Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

They went down another flight of stairs, and came out into a room that was no room at all, but an empty rock cavern with a single door, pierced by many dark openings and lit by a single torch of ancient style that fired as they entered.

Professor Snape took out his wand, then, and began to cast Charm after Charm, she lost track of how many; and when the Potions Master was done he turned back toward her, locked his intense eyes on hers, and said in a level voice unlike his usual drawl, 'You will say nothing to anyone of this matter, Miss Felthorne, nothing now or ever. If that is acceptable to you, nod. If not, we will turn and go.'

She nodded, frightened and with a strange hope dawning in her heart (well, not exactly her heart).

'The task I have for you is very simple, Miss Felthorne,' said Professor Snape's toneless voice, 'and your extremely generous pay of fifty Galleons is merely to compensate you for being Memory-Charmed afterward.'

She drew an involuntary breath. Her family might be rich but they had other daughters and kept her on a tight leash and it was certainly a lot of money for her.

Then her ears caught up with the words Memory-Charmed and for a moment she felt outraged, there was no point if she couldn't keep the memories, what sort of girl did Professor Snape think she was?

'You surely know,' said Severus Snape, 'of Miss Hermione Granger, the Sunshine General?'

'What?' said Rianne Felthorne in sudden horror and disgust. 'She's in her first year! Ew!'

Chapter 72: SA, Plausible Deniability, Pt 7

The winter Sun had well set by the time dinner ended, and so it was amid the peaceful light of stars twinkling down from the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall that Hermione left for the Ravenclaw Tower alongside her study partner Harry Potter, who lately seemed to have a ridiculous amount of time for studying. She hadn't the faintest idea of when Harry was doing his actual homework, except that it was getting done, maybe by house elves while he slept.

Nearly every single pair of eyes in the whole Hall lay on them as they passed through the mighty doors of the dining-room, which were more like siege gates of a castle than anything students ought to go through on the way back from supper.

They went out without speaking, and walked until the distant babble of student conversation had faded into silence; and then the two of them went on a little further through the stone corridors before Hermione finally spoke.

'Why'd you do that, Harry?'

'Do what?' said the Boy-Who-Lived in an abstracted tone, as if his mind were quite elsewhere, thinking about vastly more important things.

'I mean, why didn't you just tell them no?'

'Well,' Harry said, as their shoes pattered across the tiles, 'I can't just go around saying 'no' every time someone asks me about something I haven't done. I mean, suppose someone asks me, 'Harry, did you pull the prank with the invisible paint?' and I say 'No' and then they say 'Harry, do you know who messed with the Gryffindor Seeker's broomstick?' and I say 'I refuse to answer that question.' It's sort of a giveaway.'

'And that's why,' Hermione said carefully, 'you told everyone...' She concentrated, rembering the exact words. 'That if hypothetically there was a conspiracy, you could not confirm or deny that the true master of the conspiracy was Salazar Slytherin's ghost, and in fact you wouldn't even be able to admit the conspiracy existed so people ought to stop asking you questions about it.'

'Yep,' said Harry Potter, smiling slightly. 'That'll teach them to take hypothetical scenarios too seriously.'

'And you told me not to answer anything -'

'They might not believe you, if you deny it,' said Harry. 'So it's better to say nothing, unless you want them to think you're a liar.'

'But -' Hermione said helplessly. 'But - but now people think I'm doing things for Salazar Slytherin!' The way the Gryffindors had been looking at her - the way the Slytherins had been looking at her -

'It goes along with being a hero,' Harry said. 'Have you seen what the Quibbler says about me?'

For a brief second Hermione imagined her parents reading a newspaper article about her, and instead of the story being about her winning a nationwide spelling bee or any of the other ways she'd imagined getting into the papers, the headline said 'HERMIONE GRANGER GETS DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT'.

It was enough to make you think twice about the whole heroine business.

Harry's voice turned a bit more formal. 'Speaking of which, Miss Granger, how goes your latest quest?'

'Well,' said Hermione, 'unless the ghost of Salazar Slytherin really does show up and tell us where to find bullies, I don't think we're going to have much luck.' Not that she was sorry about that.

She glanced over at Harry, and saw the boy giving her a peculiarly intense look.

'You know, Hermione,' the boy said quietly, as though to make sure that nobody else in the world heard, 'I think you're right. I think some people get a lot more help than others in becoming heroes. And I don't think that's fair, either.'

And Harry grabbed at her witch's robes where they lay over her arm, and hustled her into a side-hall of the corridor they were walking through, her mouth gaping open in surprise even as Harry's wand came into his hand, they rounded a curve of the side-hall and it was so narrow that it was almost pushing her and Harry into each other, even as Harry pointed to the way they'd come and softly said 'Quietus', then a moment later, in the other direction, 'Quietus' again.

The boy looked searchingly around them, not just to every side, but even upward toward the ceiling and down