Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (130 page)

“No…” Harry said slowly. He had decided some time ago against trying to sneak into the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library, for much the same reason he’d decided a year earlier
not
to look up how to make explosives out of common household materials. Harry prided himself on at least having
more
sense than people thought he did.

“Oh?” said Professor Quirrell. The man was walking more normally now, and the lips curved about in a peculiar smile. “Why, perhaps you possess a natural talent for the field, then.”

“Yes, well,” Harry said wearily. “I suppose Dr. Seuss also has a natural talent for Dark rituals, because the part about
shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff
came from a children’s book called
Bartholomew and the Oobleck
-”

“No, not that part,” said Professor Quirrell. His voice grew a little stronger, took on some of its normal lecturing tone. “An ordinary Charm, Mr. Potter, can be cast merely by speaking certain words, making precise motions of the wand, expending some of your own strength. Even powerful spells may be invoked in this way, if the magic is efficient as well as efficacious. But with the greatest of magics, speech alone does not suffice to give them structure. You must perform specific actions, make significant choices. Nor is the temporary expenditure of your own strength sufficient to set them in motion; a ritual requires permanent sacrifice. The power of such a greater spell, compared to ordinary Charms, can be like day compared to night. But many rituals - indeed, most - happen to demand at least one sacrifice which might inspire squeamishness. And so the entire field of ritual magic, containing all the furthest and most interesting reaches of wizardry, is widely regarded as Dark. With a few exceptions carved out by tradition, of course.” Professor Quirrell’s voice took on a sardonic tinge. “The Unbreakable Vow is too useful to certain wealthy Houses to be outlawed entirely - even though to bind a man’s will through all his days is indeed a dread and terrible act, more fearsome than many lesser rituals that wizards shun. A cynic might conclude that which rituals are prohibited is not so much a matter of morality, as habit. But I digress…” Professor Quirrell made a brief coughing sound, a clearing of his throat. “The Unbreakable Vow requires three participants and three sacrifices. The one who receives the Unbreakable Vow must be one who could have come to trust the Vower, but chooses instead to demand the Vow from them, and they sacrifice that possibility of trust. The one who makes the Vow must be someone who could have chosen to do what the Vow demands of them, and they sacrifice that capacity for choice. And the third wizard, the binder, permanently sacrifices a small portion of their own magic, to sustain the Vow forever.”

“Ah,” Harry said. “I’d
wondered
why that spell wasn’t used all over the place, every time two people have difficulty trusting each other… although… why don’t wizards on their deathbeds charge money to bind Unbreakable Vows, and use that to leave an inheritance for their children -”

“Because they are stupid,” said Professor Quirrell. “There are hundreds of useful rituals which could be performed if men had so much sense; I could name twenty without stopping to draw breath. But in any case, Mr. Potter, the thing about such rituals - whether or not you choose to term them Dark - is that they are shaped to be magically efficacious, not to appear impressive when performed. I suppose there is a certain tendency for the more powerful rituals to require more dreadful sacrifices. Even so, the most terrible ritual known to me demands only a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a woman; and that for a ritual which promised to summon Death itself - though what is truly meant by that I do not know and do not care to discover, since it was also said that the counterspell to dismiss Death had been lost. The most dread chant I have encountered does not sound even a hundredth as fearsome as the chant you composed for Miss Davis. Those among the bullies who had a passing familiarity with Dark rituals - and I am certain that there were some - must have been terrified beyond the capacity of words to describe. If there existed a true ritual which appeared that impressive, Mr. Potter, it would melt the Earth.”

“Um,” said Harry.

Professor Quirrell’s lips twisted further. “Ah, but the truly amusing thing was this. You see, Mr. Potter, the chant of every ritual names that which is to be sacrificed, and that which is to be gained. The chant which you gave to Miss Davis spoke, first, of a darkness beyond darkness, buried beneath the flow of time, which knows the gate, and is the gate. And the second thing spoken of, Mr. Potter, was the manifestation of your own presence. And always, in each element of the ritual,
first
is named that which is sacrificed, and
then
is said the use commanded of it.”

