Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (100 page)

“No -”

“Then I require your fastest broomstick, at once!”

The place where Amelia
wanted
to be was with the Auror who had been injured by that Fiendfyre or whatever it had been.

What she
needed
to do was find out what Dumbledore knew.

“You!” the old witch barked at the team around her. “Keep clearing the corridors until you’re at bottom, they may not all have escaped yet!” And then, to the old wizard, “Two broomsticks. You can brief me once we’re in the air.”

There was a match of stares, but not a long one.

A sickeningly hard yank caught at Harry’s abdomen, considerably harder than the yank that had transported him to Azkaban, and this time the distance traversed was great enough that he could hear an instant of silence, watch the unseeable space between spaces, in the crack between one place and another.

The Sun, which had shone on the two only briefly, was swiftly occluded by a raincloud as they shot away from Azkaban, in the direction of the wind and faster than the wind.

“Who’s behind it?” shouted Amelia to the broomstick flying a pace away from her.

“One of two people,” Dumbledore said back, “I know not, at this instant, who. If the first, then we are in trouble. If the second, we are all in far greater trouble.”

Amelia didn’t spare any breath for sighs. “When will you know?”

The old wizard’s voice was grim, quiet and yet somehow rising above the wind. “Three things they need for perfection, if it is that one: The flesh of the Dark Lord’s most faithful servant, the blood of the Dark Lord’s greatest foe, and access to a certain grave. I had thought Harry Potter safe, with their attempt on Azkaban all but failed - though I still set guards upon him - but now I am fearful indeed. They have access to Time, someone with a Time-Turner is sending messages for them; and I suspect the kidnap attempt on Harry Potter has already taken place some hours ago. Which is why
we
have not heard about it, being in Azkaban where Time cannot knot itself. That past came after our own future, you see.”

“And if it is the other?” shouted Amelia. What she had heard already was worrying enough; that sounded like the darkest of Dark rituals, and centering on the dead Dark Lord himself.

The old wizard, his face now even grimmer, said nothing, only shook his head.

When the portkey’s yank had subsided, the Sun was only just peeking over the horizon, looking more like dawn than sunset, as their broom hovered low above a brief expanse of dark-orange rock and sand, arranged into lumpy hills like someone had kneaded the land’s dough a few times and then forgotten to roll it flat. In the near distance, waves rolled past in an endless vista of water, though the ground over which the broomstick hovered was above sea level by meters at the least.

Harry blinked at the dawn colors, and then realized the portkey had been international.

“Oy!” came a brisk, female shout from behind him, and Harry spun the broomstick to look. A middle-aged lady was holding up one hand to her mouth in a deliberate calling gesture, and bustling forward. Her kindly features, narrow eyes, and umber skin marked a race unfamiliar to Harry; she was clad in brilliant purple robes of a style Harry had never seen before; and when her lips opened again she spoke with an accent that Harry couldn’t place, for he was not widely traveled. “Where were you? You’re two hours late! I almost gave up on the lot of you… hello?”

There was a brief pause. Harry’s thoughts seemed to be moving oddly, too slow, everything felt distant, like there was a thick pane of glass between himself and the world, and another thick pane of glass between himself and his feelings, so that he could see, but not touch. It had come over him upon seeing the dawn’s light and the kindly witch, and thinking that it all seemed like a proper end to the adventure.

Then the witch was rushing forward and drawing her wand; a muttered word severed the cuffs that bound the emaciated woman to the broomstick, and Bellatrix was being floated down onto the sandy rock with her skeletal arms and pale legs dangling like lifeless things. “Oh, Merlin,” whispered the witch, “Merlin, Merlin, Merlin…”

She appears concerned,
thought an abstract, distant thing between two panes of glass.
Is that what a real healer would say, or is it what someone told to put on a performance would say?

As though it wasn’t Harry who spoke, but some other part of himself behind yet another pane of glass, a whisper came from his lips. “The green snake on her back is an Animagus.” Not high the whisper, not cold, only quiet. “He is unconscious.”

The witch’s head twitched up, to look at where that voice had seemed to speak out of empty air, and then looked back down at Bellatrix. “You’re not Mister Jaffe.”

“That would be the Animagus,” whispered Harry’s lips.
Oh,
thought the Harry behind glass, listening to the sound of his own lips,
that makes sense; Professor Quirrell must have used a different name.

“Since when is
he
a - bah, forget it.” The witch laid her wand on the snake’s nose for a moment, then shook her head sharply. “Nothing wrong with him that a day’s rest won’t cure.
Her…
”

“Can you wake him up now?” whispered Harry’s lips.
Is that a good idea?
thought Harry, but his lips definitely seemed to think so.

