Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (115 page)

Professor Quirrell had taken it in at a glance, given a dry chuckle, and observed that if you read the note
carefully
, it did not
explicitly
say that the portkey would take him to the Salem Witches’ Institute.

You needed to learn to pay attention to that kind of subtlety, Professor Quirrell said, if you wanted to be a powerful wizard when you grew up; or, indeed, if you wanted to grow up at all.

The boy sighed again as he trudged off to class.

He was starting to wonder if all the other wizarding schools were also like this, or if it was only Hogwarts that had a problem.

Hessitation iss alwayss eassy, rarely usseful.

So the Defense Professor had told him; and while you could quibble about the details of the proverb, Harry understood the weaknesses of Ravenclaws well enough to know that you had to try
answering
your own quibbles. Did some plans call for waiting? Yes, many plans called for
delayed action
; but that was not the same as
hesitating
to
choose
. Not delaying because you knew the right moment to do what was necessary, but delaying because you couldn’t make up your mind - there was no cunning plan which called for that.

Did you sometimes need more information to choose? Yes, but that could also turn into an excuse for delaying; and it would be
tempting
to delay, when you were faced with a choice between two painful alternatives, and
not choosing
would avoid the mental pain for a time. So you would pick a piece of information you couldn’t easily obtain, and claim that you couldn’t possibly decide without it; that would be your excuse. Although if you knew
what
information you needed, knew
when
and
how
you would obtain that information, and knew what you would
do
depending on each possible observation, then that was less suspicious as an excuse for hesitating.

If you
weren’t
just hesitating, you ought to be able to choose
in advance
what you would do, once you had the extra information you claimed you needed.

If the Dark Lord were
really
out there, would it be smart to go along with Professor Quirrell’s plan to have someone impersonate the Dark Lord?

No. Definitely no. Absolutely not.

And if Harry knew for a
fact
that the Dark Lord
wasn’t
really out there… in
that
case…

The Defense Professor’s office was a small room, at least today; it had changed since the last time Harry had seen it, the stone of the room becoming darker, more polished. Behind the Defense Professor’s desk stood the single empty bookcase that always decorated the room, a tall bookcase stretching almost from the floor to the ceiling, with seven empty wooden shelves. Harry had only once seen Professor Quirrell take a book from those empty shelves, and never seen him put a book back.

The green snake swayed above the seat of the chair behind the Defense Professor’s desk, the lidless eyes staring unblinking at Harry from close to his own eye level.

They were warded now by twenty-two spells, all that could be cast within Hogwarts without attracting the Headmaster’s attention.

“
No,
” hissed Harry.

The green snake cocked its head, tilting it slightly; no emotion was conveyed by the gesture, not that Harry’s Parselmouth talent conveyed to him. “
Reasson not?
” said the green snake.

“
Too rissky,
” Harry said simply. That was true whether or not the Dark Lord was out there. Forcing himself to decide in advance had made him realize that he’d just been using the unanswered question as an excuse to hesitate; the sane decision was the same, either way.

For a moment the dark pitted eyes seemed to gleam blackly, for a moment the scaled mouth gaped to expose the fangs. “
Think you have learned wrong lessson, boy, from previouss failure. My planss are not in habit of failing, and lasst one would have gone flawlesssly, but for your own foolisshnesss. Correct lessson iss to follow ssteps laid down for you by older and wisser Sslytherin, tame your wild impulssess.”

“
Lessson I learned is not to try plotss that would make girl-child friend think I am evil or boy-child friend think I am sstupid,
” Harry snapped back. He’d been planning a more temporizing response than that, but somehow the words had just slipped out.

The
sssss
-ing sound that came from the snake was not heard by Harry as words, only as pure fury. A moment later, “
You told them -
”

“
Of coursse not! But know what they would ssay.
”

There was a long pause as the snake-head swayed, staring at Harry; again no detectable emotion came through, and Harry wondered what Professor Quirrell could be thinking that would take Professor Quirrell that long to think.

