Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"Well -" she said. She was stumbling over her words. "I think - to never even ask for one kiss - would be -"

Sad.

Just too pitiful.

"Weakness," she said, her voice trembling.

"I agree," said Snape. "Suppose that boy had helped you, though. Would you think that you owed him a kiss, if he asked?"

She inhaled sharply -

"Or would you think," Snape continued, his eyes still closed, "that he was just being bothersome?"

The words stabbed into her like a knife and she couldn't help gasping out loud.

Snape's eyes flew open, and his gaze met hers across the sofa.

Then the Potions Master began to laugh, small sad chuckles.

"No, not you, Miss Felthorne!" Snape said. "Not you! We really are talking about a boy. One who attends your Potions class, in fact."

"Oh," she said. She tried to remember what Snape had said before, now feeling rather unnerved as she thought of some boy watching her, always silently watching. "Well, um, in that case. That's kind of creepy, actually. Who is it?"

The Potions Master shook his head. "It doesn't matter," said Snape. "Out of curiosity, what would you think if that boy were still in love with you years later?"

"Um," she said, feeling a bit confused, "that would be totally pathetic?"

The torch crackled a bit in the cavern.

"It's strange," Snape said quietly. "I have had two mentors, over the course of my days. Both were extraordinarily perceptive, and neither one ever told me the things I wasn't seeing. It's clear enough why the first said nothing, but the second..." Snape's face tightened. "I suppose I would have to be naive, to ask why he stayed silent."

The quiet stretched, while Rianne tried frantically to think of something to say.

"It is an odd thing," Snape said, his voice still softer, "to look back after only thirty-two years, and wonder when your life was ruined past all rescuing. Was it determined when the Sorting Hat cried 'Slytherin!' for me? It seems unfair, since I was offered no choice; the Sorting Hat spoke the moment it touched upon my head. Yet I cannot claim it named me untruly. I never treasured knowledge for its own sake. I was not loyal to the one person I called friend. I was never one for righteous fury, then or now. Courage? There is no bravery in risking a life already ruined. My little fears have always mastered me, and I never turned aside from any of the paths I walked down, for those little fears. No, the Sorting Hat could never have put me in her House. Perhaps my final loss was determined, even then. Is that fair, I ask, even if the Sorting Hat speaks truly? Is it fair that some children should possess more courage than others, and thus a man's life be judged?"

Rianne Felthorne was starting to realize that she'd never had the tiniest inkling of who her Potions Master was inside, and unfortunately all these dark hidden depths weren't helping her with her problem.

"But no," Snape said. "I know where it went wrong for the last time. I could point to the very day and hour I missed my final chance. Miss Felthorne, did the Sorting Hat offer you Ravenclaw?"

"Y-yes," she said without thinking.

"Have you ever been any good at riddles?"

"Yes," she said again, because whatever Professor Snape was about to say, she wouldn't hear it if she said no.

"I am terrible at riddles," Snape said in a distant voice. "I was once given a riddle to solve, and I did not understand even the simplest part until too late. I did not even realize the riddle was meant for me until too late. I thought I had merely happened to overhear it, when in truth it was I who was overheard. So I sold my riddle to another, and that is when the wreckage of my life passed beyond retrieval." Snape's voice was still distant, sounding more abstracted than sorrowful. "And even now, I understand nothing of importance. Tell me, Miss Felthorne, suppose a man were carrying a knife, and he tripped over a baby and stabbed himself. Would you say that the baby had," Snape's voice lowered, as though he were imitating some still deeper voice, "THE POWER TO VANQUISH him?"

"Um... no?" she said hesitantly.

"Then what does it mean to have the power to vanquish someone?"

Rianne considered the puzzle. (Wishing, not for the first time in her life, that she had chosen Ravenclaw and to perdition with her parents' disapproval; but the Sorting Hat had never offered her Gryffindor.) "Well..." Rianne said. She was having trouble putting her thoughts into words. "It means you've got the power, but you don't have to do it. It means you could do it if you tried -"

"Choice," the Potions Master said in the same faraway voice, as though he wasn't really talking to her at all. "There will be a choice. That is what the riddle seems to imply. And that choice is not a foregone conclusion to the chooser, for the riddle does not say, will vanquish, but rather the power to vanquish. How would a grown man mark a baby as his equal?"

"What?" said Rianne. She didn't understand that at all.

"Marking a baby is simple. Any strong Dark curse would produce a lasting scar. But such may be done to any child. What mark would signify that a baby was your equal? "

She answered with the first thought that came to mind. "If you signed a betrothal contract, that would mean you'd be equals with them someday, when they grew up and you got married."

"That..." said Snape. "That's probably not it, Miss Felthorne, but thank you for trying." The long delicate fingers,