Again the sharp headshake. “If an Innervate didn’t work on him -” began the witch.

“I did not attempt one,” whispered Harry’s lips.

“What? Why - oh, never mind.
Innervate.
”

There was a pause, and then a snake slowly crawled out of its harness. Slowly the green head came up, looked around.

A blur later, Professor Quirrell was standing, and a moment later had sagged to his knees.

“Lie down,” said the witch without looking up from Bellatrix. “That you in there, Jeremy?”

“Yes,” said the Defense Professor rather hoarsely, as he carefully laid himself down on a relatively flat patch of sandy orange rock. He was not so pale as Bellatrix, but his face was bloodless in the dim dawn light. “Salutations, Miss Camblebunker.”

“I told you,” said the witch, sharpness in her voice and a slight smile on her face, “call me Crystal, this isn’t Britain and we’ll have none of your formality here.
And
it’s Doctor now, not Miss.”

“My apologies, Doctor Camblebunker.” This was followed by a dry chuckle.

The witch’s smile grew a little wider, her voice that much sharper. “Who’s your friend?”

“You don’t need to know.” The Defense Professor’s eyes were closed, where he lay on the ground.

“How wrong did it go?”

Very dryly indeed: “You can read about it tomorrow in any newspaper with an international section.”

The witch’s wand was tapping here, there, poking and prodding all over Bellatrix’s body. “I missed you, Jeremy.”

“Truly?” said the Defense Professor, sounding slightly surprised.

“Not even a tiny little bit. If I didn’t owe you -”

The Defense Professor started to laugh, and then it turned into more of a coughing fit.

What do you think?
said Slytherin to the Inner Critic, while Harry listened from behind the glass walls.
Performance, or reality?

Can’t tell,
said Harry’s Inner Critic.
I’m not in top critical form right now.

Can anyone think of a good probe to gather more information?
said Ravenclaw.

Again that whisper from the empty air above the broomstick: “What is the chance of undoing all that was done to her?”

“Oh, let’s see. Legilimency and unknown Dark rituals, ten years for that to set in place, followed by ten years of Dementor exposure? Undo
that?
You’re out of your skull, Mister Whoever-You-Are. The question is whether there’s anything
left,
and I’d call that maybe one chance in three -” The witch suddenly cut herself off. Her voice, when it spoke again, was quieter. “If you were her friend, before… then no, you’re never getting her back. Best understand that now.”

I’m voting that this is a performance,
said the Inner Critic.
She wouldn’t just blurt all that out in response to one question unless she was looking for an opportunity.

Noted, but I’m putting a low weight of confidence on that,
said Ravenclaw.
It’s very hard not to let your suspicions control your perceptions when you’re trying to weigh evidence that subtle.

“What potion did you give her?” the witch said after opening Bellatrix’s mouth and peering inside, her wand flashing multiple colors of illumination.

The man lying on the ground calmly said, “Pepper-Up -”

“
Were you out of your mind?
”

Again the coughing laugh.

“She’ll sleep for a week if she’s lucky,” the witch said, and clucked her tongue. “I’ll owl you when she opens her eyes, I suppose, so you can come back and talk her into that Unbreakable Vow. Have you got anything to stop her from killing me on the spot, if she manages to even move for another month?”

The Defense Professor, eyes still closed, took a sheet of paper from his robes; a moment later, words began to appear on it, accompanied by tiny wisps of smoke. When the smoke had stopped rising, the paper floated over toward the woman.

The woman looked over the paper with raised eyebrows, gave a sardonic snort. “This had better work, Jeremy, or my last will and testament says that my whole estate goes into putting a bounty on your head. Speaking of which -”

The Defense Professor reached again into his robes and tossed the witch a bag that made a clinking sound. The witch caught it, weighed it, made a pleased sound.

Then she stood up, and the pale skeletal woman floated off the ground beside her. “I’m heading back,” said the witch. “I can’t start my work here.”

“Wait,” said the Defense Professor, and with a gesture retrieved his wand from Bellatrix’s hand and harness. Then his hand pointed the wand at Bellatrix, and moved in a small circular gesture, accompanied by a quiet, “
Obliviate
.”

“
That’s it
,” snapped the witch, “I’m taking her out of here before anyone does her any more damage -” One arm came around to hug the bony form of Bellatrix Black to her side, and they both disappeared with the loud POP! of Apparition.

And there was silence in that lumpy place, but for the gentle rush of the passing waves, and a little breath of wind.

