Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

" Mr. Potter! "

Harry's eyes gazed directly into her own. "Yes, Minerva? I know it wasn't your idea, but I'd like to survive the use the Headmaster's making of me. Please don't be an obstacle to that."

It almost broke her. "Harry," she whispered in a bare voice, "children shouldn't have to think like that!"

"You're right, they shouldn't," Harry said. "A lot of children have to grow up too early, though, not just me; and most children like that would probably trade places with me in five seconds. I'm not going to pity myself, Professor McGonagall, not when there are people out there in real trouble and I'm not one of them."

She swallowed, hard, and said, "Mr. Potter, at thirty hours per day, you'll - get older, you'll age faster -" Like Albus.

"And in my fifth year I'll be around the same physiological age as Hermione," said Harry. "Doesn't seem that terrible." There was a wry smile now on Harry's face. "Honestly, I'd probably want this even if there weren't a Dark Lord. Wizards live for a while, and either wizards or Muggles will probably push that out even further over the next century. There's no reason not to pack as many hours into a day as I can. I've got things I plan to do, and 'twere well they were done quickly."

There was a long pause.

"All right," Minerva said. It came out as almost a whisper. She raised her voice. "All right, Mr. Potter, I shall ask the Headmaster, and if he agrees, it shall be done."

Harry's eyes narrowed for a moment. "I see. Then please remind the Headmaster that Godric Gryffindor, in his last words, said that if it had been the right thing for him to do, then he wouldn't tell anyone else to choose wrongly, not even the youngest student in Hogwarts."

And she knew with a hollow feeling that any chance of Albus stopping this, stopping any of this, had just Vanished into nothingness. That was what Albus had told her when she'd objected that Cameron Edward was too young, and then when she'd objected that Peter Pevensie was too young, and finally she'd given up objecting. "Who told you that, Mr. Potter?" Not Albus - surely Albus would never say that to any student -

"I've been doing a lot of reading lately," Harry said. His body started to rise from the enveloping chair, then halted. "Dare I ask about the second piece of good news?"

"Oh," she said. "Ah - Professor Quirrell has woken up and says that you may -"

The Hogwarts infirmary was a brilliantly open space, skylit on all four sides despite seeming to be located squarely in the middle of the castle. White beds in long rows stretched out, only three of them occupied at the moment. One older boy and one older girl on opposite sides, both lying motionless with their eyes closed, probably unconscious and spell-bound while some healing Charm or Potion reconfigured their bodies in uncomfortable ways; and the third occupant had the curtain drawn around their bed, which was presumably a good thing. Madam Pomfrey had pushed him along with a hard shove and told him not to gawk, and Harry had needed to remind himself sharply that some people still didn't know who the Boy-Who-Lived was - either that, or Madam Pomfrey's identity was bound up with her absolute dominance of her own hospital, etcetera, whatever.

Behind the rows of beds were five doors, leading into the private rooms where they stored the patients who would be staying for days instead of hours, but whose condition didn't warrant a transfer to St. Mungos.

Windowless, skyless, unlit but for a single smokeless torch on one of the solid stone walls; that was the room behind the middle door. Harry had wondered whether professors could ask Hogwarts to change itself; or if the infirmary always had a room like that available, for people who didn't enjoy the light.

In the center of the room, between two equal bedstands that looked to have been carved from the same grey marble as the walls, rested a white hospital bed, looking vaguely orangish in the unsmoking torchlight; and within that bed, a white sheet pulled up about his thighs and wearing a hospital gown, sat Professor Quirrell with his back slightly propped up against the headboard of the bed.

There was something frightening about seeing Professor Quirrell in one of Madam Pomfrey's beds, even if the Defense Professor appeared uninjured. Even knowing that Professor Quirrell had deliberately arranged his own apparent defeat at Severus's hands, to give himself an excuse to recover his strength from Azkaban. Harry had never actually watched anyone dying in a hospital bed, but he'd seen too many movies. It was an intimation of mortality, and the Defense Professor was not supposed to be mortal.

Madam Pomfrey had told Harry that he was absolutely forbidden to pester her patient.

Harry had said, "I understand", which technically did not say anything about obedience.

The stern old healer had then turned, and started to say to Professor Quirrell that he was absolutely not to overexert himself or... upset himself...

Madam Pomfrey had trailed off, hurriedly turned around, and fled the room.

"Not bad," Harry observed, after the door had shut behind the escaping medical matron. "I've got to learn how to do that, sometime."

Professor Quirrell smiled a smile with absolutely no humor content, and said, his voice sounding a good deal dryer than its usual dryness, "Thank you for your artistic critique, Mr. Potter."

Harry stared into the pale blue eyes, and thought that Professor Quirrell looked...

...older.

It was subtle, it might have just been Harry's imagination, it might have been the poor lighting. But the hair above Quirinus Quirrell's forehead might have receded a bit, what remained might have thinned and greyed, an advancing of the baldness that had already been visible on the back of his head. The face might have grown a little sunken.

The pale blue eyes had stayed sharp and intense.

"I am glad," Harry said quietly, "to see you in what appears to be good health."

"Appearances can be deceiving, of course," said Professor Quirrell. He gave a flick of his fingers, and when his hand finished the gesture he was holding his wand. "Would you believe that woman thinks she has confiscated this from me?"

Six incantations the Defense Professor spoke then; six of the thirty that he had used to safeguard their important conversations in Mary's Room.

Harry raised his eyebrows, silently quizzical.

"That is all I can manage for now," said the Defense Professor. "I expect it shall prove sufficient. Still, there is a proverb: If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it. Consider it to apply in full measure. I am told that you were trying to see me?"

"Yes," Harry said. He paused, gathered his thoughts. "Did the Headmaster, or anyone, tell you that we can't go to lunch any more?"

"Something along those lines," said the Defense Professor. And without changing expression, "Of course I was terribly sorry to hear it."

"It's more extreme than that, actually," said Harry. "I'm confined to Hogwarts and its grounds indefinitely. I can't leave without a guard and a good reason. I'm not going home for summer, and maybe not ever again. I was hoping... to speak with you, about that."

There was a pause.

The Defense Professor exhaled a breath like a brief sigh, and said, "We shall just have to rely on the known fact that the Deputy Headmistress will personally murder anyone who tries to report me. Mr. Potter, I intend to keep this conversation on track so that we may conclude it quickly, is that understood?"

Harry nodded, and -

In the light of the single torch, shaded toward the reddish end of the optical spectrum, the snake's green scales were not very reflective, and the blue-and-white banding hardly more so. Dark seemed the snake, in that light. The eyes, which had seemed like gray pits before, now reflected the torchlight, and seemed brighter than the rest of the snake.