Okay. Welcome to the Ordinary Bookclub. We’re reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Our kickoff post is here, we review Chapters 1-5 here, we review chapters 6-15 here, we review chapters 16-25 here, we review chapters 26-35 here, we review chapters 36-46 here, we review chapters 47-64 here, we review chapters 65-77 here and we review chapters 78-87 here.
This week we resolved to read chapters 88-99. These brief summaries are probably going to miss stuff and put emphasis on the wrong stuff and, probably, miss the point from time to time. When I’m wrong, please call me out in the comments.
One of the things we have decided that we want to start doing is discussing the various puzzles the chapters throw up for us. When a major piece of information is withheld, it’s (usually) because it’s an opportunity for the reader to do some light detective work and figure out what is REALLY going on (for example, when we were asking “who left Harry the notes in chapter 13?” that was something that was revealed in chapter 14…). It can difficult to discuss some of the puzzles in this story without discussing major events happening in future chapters so if you want to discuss something with a major plot point: please rot13 it. That’s a simple encryption that will allow the folks who want to avoid spoilers (or premature answers to puzzles) to avoid them and allow the people who want to argue them to argue them.
Now that the boilerplate is out of the way, let’s get started.
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Chapter 88: Lunch is interrupted by a troll showing up in the dungeons at 12:07. McGonagall knows that this is the sort of thing that will be assumed to be the fault of the DADA instructor. The students are in the dining hall preparing for the worst as the professors all prepare to take care of troll and do their best to prevent the worst from happening by 12:14. Harry realizes that Hermione isn’t in the dining hall and freaks out. He’s going to grab a 7th year and find her and bring her back to safety. We have a small experience with the bystander effect. We have a small experience with people not wanting to disobey the authorities even when the authorities aren’t present. Sort of a reverse Milgram Experiment? I guess? Anyway, Harry appeals to Hagrid, who has been left in charge, and Hagrid doesn’t want to authorize Harry leaving. He says that he’ll go himself… but he can’t ride a broom. Harry is going to leave and Hagrid tries to stop him. Hagrid is distracted by a couple of students but then Neville gets in the way to stop Harry but Neville is brought down by Ron. Ron tells Harry to go. Harry runs into the Weasley Twins and they have forgotten how to find students in a hurry, but they remember that they used to know how to find students in a hurry. Harry figures out that they’ve been tampered with. Hermione ain’t in the library. Harry refers to people who have to follow scripts instead of thinking about things “NPCs”. The librarian is one. Harry summons Patronus 2.0 and tells the Patronus to find Hermione. Huh. Looks like the Patronus can find people, not just other Patroni.
Chapter 89: They find the troll. In open daylight, even. Remember Chapter 16? Let’s copy and paste the section:
“The Mountain Troll is more dangerous than the Hungarian Horntail! It is strong enough to bite through steel! Its hide is resistant enough to withstand Stunning Hexes and Cutting Charms! Its sense of smell is so acute that it can tell from afar whether its prey is part of a pack, or alone and vulnerable! Most fearsome of all, the troll is unique among magical creatures in continuously maintaining a form of Transfiguration on itself – it is always transforming into its own body. If you somehow succeed in ripping off its arm it will grow another within seconds! Fire and acid will produce scar tissue which can temporarily confuse a troll’s regenerative powers – for an hour or two! They are smart enough to use clubs as tools! The mountain troll is the third most perfect killing machine in all Nature! One Killing Curse will bring it down.”
The students were looking rather shocked.
Professor Quirrell was smiling rather grimly. “Your sad excuse for a third-year Defence textbook will suggest to you that you expose the mountain troll to sunlight, which will freeze it in place. This, my young apprentices, is the sort of useless knowledge you will never find in my lessons. You do not encounter mountain trolls in open daylight! The idea that you should use sunlight to stop them is the result of foolish textbook authors trying to show off their mastery of minutia at the expense of practicality. Just because there is a ridiculously obscure way of dealing with mountain trolls does not mean you should actually try to use it! The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable, and works every single time on anything with a brain. If, as an adult wizard, you find yourself incapable of using the Killing Curse, then you can simply Apparate away! Likewise if you are facing the second most perfect killing machine, a Dementor. You just Apparate away!”
