Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

Author's note: The version of the Dark Legion movie trailer that Harry watched is numbered on YouTube [THV1KkPXIxQ]

The key quote follows, from a modern man to a medieval audience:

"Now, you primitive elm heads! Listen to me! See? This... is my musket!"

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A boy stood in absolute darkness, pressing his wand against a solid metal wall in Azkaban, trying to perform a magic that only three people in the world believed possible, and only he could handle.

Of course, a powerful wizard could break through this wall in seconds, with just a spell, a gesture.

For a normal adult, it would take them a few minutes, and then they would catch their breath for a while.

But to get a first-year Hogwarts student to achieve the same result, you have to be a little efficient.

Fortunately—well, not luck, it has nothing to do with luck—by design, Harry took an extra hour every day to practice some Transfiguration, and he even achieved more in this class than Hermione; he's practiced part of Transfiguration to the point where he's beginning to take the real universe for granted, so with a little extra effort, he'll be able to make a firm distinction between the concept of form and the concept of material in his mind while allowing The brain is always thinking about the nature of the timeless quantum.

And the problem with this skill becoming routine is that...

…Harry could be distracted with other things while transforming.

For some reason, his mind had managed to avoid this place before confronting the obvious, and he didn't think about it until he had a few minutes left to actually get to work.

What Harry is about to do...

……very dangerous.

very dangerous.

There might really be a danger of someone dying from it.

Facing twelve dementors without a Patronus is scary, but only scary.Harry could cast the Patronus Charm, and whenever he felt he was in danger of losing his ability to cast the Patronus Charm, as soon as he felt his resistance begin to crumble, he would cast it.And even if it didn't work... Even so, unless the dementors were instructed to kiss anyone they found, failure wouldn't be fatal.

This one is different.

Muggle devices made by Transfiguration could explode, killing them.

The interface between technology and magic can be disabled in various ways and kill them.

Aurors might get lucky and shoot them down.

Anyway, well...

Very very dangerous.

Harry felt his whole mind trying to convince himself that this thing was safe.

Sure, the whole thing might work, but...

But even disregarding the part about what a rationalist must never convince himself to do, Harry knew he couldn't possibly convince himself that the probability of death was under 20 per cent.

Throw in the towel, said Hufflepuff.

Throw in the towel, said Professor Quirlow's voice in his head.

Throw in the towel, the mental models in his head[2] say, there's Hermione, there's Professor McGonagall, there's Professor Flitwick, there's Neville Longbottom, and—well, basically Harry knows Everyone's mental model, except Fred and George, who will be on in an instant.

He should just go to Dumbledore and surrender himself.That's what he should be doing, and he really, really should be doing it, and it's the only sensible thing to do at this moment.

If it was just Harry's job, if only his own life was at stake, he would do it; he certainly would.

And the part that nearly distracted him from focusing on the part of Transfiguration that put him in danger of exposing himself to the dementors...

...it is Professor Quirrell, who has not yet regained consciousness, and is still in snake form.

If Professor Quirrell was imprisoned in Azkaban for his part in this escape, he would die.He might not last a week.He is so sensitive.

It's that simple.

If Harry throws in the towel here...

He would lose Professor Quirrell.

Even if he might be the bad guy, the Hufflepuff part of him whispered, so what?

It wasn't Harry's conscious decision.He just can't do it.He can lose house points, but not people.

If you think your life is precious enough that you don't want to risk 80.00% death to protect all the prisoners in Azkaban, his Slytherin face commented, then risk 20.00% Going to save Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell just doesn't make sense.No matter how you calculate it, it is unreasonable. If the utility function [3] you used before and after is consistent, it is impossible to draw such a conclusion.

His logic indicated that Slytherin had won.

Harry continued to maintain the physical concept in his mind, and then cast the spell.It's not too late to terminate the mission after completing the transformation, he doesn't want to waste the effort he has put in.

Then something else occurred to Harry, and it suddenly made it extremely difficult to maintain both casting spells and maintaining resistance to the dementors.

What if the Portkey doesn't take us to the place Professor Quirrell says it is?

In retrospect, this is pretty obvious.

Even if the escape plan was perfectly correct, even if the Muggle equipment worked, didn't explode, didn't have any bad interactions with the combined magic item, even if the Auror didn't happen to hit it, even if Harry managed to fly out of Azkaban enough Far, far enough to use a Portkey...

