Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (211 page)

“I’m getting better about that,” Harry said, since she seemed to be waiting on his reply. “Quite rapidly, in fact. More importantly, it’s not something Dumbledore didn’t know.”

The old witch continued. “Giving away your fortune and going in debt to Lucius Malfoy to keep your best friend out of Azkaban, as much as it demonstrates your upstanding moral character, also demonstrates that you cannot corral the Wizengamot. I can see now that you did the right thing for yourself, the thing you had to do to maintain your lease on sanity and hold back your inner darkness. But you also did a thing that Merlin’s heir must not do. A sentimental leader can be far worse than a selfish one. Albus, master and servant of a phoenix, was barely survivable - and even he opposed you that day.” Amelia gestured in the direction of Mad-Eye Moody. “Alastor has hardness. He has cunning. He still does not have the talent for government. You, Harry Potter, do not yet have the sternness, the capacity for sacrifice, to direct even the Order of the Phoenix. And being what you are, you
must not try
to become that person. Not now, not at your age. Align and fuse your divided soul in your own time, if you possibly can. Do not try to be Chief Warlock while you are doing it. If Albus thought that was a good idea, he was crafting a nicer story at the expense of real-world practicality. I do think the man had a problem with that.”

Harry’s eyes were a bit wide, listening to all this. “Um… what exactly do you think is going on in here?” Harry tapped his head just above his ear.

“I imagine that inside you is the soul of a boy who remains honest and true, gathering his will to force down the fragment of Voldemort’s spirit that tries to consume him, even as it howls at him that he is sentimental and weak - did you just giggle?”

“Sorry. But seriously, it wasn’t ever
that
bad. More like having a lot of bad habits I needed to break.”

“Ahem,” said Headmistress McGonagall. “Mr. Potter, I think at the start of this year it
was
that bad.”

“Bad habits that chained into and triggered each other. Yes, those are a bit more of a problem.” Harry sighed. “And you, Madam Bones… er. Sorry if I’m wrong about this. But my guess is that you’re feeling a bit upset that the Line went to an eleven-year-old?”

“Not the way you are thinking,” the old witch said calmly. “Though it is natural for you to suspect me. The position of Chief Warlock is not one I will find pleasant, even compared to the horrors of Magical Law Enforcement. Albus persuaded me on the matter, and I would say that I took some convincing, but the truth is that I did not waste his time in an argument I expected to lose. I knew I would hate the task, and I knew I would do it anyway. Minerva says you have some amount of common sense, especially when others remind you of it. Can you really see yourself standing upon the Wizengamot’s high dais? Are you sure it is not some remnant of You-Know-Who that imagines himself suited to the position, or even desires it at all?”

Harry took off his glasses and massaged his forehead. His scar still ached a bit, from the damage he’d done by picking at it yesterday until it bled in a suitably dramatic fashion. “I do have some common sense, and yes, being Chief Warlock sounds like a huge amount of aggravation and a job that, in reality, does not fit me the tiniest bit. The trouble is. Um. I’m not sure the Line of Merlin is just about being Chief Warlock. There’s, um. I suspect… that there’s weird other stuff that goes along with it. And that Dumbledore meant me to take responsibility for the… other stuff. And that the other stuff is… possibly quite
amazingly
important.”

“Crap,” Moody said. Then Alastor Moody repeated, “Crap. Kid, should you even be saying this to us?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “If there’s a user manual, I haven’t looked at it yet.”

“Crap.”

“And if these other matters require sternness and sacrifice?” Amelia Bones said, still camly. “If they test you as you were tested before the Wizengamot? I am old, Harry Potter, and I am not without knowledge of mysteries. You have seen how I was able to perceive your own nature at nearly a glance.”

“Amelia,” Mad-Eye Moody said. “What would have happened if you’d had to fight You-Know-Who last night?”

The old witch shrugged. “I would have died, I expect.”

“You’d have
lost,
” said Alastor Moody. “And the Boy-Who-Lived didn’t just take out Voldie, he set it up so that his good friend Hermione Granger came
back from the dead
at the same time Voldie resurrected himself. There’s no way in hell or double hell that was an accident, and I don’t think it was David’s idea either. Amy, the truth is, none of us know what the keeper of Merlin’s legacy has to
do
. But we’re not the right kind of crazy for this crap.”

