Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (37 page)

“No,” Harry said. “Just no. It is their
impulse to kindness
which sheltered me. That impulse is not only in my parents. And that impulse is what would be betrayed.”

“In any case, Mr. Potter, you have not answered my original question,” said Professor Quirrell finally. “What
is
your ambition?”

“Oh,” said Harry. “Um..” He organized his thoughts. “To understand everything important there is to know about the universe, apply that knowledge to become omnipotent, and use that power to rewrite reality because I have some objections to the way it works now.”

There was a slight pause.

“Forgive me if this is a stupid question, Mr. Potter,” said Professor Quirrell, “but are you
sure
you did not just confess to wanting to be a Dark Lord?”

“That’s only if you use your power for evil,” explained Harry. “If you use the power for good, you’re a Light Lord.”

“I see,” Professor Quirrell said. He tapped his other cheek with a finger. “I suppose I can work with that. But Mr. Potter, while the scope of your ambition is worthy of Salazar himself, how exactly do you propose to go about it? Is step one to become a great fighting wizard, or Head Unspeakable, or Minister of Magic, or -”

“Step one is to become a scientist.”

Professor Quirrell was looking at Harry as if he’d just turned into a cat.

“A scientist,” Professor Quirrell said after a while.

Harry nodded.

“A
scientist?
” repeated Professor Quirrell.

“Yes,” Harry said. “I shall achieve my objectives through the power… of
Science!
”

“A
scientist!
” said Professor Quirrell. There was genuine indignation on his face, and his voice had grown stronger and sharper. “You could be the best of all my students! The greatest fighting wizard to come out of Hogwarts in five decades! I cannot picture you wasting your days in a white lab coat doing pointless things to rats!”

“Hey!” said Harry. “There’s more to science than that! Not that there’s anything
wrong
with experimenting on rats, of course. But science
is
how you go about understanding and controlling the universe -”

“Fool,” said Professor Quirrell, in a voice of quiet, bitter intensity. “You’re a fool, Harry Potter.” He passed a hand over his face, and when that hand had passed, his face was calmer. “Or more likely you have not yet found your true ambition. May I strongly recommend that you try to become a Dark Lord instead? I will do anything I can to help as a matter of public service.”

“You don’t like science,” Harry said slowly. “Why not?”

“Those fool Muggles will kill us all someday!” Professor Quirrell’s voice had grown louder. “They will end it! End all of it!”

Harry was feeling a bit lost here. “What are we talking about here, nuclear weapons?”

“
Yes
, nuclear weapons!” Professor Quirrell was almost shouting now. “Even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named never used those, perhaps because he didn’t want to rule over a heap of ash! They never should have been made! And it will only get worse with time!” Professor Quirrell was standing up straight instead of leaning on his desk. “There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can’t resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you
do not share
with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves! Every powerful wizard knows that! Even the most terrible Dark Wizards know that! And those idiot Muggles can’t seem to figure it out! The eager little fools who discovered the secret of nuclear weapons didn’t keep it to themselves, they told their
fool
politicians and now
we
must live under the constant threat of annihilation!”

This was a rather different way of looking at things than Harry had grown up with. It had never occurred to him that nuclear physicists should have formed a conspiracy of silence to keep the secret of nuclear weapons from anyone not smart enough to be a nuclear physicist. The thought was intriguing, if nothing else. Would they have had secret passwords? Would they have had masks?

(Actually, for all Harry knew, there
were
all sorts of incredibly destructive secrets which physicists kept to themselves, and the secret of nuclear weapons was the only one that had escaped into the wild. The world would look the same to him either way.)

“I’ll have to think about that,” Harry said to Professor Quirrell. “It’s a new idea to me. And one of the
hidden
secrets of science, passed down from a few rare teachers to their grad students, is how to avoid flushing new ideas down the toilet the instant you hear one you don’t like.”

Professor Quirrell blinked again.

“Is there any sort of science you
do
approve of?” said Harry. “Medicine, maybe?”

