Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

'More importantly, why did the Remembrall go off like that?' Harry said. 'Does it mean I've been Obliviated?'

'That puzzles me as well,' Professor McGonagall said slowly. 'If it were that simple, I would think that the courts would use Remembralls, and they do not. I shall look into it, Mr. Potter.' She sighed. 'You can go now.'

Harry started to get up from his chair, then halted. 'Um, sorry, I did have something else I wanted to tell you -'

You could hardly see the flinch. 'What is it, Mr. Potter?'

'It's about Professor Quirrell -'

'I'm sure, Mr. Potter, that it is nothing of importance.' Professor McGonagall spoke the words in a great rush. 'Surely you heard the Headmaster tell the students that you were not to bother us with any unimportant complaints about the Defence Professor?'

Harry was rather confused. 'But this could be important, yesterday I got this sudden sense of doom when -'

'Mr. Potter! I have a sense of doom as well! And my sense of doom is suggesting that you must not finish that sentence!'

Harry's mouth gaped open. Professor McGonagall had succeeded; Harry was speechless.

'Mr. Potter,' said Professor McGonagall, 'if you have discovered anything that seems interesting about Professor Quirrell, please feel free not to share it with me or anyone else. Now I think you've taken up enough of my valuable time -'

'This isn't like you!' Harry burst out. 'I'm sorry but that just seems unbelievably irresponsible! From what I've heard there's some kind of jinx on the Defence position, and if you already know something's going to go wrong, I'd think you'd all be on your toes -'

'Go wrong, Mr. Potter? I certainly hope not.' Professor McGonagall's face was expressionless. 'After Professor Blake was caught in a closet with no fewer than three fifth- year Slytherins last February, and a year before that, Professor Summers failed so completely as an educator that her students thought a boggart was a kind of furniture, it would be catastrophic if some problem with the extraordinarily competent Professor Quirrell came to my attention now, and I daresay most of our students would fail their Defence O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s.'

'I see,' Harry said slowly, taking it all in. 'So in other words, whatever's wrong with Professor Quirrell, you desperately don't want to know about it until the end of the school year. And since it's currently September, he could assassinate the Prime Minister on live television and get away with it so far as you're concerned.'

Professor McGonagall gazed at him unblinkingly. 'I am certain that I could never be heard endorsing such a statement, Mr. Potter. At Hogwarts we strive to be proactive with respect to anything that threatens the educational attainment of our students.'

Such as first-year Ravenclaws who can't keep their mouths shut. 'I believe I understand you completely, Professor McGonagall.'

'Oh, I doubt that, Mr. Potter. I doubt that very much.' Professor McGonagall leaned forward, her face tightening again. 'Since you and I have already discussed matters far more sensitive than these, I shall speak frankly. You, and you alone, have reported this mysterious sense of doom. You, and you alone, are a chaos magnet the likes of which I have never seen. After our little shopping trip to Diagon Alley, and then the Sorting Hat, and then today's little episode, I can well foresee that I am fated to sit in the Headmaster's office and hear some hilarious tale about Professor Quirrell in which you and you alone play a starring role, after which there will be no choice but to fire him. I am already resigned to it, Mr. Potter. And if this sad event takes place any earlier than the Ides of May, I will string you up by the gates of Hogwarts with your own intestines and pour fire beetles into your nose. Now do you understand me completely?'

Harry nodded, his eyes very wide. Then, after a second, 'What do I get if I can make it happen on the last day of the school year?'

'Get out of my office!'

Thursday.

There must have been something about Thursdays in Hogwarts.

It was 5:32pm on Thursday afternoon, and Harry was standing next to Professor Flitwick, in front of the great stone gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Headmaster's office.

No sooner had he made it back from Professor McGonagall's office to the Ravenclaw study rooms than one of the students told him to report to Professor Flitwick's office, and there Harry had learned that Dumbledore wanted to speak to him.

Harry, feeling rather apprehensive, had asked Professor Flitwick if the Headmaster had said what this was about.

Professor Flitwick had shrugged in a helpless sort of way.

Apparently Dumbledore had said that Harry was far too young to invoke the words of power and madness.

Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp? Harry had thought but not said aloud.

'Please don't worry too much, Mr. Potter,' squeaked Professor Flitwick from somewhere around Harry's shoulder level. (Harry was grateful for Professor Flitwick's gigantic puffy beard, it was hard getting used to a Professor who was not only shorter than him but spoke in a higher-pitched voice.) 'Headmaster Dumbledore may seem a little odd, or a lot odd, or even extremely odd, but he has never hurt a student in the slightest, and I don't believe he ever will.' Professor Flitwick gave Harry an encouraging smile. 'Just keep that in mind at all times and you'll be sure not to panic!'

This was not helping.

'Good luck!' squeaked Professor Flitwick, and leaned over to the gargoyle and said something that Harry somehow failed to hear at all. (Of course, the password wouldn't be much good if you could hear someone saying it.) And the stone gargoyle walked aside with a very natural and ordinary movement that Harry found rather shocking, since the gargoyle still looked like solid, immovable stone the whole time.