Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

The stairs to the top of Ravenclaw are long, slow and difficult.From the inside, the staircase seems to go straight up, but if you look at it from the outside, you understand that logically it must be a spiral.This long climb is the only way to the top of Ravenclaw Tower, there are no shortcuts, one has to go up stone steps; and Harry is lifting his tired legs up, step by step these stone steps Step on your feet.

Harry sent Hermione safely back to sleep.

He spent some extra time in the Ravenclaw common room and collected a few signatures, which might help Hermione later.Not many students signed; wizards are not trained in Muggle science and don't know the principles of "prove it with your actions or keep your mouth shut" and "take the risk of predicting or don't pretend to believe your theories" .Most people don't even understand, dare not sign a promise that if they're wrong, Hermione can make it their life's excuse, and the contradiction between the two attitudes of believing she's guilty on the surface .But even just asking for an autograph was useful when the truth came out, and if anyone was to speculate about Hermione's dark side, it was proof enough.At least she doesn't have to go through this twice.

Harry then hurried out of the common room, as it was getting harder and harder to remember the kind and forgiving emotions he had reasoned out.Sometimes Harry felt that the deepest split in his personality had nothing to do with his dark side, but the tension between the selfless and tolerant Harry who reasoned abstractly and the angry and frustrated Harry who lived in the moment.

The circular platform at the top of the Ravenclaw Tower is not the highest place in Hogwarts, but the Ravenclaw Tower is outside the main body of the castle, so it cannot be seen from the top of the Astronomy Tower.It's a quiet place to think, if you have a lot to think about.Few other students come here - if all you need is privacy, there are other more convenient options.

The torches lit at Hogwarts at night are far below.There was little on the landing to obscure the view; the stairs ended not with a door but with an uncovered exit in the floor.Here, at this moment, the stars could not be seen more clearly from Earth.

The boy lay down in the center of the platform, resting his head on the flagstones, not caring that it might stain his robes; and just like that, reality became starry, save for the faintly visible crenellations and a crescent moon at the edge of vision.

In the dark velvet sky, the stars twinkled, swayed, and brightened again, a different kind of beauty than the steady and dazzling light of Christmas Eve.

Harry stared absently, thinking of other things.

Your war with Voldemort begins today...

This is what Dumbledore said after he rescued Bellatrix from Azkaban.It was a false alarm, but the words expressed his feelings well.

Two nights ago, his war had begun, and Harry didn't know who the enemy was.

Dumbledore, thinking it was Voldemort who had risen from the dead, launched his first attack on the boy who had defeated him last time.

Professor Quirrell cast a monitoring spell on Draco because he was worried that Hogwarts' crazy headmaster was trying to kill Lucius' son and then plant it on Harry.

Maybe the whole thing was designed by Professor Quirrell, and that's why he knew where to find Draco.Severus Snape thought the Hogwarts Defense Professor was an obvious suspect, even the obvious only suspect.

And Severus Snape himself was totally unreliable.

Someone had waged war on Harry, and their first attack was aimed at taking out Draco and Hermione at the same time, and Harry barely managed to save Hermione.

You can't count it as a win.Draco left Hogwarts, and even though it wasn't the same as dying, Harry didn't know how to bring it back, and it was hard to say what Draco would be like when he returned.Magical Britain now considers Hermione an attempted murder, which may or may not make her make the sane choice to get out of here.Harry sacrificed all his possessions to recover the loss, and this card can only be played once.

Some unknown force attacked him, and even though he was partly blocked, it still dealt him an extremely heavy blow.

At least his dark side wasn't asking for anything for rescuing Hermione.Maybe it's because his dark side isn't an imaginary voice like Hufflepuff's; Harry might imagine his Hufflepuff part asking him for such and such, but his dark side isn't Such.His "dark side", as far as Harry knows, is a state Harry is sometimes in.At the moment, Harry isn't angry; asking what "Dark Harry" wants is like a phone call that goes unanswered.The idea is even a little weird; can you owe a favor to a certain state of yourself?

Harry looked up at the sky full of stars, and the human brain couldn't help but map these scattered twinkling lights into imaginary constellations.

And the oath Harry made.

