With a resigned feeling that the universe would come and get him anyway, Harry continued slicing at the pancake with his fork and knife. He couldn't muster the energy. That was the sad truth. Harry knew now how people felt when they were tired of running, tired of trying to escape fate, and they just fell to the ground and let the horrifically befanged and tentacled demons of the darkest abyss drag them off to their unspeakable destiny.
The Weasley twins drew closer.
And yet closer.
Harry ate another bite of pancake.
The Weasley twins arrived, grinning brightly.
"Hello, Fred," Harry said dully. One of the twins nodded. "Hello, George." The other twin nodded.
"You sound tired," said George.
"You should cheer up," said Fred.
"Look what we got you!"
And George took, from behind Fred's back -
A cake with twelve flaming candles.
There was a pause, as the Ravenclaw table stared at them.
"That's not right," said someone. "Harry Potter was born on the thirty-first of Jul-"
"HE IS COMING," said a huge hollow voice that cut through all conversation like a sword of ice. "THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY -"
Dumbledore had leapt out of his throne and run straight over the Head Table and seized hold of the woman speaking those awful words, Fawkes had appeared in a flash, and all three of them vanished in a crack of fire.
There was a shocked pause...
...followed by heads turning in the direction of Harry Potter.
"I didn't do it," Harry said in a tired voice.
"That was a prophecy!" someone at the table hissed. "And I bet it's about you!"
Harry sighed.
He stood up from his seat, raised his voice, and said very loudly over the conversations that were starting up, "It's not about me! Obviously! I'm not coming here, I'm already here!"
Harry sat back down again.
The people who had been looking at him turned away again.
Someone else at the table said, "Then who is it about?"
And with a dull, leaden sensation, Harry realized who wasn't already at Hogwarts.
Call it a wild guess, but Harry had a feeling the undead Dark Lord would be showing up one of these days.
The conversation continued on around him.
"Not to mention, tear apart the very what?"
"I thought I heard Trelawney start to say something with an 'S' just before the Headmaster grabbed her."
"Like... soul? Sun?"
"If someone's going to tear apart the Sun we're really in trouble!"
That seemed rather unlikely to Harry, unless the world contained scary things which had heard of David Criswell's ideas about star lifting.
"So," Harry said in tired tones, "this happens every Sunday breakfast, does it?"
"No," said a student who might have been in his seventh year, frowning grimly. "It doesn't."
Harry shrugged. "Whatever. Anyone want some birthday cake?"
"But it's not your birthday!" said the same student who'd objected last time.
That was the cue for Fred and George to start laughing, of course.
Even Harry managed a weary smile.
As the first slice was served to him, Harry said, "I've had a really long week."
And Harry was sitting in the cavern level of his trunk, slid shut and locked so no one could get in, a blanket pulled over his head, waiting for the week to be over.
10:01.
10:02.
10:03, but just to be sure...
10:04 and the first week was done.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief, and gingerly pulled the blanket off of his head.
A few moments later, he had emerged into the bright sunlit air of his dorm.
Shortly after, and he was in the Ravenclaw common room. A few people looked at him, but no one said anything or tried to talk to him.
Harry found a nice wide writing desk, pulled back a comfortable chair, and sat down. From his pouch he drew a sheet of paper and a pencil.
Mum and Dad had told Harry in no uncertain terms that while they understood his enthusiasm for leaving home and getting away from his parents, he was to write them every week without fail, just so that they knew he was alive, unharmed, and not in prison.
Harry stared down at the blank sheet of paper. Let's see...
After leaving his parents at the train station, he'd...
...gotten acquainted with a boy raised by Darth Vader, become friends with the three most infamous pranksters in Hogwarts, met Hermione, then there'd been the Incident with the Sorting Hat... Monday he'd been given a time machine to treat his sleep disorder, gotten a legendary invisibility cloak from an unknown benefactor, rescued seven Hufflepuffs by staring down five scary older boys one of whom had threatened to break his finger, realized that he possessed a mysterious dark side, learned to cast Frigideiro in Charms class, and gotten started on his rivalry with Hermione... Tuesday had introduced Astronomy taught by Professor Aurora Sinistra who was nice, and History of Magic taught by a ghost who ought to be exorcised and replaced with a tape recorder... Wednesday, he'd been pronounced the Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom... Thursday, let's not even think about Thursday... Friday, the Incident in Potions Class, followed by his blackmailing the Headmaster, followed by the Defense Professor having him beaten up in class, followed by the Defense Professor turning out to be the most awesome human being who still walked the face of the Earth... Saturday he'd lost a bet and gone on his first date and started redeeming Draco... and then this morning Professor Trelawney's unheard prophecy might or might not indicate that an immortal Dark Lord was about to attack Hogwarts.
Harry mentally organized his material, and started writing.
Dear Mum and Dad:
Hogwarts is lots of fun. I learned how to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Charms class, and I met a girl named Hermione Granger who reads faster than I do.
I'd better leave it at that.
Your loving son,
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.
Chapter 22: The Scientific Method
Something, somewhere, somewhen, must have happened differently...
PETUNIA EVANS married Michael Verres, a Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford.
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 Godel, Escher, Bach and Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases and volume one of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. 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.
HERMIONE GRANGER is doing better than him in every class except broomstick riding.
DRACO MALFOY is exactly what you would expect an eleven-year-old boy to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.
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.
DUMBLEDORE is either insane, or playing some vastly deeper game which involved setting fire to a chicken.
DEPUTY HEADMISTRESS MINERVA MCGONAGALL needs to go off somewhere private and scream for a while.
Presenting:
HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY
You ain't guessin' where this one's going.
Some notes:
The opinions of characters in this story are not necessarily those of the author. What warm!Harry thinks is often 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.