Harry Potter nodded gravely. "Right, some spells are impossible to block. I'll remember that, in case anyone casts the Killing Curse at me. Again."
"That kind of cleverness gets people killed, boy, and don't you forget it."
A sad-sounding sigh from the Boy-Who-Lived. "I know. Sorry."
"So, son. You had something to say about when Albus and I go after Lockhart?"
Harry opened his mouth, then paused. "I won't tell you how to run a war," the Boy-Who-Lived said eventually. "I don't have any experience at that. All I know is that there are consequences. Please be advised that my own assessment is that Lockhart is probably innocent, so if you can avoid hurting him without too much risk -" The boy shrugged. "I don't know the cost. Just please, if you can, be careful not to hurt him if he's innocent."
"If I can," said Moody.
"And - you're aiming to look through his mind for evidence about the Dark Lord, aren't you? I don't know what the rules are in magical Britain about admissible evidence - but everyone's always guilty of breaking some law or another, there's just too many laws. So if it's not about the Dark Lord, don't turn him in to the Ministry, just Obliviate him and go, okay?"
Moody frowned. "Son, nobody gains power that fast without being up to something."
"Then leave it for the ordinary Aurors, if and when they find evidence the ordinary way. Please, Mr. Moody. Call it a quirk of my Muggle upbringing, but if it's not about the war I don't want us to be the evil police who break into people's houses in the middle of the night, rummage through their minds and send them off to Azkaban."
"I don't see the sense of it, son, but I suppose I could do you the favor."
"Is there aught else, Alastor?" inquired Albus.
"Yes," said Moody. "About that Defense Professor of yours -"
Hypothesis: Gilderoy Lockhart: END
Hypothesis: Dumbledore
(April 9th, 1992, 5:32pm)
As Professor Quirrell slowly raised up his tea, the teacup jerked in midair, sending the dark translucent liquid just barely slopping over the side, so that only three single drops crawled down the side of the teacup. Harry would have missed it, if he hadn't happened to be watching closely; for Professor Quirrell's hand was perfectly steady on the cup before and after.
If that small jerky motion advanced to a constant tremor, it would be the end of any non-wandless magic for the Defense Professor. Wandwork had no room for trembling fingers. How much that would actually handicap Professor Quirrell, if at all, Harry couldn't guess. The Defense Professor was certainly capable of wandless magic, yet still tended to use a wand for larger things - but for him that might only be a convenience...
"Insanity," said Professor Quirrell, as he carefully sipped from his tea - he was looking at the teacup, not at Harry, which was unusual for him - "can be a signature all its own."
The Defense Professor's small office was silent, the sound-warded room quiet in a way the Headmaster's office never could be. Sometimes the two of them both happened to finish exhaling or inhaling at the same time; and then there was an auditory emptiness that was almost a sound in itself.
"I'll agree with that in one sense," Harry said. "If somebody tells me that everyone is staring at them and that their underwear is being dusted with thought-controlling powder, I know they're psychotic, because that's the standard signature of psychosis. But if you tell me that anything confusing points to Albus Dumbledore as a suspect, that seems... overreaching. Just because I can't see a purpose doesn't mean there is no purpose."
"Purposeless?" said Professor Quirrell. "Oh, but the madness of Dumbledore is not that he is purposeless, but that he has too many purposes. The Headmaster might have planned this to make Lucius Malfoy throw away his game for vengeance on you - or it might be a dozen other plots. Who knows what the Headmaster thinks he has reason to do, when he has found reason to do so many strange things already?"
Harry had politely declined tea, even knowing that Professor Quirrell would know what it meant. He'd considered bringing his own can of soda - but had decided against that as well, after realizing how easy it would be for the Defense Professor to teleport in a bit of potion, even if the two of them couldn't touch each other with direct magic.
"I have seen a little now of Dumbledore," Harry said. "Unless everything I have seen is a lie, I find it difficult to believe that he would plot to send any Hogwarts student to Azkaban. Ever."
