Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (58 page)

“What about sabotaging your
friend’s
chance at a fair fight?” said Draco angrily. “I thought we were friends!”

“Let me rephrase that,” said Harry. “
Granger
wouldn’t sabotage a friendly rival. But that’s because she has the killing intention of a bowl of wet grapes.
You
would. You
totally
would. And guess what, so would I.”

DAMN IT!

If it had been a play, there would have been dramatic music.

The hero, impeccably turned out in green-trimmed robes and perfectly combed white-blonde hair, faced the villain.

The villain, leaning back in a simple wooden chair with her buckteeth clearly visible and stray chestnut curls drifting over her cheeks, faced the hero.

It was Wednesday, October 30th, and the first battle was coming up on Sunday.

Draco was standing in General Granger’s office, a room the size of a small classroom. (
Why
each general’s office was so large, Draco wasn’t quite sure. A chair and a desk would have worked for him. He wasn’t even clear on why the generals needed offices at all, his soldiers knew where to find him. Unless Professor Quirrell had deliberately arranged the huge offices for them as a sign of status, in which case Draco was all for it.)

Granger sat on the room’s single chair like a throne, all the way on the other end of the office from where the door opened. There was a long oblong table stretched across the middle of the room between them, and four small circular tables scattered around the corners, but only that one single chair, all the way at the opposite end. The room had windows along one wall, and one beam of sunlight touched the top of Granger’s hair like a glowing crown.

It would have been nice if Draco could have walked slowly forward. But there was a table in the way, and Draco had to go around it diagonally, and there was no good way to do that in a dramatic and dignified fashion. Had that been deliberate? If it had been his father, it surely would have been; but this was Granger, so surely not.

There was nowhere for him to sit, and Granger hadn’t stood up, either.

Draco kept the outrage entirely off his face.

“Well, Mr. Draco Malfoy,” Granger said once he stood before her, “you requested an audience with me and I have been so gracious as to grant it. What was your plea?”

Come with me to visit Malfoy Manor, my father and I would like to show you some interesting spells.

“Your rival, Potter, came to me with an offer,” said Draco, putting a serious look on his face. “He doesn’t mind losing to me, but would be humiliated if you won. So he wants to join with me and wipe you out immediately, not just in our first battle, all of them. If I won’t do that, Potter wants me to hold back or harass you, while he launches an all-out attack on you as his first move.”

“I see,” Granger said, looking surprised. “And you’re offering to help me against him?”

“Of course,” said Draco smoothly. “I didn’t think what he wanted to do to you was fair.”

“Why, that’s very nice of you, Mr. Malfoy,” said Granger. “I’m sorry for how I spoke to you earlier. We should be friends. Can I call you Drakey?”

Alarm bells started to sound in Draco’s head, but there was a
chance
she meant it…

“Of course,” said Draco, “if I can call you Hermy.”

Draco was pretty sure he saw her expression flicker.

“Anyway,” Draco said, “I was thinking it would serve Potter right if we both attacked him and wiped him out.”

“But that wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Potter, would it?” said Granger.

“I think it’d be very fair,” Draco said. “He was planning to do it to you first.”

Granger was giving him a stern look that could possibly have intimidated him if he’d been a Hufflepuff instead of a Malfoy. “You think I’m pretty stupid, don’t you, Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco smiled charmingly. “No, Miss Granger, but I thought I’d at least
check.
So, what do you want?”

“Are you offering to
bribe
me?” said Granger.

“Sure,” said Draco. “Can I just slip you a Galleon and have you beat on Potter instead of me for the rest of the year?”

“Nope,” said Granger, “but you can offer me ten Galleons and have me attack both of you equally, instead of just you.”

“Ten Galleons is a lot of money,” Draco said cautiously.

“I didn’t know the Malfoys were poor,” said Granger.

Draco stared at Granger.

He was starting to get a strange feeling about this.

That particular reply didn’t seem like it should have come from this particular girl.

“Well,” said Draco, “you don’t get to be rich by wasting money, you know.”

“I don’t know if you know what a dentist is, Mr. Malfoy, but my parents are
dentists
and anything less than ten Galleons isn’t worth my time at all.”

“Three Galleons,” Draco said, more as a probe than anything else.

“Nope,” said Granger. “If you want an equal fight at all, I don’t believe that a Malfoy wants an equal fight less than he wants ten Galleons.”

Draco was starting to get a
very
strange feeling about this.

“No,” said Draco.

“No?” said Granger. “This is a limited time offer, Mr. Malfoy. Are you sure you want to risk a whole year of being miserably crushed by the Boy-Who-Lived? That would be pretty embarrassing for the House of Malfoy, wouldn’t it?”

