Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (163 page)

“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.” Dumbledore 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.

“All right, then,” Moody said, looking rather sour about it. From within his leather armor, the scarred man took out a black folder. “This is a copy of what Amelia’s people put together. She almost certainly knows we’ve got it, but it’s all off the books, that clear? Anyway -”

And Moody told them who the Department of Magical Law Enforcement thought ‘Quirinus Quirrell’ really was. A seemingly ordinary Hogwarts student (though talented enough that he’d been only narrowly beaten out for the Head Boy position) who’d gone vacationing in Albania after his graduation, disappeared, returned after 25 years, and then been caught up in the Wizarding War -

“It was murdering the House of Monroe that made Voldie’s name,” Moody said. “Until then, he was just another Dark Wizard with delusions of grandeur and Bellatrix Black. But after that -” Moody snorted. “Every fool in the country flocked to serve him. You would’ve
hoped
the Wizengamot would turn serious, once they realized Voldie was willing to kill their own sacred selves. And that’s just what the bastards did -
hope
that some other bastard would turn serious. None of the cowards wanted to step in front. It was Monroe, Crouch, Bones, and Longbottom. That was nearly everyone in the Ministry who’d dare say a word that might give Voldie offense.”

“That was how your House came to be ennobled, Mr. Potter,” injected the solemn voice of Professor McGonagall. “There is an ancient law that if anyone ends a Most Ancient House, whoever avenges that blood will be made Noble. To be sure, the House of Potter was already older than some lines called Ancient. But yours was titled a Noble House of Britain after the end of the war, in recognition that you had avenged the Most Ancient House of Monroe.”

“Flush of gratitude and all that,” Mad-Eye Moody said sourly. “It didn’t last, but at least James and Lily got a fancy title and a useless medal to take to their graves. But that’s leaving out eight years of complete horror after Monroe disappeared and Regulus Black - he was Monroe’s private source in the Death Eaters, we’re pretty sure - was executed by Voldie. Like a dam breaking and gore flooding out, drowning the whole country. Albus bloody Dumbledore himself had to step into Monroe’s shoes, and that was barely enough for us to survive.”

Harry listened with an odd sense of unreality. Some of it
felt
right, matched up with observation - especially with the speech Professor Quirrell had made before Christmas - and yet…

This was
Professor Quirrell
they were talking about.

“So that’s who the Department thinks is your Defense Professor,” Mad-Eye Moody finished up his account. “Now what do
you
think, son?”

“Well…” Harry said slowly.
It is also possible to have a mask behind the mask.
“The obvious next thought is that this ‘David Monroe’ person died in the war after all, and this is just someone else pretending to be David Monroe pretending to be Quirinus Quirrell.”

“That’s
obvious?
” said Professor McGonagall. “Dear Merlin…”

“Really, boy?” said Mad-Eye Moody, his blue eye spinning rapidly. “I’d say that’s a little…
paranoid.
”

You don’t know Professor Quirrell,
Harry did not say. “It’s an easy theory to test,” Harry said out loud. “Just check whether the Defense Professor remembers something about the war that the real David Monroe would’ve known. Though I suppose, if he’s playing the part of David Monroe
pretending
to be someone else, he has a good excuse to
pretend
he’s pretending he doesn’t know what you’re talking about -”

“A
little
paranoid,” said the scarred man, his voice rising. “
Not paranoid enough! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
Think about it, lad - what if the
real
David Monroe never came back from Albania?”

There was a pause.

“I see…” Harry said.

“Of course you do,” Professor McGonagall said. “Don’t mind me, please. I’ll just sit here quietly going mad.”

“In this line of work, if you survive, you learn that there’s three kinds of Dark Wizards,” Moody said grimly; his wand wasn’t pointed at anyone, it was angled slightly downward, but it was in his hand. It had never left his hand since the moment he’d entered the room. “There’s Dark Wizards that have one name. There’s Dark Wizards that have two names. And there’s Dark Wizards that change names like you and I change clothes. I saw ‘Monroe’ go through three Death Eaters like he was snapping twigs. There’s not many wizards that good at age forty-five. Dumbledore, maybe, but not many others.”

“Perhaps that is true,” said the Potions Master from where he was lurking. “But what of it, Mad-Eye? Whatever his identity, Monroe was surely the Dark Lord’s enemy. I’ve heard Death Eaters curse his name even after they thought him dead. They feared him well.”

“So far as Defense Professors are concerned,” Professor McGonagall said primly, “I shall take it and be grateful.”