Well, there’s the troll. In open daylight. Hooboy. Looks like the troll bit off Hermione’s legs. Harry tells the twins to take on the troll while he uses the healing kit. Tourniquets applied. Oxygenating potions injected into the carotid artery. The twins are having trouble fighting the troll. Maybe they didn’t get the same speech. Maybe they did and they aren’t remembering it. Maybe they’re not cracked enough to cast it. One of the twins casts the Sorting Hat summoning spell used by Dumbledore in the last major arc and tells it to do something. It roars out “GRYFFINDOR!” and the twin pulls Godric’s sword out, like a rabbit from a hat. Nihil Supernum. Nothing Above. With the sword, one of the troll’s arms gets cut off but the Mountain Troll is the third most perfect killing machine and takes the twins out single-handedly. They tell Harry to run but Harry knows that, if he does, the twins are dead too. He’s the only one who can do anything. He thinks about casting the killing curse for a moment but, instead, takes the transfigured pebble from his ring and throws it into the troll’s mouth and finites the spell, causing the pebble to turn back into a boulder. This doesn’t kill the troll but it does slow it down enough for Harry to transfigure the troll’s brain into acid which DOES kill it.
Hermione tells Harry that it’s not his fault and then dies. Whoa.
Dumbledore, summoned by the death of a student, can’t do anything. It’s too late. Then this section with Quirrell is interesting: “The Defense Professor had felt the boy’s horror, through the link that existed between the two of them, the resonance in their magic; and he had realized that the boy had sought the troll and found it. The Defense Professor had tried to send an impulse to retreat, to don the Cloak of Invisibility and flee; but he’d never been able to influence the boy through the resonance, and hadn’t succeeded that time either.” Trelawney gives another prophecy: “HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD.”
Chapter 90: Harry is in shock. At least the twins are okay. Dumbledore isn’t helping Harry try to help Hermione. Harry makes Hermione cold in the hopes that that will help with possible resuscitation. When Fawkes tries to sing to Harry, Harry yells at Fawkes telling him that his feelings are not a disease that needs to be cured. Dumbledore sends in McGonagall in the hopes that she’ll be able to shake him out of this weird “I can fix this” attitude. Harry explains the several things that could have been done to prevent this from happening in the first place. “False Grief”, I think this is called. “If only I hadn’t asked him to go to the grocery store, he wouldn’t have been killed by a drunk driver” is one of the ways it manifests in muggleworld.
Harry gets off a very interesting line: “Of course it’s my fault. There’s no one else here who could be responsible for anything.”
Harry then explains his NPC theory. It’s monumentally unfair… but it does seem to have a robust sense of reality. Nihil Supernum. Nothing Above. He asks McGonagall to remove his restrictions from his Time Turner. She does.
I liked the scene where Dumbledore and McGonagall talk about what Harry said. McGonagall’s line about how if she had Harry stop talking, he wouldn’t have had anyone to say those things to was a very good line. Dumbledore had a good line too: “Your role in this disaster was tiny, your decisions quite sensible at the time, and it is only Harry Potter’s perfect hindsight that lets him imagine otherwise.” Quirrell goes in to talk with Harry and Harry remembers that Quirrell is the other guy in existence who MIGHT be responsible for things. Harry and Quirrell have an in-depth conversation about how resurrection MIGHT work. Harry doesn’t want to recreate his version of Hermione, he wants the actual Hermione back. Which means that he has to figure out how to create a new spell and he doesn’t know how. Quirrell makes the analogy to making books. New books are created all the time. But you can’t learn how to make a masterpiece. But masterpieces show up anyway. Harry wants to learn everything that Quirrell knows about magic because, hey, you never know when you’re going to need everything that Quirrell knows about magic.
But, unfortunately, Harry is 12.
Harry wants to learn Obliviate, at least, because that seems to have been used against the Twins. “Rule Eight,” said the Defense Professor. “Any technique which is good enough to defeat me once is good enough to learn myself.” After the meeting, Quirrell comes out and tells McGonagall that he is going to strengthen the security on the Restricted section himself. He explains that he is not good at being consoling but someone needs to get Harry to stop sinking into his “grief and madness”. Hoo boy.
