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// 14646
//== Taboo Tradeoffs, Final

// 14647
//Phoenix travel was a sensation entirely unlike Apparition or portkeys. You
//caught on fire - you definitely felt yourself catching on fire, even though
//there was no pain - and instead of burning to ashes, the fire burned all the
//way through you and you __became__ fire, and then you went out in one
//place and blazed up in another. It didn’t sicken the stomach like portkeys or
//Apparition, but it was a rather unnerving experience nonetheless. If the
//underlying truth of phoenix travel really was becoming a specific instantiation
//of a more general Fire, then that seemed to hint you could potentially burn
//__anywhere -__ even in the distant past, or in another universe, or in two
//places at once. You might go out in one place and blaze up in a hundred others,
//and the you who arrived at Hogwarts would never know the difference. Though
//Harry had read what he could about phoenixes, trying to figure out how to get
//one of his own, and there’d been no hint of anything remotely like
//__that__ capability.

// 14648
//Harry caught fire and went out and blazed up somewhere else; and just like that
//he, and the Headmaster, and the unconscious form of Hermione Granger held in
//the Headmaster’s arms, were occupying another place; with Fawkes above them
//all. A calm, warm room of bright stone columns, skylit on all four sides,
//populated by white beds in long rows, four of which had silencing veils drawn
//around them, and the rest empty.

// 14649
//In one corner of Harry’s vision, a surprised-looking Madam Pomfrey was turning
//toward them. Dumbledore seemed to pay the senior healer no heed, as he
//carefully laid down Hermione on an unoccupied white bed.

// 14650
//From a distant corner there was a flash of green, and from out of a fireplace
//strode Professor McGonagall, brushing herself off slightly from the Floo ashes.

// 14651
//The old wizard turned from the bed and reached one of his arms around Harry
//again; and then the Boy-Who-Lived and his wizard vanished in another burst of
//fire.

// 14652
//When Harry had fully lit up again he was standing in the Headmaster’s office,
//amid the noises of a dozen dozen inexplicable gidgets.

// 14653
//The young boy took a step away from the old wizard and then turned on him,
//emerald and sapphire eyes meeting.

// 14654
//The two of them did not speak for a time, looking at each other; as though all
//they had to speak could be said only by stares, and not said in any other way.

// 14655
//In time the boy enunciated words slowly and precisely.

// 14656
//“I cannot believe that a phoenix is still upon your shoulder.”

// 14657
//“The phoenix chooses but once,” said the old wizard. “They might perhaps leave
//a master who chooses evil over good; they will not leave a master forced to
//choose between one good and another. Phoenixes are not arrogant. They know the
//limits of their own wisdom.” Stern indeed, that ancient gaze. “Unlike you,
//Harry.”

// 14658
//“Choose between one good and another,” Harry echoed flatly. “Like Hermione
//Granger’s life, versus a hundred thousand Galleons.” The rage and indignation
//Harry wanted to put into his voice wasn’t quite there, for some reason, maybe
//because -

// 14659
//“You are hardly in a position to speak to me of that, Harry Potter.” The
//Headmaster’s voice was deceptively soft. “Or what was that look of reluctance
//that I saw upon your face, there in the Most Ancient Hall?”

// 14660
//The sense of inward hollowness grew worse. “I was looking for other
//alternatives,” Harry bit out. “Some way to save her that __didn’t__ lose
//the money.”

// 14661
//__Wow,__ said Ravenclaw. __You just told an outright lie. Not only
//that, I think you actually __believed__ it for the seconds it took to say
//it. That’s kinda scary.__

// 14662
//“__Is__ that what you were thinking, Harry?” The blue eyes were keen, and
//there was a terrifying moment when Harry wondered if the world’s most powerful
//wizard could see right past his Occlumency barriers.

// 14663
//“__Yes,__” Harry said, “I flinched away from the pain of losing all the
//money in my vault. But I __did__ it! __That’s__ what counts! And
//__you__ -” The indignation that had faltered out of Harry’s voice
//returned. “You __actually__ put a price on Hermione Granger’s life, and
//you put it below a hundred thousand Galleons!”

// 14664
//“Oh?” the old wizard said softly. “And what price do you put on her life, then?
//A million Galleons?”

// 14665
//“Are you familiar with the economic concept of ‘replacement value’?” The words
//were spilling from Harry’s lips almost faster than he could consider them.
//“Hermione’s replacement value is __infinite! __There’s nowhere I can go to
//buy another one!”

// 14666
//__Now you’re just talking mathematical nonsense,__ said Slytherin.
//__Ravenclaw, back me up here?__

// 14667
//“Is Minerva’s life also of infinite worth?” the old wizard said harshly. “Would
//you sacrifice Minerva to save Hermione?”

// 14668
//“Yes and yes,” Harry snapped. “That’s part of Professor McGonagall’s job and
//she knows it.”

// 14669
//“Then Minerva’s value is not infinite,” said the old wizard, “for all that she
//is loved. There can only be one king upon a chessboard, Harry Potter, only one
//piece that you will sacrifice any other piece to save. And Hermione Granger is
//not that piece. Make no mistake, Harry Potter, this day you may well have lost
//your war.”

