Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"You don't mean," Harry said, "that he was mistaken about what it did, that he somehow read the wrong spell description -"

"All he knew was that it was meant to be directed at an enemy. He knew that was all he knew."

And that had been enough to cast the spell. "I do not understand how anything with that small a brain could walk upright."

"Indeed, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell.

There was a pause. Professor Quirrell leaned forward and picked up the silver inkwell from his desk, turning it around in his hands, staring at it as though wondering how he could go about torturing an inkwell to death.

"Was the sixth-year Slytherin seriously hurt?" said Harry.

"Yes."

"Was the sixth-year Gryffindor raised by Muggles?"

" Yes. "

"Is Dumbledore refusing to expel him because the poor boy didn't know?"

Professor Quirrell's hands whitened on the inkwell. " Do you have a point, Mr. Potter, or are you just stating the obvious? "

"Professor Quirrell," said Harry gravely, "all the Muggle-raised students in Hogwarts need a safety lecture in which they are told the things so ridiculously obvious that no wizardborn would ever think to mention them. Don't cast curses if you don't know what they do, if you discover something dangerous don't tell the world about it, don't brew high-level potions without supervision in a bathroom, the reason why there are underage magic laws, all the basics."

"Why?" said Professor Quirrell. "Let the stupid ones die before they breed."

"If you don't mind losing a few sixth-year Slytherins along with them."

The inkwell caught fire in Professor Quirrell's hands and burned with a terrible slowness, hideous black-orange flames tearing at the metal and seeming to take tiny bites from it, the silver twisting as it melted, as though it were trying and failing to escape. There was a tinny shrieking sound, as though the metal were screaming.

"I suppose you are right," Professor Quirrell said with a resigned smile. "I shall design a lecture to ensure that Muggleborns who are too stupid to live do not take anyone valuable with them as they depart."

The inkwell went on screaming and burning in Professor Quirrell's hands, tiny droplets of metal, still on fire, now dripping to the desk, as though the inkwell were crying.

"You're not running away," observed Professor Quirrell.

Harry opened his mouth -

"If you're about to say you're not scared of me," said Professor Quirrell, " don't. "

"You are the scariest person I know," Harry said, "and one of the top reasons for that is your control. I simply can't imagine hearing that you'd hurt someone you had not made a deliberate decision to hurt."

The fire in Professor Quirrell's hands winked out, and he carefully placed the ruined inkwell on his desk. "You say the nicest things, Mr. Potter. Have you been taking lessons in flattery? From, perhaps, Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry kept his expression blank, and realized one second too late that it might as well have been a signed confession. Professor Quirrell didn't care what your expression looked like, he cared which states of mind made it likely.

"I see," said Professor Quirrell. "Mr. Malfoy is a useful friend to have, Mr. Potter, and there is much he can teach you, but I hope you have not made the mistake of trusting him with too many confidences."

"He knows nothing which I fear becoming known," said Harry.

"Well done," said Professor Quirrell, smiling slightly. "So what was your original business here?"

"I think I'm done with the preliminary exercises in Occlumency and ready for the tutor."

Professor Quirrell nodded. "I shall conduct you to Gringotts this Sunday." He paused, looking at Harry, and smiled. "And we might even make it a little outing, if you like. I've just had a pleasant thought."

Harry nodded, smiling back.

As Harry left the office, he heard Professor Quirrell humming a small tune.

Harry was glad he'd been able to cheer him up.

That Sunday there seemed to be a rather large number of people whispering in the hallways, at least when Harry Potter walked past them.

And a lot of pointed fingers.

And a great deal of female giggling.

It had started at breakfast, when someone had asked Harry if he'd heard the news, and Harry had quickly interrupted and said that if the news was written by Rita Skeeter then he didn't want to hear about it, he wanted to read it in the paper himself.

It had then developed that not many students at Hogwarts got copies of the Daily Prophet, and that the copies which had not already been bought up from their owners were being passed around in some sort of complicated order and nobody really knew who had one at the moment...

So Harry had used a Quieting Charm and gone on to eat his breakfast, trusting to his seat-mates to wave off the many, many questioners, and doing his best to ignore the incredulity, the laughter, the congratulatory smiles, the pitying looks, the fearful glances, and the dropped plates as new people came down for breakfast and heard.

Harry was feeling rather curious, but it really wouldn't have done to spoil the artistry by hearing it secondhand.

He'd done homework in the safety of his trunk for the next couple of hours, after telling his dormmates to come get him if anyone found him an original newspaper.

Harry was still ignorant at 10AM, when he'd left Hogwarts in a carriage with Professor Quirrell, who was in the front right, and currently slumped over in zombie-mode. Harry was sitting diagonally across, as far away as the carriage allowed, in the back left. Even so, Harry had a constant feeling of doom as the carriage rattled over a small path through a section of non-forbidden forest. It made it a bit hard to read, especially since the material was difficult, and Harry suddenly wished he was reading one of his childhood science fiction books instead -

"We're outside the wards, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell's voice from the front. "Time to go."

Professor Quirrell carefully disembarked from the carriage, bracing himself as he stepped down. Harry, on his own side, jumped off.

Harry was wondering exactly how they'd get there when Professor Quirrell said "Catch!" and threw a bronze Knut at him, and Harry caught it without thinking.

A giant intangible hook caught at Harry's abdomen and yanked him back, hard, only without any sense of acceleration, and an instant later Harry was standing in the middle of Diagon Alley.

( Excuse me, what? said his brain.)

( We just teleported, explained Harry.)

( That didn't used to happen in the ancestral environment, Harry's brain complained, and disoriented him.)

Harry staggered as his feet adjusted to the brick of the street instead of the dirt of the forest corridor they had been traversing. He straightened, still dizzy, with the bustling witches and wizards seeming to sway slightly, and the cries of the shopkeepers seeming to move around in his hearing, as his brain tried to place a world to be located in.

Moments later, there was a sort of sucking-popping sound from a few paces behind Harry, and when Harry turned to look Professor Quirrell was there.

"Do you mind -" said Harry, at the same time as Professor Quirrell said, "I'm afraid I -"

Harry stopped, Professor Quirrell didn't.

"- need to go off and set something in motion, Mr. Potter. As it has been thoroughly explained to me that I am responsible for anything whatsoever that happens to you, I'll be leaving you with -"

"Newsstand," Harry said.

"Pardon?"

"Or anywhere I can buy a copy of the Daily Prophet. Put me there and I'll be happy."

Shortly after, Harry had been delivered into a bookstore, accompanied by several quietly spoken, ambiguous threats. And the shopkeeper had gotten less ambiguous threats, judging by the way he had cringed, and how his eyes now kept darting between Harry and the entrance.