Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry shoved himself up from the table and took a staggering step back, even as he brought up his arms to wave frantically. "That's not why I did it! I did it because we're friends!"

"Just friends?"

Harry Potter's breathing was starting to scale up toward hyperventilation. "Very good friends! Extra-special friends, even! Best friends forever, possibly! But not that kind of friends!"

"Is it really that awful to think about?" she said with a catch in her voice. "I mean - I'm not saying I'm in love with you, but -"

"Oh, you're not? Thank goodness." Harry brought up the sleeve of his robe and wiped across his forehead. "Look, Hermione, please don't misunderstand, I'm sure you're a wonderful person -"

She took a staggering step back.

"- but - even with my dark side -"

"Is that what this is about?" said Hermione. "But I - I wouldn't -"

"No, no, I mean, I have a mysterious dark side and probably other weird magic stuff going on, you know I'm not a normal child, not really -"

"It's okay to not be normal," she said, feeling increasingly desperate and confused. "I'm okay with it -"

"But even with all that weird magical stuff letting me be more adult than I should be, I haven't gone through puberty yet and there's no hormones in my bloodstream and my brain is physically incapable of falling in love with anyone. So I'm not in love with you! I couldn't possibly be in love with you! For all I know at this point, six months from now my brain is going to wake up and decide to fall in love with Professor Snape! Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?"

"Eep," said Hermione in a high-pitched sound. She swayed where she stood, and a moment later Harry was rushing over to her side and helping lower her to sit on the ground, bracing her body with firm hands.

The fact was that she had staggered over to Professor McGonagall's office back in December, not in total surprise because she'd done her reading, but still rather queasily and it was with great relief that she'd learned that witches had Charms to deal with the inconveniences and what was Harry even doing asking a poor innocent girl a question like that -

"Look, I'm sorry," Harry said frantically. "I really didn't mean most of that the way it sounded! I'm sure that anyone taking the outside view of the whole situation and offering betting odds on who I finally married would assign a higher probability to you than anyone else I can think of -"

Her intelligence, which had barely been starting to pull itself together, promptly exploded into sparks and flame.

"- though not necessarily a probability higher than fifty percent, I mean, from the outside view there's a lot of other possibilities, and who I like before I hit puberty probably isn't all that strongly diagnostic of who I'll be with seven years later - I don't want to sound like I'm promising anything -"

Her throat was making some sort of high-pitched sounds and she wasn't really listening to exactly what. All her universe had narrowed to Harry's terrible, terrible voice.

"- and besides I've been reading about evolutionary psychology, and, well, there are all these suggestions that one man and one woman living together happily ever afterward may be more the exception rather than the rule, and in hunter-gatherer tribes it was more often just staying together for two or three years to raise a child during its most vulnerable stages - and, I mean, considering how many people end up horribly unhappy in traditional marriages, it seems like it might be the sort of thing that needs some clever reworking - especially if we actually do solve immortality -"

Tano Wolfe, of fifth-year Ravenclaw, slowly stood up from his library desk, from which vantage point he'd just watched Granger flee the library, sobbing. He hadn't been able to hear the argument, but it had clearly been one of those.

Slowly and with his knees trembling, Tano approached the Boy-Who-Lived, who was staring in the direction of the library doors, still vibrating from the force of how they'd been slammed.

Tano didn't particularly want to do this, but Harry Potter had been Sorted into Ravenclaw. The Boy-Who-Lived was, technically, his fellow Ravenclaw. And that meant there was a Code.

The Boy-Who-Lived didn't say anything as Tano approached him, but his gaze wasn't friendly.

Tano swallowed, laid a hand on Harry Potter's shoulder, and recited, his voice cracking only slightly, "Witches! Go figure, huh?"

"Remove your hand before I cast it into the outer darkness."

The library doors slammed open again in the wake of another departure.

Chapter 88: Time Pressure, Pt 1

If you have forgotten current events within the story, I would suggest rereading Ch. 85-87 before proceeding to Ch. 88-89. Those of you who recall previous reading-environment difficulties are advised to find an appropriate refuge before reading Ch. 88-89.

April 16th, 1992.

12:07pm.

Lunchtime.

Harry stomped over to the mostly-deserted Gryffindor table, determining at a glance that lunch today was breen and Roopo balls. The ambient conversation, Harry could likewise hear, was Quidditch-related; an auditory environment which rated somewhat worse than the sound of rusty chainsaws, but better than what the Ravenclaw table was still blithering about Hermione. Gryffindor House, at least, had started out less sympathetic to Draco Malfoy and had more political incentive to wish that everyone would just forget certain unfortunate facts; and if that wasn't the right reason for silence, it was at least silence. Dean and Seamus and