Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (184 page)

Harry said slowly, “But - you told us that Mr. Hagrid has a blind spot when it comes to magical creatures threatening wizards. That Mr. Hagrid had a cognitive deficit and couldn’t really imagine Draco and Tracey getting hurt, which was why Mr. Hagrid didn’t see anything wrong with leaving them alone in the Forbidden Forest at night. Was that not true?”

“It is true.”

“Then wouldn’t Mr. Hagrid be the worst possible teacher for Magical Creatures?”

The old wizard gazed down at Harry through the half-moon glasses. His voice was thick when he spoke. “Mr. Malfoy himself saw nothing awry. It was not so implausible a trick which Argus played, Harry Potter. And Rubeus might have grown into his position. It would have been - all Rubeus wished, his one greatest desire -”

“Your mistake,” Harry said, looking down at his knees, feeling at least ten percent as exhausted as he’d ever been, “is a cognitive bias we would call, in the trade, scope insensitivity. Failure to multiply. You’re thinking about how happy Mr. Hagrid would be when he heard the news. Consider the next ten years and a thousand students taking Magical Creatures and ten percent of them being scalded by Ashwinders. No one student would be hurt as much as Mr. Hagrid would be happy, but there’d be a hundred students being hurt and only one happy teacher.”

“Perhaps,” the old wizard said. “And your own error, Harry, is that you do not feel the pain of those you hurt, once you have done your multiplication.”

“Maybe.” Harry went on staring at his knees. “Or maybe it’s worse than that. Headmaster, what does it mean if a centaur doesn’t like me?”
What does it mean when a member of a race of magical creatures known for Divination gives you a lecture on people who are ignorant of consequences, apologizes, and then tries to stab you with a spear?

“A centaur?” the Headmaster said. “When did you - ah, the Time-Turner. You are the reason why I could not travel back to before the event, on pain of paradox.”

“Am I? I guess I am.” Harry shook his head distantly. “Sorry.”

“With very few exceptions,” Dumbledore said, “centaurs do not like wizards, at all.”

“This was a bit more specific than that.”

“What did the centaur say to you?”

Harry didn’t reply.

“Ah.” The Headmaster hesitated. “Centaurs have been wrong many times, and if there is anyone in the world who could confuse the stars themselves, it is you.”

Harry looked up, and saw the blue eyes once more gentle behind the half-circle glasses.

“Do not fret too much about it,” said Albus Dumbledore.

June 3rd, 1992.

Professor Quirrell was very sick.

He’d seemed better for a while, after drinking his unicorn’s blood in May, but the air of intense power which had surrounded him afterward hadn’t lasted even a day. By the Ides of May, Professor Quirrell’s hands had been trembling again, though subtly. The Defense Professor’s medical regimen had been interrupted too early, it seemed.

Six days ago Professor Quirrell had collapsed at dinnertime.

Madam Pomfrey had tried to forbid Professor Quirrell from teaching classes, and Professor Quirrell had shouted at her in front of everyone. The Defense Professor had shouted that he was dying regardless, and would use his remaining time as he chose.

So Madam Pomfrey, blinking hard, had forbidden the Defense Professor from doing anything
except
teaching his classes. She’d asked for a volunteer to help her take Professor Quirrell to a room in the Hogwarts infirmary. More than a hundred students had risen to their feet, only half wearing green.

The Defense Professor no longer sat at the Head Table during mealtimes. He didn’t cast spells during lessons. The oldest students who had the most Quirrell points helped him to teach, the seventh-years who had already sat their Defense N.E.W.T.s in May. They took turns floating him from his room in the infirmary to his classes, and brought him food at mealtimes. Professor Quirrell proctored his Battle Magic classes from a chair, sitting.

Watching Hermione die had hurt more than this, but that had ended much more quickly.

This is the true Enemy.

Harry had already thought that, after Hermione had died. Being forced to watch Professor Quirrell die, day by day, week by week, had not done much to change his mind.

This is the true Enemy I have to face,
Harry thought in Wednesday’s Defense class, watching Professor Quirrell leaning far to one side of his chair before that day’s seventh-year assistant caught him.
Everything else is just shadows and distraction.

Harry had been turning over Trelawney’s prophecy in his mind, wondering if maybe the true Dark Lord had nothing to do with Lord Voldemort at all.
Born to those who have thrice defied him
seemed to strongly invoke the Peverell brothers and the three Deathly Hallows - though Harry didn’t exactly see how Death could have marked him as an equal, which seemed to imply some sort of deliberate action on Death’s part.

This alone is the true Enemy,
Harry thought.
After this will come Professor McGonagall, Mum and Dad, even Neville in his time, unless the wound in the world can be healed before then.

There was nothing Harry could do. Madam Pomfrey was already doing for Professor Quirrell what magic could do, and magic seemed strictly superior to Muggle techniques when it came to healing.

There was nothing Harry could do.

Nothing he could do.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Harry raised his hand, and knocked upon the door, in case the person there could no longer detect him.

