Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

Harry had wished he could just merge with the mysterious dark side, so that he could take advantage of all its strengths without any of its flaws - without being angry or cold, and being able to Possess a clear mind and a fearless spirit.

Once again he overestimated his progress.Something happened, but Harry still had a mysterious dark side that was separate from him, and he wasn't quite as fearless as usual.And even if he repaired his own dark fear of facing death, he still didn't dare to switch to dark mode in Azkaban without protection, which was too desperate.

That's really bad luck, because a little intrepidity can definitely come in handy here.

To make matters worse, he still couldn't sit down with his back against the wall, couldn't cry, couldn't even sigh.His dear Bella was watching him, which was not something her Dark Lord would do.

"Master—" Bellatrix said.Her deep voice tightened. "Dementors—they're coming—I feel them, master—"

"Thanks, Bella," said the cool voice, "I already know."

Harry couldn't sense the hollowness of the world the way he could when he was wearing the Deathly Hallows, but he could feel a strong pull of emptiness growing.At first he thought it was because they were going downstairs, until he and Bellatrix were no longer going downstairs, and the pull continued to rise.Then the dementors get weaker as they move down the spiral staircase, then get stronger as they climb another flight of stairs...the dementors are already in Azkaban, they're coming for him.Of course they were looking for him.Harry might be able to resist the dementors now, but he wasn't hiding.

New request, Harry told the Brain, to find a way to defeat the Dementors without using the Patronus Charm.Or figure out a way for me to hide from the dementors without the cloak—

I quit, his brain said, you find another piece of brain matrix[1] that can do calculations, and let it help you solve your problems with unimaginable constraints.

I'm serious, thought Harry.

Me too, his brain said, summon your Patronus and wait for the Aurors to come to you.Be sensible.it's all over.

give up……

Thinking of this, the emptiness that sucks everything in seems to intensify; Harry realizes what's going on, and focuses harder on the stars to keep his brain from despairing—

You see, his logical side observes that if you don't allow yourself to have any negative thoughts because you can't open up to the dementors, that's also a cognitive bias, how do you know if you really should give up up?

Screams filled with desperation and whimpers rose from below, mixed with words like "don't" and "go away".Prisoners know it, prisoners feel it.

The dementors are coming.

"Master, you—you shouldn't risk it for me—take back your Invisibility Cloak—"

"Be quiet, idiot," hissed an angry voice, "I'll tell you when I decide to sacrifice you."

She was right, said Slytherin, you shouldn't risk it for her, her life couldn't possibly be more valuable than yours.

For a split second Harry considered sacrificing Bellatrix to save himself—

At that moment, some dim orange gas lamps seemed to flee the corridor, and a cold touch crept silently up Harry's fingertips.And so Harry knew that the very thought of throwing Bellatrix into the shadow of death would make him vulnerable again.Even when he hesitated, he might become unable to cast the Patronus Charm because he gave up the idea that he had previously saved his life.

Harry also thought that even if he couldn't cast the Patronus Charm, he could still get the Invisibility Cloak back from Bellatrix later; but then he had to pull his thoughts away from this option immediately, firmly He could focus on his resolve not to do it, or he might collapse on the spot.The hollow vortex around him was now terribly strong; the screaming below had stopped, and someone above had started screaming again.

It's so absurd, he said logically, that a rational person[2] shouldn't engage in this kind of thought-examination general reasoning process.All theorems assume that the way you think doesn't affect reality, only the way you act does, which is why you are free to choose the best way to calculate without worrying about how your thoughts will interact with the dementors -

……

That's a bad idea, said Gryffindor, I'm your Gryffindor side, and even I think it's a bad idea.You don't really want to just stand here and—

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"We've found it!" Ola yelled, holding up her magic mirror as if celebrating victory. "The dementors outside the inner wall pointed to the seventh floor of Building C, and they are there!"

Her Aurors watched her expectantly.

"No," said Amelia evenly, "it's just one of them. The dementors still can't find Bellatrix Black. We can't all rush in there and let her get away, We can't disperse our forces and let the enemy sneak up. As long as we continue to act carefully, we will not lose. Ask Scrimgeour and Shacklebolt to search down layer by layer, just like before-"

The old wizard was already striding forward.The barrier they carefully set up was once again separated by the old wizard like water, and then gently closed again.This time, Amelia didn't even bother to scold him.

