Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (68 page)

A scientific civilization, reaching outward, looking upward, knowing that its destiny was to grasp the stars.

And a magical civilization, slowly fading as knowledge was lost, still governed by a nobility that saw Muggles as not quite human.

It was a terribly sad feeling, but not one that held any hint of doubt.

Aftermath: Blaise Zabini.

Blaise strolled through the hallways with careful, self-imposed slowness, his heart beating wildly as he tried to calm down -

“Ahem,” said a dry, whispering voice from a shadowy alcove as he passed.

Blaise jumped, but he didn’t scream.

Slowly, he turned.

In that small, shadowy corner was a black cloak so wide and billowing that it was impossible to determine whether the figure beneath was male or female, and atop the cloak a broad-brimmed black hat, and a black mist seemed to gather beneath it and obscure the face of whoever or whatever might lie beneath.

“Report,” whispered Mr. Hat and Cloak.

“I said just what you told me to,” said Blaise. His voice was a little calmer now that he wasn’t lying to anyone. “And Professor Quirrell reacted just the way you expected.”

The broad black hat tilted and straightened, as though the head below had nodded. “Excellent,” said the unidentifiable whisper. “The reward I promised you is already on its way to your mother, by owl.”

Blaise hesitated, but his curiosity was eating him alive. “Can I ask now why you want to cause trouble between Professor Quirrell and Dumbledore?” The Headmaster hadn’t had anything to do with the Gryffindor bullies that Blaise knew about, and besides helping Kimberly, the Headmaster had also offered to make Professor Binns give him excellent marks in History of Magic even if he turned in blank parchments for his homework, though he’d still have to attend class and pretend to hand them in. Actually Blaise would have betrayed all three generals for free, and never mind his cousin either, but he’d seen no need to say that.

The broad black hat cocked to one side, as if to convey a quizzical stare. “Tell me, friend Blaise, did it occur to you that traitors who betray so many times over often meet with ill ends?”

“Nope,” said Blaise, looking straight into the black mist under the hat. “Everyone knows that nothing
really
bad ever happens to students in Hogwarts.”

Mr. Hat and Cloak gave a whispery chuckle. “Indeed,” said the whisper. “With the murder of one student five decades ago being the exception that proves the rule, since Salazar Slytherin would have keyed his monster into the ancient wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself.”

Blaise stared at the black mist, now beginning to feel a little uneasy. But it ought to take a Hogwarts professor to do anything significant to him without setting off alarms. Quirrell and Snape were the only professors who’d do something like this, and Quirrell wouldn’t care about fooling
himself
, and Snape wouldn’t hurt one of his own Slytherins… would he?

“No, friend Blaise,” whispered the black mist, “I only wished to advise you never to try anything like this in your adult life. So many betrayals would certainly lead to at least one vengeance.”

“My
mother
never got any vengeances,” said Blaise proudly. “Even though she married
seven
husbands and every single one of them died mysteriously and left her lots of money.”

“Really?” said the whisper. “However did she persuade the seventh to marry her after he heard what happened to the first six?”

“I asked Mum that,” said Blaise, “and she said I couldn’t know until I was old enough, and I asked her how old was old enough, and she said, older than her.”

Again the whispery chuckle. “Well then, friend Blaise, my congratulations on having followed in your mother’s footsteps. Go, and if you say nothing of this, we will not meet again.”

Blaise backed uneasily away, feeling an odd reluctance to turn his back.

The hat tilted. “Oh, come now, little Slytherin. If you were truly the equal of Harry Potter or Draco Malfoy, you would have already realized that my hinted threats were just to ensure your silence before Albus. Had I intended to harm, I would not have hinted; had I said nothing,
then
you should have worried.”

Blaise straightened, feeling a little insulted, and nodded to Mr. Hat and Cloak; then turned decisively and strode off toward his meeting with the Headmaster.

He’d been hoping to the very end that someone
else
would show up and give him a chance to sell out Mr. Hat and Cloak.

But then Mum hadn’t betrayed seven different husbands at the
same time.
When you looked at it
that
way, he was still doing better than her.

And Blaise Zabini went on walking toward the Headmaster’s office, smiling, content to be a quintuple agent -

For a moment the boy stumbled, but then straightened, shaking off the odd feeling of disorientation.

And Blaise Zabini went on walking toward the Headmaster’s office, smiling, content to be a quadruple agent.

Aftermath: Hermione Granger.

The messenger didn’t approach her until she was alone.

Hermione was just leaving the girl’s bathroom where she sometimes hid to think, and a bright shining cat leaped out of nowhere and said, “Miss Granger?”

