Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

The last Death Eater was looped. The pattern of spider-silk was complete. The web had been drawn with loops around all the Death Eater’s necks. The ends of those loops had been anchored to a central circle; and that central circle in turn had three threads stretching across its center. The entire pattern still touching the anchor-line stretching out of Harry’s wand.

Over the next seconds, those near-invisible threads of reflected moonlight turned black.

Filaments narrower, stronger, and sharper than steel wire; braided carbon nanotubes, each individual tube all a single molecule.

Harry hissed, “ Want you to alsso promisse to treat nationss kindly under your rule. Will not accept lesss. ”

Voldemort hovered still in the air, snake-face showing a dawning fury.

The last two threads stretched out from the dark pattern, black theads already in the form of nanotubes. They moved lightly through the air toward the Dark Lord himself, toward the sleeve just above Voldemort’s left hand that held the gun, toward the sleeve above the right hand that held the yew wand, threads placed high at first to give them time to drift slowly downward through the air. The threads looped around, went over themselves, tied slippable knots. Began to tighten, coming closer to the sleeve, as Harry Transfigured them shorter—

Harry felt the tickle of Voldmort’s power beginning to touch his own in the back of his mind; at the same time the Dark Lord’s eyes widened, his mouth opened.

And Harry Transfigured the black threads stretching across the black pattern’s center to a quarter their previous size, shrinking the circle, yanking hard on everything attached, tightening loops.

(Black robes, falling.)

Harry wasn’t looking there, he didn’t see the falling masks, the blood, in the back of his mind he felt some explosions of magic like he’d felt when Hermione died but he ignored them, Harry’s eyes only saw the Dark Lord’s hands and wand and gun dropping downward, and then Harry’s wand was rising, pointing— Harry screamed, “ STUPORFY! ”

The red bolt the color of the Stunning Hex winged toward Voldemort, blazing across the graveyard almost faster than the eye could see.

Without any hesitation despite his wounds the Dark Lord jerked down and right through the air.

And the red bolt from Professor Flitwick’s secret Swerving Stunner turned in midair and slammed into Voldemort.

The pain that flashed through Harry’s scar was searing, it made him cry out and a red haze appear across his vision, despite everything Harry dropped his wand in pain and sheer fatigue.

As Harry let go of his wand, the pain began to clear—

Something like a fugue state had come over Harry’s mind. The absolute state had partially worn off him, partially stayed with him. Elements of his mind were numb, maybe deliberately numbed by some part that was smart enough to predict what would happen otherwise. What he’d just done—

The thought was shut off, making space for an awareness of other things.

Harry was standing in the middle of a haphazard graveyard, tombstones scattered without order.

By moonlight and starlight, it could be seen that black robes littered the ground, surrounded by textures that didn’t match the surrounding graveyard earth, wetness tinged red in the moonlight. Some heads had come loose from the surrounding hoods of the robes, revealing hair that was long or short, dark or bright, which was all that could be seen beneath the moon. The silver masks stayed on, making all the hair originate in skulls instead of human faces—

The thought was shut off, making space for awareness of other things.

A girl in a red-trimmed Hogwarts uniform slept upon an altar. Near the altar, Harry’s things lay in a heap.

Upon the ground lay a too-tall pale man of inhuman face, blood pouring from the stumps of his wrists.

As soon as the Dark Lord Voldemort awakens, he will destroy everything you love. Dumbledore is no longer there to stop him.

He cannot be imprisoned, for he can abandon his body at any time.

He cannot be killed permanently, not without destroying more than a hundred horcruxes, one of which is the Pioneer plaque.

Materials: One wand, you are allowed to point it and speak this time.

You have five minutes.

Solve.

Harry stumbled toward the altar, knelt at its side, and picked up his pouch.

He walked toward where Voldemort lay.

The sense of apprehension had diminished, after Voldemort had been hexed unconscious. Now, as Harry approached, it rose to a terrifying height, flaring also into pain in his scar.

Harry ignored the inner shriek. That had been the last memory of

Tom Riddle seared into Harry’s brain, the last cognitive pattern to be transferred over into the infant baby before Tom Riddle had exploded: a sense of mounting horror and dismay associated with the resonance that had spun out of control. Harry knew the meaning of it now, that sense of apprehension, and that made it easier to disregard. He’d guessed that the effect of the resonance mostly hit the caster, with power proportional to the caster’s power, and the bet had paid off.

Harry looked upon Voldemort’s body, and breathed deeply—through his mouth, because coppery smells Harry was not thinking about were coming in through his nose.

Harry knelt by Voldemort’s side, took out his medical kit from his pouch, and placed a self-tightening tourniquet around the body’s left wrist, then another tourniquet about the right.

It felt wrong, showing Voldemort that concern. Some part of Harry was aware, in the back of his mind, that some number of people had just had something extremely bad happen to them. What would have been balance, what would have been justice, was if Voldemort had suffered the same fate without an instant’s more hesitation. What Harry was doing now felt like Batman showing more concern for the Joker than for the Joker’s victims; it felt like a comic book where the writers wrung their hands endlessly about the morality of killing the Big Named Villains while innocents went on dying in the background. To show more solicitousness for the head villain than his minions, to pay more attention to his fate than the fates of his lower-status followers, was a flaw in human nature.

So it felt wrong when Harry rose up from beside the body, the tourniquets having tightened upon Voldemort’s wrists; it felt like Harry was doing something ethically monstrous.

Even though any sane strategic thinking said that Voldemort’s body must not die. The soul he’d created for himself had to be anchored in this brain, it mustn’t be allowed to float free.

Harry stepped back, back from Voldemort’s unconscious body, breathing deeply through his mouth. He went to the pile of his things, to put on his robes and other items, starting with placing the Time-Turner around his throat once more, readying his own escape and return if that was required…

More than a hundred horcruxes.

That had been insane, there wasn’t any other word for it, a sign of

Voldemort’s damaged thinking about death. A Muggle security expert would have called it fence-post security, like building a fence-post over a hundred metres high in the middle of the desert. Only a very obliging attacker would try to climb the fence-post. Anyone sensible would just walk around the fence-post, and making the fence-post even higher wouldn’t stop that.

Once you forgot to be scared of how impossible the problem was supposed to be, it wasn’t even difficult, not by comparison to the last one.

Neville’s parents, for example, had been Crucioed into permanent insanity. Two hundred advanced horcruxes wouldn’t prevent that insanity, they would all just echo the same damaged mind.