Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Shut up. If you ever want to vote on anything ever again... shut up.

  Aftermath, Amelia Bones:

  "Then his life isn't in danger, I take it," said Amelia.

  The healer, a stern-eyed old man who wore his robes white (he was a Muggleborn and honoring some strange tradition of Muggles, of which Amelia had never asked, although privately she thought it made him look too much like a ghost), shook his head and said, "Definitely not."

  Amelia looked at the human form resting unconscious on the healer's bed, the burned and blasted flesh, the thin sheet that covered him for modesty's sake having been peeled back at her command.

  He might make a full recovery.

  He might not.

  The healer had said it was too early to say.

  Then Amelia looked at the other witch in the room, the detective.

  "And you say," Amelia said, "that the burning matter was Transfigured from water, presumably in the form of ice."

  The detective nodded her head, and said, sounding puzzled, "It could have been much worse, if not for -"

  "How very nice of them," she spat, and then pressed a weary hand to her forehead. No... no, it had been intended as a kindness. By the final stage of the escape there would be no point in trying to fool anyone. Whoever had done this, then, had been trying to mitigate the damage - and they'd been thinking in terms of Aurors breathing the smoke, not of anyone being attacked with the fire. If it had been them still in control, no doubt, they would have steered the rocker more mercifully.

  But Bellatrix Black had ridden the rocker out of Azkaban alone, all the watching Aurors had agreed on that, they'd had their Anti-Disillusionment Charms active and there had been only one woman on that rocker, though the rocker had sported two sets of stirrups.

  Some good and innocent person, capable of casting the Patronus Charm, had been tricked into rescuing Bellatrix Black.

  Some innocent had fought Bahry One-Hand, carefully subduing an experienced Auror without significantly injuring him.

  Some innocent had Transfigured the fuel for the Muggle artifact on which the two of them had been to ride out of Azkaban, making it from frozen water for the benefit of her Aurors.

  And then their usefulness to Bellatrix Black had ended.

  You would have expected anyone capable of subduing Bahry One-Hand to have foreseen that part. But then you wouldn't have expected anyone who could cast the Patronus Charm to try rescuing Bellatrix Black in the first place.

  Amelia passed her hand down over her eyes, closing them for a moment in silent mourning. I wonder who it was, and how You-Know-Who manipulated them... what story they could possibly have been told...

  She didn't even realize until a moment later that the thought meant she was starting to believe. Perhaps because, no matter how difficult it was to believe Dumbledore, it was becoming more difficult not to recognize the hand of that cold, dark intelligence.

  Aftermath, Albus Dumbledore:

  It might have been only fifty-seven seconds before breakfast ended and he might have needed four twists of his Time-Turner, but in the end, Albus Dumbledore did make it.

  "Headmaster?" squeaked the polite voice of Professor Filius Flitwick, as the old wizard passed him by on his way to his seat. "Mr. Potter left a message for you."

  The old wizard stopped. He looked inquiringly at the Charms Professor.

  "Mr. Potter said that after he woke up, he realized how unfair had been the things he said to you after Fawkes screamed. Mr. Potter said that he wasn't saying anything about anything else, just apologizing for that one part."

  The old wizard kept looking at his Charms Professor, and still did not speak.

  "Headmaster?" squeaked Filius.

  "Tell him I said thank you," said Albus Dumbledore, "but that it is wiser to listen to phoenixes than to wise old wizards," and sat down at his place three seconds before all the food vanished.

  Aftermath, Professor Quirrell:

  "No," Madam Pomfrey snapped at the child, "you may not see him! You may not pester him! You may not ask him one little question! He is to rest in bed and do nothing for at least three days!"

  Aftermath, Minerva McGonagall:

  She was heading toward the infirmary, and Harry Potter was leaving it, when they passed each other.

  The look he gave her wasn't angry.

  It wasn't sad.

  It didn't say much at all.

  It was like... like he was looking at her just long enough to make it clear that he wasn't deliberately avoiding looking at her.

