Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (195 page)

“What on
Earth
were you trying to do? The reason I was trying so hard to figure it out was that the whole thing was just so weird.”

“That should have pointed at Dumbledore, not myself,” said Professor Quirrell, and frowned. “The fact is that Miss Greengrass was not supposed to arrive in that corridor for several hours… though I suppose, since I did have Mr. Malfoy give her the clue I assigned her, it is not too surprising they banded together. Had Mr. Nott arrived seemingly alone, events would have played out less farcically. But I consider myself a specialist in battlefield control magics, and I was able to ensure that the fight went as I wished. I suppose it did end up looking a bit ridiculous.” The Defense Professor dropped a peach slice and a bellflower into the cauldron. “But let us defer our discussion of the Mirror until we reach it. Did you have any more questions concerning Miss Granger’s regrettable and hopefully temporary demise?”

“Yes,” Harry said in an even voice. “What did you do to the Weasley twins? Dumbledore thought - I mean, the school saw the Headmaster go to the Weasley twins after Hermione was arrested. Dumbledore thought you, as Voldemort, had wondered why Dumbledore had done so, and that you’d checked on the Weasley twins, found and took their map, and Obliviated them afterward?”

“Dumbledore was quite correct,” Professor Quirrell said, shaking his head as though in wonderment. “He was also an utter fool to leave the Hogwarts Map in the possession of those two idiots. I had an unpleasant shock after I recovered the Map; it showed my name and yours correctly! The Weasley idiots had thought it a mere malfunction, especially after you received your Cloak and your Time-Turner. If Dumbledore had kept the Map himself - if the Weasleys had ever spoken of it to Dumbledore - but they did not, thankfully.”

Showed my name and yours correctly -

“I would like to see that,” Harry said.

Without taking his eyes from the cauldron, Professor Quirrell drew a folded parchment from within his robes, hissed at it
“Sshow our ssurroundingss
”, and tossed the folded parchment toward Harry. It cut unerringly through the air, an increase of doom breathing on Harry’s senses as it moved toward him, and then it fluttered gently to Harry’s feet.

Harry picked up the parchment and unfolded it.

At first the parchment seemed blank. Then, as though an unseen pen were moving across it, the outline of walls and doors appeared, all drawn in handwritten lines. The writing outlined a series of chambers, most of them shown as empty; the last chamber in the series had a confused scribble in its center, as though the Map were trying to indicate its own bewilderment; and the second-to-last chamber showed two names within, written in positions within the chamber corresponding to where Harry was sitting and Professor Quirrell was standing.

Tom M. Riddle.

Tom M. Riddle.

Harry gazed at the parchment, an unpleasant chill coming over him. It was one thing to hear Lord Voldemort claim that your name was Tom Riddle; it was another thing to find that Hogwarts’s magic agreed. “
Did you tamper with thiss map to achieve thiss ressult, or did it appear before you by ssurprisse?”

“Wass ssurprisse,
” replied Professor Quirrell, with an overtone of hissing laughter. ”
No trickss.
”

Harry folded the Map and threw it back in Professor Quirrell’s direction; some force caught it in midair before it reached the floor, and drew the Map back into Professor Quirrell’s robes.

The Defense Professor spoke. “I should also like to volunteer that Snape was guiding Miss Granger and her underlings toward bullies, and sometimes intervening to protect them.”

“I knew that.”

“Interesting,” said Professor Quirrell. “Did Dumbledore also learn of this? Answer in Parseltongue.”

“
Not sso far ass I know,
” hissed Harry.

“Fascinating,” said Professor Quirrell. “You may be interested to know this as well:
Potionss-maker had to work in ssecret because hiss plot oppossed sschoolmasster’s plot.
”

Harry thought about this, while Professor Quirrell blew on the potion as though to cool it, though the fire still burned under the cauldron; then added a pinch of dirt and a drop of water and a bellflower. “Please explain,” Harry said.

