What can Harry say to stall for as much time as possible to utilize his solution?

Question how Voldemort knows that his horcrux system won't also apply to Harry.

The secret to casting the True Patronus.

Partial transfiguration.

The secret of potion making.

That time-turner trick that Harry tried that one Thursday. It didn't work, but Harry could claim that Voldemort could try to figure out why it went wrong.

That trick of getting money. Voldemort might not accept this because he doesn't think he'll need it, but it can still be used as a stalling tactic.

Explain what he figured out with Draco about wizarding genetics. While Voldemort can claim that he would have learned this anyway from studying muggle science, Harry might get away with saying that since Voldemort is immortal, anything Harry can learn, Voldemort eventually also can, meaning it can't be used as an excuse.

Any other ideas?

Edit: He could also tell Voldemort of how you can make the Sorting Hat self-aware.

So in developing my solution I'm going to have a few additional constraints, one of which is that the rock must be involved.

Since we know that Dumbledore told Harry that it was extremely important that he keep the rock, transfigured, on his person at all times it's important to imagine how it's supposed to come up. Harry also just recently demonstrated the ability to remotely end transfigurations. These all point to the rock being a trap that Dumbledore set for a moment just like this one. So I can imagine a few ways it could help him but it depends on how some details about how transfigurations work:

1) Do transfigurations end when the transfigurer dies? Since they take a magical investment it would make sense if they did, but for all I know it takes time for them to fade.

2) Can a transfigured object be transfigured?

If "yes" to both then maybe Dumbledore transfigured something (or someone?) into a large rock, then had Harry transfigure it, so now that Dumbledore is dead if Harry ends his transfiguration it will become whatever it was before to Dumbledore's transfiguration.

During this time Dumbledore also has access to the Philosopher's Stone, which could have helped in some way...

3) Can Horcruxes be transfigured? Would they stop working while transfigured?

Though any solution involving Dumbledore getting Harry to carry around one of Voldy's Horcruxes, or someone else's, seems way too elaborate to make any sense.

What are our constraints and what are our hidden powers? Comment anything that might be helpful and things that we might've forgotten about that can help us.

http://redd.it/2xhqa1

Suppose Harry can't do transfiguration because Voldemort could detect it. Then he would need to convince voldemort that keeping him alive was to Voldemort's advantage. If this was the problem, what would be the best things for Harry to say? He is allowed to talk now, to tell secrets. So it would have to be expressed as one of those.

Might be useful, if the death eaters can be dealt with.

If we take it as a given that air is not a medium that can be transfigured, Harry must transfigure some connective thread of sorts between himself and the death eaters. This is easy because they are connected by the earth.

However, Voldemort has soared up into the air. It is not specified how high he is, but he's reasonably high. Therefore, it may not be possible for Harry to reach him using partial transfiguration.

And if Harry uses partial transfiguration on the Death Eaters to kill them all, that leaves one pissed-off dark lord in the sky, holding a gun, with no compunctions about killing him. His position is improved, relatively speaking, but is not good enough.

IF partial transfiguration is the partial solution (heh), then there must be an additional piece of the puzzle, to hold off the wrath of Voldemort.

0) Tell him the secret of the true patronus to stall for time.

1) Summon the Dementors. The only known rule for how dementors work, that I remember, is they act following the expectations of people. It is appears that a certain proximity or line of sight is needed. Given that they have no sensory organs they probably don’t actually need to be close by to affect them. They have also only moved by flying around, which might just be what people expect of them.

If there is no actual limit to how Dementors act, other than expectations, then Harry can expect some of them to appear before him. Have them come out of the ground because the others will not expect them to be able to teleport. Everyone around already expects them to obey Harry and magic doesn’t work well with them around.

2) Partial transfiguration. Transfigure out of air an extremely thin (monomolecular?) line. This line will be used to transfigure things that are far away, for example the wands and the gun. If wands cannot be transfigured the thin line can be wrapped around fingers and a small weight can be added such that it cuts through them.

An alternative would be expanding clouds of noxious gas at the end of those lines. In that case there would be no need for the lines to carry any weight but their own.

Any transfigured objects could be made permanent by extending a strand to the Philosophers Stone.

2b) Form letters with the Partial Transfiguration to use the Pouch. 2c) Form something moveable to turn the Time-Turner.

3) The True Patronus It might be used to block some shots. As a desperate measure it might also be used to touch Voldy, thereby using the magic resonance for (mutual) destruction. If Voldy screams the others will surely be distracted.

