Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (134 page)

Harry walked forward, slowly, until he stood before the pedestal. “Who was she?” Harry said, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.

“Her name was Tricia Glasswell,” said Dumbledore. “The mother of a Muggleborn daughter, who the Death Eaters killed. She was a detective of the Muggle government, and after that she fed information from the Muggle authorities to the Order of the Phoenix, until she was - betrayed - into the hands of Voldemort.” There was a catch in the old wizard’s voice. “She did not die well, Harry.”

“Did she save lives?” Harry said.

“Yes,” the wizard said quietly. “She did.”

Harry lifted his gaze from the pedestal to look at Dumbledore. “Would the world be a better place if she hadn’t fought?”

“No, it would not,” said the old wizard. His voice was tired, and grieving. He seemed more bent now, as though he were folding in on himself. “I see that you still do not understand. I think you will not understand until the day that you - oh, Harry. So very long ago, when I was not much older than you are now, I learned the true face of violence, and its cost. To fill the air with deadly curses - for any reason - for
any
reason, Harry - it is an ill thing, and its nature is corrupted, as terrible as the darkest rituals. Violence, once begun, becomes like a Lethifold that strikes at any life near it. I… would spare you that lesson the way I learned it, Harry.”

Harry looked away from the blue eyes, cast his gaze down at the black metal of the floor. The Headmaster was trying to tell him something important, that was clear; and it wasn’t something that Harry thought was stupid, either.

“There was a Muggle once named Mohandas Gandhi,” Harry said to the floor. “He thought the government of Muggle Britain shouldn’t rule over his country. And he refused to fight. He convinced his whole country not to fight. Instead he told his people to walk up to the British soldiers and let themselves be struck down, without resisting, and when Britain couldn’t stand doing that any more, we freed his country. I thought it was a very beautiful thing, when I read about it, I thought it was something higher than all the wars that anyone had ever fought with guns or swords. That they’d really done that, and that it had
actually worked.
” Harry drew another breath. “Only then I found out that Gandhi told his people, during World War II, that if the Nazis invaded they should use nonviolent resistance against them, too. But the Nazis would’ve just shot everyone in sight. And maybe Winston Churchill always felt that there should’ve been a better way, some clever way to win without having to hurt anyone; but he never found it, and so he had to fight.” Harry looked up at the Headmaster, who was staring at him. “Winston Churchill was the one who tried to convince the British government
not
to give Czechoslovakia to Hitler in exchange for a peace treaty, that they should fight right away -”

“I recognize the name, Harry,” said Dumbledore. The old wizard’s lips twitched upward. “Although honesty compels me to say that dear Winston was never one for pangs of conscience, even after a dozen shots of Firewhiskey.”

“The point is,” Harry said, after a brief pause to remember exactly who he was talking to, and fight down the suddenly returning sense that he was an ignorant child gone insane with audacity who had no right to be in this room and no right to question Albus Dumbledore about anything, “the point is, saying violence is evil isn’t an
answer.
It doesn’t say when to fight and when not to fight. It’s a hard question and Gandhi refused to deal with it, and that’s why I lost some of my respect for him.”

“And your own answer, Harry?” Dumbledore said quietly.

“One answer is that you shouldn’t ever use violence except to stop violence,” Harry said. “You shouldn’t risk anyone’s life except to save even more lives. It
sounds
good when you say it like that. Only the problem is that if a police officer sees a burglar robbing a house, the police officer
should
try to stop the burglar, even though the burglar might fight back and someone might get hurt or even killed. Even if the burglar is only trying to steal jewelry, which is just a
thing.
Because if nobody so much as
inconveniences
burglars, there will be
more
burglars, and
more
burglars. And even if they only ever stole
things
each time, it would - the fabric of society -” Harry stopped. His thoughts weren’t as ordered as they usually pretended to be, in this room. He should have been able to give some perfectly logical exposition in terms of game theory, should have at least been able to
see
it that way, but it was eluding him. Hawks and doves - “Don’t you see, if evil people are willing to risk violence to get what they want, and good people always back down because violence is too terrible to risk, it’s - it’s not a good society to live in, Headmaster! Don’t you realize what all this bullying is doing to Hogwarts, to Slytherin House most of all?”

