Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (200 page)

The Dark Lord was laughing.

From the empty air came the voice of the Defense Professor laughing wildly, so high and terrible his laughter; it was Voldemort’s laughter now, the Dark Lord’s laughter beyond all hiding or restraint.

Harry’s mind was disarrayed. His eyes kept staring at where Albus Dumbledore had been. There was a horror in him that was too huge for understanding or reflection. His mind kept trying to fall back through time and undo reality, but that wasn’t a sort of magic that existed, and reality stayed the same.

He had lost, he had lost Dumbledore, there were no take-backs, and that meant he had lost the war.

And the Dark Lord went on laughing.

“Ah, ah hah, ah hah hah ha! Professor Dumbledore, ah, Professor Dumbledore, such a fitting end to our game!” Another burst of wild laughter. “The wrong sacrifice even at the finish, for the piece you gave up everything to save was already in my possession! The wrong trap even from the beginning, for I could have abandoned this body at any time! Ah, hahahahaha, aha! You never did learn cunning, you poor old fool.”

“You -” A voice was coming from Harry’s throat. “You -”

“Ahahahaha! Why, yes, little child, you were always along on this adventure as my hostage, it was your whole purpose in being here. Ha, hahahaha! You are decades too young to play this game against the real Tom Riddle, child.” The Dark Lord drew back the hood of the Cloak, his head becoming visible, and began to remove the rest of the Cloak. “And now, boy,
you have helped me, yess indeed, and so it iss time to ressurrect your girl-child friend. To keep promisse.
” The Dark Lord’s smile was cold, cold indeed. “I suppose you have doubts? Mark well, I could kill you this instant, for there is no longer a Headmaster of Hogwarts to be informed of it. Doubt me all you wish, but remember that.” The hand was once more holding the gun. “Now come along, foolish child.”

And they left.

They went back out through the door into the Potions room, the Dark Lord banishing the returned purple fire with a stroke of his wand. They went through the chamber where the boggart had been, and the chamber of ruined chess statues, and through the burned door of the chamber of keys. The Dark Lord floated up through the trapdoor, and Harry struggled up afterward through the spiral staircase of leaves, the tendrils of the Devil’s Snare twitching and then moving back as though afraid. The Boy-Who-Lived was trying hard not to burst into tears, and his dark-side patterns weren’t helping, maybe because Voldemort had never known or dealt with guilt.

They passed the huge three-headed Inferi, and at a whispered word from the Dark Lord it collapsed over the trapdoor and became a corpse again.

They passed Severus Snape standing guard, who told them both that he was guarding the door, and that they must leave or he would deduct House points.

The Dark Lord spoke the words
“Hyakuju montauk”
without pausing in his stride, accompanied by a jab of his wand; and Severus staggered before he lifelessly drew himself up beside the door once more.

“What -” Harry said, as he followed. “What did you -”

“Just fulfilling my obligation to my faithful servant. It shall not kill him, as I promised you.” The Dark Lord laughed again.

“The hostages -” Harry said. It was hard to keep his voice steady. “The students, you said you’d stop whatever is going to kill them -”

“
Yess. Sstop worrying. Will do on our way out.
”

“Out?”

“We are leaving, child.” The Dark Lord was still smiling.

The bad feeling this raised was lost in a sea of other bad feelings.

The Dark Lord was now consulting what he’d called the Hogwarts Map, the handwritten lines upon it seeming to move as they walked. Some part of Harry’s mind that had been considering what to do if they ran into Aurors on patrol (whom the Dark Lord could kill, or Obliviate, in an instant) gave up that hope as well.

They went down the Grand Staircase to the second floor, encountering no one.

The Dark Lord made a turn Harry did not know, and went down another stair-flight. As they descended past one floor and another, the windows stopped and the torches began, they were within the Slytherin dungeons now.

Ahead, the form of a person in Hogwarts robes appeared.

The Dark Lord kept walking toward that person.

Harry followed.

A sixth or seventh-year Slytherin was waiting by a section of wall that was set with an artistic carving of Salazar Slytherin wielding his wand, against what looked like a giant covered in icicles. The witch made no comment at seeing Professor Quirrell walking upright, or seeing Harry in his company, or seeing the gun in the Defense Professor’s hand. If her eyes were blank, Harry couldn’t tell the difference.

