Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry looked up from Vegetable Cunning again, he wasn't getting any reading done at this rate; and he saw that Hermione was still reading whatever book she had, not looking up at him. Her hands turned another page even as he watched.

"I think you're taking the wrong approach by trying to defend yourself at all," Harry said. "I really do think that. You are who you are. You're friends with whoever you choose. Tell anyone who questions you to shove it."

Hermione just shook her head, and turned another page.

"Option two," Harry said. "Go to Fred and George and tell them to have a little talk with their wayward brother, those two are genuine good guys -"

"It's not just Ron," Hermione said in almost a whisper. "Lots of people are saying it, Harry. Even Mandy is giving me worried looks when she thinks I'm not looking. Isn't it funny? I keep worrying that Professor Quirrell is sucking you into the darkness, and now people are warning me just the same way I try to warn you."

"Well, yeah, " said Harry. "Doesn't that reassure you a bit about me and Professor Quirrell?"

"In a word," said Hermione, "no."

There was a silence that lasted long enough for Hermione to turn another page, and then her voice, in a real whisper this time, "And, and Padma is going around telling everyone that, that since I couldn't cast the P-Patronus Charm, I must only be p-pretending to be n-nice..."

"Padma didn't even try herself!" Harry said indignantly. "If you were a Dark Witch who was just pretending, you wouldn't have tried in front of everyone, do they think you're stupid? "

Hermione smiled a little, and blinked a few times.

"Hey, I have to worry about actually going evil. Here the worst case scenario is that people think you're more evil than you really are. Is that going to kill you? I mean, is it all that bad?"

The young girl nodded, her face screwed up tight.

"Look, Hermione... if you worry that much about what other people think, if you're unhappy whenever other people don't picture you exactly the same way you picture yourself, that's already dooming yourself to always be unhappy. No one ever thinks of us just the same way we think of ourselves."

"I don't know how to explain to you," Hermione said in a sad soft voice. "I'm not sure it's something you could ever understand, Harry. All I can think of to say is, how would you feel if I thought you were evil?"

"Um..." Harry visualized it. "Yeah, that would hurt. A lot. But you're a good person who thinks about that sort of thing intelligently, you've earned that power over me, it would mean something if you thought I'd gone wrong. I can't think of a single other student, besides you, whose opinion I'd care about the same way -"

"You can live like that," whispered Hermione Granger. "I can't."

The girl had gone through another three pages in silence, and Harry had returned his eyes to his own book and was trying to regain his focus, when Hermione finally said, in a small voice, "Are you really sure I mustn't know how to cast the Patronus Charm?"

"I..." Harry had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat. He suddenly saw himself not knowing why the Patronus Charm didn't work for him, not being able to show Draco, just being told that there was a reason, and nothing more. "Hermione, your Patronus would shine with the same light but it wouldn't be normal, it wouldn't look like people think Patronuses should look, anyone who saw it would know there was something strange going on. Even if I told you the secret you couldn't demonstrate to anyone, unless you made them face the other way so they could only see the light, and... and the most important part of any secret is the knowledge that a secret exists, you could only show one or two friends if you swore them to secrecy..." Harry's voice trailed off helplessly.

"I'll take it." Her voice was still small.

It was very hard not to just blurt out the secret, right there in the library.

"I, I shouldn't, I really shouldn't, it's dangerous, Hermione, it could do a lot of harm if that secret got out! Haven't you heard the saying, three can keep a secret if two are dead? That telling just your closest friends is the same as telling everyone, because you're not just trusting them, you're trusting everyone they trust? It's too important, too much of a risk, it's not the sort of decision that should be made for the sake of fixing someone's reputation at school!"

"Okay," Hermione said. She closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "I can't concentrate right now, Harry, I'm sorry."

"If there's anything else I can do -"

"Be nicer to everyone."

The girl didn't look back as she walked out of the stacks, which might have been a good thing, because the boy was frozen in place, unmoving.

After a while, the boy started turning pages again.

A boy waits at a small clearing at the edge of the non-forbidden forest, beside a dirt trail that runs back to the gates of Hogwarts in one direction, and off into the distance in another. There is a carriage nearby, and the boy is standing well away from it, looking at it, his eyes seldom wavering from its direction.

In the distance, a figure is approaching along the dirt path: A man wearing professorial robes, trudging slowly with his shoulders slumped low, his formal shoes kicking up small clouds of dust as he walks.

Half a minute later, the boy darts another quick glance before returning to his surveillance; and this glimpse shows that the man's shoulders have straightened, his face unslackened, and that his shoes are now walking lightly across the dirt, leaving not a trace of dust in the air behind.

"Hello, Professor Quirrell," Harry said without letting his eyes move again from the direction of their carriage.

"Salutations," said the calm voice of Professor Quirrell. "You seem to be keeping your distance, Mr. Potter. I don't suppose you see something odd about our conveyance?"

"Odd?" Harry echoed. "Why no, I can't say I see anything odd. There seem to be even numbers of everything. Four seats, four wheels, two huge skeletal winged horses..."

A skin-wrapped skull turned to look at him and flashed teeth, solid and white in that black cavernous mouth, as though to indicate that it was just about as fond of him as he was of it. The other black leathery horse-skeleton tossed its head like it was whickering, but there was no sound.

"They are Thestrals, and they have always drawn the carriage," Professor Quirrell said, sounding quite undisturbed as he climbed into the front bench of the carriage, sitting down as far to the right as possible. "They are visible only to those who have seen death and comprehended it, a useful defense against most animal predators. Hm. I suppose that the first time you went in front of the Dementor, your worst memory proved to be the night of your encounter with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"

Harry nodded grimly. It was the right guess, even if for the wrong reasons. Those who have seen Death...

"Did you recall anything of interest, thereby?"

"Yes," Harry said, "I did," only that and nothing more, for he was not ready as yet to make accusations.

The Defense Professor smiled one of his dry smiles, and beckoned with an impatient finger.

Harry closed the distance and climbed into the carriage, wincing. The sense of doom had grown significantly stronger after the day of the Dementor, even though it had been slowly weakening before then. The greatest distance that the carriage allowed him from Professor Quirrell no longer seemed like nearly far enough.