“I… see,” said Harry, as he trod through the halls of Hogwarts after Professor Quirrell, following him toward the Defense Professor’s office. “So my chant, the way I wrote it, implies that the Outer God, Yog-Sothoth -”

“Was permanently sacrificed in a ritual which but briefly manifested your presence,” said Professor Quirrell. “I suppose we will discover tomorrow whether anyone took that seriously, when we read the newspapers and see whether all the magical nations of the world are banding together in a desperate effort to seal off your incursion into our reality.”

They walked on, as the Defense Professor began chuckling, odd throaty sounds.

The two of them didn’t talk after that until they came to the Defense Professor’s office, and then the man halted with his hand upon the door.

“It is a very strange thing,” the Defense Professor said, his voice now soft again, almost inaudible. The man was not looking at Harry, and Harry saw only his back. “A very strange thing… There was a time when I would have sacrificed a finger from my wand hand, to work upon the bullies of Hogwarts as we have worked upon them this day. To make them fear me as they now fear you, to have the deference of all the students and the adoration of many, I would have given my finger for that. You have everything now that I wanted then. All that I know of human nature says that I should hate you. And yet I do not. It is a very strange thing.”

It should have been a touching moment, but instead Harry felt a coldness traveling down his spine, as though he were a little fish in the sea, and some vast white shark had just looked him over and decided after a visible hesitation not to eat him.

The man opened the door to Defense Professor’s office, and passed within, and was gone.

Aftermath:

Her fellow Slytherins were looking at Daphne like… like they didn’t have the faintest idea of how to look at her.

The Gryffindors were looking at her like they didn’t have the faintest idea of how to look at her.

Showing no fear, Daphne Greengrass strode into the Potions classroom, wrapped in the imperious dignity of a Noble and Most Ancient House. Inside she was feeling much the same way everyone else probably did.

It had been two hours since the
What?
when the
What?
had happened and Daphne’s brain was still going:
What? What? What?

The classroom was quiet as they all waited for Professor Snape to arrive. Lavender and Parvati sat near a cluster of other Gryffindors, surrounded by silent stares. The two of them were looking over each other’s homework before class started, and nobody else was helping them or talking to them. Even Lavender, who Daphne would have sworn could never be fazed by anything, seemed subdued.

Daphne sat down at her desk, and took
Magical Draughts and Potions
out of her bag, and began looking over her own homework, doing her very best to act normal. People stared at her, and said nothing -

A gasp went through the whole classroom. Girls and boys flinched back, leaning away from the door like they were stalks of wheat touched by a gust of wind.

In the door stood Tracey Davis, wrapped in a black tattered cloak which had been draped over her Hogwarts uniform.

Tracey walked slowly into the classroom, swaying slightly with each step, looking like she was trying to
drift
. She sat down at her accustomed desk, which happened to be right next to Daphne’s.

Slowly Tracey’s head turned to stare at Daphne.

“See?” the Slytherin girl said in a low, sepulchral tone. “I told you I’d get him before she did.”

“What?” blurted Daphne, who immediately wished she hadn’t said anything.

“I got Harry Potter before Granger did.” Tracey’s voice was still low, but her eyes were gleaming with triumph. “See, Daphne, what General Potter wants in a girl isn’t a pretty face or a pretty dress. He wants a girl willing to channel his dread powers, that’s what he wants. Now I’m his - and he’s mine!”

This announcement produced a frozen silence through the whole classroom.

“Excuse me, Miss Davis,” said the cultured voice of Draco Malfoy, who seemed unconcerned as he shuffled through his own Potions parchments. The other scion of a Most Ancient House didn’t so much as glance up from his desk, even as everyone else turned to look at him. “Did Harry Potter actually
tell
you that? Using those words?”

“Well, no…” Tracey said, and then her eyes flashed angrily. “But he’d
better
take me in, now that I’ve sacrificed my soul to him and everything!”