  And then he looked away before she could figure out what look to give him in return; as though he wanted to spare her that, as well.

  He didn't say anything as he walked past her.

  Neither did she.

  What could there possibly be to say?

  Aftermath, Fred and George Weasley:

  They actually yelped out loud, when they turned the corner and saw Dumbledore.

  It wasn't that the Headmaster had popped up out of nowhere and was staring at them with a stern expression. Dumbledore was always doing that.

  But the wizard was dressed in formal black robes and looking very ancient and very powerful and he was giving the two of them a SHARP LOOK.

  "Fred and George Weasley!" spake Dumbledore in a Voice of Power.

  "Yes, Headmaster!" they said, snapping upright and giving him a crisp military salute they'd seen in some old pictures.

  "Hear me well! You are the friends of Harry Potter, is this so?"

  "Yes, Headmaster!"

  "Harry Potter is in danger. He must not go beyond the wards of Hogwarts. Listen to me, sons of Weasley, I beg you listen: you know that I am as Gryffindor as yourselves, that I too know there are higher rules than rules. But this, Fred and George, this one thing is of the most terrible importance, there must be no exception this time, small or great! If you help Harry to leave Hogwarts he may die! Does he send you on a mission, you may go, does he ask you to bring him items, you may help, but if he asks you to smuggle his own person out of Hogwarts, you must refuse! Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Headmaster!" They said it without even thinking, really, and then exchanged uncertain looks with each other -

  The bright blue eyes of the Headmaster were intent upon them. "No. Not without thinking. If Harry asks you to bring him out, you must refuse, if he asks you to tell him the way, you must refuse. I will not ask you to report him to me, for that I know you would never do. But beg him on my behalf to go to me, if it is of such importance, and I will guard him as he walks. Fred, George, I am sorry to strain your friendship so, but it is his life."

  The two of them looked at each other for a long while, not communicating, only thinking the same things at the same time.

  They looked back at Dumbledore.

  They said, with a chill running through them as they spoke the name, "Bellatrix Black."

  "You may safely assume," said the Headmaster, "that it is at least that bad."

  "Okay -"

  "- got it."

  Aftermath, Alastor Moody and Severus Snape:

  When Alastor Moody had lost his eye, he had commandeered the services of a most erudite Ravenclaw, Samuel H. Lyall, whom Moody mistrusted slightly less than average because Moody had refrained from reporting him as an unregistered werewolf; and he had paid Lyall to compile a list of every known magical eye, and every known hint to their location.

  When Moody had gotten the list back, he hadn't bothered reading most of it; because at the top of the list was the Eye of Vance, dating back to an era before Hogwarts, and currently in the possession of a powerful Dark Wizard ruling over some tiny forgotten hellhole that wasn't in Britain or anywhere else he'd have to worry about silly rules.

  That was how Alastor Moody had lost his left foot and acquired the Eye of Vance, and how the oppressed souls of Urulat had been liberated for a period of around two weeks before another Dark Wizard moved in on the power vacuum.

  He'd considered going after the Left
Foot of Vance next, but had decided against it after he realized that would be just what they were expecting.

  Now Mad-Eye Moody was turning slowly, always turning, surveying the graveyard of Little Hangleton. It should have been a lot gloomier, that place, but in the broad daylight it seemed like nothing but a grassy place marked by ordinary tombstones, demarcated by the chained twists of fragile, easily climbable metal that Muggles used instead of wards. (Moody could not comprehend what the Muggles were thinking on that score, if they were pretending to have wards, or what, and he had decided not to ask whether Muggle criminals respected the pretense.)

  Moody didn't actually need to turn to survey the graveyard.

  The Eye of Vance saw the full globe of the world in every direction around him, no matter where it was pointing.

  But there was no particular reason to let a former Death Eater like Severus Snape know that.

  Sometimes people called Moody 'paranoid'.

  Moody always told them to survive a hundred years of hunting Dark Wizards and then get back to him about that.