“
You sserioussly care what thosse two think?
” came the snake’s final hiss. ”
True younglingss thosse two are, not like you. Could not weigh adult matterss.
”

“
Might have done better than me,
” Harry hissed. ”
Boy-child friend would have assked after ssecret motivess before asssenting to resscue woman -
”

“
Glad you undersstand that now,
” the snake hissed coldly. ”
Alwayss assk after other’ss advantage. Next learn to alwayss assk after your own. If my plan iss not to your tasste, what iss yours?
”

“
If necesssary - sstay at sschool ssix yearss and sstudy. Hogwartss sseemss fine place to dwell. Bookss, friendss, sstrange but tassty food.
” Harry wanted to chuckle, but there wasn’t any gesture in Parseltongue for the kind of laughter he wanted to express.

The pits of the snake’s eyes seemed almost black. “
Eassy to ssay that now. Ssuch as you and I, we do not tolerate imprissonment. You will losse patience long before sseventh year, perhapss before end of thiss one. I sshall plan accordingly.
”

And before Harry could hiss another word of Parseltongue, the human-shape of Professor Quirrell was sitting in his chair once more. “So, Mr. Potter,” said the Defense Professor, his voice as calm as if they had been discussing nothing important, as if the whole conversation had not occurred at all, “I hear that you have begun to practice dueling. Not the worthless sort with
rules
, I hope?”

Hannah Abbott looked as unnerved as Hermione had ever seen her (except on the day of the phoenix, the day Bellatrix Black had escaped, which shouldn’t ought to count for anyone). The Hufflepuff girl had come over to the Ravenclaw table during dinner, and tapped Hermione on her shoulder, and very nearly dragged her away -

“Neville and Harry Potter are learning dueling from Mr. Diggory!” Hannah blurted as soon as they were a few steps away from the table.

“Who?” said Hermione.

“
Cedric Diggory!
” said Hannah. “He’s the Captain of our Quidditch Team, and general of an army, and he’s taking
all
the electives and getting better grades than anyone, and I hear he learns dueling from professional tutors during the summers, and he once beat
two
seventh-year students, and even some teachers call him the Super Hufflepuff, and Professor Sprout says we should all emu, uh, emudate him or something like that, and -”

After Hannah finally stopped for air (the list had gone on for a while), Hermione managed to insert a word in edgewise.

“Sunshine Soldier Abbott!” said Hermione. “Calm
down
. We’re not going to be fighting General Diggory, right? Sure, Neville’s studying to beat us, but we can study too -”

“Don’t you
see?
” Hannah shrieked, raising her voice a lot louder than it should’ve been, if they were trying to keep the conversation private from all the Ravenclaws looking at them. “Neville isn’t studying to beat
us!
He’s practicing so he can fight
Bellatrix Black!
They’re going to go through us like a Bludger through a stack of pancakes!”

The Sunshine General gave her soldier a look. “Listen,” said Hermione, “I don’t think a few weeks of practice is going to make anyone an invincible fighter. Plus we already
know
how to handle invincible fighters. We’ll concentrate fire on them and they’ll go down just like Draco.”

The Hufflepuff girl was looking at her with mixed admiration and skepticism. “Aren’t you even, you know,
worried?
”

“Oh,
honestly!
” said Hermione. Sometimes it was hard being the only sensible person in your whole school year. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?”

“
What?
” said Hannah. “That’s crazy, what about Lethifolds lurking in the darkness, and being put under the Imperius Curse, and horrible Transfiguration accidents and -”

“I
mean,
” said Hermione, exasperation leaking out into her now-raised voice, she’d been hearing this sort of thing
all week
now, “how about if we wait until
after
the Chaos Legion
actually
crushes us to get so scared of them and
did you just mutter ‘Gryffindors’ under your voice?
”

A few moments later, Hermione was walking back to her place at the table with a sweet smile plastered onto her young face, it wasn’t the terrible cold glare of Harry’s dark side but it was the scariest face
she
knew how to make.

Harry Potter was going
down.

“This is loony,” gasped Neville, with what tiny amount of breath he could spare from being completely out of breath.

