Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Finally -

  "What does this mean?" Draco said. His voice wavered a bit.

  "It means you love your father," Harry's voice said. Which was just what Draco had been thinking, and trying not to cry in front of Harry. It was too right, just too right -

  Before Draco, on the floor, was the shining form of a snake that Draco recognized; a Blue Krait, a snake first brought to their manor by Lord Abraxas Malfoy after a visit to some faraway land, and Father had kept a Blue Krait in the ophidiarium ever since. The thing about the Blue Krait was that the bite wouldn't hurt much. Father had said that, and told Draco that he was never allowed to pet the snake, no matter who was watching. The venom killed your nerves so fast that you didn't have time to feel pain as the poison spread. You could die of it even after using Healing Charms. It ate other snakes. It was as Slytherin as any creature could possibly be.

  That was why a Blue Krait head had been forged into the handle of Father's cane.

  The bright snake darted out its tongue, which was also silver; and seemed to smile somehow, in a warmer way than any reptile should.

  And then Draco realized -

  "But," Draco said, still staring at the beautifully radiant snake, "you can't cast the Patronus Charm." Now that Draco had cast it himself, he understood why that was important. You could be evil, like Dumbledore, and still cast the Patronus Charm, so long as you had something bright left inside you. But if Harry Potter didn't have a single thought inside him that shone like that -

  "The Patronus Charm is more complicated than you think, Draco," Harry said seriously. "Not everyone who fails at casting it is a bad person, or even unhappy. But anyway, I can cast it. I did it on my second try, after I realized what I'd done wrong facing the Dementor my first time. But, well, my life gets a little peculiar sometimes, and my Patronus came out strange, and I'm keeping it a secret for now -"

  "Am I supposed to just believe that?"

  "You can ask Professor Quirrell if you don't believe me," said Harry. "Ask him whether Harry Potter can cast a corporeal Patronus, and tell him that I told you to ask. He'd know the request was from me, no one else would know."

  Oh, and now Draco was to trust Professor Quirrell? Still, knowing Harry, it might be true; and Professor Quirrell wouldn't lie for trivial reasons.

  The glowing snake turned its head back and forth, as though seeking a prey that wasn't there, and then coiled itself into a circle, as though to rest.

  "I wonder," Harry said softly, "when it was, which year, which generation, that Slytherins stopped trying to learn the Patronus Charm. When it was that people started to think, that Slytherins themselves started to think, that being cunning and ambitious was the same as being cold and unhappy. And if Salazar knew that his students didn't even bother showing up to learn the Patronus Charm any more, I wonder, would he wish that he'd never been born? I wonder how it all went wrong, when Slytherin's House went wrong."

  The shining creature winked out, the turmoil rising in Draco making it impossible to sustain the Charm. Draco spun on Harry, he had to control himself not to raise his wand. "What do you know about Slytherin House or Salazar Slytherin? You were never Sorted into my House, what gives you the right to -"

  And that was when Draco finally realized.

  "You did get Sorted into Slytherin!" Draco said. "You did, and afterwards you, you somehow, you snapped your fingers -" Draco had once asked Father if it would be cleverer to get Sorted into some other House so that everyone would trust him, and Father had smiled and said that he'd thought of that too at Draco's age, but there was no way to fool the Sorting Hat...

  ...not until Harry Potter came along.

  How had he ever bought for one minute that Harry was a Ravenclaw?

  "An interesting hypothesis," Harry said equably. "Do you know, you're the second person in Hogwarts to come up with a theory along those lines? At least you're the second that's actually said so to my face -"

  "Snape," Draco said with certainty. His Head of House was no fool.

  "Professor Quirrell, of course," said Harry. "Though come to think, Severus did ask me how I managed to stay out of his House, and whether I had something the Sorting Hat wanted. I suppose you could say you're number three. Oh, but Professor Quirrell's theory was a little different than yours, though. May I have your word not to repeat it?"

  Draco nodded without even really thinking about it. What was he supposed to do, say no?

  "Professor Quirrell thought that Dumbledore wasn't happy with the Hat's choice for the Boy-Who-Lived."

