Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“ Don't know, ” Harry hissed.

“ Life-eaterss cannot desstroy me, I think, ” hissed Professor Quirrell. “ And I willssimplyabandonthissbodyiftheyapproachtooclosse. Sshallreturnsswiftlythiss time, and then there will be no sstopping me. Will torture your parentss for yearss, to punissh you for balking me. Hundredss of hosstage sstudentss die, including thosse you call friendss. Now I assk again. Will you usse power over life-eaterss to protect me, if life-eaterss come? ”

“ Yess, ” Harry whispered. The sadness and horror that Harry had pushed down flared up again, and his dark side had no stored patterns for handling the emotions. Why, Professor Quirrell, why are you like this…

Professor Quirrell smiled. “That reminds me. Have you betrayed me yet?”

“ Have not betrayed you yet. ”

Professor Quirrell went over to the Potions equipment, and began chopping a root one-handed, the knife moving almost invisibly fast and with no apparent effort. The Fiendfyre phoenix drifted over to the opposite corner of the room and waited there. “All matters considered in their uncertainty, it seems wiser to expend the time to pass this room as a firstyear would,” said the Defense Professor. “We may as well talk while we are waiting. You had questions, boy? I said that I would answer them, so ask.”

The Defense Professor had set up a cauldron, floating it into place with a wave of his wand, another wave starting a fire beneath it. A brief circling of the Defense Professor’s finger had set in motion a longhandled spoon, and it had continued stirring the cauldron without being held. Now the Defense Professor was measuring out a heap of flowers from a large jar, what Harry supposed to be bellflowers; the indigo petals seemed luminous in the white light of the walls, and curved inward in a way that gave the impression of a desire for privacy. The first of these flowers had been added to the potion at once, but then the cauldron had just gone on stirring itself for a while.

The Defense Professor had assumed a position from which he could see Harry just by turning his head slightly, and Harry knew that he was within the Defense Professor’s peripheral vision.

In the corner a Fiendfyre phoenix waited, some of the nearby stone beginning to gloss over as it melted to greater smoothness. The burning wings shed crimson light that gave everything in the room a tint of blood, and reflected in scarlet sparks from the glassware.

“Time is wasting,” said Professor Quirrell. “Ask your questions, if you have them.”

Why, Professor Quirrell, why, why must you be this way, why make yourself the monster, why Lord Voldemort, I know you might not want the same things I do, but I can’t imagine what you want that makes this the best way to get it… That was what Harry’s brain wanted to know.

What Harry needed to know was… some way out of what was going to happen next. But the Defense Professor had said that he wouldn’t talk about his future plans. It was strange enough that the Defense Professor was willing to talk about anything, that had to contradict one of his Rules… “I’m thinking,” Harry said aloud.

Professor Quirrell smiled slightly. He was using a pestle to grind the potion’s first magical ingredient, a glowing red hexagon. “I quite understand,” said the Defense Professor. “But do not think over-long, child.”

Goals: Prevent Lord Voldemort from harming people, find a way to kill or neutralise him, but first get the Stone and resurrect Hermione…

…convince Professor Quirrell to STOP THIS…

Harry swallowed, pushing down the emotion, trying not to let the water reach his eyes. Tears probably wouldn’t make a good impression on Lord Voldemort. Professor Quirrell was already frowning, though from the direction of his gaze he was examining a leaf colored in vivid shades of white, green, and purple.

There wasn’t any obvious way to reach any of the goals, not yet. All Harry could do was ask the questions that seemed most likely to provide useful information, even if Harry didn’t yet have a plan.

So we just ask about whatever seems most interesting? said Harry’s Ravenclaw side. I’m up for that.

Shut up, Harry told the voice; and then, on further reflection, decided that he was no longer pretending it was there.

Four topics came to Harry’s mind as being priorities from the standpoint of curiosity about important things. Four questions, then, four major subjects, to try to fit in while this potion was still being brewed.

Four questions…

“I ask my first question,” Harry said. “What really happened on the night of October 31st, 1981?” Why was that night different from all other nights… “I would like the entire story, please.”

The question of how and why Lord Voldemort had survived his apparent death seemed likely to matter for future planning.

“I expected you would ask that,” Professor Quirrell said, dropping a bellflower and a white glittering stone into the potion. “To begin, everything I told you about the horcrux spell is true; as you should realise, since

I spoke in Parseltongue.” Harry nodded.

“Within seconds after you learned the details of the spell, you perceived the central flaw, and began pondering how the spell might be improved. Do you think the young Tom Riddle was any different?” Harry shook his head.

“Well, he was,” said Professor Quirrell. “Whenever I was tempted to despair of you, I reminded myself how I was an idiot at twice your age. When I was fifteen I made myself a horcrux as a certain book had shown me, using the death of Abigail Myrtle beneath the eyes of Slytherin’s basilisk. I planned to make a new horcrux every year after I left Hogwarts, and call that my fallback plan if my other hopes of immortality did not come to fruition. In retrospect, the young Tom Riddle was grasping straws. The thought of making a better horcrux, of not being content with the spell I had already learned… this thought did not come to me until I had grasped the stupidity of ordinary people, and realised which follies of theirs I had imitated. But in time I learned the habit that you inherited from me, to ask in every instance how it might be done better. To be content with the spell I had learned from a book, when it bore only a faint resemblance to what I truly wanted? Absurd! And so I set forth to create a better spell.”

“You have true immortality, now?” Harry was aware that, even with everything else going on, this was a question more important than war and strategy.

“Indeed,” said Professor Quirrell. He paused in his Potions work and turned to face Harry fully; there was a look of exultation in the man’s eyes that Harry had never seen there before. “In all the Darkest Arts I could find, in all the interdicted secrets to which Slytherin’s Monster gave me keys, in all the lore remembered among wizardkind, I found only hints and smatterings of what I needed. So I rewove it and remade it, and devised a new ritual based on new principles. I kept that ritual burning in my mind for years, perfecting it in imagination, pondering its meaning and making fine adjustments, waiting for the intention to stabilise. At last I dared to invoke my ritual, an invented sacrificial ritual, based on a principle untested by all known magic. And I lived, and yet live.” The Defense Professor spoke with quiet triumph, as though the act itself was so great that no words could ever do it justice. “I still use the word ‘horcrux’, but only from sentiment. It is a new thing entirely, the greatest of all my creations.”