Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (178 page)

“- so they passed on the mission to their children, and their children’s children.”

Generation after generation.

Until it came to me.

Could Time echo like that, rhyming, between this far into the future, and that far in the past? It
couldn’t
be coincidence, could it? Not this message, not in this place.

My family.

You really were, my mother and my father.

“It doesn’t mean resurrecting the dead, Harry,” Mr. Lupin said. “It means accepting death, and so being beyond death, mastering it.”

“Did James tell you that?” Harry said, his voice strange.

“No,” said Mr. Lupin, “but -”

“Good.”

Harry rose up slowly from where he had been kneeling, feeling as though he were pushing up a sun upon his shoulders, raising the dawn above the horizon.

Of
course
other wizards have tried. I am not unique. I was never alone. These feelings in my heart, they’re not so special, not in the wizard world or the Muggle one.

“Harry, your wand!” There was a sudden excitement in Mr. Lupin’s voice, and when Harry raised his wand to look at it closely, he saw that it was gleaming ever so faintly with a silver light, welling out of the wood.

“Cast the Patronus Charm!” urged Mr. Lupin. “Try casting it again, Harry!”

Oh, right. So far as Mr. Lupin knows, I can’t -

Harry smiled, and even laughed a little. “I’d better not,” Harry said. “If I tried to cast the spell in this state of mind, it’d probably kill me.”

“What?
” said Mr. Lupin. “The Patronus Charm doesn’t do that!”

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres raised his left hand, still laughing, and wiped away some more tears.

“You know, Mr. Lupin,” Harry said, “it really takes a
baroque
interpretation to think that somebody would be walking around, pondering how death is just something we all have to accept, and communicate their state of mind by saying, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ Maybe someone else thought it sounded poetic and picked up the phrase and tried to interpret it differently, but whoever said it first didn’t like death much.” Sometimes it puzzled Harry how most people didn’t seem to even
notice
when they were twisting something around to the 180-degree opposite of its first obvious reading. It couldn’t be a raw brainpower thing, people could see the obvious reading of most other English sentences. “Also ‘shall be destroyed’ refers to a change of future state, so it can’t be about the way things are now.”

Remus Lupin was staring at him with wide eyes. “You certainly are James and Lily’s child,” the man said, sounding rather shocked.

“Yes, I am,” Harry said. But that wasn’t enough, he had to do something more, so Harry raised his wand in the air and said, his voice as steady as he could make it, “I am Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, the son of Lily and James, of the house of Potter, and I accept my family’s quest. Death is my enemy, and I will defeat it.”

Thrayen beyn Peverlas soona ahnd thrih heera toal thissoom Dath bey yewoonen.

“What?” Harry said aloud. The words had popped up into his stream of consciousness as though from his own thoughts, unexplained.

“What was that?” said Remus Lupin at the same time.

Harry turned, scanning the graveyard, but he didn’t see anything. Beside him, Mr. Lupin was doing the same.

Neither of them noticed the tall stone worn as though from a thousand years of age, upon it a line within a circle within a triangle glowing ever so faintly silver, like the light which had shone from Harry’s wand, invisible at that distance beneath the still-bright Sun.

Some time later:

“Thank you again, Mr. Lupin,” Harry said, the tall, faintly scarred man was about to depart once more. “Though I really wish you hadn’t -”

“Professor Dumbledore said that I was to portkey us back to Hogwarts if anything unusual happened, whether or not it seemed like an attack,” Mr. Lupin said firmly. “Which is eminently sensible.”

Harry nodded. And then, having carefully saved this question for last, “Do you have any idea of what the words meant?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Mr. Lupin said, looking rather severe. “Certainly not without Professor Dumbledore’s permission. I can understand your eagerness, but you should not go trying to uncover any ancestral secrets of the Potters until you are an adult. That means after you’ve passed your NEWTs, Harry, or at least your OWLs. And I still think you’ve picked up entirely the wrong idea of what your family motto is meant to say!”

Harry nodded, sighing internally, and bid Mr. Lupin farewell.

Harry went back through Hogwarts, to the Ravenclaw Tower, feeling strange, and strengthened. He would not have expected any of that, but it had been all to the good.

He was passing through the Ravenclaw common room, on the way to his dorm.

