Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (124 page)

For some reason, then, even though they were supposed to vote on this sort of thing, everyone turned to look at General Granger.

The Sunshine General didn’t seem to see them looking at her, she just strode on, gazing off straight ahead.

After a little while, Hermione Granger said, in a voice that sounded thoughtful and a little sad, “Hannah said
she
didn’t want us to stop. I’m not sure it’s right for us to… be less brave
for
her, than she is.”

All the other girls, except Susan, nodded at that.

“I think that’s got to be as bad as it gets,” said Parvati. “And we can handle it. We’ve proved that now.”

Susan couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She didn’t think that shrieking at the top of her lungs about blatant stupidity and DOOM would be persuasive. And she couldn’t just
leave
the other girls, either. Wasn’t it enough to be cursed with hard work, why did Hufflepuffs have to be
loyal
on top of everything else?

“By the way, Lavender,” said Padma. “What in the name of Merlin’s underpants were you
wearing
back there?”

“My hero outfit,” said the Gryffindor girl.

Daphne sounded weary, as she spoke without turning her own head from where she was plodding through the hall. “It’s the costume of the Soldier of Gryffindor from the play
Chronicles of the Lunarian Soldiers
.”

“Did you Transfigure it?” said Parvati, looking puzzled. “But the bully cast
Finite
on you -”

“Nope!” Lavender said. “It’s
real!
See, I just Transfigured my hero outfit into a regular shirt and skirt
beforehand
, so all I had to do was cast
Finite
on myself after I saw the bully. Do you want your own, Parvati? I got mine made yesterday by Katarina and Joshua in sixth-year, for twelve Sickles -”

“I think,” General Granger said in a careful voice, “that would make us all look a little silly.”

“Well,” said Lavender, “we should vote on whether to -”

“I think,” General Granger said, “that no matter what
anyone
votes, I’m not going to be caught
dead
wearing one of those costumes -”

Susan ignored the argument. She was trying to think up some sort of clever strategy for being less doomed.

The whole Great Hall went silent, even if only for a moment, as the seven of them walked into lunch.

Then the applause started.

It was scattered, not the massive applause of everyone applauding at once. A lot of it came from the Gryffindor table, less from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and none from Slytherin.

Daphne felt her face tightening. She’d
hoped
- well, maybe after they found a Gryffindor bully to stop and a Slytherin to rescue, her fellow Slytherins would realize -

She looked at the Hufflepuff table.

Neville Longbottom was applauding with his hands held high above his head, although he wasn’t smiling. Maybe he’d heard about Hannah, or maybe he was wondering why Hannah wasn’t there.

Then, not quite able to help herself, she glanced toward the Head Table.

Professor Sprout’s face was lined with concern. She and Professor McGonagall were leaning their heads toward Headmaster Dumbledore, who had a solemn look, and all their lips were moving quickly. Professor Flitwick looked more resigned than anything else, and Quirrell, face slack, was taking trembling stabs at his soup using a spoon gripped in a fist.

Professor Snape was looking directly at -

Her?

Or - at Hermione Granger, standing next to her?

A small, thin smile crossed the Potions Master’s face, and he raised his hands, brought them together once in a motion that was too slow to be a real clap; and then the Potions Master turned back to his plate, ignoring the conversations around him.

Daphne felt a little chill go down her spine, and she hastily turned to walk toward the Slytherin table. Susan and Lavender and Parvati peeled off from their group, heading toward the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables on the other side of the Great Hall.

It happened as they were passing the part of the Slytherin table where the Slytherin Quidditch team sat.

That was when Hermione stumbled suddenly, stumbled
hard
like she was being yanked off her feet, and went sprawling into the gap between where Marcus Flint and Lucian Bole sat, and there was a sad little splutching sound as Hermione’s face ended up in Flint’s plate of steak and mashed potatoes.

Everything seemed to happen too quickly then, or maybe it was just Daphne herself who was thinking too slow, as Flint let out a bellow of indignation and his hand yanked Hermione back and threw her into the Ravenclaw table, and she bounced off a student’s back and collapsed onto the ground -

The quiet spread out in ripples.

