Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (20 page)

“I don’t even know the
words
to the Killing Curse,” Harry said promptly. “And I didn’t have my wand out at any time.”

Now Professor Sprout was giving Harry a sceptical look. “I suppose this boy hit
himself
with two pies, then.”

“He
didn’t
use his wand!” blurted one of the young Hufflepuffs. “I don’t know how he did it either, he just snapped his fingers and there was pie!”

“Really,” said Professor Sprout after a pause. She drew her own wand. “I won’t require it, since you do seem to be the victim here, but would you mind if I checked your wand to verify that?”

Harry took out his wand. “What do I -”

“
Prior Incantato,
” said Sprout. She frowned. “That’s odd, your wand doesn’t seem to have been used at all.”

Harry shrugged. “It hasn’t, actually, I only got my wand and schoolbooks a few days ago.”

Sprout nodded. “Then we have a clear case of accidental magic from a boy who felt threatened. And the rules plainly state that you are not to be held responsible. As for
you…
” she turned to the Slytherins. Her eyes dropped deliberately to Neville’s books lying on the floor.

There was a long silence during which she looked at the five Slytherins.

“Three points from Slytherin,
each
,” she said finally. “And six from
him,
” pointing to the boy covered in pie. “Don’t you
ever
meddle with my Hufflepuffs again, or my student Harry Potter either. Now
go.
”

She didn’t have to repeat herself; the Slytherins turned and walked away very quickly.

Neville went and started picking up his books. He seemed to be crying, but only a little. It might have been from delayed shock, or it might have been because the other boys were helping him.

“Thank you
very
much, Harry Potter,” Professor Sprout said to him. “Seven points to Ravenclaw, one for each Hufflepuff you helped protect. And I won’t say anything more.”

Harry blinked. He’d been expecting something more along the lines of a lecture about keeping himself out of trouble, and a rather severe scolding for missing his very first class.

Maybe he
should
have gone to Hufflepuff. Sprout was cool.

“
Scourgify,
” Sprout said to the mess of pie on the floor, which promptly vanished.

And she left, walking along the hall that led to the green study room.

“How did you
do
that?” hissed one of the Hufflepuff boys as soon as she was gone.

Harry smiled smugly. “I can make anything I want happen just by snapping my fingers.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “
Really?
”

“No,” said Harry. “But when you’re telling everyone this story be sure to share it with Hermione Granger in first-year Ravenclaw, she has an anecdote you might find amusing.” He had absolutely no clue what was happening, but he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to add to his growing legend. “Oh, and what was all that about the Killing Curse?”

The boy gave him a strange look. “You really don’t know?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“The words to the Killing Curse are,” the boy swallowed, and his voice dropped to a whisper, and he held his hands away from his sides as if to make it very clear that he wasn’t holding a wand, “
Avada Kedavra.
”

Well of course they are.

Harry put this on his growing list of things to never ever tell his Dad, Professor Michael Verres-Evans. It was bad enough talking about how you were the only person to survive the fearsome Killing Curse, without having to admit that the Killing Curse was “Abracadabra.”

“I see,” Harry said after a pause. “Well, that’s the last time I ever say
that
before snapping my fingers.” Though it
had
produced an effect that might be tactically useful.

“
Why
did you -”

“Raised by Muggles, Muggles think it’s a joke and that it’s funny. Seriously, that’s what happened. Sorry, but can you remind me of your name?”

“I’m Ernie Macmillan,” said the Hufflepuff. He held out his hand, and Harry shook it. “Honoured to meet you.”

Harry executed a slight bow. “Pleased to meet you, skip the honoured thing.”

Then the other boys crowded round him and there was a sudden flood of introductions.

When they were done, Harry swallowed. This was going to be very difficult. “Um… if everyone would excuse me… I have something to say to Neville -”

All eyes turned to Neville, who took a step back, his face looking apprehensive.

“I suppose,” Neville said in a tiny voice, “you’re going to say I should’ve been braver -”

“Oh, no, nothing like that!” Harry said hastily. “Nothing to do with
that
. It’s just, um, something the Sorting Hat told me -”

Suddenly the other boys looked
very
interested, except for Neville, who was looking even
more
apprehensive.