“This is
brilliant!
” said Cedric Diggory. The eyes of the Super Hufflepuff gleamed with manic enthusiasm, shining like the sweat on his forehead as he stamped his feet through the dance of one of his dueling postures. His usually-light steps had changed to heavier stomps, which might have had something to do with the Transfigured metal weights they’d all attached to their arms and legs and strapped over their chests. “Where do you
get
these ideas, Mr. Potter?”

“A strange old shop… in Oxford… and I’m never… shopping there… again.”
Thud.

In the high reaches of Hogwarts where rooms and corridors changed on a daily basis, where the territory itself was uncertain and not just the map, where the stability of the castle began to fray into dreams and chaos without changing its architectural style or apparent solidity - in the high reaches of Hogwarts, a battle would soon be fought.

The presence of so many students would stabilize the corridors for a time, by dint of constant observation. The rooms and corridors of Hogwarts sometimes
moved
even while people looked directly at them, but they wouldn’t
change
. Even after eight centuries, Hogwarts was still a little shy about changing in front of people.

But despite that transient permanence (the Defense Professor had said) the upper reaches of Hogwarts still had a military realism: you had to learn the ground anew each time, and check every closet for secret corridors all over again.

Sunday it was, Sunday the first of March. Professor Quirrell had recovered enough to supervise battles once more, and they were all catching up on the backlog.

The Dragon General, Draco Malfoy, watched two compasses he held in either hand. One compass was the color of the Sun, the other had a multicolored, iridescent sheen to indicate Chaos. The other two generals, Draco knew, had been given their own compasses; only Hermione Granger’s hand, and Harry Potter’s hand, would hold a compass that was orange-red and flickered in its reflections like fire, pointing always to the direction of the largest active contingent of Dragon Army.

Without those compasses they might have searched for days and never found each other, which was a territorial hazard of fighting in the upper levels of Hogwarts.

Draco had a bad feeling about what would happen when Dragon Army found the Chaos Legion. Harry Potter had changed since Bellatrix Black had escaped; the Heir of Slytherin had begun to seem truly Lordly now (and how had Professor Quirrell known that would happen?) Draco would have felt a lot better with Hermione Granger standing alongside him with her twenty-three Sunshine Soldiers in tow, but no, the Sunshine General was being stupidly proud and refusing to accept aid against General Potter. She wanted to take down Potter herself, she’d told him.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy had maintained their influence over Britain for centuries by understanding that you couldn’t always be
the
most powerful. Sometimes another Lord was just stronger, and you had to settle for
merely
being his foremost lieutenant. You could build up
quite
a position of wealth and power over a dozen generations of being second in command. You just had to be careful, each time, not to let your House be dragged down with the fall of the Lord you served. That was the Malfoy tradition which centuries of experience had honed…

And so Father had thoroughly explained to Draco that if he ran into someone who was obviously stronger than him, Draco was
not
to resent this and
not
to deny it and
not
to throw a tantrum that could sabotage his potential position, but Draco
was
to make sure that his place in the next generation’s power structure wasn’t any lower than second.

Granger, apparently, had never gotten this lecture from her own parents, and was still in denial about the obvious fact that Harry Potter was becoming stronger than her.

So Draco had secretly met with Captain Goldstein and Captain Bones and Captain Macmillan and they’d agreed to all do their best to make sure that Dragon and Sunshine didn’t engage each other before they engaged the larger threat of Chaos.

It wasn’t
really
violating the agreement against traitors, you weren’t soliciting traitors if you honestly meant to
help
the other army.

A high ringing tone belled through the corridors to signal the start of the battle, and a moment later Draco shouted “
Go!
” and the Dragons started running. It would tire his soldiers, it would cost them something even after they stopped and caught their breath, but they
had
to put Chaos directly between themselves and the Sunshine Regiment.

Harry and Neville walked at a leisurely pace through the corridors, Harry watching the yellow-golden compass that pointed toward the location of the Sunshine Regiment, and Neville keeping a lookout just in case they ran into someone else.

Their footsteps sounded a bit thumpy, if you listened closely.

“So,” the Chaotic Lieutenant said after a while. “That’s why you had us practice dueling with all that weight strapped on?”

