Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Hermione's cheeks were going even redder. "You're really evil, did anyone ever tell you that?"

"Miss Granger," Professor Quirrell said gravely, "it can be dangerous to give people compliments like that when they have not been truly earned. The recipient might feel bashful and undeserving and want to do something worthy of your praise. Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about, Miss Granger?"

It was after lunch on Thursday afternoon, and Hermione and Harry were ensconced in a little library nook, with a Quietus field up so they could talk. Harry was lying stomach-down on the ground with his elbows resting on the floor and his head in his hands and his feet kicking up casually behind him. Hermione was occupying a stuffed chair much too large for her, like she was the Hermione center of a candy shell.

Harry had suggested that they could, as a first pass, read just the titles of all the books in the library, and then Hermione could read all the tables of contents.

Hermione had thought this was a brilliant idea. She'd never done that with a library before.

Unfortunately there was a slight flaw in this plan.

Namely, they were both Ravenclaws.

Hermione was reading a book called Magical Mnemonics.

Harry was reading a book called The Skeptical Wizard.

Each had thought it was just one special exception they would make only this one time, and neither had yet realized it was impossible for either of them to ever finish reading all the book titles no matter how hard they tried.

The quiet of their little nook was broken by two words.

"Oh, no," Harry suddenly said out loud, sounding like the words had been torn out of him.

There was a bit more quiet.

"He didn't," Harry said, in the same voice.

Then she heard Harry start giggling helplessly.

Hermione looked up from her book.

"All right," she said, "what is it?"

"I just found out why you never ask the Weasleys about the family rat," Harry said. "It's really awful and I shouldn't be laughing and I'm a terrible person."

"Yes," Hermione said primly, "you are. Tell me too."

"Okay, first the background. There's a whole chapter in this book about Sirius Black conspiracy theories. You remember who that is, right?"

"Of course," said Hermione. Sirius Black was a traitor, a friend of James Potter who had let Voldemort into the protected home of the Potters.

"So it turns out there were a number of, shall we say, irregularities, associated with Black going to Azkaban. He didn't get a trial, and the Junior Minister in charge when the Aurors arrested Black was none other than Cornelius Fudge, who became our current Minister of Magic."

That sounded a little suspicious to Hermione too, and she said as much.

Harry made a shrugging motion with his shoulders, as he lay on the floor looking at his book. "Suspicious things happen all the time, and if you're a conspiracy theorist you can always find something."

"But no trial?" said Hermione.

"It was right after the Dark Lord's defeat," Harry said, his voice serious as he said it. "Things were incredibly chaotic, and when the Aurors tracked down Black he was standing there laughing in a street ankle-deep in blood, with twenty eyewitnesses to recount how he'd killed a friend of my father's named Peter Pettigrew plus twelve bystanders. I'm not saying I approve of Black not getting a trial. But these are wizards we're talking about here, so it's not really any more suspicious than, I don't know, the sort of thing people point to when they want to argue over who shot John F. Kennedy. So anyway, Sirius Black is the wizarding Lee Harvey Oswald. There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about who really betrayed my parents instead of him, and one of the favorites is Peter Pettigrew, and this is where it starts getting complicated."

Hermione listened, fascinated. "But how do you go from there to the Weasleys' pet rat -"

"Hold on," said Harry, "I'm getting there. Now, after Pettigrew's death it came out that he'd been a spy for the Light - not a double agent, just someone who snuck around and found things out. He'd been good at that since he was a teenager, even in Hogwarts he had a reputation for finding out all sorts of secrets. So the conspiracy theory is that Pettigrew became an unregistered Animagus while he was still in Hogwarts, an Animagus of something small that could scurry around and listen to conversations. The main problem being that successful Animagi are rare and doing it as a teenager would be really unlikely, so of course the conspiracy theory says that my father and Black were unregistered Animagi too. And in that conspiracy theory, Pettigrew himself killed the twelve bystanders, turned into his small Animagus form, and ran. So Michael Shermer says there are four additional problems with this. One, Black was the only one besides my parents who knew how to get through the wards around their house." (Harry's voice was a little hard as he said that.) "Two, Black was a more likely suspect to start with than Pettigrew, there's a rumor Black deliberately tried to get a student killed during his time at Hogwarts, and he was from this really nasty pureblood family, Bellatrix Black was literally his cousin. Three, Black was twenty times the fighting wizard that Pettigrew was, even if he wasn't as smart. The duel between them would have been like Professor Quirrell versus Professor Sprout. Pettigrew probably didn't even get a chance to draw his wand, let alone fake all the evidence the conspiracy theory requires. And four, Black was standing in the street laughing."

"But the rat -" said Hermione.