Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Jugson was holding his wand, and he turned it idly back and forth in his fingers, pointing it up and then downward. "Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" said Jugson. "Everyone's got a price. Everyone smart."

This statement produced a moment of silence.

"Shouldn't Malfoy be here?" Bole said tentatively.

Flint gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. "Whatever Malfoy's plotting, he wants to put on an air of innocence. He can't be seen missing at the same time as us."

"But everyone knows that already," said Bole. "Even in the other Houses."

"Yes, very clumsy," said Belka. She snorted. "Malfoy or no, he's just a little firstie and we don't need him here."

"I will owl my father," Jugson said softly, "and he will speak to Lord Malfoy himself -" Abruptly, Jugson stopped speaking.

"I don't know about you, dearies," Belka said with fake sweetness, "but I don't plan on running scared from a false ritual, and I'm not done with Potter and his pet mudblood."

Nobody answered. All their gazes were looking past her.

Slowly, Belka turned around to see what the others were staring at.

"You will do nothing," hissed their Head of House. Severus Snape's face was enraged, when he spoke small spots of spittle flew from his mouth, further dotting his already-dirtied robes. "You fools have done enough! You have embarrassed my House - lost to first-years - now you speak of embroiling noble Lords of the Wizengamot in your pathetic childish squabbles? I shall deal with this matter. You will not embarrass this House again, you will not risk embarrassing this House again! You are done with fighting witches, and if I hear otherwise -"

If you thought they'd be sitting next to each other at dinnertime, after that, you'd be quite mistaken.

"What does she want from me?" came the plaintive cry of a boy who, for all his extensive reading in the scientific literature, was still a bit naive about certain things. "Did she want to get beaten up?"

The upper-year Ravenclaw boys who'd sat down next to him at the dinner-table exchanged swift glances with each other until, by some unspoken protocol, the most experienced of their number spoke.

"Look," said Arty Grey, the seventh-year who was leading in their competition by three witches and a Defense Professor, "the thing you've got to understand is, just because she's angry doesn't mean you lost points. Miss Granger is angry because she got all frightened and you're there to be blamed, you understand? But at the same time, even though she won't admit it, she'll be touched that her boyfriend went to such ridiculous and frankly insane lengths to protect her."

"This is not about points," ground out Harry Potter, the words visibly escaping from between his clenched teeth. Dinner sat ignored on the table in front of him. "This is about justice. And I. Am. Not. Her. Boyfriend!"

This was met by a certain amount of sniggering from all present.

"Yeah, well," said a sixth-year Ravenclaw boy, "I think after she kisses you to bring you out of Dementation and you stick forty-four bullies to the ceiling for her, we've gone way past 'she's not my girlfriend, really' and into the question of what your kids will be like. Wow, that's a scary thought..." The Ravenclaw trailed off and then said, in a smaller voice, "Please don't look at me like that."

"Look," said Arty Grey, "I'm sorry to be blunt about this, but you can have justice or you can have girls, you can't have both at the same time." He clapped a companionable hand on Harry Potter's shoulder. "You've got potential, kid, more potential than any wizard I've ever seen, but you've got to learn how to use it, you know? Be a bit sweeter to them, learn some spells to clean up that mess you call hair. Above all, you need to hide your evilness better - not too well, but better. Nice well-groomed boys get girls, and Dark Wizards also get girls, but nice well-groomed boys suspected of being secretly Dark get more girls than you can imagine -"

"Not interested," Harry said flatly, as he picked up the boy's hand from his shoulder and unceremoniously dropped it.

"But you will be," said Arty Grey, his voice low and foreboding. "Ah, you will be!"

Elsewhere along the same table -

"Romantic?" shrieked Hermione Granger, so loudly that some of the girls next to her winced. "What part of that was romantic? He didn't ask! He never asks! He just sends ghosts after people and glues them to ceilings and does whatever he wants with my life!"

"But don't you see?" said a fourth-year witch. "It means that even though he's evil, he loves you!"

"You're not helping," said Penelope Clearwater a little further down the table, but she was ignored. Several older witches had started toward Hermione, after she'd sat down at the extreme opposite end of the table from Harry Potter, but then a swifter cloud of younger girls had surrounded Hermione in an impenetrable barrier.