“
You sacrificed your soul to Harry Potter?
” gasped Millicent. There was a clatter from the other side of the room as Ron Weasley dropped his inkwell.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I did,” said Tracey, sounding briefly uncertain before she rallied. “I mean, I looked at myself in a mirror and I look paler now, and I can always feel darkness surrounding me, and I was a conduit for his dread powers and everything… Daphne, you also saw my eyes go green, right? I didn’t see it myself but that’s what I heard afterward.”

There was a pause, broken only by the sounds of Ron Weasley trying to clean up his desk.

“Daphne?” said Tracey.

“I don’t believe it,” said an angry voice. “There’s no way the next Dark Lord would take
you
to be his bride!”

Slowly, and with considerable disbelief, heads turned to stare at Pansy Parkinson.

“Hush, you,” said Tracey, “or I’ll…” The Slytherin girl paused. Then Tracey’s voice went even lower, and she said, “Hush, you, or I’ll devour your soul.”

“You can’t do that,” said Pansy, in the confident tones of a hen which had worked out a perfectly good pecking order where she was at the top, and wasn’t about to go updating that belief based on mere evidence.

Slowly, like she was trying to float, Tracey got up from her desk. There were more gasps. Daphne felt like she’d been Petrified in place within her chair.

“Tracey?” said Lavender in a small voice. “Please don’t do all that again. Please?”

Now Pansy was showing definite nervousness as Tracey swayed toward her desk. “What d’you think you’re doing?” Pansy said, not quite managing to sound indignant.

“I told you,” Tracey said menacingly. “I’m going to devour your soul.”

Tracey bent down over Pansy, who sat frozen at her desk; and, with their lips almost touching, made a loud inhaling noise.

“There!” said Tracey as she straightened. “I ate your soul.”

“No you didn’t!” said Pansy.

“Did too!” said Tracey.

There was a very slight pause -

“Merlin, she
did!
” cried Theodore Nott. “You look all pale now, and your eyes seem empty!”

“
What?
” screeched Pansy, turning pale. The girl leapt up from her desk and began frantically rummaging through her bookbag. After Pansy drew out a mirror and looked at herself, she turned even paler.

Daphne abandoned all pretense of aristocratic poise and let her head fall to the desk with a dull thud, as she wondered whether going to the same school as all the other important families was really worth going to the same school as the Chaos Legion.

“Ooh, you’re in trouble now, Pansy,” said Seamus Finnigan. “I don’t know exactly what happens when a Dementor Kisses you, but if Tracey Davis kisses you that’s probably even worse.”

“I’ve heard about people without souls,” Dean Thomas said gloomily. “They have to dress all in black, and they write awful poetry, and nothing ever makes them happy. They’re all
angsty
.”

“I don’t want to be angsty!” cried Pansy.

“Too bad,” said Dean Thomas. “You’ve got to be, now that your soul’s gone.”

Pansy turned, and stretched out a begging hand toward Draco Malfoy’s desk. “Draco!” she said pleadingly. “Mr. Malfoy! Please, make Tracey give me back my soul!”

“I can’t,” said Tracey. “I
ate
it.”

“Make her throw it up!” yelled Pansy.

The heir of Malfoy had slumped forward, resting his head in both hands, so that nobody could see his face. “Why is my life like this?” said Draco Malfoy.

A wild babble of whispers started up as Tracey returned to her desk, now smiling in satisfaction, while Pansy stood in the midst of the classroom, wringing her hands and tears starting from her eyes -

“Be. Quiet.”

The soft, lethal voice seemed to fill the whole classroom as Professor Snape stalked in through the door. His face was angrier than Daphne had ever seen it, sending a jolt of genuine fear down her spine. Hastily she looked down at her homework.

“Sit down, Parkinson,” the Potions Master hissed, “and you, Davis, take off that ridiculous cloak -”

“
Professor Snaaaaaape!
” wailed Pansy Parkinson in tears. ”
Tracey ate my sooouuul!
”

It was a looping, meandering alley in the midst of Hogwarts, wandering like a stray lock of hair; sometimes crossing itself, it seemed, but you couldn’t ever get to the end if you gave into the temptation of apparent shortcuts.

