Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

Thursday, April 1992, [-].

The school was empty now, ninety percent of the students had gone home for Easter, and hardly anyone she knew was there.Susan stayed, her aunt was busy, Ron stayed too, but she didn't know why - maybe the Weasleys were so poor that it would be hard to raise all the kids for an extra week?It was a good thing for her, because Ron and Susan were pretty much the only ones still willing to talk to her. (At least she was willing to talk to them, too. Lavender was still nice to her, and Tracy was, well, still Tracy, but it wasn't easy spending an hour of spare time with them; Neither was at school over the Easter break.)

If she couldn't come home—they wouldn't let her, lied to her parents that she had a shiny rash—then almost deserted Hogwarts was the best option left.

She can even go to the library without anyone staring at her, because there are no classes and no one is there to do homework.

If you thought Hermione was hiding in the corridor crying all day, you were wrong.Oh, of course she cried a lot in the first two days, but two days was enough.This was explained in the book Harry had lent her.Even people who were paralyzed in traffic accidents were far less sad than they thought after six months, and people who won the lottery were far less happy than they expected.People will adjust, their happiness will go back to where it was before, and life will go on.

A shadow fell on Hermione's book, she turned quickly, raised the wand hidden in her lap, and pointed it at a surprised face——

"I'm sorry!" said Harry Potter, throwing up his hands hastily. His left hand was empty, and his right held a small red velvet bag. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

There was an awkward silence, Harry Potter just looking at her while her heart beat faster and her palms started to sweat.On the first morning of the rest of her life, she almost talked to him; but when she came down to breakfast, Harry Potter looked so terrible - so instead of sitting next to him, she hid She quietly finished her breakfast in her little "no one sitting next to her" bubble, feeling terrible, but Harry didn't come to her, and then...she hasn't been with him since. have spoken. (It's not that hard to avoid everyone, just avoid the Ravenclaw common room, and run away after class without giving anyone a chance to talk to you.)

Ever since, she's wondered what Harry thought of her - did he hate her for losing all his money - or did he really fall in love with her and that's why he did it - or had he given up, Thought she couldn't keep up with him because she couldn't scare the dementors - she couldn't face him now, not anyway, and she couldn't sleep all night worrying about how Harry would treat her now What to think, and she was terrified, she kept avoiding this boy who spent all his money trying to save her, she was a horrible ungrateful bad person, a terrible person, and—

Then she glanced down to see Harry reaching into the red velvet bag and pulling out a heart-shaped candy wrapped in red sugar wrappers, her brain melting like chocolate in the sun.

"I was going to give you a little more space," said Harry Potter, "but I read Krich's Hedonic Theory[1], How to Train Your Inner Pigeon, and Tiny Instant Positive/Negative Feedback How in fact quietly controls most of our behavior, so I thought, maybe you avoid me because seeing me makes you have some negative associations, and I really don’t want to let this continue. Nothing to do, so I got a bag of chocolates from the Weasley twins, and if you don't mind, I'd like to give you one every time you see me, as a positive feedback—"

"Breathe, Harry," said Hermione without thinking.

It was the first thing she had said to him since the day of the trial.

The two looked at each other.

The books on the surrounding shelves looked at them.

They continue to look at each other.

"You should eat the chocolate," said Harry, handing the heart-shaped candy bar like a Valentine's Day present, "unless the feeling of being given chocolate is enough of a positive feedback, and if that's the case, you might Need to put it in your pocket or something."

She knew she would fail if she tried to speak again, so she didn't try.

Harry's head dropped a little. "Do you hate me now?"

"No!" she said, "no, you shouldn't think that, Harry! It's just - just - just indescribable!" Realizing that her wand was still pointed at Harry, she dropped it, trying desperately not to cry Come out, "It's hard to describe!" she repeated, unable to find any better description, although she was sure Harry would want her to be more specific.

"I think I understand," said Harry cautiously. "What are you reading?"

Before she could stop him, Harry was already bending over the library table, looking at the book she was reading, poking his head over before she could snatch it away—

Harry stared at the open pages.