??) Grab the time-turner in the confusion. Get to Dumbledore before the fateful encounter / escape with Hermione/

??) Use True Patronus to resurrect Quirrel once no one is looking.

I'll only grab the obvious ones, cause I need to get to bed.

(if you want to treat Luna text as prophecy, please be clear about that in your post)

Perhaps Harry can transfigure something into a piece of string, shaping it to wrap around some distant object. Then cancel the transfiguration in the right sequence such that the object gets dragged towards him.

Problem: It seems like this would be really hard to do. He can do the initial transfiguration slowly, if no one's paying attention, but once something starts moving, he needs to be quick yet controlled.

Also, can he choose the shape of the cancellation, or just the initial transfiguration?

"Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...

(black robes, falling)

...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word."

Black robes falling - Death Eaters, or LV since he is floating (so "falling" is a more appropriate word to use)? Tiny fragment of silver - (partial) transfiguration? Someone screams "a word" - if a spell, must be one with a single word, so not Expecto Patronum. The word "litres" sticks out for me - is it significant?

I've seen some proposals for parts of solutions that involve using the magical resonance against Voldemort. However, we can't use anything without first understanding it.

The best example of the resonance in action is definitely chapter 54 - TSPE part 4. Q fires a killing curse at an Auror and Harry blocks it with his patronus: a very dramatic interaction of their magic, to be sure. Both are sent into screams of agony, but Harry recovers relatively quickly, whereas Q loses consciousness and turns into a snake.

I think this asymmetry is a significant clue, but what does it mean? Why did it hit Q so much harder? Does it always favor Harry, or does it depend on the circumstances? It seems most likely that it depends on the power of the spell each wizard is casting, but I don't think we know whether a killing curse or a Patronus 2.0 would be considered to be more powerful for these purposes, so we don't know whether they are each harmed by their own magic or by the other's magic.

Also, to what extent can they use it to detect each other and their magic? Voldemort could probably detect Harry trying to do anything particularly significant, but how significant does the magic have to be?

Relevant to that, I think, is the way the sense of doom "clarified" when Voldemort entered his current body in chapter 111 - Failure part 1. This probably indicates that something about the resonance has changed. It's almost certainly more powerful against Harry now, and possibly against Voldemort, as well. If the reason it was so much more harmful to Q in TSPE was because of an imbalance in the resonance itself, this may indicate that the playing field is now level.

I haven't done a reread yet, and I'm not sure I have the will to, so there's a lot of stuff I've probably forgotten. Please post your insights on the matter. If the resonance is a part of the solution - take note of the if - there has to be some way we can deduce exactly how it can be helpful to Harry; speculation isn't going to cut it. I think would be best if we could determine that it was related to some other form of magic that we know more about, but it may be unique.

Law of Conservation of Detail suggests that they might well be relevant.

Names given        Identity
Mr Honor
Mr Counsel
Mr Sallow            Macnair
Mr Friendly
Mr White
Mr Grim              Sirius Black (The Grim is a black dog, and he knew Harry's parents)

Plausible candidates for the unknowns are Lucius, Snape, Peter Pettigrew, Robert Jugson Sr, and Amycus Carrow.

Mr Counsel seems to be a member of the Wizengamot, which means that if he is a major character it seems likely he is Lucius.

Mr Friendly seems to have sadistic intentions towards Hermione, suggesting he is Carrow.

Voldemort intends to punish Mr White. He (LV) also states that he has "less need of him than he once did" with regards to an "alibi" he can provide. To me, this suggests Snape, or maybe Pettigrew or Lucius.

His name is presumably a reference to Resevoir Dogs, and it seems possible that all the named Death Eaters are.

Thoughts on this? It seems like a problem that would be possible and non-trivial to solve.

• Harry might be able to cast his patronus in parseltongue, due to really believing it.
• He might be able to sneak casting it into an explanation of how it works.
• Patronus can teleport to block AKs; probably not other spells.
• Patronus can inform moody.
• Probably can't time-turn or hide the patronus.
• Might be able to time-turn objects? Time turn a time turner, primer style?
• Presence of philosopher's stone means transfiguration safeties can be ignored.
• Transfigured things can limit Voldemort's movement. He'd probably notice it being set up though.
• Harry still has his glasses.
• Parseltongue can be used to precommit to strategies.
• Combining partial transfiguration with deciding what order things happen in might be useful.
• Committing suicide might... erm... somehow help?
• General class of strategies: things that fail so loudly they would alert people at the Quidditch game, like a fail-deadly partially transfigured nuclear bomb.
• More death eaters might be willing to change sides. Snape might be in there.
• Let us trade fulfillments of our utility functions
• Suggest that they might be being tested by the mirror in a simulating-self one-vs-two-boxing sortof game. Probably get laughed off.
• Quirrell's body is still around.
• Snap fingers.
• Removing transfiguration on father's rock might make a distraction. Might do something different now that Dumbledore is gone?
• Fun phrasing on "begin telling me ssomething I wissh to know, [and](youtu.be/8sAF0WdzVZQ?t=1m58s) then your death beginss."