At the end of the tangle, six students leaned against rough stones, robes black against the grey walls and trimmed in green, eyes darting from one to each other. Torches burned in the windowless sconce, casting light to ward off the darkness and heat to ward off the chill of the Slytherin dungeons.

“I am
certain,
” Reese Belka snapped, “absolutely
certain,
that was no true ritual. Little firstie witches can’t do that kind of magic, and even if they could, who’s ever heard of a Dark ritual which
sacrifices
a sealed horror for -
that?
”

“Were you -” said Lucian Bole. “I mean - after that girl snapped her fingers -”

Belka’s glare should have melted him. “No,” she spat, “I was
not.
”

“That is, she wasn’t naked,” drawled Marcus Flint, his broad shoulders leaning back in apparent relaxation against the lumpy stone surface. “Covered in chocolate frosting, yes, but not naked.”

“This day Potter has offered great insult to our Houses,” said the grim voice of Jaime Astorga.

“Yes, well, I’m sorry to be blunt,” Randolph Lee said evenly. The seventh-year duelist rubbed at his chin, where a faint fuzz of beard had been allowed to grow. “But when someone sticks you to the ceiling, it’s a message, Astorga. It’s a message which says: I’m an incredibly powerful Dark Wizard who could’ve done anything to you I damn well pleased, and I don’t care if your House is offended, either.”

Robert Jugson III gave a soft, low laugh at this, a chuckle that sent chills down several spines. “It makes you wonder if you picked the wrong side, doesn’t it? I’ve heard tales about
messages
like that, sent at the old Dark Lord’s bidding…”

“I’m not ready to kneel to Potter just yet,” said Astorga, staring hard into Jugson’s eyes.

“Neither am I,” said Belka.

Jugson was holding his wand, and he turned it idly back and forth in his fingers, pointing it up and then downward. “Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?” said Jugson. “Everyone’s got a price. Everyone smart.”

This statement produced a moment of silence.

“Shouldn’t Malfoy be here?” Bole said tentatively.

Flint gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. “Whatever Malfoy’s plotting, he wants to put on an air of innocence. He can’t be seen missing at the same time as us.”

“But everyone
knows
that already,” said Bole. “Even in the other Houses.”

“Yes, very clumsy,” said Belka. She snorted. “Malfoy or no, he’s just a little firstie and we don’t need him here.”

“I will owl my father,” Jugson said softly, “and
he
will speak to Lord Malfoy himself -” Abruptly, Jugson stopped speaking.

“I don’t know about
you
, dearies,” Belka said with fake sweetness, “but
I
don’t plan on running scared from a false ritual, and
I’m
not done with Potter and his pet mudblood.”

Nobody answered. All their gazes were looking past her.

Slowly, Belka turned around to see what the others were staring at.

“You will do
nothing,
” hissed their Head of House. Severus Snape’s face was enraged, when he spoke small spots of spittle flew from his mouth, further dotting his already-dirtied robes. “You fools have done
enough!
You have embarrassed my House -
lost
to first-years - now you speak of embroiling noble Lords of the Wizengamot in your
pathetic
childish squabbles?
I
shall deal with this matter.
You
will not embarrass this House again, you will not
risk
embarrassing this House again! You are
done
with fighting witches, and if I hear otherwise -”

If you thought they’d be sitting next to each other at dinnertime, after that, you’d be quite mistaken.

“What does she
want
from me?” came the plaintive cry of a boy who, for all his extensive reading in the scientific literature, was still a bit naive about certain things. “Did she
want
to get beaten up?”

The upper-year Ravenclaw boys who’d sat down next to him at the dinner-table exchanged swift glances with each other until, by some unspoken protocol, the most experienced of their number spoke.

