Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (104 page)

The inner part of Harry was screaming and banging its head against imaginary walls, while the outer Harry turned and stared at what proved to be -

There was a rather long pause.

Then Harry said, “It is a copy of
The Lord of the Rings
by J. R. R. Tolkien.”

“You recognized a quote from that book,” said Dumbledore, an intent look in his eyes, “so I assume you remember it well. If I am mistaken, let me be corrected.”

Harry just stared at him.

“It is important to understand,” said Dumbledore, “that this book is not a realistic depiction of a wizarding war. John Tolkien never fought Voldemort. Your war will not be like the books you have read. Real life is not like stories. Do you understand, Harry?”

Harry, rather slowly, nodded yes; and then shook his head no.

“In particular,” said Dumbledore, “there is a certain very foolish thing that Gandalf does in the first book. He makes many mistakes, does Tolkien’s wizard; but this one error is the most unforgivable. That mistake is this: When Gandalf first suspected, even for a moment, that Frodo held the One Ring, he should have moved Frodo to Rivendell
at once.
He might have been embarrassed, that old wizard, if his suspicions had proven false. He might have found it awkward to so command Frodo, and Frodo would have been greatly inconvenienced, needing to set aside many other plans and pastimes. But a little embarrassment, and awkwardness, and inconvenience, is as nothing compared to the loss of your whole war, when the nine Nazgul swoop down on the Shire while you are reading old scrolls in Minas Tirith, and take the Ring at once. And it is not Frodo alone who would have been hurt; all Middle-Earth would have fallen into slavery. If it had
not
been only a story, Harry, they would have lost their war. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Er…” said Harry, “not exactly…” There was something about Dumbledore when he was like this, which made it hard to stay properly cold; his dark side had trouble with weird.

“Then I will spell it out,” said the old wizard. His voice was stern, his eyes were sad. “Frodo should have been moved to Rivendell at once by Gandalf himself - and Frodo should never have left Rivendell without guard. There should have been no night of terror in Bree, no Barrow-downs, no Weathertop where Frodo was wounded, they could have lost their entire war any of those times, for Gandalf’s folly! Do you understand now what I am saying to you, son of Michael and Petunia?”

And the Harry who knew nothing did understand.

And the Harry who knew nothing saw that it was the smart, the wise, the intelligent and sane, the
right
thing to do.

And the Harry who knew nothing said just what an innocent Harry
would
have said, while the silent watcher screamed in confusion and agony.

“You’re saying,” Harry said, his voice shaking as the emotions inside burned through the outer calm, “that I’m not going home to my parents for Easter.”

“You
will
see them again,” the old wizard said swiftly. “I will beg them to come here to be with you, I will extend them every courtesy during their visits. But you are not going home for Easter, Harry. You are not going home for the summer. You are no longer taking lunches in Diagon Alley, even with Professor Quirrell to watch you. Your blood is the second requisite Voldemort needs to rise as strong as before. So you are never again leaving the bounds of Hogwarts’s wards without a vital reason, and a guard strong enough to fend off any attack for long enough to get you to safety. ”

Water was beginning at the corners of Harry’s eyes. “Is that a request?” said his quavering voice. “Or an order?”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” the old wizard said softly. “Your parents will see the necessity, I hope; but if not… I am afraid they have no recourse; the law, however wrongly, does not recognize them as your guardians. I am sorry, Harry, and I will understand if you despise me for it, but it must be done.”

Harry whirled, looked at the door, he couldn’t look at Dumbledore any more, couldn’t trust his own face.

This is the cost to yourself,
said Hufflepuff within his mind,
even as you imposed costs on others. Will that change your whole view of the matter, the way Professor Quirrell thinks it will?

Automatically, the mask of the innocent Harry said exactly what it would have said: “Are my parents in danger? Do
they
need to be moved here?”

“No,” said the old wizard’s voice. “I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try.”

Harry turned back then, and saw a coldness on the old wizard’s face to match the shift in his voice, Dumbledore’s blue eyes grown hard as steel behind the glasses, it didn’t match the person but it matched the formal black robes.

