Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (215 page)

I need to think faster, grow up faster… How alone am I, how alone will I be? Am I making the same mistake I made during Professor Quirrell’s first battle, when I didn’t realise Hermione had captains? The mistake I made when I didn’t tell Dumbledore about the sense of doom, once I realised Dumbledore probably wasn’t mad or evil?

It would help if Muggles had classes for this sort of thing, but they didn’t. Maybe Harry could recruit Daniel Kahneman, fake his death, rejuvenate him with the Stone, and put him in charge of inventing better training methods…

Harry took the Elder Wand out of his robes, gazed again at the dark-grey wood that Dumbledore had passed down to him. Harry had
tried
to think faster this time, he’d tried to complete the pattern implied by the Cloak of Invisibility and the Resurrection Stone. The Cloak of Invisibility had possessed the legendary power of hiding the wearer, and the hidden power of allowing the wearer to hide from Death itself in the form of Dementors. The Resurrection Stone had the legendary power of summoning an image of the dead, and then Voldemort had incorporated it into his horcrux system to allow his spirit to move freely. The second Deathly Hallow was a potential component of a system of true immortality that Cadmus Peverell had never completed, maybe due to his having ethics.

And then there was the third Deathly Hallow, the Elder Wand of Antioch Peverell, that legend said passed from wizard to stronger wizard, and made its holder invincible against ordinary attacks; that was the known and overt characteristic…

The Elder Wand that had belonged to Dumbledore, who’d been trying to prevent the Death of the world itself.

The purpose of the Elder Wand always going to the victor might be to find the strongest living wizard and empower them still further, in case there was any threat to their entire species; it could secretly be a tool to defeat Death in its form as the destroyer of worlds.

But if there was some higher power locked within the Elder Wand, it had not presented itself to Harry based on that guess. Harry had raised up the Elder Wand and spoken to it, named himself a descendant of Peverell who accepted his family’s quest; he’d promised the Elder Wand that he would do his best to save the world from Death, and take up Dumbledore’s duty. And the Elder Wand had answered no more strongly to his hand than before, refusing his attempt to jump ahead in the story. Maybe Harry needed to strike his first true blow against the Death of worlds before the Elder Wand would acknowledge him; as the heir of Ignotus Peverell had already defeated Death’s shadow, and the heir of Cadmus Peverell had already survived the Death of his body, when their respective Deathly Hallows had revealed their secrets.

At least Harry had managed to guess that, contrary to legend, the Elder Wand didn’t contain a core of ‘Thestral hair’. Harry had seen Thestrals, and they were skeletal horses with smooth skin and no visible mane on their skull-like heads, nor tufts on their bony tails. But what core was truly inside the Elder Wand, Harry hadn’t yet felt himself knowing; nor had he been able to find, anywhere on the Elder Wand, the circle-triangle-line of the Deathly Hallows that should have been present.

“I don’t suppose,” Harry murmured to the Elder Wand, “you could just tell me?”

There came back no answer from the globe-knobbed wand; only a sense of glory and contained power, watching him skeptically.

Harry sighed, and put the most powerful wand in the world back into his school robes. He’d get it eventually, and hopefully in time.

Maybe faster, if there was someone to help him do the research.

Harry was aware on some level - no, he needed to stop being aware of things
on some level
and start just being aware of them - Harry was explicitly and consciously aware that he was ruminating about the Future mostly to distract himself from the imminent arrival of Hermione Granger. Who would receive a clear bill of health from St. Mungo’s, when she woke up very early this morning, and who would then Floo with Professor Flitwick back to Hogwarts. Whereupon she’d tell Professor Flitwick that she needed to speak with Harry Potter immediately. There’d been a note from Harry to himself about that, when Harry had woken up later this morning with the sun already risen in the Ravenclaw dorm. He’d read the note, and then Time-Turned back to before the dawn hour when Hermione Granger would arrive.

She won’t actually be angry with me.

…

Seriously. Hermione isn’t that kind of person. Maybe she was at the start of the year but she’s too self-aware to fall for that one now.

…

What do you mean, ‘…’? If you have something to say, inner voice, just say it! We’re trying to be more aware of our own thought processes, remember?