“Look,” said Arty Grey, the seventh-year who was leading in their competition by three witches and a Defense Professor, “the thing you’ve got to understand is, just because she’s
angry
doesn’t mean you lost points. Miss Granger is angry because she got all frightened and you’re
there to be blamed,
you understand? But at the same time, even though she won’t admit it, she’ll be touched that her boyfriend went to such ridiculous and frankly insane lengths to protect her.”

“This is not about
points,
” ground out Harry Potter, the words visibly escaping from between his clenched teeth. Dinner sat ignored on the table in front of him. “This is about
justice.
And
I. Am. Not. Her. Boyfriend!
”

This was met by a certain amount of sniggering from all present.

“Yeah, well,” said a sixth-year Ravenclaw boy, “I think after she kisses you to bring you out of Dementation and you stick forty-four bullies to the ceiling for her, we’ve gone way past ‘she’s not my girlfriend, really’ and into the question of what your kids will be like. Wow, that’s a scary thought…” The Ravenclaw trailed off and then said, in a smaller voice, “Please don’t look at me like that.”

“Look,” said Arty Grey, “I’m sorry to be blunt about this, but you can have justice or you can have girls, you can’t have both at the same time.” He clapped a companionable hand on Harry Potter’s shoulder. “You’ve got potential, kid, more potential than any wizard I’ve ever seen, but you’ve got to learn how to
use
it, you know? Be a bit sweeter to them, learn some spells to clean up that mess you call hair. Above all, you need to hide your evilness better - not
too
well, but better. Nice well-groomed boys get girls, and Dark Wizards also get girls, but nice well-groomed boys suspected of being
secretly
Dark get more girls than you can imagine -”

“Not interested,” Harry said flatly, as he picked up the boy’s hand from his shoulder and unceremoniously dropped it.

“But you will be,” said Arty Grey, his voice low and foreboding. “Ah, you will be!”

Elsewhere along the same table -

“
Romantic?
” shrieked Hermione Granger, so loudly that some of the girls next to her winced. ”
What part of that was romantic?
He didn’t
ask!
He never
asks!
He just sends ghosts after people and glues them to ceilings and does whatever he wants with
my
life!”

“But don’t you see?” said a fourth-year witch. “It means that even though he’s evil, he
loves
you!”

“You’re not helping,” said Penelope Clearwater a little further down the table, but she was ignored. Several older witches had started toward Hermione, after she’d sat down at the extreme opposite end of the table from Harry Potter, but then a swifter cloud of younger girls had surrounded Hermione in an impenetrable barrier.

“Boys,” said Hermione Granger, “should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!”

This was also ignored. “It’s just like a play!” sighed a third-year girl.

“A play?” said Hermione. “I’d like to see the play where anything like
this
happens!”

“Oh,” said the third-year girl, “I was thinking of that really
romantic
one where there’s this very nice, sweet boy who makes a Floo call, only he mispronounces his destination and stumbles out into this room full of Dark Wizards who are performing a forbidden ritual that should’ve stayed forever lost to time, and they’re sacrificing seven victims in order to unseal this ancient horror which is supposed to grant someone a wish if it’s freed, so of course the boy’s presence interrupts the ritual, and as the horror is eating all the Dark Wizards and everyone is dying the boy’s last thought is that he wishes he could’ve had a girlfriend, and the next thing you know the boy is lying in the lap of this beautiful woman whose eyes are burning with a dreadful light, only she doesn’t understand anything about being human so the boy always has to stop her eating people. This is just like that play, only you’re the boy and Harry Potter is the girl!”

“That…” Hermione said, feeling quite surprised. “That actually
does
sound something like -”

“It
does?
” blurted a second-year girl sitting across the table, who was now leaning forward, looking horrified and yet even more fascinated.

“No!” said Hermione. “I mean -
he’s not my boyfriend!
”

Two seconds later, Hermione’s ears caught up with what her lips had just said.

The fourth-year witch put her hand on Hermione’s shoulder and gave her a comforting squeeze. “Miss Granger,” she said in a soothing voice, “I think if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll admit that the real reason you’re angry with your dark master is that he channeled his unspeakable powers through Tracey Davis instead of you.”

