Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Harry was swallowing hard, trying to suppress the sudden surge of emotion that had overcome him when Professor Quirrell had begun speaking. The precise tones reminded him very much of a lecturer at Oxford, and it was starting to hit home that Harry wasn't going to see his home or his Mum or his Dad until Christmas.

  "You are accustomed to the Defence position being filled by incompetents, scoundrels, and the unlucky. To anyone with a sense of history, it bears another reputation entirely. Not everyone who teaches here has been the best, but the best have all taught at Hogwarts. In such august company, and after so much time anticipating this day, I would be ashamed to set myself any standard lower than perfection. And so I do intend that every one of you will always remember this year as the best Defence class that you have ever had. What you learn this year will forever serve as your firm foundation in the arts of Defence, no matter who your teachers before and after."

  Professor Quirrell's expression grew serious. "We have a great deal of lost ground to make up and not much time to cover it. Therefore I intend to depart from Hogwarts teaching conventions in a number of respects, as well as introducing some optional after-school activities." He paused. "If that is not sufficient, perhaps I can find new ways to motivate you. You are my long-awaited students, and you will do your very best in my long-awaited Defence class. I would add some sort of dreadful threat, like 'Otherwise you will suffer horribly', but that would be so cliched, don't you think? I pride myself on being more imaginative than that. Thank you."

  Then the vigour and confidence seemed to drain away from Professor Quirrell. His mouth gaped open as if he had suddenly found himself facing an unexpected audience, and he turned with a convulsive jerk and shuffled back to his seat, hunched over as if he was about to collapse in on himself and implode.

  "He seems a little odd," whispered Harry.

  "Meh," said the older-looking student. "You ain't seen nothin'."

  Dumbledore resumed the podium.

  "And now," said Dumbledore, "before we go to bed, let us sing the school song! Everyone pick their favourite tune and favourite words, and off we go!"

  Chapter 13: Asking the Wrong Questions

  Elen sila J. K. Rowling omentielvo.

  EDIT: Don't panic. I solemnly swear that there is a logical, foreshadowed, canon-compliant explanation for everything which happens in this chapter. It's a puzzle, you're supposed to try to solve it, and if not, just read the next chapter.

  "That's one of the most obvious riddles I've ever heard."

  As soon as Harry opened his eyes in the Ravenclaw first-year boys' dormitory, on the morning of his first full day at Hogwarts, he knew something was wrong.

  It was quiet.

  Too quiet.

  Oh, right... There was a Quietus Charm on his bed's headboard, controlled by a small slider bar, which was the only reason it was ever possible for anyone to go to sleep in Ravenclaw.

  Harry sat up and looked around, expecting to see others rising for the day -

  The dorm, empty.

  The beds, rumpled and unmade.

  The sun, coming in at a rather high angle.

  His Quieter turned all the way up to maximum.

  And his mechanical alarm clock was still running, but the alarm was turned off.

  He'd been allowed to sleep until 9:52 AM, apparently. Despite his best efforts to synchronize his 26-hour sleep cycle to his arrival at Hogwarts, he hadn't gotten to sleep last night until around 1AM. He'd been planning to wake up at 7:00AM with the other students, he could stand being a little sleep-deprived his first day so long as he got some sort of magical fix before tomorrow. But now he'd missed breakfast. And his very first class at Hogwarts, in Herbology, had started one hour and twenty-two minutes ago.

  The anger was slowly, slowly wakening in him. Oh, what a nice little prank. Turn off his alarm. Turn up the Quieter. And let Mr. Bigshot Harry Potter miss his first class, and be blamed for being a heavy sleeper.

  When Harry found out who'd done this...

  No, this could only have been done with the cooperation of all twelve other boys in the Ravenclaw dorm. All of them would have seen his sleeping form. All of them had let him sleep through breakfast.

  The anger drained away, replaced by confusion and a horribly wounded feeling. They'd liked him. He'd thought. Last night, he'd thought they liked him. Why...

  As Harry stepped out of the bed, he saw a piece of paper facing out from his headboard.

  The paper said,

  My fellow Ravenclaws,

  It's been an extra long day. Please let me sleep in and don't worry about my missing breakfast. I haven't forgotten about my first class.

  Yours,

  Harry Potter.

  And Harry stood there, frozen, ice water beginning to trickle through his veins.

  The paper was in his own handwriting, in his own mechanical pencil.

  And he didn't remember writing it.

  And... Harry squinted at the piece of paper. And unless he was imagining it, the words "I haven't forgotten" were written in a different style, as if he was trying to tell himself something...?

  Had he known he was going to be Obliviated? Had he stayed up late, committed some sort of crime or covert activity, and then... but he didn't know the Obliviate spell... had someone else... what...

  A thought occurred to Harry. If he had known he was going to be Obliviated...

  Still in his pyjamas, Harry ran around his bed to his trunk, pressed his thumb against the lock, pulled out his pouch, stuck in his hand and said "Note to myself."

  And another piece of paper popped into his hand.

  Harry took it out, staring at it. It too was in his own handwriting.

