Ginny's eyes drifted open. She stretched out on the small bed she had been laid on, and looked around. The room suddenly got quieter than it had been – upon seeing her waking, Professor Lockhart had stopped talking, in case she wanted to go back to sleep. But she did not.

"It didn't work?" said Ginny.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Weasley," said Professor Lockhart. Ginny could only sigh. She had been trying something inordinately more difficult than everyone else had. If she'd merely tried to cast an animal Patronus, she thought, surely she would have been able.

"Can I try again?" said Ginny, although she was already being torn apart by doubts. There was no point in trying again if she didn't even know what she had done wrong.

"Yes," said Professor Lockhart. "In fact, I booked the group for several hours, specifically so that students could try on multiple occasions. You can probably even try a third time, although I don't recommend it."

"Alright," said Ginny. "Can I take some time to think, before-"

"Yes," said Professor Lockhart. "In fact, you should. I've taken the liberty of Obliviating you of the nastier effects of critical Dementor exposure. They're known to impede Patronus formation at times on second encounters, as they continue to weigh your emotional state down. Personally, I think Obliviation should be applied more often as a Dementor cure..."

"Okay," said Ginny. "Just let me think..." She certainly felt awful, although she could only remember part of the reason why. Why hadn't her Patronus worked? Had she had the wrong thought? Or had she not truly believed it? Or could it have been both?

"Tell me whenever you want to go back and face it again," said Professor Lockhart. "And for your information, Harry Potter didn't cast his Patronus on his first attempt, either. Eat this." He handed Ginny some chocolate, which she slowly began to eat, and he went to sit elsewhere.

Harry Potter... that was just the problem. Ginny had been so focused on the fact that you couldn't cast a Patronus by putting yourself into someone else's shoes that it hadn't occurred to her that her own beliefs might simply be wrong, or at least unfit for casting Harry's advanced Patronus. There were only two people who could cast it, and both of them had theological views particularly distant from Ginny's own. Perhaps it was just coincidence – or perhaps it was evidence that Ginny was simply being particularly stubborn about something that, deep down, she knew was wrong.

But Ginny looked deep within herself, and could not find any component of her brain that would admit to wrongdoing. Even as her Internal Harry told her that she was only believed in her belief and she was killing valuable brain cells with every second she kept up the charade, she didn't come to any sort of epiphany that she had been acting all along, and hadn't really believed it.

What she could come up with were good counterarguments against what she believed; counterarguments that she had always brushed off, often with circular logic, come to think of it. Perhaps her knowledge of those counterarguments undermined her faith, making her beliefs weaker and preventing them from being legitimate for purposes of the Patronus. She briefly considered asking the Defense Professor to Obliviate her of the arguments, before realizing what an idiotic premise that was. Literally the opposite of rationality. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.

Even if Ginny's beliefs were true, she had been drawing off of her belief in her belief, not the root belief. So what if all of this indicated that Ginny's worldview was wrong and she would need a new one to cast a real Patronus? That simply wouldn't do. You can't build a strong worldview for yourself in a matter of hours. Still, if Ginny's old worldview was wrong, it wouldn't work for Patronus purposes, particularly if she knew it. She was just about ready to curl up into a ball and die, but she didn't want to. She wanted to cast a Patronus and be done with it. How do you rebuild all of philosophy from nothing; how do you build your worldview out of basic principles that aren't in dispute? Once again, Ginny was concerned that it might take more than a few hours.

Ginny ran through the counterarguments in her head. Why her sect over all others? The obvious answers all relied on circular reasoning. Why believe in an afterlife, when all magical evidence for one was so questionable? The idea that her relevant beliefs were founded by a need for comfort in the face of inevitable, real death gnawed at Ginny. A closely related idea that momentarily comforted Ginny was that an afterlife must exist, owing to the omnibenevolence of God, but then Ginny finally asked herself: why believe in God? She'd never really thought about it. She'd never really doubted it, true, but she'd never really thought about it, either. Pascal's Wager only "proved" the existence of a class of non-omnibenevolent "god" that Ginny didn't believe in, and its status as blackmail sent it to the rejection heap of her brain; Pascal's Wager hadn't been a convincing argument for her since she was very young. As long as she could remember, Ginny had simply felt the existence of God like the existence of gravity or the existence of magic, and so it had never occurred to her to question it, even as some people around her didn't seem to feel the same thing. But gravity and magic were objectively provable through scientific analysis; God was not, and all of the first arguments Ginny could think of for His existence were circular. Ginny was in a new circle of a Hell she did not believe in, the Circle of Reasoning, where everything was confirmed by everything else but there was no base truth confirming anything.

