Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

boy.

"Legilimens," said the black-robed wizard.

There was a pause.

The black-robed wizard blinked, as if he'd seen something so shocking that it had been enough to make even his eyelids move. His voice wasn't quite toneless as he said, "The Boy-Who-Lived has a mysterious dark side?"

The heat slowly crept up into Harry's cheeks.

"Well," the man said. His face had now settled back into perfect calm. "Excuse me. Mr. Potter, it is good to know your advantages, but that is not the same as being wildly overconfident in them. You may indeed be able to learn Occlumency at eleven years of age. This astounds me. I had thought Mr. Dumbledore was pretending to be insane again. Your dissociative talent is so strong that I am surprised to find no other signs of childhood abuse, and you may become a perfect Occlumens in time. But there is a considerable difference between that and expecting to put up a successful Occlumency barrier on your first attempt. That is merely ridiculous. Did you feel anything as I read your mind?"

Harry shook his head, now blushing furiously.

"Then pay closer attention next time. The goal is not to create a perfect image on your first day of lessons. The goal is to learn where your surfaces are. Prepare yourself."

Harry tried to pretend to be Kimball Kinnison again, tried to pay more attention, but his thoughts were a little scattered and he was suddenly aware of all the things he shouldn't be thinking about...

Oh, this was going to suck.

Harry gritted his teeth. At least the instructor would be Obliviated afterward.

"Legilimens."

There was a pause -

...in a white room, windowless, featureless, sitting before a desk, facing an expressionless man in formal robes of solid black.

It was their fourth day, on a Sunday evening. When you paid this much, you got your sessions any darned time you wanted, never mind the concept of weekends.

"Hello, Mr. Potter," the telepath said tonelessly, having cast the full suite of privacy spells.

"Hello, Mr. Bester," Harry said wearily. "Let's just get the initial shock out of the way, shall we?"

"You managed to surprise me?" the man said, now sounding slightly interested. "Well then." He pointed his wand and stared into Harry's eyes. "Legilimens."

There was a pause, and then the black-robed wizard jerked as if someone had touched him with a cattle prod.

"The Dark Lord is alive?" he choked. His eyes were suddenly wild. "Dumbledore turns himself invisible and sneaks into girls' dorm rooms?"

Harry sighed and looked down at his watch. In about another three seconds...

"So," the man said. He hadn't quite recovered his tonelessness. "You genuinely believe you're going to discover the secret rules of magic and become all-powerful."

"That's right," Harry said evenly, still looking at his watch. "I'm that overconfident."

"I wonder. It seems the Sorting Hat thinks you'll be the next Dark Lord."

"And you know I'm trying pretty hard not to be, and you saw that we already had a long discussion about whether you were willing to teach me Occlumency, and in the end you decided to do it, so can we just get this over with?"

"All right," said the man exactly six seconds later, same as last time. "Prepare yourself." He paused, and then said, his voice rather wistful, "Though I do wish I could remember that trick with the gold and silver."

Harry was finding himself very disturbed by how reproducible human thoughts were when you reset people back to the same initial conditions and exposed them to the same stimuli. It was dispelling illusions that a good reductionist wasn't supposed to have in the first place.

Harry was in a rather bad mood as he stomped out of his Herbology class the next Monday morning.

Hermione was seething alongside him.

The other children were still inside, a bit slow to assemble their things because they were gibbering excitedly to each other about Ravenclaw winning the year's second Quidditch match.

It seemed that last night after dinner, a girl had flown around on a broomstick for thirty minutes and then caught some sort of giant mosquito. There were other facts about what had happened during this match, but they were irrelevant.

Harry had missed this exciting sports event due to his Occlumency lesson, and also having a life.

He had then avoided all conversations in the Ravenclaw dorm, weren't Quieting Charms and magical trunks wonderful. He had eaten breakfast at the Gryffindor table.

But Harry couldn't avoid Herbology, and the Ravenclaws had talked about it before class, and after class, and during class, until Harry had looked up from the baby furcot whose diaper he was changing, and announced loudly that some of them were trying to learn about plants and Snitches didn't grow on anything so could they all please shut up about Quidditch. Everyone else present had given him shocked looks, except Hermione, who'd looked like she wanted to applaud, and Professor Sprout, who had awarded him a point for Ravenclaw.

A point for Ravenclaw.