Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (44 page)

And Harry brought out the original parchment with the hypotheses, and began scribbling.

Observation:

Wizardry isn’t as powerful now as it was when Hogwarts was founded.

Hypotheses:

1
. Magic itself is fading.
2
. Wizards are interbreeding with Muggles and Squibs.
3
. Knowledge to cast powerful spells is being lost.
4. Wizards are eating the wrong foods as children, or something else besides blood is making them grow up weaker.
5. Muggle technology is interfering with magic. (Since 800 years ago?)
6. Stronger wizards are having fewer children. (Draco = only child? Check if 3 powerful wizards, Quirrell / Dumbledore / Dark Lord, had any children.)

Tests:

A. Are there spells we know but can’t cast (1 or 2) or are the lost spells no longer known (3)?
Result
: Inconclusive due to Interdict of Merlin. No known uncastable spell, but could simply have not been passed on.

B. Did ancient first-year students cast the same sort of spells, with the same power, as now? (Weak evidence for 1 over 2, but blood could also be losing powerful wizardry only.)
Result
: Same level of first-year spells then as now.

C. Additional test that distinguishes 1 and 2 using scientific knowledge of blood, will explain later.
Result
: There’s only one place in the recipe that makes you a wizard, and either you have two papers saying ‘magic’ or you don’t.

D. Are magical creatures losing their powers? Distinguishes 1 from (2 or 3).
Result:
Magical creatures seem to be as strong as they ever were.

“A failed,” said Harry Potter. “B is weak evidence for 1 over 2. C falsifies 2. D falsifies 1. 4 was unlikely and B argues against 4 as well. 5 was unlikely and D argues against it. 6 is falsified along with 2. That leaves 3. Interdict of Merlin or not, I didn’t actually find any known spell that couldn’t be cast. So when you add it all up, it looks like knowledge is being lost.”

And the trap snapped shut.

As soon as the panic went away, as soon as Draco understood that magic
wasn’t
fading out, it took all of five seconds to realize.

Draco shoved himself away from the desk and stood up so hard that his chair skittered with a scraping noise across the floor and fell over.

“So it was all just a stupid trick, then.”

Harry Potter stared at him for a moment, still sitting. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “It was a fair test, Draco. If it had come out a different way, I would have accepted it. That’s not something I would ever cheat on. Ever. I didn’t look at your data before I made my predictions. I told you up front when the Interdict of Merlin invalidated the first experiment -”

“Oh,” Draco said, the anger starting to come out into his voice, “you didn’t know how the whole thing was going to come out?”

“I didn’t
know
anything you didn’t know,” Harry said, still quietly. “I admit that I suspected. Hermione Granger was too powerful, she should have been barely magical and she wasn’t, how can a Muggleborn be the best spellcaster in Hogwarts? And she’s getting the best grades on her essays too, it’s too much coincidence for one girl to be the strongest magically
and
academically unless there’s a single cause. Hermione Granger’s existence pointed to there being only one thing that makes you a wizard, something you either have or you don’t, and the power differences coming from how much we know and how much we practice. And there weren’t different classes for purebloods and Muggleborns, and so on. There were too many ways the world didn’t look the way it would look if you were right. But Draco, I didn’t see anything you couldn’t see too. I didn’t perform any tests I didn’t tell you about. I didn’t cheat, Draco. I wanted us to work out the answer together. And I never thought that magic might be fading out of the world until you said it. It was a scary idea for me, too.”

“Whatever,” Draco said. He was working very hard to control his voice and not just start screaming at Harry. “You claim you’re not going to run off and tell anyone else about this.”

“Not without consulting you first,” Harry said. He opened his hands in a pleading gesture. “Draco, I’m being as nice as I can but
the world turned out to just not be that way
.”

“Fine. Then you and I are through. I’m going to just walk away and forget any of this ever happened.”

Draco spun around, feeling the burning sensation in his throat, the sense of betrayal, and that was when he realized he really
had
liked Harry Potter, and that thought didn’t slow him down for a moment as he strode toward the classroom door.

