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<title>Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 22: The Scientific Method</title>
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<div id="nav-top"><form action="../go.php" method="GET" id="nav-form-top" target="_top"><div class="nav-prev"><a href="../chapter/21" title="Chapter 21: Rationalization" accesskey="p" target="_top">« Prev</a></div><div class="nav-dropdown"><select name="chapter" class="nav-select">
<option value="home">Home</option>
<option value="1">Chapter 1: A Day of Very Low Probability</option>
<option value="2">Chapter 2: Everything I Believe Is False</option>
<option value="3">Chapter 3: Comparing Reality To Its Alternatives</option>
<option value="4">Chapter 4: The Efficient Market Hypothesis</option>
<option value="5">Chapter 5: The Fundamental Attribution Error</option>
<option value="6">Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy</option>
<option value="7">Chapter 7: Reciprocation</option>
<option value="8">Chapter 8: Positive Bias</option>
<option value="9">Chapter 9: Title Redacted, Part I</option>
<option value="10">Chapter 10: Self Awareness, Part II</option>
<option value="11">Chapter 11: Omake Files 1, 2, 3</option>
<option value="12">Chapter 12: Impulse Control</option>
<option value="13">Chapter 13: Asking the Wrong Questions</option>
<option value="14">Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable</option>
<option value="15">Chapter 15: Conscientiousness</option>
<option value="16">Chapter 16: Lateral Thinking</option>
<option value="17">Chapter 17: Locating the Hypothesis</option>
<option value="18">Chapter 18: Dominance Hierarchies</option>
<option value="19">Chapter 19: Delayed Gratification</option>
<option value="20">Chapter 20: Bayes's Theorem</option>
<option value="21">Chapter 21: Rationalization</option>
<option value="22" selected>Chapter 22: The Scientific Method</option>
<option value="23">Chapter 23: Belief in Belief</option>
<option value="24">Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis</option>
<option value="25">Chapter 25: Hold Off on Proposing Solutions</option>
<option value="26">Chapter 26: Noticing Confusion</option>
<option value="27">Chapter 27: Empathy</option>
<option value="28">Chapter 28: Reductionism</option>
<option value="29">Chapter 29: Egocentric Bias</option>
<option value="30">Chapter 30: Working in Groups, Pt 1</option>
<option value="31">Chapter 31: Working in Groups, Pt 2</option>
<option value="32">Chapter 32: Interlude: Personal Financial Management</option>
<option value="33">Chapter 33: Coordination Problems, Pt 1</option>
<option value="34">Chapter 34: Coordination Problems, Pt 2</option>
<option value="35">Chapter 35: Coordination Problems, Pt 3</option>
<option value="36">Chapter 36: Status Differentials</option>
<option value="37">Chapter 37: Interlude: Crossing the Boundary</option>
<option value="38">Chapter 38: The Cardinal Sin</option>
<option value="39">Chapter 39: Pretending to be Wise, Pt 1</option>
<option value="40">Chapter 40: Pretending to be Wise, Pt 2</option>
<option value="41">Chapter 41: Frontal Override</option>
<option value="42">Chapter 42: Courage</option>
<option value="43">Chapter 43: Humanism, Pt 1</option>
<option value="44">Chapter 44: Humanism, Pt 2</option>
<option value="45">Chapter 45: Humanism, Pt 3</option>
<option value="46">Chapter 46: Humanism, Pt 4</option>
<option value="47">Chapter 47: Personhood Theory</option>
<option value="48">Chapter 48: Utilitarian Priorities</option>
<option value="49">Chapter 49: Prior Information</option>
<option value="50">Chapter 50: Self Centeredness</option>
<option value="51">Chapter 51: Title Redacted, Pt 1</option>
<option value="52">Chapter 52: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 2</option>
<option value="53">Chapter 53: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 3</option>
<option value="54">Chapter 54: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 4</option>
<option value="55">Chapter 55: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 5</option>
<option value="56">Chapter 56: TSPE, Constrained Optimization, Pt 6</option>
<option value="57">Chapter 57: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 7</option>
<option value="58">Chapter 58: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 8</option>
<option value="59">Chapter 59: TSPE, Curiosity, Pt 9</option>
<option value="60">Chapter 60: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 10</option>
<option value="61">Chapter 61: TSPE, Secrecy and Openness, Pt 11</option>
<option value="62">Chapter 62: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Final</option>
<option value="63">Chapter 63: TSPE, Aftermaths</option>
<option value="64">Chapter 64: Omake Files 4, Alternate Parallels</option>
<option value="65">Chapter 65: Contagious Lies</option>
<option value="66">Chapter 66: Self Actualization, Pt 1</option>
<option value="67">Chapter 67: Self Actualization, Pt 2</option>
<option value="68">Chapter 68: Self Actualization, Pt 3</option>
<option value="69">Chapter 69: Self Actualization, Pt 4</option>
<option value="70">Chapter 70: Self Actualization, Pt 5</option>
<option value="71">Chapter 71: Self Actualization, Pt 6</option>
<option value="72">Chapter 72: SA, Plausible Deniability, Pt 7</option>
<option value="73">Chapter 73: SA, The Sacred and the Mundane, Pt 8</option>
<option value="74">Chapter 74: SA, Escalation of Conflicts, Pt 9</option>
<option value="75">Chapter 75: Self Actualization Final, Responsibility</option>
<option value="76">Chapter 76: Interlude with the Confessor: Sunk Costs</option>
<option value="77">Chapter 77: SA, Aftermaths: Surface Appearances</option>
<option value="78">Chapter 78: Taboo Tradeoffs Prelude: Cheating</option>
<option value="79">Chapter 79: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 1</option>
<option value="80">Chapter 80: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 2, The Horns Effect</option>
<option value="81">Chapter 81: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 3</option>
<option value="82">Chapter 82: Taboo Tradeoffs, Final</option>
<option value="83">Chapter 83: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 1</option>
<option value="84">Chapter 84: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 2</option>
<option value="85">Chapter 85: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 3, Distance</option>
<option value="86">Chapter 86: Multiple Hypothesis Testing</option>
<option value="87">Chapter 87: Hedonic Awareness</option>
</select><noscript><input type="submit" value="Go" /></noscript></div><div class="nav-next"><a href="../chapter/23" title="Chapter 23: Belief in Belief" accesskey="n" target="_top">Next »</a></div></form></div>
<div id="chapter-title">Chapter 22: The Scientific
Method<br /></div>
<div style='' class='storycontent' id='storycontent'>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>Something, somewhere, somewhen,
must have happened differently...</i></p>
<p>PETUNIA EVANS married Michael Verres, a Professor of
Biochemistry at Oxford.</p>
<p>HARRY JAMES POTTER-EVANS-VERRES grew up in a house filled to the
brim with books. He once bit a math teacher who didn't know what a
logarithm was. He's read <i>Godel, Escher, Bach</i> and <i>Judgment
Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases</i> and volume one of
<i>The Feynman Lectures on Physics.</i> And despite what everyone
who's met him seems to fear, he doesn't want to become the next
Dark Lord. He was raised better than that. He wants to discover the
laws of magic and become a god.</p>
<p>HERMIONE GRANGER is doing better than him in every class except
broomstick riding.</p>
<p>DRACO MALFOY is exactly what you would expect an eleven-year-old
boy to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.</p>
<p>PROFESSOR QUIRRELL is living his lifelong dream of teaching
Defense Against the Dark Arts, or as he prefers to call his class,
Battle Magic. His students are all wondering what's going to go
wrong with the Defense Professor this time.</p>
<p>DUMBLEDORE is either insane, or playing some vastly deeper game
which involved setting fire to a chicken.</p>
<p>DEPUTY HEADMISTRESS MINERVA MCGONAGALL needs to go off somewhere
private and scream for a while.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">Presenting:</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF
RATIONALITY</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">You ain't guessin' where this one's
going.</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" />
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>Some notes:</i></p>
<p>The opinions of characters in this story are not necessarily
those of the author. What warm!Harry thinks is <i>often</i> meant
as a good pattern to follow, especially if Harry thinks about how
he can cite scientific studies to back up a particular principle.