The Dark Lord reached into his robes, took out a Knut, and flipped it to her. “Klaudia Alicja Tabor, I command you thus. Take this Knut to the spell circle I showed you beneath the Quidditch stands and put it in the center. Then Obliviate yourself of the last six hours.”

“Yes, lord,” the witch said, bowing to him, and went on her way.

“I thought -” Harry said. “I thought you needed the Stone to -”

The Dark Lord was still smiling, he had never stopped smiling. “I did not say that part in Parseltongue, child. All I said in Parseltongue was that I had set events in motion to kill students, events that I would stop if I obtained the Stone. The rest was in human speech. I would also have stopped the Blood Fort sacrifice if I had not obtained the Stone, so long as I was not discovered and restrained. The students of Hogwarts are a valuable resource, whom I have already spent much time training.” Then the Dark Lord hissed to the wall, “
Open.
”

Harry’s eyes saw the tiny snake that had been set in the upper-left of the carving, even as the wall slowly swung backward, revealing the opening of a huge pipe. Moss grew on its sides and a musty dusty smell welled up from it; the interior was also covered with cobwebs in multiple sheets.

“Spiders…” murmured the Dark Lord. He sighed, and for that brief moment he sounded once more like Professor Quirrell.

The Dark Lord walked into the huge pipe, the cobwebs burning away before him. Harry, not seeing any other better options, followed.

The pipe branched in a Y-shape, then branched again. The Dark Lord went left, then right.

The pipe came to a solid metal wall.
“Open,”
the Dark Lord hissed, and a crack appeared in the metal; it seemed to fold into itself.

Beyond was the middle of a long, stone tunnel.

“We shall be walking a while,” said the Dark Lord. “Did you have more questions to ask, little child?”

“I - I can’t think of any - right now -”

Another cold laugh replied to this, and they walked into the tunnel, turning right.

Harry didn’t know, then or ever, how long he walked; the light of burning spiderwebs was too dim to read his mechanical watch, and Harry had not thought to look at the time before entering. It felt like they walked for miles, miles beneath the ground.

Slowly, Harry’s mind tried to recover itself a final time. Very possibly final, if he was right about the Dark Lord killing him after this… though the Dark Lord had said that he would resurrect Hermione, which seemed pointless if that was true… was that simply the Dark Lord following through on a promise he would not otherwise have been able to make in Parseltongue… why had he not just shot Harry on the spot…

Seriously,
some last functioning part of his brain said to all the other parts,
this would be a good time to think of something, something that the Dark Lord has not already thought of, something we can do without our pouch or our wand or our Time-Turner, something that Professor Quirrell has not imagined we can do… think, think, pretty pretty please think of something? Don’t shut down now, even if you’re scared, even if we’ve never really really faced death before in the sense of being about to die in the next hour, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO SHUT DOWN -

Harry’s mind stayed blank.

Suppose,
said that last remaining part,
suppose we try to condition on the fact that we win this, or at least get out of this alive. If someone TOLD YOU AS A FACT that you had survived, or even won, somehow made everything turn out okay, what would you think had happened -

Not legitimate procedure,
whispered Ravenclaw,
the universe doesn’t work like that, we’re just going to die.

Someone realises we’re missing,
thought Hufflepuff,
and Mad-Eye Moody shows up with a squad of Aurors and rescues us. I think the time has come to admit we’re not more competent than the standard authorities.

The saving factor does have to be something we
do
somehow,
said the last voice.
Otherwise there’s no point in our thinking about it.

Problem two,
said Gryffindor.
Harry Potter isn’t missing, he’s right there at the Quidditch match where everyone can see him. Professor Quirrell thought of that too, it’s part of why he sent that fake note. Problem three. I don’t think Mad-Eye Moody and an Auror squad can beat the Dark Lord, and certainly not before he kills us. I’m not sure the entire DMLE can beat the Dark Lord if he’s fighting seriously and Dumbledore is gone. Problem four. The Quidditch match was not disrupted, that’s probably the only reason why Professor Quirrell was willing to try something as complicated as bringing us along on this trip in the first place.