I think the performance is finished,
said the Inner Critic.
I give it two and a half out of five stars. She’s probably not a very experienced actor.

I wonder if a real healer would seem more fake than an actor told to play one?
mused Ravenclaw.

Like watching a television show, that was how it felt, like watching a television show whose characters you didn’t particularly empathize with, that was all that could be seen and felt from behind the glass walls.

Somehow, Harry managed to move his lips himself, send his own voice out into the still dawn air, and then was surprised to hear his own question. “How many different people are you, anyway?”

The pale man lying on the ground didn’t laugh, but from the broomstick Harry’s eyes saw the sides of Professor Quirrell’s lips curling up, the edge of that familiar sardonic smile. “I cannot say that I bothered keeping count. How many are you?”

It shouldn’t have shaken the inner Harry so much, hearing that response, and yet he felt - he felt - unstable, like his own center had been subtracted -

Oh.

“Excuse me,” said Harry’s voice. It now sounded as distant and detached as the fading Harry felt. “I’m going to faint in a few seconds, I think.”

“Use the fourth portkey I gave you, the one I said was our fallback refuge,” said the man lying on the ground, calmly but swiftly. “It will be safer there. And continue wearing your cloak.”

Harry’s free hand retrieved another twig from his pouch and snapped it.

There was another portkey yank, internationally long, and then he was somewhere black.

“
Lumos
,” said Harry’s lips, some part of him looking out for the safety of the whole.

He was inside what looked like a Muggle warehouse, a deserted one.

Harry’s legs climbed off the broomstick, lay on the floor. His eyes closed, and some tidy fraction of self willed his light to fail, before the darkness took him.

“Where will you go?” yelled Amelia. They were almost at the edge of the wards.

“Backward in time to protect Harry Potter,” said the old wizard, and before Amelia could even open her lips to ask if he wanted help, she felt the boundary of the wards as they crossed them.

There was a pop of Apparition, and the wizard and the phoenix vanished, leaving behind the borrowed broomstick.

“Wake.”

Harry’s eyes flew open as he came awake with a choking gasp, a jerking start of his prone body. He couldn’t remember any dreams, maybe his brain had been too exhausted to dream, it seemed like he’d only closed his eyes and then heard that word spoken a moment after.

“You must awaken,” said the voice of Quirinus Quirrell. “I gave you as much time as I could, but it would be wise to reserve at least one use of your Time-Turner. Soon we must go backward four hours to Mary’s Place, appearing in every way as though we have done nothing interesting this day. I wished to speak to you before then.”

Harry slowly sat up in the midst of darkness. His body ached, and not only in the places where it had laid on the hard concrete. Images tumbled over each other in his memory, everything his unconscious brain had been too tired to discharge into a proper nightmare.

Twelve terrible voids floating down a metal corridor, tarnishing the metal around them, light dimmed and temperature falling as the emptiness tried to suck all life out of the world -

Chalk-white skin, stretched just above the bone that had remained after fat and muscle faded -

A metal door -

A woman’s voice -

No, I didn’t mean it, please don’t die -

I can’t remember my children’s names any more -

Don’t go, don’t take it away, don’t don’t don’t -

“What was that place?” Harry said hoarsely, in a voice pushed out of his throat like water forced through a too-thin pipe, in the darkness it sounded almost as shattered as Bellatrix Black’s voice had been. “
What was that place? That wasn’t a prison, that was HELL!
”

“Hell?” said the calm voice of the Defense Professor. “You mean the Christian punishment fantasy? I suppose there is a similarity.”

“How -” Harry’s voice was blocking, there was something huge lodged in his throat. “How - how could they -”
People
had built that place, someone had
made
Azkaban, they’d made it on
purpose,
they’d done it
deliberately,
that woman, she’d had children, children she wouldn’t remember, some judge had
decided
for that to happen to her, someone had needed to
drag
her into that cell and lock its door while she screamed, someone fed her every day and walked away
without letting her out
-

“
HOW COULD PEOPLE DO THAT?
”

“Why shouldn’t they?” said the Defense Professor. A pale blue light lit the warehouse, then, showing a high, cavernous concrete ceiling, and a dusty concrete floor; and Professor Quirrell sitting some distance away from Harry, leaning his back against a painted wall; the pale blue light turned the walls to glacier surfaces, the dust on the floor to speckled snow, and the man himself had become an ice sculpture, shrouded in darkness where his black robes lay over him. “What use are the prisoners of Azkaban to them?”

Harry’s mouth opened in a croak. No words exited.

