Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

desk, even as everyone else turned to look at him. "Did Harry Potter actually tell you that? Using those words?"

"Well, no..." Tracey said, and then her eyes flashed angrily. "But he'd better take me in, now that I've sacrificed my soul to him and everything!"

"You sacrificed your soul to Harry Potter?" gasped Millicent. There was a clatter from the other side of the room as Ron Weasley dropped his inkwell.

"Well, I'm pretty sure I did," said Tracey, sounding briefly uncertain before she rallied. "I mean, I looked at myself in a mirror and I look paler now, and I can always feel darkness surrounding me, and I was a conduit for his dread powers and everything... Daphne, you also saw my eyes go green, right? I didn't see it myself but that's what I heard afterward."

There was a pause, broken only by the sounds of Ron Weasley trying to clean up his desk.

"Daphne?" said Tracey.

"I don't believe it," said an angry voice. "There's no way the next Dark Lord would take you to be his bride!"

Slowly, and with considerable disbelief, heads turned to stare at Pansy Parkinson.

"Hush, you," said Tracey, "or I'll..." The Slytherin girl paused. Then Tracey's voice went even lower, and she said, "Hush, you, or I'll devour your soul."

"You can't do that," said Pansy, in the confident tones of a hen which had worked out a perfectly good pecking order where she was at the top, and wasn't about to go updating that belief based on mere evidence.

Slowly, like she was trying to float, Tracey got up from her desk. There were more gasps. Daphne felt like she'd been Petrified in place within her chair.

"Tracey?" said Lavender in a small voice. "Please don't do all that again. Please?"

Now Pansy was showing definite nervousness as Tracey swayed toward her desk. "What d'you think you're doing?" Pansy said, not quite managing to sound indignant.

"I told you," Tracey said menacingly. "I'm going to devour your soul."

Tracey bent down over Pansy, who sat frozen at her desk; and, with their lips almost touching, made a loud inhaling noise.

"There!" said Tracey as she straightened. "I ate your soul."

"No you didn't!" said Pansy.

"Did too!" said Tracey.

There was a very slight pause -

"Merlin, she did!" cried Theodore Nott. "You look all pale now, and your eyes seem empty!"

"What?" screeched Pansy, turning pale. The girl leapt up from her desk and began frantically rummaging through her bookbag. After Pansy drew out a mirror and looked at herself, she turned even paler.

Daphne abandoned all pretense of aristocratic poise and let her head fall to the desk with a dull thud, as she wondered whether going to the same school as all the other important families was really worth going to the same school as the Chaos Legion.

"Ooh, you're in trouble now, Pansy," said Seamus Finnigan. "I don't know exactly what happens when a Dementor Kisses you, but if Tracey Davis kisses you that's probably even worse."

"I've heard about people without souls," Dean Thomas said gloomily. "They have to dress all in black, and they write awful poetry, and nothing ever makes them happy. They're all angsty."

"I don't want to be angsty!" cried Pansy.

"Too bad," said Dean Thomas. "You've got to be, now that your soul's gone."

Pansy turned, and stretched out a begging hand toward Draco Malfoy's desk. "Draco!" she said pleadingly. "Mr. Malfoy! Please, make Tracey give me back my soul!"

"I can't," said Tracey. "I ate it."

"Make her throw it up!" yelled Pansy.

The heir of Malfoy had slumped forward, resting his head in both hands, so that nobody could see his face. "Why is my life like this?" said Draco Malfoy.

A wild babble of whispers started up as Tracey returned to her desk, now smiling in satisfaction, while Pansy stood in the midst of the classroom, wringing her hands and tears starting from her eyes -

"Be. Quiet."

The soft, lethal voice seemed to fill the whole classroom as Professor Snape stalked in through the door. His face was angrier than Daphne had ever seen it, sending a jolt of genuine fear down her spine. Hastily she looked down at her homework.

"Sit down, Parkinson," the Potions Master hissed, "and you, Davis, take off that ridiculous cloak -"

"Professor Snaaaaaape!" wailed Pansy Parkinson in tears. "Tracey ate my sooouuul!"

Chapter 75: Self Actualization Final, Responsibility