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Harry waited at the end of the corridor, standing next to the stairs going up.Bellatrix and the snake were behind him, hidden under the Deathly Hallows in Harry's possession; although he couldn't see it, Harry knew that the thin woman was sitting on the stairs, hunched over, because ha Leigh lifted the Levitation Charm to save energy and mana.

Harry's eyes were fixed on the other end of the corridor, which led down to the stairs.This time, not in his consciousness but in reality, the lights in the hallway dimmed and the temperature plummeted.Fear swept over him like a hurricane-driven wave, the sucking emptiness turned into a massive pull, pointing all the way to some approaching black hole.

On the far stairway, in the dead air, gliding towards him was the void, the absence, the wound of the world.

And Harry expected them to stop.

With all the will and focus he could muster, Harry expected them to stop.

Expect them to stop.

Trust them to stop.

...In short, he thought so...

Harry forced a break from this dangerous reverie, and then went on to expect the dementors to stop.They are not intelligent in themselves, they are only wounds in the world, their shape and structure are borrowed from the expectations of others.People can negotiate with them, offering them victims in exchange for their cooperation, only because they believe that the dementors will be bought.So if Harry believed firmly enough that the voids would turn away, they would.

But the wounds of the world are still approaching, and the fear that swept through seems to be solidified now. The void will tear matter like consciousness, tear matter like soul, and the surrounding metal will pass through the void of the world. Will visibly start to lose its luster.

A faint voice came from behind him, it was Bellatrix, but she said nothing because she had been instructed to keep quiet.

Don't think of them as living beings, think of them as psychofeeling things, as long as I can control myself, I can control them—

The problem is that it's not so easy to control himself. He can't use his mind to force himself to believe that blue is green, and he can't suppress the idea of ​​"how irrational it is to force himself to believe something."It's almost impossible to trick yourself into believing something when you know what you're doing.All the anti-self-deception training Harry had done for himself was refusing to switch off, no matter how costly it might be in this unique case—

The shadow of death had passed halfway through the corridor, Harry raised his hand, spread his fingers, and ordered in a firm and confident voice, "Stop."

The shadow of death stopped.

Behind Harry, Bellatrix gasped in a chokehold, as if it was being forced out of her body.

Harry gestured to her, which he had programmed before, repeating what you heard the dementor say.

"They said," said Bellatrix, her voice trembling, "they said, 'Bellatrix Black has been promised to us. Tell us where she hides, and we will spare you .'"

"Bellatrix?" said Harry, making it sound like he was laughing. "She's been running for a while."

After a while, Harry realized that he should have said that Bellatrix was ambushing the Aurors on the top floor, to confuse them even more—

No, it's wrong to think that dementors can be fooled, they're just things, and what controls them is people's expectations—

"They say," said Bellatrix hoarsely, "they say they know you're lying."

The void moves forward again.

She's more convinced of her expectations than I am; she's manipulating them unconsciously—

"Don't resist," said Harry, pointing his wand behind him.

"I, I love you, goodbye, master—"

"Falling asleep."

Strangely enough, hearing those horrible words, and understanding Bellatrix's misunderstanding, made him feel better; it reminded Harry of his own reasons for fighting.

"Stop it," Harry said again.Bellatrix is ​​asleep, and now only his own will, or rather his own anticipation, controls these annihilating black holes[3]—

But they were still gliding along, and Harry couldn't help but worry that the damage to his self-confidence from the previous experience would mean that he would no longer be able to stop them, and when he noticed his thoughts, his Suspicions grow - he needs more time to prepare, he really should practice controlling a caged dementor first -

There was only a quarter of a corridor between Harry and the shadow of death now, and the wind in the void was so strong that Harry could feel the erosion starting to seep into his own space.

And then Harry starts thinking, maybe he's wrong, maybe Dementors do have desires and planning abilities of their own.Or they might be manipulated by the perceptions of everyone, not just those closest to them.anyway--

Harry drew his wand, made a Patronus gesture, and said.

