Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"I know what you're trying to do," said Draco calmly without looking up from the pages. "It's not going to work. We're still ganging up and crushing you."

"A Maaaalfoy is working with a muuudbloood, what will all your father's frieeeends think -"

"They'll think Malfoys aren't as easily manipulated as you seem to believe, Potter!"

The Defense Professor was crazier than Dumbledore, no future saviour of the world could ever be this childish and undignified at any age.

"Hey, Draco, you know what's really going to suck? You know that Hermione Granger has two copies of the magical allele, just like you and just like me, but all your classmates in Slytherin don't know that and yooouuu're not allowed to explaaaaain -"

Draco's fingers were whitening where they gripped the book. Being beaten and spat upon couldn't possibly require this much self-control, and if he didn't get back at Harry soon, he was going to do something incriminating -

"So what did you wish the first time?" said Draco.

Harry didn't say anything, so Draco looked up from his book, and felt a twinge of malicious satisfaction at the sad look on Harry's face.

"Um," Harry said. "A lot of people asked me that, but I don't think Professor Quirrell would have wanted me to talk about it."

Draco put a serious look on his own face. "You can talk about it with me. It's probably not important compared to the other secrets you've told me, and what else are friends for?" That's right, I'm your friend! Feel guilty!

"It wasn't really all that interesting," Harry said with obviously artificial lightness. "Just, I wish Professor Quirrell would teach Battle Magic again next year."

Harry sighed, and looked back down at his book.

And said, after another few seconds, "Your father's probably going to be pretty upset with you this Christmas, but if you promise him that you'll betray the mudblood girl and wipe out her army, everything will go back to being all right, and you'll still get your Christmas presents."

Maybe if he and Granger asked Professor Quirrell extra politely and used some of their Quirrell points, the two of them would be allowed to do something more interesting to General Chaos than putting him to sleep.

Chapter 36: Status Differentials

Wrenching disorientation, that was how it felt to walk out of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters into the rest of Earth, the world that Harry had once thought was the only real world. People dressed in casual shirts and pants, instead of the more dignified robes of wizards and witches. Scattered bits of trash here and there around the benches. A forgotten smell, the fumes of burned gasoline, raw and sharp in the air. The ambiance of the King's Cross train station, less bright and cheerful than Hogwarts or Diagon Alley; the people seemed smaller, more afraid, and likely would have eagerly traded their problems for a dark wizard to fight. Harry wanted to cast Scourgify for the dirt, and Everto for the garbage, and if he'd known the spell, a Bubble-Head Charm so he wouldn't have to breathe the air. But he couldn't use his wand, in this place...

This, Harry realized, must be what it felt like to go from a First World country to a Third World country.

Only it was the Zeroth World which Harry had left, the wizarding world, of Cleansing Charms and house elves; where, between the healer's arts and your own magic, you could hit one hundred and seventy before old age really started catching up with you.

And nonmagical London, Muggle Earth, to which Harry had temporarily returned. This was where Mum and Dad would live out the rest of their lives, unless technology leapfrogged over wizardry's quality of life, or something deeper in the world changed.

Without even thinking about it, Harry's head turned and his eyes darted behind him to see the wooden trunk that was scurrying after him, unnoticed by any Muggles, the clawed tentacles offering quick confirmation that, yes, he hadn't just imagined it all...

And then there was the other reason for the tight feeling in his chest.

His parents didn't know.

They didn't know anything.

They didn't know...

"Harry?" called a thin, blonde woman whose perfectly smooth and unblemished skin made her look a good deal younger than thirty-three; and Harry realized with a start that it was magic, he hadn't known the signs before but he could see them now. And whatever sort of potion lasted that long, it must have been terribly dangerous, because most witches didn't do that to themselves, they weren't that desperate...

There was water gathering in Harry's eyes.

"Harry?" yelled an older-looking man with a paunch gathering about his stomach, dressed with ostentatious academic carelessness in a black vest thrown over a dark grey-green shirt, someone who would always be a professor anywhere he went, who would certainly have been one of the most brilliant wizards of his generation, if he'd been born with two copies of that gene, instead of zero...

Harry raised his hand and waved to them. He couldn't speak. He couldn't speak at all.

They came over to him, not running, but at a steady, dignified walk; that was how fast Professor Michael Verres-Evans walked, and Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres wasn't about to walk any faster.

The smile on his father's face wasn't very wide, but then his father never was given to huge smiles; it was, at