There seemed to be something blocking Harry’s throat. He knew he should just blurt it out, and it was like he’d swallowed a large brick that was just stuck in the way.

It was like Harry had to manually take control of his lips and produce each syllable individually, but he managed to make it happen. “I’m, sor, ry.” He exhaled and took a deep breath. “For what I did, um, the other day. You… don’t have to be gracious about it or anything, I’ll understand if you just hate me. This isn’t about me trying to look cool by apologising or your having to accept it. What I did was wrong.”

There was a pause.

Neville clutched his books tighter to his chest. “Why did you do it?” he said in a thin, wavering voice. He blinked, as if trying to hold back tears. “Why does
everyone
do that to me, even the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Harry suddenly felt smaller than he ever had in his life. “I’m sorry,” Harry said again, his voice now hoarsened. “It’s just… you looked so scared, it was like a sign over your head saying ‘victim’, and I wanted to show you that things
don’t
always turn out badly, that sometimes the monsters give you chocolate… I thought if I showed you that, you might realise there wasn’t so much to be afraid of -”

“But there
is,
” whispered Neville. “You saw it today, there
is!
”

“They wouldn’t have done anything really bad in front of witnesses. Their main weapon is fear. That’s why they target
you,
because they can see you’re afraid. I wanted to make you less afraid… show you that the fear was worse than the thing itself… or that was what I told myself, but the Sorting Hat told me that I was lying to myself and that I really did it because it was fun. So that’s why I’m apologising -”

“You hurt me,” said Neville. “Just now. When you grabbed me and pulled me away from them.” Neville held out his arm and pointed to where Harry had grabbed him. “I might have a bruise here later from how hard you pulled. You hurt me worse than anything the Slytherins did by bumping into me, actually.”

“
Neville!
” hissed Ernie. “He was trying to
save
you!”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Harry. “When I saw that I just got… really angry…”

Neville looked at him steadily. “So you yanked me out really hard and put yourself in where I was and went, ‘Hello, I’m the Boy-Who-Lived’.”

Harry nodded.

“I think you’re going to be really cool someday,” Neville said. “But right now, you’re not.”

Harry swallowed the sudden knot in his throat and walked away. He continued down the corridor to the intersection, then turned left into a hallway and kept on walking, blindly.

What was he
supposed
to do here? Never get angry? He wasn’t sure he could have done anything without being angry and who knows what would have happened to Neville and his books then. Besides, Harry had read enough fantasy books to know how
this
one went. He would try to suppress the anger and he would fail and it would keep coming out again. And after this whole long journey of self-discovery he would learn at the end that his anger was a part of himself and that only by accepting it could he learn to use it wisely.
Star Wars
was the only universe in which the answer actually
was
that you were supposed to cut yourself off completely from negative emotions, and something about Yoda had always made Harry hate the little green moron.

So the obvious time-saving plan was to skip the journey of self-discovery and go straight to the part where he realised that only by accepting his anger as a part of himself could he stay in control of it.

The problem was that he didn’t
feel
out of control when he was angry. The cold rage made him feel like he was
in
control. It was only when he looked back that
events as a whole
seemed to have… blown up out of control, somehow.

He wondered how much the Game Controller cared about that sort of thing, and whether he’d won or lost points for it. Harry himself felt like he’d lost quite a few points, and he was sure the old lady in the picture would have told him that his was the only opinion that mattered.

And Harry was also wondering whether the Game Controller had sent Professor Sprout. It was the logical thought: the note had threatened to notify the Game Authorities, and then there Professor Sprout was. Maybe Professor Sprout
was
the Game Controller - the
Head of House Hufflepuff
would be the
last
person anyone would suspect, which ought to put her near the top of Harry’s list. He’d read one or two mystery novels, too.

“So how am I doing in the game?” Harry said out loud.

A sheet of paper flew over his head, as if someone had thrown it from behind him - Harry turned around, but there was no one there - and when Harry turned forwards again, the note was settling to the floor.

