Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (161 page)

“Duly noted,” Harry said to the scarred chin. Harry was more shaken than he’d have admitted; Mr. Bester hadn’t been anywhere near that powerful, and had never tested Harry like
that
. Pretending to be someone hurting that much had… Harry couldn’t find words for describing what it felt like to contain an imaginary person in that much pain, but it hadn’t been
normal
. “Do I get any credit for being an Occlumens in the first place?”

“So you’re think you’re all grown up already, eh? Look me in the eyes!”

Harry strengthened his shields, and looked once more into the dark grey eye and the brilliant blue.

“Ever watched someone die?” asked Mad-Eye Moody.

“My parents,” Harry said evenly. “I recovered the memory in January when I went in front of a Dementor to learn the Patronus Charm. I remember You-Know-Who’s voice -” A chill went through Harry’s body, his wand twitching in his hand. “My main tactical report is that You-Know-Who could speak the Killing Curse in less than half a second, but you probably already knew that.”

There was a gasp from Professor McGonagall’s direction, and Severus’s face had tightened.

“All right,” Mad-Eye Moody said softly. A strange, thin grin twisted up the lips within the scarred face. “I’ll make you the same offer I’d make to any trainee Auror. Land one touch on me, boy - one hit, one spell - and I’ll concede your right to talk back to me.”

“Alastor!” exclaimed Professor McGonagall’s voice. “Surely that’s an unreasonable test! Mr. Potter, whatever his other merits, does not have a hundred years of fighting experience!”

Harry’s eyes made a lightning dart around the room, passing over the peculiar devices, glancing past Dumbledore and Severus and the Sorting Hat, settling briefly here and there. Harry couldn’t see Professor McGonagall from where he was, but that didn’t matter. There was only one device he’d really wanted to look at, and the point of all the other glances had just been to conceal which one.

“All righty,” Harry said, and hopped off his chair, ignoring Professor McGonagall’s inhalation and the Potions Master’s snort of disbelief. Dumbledore’s eyebrows had lifted, and Moody was grinning like a tiger. “Be sure to wake me up in forty minutes if he does get me.” Harry settled into a duelist’s starting stance, his wand held low. “Let’s go, then -”

Harry opened his eyes, his head feeling like it had been stuffed with cotton wool.

Everyone else was gone from the Headmaster’s office, the Floo-Fire dimmed; only Dumbledore still waited behind the desk.

“Hello, Harry,” the Headmaster said quietly.

“I didn’t even see him
move,
” Harry marvelled, muscles creaking as he sat up.

“You were standing two paces away from Alastor Moody,” said Dumbledore, “and you took your eye off his wand.”

Harry nodded, as he took the Cloak of Invisibility out of his pouch. “I mean - I was taking the dueling stance so that he’d think I was a standard idiot and underestimate me - but I have to admit,
that
was impressive.”

“So you planned it all along, Harry?” Dumbledore said.

“Of course,” Harry said. “Note how I’m doing this as soon as I wake up, rather than pausing to think of it.”

Harry drew the hood of the Cloak over his head, and glanced back up at the wall clock he’d surreptitiously glanced at earlier.

It had then shown around twenty-three minutes after eight, and now it was five minutes after nine.

Minerva stared as the boy put himself into the dueling stance, his wand held low. For a second Minerva wondered if Harry might possibly - no, that was completely ridiculous, it was
Mad-Eye Moody
and that was beyond impossible. Of course that was what she’d thought about his partial Transfiguration, too…

“Let’s go, then,” Harry said and fell over.

Severus gave a single chuckle. “Mr. Potter has his points, I must confess,” the Potions Master said. “Though I would never say it while he was awake, and if you repeat the words I shall deny them, for the boy’s ego is quite large enough already. Mr. Potter does have his points, Mad-Eye, but duelling is not among them.”

Mad-Eye’s own chuckle was lower and grimmer. “Oh, yes,” said Mad-Eye. “Only fools duel. Standing like that and waiting for me to attack, what
was
the boy thinking? Why, I ought to give him a scar, to remember this occasion -”

“Alastor!” barked Albus, just as she cried “Stop!”, Severus dashed forward, and Mad-Eye Moody deliberately leveled his wand on Harry Potter’s body.

