Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (192 page)

The next chamber contained a cauldron, a rack of bottled ingredients, chopping boards, stirring sticks, and the other apparatus of Potions. The light coming from the arched alcoves was white instead of blue, presumably because color vision was important to Potions-brewing. Professor Quirrell was already standing next to the brewing apparatus, scrutinizing a long parchment he had picked up. The door to the next chamber was guarded by a curtain of purple fire that would have looked a lot more threatening, if it hadn’t seemed pale and weak by comparison to the blackened flame hovering over Professor Quirrell’s shoulder
.

Harry’s suspension of disbelief had already checked out on vacation at this point, so he didn’t say anything about how real-world security systems had the goal of
distinguishing
authorized from unauthorized personnel, which meant issuing challenges that behaved
differently
around people who were or weren’t supposed to be there. For example, a
good
security challenge would be testing whether the entrant knew a lock combination that only authorized people had been told, and a
bad
security challenge would be testing whether the entrant could brew a potion according to written instructions that had been helpfully included.

Professor Quirrell tossed the parchment toward Harry, and it fluttured to the ground between them. “What do you make of this?” said Professor Quirrell, who then stepped back so that Harry could come forward and pick up the parchment.

“Nope,” Harry said after skimming the parchment. “Testing whether the entrant can solve a ridiculously straightforward logic puzzle about the order of the ingredients is still not a challenge that behaves differently for authorized and unauthorized personnel. It doesn’t matter if you use a more interesting logic puzzle about three idols or a line of people wearing colored hats, you’re still completely missing the point.”

“Look at the other side,” said Professor Quirrell.

Harry turned over the two-foot parchment.

On the other side, written in tiny letters, was the
longest
list of brewing instructions Harry had ever seen. “What on Earth-”

“A
potion of effulgence,
to quench the purple fire,” Professor Quirrell said. “It is made by adding the same ingredients, over and over again, in slightly different ways. Imagine some eager young group of first-years, passing all the other chambers, thinking they are just about to reach the magic mirror, and then encountering this task. This room is the handiwork of the Potions Master indeed.”

Harry glanced pointedly at the blackfire shape on Professor Quirrell’s shoulder. “Fire can’t beat fire?”

“It can,” said Professor Quirrell. “I am not sure it should. Suppose this room is trapped?”

Harry did
not
want to be stuck brewing this potion for laughs, or for whatever other reason Professor Quirrell was taking them through these chambers so slowly. The potions recipe had
thirty-five
separate occasions for adding bellflowers, fourteen times to add ‘a lock of bright hair’… “Maybe the potion gives off a lethal gas that is fatal to adult wizards but not children. Or any of a hundred other deadly tricks, if we’re suddenly being serious. Are we being serious?”

“This room is the handiwork of Severus Snape,” Professor Quirrell said, once more looking thoughtful. “Snape is not a bystander in this game, not quite. He lacks Dumbledore’s intelligence, but possesses the killing intent that Dumbledore never had.”

“Well, whatever’s going on here, it doesn’t actually keep out children,” Harry observed. “Lots of first-years made it through. And if you can somehow keep out everyone
except
children, then that, from Dumbledore’s perspective, forces Lord Voldemort to possess a child to enter. I don’t see the point, given their goals.”

“Indeed,” Professor Quirrell said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But see, boy, this room lacks the triggers and tripsigns that are upon the others. There are no subtle wards to be defeated. It is as if I am
invited
to bypass the Potion and simply enter - but Snape knows that Lord Voldemort will perceive this. If in fact there was a trap laid for anyone who did not brew the potion, then it would be wiser to lay wards, and give no sign that this room was different from the others.”

Harry listened, frowning in concentration. “So… the only point of leaving off the detection webs is to make you
not
bulldoze this room.”

“I expect Snape expects me to deduce that as well,” the Defense Professor said. “And past that point I cannot predict at what level he thinks I will play. I am patient, and I have given myself plenty of time for this endeavor. But Snape does not know me, he only knows Lord Voldemort. He has sometimes seen Lord Voldemort shriek in frustration, and act on impulses that appear counterproductive. Consider this matter from Snape’s perspective: it is the Potions Master of Hogwarts telling Lord Voldemort to be patient and follow instructions if he wants to enter, as though Lord Voldemort were a mere schoolboy. I would find it easy to comply, smiling the while, and take my vengeance later. But Snape does not know that Lord Voldemort finds it easy to think this way.” Professor Quirrell looked at Harry. “Boy, you saw me floating in the air by the Devil’s Snare, did you not?”

