Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"I only used my dark side once and that was - when I had to!"

"So today you beat my whole army being just Harry?" She still wasn't crying yet, and she wondered what her face looked like right now, if she looked like an angry Hermione or a sad one.

"I -" Harry said. His voice got a little lower, "I wasn't... really expecting to win, that time, I know I said I was invincible but that was just to try to scare you, I really just thought we'd slow you down for a bit -"

She started walking again, walked right past him, and as she passed Harry's face tightened up like he was going to cry.

"Is Professor Quirrell right?" came a high desperate whisper from behind her. "If I have you for a friend, will I always be afraid to do better because I know it will hurt your feelings? That's not fair, Hermione!"

She took a breath and held it and ran, her feet pattering across the stone as fast as they could, running as fast as she dared with her vision all blurry, ran so that no one would hear her, and this time Harry didn't follow.

Minerva was going over the Transfiguration parchment due Monday, and had just marked down to negative two hundred points a fifth-year parchment with an error that could have potentially killed someone. During her first year as a professor she'd been indignant at the folly of older students, now she was just resigned. Some people not only never learned, they never noticed that they were hopeless, they stayed bright and eager and kept on trying. Sometimes they believed you when you told them, before they left Hogwarts, that they must never try anything unusual, give up free Transfiguration and use the art only through established Charms; and sometimes... they didn't.

She was in the middle of trying to unravel a particularly convoluted answer when a knock at the door disrupted her thoughts; and it wasn't her office hours, but it had only taken a very short time as Head of Gryffindor House for her to learn to suspend judgment. You could always deduct House points afterward.

"Come in," she said in a crisp voice.

The young girl who entered her office had clearly been crying, and then afterward had washed her face in hopes it wouldn't show -

"Miss Granger!" said Professor McGonagall. It had taken her a moment to recognize that face with its eyes reddened and cheeks puffed. "What happened?"

"Professor," said the young girl in a wavering voice, "you said that if I was ever worried or uncomfortable about anything, I should come to you at once -"

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall, "now what happened?"

The girl started to explain -

Hermione stood still and the stairs turned around her, a revolving helix that shouldn't have taken her anywhere at all, and instead bore her continuously upward. Hermione thought it seemed like the Enchantment of the Endless Stair, which had been invented in 1733 by the wizard Arram Sabeti who'd lived on top of Mount Everest in the days when no Muggles could climb it. Only that couldn't be right because Hogwarts was much older - maybe the enchantment had been reinvented?

She should've been frightened, should've been nervous about her second meeting with the Headmaster.

She was, in fact, frightened and nervous about her second meeting with the Headmaster.

Only Hermione Granger had been thinking; she'd been thinking a lot, after she hadn't been able to run any further and had slid down against the wall with her lungs on fire, thinking while she curled up in a ball with her back against the chilly stone wall and her legs drawn up and crying.

Even if she lost to Harry Potter she was never, ever going to lose to Draco Malfoy, that was just totally absolutely unacceptable, and Professor Quirrell had praised General Malfoy for not ignoring his thousand alternatives; and so after Hermione had cried herself out she'd thought of fourteen other spells she should've tried against Harry and Neville, and then she'd started wondering if she might be making the same sort of mistake about other things; and that was how she'd ended up knocking on Professor McGonagall's door. Not asking for help, right now Hermione didn't have any plans she could ask for help with, just telling Professor McGonagall everything, because when she'd thought of it that had seemed like one of the thousand alternatives that Professor Quirrell had been talking about.

And she'd told Professor McGonagall about how Harry Potter had changed since the day the phoenix had been on his shoulder, and about how people more and more seemed to see her as just something of Harry's, and how it seemed like Harry was pulling farther and farther away from everyone else in their school year and went around with a sad air sometimes like he was losing something, and she didn't know what to do anymore.

And Professor McGonagall had told her that they needed to talk to the Headmaster.

And Hermione had felt worried, but then the thought had come to her that Harry Potter wouldn't have been scared of the Headmaster. Harry Potter would have just barged ahead doing whatever he was trying to do. Maybe (the thought had come to her) it was worth trying to be like that, not being scared, just doing whatever, and seeing what happened to her, it couldn't really be worse.

The Endless Stair stopped turning.

The great oaken door in front of them with the brass griffin knocker opened without being touched.

Behind a black oaken desk with dozens of drawers facing in every direction, looking like it had drawers set inside other drawers, was the silver-bearded Headmaster of Hogwarts upon his throne, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, into whose gently twinkling eyes Hermione looked for around three seconds before she was distracted by all the other things in the room.

Some time later - she wasn't sure how long but it was while she was trying to count the number of things in the room for the third time and still not getting the same answer, even though her memory insisted that nothing had been added or removed - the Headmaster cleared his throat and said, "Miss Granger?"

Hermione's head snapped around, and she felt a little heat in her cheeks; but Dumbledore didn't appear annoyed with her at all, only serene, and with an inquiring look in those mild, half-glassed eyes.