“
Stupefy!
”

Mad-Eye’s body seemed to almost flicker as he spun on his wooden foot like lightning, faster than she’d ever seen anyone move without magic, the red Stunning Hex passing through the suddenly empty air and barely missing Severus to crash into the opposite wall, and by the time her eyes jerked back to Moody there were seventeen radiant orbs in the pattern of a
Sagitta Magica,
visible for only an instant before they streaked brilliance and struck
something
that fell to the floor with a thud -

“Hello again, Harry,” said Dumbledore.

“I cannot
believe
that guy’s reaction time,” Harry said, brushing off his Cloak as he stood up from where he’d been lying invisible on the floor, unseen by his previous self. “I can’t believe his movement speed either. I’m going to have to figure out some way to zap him without speaking an incantation that gives it away…”

- and then Mad-Eye ducked hard and fast, his hands hitting flat on the floor. She almost didn’t see the two tiny white threads passing through the space he’d been, but her eyes went to the blue spark when the threads impacted on one of the Headmaster’s devices, and by the time she managed to turn her eyes back, Mad-Eye had spun smoothly up to his feet, his wand was dancing unseeably fast and there was another thudding sound -

“Hello again, Harry.”

“Pardon me, Headmaster, but could you let me go down your stairs, and then come back up again, before I make the final jump backward? This is going to take longer than one hour of preparation -”

Minerva gaped at Mad-Eye Moody, who hadn’t lowered his wand in the slightest; and Severus had a look on his face that was almost like shock.

“Well, boy?” said Mad-Eye Moody. “What else have you got?”

Harry Potter’s head appeared, floating in midair as an invisible hand drew back the hood of his invisibility cloak.

“That eye,” said Harry Potter. There was a strange fierce light in the boy’s eyes. “That isn’t any ordinary device. It can see right through my invisibility cloak. You dodged my Transfigured taser as soon as I started raising it, even though I didn’t speak any incantations. And now that I’ve watched it again - you spotted all my Time-Turned selves the moment you Flooed into this room, didn’t you?”

Mad-Eye Moody was smiling, the same teeth-bared grin she’d seen him wear as they’d faced off against Voldemort himself. “Spend a hundred years hunting Dark wizards, and you see everything,” said Moody. “I once arrested a young Japanese who tried a similar trick. He found out the hard way that his shadow replica technique was no match for this eye of mine.”

“You see in all directions,” Harry Potter said, that strange fierce light still in his gaze. “No matter where that eye is pointing, it sees everything around you.”

Moody’s tiger-grin grew wider. “There’s no more of you in this room, now,” Mad-Eye said. “Think that’s because you’ll give up after this time, or because you’ll win? Any bets, boy?”

“It’s my final attempt because I decided to stake my last three hours on one shot,” said Harry Potter. “As for whether I win -”

There was a blur filling the whole air of the Headmaster’s office. Mad-Eye Moody leapt to one side with blinding speed and an instant later Harry’s head darted backward as he cried “
Stuporfy!
”

Three shimmers in the air went past Harry’s moving head, just as a red bolt erupted from Harry’s location, shooting past Moody as he dodged in yet another direction -

If she’d blinked, she would have missed it, the red bolt making an angled turn in midair and slamming into Moody’s ear.

Moody fell.

Harry Potter’s floating head dropped to the height of a first-year on their hands and knees, then dropped further to the ground, his face showing sudden exhaustion.

Minerva McGonagall said, “What in
Merlin’s name
just -”

“So you went to Flitwick, then,” Moody said. The retired Auror was now sitting in a chair, drinking long draughts from a restorative in a bottle he’d taken off his belt.

Harry Potter nodded, now sitting in his own chair instead of perched on an armrest. “I tried the Defense Professor first, but -” The boy grimaced. “He… wasn’t available. Well, I’d decided it was worth risking five House points, and if you say a risk is worth it, you can’t complain when you have to pay up. Anyway, I figured that if you had an eye that saw things other people couldn’t see, then as Isaac Asimov pointed out in
Second Foundation
, the weapon to use is a brilliant light. Read enough science fiction, you know, and you’ll read everything at least once. Anyway, I told Professor Flitwick that I needed a Charm that would make a huge number of shapes, bright and flickering and filling the whole office, but invisible, so only your eye could see them. I had no idea what it would even
mean
to cast an illusion and then make it invisible, but I figured if I didn’t mention that out loud, Professor Flitwick would just do it anyway, and he did. Turns out there was no spell like that I could cast myself, but Flitwick Charmed me a one-time device for it - though I had to persuade him that it wasn’t cheating, since nothing could
possibly
be cheating against an Auror who’d lived long enough to retire. And then I still didn’t see how I could hit you, when you were moving that fast. So I asked about targeted spells, and that was when Flitwick showed me that hex I cast at the end, the Swerving Stunner. It’s one of Professor Flitwick’s own inventions - he’s a champion duellist as well as a Charms Master -”

“I know that, son.”