Draco will help Harry reform Slytherin house.And Harry would use his best judgment as a rationalist to treat Narcissa Malfoy's killer as an enemy.If Narcissa had never done anything bad, if she had indeed been burned alive, if the killer hadn't been tricked—that was all the conditions Harry remembered.He probably should have written those terms down, or better yet, hadn't made the promise in such a goofy situation in the first place.

For those who are willing to make excuses, there are plausible excuses.Dumbledore did not confess.He didn't just jump out and say he did it.A factually guilty Dumbledore might have legitimate reasons for doing so.But you'd see the same thing if Narcissa had been burned by someone else and Dumbledore had just taken on the reputation of murder.

Harry shook his head, flattening one side of his hair on the flagstones, then the other.There was also a final way out, Draco could still lift the oath from him at any time.He could at least explain the whole situation to Draco the next time they met, and talk to him about the options available.There was little chance of Draco breaking the bond - but at the moment, being honest about the possibility had satisfied the part of him that insisted on keeping the oath.Even if it just means procrastination, it's better than making a good person your enemy.

But is Dumbledore a good guy?asked the Hufflepuff voice.If Dumbledore burns people alive - isn't the point of the matter that good people may kill, but never torture to death?

Maybe he killed her right away, said the Slytherin in him, and lied to Lucius that she was burned alive.But...if the Death Eaters have any chance of magically finding out how Narcissa died...if caught lying it would put justice's family at risk...

Watch out, we're making clever excuses, Gryffindor warned.

You have to anticipate that people's attitudes towards you will have something to do with your reputation, Hufflepuff said.If you think there's good reason to burn a woman alive, a predictable side effect is that the good guys think you've crossed the line and must be stopped.Dumbledore should have thought of that.He has no right to complain.

Or maybe he expects us to be smart, Slytherin said.From what we know now—regardless of the specifics of the whole thing—can we really believe that Dumbledore was a terrible man who deserved to be our enemy?Because Dumbledore burned alive an enemy civilian during a bloody and terrible war?It's only evil by comic book standards, not at all in real history.

Harry looked up at the night sky, reflecting on history.

In real life, in real wars...

In World War II, there was an operation to destroy the Nazi nuclear weapons program.A few years ago, Leo Szilard [1], the first scientist to realize the possibility of a fission chain reaction, persuaded Fermi not to publish his discovery that purified graphite was a cheap and effective neutron moderator. [2] Fermi originally wanted to publish it because it was great international scientific research that was above patriotism.But Szilard persuaded the rabbi,[3] and Fermi complied with the majority vote of their three-person research group.And so, until years later, the only neutron moderator known to the Nazis was deuterium.

The only source of deuterium under Nazi control was in occupied Norway, and the Nazis overran the facility by dropping bombs and taking hostages, killing a total of 24 civilians.

The Nazis attempted to transport purified deuterium to Germany on a civilian Norwegian ferry called the SF Waterway. [4]

Knut Hokelly and his assistants were discovered by the night watchmen on the civilian ferry when they sneaked into the deck to wreak havoc.Hao Kaili told the night watchman that they were escaping from the Gestapo, and the night watchman let them go.Hao Kelly considered whether to warn the night watchman, but this would put the whole mission in danger, so Hao Kelly just shook his hand.The civilian ferry sank in the deepest part of the lake, killing eight Germans, seven crew members and three civilians.Some Norwegian rescuers believed that the German soldiers should be allowed to drown, but this view was not supported by the majority, so the German survivors were also rescued.This operation ended the Nazi nuclear weapons program.

That is, Knut Hokelly killed innocent people.One of them - the ship's night watchman - was a good man.Out of kindness and the highest moral principles, he risked danger to help Hao Kaili, but was drowned because of it.Since then, in the cold light of history, the Nazis have always seemed far from building the atomic bomb.

Harry had never seen a book that thought Kelly Hao was wrong.

That's what war is like in real life.In terms of total losses and deaths, Kelly Hao did a lot worse than Dumbledore, regardless of whether Dumbledore burned Narcissa Malfoy alive, or deliberately leaked the prophecy to Voldemort, let him go Attack Harry's parents.

If Kelly Hao was a superhero in the comics, he would have managed to get all the civilians off the ferry, and would have directly attacked the German soldiers...

