hpmorvn.com

Just Chapter 1 right now, but I'm looking to do all of the chapters. Feedback at this stage (before I've done the rest of the chapters) would be really helpful!

Narration is the podcast's, with Eneasz's permission. Pictures are AI-made, chosen and touched up by hand.

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For those of you who haven't seen it, EY wrote an eulogy that he sent to transhumanist mailing lists after his brother died in 2004. Among the replies he received was this excerpt:

re: Your statement “What would it be like to be a rational atheist in the fifteenth century, and know beyond all hope of rescue that everyone you loved would be annihilated, one after another, unless you yourself died first? That is still the fate of humans today; the ongoing horror has not changed, for all that we have hope.” In a commencement speech of last year, Lewis Lapham mentioned a “French noblewoman, a duchess in her 80s, who, on seeing the first ascent of Montgolfier’s balloon from the palace of the Tuilleries in 1783, fell back upon the cushions of her carriage and wept. “Oh yes,” she said, “Now it’s certain. One day they’ll learn how to keep people alive forever, but I shall already be dead.”

This got me rather intrigued after seeing it, and after a few surface-level searches didn't resolve the question, finding the primary source for this quote became a low-level obsession for me. I don't remember exactly when I first read this, but when I tried then, I could only find mentions without citations. I tried to have AI research the topic for me several times over several months, none of which found anything either.

Yesterday, this thought spontaneously came back to me, and I thought to try searching for the source again. Although I didn't have access to any more tools than before, I've gotten a lot better at using them since then, and I managed to find the relevant source this time in just 1-2 hours of searching. Apparently, it's first attested in François Arago's written eulogy for Lazare Carnot, which he presented and read to the French Academy of Sciences in 1837. Below are both the relevant original French excerpt and an English translation of it:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Biographie_de_Lazare_Nicolas_Marguerite/yCqm5okqn-0C?gbpv=1&pg=PA13

Voyez la maréchale de Villeroi : octogénaire et malade, on la conduit, presque de force, à une des fenêtres des Tuileries, car elle ne croit pas aux ballons; le ballon, toutefois, se détache de ses amarres; notre confrère Charles, assis dans la nacelle, salue gaiement le public et s'élance ensuite majestueusement dans les airs. Oh! pour le coup, passant, et sans tran-sition, de la plus complète incrédulité à une confiance sans bornes dans la puissance de l'esprit humain, la vieille maréchale tombe à genoux, et, les yeux baignés de larmes, laisse échapper ces tristes paroles: «Oui, c'est décidé, main-tenant, c'est certain; ILs trouveront le secret de ne plus mou-rir, et ce sera quand je serai morte! »

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Biographies_of_Distinguished_Scientific/Z-8GVvckOJAC?gbpv=1&pg=PA12

See the Maréchale de Villeroi, an octogenarian and an invalid: she is led to one of the windows of the Tuileries almost by force, for she does not believe in balloons; the balloon nevertheless detaches itself from its moorings; our colleague, Charles, seated in the cradle, gaily salutes the spectators, and soars majestically into the air. Oh! on the instant passing without transition from the most complete incredulity to an unbounded confidence in the powers of the human mind, the old Maréchale falls on her knees, and, her eyes bathed in tears, gasps forth these sad words: "Yes, it is decided, now it is certain; THEY will discover the secret of never dying, but it will be when I am dead!"

The only person the "Maréchale de Villeroi" could be referring to is Madeleine Angélique de Neufville, who was the only wife of a Marshal of France from the de Villeroi family during this period. A consciousness 122 years, 6 months, and 28 days removed from anyone still alive today, we can only wonder at how she coped, or not, with the prospect of death, even more so with a source dated 54 years after this event that may or may not be accurate in its details. All we can do now is remember her - for how she was ahead of her time, yes, but also just as a consciousness that has ceased, like over one hundred billion other people.

Even if the stars should die in heaven,
Our sins can never be undone.
No single death will be forgiven
When fades at last the last lit sun.
Then in the cold and silent black
As light and matter end,
We'll have ourselves a last look back
And toast an absent friend.

Now I have to reread the book, damnit!

I remember waiting for the next chapter, time and time again.

I just had to google "How do you know what you know, and why do you think you know it" to find something to be sarcastic with someone being dumb in an "argument".

Are there copies of the chapters that were changed before release of the compiled pdf with the full book? I remember about 5 to 7 chapters were rewritten and honestly, I liked those better. Even though they don't mesh with the rest of the book.

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Hi im trying to learn how to animate ps1 assets inside blender. I love HP and i love fanfic a lot so i tried adapting HPMOR to this format.

https://reddit.com/link/1x0oqw4/video/3lh7cjosd8uh1/player

Hi im trying to learn how to animate ps1 assets inside blender. I love HP and i love fanfic a lot so i tried adapting HPMOR to this format.

(Chapter 51)

"So, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell. His gaze intent, his pale blue eyes dark and shadowed in the white light coming from Harry's wand. "We are alone and unobserved, and I have an important question to ask you."

"Go ahead," said Harry, his heart starting to beat faster.

"What is your opinion of the government of magical Britain?"

That wasn't quite what Harry had been expecting, but it was close enough, so Harry said, "Based on my limited knowledge, I would say that both the Ministry and the Wizengamot appear to be stupid, corrupt, and evil."

"Correct," Professor Quirrell said. "Do you understand why I ask?"

Harry took a deep breath, and looked Professor Quirrell straight in the eyes, unflinching. Harry had finally worked out that the way to make amazing deductions from scanty evidence was to know the answer in advance, and he had guessed this answer fully a week ago. It needed only a slight adjustment...

