Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (83 page)

“Let me think,” Draco said, his voice coming out in something of a croak, “please,” and he rested his head in his hands, and thought.

Draco thought for a while, with his palms over his eyes to shut out the world, no sound but his and Harry’s breathing. All the persuasive reasonableness of what Harry said, the evident grains of truth that it contained; and against that, the obvious, the perfectly and entirely obvious hypothesis about what was
really
going on…

After a time, Draco finally raised his head.

“It sounds right,” Draco said quietly.

A huge smile broke out on Harry’s face.

“So,” Draco continued, “is this where you bring me to Dumbledore, to make it official?”

He kept his voice very casual as he said it.

“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “That was the thing I was going to ask you about, actually -”

Draco’s blood froze in his veins, froze solid and shattered -

“Professor Quirrell said something to me that got me thinking, and, well, no matter how you answer this question, I’m already stupid for having not asked you a lot earlier. Everyone in Gryffindor thinks Dumbledore is a saint, the Hufflepuffs think he’s crazy, the Ravenclaws are all proud of themselves for having worked out that he’s only pretending to be crazy, but I never asked anyone in Slytherin. I’m supposed to know better than to make that sort of mistake. But if even
you
think Dumbledore’s okay to conspire with on fixing Slytherin House, I guess I didn’t miss anything important.”

…

…

…

“You know,” Draco said, his voice remarkably calm, all things considered, “every time I wonder if you do things like this just to annoy me, I tell myself that it
has
to be accidental,
no one
could possibly do this sort of thing on purpose even if they tried until blood trickled out of their ears. That’s the only reason I’m not going to strangle you now.”

“Huh?”

And then strangle
himself,
because Harry
had
grown up with Muggles, and then Dumbledore had smoothly diverted him from Slytherin to Ravenclaw, so it was perfectly plausible that Harry might
not
know anything, and Draco had never thought to
tell him.

Or else Harry had guessed that Draco wouldn’t join up with Dumbledore so readily, and this itself was just the next step of Dumbledore’s plan…

But if Harry
really
didn’t know about Dumbledore, then warning him had to take precedence over
everything.

“All right,” Draco said, after he’d had a chance to organize his thoughts. “I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just start somewhere.” Draco drew a deep breath. This was going to take a while. “Dumbledore murdered his little sister, and got away with it because his brother wouldn’t testify against him -”

Harry listened with increasing worry and dismay. Harry had been prepared, he’d thought, to take the blood purist side of the story with a grain of salt. The trouble was that even after you added an enormous amount of salt, it
still
didn’t sound good.

Dumbledore’s father had been convicted of using Unforgivable Curses on children, and died in Azkaban. That was no sin of Dumbledore’s, but it would be a matter of public record. Harry could check that part, and see whether all of this had been made up out of thin air by the blood purists.

Dumbledore’s mother had died mysteriously, shortly before his younger sister died in what the Aurors had ruled to be murder. Supposedly that sister had been brutalized by Muggles and never spoken again after that; which, Draco pointed out, sounded remarkably like a botched Obliviation.

After Harry’s first few interruptions, Draco had seemed to pick up on the general principle, and was now presenting the observations first and the inferences afterward.

“- so you don’t have to take my word for it,” said Draco, “you can
see
it, right? Anyone in Slytherin can. Dumbledore waited to fight his duel with Grindelwald until the exact moment when it would look best for Dumbledore,
after
Grindelwald had ruined most of Europe and built up a reputation as the most terrible Dark Wizard in history, and just when Grindelwald had lost the gold and blood sacrifices he was getting from his Muggle pawns and was about to start heading downhill. If Dumbledore was really the noble wizard he pretended to be, he’d have fought Grindelwald long before that. Dumbledore probably
wanted
Europe ruined, it was probably part of their plan together, he only attacked Grindelwald after his puppet
failed
him. And that big flashy duel wasn’t real, there’s no way two wizards would be so exactly matched that they’d fight for twenty whole hours until one of them fell over from exhaustion, that was just Dumbledore making it look more spectacular.” Here Draco’s voice became more indignant. “And that got Dumbledore made
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot!
The Line of Merlin Unbroken, corrupted after fifteen hundred years! And
then
he became Supreme Mugwump on top of that, and he
already
had Hogwarts to use as an invincible fortress - Headmaster
and
Chief Warlock
and
Supreme Mugwump, no normal person would try to do all that at once,
how can anyone not see that Dumbledore’s trying to take over the world?
”

“Pause,” Harry said, and closed his eyes to think.