"One of your kind went to Hogwarts and never came back, it is no more; the symbol of death is dead."

The dementors stopped, and the twelve world wounds stood motionless, the void screaming around them like death winds that had nowhere to go.

"Turn around and leave, don't tell anyone about this, little shadow, or I'll destroy you too."

Harry's fingers made the opening gesture of the Patronus Charm and prepared to cast it; in his mind, the earth was shining among the stars, the day side was bright azure blue reflecting the sun, and the night side was Glittering with the glimmer of human cities.Harry wasn't bluffing, not trying to play tricks on his mind.The shadows of death will come forward and be destroyed, or they will leave; he is ready for both...

Then the void retreated as smoothly as they had come, and the wind of nothingness weakened with each step they took, and they slid back down the stairs and away.

Whether they really possessed something that could be called intelligent, or if he had finally managed to expect them to leave... Harry didn't know.

But they leave.

Harry took a moment to sit down next to the unconscious Bellatrix, on the steps, and then hunched over like she had done before, closing his eyes for a moment, just for a moment, and he definitely wasn't planning on being there. Azkaban was asleep, but he needed this moment.Harry hoped the Aurors would continue slowly down the stairs, so a five-minute break wouldn't be a bad thing.Harry was careful to keep himself in pleasant positive thoughts, oh my god I'm going to be here to rest and recover and I'll feel better instead of saying, oh my god I'm drained mentally and physically I'm going to Crashed because the dementor hadn't retreated too far.

By the way, Harry told his brain, you're fired.

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"I've found him!" cried the old wizard's voice.

who?Amelia thought, and she turned around to see Dumbledore back with—

——This scene, this person, was completely beyond her expectations——

——A man in a tattered red robe, scorched as if he had just fought a small war, with many small wounds on his body, scabbed with blood.His eyes were open, and he was chewing on a bar of chocolate, which he held in his living hand.

One-armed Barry is still alive.

A shriek of joy erupted, and her Aurors lowered their wands, some already charging forward.

"Stay alert!" growled Amelia. "Check these two for fakes—check Barry for a miniature Animagus or trap—"

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"Resuscitate quickly. Wingardim, Leviosa."

There was a pause.Harry felt, though he couldn't quite see, the invisible woman standing up, turning her head to look around. "I'm alive……?"

Harry wanted so badly to say no and see how she would react.But he just hissed, "Don't ask stupid questions."

"What happened?" Bellatrix murmured.

The Dark Lord let out a wild, sharp laugh, and said, "I scared the dementors away, my dear Bella."

There was a pause.Harry wished he could see Bellatrix's face, had he said something wrong?

After a while, a trembling voice sounded, "Is it possible, my master, that in your new body, you start to care about me—"

"No," said Harry grimly, then turned away (although his wand was still pointed at her) and started walking forward. "Be careful not to offend me again, or I'll leave you here, useful or not. Follow me now, or I'll leave you; I have work to do."

Harry strode forward, not listening to the gasp behind him; he knew Bellatrix was following him.

…Because the last thing this woman needed, before the therapists started trying to dispel her instilled beliefs, the last thing she needed was to believe that it was possible that her Dark Lord loved her.

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The old wizard stroked his silver beard thoughtfully, staring at the place where Auror Barry had been carried out the door by two strong Aurors.

"Do you understand all this, Amelia?"

"No." She said simply.She suspected that there were some traps that they hadn't figured out, that's why Auror Barry was separated from the main force and guarded.

"Perhaps," said the old wizard at last, "the one of them who could cast the Patronus Charm was not just a hostage. Perhaps that one was tricked? For whatever reason, they let your Auror live down; and when we find them, let us not be the first to cast the deadly spell—"

"I understand," the old witch suddenly realized, "this is their plan. To forget him and let him survive, there is no loss for them, and we can still hesitate—" Amelia Nodding decisively, she then said to her people, "Let's continue, as before."

The old wizard sighed. "Any news from the dementors?"

"If I told you," Amelia scolded, "would you run away again?"

"It's no loss for you, Amelia," said the old wizard softly, "and perhaps save your men a fight."

To me there is no loss, save the chance for vengeance—

But that's nothing compared to everything else, and the annoying old wizard is usually right in the end, which is one of the reasons why he's so annoying.

