Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Albus Dumbledore staggered, as though some essential support had been removed from him.

“Harry Potter,” the Headmaster breathed. “ What are you doing here? ”

Harry stared at the image of Albus Dumbledore, on whose face utter shock and utter dismay were warring.

The guilt and the shame were too much, too much, hitting Harry all at once, and he could feel the incomprehensible presence around him rising to a peak. Harry knew without words that there was no time left, and that he was done.

“It’s my fault,” Harry said in a tiny voice, from whatever part of him had taken over his throat in the final extremity. “I was stupid. I’ve always been stupid. You mustn’t rescue me. Goodbye.”

“Why, look at that,” sang out Professor Quirrell’s voice from the empty air, “I don’t seem to have a reflection any more.” “No,” said Albus Dumbledore. “No, no, NO! ”

Into the hand of the Albus Dumbledore flew from his sleeve his long, dark-grey wand, and in his other hand, as though from nowhere, appeared a short rod of dark stone.

Albus Dumbledore threw these both violently aside, just as the building sense of power rose to an unbearable peak, and then disappeared.

The Mirror returned to showing the ordinary reflection of a gold-lit room of white stone, without any trace of where Albus Dumbledore had been.

The Dark Lord was laughing.

From the empty air came the voice of the Defense Professor laughing wildly, so high and terrible his laughter; it was Voldemort’s laughter now, the Dark Lord’s laughter beyond all hiding or restraint.

Harry’s mind was disarrayed. His eyes kept staring at where Albus Dumbledore had been. There was a horror in him that was too huge for understanding or reflection. His mind kept trying to fall back through time and undo reality, but that wasn’t a sort of magic that existed, and reality stayed the same.

He had lost, he had lost Dumbledore, there were no take-backs, and that meant he had lost the war.

And the Dark Lord went on laughing.

“Ah, ah hah, ah hah hah ha! Professor Dumbledore, ah, Professor Dumbledore, such a fitting end to our game!” Another burst of wild laughter. “The wrong sacrifice even at the finish, for the piece you gave up everything to save was already in my possession! The wrong trap even from the beginning, for I could have abandoned this body at any time! Ah, hahahahaha, aha! You never did learn cunning, you poor old fool.”

“You—” A voice was coming from Harry’s throat. “You—”

“Ahahahaha! Why, yes, little child, you were always along on this adventure as my hostage, it was your whole purpose in being here. Ha, hahahaha! You are decades too young to play this game against the real Tom Riddle, child.” The Dark Lord drew back the hood of the Cloak, his head becoming visible, and began to remove the rest of the Cloak. “And now, boy, you have helped me, yess indeed, and so it iss time to ressurrect your girlchild friend. To keep promisse. ” The Dark Lord’s smile was cold, cold indeed. “I suppose you have doubts? Mark well, I could kill you this instant, for there is no longer a Headmaster of Hogwarts to be informed of it. Doubt me all you wish, but remember that.” The hand was once more holding the gun. “Now come along, foolish child.” And they left.

They went back out through the door into the Potions room, the Dark

Lord banishing the returned purple fire with a stroke of his wand. They went through the chamber where the boggart had been, and the chamber of ruined chess statues, and through the burned door of the chamber of keys. The Dark Lord floated up through the trapdoor, and Harry struggled up afterward through the spiral staircase of leaves, the tendrils of the Devil’s Snare twitching and then moving back as though afraid. The Boy-Who-Lived was trying hard not to burst into tears, and his dark-side patterns weren’t helping, maybe because Voldemort had never known or dealt with guilt.

They passed the huge three-headed Inferi, and at a whispered word from the Dark Lord it collapsed over the trapdoor and became a corpse again.

They passed Severus Snape standing guard, who told them both that he was guarding the door, and that they must leave or he would deduct House points.

The Dark Lord spoke the words “ Hyakuju montauk ” without pausing in his stride, accompanied by a jab of his wand; and Severus staggered before he lifelessly drew himself up beside the door once more.

“What—” Harry said, as he followed. “What did you—”

“Just fulfilling my obligation to my faithful servant. It shall not kill him, as I promised you.” The Dark Lord laughed again.

“The hostages—” Harry said. It was hard to keep his voice steady. “The students, you said you’d stop whatever is going to kill them—”

“ Yess. Sstop worrying. Will do on our way out. ” “Out?”

“We are leaving, child.” The Dark Lord was still smiling.

The bad feeling this raised was lost in a sea of other bad feelings.

The Dark Lord was now consulting what he’d called the Hogwarts Map, the handwritten lines upon it seeming to move as they walked.

Some part of Harry’s mind that had been considering what to do if they ran into Aurors on patrol (whom the Dark Lord could kill, or Obliviate, in an instant) gave up that hope as well.

They went down the Grand Staircase to the second floor, encountering no one.

The Dark Lord made a turn Harry did not know, and went down another stair-flight. As they descended past one floor and another, the windows stopped and the torches began, they were within the Slytherin dungeons now.

Ahead, the form of a person in Hogwarts robes appeared.

The Dark Lord kept walking toward that person.

Harry followed.

A sixth or seventh-year Slytherin was waiting by a section of wall that was set with an artistic carving of Salazar Slytherin wielding his wand, against what looked like a giant covered in icicles. The witch made no comment at seeing Professor Quirrell walking upright, or seeing Harry in his company, or seeing the gun in the Defense Professor’s hand. If her eyes were blank, Harry couldn’t tell the difference.

The Dark Lord reached into his robes, took out a Knut, and flipped it to her. “Klaudia Alicja Tabor, I command you thus. Take this Knut to the spell circle I showed you beneath the Quidditch stands and put it in the center. Then Obliviate yourself of the last six hours.”

“Yes, lord,” the witch said, bowing to him, and went on her way.

“I thought—” Harry said. “I thought you needed the Stone to—”

The Dark Lord was still smiling, he had never stopped smiling. “I did not say that part in Parseltongue, child. All I said in Parseltongue was that I had set events in motion to kill students, events that I would stop if I obtained the Stone. The rest was in human speech. I would also have stopped the Blood Fort sacrifice if I had not obtained the Stone, so long as I was not discovered and restrained. The students of Hogwarts are a valuable resource, whom I have already spent much time training.” Then the Dark Lord hissed to the wall, “ Open. ”

Harry’s eyes saw the tiny snake that had been set in the upper-left of the carving, even as the wall slowly swung backward, revealing the opening of a huge pipe. Moss grew on its sides and a musty dusty smell welled up from it; the interior was also covered with cobwebs in multiple sheets.

“Spiders…” murmured the Dark Lord. He sighed, and for that brief moment he sounded once more like Professor Quirrell.

The Dark Lord walked into the huge pipe, the cobwebs burning away before him. Harry, not seeing any other better options, followed.