Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  The boy advanced further into the room, his head tilting back further to look up at the half-moon glasses; and somehow it was like the boy was looking down at the Headmaster, rather than up. "So this Lord Jugson is a Death Eater?" the boy said softly. "Good. His life is already bought and paid for, then, and I can do anything I want to him without ethical problems -"

  "Harry!"

  The boy's voice was clear as ice, frozen of purest water from some untouched spring. "You seem to think that the Light should live in fear of the darkness. I say it should be the other way around. I'd prefer not to kill this Lord Jugson, even if he is a Death Eater. But one hour of brainstorming with the Defense Professor would be plenty of time to come up with some creative way to wreck him financially, or get him exiled from magical Britain. That would serve to make the point, I think."

  "I confess," the old wizard said slowly, "that the thought of ruining a five-hundred-year-old House, and challenging a Death Eater to war to the finish, over a scuffle in a Hogwarts hallway, had not occurred to me, Harry." The old wizard lifted a finger to push back his half-moon glasses from where they had slid a little down his nose, during his sudden motion earlier. "I daresay it would not occur to Miss Granger either, nor to Professor McGonagall, nor to Fred and George."

  The boy shrugged. "It wouldn't be about the hallways," the boy said. "It would be justice for his past crimes, and I'd only do it if Jugson made the first move. The point isn't to make people scared of me as a wild card, after all. It's to teach them that neutrals are perfectly safe from me, and poking me with a stick is incredibly dangerous." The boy smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "Maybe I'll buy an ad in the Daily Prophet, saying that anyone who wants to carry on this dispute with me will learn the true meaning of Chaos, but anyone who leaves me alone will be fine."

  "No," the old wizard said. His voice was deeper now, showing something of his true age and power. "No, Harry, that must not be. You have not yet learned the meaning of fighting, what truly happens when foes meet in battle. And so you dream, as young boys do, of teaching your foes to fear you. It frightens me that you, at far too young an age, might already have enough power to make some part of your dreams into reality. There is no turning of that road which does not lead into darkness, Harry, none. That is the way of a Dark Lord, for certain."

  The boy hesitated, then, and his eyes flickered to the empty golden platform where Fawkes sometimes rested his wings. It was a gesture that few would have caught, but the old wizard knew it very well.

  "All right, forget the part about teaching them to fear me," the boy said then. His voice was no less hard, but some of the cold had gone from it. "I still don't think you should let children get hurt out of fear of what someone like Lord Jugson might do. Protecting them is the whole point of your job. If Lord Jugson really does try to get in your way, then do whatever it takes to stop him. Give me full access to my vaults, and I'll take personal responsibility for dealing with any fallout from banning bullies in Hogwarts, whether it's Lord Jugson or anyone else."

  Slowly the old wizard shook his head. "You seem to think, Harry, that I need merely use my full power, and all foes will be swept aside. You are wrong. Lucius Malfoy controls Minister Fudge, through the Daily Prophet he sways all Britain, only by bare margins does he not control enough of the Board of Governors to oust me from Hogwarts. Amelia Bones and Bartemius Crouch are allies, but even they would step aside if they saw us acting wantonly. The world that surrounds you is more fragile than you seem to believe, and we must walk with greater care. The old Wizarding War never ended, Harry, it only continued in a different form; the black king slept, and Lucius Malfoy moved his chesspieces for a time. Do you think Lucius Malfoy would lightly permit you to take a pawn of his color?"

  The boy smiled, now with a touch of coldness again. "Okay, I'll figure out some way to set it up so that it looks like Lord Jugson betrayed his own side."

  "Harry -"

  "Obstacles mean you get creative, Headmaster. It doesn't mean you abandon the children you're supposed to protect. Let the Light win, and if trouble comes of it -" The boy shrugged. "Let Light win again."

  "So might phoenixes speak, if they had words," the old wizard said. "But you do not understand the phoenix's price."

  The last two words were spoken in a peculiarly clear voice that seemed to echo around the office, and then a huge rumbling noise seemed to come from all around them.

  Between the ancient shield on the wall and the Sorting Hat's hatrack, the stone of the walls began to flow and move, pouring itself into two framing columns and revealing a gap between them, an opening that showed a set of stone stairs leading upward into darkness.

  The old wizard turned and strode toward those stairs, and then looked back at where Harry Potter stood. "Come!" said the old wizard. There was no twinkle now in those blue eyes. "Since you have already gone so far as to force your way here uninvited, you may as well go further."

  There were no railings on those stone steps, and after the first few steps Harry drew his wand and cast Lumos. The Headmaster did not look back, did not seem to be looking downward, as though he had climbed the steps often enough to have no need of vision.

  The boy knew that he should have been curious, or frightened, but there was no spare brain capacity for that. It was taking all his control not to let the fury simmering inside him boil over any further than it already had.

  The stairs went on for only a short distance, one straight rising flight without turns or curves.

  At the top was a door of solid metal, looking black in the blue light cast from Harry's wand, meaning that the metal itself was either black or perhaps red.

  Albus Dumbledore lifted up his long wand like a brandished symbol, and again spoke in that strange voice which seemed to echo in Harry's ears, as though burning itself into his memory: "Phoenix's fate."

