Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (41 page)

It seemed the universe actually
did
want you to say ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ and it wanted you to say it in a certain exact way and it didn’t care what
you
thought the pronunciation should be any more than it cared how you felt about gravity.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

The worst part of it was the smug, amused look on Hermione’s face.

Hermione had
not
been okay with sitting around obediently following Harry’s instructions without being told why.

So Harry had explained to her what they were testing.

Harry had explained why they were testing it.

Harry had explained why probably no wizard had tried it before them.

Harry had explained that he was actually fairly confident of his prediction.

Because, Harry had said, there was
no way
that the universe actually wanted you to say ‘Wingardium Leviosa’.

Hermione had pointed out that this was not what her books said. Hermione had asked if Harry really thought he was smarter, at eleven years old and just over a month into his Hogwarts education, than all the other wizards in the world who disagreed with him.

Harry had said the following exact words:

“Of course.”

Now Harry was staring at the red brick directly in front of him and contemplating how hard he would have to hit his head in order to give himself a concussion that would interfere with long-term memory formation and prevent him from remembering this later. Hermione wasn’t laughing, but he could feel her
intent to laugh
radiating out from behind him like a dreadful pressure on his skin, sort of like knowing you were being stalked by a serial killer only
worse.

“Say it,” Harry said.

“I wasn’t
going
to,” said the kindly voice of Hermione Granger. “It didn’t seem nice.”

“Just get it over with,” said Harry.

“Okay! So you gave me this
whole long lecture
about how hard it was to do basic science and how we might need to stay on the problem for
thirty-five years
, and then you went and expected us to make the greatest discovery in the history of magic in the first hour we were working together. You didn’t just hope, you really expected it. You’re silly.”

“Thank you. Now -”

“I’ve read all the books you gave me and I still don’t know what to call that. Overconfidence? Planning fallacy? Super duper Lake Wobegon effect? They’ll have to name it after you. Harry Bias.”

“All
right!
”

“But it
is
cute. It’s such a boy thing to do.”

“
Drop dead.
”

“Aw, you say the most romantic things.”

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“So what’s next?” said Hermione.

Harry rested his head against the bricks. His forehead was starting to hurt where he’d been banging it. “Nothing. I have to go back and design different experiments.”

Over the last month, Harry had carefully worked out, in advance, a course of experimentation for them that would have lasted until December.

It would have been a
great
set of experiments if the
very first test
had not falsified the basic premise.

Harry could not believe he had been this dumb.

“Let me correct myself,” said Harry. “I need to design
one
new experiment. I’ll let you know when we’ve got it, and we’ll do it, and then I’ll design the next one. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like
someone
wasted a
whole lot of effort
.”

Thud.
Ow. He’d done that a bit harder than he’d planned.

“So,” said Hermione. She was leaning back in her chair and the smug look was back on her face. “What did we discover today?”

“I discovered,” said Harry through gritted teeth, “that when it comes to doing truly basic research on a genuinely confusing problem where you have no clue what’s going on, my books on scientific methodology aren’t worth crap -”

“Language, Mr. Potter! Some of us are innocent young girls!”

“Fine. But if my books were worth a
carp,
that’s a kind of fish not anything bad, they would have given me the following important piece of advice: When there’s a confusing problem and you’re just starting out and you have a falsifiable hypothesis, go test it. Find some simple, easy way of doing a basic check and do it right away. Don’t worry about designing an elaborate course of experiments that would make a grant proposal look impressive to a funding agency. Just check as fast as possible whether your ideas are false before you start investing huge amounts of effort in them. How does that sound for a moral?”

“Mmm… okay,” said Hermione. “But I was also hoping for something like ‘Hermione’s books aren’t worthless. They’re written by wise old wizards who know way more about magic than I do. I should pay attention to what Hermione’s books say.’ Can we have that moral too?”

Harry’s jaw seemed to be clenched too tightly to let any words out, so he just nodded.