She let out a little shriek before she realized the cat had spoken in Professor McGonagall’s voice.

Even so she hadn’t been frightened, only startled; the cat was bright and brilliant and beautiful, glowing with a white silver radiance like moon-colored sunlight, and she couldn’t imagine being scared.

“What are you?” said Hermione.

“This is a message from Professor McGonagall,” said the cat, still in the Professor’s voice. “Can you come to my office, and not speak of this to anyone?”

“I’ll be there right away,” said Hermione, still surprised, and the cat leaped and vanished; only it didn’t vanish, it traveled away somehow; or that was what her mind said, even though her eyes just saw it disappear.

By the time Hermione had got to the office of her favorite professor, her mind was all a-whirl with speculations. Was there something wrong with her Transfiguration scores? But then why would Professor McGonagall say not to tell anyone? It was probably about Harry practicing his partial Transfiguration…

Professor McGonagall’s face looked worried, not stern, as Hermione seated herself in front of the desk - trying to keep her eyes from going to the nest of cubbyholes containing Professor McGonagall’s homework, she’d always wondered what sort of work grownups had to do to keep the school running and whether they could use any help from her…

“Miss Granger,” said Professor McGonagall, “let me start by saying that I already know about the Headmaster asking you to make that wish -”

“He
told
you?” blurted Hermione in startlement. The Headmaster had said no one else was supposed to know!

Professor McGonagall paused, looked at Hermione, and gave a sad little chuckle. “It’s good to see Mr. Potter hasn’t corrupted you too much. Miss Granger, you aren’t supposed to
admit
anything just because I say I know. As it happens, the Headmaster did
not
tell me, I simply know him too well.”

Hermione was blushing furiously now.

“It’s fine, Miss Granger!” said Professor McGonagall hastily. “You’re a Ravenclaw in your first year, nobody expects you to be a Slytherin.”

That
really
stung.

“Fine,” said Hermione with some acerbity, “I’ll go ask Harry Potter for Slytherin lessons, then.”

“That
wasn’t
what I wanted to…” said Professor McGonagall, and her voice trailed off. “Miss Granger, I’m worried about this
because
young Ravenclaw girls shouldn’t have to be Slytherins! If the Headmaster asks you to get involved in something you’re not comfortable with, Miss Granger, it really is all right to say no. And if you’re feeling pressured, please tell the Headmaster that you would like me to be there, or that you would like to ask me first.”

Hermione’s eyes were very wide. “Does the Headmaster do things that are wrong?”

Professor McGonagall looked a little sad at that. “Not on purpose, Miss Granger, but I think… well, it probably
is
true that sometimes the Headmaster has trouble remembering what it’s like to be a child. Even when he was a child, I’m sure he must have been brilliant, and strong of mind and heart, with courage enough for three Gryffindors. Sometimes the Headmaster asks too much of his young students, Miss Granger, or isn’t careful enough not to hurt them. He is a good man, but sometimes his plotting can go too far.”

“But it’s
good
for students to be strong and have courage,” said Hermione. “That’s why you suggested Gryffindor for me, wasn’t it?”

Professor McGonagall smiled wryly. “Perhaps I was only being selfish, wanting you for my own House. Did the Sorting Hat offer you - no, I should not have asked.”

“It told me I might go anywhere but Slytherin,” said Hermione. She’d
almost
asked why she wasn’t good enough for Slytherin, before she’d managed to stop herself… “So I
have
courage, Professor!”

Professor McGonagall leaned forward over her desk. The worry was showing plainer on her face now. “Miss Granger, it’s not about courage, it’s about what’s healthy for young girls! The Headmaster is drawing you into his plots, Harry Potter is giving you his secrets to keep, and now you’re making alliances with Draco Malfoy! And I promised your mother that you would be safe at Hogwarts!”

Hermione just didn’t know what to say to that. But the thought was occurring to her that Professor McGonagall might not have been warning her if she’d been a boy in Gryffindor instead of a girl in Ravenclaw and
that
was, well… “I’ll try to be good,” she said, “and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.”

Professor McGonagall pressed her hands over her eyes. When she took them away, her lined face looked very old. “Yes,” she said in a whisper, “you would have done well in my House. Stay safe, Miss Granger, and be careful. And if you are ever worried or uncomfortable about anything, please come to me at once. I won’t keep you any longer.”

Aftermath, Draco Malfoy:

Neither of them really wanted to do anything complicated that Saturday, not after fighting a battle earlier. So Draco was just sitting in an unused classroom and trying to read a book called
Thinking Physics.
It was one of the most fascinating things that Draco had ever read in his life, at least the parts he could understand, at least when the
accursed idiot
who refused to let his books out of his sight could manage to
shut up
and let Draco
concentrate
-

“Hermione Granger is a
muuudbloood,
” sang Harry Potter from where he sat at a nearby desk, reading a far more advanced book of his own.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” said Draco calmly without looking up from the pages. “It’s not going to work. We’re still ganging up and crushing you.”