Moody swung around to glare at her. “Just where the devil was ‘Monroe’ all those years he was gone, eh? Maybe he thought he could make a name for himself in Britain by opposing Voldie, and vanished away when he found out he was wrong. Then why’d he come back
now,
hah? What’s his
new
plan?”

“He, ah…” Harry ventured tentatively. “He
says
he always wanted to be a great Defense Professor because all the best fighting wizards have taught at Hogwarts. And he kind of
is
being an incredibly good Defense Professor, actually… I mean, if he just wanted to keep up a disguise, he could get away with
much
sloppier work…”

Professor McGonagall was nodding firmly.

“Naive,” Moody said flatly. “I suppose you all haven’t wondered if your Defense Professor set up the whole House of Monroe to be wiped out?”

“
What?
” cried Professor McGonagall.

“Our mystery wizard hears about a missing kid from a Most Ancient House of Britain,” Moody said. “Steps into the shoes of ‘David Monroe’, but stays away from the real Monroe family. But eventually the House is bound to notice something wrong. So this imposter somehow prods Voldie into wiping them all out - maybe leaked a password they’d given him for their wards - and then he was a Lord of the Wizengamot!”

There seemed to be a fight going on inside Harry’s mind between Hufflepuff One, who’d never trusted the Defense Professor in the first place; and Hufflepuff Two, who was far too loyal to Harry’s friend, Professor Quirrell, to believe something like that just because Moody said so.

It
is
kind of obvious, though,
observed his Slytherin part.
I mean, do you actually believe that under natural circumstances, anyone would end up as the last heir to a Most Ancient House AND Lord Voldemort killed his family AND he has to avenge his martial arts sensei? If anything I’d say he went too far over the top in setting up his new identity as the ideal literary hero. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.

This from an orphan who was raised unaware of his heritage,
commented Harry’s Inner Critic.
With a prophecy about him. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever read a story about two equally destined heroes competing to see who’s cliched enough to take down the villain -

Yes,
replied the central Harry over the distant vroop-ing noise in the background,
it’s a very sad life we lead and YOU’RE NOT HELPING.

There’s only one thing to do at this point,
said Ravenclaw.
And we all know what it is, so why argue?

But,
Harry replied,
how
do
we test experimentally whether or not Professor Quirrell is the original David Monroe? I mean, what sort of observable behaves differently, depending on whether he’s the real David Monroe or an impostor?

“What do you want me to do about it, Mad-Eye?” Professor McGonagall was demanding. “I can’t -”

“You can,” the scarred man said, glaring at her fiercely. “Just fire the bloody Defense Professor.”

“You say that
every
year,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Yes, and I’m always right!”

“Constant vigilance or no, Alastor, the students must be taught!”

Moody snorted. “Pfah! I swear the curse gets worse every year, as you lot get more and more reluctant to let them go. Your precious Professor Quirrell would have to
be
Grindelwald in disguise, to get himself sent off!”

“Is he?” Harry couldn’t help asking. “I mean, could he
actually
be -”

“I check Grindie’s cell every two months,” Moody said. “He was there in March.”

“Could the person in the cell be a ringer?”

“I administer a blood test for his identity, son.”

“Where do you keep the blood you use as a reference?”

“In a safe place.” Something like a smile was stretching the scarred lips. “Have you considered the Auror Office after you graduate?”

“Alastor,” Professor McGonagall said reluctantly. “The Defense Professor
does
have a… health condition. I suppose you will call it suspicious in itself - but it is by no means certain that it will be any ill-doing on his part which prevents us from renewing his employment.”

“Yes, his little naptimes,” Moody said darkly. “Amelia thinks he stepped into the path of a high-level curse. Sounds to
me
more like a Dark ritual gone wrong!”

“You’ve no proof of that!” Professor McGonagall said.

“That man might as well be wearing a sign saying ‘Dark Wizard’ in glowing green letters over his head.”

“Ah…” Harry said. It didn’t seem like an especially good time to ask what Mr. Moody thought of the ‘not all sacrificial rituals are evil’ standpoint. “Excuse me, but you said earlier that Professor Quirrell - I mean the old David Monroe - I mean the Monroe from the seventies - anyway, you said that person used the Killing Curse. What does that imply? Does somebody have to be a Dark Wizard to use it?”

Moody shook his head. “I’ve used it myself. All it takes is power and a certain
mood.
” The grimacing lips were showing teeth. “The first time I cast it was against a wizard named Gerald Grice, and you can ask me what
he
did after you graduate Hogwarts.”

“But why is it Unforgiveable, then?” Harry said. “I mean, a Cutting Hex can kill someone too. So why’s it any better to use a Reducto instead of Avada Kedav-”