  That last door opened, and Harry followed Dumbledore inside.

  The room beyond seemed to be made of black metal like the door that led to it. The walls were black, the floor was black. The ceiling above was black, but for a single globe of crystal that hung down from the ceiling on a white chain, and shone with a brilliant silver light that looked like it had been cast in imitation of Patronus light, though you could tell it wasn't the real thing.

  Within the room were pedestals of black metal, each bearing a moving picture, or an upright cylinder half-filled with some faintly shining silver liquid, or a lone small object; a scorched silver necklace, a crushed hat, an untouched golden wedding ring. Many pedestals bore all three, the moving picture and the silver liquid and the item. There seemed to be a good many wizards' wands upon those pedestals, and many of those wands were broken, or burned, or looked like the wood had somehow melted.

  It took that long for Harry to realize what he was seeing, and then his throat suddenly choked; it was like the rage inside him had been hit a hammerblow, maybe the hardest hammerblow of his entire existence.

  "These are not all the fallen of all my wars," Albus Dumbledore said. His back was to Harry, only his grey locks and yellowish robes showed. "Not even nearly all of them. Only my closest friends, and those who died of my worst decisions, there is something of them here. Those I regret most of all, this is their place."

  Harry couldn't count how many pedestals were in the room. It might have been around a hundred. The room of black metal was not small, and there was clearly more space left in it for future pedestals.

  Albus Dumbledore turned and regarded Harry, the deep blue eyes set like steel in his brow, but his voice, when he spoke, was calm. "It seems to me that you know nothing of the phoenix's price," Albus Dumbledore said quietly. "It seems to me that you are not an evil person, but most terribly ignorant, and confident in your ignorance; as I once was, a long time ago. Yet I have never heard Fawkes so clearly as you seemed to, that day. Perhaps I was already too old and full of grief, when my phoenix came to me. If there is something I do not understand, about how ready I should be to fight
, then tell me of this wisdom." There was no anger in the old wizard's voice; the impact that drove out your breath like falling off a broomstick was all in the scorched and shattered wands, gleaming gently in their death beneath the silver light. "Or else turn and go from this place, but then I wish to hear no more of it."

  Harry didn't know what to say. There had been nothing in his own life that was like this, and all the words seemed to fall away. He would find something to say if he looked, but he couldn't believe, in that moment, that the words would be meaningful. You shouldn't be able to win any possible argument, just from people having died of your decisions, and yet even knowing that it felt like there was nothing to be said. That there was nothing Harry had any right to say.

  And Harry almost did turn and go from that place, except for the understanding which came to him then: that there was probably a part of Albus Dumbledore which always stood in this place, always, no matter where he was. And that if you stood in a place like this you could do anything, lose anything, if it meant that you didn't have to fight another time.

  One of the pedestals caught Harry's eye; the photograph on it did not move, did not smile or wave, it was a Muggle photograph of a woman looking seriously at the camera, her brown hair twisted into braids of an ordinary Muggle style that Harry hadn't seen on any witch. There was a cylinder of silvery liquid beside the photograph, but no object; no melted ring or broken wand.

  Harry walked forward, slowly, until he stood before the pedestal. "Who was she?" Harry said, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.

  "Her name was Tricia Glasswell," said Dumbledore. "The mother of a Muggleborn daughter, who the Death Eaters killed. She was a detective of the Muggle government, and after that she fed information from the Muggle authorities to the Order of the Phoenix, until she was - betrayed - into the hands of Voldemort." There was a catch in the old wizard's voice. "She did not die well, Harry."

  "Did she save lives?" Harry said.

  "Yes," the wizard said quietly. "She did."

  Harry lifted his gaze from the pedestal to look at Dumbledore. "Would the world be a better place if she hadn't fought?"

  "No, it would not," said the old wizard. His voice was tired, and grieving. He seemed more bent now, as though he were folding in on himself. "I see that you still do not understand. I think you will not understand until the day that you - oh, Harry. So very long ago, when I was not much older than you are now, I learned the true face of violence, and its cost. To fill the air with deadly curses - for any reason - for any reason, Harry - it is an ill thing, and its nature is corrupted, as terrible as the darkest rituals. Violence, once begun, becomes like a Lethifold that strikes at any life near it. I... would spare you that lesson the way I learned it, Harry."

  Harry looked away from the blue eyes, cast his gaze down at the black metal of the floor. The Headmaster was trying to tell him something important, that was clear; and it wasn't something that Harry thought was stupid, either.