"The wealthiest wizards in the world and their fortunes," Harry read the title from above, "No. 60 Five, Sir Gareth, owned a shipping company, was the winner of the shipping war in the nineteenth century... OT-3's monopoly giant...[2] I get it."

"I guess you're going to tell me I don't have to worry about anything, you'll take care of it all, don't you?" The words came out harsher than she expected, and she felt another pang of agonizing guilt at being such a horrible villain .

"No," said Harry, sounding oddly amused, "I can consider and understand from your point of view that if you spent money to save me, I'd try to pay you back. I'd know that in some way It's silly in a sense, but I'll still try to pay for it myself. There's no way I don't understand that, Hermione."

Hermione's face scrunched up, and she felt the corners of her eyes moisten.

"Fair warning, though," continued Harry, "if I figured it out before you, I might settle my debt with Lucius Malfoy myself. It doesn't matter which of us settles the problem." Than, it is more important to get rid of it as soon as possible. Any interesting discoveries?"

Three-quarters of her is figuring out the overtones of everything Harry just said, circling in circles and bumping into walls, (Does he still respect her like a heroine? Or do these words mean he doesn't think she can pull it off on her own? The thing?) Meanwhile a much wiser part of Hermione flipped the book back to page 37 with the most promising item she'd seen so far (though in her imagination she always did it herself , to Harry's surprise)—

"I think this is interesting," her voice said.

"No. 14, 'Scepter', real name unknown," Harry read, "Wow, this is... the most fancy checkerboard hat I've ever seen. Property, at least 60 Galleons ...so about £3000 million, not yet famous among Muggles, but quite a lot among the smaller number of wizards, I guess. Nicholas Flamel, who is said to have lived for six centuries, in this era Alias, the only wizard known to have successfully completed the extremely difficult alchemy procedure, created the Sorcerer's Stone, which can turn cheap metals into gold and silver, and... the elixir of life, which infinitely prolongs the youth and health of the user... ...uh, Hermione, that looks clearly fake."

"I've read other books that mention Nicholas Flamel," said Hermione, "The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts says he used to secretly train Dumbledore against Grindelwald. There are a lot of books that think this story is Really, not just this one... Do you think there will be such a good thing?"

"No, of course not," Harry said.Harry pulled the chair away from her and sat down at her small table, sitting to her right as usual, as if he had never left; she had to fight back a lump in her throat. "The so-called 'too good things don't happen' is not causal reasoning. The universe does not decide whether an equation will be true based on whether the result is 'too good' or 'too bad'. People used to think that there would be no airplanes Good things like the smallpox vaccine. Muggles have figured out how to go to other planets without magic, and you and I can do things with wands that Muggle scientists never thought possible. I can't even imagine that the real laws of magic can't do it to what?"

"So what's the problem?" Hermione asked.She felt that her voice sounded more normal.

"Ah..." said Harry.The boy stepped over her outstretched arm, brushed his robe against hers, and tapped the illustration in the book with his hand; the stone gleamed ominously with blood, dripping crimson fluid.

"The first problem is that there's no logical reason for the same magical artifact to turn lead into gold and at the same time create an elixir of eternal youth. I don't know if this phenomenon has an official description in the literature. Name? Maybe something like 'Turn the volume up to 11'[3]? If everyone can see a flower and you say it's the size of a house, you'll be caught in the wrong place. But if you believe in flying saucers Cult, because no one has ever seen an alien mothership anyway, you can say it's the size of a city, or the size of the moon. Observables will be limited by evidence, but when making up the story, It doesn't matter how extreme you make it. So the Philosopher's Stone gives you infinite gold and eternal life not because of some magical discovery that can do both at the same time, but because someone made up such a special something that makes people happy."

"Harry, a lot of things in magic don't make sense," she said.

"That's right," said Harry, "but Hermione, the second problem is that even wizards aren't so crazy as to ignore the significance of it. Everyone will try to rediscover the formula for the Philosopher's Stone." , nations will try to capture the Immortal Wizard and pry the secrets out of him—”

"It's not a secret." Hermione turned a page and showed Harry the illustration on it. "The instructions are on the next page. It's just so difficult that only Nicolas Flamel actually made it."

