Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

It's all right, thought Harry, it's all right.

Visualizing himself cradling his dark side like a frightened child in his arms.

It's right and proper to be horrified, because death is horrible. You don't have to hide your horror, you don't have to feel ashamed of it, you can wear it as a badge of honor, openly in the Sun.

It was strange, to feel himself split in two like this, the track of his thoughts that gave the comfort, the track of his thoughts that followed his dark side's incomprehension at the alienness of the ordinary Harry's thoughts; of all the things that his dark side associated with its own fear of death, the one thing it had never expected or imagined that it might find, was acceptance and praise and help...

You don't have to fight alone, Harry said silently to his dark side. The rest of me will back you up on this. I won't let myself die, and I won't let my friends die either. Not you/I, not Hermione, not Mum or Dad, not Neville or Draco or anyone, this is the will to protect... Visualizing wings of sunlight, like the wings of the Patronus he had spread, to give shelter to that frightened child.

The Patronus brightened again, the world spun around Harry or it was his own mind that was spinning?

Take my hand, Harry thought and visualized, come with me, and we will do this thing together...

There was a lurch in Harry's mind, like his brain had taken one step to the left, or the universe had taken one step to the right.

And in a brightly lit corridor in Azkaban, the dim gas lights far outshone by the steady and unwavering light of a human-shaped Patronus, an invisible boy stood with a strange small smile on his face, shaking only slightly.

Harry knew, somehow, that he'd just done something significant, something that went beyond just strengthening his resistance to Dementors.

And more than that, he'd remembered. Thinking of Death as an anthropomorphic figure had done the trick, ironically enough. Now Harry could remember it, what was reputed to hide someone from the gaze of Death himself...

In a corridor of Azkaban, a wizard's striding legs came to an abrupt halt; for the bright silver thing that was his guide, had halted in midair, fluttering its wings in distress. The brilliant white phoenix craned its head, looking backward and forward as though confused; and then it turned to its master and shook its head in apology.

Without another word, the old wizard turned and strode back the way he came.

Harry stood straight and upright, feeling the fear wash over him and around him. Some tiny part of him might have been eroded a little by the waves of emptiness that broke continually upon his unmoving stone, but his limbs were not cold, and his magic was with him. In time those waves might corrode him and consume him, sneaking through whatever tiny part of him still cowered before Death instead of using its fear to energize itself for battle. But that doom would take time, with the shadows of Death far away and uncaring of him. The flaw, the crack, the fault-line that was in him had been repaired, and the stars blazed brightly in his mind, vast and unafraid, and brilliant in the midst of cold and darkness.

To anyone else's eyes, it would have seemed that the boy stood alone in the dimly lit metal corridor, wearing that strange smile.

For Bellatrix Black and the snake draped around her shoulders were concealed by the Cloak of Invisibility, one of the three Deathly Hallows and reputed to hide its wearer from the gaze of Death himself. The riddle whose answer had been lost, and which Harry had found anew.

And Harry knew, now, that the concealment of the Cloak was more than the mere transparency of Disillusionment, that the Cloak kept you hidden and not just invisible, as unseeable as were Thestrals to the unknowing. And Harry also knew that it was Thestral blood which painted the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on the inside of the Cloak, binding into the Cloak that portion of Death's power, enabling the Cloak to confront the Dementors on their own level and block them. It had felt like guessing, and yet a certain guess, the knowledge coming to him in the instant of solving the riddle.

Bellatrix was still transparent within the Cloak, but to Harry she was no longer hidden, he knew that she was there, as obvious to him as a Thestral. For Harry had only loaned his Cloak, not given it; and he had comprehended and mastered the Deathly Hallow that had been passed down through the Potter line.

Harry gazed directly at the invisible woman, and said, "Can the Dementors reach you, Bella?"

"No," said the woman in a soft, wondering voice. Then, "But my Lord... you..."

"If you say anything foolish, it will annoy me," Harry said coldly. "Or are you under the impression that I would sacrifice myself for you?"

"No, my Lord," the Dark Lord's servant replied, sounding puzzled, and perhaps awed.

"Follow," spoke Harry's cold whisper.

And they continued their journey downward, as the Dark Lord reached into his pouch, and took a cookie, and ate it. If Bellatrix had asked, Harry would have claimed it was for the chocolate, but she didn't ask.

The old wizard strode back into the midst of the Aurors, the silver and the red-golden phoenixes now following behind.

"You -" Amelia began to bellow.

"They have dismissed their Patronus," said Dumbledore. The old wizard didn't seem to raise his voice but his calm words somehow overrode her own. "I cannot find them now."

Amelia gritted her teeth, and put a number of scathing remarks on hold, and turned to the communications officer. "Tell the duty room to ask the Dementors again if they can sense Bellatrix Black."

The communications specialist spoke to her mirror for a moment, and a few seconds later, looked up, surprised. "No -"

Amelia was already cursing violently in her mind.

"- but they can see someone else on the lower levels who isn't a prisoner."

"Fine!" snapped Amelia. "Tell the Dementor that a dozen of its kind are authorized to enter Azkaban and seize