Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Chapter 40: Pretending to be Wise, Pt 2

Harry, holding the tea cup in the exactly correct way that Professor Quirrell had needed to demonstrate three times, took a small, careful sip. All the way across the long, wide table that was the centerpiece of Mary's Room, Professor Quirrell took a sip from his own cup, making it look far more natural and elegant. The tea itself was something whose name Harry couldn't even pronounce, or at least, every time Harry had tried to repeat the Chinese words, Professor Quirrell had corrected him, until finally Harry had given up.

Harry had maneuvered himself into getting a glimpse at the bill last time, and Professor Quirrell had let him get away with it.

He'd felt an impulse to drink a Comed-Tea first.

Even taking that into account, Harry had still been shocked out of his skin.

And it still tasted to him like, well, tea.

There was a quiet, nagging suspicion in Harry's mind that Professor Quirrell knew this, and was deliberately buying ridiculously expensive tea that Harry couldn't appreciate just to mess with him. Professor Quirrell himself might not like it all that much. Maybe nobody actually liked this tea, and the only point of it was to be ridiculously expensive and make the victim feel unappreciative. In fact, maybe it was really just ordinary tea, only you asked for it in a certain code, and they put a fake gigantic price on the bill...

Professor Quirrell's expression was drawn and thoughtful. "No," Professor Quirrell said, "you should not have told the Headmaster about your conversation with Lord Malfoy. Please try to think faster next time, Mr. Potter."

"I'm sorry, Professor Quirrell," Harry said meekly. "I still don't see it." There were times when Harry felt very much like an impostor, pretending to be cunning in Professor Quirrell's presence.

"Lord Malfoy is Albus Dumbledore's opponent," said Professor Quirrell. "At least for this present time. All Britain is their chessboard, all wizards their pieces. Consider: Lord Malfoy threatened to throw away everything, abandon his game, to take vengeance on you if Mr. Malfoy was hurt. In which case, Mr. Potter...?"

It took more long seconds for Harry to get it, but it was clear that Professor Quirrell wasn't going to give any more hints, not that Harry wanted them.

Then Harry's mind finally made the connection, and he frowned. "Dumbledore kills Draco, makes it look like I did it, and Lucius sacrifices his game against Dumbledore to get at me? That... doesn't seem like the Headmaster's style, Professor Quirrell..." Harry's mind flashed back to a similar warning from Draco, which had made Harry say the same thing.

Professor Quirrell shrugged, and sipped his tea.

Harry sipped his own tea, and sat in silence. The tablecloth spread over the table was in a very peaceful pattern, seeming at first like plain cloth, but if you stared at it long enough, or kept silent long enough, you started to see a faint tracery of flowers glimmering on it; the curtains of the room had changed their pattern to match, and seemed to shimmer as though in a silent breeze. Professor Quirrell was in a contemplative mood that Saturday, and so was Harry, and Mary's Room, it seemed, had not neglected to notice this.

"Professor Quirrell," Harry said suddenly, "is there an afterlife?"

Harry had chosen the question carefully. Not, do you believe in an afterlife? but simply Is there an afterlife? What people really believed didn't seem to them like beliefs at all. People didn't say, 'I strongly believe in the sky being blue!' They just said, 'the sky is blue'. Your true inner map of the world just felt to you like the way the world was...

The Defense Professor raised his cup to his lips again before answering. His face was thoughtful. "If there is, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell, "then quite a few wizards have wasted a great deal of effort in their searches for immortality."