Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (81 page)

“That doesn’t sound like true love to
me,
” said the Carrow twins. “That sounds like the
wrong person
kissed him.”

“It was supposed to be
me
,” whispered Tracey. Her face was still stunned. “
I
was supposed to be his true love. Harry Potter was
my
general. I should’ve, I should’ve fought Granger for him -”

Daphne spun on Tracey, incensed. “
You?
Take Harry away from Hermione?”

“Yeah!” said Tracey. “Me!”

“You’re nuts,” Daphne stated with conviction. “Even if you
had
kissed him first, you know what that would make you? The sad little lovestruck girl who dies at the end of Act Two.”

“
You take that back!
” shouted Tracey.

Meanwhile, Gregory had crossed the room to where Vincent was doing his homework. “Mr. Crabbe,” Gregory said in a low voice, “I think Mr. Malfoy needs to know about this.”

Aftermath, Hermione Granger:

Hermione stared at the wax-sealed paper, on the surface of which was inscribed simply the number
42.

I figured out why we couldn’t cast the Patronus Charm, Hermione, it doesn’t have anything to do with us not being happy enough. But I can’t tell you. I couldn’t even tell the Headmaster. It needs to be even more secret than partial Transfiguration, for now, anyway. But if you ever need to fight Dementors, the secret is written here, cryptically, so that if someone doesn’t know it’s about Dementors and the Patronus Charm, they won’t know what it means…

She’d told Harry about seeing him dying, her parents dying, all her friends dying, everyone dying. She hadn’t told him about her terror of dying alone, somehow that was still too painful.

Harry had told her about remembering his parents dying, and that he’d thought it was funny.

There’s no light in the place the Dementor takes you, Hermione. No warmth. No caring. It’s somewhere that you can’t even understand happiness. There’s pain, and fear, and those can still drive you. You can hate, and take pleasure in destroying what you hate. You can laugh, when you see other people hurting. But you can’t ever be happy, you can’t even remember what it is that isn’t there anymore… I don’t think there’s any way I can ever explain just what you saved me from. I’m usually ashamed to put people to trouble, I usually can’t stand it when people make sacrifices for me, but this one time I’ll say that no matter what it ends up costing you to have kissed me, don’t ever doubt for a second that it was the right thing to do.

Hermione hadn’t realized how
little
the Dementor had touched her, how small and shallow had been the darkness into which it had taken her.

She’d seen everyone dying, and that had still been able to hurt.

Hermione put the paper back into her pouch, like a good girl ought to.

She’d really wanted to read it, though.

She was frightened of Dementors.

Aftermath, Minerva McGonagall:

She felt frozen; she shouldn’t have been so shocked, she shouldn’t have found Harry so hard to face, but after what he’d been through… She had searched the young boy in front of her for any signs of Dementation, and failed to find them. But something about the calm with which he had asked such a foreboding question seemed deeply worrying. “Mr. Potter, I can’t possibly speak of such matters without the Headmaster’s permission!”

The boy in her office took this in without changing expression. “I would prefer not to disturb the Headmaster over this matter,” Harry Potter said calmly. “I
insist
on not disturbing him, in fact, and you did promise that our conversation would be kept private. So let me put it this way. I know that there was, in fact, a prophecy. I know that you are the one who originally heard it from Professor Trelawney. I know that the prophecy identified the child of James and Lily as someone dangerous to the Dark Lord. And I know who I am, indeed everyone now knows who I am, so you are revealing nothing new or dangerous, if you tell me only this: What was the
exact wording
which identified
me,
the child of James and Lily?”

Trelawney’s hollow voice echoed in her mind -

BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM,
BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…

“Harry,” said Professor McGonagall, “I can’t possibly tell you that!” It chilled her to the bone that Harry knew so much already, she couldn’t imagine how Harry had learned -

The boy looked at her with strange, sorrowful eyes. “Can you not sneeze without the Headmaster’s permission, Professor McGonagall? For I do promise to you that I have good reason to ask, and good reason to keep the question private.”

“Please don’t, Harry,” she whispered.

“All right,” Harry said. “One simple question. Please. Was the Potter family mentioned by
name?
Does the prophecy literally say ‘Potter’?”