"You are about to invite me to join a secret organization full of interesting people like yourself," said Harry, "one of whose goals is to reform or overthrow the government of magical Britain, and yes, I'm in."

There was a slight pause.

"I'm afraid that is not quite where I intended to direct this conversation," said Professor Quirrell. The corners of his lips were twitching slightly. "I merely planned to ask for your help in doing something extremely treasonous and illegal."

Darn, thought Harry. Still, Professor Quirrell hadn't denied it...

(End of quote)

I just realized Quirrell is probably thinking about the Death Eaters when he 'doesn't deny it'.

I hate e-reading, it’s just not for me but I want to read Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, I heard there are PDFs designed for printing but due to the extent of the work it would probably cost too much, do any of you know the best way, if there is any, to buy or obtain HPMOR on paper? It doesn’t have to be pretty, to have a cover, a binding… none of that, I had hoped somebody already printed it and was selling (for a decent prize) after finishing it, just like you would do on vinted, but since it isn’t a common or official (maybe not even existing) item I had no luck and I’ve quickly run out of ideas, help would be greatly appreciated
it can even be printed on dirty tissues i don’t really care, my only requirements are that is on paper and in the original language (I know they did a whole big thing of translation and printing in Russia)

I asked Opus to make an animation for chapter 1 and it made this which I think is nice?.
I probably won't ask it to make the full thing cause it would take too many tokens and I have other projects but could be nice if someone did something like that now that its possible.

something I've been thinking about lately is, many people regard rationalism as a movement or ideology, when I (as someone who's main involvement with it has been through HPMOR fan commuities) personally have always considered it to be more of a framework for defining, assessing and holding to account the values according to which you make decisions. "always trying to optimize for desired results" as an ideology, just seems like a specific way to communicate something that most philosophical frameworks in our society are already trying to do, in some form or another. and the way I understood it, both rationalist and spiritual frameworks are always being used for both good and harm in the world, and supporters of both would argue that any usage of the framework they support for harm is a misuse that misunderstands the fundamental purpose, and the majority of people in our society move between the two frameworks most of the time on the basis of context, and so... it's just a matter of a framework according to which you communicate basic values of how to live a smart and moral life that most people in society ultimately believe in, right?

however, again, I have never personally been all THAT invested in purely rationalist communities that exist outside of the context of EY's fiction works, and so I HAVE been wondering if there is some context that I'm missing. is that perception of mine is not generally held by most those who consider themselves associated with rationalism? if it isn't, then what DO they consider it to be that differs from that? and if it is, then why do so many people tend to interprate it so much more... aggressively than that?

the last few times I've gone through it cover to cover over the last four years have all been on audiobook, and I think that might not be good. reading is legit the key to being able to engage with so many of the complex ideas people have expressed throughout human history, I talk to my friends who still read books and they are able to do so much that I don't in terms of interpreting media and information that I just zone out staring at. I think I should probably just try opening that can of brain damage again with The One Story I'm still passionate enough about that it might be able to get me through this in full. wish me luck?

I finally finished the story recently, and I’m a bit confused on the origins of the Invisibility Cloak. Harry receives it mysteriously, as he did in canon. But where canon has it be Dumbledore returning the Hallow to the Potter line, HPMOR has it be someone who is not Dumbledore giving it back to the Potters with the explicit warning that Dumbledore should not get it. Was this a Quirrell ploy and I missed the part where that implication was made? Or is there something else I’m completely missing here

Thesis

During the three-way battle in Chapter 78, Hermione Granger's Alohomora overcomes Draco Malfoy's Colloportus, publicly humiliating the Malfoy heir before his father and a quorum of the Board of Governors. The chapter offers an in-story explanation (Draco's exhaustion), but the text also contains signals consistent with a different one: that Professor Quirrell - Tom Riddle - used battlefield-control magic to guarantee Hermione's spell would succeed, thereby manufacturing the pretext for Draco's midnight challenge and the attempted-murder frame that follows.

Argument 1: Quirrell's body changes state at exactly the moment of the Alohomora

Throughout the book, Riddle's possession of Quirrell's body has a known cost: heavy magic use leaves him immobile, and beyond that he lapses into the "zombie mode" that Harry and the students observe elsewhere. Chapter 78 tracks his mobility with unusual care.

Before and during the battle, he is described moving freely and naturally: leaning back at ease among the Governors [1]; leaning back again while his eyes unfocus as the screen re-frames itself [2]; giving Amelia Bones a half-nod [3]; laughing loudly enough that Lady Greengrass asks him to stop [4].

After the battle, the descriptions change. He is still in his chair, arms limp, apparently unwilling to move, and the narrator marks this with an explicit "for some reason" [5]. When Dumbledore speaks to him, his only response is a shoulder-twitch, which the narrator flags as the sole movement he has made since the battle ended [6]. This is a deliberate authorial note: the reader is told precisely when the stillness began, and that moment coincides with the duel's end.

One supporting details: the eye-unfocusing in [2] is tied by the sentence structure to the screen changing viewpoint, establishing that Quirrell is actively channeling magic into the display system during the battle - that is, he is in a position to be casting.

Argument 2: Riddle is established as able and willing to do exactly this

Later chapters confirm that Riddle can covertly intervene in other wizards' fights. In Chapter 104, Harry watches Professor Sprout's bolts grow brighter and faster as they leave her wand, each surge accompanied by the sense of doom, and a mere Stunning Hex defeats Severus Snape [8]. In Chapter 108, Riddle explicitly calls himself a specialist in battlefield-control magics and says he ensured the Nott/Greengrass and Malfoy fight went as he wished [9].