  "There was a Muggle once named Mohandas Gandhi," Harry said to the floor. "He thought the government of Muggle Britain shouldn't rule over his country. And he refused to fight. He convinced his whole country not to fight. Instead he told his people to walk up to the British soldiers and let themselves be struck down, without resisting, and when Britain couldn't stand doing that any more, we freed his country. I thought it was a very beautiful thing, when I read about it, I thought it was something higher than all the wars that anyone had ever fought with guns or swords. That they'd really done that, and that it had actually worked." Harry drew another breath. "Only then I found out that Gandhi told his people, during World War II, that if the Nazis invaded they should use nonviolent resistance against them, too. But the Nazis would've just shot everyone in sight. And maybe Winston Churchill always felt that there should've been a better way, some clever way to win without having to hurt anyone; but he never found it, and so he had to fight." Harry looked up at the Headmaster, who was staring at him. "Winston Churchill was the one who tried to convince the British government not to give Czechoslovakia to Hitler in exchange for a peace treaty, that they should fight right away -"

  "I recognize the name, Harry," said Dumbledore. The old wizard's lips twitched upward. "Although honesty compels me to say that dear Winston was never one for pangs of conscience, even after a dozen shots of Firewhiskey."

  "The point is," Harry said, after a brief pause to remember exactly who he was talking to, and fight down the suddenly returning sense that he was an ignorant child gone insane with audacity who had no right to be in this room and no right to question Albus Dumbledore about anything, "the point is, saying violence is evil isn't an answer. It doesn't say when to fight and when not to fight. It's a hard question and Gandhi refused to deal with it, and that's why I lost some of my respect for him."

  "And your own answer, Harry?" Dumbledore said quietly.

  "One answer is that you shouldn't ever use violence except to stop violence," Harry said. "You shouldn't risk anyone's life except to save even more lives. It sounds good when you say it like that. Only the problem is that if a police officer sees a burglar robbing a house, the police officer should try to stop the burglar, even though the burglar might fight back and someone might get hurt or even killed. Even if the burglar is only trying to steal jewelry, which is just a thing. Because if nobody so much as inconveniences burglars, there will be more burglars, and more burglars. And even if they only ever stole things each time, it would - the fabric of society -" Harry stopped. His thoughts weren't as ordered as they usually pretended to be, in this room. He should have been able to give some perfectly logical exposition in terms of game theory, should have at least been able to see it that way, but it was eluding him. Hawks and doves - "Don't you see, if evil people are willing to risk violence to get what they want, and good people always back down because violence is too terrible to risk, it's - it's not a good society to live in, Headmaster! Don't you realize what all this bullying is doing to Hogwarts, to Slytherin House most of all?"

  "War is too terrible to risk," the old wizard said. "And yet it will come. Voldemort is returning. The black chesspieces are gathering. Severus is one of the most important pieces our own side possesses, in that war. But our evil Potions Master must, as the saying goes, keep up appearances. If Severus can pay that keep by hurting the feelings of children, only their feelings, Harry," the old wizard's voice was very soft, "you would have to be most terribly innocent in the ways of war, to think he had made a poor bargain. Hard decisions do not look like that, Harry. They look - like this." The old wizard did not gesture. He simply stood where he was, among the pedestals.

  "You shouldn't be Headmaster," Harry said through the burning in his throat. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but you shouldn't try to be a school principal and run a war at the same time. Hogwarts shouldn't be part of this."

  "The children will survive," the old wizard said with tired old eyes. "They would not survive Voldemort. Have you wondered why the children of Hogwarts do not speak much of their parents, Harry? It is because there is always, within earshot, someone who has lost their mother or father or both. That is what Voldemort left behind, the last time he came. Nothing is worth that war beginning again even one day earlier than it must, or lasting one day longer than it must." The old wizard did gesture now, as though to indicate all the shattered wands. "We did not fight because it seemed righteous to do so! We fought when we had to, when there was no other way left. That was our answer."

  "Is that why you waited so long to confront Grindelwald?"

  Harry had uttered the question without quite thinking -

  There was a slow time while the blue eyes searched him.

  "Who have you been talking to, Harry?" said the old wizard. "No, do not answer. I already know." Dumbledore sighed. "Many have asked me that question, and always I have turned them aside. Yet in time you must learn the full truth of that matter. Will you swear never to speak of it to another, until I give you leave?"


  Harry would have liked to be allowed to tell Draco, but - "I swear," Harry said.

  "Grindelwald possessed an ancient and terrible device," said Dumbledore. "While he held it, I could not break his defense. In our duel I could not win, only fight him for long hours until he fell in exhaustion; and I would have died of it afterward, if not for Fawkes. But while his Muggle allies yet made blood sacrifice to sustain him, Grindelwald would not have fallen. He was, during that time, truly invincible. Of that grim device which Grindelwald held, none must know, none must suspect, there must be not a single hint. And therefore you must not speak of it, and I will say no more for now. That is all, Harry. There is no moral to it, and no wisdom. That is all there is."

  Harry slowly nodded. It wasn't entirely implausible, by the standards of magic...

  "And then," Dumbledore's voice went on, even quieter, almost as though he were speaking to himself, "since it was I who felled him, they obeyed me when I said he should not die, though they cried by the thousands for his blood. So he was imprisoned in Nurmengard, in the prison that he built, and he abides there until this day. I went to that duel without any intent to kill him, Harry. Because, you see, I had tried to kill Grindelwald once before, a long time ago, and that... that was... it proved to be... a mistake, Harry..." The old wizard was staring now at his long dark-grey wand where he held it in both hands, as though it were a crystal ball out of Muggle fantasy, a scrying pool within which answers could be found. "And I thought, then... I thought that I should never kill. And then came Voldemort."