“What is it?” came a strained voice from the infirmary room.

“It’s me.”

There was a long pause. “Come in,” said that voice.

Harry slipped inside and closed the door behind him, and cast the Quieting Charm. He stood as far away from Professor Quirrell as he could, just in case his own magic was making the Professor feel uncomfortable.

Though the sense of doom was fading, fading with each passing day.

Professor Quirrell was lying back in his infirmary bed, only his head propped up by a pillow. A coverlet of cottony material, red with black stitching, covered him to his chest. A book hovered before his eyes, outlined in a pale glow which also surrounded a black cube lying by the bed. Not the Defense Professor’s own magic, then, but a device of some kind.

The book was
Thinking Physics
by Epstein, the same book Harry had lent to Draco a few months back. Harry had stopped fretting about its possible misuse several weeks earlier.

“This -” Professor Quirrell said, and coughed, it didn’t sound quite right. “This is a fascinating book… if I’d ever realized…” A laugh, mixed with another cough. “Why did I assume the Muggle arts… must not be mine? That they would be… of no use to me? Why did I never bother trying… to test it experimentally… as you would say? In case… my assumption… was wrong? It seems sheerly foolish of me… in retrospect…”

Harry was having more trouble speaking than Professor Quirrell was. Wordlessly, Harry reached into his pocket, and laid a kerchief on the floor; which he unfolded to reveal a small white pebble, smooth and round.

“What’s that?” said the Defense Professor.

“It’s a, it’s a, Transfigured, unicorn.”

Harry had checked the books, had learned that since he was too young to have sexual thoughts he would be able to approach a unicorn without fear. The same books had said nothing about unicorns being smart. Harry had already noticed that every intelligent magical species was at least partially humanoid, from merfolk to centaurs to giants, from elves to goblins to veela. All had essentially humanlike emotions, many were known to interbreed with humans. Harry had already reasoned out that magic didn’t create new intelligence but just changed the shape of genetically human beings. Unicorns were equinoid, were not even partially humanoid, didn’t talk, used no tools, they were almost certainly just magical horses. If it was right to eat a cow to feed yourself for a day, then it
had
to be right to drink a unicorn’s blood in order to stave off death for weeks. You couldn’t have it both ways.

So Harry had gone into the Forbidden Forest wearing his Cloak. He had searched the Grove of Unicorns until he saw her, a proud creature with a pure white coat and violet hair, with three blue blotches on her flank. Harry had gone over, and the sapphire eyes had stared at him inquisitively. Harry had tapped out the sequence 1-2-3 on the ground several times with his shoes. The unicorn had shown no sign of responding in kind. Harry had reached over, taken her hoof in his hand, and tapped the same sequence with the unicorn’s hoof. The unicorn had only looked at him curiously.

And something about feeding the unicorn the sleeping-potion-laced sugar cubes had still felt like murder.

That magic gives their existence a weight of meaning which no mere animal could possess… to slay something innocent to save oneself, that is a very grave sin.
Those two phrases, from Professor McGonagall, from the centaur, had both run through Harry’s mind, over and over as the white unicorn had yawned, laid down on the ground, and closed its eyes for what would be the last time. The Transfiguration had lasted an hour, and Harry’s eyes had watered repeatedly as he worked. The unicorn’s death might not have come then, but it would come soon enough, and it was foreign to Harry’s nature to try to refuse responsibility of any kind. Harry would just have to hope that, if you didn’t kill the unicorn to save yourself, if you did it to help a friend, it would be acceptable in the end.

Professor Quirrell’s eyebrows had climbed toward his hairline. His voice was less soft, had something of his normal sharpness, as he said, “I forbid you from doing that again.”

“I wondered if you’d say that,” Harry said. He swallowed again. “But this unicorn is already, already doomed, so you might as well take it, Professor…”

“Why have you done this?”

If the Defense Professor really didn’t understand that, he was slower on the uptake than anyone Harry had ever met. “I kept thinking there was nothing I could do,” Harry said. “I got tired of thinking it.”

Professor Quirrell closed his eyes. His head leaned back into the pillow. “You were lucky,” the Defense Professor said in a soft voice, “that a unicorn in Transfigured form… did not set off the Hogwarts wards, as a strange creature… I shall have to… take this outside the grounds, to make use of it… but that can be managed. I shall tell them that I wish to look upon the lake… I will ask you to sustain the Transfiguration before you go, and it should last long enough, after that… and with my last strength, dispel whatever death-alarms were placed to watch over the herd… which, the unicorn being not yet dead, but only Transfigured, will not yet have triggered… you were very lucky, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nodded. He started to speak, then stopped again. Words seemed to stick in his throat once more.

You already calculated the expected utilities, if it works, if it goes wrong. You assigned probabilities, you multiplied, and then you threw out the answer and went with your new gut feeling, which was the same. So say it.

“Do you know,” Harry said unsteadily, “of any way at all, by which your life might be saved?”

