Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry made a shrugging motion with his shoulders, as he lay on the floor looking at his book. 'Suspicious things happen all the time, and if you're a conspiracy theorist you can always find something.'

'But no trial?' said Hermione.

'It was right after the Dark Lord's defeat,' Harry said, his voice serious as he said it. 'Things were incredibly chaotic, and when the Aurors tracked down Black he was standing there laughing in a street ankle-deep in blood, with twenty eyewitnesses to recount how he'd killed a friend of my father's named Peter Pettigrew plus twelve bystanders. I'm not saying I approve of Black not getting a trial. But these are wizards we're talking about here, so it's not really any more suspicious than, I don't know, the sort of thing people point to when they want to argue over who shot John F. Kennedy. So anyway, Sirius Black is the wizarding Lee Harvey Oswald. There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about who really betrayed my parents instead of him, and one of the favorites is Peter Pettigrew, and this is where it starts getting complicated.'

Hermione listened, fascinated. 'But how do you go from there to the Weasleys' pet rat -'

'Hold on,' said Harry, 'I'm getting there. Now, after Pettigrew's death it came out that he'd been a spy for the Light - not a double agent, just someone who snuck around and found things out. He'd been good at that since he was a teenager, even in Hogwarts he had a reputation for finding out all sorts of secrets. So the conspiracy theory is that Pettigrew became an unregistered Animagus while he was still in Hogwarts, an Animagus of something small that could scurry around and listen to conversations. The main problem being that successful Animagi are rare and doing it as a teenager would be really unlikely, so of course the conspiracy theory says that my father and Black were unregistered Animagi too. And in that conspiracy theory, Pettigrew himself killed the twelve bystanders, turned into his small Animagus form, and ran. So Michael Shermer says there are four additional problems with this. One, Black was the only one who knew where my parents were.' (Harry's voice was a little hard as he said that.) 'Two, Black was a more likely suspect to start with than Pettigrew, there's a rumor Black deliberately tried to get a student killed during his time at Hogwarts, and he was from this really nasty pureblood family, Bellatrix Black was literally his cousin. Three, Black was twenty times the fighting wizard that Pettigrew was, even if he wasn't as smart. The duel between them would have been like Professor Quirrell versus Professor Sprout. Pettigrew probably didn't even get a chance to draw his wand, let alone fake all the evidence the conspiracy theory requires. And four, Black was standing in the street laughing.'

'But the rat -' said Hermione.

'Right,' Harry said. 'Well, to make a long story short, Bill Weasley decided that his little brother Percy's pet rat was Pettigrew's Animagus form -'

Hermione's jaw dropped.

'Yes,' Harry said, 'you wouldn't exactly expect Evil Pettigrew to be living a sad and furtive life as the pet rat of an enemy wizarding family, he'd either be with the Malfoys or, more likely, off in the Carribean after a bit of plastic surgery. Anyway, Bill knocks out his little brother Percy, stuns and grabs the rat, sends out all these emergency owl messages -'

'Oh, no!' Hermione said, the words torn out of her.

'- and somehow manages to gather Dumbledore, the Minister of Magic, and the Head Auror -'

'He didn't!' said Hermione.

'And of course when they get there they think he's crazy, but they use Veritas Oculum on the rat anyway, just to be sure, and what do they discover?'

She would've died. 'A rat.'

'You win a cookie! So they dragged poor Bill Weasley off to St. Mungo's and it turned out to be a pretty standard schizophrenic break, it just happens to some people, especially young men around what we'd consider college age. Guy was convinced he was ninety-seven years old and had died and gone back in time to his younger self via train station. And he responded perfectly well to antipsychotics and is back to normal and everything's fine now, except people don't talk as much anymore about Sirius Black conspiracy theories, and you don't ever ask the Weasleys about the family rat.'

Hermione was giggling helplessly. It was really awful and she shouldn't be laughing and she was a terrible person.

'The thing I don't understand,' Harry said, after their giggles had died down, 'is why Black would hunt down Pettigrew instead of running as fast as he could. He had to know the Aurors would be after him. I wonder if they got the reason out of Black before they took him to Azkaban? See, this is why people who are absolutely positively guilty still go through the legal system and get trials.'

Hermione had to agree with that.

Soon Harry was done with his book while Hermione was only halfway through hers - hers was a much more difficult book than Harry's, but she still felt embarrassed about that. And then she had to put Magical Mnemonics back on the shelf and drag herself away, because it was time for her to face the most dreaded class in Hogwarts, BROOMSTICK RIDING.

Harry tagged along as she walked there, even though his own class wasn't until an hour and a half later, like a fighter jet escorting a sad little propeller plane on its way to its own funeral.

The boy wished her goodbye in a quiet, sympathetic voice, and she walked onto the grassy fields of Doom.

And there was much shrieking and almost falling and horrible brushes with death and the ground in completely the wrong place and the sun getting in her eyes and Morag buzzing her and Mandy thinking she was being subtle about always being near enough to catch her if she fell and she knew the other students were laughing at both of them but she never said anything to Mandy because she didn't actually want to die.

After ten million years the class ended, and she was back on the ground where she belonged until next Thursday. Sometimes she had nightmares about it always being Thursday.

Why everyone had to learn this, when they were just going to Apparate or Floo or portkey everywhere once they grew up, was a complete and utter mystery to Hermione. Nobody actually needed to ride broomsticks as an adult, it was like being forced to play dodgeball in P.E.