Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Harry's smile grew chillier, and he regarded the black-robed man who thought he was going to read Harry's mind.

  And then Harry turned into someone else entirely, someone who had seemed appropriate to the occasion.

  ...in a white room, windowless, featureless, sitting before a desk, facing an expressionless man in formal robes of solid black.

  Kimball Kinnison regarded the black-robed man who thought he was going to read the mind of a Second-Stage Lensman of the Galactic Patrol.

  To say that Kimball Kinnison was confident of the outcome would be an understatement. He had been trained by Mentor of Arisia, the most powerful mind known to this or any other universe, and the mere wizard sitting across from him would see precisely what the Gray Lensman wanted him to see...

  ...the mind of the boy he was currently disguised as, an innocent child named Harry Potter.

  "I'm ready," said Kimball Kinnison in nervous tones that were exactly appropriate for an eleven-year-old boy.

  "Legilimens," said the black-robed wizard.

  There was a pause.

  The black-robed wizard blinked, as if he'd seen something so shocking that it had been enough to make even his eyelids move. His voice wasn't quite toneless as he said, "The Boy-Who-Lived has a mysterious dark side?"

  The heat slowly crept up into Harry's cheeks.

  "Well," the man said. His face had now settled back into perfect calm. "Excuse me. Mr. Potter, it is good to know your advantages, but that is not the same as being wildly overconfident in them. You may indeed be able to learn Occlumency at eleven years of age. This astounds me. I had thought Mr. Dumbledore was pretending to be insane again. Your dissociative talent is so strong that I am surprised to find no other signs of childhood abuse, and you may become a perfect Occlumens in time. But there is a considerable difference between that and expecting to put up a successful Occlumency barrier on your first attempt. That is merely ridiculous. Did you feel anything as I read your mind?"

  Harry shook his head, now blushing furiously.

  "Then pay closer attention next time. The goal is not to create a perfect image on your first day of lessons. The goal is to learn where your surfaces are. Prepare yourself."

  Harry tried to pretend to be Kimball Kinnison again, tried to pay more attention, but his thoughts were a little scattered and he was suddenly aware of all the things he shouldn't be thinking about...

  Oh, this was going to suck.

  Harry gritted his teeth. At least the instructor would be Obliviated afterward.

  "Legilimens."

  There was a pause -

  ...in a white room, windowless, featureless, sitting before a desk, facing an expressionless man in formal robes of solid black.

  It was their fourth day, on a Sunday evening. When you paid this much, you got your sessions any darned time you wanted, never mind the concept of weekends.

  "Hello, Mr. Potter," the telepath said tonelessly, having cast the full suite of privacy spells.

  "Hello, Mr. Bester," Harry said wearily. "Let's just get the initial shock out of the way, shall we?"

  "You managed to surprise me?" the man said, now sounding slightly interested. "Well then." He pointed his wand and stared into Harry's eyes. "Legilimens."

  There was a pause, and then the black-robed wizard jerked as if someone had touched him with a cattle prod.

  "The Dark Lord is alive?" he choked. His eyes were suddenly wild. "Dumbledore turns himself invisible and sneaks into girls' dorm rooms?"

  Harry sighed and looked down at his watch. In about another three seconds...

  "So," the man said. He hadn't quite recovered his tonelessness. "You genuinely believe you're going to discover the secret rules of magic and become all-powerful."

  "That's right," Harry said evenly, still looking at his watch. "I'm that overconfident."

  "I wonder. It seems the Sorting Hat thinks you'll be the next Dark Lord."

  "And you know I'm trying pretty hard not to be, and you saw that we already had a long discussion about whether you were willing to teach me Occlumency, and in the end you decided to do it, so can we just get this over with?"

  "All right," said the man exactly six seconds later, same as last time. "Prepare yourself." He paused, and then said, his voice rather wistful, "Though I do wish I could remember that trick with the gold and silver."

  Harry was finding himself very disturbed by how reproducible human thoughts were when you reset people back to the same initial conditions and exposed them to the same stimuli. It was dispelling illusions that a good reductionist wasn't supposed to have in the first place.