Harry nodded, keeping his eyes on the compass that led to Sunshine; if the apparent direction started to change quickly then they were getting close.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others, but a couple of weeks isn’t a lot of time to put on extra muscle,” said Neville. “And the balance is different, and I think this weighs
more
actually, and doesn’t this count as Transfiguring a Muggle artifact?”

“Nope,” Harry said. “I checked that in advance. You can see it in Hogwarts statues, so some wizards
used
to wear it, even if they were just being fashionable for the Dark Ages.” And since nobody would ever try this if they
weren’t
fighting first-year students using weak spells like the Sleep Hex, it didn’t count as giving away good ideas, either.

They came to a Y-intersection, an annoying one; neither corridor bent in quite the right way to take them on a direct intercept course toward where Sunshine would go as they followed the Chaos Legion following Dragon Army. So Harry chose what seemed like the better of the two options, and Neville followed.

“We’d better try a quick Silencing Charm on this stuff when we get close,” Neville said. “It’s kind of noisy, they might figure it out.”

Harry nodded, and then said “Good idea” in case Neville hadn’t been looking at him.

They trudged on through the stone-floored corridor of the upper reach of Hogwarts, lit by windows of plain glass or stained glass, now and then passing statues of witches and dragons and even the occasional wizard-knight in plate armor or chainmail.

The Sunshine Soldiers were striding through a long, wide corridor with their wands out and pointed. They couldn’t use the Prismatic Shield while they were maneuvering, but Parvati Patil and Jenny Rustad were currently maintaining
Contegos
around the officer group, who would be the first targets of any ambush.

Their tactic for the next battle, she and her officers had decided, would be to mix directly in with the enemy soldiers as fast as possible - after having practiced among
themselves
how to support one another, avoid hitting each other, and get into positions where enemy soldiers would hesitate to fire. They’d only gotten in four hours practice, but she thought her troops would already be better at that kind of mixed-in fighting than soldiers who hadn’t practiced at all. It seemed like the sort of tactic Chaos would use, but they hadn’t actually used it yet.

It was a good strategy, she believed. And yet still, no matter how much she’d lectured her soldiers, they’d persisted in whispering fearful rumors about what Harry and Neville were learning to do. Finally she’d gone off and talked with Captain Goldstein, who understood things like Troop Morale, and Anthony had suggested -

“That’s weird,” Captain Macmillan spoke up suddenly, frowning at the fiery and iridescent compasses he held in either hand. (Ernie was, as Harry would have termed it, “good at spatial visualization”, and so had been designated to hold both compasses and try to figure out what their enemies were doing.) “I think… Dragon’s not moving fast anymore… I think they got on the other side of Chaos from us first… and it looks like Chaos is moving to attack them instead of trying to maneuver out from in between?”

Hermione frowned, trying to understand, and she saw similar frowns on the faces of Anthony and Ron. If Chaos and Dragon attacked each other straight out, and spent all their forces fighting each other, that was practically conceding the battle to Sunshine…

“Potter thinks we’re allied so he’s attacking Malfoy now, before Dragon can link up with us,” said Blaise Zabini from the common ranks of soldiers. “Or Potter just thinks he can beat both armies in a row, if he attacks them separately.” The Slytherin boy gave a condescending sigh. “Are you going to promote me back to officer now? You lot are hopeless without me, you know.”

They all ignored the talking noises coming from Zabini’s mouth.

“We still moving in the right direction?” said Anthony.

“Yeah,” said Ernie.

“We getting close to them?” said Ron.

“Not yet -”

That was when the huge black-wooden doors at the end of the corridor flew open and crashed into the wall, revealing two figures almost completely enveloped in grey cloaks, grey cloth stretched over the faces beneath the grey hoods, one of those figures already raising a wand and pointing it directly at her.