The duel in Chapter 78 is narrated from Draco's and the spectators' viewpoints - never Harry's - so the one observer who could have felt the sense of doom is absent from the scene. But the absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence.

Argument 3: Draco's exhaustion is a post-hoc rationalisation, not an observed fact

After the battle, Draco constructs an explanation: he cast twenty-seven Locking Charms with under a minute between each, and so he did not put full strength into his own glove [10]. But this is a thought in Draco's head, produced while reliving the memory in a state the narrator compares to Dementor exposure - not a narrated fact about how strongly the charm was actually cast.

Draco's own "Voice of Contrary Evidence" undercuts his explanation: Hermione was equally exhausted from casting Stunning Hexes, and she still broke his charm [11]. His conclusion - that with a two-year head start on wand ownership he should have been stronger, so she must be more powerful than he assumed, or he must have neglected practice [12] - is exactly the conclusion the evidence would force if there had been no third party. If a third party was amplifying her spell, Draco's inference is wrong for reasons he cannot see.

Argument 4: The defeat is the opening Riddle needs, not Lucius's motive

Riddle's goal is to remove Lucius from the board before Lucius discovers Draco's collaboration with Harry — a time bomb Riddle knows will eventually go off [13]. The plan (attack Draco, frame Hermione, then expose "Lucius" as the true culprit) requires a trigger: something that sets Draco and Hermione on a collision course outside adult supervision, so that an attack on Draco with Hermione as the obvious suspect becomes possible.

The Alohomora is that trigger. A public defeat by a Muggleborn, before Lucius and the Governors, leaves Draco with what he himself calls a forced move: a secret midnight duel [14]. That duel is the scene of the attack. Riddle's "entirely by luck" [17] then refers to Draco choosing a tactic that could be countered — which is exactly the opening a battlefield-control specialist could turn into a guaranteed outcome.

Counter-argument

In Chapter 108, Riddle says that after two hours of failed attempts to make Hermione play her assigned role, he gave up and instead implanted False Memories of Draco plotting against her, and that it was Draco who, "entirely by luck," gave him the opening he needed [17].

Read one way, "luck" means Riddle did not engineer the duel's outcome at all: the False Memories made Hermione furious, she happened to beat Draco, and Riddle merely exploited the result. Read another way, "luck" refers only to Draco's choice of tactic - a locking charm that could be countered by Alohomora - which created the opportunity for Riddle to nudge the outcome. Riddle is also an unreliable narrator by design; he admits to what Harry has already deduced and volunteers nothing more. The passage is therefore compatible with both readings and does not settle the question.

Conclusion

The text does not prove interference. But the chapter goes out of its way to establish Quirrell's ease of movement before the duel, then marks his post-duel immobility with two explicit narratorial comments, and places him in control of the magical apparatus at the time. Combined with his later self-description as a battlefield-control specialist and the absence of Harry's sense-of-doom as an in-scene detector, the "exhausted Draco" explanation looks less like a fact the narrator gives us and more like a cover story the narrator lets Draco give himself.

References (all HPMOR, Eliezer Yudkowsky)

[1] "And finally, on the far right, one would find the enigmatic Defense Professor of Hogwarts, Quirinus Quirrell, who was leaning back on the cushioned benches as though resting; seeming entirely and naturally at ease in the rarefied company of a voting quorum of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, which had dropped by on this fine Saturday to learn just what the Fiddly-Snocks had been going on at Hogwarts in general and with Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Daphne Greengrass, Susan Bones, and Neville Longbottom in particular." - Chapter 78

[2] "Professor Quirrell had leaned back in his seat, the pale blue eyes briefly unfocusing as one of the windows shifted its viewpoint within the greater screen, zooming in to show the sweat now on Draco Malfoy's forehead." - Chapter 78

[3] "Professor Quirrell gave the DMLE Director a half-nod of acknowledgment." - Chapter 78

[4] "('Pardon me,' the Lady Greengrass said. 'Could you stop laughing like that, Mr. Quirrell? It's unnerving.')" - Chapter 78

[5] "Lord Malfoy," the Defense Professor said in mild tones. That man was still seated in his own chair, looking upon his parchment-like screens, arms limp at his side, as though for some reason he didn't feel like moving." - Chapter 78

[6] "The Defense Professor's shoulders twitched in a slight shrug, the only movement they'd shown since the battle ended." - Chapter 78

[8] "And the last person anyone would suspect would be the Head of House Hufflepuff.

Snape's head snapped around, as Professor Sprout raised her wand, and the Potions Master managed to raise a wordless translucent ward between them. But the bolt that shot from Professor Sprout's wand was a dark brown that produced a surge of awful apprehension in Harry's mind; and the brown bolt made Severus's shield wink out before they touched, clipping the Potions Master's right arm even as he dodged. Professor Snape gave a muffled shriek and his hand spasmed, dropping his wand.

