Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (92 page)

A faint green spark moved forward to set the pace, and behind it followed a brilliant silver figure, all other entities invisible. They had traversed five legs of corridor, turned right five times and gone up five flights of stairs; and when Bellatrix had finished her second bottle of chocolate milk, she had been given solid bars of chocolate to eat.

It was after her third bar of chocolate that strange noises began to come from Bellatrix’s throat.

It took a moment for Harry to understand, to process the sounds, it didn’t sound like anything he’d ever heard before; the rhythm of it was shattered, almost unrecognizable, it took him that long to realize that Bellatrix was crying.

Bellatrix Black was crying, the Dark Lord’s most terrible weapon was crying, she was invisible but you could hear it, tiny pathetic sounds she was trying to suppress, even now.

“It’s real?” said Bellatrix. Tonality had returned into her voice, no longer a dead mutter, it rose up at the end to form the question. “It’s real?”

Yes,
thought the part of Harry simulating the Dark Lord,
now be silent
-

He couldn’t make those words pass his lips, he just couldn’t.

“I knew - you would - come to me - someday,” Bellatrix’s voice quavered and fractured as she drew breath for quiet sobs, “I knew - you were alive - that you would come - to me - my Lord…” there was a long inhalation like a huge gasp, “and that even - when you came - you still wouldn’t love me - never - you would never love me back - that was why - they couldn’t take - my love from me - even though I can’t remember - can’t remember so many other things - though I don’t know what I forgot - but I remember how much I love you, Lord -”

There was a knife stabbing through Harry’s heart, he’d never heard anything so terrible, he wanted to hunt down the Dark Lord and kill him just for this…

“Do you still - have use for me - my Lord?”

“No,” hissed Harry’s voice, without him even thinking, it just seemed to be operating on automatic, “I entered Azkaban on a whim. Of course I have use for you! Don’t ask foolish questions.”

“But - I’m weak,” said Bellatrix’s voice, and a full sob escaped her, it sounded much too loud in the corridors of Azkaban, “I can’t kill for you, my Lord, I’m sorry, they ate it all, ate me all up, I’m too weak to fight, what good am I to you now -”

Harry’s brain cast about desperately for some way to reassure her, from the lips of a Dark Lord who would never speak a single word of caring.

“Ugly,” said Bellatrix. Her voice said that word like it was the final nail in her coffin, the last despair. “I’m ugly, they ate that too, I’m, I’m not pretty any more, you won’t even, be able, to use me, as a reward, for your servants - even the Lestranges, won’t want, to hurt me, any more -”

The brilliant silver figure stopped walking.

Because Harry had stopped walking.

The Dark Lord, he…
The part of Harry’s self that was soft and vulnerable was screaming in disbelieving horror, trying to reject reality, refuse the understanding, even as a colder and harder part completed the pattern:
She obeyed him in that as she obeyed him in all things.

The green spark bobbed urgently, darted forward.

The silver humanoid stayed in place.

Bellatrix was sobbing harder.

“I’m, I’m not, I can’t be, useful, any more…”

Giant hands were squeezing Harry’s chest, wringing him like a washcloth, trying to crush his heart.

“Please,” whispered Bellatrix, “just kill me…” Her voice seemed to calm, once she said that. “Please Lord, kill me, I’ve no reason to live if I’m no use to you… I only want it to stop… please hurt me one last time, my Lord, hurt me until I stop… I love you…”

It was the saddest thing Harry had ever heard.

The bright silver shape of Harry’s Patronus flickered -

Wavered -

Brightened -

The fury that was rising in Harry, his rage against the Dark Lord who had done this, the rage against the Dementors, against Azkaban, against the world that allowed such horror, it all seemed to be pouring straight through his arm and into his wand without there being any way of blocking it, he tried willing it to stop and nothing happened.

“My Lord!” whispered the disguised voice of Professor Quirrell. “My spell is going out of control! Help me, my Lord!”

Brighter the Patronus, brighter and brighter, it was waxing faster than on the day that Harry had destroyed a Dementor.

“My Lord!” the silhouette said in a terrified whisper. “Help me! Everyone will feel it, my Lord!”