"Ah," the Defense Professor said softly, the tiny reflection of the teacup gleaming in his pale eyes. "But perhaps that is another signature, Mr. Potter. You have not yet comprehended the perspective of a man like Dumbledore. If he must, in some sufficiently noble cause, sacrifice a student - why, who would he choose, but she who declared herself a heroine?"
That gave Harry some pause. It might just be hindsight bias, but that did seem to concentrate some of that hypotheses's probability mass onto framing Hermione in particular. Similarly, Professor Quirrell had predicted in advance that Dumbledore might target Draco...
But if it's you behind all of this, Professor, you might have shaped your plans to frame the Headmaster, and taken care to cast suspicion on him in advance.
The concept of 'evidence' had something of a different meaning, when you were dealing with someone who had declared themselves to play the game at 'one level higher than you'.
"I see your point, Professor," Harry said evenly, giving no hint of his other thoughts. "So you think it most probable that it was the Headmaster who framed Hermione?"
"Not necessarily, Mr. Potter." Professor Quirrell drained his teacup in one swallow and then set it down, the cup making a sharp rap as it descended. "There is also Severus Snape - though what he might think to gain from this, I could not guess. Thus he is not my prime suspect either."
"Then who is?" Harry said, somewhat puzzled. Professor Quirrell surely wasn't about to reply 'You-Know-Who' -
"The Aurors have a rule," said Professor Quirrell. "Investigate the victim. Many would-be criminals imagine that if they are the apparent victims of a crime, they shall not be suspected. So many criminals imagine it, indeed, that every senior Auror has seen it a dozen times over."
"You're not seriously trying to convince me that Hermione -"
The Defense Professor was giving Harry one of those slit-eyed looks that meant he was being stupid.
Draco? Draco had been interrogated under Veritaserum - but Lucius might have had enough control to subvert Aurors to... oh.
"You think Lucius Malfoy set up his own son?" Harry said.
"Why not?" Professor Quirrell said softly. "From Mr. Malfoy's recorded testimony, Mr. Potter, I gather that you enjoyed some success in changing Mr. Malfoy's political views. If Lucius Malfoy learned of that earlier... he might have decided that his former heir had become a liability."
"I don't buy it," Harry said flatly.
"You are being wantonly naive, Mr. Potter. The history books are full of family disputes turned murderous, for inconveniences and threats far less than those which Mr. Malfoy posed to his father. I suppose next you will tell me that Lord Malfoy of the Death Eaters is far too gentle to wish his son such harm." A tinge of heavy sarcasm.
"Well, yes, frankly," Harry said. "Love is real, Professor, a phenomenon with observable effects. Brains are real, emotions are real, and love is as much a part of the real world as apples and trees. If you made experimental predictions without taking parental love into account, you'd have a heck of a time explaining why my own parents didn't abandon me at an orphanage after the Incident with the Science Project."
The Defense Professor did not react to this at all.
Harry continued. "From what Draco says, Lucius prioritized him over important Wizengamot votes. That's significant evidence, since there's less expensive ways to fake love, if you just want to fake it. And it's not like the prior probability of a parent loving their child is low. I suppose it's possible that Lucius was just taking on the role of a loving father, and he renounced that role after he learned
Draco was consorting with Muggleborns. But as the saying goes, Professor, one must distinguish possibility from probability."
"All the better the crime," the Defense Professor said, still in that soft tone, "if no one would believe it of him."
"And how would Lucius even Memory-Charm Hermione in the first place, without setting off the wards? He's not a Professor - oh, right, you think it's Professor Snape."
"Wrong," said the Defense Professor. "Lucius Malfoy would trust no servant with that mission. But suppose some Hogwarts Professor, intelligent enough to cast a well-formed Memory Charm but of no great fighting ability, is visiting Hogsmeade. From a dark alley the black-clad form of Malfoy steps forth - he would go in person, for this - and speaks to her a single word."
"Imperio."