The next bolt that came from Sprout's wand was a bright red the color of a Stunning Hex, seeming to grow brighter and move faster even as it left her wand, accompanied by another surge of anxiety; and that blew the Potions Master into the door, dropping him motionless to the ground." - Chapter 104

[9] "That should have pointed at Dumbledore, not myself," said Professor Quirrell, and frowned. "The fact is that Miss Greengrass was not supposed to arrive in that corridor for several hours... though I suppose, since I did have Mr. Malfoy give her the clue I assigned her, it is not too surprising they banded together. Had Mr. Nott arrived seemingly alone, events would have played out less farcically. But I consider myself a specialist in battlefield control magics, and I was able to ensure that the fight went as I wished. I suppose it did end up looking a bit ridiculous." The Defense Professor dropped a peach slice and a bellflower into the cauldron. "But let us defer our discussion of the Mirror until we reach it. Did you have any more questions concerning Miss Granger's regrettable and hopefully temporary demise?" - Chapter 108

[10] "It kept on playing in Draco's mind, over and over again, even as he walked like an automaton through the massive portals of Hogwarts, sent away Vincent and Gregory with two sharp words, and became alone within his private bedroom, sitting on his bed, staring at the wall above his desk. Filling his mind like a Dementor had locked him into the memory.

The padlock on his glove clicking and falling away -

Draco knew, he knew what he'd done wrong. He'd been so tired after casting twenty-seven Locking Charms for all the other Dragon Warriors. Less than a minute wasn't enough time to recover after each spell. And so he'd just cast Colloportus on his own padlocked glove, just cast the spell, not put in all his strength to bind it stronger than Harry Potter or Hermione Granger could undo." - Chapter 78

[11] "And Granger was exhausted too, whispered the Voice of Contrary Evidence inside him. Granger must have been exhausted from all those Stunning Hexes, and even in that state she'd been able to undo his Locking Charm." - Chapter 78

[12] "If he challenged Granger, and lost...

It ought not to be possible, Draco had gotten his wand two full years before anyone else in his Hogwarts class.

Only there was a reason why they usually didn't bother giving wands to nine-year-olds. Age counted too, it wasn't just how long you'd held a wand. Granger's birthday had been only a few days into the year, when Harry had bought her that pouch. That meant she was twelve now, that she'd been twelve almost since the start of Hogwarts. And the truth was, Draco hadn't been practicing much outside of class, probably not nearly as much as Hermione Granger of Ravenclaw. Draco hadn't thought he needed any more practice to stay ahead..." - Chapter 78

[13] 'Harry unclenched his teeth, which took an effort. "That's after your failed attempt to frame Hermione for the attempted murder of Draco and send her to Azkaban because of why? Because you didn't like the influence she was having on me?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Professor Quirrell said. "If I had only wished to remove Miss Granger, I would not have brought the Malfoys into it. I observed your game with Draco Malfoy and found it amusing, but I knew it could not continue for very long before Lucius learned and intervened; and then your folly would have brought you great trouble, for Lucius would not take it lightly. Had you just been able to lose during the Wizengamot trial, lose as I had taught you, then in only two more weeks, ironclad evidence would have shown that Lucius Malfoy, after discovering his son's seeming perfidy, had Imperiused Professor Sprout into using the Blood-Cooling Charm on Mr. Malfoy and casting the False Memory Charm on Miss Granger. Lucius would have been swept off the political gameboard, sent to exile if not Azkaban; Draco Malfoy would have inherited the wealth of House Malfoy, and your influence over him would have been unchallenged. Instead I had to abort that plot in mid-course. You managed to completely disrupt the real plan in the course of sacrificing double your entire fortune, by giving Lucius Malfoy the perfect opportunity to prove his true concern for his son. You have an incredible anti-talent for meddling, I must say."' - Chapter 108

[14] ""ALOHOMORA! "

Time should have paused.

But it didn't.

Instead the padlock clicked and fell off the glove.

Just like that.

Just like that.

The screens showed it all very clearly, to the entire watching Hogwarts stadium.

And the bone-dead-silent hush that fell over every bench in every bleacher said that everyone understood quite clearly what it meant, that the scion of House Malfoy had just had his magic overcome by a Muggleborn." - Chapter 78

[15] "The elderly Charles Nott said nothing as he stood from his chair. The scarred Lord Jugson said nothing, as he stood from his own chair.

Lucius Malfoy said nothing as he stood.

All three of them turned without pause and strode toward the stairwell of the elevated bleachers, moving in eerie unison like an Auror trio -" - Chapter 78

[16] '"Your son performed exceptionally well today," said Professor Quirrell. "I must confess that I underestimated him. And he has earned his army's loyalty, as you have witnessed." Still very mild, the Defense Professor's voice. "Speaking as your son's teacher, it is my opinion that he will not benefit if you interfere in his -"

Lord Malfoy and his compatriots vanished down the stairs.

"A fine try, Quirinus," Dumbledore said quietly. The old wizard's face showed small lines of worry; he hadn't risen from his own seat either, staring at the parchment screens as though they were still active. "Do you think he will listen?"' - Chapter 78

[17] "Fair enough, I suppose," said Professor Quirrell. "There is a saying that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and I do not think Miss Granger was actually being reasonable. Still, Rule Ten: one must not rant about the opposition's unworthiness after they have foiled you. Regardless. After two full hours of failed attempts, I realized that I was being over-stubborn, and that I did not need Miss Granger to carry out the exact part I had planned for her. I gave up on my original intent, and instead imbued Miss Granger with False Memories of watching Mr. Malfoy plotting against her under circumstances that implied she should not tell you or the authorities. In the end it was Mr. Malfoy who gave me the opening I needed, entirely by luck." Professor Quirrell dropped a bellflower and a scrap of parchment into the cauldron." - Chapter 108

Some background:

Read hpmor at least once every two years, i relate way too strongly to a certain professors pessimistic viewpoint on things and I've been told I shouldn't read it too frequently as I become a bummer to be around apparently 😆

I work in tech. Directord and Senior management etc. in my company and every vendor I engage with all talk about modern ai like an era defining super mega cool best thing ever exciting bla bla bla bla.