...instead of letting any innocent person die...

...and yet Knut Hokelly is not a superhero.

Neither was Albus Dumbledore.

Harry closed his eyes, swallowed hard several times, suppressing the sudden lump in his throat.For a split second, it's all too obvious that while Harry is trying to live up to the ideals of the Enlightenment, it's Dumbledore who's actually been through the war.If you're a scientist living in a soap bubble of armor that the police and fighters have created for you, giving you the luxury of questioning them, then such nonviolent idealism is worthless.Albus Dumbledore was as idealistic as Harry at first, maybe even stronger; and Dumbledore didn't manage to survive the war without killing his enemies or sacrificing his friends.

Are you really so much stronger than Kelly and Dumbledore, Harry Potter, that you can fight without causing any deaths?Even in the world of comics, superheroes like Batman seem to succeed only because readers only notice when important, named characters die, and it doesn't feel right when the Joker shoots nameless passers-by to show off his evilness. arrived. [5] Batman is equally a murderer as the Joker, because he could have saved all these lives by killing the Joker.That's what the man named Alastor tried to tell Dumbledore, and Dumbledore later regretted it took him so long to change his mind.Are you really going to try to follow in the footsteps of superheroes, never sacrifice a pawn, never kill an enemy?

Wearily, Harry pulled his mind away from this dilemma for a moment, and opened his eyes again to gaze at the hemispherical night sky, which required no decision from him.

At the edge of his field of vision was the pale white crescent, from which the light had set off 1.25 seconds ago, about 375 kilometers from Earth, almost at the same time.

Flanked above the night sky is Polaris; it was the first star Harry learned to recognize and can be found along the handle of the Big Dipper's spoon.It's actually a system of five stars, with a particularly bright supergiant in the middle, 434 light-years from Earth.It was the first 'star' Harry had learned his name from his father, so long ago that Harry couldn't even guess how old he was.

That hazy mist was the Milky Way, made up of billions and billions of distant stars that looked like a blurred river of stars.The diameter of this galaxy is 100 light-years.If Harry had been surprised when he first found out, he was too young to remember, even if it was only a few years ago.

At the center of Andromeda is Andromeda, which is actually the Andromeda galaxy.This is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, 240 million light-years from Earth, and has about a trillion billion stars in it.

Such a number would dwarf 'infinity' because 'infinity' is so empty.Compared with calculating how many meters is 240 million light-years, imagining stars are 'infinitely far away' from us is less scary. 240 million light years, multiplied by 100 million seconds per year, multiplied by the moving speed of photons at 300 meters per second...

It is strange to think that such a distance may not be insurmountable.But there's magic in the universe, with things like time-turners and broomsticks.Has any wizard ever measured a Portkey, or a Phoenix's speed?

Moreover, human beings' understanding of magic is far from discovering its inner laws.What can you do with magic if you really understand it?

A year ago, my father was invited to speak at an academic conference at the Australian National University in Canberra, and he took his mother and Harry with him.Together they visited the National Museum of Australia because, they found, there was basically nothing else to do in Canberra.Those glass display cases housed Aboriginal Australian catapults—what looked like giant wooden shoehorns, only polished, carved and decorated.4 years after anatomically modern humans migrated from Asia to Australia, no one has invented the bow and arrow.This gives you a real sense of how non-obvious the concept of progress is.If all the heroic stories in history are about great warriors and defenders, but not Thomas Edison, how can you possibly think that inventions matter?Who could have guessed that one day humans would invent spaceships and use nuclear energy when they were carefully crafting catapults?

Is it possible for you to look up at the sky, look at the blinding light of the sun, and deduce that there is something more powerful in the universe than a mere fire?Did you realize that humans could one day tap the same energy source as the sun if only basic physics allowed it?Even if you can't imagine how to do it with a catapult or a woven bag—you can't find it by running on the savannah, you can't get it by hunting animals—you can't even imagine it?

