Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (201 page)

But why?
said Ravenclaw.
Why suppose that?

Because,
thought Harry,
it explains why Professor Quirrell didn’t
warn me
not to cast any magic on him in Azkaban. Because Professor Quirrell never said in Parseltongue, that I can remember, that I’d hurt myself if I tried to cast magic on him. He could have given me that warning, but he didn’t, even though he gave me a lot of other warnings. Absence of evidence is weak evidence of absence.

There was a pause while Harry’s parts considered this.

We don’t actually have our wand,
said Ravenclaw.

We might get it back at some point,
thought the last voice.

But even then,
Harry thought, and the grey hopelessness returned,
the resonance is something the Dark Lord knows about. He’s already thought of everything I can do with that, he already has a response prepared. That was my mistake from the beginning. I didn’t respect the Dark Lord’s intelligence, I didn’t think that maybe he knew everything I knew and could see everything I saw and had already taken it into account.

Then,
said the last voice,
conditional on our winning, we must have hit him with something he doesn’t know about.

Dementors,
offered Gryffindor.

The Dark Lord
knows
we can destroy, deflect, and possibly control Dementors,
said Ravenclaw.
He doesn’t know how, but he knows we have the capability, and where the heck would we get a Dementor anyway?

Maybe, ventured Hufflepuff,
the Dark Lord’s whole horcrux system would short out via the resonance if we grabbed him and held him, sacrificing our own life to destroy him forever.

Bullhockey,
said Ravenclaw.
But I guess it doesn’t hurt to engage in some pleasant fantasy before we die, no matter how stupid.

If Lord Voldemort had a strong enough fear of death,
Hufflepuff argued,
if he
wanted strongly enough to just not need to think about death again, then the horcrux system
could
have design flaws like that. It never occurred to Voldemort to test his horcruxes on someone else, that could indicate he wasn’t able to think about the subject clearly -

So his fear of death is his fatal weakness?
said Ravenclaw.
Yeah, no. I’m thinking someone with over a hundred horcruxes might have a few failsafe mechanisms in there.

And Harry’s brain went on thinking.

A genuine asymmetry in the magical resonance between them… seemed improbable, there was no reason for the magical effect to work like that. But the magical backlash could hit the stronger wizard harder, the more powerful magic resonating more dangerously. That could explain the observed event in Godric’s Hollow (Voldemort explodes, baby survives), and also explain the observed event in Azkaban (Voldemort severely impaired by backlash of his strong magic, first-year Boy-Who-Lived hit by lighter backlash of his weak magic). Or if it was only the caster’s magic that resonated, that could also explain both those two observations. That might even explain why Professor Quirrell had been in no rush to warn Harry against casting any magic on him. Though there was another obvious reason why Professor Quirrell would avoid raising the subject of the resonance; it was a gigantic hint about the mystery of Godric’s Hollow, if Harry had ever made the connection.

The part that was numb with grief and guilt took this opportunity to observe, speaking of obliviousness, that after events at Hogwarts had turned serious, they really really
really REALLY
should have reconsidered the decision made on First Thursday, at the behest of Professor McGonagall,
not to tell Dumbledore about the sense of doom that Harry got around Professor Quirrell.
It was true that Harry hadn’t been sure who to trust, there was a long stretch where it had seemed plausible that Dumbledore was the bad guy and Professor Quirrell the heroic opposition, but…

Dumbledore would have realised.

Dumbledore would have realised instantly.

The wise old wizard with the true phoenix on his shoulder would have known, and Harry hadn’t trusted him, Harry hadn’t told him all the relevant facts, and the reason for this had been sheer neglect to reconsider a cached decision made four days into the start of the school year. It had been marked ‘something not to tell Dumbledore’ and even after Azkaban, even after Hermione died, even after everything, Harry had simply forgot to promote the question to deliberation and reconsider the tradeoff.

Another wave of grief and shame washed over Harry, and for a time he walked on in the silence of the last voice, other voices being happy enough to fill the gap.