Everyone will feel it,
thought Harry. His imagination could picture it clearly, the prisoners in their cells stirring as the cold and darkness fell away, replaced by healing light.

Every exposed surface now burned like a white sun in the reflections, the silhouette of Bellatrix’s skeleton and the sallow man now clearly visible in the blaze, the Disillusionment spells unable to keep pace with the unearthly brilliance; only the Cloak of Invisibility out of the Deathly Hallows withstood it.

“My Lord!
You must stop it!
”

But Harry could no longer will it to stop, he no longer wanted it to stop. He could sense it, more and more of the sparks of life in Azkaban being sheltered by his Patronus,
as it unfolded like spreading wings of sunlight, the air turned to absolute silver as he thought it, Harry knew what he had to do.

“
Please, my Lord!
”

The words went unheard.

They were far from him, the Dementors in their pit, but Harry knew that they could be destroyed even at this distance if the light blazed bright enough, he knew that Death itself could not face him if he stopped holding back, so he unsealed all the gates inside him and sank the wells of his spell into all the deepest parts of his spirit, all his mind and all his will, and gave over absolutely everything to the spell -

And in the interior of the Sun, an only slightly dimmer shadow moved forward, reaching out an entreating hand.

WRONG
DON’T

The sudden sense of doom clashed with Harry’s steel determination, dread and uncertainty striving against the bright purpose, nothing else might have reached him but that. The silhouette took another step forward and another, the sense of doom rising to a point of terrible catastrophe; and in the drench of cold water, Harry saw it, he realized the consequences of what he was doing, the danger and the trap.

If you had been watching from outside you would have seen the interior of the Sun brightening and dimming…

Brightening and dimming…

…and finally fading, fading, fading into ordinary moonlight that seemed like pitch darkness by contrast.

Within the darkness of that moonlight stood a sallow man with his hand outstretched in entreaty, and the skeleton of a woman, lying upon the floor, a puzzled look upon her face.

And Harry, still invisible, fallen to his knees. The greater danger had passed, and now Harry was just trying not to collapse, to keep the spell going at the lower level. He’d drained something, hopefully not lost something
-
he should have known, should have remembered, that it wasn’t mere magic that fueled the Patronus Charm -

“Thank you, my Lord,” whispered the sallow man.

“Fool,” said the hard voice of a boy pretending to be a Dark Lord. “Did I not warn you that the spell could prove fatal if you failed to control your emotions?”

Professor Quirrell’s eyes did not widen, of course.

“Yes, my Lord, I understand,” said the Dark Lord’s servant in a faltering voice, and turned to Bellatrix -

She was already pushing herself off the floor, slowly, like an old, old Muggle woman. “How funny,” Bellatrix whispered, “you were almost killed by a Patronus Charm…” A giggle that sounded like it was blowing dust out of her giggle pipes. “I could punish you, maybe, if my Lord froze you in place and I had knives… maybe I can be useful after all? Oh, I feel a little better now, how strange…”

“Be silent, dear Bella,” Harry said in a chill voice, “until I give you leave to speak.”

There was no reply, which was obedience.

The servant levitated the human skeleton, and made her invisible once more, followed shortly by his own disappearance with the sound of another cracking egg.

They passed on through the corridors of Azkaban.

And Harry knew that as they passed, the prisoners were stirring in their cells as the fear lifted for one precious moment, maybe even feeling a small touch of healing as his light passed them by, and then collapsing down again as the cold and darkness pressed back in.

Harry was trying very hard not to think about it.

Otherwise his Patronus would wax until it burned away every Dementor in Azkaban, blazing bright enough to destroy them even at this distance…

Otherwise his Patronus would wax until it burned away every Dementor in Azkaban, taking all of Harry’s life as fuel.

In the Auror’s quarters at the top of Azkaban, one Auror trio was snoring in the barracks, one Auror trio was resting in the breakroom, and one Auror trio was on duty in the command room, keeping their watch. The command room was simple but large, with three chairs at back where three Aurors sat, their wands always in hand to sustain their three Patronuses, as the bright white forms paced in front of the open window, sheltering them all from the Dementors’ fear.

