Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

And the woman who was behind that door - wasn't there someone, somewhere, to whom she too was precious? Wasn't it only Harry's distance from her life that was preventing his brain from being driven to Azkaban to save her no matter what? What would it have taken to compel him? Would he have needed to know her face? Her name? Her favorite color? Would he have been driven to Azkaban to save Tracey Davis? Would he have been compelled there to save Professor McGonagall? Mum and Dad - there wasn't even any question. And that woman had said she was someone's mother. How many people had wished for the power to break Azkaban? How many prisoners of Azkaban dreamed nightly of such a miraculous rescue?

None. It's a happy thought.

Maybe he should harrow Azkaban. All he had to do was find Fawkes and tell him it was time. Visualize the center of the Dementor's pit as he'd seen it from the broomstick, and let the phoenix take him there. Cast the True Patronus Charm at point-blank range and to hell with what came after.

All he had to do was go find Fawkes.

It might be as simple as thinking of the flame, calling for the fire-bird in his heart -

A star flashed in the night.

By the time Harry's eyes had jumped with a reflex action trained on meteor showers, another part of him was surprised that the astronomical phenomenon was still there; a faint star whose brightness was slowly visibly waxing. There was a startled moment when Harry wondered whether he was seeing, not a meteor, but a nova or supernova - could you see them getting brighter like that? Was the first stage of a nova supposed to be that yellow-orange color?

Then the new star moved again, and seemed to grow as well as brightening. It looked closer suddenly, no longer so far away that distance became moot. Like what you thought was a star, turning out to be an airplane, a lighted form whose shape you could actually see...

...no, not a plane...

The realization seemed to spread out from Harry's chest in a wave of prickling, sweat preparing to break out.

...a bird.

A piercing cry split the night, echoing from the rooftops of Hogwarts.

The approaching creature trailed fire as it flew, shedding golden flames like sparks from its feathers as the mighty wings beat and beat again. Even as it swooped up in a great curve to hover a few paces away from Harry, even as the flames surrounding its passage diminished, the creature seemed no dimmer, no less bright; as though some unseen Sun shone upon it and illuminated it.

Great shining wings red like a sunset, and eyes like incandescent pearls, blazing with golden fire and determination.

The phoenix's beak opened, and let out a great caw that Harry understood as though it had been a spoken word:

COME!

Not even realizing, the boy stumbled back from the edge of the rooftop, eyes still locked on the phoenix, his whole body trembling and tensed, his fists clutching and releasing at his side; stepping back, stepping away.

The phoenix cawed again, a desperate, pleading, sound. It didn't come through in words, this time, but it came through in feelings, an echo of everything that Harry had ever felt about Azkaban and every temptation to action, to just do something about it, the desperate need to do something now and not delay any longer, all spoken in the cry of a bird.

Let's go. It's time. The voice that spoke came from inside Harry, not from the phoenix; from so deep inside it couldn't be given a separate name like 'Gryffindor'.

All he had to do was step forward and touch the phoenix's talons, and it would take him where he needed to be, where he kept thinking he ought to be, down into the central pit of Azkaban. Harry could see the image in his mind, shining with unbearably clarity, the image of himself suddenly smiling with joyous release as he threw all his fears away and chose -

"But I -" Harry whispered, not even aware of what he was saying. Harry lifted his shaking hands to wipe at his eyes from which tears had sprung, as the phoenix hovered before him with great wing-sweeps. "But I - there's other people I also have to save, other things I have to do -"

The fire-bird let out a piercing scream, and the boy flinched back as though from a blow. It wasn't a command, it wasn't an objection, it was the knowledge -

The corridors lit by dim orange light.

It felt like a tightening compulsion in Harry's chest, the desire to just do it and get it over with. He might die, but if he didn't die he could feel clean again. Have principles that were more than excuses for inaction. It was his life. His to spend, if he chose. He could do it any time he wanted...

...if he wasn't a good person.

The boy stood there on the rooftop, his own eyes locked with two points of fire. The stars might have had time to shift in their constellations while he stood there, agonizing over the decision...

...that wouldn't...

...change.

The boy's eyes flickered once to the stars above; and then he looked at the phoenix.

"Not yet," the boy said in a voice hardly audible. "Not yet. There's too much else I have to do. Please come back later, when I've found others who can cast the True Patronus - in six months, maybe -"

Without word, without sound, a sphere of fire surrounded the bird's form, crackling and blazing with white and crimson veins as though it meant to consume that which lay within; and when the fire dispersed into grey smoke, no phoenix remained.

There was silence on the top of the Ravenclaw tower. The boy gradually lowered his hands from his ears, pausing only to wipe at his wet cheeks.

Slowly, the boy turned -

Then cried out and leapt back and almost fell off the Ravenclaw tower; though the misstep would hardly have mattered, with that other wizard standing there.

"And so it was done," Albus Dumbledore said, almost in a whisper. "So it was done." Fawkes was on his shoulder, staring at where the other phoenix had been with an indecipherable avian gaze.

" What are you doing here? "

"Ah?" said the ancient man standing on the roof-platform's opposite corner. "I felt the presence of a creature Hogwarts did not know, and came to see, of course." Slowly the old wizard's shaking hand came up to remove the half-moon glasses, his other hand wiped at his eyes and forehead with his robe's sleeve. "I dared - I dared not speak - I knew, I knew this choice above all choices must be your own -"

A strange apprehension was beginning to fill Harry, welling up in him like a sick feeling in his stomach.

"That everything depended on this," Albus Dumbledore said, still in that almost-whisper, "that much I knew. But which choice led into darkness, that I could not guess. At least the choice was your own."

"I don't -" Harry said, and then his voice stopped.

A terrible hypothesis, rising in credibility...

"The phoenix comes," said the old wizard. "To those who would fight, to those would act even at cost of their lives, the phoenix comes. Phoenixes are not wise, Harry, they know no means to judge us, save witnessing the choice. I thought it was to my death I went, when the phoenix took me to fight Grindelwald. I did not know that Fawkes would sustain me, and heal me, and stay by my side -" The old wizard's voice quavered, for a moment. "It is not spoken of - you should realize, Harry, why it is never spoken of - if the one knew, the phoenix could not judge. But to you, Harry, I may say it now, for the phoenix comes only once."

The old wizard walked across the top of the Ravenclaw tower to where a boy stood rooted in dawning horror, in dawning and utter horror.

In my duel with Grindelwald I could not win, only fight him for long hours until he collapsed in exhaustion; and I would have died of it afterward, if not for Fawkes -