Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (106 page)

Then Harry looked at Draco.

Then Harry looked back down at the parchment.

There was a pause.

Harry said, “Did Lucius tell you to report on my reaction to this?”

Draco paused for a moment, weighing, and then opened his mouth -

“I see he did,” said Harry, and Draco cursed himself, he should’ve known better, only it
had
been hard to decide. “What are you going to tell him?”

“That you were surprised,” said Draco.

“Surprised,” Harry said flatly. “Yeah. Good. Tell him that.”

“What
is
it?” said Draco. And then, as he saw Harry looking conflicted, “If you’re dealing with Father behind my back -”

And Harry, without a word, gave Draco the paper.

It said:

I know it was you.

“
WHAT THE -
”

“I was going to ask
you
that,” said Harry. “Have you got
any
idea what’s up with your Dad?”

Draco stared at Harry.

Then Draco said, “
Did
you do it?”

“What?” said Harry. “What
possible
reason would I -
how
would I -”

“Did you do it, Harry?”

“No!” Harry said. “Of course not!”

Draco had listened carefully, but he hadn’t detected any hesitation or tremor.

So Draco nodded, and said, “I’ve got no idea what Father’s thinking but it
can’t
, I mean it
can’t possibly
be good. And, um… people are also saying…”

“What,” said Harry warily, “are they saying, Draco?”

“Did a phoenix
really
take you to Azkaban to try to stop Bellatrix Black from escaping -”

Aftermath: Neville Longbottom

Harry had only just sat down at the Ravenclaw table for the first time, hoping to grab a quick bite of food. He knew he needed to go off and think about things, but there was a tiny remaining bit of phoenix’s peace (even after the encounter with Draco) that he still wanted to cling to, some beautiful dream of which he remembered nothing but the beauty; and the part of him that
wasn’t
feeling peaceful was waiting for all the anvils to finish dropping on him, so that when he went off to think and be by himself for a while, he could batch-process all the disasters at once.

Harry’s hand grasped a fork, lifted a bite of mashed potatoes toward his mouth -

And there was a shriek.

Every now and then someone would shout when they heard the news, but Harry’s ears
recognized
this one -

Harry was up from the bench in an instant, heading toward the Hufflepuff table, a horrible sick feeling dawning in the pit of his stomach. It was one of those things he hadn’t considered when he’d decided to commit the crime, because Professor Quirrell had planned for no one to know; and now, afterward, Harry just - hadn’t
thought
of it -

This,
Hufflepuff said with bitter intensity,
is also your fault.

But by the time Harry got there, Neville was sitting down and eating fried sausage patties with Snippyfig Sauce.

The Hufflepuff boy’s hands were trembling, but he cut the food, and ate it, without dropping it.

“Hello, General,” Neville said, his voice wavering only slightly. “Did you fight a duel with Bellatrix Black last night?”

“No,” Harry said. His own voice was also wavery, for some reason.

“Didn’t think so,” said Neville. There was a scraping sound as his knife cut the sausage again. “I’m going to hunt her down and kill her, can I count on you to help?”

There were startled gasps from the mass of Hufflepuffs who had gathered around Neville.

“If she comes after you,” Harry said hoarsely,
if it was all a terrible mistake, if it was all a lie,
“I’ll defend you even with my life,”
won’t let you get hurt for what I did, no matter what,
“but I won’t help you go after her, Neville, friends don’t help friends commit suicide.”

Neville’s fork paused on the way to his mouth.

Then Neville put the bite of food in his mouth, chewed again.

And Neville swallowed it.

And Neville said, “I didn’t mean
right now
, I mean after I graduate Hogwarts.”

“Neville,” Harry said, keeping his voice under very careful control, “I think, even after you graduate, that might still be a
just plain
stupid idea.
There’s got to be much more experienced Aurors tracking her -”
oh, wait, that’s not good
-

“Listen to him!” said Ernie Macmillan, and then an older-looking Hufflepuff girl standing close to Neville said, “Nevvy, please, think about it, he’s right!”

Neville stood up.