Why believe in souls? It was intuitively obvious to Ginny, cogito ergo sum, that she existed, and furthermore, it was obvious to her that her own existence was evidence that the universe existed. It was also obvious to Ginny, conversely, that in physical reality, there was a spectrum of intelligence dictated by cognition structure; the mere differences in behavior between lower animals and humans suggested this, and the existence of brain damage confirmed it. Ginny had had personal experience with this, when she realized that by expanding her Parseltongue computer's complexity sufficiently, she could build a device with no intelligence, or she could build a device more intelligent than she was – or anything in-between. The brain is just a particularly efficient electrochemical computer, after all. And yet, despite the spectrum of intelligence dictated by physical reality, there could be no spectrum of cogito ergo sum. A mind was either a proof of the universe's existence or it wasn't; it was either a real viewpoint with agency or it wasn't. And so there had to be some invisible, intangible marker, a soul, distinguishing real beings, just as there had to be aether to clarify the true position of space itself. Rationalism could take many things away from Ginny, but her logical proof of souls had been formed so long ago, and so solidly, that it was not going anywhere.

The existence of souls certainly suggested the existence of God: who, exactly, decides what gets a soul and what doesn't? There had to be some intelligent force behind it. Or maybe there didn't. Perhaps Ginny was the only being in the world with a soul – she couldn't confirm the existence of anyone else's, only her own. Or perhaps souls were everywhere, just floating around, and some attached themselves to rocks and plants and stars. No, the existence of souls did not truly imply the existence of God as far as Ginny could tell. She was simply trying desperately to reassemble a shattered vase before her mother found her.

Some time after Ginny had stopped shaking and sweating, she let her mind wander, in the hope that the dreaming part of her mind would come up with something more useful than the waking part. Her mind went first to Harry, and then to Hermione, and then back to Harry, and then to Voldemort, and then back to Harry, and then to Draco, and then to Tim, and then to vague suspicion, and then back to Draco again, and then to Luna, and then to Nargles, and then to time, and then to the Well of Time, and then to church and then back to Luna, and then to Luna's father, and then to Luna's house, and then to Luna asleep, and then to Luna at the train station, and then-

"Professor Lockhart?" said Ginny. "I'd like to see the Dementor again soon."

"Alright," said the Professor. "Get your wand and follow me back to the Death Room at your own pace." Wait, Death Room? Had Dementors been Death instead of Evil this entire time? The Veil nearby should have made it very obvious, and Ginny now felt rather stupid, but no, the train of thought had to keep going.

Luna had once told Ginny of a magical mirror capable of creating universes. Whether or not the mirror existed as she described it was immaterial. It was clear that such a device was within the capabilities of wizards – in fact, it was within the capabilities of Muggles; a sufficiently powerful computer should be capable of simulating a universe, as universes, in Ginny's experience, operated on mathematically precise laws. And a simulation was the same as the real thing, from the perspective of the mind living in it.

"By the power of Bayes," whispered Ginny, and she grasped her wand off of the bedside cabinet, and held it in her hand. Given an infinite number of universes anything like Ginny's own – that is, containing intelligences capable of constructing computers – the infinity of universes that came from nowhere was infinitely smaller than the infinity of universes that had been created by a different, similar universe. So there was at least rationalist evidence to reject the null hypothesis of atheism, in favor of at least deism. That was certainly a breakthrough.

There was absolutely no reason for a universe-creator not to grant themselves omnipotence and omniscience; to prove omnibenevolence, though, she would need to psychoanalyze the creator of the universe, a task that proved daunting. Psychoanalyzing the creator of the universe would also help to reject the null hypothesis of deism. Was he a non-interventionist sort of God, or was He an interventionist sort of God? Well... yes and no. Interventions, miracles, did not happen often; the universe had existed for billions of years, and the universe didn't look like one that had been covered in miracles for billions of years. Many of the major points of life that were explainable once as miracles were now explainable by other means – life occurred on Earth through natural processes and chance; this also explained the eventual evolution of intelligence. Religions could and often did arise from memetic processes, and the miracles used to found them could be forged, particularly with magic (but where did magic come from, if not from God?), and one would therefore expect to see religions even in a world where all of them were false.

