Read Online Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky - Free Book Online Page A

exhaled. “I would still like to hear about it,” she said.
    “Um…” Harry said. He took a deep breath. “There’d been some muggings in our neighborhood, and my mother asked me to return a pan she’d borrowed to a neighbor two streets away, and I said I didn’t want to because I might get mugged, and she said, ‘Harry, don’t say things like that!’ Like thinking about it would
make
it happen, so if I didn’t talk about it, I would be safe. I tried to explain why I wasn’t reassured, and she made me carry over the pan anyway. I was too young to know how statistically unlikely it was for a mugger to target me, but I was old enough to know that not-thinking about something doesn’t stop it from happening, so I was really scared.”
    “Nothing else?” Professor McGonagall said after a pause, when it became clear that Harry was done. “There isn’t anything
else
that happened to you?”
    “I know it doesn’t
sound
like much,” Harry defended. “But it was just one of those critical life moments, you see? I mean, I
knew
that not thinking about something doesn’t stop it from happening, I
knew
that, but I could see that Mum really thought that way.” Harry stopped, struggling with the anger that was starting to rise up again when he thought about it. “She
wouldn’t listen
. I tried to tell her, I
begged
her not to send me out, and she
laughed it off
. Everything I said, she treated like some sort of big joke…” Harry forced the black rage back down again. “That’s when I realised that everyone who was supposed to protect me was actually crazy, and that they wouldn’t listen to me no matter how much I begged them, and that I couldn’t ever rely on them to get anything right.” Sometimes good intentions weren’t enough, sometimes you had to be sane…
    There was a long silence.
    Harry took the time to breathe deeply and calm himself down. There was no point in getting angry. There was no point in getting angry.
All
parents were like that,
no
adult would lower themselves far enough to place themselves on level ground with a child and listen, his genetic parents would have been no different. Sanity was a tiny spark in the night, an infinitesimally rare exception to the rule of madness, so there was no point in getting angry.
    Harry didn’t like himself when he was angry.
    “Thank you for sharing that, Mr. Potter,” said Professor McGonagall after a while. There was an abstracted look on her face (almost exactly the same look that had appeared on Harry’s own face while experimenting on the pouch, if Harry had only seen himself in a mirror to realise that). “I shall have to think about this.” She turned towards the alley mouthway, and raised her wand -
    “Um,” Harry said, “can we go get the healer’s kit now?”
    The witch paused, and looked back at him steadily. “And if I say no - that it is too expensive and you won’t need it - then what?”
    Harry’s face twisted in bitterness. “Exactly what you’re thinking, Professor McGonagall.
Exactly
what you’re thinking. I conclude you’re another crazy adult I can’t talk to, and I start planning how to get my hands on a healer’s kit anyway.”
    “I am your guardian on this trip,” Professor McGonagall said with a tinge of danger. “I
will not
allow you to push me around.”
    “I understand,” Harry said. He kept the resentment out of his voice, and didn’t say any of the other things that came to mind. Professor McGonagall had told him to think before he spoke. He probably wouldn’t remember that tomorrow, but he could at least remember it for five minutes.
    The witch’s wand made a slight circle in her hand, and the noises of Diagon Alley came back. “All right, young man,” she said. “Let’s go get that healer’s kit.”
    Harry’s jaw dropped in surprise. Then he hurried after her, almost stumbling in his sudden rush.
----
    The shop was the same as they had left it, recognisable and unrecognisable items still