Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Read Online Free Page A

in case it was one of the three you needed to complete the cycle of infinite
wish
spells.
    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 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.
)
    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,