Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

WHAT IS "HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY"?

http://hpmor.com/chapter/1 posted:

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, and no one owns the methods of rationality.

This fic is widely considered to have really hit its stride starting at around Chapter 5. If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.

Please visit HPMOR DOT COM for:

* Easy email notification system, RSS feed, and Twitter feed for new chapters;
* Current Author's Notes and progress updates;
* Lovely fan-made book-style PDF version;
* Ad-free mirror of the text;
* ePUB and MOBI e-texts;
* Ongoing podcast of the story;
* Fan art in vast quantities;
* Cameo list (characters named after fan artists);
* Fan-fanfiction of this fanfiction;
* Fan music, songs, and animations;
* Fan translations;
* The OKCupid keyword for HPMOR readers;
* Links to TV Tropes page and discussion forum;
* Trigger warnings page (warnings about possible traumatic associations for some readers; to avoid spoilers for most readers, there are no warnings inside the main story);
* How to learn everything the main character knows;
* Open job positions at a related nonprofit;
* And ever so much more.

Reviews make me happy. You can leave reviews on any chapter, no login required, and there's no need to finish reading it all before you start reviewing chapters - but do please leave at most one review per chapter.

This is not a strict single-point-of-departure fic - there exists a primary point of departure, at some point in the past, but also other alterations. The best term I've heard for this fic is "parallel universe".

The text contains many clues: obvious clues, not-so-obvious clues, truly obscure hints which I was shocked to see some readers successfully decode, and massive evidence left out in plain sight. This is a rationalist story; its mysteries are solvable, and meant to be solved.

The pacing of the story is that of serial fiction, i.e., that of a TV show running for a predetermined number of seasons, whose episodes are individually plotted but with an overall arc building to a final conclusion.

The story has been corrected to British English up to Ch. 17, and further Britpicking is currently in progress (see the /HPMOR subreddit).

All science mentioned is real science. But please keep in mind that, beyond the realm of science, the views of the characters may not be those of the author. Not everything the protagonist does is a lesson in wisdom, and advice offered by darker characters may be untrustworthy or dangerously double-edged.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality posted:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an on-going Harry Potter rational fanfic by Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI researcher and decision theorist.

This is an Alternate Universe story, where Petunia married a scientist. Now Rationalist!Harry enters the wizarding world armed with Enlightenment ideals and the experimental spirit.

It should also be noted that the author is aware of us and has links to this page on his author's notes for chapter 20.

Recaps of all chapters can be found here (currently under construction).

SPOILER ALERT: Through this article you will find spoilers EVEN if you have read every chapter published by the author (by august 2014), continue at your own peril.

WHO IS THE AUTHOR?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky posted:

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979[citation needed]) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for friendly artificial intelligence.

Biography

Yudkowsky is a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area.[1] Largely self-educated,[2]:38 he co-founded the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence) in 2000 and continues to be employed there as a full-time Research Fellow.[3]:599

Work

Yudkowsky's interests focus on Artificial Intelligence theory for self-awareness, self-modification, and recursive self-improvement, and on artificial-intelligence architectures and decision theories for stable motivational structures (Friendly AI and Coherent Extrapolated Volition in particular).[3]:420 Yudkowsky's most recent work is on decision theory for problems of self-modification and Newcomblike problems.

Yudkowsky was, along with Robin Hanson, one of the principal contributors to the blog Overcoming Bias[4] sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. In February 2009, he helped to found LessWrong,[5] a "community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality".[2]:37 LessWrong has been covered in depth in Business Insider.[6] Core concepts from LessWrong have been referenced in columns in The Guardian.[7][8] LessWrong has been mentioned briefly in articles related to the technological singularity and the work of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly called the Singularity Institute).[9]

Yudkowsky contributed two chapters to Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom's and Milan Ćirković's edited volume Global Catastrophic Risks.[10]

Fan fiction

Yudkowsky has also written several works[11] of science fiction and other fiction. His wide-ranging Harry Potter fan fiction story Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality illustrates topics in cognitive science and rationality.[2]:37[12][13][14][15][16][17] The New Yorker described it as "recast[ing] the original story in an attempt to explain Harry's wizardry through the scientific method."[18]

Publications

Creating Friendly AI (2001)
Levels of Organization in General Intelligence(2002)
Coherent Extrapolated Volition(2004)
Timeless Decision Theory (2010)
Complex Value Systems are Required to Realize Valuable Futures (2011)
Tiling Agents for Self-Modifying AI, and the L�bian Obstacle (2013)
A Comparison of Decision Algorithms on Newcomblike Problems (2013)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/EliezerYudkowsky posted:

Creator: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Author of Three Worlds Collide and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, the shorter works Trust in God/The Riddle of Kyon and The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover, and various other fiction. Helped found and is probably the most prolific poster to the blog/discussion site Less Wrong, and is currently writing a book on rationality.

His day job is with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, specifically working on how to make an A.I. that won't just kill us all accidentally, and make AI less of a crapshoot.

Tropes describing Yudkowsky's work:

Author Tract: His theories and avatars crop up a fair bit in his fictional works.

Genre Adultery: Almost all of his works, whether fanfic or original, are highly philosophical Author Tracts. And then there's Peggy Susie, which is merely a Calvin and Hobbes fic and parody of The Terminator... with no philosophical elements whatsoever.

Living Forever Is Awesome: Eliezer's hatred of death appears as a recurring theme in his stories.

Mind Screwdriver: "The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover" is this for the ending of Permutation City by Greg Egan. On the other hand, the explanation involves quite a bit of theoretical computer science.

Reference Overdosed: Eliezer loves his ShoutOuts. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has at least one in most chapters, while the first half of "The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover" has several per paragraph. Even Three Worlds Collide includes Fate/stay night in a list of "classic" literature.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 16:39

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:29

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

TABLE OF CONTENTS

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 16:41

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

CHAPTER 1 - A DAY OF VERY LOW PROBABILITY

quote:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...

(black robes, falling)

... blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase. Each bookcase has six shelves, going almost to the ceiling. Some bookshelves are stacked to the brim with hardback books: science, maths, history, and everything else. Other shelves have two layers of paperback science fiction, with the back layer of books propped up on old tissue boxes or lengths of wood, so that you can see the back layer of books above the books in front. And it still isn't enough. Books are overflowing onto the tables and the sofas and making little heaps under the windows.

This is the living-room of the house occupied by the eminent Professor Michael Verres-Evans, and his wife, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres, and their adopted son, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

The story has barely begun and I already feel like punching these people. Triple-barrelled last names? Really?

And why's the husband "Verres-Evans" and the wife "Evans-Verres"? Are they cousins? That's not very rational, given the increased chances of genetic disorders in their offspring arising from such inbreeding.

quote:

There is a letter lying on the living-room table, and an unstamped envelope of yellowish parchment, addressed to Mr. H. Potter in emerald-green ink.

The Professor and his wife are speaking sharply at each other, but they are not shouting. The Professor considers shouting to be uncivilised.

Shouldn't a "rational" person not be bothered about shouting? After all, the tone and volume of a statement is independent of the content of the statement in question, and calling attention to it distracts from the issue being discussed. Dismissing / Devaluing an argument or statement because it is "shouted" would therefore be less rather than more "rational".

quote:

"You're joking," Michael said to Petunia. His tone indicated that he was very much afraid that she was serious.

"My sister was a witch," Petunia repeated. She looked frightened, but stood her ground. "Her husband was a wizard."

"This is absurd!" Michael said sharply. "They were at our wedding - they visited for Christmas -"

"I told them you weren't to know," Petunia whispered. "But it's true. I've seen things -"

The Professor rolled his eyes. "Dear, I understand that you're not familiar with the sceptical literature. You may not realise how easy it is for a trained magician to fake the seemingly impossible. Remember how I taught Harry to bend spoons? If it seemed like they could always guess what you were thinking, that's called cold reading -"

Ah, I see why "the Professor" was burdened with irrationality in that earlier passage. He's such a pompous, condescending rear end in a top hat that we are clearly not meant to like or admire him.

quote:

"It wasn't bending spoons -"

"What was it, then?"

Petunia bit her lip. "I can't just tell you. You'll think I'm -" She swallowed. "Listen. Michael. I wasn't - always like this -" She gestured at herself, as though to indicate her lithe form. "Lily did this. Because I - because I begged her. For years, I begged her. Lily had always been prettier than me, and I'd... been mean to her, because of that, and then she got magic, can you imagine how I felt? And I begged her to use some of that magic on me so that I could be pretty too, even if I couldn't have her magic, at least I could be pretty."

Tears were gathering in Petunia's eyes.

"And Lily would tell me no, and make up the most ridiculous excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister, or a centaur told her not to - the most ridiculous things, and I hated her for it. And when I had just graduated from university, I was going out with this boy, Vernon Dursley, he was fat and he was the only boy who would talk to me. And he said he wanted children, and that his first son would be named Dudley. And I thought to myself, what kind of parent names their child Dudley Dursley?

What kind of adoptive parents gives their child a triple-barrelled last name?

quote:

It was like I saw my whole future life stretching out in front of me, and I couldn't stand it. And I wrote to my sister and told her that if she didn't help me I'd rather just -"

Petunia stopped.

"Anyway," Petunia said, her voice small, "she gave in. She told me it was dangerous, and I said I didn't care any more, and I drank this potion and I was sick for weeks, but when I got better my skin cleared up and I finally filled out and... I was beautiful, people were nice to me," her voice broke, "and after that I couldn't hate my sister any more, especially when I learned what her magic brought her in the end -"

"Darling," Michael said gently, "you got sick, you gained some weight while resting in bed, and your skin cleared up on its own. Or being sick made you change your diet -"

"She was a witch," Petunia repeated. "I saw it."

"Petunia," Michael said. The annoyance was creeping into his voice. "You know that can't be true. Do I really have to explain why?"

It took me until the second chapter of Twisted before I started hating "Railrunner". I'm already hating "the Professor" and we're not even half-way through the first chapter of "Methods of Rationality" yet. Eliezer did a good job on making Harry's adoptive father as loathsome and contemptible as Vernon Dursley in the canon series.

quote:

Petunia wrung her hands. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. "My love, I know I can't win arguments with you, but please, you have to trust me on this -"

This poor, broken woman needs to check into a domestic violence shelter soon.

Also, the Professor clearly doesn't, and never has, respected Petunia. Why then did he marry her? Is it "rational" to marry someone you have so much contempt for?

quote:

"Dad! Mum! "

The two of them stopped and looked at Harry as though they'd forgotten there was a third person in the room.

Harry took a deep breath. "Mum, your parents didn't have magic, did they?"

"No," Petunia said, looking puzzled.

"Then no one in your family knew about magic when Lily got her letter. How did they get convinced?"

"Ah..." Petunia said. "They didn't just send a letter. They sent a professor from Hogwarts. He -" Petunia's eyes flicked to Michael. "He showed us some magic."

"Then you don't have to fight over this," Harry said firmly. Hoping against hope that this time, just this once, they would listen to him.

His adoptive father is a self-absorbed, arrogant, condescending, pompous rear end and his adoptive mother is too drained and shattered to stand up to her husband. It's no wonder they never listen to Harry.

quote:

"If it's true, we can just get a Hogwarts professor here and see the magic for ourselves, and Dad will admit that it's true. And if not, then Mum will admit that it's false. That's what the experimental method is for, so that we don't have to resolve things just by arguing."

The Professor turned and looked down at him, dismissive as usual. "Oh, come now, Harry. Really, magic? I thought you'd know better than to take this seriously, son, even if you're only ten. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!"

Harry's mouth twisted bitterly. He was treated well, probably better than most genetic fathers treated their own children. Harry had been sent to the best primary schools - and when that didn't work out, he was provided with tutors from the endless pool of starving students. Always Harry had been encouraged to study whatever caught his attention, bought all the books that caught his fancy, sponsored in whatever maths or science competitions he entered. He was given anything reasonable that he wanted, except, maybe, the slightest shred of respect. A Doctor teaching biochemistry at Oxford could hardly be expected to listen to the advice of a little boy. You would listen to Show Interest, of course; that's what a Good Parent would do, and so, if you conceived of yourself as a Good Parent, you would do it. But take a ten-year-old seriously? Hardly.

To be fair, most adults don't take ten year olds "seriously".

quote:

Sometimes Harry wanted to scream at his father.

"Mum," Harry said. "If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. Um... off the top of my head I can't think of where to find something about how it's an ideal of science to settle things by experiment instead of arguments -"

WTF is this? Which ten year old in all of history has ever, ever spoken like this? The dialogue in "Twisted" feels natural in comparison to this.

quote:

His mother looked down at him and smiled. "Thank you, Harry. But -" her head rose back up to stare at her husband. "I don't want to win an argument with your father. I want my husband to, to listen to his wife who loves him, and trust her just this once -"

Harry closed his eyes briefly. Hopeless. Both of his parents were just hopeless.

Okay, at least that's a realistic portrayal of a child's thought processes. All children and teenagers have at some point thought their parents were totally hopeless.

quote:

Now his parents were getting into one of those arguments again, one where his mother tried to make his father feel guilty, and his father tried to make his mother feel stupid.

"I'm going to go to my room," Harry announced. His voice trembled a little. "Please try not to fight too much about this, Mum, Dad, we'll know soon enough how it comes out, right?"

"Of course, Harry," said his father, and his mother gave him a reassuring kiss, and then they went on fighting while Harry climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

He shut the door behind him and tried to think.

The funny thing was, he should have agreed with Dad. No one had ever seen any evidence of magic, and according to Mum, there was a whole magical world out there. How could anyone keep something like that a secret? More magic? That seemed like a rather suspicious sort of excuse.

It should have been a clean case for Mum joking, lying or being insane, in ascending order of awfulness. If Mum had sent the letter herself, that would explain how it arrived at the letterbox without a stamp. A little insanity was far, far less improbable than the universe really working like that.

Except that some part of Harry was utterly convinced that magic was real, and had been since the instant he saw the putative letter from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Harry rubbed his forehead, grimacing. Don't believe everything you think, one of his books had said.

But this bizarre certainty... Harry was finding himself just expecting that, yes, a Hogwarts professor would show up and wave a wand and magic would come out. The strange certainty was making no effort to guard itself against falsification - wasn't making excuses in advance for why there wouldn't be a professor, or the professor would only be able to bend spoons.

Where do you come from, strange little prediction? Harry directed the thought at his brain. Why do I believe what I believe?

Usually Harry was pretty good at answering that question, but in this particular case, he had no clue what his brain was thinking.

Harry mentally shrugged. A flat metal plate on a door affords pushing, and a handle on a door affords pulling, and the thing to do with a testable hypothesis is to go and test it.

He took a piece of lined paper from his desk, and started writing.

Dear Deputy Headmistress

Harry paused, reflecting; then discarded the paper for another, tapping another millimetre of graphite from his mechanical pencil. This called for careful calligraphy.

Dear Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall,

Or Whomsoever It May Concern:

I recently received your letter of acceptance to Hogwarts, addressed to Mr. H. Potter. You may not be aware that my genetic parents, James Potter and Lily Potter (formerly Lily Evans) are dead. I was adopted by Lily's sister, Petunia Evans-Verres, and her husband, Michael Verres-Evans.

I am extremely interested in attending Hogwarts, conditional on such a place actually existing. Only my mother Petunia says she knows about magic, and she can't use it herself. My father is highly sceptical. I myself am uncertain. I also don't know where to obtain any of the books or equipment listed in your acceptance letter.

Mother mentioned that you sent a Hogwarts representative to Lily Potter (then Lily Evans) in order to demonstrate to her family that magic was real, and, I presume, help Lily obtain her school materials. If you could do this for my own family it would be extremely helpful.

Sincerely,

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

Harry is remarkably precocious in this story, but I think it's still within the bounds of credibility, save for that bit above about the "Feynman Lectures on Physics".

quote:

Harry added their current address, then folded up the letter and put it in an envelope, which he addressed to Hogwarts. Further consideration led him to obtain a candle and drip wax onto the flap of the envelope, into which, using a penknife's tip, he impressed the initials H.J.P.E.V. If he was going to descend into this madness, he was going to do it with style.

Then he opened his door and went back downstairs. His father was sitting in the living-room and reading a book of higher maths to show how smart he was;

Again not very "rational" on the Professor's part - reading the book just shows how "educated" you are but not necessarily how "smart".

quote:

and his mother was in the kitchen preparing one of his father's favourite meals to show how loving she was. It didn't look like they were talking to one another at all. As scary as arguments could be, not arguing was somehow much worse.

The author may have a little difficulty with portraying a child's thoughts, but I must concede that he does a good job at writing a dysfunctional marriage.

quote:

"Mum," Harry said into the unnerving silence, "I'm going to test the hypothesis. According to your theory, how do I send an owl to Hogwarts?"

His mother turned from the kitchen sink to stare at him, looking shocked. "I - I don't know, I think you just have to own a magic owl."

That should've sounded highly suspicious, oh, so there's no way to test your theory then, but the peculiar certainty in Harry seemed willing to stick its neck out even further.

"Well, the letter got here somehow," Harry said, "so I'll just wave it around outside and call 'letter for Hogwarts!' and see if an owl picks it up. Dad, do you want to come and watch?"

His father shook his head minutely and kept on reading. Of course, Harry thought to himself. Magic was a disgraceful thing that only stupid people believed in; if his father went so far as to test the hypothesis, or even watch it being tested, that would feel like associating himself with that...

Only as Harry stumped out the back door, into the back garden, did it occur to him that if an owl did come down and snatch the letter, he was going to have some trouble telling Dad about it.

But - well - that can't really happen, can it? No matter what my brain seems to believe. If an owl really comes down and grabs this envelope, I'm going to have worries a lot more important than what Dad thinks.

Harry took a deep breath, and raised the envelope into the air.

He swallowed.

Calling out Letter for Hogwarts! while holding an envelope high in the air in the middle of your own back garden was... actually pretty embarrassing, now that he thought about it.

No. I'm better than Dad. I will use the scientific method even if it makes me feel stupid.

"Letter -" Harry said, but it actually came out as more of a whispered croak.

Harry steeled his will, and shouted into the empty sky, "Letter for Hogwarts! Can I get an owl? "

"Harry?" asked a bemused woman's voice, one of the neighbours.

Harry pulled down his hand like it was on fire and hid the envelope behind his back like it was drug money. His whole face was hot with shame.

An old woman's face peered out from above the neighbouring fence, grizzled grey hair escaping from her hairnet. Mrs. Figg, the occasional babysitter. "What are you doing, Harry?"

"Nothing," Harry said in a strangled voice. "Just - testing a really silly theory -"

"Did you get your acceptance letter from Hogwarts?"

Harry froze in place.

"Yes," Harry's lips said a little while later. "I got a letter from Hogwarts. They say they want my owl by the 31st of July, but -"

"But you don't have an owl. Poor dear! I can't imagine what someone must have been thinking, sending you just the standard letter."

A wrinkled arm stretched out over the fence, and opened an expectant hand. Hardly even thinking at this point, Harry gave over his envelope.

"Just leave it to me, dear," said Mrs. Figg, "and in a jiffy or two I'll have someone over."

And her face disappeared from over the fence.

There was a long silence in the garden.

Then a boy's voice said, calmly and quietly, "What."

All in all, not too bad an opening chapter. The Professor's clearly meant to be hated and is indeed loathsome while not being over-the-top; the portrayal of abusive relationship with Petunia is reasonably grounded and believable; and Harry's precociousness stretches a little far at time but is still generally believable. I also like how the author subtly mocks the supposed "rationality" of the Professor throughout the chapter.

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Feb 21, 2015

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 17:52

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

REVIEWS FOR CHAPTER 1

quote:

Errrrr chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

So. I'm the first one reviewing, eh?

I enjoyed the chapter. It is a very good start. Do continue I would like to see how you progress.

Not-to-mention I would like to see how Harry's adoptive father reacts.

P.S. Will it be Snape?

quote:

anonnatymousMARTIN chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

Oh! I love these types of stories! It screams brilliance! Sharp, considerate, very intelligent Harry. This cheered me up a little. I hope you continue.

quote:

omegahurricane chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

Very interesting. Hermione will truely get along very well with this Harry. Petunia being indepted to Lily and there for being nice is a good swing on things. Can't wait to see who gives and the expation of the method to the madness that is J. K. Rowlings Magical Universe.

quote:

scarletalphabet chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

This has the potential to be VERY interesting. I've never seen a take quite like this, and that is very rare indeed in the world of HP fanfic. :P I like how Harry is smart and studies, but doesn't seem to know everything. I hope you keep it that way and I look forward to more. Cool idea with the Petunia and Lily relationship as well.

quote:

cheekylildevil chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

I have never read anything like this and are waiting with baited breath for more. This has the potential to become one of the most read stories on this site.

Please, please write more,

Waiting,

Indi

quote:

Ishikawa-san chapter 1 . Feb 28, 2010

A well written start.

A completely new take on the HP Universe, i agree with the majority of the other reviewers that the potential is incredible.