  And the instant Harry said it, Draco knew, he knew that it was true, it was just obvious. Who did Dumbledore even think he was fooling?

  ...well, besides every single other person in Hogwarts except Snape and Quirrell, Harry might even believe it himself...

  Draco stumbled back over to his desk in something of a daze, and sat down hard enough to hurt slightly. This sort of thing happened around once a month with Harry, and it hadn't happened yet in January, so it was time.

  His fellow Slytherin, who might or might not think himself a Ravenclaw, sat back down in the chair he'd used earlier, now sitting on it crosswise, and looking up intently at Draco.

  Draco didn't know what he should be doing now, whether he should be trying to persuade the lost Slytherin boy that, no, he wasn't actually a Ravenclaw... or trying to figure out whether Harry was in league with Dumbledore, though that suddenly seemed less likely... but then why had Harry set up the whole thing with him and Granger...

  He really should have remembered that Harry was too weird for any normal plots.

  "Harry," Draco said. "Did you deliberately antagonize me and General Sunshine just so we'd work together against you?"

  Harry nodded without hesitation, as though it was the most normal thing in the world, and nothing to be ashamed of.

  "The whole thing with the gloves and making us climb up the walls of Hogwarts, the only point was to make me and Granger more friendly toward each other. And even before then. You've been plotting it for a really long time. Since the beginning."

  Again the nod.

  "WHYYYYY?"

  Harry's eyebrows lifted for a moment, the only reaction he showed to Draco shrieking so loudly in the closed classroom that it hurt his own ears. WHY, WHY, WHY did Harry Potter DO this sort of thing...

  Then Harry said, "So that Slytherins will be able to cast the Patronus Charm again."

  "That... doesn't... make... SENSE!" Draco was aware that he was losing control of his voice, but he didn't seem able to stop himself. "What does that have to do with Granger?"

  "Patterns," Harry said. His face was very serious now, and very grave. "Like a quarter of children born to Squib couples being wizards. A simple, unmistakable pattern you would recognize instantly, if you knew what you were looking at; even though, if you didn't know, you wouldn't even realize it was a clue. The poison in Slytherin House is something that's been seen before in the Muggle world. This is an advance prediction, Draco, I could have written it down for you before our first day of school, just from hearing you talk in King's Cross Station. Let me describe some really pathetic sorts of people that hang around at your father's political rallies, pureblood families that would never be invited to dinner at Malfoy Manor. Bearing in mind that I've never met them, I'm just predicting it from recognizing the pattern of what's happening to Slytherin House -"

  And Harry Potter proceeded to describe the Parkinsons and Montagues and Boles with a calmly cutting accuracy that Draco wouldn't have dared think to himself in case there was a Legilimens around, it was beyond insult, they would kill Harry if they ever heard...

  "To sum up," Harry finished, "they don't have any power themselves. They don't have any wealth themselves. If they didn't have Muggleborns to hate, if all the Muggleborns vanished the way they say they want, they'd wake up one morning and find they had nothing. But so long as they can say purebloods are superior, they can feel superior themselves, they can feel like part of the master c
lass. Even though your father would never dream of inviting them to dinner, even though there's not one Galleon in their vaults, even if they did worse on their OWLs than the worst Muggleborn in Hogwarts. Even if they can't cast the Patronus Charm any more. Everything is the Muggleborns' fault to them, they have someone besides themselves to blame for their own failures, and that makes them even weaker. That's what Slytherin House is becoming, pathetic, and the root of the problem is hating Muggleborns."

  "Salazar Slytherin himself said that mudbloods needed to be cast out! That they were weakening our blood -" Draco's voice had risen to a shout.

  "Salazar was wrong as a question of simple fact! You know that, Draco! And that hatred is poisoning your whole House, you couldn't cast the Patronus Charm using a thought like that!"

  "Then why could Salazar Slytherin cast the Patronus Charm?"

  Harry was wiping sweat from his forehead. "Because things have changed between then and now! Listen, Draco, three hundred years ago you could find great scientists, as great as Salazar in their own way, who would have told you that some other Muggles were inferior because of their skin color -"

  "Skin color?" said Draco.