“Great!” Hermione said. “I liked this experiment. We learned a lot from it and it only took me an hour or so.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

In the dungeons of Slytherin.

An unused classroom lit with eerie green light, much brighter this time and coming from a small crystal globe with a temporary enchantment, but eerie green light nonetheless, casting strange shadows from the dusty desks.

Two boy-sized figures in cowled grey cloaks (no masks) had entered in silence, and sat down in two chairs opposite the same desk.

It was the second meeting of the Bayesian Conspiracy.

Draco Malfoy hadn’t been sure if he should look forward to it or not.

Harry Potter, judging by the expression on his face, didn’t seem to have any doubts on the appropriate mood.

Harry Potter looked like he was ready to kill someone.

“Hermione Granger,” said Harry Potter, just as Draco was opening his mouth. “
Don’t ask
.”

He couldn’t have gone on another date, could he?
thought Draco, but that didn’t make any sense.

“Harry,” said Draco, “I’m sorry but I have to ask this anyway, did you
really
order the mudblood girl an expensive mokeskin pouch for her birthday?”

“Yes, I did. You’ve already worked out why, of course.”

Draco reached up and raked fingers through his hair in frustration, his cowl brushing the back of his hand. He
hadn’t
been quite sure why, but now he couldn’t say so. And Slytherin
knew
he was courting Harry Potter, he’d made it obvious enough in Defense class. “Harry,” said Draco, “people know I’m friends with you, they don’t know about the Conspiracy of course, but they know we’re friends, and it makes
me
look bad when you do that sort of thing.”

Harry Potter’s face tightened. “Anyone in Slytherin who can’t understand the concept of acting nice toward people you don’t actually like should be ground up and fed to pet snakes.”

“There are a lot of people in Slytherin who
don’t,
” Draco said, his voice serious. “Most people are stupid, and you have to look good in front of them anyway.” Harry Potter
had
to understand that if he ever wanted to get anywhere in life.

“What do
you
care what other people think? Are you really going to live your life needing to explain everything you do to the dumbest idiots in Slytherin, letting
them
judge
you?
I’m sorry, Draco, but I’m not lowering my cunning plots to the level of what the dumbest Slytherins can understand, just because it might make you look bad otherwise. Not even your friendship is worth that. It would
take all the fun out of life.
Tell me
you
haven’t ever thought the same thing when someone in Slytherin is being too stupid to breathe, that it’s beneath the dignity of a Malfoy to have to pander to them.”

Draco genuinely hadn’t. Ever. Pandering to idiots was like breathing, you did it without thinking about it.

“Harry,” Draco said at last. “Just doing whatever you want, without worrying about how it looks, isn’t smart. The
Dark Lord
worried about how he looked! He was feared and hated, and he knew
exactly
what sort of fear and hate he wanted to create.
Everyone
has to worry about what other people think.”

The cowled figure shrugged. “Perhaps. Remind me sometime to tell you about something called Asch’s Conformity Experiment, you might find it quite amusing. For now I’ll just note that it’s dangerous to worry about what other people think on
instinct,
because you
actually care,
not as a matter of cold-blooded calculation. Remember, I was beaten and bullied by older Slytherins for fifteen minutes, and afterward I stood up and graciously forgave them. Just like the good and virtuous Boy-Who-Lived ought to do. But my cold-blooded calculations, Draco, tell me that I have
no use
for the dumbest idiots in Slytherin, since
I don’t own a pet snake.
So I have no reason to care what they think about how I conduct my duel with Hermione Granger.”

Draco did not clench his fists in frustration. “She’s just some mudblood,” Draco said, keeping his voice calm, rather than shouting. “If you don’t like her, push her down the stairs.”

“Ravenclaw would know -”

“Have Pansy Parkinson push her down the stairs! You wouldn’t even have to manipulate her, offer her a Sickle and she’d do it!”

