The sign outside the Potters' ruined house in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reads as follows:
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever
to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter 17: "Bathilda's Secret"
The same sign appears in the fanfiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but the wording is a bit different:
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.They were survived by their son, Harry Potter,
the only wizard ever to withstand the Killing Curse,
the Boy-Who-Lived, who broke You-Know-Who's power.This house has been left in its ruined state,
as a monument to the Potters,
as a reminder of their sacrifice.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 96: "Roles, Pt 7"
I notice several things about the changes:
- The sign text in HPMOR is set off as poetry. (I don't have a copy of Deathly Hallows to check how it is formatted there.) Some phrases have been reworded to read better as poetry.
- There is more of a focus on Harry; the sign calls him the Boy-Who-Lived and states that he broke Voldemort's power.
- The reference to Muggles has been removed.
- The last line speaks of the Potters' "sacrifice" instead of "the violence that tore apart their family"
What is the significance of these changes? Do the modified words better represent the way people in this version of the Harry Potter universe think and speak about the Potters? Do they connect with the themes of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in ways the original words would not have?
