Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry would have tried to deny the thought, rationalize it away.

He couldn’t do that either.

It wasn’t a thing-Harry-Potter-would-do.

Like water flowing downhill, Harry Potter would take no chances when it came to not destroying the world.

“Fourth?” said Amelia Bones, who was looking like she’d been hit repeatedly in the face with a planet. “ What comes fourth? ”

“Never mind,” said Harry. His voice did not break. He did not fold over sobbing. There were still lives he could save and those took precedence. “Never mind. Chief Warlock Bones, I’ve given the regency of the Wizengamot into your hands. Please use that position to announce internationally that the Stone’s healing power will soon be made available to all, and that meanwhile, all dying patients are to be kept alive at any cost, no matter what magic is required to do it. That announcement is your absolute priority. When you have done that you may rescue Peter Pettigrew and tell your old Department to begin preparations for shutting down Azkaban. Then please have someone prepare a full list of imprisoned Death Eaters and what was said at their trials and whether Lucius seemed strangely uninterested in defending them. Thank you. That’s all.”

Amelia Bones turned without another word, and dashed into the Floo like it was her own self that was on fire.

“And someone,” Harry said, his voice breaking again now that it was all set in motion, and crying wasn’t costing time, though the vast majority of total lives at stake had turned out not to be savable just yet, “someone has to, someone tell Remus Lupin.”

The boy sat in an office near to where the once-Deputy Headmistress had held court. His tears had run dry hours ago. Now there was only the waiting to see what would become of him, the orphan ward of Hogwarts, whose life and happiness lay in the hands of his family’s enemies. The boy had been called to this room, and he had come because there was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. Vincent and Gregory had left his side, called back by their mothers for their fathers’ hurried funerals. Perhaps the boy should have gone with them, but he could not bring himself to do so. He would not have been able to act the part of a Malfoy. The feeling of emptiness that filled him up was so profound that it left no room even for pretended courtesy.

Everyone was dead.

His father was dead, and his godfather Mr. MacNair, and his fallback godfather Mr. Avery. Even Sirius Black, his mother’s cousin, had somehow managed to die, and the last remnant of House Black was no friend to any Malfoy.

Everyone was dead.

There came a knock upon the office’s door; and then, when the boy made no reply, the door opened, revealing—

“Go away,” Draco Malfoy said to the Boy-Who-Lived. He couldn’t muster any force in the words.

“I will soon,” Harry Potter said, as he stepped into the room. “But there’s a decision to be made, and only you can make it.”

Draco turned his head toward the wall, because just looking at Harry Potter took more energy than he had left in him.

“You have to decide,” Harry said, “what happens to Draco Malfoy after this. I don’t mean that in any ominous way. No matter what, you’re still going to grow up to be the rich heir of a Noble and Most Ancient House. The thing is,” Harry’s voice was wavering now, “the thing is, there’s a horrible truth you don’t know, and I keep thinking that if you knew, you’d tell me not to be your friend anymore. And I don’t want to stop being your friend. But to just—never tell you—and always maintain that lie so I can go on being your friend—I can’t do that. It’s also wrong. I don’t… don’t want this anymore, I don’t want to be manipulating you. I’ve hurt you too much already.”

Then stop trying to be my friend, you’re no good at it anyway. The words rose up into Draco’s consciousness, and were rejected from his lips. He felt like he’d mostly lost Harry already, from the games Harry had played with their friendship, the lies and manipulations; and yet the thought of going back to Slytherin alone, maybe without Vincent and Gregory if their mothers terminated the arrangement… Draco didn’t want to do that, he didn’t want to go back to Slytherin and live out his life among only people who’d agreed to be Sorted into Slytherin House. Draco was barely sensible enough to remember how many of his real friends were also friends with Harry, that Padma was a Ravenclaw and even Theodore was a Chaotic Lieutenant. All that remained of Malfoy House was a tradition, now; and that tradition said it wasn’t clever to tell the war’s victor to go away and stop trying to be friends with you.

“All right,” Draco said emptily. “Tell me.”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” Harry said. “And then the Headmistress will come in after I leave, and seal away your last half-hour of memory. But before then, knowing the whole truth, you’ll get to decide whether you still want to be involved with me.” Harry’s voice was shaking. “Um. According to the records I was reading through before I came here, the story really began in 1926 with the birth of a half-blood wizard named Tom Morfin Riddle. His mother died in childbirth, and he grew up in a Muggle orphanage, until his Hogwarts letter was brought to him by Professor Dumbledore…”

The Boy-Who-Lived continued speaking, words that slammed into what was left of Draco’s mind like falling houses.

The Dark Lord had been a half-blood. He’d never believed in blood purity for a fraction of a second.

Tom Riddle had come up with the idea of Lord Voldemort as a bad joke.

The Death Eaters had been meant to lose to David Monroe, so Monroe could take over.

After giving up on that, Tom Riddle had gone on playing Voldemort instead of actually trying to win, because he’d liked bossing the Death Eaters around.

Voldemort used me to try to frame Father for my attempted murder, then used me again to go after the Philosopher’s Stone. Draco couldn’t remember that part, but he’d already been told that he’d been used as a pawn alongside Professor Sprout, and that no charges would be filed.

And then the last horror.

“You—” whispered Draco Malfoy. “You—”

“I’m the one who killed your father and all the other Death Eaters last night. They’d been told to open fire on me the moment I did anything, so I had to kill them in order to have a chance at dealing with Voldemort, who was a danger to the entire world.” Harry Potter’s voice was strained. “I didn’t think about you and Theodore and Vincent and Gregory, but if I had, I’d have done it anyway. My mind managed not to realise until afterwards that Mr. White was Lucius, but if I’d realised, I still wouldn’t have risked leaving him alive, in case he knew wandless magic. The thought occurred to me long before that it would be pretty convenient, in terms of the political landscape, for all the Death Eaters to suddenly die. I always thought that the Death Eaters were horrible people, much more strongly than I ever let on to you, since the first day we met. But if your father hadn’t been there, and I’d had a button that could kill him remotely, I wouldn’t have pressed the button just for political reasons. The way I feel about what I’ve done, and whether there’s remorse… well, there’s a part of me that’s screaming in generic horror about having killed anyone. And another part that says that from a moral standpoint, the Death Eaters signed away their lives on the day they signed up with Voldemort. They pointed their wands at me first, blah blah and so on. But right now I just feel sick about what I’ve done to you. Again. I feel like,” Harry Potter’s voice wobbled a bit, “everything I do only hurts you, for all my good intentions, that you’ve only ever lost things from being around me, so if you tell me to stay away entirely from Draco Malfoy after this, then I will. And if you want me to try to be your friend for real this time, without ever trying to manipulate you again, without ever using you again or risking hurting you again, then I will, I swear I will.”