Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
For most people, probably not, but having the support of the masses might be more valuable for a house that is either not a major player among the existing alliances, or not going to win any friends anyway (such as Malfoy).
I’m just imagining the professors’ frustration: “Well done, , and five points for AAAAGHHH CURSE YOU HARRY!”
Where it goes from here: If the enemy actually wants to defeat this coalition, nothing happens. This is a temporary alliance against an outside threat, and if said threat goes away, the alliance will probably collapse of its own accord. (It may bring some lasting changes to the leadership of Hogwarts, but people will chafe against the strict security, and old and new grudges will emerge, and the coalition will break.)
If the enemy has been breeding Harry/Draco as the future leader of Magical Britain (much more likely), they will continue to attack or otherwise be active, probably conceding many victories to the new Kids’ Coalition.
It reads like a very forced solution—there would be significant gains to one noble house going against the tradition, so their heir could have several years of Hogwarts students rally behind them—and also kind of impossible to implement, given that we don’t know much about their birth control methods, and the Noble Houses are unlikely to all marry at the same time etc.
That said, the HP universe which Eliezer took on as his setting is full of such bugs, and this is a reasonable patch.
Yes, obviously. Even in the unlikely event this wasn’t all planned by Quirrell with his talk of unity, and role in the Hermione Affair, it is now really easy for him to accomplish this goal.
I also doubt it will be an issue. But it will be fun. And I’m wondering if we could try to get a head start...
Don’t forget Space Stuff.
I agree that it’s important and has serious consequences, but what is the puzzle?
Now you’re just being paranoid.
Which is totally appropriate.
So...maybe.
I, for one, liked it. I’m not sure here is where it belongs (though I couldn’t say where else it does).
Seems pretty well-written and reasonably plausible; I like being reminded that Voldemort winning is a real possibility, and this seems like a way he might do so.
Thanks for the correction.
On the topic of illogical career paths, Bones has a real job that requires being a very good auror, rather than being an errand-boy for Dumbledore, as Moody seems to be.
And as for “what are these people doing running a boarding school”, they run a school based on reward and (mostly) punishment, rather than the growth of their pupils; they teach a rigid curriculum that seems to have remained unchanged for centuries, in spite of advances in both the magical and muggle worlds; and they socially condition people into narrow roles, largely defined by negative attitudes towards others, based solely on the House a piece of fabric sorts them into.
Thank you for pointing out these subtle clevernesses.
I think it’s relatively plausible, actually. The troll did not necessarily have specific orders to eat her feet-first.
As a matter of character, Dumbledore does have odd notions of what it takes to be a hero. And he may think Harry needed to see the real toll of wars by having someone close to him die.
Or he really was confident that Harry would save her, and he would use the troll attempt as evidence against Malfoy (which would have worked).
And my favourite part of your comment:
“Invisibility cloak not doing what it was supposed to? Well, I can see that.”
Yes; that’s the problem :)
It’s even worse than this; Harry did not have his pouch as he went in.
A plausible response is that Harry wrote it out during the waiting period before the Malfoys entered.
Now is the time to start speculating as to the contents of the secret agreement between Harry and House Malfoy...
You miss the point—he is still hiding it. The eye provides full 360-degree vision at all times, but few people know this, so he maintains an appearance of some level of vigilance.
This means that anyone who sees him respond quickly to a threat (i.e. evidence of vigilance) will have an immediate explanation of how he was able to do so (being vigilant), and not look beyond it to find out the extent of his abilities.
Quite well thought out, really.
Counterpoint: it appears that Harry is now serious about using Transfiguration as a weapon. However, he has not recently been considering very much else, meaning that he has fewer backups than perhaps he should, in the case where someone counters his Transfigurations (e.g. with good shields, or casting finite on Harry before a fight).
Did the survey.
Results: I’m better at estimating continental populations than I had thought; I am frustrated by single-option questions in many cases (e.g. domain of study, nothing for significantly-reduced-meat-intake-but-not-strict-vegetarian, interdependent causes of global catastrophe) and questions that are too huge to be well-formulated, let alone reasonably answer (supernatural/simulation/God).
Also the question about aliens made me unaccountably sad: even if I retroactively adjust my estimates of intelligent alien life upwards (which I would never do), I have to face the incredibly low probability that they’re in the Milky way.