060.asc

// 10449
//== The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 10

// 10450
//“Wake.”

// 10451
//Harry’s eyes flew open as he came awake with a choking gasp, a jerking start of
//his prone body. He couldn’t remember any dreams, maybe his brain had been too
//exhausted to dream, it seemed like he’d only closed his eyes and then heard
//that word spoken a moment after.

// 10452
//“You must awaken,” said the voice of Quirinus Quirrell. “I gave you as much
//time as I could, but it would be wise to reserve at least one use of your
//Time-Turner. Soon we must go backward four hours to Mary’s Place, appearing in
//every way as though we have done nothing interesting this day. I wished to
//speak to you before then.”

// 10453
//Harry slowly sat up in the midst of darkness. His body ached, and not only in
//the places where it had laid on the hard concrete. Images tumbled over each
//other in his memory, everything his unconscious brain had been too tired to
//discharge into a proper nightmare.

// 10454
//Twelve terrible voids floating down a metal corridor, tarnishing the metal
//around them, light dimmed and temperature falling as the emptiness tried to
//suck all life out of the world -

// 10455
//Chalk-white skin, stretched just above the bone that had remained after fat and
//muscle faded -

// 10456
//A metal door -

// 10457
//A woman’s voice -

// 10458
//__No, I didn’t mean it, please don’t die -__

// 10459
//__I can’t remember my children’s names any more -__

// 10460
//__Don’t go, don’t take it away, don’t don’t don’t -__

// 10461
//“What was that place?” Harry said hoarsely, in a voice pushed out of his throat
//like water forced through a too-thin pipe, in the darkness it sounded almost as
//shattered as Bellatrix Black’s voice had been. “__What was that place?
//That wasn’t a prison, that was HELL!__”

// 10462
//“Hell?” said the calm voice of the Defense Professor. “You mean the Christian
//punishment fantasy? I suppose there is a similarity.”

// 10463
//“How -” Harry’s voice was blocking, there was something huge lodged in his
//throat. “How - how could they -” __People__ had built that place, someone
//had __made__ Azkaban, they’d made it on __purpose,__ they’d done it
//__deliberately,__ that woman, she’d had children, children she wouldn’t
//remember, some judge had __decided__ for that to happen to her, someone
//had needed to __drag__ her into that cell and lock its door while she
//screamed, someone fed her every day and walked away __without letting her
//out__ -

// 10464
//“__HOW COULD PEOPLE DO THAT?__”

// 10465
//“Why shouldn’t they?” said the Defense Professor. A pale blue light lit the
//warehouse, then, showing a high, cavernous concrete ceiling, and a dusty
//concrete floor; and Professor Quirrell sitting some distance away from Harry,
//leaning his back against a painted wall; the pale blue light turned the walls
//to glacier surfaces, the dust on the floor to speckled snow, and the man
//himself had become an ice sculpture, shrouded in darkness where his black robes
//lay over him. “What use are the prisoners of Azkaban to them?”

// 10466
//Harry’s mouth opened in a croak. No words exited.

// 10467
//A faint smile twitched on the Defense Professor’s lips. “You know, Mr. Potter,
//if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had come to rule over magical Britain, and built
//such a place as Azkaban, he would have built it because he enjoyed seeing his
//enemies suffer. And if instead he began to find their suffering distasteful,
//why, he would order Azkaban torn down the next day. As for those who did make
//Azkaban, and those who do not tear it down, while preaching lofty sermons and
//imagining themselves __not__ to be villains… well, Mr. Potter, I think if
//I had my choice of taking tea with them, or taking tea with You-Know-Who, I
//should find my sensibilities less offended by the Dark Lord.”

// 10468
//“I don’t understand,” Harry said, his voice was shaking, he’d read about the
//classic experiment on the psychology of prisons, the ordinary college students
//who had turned sadistic as soon as they were assigned the role of prison
//guards; only now he realized that the experiment hadn’t examined the right
//question, the one most important question, they hadn’t looked at the key
//people, not the prison guards but __everyone else,__ “I really don’t
//understand, Professor Quirrell, how can people just stand by and let this
//happen, __why__ is the country of magical Britain __doing this__ -”
//Harry’s voice stopped.

