Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

Silence, luckily the next metal door was silence.There may be no one behind the metal door, or they may be suffering silently, maybe they are screaming but their voices are hoarse, or they may just be talking to themselves in the dark...

I'm not sure I can, Harry thought, and he couldn't blame the Dementors for this desperate thought.It was better to go lower, it was safer to go lower, his plan would take time to execute, and the Auror might already be going down.But if Harry had to go through one more metal door while remaining quiet and breathing perfectly evenly, he might go mad; if he had to drop a piece of himself at every metal door, he'd soon be a With an empty shell——

A bright cat dressed in moonlight jumped out of nowhere and landed in front of Harry's Patronus.Harry almost screamed, which didn't help his image in front of Bellatrix.

"Harry!" said Professor McGonagall's voice. Harry had never heard her so frightened. "Where are you? Are you all right? This is my Patronus, answer me!"

With desperate efforts, Harry cleared his brain, changed his voice slightly, and forcibly calmed down, switching into another personality like using an Occlumency barrier.It took a few seconds to prepare, and he desperately hoped that Professor McGonagall wouldn't blame the communication delay for the few seconds of delay to discover the problem, and likewise, he desperately hoped that the Patronuses wouldn't report their circumstances .

A little boy said in an innocent voice, "I'm at Mary's, Professor, in Diagon Alley. On my way to the toilet. What's the matter?"

The cat jumped away, and Bellatrix began to laugh softly, admiringly laughing like dust.But when Harry hissed her, she shut up.

After a while, the cat came back and said in Professor McGonagall's voice, "I'll pick you up right away. Don't go anywhere, and if you're not with the Defense Professor right now, don't go back to him, don't talk to anyone, I'll come over as soon as possible!"

Then the bright cat leaps forward, gradually blurring away.

Harry glanced at his watch, noting the time, so that after getting everyone out, he could get Professor Quirrell to fix the Time-Turner again, go back in time, and show up at Mary's toilet on time...

You have to know that the part of his brain used to solve the problem says that the additional constraints on a problem are limited, and if the limit is exceeded, there is really no solution, you know?

It shouldn't have been a problem—it wasn't a problem at all, and it was nothing compared to the suffering of a single prisoner in Azkaban; yet Harry found himself very well aware that if the plan ended up If it didn't turn out that he was picked up from Maryville as if he had never left, and the Defense Professor didn't look like he wasn't involved in any crime, Professor McGonagall would have killed him.

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Their team was preparing to advance further up the spiral staircase in Area C: put up the shield, scan the hallway, then remove the previous shield behind them.Meanwhile, Amelia was banging her hands on her thighs as she wondered if she should consult the most obvious expert.If he's not so-

Amelia heard the familiar sound of flames burning, and when she turned around she knew what she was going to see.

A third of her Aurors turned and pointed their wands at the old wizard with crescent-shaped glasses and long silver beard who suddenly appeared among them, a bright red-gold phoenix crouching his shoulders.

"Don't do it!" It's easy to disguise with Polyjuice Potion, but it's much harder to fake a Phoenix Teleport - the enchantment allows for this quick way to get into Azkaban, though there's no way to get out of it quickly.

The old witch and the old wizard looked at each other for a long time.

(Amelia subconsciously wonders which of her Aurors sent the letter, several of whom she brought were former members of the Order of the Phoenix; subconsciously she tries to recall Emmeline's Sparrow or Andy Had the cat disappeared from the ranks of the bright animals; but she knew it was all in vain. It was possible that it was not hers who were tipping the whistle at all. The nosy old man often knew something he didn't know at all. Impossible to know.)

Albus Dumbledore nodded politely to Amelia. "I hope I'm not an uninvited visitor," said the wizard calmly. "We're all on one side, aren't we?"

"It depends," Amelia said sternly. "Are you here to help us catch the prisoner, or are you here to protect the prisoner from the consequences of their actions?" You're trying to prevent my brother from being killed. Does anyone get the kiss she deserves, nosy old man?From what Amelia heard, Dumbledore wised up a bit toward the end of the war, largely thanks to Mad-Eye's constant chatter at his side; but after Voldemort's body was found, his Immediately the foolish kindness returned.

Those tiny silvery-white spots of light—the reflections of those shiny animals—were gone from the old wizard's half-moon spectacles.He began, "I don't want Bellatrix to escape any more than you do," said the old wizard. "She must not leave prison alive, Amelia."