Neville said, “Please don’t follow me.”

Neville walked away from all of them; Harry and Ernie reaching out involuntarily toward him, and some of the other Hufflepuffs as well.

And Neville sat down at the Gryffindor table, and distantly (though they had to strain to hear) they heard Neville say, “I’m going to hunt her down and kill her after I graduate, anyone want to help?” and at least five voices said “Yes” and then Ron Weasley said loudly, “Get in line, you lot, I got an owl from Mum this morning, she says to tell everyone she’s called dibs” and someone said “
Molly Weasley
against
Bellatrix Black?
Who does she even think she’s kidding -” and Ron reached over to a plate and hefted a muffin -

Someone tapped Harry on the shoulder, and he turned around and saw an unfamiliar green-trimmed older girl, who handed him a parchment envelope and then quickly strode away.

Harry stared at the envelope for a moment, then started walking toward the nearest wall. That wasn’t very private, but it should be private enough, and Harry didn’t want to give the impression of having much to hide.

That had been a Slytherin System delivery, what you used if you wanted to communicate with someone without anyone else knowing that the two of you had talked. The sender gave an envelope to someone who had a reputation for being a reliable messenger, along with ten Knuts; that first person would take five Knuts and pass the envelope to another messenger along with the other five Knuts, and the second messenger would open up that envelope and find another envelope with a name written on it and deliver that envelope to that person. That way neither of the two people passing the message knew both the sender
and
the recipient, so no one else knew that those two parties had been in contact…

When Harry reached the wall, he put the envelope inside his robes, opened it beneath the folds of cloth, and carefully snuck a peek at the parchment he drew forth.

It said,

Classroom to the left of Transfiguration, 8 in the morning.

- LL.

Harry stared at it, trying to remember if he knew anyone with the initials LL.

His mind searched…

Searched…

Retrieved -

“The
Quibbler
girl?” Harry whispered incredulously, and then shut his mouth. She was only ten years old, she shouldn’t be in Hogwarts at all!

Aftermath: Lesath Lestrange.

Harry was standing in the unused classroom next to Transfiguration at 8AM, waiting, he’d at least managed to get some food into himself before facing the next disaster, Luna Lovegood…

The door to the classroom opened, and Harry saw, and gave himself a really
hard
mental kick.

One more thing he hadn’t thought of, one more thing he
really should have.

The older boy’s green-trimmed formal robes were askew, there were red spots on them looking very much like small dots of fresh blood, and one corner of his mouth had the look of a place that had been cut and healed, by
Episkey
or some other minor medical Charm that didn’t quite erase all the damage.

Lesath Lestrange’s face was streaked with tears, fresh tears and half-dried tears, and there was water in his eyes, a promise of still more on the way. “
Quietus,
” said the older boy, and then ”
Homenum Revelio
” and some other things, while Harry thought frantically and without much luck.

And then Lesath lowered his wand and sheathed it in his robes, and slowly this time, formally, the older boy dropped to his knees on the dusty classroom floor.

Bowed his head all the way down, until his forehead also touched the dust, and Harry would have spoken but he was voiceless.

Lesath Lestrange said, in a breaking voice, “My life is yours, my Lord, and my death as well.”

“I,” Harry said, there was a huge lump in his throat and he was having trouble speaking, “I -”
didn’t have anything to do with it,
he should have been saying, should be saying
right now,
but then again the innocent Harry would have had trouble speaking too -

“Thank you,” whispered Lesath, “thank you, my Lord, oh, thank you,” the sound of a choked-off sob came from the kneeling boy, all Harry could see of him was the hair on the back of his head, nothing of his face. “I’m a fool, my Lord, an ungrateful bastard, unworthy to serve you, I cannot abase myself enough, for I - I shouted at you after you helped me, because I thought you were refusing me, and I didn’t even realize until this morning that I’d been such a fool as to ask you in front of Longbottom -”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Harry said.

(It was still very hard to tell an outright lie like that.)

Slowly Lesath raised his head from the floor, looked up at Harry.