But not everything Harry does or thinks is a good idea. That
wouldn't work as a story. And the less warm characters may
sometimes have valuable lessons to offer, but those lessons may
also be dangerously double-edged.</p>
<p>If you haven't visited <b>HPMOR DOT COM</b>, don't forget to do
that at some point; otherwise you'll miss out on the fan art, how
to learn everything Harry knows, and more.</p>
<p>If you haven't just enjoyed this fic, but learned something from
it, then please consider blogging it or tweeting it. A work like
this only does as much good as there are people who read it.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>And now, back to your regularly
scheduled fic...</i></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" />
<p>The key to strategy is not to choose <i>a</i> path to J. K.
Rowling, but to choose so that <i>all</i> paths lead to a J. K.
Rowling.</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" />
<p>A small study room, near but not in the Ravenclaw dorm, one of
the many many unused rooms of Hogwarts. Gray stone the floors, red
brick the walls, dark stained wood the ceiling, four glowing glass
globes set into the four walls of the room. A circular table that
looked like a wide slab of black marble set on thick black marble
legs for columns, but which had proved to be very light (weight and
mass both) and wasn't difficult to pick up and move around if
necessary. Two comfortably cushioned chairs which had seemed at
first to be locked to the floor in inconvenient places, but which
would, the two of them had finally discovered, scoot around to
where you stood as soon as you leaned over in a posture that looked
like you were about to sit down.</p>
<p>There also seemed to be a number of bats flying around the
room.</p>
<p>That was where, future historians would one day record -
<i>if</i> the whole project ever actually amounted to anything -
the scientific study of magic had begun, with two young first-year
Hogwarts students.</p>
<p>Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, theorist.</p>
<p>And Hermione Jean Granger, experimenter and test subject.</p>
<p>Harry was doing better in classes now, at least the classes he
considered interesting. He'd read more books, and not books for
eleven-year-olds either. He'd practiced Transfiguration over and
over during one of his extra hours every day, taking the other hour
for beginning Occlumency. He was taking the worthwhile classes
<i>seriously,</i> not just turning in his homework every day, but
using his free time to learn more than was required, to read other
books beyond the given textbooks, looking to master the subject and
not just memorize a few test answers, to excel. You didn't see that
much outside Ravenclaw. And now even <i>within</i> Ravenclaw, his
only remaining competitors were Padma Patil (whose parents came
from a non-English-speaking culture and thus had raised her with an
actual work ethic), Anthony Goldstein (out of a certain tiny ethnic
group that won 25% of the Nobel Prizes), and of course, striding
far above everyone like a Titan strolling through a pack of
puppies, Hermione Granger.</p>
<p>To run this particular experiment you needed the test subject to
learn sixteen new spells, on their own, without help or correction.
That meant the test subject was Hermione. Period.</p>
<p>It should be mentioned at this point that the bats flying around
the room were <i>not</i> glowing.</p>
<p>Harry was having trouble accepting the implications of this.</p>
<p>"<i>Oogely boogely!</i> " Hermione said again.</p>
<p>Again, at the tip of Hermione's wand, there was the abrupt,
transitionless appearance of a bat. One moment, empty air. The next
moment, bat. Its wings seemed to be already moving in the instant
when it appeared.</p>
<p>And it <i>still wasn't glowing.</i></p>
<p>"Can I stop now?" said Hermione.</p>
<p>"Are you sure," Harry said through what seemed to be a block in
his throat, "that maybe with a bit more practice you couldn't get
it to glow?" He was violating the experimental procedure he'd
written down beforehand, which was a sin, and he was violating it
because he didn't like the results he was getting, which was a
<i>mortal</i> sin, you could go to Science Hell for that, but it
didn't seem to be mattering anyway.</p>
<p>"What did you change this time?" Hermione said, sounding a
little weary.</p>
<p>"The durations of the <i>oo,</i> <i>eh,</i> and <i>ee</i>
sounds. It's supposed to be 3 to 2 to 2, not 3 to 1 to 1."</p>
<p>"<i>Oogely boogely!</i> " said Hermione.</p>
<p>The bat materialized with only one wing and spun pathetically to
the floor, flopping around in a circle on the gray stone.</p>
<p>"Now what is it really?" said Hermione.</p>
<p>"3 to 2 to 1."</p>
<p>"<i>Oogely boogely!</i> "</p>
<p>This time the bat didn't have any wings at all and fell with a
plop like a dead mouse.</p>
<p>"3 to 1 to 2."</p>
<p>And lo the bat did materialize and it did fly up at once toward
the ceiling, healthy and glowing a bright green.</p>
<p>Hermione nodded in satisfaction. "Okay, what next?"</p>
<p>There was a long pause.</p>
<p>"<i>Seriously?</i> You <i>seriously</i> have to say <i>Oogely
boogely</i> with the duration of the <i>oo,</i> <i>eh,</i> and
<i>ee</i> sounds having a ratio of 3 to 1 to 2, or the bat won't
glow? <i>Why? Why? For the love of all that is sacred,
why?</i> "</p>
<p>"Why not?"</p>
<p>"<i>AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH!</i> "</p>
<p><i>Thud. Thud. Thud.</i></p>
<p>Harry had thought about the nature of magic for a while, and
then designed a series of experiments based on the premise that
virtually everything wizards believed about magic was wrong.</p>
<p>You couldn't <i>really</i> need to say 'Wingardium Leviosa' in
exactly the right way in order to levitate something, because, come
on, 'Wingardium Leviosa'? The universe was going to check that you
said 'Wingardium Leviosa' in exactly the right way and otherwise it
wouldn't make the quill float?</p>
<p>No. Obviously no, once you thought about it seriously. Someone,
quite possibly an actual preschool child, but at any rate some
English-speaking magic user, who thought that 'Wingardium Leviosa'
sounded all flyish and floaty, had originally spoken those words
while casting the spell for the first time. And then told everyone
else it was necessary.</p>
<p>But (Harry had reasoned) it didn't <i>have</i> to be that way,
it wasn't built into the universe, it was built into
<i>you</i>.</p>
<p>There was an old story passed down among scientists, a
cautionary tale, the story of Blondlot and the N-Rays.</p>
<p>Shortly after the discovery of X-Rays, an eminent French
physicist named Prosper-Rene Blondlot - who had been first to
measure the speed of radio waves and show that they propagated at
the speed of light - had announced the discovery of an amazing new
