Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (94 page)

Harry Potter, the only wizard ever to survive a Killing Curse. Bahry might have been able to dodge the green death, he’d certainly been trying, but if the matter came up before the Wizengamot, they’d rule it was a life debt to a Noble House.

“I see,” Bahry said in a much gentler growl. He started to walk toward the boy. “Son, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but I need you to drop the cloak and drop your wand.”

The rest of Harry Potter emerged from invisibility, showing the sweat-soaked blue-trimmed Hogwarts robes, and his right hand clutching an eleven-inch holly wand so hard his knuckles were white.

“Your wand,” Bahry repeated.

“Sorry,” whispered the eleven-year-old boy, “here,” and he held out the wand toward Bahry.

Bahry barely stopped himself from snarling at the traumatized boy who’d just saved his life. Instead he overrode the impulse with a sigh, and just stretched out a hand to take the wand. “Look, son, you’re
really
not supposed to point a wand at -”

The wand’s end twisted lightly beneath Bahry’s hand just as the boy whispered, “
Somnium
.”

Harry stared at the Auror’s crumpled body, there was no sense of triumph, just a crushing sense of despair.

(Even then it might not have been too late.)

Harry turned to look at where the green snake lay motionless.

“
Teacher?
” hissed Harry. ”
Friend? Pleasse, are you alive?
” An awful fear was taking hold in Harry’s heart; in that moment he had entirely forgotten that he’d just seen the Defense Professor try to kill a police officer.

Harry pointed his wand at the snake, and his lips even began to shape the word
Innervate
, before his brain caught up with him and screamed at him.

He didn’t dare use magic on Professor Quirrell.

Harry had felt it, the burning, tearing pain in his head, like his brain was about to split in half. He’d felt it, his magic and Professor Quirrell’s magic, matched and anti-harmonized in a fulfillment of doom. That was the mysterious terrible thing that would happen if Harry and Professor Quirrell ever got too close to each other, or if they ever cast magic on each other, or if
their spells ever touched,
their magic would resonate out of control -

Harry stared at the snake, he couldn’t tell if it was breathing.

(The last seconds ticked away.)

He turned to stare at the Auror, who had seen the Boy-Who-Lived, who knew.

The full magnitude of the disaster crushed in on Harry like a thousand hundred-ton weights, he’d managed to stun the Auror but now there was nothing left to do, no way to recover, the mission had failed, everything had failed,
he
had failed.

Shocked, dismayed, despairing, he
didn’t think of it
, didn’t see the obvious, didn’t remember where the hopeless feelings were coming from, didn’t realize that he still needed to recast the True Patronus Charm.

(And then it was already too late.)

Auror Li and Auror McCusker had rearranged their chairs around the table, and so they both saw it at the same time, the naked, skeletally thin horror rising up to hover outside the window, the headache already hitting them from seeing it.

They both heard the voice, like a long-dead corpse had spoken words and those words themselves had aged and died.

The Dementor’s speech hurt their ears as it said, “Bellatrix Black is out of her cell.”

There was a split second of horrified silence, and then Li tore out of his chair, heading for the communicator to call in reinforcements from the Ministry, even as McCusker grabbed his mirror and started frantically trying to raise the three Aurors who’d gone on patrol.

In a scarred and ruined corridor, lit by dim gas lights, a boy slowly crept forward, one hand stretched out, toward the unmoving snake that was the body of his teacher.

Harry was only a meter away from the snake’s body when he first felt it, tickling at the edge of his perception.

Ever so weakly, a sense of doom…

Professor Quirrell
was
alive, then.

The thought engendered no feeling of joy, only a sort of empty despair.

Harry would still be caught soon, and no matter how he tried to explain, it still wouldn’t look good. No one would trust him again, they would think he was the next Dark Lord, they wouldn’t help him when it came time to fight Lord Voldemort, Hermione would give up on him, probably even Dumbledore would look for another hero…

…maybe they’d just send him home to his parents.

He had failed.

Harry looked at the crumpled body of the police officer he’d stunned, the already-drying blood from the minor cuts and slashes, the burned places on the intricately embroidered red robes.

He’d been stupid. He
shouldn’t
have stunned the police officer, should have just
stayed
with his original story about being kidnapped by Professor Quirrell…

It might not be too late,
whispered a voice inside him.
You might still be able to fix your mistake. The Auror saw you, he remembers that you stunned him… but if he were dead, if Professor Quirrell were dead, if Bellatrix were dead, there would be no one to contradict your story.

Slowly, Harry’s hand started to rise, pointing his wand at the police officer and -

Harry’s hand halted.

He had a distant sense he was behaving uncharacteristically of himself, somehow. Like there was something he’d forgotten, something important, but he was having trouble remembering what it was, exactly.

Oh. That was right. He was someone who believed in the value of human life.

A sense of puzzlement accompanied the thought, he couldn’t quite remember
why
other people’s lives had seemed valuable…

All right,
said the logical part of him, w
hy has my mind changed between then and now?