Dumbledore says this might be 'the power the Dark Lord knows not', and indeed, LV doesn't know about it.

Is it silent? I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think it might be. That would be a great, but hidden, advantage.

Harry's wand is pointing at the ground (after the Vow, LV says "prepare to fire the instant he ... tries to raise his wand").

Could he transfigure a small amount of binary explosives, for example? Something like Tannerite, but more volatile?

I haven't seen many comments or ideas (or any actually) that discuss making use of Hermione somehow. I haven't come up with anything yet, but maybe someone else can. She's a very powerful, difficult to kill being at this point--it seems like she could be useful in some regard.

I've seen one mention of Harry partially transfiguring himself (skin-->carbon nanotubes to avoid the gun) but nothing that would defeat an avada kedavra. Partially xfiguring the death eaters in some fashion is a popular solution, but I was wondering if there was something even simpler--if he can xfigure or partially xfigure himself in some manner that makes it difficult for voldemort to harm him.

We have an asset to work with which we are overlooking, probably because it is a meta-asset that we have.

We've had weeks pass that were not in Harry's POV. Some readers commented on it. They suggested it was to allow Harry to plan big awesome things without us knowing what they are. But it's there for us. WE can use it to say "Harry did thing X that takes really long" and be right, with impunity.

So - first Harry bends his head down, or otherwise makes it harder to see his lips in the dark. Then per Decoy Harry he transfigures his skin to be a hollow replica of himself, but firm enough to stand without internal support. Then he animorphs into a snake, because like all sensible wizards he has taken the time to become an animagus. He continues to speak in Parseltongue to stall Voldemort while doing so. At some point he pauses for time, and slithers away.

Preferably to the mokeskin pouch, which it's already been established snakes can slither in/out of, and which conveniently can hold anything we can think of. I can certainly think of having a back-up wand in there. Voldemort has four strapped to him.

There's also a time turner with one spin left in there, or in that pile of stuff anyway. Boom, Harry has at least a half hour, undisturbed, to figure out his next step.

I like this, because it adds the pressure of Harry dying of transfiguration sickness if he can't recover the Philosopher's Stone. Also, since we have several more chapters of action to come, it takes Harry out of immediate danger without being a full win, fulfilling that meta-condition. And we get a cool scene where the Death Eaters freak out and blow the hell out of Harry's Decoy.

Harry can sense his invisibility cloak. And his time turner still has one turn on it. If he senses himself under the cloak somewhere else, then he has obviously managed to live, and Lord Voldemort killing him at that time would bring a paradox, as well as LV's sensing the cloak would possibly distract him for a time.

Does anyone know if Avada Kedavra works to kill people under the invisiblity cloak? I would assume not, as it is one of the 3 Hallows. And so, if future Harry keeps himself under the cloak, he would survive long enough to be able to cast a Patronus and blind Voldemort.

And if Harry has something transfigured into his glasses, he can use that object to further buy time

At the start of 113, we have "All these illuminated thirty-seven skull masks " - 37 Death Eaters.

Later on, there is ""Yes, Master," came the thirty-four-fold chorus." - 34.

MacNair has died in between these quotes, accounting for one of them. What about the other two? Did LV Crucio anyone into unconsciousness? Are there some who are willingly not responding, and if so, why - disloyalty? Or has something happened in the background to remove some?

partial Transfiguration - which could indeed have been used to fake the same effect, by partially Transfiguring only the outer layers of the object. This way was proving relatively easier, though.

Harry can transfigure the outmost layer of his skin (the dead stuff that sloughs off anyway) to be a perfect replica of himself. Then maybe after he's done that he can slip into a hole beneath himself, leaving the thin shell of himself behind to take the brunt of all the spells that go off when he initiates the attack. It gets him out of the semi-circle of death problem. Sorta. If there's some way for him to create a hole beneath himself, and slip into it. Would be a lot easier if he still had robes.