  Mad-Eye Moody had once worked out how long it had taken him, in retrospect, to achieve what he now considered a decent level of caution - weighed up how much experience it had taken him to get good instead of lucky - and had begun to suspect that most people died before they got there. Moody had once expressed this thought to Lyall, who had done some ciphering and figuring, and told him that a typical Dark Wizard hunter would die, on average, eight and a half times along the way to becoming 'paranoid'. This explained a great deal, assuming Lyall wasn't lying.

  Yesterday, Albus Dumbledore had told Mad-Eye Moody that the Dark Lord had used unspeakable dark arts to survive the death of his body, and was now awake and abroad, seeking to regain his power and begin the Wizarding War anew.

  Someone else might have reacted with incredulity.

  "I can't believe you lot never told me about this resurrection thing," Mad-Eye Moody said with considerable acerbity. "D'you realize how long it'll take me to do the grave of every ancestor of every Dark Wizard I've ever killed who could've been smart enough to make a horcrux? You're not just now doing this one, are you?"

  "I redose this one every year," Severus Snape said calmly, uncapping the third flask of what the man had claimed would be seventeen bottles, and beginning to wave his wand over it. "The other ancestral graves we've been able to locate were poisoned with only the long-lasting substances, since some of us have less free time than yourself."

  Moody watched the fluid spiraling out of the vial and vanishing, to appear within the bones where marrow had once been. "But you think it's worth the effort of the trap, instead of just Vanishing the bones."

  "He does have other avenues to life, should he perceive this one blocked," Snape said dryly, uncapping a fourth bottle. "And before you ask, it must be the original grave, the place of first burial, the bone removed during the ritual and not before. Thus he cannot have retrieved it earlier; and also there is no point in substituting the skeleton of a weaker ancestor. He would notice it had lost all potency."

  "Who else knows about this trap?" Moody demanded.

  "You. Me. The Headmaster. No one else."

  Moody snorted. "Pfah. Did Albus tell Amelia, Bartemius, and that McGonagall woman about the resurrection ritual?"

  "Yes -"

  "If Voldie finds out that Albus knows about the resurrection ritual and that Albus told them, Voldie'll figure that Albus told me, and Voldie knows I'd think of this." Moody shook his head in disgust. "What're these other ways Voldie could come back to life?"

  Snape's hand paused on the fifth bottle (it was all Disillusioned, of course, the whole operation was Disillusioned, but that meant less than nothing to Moody, it just marked you in his Eye's sight as trying-to-hide), and the former Death Eater said, "You don't need to know."

  "You're learning, son," said Moody with mild approval. "What's in the bottles?"

  Snape opened the fifth bottle, gestured with his wand to begin the substance flowing toward the grave, and said, "This one? A Muggle narcotic called LSD. A conversation yesterday put me in mind of Muggle things, and LSD seemed the most interesting option, so I hurried to obtain some. If it is incorporated into the resurrection potion, I suspect its effects will be permanent."

  "What does it do?" said Moody.

  "It is said that the effects are impossible to describe to anyone who has not used it," drawled Snape, "and I have not used it."

  Moody nodded approval as Snape opened the sixth flask. "What about that one?"

  "Love potion."

  "Love potion?" said Moody.

  "Not of the standard sort. It is meant to trigger a two-way bond with an unbearably sweet Veela woman named Verdandi who the Headmaster hopes might be able to redeem even him, if they truly loved each other."

  "Gah!" said Moody. "That bloody sentimental fool -"

  "Agreed," Severus Snape said calmly, his attention focused on his work.

  "Tell me you've at least got some Malaclaw venom in there."

  "Second flask."

  "Iocane powder."

  "Either the fourteenth or fifteenth bottle."

  "Bahl's Stupefaction," Moody said, naming an extremely addictive narcotic with interesting side effects on people with Slytherin tendencies; Moody had once seen an addicted Dark Wizard go to ridiculous lengths to get a victim to lay hands on a certain exact portkey, instead of just having someone toss the target a trapped Knut on their next visit to town; and after going to all that work, the addict had gone to the further effort to lay a second Portus, on the same portkey, which had, on a second touch, transported the victim back to safety. To this day, even taking the drug into account, Moody could not imagine what could have possibly been going through the man's mind at the time he had cast the second Portus.

