Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

maths textbook.

Neville Longbottom went to Hufflepuff, Harry was glad to see. If that House really did contain the loyalty and camaraderie it was supposed to exemplify, then a Houseful of reliable friends would do Neville a whole world of good. Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.

(Though Harry had been right to consult a Ravenclaw prefect first. The young woman hadn't even looked up from her reading or identified Harry, just jabbed a wand in Neville's direction and muttered something. After which Neville had acquired a dazed expression and wandered off to the fifth carriage from the front and the fourth compartment on the left, which indeed had contained his toad.)

"Malfoy, Draco!" went to Slytherin, and Harry breathed a small sigh of relief. It had seemed like a sure thing, but you never did know what tiny event might upset the course of your master plan.

Professor McGonagall called "Perks, Sally-Anne!", and from the gathered children detached a pale waifish girl who looked oddly ethereal - like she might mysteriously disappear the moment you stopped looking at her, and never be seen again or even remembered.

And then (with a note of trepidation so firmly kept from her voice and face that you'd have needed to know her very well indeed to notice) Minerva McGonagall inhaled deeply, and called out, "Potter, Harry!"

There was a sudden silence in the hall.

All conversation stopped.

All eyes turned to stare.

For the first time in his entire life, Harry felt like he might be having an opportunity to experience stage fright.

Harry immediately stomped down this feeling. Whole room-fulls of people staring at him was something he'd have to accustom himself to, if he wanted to live in magical Britain, or for that matter do anything else interesting with his life. Affixing a confident and false smile to his face, he raised a foot to step forwards -

"Harry Potter!" cried the voice of either Fred or George Weasley, and then "Harry Potter!" cried the other Weasley twin, and a moment later the entire Gryffindor table, and soon after a good portion of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, had taken up the cry.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter!"

And Harry Potter walked forwards. Much too slowly, he realized once he'd begun, but by then it was too late to alter his pace without it looking awkward.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! HARRY POTTER!"

With all too good a notion of what she would see, Minerva McGonagall turned to look behind herself at the rest of the Head Table.

Trelawney frantically fanning herself, Filius looking on with curiosity, Hagrid clapping along, Sprout looking severe, Vector and Sinistra bemused, and Quirrell gazing vacuously at nothing. Albus smiling benevolently. And Severus Snape gripping his empty wine goblet, white-knuckled, so hard that the silver was slowly deforming.

With a wide grin, turning his head to bow to one side and then the other as he walked between the four House tables, Harry Potter walked forwards at a grandly measured pace, a prince inheriting his castle.

"Save us from some more Dark Lords!" called one of the Weasley twins, and then the other Weasley twin cried, "Especially if they're Professors!" to general laughter from all the tables except Slytherin.

Minerva's lips set in a white line. She would have words with the Weasley Horrors about that last part, if they thought she was powerless because it was the first day of school and Gryffindor had no points to take away. If they didn't care about detentions then she would find something else.

Then, with a sudden gasp of horror, she looked in Severus's direction, surely he realized the Potter boy must have no idea who that was talking about -

Severus's face had gone beyond rage into a kind of pleasant indifference. A faint smile played about his lips. He was looking in the direction of Harry Potter, not the Gryffindor table, and his hands held the crumpled remains of a former wine goblet.

Harry Potter walked forwards with a fixed smile, feeling warm inside and sort of awful at the same time.

They were cheering him for a job he'd done when he was one year old. A job he hadn't really finished. Somewhere, somehow, the Dark Lord was still alive. Would they have been cheering quite so hard, if they knew that?

But the Dark Lord's power had been broken once.

And Harry would protect them again. If there was in fact a prophecy and that was what it said. Well, actually regardless of what any darn prophecy said.

All those people believing in him and cheering him - Harry couldn't stand to let that be false. To flash and fade like so many other child prodigies. To be a disappointment. To fail to live up to his reputation as a symbol of the Light, never mind how he'd gotten it. He would absolutely, positively, no matter how long it took and even if it killed him, fulfill their expectations. And then go on to exceed those expectations, so that people wondered, looking back, that they had once asked so little of him.

"HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!"

Harry took his last steps towards the Sorting Hat. He swept a bow to the Order of Chaos at the Gryffindor table, and then turned and swept another bow to the other side of the hall, and waited for the applause and giggling to die away.

(In the back of his mind, he wondered if the Sorting Hat was genuinely conscious in the sense of being aware of its own awareness, and if so, whether it was satisfied with only getting to talk to eleven-year-olds once per year. Its song had implied so: Oh, I'm the Sorting Hat and I'm okay, I sleep all year and I work one day...)

When there was once more silence in the room, Harry sat on the stool and carefully