Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (103 page)

Severus shrugged. “From the rumors I have heard, Headmaster, Muggle weapons are only slightly worse than the more…
recondite
aspects of wizardry -”

“
Worse?
” gasped Minerva, and then shut her mouth as though by force.

“Worse than any peril left in these fading years,” said Albus. “Not worse than that which erased Atlantis from Time.”

Minerva stared at him, feeling the sweat break out all along her spine.

Severus continued, still addressing Albus. “All the Death Eaters save Bellatrix would have betrayed him, all his supporters turned against him, all the powers of the world converged to destroy him, if he had been reckless with any truly dangerous potency. Is this so different, then?”

Some motion, some color, had returned to the old wizard’s face. “Perhaps not…”

“And in any case,” Severus said with a slightly condescending smile, “Muggle weapons are not so easy to obtain, not for a thousand Galleons or a thousand thousand.”

Doesn’t Harry just Transfigure the devices he uses in his battles?
thought Minerva, but before she could open her mouth to ask -

The fireplace erupted in green flames, then, and the face of Pius Thicknesse, Madam Bones’s assistant, appeared therein. “Chief Warlock?” said Thicknesse. “I have a report for you, transmitted from -” Thicknesse’s eyes flickered over Minerva and Severus, “six minutes ago.”

“Six hours ahead, you mean,” said Albus. “These two are meant to hear it; deliver your report.”

“We know how it was done,” said Thicknesse. “In Bellatrix Black’s cell, hidden in one corner, was a potions vial; and testing the traces of remaining fluid shows that it was an Animagus potion.”

There was a long pause.

“I see…” Albus said heavily.

“Pardon me?” said Minerva. She didn’t.

Thicknesse’s head turned toward her. “Animagi, Madam McGonagall, in their Animagus forms, are of less interest to Dementors. All prisoners are tested before their arrival at Azkaban; and if they are Animagi, their Animagus form is destroyed. But we had not considered that someone protected by a Patronus Charm while taking the potion and performing the meditation, might be able to become an Animagus
after
they went to Azkaban -”

“I understood,” Severus said, having by now put on his customary sneer, “that the Animagus meditation required considerable time.”

“Well, Mr. Snape,” Thicknesse barked, “records show that Bellatrix Black was an Animagus
before
she was sentenced to Azkaban and her form destroyed; so maybe her
second
meditation didn’t take as much time as her first!”

“I would not have thought it possible for any prisoner of Azkaban to do such a thing…” Albus said. “But Bellatrix Black was a most powerful sorceress before her incarceration, and she might have done it if any witch could. Can Azkaban be secured against this method?”

“Yes,” said the confident head of Pius Thicknesse. “Our expert says that it is nigh-unimaginable that an Animagus meditation could be performed in less than three hours, regardless of experience. All visits to prisoners allowed to receive them will be limited to two hours henceforth, and the Dementors will inform us if any Patronus Charm is maintained in the prison areas for longer than that.”

Albus looked unhappy at that, but nodded. “I see. There will be no further attempts of that sort, of course, but do not relax your vigilance. And when Amelia has been told all this, tell her that I have information for her.”

The head of Pius Thicknesse vanished without another word.

“No further attempts…?” said Minerva.

“Because, dear Minerva,” Severus drawled, having not quite taken off his habitual sneer, “if the Dark Lord had planned to free any of his other servants from Azkaban, he would not have left behind the vial of potion to tell us how it was done.” Severus frowned. “I confess… even so I do not see why that vial was left there.”

“It is some kind of message…” Albus said slowly. “And I cannot see what it means, not at all…” He drummed his fingers on his desk.

For a long minute or three, the old wizard stared off into nothingness, frowning; while Severus also sat in silence.

Then Albus shook his head in dismay, and said, “Severus, do
you
comprehend this?”

“No,” said the Potions Master, and with a sardonic smile, “which is probably all the better for us; whatever we are
intended
to conclude from it, that part of his plan has misfired.”

“You are certain, now, that it
is
You-Know… that it is Voldemort?” said Minerva. “It could not be that some other Death Eater conceived this clever notion?”

“And they knew about rockets, too?” Severus said dryly. “I don’t believe the other Death Eaters were so fond of Muggle Studies. It is he.”

“Aye, it is he,” Albus said. “Azkaban has endured impenetrable for ages, only to fall to an ordinary Animagus potion. It is too clever and too impossible, which was ever Voldemort’s signature since the days he was known as Tom Riddle. Anyone who wished to forge that signature must needs be as cunning as Voldemort himself to do so. And there is no one else in the world who would accidentally overestimate my wit, and leave me a message I cannot understand at all.”

“Unless he has gauged you exactly,” Severus said tonelessly, “in which case all that is just what he intended you to think.”

