Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Something to do that wouldn't be seen as pushing up on the opposite end of Harry Potter's seesaw.

It would be hard.

It would go against her nature.

She would have to fight someone very evil.

And she would need to ask someone even more evil for help.

Hermione raised her hand to knock upon that terrible door.

She hesitated.

Hermione realized she was being silly, and raised her hand a bit higher.

She tried to knock again.

Her hand quite failed to touch the door.

And then the door swung open anyway.

'Dear me,' said the spider, sitting in its web. 'Was it really that hard to lose a single Quirrell point, Miss Granger?'

Hermione stood there with her hand raised, her cheeks growing pink. It had been.

'Well, Miss Granger, I shall be merciful,' said the evil Professor Quirrell. 'Consider it already lost. There, I have taken a hard choice from you. Are you not grateful?'

'Professor Quirrell,' Hermione managed to say in a voice that squeaked a little. 'I have a lot of Quirrell points, don't I?'

'You do indeed,' said Professor Quirrell. 'Though one less than you had before. Terrible, isn't it? Just think, if I don't like your reason for coming here, you could lose another fifty. Maybe I'd take them away one... by one... by one...'

Hermione's cheeks were going even redder. 'You're really evil, did anyone ever tell you that?'

'Miss Granger,' Professor Quirrell said gravely, 'it can be dangerous to give people compliments like that when they have not been truly earned. The recipient might feel bashful and undeserving and want to do something worthy of your praise. Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about, Miss Granger?'

It was after lunch on Thursday afternoon, and Hermione and Harry were ensconced in a little library nook, with a Quietus field up so they could talk. Harry was lying stomach-down on the ground with his elbows resting on the floor and his head in his hands and his feet kicking up casually behind him. Hermione was occupying a stuffed chair much too large for her, like she was the Hermione center of a candy shell.

Harry had suggested that they could, as a first pass, read just the titles of all the books in the library, and then Hermione could read all the tables of contents.

Hermione had thought this was a brilliant idea. She'd never done that with a library before.

Unfortunately there was a slight flaw in this plan.

Namely, they were both Ravenclaws.

Hermione was reading a book called Magical Mnemonics.

Harry was reading a book called The Skeptical Wizard.

Each had thought it was just one special exception they would make only this one time, and neither had yet realized it was impossible for either of them to ever finish reading all the book titles no matter how hard they tried.

The quiet of their little nook was broken by two words.

'Oh, no,' Harry suddenly said out loud, sounding like the words had been torn out of him.

There was a bit more quiet.

'He didn't,' Harry said, in the same voice.

Then she heard Harry start giggling helplessly.

Hermione looked up from her book.

'All right,' she said, 'what is it?'

'I just found out why you never ask the Weasleys about the family rat,' Harry said. 'It's really awful and I shouldn't be laughing and I'm a terrible person.'

'Yes,' Hermione said primly, 'you are. Tell me too.'

'Okay, first the background. There's a whole chapter in this book about Sirius Black conspiracy theories. You remember who that is, right?'

'Of course,' said Hermione. Sirius Black was a traitor, a friend of James Potter who'd betrayed the location of Harry's parents to Voldemort.

'So it turns out there were a number of, shall we say, irregularities, associated with Black going to Azkaban. He didn't get a trial, and the Junior Minister in charge when the Aurors arrested Black was none other than Cornelius Fudge, who became our current Minister of Magic.'

That sounded a little suspicious to Hermione too, and she said as much.