Harry nodded. Then he noticed his confusion. “My Charms textbook says that it’s impossible for wizards to levitate themselves.”

“Yes,” said Professor Quirrell, “that is what it says in your Charms textbook. No wizard may levitate themselves, or any object supporting their own weight; it is like trying to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. Yet Lord Voldemort alone can fly - how? Answer as quickly as you can.”

If the question was answerable by a first-year student - “You had someone else cast broomstick enchantments on your underwear, then you Obliviated them.”

“Not quite,” said Professor Quirrell. “The broomstick enchantments require a long narrow shape, which must be solid. Cloth will not do.”

Harry’s eyebrows furrowed. “How long does the shape have to be? Can you attach some short broomstick rods to a fabric harness, and fly using those?”

“Indeed, at first I strapped enchanted rods to my arms and legs, but that was only to teach myself a new mode of flight.” Professor Quirrell drew back the sleeve of his robes, revealing the bare arm. “As you can see, I have nothing up my sleeve right now.”

Harry absorbed this further constraint. “You had someone cast broomstick enchantments on your
bones?
”

Professor Quirrell sighed. “And that was one of Voldemort’s most feared feats, or so I am told. After all these years, and some amount of reluctant Legilimency, I still do not truly comprehend what is
wrong
with ordinary people… But you are not one of them. It is time for you to begin contributing to this expedition. You have known Severus Snape more recently than I. Tell me your own analysis of this room.”

Harry hesitated, trying to look thoughtful.

“I will mention,” said Professor Quirrell, as the blackened-fire-phoenix on his shoulder seemed to extend its head and glare at Harry, “that if you knowingly allow me to fail, I will call it betrayal. I remind you that the Stone is key to Miss Granger’s resurrection, and that I hold hostage the lives of hundreds of students.”

“I remember,” Harry said, and on the heels of this Harry’s wonderful inventive brain came up with a thought.

Harry wasn’t sure if he should say it.

The silence stretched.

“Have you thought of anything yet?” said Professor Quirrell. “Answer in Parseltongue.”

No, this was
not
going to be easy, not against a smart opponent who could force you to tell the literal truth at any time. “Severus, at least the modern-day Severus, respects your intelligence a great deal,” Harry said instead. “I think… I think he might
expect
Voldemort to believe that Severus wouldn’t believe that Voldemort could pass his test of patience, but Severus
would
expect Voldemort to pass it.”

Professor Quirrell nodded. “That is a plausible theory. Do you believe it yourself? Answer in Parseltongue.”

“Yess,
” Harry hissed. It might not be safe to withhold information, not even thoughts and ideas… “Therefore, the point of this room is to delay Lord Voldemort for an hour. And if I wanted to kill you, believing what Dumbledore believes, the obvious thing to try would be a Dementor’s Kiss. I mean, they think you’re a disembodied soul - are you, by the way?”

Professor Quirrell was still. “Dumbledore would not think of that method,” the Defense Professor said after a time. “But Severus might.” Professor Quirrell began to tap a finger against his cheek, his gaze distant. “You have power over Dementors, boy, can you tell me if there are any nearby?”

Harry closed his eyes. If there were voids in the world, he could not feel them. “None that I can sense.”

“Answer in Parseltongue.”

“
Do not ssensse life-eaterss.
”

“But you were being honest with me when you suggested the possibility? You intended no clever trickery?”

“
Wass honesst. Not trick.
”

“Perhaps there is some means by which Dementors might be concealed, being told to leap out and eat a possessing soul if they see one…” Professor Quirrell was still tapping his cheek. “It is not impossible that I would qualify. Or it can be told to eat anyone who passes through this room too quickly, or anyone who is not a child. Bearing in mind that I hold Hermione and hundreds of other students hostage over you, would you use your power over Dementors to defend me, if a Dementor unmasked itself? Answer in Parseltongue.”

“
Don’t know,
” Harry hissed.

“
Life-eaterss cannot desstroy me, I think,
” hissed Professor Quirrell. ”
And I will ssimply abandon thiss body if they approach too closse. Sshall return sswiftly thiss time, and then there will be no sstopping me. Will torture your parentss for yearss, to punissh you for balking me. Hundredss of hosstage sstudentss die, including thosse you call friendss. Now I assk again. Will you usse power over life-eaterss to protect me, if life-eaterss come?
”

“
Yess,
” Harry whispered. The sadness and horror that Harry had pushed down flared up again, and his dark side had no stored patterns for handling the emotions.
Why, Professor Quirrell, why are you like this…

Professor Quirrell smiled. “That reminds me. Have you betrayed me yet?”

