Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

crime, before he actually thought about it for two-thirds of a second, remembered a wiser proverb, and shut his mouth in midsentence.

What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?

If you did commit the perfect crime, nobody would ever find out - so how could anyone possibly know that there weren't perfect crimes?

And as soon as you looked at it that way, you realized that perfect crimes probably got committed all the time, and the coroner marked it down as death by natural causes, or the newspaper reported that the shop had never been very profitable and had finally gone out of business...

When Bellatrix Black's corpse was found dead in her cell the next morning, there within the prison of Azkaban from which (everyone knew) no one had ever escaped, nobody bothered doing an autopsy. Nobody thought twice about it. They just locked up the corridor and left, and the Daily Prophet reported it in the obituary column the next day...

...that was the perfect crime which Professor Quirrell had planned.

And it wasn't Professor Quirrell who screwed it up.

Chapter 54: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 4

A faint green spark moved forward to set the pace, and behind it followed a brilliant silver figure, all other entities invisible. They had traversed five legs of corridor, turned right five times and gone up five flights of stairs; and when Bellatrix had finished her second bottle of chocolate milk, she had been given solid bars of chocolate to eat.

It was after her third bar of chocolate that strange noises began to come from Bellatrix's throat.

It took a moment for Harry to understand, to process the sounds, it didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard before; the rhythm of it was shattered, almost unrecognizable, it took him that long to realize that Bellatrix was crying.

Bellatrix Black was crying, the Dark Lord's most terrible weapon was crying, she was invisible but you could hear it, tiny pathetic sounds she was trying to suppress, even now.

'It's real?' said Bellatrix. Tonality had returned into her voice, no longer a dead mutter, it rose up at the end to form the question. 'It's real?'

Yes, thought the part of Harry simulating the Dark Lord, now be silent -

He couldn't make those words pass his lips, he just couldn't.

'I knew - you would - come to me - someday,' Bellatrix's voice quavered and fractured as she drew breath for quiet sobs, 'I knew - you were alive - that you would come - to me - my Lord...' there was a long inhalation like a huge gasp, 'and that even - when you came - you still wouldn't love me - never - you would never love me back - that was why - they couldn't take - my love from me - even though I can't remember - can't remember so many other things - though I don't know what I forgot - but I remember how much I love you, Lord -'

There was a knife stabbing through Harry's heart, he'd never heard anything so terrible, he wanted to hunt down the Dark Lord and kill him just for this...

'Do you still - have use for me - my Lord?'

'No,' hissed Harry's voice, without him even thinking, it just seemed to be operating on automatic, 'I entered Azkaban on a whim. Of course I have use for you! Don't ask foolish questions.'

'But - I'm weak,' said Bellatrix's voice, and a full sob escaped her, it sounded much too loud in the corridors of Azkaban, 'I can't kill for you, my Lord, I'm sorry, they ate it all, ate me all up, I'm too weak to fight, what good am I to you now -'

Harry's brain cast about desperately for some way to reassure her, from the lips of a Dark Lord who would never speak a single word of caring.

'Ugly,' said Bellatrix. Her voice said that word like it was the final nail in her coffin, the last despair. 'I'm ugly, they ate that too, I'm, I'm not pretty any more, you won't even, be able, to use me, as a reward, for your servants - even the Lestranges, won't want, to hurt me, any more -'

The brilliant silver figure stopped walking.

Because Harry had stopped walking.

The Dark Lord, he... The part of Harry's self that was soft and vulnerable was screaming in disbelieving horror, trying to reject reality, refuse the understanding, even as a colder and harder part completed the pattern: She obeyed him in that as she obeyed him in all things.

The green spark bobbed urgently, darted forward.

The silver humanoid stayed in place.

Bellatrix was sobbing harder.

'I'm, I'm not, I can't be, useful, any more...'

Giant hands were squeezing Harry's chest, wringing him like a washcloth, trying to crush his heart.

'Please,' whispered Bellatrix, 'just kill me...' Her voice seemed to calm, once she said that. 'Please Lord, kill me, I've no reason to live if I'm no use to you... I only want it to stop... please hurt me one last time, my Lord, hurt me until I stop... I love you...'

It was the saddest thing Harry had ever heard.

The bright silver shape of Harry's Patronus flickered -

Wavered -

Brightened -