“Sorry. Anyway, the Professor says he left the duelling circuit before he got a chance to use that spell, since it only works as a finishing move on an unshielded opponent. The hex gets as close to the target as possible along its original trajectory, and then once it detects that the target is getting more distant again, the hex turns in midair and heads straight for the target. It can only swerve once - but the incantation sounds very close to ‘Stupefy’ and the hex is the same red color, so if the enemy thinks it’s a regular Stunning Hex and tries a normal dodge, that midair retargeting will finish them off. Oh, and the Professor requested that none of us talk about his special move, just in case he does get a chance to use it during competition someday.”

“But -” said Professor McGonagall. She glanced at Mad-Eye Moody, who was nodding his approval, and at Severus, who was keeping his face decidedly blank. “Mr. Potter, you just stunned
Mad-Eye Moody!
The most famous Dark wizard hunter in the history of the Auror Office! That should’ve been impossible!”

Moody let out a dark chuckle. “What’s
your
answer to that one, kid? I’m curious.”

“Well…” Harry said. “First of all, Professor McGonagall, neither of us were fighting seriously.”

“Neither of you?”

“Of course,” Harry said. “In a serious fight, Mr. Moody would’ve dropped all my copies immediately without waiting for them to attack. And on my side, if it was
actually
necessary to take down the most famous Auror in the history of the office, I’d get Headmaster Dumbledore to do it for me. And beyond that… since that
wasn’t
a real fight…” Harry paused. “How can I put this? Wizards are used to duels where people fight back and forth with spells for a while. But if two Muggles with guns stand in a small room and fire bullets at each other… then whoever hits first, wins. And if one of them is deliberately missing his shots, giving the other person one chance after another - like Mr. Moody gave me one chance after another - well, you’d have to be pretty pathetic to lose.”

“Oh, not
that
pathetic,” Moody said with a slightly threatening grin.

Harry didn’t seem to notice. “You might say that Mr. Moody was testing me to see if I would try to
fight
him, or try to
win.
That is, whether I’d carry out the
role
of somebody fighting - use standard spells I already knew, even though I didn’t expect the
consequences
of that action to be victory - or if I’d search through unusual plans until I found something that
could
win. Like the difference between a student who sits in class because that’s what students do, versus a student who cares enough to ask themselves what it takes to
actually
learn a piece of material, and practices however necessary - you see, Professor McGonagall? When you look at it that way - realize that Mr. Moody was giving me chances, and that I shouldn’t attack in the first place unless I think I can win - then I don’t come out looking so well, since it actually took me three tries to get him. Plus, like I said, in a real fight Mr. Moody could’ve turned
himself
invisible, or put up shields -”

“Don’t go relying too much on shields, boy,” Mad-Eye said. The leather-clad Auror took another sip from his restorative flask. “What you learn in your first year at the academy doesn’t stay true forever, not against the strongest Dark Wizards. Every shield ever made, there’s some curse that goes straight through it, if you’re not quick enough to cast the counter. And there’s one curse that goes through everything, and it’s a curse any Death Eater will use.”

Harry Potter nodded gravely. “Right, some spells are impossible to block. I’ll remember that, in case anyone casts the Killing Curse at me. Again.”

“That kind of cleverness gets people killed, boy, and don’t you forget it.”

A sad-sounding sigh from the Boy-Who-Lived. “I know. Sorry.”

“So, son. You had something to say about when Albus and I go after Lockhart?”

Harry opened his mouth, then paused. “I won’t tell you how to run a war,” the Boy-Who-Lived said eventually. “I don’t have any experience at that. All I know is that there are consequences. Please be advised that my own assessment is that Lockhart is probably innocent, so if you can avoid hurting him without too much risk -” The boy shrugged. “I don’t know the cost. Just please, if you can, be careful not to hurt him if he’s innocent.”