That was when the shining creature came to him, gleaming soft white beneath the candlefires of the Ravenclaw common room, as it slithered out from nowhere, the silver snake.

Þregen béon Pefearles suna and þrie hira tól þissum Déað béo gewunen.

Three shall be Peverell’s sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated.

- Spoken in the presence of the three Peverell brothers,
in a small tavern on the outskirts of what would later be called Godric’s Hollow.

For the second time that day, Harry’s eyes filled with tears. Heedless of the puzzled eyes of the Ravenclaws in the common room, he reached out to the silver creature which Draco Malfoy had sent, cradling it in his arms like a live thing; and stumbled off in the direction of his dorm room, heading half-blindly for the bottom of his trunk, as the silver snake waited silently in his arms.

The fifth meeting: 10:12am, Sunday, April 19th.

The debtor’s meeting which Lord Malfoy had demanded from Harry Potter, who owed Lucius Malfoy a debt of some 58,203 Galleons, was held within the Gringotts Central Bank, in accordance with the laws of Britain.

There had been some pushback from Chief Warlock Dumbledore, trying to prevent Harry Potter from leaving the security of Hogwarts (a phrase that caused Harry Potter to raise his fingers and silently make quote marks in the air). For his own part, the Boy-Who-Lived had seemingly pondered quietly, and then assented to the meeting, strangely compliant in the face of his enemy’s demand.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts, who acted as Harry Potter’s legal guardian in the eyes of magical Britain, had overruled his ward’s assent.

The Debts Committee of the Wizengamot had overruled the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

The Chief Warlock had overruled the Debts Committee.

The Wizengamot had overruled the Chief Warlock.

And so the Boy-Who-Lived had departed under the heavy guard of Mad-Eye Moody and an Auror trio for the Gringotts Central Bank; with Moody’s bright-blue eye rotating wildly in every direction, as though to signal to any possible attacker that he was On Guard and Constantly Vigilant and would cheerfully incinerate the kidneys of anyone who sneezed in the general direction of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry Potter watched more keenly than before, as they marched through the wide-open front doors of Gringotts, beneath the motto
Fortius Quo Fidelius
. On Harry’s last three visits to Gringotts he had merely admired the marble pillars, the gold-burning torchlights, the architecture not quite like the human parts of magical Britain. Since then had come the Incident at Azkaban and other things; and now, on his fourth visit, Harry was thinking about the Goblin Rebellions and goblins’ ongoing resentment at not being allowed to own wands and certain facts which hadn’t been in the first-year History textbook, which Harry had guessed at by pattern-matching and which Professor Flitwick had confirmed in a very quiet voice. Lord Voldemort had killed goblins as well as wizards - an incredibly stupid move on Lord Voldemort’s part, unless Harry was really missing something - but what goblins thought of the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry had no idea. Goblins had a reputation for paying what they owed and taking what they thought owed them, along with a reputation for interpreting those accounts in a somewhat prejudiced fashion.

Today, the guards standing upright in armor at regular intervals around the bank were staring at the Boy-Who-Lived with blank faces, and glaring at Moody and the Aurors with flashes of bitter contempt. At the stands and counters of the bank’s foyer, goblin tellers stared with equal contempt at the wizards whose hands they were filling with Galleons; one teller smiled a sharp-toothed grin at a witch who was looking angry and desperate.

If I understand human nature correctly - and if I’m right that all the humanoid magical species are genetically human plus a heritable magical effect - then you’re not likely to become friends with a wizard just because I’m polite to you, or say that I’m sympathetic. But
I wonder if you would back the Boy-Who-Lived in a bid to overthrow the Ministry, if I promised to revoke the Wand Law afterward… or if I quietly gave you wands, and spellbooks, in exchange for your support… is that why the secret of wand-making is restricted to people like Ollivander? Though if you really are human, just plain human, then the goblin nation probably has its own internal horrors, its own Azkabans, for that is also human nature; in which case sooner or later I must overthrow or reform your own government as well. Hm.

An aged goblin appeared before them, and Harry inclined his head with careful courtesy, a gesture that the aged goblin returned with an abrupt half-nod. There was no wild train ride; instead the aged goblin ushered them into a short hallway that terminated in a small waiting room, with three goblin-sized benches and one wizard-sized chair, within which nobody sat.

