Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (31 page)

“Expelled, were you about to say?” Harry, on the other hand, was now smiling thinly. “But then you seemed to doubt your ability to carry out the threat, or fear the consequences if you did. I, on the other hand, neither doubt nor fear the prospect of finding a school with less abusive professors. Or perhaps I should hire private tutors, as is my accustomed practice, and be taught at my full learning speed. I have enough money in my vault. Something about bounties on a Dark Lord I defeated. But there
are
teachers at Hogwarts who I rather like, so I think it will be easier if I find some way to get rid of you instead.”

“Get rid of me?” Severus said, now also smiling thinly. “What an amusing conceit. How do you suppose you will do that, Potter?”

“I understand there have been a number of complaints about you from students and their parents,” a guess but a safe one, “which leaves only the question of why you’re not already gone. Is Hogwarts too financially strapped to afford a real Potions professor? I could chip in, if so. I’m sure they could find a better class of teacher if they offered double your current salary.”

Two poles of ice radiated freezing winter across the classroom.

“You will find,” Severus said softly, “that the Board of Governers is not the slightest bit sympathetic to your offer.”

“Lucius…” Harry said. “
That’s
why you’re still here. Perhaps I should chat with Lucius about that. I believe he desires to meet with me. I wonder if I have anything he wants?”

Hermione frantically shook her head. Harry noticed out of the corner of his eye, but his attention was all on Severus.

“You are a very foolish boy,” Severus said. He wasn’t smiling at all, now. “You have nothing that Lucius values more than my friendship. And if you did, I have other allies.” His voice grew hard. “And I find it increasingly unlikely that you were not Sorted into Slytherin. How was it that you managed to stay out of my House? Ah, yes, because the Sorting Hat claimed it was
joking
. For the first time in recorded history. What were you really
chatting
about with the Sorting Hat, Potter? Did you have something that it wanted?”

Harry stared into Severus’s cold gaze and remembered that the Sorting Hat had warned him not to meet anyone’s eyes while thinking about - Harry dropped his gaze to Severus’s desk.

“You seem oddly reluctant to look me in the eyes, Potter!”

A shock of sudden understanding - “So it was
you
the Sorting Hat was warning me about!”

“What?” said Severus’s voice, sounding genuinely surprised, though of course Harry didn’t look at his face.

Harry got up out of his desk.

“Sit down, Potter,” said an angry voice from somewhere he wasn’t looking.

Harry ignored it, and looked around the classroom. “I have no intention of letting one unprofessional teacher ruin my time at Hogwarts,” Harry said with deadly calm. “I think I’ll take my leave of this class, and either hire a tutor to teach me Potions while I’m here, or if the Board is really that locked up, learn over the summer. If any of you decide that you don’t care to be bullied by this man, my sessions will be open to you.”

“
Sit down, Potter!
”

Harry strode across the room and grasped the doorknob.

It didn’t turn.

Harry slowly turned around, and caught a glimpse of Severus smiling nastily before he remembered to look away.

“Open this door.”

“No,” said Severus.

“You are making me feel threatened,” said a voice so icy it didn’t sound like Harry’s at all, “and that is a mistake.”

Severus’s voice laughed. “What do you intend to do about it, little boy?”

Harry took six long strides forward away from the door, until he was standing near the back row of desks.

Then Harry drew himself upright and raised his right hand in one terrible motion, fingers poised to snap.

Neville screamed and dived under his desk. Other children shrank back or instinctively raised their arms to shield themselves.

“
Harry don’t!
” shrieked Hermione. “Whatever you were going to do to him, don’t do it!”

“Have you all gone
mad?
” barked Severus’s voice.

Slowly, Harry lowered his hand. “I wasn’t going to hurt him, Hermione,” Harry said, his voice a little lower. “I was just going to blow up the door.”

Though now that Harry remembered it, you weren’t supposed to Transfigure things that were to be burned, which meant that going back in time afterward and getting Fred or George to Transfigure some carefully measured amount of explosives might not actually have been such a good idea…

“
Silencio,
” said Severus’s voice.

