Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (126 page)

Daphne’s eyes went wide for a moment; she’d never thought of using a Prismatic Sphere like
that
-

“Jugsy, honey?” said Belka. Her lips widened in a vicious smile. “I thought we discussed this. First we beat them,
then
we play.”

“P-please,” said Hermione Granger in a faltering voice, “let them go - I, I, I promise I’ll -”

“Oh, really,” said Lee in an annoyed tone. “Are you about to offer to turn yourself over if we let the others go? We’ve got
all
of you, now.”

Jugson smiled, then. “It could be funny,” said the sixth-year junior Death Eater, softly and with menace. “How about if you lick my shoes, mudblood, and
one
of your friends can go? Pick whichever one you like best, leave the others to get hurt.”

“Nope,” said the young voice of Susan Bones, “not going to happen,” and with a blindingly fast motion the Hufflepuff girl leapt leftward just as a red stunbolt erupted from Belka’s wand, Daphne could hardly
see
the movement as Susan seemed to hit the corridor wall and then bounce off it like she was a rubber ball and her legs smashed into Jugson’s
face
, it didn’t go through the shield but the sixth-year went sprawling backward with the impact and Susan followed him downward and her foot stamped down on the boy’s wand arm, again being repelled by the shield, “
Elmekia!
” shouted Lee and Parvati shouted ”
Prismatis!
” and the rainbow wall formed but the fiery blue blast passed right through it like it wasn’t even there, the bolt missed Susan by inches, there was a whirlwind of motion that Daphne couldn’t follow during which Belka had her feet knocked out from under her, but the older witch just rolled back to a stand and then -

Daphne saw it coming, and her lips started to mouth “
Pris-
” but it was already too late.

Three blasts of brilliance slammed into Susan at once, she had her wand raised as though she could counter them and there was a white flash as the hexes struck the magical wood, but then Susan’s legs convulsed and sent her flying into a corridor wall. Her head hit with a strange cracking sound, and then Susan fell down and lay motionless with her head at an odd-seeming angle, her wand still clutched in one outstretched hand.

There was a moment of frozen silence.

Parvati scrambled over to where Susan lay, pressed a thumb over the pulse point on Susan’s wrist, and then - then slowly, tremblingly, Parvati rose to her feet, her eyes huge -

“
Vitalis revelio
,” said Lee just as Parvati opened her mouth, and Susan’s body was surrounded by a warm red glow. Now the seventh-year boy really was grinning. “Probably just a broken collarbone, I’d say. Nice try, though.”

“Merlin, they
are
tricky,” said Jugson.

“You had me going for a second there, dearies.” The seventh-year girl wasn’t smiling at all.

“
Tonare!
” screamed Daphne, raising her wand above her head and focusing harder than she ever had in her life. ”
Rava calvaria! Lucis -
”

She didn’t even see the hex that got her.

Hermione felt the jolt of Innervation bringing her awake, and out of some intuitive strategism she
didn’t
roll to her feet right away; it had been a completely hopeless battle and she didn’t know what she could do but some instinct told her that leaping to her feet wasn’t it.

Just a crack, Hermione opened her eyes, and the thin rays of light that entered them showed Parvati backing away from all three bullies, the last girl standing that Hermione could see.

And her eyes also showed Tracey fallen not far away from her, and Hermione’s wand was still in her hand; and so, desperately hoping the Slytherin girl would show more sense than she usually did, Hermione made the wand movements as subtly as she could, and hardly moving her lips, whispered, “Innervate.”

Hermione felt the spell working, but Tracey didn’t move. Hermione hoped it was because Tracey was being cunning, and waiting to…

What
could
they do?

Hermione didn’t know, and the panic that had waited through the moments of fighting was starting to eat her up inside now that she was still, now that she was trying to think, now that she could see that it was all absolutely hopeless.

That was when Hermione heard a thud, and though it was out of her field of vision now, she knew that Parvati had fallen.

A moment of silence came, and passed.

“Now what?” said the voice of the scary-soft boy.

“Now we wake up the mudblood,” said the precise voice of the scary-formal boy, “and find out who’s
really
behind them, not Salazar Slytherin’s ghost.”