"The dementors don't answer questions about the person they claimed to have seen before," Amelia told him. "They don't say why, and they don't say where."

Dumbledore turned to the bright phoenix on his shoulder, its light lighting up the corridor, and the phoenix shook his head in reply. "I can't detect them either," said Dumbledore.Then he shrugged. "I guess I'm going to just walk the whole building from start to finish and see if anything happens, right?"

If Amelia thought it would be of any use to stop him, she would have stopped him.

"Albus," Amelia said as the old wizard turned away, "even you can be ambushed."

"Don't talk nonsense, my dear," said the old wizard briskly, striding away again, waving his fifteen-inch wand of unidentifiable dark gray wood warningly, "I am invincible." .”

There was a pause.

("He won't really say—" murmured a young lady named Noel Currie, one of the most junior of the Aurors in attendance, bookish, who told the three of them Brooke Auror, the senior member of the team, says, "Is he serious?")

("He said nothing would happen," Isabel murmured behind her. "He's Dumbledore, and not even fate will take him seriously again.")

"And that," said Amelia heavily, for the young Aurors' good, "is why we call him as a last resort."



Harry lay motionless on the hard bench that served as a bed in his cell, a blanket over his body, trying to stay as still as possible, waiting for the fear to return.There is a Patronus approaching, very powerful.Bellatrix was hidden by the Deathly Hallows, and there was no spell that could easily see through; but Harry didn't know if the Aurors had any technology that could detect him, and he didn't dare to ask her, it would expose him ignorance.So Harry lay on his hard bed, in a locked cell with the huge metal door locked behind him, in absolute darkness, covered with a thin blanket, hoping that whoever was watching was No one should look inside, or look too carefully——

It wasn't something Harry could influence, really, this part of his fate was entirely in hidden variables.Most of his consciousness was focused on the Transfiguration he was performing.

Harry pricked up his ears in the darkness to hear a series of hurried footsteps approaching; they stopped before his door, and then—

—and move on.

Soon, the fear returned.

Harry didn't allow himself to notice that he was relaxing, nor did he allow himself to notice the fear.He's concentrating on building a Muggle device in his mind that's bigger than a car battery, and slowly giving that form to the stuff that makes up the ice cubes (Harry used icy frost to freeze a bottle of water).You couldn't transform objects into combustibles, but the thing was water, and the Bubble Charm kept them supplied with air, which Harry hoped wouldn't make him or anyone else sick.

So now there's only one question: will Harry have enough time to complete this transformation, and some of his subsequent transformations, before the Aurors go through each cell one by one—

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Even Amelia began to feel a little anxious when the old wizard strode back empty-handed.She has already teamed up with two other Aurors to search a third of the three buildings. They searched the three buildings at the same time, so that they can prevent holes in their coverage and allow people to break through the cells. We walked back and forth between the three buildings, but so far they haven't found any signs.

"May I ask you to report?" Amelia kept the anger out of her voice.

"At first, I simply walked through it from beginning to end," said the old wizard.He frowned, his face more wrinkled than usual. "I checked Bellatrix's cell, and she has a death doll in there. I don't think this escape should have been discovered in the original escape plan. There is something hidden in the corner of the cell, with a piece of Clothes covered; I didn't move, leaving it for your Aurors to inspect. On the way back, I opened every cell door and looked. I didn't see anything under the Disillusionment spell, only prisoners— —”

They were interrupted by the scream of the red and gold phoenix, and all the Aurors under her flinched.There was reproach in the screaming, and the urging demands in it almost made Amelia flee down the hallway immediately.

"—they're not doing very well," said Dumbledore softly.For a moment the blue eyes under the half-moon spectacles were cold. "Did any of you ever tell me that their actions would have this effect?"

"I didn't—" Amelia began.

"I know," said the old wizard, "I'm sorry, Amelia." He sighed. "I've checked, and the prisoners locked in recently still have some residual magic power, but I don't feel the power that hasn't been swallowed up; the strongest one's residual magic power is only equivalent to that of a first-grade child. I Heard Fox screaming in distress many times, but never accusing. Looks like you should go ahead with your search; I just took a look, and they're well hidden from my sight."

