Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (169 page)

There was a thundering crash, as of two huge doors being shoved open by someone very, very strong.

Harry spun around in the air to present the two open stirrup-positions on the broomstick to the Weasley twins, he didn’t say anything, there was no reason for them to give away their positions if they didn’t have to. Time seemed to move too slowly as the Weasley twins scrambled into the stirrups, Harry’s heart beating hard despite his mental calculation that Mr. Hagrid, running, shouldn’t reach even the foot of the stairway in time. Then the three of them were accelerating
hard
and away toward the nearest corridor, the stone floor beneath them blurring and the walls seeming to make an audible whooshing sound (though that was just the wind in their ears) as they went past; Harry remembered that he was riding a longer three-person broomstick barely in time to
slow down
for the next turn.

And now all the broomstick seats were occupied, but if they actually found Hermione then - Harry could put on the Cloak of Invisibility, that should hide him from the troll, and that would free up a seat for Hermione -

Harry ducked hard before a sudden archway took his head off.

“We found Jesse!” the Weasley twin seated behind Harry blurted. “I know we did! That time we needed to tell him that Filch was hunting for him!”

“How?” Harry said, most of his brain engaged in not dying in a horrible air accident. He should have slowed down for safety, but there was a tension rising in him, a sourceless dread. He
couldn’t
slow down, something terrible would happen if he slowed down…

“We -” said the Weasley twin seated lower down. “We can’t remember!”

Another sharp turn taken at, Harry estimated, roughly 0.3% of the speed of light, and they were going through a twisty curving corridor that Harry always took to get from the Great Hall to the library only it
wasn’t
the shortest way if you were
on a broomstick,
he should’ve taken the long straight West Corridor instead -

The part of his brain that wasn’t steering caught up with reality.

“Someone’s been tampering with your minds!” Harry yelled, as he weaved through the curving corridor so fast that the tail-end Weasley sometimes lightly smacked into the wall as the length of the broomstick conflicted with Harry’s maladapted air skills.

“
What?
” cried Fred or George.

“Whoever got to Hermione messed with your minds too!” It could be an Obliviation, it could be a False Memory that hadn’t been planted right, but right now Harry couldn’t
think -

The broomstick turned and shot upward beside a spiral staircase, all three of them flattened themselves against the broomstick so they could make in through the gap in the ceiling that opened onto the third floor, and then they were in front of the library, the broomstick slowing to a halt with a shriek despite the lack of anything it could be friction-braking against. Harry shot the Weasley twins a quick glance to
stay put
, as he clambered off the broomstick to shove open the doors of the library, controlling his breathing as he shoved his head inside.

Hermione Granger wasn’t there.

Madam Pince, who was eating a sandwich at her desk, looked up with a sudden glare. “Library’s closed!”

“Have you seen Hermione Granger?” Harry said.

“I said the library’s
closed,
boy! Lunch hours!”

“This is extremely important. Have you seen Hermione Granger or do you have any idea where she might be?”

“No, now be off!”

“Do you have any fast way of contacting Professor McGonagall in an emergency?”

“Eh?” said the librarian, startled. She rose up from behind her desk. “What is -”

“Yes or no. Please answer immediately.”

“Ah - there’s the Floo -”

“She’s not in her office,” Harry said. “Do you have any other way of reaching her. Yes or no.”

“Young man, I insist that you -”

Harry’s brain flagged this as
I’m talking to NPCs again
and he spun on his heel and dashed back for the broomstick.

“Stop!” cried Madam Pince, bursting too late from the doors as Harry and the Weasley twins shot off again, out of the librarian’s sight. The pressure in Harry’s mind still rising, like a physical hand squeezing his chest,
he had to find Hermione
and he had no other notion of where she could be, unless it was the witches’ dorms in the Ravenclaw tower and that he couldn’t enter. Searching all of Hogwarts bordered on a mathematical impossibility, there probably was no continuous flight path that entered all the rooms at least once -
why
hadn’t he thought to demand for Hermione and Neville and him to be given a set of those neat little mirrors the Aurors used to communicate -

The realization that he was being
stupid
hit Harry like a blow to the stomach. He didn’t need mirrors to send a message, he hadn’t needed mirrors since January. Harry slowed the broomstick to a halt in midair of a hallway, his wand already coming into his hand, the driving will to
protect Hermione Granger
rising to the front of his mind like a sun of silver fire and flowing down his arm as he cried

“
EXPECTO PATRONUM!
”

and the blazing white humanoid burst into existence like a nova, the Weasley twins’ voices crying aloud in shock.

