Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (97 page)

The silver figure had darkened to moonlight, was flickering like a failing candle -

It’s all right,
thought Harry,
it’s all right.

Visualizing himself cradling his dark side like a frightened child in his arms.

It’s right and proper to be horrified, because death is horrible. You don’t have to hide your horror, you don’t have to feel ashamed of it, you can wear it as a badge of honor, openly in the Sun.

It was strange, to feel himself split in two like this, the track of his thoughts that gave the comfort, the track of his thoughts that followed his dark side’s incomprehension at the alienness of the ordinary Harry’s thoughts; of all the things that his dark side associated with its own fear of death, the one thing it had never expected or imagined that it might find, was acceptance and praise and help…

You don’t have to fight alone,
Harry said silently to his dark side.
The rest of me will back you up on this. I won’t let myself die, and I won’t let my friends die either. Not you/I, not Hermione, not Mum or Dad, not Neville or Draco or anyone, this is the will to protect…
Visualizing wings of sunlight, like the wings of the Patronus he had spread, to give shelter to that frightened child.

The Patronus brightened again, the world spun around Harry or it was his own mind that was spinning?

Take my hand,
Harry thought and visualized,
come with me, and we will do this thing together…

There was a lurch in Harry’s mind, like his brain had taken one step to the left, or the universe had taken one step to the right.

And in a brightly lit corridor in Azkaban, the dim gas lights far outshone by the steady and unwavering light of a human-shaped Patronus, an invisible boy stood with a strange small smile on his face, shaking only slightly.

Harry knew, somehow, that he’d just done something significant, something that went beyond just strengthening his resistance to Dementors.

And more than that, he’d
remembered
. Thinking of Death as an anthropomorphic figure had done the trick, ironically enough. Now Harry could remember it, what was reputed to hide someone from the gaze of Death himself…

In a corridor of Azkaban, a wizard’s striding legs came to an abrupt halt; for the bright silver thing that was his guide, had halted in midair, fluttering its wings in distress. The brilliant white phoenix craned its head, looking backward and forward as though confused; and then it turned to its master and shook its head in apology.

Without another word, the old wizard turned and strode back the way he came.

Harry stood straight and upright, feeling the fear wash over him and around him. Some tiny part of him might have been eroded a little by the waves of emptiness that broke continually upon his unmoving stone, but his limbs were not cold, and his magic was with him. In time those waves might corrode him and consume him, sneaking through whatever tiny part of him still cowered before Death instead of using its fear to energize itself for battle. But that doom would take time, with the shadows of Death far away and uncaring of him. The flaw, the crack, the fault-line that was in him had been repaired, and the stars blazed brightly in his mind, vast and unafraid, and brilliant in the midst of cold and darkness.

To anyone else’s eyes, it would have seemed that the boy stood alone in the dimly lit metal corridor, wearing that strange smile.

For Bellatrix Black and the snake draped around her shoulders were concealed by the Cloak of Invisibility, one of the three Deathly Hallows and reputed to hide its wearer from the gaze of Death himself. The riddle whose answer had been lost, and which Harry had found anew.

And Harry knew, now, that the concealment of the Cloak was more than the mere transparency of Disillusionment, that the Cloak kept you
hidden
and not just invisible, as unseeable as were Thestrals to the unknowing. And Harry also knew that it was Thestral blood which painted the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on the inside of the Cloak, binding into the Cloak that portion of Death’s power, enabling the Cloak to confront the Dementors on their own level and block them. It had felt like guessing, and yet a certain guess, the knowledge coming to him in the instant of solving the riddle.

Bellatrix was still transparent within the Cloak, but to Harry she was no longer hidden, he knew that she was there, as obvious to him as a Thestral. For Harry had only loaned his Cloak, not given it; and he had comprehended and mastered the Deathly Hallow that had been passed down through the Potter line.

Harry gazed directly at the invisible woman, and said, “Can the Dementors reach you, Bella?”

“No,” said the woman in a soft, wondering voice. Then, “But my Lord…
you
…”

“If you say anything foolish, it will annoy me,” Harry said coldly. “Or are you under the impression that I would sacrifice myself for you?”

“No, my Lord,” the Dark Lord’s servant replied, sounding puzzled, and perhaps awed.

“Follow,” spoke Harry’s cold whisper.

And they continued their journey downward, as the Dark Lord reached into his pouch, and took a cookie, and ate it. If Bellatrix had asked, Harry would have claimed it was for the chocolate, but she didn’t ask.

