Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (191 page)

“I promise,” whispered Harry.

WHAT?
screamed other parts of his mind.

Um, he’s still pointing a gun at us,
pointed out Slytherin.
We don’t actually have a choice, we’re just getting as much mileage out of this as possible.

You bastard,
said Hufflepuff.
Do you think this is what Hermione would have wanted? This is Lord Voldemort we’re talking about, do we even know how many people he’s killed, and will kill?

I deny that we are compromising with Lord Voldemort for Hermione’s sake,
said Slytherin.
Since there is, in fact, a gun and we can’t otherwise stop him. Also, Mum and Dad would want us to just go along and stay safe.

Professor Quirrell regarded him steadily. “Repeat the full promise in Parseltongue, boy.”

“
I sshall help you obtain the Sstone… I cannot promisse I will usse my besst efforts, my heart will not be in it, I fear. I intend to try. Sshall not do anything I think will annoy you to no good end. Sshall call no help if I expect them to be killed by you or for hosstagess to die. I’m ssorry, teacher, but it iss besst I can do.”
Harry’s mind was settling, composing itself, as the decision was made. He would stay with Professor Quirrell, go with him to get the Stone, save the student hostages, and… and… and Harry didn’t know, except that he’d go on thinking.

“You actually are sorry about that?” Professor Quirrell looked amused. “I suppose it shall have to do. Then keep two other things in mind:
I have plan to sstop even sschoolmasster, if he appearss before uss.
And also this: I will occasionally ask you to say in Parseltongue whether you have betrayed me.
The bargain is sstruck.
”

After that, Professor Sprout picked up Harry’s wand, and wrapped it in shimmering cloth; then she placed it on the floor, and again pointed her wand at Harry. Only then did Professor Quirrell lower his gun, which seemed to disappear into his hand, and pick up Harry’s wrapped wand, tucking it into his robes.

The True Cloak of Invisibility was removed from the sleeping form of Lesath Lestrange, and Professor Quirrell took the Cloak, as well as Harry’s pouch and Time-Turner.

Then Professor Quirrell cast a mass Obliviation followed by the mass version of the False Memory Charm, the one that just had the subject fill in the blanks using their own suggestibility, on all the students present. Afterwards Professor Sprout floated away the sleeping children, now wearing an expression that seemed annoyed and preoccupied, as if they’d been in some Herbology accident.

Professor Quirrell then turned back to where the Potions Master lay sprawled, bent over and placed his wand on Professor Snape’s forehead.
“Alienis nervus mobile lignum.”

The Defense Professor stepped back, and began to move his left fingers in the air as though manipulating a puppet on strings.

Professor Snape pushed himself up from the ground by smooth motions, and stood once more before the corridor door.

“
Alohomora,
” Professor Quirrell said, pointing his wand at the forbidden door. The Defense Professor looked rather amused. “Would you do the honors, boy?”

Harry swallowed. He was once again having second thoughts, and third thoughts.

It was strange how you could do something even while knowing it was the wrong thing, not the selfish thing but the
wrong thing to do
on some deeper level.

But the man behind him was holding the gun; it had once more appeared in his hand at Harry’s hesitation.

Harry laid his hand on the door-knocker, and took several deep breaths, again composing his mind as best he could. Go through with it, don’t get shot, don’t let the hostages die, be there to optimize events, be there to watch for opportunities and stay capable of taking them. It wasn’t a good choice, but all the other ones seemed worse.

Harry pushed open the forbidden door, and stepped through.

The next (short) chapter will post on
February 17th, 2015
at
5pm Pacific Time
.

After a single step into Dumbledore’s forbidden chamber, Harry shrieked and jumped back and collided with Professor Snape, sending the two of them down in a heap.

Professor Snape picked himself up and resumed standing in front of the door. His head tracked to look at Harry. “I am guarding this door at the Headmaster’s orders,” said Professor Snape in his usual sardonic tones. “Be off with you at once, or I shall deduct House Points.”

This was bone-chillingly creepy, but Harry’s attention was occupied by the gigantic three-headed dog which had lunged forward, only to be stopped meters from Harry by the chains upon its three collars.

“That - that - that - ” Harry said.

“Yes,” Professor Quirrell said from a ways behind him, “that is indeed the usual occupant of that chamber, which is off-limits to all students, especially first-years.”

“That’s not safe even by wizard standards!”
Within the chamber, the enormous black beast gave a multi-voiced bellow, flecks of white saliva flying from three fanged mouths.

Professor Quirrell sighed. “It is enchanted not to eat students, just spit them back out through the door. Now, boy, how would you recommend that we deal with this dangerous creature?”