“Space travel,” said Professor Quirrell. “But the Muggles seem to be dragging their feet on the one project which might have let wizardkind escape this planet before they blow it up.”

Harry nodded. “I’m a big fan of the space program too. At least we have that much in common.”

Professor Quirrell looked at Harry. Something flickered in the professor’s eyes. “I will have your word, your promise and your oath never to speak of what follows.”

“You have it,” Harry said immediately.

“See to it that you keep your oath or you will not like the results,” said Professor Quirrell. “I will now cast a rare and powerful spell, not on you, but on the classroom around us. Stand still, so that you do not touch the boundaries of the spell once it has been cast. You must not interact with the magic which I am maintaining. Look only. Otherwise I will end the spell.” Professor Quirrell paused. “And try not to fall over.”

Harry nodded, puzzled and anticipatory.

Professor Quirrell raised his wand and said something that Harry’s ears and mind couldn’t grasp at all, words that bypassed awareness and vanished into oblivion.

The marble in a short radius around Harry’s feet stayed constant. All the other marble of the floor vanished, the walls and ceilings vanished.

Harry stood on a small circle of white marble in the midst of an endless field of stars, burning terribly bright and unwavering. There was no Earth, no Moon, no Sun that Harry recognized. Professor Quirrell stood in the same place as before, floating in the midst of the starfield. The Milky Way was already visible as a great wash of light and it grew brighter as Harry’s vision adjusted to the darkness.

The sight wrenched at Harry’s heart like nothing he had ever seen.

“Are we… in space…?”

“No,” said Professor Quirrell. His voice was sad, and reverent. “But it is a true image.”

Tears came into Harry’s eyes. He wiped them away frantically, he would not miss this for some stupid water blurring his vision.

The stars were no longer tiny jewels set in a giant velvet dome, as they were in the night sky of Earth. Here there was no sky above, no surrounding sphere. Only points of perfect light against perfect blackness, an infinite and empty void with countless tiny holes through which shone the brilliance from some unimaginable realm beyond.

In space, the stars
looked
terribly, terribly, terribly far away.

Harry kept on wiping his eyes, over and over.

“Sometimes,” Professor Quirrell said in a voice so quiet it almost wasn’t there, “when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have been. I cannot seem to imagine what that place might be, and if I can’t even imagine it then how can I believe it exists? And yet the universe is so very, very wide, and perhaps it might exist anyway? But the stars are so very, very far away. It would take a long, long time to get there, even if I knew the way. And I wonder what I would dream about, if I slept for a long, long time…”

Though it felt like sacrilege, Harry managed a whisper. “Please let me stay here awhile.”

Professor Quirrell nodded, where he stood unsupported against the stars.

It was easy to forget the small circle of marble on which you stood, and your own body, and become a point of awareness which might have been still, or might have been moving. With all distances incalculable there was no way to tell.

There was a time of no time.

And then the stars vanished, and the classroom returned.

“I’m sorry,” said Professor Quirrell, “but we’re about to have company.”

“It’s fine,” Harry whispered. “It was enough.” He would never forget this day, and not because of the unimportant things that had happened earlier. He would learn how to cast that spell if it was the last thing he ever learned.

Then the heavy oaken doors of the classroom blasted off their hinges and skittered across the marble floor with a high-pitched shriek.

“
QUIRINUS! HOW DARE YOU!
”

Like a vast thundercloud, an ancient and powerful wizard blew into the room, a look of such incandescent rage upon his face that the stern look he had earlier turned upon Harry seemed like nothing.

There was a wrench of disorientation in Harry’s mind as the part that wanted to run away screaming from the scariest thing it had ever seen ran away, rotating into place a part of him which could take the shock.

None
of Harry’s facets were happy about having their star-gazing interrupted. “Headmaster Albus Percival -” Harry started to say in icy tones.

WHAM.
Professor Quirrell’s hand came down hard upon his desk. “
Mr. Potter!
” barked Professor Quirrell. “This is the
Headmaster of Hogwarts
and you are a mere student! You will address him appropriately!”

