“No,” Hermione said. “Who told you about me? ”
“Professor McGonagall and I believe I see why. Do you have an eidetic memory, Hermione?”
MathMage
I...hm. Maybe I was letting hindsight bias me here.
Whoops, that’s, right. Thanks.
Ah, thanks.
Unless Dumbledore comes back. Even if he doesn’t, Harry has made little effort to prevent people from suspecting that Quirrell was connected to Voldemort.
I would say at least 95% certainty that there’s more than wrapup left, but it sounds like handing out prophecies is pretty far down on the list of additional things to cover.
The Blood-Cooling Charm was invented for the story specifically to offer a means of murder that didn’t set off the wards until the point of death; furthermore, if a professor (Quirrell) cast it, the wards wouldn’t trigger anyway.
Over/under on there being such entities at all? It’s certainly possible that our current understanding of where prophecies come from is incomplete, but the story doesn’t seem to have set it up as particularly likely.
He doesn’t have to be persuaded to be good, he just has to be persuaded to let Harry out of the box. If he lets Harry out of the box for non-good reasons, that still counts.
Isn’t Voldemort’s body going to die in its Transfigured form? I assume Harry has a way around that, and he has a reasonably long time frame to implement a solution (at least compared to the 60 seconds he had to work with just now), but that dangling loose end is gnawing at me.
Although it sounds persuasive to us, to Voldemort this would sound like exactly the sort of ‘intelligent idiocy’ that would only solidify his belief that Harry has to be killed right away.
Because it is unlikely that Harry would have precommitted to blowing himself up as a general emergency countermeasure.
Obvious potentially useful moves:
Buy time with discussion of secret powers (partial Transfiguration and true Patronus), since we’re optimizing primarily for surviving the immediate situation and not for preventing Voldemort from knowing useful powers.
Partially Transfigure himself in some useful way, depending on subsequent access to PStone to avoid T. sickness.
Cast Patronus centered on himself to blind and to block AKs. (Problem: doesn’t block other curses. But if he moves, Death Eaters might fire at the shiny thing instead of at him.)
Un-Transfigure glasses into whatever emergency countermeasure Harry could have chosen. (Note: will still be stuck to Harry’s face, so no bombs or suchlike.)
I’ve been primarily thinking along the lines of defense, escape, mobility. Once Harry gets to the Time Turner or the pouch he has more options.
At present, McGonagall has no options because she doesn’t know what’s going on. In order for your question “What can McGonagall do?” to even make sense, we must first postulate that Harry/Hermione get out of this situation and that one of them is able to contact McGonagall while evading control or surveillance. Even if that is resolved without obviating your reason for considering McGonagall (that Harry is in an impossible situation), it’s not clear that McGonagall could:
Persuade enough Muggles to take her seriously
Anticipate Voldemort’s intentions and avenues of attack
Explain these to the Muggles in sufficient detail that the Muggles could devise countermeasures (McGonagall certainly can’t devise Muggle countermeasures for them)
Do all this in the time frame before Voldemort could take over magical Britain, not to mention whichever Muggles McGonagall has gone to for help
Avoid Voldemort while doing all of this
Yes—I claim no points for originality, only timing.
I am dubious that “seeking help from the Muggles” is as straightforward as you seem to think it is.
Therefore, LV needs him for something right now.
Better yet, Nott is the power that Voldemort knows!
Native speaker—it’s not wrong, but it is somewhat awkward. That said, the whole excerpt is redundant, so I’d be making more extensive changes than replacing “insofar as” with something else if I were editing. (Also: “He tried not to shiver in the falling night temperatures, for...it was getting colder.”)
From 113:
So it was planned, but never executed. All other references to the gun have it in Voldemort’s hand.