The note said:

POINTS FOR STYLE: 10
POINTS FOR GOOD THINKING: -3,000,000
RAVENCLAW HOUSE POINTS BONUS: 70
CURRENT POINTS: -2,999,871
TURNS REMAINING: 2

“
Minus three million points?”
Harry said indignantly to the empty hallway. “That seems excessive! I want to file an appeal with the Game Authorities! And how am I supposed to make up three million points in the next two turns?”

Another note flew over his head.

APPEAL: FAILED
ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS: -1,000,000,000,000 POINTS
CURRENT POINTS: -1,000,002,999,871
TURNS REMAINING: 1

Harry gave up. With one turn remaining all he could do was take his best shot, even if it wasn’t very good. “My guess is that the game represents life.”

A final sheet of paper flew over his head, reading:

ATTEMPT FAILED
FAILED FAILED FAILED
AIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
CURRENT POINTS: MINUS INFINITY
YOU HAVE LOST THE GAME

FINAL INSTRUCTION:
go to Professor McGonagall’s office

The last line was in his own handwriting.

Harry stared at the last line for a while, then shrugged. Fine. Professor McGonagall’s office it would be. If
she
was the Game Controller…

Okay, honestly, Harry had absolutely no idea how he would feel if Professor McGonagall was the Game Controller. His mind was just drawing a complete blank. It was, literally, unimaginable.

A couple of portraits later - it wasn’t a long trip, Professor McGonagall’s office wasn’t far from her Transfiguration classroom, at least not on Mondays on odd-numbered years - Harry stood outside the door to her office.

He knocked.

“Come in,” said Professor McGonagall’s muffled voice.

He entered.

Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill J. K. Rowling!

There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms.

“Come in,” said Professor McGonagall’s muffled voice.

Harry did so.

The office of the Deputy Headmistress was clean and well-organised; on the wall immediately adjacent to the desk was a maze of wooden cubbyholes of all shapes and sizes, most with several parchment scrolls thrust into them, and it was somehow very clear that Professor McGonagall knew exactly what every cubbyhole meant, even if no one else did. A single parchment lay on the actual desk, which was, aside from that, clean. Behind the desk was a closed door barred with several locks.

Professor McGonagall was sitting on a backless stool behind the desk, looking puzzled - her eyes had widened, with perhaps a slight note of apprehension, as she saw Harry.

“Mr. Potter?” said Professor McGonagall. “What is this about?”

Harry’s mind went blank. He’d been instructed by the game to come here, he had been expecting
her
to have something in mind…

“Mr. Potter?” said Professor McGonagall, starting to look slightly annoyed.

Thankfully, Harry’s panicking brain remembered at this point that he
did
have something he’d been planning to discuss with Professor McGonagall. Something important and well worth her time.

“Um…” Harry said. “If there are any spells you can cast to make sure no one’s listening to us…”

Professor McGonagall stood up from her chair, firmly closed the outer door, and began taking out her wand and saying spells.

It was at this point that Harry realised he was faced with a priceless and possibly irreplaceable opportunity to offer Professor McGonagall a Comed-Tea and he couldn’t believe he was seriously thinking that and it would be fine the soda would vanish after a few seconds and he told that part of himself to
shut up.

It did, and Harry began to organise mentally what he was going to say. He hadn’t planned to have this discussion
quite
so soon, but so long as he was here…

Professor McGonagall finished a spell that sounded a lot older than Latin, and then she sat down again.

“All right,” she said in a quiet voice. “No one’s listening.” Her face was rather tight.

Oh, right, she’s expecting me to blackmail her for information about the prophecy.

Eh, Harry’d get around to that some other day.

“It’s about the Incident with the Sorting Hat,” Harry said. (Professor McGonagall blinked.) “Um… I think there’s an extra spell on the Sorting Hat, something that the Sorting Hat itself doesn’t know about, something that triggers when the Sorting Hat says Slytherin. I heard a message that I’m pretty sure Ravenclaws aren’t supposed to hear. It came the moment the Sorting Hat was off my head and I felt the connection break. It sounded like a hiss and like English at the same time,” there was a sharp intake of breath from McGonagall, “and it said: Salutations from Slytherin to Slytherin, if you would seek my secrets, speak to my snake.”