“A
Maaaalfoy
is working with a
muuudbloood,
what will all your father’s
frieeeends
think -”

“They’ll think Malfoys aren’t as easily manipulated as
you
seem to believe,
Potter!
”

The Defense Professor was crazier than Dumbledore, no future saviour of the world could ever be this
childish
and
undignified
at any age.

“Hey, Draco, you know what’s really going to suck?
You
know that Hermione Granger has two copies of the magical allele, just like you and just like me, but all your classmates in Slytherin don’t know that and
yooouuu’re
not allowed to
explaaaaain
-”

Draco’s fingers were whitening where they gripped the book. Being beaten and spat upon couldn’t possibly require this much self-control, and if he didn’t get back at Harry soon, he was going to do something incriminating -

“So what
did
you wish the first time?” said Draco.

Harry didn’t say anything, so Draco looked up from his book, and felt a twinge of malicious satisfaction at the sad look on Harry’s face.

“Um,” Harry said. “A lot of people asked me that, but I don’t think Professor Quirrell would have wanted me to talk about it.”

Draco put a serious look on his own face. “You can talk about it with
me
. It’s probably not important compared to the other secrets you’ve told me, and what else are friends for?”
That’s right, I’m your friend! Feel guilty!

“It wasn’t really all that interesting,” Harry said with obviously artificial lightness. “Just,
I wish Professor Quirrell would teach Battle Magic again next year.
”

Harry sighed, and looked back down at his book.

And said, after another few seconds, “Your father’s probably going to be pretty upset with you this Christmas, but if you promise him that you’ll betray the mudblood girl and wipe out her army, everything will go back to being all right, and you’ll still get your Christmas presents.”

Maybe if he and Granger asked Professor Quirrell extra politely and used some of their Quirrell points, the two of them would be allowed to do something more interesting to General Chaos than putting him to sleep.

Wrenching disorientation, that was how it felt to walk out of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters into the rest of Earth, the world that Harry had once thought was the only real world. People dressed in casual shirts and pants, instead of the more dignified robes of wizards and witches. Scattered bits of trash here and there around the benches. A forgotten smell, the fumes of burned gasoline, raw and sharp in the air. The ambiance of the King’s Cross train station, less bright and cheerful than Hogwarts or Diagon Alley; the people seemed smaller, more afraid, and likely would have eagerly traded their problems for a dark wizard to fight. Harry wanted to cast
Scourgify
for the dirt, and
Everto
for the garbage, and if he’d known the spell, a Bubble-Head Charm so he wouldn’t have to breathe the air. But he couldn’t use his wand, in this place…

This, Harry realized, must be what it felt like to go from a First World country to a Third World country.

Only it was the Zeroth World which Harry had left, the wizarding world, of Cleansing Charms and house elves; where, between the healer’s arts and your own magic, you could hit one hundred and seventy before old age really started catching up with you.

And nonmagical London, Muggle Earth, to which Harry had temporarily returned. This was where Mum and Dad would live out the rest of their lives, unless technology leapfrogged over wizardry’s quality of life, or something deeper in the world changed.

Without even thinking about it, Harry’s head turned and his eyes darted behind him to see the wooden trunk that was scurrying after him, unnoticed by any Muggles, the clawed tentacles offering quick confirmation that, yes, he hadn’t just imagined it all…

And then there was the other reason for the tight feeling in his chest.

His parents didn’t know.

They didn’t know
anything
.

They didn’t know…

“Harry?” called a thin, blonde woman whose perfectly smooth and unblemished skin made her look a good deal younger than thirty-three; and Harry realized with a start that it
was
magic, he hadn’t known the signs before but he could see them now. And whatever sort of potion lasted that long, it must have been terribly dangerous, because most witches didn’t do that to themselves, they weren’t that desperate…

There was water gathering in Harry’s eyes.

“
Harry?
” yelled an older-looking man with a paunch gathering about his stomach, dressed with ostentatious academic carelessness in a black vest thrown over a dark grey-green shirt, someone who would always be a professor anywhere he went, who would certainly have been one of the most brilliant wizards of his generation, if he’d been born with two copies of that gene, instead of zero…

Harry raised his hand and waved to them. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak at all.

They came over to him, not running, but at a steady, dignified walk; that was how fast Professor Michael Verres-Evans walked, and Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres wasn’t about to walk any faster.