  "Tenth vial," said Snape.

  "Basilisk venom," offered Moody.

  "What?" spat Snape. "Snake venom is a positive component of the resurrection potion! Not to mention that it would dissolve the bone and all the other substances! And where would we even get -"

  "Calm down, son, I was just checking to see if you could be trusted."

  Mad-Eye Moody continued his (secretly unnecessary) slow turning, surveying the graveyard, and the Potions Master continued pouring.

  "Hold on," Moody said suddenly. "How do you know this is really where -"

  "Because it says 'Tom Riddle' on the easily moved headstone," Snape said dryly. "And I have just won ten Sickles from the Headmaster, who bet you would think of that before the fifth bottle. So much for constant vigilance."

  There was a pause.

  "How long did it take Albus to reali-"

  "Three years after we learned of the ritual," said Snape, in a tone not quite like his usual sardonic drawl. "In retrospect, we should have consulted you earlier."

  Snape uncapped the ninth bottle.

  "We poisoned all the other graves as well, with long-lasting substances," remarked the former Death Eater. "It is possible that we are in the correct graveyard. He may not have planned this far ahead back when he was slaughtering his family, and he cannot move the grave itself -"

  "The true location doesn't look like a graveyard any more," Moody said flatly. "He moved all the other graves here and Memory-Charmed the Muggles. Not even Bellatrix Black would be told anything about that until just before the ritual started. No one knows the true location now except him."

  They continued their futile work.

  Aftermath, Blaise Zabini:

  The Slytherin common room could be accurately and precisely described as a remilitarized zone; the moment you stepped through the portrait hole you would see that the left half of the room was Definitely Not Talking to the right half and vice versa. It was very clear, it did not need to be explained to anyone, that you did not have the option of not taking sides.

  At a table in the exact middle of the room, Blaise Zabini sat by himself, smirking as he did his homework. He had a reputation now, and
meant to keep it.

  Aftermath, Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis:

  "You doing anything interesting today?" said Tracey.

  "Nope," said Daphne.

  Aftermath, Harry Potter:

  If you went high enough in Hogwarts, you didn't see many other people around, just corridors and windows and staircases and the occasional portrait, and now and then some interesting sight, such as a bronze statue of a furry creature like a small child, holding a peculiar flat spear...

  If you went high enough in Hogwarts, you didn't see many other people around, which suited Harry.

  There were much worse places to be trapped, Harry supposed. In fact you probably couldn't think of anywhere better to be trapped than an ancient castle with a fractal ever-changing structure that meant you couldn't ever run out of places to explore, full of interesting people and interesting books and incredibly important knowledge unknown to Muggle science.

  If Harry hadn't been told that he couldn't leave, he probably would've jumped at the chance to spend more time in Hogwarts, he would've plotted and connived to get it. Hogwarts was literally optimal, not in all the realms of possibility maybe, but certainly on the real planet Earth, it was the Maximum Fun Location.

  How could the castle and its grounds seem so much smaller, so much more confining, how could the rest of the world become so much more interesting and important, the instant Harry had been told that he wasn't allowed to leave? He'd spent months here and hadn't felt claustrophobic then.

  You know the research on this, observed some part of himself, it's just standard scarcity effects, like that time where as soon as a county outlawed phosphate detergents, people who'd never cared before drove to the next county in order to buy huge loads of phosphate detergent, and surveys showed that they rated phosphate detergents as gentler and more effective and even easier-pouring... and if you give two-year-olds a choice between a toy in the open and one protected by a barrier they can go around, they'll ignore the toy in the open and go for the one behind the barrier... salespeople know that they can sell things just by telling the customer it might not be available... it was all in Cialdini's book Influence, everything you're feeling right now, the grass is always greener on the side that's not allowed.