Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (140 page)

The
potion of giant strength
required a Re’em to trample the mashed Dugbogs you stirred into the potion. It was odd, Harry had realized after a moment, because crushed Dugbogs weren’t strong themselves, they were just… very, very crushed after the Re’em got through with them.

Another recipe said to ‘touch with forged bronze’, i.e., grasp a Knut in pliers so you could skim the potion’s surface; and if you dropped the Knut all the way in, the book warned, the potion would instantly superheat and boil over the cauldron.

Harry had stared at the recipes and their warnings, forming a second and stranger hypothesis. Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as Potions-Making using magical potentials imbued in the ingredients, like Muggle cars fueled by the combustion potential of gasoline. Magic would never be as sensible as that…

And then Harry had gone to Professor Flitwick - since he didn’t want to approach Professor Snape outside of class - and Harry had told Professor Flitwick that he wanted to invent a new potion, and he knew what the ingredients ought to be and what the potion should do, but he didn’t know how to deduce the required stirring pattern -

After Professor Flitwick had stopped screaming in horror and running in little circles, and Professor McGonagall had been called into the ensuing fierce interrogation to promise Harry that in this case it was both acceptable and important for him to reveal his underlying theory, it had developed that Harry had not made an original magical discovery, but rediscovered a law so ancient that nobody knew who had first formulated it:

A potion spends that which is invested in the creation of its ingredients.

The heat of goblin forges that had cast the bronze Knut, the Re’em’s strength that had crushed the Dugbogs, the magical fire that had spawned the Ashwinder: all these potencies could be recalled, unlocked, and restructured by the spell-like process of stirring the ingredients in exact patterns.

(From a Muggle standpoint it was just
odd,
a deranged version of thermodynamics invented by someone who thought life ought to be
fair
. From a Muggle standpoint, the heat expended in forging the Knut hadn’t gone into the bronze, the heat had left and dissipated into the environment, becoming permanently less available. Energy was conserved, could be neither created nor destroyed;
entropy
always increased. But wizards didn’t think that way: from their perspective, if you’d put some amount of work into making a Knut, it stood to reason that you could get exactly the same work back out. Harry had tried to explain why this sounded a bit odd if you’d been raised by Muggles, and Professor McGonagall had asked bemusedly why the Muggle perspective was any better than the wizarding one.)

The fundamental principle of Potions-Making had no name and no standard phrasing, since then you might be tempted to write it down.

And someone who wasn’t wise enough to figure out the principle themselves might read it.

And they would start having all sorts of bright ideas for inventing new Potions.

And then they would be turned into catgirls.

It had been made very clear to Harry that he wasn’t going to be sharing this particular discovery with Neville, or Hermione either after the next armies’ battle. Harry had tried to say something about Hermione seeming really off lately and this being just the sort of thing that might cheer her up. Professor McGonagall had said flatly that he wasn’t even to think it, and Professor Flitwick had raised his little hands and made a gesture as of snapping a wand in half.

Although the two Professors had been kind enough to suggest that if Mr. Potter thought he knew what the potion’s ingredients should be, he might be able to find an already-existing recipe that did the same thing; and Professor Flitwick had mentioned several volumes in the Hogwarts library that might be useful…

The vast parchment-like screen now showed only an aerial view of the forest, from which you could barely make out the camouflaged forms of three armies, split up into two groups each, converging to fight their three-way battle.

The benches of the Quidditch stadium were now rapidly filling up with the more easily bored sort of spectator who only wanted to be there for the final battle and skip out on all the boring points along the way. (If there was anything wrong with Professor Quirrell’s battles, it was widely agreed, it was that his spectacles didn’t last nearly as long as Quidditch matches, once they actually started. To this Professor Quirrell had replied only,
Such is realism,
and that had been that.)

Within the huge window - it was all one window now, observing from a great height - the vague collections of tiny camouflaged forms grew closer.

Closer.

