"You're, better, than, me."
Harry started to raise himself and Derrick put a foot on his chest and shoved him back down to the mat.
The world was becoming transparent as crystal. Lines of action and their consequences stretched out before him in utter clarity. The fool wouldn't be expecting him to strike back, a quick hit in the groin would stun him long enough for -
"Try again," said Professor Quirrell and with a sudden sharp motion Harry rolled and sprang to his feet and whirled on where stood his real enemy, the Defense Professor -
Professor Quirrell said, "You have no patience."
Harry faltered. His mind, well-honed in pessimism, drew a picture of a wizened old man with blood pouring from his mouth after Harry had ripped his tongue out -
A moment later, Derrick pushed Harry to the mat again and then sat down on him, sending Harry's breath whooshing out.
"Stop!" Harry screamed. "Please stop!"
"Better," said Professor Quirrell. "That even sounded sincere."
It had been. That was the horrible thing, the sickening thing, it had been sincere. Harry was panting rapidly, fear and cold anger both flushing through him -
"Lose," said Professor Quirrell.
"I, lose," Harry forced out.
"I like it," Derrick said from on top of him. "Lose some more."
Hands shoved Harry, sending him stumbling across the circle of older Slytherins to another set of hands that shoved him again. Harry had long since passed the point of trying not to cry, and was now just trying not to fall down.
"What are you, Potter?" said Derrick.
"A, l-loser, I lose, I give up, you win, you're b-better, than me, please stop -"
Harry tripped over a foot and went crashing to the ground, hands not quite able to catch himself. He was dazed for a moment, then began struggling to his feet again -
"Enough!" said Professor Quirrell's voice, sounding sharp enough to cut iron. "Step away from Mr. Potter!"
Harry saw the surprised looks on their faces. The chill in his blood, which had been flowing and ebbing, smiled in cold satisfaction.
Then Harry collapsed to the mat.
Professor Quirrell talked. There were gasps from the older Slytherins.
"And I believe the scion of Malfoy has something he wants to explain to you as well," finished Professor Quirrell.
Draco's voice started talking. His voice sounded almost as sharp as professor Quirrell's, it had acquired the same cadence Draco had used to imitate his father, and it was saying things like could have put Slytherin House in jeopardy and who knows how many allies in this school alone and total lack of awareness, never mind cunning and dull thugs, useful for nothing but lackeys and something in Harry's hindbrain, despite everything he knew, was designating Draco as an ally.
Harry ached all over, was probably bruised, his body felt cold, his mind utterly exhausted. He tried to think of Fawkes's song, but without the phoenix present he couldn't remember the melody and when he tried to imagine it he couldn't seem to think of anything except a bird chirping.
Then Draco stopped talking and Professor Quirrell told the older Slytherins they were dismissed, and Harry opened his eyes and struggled to sit up, "Wait," Harry said, forcing the words out, "there's something, I want, to say, to them -"
"Wait on Mr. Potter," Professor Quirrell said coldly to the departing Slytherins.
Harry swayed to his feet. He was careful not to look in the direction of his classmates. He didn't want to see how they were looking at him now. He didn't want to see their pity.
So instead Harry looked at the older Slytherins, who still seemed to be in a state of shock. They stared back at him. Dread was on their faces.
His dark side, when it was in control, had held to the imagination of this moment, and went on pretending to lose.
Harry said, "No one will -"
"Stop," said Professor Quirrell. "If that's what I think it is, please wait until after they're gone. They'll hear about it later. We all have our lessons to learn, Mr. Potter."
"All right," Harry said.
"You. Go."
The older Slytherins fled and the door closed behind them.
"No one's to take any revenge on them," Harry said hoarsely. "That's a request to anyone who considers themselves my friend. I had my lesson to learn, they helped me learn it, they had their lesson to learn too, it's over. If you tell this story, make sure you tell that part too."
Harry turned to look at Professor Quirrell.
"You lost," said Professor Quirrell, his voice gentle for the first time. It sounded strange coming from the professor, like his voice shouldn't even be able to do that.
