Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

our spy,' Hermione said carefully.

The young Slytherin shrugged. 'I think I did a good job of telling which ones really want to sell out Malfoy, I'm not sure anyone really wants to sell out Potter to you. But Nott is a sure bet for betraying Potter to Malfoy and since I had Entwhistle approach him supposedly on behalf of Malfoy and Entwhistle really reports to us, that's almost as good -'

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment. 'We're going to lose, aren't we?'

'Look,' Zabini said patiently, 'You're in the lead right now on Quirrell points. We just have to not lose this last battle completely and you'll have enough Quirrell points to win the Christmas wish.'

Professor Quirrell had announced that the final battle would operate on a formal scoring system, which he'd been asked to do to avoid recriminations afterward. Each time you shot someone, the general of your army got two Quirrell points. A gong would ring through the battle area (they didn't know yet where they would be fighting, though Hermione was hoping for the forest again, where Sunshine did well) and its pitch would tell which army had won the points. And if anyone was faking being hit, the gong would ring out anyway, and then a double gong would ring later, after no fixed time, to hail the retraction. And if you called the name of an army, cried 'For Sunshine!' or 'For Chaos!' or 'For Dragon!', it switched your allegiance to that army...

Even Hermione had been able to see the flaw in that set of rules. But Professor Quirrell had gone on to announce that if you'd been originally assigned to Sunshine, nobody could shoot you in the name of Sunshine - or rather, they could, but then Sunshine lost a single Quirrell point, symbolized by a triple gong. That prevented you from shooting your own soldiers for points, and discouraged suiciding before the enemy got you, but you could still shoot spies if you had to.

Right now, Hermione had two hundred and forty-four Quirrell points, and Malfoy had two hundred and nineteen, and Harry had two hundred and twenty-one; and there were twenty-four soldiers in each army.

'So we fight carefully,' Hermione said, 'and just try not to lose too badly.'

'No,' said Zabini. The young Slytherin's face was now serious. 'The problem is, Malfoy and Potter both know that their only way to win is to combine and crush us, then fight it out on their own. So here's what I think we should do -'

Hermione left the classroom in something of a daze. Zabini's plan hadn't been the obvious one, it had been strange and complicated and layered and the sort of thing she would've expected Harry to come up with, not Zabini. It felt wrong just for her to be able to understand a plan like that. Young girls shouldn't be able to understand plans like that. The Hat would've Sorted her into Slytherin, if it'd seen that she could understand plans like that...

The awesome thing was how fast he'd been able to escalate the chaos once he started doing it deliberately.

Harry sat in his office; he'd been given the authority to order furniture from the house elves, so he'd ordered a throne, and curtains in a black and crimson pattern. Scarlet light like blood, mixed with shadow, poured over the floor.

Something in Harry felt like he'd finally come home.

Before him stood the four Lieutenants of Chaos, his most trusted minions, one of whom was a traitor.

This. This was what life should be like.

'We are gathered,' said Harry.

'Let Chaos reign,' chorused his four Lieutenants.

'My hovercraft is full of eels,' said Harry.

'I will not buy this record, it is scratched,' chorused his four Lieutenants.

'All mimsy were the borogroves.'

'And the mome raths outgrabe!'

That concluded the formalities.

'How goes the confusion?' Harry said in a dry whisper like Emperor Palpatine.

'It goes well, General Chaos,' said Neville in the tone he always used for military matters, a tone so deep that the boy often had to stop and cough. The Chaotic Lieutenant was neatly dressed in his black school robes, trimmed in the yellow of Hufflepuff House, and his hair was parted and combed in the usual look for an earnest young boy. Harry had liked the incongruity better than any of the cloaks they'd tried. 'Our Legionnaires have begun five new plots since yesterday evening.'

Harry smiled evilly. 'Do any of them have a chance of working?'

'I don't think so,' said Neville of Chaos. 'Here's the report.'

'Excellent,' said Harry, and laughed chillingly as he took the parchment from Neville's hand, trying his best to make it sound like he was choking on dust. That brought the total to sixty.

Let Draco try to handle that. Let him try.

And as for Blaise Zabini...

Harry laughed again, and this time it didn't even take an effort to sound evil. He really needed to borrow someone's pet Kneazle for his staff meetings, so he'd have a cat to stroke while he did this.

'Can the Legion stop making plots now?' said Finnigan of Chaos. 'I mean, don't we have enough already -'

'No,' Harry said flatly. 'We can never have enough plots.'

Professor Quirrell had put it perfectly. They were pushing the boundaries further, perhaps, than they had ever been pushed; and Harry wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he'd turned back now.

There came a knock at the door.

'That will be the Dragon General,' Harry said, smiling with evil prescience. 'He arrives precisely as I expected. Do show him in, and yourselves out.'