Because he was in Azkaban…

And he’d forgotten to recast the Patronus Charm…

Doing anything at all, somehow, seemed like a tremendous effort, like the thought of action itself was a weight too heavy to lift; but it did seem like a good idea to recast the Patronus Charm, for he was still able to be afraid of Dementors. And though he couldn’t remember what it was like to be happy, he knew that this wasn’t it.

Harry’s hand rose to hold his wand level before him, his fingers took the starting positions.

And then Harry paused.

He couldn’t… quite remember… what he’d used as his happy thought.

That was odd, it had been something very important, he really ought to be able to remember it… something to do with death? But that wasn’t happy…

His body was shivering, Azkaban hadn’t seemed so cold before, and it seemed to be getting colder even as he thought. It was too late for him, he’d already sunk too far, he’d never be able to cast the Patronus Charm now -

That may be the Dementation talking rather than an accurate estimate,
observed the logical part of himself, habits that had been encoded into sheer reflex, requiring no energy to activate.
Think of the Dementors’ fear as a cognitive bias, and try to overcome it the way you would overcome any other cognitive bias. Your hopeless feelings may not indicate that the situation is actually hopeless. It may only indicate that you are in the presence of Dementors. All negative emotions and pessimistic estimates must now be considered suspect, fallacious until proven valid.

(If you’d been watching the boy as he thought, you would have seen a distant, abstract, puzzled frown move across his face, below the glasses and the lightning-bolt scar. His hand stayed in the starting position for the Patronus Charm, and did not move.)

The presence of Dementors interferes with the part of you that processes happiness. If you cannot retrieve your happy thought by mnemonic association on the key of happiness, perhaps you can get at the memory some other way instead. When was the last time you talked to someone about the Patronus Charm?

Harry couldn’t seem to remember that either.

A crushing wave of despair swept over him, and was dismissed by the logical part of himself as untrustworthy, external, not-Harry, the dull weight still pressed him down but his mind went on thinking, it didn’t take much effort to think…

When was the last time you talked to someone about Dementors?

Professor Quirrell had said that he was already able to feel the presence of Dementors, and Harry had said to Professor Quirrell… he’d told Professor Quirrell…

…to hold to the memory of the stars, of falling bodilessly through space, like an Occlumency barrier across his entire mind.

His second Defense class of the year, on Friday, that was when Professor Quirrell had shown him the stars, and again on Christmas.

It didn’t take much effort to remember them, the searing points of white against perfect blackness.

Harry remembered the great cloudy wash of the Milky Way.

Harry remembered the peace.

Some of the coldness at the fringes of his limbs seemed to retreat.

There were words he had spoken out loud on the day he’d first cast the Patronus Charm, his mind could remember the sounds and the speech even as the feelings seemed distant…

…
I thought of my absolute rejection of death as the natural order.

You cast the True Patronus Charm by thinking about the value of human life.

…But there are other lives that are still alive to be fought for. Your life, and my life, and Hermione Granger’s life, all the lives of Earth, and all the lives beyond, to be defended and protected.

Then the idea of killing everyone… that hadn’t been his true self, that had been the Dementation talking…

Despair was the Dementors’ influence.

Where there’s life, there’s hope. The Auror is still alive. Professor Quirrell is still alive. Bellatrix is still alive. I’m still alive. No one’s actually died yet…

Harry could picture the Earth, now, in the midst of the starfield, the blue-white orb.

…and I won’t let them!

“Expecto Patronum!”

The words came out a little halting, and when the human shape burst back into existence it was dim at first, moonlight instead of sunlight, white instead of silver.

But it strengthened, slowly, as Harry breathed in deliberate rhythm, recovering. Letting the light drive back the darkness from his mind. Remembering the things that he had almost forgotten, and channeling them back into the Patronus Charm.

Even when the light blazed full and silver once more, illuminating the corridor more brightly than the gas lamps, banishing fully the cold, Harry’s limbs still shook. That had been too close.

Harry took a deep breath. All right. It was time to reconsider the situation now that his thoughts were no longer being artificially darkened by Dementors.

Harry reviewed the situation.

…still looked pretty hopeless, actually.

It wasn’t the crushing despair of before, but Harry still felt wobbly, to put it mildly. He didn’t dare go dark and it was his dark side that had the ability to take this level of problem in stride. It was his dark side that would have laughed scornfully at the very concept of giving up just because he’d lost Professor Quirrell and was marooned in the depths of Azkaban and had been seen by a police officer. The ordinary Harry was not able to take that sort of thing in stride.

But there wasn’t any option except to keep moving forward anyway. You couldn’t get any
more
pointless than giving up before you’d actually lost.

Harry looked around.

Dim gas lights lit a corridor of grey metal, whose sides and floor and ceiling were slashed in places, gouged and melted, telling anyone who cared to look that there had been battle here.

Professor Quirrell could have repaired it easily enough, if he’d…

The sense of betrayal struck Harry with full force, then.

Why… why did he… why…

Because he’s evil,
said Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, quietly and sadly.
We told you so.