The smile on his father’s face wasn’t very wide, but then his father never was given to huge smiles; it was, at least, as wide as Harry had ever seen it, wider than when a new grant came in, or when one of his students got a position, and you couldn’t ask for a wider smile than that.

Mum was blinking hard, and she was trying to smile but not doing a very good job.

“So!” said his father as he came striding up. “Made any revolutionary discoveries yet?”

Of course Dad thought he was joking.

It hadn’t hurt quite so much when his parents didn’t believe in him, back when no one
else
had believed in him either, back when Harry hadn’t
known
how it felt to be taken seriously by people like Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor Quirrell.

And that was when Harry realized that the Boy-Who-Lived only existed in magical Britain, that there wasn’t any such person in Muggle London, just a cute little eleven-year-old boy going home for Christmas.

“Excuse me,” Harry said, his voice trembling, “I’m going to break down and cry now, it doesn’t mean there was anything wrong at school.”

Harry started to move forward, and then stopped, torn between hugging his father and hugging his mother, he didn’t want either one to feel slighted or that Harry loved them more than the other -

“You,” said his father, “are a very silly boy, Mr. Verres,” and he gently took Harry by the shoulders and pushed him into the arms of his mother, who was kneeling down, tears already streaking her cheek.

“Hello, Mum,” Harry said with his voice wavering, “I’m back.” And he hugged her, amid the noisy mechanical sounds and the smell of burned gasoline; and Harry started crying, because he knew that nothing
could
go back, least of all him.

The sky was completely dark, and stars were coming out, by the time they negotiated the Christmas traffic to the university town that was Oxford, and parked in the driveway of the small, dingy-looking old house that their family used to keep the rain off their books.

As they walked up the brief stretch of pavement leading to the front door, they passed a series of flower-pots holding small, dim electric lights (dim since they had to recharge themselves off solar power during the day), and the lights lit up just as they passed. The hard part had been finding motion sensors that were waterproof and triggered at just the right distance…

In Hogwarts there were real torches like that.

And then the front door opened and Harry stepped into their living-room, blinking hard.

Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase. Each bookcase has six shelves, going almost to the ceiling. Some bookshelves are stacked to the brim with hardcover books: science, math, history, and everything else. Other shelves have two layers of paperback science fiction, with the back layer of books propped up on old tissue boxes or two-by-fours, so that you can see the back layer of books above the books in front. And it still isn’t enough. Books are overflowing onto the tables and the sofas and making little heaps under the windows…

The Verres household was just as he’d left it, only with more books, which was also just how he’d left it.

And a Christmas tree, naked and undecorated just two days before Christmas Eve, which threw Harry briefly before he realized, with a warm feeling blossoming in his chest, that of course his parents had
waited
.

“We took the bed out of your room to make room for more bookcases,” said his father. “You can sleep in your trunk, right?”

“
You
can sleep in my trunk,” said Harry.

“That reminds me,” said his father. “What
did
they end up doing about your sleep cycle?”

“Magic,” Harry said, making a beeline for the door that opened upon his bedroom, just in case Dad
wasn’t
joking…

“That’s not an explanation!” said Professor Verres-Evans, just as Harry shouted, “
You used up all the open space on my bookcases?
”

Harry had spent the 23rd of December shopping for Muggle things that he couldn’t just Transfigure; his father had been busy and had said that Harry would need to walk or take the bus, which had suited Harry just fine. Some of the people at the hardware store had given Harry questioning looks, but he’d said with an innocent voice that his father was shopping nearby and was very busy and had sent him to get some things (holding up a list in carefully adult-looking half-illegible handwriting); and in the end, money was money.

They had all decorated the Christmas tree together, and Harry had put a tiny dancing fairy on top (two Sickles, five Knuts at Gambol & Japes).

Gringotts had readily exchanged Galleons for paper money, but they didn’t seem to have any simple way to turn larger quantities of gold into tax-free, unsuspicious Muggle money in a numbered Swiss bank account. This had rather spiked Harry’s plan to turn most of the money he’d self-stolen into a sensible mix of 60% international index funds and 40% Berkshire Hathaway. For the moment, Harry had diversified his assets a little further by sneaking out late at night, invisible and Time-Turned, and burying one hundred golden Galleons in the backyard. He’d always always
always
wanted to do that anyway.

Some of December 24th had been spent with the Professor reading Harry’s books and asking questions. Most of the experiments his father had suggested were impractical, at least for the moment; of those remaining, Harry had done many of them already. (“Yes, Dad, I checked what happened if Hermione was given a changed pronunciation and she didn’t know whether it was changed, that was the very first experiment I did, Dad!”)