Looking forward to reading more. Should be fascinating as well as hilarious at various points. Always a good combination in fanfiction.

Thumbs up.

quote:

Aries The Ram chapter 1 . Mar 5, 2010

I certainly hope you continue to write this, I'm definitely going to keep reading as it is one of the more interesting and engaging stories. Within one chapter you've given me something that is different enough to keep me reading while also giving me some solace in knowing that in some way, shape and form the H/Hr should be pleasing. Also I enjoy humor fics. Thank you and i'll review on another chapter once I get more information.

quote:

Madame Norberta chapter 1 . Mar 9, 2010

I am loving this already! The characters are so different, yet so in character. Harry outside shouting for an owl made me laugh out loud.

I'm glad you have several chapters posted already. I don't think I have the patience to wait...

I also should mention how much I appreciate your excellent writing and careful editing. Unfortunately both are rare in fanfiction.

Peggy

quote:

Meteoricshipyards chapter 1 . Mar 9, 2010

What a _wonderful_ start! I'm loving it!

Thank you so much. Looking forward to this Harry encountering the wizarding world.

Tom A.

quote:

SomeGuyFawkes chapter 1 . Mar 9, 2010

What an interesting and unusual spin on the HP story. The rationalist stuff was great, but is was undercut, a little, by Politically Correct absurdities (for example, what names will be inflicted on Potter's poor grand-kids?). The PC is more amusing since, in other regards, the family seems to fit in a traditional (pre-FemiNazi) mold.

Anywho, fine start. The twist with Mrs. Figg was well done.

But, Harry would have had a few bouts of accidental magic (EVERY kid's life has stressors (especially perceived), no matter how PC the family is). Harry and his Dad should already have a list of minor mysteries that they can't adequately explain; this would be more plausible than mysterious notions in Harry's internal dialog.

quote:

Pennilyn Novus chapter 1 . Mar 10, 2010

Great beginning. Your writing style is tidy and scientific, and I like the alternate universe and its concept. Harry, Petunia, and the Professor's characters are revealed through their actions instead of clumbsy exposition. I look forward to reading the rest.

quote:

lucis chapter 1 . Mar 11, 2010

As of reading Chapter 1, I think this story has epic potential.

Also, in _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_ (or maybe _What do you care what other people think_, but I'm pretty sure it was the former) Feynman mentions that he went to psychics, magicians, et cetera, to give them a chance. All failed of course. In a similar vein, Dawkins has visited psychics to disprove them.

quote:

uo-chou chapter 1 . Mar 19, 2010

Interesting. Very, very interesting. As a man of science, I heartily look forward to your descriptions of Hogwarts and magic in general through the eyes of a disciple of the great Richard Feynman. Heh, I hope Harry pokes a million holes in the nonsensical canon storyline.

quote:

aliard chapter 1 . Mar 20, 2010

I can tell just now from reading the first chapter that this is going to be a wild ride. So Mrs. Fig gets hold of Hogwarts for Harry does she? I liked the part when Petunia was thinking about Vernon wanting a child named Dudley. And she said to herself, who would name a child Dudley Dersly?

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 18:05

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 2: Everything I Believe Is False

quote:

#include "stddisclaimer.h"

______________________________________________

"Of course it was my fault. There's no one else here who could be responsible for anything."
______________________________________________

"Now, just to be clear," Harry said, "if the professor does levitate you, Dad, when you know you haven't been attached to any wires, that's going to be sufficient evidence. You're not going to turn around and say that it's a magician's trick. That wouldn't be fair play. If you feel that way, you should say so now, and we can figure out a different experiment instead."

Harry's father, Professor Michael Verres-Evans, rolled his eyes. "Yes, Harry."

Is there a need to repeat Harry's dad's full name and title at this point? We've just had multiple mentions of said name and title one chapter ago. Wouldn't "Harry's father rolled his eyes" be sufficient?

quote:

"And you, Mum, your theory says that the professor should be able to do this, and if that doesn't happen, you'll admit you're mistaken. Nothing about how magic doesn't work when people are sceptical of it, or anything like that."

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall was watching Harry with a bemused expression. She looked quite witchy in her black robes and pointed hat, but when she spoke she sounded formal and Scottish, which didn't go together with the look at all. At first glance she looked like someone who ought to cackle and put babies into cauldrons, but the whole effect was ruined as soon as she opened her mouth. "Is that sufficient, Mr. Potter?" she said. "Shall I go ahead and demonstrate?"

"Sufficient? Probably not," Harry said. "But at least it will help. Go ahead, Deputy Headmistress."

"Just Professor will do," said she, and then, "Wingardium Leviosa."

Harry looked at his father.

"Huh," Harry said.

His father looked back at him. "Huh," his father echoed.

Then Professor Verres-Evans looked back at Professor McGonagall. "All right, you can put me down now."

His father was lowered carefully to the ground.

Harry ruffled a hand through his own hair. Maybe it was just that strange part of him which had already been convinced, but... "That's a bit of an anticlimax," Harry said. "You'd think there'd be some kind of more dramatic mental event associated with updating on an observation of infinitesimal probability -" Harry stopped himself. Mum, the witch, and even his Dad were giving him that look again. "I mean, with finding out that everything I believe is false."

Lampshading (Harry's unchildlike language and thought processes) doesn't make it any better. If the author is aware of this and isn't writing Harry like that for comedic effect, why not just write differently?

quote:

Seriously, it should have been more dramatic. His brain ought to have been flushing its entire current stock of hypotheses about the universe, none of which allowed this to happen. But instead his brain just seemed to be going, All right, I saw the Hogwarts Professor wave her wand and make your father rise into the air, now what?

The witch-lady was smiling benevolently upon them, looking quite amused. "Would you like a further demonstration, Mr. Potter?"

"You don't have to," Harry said. "We've performed a definitive experiment. But..." Harry hesitated. He couldn't help himself. Actually, under the circumstances, he shouldn't be helping himself. It was right and proper to be curious. "What else can you do?"

Professor McGonagall turned into a cat.

Harry scrambled back unthinkingly, backpedalling so fast that he tripped over a stray stack of books and landed hard on his bottom with a thwack. His hands came down to catch himself without quite reaching properly, and there was a warning twinge in his shoulder as the weight came down unbraced.

At once the small tabby cat morphed back up into a robed woman. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter," said the witch, sounding sincere, though the corners of her lips were twitching upwards. "I should have warned you."

Harry was breathing in short gasps. His voice came out choked. "You can't DO that!"

"It's only a Transfiguration," said Professor McGonagall. "An Animagus transformation, to be exact."

"You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualise a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?"

That's not very rational, is it? If evidence contradicts a theory, you shouldn't reject the evidence, you should revise the theory.

quote:

Professor McGonagall's lips were twitching harder now. "Magic."

"Magic isn't enough to do that! You'd have to be a god!"

That's not a very "rational" statement either. Harry doesn't yet know enough about "magic" to say what "magic" is or is not capable of doing.

quote:

Professor McGonagall blinked. "That's the first time I've ever been called that."

A blur was coming over Harry's vision, as his brain started to comprehend what had just broken. The whole idea of a unified universe with mathematically regular laws, that was what had been flushed down the toilet; the whole notion of physics. Three thousand years of resolving big complicated things into smaller pieces, discovering that the music of the planets was the same tune as a falling apple, finding that the true laws were perfectly universal and had no exceptions anywhere and took the form of simple maths governing the smallest parts, not to mention that the mind was the brain and the brain was made of neurons, a brain was what a person was -

If you saw a person turning into a cat right in front of you, you'd be thinking "WOW!" or "HOLY poo poo!" I defy you to find anyone, anyone, who'd be thinking "The whole idea of a unified universe with mathematically regular laws, that was what had been flushed down the toilet; the whole notion of physics", let alone a 10-year old child. If living with his adoptive parents has scrubbed out his sense of wonder to such an extent, I'd say that qualifies as child abuse.

quote:

And then a woman turned into a cat, so much for all that.

A hundred questions fought for priority over Harry's lips and the winner poured out: "And, and what kind of incantation is Wingardium Leviosa? Who invents the words to these spells, nursery schoolers?"

Man is this incarnation of Harry an insufferable brat.

quote:

"That will do, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said crisply, though her eyes shone with suppressed amusement. "If you wish to learn about magic, I suggest that we finalise the paperwork so that you can go to Hogwarts."

"Right," Harry said, somewhat dazed. He pulled his thoughts together. The March of Reason would just have to start over, that was all; they still had the experimental method and that was the important thing. "How do I get to Hogwarts, then?"

A choked laugh escaped Professor McGonagall, as if extracted from her by tweezers.

"Hold on a moment, Harry," his father said. "Remember why you haven't been going to school up until now? What about your condition?"

Professor McGonagall spun to face Michael. "His condition? What's this?"

"I don't sleep right," Harry said. He waved his hands helplessly. "My sleep cycle is twenty-six hours long, I always go to sleep two hours later, every day. I can't fall asleep any earlier than that, and then the next day I go to sleep two hours later than that. 10PM, 12AM, 2AM, 4AM, until it goes around the clock. Even if I try to wake up early, it makes no difference and I'm a wreck that whole day. That's why I haven't been going to a normal school up until now."

That is indeed a rather terrible condition to suffer. Is this an actual thing that exists in the real world?

quote:

"One of the reasons," said his mother. Harry shot her a glare.

McGonagall gave a long hmmmmm. "I can't recall hearing about such a condition before..." she said slowly. "I'll check with Madam Pomfrey to see if she knows any remedies." Then her face brightened. "No, I'm sure this won't be a problem - I'll find a solution in time. Now," and her gaze sharpened again, "what are these other reasons?"

Harry sent his parents a glare. "I am a conscientious objector to child conscription, on grounds that I should not have to suffer for a disintegrating school system's failure to provide teachers or study materials of even minimally adequate quality."

:facepalm:

I mean, I can sympathise with a child who doesn't fit into a standardised school system, but the obnoxious way that Harry talks rapidly erodes any sympathy I might have for him.

quote:

Both of Harry's parents howled with laughter at that, like they thought it was all a big joke. "Oh," said Harry's father, eyes bright, "is that why you bit a maths teacher in third year."

"She didn't know what a logarithm was! "

"Of course," seconded Harry's mother. "Biting her was a very mature response to that."

Harry's father nodded. "A well-considered policy for addressing the problem of teachers who don't understand logarithms."

"I was seven years old! How long are you going to keep on bringing that up?"

"I know," said his mother sympathetically, "you bite one maths teacher and they never let you forget it, do they?"

Harry turned to Professor McGonagall. "There! You see what I have to deal with?"

"Excuse me," said Petunia, and fled through the backdoor into the garden, from which her screams of laughter were clearly audible.

For a pair of parents who "don't have any respect for Harry", they sure do talk to him like he was an adult peer instead of a child under their guardianship.

quote:

"There, ah, there," Professor McGonagall seemed to be having trouble speaking for some reason, "there is to be no biting of teachers at Hogwarts, is that quite clear, Mr. Potter?"

Harry scowled at her. "Fine, I won't bite anyone who doesn't bite me first."

Professor Michael Verres-Evans also had to leave the room briefly upon hearing that.

"Well," Professor McGonagall sighed, after Harry's parents had composed themselves and returned. "Well. I think, under the circumstances, that I should avoid taking you to purchase your study materials until a day or two before school begins."

"What? Why? The other children already know magic, don't they? I have to start catching up right away!"

"Rest assured, Mr. Potter," replied Professor McGonagall, "Hogwarts is quite capable of teaching the basics. And I suspect, Mr. Potter, that if I leave you alone for two months with your schoolbooks, even without a wand, I will return to this house only to find a crater billowing purple smoke, a depopulated city surrounding it and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of England."

Harry's mother and father nodded in perfect unison.

"Mum! Dad! "

Welp, that went downhill pretty fast. What seemed to be a tolerably amusing quirk of Harry in Chapter 1 has rapidly turned just downright obnoxious and insufferable in Chapter 2. How many more chapters of this are there? I hadn't checked.

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Feb 22, 2015

# ¿ Feb 22, 2015 18:52

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 3: Comparing Reality To Its Alternatives

quote:

If J. K. Rowling asks you about this story, you know nothing.

________________________________________________________

"But then the question is - who?"

________________________________________________________

"Good Lord," said the barman, peering at Harry, "is this - can this be -?"

Harry leaned towards the bar of the Leaky Cauldron as best he could, though it came up to somewhere around the tips of his eyebrows. A question like that deserved his very best.

"Am I - could I be - maybe - you never know - if I'm not - but then the question is - who? "

"Bless my soul," whispered the old barman. "Harry Potter... what an honour."

Harry blinked, then rallied. "Well, yes, you're quite perceptive; most people don't realise that so quickly -"

"That's enough," Professor McGonagall said. Her hand tightened on Harry's shoulder. "Don't pester the boy, Tom, he's new to all this."

"But it is him?" quavered an old woman. "It's Harry Potter?" With a scraping sound, she got up from her chair.

"Doris -" McGonagall said warningly. The glare she shot around the room should have been enough to intimidate anyone.

"I only want to shake his hand," the woman whispered. She bent low and stuck out a wrinkled hand, which Harry, feeling confused and more uncomfortable than he ever had in his life, carefully shook. Tears fell from the woman's eyes onto their clasped hands. "My granson was an Auror," she whispered to him. "Died in seventy-nine. Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank heavens for you."

"You're welcome," Harry said automatically, and then he turned his head and shot Professor McGonagall a frightened, pleading look.

This feels like a totally different Harry Potter from the one in the first two chapters - actually human and likable. Was this chapter written by a guest author or something?

quote:

Professor McGonagall slammed her foot down just as the general rush was about to start. It made a noise that gave Harry a new referent for the phrase "Crack of Doom", and everyone froze in place.

"We're in a hurry," Professor McGonagall said in a voice that sounded perfectly, utterly normal.

They left the bar without any trouble.

"Professor?" Harry said, once they were in the courtyard. He had meant to ask what was going on, but oddly found himself asking an entirely different question instead. "Who was that pale man, by the corner? The man with the twitching eye?"

"Hm?" said Professor McGonagall, sounding a bit surprised; perhaps she hadn't expected that question either. "That was Professor Quirinus Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts."

"I had the strangest feeling that I knew him..." Harry rubbed his forehead. "And that I shouldn't ought to shake his hand." Like meeting someone who had been a friend, once, before something went drastically wrong... that wasn't really it at all, but Harry couldn't find words. "And what was... all of that?"

Professor McGonagall was giving him an odd glance. "Mr. Potter... do you know... how much have you been told... about how your parents died?"

Harry returned a steady look. "My parents are alive and well, and they always refused to talk about how my genetic parents died. From which I infer that it wasn't good."

"An admirable loyalty," said Professor McGonagall. Her voice went low. "Though it hurts a little to hear you say it like that. Lily and James were friends of mine."

Harry looked away, suddenly ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said in a small voice. "But I have a Mum and Dad. And I know that I'd just make myself unhappy by comparing that reality to... something perfect that I built up in my imagination."

Yup, definitely written by a guest author.

quote:

"That is amazingly wise of you," Professor McGonagall said quietly. "But your genetic parents died very well indeed, protecting you."

Protecting me?

Something strange clutched at Harry's heart. "What... did happen?"

Professor McGonagall sighed. Her wand tapped Harry's forehead, and his vision blurred for a moment. "Something of a disguise," she said, "so that this doesn't happen again, not until you're ready." Then her wand licked out again, and tapped three times on a brick wall...

...which hollowed into a hole, and dilated and expanded and shivered into a huge archway, revealing a long row of shops with signs advertising cauldrons and dragon livers.

Harry didn't blink. It wasn't like anyone was turning into a cat.

And they walked forwards, together, into the wizarding world.

There were merchants hawking Bounce Boots ("Made with real Flubber!") and "Knives +3! Forks +2! Spoons with a +4 bonus!" There were goggles that would turn anything you looked at green, and a lineup of comfy armchairs with ejection seats for emergencies.

Harry's head kept rotating, rotating like it was trying to wind itself off his neck. It was like walking through the magical items section of an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebook (he didn't play the game, but he did enjoy reading the rulebooks). Harry desperately didn't want to miss a single item for sale, in case it was one of the three you needed to complete the cycle of infinite wish spells.

Rather gratuitous pandering to D&D fans here. And not even up-to-date pandering either - AD&D was released in 1989, and by the time Eliezer started writing HPMOR in 2010, D&D 4th Edition had already been out for 2 years.

quote:

Then Harry spotted something that made him, entirely without thinking, veer off from the Deputy Headmistress and start heading straight into the shop, a front of blue bricks with bronze-metal trim. He was brought back to reality only when Professor McGonagall stepped right in front of him.

"Mr. Potter?" she said.

Harry blinked, then realised what he'd just done. "I'm sorry! I forgot for a moment that I was with you instead of my family." Harry gestured at the shop window, which displayed fiery letters that shone piercingly bright and yet remote, spelling out Bigbam's Brilliant Books. "When you walk past a bookshop you haven't visited before, you have to go in and look around. That's the family rule."

That doesn't seem like a very "rational" rule. Most bookstores would stock more or less the same books as each other, and if you want to compel your children to explore and expand their horizons, you could just browse randomly through Amazon and save time that way.

quote:

"That is the most Ravenclaw thing I have ever heard."

"What?"

"Nothing. Mr. Potter, our first step is to visit Gringotts, the bank of the wizarding world. Your genetic family vault is there, with the inheritance your genetic parents left you, and you'll need money for school supplies." She sighed. "And, I suppose, a certain amount of spending money for books could be excused as well. Though you might want to hold off for a time. Hogwarts has quite a large library on magical subjects. And the tower in which, I strongly suspect, you will be living, has a more broad-ranging library of its own. Any book you bought now would probably be a duplicate."

Harry nodded, and they walked on.

"Don't get me wrong, it's a great distraction," Harry said as his head kept swivelling, "probably the best distraction anyone has ever tried on me, but don't think I've forgotten about our pending discussion."

Professor McGonagall sighed. "Your parents - or your mother at any rate - may have been very wise not to tell you."

"So you wish that I could continue in blissful ignorance? There is a certain flaw in that plan, Professor McGonagall."

"I suppose it would be rather pointless," the witch said tightly, "when anyone on the street could tell you the story. Very well."

And she told him of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

"Voldemort?" Harry whispered. It should have been funny, but it wasn't. The name burned with a cold feeling, ruthlessness, diamond clarity, a hammer of pure titanium descending upon an anvil of yielding flesh. A chill swept over Harry even as he pronounced the word, and he resolved then and there to use safer terms like You-Know-Who.

The Dark Lord had raged upon wizarding Britain like a wilding wolf, tearing and rending at the fabric of their everyday lives. Other countries had wrung their hands but hesitated to intervene, whether out of apathetic selfishness or simple fear, for whichever was first among them to oppose the Dark Lord, their peace would be the next target of his terror.

(The bystander effect, thought Harry, thinking of Latane and Darley's experiment which had shown that you were more likely to get help if you had an epileptic fit in front of one person than in front of three. Diffusion of responsibility, everyone hoping that someone else would go first.)

A return to the all-knowing 10-year old polymath Harry, though it comes off a little less jarring here given his display of humanity in the earlier part of this chapter.

quote:

The Death Eaters had followed in the Dark Lord's wake and in his vanguard, carrion vultures to pick at wounds, or snakes to bite and weaken. The Death Eaters were not as terrible as the Dark Lord, but they were terrible, and they were many. And the Death Eaters wielded more than wands; there was wealth within those masked ranks, and political power, and secrets held in blackmail, to paralyse a society trying to protect itself.

An old and respected journalist, Yermy Wibble, called for increased taxes and conscription. He shouted that it was absurd for the many to cower in fear of the few. His skin, only his skin, had been found nailed to the newsroom wall that next morning, next to the skins of his wife and two daughters. Everyone wished for something more to be done, and no one dared take the lead to propose it. Whoever stood out the most became the next example.

Until the names of James and Lily Potter rose to the top of that list.

And those two might have died with their wands in their hands and not regretted their choices, for they were heroes; but for that they had an infant child, their son, Harry Potter.

Tears were coming into Harry's eyes. He wiped them away in anger or maybe desperation, I didn't know those people, not really, they aren't my parents now, it would be pointless to feel so sad for them -

When Harry was done sobbing into the witch's robes, he looked up, and felt a little bit better to see tears in Professor McGonagall's eyes as well.

"So what happened?" Harry said, his voice trembling.

"The Dark Lord came to Godric's Hollow," Professor McGonagall said in a whisper. "You should have been hidden, but you were betrayed. The Dark Lord killed James, and he killed Lily, and he came in the end to you, to your cot. He cast the Killing Curse at you, and that was where it ended. The Killing Curse is formed of pure hate, and strikes directly at the soul, severing it from the body. It cannot be blocked, and whomever it strikes, they die. But you survived. You are the only person ever to survive. The Killing Curse rebounded and struck the Dark Lord, leaving only the burnt hulk of his body and a scar upon your forehead. That was the end of the terror, and we were free. That, Harry Potter, is why people want to see the scar on your forehead, and why they want to shake your hand."