Almost touching -

The vast white parchment window showed the first touch of battle between Sunshine and Chaos, a screaming mass of running children with smiley-faces upon their breasts, charging forward with
Contego
shields held high and others shouting “
Somnium!
” -

Until one of their number shrieked “
Prismatis!
” in a terrified voice and the entire charge came to a sudden halt before the sparkling wall of force that had appeared in front of them.

Tracey Davis had walked out from behind the trees.

“That’s right,” said Tracey, her voice low and grim as she leveled her wand on the barrier. “You should fear me. For I am Tracey Davis, the Darke Lady! That’s Darke Lady spelled D-A-R-K-E, with an E!”

(Amelia Bones, Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, was sending an inquiring look at Mr. and Mrs. Davis, both of whom looked like they would have dearly preferred to die on the spot.)

Behind the Prismatic Barrier, there was some kind of hushed argument taking place among the Sunshine Soldiers, one of whom in particular seemed to be getting scolded by several of the others.

Then, a moment later,
Tracey
flinched.

Susan Bones had come to the front of the Sunshine contingent.

(“Goodness,” said Augusta Longbottom. “What
do
you suppose your grand-niece has been learning at Hogwarts?”)

(“I don’t know,” Amelia Bones said calmly, “but I shall owl her a Chocolate Frog and instructions to learn more of it.”)

The Prismatic Barrier vanished.

The Sunshine Soldiers resumed their charge forward.

Tracey yelled, her voice high with strain, “
Inflammare!
” and the Sunshine charge came to another sudden halt as a line of fire blazed up between them in the half-dry grass, extending to follow the path of Tracey’s wand as she pointed it; an instant later Susan Bones cried ”
Finite Incantatem!
” and the flames dimmed, brightened, dimmed in the contest of their wills, other soldiers raising their wards to aim at Tracey; and
that
was when Neville Longbottom plunged shrieking out of the sky.

One of the Dragon Warriors, Raymond Arnold, made a hand-sign, pointing forward and oblique left; and there was a sudden hushed hiss of whispers among the Dragon Army contingent as they all quietly reoriented themselves in the direction of the enemy. The Sunnies knew they were there, of course both armies knew; but somehow, in this moment, they had all become instinctively quiet.

The Dragons crept forward further, and then further, the dull camouflaged forms of the Sunnies beginning to appear among the distant trees, and still nobody spoke, nobody bellowed the call to charge.

Draco was now at the forefront of his soldiers, Vincent behind him and Padma only a shade further back; if the three of them could take the shock of Sunshine’s best, the rest of Dragon Army might stand a chance.

Then Draco saw one Sunnie staring at him from the distance, in the vanguard of her own army; staring at him with a look of fury -

Across the forest battleground, their eyes met.

Draco had only a fraction of a second to wonder, in the back of his mind, what Hermione Granger was so angry about, before the shout went up from both their armies; and they were all running forward to the charge.

The other Chaotics had appeared now from among the trees, some had
dropped out
of trees, and the battle was in full force now, everyone firing in every direction at anything that looked like an enemy. Plus a number of Sunnies crying
“Luminos!
” at Neville Longbottom as the Chaos Hufflepuff twisted and rocketed up through the air on courses that could only be described as, indeed, “chaotic” -

And it happened, the way it happened only one time out of twenty in mock aerial combat, that Neville Longbottom’s broomstick glowed bright red beneath his clenched hands.

It should’ve meant that Longbottom was out of the game.

Then, in the Hogwarts stands, among the watching crowds of students, a scream went up -

Combat realism.
It was Professor Quirrell’s one master rule. You could get away with anything if it was realistic, and in real life, a soldier didn’t just vanish when their
broomstick
got hit by a curse.

Neville was falling toward the ground and screaming “
Chaotic landing!
” and the Chaotics were wrenching their attention away from fights to cast the Hover Charm (and run at the same time so they wouldn’t be sitting ducks), almost everyone else stopping to gape -

And Neville Longbottom slammed into the leaf-laden forest ground, landing on one knee, one foot, and both hands, as though he were kneeling down to be knighted.

Everything stopped. Even Tracey and Susan paused in their duel.

