Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  And the Harry who knew nothing said just what an innocent Harry would have said, while the silent watcher screamed in confusion and agony.

  "You're saying," Harry said, his voice shaking as the emotions inside burned through the outer calm, "that I'm not going home to my parents for Easter."

  "You will see them again," the old wizard said swiftly. "I will beg them to come here to be with you, I will extend them every courtesy during their visits. But you are not going home for Easter, Harry. You are not going home for the summer. You are no longer taking lunches in Diagon Alley, even with Professor Quirrell to watch you. Your blood is the second requisite Voldemort needs to rise as strong as before. So you are never again leaving the bounds of Hogwarts's wards without a vital reason, and a guard strong enough to fend off any attack for long enough to get you to safety. "

  Water was beginning at the corners of Harry's eyes. "Is that a request?" said his quavering voice. "Or an order?"

  "I'm sorry, Harry," the old wizard said softly. "Your parents will see the necessity, I hope; but if not... I am afraid they have no recourse; the law, however wrongly, does not recognize them as your guardians. I am sorry, Harry, and I will understand if you despise me for it, but it must be done."

  Harry whirled, looked at the door, he couldn't look at Dumbledore any more, couldn't trust his own face.

  This is the cost to yourself, said Hufflepuff within his mind, even as you imposed costs on others. Will that change your whole view of the matter, the way Professor Quirrell thinks it will?

  Automatically, the mask of the innocent Harry said exactly what it would have said: "Are my parents in danger? Do they need to be moved here?"

  "No," said the old wizard's voice. "I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order's families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try."

  Harry turned back then, and saw a coldness on the old wizard's face to match the shift in his voice, Dumbledore's blue eyes grown hard as steel behind the glasses, it didn't match the person but it matched the formal black robes.

  "Is that everything, then?" said Harry's trembling voice. Later he would think about this, later he would think of some cunning countermeasure, later he would ask Professor Quirrell if there was any way to convince the Headmaster he was mistaken. Right now, maintaining the mask was taking all of Harry's attention.

  "Voldemort used a Muggle artifact to escape Azkaban," the old wizard said. "He is watching you and learning from you, Harry Potter. Soon a man named Arthur Weasley at the Ministry will issue an edict that all use of Muggle artifacts must cease in the Defense Professor's battles. In the future, when you have a good idea, keep it closer about yourself."

  It didn't seem important by comparison. Harry just nodded, and said again, "Is that everything?"

  There was a pause.

  "Please," said the old wizard in a whisper. "I have no right to ask your forgiveness, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, but please, at least say that you understand why." There was water in the old wizard's eyes.

  "I understand," said the voice of the outer Harry who did understand, "I mean... I was sort of thinking about it anyway... wondering whether I could get you and my parents to let me stay over at Hogwarts during the summer like the orphans, so I could read the library here, it's just more interesting at Hogwarts anyway..."

  A choking sound came from Albus Dumbledore's throat.

  Harry turned again toward the door. It wasn't escape unscathed, but it was escape.

  He took a step forward.

  His hand reached to the door-handle.

  A piercing cry split the air -

  As though in slow motion, as Harry spun, he saw the phoenix already launched through the air and winging toward him.

  From the true Harry, the one who knew his own guilt, came a flash of panic, he hadn't thought of that, hadn't anticipated it, he'd prepared to face Dumbledore but he'd forgotten about Fawkes -

  Flap, flap, and flap, three times the phoenix's wings flapped like the flaring up and dying down of a fire, duration seemed to pass too slowly as Fawkes soared over the mysterious devices toward where Harry stood.

  And the red-golden bird was hovering in front of him with gentle wing-sweeps, bobbing in the air like a candle-flame.

  "What is it, Fawkes?" said the false Harry in puzzlement, looking the phoenix in the eyes, as he would if he were innocent. The real Harry, feeling the same awful sickness inside as when Professor McGonagall had expressed her trust in him, thought, Did I turn evil today, Fawkes? I didn't think I was evil... Do you hate me now? If I've become something a phoenix hates, maybe I should just give it up now, give up everything now and confess -

  Fawkes screamed, the most terrible cry Harry had ever heard, a scream that set all the devices vibrating and made all the sleeping figures start within their portraits.