// 14670
//And if the old wizard’s words hadn’t hit quite so hard, and quite so close to
//home, Harry might not have said what he said then.

// 14671
//“Lucius was right,” Harry ground out. “You never had a wife, you never had a
//daughter, you’ve never had anything but war -”

// 14672
//The old wizard’s left hand closed hard upon Harry’s wrist, bony fingers digging
//into the still-developing muscle of Harry’s arm, and for a moment Harry was
//paralyzed with the shock of it, he had forgotten what it meant that adults were
//stronger.

// 14673
//Albus Dumbledore did not seem to notice. He only turned, dragging Harry with
//him, and moved forward in hard steps toward the wall of the room.

// 14674
//“__Phoenix’s price.__”

// 14675
//Harry was pulled up along the black stairs.

// 14676
//“__Phoenix’s fate.__”

// 14677
//The room of black pedestals, silver light falling on shattered wands.

// 14678
//“You think,” yelled Harry, after his lips unlocked, “that you can win any
//argument, just by standing here?”

// 14679
//The old wizard ignored him, dragging Harry across the room. His right hand, no
//longer holding his wand, grabbed up a vial of silver fluid -

// 14680
//Harry blinked in shock; the vial of silver fluid had been standing next to a
//picture of __Dumbledore,__ or so it had appeared to Harry in the brief
//moment before he was dragged past.

// 14681
//Past the end of all the pedestals, at the farthest part of the room, rose a
//great stone basin with runes carved into it that Harry didn’t recognize. The
//center was a shallow depression filled with transparent liquid, and into this
//the old wizard dumped the canister of silver fluid, which at once began to
//spread out, to swirl, to set the entire basin glowing eerie white.

// 14682
//The old wizard’s hand let go of Harry’s arm and gestured to the glowing basin,
//commanding harshly, “Look!”

// 14683
//As requested, Harry stared at the glowing water.

// 14684
//“Put your head into the Pensieve, Harry Potter.” The old wizard’s voice was
//stern.

// 14685
//Harry had heard that word before, but he couldn’t remember where . “What - does
//this do -”

// 14686
//“Memories,” the old wizard said. “You will see my memory. My oath that it is
//safe. Now look into the Pensieve, Ravenclaw, if you still care anything at all
//for your precious truth!”

// 14687
//That was a request that Harry could not deny, and he stepped forward and thrust
//his head into the glowing water.

// 14688
//__Harry was sitting behind the desk in the Headmaster’s office of
//Hogwarts, and his wrinkled hands that clutched at his head were spotted with
//age and white hairs.__

// 14689
//__“He is all that I have!” wept a voice, very strange was Dumbledore’s
//voice as Dumbledore himself remembered it, from the inside it seemed far less
//stern and wise. “The last of my family! All that I have left!”__

// 14690
//__No emotion had been allowed to pass through the Pensieve, only the
//physical sensation of seeming to speak the words. Harry heard the utter
//desolation in Dumbledore’s words, the sounds that seemed to come from Harry’s
//own throat, but Harry did not feel it beyond the hearing.__

// 14691
//__“You’ve got no choice,” said a harsh voice.__

// 14692
//__The eyes moved, the field of vision jumped to a man that Harry didn’t
//recognize, in clothing tinged with Auror crimson but made of solid leather with
//many pockets.__

// 14693
//__His right eye was overlarge, with an electric-blue pupil that
//constantly darted and moved.__

// 14694
//__“You cannot ask this of me, Alastor!” Dumbledore’s voice was wild. “Not
//this! Anything but this!”__

// 14695
//__“I’m not asking,” growled the man. “Voldie’s the one who’s asking, and
//you’re going to tell him no.”__

// 14696
//__“For money, Alastor?” Dumbledore’s voice was begging. “Only for
//money?”__

// 14697
//__“You ransom Aberforth, you lose the war,” the man said sharply. “That
//simple. One hundred thousand Galleons is nearly all we’ve got in the war-chest,
//and if you use it like this, it won’t be refilled. What’ll you do, try to
//convince the Potters to empty their vault like the Longbottoms already did?
//Voldie’s just going to kidnap someone else and make another demand. Alice,
//Minerva, anyone you care about, they’ll all be targets if you pay off the Death
//Eaters. That’s not the lesson you should be trying to teach them.”__

// 14698
//__“If I do this I will have no one. No one.” Dumbledore’s voice broke,
//the world tilted as the outlooking head fell down into the ancient hands, and
//awful sounds came from not-Harry’s throat as he began to sob like a child.__

// 14699
//__“Shall I tell Voldie’s messenger no?” said Alastor’s voice, now
//strangely gentle. “You don’t have to do it yourself, old friend.”__

// 14700
//__“No - I will say it myself - I must -”__

// 14701
//The memory ended with a shock and Harry ripped his head out of the glowing
//water, gasping as though he’d been deprived of air.