The last question Harry’s father had asked, looking up from
Magical Draughts and Potions
with an expression of bewildered disgust, was whether it all made sense if you were a wizard; and Harry had answered no.

Whereupon his father had declared that magic was unscientific.

Harry was still a little shocked at the idea of pointing to a section of
reality
and calling it unscientific. Dad seemed to think that the conflict between his intuitions and the universe meant that the universe had a problem.

(Then again, there were lots of physicists who thought that quantum mechanics was weird, instead of quantum mechanics being normal and them being weird.)

Harry had shown his mother the healer’s kit he’d bought to keep in their house, though most of the potions wouldn’t work on Dad. Mum had stared at the kit in a way that made Harry ask whether Mum’s sister had ever bought anything like that for Grandpa Edwin and Grandma Elaine. And when Mum still hadn’t answered, Harry had said hastily that she must have just never thought of it. And then, finally, he’d fled the room.

Lily Evans probably
hadn’t
thought of it, that was the sad thing. Harry knew that other people had a tendency to not-think about painful subjects, in the same way they had a tendency not to deliberately rest their hands on red-hot stove burners; and Harry was starting to suspect that most Muggleborns rapidly acquired a tendency to not-think about their family, who were all going to die before they reached their first century anyway.

Not that Harry had any intention of letting
that
happen, of course.

And then it was late in the day on December 24th and they were driving off for their Christmas Eve dinner.

The house was huge, not by Hogwarts standards, but certainly by the standards of what you could get if your father was a distinguished professor trying to live in Oxford. Two stories of brick gleaming in the setting sun, with windows on top of windows and one tall window that went up much further than glass should go, that was going to be one huge living room…

Harry took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell.

There was a distant call of “Honey, can you get it?”

This was followed by a slow patter of approaching steps.

And then the door opened to reveal a genial man, of fat and rosy cheeks and thinning hair, in a blue button-down shirt straining slightly at the seams.

“Dr. Granger?” Harry’s father said briskly, before Harry could even speak. “I’m Michael, and this is Petunia and our son Harry. The food’s in the magical trunk,” and Dad made a vague gesture behind him - not quite in the direction of the trunk, as it happened.

“Yes, please, come in,” said Leo Granger. He stepped forward and took the wine bottle from the Professor’s outstretched hands, with a muttered “Thank you,” and then stepped back and waved at the living room. “Have a seat. And,” his head turning down to address Harry, “all the toys are downstairs in the basement, I’m sure Herm will be down shortly, it’s the first door on your right,” and pointed toward a hallway.

Harry just looked at him for a moment, conscious that he was blocking his parents from coming in.

“Toys?” said Harry in a bright, high-pitched voice, with his eyes wide. “I love toys!”

There was an intake of breath from his mother behind him, and Harry strode into the house, managing not to stomp too hard as he walked.

The living room was every bit as large as it had looked from outside, with a huge vaulted ceiling dangling a gigantic chandelier, and a Christmas tree that must have been murder to maneuver through the door. The lower levels of the tree were thoroughly and carefully decorated in neat patterns of red and green and gold, with a newfound sprinkling of blue and bronze; the heights that only a grownup could reach were carelessly, randomly draped with strings of lights and wreaths of tinsel. A hallway extended until it terminated in the cabinetry of a kitchen, and wooden stairs with polished metal railings stretched up toward a second floor.

“Gosh!” Harry said. “This is a big house! I hope I don’t get lost in here!”

Dr. Roberta Granger was feeling rather nervous as dinner approached. The turkey and the roast, their own contributions to the common project, were steadily cooking away in the oven; the other dishes were to be brought by their guests, the Verres family, who had adopted a boy named Harry. Who was known to the wizarding world as the Boy-Who-Lived. And who was also the only boy that Hermione had ever called “cute”, or noticed at all, really.

The Verreses had said that Hermione was the only child in Harry’s age group whose existence their son had ever acknowledged in any way whatsoever.

And it might’ve been jumping the gun just a little; but both couples had a sneaking suspicion that wedding bells might be in the offing a few years down the road.

So while Christmas Day would be spent, as always, with her husband’s family, they’d decided to spend Christmas Eve meeting their daughter’s possible future in-laws.

The doorbell rang while she was right in the middle of basting the turkey, and she raised her voice and shouted, “
Honey, can you get it?
”

There was a brief groan of a chair and its occupant, and then there was the sound of her husband’s heavy footsteps and the door swinging open.

“Dr. Granger?” said an older man’s brisk voice. “I’m Michael, and this is Petunia and our son Harry. The food’s in the magical trunk.”