Harry had lost. There had been moments when the cold anger had faded entirely, replaced by fear, and during those moments he'd begged the older Slytherins and he'd meant it...
"And are you yet alive?" said Professor Quirrell, still with that strange gentleness.
Harry managed to nod.
"Not all losing is like this," said Professor Quirrell. "There are compromises and negotiated surrenders. There are other ways to placate bullies. There is a whole art form to manipulating others by letting them be dominant over you. But first, losing must be thinkable. Will you remember how you lost?"
"Yes."
"Will you be able to lose?"
"I... think so..."
"I think so too." Professor Quirrell bowed so low that his thin hair almost touched the floor. "Congratulations, Harry Potter, you win."
There was no single source, no first mover, the applause started all at once like a massive thunderclap.
Harry's couldn't keep the shock from his face. He risked a glance at his classmates, and he saw their faces showing not pity but awe. The applause was coming from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor and Hufflepuff and even Slytherin, probably because Draco Malfoy was applauding too. Some students were standing up from their chairs and half of Gryffindor was standing on their desks.
So Harry stood there, swaying, letting their respect wash over him, feeling stronger, and maybe even a little healed.
Professor Quirrell waited for the applause to die away. It took quite a while.
"Surprised, Mr. Potter?" Professor Quirrell said. His voice sounded amused. "You have just found out that the real world does not always work like your worst nightmares. Yes, if you had been some poor anonymous boy being abused, then they would probably have respected you less afterward, pitied you even as they comforted you from their loftier perches. That is human nature, I'm afraid. But you they already know for a figure of power. And they saw you confront your fear and keep confronting it, even though you could have walked away at any time. Did you think less of me when I told you that I had deliberately endured being spat upon?"
Harry felt a burning sensation in his throat and frantically clamped down. He didn't trust this miraculous respect enough to start crying again in front of it.
"Your extraordinary achievement in my class deserves an extraordinary reward, Harry Potter. Please accept it with my compliments on behalf of my House, and remember from this day forward that not all Slytherins are alike. There are Slytherins, and then there are Slytherins." Professor Quirrell was smiling quite broadly as he said this. "Fifty-one points to Ravenclaw."
There was a shocked pause and then pandemonium broke out among the Ravenclaw students, howling and whistling and cheering.
(And in the same moment Harry felt something wrong about that, Professor McGonagall had been right, there should have been consequences, there should have been a cost and a price to be paid, you couldn't just put everything back the way it was like that -)
But Harry saw the elated faces in Ravenclaw and knew he couldn't possibly say no.
His brain made a suggestion. It was a good suggestion. Harry could not even believe his brain was still keeping him upright, let alone producing good suggestions.
"Professor Quirrell," Harry said, as clearly as he could through his burning throat. "You are everything a memb
er of your House should be, and I think you must be just what Salazar Slytherin had in mind when he helped found Hogwarts. I thank you and your House," Draco was very slightly nodding and subtly turning his finger, keep going, "and I think this calls for three cheers for Slytherin. With me, everyone?" Harry paused. "Huzzah!" Only a few people managed to join in on the first try. "Huzzah!" This time most of Ravenclaw was in on it. "Huzzah!" That was almost all of Ravenclaw, a scattering of Hufflepuffs and around a quarter of Gryffindor.
Draco's hand moved into a small, quick, thumbs-up gesture.
Most of the Slytherins had expressions of sheer shock. A few were staring at Professor Quirrell in wonder. Blaise Zabini was looking at Harry with a calculating, intrigued expression.
Professor Quirrell bowed. "Thank you, Harry Potter," he said, still with that broad smile. He turned to the class. "Now, believe it or not, we still have half an hour left in this session, and that is enough to introduce the Simple Shield. Mr. Potter, of course, is going off and taking a well-earned rest."