After what was at least several miles, and many grey thoughts, the stone tunnel ended.

The Dark Lord climbed up stone steps, and Harry followed after.

The two of them came into a dark, dank stone building. Dirty old stone doors swung open without being touched.

Before them lay marble slabs, rising up from bare ground, upon them names and dates. The tombstones were scattered in nothing like neat rows, and the rest of the graveyard ran wild.

The moon above was over three-quarters full, already seeming bright with night not fully fallen.

Harry had stopped walking upon seeing the graveyard. There was a blaring alarm in his brain saying to be
anywhere other than here,
but there weren’t any options for accomplishing that. So that alarm cried unanswered, even as behind Harry the stone doors of the mausoleum swung shut again and sealed themselves.

The Dark Lord came into the center of the scattered graveyard. He stopped walking, and waved his wand above his head in a small circle.

There was a rumbling sound, and smoothly from the ground rose an altar, at least two meters wide and of black stone carved with grey sigils. And then surrounding the altar groaned up six dark-marble obelisks, regularly spaced, gleaming darkly beneath the fading twilight sky.

The unanswerable alarm in Harry’s brain grew louder.

“This,” said the Dark Lord in Professor Quirrell’s cadences, “is a workspace I made for myself, convenient to either Hogwarts or Hogsmeade.” The Dark Lord flourished a hand at the altar. “That is where Miss Granger shall revive, and also where I shall be reborn into my true body. I shall remake myself first, of course.
Magicss to revive girl-child eassier with true body.
” A strange snakish laughter accompanied these words. ”
Resst asssured that though ssome asspects of girl-child’ss ressurrection sshall be what otherss conssider Dark, girl-child will not be harmed or made ugly by it. Sshall sstill look like hersself, mind sshall be her own, nor sshall I or mine harm her after.”

Harry’s tongue was dry and his mind was having trouble functioning. “Please, Professor, would you say in Parseltongue what is your real purpose in resurrecting Miss Granger?”

“
To resstore to you girl-child friend’ss counssel and resstraint. To make ssure sshe iss part of the world for you to care about. That, boy, iss truly the greater part of the reasson I am doing thiss deed.
” Again snakish laughter accompanied these words, conveying sardonic awareness of some vast irony.

A small spark of hope kindled inside Harry, alongside the much greater note of confusion, and the fear that a perfect Occlumens could indeed lie in Parseltongue. Harry didn’t understand why the Dark Lord was doing this, if the next step was just to kill the Boy-Who-Lived or enslave him…

Maybe he’d just never understood Professor Quirrell at all, maybe somehow Harry’s model of Tom Riddle was just
that wrong
… maybe the Boy-Who-Lived would be Obliviated of the last day and dropped off somewhere with a confused Hermione Granger, while Lord Voldemort went on to conquer the world…?

Hope flared up in Harry, but it was a confused hope that didn’t make any sense. It didn’t square with the Dark Lord who had mocked Dumbledore and laughed at his defeat. Harry couldn’t come up with any consistent account of Professor Quirrell’s motives that allowed for something like that.

I do not know what is meant to happen next.

The Dark Lord had moved forward to the altar. He knelt there, and seemed to reach deep into the stone of the altar itself, drawing forth a vial of liquid that looked black in the fading twilight.

When the Dark Lord spoke again his voice was clipped and precise. “Blood, blood, blood so wisely hidden,” said the Dark Lord.

And the obelisks surrounding the altar began to speak, voices like a chanting chorus coming from the motionless stones, cadances older than Latin.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi.

The obelisks’ chant echoed after the end of each line, as if they were speaking out of synchrony with each other. The blood was poured from the vial, and it seemed to catch and hang over the altar, slowly expanding through the air, taking on a shape.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi (emoi).

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi (emoi).

A tall form rested upon the altar, and even in the dimming twilight it looked too pale.

The Defense Professor reached his hand into his robe, and drew forth a small irregular chunk of red glass.

He placed that upon the tall pale body.

The Stone stayed there for a time, minutes at least. The irregular chunk of red glass did not glow, or flash, or give any other indication of power.