Hermione pushed herself up on her hands, though she didn’t get all the way to her feet, Daphne could see that her whole body was shaking, and that her face was still covered with mashed potatoes with scattered pieces of steak.

For a long moment, nobody spoke, nobody moved. Like nobody in the whole Great Hall could imagine, any more than Daphne could, what happened next.

Then Flint’s powerful voice, the voice of the Slytherin Captain that bellowed commands on the Quidditch pitch, said in a dangerous rumble, “You ruined my food, girl.”

Another moment of frozen silence. Hermione’s head - Daphne could see it trembling - turned to look at the Slytherin Quidditch Captain.

“Apologize to me,” said Flint.

Harry Potter started to push himself up from the Ravenclaw table, and then stopped abruptly, halfway to his feet, as if he’d just thought of something -

Then five other people stood up from the Ravenclaw table.

All of the Slytherin Quidditch team stood up, their wands coming into their hands, and then students stood up at the Gryffindor table and at the Hufflepuff table and without thinking Daphne turned to look at the Head Table and she saw that the Headmaster was still sitting down, watching, just watching, Dumbledore was
just watching
and he had one hand out as though to restrain Professor McGonagall - in just one second someone would shout a spell and then it would be too late,
why wasn’t the Headmaster doing anything
-

And a voice said, “My apologies.”

Daphne turned back to look, her mouth gaping open in absolute shock.

“
Scourgify
,” said that smooth voice, and the mashed potatoes vanished from Hermione’s face, revealing the Ravenclaw’s surprised expression as Draco Malfoy approached her, sheathed his wand again, and then knelt to one knee beside her and offered her a hand.

“Sorry about that, Miss Granger,” said Draco Malfoy’s polite voice. “I guess someone thought they were being funny.”

Hermione took Draco’s hand, and Daphne suddenly realized what was about to happen -

But Draco Malfoy
didn’t
raise Hermione halfway up and then drop her.

He just pulled her to her feet.

“Thanks,” said Hermione.

“You’re welcome,” Draco Malfoy said in a loud voice, not looking to either side to see where all four Houses of Hogwarts were staring at him in total shock. “Just remember, being cunning and ambitious doesn’t mean you have to be like that.”

And then Draco Malfoy went back to his seat at the Slytherin bench and sat down like he hadn’t - he hadn’t just -
he’d just
-

Hermione went to the nearest empty place at the Ravenclaw bench and sat down.

A number of other people, rather slowly, sat down.

“Daphne?” said Tracey. “Are you all right?”

Draco’s heart was hammering in his chest so hard he worried it might explode right out of his chest in a shower of blood, like that curse Amycus Carrow had used once on a puppy.

Draco’s face stayed completely controlled, because he knew (it’d been drilled into him over and over) that if he showed the slightest sign of the fear he was feeling, his Housemates would rip him apart like a swarm of Acromantulas.

There’d been no time to check with Harry Potter, no time to plot, no time to think, just the instant of realizing that the time to start rescuing Slytherin’s reputation was
right then
.

From all sides of the long Slytherin table, angry faces stared at Draco.

But they were outnumbered by the faces that just looked puzzled.

“All right, I give up,” said a sixth-year boy that Draco didn’t recognize, sitting across from him and two places to his right. “Why did you do that, Malfoy?”

Although his mouth was very dry, Draco didn’t swallow. That would have been a sign of fear. Instead he took a bite of carrots, which had the most moisture of anything on his plate, and chewed and swallowed, thinking as rapidly as he could.

“You know,” Draco said, making his voice as cutting as he could - as his heart thumped even harder in his chest, as everyone around him stopped talking to listen - “there’s
probably
some way to make Slytherin look even
worse
than attacking eight first-year girls from all four Houses who are working together to stop bullies, but I can’t think of
how
. This way we get the benefit of what Greengrass is doing.”

The puzzled faces stayed puzzled.

“What?” said the sixth-year boy, and “Wait,
what
benefit?” said a fifth-year girl sitting to his right.

“It makes Slytherin House look better,” said Draco.