And then the face of the game changed drastically, as Harry’s voice, high and strained with the effort, screamed the word:

“
Stupefy!
”

The dueling-grade stunner blasted toward her, she was so shocked that she didn’t start to move until almost too late, as the red jet of light
smashed
right through the
Contego
shield to their front and she just barely dodged, there was a tingle on her arm as the red light went past her, and she saw out of the corner of her eye Susan getting hit and blown off her feet into Ron -

“
Somnium!
” bellowed Anthony’s voice, followed a moment later by a dozen voices crying ”
Somnium!
”

Hermione frantically pushed herself to her feet, and as she rose, she saw the two figures in the grey cloaks just standing there.

You couldn’t
see
Sleep Hexes, the spell was too weak -

But there was no way they all could’ve
missed
.

“
Stupefy!
” shrieked the voice of Neville Longbottom, and another red jet shot at her, she fell in an undignified heap as she desperately twisted out of the way, and when she scrambled up, panting, she saw that this time the stunbolt had gotten Ron where he’d been rising from the ground.

“Hello there, Sunshine,” said Harry’s voice from beneath his hood.

“We’re the Grey Knights of Chaos,” said Neville’s voice.

“We’ll be your opponents for this battle,” said Harry’s voice, “while Chaos’s
other
army slaughters the Dragons.”

“And by the way,” said Neville’s voice, “we’re invincible.”

The two boys in their grey cloaks and robes, grey cloth over their faces, stood facing Sunshine’s entire army, seemingly unfazed by a dozen Sleep Hexes.

Daphne heard a soft sigh from beside her, and when her head turned she saw that Hannah’s lips were parted, and the Hufflepuff girl’s eyes were huge, and she was staring at -

It would have been hard to describe the jumble of thoughts that flashed through Daphne’s mind as she realized that Hannah was staring at Neville rather than Harry, which in turn seemed to trigger some part of her into noticing that in point of fact Neville
had
been getting pretty interesting lately as boys went, in fact right now the Last Scion of Longbottom was seeming downright
cool,
and something woke up inside her and her own lips parted and everything the Lady her Mother had ever instructed her about demure demeanors and flattery and scented shampoo blew straight out of her mind so hard it should have fluffed her hair about her ears, because she’d watched Hermione and Harry and she knew how she wanted
her
own courtship to go -

Her Lady Mother had also recently instructed her on a few spells it might be embarrassing not to know if you belonged to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass.

Daphne’s wand swung to point to her left, and she shouted “
Tonare!
”

The wand went over her head, and she spoke the incantation “
Ravum Calvaria!
”

And finally she grasped her wand in both hands and shrieked, “
Lucis Gladius!
”

The huge magical drain almost sent her to her knees, but she bore it, and when the blazing shape had fully formed and stabilized the drain was a little less.

Still, she had a feeling she’d better not try to fight with this for long.

That everyone was staring at her went
quite
without saying, and she
should
have leaped forward to confront Neville with her hair billowing around her, but it was all she could do to walk forward steadily to level her Most Ancient Blade at Neville Longbottom. That everyone moved aside and made way for her also went without saying.

“
I hight Daphne, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass!
” she cried. ”
Greengrass of Sunshine!
” The dueling forms had gone completely out of her mind, she’d seen enough plays to remember death challenges and blood challenges but she couldn’t remember at all what was appropriate for this, so she just pointed the incandescent sword toward the object of her crush and yelled, ”
Let’s see what you got, Nevvy!
”

Once again Harry’s voice shrieked “
Stupefy!
”, and later on, when she was remembering this, she could never quite believe she’d managed to do it, but she slashed out with her blade of light like it was a Beater’s bat, and
hit the stunbolt back at Harry
who just barely managed to twist out of the way.

“
Tonare!
” shouted Neville, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Longbottom. ”
Ravum Calvaria, Lucis Gladius!
”

For a few seconds, no one did anything but stare at Neville and Daphne as they started whacking at each other. They were both moving slowly, and Hermione guessed that the spell was taking a lot of strength out of them. It wasn’t very impressive by comparison, if you were a Muggleborn and you’d watched certain movies.

But you still had to give them extra credit for using lightsabers at all.

“Point of order,” said Harry’s voice. “I know the Defense Professor is watching, but I still have to ask, does anyone know whether they’ll slice each other in half if they actually hit -”