Then the Stone moved, just a little, turning slightly upon the body.

The Defense Professor took back the Stone into his robes, and prodded the tall form that lay motionless upon the altar, touching the eyes with his fingers, poking the chest with his wand.

He threw back his head, then, and laughed.

“Incredible,” said the Dark Lord, in the voice of the Defense Professor that Harry had known. “Fixed, it is fixed in form! A mere construct sustained by magic, become the true substance at the Stone’s touch! And yet I sensed nothing! Nothing! I feared I had been deceived, that I had obtained a false Stone, but the substance proves true to my every test!” The Defense Professor tucked the red glass back into his robes. “That is eldritch even by my standards, I admit.”

Then the Defense Professor walked around the altar, five times he walked around it, chanting something too low for Harry to hear.

The Dark Lord placed his wand in the hand of the figure lying on the altar.

He placed his hands, both of them, over the body’s forehead.

The Dark Lord spoke. “
Fal. Tor. Pan.”

Without any warning there was a flash like lightning that lit up the entire graveyard, and Harry staggered back a step, his hands involuntarily going to his forehead. It felt as if he had been shot there, or a wasp stung him, upon his scar.

The Defense Professor collapsed.

And the too-tall figure sat up upon the altar.

It swung around smoothly, and stood tall upon the ground, at least a head higher than a normal man. The form’s limbs were lean and pale, little-muscled but giving an impression of terrible strength.

Harry took another staggering step back, his hands still clasped to his scar. Though the distance between them was wide, Harry felt a sense of terrifying apprehension in the air, as though the sense of doom had always been been
out of focus
and had now clarified, concentrated into a physical pain in the scar on Harry’s forehead.

Was that what Voldemort was
supposed
to look like? The nose looked like, it looked like it had
malfunctioned
during the resurrection process -

The too-tall figure threw back his head and laughed, raising his hands and wand to look at them. The left hand opened wide and it was like a pale half-spider with four over-long legs, fingers caressing the wand held in the other hand. Leaves stirred up from the graveyard, approaching to dance around the too-tall figure, surrounding him and clothing him, reforming into a high-necked shirt and flowing robes; and Lord Voldemort was laughing. Exactly the mirthless laughter that Harry remembered coming from his own throat inside the Dementor’s nightmare, precise in tone and timbre.

Red eyes gleamed beneath the fading twilight, their pupils slitted like a cat’s.

The form that Voldemort had abandoned raised itself, quivering, from the ground; and in a voice that Harry could barely hear, Quirinus Quirrell gasped, “Free - oh, free -”

“
Stupefy,
” said the high cold voice of Voldemort, and Quirinus Quirrell was blasted down into the ground; then, with a wave of Voldemort’s other hand, Quirinus Quirrell was picked up and flung away from the altar.

Voldemort walked away from the altar, then turned and looked at Harry; and the pain in Harry’s scar flared at it.

“Frightened, child?” Voldemort hissed, like there was an undercurrent of Parseltongue even to the Dark Lord’s human speech. “Good. Place the girl on the altar, and break your Transfiguration.
Iss time for me to revive her.
”

Is this really going to happen? Are we really going to do this?

Harry swallowed, mastering his fear through that note of impossible hope amid the confusion, and walked over to the altar. Then Harry took off his left shoe, and his left sock, and took off the toe-ring that was Hermione Granger, the Transfigured shape identical to the toe-ring that had been given Harry as an emergency portkey. There was a twinge of regret in Harry for not having the real portkey now, but only a twinge; an inner-circle Death Eater would routinely put up boundaries against portkeys, if Severus had been right. Behind Harry, Voldemort laughed again in what sounded like surprised appreciation.

“I need my wand to
Finite
her,” Harry said aloud.

“You do
not
.” High the voice and cruel. “You learned to sustain a Transfiguration by touch alone, without further use of the wand. You can likewise break your own Transfiguration wandlessly, by commanding your sustaining magic to drain away. Do so now.”