A few seconds later Ginny still had not said a word.

"You seem to be experiencing some kind of glossophobia, does that happen to you often? You can nod if you cannot talk," asked Harry.

Ginny had not understood a word of what Harry said. She showed no reaction at all, only her head turned even redder.

"Ah, my mistake, said Harry. "Of course you don't know the technical term. Do you usually find it difficult to talk to people?"

Ginny shook her head.

"Then it seems to me that I am somehow a very important person for you, and you are experiencing glossophobia because you're afraid to say something wrong. The easiest way to fix that would probably be if I showed you that I am a completely normal person like you, and there is no reason to be afraid. However, I find acting like a normal 12 year old to be very annoying, so we can disregard that solution. Another way would be to find out the deeper reasons behind your nervousness, but I don't think I have enough practice in psychology to do that. So let's try this: Stand up straight, spread your arms and legs a bit and breathe deeply."

Ginny did as Harry had told her, and after a few seconds she really started to feel a bit more comfortable. She continued standing silently for a while and then said, "Thank you, that really helped."

"You have just tricked your subconscious mind," Harry said. "By showing body language signs of confidence, you actually feel more confident. By the way, you still haven't told me if my guess was right. Are you Ginny Weasley?"

"Yes I am," she replied.

"OK, Ginny, then why have you come to this compartment? Did you want to speak with me?"

Ginny again fell silent. She realised that she had not thought her first meeting with Harry Potter through very well. Actually her plan had only extended so far as to open the compartment door and step inside. In retrospect she felt quite stupid for that, but couldn't change it now, so she just said, "I was looking for a place to sit and all the other compartments were full." Although she did not think it sounded very convincing.

"In that case, just have a seat. You can put your trunk on the other bench next to mine. There's no need to lift it up to the storage space. I doubt that more people will come to sit here. Most people who know me avoid spending too much time with me, because spending time with me tends to make your life surreal."

"Won't Hermione Granger be coming?" asked Ginny. "I mean, isn't she your girlfriend?"

"I don't know who told you that, but she is not my girlfriend and if you ever hear that rumour again, please tell me who spread it; I would like to give that person a visit. Hermione won't be in Hogwarts the first couple of days; she has something else to do."

Ginny had only half paid attention to what Harry had said after he denied that Hermione was his girlfriend. At that point she felt a sudden rush of joy. She had always expected Hermione to be an obstacle that she would have to get out of the way first, before having a shot with Harry. This would make things a lot easier. However, there was still the problem that she was extremely nervous around him. Before she could think any further on how to fix that issue, Harry interrupted her thoughts.

"Excuse me for being this direct, I just don't see the point of not mentioning the obvious, just because it might hurt someone's feelings. If we all spent less time on protecting other people's feelings and more on saying what we actually think, then there would be a lot fewer misunderstandings in human communication. I don't believe that you entered this compartment by chance. Your behaviour shows that you clearly knew who I am, so I guess you wanted to meet me. Is that correct?"

Ginny had known that her excuse was not really believable, and that someone as smart as Harry would of course see through it, so there was no point in denying it. So she replied, "Yes."

"May I ask you why you wanted to meet me? Is it just because I'm famous? Do you want an autograph?"

Ginny thought carefully about her reply. She would have loved an autograph from Harry but she did not think that asking for one now would be very helpful to her plans with him. She thought about what he had said about how telling the truth made human communication easier, and briefly considered confessing her love to Harry, but that did not seem wise at this point either. So she answered: "Fred and George told me a lot about you, and I thought you would be an interesting person to meet."

"That seems reasonable to me," replied Harry. "I am indeed an interesting person." He sounded rather pleased with himself.

"The question is, are you an interesting person? I would ask you to pitch to me, why I should be interested in getting to know you. But you still seem quite nervous around me, so that test would probably not give good results. Your nervousness will fade with time and it doesn't tell me anything about whether you're an interesting person or not. If you want to test if someone is fit for a job, you should test skills that are actually required for the job. That's something that muggles get wrong a lot."

"What exactly do you mean by that?", asked Ginny. She had inherited part of her father's curiosity about the muggle world and, since it played an important role in Harry's life, she thought it was a good idea to know more about it."

