Eliezer Yudkowsky: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Going by heredity, alter-Harry would have been in Gryffindor like his parents, and the two of you wouldn’t have become friends. Though James Potter and Lily Evans were the Head Boy and Head Girl of Hogwarts back

in their day, so he wouldn’t have been that bad.”

“I can just imagine it,” Hermione said. “Harry James Potter, Sorted into Gryffindor, aspiring Quidditch player—”

“No. Just no.”

“Remembered by history as the sidekick of Hermione Jean Granger, who’d send out Mr. Potter to get into trouble for her, and then solve the mystery from the library by reading books and using her incredible memory.”

“You’re really enjoying this alternate universe, aren’t you.”

“Maybe he’d be best mates with Ron Weasley, the smartest boy in Gryffindor, and they’d fight side by side in my army in Defense class, and afterwards help each other with their homework—”

“Okay, enough, this is starting to creep me out.”

“Sorry,” Hermione said, though she was still smiling to herself, appearing rapt in some private vision.

“Apology accepted,” Harry said dryly.

The Sun rose a little further in the sky.

After a while, Hermione spoke. “ Do you suppose we’ll fall in love with each other later on?”

“I don’t know any better than you do, Hermione. But why does it have to be about that? Seriously, why does it always have to be about that? Maybe when we’re older we’ll fall in love, and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll stay in love, and maybe we won’t.” Harry turned his head slightly, the Sun was hot on his cheek and he wasn’t wearing sunscreen. “No matter how it goes, we shouldn’t try to force our lives into a pattern. I think when people try to force patterns onto this sort of thing, that’s when they end up unhappy.”

“No forced patterns?” Hermione said. Her eyes had taken on a mischievous look. “That sounds like a more complicated way of saying no rules . Which I guess seems a lot more reasonable to me than it would’ve at the start of this year. If I’m going to be a Sparkling Unicorn Princess and have my own time machine, I might as well give up on rules, I suppose.”

“I’m not saying that rules are always bad, especially when they actually fit people, instead of them being blindly imitated like Quidditch. But weren’t you the one who rejected the ‘hero’ pattern in favor of just doing the things she could?”

“I suppose so.” Hermione turned her head again to gaze down at the grounds below Hogwarts, for the Sun was too bright to look at now— though, Harry thought, Hermione’s retinas would always heal now, it was safe for her alone to look directly into the light. “You said, Harry, that you thought I was always destined to be the hero. I’ve been considering, and I suspect you’re completely wrong. If this had been meant to be, things would’ve been a lot easier all round. Just doing the things you can do— you have to make that happen, you have to choose it, over and over again.”

“That might not conflict with your being a destined hero,” Harry said, thinking of compatibilist theories of free will, and prophecies that he must not look upon in order to fulfill. “But we can talk about that later.”

“You have to choose it,” Hermione repeated. She pushed herself up on her hands, then popped herself backwards and onto the rooftop, rising to her feet in a smooth motion. “Just like I’m choosing to do this.”

“No kissing!” Harry said, scrambling to his feet and preparing to dodge; though the realization came to him that the Girl-Who-Revived would be much, much faster.

“I won’t try to kiss you again, Mr. Potter. Not until you ask me, if you ever do. But there are all these warm feelings bubbling up inside me and I feel like I might burst if I don’t do something, though it does now occur to me that it’s unhealthy if girls don’t know any way of expressing gratitude to boys besides kissing them.” Hermione took out her wand and offered it crosswise, in the position she’d used to swear her oath of fealty to House Potter before the Wizengamot.

“Oh hell no,” Harry said. “Do you realise what it took to get you out of that oath last time—”

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, you. I wasn’t about to swear fealty to your House again. You’ve got to start trusting me to be sensible if you’re going to be my mysterious young wizard. Now please hold out your wand.”

Slowly, Harry took out the Elder Wand and crossed it with Hermione’s ten-and-three-quarter-inches of vinewood, forcing down a last worry about her choosing the wrong thing. “Can you at least not say anything about ‘until death takes me’, because did I mention I have the Philosopher’s Stone now? Or anything about ‘the end of the world and its magic’? I’m a lot more nervous around phrases like that than I used to be.”

Upon a roof floored in square stony tiles, the brilliant morning Sun blazes down upon two not-really-children-anymore, both in blue-fringed black robes, facing each other across crossed wands. One has brown eyes beneath chaotic chestnut curls, and radiates an aura of strength and beauty that is not magic only; the other has green eyes under glasses, with messy black hair above a recently inflamed scar. Below, a stone tower nobody remembers seeing from ground level stretches downwards into the broad base of the castle Hogwarts. Far beneath them are visible the green hills, and the lake. In the distance a huge red-and-black line of railcars and an engine, appearing tiny from this height, a train neither Muggle nor fully magical. The sky is nearly unclouded, but for faint tinges of orange-white where wisps of moisture reflect the sunlight. A light breeze carries the crisp chill of dawn, and the dampness of morning; but the huge blazing golden globe is now risen high above the horizon, and its incandescence casts warmth on everything it touches.

“Well, maybe after this you’ll be less nervous,” the hero says to her enigmatic wizard. She knows she doesn’t know the whole story, but the fragment of truth that she does hold shines bright like sunlight within her, casting warmth on her insides the way the Sun warms her face. “I do choose this, now.”

Upon my life and magic I swear friendship to Harry Potter,

To help him and trust in him,

To stand with him and, um, stand by him, And sometimes go where he can’t go,

’Till the day that death takes me for real, if it ever does, I mean,

And if the world or its magic ends, we’ll deal with that together.

The following was posted at the end of Chapter 113:

This is your final exam.

You have 60 hours.

Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death, despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.

Ifaviablesolutionispostedbefore*12:01AMPacificTime*(8:01AMUTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015, the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.Keep in mind the following:

1. Harry must succeed via his own efforts. The cavalry is not coming. Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game.

2. Harry may only use capabilities the story has already shown him to have; he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.

3. Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good; the Dark Lord’sutility function cannot be changed by talking to him.