Chapter 91: Snape comes in to talk to Harry as well. He opens with a great line: “I also cannot imagine what the Deputy Headmistress is thinking, unless I am meant to serve as a warning of where it will lead you, if you decide to take the blame for her death upon yourself.” Snape tells Harry that, yeah, he was the guy who left Hermione the notes about the bullies. He acknowledges that he was put in charge of Slytherin because Dumbledore gave up all hope for it (and notices that Harry was doing something interesting to fix Slytherin with Draco Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass). Snape says “I truly am sorry for your loss” and, man, I don’t think that anybody else could have given it. Harry is replaying everything over and over in his head with his perfect hindsight and it’s not helping. Harry’s mom and dad show up. Oof. Harry explains pretty much everything to them. The dark side, the way magical people treat muggles, and the plot of the story so far. Well, probably not the Azkaban thing. Anyway, Harry quickly realizes how much danger his parents are in and tries to get them removed from Hogwart’s. His parents, of course, are acting like parents and they want him to come HOME. Harry knows that that won’t work and just tells his mom to keep dad from doing something that will get him locked up or Obliviated beyond a perfectly acceptable level. Harry goes and gives his last respects to Hermione and McGonagall starts to write the dreadful letter to Hermione’s parents.
Chapter 92: Lesath apologizes for following Harry’s orders to not hint that he is connected to him. Lesath asks if he did the right thing and Harry lets him off the hook… kind of. He plausibly deniably tells Lesath to start learning stuff like the killing curse. Afterwards, an internal dialog between the four houses in Harry’s head. Quirrell busts into McGonagall’s office and wants to know if Harry is still, you know, going nuts. Quirrell points out that Hermione was the only person that Harry listened to. He doesn’t listen to anybody else. Lupin? Would he listen to Lupin? Yeah, probably not. Quirrell points out that maybe McGonagall is the closest we’ve got to someone that Harry would listen to and he suggests that she hasn’t done enough. She kicks him out of her office but not before he lets her know that he knows that she knows that he is REALLY David Monroe and AS David Monroe, he wants her to know that he knows that Harry is in a very, very bad place indeed. Like, “destroy a country” kinda bad place. McGonagall sees that he has a point, kinda, but tries to argue against him anyway. Quirrell points out that McGonagall is pretty much the only person who can do something and, if she doesn’t, things will get very, very bad indeed. Which, let’s face it, is kinda unfair. But it’s kinda got a robust sense of reality.
Chapter 93: Harry gets a letter from his parents and also gets told about an upcoming announcement in the dining hall. The letter is a good letter. It’s easy to forget that Harry is 12, sometimes. The dining hall is somber and the announcement given by McGonagall was that the Weasley twins were NOT going to be expelled and gave an apology for what she had done to House Gryffindor by telling them to not answer the call… and, jeez. Announces her resignation. Oh! Whew, Dumbledore didn’t accept it. And we start handing out house points. Which… well. It’s something. And Harry apologizes to McGonagall? He actually apologizes? He’s deeper in grief than we thought. And McGonagall hugged Harry and told him “I had a sister once”. It’s easy to forget that everybody in Hogwart’s has holes in their lives too. Quirrell doesn’t think that this will be enough. And Hermione’s body is missing.
