Harry Potter and the Memories of a Sociopath, Ch 5, Azkaban 2.0

Here's how it is:

During the summer after the events of HPMOR, Harry remains deeply concerned about the fate of the world, despite Hermione obtaining a phoenix and destroying Azkaban's dementors, Moody having made progress toward a functional Philosopher's Stone based hospital, and Bones apparently grudgingly willing to take his cues on national policy.

Moody is suspicious of Gilderoy Lockhart, McGonagall's new hire for Defense professor. But that's nothing new, and Moody has found no evidence of wrongdoing in spite of putting some effort into investigating him. Moody, Bones, McGonagall, and Hermione are all concerned about Harry's apparent desire to release Voldemort from the ring in order to question him about the mirror and help rescue Dumbledore. Sprout has mysteriously received a gift: the long-lost and apparently cursed Hufflepuff Cup.

Draco is angry at the world; at the perceived failures and betrayals of everyone around him. In a flash of incite, Draco concludes that Harry is Voldemort and is the biggest threat to magical society. He begins planning to amass power for the inevitable battle.

Harry nodded, a slight shiver going through him. "Um, when you told me about what happened in Godric's Hollow, on Halloween night, in 1981 I mean, um... I thought I saw another flaw in your reasoning. A way you could have avoided disaster. But, um, I think you have a blind spot, a class of strategies you don't consider, so you didn't see it even afterward-"



Harry swallowed a lump in his throat. "There wass way for you to tesst your horcrux ssysstem without dying. The general lesson is important. Do you see it now?"

"No," Professor Quirrell said after a while. "And I do hope your lesson is a sensible one, for your sake."

"Suppose, Professor, that I learned how to cast the improved horcrux spell and I was willing to use it. What would I do with it?"

Professor Quirrell answered at once. "You would find some person whom you found morally abhorrent and whose death you could convince yourself would save other lives, and murder them to create a horcrux."

"And then what?"

"Make more horcruxes," said the Defense Professor. He picked up a jar of what looked like dragon scales.

"Before that," Harry said.

After a time the Defense Professor shook his head. "I still do not see it, and you will cease this game and tell me."

"I would make horcruxes for my friends. If you'd ever really cared about one single other person in the entire world, if there'd been just one person who gave your immortality meaning, someone that you wanted to live forever with you -" Harry's throat choked. "Then, then the idea of making a horcrux for someone else wouldn't have been such a counterintuitive thought." Harry was blinking hard. "You have a blind spot around strategies that involve doing nice things for other people, to the point where it stops you from achieving your selfish values. You think... it's not your style, I suppose. That... particular part of your self-image... is what cost you those nine years."

"I see..." the Defense Professor said slowly. "I see. I should have taught Rabastan the advanced horcrux ritual, and forced him to test the invention. Yes, that is supremely obvious in retrospect. For that matter, I could have ordered Rabastan to try marking himself onto some disposable infant, to see what happened, before I took myself to Godric's Hollow to create you." Professor Quirrell shook his head bemusedly. "Well. I am glad I am realizing this now and not ten years earlier; I had enough to chide myself for at that time."

"You don't see nice ways to do the things you want to do," Harry said. His ears heard a note of desperation in his own voice. "Even when a nice strategy would be more effective you don't see it because you have a self-image of not being nice."

"That is a fair observation," said Professor Quirrell. "Indeed, now that you have pointed it out, I have just now thought of some nice things I can do this very day, to further my agenda."

Harry just looked at him.

Professor Quirrell was smiling. "Your lesson is a good one, Mr. Potter. From now on, until I learn the trick of it, I shall keep diligent watch for cunning strategies that involve doing kindnesses for other people. Go and practice acts of goodwill, perhaps, until my mind goes there easily."

Cold chills ran down Harry's spine.

Professor Quirrell had said this without the slightest visible hesitation.

Lord Voldemort was absolutely certain that he could never be redeemed. He wasn't the tiniest bit afraid of it happening to him.

Harry awoke with a groan and checked the time. Four o'clock in the morning. Harry pushed himself to his feet, groaning again. At least he'd be able to get some work done before Moody arrived and prevented him from doing anything useful for the rest of the day...

The silence in Harry's office was interrupted by a pop as a short, long-eared creature appeared. "What the hell?"

"Hogwarts is being too dangerous, Harry Potter must leave Hog-"

The creature teleported away just in time to avoid the burst of stunners aimed at and around it.

Harry cursed as she metamorphosed into Auror Tonks, while Harry pulled back the hood of his invisibility cloak.