The sky had gone full blue-gray, dawn barely short of sunrise, by the time that Harry heard the sound of footsteps coming from the ladder that opened into his new office. Hastily Harry stood up and began to brush off his robes; and then, realising what he was doing, stopped the nervous motions. He’d just defeated Voldemort, damn it, he ought not to be this nervous.

The young witch’s head and chestnut curls appeared in the opening and peered around. Then she rose up higher, seemed almost to run up the ladder steps, like she was walking along an ordinary sidewalk but vertically; Harry could have blinked and missed it, how her one shoe came down on the top rung of the ladder and then she leaped lightly onto the roof an instant later.

Hermione.
Harry’s lips moved around the word, but made no sound.

There’d been something Harry had meant to say, but it had gone right out of his mind.

Maybe a quarter of the minute passed, on the rooftop, before Hermione Granger spoke. She was wearing a blue-edged uniform now, and the blue-bronze-striped tie of her proper House.

“Harry,” said Hermione Granger, a terribly familiar voice that almost brought tears to Harry’s eyes, “before I ask you all the questions, I’d like to start by saying thank you very much for, um, whatever it is you did. I mean it, really. Thank you.”

“Hermione,” Harry said, and swallowed. The phrase
may I have permission to hug you,
which Harry had imagined using for his opening line, seemed impossible to say. “Welcome back. Hold on while I put up some privacy spells.” Harry took the Elder Wand out of his robes, got a book from his pouch that he opened to a bookmark, and then carefully pronounced “
Homenum Revelio,
” along with two other recently-acquired security Charms that Harry had found himself barely able to cast if he wielded the Elder Wand. It wasn’t much, but it was marginally better security than just relying on Professor Vector.

“You have Dumbledore’s wand,” Hermione said. Her voice was hushed, and sounded as loud as an avalanche in the still dawn air. “And you can use it to cast fourth-year spells?”

Harry nodded, making a mental note to be more careful who else saw him do that. “Is it okay if I hug you?”

Hermione moved lightly over to him; her movements were peculiarly swift, more graceful than they’d been before. Her motions seemed to radiate an air of something pure and untouched, reminding Harry again of how peaceful Hermione had looked when she was sleeping on Voldemort’s altar -

Realization hit Harry like a ton of bricks, or at least a kilogram of brick.

And Harry hugged Hermione, feeling how very
alive
she seemed. He felt like crying, and suppressed it, because he didn’t know whether that was just her aura affecting him or not.

Hermione’s arms around him were gentle, exceedingly light in their pressure, as if she were being deliberately careful not to snap his body in half like a used toothpick.

“So,” Hermione said, once Harry had let go of her. Her young face looked very serious, as well as pure and innocent. “I didn’t tell the Aurors you were there, or that it was Professor Quirrell and not You-Know-Who who killed all the Death Eaters. Professor Flitwick only let them give me one drop of Veritaserum, so I didn’t have to say. I just told them the troll was the last thing I remembered.”

“Ah,” Harry said. He had somehow found himself staring at Hermione’s nose instead of her eyes. “What do you think happened, exactly?”

“Well,” Hermione Granger said consideringly, “I got eaten by a troll, which I’d frankly rather not do again, and then there was a really loud
bang
and my legs were back, and I was lying on a stone altar in the middle of a graveyard in a dark moonlit forest I’d never seen before, with somebody’s severed hands clutched around my throat. So you see, Mr. Potter, finding myself in a situation that weird and dark and scary, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I did last time with Tracey. I knew
right away
that it was you.”

Harry nodded. “Good call.”

“I said your name, but you didn’t answer,” said Hermione. “I sat up and one of the bloody hands slid down over my shirt, leaving little bits of flesh behind. I didn’t scream though, even when I looked around and saw all the heads and bodies and realized what the smell was.” Hermione stopped, took another deep breath. “I saw the skull masks and realized that the dead people had been Death Eaters. I knew right away that the Defense Professor had been there with you and killed them all, but I didn’t notice Professor Quirrell’s body was also there. I didn’t realize it was him even when I saw Professor Flitwick checking the body. He looked… different, when he was dead.” Hermione’s voice became quieter. She looked humbled somehow, in a way Harry couldn’t often remember seeing. “They said David Monroe sacrificed his life to bring me back, the same way your mother sacrificed herself for you, so that the Dark Lord would explode again when he tried to touch me. I’m
pretty
sure that’s not the whole truth, but… I’ve thought a lot of nasty things about our Defense Professor that I never should’ve thought.”