She stared at Harry for a while. She couldn’t have said why or where she got the sense that this was a critical point, that she could not lightly refuse the request, nor lightly accede to it -

“No,” she finally said. “Please, Harry, don’t ask any more.”

The boy smiled, a little sadly it seemed, and said, “Thank you, Minerva. You are a good woman and true.”

And while her mouth was still open in utter shock, Harry Potter got up and left the office; and only then did she realize that Harry had taken her refusal as an answer, and the true answer at that -

Harry closed the door behind himself.

The logic had presented itself with a strange diamondlike clarity. Harry couldn’t have said if it had come to him during Fawkes’s singing, or maybe even before.

Lord Voldemort had killed James Potter. He had preferred to spare Lily Potter’s life. He had continued his attack, therefore, with the sole purpose of killing their infant child.

Dark Lords were not usually scared of infant children.

So there was a prophecy about Harry Potter being dangerous to Lord Voldemort, and Lord Voldemort had known that prophecy.

“I give you this rare chance to flee. But I will not trouble myself to subdue you, and your death here will not save your child. Step aside, foolish woman, if you have any sense in you at all!”

Had it been a whim, to give her that chance? But then Lord Voldemort would not have tried to persuade her. Had the prophecy warned Lord Voldemort against killing Lily Potter? Then Lord Voldemort
would
have troubled himself to subdue her. Lord Voldemort had been
mildly
inclined not to kill Lily Potter. The preference had been stronger than a whim, but not as strong as a warning.

So suppose that someone whom Lord Voldemort considered a lesser ally or servant, useful but not indispensable, had begged the Dark Lord to spare Lily’s life. Lily’s, but not James’s.

This person had known that Lord Voldemort would attack the house of the Potters. Had known both the prophecy, and the fact that the Dark Lord knew it. Otherwise he would not have begged Lily’s life.

According to Professor McGonagall, besides herself, the other two who knew of the prophecy were Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

Severus Snape, who had loved Lily before she was Lily Potter, and hated James.

Severus, then, had learned of the prophecy, and told it to the Dark Lord. Which he had done because the prophecy had not described the Potters by name. It had been a riddle, and Severus had solved that riddle only too late.

But if Severus had been the
first
to hear the prophecy, and disposed to tell it to the Dark Lord, then why would he also have told Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall?

Therefore Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall had heard it first.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts had no obvious reason to tell the Transfiguration Professor about an extremely sensitive and crucial prophecy. But the Transfiguration Professor had every reason to tell the Headmaster.

It seemed likely, then, that Professor McGonagall had been the first to hear it.

The prior probabilities said that it had been Professor Trelawney, Hogwarts’s resident seer. Seers were rare, so if you counted up most of the seconds Professor McGonagall had spent in the presence of a seer over the course of her lifetime, most of those seer-seconds would be Trelawney-seconds.

Professor McGonagall had told Dumbledore, and would have told no one else about the prophecy without permission.

Therefore, it was Albus Dumbledore who had arranged for Severus Snape to somehow learn of the prophecy. And Dumbledore himself had solved the riddle successfully, or he would not have selected
Severus
, who had once loved Lily, as the intermediary.

Dumbledore had deliberately arranged for Lord Voldemort to hear about the prophecy, in hopes of luring him to his death. Perhaps Dumbledore had arranged for Severus to learn only
some
of the prophecy, or there were other prophecies of which Severus had remained innocent… somehow Dumbledore had known that an
immediate
attack on the Potters would still lead to Lord Voldemort’s
immediate
defeat, although Lord Voldemort himself had not believed this. Or maybe that had just been a lucky stroke of Dumbledore’s insanity, his taste for bizarre plots…

Severus had ended up serving Dumbledore afterward; perhaps the Death Eaters would not look kindly on Severus if Dumbledore revealed his role in their defeat.

Dumbledore had tried to arrange for Harry’s mother to be spared. But that part of his plot had failed. And he had knowingly condemned James Potter to his death.

Dumbledore was responsible for the deaths of Harry’s parents.
If
the whole chain of logic was correct. Harry could not, in justice, say that successfully ending the Wizarding War did not count as extenuating circumstances. But somehow this still…
bothered him a great deal.