“Has it never occurred to you to wonder why Dumbledore chose Severus Snape as the Head of House Slytherin? To say that it was a cover for his work as Dumbledore’s spy explains nothing. Snape could have been a Potions Master only, and not the Head of Slytherin at all. Snape could have been made Keeper of Grounds and Keys, if he needed to stay within Hogwarts! Why the
Head of House Slytherin?
Surely it occurred to you that this could not have good effects upon the Slytherins, according to Dumbledore’s moral pretenses?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Harry in
exactly
those terms, no… “I wondered something like it. I didn’t put the dilemma in that precise form.”

“And now that you have, is the solution obvious?”

“No,” Harry said.

“Disappointing. You have not learned enough cynicism, you have not grasped the
flexibility
of what moralists call morality. To fathom a plot, look at the consequences and ask if they might be intended. Dumbledore was deliberately sabotaging Slytherin House - don’t give me that look, boy,
I am sspeaking truth.
During the last Wizarding War, Slytherins filled out my ranks of underlings, and other Slytherins in the Wizengamot supported me. Look at it from Dumbledore’s perspective, and remember that he has no native understanding of Slytherin’s ways. Think of Dumbledore becoming increasingly sad over this Hogwarts House that seems the source of so much ill-doing. And then behold, Dumbledore puts in as Head of Slytherin the person of Snape. Snape! Severus Snape! A man who would teach his House neither cunning nor ambition, a man who would impose lax discipline and make its children weak! A man who would offend students of other Houses, who would ruin Slytherin’s name among them! A man whose surname was unknown in magical Britain and certainly not noble, who went about half in rags! Do you think Dumbledore ignorant of the consequence? When Dumbledore was the one who brought it about, and had motive to bring it about? I expect Dumbledore told himself that more lives would be saved during the next Wizarding War if Voldemort’s future Death Eaters were weakened.” Professor Quirrell dropped into the cauldron a chip of ice, slowly melting as it touched the surface froth. “Continue the process long enough, and no child would want to go to Slytherin. The House would be retired, and if the Hat kept calling the name, it would become a mark of ignominy among children who would afterward be distributed among the other three Houses. From that day on, Hogwarts would have three upstanding Houses of courage and scholarship and industry, with no House of Bad Children added to the mix; just as if the three Founders of Hogwarts had been wise enough in the beginning to refuse Salazar Slytherin their company. That, I expect, was Dumbledore’s intended end-game; a short-term sacrifice for the greater good.” Professor Quirrell smiled sardonically. “And Lucius let it all happen without protest or even, I expect,
noticing
that anything was going awry. I fear that in my absence my former servants have been quite outmatched in this battle of wits.”

Harry was having a bit of trouble taking this in, but decided, after some thought, that now was not the time to try to work it out. Whether Lord Voldemort believed it was not decisive; Harry would have to evaluate this accusation on his own.

Professor Quirrell’s mention of his
servants
had reminded Harry of something else that he was… obligated, Harry supposed, to ask. The bad news was predictable. On any other day it would have been horrible. Today it would just wash out in the flood. “Bellatrix Black,” Harry said. “What was the truth about her?”

“She was broken inside before I ever met her,” Professor Quirrell said. He picked up what looked like a white-grey rubber band and held it over the cauldron; as the rubber was held within the steam, it turned black. “Using Legilimency on her was a mistake. But that glimpse showed me how easy it would be to make her fall in love with me, so I did. Ever after she was the most faithful of all my servants, the only one I could almost trust. I had no intention of giving her what she wanted from me; so I commended her to the Lestrange brothers for their use, and the three of them were happy in their own special way.”

“I doubt it,” Harry’s mouth said, mostly on autopilot. “If that were true, Bellatrix wouldn’t have remembered who the Lestrange brothers were, when we found her in Azkaban.”

Professor Quirrell shrugged. “You may be right.”

“What the hell were we actually doing there?”

“Finding out where Bellatrix had put my wand. I had told the Death Eaters of my immortality, in the hope - now proven futile - that they would stay together for at least a few
days
if I appeared to die. Bellatrix’s instructions were to recover my wand from wherever my body had been slain; and take that wand to a certain graveyard where my spirit would appear before her.”