“Um,” Harry said.

Hermione nodded solemnly, her hands clasped in front of her as though in penitence. “I know you’re probably too nice to say the things to me that you have a right to say now, so I’ll say them for you, Harry. You were right about Professor Quirrell, and I was wrong. You told me so. David Monroe was a little bit Dark and a whole lot Slytherin, and it was childish of me to think that was the same thing as being evil.”

“Ah…” Harry said. This was very hard to say. “Actually, the rest of the world doesn’t know this part, not even the Headmistress. But in point of fact you were one hundred and twelve percent correct about him being evil, and I’ll remember for future reference that although ‘Dark’ and ‘evil’ may not technically be the same thing, there’s a great big statistical correlation.”

“Oh,” said Hermione, and fell silent again.

“You’re not saying that you told me so?” said Harry. His mental model of Hermione was yelling: I TOLD YOU SO! DIDN’T I TELL YOU SO, MR. POTTER? DIDN’T I TELL YOU? PROFESSOR QUIRRELL IS EEEEVIIIL, I SAID, BUT
YOU DIDN’T LISTEN TO ME!

The actual Hermione just shook her head. “I know you cared about him a lot,” she said softly. “Since I was right after all… I knew you’d probably be hurting a lot after Professor Quirrell turned out to be evil, and that it wouldn’t be a good time to say I told you so. I mean, that’s what I decided when I was thinking that part through several months earlier.”

Thank you, Miss Granger.
Harry was glad she’d said that much, though, it just wouldn’t have felt like Hermione otherwise.

“So, Mr. Potter,” said Hermione Granger, tapping her fingers on her robe at around thigh level. “After the medi-witch drew my blood, it stopped hurting right away, and when I brushed away the little bit of blood on my arm, I couldn’t find where the needle had poked me. I bent some of the metal in my bedframe without trying hard, and though I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, I feel like I should be able to runreally
fast.
My fingernails are pearly-white and shiny even though I don’t remember painting them. And my teeth look like that too, which, being the daughter of dentists, makes me nervous. So it’s not that I’m ungrateful, but just what exactly did you do?”

“Um,” Harry said. “And I’m expecting you’re also wondering why you’re radiating an aura of purity and innocence?”

“I’m WHAT?”

“That part wasn’t my idea. Honestly.” Harry’s voice went small. “Please don’t kill me.”

Hermione Granger raised her hands in front of her face, staring somewhat cross-eyed at her fingers. “Harry, are you saying… I mean, my radiating innocence and being all strong and fast and my teeth being pearly white… is it
alicorn
my fingernails are made of?”

“Alicorn?”

“It’s the term for unicorn horn, Mr. Potter.” Hermione Granger seemed to be trying to nibble her fingernails, and not having much luck. “So, I guess if you bring a girl back from the dead she ends up as, what did Daphne call it, a Sparkling Unicorn Princess?”

“That’s not exactly what happened,” Harry said, though it was frighteningly close.

Hermione took her finger out of her mouth, frowning at it. “I can’t bite through it either. Mr. Potter, did you consider the problems now that it’s literally impossible for me to trim my fingernails and toenails?”

“The Weasley twins have a magical sword that should work,” Harry volunteered.

“I think,” Hermione Granger said firmly, “that I would like to know the whole story behind all this, Mr. Potter. Because knowing you and knowing Professor Quirrell, there was some sort of
plan
going on.”

Harry took a deep breath. Then he exhaled. “Sorry, it’s… classified. I could tell you if you studied Occlumency, but… do you want to?”

“Do I want to study Occlumency?” Hermione said, looking slightly surprised. “That’s at least a sixth-year thing, isn’t it?”

“I learned it,” Harry said. “I started with an unusual boost, but I doubt that really mattered in the long run. I mean, I’m sure you could learn calculus if you studied hard, regardless of what age Muggles usually learn it. The question is, um.” Harry was having to control his breathing. “The question is, do you still want to do… that kind of stuff.”

Hermione turned, and looked at where the sky was lightening in the east. “You mean,” she said quietly, “do I still want to be a hero now that it’s earned me a horrible death that one time.”