"Legilimens, rather," said Professor Quirrell. "I do not know if the Hogwarts wards would trigger for a returning Professor under the Imperius Curse. And if I do not know, Malfoy probably does not know either. But Malfoy is a perfect Occlumens at least; he might be able to use Legilimency. And for the target...perhaps Aurora Sinistra; none would question the Astronomy Professor moving about at night."
"Or even more obviously, Professor Sprout," said Harry. "Since she's the last person anyone would suspect."
The Defense Professor hesitated minutely. "Perhaps."
"Actually," Harry said then, putting a thoughtful frown on his face, "I don't suppose you know offhand if any of the current Professors at Hogwarts were around back when Mr. Hagrid got framed in 1943?"
"Dumbledore taught Transfiguration, Kettleburn taught Magical Creatures, and Vector taught Arithmancy," Professor Quirrell said at once. "And I believe that Bathsheda Babbling, now of Ancient Runes, was then a Ravenclaw prefect. But Mr. Potter, there is no reason to suppose that anyone besides You-Know-Who was involved in that affair."
Harry shrugged artfully. "Seemed worth asking the question, just to check. Anyway, Professor, I agree it's possible that some outsider Legilimized a member of Hogwarts staff - and then Obliviated them afterward, there's no way anyone would forget that part. But I don't think Lucius Malfoy is a probable candidate for the mastermind. It's possible but not probable that all of Lucius's apparent love for Draco was just a sense of duty, and that it all went up in a puff of smoke. It's possible though not probable that everything Lucius did in front of the Wizengamot was just an act. People's outsides do not always resemble their insides, like you said. But there's one piece of evidence that doesn't fit at all."
"And that would be?" said the Defense Professor, his eyes half-lidded.
"Lucius tried to reject a hundred thousand Galleons for Hermione's life. I saw how surprised the Wizengamot was, when Lucius said he was refusing it despite the rules of honor. The Wizengamot didn't expect that of him. Why wouldn't he just take the money while acting all indignant and pretending to grit his teeth? He wouldn't actually care that much about throwing Hermione into Azkaban."
There was a pause. "Perhaps the role he was playing ran away with him," said Professor Quirrell. "It does happen, Mr. Potter, in the heat of the moment."
"Perhaps," Harry said. "But it's still one more improbability to be postulated - and by the time you have to add up that many excuses in a theory, it can't be at the top of the list anymore. Anything else in particular you think I ought to think about, within the range of all other possibilities?"
There was a long silence. The Defense Professor's eyes dropped down to look at the empty teacup before them, seeming unusually distant.
"I suppose I can think of one final suspect," the Defense Professor said at last.
Harry nodded.
The Defense Professor didn't seem to notice, but only spoke on. "Has the Headmaster has told you anything - even a hint - about Professor Trelawney's prophecy?"
"Huh?" Harry said automatically, converting his own sudden shock into the best dissembling he could manage. It probably was at the wrong level to fool Professor Quirrell but Harry certainly couldn't take time to think before replying - wait, but how on Earth would Professor Quirrell know about that - "Professor Trelawney made a prophecy?"
"You were there to hear its beginning," Professor Quirrell said, frowning. "You called out to the entire school that the prophecy could not be about you, since you were not coming here, you were already here."
HE IS COMING. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY -
And that was as far as Professor Trelawney had gotten before Dumbledore had grabbed her and vanished.
"Oh, that prophecy," Harry said. "Sorry! It went clear out of my mind."
Harry thought he'd put too much force into the end statement, and was 80%-expecting Professor Quirrell to say, Aha, now Mr. Potter, what is this mysterious other prophecy you went to such lengths to deny -
"That is foolish," the Defense Professor said sharply, "if indeed you are telling me the truth. Prophecies are not trivial things. I have racked my brain much over the little that I heard, but such a small fragment is simply too little."
"You think the one who's coming is the one who might've framed Hermione?" said Harry. As his mind allocated yet another hypothesis, uncertain predicate referent, he-who-is-coming.
"With no offense meant to Miss Granger," the Defense Professor said with another frown, "her life or death does not seem that important. But someone was to come - one who, in your interpretation, was not already there - and someone so significant, and unknown as a player... who knows what else they may have done?"