“No, dears,” said the voice of the scary-sweet girl, “
first
we bind them all
very
securely -”

And then there was a sound like lightning and thunder and Hermione’s eyes widened in shock before she could stop herself, and in her widened field of vision she saw the scary-soft boy convulsing as yellow arcs of energy crawled over him like giant blazing worms. His wand flew out of his hand as he collapsed to the ground, twitching, and then a moment later he lay still.

“Is everyone else asleep now?” said a voice. “Good.”

Susan Bones rose from the floor near where the scary-soft boy had stood, neck still oddly bent. Then she rolled her head around her shoulders, a casual loose motion, and her head was straight again.

The round-faced first-year girl stood facing the remaining two bullies with one hand cocked on her hip.

Grinning.

And surrounded by faceted blue haze.

“Polyjuice!” spat the bully-girl.

“
Polyfluis Reverso!
” roared the remaining boy bully.

Something like the form of a mirrored scarf spat out of his wand -

Passed without resistance through the haze surrounding Susan -

For an instant, she glowed in a strange mirror-color, like a reflection of herself -

And then the glow faded.

The young girl still stood there, hand on her hip.

“Wrong,” said Susan.

“And
this
is the truth,” said Susan. “In case nobody ever told you -”

In her small hand a wand rose up, blurred by the blue haze surrounding it.

“You don’t mess with the ‘Puffs,” said Susan, and with a grey flash so bright it hurt Hermione’s half-closed eyes, the real battle started.

It went on for a while.

Some of the ceiling got melted.

The girl-bully tried to cry a truce, that they would leave and take Jugson with them, and Susan roared out the syllables of a curse Hermione recognized as Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting which was illegal in seven countries.

Eventually the girl-bully lay unconscious and unawakenable on the ground, and the last boy-bully had fled leaving his companions’ bodies behind, and Susan was leaned over against one wall, covered in sweat and her scorched robes soaked through with wet spots, gasping for breath, and clutching at her right shoulder using her left hand.

After a while Susan straightened up, and turned to look back at where her fellow witches were sleeping on the floor.

Well, they
should’ve
been sleeping on the floor.

Lavender was already sitting up with eyes as wide as watermelons.

“That…” said Lavender.

“Was…” said Tracey.

“
What?
” said Hermione.

“I mean,
what?
” said Parvati.

“
Cool!
” said Lavender.

“Oh, hell,” said Susan Bones. Her face had already looked a little pale beneath the sweat, and now it was getting paler, looking almost frighteningly white. “Ah… could I convince you that you hallucinated all that?”

There was a rapid exchange of glances. Hermione looked at Parvati, Parvati looked at Lavender, Lavender briefly locked gazes with Tracey.

The four of them looked back at Susan and shook their heads.

“Oh, hell,” said Susan again. “Look I’ll be back in a few minutes but I’ve really got to go now
please
don’t say anything bye!”

And Susan ran out into the hallway, moving surprisingly fast, before anyone could say another word.

“No, seriously,
what?
” said Parvati.

“
Innervate
,” said Hermione, pointing her wand at Daphne, whose body she hadn’t been able to see before; and Lavender pointed her wand at Hannah’s body and said the same.

Hannah’s eyes opened and she tried frantically to roll to her feet, but collapsed to the ground halfway through.

“It’s okay, Hannah!” said Lavender. “We won.”

“We
what?
” said Hannah from her little heap on the floor.

Daphne hadn’t stirred, but Hermione could see her chest rising and falling, and the breathing rhythm looked normal enough. “I think she’s okay,” said Hermione, “but -” She took a moment to swallow, her mouth was still dry. This had all gotten way, way,
way
out of hand. “I think we ought to take Daphne to Madam Pomfrey’s…”

“Sure, sure, just
give me a second here
and I’ll
probably be fine
,” said Parvati.

“Ex
cuse
me,” Hannah said in a tone that was polite, but firm. “How did we win? And why does the ceiling look all melty?”

There was a pause.

“Susan did it,” said Tracey.