Hermione’s mouth opened but her throat locked up before the words came out, which was probably a good thing, because if she’d actually yelled that loudly it would’ve broken something.

“How’s that possible, actually?” said the third-year girl. “I mean for Harry Potter to work through another girl even though he’s bound himself to you? Do the three of you have one of those, you know, arrangements?”

“
Gaaaaack,
” said Hermione Granger, her throat still locked, her brain halted, and her vocal cords spontaneously making a noise like she was coughing up a yak.

(Later.)

“I don’t understand why you’re being so
unreasonable
,” said another second-year witch, who’d replaced the third-year-girl after Hermione had threatened to ask Tracey to eat her soul. “I mean, really, if someone like Harry Potter rescued
me
, I’d be - sending him thank-you cards, and hugging him, and,” the girl’s face was a bit red, “well, kissing him, I’d hope.”

“Yeah!” said the other second-year witch. “I’ve never understood why girls in plays get
angry
when the main character goes out of his way to be nice to them.
I
wouldn’t act like that if the hero liked
me.
”

Hermione Granger had dropped her head to the dinner table, her hands slowly pulling at her hair.

“You just don’t understand male psychology,” the fourth-year witch said in an authoritative voice. “Granger’s got to make it
look
like she can mysteriously resist his seductive charm.”

(Even later.)

And so before long Hermione Granger had turned to the only person left she could talk to, the only person guaranteed to understand her point of view -

“They’re all mad,” said Hermione Granger as she strode vigorously toward Ravenclaw tower, having left dinner a bit early. “Everyone except you and me, Harry, I mean
everyone
except us in this whole school of Hogwarts, they’re all entirely
mad.
And Ravenclaw girls are the
worst,
I don’t know
what
Ravenclaw girls go reading when they get older, but I’m certain they ought not to be reading it. One witch asked me if the two of us had soul-bonded, which I’m going to look up in the library tonight, but I’m pretty sure has never actually happened -”

“I don’t even know a
name
for this kind of fallacious reasoning,” said Harry Potter. The boy was walking normally, which meant he often had to skip forward a few steps to match her own indignation-fueled speed. “I seriously think if it was up to
them
, they’d be dragging us off this minute to get our names changed to Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger… Ugh, saying that out loud makes me realize how awful it sounds.”

“You mean
your
name would be Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger and
mine
would be Granger-Potter-Evans-Verres,” said Hermione. “It’s too horrible to imagine.”

“No,” said the boy, “House Potter is a Noble House, so I think that name stays in front -”

“
What?
” she said indignantly. “Who says
we
have to -”

There was a sudden awful silence, broken only by the thuds of their shoes.

“
Anyhow,
” Hermione said hastily, “some of the crazy things they said at dinner got me thinking, so I just want to say, Harry, that I really am grateful to you for saving me and everybody from getting beat up, and even though some parts of this afternoon upset me, I’m sure we can just talk about it calmly.”

“Ah…” Harry said with a faint and tentative smile, his eyes showing a mixture of befuddlement and apprehension, “that’s… good, I guess?”

To be specific, there’d been the fourth-year witch explaining that, since Harry was the evil wizard who’d fallen in love with Hermione, and Hermione was the pure and innocent girl who would either redeem him or get seduced by the Dark Arts herself, it followed that Hermione
had
to be perpetually indignant at anything Harry did, even if it was him heroically saving her from certain doom, just so that their romance wouldn’t resolve itself before the end of Act IV. And
then
Penelope Clearwater, who Hermione had really thought was smarter than that, had remarked in a loud voice that for identical reasons it was
impossible
for Hermione to just go over and talk sensibly with Harry about why she was feeling hurt, and anyway Dark Wizards were attracted to passionate defiance in a woman, not logic. This was the point at which Hermione had shoved herself up from the benches, stomped furiously over to where Harry was sitting, and asked him in a reasonable voice if the two of them could go for a walk and sort things out.