Thinking along different lines,
ventured Slytherin
, maybe Professor Quirrell calls in someone else to Memory-Charm us
.
Legilimency, Imperius, Confundus, who knows what else, we’re not a perfect Occlumens. Then the Dark Lord would have a smart - well, sort-of smart lieutenant that he could use. That could be another reason why Professor Quirrell was so willing to tell us secrets, if he knew that the memory would disappear. It’s also a reason to leave the Hogwarts wards, so the Dark Lord can call Bellatrix to Apparate in and do the work…

This entire reasoning process is illegitimate and I refuse to participate,
said Ravenclaw.

What lovely last words,
said the last voice.
Now shut up and think.

Rough stone tunnel went by underfoot, Harry’s shoes sometimes dipping into moisture or nearly slipping on a curved surface. The neurons in his brain, which kept on firing, imagined voices talking to each other, yelling at each other, even as the Listener stayed numb with horror and shame.

Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were conducting a debate about suicide by charging the Dark Lord’s gun, or by swallowing the little jewel on Harry’s steel ring. It seemed unclear whether the fate of the world was better or worse if the Dark Lord had Harry as a mind-slave; if the Dark Lord was going to win anyway, it might be better if he won faster.

And the last voice kept talking through it all; even in the depths of failure that last voice remained.
What else did the Dark Lord always say in human speech and never in Parseltongue? Do we remember? Anything like that, anything at all?

It was all too distant in time, too distant in time even though it had all happened this very day. The Dark Lord had told him in Parseltongue just now that it was time to revive Hermione, and then he’d said other things all in English, Harry could hardly remember for all that they’d just been spoken. Before then… before then there’d been the Circle of Concealment, when Professor Quirrell had hissed that the barrier would explode if touched. And the Defense Professor had said in English for Harry not to take off his Cloak or try crossing the Circle, said in English that the resonance might strike Professor Quirrell afterwards but Harry would be dead. Said in English that if Harry touched the magic and Professor Quirrell didn’t remember how to halt the resonance, it would kill them both…

Suppose it doesn’t kill us both,
said the last voice.
On Halloween in Godric’s Hollow, the Dark Lord’s body was burned and we only ended up with a scar on our forehead. Suppose the resonance between us is deadlier to the Dark Lord than to us. What if this entire time we’ve been able to kill the Dark Lord at any time, just by dashing forward and touching our hands to any part of his exposed skin? And then it makes our scar bleed again, but that’s all. The sense of ‘stop, don’t do that’ is inherited from the Dark Lord’s worst memory of his mistake in Godric’s Hollow, it may not actually apply to the Boy-Who-Lived.

A small note of hope rose.

Rose, and was quashed.

The Dark Lord can just throw away his wand,
droned Ravenclaw.
Professor Quirrell can turn into his Animagus form. Even if he dies the Dark Lord will possess someone else and return, and then torture our parents, to punish us.

We might be able to get to our parents in time,
said the last voice.
We might be able to hide them. We might be able to get the Philosopher’s Stone away from the Dark Lord if we killed his current body now, and that Stone could provide the nucleus of a counter-army.

The Dark Lord was moving on through the stony corridor. His hand still held the gun. He was at least four meters away from Harry.

If we dart forward, he will sense us approaching through the resonance,
said Hufflepuff.
He will fly forward rapidly, he can do that, he has the broomstick-enchantments that let him fly. He will fly forward, turn around, and fire the gun. He knows about the resonance, he’s thought of this already. This is not something the Dark Lord has failed to consider. He will be ready for it, and waiting.

Continuing the same line of argument,
said the last voice.
Suppose we can freely cast magic on Professor Quirrell but he can’t cast it on us.

Why would that be true?
demanded Ravenclaw.
In fact, we have evidence that it’s false.
In Azkaban, when Professor Quirrell’s Avada Kedavra hit our Patronus Charm, it felt like our head was splitting apart -

Suppose that was all
his
magic going out of control. Suppose if we’d just cast, say, a Luminos targeting him, nothing bad would have happened.