  Harry was in a rather bad mood as he stomped out of his Herbology class the next Monday morning.

  Hermione was seething alongside him.

  The other children were still inside, a bit slow to assemble their things because they were gibbering excitedly to each other about Ravenclaw winning the year's second Quidditch match.

  It seemed that last night after dinner, a girl had flown around on a broomstick for thirty minutes and then caught some sort of giant mosquito. There were other facts about what had happened during this match, but they were irrelevant.

  Harry had missed this exciting sports event due to his Occlumency lesson, and also having a life.

  He had then avoided all conversations in the Ravenclaw dorm, weren't Quieting Charms and magical trunks wonderful. He had eaten breakfast at the Gryffindor table.

  But Harry couldn't avoid Herbology, and the Ravenclaws had talked about it before class, and after class, and during class, until Harry had looked up from the baby furcot whose diaper he was changing, and announced loudly that some of them were trying to learn about plants and Snitches didn't grow on anything so could they all please shut up about Quidditch. Everyone else present had given him shocked looks, except Hermione, who'd looked like she wanted to applaud, and Professor Sprout, who had awarded him a point for Ravenclaw.

  A point for Ravenclaw.

  One point.

  The seven idiots on their idiot brooms playing their idiot game had earned one hundred and ninety points for Ravenclaw.

  It seemed that Quidditch scores added directly onto the House points total.

  In other words, catching a golden mosquito was worth 150 House points.

  Harry couldn't even imagine what he would have to do to earn one hundred and fifty House points.

  Besides, y'know, rescuing a hundred and fifty Hufflepuffs, or coming up with fifteen ideas as good as putting protective shells on time machines, or inventing one thousand five hundred creative ways to kill people, or being Hermione Granger for the entire year.

  "We should kill them," Harry said to Hermione, who was walking beside him with an equally offended air.

  "Who?" said Hermione. "The Quidditch team?"

  "I was thinking of everyone involved in any way with Quidditch anywhere, but the Ravenclaw team would be a start, yes."

  Hermione's lips were pursed disapprovingly. "You do know that killing people is wrong, Harry?"

  "Yes," Harry said.

  "Okay, just checking," Hermione said. "Let's get the Seeker first. I've read some Agatha Christie mysteries, do you know how we can get her onto a train?"

  "Two students plotting murder," said a dry voice. "How shocking."

  From around a nearby corner strolled a man in lightly spotted robes, his greasy hair falling long and unkempt about his shoulders. Deadly danger seemed to radiate out from him, filling the hallway with improperly mixed potions and accidental falls and people dying in bed of what the Aurors would rule to be natural causes.

  Without thinking about it at all, Harry stepped in front of Hermione.

  There was an intake of breath from behind him, and then a moment later Hermione brushed past and stepped in front of him. "Run, Harry!" she said. "Boys shouldn't have to be in danger."

  Severus Snape smiled mirthlessly. "Amusing. I request a moment of your time, Potter, if you can tear yourself away from your flirtations
with Miss Granger."

  Suddenly there was a very worried look on Hermione's face. She turned to Harry and opened her mouth, then paused, looking distressed.

  "Oh, don't worry, Miss Granger," said Severus's silky voice. "I promise to return your beau unmaimed." His smile vanished. "Now Potter and I are about to go off and have a private conversation, just by ourselves. I hope it is clear that you are not invited, but just in case, consider that an order from a Hogwarts professor. I'm sure a good little girl like you won't disobey."

  And Severus turned and walked back around the corner. "Coming, Potter?" his voice said.

  "Um," Harry said to Hermione. "Can I just sort of go off and follow him and let you work out what I should say to make sure you're not all worried and offended?"

  "No," Hermione said, her voice trembling.

  Severus's laughter echoed from around the corner.

  Harry bowed his head. "Sorry," he said lowly, "really," and he went off after the Potions Master.