“
War
is too terrible to risk,” the old wizard said. “And yet it will come. Voldemort is returning. The black chesspieces are gathering. Severus is one of the most important pieces our own side possesses, in that war. But our evil Potions Master must, as the saying goes, keep up appearances. If Severus can pay that keep by hurting the feelings of children, only their feelings, Harry,” the old wizard’s voice was very soft, “you would have to be most terribly innocent in the ways of war, to think he had made a poor bargain. Hard decisions do not look like
that
, Harry. They look - like this.” The old wizard did not gesture. He simply stood where he was, among the pedestals.

“You shouldn’t be Headmaster,” Harry said through the burning in his throat. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you shouldn’t try to be a school principal and run a war at the same time. Hogwarts shouldn’t be part of this.”

“The children will survive,” the old wizard said with tired old eyes. “They would not survive Voldemort. Have you wondered why the children of Hogwarts do not speak much of their parents, Harry? It is because there is always, within earshot, someone who has lost their mother or father or both. That is what Voldemort left behind, the last time he came.
Nothing
is worth that war beginning again even one day earlier than it must, or lasting one day longer than it must.” The old wizard did gesture now, as though to indicate all the shattered wands. “We did not fight because it seemed righteous to do so! We fought when we had to, when there was no other way left. That was our answer.”

“Is that why you waited so long to confront Grindelwald?”

Harry had uttered the question without quite thinking -

There was a slow time while the blue eyes searched him.

“Who have you been talking to, Harry?” said the old wizard. “No, do not answer. I already know.” Dumbledore sighed. “Many have asked me that question, and always I have turned them aside. Yet in time you must learn the full truth of that matter. Will you swear never to speak of it to another, until I give you leave?”

Harry would have liked to be allowed to tell Draco, but - “I swear,” Harry said.

“Grindelwald possessed an ancient and terrible device,” said Dumbledore. “While he held it, I could not break his defense. In our duel I could not win, only fight him for long hours until he fell in exhaustion; and I would have died of it afterward, if not for Fawkes. But while his Muggle allies yet made blood sacrifice to sustain him, Grindelwald would
not
have fallen. He was, during that time, truly invincible. Of that grim device which Grindelwald held, none must know, none must suspect, there must be not a single hint. And therefore you must not speak of it, and I will say no more for now. That is all, Harry. There is no moral to it, and no wisdom. That is all there is.”

Harry slowly nodded. It wasn’t entirely implausible, by the standards of magic…

“And then,” Dumbledore’s voice went on, even quieter, almost as though he were speaking to himself, “since it was I who felled him, they obeyed me when I said he should not die, though they cried by the thousands for his blood. So he was imprisoned in Nurmengard, in the prison that he built, and he abides there until this day. I went to that duel without any intent to kill him, Harry. Because, you see, I had tried to kill Grindelwald once before, a long time ago, and that… that was… it proved to be… a mistake, Harry…” The old wizard was staring now at his long dark-grey wand where he held it in both hands, as though it were a crystal ball out of Muggle fantasy, a scrying pool within which answers could be found. “And I thought, then… I thought that I should never kill. And then came Voldemort.”

The old wizard looked back up at Harry, and said, in a hoarse voice, “He is not like Grindelwald, Harry. There is nothing human left in him.
Him
you must destroy. You must not hesitate, when the time comes. To him alone, of all the creatures in this world, you must show no mercy; and when you are done you must forget it, forget that you ever did such a thing, and go back to living. Save your fury for that, and that alone.”

In that office there was silence.

It lasted for some many long seconds, and finally was broken by a single question.

“Are there Dementors in Nurmengard?”

