Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

The adrenaline was rushing through Harry's veins and his heart was pounding inside the dimly lit, bankrupt store.Professor Quirrell had finished explaining, and Harry was holding a twig that would turn into a portkey in his hand.Today, at this very moment, Harry was about to start playing his part.On his first real expedition, there's a dungeon to explore, an evil government to overthrow, and a troubled lady to save.Harry should have been more frightened, more hesitant, but he just felt it was time to become the man he had seen in the books; he was about to start his journey, to become the man he was meant to be, to be the hero; he always knew this point.He's taking his first steps to be Kimber Gennison[2] and Captain Picard[3] and Thundercat[4] - definitely not Raistlin Magery[5].According to what Harry's brain has learned from morning cartoons, when people grow up, they should gain some incredible powers and save the world - this is what Harry's brain sees adults should do and branded it as a role model for himself as he matured, and Harry desperately wanted to start growing up.

And if the laws of the story demand that the hero lose some of his innocence in his first adventure, at least now, while he is still innocent, it is time to experience the pain.Like throwing away clothes that were already too small; or finally making it to the next level after 3 years on a 2-11 level in Super Mario.

Harry had read enough novels to know that he probably wouldn't be so enthusiastic, so he wanted to enjoy the excitement while it still hadn't passed.

Something around Harry disappeared with a snap.There is no time to continue to immerse yourself in heroic melancholy.Harry snapped off the twig in his hand.

The Portkey activated, and an invisible hook yanked behind Harry's navel, feeling far harder than the jaunt from Hogwarts to Diagon Alley—

——then he was thrown into a ball of lightning that was about to disappear, the cold rain hit Harry's face, covered his glasses, quickly blocked his vision, and blurred the whole world, and at the same time At the same time, he began to fall towards the stormy sea far below him.

He was teleported to the sky above the vast North Sea.

The blast of the storm nearly made Harry let go of the broom that Professor Quirrell had given him, which was not a good idea.It took almost a second for Harry to react, and then deftly let the broom fly upwards.

"I'm here." An unfamiliar voice sounded in the empty air above his head, low and serious.The voice belonged to a lanky, sallow, bearded man; Professor Quirrell had Polyjuv Potioned that, and then made himself invisible along with the broomstick.

"Here I am," said Harry from under the cloak.He couldn't use Polyjuice Potion.Physical differences would hinder magic, and Harry would probably need all the magic in his body; so Harry would remain invisible almost all the time throughout the project, rather than using Polyjuice Potion.

(Neither one of them has said each other's names. They can't even use their real names on illegal missions, not even while flying incognito over some unnamed stretch of the North Sea. You just shouldn't be doing it. It's stupid .)

With the wind and rain whistling in Harry's ears, he cautiously grabbed the broom with one hand, then raised his wand just as carefully, and cast a waterproofing charm on his spectacles.

The glasses were clear, and Harry looked around.

He was in the midst of a blustery storm, and five degrees here would be fine; he had cast a warming spell on himself for going out in February, but he still couldn't resist the icy drops of water falling on him.Rain soaks every inch of exposed surface, worse than snow.The invisibility cloak can make the whole body invisible, but it cannot cover the whole body, which means that the invisibility cloak cannot completely block the rain.Harry's face was exposed to the harsh rain, and the rain just flowed down his face and down his neck, soaking his shirt.The same goes for his robe sleeves, trouser edges, and shoes, with water soaking through every inch of the fabric.

"Over here," said a voice altered by Polyjuice Potion.A small green spot of light lit up in front of Harry's broom, flying in a direction that seemed indistinguishable to Harry from any other.

Harry followed through the rainstorm that obscured his view.He would sometimes lose track of the cluster of green lights, and Harry would call out, and the green lights would reappear in front of him a few seconds later.

When Harry gradually mastered the technique of following the flash, the flash accelerated, and Harry bent down to adjust the broom to high speed mode and followed.

The rain hit his face as hard as Harry imagined a shotgun bullet hitting his face, but his glasses remained clean and protected his eyes.

After just a few minutes of broom going at full speed, Harry glimpsed through the rain a huge shadow looming far above the water.

And then he felt, in the distance, where death waited, and from there radiated hollow echoes from nothingness that rushed into Harry's brain, and went around on both sides, like ripples cleaved by stone.This time, Harry already knew what his enemy was, and his will was steel and full of light.

"I can already feel the dementors," said the transformed Quirrell in a dignified voice. "It was a bit of a surprise, I didn't expect it to be this fast."