// 10469
//The Defense Professor’s eyes appeared to be the same color as always, in the
//pale blue light, for that light was the same color as Quirinus Quirrell’s
//irises, those never-thawing chips of ice. “Welcome, Mr. Potter, to your first
//encounter with the realities of politics. What do the wretched creatures in
//Azkaban have to offer any faction? Who would benefit from aiding them? A
//politician who openly sided with them would associate themselves with
//criminals, with weakness, with distasteful things that people would rather not
//think about. Alternatively, the politician could demonstrate their might and
//cruelty by calling for longer sentences; to make a display of strength requires
//a victim to crush beneath you, after all. And the populace applauds, for it is
//their instinct to back the winner.” A coldly amused laugh. “You see, Mr.
//Potter, no one ever quite believes that __they__ will go to Azkaban, so
//they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others… I
//suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a
//lie, Mr. Potter, people don’t care in the slightest, and if you had not led a
//vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console
//yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers
//of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. I admit, Mr.
//Potter, that I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of
//government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in
//their own destruction.”

// 10470
//Harry’s recently cohered self was threatening to shatter into fragments again,
//the words falling like hammerstrikes on his consciousness, driving him back,
//step by step, over the precipice where lurked some vast abyss; and he was
//trying to find something to save himself, some clever retort that would refute
//the words, but it did not come.

// 10471
//The Defense Professor watched Harry, the gaze reflecting more curiosity than
//command. “It is very simple, Mr. Potter, to understand how Azkaban was built,
//and how it continues to be. Men care for what they, themselves, expect to
//suffer or gain; and so long as they do not expect it to redound upon
//themselves, their cruelty and carelessness is without limit. All the other
//wizards of this country are no different within than he who sought to rule over
//them, You-Know-Who; they only lack his power and his… frankness.”

// 10472
//The boy’s hands were clenched into fists so tightly that the nails cut into his
//palm, if his fingers were white or his face was pale you couldn’t have seen
//that, for the dim blue light cast all into ice or shadow. “You once offered to
//support me if my ambition were to be the next Dark Lord. Is that why,
//Professor?”

// 10473
//The Defense Professor inclined his head, a thin smile on his lips. “Learn all
//that I have to teach you, Mr. Potter, and you will rule this country in time.
//Then you may tear down the prison that democracy made, if you find that Azkaban
//still offends your sensibilities. Like it or not, Mr. Potter, you have seen
//this day that your own will conflicts with the will of this country’s populace,
//and that you do not bow your head and submit to their decision when that
//occurs. So to them, whether or not they know it, and whether or not you
//acknowledge it, you are their next Dark Lord.”

// 10474
//In the monochromatic light, unwavering, the boy and the Defense Professor both
//seemed like motionless ice sculptures, the irises of their eyes reduced to
//similar colors, looking very much the same in that light.

// 10475
//Harry stared directly into those pale eyes. All the long-suppressed questions,
//the ones he’d told himself he was putting on hold until the Ides of May. That
//had been a lie, Harry now knew, a self-deception, he had kept silent for fear
//of what he might hear. And now everything was coming forth from his lips, all
//at once. “On our first day of class, you tried to convince my classmates I was
//a killer.”

// 10476
//“You are.” Amusedly. “But if your question is why I __told__ them that,
//Mr. Potter, the answer is that you will find ambiguity a great ally on your
//road to power. Give a sign of Slytherin on one day, and contradict it with a
//sign of Gryffindor the next; and the Slytherins will be enabled to believe what
//they wish, while the Gryffindors argue themselves into supporting you as well.
//So long as there is uncertainty, people can believe whatever seems to be to
//their own advantage. And so long as you appear strong, so long as you appear to
//be winning, their instincts will tell them that their advantage lies with you.
//Walk always in the shadow, and light and darkness both will follow.”

// 10477
//“And,” said the boy, his voice level, “just what do __you__ want out of
//all this?”

// 10478
//Professor Quirrell had leaned further back against the wall from where he sat,
//casting his face into shadow, his eyes changing from pale ice into dark pits
//like those of his snake form. “I wish for Britain to grow strong under a strong
//leader; that __is__ my desire. As for my reasons why,” Professor Quirrell
//smiled without mirth, “I think they shall stay my own.”

// 10479
//“The sense of doom that I feel around you.” The words were becoming harder and
//harder to say, as the subject danced closer and closer to something terrible
//and forbidden. “You always knew what it meant.”