And Harry Potter’s voice came, now louder, and worried:

“Draco… you
can’t
forget. Don’t you understand? That was your sacrifice.”

Draco stopped in midstride and turned around. “
What
are you talking about?”

But there was already a freezing coldness in Draco’s spine.

He knew even before Harry Potter said it.

“To become a scientist. You questioned one of your beliefs, not just a small belief but something that had great significance to you. You did experiments, gathered data, and the outcome proved the belief was wrong. You saw the results and understood what they meant.” Harry Potter’s voice was faltering. “Remember, Draco, you can’t sacrifice a
true
belief that way, because the experiments will confirm it instead of falsifying it. Your sacrifice to become a scientist was your
false
belief that wizard blood was mixing and getting weaker.”

“
That’s not true!
” said Draco. “I didn’t sacrifice the belief. I still believe that!” His voice was getting louder, and the chill was getting worse.

Harry Potter shook his head. His voice came in a whisper. “Draco… I’m sorry, Draco, you
don’t
believe it, not anymore.” Harry’s voice rose again. “I’ll prove it to you. Imagine that someone tells you they’re keeping a dragon in their house. You tell them you want to see it. They say it’s an invisible dragon. You say fine, you’ll listen to it move. They say it’s an inaudible dragon. You say you’ll throw some cooking flour into the air and see the outline of the dragon. They say the dragon is permeable to flour. And the telling thing is that they know, in
advance,
exactly which experimental results they’ll have to explain away. They
know
everything will come out the way it does if there’s no dragon, they know in
advance
just which excuses they’ll have to make. So maybe they
say
there’s a dragon. Maybe they
believe
they believe there’s a dragon, it’s called belief-in-belief. But they don’t actually believe it. You can be mistaken about what you believe, most people never realize there’s a difference between believing something and thinking it’s good to believe it.” Harry Potter had risen from the desk now, and taken a few steps toward Draco. “And Draco, you don’t believe any more in blood purism, I’ll show you that you don’t. If blood purism is true, then Hermione Granger doesn’t make sense, so what could explain her? Maybe she’s a wizarding orphan raised by Muggles, just like I was? I could go to Granger and ask to see pictures of her parents, to see if she looks like them. Would you expect her to look different? Should we go perform that test?”

“They would have put her with relatives,” Draco said, his voice trembling. “They’ll still look the same.”

“You see. You already know what experimental result you’ll have to excuse. If you still believed in blood purism you would say, sure, let’s go take a look, I bet she won’t look like her parents, she’s too powerful to be a real Muggleborn -”

“They
would
have put her with relatives!”

“Scientists can do tests to check for sure if someone is the true child of a father. Granger would probably do it if I paid her family enough.
She
wouldn’t be afraid of the results. So what do you expect that test to show? Tell me to run it and we will. But you already know what the test will say. You’ll always know. You won’t ever be able to forget. You might
wish
you believed in blood purism, but you’ll always
expect to see happen
just exactly what would happen if there was only one thing that made you a wizard. That was your sacrifice to become a scientist.”

Draco’s breathing was ragged. “Do you realize
what you’ve done?
” Draco surged forward and he seized Harry by the collar of his robes. His voice rose to a scream, it sounded unbearably loud in the closed classroom and the silence. ”
Do you realize what you’ve done?
”

Harry’s voice was shaky. “You had a belief. The belief was false. I helped you see that. What’s true is already so, owning up to it doesn’t make it worse -”

The fingers on Draco’s right hand clenched into a fist and that hand dropped down and blasted up unstoppably and punched Harry Potter in the jaw so hard that his body went crashing back into a desk and then to the floor.

“
Idiot!
” screamed Draco. ”
Idiot! Idiot!
”

“Draco,” whispered Harry from the floor, “Draco, I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would happen for months, I didn’t expect you to awaken as a scientist this quickly, I thought I would have longer to prepare you, teach you the techniques that make it hurt less to admit you’re wrong -”

“What about Father?” Draco said. His voice trembled with rage. “Were you going to prepare
him
or did you just not
care
what happened after this?”