"Think about the stars," said Harry, as thunder rumbled in the distance. "Don't let a trace of anger stay in your heart, don't have negativity, just think about the stars, imagine what it would be like to forget yourself and fall invisible in the universe. Hold this thought, let this thought envelop you like an Occlumency barrier The whole thought. Dementors don't get through that barrier so easily."

There was a moment of silence, and then, "Interesting."

The green light began to rise, and Harry lifted his broom a little to follow, and they rushed towards the bank of fog, towards the cloud that hovered low over the water.

Soon, they were flying up, hovering above the huge three-sided metal building, looming beneath them.The walls surrounding the metal prisms are hollow, not solid. The whole building is surrounded by these three thick walls, and there is nothing in the center of the prisms.Professor Quirrell had said that the Aurors' guardhouse was on the south side of the top floor of the building, protected by their Patronus Charm.The official entrance to Azkaban is on the southwest corner of the building's roof.Of course neither of them would use that entrance.They'll use the hallway directly under the north corner of the building.Professor Quirrell would go down first, punch a hole in the roof and the north corner, and leave an illusion behind him to cover the gap.

Prisoners were housed at the sides of the building, with floors corresponding to the level of crime they had committed.At the bottom, the lowest level closest to the center of Azkaban, is the lair of hundreds of dementors.In order to maintain the height of the dementor lair, clods of earth are thrown down from time to time, because the matter directly exposed to the dementor will be disintegrated into sludge and nothingness...

"Wait for a minute." The voice was rough, "Keep up with me, then walk through carefully."

"Understood." Harry whispered.The flash went off, and Harry started counting, ten thousand and one, twenty thousand and one, thirty thousand and one...

... 60 and one, and then Harry began to dive, the wind whistling past him, the metal buildings in his vision were getting bigger and bigger, he could feel the shadow of death waiting for him at his destination, sucking Light, sows emptiness.This huge gray shadowy building has no features, except for a box-shaped building in the southwest corner.There was nothing in the North Point, and no one noticed Professor Quirrell's hole.

Harry gave himself a little more of a safety buffer than he had in flying lessons, but not by much, as Harry made a sharp upward dash as he approached the North Point.As soon as he had come to a halt, he began to lower his broom again, flying towards what appeared to be a solid roof at the north end.

It felt strange to be invisible through the hallucinated roof, and then Harry found himself in a metal corridor lit with dim orange lights - the light, Harry was surprised to find, came from an old gas lamp...

...Because magic doesn't work, magic gets absorbed after a while because of dementors.

Harry jumped off the broom.

The empty pull grew stronger, skirting either side of Harry without touching him.These were the wounds of the world, some distance away, but many; Harry could point out where they were with his eyes closed.

"Cast the Patronus Charm," hissed the snake on the floor, the green on its body almost dimmed in the dim orange light.

The feeling of being under pressure can be heard through Parseltongue.Harry was surprised; Professor Quirrell had said that Animagus in animal form were far more resistant to Dementors. (That's why the Patronuses are animals, Harry thought.) If Professor Quirrell was so miserable in snake form, what was it like when he switched to human form to cast spells...?

Harry's wand was already in his hand.

Start here.

Even if there is only one person, even if he can only save one person from the darkness, even if he is not strong enough to teleport all the prisoners of Azkaban to safety and burn this triangle hell to bedrock ...

Even so, it was still a beginning, his first step, something Harry would spend his life doing.No more waiting, no more begging, no more just promises, start here.Here and now.

Harry swung his wand down, pointing directly at the group of dementors waiting in the far underground.

"Call God Guard!"

The humanoid figure shone brightly.It wasn't as bright as the sun like it was last time... maybe because Harry couldn't stop himself from thinking about all the other prisoners in the cells, the ones he couldn't save.

Although maybe that's for the best.Harry's Patronus needs to last for a while, less light is probably a good thing.

Thinking of this, the Patronus dimmed a little more; then dimmed a little more as Harry tried to control the force of the contraction, until the bright human figure was only a little brighter than the brightest animal Patronus, and Harry felt that any further dimming might be the same. To be completely gone.

Then, "Stabilized," Harry hissed in Parseltongue, and began feeding the broom into his pocket.His wand was still in his hand, and a small stream of magic flowed steadily from him to replace the lost magic of the Patronus.

The snake transformed into a lanky, sallow man with Professor Quirrell's wand in one hand and a broom in the other.

The lanky man staggered as he took shape, then leaned against the wall for a moment.