Harry nodded, and mentally sighed because he was going to have to redo his Lord-Voldemort odds calculation with yet another piece of evidence in the mix.
Professor Quirrell spoke with eyes half-lidded, looking out like through slits. "More than the question of whom the prophecy spoke - who was meant to hear it? It is said that fates are spoken to those with the power to cause them or avert them. Dumbledore. Myself. You. As a distant fourth, Severus Snape. But of those four, Dumbledore and Snape would often be in Trelawney's presence. You and I are the ones who would not have spent much time around her before that Sunday. I think it quite likely that the prophecy was meant for one of us - before Dumbledore took the prophetess away. Did the Headmaster say nothing more to you?" Professor Quirrell's voice was demanding now. "I thought I heard too much force in that denial, Mr. Potter."
"Honestly, no," Harry said. "It had honestly slipped clear out of my mind."
"Then I am rather put out with him," Professor Quirrell said softly. "In fact, I think that I am angry."
Harry said nothing. He didn't even sweat. It might've been a poor reason for confidence, but on this particular score, Harry did happen to be innocent.
Professor Quirrell nodded once, sharply, as though in acknowledgment. "If there is nothing more to say between us, Mr. Potter, you may go."
"I can think of one other suspect," Harry said. "Someone you didn't put on your list at all. Would you analyze him to me, Professor?"
There was another of those moments of silence that was almost a sound in itself.
"As for that suspect," the Defense Professor said softly, "I think you shall prosecute him on your own, Mr. Potter, without help from me. I have heard such requests before, and experience leads me to refuse. Either I will do too good a job of prosecuting myself, and convince you that I am guilty - or else you will decide that my prosecution was too half-hearted, and that I am guilty. I will remark only this in my defense - that I would have needed a very good reason indeed to jeopardize your fragile alliance with the heir to House Malfoy."
Hypothesis: The Defense Professor
(April 8th, 1992, 8:37pm)
"...so I fear I must take my leave," Dumbledore was saying gravely. "I promised Quirinus... that is to say, I promised the Defense Professor... that I would not make any attempt to uncover his true identity, in my own person or any other."
"And why'd you make a fool promise like that, then?" snapped Mad-Eye Moody.
"It was an unalterable condition of his employment, or so he said." Dumbl
edore glanced at Professor McGonagall, a wry smile briefly flitting over his face. "And Minerva made it clear to me that Hogwarts required a competent Defense Professor this year, even if I had to haul Grindelwald out of Nurmengard and prevail on old affections to persuade him to take the position."
"I did not quite phrase it in that fashion -"
"Your expression said it for you, my dear."
And so soon the four of them - Harry, Professor McGonagall, the Potions Master, and Alastor Moody aka 'Mad-Eye' - were ensconced all by themselves in the Headmaster's office.
It was strange how the Headmaster's office seemed... unbalanced... without the Headmaster in it. If you didn't have the ancient wizened master to make it all seem solemn, you were just four people trying to have a serious meeting while surrounded by bizarre, noisy gidgets. Clearly visible from where Harry had perched himself on his chair's arm was a truncated-conical object, like a cone with its top snipped off, slowly spinning around a pulsating central light which it shaded but did not obscure; and each time the inner light pulsated, the assembly made a vroop-vroop-vroop sound that sounded oddly distant, muffled like it was coming from behind four solid walls, even though the spinning-conical-section thingy was only a meter or two away.
Vroop... vroop... vroop...
And then there were the various still-breathing bodies of Harry Potter he'd stashed in one quiet corner, cleaning up a mess that was his own in more ways than one. (Only one body wasn't inside a copy of the Invisibility Cloak; but then it merely took a small effort of concentration for Harry to perceive his other selves beneath the Cloak of which he was master - an effort which Harry had carefully not put forth earlier, to avoid getting advance temporal information he wanted to determine by his own decision.) The sad thing was that by this point, having his own body visibly lying in a corner didn't seem all that crazy. It was just... Hogwarts.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 149