Modern Muggles are nowhere near the limits indicated by Muggle physics.However, just as the primitive men of the gatherers and hunters were conceptually imprisoned by the catapult, so most Muggles live in a world limited by the capabilities of the car and the telephone.Although Muggle physics clearly points to the possibility of molecular nanotechnology, or energy extraction from black holes via the Penrose process [6], most people still associate them with fairy tales and history books in their minds, Far away from their personal reality: long ago, far away, as far away as ever.So it's no surprise that the wizarding world is conceptually limited—not by fundamental magical principles, which no one even knows what—but by the superficial rules of known spells and spells.If you look at the use of magic today, it's impossible not to think of the National Museum of Australia once you realize what you're seeing.Even if Harry's initial guess is wrong, it's hard to imagine anyway that the fundamental laws of this universe include a special case requiring human lips to say "Wingardium, Leviosa".And through such a superficial understanding, magic can do what Muggle physics thinks should never be possible: time converter, using clear water like a spring to conjure water out of nothing.If the laws of this universe allow an 11-year-old to break nearly every limitation of Muggle physics with a stick, what might we end up inventing?

Like a gatherer and hunter looking up at the sun and guessing that the way the universe was formed must have included nuclear power...

That would make you guess, maybe 20 meters is not a very long distance.

When he has enough time to calm down and is in the right environment, he can go one step further than the Harry of abstract reasoning; this is beyond the Harry of abstract reasoning, and beyond the Harry of living in the moment .By looking up at the stars, you can try to imagine how the distant descendants of humanity will view your dilemma—a hundred million years from now, when the giant galactic motion will move the stars to completely different positions, and each constellation will spread out.According to the basic principle of probability, if you know in advance what answer you will give after receiving future evidence, you should choose this answer immediately.If you know your destination, you've already arrived.By the same token—although it is not a theorem—if you can guess how the descendants of man will think about something, you should take it as your own best guess.

From this vantage point, killing two-thirds of the Wizengamot is far less appealing than it was a few hours ago.Even if you had to, even if you were absolutely sure it was the best outcome for magical Britain, the whole of history would be worse if you didn't... Even if it had to, the death of sentient beings still is a tragedy.Another sad thing on earth; the oldest earth from which it all began, long ago, far away, as far away as ever.

He's not like Grindelwald.He has no humanity left.You must destroy him.Save your anger for that time, and only for that time—

Harry shook his head slightly, tilting the stars in his field of vision a little.He lay on the flagstone floor, looking up, out, into the future.Even if Dumbledore is right, the real enemy is completely insane and evil... In [-] million years, the organic life known as Voldemort and the rest of the lost children of ancient earth may not look very different. big difference.Whatever Voldemort had done to himself, no matter how horrific and irreparable the dark rituals were by mere human standards, it was not beyond the reach of technology a hundred million years later.Killing him—even if you have to do so to save other life—is just another death that will make future intelligent beings sad.How could you possibly believe any other answer when looking up at the stars?

Harry looked up at the twinkling eternal stars, wondering how the children of the children of men would think what Dumbledore might have done to Narcissa.

But even if you try to ask the question from this angle, what the descendants of man would think, you still have to rely on your own knowledge and not their knowledge to get the answer.The answer still comes from your heart and can still be wrong.If you don't know what the hundredth digit of pi is, you won't know how the descendants of the descendants of the descendants will calculate it, though the fact itself is trivial.

——————————————————————————————

Slowly—he had been lying there, looking at the stars, longer than originally planned—Harry sat up from the floor.He stood up on his hands and walked to the edge of the ledge at the top of Ravenclaw, every muscle in his body protesting.The battlements surrounding the edge of the tower were not very high and were not safe.Obviously these battlements are just a marker, not a guardrail.Harry didn't come very close to the edge; there was no need to risk it.He looked down at the Hogwarts floor and felt, as expected, a bout of dizziness, that weakness in the legs known as acrophobia.His mind seemed to be frightened because the ground below felt so far away.Most likely a full 50 meters.

The moral of the incident seems to be that things have to be incredibly close for your brain to really comprehend in order to feel the fear.

Few brains feel strongly about anything if it's not near at hand, imminent, within reach, close by...

Once upon a time, Harry had thought that going to Azkaban required careful planning, the cooperation of an adult accomplice.Portkeys, brooms, invisibility spells.Manage to escape the Auror's attention and get to the bottom floor, let him walk into the abyss in the center of the prison, where the shadow of death lies.