phenomenon, N-Rays, which would induce a faint brightening of a
screen. You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. N-Rays
had all sorts of interesting properties. They were bent by
aluminium and could be focused by an aluminium prism into striking
a treated thread of cadmium sulfide, which would then glow faintly
in the dark...</p>
<p>Soon dozens of other scientists had confirmed Blondlot's
results, especially in France.</p>
<p>But there were still other scientists, in England and Germany,
who said they weren't quite sure they could see that faint
glow.</p>
<p>Blondlot had said they were probably setting up the machinery
wrong.</p>
<p>One day Blondlot had given a demonstration of N-Rays. The lights
had turned out, and his assistant had called off the brightening
and darkening as Blondlot performed his manipulations.</p>
<p>It had been a normal demonstration, all the results going as
expected.</p>
<p>Even though an American scientist named Robert Wood had quietly
stolen the aluminium prism from the center of Blondlot's
mechanism.</p>
<p>And that had been the end of N-Rays.</p>
<p><i>Reality,</i> Philip K. Dick had once said, <i>is that which,
when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.</i></p>
<p>Blondlot's sin had been obvious in retrospect. He shouldn't have
told his assistant what he was doing. Blondlot should have made
sure the assistant <i>didn't</i> know what was being tried or when
it was being tried, before asking him to describe the screen's
brightness. It could have been that simple.</p>
<p>Nowadays it was called "blinding" and it was one of the things
modern scientists took for granted. If you were doing a psychology
experiment to see whether people got angrier when they were hit
over the head with red truncheons than with green truncheons, you
didn't get to look at the subjects yourself and decide how "angry"
they were. You would snap photos of them after they'd been hit with
the truncheon, and send the photos off to a panel of raters, who
would rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how angry each person looked,
obviously <i>without</i> knowing what color of truncheon they'd
been hit with. Indeed there was no good reason to tell the raters
what the experiment was about, at all. You <i>certainly</i>
wouldn't tell the experimental subjects that <i>you thought</i>
they ought to be angrier when hit by red truncheons. You'd just
offer them 20 pounds, lure them into a test room, hit them with a
truncheon, color randomly assigned of course, and snap the photo.
In fact the truncheon-hitting and photo-snapping would be done by
an assistant who hadn't been told about the hypothesis, so he
couldn't look expectant, hit harder, or snap the photo at just the
right time.</p>
<p>Blondlot had destroyed his reputation with the sort of mistake
that would get a failing grade and probably derisive laughter from
the T.A. in a first-year undergraduate course on experimental
design... in 1991.</p>
<p>But this had been a bit longer ago, in 1904, and so it had taken
months before Robert Wood had formulated the obvious alternative
hypothesis and figured out how to test it, and dozens of other
scientists had been sucked in.</p>
<p>More than two centuries after science had gotten started. That
late in scientific history, it still hadn't been obvious.</p>
<p>Which made it <i>entirely</i> plausible that in the tiny
wizarding world, where science didn't seem much known at all, no
one had ever tried the first, the simplest, the most obvious thing
that any modern scientist would think to check.</p>
<p>The books were full of complicated instructions for all the
things you had to do <i>exactly right</i> in order to cast a spell.
And, Harry had hypothesized, the process of obeying those
instructions, of checking that you were following them correctly,
probably <i>did</i> do something. It <i>forced you to concentrate
on the spell</i>. Being told to just wave your wand and wish
probably <i>wouldn't</i> work as well. And once you believed the
spell was supposed to work a certain way, once you had practiced it
that way, you might not be able to convince yourself that it could
work any <i>other</i> way...</p>
<p>...if you did the simple but wrong thing, and tried to test
alternative forms <i>yourself.</i></p>
<p>But what if you <i>didn't know</i> what the original spell had
been like?</p>
<p>What if you gave Hermione a list of spells she hadn't studied
yet, taken from a book of silly prank spells in the Hogwarts
library, and some of those spells had the correct and original
instructions, while others had one changed gesture, one changed
word? What if you kept the instructions constant, but told her that
a spell supposed to create a red worm was supposed to create a blue
worm instead?</p>
<p>Well, in that case, it had turned out...</p>
<p>...Harry was having trouble believing his results here...</p>
<p>...if you told Hermione to say "Oogely boogely" with the vowel
durations in the ratio of 3 to 1 to 1, instead of the correct ratio
of 3 to 1 to 2, you still got the bat but it wouldn't glow any
more.</p>
<p>Not that belief was <i>irrelevant</i> here. Not that <i>only</i>
the words and wand movements mattered.</p>
<p>If you gave Hermione completely incorrect information about what
a spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.</p>
<p>If you didn't tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do,
it would stop working.</p>
<p>If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to
do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as
originally described in the book, not the way she'd been told it
should.</p>
<p>Harry was, at this moment, literally banging his head against
the brick wall. Not hard. He didn't want to damage his precious
brains. But if he didn't have some outlet for his frustration, he
would spontaneously catch on fire.</p>
<p><i>Thud. Thud. Thud.</i></p>
<p>It seemed the universe actually <i>did</i> want you to say
'Wingardium Leviosa' and it wanted you to say it in a certain exact
way and it didn't care what <i>you</i> thought the pronunciation
should be any more than it cared how you felt about gravity.</p>
<p><i>WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?</i></p>
<p>The worst part of it was the smug, amused look on Hermione's
face.</p>
<p>Hermione had <i>not</i> been okay with sitting around obediently
following Harry's instructions without being told why.</p>
<p>So Harry had explained to her what they were testing.</p>
<p>Harry had explained why they were testing it.</p>
<p>Harry had explained why probably no wizard had tried it before
them.</p>
<p>Harry had explained that he was actually fairly confident of his
prediction.</p>
<p>Because, Harry had said, there was <i>no way</i> that the
universe actually wanted you to say 'Wingardium Leviosa'.</p>
<p>Hermione had pointed out that this was not what her books said.