  "So," Harry said. There were no other sounds now but two pairs of legs, the long and the short, padding across a random stone corridor. The Potions Master was striding quickly but not too fast for Harry to keep up, and insofar as Harry could apply the concept of directionality to Hogwarts, they were moving away from the frequented areas. "What's this about?"

  "I don't suppose you could explain," Severus said dryly, "why the two of you were plotting to murder Cho Chang?"

  "I don't suppose you could explain," Harry said dryly, "in your capacity as an official of the Hogwarts school system, why catching a golden mosquito is deemed an academic accomplishment worthy of a hundred and fifty House points?"

  A smile crossed Severus's lips. "Dear me, and I thought you were supposed to be perceptive. Are you truly so incapable of understanding your classmates, Potter, or do you dislike them too much to try? If Quidditch scores did not count toward the House Cup then none of them would care about House points at all. It would merely be an obscure contest for students like you and Miss Granger."

  It was a shockingly good answer.

  And that shock brought Harry's mind fully awake.

  In retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising that Severus understood his students, understood them very well indeed.

  He had been reading their minds.

  And...

  ...the book said that a successful Legilimens was extremely rare, rarer than a perfect Occlumens, because almost no one had enough mental discipline.

  Mental discipline?

  Harry had collected stories about a man who routinely lost his temper in class and blew up at young children.

  ...but this same man, when Harry had spoken of the Dark Lord still being alive, had responded instantly and perfectly - reacting in precisely the way that someone completely ignorant would react.

  The man stalked about Hogwarts with the air of an assassin, radiating danger...

  ...which was exactly not what a real assassin should do. Real assassins should look like meek little accountants until they killed you.

  He was the Head of House for proud and aristocratic Slytherin, and he wore a robe with spotted stains from bits of potions and ingredients, which two minutes of magic could have removed.

  Harry noticed that he was confused.

  And his threat estimate of the Head of House Slytherin shot up astronomically.

  Dumbledore had seemed to think Severus was his, and there'd been nothing to contradict that; the Potions Master had been "scary but not abusive", as promised. So, Harry had reasoned earlier, this was Fellowship business. If Severus had been planning harm, surely he wouldn't have come to get Harry in front of Hermione, a witness, when he could have simply waited for some time when Harry was alone...

  Harry quietly bit his lip.

  "I once knew a boy who truly adored Quidditch," said Severus Snape. "He was an utter pillock. Just as you and I would expect, we two."

  "What is this?" Harry said slowly.

  "Patience, Potter."

  Severus turned his head, and then glided with his assassin's bearing into a nearby opening in the corridor walls, a smaller and narrower hallway leading off.

  Harry followed him, wondering if it would be smarter to simply run away.

  They turned and made another turn, and came to a dead end, a simple blank wall. If Hogwarts had actually been built, rather than conjured or summoned or birthed or whatever, Harry would have had some sharp words for the architect about paying people to build hallways that didn't go anywhere.

  "Quietus," said Severus, and a few other things as well.

  Harry leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and watched Severus's face.

  "Looking me in the eyes, Potter?" said Severus Snape. "Your Occlumency lessons cannot have progressed far enough for you to block Legilimency. But then perhaps they have progressed far enough for you to detect it. Since I cannot know otherwise, I will not risk trying." The man smiled thinly. "And the same will hold for Dumbledore, I think. Which is why we are now having this little talk."

  Harry's eyes widened involuntarily.

  "To begin with," Severus said, eyes glittering, "I should like you to promise not to speak of our conversations to anyone. So far as the school is concerned, we are discussing your Potions homework. Whether or not they believe that is unimportant. So far as Dumbledore and McGonagall are concerned, I am violating Draco Malfoy's confidences in me, and neither of us think it proper to speak further of the particulars."

  Harry's brain tried to calculate the ramifications and implications of this and ran out of swap space.

  "Well?" said the Potions Master.

  "All right," Harry said slowly. It was hard to see how having a conversation and being unable to tell anyone could be more constraining than not having it, in which case you also couldn't tell anyone the contents. "I promise."