Amelia Bones frowned. “Alastor, you know I’ve dealt with strange things before. Dealt with them quite well, in my opinion.”

“Yeah. You
dealt with
the crap so you could go back to real life. You’re not the kind of crazy that builds a castle out of the crap and lives there.” Moody sighed. “Amy, on some level you know exactly why Albus had to leave who-knows-what-job to the poor kid.”

The old witch’s fists clenched on the table. “Do you have any idea of the
disaster
it would be for Britain? Call me sane, but I cannot accept that outcome! I have worked too long toward this day to see it fall apart now,
now
of all times!”

“Excuse me,” Headmistress McGonagall said, sounding quite precise and Scottish. “Is there any reason why Mr. Potter cannot simply instruct the Line that Madam Bones is his regent for the position of Chief Warlock, but not anything having to do with the Department of Mysteries, until he comes of age? If Albus could tell the Line to appoint a regent only until Voldemort’s defeat, it is clearly capable of following complex orders.”

Slowly, this unexpected hammer-blow of common sense was absorbed by everyone present.

Harry opened his mouth to agree to appoint Amelia Bones his regent for Wizengamot-related matters, and then hesitated again.

“Um,” Harry said. “Um. Madam Bones, I would much prefer if you took charge of handling the Wizengamot instead of me.”

“In that we are agreed,” said the old witch. “Shall we let it be done?”

“But -”

There was a sort of frustrated dropping-back of the others. “What is the problem, Mr. Potter?” said the Headmistress, in a voice that indicated she hoped it was nothing serious.

“Um. I think there’s a couple of things I might have to do very soon that could… prove politically controversial, and in exchange for handing over the Line’s political power to Madam Bones I’m going to want her… um, cooperation on some things.”

Amelia Bones exchanged another long stare with Minerva McGonagall. Then she looked back at Harry Potter.

“I am indignant at your request!” Amelia Bones said. “Your hesitancy has told me that you are weak and unused to bargaining, and will probably fold if I push back.”

Harry closed his eyes.

Slightly
dark-tinged Harry opened them.

“All right,” Harry said, “let me rephrase. I don’t mean to interfere with your work on a day-to-day or even month-to-month basis, but I can’t just toss off the final responsibility that Dumbledore left me. I’m not going to owl you bizarre parchments out of nowhere, there can be discussions first, but at some point I may have to give you an order. If you refuse the order I might have to take back the Line’s Wizengamot functions and assume direct control. Can you handle that?”

“And if I say no?” said the old witch.

Slight, slight the dark tinge…
“I don’t have an alternative to you lined up. I could start by asking Augusta Longbottom who she thought might be suitable and work from there. But it may be important that we keep to Dumbledore’s plan as much as possible, since I don’t know exactly why he did the things he did, and he thought Amelia Bones should be Chief Warlock for a time. I’m not going to pull Merlin’s name on you, but… no, strike that, I
am
going to pull Merlin’s name on you, this might or might not be insanely important.”

The old witch thought for a time, her eyes going from person to person around the table. “I am not satisfied with this,” she said after a time. “But the Wizengamot must be called to order soon. It will do for now.”

Slowly the old witch reached into her robes, and took out a short rod of stone, dark stone.

She placed the rod on the table before Harry. “Take what is yours,” she said. “And then do please give it back.”

Harry reached out his hand to take it.

In the moment that Harry’s fingers first touched the dark stone -

- nothing happened.

Well, perhaps Merlin hadn’t been given to melodrama. That could explain why his final legacy looked like a small, unassuming dark rod. If that was all that was needed for its function, that would be all that was there.

Harry took up the Line, frowning at it. “I’d like to appoint Amelia Bones as my regent for Wizengamot-related functions.” Then, the thought occurring to him that he needed to specify a stopping point to define a regency, Harry added, “Until I say that I’ve taken it back.”

Then Harry made a face. He’d been hoping for more from the Line, but it was just a key to places in the Department of Mysteries where interesting things were kept, or to seals where Merlin and his successors had stashed things that shouldn’t be destroyed but ought to be kept from general circulation. Aside from that, the Line didn’t do much.

