Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

but loan you, my cloak, unto Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well."

She stared at the shimmering velvet of the cloak, cloth that swallowed all the light that fell on it except what glinted from small strange reflections, fabric so perfectly black it should've shown dust or lint or something but it didn't, the longer you looked the more you felt like what you were seeing wasn't really there at all, but then you blinked again and it was just a black cloak.

"Take it, Hermione."

Hardly even thinking, Hermione stretched out her hand to grasp the fabric; and then just as her brain woke up and she started to pull her hand back, Harry let go of the cloak and it started to fall and she grabbed at it without thinking. And the instant her fingers touched and held the cloak she felt an intangible jolt run through her like picking up her wand for the first time; and it was like she heard a song being sung, ever so faintly, in the back of her mind.

"That's one of my quest items, Hermione," Harry said softly. "It belonged to my father, and it's not something I can replace, if it's lost. Don't loan it to anyone else, don't show it to anyone, don't tell anyone it exists... but if you want to borrow it for a while, just come to me and ask."

Hermione finally tore her eyes loose from the depthless black folds and stared back up at Harry.

"I can't -"

"You certainly can," Harry said. "Because there's nothing even the tiniest bit fair about my finding this gift- wrapped in a box next to my bed one morning, and you... not." Harry paused thoughtfully. "Unless you did get your own invisibility cloak, in which case never mind."

Then the implications of invisibility cloak finally dawned on her, and she pointed a shocked finger at Harry, though they were close enough together that she couldn't quite straighten her arm properly, and her voice rose with considerable indignation as she said, "So that's how you disappeared from the Potions closet! And the time when -" and then she trailed off, because even with an invisibility cloak she still couldn't see how Harry had...

Harry buffed his fingernails on his robes with artful nonchalance, and said, "Well, you knew there had to be some trick to it, right? And now the heroine will mysteriously know where and when to find bullies - just like she listened to the bullies planning it, even though nobody her age could possibly have turned herself invisible to spy on them."

There was a pause and a silence.

"Harry -" she said. "I'm - I'm not sure anymore that fighting bullies is such a good idea."

Harry's eyes stayed steady on hers. "Because the other girls might get hurt?"

She nodded, just nodded.

"That's their choice, Hermione, just like it's yours. I decided not to do the obvious stupid thing that everyone does in books, try to keep you safe and protected and helpless, and have you get really angry at me, and push me away while you go off on your own and get into even more trouble, and then heroically pull through it successfully, after which I'd finally have my epiphany and realize that blah blah blah etcetera. I know how that part of my life story goes, so I'm just skipping over it. If I can predict what I'm going to think later, I might as well go ahead and think it now. Anyway, my point is, you shouldn't smother your friends to keep them safe, either. Just tell them up front it's predictably going to go horribly wrong, and if they still want to be heroines after that, fine."

It was at times like this that Hermione wondered if she was ever going to get used to the way Harry thought. "Harry, I really," her voice stuck for a second, "really, really don't want them getting hurt! Especially because of something I started!"

"Hermione," Harry said seriously, "I'm pretty sure you did the right thing. I don't see what could realistically happen to them that would be worse for them, in the long run, than not trying."

"What if they get badly hurt?" Hermione said. Her voice felt blocked in her throat; she remembered Captain Ernie saying how Harry had just stared straight into the eyes of a bully as the bully bent his finger back, before Professor Sprout had arrived to save him; and there was another thought that came after that, about Hannah and her delicate hands with the fingernails that she carefully painted in Hufflepuff yellow every morning, but that wasn't allowed to be imagined. "And then - they'll never do anything courageous, ever again -"

"I don't think it works like that," Harry said steadily. "Even if it all goes mind-bogglingly wrong, I don't think it works like that inside a human mind. The important thing is believing about yourself that you're someone who can break your boundaries. Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck."

"What if you're wrong, Harry?"

Harry paused for a moment, and then shrugged a little sadly, and said, "What if I'm right?"

Hermione looked back at the black mesh running over her hand. From the inside the cloak felt strangely soft and yet firm against her palm, as if it was trying to give her hand a reassuring hug.

Then she lifted her arm back up, holding the cloak back to Harry.

Harry didn't move to take it.

"I -" said Hermione. "I mean, thank you, thank you a lot, but I'm still thinking about it, so you can take it back for now. And... Harry, I don't think it's right to spy on people -"

"Not even on known bullies, to rescue their victims?" Harry said. "I've never been bullied, but I've been through a realistic simulation, and it didn't feel very pleasant. Have you ever been bullied, Hermione?"

"No," she said in a quiet voice, and went on holding out Harry's invisibility cloak to him.

Finally Harry took back his cloak - she felt a small twitch of loss as the inaudible song vanished from the back of her mind - and started to stuff the black material back into his pouch.

As the pouch ate the last of the fabric, Harry turned from her, to break the Quieting Barrier -