  "I know, skin color instead of anything important like blood purity, isn't it ridiculous? But then something in the world changed, and now you can't find any great scientists who still think skin color should matter, only loser people like the ones I described to you. Salazar Slytherin made the mistake when everyone else was making it, because he grew up believing it, not because he was desperate for someone to hate. There were a few people who did better than everyone else around them, and they were exceptionally good. But the ones who just accepted what everyone else thought weren't exceptionally evil. The sad fact is that most people just don't notice a moral issue at all unless someone else is pointing it out to them; and once they're as old as Salazar was when he met Godric, they've lost the ability to change their minds. Only then Hogwarts was built, and Hogwarts started sending acceptance letters to Muggleborns like Godric insisted, and more and more people began to notice that Muggleborns weren't any different. Now it's a big political issue instead of something that everyone just believes without thinking about it. And the correct answer is that Muggleborns aren't any weaker than purebloods. So now the people who end up siding with what Salazar once believed, are either people who grew up in very closed pureblood environments like you, or people who are so pathetic themselves that they're desperate for someone to feel superior to, people who love to hate."

  "That doesn't... that doesn't sound right..." Draco's voice said. His ears listened, and wondered that he couldn't come up with anything better to say.

  "It doesn't? Draco, you know now there's nothing wrong with Hermione Granger. You had trouble dropping her off a roof, I hear. Even though you knew she'd taken a Feather-Falling Potion, even though you knew she was safe. What sort of person do you think wants to kill her, not for any wrong she did to them, just because she's a Muggleborn? Even though she's, she's just a young girl who would help them with their homework in a second, if they ever asked her," Harry's voice broke, "what sort of person wants her to die?"

  Father -

  Draco felt split in two, he seemed to be having a problem with dual vision, Granger is a mudblood, she should die and a girl hanging from his hand on the rooftop, like seeing double, seeing double -

  "And anyone who doesn't want Hermione Granger to die, won't want to hang around the sort of people who do! That's all people think Slytherin is now, not clever planning, not trying to achieve greatness, just hating Muggleborns! I paid Morag a Sickle to ask Padma why she hadn't gone to Slytherin, we both know she got the option. And Morag told me that Padma just gave her a look and said that she wasn't Pansy Parkinson. You see? The best students with the virtues of more than one House, the students with choices, they go under the Hat thinking anywhere but Slytherin, and someone like Padma ends up in Ravenclaw. And... I think the Sorting Hat tries to maintain a balance in the Sorting, so it fills out the ranks of Slytherin with anyone who isn't repelled by all the hatred. So instead of Padma Patil, Slytherin gets Pansy Parkinson. She's not very cunning, and she's not very ambitious, but she's the sort of person who doesn't mind what Slytherin is turning into. And the more Padmas go to Ravenclaw and the more Pansies go to Slytherin, the more the process accelerates. It's destroying Slytherin House, Draco!"

  It had a ring of awful truth, Padma had belonged in Slytherin... and instead Slytherin got Pansy... Father rallied lesser families like the Parkinsons because they were convenient sources of support, but Father hadn't realized the consequences of associating Slytherin's name with them...

  "I can't -" Draco said, but he wasn't even sure what he couldn't do - "What do you want from me?"

  "I'm not sure how to heal Slytherin House," Harry said slowly. "But I know it's something you and I will end up having to do. It took centuries for science to dawn over the Muggle world, it only happened slowly, but the stronger science got, the further that sort of hatred retreated." Harry's voice was quiet, now. "I don't know exactly why it worked that way, but that's how it happened historically. As though there's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness, not right away, but it seems to follow wherever science goes. The Enlightenment, that was what it was called in the Muggle world. It has something to do with seeking the truth, I think... with being able to change your mind from what you grew up believing... with thinking logically, realizing that there's no reason to hate someone because their skin is a different color, just like there's no reason to hate Hermione Granger... or maybe there's something to it that even I don't understand. But the Enlightenment is something that you and I belong to now, both of us. Fixing Slytherin House is just one of the things we have to do."

  "Let me think," Draco said, his voice coming out in something of a croak, "please," and he rested his head in his hands, and thought.

