Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"It was a clever enough slander of my abilities," Lucius said coldly, "though only effective upon the fools who believe that I was truly a Death Eater."

" What? " blurted Neville.

"I was under the Imperius, young man," said Lucius, now sounding tired. "The Dark Lord could hardly have begun recruiting among pureblood families without the support of House Malfoy. I demurred, and he simply made sure of me. His own Death Eaters did not know it until afterward, hence the false Mark I bear; though since I did not truly consent, it does not bind me. Some of the Death Eaters still believe I was foremost among their number, and for the peace of this nation I let them believe it, to keep them controlled. But I was not such a fool as to support that ill-fated adventurer of my own choice -"

"Ignore him," Madam Longbottom said, the instruction addressed to Harry as well as Neville. "He must spend the rest of his life pretending, for fear of your testimony under Veritaserum." Said with malicious satisfaction.

Lucius turned his back on her dismissively, and faced Harry again. "Will you request this harridan to depart, Mr. Potter? "

"I think not," said Harry in a dry voice. "I prefer to deal with the part of House Malfoy that's my own age."

There was a long pause, then. The grey eyes searched him.

"Of course..." said Lucius slowly. "I do feel the fool now. This whole time you were just pretending to have no idea what we were talking about."

Harry met the gaze, and said nothing.

Lucius raised his cane a few centimeters and struck it hard on the ground.

The world vanished in a pale haze, all sounds went quiet, there was nothing in the universe but Harry and Lucius Malfoy and the snake-headed cane.

"My son is my heart," said the senior Malfoy, "the last worthwhile thing I have left in this world, and this I say to you in a spirit of friendship: if he were to come to harm, I would give my life over to vengeance. But so long as my son does not come to harm, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. And as you have asked nothing more of me, I will ask nothing more of you."

Then the pale haze vanished, showing an outraged Madam Longbottom being blocked from moving forward by the senior Crabbe; her wand was in her hand, now.

"How dare you!" she hissed.

Lucius's dark robes swirled around him, and his white hair, as he turned to the senior Goyle. "We return to Malfoy Manor."

There were three pops of Apparition, and they were gone.

A silence followed.

"Dear heavens ," said Madam Longbottom. "What was that about?"

Harry shrugged helplessly. Then he looked at Neville.

There was sweat on Neville's forehead.

"Thank you very much, Neville," said Harry. "Your help was greatly appreciated, Neville. And now, Neville, I think you should sit down."

"Yes, General," said Neville, and instead of coming over to one of the other chairs near Harry, he semi-collapsed into a sitting position on the pavement.

"You have wrought many changes in my grandson," said Madam Longbottom. "I approve of some, but not others."

"Send me the list of which is which," said Harry. "I'll see what I can do."

Neville groaned, but said nothing.

Madam Longbottom gave a chuckle. "I shall, young man, thank you." Her voice lowered. "Mr. Potter... the speech given by Professor Quirrell is something our nation has long needed to hear. I cannot say as much of your comment on it."

"I will take your opinion under advisement," Harry said mildly.

"I dearly hope that you do," said Madam Longbottom, and turned back to her grandson. "Do I still need to -"

"It's okay for you to go, Granma," said Neville. "I'll be fine on my own, this time."

"Now that I approve of," she said, and popped and vanished like a soap bubble.

The two boys sat quietly for a moment.

Neville spoke first, his voice weary. "You're going to try to fix all the changes she approves of, right?"

"Not all of them," Harry said innocently. "I just want to make sure I'm not corrupting you."

Draco looked very worried. His head kept darting around, despite the fact that Draco had insisted on them going down into Harry's trunk, and using a true Quieting Charm and not just the sound-blurring barrier.

" What did you say to Father?" blurted Draco, the moment the Quieting Charm went up and the sounds of Platform 9 3/4 vanished.

"I... look, can you tell me what he said to you, before he dropped you off?" said Harry.

"That I should tell him right away if you seemed to be threatening me," said Draco. "That I should tell him right away if there was anything I was doing that could pose a threat to you! Father thinks you're dangerous, Harry, whatever you said to him today it scared him! It's not a good idea to scare Father! "

Oh, hell...

" What did you talk about?" demanded Draco.

Harry leaned back wearily in the small folding chair that sat at the bottom of his trunk's cavern. "You know, Draco, just as the fundamental question of rationality is 'What do I think I know and how do I think I know it?', there's also a cardinal sin, a way of thinking that's the opposite of that. Like the ancient Greek philosophers. They had no clue what was going on, so they'd go around saying things like 'All is water' or 'All is fire', and they never asked themselves, 'Wait a minute, even if everything is water, how could I possibly know that?' They didn't ask themselves if they had evidence which discriminated that possibility from all the other possibilities you could imagine, evidence they'd be very unlikely to encounter if the theory wasn't true -"

" Harry ," Draco said, his voice strained, " What did you talk about with Father? "

"I don't know, actually," said Harry, "so it's very important that I not just make stuff up -"

Harry had never heard Draco shriek in horror in quite that high a pitch before.

Whistle. Tick. Bzzzt. Ding. Glorp. Pop. Splat. Chime. Toot. Puff. Tinkle. Bubble. Beep. Thud. Crackle. Whoosh. Hiss. Pffft. Whirr.

Professor Flitwick had silently passed Harry a folded parchment during Charms class that Monday, and the note had said that Harry was to visit the Headmaster at his convenience and in such fashion that no one else would notice, especially not Draco Malfoy or Professor Quirrell. His one-time password for the gargoyle would be "squeamish ossifrage". This had been accompanied by a remarkably artistic ink drawing of Professor Flitwick staring at him sternly, the eyes of which occasionally blinked; and at the bottom of the note, underlined three times, was the phrase DON'T GET INTO TROUBLE.

And so Harry had finished up Transfiguration class, and studied with Hermione, and eaten dinner, and spoken with his lieutenants, and finally, when the clock struck nine, turned himself invisible and dropped back to 6PM and wearily trudged off toward the gargoyle, the turning spiral stairs, the wooden door, the room full of little fiddly things, and the silver-bearded figure of the Headmaster.

This time, Dumbledore looked quite serious, the customary smile absent; and he was dressed in pajamas of a darker and more sober purple than usual.

"Thank you for coming, Harry," said the Headmaster. The old wizard rose from his throne, began to slowly pace through the room and the strange devices. "First, do you have with you the notes of yesterday's encounter with Lucius Malfoy?"

"Notes?" blurted Harry.

" Surely you wrote it down..." said the old wizard, and his voice trailed off.