Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

'Um...' Harry said. 'Hermione, I hate to put it this way, but imagine we'd decided to hold off on research until later, and the first thing we tried after we graduated was Transfiguring an Alzheimer's cure, and it worked. We'd feel... I don't think the word stupid would adequately describe how we'd feel. What if there's something else like that and it does work?'

'That's not fair, Harry!' Hermione said. Her voice was trembling like she was on the verge of breaking out crying. 'You can't put that on people! It's not our job to do that sort of thing, we're kids!'

For a moment Harry wondered what would happen if someone told Hermione she had to fight an immortal Dark Lord, if she would turn into one of the whiny self-pitying heroes that Harry could never stand reading about in his books.

'Anyway,' Hermione said. Her voice shook. 'I don't want to keep doing this. I don't believe children can do things that grownups can't, that's only in stories.'

There was silence in the classroom.

Hermione started to look a little scared, and Harry knew that his own expression had gotten colder.

It might not have hurt so much if the same thought hadn't already come to Harry - that, while thirty might be old for a scientific revolutionary and twenty about right, while there were people who got doctorates when they were seventeen and fourteen-year-old heirs who'd been great kings or generals, there wasn't really anyone who'd made the history books at eleven.

'All right,' Harry said. 'Figure out how to do something a grownup can't. Is that your challenge?'

'I didn't mean it like that,' Hermione said, her voice coming out in a frightened whisper.

With an effort, Harry wrenched his gaze away from Hermione. 'I'm not angry at you,' Harry said. His voice was cold, despite his best efforts. 'I'm angry at, I don't know, everything. But I'm not willing to lose, Hermione. Losing isn't always the right thing to do. I'll figure out how to do something a grown wizard can't do, and then I'll get back to you. How's that?'

There was more silence.

'Okay,' said Hermione, her voice wavering a little. She pushed herself up out of her chair, and went over to the door of the abandoned classroom they'd been working in. Her hand went onto the doorknob. 'We're still friends, right? And if you can't figure out anything -'

Her voice halted.

'Then we'll study together,' Harry said. His voice was even colder now.

'Um, bye for now, then,' Hermione said, and she quickly went out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Sometimes Harry hated having a dark side, even when he was inside it.

And the part of him that had thought exactly the same thing as Hermione, that no, children couldn't do what grownups couldn't, was saying all the things that Hermione had been too frightened to say, like, That's one hell of a difficult challenge you just grabbed for yourself and boy are you going to end up with egg on your face this time and at least this way you'll know you've failed.

And the part of him that didn't enjoy losing replied, in a very cold voice, Fine, you can shut up and watch.

It was almost lunchtime, and Harry didn't care. He hadn't even bothered grabbing a snack bar from his pouch. His stomach could stand a little starving.

The wizarding world was tiny, they didn't think like scientists, they didn't know science, they didn't question what they'd grown up with, they hadn't put protective shells on their time machines, they played Quidditch, all of magical Britain was smaller than a small Muggle city, the greatest wizarding school only educated up to the age of seventeen, silly wasn't challenging that at eleven, silly was assuming wizards knew what they were doing and had already exhausted all the low- hanging fruit a scientific polymath would see.

Step One had been to make a list of every magical constraint Harry could remember, all the things you supposedly couldn't do.

Step Two, mark the constraints that seemed to make the least sense from a scientific perspective.

Step Three, prioritize constraints that a wizard would be unlikely to question if they didn't know science.

Step Four, come up with avenues for attacking them.

Hermione still felt a little shaky as she sat down next to Mandy at the Ravenclaw table. Hermione's lunch had two fruits (tomato slices and peeled tangerines), three vegetables (carrots, carrots, and more carrots), one meat (fried Diricawl drumsticks whose unhealthy coating she would carefully remove), and one little piece of chocolate cake that she would earn by eating the other parts.

It hadn't been as bad as Potions class, sometimes she still had nightmares about that. But this time she had made it happen and she'd felt like its target. Just for a moment, before the terrible cold darkness looked away and said it wasn't angry with her, because it hadn't wanted to scare her.

And she still had that feeling like she'd missed something earlier, something really important.

But they hadn't violated any of the rules of Transfiguration... had they? They hadn't made any liquids, any gases, they hadn't taken orders from the Defense Professor...

The pill! That had been something to be eaten!

...well, no, nobody would just eat a pill lying around, it hadn't worked actually, they could have just Finite Incantatemed it if it had, but she would still have to tell Harry about that and make sure they didn't mention it in front of Professor McGonagall, in case they were never allowed to study Transfiguration again...

Hermione was starting to get a really sick feeling in her stomach. She pushed back her plate from the table, she