“
Have not betrayed you yet.
”

Professor Quirrell went over to the Potions equipment, and began chopping a root one-handed, the knife moving almost invisibly fast and with no apparent effort. The Fiendfyre phoenix drifted over to the opposite corner of the room and waited there. “All matters considered in their uncertainty, it seems wiser to expend the time to pass this room as a first-year would,” said the Defense Professor. “We may as well talk while we are waiting. You had questions, boy? I said that I would answer them, so ask.”

Ch. 108 (long) will post on
February 20th, 2015
at
1
pm Pacific Time
(9pm UTC).

Those of you who have outstanding disputes regarding the Defense Professor’s secrets should bet now, or forever hold your peace.

The Defense Professor had set up a cauldron, floating it into place with a wave of his wand, another wave starting a fire beneath it. A brief circling of the Defense Professor’s finger had set in motion a long-handled spoon, and it had continued stirring the cauldron without being held. Now the Defense Professor was measuring out a heap of flowers from a large jar, what Harry supposed to be bellflowers; the indigo petals seemed luminous in the white light of the walls, and curved inward in a way that gave the impression of a desire for privacy. The first of these flowers had been added to the potion at once, but then the cauldron had just gone on stirring itself for a while.

The Defense Professor had assumed a position from which he could see Harry just by turning his head slightly, and Harry knew that he was within the Defense Professor’s peripheral vision.

In the corner a Fiendfyre phoenix waited, some of the nearby stone beginning to gloss over as it melted to greater smoothness. The burning wings shed crimson light that gave everything in the room a tint of blood, and reflected in scarlet sparks from the glassware.

“Time is wasting,” said Professor Quirrell. “Ask your questions, if you have them.”

Why, Professor Quirrell, why, why must you be this way, why make yourself the monster, why Lord Voldemort, I know you might not want the same things I do, but I can’t imagine what you want that makes
this
the best way to get it…

That was what Harry’s brain wanted to know.

What Harry
needed
to know was… some way out of what was going to happen next. But the Defense Professor had said that he wouldn’t talk about his future plans. It was strange enough that the Defense Professor was willing to talk about
anything,
that had to contradict one of his Rules…

“I’m thinking,” Harry said aloud.

Professor Quirrell smiled slightly. He was using a pestle to grind the potion’s first magical ingredient, a glowing red hexagon. “I
quite
understand,” said the Defense Professor. “But do not think over-long, child.”

Goals: Prevent Lord Voldemort from harming people, find a way to kill or neutralise him, but first get the Stone and resurrect Hermione…

…convince Professor Quirrell to STOP THIS…

Harry swallowed, pushing down the emotion, trying not to let the water reach his eyes. Tears probably wouldn’t make a good impression on Lord Voldemort. Professor Quirrell was already frowning, though from the direction of his gaze he was examining a leaf colored in vivid shades of white, green, and purple.

There wasn’t any obvious way to reach any of the goals, not yet. All Harry could do was ask the questions that seemed most likely to provide useful information, even if Harry didn’t yet have a plan.

So we just ask about whatever seems most interesting?
said Harry’s Ravenclaw side.
I’m up for that.

Shut up,
Harry told the voice; and then, on further reflection, decided that he was no longer pretending it was there.

Four topics came to Harry’s mind as being priorities from the standpoint of curiosity about important things. Four questions, then, four major subjects, to try to fit in while this potion was still being brewed.

Four questions…

“I ask my first question,” Harry said. “What really happened on the night of October 31st, 1981?”
Why was that night different from all other nights…
“I would like the entire story, please.”

The question of how and why Lord Voldemort had survived his apparent death seemed likely to matter for future planning.

“I expected you would ask that,” Professor Quirrell said, dropping a bellflower and a white glittering stone into the potion. “To begin, everything I told you about the horcrux spell is true; as you should realise, since I spoke in Parseltongue.”

Harry nodded.

“Within seconds after you learned the details of the spell, you perceived the central flaw, and began pondering how the spell might be improved. Do you think the young Tom Riddle was any different?”

Harry shook his head.