“Is that everything, then?” said Harry’s trembling voice. Later he would think about this, later he would think of some cunning countermeasure, later he would ask Professor Quirrell if there was any way to convince the Headmaster he was mistaken. Right now, maintaining the mask was taking all of Harry’s attention.

“Voldemort used a Muggle artifact to escape Azkaban,” the old wizard said. “He is watching you and learning from you, Harry Potter. Soon a man named Arthur Weasley at the Ministry will issue an edict that all use of Muggle artifacts must cease in the Defense Professor’s battles. In the future, when you have a good idea, keep it closer about yourself.”

It didn’t seem important by comparison. Harry just nodded, and said again, “Is that everything?”

There was a pause.

“Please,” said the old wizard in a whisper. “I have no right to ask your forgiveness, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, but please, at least say that you understand why.” There was water in the old wizard’s eyes.

“I understand,” said the voice of the outer Harry who did understand, “I mean… I was sort of thinking about it anyway… wondering whether I could get you and my parents to let me stay over at Hogwarts during the summer like the orphans, so I could read the library here, it’s just more interesting at Hogwarts anyway…”

A choking sound came from Albus Dumbledore’s throat.

Harry turned again toward the door. It wasn’t escape unscathed, but it was escape.

He took a step forward.

His hand reached to the door-handle.

A piercing cry split the air -

As though in slow motion, as Harry spun, he saw the phoenix already launched through the air and winging toward him.

From the true Harry, the one who knew his own guilt, came a flash of panic, he hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t anticipated it, he’d prepared to face Dumbledore but he’d forgotten about
Fawkes -

Flap, flap, and flap, three times the phoenix’s wings flapped like the flaring up and dying down of a fire, duration seemed to pass too slowly as Fawkes soared over the mysterious devices toward where Harry stood.

And the red-golden bird was hovering in front of him with gentle wing-sweeps, bobbing in the air like a candle-flame.

“What is it, Fawkes?” said the false Harry in puzzlement, looking the phoenix in the eyes, as he would if he were innocent. The real Harry, feeling the same awful sickness inside as when Professor McGonagall had expressed her trust in him, thought,
Did I turn evil today, Fawkes? I didn’t think I was evil… Do you hate me now? If I’ve become something a phoenix hates, maybe I should just give it up now, give up everything now and confess -

Fawkes screamed, the most terrible cry Harry had ever heard, a scream that set all the devices vibrating and made all the sleeping figures start within their portraits.

It pierced through all of Harry’s defenses like a white-hot sword through butter, collapsed all his layers like a punctured balloon popping, reshuffled his priorities in an instant as he remembered the one most important thing; the tears began pouring freely from Harry’s eyes, down his cheeks, his voice choked as the words came out of his throat like coughing up lava -

“Fawkes says,” Harry’s voice said, “he wants me, to do, something, about, the prisoners, in Azkaban -”

“Fawkes,
no!
” said the old wizard. Dumbledore strode forward, reaching out to the phoenix with a pleading hand. The old wizard’s voice was almost as desperate as the phoenix’s scream had been. “You cannot ask that of him, Fawkes, he’s only a boy still!”

“You went to Azkaban,” Harry whispered, “you took Fawkes with you, he saw -
you
saw - you were
there
, you saw -
WHY DIDN’T YOU DO ANYTHING? WHY DIDN’T YOU LET THEM OUT?
”

When the instruments stopped vibrating, Harry realized that Fawkes had screamed at the same time as his own scream, that the phoenix was now flying next to Harry and facing Dumbledore at his side, the red-golden head level with his own.

“Can you,” whispered the old wizard, “can you truly hear the voice of the phoenix so clearly?”