"Then every country will try to kidnap Flamel and force him to make more Philosopher's Stones. Come on, Hermione, it's impossible for even a wizard to hear about immortality, yet, yet," Harry Potter paused, his usual The eloquence seemed to disappear, "It's still on deaf ears. People are crazy, but they're not that crazy yet!"

"Not everyone thinks like you do, Harry." He had a point, but ... how many different books had she seen mentioning Nicolas Flamel?In addition to "The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts", there are "Anecdotes from the Middle Ages" and "Biographies of Famous People Well-Deserved"...

"Okay, then Professor Quirrell will kidnap this guy named Flamel. Whether it's a bad guy or a good guy or just a selfish ordinary person, anyone with a sense will do it. The Defense Professor knows a lot of secrets, and he won't let it go This one." Harry sighed, looking up; she followed his gaze, but he just seemed to be looking at the whole library, row after row of bookshelves. "I don't mean to interfere with your project," said Harry, "and I definitely don't want to discourage you, but... to be honest, Hermione, I'm not sure you'll find a good way to make money in a book like this. Just Like that old joke, if an economist sees a twenty pound note on the ground, he doesn't bother to pick it up, because if it was real, someone else would have already picked it up. Any Well known ways to make a lot of money to be included in this kind of book...you know what I mean? There can't be easy [-] steps for everyone to make a thousand galleons a month or everyone would be doing it .”

"So what? That won't stop you," said Hermione, her voice harsh again. "You've been doing the impossible, and I bet you did the impossible last week, and You don't even bother to tell anyone."

(Slight pause, if Miss Granger knew, would have paused exactly that long if you had won the fight with Mad-Eye Moody eight days ago.)

"No, not in the last seven days," Harry said, "You see... one of the tricks to trying to do the impossible is to choose carefully which impossible things to challenge, and only if you have a special advantage If there's anything in this book about making money that's difficult for a wizard but easy to do with Dad's old Mac, then we've got it."

"I know that, Harry," said Hermione, her voice trembling just a little. "I came to see if there was anything I could manage to do. I thought maybe the hardest part of refining the Sorcerer's Stone The alchemy ring has to be very precise, so I can do it with a Muggle microscope—"

"That's amazing, Hermione!" said the boy, drawing his wand quickly, "Silently," and then continued after the noise from the noisy books had died down, "Even if the Sorcerer's Stone is just a myth, the same technique works for other Difficult alchemical procedures may also be useful—”

"Well, it won't help," said Hermione.She rushed to the library to read the only book on alchemy that wasn't in the restricted section.And then—she remembered the utter disappointment, all the sudden hopes that evaporated like smoke. "Because all alchemy rings have to be drawn 'as thin as a child's hair', not thinner in some alchemy procedures. And wizards have panoptic scopes, but I've never heard of a spell that requires them to zoom in on objects for precise manipulation. I should have thought of that!"

"Hermione," said Harry gravely, reaching into the red velvet bag again, "don't punish yourself for having a good idea that doesn't work out. You have to sift through a lot of flawed ideas to find the ones that have the potential to succeed." ...if you feel unhappy when thinking flawed thoughts, sending negative feedback to your brain instead of realizing that coming up with ideas is good brain behavior and should be encouraged, soon you won't have any thoughts ’” Harry put down two heart-shaped chocolates by the book. “Here, another chocolate. I mean, except for the one just now. This one rewards your brain for thinking of a good alternative strategy.”

"I think you're right," Hermione whispered, but didn't touch the chocolate.She started turning the pages back to page 167, the page she was reading when Harry entered.

(Hermione Granger doesn't need bookmarks, of course.)

Harry leaned in slightly, his head almost touching her shoulder, looking at the pages as she turned the pages, like he could see some valuable information in the quarter-second it took to turn the pages.It hadn't been long before breakfast, and from the faint smell of his breath she could clearly make out that Harry had banana pudding for dessert.

Harry spoke again. "So anyway...please take this as positive encouragement...are you really trying to invent ways to mass-produce elixirs to help me pay off my Lucius Malfoy debt?"

