15 KiB
[FF][RT][WIP]Hermione Granger and the Perfectly Reasonable Explanation - Interlude: Quod Sequitur
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Author: u/RobinDrew Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE)*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6l8fv9/ffrtwiphermione_granger_and_the_perfectly/
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Score: 37
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Created: 2017-07-04T17:29:41
Post:
Well, that took a while. Seven months of frittering and distractions, but no hard AI takeoff yet...you're letting me down, Singularity.
FFN Chapter 18.5
Ao3 Chapter 18.5
Progress in the A/N. :)
Comments:
u/daydev [+8] (3 hours later)
Unexpected to see Pauline of all people channeling HJPEV a bit there. I suppose it makes sense for a healer to have a weaker version of that ideal.
u/RobinDrew [+6] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (9 hours later)
That's kinda what I thought. And given the canon symbolism of Dementors as clinical depression, frankly, a "happy memory" just shouldn't always cut it - firm conviction seems like a legitimate substitute, if not indeed a superior one.
Most of my depression has been exogenous, but even when you can't see a path out of darkness, sometimes just stubbornly putting one foot in front of the other anyway can get you there.
u/turbinicarpus [+5] (a day later)
More generally, I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter. I wonder if Hermione will mention to Dumbledore that Nott is blackmailing her. That might short-circuit that subplot as well.
On characterization, there was this passage from Dumbledore's point of view:
... moved to trap him in the castle with the eleven-year-old boy who was apparently the sole being with any hope of destroying him. Even while knowing that the Prophecy constrained Time but did not choose which of them would fall to the other.
I don't know how much you care about canonicity, but canon Dumbledore (as he amply explains in OotP and HBP) believed that prophecies only came true if their subjects believed them and acted on them. So, he would do his best to avoid the mindset that Harry was the only hope against Voldemort, because that would make the prophecy binding on himself. (It would be partly self-fulfilling: focusing on Harry to the exclusion of other avenues of attack could cause him to miss opportunities to defeat Voldemort sooner and more easily.)
u/RobinDrew [+5] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
Nott is a different case, that's noted in the next chapter. :)
For the rest - you always have a way of bringing up involved topics. :) I think I've mentioned before that I'm not portraying Dumbledore as a sinister puppet-master who is a jerkface for no good reason. But similarly, saying he's never manipulative is just silly. Despite what canon Dumbledore says, the way he acts rather suggests he does actually put great weight in what the Prophecy says - that Harry is key, that things explicitly stated will come to pass. The fact that the Prophecy was self-fulfilling (and mutable where not otherwise specified - in that it could have been Neville, and that Voldemort might have won the final duel) doesn't make the rest of it meaningless in a strategic sense.
Take a quote from Albus: “If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?” Read that, while thinking about precision of speech. What does he actually say? The first can be read as suggesting it was possible for Voldemort to not have heard of the Prophecy, but it can also simply be read as a counterfactual assertion - if not X then not Y. It's logically valid, but irrelevant (since X is pre-defined as True). The question at the end is highly leading, but does not explicitly assert anything. It's irrelevant what Harry thinks, if the true answer is, yes, every prophecy (whose Time horizon has passed) has been fulfilled. Obviously there are also plenty that haven't, but only because their horizons are still in the relative future.
Anyway, why would being deceptive in that quote make sense? Dumbledore at that point is suffering from considerable guilt over what he's had to do to Harry to give him the best chance of living long enough to beat Voldemort, and Harry is despairing because he feels the Prophecy has trapped him. So emphasizing the wiggle room in prophecy while skirting around the sticky parts helps convince him that he is still the author of his own destiny (even while, weirdly, arguing that he's just as trapped by genetics and upbringing instead). In turn, that both relieves some of Albus' guilt (since Harry is less despairing) and makes Harry (slightly) more emotionally stable, which is bound to help him in the impending conflict, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Take Sybill's second prophecy, too, about Pettigrew - it doesn't appear to have been self-fulfilling (because Harry presumably would've met up with Ron and Hermione after his exam regardless, and he doesn't do anything else in reaction to it)...but it still went down exactly as stated.
I'm comfortable with the interpretation of canon here that once a Prophecy is uttered, those things it fixes are considered pivot points in Time - from the point of the prophecy forward - but only to the extent that the language supports. A Prophecy is a translation of a brief measurement of the evolution of a chaotic multi-dimensional quantum system into, usually, English, so it's not surprising that they frequently involve symbolism and metaphor and are almost always fuzzy at the edges. But that measurement happened, and whatever previously-potential states needed to collapse to make it self-consistent did collapse. Albus knows all that, and is doing his best to work with the advantages and disadvantages alike.
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (a day later)
I like the quantum interpretation of prophecy very, very much, but
- Dumbledore spoke about prophecies at other times as well, and he was far less ambiguous, so if he deceived Harry about inevitability of prophecies, he would have had to lie directly. (Of course, there's no fundamental moral difference between misleading through subtle wording and outright lying in any case.)
- It doesn't make sense for him to mislead or lie about something that's verifiable. For example, suppose that a few days later, Harry recounts their conversation to Hermione, who says that all her reading on prophecies suggests that, in fact, prophecies are always fulfilled in some form, even if it's an unexpected form. Anybody even aware of the prophecy can potentially expose the lie. Then where would Dumbledore's manipulations be?