The three of them usually stuck to the back, and played poker, and didn’t look out the window. You could have seen some sky there, sure, and there was even an hour or two every day where you could’ve seen some sun, but that window also looked down on the central pit of hell.

Just in case a Dementor wanted to float up and talk to you.

There was no way that Auror Li would have agreed to serve duty here, triple pay or no triple pay, if he hadn’t had a family to support. (His real name was Xiaoguang, and everyone called him Mike instead; he’d named his children Su and Kao, which hopefully would serve them better.) His only consolation, besides the money, was that at least his mates played an excellent game of Dragon Poker. Though it would be hard
not
to, at this point.

It was their 5,366th game and Li had what would probably be his best hand of the 5300s. It was a Saturday in February and there were three players, which let him shift the suit of any one hole card except a two, three, or seven; and that was enough to let him build a Corps-a-Corps with Unicorns, Dragons, and sevens…

Across the table from him, Gerard McCusker looked up from the table cards toward the direction of the window, staring.

The sinking feeling came over Li’s stomach with surprising speed.

If his seven of hearts got hit by a Dementor Modifier and turned into a six, he was going straight down to two pair and McCusker might beat that -

“Mike,” said McCusker, “what’s with your Patronus?”

Li turned his head and looked.

His soft silver badger had turned away from its watch over the pit and was staring downward at something only it could see.

A moment later, Bahry’s moonlit duck and McCusker’s bright anteater followed suit, staring in the same downward direction.

They all exchanged glances, and then sighed.

“I’ll tell them,” said Bahry. Protocol called for sending the three Aurors who were off-duty but not sleeping to investigate anything anomalous. “Maybe relieve one of them and take the C spiral, if you two don’t mind.”

Li exchanged a glance with McCusker, and they both nodded. It wasn’t too hard to break into Azkaban, if you were wealthy enough to hire a powerful wizard, and well-intentioned enough to recruit someone who could cast the Patronus Charm. People with friends in Azkaban would do that, break in just to give someone a half-day’s worth of Patronus time, a chance at some real dreams instead of nightmares. Leave them a supply of chocolate to conceal in their cell, to increase the chance they lived through their sentence. And the Aurors on guard… well, even if you got caught, you could probably convince the Aurors to overlook it, in exchange for the right bribe.

For Li, the right bribe tended to be in the range of two Knuts and a silver Sickle. He hated this place.

But Bahry One-Hand had a wife and the wife had healer’s bills, and if you could afford to hire someone who could break into Azkaban, then you could afford to grease Bahry’s remaining palm pretty hard, if he was the one who caught you.

By unspoken agreement, none of them giving anything away by being the first to propose it, the three of them finished out their poker hand first. Li won, since no Dementors had actually shown up. And by then the Patronuses had stopped staring and gone back to their normal patrol, so it was probably nothing, but procedure was procedure.

After Li raked in the pot, Bahry gave them all formal nods, and stood up from the table. The older man’s long white locks brushed against his fancy red robes, his robes brushed the metal floor of the command room, as Bahry went through the separating door that led to the formerly off-duty Aurors.

Li had been Sorted into Hufflepuff, and he sometimes felt a little queasy about this kind of business. But Bahry had shown them all the pictures, and you had to let a man do what he could for his poor sick wife, especially when he only had seven months left before his retirement.

The faint green spark floated through the metal corridors, and the silver humanoid, seeming a little dimmer now, followed after it. Sometimes the bright figure would flare, especially when they passed one of the huge metal doors, but it always died back down again.

Mere eyes could not have seen the invisible others: the eleven-year-old Boy-Who-Lived, and the living skeleton that was Bellatrix Black, and the Polyjuiced Defense Professor of Hogwarts, all traveling together through Azkaban. If that was the beginning of a joke, Harry didn’t know the punchline.

They’d gone up another four flights of stairs before the rough voice of the Defense Professor said, simply and without emphasis, “Auror coming.”

It took too long, a whole second maybe, for Harry to understand, for the jolt of adrenaline to pump into his blood, and for him to remember what Professor Quirrell had already discussed with him and told him to do in this case, and then Harry spun on his heel and flew back the way they’d come.