It was a very persuasive argument, one that was hard to refuse, but you didn’t get to be rich by spending money when your heart told you it was a setup.

“No,” said Draco.

“See you on Sunday,” said Granger.

Draco turned and walked out of the office without another word.

That had been
not right…

“Hermione,” Harry said patiently, “we’re
supposed
to be plotting against each other. You could even betray me and it wouldn’t mean anything outside the battlefield.”

Hermione shook her head. “It wouldn’t be nice, Harry.”

Harry sighed. “I don’t think you’re getting into the spirit of this at all.”

It wouldn’t be nice.
She’d actually said that. Hermione didn’t know whether to be insulted at what Harry thought of her, or worried about whether she really
did
sound like that much of a goody-two-shoes usually.

It was probably time to change the subject.

“Anyway, are you doing anything special for tomorrow?” said Hermione. “It’s -”

Her voice cut off abruptly as she realized.

“Yes, Hermione,” Harry said a little tightly, “what day is it?”

Interlude:

There was a time when October 31st had been called Halloween in magical Britain.

Now it was Harry Potter Day.

Harry had turned down all the offers, even the one from Minister Fudge which might have been good for future political favors and which he
really
should have gritted his teeth and taken. But to Harry, October 31st would always be The Dark Lord Killed My Parents Day. There should have been a quiet, dignified memorial service somewhere, and if there was one, he hadn’t been invited.

Hogwarts got the day off to celebrate. Even the Slytherins didn’t dare wear black outside their own dorm. There were special events and special foods and the teachers looked the other way if anyone ran through the hallways. It was the tenth anniversary, after all.

Harry spent the day in his trunk so as not to spoil it for anyone else, eating snack bars in place of meals, reading some of his sadder science fiction books (no fantasy), and writing a letter to Mum and Dad that was much longer than the ones he usually sent.

J. K. Rowling if a man tries to bother you, you can think blue, count two, and look for a red shoe.

The day was Sunday, November 3rd, and soon the three great powers of their school year, Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, and Hermione Granger, would begin their struggle for supreme dominance.

(Harry was slightly annoyed by the way the Boy-Who-Lived had been demoted from supreme dominance to one of three equal rivals just by entering the contest, but he expected to get it back soon.)

The battleground was a section of non-Forbidden forest, dense with trees, because Professor Quirrell thought that being able to see all the enemy forces was too boring even for your very first battle.

All the students who were not actually
in
a first-year army were camped out nearby and watching on screens that Professor Quirrell had set up. Except for three Gryffindors in their fourth year, who were currently sick and confined to healer’s beds by Madam Pomfrey. Aside from that, everyone was there.

The students were dressed, not in their ordinary school robes, but in Muggle camouflage uniforms that Professor Quirrell had obtained somewhere and supplied in sufficient quantity and variety to fit everyone. It wasn’t that students would have worried about stains and rips, that was what Charms were for. But as Professor Quirrell had explained to the surprised wizardborns, nice dignified clothing was not efficient for hiding in forests or dodging around trees.

And on each uniform’s breast, a patch bearing the name and insignia of your army. A
small
patch. If you wanted your soldiers to wear, say, colored ribbons so that they could identify each other at a distance, and risk the enemy getting their hands on the ribbons, that was all up to you.

Harry had tried to get the name Dragon Army.

Draco had pitched a fit and said that would confuse everyone completely.

Professor Quirrell had ruled that Draco could lay prior claim to the name, if he wished.

So now Harry was fighting Dragon Army.

This probably wasn’t a good sign.

For their insignia, instead of the too-obvious dragon’s head breathing fire, Draco had elected to simply go with the fire. Elegant, understated, deadly:
This is what’s left after we’ve passed.
Very Malfoy.

Harry, after considering alternate choices such as the 501st Provisional Battalion and Harry’s Minions o’ Doom, had decided that his army would be known by the simple and dignified appellation of the Chaos Legion.

Their insignia was a hand poised with fingers ready to snap.

It was
universally
agreed that this wasn’t a good sign.

Harry had earnestly advised Hermione that the young boys serving under her were probably nervous about her being a girl with a reputation for being nice, and that she should pick something scary that would reassure them of her toughness and make them proud to be part of her army, like the Blood Commandos or something.

Hermione had named her army the Sunshine Regiment.

Their insignia was a smiley face.

And in ten minutes, they would be at war.