Chapter 94: Flitwick shows up in Harry Potter’s bedroom at o’dark-thirty and tells Harry to wake up because he’s going to Dumbledore’s office Right Freaking Now. Some Floo action less than a minute later and they’re interrogating him to find out if Harry stole Hermione’s body. He denies it. They search his room and his trunk and his various hiding places anyway. Not finding it, they conclude that, yeah, Harry’s telling the truth and Voldemort stole it in order to use it against Harry as an Inferius. Not that Harry would care because he knows that that’s not Hermione, it’s just her shell. Dumbledore tells Harry that it looks like Quirrell killed Hermione. Harry points out that Voldemort is smart enough to frame Quirrell. (Draco has been taken away from Harry, Hermione is dead, if Quirrell is gone, Harry doesn’t have ANYBODY anymore.) Harry puts himself in Voldemort’s shoes and figures out a handful of things that we might conclude from what happened and Snape points out that maybe Voldemort was playing the game of making people think what he wants them to think. When Harry asked if Voldemort really goes meta to that degree, both Dumbledore and Snape answer “Yes” at the same time (which I thought was a nice touch). So is it about trusting the wards or not trusting the wards? If Voldy is that smart, why is Harry still alive? So all Harry knows for sure is that he has to pee and that Neville needs to go to safety. McGonagall agrees. We hammer out that the Weasley twins are the heir of Gryffindor… despite the twins not being particularly Godricy. Dumbledore gets off a good line: “Only a man exceedingly proud and vain would believe that his heir should be like himself, rather than like who he wished that he could be.” We have a conversation with Neville where Neville apologizes for trying to stop Harry from saving Hermione. We discuss “Egocentric Bias”. And we say goodbye to Neville.
Chapter 95: Harry goes for a walk in the Permitted Woods to think about stuff like Invisibility Theory and Godhood Theory and HOLY COW QUIRRELL IS THERE. He doesn’t want to talk to Quirrell but Quirrell pulls out the big guns and tells Harry, hey, you owe me one. After using the Time Turner to tell McGonagall that, hey, I’m talking to the guy who may or may not have been framed with the murder of Hermione, he has a conversation with Quirrell where Quirrell, once again, tries to talk Harry out of ascending to Godhood. Quirrell takes Harry out to outer space one last time and they discuss how magicians might be capable of destroying things utterly that muggles wouldn’t be able to do. And, hey, muggles have nukes. We learn that Wizard Novels have protagonists who are unable to stop the behaviors that will destory them. They don’t unleash destruction because they’re like Voldemort. They unleash destruction because they’re trying to do something else entirely and destruction is a by-product. Quirrell doesn’t understand why Harry is willing to risk unleashing destruction to bring back Hermione. Quirrell wonders if Harry himself is playing a role in searching for some way to raise the dead. Harry hammers out that, no, he’s not. Quirrell can’t believe that Harry will go to those ends to bring Hermione back. “Challenge death itself”. Quirrell then offers his own help, which surprises Harry. Hey. Give me the same science books that you gave Draco and maybe I can come up with something. And Quirrell passes out from the effort.
Chapter 96: Lupin takes Harry back to Godric’s Hollow. There’s a statue of James and Lily and baby Harry. What would Harry have been like had he grown up with those two as his parents? Maybe he’d like Quiddich. He asks Lupin whether he tried to figure out a way to bring his parents back after Voldemort killed them. He didn’t because magic can’t undo death. Harry wants to know if Lupin knows that or if that’s something that Everybody Just Knows (without them really knowing it). Did Lupin even care enough to try to get them back? They get to the house itself and see the sign memorializing the events of the night of Halloween 1981. There’s a note that said that “You were our miracle” and Harry meditates on it for a second. He says that these notes are what people do instead of trying to make it better but realizes that, no, he’s looking at it wrong. Harry walks through the graveyard and can’t believe how many people have died without wizards putting a stop to death. Harry gets to his parents’ tombstones and sees 1 Corinthians 15:26: “THE LAST ENEMY THAT SHALL BE DESTROYED IS DEATH”. Harry realizes then that he’s not alone and his parents (his lineage) is one of wanting to challenge, and defeat, death itself. Even if Lupin doesn’t understand. Harry and Lupin both hear some Old English and use the portkey that takes them back to Hogwart’s. Harry goes back to the Ravenclaw dorm to encounter… is that Draco’s Patronus?
