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by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
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I’ve just finished reading Eliezer Yudkowsky’s magnum opus Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, for the second time and it is amazing. Off the top of my head I think it’s the only novel I’ve read twice in one year, the first time because I couldn’t put it down, and the second time to find all the details I missed while eagerly following the story the first time. Like the Rowling canon, there’s a lot of depth here you notice the first time through. It’s the only HP fanfic that I’ve found as compelling, maybe more compelling, than the original.
There are two ways I can think of to explain this story. The obvious one is that it’s an alternate history of the Harry Potter-verse in which Harry’s Aunt Petunia convinces her sister to magically make her beautiful. As a result instead of marrying Vernon Dursley, she marries physicist Michael Verres. Consequently instead of growing up in a closet under the stairs, Harry grows up as a doted-upon only child of way above average intelligence. But the more accurate description is a story in which Harry Potter is replaced by Ender Wiggin.
Warning: major spoilers follow.
Differences from Canon
As I said, the major departure from established events is when Lily Evans uses magic to make Petunia beautiful. Most of the differences from canon can be derived from that, especially her marriage to Michael Verres and the loving and intellectually curious household that Harry grows up in until his letter from Hogwarts arrives.
Furthermore, you really do have to accept that the character of Harry in this fanfic is completely different from the character of Harry in canon. They are really two very different people. This Harry is more like Ender Wiggin; and like Ender he’s smarter, wiser, and more learned way beyond what any actual 11-year old ever is or ever could be. As in Ender’s Game, the real supernatural power here is the protagonist’s extreme intelligence, cunning, and learning. One of the things that makes the original series so compelling is that Harry acts and thinks like an 11 year old in the Sorcerer’s Stone and grows up through the series. That’s lost here because when the story opens Harry is in many ways already wiser and more mature than 99% of the magical world. Heck, he’s wiser and more mature than 99% of people in our real Muggle world. As Mcgonagall says on p. 49, “In all my life I’ve never met anyone else like you. Sometimes you just don’t seem eleven years old or even all that human.”
Beyond that there are a few other differences from the canonical story that, I think, all occur after Lily casts her spell on Petunia. Thus you could invoke the Butterfly Effect to explain them, but they aren’t obviously caused by Lily’s spell and its consequences. Specifically:
During the war, Dumbledore may have burned Narcissa Malfoy to death in her bed; and if he didn’t someone did. Or the whole thing was faked for as yet unrevealed reasons. In any case, Draco grew up without a mother.
During the war, the Death Eaters kidnapped Aberforth and tortured him to death when Albus wouldn’t pay his ransom.
Peter Pettigrew probably did not go into hiding as the Weasleys’ rat; or, if he did, he switched in a real rat before Harry arrives at Hogwarts. Sirius may have killed him in this version. He may even not have been the Potters’ secret keeper. So far, the story is unclear on these points.
McGonagall also hear Trelawney’s prophecy. (Double check that she didn’t in canon)
Trelawney’s prophecy is subtly different between the canon and HPMOR, though arguably this is a result of the future changing as a result of Petunia’s transformation, and since the future changed prophecies of the future changed too.
There may be a couple more I’ve missed, but I don’t think there were any that precede Lily making Petunia beautiful.
Rowling Criticisms
There are a number of amusing places in the book where Yudkowsky takes good natured jabs at either Rowling the author or Rowling’s characters in canon. Among them:
Harry is astonished, shocked, and appalled that a sixth year Gryffindor would attack a Sixth Year Slytherin with a curse when he didn’t even know what it would do:
Professor Quirrell slammed the book shut and it vanished with a
small whispering sound. He looked up, then, and Harry flinched.
“I suppose an intelligent conversation would be pleasant for me at this point,” said Professor Quirrell in the same
biting tone that had invited Harry to enter. “You are not
likely to find it so, be warned.”
Harry drew a deep breath. “I promise I won’t mind if you snap at
me. What happened?”
The cold in the room seemed to deepen. “A sixth-year Gryffindor
cast a curse at one of my more promising students, a sixth-year
Slytherin.”
Harry swallowed. “What… sort of curse?”
And the fury on Professor Quirrell’s face was no longer
contained. “Why bother to ask an unimportant question like that,
Mr. Potter? Our friend the sixth-year Gryffindor did not think it
was important!”
“Are you serious? ” Harry said before he could stop
himself.
“No, I’m in a terrible mood today for no particular reason. Yes I’m serious, you fool! He didn’t know. He actually
didn’t know. I didn’t believe it until the Aurors confirmed it
under Veritaserum. He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and
he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it
did.“
“You don’t mean,” Harry said, “that he was mistaken about
what it did, that he somehow read the wrong spell description
-”
“All he knew was that it was meant to be directed at an enemy.
He knew that was all he knew.”
And that had been enough to cast the spell. “I do not understand
how anything with that small a brain could walk upright.”
“So let me get this straight,” Harry said as it seemed that
Ron’s explanation (with associated hand gestures) was winding down.
“Catching the Snitch is worth one hundred and fifty
points? ”
“Yeah -”
“How many ten-point goals does one side usually score not counting the Snitch?”
“Um, maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games -”
“That’s just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game
design. Look, the rest of this game sounds like it might make
sense, sort of, for a sport I mean, but you’re basically saying
that catching the Snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point
spread. The two Seekers are up there flying around looking for the
Snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else, spotting the
Snitch first is going to be mostly luck -”
“It’s not luck!” protested Ron. “You’ve got to keep your eyes
moving in the right pattern -”
“That’s not interactive, there’s no back-and-forth with
the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly
good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky
swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else’s work moot.