Harry stood in the bright forest clearing that was their assigned starting location, an area of open space with old and rotting tree stumps that had been cleared away for some unknown purpose, ground coated with a small scattering of blown leaves and the dried grey remnants of grass that had failed the test of summer’s heat, and the sun shining down brilliantly from above.

Around him were the twenty-three soldiers that Professor Quirrell had assigned to him. Nearly all of Gryffindor had signed up, of course, and more than half of Slytherin, and less than half of Hufflepuff, and a handful of Ravenclaw. In Harry’s army there were twelve Gryffindors and six Slytherins and four Hufflepuffs and one Ravenclaw besides himself… not that there was any way to tell that by looking at the uniforms. No red, no green, no yellow, no blue. Just Muggle camouflage patterns, and a patch on the breast with the device of a hand poised to snap its fingers.

Harry looked upon his twenty-three soldiers, all wearing the same uniforms with no marks of group identity save that single patch.

And lo, Harry smiled, because he understood what this part of Professor Quirrell’s master plan was about; and Harry was taking full advantage of it for his
own
purposes, too.

There was a legendary episode in social psychology called the Robbers Cave experiment. It had been set up in the bewildered aftermath of World War II, with the intent of investigating the causes and remedies of conflicts between groups. The scientists had set up a summer camp for 22 boys from 22 different schools, selecting them to all be from stable middle-class families. The first phase of the experiment had been intended to investigate what it took to
start
a conflict between groups. The 22 boys had been divided into two groups of 11 -

- and this had been quite sufficient.

The hostility had started from the moment the two groups had become aware of each others’ existences in the state park, insults being hurled on the first meeting. They’d named themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers (they hadn’t needed names for themselves when they thought they were the only ones in the park) and had proceeded to develop contrasting group stereotypes, the Rattlers thinking of themselves as rough-and-tough and swearing heavily, the Eagles correspondingly deciding to think of themselves as upright-and-proper.

The other part of the experiment had been testing how to resolve group conflicts. Bringing the boys together to watch fireworks hadn’t worked at all. They’d just shouted at each other and stayed apart. What
had
worked was warning them that there might be vandals in the park, and the two groups needing to work together to solve a failure of the park’s water system. A common task, a common enemy.

Harry had a strong suspicion Professor Quirrell had understood this principle very well indeed when he had chosen to create
three
armies per year.

Three
armies.

Not
four
.

And definitely
not
segregated by House… except that no Slytherins had been assigned to Draco besides Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle.

It was things like this which reassured Harry that Professor Quirrell, despite his affected Dark atmosphere and his pretense of neutrality in the conflict between Good and Evil, was secretly backing Good, not that Harry would ever dare say that out loud.

And Harry had decided to take full advantage of Professor Quirrell’s plan to define a group identity
his
way.

The Rattlers, once they’d met the Eagles, had started thinking of themselves as rough-and-tough, and they’d conducted themselves accordingly.

The Eagles had thought of themselves as good-and-proper.

And in that bright forest clearing, scattered around the old and rotting tree stumps, outlined in the sun shining down brilliantly from above, General Potter and his twenty-three soldiers were arranged in nothing remotely resembling a formation. Some soldiers stood, some soldiers sat, some stood on one leg just to be different.

It was the
Chaos
Legion, after all.

And if there wasn’t a
reason
to stand in neat little lines, Harry had said disdainfully, there weren’t going to be neat little lines.

Harry had divided the army into 6 squads of 4 soldiers each, each squad commanded by a Squad Suggester. All troops were under strict orders to disobey any orders they were given if it seemed like a good idea at the time, including that one… unless Harry or the Squad Suggester prefixed the order with “Merlin says”, in which case you were supposed to actually obey.

The Chaos Legion’s chief attack was to split up and run in from multiple directions, randomly changing vectors and firing the approved sleep spell as rapidly as you could rebuild the magical strength. And if you saw a chance to distract or confuse the enemy, you took it.

Fast. Creative. Unpredictable. Non-homogenous. Don’t just obey orders, think about whether what you’re doing
right now
makes sense.

Harry wasn’t quite as sure as he’d pretended that this was the optimum of military efficiency… but he’d been given a golden opportunity to change how some students
thought about themselves,
and that was how he intended to use it.

Five minutes to wartime, according to Harry’s watch.

General Potter walked (not marched) over to where his air force was waiting tensely, broomsticks already clutched firmly in their hands.

“All wings report in,” said General Potter. They’d rehearsed this during their one training session on Saturday.

“Red Leader standing by,” said Seamus Finnigan, who had no idea what it meant.

“Red Five standing by,” said Dean Thomas, who’d waited his entire life to say it.