"I can -"
"Idiot," Professor Quirrell said fondly. The class was already laughing. "Your classmates can teach you afterward, or I'll tutor you privately if that's what it takes. But right now, you're going through the third door from the left in the back of the stage, where you will find a bed, an assortment of exceptionally tasty snacks, and some extremely light reading from the Hogwarts library. You may not take anything else with you, particularly not your textbooks. Now go."
Harry went.
Chapter 20: Bayes's Theorem
That which can be destroyed by the Rowling should be.
Harry stared up at the gray ceiling of the small room, from where he lay on the portable yet soft bed that had been placed there. He'd eaten quite a lot of Professor Quirrell's snacks - intricate confections of chocolate and other substances, dusted with sparkling sprinkles and jeweled with tiny sugar gems, looking highly expensive and proving, in fact, to be quite tasty. Harry hadn't felt the least bit guilty about it either, this he had earned.
He hadn't tried to sleep. Harry had a feeling that he wouldn't like what happened when he closed his eyes.
He hadn't tried to read. He wouldn't have been able to focus.
Funny how Harry's brain just seemed to keep on running and running, never shutting down no matter how tired it got. It got stupider but it refused to switch off.
But there was, there really and truly was a feeling of triumph.
Anti-Dark-Lord-Harry program, +1 point didn't begin to cover it. Harry wondered what the Sorting Hat would say now, if he could put it on his head.
No wonder Professor Quirrell had accused Harry of heading down the path of a Dark Lord. Harry had been too slow on the uptake, he should have seen the parallel right away -
Understand that the Dark Lord did not win that day. His goal was to learn martial arts, and yet he left without a single lesson.
Harry had entered the Potions class with the intent to learn Potions. He'd left without a single lesson.
And Professor Quirrell had heard, and understood with frightening precision, and reached out and yanked Harry off that path, the path that led to his becoming a copy of You-Know-Who.
There was a knock at the door. "Classes are over," said Professor Quirrell's quiet voice.
Harry approached the door and found himself suddenly nervous. Then the tension diminished as he heard Professor Quirrell's footsteps moving away from the door.
What on Earth is that about? Is it what's going to get him fired eventually?
Harry opened the door, and saw that Professor Quirrell was now waiting several bodylengths away.
Does Professor Quirrell feel it too?
They walked across the now-deserted stage to Professor Quirrell's desk, which Professor Quirrell leaned on; and Harry, as before, stopped short of the dais.
"So," Professor Quirrell said. There was a friendly sense about him somehow, even though his face still kept its usual seriousness. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Potter?"
I have a mysterious dark side. But Harry couldn't just blurt it out like that.
"Professor Quirrell," Harry said, "am I off the path to becoming a Dark Lord, now?"
Professor Quirrell looked at Harry. "Mr. Potter," he said solemnly, with only a slight grin, "a word of advice. There is such a thing as a performance which is too perfect. Real people who have just been beaten and humiliated for fifteen minutes do not stand up and graciously forgive their enemies. It is the sort of thing you do when you're trying to convince everyone you're not Dark, not -"
"I can't believe this! You can't have every possible observation confirm your theory!"
"And that was a trifle too much indignation."
"What on Earth do I have to do to convince you?"
"To convince me that you harbor no ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord?" said Professor Quirrell, now looking outright amused. "I suppose you could just raise your right hand."
"What?" Harry said blankly. "But I can raise my right hand whether or not I -" Harry stopped, feeling rather stupid.
"Indeed," said Professor Quirrell. "You can just as easily do it either way. There is nothing you can do to convince me because I would know that was exactly what you were trying to do. And if we are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is barely possible that perfectly good people exist even though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable that someone would be beaten for fifteen minutes and then stand up and feel a great surge of kindly forgiveness for his attackers. On the other hand it is less improbable that a young child would imagine this as the role to play in order to convince his teacher and classmates that he is not the next Dark Lord. The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable."
Harry blinked. He'd just had the dichotomy between the representativeness heuristic and the Bayesian definition of evidence explained to him by a wizard.