“Uh,” Harry stuttered, trying to think over the continued roaring of the chamber’s guardian. “Uh. If it’s like the Cerberus from the Muggle legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, then we have to sing it to sleep so we can pass -”

“
Avada Kedavra.
”

The three-headed beast fell over.

Harry looked back at Professor Quirrell, who was giving him a look of extreme disappointment, as if to ask whether Harry had attended any of his classes, ever.

“I sort of
assumed
,” Harry said, still trying to catch his breath, “that going through this challenge in any way except the one used by first-years, might perhaps trigger an
alarm
.”

“That is a lie, boy, you simply did not remember your lessons when you faced the occasion in true life. As for alarms, I have spent months befuddling all the wards and tripsigns upon these chambers.”

“Then why did you send me in first, exactly?”

Professor Quirrell just smiled. It looked significantly more evil than usual.

“Never mind,” Harry said, and walked slowly into the chamber, his limbs still shaking.

The chamber was all of stone, illuminated by a pale blue light that shone from arched nooks carved into the wall; as if the light of a grey sky were passing through windows, though there were no windows. At the far end of the chamber was a wooden trapdoor upon the floor, with a single ring attached. In the middle of the chamber lay a gigantic dead dog with three lifeless heads.

Harry turned toward one of the arched nooks and looked inside it. There was nothing there but the sourceless blue glow, so he walked over and looked in the next one, also scrutinizing the wall as he passed.

“What,” said Professor Quirrell, “are you doing?”

“Searching the room,” Harry said. “There could be a clue, or an inscription, or a key we’ll need later, or something -”

“Are you serious, or are you deliberately trying to slow us down? Answer in Parseltongue.”

Harry looked back. “
Wass sseriouss,
” hissed Harry. ”
Would have done ssame if came by mysself.
”

Professor Quirrell briefly massaged his forehead. “I confess,” he said, “that your approach would serve you well in, say, exploring the tomb of Amon-Set, so I will not quite call you an idiot, but still. The false puzzle, the outer form of the challenge, is a game meant for first-years. We simply go down through the trapdoor.”

Beneath the trapdoor was a gigantic plant, something like an enormous dieffenbachia with wide leaves emerging from the central stem like a spiral staircase, but darker-colored than a normal dieffenbachia, with tendril-like vines emerging from the central stem and hanging down. The base spread out wide with bigger leaves and tendrils, as though promising to cushion anyone’s fall. Beneath was another stone chamber like the first, with the same nooks like false arched windows, emitting the same grey-blue light.

“The obvious thought is to fly down on the broomstick in my pouch, or toss something heavy to see if those tendrils are traps,” Harry said, peering down. “But I’m guessing you’ll say that we just walk down the leaves.” They certainly looked like they were meant to be a spiral staircase.

“After you,” said Professor Quirrell.

Harry carefully put a foot down on a leaf and found that it indeed supported his weight. Then Harry took a last look around the room before departing, to see if there was anything worth noticing.

The enormous dead dog called enough attention to itself that it was hard to focus on anything else.

“Professor Quirrell,” Harry said, omitting the phrase
your approach to dealing with obstacles has certain drawbacks,
“what if somebody looks in the door and sees that the Cerberus is dead?”

“Then they have probably already noticed something wrong with Snape,” said Professor Quirrell. “But since you insist…” The Defense Professor walked over to the three-headed corpse and placed his wand against it. He began a Latin-sounding incantation that was accompanied by a sense of rising apprehension, the Boy-Who-Lived feeling the Dark Lord’s power as he always had.

The last word spoken was
“Inferius”
and it was accompanied by a final surge of
STOP, DON’T
.

And the three-headed dog rose to a stand, its six eyes dull and blank, turning to watch the door once more.

Harry stared at the huge Inferius with a horrible sinking sensation in his stomach, the third-worst feeling he’d ever felt in his life.

He knew then that he’d seen and sensed this procedure before, only without the spoken Latin.

The centaur who’d confronted him in the Forbidden Forest was dead. The Defense Professor had hit it with a real Avada Kedavra, not a fake one.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry had thought that if he could just get Hermione
back
then he could return to the code of nobody dying, the ethic of Batman. Most people went through their whole lives without anyone getting killed on whatever adventures they had.

And that was not to be.

He hadn’t even noticed, the day he lost his last chance to win. Even if Hermione was resurrected, now, Harry wouldn’t have come through the whole mess without anyone getting killed.

He hadn’t even learned the centaur’s name.