The old wizard strode back into the midst of the Aurors, the silver and the red-golden phoenixes now following behind.

“
You -
” Amelia began to bellow.

“They have dismissed their Patronus,” said Dumbledore. The old wizard didn’t seem to raise his voice but his calm words somehow overrode her own. “I cannot find them now.”

Amelia gritted her teeth, and put a number of scathing remarks on hold, and turned to the communications officer. “Tell the duty room to ask the Dementors
again
if they can sense Bellatrix Black.”

The communications specialist spoke to her mirror for a moment, and a few seconds later, looked up, surprised. “No -”

Amelia was already cursing violently in her mind.

“- but they can see someone else on the lower levels who isn’t a prisoner.”

“Fine!” snapped Amelia. “Tell the Dementor that a dozen of its kind are authorized to enter Azkaban and seize whoever that is and anyone in their company! And if they see Bellatrix Black, they’re to Kiss her immediately!”

Amelia turned and glared toward Dumbledore, then, daring him to argue; but the old wizard only looked at her a bit sadly, and held his peace.

Auror McCusker finished speaking to the corpse that drifted outside the window, conveying the Director’s orders.

The corpse gave him a deathly smile that almost unstrung his limbs, and then floated downward.

Soon after, a dozen Dementors arose from where they had drifted in the central pit of Azkaban, and headed outward, toward the walls of the vast metal structure that towered above them.

Entering through holes set into the base of Azkaban, the darkest of all creatures began their march of horror.

Harry had
hoped
that he’d just achieved fusion with his mysterious dark side and would be enabled to draw on all of its benefits with none of its drawbacks, call up the crystal clarity and indomitable will on demand, without needing to go cold or angry.

Once again, he’d overestimated how much progress he’d made.
Something
had happened, but Harry still had a mysterious dark side, it was still separate from him, and his ordinary self was still domitable. And despite the repair work he’d done on his dark side’s fear of death, he didn’t dare go dark while unshielded in Azkaban, that was tempting fate way too much.

Which was unfortunate, because a bit of nondomitability would have
sure come in handy about now.

What made it harder was that he couldn’t slump against a wall, couldn’t break into tears, couldn’t even heave a sigh. His dear Bella was watching him and that wasn’t the sort of thing her Dark Lord would do.

“My Lord -” Bellatrix said. Her low voice was strained. “The Dementors - they are coming - I can feel them, my Lord -”

“Thank you, Bella,” said a dry voice, “I already know that.”

Harry couldn’t sense the holes in the world the same way as when he’d been wearing the Deathly Hallow, but he could feel the empty pull increasing in intensity. At first he’d mistaken it for the result of descending a stairwell, until he and Bellatrix had finished descending and the pull had gone on increasing. Then decreased, as the Dementors moved away along the spiral, then increased as they went up another flight of stairs… There were Dementors within Azkaban itself now, and they were coming for him. Of course they were. Harry might be resistant now, but he was not
hidden.

New requirement,
Harry told his brain.
Find a way of defeating Dementors that doesn’t invoke my Patronus Charm. Alternatively, find yet another way of hiding someone from Dementors, besides the Cloak of Invisibility -

I quit,
said his brain.
Find yourself another piece of computing substrate to solve your ridiculously overconstrained problems.

I mean it,
thought Harry.

So do I,
said his brain.
Put up your Patronus Charm and wait for the Aurors to find you. Be sensible. It’s over.

Give up…

The sucking emptiness seemed to pull harder, as he thought it; and Harry realized what was happening, concentrated more intensely on the stars, turned his mind away from the despair -

You know,
observed the logical side of him,
if you’re not allowed to think
any
negative thoughts because that will open your mind to the Dementors,
that’s
a cognitive bias too, how would you know if it actually
was
time to give up?

A desperate sobbing scream rose up from below, words mixed in like “no” and “away”. The prisoners knew, the prisoners could feel it.

The Dementors were coming.

“My Lord, you - you should not risk yourself for me - take back your Cloak -”

“Be silent, fool,” hissed an angry voice. “When I decide to sacrifice you I will tell you so.”

She’s got a valid point,
said Slytherin.
You
shouldn’t
risk yourself for her, there’s no way her life is as valuable as yours.

