Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Too many people had shown up synchronously and that was too much coincidence, it was improbable that so many different parties would show up at the same location within a five-minute window, there had to be hidden entanglements.

Label Sprout’s controller as the mastermind who had ordered Hermione Memory-Charmed. The mastermind had sent Sprout.

Professor Snape had said that the Headmaster had sent him to guard the door after there’d been some sort of disturbance , if the mastermind had caused that as a distraction then that explained Severus’s presence as well.

Harry wasn’t sure any more that Draco had been controlled by the mastermind, that hypothesis had come to him in the spur of the moment, Draco might have just been trying to drop not-Susan so he could get into the corridor unhindered—

No that was the wrong way to think, turn it around, try to explain the timed presence of Draco and his adventuring party, no time for selfquestioning, run with the hypothesis, therefore suppose Sprout’s mastermind had sent Draco or triggered his coming.

That was three arrivals explained.

Harry had shown up because his note to himself had told him to do so. That could be attributed to time travel.

That left the Defense Professor who’d said he was following Snape, only that didn’t really seem like an adequate reason for Professor Quirrell to show up it didn’t really make Harry feel less confused and so maybe the mastermind had also controlled the timing of Professor Quirrell’s presence somehow and even arranged for Harry himself to enter the time loop.

Harry’s mind hit a stumbling-block, he couldn’t see how to extend that reasoning further.

There was no time to stare blankly at stumbling-blocks.

Without any pause or braking Harry’s mind attacked the problem from a new angle.

Professor Quirrell had deduced a controlled Hogwarts Professor from the need for some Professor to Memory-Charm Hermione which meant that Professor Sprout’s controller had framed and then murdered Hermione which meant Professor Sprout’s controller had detailed information about Hogwarts life and maybe a personal interest in the Boy-Who-Lived and his friends.

Harry’s mind finally threw up the relevant memory, Dumbledore saying that Lord Voldemort’s strongest road to life was hidden here inside Hogwarts run with the hypothesis so that resurrection tool was the Philosopher’s Stone hidden inside the mirror why had Dumbledore put the mirror into a corridor first-years could get through no ignore this question it’s not important right now and Professor Quirrell had said the Philosopher’s Stone possessed great healing power so that part also fit.

But if it was the Philosopher’s Stone that was hidden in the mirror to keep it away from the Dark Lord, that meant the mirror also contained the one thing in the world that could save the Defense Professor’s life—

Harry’s mind tried to hesitate, to flinch away, feeling a sudden apprehension as to where this was going.

But there was no time allowed for hesitation.

-and that was also far too much coincidence just too much improbability if your mind didn’t write it off as an amazing plot twist like you were inside a story.

Could the putative Dark Lord also be manipulating Professor Quirrell so that Professor Quirrell would discover his supposed salvation at the right time so that Harry and Professor Quirrell would go get the resurrection tool from the mirror that might not even actually be the Philosopher’s Stone and then the Dark Lord’s avatar or some other servant would show up and seize it from them that would explain all the synchronies and negate every coincidence.

Or Professor Quirrell had known from the beginning that the one thing that could save his life was hidden inside this mirror and that was why he had agreed to teach Defense at Hogwarts and now he was finally trying to get it but then why wait until he was this sick to even try and why had Sprout shown up at the same time as Professor Quirrell— Harry’s mind faltered harder.

His inner eye was looking in a direction it was afraid to look.

The note I sent myself said to help the watcher of stars. I wouldn’t send myself a note saying that, if I hadn’t already worked out in the future that it was the right thing to do—maybe the note is just telling me to get on with it— A small note of confusion was promoted to conscious attention.

The coded message on the parchment… one or two lines hadn’t quite sounded right, hadn’t sounded like the code Harry would expect himself to use…

“Harry,” whispered the dying voice of Professor Quirrell from behind him. “Harry, please.”

“I’m almost done thinking,” Harry’s voice said aloud, and Harry realized as he spoke the words that they were true.

Turn it around.

Look at it from the Enemy’s perspective, from where the Enemy does their own intelligent planning, somewhere out of your sight.

There are Aurors in Hogwarts, and your target Harry Potter is now fully on guard. Harry Potter will call in Aurors at the first sign of trouble, or send a Patronus to Albus Dumbledore. Considering that as a puzzle, one creative solution is to—

—forge a supposedly Time-Turned message to Harry Potter from himself, telling Harry Potter not to call for help, telling him to be at the place and time you want him to be. You get the target himself to bypass all the protections he set up. You even bypass his protection of skepticism with the overriding authority of his own future self’s judgment.

It isn’t even difficult. You can Memory-Charm some random student into remembering Harry Potter handing over an envelope to be given back to himself later.

You can Memory-Charm that student because you are a Hogwarts Professor.

You don’t go to the extra effort to steal a pencil and Muggle paper from Harry Potter’s pouch. Instead you forge Harry Potter’s handwriting on wizard parchment. You can forge Harry Potter’s handwriting because you have seen it on Ministry-mandated exams you have graded.

You call Draco Malfoy ‘the constellation’ because you know Harry Potter is interested in astronomy and you are a wizard and you have taken Astronomy and memorised the names of all the constellations. But it’s not the natural code that Harry Potter would use to describe Draco Malfoy to himself, that would have been ‘the apprentice’.

You call Professor Quirrell ‘the watcher of stars’, and tell Harry Potter to help him.

You know that life-eater is how you say ‘Dementor’ in Parseltongue and you expect Harry Potter to think of the Aurors as being in league with them.

You encode 6:49 as ‘six, and seven in a square’ because you have been reading a Muggle physics book that Harry Potter gave you.

Who are you, then?

Harry noticed his breathing had sped up, and with a burst of heartrate, Harry slowed his breath down again, Professor Quirrell was watching him .

What if hypothetically speaking Professor Quirrell was the mastermind and had faked Harry’s message then that explained all five parties showing up the whole synchronous coordination of the comedy and then Professor Sprout was just controlled to give Professor Quirrell deniability let him blame someone else for the False Memory Charm after the dust settled but

But why would Professor Quirrell risk the fragile alliance Harry had with Draco via the attempted murder-frame

(that Professor Quirrell had ‘detected’ and ‘stopped’ allegedly via a tracer put on Draco)

Why would Professor Quirrell kill Hermione

(if his first attempt to remove her hadn’t worked)

If Professor Quirrell was the bad guy then he might have lied about everything to do with horcruxes and maybe it wasn’t coincidence at all that the only thing that could save his life was the avenue that could resurrect the Dark Lord what if the Dark Lord had arranged that too somehow