That's enough to put the plan on hold for the future, safely out of the present.

He didn't realize until today that it's very simple, just find Fox and tell Phoenix that it's time.

Memories came flooding back again, memories Harry hadn't been able to get out of his mind for long.Even though the stone under my feet is not smooth metal, and even though I am surrounded by a moonlit night sky, for some reason, it is still easy to imagine myself trapped in a long metal corridor under the dim yellow light.

It was a quiet night, so quiet that the voice of memories could be heard clearly.

No, I didn't mean to, please don't die!

No, I didn't mean to, please don't die!

Don't take it, don't don't don't-

The world blurred, and Harry wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

If Hermione was behind that door—

If Hermione was sent to Azkaban, Harry would call up the phoenix and go there and burn all the dementors to death, no matter how crazy it was, or whatever else he wanted to do with his life.That's just—that's—that's what it is.

And the woman really locked behind that door—isn't there someone, somewhere, who is precious to him or her?Isn't the reason Harry's brain didn't force himself to go to Azkaban to save her anyway just because of the distance between Harry's life and her?What will prevent him from sitting idly by?Does he need to know her face?Know her name?Know her favorite colors?Would he have to go to Azkaban to rescue Tracy Davis anyway?Would he have to rescue Professor McGonagall anyway?Mom and Dad—that's for sure.The woman said she was a mother.How many people desire to have the power to destroy Azkaban?How many prisoners of Azkaban dreamed of a miraculous rescue every night?

not even one.It's a happy thought.

Maybe he really should go to Azkaban.Just find Fox and tell him it's time.Picture the heart of the Dementor Pit he'd seen on the broom in his mind, and let the phoenix take him there.Cast a real Patronus Charm at close range and let it go to hell with what happens next.

All he had to do was go to Fox.

In fact, it may be very simple, as long as you think about the flame and summon the fire bird in your heart——

A star shone for a moment in the night sky.

Harry's meteor-trained eyes jumped in reflex, and another part of him wondered that the astronomical phenomenon was still going on; the light of a dim star was slowly getting brighter.For a moment, Harry wondered in amazement what he saw, not a meteor, but a nova or a supernova - can you watch them brighten like that?Is the first stage of a nova this orange-yellow light?

Then the nova moved again and seemed to get bigger and brighter.Suddenly, it seemed closer, not so far away that the distance was meaningless.Like when you think it's a star, it's actually an airplane, a shiny thing you can see the shape of...

...no, not a plane...

Mingwu's feeling seemed to start from Harry's chest, waves of tingling pain spread outward, and he began to sweat.

...is a bird.

A shrill cry pierced the night sky and echoed across the roof of Hogwarts Castle.

The gradually approaching creature left a trail of flames in the air, its powerful wings fluttered up and down, and golden flames like sparks fell from the feathers.It flew up in a wide arc, and came to a halt a few steps in front of Harry; the flames behind it dimmed, but the creature did not, and remained bright; as if illuminated by an invisible sun. On it, illuminating it.

Huge wings glow red like the setting sun, and eyes are like blazing pearls, burning with golden fire and determination.

The phoenix's beak opened and it let out a loud cry, which Harry understood as clearly as if it were human language:

come on!

The boy involuntarily backed away from the edge of the roof, his eyes still fixed on the phoenix, his stiff body trembling, his hands clenched into fists and then loosened; he backed away, backed away.

Phoenix let out another long cry, an urgent, pleading voice.This time not through words, but through emotion, a resonance of all Harry's feelings about Azkaban, all desires for action.That desperate desire to act now, to act now, without further delay, is spoken in the song of this bird.

let's go.it's time.It was the voice of Harry's heart, not the words of the Phoenix; it came from so deep inside that it didn't have a separate name like 'Gryffindor'.

Just step forward and grab the phoenix's paw, and it will take him where he needs to go, where he always thought he should go, down into the abyss at the heart of Azkaban.Harry could picture this scene with unbelievable clarity, imagine himself suddenly smiling with joy and relief, putting aside all fear, and choosing—

"But I—" whispered Harry, not paying attention to what he was saying.The phoenix flapped its huge wings and stopped in the air. Harry raised his trembling hand and wiped away the tears from his eyes, "But I——I have other people who must be saved, other things that must be done—"

The Firebird let out a long, sharp cry, and the boy flinched, as if he had been punched.This is not an order, not an objection, but an understanding of the facts—

A hallway illuminated by dim lights.