A faint smile twitched on the Defense Professor’s lips. “You know, Mr. Potter, if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had come to rule over magical Britain, and built such a place as Azkaban, he would have built it because he enjoyed seeing his enemies suffer. And if instead he began to find their suffering distasteful, why, he would order Azkaban torn down the next day. As for those who did make Azkaban, and those who do not tear it down, while preaching lofty sermons and imagining themselves
not
to be villains… well, Mr. Potter, I think if I had my choice of taking tea with them, or taking tea with You-Know-Who, I should find my sensibilities less offended by the Dark Lord.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said, his voice was shaking, he’d read about the classic experiment on the psychology of prisons, the ordinary college students who had turned sadistic as soon as they were assigned the role of prison guards; only now he realized that the experiment hadn’t examined the right question, the one most important question, they hadn’t looked at the key people, not the prison guards but
everyone else,
“I really don’t understand, Professor Quirrell, how can people just stand by and let this happen,
why
is the country of magical Britain
doing this
-” Harry’s voice stopped.

The Defense Professor’s eyes appeared to be the same color as always, in the pale blue light, for that light was the same color as Quirinus Quirrell’s irises, those never-thawing chips of ice. “Welcome, Mr. Potter, to your first encounter with the realities of politics. What do the wretched creatures in Azkaban have to offer any faction? Who would benefit from aiding them? A politician who openly sided with them would associate themselves with criminals, with weakness, with distasteful things that people would rather not think about. Alternatively, the politician could demonstrate their might and cruelty by calling for longer sentences; to make a display of strength requires a victim to crush beneath you, after all. And the populace applauds, for it is their instinct to back the winner.” A coldly amused laugh. “You see, Mr. Potter, no one ever quite believes that
they
will go to Azkaban, so they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others… I suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a lie, Mr. Potter, people don’t care in the slightest, and if you had not led a vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. I admit, Mr. Potter, that I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.”

Harry’s recently cohered self was threatening to shatter into fragments again, the words falling like hammerstrikes on his consciousness, driving him back, step by step, over the precipice where lurked some vast abyss; and he was trying to find something to save himself, some clever retort that would refute the words, but it did not come.

The Defense Professor watched Harry, the gaze reflecting more curiosity than command. “It is very simple, Mr. Potter, to understand how Azkaban was built, and how it continues to be. Men care for what they, themselves, expect to suffer or gain; and so long as they do not expect it to redound upon themselves, their cruelty and carelessness is without limit. All the other wizards of this country are no different within than he who sought to rule over them, You-Know-Who; they only lack his power and his… frankness.”

The boy’s hands were clenched into fists so tightly that the nails cut into his palm, if his fingers were white or his face was pale you couldn’t have seen that, for the dim blue light cast all into ice or shadow. “You once offered to support me if my ambition were to be the next Dark Lord. Is that why, Professor?”

The Defense Professor inclined his head, a thin smile on his lips. “Learn all that I have to teach you, Mr. Potter, and you will rule this country in time. Then you may tear down the prison that democracy made, if you find that Azkaban still offends your sensibilities. Like it or not, Mr. Potter, you have seen this day that your own will conflicts with the will of this country’s populace, and that you do not bow your head and submit to their decision when that occurs. So to them, whether or not they know it, and whether or not you acknowledge it, you are their next Dark Lord.”

In the monochromatic light, unwavering, the boy and the Defense Professor both seemed like motionless ice sculptures, the irises of their eyes reduced to similar colors, looking very much the same in that light.

Harry stared directly into those pale eyes. All the long-suppressed questions, the ones he’d told himself he was putting on hold until the Ides of May. That had been a lie, Harry now knew, a self-deception, he had kept silent for fear of what he might hear. And now everything was coming forth from his lips, all at once. “On our first day of class, you tried to convince my classmates I was a killer.”

“You are.” Amusedly. “But if your question is why I
told
them that, Mr. Potter, the answer is that you will find ambiguity a great ally on your road to power. Give a sign of Slytherin on one day, and contradict it with a sign of Gryffindor the next; and the Slytherins will be enabled to believe what they wish, while the Gryffindors argue themselves into supporting you as well. So long as there is uncertainty, people can believe whatever seems to be to their own advantage. And so long as you appear strong, so long as you appear to be winning, their instincts will tell them that their advantage lies with you. Walk always in the shadow, and light and darkness both will follow.”

“And,” said the boy, his voice level, “just what do
you
want out of all this?”