The storm of weeping that had washed through Harry had used up all his tears; he could not cry again, he was done.

(And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry's art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.)

Harry detached himself from Professor McGonagall's side. "I'll - have to think about this," he said, trying to keep his voice under control. He stared at his shoes. "Um. You can go ahead and call them my parents, if you want, you don't have to say 'genetic parents' or anything. I guess there's no reason I can't have two mothers and two fathers."

There was no sound from Professor McGonagall.

And they walked together in silence, until they came before a great white building with vast bronze doors, and carven words above saying Gringotts Bank.

Not too much commentary from me on this chapter. This chapter was actually pretty decent, thanks to the guest author's much more human and much less obnoxious portrayal of Harry. I hope the guest author makes regular appearances throughout the remainder of the story.

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Feb 23, 2015

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 16:28

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Mugticket posted:

HP is set in the nineties.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten that the first HP book was released in 1997. Then that also invalidates my comment about Amazon being the better way to browse for new books.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 16:55

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Reviews for Chapters 2 and 3

quote:

cheekylildevil chapter 2 . Feb 28, 2010
Finally! A writer who has more than one chapter prepared! Please excuse my outburst there, I got a little exited... It's lovely to see that this chapter not only lives up to the previous chapter but is quite possibly better than it.

I loved the conversation at the beginning, stating the grounds on which the experiment was to be attempted, and the line on his biting the maths teacher, not to mention the ground on which he agreed to be a student. Just out of curiousity, how exactly does his sleep pattern work, I found it confused me slightly.

Thank you for another excellent chapter,

Indi

quote:

anonnatymousMARTIN chapter 2 . Mar 1, 2010
This is hilarious! I love all the technical slangs and the reactions Harry has towards McGonagall's visit and Magic defying the laws of Science.

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HarmoniousPie chapter 2 . Mar 1, 2010
I'm hooked. This is amazing and hilarious and I loved McGonagalls line at end.

Plase update soon.

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Jarno chapter 2 . Mar 2, 2010
Nice story, it has to be one of the most interesting as well as one of the most refreshing plots I've read in the last year or so. I do hope you are going to continue this story.

There is one thing I'd like to comment on, and that is the science though.

Changing into a cat does not violate the law of energy. While energy can not be destroyed, it can however be changed. There is nothing that doesn't say that the energy isn't put into another form during transfiguration.

quote:

DarkHeart81 chapter 2 . Mar 2, 2010
LMAO! Loved this chapter. I feel so stupid now... lol I could have done logarithms in my sleep back in high school... But now, I look at them and go that's a math problem? lol Loved the story about Harry biting the teacher. And the sleep cycle thing is and interesting twist. Can't wait to see what it's like for him at Hogwarts.

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BellaDrogo chapter 2 . Mar 10, 2010
This is amazing! You must be really smart or really good at faking it! I honestly can not wait to see where it goes!

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Hedwig's Owl chapter 2 . Mar 11, 2010
OK, it's only chapter 2 but I have to review right now because I'm laughing so hard I've got tears in my eyes. This is *perfect*. I love the concept and you write science!Harry so very well, plus his parents are great and I *love* that he bit the teacher and that McGonagall's got his measure so quickly. I love this fic!

quote:

happylady chapter 2 . Mar 14, 2010
I love post, that so very funny even the Professor had a hard

time keeping herself from laughing. If the rest of the story

is like this... count me in for the long haul

Until next time

Gloria

quote:

LonelyAura chapter 2 . Mar 26, 2010
X...D... I laughed for five minutes straight! Oh my god, you are an amazing author! Though I didn't get many of your words being below the eighth grade...

quote:

Bob Dole chapter 2 . Apr 3, 2010
De-fricking-lightful!

I am officially ecstatic to have found this story.

I've been laughing aloud for parts of it and almost squeeling with glee (in a very manly manner of course) over the discussions of proper observation and such. Rationality, curiosity... such WONDERFUL traits of ours, aren't they?

quote:

He Who Comes With the Dusk chapter 2 . Apr 10, 2010
Once again, an excellent chapter. Written well, and McGonagall seems very in character. Fine work once again.

And the back story you're forming for Harry is excellent as well! He *bit* a teacher! And "**She didn't know what a logarithm was!**" Priceless. In his defense, I'd have been rather upset too.

Once again, anxious to finish this review and get to the next chapter.

quote:

BeLlIxiEs chapter 2 . Apr 25, 2010
ok...SO i am dying of laughter here...is that even possible?

this is awesome! and oh so original!

thank you!

i must keep going now...

CHeers

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Viridian chapter 2 . May 31, 2010
Oh ... just ... awesome! I loved Harry setting up the conditions for the "experiment" and making sure beforehand that both his parents accept the results. And the bit with Harry thinking about the history of physical and natural science - only for all of that to be flushed down the train by McGonagall's transformation (and his reaction to it ... the law of conservation of energy!) Ahhh, that was just priceless!

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hhrforeverhhr chapter 3 . Mar 1, 2010
very very nice, i am loving how you are writing this story. i can't wait for the next chapter, update soon! wow, best story eva!

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J-Kid chapter 3 . Mar 1, 2010
Oh, I am looking forward to reading more of this! What fun. I think I will look forward to Rational!Harry. I wonder how he will react to the Weasleys and Hermione and other characters in the HP series? (Well, considering Hermione is the secondary char. I've got a pretty good idea what will happen there. But it would be cool if he decided she was irrational- because sometimes Hermione IS irrational about various things (brilliant people can still be irrational, after all)- and they had to work to understand each other at first.

quote:

cheekylildevil chapter 3 . Mar 1, 2010
Wow, just incredible. I think this may be your best chapter yet, I adored the sheer amount of curiosity you could feel coming from harry as I read this, and the emotion as harry was told about his parents, and his quote at the end nearly moved me to tears.

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful piece with the world.

Indi

quote:

BenRG chapter 3 . Mar 2, 2010
A very interesting story concept and one that I've only previously seen approached from a humourous perspective (Rorsharchesblot's "Better Living Through Chemistry" for example).

It should be interesting to see what this very clear-minded Harry makes of the wizarding world and its inherit contradictions, stupidities and illogical thought-patterns. I'm REALLY looking forward to how the kid uses arithmancy, potions and ancient runes, the most scientific of the Hogwarts diciplines IMHO. I strongly expect his experiments to start racking up explosions fairly quickly.

I'm pretty sure that this Harry will be suited for Ravenclaw, although Dumbledore may wish him to be in Gryffindor and force the Hat to sort him appropriately. It should be very interesting to see how this very different personality handles the adventures awaiting him.

I have to congratulate you in making Harry still recognisably a pre-teen boy. He can be frightened, overwhelmed and his thinking disrupted by his emotions. It is the downfall of too many HP fanfictions that they make Harry virtually an adult (if a somewhat bipolar one). You seem to have avoided that trap so far.

BenRG's Rating: 8/10

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Nachoman1 chapter 3 . Mar 3, 2010
Alright, Petunia spurned Vernon and managed to land a book eater and physics professor. Thus, a Harry who lives by the cientific method and is even more scientific literate that I was by his age enters Hogwarts.

Terrifying. Astounding. Now you even managed to write the most convincing explanation on the mechanics of the Killing Curse that I have read these past few years.

You have me with hook, line and sinker. Take as long as you need to update: quality work can't be rushed.

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Cinnamon Selkie chapter 3 . Mar 3, 2010
Thus far I find this story absolutely brilliant. Please update it soon. Cinnamon.

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riayi chapter 3 . Mar 12, 2010
It is so very satisfying to read a well written story, where fare is not substituted by fair, or there with their, and has a fun and original premise, that really, I don't know what to say. Rationalist Harry is such a refreshing change, that I can already imagine the following days, years, or months checking daily to see if you've added another chapter. In chapter 5, the scene with Draco was specially nice, and I guess it can lead to all kinds of interesting (and fun, again) changes to their relationship. The intermissions in italics are a bit of a puzzle, but I suppose everything will get explained eventually.

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uo-chou chapter 3 . Mar 19, 2010
Interesting. So behind his rationalist exterior, Harry is still a normal boy. Excellent. I don't like Harry Stu's. Keep up the good work.

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liareh chapter 3 . Mar 27, 2010
CH 3 Review:

For all of Harry's rationality, I am glad that there are small bits and pieces of him acting like a 11-yr old - whether it was hating his parents arguing/not arguing, biting incident ( rather, his response to his parent's relating the incident ) and now wandering away from McGonagall for a minute. Finally of course, his reaction to hearing Mc Gonagall's recounting of his story ( now, history).

I am glad that he is sounding 11 yr old still.

Good going.

quote:

He Who Comes With the Dusk chapter 3 . Apr 10, 2010
Still fantastic, and I love this Harry more and more! You are quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite stories.

Also, one question I forgot to ask: Is the 26-hour sleep-cycle based on a real medical case, or on the one xkcd strip where the guy's internal clock is drifting west? (I assume, based on the knowledge you seem to have, that you read xkcd (a webcomic). If you don't, you should.) Or neither?

quote:

LuMiLoS chapter 3 . May 3, 2010
I have sampled many Harry Potter tales that exist within an alternative universe similar, but diversely separate from the mainstream. Needless to say I have seen many that brought shame upon the novel, but you're story is one that I will always look upon with respect and admiration to its creator.

Using big words and phrases is fun )

P.S. ur awesome

quote:

Darkness Consumes the Souls chapter 3 . Jun 29, 2010
...emotions are irrational...hes a whiny bitch...its like a hermione canonharry...book smarts...at least so far.

there is a reason smarter people are cold and less connected to emotions...he does not understand the reality of the world or is in ignorant bliss of it...innocence is overrated.

only when someone that is smart realizes how lovely the world is do they become truly intelligent...harry is a draco malfoy in the muggle world.

quote:

Melverne chapter 3 . Nov 17, 2010
drat fine chapter. It was much more serious than the previous two. Following a rough outline of JKR's work you have introduced several alterations which have peeked my interest. I am looking forward to see what happens next. It didn't take five chapters to capture me.

-Melverne

quote:

Please write a book chapter 3 . Nov 26, 2010
I mean, please write *another* book, one with your own characters and world. You have the gift for making characters real-your version of Harry Potter is already vastly more real to me than Rowling's-and putting them in situations that reveal their character and give them interesting choices.

I would gladly buy a novel of yours.

Gratefully,

Mickey.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 16:28

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 4: The Efficient Market Hypothesis

quote:

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling is watching you from where she waits, eternally in the void between worlds.

A/N: As others have noted, the novels seem inconsistent in the apparent purchasing power of a Galleon; I'm picking a consistent value and sticking with it. Five pounds sterling to the Galleon doesn't square with seven Galleons for a wand and children using hand-me-down wands.

It's a children's book! Sheesh.

quote:

__________________________________________

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."

__________________________________________

Heaps of gold Galleons. Stacks of silver Sickles. Piles of bronze Knuts.

Harry stood there, and stared with his mouth open at the family vault. He had so many questions he didn't know where to start.

From just outside the door of the vault, Professor McGonagall watched him, seeming to lean casually against the wall, but her eyes intent. Well, that made sense. Being plopped in front of a giant heap of gold coins was a test of character so pure it was archetypal.

"Are these coins the pure metal?" Harry said finally.

"What?" hissed the goblin Griphook, who was waiting near the door. "Are you questioning the integrity of Gringotts, Mr. Potter-Evans-Verres?"

"No," said Harry absently, "not at all, sorry if that came out wrong, sir. I just have no idea at all how your financial system works. I'm asking if Galleons in general are made of pure gold."

"Of course," said Griphook.

"And can anyone coin them, or are they issued by a monopoly that thereby collects seigniorage?"

Ugh. We're back to "absurd polymath Harry Potter" in this chapter, I see.

quote:

"What?" said Professor McGonagall.

Griphook grinned, showing sharp teeth. "Only a fool would trust any but goblin coin!"

"In other words," Harry said, "the coins aren't supposed to be worth any more than the metal making them up?"

Griphook stared at Harry. Professor McGonagall looked bemused.

"I mean, suppose I came in here with a ton of silver. Could I get a ton of Sickles made from it?"

"For a fee, Mr. Potter-Evans-Verres." The goblin watched him with glittering eyes. "For a certain fee. Where would you find a ton of silver, I wonder?"

"I was speaking hypothetically," Harry said. For now, at any rate. "So... how much would you charge in fees, as a fraction of the whole weight?"

Griphook's eyes were intent. "I would have to consult my superiors..."

"Give me a wild guess. I won't hold Gringotts to it."

"A twentieth part of the metal would well pay for the coining."

Harry nodded. "Thank you very much, Mr. Griphook."

So not only is the wizarding economy almost completely decoupled from the Muggle economy, no one here has ever heard of arbitrage. The larger Muggle economy had a fluctuating trading range of gold to silver, so every time the Muggle gold-to-silver ratio got more than 5% away from the weight of seventeen Sickles to one Galleon, either gold or silver should have drained from the wizarding economy until it became impossible to maintain the exchange rate. Bring in a ton of silver, change to Sickles (and pay 5%), change the Sickles for Galleons, take the gold to the Muggle world, exchange it for more silver than you started with, and repeat.

Wasn't the Muggle gold to silver ratio somewhere around fifty to one? Harry didn't think it was seventeen, anyway. And it looked like the silver coins were actually smaller than the gold coins.

Totally a 10-year old, yup. Totally.

quote:

Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that literally stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons, where you had to go in and take coins out of your vault whenever you wanted to spend money. The finer points of arbitraging away market inefficiencies might well be lost on them. He'd been tempted to make snide remarks about the crudity of their financial system...

It's a children's book about going to magic school and riding on broomsticks and fighting evil wizards! Sheesh!

quote:

But the sad thing is, their way is probably better.

On the other hand, one competent hedge fundie could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money, or had a week free.

Can we get the guest writer from Chapter 3 back? Please?

quote:

Meanwhile, the giant heaps of gold coins within the Potter vault ought to suit his near-term requirements.

Harry stumped forward, and began picking up gold coins with one hand and dumping them into the other.

When he had reached twenty, Professor McGonagall coughed. "I think that will be more than enough to pay for your school supplies, Mr. Potter."

"Hm?" Harry said, his mind elsewhere. "Hold on, I'm doing a Fermi calculation."

"A what? " said Professor McGonagall, sounding somewhat alarmed.

"It's a mathematical thing. Named after Enrico Fermi. A way of getting rough numbers quickly in your head..."

Twenty gold Galleons weighed a tenth of a kilogram, maybe? And gold was, what, ten thousand British pounds a kilogram? So a Galleon would be worth about fifty pounds... The mounds of gold coins looked to be about sixty coins high and twenty coins wide in either dimension of the base, and a mound was pyramidal, so it would be around one-third of the cube. Eight thousand Galleons per mound, roughly, and there were around five mounds of that size, so forty thousand Galleons or 2 million pounds sterling.

Why do you even need a Fermi calculation, or any kind of calculation, when you can simply ask the banker right next to you how many coins you have and how much they weigh?

quote:

Not bad. Harry smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. It was too bad that he was right in the middle of discovering the amazing new world of magic, and couldn't take time out to explore the amazing new world of being rich, which a quick Fermi estimate said was roughly a billion times less interesting.

Still, that's the last time I ever mow a lawn for one lousy pound.

Harry wheeled from the giant heap of money. "Pardon me for asking, Professor McGonagall, but I understand that my parents were in their twenties when they died. Is this a usual amount of money for a young couple to have in their vault, in the wizarding world?" If it was, a cup of tea probably cost five thousand pounds. Rule one of economics: you can't eat money.

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "Your father was the last heir of an old family, Mr. Potter. It's also possible..." The witch hesitated. "Some of this money may be from bounties placed on You-Know-Who, payable to his ki- ah, to whoever might defeat him. Or those bounties might not have been collected yet. I am not sure."

"Interesting..." Harry said slowly. "So some of this really is, in a sense, mine. That is, earned by me. Sort of. Possibly. Even if I don't remember the occasion." Harry's fingers tapped against his trouser-leg. "That makes me feel less guilty about spending a very tiny fraction of it! Don't panic, Professor McGonagall! "

"Mr. Potter! You are a minor, and as such, you will only be allowed to make reasonable withdrawals from -"

"I am all about reasonable! I am totally on board with fiscal prudence and impulse control! But I did see some things on the way here which would constitute sensible, grown-up purchases..."

"I am totally on board with fiscal prudence and impulse control" - Totally something a 10-year would say.

quote:

Harry locked gazes with Professor McGonagall, engaging in a silent staring contest.

"Like what?" Professor McGonagall said finally.

"Trunks whose insides hold more than their outsides?"

Professor McGonagall's face grew stern. "Those are very expensive, Mr. Potter!"

"Yes, but -" Harry pleaded. "I'm sure that when I'm an adult I'll want one. And I can afford one. Logically, it would make just as much sense to buy it now instead of later, and get the use of it right away. It's the same money either way, right? I mean, I would want a good one, with lots of room inside, good enough that I wouldn't have to just get a better one later..." Harry trailed off hopefully.

Professor McGonagall's gaze didn't waver. "And just what would you keep in a trunk like that, Mr. Potter -"

"Books."

"Of course," sighed Professor McGonagall.

"You should have told me much earlier that sort of magic item existed! And that I could afford one! Now my father and I are going to have to spend the next two days frantically hitting up all the secondhand bookshops for old textbooks, so I can have a decent science library with me at Hogwarts - and maybe a small science fiction collection, if I can assemble something decent out of the bargain bins. Or better yet, I'll make the deal a little sweeter for you, okay? Just let me buy -"

"Mr. Potter! You think you can bribe me?"

"What? No! Not like that! I'm saying, Hogwarts can keep some of the books I bring, if you think that any of them would make good additions to the library. I'm going to be getting them cheap, and I just want to have them around somewhere or other. It's okay to bribe people with books, right? That's a -"

"Family tradition."

"Yes, exactly."

Professor McGonagall's body seemed to slump, the shoulders lowering within her black robes. "I cannot deny the sense of your words, though I much wish I could. I will allow you to withdraw an additional hundred Galleons, Mr. Potter." She sighed again. "I know that I shall regret this, and I am doing it anyway."

"That's the spirit! And does a 'mokeskin pouch' do what I think it does?"

"It can't do as much as a trunk," the witch said with visible reluctance, "but... a mokeskin pouch with a Retrieval Charm and Undetectable Extension Charm can hold a number of items until they are called forth by the one who emplaced them -"

"Yes! I definitely need one of those too! It would be like the super beltpack of ultimate awesomeness! Batman's utility belt of holding!

Okay, that's a little more like a 10-year old. Credit where it's due.

quote:

Never mind my swiss army knife, I could carry a whole tool set in there! Or books! I could have the top three books I was reading on me at all times, and just pull one out anywhere! I'll never have to waste another minute of my life! What do you say, Professor McGonagall? It's for the sake of children's reading, the best of all possible causes."

"...I suppose you may add another ten Galleons."

Griphook was favouring Harry with a gaze of frank respect, possibly even outright admiration.

"And a little spending money, like you mentioned earlier. I think I can remember seeing one or two other things I might want to store in that pouch."

"Don't push it, Mr. Potter."

"But oh, Professor McGonagall, why rain on my parade? Surely this is a happy day, when I discover all things wizarding for the first time! Why act the part of the grumpy grownup when instead you could smile and remember your own innocent childhood, watching the look of delight upon my young face as I buy a few toys using an insignificant fraction of the wealth that I earned by defeating the most terrible wizard Britain has ever known, not that I'm accusing you of being ungrateful or anything, but still, what are a few toys compared to that?"

"You," growled Professor McGonagall. There was a look on her face so fearsome and terrible that Harry squeaked and stepped back, knocking over a pile of gold coins with a great jingling noise and sprawling backwards into a heap of money. Griphook sighed and put a palm over his face. "I would be doing a great service to wizarding Britain, Mr. Potter, if I locked you in this vault and left you here."

You really would, Griphook. Do it. Do it! Lock him in the vault!

quote:

And they left without any more trouble.

Awww. He missed the chance.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 17:08

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

REVIEWS OF CHAPTER 4

quote:

hhrforeverhhr chapter 4 . Mar 3, 2010
o.. i love this chapter, even though its short, its still funny. i didn't think i could love this story anymore, and here you go proving me wrong.. update soon and i'll love it even more.

quote:

Star Bear chapter 4 . Mar 3, 2010
Very clever! I love the use of logic and science. I hope you are planning some serious pureblood lecturing.

quote:

cheekylildevil chapter 4 . Mar 3, 2010
You know, that really makes sense... I wouldn't have said that galleons were pure gold though, but that they were part gold, part alloy, it would have made more sense. I'm from Australia and we have 'gold' one and two dollar coins but I think that they are really nickel. Wouldn't it make sense then to just melt all the coins, sell them to muggles and then trade them back to galleons? You could keep doing that for an infinite amount of time, couldn't you?