The Slytherins around him were giving him quizzical gazes like he’d just tried to explain algebra.

“Look better to
who?
” said the sixth-year boy.

“But you just helped a
mudblood
,” said the fifth-year girl. “How’s
that s
upposed to look good?”

Draco’s throat closed up. His brain was experiencing a hideous malfunction during which it couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth -

Then, “It’s probably some kind of tremendously clever scheme Malfoy’s got going,” said a fifth-year boy. “You know, like in
The Tragedy of Light
, where everything that looks like a setback is part of the plot. And it ends with Granger’s head on a stick and nobody suspecting that it was him.”

“
That
makes sense,” someone said from further down the table, and there was a lot of nodding.

“Do
you
know what the boss’s up to?” Vincent muttered in an undertone.

Gregory Goyle didn’t reply. In his mind he could hear very clearly his master’s voice, saying,
I can’t believe I believed every word of that
, the day the rumor had started about Salazar Slytherin showing Potter and Granger where to find bullies.

“Mr. Goyle?” whispered Vincent.

Gregory Goyle’s lips shaped the words,
Oh no,
but no sound came out.

Hermione had left lunch early that day, for some reason she hadn’t felt hungry. Those few seconds of horrible humiliation had kept burning through her mind, over and over, the feeling of her face squishing into the mashed potatoes and then being thrown through the air and then the Slytherin’s boy’s voice saying ‘Apologize to me’… it might have been the first time in her whole life that she’d felt like
hating
someone. The boy who’d thrown her (Marcus Flint, they’d said his name was) and whoever had cast the tripping Jinx on her in the first place… she’d felt it, for one horrible instant she’d wanted to go tell Harry that if he started getting
creative
on her behalf, she wouldn’t object.

She hadn’t been a minute out of the Great Hall before she’d heard the sound of running feet behind, and turned to see Daphne racing toward her.

And listened to what her Sunshine Soldier had to say…

“Don’t you
understand?
” Daphne’s voice was barely below a shriek. “Just because someone’s nice to you doesn’t mean they’re your friend! He’s
Draco Malfoy!
His father’s a Death Eater, all the parents of all his friends are Death Eaters - Nott, Goyle, Crabbe,
everyone around him
, do you get it? They
all
despise Muggleborns, they want everyone like you to
die
, they think you’re good for nothing but being a
sacrifice
in horrible Dark rituals! Draco is
the next Lord Malfoy
, he’s been raised from birth to hate you and he’s been raised from birth to
lie!
” Daphne’s gray-green eyes stared fiercely at her, demanding assent and understanding.

“He -” Hermione said falteringly. She remembered the rooftop, the awful jolt as she started to fall, Draco Malfoy’s hand grabbing hers and holding it so hard that she’d had bruises afterward. She’d had to tell him twice before he finally let her fall. “Maybe Draco Malfoy isn’t like them -”

Daphne’s whisper was almost a scream. “If he
doesn’t
end up doing you ten times as hard as he just helped you, his
life
is
over
, do you understand? I mean Lucius Malfoy would
literally
disinherit him! D’you know what the chance is that he’s
not
up to something?”

“Tiny?” said Hermione in a small voice.

“
Zero!
” hissed Daphne. “I mean
none!
I mean
less
than zero! I mean the chance is so small that you couldn’t find it with three Magnifying Charms and a Point-Me spell and - and - and an ancient map and a centaur prophet! Everyone in Slytherin knows he’s plotting to do something to you and doesn’t want to be suspected, I heard someone say he was seen pointing his wand at you just before you tripped - don’t you
see?
This is all part of Malfoy’s plan!
”

Draco sat eating his steak with roasted cauliflower florets and Ashwinder sauce (it wasn’t made from real Ashwinder eggs, it just tasted like fire), trying not to laugh and trying not to cry.

He’d
heard
about plausible deniability, but hadn’t realized how much it mattered until he found that Malfoys didn’t have any.

“You want to know my plot?” said Draco. “
Here’s
my plot. I’m not going to do
anything
and then the
next
time people think I’m plotting something, they won’t be sure.”