And it was time and past time to ask Draco Malfoy what the
other
side of that war had to say about the character of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

There comes a point in every plot where the victim starts to suspect; and looks back, and sees a trail of events all pointing in a single direction. And when that point comes, Father had explained, the prospect of the loss may seem so unbearable, and admitting themselves tricked may seem so humiliating, that the victim will yet deny the plot, and the game may continue long after.

Father had warned Draco not to do that again.

First, though, he’d let Mr. Avery finish eating all of the cookies he’d swindled from Draco, while Draco watched and cried. The whole lovely jar of cookies that Father had given him just a few hours earlier, for Draco had lost all of them to Mr. Avery, down to the very last one.

So it was a familiar feeling that Draco had felt in the pit of his stomach, when Gregory told him about The Kiss.

Sometimes you looked back, and saw things…

(In a lightless classroom - you couldn’t quite call it
unused
any more, since it’d seen weekly use over the last few months - a boy sat enshrouded in a hooded cowl, with an unlighted crystal globe on the desk in front of him. Thinking in silence, thinking in darkness, waiting for an opening door to let in the light.)

Harry had shoved Granger away and said,
I told you, no kissing!

Harry would probably say something like,
She just did it to annoy me, last time, just like she made me go on that date.

But the verified story was that Granger had been willing to face the Dementor again in order to help Harry; that she had kissed Harry, crying, when he was lost in the depths of Dementation; and that her kiss had brought him back.

That didn’t sound like rivalry, even friendly rivalry.

That sounded like the kind of friendship you usually didn’t see even in plays.

Then why had Harry made his friend climb the icy walls of Hogwarts?

Because that was the sort of thing Harry Potter did to his friends?

Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what
ended up
happening, assume it was the
intended
result, and ask who benefited.

What had ended up happening as the result of Draco and Granger fighting Harry Potter together… was that Draco had started to feel a lot friendlier toward Granger.

Who benefited from the scion of Malfoy becoming friends with a mudblood witch?

Who benefited, that was famous for exactly that sort of plot?

Who benefited, that could possibly be pulling Harry Potter’s strings?

Dumbledore.

And if that was true then Draco would
have
to go to Father and tell him everything, no matter what happened after that, Draco couldn’t imagine what would happen after that, it was awful beyond imagining. Which made him want to cling desperately to the last shred of hope that it wasn’t all what it looked like…

…Draco remembered that, too, from Mr. Avery’s lesson.

Draco hadn’t planned to confront Harry yet. He was still trying to think of an experimental test, something that Harry wouldn’t just see through and fake. But then Vincent had come with the message that Harry wanted to meet early this week, on Friday instead of Saturday.

And so here Draco was, in a dark classroom, an unlit crystal globe on his desk, waiting.

Minutes passed.

Footsteps approached.

The door made a gentle creak as it swung open into the classroom, revealing Harry Potter dressed in his own hood and cowl; Harry stepped forward into the dark classroom, and the sturdy door closed behind him with a faint click.

Draco tapped the crystal globe, and the classroom lit with bright green light. Green light projected shadows of the desks onto the floor, and glared back at him from the curved chair-backs, photons bouncing off the wood in such fashion that the angle of incidence equaled the angle of reflection.

At least
that
much of what he’d learned wasn’t likely to be a lie.

Harry had flinched as the light went on, halting for a moment, then resumed his approach. “Hello, Draco,” Harry said quietly, drawing back his hood as he came to Draco’s desk. “Thank you for coming, I know it’s not our usual time -”

“You’re welcome,” Draco said flatly.

Harry dragged one of the chairs to face Draco across his desk, the legs making a slight screeching sound on the floor. He spun the chair so that it was facing the wrong way, and sat down straddling it, his arms folded across the back of the chair. The boy’s face was pensive, frowning, serious, looking very adult even for Harry Potter.

“I have an important question to ask you,” said Harry, “but there’s something else I want us to do before that.”

Draco said nothing, feeling a certain weariness. Part of him just wanted it all to be over with already.

“Tell me, Draco,” said Harry. “Why don’t Muggles ever leave ghosts behind when they die?”