Hermione had asked if Harry really thought he was smarter, at
eleven years old and just over a month into his Hogwarts education,
than all the other wizards in the world who disagreed with him.</p>
<p>Harry had said the following exact words:</p>
<p>"Of course."</p>
<p>Now Harry was staring at the red brick directly in front of him
and contemplating how hard he would have to hit his head in order
to give himself a concussion that would interfere with long-term
memory formation and prevent him from remembering this later.
Hermione wasn't laughing, but he could feel her <i>intent to
laugh</i> radiating out from behind him like a dreadful pressure on
his skin, sort of like knowing you were being stalked by a serial
killer only <i>worse.</i></p>
<p>"Say it," Harry said.</p>
<p>"I wasn't <i>going</i> to," said the kindly voice of Hermione
Granger. "It didn't seem nice."</p>
<p>"Just get it over with," said Harry.</p>
<p>"Okay! So you gave me this <i>whole long lecture</i> about how
hard it was to do basic science and how we might need to stay on
the problem for <i>thirty-five years</i>, and then you went and
expected us to make the greatest discovery in the history of magic
in the first hour we were working together. You didn't just hope,
you really expected it. You're silly."</p>
<p>"Thank you. Now -"</p>
<p>"I've read all the books you gave me and I still don't know what
to call that. Overconfidence? Planning fallacy? Super duper Lake
Wobegon effect? They'll have to name it after you. Harry Bias."</p>
<p>"All <i>right!</i> "</p>
<p>"But it <i>is</i> cute. It's such a boy thing to do."</p>
<p>"<i>Drop dead.</i>"</p>
<p>"Aw, you say the most romantic things."</p>
<p><i>Thud. Thud. Thud.</i></p>
<p>"So what's next?" said Hermione.</p>
<p>Harry rested his head against the bricks. His forehead was
starting to hurt where he'd been banging it. "Nothing. I have to go
back and design different experiments."</p>
<p>Over the last month, Harry had carefully worked out, in advance,
a course of experimentation for them that would have lasted until
December.</p>
<p>It would have been a <i>great</i> set of experiments if the
<i>very first test</i> had not falsified the basic premise.</p>
<p>Harry could not believe he had been this dumb.</p>
<p>"Let me correct myself," said Harry. "I need to design
<i>one</i> new experiment. I'll let you know when we've got it, and
we'll do it, and then I'll design the next one. How does that
sound?"</p>
<p>"It sounds like <i>someone</i> wasted a <i>whole lot of
effort</i>."</p>
<p><i>Thud.</i> Ow. He'd done that a bit harder than he'd
planned.</p>
<p>"So," said Hermione. She was leaning back in her chair and the
smug look was back on her face. "What did we discover today?"</p>
<p>"I discovered," said Harry through gritted teeth, "that when it
comes to doing truly basic research on a genuinely confusing
problem where you have no clue what's going on, my books on
scientific methodology aren't worth crap -"</p>
<p>"Language, Mr. Potter! Some of us are innocent young girls!"</p>
<p>"Fine. But if my books were worth a <i>carp,</i> that's a kind
of fish not anything bad, they would have given me the following
important piece of advice: When there's a confusing problem and
you're just starting out and you have a falsifiable hypothesis, go
test it. Find some simple, easy way of doing a basic check and do
it right away. Don't worry about designing an elaborate course of
experiments that would make a grant proposal look impressive to a
funding agency. Just check as fast as possible whether your ideas
are false before you start investing huge amounts of effort in
them. How does that sound for a moral?"</p>
<p>"Mmm... okay," said Hermione. "But I was also hoping for
something like 'Hermione's books aren't worthless. They're written
by wise old wizards who know way more about magic than I do. I
should pay attention to what Hermione's books say.' Can we have
that moral too?"</p>
<p>Harry's jaw seemed to be clenched too tightly to let any words
out, so he just nodded.</p>
<p>"Great!" Hermione said. "I liked this experiment. We learned a
lot from it and it only took me an hour or so."</p>
<p>"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH H!"</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" />
<p>In the dungeons of Slytherin.</p>
<p>An unused classroom lit with eerie green light, much brighter
this time and coming from a small crystal globe with a temporary
enchantment, but eerie green light nonetheless, casting strange
shadows from the dusty desks.</p>
<p>Two boy-sized figures in cowled grey cloaks (no masks) had
entered in silence, and sat down in two chairs opposite the same
desk.</p>
<p>It was the second meeting of the Bayesian Conspiracy.</p>
<p>Draco Malfoy hadn't been sure if he should look forward to it or
not.</p>
<p>Harry Potter, judging by the expression on his face, didn't seem
to have any doubts on the appropriate mood.</p>
<p>Harry Potter looked like he was ready to kill someone.</p>
<p>"Hermione Granger," said Harry Potter, just as Draco was opening
his mouth. "<i>Don't ask</i>."</p>
<p><i>He couldn't have gone on another date, could he?</i> thought
Draco, but that didn't make any sense.</p>
<p>"Harry," said Draco, "I'm sorry but I have to ask this anyway,
did you <i>really</i> order the mudblood girl an expensive mokeskin
pouch for her birthday?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I did. You've already worked out why, of course."</p>
<p>Draco reached up and raked fingers through his hair in
frustration, his cowl brushing the back of his hand. He
<i>hadn't</i> been quite sure why, but now he couldn't say so. And
Slytherin <i>knew</i> he was courting Harry Potter, he'd made it
obvious enough in Defense class. "Harry," said Draco, "people know
I'm friends with you, they don't know about the Conspiracy of
course, but they know we're friends, and it makes <i>me</i> look
bad when you do that sort of thing."</p>
<p>Harry Potter's face tightened. "Anyone in Slytherin who can't
understand the concept of acting nice toward people you don't
actually like should be ground up and fed to pet snakes."</p>
<p>"There are a lot of people in Slytherin who <i>don't,</i>" Draco