“Tell Hermione Granger - that there’s a troll loose in Hogwarts - it could be hunting for her - she needs to get into direct sunlight, now!”

The silver figure turned as though it was departing, and then vanished.

“Merlin’s underpants,” breathed Fred or George.

The silver outline blasted back into the world, and said in the strange outside version of Harry’s own voice, “Hermione Granger says,” the blazing figure’s voice became higher-pitched,
“AHHHHHHHHH!
”

Time seemed to fracture, like everything was moving very quickly and slowly at the same time. A desperate impulse to accelerate the broomstick, fly at its maximum speed, only Harry didn’t
know where
-

“If you know where she is,” Harry shouted to the blazing humanoid figure, staring into it as though it were a sun, “then
take me to her!”

The silver blaze moved and Harry accelerated after it, the Weasley twins giving out high-pitched shrieks behind him as he fired through the air like a cannonball, moving faster than sanity, he didn’t focus on the walls whizzing past him or how fast he was moving, just followed the silver light through corridors and flying up staircases and blitzing through doors that Fred or George cried desperate incantations to open and it was
all still taking too much time,
somewhere deep inside Harry felt like he was sinking through molasses as windows and portraits shot past.

The broomstick screamed through a final turn that whacked one of the Weasley twins against the wall not quite as hard as a Bludger would hit, and then they followed the brilliant Patronus through an open space in the ceilings, blasting up and upwards, rising past one floor and then another in less than a breath.

His Patronus slowed to a halt (Harry braking hard in response) just as they reached the level of a wide-open floor space that that spread out until it escaped the ceiling and turned into an outdoor terrace, a spread of tiled marble open to the air and sky -

Cool blue fires clung to the floor in small masses, surrounding a blazing pool that seemed to burn with a deadlier, hotter blue.

In one narrow circle the marble tiles were scorched and shattered by some explosive spell that only the most prodigious of first-year witches could have cast, with the last of her strength.

On the terrace,
still moving
beneath the open sunlight, stood a great lumpy creature of dull granite-grey. Body like a boulder with small bald head perched on top like a stone, short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. One hand held a tremendous stone club as long and as wide as an adult human, and the other hand held

The Weasley twins screamed.

Harry’s Patronus shattered.

The troll snorted and spun around to face them, dropping

into the red pool that had spread out beneath its feet, raising its club high.

Then a Weasley cried an incantation and the club was torn from the troll’s hand, smashed into its face so hard it drove the troll back for one of its steps, a blow that might have killed a Muggle. The troll gave a bellow of anger, its nose squashed and blood-spattered, and then the nose straightened once more, regenerated. The troll grabbed with both hands for the club, which shot away through the air but only barely dodged the grab.

“Lead it away, keep it off me,” said a voice.

The levitated club moved backwards from the troll, from the terrace onto the wide-open floor beneath the ceiling; and the troll made a great prodigious leap that almost brought the club into its hands. Then the troll made another great leap as the club moved to one side; and the broomstick moved forwards and Harry jumped off and ran towards where Hermione Granger was lying in a pool of her own blood with her legs eaten away to the upper thighs.

Harry’s hands tore open the healer’s kit from his pouch, grabbed one of the self-tightening tourniquets, wrapped them around one ragged tooth-marked stump, his hands briefly slipping in the blood, they didn’t tremble, there wasn’t any allowance for his hands to tremble. As the tourniquet formed a complete loop it tightened hard and more blood came out, but then the bleeding stopped on that thigh-stump, and Harry turned to the other. Part of his mind was screaming, screaming, screaming and even the part of him picking up the other self-tightening tourniquet heard it, but that also wasn’t allowed.

The two Weasley twins were shouting spells, one after another in rapid-fire casting that would have had Harry unconscious in sixty seconds, sometimes the twins shouted two spells simultaneously in perfect coordination, but most of the spells were disrupting in harmless showers of sparks against the troll’s skin. As the other tourniquet tightened itself in another pulse of blood, Harry looked up at a “
Diffindo!” / “Reducto!
” that made the troll’s vulnerable eyes explode in twin showers of vitreous humor, but the troll only bellowed once more, its eyes already reforming.

“
Fire and acid!
” Harry shouted. ”
Use fire or acid!
”

“Fuego!”
/
“Incendio!”
Harry heard, but he wasn’t looking, he was reaching for the syringe of glowing orange liquid that was the oxygenating potion, pushing it into Hermione’s neck at what Harry hoped was the carotid artery, to keep her brain alive even if her lungs or heart stopped, so long as her brain stayed intact everything else could be fixed, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, and Harry pushed the plunger of the syringe all the way down, creating a faint glow beneath the pale skin of her neck. Harry then pushed down on her chest, where her heart should be, hard compressions that he hoped was moving the oxygenated blood around to where it could reach her brain, even if her heart might have stopped beating, he hadn’t actually thought to check her pulse.