  It pierced through all of Harry's defenses like a white-hot sword through butter, collapsed all his layers like a punctured balloon popping, reshuffled his priorities in an instant as he remembered the one most important thing; the tears began pouring freely from Harry's eyes, down his cheeks, his voice choked as the words came out of his throat like coughing up lava -

  "Fawkes says," Harry's voice said, "he wants me, to do, something, about, the prisoners, in Azkaban -"

  "Fawkes, no!" said the old wizard. Dumbledore strode forward, reaching out to the phoenix with a pleading hand. The old wizard's voice was almost as desperate as the phoenix's scream had been. "You cannot ask that of him, Fawkes, he's only a boy still!"

  "You went to Azkaban," Harry whispered, "you took Fawkes with you, he saw - you saw - you were there, you saw - WHY DIDN'T YOU DO ANYTHING? WHY DIDN'T YOU LET THEM OUT?"

  When the instruments stopped vibrating, Harry realized that Fawkes had screamed at the same time as his own scream, that the phoenix was now flying next to Harry and facing Dumbledore at his side, the red-golden head level with his own.

  "Can you," whispered the old wizard, "can you truly hear the voice of the phoenix so clearly?"

  Harry was sobbing almost too hard to speak, for all the metal doors he'd passed, the voices he'd heard, the worst memories, the desperate begging as he walked away, all of it had burst into his mind like fire at the phoenix's scream, all the inner bulwarks smashed. Harry didn't know whether he could truly hear the voice of the phoenix so clearly, whether he would have understood Fawkes without already knowing. All Harry knew was that he had a plausible excuse to say the things Professor Quirrell had told him he must never raise in conversation from this day forth; because this was just what an innocent Harry would have said, would have done, if he had heard so clearly. "They're hurting - we have to help them -"

  "I can't!" cried Albus Dumbledore. "Harry, Fawkes, I can't, there's nothing I can do!"

  Another piercing scream.

  "WHY NOT? JUST GO IN AND TAKE THEM OUT!"

  The old wizard wrenched his gaze from the phoenix, his eyes meeting Harry's instead. "Harry, tell Fawkes for me! Tell him it's not that simple! Phoenixes aren't mere animals but they are animals, Harry, they can't understand -"

  "I don't understand either," Harry said, his voice trembling. "I don't understand why you're feeding people to Dementors! Azkaban isn't a prison, it's a torture chamber and you're torturing those people to DEATH!"

  "Percival," said the old wizard hoarsely, "Percival Dumbledore, my own father, Harry, my own father died in Azkaban! I know, I know it is a horror! But what would you have of me? To break Azkaban by force? Would you have me declare open rebellion against the Ministry?"

  CAW!

  There was a pause, and Harry's trembling voice said, "Fawkes doesn't know anything about governments, he just wants you - to take the prisoners out - of their cells - and he'll help you fig
ht, if anyone stands in your way - and - and so will I, Headmaster! I'll go with you and destroy any Dementor that comes near! We'll worry about the political fallout afterward, I bet that you and I together could get away with it -"

  "Harry," whispered the old wizard, "phoenixes do not understand how winning a battle can lose a war." Tears were streaming down the old wizard's cheeks, dripping into his silver beard. "The battle is all they know. They are good, but not wise. That is why they choose wizards to be their masters."

  "Can you bring out the Dementors to where I can get at them?" Harry's voice was begging, now. "Bring them out in groups of fifteen - I think I could destroy that many at a time without hurting myself -"

  The old wizard shook his head. "It was hard enough to pass off the loss of one - they might give me one more, but never two - they are considered national possessions, Harry, weapons in case of war -"

  Fury blazed in Harry then, blazed up like fire, it might have come from where a phoenix now rested on his own shoulder, and it might have come from his own dark side, and the two angers mixed within him, the cold and the hot, and it was a strange voice that said from his throat, "Tell me something. What does a government have to do, what do the voters have to do with their democracy, what do the people of a country have to do, before I ought to decide that I'm not on their side any more?"