“Yeah,” said Parvati, voice only slightly shaky as she stood up and started to brush off her red-trimmed robes, “it turns out that Susan Bones is the Heir of Hufflepuff and she’s opened up the long-lost entrance to Helga Hufflepuff’s Chamber of Hard Work and Practice.”

“
Huh?
” said Hannah, who was feeling over herself as if to make sure all her body parts were still there. “I thought that was just something Professor Sprout says to teach us an Important Moral Lesson -
Susan
is?”

Slowly, Hermione was beginning to feel a bit more together. It hadn’t really been more than thirty seconds of extreme terror, at least not the parts she’d been conscious for. “Actually,” Hermione said carefully, as her mind started to work again, “I’m pretty sure that
is
just something Professor Sprout says, it wasn’t in
Hogwarts: A History
or anywhere else I’ve read -”

“
She’s a double witch!
” shouted Tracey, her voice so high it cracked. “She
is!
She’s one of
them!
She’s been this whole time!”

“
What?
” yelled Parvati, twisting around to look at Tracey. “That is the
looniest
thing -”

“Of
course!
” said Lavender, now all the way on her feet and starting to bounce up and down with excitement. “I should’ve
realized!
”

“Susan’s a
what?
” said Hermione.

“A
double
witch!” said Tracey.

“You see,” said Lavender, speaking very rapidly, “There’ve always been stories, about these children who are born as super magicians who can cast spells no one else can, and there’s a whole secret school hidden inside Hogwarts with classes that only they can see and go to -”

“Those are just
stories!
” yelled Parvati. “That’s not how real life works! I mean, sure, I read those books too -”

“Just a minute, please,” said Hermione. Maybe her mind
was
feeling a little slow after all. “You mean even though you
already
get to go to a magical school and everything, you still want to go to a
double
magical school?”

Lavender looked at her, puzzled. “What?” said Lavender. “Who
wouldn’t
want to have super extra magical powers? It would be like this whole amazing
destiny
and everything! It’d mean you were
special!
”

Hannah nodded to that, looking up from where she’d crawled to Daphne’s side and was checking the girl for broken bones. “I wish
I
was a double witch,” Hannah said, and then, sounding a little sadder, “though I don’t believe there is any such thing, really… what did you see Susan do, exactly? I mean, are you sure you weren’t just seeing things after getting stunned?”

Hermione truly, truly couldn’t find any words at this point.

“Oh, no,” said Tracey. The Slytherin girl spun around to look at the entrance to the corridor, her robes fluttering around her. “Oh no! We’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get away before Susan comes back with someone who can Super-Memory-Charm us!”

“Susan wouldn’t
do
that!” said Parvati. “I mean, if there even
was
-”

“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” roared a high-pitched squeaky voice, as Professor Flitwick stormed into the partially melted corridor like a small, dangerously compressed package of pure academic fury, an ashen-faced Padma gasping along behind him.

“What
happened?
” Susan blurted to the girl who looked exactly like her, except for the scorched robes damp with sweat.

“Ooh, great question!” said the other Susan Bones as she rapidly skinned off what was left of her borrowed clothes. A moment later the girl began to Metamorphose back into her more accustomed form of Nymphadora Tonks. “Sorry but I couldn’t think of anything myself so you’ve got about three minutes to decide on an answer to that -”

As Daphne Greengrass observed afterward with some acidity, the flaw in Hermione’s cunning plan to make sure that House points were taken evenly from all four Houses if they got caught, was that it didn’t work on
detentions
.

They’d all agreed to keep their mouths shut about Susan’s mysterious powers - even Tracey, after Susan threatened to have her Super-Memory-Charmed if she didn’t promise. Unfortunately, they discovered at dinnertime that someone had forgotten to tell the
bullies
about their agreement, and also that Susan Bones had sacrificed her soul to dreadful forbidden powers which now inhabited the hulk of her body and that was why they’d all gotten detention.

“Hermione?” Harry Potter said to her from beside her at the dinner table, his voice very tentative. “Please don’t take offense, and I’ll understand if you say it’s none of my business, but I think all this is starting to spin out of control.”