In the stadium, all crowd noises vanished.

There was a universal silence composed of astonishment, concern, and sheer dumbstruck gaping awe, as everyone waited to see what would happen next.

And then Neville Longbottom slowly rose to his feet, and leveled his wand at the Sunshine Soldiers.

Though nobody on the battlefield heard it, a large segment of the stadium audience had begun chanting, in steadily rising notes each time the word was uttered, “DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM”, because you just couldn’t see that and
not
think it required musical accompaniment.

“The crowd is cheering your grandson,” said Amelia Bones. The old witch was favoring the screen with a measuring look.

“So they are,” said Augusta Longbottom. “Some, if I hear correctly, are cheering,
Our blood for Neville! Our souls for Neville!
”

“Quite,” said Amelia, taking a sip from a teacup which had not been there moments earlier. “It shows the lad has leadership potential.”

“These cheers,” continued Augusta, her voice taking on an even more stunned quality, “seem to be coming from the Hufflepuff benches.”

“It is the House of the loyal, my dear,” said Amelia.

“Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore!
What in Merlin’s name has been happening in this school?
”

Lucius Malfoy was watching the screens with an ironic smile, his fingers tapping at his armrest in no discernible pattern. “I do not know what is more frightening, the thought that he has some hidden plan behind all this, or the thought that he does not.”

“Look!” cried the Lord of Greengrass. The dapper young man had risen half out of his chair, pointing his finger at the screen. “There she goes!”

“We’ll both take him at once,” Daphne whispered. She knew that a few fear-filled minutes of real combat experience, a handful of times each week, might not be enough to match Neville’s regular dueling practice with Harry and Cedric Diggory over the same period. “He’s too much for one of us, but both of us together - I’ll use my Charm, you just try to stun him -”

Hannah, beside her, nodded, and then they both screamed at the top of their lungs and charged forward, the Hover Charms of two supporting Sunshine Soldiers moving them faster and making them light on their feet, Daphne already crying “
Tonare!
” even as Hannah kept a huge
Contego
shield moving in front of them, and with a brief extra lift they leapt over the heads of the front screen of soldiers and landed in front of Neville with their hair billowing high around them -

(Photographs were strictly prohibited at all Hogwarts games, but somehow this moment
still
ended up on the front page of the next day’s
Quibbler
.)

- and in the same instant, because fighting older bullies had burned away the slightest traces of hesitation, Hannah fired her first Sleep Hex at Neville (she’d started the incantation while she was still in the air) even as Daphne, concentrating more on speed than on force, slashed down with her Ancient Blade at where she thought Neville’s thighs would be
after
he dodged -

But Neville leapt up, not sideways, leapt up higher than he should’ve been able to go, so that her glowing sword cut only the air beneath his feet. Somehow Daphne realized what it meant, that Neville still had other Chaotics Hovering him, in time for her to raise her Blade up over her head, but Neville
fell too fast
and when his Blade smashed into hers it was like being hit by a Bludger. It knocked Daphne off her feet and sent her sprawling backward onto the grass, hitting the ground hard on her back. It might have been all over for her, then, if Neville hadn’t landed too hard himself and gone to his knees with a pained gasp. And then before Neville could bring his glowing Blade down, Hannah shouted “
Somnium!
” and Neville lurched frantically backward - though of course no spell had actually come from Hannah’s wand, the Hufflepuff girl couldn’t really have fired again that fast - which gave Daphne a second to scramble to her feet and get both hands around her wand again -

“Dear Merlin,” said Lady Greengrass. Her voice seemed unsteady, the aristocratic poise well-punctured. “My daughter is fighting with the Charm of the Most Ancient Blade. In her first year. I never knew she possessed - such extraordinary talent -”

“Excellent blood,” Charles Nott said approvingly, causing Augusta to snort.

“My good Lady,” said Professor Quirrell, sounding grave. “Do not wrong your daughter so. That is not mere talent which you see.” His voice grew a little dryer. “Rather, it is what happens when children put their competitive efforts into a game which involves actual spellcasting.”