Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

And so it was with some puzzlement, a few days later, that Daphne looked at the parchment delivered to her at lunch, drawn in a hand so shaky it was almost unreadable, saying:

2 this afternoon at the top of the stairs going up from the library REALLY IMPORTANT everyone has to be there - Millicent

Daphne looked around, but she couldn't see Millicent anywhere in the Great Hall.

"A message from your informant?" said Hermione, when Daphne told her. "That's odd - I didn't -"

"You didn't what?" said Daphne, after the Ravenclaw girl had stopped in mid-sentence.

The Sunshine General shook her head and said, "Listen, Daphne, I think we need to know where these messages come from before we keep following them. Look at what happened last time, how could anyone have known where those three bullies would be, unless they were in on it?"

"I can't say -" Daphne said. "I mean, I can't say anything, but I know where the messages come from, and I know how anyone can know."

Hermione gave Daphne a look that, for a moment, made the Ravenclaw girl look scarily like Professor McGonagall.

"Uh huh," said Hermione. "And do you know how Susan suddenly turned into Supergirl?"

Daphne shook her head, and said, "No, but I think it might be really important that if we get a message saying we should be somewhere, everyone has to be there." Daphne hadn't seen what had happened with Susan, after Daphne had tried to avert the prophecy by keeping Susan away. But she'd been told about it afterward, and now Daphne was afraid that...

She might have possibly...

Might possibly have Broken Something...

"Uh huh," said Hermione, who was doing the McGonagall Stare again.

Nobody seemed to know where it had started, who had started it. If you'd tried tracing it afterward, tracked it back word by word and mutter by mutter, you probably would have found it all going in a huge circle.

Peregrine Derrick was tapped on his shoulder as he left Potions that morning.

Jaime Astorga heard a whisper in his ear at lunch.

Robert Jugson III discovered a tiny folded note under his plate.

Carl Sloper overheard two older Gryffindors whispering about it, and they gave him significant glances as they walked past.

Nobody seemed to know where the word began, or who had first spoken it, but it named the place, and it named the time, and it said that the color would be white.

"Every single one of you had better be absolutely clear on this," said Susan Bones. The Hufflepuff girl, or whatever strange power had possessed her, wasn't even pretending to act normal anymore. The round-faced girl was striding through the halls with a firm, confident gait. "If we get there and it's just one bully, that's fine, you can fight them the regular way. My mysterious superpowers won't activate if there are no innocents in danger. But if five seventh-year bullies jump out of a closet, you know what you do? That's right, you run away and let me fight them. Finding a teacher is optional, the important thing is that you run away as soon as I create an opening. In a fight like that you are liabilities. You are civilian targets I have to worry about protecting. So you will get away as fast as possible and you will not try to do anything heroic or so help me, the hour you get out of your healer's beds I will personally show up and kick your asses right back in. Are we all clear on that?"

"Yes," squeaked most of the girls, though in Hannah's case it came out, "Yes, Lady Susan!"

"Don't call me that," snapped Susan. "And I don't think I heard you, Miss Brown! I'm warning you, I have friends who write plays and if you do anything dumb, posterity will remember you as Lavender, the Amazing Stupid Hostage."

(Hermione was beginning to worry about just how many other Hogwarts students besides Harry had mysterious dark sides, and whether she was likely to develop one if she kept hanging out with them.)

"Alright, Captain Bones," said Lavender in an unusually respectful tone, as they turned another corner along the shortest way to the library, passing through a rather large corridor studded with six sets of double doors, three sets on either side. "Can I ask if there's any way for me to become a double witch?"

"Sign up for the Auror preparation program in your sixth year," said Susan. "It's the next best thing. Oh, and if a famous Auror offers to oversee your summer internship, just ignore anyone who warns you that he's a terrible influence or that you're almost certainly going to die."

Lavender was nodding rapidly. "Got it, got it."

(Padma, who hadn't actually been there last time, was giving Susan very skeptical looks.)

Then Susan suddenly stopped in place and her wand snapped up and she said, "Protego Maximus!"