For an instant Harry considered sacrificing Bellatrix to save himself -

And in that moment, some of the dim orange gas-light seemed to flee the corridor, a touch of cold crept over Harry’s fingertips. And he knew, then, that to think of leaving Bellatrix to the shadows of Death, would make him vulnerable once more. Even in the moment of making the decision, he might become unable to cast the Patronus Charm, for he would have given up the thought that had saved him before.

It occurred to Harry that he could still take the Cloak from Bellatrix afterward, even if he couldn’t cast the Patronus Charm; and then he had to wrench his thoughts away from that option, focus firmly on his decision
not
to do it, or he might have just fallen over where he stood. For the whirlpool of emptiness swirling around him was now deadly strong; there were screams coming from
above
, and the screams below had stopped.

This is ridiculous,
said his logical side.
Rational agents shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of censored reasoning process, all the theorems assume that how you think doesn’t affect reality apart from your actual actions, which is why you’re free to choose an optimal algorithm without worrying about how your thoughts interact with Dementors -

…

That is a really dumb idea,
said Gryffindor.
Even I think it’s a dumb idea and I’m your Gryffindor side. You’re not seriously going to just stand there and -

“We have a fix!” shouted Ora, holding up her magic mirror as though in triumph. “The Dementor outside the inner wall pointed to level seven, C spiral, that’s where they are!”

Her Aurors were looking at her expectantly.

“No,” Amelia said in a level voice. “That’s where
one
of them is. The Dementors still can’t find Bellatrix Black. We are not running down there and letting her through in the confusion, and we are not dividing our forces to be ambushed. So long as we move with caution, we can’t lose. Tell Scrimgeour and Shacklebolt to keep going down level by level, same as before -”

The old wizard was already striding forward. Amelia didn’t even bother cursing him, this time, as once again their carefully constructed shields parted like water and rippled gently in his wake.

Harry waited at the beginning of the corridor, just next to the stairs leading upward. Bellatrix and the snake were behind him, concealed by the Deathly Hallow that Harry had mastered; he knew, though he could not see, that the emaciated sorceress was sitting upon the stairs, slumped back, since Harry had withdrawn his Hover Charm to free up his mind and magic.

Harry’s eyes were fixed on the far end of the corridor, next to the stairs that led downward. Not in his mind now, but in true reality, the light in the corridor had dimmed, the temperature had fallen. The fear thundered over him and around him like a sea whipped by hurricane winds, and the sucking emptiness had become a howling draw toward some approaching black hole.

Up the stairs at the far end, floating smoothly through the dying air, came the voids, the absences, the wounds in the world.

And Harry expected them to stop.

With all the will and focus he could muster, Harry
expected them to stop.

Anticipated their stopping.

Believed they would stop.

…that was the idea, anyway…

Harry shut down the dangerous stray thought, and
expected the Dementors to halt.
They had no intelligence of their own, they were just wounds in the world, their form and structure was borrowed from others’ expectations. People had been able to negotiate with them, offer them victims in exchange for cooperation, only because they
believed Dementors would bargain.
So if Harry believed hard enough that the voids would turn and go, they would turn and go.

But the wounds in the world kept coming, the swirling fear seemed like a solid thing now, the emptiness tearing at matter as well as mind, substance as well as spirit, you could see the metal beginning to tarnish as the holes in the world passed.

A small sound came from behind him, from Bellatrix, but she said no word, for she had been instructed to remain silent.

Don’t think of them as creatures, think of them as psychosensitive objects, they can be controlled if I can control myself -

The problem was that he
couldn’t
control himself so easily, couldn’t make himself believe blue was green by an act of will. Couldn’t suppress all those thoughts about how irrational it was to
make
yourself believe something. How
impossible
it was to trick yourself into believing something if you
knew
that was what you were doing. All the training Harry had given himself against self-deception was refusing to switch off
no matter how harmful it was in this unique special case -

The shadows of Death crossed the halfway point of the corridor, and Harry held up his hand, fingers spread, and said in a voice of firm and confident command, “Stop.”

The shadows of Death stopped.

Behind Harry, Bellatrix gave a strangled gasp, like it was being torn out of her.

Harry gestured to her, the signal he had set up in advance which meant,
repeat what you heard the Dementors say.

“They say,” Bellatrix said, her voice was shaking, “they said, ‘Bellatrix Black was promised us. Tell us where she hides, and you will be spared.’”

“Bellatrix?” Harry said, making his voice sound amused. “She escaped a while ago.”

