Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

That might have been a mistake. There was a lot of air underneath her, nothing but air, they were on the edge of a rooftop that had jutted out from the main stone wall of Hogwarts.

"He's going to come help me," whispered the girl, "but first he's going to Luminos both of us, there's no way he wouldn't. You have to let me go."

It should have been the easiest thing in the world.

She was just a mudblood, just a mudblood, just a mudblood!

She wouldn't even be hurt!

...Draco's brain wasn't listening to anything Draco was telling it right now.

"Do it," Hermione Granger whispered, her eyes blazing without a single trace of fear, "do it, Draco, do it, you can beat him yourself we have to win Draco! "

There was a sound of someone running and it was coming closer.

Oh, be rational...

The voice in Draco's head sounded an awful lot like Harry Potter teaching lessons.

... are you going to let your brain run your life?

Aftermath, 1:

It was taking a bit of an effort for Daphne Greengrass to keep herself quiet, as Millicent Bulstrode retold the story in the Slytherin girls' common room (a cozy cool place in the dungeons running beneath the Hogwarts Lake, with fish swimming past every window, and couches you could lie down in if you wanted). Mostly because, in Daphne's opinion, it was a perfectly good story already without all of Millicent's improvements .

"And then what?" gasped Flora and Hestia Carrow.

"General Granger looked up at him," Millicent said dramatically, "and she said, 'Draco! You've got to let go of me! Don't worry about me, Draco, I promise I'll be all right! And what do you suppose Malfoy did then?"

"He said 'Never!'," shouted Charlotte Wiland, "and held on even tighter!"

All the listening girls except Pansy Parkinson nodded.

"Nope!" said Millicent. "He dropped her. And then he jumped up and shot General Potter. The end."

There was a stunned pause.

"You can't do that!" said Charlotte.

"She's a mudblood, " said Pansy, sounding confused. "Of course he let go!"

"Well, Malfoy shouldn't have grabbed her in the first place, then!" said Charlotte. "But once he grabbed her, he had to hang on! Especially in the face of approaching certain doom!" Tracey Davis, sitting next to Daphne, was nodding along in firm agreement.

"I don't see why," said Pansy.

"That's because you don't have the tiniest smidgin of romance in you," said Tracey. "Besides, you can't just go dropping girls. A boy who'd drop a girl like that... he'd drop anyone. He'd drop you, Pansy."

"What d'you mean, drop me? " Pansy said.

Daphne couldn't resist any more. "You know," Daphne said darkly, "you're eating breakfast one day at our table, and the next thing you know, Malfoy lets go of you, and you're falling off the top of Hogwarts! That's what!"

"Yeah!" said Charlotte. "He's a witch dropper!"

"You know why Atlantis fell?" said Tracey. "'Cause someone like Malfoy dropped it, that's why!"

Daphne lowered her voice. "In fact... what if Malfoy's the one who made Hermione, I mean General Granger, slip in the first place? What if he's out to make all the Muggleborns trip and fall?"

"You mean - ?" gasped Tracey.

"That's right!" Daphne said dramatically. "What if Malfoy is - the heir of Slipperin? "

"The next Drop Lord!" said Tracey.

Which was far too good a line for anyone to keep to themselves, so by nightfall it was all over Hogwarts, and the next morning it was the Quibbler's headline.

Aftermath, 2:

Hermione made sure she got to their usual classroom nice and early that evening, just so that she would be by herself, in a chair, peacefully reading a book, when Harry got there.

If there was any way for a door to creak open apologetically, that was how the door was creaking open.

"Um," said Harry Potter's voice.

Hermione kept reading.

"I'm, um, kinda sorry, I didn't mean for you to actually fall off the roof or anything..."

It had been quite an entertaining experience, in fact.

"I, ah... I don't have much experience apologizing, I'll fall to my knees if you want, or buy you something expensive, Hermione I don't know how to apologize to you for this what can I do just tell me? "

She kept reading the book in silence.

It wasn't as if she had any idea how Harry could apologize, either.

Right now she was just feeling a sort of odd curiosity as to what would happen if she kept reading her book for a while.

" Romantic? " Hermione said. "They're both boys! "

"Wow," Daphne said, sounding a little shocked. "You mean Muggles really do hate that? I thought that was just something the Death Eaters made up."

"No," said an older Slytherin girl Hermione didn't recognize, "it's true, they have to get married in secret, and if they're ever discovered, they get burned at the stake together. And if you're a girl who thinks it's romantic, they burn you too."

"That can't be right!" objected a Gryffindor girl, while Hermione was still trying to sort out what to say to that. "There wouldn't be any Muggle girls left! "

She'd kept on reading quietly, and Harry Potter had kept on trying to apologize, and it had soon dawned on Hermione that Harry had realized, possibly for the first time in his life, that he'd done something annoying; and that Harry, definitely for the first time in his life, was terrified that he'd lost her as a friend; and she'd started to feel (a) guilty and (b) worried about the direction Harry's increasingly desperate offers were going. But she still had no idea what sort of apology was appropriate, so she'd said that the Ravenclaw girls should vote on it - and this time she wouldn't fix the outcome, though she hadn't mentioned that part - to which Harry had instantly agreed.

The next day, practically every Ravenclaw girl over the age of thirteen had voted to have Draco drop Harry.

Hermione had felt mildly disappointed it was that simple, though it was obviously fair.

Right now, however, standing just outside the great doors of the castle amid half the female population of Hogwarts, Hermione was beginning to suspect that there were things going on here that she did not understand and that she desperately hoped neither of her fellow generals ever heard about.

You couldn't really see the details from up there, just the general fact of a sea of expectant female faces.

"You've got no idea what this is about, do you?" said Draco, sounding amused.

Harry had read a fair number of books he wasn't supposed to read, not to mention a few Quibbler headlines.

"Boy-Who-Lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant?" said Harry.

"Okay, you do know what this is about," said Draco. "I thought Muggles hated that?"

"Only the dumb ones," said Harry. "But, um, aren't we, uh, a little young? "

"Not too young for them, " said Draco. He snorted. " Girls! "

They silently walked toward the edge of the roof.

"So I'm doing this for revenge on you," said Draco, "but why are you doing this?"

Harry's mind made a lightning calculation, weighing the factors, whether it was too soon...

"Honestly?" said Harry. "Because I meant to have her climb up the icy walls, but I didn't mean to have her fall off the roof. And, um, I kinda did feel really awful about that. I mean, I guess I actually did start seeing her as my friendly rival after a while. So this is a real apology to her, not a plot or anything."