...and there may not be a psychotherapist on the other side of the Portkey either.

When he still trusted Professor Quirrell, he believed that there was a psychotherapist on the other side of the Portkey, but after losing his trust in Professor Quirrell, he forgot to reassess the matter.

You can't do that, said Hufflepuff, it's just plain stupid at this point.

The room seemed to be getting colder, but Harry continued to transform, even as his resistance to the dementors began to falter.

I can't lose Professor Quirrell.

He tried to kill a police officer, Hufflepuff said, and at that point you lost him.Bellatrix might be whoever everyone thinks she is.Get back your invisibility cloak, go find Dumbledore, and tell him you've been tricked.

No, Harry thought desperately, not until I've talked to Professor Quirrell, maybe he'll explain, I don't know, maybe he's too far from my Patronus, the dementors are affecting him... I don't understand, this Doesn't fit any hypothesis, why would he do that... I can't just...

Before his resistance to fear was completely overwhelmed, Harry pulled his consciousness out of this train of thought, because he couldn't decide to fight death while thinking about feeding Professor Quirrell to the dementors, which was a cognitive inadequacy. possible.

Your reasoning has been artificially weakened, his logical part observed calmly, find a way to fix it.

Well, let's think about the other options, Harry thought, no choice, no consideration, certainly no decision... just think about what else I could do besides my original plan.

Harry then proceeded to dig holes in the wall.He was partially transfiguring a thin cylinder of metal, two meters in diameter and half a millimeter thick, completely penetrating the wall.He's transforming this half-millimeter-thick metal into motor oil.Motor oil is a liquid and you can't warp things into a liquid because the liquid might evaporate, but he and Bellatrix and the snake have the Bubble Head Charm.And Harry would immediately cast the spell on Oil afterwards, canceling his own Transfiguration...

…after the lubricated and dismembered chunks of metal broke away from the wall and fell to the floor of their cell.The metal face of his transformation was sloped so that once the transformation was complete, gravity would pull it down.

If Harry and Bellatrix hadn't been riding on his broom and flying out through the hole in the wall...

Harry's brain suggested that he could try to morph a surface to cover the hole in the wall, leaving space for Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell to hide in with the cloak, and then Harry turned himself in .Once Professor Quirrell is awake, he and Bellatrix can try to figure out how they can get out of Azkaban by themselves.

First, it's a bad idea, and then, there's still going to be a big lump of metal on the cell floor, which would give them away.

Then Harry's brain hit the most obvious answer.

Let Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell use your escape route.You stay and surrender.

Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell are the ones whose lives are in danger.

For them, taking this risk is a gain, not a loss.

And Harry had no reason - no sensible reason at all to go with them.

Harry calmed down at the thought, the cold and darkness that throbbed at the edge of his consciousness receded.That's right, that's it, this is the innovative way out of the box, and this is the hidden third option.In retrospect, the wrong spot for the dilemma is obvious.If Harry turned himself in, he didn't have to take Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell with him.If Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell had used a dangerous escape route, Harry didn't need to follow them.

If he ordered Bellatrix to have his memory removed, Harry wouldn't even have to face the embarrassment of admitting he'd been tricked.Everyone just assumed he had been kidnapped, including Harry himself.Admittedly, there was no plausible reason for the Dark Lord to let Bellatrix do this; but Harry could just laugh, tell Bellatrix she wasn't allowed to know, and it would be done...

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Her Auror team and two other teams in the other two towers had searched three-quarters of Azkaban.Amelia was already getting nervous, but she still bet on the penultimate floor, thinking that the prisoner was hiding there.Part of her wished Dumbledore had thought of examining the floor more closely, and part of her was glad he hadn't.

Then there was a distant sound that sounded like a "ding" from far away.If you want to say it, it seems to be a loud noise from the penultimate floor.

Before she could react, before she had time to stop herself, Amelia had unconsciously looked at Dumbledore.

The old wizard shrugged, gave her a flat smile, and said, "Since you asked, Amelia." Then he left again.