Professor McGonagall sat there with her mouth open, staring at Harry as if he’d grown another two heads.

“So…” Professor McGonagall said slowly, as though she couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her own lips, “you decided to come to me right away and tell me about it.”

“Well, yes, of course,” Harry said. There was no need to admit how long it had taken him to actually think of that. “As opposed to, say, trying to research it myself, or telling any of the other children.”

“I… see,” Professor McGonagall said. “And if, perhaps, you were to discover the entrance to Salazar Slytherin’s legendary Chamber of Secrets, an entrance that you and you alone could open…”

“I would close the entrance and report to you at once so that a team of experienced magical archaeologists could be assembled,” Harry said promptly. “Then I would open up the entrance again and they would go in very carefully to make sure that there was nothing dangerous. I might go in later to look around, or if they needed me to open up something else, but it would be after the area had been declared clear and they had photographs of how everything looked before people started tromping around their priceless historical site.”

Professor McGonagall sat there with her mouth open, staring at him like he’d just turned into a cat.

“It’s obvious if you’re not a Gryffindor,” Harry said kindly.

“I think,” Professor McGonagall said in a rather choked voice, “that you
far
underestimate the rarity of common sense, Mr. Potter.”

That sounded about right. Although… “A Hufflepuff would’ve said the same thing.”

McGonagall paused, struck. “
That’s
true.”

“Sorting Hat offered me Hufflepuff.”

She blinked at him as though she couldn’t believe her own ears. “Did it
really?
”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, and now her voice was low, “five decades ago was the last time a student died within the walls of Hogwarts, and I am now certain that five decades ago was the last time someone heard that message.”

A chill went through Harry. “Then I will be
very
sure to take no action
whatsoever
on this matter without consulting you, Professor McGonagall.” He paused. “And may I suggest that you get together the best people you can find and see if it’s possible to get that extra spell off the Sorting Hat… and if you can’t do that, maybe put on
another
spell, a Quietus that briefly activates just as the Hat is being removed from a student’s head, that might work as a patch. There, no more dead students.” Harry nodded in satisfaction.

Professor McGonagall looked even more stunned, if such a thing were imaginable. “I cannot
possibly
award you enough points for this without giving the House Cup to Ravenclaw outright.”

“Um,” Harry said. “Um. I’d rather not earn
that
many House points.”

Now Professor McGonagall was giving him a strange look. “Why not?”

Harry was having a little difficulty putting it into words. “Because it would be just too sad, you know? Like… like back when I was still trying to go to school in the Muggle world, and whenever there was a group project, I’d go ahead and do the whole thing myself because the others would only slow me down. I’m fine with earning lots of points, more than anyone else even, but if I earn enough to be decisive in winning the House Cup just by myself, then it’s like I’m carrying House Ravenclaw on my back and that’s too sad.”

“I see…” McGonagall said hesitantly. It was apparent that this way of thinking had never occurred to her. “Suppose I only awarded you fifty points, then?”

Harry shook his head again. “It’s not fair to the other children if I earn lots of points for grownup things that I can be part of and they can’t. How is Terry Boot supposed to earn fifty points for reporting a whisper he heard from the Sorting Hat? It wouldn’t be fair at all.”

“I see why the Sorting Hat offered you Hufflepuff,” said Professor McGonagall. She was eyeing him with a strange respect.

That made Harry choke up a bit. He’d honestly thought he wasn’t worthy of Hufflepuff. That the Sorting Hat had just been trying to shove him anywhere but Ravenclaw, into a House whose virtues he didn’t have…

Professor McGonagall was smiling now. “And if I tried to give you
ten
points…?”

“Are you going to explain where those ten points came from, if anyone asks? There might be a lot of Slytherins, and I don’t mean the children at Hogwarts, who would be really
really
angry if they knew about the spell being taken off the Sorting Hat and found out I was involved. So I think that absolute secrecy is the better part of valour. No need to thank me, ma’am, virtue is its own reward.”