// 10480
//“I had several guesses,” said Professor Quirrell, his expression unreadable.
//“And I will not yet say all I guessed. But this much I will tell you: it is
//__your__ doom which flares when we come near, not mine.”

// 10481
//For once Harry’s brain managed to mark this as a questionable assertion and
//possible lie, instead of believing everything it heard. “Why do you sometimes
//turn into a zombie?”

// 10482
//“Personal reasons,” said Professor Quirrell with no humor at all in his voice.

// 10483
//“What was your ulterior motive for rescuing Bellatrix?”

// 10484
//There was a brief silence, during which Harry tried hard to control his
//breathing, keep it steady.

// 10485
//Finally the Defense Professor shrugged, as though it were of no account. “I all
//but spelled it out for you, Mr. Potter. I told you everything you needed to
//deduce the answer, if you had been mature enough to consider that first obvious
//question. Bellatrix Black was the Dark Lord’s most powerful servant, her
//loyalty the most assured; she was the single person most likely to be entrusted
//with some part of the lost lore of Slytherin that should have been yours.”

// 10486
//Slowly the anger crept over Harry, slowly the wrath, something terrible
//beginning to boil his blood, in just a few moments he would say something that
//he really shouldn’t say while the two of them were alone in a deserted
//warehouse -

// 10487
//“But she __was __innocent,” said the Defense Professor. He was not
//smiling. “And the degree to which all her choices were taken away from her, so
//that she never had a chance to suffer for her __own__ mistakes… it struck
//me as __excessive__, Mr. Potter. If she tells you nothing of use -” The
//Defense Professor gave another small shrug. “I shall not consider this day’s
//work a waste.”

// 10488
//“How altruistic of you,” Harry said coldly. “So if all wizards are like
//You-Know-Who inside, are you an exception to that, then?”

// 10489
//The Defense Professor’s eyes were still in shadow, dark pits that could not be
//met. “Call it a whim, Mr. Potter. It has sometimes amused me to play the part
//of a hero. Who knows but that You-Know-Who would say the same.”

// 10490
//Harry opened his mouth a final time -

// 10491
//And found that he couldn’t say it, he couldn’t ask the last question, the last
//and most important question, he couldn’t make the words come out. Even though a
//refusal like that was forbidden to a rationalist, for all that he’d ever
//recited the Litany of Tarski or the Litany of Gendlin or sworn that whatever
//could be destroyed by the truth should be, in that one moment, he could not
//bring himself to say his last question out loud. Even though he knew he was
//thinking wrongly, even though he knew he was supposed to be better than this,
//he still couldn’t say it.

// 10492
//“Now it is my turn to inquire of you.” Professor Quirrell’s back straightened
//from where it had leaned back against the glacier wall of painted concrete. “I
//was wondering, Mr. Potter, if you had anything to say about nearly killing me
//and ruining our mutual endeavor. I am given to understand that an apology, in
//such cases, is considered a sign of respect. But you have not offered me one.
//Is it just that you have not yet gotten around to it, Mr. Potter?”

// 10493
//The tone was calm, the quiet edge so fine and sharp that it would slice all the
//way through you before you realized you were being murdered.

// 10494
//And Harry just looked at the Defense Professor with cool eyes that would never
//flinch from anything; not even death, now. He was no longer in Azkaban, no
//longer fearful of the part of himself that was fearless; and the solid gemstone
//that was Harry had rotated to meet the stress, turning smoothly from one facet
//to another, from light to darkness, warm to cold.

// 10495
//__A calculated ploy on his part, to make me feel guilty, put me in a
//position where I must submit?__

// 10496
//__Genuine emotion on his part?__

// 10497
//“I see,” said Professor Quirrell. “I suppose that answers -”

// 10498
//“No,” said the boy in a cool, collected voice, “you do not get to frame the
//conversation that easily, Professor. I went to considerable lengths to protect
//you and get you out of Azkaban safely, __after__ I thought you had tried
//to kill a police officer. That included facing down twelve Dementors without a
//Patronus Charm. I wonder, if I had apologized when you demanded it, would you
//have said thank-you in turn? Or am I correct in thinking that it was my
//submission you demanded there, and not only my respect?”

// 10499
//There was a pause, and then Professor Quirrell’s voice came in reply, openly
//icy with danger no longer veiled. “It seems you still cannot bring yourself to
//lose, Mr. Potter.”

