Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

He should scream and run away.

He should scream and run away.

Whatever this was... it could very well be...

...the grand finale...

He really should just scream and run away.

With a resigned feeling that the universe would come and get him anyway, Harry continued slicing at the pancake with his fork and knife. He couldn't muster the energy. That was the sad truth. Harry knew now how people felt when they were tired of running, tired of trying to escape fate, and they just fell to the ground and let the horrifically befanged and tentacled demons of the darkest abyss drag them off to their unspeakable destiny.

The Weasley twins drew closer.

And yet closer.

Harry ate another bite of pancake.

The Weasley twins arrived, grinning brightly.

'Hello, Fred,' Harry said dully. One of the twins nodded. 'Hello, George.' The other twin nodded.

'You sound tired,' said George.

'You should cheer up,' said Fred.

'Look what we got you!'

And George took, from behind Fred's back -

A cake with twelve flaming candles.

There was a pause, as the Ravenclaw table stared at them.

'That's not right,' said someone. 'Harry Potter was born on the thirty-first of Jul-'

'HE IS COMING,' said a huge hollow voice that cut through all conversation like a sword of ice. 'THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY -'

Dumbledore had leapt out of his throne and run straight over the Head Table and seized hold of the woman speaking those awful words, Fawkes had appeared in a flash, and all three of them vanished in a crack of fire.

There was a shocked pause...

...followed by heads turning in the direction of Harry Potter.

'I didn't do it,' Harry said in a tired voice.

'That was a prophecy!' someone at the table hissed. 'And I bet it's about you!'

Harry sighed.

He stood up from his seat, raised his voice, and said very loudly over the conversations that were starting up, 'It's not about me! Obviously! I'm not coming here, I'm already here!'

Harry sat back down again.

The people who had been looking at him turned away again.

Someone else at the table said, 'Then who is it about?'

And with a dull, leaden sensation, Harry realized who wasn't already at Hogwarts.

Call it a wild guess, but Harry had a feeling the undead Dark Lord would be showing up one of these days.

The conversation continued on around him.

'Not to mention, tear apart the very what?'

'I thought I heard Trelawney start to say something with an 'S' just before the Headmaster grabbed her.'

'Like... soul? Sun?'

'If someone's going to tear apart the Sun we're really in trouble!'

That seemed rather unlikely to Harry, unless the world contained scary things which had heard of David Criswell's ideas about star lifting.

'So,' Harry said in tired tones, 'this happens every Sunday breakfast, does it?'

'No,' said a student who might have been in his seventh year, frowning grimly. 'It doesn't.'

Harry shrugged. 'Whatever. Anyone want some birthday cake?'

'But it's not your birthday!' said the same student who'd objected last time.

That was the cue for Fred and George to start laughing, of course.

Even Harry managed a weary smile.

As the first slice was served to him, Harry said, 'I've had a really long week.'

And Harry was sitting in the cavern level of his trunk, slid shut and