Chapter 97: Ah, it IS Draco’s Patronus. Draco can still cast it. That’s good. Harry has a debtor’s meeting at Gringotts. Oh, crap. Yeah, that debt thing. Before the meeting, some thoughts on Goblin Theory and Harry realizes that, yeah, in addition to remaking Wizard Culture, he’s probably going to have to remake Goblin Culture too. Mad-Eye explains to Harry that he isn’t to sign ANYTHING. It’s a pity that Mad-Eye isn’t as smart as Harry is, though. Harry comes from a culture with REAL lawyers. We have the meeting. Oh, yeah! Harry borrowed 40 Galleons from Draco back in the early chapters. So that’s on Harry too. Lucius opens the meeting with an exceptionally good (if exceptionally direct) question: “I do not understand what is happening at Hogwarts, Harry Potter. Would you care to explain it to me?” Harry and Lucius and Draco have a real conversation. Lucius and Draco don’t understand Harry’s love for Hermione and Draco kinda resents that he’d been played for a fool. Harry explains that it was for Draco’s own good (indeed, perhaps even the good of the world). Lucius wants to know about the troll. Harry knows that Lucius knows that Harry knows that, well, anyway, Harry gives his theories about the troll… and it comes out that Lucius suspects that he’s one heck of a suspect for the hand that pointed the troll at Hermione. And then Harry and Lucius play a couple of games at once. One is the gathering information game. One is the preparing for eventual trial and testimony under veritaserum game. There might be some more games as well. Lucius still knows that he’s a suspect though and this preoccupies him overly… to the point that he wants Harry to testify that Harry knows that House Malfoy had NOTHING to do with the Hermione thing (and is willing to reduce the debt or adjust the terms of repayment). Harry counter-offers and points out that Lucius knows that the attempt on Draco’s life was OBVIOUSLY a setup and Hermione got the False Memory Charm and Lucius should absolve the debt and Harry will testify that he knows that Lucius had bad information before, now he’s got good information, and House Potter holds no animus to House Malfoy. Lucius points out that 100,000 Galleons is 100,000 Galleons. Harry points out that 100,000 ain’t nothin’. And Draco and Lucius have a conversation about what is worth what… and Draco suggests that the offer is worth taking. But Potter wronged Draco and Draco wants Potter to acknowledge that… and Harry will if Lucius accepts the deal. Lucius and Draco argue about this for a while and, looky there, Harry already has a contract written up for Lucius to sign. See? Harry won’t sign anything! And he won’t touch a quill either! He has a PEN. Take that, Mad-Eye! Lucius has never seen a pen before. Lucius asks Harry for his third suspect and Harry points out that it’s Dumbledore because, among other things, Harry killed the troll with a weapon Dumbledore gave him at the beginning of the school year… and, of course, Lucius and Draco are more than willing to see that a coincidence ain’t a coincidence when Dumbledore is involved. Remember the line from Chapter 47? “Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.” Well, it pops up again. Dumbledore DID try to prevent Harry from saving Hermione, after all. They go through all of the ins and outs of Dumbledore’s motives, means, and opportunity. Lucius tells Harry that, hey, if this is a deception, Harry will pay. If it is the truth? House Malfoy and House Potter will be besties forever. Harry makes a deal with Lucius: if Dumbledore gets ousted, Draco is next in line to fill the vacuum in the power structure. Lucius signs the contract. The meeting ends and Mad-Eye reads the contract.
Chapter 98: Daphne Greengrass comes back to Hogwarts after Easter Break. “Mother had said that the sad fact was that if only one student died every year, well, that still made Hogwarts safer than Beauxbatons, let alone Durmstrang.” Ah, utilitarianism. Draco meets her in the hallway when she doesn’t expect it and Draco asks her to cast the Patronus. She senses a trap and says as much and Draco proves that he can cast the Patronus too. With the Patronus shining, Draco explains to Daphne that he knows that Hermione didn’t try to kill him. It was obviously a setup and he knows that. Heck, he tells Daphne that House Malfoy is giving House Potter their money back. The Slytherin who can cast the Patronus Charm all need to work together. The Silvery Slytherins. Draco makes Daphne an offer. Harry hires the Weasley Twins and tells them that whomever they hired for the Rita Skeeter memory charm will probably be needed to get this plan off the ground too. He provides a list without naming the things on it and the twins read the list without naming the things on it and there’s a lot of “we don’t recognize this stuff!” kinda statements without telling us what’s on the list. Harry points out that things have become serious. The Twins are Gryffindor through and through. The good kind. Not the bad kind. “It was a strange kind of selfishness, they thought, that Harry could understand kindness within himself – never dreaming of asking of money from anyone he’d helped more than they’d helped him, or calling that a debt – while being apparently unable to conceive that others might want to act the same way toward him.” Draco gets up after dinner to make an announcement. Harry gets up and stands next to him. They announce that they have joined forces to fight whatever force tried to separate them, kill Hermione, and almost kill Draco. Daphne Greengrass anounces that she’s in. Teddy Nott announces that he’s in. Susan Bones announces that she’s in. Neville’s back. He announces that he’s in. And they announce how stuff’s going to be done in the future. No wanering alone, not even to go to the can. There will now be aurors on the grounds. The house points system is temporarily suspended because everybody needs to band together as comrades, not as rivals. All students who aren’t in the DADA classes will get training from the aurors. NO MORE FIGHTING IN THE HALLS. Only in defense lessons or not at all. And since memory charms had been used on students so effectively, they concluded that it might be someone on the faculty. So reports go to Lord Greengrass rather than to the professors. Someone is bringing it to the Hogwarts students and the Hogwarts students are going to bring it back in kind.