said, his voice serious. "Most people are stupid, and you have to
look good in front of them anyway." Harry Potter <i>had</i> to
understand that if he ever wanted to get anywhere in life.</p>
<p>"What do <i>you</i> care what other people think? Are you really
going to live your life needing to explain everything you do to the
dumbest idiots in Slytherin, letting <i>them</i> judge <i>you?</i>
I'm sorry, Draco, but I'm not lowering my cunning plots to the
level of what the dumbest Slytherins can understand, just because
it might make you look bad otherwise. Not even your friendship is
worth that. It would <i>take all the fun out of life.</i> Tell me
<i>you</i> haven't ever thought the same thing when someone in
Slytherin is being too stupid to breathe, that it's beneath the
dignity of a Malfoy to have to pander to them."</p>
<p>Draco genuinely hadn't. Ever. Pandering to idiots was like
breathing, you did it without thinking about it.</p>
<p>"Harry," Draco said at last. "Just doing whatever you want,
without worrying about how it looks, isn't smart. The <i>Dark
Lord</i> worried about how he looked! He was feared and hated, and
he knew <i>exactly</i> what sort of fear and hate he wanted to
create. <i>Everyone</i> has to worry about what other people
think."</p>
<p>The cowled figure shrugged. "Perhaps. Remind me sometime to tell
you about something called Asch's Conformity Experiment, you might
find it quite amusing. For now I'll just note that it's dangerous
to worry about what other people think on <i>instinct,</i> because
you <i>actually care,</i> not as a matter of cold-blooded
calculation. Remember, I was beaten and bullied by older Slytherins
for fifteen minutes, and afterward I stood up and graciously
forgave them. Just like the good and virtuous Boy-Who-Lived ought
to do. But my cold-blooded calculations, Draco, tell me that I have
<i>no use</i> for the dumbest idiots in Slytherin, since <i>I don't
own a pet snake.</i> So I have no reason to care what they think
about how I conduct my duel with Hermione Granger."</p>
<p>Draco did not clench his fists in frustration. "She's just some
mudblood," Draco said, keeping his voice calm, rather than
shouting. "If you don't like her, push her down the stairs."</p>
<p>"Ravenclaw would know -"</p>
<p>"Have Pansy Parkinson push her down the stairs! You wouldn't
even have to manipulate her, offer her a Sickle and she'd do
it!"</p>
<p>"<i>I</i> would know! Hermione beat me in a book-reading
contest, she's getting better grades than me, I have to defeat her
with my <i>brain</i> or it doesn't count!"</p>
<p>"<i>She's just a mudblood! Why do you respect her that
much?</i> "</p>
<p>"<i>She's a power among Ravenclaws! Why do you care what some
powerless idiot in Slytherin thinks?</i> "</p>
<p>"<i>It's called politics! And if you can't play it you can't
have power!</i> "</p>
<p>"<i>Walking on the moon is power! Being a great wizard is power!
There are kinds of power that don't require me to spend the rest of
my life pandering to morons!</i> "</p>
<p>Both of them stopped, and, in almost perfect unison, began
taking deep breaths to calm themselves.</p>
<p>"Sorry," Harry Potter said after a few moments, wiping sweat
from his forehead. "Sorry, Draco. You've got a lot of political
power and it makes sense for you to keep it. You <i>should</i> be
calculating what Slytherin thinks. It's an important game and I
shouldn't have insulted it. But you can't ask <i>me</i> to lower
the level of my game in Ravenclaw, just so that you don't look bad
by associating with me. Tell Slytherin you're gritting your teeth
while you pretend to be my friend."</p>
<p>That was exactly what Draco <i>had</i> told Slytherin, and he
still wasn't sure whether it was true.</p>
<p>"Anyway," Draco said. "Speaking of your image. I'm afraid I've
got some bad news. Rita Skeeter heard some of the stories about you
and she's been asking questions."</p>
<p>Harry Potter raised his eyebrows. "Who?"</p>
<p>"She writes for the <i>Daily Prophet,</i>" Draco said. He tried
to keep the worry out of his voice. The <i>Daily Prophet</i> was
one of Father's primary tools, he used it like a wizard's wand.
"That's the newspaper people actually pay attention to. Rita
Skeeter writes about celebrities, and as she puts it, uses her
quill to puncture their over-inflated reputations. If she can't
find any rumors about you, she'll just make up her own."</p>
<p>"I <i>see,</i>" said Harry Potter. His green-lit face looked
very thoughtful beneath the cowl.</p>
<p>Draco hesitated before saying what he had to say next. By now
someone had certainly reported to Father that he was courting Harry
Potter, and Father would also know that Draco hadn't written home
about it, and Father would understand that Draco didn't think he
could actually keep it a secret, which sent a clear message that
Draco was practicing his own game now but still on Father's side,
since if Draco had been tempted away, he would have been sending
false reports.</p>
<p>It followed that Father had probably anticipated what Draco was
about to say next.</p>
<p>Playing the game with Father for real was a rather unnerving
sensation. Even if they were on the same side. It was, on the one
hand, exhiliarating, but Draco also knew that in the end it would
turn out that Father had played the game better. There was no other
way it could possibly go.</p>
<p>"Harry," Draco finally said. "This isn't a suggestion. This
isn't my advice. Just the way it is. My father could almost
certainly quash that article. But it would cost you."</p>
<p>That Father had been expecting Draco to tell Harry Potter
exactly that was not something Draco said out loud. Harry Potter
would work it out on his own, or not.</p>
<p>But instead Harry Potter shook his head, smiling beneath the
cowl. "I have no intention of trying to quash Rita Skeeter."</p>
<p>Draco didn't even try to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
"You <i>can't</i> tell me you don't care what the <i>newspaper</i>
says about you!"</p>
<p>"I care less than you might think," said Harry Potter. "But I
have my own ways of dealing with the likes of Skeeter. I don't need
Lucius's help."</p>
<p>A worried look came over Draco's face before he could stop it.