Thanks for another wonderful chapter,

Indi

quote:

Mariann's chapter 4 . Mar 3, 2010
Fun chapter :-)

I like how this overly logical and rational Harry works. Can't wait to see him clashing with Hermione's logic and rationalism, LOL! Gotta be fun, too.

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OfTheGreenwood chapter 4 . Mar 4, 2010
Oh my god. LOVE this story. Could not stop grinning-can't WAIT for Harry to get his paws on Snape, Dumbledore, or anyone who calls him a nerd! ; )

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Bob-san chapter 4 . Mar 4, 2010
HILARIOUS! I love your depiction of the mini super-genius! I'm looking forward to an update soon!

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TBrad chapter 4 . Mar 4, 2010
Loving this story. Just hope you don't mature Harry too much. Tired of these stories where Harry acts like a 40 year old man.

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Marla1 chapter 4 . Mar 4, 2010
I LOVE YOUR TAKE ON THIS STORY... this not one i have seen! I am an engineer so i truely appericate seeing this from a rational side, its so amsuing to me hehe. KEEP WRITING I CANNOT WAIT TO READ MORE OF THIS STORY!

quote:

reader1writer1 chapter 4 . Mar 5, 2010
This is brilliant...in case you had any doubt. I love it.

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Shadow Kitsune11 chapter 4 . Mar 5, 2010
I just found this story for the first time and I have to say that it is funny. Keep coming with the updates.

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Ceralyn chapter 4 . Mar 6, 2010
I can't even imagin where you got the idea for this fic - but it's just great.

It will be interesting to see Harry and Hermione meet. Look forward to reading more

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bloocheeze chapter 4 . Mar 8, 2010
ohmygosh, this is amazing. I love logical!Harry; he makes everything funnier. Although, his knowledge may be a bit much for a 10/11 year old, don't you think? :\ Well, I guess that depends on his environment and the way he was brought up... Hm. Oh well. It's entertaining, so who am I to complain?

This is a pretty original take on the HP world and I'm happy I stumbled upon it. I think the only other fic similar to this was that one HP/Marvel cross over... But I digress.

Your story telling skills are great and your sense of humor is similar to mine, so yay! Ahaha, and I'm actually learning something useful as I read this, so that's a plus too. I don't have too much to say (or rather I'm too lazy right now to write a full out review/critique, ahaha ._.; ) so I'll just end with this: You're a great writer and I hope to see you update soon!

'Cause I really wanna see Harry at Hogwarts, kukukuku BD

quote:

Unclouded chapter 4 . Mar 9, 2010
Oh this story looks very good indeed. I was recommended this as a smart!Harry fic and I always tend to enjoy them. Especially enjoy the wit and intelligence of this Harry. Thanks for the fic and I look forward to your future chapters.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 09:35

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

The Unholy Ghost posted:

Does it really if there are hundreds and hundreds of these people and none of them sound particularly crazy, or at least not in a way that is humorous?

I would say drop the review copy-paste because it just detracts or adds nothing to your position, unless you make sure to cherry-pick the most insane people (have fun digging through literally hundreds of reviews).

Point taken. I'll paste only the most exuberant reviews henceforth.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 05:15

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 5: The Fundamental Attribution Error
Part One

quote:

J. K. Rowling is staring at you. Can you feel her eyes on you? She's reading your mind using her Rowling Rays.

________________________________________________________________

"It would've required a supernatural intervention for him to have your morality given his environment."
________________________________________________________________

The Moke Shop was a quaint little shop (some might even say cute) ensconced behind a vegetable stall that was behind a magical glove shop that was on an alleyway off a side street of Diagon Alley. Disappointingly, the shopkeeper was not a wizened ancient crone; just a nervous-looking young woman wearing faded yellow robes. Right now she was holding out a Moke Super Pouch QX31, whose selling point was that it had a Widening Lip as well as an Undetectable Extension Charm: you could actually fit big things in it, though the total volume was still limited.

Harry had insisted on coming here straight away, first thing - insisted as hard as he thought he could without making Professor McGonagall suspicious. Harry had something he needed to put into the pouch as soon as possible. It wasn't the bag of Galleons that Professor McGonagall had allowed him to withdraw from Gringotts. It was all the other Galleons that Harry had surreptitiously shoved into his pocket after falling into a heap of gold coins. That had been a real accident, but Harry was never one to discard an opportunity... though it'd really been more of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Ever since Harry had been awkwardly carrying the allowed bag of Galleons next to his trouser pocket, so that any jingling would seem to come from the right place.

Harry should be deeply concerned about the state of Gringott�s defences, if it was so easy to remove money from the bank�s premises without detection. Isn�t it �irrational� for him to be shopping right now, instead of meeting with the goblin management to alert them to the security loophole? It�s also �irrational� for Harry to give up this opportunity to demand substantial compensation from the bank in exchange for not leaking this story and thereby damaging the bank�s reputation and image.

quote:

This still left the question of how he was actually going to get the other coins into the pouch without getting caught. The golden coins might have been his, but they were still stolen - self-stolen? Auto-thieved?

Harry looked up from the Moke Super Pouch QX31 on the counter in front of him. "Can I try this for a bit? To make sure it works, um, reliably?" He widened his eyes in an expression of boyish, playful innocence.

Sure enough, after ten repetitions of putting the coin-bag into the pouch, reaching in, whispering "bag of gold", and taking it out, Professor McGonagall took a step away and began examining some of the other items in the shop, and the shopkeeper turned her head to watch.

Harry dropped the bag of gold into the mokeskin pouch with his left hand; his right hand came out of his pocket tightly holding some of the gold coins, reached into the mokeskin pouch, dropped the loose Galleons, and (with a whisper of "bag of gold") retrieved the original bag. Then the bag went back into his left hand, to be dropped in again, and Harry's right hand went back into his pocket..
.
Professor McGonagall looked back at him once, but Harry managed to avoid freezing or flinching, and she didn't seem to notice anything. Though you never did quite know, with the adults that had a sense of humour. It took three iterations to get the job done, and Harry guessed he'd managed to steal maybe thirty Galleons from himself.

Alright, this sequence was actually reasonably funny. Credit where it's due.

quote:

Harry reached up, wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead, and exhaled. "I'd like this one, please."

Fifteen Galleons lighter (twice the price of a wizard's wand, apparently) and one Moke Super Pouch QX31 heavier, Harry and Professor McGonagall pushed their way out of the door. The door formed a hand and waved goodbye to them as they left, extruding its arm in a way that made Harry feel a bit queasy.

And then, unfortunately...

"Are you really Harry Potter?" whispered the old man, one huge tear sliding down his cheek. "You wouldn't lie about that, would you? Only I'd heard rumours that you didn't really survive the Killing Curse and that's why no one ever heard from you again."

...it seemed that Professor McGonagall's disguise spell was less than perfectly effective against more experienced magical practitioners.

Professor McGonagall had laid a hand on Harry's shoulder and yanked him into the nearest alleyway the moment she'd heard "Harry Potter?" The old man had followed, but at least it looked like no one else had heard.

Harry considered the question. Was he really Harry Potter?

"I only know what other people have told me," Harry said. "It's not like I remember being born." His hand brushed his forehead. "I've had this scar as long as I remember, and I've been told my name was Harry Potter as long as I remember. But," Harry said thoughtfully, "if there's already sufficient cause to postulate a conspiracy, there's no reason why they wouldn't just find another orphan and raise him to believe that he was Harry Potter -"

Ten years old.

quote:

Professor McGonagall drew her hand over her face in exasperation. "You look just about exactly like your father, James, the year he first attended Hogwarts. And I can attest on the basis of personality alone that you are related to the Scourge of Gryffindor."

"She could be in on it too," Harry observed.

"No," quavered the old man. "She's right. You have your mother's eyes."

"Hmm," Harry frowned. "I suppose you could be in on it too -"

"Enough, Mr. Potter."

The old man raised up a hand as if to touch Harry, but then let it fall. "I'm just glad that you're alive," he murmured. "Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank you for what you did... I'll leave you alone now."

And his cane slowly tapped away, out the alley and down the main street of Diagon Alley.

The Professor looked around, her expression tense and grim. Harry automatically looked around himself. But the alley seemed empty of all but old leaves, and from the mouth leading out into Diagon Alley, only swiftly striding passersby could be seen.

Finally Professor McGonagall seemed to relax. "That was not well done," she said in a low voice. "I know you're not used to this, Mr. Potter, but people do care about you. Please be kind to them."

Harry looked down at his shoes. "They shouldn't," he said with a tinge of bitterness. "Care about me, I mean."

"You saved them from You-Know-Who," said Professor McGonagall. "How should they not care?"
Harry looked up at the witch-lady's strict expression beneath her pointed hat, and sighed. "I suppose there's no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you'd have any idea what that meant."

"No," said the Professor in her precise Scottish accent, "but please explain, Mr. Potter, if you would be so kind."

"Well..." Harry said, trying to figure out how to describe that particular bit of Muggle science. "Suppose you come into work and see your colleague kicking his desk. You think, 'what an angry person he must be'. Your colleague is thinking about how someone bumped him into a wall on the way to work and then shouted at him. Anyone would be angry at that, he thinks. When we look at others we see personality traits that explain their behaviour, but when we look at ourselves we see circumstances that explain our behaviour. People's stories make internal sense to them, from the inside, but we don't see people's histories trailing behind them in the air. We only see them in one situation, and we don't see what they would be like in a different situation. So the fundamental attribution error is that we explain by permanent, enduring traits what would be better explained by circumstance and context." There were some elegant experiments which confirmed this, but Harry wasn't about to go into them.

Ten. Years. Old.

quote:

The witch's eyebrows drew up beneath her hat's brim. "I think I understand..." Professor McGonagall said slowly. "But what does that have to do with you?"

Harry kicked the brick wall of the alley hard enough to make his foot hurt. "People think that I saved them from You-Know-Who because I'm some kind of great warrior of the Light."

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord..." murmured the witch, a strange irony leavening her voice.

"Yes," Harry said, annoyance and frustration warring in him, "like I destroyed the Dark Lord because I have some kind of permanent, enduring destroy-the-Dark-Lord trait. I was fifteen months old at the time! I don't know what happened, but I would suppose it had something to do with, as the saying goes, contingent environmental circumstances. And certainly nothing to do with my personality. People don't care about me, they aren't even paying attention to me, they want to shake hands with a bad explanation." Harry paused, and looked at McGonagall. "Do you know what really happened?"

"I have formed an idea..." said Professor McGonagall. "After meeting you, that is."

"Yes?"

"You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than he was, and survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."

I�d accept this explanation.

quote:

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Harry kicked the wall again.

Professor McGonagall chuckled. "Let's get you to Madam Malkin's next. I fear your Muggle clothing may be attracting attention."

TO BE CONTINUED

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 05:39

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

On the "Let's Read: Twisted" thread, it was occasionally said that Twisted would be much improved (not "good", mind you - just substantially less bad) if Railrunner were an ordinary werewolf instead of a were-roller coaster. All the parts concerning Railrunner's claws and affinity to the moon and feral bloodlust would seem far less stupid in the context of a werewolf, for starters.

Similarly, I think that HPMOR would be much improved if Harry Potter was aged up by 5 to 10 years - a great part of my annoyance with the story so far comes from the fact that the :words:

sound so unbearably jarring coming from a 10-year old. What do you guys think?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 05:46

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 5: The Fundamental Attribution Error
Part Two

quote:

They ran into two more well-wishers along the way.

Madam Malkin's Robes had a genuinely boring shopfront, red ordinary brick, and glass windows showing plain black robes within. Not robes that shone or changed or spun, or radiated strange rays that seemed to go right through your shirt and tickle you. Just plain black robes, that was all you could see through the window. The door was propped wide open, as if to advertise that there were no secrets here and nothing to hide.

"I'm going to go off for a few minutes while you get fitted for your robes," said Professor McGonagall. "Will you be all right with that, Mr. Potter?"

Harry nodded. He hated clothes shopping with a fiery passion and couldn't blame the older witch for feeling the same way.

Professor McGonagall's wand came out of her sleeve, tapped Harry's head lightly. "And as you'll need to be clear to Madam Malkin's senses, I am removing the Obfuscation."

"Uh..." Harry said. That did worry him a little; he still wasn't used to the 'Harry Potter' thing.

"I went to Hogwarts with Madam Malkin," McGonagall said. "Even then, she was one of the most composed people I knew. She wouldn't turn a hair if You-Know-Who himself walked into her shop." McGonagall's voice was reminiscent, and very approving. "Madam Malkin won't bother you, and she won't let anyone else bother you."

"Where are you going?" Harry inquired. "Just in case, you know, something does happen."
McGonagall gave Harry a hard look. "I am going there," she said, pointing at a building across the street which showed the sign of a wooden keg, "and buying a drink, which I desperately need. You are to get fitted for your robes, nothing else. I will come back to check up on you shortly, and I expect to find Madam Malkin's shop still standing and not in any way on fire."

Gladdens my heart to see McGonagall standing up to Harry�s bullshit.

Now that I think of it, I�d actually like to read a �boarding school� story written from the perspective of a beleaguered, over-worked teacher who is sick and tired of the crap he or she has to put up with from the precocious self-centred students in her class. I�m sure there are thousands of Harry Potter fanfic written from the POV of one of the Hogwarts staff, but are there any original stories like that?

quote:

Madam Malkin was a bustling old woman who didn't say a word about Harry when she saw the scar on his forehead, and she shot a sharp look at an assistant when that girl seemed about to say something. Madam Malkin got out a set of animated, writhing bits of cloth that seemed to serve as tape measures and set to work examining the medium of her art.

Next to Harry, a pale young boy with a pointed face and awesomecool blonde-white hair seemed to be going through the final stages of a similar process. One of Malkin's two assistants was examining the white-haired boy and the chequerboard-gridded robe he was wearing; occasionally she would tap a corner of the robe with her wand, and the robe would loosen or tighten.

"Hello," said the boy. "Hogwarts, too?"

Harry could predict where this conversation was about to go, and he decided in a split second of frustration that enough was enough.

"Good heavens," whispered Harry, "it couldn't be." He let his eyes widen. "Your... name, sir?"

"Draco Malfoy," said Draco Malfoy, looking slightly puzzled.

"It is you! Draco Malfoy. I - I never thought I'd be so honoured, sir." Harry wished he could make tears come out of his eyes. The others usually started crying at around this point.

"Oh," said Draco, sounding a little confused. Then his lips stretched in a smug smile. "It's good to meet someone who knows his place."

One of the assistants, the one who'd seemed to recognise Harry, made a muffled choking sound.

Harry burbled on. "I'm delighted to meet you, Mr. Malfoy. Just unutterably delighted. And to be attending Hogwarts in your very year! It makes my heart swoon."

Oops. That last part might have sounded a little odd, like he was flirting with Draco or something.

"And I am pleased to learn that I shall be treated with the respect due to the family of Malfoy," the other boy lobbed back, accompanied by a smile such as the highest of kings might bestow upon the least of his subjects, if that subject were honest, though poor.

Eh... drat, Harry was having trouble thinking up his next line. Well, everyone did want to shake the hand of Harry Potter, so - "When my clothes are fitted, sir, might you deign to shake my hand? I should wish nothing more to put the capper upon this day, nay, this month, indeed, my whole lifetime."

The white-blonde-haired boy glared in return. "And what have you done for the Malfoys that entitles you to such a favour?"

Oh, I am so totally trying this routine on the next person who wants to shake my hand. Harry bowed his head. "No, no, sir, I understand. I'm sorry for asking. I should be honoured to clean your boots, rather."

Alright, this part is pretty funny too. I could certainly believe that a 10-year old would be an accomplished troll.

quote:

"Indeed," snapped the other boy. His stern face lightened somewhat. "Tell me, what House do you think you might be sorted into? I'm bound for Slytherin House, of course, like my father Lucius before me. And for you, I'd guess House Hufflepuff, or possibly House Elf."

Harry grinned sheepishly. "Professor McGonagall says that I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen or heard tell of in legend, so much so that Rowena herself would tell me to get out more, whatever that means, and that I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to make out any words, end quote."

"Wow," said Draco Malfoy, sounding slightly impressed. The boy gave a sort of wistful sigh. "Your flattery was great, or I thought so, anyway - you'd do well in Slytherin House, too. Usually it's only my father who gets that sort of grovelling. I'm hoping the other Slytherins will suck up to me now I'm at Hogwarts... I guess this is a good sign, then."

Harry coughed. "Actually, sorry, I've got no idea who you are really."

"Oh come on! " the boy said with fierce disappointment. "Why'd you go and do that, then?" Draco's eyes widened with sudden suspicion. "And how do you not know about the Malfoys? And what are those clothes you're wearing? Are your parents Muggles? "

"Two of my parents are dead," Harry said. His heart twinged. When he put it that way - "My other two parents are Muggles, and they're the ones that raised me."

"What? " said Draco. "Who are you?"

"Harry Potter, pleased to meet you."

"Harry Potter? " gasped Draco. "The Harry -" and the boy cut off abruptly.

There was a brief silence.

Then, with bright enthusiasm, "Harry Potter? The Harry Potter? Gosh, I've always wanted to meet you!"

Draco's attendant emitted a sound like she was strangling but kept on with her work, lifting Draco's arms to carefully remove the chequered robe.

"Shut up," Harry suggested.

"Can I have your autograph? No, wait, I want a picture with you first!"

"Shutupshutupshutup."

"I'm just so delighted to meet you!"

"Burst into flames and die."

"But you're Harry Potter, the glorious saviour of the wizarding world! Everyone's hero, Harry Potter! I've always wanted to be just like you when I grow up so I can -"

I can�t quite tell whether Draco is being sarcastic here or not. Either way, this is very out-of-character from canon Draco, so I suppose this is going to be one of those fanfics where Harry befriends Draco.

quote:

Draco cut off the words in mid-sentence, his face freezing in absolute horror.

Tall, white-haired, coldly elegant in black robes of the finest quality. One hand gripping a silver-handled cane which took on the character of a deadly weapon just by being in that hand. His eyes regarded the room with the dispassionate quality of an executioner, a man to whom killing was not painful, or even deliciously forbidden, but just a routine activity like breathing.

That was the man who had, just that moment, strolled in through the open door.

"Draco," said the man, low and very angry, "what are you saying? "

In one split second of sympathetic panic, Harry formulated a rescue plan.

"Lucius Malfoy!" gasped Harry Potter. "The Lucius Malfoy?"

One of Malkin's assistants had to turn away and face the wall.

Coolly murderous eyes regarded him. "Harry Potter."

"I am so, so honoured to meet you!"

The dark eyes widened, shocked surprise replacing deadly threat.

"Your son has been telling me all about you," Harry gushed on, hardly even knowing what was coming out of his mouth but just talking as fast as possible. "But of course I knew about you all before then, everyone knows about you, the great Lucius Malfoy! The most honoured laureate of all the House of Slytherin, I've been thinking about trying to get into Slytherin House myself just because I heard you were in it as a child -"

"What are you saying, Mr. Potter? " came a near-scream from outside the shop, and Professor McGonagall burst in a second later.

There was such pure horror on her face that Harry's mouth opened automatically, and then blocked on nothing-to-say.

"Professor McGonagall!" cried Draco. "Is it really you? I've heard so much about you from my father, I've been thinking of trying to get Sorted into Gryffindor so I can -"

Ah, so he was indeed being sarcastic earlier on. And they are definitely going to become friends later on. I wonder how Ron and Hermione�s personalities in this story will vary from canon.

quote:

"What? " bellowed Lucius Malfoy and Professor McGonagall in perfect unison, standing side-by-side. Their heads swivelled to look at each other in duplicate motions, and then the two recoiled from one another as though performing a synchronised dance.

There was a sudden flurry of action as Lucius seized Draco and dragged him out of the shop.

And then there was silence.

In Professor McGonagall's left hand lay a small drinking-glass, tilted over to one side in the forgotten rush, now slowly dripping drops of alcohol into the tiny puddle of red wine that had appeared on the floor.

Professor McGonagall strode forward into the shop until she was opposite Madam Malkin.

"Madam Malkin," said Professor McGonagall, her voice calm. "What has been happening here?"

Madam Malkin looked back silently for four seconds, and then cracked up. She fell against the wall, wheezing out laughter, and that set off both of her assistants, one of whom fell to her hands and knees on the floor, giggling hysterically.

Professor McGonagall slowly turned to look at Harry, her expression chilly. "I leave you alone for six minutes. Six minutes, Mr. Potter, by the very clock."

"I was only joking around," Harry protested, as the sounds of hysterical laughter went on nearby.

"Draco Malfoy said in front of his father that he wanted to be sorted into Gryffindor! Joking around isn't enough to do that!" Professor McGonagall paused, visibly taking breaths. "What part of 'get fitted for robes' sounded to you like please cast a Confundus Charm on the entire universe! "

"He was in a situational context where those actions made internal sense -"

"No. Don't explain. I don't want to know what happened in here, ever. Whatever dark power inhabits you, it is contagious, and I don't want to end up like poor Draco Malfoy, poor Madam Malkin and her two poor assistants."