Harry said nothing aloud. The Defense Professor would either confirm the accusation in Parseltongue or lie in plain speech, and either way the Defense Professor would have more reason to suspect Harry’s next actions. But Harry knew that - although he didn’t know
how
he would stop Professor Quirrell, although he didn’t dare any positive act of betrayal, maybe not even making the
decision,
until it was almost time to win - there would never be an amicable settlement between him and Lord Voldemort, for those two different spirits could not exist in the same world.

And it was like that resolution, that knowledge of opposition, invoked a strength from what Harry had thought of as his dark side. Harry had stopped trying to call deliberately on his dark side after the day he’d killed the troll. But his dark side had never been something separate from him. It had been something remembered from Tom Riddle. Harry didn’t know how that had happened, but taking the assumption and running with it, whatever echoes of cognitive skill were in his dark side should be there for him to use. Not as a separate mode, as Harry had conceptualized at first, but just as neural patterns with a strong tendency to chain into one another since they had once formed part of a connected whole.

This unfortunately did not change that Professor Quirrell had the same skills with far more life experience backing them up, and also had the gun.

Harry turned, and set foot on the giant plant, and began to walk down the spiral staircase provided by the leaves. It had taken Harry too long this time, but he’d recovered himself to some degree, despite the grief still weighing him down like thick water. It wasn’t a cold steel rod in his spine, but it was something straight and solid nonetheless. He was going to play this through, see Hermione returned to life first, and then, somehow, stop Professor Quirrell. Or stop Professor Quirrell first and then get the Stone himself. There had to be something, some possibility, some opportunity that would present itself, some way to stop Voldemort
and
return Hermione to life…

Harry continued his descent.

Behind him, the three-headed dog waited, guarding the gate.

The next chapter (107) will post on
February 18th, 2015
at
*2PM* Pacific Time.

The spiraling leaves of the gigantic dieffenbachia felt like forest loam beneath Harry’s shoes, not as unyielding as concrete, but supporting his weight. Harry kept a wary eye on the tendrils, but they remained passive.

When Harry reached the bottom of the leafy spiral staircase, the tendrils suddenly whipped out and grasped Harry’s arms and legs.

After a brief struggle, Harry allowed himself to go limp.

“Interesting,” said Professor Quirrell, as he floated down from above, not touching any of the plant’s leaves or tendrils. “I notice that you seem to have no trouble losing to a plant.”

Harry looked more closely at the Defense Professor, seeing him now without the lens of panic. Professor Quirrell was upright and moving, flying without apparent difficulty; the sense of doom about him was strong. But his eyes were still sunken in the skull, his arms thin and wasted. The sickness had
not
been bluff, and the obvious hypothesis was that the Defense Professor had recently eaten another unicorn to temporarily regain some strength.

And the Defense Professor was also speaking like the mask of Professor Quirrell, not like Lord Voldemort, which might not be a bad thing from Harry’s perspective. Harry didn’t know why - unless it was that the Defense Professor still needed him for something - but it certainly seemed to be in Harry’s own interests to play along.

“You specifically let me walk into this trap, Professor,” Harry answered, just the way he’d have spoken to Professor Quirrell.
Roles, masks, remind him of how it was between us…
“On my own, I’d have used my broomstick.”

“Perhaps. How would an ordinary first-year solve this challenge? If they had their wand, that is.” The plant was now reaching tendrils out toward Professor Quirrell, but Professor Quirrell was hovering just out of their reach.

Harry had now remembered Professor Sprout talking about a Devil’s Snare plant, which the Herbology textbook had said liked cool, dark places like caves - though how that could be true of a leafy plant was anyone’s guess. “At a guess, I’d say this is a Devil’s Snare plant and it might retreat from light or heat. So maybe a first-year could use Lumos? Today I’d use
Inflammare
, but I didn’t learn that spell until May.”

A twirl of the Defense Professor’s wand, and a pattern of sprays of liquid shot out from it, striking the plant near the bases of its tendrils, hitting with a quiet splat and then a quiet hissing. All the tendrils touching Harry frantically shot back and began to beat at the growing wounds appearing on the plant’s skin, as if trying to remove the pain-stimulus; something about the plant gave the impression that it was screaming soundlessly.

Professor Quirrell finished drifting downward. “Now it is afraid of light, heat, acid, and me.”

Harry stepped off the final leaves onto the floor, after a careful glance at his robes and then the floor to make sure that none of the acid had splashed anywhere. Harry had begun to suspect that Professor Quirrell was trying to make some sort of point, but Harry did not know what that point might be. “I thought we were on a mission, Professor. I can’t stop you, but is it
smart
to spend this much time on messing with me?”

