Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

it. A work like this only does as much good as there are people who read it.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled fic...

The key to strategy is not to choose a path to J. K. Rowling, but to choose so that all paths lead to a J. K. Rowling.

A small study room, near but not in the Ravenclaw dorm, one of the many many unused rooms of Hogwarts. Gray stone the floors, red brick the walls, dark stained wood the ceiling, four glowing glass globes set into the four walls of the room. A circular table that looked like a wide slab of black marble set on thick black marble legs for columns, but which had proved to be very light (weight and mass both) and wasn't difficult to pick up and move around if necessary. Two comfortably cushioned chairs which had seemed at first to be locked to the floor in inconvenient places, but which would, the two of them had finally discovered, scoot around to where you stood as soon as you leaned over in a posture that looked like you were about to sit down.

There also seemed to be a number of bats flying around the room.

That was where, future historians would one day record - if the whole project ever actually amounted to anything - the scientific study of magic had begun, with two young first-year Hogwarts students.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, theorist.

And Hermione Jean Granger, experimenter and test subject.

Harry was doing better in classes now, at least the classes he considered interesting. He'd read more books, and not books for eleven-year-olds either. He'd practiced Transfiguration over and over during one of his extra hours every day, taking the other hour for beginning Occlumency. He was taking the worthwhile classes seriously, not just turning in his homework every day, but using his free time to learn more than was required, to read other books beyond the given textbooks, looking to master the subject and not just memorize a few test answers, to excel. You didn't see that much outside Ravenclaw. And now even within Ravenclaw, his only remaining competitors were Padma Patil (whose parents came from a non-English-speaking culture and thus had raised her with an actual work ethic), Anthony Goldstein (out of a certain tiny ethnic group that won 25% of the Nobel Prizes), and of course, striding far above everyone like a Titan strolling through a pack of puppies, Hermione Granger.

To run this particular experiment you needed the test subject to learn sixteen new spells, on their own, without help or correction. That meant the test subject was Hermione. Period.

It should be mentioned at this point that the bats flying around the room were not glowing.

Harry was having trouble accepting the implications of this.

'Oogely boogely!' Hermione said again.

Again, at the tip of Hermione's wand, there was the abrupt, transitionless appearance of a bat. One moment, empty air. The next moment, bat. Its wings seemed to be already moving in the instant when it appeared.

And it still wasn't glowing.

'Can I stop now?' said Hermione.

'Are you sure,' Harry said through what seemed to be a block in his throat, 'that maybe with a bit more practice you couldn't get it to glow?' He was violating the experimental procedure he'd written down beforehand, which was a sin, and he was violating it because he didn't like the results he was getting, which was a mortal sin, you could go to Science Hell for that, but it didn't seem to be mattering anyway.

'What did you change this time?' Hermione said, sounding a little weary.

'The durations of the oo, eh, and ee sounds. It's supposed to be 3 to 2 to 2, not 3 to 1 to 1.'

'Oogely boogely!' said Hermione.

The bat materialized with only one wing and spun pathetically to the floor, flopping around in a circle on the gray stone.

'Now what is it really?' said Hermione.

'3 to 2 to 1.'

'Oogely boogely!'

This time the bat didn't have any wings at all and fell with a plop like a dead mouse.

'3 to 1 to 2.'

And lo the bat did materialize and it did fly up at once toward the ceiling, healthy and glowing a bright green.

Hermione nodded in satisfaction. 'Okay, what next?'

There was a long pause.

'Seriously? You seriously have to say Oogely boogely with the duration of the oo, eh, and ee sounds having a ratio of 3 to 1 to 2, or the bat won't glow? Why? Why? For the love of all that is sacred, why?'

'Why not?'

'AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH!'

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Harry had thought about the nature of magic for a while, and then designed a series of experiments based on the premise that virtually everything wizards believed about magic was wrong.

You couldn't really need to say 'Wingardium Leviosa' in exactly the right way in order