Chapter 99: This chapter consists of a single sentence: “Ten days later, the first dead unicorn was found in the Forbidden Forest.”
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And that’s our first ninety-nine chapters.
For next Sunday, we’re going to read fourteen chapters and get ourselves up through chapter 113. That will get us through the next major arc and let us play the same game that was played way back when this was first written. (Like, please, open a notepad file and fire off a handful of sentences and then save the file to copy and paste into a comment box.)
So… What do you think?
(Featured image is Foucault’s Pendulum by Sylvar. Used under a creative commons license.)
I’ll post thoughts later, but for now I strongly recommend we read to chapter 113, instead of 110 next week.Report
If you get to a cliffhanger and are able to keep yourself from reading on, you’re a stronger person than I.
That said: These recaps take *FOREVER* and the fewer chapters the better. (Not counting the boilerplate stuff bookending the post, that’s over 4000 words up there.)Report
Back in my time, we actually had to wait for the thing to be written!Report
That’s fair. I suggested it because I wanted to offer the people reading for the first time the same experience I had reading Chapter 113 when it came out. But I appreciate the practical considerations involved.Report
Wait, let me go back and re-read 113… OH YEAH THAT ONE.
Hrm. We could play that game. There are only 22 chapters left. I was thinking that the (spoiler) with the (spoiler) was the best place to leave that off but okay. You talked me into it.
We’ll read the next 14 chapters and play the game.
And that’ll make the penultimate HPMOR bookclub post that much shorter.Report
Okay, and we’ll announce again, down here in comments, that if this is your first read-through, please consider playing the game that you’ll be asked to play at the end of chapter 113.
I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO STOP READING!
I am just asking you to consider putting the book down for long enough to open a notepad file and write a short paragraph.
After that, feel free to finish reading everything and Rot13 (link is in the top boilerplate section!) your short paragraph and leave it as a comment to either this week or next week’s post.
There. Now we can argue about whether Hermione would really have died from being really sad like Padme after her encounter with the troll.Report
I was pretty annoyed at the end of 89. He fridged Hermione? Come on!
I think the second last sentence of 89, just before Trelawney’s prophecy, will prove important.
Unseen by anyone, the Defense Professor’s lips curved up in a thin smile. Despite its little ups and downs, on the whole this had been a surprisingly good day –
To me the Dumbledore-done-it theory that the Malfoys and Harry agree over doesn’t seem like the right one. I think Lucius’ threats about what happens if this is a trick, is going to mean something – because Lucius is not a member of the reality-based community. He’s not only uninterested in finding out who risked Draco’s life and assassinated Hermione, whoever that happens to be – he doesn’t even understand the concept of it. He only understands decisiom-based evidence making.
Anyway, things are getting real. The adminstrative coup was interesting all right – I didn’t see that coming.Report
Killing Hermione was nuts. The first time I read it, my jaw was on the floor and I had to read it a second time to make sure I read what I read. (I was vaguely reminded of Ned Stark getting his fool head cut off.)
I’m meditating on whether Hermione was fridged or not. In Green Lantern, Alexandra DeWitt’s only purpose was to be lovely and then provide emotional depth for Kyle Rayner after she died. Did Hermione do that in this story?