So, this theory seems to be postulating not just a Dumbledore who is manipulative but a Manipulative!Dumbledore.
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
For continuity checking against canon, I have a single text doc with all the novels in it, and I searched on prophecy and prophecies - if there's a more explicit example of Dumbledore debunking divination than the one I provided, I didn't find it, but I'd be interested in seeing it?
Canon-Dumbledore splits hairs basically, saying it's not the prophecy that "magically" makes these things happen, it's who Harry is and who Voldemort is, since Voldemort is obsessed with the prophecy and won't leave Harry alone, and Harry is a Gryffindor and won't leave him alone in turn. But none of that makes the prophecy any less than 100% accurate.
As far as the suggestion that prophecies go unfulfilled all the time being an easily-checkable deception, I guess the presumption would be is that it isn't? True prophecies do have specific privacy protections, after all. He could be counting on Hermione's anti-divination opinions and Harry's poor record of independent research as well. It's not fool-proof, but it's good enough in the moment for it to feel reasonable, given the constraints he's under. He's easing a boy's pain and putting him in a better place to face his challenges at the same time, who could fault him?
Dumbledore isn't a saint, he's doing the best he can with what he's got. It may be revisionist canon (because we have to make sense of all the books as a whole, whereas it's evident JK was building a layer cake without a detailed blueprint), but I still consider it canon. YMMV. :)
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (21 days later)
I kept meaning to reply to this, and then the next chapter came out, so it's probably a moot point, but I think that this reading of canon makes Dumbledore more mendacious and manipulative than he has to be. In some sense, it multiplies entities unnecessarily.
It also clashes with the canon's themes of choices, that are advanced not just by Dumbledore but by the Sorting Hat as well.
u/hswerdfe [+3] (9 hours later)
Thanks, me and my wife love reading this story.
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (9 hours later)
I'm glad, thank you so much for saying so! <3
u/aldonius [+3] (23 hours later)
I reread all of this today.
What a ride.
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
Assuming a ride is a positive thing for you, thanks! <3 I'm glad it holds up for you even on re-reading!
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (19 minutes later)
- Official Typo/Britpick Thread, if you are so inclined, helps if they're all in one place.
u/daydev [+2] (3 hours later)
Not a typo, but a style break perhaps? That bit with Tracey was weird, it seemed to suddenly switch from the usual 3rd person limited into the omniscient and almost spoke to the reader breaking the fourth wall?
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (9 hours later)
Yeah, this was a late edit, and I wasn't entirely sure how to handle it. Originally, Tracey had already found a note, but since spoiler this chapter
In the end I decided dropping POV in this specific case was suitable - Tracey is weird, and furthermore has Stuff Going On™.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (17 days later)
Are we intended at this point to know more about that note, or is that a thread to be picked up later?
It's been a while since I read the previous chapters, and I can't tell if I've forgotten something or if it just hasn't happened yet.
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (17 days later)
No, it's a somewhat clumsy foreshadowing that spoiler earlier chapters
u/turbinicarpus [+2] (a day later)
Another possible correction:
Though I believe I had good reasons to act as I did, at this point I am regrettably not at liberty to explain them fully to you without ostensibly putting a great many people in even worse jeopardy.
Dumbledore seems to be misusing "ostensibly" here. "Ostensibly" means apparently or purportedly (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostensibly). I'd just delete it, but "likely" would probably work as well.
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
My intended use there is "on the surface", which is to say that a casual analysis suggests it is likely, as opposed to actually obtaining "future evidence" like Prophecy or Divination, which is a contrast powerful Wizards actually have to make when discussing this sort of thing.
Dumbledore tends to use great precision of speech, which is a good habit for a spellcaster in general, but also lets him deceive without lying outright (though I'm not suggesting that he's doing the latter here).
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (a day later)
I'm still not following; "ostensibly" strongly connotes that the underlying reality is contrary to the appearance. One could rewrite the original sentence with no change in meaning (as far as I can tell) as
Though I believe I had good reasons to act as I did, at this point I am regrettably not at liberty to explain them fully to you without seeming to put a great many people in even worse jeopardy.
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
I think that "strongly connotes" may be in your own usage - I can't find any reference to the word actively implying the reverse meaning in any actual definitions, including the wiktionary link you used.
IMO the strongest connotation is of "weak evidence" or "non-certainty" (but not quite uncertainty), i.e. "This seems so, but may well not be." For me, "seeming to" doesn't cover the same shade of meaning. "risking" would be closer, but doesn't feel as Dumbledore-flavoured.
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (21 hours later)
For future reference, any Professor can arrange a meeting with me, with sufficient reason, though typically students would do so through their Head of House.
Was this supposed to read "any student can arrange a meeting"?
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
No - the implication was that a student can request a meeting by going through any Professor, and if the Professor deems it suitable, they are the one who arranges the meeting. But for reasons of protocol, it ought to be the student's Head of House unless that's inappropriate for some reason (like lodging a formal complaint against your Head of House).
u/Cariyaga [+2] Kyubey did nothing wrong (4 days later)
Ah! I forgot how much I enjoyed this, and I am thoroughly pleased to see this continued! You're a wonderful writer, and your characterization is fantastic!
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (5 days later)
Thank you for the compliments! <3 When I have a lucky bout of inspiration, it's like I'm peeking into some weird alternate universe where HP was made into a tv series - I can just write down what I see. When I'm even luckier, it vaguely makes sense. :D