"But then again," said Professor Quirrell, "anyone can want to impress their friends. That need not be Dark. So without it being any kind of admission, Mr. Potter, tell me honestly. What thought was in your mind at the moment when you forbade any vengeance? Was that thought a true impulse to forgiveness? Or was it an awareness of how your classmates would see the act?"
Sometimes we make our own phoenix song.
But Harry didn't say it out loud. It was clear that Professor Quirrell wouldn't believe him, and would probably respect him less for trying to utter such a transparent lie.
After a few moments of silence, Professor Quirrell smiled with satisfaction. "Believe it or not, Mr. Potter," said the professor, "you need not fear me for having discovered your secret. I am not going to tell you to give up on becoming the next Dark Lord. If I could turn back the hands of time and somehow remove that ambition from the mind of my child self, the self of this present time would not benefit from the alteration. For as long as I thought that was my goal, it drove me to study and learn and refine myself and become stronger. We become what we are meant to be by following our desires wherever they lead. That is the insight of Salazar. Ask me to show you to the library section which holds those same books I read as a thirteen-year-old, and I will happily lead the way."
"For the love of crap," Harry said, and sat down on the hard marble floor, and then lay back on the floor, staring up at the distant arches of the ceiling. It was as close as he could come to collapsing in despair without hurting himself.
"Still too much indignation," observed Professor Quirrell. Harry wasn't looking but he could hear the suppressed laughter in the voice.
Then Harry realized.
"Actually, I think I know what's confusing you here," Harry said. "That was what I wanted to talk to you about, in fact. Professor Quirrell, I think that what you're seeing is my mysterious dark side."
There was a pause.
"Your... dark side..."
Harry sat up. Professor Quirrel
l was regarding him with one of the strangest expressions Harry had seen on anyone's face, let alone anyone as dignified as Professor Quirrell.
"It happens when I get angry," Harry explained. "My blood runs cold, everything gets cold, everything seems perfectly clear... In retrospect it's been with me for a while - in my first year of Muggle school, someone tried to take away my ball during recess and I held it behind my back and kicked him in the solar plexus which I'd read was a weak point, and the other kids didn't bother me after that. And I bit a math teacher when she wouldn't accept my dominance. But it's only just recently that I've been under enough stress to notice that it's an actual, you know, mysterious dark side, and not just an anger management problem like the school psychologist said. And I don't have any super magical powers when it happens, that was one of the first things I checked."
Professor Quirrell rubbed his nose. "Let me think about this," he said.
Harry waited in silence for a full minute. He used that time to stand up, which was more difficult than he had expected.
"Well," Professor Quirrell said after a while. "I suppose there was something you could say that would convince me."
"I have already guessed that my dark side is really just another part of me and that the answer isn't to never become angry but to learn to stay in control by accepting it, I'm not dumb or anything and I've seen this story enough times to know where it's going, but it's hard and you seem like the person to help me."
"Well... yes... very perspicacious of you, Mr. Potter, I must say... that side of you is, as you seem to have already surmised, your intent to kill, which as you say is a part of you..."
"And needs to be trained," Harry said, completing the pattern.
"And needs to be trained, yes." That strange expression was still on Professor Quirrell's face. "Mr. Potter, if you truly do not wish to be the next Dark Lord, then what was the ambition which the Sorting Hat tried to convince you to abandon, the ambition for which you were Sorted into Slytherin?"
"I was Sorted into Ravenclaw!"
"Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell, now with a much more usual-looking dry smile, "I know you are accustomed to everyone around you being a fool, but please do not mistake me for one of them. The likelihood that the Sorting Hat would play its first prank in eight hundred years while it was upon your head is so small as to not be worth considering. I suppose it is barely possible that you snapped your fingers and invented some simple and clever way to defeat the anti-tampering spells upon the Hat, though I myself can think of no such method. But by far the most probable explanation is that Dumbledore decided he was not happy with the Hat's choice for the Boy-Who-Lived. This is evident to anyone with the tiniest smidgin of common sense, so your secret is safe at Hogwarts."
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 33