Then Harry stared at the other things in his medical kit, his mind going blank as he tried to figure out what else of what was there, if anything, he could use. The screaming in that distant corner of his mind was getting louder, much louder, now that his hands had stopped their frantic motions. He was suddenly aware of the liquid sensation where blood had soaked through his robes and the knees of his pants.

From behind Harry came the sound of another bellow from the troll, and he heard one of the Weasley twins shout
“Deligitor prodeas!”
and then,
“HELP! Do something!”

Harry twisted his head back to look, and saw that one of the Weasley twins was somehow now wearing the Sorting Hat on his head, facing off against the troll which held the huge stone club in both its hands, looking somewhat scorched now and with one or two smoking scars across its arms, but still intact.

And then the voice of the Hat bellowed in a voice so loud it seemed to shake the walls,

“GRYFFINDOR!”

A pulse of power burned the air, magic feeling almost tangible even to Harry’s young senses, the troll jumped back a pace with a snort of surprise. Fred or George, with a strange look on his face, swept the Hat off his head with a motion smooth as a magician’s trick, and reached in with one hand and drew forth a hilt whose pommel was a glowing ruby, followed by a wide crossguard of gleaming white metal, and a blade as long as a tall child. As the sword was revealed the air seemed to fill with a silent scream of fury.

Upon the blade was written in golden script,
nihil supernum.

Then the Weasley twin raised the sword aloft as though the huge blade weighed nothing, and screamed and charged.

Harry’s lips opened to say something, some long sentence like,
No, stop, you have no idea how to use a sword
but not even a single syllable left his lips before the sword sliced off the troll’s right arm through the elbow, cutting through skin and flesh and bone like jelly; just as the already-swinging arc of the stone club smashed into the charging Weasley twin and sent him flying through the air above the marble floor, over the gap out of which they’d risen on the broomstick, until that Weasley hit the wall on the opposite side and then collapsed into an unmoving heap.

The bright sword vanished down into the opening in the floor, clattering distantly as it dropped.

“Fred!
” screamed George Weasley, and then
“VENTUS!”

An invisible blow caught the troll and hurled it sideways through the air.

“
VENTUS!
”

The troll was hit again, blown to the edge of the floor and the gap leading downwards.

“VENTUS!”

But the troll had reached down and grabbed at the floor, its remaining hand crunching through marble to gain a firm hold. The third blow sent the troll’s body over the gap; but the hand remained at the edge. And then the troll was pulling itself back up single-handedly, roaring.

George Weasley staggered, almost falling, his hand dropping to his side. “Harry -” the Weasley twin said in a strained voice, “Run -”

The remaining Weasley twin took a step sideways, slumped against the wall, and slid to the ground.

Time was fractured in Harry’s mind, the world around him seemed to move slowly, distorted, or perhaps it was his own mind twisting and folding. He should have been moving, doing something, but a strange paralysis seemed to be stopping all his muscles, all his motions. Without any time for words, thoughts came in flashes of concepts: that if Harry ran away the troll would eat the Weasley twins as well as Hermione, that if Bludgers didn’t kill wizards then Fred should still be alive, that the Weasley twins were more powerful spellcasters than him and they hadn’t been able to hold back the troll, there was no time to Transfigure anything he didn’t already possess, the troll seemed too agile to be lured over the edge of the terrace to fall off the sides of the Hogwarts castle, someone had enchanted the troll against sunlight before using it as a murder weapon and might also have strengthened it in other ways. And then a mental image of Hermione running from the troll, running for sunlight, finally reaching the bright terrace with the troll hot on her heels, only to find that someone else had thought of that possibility, too.

The screaming horror in his mind was drowned out by another emotion.

Harry stood up.

On the other side of the room, the enemy had also risen, the unregenerating stump of one sword-cut arm still bloody.

intent to kill

The troll grasped its fallen club in its remaining hand, and gave a huge bellow, smashing the club into the floor and sending marble chips flying.

think purely of killing

The troll began to lumber towards where George had fallen, a thin string of drool trailing from the side of its lips.

grasp at any means to do so

Harry took five strides forward, and the enemy gave another bellow and turned away from George, its eyes focusing squarely on him.

censors off, do not flinch

The third most perfect killing machine in nature bounded towards him in leaping steps.