But that didn't imply that any given religion was necessarily false, either – between the extreme cases of "non-interventionist God who leaves no deliberate sign of his existence in his creation" and "interventionist God whose existence is made explicitly clear to every being within His creation" was an intermediate case, like the liquid phase between solids and gases – a semi-interventionist God, who left only debatable signs at critical developmental points, to produce a diversity of beings with different pictures of their root cause, varying in accuracy. If Ginny entertained the notion of this semi-interventionist God, then it was reasonably likely that He had a hand in Christianity – the incomplete version of it, after all, was the dominant religion amongst the dominant Muggles, and for a long time the true version was dominant amongst wizards. It was far from a certainty, though – and Ginny hadn't actually found any reason to reject the null hypothesis of deism – or, more importantly, to believe in omnibenevolence, which was the foundation of so many other beliefs, most notably the belief in an afterlife.

"You're very brave to try again," said Professor Lockhart. "A lot like your mother; she's a very brave woman." The Defense Professor smiled, and Ginny tried to reciprocate, but it was more of a gulp. They were walking through the stone hall back to the room in which Dementors were fought, and now Ginny knew that she was facing Death. She briefly thought that she should have put the confrontation off more, but she brushed that thought off; it was time.

Hello, Death, thought Ginny. I'm Ginny Weasley. I exist, and you don't. The Dementor wasn't actually there, yet, but she might as well begin to form her Patronus thought now. Cogito ergo sum. Why doesn't death exist, you might ask, indignantly pointing at yourself. People die all the time; surely that proves that I, Death, am real? But for Death to be a true horror, it must be the end of the self. Is it? We don't know! That's why you're in the Department of Mysteries, because we don't actually collectively know what you are! It's beyond ordinary study! For all of history, you've been a land that everyone enters into, and from which none return. But does that mean that you're empty? Age, too, fits your description. But we can contact the aged...

Who or what created our world is also a mystery, thought Ginny. If they don't study that here, they should. I believe I have a pretty good idea of Who created our world, but that doesn't even matter, here. Because by the same proof that we were probably created – the probability approaches one, that is – our creator was probably created. And His creator, and His, and so on. We are living in some indefinite layer of recursion. If an omnibenevolent entity exists anywhere in a tree of universes – and surely there does exist such an entity, because there is rightness in reality, and omnibenevolence is right – then surely it's Their responsibility to end true death everywhere on that tree of universes. To back up beings' mind-states, with something that could be called a soul, and keep them running in perpetuity past what the cold, non-altruistic mathematically precise universes would do.

A set of additional physical laws for the universe on top of the regularly activated ones? thought Ginny. Hmm, doesn't that sound like... magic? It appears that we've already been touched by omnibenevolence. But in the strange event that we haven't, that we are the first omnibenevolence to form on our tree of universes, it's our responsibility to make it ourselves, and seeing as you, Death, are a mystery, I'd say that we should do our best not to take chances. Add another layer of security.

"Ginevra Weasley, are you ready?" asked an Unspeakable. Ginny nodded with confidence, and finished her thought:

If there is the slightest reasonable chance that death is the true end of the soul, it's our responsibility to prevent and even end death. Pascal's Wager Maxima. The Dementor finally arrived, and someone muttered "about time".

I am Ginny Weasley, daughter of Arthur. I am the third seventh son. I am the child of God and man, of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, of a soul and a brain, of evolution and creation, of science and religion, of Muggle techniques and magical ones, of faith and reason, of knowledge and mystery. I am the one who I know thinks, and therefore I am the one who I know exists. I am destined for great things, but first, you must be resolved. I believe you've already been defeated, but... if not...

"Expecto Patronum!" shouted Ginny, with all of the conviction of the people she had occasionally seen getting overly excited in church.

Then you're about to be, thought Ginny, as the silver-white mist began to form at the tip of her wand. A burst of brilliant light, and countless forms began to appear in the mist, all animals, each blinking by too fast to clearly see, gradually increasing in average size. The Dementor was confused, and Ginny didn't quite know what was going on either, but she liked it. Finally, a single form settled in, a tall biped, and the others disappeared. Ginny looked at it closely, and was immediately disappointed, despite the brilliance of the light.

Aw, it's an ape? thought Ginny. So close and yet so far. ...or is it? It didn't look very much like a human; it was far too hairy and the face was all wrong. But it looked too much like a human to comfortably call it an animal, and soon... it picked up a rock, which shone nearly as brightly as it did, and threw it.

The Dementor fainted, and had to be revived later by the Unspeakables using black licorice.