“What?” said the old wizard. “No! I would not have done that even to him -”

The old wizard stared at the young boy, who had straightened, and his face changed.

“In other words,” the boy said, as though talking to himself without any other people in the room, “it’s already known how to keep powerful Dark Wizards in prison, without using Dementors. People
know
they know that.”

“Harry…?”

“No,” the boy said. The boy looked up, and his eyes were blazing like green fire. “I do not accept your answer, Headmaster. Fawkes gave me a mission, and I know now why Fawkes gave that mission to me, and not to you. You are willing to accept balances of power where the bad guys end up winning. I am not.”

“That too is not an answer,” the old wizard said; his face showed nothing of his hurt, he had long practice in concealing pain. “Refusing to accept something does not change it. I wonder now if you are simply too young to understand this matter, Harry, despite your outward airs; only in children’s fantasies can all battles be won, and not a single evil tolerated.”

“And that’s why I can destroy Dementors and you can’t,” said the boy. “Because I believe that the darkness can be broken.”

The old wizard’s breath stopped in his throat.

“The phoenix’s price isn’t inevitable,” the boy said. “It’s not part of some deep balance built into the universe. It’s just the parts of the problem where you haven’t figured out yet how to cheat.”

The old wizard’s lips parted, and no words came forth.

Silver light falling on shattered wands.

“Fawkes gave me a mission,” the boy repeated, “and I will carry out that mission if I must break the entire Ministry to do it. That’s the part of the answer that you’re missing. You don’t stop and say,
oh well, guess I can’t possibly figure out any way to stop bullying in Hogwarts,
and
leave
it at that. You just keep looking until you figure out how to do it. If that requires breaking Lucius Malfoy’s entire conspiracy,
fine.
”

“And the true fight, the fight against Voldemort?” the old wizard said in an unsteady voice. “What will you do to win
that
, Harry? Will you break the whole world? Even if someday you gain such power, you are not yet beyond prices, and perhaps you never will be! For you to act this way
now
is nothing short of madness!”

“I asked Professor Quirrell why he’d laughed,” the boy said evenly, “after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And Professor Quirrell said, these aren’t his exact words, but it’s pretty much what he said, that he’d found it tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent girl begged for help, while
he
had been the one to defend her. And he told me then that by the time good and moral people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually did was nothing; or, if they did act, you could hardly tell them apart from the people called bad. Whereas
he
could help innocent girls any time he felt like it, because he wasn’t a good person. And that I ought to remember that, any time I considered growing up to be good.”

The old wizard did not show the force of the blow. Only a slight widening of his eyes would have betrayed it, if you had been watching him very closely.

“Don’t worry, Headmaster,” said the boy. “I haven’t gotten my wires crossed. I know that I’m supposed to learn goodness from Hermione and Fawkes, not from Professor Quirrell and you. Which brings me to the actual reason why I came here. Hermione’s time is too valuable to waste in detentions. Professor Snape will revoke it, claiming that I blackmailed him.”

After a hesitation the old wizard nodded his head, the silver beard swaying slowly beneath. “That would not be best for
her,
Harry,” the old wizard said. “But the detention can be put down as being served with Professor Binns, and you and she can study together in his classroom.”

“Fine,” the boy said. “I think that was all the business we had together, in the end. You may expect, the next time you seem to be working on the side of the bad guys or letting them win, that I will do whatever I think Fawkes would tell me to, regardless of how much trouble comes of it. I hope we’re both clear on that.”

Without another word, the boy turned and walked out of the room, through the open door of black metal, the words “
Lumos!
” and the light of his wand following a moment later.

The old wizard stood there silent, silent amid the ruins of the lives which his own life had left behind. His wrinkled hand rose, shaking, to touch at his half-moon glasses -

The boy poked his head back in. “Would you mind switching on the stairs, Headmaster? I’d rather not go through all the work again to leave the same way I came.”

“Go, Harry Potter,” the old wizard said. “The stairs will receive you.”