Before Amelia could speak again, or even express her surprise, the old wizard made a gesture with his long black wand, and a dazzling silver phoenix appeared out of nowhere, more powerful than all their patron saints. Get up brighter.It was the first time she had seen someone cast the spell silently. "Command all your Aurors to lift their Patronus Charm for ten seconds," said the old wizard. "What the Darkness cannot find, the Light may find."

Amelia sternly instructed the liaison officer to use mirrors to inform all the Aurors, ordering them to do as Dumbledore instructed.

It took some time to deliver the order, the room was eerily silent, not a single Auror dared speak, and Amelia was gathering her thoughts.She must never leave prison alive... Albus Dumbledore doesn't just turn into Barty Crouch for no reason.If he wanted to tell her why, he would have done so; but it certainly wasn't a good sign.

Still, it's good news to know they've been able to work together on the issue.

"Begin." All the mirrors announced together.All Patronus spells were removed, leaving only the dazzling silver phoenix.

"Are there any other Patronuses?" said the old wizard clearly to the bright creature.

The bright creature nodded.

"Can you find it?"

The silver head nodded again.

"If it disappears and reappears, will you recognize it?"

The dazzling phoenix nodded for the last time.

"It's done," said Dumbledore.

"It's over." After a while, all the mirrors announced at the same time.Amelia raised her wand and began to resummon her Patronus. (Although with a wolf-like smile on her face, she needs to pay extra attention to thinking about Susan kissing her cheek for the first time, instead of dwelling on Bellatrix's gloomy fate. Kissing is certainly a happy idea, but not a good one for a Patronus Charm.)

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Before they had even reached the end of the corridor, Harry's Patronus raised his hand politely, as if in a classroom.

Harry thought quickly.The question is how - no, that's not the question.

"It appears," said Harry in a grimly amused voice, "that the Patronus has been instructed to pass on information only to me." He smiled softly. "Okay. Excuse me, Bella dear. No sound."

The silver figure said immediately in Harry's own voice, "There's another Patronus searching for this Patronus."

"What?" said Harry.Then, without stopping to think about what happened, "Can you block it? Keep it from finding you?"

The silver figure shook its head.

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Amelia and the other Aurors had just recast the Patronus Charm, and at this moment—

The dazzling silver phoenix flew away, followed by the real golden and red phoenix, and the old wizard strode calmly behind them both, his long wand slightly drooping tightly in his hand.

The protective shield they set up in the area parted like water around the old wizard, and closed behind him again, hardly causing a single ripple.

"Albus!" Amelia yelled, "what do you think you're doing?"

But she already knew.

"Don't follow me," the old wizard said solemnly, "I can protect myself, but I cannot protect others."

Amelia's own Auror flinched at the words Amelia swore behind him.

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It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair!There is a limit to the constraints attached to a problem, beyond which there is really no solution!

Harry blocked useless thoughts, ignored the exhaustion he felt, and forced his brain to face up to the new requirements. He had to think quickly and use adrenaline to quickly follow the interlocking logic without hesitation. Not wasted on despair.

In order to complete the task,

(1) Harry has to remove the Patronus.

(2) Bellatrix needs to escape the Dementors after the Patronus is removed.

(3) Harry needs to resist the absorption of the dementor after the patron saint is withdrawn.

……

If I solve this problem, said Harry's brain, after that, I want you to reward me with a biscuit, and then if you ask a problem harder than this, I mean just a little bit harder, I will Crawl out of your skull and take a vacation to Tahiti.

Harry and his brain began to think about it.

Azkaban has stood for centuries, thanks to the fact that no one can escape the sight of the dementors.So if Harry wanted to find other ways to keep Bellatrix from dementors, it would have to rely on his scientific knowledge or the discovery that "dementors are death".

Harry's brain suggested that the most obvious way to make Bellatrix invisible to the dementors was to cease her existence, in other words, kill her.

Harry congratulated the brain for thinking outside the box, and told it to keep thinking.

Kill her, bring her back to life, and the brain makes its next suggestion.Lower Bellatrix's body temperature with freezing frost to stop the brain activity, and then use the warming spell to raise the body temperature, just like those who have fallen into ice water and successfully revived half an hour later, the brain also There will be no visible damage.

Harry considered the suggestion for a moment.Bellatrix's physical condition may not last.And that probably won't stop Death from finding her.And he couldn't walk very far with the frozen and unconscious Bellatrix on his shoulders, and Harry couldn't remember the exact temperature in the study that was non-lethal but temporarily halted brain activity.