Harry looked at Professor Quirrell.

Professor Quirrell was giving Harry a stern glare.

Neither of them smiled.

Dumbledore’s long strides had come to a halt before where Harry stood in front of the dais and Professor Quirrell stood by his desk. The Headmaster stared in shock at both of them.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said in meekly polite tones. “Headmaster, thank you for wanting to protect me, but Professor Quirrell did the right thing.”

Slowly, Dumbledore’s expression changed from something that would vaporize steel into something merely angry. “I heard students saying that this man had you abused by older Slytherins! That he forbade you to defend yourself!”

Harry nodded. “He knew exactly what was wrong with me and he showed me how to fix it.”

“Harry,
what are you talking about?
”

“I was teaching him how to lose,” Professor Quirrell said dryly. “It’s an important life skill.”

It was apparent that Dumbledore still didn’t understand, but his voice had lowered in register. “Harry…” he said slowly. “If there’s any threat the Defense Professor has offered you to prevent you from complaining -”

You lunatic, after today of all days do you really think I -

“Headmaster,” Harry said, trying to look abashed, “what’s wrong with me isn’t that I keep quiet about abusive professors.”

Professor Quirrell chuckled. “Not perfect, Mr. Potter, but good enough for your first day. Headmaster, did you stay long enough to hear about the fifty-one points for Ravenclaw, or did you storm out as soon as you heard the first part?”

A brief look of disconcertment crossed Dumbledore’s face, followed by surprise. “Fifty-one points for Ravenclaw?”

Professor Quirrell nodded. “He wasn’t expecting them, but it seemed appropriate. Tell Professor McGonagall that I think the story of what Mr. Potter went through to earn back the lost points will do just as well to make her point. No, Headmaster, Mr. Potter didn’t tell me anything. It’s easy to see which part of today’s events are her work, just as I know that the final compromise was your own suggestion. Though I wonder how on Earth Mr. Potter was able to gain the upper hand over both Snape and you and then Professor McGonagall was able to gain the upper hand over him.”

Somehow Harry managed to control his face. Was it
that
obvious to a real Slytherin?

Dumbledore came closer to Harry, scrutinizing. “Your color looks a little off, Harry,” the old wizard said. He peered closely at Harry’s face. “What did you have for lunch today?”

“What?” Harry said, his mind wobbling in sudden confusion. Why would Dumbledore be asking about deep-fried lamb and thin-sliced broccoli when that was just about the
last
probable cause of -

The old wizard straightened up. “Never mind, then. I think you’re fine.”

Professor Quirrell coughed, loudly and deliberately. Harry looked at the professor, and saw that Professor Quirrell was staring sharply at Dumbledore.

“
Ah-hem!
” Professor Quirrell said again.

Dumbledore and Professor Quirrell locked eyes, and something seemed to pass between them.

“If you don’t tell him,” Professor Quirrell said then, “I will, even if you fire me for it.”

Dumbledore sighed and turned back to Harry. “I apologize for invading your mental privacy, Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster said formally. “I had no purpose except to determine if Professor Quirrell had done the same.”

What?

The confusion lasted just exactly as long as it took Harry to understand what had just happened.

“
You - !
”

“Gently, Mr. Potter,” said Professor Quirrell. His face was hard, however, as he stared at Dumbledore.

“Legilimency is sometimes mistaken for common sense,” said the Headmaster. “But it leaves traces which another skillful Legilimens can detect. That was all I looked for, Mr. Potter, and I asked you an irrelevant question to ensure you wouldn’t think about anything important while I looked.”

“
You should have asked first!
”

Professor Quirrell shook his head. “No, Mr. Potter, the Headmaster had some justification for his concerns, and had he asked for permission you would have thought of exactly those things you did not wish him to see.” Professor Quirrell’s voice grew sharper. “I am rather more concerned, Headmaster, that you saw no need to tell him afterward!”