“Green Leader standing by,” Theodore Nott said rather stiffly.

“Green Forty-One standing by,” Tracey Davis said.

“I want you in the air the instant we hear the bell,” said General Potter. “Do not engage, repeat, do not engage. Evade if under fire.” (Of course you did
not
aim sleep spells at broomsticks; you fired a spell that gave a temporary red glow to whatever it hit. If you hit the broomstick or the rider, they were out of the war.) “Red Leader and Red Five, fly toward Malfoy’s army as fast as you can, stay as high as you can while still seeing them, return the instant you know for sure what they’re doing. Green Leader, do the same for Granger’s army. Green Forty-One, fly above us and watch for any approaching broomsticks or soldiers, you and only you are authorized to fire. And remember, I didn’t say ‘Merlin says’ for any of that, but we
do
really need the information. For Chaos!”

“For Chaos!” the four echoed with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Harry expected Hermione to launch an immediate attack on Draco, in which case he’d move his troops into position and start supporting her, but only after she’d taken severe losses and caused some damage. He would frame it as a heroic rescue, if possible; it wouldn’t do to have Sunshine thinking that Chaos wasn’t their friend, after all.

But just in case she
didn’t
… well, that was why the Chaos Legion was staying put until Green Leader reported back.

Draco’s moves would be in his own self-interest. He would predictably ready his army to defend against Hermione; he might or might not realize that Harry had been lying about waiting to attack until after that battle finished. Harry had still put two broomsticks on Dragon Army, just in case they
were
doing something, and just in case Draco or Mr. Goyle or Mr. Crabbe was good enough to shoot a broomstick out of the sky.

But General Granger was the unpredictable one, and Harry couldn’t move until he knew how she was moving.

In the heart of the forest, with shadow patterns dancing on the ground as leafy canopies swayed high above, General Malfoy stood where the trees were relatively sparser, and looked out on his troops with calm satisfaction. Six units of three troops each, the Aerial Unit of four (to which Gregory was assigned), and the Command Unit, which was himself and Vincent. They’d only drilled for a short time on the previous Saturday, but Draco was confident that he’d managed to explain the basics. Stay with your mates, watch their back and trust them to watch yours. Move as a single body. Obey orders and show no fear. Aim, fire, move, aim again, fire again.

The six units were formed up in a defensive perimeter around Draco, watchfully gazing outward into the forest. Back-to-back they stood, wands gripped low until they needed to strike.

They already looked remarkably like the Auror units whose training Draco had watched during his father’s inspections.

Chaos and Sunshine weren’t going to know what hit them.

“Attention,” said General Malfoy.

The six units unfolded and spun toward Draco; the faces of his broomstick riders turned from where they stood with broomsticks already in hand.

Draco had decided to wait on demanding salutes until after they won their first battle, when Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs would be more willing to salute a Malfoy.

But his soldiers were already standing straight enough, especially the Gryffindors, that Draco wondered if he’d even needed to delay. Gregory had quietly listened, and reported back that Draco’s volunteering to stand by Harry Potter in Defense class, that time when Professor Quirrell had taught Harry how to lose, had marked Draco as an acceptable commander. At least if you happened to be assigned to his army.
Not all Slytherins are alike; there are Slytherins, and then there are Slytherins
was what the Gryffindors in Draco’s army were quoting to their Housemates.

Draco was frankly
astounded
at how incredibly
easy
that had been. Draco had protested at first about not being assigned any Slytherins, and Professor Quirrell had told him that if he wanted to be the first Malfoy to gain complete political control of the country, he needed to learn how to govern the other three-quarters of the population. It was things like this which reassured Draco that Professor Quirrell had a great deal more sympathy for the good guys than Professor Quirrell was letting on.

The actual battle wouldn’t be easy, especially if Granger did attack the Dragons first. Draco had agonized over whether to commit all his forces against Granger immediately in a preemptive strike, but had worried that (1) Harry had been misleading him completely about what Granger was likely to do, and (2) Harry had been misleading him about waiting until after Granger’s attack to join the battle.

Though Dragon Army had a secret weapon, three of them in fact, which might be enough to win even if they were attacked by both armies at once…

It was almost time, and that meant it was time for the pre-battle speech that Draco had composed and memorized.

“The battle is about to begin,” Draco said. His voice was calm and precise. “Remember everything that I and Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle showed you. An army wins because it is disciplined and deadly. General Potter and the Chaos Legion will not be disciplined. Granger and the Sunshine Regiment will not be deadly. We are disciplined, we are deadly, we are Dragons. The battle is about to begin, and we are about to win it.”