It wasn’t any worse than what you would have heard about the West in Stalin’s Russia, and none of that would have been true. Though the blood purists wouldn’t be able to get away with making stuff up entirely… or would they? The
Daily Prophet
had shown a pronounced tendency to make stuff up… but then again, when they stuck out their neck too far on the Weasley betrothal, they
had
been called on it and they
had
been embarrassed…

Harry opened his eyes, and saw that Draco was watching him with a steady, waiting gaze.

“So when you asked me if it was time to join up with Dumbledore, that was just a test.”

Draco nodded.

“And before that, when you said it sounded right -”

“It
sounds
right,” said Draco. “But I don’t know if I can trust you. Are you going to complain about my
testing
you, Mr. Potter? Are you going to say that I
fooled
you? That I
led you on?
”

Harry knew he should smile like a good sport, but he couldn’t really, it was too much of a disappointment.

“You’re right, it’s fair, I can’t complain,” Harry said instead. “So what about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Not as bad as he was made out to be?”

Draco looked bitter, at that. “So you think it’s all just making Father’s side look good and Dumbledore’s side look bad, and that I believe it all myself just because Father told me.”

“It’s a possibility I’m considering,” Harry said evenly.

Draco’s voice was low and intense. “They
knew
. My father knew, his friends knew. They
knew
the Dark Lord was evil.
But he was the only chance anyone had against Dumbledore!
The only wizard anywhere who was powerful enough to fight him! Some of the other Death Eaters were truly evil too, like Bellatrix Black - Father isn’t like that - but Father and his friends
had
to do it, Harry, they
had
to, Dumbledore was taking over everything, the Dark Lord was the only hope anyone had left!”

Draco was staring hard at Harry. Harry met the gaze, trying to think. Nobody ever thought of themselves as the villain of their own story - maybe Lord Voldemort did, maybe Bellatrix did, but Draco certainly didn’t. That the Death Eaters were bad guys was not in question. The question was whether they were
the
bad guys; whether there was
one
villain in the story, or
two…

“You’re not convinced,” Draco said. He looked worried, and a little angry. Which didn’t surprise Harry. He was pretty sure Draco himself believed all this.

“
Should
I be convinced?” Harry said. He didn’t look away. “Just because you believe it? Are you a strong enough rationalist now that your belief is strong evidence to me, because you’d be very unlikely to believe it if it weren’t true? When I met you, you weren’t that strong. Everything you told me, did you rethink it after you awakened as a scientist, or is it just something you grew up believing? Can you look me in the eyes and swear to me upon the honor of House Malfoy that if there’s one untruth buried in what you said, one thing that got added on just to make Dumbledore look a little worse, you would have noticed?”

Draco started to open his mouth, and Harry said, “Don’t. Don’t stain the honor of House Malfoy. You’re
not
that strong yet, and you should know it. Listen, Draco, I’ve started to notice some worrying things myself. But there’s nothing
definite,
nothing
certain,
it’s all just deductions and hypotheses and untrustworthy witnesses… And there’s nothing certain in your story, either. Dumbledore might’ve had some other good reason not to fight Grindelwald years earlier - though it
would
have to be a pretty good excuse, especially considering what was happening on the Muggle side of things… but still. Is there one clearly evil thing that Dumbledore’s done for
certain,
so I don’t have to wonder?”

Draco’s breathing was harsh. “All right,” Draco said in an uneven voice, “I’ll tell you what Dumbledore did.” From Draco’s robes came a wand, and Draco said “Quietus”, then “Quietus” again, but he got the pronunciation wrong a second time, and finally Harry took out his own wand and did it.