Albus sighed. “Indeed. But even if he has tricked me perfectly, we may at least rely on the conclusion that it was not Harry Potter.”

It should have come as a relief, and yet Minerva felt the chill spreading through her spine and her veins, her lungs and her bones.

She remembered conversations like this.

She remembered conversations like this from ten years ago, from a time when blood had run through Britain in wide rivers, when wizards and witches she had once taught in class had been slaughtered by the hundreds, she remembered burning homes and screaming children and flashes of green light -

“What will you tell Madam Bones?” she whispered.

Albus stood from his desk and paced to the center of the room, his hand lightly touching the devices, here an instrument of light, there an instrument of sound; he adjusted his glasses with one hand, used the other to center the long silver beard against his robes, and then finally that ancient wizard turned back and faced them.

“I will tell her what little I know of the Dark Art called horcrux, by which a soul is deprived of death,” said Albus Dumbledore, in a soft voice that seemed to fill the whole room, “and I will tell her what may be done with the flesh of the servant.”

“I will tell her that I am reconstituting the Order of the Phoenix.”

“I will tell her that Voldemort has returned.”

“And that the Second Wizarding War is begun.”

Some hours later…

The antique old clock upon the wall of the Deputy Headmistress’s office had golden hands, and silver numerals to make the clock-face; it ticked and jerked soundlessly through its motions, for there was a Quieting enchantment on it.

The golden hour hand approached the silver numeral of nine, the golden minute hand did the same, the two linked components of Time nearing each other, soon to be in the same place and never to collide.

It was 8:43 PM, and the time approached when Harry’s Time-Turner would open, to be tested in the one way that no imaginable spell could fool, unless that spell could bypass the laws of Time itself. No body or soul, no knowledge or substance, could stretch an extra seven hours in a single day. She would make up a message on the spot, and tell Harry to take that message back six hours to Professor Flitwick at 3PM, and she would ask Professor Flitwick if he had received it in that hour.

And Professor Flitwick would tell her that he had indeed received it at 3PM.

And she would tell Severus and Albus to have a
little
more faith in Harry next time.

Professor McGonagall cast the Patronus Charm, and told her shining cat, “Go to Mr. Potter, and tell him this: Mr. Potter, please come to my office as soon as you hear this, without doing anything else along the way.”

Minerva gazed up at the clock, the golden hands and silver numerals, the jerking motion. Muggles had invented that, and until they had, wizards had not bothered keeping time. Bells, timed by a sanded hourglass, had served Hogwarts for its classes when it was built. It was one of the things that blood purists wished not to be true, and therefore Minerva knew it.

She had received an Outstanding on her Muggle Studies N.E.W.T., which now seemed to her a mark of shame, considering how little she knew. Her younger self had realized, even then, that the class was a sham, taught by a pureblood, supposedly because Muggleborns could not appreciate what wizardborns needed to be told, and actually because the Board of Governors did not approve of Muggles at all. But when she was seventeen the Outstanding grade had been the main thing that mattered to her, she was saddened to remember…

If Harry Potter and Voldemort fight their war with Muggle weapons there will be nothing left of the world but fire!

She couldn’t imagine it, and the reason she couldn’t imagine it was that she couldn’t imagine Harry fighting You-Know-Who.

She had encountered the Dark Lord four times and survived each one, three times with Albus to shield her and once with Moody at her side. She remembered the damaged, snakelike face, the faint green scales scattered over the skin, the glowing red eyes, the voice that laughed in a high-pitched hiss and promised nothing but cruelty and torment: the monster pure and complete.

And Harry Potter was easy to picture in her mind, the bright expression on the face of a young boy who wavered between taking the ludicrous seriously and taking the serious ludicrously.

And to think of the two of them facing off at wandpoint was too painful to be imagined.

They had no right, no right at all to set this on an eleven-year-old boy. She knew what the Headmaster had decided for him this day, for she had been told to make the arrangements; and if it had been her at the same age she would have raged and screamed and cried and been inconsolable for weeks, and…

He is no ordinary first-year,
Albus had said.
He is marked as the Dark Lord’s equal, and he has power the Dark Lord knows not.

The terrible hollow voice booming from Sybill Trelawney’s throat, the true and original prophecy, echoed once more through her mind. She had a feeling it didn’t mean what the Headmaster thought it did, but there was no way to put the difference into words.

And even so it still seemed true, that if there were any eleven-year-old within the Earth entire who could bear this burden, that boy approached her office now. And if she said anything at all like ‘poor Harry’ to his face… well, he wouldn’t like it.

So now I’ve got to find some way to kill an immortal Dark Wizard,
Harry had said on the day he had first learned.
I really wish you had told me that before I started shopping…

She’d been Head of House Gryffindor for long enough, she’d watched enough friends die, to know that there were some people you couldn’t save from becoming heroes.