Harry tried to say “What?” and found that no sound was coming out.

“This has become ridiculous. I think you’ve been allowed to get yourself in enough trouble for one day, Potter. You are the most disruptive and unruly student I have ever seen, and I don’t recall how many points Ravenclaw has right now, but I’m sure I can manage to wipe them all out. Ten points from Ravenclaw. Ten points from Ravenclaw. Ten points from Ravenclaw! Fifty points from Ravenclaw! Now sit down and watch the rest of the class take their lesson!”

Harry put his hand into his pouch and tried to say ‘marker’ but of course no words came out. For one brief moment that stopped him; and then it occurred to Harry to spell out M-A-R-K-E-R using finger motions, which worked. P-A-D and he had a pad of paper. Harry strode over to an empty desk, not the one he’d originally sat down in, and scrawled a brief message. He tore off that sheet of paper, put away the marker and pad in a pocket of his robes for quicker access, and held up his message, not to Snape, but to the rest of the class.

I’M LEAVING
DOES ANYONE ELSE
NEED TO GET OUT?

“You’re insane, Potter,” Severus said with cold contempt.

Aside from that, no one spoke.

Harry swept an ironic bow to the teacher’s desk, walked over to the wall, and with one smooth motion yanked open a closet door, stepped in, and slammed the door shut behind him.

There was the muffled sound of someone snapping his fingers, and then nothing.

In the classroom, students looked at each other in puzzlement and fear.

The Potions Master’s face was now completely enraged. He crossed the room in terrible strides and yanked open the closet door.

The closet was empty.

One hour earlier, Harry listened from inside the closed closet. There was no sound from outside, and no point in taking risks either.

C-L-O-A-K, his fingers spelled out.

Once he was invisible, he very carefully and slowly cracked open the closet door and peeked out. No one seemed to be in the classroom.

The door wasn’t locked.

It was when Harry was outside the dangerous place and inside the hallway, safely invisible, that some of the anger drained away and he realized what he’d just done.

What he’d just done.

Harry’s invisible face was frozen in absolute horror.

He’d antagonized a teacher three orders of magnitude beyond anything he’d ever managed before. He’d threatened to walk out of Hogwarts and might have to follow through on it. He’d lost all the points Ravenclaw had and then he’d used the Time-Turner…

His imagination showed him his parents yelling at him after he was expelled, Professor McGonagall disappointed in him, and it was just too painful and he couldn’t bear it and he
couldn’t think of any way to save himself -

The thought that Harry allowed himself to think was that if getting angry had gotten him into all this trouble, then maybe when he was angry he’d think of a way out, things seemed clearer somehow when he was angry.

And the thought that Harry didn’t let himself think was that he just couldn’t face this future if he wasn’t angry.

So he cast his thoughts back and remembered the burning humiliation -

Tut, tut. Fame clearly isn’t everything.

Ten points from Ravenclaw for backchat.

The calming cold washed back through his veins like a wave reflected and returning from some breaker, and Harry let out his breath.

Okay. Back to being sane now.

He was actually feeling a bit disappointed in his non-angry self for collapsing like that and wanting only to get out of trouble. Professor Severus Snape was
everyone’s
problem. Normal-Harry had forgotten that and wished for a way to protect
himself.
And let all the other victims go hang? The question wasn’t how to protect himself, the question was how to destroy this Potions professor.

So this is my dark side, is it?
Bit of a prejudiced term that, my light side seems more selfish and cowardly, not to mention confused and panicky.

And now that he was thinking clearly, it was equally clear what to do next. He’d already given himself an extra hour to prepare, and could get up to five hours more if required…

Minerva McGonagall waited in the Headmaster’s office.

Dumbledore sat in his padded throne behind his desk, dressed in four layers of formal lavender robes. Minerva sat in a chair before him, opposite Severus in another chair. Facing the three of them was an empty wooden stool.

They were waiting for Harry Potter.

Harry,
Minerva thought despairingly,
you promised you wouldn’t bite any teachers!