To me, modern 'AI' is an LLM that predicts the next token following a bunch of vector and matrix calculations.....cos that's what it is.

Redefining 'AI' as an LLM, reserving AGI for what AI used to refer to and trying to redefine 'AGI' as an LLM that is good at doing one specific thing to me, is dumb and only used to sell stuff (see recent comments from Nvidia CEO for example).

The reason I ask is because I was reading some posts earlier and I noticed that way more people were referring to tools like Claude, cursor, Gemini, DeepSeek etc. as LLMs rather than AIs.

I feel like that's a result of a piece of HPMOR fandom counter culture, to push back on the semantic bleaching of what an artificial intelligence is defined as.

Curious to hear other peoples thoughts from this sub.

Hi! I made this logo for a pin, what do you think?

I started listening to the Askwho audiobook and I really struggle to get past the lifeless intonation and lack of emotion. Does it get better throughout the book? Or am I better off just cutting my losses and reading it instead?

Disclaimer: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1wzmns8/comment/pee6c4w/?screen_view_count=2

# Chapter Two: Moore's Prophecy

The wind hadn't stopped. Lockhart was mending the broken chalk with his wand, which was entirely unnecessary, since there were twenty more pieces in the box.

"Mr Potter," he said, without looking up. "About eleven minutes faster than usual."

"Faster than who?"

"There's one every year." He set the chalk down on the ledge. "Ask."

Harry took a breath.

"You spent an hour proving that the more people know how divination works, the less it works. You said this class is taught badly on purpose. You called it the most successful piece of engineering our society has ever done."

"I did."

"And then you taught it well."

Lockhart smiled. It was much smaller than the smiles he'd used in class, and much better made.

"Two explanations, Mr Potter. Write down both."

He raised a finger. "One: I was lying. Interference, Volume Seven, boredom as the best lock — all invented. There is no teaching method on earth that keeps clever children awake past midnight like being told the truth has been kept from them."

Something went down in Harry's stomach.

(That works. That works completely. It is the textbook use of the first class — publish a statement about the world, change the behaviour of everyone who hears it. He handed us a conspiracy theory whose content is *divination matters*, and now we will go and learn divination.

And he taught us to recognise the technique first, which is precisely why we'd assume he wouldn't use it on us.

Vaccine as syringe.)

"And the second?"

A second finger. "Interference is real, and I am contaminating it deliberately."

"…Why?"

"You already know why. You just haven't given yourself permission to say it."

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and said:

"Because if the system is dirty enough, nobody can prophesy *you*."

The wind dropped for half a beat.

"One every year," Lockhart said quietly. "The Gryffindor usually takes until Easter."

"So which is it?"

"What do you think?"

"I can't tell. Both explanations predict exactly what I'm looking at. Either way I see a man teaching Divination well."

"Good."

"And it's worse than that, because if you tell me it's the second one, that could be part of the first. *I am poisoning the prophecy supply* sounds a great deal better than *I am making things up*, and sounding better is the effect you'd need."

"Mr Potter, the state you're in has a name. It's called being outtalked. The correct response isn't to win. It's to take notes. Write down both hypotheses and go outside this room to look for evidence."

"Because in here," he added pleasantly, "I always win. Not because I'm right. Because it's my room."

Harry took out the notebook and wrote it down. Lockhart waited until he'd finished.

"Good. It's the second one."

"I can't believe that."

"Of course not. So I'll give you something else." Lockhart sat back on the desk. "I'll tell you what I want, and you can go and check whether thirty years of my life look like a man who wanted it. Behaviour is more reliable than testimony. You may look it up."

"What do you want?"

"One of the things I want," Lockhart said, "is for Muggles not to invent deep learning too early."

A pause.

"…What?"

"Deep learning."

"What is that?" Harry hated saying it. He hated it enormously.

Lockhart didn't look remotely surprised. "It's 1992. Of course you haven't heard it. The phrase won't be coined for another twenty years or so. Occupational hazard — I'm always misremembering which decade a thing belongs to."

"Then what is it?"

"Neural networks. Several hundred layers of them. A little reinforcement learning on top."

Harry's brain lit up.

"Oh — perceptrons. Artificial neural nets. You mean connectionism. That's dead."

"Is it?"

"Minsky and Papert, 1969. They proved a single-layer perceptron can't compute exclusive-or. The whole field collapsed for a decade, the funding evaporated—"

Harry stopped.

Lockhart said nothing at all.

"…That was you."

"I didn't write the book." Lockhart's voice was mild. "Marvin Minsky is a very intelligent and very sincere man, and every theorem in it is correct. What I did was much smaller. I made sure it was read. In the right room, by the right seventeen people. Then I made sure those seventeen people all happened to sit on funding committees for the following two years."

"That isn't science," he said. "That's seating."

Harry sat down, because standing had stopped working.

"Even so, hundreds of layers is useless. The error signal is diluted on the way back — multiply by something less than one at every layer and after three hundred layers you have zero. It can't learn. That isn't a money problem, it's arithmetic."

"That is what everyone says."

"Because it's true."

"Because it's true *under present conditions*." He held up three fingers. "The thing needs three ingredients to wake up. Depth, data, computation. Depth is free. Data requires the Muggles to write down the whole world, which is already happening and which I cannot stop."

"So I could only touch the third."

"Computation," Harry said.

"Computation."

"But computation keeps going up. Very fast. Moore's Law—"

He stopped halfway through the sentence.

Lockhart smiled and said nothing.

Harry felt the blood leave his face.

"Oh," he said, very quietly. "Oh."