// 10500
//Darkness stared out of Harry’s eyes without flinching, the Defense Professor
//himself reduced to a mortal thing within them. “Oh, and are __you__
//pondering now, whether __you__ should pretend to lose to me, and pretend
//to humble yourself before my own anger, in order to preserve your own plans?
//Did the thought of a calculated false apology even __cross your mind?__ Me
//neither, Professor Quirrell.”

// 10501
//The Defense Professor laughed, low and humorless, emptier than the void between
//the stars, dangerous as any vacuum filled with hard radiation. “No, Mr. Potter,
//you have not learned your lesson, not at all.”

// 10502
//“I thought of losing many times, in Azkaban,” said the boy, his voice level.
//“That I ought to simply give up, and turn myself over to the Aurors. Losing
//would have been the sensible thing to do. I heard your voice saying it to me,
//in my mind; and I would have __done__ it, if I had been there by myself.
//But I could not bring myself to lose __you__.”

// 10503
//There was silence, then, for a time; as though even the Defense Professor could
//not quite think of what to say to that.

// 10504
//“I am curious,” said Professor Quirrell at last. “What do you think that I
//should apologize for, precisely? I gave you explicit instructions in the event
//of a fight. You were to stay down, stay out of the way, cast no magic. You
//violated those instructions and brought down the mission.”

// 10505
//“I made no decision,” the boy said evenly, “there was no choice in it, only a
//wish that the Auror should not die, and my Patronus was there. For that wish to
//have never occurred, you should have warned me that you might bluff using a
//Killing Curse. By default, I assume that if you point your wand at someone and
//say Avada Kedavra, it is because you want them dead. Shouldn’t that be the
//first rule of Unforgivable Curse Safety?”

// 10506
//“Rules are for duels,” said the Defense Professor. Some of the coldness had
//returned to his voice. “And dueling is a sport, not a branch of Battle Magic.
//In a real fight, a curse which cannot be blocked and __must__ be dodged is
//an indispensable tactic. I would have thought this obvious to you, but it seems
//I misjudged your intellect.”

// 10507
//“It also seems to me imprudent,” said the boy, continuing as though the other
//had not spoken, “to not __tell me__ that my casting any spell on you might
//kill us both. What if you had suffered some mishap, and I had tried an
//Innervate, or a Hover Charm? That ignorance, which you permitted for purposes I
//cannot guess, played also some part in this catastrophe.”

// 10508
//There was another silence. The Defense Professor’s eyes had narrowed, and there
//was a faintly puzzled look on his face, as though he had encountered some
//completely unfamiliar situation; and still the man spoke no word.

// 10509
//“Well,” said the boy. His eyes had not wavered from the Defense Professor’s. “I
//certainly regret hurting you, Professor. But I do not think the situation calls
//for me to submit to you. I never really did understand the concept of apology,
//still less as it applies to a situation like this; if you have my regrets, but
//not my submission, does that count as saying sorry?”

// 10510
//Again that cold, cold laugh, darker than the void between the stars.

// 10511
//“I wouldn’t know,” said the Defense Professor, “I, too, never understood the
//concept of apology. That ploy would be futile between us, it seems, with both
//of us knowing it for a lie. Let us speak no more of it, then. Debts will be
//settled between us in time.”

// 10512
//There was silence for a time.

// 10513
//“By the way,” said the boy. “Hermione Granger would never have built Azkaban,
//no matter who was going to be put in it. And she’d die before she hurt an
//innocent. Just mentioning that, since you said before that all wizards are like
//You-Know-Who inside, and that’s just false as a point of simple fact. Would’ve
//realized it earlier if I hadn’t been,” the boy gave a brief grim smile,
//“stressed out.”

// 10514
//The Defense Professor’s eyes were half-lidded, his expression distant.
//“People’s insides are not always like their outsides, Mr. Potter. Perhaps she
//simply wishes others to think of her as a good girl. She cannot use the
//Patronus Charm -”

// 10515
//“Hah,” said the boy; his smile seemed realer now, warmer. “She’s having trouble
//for exactly the same reason I did. There’s enough light in her to destroy
//Dementors, I’m sure. She wouldn’t be able to __stop__ herself from
//destroying Dementors, even at the cost of her own life…” The boy trailed off,
//and then his voice resumed. “__I __might not be such a good person, maybe;
//but they do exist, and she’s one of them.”