"Well done, but a bit slow." The heavy figure murmured.Professor Quirrell's tone remained cold, even though his tone didn't match his voice, and his serious eyes didn't quite match that furry face. "I can't feel them at all now."

After a while, the broom got into the man's robe and disappeared.Then the man raised his wand, tapped it on his head, and disappeared again with a sound like a cracking eggshell.

A dim green light burst into the air, and Harry, wrapped in the Invisibility Cloak, followed.

If you looked from the outside, all you could see was a small cluster of green lights gliding through the air, with a bright silver humanoid following behind them.

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They descended floor after floor, past gaslight after gaslight, and occasionally through huge metal doors, making their way into the depths of Azkaban in utter silence.Professor Quirrell had put up some kind of barrier, and he could hear what was going on nearby, but their voices wouldn't go out, and the outside sounds wouldn't reach Harry.

Harry was a little unable to stop himself from wondering why it was muted, or from his conscious mind to come up with an answer.On some level of unspoken anticipation, he already knew the answer, and that level of thinking was trying in vain to keep him from thinking about it.

Somewhere behind those huge metal doors, someone was screaming.

Whenever Harry thought about it, the silver figure flickered on and off.

Harry had been told he needed to put the Bubble Charm on himself, in case he smelled something.

All the enthusiasm and heroism had faded, Harry knew it would, but even by his standards it had come a little too quickly, the whole mental shift from the first metal door they passed through finished.There is a huge lock on every metal door, simple and plain, without magic blessing, even a first-year Hogwarts student can't stop it-as long as there is a wand and magic, but the prisoners have no .Professor Quirrell said that these metal doors are not the doors of individual cells. Behind each door is a corridor and some cells.For some reason, this news made people feel better, without thinking that every door directly corresponds to a prisoner.Conversely, there may be more than one prisoner behind each door, spreading out the emotional impact; as studies have shown, people donate more money when they hear that a donation is needed to save one child than when they hear that it is to save eight children. need more……

Harry was finding it harder and harder not to think about it, and whenever he thought about it, the Patronus light would flicker on and off.

They came to the left corner of the corridor, the corner of this triangular building.Another downward passage, another flight of stairs; they began to descend again.

If you just kill someone, you won't be put in the lowest cell.You can always go lower, and there are always worse penalties.No matter how far you have fallen, the British wizarding government has room to threaten you further, and to punish you for more serious crimes.

But Bellatrix was once the most feared Death Eater besides the Dark Lord himself, a beautiful and deadly witch who was absolutely loyal to her master; Man is crueler, more evil, as if she is trying to outdo her master...

...that's what the world thinks of her, that's who the world thinks she is.

But before that, Professor Quirrell had told Harry that she had been just a quiet, withdrawn, harmless Slytherin girl before she came on stage as the Dark Lord's most fearsome servant.Then there were fabricated stories, impressions distorted in recall (Harry was well aware of the research on this).But at that time, when she was still in school, she was the most talented witch at Hogwarts, and at the same time, she was also a gentle girl in people's hearts (so Professor Quirrell said).Her few friends were amazed when she joined the Death Eaters, and even more horrified when they discovered how much darkness lay beneath her sad, brooding smile.

This is Bellatrix's past.She was the most promising witch of her generation, and then the Dark Lord took her, crushed her, smashed her, reshaped her, bound her in a way deeper and darker than the Imperius Curse. around.

For ten years, Bellatrix has been serving the Dark Lord. She will kill whoever the Dark Lord tells her to kill, and she will torture whoever the Dark Lord asks her to torture.

Then the Dark Lord was finally defeated.

And Bellatrix's nightmare continues.

Maybe there was something inside of Bellatrix that was screaming, that had been screaming all along, and maybe the therapist could bring that part back; maybe there wasn't even a bit of it left.About this, even Professor Quirrell has no way of knowing.But anyway, they can still...

...they could at least get her out of Azkaban...

Bellatrix Black at the bottom of Azkaban.

It was hard for Harry not to imagine what they'd see when they got to her cell.If Bellatrix was still alive, she shouldn't be so afraid of death.

They descended another flight of stairs, so close to death and Bellatrix that Harry could hear only the sound of their invisible strides.The gas lamps gave off a dim orange light, and green flashes floated in the air, while the shining figures following behind swayed from time to time.

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After many descents, they made it in time to a corridor with no stairs at the end, replaced by a final metal door.The green flash stopped in front of the metal door.

