Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

'There were more things I planned to say to you,' Dumbledore said, 'and if you leave now, you will not know what they were.'

Sometimes Harry absolutely hated being a Ravenclaw.

He's never hurt a student, said Harry's Gryffindor side. Just keep remembering that and you'll be sure not to panic. You're not going to run away just because things are getting interesting, are you?

You can't just walk out on the Headmaster! said the Hufflepuff part. What if he starts deducting House points? He could make your school life very difficult if he decides he doesn't like you!

And a piece of himself which Harry didn't much like but couldn't quite manage to silence was pondering the potential advantages of being one of the few friends of this mad old wizard who also happened to be Headmaster, Chief Warlock, and Supreme Mugwump. And unfortunately his inner Slytherin seemed to be much better than Draco at turning people to the Dark Side, because it was saying things like poor fellow, he looks like he needs someone to talk to, doesn't he? and you wouldn't want such a powerful man to end up trusting someone less virtuous, would you? and I wonder what sort of incredible secrets Dumbledore could tell you if, you know, you became friends with him and even I bet he's got a reaallly interesting book collection.

You're all a bunch of lunatics, Harry thought at the entire assemblage, but he'd been unanimously outvoted by every component part of himself.

Harry turned, took a step towards the open door, reached out, and deliberately closed it again. It was a costless sacrifice given that he was staying anyway, Dumbledore could control his movements regardless, but maybe it would impress Dumbledore.

When Harry turned back around he saw that the powerful insane wizard was once more smiling and looking friendly. That was good, maybe.

'Please don't do that again,' Harry said. 'I don't like being trapped.'

'I am sorry about that, Harry,' said Dumbledore in what sounded like tones of sincere apology. 'But it would have been terribly unwise to let you leave without your father's rock.'

'Of course,' Harry said. 'It wasn't reasonable of me to expect the door to open before I put the quest items in my inventory.'

Dumbledore smiled and nodded.

Harry went over to the desk, twisted his mokeskin pouch around to the front of his belt, and, with some effort, managed to heave up the rock in his eleven-year-old arms and feed it in.

He could actually feel the weight slowly diminishing as the Widening Lip charm ate the rock, and the burp which followed was rather noisy and had a distinctly complaining sound to it.

His mother's fifth-year Potions textbook (which held a secret that was in fact pretty terrible) followed shortly after.

And then Harry's inner Slytherin made a sly suggestion for ingratiating himself with the Headmaster, which, unfortunately, had been perfectly pitched in such a way as to gain the support of the majority Ravenclaw faction.

'So,' Harry said. 'Um. As long as I'm hanging around, I don't suppose you would like to give me a bit of a tour of your office? I'm a bit curious as to what some of these things are,' and that was his understatement for the month of September.

Dumbledore gazed at him, and then nodded with a slight grin. 'I'm flattered by your interest,' said Dumbledore, 'but I'm afraid there isn't much to say.' Dumbledore took a step closer to the wall and pointed to a painting of a sleeping man. 'These are portraits of past Headmasters of Hogwarts.' He turned and pointed to his desk. 'This is my desk.' He pointed to his chair. 'This is my chair -'

'Excuse me,' Harry said, 'actually I was wondering about those.' Harry pointed to a small cube that was softly whispering 'blorple... blorple... blorple'.

'Oh, the little fiddly things?' said Dumbledore. 'They came with the Headmaster's office and I have absolutely no idea what most of them do. Although this dial with the eight hands counts the number of, let's call them sneezes, by left-handed witches within the borders of France, you would not believe how much work it took to nail that down. And this one with the golden wibblers is my own invention and Minerva is never, ever going to figure out what it's doing.'

Dumbledore took a step over to the hatrack while Harry was still processing this. 'Here of course we have the Sorting Hat, I believe the two of you have met. It told me that it was never again to be placed on your head under any circumstances. You're only the fourteenth student in history it's said that about, Baba Yaga was another one and I'll tell you about the other twelve when you're older. This is an umbrella. This is another umbrella.' Dumbledore took another few steps and turned around, now smiling quite broadly. 'And of course, most people who come to my office want to see Fawkes.'

Dumbledore was standing next to the bird on the golden platform.

Harry came over, rather puzzled. 'This is Fawkes?'

'Fawkes is a phoenix,' said Dumbledore. 'Very rare, very powerful magical creatures.'

'Ah...' Harry said. He lowered his head and stared into the tiny, beady black eyes, which showed not the slightest sign of power or intelligence.

'Ahhh...' Harry said again.

He was pretty sure he recognised the shape of the bird. It was pretty hard to miss.

'Umm...'

Say something intelligent! Harry's mind roared at itself. Don't just stand there sounding like a gibbering moron!