The wacky thing is that, in Rowling’s story, Hermione was one of the three core players. Sure, Harry was the main protagonist, but she and Ron were co-protagonists (e.g., Harry couldn’t have finished the first book without both of them).
If Harry hadn’t met Hermione in this fanfic, would he have been able to do the things he did? I think so. He didn’t do anything with her that he couldn’t have done without her and Daphne Greengrass or Susan Bones could have just as easily been an opposing General who also would have lost to Harry all the time. Sure, Hermione was allowed her own growth (the SPHEW chapters) but Harry didn’t *NEED* her like he did in the originals.
By making Harry a rationalist, they no longer needed a character who did her homework to be part of the foundation. The foundation already had one. (Now, this isn’t to say that the emotional support she provides/provided isn’t essential to what becomes of Harry in the story… but that’s immaterial to whether her death qualifies as fridging, isn’t it?)Report
Yeah, Hermione was fridged and, as you note, the core premise of HPMOR basically renders her fundamentally redundant and the author then tries to repurpose her character in a manner that kind of flies right into the “women exist to emotionally tame and civilize men” trope. It’s definitely not one of the stronger elements of the fanfic but it IS a fanfic and a well written and clever one. So probably best to simply acknowledge that weakness and move on.Report
I think regardless of what Hermione did earlier in the story, her death was there primarily to move the protagonist to his next character development.
Which I guess was well foreshadowed by the whole “Harry has zero chill about death” thing all along. Kind of made it inevitable now you see it that his big character transformation would be when his bluff against death gets called.
Hermione wasn’t a character written for nothing but fridging, but that’s what I’d call these chapters.Report
Eliezer Yudkowsky actually wrote a response to the suggestion Hermione was fridged, and that HPMOR is anti-feminst in general when these chapters were originally released: http://www.hpmor.com/a-rant-thereof/
The tldr is that he was frustrated that he couldn’t properly defend against the criticisms when the work was not yet complete. But one point he does make that I think is worth noting is that Hermione’s death wasn’t just character development for Harry. McGonagall also developed as a character because of her death.Report
I imagine that he remains frustrated that he can’t properly defend against the criticisms now.Report
Hm. I won’t particularly address the bit about Snape vs. McGonagall’s amounts of agency, as that’s not a gripe I have with the story. I think if anything, their difference in freedom of action is simply that McGonagall has more ethics than Snape, and so is cut off from a number of courses of action of a type Snape could easily choose, because for her it would be sinking too low, while for Snape it wouldn’t. That seems entirely in keeping with both the canonical and fan fictional depictions of Snape and McGonagall, and with ethical and unethical people in general.
But as far as Hermione’s death being a fridging… It is perhaps not an absolute classic-form fridging – the character being there only to be an object of emotions felt by the male lead, affection while she lives and then distress leading to personal development when she’s dead. But I’d say the defence that her death also serves as a character-developing distress source for a female character is at most a very narrow defence on technical grounds.
While she lives, she doesn’t play a very significant role in the actual plot actions / power dynamics of the school, other than by influencing Harry’s decision making, specifically because of the affection he holds for her. When she dies, there really is no “Oh crap, we never would have achieves W and X without Hermione, now how are we ever going to manage Y and Z?” It’s not a setback, just a trauma.
Her death seems so far to influence things only through other people’s emotional development in response to it, not because her presence in the overall arc of the story would have been materially different from her absence. Regardless of the genders of the people who grow or change through their grief, that’s fridge-y enough for me.Report
That was probably a bit overstated – her role as Sunshine General and S.P.H.E.W. instigator ain’t nothing, but as Jaybird observes, Susan Bones or Daphne Greengrass could have been generals as well, and S.P.H.E.W. doesn’t seem to have done a whole huge amount to shape the world around it.
And she was definitely a real character in her own right – it was only her death in chapter 89 that I’d call a fridging, not by any means her whole presence in the story.Report
For what it’s worth, my criticism is *NOT* that EY is “anti-feminist” (not that I’m the best person to give that defense to him, of course). He’s written Hermione as a strong female character (heck, you can use all caps, if you want) and McGonagall too. Heck, he’s given us a lot of time with characters that I don’t really remember from the books… Daphne, Susan, Padma… I’m sure I’m missing some.