No!
thought Harry desperately.
No, it doesn’t make sense, we were going to commit the perfect crime, the Auror could have been Obliviated, the corridor repaired, it wasn’t too late but it would have BEEN too late if he’d died!

But Professor Quirrell was never really planning to commit the perfect crime,
said the grim voice of Slytherin.
He
wanted
the crime to be noticed. He wanted everyone to know that someone had killed an Auror and broken Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban. He would have prepared some kind of evidence, some proof he could reveal of your involvement, to use as blackmail against you; and you would have been bound to him forever.

Harry’s Patronus almost went out, then.

No…
Harry thought.

Yes,
said the other three parts of him sadly.

No. It still doesn’t make sense. Professor Quirrell had to know I would turn against him the instant I saw him kill an Auror. That I might very well go ahead and confess to Dumbledore, hoping to plead the true fact that I was tricked. And… in terms of blackmail, does his killing an Auror against my will, really add all
that
much to breaking Bellatrix out of Azkaban with my willing help? It would have been more cunning to keep the evidence of my involvement with the basic crime, but still pretend to be my ally for as long as he could, saving the blackmail to use only if it became necessary…

Rationalization,
said Slytherin.
So why
did
Professor Quirrell do it, then?

And Harry thought with a tinge of desperation - knowing, even as he thought it, that he was motivated in part by a desire to reject reality, and that wasn’t how the technique was meant to be wielded -
I notice that I am confused.

There was internal silence. None of the parts of himself seemed to have anything to add to that.

And Harry continued to take stock of the moderately hopeless-looking situation.

Did Harry need to re-evaluate the probability that Bellatrix was evil?

…not in any mission-relevant sense. It was a
given
that Bellatrix was currently evil. Whether she was an innocent who’d been made that way by torture and Legilimency and unspeakable rituals, or whether she’d chosen it of her own will, didn’t have much bearing on the current situation. The key fact was that while Bellatrix thought Harry was the Dark Lord, she would obey him.

That was one resource, then. But Bellatrix was starved and nine-tenths dead…

‘Oh, I feel a little better now, how strange…’

Bellatrix had said that, in her shattered voice, after Harry’s Patronus had blazed out of control.

Harry thought, and he couldn’t have quite said
why
he thought this, it might have just been his own mind making things up, but… it seemed likely that what the Dementors had taken from you long ago was lost forever. But what the Dementors had taken from you
recently,
the True Patronus Charm might give back. Like the difference between emptying a cup, and the unused cup fading away. Bellatrix, then, might have got back what she’d lost in just the last week or so. Not any happy memories, those would have been eaten years ago. But whatever strength and magic had been drained from her in just the last week, she might have regained. Like the equivalent of getting a week of rest, a week to build up her magic again…

Harry looked at Professor Quirrell’s snake form.

…maybe enough for an
Innervate.

If awakening Professor Quirrell
was
, in fact, a smart thing to do.

Some of the despair came back to Harry, then. He couldn’t trust Professor Quirrell, couldn’t trust that reviving him would be wise, not after what had just happened.

Steady,
Harry thought to himself, and looked at the crumpled form of the Auror.

Bellatrix might
also
be able to manage a Memory Charm.

That could be step one, anyway. It wasn’t exactly getting everyone safely out of Azkaban, and the Aurors
would
know afterward that something strange had happened, they might suspect Bellatrix’s body and perform an autopsy. But it was a step.

…and
would
it be all that hard to get out of Azkaban? If they could get to the top of Azkaban quickly enough, before the Auror was supposed to report back in, before anyone noticed him missing, then they could just fly out through the hole Professor Quirrell had made, and get far enough away from Azkaban to activate the portkey Harry already had in his possession. (Both Professor Quirrell and Harry had portkeys, and both were powerful enough to transport two humans, plus or minus a snake. As with their doubly-concealed departure from Mary’s Room, Professor Quirrell had put enough safety margin in his plans to impress even Harry.)

Bellatrix could carry Professor Quirrell’s snake form, which Harry dared not touch or levitate.

Harry turned and strode quickly toward where Bellatrix was waiting on the stairs. He could feel his spirits reviving a little. It
was
starting to look like a good plan, and there was no time to waste in going about it.

What to do with Professor Quirrell, or for that matter Bellatrix, after the portkey took them to where they were supposed to hand Bellatrix over to the psychiatric healer… well, Harry could work that out along the way. Harry would probably have to bamboozle the healer into doing something - which was going to take one hell of a bamboozling, and Harry wasn’t even sure what he
wanted
done - but he and Bellatrix had to get moving
now.

The main problem Harry saw, as he quickly ran the whole process forward in his imagination, would come when they reached the roof. Professor Quirrell had been supposed to sneak around invisibly and Confund the monitors that would notice visitors in the aerial surroundings of Azkaban, causing them to see a repeating loop of scenery for a few minutes. Professor Quirrell had said that he couldn’t Disillusion Harry’s Patronus; and if they switched
off
the Patronus, the Dementors would notice Bellatrix was missing, and alert the Aurors…