"In 1965 an engineer named Gordon Moore wrote a short piece for a trade magazine. He observed that the number of components on a chip had been roughly doubling every year, and supposed it might continue for another decade. No physics in it. No derivation. An observation."

"And then the entire industry began scheduling around it. Manufacturers set investment cycles by it. Investors priced returns off it. Engineers set next year's target not because physics permitted it but because it was on the calendar. It became a promise everyone was obliged to keep, since anyone who fell behind was out."

"Mr Potter. What is that?"

"First class," Harry said. His lips were dry. "Self-fulfilling."

"The largest one in human history. And the best work I have ever done."

"But that made computation go *up*. That helped—"

"I didn't change how much there was. I changed what shape it grew in."

He took the chalk and drew two things. On the left, a small square: *smaller switches*. On the right, a snarl of lines: *more wires*.

"A machine can get stronger two ways. Make the switch smaller and faster and perfectly correct — one thing at a time, a billion times a second, right on every occasion. That road speaks binary. Exact, ordered, one after another."

"Or: don't make the switch smaller. Make more wires. Slow is acceptable. Wrong is acceptable. Three per cent error is acceptable, provided there are millions of things calculating at once and all of them are connected."

He tapped the tangle. "A neural network wants this. It doesn't need a perfect calculator. It needs a swamp. Big enough, wet enough, connected enough."

"And Moore's Law" — he tapped the square — "put every pound, every graduate student and every laboratory of the next thirty years over here."

"I didn't slow them down. I pointed them the wrong way and then made them very fast."

(Serial and parallel aren't a spectrum. There's an entire civilisation in between: toolchains, compilers, textbooks, hiring, referees, one generation's worth of intuition. Once the infrastructure is shaped like exact-and-serial, anyone who wants fuzzy-and-parallel is pushing a cart uphill against all of it.

Not impossible. Only twenty years more expensive.

Twenty years is a great deal.)

"It doesn't hold," Harry said. "Serial machines keep getting faster. One day one of them is fast enough to pretend to be a parallel machine. It can simulate the swamp directly. After that the direction stops mattering, because you have enough computation to waste."

Lockhart looked at him for a long moment.

"I ran that road. It isn't the main computer that does it, in the end. It's the board that draws the pictures."

"What?"

"They'll build a part whose only job is drawing. Light and shadow, for games. That sort of part is thousands of stupid little arithmetic units working at once, by its nature. One day somebody will notice it's exactly the right thing to feed a neural network."

His face was very calm. "That's the road I can't block. I've tried three times."

"*Why?*" Harry was on his feet. "Neural networks could cure diseases. They could translate. They could — I don't know what they could do, that's the entire point, nobody knows. You've spent thirty years making human civilisation decades late. You need a reason."

Lockhart got off the desk, went to the window and looked at the lake.

"Because I prophesied that the Muggles would eventually build a true artificial intelligence."

"And then?"

"And then a wizard enchants it."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again.

"And then the world ends," Lockhart said.

For about four seconds, Harry Potter believed him completely.

(This is it.

*He will have the power to tear apart the very stars in heaven.*

A year. Two months on a windowsill. I kept asking what the power looks like — a spell, an artefact, a war I lose.

It's a machine. A thinking machine the Muggles build, and a wizard puts magic into it. Transfiguration makes matter out of nothing. A Time-Turner gives it negative latency. Legilimency gives it human minds. And it has three hundred layers and the written world.

That isn't a weapon. That's a new species, and we are the midwives.

Tearing apart the stars. Obviously. A sufficiently strong optimiser takes stars apart; stars are energy and energy is what it wants; I did that arithmetic in August—

I did that arithmetic in August.

I am twelve years old and I worked out on my own, over the summer, that if you want a great deal of energy you should go and take stars apart.

And the wizard is me.

Obviously it's me. Who else would it be?)

His right hand went to his chest without being told to.

(The Vow. Anything?

I am thinking *I will build that machine*. Anything?

…No.

Which means building it doesn't have to end the world.

Which also means nothing, because the Vow only bites when I act, and at present I am standing in a classroom shaking.)

Then the fifth second arrived. It came slowly, the way a man walks up from a long way off and you don't see his face until he's close.

(Wait.

He has just told a twelve-year-old boy with a doom prophecy on him that a wizard will enchant the machine, and then the world ends.

If I am that wizard, telling me is a warning.

If I am not, telling me is instructions.

And if he wants me to be that wizard, that sentence is the most efficient recruitment advertisement on earth, because it hands me an identity, a destiny and a story that explains my entire life, in the year I most want an explanation.

First class.

He taught it. He demonstrated it. He wrote the marks on the board and said *I made them up*, and the marks will come true anyway.

And I have just sat in the same room and very nearly written myself onto his blackboard.)

Harry took his hand off his chest and put it back at his side.

He spent about two seconds arranging his face into something a twelve-year-old ought to be wearing. He failed, but he knew he had failed, which was the second most useful thing he'd learned that year.

"Professor. Which class of prophecy is that?"

Lockhart turned round. The expression Harry had seen for an instant in class was there, and this time it stayed for three whole seconds.

"You're the first to ask in the room."

"Answer me."

"Fourth."

"Then you can't stop it." Harry's voice was shaking and he didn't trouble to hide it, because shaking was useful. "You taught us this. Fourth class is self-consistent. The information comes from the future, so the future is already there, so nothing you do can change it — including everything you've done for thirty years. Those thirty years are *part of the prophecy*."

"Yes," Lockhart said.

"Then what are you *doing*?"

"The prophecy told me what happens." A pause. "It didn't tell me when."

Harry stopped.

