Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Daphne kept her wand level. "Like your father couldn't tamper with the Aurors' record, if he wanted to! I wasn't born yesterday, Mister Malfoy!"

Slowly, as if not to cause alarm, the silver-robed figure drew a wand from his robes. Daphne's hand tightened on her own wand, but then she recognized the position of the fingers on the wand, the stance the figure was assuming, and she drew a shocked breath -

"Expecto Patronum!"

Silver light leapt from the end of the other's wand - and condensed, forming a shining serpent that seemed to coil in the air as though nesting there.

She just gaped.

"I did try to help Hermione Granger," Draco Malfoy said with a level voice. "Because I know the sickness at the heart of Slytherin's House, the reason why so many of us can't cast the Patronus Charm any more, is hate. Hate of Muggleborns, or just anyone really. People think that's all Slytherin is about now, not cunning or ambition or honorable nobility. And I even know, because it's obvious if you just look, that Hermione Granger wasn't weak at magic."

Daphne's mind had gone completely blank. Her eyes darted around nervously, just to check that there wasn't blood coming from under the doors, like the last time Something had Broken.

"And I've also figured out," Draco Malfoy said quietly, as the silver snake went on shining with unmistakeable light and warmth, "that Hermione Granger never really tried to kill me. Maybe she was False-Memory-Charmed, maybe she was Legilimized, but now that she's been murdered, it's obvious that Miss Granger was the target in the first place, when somebody tried to set her up for murdering me -"

"D-do-do you know what you're saying?" Daphne's voice broke. If Lucius Malfoy heard his heir saying that - he'd skin Draco and turn him into trousers!

Draco Malfoy smiled, metallic robes gleaming in the light of his full corporeal Patronus; it was a smile both arrogant and dangerous, like being turned into a pair of leather pants was beneath his concerns. "Yes," said Draco, "but it doesn't matter now. House Malfoy is returning House Potter's money and cancelling the debt."

Daphne walked over to her bed and then fell on it, hoping she could wake up from the dream once she was in bed.

"I'd like you to join a conspiracy," said the figure in the shining robes. "Everyone in Slytherin who can cast the Patronus Charm, and everyone who can learn. That's how we'll know to trust each other, when the Silvery Slytherins meet." With a dramatic gesture, Draco Malfoy cast back his hood. "But it won't work without you, Daphne Greengrass. You and your family. Your mother will negotiate it with Father, but I'd like the Greengrasses to hear the proposal from you, first." Draco Malfoy's voice lowered grimly. "There is much we must speak of, before we eat dinner."

Harry Potter had, apparently, taken to being invisible; they'd glimpsed his hand only briefly, when he was handing them the list, written on strange not- parchment. Harry had explained that, all things considered, he didn't really think it was smart for him to be findable except on special occasions, so he was just going to deal with people as a disembodied floating voice from now on, or as a brilliant silver light that hid behind corners where nobody could see it, and which could always find his friends no matter where they tried to hide. It was, in all honesty, one of the creepiest things which Fred and George had ever heard, over a lifetime which had included filling the shoes of every student in second-year Slytherin with Transfigured live millipedes. Fred and George didn't think this could possibly be good for anyone's sanity, but they didn't know what to say. It couldn't be denied, they'd seen with their own four eyes, that Hogwarts...

...wasn't safe...

"I don't know who you went to for the False Memory Charm on Rita Skeeter," said the sourceless voice of Harry Potter. "Whoever it is... probably won't be able to fill this order directly, but they may know someone who can get things from the Muggle world. And - I know it may cost extra, but as few people as possible should know that Harry Potter is related to this." Another flash of a small boy's hand, and a bag hit the ground with the clinking noise. "Some of these items are expensive even in the Muggle world, and your contact may have to go outside Britain; but one hundred Galleons will be enough to pay for it all, I hope. I'd tell you where the Galleons came from, but I don't want to spoil tomorrow's surprise."

"What is this stuff?" said Fred or George, as they looked over the list. "Our father is a Muggle expert -"

"- and we don't recognize half this stuff -"

"- why, we don't recognize any of it -"

"- just what are you planning to do?"

"Things have become serious," Harry's voice said softly. "I don't know what I'll have to do. I may need the power of the Muggles, not just the wizards, before this is done - and I might need it right away, with no time to prepare. I'm not planning to use any of this. I just want it around in case of... contingencies." Harry's voice paused. "Obviously I owe you more than I can ever repay and you won't let me give you any of what you deserve, I don't even know how to say thank you properly, and all I can do is hope that someday when you grow up you'll be more sensible about this whole thing and would you please take a ten percent commission -"

"Shut up, you," said George or Fred.

"For God's sake, you went after a troll for me and Fred had his ribs broken!"

They both just shook their heads. Harry had stayed behind when they'd told him to run, and stepped forward to distract the troll from eating George. Harry was the kind of person, they knew, who'd think that something like that didn't cancel out what he owed the Weasley twins, that his own deed wasn't properly commensurate. But what the Weasleys knew, and Harry wouldn't understand until he was older, was that it meant that nothing was owed, or ever could be owed between them. It was a strange kind of selfishness, they thought, that Harry could understand kindness within himself - never dreaming of asking of money from anyone he'd helped more than they'd helped him, or calling that a debt - while being apparently unable to conceive that others might want to act the same way toward him.

"Remind me to buy you a copy of the Muggle novel Atlas Shrugged," the sourceless voice said. "I'm starting to understand what sort of person can benefit from reading it."

Monday, April 20th, 7:00pm.