// 10516
//Dryly. “She is young, and to make a show of kindness costs her little.”

// 10517
//There was a pause at this. Then the boy said, “Professor, I have to ask, when
//you see something all dark and gloomy, doesn’t it ever occur to you to try and
//__improve__ it somehow? Like, yes, something goes terribly wrong in
//people’s heads that makes them think it’s great to torture criminals, but that
//doesn’t mean they’re truly evil inside; and maybe if you taught them the right
//things, showed them what they were doing wrong, you could change -”

// 10518
//Professor Quirrell laughed, then, and not with the emptiness of before. “Ah,
//Mr. Potter, sometimes I do forget how very young you are. Sooner you could
//change the color of the sky.” Another chuckle, this one colder. “And the reason
//it is easy for you to forgive such fools and think well of them, Mr. Potter, is
//that you yourself have not been sorely hurt. You will think less fondly of
//commonplace idiots after the first time their folly costs you something dear.
//Such as a hundred Galleons from your own pocket, perhaps, rather than the
//agonizing deaths of a hundred strangers.” The Defense Professor was smiling
//thinly. He took a pocket-watch out of his robes, looked at it. “Let us depart
//now, if there is nothing more to say between us.”

// 10519
//“You don’t have any questions about the impossible things I did to get us out
//of Azkaban?”

// 10520
//“No,” said the Defense Professor. “I believe I have solved most of them
//already. As for the rest, it is too rare that I find a person whom I cannot see
//through immediately, be they friend or foe. I shall unravel the puzzles about
//you for myself, in due time.”

// 10521
//The Defense Professor shoved himself up, pushing back on the wall with both
//hands and rising to his feet, smoothly if too slowly. The boy, less gracefully,
//did the same.

// 10522
//And the boy blurted out the last most terrible question which he had earlier
//been unable to ask; as though to say it aloud would make it real, and as though
//it were not, already, vastly obvious.

// 10523
//“Why am I not like the other children my own age?”

// 10524
//In a deserted side-road of Diagon Alley, where scraps of un-Vanished trash
//could be seen lodged into the edges of the brick street and the blank brick
//building-sides that surrounded it, along with scattered dirt and other signs of
//neglect, an ancient wizard and his phoenix Apparated into existence.

// 10525
//The wizard was already reaching within his robes for his hourglass when, in
//habit, his eyes jumped to a random spot between the road and the wall, to
//memorize it -

// 10526
//And the old wizard blinked in surprise; there was a scrap of parchment in that
//spot.

// 10527
//A frown crossed Albus Dumbledore’s face as he took a step forward and took the
//crumpled scrap, unfolding it.

// 10528
//On it was the single word “NO”, and nothing more.

// 10529
//Slowly the wizard let it flutter from his fingers. Absently he reached down to
//the pavement, and picked up the nearest scrap of parchment, which looked
//remarkably similar to the one he had just taken; he touched it with his wand,
//and a moment later it was inscribed with the same word “NO”, in the same
//handwriting, which was his own.

// 10530
//The old wizard had planned to go back three hours to when Harry Potter first
//arrived in Diagon Alley. He had already watched, upon his instruments, the boy
//leaving Hogwarts, and that could not be undone (his one attempt to fool his own
//instruments, and so control Time without altering its appearance to himself,
//had ended in sufficient disaster to convince him to never again try such
//trickery). He had hoped to retrieve the boy at the first possible moment after
//his arrival, and take him to another safe location, if not Hogwarts (for his
//instruments had not shown the boy’s return). But now -

// 10531
//“A paradox if I retrieve him immediately after he arrives in Diagon Alley?”
//murmured the old wizard to himself. “Perhaps they did not set in motion their
//plan to rob Azkaban, until after they had confirmed his arrival here… or else…
//perhaps…”

// 10532
//Painted concrete, hard floor and distant ceilings, two figures facing off
//across from each other. One entity who wore the shape of a man in his late
//thirties and already balding, and another mind that wore the form of an
//eleven-year-old boy with a scar upon his forehead. Ice and shadow, pale blue
//light.

// 10533
//“I don’t know,” said the man.

// 10534
//The boy just looked at him. And then said, “Oh, really?”

// 10535
//“Truly,” said the man. “I know nothing, and of my guesses I will not speak. Yet
//I will say this much -”