"Look at the process of how muggles in Britain choose their leaders for example. The key skill you've got to have is persuasion. Less and less people seem to actually care about what you want to do after you get elected. They elect you based on things like charisma and rhetorical skills. The correlation between those things and the ability to make good decisions for a country is not that strong. Of course, it is still higher than the correlation between being born into a Noble and Most Ancient House and being an able leader, so muggle governments are in general more competent than the Wizengamot, but still there would be better ways to choose a leader."

"OK, I think I understand," said Ginny.

"Great, than we can proceed with the friend casting thing. You don't have to be nervous, what I've heard from you so far is already relatively promising, and I have a good record of casting my friends in the Hogwarts Express. I'm just going to ask you some questions. Let me start with this one: what do you think about Quidditch?"

Ginny had not expected that. Ron always told her that Harry Potter hated Quidditch, and once threatened to destroy it. She felt the nervousness creeping back into her brain and sabotaging her ability to form proper thoughts. She repeated the techniques Harry had shown her earlier and, when she felt calm again, she replied: "I quite like watching it. I would also like to play, but my brothers never let me."

For a quarter of a second Harry seemed to look a bit disappointed, but then his face went back to a neutral expression. She thought that it might have been a better idea to deny that she liked Quidditch, but it was too late for that now.

"What position would you like to play if you could choose?"

Ginny did not know which answer Harry wanted to hear so she answered honestly: "I think I'd like being a chaser the most."

"Why not the seeker? That is the most important player."

"I think I just like being really involved in the game. Of course the seeker is more important, but I don't think it's that much fun to fly around alone doing nothing until you see the snitch. The chaser is just more a part of the team."

That seemed to please Harry, and Ginny thought that she had gotten the answer right this time.

"Then what would you say if I told you that the snitch completely ruins Quidditch, since catching it makes everything else that happened during the game irrelevant in most cases?"

At first Ginny was shocked by this statement. The snitch was an important part of Quidditch, it had been part of the game for more than a thousand years, but what Harry said actually made sense. It happened maybe once a year that a professional Quidditch game was decided by anything other than who got the snitch. That was mostly if a top tier team played against a bad one, and the seeker of the bad team caught the snitch. But with two teams of equal strength it almost never happened that one managed to score over 15 goals more than the other team. Especially as Quidditch matches grew shorter and shorter, with the racing brooms getting better.

"You're absolutely right; the snitch kind of ruins the game. I can't believe that I never noticed that on my own." She was surprised to realise that she had not said this because she knew it was the answer Harry wanted to hear, but that she actually believed it.

"It's a lot harder spotting mistakes like that if everyone around you doesn't see them," said Harry. "It takes training, and wizards usually don't have that training. Although I have hope that this might change quite soon. You admitted that your belief about how Quidditch should be was wrong. Admitting that you are wrong is one of the most important skills of a rationalist. You passed the test."

Ginny smiled as she heard the good news and then she asked: "Ehm, Harry, what is a rationalist?"

"Rationalist strive to acquire accurate beliefs about the world around them, and uses those beliefs to make good decisions and maximise their utility."

"And how does that work? I mean, how do you get accurate beliefs about the world?"

"You perform experiments and measure the results. And you can read books written by people who already performed experiments before you. That is actually the faster way for most things. At least, things that don't concern magic. If you don't have to repeat experiments that were already done, you have more time to test things that are actually new. I am sure that you are still a bit confused by this. It is very unintuitive for wizard born children and even for a lot of muggles. But I expect you to understand it after a while in Hogwarts."

"Do you really think so? My brothers never mentioned that they learned anything like that in Hogwarts."

"Well, you plan to spend time with me. And people who spend time with me usually learn a thing or two about rationality."

"I'll be spending time with you? I thought you wanted to test me first, before you decided on that."

"Well, by asking you questions I cannot truly find out whether I would like to be your friend. The only thing I can find out quite easily is if you fulfil any K.O. criteria that prevent me from being able to enjoy spending time with you. I hadn't made a list of such criteria when I asked you the first question, so I just tried to test the first one that came into my mind. And now that I've thought about it, I've come to the conclusion that I only have one criterion. Friends of mine have to be able to admit when they are wrong, because otherwise it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with them. You showed that you can do that. I hereby officially declare you my friend. On probation of course, I still don't know nearly enough about you to make a final decision on the topic."

To this Ginny said nothing. She just sat there and smiled. She had never been happier than that in her entire life.

Authors notes

This chapter was a bit of a filler chapter, but I hope you still liked it. In the next chapter you'll find out how the setting for my Hogwarts will look like. It will go online on Sunday the 31th of may.