Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Suppose that was all his magic going out of control. Suppose if we’d just cast, say, a Luminos targeting him, nothing bad would have happened.

But why? said Ravenclaw. Why suppose that?

Because, thought Harry, it explains why Professor Quirrell didn’t warn me not to cast any magic on him in Azkaban. Because Professor Quirrell never said in Parseltongue, that I can remember, that I’d hurt myself if I tried to cast magic on him. He could have given me that warning, but he didn’t, even though he gave me a lot of other warnings. Absence of evidence is weak evidence of absence.

There was a pause while Harry’s parts considered this. We don’t actually have our wand, said Ravenclaw.

We might get it back at some point, thought the last voice.

But even then, Harry thought, and the grey hopelessness returned, the resonance is something the Dark Lord knows about. He’s already thought of everything I can do with that, he already has a response prepared. That was my mistake from the beginning. I didn’t respect the Dark Lord’s intelligence, I didn’t think that maybe he knew everything I knew and could see everything I saw and had already taken it into account.

Then, said the last voice, conditional on our winning, we must have hit him with something he doesn’t know about.

Dementors, offered Gryffindor.

The Dark Lord knows we can destroy, deflect, and possibly control Dementors, said Ravenclaw. He doesn’t know how, but he knows we have the capability, and where the heck would we get a Dementor anyway?

Maybe, ventured Hufflepuff, the Dark Lord’s whole horcrux system would short out via the resonance if we grabbed him and held him, sacrificing our own life to destroy him forever.

Bullhockey, said Ravenclaw. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to engage in some pleasant fantasy before we die, no matter how stupid.

If Lord Voldemort had a strong enough fear of death, Hufflepuff argued, if he wanted strongly enough to just not need to think about death again, then the horcrux system could have design flaws like that. It never occurred to Voldemort to test his horcruxes on someone else, that could indicate he wasn’t able to think about the subject clearly—

So his fear of death is his fatal weakness? said Ravenclaw. Yeah, no. I’m thinking someone with over a hundred horcruxes might have a few failsafe mechanisms in there.

And Harry’s brain went on thinking.

A genuine asymmetry in the magical resonance between them… seemed improbable, there was no reason for the magical effect to work like that. But the magical backlash could hit the stronger wizard harder, the more powerful magic resonating more dangerously. That could explain the observed event in Godric’s Hollow (Voldemort explodes, baby survives), and also explain the observed event in Azkaban (Voldemort severely impaired by backlash of his strong magic, first-year Boy-WhoLived hit by lighter backlash of his weak magic). Or if it was only the caster’s magic that resonated, that could also explain both those two observations. That might even explain why Professor Quirrell had been in no rush to warn Harry against casting any magic on him. Though there was another obvious reason why Professor Quirrell would avoid raising the subject of the resonance; it was a gigantic hint about the mystery of Godric’s Hollow, if Harry had ever made the connection.

The part that was numb with grief and guilt took this opportunity to observe, speaking of obliviousness, that after events at Hogwarts had turned serious, they really really really REALLY should have reconsidered the decision made on First Thursday, at the behest of Professor McGonagall, not to tell Dumbledore about the sense of doom that Harry got around Professor Quirrell. It was true that Harry hadn’t been sure who to trust, there was a long stretch where it had seemed plausible that Dumbledore was the bad guy and Professor Quirrell the heroic opposition, but… Dumbledore would have realised.

Dumbledore would have realised instantly.

The wise old wizard with the true phoenix on his shoulder would have known, and Harry hadn’t trusted him, Harry hadn’t told him all the relevant facts, and the reason for this had been sheer neglect to reconsider a cached decision made four days into the start of the school year. It had been marked ‘something not to tell Dumbledore’ and even after Azkaban, even after Hermione died, even after everything, Harry had simply forgot to promote the question to deliberation and reconsider the tradeoff.

Another wave of grief and shame washed over Harry, and for a time he walked on in the silence of the last voice, other voices being happy enough to fill the gap.

After what was at least several miles, and many grey thoughts, the stone tunnel ended.

The Dark Lord climbed up stone steps, and Harry followed after.

The two of them came into a dark, dank stone building. Dirty old stone doors swung open without being touched.

Before them lay marble slabs, rising up from bare ground, upon them names and dates. The tombstones were scattered in nothing like neat rows, and the rest of the graveyard ran wild.

The moon above was over three-quarters full, already seeming bright with night not fully fallen.

Harry had stopped walking upon seeing the graveyard. There was a blaring alarm in his brain saying to be anywhere other than here, but there weren’t any options for accomplishing that. So that alarm cried unanswered, even as behind Harry the stone doors of the mausoleum swung shut again and sealed themselves.

The Dark Lord came into the center of the scattered graveyard. He stopped walking, and waved his wand above his head in a small circle.

There was a rumbling sound, and smoothly from the ground rose an altar, at least two meters wide and of black stone carved with grey sigils. And then surrounding the altar groaned up six dark-marble obelisks, regularly spaced, gleaming darkly beneath the fading twilight sky.

The unanswerable alarm in Harry’s brain grew louder.

“This,” said the Dark Lord in Professor Quirrell’s cadences, “is a workspace I made for myself, convenient to either Hogwarts or Hogsmeade.” The Dark Lord flourished a hand at the altar. “That is where Miss Granger shall revive, and also where I shall be reborn into my true body. I shall remake myself first, of course. Magicss to revive girlchild eassier with true body. ” A strange snakish laughter accompanied these words. “ Resst asssured that though ssome asspects of girl-child'ss ressurrection sshall be what otherss conssider Dark, girl-child will not be harmed or made ugly by it. Sshall sstill look like hersself, mind sshall be her own, nor sshall I or mine harm her after. ”

Harry’s tongue was dry and his mind was having trouble functioning.

“Please, Professor, would you say in Parseltongue what is your real purpose in resurrecting Miss Granger?”

“ To resstore to you girl-child friend'ss counssel and resstraint. To make ssure sshe iss part of the world for you to care about. That, boy, iss truly the greater part of the reasson I am doing thiss deed. ” Again snakish laughter accompanied these words, conveying sardonic awareness of some vast irony.

A small spark of hope kindled inside Harry, alongside the much greater note of confusion, and the fear that a perfect Occlumens could indeed lie in Parseltongue. Harry didn’t understand why the Dark Lord was doing this, if the next step was just to kill the Boy-Who-Lived or enslave him…

Maybe he’d just never understood Professor Quirrell at all, maybe somehow Harry’s model of Tom Riddle was just that wrong … maybe the Boy-Who-Lived would be Obliviated of the last day and dropped off somewhere with a confused Hermione Granger, while Lord Voldemort went on to conquer the world…?