“Oh, we have time,” said Professor Quirrell, sounding amused. “There would be a great uproar if we were discovered here, guarded by an Inferius. You did not act like you had heard of such an uproar at your Quidditch match, before you arrived in this time and spoke to Snape as you did.”

A slight chill came over Harry, as he comprehended this. Anything he did to beat Professor Quirrell would have to
not
disrupt the school, or at least the Quidditch game, because it
hadn’t
disrupted the Quidditch game. Even if enough forces could be called in to subdue Lord Voldemort, it might not be easy to do it without Professor McGonagall or Professor Flitwick or anyone else at the Quidditch game noticing…

Fighting a smart enemy was hard.

And even so… even so it seemed to Harry that if he stood in Professor Quirrell’s shoes, he would not be having leisurely conversations and playing mind games. Professor Quirrell was gaining
something
by taking his time here. But what? Was there some other process that had to run to completion?

“By the by, have you betrayed me yet?” said Professor Quirrell.

“Have not betrayed you yet,
” Harry hissed.

The Defense Professor gestured pointedly with the gun he was now holding in his left hand, and Harry walked ahead to the great wooden door at the end of the room, and opened it.

The next chamber was smaller in diameter, with a higher ceiling. The light shining out of the arched alcoves was white, instead of blue.

Around them whizzed hundreds of winged keys, beating frantically through the air. After watching for a few seconds, it became clear that only a single key was the golden color of a Snitch - though it was moving slower than a Snitch in a real Quidditch game.

On the other end of the room was a door containing a large, prominent keyhole.

Against the left wall leaned a broomstick, the school’s workhorse Cleansweep Seven.

“Professor,” Harry said, staring up at the clouds and flocks of whizzing keys, “you said you would answer my questions. What exactly is all this about? If you think you’ve secured a door so that it won’t open without a key, you keep the key in a safe place and only give a copy to authorized entrants. You don’t
give the key wings
and then
leave a broomstick propped against the wall.
So what the heck are we doing in here and what is going on? It’s an obvious guess that the magic mirror is the only real factor guarding the Stone, but why the rest of this - and why encourage first-years to come here?”

“I am truly not sure,” said the Defense Professor. He had entered the room and taken up station well to Harry’s right, maintaining the distance between them. “But I shall answer, as I said I would. Dumbledore’s way is to do a dozen things which seem mad, and then only eight of them, or perhaps nine, conceal an inner meaning. My guess is that Dumbledore intends to make it seem like I am invited to send a student as my proxy. Precisely so that Lord Voldemort, as Dumbledore conceives of him, is less tempted to think himself clever by doing so. Imagine Dumbledore first considering the issue of how to ward the Stone. Imagine Dumbledore considering whether to set true dangers to guard the Mirror. Imagine him imagining some young student blundering through those dangers at my behest. I think that is what Dumbledore is trying to avoid, by making it seem as though that strategy is invited, and so not cunning. Unless, of course, I have misunderstood what Dumbledore thinks Lord Voldemort will think.” Professor Quirrell grinned, and it looked just as natural, on him, as any grin he’d shown Harry before. “Plotting does not come naturally to Dumbledore, but he tries because he must. To that task Dumbledore brings intelligence, dedication, the ability to learn from his mistakes, and an utter lack of native talent. He is marvelously hard to predict for that reason alone.”

Harry turned away, looking at the door on the opposite side of the room.
It wasn’t a game to him, Professor.
“My guess is that the intended solution for first-years is to ignore the broomstick and use
Wingardium Leviosa
to grab the key, since this isn’t a Quidditch game and there are no rules forbidding that. So what absurdly overpowered spell are you going to unleash on this one, then?”

There was a brief silence but for the whizzing of keys.

Harry took several steps away from Professor Quirrell. “I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I.”

“Oh, no,” Professor Quirrell said. “I think that is a quite reasonable thing to say to the most powerful Dark Wizard in the world when he is standing not a dozen paces from you.”

Professor Quirrell put his wand back into the sleeve of his other hand, the hand that sometimes held the gun.

Then the Defense Professor reached into his mouth and took out what appeared to be a tooth. He tossed the false tooth high in the air, and when it came down, it had transformed into a wand that sparked a strange sense of recognition in Harry’s mind, as though some part of him recognized that wand as being… part of him…

Thirteen and a half inches, yew, with a core of phoenix feather.
Harry had memorized the information when the wandmaker Olli-something had given it, because it had seemed like it might be Plot-Relevant. The event, and the thinking that had underlain it, both felt a lifetime distant.

The Defense Professor raised that wand, and traced in the air a flaming rune that was all jagged edges and malevolence; Harry took another instinctive step back. Then Professor Quirrell spoke. “Az-reth. Az-reth. Az-reth.”