"Yes," her voice trailed off.Even though she's trying to think like Harry, it doesn't look like she's got the knack yet. "And what have you been doing all this time, Harry?"

Harry grimaced in disgust. "Trying to gather evidence for the 'Who Framed Hermione Granger' mystery."

"I..." Hermione looked up at Harry, "but, shouldn't I... try to solve this mystery myself?" It wasn't her first thought, it wasn't the most important thing she thought, but since Harry said so...

"It's not going to work," said Harry calmly. "There are too many people who would rather talk to me than you... and unfortunately, some of them have asked me to promise not to tell you what was said. Someone else. I'm sorry, but I don't think you can be of much help in this matter."

"Well, I think," said Hermione heavily, "that's it. It's all up to you. You collect all the clues, talk to all the suspects, and I'll stay here in the library. Waiting for you Please remember to tell me when you find out that Professor Quirrell did it."

"Hermione..." Harry said, "why does it matter who does it? Isn't it more important that everything gets sorted out than who does it?"

"I think you're right," said Hermione.She raised her hand and pressed her eyes. "I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Everyone's going to think - I know it's not your fault, Harry, you're - you're doing good, you're the perfect gentleman - except that now whatever I do , they'll all think I'm just—your rescue." She paused, then said in a trembling voice, "Perhaps they're right, Harry."

"Hey, hey, wait a minute—"

"I don't scare dementors. I get excellent marks in Charms, but I don't scare dementors."

"I have a mysterious dark side!" Harry whispered fiercely, turning his head to scan the rest of the library. (There is a boy in a far corner who occasionally does look in their direction; but it's so far away that it's impossible to hear anything without a silence spell.) "My dark side is definitely not a child, and God knows What other crazy magic is going on in my head - Professor Quirrell claims I can be whoever I want - it's all cheating, don't you understand, Hermione? The school administration has made special arrangements for me - I can't tell anyone - so that the Boy Who Lived has more study hours per day than anyone else, I'm cheating, and you still do better than me in Charms. I'm - I'm afraid I'm not - big The Boy Who Don't Die is probably not really a kid at all - but you can still compete with it. Didn't it occur to you that you might be the most powerful witch of the century if people weren't paying attention to me? Like you Can one person fight three senior bullies and still win?"

"I don't know," she said, her voice shaking as she put her hand over her eyes again. "All I know - even if it's true - is that no one will ever see the real me again, ever."

"Okay," Harry said after a while, "I see what you mean. Not the famous Potter-Granger research team, but Harry Potter and his lab assistants. Hmm... …I have an idea. How about I take my mind off making money for a while? I mean, this debt won’t be paid until I graduate from Hogwarts. So you can do it yourself and make the world Knowing that you are still as strong as ever. If you discover the secret of immortality by the way, we will treat it as a windfall."

To think of Harry relying on her to figure out a solution is like... an incredibly heavy burden on the shoulders of a poor traumatized 12-year-old girl, but she wants to hug Harry and give her a recovery for him A chance at self-respect as a heroine; she deserved it, she was a horrible villain, and kept talking nasty things to Harry, who was her loyal friend through and through, far more loyal than she was to him , and she's glad he still thinks she can accomplish something, and...

"Is there any magical method of rationality you can use when your mind is racing?" she asked finally.

"My personal approach is usually to separate the different thoughts, give them names, treat them as separate entities, and let them argue clearly in my head. The main permanent entities currently are: My Hufflepuff Odd, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Slytherin traits, my inner critic, and a simulation of you, Neville, Draco, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Quirrell, Dad , Ma, Richard Feynman[4], and Douglas Hofstetter[5]."

Hermione considered giving it a try, and then her common sense warned her that such role-playing could be dangerous. "You have a copy of me in your head?"

"Of course!" said Harry.The boy suddenly looked a little hurt. "Don't you have a copy of me in your head?"

That's when she realized that there was; not only that, it was speaking in Harry's own voice.

"It's creepy to think about that," said Hermione, "I do have a copy of you in my head. It's talking to me in your voice right now, arguing why it's perfectly normal."

"Very well," said Harry gravely, "I mean, otherwise I don't know how we can be friends."