Harry was sobbing almost too hard to speak, for all the metal doors he’d passed, the voices he’d heard, the worst memories, the desperate begging as he walked away, all of it had burst into his mind like fire at the phoenix’s scream, all the inner bulwarks smashed. Harry didn’t know whether he could truly hear the voice of the phoenix so clearly, whether he would have understood Fawkes without already knowing. All Harry knew was that he had a plausible excuse to say the things Professor Quirrell had told him he must
never
raise in conversation from this day forth; because this was just what an innocent Harry would have said, would have done, if he
had
heard so clearly. “They’re hurting - we have to help them -”

“I
can’t!
” cried Albus Dumbledore. “Harry, Fawkes, I
can’t
, there’s nothing I can do!”

Another piercing scream.

“
WHY NOT? JUST GO IN AND TAKE THEM OUT!”

The old wizard wrenched his gaze from the phoenix, his eyes meeting Harry’s instead. “Harry, tell Fawkes for me! Tell him it’s not that simple! Phoenixes aren’t mere animals but they
are
animals, Harry, they can’t understand -”

“I don’t understand either,” Harry said, his voice trembling. “I don’t understand why you’re
feeding people to Dementors! Azkaban isn’t a prison, it’s a torture chamber and you’re torturing those people to DEATH!
”

“Percival,” said the old wizard hoarsely, “Percival Dumbledore, my own father, Harry, my own father died in Azkaban! I know, I know it is a horror!
But what would you have of me?
To break Azkaban by force? Would you have me declare open rebellion against the Ministry?”

CAW!

There was a pause, and Harry’s trembling voice said, “Fawkes doesn’t know anything about governments, he just wants you - to take the prisoners out - of their cells - and he’ll help you fight, if anyone stands in your way - and - and so will I, Headmaster! I’ll go with you and destroy any Dementor that comes near! We’ll worry about the political fallout afterward, I bet that you and I together could get away with it -”

“Harry,” whispered the old wizard, “phoenixes do not understand how winning a battle can lose a war.” Tears were streaming down the old wizard’s cheeks, dripping into his silver beard. “The battle is all they know. They are good, but not wise. That is why they choose wizards to be their masters.”

“Can you bring out the Dementors to where I can get at them?” Harry’s voice was begging, now. “Bring them out in groups of fifteen - I think I could destroy that many at a time without hurting myself -”

The old wizard shook his head. “It was hard enough to pass off the loss of one - they might give me one more, but never two - they are considered national possessions, Harry, weapons in case of war -”

Fury blazed in Harry then, blazed up like fire, it might have come from where a phoenix now rested on his own shoulder, and it might have come from his own dark side, and the two angers mixed within him, the cold and the hot, and it was a strange voice that said from his throat, “Tell me something. What does a government have to do, what do the voters have to do with their democracy, what do the
people
of a
country
have to do, before I ought to decide that I’m not on their side any more?”

The old wizard’s eyes widened where he stared at the boy with a phoenix upon his shoulder. “Harry… are those your words, or the Defense Professor’s -”

“Because there has to be
some
point, doesn’t there? And if it’s not Azkaban, where is it, then?”

“Harry, listen, please, hear me! Wizards could not live together if they each declared rebellion against the whole, every time they differed! Always there will be
something
-”

“
Azkaban is not just something! It’s evil!
”

“Yes, even evil! Even some evils, Harry, for wizards are not perfectly good! And yet it is better that we live in peace, than in chaos; and for you and I to break Azkaban by force would be the beginning of
chaos
, can you not see it?” The old wizard’s voice was pleading. “And it is possible to oppose the will of your fellows openly or in secret, without
hating
them, without declaring them evil and enemy! I do not think the people of this country deserve that of you, Harry! And even if some of them did - what of the children, what of the students in Hogwarts, what of the many good people mixed in with the bad?”

Harry looked on his shoulder at where Fawkes had perched, saw the phoenix’s eyes gazing back at him, they did not glow and yet they blazed, red flames in a sea of golden fire.

What do you think, Fawkes?

“Caw?” said the phoenix.

Fawkes didn’t understand the conversation.

The young boy looked at the old wizard, and said in a thick voice, “Or maybe the phoenixes are wiser than us, smarter than us, maybe they follow us around hoping that someday we’ll
listen
to them, someday we’ll
get
it, someday we’ll just
take
, the prisoners,
out,
of their
cells -
”