  The note said:

  Dear Me,

  Please play the game. You can only play the game once in a lifetime. This is an irreplaceable opportunity.

  Recognition code 927, I am a potato.

  Yours,

  You.

  Harry nodded slowly. "Recognition code 927, I am a potato" was indeed the message he had worked out in advance - some years earlier, while watching TV - that only he would know. If he had to identify a duplicate of himself as being really him, or something. Just in case. Be Prepared.

  Harry couldn't trust the message, there might be other spells involved. But it ruled out any simple prank. He had definitely written this and he definitely didn't remember writing it.

  Staring at the paper, Harry became aware of ink showing through from the other side.

  He flipped it over.

  The reverse side read:

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE GAME:

  you do not know the rules of the game

  you do not know the stakes of the game

  you do not know the objective of the game

  you do not know who controls the game

  you do not know how to end the game

  You start with 100 points.

  Begin.

  Harry stared at the "instructions". This side wasn't handwritten; the writing was perfectly regular, hence artificial. It looked as if it had been inscribed by a Quotes Quill, such as the one he'd bought to take dictation.

  He had absolutely no clue what was going on.

  Well... step one was to get dressed and eat. Maybe reverse the order of that. His stomach felt rather empty.

  He'd missed breakfast, of course, but he was Prepared for that eventuality, having visualised it in advance. Harry put his hand into his pouch and said "Snack bars", expecting to get the box of cereal bars he'd bought before departing for Hogwarts.

  What popped up did not feel like a box of cereal bars.

  When Harry brought his hand into his field of vision he saw two tiny candy bars - not nearly enough for a meal - attached to a note, and the note was inscribed in the same writing as the game instructions.

  The note said:

  ATTEMPT FAILED: -1 POINT

  CURRENT POINTS: 99

  PHYSICAL STATE: STILL HUNGRY

  MENTAL STAT
E: CONFUSED

  "Gleehhhhh" Harry's mouth said without any sort of conscious intervention or decision on his part.

  He stood there for around a minute.

  One minute later, it still didn't make any sense and he still had absolutely no idea what was going on and his brain hadn't even begun to grasp at any hypotheses like his mental hands were encased in rubber balls and couldn't pick anything up.

  His stomach, which had its own priorities, suggested a possible experimental probe.

  "Ah..." Harry said to the empty room. "I don't suppose I could spend a point and get my box of cereal bars back?"

  There was only silence.

  Harry put his hand into the pouch and said "Box of cereal bars."

  A box that felt like the right shape popped up into his hand... but it was too light, and it was open, and it was empty, and the note attached to it said:

  POINTS SPENT: 1

  CURRENT POINTS: 98

  YOU HAVE GAINED: A BOX OF CEREAL BARS

  "I'd like to spend one point and get the actual cereal bars back," said Harry.

  Again, silence.

  Harry put his hand into the pouch and said "cereal bars".

  Nothing came up.

  Harry shrugged despairingly and went over to the cabinet he'd been given near his bed, to get his wizard's robes for the day.

  On the floor of the cabinet, under his robes, were the cereal bars, and a note:

  POINTS SPENT: 1

  CURRENT POINTS: 97

  YOU HAVE GAINED: 6 CEREAL BARS

  YOU ARE STILL WEARING: PYJAMAS

  DO NOT EAT WHILE YOU ARE WEARING YOUR PYJAMAS

  YOU WILL GET A PYJAMA PENALTY

  And now I know that whoever controls the game is insane.

  "My guess is that the game is controlled by Dumbledore," Harry said out loud. Maybe this time he could set a new land speed record for being quick on the uptake.

  Silence.

  But Harry was starting to pick up the pattern; the note would be in the next place he looked. So Harry looked under his bed.

  HA! HA HA HA HA HA!

  HA HA HA HA HA HA!

  HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

  DUMBLEDORE DOES NOT CONTROL THE GAME

  BAD GUESS

  VERY BAD GUESS

  -20 POINTS

  AND YOU ARE STILL WEARING PYJAMAS

  IT IS YOUR FOURTH MOVE

  AND YOU ARE STILL WEARING PYJAMAS

  PYJAMA PENALTY: -2 POINTS

  CURRENT POINTS: 75

  Welp, that was a puzzler, all right. It was only his first day at school and once you ruled out Dumbledore, he didn't know the name of anyone else here who was this crazy.

  His body more or less on autopilot, Harry gathered up a set of robes and underwear, pulled out the cavern level of his trunk (he was a very private sort of person and someone might walk into the dorm), got dressed, and then went back upstairs to put away his pyjamas.

  Harry paused before pulling out the cabinet drawer that held his pyjamas. If the pattern here held true...

  "How can I earn more points?" Harry said out loud.

  Then he pulled out the drawer.

  OPPORTUNITIES TO DO GOOD ARE EVERYWHERE

  BUT DARKNESS IS WHERE THE LIGHT NEEDS TO BE

  COST OF QUESTION: 1 POINT

  CURRENT POINTS: 74

  NICE UNDERWEAR

  DID YOUR MOTHER PICK THEM OUT?