And in her mind she could see very clearly the reply, Harry’s angry face and his outraged response:
I said I wouldn’t bite anyone who didn’t bite me first!

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Dumbledore called.

The door swept open, and Harry Potter entered. Minerva almost gasped out loud. The boy looked cool, collected, and utterly in control of himself.

“Good mor-” Harry’s voice suddenly cut off. His jaw dropped.

Minerva tracked Harry’s gaze, and she saw that Harry was staring at Fawkes where the phoenix sat on its golden perch. Fawkes fluttered his bright red-golden wings like the flickering of a flame, and dipped his head in a measured nod to the boy.

Harry turned to stare at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore winked at him.

Minerva felt she was missing something.

Sudden uncertainty crossed Harry’s face. His coolness wavered. Fear showed in his eyes, then anger, and then the boy was calm again.

A chill went down Minerva’s spine. Something was not right here.

“Please sit down,” said Dumbledore. His face was now serious once more.

Harry sat.

“So, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “I’ve heard one report of this day from Professor Snape. Would you care to tell me what happened in your own words?”

Harry’s gaze flicked dismissively to Severus. “It’s not complicated,” said the boy, smiling thinly. “He tried bullying me the way he’s been bullying every non-Slytherin in the school since the day Lucius foisted him off on you. As for the other details, I request a private conversation with you concerning them. A student who is reporting abusive behavior from a professor can hardly be expected to speak frankly in front of that same professor, after all.”

This time Minerva couldn’t stop herself from gasping out loud.

Severus simply laughed.

And the Headmaster’s face grew grave. “Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster said, “one does not speak of a Hogwarts professor in such terms. I fear that you labor under a terrible misapprehension. Professor Severus Snape has my fullest confidence, and serves Hogwarts at my own behest, not Lucius Malfoy’s.”

There was silence for a few moments.

When the boy spoke again his voice was icy. “Am I missing something here?”

“Quite a number of things, Mr. Potter,” said the Headmaster. “You should understand, to start with, that the purpose of this meeting is to discuss how to discipline you for the events of this morning.”

“This man has terrorized your school for years. I spoke to students and collected stories to make sure there would be enough for a newspaper campaign to rally the parents against him. Some of the younger students cried while they told me. I almost cried when I heard them!
You allowed this abuser to run free? You did this to your students? Why?
”

Minerva swallowed a lump in her throat. She’d - thought that, sometimes, but somehow she’d never quite -

“Mr. Potter,” said the Headmaster, his voice now stern, “this meeting is not about Professor Snape. It is about you and your disregard for school discipline. Professor Snape has suggested, and I have agreed, that three full months of detention will be appropriate -”

“Declined,” Harry said icily.

Minerva was speechless.

“This is not a request, Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster said. The full, entire force of the wizard’s gaze was turned on the boy. “This is your punishme-”

“You will explain to me why you allowed this man to hurt the children placed in your care, and if your explanation is not sufficient then I will begin my newspaper campaign with
you
as the target.”

Minerva’s body swayed with the force of that blow, with the sheer raw
lese majeste
.

Even Severus looked shocked.

“That, Harry, would be most extremely unwise,” Dumbledore said slowly. “I am the primary piece opposing Lucius on the gameboard. For you to do such a thing would strengthen him greatly, and I did not think that was your chosen side.”

The boy was still for a long moment.

“This conversation grows private,” Harry said. His hand flicked in Severus’s direction. “Send him away.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “Harry, did I not tell you that Severus Snape has my fullest confidence?”

The boy’s face showed the shock of it. “This man’s bullying makes you vulnerable! I am not the only one who could start a newspaper campaign against you! This is insane! Why are you doing this?”

Dumbledore sighed. “I’m sorry, Harry. It has to do with things that you are not, at this time, ready to hear.”

The boy stared at Dumbledore. Then he turned to look at Severus. Then back to Dumbledore again.

“It
is
insanity,” the boy said slowly. “You haven’t reined him in because you think he’s
part of the pattern
. That Hogwarts needs an evil Potions Master to be a proper magical school, just as it needs a ghost to teach History.”