  Draco thought for a while, with his palms over his eyes to shut out the world, no sound but his and Harry's breathing. All the persuasive reasonableness of what Harry said, the evident grains of truth that it contained; and against that, the obvious, the perfectly and entirely obvious hypothesis about what was really going on...

  After a time, Draco finally raised his head.

  "It sounds right," Draco said quietly.

  A huge smile broke out on Harry's face.

  "So," Draco continued, "is this where you bring me to Dumbledore, to make it official?"

  He kept his voice very casual as he said it.

  "Oh, yeah," Harry said. "That was the thing I was going to ask you about, actually -"

  Draco's blood froze in his veins, froze solid and shattered -

  "Professor Quirrell said something to me that got me thinking, and, well, no matter how you answer this question, I'm already stupid for having not asked you a lot earlier. Everyone in Gryffindor thinks Dumbledore is a saint, the Hufflepuffs think he's crazy, the Ravenclaws are all proud of themselves for having worked out that he's only pretending to be crazy, but I never asked anyone in Slytherin. I'm supposed to know better than to make that sort of mistake. But if even you think Dumbledore's okay to conspire with on fixing Slytherin House, I guess I didn't miss anything important."

  ...

  ...

  ...

  "You know," Draco said, his voice remarkably calm, all things considered, "every time I wonder if you do things like this just to annoy me, I tell myself that it has to be accidental, no one could possibly do this sort of thing on purpose even if they tried until blood trickled out of their ears. That's the only reason I'm not going to strangle you now."

  "Huh?"

  And then strangle himself, because Harry had grown up with Muggles, and then Dumbledore had smoothly diverted him from Slytherin to Ravenclaw, so it was perfectly plausible that Harry might not know anything, and Draco had never thought to tell him.

  Or else Harry had guessed that Draco wouldn't join up with
Dumbledore so readily, and this itself was just the next step of Dumbledore's plan...

  But if Harry really didn't know about Dumbledore, then warning him had to take precedence over everything.

  "All right," Draco said, after he'd had a chance to organize his thoughts. "I don't know where to start, so I'll just start somewhere." Draco drew a deep breath. This was going to take a while. "Dumbledore murdered his little sister, and got away with it because his brother wouldn't testify against him -"

  Harry listened with increasing worry and dismay. Harry had been prepared, he'd thought, to take the blood purist side of the story with a grain of salt. The trouble was that even after you added an enormous amount of salt, it still didn't sound good.

  Dumbledore's father had been convicted of using Unforgivable Curses on children, and died in Azkaban. That was no sin of Dumbledore's, but it would be a matter of public record. Harry could check that part, and see whether all of this had been made up out of thin air by the blood purists.

  Dumbledore's mother had died mysteriously, shortly before his younger sister died in what the Aurors had ruled to be murder. Supposedly that sister had been brutalized by Muggles and never spoken again after that; which, Draco pointed out, sounded remarkably like a botched Obliviation.

  After Harry's first few interruptions, Draco had seemed to pick up on the general principle, and was now presenting the observations first and the inferences afterward.

  "- so you don't have to take my word for it," said Draco, "you can see it, right? Anyone in Slytherin can. Dumbledore waited to fight his duel with Grindelwald until the exact moment when it would look best for Dumbledore, after Grindelwald had ruined most of Europe and built up a reputation as the most terrible Dark Wizard in history, and just when Grindelwald had lost the gold and blood sacrifices he was getting from his Muggle pawns and was about to start heading downhill. If Dumbledore was really the noble wizard he pretended to be, he'd have fought Grindelwald long before that. Dumbledore probably wanted Europe ruined, it was probably part of their plan together, he only attacked Grindelwald after his puppet failed him. And that big flashy duel wasn't real, there's no way two wizards would be so exactly matched that they'd fight for twenty whole hours until one of them fell over from exhaustion, that was just Dumbledore making it look more spectacular." Here Draco's voice became more indignant. "And that got Dumbledore made Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot! The Line of Merlin Unbroken, corrupted after fifteen hundred years! And then he became Supreme Mugwump on top of that, and he already had Hogwarts to use as an invincible fortress - Headmaster and Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump, no normal person would try to do all that at once, how can anyone not see that Dumbledore's trying to take over the world?"