Whatever Harry Potter was about to do next, it would be something
Father wasn't expecting, and Draco was feeling very nervous about
where that might lead.</p>
<p>Draco also realized that his hair was getting sweaty underneath
the cowl. He'd never actually worn one of those before, and hadn't
realized that the Death Eaters' cloaks probably had things like
Cooling Charms.</p>
<p>Harry Potter wiped some sweat from his forehead again, grimaced,
took out his wand, pointed it upward, took a deep breath, and said
"<i>Frigideiro!</i> "</p>
<p>Moments later Draco felt the cold draft.</p>
<p>"<i>Frigideiro! Frigideiro! Frigideiro! Frigideiro!
Frigideiro!</i> "</p>
<p>Then Harry Potter lowered the wand, though his hand seemed a bit
shaky, and put it back into his robes.</p>
<p>The whole room seemed perceptibly cooler. Draco could have done
that too, but still, not bad.</p>
<p>"So," Draco said. "Science. You're going to tell me about
blood."</p>
<p>"We're going to <i>find out</i> about blood," Harry Potter said.
"By doing experiments."</p>
<p>"All right," Draco said. "What sort of experiments?"</p>
<p>Harry Potter smiled evilly beneath his cowl, and said, "You tell
me."</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" />
<p>Draco had heard of something called the Socratic Method, which
was teaching by asking questions (named after an ancient
philosopher who had been too smart to be a real Muggle and hence
had been a disguised pureblood wizard). One of his tutors had used
Socratic teaching a lot. It had been annoying but effective.</p>
<p>Then there was the Potter Method, which was insane.</p>
<p>To be fair, Draco had to admit that Harry Potter had tried the
Socratic Method first and it hadn't been working too well.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had asked how Draco would go about
<i>disproving</i> the blood purist hypothesis that wizards couldn't
do the neat stuff now that they'd done eight centuries ago because
they had interbred with Muggleborns and Squibs.</p>
<p>Draco had said that he did not understand how Harry Potter could
sit there with a straight face and claim this was not a trap.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had replied, still with a straight face, that if it
was a trap it would have been so pathetically obvious that
<i>he</i> ought to be ground up and fed to pet snakes, but it was
<i>not</i> a trap, it was simply a rule of how scientists operated
that you had to try to disprove your own theories, and if you made
an honest effort and failed, that was victory.</p>
<p>Draco had tried to point out the staggering stupidity of this by
suggesting that the key to surviving a duel was to cast Avada
Kedavra on your own foot and miss.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had <i>nodded</i>.</p>
<p>Draco had shaken his head.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had then presented the idea that scientists watched
ideas fight to see which ones won, and you <i>couldn't fight
without an opponent,</i> so Draco needed to figure out opponents
for the blood purist hypothesis to fight so that blood purism could
win, which Draco understood a little better even though Harry
Potter had said it with a rather distasteful look. Like, it was
clear that if blood purism was the way the world really was, then
the sky just had to be blue, and if some other theory was true, the
sky just had to be green; and nobody had seen the sky yet; and then
you went outside and looked and the blood purists won; and after
this had happened six times in a row, people would start noticing
the trend.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had then proceeded to claim that all the opponents
Draco was inventing were too weak, so blood purism wouldn't get
credit for defeating them because the battle wouldn't be impressive
enough. Draco had understood that too. <i>Wizards have gotten
weaker because house elves are stealing our magic</i> hadn't
sounded impressive to him either.</p>
<p>(Though Harry Potter <i>had</i> said that one at least was
testable, in that they could try to check if house elves had gotten
stronger over time, and even draw a picture representing the
increasing strength of house elves and another picture representing
the decreasing strength of wizards and if the two pictures matched
that would point to the house elves, all said in such completely
serious tones that Draco had felt an impulse to ask Dobby a few
pointed questions under Veritaserum before snapping out of it.)</p>
<p>And Harry Potter had finally said that Draco <i>couldn't</i> fix
the battle, scientists weren't dumb, it would be <i>obvious</i> if
you fixed the battle, it had to be a <i>real fight,</i> between two
different theories that might both <i>really</i> be true, with a
test that only the <i>true</i> hypothesis would win, something that
actually <i>would</i> come out different ways depending on which
hypothesis was actually correct, and there would be experienced
scientists watching to make sure that was exactly what happened.
Harry Potter had claimed that he himself just wanted to know <i>how
blood really worked</i> and for that he need to see blood purism
<i>really win</i> and Draco wasn't going to fool <i>him</i> with
theories that were just there to be knocked down.</p>
<p>Even having seen the point, Draco hadn't been able to invent any
"plausible alternatives", as Harry Potter put it, to the idea that
wizards were getting less powerful because they were mixing their
blood with mud. It was too obviously true.</p>
<p>It was then that Harry Potter had said, rather frustrated, that
he couldn't imagine Draco was <i>really</i> this bad at considering
different viewpoints, <i>surely</i> there'd been Death Eaters who'd
posed as enemies of blood purism and had come up with much more
plausible-sounding arguments against their own side than Draco was
offering. If Draco had been trying to pose as a member of
Dumbledore's faction, and come up with the house elf hypothesis, he
wouldn't have fooled anyone for a second.</p>
<p>Draco had been forced to admit this was a point.</p>
<p>Hence the Potter Method.</p>
<p>"Please, Dr. Malfoy," whined Harry Potter, "why won't you accept
my paper?"</p>
<p>Harry Potter had needed to repeat the phrase "just pretend to be
pretending to be a scientist" three times before Draco had
understood.</p>
<p>In that moment Draco had realized that there was something
deeply <i>wrong</i> with Harry Potter's brain, and anyone who tried
Legilimency on it would probably never come back out again.</p>
<p>Harry Potter had then gone into further and considerable detail:
Draco was to pretend to be a Death Eater who was posing as the
editor of a scientific journal, Dr. Malfoy, who wanted to reject
his enemy Dr. Potter's paper "On the Heritability of Magical
Ability", and if the Death Eater didn't act like a real scientist
would, he would be revealed as a Death Eater and executed, while
Dr. Malfoy was also being watched by his own rivals and needed to
<i>appear</i> to reject Dr. Potter's paper for neutral scientific
reasons or he would lose his position as journal editor.</p>
<p>It was a wonder the Sorting Hat wasn't gibbering madly in St.
