Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"A paradox if I retrieve him immediately after he arrives in Diagon Alley?" murmured the old wizard to himself. "Perhaps they did not set in motion their plan to rob Azkaban, until after they had confirmed his arrival here... or else... perhaps..."

Painted concrete, hard floor and distant ceilings, two figures facing off across from each other. One entity who wore the shape of a man in his late thirties and already balding, and another mind that wore the form of an eleven-year-old boy with a scar upon his forehead. Ice and shadow, pale blue light.

"I don't know," said the man.

The boy just looked at him. And then said, "Oh, really?"

"Truly," said the man. "I know nothing, and of my guesses I will not speak. Yet I will say this much -"

Through green flame they whirled, through the Floo network they spun, Minerva's heart racing with a pounding horror that she hadn't felt in ten years and three months, the corridors between space coughed and spit them out into the lobby of Gringotts (the safest Floo receiver in Diagon Alley, the connection most difficult to intercept, the fastest way out of Hogwarts without a phoenix). A goblin attendant turned toward them, his eyes widened, he began a slightly respectful bow -

Determination, Destination, Deliberation!

And the two of them were in the alley just in back of Mary's Place, wands already out and raised, spinning around back-to-back and the words of an Anti-Disillusionment Charm already rising to Severus's lips.

The alley was empty.

When she turned back to look at Severus, his wand was already cracking down on his own head with a sound like smashing an egg, as his lips chanted words of invisibility; he took on the colors of his surroundings, became a blur of his surroundings, the blur moved and matched what was behind him and then there was nothing there.

She lowered her wand and stepped forward to receive her own Disillusionment -

From behind her, the unmistakable sound of a burst of flame.

She spun and saw Albus there, his long wand already drawn and raised in his right hand. His eyes were grim beneath the half-circles of his glasses, and Fawkes upon his shoulder had spread his fire-colored wings in readiness for flight and fight.

"Albus!" she said. "I thought -" She'd just seen him depart for Azkaban, and she'd thought not even phoenixes could return from there so easily.

Then she realized.

"She escaped," said Albus. "Did your Patronus reach him?"

The pounding in her heart grew stronger, the horror in her veins solidified. "He said he was here, in the washroom -"

"Let us hope he spoke true," said Albus, the wand tapped her head with a sensation like water trickling over her, and a moment later the four of them (even Fawkes had been rendered invisible, though sometimes you saw a flicker of something like fire in his air) were racing to the front of the restaurant. They paused before the door while Albus whispered something, and a moment later one of the customers visible through the windows stood up with a vague look on his face and opened the door as though taking a quick look outside for some friend; and the three of them were through, racing past the unwitting customers (Severus was marking their faces, Minerva knew, and Albus would see any Disillusioned) toward the sign that pointed to the washroom -

An old wooden door marked with the sign of a toilet burst open with a slam, and four invisible rescuers stormed through it.

The small but clean wooden room was empty, fresh droplets of water showed in the sink but there was no sign of Harry, only a sheet of paper left on the closed lid of the toilet.

She couldn't breathe.

The sheet of paper rose up into the air as Albus took it, and a moment later was thrust in her own direction.

M: What did the hat tell me to tell you?

- H

"Ah," Minerva said aloud in surprise, her mind taking a moment to place the question, it wasn't the sort of thing you'd forget but she hadn't been thinking in that mode, really - "I'm an impudent youngster and I should get off its lawn."

" Eh? " said the air in Albus's voice, as if even he could be shocked.

And then Harry Potter's head appeared, suspended next to the air beside the toilet, his face was cold and alert, the too-adult Harry she'd seen sometimes, eyes darting back and forth and around.

"What's going on -" the boy began.

Albus, now visible once more along with her and Fawkes, was moving forward in an instant, his left hand reached forward and plucked a hair from Harry's head (producing a startled yelp from the boy), Minerva accepted the hair in her own hand, and a moment later Albus swept up the mostly-invisible boy in his arms and there was a flash of red-golden fire.

And Harry Potter was safe.

Minerva took a few steps forward, leaned against the wall where Albus and Harry had been, trying to recover her poise.

She'd... lost some habits, in the ten years since the Order of the Phoenix had disbanded.

Beside her, Severus shimmered into visibility. His right hand was already drawing forth the flask from his robes, his left hand already stretching forth in demand. She gave him Harry's hair, and a moment later, it dropped into the flask of unfinished Polyjuice, which at once began fizzing and bubbling as it settled into the potency that would enable Severus to act his part as bait.

"That was unexpected," the Potions Master said slowly. "Why did our Headmaster not retrieve Mr. Potter earlier , I wonder, if he was going so far as to twist Time? There should have been nothing preventing him from doing so... indeed, your Patronus should have found Mr. Potter already safe..."

She hadn't thought of that, a different realization having jumped to the forefront of her mind. It wasn't nearly as horrifying as Bellatrix Black having escaped from Azkaban, but still -

"Harry has an invisibility cloak? " she said.

The Potions Master did not answer; he was shrinking.

Tick-snick, drip-blip, ding-ring-ting-

It still annoyed her, though it faded past attention after a while; and when and if she became Headmistress, she intended to Silence the whole lot. Which Head of Hogwarts, she wondered, had first been so inconsiderate as to create a device that made noise , to pass on to their successors?

She was sitting in the Headmaster's office with a quickly Transfigured desk of her own, doing some of the hundred little pieces of necessary paperwork that kept Hogwarts from grinding to a halt; she could lose herself in it easily, and it prevented her from thinking about other things. Albus had once remarked, sounding rather wry, that Hogwarts seemed to run even more smoothly when there was an outside crisis for her to avoid thinking about...

...ten years ago, that was the last time Albus had said that.

There was the chime that indicated an approaching visitor.

Minerva kept reading her current parchment.

The door slammed open, revealing Severus Snape, who took three steps inward and demanded without the slightest pause, "Any word from Mad-Eye?"

Albus was already rising from his chair, even as she tucked away her parchments and dispelled the desk. "Moody's Patronus is reporting to the me in Azkaban," Albus said. "His Eye saw nothing; and if the Eye of Vance does not see a thing, then that thing does not exist. Yourself?"

"No one has tried to forcibly take my blood," Severus said. He gave a quick grimace of a smile. "Except the Defense Professor."

" What? " said Minerva.

"He saw me for an impostor before I could even open my lips, and quite reasonably attacked me on the spot, demanding to know the whereabouts of Mr. Potter." Another grimace of a smile. "Shouting that I was Severus Snape did not seem to reassure him, for some reason. I do believe that man would kill me for a Sickle and give back five Knuts change. I had to stun our good Professor Quirrell, which was not easy, and then he reacted poorly to the hex. 'Harry Potter', naturally alarmed, ran out and told the owner, and the Defense Professor was taken to St. Mungos -"