“You can’t tell
him!
” Harry said, his voice rising in alarm. “He’s not a scientist! You promised, Draco!”

For a moment the thought of Father not knowing came as a relief.

And then the real anger started to rise.

“So you planned for me to lie to him and tell him I still believe,” Draco said, voice shaking. “I’ll always have to lie to him, and now when I grow up I can’t be a Death Eater, and I won’t even be able to tell him why not.”

“If your father really loves you,” whispered Harry from the floor, “he’ll still love you even if you don’t become a Death Eater, and it sounds like your father
does
really love you, Draco -”

“
Your
stepfather is a scientist,” Draco said. The words coming out like biting knives. “If
you
weren’t going to be a scientist, he would still love you. But you’d be a
little less special
to him.”

Harry flinched. The boy opened his mouth, as if to say ‘I’m sorry’, and then closed his mouth, seeming to think better of it, which was either very smart of him or very lucky, because Draco might have tried to kill him.

“You should have warned me,” Draco said. His voice rose. “
You should have warned me!
”

“I… I did… every time I told you about the power, I told you about the price. I said, you have to admit you’re wrong. I said this would be the hardest path for you. That this was the sacrifice anyone had to make to become a scientist. I said, what if the experiment says one thing and your family and friends say another -”

“
You call that a warning?
” Draco was screaming now. ”
You call that a warning? When we’re doing a ritual that calls for a permanent sacrifice?
”

“I… I…” The boy on the floor swallowed. “I guess maybe it wasn’t clear. I’m sorry. But that which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”

Hitting him wasn’t enough.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” Draco said, his voice deadly. “Granger isn’t the strongest student in Hogwarts. She just gets the best grades in class. You’re about to find out the difference.”

Sudden shock showed in Harry’s face, and he tried to roll quickly to his feet -

It was already too late for him.

“
Expelliarmus!
”

Harry’s wand flew across the room.

“
Gom jabbar!
”

A pulse of inky blackness struck Harry’s left hand.

“That’s a torture spell,” said Draco. “It’s for getting information out of people. I’m just going to leave it on you and lock the door behind me when I go. Maybe I’ll set the locking spell to wear off after a few hours. Maybe it won’t wear off until you die in here. Have fun.”

Draco moved smoothly backward, wand still on Harry. Draco’s hand dipped down, picked up his bookbag, without his aim wavering.

The pain was already showing in Harry Potter’s face as he spoke. “Malfoys are above the underage magic laws, I take it? It’s not because your blood is stronger. It’s because you already practiced. In the beginning you were as weak as any of us. Is my prediction wrong?”

Draco’s hand whitened on his wand, but his aim stayed steady.

“Just so you know,” Harry said through gritted teeth, “if you’d told me I was wrong I would have listened.
I
won’t ever torture
you
when you show me that I’m wrong. And you
will
. Someday. You’re awakened as a scientist now, and even if you never learn to use your power, you’ll always,” Harry gasped, “be looking, for ways, to test, your beliefs -”

Draco’s backing away was less smooth, now, a little faster, and he had to work to keep his wand on Harry as he reached back to open the door and stepped back out of the classroom.

Then Draco shut the door again.

He cast the most powerful locking Charm he knew.

Draco waited until he heard Harry’s first scream before casting the
Quietus.

And then he walked away.

“
Aaahhhhh! Finite Incantatem! Aaaahhh!
”

Harry’s left hand had been put into a pot of boiling cooking oil and left there. He’d put everything he had into the
Finite Incantatem
and it still wasn’t working.

Some hexes required specific counters or you couldn’t undo them, or maybe it was just that Draco was that much stronger.

“
Aaaaahhhh!
”

Harry’s hand was really starting to hurt, now, and that was interfering with his attempts to think creatively.