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"Curse Stop," Harry said to the oil covering the large metal block on the ground.He could barely hear what he was saying, his ears were still buzzing: the solid metal that had just slid off the wall and landed on the floor with a loud bang. (In retrospect, he should have used a Silence Charm first, though that didn't stop the noise from propagating through the metal floor.) Harry then turned to the oil covering the two-meter-wide hole in the wall. Saying "Curse stops immediately" spreads the effect; what Harry cancels is his own magic, so the spell is effortless to cast.Harry was a bit tired now, but this would be the last time he used magic.He didn't even need to do that, really, but Harry didn't want the transfigured fluid to stay here, nor did he want to reveal part of Transfiguration's secrets.

It looked very... tempting, a hole two meters wide, leading to freedom.

The light coming in from outside... the light on his face wasn't technically sunlight, but it was brighter than anything inside Azkaban.

Harry was indeed drawn, and just hopped on the broom with Bellatrix and the snake.Most of them will get out safely.And if they did get out safely, and Harry followed them, then he and Professor Quirrell could go back in time, pretend to be completely innocent, and everything would be back to normal.

If Harry stays and turns himself in... Well, even if everyone assumes that Harry is a hostage, that Harry was being pointed at with a wand when he lied to Professor McGonagall... Even if Harry gets away easily, even so...

It is also unlikely that the Defense Professor will continue to teach at Hogwarts.

The defense professor's career will come to an end that is destined to come to an end in February of this academic year.

And yes, Professor McGonagall would kill Harry, and yes, he would die a slow and painful death.

But staying behind was the smart, safe, rational choice, and Harry was more relaxed than sorry about it.

Harry turned to Bellatrix; he opened his mouth, instructing her one last time—

Then there was a hiss, a faint hiss, sounding slow and confused, and the hiss said,

"What kind of sound is this...?"

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The old wizard strode down the corridor.He came to a metal door and opened it, knowing from memory that the cell was empty.

Then the old wizard cast seven powerful and excellent spells, and went on to examine the next door; and the spells would add up to very little effort, for there were only a few cells left unexamined.

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"Master," Harry hissed in Parseltongue.There were so many emotions rushing through him at once.He knew, though he couldn't see it, that the green snake on Bellatrix's shoulder lifted its head slowly and looked around. "Are you still... okay, teacher?"

"Teacher?" said a faint, confused hiss. "Where is this?"

"Prison," Harry hissed, "a prison full of life-eaters, and we're here to save a woman, you and me. You try to kill the guards, I block your killing curse, and there's something between us." Resonated...you're unconscious, I'll have to knock down the guard myself...my Guardian Charm is removed, and the Life Eater may have told the guard that the woman has escaped. Someone could feel my Guardian Charm, maybe the Headmaster... So I have to remove my ward and find other ways to hide you and this woman from life eaters without a ward, learn to protect yourself without a ward, and learn to protect yourself without a ward scare away the Life Eater without a situation, then devise a new escape plan for you and that woman, and end up cutting a hole in a prison-thick metal wall, even though I'm only a first-year student. No time to explain, You must go now. If we never see each other again, teacher, I am glad to have known you during this time, even if you may be a bad person. It is good to still have the opportunity to say so much: goodbye."

Then Harry handed the broom to Bellatrix and simply said, "Up."

He decided to keep his memory anyway.On the one hand, these memories are important.On the other hand, he and the Defense Professor had started planning this a week ago, and Harry didn't want to forget about the whole week, or explain to Bellatrix which memories to clear.Harry might be able to outwit Veritaserum, and if Dumbledore insisted that Harry remove his Occlumency barrier and take a deeper test... well, at least Harry was acting heroically throughout.

"Stop!" said the snake.It got louder. "Stop, stop, stop! What do you mean, goodbye?"

"The escape plan is risky," Harry said in Parseltongue, "I'm not in danger, just you and her. So I'm here to turn myself in—"

"No!" The snake hoarsely said, "Absolutely not! Not allowed!"

Bellatrix got on the broom; Harry felt (but couldn't see) her head turned to him, and she said nothing.Maybe it was waiting for him, or just waiting for his order.

"Don't trust you anymore," Harry said simply in Parseltongue. "You tried to kill the guards. Don't trust you anymore."

The snake hissed, "I didn't mean to kill the guard! Are you an idiot, boy? It doesn't make sense to kill him, bad or not!"

The earth's rotation stopped for a while, and it stopped in the orbit around the sun.