“Do not sign anything that Lucius Malfoy gives you,” Mad-Eye Moody said. “
Nothing,
do you understand me, lad? If Malfoy hands you a copy of
The Wonderful Adventures of the Boy-Who-Lived
and asks you for an autograph, tell him that you’ve sprained a finger. Don’t pick up a quill for a single second while you’re in Gringotts. If someone hands you a quill, break the quill and then break your own fingers. Do I need to explain further, son?”

“Not particularly,” Harry said. “We also have lawyers in Muggle Britain, and they’d think your lawyers are cute.”

A short time later Harry Potter handed his wand over to an armored goblin guard who frisked him with all manner of interesting-looking probes, and gave his pouch to Moody to keep.

And then Harry stepped through another door, and a brief waterfall of Thief’s Downfall, which evaporated from his skin as soon as he stepped out.

On the other side of the door was a larger room, richly paneled and appointed, with a great golden table stretching across it; two huge leather chairs on one side of the table, and a small wooden stool on the other, the debtor’s perch. Two goblins in full armor, wearing ornate earpieces and glasses, stood watch around the room. Neither side would have wands or any other device of magic, and the goblin guards would attack immediately if anyone dared to use wandless magic within this peaceable meeting supervised by Gringotts Bank. The ornate earpieces would prevent the goblin guards from hearing the conversation unless directly addressed, the eyepieces would leave the wizards’ faces as blurs. It was, in short, something along the lines of
actual
security, at least if you were an Occlumens.

Harry climbed up onto his uncomfortable wooden stool, thinking
Subtle
in a tone of some mental sarcasm, and awaited his creditors.

It was only a brief interval later, much shorter than the time a debtor could legally be made to wait, when Lucius Malfoy entered into the room, taking up his leather chair with motions worn smooth by practice. His snake-headed cane was missing from his hands, his long white mane drifted behind him the same as ever, his face could not be read.

Quietly following behind him was a young boy with white-blonde hair, now wearing black robes far finer than any Hogwarts uniform, who followed in his father’s footsteps with a controlled face. A boy who was also Harry’s creditor to the tune of forty Galleons, and also of House Malfoy, and therefore, technically, covered by the Wizengamot resolution enabling this meeting.

Draco.
Harry didn’t say it aloud, didn’t let his own expression change. He could not think of what to say. Not even
I’m sorry
seemed appropriate. Harry hadn’t dared say any of that to Draco’s Patronus either, when they had set up this meeting in a few brief exchanges; and not only because Lucius might be listening. It had been enough to know that Draco’s happy thought was still happy, and that he had still been able to want Harry to know it.

Lucius Malfoy spoke first, his voice level, his face set. “I do not understand what is happening at Hogwarts, Harry Potter. Would you care to explain it to me?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “If I understood these events I would not have let them happen, Lord Malfoy.”

“Then answer me this question.
Who
are you?”

Harry gazed evenly at the face of his creditor. “I’m not You-Know-Who, like you thought I was,” Harry said. Not being a
complete
idiot, he’d eventually worked out who Lucius Malfoy had thought he was talking to in front of the Wizengamot. “Obviously I’m not a normal boy. Equally obviously, that probably has
something
to do with the Boy-Who-Lived business. But I don’t know what, or why, any more than you do. I asked the Sorting Hat and it didn’t know either.”

Lucius Malfoy nodded distantly. “I could not think of any reason why you would pay a hundred thousand Galleons to save a mudblood’s life. No reason save one, which would account for her power and bloodthirst alike; but then she died at the hands of a troll, and yet you lived. And also my
son
has told me
much
of you, Harry Potter, which
did not make the tiniest bit of sense,
I have heard the ravings of the mad in St. Mungo’s and they were more sensible by far than the events which my
son
told me under
Veritaserum
that you enacted, and that portion of this
raving lunacy,
which you
personally carried out,
I would have you explain to me, and now.”

Harry turned to look at Draco, who looked back at him with a face that was screwing up, being controlled, and then tensing up again.

“I’d also,” Draco Malfoy said in a high and wavering voice, “like, to know, why, Potter.”

Harry closed his eyes, and spoke without looking. “A boy raised by Muggles who thought he was clever. You saw me, Draco, and you thought of how very useful it would be if the Boy-Who-Lived, out of all the other children in your year, could be shown the truth of things, if we could be friends. And I thought the same thing about you. Only, you and I believed different things were true. Not that I’m saying that there are different truths, I mean, there’s different beliefs but there’s only one reality, only one universe that can make those beliefs true or false -”

“You lied to me.”