The Defense Professor’s eyes opened. “Why… do you ask me that, boy?”

“There’s… a spell I heard of, a ritual -”

“Be silent,” said the Defense Professor.

An instant later a snake lay in the bed.

Even the snake’s eyes were dull.

It did not rise.

“
Sspeak on,”
hissed that snake, its flickering tongue its only motion.

“There is…
there iss a ritual, I heard of from the sschoolmasster, by which he thinkss the Dark Lord might have lived on. It iss called -”
and Harry stopped, as he realized that he did know how to say the word in Parseltongue. “
Horcrux. It requiress a death, I have heard. But if you are dying in any casse, you might try to adapt the ritual, even at great rissk for the new sspell, sso that it can be done with a different ssacrifice. It would change the whole world, if you ssucceed - though I don’t know anything about the sspell - the sschoolmasster thought it tore off a piece of ssoul, though I don’t ssee how that could be true -”

The snake was hissing laughter, strange sharp laughter, almost hysterical. “
You tell me of that sspell? Me? You musst learn more caution in the future, boy. But it matterss not. I learned of the horcrux sspell ssince long ago. It iss meaninglesss.”

“Meaningless?” Harry said aloud in surprise.

“
Would be pointlesss sspell from beginning, if ssoulss exissted.
Tear piece of ssoul? That iss lie. Missdirection to hide true ssecret. Only one who doess not believe in common liess will reasson further, ssee beneath obsscuration, realisse how to casst sspell. Required murder iss not ssacrificial ritual at all. Ssudden death ssometimes makess ghosst, if magic burssts and imprintss on nearby thing. Horcrux sspell channelss death-bursst through casster, createss your own ghosst insstead of victim’ss, imprintss ghosst in sspecial device. Ssecond victim pickss up horcrux device, device imprintss your memoriess into them. But only memoriess from time horcrux device wass made. You ssee flaw?”

The burning sensation was back in Harry’s throat. “
No continuity of -
” there wasn’t a snake word for consciousness ”-
sself, you would go on thinking after making the horcrux, then sself with new memoriess diess and iss not resstored -”

“Yess, you do ssee. Alsso Merlin’ss Interdict preventss powerful sspells from passing through ssuch a device, ssince it iss not truly alive. Dark Wizardss who think to return thuss are weaker, eassily disspatched. None have perssissted long by ssuch meanss. Perssonalitiess change, mix with victim’ss. Death iss not truly gainssaid. Real sself is losst, as you ssay. Not to my pressent tasste. Admit I conssidered it, long ago.”

A man was lying in the infirmary bed once more. The Defense Professor breathed, then made a wretched coughing sound.

“Can you give me a full recipe for the spell?” Harry said, after a moment’s deliberation. “There might be some way to improve on the flaws, with enough research. Some way to do it ethically and have it work.” Like doing the transfer into a clone body with a blank brain, instead of an innocent victim, which might also improve the fidelity of the personality transfer… though that still left the other problems.

Professor Quirrell made a short sound, under his breath, that might have been laughter. “You know, boy,” Professor Quirrell whispered, “I had thought… to teach you everything… the seeds of all the secrets I knew… from one living mind to another… so that later, when you found the right books, you would be able to understand… I would have passed on my knowledge to you, my heir… we would have begun as soon as you asked me… but you never asked.”

Even the grief surrounding by Harry like thick water gave way to that, to the sheer magnitude of the missed opportunity. “I was supposed to - ? I didn’t know I was supposed to - !”

Another coughing chuckle. “Ah yes… the unknowing Muggleborn… in heritage if not in blood… that is you. But I thought… better of it… that you should not walk my path… it was not a good path, in the end.”

“It’s not too late, Professor!” Harry said. A part of Harry yelled that he was being selfish, and then another part shouted that down; there would be other people to help.

“Yes, it is too late… and you shall not… persuade me otherwise… I have… thought better of it… as I said… I am too full… of secrets better left unknown…
look at me.
”

Harry looked, almost despite himself.

He saw a still-unwrinkled face, looking old and pained, beneath a head rapidly losing its hair, even the sides looking wispy now; Harry saw a face he’d always thought was sharp, now revealed as
thin,
muscle and fat fading away from the face, as from the arms beneath it, like the skeletal form of Bellatrix Black he’d seen in Azkaban -

Harry’s head wrenched aside, unthinkingly.

“You see,” whispered the Professor. “I dislike to sound cliched… Mr. Potter… but the truth is… the Arts called Dark… really are not good for a person… in the end.”

Professor Quirrell breathed in, breathed out. There was quiet for a time in the infirmary, the two of them watched only by the elaborately ornamented stone of the walls.

“Is there anything left… unsaid between us?” said Professor Quirrell. “I am not dying today… mind you… not right now… but I do not know how long… I shall be able to converse.”

“There’s,” Harry said, swallowed again. “There’s a lot of things, way too many things, but… it might be the wrong thing to ask, but I don’t want - this one question unanswered - snake?”