Harry shook his head, "That was new. I was expecting something to take advantage of the interruption in the wards, but certainly I wasn't expecting that."

Tonks smirked, "I thought being a body-double slash body-guard for a twelve-year-old was silly before, but now that I know Moody sent me to protect you from rogue house elves... Yeah, that's probably the weirdest thing I've seen this week. It's been a slow week."

"It's been a pretty full week for me, though that's probably in my top ten. It could have been much worse; Moody was probably expecting some new incarnation of Voldemort to appear and that you'd have to sacrifice yourself to fake my death or at least stall the attack long enough for him to bring reinforcements."

Tonks frowned, "That... is probably closer to the truth than you think it is."

"I'm still surprised he, and the headmistress, agreed to allow the warding specialists to interrupt some of the wards to study how they interact."

"Yeah, and it's really too bad the creature detection ward is down. It would have been nice to know where that elf came from or ran away to. People always make investigations harder than they ought to be."

Bones stepped through the floo and glared at Hermione, specifically, at her phoenix. "Of course you two were responsible for Azkaban. I never doubted it for a moment, but there's the smoking responsible adults cleaned up your mess without incident this time."

Harry turned to Hermione, "Yeah, you probably need to keep the phoenix hidden from teachers, students, etc. for a while. Like until the next time you do something heroic and dangerous."

"I guess even Fawkes wouldn't go along with a prison break", Moody added. "How did you get another phoenix, anyway?"

Harry answered, "The normal way; when someone plans on doing something heroic and crazy and dangerous, one shows up somehow. I'm still investigating the details. Also, since when has Azkaban blocked phoenix travel? I remember Fawkes took Dumbledore there."

"Well, if someone had told me about what you were planning, I probably would have explained the new wards. It's not like I can predict what crazy things you're going to do."

Harry shrugged, "Fair enough-"

Hermione interrupted, "Fawkes probably would have helped. We could have waited and come up with an actual plan and found out about the anti-phoenix wards and the tripping jinxes and everything else.I didn't think about it at the time, but it really wasn't urgent that I left at that second."

Bones added, "Or if we'd seriously tried, we may have been able to convince the Wizengamot to close the prisonwithout the vigilantism."

Harry closed his eyes, "It was urgent. You only get one chance to accept a phoenix."

Hermione scowled, "I thought you guys tried to get the Wizengamot to close the prison. And basically concluded it wasn't going to happen."

"Actually, I just had Bones say that so you'd be in the right state of mind to attract a phoenix."

"Harry, you lied to me!"

"I think it's very, very important that you have a phoenix. The safest way to get one is to plan a mission one believes is urgent and dangerous but really isn't."

"You should have asked first; you promised."

"That wouldn't have worked. For a phoenix to show up, you need to believe you're doing the right thing, that it's going to be dangerous even with help from a phoenix, and again, you only get one chance. And I wish someone had manipulated me into getting a phoenix. Although if I'd known your phoenix would be defective, I might not have bothered with it."

"As glad as I am to have Hermes, you have to stop manipulating people like this."

"I've been meaning to ask about that name; the messenger of the gods. Does that mean you've found a new ambition?"

"Don't change the subject, Harry-"

McGonagall interrupted, "Actually, if you can postpone this fight until later, I assume there are more important topics on the agenda?"

Bones nodded, "Bellatrix was at Gringotts. The goblins have been spectacularly unhelpful but we've been able to determine that she flooed in a few weeks ago, accessed her vault, and left without incident. The floo system reported unexpected activity at the Black family home to the DMLE, but it looked like she had moved on at least a week earlier and there are no further leads and no usable witness reports."

Hermione frowned, "No one saw her at Gringotts? She was there during normal business hours, right?"

Bones scowled, "We've tracked down a few people who apparently saw her. You'd think people would recognize the most wanted woman in magical Britain, but apparently not if she dyes her hair blond."

Harry asked, "Not even with a missing arm?"

"According to the witnesses, her limbs were intact and there was nothing suspicious about her. Basically no one knows anything useful. The bottom line is you should stay inside the wards here until she's apprehended."

"Speaking of the which, did the ward specialists learn everything they needed to know to set something up at Hogwarts?"

Moody chuckled, "The only thing they learned was how much they don't know. They said they'll need to investigate for at least a year to be able to make even simple modifications."