  Severus was watching Harry intently. "You said once in the Headmaster's office that you would not tolerate bullying or abuse. And so I wonder, Harry Potter. Just how much do you resemble your father?"

  "Unless we're talking about Michael Verres-Evans," Harry said, "the answer is that I know very little about James Potter."

  Severus nodded, as though to himself. "There is a fifth-year Slytherin. A boy named Lesath Lestrange. He is being bullied by Gryffindors. I am... constrained, in my ability to deal with such situations. You could help him, perhaps. If you wished. I am not asking you for a favor, and will not owe you one. It is simply an opportunity to do as you will."

  Harry stared at Severus, thinking.

  "Wondering if it's a trap?" said Severus, a faint smile crossing his lips. "It is not. It is a test. Call it curiosity on my part. But Lesath's troubles are real, as are my own difficulties in intervening."

  That was the trouble with other people knowing you were a good guy. Even if you knew they knew, you still couldn't ignore the bait.

  And if his father had protected students from bullies too... it didn't matter if Harry knew why Severus had told him. It still made him feel warm inside, and proud, and made it impossible to walk away.

  "Fine," Harry said. "Tell me about Lesath. Why is he being bullied?"

  Severus's face lost the faint smile. "You think there are reasons, Potter?"

  "Perhaps not," Harry said quietly. "But the thought had occurred to me that he might have pushed some unimportant mudblood girl down the stairs."

  "Lesath Lestrange," Severus said, his voice now cold, "is the son of Bellatrix Black, the most fanatic and evil servant of the Dark Lord. Lesath is the acknowledged bastard of Rabastan Lestrange. Shortly after the Dark Lord's death, Bellatrix and Rabastan and Rabastan's brother Rodolphus were captured while torturing Alice and Frank Longbottom. All three are in Azkaban for life. The Longbottoms were driven insane by repeated Cruciatus and remain in St. Mungo's incurable ward. Is any of that a good reason to bully him, Potter?"

  "It is no reason at all," Harry said, still quietly. "And Lesath himself has done no wrong that you know?"

>   The faint smile crossed Severus's lips again. "He is no more a saint than anyone else. But he has pushed no mudblood girls down the stairs, not that I ever heard."

  "Or saw in his mind," said Harry.

  Severus's expression was chill. "I did not invade his privacy, Potter. I looked within the Gryffindors, rather. He is simply a convenient target for their little satisfactions."

  A cold wash of anger ran down Harry's spine, and he had to remind himself that Severus might not be a trustworthy source of information.

  "And you think," Harry said, "that an intervention by Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, might prove effective."

  "Indeed," said Severus Snape, and told Harry when and where the Gryffindors were planning their next little game.

  There is a main hallway running through the middle of Hogwarts's second floor on the north-south axis, and near the center of this hallway there is an opening into a short corridor which goes a dozen paces back before turning at a right angle, making an L-shape, and then goes a dozen paces more before it ends at a bright, wide window, looking out from three stories above upon the light drizzle falling over the east grounds of Hogwarts. Standing by the window you can hear nothing of the main hallway, and no one in the hallway would hear what went on by the window. If you think there is anything odd about this, you haven't been in Hogwarts very long.

  Four boys in red-trimmed robes are laughing, and a boy in green-trimmed robes is screaming and grabbing frantically onto the edges of the opened window with his hands, as the four boys make as though to push him out. It's just a joke, of course, and besides, a fall from that height wouldn't kill a wizard. All good fun. If you think there is anything odd about this -

  "What are you doing?" says a sixth boy's voice.

  The four boys in red-trimmed robes spin around with sudden starts, and the boy in green-trimmed robes frantically pushes himself away from the window and falls to the floor, face streaked with tears.

  "Oh," says the most handsome of the boys in red-trimmed robes, sounding relieved, "it's you. Hey, Lessy, you know who this is?"

  There isn't any answer from the boy on the floor, who's trying to get his sniffling under control, and the boy in the red-trimmed robes draws back his leg for a kick -