“So it is,” Professor McGonagall said, “but I do have a very special something else to give you. I see that I have greatly wronged you in my thoughts, Mr. Potter. Please wait here.”

She got up, went over to the locked back door, waved her wand, and a sort of blurry curtain sprang up around her. Harry could neither see nor hear what was going on. It was a few minutes later that the blur vanished and Professor McGonagall was standing there, facing him, with the door behind her looking as though it hadn’t ever been opened.

And Professor McGonagall held out in one hand a necklace, a thin golden chain bearing in its center a silver circle, within which was the device of an hourglass. In her other hand was a folded pamphlet. “This is for you,” she said.

Wow! He was going to get some sort of neat magical item as a quest reward! Apparently that business with refusing offers of monetary rewards until you got a magic item actually worked in real life, not just computer games.

Harry accepted his new necklace, smiling. “What is it?”

Professor McGonagall took a breath. “Mr. Potter, this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible, in order to help them with difficult class schedules.” McGonagall hesitated, as though about to add something else. “I
must
emphasise, Mr. Potter, that this item’s true nature is
secret
and that you must
not
tell any of the other students about it, or let them see you using it. If that’s not acceptable to you, then you can give it back now.”

“I can keep secrets,” Harry said. “So what does it do?”

“So far as the other students are concerned, this is a Spimster wicket and it is used to treat a rare, non-contagious magical ailment called Spontaneous Duplication. You wear it under your clothes, and while you have no reason to show it to anyone, you also have no reason to treat it as an awful secret. Spimster wickets are not interesting. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?”

Harry nodded, his smile widening. He sensed the work of a
competent
Slytherin. “And what does it
really
do?”

“It’s a Time-Turner. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour back in time. So if you use it to go back two hours every day, you should always be able to get to sleep at the same time.”

Harry’s suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.

You’re giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.

You’re giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.

YOU’RE
GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE
IN ORDER TO
TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER
.

“Ehehehehhheheh…” Harry’s mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb, that didn’t
begin
to describe the severity of the situation. Harry held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine.

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realise that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

“Excuse me,” Harry managed to say, “but this sounds really really
really REALLY DANGEROUS!
” Harry’s voice didn’t quite rise to a shriek, he couldn’t possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there was no point in trying.

Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. “I’m glad you’re taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren’t
that
dangerous. We wouldn’t give them to children if they were.”

“Really,” Harry said. “Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn’t give time machines to children if they were dangerous, what
was
I thinking? So just to be clear, sneezing on this device will
not
send me into the Middle Ages where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me.”

McGonagall’s lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make sure it wasn’t about to turn. “Don’t worry,” McGonagall said after a momentary pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn’t going to move, “that can’t possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than six hours backwards. It can’t be used more than six times in any day.”

“Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will
not
break and will
not
trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays.”

“Well, they
can
be fragile…” said McGonagall. “And I do think I’ve heard about strange things happening if they’re broken. But nothing like
that!
”

“Perhaps,” Harry said when he could speak again, “you ought to provide your time machines with some sort of
protective shell
, rather than
leaving the glass exposed
, so as to
prevent that from happening
.”

McGonagall looked quite struck. “That’s an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall inform the Ministry of it.”

That’s it, it’s official now, they’ve ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

“And while I hate to get all
PHILOSOPHICAL,
” Harry desperately tried to lower his voice to something under a shriek, “has anyone thought about the
IMPLICATIONS
of going back six hours and doing something that changes time which would pretty much
DELETE ALL THE PEOPLE AFFECTED
and
REPLACE THEM WITH DIFFERENT VERSIONS -
”

“Oh, you can’t
change
time!” Professor McGonagall interrupted. “Good heavens, Mr. Potter, do you think these would be allowed students if
that
was possible? What if someone tried to change their test scores?”

Harry took a moment to process this. His hands relaxed, just a little, from their white grip on the hourglass chain. Like he wasn’t holding a time machine, just a live nuclear warhead.