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Post by Tim BehrendsenI agree with the theory that the map only shows Marauders when a
Marauder is looking at the map. That sounds like something that MWPP
would do, in case the map fell into teacher hands. They would especially
not want to blow their animagus covers.
Agreed. Those are also to me the reasons for believing in this theory.
Post by Tim BehrendsenPost by Troels ForchhammerC: Harry saw Bartemius Crouch in Snape's office (under that name, but in
the form of Mad-Eye Moody), while certainly not expecting or looking
for him.
I find this one the most worrisome, since it gives an inordinate amount
of power to the map.
Agreed. The ability to see through both Animagus and Polyjuice
transformations is a very powerful feature no matter how it's used.
Post by Tim BehrendsenIf it was that easy to tell that someone was Polyjuiced, then it would
make sense that Hogwarts would be equipped with some sort of detector
after the last war.
I'm not sure that the Map knows or bothers whether the person is
Polyjuiced, Animagically transformed or something else; I think that it
somehow just shows who the person really is - to discover a magical
disguise you would probably have to correlate the Map with what you can
see.
Post by Tim BehrendsenBut let's say that MWPP were just especially brilliant and the map is
just darn smart. If you assume that, then the map is just showing who's
in Snape's office.
Exactly.
The incident is, however, also important in other ways when trying to work
out the properties of the Marauder's Map. It is generally assumed that the
Map doesn't show everyone at Hogwarts, so any theory of how it decides
which persons to actually show must take this incident into account (it is
certain that Harry wasn't looking for or expecting Crouch at that point).
Post by Tim BehrendsenPost by Troels ForchhammerD: A /new/ ink figure labelled "Harry Potter" had appeared when Harry
looked at the Map when standing in front of the statue of the one-eyed
witch.
I'm not sure how significant the word "new" is in this context.
It is, IMO, significant in that it tells us that the figure representing
Harry had not been on the Map previously when he looked at it together
with the twins. This tells us that whatever the criteria for being shown
are, Harry didn't fulfil any of them earlier, but now he does (possibly
he now fulfils a "holding the Map" criterion).
Post by Tim BehrendsenWhat is interesting is that the map knows who is holding it apparently,
since it shows the map-Harry tapping the statue with the magic word in a
bubble.
And that it is able to know/guess the needs of the person holding it.
That could of course also help explain how it decides which persons to
show.
Post by Tim BehrendsenPost by Troels ForchhammerE: Lupin apparently saw only one each of Harry and Hermione when there
was actually both the normal and the time-travelling pair around -
and quite close to each other.
I think we need to assume that the map is intelligent,
That seems almost an understatement to me ;-)
Intelligence is a fundamental necessity for the Map to work as we have
seen - it must be able to detect needs and wants of the person holding it.
A quite advanced piece of MI (Magical Intelligence) coding ;-)
Post by Tim Behrendsenand in this case it may be simply confused by the fact that it detects
the same person in two different places. It knows that's "impossible",
so it picks only one set.
"It's not a bug - it's a feature" ;-)
A limitation in the Map - being unable to handle more than one instance of
any one person, it refuses to acknowledge the second pair. When, however,
the first pair disappeared, the Map, on the next area scan, picked up the
second pair (who were now the only instances).
Possibly James et Al. should have known better - didn't they know about
time travelling when they wrote the Marauder's Map? I don't think we'll
ever know.
Post by Tim BehrendsenI think if a real person was trying to plot people on a map, and got
conflicting information, they would tend to just pick the most likely
one.
It depends on the person and situation, I'd say. If a radar operator were
to discover two vessels giving the same identity, I hope he'd do more than
just ignore one (these days I think it's likely that there would be some
fighters in the air within a couple of minutes to check the identity of
both vessels).
I would probably think that there might be a problem with the identity,
but map both anyway - marking both with the resulting identity and a large
question mark to note my uncertainty.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid mail is t.forch(a)mail.dk
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent
whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into
teaching?"
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)