Harry opened his eyes and looked at Draco. “I would prefer to say,” Harry said, not quite with a steady voice, “that the things I told you were true from a certain point of view.”

“A certain point of view?”
Draco Malfoy looked every bit as angry as Luke Skywalker’d had the right to be, and not in a mood to accept Kenobi’s excuses, either. “There’s a word for things that are true from a certain point of view. They’re called
lies!
”

“Or tricks,” Harry said evenly. “Statements which are technically true but which deceive the listener into forming further beliefs which are false. I think it’s worth making that distinction. What I told you was a self-fulfilling prophecy; you believed that you couldn’t deceive yourself, so you didn’t try. The skills you’ve learned are real, and it would have been very bad for you to start fighting against them internally. People can’t make themselves believe that blue is green by an act of will, but they
think
they can, and that can be almost as bad.”

“You
used
me,” said Draco Malfoy.

“I only used you in ways that made you stronger. That’s what it means to be used by a friend.”

“Even I know that’s not what friendship is!”

Now Lucius Malfoy spoke again. “For what purpose? To what end?” Even the elder Malfoy’s voice was not quite steady. “
Why?”

Harry regarded him for a moment, and then turned to Draco. “Your father’s probably not going to believe this,” Harry said. “But you, Draco, should be able to see that everything which has happened is compatible with this hypothesis. And that any more cynical hypothesis wouldn’t explain why I didn’t press you harder when you thought I had leverage, or why I taught you so much. I thought that the heir of House Malfoy, who’d been publicly seen to grab a Muggleborn girl to stop her falling off the roof of Hogwarts, would be a good compromise candidate to lead magical Britain after the reformation.”

“So you would have me believe,” Lucius Malfoy said in a thin voice, “that you are claiming to be mad. Well, let us leave all that aside. Tell me who set that troll on Hogwarts.”

“I don’t know,” Harry said.

“Tell me who you
suspect,
Harry Potter.”

“I have four suspects. One of them is Professor Snape -”

“
Snape?
” Draco burst out.

“The second, of course, is the Defense Professor of Hogwarts, just because he’s the Defense Professor.” Harry would have left him out, not wanting to bring Professor Quirrell to the Malfoys’ attention if he was innocent, but Draco might have called him on that. “The third, you wouldn’t believe me about. The fourth is a catchall category called Everything Else.”
And the fifth, Lord Voldemort, I do not think I should name to you.

Lucius Malfoy’s face contorted in a snarl. “Do you think I cannot recognize bait upon your hook? Tell me about this third possibility, Potter, the one you wish me to believe is the
true
answer, and leave aside games.”

Harry regarded Lord Malfoy steadily. “I once read a book I wasn’t supposed to read, and it told me this: Communication is an event that takes place between equals. Employees lie to their bosses, who, in turn, expect to be lied to. I’m not playing coy, I’m observing that it’s simply not possible, in our present situation, for me to tell you about the third suspect, and have you believe that my story was anything but a lure.”

Draco spoke then. “It’s Father, isn’t it?”

Harry gave Draco a startled look.

Draco spoke evenly. “You suspect that Father sent the troll into Hogwarts to get at Granger, don’t you? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it!”

Harry opened his mouth to say,
Actually, no,
and then managed to think ahead and stop himself for once in his life.

“I see…” Harry said slowly. “
That’s
what this is about. Lucius Malfoy publicly says that Hermione won’t get away with what she’s done, and lo and behold, a troll kills her.” Harry smiled then, in a way that bared his teeth. “And if I deny that here, then Draco, who isn’t an Occlumens, can then testify under Veritaserum that the Boy-Who-Lived does
not
suspect Lucius Malfoy of having sent a troll into Hogwarts to kill Hermione Granger, sworn to the Noble House of Potter, whose blood debt was recently purchased for a hundred thousand Galleons et cetera.” Harry leaned back slightly, though his wooden stool had no back with which to do it properly. “But now that it’s been pointed out, I see that it’s very reasonable. Obviously
you
killed Hermione Granger, just like you threatened to do in front of the whole Wizengamot.”