Then she continued reading, and Harry seemed content to read the same book over her shoulder.

She kept seeing No. 70—Katherine Scott, who seemed to have invented a way to turn small animals into lemon tarts—before she finally worked up the courage to speak.

"Harry?" she said. (She leans slightly away from him, though she doesn't notice it herself.) "If you have a copy of Draco Malfoy in your head, does that mean that you and Draco Malfoy are friends?"

"Ah..." said Harry.He sighed. "Yes, I wanted to talk to you about it. I kind of regret not telling you sooner. Anyway, how should I put it... am I corrupting him?"

"What do you mean by corrupting him?"

"Lure him to the bright side of the Force.[6]"

She couldn't close her mouth.

"You know, like the Emperor and Darth Vader, but in reverse."

"Draco Malfoy," she said, "Harry, do you know—"

"I know."

"—what did Malfoy say about me? What would he do to me when he got the chance? I don't know what he said to you, but Daphne Greengrass said what Malfoy said in Slytherin Tell me. Those words are unspeakable, Harry! Literally unspeakable, because I can't even say them!"

"When was that?" Harry asked. "At the beginning of the year? Did Daphne say when?"

"No," said Hermione, "because it doesn't matter when, Harry. Anyone who says things like that - who says things like what Malfoy said - can't be a good person. He's useless, he's bad, because there's no way a good guy can—"

"You're wrong," said Harry, looking straight into her eyes, "I could guess what Draco was threatening to do to you, because the second time I saw him, he said he was going to do something to a Ten-year-old girls do the same thing. But don't you understand, Draco was raised by Death Eaters before he entered Hogwarts. With his circumstances, unless there is supernatural power, In order to make his moral standards the same as yours—"

Hermione was shaking her head desperately. "It's not like that, Harry. You don't need anyone to tell you it's wrong to hurt people. The reason you don't is not that the teacher won't let you do it, but because—because you can see people hurt, don't you know that?" Harry?" Her voice was shaking, "It's not—it's not a rule to follow, like a rule in algebra! If you can't see it, if you can't feel it here," she slapped her hand on the center of her chest, and The location of her heart is different, but it doesn't matter, because it's all actually in the brain anyway, "Then you just don't!"

It occurred to her then that perhaps Harry hadn't.

"There are some history books you haven't read," said Harry quietly. "There are some books you haven't read, Hermione, and those books might give you a big picture. Centuries ago—I think in the It must have been in the seventeenth century—a popular country pastime was to pack a dozen live cats in wicker baskets or parcels, and—"

"Stop it," she said.

"—cooked over a campfire. Just ordinary celebration. Fun, civilized entertainment. I'd say it's really more civilized than burning women they think are witches. Because that's the way people are made, huh." Min, the way humans feel emotions—" Harry put a hand on his heart, in the anatomically correct position, then paused, then moved his hand up to his head, pointing to the Position, "—is feeling hurt when they see their friends hurt. They care about people within range, members of their own tribe. This feeling has a kill switch labeled 'enemy,' 'foreigner,' or sometimes Just 'stranger'. That's how people are if they aren't learned. So no, that doesn't mean Draco Malfoy is inhuman, or even that he's particularly evil. If he was raised to believe in hurting enemies very funny--"

"If you believe this," her voice trembled, "if you can believe this, you are evil. People are always responsible for what they do. No matter who tells you to do it, you It's the one who does the action. Everyone understands that—"

"No, they don't! You grew up in a post-World War II society where everyone knew that only bad people would say 'I'm just following orders'[7]. In the fifteenth century, such behavior would have been called For noble loyalty." Harry raised his voice, "Do you think that you are genetically better than everyone who lived in that era? For example, if you travel back to the fifteenth century as a baby, you yourself can To think that burning cats is wrong, that burning witches is wrong, that slavery is wrong, that all self-aware beings should be within your sphere of concern? Do you think that you are on your first day at Hogwarts? Can this realization be done in a day? No one ever told Draco that he had a responsibility to be more moral than the social environment in which he grew up. And even then, it only took him four months to grasp A Muggle-born, don't let her fall off the roof." She had never seen Harry's eyes more intense than they were now, "I haven't finished corrupting Draco Malfoy yet, but I think so far He did a great job."