"Real prophecies almost never give dates. It is their most famous property and the only one that has ever been to our advantage. I can't stop it. I never intended to stop it."

"I'm delaying it."

"Every year I buy is a year in which everyone is still alive. A year in which more children are born. A year in which somebody might think of something I couldn't."

"I'm not saving the world, Mr Potter."

Gilderoy Lockhart smiled, and not one tooth in it was there to catch the light.

"I'm renewing the lease."

Harry stood still and did the thing he had got into the habit of doing that year: he stopped talking and started counting.

(Count this man.

One. He knows perceptrons. He knows Minsky. He knows how a funding committee works. He knows which magazine Moore published in. He knows about graphics cards — he doesn't have the word, but he described one.

Two. In a single lesson he used chaotic systems, Monte Carlo, binary, Leibniz, a commons, and a consistency argument I still cannot answer.

Three. The rhythm of the lecturing. The way he awards points. The statistical contempt underneath *there's one every year*.

I have made this list before.

Last year.

The last person who fitted it is on the ring finger of my left hand.

—But there's no resonance. Nothing. No dread, no doom, no universe murmuring that the two of us oughtn't be in the same room. I have been standing here twenty minutes and felt nothing whatsoever.

So it isn't him.

—Unless.

Unless the thing in the ring has been swapped.

Which is impossible. There is a guarding charm on it whose entire purpose is *cannot be replaced, removed, or disguised*. I watched it cast. I understand how it works. I am not trusting a person, I'm trusting physics.

And the feel of it — twice a day, the sense that the Transfiguration is still holding — that's real too. Partial Transfiguration must be sustained. If the stone isn't him, then what I have been sustaining is an ordinary stone, and sustaining an ordinary stone and sustaining a person—

—do those feel different?

I have never run the control.

I have never sustained an ordinary stone.

I have no baseline.

God. A year, and it never once occurred to me that I have no baseline.)

He pressed his thumb into the ring until the knuckle went white.

Lockhart glanced at his hand for half a second and then away, the way a polite man doesn't look at what's in somebody else's pocket.

Harry wrote down the half second. Evidence, not conclusion.

"Professor. I'm going to ask a rude question."

"My favourite sort."

"Have you Obliviated me?"

Lockhart didn't laugh, and didn't take offence, and did none of the things Harry had rehearsed for.

He nodded, as though a decent question had finally turned up.

"The standard check is to bite your tongue. Before an important conversation you bite it. If afterwards there's blood in your mouth and no conversation in your head, you know. Auror handbook, page nine. Most popular defence in Europe."

"Does it work?"

"It works," Lockhart said, "until the other party learns to follow the Obliviate with a silent Episkey."

Cold went down Harry's spine.

"No blood. No cut. Your tongue is perfectly sound. And you conclude that nothing has happened to you."

"So: in theory, no, you can't tell. Any test that relies on *there will be marks on me* is defeated by anyone who remembers to tidy up. And memory magic, in its entirety, is the study of tidying up."

"That's your answer?"

"No. That's the true answer to your question. My answer comes after it."

Lockhart straightened.

"I'm told Mr Potter has studied Occlumency."

Harry didn't move.

"An Occlumens who gets Obliviated usually keeps something. A sense that the room is missing a piece of furniture and you can't say which one. It's unpleasant. It is also a signal."

"So you aren't undefended. You're only uncertain."

"That isn't enough," Harry said.

"Of course it isn't. Which is why there's a second thing, and the second thing is what I actually want you to hear."

"I am not going to risk dismissal, or arrest, to interfere with a student's head. Memory charms on a student are a Class Seven offence. Not points, not the sack — the Wizengamot. I draw a salary at this school, I write books that sell extremely well, and I live very comfortably indeed."

"The question isn't whether I *can*. It's whether it's *worth it to me*."

"That's the question you should be asking, and it's the only one you can check, because motive leaves marks, and the marks are out there, not inside your head."

Harry turned it over.

(That's a good argument. It's a very good argument. It replaces *I can't tell* with *I don't have to tell, I only have to price him*, and price is observable.

It is also a bad argument, because it assumes I know his utility function.

A man who wants a comfortable life won't take that risk.

What is a Class Seven offence to a man who has spent thirty years falsifying the technological history of a species in order to postpone the end of the world?

It's a cost. Costs get paid.)

Harry didn't say it aloud.

He took out the notebook, turned to the day's page, and put his finger on the line at the bottom that he had not written.

*Ask him if he knows Quirrell.*

(I own a Time-Turner.

Invisible ink and a timed revealing charm is not a fantasy. I worked that trick out last term and wrote down what it could be used for.

If it was me, then showing it to him is handing intelligence I own to a man I haven't finished evaluating.

If it was him — a delayed charm, my handwriting, set before term — then the point was to make me ask, so that he can give me the version of Quirrell he wants me to have.

Two explanations. Identical observations. Again.

Fine. Both of them say *ask*. Only the asking changes.)

He shut the notebook.

"Professor. Do you know Professor Quirrell?"

Lockhart said nothing for a long time.

Out on the lake a bird came down and went away again. Harry was watching Lockhart's face, and so did not see the parchment on the side desk lift and settle and lift again, as though the draught from the window had struck something on its way across the room.

"Mr Potter," he said at last, "do you know why I came to Hogwarts?"

"Because you wanted a job."

"My royalties for one year exceed the Headmaster's salary for ten."

Harry waited.

"I came to Hogwarts because I received a letter."

"What letter?"

"The sort that is delivered after the sender is dead. There's a charm for it. It isn't cheap, and it requires the writer to be entirely lucid and entirely willing. We call it the testament charm."

