Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

one eyebrow, like Spock, but he'd never been able to manage.) 'Thanks,' Harry said. 'You might've just saved me a lot of trouble.'

Ernie nodded, and turned to go back to the Hufflepuff table.

Harry resumed eating his toast.

It was around four bites afterward that someone said 'Pardon me,' and Harry turned around to see an older Ravenclaw, looking a little worried -

Some time later, Harry was finishing up his third plate of rashers. (He'd learned to eat heavily at breakfast. He could always eat lightly at lunch if he didn't end up using the Time-Turner.) And there was yet another voice from behind him saying 'Harry?'

'Yes,' Harry said wearily, 'I'll try not to draw Professor Snape's attention -'

'Oh, that's hopeless,' said Fred.

'Completely hopeless,' said George.

'So we had the house elves bake you a cake,' said Fred.

'We're going to put one candle on it for every point you lose for Ravenclaw,' said George.

'And have a party for you at the Gryffindor table during lunch,' said Fred.

'We hope that'll cheer you up afterward,' finished George.

Harry swallowed his last bite of rasher and turned around. 'All right,' said Harry. 'I wasn't going to ask this after Professor Binns, I really wasn't, but if Professor Snape is that awful why hasn't he been fired?'

'Fired?' said Fred.

'You mean, let go?' said George.

'Yes,' Harry said. 'It's what you do to bad teachers. You fire them. Then you hire a better teacher instead. You don't have unions or tenure here, right?'

Fred and George were frowning in much the same way that hunter-gatherer tribal elders might frown if you tried to tell them about calculus.

'I don't know,' said Fred after a while. 'I never thought about that.'

'Me neither,' said George.

'Yeah,' said Harry, 'I get that a lot. See you at lunch, guys, and don't blame me if there aren't any candles on that cake.'

Fred and George both laughed, as if Harry had said something funny, and bowed to him and headed back toward Gryffindor.

Harry turned back to the breakfast table and grabbed a cupcake. His stomach already felt full, but he had a feeling this morning might use a lot of calories.

As he ate his cupcake, Harry thought of the worst teacher he'd met so far, Professor Binns of History. Professor Binns was a ghost. From what Hermione had said about ghosts, it didn't seem likely that they were fully self-aware. There were no famous discoveries made by ghosts, or much of any original work, no matter who they'd been in life. Ghosts tended to have trouble remembering the current century. Hermione had said they were like accidental portraits, impressed into the surrounding matter by a burst of psychic energy accompanying a wizard's sudden death.

Harry had run into some stupid teachers during his abortive forays into standard Muggle education - his father had been a lot pickier when it came to selecting grad students as tutors, of course - but History class was the first time he'd encountered a teacher who literally wasn't sentient.

And it showed, too. Harry had given up after five minutes and started reading a textbook. When it became clear that 'Professor Binns' wasn't going to object, Harry had also reached into his pouch and gotten earplugs.

Did ghosts not require a salary? Was that it? Or was it literally impossible to fire anyone in Hogwarts even if they died?

Now it seemed that Professor Snape was going about being absolutely awful to everyone who wasn't a Slytherin and it hadn't even occurred to anyone to terminate his contract.

And the Headmaster had set fire to a chicken.

'Excuse me,' came a worried voice from behind him.

'I swear,' Harry said without turning around, 'this place is almost eight and a half percent as bad as what Dad says about Oxford.'

Harry stamped down the stone corridors, looking affronted, annoyed, and infuriated all at once.

'Dungeons!' Harry hissed. 'Dungeons! These are not dungeons! This is a basement! A basement!'

Some of the Ravenclaw girls gave him odd looks. The boys were all used to him by now.

It seemed that the level in which the Potions classroom was located was called the 'dungeons' for no better reason than that it was below ground and slightly colder than the main castle.

In Hogwarts! In Hogwarts! Harry had been waiting his whole life and now he was still waiting and if there was anywhere on the face of the Earth that had decent dungeons it ought to be Hogwarts! Was Harry going to have to build his own castle if he wanted to see one little bottomless abyss?

A short time later they got to the actual Potions classroom and Harry cheered up considerably.

The Potions classroom had strange preserved creatures floating in huge jars on shelves that covered every