KILL

Harry’s left hand already held the Transfigured diamond from his ring, his right hand already held his wand.

“Wingardium Leviosa.”

Harry’s wand directed the tiny jewel into the troll’s mouth.

“Finite Incantatem.”

The troll’s head blew off its spine as the rock expanded back into its old form, and Harry stepped aside as the Enemy’s body crashed where he’d been standing.

The enemy’s head was already beginning to regenerate, the ragged stump of the jaw and spine smoothing over, the mouth completing itself and replacing its teeth.

Harry bent down and picked up the troll’s head by its left ear. His wand jammed through the troll’s left eye, plunging through the jelly-like material and passing through the wide socket in the bone. Harry visualized a one-millimeter-wide cross-section through the enemy’s brain, and Transfigured it into sulfuric acid.

The enemy stopped regenerating.

Harry threw the corpse over the edge of the terrace and turned back to Hermione.

Her eyes were moving, and focused on him.

Harry scrambled down beside her, ignoring the blood soaking more of his already-soaked robes.
You’ll be all right,
his brain formed the sentence, but his lips wouldn’t move.
You’ll be all right, we’ll find some magic to fix all this, put you back to normal, just hold on, don’t -

Hermione’s lips were moving, just a tiny bit but they were moving.

“your… fault…”

Time froze. Harry should have told her not to talk, to save her breath, only he couldn’t unblock his lips.

Hermione drew in another breath, and her lips whispered, “Not your fault.”

Then she exhaled, and closed her eyes.

Harry stared at her with his mouth half-open, his breath caught in his throat.

“Don’t do this,” said his voice. He’d only been two minutes late.

Hermione suddenly convulsed, her arms twitching into the air as though reaching up for something, and her eyes flew open again. There was a burst of
something
that was magic and also more, a shout louder than an earthquake and containing a thousand books, a thousand libraries, all spoken in a single cry that was Hermione; too vast to be understood, except that Harry suddenly knew that Hermione had whited out the pain, and was glad not to be dying alone. For a moment it seemed like the outpouring of magic might hold, take root in the castle’s stone; but then the outpouring ended and the magic faded, her body stopped moving and all motion halted as Hermione Jean Granger ceased to exist -

No.

Harry stood up from the body, swaying.

No.

There was a burst of flame and Dumbledore was standing there with Fawkes, his eyes filled with horror. “I felt a student die! What -”

The old wizard’s eyes saw what lay upon the ground.

“Oh, no,” whispered Albus Dumbledore. Fawkes gave a sad, mournful croon.

“Bring her back.”

There was silence on the terrace. Fred Weasley had risen up into the air at a gesture from Dumbledore’s wand and was floating towards them, surrounded by a reassuring pink glow.

“Harry -” the old wizard began. His voice cracked. “Harry -”

“Have Fawkes cry on her or whatever. Hurry up.” The voice that spoke sounded perfectly calm.

“I, I can’t, Harry, it’s too late, she’s dead -”

“I don’t want to hear about it. If it was me lying there, you’d pull some kind of amazing rabbit out of your hat and save me, right, because the hero isn’t allowed to die before the story’s over. Well, she’s the hero too, so whatever you were saving for that extra-special occasion, just go ahead and use it now. I promise I’ll pay you back.”

“There isn’t anything I can do! Her soul has departed, she’s passed on!”

Harry opened his mouth to scream out all his fury, and then closed it again. There wasn’t any point in screaming, it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The unbearable pressure rising inside him couldn’t be let out that way.

Harry turned away from Dumbledore and looked down at where the remains of Hermione Granger were lying in a pool of blood. Part of his mind was hammering at the world around him, trying to make it go away, wake up from the nightmare and find himself back in his Ravenclaw dorm room with the morning sun shining through the curtains. But the blood remained and Harry didn’t wake up, and another part of him already knew that this event was real, part of the same flawed world that included Azkaban and the Wizengamot chamber and

No

With a fracturing feeling, as though time was still torn to pieces around him, Harry turned away from Dumbledore and looked down at the remains of Hermione Granger lying in a pool of blood with two tourniquets tied around her thigh-stumps, and decided

No.

I do not accept this.

There isn’t any reason to accept it, not when there’s magic in the world.

Harry would learn whatever he had to learn, invent whatever he had to invent, rip the knowledge of Salazar Slytherin from the Dark Lord’s mind, discover the secret of Atlantis, open any gates or break any seals necessary, find his way to the root of all magic and reprogram it.