Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (218 page)

Hermione nodded. “You probably know this already, but I just thought I’d say it to be sure: You’re not Voldemort, Harry.”

“I know. And
that’s
what you mean to me.” Harry took a breath, finding it still painful to say aloud. “Voldemort… he wasn’t a happy person. I don’t know if he was ever happy, a single day in his life.”
He never could cast the Patronus Charm.
“That’s one reason his cognitive patterns didn’t take me over, my dark side didn’t feel like a good place to be, it didn’t get positively reinforced. Being friends with you means that my life doesn’t have to go the way Voldemort’s did. And I was pretty lonely before Hogwarts, although I didn’t realise it then, so… yeah. I might’ve been slightly more desperate to bring you back from the dead than the average boy my age would’ve been. Though I also maintain that my decision was strictly normative moral reasoning, and if other people care less about their friends, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“I see,” Hermione said softly. She hesitated. “Harry, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not one hundred percent comfortable with that. It’s a big responsibility that I didn’t choose, and I don’t think it’s healthy for you to lay it on just one person.”

Harry nodded. “I know. But there’s more to the point I’m trying to make. There was a prophecy about my vanquishing Voldemort -”

“A
prophecy?
There was a
prophecy
about you? Seriously, Harry?”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, part of it went, ‘And the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal, but he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not.’ What would you guess that meant?”

“Hmmm,” Hermione said. Her fingers tapped thoughtfully on the stone. “Your mysterious dark side is You-Know-Who’s mark on you that made you his equal. The power he knew not… was the scientific method, right?”

Harry shook his head. “That’s what I thought too at first - that it was going to be Muggle science, or the methods of rationality. But…” Harry exhaled. The Sun had now fully risen above the hills. This felt embarrassing to say, but he was going to say it anyway. “Professor Snape, who originally heard the prophecy - yes, that’s also a thing that happened - Professor Snape said he didn’t think it could just be science, that the ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’ needed to be something more alien to Voldemort than just that. Even if I think of it in terms of rationality, well, it turns out that the person Voldemort really was,”
why, Professor Quirrell, why,
the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry’s heart, “he’d have been able to learn the methods of rationality too, if he read the same science papers I did. Except, maybe, for one last thing…” Harry drew a breath. “At the end of all of it, during my final showdown with Voldemort, he threatened to put my parents, and my friends, into Azkaban. Unless I came up with interesting secrets to tell him, one person saved per secret. But I knew I couldn’t find enough secrets to save everyone. And in the moment that I saw no way at all left to save everyone… that’s when I actually started thinking. Maybe for the first time in my life, I started thinking. I thought faster than Voldemort, even though he was older than me and smarter, because… because I had a
reason to think
. Voldemort had a drive to be immortal, he strongly preferred not to die, but that wasn’t a positive desire, it was
fear,
and Voldemort made mistakes because of that fear. I think the power that Voldemort knew not… was that I had something to protect.”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said gently. She hesitated. “Is that what I am to you, then? The thing that you protect?”

“No, I mean, the whole reason I’m telling you this, is that Voldemort wasn’t threatening to put
you
in Azkaban. Even if he’d taken over the whole world, you’d have been fine. He’d already made a binding promise not to harm you, because of, um, because of reasons. So in my moment of ultimate crisis, when I reached deep down and found the power Voldemort knew not, I did it to protect everyoneexcept you.”

Hermione considered this, a slow smile spreading over her face. “Why, Harry,” she said. “That’s the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, really, it
does
help,” Hermione said. “I mean, it makes the whole thing much less stalker-y.”

“I know, right?”

The two of them shared a companionable nod, both of them looking more relaxed now, and watched the sunrise together.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harry said, his own voice going soft, “about the alternate Harry Potter, the person I might have been if Voldemort hadn’t attacked my parents.”
If Tom Riddle hadn’t tried to copy himself onto me.
“That other Harry Potter wouldn’t have been as smart, I guess. He probably wouldn’t have studied much Muggle science, even if his mother was a Muggleborn. But that other Harry Potter would’ve had… the capacity for warmth, that he inherited from James Potter and Lily Evans, he would’ve cared about other people and tried to save his friends, I know that would have been true, because that’s something that Lord Voldemort never did, you see…” Harry’s eyes were watering. “So that part must be, the remnant.”

The Sun was well above the horizon now, the golden light illuminating both of them, casting long shadows off the other side of the rooftop platform.

“I think you’re just fine the way you are,” Hermione said. “I mean, that other Harry Potter might’ve been a nice boy, maybe, but it sounds like I would’ve had to do all his thinking for him.”

“Going by heredity, alter-Harry would have been in Gryffindor like his parents, and the two of you wouldn’t have become friends. Though James Potter and Lily Evans were the Head Boy and Head Girl of Hogwarts back in their day, so he wouldn’t have been
that
bad.”

“I can just imagine it,” Hermione said. “Harry James Potter, Sorted into Gryffindor, aspiring Quidditch player -”

“No. Just no.”

“Remembered by history as the sidekick of Hermione Jean Granger, who’d send out Mr. Potter to get into trouble for her, and then solve the mystery from the library by reading books and using her incredible memory.”

“You’re really enjoying this alternate universe, aren’t you.”

“Maybe he’d be best mates with Ron Weasley, the
second
-smartest boy in Gryffindor, and they’d fight side by side in my army in Defense class, and afterwards help each other with their homework -”

“Okay, enough, this is starting to creep me out.”

“Sorry,” Hermione said, though she was still smiling to herself, appearing rapt in some private vision.

“Apology accepted,” Harry said dryly.

The Sun rose a little further in the Sky.