“Well, he was,” said Professor Quirrell. “Whenever I was tempted to despair of you, I reminded myself how I was an idiot at twice your age. When I was fifteen I made myself a horcrux as a certain book had shown me, using the death of Abigail Myrtle beneath the eyes of Slytherin’s basilisk. I planned to make a new horcrux every year after I left Hogwarts, and call that my fallback plan if my other hopes of immortality did not come to fruition. In retrospect, the young Tom Riddle was grasping straws. The thought of making a
better
horcrux, of not being content with the spell I had already learned… this thought did not come to me until I had grasped the stupidity of ordinary people, and realised which follies of theirs I had imitated. But in time I learned the habit that you inherited from me, to ask in every instance how it might be done better. To be content with the spell I had learned from a book, when it bore only a faint resemblance to what I truly wanted? Absurd! And so I set forth to create a better spell.”

“You have true immortality, now?” Harry was aware that, even with everything else going on, this was a question more important than war and strategy.

“Indeed,” said Professor Quirrell. He paused in his Potions work and turned to face Harry fully; there was a look of exultation in the man’s eyes that Harry had never seen there before. “In all the Darkest Arts I could find, in all the interdicted secrets to which Slytherin’s Monster gave me keys, in all the lore remembered among wizardkind, I found only hints and smatterings of what I needed. So I rewove it and remade it, and devised a new ritual based on new principles. I kept that ritual burning in my mind for years, perfecting it in imagination, pondering its meaning and making fine adjustments, waiting for the intention to stabilise. At last I dared to invoke my ritual, an invented sacrificial ritual, based on a principle untested by all known magic. And I lived, and yet live.” The Defense Professor spoke with quiet triumph, as though the act itself was so great that no words could ever do it justice. “I still use the word ‘horcrux’, but only from sentiment. It is a new thing entirely, the greatest of all my creations.”

“As one of my questions you said you’d answer, I ask how to cast that spell,” Harry said.

“Denied.” The Defense Professor turned back to his potion, dropping in a gray-flecked white feather and a bellflower. “I had thought perhaps to teach you when you were older, for no Tom Riddle would be content otherwise; but I have changed my mind.”

Memory is a hard thing to recall, sometimes, and Harry had been trying to remember if Professor Quirrell had dropped any hints about this subject before. Something about Professor Quirrell’s phrasing sparked a memory:
Perhaps you will be told when you are older…

“There are still physical anchors for your immortality,” Harry said aloud. “It resembles the old horcrux spell by that much, which is another reason you still call them horcruxes.” It was dangerous to say aloud, but Harry needed to
know.
“If I’m wrong, you can always deny it in Parseltongue.”

Professor Quirrell was smiling evilly. “
Your guesss iss right, boy, for all the good it doess you.
”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a difficult vulnerability to cover if the Enemy was smart. Harry wouldn’t ordinarily have made the suggestion, just in case the Enemy
hadn’t
thought of it for themselves, but in this case he’d already made it. “One horcux dropped into an active volcano, weighted so it would sink into the Earth’s mantle,” Harry said heavily. “The same place I thought of dropping the Dementor if I couldn’t destroy it. And then you asked me where else I would hide something if I didn’t want anyone to find it ever again. One horcrux buried kilometers down, in an anonymous cubic meter of the Earth’s crust. One horcrux you dropped into the Mariana Trench. One horcrux floating high in the stratosphere, transparent. Even you don’t know where they are, because you Obliviated the exact details from your memory. And the last horcrux is the Pioneer 11 plaque that you snuck into NASA and modified. It’s where you get your image of the stars, when you cast the spell of starlight. Fire, earth, water, air, void.”
Something of a riddle,
the Defense Professor had called it, and therefore Harry had remembered it. Something of a Riddle.

“Indeed,” said the Defense Professor. “It did give me something of a shock when you remembered it that quickly, but I suppose it makes no difference; all five are beyond my reach, or yours.”

That might not be true, especially if there was some way to trace the magical connection somehow and determine the location… though presumably Voldemort would have done his best to obscure it… but what magic had done, magic might be able to defeat. Pioneer 11 might be far away by wizard standards, but NASA knew exactly where it was, and it was probably a lot more reachable if you could use magic to tell the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation to bugger off…

A sudden note of worry plucked at Harry’s mind. There was no rule saying the Defense Professor needed to have told the truth about
which
interstellar probe he’d horcruxed, and if Harry recalled correctly, communication and tracking of the Pioneer 10 probe had been lost shortly after the Jupiter fly-by.