The Line didn’t let you bypass the Interdict of Merlin either. No, not even if the fate of the galaxy was at stake. Not even if the person seemed sane, had taken an Unbreakable Vow, and honestly believed the world was about to be destroyed otherwise.

Merlin had dreamed of a long run, a world that would last for eons and not just centuries. The world had no reason not to last
forever,
if the truly dangerous powers were removed and kept gone. Conversely, a single loophole in the safeguards made the world’s destruction only a matter of time. Someday Merlin’s Line would pass to the wrong person. It could reject the obviously unworthy, but eventually it would pass into hands too subtly flawed for the Line to detect. This was inevitable, when dealing with human beings, and Harry needed to keep that in mind before he sealed something where future Line-holders could retrieve it - the disaster of its inevitable misuse
someday
needed to be outweighed by its benefits over the next few thousand years.

Harry let out a sad small sigh, under his breath.
Merlin, you idiot…

Thinking that didn’t unlock any final safeguards.

There wasn’t anything currently on fire in the Department of Mysteries, so Harry carefully placed the Line back on the table.

“Thank you,” the old witch said. She picked up the rod of dark stone. “Do you know how I am to use it to call the Wizengamot to order, or - never mind, I shall just try striking the podium. That seems obvious enough. To the rest of the country, of course, I am the Chief Warlock so far as anyone knows except us four.”

Harry hesitated. Then he imagined the owls he would receive if anyone knew he was allowed to second-guess the Chief Warlock, and what that would do to Amelia’s negotiating power. “Fine.”

Amelia tucked the rod back into her robes. “I will not say it was a pleasure doing business with you, Boy-Who-Lived, but it could have been much worse. Thank you kindly for that.”

Harry was already feeling worried about the exact balance of power here, from the way Madam Bones was acting. The others had, quite logically, deduced that it had been mostly David Monroe who’d planned the way to defeating Voldemort, which meant they were still underestimating him. It might take a crisis of some type, with Harry figuring it out successfully for once instead of screwing up, before Amelia Bones started to respect his authority. Or believe in it at all, actually… “So,” Harry said. “Any weirdness for me that you would have brought to Dumbledore while he was around?”

Amelia looked thoughtful. “Since you ask… I can think of three things, indeed. First, we don’t have the faintest notion what ritual was used to sacrifice the Death Eaters and resurrect You-Know-Who. It corresponds to no known legend, and the magic traces from the ritual have been eradicated. So far as my Aurors can tell, everyone’s heads fell off their necks due to natural causes. Except for Walden MacNair, who was killed by magical fire after firing a Killing Curse from his wand. A very mysterious ritual indeed.” She was giving Harry Potter a rather
precise
look.

Harry considered this, choosing his words carefully. Voldemort had said he’d put up wards, so Harry had been confident of not being observed by Time-Turned Aurors, but still… “I think this is a matter you don’t need to investigate too hard, Madam Bones.”

The old witch grinned slightly. “We can’t be seen to go easy on the investigation of so many Noble deaths, Harry Potter. When I heard retold your particular account of David’s last stand, I made certain to send investigators whom I considered
reliable
in the usual quality of their work. Auror Nobbs and Auror Colon, in fact, who are widely respected outside my Department. I found their report to be quite fascinating reading.” Amelia paused. “There’s a possibility that Augustus Rookwood left a ghost -”

“Exorcise it before anyone talks to it,” Harry said, conscious of the sudden hammering of his heart.

“Yes, sir,” the old witch said dryly. “I shall disrupt the soul’s anchoring a little, and none shall be the wiser when it fails to materialize. The second matter is that there was a still-living human arm found among the Dark Lord’s things -”

“Bellatrix,” Harry said. His mind had leaped back, made the connection that ongoing trauma had blurred. “I think that’s Bellatrix Black’s arm.”
Lesath Lestrange hadn’t been named as someone who’d lost a parent.
“Oh, bloody hell. She’s still out there, isn’t she. Can you use her arm to track her down somehow?”

Amelia Bones had acquired a sour look. “I see. As I was saying, a still-living human arm was found among the Dark Lord’s things, but it proved to be easily incinerated.”