Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"Yes, actually," said the buzzing voice of the leader. "We are."

"I'm under Harry Potter's protection, you know! Anyone who tries to hurt me will learn the true meaning of Chaos! So are you going to let me go?" It should have sounded defiant. It came out sounding terrified.

There was a pause. Some of the hoods of the robes turned to face each other, then turned back to face the girls.

"Hm..." said the buzzing male voice. "Hm... no."

Tracey Davis put her wand away into her robes.

Slowly, deliberately, she raised her right hand high in the air, and pressed her thumb and forefingers together.

"Go ahead," said that voice.

Tracey Davis snapped her fingers.

There was a long, awful pause.

Nothing happened.

"Yes, well," said the voice -

Tracey said, her voice sounding even higher and shakier, "Acathla, mundatus sum." Her hand, stretching up still further, snapped its fingers a second time.

A nameless chill went down Hermione's spine then, a frisson of fear and disorientation like she'd just felt the floor tilt beneath her, threatening to spill her into some darkness lying beneath.

"What's she -" began a buzzing female voice.

Tracey's face looked pale, twisted with fear, but her lips moved, spilled forth sound in a high chant, "Mabra, brahoring, mabra..."

A chill wind seemed to spring up within the confines of the corridor, a dark breath that caressed their faces and touched their hands with ice.

"Fire at her on my count!" shouted the leading voice. "One, two, three!" and maybe- forty voices roared spells, creating a huge concentric array of fiery bolts that lit the wide corridor brighter than the Sun -

- for the short moment before the bolts struck and vanished upon a dark red octagon that appeared in the air around the girls, and then disappeared a moment later.

Hermione saw it, she saw it but she still couldn't imagine it; she couldn't imagine a Shielding Charm that powerful, a spell that would withstand an army.

And Tracey's voice went on chanting, her voice sounding louder and more confident, and her face screwed up like she was trying to remember something very exactly.

"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff.

Fista, wista, mista-cuff."

Now all those present could feel it, heroines and bullies alike, the sensation of some dark will pressing down on them, a tingling in the air as something built and built and built. All the blue hazes around the white robes, all the shielding spells, had died out without any visible hex touching them. There were more flashes of light as more desperate spells were fired, but they fizzled out in midair like candle-flames touching water.

The black barriers at the two ends of the corridor had dissipated like smoke beneath the growing pressure, but their evaporation revealed the exits sealed, blocked by tiled slats of dark metal that looked stained as though with blood; and as Tracey chanted "Lemarchand, Lament, Lemarchand," a dreadful blue light began to shine out from beneath the metal slats and between them; and the six sets of double doors slammed shut all at once, as panicked white-robed bullies began to pound on them and howl.

Then Tracey's hand slashed to her left, and she cried "Khornath!", then her hand pointed below her and "Slaaneth!", above her "Nurgolth!", and then, to her right, "TZINTCHI!"

Tracey paused, took a deep breath; and Hermione found her voice and cried, "Stop! Tracey, stop! "

But there was a strange wild smile on Tracey's face. She raised her hand still higher, and snapped her fingers a third time; and when she spoke again, beneath her high girlish voice there was an undertone as though some lower chorus were chanting along with her.

"Darkness beyond darkness, deeper than pitchest black.

Buried beneath the flow of time...

From darkness to darkness, your voice echoes in the emptiness,

Unknown to death, nor known to life."

"What are you doing?" shrieked Parvati, and the Gryffindor girl stretched out a hand as though to pull down the Slytherin, who was now starting to float upward into the air; and both Daphne and Susan grabbed Parvati's arm at the same time and Daphne cried out, "Don't, we don't know what will happen if the ritual is interrupted!"

"Well what happens if it gets COMPLETED?" screamed Hermione, as close as she'd ever come to total brain meltdown.

Susan's face was white as chalk, and she whispered, "I'm sorry, Mad-Eye..."

And Tracey spoke on, her body floating higher and higher off the floor, her black hair whipping wildly around her in the chill winds.

"You who know the gate, who are the gate, the key and guardian of the gate:

I bid you open the way for him, and manifest his power before me!"