A moment later, Harry realized that he should have said that Bellatrix was among the Aurors in the top level, that would have caused more confusion -

No, it was wrong to think of the Dementors as trickable, they were merely
things,
they were controlled only by
expectations -

“They say,” Bellatrix said in a cracked voice, “they say they know you’re lying.”

The voids began to move forward again.

Her anticipations are more solidly believed than mine; she is controlling them, unwittingly -

“Don’t resist,” Harry said, pointing his wand behind him.

“I, I love you, farewell, my Lord -”

“
Somnium.
”

It had helped, strangely enough, hearing those particular awful words, understanding Bellatrix’s mistake; it reminded Harry why he was fighting.

“Stop,” Harry said again. Bellatrix was asleep; now only his own will, his own expectations rather, should control those spheres of annihilation -

But they kept on gliding forward, and Harry couldn’t stop himself from worrying that the previous experience had damaged his confidence, which meant that he
wouldn’t
be able to stop them, and as he noticed himself thinking that, he doubted even more - he needed more time to prepare, really ought to practice controlling just one Dementor in a cage first -

There was only a quarter of corridor now between Harry and the shadows of death, the empty winds were so strong that Harry could feel the erosion beginning in the cracks of himself.

And the thought came to Harry that maybe he was wrong, maybe Dementors
did
have their own desires and planning capability. Or maybe they were controlled by how
everyone
thought they worked, not just whoever was closest to them. And in either case -

Harry drew up his wand into the starting position for the Patronus Charm, and spoke.

“One of your number went to Hogwarts and did not return. It no longer exists; that Death is dead.”

The Dementors halted, a dozen wounds in the world stood motionless, while the emptiness screamed around them like a deadly wind to nowhere.

“Turn and go and do not speak of this to anyone, little shadows, or I will destroy you as well.”

Harry’s fingers slid into the starting position for the Patronus Charm, and readied himself to cast it; in his mind, the Earth shone among the stars, the day side bright and blue with reflected sunlight, the night side glimmering with the light of human cities. Harry wasn’t bluffing, wasn’t trying to do anything tricky with his thoughts. The shadows of Death would move forward and be annihilated, or they would depart, he was equally ready for either…

And the voids retreated back as smoothly as they came, the winds of nothingness lessening with each meter they traversed, as they slid back down the stairs, and departed.

Whether they truly had their own pseudo-intelligence, or whether Harry had finally succeeded in
expecting
them to go… that, Harry didn’t know.

But they were gone.

Harry took a moment to sit down beside the unconscious Bellatrix on the stairs, and slumped down as she was slumped, closing his eyes for a moment, only a moment, he sure as hell wasn’t planning to sleep in Azkaban, but he needed to take that moment. The Aurors would still be going down the stairs slowly, Harry hoped, so it wouldn’t hurt to take just five minutes to rest. Harry was careful to keep his thoughts positive, cheerful,
my, I’ll just have some nice regenerative rest here, and then I’ll feel better,
rather than, say,
my, I’ll just collapse in emotional and physical exhaustion,
because the Dementors hadn’t yet retreated very far.

And by the way,
Harry said to his brain,
you’re fired.

“I found him!” cried the old wizard’s voice.

Who?
thought Amelia, as she turned to see Dumbledore’s return, carrying in his arms -

- the one sight, the one person, she would never have expected to behold -

- a man in torn red robes, looking scorched like he’d fought a small war, blood dried on many cuts. His eyes were open, and he was chewing on a bar of chocolate, held in his one living hand.

Bahry One-Hand was
alive.

A glad cry went up, her Aurors lowering their wands, some of them already starting to rush forward.

“
Stay on guard!
” bellowed Amelia. “Check them both for Polyjuice - scan Bahry for small Animagi or traps -”

“
Innervate. Wingardium Leviosa.
”

There was a pause. Harry sensed, though he could not quite see, that the invisible woman was pushing herself to her feet, and turning her head to look around. “I’m… alive…?”

Harry was sorely tempted to say no, just to see what she made of that. Instead he hissed, “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“What happened?” whispered Bellatrix.

And the Dark Lord gave a wild, high-pitched laugh, and said, “I scared the Dementors away, my dear Bella.”

There was a pause. Harry wished he could see Bellatrix’s face; had he said the wrong thing?

After a time, in a quavering voice, “Could it be, my Lord, that in your new form, you have begun to care for me -”

“No,” Harry said coldly, and turned from her (though he kept his wand on her), and began walking. “And take care that you do not offend me again, or I will abandon you here, use or no use. Now follow, or be left behind; I have work to do.”