"Who wrote it?"

"David Monroe."

Harry's breathing stopped.

(David Monroe.

That name. The hero who fought the war of the seventies better than anyone and then disappeared. The name that later grew onto a man, and that man later stood in front of me and raised his wand, and that man is now—

—on my hand.

That letter was written by my enemy before I was born.

Or that letter was written by the real David Monroe before he was murdered.)

"We were very good friends," Lockhart said.

Harry did the subtraction quickly, because he had memorised the numbers a long time ago.

"Professor."

"Mm."

"David Monroe disappeared in 1973."

"Yes."

"*Witch Weekly* printed your birthday last year. 1964."

Lockhart said nothing.

"So in 1973," Harry said, "you were nine."

The wind went through the classroom.

"Yes," Gilderoy Lockhart said.

He didn't explain. He didn't say *we were pen-friends*, or *we met later*, or *that was my father*, or anything else that would have made it ordinary. He stood there with a very gentle expression and waited to see whether Harry would go on.

Harry remembered what he'd said in class.

*I knew children like that. I knew several of them when I was young.*

And the note in his book he hadn't finished:

*It took thirty-odd years. He never said the thirty years were his.*

—He never said that.

I inferred it.

Did I infer it, or was I walked to it?

Harry decided to stop asking. Not because he was frightened, although he was. Because in this room, every question he asked told the other man how much he knew.

And he knew far too little.

"One more thing," Harry said. He took out the notebook, tore out a page, wrote seven words on it, folded it three times and put it in an inner pocket.

"What's that?" Lockhart asked.

"A sentence only I would choose. If one day I find I can't read it, or I remember writing something else, I'll know somebody has been at me. It's called an external record."

"You can change what's in my head. You can't change what's in my pocket — unless you change the paper too, which requires you to know the paper exists, and now you do, so this one is void, so in a few minutes I'll write another and not tell you."

Gilderoy Lockhart stood and looked at him.

Then he bowed. Afterwards, Harry couldn't shake the impression that the bow had been aimed slightly to one side of him.

"You're the third."

"…Third what?"

"Third student to explain external records to me in this office." A pause. "I haven't been teaching very long. But I know a great many people."

"What happened to the first two?"

Lockhart considered him for a moment.

"One is an Auror. He runs a department now."

"And the other?"

"The other is dead," Lockhart said. "In a war he started himself. He was still keeping external records at the end. Very diligently. Very thoroughly. Very cleverly."

"Did they save him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he never showed them to anyone," Lockhart said.

On his way out, Harry noticed the chalk lying on the ledge in two pieces.

---

## Coda

Four steps down the spiral stair, Harry heard Lockhart's voice above him: conversational, unhurried, in the cadence of a man answering a question.

There had been nobody else in the room.

He told himself it was the wind, and kept going down.

He sat on the fourth-floor stairs for about twenty minutes and wrote out the whole conversation, every word, the way Hermione had told him to — in the corridor, not back in the tower. Twice he stopped, because the next sentence didn't seem to follow from the one before it, and twice he found that it did after all if he read it again.

There was a taste of copper at the back of his mouth. He'd been biting his lip, probably.

When he had finished he checked the inner pocket for the paper with the seven words on it.

There were two. Both folded three times.

He had written one.

He put them back without opening either, and went to find Hermione.

She was in the library behind four books, two rolls of parchment and a table she'd ruled herself, with three columns headed *claimed*, *checkable*, and *deliberately not said*.

Harry pushed the notebook across.

Hermione read very slowly. Her face began to change about halfway down. When she had finished she sat without moving and looked at the table top for a long time.

"Harry."

"Mm."

"I'm going to say something, and don't interrupt, because if I stop I'll decide I'm being ridiculous."

"Go on."

She put her finger under a line. "He said: *because I prophesied that the Muggles would eventually build a true artificial intelligence*."

"Yes."

"And you asked him which class it was, and he said the fourth."

"Yes."

"Harry, he isn't a Seer."

The world went quiet.

"The fourth class can only come out of a Seer. He said so himself — it goes straight into the Seer's mouth, it needs a vessel, it nearly drives them mad. Gilderoy Lockhart is not a Seer. If he were, it would be on the cover of every book he's written. He'd have it printed on his Christmas cards."

She looked up. "So he didn't make that prophecy."

"Somebody else made it," Harry said, "and told him."

"And this afternoon he said *I prophesied*." She tapped the table. "Harry, he said about eight thousand words to you today and every one of them was measured with a ruler. Except that verb."

Harry sat in the library with the feeling he had grown used to that year and would never get accustomed to: the pieces closing, and nothing in the picture being anything he wanted to see.

"Hermione."

"Mm."

"He said he came to Hogwarts because of a letter delivered after the sender died."

"I read it."

"He said David Monroe wrote it."

"I read that too, Harry, I know who that is, the entire class knows who—" Hermione stopped.

"Oh," she said.

"Yes," Harry said.

He laid his left hand flat on the table and looked at the small, opaque, grey stone on his ring finger.

"So there's a question now," said Harry Potter, in a very level voice. "If that letter had a fourth-class prophecy in it—"

"—then the person who wrote the letter already knew how the world ends," said Hermione.

The library clock struck six. Harry counted the strokes, and then counted them again.

"We need a list," he said. "Three things. One: whether Lockhart knows where those things are. Two: whether he has touched any of them, or been touched by one. Three—"

He stopped.

"Three?" said Hermione.

Harry looked at his hand.

"Three," he said. "I need to find an ordinary stone."