After a while, Hermione spoke. “
Do
you suppose we’ll fall in love with each other later on?”

“I don’t know any better than you do, Hermione. But why does it have to be about that? Seriously, why does it always have to be about that? Maybe when we’re older we’ll fall in love, and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll stay in love, and maybe we won’t.” Harry turned his head slightly, the Sun was hot on his cheek and he wasn’t wearing sunscreen. “No matter how it goes, we shouldn’t try to force our lives into a pattern. I think when people try to
force
patterns onto this sort of thing, that’s when they end up unhappy.”

“No forced patterns?” Hermione said. Her eyes had taken on a mischievous look. “That sounds like a more complicated way of saying
no rules
. Which I guess seems a lot more reasonable to me than it would’ve at the start of this year. If I’m going to be a Sparkling Unicorn Princess and have my own time machine, I might as well give up on rules, I suppose.”

“I’m not saying that rules are always bad, especially when they actually fit people, instead of them being blindly imitated like Quidditch. But weren’t you the one who rejected the ‘hero’ pattern in favor of just doing the things she could?”

“I suppose so.” Hermione turned her head again to gaze down at the grounds below Hogwarts, for the Sun was too bright to look at now - though, Harry thought, Hermione’s retinas would regenerate, it was safe for
her
. “You said, Harry, that you thought I was always destined to be the hero. I’ve been considering, and I suspect you’re completely wrong. If this had been
meant
to be, things would’ve been a lot easier all round. Just doing the things you can do - you have to
make
that happen, you have to choose it, over and over again.”

“That might not conflict with your being a destined hero,” Harry said, thinking of compatibilist theories of free will, and prophecies that he must not look upon in order to fulfill. “But we can talk about that later.”

“You have to choose it,” Hermione repeated. She pushed herself up on her hands, then popped herself backwards and onto the rooftop, rising to her feet in a smooth motion. “Just like I’m choosing to do this.”

“No kissing!” Harry said, scrambling to his feet and preparing to dodge; though the realization came to him that the Girl-Who-Revived would be much, much faster.

“I won’t try to kiss you again, Mr. Potter. Not until you ask me, if you ever do. But there are all these warm feelings bubbling up inside me and I feel like I might burst if I don’t do
something,
though it does now occur to me that it’s unhealthy if girls don’t know any way of expressing gratitude to boys besides kissing them.” Hermione took out her wand and offered it crosswise, in the position she’d used to swear her oath of fealty to House Potter before the Wizengamot.

“Oh
hell
no,” Harry said. “Do you realise what it took to get you out of that oath
last
time -”

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, you. I wasn’t about to swear fealty to your House again. You’ve got to start trusting me to be sensible if you’re going to be my mysterious young wizard. Now please hold out your wand.”

Slowly, Harry took out the Elder Wand and crossed it with Hermione’s ten-and-three-quarter-inches of vinewood, forcing down a last worry about her choosing the wrong thing. “Can you at least not say anything about ‘until death takes me’, because did I mention I have the Philosopher’s Stone now? Or anything about ‘the end of the world and its magic’? I’m a lot more nervous around phrases like that than I used to be.”

Upon a roof floored in square stony tiles, the brilliant morning Sun blazes down upon two not-really-children-anymore, both in blue-fringed black robes, facing each other across crossed wands. One has brown eyes beneath chaotic chestnut curls, and radiates an aura of strength and beauty that is not magic only; the other has green eyes under glasses, with messy black hair above a recently inflamed scar. Below, a stone tower nobody remembers seeing from ground level stretches downwards into the broad base of the castle Hogwarts. Far beneath them are visible the green hills, and the lake. In the distance a huge red-and-black line of railcars and an engine, appearing tiny from this height, a train neither Muggle nor fully magical. The sky is nearly unclouded, but for faint tinges of orange-white where wisps of moisture reflect the sunlight. A light breeze carries the crisp chill of dawn, and the dampness of morning; but the huge blazing golden globe is now risen high above the horizon, and its incandescence casts warmth on everything it touches.

“Well, maybe after this you’ll be less nervous,” the hero says to her enigmatic wizard. She knows she doesn’t know the whole story, but the fragment of truth that she does hold shines bright like sunlight within her, casting warmth on her insides the way the Sun warms her face. “I
do
choose this, now.”

Upon my life and magic I swear friendship to Harry Potter,
To help him and trust in him,
To stand with him and, um, stand by him,
And sometimes go where he can’t go,
‘Till the day that death takes me for real, if it ever does, I mean,
And if the world or its magic ends, we’ll deal with that together.

This is the end of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

I may post Omake Files #5: Collective Intelligence (alternate Final Exam solutions) at some point. I intend to someday post an epilogue, when I can. I will probably post that epilogue as a separate story from this one, since I regard this story as being complete without the epilogue. Similarly with any HPMOR side stories that I might publish in the future, though don’t get your hopes too high; it is time for me to move on. I do not intend to write a sequel, but I encourage you to write your own, if you wish.

Please subscribe to the notification email list at hpmor dot com
, if you want to see epilogues or side stories when they appear,
and to be notified when I embark on my next major work of fiction.

Over the next week or so, I may publish some of my thoughts upon the project now that it’s done, and venture an Opinion of God on some questions, at
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. The notification email list will also tell you of such.

The Wrap Parties have already begun, in some parts of the globe. Several have been added since last time. Please check the page indicated in the Author’s Notes to see if there is one in your city, and if not, you can always try any local Pi Day celebration.

I am happy to have written this book for you,
and I am honored that you read it.
Many of you have declared yourselves my friends,
and that knowledge is shining warmly inside me.

I wish for you to live long, and prosper -
EXPECTO PATRONUM!