It's also a good idea to think outside the box, but Harry tells his brain to keep thinking...

...the way to avoid death...

Harry frowned.Where, had he heard something about it.

One of the conditions for becoming a powerful wizard is extraordinary memory. Professor Quirrell once said that the key to the puzzle is often in an ancient scroll you read 20 years ago, or someone you only met once. On the strange ring of...

Harry tried his best to focus, but he still couldn't remember, the words had come to his lips, but he couldn't; so he told his subconscious to keep trying to remember, and then refocused on On the other half of the question.

How can I protect myself from dementors without a Patronus Charm?

The headmaster had been exposed to being within a few steps of the dementor, time and time again, for a whole day, only to look a little tired in the end.How did the principal do it?Can Harry do it too?

If it was just genetics, Harry would be dead.But assuming the problem is indeed solvable...

The obvious answer, then, is that Dumbledore was not afraid of death.

Dumbledore really wasn't afraid of death.Dumbledore really, really believed that death was the next great adventure.In his heart, he believed that it wasn't just an excuse to suppress cognitive dissonance, and it wasn't just pretending to be wise.Dumbledore believed that death was a natural and regular law.As for the little bit of fear that was still lingering in his body, it had to be exposed to the dementor several times, and after a long time, the dementor could devour him through this small opening.

Harry couldn't go this way.

So Harry started thinking about the other side of the problem, the most obvious one:

Why am I so much more vulnerable than normal people?The other students didn't fall when they faced the dementors.

Harry wanted to destroy death, if he could, he wanted to end the existence of death.He wanted to live forever if he could; he was hopeful that the thought of death would not make him despair, or think it was inevitable.He wasn't blindly attached to life; he had to struggle to keep himself from burning all his life to protect others from death.Why does the shadow of death have such a big influence on Harry?He doesn't think he's scared.

Could it be that Harry himself was the one rationalizing the whole time?Was he himself the one who had secretly been so terrified of death that he had twisted his mind, like Harry blamed Dumbledore?

Harry thought for a moment, trying not to flinch.The thought is uncomfortable, but...

but……

But the thought of being uncomfortable isn't always right, and it doesn't quite sound right.It's as if there's a sliver of truth hidden in it, but not in the place the hypothesis mentions—

Then Harry thought.

Oh.

Oh I see.

The one who is afraid is...

Harry asked his dark how it felt in the face of death.

Then Harry's Patronus began to flicker, dimmed, and disappeared almost instantly; the desperate horror that made people scream, the fear that could not be expressed in words, willing to do anything to not die, discarding everything to not die, in absolute panic Unable to think or feel normally, would rather look directly at the sun than look at the abyss of nothingness, has been scared blind, just want to find a dark corner to hide, never think about it again——

The silver figure has dimmed like moonlight, like a candle in the wind——

It's all right, Harry thought, it's all right.

He imagined himself taking the dark side into his arms, like hugging a frightened child.

Fear is normal and legitimate, because death is scary.You don't have to hide your fear, you don't have to be ashamed of it, you can wear it as a badge of honor and show it in the sun.

It's a weird feeling, feeling like you're being split into two sides like this.One side of his mind-trajectories comforts, the other follows his dark side, unable to comprehend the strange thoughts that belong to the average Harry; his dark side, of all the things it associates with the fear of death, never expects , What I never imagined that it is possible to find is acceptance, appreciation and help...

You don't have to fight alone, Harry said silently to his dark side, the rest of me will support you.I won't let myself die, and I won't let my friends die.You/I won't die, Hermione won't die, Mom and Dad won't die, Neville and Draco and everyone else won't die, it's the will to protect... He imagines a pair of sunny wings , like the kind of wings he'd let his Patronus spread, to give shelter to the frightened child.

The Patronus lights up again, is the world spinning around Harry, or is Harry's own brain spinning?

Take my hand, Harry thought, concretizing, come with me, we'll do this together...

There was a sudden tilt in Harry's mind, as if the brain had taken a step to the left, or the universe had taken a step to the right.

And in the bright corridors of Azkaban, the dim light of the gas lamps was completely covered by the steady, steady light of the humanoid Patronus, and an invisible boy stood in the middle of the corridor, with a strange smile on his face, only a little trembling .

Harry knew that somehow he had just done something very remarkable, not just strengthened his resistance to dementors.

