Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

There was silence for a moment, then, "Interesting."

The green spark lifted, and Harry inclined his broomstick slightly upward to follow, even as it steered them into a fogbank, a cloud hovering low on the waters.

Soon they were hovering above and slightly oblique of the huge three-sided metal building, as it loomed far below. The triangle of steel was hollow, not solid, it was a building of three thick solid walls and no center. The Aurors on guard roomed in the top level and southern side of the building, Professor Quirrell had said, protected by their Patronus Charms. The legal entrance into Azkaban was on the roof of the southwest corner of the building. Which the two of them wouldn't use, of course. Instead they would use a corridor that ran directly beneath the northern corner of the building. Professor Quirrell would go down first, and puncture a hole in the roof and its wards right at the northern tip, leaving behind an illusion to cover the gap.

The prisoners were kept in the side of the building, in levels corresponding to their crimes. And at the bottom, in the uttermost center and depth of Azkaban, lay a nest of more than a hundred Dementors. Loads of dirt were occasionally dropped in to keep up the level, as the matter directly exposed to the Dementors broke down into mud and nothingness...

"Wait one minute," said the rough voice, "follow me at speed, and pass through with care."

"Got it," Harry said lowly.

The spark winked out, and Harry began to count, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...

...sixty one thousand, and Harry dived, the wind shrieking around him as he dived, down toward the vast metal structure, down toward where he could feel the shadows of Death waiting for him, draining light and radiating emptiness, as the metal structure grew larger and larger. Plain and featureless loomed the vast grey shape, but for a single raised boxlike structure in the southwest corner. The north corner was simply blank, Professor Quirrell's hole undetectable.

Harry pulled up sharply as he approached the north corner, giving himself more safety margin than he would have bothered with in flying classes, but not too much. As soon as he'd come to a halt, he began to slowly lower his broomstick again, toward what looked like the solid roof of the tip of the north corner.

Descending through the illusory roof while invisible was a strange experience, and then Harry found himself in a metal corridor lighted with a dim orange light - which, Harry realized after a startled glance, was coming from an old-fashioned mantled gas lamp...

...for magic would fail, be drained away after a time, in the presence of Dementors.

Harry dismounted his broom.

The pull of the emptiness was stronger now, as it parted and flowed around Harry without touching him. They were distant but they were many, the wounds in the world; Harry could have pointed to them with his eyes closed.

" Casst your Patronuss, " hissed a snake from the floor, looking more discolored than green in the dim orange light.

The note of stress came through even in Parseltongue. Harry was surprised; Professor Quirrell had said that Animagi in their Animagus forms were much less vulnerable to Dementors. (For the same reason the Patronuses were animals, Harry assumed.) If Professor Quirrell was in this much trouble in his snake form, what had been happening to him while he was in the human form that let him use his magic...?

Harry's wand was already rising in his hand.

This would be the beginning.

Even if it was only one person, just one person that he could save from the darkness, even if he wasn't powerful enough yet to teleport all of Azkaban's prisoners to safety and burn the triangular hell down to bedrock...

Even so it was a start, it was a beginning, it was a down payment on everything that Harry meant to accomplish with his life. No more waiting, no more hoping, no more mere promising, it would all begin here. Here and now.

Harry's wand slashed down to point at where the Dementors waited far below.

" Expecto Patronum! "

The glowing humanoid figure blazed up into existence. It wasn't the sun-bright thing that it had been before... probably because Harry hadn't quite been able to stop himself from thinking about all the other prisoners in their cells, the ones that he wasn't here to save.

It might be for the best, though. Harry would need to keep this Patronus going for a while, and it might be better if it wasn't quite so bright.

The Patronus dimmed a little further, at that thought; and then further again, as Harry tried to put a little less of his strength into it, until finally the brilliant humanoid figure was glowing only slightly brighter than the brightest animal Patronus, and Harry felt that he could dim it no further without risking losing it entirely.

And then, " It iss sstable, " Harry hissed, and began feeding his broomstick into his pouch. His wand stayed in his hand, and a slight, sustainable flow from him replaced the slight losses from his Patronus.

The snake blurred into the form of a lanky, sallow man, holding Professor Quirrell's wand in one hand and a broomstick in the other. The lanky man staggered as he came back into existence, and went to lean against the wall for a moment.

"Well done, if perhaps a trifle slow," murmured the gravelly voice. Professor Quirrell's dryness was in it, even though it didn't fit the voice, nor did the grave look on the thickly bearded face. "I cannot feel them at all, now."

A moment later, the broomstick went into the man's robes and vanished. Then the man's wand rose and tapped on his head, and with a sound like a cracking eggshell he disappeared once more.

Within the air blossomed a faint green spark, and Harry, still enshrouded in the Cloak of Invisibility, followed after.

If you had been watching from outside, you would have seen nothing but a small green spark drifting through the air, and a brilliantly silver humanoid walking after it.

They went down, and down, and down, passing gas lamp after gas lamp, and the occasional huge metal door, descending into Azkaban within what seemed like utter silence. Professor Quirrell had set up some type of barrier by which he could hear what went on nearby, but no sounds could pass outward, and no sounds could reach Harry.

Harry hadn't quite been able to stop his mind from wondering why the silence, or stop his mind from giving the answer. The answer he'd already known on some wordless level of anticipation that had prompted him to futilely try not to think about it.

Somewhere behind those huge metal doors, people were screaming.

The silver humanoid figure wavered, brightening and dimming, every time Harry thought about it.

Harry had been told to cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself. To prevent himself from smelling anything.

All the enthusiasm and heroism had worn off already, as Harry had known it would, it hadn't taken long even by his standards, the process had completed itself the very first time they passed one of those metal doors. Every metal door was locked with a huge lock, a lock of simple unmagical metal that wouldn't have stopped a first-year Hogwarts student - if you still had a wand, if you still had your magic, which the prisoners didn't. Those metal doors were not the doors of individual cells, Professor Quirrell had said, each one opened into a corridor in which there would be a group of cells. Somehow that helped a little, not thinking that each door corresponded directly to a prisoner who was waiting right behind it. Instead there might be more than one prisoner, which diminished the emotional impact; just like the study showing that people contributed more when they were told that a given amount of money was required to save one child's life, than when told the same total amount was needed to save eight children...