Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Draco's eyes rested on his Astronomy homework, but he couldn't make his mind focus there. If you were trying not to think about things Harry Potter had said, pretty much the worst possible thing you could do was look at your textbook's pictures of the night sky, and try to remember what you weren't supposed to know about how the planets wandered. Astronomy, a noble and prestigious art, a sign of learning and knowledge; only Muggles possessed secret modern artifacts which could do it a million billion times better using methods that Harry had tried to explain and which Draco still couldn't begin to understand except that apparently it didn't even take magic to make things do Arithmancy.

Draco looked at the pictures of constellations, and wondered if it was like this in the other Houses, if people were always threatening each other in Ravenclaw.

Harry Potter had told him once that soldiers on a battlefield didn't really fight for their country. Patriotism might get them to the battlefield in the first place, but once they were there, they fought to protect each other, the friends they'd trained with who were right in front of them. And Harry had observed, and Draco had known that it was true, that you couldn't use loyalty to a leader to power a Patronus Charm, it wasn't quite the right kind of warm and happy thought. But thinking of protecting someone beside you -

That, Harry Potter had said thoughtfully, was probably why the Death Eaters had fallen apart the moment the Dark Lord had departed. They hadn't been warm enough to each other.

You could recruit a group that included Bellatrix Black and Amycus Carrow alongside Lord Malfoy and Mr. MacNair, and keep them in line with the Cruciatus Curse. But the instant the master of the Dark Mark was gone, you didn't have an army anymore, you had a circle of acquaintances. That was why Father had failed. It hadn't even really been his fault. There'd been nothing Father could have done, after inheriting Death Eaters who weren't really friends with each other.

And even though it was Slytherin House he was supposed to defend - Slytherin House which he and Harry had formed a pact to save - sometimes Draco couldn't help but think that it was just less wearisome when he was leading army practices. When he was working with students from the other three Houses that weren't Slytherin. Once you saw and named the problems, you couldn't stop seeing them, it just got more annoying every day.

"Mr. Malfoy?" said the voice of Gregory Goyle, from where he was lying on the floor beside Draco's desk, in the small but private bedroom; Gregory was doing his Transfiguration homework, on which he often needed help.

Any distraction was welcome at this point. "Yes?" said Draco.

"You weren't really plotting against Granger at all," said Gregory. "Were you?"

The sensation spreading through Draco's stomach felt just like Gregory's voice sounded, sickened and afraid.

"You actually were helping Granger, that day you picked her up off the floor," said Gregory. "And before, that time you kept her from falling off the roof. You helped a mudblood -"

"Yeah, right," said Draco sarcastically, without the slightest hesitation or delay, looking back down at his Astronomy homework like he wasn't the least bit nervous. It was all happening the way Draco had feared it would, but at least that meant he'd played this conversation in his head over and over, coming up with the right opening gambit. "Come on, Gregory, you've dueled General Granger, you know how strong her spells are. Like a real Muggle-spawn is going to be more powerful than you, more powerful than Theodore, more powerful than every single pureblood in our whole school year except me? Don't you actually believe in anything Father says? She's adopted. Her parents died in the war and someone stuck her with a couple of Muggles to hide her. No way is General Granger a real mudblood."

A slow pulse of silence through Draco's bedroom. Draco wanted to know, needed to know what look was on Gregory's face. But he couldn't look up from his desk, not yet, not until Gregory spoke first.

And then -

"Is that what Harry Potter said to you?" said Gregory.

The voice wavered, and broke. When Draco looked up from his homework, he saw that tears were leaking out of Gregory's eyes.

Apparently that hadn't worked.

"I don't know what to do," Gregory said in a whisper. "I don't know what to do now, Mr. Malfoy. Your father isn't - when he finds out - he's not going to like it, Mr. Malfoy!"

It's not your job to decide what Father will like, Goyle -