Harry scowled, "That's totally unacceptable. How about this as a temporary alternative: We build the arrival and departure rooms outside the wards as planned, with hallways that lead underground. But instead of building an underground hospital, we just leave it as two rooms, from which Hermes teleports people to random rooms in Azkaban. Fawkes holds the Philosopher's Stone and takes it to the rooms where it's needed. We recruit someone in each of the world's major magical hospitals to report their terminal patients, after which someone stuns, time-turns, and then teleports them to the arrival room. After treatment, they're taken to wait in the departure room and returned to the hospital the instant they left."

Moody nodded, "The basics sound workable; Azkaban does have pretty solid warding to start with. I'll work out the details for the hospital liaisons, which will take a little time, but I should be able to get St. Mungo's on board within the week. International hospitals may present some issues."

"Other governments have three general options: to cooperate, to stall, or to actively try to attack or sabotage the hospital. We need a situation where cooperation is the Nash equilibrium choice for each government. Countries shouldn't interfere if the likely outcome of that interference (including reactions by other countries) is worse than the status quo. I'll have to think more about it, but I'd guess that threatening to withhold treatment from leaders of countries that do annoying things would probably be sufficient."

Bones smirked, "You make it sound like politics should be an arithmancy exercise. Let me know how that works out for you."

"I know there are more details to work out there, and your advice would be appreciated. Take some time to think it over and we'll talk about it later."

Bones nodded unenthusiastically.

"Is there any news about Peter?", McGonagall asked.

Bones sighed. "At the moment, no one knows where he is. As you know, Peter Pettigrew was taken from Azkaban to St. Mungo's weeks ago. Physically, he was reportedly recovering, psychologically, not so much. He hadn't spoken or demonstrated any magical ability, including metamorphosing back to his original form. Then he disappeared from the hospital."

"Oh...", Harry began. "Wait, never mind..."

"So he was Sirius after all then", Moody concluded.

Bones replied, "Well, the investigators can't be sure it was really Sirius who was killed by Voldemort. They don't know anything. That's not in report i mean, of course."

"I can certainly understand someone who was imprisoned for a decade without a trial fleeing magical Britain at their earliest opportunity," McGonagall argued.

Harry concluded, "There are four general possibilities, between which I can't distinguish with the current evidence: One, Sirius became a death eater, betrayed my parents, then got Peter imprisoned in his place. Two, Sirius was a death eater, but ended up in Azkaban while metamorphosed Peter was killed by Voldemort that night. Three, Peter was the traitor but was smart and/or cowardly enough to use Sirius' form to do illegal things, eventually getting Sirius arrested in his place. And four, Peter used Sirius' appearance as a death eater, but Sirius then got Peter justly arrested. So basically, I think we know less now than we thought we knew a few weeks ago."

"I don't think that changes anything", Bones replied. "Aurors will continue to search for him, and we'll get it settled after they apprehend him."

"He could be a security threat, but with reduced magic and likely limited mental function, he's unlikely to be more dangerous than anyone else", Moody added. "Speaking of suspicious and probably dangerous people, what are you planning to do about Lockhart?"

McGonagall answered dryly, "pay him to teach defense."

"That's a mistake. That man is either into something so dark I don't know how to detect it or he's just been lucky. Either way, he's a bad choice for a defense teacher."

Harry interjected, "I'm surprised you believe in luck, actually."

Moody's human eye stared at Harry, "It'll be in your 6th or 7th year potions text. Only a few wizards have ever been able to brew it, so I assume he bought, inherited, or stole some."

Harry lowered his face into his hands. "A potion that makes luck? You've got to be kidding me. With instructions that everyone knows about but almost no one can use? Why does that sound familiar? It's got to be another cover story for some secret artifact. I guess that's another entry for the list of artifacts we need to collect." Harry looked around the room, "So is there anything else we need to talk about?"

Bones shrugged, "It's probably nothing but you get weird about these things. Some aurors reported a glowing person rising through the core of Azkaban after the dementors disappeared. One of the muggleborns referred to it as an angel and a handful of people are convinced it's part of some muggle end-of-the-world prophecy and are taking the whole thing far more seriously than I'd consider healthy."

"A messenger of a different god", Harry smirked. "Hermione, I'm definitely noticing a pattern..."

Hermione walked down a random hallway. She was trying to decide for how long she should refuse to speak to Harry, or if there were a more effective behavior modification method, when Professor Sprout walked through an intersection and paused to talk.

"Hermione, I'm sorry I haven't been available much this summer. I don't know how I got this busy. I heard you passed a fair number of OWLs anyway, so congratulations; that's very impressive. Anyway, one of the projects I've been working on involves some really interesting charms research that I could use some help with, if you're interested..."