“
I
would know! Hermione beat me in a book-reading contest, she’s getting better grades than me, I have to defeat her with my
brain
or it doesn’t count!”

“
She’s just a mudblood! Why do you respect her that much?
”

“
She’s a power among Ravenclaws! Why do you care what some powerless idiot in Slytherin thinks?
”

“
It’s called politics! And if you can’t play it you can’t have power!
”

“
Walking on the moon is power! Being a great wizard is power! There are kinds of power that don’t require me to spend the rest of my life pandering to morons!
”

Both of them stopped, and, in almost perfect unison, began taking deep breaths to calm themselves.

“Sorry,” Harry Potter said after a few moments, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Sorry, Draco. You’ve got a lot of political power and it makes sense for you to keep it. You
should
be calculating what Slytherin thinks. It’s an important game and I shouldn’t have insulted it. But you can’t ask
me
to lower the level of my game in Ravenclaw, just so that you don’t look bad by associating with me. Tell Slytherin you’re gritting your teeth while you pretend to be my friend.”

That was exactly what Draco
had
told Slytherin, and he still wasn’t sure whether it was true.

“Anyway,” Draco said. “Speaking of your image. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Rita Skeeter heard some of the stories about you and she’s been asking questions.”

Harry Potter raised his eyebrows. “Who?”

“She writes for the
Daily Prophet,
” Draco said. He tried to keep the worry out of his voice. The
Daily Prophet
was one of Father’s primary tools, he used it like a wizard’s wand. “That’s the newspaper people actually pay attention to. Rita Skeeter writes about celebrities, and as she puts it, uses her quill to puncture their over-inflated reputations. If she can’t find any rumors about you, she’ll just make up her own.”

“I
see,
” said Harry Potter. His green-lit face looked very thoughtful beneath the cowl.

Draco hesitated before saying what he had to say next. By now someone had certainly reported to Father that he was courting Harry Potter, and Father would also know that Draco hadn’t written home about it, and Father would understand that Draco didn’t think he could actually keep it a secret, which sent a clear message that Draco was practicing his own game now but still on Father’s side, since if Draco had been tempted away, he would have been sending false reports.

It followed that Father had probably anticipated what Draco was about to say next.

Playing the game with Father for real was a rather unnerving sensation. Even if they were on the same side. It was, on the one hand, exhiliarating, but Draco also knew that in the end it would turn out that Father had played the game better. There was no other way it could possibly go.

“Harry,” Draco finally said. “This isn’t a suggestion. This isn’t my advice. Just the way it is. My father could almost certainly quash that article. But it would cost you.”

That Father had been expecting Draco to tell Harry Potter exactly that was not something Draco said out loud. Harry Potter would work it out on his own, or not.

But instead Harry Potter shook his head, smiling beneath the cowl. “I have no intention of trying to quash Rita Skeeter.”

Draco didn’t even try to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “You
can’t
tell me you don’t care what the
newspaper
says about you!”

“I care less than you might think,” said Harry Potter. “But I have my own ways of dealing with the likes of Skeeter. I don’t need Lucius’s help.”

A worried look came over Draco’s face before he could stop it. Whatever Harry Potter was about to do next, it would be something Father wasn’t expecting, and Draco was feeling very nervous about where that might lead.

Draco also realized that his hair was getting sweaty underneath the cowl. He’d never actually worn one of those before, and hadn’t realized that the Death Eaters’ cloaks probably had things like Cooling Charms.

Harry Potter wiped some sweat from his forehead again, grimaced, took out his wand, pointed it upward, took a deep breath, and said “
Frigideiro!
”

Moments later Draco felt the cold draft.

“
Frigideiro! Frigideiro! Frigideiro! Frigideiro! Frigideiro!
”

Then Harry Potter lowered the wand, though his hand seemed a bit shaky, and put it back into his robes.

The whole room seemed perceptibly cooler. Draco could have done that too, but still, not bad.