Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“ Iss there, ” Harry hissed back. “ Not moving. ”

Again tones of command rang forth. “Walk around to the back of the Mirror.”

From behind, the golden frame appeared solid, showing no reflections, and Harry said so in Parseltongue.

“Now take off your Cloak,” commanded Professor Quirrell’s voice still from within the Potions room. “Report to me at once if the Mirror moves to face you.”

Harry took off his Cloak.

The Mirror remained nailed to the reference frame of Earth’s motion; and Harry reported this.

Shortly after there came a hissing and seething, and a balefire phoenix melted through the marble wall behind Harry, the ambient light in the room taking on a red tinge as it entered. Professor Quirrell followed behind it, walking out of the new-made corridor that had been carved, his black formal shoes unharmed by the red-glowing molten surface beneath. “Well,” Professor Quirrell said, “that is one possible trap averted. And now…” Professor Quirrell exhaled. “Now we will think of possible strategies for retrieving the Stone from the Mirror, and you will try them; for I prefer not to let my own image be reflected. I give you fair warning, this is the part that may prove tedious.”

“I take it this isn’t a problem you can solve with Fiendfyre?” “Ha,” said Professor Quirrell, and gestured.

The balefire phoenix moved forward in a rush of crimson terror, the red light casting writhing shadows on the remaining marble walls. Harry jumped back before he could think.

The dreadful dark-red blaze rushed past Professor Quirrell, surged into the golden back of the Mirror, and disappeared as fast as it touched the gold.

Then the fire was gone, and the room was tinged scarlet no more.

There was no scratch upon the golden surface, no glow to mark the absorption of heat. The Mirror had simply remained in place, untouched. Chills went down Harry’s spine. If he’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons and the dungeon master had reported that result, Harry would have suspected a mental illusion, and rolled to disbelieve.

Upon the center of the golden back had appeared a sequence of runes in no known alphabet, black absences of light in small lines and curves, arranged in a level horizontal row. The thought occurred to Harry that some minor concealing illusion had been consumed in the Fiendfyre, a far lesser enchantment that had been added to prevent children from seeing those letters…

“How old is this Mirror?” Harry said in almost a whisper.

“Nobody knows, Mr. Potter.” The Defense Professor reached out his fingers toward the runes, a look of something like reverence on his face; but his fingers did not touch the gold. “But my guess is the same as yours, I think. It is said, in certain legends that may or may not be fabrications, that this Mirror reflects itself perfectly and therefore its existence is absolutely stable. So stable that the Mirror was able to survive when every other effect of Atlantis was undone, all its consequences severed from Time. You can see why I was amused when you suggested Fiendfyre.” The Defense Professor let his hand fall.

Even in the middle of everything else, Harry felt the awe, if that was true. The golden frame gleamed no brighter than before, for all the revelation; but you could imagine it going back, and back, into a civilization that had been made to never be… “What—does the Mirror do, exactly?”

“An excellent question,” said Professor Quirrell. “The answer is in the runes that are written upon the Mirror’s golden back. Read them to me.”

“They’re not in any alphabet I recognize. They look like randomly oriented chicken-scratches drawn by Tolkien elves.”

“Read them anyway. Iss not dangerouss. ”

“The runes say, noitilov detalo partxe tnere hoc ruoy tu becafruoy ton wo hsi— ” Harry stopped, feeling more prickles at his spine.

Harry knew what the rune for noitilov meant . It meant noitilov. And the next runes said to detalo the noitilov until it reached partxe, then keep the part that was both tnere and hoc. That belief felt like knowledge, like he could have answered ‘Yes’ with confident authority if somebody asked him whether the ton wo was ruoy or becafruoy. It was just that when Harry tried to relate those concepts to any other concepts, he drew a blank.

“ Do you undersstand what wordss mean, boy? ”

“ Don't think sso. ”

Professor Quirrell gave a soft exhalation, his eyes not leaving the golden frame. “I had wondered if perhaps the Words of False Comprehension might be understandable to a student of Muggle science. Apparently not.”

“Maybe—” Harry began.

Really, Ravenclaw? said Slytherin. You’re pulling this NOW?

“Maybe I could try again to understand the words if I knew more about the Mirror?” said Harry’s Ravenclaw part, which had assumed direct control.

Professor Quirrell’s lips quirked up. “As with most ancient things, scholars have written down enough lies that it is hard to be sure of anything by now. It is definite that the Mirror is at least as old as Merlin, for it is known that Merlin used it as a tool. It is also known that after his death, Merlin left written instructions that the Mirror did not need to be sealed away, despite it having certain powers that might normally cause one to worry. He wrote that, given how painstakingly the Mirror had been crafted to not destroy the world, it would be easier to destroy the world using a lump of cheese.”

This statement struck Harry as not entirely reassuring.

“Certain other facts about the Mirror are attested by famous wizards who were reasonably skeptical, and whose word has otherwise proven reliable. The Mirror’s most characteristic power is to create alternate realms of existence, though these realms are only as large in size as what can be seen within the Mirror; it is known that people and other objects can be stored therein. It is claimed by several authorities that the Mirror alone of all magics possesses a true moral orientation, though I am not sure what that could mean in practical terms. I would expect moralists to call the Cruciatus Curse by their name of ‘evil’ and the Patronus Charm by their name of ‘good’; I cannot guess what a moralist would think was any more moral than that. But it is claimed, for example, that phoenixes came into our world from a realm that was evoked inside this Mirror.”

Words like Jeepers and what his parents would have termed inappropriate language were all running through Harry’s head, none very coherently, as he stared at the golden back of the Mirror.

“I have wandered the world and encountered many stories that are not often heard,” said Professor Quirrell. “Most of them seemed to me to be lies, but a few had the ring of history rather than storytelling. Upon a wall of metal in a place where no one had come for centuries, I found written the claim that some Atlanteans foresaw their world’s end, and sought to forge a device of great power to avert the inevitable catastrophe. If that device had been completed, the story claimed, it would have become an absolutely stable existence that could withstand the channeling of unlimited magic in order to grant wishes. And also—this was said to be the vastly harder task—the device would somehow avert the inevitable catastrophes any sane person would expect to follow from that premise. The aspect I found interesting was that, according to the tale writ upon those metal plates, the rest of Atlantis ignored this project and went upon their ways. It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. I recognise certain echoes of my own experience that one does not usually see invented in mere tales.” A twist in the dry smile. “But perhaps that is merely my own preference for one tale among a hundred other legends. You perceive, however, the echo of Merlin’s statement about the Mirror’s creators shaping it to not destroy the world. Most importantly for our purposes, it may explain why the Mirror would have the previously unknown capability that Dumbledore or