Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

And Harry turned again and took a few more steps -

Looked back one last time, and said, softly, 'Thank you.'

And left.

There was a long pause after he'd departed.

'So,' said one.

'So,' said the other.

'The Defense Professor doesn't like publicity, does he.'

'Harry doesn't know us very well, does he.'

'No, he doesn't.'

'But we won't use his money for that, of course.'

'Of course not, that wouldn't be right. We'll do the Defense Professor separately.'

'We'll get some Gryffindors to write Skeeter, and say...'

'...his sleeve lifted up one time in Defense class, and they saw the Dark Mark...'

'...and he's probably teaching Harry Potter all sorts of dreadful things...'

'...and he's the worst Defense Professor anyone remembers even in Hogwarts, he's not just failing to teach us, he's getting everything wrong, the complete opposite of what it should be...'

'...like when he claimed that you could only cast the Killing Curse using love, which made it pretty much useless.'

'I like that one.'

'Thanks.'

'I bet the Defense Professor likes it too.'

'He does have a sense of humor. He wouldn't have called us what he did if he didn't have a sense of humor.'

'But are we really going to be able to do Harry's job?'

'Harry said to discuss the problem before trying to solve it, so let's do that.'

The Weasley twins decided that George would be the enthusiastic one while Fred doubted.

'It all seems sort of contradictory,' said Fred. 'He wants it to be ridiculous enough that everyone laughs at Skeeter and knows it's wrong, and he wants Skeeter to believe it. We can't do both things at the same time.'

'We'll have to fake up some evidence to convince Skeeter,' said George.

'Was that a solution?' said Fred.

They considered this.

'Maybe,' said George, 'but I don't think we should be all that strict about it, do you?'

The twins shrugged helplessly.

'So then the fake evidence has to be good enough to convince Skeeter,' said Fred. 'Can we really do that on our own?'

'We don't have to do it on our own,' said George, and pointed to the pile of money. 'We can hire other people to help us.'

The twins got a thoughtful look on their face.

'That could use up Harry's budget pretty fast,' said Fred. 'This is a lot of money for us, but it's not a lot of money for someone like Flume.'

'Maybe people will give discounts if they know it's for Harry,' said George. 'But most importantly of all, whatever we do, it has to be impossible.'

Fred blinked. 'What do you mean, impossible?'

'So impossible that we don't get in trouble, because no one believes we could have done it. So impossible that even Harry starts wondering. It has to be surreal, it has to make people doubt their own sanity, it has to be... better than Harry.'

Fred's eyes were wide in astonishment. This happened sometimes, between them, but not often. 'But why?'

'They were pranks. They were all pranks. The pie was a prank. The Remembrall was a prank. Kevin Entwhistle's cat was a prank. Snape was a prank. We're the best pranksters in Hogwarts, are we going to roll over and give up without a fight?'

'He's the Boy-Who-Lived,' said Fred.

'And we're the Weasley twins! He's challenging us. He said we could do what he does. But I bet he doesn't think we'll ever be as good as him.'

'He's right,' said Fred, feeling rather nervous. The Weasley twins did sometimes disagree even when they had all the same information, but every time they did it seemed unnatural, like at least