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When Harry finished his first transformation, he sat up, put the blanket back on him, cast a quick lumo flare, looked at his watch, and was shocked to see that almost an hour and a half had passed.How long it had been since someone had opened and closed the door - of course Harry wasn't looking in that direction - Harry couldn't guess about that.

"Master...?" Bellatrix's voice murmured, soft and hesitant.

"You can talk now," said Harry.He had told her before to keep quiet while he was working.

"It's Dumbledore who came to see us."

pause.

"Interesting," said Harry calmly.He's glad he didn't notice it at the time.It sounded like a close call.

Harry gave a word to his pocket, and began to pull out the magical device, which he was going to combine with what he'd spent an hour building earlier.After pulling such a thing out, he said again, and produced a tube of industrial-strength glue; before using it, Harry cast a Bubble Charm on himself and Bellatrix, and asked Bellatrix to Kex cast the same spell on the snakes so that the glue that evaporated in the closed cell would not harm them.

After the glue was applied and the technology and magic combined, Harry put it on the bed and sat on the floor to wait for a while to recover his magic and energy before moving on to the next Transfiguration.

"Master..." Bellatrix said hesitantly.

"What?" said the cold voice.

"What instrument do you make?"

Harry thought quickly.This seemed like a good opportunity to go over the plan with her, and he could use leading questions as a cover.

"Think about it, my dear Bella," said Harry smoothly, "how hard it would be for a powerful wizard to cut a hole in the walls of Azkaban?"

There was a pause, and then Bellatrix's voice sounded, slow and confused, "It's not difficult at all, Master...?"

"That's right," Bella's master shrieked coldly, "assuming someone did this, then took a broom, passed through the hole in the wall, flew high into the air, and left. The prisoners who rescued Azkaban looked Pretty easy, isn't it?"

"But master..." Bella said, "the Aurors will—they have brooms too, master, the quick kind—"

Harry listened, he had thought about that too.The Dark Lord answered, still in a smooth Socratic questioning tone, and Bellatrix went further and asked some questions Harry hadn't expected, but Harry's own rhetorical questions showed that, in the end, None of these questions matter.As for Bellatrix's final question, the Dark Lord just smiled and said that it was time and he should get back to work.

Then Harry got up from the floor of the cell, walked to the other end of the prison, and pressed his wand to the wall - the walls of Azkaban were solid metal, which protected them from direct exposure to the dementor's lair. .

Harry then proceeded to perform a partial Transfiguration.

Harry wished the spell was quicker this time, he had spent hours and hours practicing this one-of-a-kind spell, which made him perfect, and to him it was not much more difficult than ordinary Transfiguration.The total volume of his transformed shapes is not large, his transformed shapes may be tall, wide and long, but very thin.Half a millimeter would be enough, Harry thought, given the perfect smoothness...

On the bench that served as a bed in the cell, the glue holding together Harry's transformed technological equipment and magical objects was waiting to dry; on the Muggle equipment, there was a line of small, faintly glowing gold letters.Harry hadn't conjured it on purpose, but the small words had been lingering in his subconscious, so it seemed to be part of the transformed form.

Harry had a lot of different things to say before using this technologically sophisticated monumental achievement.No matter what the words are, no matter how they are interpreted, they seem to be quite appropriate.At least these were things Harry could have said, would have said, if Bellatrix hadn't been there.

But there was only one thing Harry could say, and it was the one time he could say it once, and he might never get a better chance to say it again. (Or, anyway, thought, if he couldn't get the words out.) He hadn't actually seen the movie, but he'd seen the trailer, and for some reason the words stuck in his head.

In tiny gold letters on the Muggle device read,

There you go, you primitive elm heads!Listen to me! [4]

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1. Brain substrate: en.wikipedia/wiki/Neural_substrate

2.理性人：zh.wikipedia/wiki/%E7%90%86%E6%80%A7%E4%B8%BB%E4%BD%93

3. Sphere of annihilation: Suspected to be from the DND spell to destroy a black hole, see en.wikipedia/wiki/Sphere_of_annihilation

4. From "ArmyofDarkness": imdb/title/tt0106308/"es