Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

eyes.

The boy and the girl walked forward together, definitely not holding hands, but each drawing a kind of strength from the other's presence, something that let them ignore the whispers of their year- mates, as they walked through the hallway approaching the great doors of Hogwarts.

Harry hadn't been able to cast the Patronus Charm no matter what happy thought he tried. People hadn't seemed surprised by that, which made it even worse. Hermione hadn't been able to do it either. People had been very surprised by that, and Harry had seen her starting to get the same sidelong looks as him. The other Ravenclaws who'd failed weren't getting those looks. But Hermione was the Sunshine General, and her fans were treating it like she'd failed them, somehow, like she'd betrayed a promise she'd never made.

The two of them had gone to the library to research the Patronus Charm, which was Hermione's way of dealing with distress, as it was sometimes also Harry's. Study, learn, try to understand why...

The books had confirmed what the Headmaster had told Harry; often, wizards who couldn't cast the Patronus Charm in practice would be able to do so in the presence of a real Dementor, going from flat failure all the way to a full corporeal Patronus. It defied all logic, the Dementor's aura of fear ought to make it harder to wield a happy thought; but that was the way it was.

So the two of them were both going to give it one last try, there was no way either of them wouldn't give it one last try.

It was the day the Dementor came to Hogwarts.

Earlier, Harry had unTransfigured his father's rock from where it usually rested on his pinky ring in the form of a tiny diamond, and placed the huge gray stone back into his pouch. Just in case Harry's magic failed entirely, when he confronted the darkest of all creatures.

Harry had already started to feel pessimistic, and he wasn't even in front of a Dementor yet.

"I bet you can do it and I can't," Harry said in a whisper. "I bet that's what happens."

"It felt wrong to me," Hermione said, her voice even quieter than his. "I tried it this morning and I realized. When I was doing the brandish at the end, even before I said the words, it felt wrong."

Harry didn't say anything. He'd felt the same thing, right from the start, though it had taken another five attempts using five other happy thoughts before he'd been able to acknowledge it to himself. Every time he tried to brandish his wand, it had felt hollow; the spell he was trying to learn didn't fit him.

"It doesn't mean we're going to be Dark Wizards," said Harry. "Lots of people who can't cast the Patronus Charm aren't Dark Wizards. Godric Gryffindor wasn't a Dark Wizard..."

Godric had defeated Dark Lords, fought to protect commoners from Noble Houses and Muggles from wizards. He'd had many fine friends and true, and lost no more than half of them in one good cause or another. He'd listened to the screams of the wounded, in the armies he'd raised to defend the innocent; young wizards of courage had rallied to his calls, and he'd buried them afterward. Until finally, when his wizardry had only just begun to fail him in his old age, he'd brought together the three other most powerful wizards of his era to raise Hogwarts from the bare ground; the one great accomplishment to Godric's name that wasn't about war, any kind of war, no matter how just. It was Salazar, and not Godric, who'd taught the first Hogwarts class in Battle Magic. Godric had taught the first Hogwarts class in Herbology, the magics of green growing life.

To his last day he'd never been able to cast the Patronus Charm.

Godric Gryffindor had been a good man, not a happy one.

Harry didn't believe in angst, he couldn't stand reading about whiny heroes, he knew a billion other people in the world would have given anything to trade places with him, and...

And on his deathbed, Godric had told Helga (for Salazar had abandoned him, and Rowena passed before) that he didn't regret any of it, and he was not warning his students not to follow in his footsteps, no one was ever to say he'd told anyone not to follow in his footsteps. If it had been the right thing for him to do, then he wouldn't tell anyone else to choose wrongly, not even the youngest student in Hogwarts. And yet for those who did follow in his footsteps, he hoped they would remember that Gryffindor had told his House that it was all right for them to be happier than him. That red and gold would be bright warm colors, from now on.

And Helga had promised him, weeping, that when she was Headmistress she would make sure of it.

Whereupon Godric had died, and left no ghost behind him; and Harry had shoved the book back to Hermione and walked away a little, so she wouldn't see him crying.

You wouldn't think that a book with an innocent title like "The Patronus Charm: Wizards Who Could and Couldn't" would be the saddest book Harry had ever read.

Harry...

Harry didn't want that.

To be in that book.

Harry didn't want that.

The rest of the school just seemed to think that No Patronus meant Bad Person, plain and simple. Somehow the fact that Godric Gryffindor also hadn't been able to cast the Patronus Charm seemed not to get repeated. Maybe people didn't talk about it to respect his last wish, Fred and George probably didn't know and Harry certainly wasn't about to tell them. Or maybe the other failures didn't mention it because it was less shameful, the smaller loss of pride and status, to be thought Dark rather than unhappy.

Harry saw that Hermione, beside him, was blinking hard; and he wondered if she was thinking of Rowena Ravenclaw, who'd also loved books.

"Okay," Harry whispered. "Happier thoughts. If you do go to a full corporeal Patronus, what do you think your animal will be?"

"An otter," Hermione said at once.

"An otter?" Harry whispered incredulously.