“I understand, my Lord,” said the older boy, his voice wavering a little, “you do not trust my cunning, and indeed I have shown myself a fool… I only wanted to say to you, that I am not ungrateful, that I know it must have been hard enough to save only one person, that they’re alerted now, that you can’t - get Father - but I am not ungrateful, I will never be ungrateful to you again. If ever you have a use for this unworthy servant, call me wherever I am, and I will answer, my Lord -”

“I was not involved in any way.”

(But it got easier each time.)

Lesath gazed up at Harry, said uncertainly, “Am I dismissed from your presence, my Lord…?”

“I am not your Lord.”

Lesath said, “Yes, my Lord, I understand,” and pushed himself back up from the floor, stood straight and bowed deeply, then backed away from Harry until he turned to open the classroom door.

As Lesath’s hand touched the doorknob, he paused.

Harry couldn’t see Lesath’s face, as the older boy’s voice said, “Did you send her to someone who would take care of her? Did she ask about me at all?”

And Harry said, his voice perfectly level, “Please stop that. I was not involved in any way.”

“Yes, my Lord, I’m sorry, my Lord,” said Lesath’s voice; and the Slytherin boy opened the door and went out and shut the door behind him. His feet sped up as he ran away, but not fast enough that Harry couldn’t hear him start sobbing.

Would I cry?
wondered Harry.
If I knew nothing, if I was innocent, would I cry right now?

Harry didn’t know, so he just kept looking at the door.

And some unbelievably tactless part of him thought,
Yay, we completed a quest and got a minion -

Shut up. If you ever want to vote on anything ever again… shut up.

Aftermath, Amelia Bones:

“Then his life isn’t in danger, I take it,” said Amelia.

The healer, a stern-eyed old man who wore his robes white (he was a Muggleborn and honoring some strange tradition of Muggles, of which Amelia had never asked, although privately she thought it made him look too much like a ghost), shook his head and said, “Definitely not.”

Amelia looked at the human form resting unconscious on the healer’s bed, the burned and blasted flesh, the thin sheet that covered him for modesty’s sake having been peeled back at her command.

He might make a full recovery.

He might not.

The healer had said it was too early to say.

Then Amelia looked at the other witch in the room, the detective.

“And you say,” Amelia said, “that the burning matter was Transfigured from
water
, presumably in the form of ice.”

The detective nodded her head, and said, sounding puzzled, “It could have been much worse, if not for -”

“How
very nice
of them,” she spat, and then pressed a weary hand to her forehead. No… no, it
had
been intended as a kindness. By the final stage of the escape there would be no point in trying to fool anyone. Whoever had done this, then,
had
been trying to mitigate the damage - and they’d been thinking in terms of Aurors breathing the smoke, not of anyone being attacked with the fire. If it had been them still in control, no doubt, they would have steered the rocker more mercifully.

But Bellatrix Black had ridden the rocker out of Azkaban alone, all the watching Aurors had agreed on that, they’d had their Anti-Disillusionment Charms active and there had been only one woman on that rocker, though the rocker had sported two sets of stirrups.

Some good and innocent person, capable of casting the Patronus Charm, had been tricked into rescuing Bellatrix Black.

Some innocent had fought Bahry One-Hand, carefully subduing an experienced Auror without significantly injuring him.

Some innocent had Transfigured the fuel for the Muggle artifact on which the two of them had been to ride out of Azkaban, making it from frozen water for the benefit of her Aurors.

And then their usefulness to Bellatrix Black had ended.

You would have expected anyone capable of subduing Bahry One-Hand to have foreseen that part. But then you wouldn’t have expected anyone who could cast the Patronus Charm to try rescuing Bellatrix Black in the first place.

Amelia passed her hand down over her eyes, closing them for a moment in silent mourning.
I wonder who it was, and how You-Know-Who manipulated them… what story they could
possibly
have been told…

She didn’t even realize until a moment later that the thought meant she was starting to believe. Perhaps because, no matter how difficult it was to believe Dumbledore, it was becoming more difficult
not
to recognize the hand of that cold, dark intelligence.