But that doesn’t mean that Hermione wasn’t fridged.Report
I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had in the area of women in HPMOR and Hermione specifically, but I’m going to wait till the whole thing is finished to get into itReport
This. I wouldn’t call the fanfic anti-feminist, but I did stop reading after ch 89 (okay, I skimmed a bit further, but the fridging vibe only got worse). The Girl In The Fridge is one of my least favorite tropes in fiction or fanfic and this was such an over the top blatant example, it completely turned me off.
Worse, so many plot holes to get there. What happened to the wards Dumbledore set to know if Hermoine was in trouble? Also absolutely everybody had to be stupid. Hermoine use the broomstick or cloak she had in her bag. Harry maybe was too upset to think straight until it was too late, literally no one student, even the older ones, including a general praised for sense, thought of using a patronus to send a message to McGonagell? etc. etc.Report
All of Hermione’s items had been rendered non-functional. And the Hogwarts wards identified the troll as the Defense Professor, which would have prevented them from issuing the same warnings that they would for a stray creature. Also, I don’t believe the message-delivery abilities of the Patronus charm are widely known.
As for Harry panicking in the moment, that is all too plausible to me. This is the first really time-sensitive crisis he has ever faced, and thinking at speed is different from systematically evaluating your options.Report
Since McGonagell used her cat Patronus to find and give a message to Hermoine in earlier chapters, and Harry was showing others in the army that they could be used to deliver messages, I feel like it was more generally known. And even if it wasn’t, why not talk to a portrait – tell it to pass the word?
Harry panicking is plausible (though I note he thought pretty clearly in the middle of Azkaban). No one else thinking of the obvious isn’t.
Also the wards Dumbeldore put on Hermoine were made ineffective as well? Without him noticing?Report
Whoever did this was powerful, intelligent and methodical – they got a troll into Hogwarts, confused the Hogwarts wards, stole Fred and George’s map (obliviating them in the process) and shut down all of Hermione’s defences. It is entirely possible that they were able to silence Dumbledore’s wards – the only ward they couldn’t silence was the one marking a student’s death because it is part of Hogwarts itself.
A lot of people made mistakes during that whole sorry episode, but plausible ones.Report
I think a lot of the, shall we say, strain on the plot, arises from the understandable desire to adapt the troll-on-the-loose scene from the Philosopher’s Stone, into this new story.
If the goal was mostly just to assassinate Hermione, without reimagining the troll scene, transfiguring a quarter pound of potassium cyanide into Hermione’s hot cocoa, with a spell timed to wear off when everyone was asleep so it would be too late by the time the poisoning was detected, would have done fine.
I can accept that Hermione, having decided that heading for sunlight was her best bet at a beating the troll, was just barely keeping her fighting retreat from turning into a rout, and so didn’t get an opportunity to talk to a portrait. (I kind of recall a thing where Harry uses his patronus to send a message to someone, specifically so his allies Draco and Hermione would know that – but maybe he only revealed that to Draco?)Report
Well, I had this conversation with Maribou as to whether she should read it. I pointed out that I was a guy reading it and I encountered a bunch of stuff that rolled off my back but, when I imagined what’d be going through her head when she read it, that it’d be a lot more irritating for her than it was for me.
That said: There are good things that happen in the fanfic and while I can completely understand you being upset with the story to the point where you want to stop, I think that there are enough good things that happen in the rest of the story to make you say “okay, going through to the end was worth it.”
I can completely understand if you don’t want to take my word for it (as I said, I’m not the best person to give that defense) but know that I am willing to say that there are still good things that happen including things that will make you less irritated. They won’t make you *UN*irritated… but in the same way that I hope that I communicated severe frustration with multiple parts of the story, I found gems hiding amongst the sand that I hate that is rough and gets everywhere.
If you can’t do it anyway, I am sorry that I made you read that much only to whap you in the face with the fridging of a character.
That wasn’t what I wanted when I asked everybody to read along with us. I’m sorry.Report