  The old wizard's eyes widened where he stared at the boy with a phoenix upon his shoulder. "Harry... are those your words, or the Defense Professor's -"

  "Because there has to be some point, doesn't there? And if it's not Azkaban, where is it, then?"

  "Harry, listen, please, hear me! Wizards could not live together if they each declared rebellion against the whole, every time they differed! Always there will be something -"

  "Azkaban is not just something! It's evil!"

  "Yes, even evil! Even some evils, Harry, for wizards are not perfectly good! And yet it is better that we live in peace, than in chaos; and for you and I to break Azkaban by force would be the beginning of chaos, can you not see it?" The old wizard's voice was pleading. "And it is possible to oppose the will of your fellows openly or in secret, without hating them, without declaring them evil and enemy! I do not think the people of this country deserve that of you, Harry! And even if some of them did - what of the children, what of the students in Hogwarts, what of the many good people mixed in with the bad?"

  Harry looked on his shoulder at where Fawkes had perched, saw the phoenix's eyes gazing back at him, they did not glow and yet they blazed, red flames in a sea of golden fire.

  What do you think, Fawkes?

  "Caw?" said the phoenix.

  Fawkes didn't understand the conversation.

  The young boy looked at the old wizard, and said in a thick voice, "Or maybe the phoenixes are wiser than us, smarter than us, maybe they follow us around hoping that someday we'll listen to them, someday we'll get it, someday we'll just take, the prisoners, out, of their cells -"

  Harry spun and pulled open the oaken door and stepped onto the staircase and slammed the door behind him.

  The stairwell began rotating, Harry began descending, and he put his face in his hands, and began to weep.

  It wasn't until he was halfway to the bottom that he noticed the difference, noticed the warmth still spreading through him, and realized that -

  "Fawkes?" Harry whispered.

  - the phoenix was still on his shoulder, perched there as he had seen him a few times upon Dumbledore's.

  Harry looked again into the eyes, red flames in golden fire.

  "You're not my phoenix now... are you?"

  Caw!

  "Oh," Harry said, his voice trembling a little, "I'm glad to hear that, Fawkes, because I don't think - the Headmaster - I don't think he deserves -"

  Harry stopped, took a breath.

  "I don't think he deserves that, Fawkes, he was trying to do the right thing..."

  Caw!

  "But you're angry at him and trying to make a point. I understand."

  The phoenix nestled his head against Harry's shoulder, and the stone gargoyle walked smoothly aside to let Harry pass back into the corridors of Hogwarts.

  Chapter 63: TSPE, Aftermaths

  Aftermath, Hermione Granger:

  She was just starting to close up her books and put away her homework in preparation for sleep, Padma and Mandy stacking up their own books across the table from her, when Harry Potter walked into the Ravenclaw common room; and it was only then that she realized, she hadn't seen him at all since breakfast.

  That realization was rapidly stomped-on by a much more startling one.

  There was a golden-red winged creature on Harry's shoulder, a bright bird of fire.

  And Harry looked sad and worn and really tired like the phoenix was the only thing keeping him on his feet, but there was still a warmth about him, if you crossed your eyes you might have thought you were looking at the Headmaster somehow, that was the impression that went through Hermione's mind even though it didn't make any sense.

  Harry Potter trudged across the Ravenclaw common room, past sofas full of staring girls, past cardgame-circles of staring boys, heading for her.

  In theory she wasn't talking to Harry Potter yet, his week wasn't up until tomorrow, but whatever was going on was clearly a whole lot more important than that -

  "Fawkes," Harry said, just as she was opening her mouth, "that girl over there is Hermione Granger, she's not talking to me right now because I'm an idiot, but if you want to be on a good person's shoulder she's better than me."

