Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Step three, the pouch.

“Yes,” Voldemort hissed as he flipped pages of the diary, “this will do quite well.” The Stone moved slightly, and the Dark Lord’s other hand stored the Stone again within his robes.

“What was your hidden purpose behind the diary?” Harry said when the pouch was attached to his belt, and he’d put both of his empty hands where Voldemort could see them again. “I tried translating a little at the beginning, but it was going slowly—” Actually, it had been excruciatingly slow and Harry had found other priorities.

“ Diary wass exactly what it sseemed, a gift meant to sseduce you to my sside. ” Voldemort made intricate gestures in the air with his wand, not even looking at what his hand was doing, as he held the diary in his other hand. For a moment Harry thought he could see a trail of darkness in the air, but the moonlight was too faint for certainty. “And now, my dear boy,” Voldemort’s high voice was laced with grim amusement, as his wand briefly tapped Hermione Granger’s forehead with a casual gesture, “I make this diary into a far more precious gift, a sign of how much wisdom I have learned from you. For I would never want you to be deprived of Hermione Granger’s counsel and restraint, not ever while the stars yet live. Avadakedavra. ”

The green bolt of the Killing Curse blazed out faster than Harry could possibly have cast the Patronus Charm, faster than he could possibly have moved, it was already over even as Harry cried out and went for his wand.

Quirinus Quirrell’s unconscious body did not even jerk, in death. The green light struck into it without other sign.

Darkness glowed in the air, anti-light in the trails that Voldemort had made before, and the Diary of Roger Bacon darkened as though corruption were creeping over it, even as a shiver appeared in the air around Hermione Granger’s form.

The pain in Harry’s scar flared overwhelmingly, like a brand driven into his forehead, it sent Harry dodging unthinkingly to one side as Tom Riddle’s reflexes took over.

And Voldemort was also screaming, shrieking as he dropped the diary to the ground, holding his own head and screaming.

Chance—

The last voice of hope said that, as Harry tried frantically to think, to understand. There wasn’t any point in trying to kill Voldemort now, it might only annoy him, weapons couldn’t kill him while any of his hundreds of horcruxes remained—

But it still seemed worth it to temporarily discarnate Voldemort, take the Stone and Hermione and run.

Harry’s right hand had already taken his wand. His left hand went around to his back, reached awkwardly into his pouch, began to make a silent sign, three English letters.

“No!” cried Voldemort. He’d dropped his hands from his head, was staring at Hermione’s body as though bewildered. “No, no!”

The item came up from Harry’s pouch into his hand, and Harry began to step forward as smoothly as he could, diminishing the range between them to what his brief trials had shown was doable.

“My great creation—” gasped Voldemort. His voice was high, sounding panicked. “Two different spirits cannot exist in the same world—it is gone, it is severed! A horcrux, I must make a horcrux at once—” Voldemort’s gaze fell on Hermione Granger’s still-sleeping form, and he began to raise his wand in the air, executing the same gestures as before.

Harry raised his gun and pulled the trigger three times.

Even as Harry had raised the gun, he’d known he was making a mistake, his forebrain saw it and tried to stop his hand, but somehow the sick certainty didn’t propagate fast enough to prevent his finger from pulling the trigger—

The echo of the shots died away within the graveyard.

A fraction of a second before Harry had pulled the trigger, Voldemort had jabbed his wand downward, and a wide wall of dirt had shot up between them from the graveyard earth, intercepting all three bullets.

An instant after that, pain flared in Harry’s scar, a crawling feeling came close to his skin; and then Harry’s pouch, clothes, gun, everything except his wand disappeared, leaving him naked but for the wand still in his right hand, and the glasses he’d Charmed to stick to his nose. The steel ring upon his left pinky finger was yanked off hard enough to scrape skin, taking the Transfigured jewel with it.

“That,” said the voice of Voldemort from behind the dirt wall, “was absolutely predictable. Do you really think I would shout it aloud for you to hear, if my immortality were disrupted? Really, stupid child? Lower your wand, do not raise it up again at any time, or you die upon the spot.”

Harry swallowed, and pointed his wand downward. “You would have been disappointed in me,” Harry said, his own voice now unusually high, “if I’d missed an opportunity like that, I mean.” There was no time to think, and Harry’s mouth was operating on autopilot for trying to placate evil overlords that might have paternal feelings for you and whom you’d just failed to assassinate.

Voldemort stepped around from behind the dirt wall, smiling that horrible smile that seemed to contain too many teeth. “I promised not to raise my hand or wand against you, child, if you did not raise your hand or wand against me.”

“I used bullets,” Harry said, his voice still high. “That’s not a fist or a spell.”

“My curse thinks differently. That is the puzzle piece that you missed.

Did you think I would leave the peace between us to mere fortune? Before

I created you, I invoked a curse upon myself and all other Tom Riddles who would descend from me. A curse to enforce that none of us would threaten the others’ immortality, so long as the other made no attempt upon our own. Typical of that ridiculous fiasco, the curse seems to have ended up binding me, but taking no hold upon the infant with his self so lost.” A low, lethal chuckle. “ But you tried to end my true life jusst then, sstupid child. Now cursse iss lifted, and I may kill you any time I wissh. ”

“I see,” Harry said. He did see; that was why Voldemort had told him about his horcrux system in the first place, just to set up the moment when Harry knowingly tried to violate his immortality. Harry’s mind was frantically churning through options, none of which seemed helpful. His pouch, his clothes, Harry saw by the moonlight that they all now lay in another heap by the altar, out of reach. “And now you kill me?” Harry still had his wand, presumably the Dark Lord couldn’t cast his own magic on that, or his glasses, because of the disharmony. Cast my own spell first? No, Voldemort just jabs his wand downward to make another shield, then shoots me— what else is there? WHAT ELSE?

“Still a fool. If no further matters remained between us, I would already have killed you.” The dirt wall crumbled at another gesture of the wand, and Voldemort moved smoothly back toward the heap of items by the altar. The Dark Lord stretched out a hand, and the diary of Roger Bacon flew to him. “ Thiss iss, indeed, horcrux of girl-child, my ssuperior verssion. ” In his other hand appeared a parchment. “ Thiss iss ritual for ressurrecting her, if it musst be done again. Insstructionss are honesst, no trapss. Remember that girlchild'ss sspirit cannot float free like ghosst, Ressurrection Sstone iss my horcrux, not herss. Do not losse her horcrux, or her sspirit may be trapped within it. ” Voldemort reached down, picked up Harry’s pouch, fed both the diary and the parchment into it. “ Remember that, in casse something goess wrong with next movess. ”