“There,” said Draco hoarsely, “once upon a time there, there was a girl, and her name was Narcissa, and she was the prettiest, the smartest, the most cunning girl that was ever Sorted into Slytherin, and my father loved her, and they married, and she wasn’t a Death Eater, she wasn’t a fighter,
all she ever did was love Father -
” Draco stopped there, because he was crying.

Harry felt sick to his stomach. Draco had never talked about his
mother
, not once, he should have noticed that earlier. “She… got in the way of a curse?”

Draco’s voice came out in a scream. “
Dumbledore burned her to death in her own bedroom!
”

In a classroom filled with soft silver light, one boy is staring at another boy, who is sobbing, wiping frantically at his eyes with the sleeves of his robes.

It was hard for Harry to stay balanced, to keep withholding judgment, it was too emotional, there was something that either wanted to start tears from his own eyes in sympathy with Draco, or
know
that it wasn’t true…

Dumbledore burned her to death in her own bedroom!

That…

…didn’t sound like Dumbledore’s style…

…but you could only think that thought so many times, before you started to wonder about the trustworthiness of that whole ‘style’ concept.

“It, it must have hurt horribly,” Draco said, his voice shaking, “Father never talks about it at all, you don’t ever talk about it in front of him, but Mr. Macnair told me, there were scorch marks all over the bedroom, from how Mother must have struggled while Dumbledore
burned her alive
. That is the debt Dumbledore owes to House Malfoy and
we will have his life for it!
”

“Draco,” Harry said, he let all of the hoarseness into his own voice, it would be
wrong
to sound calm, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for asking, but I
have
to know,
how
do you know it was Dumble-”

“Dumbledore
said
he did it, he told Father it was a
warning!
And Father couldn’t testify under Veritaserum because he was an Occlumens, he couldn’t even get Dumbledore put on trial, Father’s own allies didn’t believe him after Dumbledore just denied everything in public, but we know, the Death Eaters know, Father wouldn’t have any reason to lie about that, Father would want us to take revenge on the
right person,
can’t you see that Harry?” Draco’s voice was wild.

Unless Lucius did it himself, of course, and found it more convenient to blame Dumbledore.

Although… it also didn’t seem like
Lucius’s
style. And if he
had
murdered Narcissa, it would have been smarter to pin the blame on an easier victim instead of losing political capital and credibility by going after Dumbledore…

In time, Draco stopped crying, and looked at Harry. “
Well?
” said Draco, sounding like he wanted to spit the words. “Is that
evil
enough for you, Mr. Potter?”

Harry looked down at where his arms rested on the back of his chair. He couldn’t meet Draco’s eyes any more, the pain in them was too raw. “I wasn’t expecting to hear that,” Harry said softly. “I don’t know what to think any more.”

“You
don’t know?
” Draco’s voice rose to a shriek, and he stood up abruptly from his desk -

“I remembered the Dark Lord killing my parents,” Harry said. “When I went in front of the Dementor the first time, that was what I remembered, the worst memory. Even though it was so long ago. I heard them dying. My mother begged the Dark Lord not to kill me,
not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead!
That’s what she said. And the Dark Lord mocked her, and laughed. Then, I remember, the flash of green light -”

Harry looked up at Draco.

“So we could fight,” Harry said, “we could just keep on with the same fight. You could tell me that it was right for my mother to die, because she was the wife of James, who killed a Death Eater. But bad for
your
mother to die, because
she
was innocent. And I could tell you that it was right for your mother to die, that Dumbledore must have had some
reason
that made it
okay
to burn her alive in her own bedroom; but bad for
my
mother to die. But you know, Draco, either way, wouldn’t it be
obvious
that we were just being biased? Because the rule that says that it’s wrong to kill innocent people, that rule can’t switch on for my mother and off for yours, and it can’t switch on for your mother and off for mine. If you tell me that Lily was an enemy of the Death Eaters and it’s right to kill your enemies, then the same rule says that Dumbledore was right to kill Narcissa, since she was
his
enemy.” Harry’s voice went hoarse. “So if the two of us are going to agree on anything, it’s going to be that
neither
of their deaths were right and that
no one’s
mother should die any more.”