There came a knock at the door, and Professor McGonagall said, “Enter.”

When Harry entered, his face had the same cold, alert look she’d seen in Mary’s Place; and she wondered for an instant if he’d been wearing that same mask, that same self, this whole day.

The young boy seated himself on the chair before her desk, and said, “So is it time for me to be told what’s going on?” Neutral the words, not the sharpness that should have gone with the expression.

Professor McGonagall’s eyes rose in surprise before she could stop them, and she said, “The Headmaster told you nothing, Mr. Potter?”

The boy shook his head. “Only that he’d received a warning that I might be in danger, but I was safe now.”

Minerva was having trouble meeting his gaze. How could they
do
this to him, how could they lay this upon an eleven-year-old boy, this war, this destiny, this prophecy… and they didn’t even
trust
him…

She forced herself to look at Harry directly, and saw that his green eyes were calm as they rested on her.

“Professor McGonagall?” the boy said quietly.

“Mr. Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, “I’m afraid it is not my place to explain, but if after this the Headmaster
still
does not tell you anything, you may come back to me and I will go yell at him for you.”

The boy’s eyes widened, something of the real Harry showing through the crack before the cool mask was set back in place.

“In any case,” Professor McGonagall said briskly. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Potter, but I need to ask you to use your Time-Turner to go back six hours to three o’clock, and give the following message to Professor Flitwick: Silver on the tree. Ask the Professor to note down the time at which you gave him that message. Afterward the Headmaster wishes to meet with you at your convenience.”

There was a pause.

Then the boy said, “I am suspected of misusing my Time-Turner, then?”

“Not by
me!
” Professor McGonagall said hastily. “I
am
sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Potter.”

There was another pause, and then the young boy shrugged. “It’ll play hob with my sleep schedule but I suppose it can’t be helped. Please let the house elves know that if I ask for an early breakfast at, say, three A.M. tomorrow morning, I’m to receive it.”

“Of course, Mr. Potter,” she said. “Thank you for understanding.”

The boy rose up from his chair and gave her a formal nod, then slipped out the door with his hand already going under his shirt to where his Time-Turner waited; and she almost called out
Harry!
only she wouldn’t have known what to say after.

Instead she waited, her eyes on the clock.

How long did she need to wait for Harry Potter to go back in time?

She didn’t need to wait at all, actually; if he had done it, then it had already happened…

Minerva knew, then, that she was delaying because she was nervous, and the realization saddened her. Mischief, yes, unspeakable unthinkable mischief with all the prudence and foresight of a falling rock - she didn’t know how the boy had tricked the Hat into not Sorting him to Gryffindor where he obviously belonged - but nothing dark or harmful, not ever. Beneath that mischief his goodness ran as deep and as true as the Weasley twins’, though not even the Cruciatus Curse could have gotten her to say that out loud.

“
Expecto Patronum
,” she said, and then, “Go to Professor Flitwick, and bear back his reply after you ask him this: ‘Did Mr. Potter give you a message from me, what was that message, and when did you receive it?’”

One hour earlier, having used the last remaining spin of his Time-Turner after putting on the Cloak of Invisibility, Harry tucked the hourglass back into his shirt.

And he set out toward the Slytherin dungeons, striding as quickly as his invisible legs could manage, though not running. Thankfully the Deputy Headmistress’s office was already on a lower floor of Hogwarts…

A few staircases later, taken two steps but not three steps at once, Harry stopped at a corridor around whose final bend lay the entrance to the Slytherin dorms.

Harry took a piece of parchment (not paper) out of his parch, took a Quotes Quill (not pen) out of his pouch, and told the quill, “Write these letters exactly as I say them: Z-P-G-B-S-Y, space, F-V-Y-I-R-E-B-A-G-U-R-G-E-R-R.”

There were two kinds of codes in cryptography, codes that stopped your little brother from reading your message and codes that stopped major governments from reading your message, and this was the first kind of code, but it was better than nothing. In theory, no one should read it anyway; but even if they did, they wouldn’t remember anything interesting unless they did cryptography first.

Harry then put that parchment in a parchment envelope, and with his wand melted a little green wax to seal it.

In principle, of course, Harry could’ve done all that hours earlier, but somehow waiting until
after
he heard the message from Professor McGonagall’s own lips seemed less like Messing With Time.

Harry then put that envelope inside another envelope, which already contained another sheet of paper with other instructions, and five silver Sickles.

He closed that envelope (which already had a name written on the outside), sealed it with more green wax, and pressed a final Sickle into that seal.

Then Harry put
that
envelope into the very last envelope on which was written in large letters the name “Merry Tavington”.

And Harry peeked around the bend to where the scowling portrait that served as the door to the Slytherin dorms waited; and as he did not wish the portrait to recall not-seeing anyone invisible, Harry used the Hover Charm to float the envelope to the scowling man, and tap it against him.

