Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

...there might not be a psychiatric healer at the end of it.

That was something Harry had believed when he'd trusted Professor Quirrell, and he'd forgotten to re-evaluate it after Professor Quirrell was no longer to be trusted.

You can't do this, said Hufflepuff. At this point we're talking mere stupidity.

Cold seemed to spread through the room, but Harry kept the Transfiguration going, even as his resistance against the Dementors faltered.

I can't lose Professor Quirrell.

He tried to kill a police officer, said Hufflepuff. You already lost him, in that moment. Bellatrix is probably just what everyone thinks she is. Just take your Cloak back, go find Dumbledore and tell him you were tricked.

No, thought Harry desperately, not without talking to Professor Quirrell, there might be an explanation, I don't know, maybe he was standing far enough away from my Patronus that the Dementors got to him... I don't understand, it doesn't make sense on any hypothesis, why he would do that... I can't just...

Harry turned his mind away from that chain of thought before it completely broke his resistance to the fear, because he couldn't think of feeding Professor Quirrell to Dementors while staying resolved against Death, it was a cognitive impossibility.

Your reasoning is artificially impaired, observed the logical part of him calmly, find a way to unimpair it.

All right, let's just generate alternatives, Harry thought. Not choose, not weigh, certainly not commit... just think about what else I might be able to do besides the original plan.

And Harry went on cutting the hole in the wall. He was using partial Transfiguration on a thin cylindrical shell of metal, two meters in diameter and half a millimeter thick, running all the way through the wall. He was Transfiguring that half-millimeter thickness of metal into motor oil. Motor oil was a liquid and you weren't to Transfigure liquids because they might evaporate, but he and Bellatrix and the snake all had Bubble-Head Charms. And Harry would cast Finite on the oil immediately after, dispelling his own Transfiguration...

...as soon as the separated and lubricated hunk of metal slid out of the wall and onto the floor of their cell, he'd slanted it so gravity would pull it in, once the Transfiguration was done.

If Harry and Bellatrix didn't exit on his broomstick through the resulting hole in the wall...

Harry's brain suggested that he could try to Transfigure a surface cover over the hole in the wall, leaving a space for Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell to hide in, wearing the Cloak, while Harry turned himself in. And Professor Quirrell would eventually wake up, and he and Bellatrix could try to figure out how to exit Azkaban on their own.

It was, first of all, a dumb idea, and second, there would still be a huge hunk of metal on the floor of the cell, which would give it away.

And then Harry's brain saw the obvious.

Let Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell use the escape route you invented. You stay behind, and turn yourself in.

Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell were the ones whose lives were at stake.

They were gaining, not losing, from taking the risk.

And there was no reason, no sane reason at all, for Harry to go with them.

A calm came over Harry as he thought it, the cold and darkness that had been wavering around the fringes of his mind retreated. Yes, that was it, that was the creative outside-the-box route, that was the hidden third alternative. The falseness of the dilemma was obvious in retrospect. If Harry turned himself in, he didn't have to turn in Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell. If Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell took a dangerous escape route, Harry didn't need to go with them.

Harry didn't even need to face the embarrassment of admitting he'd been tricked, if he ordered Bellatrix to remove the memory. Everyone would just assume he'd been kidnapped, including Harry himself. Admittedly, there was no plausible reason why the Dark Lord would ever ask Bellatrix to do that; but Harry could simply smile and tell Bellatrix she wasn't allowed to know, and that would be that...

Her Auror team had gotten around three-quarters of the way down Azkaban, as had the other two teams on the other two spirals. Amelia was feeling tenser already, though she was betting on the criminals hiding on the second-to-lowest floor, part of her wished Dumbledore had thought to check that specific floor more carefully and part of her was glad he hadn't.

And then there was a distant sound, like a tiny 'tink' noise coming from far away. Like a very loud sound coming from the second-to-lowest floor, say.

Amelia looked at Dumbledore before she realized, before she managed to stop herself.

The old wizard shrugged, gave her a small smile, said, "Since you asked it, Amelia," and went off yet again.

"Finite Incantatem," Harry said to the oil coating the giant chunk of metal on the floor. He hardly heard himself speak, his ears were still ringing from the gigantic thud of the solid metal sliding out of the wall and falling. (He should have put up a Quieting Charm, in retrospect, though that wouldn't have stopped the noise from spreading through the solid metal floor.) And then Harry said it again, "Finite Incantatem" to the oil coating the two-meter hole in the wall, spreading the effect wide; it was his own magic Harry was canceling, which made the spell almost effortless. Harry was feeling a bit tired now, but that was the last use of magic he would need. He hadn't even needed to do it, really, but Harry didn't want to leave Transfigured liquid lying around, and he didn't want to betray the secret of partial Transfiguration either.

It seemed very... inviting, that two-meter hole leading to freedom.

The light from outside coming in... wasn't exactly the Sun shining on his face, but it was brighter than anything of Azkaban's interior.