“Because Muggles don’t have souls, obviously,” Draco said. He didn’t even realize until after he’d said it that it might contradict Harry’s politics, and then he didn’t care. Besides, it
was
obvious.

Harry’s face showed no surprise. “Before I ask my important question, I want to see if you can learn the Patronus Charm.”

For a moment the sheer nonsequitur stumped Draco. Good old impossible-to-predict-or-understand Harry Potter. There were times when Draco wondered whether Harry was deliberately this disorienting as a tactic.

Then Draco understood, and shoved himself up and away from his desk in a single angry motion. That was it. It was over. “Like
Dumbledore’s
servants,” he spat.

“Like Salazar Slytherin,” Harry said steadily.

Draco almost stumbled over his own feet in the middle of his first stride toward the door.

Slowly, Draco turned back toward Harry.

“I don’t know where you came up with that,” said Draco, “but it’s wrong, everyone knows the Patronus Charm is a Gryffindor spell -”

“Salazar Slytherin could cast a corporeal Patronus Charm,” Harry said. Harry’s hand darted into his robes, brought out a book whose title was written as white on green, and so almost impossible to read in the green light; but it looked old. “I discovered that when I was researching the Patronus Charm before. And I found the original reference and checked the book out of the library just in case you didn’t believe me. The author of this book doesn’t think there’s anything
unusual
about Salazar being able to cast a Patronus, either; the belief that Slytherins can’t do that must be recent. And as a further historical note, though I don’t have the book with me, Godric Gryffindor never could.”

After the first six times Draco had tried calling Harry’s bluff, on six successively more ridiculous occasions, he’d realized that Harry just
didn’t
lie about what was written in books. Still, when Harry’s hands opened the book and laid it out to the place of a bookmark, Draco leaned over and studied the place where Harry’s finger pointed.

Then the fires of Ravenclaw fell upon the darkness that had cloaked the left wing of Lord Foul’s army, breaking it, and it was revealed that the Lord Gryffindor had spoken true; the fear they all had felt was not natural in its source, but coming from thrice a dozen Dementors, who had been promised the souls of the defeated. At once the Lady Hufflepuff and Lord Slytherin brought forth their Patronuses, a vast angry badger and a bright silver serpent, and the defenders lifted their heads as the shadow passed from their hearts. And Lady Ravenclaw laughed, remarking that Lord Foul was a great fool, for now his own army would be subject to the fear, but not the defenders of Hogwarts. Yet the Lord Slytherin said, “No fool he, that much I know.” And the Lord Gryffindor beside him studied the battlefield with a frown upon his face…

Draco looked back up. “So?”

Harry closed the book and put it into his pouch. “Chaos and Sunshine both have soldiers that can cast corporeal Patronus Charms. Corporeal Patronuses can be used to convey messages. If you can’t learn the spell, Dragon Army will be at a severe military disadvantage -”

Draco didn’t care about that right now, and told Harry so. His voice was sharper than it probably should have been.

Harry didn’t blink. “Then I’m calling in the favor you owe me from that time I stopped a riot from breaking out, on our first day of broomstick lessons. I’m going to try to teach you the Patronus Charm, and for my favor, I want you to do your honest best to learn and cast it. I trust to the honor of House Malfoy that you will.”

Draco felt that certain weariness again. If Harry had asked at any other time, it would have been a fair return on favor owed, given that it wasn’t actually a Gryffindor spell. But…

“
Why?
” Draco said.

“To find out whether you can do this thing that Salazar Slytherin could do,” Harry said evenly. “This is an experimental test, and I will not tell you what it means until after you have done it. Will you?”

…It probably
was
a good idea to discharge that favor on something innocuous, all the more so if it was time to break with Harry Potter. “All right.”

Harry drew a wand from his robes, and laid it against the globe. “Not really the best color for learning the Patronus Charm,” Harry said. “Green light the exact shade of the Killing Curse, I mean. But silver is a Slytherin color too, isn’t it?
Dulak.
” The light went out, and Harry whispered the first two phrases of the Continual Light enchantment, recasting that part of it, though neither of them could have cast the whole thing by themselves. Then Harry tapped the globe again, and the room lit with a silver radiance, brilliant but still soft and gentle. Color returned to the desks and chairs, and to Harry’s slightly sweaty face beneath his shock of black hair.