Harry sighed. It was clear that Professor McGonagall wasn't in a mood to listen to reasonable explanations. He looked at Madam Malkin, who was still wheezing against the wall, and Malkin's two assistants, who had now both fallen to their knees, and finally down at his own tape-measure-draped body.

"I'm not quite done being fitted for clothes," Harry said kindly. "Why don't you go back and have another drink?"

I quite liked this scene � the escalating comedy of errors worked pretty well. If Harry spent the story trolling everyone and the role of �Mr Exposition� was passed to someone else, I think I could actually grow to like this particular incarnation of Harry.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 02:08

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part One

quote:

Blah blah disclaimer blah blah Rowling blah blah ownership.

A/N: The "Aftermath" section of this chapter is part of the story, not omake.
________________________________________

You think your day was surreal? Try mine.

________________________________________

Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.

"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.

Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.

"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.

Oh no, we are back to obnoxious show-off Harry.

The Pouch of Holding shouldn�t have responded to �okane�, though. �Okane� is Japanese for �money�; for �gold� he should have said �kin�.

quote:

Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came out empty.

"Give me back the bag that I just put in." Out came the bag of gold once more.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres had gotten his hands on at least one magical item. Why wait?

"Professor McGonagall," Harry said to the bemused witch strolling beside him, "can you give me two words, one word for gold, and one word for something else that isn't money, in a language that I wouldn't know? But don't tell me which is which."

Wow! There�re actually things that this Harry doesn�t know!

quote:

"Ahava and zahav," said Professor McGonagall. "That's Hebrew, and the other word means love."

"Thank you, Professor. Bag of ahava." Empty.

"Bag of zahav." And it popped up into his hand.

"Zahav is gold?" Harry questioned, and Professor McGonagall nodded.

Harry thought over his collected experimental data. It was only the most crude and preliminary sort of effort, but it was enough to support at least one conclusion:

"Aaaaaaarrrgh this doesn't make any sense! "

The witch beside him lifted a lofty eyebrow. "Problems, Mr. Potter?"

"I just falsified every single hypothesis I had! How can it know that 'bag of 115 Galleons' is okay but not 'bag of 90 plus 25 Galleons'? It can count but it can't add? It can understand nouns, but not some noun phrases that mean the same thing? The person who made this probably didn't speak Japanese and I don't speak any Hebrew, so it's not using their knowledge, and it's not using my knowledge -" Harry waved a hand helplessly.

It�s certainly not using his knowledge of Japanese.

quote:

"The rules seem sorta consistent but they don't mean anything! I'm not even going to ask how a pouch ends up with voice recognition and natural language understanding when the best Artificial Intelligence programmers can't get the fastest supercomputers to do it after thirty-five years of hard work," Harry gasped for breath, "but what is going on? "

He just saw the person next to him turn into a cat and he�s still getting flustered about voice recognition and natural language understanding.

quote:

"Magic," said Professor McGonagall.

"That's just a word! Even after you tell me that, I can't make any new predictions! It's exactly like saying 'phlogiston' or 'elan vital' or 'emergence' or 'complexity'!"

The black-robed witch laughed aloud. "But it is magic, Mr. Potter."

Harry slumped over a little. "With respect, Professor McGonagall, I'm not quite sure you understand what I'm trying to do here."

"With respect, Mr. Potter, I'm quite sure I don't. Unless - this is just a guess, mind - you're trying to take over the world?"

"No! I mean yes - well, no! "

"I think I should perhaps be alarmed that you have trouble answering the question."

Harry glumly considered the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1956. It had been the first conference ever on the topic, the one that had coined the phrase "Artificial Intelligence". They had identified key problems such as making computers understand language, learn, and improve themselves. They had suggested, in perfect seriousness, that significant advances on these problems might be made by ten scientists working together for two months.

No. Chin up. You're just starting on the problem of unravelling all the secrets of magic. You don't actually know whether it's going to be too difficult to do in two months.

"And you really haven't heard of other wizards asking these sorts of questions or doing this sort of scientific experimenting?" Harry asked again. It just seemed so obvious to him.

Then again, it'd taken more than two hundred years after the invention of the scientific method before any Muggle scientists had thought to systematically investigate which sentences a human four-year-old could or couldn't understand. The developmental psychology of linguistics could've been discovered in the eighteenth century, in principle, but no one had even thought to look until the twentieth. So you couldn't really blame the much smaller wizarding world for not investigating the Retrieval Charm.

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips, then shrugged. "I'm still not sure what you mean by 'scientific experimenting', Mr. Potter. As I said, I've seen Muggleborn students try to get Muggle science to work inside Hogwarts, and people invent new Charms and Potions every year."

Harry shook his head. "Technology isn't the same thing as science at all. And trying lots of different ways to do something isn't the same as experimenting to figure out the rules." There were plenty of people who'd tried to invent flying machines by trying out lots of things-with-wings, but only the Wright Brothers had built a wind tunnel to measure lift... "Um, how many Muggle-raised children do you get at Hogwarts every year?"

"Perhaps ten or so?"

Harry missed a step and almost tripped over his own feet. "Ten? "

The Muggle world had a population of six billion and counting. If you were one in a million, there were seven of you in London and a thousand more in China. It was inevitable that the Muggle population would produce some eleven-year-olds who could do calculus - Harry knew he wasn't the only one. He'd met other prodigies in mathematical competitions. In fact he'd been thoroughly trounced by competitors who probably spent literally all day practising maths problems and who'd never read a science-fiction book and who would burn out completely before puberty and never amount to anything in their future lives because they'd just practised known techniques instead of learning to think creatively. (Harry was something of a sore loser.)

That last bit feels like it came from somewhere deep in the heart. Anyone know if the author had taken part in maths competitions as a child?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 03:42

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Two

quote:

But... in the wizarding world...

Ten Muggle-raised children per year, who'd all ended their Muggle educations at the age of eleven? And Professor McGonagall might be biased, but she had claimed that Hogwarts was the largest and most eminent wizarding school in the world... and it only educated up to the age of seventeen.

Professor McGonagall undoubtedly knew every last detail of how you went about turning into a cat. But she seemed to have literally never heard of the scientific method. To her it was just Muggle magic. And she didn't even seem curious about what secrets might be hiding behind the natural language understanding of the Retrieval Charm.

That left two possibilities, really.

Possibility one: Magic was so incredibly opaque, convoluted, and impenetrable, that even though wizards and witches had tried their best to understand, they'd made little or no progress and eventually given up; and Harry would do no better.

Or...

Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.

Possibility two: He'd be taking over the world.

Eventually. Perhaps not right away.

That sort of thing did sometimes take longer than two months. Muggle science hadn't gone to the moon in the first week after Galileo.

It appears that Harry thinks that the second possibility has a higher probability than the first. Isn�t that �irrational�, considering that Harry knows next-to-nothing about magic or the wizarding / witching community?

quote:

But Harry still couldn't stop the huge smile that was stretching his cheeks so wide they were starting to hurt.

Ten. Years. Old.

quote:

Harry had always been frightened of ending up as one of those child prodigies that never amounted to anything and spent the rest of their lives boasting about how far ahead they'd been at age ten. But then most adult geniuses never amounted to anything either. There were probably a thousand people as intelligent as Einstein for every actual Einstein in history. Because those other geniuses hadn't gotten their hands on the one thing you absolutely needed to achieve greatness. They'd never found an important problem.

Again, seems like the author is speaking of himself in this case. Has he claimed to be a child prodigy and/or a genius in his other writings?

quote:

You're mine now, Harry thought at the walls of Diagon Alley, and all the shops and items, and all the shopkeepers and customers; and all the lands and people of wizarding Britain, and all the wider wizarding world; and the entire greater universe of which Muggle scientists understood so much less than they believed. I, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, do now claim this territory in the name of Science.

Lightning and thunder completely failed to flash and boom in the cloudless skies.

"What are you smiling about?" inquired Professor McGonagall, warily and wearily.

"I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution," explained Harry. He was carefully memorising the exact words of his ominous resolution so that future history books would get it right.

"I have the distinct feeling that I ought to be doing something about this," sighed Professor McGonagall.

"Ignore it, it'll go away. Ooh, shiny!" Harry put his thoughts of world conquest temporarily on hold and skipped over to a shop with an open display, and Professor McGonagall followed.

I think that an evil child genius plotting to take over the world may in the right circumstances be entertaining, but this particular smug know-it-all Harry is just so unpleasant to read that it sucks all the potential joy out of the story. Are there any good (original, non-fanfiction) stories about an evil child overlord or overlord wannabe?

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Mar 2, 2015

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 09:33

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Three

quote:

Harry had now bought his potions ingredients and cauldron, and, oh, a few more things. Items that seemed like good things to carry in Harry's Bag of Holding (aka Moke Super Pouch QX31 with Undetectable Extension Charm, Retrieval Charm, and Widening Lip). Smart, sensible purchases.

Harry genuinely didn't understand why Professor McGonagall was looking so suspicious.

Right now, Harry was in a shop expensive enough to display in the twisting main street of Diagon Alley. The shop had an open front with merchandise laid out on slanted wooden rows, guarded only by slight grey glows and a young-looking salesgirl in a much-shortened version of witch's robes that exposed her knees and elbows.

Seems like in Eliezer�s version of Harry Potter, even the wizarding community aren�t immune from the use of sex appeal in advertising.

quote:

Harry was examining the wizarding equivalent of a first-aid kit, the Emergency Healing Pack Plus. There were two self-tightening tourniquets. A syringe of what looked like liquid fire, which was supposed to drastically slow circulation in a treated area while maintaining oxygenation of the blood for up to three minutes, if you needed to prevent a poison from spreading through the body. White cloth that could be wrapped over a part of the body to temporarily numb pain. Plus any number of other items that Harry totally failed to comprehend, like the "Dementor Exposure Treatment", which looked and smelled like ordinary chocolate. Or the "Bafflesnaffle Counter", which looked like a small quivering egg and carried a placard showing how to jam it up someone's nostril.

"A definite buy at five Galleons, wouldn't you agree?" Harry said to Professor McGonagall, and the teenage salesgirl hovering nearby nodded eagerly.

Harry had expected the Professor to make some sort of approving remark about his prudence and preparedness.

What he was getting instead could only be described as the Evil Eye.

"And just why," Professor McGonagall said with heavy scepticism, "do you expect to need a healer's kit, young man?" (After the unfortunate incident at the Potions shop, Professor McGonagall was trying to avoid saying "Mr. Potter" while anyone else was nearby.)

Harry's mouth opened and closed. "I don't expect to need it! It's just in case!"

"Just in case of what? "

Harry's eyes widened. "You think I'm planning to do something dangerous and that's why I want a medical kit?"

A look of grim suspicion and ironic disbelief was the answer.

"Great Scott!" said Harry. (This was an expression he'd learned from the mad scientist Doc Brown in Back to the Future.)

More gratuitous nerd-pandering.

quote:

"Were you also thinking that when I bought the Feather-Falling Potion, the Gillyweed, and the bottle of Food and Water Pills?"

"Yes."

Harry shook his head in amazement. "Just what sort of plan do you think I have going, here?"

"I don't know," Professor McGonagall said darkly, "but it ends either in you delivering a ton of silver to Gringotts, or in world domination."

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."

This hilarious joke failed to reassure the witch giving him the Look of Doom.

"Wow," Harry said, as he realised that she was serious. "You really think that. You really think I'm planning to do something dangerous."

To be fair, canon Harry Potter did do an absurd amount of dangerous things. The Hogwarts teachers were one of the most egregiously negligent group of educational staff I�ve encountered in a work of fiction.

quote:

"Yes."

"Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?"

"Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful enthusiasm and high spirits.

"Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall," Harry said, putting his hands sternly on his hips. "I am not going to be in Gryffindor -"

At this point the Deputy Headmistress interjected something about how if he was she would figure out how to kill a hat, which odd remark Harry let pass without comment, though the salesgirl seemed to be having a sudden coughing fit.

Warning � italics overdose coming up.

quote:

"- I am going to be in Ravenclaw. And if you really think that I'm planning to do something dangerous, then, honestly, you don't understand me at all. I don't like danger, it is scary. I am being prudent. I am being cautious. I am preparing for unforeseen contingencies. Like my parents used to sing to me: Be prepared! That's the Boy Scout's marching song! Be prepared! As through life you march along! Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared - be prepared! "

(Harry's parents had in fact only ever sung him those particular lines of that Tom Lehrer song, and Harry was blissfully unaware of the rest.)

Professor McGonagall's stance had slightly softened - though mostly when Harry had said that he was heading for Ravenclaw. "What sort of contingency do you imagine this kit might prepare you for, young man? "

All this emphasis on Ravenclaw must mean he�s heading for Slytherin, I�d wager.

quote:

"One of my classmates gets bitten by a horrible monster, and as I scrabble frantically in my mokeskin pouch for something that could help her, she looks at me sadly and with her last breath says, 'Why weren't you prepared?' And then she dies, and I know as her eyes close that she won't ever forgive me -"

Harry heard the salesgirl gasp, and he looked up to see her staring at him with her lips pressed tight. Then the young woman whirled and fled into the deeper recesses of the shop.

What...?

Professor McGonagall reached down, and took Harry's hand in hers, gently but firmly, and pulled Harry out of the main street of Diagon Alley, leading him into an alleyway between two shops which was paved in dirty bricks and dead-ended in a wall of solid black dirt.

The tall witch pointed her wand at the main street and spoke, "Quietus" she said, and a screen of silence descended around them, blocking out all the street noises.

What did I do wrong...

Professor McGonagall turned to regard Harry. She didn't have a full adult Wrongdoing Face, but her expression was flat, controlled. "You must remember, Mr. Potter," she said, "that there was a war in this country not ten years ago. Everyone has lost someone, and to speak of friends dying in your arms - is not done lightly."

"I - I didn't mean to -" The inference dropped like a falling stone into Harry's exceptionally vivid imagination. He'd talked about someone breathing their last breath - and then the salesgirl had run away - and the war had ended ten years ago so that girl would have been at most eight or nine years old, when, when, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." Harry choked up, and turned away to run from the older witch's gaze but there was a wall of dirt blocking his way and he didn't have his wand yet. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! "

There came a heavy sigh from behind him. "I know you are, Mr. Potter."

At least Harry isn�t a full-on �BEEP BOOP WHAT IS LOVE� robot. I think I could put up with him being an obnoxious know-it-all if there are more of such humanizing moments from time to time and if there are actually negative consequences to him from being an insensitive arrogant brat.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 02:46

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Four

quote:

Harry dared to peek behind him. Professor McGonagall only seemed sad, now. "I'm sorry," Harry said again, feeling wretched. "Did anything like that happen to -" and then Harry shut his lips and slapped a hand over his mouth for good measure.

The older witch's face grew a little sadder. "You must learn to think before you speak, Mr. Potter, or else go through life without many friends. That has been the fate of many a Ravenclaw, and I hope it will not be yours."

Another deviation from canon, from what I can recall (the last time I read Harry Potter was in 2007 when the last book came out). The Ravenclaw students as a whole did not seem to be any less socially adept than the other factions, save for Luna, and her isolation was due to her own special circumstances.

quote:

Harry wanted to just run away. He wanted to pull out a wand and erase the whole thing from Professor McGonagall's memory, be back with her outside the shop again, make it didn't happen -

"But to answer your question, Mr. Potter, no, nothing like that has ever happened to me. Certainly I've watched a friend breathe their last, once or seven times. But not one of them ever cursed me as they died, and I never thought that they wouldn't forgive me. Why would you say such a thing, Mr. Potter? Why would you even think it?"

"I, I, I," Harry swallowed. "It's just that I always try to imagine the worst thing that could happen," and maybe he'd also been joking around a little but he would rather have bitten off his own tongue than say that now.

"What?" said Professor McGonagall. "But why?"

"So I can stop it from happening!"

"Mr. Potter..." the older witch's voice trailed off. Then she sighed, and knelt down beside him. "Mr. Potter," she said, gently now, "it's not your responsibility to take care of the students at Hogwarts. It's mine. I won't let anything bad happen to you or anyone else. Hogwarts is the safest place for magical children in all the wizarding world,

Yeah right.

quote:

and Madam Pomfrey has a full healer's office. You won't need a healer's kit at all, let alone a five-Galleon one."

"But I do! " Harry burst out. "Nowhere is perfectly safe! And what if my parents have a heart attack or get in an accident when I go home for Christmas - Madam Pomfrey won't be there, I'll need a healer's kit of my own -"

"What in Merlin's name..." Professor McGonagall said. She stood up, and looked down at Harry an expression torn between annoyance and concern. "There's no need to think about such terrible things, Mr. Potter!"

Harry's expression twisted up into bitterness, hearing that. "Yes there is! If you don't think, you don't just get hurt yourself, you end up hurting other people!"

Children do indeed experience their own world of anxieties and fears, so this is good writing on Eliezer�s part�

quote:

Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, then closed it. The witch rubbed the bridge of her nose, looking thoughtful. "Mr. Potter... if I were to offer to listen to you for a while... is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?"

"About what?"

"About why you're convinced you must always be on your guard against terrible things happening to you."

Harry stared at her in puzzlement. That was a self-evident axiom. "Well..." Harry said slowly. He tried to organise his thoughts. How could he explain himself to a Professor-witch, when she didn't even know the basics?

"Muggle researchers have found that people are always very optimistic, compared to reality. Like they say something will take two days and it takes ten days, or they say it'll take two months and it takes over thirty-five years. For example, in one experiment, they asked students for times by which they were 50% sure, 75% sure, and 99% sure they'd complete their homework, and only 13%, 19%, and 45% of the students finished by those times. And they found that the reason was that when they asked one group for their best-case estimates if everything went as well as possible, and another group for their average-case estimates if everything went as usual, they got back answers that were statistically indistinguishable. See, if you ask someone what they expect in the normal case, they visualise what looks like the line of maximum probability at each step along the way - everything going according to plan, with no surprises. But actually, since more than half the students didn't finish by the time they were 99% sure they'd be done, reality usually delivers results a little worse than the 'worst-case scenario'. It's called the planning fallacy, and the best way to fix it is to ask how long things took the last time you tried them. That's called using the outside view instead of the inside view. But when you're doing something new and can't do that, you just have to be really, really, really pessimistic. Like, so pessimistic that reality actually comes out better than you expected around as often and as much as it comes out worse. It's actually really hard to be so pessimistic that you stand a decent chance of undershooting real life. Like I make this big effort to be gloomy and I imagine one of my classmates getting bitten, but what actually happens is that the surviving Death Eaters attack the whole school to get at me. But on a happier note -"

�But this sudden deluge of is not.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 05:51

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

SSNeoman posted:

How do you know what a Death Eater is, Harry?

McGonagall told Harry about them in Chapter 3:

quote:

... And she told him of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord, Voldemort...

... The Death Eaters had followed in the Dark Lord's wake and in his vanguard, carrion vultures to pick at wounds, or snakes to bite and weaken. The Death Eaters were not as terrible as the Dark Lord, but they were terrible, and they were many. And the Death Eaters wielded more than wands; there was wealth within those masked ranks, and political power, and secrets held in blackmail, to paralyse a society trying to protect itself.

An old and respected journalist, Yermy Wibble, called for increased taxes and conscription. He shouted that it was absurd for the many to cower in fear of the few. His skin, only his skin, had been found nailed to the newsroom wall that next morning, next to the skins of his wife and two daughters. Everyone wished for something more to be done, and no one dared take the lead to propose it. Whoever stood out the most became the next example.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 06:58

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Five

quote:

"Stop," said Professor McGonagall.

Harry stopped. He had just been about to point out that at least they knew the Dark Lord wouldn't attack, since he was dead.

"I think I might not have made myself clear," the witch said, her precise Scottish voice sounding even more careful. "Did anything happen to you personally that frightened you, Mr. Potter?"

"What happened to me personally is only anecdotal evidence," Harry explained. "It doesn't carry the same weight as a replicated, peer-reviewed journal article about a controlled study with random assignment, many subjects, large effect sizes and strong statistical significance."

Just answer the question, Harry. She�s not asking you whether anything had happened that had �rationally� frightened you, she�s just asking whether there was anything that did, as a matter of fact, frightened you. One would have thought your excellent command of language, among other fields of study, would have enabled you to make that distinction.

quote:

Professor McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled, and 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...

My sympathies lie with Harry in this instance � he�s still insufferable but I think the mother shouldn�t have disregarded his fears like that. At least this is consistent with canon � negligent parenting / guardianship is a running theme throughout the entire series.

quote:

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.

McGonagall's gonna end up being saved from death because of Harry's healing kit, right? And Harry's gonna smug it over her for that, won't he?

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 07:12

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Six

quote:

The shop was the same as they had left it, recognisable and unrecognisable items still laid out on the slanted wooden display, the grey glow still protecting and the salesgirl back in her old position. The salesgirl looked up as they approached, her face showing surprise.

"I'm sorry," she said as they got closer, and Harry spoke at almost the same moment, "I apologise for -"

They broke off and looked at each other, and then the salesgirl laughed a little. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble with Professor McGonagall," she said. Her voice lowered conspiratorially. "I hope she wasn't too awful to you."

