Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

And the thought had occurred to him... Harry didn't know if this was a valid way to think about the universe, he didn't know anything any more, but it seemed possible...

That...

Not enough interesting things had happened to him over the last week.

When he was done eating breakfast, Harry planned to go straight up to his room and hide in the bottom level of his trunk and not talk to anyone until 10:03am.

And that was when Harry saw the Weasley twins walking toward him. One of them was carrying something concealed behind his back.

He should scream and run away.

He should scream and run away.

Whatever this was... it could very well be...

...the grand finale...

He really should just scream and run away.

With a resigned feeling that the universe would come and get him anyway , Harry continued slicing at the pancake with his fork and knife. He couldn't muster the energy. That was the sad truth. Harry knew now how people felt when they were tired of running, tired of trying to escape fate, and they just fell to the ground and let the horrifically befanged and tentacled demons of the darkest abyss drag them off to their unspeakable destiny.

The Weasley twins drew closer.

And yet closer.

Harry ate another bite of pancake.

The Weasley twins arrived, grinning brightly.

"Hello, Fred," Harry said dully. One of the twins nodded. "Hello, George." The other twin nodded.

"You sound tired," said George.

"You should cheer up," said Fred.

"Look what we got you!"

And George took, from behind Fred's back -

A cake with twelve flaming candles.

There was a pause, as the Ravenclaw table stared at them.

"That's not right," said someone. "Harry Potter was born on the thirty-first of Jul-"

" HE IS COMING ," said a huge hollow voice that cut through all conversation like a sword of ice. " THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY - "

Dumbledore had leapt out of his throne and run straight over the Head Table and seized hold of the woman speaking those awful words, Fawkes had appeared in a flash, and all three of them vanished in a crack of fire.

There was a shocked pause...

...followed by heads turning in the direction of Harry Potter.

"I didn't do it," Harry said in a tired voice.

"That was a prophecy! " someone at the table hissed. "And I bet it's about you! "

Harry sighed.

He stood up from his seat, raised his voice, and said very loudly over the conversations that were starting up, " It's not about me! Obviously! I'm not coming here, I'm already here! "

Harry sat back down again.

The people who had been looking at him turned away again.

Someone else at the table said, "Then who is it about?"

And with a dull, leaden sensation, Harry realized who wasn't already at Hogwarts.

Call it a wild guess, but Harry had a feeling the undead Dark Lord would be showing up one of these days.

The conversation continued on around him.

"Not to mention, tear apart the very what? "

"I thought I heard Trelawney start to say something with an 'S' just before the Headmaster grabbed her."

"Like... soul? Sun?"

"If someone's going to tear apart the Sun we're really in trouble!"

That seemed rather unlikely to Harry, unless the world contained scary things which had heard of David Criswell's ideas about star lifting.

"So," Harry said in tired tones, "this happens every Sunday breakfast, does it?"

"No," said a student who might have been in his seventh year, frowning grimly. "It doesn't."

Harry shrugged. "Whatever. Anyone want some birthday cake?"

"But it's not your birthday!" said the same student who'd objected last time.

That was the cue for Fred and George to start laughing, of course.

Even Harry managed a weary smile.

As the first slice was served to him, Harry said, "I've had a really long week ."

And Harry was sitting in the cavern level of his trunk, slid shut and locked so no one could get in, a blanket pulled over his head, waiting for the week to be over.

10:01.

10:02.

10:03, but just to be sure...

10:04 and the first week was done.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief, and gingerly pulled the blanket off of his head.

A few moments later, he had emerged into the bright sunlit air of his dorm.

Shortly after, and he was in the Ravenclaw common room. A few people looked at him, but no one said anything or tried to talk to him.

Harry found a nice wide writing desk, pulled back a comfortable chair, and sat down. From his pouch he drew a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Mum and Dad had told Harry in no uncertain terms that while they understood his enthusiasm for leaving home and getting away from his parents, he was to write them every week without fail , just so that they knew he was alive, unharmed, and not in prison.

Harry stared down at the blank sheet of paper. Let's see...

After leaving his parents at the train station, he'd...

...gotten acquainted with a boy raised by Darth Vader, become friends with the three most infamous pranksters in Hogwarts, met Hermione, then there'd been the Incident with the Sorting Hat... Monday he'd been given a time machine to treat his sleep disorder, gotten a legendary invisibility cloak from an unknown benefactor, rescued seven Hufflepuffs by staring down five scary older boys one of whom had threatened to break his finger, realized that he possessed a mysterious dark side, learned to cast Frigideiro in Charms class, and gotten started on his rivalry with Hermione... Tuesday had introduced Astronomy taught by Professor Aurora Sinistra who was nice, and History of Magic taught by a ghost who ought to be exorcised and replaced with a tape recorder... Wednesday, he'd been pronounced the Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom... Thursday, let's not even think about Thursday... Friday, the Incident in Potions Class, followed by his blackmailing the Headmaster, followed by the Defense Professor having him beaten up in class, followed by the Defense Professor turning out to be the most awesome human being who still walked the face of the Earth... Saturday he'd lost a bet and gone on his first date and started redeeming Draco... and then this morning Professor Trelawney's unheard prophecy might or might not indicate that an immortal Dark Lord was about to attack Hogwarts.

Harry mentally organized his material, and started writing.

Dear Mum and Dad:

Hogwarts is lots of fun. I learned how to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Charms class, and I met a girl named Hermione Granger who reads faster than I do.

I'd better leave it at that.

Your loving son,

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

A small study room, near but not in the Ravenclaw dorm, one of the many many unused rooms of Hogwarts. Gray stone the floors, red brick the walls, dark stained wood the ceiling, four glowing glass globes set into the four walls of the room. A circular table that looked like a wide slab of black marble set on thick black marble legs for columns, but which had proved to be very light (weight and mass both) and wasn't difficult to pick up and move around if necessary. Two comfortably cushioned chairs which had seemed at first to be locked to the floor in inconvenient places, but which would, the two of them had finally discovered, scoot around to where you stood as soon as you leaned over in a posture that looked like you were about to sit down.

There also seemed to be a number of bats flying around the room.

That was where, future historians would one day record - if the whole project ever actually amounted to anything - the scientific study of magic had begun, with two young first-year Hogwarts students.