  Harry crushed the note in his hand, face flaming scarlet. Draco's curse came back to him. Son of a mudblood -

  At this point he knew better than to say it out loud. He would probably get a Profanity Penalty.

  Harry girded himself with his mokeskin pouch and wand. He peeled off the wrapper of one his cereal bars and threw it into the room's rubbish bin, where it landed atop a mostly-uneaten Chocolate Frog, a crumpled envelope and some green and red wrapping paper. He put the other cereal bars into his mokeskin pouch.

  He looked around in a final, desperate, and ultimately futile search for clues.

  And then Harry left the dorm, eating as he went, in search of the Slytherin dungeons. At least that was what he thought the line was about.

  Trying to navigate the halls of Hogwarts was like... probably not quite as bad as wandering around inside an Escher painting, that was the sort of thing you said for rhetorical effect rather than for its being true.

  A short time later, Harry was thinking that in fact an Escher painting would have both pluses and minuses compared to Hogwarts. Minuses: No consistent gravitational orientation. Pluses: At least the stairs wouldn't move around WHILE YOU WERE STILL ON THEM.

  Harry had originally climbed four flights of stairs to get to his dorm. After clambering down no fewer than twelve flights of stairs without getting anywhere near the dungeons, Harry had concluded that (1) an Escher painting would be a cakewalk by comparison, (2) he was somehow higher in the castle than when he'd started, and (3) he was so thoroughly lost that he wouldn't have been surprised to look out of the next window and see two moons in the sky.

  Backup plan A had been to stop and ask for directions, but there seemed to be an extreme lack of people wandering around, as if the beggars were all attending class the way they were supposed to or something.

  Backup plan B...

  "I'm lost," Harry said out loud. "Can, um, the spirit of the Hogwarts castle help me or something?"

  "I don't think this castle has a spirit," observed a wizened old lady in one of the paintings on the walls. "Life, perhaps, but not spirit."

  There was a brief pause.

  "Are you -" Harry said, and then shut his mouth. On second thought, no he was NOT going to ask the painting whether it was fully conscious in the sense of being aware of its own awareness.

  "I'm Harry Potter," said his mouth, more or less on autopilot. Also more or less automatically, Harry stuck out a hand towards the painting.

  The woman in the painting looked down at Harry's hand and raised her eyebrows.

  Slowly, the hand dropped back to Harry's side.

  "Sorry," Harry said, "I'm sort of new here."

  "So I perceive, young raven. Where are you trying to go?"

  Harry hesitated. "I'm not really sure," he said.

  "Then perhaps you are already there."

  "Well, wherever I am trying to go, I don't think this is it..." Harry shut his mouth, aware of just how much he was sounding like an idiot. "Let me start over. I'm playing this game only I don't know what the rules are -" That didn't really work either, did it. "Okay, third try. I'm looking for opportunities to do good so I can score points, and all I have is this cryptic hint about how darkness is where the light needs to be, so I was trying to go down but I seem to keep going up instead..."

  The old lady in the painting was looking at him rather sceptically.

  Harry sighed. "My life tends to get a bit peculiar."

  "Would it be fair to say that you don't know where you're going or why you're trying to get there?"

  "Entirely fair."

  The old lady nodded. "I'm not sure that being lost is your most important problem, young man."

  "True, but unlike the more important problems, it's a problem I can understand how to solve and wow is this conversation turning into a metaphor for human existence, I didn't even realise that was happening until just now."

  The lady eyed Harry appraisingly. "You are a fine young raven, aren't you? For a moment I was starting to wonder. Well then, as a general rule, if you keep on turning left, you're bound to keep going down."

  That sounded strangely familiar but Harry couldn't recall where he'd heard it before. "Um... you seem like a very intelligent person. Or a picture of a very intelligent person... anyway, have you heard of a mysterious game where you can only play once, and they won't tell you the rules?"

  "Life," said the lady at once. "That's one of the most obvious riddles I've ever heard."

  Harry blinked. "No," he said slowly. "I mean I got an actual note and everything saying that I had to play the
game but I wouldn't be told the rules, and someone is leaving me little slips of paper telling me how many points I've lost for violating the rules, like a minus two point penalty for wearing pyjamas. Do you know anyone here at Hogwarts who's crazy enough and powerful enough to do something like that? Besides Dumbledore, I mean?"

  The picture of a lady sighed. "I'm only a picture, young man. I remember Hogwarts as it was - not Hogwarts as it is. All I can tell you is that if this were a riddle, the answer would be that the game is life, and that while we do not make all the rules ourselves, the one who awards or takes points is always you. If it is not riddle but reality - then I do not know."

  Harry bowed very low to the picture. "Thank you, milady."

  The lady curtseyed to him. "I wish I could say that I'll remember you with fondness," she said, "but I probably won't remember you at all. Farewell, Harry Potter."

  He bowed again in reply, and started to climb down the nearest flight of stairs.

  Four left turns later he found himself staring down a corridor that ended, abruptly, in a tumbled mound of large rocks - as if there had been a cave-in, only the surrounding walls and ceiling were intact and made of quite regular castle stones.