"Della! " said Professor McGonagall, sounding scandalised.

"Bag of gold," Harry said to his pouch, and then looked back up at the salesgirl while he counted out five Galleons. "Don't worry, I understand that she's only awful to me because she loves me."

He counted out five Galleons to the salesgirl while Professor McGonagall was spluttering something unimportant. "One Emergency Healing Pack Plus, please."

It was actually sort of unnerving to see how the Widening Lip swallowed the briefcase-sized medical kit. Harry couldn't help wondering what would happen if he tried climbing into the mokeskin pouch himself, given that only the person who put something in was supposed to be able to take it out again.

Hmm, I never thought of that question myself. I know that if you put a Bag of Holding into another Bag of Holding, you get a big-rear end explosion and both Bags of Holding and their contents vaporize. Do the D&D rules cover what happens if the person holding the Bag of Holding himself crawls into the Bag of Holding?

quote:

When the pouch was done... eating... his hard-won purchase, Harry swore he heard a small burping sound afterward. That had to have been spelled in on purpose. The alternative hypothesis was too horrifying to contemplate... in fact Harry couldn't even think of any alternative hypotheses. Harry looked back up at the Professor, as they began walking through Diagon Alley once more. "Where to next?"

Professor McGonagall pointed toward a shop that looked as if it had been made from flesh instead of bricks and covered in fur instead of paint. "Small pets are permitted at Hogwarts - you could get an owl to send letters, for example -"

"Can I pay a Knut or something and rent an owl when I need to send mail?"

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.

"Then I think emphatically no."

Professor McGonagall nodded, as though ticking off a point. "Might I ask why not?"

"I had a pet rock once. It died."

"You don't think you could take care of a pet?"

"I could," Harry said, "but I would end up obsessing all day long about whether I'd remembered to feed it that day or if it was slowly starving in its cage, wondering where its master was and why there wasn't any food."

Shouldn�t Harry know that that�s not very �rational�? He could easily keep a diary to record the times he�d fed his pet. Even in the 1990s he could have set up a closed circuit TV camera to keep watch on his pets, not to mention the new methods of surveillance that are no doubt available with magic.

quote:

"That poor owl," the older witch said in a soft voice. "Abandoned like that. I wonder what it would do."

"Well, I expect it'd get really hungry and start trying to claw its way out of the cage or the box or whatever, though it probably wouldn't have much luck with that -" Harry stopped short.

The witch went on, still in that soft voice. "And what would happen to it afterward?"

"Excuse me," Harry said, and he reached up to take Professor McGonagall by the hand, gently but firmly, and steered her into yet another alleyway; after ducking so many well-wishers the process had become almost unnoticeably routine. "Please cast that silencing spell."

"Quietus."

Harry's voice was shaking. "That owl does not represent me, my parents never locked me in a cupboard and left me to starve, I do not have abandonment fears and I don't like the trend of your thoughts, Professor McGonagall! "

The witch looked down at him gravely. "And what thoughts would those be, Mr. Potter?"

"You think I was," Harry was having trouble saying it, "I was abused? "

That�s not very rational either. After Chapter 1, where Harry found out that Mrs Figg already knew that he had his letter from Hogwarts before he told her about it, Harry knows (or should have known) that Hogwarts has been keeping watch on him during his childhood and they would therefore know that he has not been abused by his adoptive parents.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 03:37

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Seven

quote:

"Were you?"

"No! " Harry shouted. "No, I never was! Do you think I'm stupid? I know about the concept of child abuse, I know about inappropriate touching and all of that and if anything like that happened I would call the police! And report it to the head teacher! And look up social services in the phone book! And tell Grandpa and Grandma and Mrs. Figg! But my parents never did anything like that, never ever ever! How dare you suggest such a thing!"

The older witch gazed at him steadily. "It is my duty as Deputy Headmistress to investigate possible signs of abuse in the children under my care."

Harry's anger was spiralling out of control into pure, black fury. "Don't you ever dare breathe a word of these, these insinuations to anyone else! No one, do you hear me, McGonagall? An accusation like that can ruin people and destroy families even when the parents are completely innocent! I've read about it in the newspapers!" Harry's voice was climbing to a high-pitched scream. "The system doesn't know how to stop, it doesn't believe the parents or the children when they say nothing happened! Don't you dare threaten my family with that! I won't let you destroy my home! "

I�ll just quote SSNeoman here since he or she has put it best: �Holy poo poo stop it, you little poo poo! Why does everything have to be a problem for this kid?�

quote:

"Harry," the older witch said softly, and she reached out a hand towards him -

Harry took a fast step back, and his hand snapped up and knocked hers away.

McGonagall froze, then she pulled her hand back, and took a step backwards. "Harry, it's all right," she said. "I believe you."

"Do you," Harry hissed. The fury still roaring through his blood. "Or are you just waiting to get away from me so you can file the papers?"

"Harry, I saw your house. I saw you with your parents. They love you. You love them. I do believe you when you say that your parents are not abusing you. But I had to ask, because there is something strange at work here."

Harry stared at her coldly. "Like what?"

"Harry, I've seen many abused children in my time at Hogwarts, it would break your heart to know how many. And, when you're happy, you don't behave like one of those children, not at all. You smile at strangers, you hug people, I put my hand on your shoulder and you didn't flinch. But sometimes, only sometimes, you say or do something that seems very much like... someone who spent his first eleven years locked in a cellar. Not the loving family that I saw." Professor McGonagall tilted her head, her expression growing puzzled again.

Harry took this in, processing it. The black rage began to drain away, as it dawned on him that he was being listened to respectfully, and that his family wasn't in danger.

"And how do you explain your observations, Professor McGonagall?"

"I don't know," she said. "But it's possible that something could have happened to you that you don't remember."

Fury rose up again in Harry. That sounded all too much like what he'd read in the newspaper stories of shattered families. "Suppressed memory is a load of pseudoscience! People do not repress traumatic memories, they remember them all too well for the rest of their lives!"

Trauma could result in dissociative orders that include amnesia, though.

quote:

"No, Mr. Potter. There is a Charm called Obliviation."

Harry froze in place. "A spell that erases memories?"

The older witch nodded. "But not all the effects of the experience, if you see what I'm saying, Mr. Potter."

A chill went down Harry's spine. That hypothesis... could not be easily refuted. "But my parents couldn't do that!"

"Indeed not," said Professor McGonagall. "It would have taken someone from the wizarding world. There's... no way to be certain, I'm afraid."

Harry's rationalist skills began to boot up again. "Professor McGonagall, how sure are you of your observations, and what alternative explanations could there also be?"

The witch opened her hands, as though to show their emptiness. "Sure? I'm sure of nothing, Mr. Potter. In all my life I've never met anyone else like you. Sometimes you just don't seem eleven years old or even all that human."

This Harry Potter doesn�t talk like one, at the least.

quote:

Harry's eyebrows rose toward the sky -

"I'm sorry!" Professor McGonagall said quickly. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Potter. I was trying to make a point and I'm afraid that came out sounding different from what I had in mind -"

"On the contrary, Professor McGonagall," Harry said, and slowly smiled. "I shall take it as a very great compliment. But would you mind if I offered an alternative explanation?"

Does the author also take it as a compliment if someone calls him �not all that human�?

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Mar 6, 2015

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 04:14

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Eight

quote:

"Please do."

"Children aren't meant to be too much smarter than their parents," Harry said. "Or too much saner, maybe - my father could probably outsmart me if he was, you know, actually trying, instead of using his adult intelligence mainly to come up with new reasons not to change his mind -" Harry stopped. "I'm too smart, Professor. I've got nothing to say to normal children. Adults don't respect me enough to really talk to me. And frankly, even if they did, they wouldn't sound as smart as Richard Feynman, so I might as well read something Richard Feynman wrote instead. I'm isolated, Professor McGonagall. I've been isolated my whole life. Maybe that has some of the same effects as being locked in a cellar. And I'm too intelligent to look up to my parents the way that children are designed to do. My parents love me, but they don't feel obliged to respond to reason, and sometimes I feel like they're the children - children who won't listen and have absolute authority over my whole existence. I try not to be too bitter about it, but I also try to be honest with myself, so, yes, I'm bitter. And I also have an anger management problem, but I'm working on it. That's all."

It�s a myth that smart people are unpopular because they are �too smart�. The reason why ~~Eliezer was~~ Harry is an unpopular child is because he�s utterly insufferable and has serious deficiency in empathy and social graces, as has been amply shown in the past few chapters.

quote:

"That's all? "

Harry nodded firmly. "That's all. Surely, Professor McGonagall, even in magical Britain, the normal explanation is always worth considering? "

___________________________________________

It was later in the day, the sun lowering in the summer sky and shoppers beginning to peter out from the streets. Some shops had already closed; Harry and Professor McGonagall had bought his textbooks from Flourish and Blotts just under the deadline. With only a slight explosion when Harry had made a beeline for the keyword "Arithmancy" and discovered that the seventh-year textbooks invoked nothing more mathematically advanced than trigonometry.

At this moment, though, dreams of low-hanging research fruit were far from Harry's mind.

At this moment, the two of them were walking out of Ollivander's, and Harry was staring at his wand. He'd waved it, and produced multicoloured sparks, which really shouldn't have come as such an extra shock after everything else he'd seen, but somehow -

I can do magic.

Me. As in, me personally. I am magical; I am a wizard.

He had felt the magic pouring up his arm, and in that instant, realised that he had always had that sense, that he had possessed it his whole life, the sense that was not sight or sound or smell or taste or touch but only magic. Like having eyes but keeping them always closed, so that you didn't even realise that you were seeing darkness; and then one day the eye opened, and saw the world. The shock of it had poured through him, touching pieces of himself, awakening them, and then died away in seconds; leaving only the certain knowledge that he was now a wizard, and always had been, and had even, in some strange way, always known it.

And -

"It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother why, its brother gave you that scar."

That could not possibly be coincidence. There had been thousands of wands in that shop. Well, okay, actually it could be coincidence, there were six billion people in the world and thousand-to-one coincidences happened every day. But Bayes's Theorem said that any reasonable hypothesis which made it more likely than a thousand-to-one that he'd end up with the brother to the Dark Lord's wand, was going to have an advantage.

In the absence of any other known constants, does Bayes�s Theorem actually lead to such a conclusion? Wouldn�t this be a "conjunction fallacy� and therefore �irrational�?

quote:

Professor McGonagall had simply said how peculiar and left it at that, which had put Harry into a state of shock at the sheer, overwhelming uncuriosity of wizards and witches. In no imaginable world would Harry have just went "Hm" and walked out of the shop without even trying to come up with a hypothesis for what was going on.

Given that Harry only has one example of such an event, isn�t Harry�s placing of so much importance on this incident and his obsession with seeking a cause for the incident itself a fallacy (though I can�t recall the name of the fallacy) and therefore �irrational�? Wouldn�t it be more rational to chalk it up as a data point and move on with the rest of your day, exactly as McGonagall has done?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 03:17

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Darth Walrus posted:

Part Eight? Man, you are just dragging out that big Chapter Seven reveal, aren't you?

Chapter Six is really long (10,000+ words) and I only have that much free time each day.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 03:24

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Nine

quote:

His left hand rose and touched his scar.

What... exactly...

"You're a full wizard now," said Professor McGonagall. "Congratulations."

Much less catchy than �Yer a wizard Harry!�, I�m afraid.

quote:

Harry nodded.

"And what do you think of the wizarding world?" said she.

"It's strange," Harry said. "I ought to be thinking about everything I've seen of magic... everything that I now know is possible, and everything I now know to be a lie, and all the work left before me to understand it. And yet I find myself distracted by relative trivialities like," Harry lowered his voice, "the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing." There didn't seem to be anyone nearby, but no point tempting fate.

Professor McGonagall ahemmed. "Really? You don't say."

Harry nodded. "Yes. It's just... odd. To find out that you were part of this grand story, the quest to defeat the great and terrible Dark Lord, and it's already done. Finished. Completely over with. Like you're Frodo Baggins and you find out that your parents took you to Mount Doom and had you toss in the Ring when you were one year old and you don't even remember it."

It seems rather out of character for strict �rationalist� Harry to read the Lord of the Rings. Why would he deign to read a novel, one that�s not even sci-fi? What could this brilliant scientific child prodigal possibly learn from it?

quote:

Professor McGonagall's smile had grown somewhat fixed.

"You know, if I were anyone else, anyone else at all, I'd probably be pretty worried about living up to that start. Gosh, Harry, what have you done since you defeated the Dark Lord? Your own bookshop? That's great! Say, did you know I named my child after you? But I have hopes that this will not prove to be a problem." Harry sighed. "Still... it's almost enough to make me wish that there were some loose ends from the quest, just so I could say that I really, you know, participated somehow."

"Oh?" said Professor McGonagall in an odd tone. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, for example, you mentioned that my parents were betrayed. Who betrayed them?"

"Sirius Black," the witch said, almost hissing the name. "He's in Azkaban. Wizarding prison."

"How probable is it that Sirius Black will break out of prison and I'll have to track him down and defeat him in some sort of spectacular duel, or better yet put a large bounty on his head and hide out in Australia while I wait for the results?"

Professor McGonagall blinked. Twice. "Not likely. No one has ever escaped from Azkaban, and I doubt that he will be the first."

Harry was a bit sceptical of that "no one has ever escaped from Azkaban" line. Still, maybe with magic you could actually get close to a 100% perfect prison, especially if you had a wand and they did not. The best way to get out would be to not go there in the first place.

"All right then," Harry said. "Sounds like it's been nicely wrapped up." He sighed, scrubbing his palm over his head. "Or maybe the Dark Lord didn't really die that night. Not completely. His spirit lingers, whispering to people in nightmares that bleed over into the waking world, searching for a way back into the living lands he swore to destroy, and now, in accordance with the ancient prophecy, he and I are locked in a deadly duel where the winner shall lose and the loser shall win -"

Professor McGonagall's head swivelled, and her eyes darted around, as though to search the street for listeners.

"I'm joking, Professor," Harry said with some annoyance. Sheesh, why did she always take everything so seriously -

�Sheesh, why did she always take everything so seriously�

quote:

A slow sinking sensation began to dawn in the pit of Harry's stomach.

�Sinking sensations� do not �dawn�.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 06:48

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Ten

quote:

Professor McGonagall looked at Harry with a calm expression. A very, very calm expression. Then a smile was put on. "Of course you are, Mr. Potter."

Aw crap.

If Harry had needed to formalise the wordless inference that had just flashed into his mind, it would have come out something like, 'If I estimate the probability of Professor McGonagall doing what I just saw as the result of carefully controlling herself, versus the probability distribution for all the things she would do naturally if I made a bad joke, then this behavior is significant evidence for her hiding something.'

But what Harry actually thought was, Aw crap.

Harry turned his own head to scan the street. Nope, no one nearby. "He's not dead, is he," Harry sighed.

"Mr. Potter -"

"The Dark Lord is alive. Of course he's alive. It was an act of utter optimism for me to have even dreamed otherwise. I must have taken leave of my senses, I can't imagine what I was thinking. Just because someone said that his body was found burned to a crisp, I can't imagine why I would have thought he was dead. Clearly I have much left to learn about the art of proper pessimism."

Holy over-use of italics Batman!

quote:

"Mr. Potter -"

"At least tell me there's not really a prophecy..." Professor McGonagall was still giving him that bright, fixed smile. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"Mr. Potter, you shouldn't go inventing things to worry about -"

"Are you actually going to tell me that? Imagine my reaction later, when I find out that there was something to worry about after all."

Dumbledore did conceal a lot of vital information from Harry in the canon series. For someone who was ostensibly one of the �good� guys, he was really horrible to Harry.

quote:

Her fixed smile faltered.

Harry's shoulders slumped. "I have a whole world of magic to analyse. I do not have time for this."

Then both of them shut up, as a man in flowing orange robes appeared on the street and slowly passed them by; Professor McGonagall's eyes tracked him, unobtrusively. Harry's mouth was moving as he chewed hard on his lip, and someone watching closely would have noticed a tiny spot of blood appear.
When the orange-robed man had passed into the distance, Harry spoke again, in a low murmur. "Are you going to tell me the truth now, Professor McGonagall? And don't bother trying to wave it off, I'm not stupid."

"You're eleven years old, Mr. Potter!" she said in a harsh whisper.

"And therefore subhuman. Sorry... for a moment there, I forgot."

"These are dreadful and important matters! They are secret, Mr. Potter! It is a catastrophe that you, still a child, know even this much! You must not tell anyone, do you understand? Absolutely no one!"

Notwithstanding my comments on Dumbledore above, and to be fair to this incarnation of McGonagall, at this stage she doesn�t know Harry well enough to entrust him with the various portentous secrets in her possession. It is therefore not rational of Harry to get angry with her for withholding information from him now � if he wants to get her trust, he should work to earn it.

quote:

As sometimes happened when Harry got sufficiently angry, his blood went cold, instead of hot, and a terrible dark clarity descended over his mind, mapping out possible tactics and assessing their consequences with iron realism.

Point out that you have a right to know: Failure. Eleven-year-old children do not have rights to know anything, in McGonagall's eyes.

Say that you will not be friends any more: Failure. She does not value your friendship sufficiently.

Point out that you will be in danger if you do not know: Failure. Plans have already been made based on your ignorance. The certain inconvenience of rethinking will seem far more unpalatable than the mere uncertain prospect of your coming to harm.

Justice and reason will both fail. You must either find something you have that she wants, or find something you can do which she fears...

Ah.

"Well then, Professor," Harry said in a low, icy tone, "it sounds like I have something you want. You can, if you like, tell me the truth, the whole truth, and in return I will keep your secrets. Or you can try to keep me ignorant so you can use me as a pawn, in which case I will owe you nothing."

McGonagall stopped short in the street. Her eyes blazed and her voice descended into an outright hiss. "How dare you!"

"How dare you! " he whispered back at her.

"You would blackmail me?"

I�m not sure that it is �rational� to escalate directly to blackmail without attempting more congenial modes of diplomacy. A good long-term relationship is often worth much more than an immediate short-term advantage obtained through coercion.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 09:40

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

reignonyourparade posted:

I think you really mischaracterize the author's ideology a lot, which is dumb because it's got plenty of stupid bullshit to criticize and make fun of it for even before that. I think only the craziest of lesswrongers (And as crazy as Yudkowsky is, he is by no means the craziest lesswronger) would ever claim that you shouldn't ever enjoy yourself, at the very least for the sake of your mental health.

Fair enough. I'll keep that in mind for the remaining chapters.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 23:48

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Eleven

quote:

Harry's lips twisted. "I am offering you a favor. I am giving you a chance to protect your precious secret. If you refuse I will have every natural motive to make inquiries elsewhere, not to spite you, but because I have to know! Get past your pointless anger at a child who you think ought to obey you, and you'll realise that any sane adult would do the same! Look at it from my perspective! How would you feel if it was YOU? "

ARGH, stop it! Just stop it, you rotten spoiled brat!

quote:

Harry watched McGonagall, observed her harsh breathing. It occurred to him that it was time to ease off the pressure, let her simmer for a while. "You don't have to decide right away," Harry said in a more normal tone. "I'll understand if you want time to think about my offer... but I'll warn you of one thing," Harry said, his voice going colder. "Don't try that Obliviation spell on me. Some time ago I worked out a signal, and I have already sent that signal to myself. If I find that signal and I don't remember sending it..." Harry let his voice trail off significantly.

McGonagall's face was working as her expressions shifted. "I... wasn't thinking of Obliviating you, Mr. Potter... but why would you have invented such a signal if you didn't know about -"

"I thought of it while reading a Muggle science-fiction book, and said to myself, well, just in case... And no, I won't tell you the signal, I'm not dumb."

But even if Harry has set up this signal to alert future him that his memories have been tampered with, how would he be able to know the identity of the tamperer in advance?

quote:

"I hadn't planned to ask," McGonagall said. She seemed to fold in on herself, and suddenly looked very old, and very tired. "This has been an exhausting day, Mr. Potter. Can we get your trunk, and send you home? I will trust you not to speak upon this matter until I have had time to think. Keep in mind that there are only two other people in the whole world who know about this matter, and they are Headmaster Albus Dumbledore and Professor Severus Snape."

So. New information; that was a peace offering. Harry nodded in acceptance, and turned his head to look forward, and started walking again, as his blood slowly began to warm over once more.

"So now I've got to find some way to kill an immortal Dark Wizard," Harry said, and sighed in frustration. "I really wish you had told me that before I started shopping."

_________________________________________________________

The trunk shop was more richly appointed than any other shop Harry had visited; the curtains were lush and delicately patterned, the floor and walls of stained and polished wood, and the trunks occupied places of honor on polished ivory platforms. The salesman was dressed in robes of finery only a cut below those of Lucius Malfoy, and spoke with exquisite, oily politeness to both Harry and Professor McGonagall.