The scowling man looked down at the envelope, peering at it through a monocle, and sighed, and turned around to face toward the inside of the Slytherin dorms, and called, “Message for Merry Tavington!”

The envelope was then allowed to fall to the floor.

A few moments later the portrait door opened, and Merry snatched up the envelope from the floor.

She would open it up and find a Sickle and an envelope addressed to a fourth-year student named Margaret Bulstrode.

(Slytherins did this sort of thing all the time, and a Sickle definitely constituted a rush order.)

Margaret would open
her
envelope, and find five Sickles along with an envelope to be dropped off in an unused classroom…

…
after
she used her Time-Turner to go back five hours…

…whereupon she would find another five Sickles waiting for her, if she got there quickly.

And an invisible Harry Potter would be waiting in that classroom from three PM to three-thirty, just in case someone tried the obvious test.

Well, it had been obvious to Professor Quirrell, anyway.

It had also been obvious to Professor Quirrell that (a) Margaret Bulstrode had a Time-Turner and (b) she wasn’t very strict about how she used it, e.g. telling her younger sister really good pieces of gossip “before” anyone else had heard.

Some of the tension leaked off Harry as he strode away from the portrait door, still invisible. Somehow his mind had still managed to worry about the plan, even
knowing
that it had already succeeded. Now there remained only the confrontation with Dumbledore, and then he was done for the day… he’d go to the Headmaster’s gargoyles at 9PM, since doing it at 8PM would seem more suspicious. This way he could claim that he’d just misunderstood what Professor McGonagall had meant by “afterward”…

The obscure pain clutched at Harry’s heart again as he thought of Professor McGonagall.

So Harry retreated a little further into his dark side, which had worn the calm expression and kept the fatigue off his face, and kept walking.

There would come a reckoning, but sometimes you had to borrow everything you could today, and let the payments come due tomorrow.

Even Harry’s dark side was feeling the exhaustion by the time the spiraling staircase had delivered him to the great oaken door that was the final gate to Dumbledore’s office; but since Harry was now
legally
four hours past his natural bedtime, it was safe to let some of the fatigue show, the physical if not the emotional.

The oaken door swung open -

Harry’s eyes had already been focused in the direction of the great desk, the throne behind it; so it took a moment to register that the throne was empty, the desk barren but for a single leatherbound volume; and then Harry shifted his gaze to see the wizard standing among his fiddly things, the mysterious unknown devices in their scores. Fawkes and the Sorting Hat occupied their respective perches, a bright cheerful blaze crackled in a nook that Harry had not before realized was a fireplace, and there were the two umbrellas and three red slippers for left feet. All things in their place and in their customary appearance except the old wizard himself, standing tall and dressed in robes of the most formal black. It came as a shock to the eyes, those robes on that person, it was as if Harry had seen his father wearing a business suit.

Very ancient was the appearance of Albus Dumbledore, and sorrowful.

“Hello, Harry,” said the old wizard.

From within an alternate self maintained like an Occlumency construct, an innocent-Harry who had absolutely no idea what was happening inclined his head coldly, and said, “Headmaster. I expect you’ve heard back from Deputy Headmistress McGonagall by now, so if it’s fine by you, I would
really
like to know what is going on.”

“Yes,” said the old wizard, “it is time, Harry Potter.” The back straightened, only slightly for the wizard had already been standing straight; but somehow even that small change made the wizard seem a foot taller, and stronger if not younger, formidable though not dangerous, his potency gathered about him like a cowl. In a clear voice, then, he spoke: “This day your war against Voldemort has begun.”

“What?” said the outer Harry who knew nothing, while something watching from inside thought much the same only with a lot more profanity attached.

“Bellatrix Black has been taken from Azkaban, she has escaped from a prison inescapable,” the old wizard said. “It is a feat that bears Voldemort’s signature if ever I have seen it; and she, his most faithful servant, is one of three requisites he must obtain to rise again in a new body. After ten years the enemy you once defeated has returned, as was foretold.”

Neither part of Harry could think of anything to say to that, at least not for the few seconds before the old wizard continued.

“It need change little for you, for now,” said the old wizard. “I have begun reconstituting the Order of the Phoenix that will serve you, I have alerted the few souls who can and should understand: Amelia Bones, Alastor Moody, Bartemius Crouch, certain others. Of the prophecy - yes, there is a prophecy - I have not told them, but they know that Voldemort is returned, and they know that you are to play some vital role. They and I shall fight your war in its lesser beginnings, while you grow stronger, and perhaps wiser, here at Hogwarts.” The old wizard’s hand came up, as though beseeching. “So to you, for now, there is but one change, and I implore you to understand its necessity. Do you recognize the book on my desk, Harry?”