Mungo's.</p>
<p>It was also the most complicated thing anyone had <i>ever</i>
asked Draco to pretend and there was no possible way he could have
refused the challenge.</p>
<p>Right now they were, as Harry Potter had put it, getting in the
mood.</p>
<p>"I'm afraid, Dr. Potter, that you wrote this in the wrong color
of ink," Draco said. "Next!"</p>
<p>Dr. Potter's face did an excellent job of crumpling in despair,
and Draco couldn't help but feel a flash of Dr. Malfoy's glee, even
though the Death Eater was only pretending to be Dr. Malfoy.</p>
<p>This part was <i>fun.</i> He could have done this all day
long.</p>
<p>Dr. Potter got up from the chair, slumped over in dismay, and
trudged off, and turned into Harry Potter, who gave Draco a
thumbs-up, and then turned back into Dr. Potter again, now
approaching with an eager smile.</p>
<p>Dr. Potter sat down and presented Dr. Malfoy with a piece of
parchment on which was written:</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>On the Heritability of Magical
Ability</i></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>Dr. H. J. Potter-Evans-Verres,
Institute for Sufficiently Advanced Science</i></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>My observation:</i></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>Today's wizards can't do things as
impressive as<br />
what wizards used to do 800 years ago.</i></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>My conclusion:</i></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><i>Wizardkind has become weaker by
mixing<br />
their blood with Muggleborns and Squibs.</i></p>
<p>"Dr. Malfoy," said Dr. Potter with a hopeful look, "I was
wondering if the <i>Journal of Irreproducible Results</i> could
consider for publication my paper entitled 'On the Heritability of
Magical Ability'."</p>
<p>Draco looked at the parchment, smiling while he considered
possible rejections. If he was a professor, he would have refused
the essay as too short, so -</p>
<p>"It's too long, Dr. Potter," said Dr. Malfoy.</p>
<p>For a moment there was genuine incredulity on Dr. Potter's
face.</p>
<p>"Ah..." said Dr. Potter. "How about if I get rid of the separate
lines for observations and conclusions, and just put in a
<i>therefore</i> -"</p>
<p>"Then it'll be too short. Next!"</p>
<p>Dr. Potter trudged off.</p>
<p>"All right," said Harry Potter, "you're getting <i>too</i> good
at this. Two more times to practice, and then third time is for
real, no interruptions between, I'll just come in straight at you
and that time you'll reject the paper based on the actual content,
remember, your scientific rivals are watching."</p>
<p>Dr. Potter's next paper was perfect in every way, a marvel of
its kind, but unfortunately had to be rejected because Dr. Malfoy's
journal was having trouble with the letter E. Dr. Potter offered to
rewrite it without those words, and Dr. Malfoy explained that it
was really more of a vowel problem.</p>
<p>The paper after that was rejected because it was Tuesday.</p>
<p>It was, in fact, Saturday.</p>
<p>Dr. Potter tried to point this out and was told "Next!"</p>
<p>(Draco was starting to understand why Snape had used his hold
over Dumbledore just to get a position that let him be awful to
students.)</p>
<p>And then -</p>
<p>Dr. Potter was approaching with a superior smirk on his
face.</p>
<p>"This is my latest paper, <i>On the Heritability of Magical
Ability,</i>" Dr. Potter stated confidently, and thrust out the
parchment. "I have decided to allow your journal to publish it, and
have prepared it in perfect accordance with your guidelines so that
you may publish it quickly."</p>
<p>The Death Eater decided to track down and kill Dr. Potter after
his mission was done. Dr. Malfoy kept a polite smile on his face,
since his rivals were watching, and said...</p>
<p>(The pause stretched, with Dr. Potter looking at him
impatiently.)</p>
<p>..."Let me look at that, please."</p>
<p>Dr. Malfoy took the parchment and perused it carefully.</p>
<p>The Death Eater was starting to get nervous about the fact that
he wasn't a real scientist, and Draco was trying to remember how to
talk like Harry Potter.</p>
<p>"You, ah, need to consider other possible explanations for your,
um, observation, besides just this one -"</p>
<p>"Really?" interrupted Dr. Potter. "Like what, exactly? <i>House
elves are stealing our magic?</i> My data admit of only one
possible conclusion, Dr. Malfoy. There <i>are</i> no other
plausible hypotheses."</p>
<p>Draco was trying furiously to order his brain to think, what
would he say if he was posing as a member of Dumbledore's faction,
what <i>did</i> they claim was the explanation for wizardkind's
decline, Draco had never bothered to actually ask that...</p>
<p>"If you can't think of any other way to explain my data, you'll
have to publish my paper, <i>Dr. Malfoy.</i>"</p>
<p>It was the sneer on Dr. Potter's face that did it.</p>
<p>"Oh yeah?" snapped Dr. Malfoy. "How do you know that magic
itself isn't fading away?"</p>
<p>Time stopped.</p>
<p>Draco and Harry Potter exchanged looks of appalled horror.</p>
<p>Then Harry Potter spat something that was probably an extremely
bad word if you'd been raised by Muggles. "<i>I didn't think of
that!</i> " said Harry Potter. "And I should have. The magic goes
away. <i>Damn, damn, damn!</i> "</p>
<p>The alarm in Harry Potter's voice was contagious. Without even
thinking about it, Draco's hand went into his robes and clutched at
his wand. He'd thought the House of Malfoy was <i>safe,</i> so long
as you only married into families that could trace their bloodlines
back four generations you were supposed to be <i>safe,</i> it had
never occurred to him before that there might be nothing anyone
could do to stop the end of magic. "Harry, what do we do?" Draco's
voice was rising in panic. "<i>What do we do?</i> "</p>
<p>"<i>Let me think!</i> "</p>
<p>After a few moments, Harry grabbed from a nearby desk the same
quill and roll of parchment he'd used to write his pretend paper,
and started scribbling something.</p>
<p>"We'll figure it out," Harry said, his voice tight, "if magic is
fading out of the world we'll figure out how fast it's fading and
how much time we have left to do something, and then we'll figure
out why it's fading, and then we'll do something about it. Draco,
have wizarding powers been declining at a steady rate, or have
there been sudden drops?"</p>
<p>"I... I don't know..."</p>
<p>"You told me that no one had matched the four founders of
Hogwarts. So it's been going on for at least eight centuries, then?