It took that long for Draco to realize the implication. “You saw a
Killing Curse
cast since the last time we met? When - how -”

“Cast the Patronus Charm,” Harry said, looking more serious than ever, “and I’ll tell you.”

Draco pressed his hands to his eyes, shutting out the silver light. “You know, I really should remember that you’re too
weird
for any
normal
plots!”

Within his self-imposed darkness, he heard the sound of Harry snickering.

Harry watched closely as Draco finished his latest run-through of the preliminary gestures, the part of the spell that was difficult to learn; the final brandish and the pronunciation didn’t have to be precise. All three of the last runs had been perfect as far as Harry could see. Harry had also felt an odd impulse to adjust things that Mr. Lupin hadn’t said anything about, like the angle of Draco’s elbow or the direction his foot was pointing; it could have been entirely his own imagination, and probably was, but Harry had decided to go with it just in case.

“All right,” Harry said quietly. There was a tension in his chest that made it a little hard to speak. “Now we don’t have a Dementor here, but that’s all right. We won’t need one. Draco, when your father spoke to me at the train station, he said that you were the one thing in the world that was most precious to him, and he threatened to throw away all his other plans to take vengeance on me, if ever you came to harm.”

“He… what?” There was a catch in Draco’s voice, and a strange look on his face. “Why are you telling me
that?
”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Harry didn’t let his expression change, though he could guess what Draco was thinking; that Harry had been plotting to separate Draco from his father, and shouldn’t be saying anything that would bring them closer together. “There’s always been just one person who matters most to you, and I know exactly what warm and happy thought will let you cast the Patronus Charm. You told it to me at the train station before the first day of school. Once you fell off a broomstick and broke your ribs. It hurt more than anything you’d ever felt, and you thought you were going to die. Pretend that fear is coming from a Dementor, standing in front of you, wearing a tattered black cloak, looking like a dead thing left in water. And then cast the Patronus Charm, and when you brandish the wand to drive the Dementor away, think of how your father held your hand, so that you wouldn’t be afraid; and then think of how much he loves you, and how much you love him, and put it all into your voice when you say
Expecto Patronum.
For the honor of House Malfoy, and not just because you promised me a favor. Show me you didn’t lie to me that day in the train station when you told me Lucius was a good father. Show me you can do what Salazar Slytherin could do.”

And Harry stepped backward, behind Draco, out of Draco’s field of vision, so that Draco only faced the dusty old teacher’s desk and blackboard at the front of the unused classroom.

Draco cast one look behind him, that strange look still on his face, and then turned away to face forward. Harry saw the exhalation, the inhalation. The wand twitched once, twice, thrice, and four times. Draco’s fingers slid along the wand, exactly the right distances -

Draco lowered his wand.

“This is too -” Draco said, “I can’t
think
this right, while you’re watching -”

Harry turned around and started walking toward the door. “I’ll come back in a minute,” Harry said. “Just hold to your happy thought, and the Patronus will stay.”

From behind Draco came the sound of the door opening again.

Draco heard Harry’s footsteps entering the classroom, but Draco didn’t turn to look.

Harry didn’t say anything either. The silence stretched.

Finally -

“What does this
mean?
” Draco said. His voice wavered a bit.

“It means you love your father,” Harry’s voice said. Which was just what Draco had been thinking, and trying not to cry in front of Harry. It was too right, just too right -

Before Draco, on the floor, was the shining form of a snake that Draco recognized; a Blue Krait, a snake first brought to their manor by Lord Abraxas Malfoy after a visit to some faraway land, and Father had kept a Blue Krait in the ophidiarium ever since. The thing about the Blue Krait was that the bite wouldn’t hurt much. Father had said that, and told Draco that he was
never
allowed to pet the snake, no matter who was watching. The venom killed your nerves so fast that you didn’t have time to feel pain as the poison spread. You could die of it even after using Healing Charms. It ate other snakes. It was as Slytherin as any creature could possibly be.