Not only that, he remembered.Ironically, he succeeds by imagining death as an anthropomorphic figure.Now that Harry could recall, what was recognized as a way to ward off death's eyeliner...

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Walking the corridors of Azkaban a wizard stopped suddenly in his striding steps; for the bright thing that guided him halted in mid-air, distressed.The bright white phoenix craned its neck, looked in front and back, as if confused; then it turned to its owner, shaking its head apologetically.

The old wizard didn't say anything, turned around and walked back the way he came.

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Harry straightened up, accepting the baptism of fear, feeling it all around him.The wave-like nothingness was constantly stopped by his rock-solid will, maybe a small part of him had been eroded by this, but his limbs did not feel cold, and his magic power was still there.In time, the rippling nothingness might have eaten away at him, consumed him, slipped in from the little part of him that still recoiled from death instead of motivating himself to fight with fear.But this destruction took time, for the shadow of death was far away from him and paid little attention to him.The flaws, the cracks, the faults in him had been repaired, and the stars burned bright in his brain, vast and fearless, shining in the cold darkness.

To others, it all looked like a boy standing alone in a dimly lit metal corridor with a strange smile on his face.

Because Bellatrix and the snake hanging from her shoulder are covered under the Invisibility Cloak, one of the three Deathly Hallows, famous for the eyeliner that can prevent the wearer from dying.The answer to this riddle had been lost, and Harry had found it again.

And Harry now knows that hiding under the Invisibility Cloak is not just about being transparent like the Disillusionment Charm, the Invisibility Cloak allows you to hide, not just be invisible, like those who haven't seen death can't see the night Qi is the same.Harry also knew that the Deathly Hallows symbol inside the Invisibility Cloak was painted with thestral blood, giving the Cloak the power of death so that the Cloak could confront the Dementors on the same level, thus shielding them.It felt like guessing a riddle, but he was very sure of his guess. The moment he solved the riddle, he immediately knew everything.

Bellatrix is ​​transparent under the cloak of invisibility, but to Harry, she can no longer hide, he knows she is there, in his eyes, Bellatrix is ​​like Thestrals are as obvious.Because Harry just lent out his Invisibility Cloak and didn't change hands; and he has fully understood and become the real owner of this Deathly Hallows that has been passed down from generation to generation in the Potter family.

Harry looked directly at the invisible woman, and said, "Can the dementors find you, Bella?"

"No," said the woman in a soft trembling voice, and then, "but master...you..."

"Don't say stupid things that will annoy me," said Harry grimly, "or are you under the impression that I will sacrifice myself for you?"

"No, master," replied the Dark Lord's servant, sounding bewildered, perhaps a little awed.

"Come on," Harry whispered grimly.

Then they went on down and the Dark Lord took a biscuit out of his bag and ate it.If Bellatrix had asked, Harry would have said it was chocolate, but she hadn't asked.

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The old wizard strode back among the Aurors, the silver and red-gold phoenix now following him.

"You—" Amelia began to growl.

"They lifted the Patronus," said Dumbledore.The old wizard didn't raise his voice, but somehow his calm words drowned out her roar. "I can't find them now."

Amelia gritted her teeth, swallowed back a lot of sarcasm, and then turned to the liaison officer. "Ask the duty room to ask the dementors again, and ask them if they can find Bellatrix."

The liaison officer spoke to the mirror for a moment, then after a few seconds she looked up, looking surprised. "No--"

Amelia was already cursing violently in her head.

"—but they found someone on the lower floor who wasn't a prisoner."

"Very good!" Amelia scolded, "tell the dementors to authorize them to bring a dozen of their kind into Azkaban, and capture that man and his companions! If Bellatrix is ​​found, Give her a kiss right now!"

Then Amelia turned and stared at Dumbledore to see if he dared object; but the old wizard just gave her a slightly sad look and did nothing.

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The McCusker Auror conveyed the Commander's order to the skeleton floating outside the window.

The skeleton gave him a deathly smile, almost limp his limbs, and then floated down.

Soon, the twelve dementors floating in the central pool of Azkaban flew to the periphery, moving towards the wall of the huge metal building that enveloped them.

Having entered the small hole set in the lowest level of Azkaban, the darkest creatures began their terrifying march.

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1. Constrained optimization: baike.baidu/view/908839.htm

2. Cognitive dissonance: wiki.mbalib/wiki/Cognitive dissonance theory