Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Professor Quirrell was smiling. “Your lesson is a good one, Mr. Potter.

From now on, until I learn the trick of it, I shall keep diligent watch for cunning strategies that involve doing kindnesses for other people. Go and practice acts of goodwill, perhaps, until my mind goes there easily.” Cold chills ran down Harry’s spine.

Professor Quirrell had said this without the slightest visible hesitation.

Lord Voldemort was absolutely certain that he could never be redeemed. He wasn’t the tiniest bit afraid of it happening to him.

The second-to-last bellflower was dropped into the potion, gently.

“Any other valuable lessons you would like to teach to Lord Voldemort, boy?” said Professor Quirrell. He was looking up from the potion, and grinning as though he knew exactly what Harry was thinking.

“Yes,” Harry said, his voice almost breaking. “If your goal is to obtain happiness, then doing nice things for other people feels better than doing them for yourself—”

“Do you really think I never thought of that, boy?” The smile had vanished. “Do you think I am stupid? After graduating Hogwarts I wandered the world for years, before I returned to Britain as Lord Voldemort. I have put on more faces than I bothered counting. Do you think I never tried to play the hero, just to see how it would feel? Have you come across the name of Alexander Chernyshov? Under that guise, I sought out a forlorn hellhole ruled over by a Dark Wizard, and I freed the wretched inhabitants from their bondage. They wept tears of gratitude for me. It did not feel like anything in particular. I even stayed about and killed the next five Dark Wizards to try taking command of the place. I spent my own Galleons—well, not my own Galleons, but the same principle applies— to prettify their little country and introduce a semblance of order. They groveled all the more, and named one in three of their infants Alexander. I still felt nothing, so I nodded to myself, wrote it off as a fair try, and went upon my way.”

“And were you happy as Lord Voldemort, then?” Harry’s voice had risen, grown wild.

Professor Quirrell hesitated, then shrugged. “It appears you already know the answer to that.”

“Then why? Why be Voldemort if it doesn’t even make you happy? ” Harry’s voice broke. “I’m you , I’m based on you, so I know that Professor Quirrell isn’t just a mask! I know he’s somebody you really could have been! Why not just stay that way? Take your curse off the Defense Position and just stay here , use the Philosopher’s Stone to take David Monroe’s shape and let the real Quirinus Quirrell go free, if you say you’ll stop killing people I’ll swear not to tell anyone who you really are, just be Professor Quirrell, for always! Your students would appreciate you, my father’s students appreciate him —”

Professor Quirrell was chuckling over the cauldron as he stirred it. “There are perhaps fifteen thousand wizards living in magical Britain, child. There used to be more. There’s a reason they’re afraid to speak my name. You’d forgive me that because you liked my Battle Magic lessons?” Seconded, said Harry’s inner Hufflepuff. Seriously, what the hell?

Harry kept his head raised, though it was trembling. “It’s not my place to forgive anything you’ve done. But it’s better than another war.”

“Ha,” said the Defense Professor. “If you ever find a Time-Turner that goes back forty years and can alter history, be sure to tell Dumbledore that before he rejects Tom Riddle’s application for the Defense position. But alas, I fear that Professor Riddle would not have found lasting happiness in Hogwarts.”

“ Why not? ”

“Because I still would’ve been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn’t have been able to kill them,” Professor Quirrell said mildly. “Killing idiots is my great joy in life, and I’ll thank you not to speak ill of it until you’ve tried it for yourself.”

“There’s something that would make you happier than that,” Harry said, his voice breaking again. “There has to be.”

“Why?” said Professor Quirrell. “Is this some scientific law I have not yet encountered? Tell me of it.”

Harry opened his mouth, but couldn’t find any words, there had to be something had to be something if he could just find the right thing to say—

“And you ,” said Professor Quirrell, “have no right to speak of happiness either. Happiness is not what you hold precious above all. You decided that in the beginning, all the way back in the beginning of this year, when the Sorting Hat offered you Hufflepuff. Which I know about, because I received a similar offer and warning all those years ago, and I refused it just as you did. Beyond this there is little more to say, between Tom Riddles.” The Defense Professor turned back to the cauldron.

Before Harry could think of any way to reply, Professor Quirrell dropped in the last bellflower, and a burst of glowing bubbles boiled up from the cauldron.

“I believe we are done here,” Professor Quirrell said. “If you have further questions, they must wait.”

Harry shakily rose to his feet; even as Professor Quirrell took up the cauldron and poured out a ridiculously huge volume of effulgent liquid, more than seemed like it could fit in a dozen cauldrons, onto the purple fire that guarded the doorway.

The purple fire winked out.

“Now for the Mirror,” said Professor Quirrell, and he drew forth the Cloak of Invisibility from his robes, and floated it to drop before Harry’s shoes.

Even the greatest artifact can be defeated by a counter-artifact that is lesser, but specialized.

That was what the Defense Professor had told Harry, after dropping the True Cloak of Invisibility to pool in fuliginous folds near Harry’s shoes.

The Mirror of Perfect Reflection has power over what is reflected within it, and that power is said to be unchallengeable. But since the True Cloak of Invisibility produces a perfect absence of image, it should evade this principle rather than challenging it.

There had followed a series of questions in Parseltongue establishing that Harry currently did not intend to do anything stupid or try to run away, and further reminders that Professor Quirrell could sense him and had spells to detect the Cloak and was holding hostage hundreds of lives plus Hermione.

Then Harry was told to don the Cloak, open the door that lay beyond the quenched fires, and advance through the door into the final chamber; as Professor Quirrell stood well back, outside of that door’s sight.

The last chamber was illuminated in lights of soft gold, and the stone walls were of gentle white and faced with marble.

In the center of the room stood a simple and unornamented golden frame, and within the frame was a portal to another gold-illuminated room, beyond whose door which lay another Potions chamber; that was what Harry’s brain told him. The Mirror’s transformation of light was so perfect that conscious thought was required to deduce that the room inside the frame was only a reflection, rather than a portal. (Though it might have been easier to intuit if Harry hadn’t been invisible, just then.) The Mirror did not touch the ground; the golden frame had no feet. It didn’t look like it was hovering; it looked like it was fixed in place, more solid and more motionless than the walls themselves, like it was nailed to the reference frame of the Earth’s motion.

“Is the Mirror there? Is it moving?” came Professor Quirrell’s commanding voice from the Potions Chamber.