The snake's hiss now sounded more outrageous than anything Harry had ever heard from Professor Quirrell in human form. "Kill him? If I want to kill him, he will die in a few seconds, silly boy, he is not my opponent at all! I want to conquer him, dominate him, and force him to remove the barriers in his consciousness. I need to read his heart , know who is waiting for his reply, and use the memory spell to get the details—”

"You cast a death curse!"

"Know that he will escape!"

"Is his life so worthless? What if he didn't escape?"

"Will push him away with my own magic, silly boy!"

The motion of the planets stopped again.Harry didn't expect this.

"The foolish schemer apprentice," the snake hissed, in a voice so angry that hisses overlapped each other, slipping at the end of each sentence, "smart retarded, cunning fool, untrained idiot Slater Lin, your ill-timed distrust has ruined—”

"It's not fair to argue at this point," Harry pointed out peacefully, in Parseltongue.The relief that was about to fill him was now counterbalanced by rising tension. "I can't get mad at you, or let the Life Eater take advantage of it. Must hurry, someone might hear the noise—"

"Explain the escape plan," said the snake savagely, "quick!"

Harry began to explain.There was no word for Muggle technology in Parseltongue, but Harry described the function, and Professor Quirrell seemed to understand.

There were a few short hisses, which to the snake amounted to a short surprised laugh, followed by snapped orders. "Tell the woman to look aside, cast a silencer spell, put a ward over the door. Will shapeshift myself, make a quick improvement on your invention, give the woman an emergency potion so she can cover us, before you remove the ward Then change back. This plan will be safer."

"And then I have to believe," Harry hissed in Parseltongue, "that there really is a healer for that woman waiting for us?"

"Use your brains, boy! Say I'm a bad person. Abandoning you here was clearly not my plan. The mission was a whim, after seeing your warding spell. When we left the eating place, the whole thing should have Unnoticed, no trace. Of course you'll see someone pretending to be a therapist at your destination! Then go back to the place to eat and plan to get back on track!"

Harry stared at the invisible snake.

On the one hand, it would make Harry feel stupid to say something like that.

On the other hand, the words just now made people feel uneasy.

"So," Harry hissed in Parseltongue, "what exactly are your plans for me, exactly?"

"You say you don't have time," the snake hissed, "but the plan is for you to rule the country, so obvious that even your young aristocratic friend should understand by now, and you can go back and ask him if you want. Start now Stop talking, it's takeoff time, not talking time."

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The old wizard walked towards another metal door, behind him was the endless murmur of death, "I'm not serious, I'm not serious, I'm not serious..." The golden-red phoenix on his shoulders had already let out an urgent scream sound, and the old wizard had begun to frown, and—

Another cry cut through the hallway, it was the creature that looked like a phoenix but wasn't really a phoenix.

The wizard turned his head to look at the shining silver creature on his other shoulder, and at the same time, a pair of fleeting invisible claws kicked, causing the entity condensed by the spell to fly.

The fake phoenix flew down the corridor.

The old wizard hurriedly followed, his legs treading like a lively 60-year-old youth.

The real phoenix called once, twice, three times, and circled in front of the metal door; then, when it realized that its master would not come back because of its cry, it flew hesitantly.

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Professor Quirrell turned back into his real body this time - without the tonic, the polyjuice potion can only last for an hour - although the professor of defense is pale and leaning against the nearest metal bar of the cell, his magic power is still strong enough Retrieving the wand without a sound, at the same time Bellatrix took off the cloak and handed it obediently into Harry's hands.As soon as Professor Quirrell's power came back, the feeling of imminent disaster also came back. Although it was not that strong, the edge of the huge power still hit Harry's small immature domain.

Harry shouted out the instructions for his Muggle equipment, pointing out the names of the wizards who were watching, and with a spell, Harry turned all his hard work back into ice.Professor Quirrell couldn't cast a spell on something Harry had transformed, because their magic couldn't interact, no matter how light, but—

Three seconds later, Professor Quirrell was holding his own transformed Muggle device.With a flick of his wand and a short utterance, the remaining glue disappeared from the magic object; three more spells followed, magic and technology merged, merged into one, and the unbreakable and seamless spell was cast On to the Muggle device.

(Harry is much more relaxed doing this under adult supervision.)