It’s like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless
extra position so that you could be the Most Important Player
without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who
was the first Seeker, the King’s idiot son who wanted to play
Quidditch but couldn’t understand the rules?” Actually, now that
Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good
hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny
thing…
Ron’s face pulled into a scowl. “If you don’t like Quidditch,
you don’t have to make fun of it!”
“If you can’t criticise, you can’t optimise. I’m suggesting how
to improve the game. And it’s very simple. Get rid of the
Snitch.”
“They won’t change the game just ’cause you say so!”
“I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know. People will listen to
me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at
Hogwarts, the innovation will spread.”
A look of absolute horror was spreading over Ron’s face. “But,
but if you get rid of the Snitch, how will anyone know when the
game ends?”
“Buy… a… clock. It would be a lot fairer than having
the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for
hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the
spectators, too.” Harry sighed. “Oh, stop giving me that look of
absolute horror, I probably won’t actually take the time to
destroy this pathetic excuse for a national sport and remake it
stronger and smarter in my own image. I’ve got way, way, way
more important stuff to worry about.” Harry looked thoughtful.
“Then again, it wouldn’t take much time to write up the
Ninety-Five Theses of the Snitchless Reformation and nail it to a
church door -”
(I’ve always agreed with this.)
The plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire makes no sense at all:
“Bahl’s Stupefaction,” Moody said, naming an extremely addictive narcotic with interesting side effects on people with Slytherin tendencies; Moody had once seen an addicted Dark Wizard go to ridiculous lengths to get a victim to lay hands on a certain exact portkey, instead of just having someone toss the target a trapped Knut on their next visit to town; and after going to all that work, the addict had gone to the further effort to lay a second Portus, on the same portkey, which had, on a second touch, transported the victim back to safety. To this day, even taking the drug into account, Moody could not imagine what could have possibly been going through the man’s mind at the time he had cast the second Portus.
(I’ve always thought Goblet of Fire was by far the weakest of the seven canon novels.)
Dangling Plot Points
HPMOR’s story isn’t finished yet. It’s several hundred pages longer than the longest Rowling novel, with several hundred more yet to come. And it still only takes Harry through Year One at Hogwarts. There are a number of open questions that have yet to be resolved, including:
What’s wrong with the story of Harry’s parents’ deaths on p. 20?
And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry’s art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.
What was the incident at the Potions Shop? (Perhaps just unmentioned or unclear?)
On p. 176 what does the drooling professor remind him of?
On p. 200 Why does the Remebrall glow when Harry picks it up? What has Harry forgotten? Possible (but not probable) answer: he has simply forgotten that he should have lost to Goyle. I don’t like that though because it’s more a failure to figure something out than forgetting something he once knew.
What is the defense professor’s mysterious illness? (Possible answer: Voldemort’s stuck to the back of his head, but it seems too obvious and too derived from canon. Yudkowsky is explicit about telling a different story, albeit in the same universe with mostly the same characters. In this case since the defense professor is not Quirrell, we can assume that the real Quirrell is somewhere offstage, possibly with Voldemort stuck to the back of his head. Memo to self: check to see if the physical descriptions Quirrell in HPMOR match those in Sorcerer’s Stone. If they do, then perhaps the defense professor is holding Quirrell in a trunk somewhere and using polyjuice to maintain appearances.)
Why does Harry have a sense of impending doom when he gets close to the defense professor? Why do their magics interact like they do? (Same possible answer. Same objection. A more interesting possibility: Voldemort is not stuck to the back of the defense professor’s head. Voldemort is the defense professor. In this version Tom Riddle is older, wiser, and less evil for reasons yet to be seen. The reveal of his true identity in Chapter ?? is a double fake.)
Is Dumbledore insane? I think not. My best guess is that this is the same Dumbledore we see in canon, but because Harry is different he interprets Dumbledore’s actions and personality differently.
Who set up Hermione? How and was it done and why?
Why did the defense professor break Bellatrix out of Azkaban?
Did Dumbledore burn Narcissa Malfoy to death in her bed? If so, were there extenuating circumstances? And if he didn’t, who did? (My guess: Dumbledore did it, and there were no extenuating circumstances according to the terms of Draco’s agreement with Harry; but Harry may change his mind and break his promise to Draco anyway.)
Who is the man in the black hat/mysterious glowing lady? And what does she want? My best guess: Rowena Ravenclaw or her ghost. Second best guess: Narcissa Malfoy or her ghost.
What really happened to Peter Pettigrew?
What is Harry’s mysterious dark side? (The obvious answer is the eighth part of Voldemort’s soul, but that seems a little too obvious; and too gratuitously different from canon. Yudkowsky seems to stick fairly closely to the established workings of magic from the original. he introduces new details and explanations, but does not throw away what we already know about how magic works. If it is the eighth part of Voldemort’s soul, then there has to be a reason it affects Harry differently in HPMOR than in canon.)
Is Voldemort still alive? If so, where? There are strong hints in the book that maybe he isn’t alive in this alternate universe; and maybe he isn’t the Dark Lord Harry has to defeat. (My best guess: Harry himself is the Dark Lord Harry has to defeat.)
Possibly related question: what happened to the real Quirinus Quirrell? I suspect the answer to this one is that this was simply driven by the needs of the plot. I.e. Yudkowsky needs to bring in a different character to make his stories work.
Maybe we’ll know a little more in December, when the next update is scheduled.
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