Harry's chest was constricting, and he felt an urge to do it now, to get it over with.He might die, but if he didn't he would feel clean again.Let his principles be more than excuses for inaction.This is his life.As long as he wants, he can use it however he wants.As long as he wants, he can do it anytime...

...if he's not a good guy.

——————————————————————————————

The boy stood on the roof, his eyes fixed on the two fires.He stood there, agonizing over his decision, and during that long time, even the stars seemed to have shifted places...

...can't...

……Change.

The boy glanced at the stars in the sky; then he looked at the phoenix in front of him.

"Not now," the boy said in a barely audible voice, "not yet. I have too many other things to do. Please wait until I find someone else who can cast a real Patronus Charm— —Maybe, in six months—”

Silently, a ball of fire surrounded the body of the bird. The white and bright red veins of fire blazed and crackled, as if they were about to burn everything inside; when the flames turned into blue smoke, the phoenix disappeared .

There was silence atop Ravenclaw's tower.The boy slowly lowered his hands from his ears, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

The boy turned slowly—

Then screamed and jumped backwards, almost falling off the Ravenclaw Tower; but considering who the wizard was standing there, even such an accident was unlikely to have any consequences.

"So that's it," said Albus Dumbledore, almost whispering, "that's it." Fawkes stood on his shoulder, staring with unreadable avian eyes at the place where the other phoenix had been. place.

"What are you doing here?"

"Ah?" The old man said standing on the other corner of the roof terrace, "Of course it's because I feel that there is a creature that Hogwarts doesn't recognize here, so I came to have a look." The old wizard slowly raised his trembling hand, He took off his half-moon glasses and wiped his eyes and forehead with his sleeve. "I dare not— dare not speak—I know, I know that, of all the choices, this one above all must be yours—"

Harry's heart began to fill with strange unease, rising upwards, like a nausea in his stomach.

"Everything depends on the matter," said Albus Dumbledore, still almost whispering, "I know that. But which choice leads to darkness, I cannot guess. At least it is you s Choice."

"I didn't—" said Harry, stopping.

A scary hypothesis, the odds are growing...

"The phoenix comes for those who will fight," said the old wizard, "for those who would do something if it cost them their lives. The phoenixes are not wise, Harry, and they cannot judge us except to see us When the Phoenix took me to fight Grindelwald, I thought I was going to die. I didn't know that Fox would extend my life, heal me, stand by my side—” The voice of the old wizard trembled for a moment, "It didn't tell me - you should understand, Harry, why it never said it - if the other party knew, the Phoenix couldn't judge. But to you, Harry, I can tell now, because the Phoenix only comes once."

The old wizard walked across the platform at the top of Ravenclaw Tower to the boy, who was immobilized in the horror of enlightenment, enlightenment and utter terror.

In my duel with Grindelwald, I couldn't win, I had to fight him until he collapsed; if it wasn't for Fox, I would have died after the duel——

Harry didn't even know what he was talking about until the whisper came out—

"So I could have—"

"Can you?" the old wizard asked back, his voice much older than usual, "this is the third time the phoenix has come to my students. One of them sent her phoenix away, I think, she was taken by the following Grief overwhelms. The last one was your little friend Lavender Brown's cousin, and he—" the old wizard's voice cracked, "he didn't come back, poor John, and he didn't save anyone he wanted to save. .According to the few scholars who have studied the Phoenix, not one in four people will survive a Phoenix mission. Even if you do survive - considering the life you will have to live in the future, Harry Jan Tom Pott-Evans-Verys--considering the choices you must make, the paths you must walk--listen to the cries of the phoenix all the time--who says it won't drive you mad?" Again the old wizard He raised his sleeve and wiped his face, "Before the days of fighting Voldemort, Fox's company used to give me more joy."

The boy didn't seem to be listening, just staring intently at the red-gold bird on the old wizard's shoulder. "Fox?" said the boy in a trembling voice, "