Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“You know,” Hermione said to the horizon, still not looking at Harry, “I had a conversation like this with Professor Quirrell, once, about being a hero. He was taking the other side, of course. But apart from that, this is feeling like when he argued with me, somehow.”

Harry kept his lips pressed shut. Letting people make their own decisions was hard, because it meant they were allowed to make the wrong ones, but it still had to be done.

Hermione spoke carefully, the blue fringes of her Hogwarts uniform now seeming brighter against her black robes as the sky all around them became illuminated; there were no more stars in the west. “Professor Quirrell told me, he said he’d been a hero once. But people weren’t helping him enough, so he gave up and went off to do something more interesting. I told Professor Quirrell that it hadn’t been right for him to do that—what I actually said was ‘that’s horrible’. Professor Quirrell said that, yes, maybe he was an awful person, but then what about all the other people who’d never tried to be heroes at all? Were they even worse than him? And I didn’t know what to say back. I mean, it’s wrong to say that only Gryffindor-style heroes are good people—though I think from Professor Quirrell’s perspective it was more like only people with big ambitions had a right to breathe. And I didn’t believe that. But it also seemed wrong to stop being a hero, to walk away like he’d done. So I just stood there looking silly. But now I know what I should’ve told him back then.” Harry controlled his breathing.

Hermione stood up from her cushion, and turned to face Harry. “I’m done with trying to be a heroine,” said Hermione Granger with the eastern sky brightening around her. “I shouldn’t ever have gone along with that entire line of thinking. There are just people who do what they can, whatever they can. And there are also people who don’t even try to do what they can, and yes, those people are doing something wrong. I’m not ever going to try to be a hero again. I’m not going to think in heroic terms if I can help it. But I won’t do any less than I can—or not a lot less, I mean, I’m only human.” Harry had never understood what was supposed to be mysterious about the Mona Lisa, but if he could have taken a picture of Hermione’s resigned/joyous smile just then, he had the sense that he could have looked at it for hours without understanding, and that Dumbledore could have read through it at a glance. “I won’t learn my lesson. I will be that stupid. I’ll go on trying to do most of what I can, or at least some of what I can—oh, you know what I mean. Even if it means risking my life again, so long as it’s worth the risk and isn’t being, you know, actually stupid. That’s my answer.” Hermione took a deep breath, her face resolute. “So, is there something I can do?”

Harry’s throat was choked. He reached into his pouch, and signed CL-O-A-K since he couldn’t speak, and drew forth the fuliginous spill of the Cloak of Invisibility, offering it to Hermione for the last time. Harry had to force the words from his throat. “This is the True Cloak of Invisibility,”

Harry said in almost a whisper, “the Deathly Hallow passed down from Ignotus Peverell to his heirs, the Potters. And now to you—”

“Harry!” Hermione said. Her hands flew up across her chest, as though to protect herself from the attacking gift. “You don’t have to do this!”

“I do have to do this. I’ve left the part of the path that lets me be a hero, I can’t risk myself adventuring, ever. And you… can.” Harry reached up the hand that wasn’t holding the Cloak, and wiped at his eyes. “This was made for you, I think. For the person you’re going to become.” A weapon to fight Death, in its form as the shadow of despair that falls on human minds and drains away their hope for the future; you will fight that, I expect, in more forms than just Dementors… “I do not loan you, my Cloak, but give you, unto

Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well forevermore.”

Slowly, Hermione reached out, and took hold of the Cloak, looking like she was trying not to cry herself. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I think… even though I’m done with the notion of heroing… I think that you always were, from the day I met you, my mysterious old wizard.”

“And I think,” Harry said, his own throat half-closed, “even if you deny that way of thinking now, I think that you were always destined to become, from the very beginning of the story, the hero.” Who must Hermione Granger become, what adult form must she take when she grows up, to pass through Time’s narrow keyhole? I don’t know the answer to that either, any more than I can imagine my own adult self. But her next few steps ahead seem clearer than mine…

Harry let the Cloak go, and it passed from his hands to hers .

“It sings,” Hermione said. “It’s singing to me.” She reached up, and wiped at her own eyes. “I can’t believe you did that, Harry.”

Harry’s other hand came out of his pouch, now bearing a long golden chain, at the end of which dangled a closed golden shell. “And this is your personal time machine.”

There was a pause, during which the planet Earth rotated a bit further in its orbit.

“What?” said Hermione.

“A Time-Turner, they call it. Hogwarts has a stock they give out to some students, I got one at the start of the year to treat my sleep disorder. It lets the user go backwards in time, in up to six one-hour increments, which I used to get six extra hours per day to study. And to vanish out of Potions class and so on. Don’t worry, a Time-Turner can’t change history or generate paradoxes that destroy the universe.”

“You were keeping up with me in lessons by studying six extra hours per day using a time machine .” Hermione Granger seemed to be having trouble with this concept for some unaccountable reason.

Harry made his face look puzzled. “Is there something odd about that?”

Hermione reached out and took the golden necklace. “I guess not by wizard standards, ” she said. For some reason her voice sounded rather sharp. She arranged the chain around her neck, placing the hourglass inside her shirt. “I do feel better now about keeping up with you, though, so thank you for that.”

Harry cleared his throat. “Also, since Voldemort wiped out the House of Monroe and then, so far as everyone believes, you avenged them by killing Voldemort, I got Amelia Bones to railroad a bill through what’s left of the Wizengamot, saying that Granger is now a Noble House of Britain.” “Excuse me?” said Hermione.

“That also makes you the only scion of a Noble House, which means that to get your legal majority you just need to pass your Ordinary Wizarding Levels, which I’ve set us up to do at the end of the summer so we’ll have some time to study first. If you’re okay with that, I mean.”

Hermione Granger was making some sort of high-pitched noise that would, in a less organic device, have indicated an engine malfunction. “ I have two months to study for my O.W.L.S? ”

“Hermione, it’s a test designed so that most fifteen-year-olds can pass. Ordinary fifteen year-olds. We can get a passing grade with a low thirdyear’s power level if we learn the right set of spells, and that’s all we need for our majorities. Though you’ll need to come to terms with getting Acceptable scores instead of your usual Outstandings.”

The high-pitched noises coming from Hermione Granger rose in pitch.

“Here’s your wand back.” Harry took it from his pouch. “And your mokeskin pouch, I made sure they put back everything that was there when you died.” That pouch Harry withdrew from a normal pocket of his robes, since he was reluctant to put a bag of holding inside a bag of holding no matter what was supposed to be harmless so long as both devices had been crafted observing all safety precautions.