The flaming rune began pouring out fire that was…
twisted,
as though the jagged edges of the rune had become the nature of the fire itself. The fire was blazing crimson, shaded further red than blood, glowing as searingly intense as an arc-welder. That brilliance in that shade seemed
wrong
in its own right, like nothing shaded so far red should give off that much light; and the searing crimson was shot through with veins of black that seemed to suck the light from the fire. Within the blackened fire, outlined in the interplay of crimson and darkness, animal shapes twisted wildly from one predator to another, cobra to hyena to scorpion.

“Az-reth. Az-reth. Az-reth.” When Professor Quirrell had repeated the word six times, as much black-crimson fire had poured out as the volume of a small bush.

The cursed fire slowed in its changes as Professor Quirrell locked eyes upon it, taking on a single form, the form of a blackened blood-burning phoenix.

And something told Harry with a terrible certainty that if that black burning phoenix met Fawkes, the true phoenix would die and never be reborn.

Professor Quirrell made a single gesture with his wand, and the blackened fire went soaring across the room. It met the door and its keyhole, and with a single sweep of crimson-burning wings, most of the door and part of the archway was consumed. Then the tainted crimson blaze swept on.

Harry had only a glance through the hole to see huge statues just beginning to raise swords and clubs, when the blackened fire came among them, and they cracked and burned.

When it ended, the blackened-fire phoenix swept back in through the hole, and hovered above Professor Quirrell’s left shoulder, the sun-intense crimson claws staying an inch from his robes.

“Go on ahead,” said Professor Quirrell. “It’s safe now.”

Harry walked forward, needing to invoke his dark side’s cognitive patterns in order to maintain calm enough to do it. Harry stepped over the glowing edges of the remaining part of the door, and gazed at a chessboard of ruined huge chess-pieces. The alternating tiles of black and white marble on the floor started five meters after the ruined doorway, and extended from wall to wall, but stopped five meters short of the next door on the opposite side of the room. The ceiling was significantly higher than any of the statues should have been able to reach.

“I would guess,” Harry said, and his dark side’s cognitive patterns kept his voice calm, “that the intended solution is to fly over the statues using the broomstick from the previous room, since it wasn’t actually needed to get the key?”

From behind, Professor Quirrell laughed, and it was Lord Voldemort’s laugh. “Proceed,” said a voice grown colder and higher. “Go to the next room. I wish to see what you will make of what is there.”

Arranged by Dumbledore for first-years,
Harry reminded himself,
it WILL be safe,
and he walked across the ruined chessboard, laid his hand upon that door’s handle, and pushed it inward.

Half a second later, Harry slammed the door and leapt back.

It took Harry several seconds to master his breathing, and master himself. From behind the door came continued loud bellows, and great slams as of a rock club pounding the floor.

“I suppose,” Harry said in a voice grown cold as well, “that since Dumbledore would hardly put a real mountain troll in there, the next challenge is an illusion of my worst memories. Like a Dementor, with the memory projected into the outside world. Very amusing, Professor.”

Professor Quirrell advanced himself toward the door, and Harry stepped well aside. Besides the sense of doom that was now strong about the Professor, Harry’s dark side or just plain instinct was advising him not to get anywhere near that black-crimson fire hovering above Professor Quirrell’s shoulder.

Professor Quirrell swung open the door, and looked in. “Hm,” Professor Quirrell said. “Just the troll, as you say. Ah, well. I had hoped to learn something about you more interesting than that. What lies within is a Kokorhekkus
,
also known as the common boggart.”

“A boggart? What does that - no, I suppose I know what it does.”

“A boggart,” Professor Quirrell said, and now his voice was again that of a Hogwarts Professor lecturing, “gravitates to dark enclosures that are rarely opened, such as a neglected cupboard in the attic. It seeks to be left alone, and it will manifest in whatever form it thinks will scare you away.”

“Scare me away?” Harry said. “I
killed
the troll.”

“You leapt backward out of the room without thinking. A boggart seeks out the instinctive flinch, not the reasoned threat. Else it would have selected something more believable. In any case, the standard counter-Charm for a boggart is, of course, Fiendfyre.” Professor Quirrell gestured, and the blackened fire leapt off his shoulder and poured through the doorway.

From within the room there was a single squeak, and then nothing.

They advanced into the boggart’s former room, Professor Quirrell going first this time. With the seeming mountain troll gone, the room was just another huge chamber lit by sconces of cold blue light.

Professor Quirrell’s gaze seemed distant, thoughtful. He crossed the room without waiting for Harry, and swung open the door on the opposite wall of his own accord.

Harry followed after, and not closely.