Harry swallowed. The image came to him of Bellatrix Black waiting, waiting, waiting at the graveyard, in increasing desperation… it was no wonder she hadn’t been thinking strategically when she attacked the Longbottom household. “What did you do with Bellatrix once she was out?”

“
Ssent her to a peaceful place to recover sstrength
,” Professor Quirrell said. A cold smile. “I had a use remaining for her, or rather a certain portion of her, and on my future plans I shall not answer questions.”

Harry breathed deeply, trying to maintain control. “Were there any other secret plots in this school year?”

“Oh, a fair number, but not many more that concern you, not that I can think of offhand. The true reason I demanded to try to teach the Patronus Charm to first-years was to bring a Dementor before your own person, and then I arranged for your wand to fall where the Dementor could continue to drain you through it.
Wass no malice in it, only hopess that you would recover ssome of your true memoriess.
That was also why I arranged for certain witches to pull you down from the air during your rooftop episode, so I could appear to save your life; just in case any suspicion fell on me during the Dementor incident I had scheduled for shortly after.
Alsso no malice there.
I arranged some of the attacks on Miss Granger’s group, so that the attacks could be defeated; I do rather dislike bullies.
Think that iss all ssecret plotss concerning you from thiss sschool-year, unless I have forgotten ssomething.
”

Life lesson learned,
said his Hufflepart.
Try to resist the temptation to randomly meddle in other people’s lives. Like, you know, Padma Patil’s life. If you don’t want to end up like this, that is.

A pinch of red-brown dust was gently sifted into the potions cauldron, and Harry asked his fourth and final question, the one that had seemed to have the lowest priority, but still mattered.

“What was your objective during the Wizarding War?” Harry said. “I mean, what -” His voice wobbled. “What was the
point
of the
entire thing?
” His brain repeating endlessly,
Why, why, why Lord Voldemort…

Professor Quirrell lifted an eyebrow. “They told you about David Monroe, did they not?”

“Yes you were both David Monroe and Lord Voldemort during the Wizarding War, I understood that part. You killed David Monroe, disguised yourself as him, and wiped out David Monroe’s family so they wouldn’t notice any differences -”

“Indeed.”

“You planned to control whichever side won the Wizarding War, regardless of which side won. But why did one side have to be
Voldemort?
I, I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier to gain public support with someone less… with someone less Voldemort?”

Professor Quirrell’s mallet made an unusually loud
thud
as it crushed white butterfly wings, mixing them with another bellflower. “I
planned,
” Professor Quirrell said harshly, “for Lord Voldemort to
lose
to David Monroe. The flaw in that strategy was the absolute wretchedness of -” Professor Quirrell stopped. “No, I am telling the tale out of order. Listen, boy, when I had devised my great creation and come into the fullness of my magic, I thought the time had come for me to take political power into my hands. It would be inconvenient, certainly, and take up my time in ways that were not enjoyable. But I knew the Muggles would eventually destroy the world or make war on wizardkind or both, and something had to be done if I was not to wander a dead or dull world through my eternity. Having attained immortality I needed a new ambition to occupy my decades, and to prevent the Muggles from ruining everything seemed a goal of acceptable scope and difficulty. It is a source of continual amusement to me that I, of all people, am the only one really taking action towards that end. Though I suppose it would make sense for the mortal insects not to care about their world’s end; why should they, when they are just going to die regardless, and can save themselves the inconvenience of trying to do anything difficult along the way? But I digress. I saw how Dumbledore had risen to power from his defeat of Grindelwald, so I thought I would do the same. I had long ago taken my vengeance on David Monroe - he was an annoyance from my year in Slytherin - so I bethought to also steal his identity, and wipe out his family to make myself heir of his House. And I conceived also a great foe for David Monroe to fight, the most terrifying Dark Lord imaginable, clever beyond reckoning; more dangerous by far than Grindelwald, for his intelligence would be perfected in all the ways that Grindelwald had been flawed and self-destructive. A Dark Lord who would do his cunning utmost to disrupt the alliances who would fight him, a Dark Lord who would command the deepest loyalty from his followers through his oratical skills. The most dreadful Dark Lord who had ever threatened Britain or the world, that was who David Monroe would defeat.”