Nothing happened as they descended deeper into Azkaban, which calmed Harry's heartbeat a little.But now, his heart started pounding again.They are already at the bottom, and the shadow of death is close at hand.

There was a snap of the lock, and Professor Quirrell opened the door.

Harry took a deep breath, recalling everything Professor Quirrell had told him.It's not hard to pretend to be a personality that can fool Bellatrix Black, but it's hard to maintain his Patronus at the same time...

The green light spot disappeared, and after a while, a one-meter-long snake appeared without being invisible.

Harry pushed the metal door with his still invisible hand, and with a creak, he pushed it open a crack, and then took a closer look.

He looked towards the solid rock at the end of the corridor.The light from Harry's Patronus leaking through the crack of the door was the only source of light.He could see the bars of the eight cells protruding across the corridor, but he couldn't see inside; more importantly, he couldn't see a single person in the corridor.

"I didn't see anything," said Harry in Parseltongue.

The snake rushed forward and slid quickly across the floor.

after awhile--

"Only her," the snake hissed.

Stay here, Harry thought to his Patronus, who stood by the door as if to keep watch; then Harry opened the door a little wider and followed inside.

The first cell that Harry saw was a shriveled corpse, the ashen skin was covered with corpse spots, and the flesh had been eaten away in many places, exposing the underlying bones, without eyes——

Harry closed his eyes.He can still do it, he's still invisible, he won't betray anything just because he closes his eyes.

He already knew it, he'd read it on page six of his Transfiguration book, that you'd stay in Azkaban until your sentence was over.If you die before that, they will leave you where you are until the body is released after the sentence is over.If it's a life sentence, they'll just dump the body in the cell until they need the cell, then dump your body in the dementor's lair.But it was still shocking to see it with my own eyes. A corpse that was once a person was just thrown there——

The light in the room flickered.

Hold on, Harry thought to himself.Professor Quirrell would be in trouble if the Patronus Charms were to wear off because of his sadness.It's so close to the dementors that Professor Quirrell might just die.Hold on, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verys, hold on!

With that thought in mind, Harry opened his eyes again, unable to waste any more time.

The second cell he looked at contained only a skeleton.

Behind the bars of the third cell, he saw Bellatrix Black.

Something so precious and irreplaceable in Harry withered like dry grass.

You could tell that the woman was not a skeleton, her head was not a skeleton, because the texture of the skin was still different from that of the bones, no matter how pale she had grown waiting in the dark alone.They didn't feed her much, or what she ate was sucked away by the shadow of death; the eyeballs under her eyelids seemed to have shrunk, and her lips were so dry that they didn't look like they could cover her teeth.The black clothes on her body seemed to have been filtered out, as if they had been sucked away by the dementors.Those clothes should have been bold designs, but now they hung loosely on the frame, showing only the withered skin.

I'm here to save her.I'm here to save her.I'm here to save her.Harry thought desperately to himself, over and over, like Occlumency, insisting that his Patronus not disappear, stay, protect Bellatrix from the dementors—

In his heart, at the bottom of his heart, Harry kept all his sympathy and compassion, his will to save her from the darkness; thinking of this, the silver light coming from the door brightened a little.

And the other part of him, it's as if he just let another part of his consciousness perform it habitually, and doesn't take it very seriously...

Under the hood of invisibility, Harry had a grim expression on his face.

"Hello, my dear Bella." A cold whisper sounded from the cell. "Do you miss me?"

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[1] Stanford Prison Experiment: baike.baidu/view/402672.htm?fr=aladdin

[2］金柏·吉尼森：baike.baidu/link?url=LRt9C3＿pRbpAv＿Ia2NnV＿ltvtHHycApmjGACClN4rUVk0fkKjvNu＿ZHLmVJ2C3wo6mWQszqEs9j7wtWO-aj0Tq

[3］皮卡德船长：baike.baidu/link?url=VXGOEVPLes-CpvrMVVTWhrcVEJG7nMA79QWCBM3ltfwVYDq7j6C1zbVX5AOEr5oIL3WyaixW2Dsmd0SQqxlcS＿

[4] Thunderbolt cat: baike.baidu/view/1202612.htm

[5］雷斯林·马哲里：baike.baidu/view/1242252.htm?from＿id=10764858&type=search&fromtitle=%E9%9B%B7%E6%96%AF%E6%9E%97

[6] Regarding the phenomenon that "one prisoner is more likely to arouse emotions than eight prisoners", the term is called scope insensitivity: lesswrong/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/

[7] Memory biases: sciencedaily/articles/l/list_of_memory_biases.htm