  So much exhaustion and hurt in Harry Potter's voice -

  But before she could figure out what to do about it, the phoenix had glided off Harry's shoulder like a fire creeping up a matchstick on fast-forward, flashing toward her; there was a phoenix flying in front of her and staring at her with eyes of light and flame.

  "Caw?" asked the phoenix.

  Hermione stared at it, feeling like she was facing a question on a test she'd forgotten to study for, the one most important question and she'd gone her whole life without studying for it, she couldn't find anything to say.

  "I'm -" she said. "I'm only twelve, I haven't done anything yet -"

  The phoenix just glided gently around, rotating around one wingtip like the being of light and air that it was, and soared back to Harry Potter's shoulder, where it settled down quite firmly.

  "You silly boy," said Padma across from her, looking like she was deciding whether to laugh or grimace, "phoenixes aren't for smart girls who do their homework, they're for idiots who charge straight at five older Slytherin bullies. There's a reason why the Gryffindor colors are red and gold, you know."

  There was a lot of friendly laughter in the Ravenclaw common room.

  Hermione wasn't one of the laughing ones.

  Neither was Harry.

  Harry had put a hand over his face. "Tell Hermione I'm sorry," he said to Padma, his voice almost fallen to a whisper. "Tell her I forgot that phoenixes are animals, they don't understand time and planning, they don't understand people who are going to do good things later - I'm not sure they understand really the notion of there being something that a person is, all they see is what people do. Fawkes doesn't know what twelve means. Tell Hermione I'm sorry - I shouldn't have - it just all goes wrong, doesn't it?"

  Harry turned to go, the phoenix still on his shoulder, began slowly trudging toward the staircase that led up to his dorm.

  And Hermione couldn't leave it at that, she just couldn't leave it at that. She didn't know if it was her competition with Harry or something else. She just couldn't leave it with the phoenix turning away from her.

  She had to -

  Her mind keyed a frantic question to the entirety of her excellent memory, found just one thing -

  "I was going to run in front of the Dementor to try and save Harry!" she shouted a little desperately at the red-golden bird. "I mean, I actually did start running and everything! That was stupid and courageous, right?"


  With a warbling cry the phoenix launched itself from Harry's shoulder again, back toward her like a spreading blaze, it circled her three times like she was the center of an inferno, and for just a moment its wing brushed against her cheek, before the phoenix soared back to Harry.

  There was a hush in the Ravenclaw common room.

  "Told you so," Harry said aloud, and then he started climbing the stairs up to his bedroom; he seemed to climb very quickly, like he was very light on his feet for some reason, so that in just a moment he and Fawkes were gone.

  Hermione held up a trembling hand to her cheek where Fawkes had brushed her with his wing, a spot of warmth lingering there like that one small patch of skin had been very gently set on fire.

  She'd answered the question of the phoenix, she supposed, but it felt to her like she'd just barely squeaked by on the test, like she'd gotten a 62 and she could've gotten 104 if she'd tried harder.

  If she'd tried at all.

  She hadn't really been trying, when she thought about it.

  Just doing her homework -

  Who have you saved?

  Aftermath, Fawkes:

  Nightmares, the boy had expected, screams and begging and howling hurricanes of emptiness, the discharge of the horrors being laid down into memory, and in that fashion, perhaps, becoming part of the past.

  And the boy knew that the nightmares would come.

  The next night, they would come.

  The boy dreamed, and in his dreams the world was on fire, Hogwarts was on fire, his home was on fire, the streets of Oxford were on fire, all ablaze with golden flames that shone but did not consume, and all the people walking through the blazing streets were shining with white light brighter than the fire, like they were flames themselves, or stars.

  The other first-year boys came to bed, and saw it for themselves, the wonder whose rumor they had already heard, that in his bed Harry Potter lay silent and motionless, a gentle smile on his face, while perched on his pillow a red-golden bird watched over him, with bright wings swept above him like a blanket pulled over his head.