Harry had asked his questions, and had gravitated to a trunk of heavy-looking wood, not polished but warm and solid, carved with the pattern of a guardian dragon whose eyes shifted to look at anyone nearing it. A trunk charmed to be light, to shrink on command, to sprout small clawed tentacles from its bottom and squirm after its owner. A trunk with two drawers on each of four sides that each slid out to reveal compartments as deep as the whole trunk. A lid with four locks each of which would reveal a different space inside. And - this was the important part - a handle on the bottom which slid out a frame containing a staircase leading down into a small, lighted room that would hold, Harry estimated, around twelve bookcases.

If they made luggages like this, Harry didn't know why anyone bothered owning a house.

One hundred and eight golden Galleons. That was the price of a good trunk, lightly used. At around fifty British pounds to the Galleon, that was enough to buy a second-hand car. It would be more expensive than everything else Harry had ever bought in his whole life all put together.

Ninety-seven Galleons. That was how much was left in the bag of gold Harry had been allowed to take out of Gringotts.

Professor McGonagall wore a look of chagrin upon her face. After a long day's shopping she hadn't needed to ask Harry how much gold was left in the bag, after the salesman quoted his price, which meant the Professor could do good mental arithmetic without pen and paper. Once again, Harry reminded himself that scientifically illiterate was not at all the same thing as stupid.

Unfortunately he seems to be unaware that �has read lots of books� was not necessarily the same thing as �intelligent� or �wise�.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 02:33

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Twelve

quote:

"I'm sorry, young man," said Professor McGonagall. "This is entirely my fault. I would offer to take you back to Gringotts, but the bank will be closed for all but emergency services now."

Why can�t Harry just buy a cheaper luggage trunk or something?

quote:

Harry looked at her, wondering...

"Well," sighed Professor McGonagall, as she swung on one heel, "we may as well go, I suppose."

... she hadn't lost it completely when a child had dared defy her. She hadn't been happy, but she had thought instead of exploding in fury. It might have just been that there was an immortal Dark Lord to fight - that she had needed Harry's goodwill. But most adults wouldn't have been capable of thinking even that much; wouldn't consider future consequences at all, if someone lower in status had refused to obey them...

�She had thought instead of exploding in fury�, said the boy who explodes in fury at every little slight done or perceived to be done to him.

quote:

"Professor?" Harry said.

The witch turned back and looked at him.

Harry took a deep breath. He needed to be a little angry for what he wanted to try now, there was no way he'd have the courage to do it otherwise. She didn't listen to me, he thought to himself, I would have taken more gold but she didn't want to listen... Focusing his entire world on McGonagall and the need to bend this conversation to his will, he spoke.

�The need to bend this conversation to his will.� Ugh, could he be any more narcissistic?

quote:

"Professor, you thought one hundred Galleons would be more than enough for a trunk. That's why you didn't bother warning me before it went down to ninety-seven. Which is just the sort of thing the research studies show - that's what happens when people think they're leaving themselves a little error margin. They're not pessimistic enough. If it'd been up to me, I'd have taken two hundred Galleons just to be sure. There was plenty of money in that vault, and I could have put back any extra later. But I thought you wouldn't let me do it. I thought you'd be angry at me just for asking. Was I wrong?"

Have you ever considered that it was you who didn�t budget properly and over-spent on everything else?

quote:

"I suppose I must confess that you are right," said Professor McGonagall. "But, young man -"

"That sort of thing is the reason why I have trouble trusting adults." Somehow Harry kept his voice steady. "Because they get angry if you even try to reason with them. To them it's defiance and insolence and a challenge to their higher tribal status. If you try to talk to them they get angry. So if I had anything really important to do, I wouldn't be able to trust you. Even if you listened with deep concern to whatever I said - because that's also part of the role of someone playing a concerned adult - you'd never change your actions, you wouldn't actually behave differently, because of anything I said."

The salesman was watching them both with unabashed fascination.

"I can understand your point of view," Professor McGonagall said eventually. "If I sometimes seem too strict, please remember that I have served as Head of Gryffindor House for what feels like several thousand years."

McGonagall has nothing to apologise for. She has treated and dealt with Harry with utterly saintly patience and fortitude, in my opinion.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 03:35

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
Part Twelve

quote:

Harry nodded and continued. "So - suppose I had a way to get more Galleons from my vault without us going back to Gringotts, but it involved me violating the role of an obedient child. Would I be able to trust you with that, even though you'd have to step outside your own role as Professor McGonagall to take advantage of it?"

"What? " said Professor McGonagall.

"To put it another way, if I could make today have happened differently, so that we didn't take too little money with us, would that be all right even though it would involve a child being insolent to an adult in retrospect?"

Again, it�s not that you took too little money with you, it�s that you spent too much. All the other kids get by with much less, you insufferable brat.

quote:

"I... suppose..." the witch said, looking quite puzzled.

Harry took out the mokeskin pouch, and said, "Eleven Galleons originally from my family vault."

And there was gold in Harry's hand.

For a moment Professor McGonagall's mouth gaped wide, then her jaw snapped shut and her eyes narrowed and the witch bit out, "Where did you get that -"

"From my family vault, like I said."

"How? "

"Magic."

"That's hardly an answer!" snapped Professor McGonagall, and then stopped, blinking.

"No, it isn't, is it? I ought to claim that it's because I experimentally discovered the true secrets of how the pouch works and that it can actually retrieve objects from anywhere, not just its own inside, if you phrase the request correctly. But actually it's from when I fell into that pile of gold before and I shoved some Galleons into my pocket. Anyone who understands pessimism knows that money is something you might need quickly and without much warning. So now are you angry at me for defying your authority? Or glad that we succeeded in our important mission?"

The salesman's eyes were wide like saucers.

And the tall witch stood there, silent.

And then everyone in the shop stood up and clapped.

quote:

"Discipline at Hogwarts must be enforced," she said after almost a full minute. "For the sake of all the students. And that must include courtesy and obedience from you to all professors."

"I understand, Professor McGonagall."

"Good. Now let us buy that trunk and go home."

Harry felt like throwing up, or cheering, or fainting, or something. That was the first time his careful reasoning had ever worked on anyone. Maybe because it was also the first time he had something really serious that an adult needed from him, but still -

Minerva McGonagall, +1 point.

Harry bowed, and gave the bag of gold and the extra eleven Galleons into McGonagall's hands. "Thank you very much, Professor. Can you finish up the purchase for me? I've got to visit the lavatory."

The salesman, unctuous once more, pointed toward a door set into the wall with a gold-handled knob. As Harry started to walk away, he heard the salesman ask in his oily voice, "May I inquire as to who that was, Madam McGonagall? I take it he is Slytherin - third-year, perhaps? - and from a prominent family, but I did not recognise -"

And the salesman�s name? Albert Einstein.

quote:

The slam of the lavatory door cut off his words, and after Harry had identified the lock and pressed it into place, he grabbed the magical self-cleaning towel and, with shaky hands, wiped moisture off his forehead. Harry's entire body was sheathed in sweat which had soaked clear through his Muggle clothing, though at least it didn't show through the robes.

_______________________________________________________

The sun was setting and it was very late indeed, by the time they stood again in the courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron, the silent leaf-dusted interface between magical Britain's Diagon Alley and the entire Muggle world. (That was one awfully decoupled economy...) Harry was to go to a phone box and call his father, once he was on the other side. He didn't need to worry about his luggage being stolen, apparently. His trunk had the status of a major magical item, something that most Muggles wouldn't notice; that was part of what you could get in the wizarding world, if you were willing to pay the price of a secondhand car.

"So here we part ways, for a time," Professor McGonagall said. She shook her head in wonderment. "This has been the strangest day of my life for... many a year. Since the day I learned that a child had defeated You-Know-Who. I wonder now, looking back, if that was the last reasonable day of the world."

Oh, like she had anything to complain about. You think your day was surreal? Try mine.

�Me me me me me me me. Me.�

quote:

"I was very impressed with you today," Harry said to her. "I should have remembered to compliment you out loud, I was awarding you points in my head and everything."

"Thank you, Mr. Potter," said Professor McGonagall. "If you had already been sorted into a House I would have deducted so many points that your grandchildren would still be losing the House Cup."

"Thank you, Professor." It was probably too early to call her Minnie.

This woman might well be the sanest adult Harry had ever met, despite her lack of scientific background. Harry was even considering offering her the number-two position in whatever group he formed to fight the Dark Lord, though he wasn't silly enough to say that out loud. Now what would be a good name for that...? The Death Eater Eaters?

"I'll see you again soon, when school starts," Professor McGonagall said. "And, Mr. Potter, about your wand -"

"I know what you're going to ask," Harry said. He took out his precious wand and, with a deep twinge of inner pain, flipped it over in his hand, presenting her with the handle. "Take it. I hadn't planned to do anything, not a single thing, but I don't want you to have nightmares about me blowing up my house."

Professor McGonagall shook her head rapidly. "Oh no, Mr. Potter! That isn't done. I only meant to warn you not to use your wand at home, since the Ministry can detect underage magic and it is prohibited without supervision."

"Ah," Harry said. "That sounds like a very sensible rule. I'm glad to see the wizarding world takes that sort of thing seriously."

Professor McGonagall peered hard at him. "You really mean that."

"Yes," Harry said. "I get it. Magic is dangerous and the rules are there for good reasons. Certain other matters are also dangerous. I get that too. Remember that I am not stupid."

Not stupid, just tremendously obnoxious and unlikable.

quote:

"I am unlikely ever to forget it. Thank you, Harry, that does make me feel better about entrusting you with certain things. Goodbye for now."

Harry turned to go, into the Leaky Cauldron and out towards the Muggle world.

As his hand touched the back door's handle, he heard a last whisper from behind him.

"Hermione Granger."

"What?" Harry said, his hand still on the door.

"Look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the train to Hogwarts."

"Who is she?"

There was no answer, and when Harry turned around, Professor McGonagall was gone.

__________________________________________________

Aftermath

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore leaned forward over his desk. His twinkling eyes peered out at Minerva. "So, my dear, how did you find Harry?"

Minerva opened her mouth. Then she closed her mouth. Then she opened her mouth again. No words came out.

"I see," Albus said gravely. "Thank you for your report, Minerva. You may go."

I admit I laughed a bit at this.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 05:47

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

petrol blue posted:

Am I the white knight? I don't want to be the white knight. And for Yud, especially...

e: Can we make JWKS read Fifty Shades next?

Do I need to have read the Twilight series first, or can Fifty Shades be read on a stand-alone basis?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 07:40

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part One

quote:

Whoa. A spokesman for Rowling's literary agent said that Rowling is okay with the existence of fanfiction as long as no one charges for it and everyone's clear that the original copyrights belong to her? That's really cool of her. So thank you, JKR, and thine is the kingdom!

_____________________________________________________

I feel the need to disclaim that certain parts of this chapter are not meant as "bashing". It's not that I have a grudge, the story just writes itself and once you start dropping anvils on a character it's hard to stop.

A few reviewers have asked whether the science in this story is real or made up. Yes, it is real, and if you look at my profile, you'll see a link to a certain nonfiction site that will teach you pretty much everything Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres knows and then some.

Thank you very much to all my reviewers. (Especially Darkandus on Viridian Dreams, for the surprisingly inspiring comment "Lungs and tea are not meant to interact".

The �certain nonfiction site� referred to above is wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences, if you are curious.

quote:

"Your dad is almost as awesome as my dad."

____________________________________________

Petunia Evans-Verres's lips were trembling and her eyes were tearing up as Harry hugged her midsection on Platform Nine of the King's Cross Station. "Are you sure you don't want me to come with you, Harry?"
Harry glanced over to his father Michael Verres-Evans, who was looking stereotypically stern-but-proud, and then back to his mother, who really did look rather... uncomposed. "Mum, I know you don't like the wizarding world very much. You don't have to come with. I mean it."

Petunia winced. "Harry, you shouldn't worry about me, I'm your mother and if you need someone with you -"

"Mum, I'm going to be on my own at Hogwarts for months and months. If I can't manage a train platform alone, better to find out sooner rather than later so we can abort." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Besides, Mum, they all love me over there. If I have any problems, all I need to do is take off my sweatband," Harry tapped the exercise band covering his scar, "and I'll have way more help than I can handle."

"Oh, Harry," Petunia whispered. She knelt down and hugged him hard, face to face, their cheeks resting against each other. Harry could feel her ragged breathing, and then he heard a muffled sob escape. "Oh, Harry, I do love you, always remember that."

It's like she's afraid she'll never see me again, the thought popped into Harry's head. He knew the thought was true but he didn't know why Mum was so afraid.

So he made a guess. "Mum, you know that I'm not going to turn into your sister just because I'm learning magic, right? I'll do any magic you ask for - if I can, I mean - or if you want me not to use any magic around the house, I'll do that too, I promise I'll never let magic come between us -"

A tight hug cut off his words. "You have a good heart," his mother whispered into his ear. "A very good heart, my son."

Harry choked up himself a little, then.

At least he does care for his parents. 10 points to ~~Gryffindor~~ Slytherin, which is where I guess he�ll be Sorted into.

quote:

His mother released him, and stood up. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag, and with a trembling hand dabbed at the running makeup around her eyes.

There were no questions about his father accompanying him to the magical side of King's Cross Station. Dad had trouble just looking at Harry's trunk directly. Magic ran in families, and Michael Verres-Evans couldn't even walk.

So instead his father just cleared his throat. "Good luck at school, Harry," he said. "Do you think I bought you enough books?"

Harry had explained to his father about how he thought this might be his big chance to do something really revolutionary and important, and Professor Verres-Evans had nodded and dumped his extremely busy schedule for two solid days in order to go on the Greatest Secondhand Bookshop Raid Ever, which had covered four cities and produced thirty boxes of science books now sitting in the cavern level of Harry's trunk. Most of the books had gone for a pound or two, but some of them definitely hadn't, like the very latest Handbook of Chemistry and Physics or the complete 1972 set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His father had tried to block Harry off from seeing the till displays but Harry figured his father must have spent at least a thousand pounds. Harry had said to his father that he would pay him back as soon as he figured out how to convert wizarding gold into Muggle money, and his father had told him to go jump in a lake.

Isn�t the story set in the early 90s? Why did they go out of their way to buy a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that�s more than a decade old?

quote:

And then his father had asked him: Do you think I bought you enough books? It was quite clear what answer Dad wanted to hear.

Harry's throat was hoarse, for some reason. "You can never have enough books," he recited the Verres family motto, and his father knelt down and gave him a quick, firm embrace. "But you certainly tried," Harry said, and felt himself choking up again. "It was a really, really, really good try."

This has been a pretty good, heartwarming start to the chapter. Harry�s back to being human and likable again. Isn�t this the supposedly �infamous� Chapter Seven? How bad can it get?

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 12, 2015

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 02:38

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Two

quote:

His Dad straightened. "So..." he said. "Do you see a Platform Nine and Three-Quarters?"

King's Cross Station was huge and busy, with walls and floors paved with ordinary dirt-stained tiles. It was full of ordinary people hurrying about their ordinary business, having ordinary conversations which generated lots and lots of ordinary noise. King's Cross Station had a Platform Nine (which they were standing on) and a Platform Ten (right nearby) but there was nothing between Platform Nine and Platform Ten except a thin, unpromising barrier wall. A great skylight overhead let in plenty of light to illuminate the total lack whatsoever of any Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Harry stared around until his eyes watered, thinking, come on, mage-sight, come on, mage-sight, but absolutely nothing appeared to him. He thought about taking out his wand and waving it, but Professor McGonagall had warned him against using his wand. Plus if there was another shower of multicoloured sparks that might lead to being arrested for setting off fireworks inside a train station. And that was assuming his wand didn't decide to do something else, like blowing up all of King's Cross. Harry had only lightly skimmed his schoolbooks (though that skim was quite bizarre enough) in a very quick effort to determine what sort of science books to buy over the next 48 hours.

Well, he had - Harry glanced at his watch - one whole hour to figure it out, since he was supposed to be on the train at eleven. Maybe this was the equivalent of an IQ test and the stupid kids couldn't become wizards. (And the amount of extra time you gave yourself would determine your Conscientiousness, which was the second most important factor in scholarly success.)

What does capital-C �Conscientiousness� refer to in this context? Is it some �rationalist� or transhumanist jargon?

quote:

"I'll figure it out," Harry said to his waiting parents. "It's probably some sort of test thingy."

His father frowned. "Hm... maybe look for a trail of mixed footprints on the ground, leading somewhere that doesn't seem to make sense -"

"Dad! " Harry said. "Stop that! I haven't even tried to figure it out on my own!" It was a very good suggestion, too, which was worse.

"Sorry," his father apologised.

"Ah..." Harry's mother said. "I don't think they would do that to a student, do you? Are you sure Professor McGonagall didn't tell you anything?"

"Maybe she was distracted," Harry said without thinking.

"Harry! " hissed his father and mother in unison. "What did you do? "

His parents have the proper measure of Harry, at least.

quote:

"I, um -" Harry swallowed. "Look, we don't have time for this now -"

"Harry! "

"I mean it! We don't have time for this now! Because it's a really long story and I've got to figure out how to get to school!"

His mother had a hand over her face. "How bad was it?"

"I, ah," I can't talk about that for reasons of National Security, "about half as bad as the Incident with the Science Project?"

"Harry! "

"I, er, oh look there are some people with an owl I'll go ask them how to get in!" and Harry ran away from his parents towards the family of fiery redheads, his trunk automatically slithering behind him.

The plump woman looked to him as he arrived. "Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too -" and then she peered closely at him. "Harry Potter? "

Four boys and a red-headed girl and an owl all swung around and then froze in place.

"Oh, come on! " Harry protested. He'd been planning to go as Harry Verres at least until he got to Hogwarts. "I bought a sweatband and everything! How come you know who I am?"

"Yes," Harry's father said, coming up behind him with long easy strides, "how do you know who he is?" His voice indicated a certain dread.

"Your picture was in the newspapers," said one of two identical-looking twins.

"HARRY! "

"Dad! It's not like that! It's 'cause I defeated the Dark Lord You-Know-Who when I was one year old!"

"WHAT? "

"Mum can explain."

"WHAT? "

"Ah... Michael dear, there are certain things I thought it would be best not to bother you with until now -"

"Excuse me," Harry said to the redheaded family who were all staring at him, "but it would be quite extremely helpful if you could tell me how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters right now."

"Ah..." said the woman. She raised a hand and pointed at the wall between platforms. "Just walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared you'll crash into it, that's very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous."

"And whatever you do, don't think of an elephant."

"George! Ignore him, Harry dear, there's no reason not to think of an elephant."

"I'm Fred, Mum, not George -"

"Thanks!" Harry said and took off at a run towards the barrier �

All�s well, so I�m apparently still not at the �bad� part of this chapter. Also happy to see the Weasleys making an appearance in the story � I liked the Weasleys in the canon series.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 07:37

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Two

quote:

Wait a minute, it wouldn't work unless he believed in it?

It was at times like this that Harry hated his mind for actually working fast enough to realise that this was a case where "resonant doubt" applied, that is, if he'd started out thinking that he would go through the barrier he'd have been fine, only now he was worried about whether he sufficiently believed he'd go through the barrier, which meant that he actually was worried about crashing into it -

"Harry! Get back here, you have some explaining to do! " That was his Dad.

Harry shut his eyes and ignored everything he knew about justified credibility and just tried to believe really hard that he'd go through the barrier and -

- the sounds around him changed.

Harry opened his eyes and stumbled to a halt, feeling vaguely dirtied by having made a deliberate effort to believe something.

He was standing in a bright, open-air platform next to a single huge train, fourteen long carriages headed up by a massive scarlet-metal steam engine with a tall chimney that promised death to air quality. The platform was already lightly crowded (even though Harry was a full hour early); dozens of children and their parents swarmed around benches, tables, and various hawkers and stalls.

It went entirely without saying that there was no such place in King's Cross Station and no room to hide it.
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.

There was a slithering sound behind him, and Harry turned around to observe that his trunk had indeed followed him on its small clawed tentacles. Apparently, for magical purposes, his luggage had also managed to believe with sufficient strength to pass through the barrier. That was actually a little disturbing when Harry started thinking about it.

Didn�t Harry say that he liked reading D&D manuals? Then he should know that spells that affect the caster (such as Invisibility or Teleport) usually also affect the caster�s gear (i.e. the gear also turns invisible or gets teleported along with the caster). Same principle applies in this case � there�s no necessity for the luggage to �believe�.

quote:

A moment later, the youngest-looking red-haired boy came through the iron archway (iron archway?) at a run, pulling his trunk behind him on a lead and nearly crashing into Harry. Harry, feeling stupid for having stayed around, quickly began moving away from the landing area, and the red-haired boy followed him, yanking hard on his trunk's lead in order to keep up. A moment later, a white owl fluttered through the archway and came to rest on the boy's shoulder.

"Cor," said the red-haired boy, "are you really Harry Potter?"