Professor Quirrell had leaned further back against the wall from where he sat, casting his face into shadow, his eyes changing from pale ice into dark pits like those of his snake form. “I wish for Britain to grow strong under a strong leader; that
is
my desire. As for my reasons why,” Professor Quirrell smiled without mirth, “I think they shall stay my own.”

“The sense of doom that I feel around you.” The words were becoming harder and harder to say, as the subject danced closer and closer to something terrible and forbidden. “You always knew what it meant.”

“I had several guesses,” said Professor Quirrell, his expression unreadable. “And I will not yet say all I guessed. But this much I will tell you: it is
your
doom which flares when we come near, not mine.”

For once Harry’s brain managed to mark this as a questionable assertion and possible lie, instead of believing everything it heard. “Why do you sometimes turn into a zombie?”

“Personal reasons,” said Professor Quirrell with no humor at all in his voice.

“What was your ulterior motive for rescuing Bellatrix?”

There was a brief silence, during which Harry tried hard to control his breathing, keep it steady.

Finally the Defense Professor shrugged, as though it were of no account. “I all but spelled it out for you, Mr. Potter. I told you everything you needed to deduce the answer, if you had been mature enough to consider that first obvious question. Bellatrix Black was the Dark Lord’s most powerful servant, her loyalty the most assured; she was the single person most likely to be entrusted with some part of the lost lore of Slytherin that should have been yours.”

Slowly the anger crept over Harry, slowly the wrath, something terrible beginning to boil his blood, in just a few moments he would say something that he really shouldn’t say while the two of them were alone in a deserted warehouse -

“But she
was
innocent,” said the Defense Professor. He was not smiling. “And the degree to which all her choices were taken away from her, so that she never had a chance to suffer for her
own
mistakes… it struck me as
excessive
, Mr. Potter. If she tells you nothing of use -” The Defense Professor gave another small shrug. “I shall not consider this day’s work a waste.”

“How altruistic of you,” Harry said coldly. “So if all wizards are like You-Know-Who inside, are you an exception to that, then?”

The Defense Professor’s eyes were still in shadow, dark pits that could not be met. “Call it a whim, Mr. Potter. It has sometimes amused me to play the part of a hero. Who knows but that You-Know-Who would say the same.”

Harry opened his mouth a final time -

And found that he couldn’t say it, he couldn’t ask the last question, the last and most important question, he couldn’t make the words come out. Even though a refusal like that was forbidden to a rationalist, for all that he’d ever recited the Litany of Tarski or the Litany of Gendlin or sworn that whatever could be destroyed by the truth should be, in that one moment, he could not bring himself to say his last question out loud. Even though he knew he was thinking wrongly, even though he knew he was supposed to be better than this, he still couldn’t say it.

“Now it is my turn to inquire of you.” Professor Quirrell’s back straightened from where it had leaned back against the glacier wall of painted concrete. “I was wondering, Mr. Potter, if you had anything to say about nearly killing me and ruining our mutual endeavor. I am given to understand that an apology, in such cases, is considered a sign of respect. But you have not offered me one. Is it just that you have not yet gotten around to it, Mr. Potter?”

The tone was calm, the quiet edge so fine and sharp that it would slice all the way through you before you realized you were being murdered.

And Harry just looked at the Defense Professor with cool eyes that would never flinch from anything; not even death, now. He was no longer in Azkaban, no longer fearful of the part of himself that was fearless; and the solid gemstone that was Harry had rotated to meet the stress, turning smoothly from one facet to another, from light to darkness, warm to cold.

A calculated ploy on his part, to make me feel guilty, put me in a position where I must submit?

Genuine emotion on his part?

“I see,” said Professor Quirrell. “I suppose that answers -”

“No,” said the boy in a cool, collected voice, “you do not get to frame the conversation that easily, Professor. I went to considerable lengths to protect you and get you out of Azkaban safely,
after
I thought you had tried to kill a police officer. That included facing down twelve Dementors without a Patronus Charm. I wonder, if I had apologized when you demanded it, would you have said thank-you in turn? Or am I correct in thinking that it was my submission you demanded there, and not only my respect?”

There was a pause, and then Professor Quirrell’s voice came in reply, openly icy with danger no longer veiled. “It seems you still cannot bring yourself to lose, Mr. Potter.”

Darkness stared out of Harry’s eyes without flinching, the Defense Professor himself reduced to a mortal thing within them. “Oh, and are
you
pondering now, whether
you
should pretend to lose to me, and pretend to humble yourself before my own anger, in order to preserve your own plans? Did the thought of a calculated false apology even
cross your mind?
Me neither, Professor Quirrell.”