A bottle of potion was thrown to Bellatrix, and Professor Quirrell and Harry ordered, "Drink it," at the same time, as if speaking from the same person.The haggard woman had already raised the potion to her lips without hesitation; anyone could tell that the snake's Animagus was a servant of the Dark Lord, powerful and trusted.

Harry put the hood of the Invisibility Cloak over his head.

A brief but terrifying surge of magic from the Defense Professor's wand corroded the hole in the wall and etched the huge metal block that lay in the room; Harry had asked for it, he said he had used it May be recognized.

"The left glove," said Harry to his pocket, and he took out the glove and put it on.

The Defense Professor made a gesture, and a saddle appeared on Bellatrix's shoulders, and another gesture, and there was a small cloth thing in her hand, and at the same time the woman finished the potion, her Something resembling handcuffs appeared on the wrist.

A strange, unhealthy red appeared on Bellatrix's pale face, she straightened up, her sunken eyes looked a little brighter, a lot more dangerous...

...a small puff of steam came out of her ear...

(Harry decided not to think about that part.)

…and then Bellatrix Black laughed, a sudden, maniacal laugh that echoed in the tiny cell of Azkaban, too loud.

(The defense professor said that soon Bellatrix would lose consciousness and then faint for a while, which was a side effect of the potion she drank; but during this time, she was able to regain about 20.00% of the had power.)

The Defense Professor threw his wand at Bellatrix, who immediately melted into a green snake.

Immediately after this the terror of the dementor returned to the room.

Bellatrix flinched only a little as she seized her wand and gestured silently; the snake flew up and burrowed into the saddle on her back.

Harry said "Up!" to the broom.

Bellatrix slung her wand back into the cloth sheath in her hand.

Harry jumped into the lead position on the tandem broom.

Bellatrix followed him, taking the handcuff-like device on her wrist and handcuffing her hands to the broomstick while Harry's right hand pocketed his wand.

Then the three of them rushed forward, through the hole in the wall—

—exposed to the open air, directly over the dementor lair, right in the middle of the great triangular prism of Azkaban, the blue sky now clearly visible above them, casting the light of day.

Harry adjusted the angle of the broom and began to accelerate upwards, facing the triangular space.His left hand, gloved so as not to allow direct skin contact with what Professor Quirrell had transformed, was now gripping the controls of the Muggle device.

In the sky far away from them, several indistinct shouts sounded.

There you go, you primitive elm heads!

Aurors on racing broomsticks angled in the sky and swooped down on them, faint flashes of light already starting to flash down - the first spell had fired.

Listen to me!

"Extreme armor protection!" Bellatrix growled hoarsely, and then laughed shrilly, as the blue-shining shields surrounded them.

did you see it?

From the decaying lair at the heart of Azkaban, hundreds of dementors rise into the air, to some a mass of skeletons and a flying graveyard; to another a confluence of emptiness bodies, they looked like the world had been ripped open as they slid upward.

This……

The old and powerful wizard roared a terrifying spell, and a huge cluster of platinum-golden flames burst out, shooting out of the hole in the wall of Azkaban, and after a while, the invisible flames formed wings.

Just ...

The Aurors then activated the Anti-Gravity Curse in the Azkaban exclusion zone, disabling any flying spells that didn't have the last-changed password attached.

The lift of Harry's broom was switched off.

On the other hand, gravity is still there.

The ascent of their brooms slowed down, began to slow down, and began to turn into a downward process.

mine……

But the spells that made the broom point in a certain direction and allowed the broom to be manipulated, the spells that kept the rider on the broom from falling off and somewhat protected them from acceleration, were still working.

broom!

Harry pushes the settings in combination with his Nimbus X200 tandem broom, made by Universal Technologies[4], model Berserker PFRC[5], class N, ammonium perchlorate compound jet, solid fuel rocket ignition switch.

Noise erupts.

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[1] The English words of boomstick and broomstick are only one letter apart

[2] Mental model (mentalmodel): baike.baidu/view/1537221.htm?fr=aladdin

[3]效用函数：wiki.mbalib/wiki/%E6%95%88%E7%94%A8%E5%87%BD%E6%95%B0

[4] GeneralTechnics: a DIY fan organization composed of sci-fi fans, see mystery/gt/

[5] This is suspected to be a tribute to a mad scientist society at MTU: pfrc.students.mtu.edu/wiki/Berserker