The problem with having an excellent memory is that she does remember.

She remembered Draco Malfoy gripping her wrist so hard when she fell from the Hogwarts roof that her wrist was bruised afterwards.

She remembered Draco Malfoy helping her to her feet when someone jinxed her and tripped her onto the Slytherin Quidditch captain's plate.

She also remembered—in fact, that's why she brought up the subject in the first place—how she felt hearing Draco Malfoy's testimony under Veritaserum.

"Why didn't you tell me?" said Hermione, unable to help raising her voice. "If I knew—"

"I can't tell you, it's not my secret," said Harry, "and Draco is in danger if his father finds out."

"I'm not stupid, Mr. Potter. What's your real reason for not telling me, what the hell are you doing with Mr. Malfoy?"

"Ah. Hmm..." Harry avoided her gaze and looked down at the library desk.

"Draco Malfoy told the Aurors under Veritaserum that he wanted to see if he could beat me, so he asked to duel me, so he could test it out. According to the transcript, those are his exact words."

"Yeah," said Harry, still not looking her in the eye, "Hermione Granger. Of course she'll remember the exact words. Even if it's strapped to a chair, in front of all the members of the Wizengamot because Tried for murder—”

"What the hell are you doing with Draco Malfoy?"

Harry flinched and said, "I'm afraid it's not quite what you guessed, but..."

The terror escalated layer by layer in her heart, and finally broke out.

"Are you doing scientific research with him?"

"Uh--"

"Are you doing scientific research with him? You should be doing scientific research with me!"

"Not like that! I didn't do any real science with him! I just, you know, taught him some harmless Muggle science like fundamentals of physics and algebra or something - I didn't do that with you, To do original magical research with him—”

"I guess you didn't tell him about me either?"

"Er, of course not?" said Harry, "I've been doing science with him since October, when he wasn't fit to hear about you—"

That unspeakable sense of betrayal was rising up inside her, up, taking over, her voice rising, her eyes blazing with anger, she was sure her nose was starting to run, her throat Like fire.She pushed the table and stood up, took a step back, fixed her eyes on the person who betrayed her, and roared in a sharp and piercing voice, "That's wrong! You can't do scientific research with two people at the same time!"

"Uh--"

"I mean, you can't do scientific research with two people at the same time and keep each other in the dark!"

"Ah..." said Harry carefully, "I did think of that, and I was careful not to mix your research with anything I did with him—"

"You are very careful." She almost hissed this sentence, but unfortunately there was no word in this sentence that could make her hiss.

Harry raised a hand and ran through his tangled hair, which for some reason made her want to scream at him even more. "Miss Granger," Harry said, "I think this conversation has become more and more like a metaphor, um..."

"What?" She screamed at him with all her might inside the silence barrier.

Then she realized, flushing, that if her magic reached adult levels, her hair would burn itself.

The only other person in the library - the Ravenclaw boy sitting at the far end - watched them both with wide eyes, while a book was lamely covering the lower half of his face, as cover up.

"Okay," Harry sighed slightly, "then, please keep in mind that this is just a bad metaphor. Real scientists will cooperate with each other at any time. I don't think my behavior is cheating. Scientists often Keep their work confidential. Your research and mine are confidential, especially not to Draco Malfoy - in the first place he wouldn't have come close if he knew I was your friend and not your rival Me. And if I tell anyone about Draco, the danger is that Draco—”

"Is that really all it is?" she asked, "Really, Harry? Don't you want us both to feel special, like you just want to be with us and only we can be with you ?”

"That's not why I did it—"

Harry stopped.

Harry looked at her.

When she realized what she blurted out, all the blood rushed back to her face, the heat should have steamed her ears, melted her head, and the flesh would have turned into liquid and flowed down her neck down.

Harry stared at her with sudden, utter terror on his face.

"Well..." she squealed, "it's... oh, I don't know, Harry! Is this just a metaphor? If a boy spends a hundred thousand galleons to turn a girl