Not this again. "I have no logical way of knowing that for certain. My parents raised me to believe that my name was Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, and many people here have told me that I look like my parents, I mean my other parents, but," Harry frowned, realising, "for all I know, there could easily be spells to polymorph a child into a specified appearance -"

"Er, what, mate?"

Not headed for Ravenclaw, I take it. "Yes, I'm Harry Potter."

If Ron really does only appear a few more times in the rest of the series, I�m glad this is the case because he doesn�t deserve Harry�s condescension and general bullshit attitude.

quote:

"I'm Ron Weasley," said the tall skinny freckled long-nosed kid, and stuck out a hand, which Harry politely shook as they walked. The owl gave Harry an oddly measured and courteous hoot (actually more of an eehhhhh sound, which surprised Harry).

At this point Harry realised the potential for imminent catastrophe. "Just a second," he said to Ron, and opened one of the drawers of his trunk, the one that if he recalled correctly was for Winter Clothes - it was - and then he found the lightest scarf he owned, underneath his winter coat. Harry took off his sweatband, and just as quickly unfolded the scarf and tied it around his face. It was a little hot, especially in the summer, but Harry could live with that.

Then he shut that drawer and pulled out another drawer and drew forth black wizarding robes, which he shrugged over his head, now that he was out of Muggle territory.

"There," Harry said. The sound came out slightly muffled through the scarf over his face. He turned to Ron. "How do I look? Stupid, I know, but am I identifiable as Harry Potter?"

"Er," Ron said. He closed his mouth, which had been open. "Not really, Harry."

Ah, I see where this is going. Ron�s role in this story is to be the designated moron to make Harry look �smart�.

quote:

"Very good," Harry said. "However, so as not to obviate the point of the whole exercise, you will henceforth address me as," Verres might not work anymore, "Mr. Spoo."

"Okay, Harry," Ron said uncertainly.

The Force is not particularly strong in this one. "Call... me... Mister... Spoo."

"Okay, Mister Spoo -" Ron stopped. "I can't do that, it makes me feel stupid."

That's not just a feeling. "Okay. You pick a name."

I hate ~~Railrunner~~ Elizer�s Harry Potter and I hate everything he stands for.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 04:18

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Three

quote:

"Mr. Cannon," Ron said at once. "For the Chudley Cannons."

"Ah..." Harry knew he was going to terribly regret asking this. "Who or what are the Chudley Cannons?"

"Who're the Chudley Cannons? Only the most brilliant team in the whole history of Quidditch! Sure, they finished at the bottom of the league last year, but -"

"What's Quidditch?"

Asking this was also a mistake.

"So let me get this straight," Harry said as it seemed that Ron's explanation (with associated hand gestures) was winding down. "Catching the Snitch is worth one hundred and fifty points? "

"Yeah -"

"How many ten-point goals does one side usually score not counting the Snitch?"

"Um, maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games -"

"That's just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game design. Look, the rest of this game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport I mean, but you're basically saying that catching the Snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point spread. The two Seekers are up there flying around looking for the Snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else, spotting the Snitch first is going to be mostly luck -"

"It's not luck!" protested Ron. "You've got to keep your eyes moving in the right pattern -"

"That's not interactive, there's no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else's work moot. It's like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King's idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn't understand the rules?" Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing...

Yes yes, the Quidditch scoring system is designed solely to let the Seeker (i.e. Harry) shine and is terrible for an IRL game. However, the scoring system is perfectly designed for a story centred on Harry, and that�s all that matters for the story.

quote:

Ron's face pulled into a scowl. "If you don't like Quidditch, you don't have to make fun of it!"

"If you can't criticise, you can't optimise. I'm suggesting how to improve the game. And it's very simple. Get rid of the Snitch."

"They won't change the game just 'cause you say so!"
"I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know. People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread."

A look of absolute horror was spreading over Ron's face. "But, but if you get rid of the Snitch, how will anyone know when the game ends?"

"Buy... a... clock. It would be a lot fairer than having the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the spectators, too." Harry sighed.

These sure are novel insights and suggestions that thousands of people before Eliezarry haven�t made before.

quote:

"Oh, stop giving me that look of absolute horror, I probably won't actually take the time to destroy this pathetic excuse for a national sport and remake it stronger and smarter in my own image. I've got way, way, way more important stuff to worry about." Harry looked thoughtful. "Then again, it wouldn't take much time to write up the Ninety-Five Theses of the Snitchless Reformation and nail it to a church door -"

I hate ~~Railrunner~~ Eliezarry and I hate everything he stands for.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 07:11

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Four

quote:

"Potter," drawled a young boy's voice, "what is that on your face and what is standing next to you?"

Ron's look of horror was replaced by utter hatred. "You! "

Harry turned his head; and indeed it was Draco Malfoy, who might have been forced to wear standard school robes, but was making up for that with a trunk looking at least as magical and far more elegant than Harry's own, decorated in silver and emeralds and bearing what Harry guessed to be the Malfoy family crest, a beautiful fanged serpent over crossed ivory wands.

"Draco!" Harry said. "Er, or Malfoy if you prefer, though that kind of sounds like Lucius to me. I'm glad to see you're doing so well after, um, our last meeting. This is Ron Weasley. And I'm trying to go incognito, so call me, eh," Harry looked down at his robes, "Mister Black."

"Harry! " hissed Ron. "You can't use that name!"

Harry blinked. "Why not?" It sounded nicely dark, like an international man of mystery -
"I'd say it's a fine name," said Draco, "but it belongs to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I'll call you Mr. Silver."

"You get away from... from Mr. Gold," Ron said coldly, and took a forward step. "He doesn't need to talk to the likes of you!"

Harry raised a placating hand. "I'll go by Mr. Bronze, thanks for the naming schema. And, Ron, um," Harry struggled to find a way to say this, "I'm glad you're so... enthusiastic about protecting me, but I don't particularly mind talking to Draco -"

This was apparently the last straw for Ron, who spun on Harry with eyes now aflame with outrage. "What? Do you know who this is?"

"Yes, Ron," Harry said, "you may remember that I called him Draco without him needing to introduce himself."

Isn�t Harry supposed to be �smart�? Why can�t he tell that in this context, �who this is� doesn�t refer to �what is his name� but �what are his character and/or affiliations�?

quote:

Draco sniggered. Then his eyes lit on the white owl on Ron's shoulder. "Oh, what's this? " Draco said in a drawl rich with malice. "Where's the famous Weasley family rat?"

"Buried in the backyard," Ron said coldly.

"Aw, how sad. Pot... ah, Mr. Bronze, I should mention that the Weasley family is widely agreed to have the best pet story ever. Want to tell it, Weasley?"

Ron's face contorted. "You wouldn't think it was funny if it happened to your family!"

"Oh," Draco purred, "but it wouldn't ever happen to the Malfoys."

Ron's hands clenched into fists -

"That's enough," Harry said, putting as much quiet authority into the voice as he could manage. It was clear that whatever this was about, it was a painful memory for the red-haired kid. "If Ron doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't have to talk about it, and I'd ask that you not talk about it either."

Draco turned a surprised look on Harry, and Ron nodded. "That's right, Harry! I mean Mr. Bronze! You see what kind of person he is? Now tell him to go away!"

Harry counted to ten inside his head, which for him was a very quick 12345678910 - an odd habit left over from the age of five when his mother had first instructed him to do it, and Harry had reasoned that his way was faster and ought to be just as effective. "I'm not telling him to go away," Harry said calmly. "He's welcome to talk to me if he wants."

"Well, I don't intend to hang around with anyone who hangs around with Draco Malfoy," Ron announced coldly.

Harry shrugged. "That's up to you. I don't intend to let anyone say who I can and can't hang around with." Silently chanting, please go away, please go away...

Ron's face went blank with surprise, like he'd actually expected that line to work. Then Ron spun about, yanked his luggage's lead and stormed off down the platform.

I can see now why Eliezer �[felt] the need to disclaim that certain parts of this chapter are not meant as "bashing". It's not that I have a grudge, the story just writes itself and once you start dropping anvils on a character it's hard to stop�.

Even if we take it at face value that he doesn�t have a �grudge� against Ron, this scene is so contrived, and Ron is so blatantly and awkwardly forced into the role of �blithering idiot� for the sake of showcasing Harry�s �maturity�, that it�s almost physically painful to read.

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Mar 16, 2015

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 02:44

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Five

quote:

"If you didn't like him," Draco said curiously, "why didn't you just walk away?"

"Um... his mother helped me figure out how to get to this platform from the King's Cross Station, so it was kind of hard to tell him to get lost. And it's not that I hate this Ron guy," Harry said, "I just, just..." Harry searched for words.

"Don't see any reason for him to exist?" offered Draco.

"Pretty much."

People � both children and adults � hate other people all the time. It�s normal to hate someone else.

�Not seeing any reason for him to exist� is much, much worse. It�s a denial of the humanity of the other person. It�s the thought process of a sociopath. Are we actually supposed to like or respect Harry for this?

quote:

"Anyway, Potter... if you really were raised by Muggles -" Draco paused here, as if waiting for a denial, but Harry didn't say anything "- then you mightn't know what it's like to be famous. People want to take up all of our time. You have to learn to say no."

Harry nodded, putting a thoughtful look on his face. "That sounds like good advice."

"If you try to be nice, you just end up spending the most time with the pushiest ones. Decide who you want to spend time with and make everyone else leave. You're just getting here, Potter, so everyone's going to judge you by who they see you with, and you don't want to be seen with the likes of Ron Weasley."

Harry nodded again. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you recognise me?"

"Mister Bronze," Draco drawled, "I have met you, remember. I saw someone going around with a scarf wrapped around his head, looking absolutely ridiculous. So I took a guess."

Harry bowed his head, accepting the compliment. "I'm terribly sorry about that," Harry said. "Our first meeting, I mean. I didn't mean to embarrass you in front of Lucius."

Draco waved it off while giving Harry an odd look. "I just wish Father could have come in while you were flattering me -" Draco laughed. "But thank you for what you said to Father. If not for that, I might've had a harder time explaining."

Harry swept a deeper bow. "And thank you for reciprocating with what you said to Professor McGonagall."

"You're welcome. Though one of the assistants must've sworn her closest friend to absolute secrecy, because Father says there're weird rumors going around, like you and I got in a fight or something."

"Ouch," Harry said, wincing. "I'm really sorry -"

"No, we're used to it, Merlin knows there's lots of rumors about the Malfoy family already."

Harry nodded. "I'm glad to hear you're not in trouble."

Why is Harry so friendly to Draco? He doesn�t know anything about the Malfoys, and so far Harry has witnessed two people � McGonagall and Ron (both of whom have been kind to Harry) � having extremely adverse reactions to Lucius and/or Malfoy. Wouldn�t it be more rational for Harry to be a little warier or guarded until he�s gathered more information on Draco and his family?

quote:

Draco smirked. "Father has, um, a refined sense of humor, but he does understand making friends. He understands it very well. He made me repeat that before I went to bed every night for the last month, 'I will make friends at Hogwarts.' When I explained everything to him and he saw that's what I was doing, he bought me an ice-cream."

Harry's jaw dropped. "You managed to spin that into an ice-cream? "

Draco nodded, looking every bit as smug as the feat deserved. "Well, father knew what I was doing, of course, but he's the one who taught me how to do it, and if I grin the right way while I'm doing it, that makes it a father-son thing and then he has to buy me an ice-cream or I'll give him this sort of sad look, like I think I must have disappointed him."

Harry eyed Draco calculatingly, sensing the presence of another master. "You've had lessons on how to manipulate people?"

"Of course," Draco said proudly. "I'm a Malfoy. Father bought me tutors."

"Wow," Harry said. Reading Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice probably didn't stack up very high compared to that (though it was still one heck of a book). "Your dad is almost as awesome as my dad."

How�s Draco's "feat" in any way supposed to be impressive? Children manipulate adults all the time without any training or instruction whatsoever. Literal toddlers pull it off on a regular basis.

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Mar 16, 2015

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 09:29

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Six

quote:

Draco's eyebrows rose loftily. "Oh? And what does your father do?"

"He buys me books."

Draco considered this. "That doesn't sound very impressive."

"You had to be there. Anyway, I'm glad to hear all that. The way Lucius was looking at you, I thought he was going to c-crucify you."

"My father really loves me," Draco said firmly. "He wouldn't ever do that."

"Um..." Harry said. He remembered the black-robed, white-haired figure of elegance that had stormed through Madam Malkin's, wielding that beautiful, deadly silver-handled cane. It wasn't easy to visualise him as a doting father. "Don't take this the wrong way, but how do you know that?"

"Huh?" It was clear that this was a question Draco did not commonly ask himself.

"I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it? What makes you think Lucius wouldn't sacrifice you the same way he'd sacrifice anything else for power?"

Draco shot Harry another odd look. "Just what do you know about Father?"

"Um... seat on the Wizengamot, seat on Hogwarts' Board of Governors, incredibly wealthy, has the ear of Minister Fudge, has the confidence of Minister Fudge, probably has some highly embarrassing photos of Minister Fudge, most prominent blood purist now that the Dark Lord's gone, former Death Eater who was found to have the Dark Mark but got off by claiming to be under the Imperius Curse, which was ridiculously implausible and pretty much everyone knew it... evil with a capital 'E' and a born killer... I think that's it."

And Harry�s still keen to buddy up with the son of the �evil with a capital �E�� man, a son who clearly adores his father and is proud of his family. What does that say about Harry?

quote:

Draco's eyes had narrowed to slits. "McGonagall told you that, did she."

"No, she wouldn't say anything to me about Lucius afterwards, except to stay away from him. So during the Incident at the Potions Shop, while Professor McGonagall was busy yelling at the shopkeeper and trying to get everything under control, I grabbed one of the customers and asked them about Lucius."

Draco's eyes were wide again. "Did you really? "

Harry gave Draco a puzzled look. "If I lied the first time, I'm not going to tell you the truth just because you ask twice."

There was a certain pause as Draco absorbed this.

"You're so completely going to be in Slytherin."

"I'm so completely going to be in Ravenclaw, thank you very much. I only want power so I can get books."

Draco giggled. "Yeah, right. Anyway... to answer what you asked..." Draco took a deep breath, and his face turned serious. "Father once missed a Wizengamot vote for me. I was on a broom and I fell off and broke a lot of ribs. It really hurt. I'd never hurt that much before and I thought I was going to die. So Father missed this really important vote, because he was there by my bed at St. Mungo's, holding my hands and promising me that I was going to be okay."

Harry glanced away uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. "Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of... private..."

Draco gave Harry a serious look. "One of my tutors once said that people form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don't make close friends is because they're too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves." Draco turned his palms out invitingly. "Your turn?"

Wait, what? �Most people don�t make close friends�? Is that actually what ~~Eliezer's secondary self-insert~~ Eliezer believes?

quote:

Knowing that Draco's hopeful face had probably been drilled into him by months of practice did not make it any less effective, Harry observed. Actually it did make it less effective, but unfortunately not ineffective.

If Harry�s knowledge of Draco�s manipulativeness merely makes said manipulation less effective instead of totally ineffective, doesn�t that mean that Harry is being irrational? And �knowingly� irrational, at that, which is doubly irrational?

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Mar 17, 2015

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 01:37

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Seven

quote:

The same could be said of Draco's clever use of reciprocation pressure for an unsolicited gift, a technique which Harry had read about in his social psychology books (one experiment had shown that an unconditional gift of $5 was twice as effective as a conditional offer of $50 in getting people to fill out surveys). Draco had made an unsolicited gift of a confidence, and now invited Harry to offer a confidence in return... and the thing was, Harry did feel pressured. Refusal, Harry was certain, would be met with a look of sad disappointment, and maybe a small amount of contempt indicating that Harry had lost points.

�Lost points�? Is Harry treating real-life conversation and social interaction like a Bioware game or dating sim? Is that what Robert Cialdini teaches in �Influence: Science and Practice�?

quote:

"Draco," Harry said, "just so you know, I recognise exactly what you're doing right now. My own books called it reciprocation and they talk about how giving someone a straight gift of two Sickles was found to be twice as effective as offering them twenty Sickles in getting them to do what you want..." Harry trailed off.

Telling someone you recognize �exactly what [he is] doing� is the best and most time-honoured way to make friends, yup yup.

quote:

Draco was looking sad and disappointed. "It's not meant as a trick, Harry. It's a real way of becoming friends."

Harry held up a hand. "I didn't say I wasn't going to respond. I just need time to pick something that's private but just as non-damaging. Let's say... I wanted you to know that I can't be rushed into things." A pause to reflect could go a long way in defusing the power of a lot of compliance techniques, once you learned to recognise them for what they were.

"All right," Draco said. "I'll wait while you come up with something. Oh, and please take off the scarf while you say it."

Simple but effective.

And Harry couldn't help but notice how clumsy, awkward, graceless his attempt at resisting manipulation / saving face / showing off had appeared compared to Draco. I need those tutors.

Maybe� just maybe Harry shouldn�t want to be friends with someone who�s trying to manipulate him? Has he considered that?

quote:

"All right," Harry said after a time. "Here's mine." He glanced around and then rolled the scarf back up over his face, exposing everything but the scar. "Um... it sounds like you can really rely on your father. I mean... if you talk to him seriously, he'll always listen to you and take you seriously."

Draco nodded.

"Sometimes," Harry said, and swallowed. This was surprisingly hard, but then it was meant to be. "Sometimes I wish my own Dad was like yours." Harry's eyes flinched away from Draco's face, more or less automatically, and then Harry forced himself to look back at Draco.

Then it hit Harry what on Earth he'd just said, and Harry hastily added, "Not that I wish my Dad was a flawless instrument of death like Lucius, I only mean taking me seriously -"

"I understand," Draco said with a smile. "There... now doesn't it feel like we're a little closer to being friends?"

Man, their understanding of friendship is completely hosed up. Has Eliezer written anything on his blog or other publications that indicates that he shares the same sentiments regarding friendship as his self-inserts?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 05:48

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:29

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 7 � Reciprocation
Part Seven

quote:

Harry nodded. "Yeah. It does, actually. Um... no offence, but I'm going to put on my disguise again, I really don't want to deal with -"

"I understand."

Harry rolled the scarf back down over his face.

"My father takes all his friends seriously," Draco said. "That's why he has lots of friends. You should meet him."

If Eliezer is writing based on his childhood experience of friendship, I weep for his childhood.

quote:

"I'll think about it," Harry said in a neutral voice. He shook his head in wonder. "So you really are his one weak point. Huh."

Because parents caring for and loving their children is a �weakness� and that is totally the thought that a mentally and emotionally healthy person would have.

quote:

Now Draco was giving Harry a really odd look. "You want to go get something to drink and find somewhere to sit down?"

Harry realised he had been standing in one place for too long, and stretched himself, trying to crick his back. "Sure."

The platform was starting to fill up now, but there was still a quieter area on the far side away from the red steam engine. Along the way they passed a stall containing a bald, bearded man offering newspapers and comic books and stacked neon-green cans.

The stallholder was, in fact, leaning back and drinking out of one of the neon-green cans at the exact point when he spotted the refined and elegant Draco Malfoy approaching along with a mysterious boy looking incredibly stupid with a scarf tied over his face, causing the stallholder to experience a sudden coughing fit in mid-drink and dribble a large amount of neon-green liquid onto his beard.

"'Scuse me," Harry said, "but what is that stuff, exactly?"

"Comed-Tea," said the stallholder. "If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen which makes you spill it on yourself or someone else. But it's charmed to vanish just a few seconds later -" Indeed the stain on his beard was already disappearing.

"How droll," said Draco. "How very, very droll. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another -"

"Hold on," Harry said.

"Oh come on! That's just, just juvenile! "

"No, I'm sorry Draco, I have to investigate this. What happens if I drink Comed-Tea while doing my best to keep the conversation completely serious?"

The stallholder smiled mysteriously. "Who knows? A friend walks by in a frog costume? Something unexpected is bound to happen -"

"No. I'm sorry. I just don't believe it. That violates my much-abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I don't even have the language to describe it. There is, there is just no way a bloody drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups, or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas -"

Harry has, within the past few days, witnessed:

(a) his father being levitated;

(b) McGonagall turning into a cat;

(c) McGonagall opening a secret passage by turning a wall with her wand;

(d) a bag of holding (his mokeskin pouch);

(e) a luggage trunk of holding;

(f) his wand producing multi-coloured sparks; and

(h) Platform Nine and Three-Quarters;

(i) the stain on the stall-holder�s beard disappearing within seconds after being spilled.

At this point, isn�t it �irrationally� obstinate of Harry to say that �I just don�t believe� that magic can [do this thing that he just saw being done]?

quote:

Draco groaned. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to drink it but I have to investigate. Have to. How much?"

"Five Knuts the can," the stallholder said.

"Five Knuts? You can sell reality-manipulating fizzy drinks for five Knuts the can?" Harry reached into his pouch, said "four Sickles, four Knuts", and slapped them down on the counter. "Two dozen cans please."

The drink just guarantees �something surprising�, it�s hardly on the level of levitation, polymorph, or spatial manipulation. Five Knuts seems reasonable for a can of Comed-Tea.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 09:25

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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