You can't remember hearing anything about the problems suddenly
appearing five centuries ago or anything like that?"</p>
<p>Draco was trying frantically to think. "I always heard that
nobody was as good as Merlin and then after that nobody was as good
as the Founders of Hogwarts."</p>
<p>"All right," Harry said. He was still scribbling. "Because three
centuries ago is when Muggles started to not believe in magic,
which I thought might have something to do with it. And about a
century and a half ago was when Muggles began using a kind of
technology that stops working around magic and I was wondering if
it might also go the other way around."</p>
<p>Draco exploded out of his chair, so angry he could hardly even
speak. "It's the <i>Muggles</i> -"</p>
<p>"<i>Damn it!</i> " roared Harry. "Weren't you even listening to
<i>yourself?</i> It's been going on for eight centuries at least
and the Muggles weren't doing anything interesting then! <i>We have
to figure out the real truth!</i> The Muggles <i>might</i> have
something to do with this but if they <i>don't</i> and you go
blaming everything on them and that stops us from figuring out
what's <i>really</i> going on then one day you're going to wake up
in the morning and find out that your wand is just a stick of
wood!"</p>
<p>Draco's breath stopped in his throat. His father often said
<i>our wands will break in our hands</i> in his speeches but Draco
had never really thought before about what that <i>meant</i>, it
wasn't going to happen to <i>him</i> after all. And now suddenly it
seemed very real. <i>Just a stick of wood.</i> Draco could imagine
just what it would be like to take out his wand and try to cast a
spell and find that nothing was happening...</p>
<p>That could happen to <i>everyone</i>.</p>
<p>There would be no more wizards, no more magic, ever. Just
Muggles who had a few legends about what their ancestors had been
able to do. Some of the Muggles would be called Malfoy, and that
would be all that was left of the name.</p>
<p>For the first time in his life, Draco realized why there were
Death Eaters.</p>
<p>He'd always taken for granted that becoming a Death Eater was
something you did when you grew up. Now Draco <i>understood</i>, he
knew why Father and Father's friends had sworn to give their lives
to prevent the nightmare from coming to pass, there were things you
couldn't just stand by and watch happen. But what if it was going
to happen <i>anyway</i>, what if all the sacrifices, all the
friends they'd lost to Dumbledore, the <i>family</i> they'd lost,
what if it had all been for <i>nothing...</i></p>
<p>"Magic <i>can't</i> be fading away," Draco said. His voice was
breaking. "It wouldn't be <i>fair</i>."</p>
<p>Harry stopped scribbling and looked up. His face had an angry
expression. "Your father never told you that life isn't fair?"</p>
<p>Father had said that every single time Draco used the word.
"But, but, it's too awful to believe that -"</p>
<p>"Draco, let me introduce you to something I call the Litany of
Tarski. It changes every time you use it. On this occasion it runs
like so: <i>If magic is fading out of the world, I want to believe
that magic is fading out of the world. If magic is not fading out
of the world, I want not to believe that magic is fading out of the
world. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.</i> If
we're living in a world where magic is fading, <i>that's what we
have to believe,</i> we have to know what's coming, so we can stop
it, or in the very worst case, be prepared to do what we can in the
time we have left. Not believing it won't stop it from happening.
So the <i>only</i> question we have to ask is whether magic is
<i>actually</i> fading, and if that's the world we live in then
that's what we want to believe. Litany of Gendlin: <i>What's true
is already so, owning up to it doesn't make it worse.</i> Got that,
Draco? I'm going to make you memorize it later. It's something you
repeat to yourself any time you start wondering if it's a good idea
to believe something that isn't actually true. In fact I want you
to say it right now. <i>What's true is already so, owning up to it
doesn't make it worse.</i> Say it."</p>
<p>"What's true is already so," repeated Draco, his voice
trembling, "owning up to it doesn't make it worse."</p>
<p>"If magic is fading, I want to believe that magic is fading. If
magic is not fading, I want not to believe that magic is fading.
Say it."</p>
<p>Draco repeated back the words, the sickness churning in his
stomach.</p>
<p>"Good," Harry said, "remember, it might <i>not</i> be happening,
and then you won't have to believe it, either. <i>First</i> we just
want to know what's actually going on, which world we actually live
in." Harry turned back to his work, scribbled some more, and then
turned the parchment so Draco could see it. Draco leaned over the
desk and Harry brought the green light closer.</p>
<p><i><u>Observation:</u></i></p>
<p><i>Wizardry isn't as powerful now as it was when Hogwarts was
founded.</i></p>
<p><i><u>Hypotheses:</u></i></p>
<p><i>1. Magic itself is fading.<br />
2. Wizards are interbreeding with Muggles and Squibs.<br />
3. Knowledge to cast powerful spells is being lost.</i><i><br />
4. Wizards are eating the wrong foods as children, or something
else besides blood is making them grow up weaker.<br />
5. Muggle technology is interfering with magic. (Since 800 years
ago?)<br />
6. Stronger wizards are having fewer children. (Draco = only child?
Check if 3 powerful wizards, Quirrell / Dumbledore / Dark Lord, had
any children.)</i></p>
<p><i><u>Tests:</u></i></p>
<p>"All right," Harry said. His breathing sounded a little calmer.
"Now when you're dealing with a confusing problem and you have no
idea what's going on, the smart thing to do is figure out some
really simple tests, things you can look at right away. We need
fast tests that distinguish between these hypotheses. Observations
that would come out a different way for at least one of them
compared to all the other ones."</p>
<p>Draco stared at the list in shock. He was suddenly realizing
that he knew an awful lot of purebloods who were only children.
Himself, Vincent, Gregory, practically <i>everyone.</i> The two
most powerful wizards everyone talked about were Dumbledore and the
Dark Lord and neither had any children just like Harry had
suspected...</p>
<p>"It's going to be really hard to distinguish between 2 and 6,"
Harry said, "it's in the blood either way, you'd have to try and
track the decline of wizardry and compare that to how many kids
different wizards were having and measure the abilities of
Muggleborns compared to purebloods..." Harry's fingers were tapping
nervously on the desk. "Let's just lump 6 in with 2 and call them
the blood hypothesis for now. 4 is unlikely because then everyone
would notice a sudden drop when the wizards switched to new foods,
it's hard to see what would've changed steadily over 800 years. 5
is unlikely for the same reason, no sudden drop, Muggles weren't
doing anything 800 years back. 4 looks like 2 and 5 looks like 1
anyway. So mainly we should be trying to distinguish between 1, 2,
and 3." Harry turned the parchment to himself, drew an ellipse
around those three numbers, turned it back. "Magic is fading, blood
is weakening, knowledge is disappearing. What test comes out
differently depending on which of those is true? What could we see
that would mean any one of these was false?"</p>
<p>"<i>I</i> don't know!" blurted Draco. "Why are you asking me?
You're the scientist!"</p>
<p>"Draco," Harry said, a note of pleading desperation in his
voice, "I only know what Muggle scientists know! You grew up in the
wizarding world, I didn't! You know more magic than I do and you
know more <i>about</i> magic than I do and you thought of this
whole idea in the first place, so start thinking like a scientist