Why wouldn’t Professor Quirrell have just horcruxed them both?

The obvious next thought came to Harry. It was something that ought not to be suggested, if the Enemy had not thought of it. But it seemed extremely probable that the Enemy had thought of it.

“
Tell me, teacher,
” Harry hissed, ”
would desstroying thosse five anchors sslay you?
”

“
Why do you assk?
” hissed the Defense Professor, with a lilt to the hiss that Parseltongue translated as snakish amusement. ”
Do you ssusspect that ansswer is no?
”

Harry couldn’t think of how to answer, though he strongly suspected that it didn’t matter in any case.

“Your ssusspicion iss right, boy. Desstroying thosse five would not render me mortal.
”

Harry’s throat felt a bit dry again. If the spell had no disastrous cost associated with it… “
How many anchorss did you make?
”

“
Would not ordinarily ssay, but iss clear you have already guesssed.”
The Defense Professor’s smile widened.
“Ansswer iss that I do not know. Sstopped counting ssomewhere around one hundred and sseven. Ssimply made a habit of it each time I murdered ssomeone in private.
”

Over
one hundred
murders, in private, before Lord Voldemort had stopped counting. And even worse news - “Your immortality spell still requires a human death?
Why?
”

“Great creation maintainss life and magic within devicess created by ssacrificing life and magic of otherss.
” Again that hissing snake laughter. ”
Liked falsse desscription of previousss horcrux sspell sso much, sso dissappointed when realissed truth of it, thoughtss of improved verssion came out in that sshape.”

Harry wasn’t sure why the Defense Professor was giving him all this vital information,
but there had to be a reason,
and that was making him nervous. “So you really are a disembodied spirit possessing Quirinus Quirrell.”

“
Yess. I sshall return sswiftly, if thiss body iss killed. Will be greatly annoyed, and vengeful.
I am telling you this, boy, so that you do not try anything stupid.”

“I understand,” Harry said. He did his best to organize his thoughts, remember what he’d meant to ask next, while the Defense Professor turned his eyes back to the potion. The man’s left hand was dribbling crushed seashell into the cauldron, while his right hand dropped in another bellflower. “So what did happen on October 31st? You… tried to turn the baby Harry Potter into a horcrux, either the new kind or the old kind. You did it deliberately, because you told Lily Potter,” Harry took a breath. Now that he knew
why
the chills were there, he could endure them. “Very well, I accept the bargain. Yourself to die, and the child to live. Now drop your wand so that I can murder you.” In retrospect, it was clear that Harry had remembered that event mainly from Lord Voldemort’s perspective, and only at the very end had he seen it through the baby Harry Potter’s eyes. “What did you do?
Why
did you do it?”

“Trelawney’s prophecy,” Professor Quirrell said. His hand tapped a bellflower with a strip of copper before dropping it in. “I spent long days pondering it, after Snape brought the prophecy to me. Prophecies are never trivial things. And how shall I put this in a way that does not make you think stupid things… well, I shall say it, and if you are stupid I shall be annoyed. I was fascinated by the prophecy’s assertion that someone would be my equal, because it might mean that person could hold up the other end of an intelligent conversation. After fifty years of being surrounded by gibbering stupidity, I no longer cared whether my reaction might be considered a literary cliche. I was not about to pass up on that opportunity without thinking about it first. And then, you see, I had a
clever idea
.” Professor Quirrell sighed. “It occurred to me how I might fulfill the Prophecy my own way, to my own benefit. I would mark the baby as my equal by casting the old horcrux spell in such fashion as to imprint my own spirit onto the baby’s blank slate; it would be a purer copy of myself, since there would be no old self to mix with the new. In some years, when I had become bored with ruling Britain and moved on to other things, I would arrange with the other Tom Riddle that he should appear to vanquish me, and he would rule over the Britain he had saved. We would play the game against each other forever, keeping our lives interesting amid a world of fools. I knew a dramatist would predict that the two of us would end by destroying each other; but I pondered long upon it, and decided that both of us would simply decline to play out the drama. That was my decision and I was confident that it would remain so; both Tom Riddles, I thought, would be too intelligent to truly go down that road. The prophecy seemed to hint that if I destroyed all but a remnant of Harry Potter, then our spirits would not be so different, and we could exist in the same world.”