// 14702
//The transition between scenes, between decade-old reality and present moment,
//was another jolt to Harry’s mind; in some fashion his immersion in the past had
//unanchored him. The broken old man sobbing in his office had been another
//person in another era, Harry had understood that much; someone softer -

// 14703
//Before it had all vanished like dissipating smoke, returning the __now,__
//the present day.

// 14704
//Terrible and stern stood the ancient wizard, like he was carven from stone;
//beard woven of thread like iron, half-moon glasses like mirrors, and the pupils
//behind as sharp and unyielding as black diamond.

// 14705
//“Do you also wish to see my brother as he died under the Cruciatus?” said Albus
//Dumbledore. “Voldemort sent me that memory as well!”

// 14706
//“And that - ” Harry was having trouble producing a voice, for the growing
//sickness in his chest. ”__That__ was when -” The words seemed to burn in
//his throat, as the awful knowledge dawned on him, the horrible understanding.
//“That was when you burned Narcissa Malfoy alive in her own bedroom.”

// 14707
//Albus Dumbledore’s gaze was cold as he answered. “To that question only a fool
//would say yea or nay. What matters is that the Death Eaters believe I killed
//her, and that belief kept safe the families of all who served the Order of the
//Phoenix - until this day. Now do you understand what you have done? What you
//have done to your __friends,__ Harry Potter, and to any that stand with
//you?” The old wizard seemed to grow still taller and more terrible, as his
//voice rose louder. “You have made them all targets, and targets they will
//remain! Until you prove, the only way it can be proven, that you are no longer
//willing to pay such prices!”

// 14708
//“And is it true?” Harry said. There was a buzzing sensation filling him, his
//body growing more distant. “What Draco said, that Narcissa Malfoy never got her
//hands dirty, that she was only Lucius’s wife? She was an enabler, I get that,
//but I can’t back that deserving being __burned alive__.”

// 14709
//“Nothing less would have convinced them that I was done with hesitation.” The
//old wizard’s voice brooked no question and no refusal. “Always I was too
//reluctant to do as I must, always it was others who paid the cost of my mercy.
//So Alastor told me from the beginning, but I did not listen to him. You, I
//expect, shall prove better at such decisions than I.”

// 14710
//“I’m surprised,” Harry said, amazed that his voice was almost steady. “I would
//have expected the Death Eaters to go after another Light family and start a
//cycle of escalating retaliation, if you didn’t get them all with your first
//strike.”

// 14711
//“If my opponent had been Lucius, perhaps.” Dumbledore’s eyes were like stones.
//“I am told that Voldemort laughed at the news, and proclaimed to his Death
//Eaters that I had finally grown, and was at last a worthy opponent. Perhaps he
//was right. After the day I condemned my brother to his death, I began to weigh
//those who followed me, balancing them one against another, asking who I would
//risk, and who I would sacrifice, to what end. It was strange how many fewer
//pieces I lost, once I knew what they were worth.”

// 14712
//Harry’s jaw seemed locked, like it took a massive effort to make his lips move.
//“But then it’s not like Lucius was deliberately taking Hermione for ransom,”
//Harry’s voice said thinly. “From Lucius’s perspective, someone else broke the
//truce first. So with that in mind, how many Galleons __was__ Hermione
//worth, exactly? Leaving aside the Danegeld thing, if it was just some ordinary
//threat to her life, how much should I have paid to save her? Ten thousand
//Galleons? Five thousand?”

// 14713
//The old wizard did not answer.

// 14714
//“It’s a funny thing,” Harry said, his voice wavering like something seen
//through water. “Do you know, the day I went in front of the Dementor, what my
//worst memory was? It was my parents dying. I heard their voices and
//everything.”

// 14715
//The old wizard’s eyes widened behind the half-moon glasses.

// 14716
//“And here’s the thing,” Harry said, “here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about
//over and over. The Dark Lord gave Lily Potter the chance to walk away. He said
//that she could flee. He __told__ her that dying in front of the crib
//wouldn’t save her baby. ‘Step aside, foolish woman, if you have any sense in
//you at all -’” An awful chill came over Harry as he spoke those words from his
//own lips, but he shook it off and continued. “And afterward I kept thinking, I
//couldn’t seem to stop myself from thinking, wasn’t the Dark Lord
//__right?__ If only Mother had stepped away. She tried to curse the Dark
//Lord but it was suicide, she had to have __known __that it was suicide.
//Her choice wasn’t between her life and mine, her choice was for herself to live
//or for both of us to die! If she’d only done the logical thing and walked away,
//I mean, I love Mum too, but Lily Potter would be alive right now and she would
//be my mother!” Tears were blurring Harry’s eyes. “Only now I understand, I know
//what Mother must have felt. She __couldn’t__ step aside from the crib. She
//couldn’t! Love doesn’t walk away!”

// 14717
//It was like the old wizard had been struck, struck by a chisel that shattered
//him straight down the middle.

// 14718
//“What have I said?” the old wizard whispered. “What have I said to you?”

// 14719
//“I don’t know!” shouted Harry. “I wasn’t listening either!”

// 14720
//“I - I’m sorry, Harry - I -” The old wizard pressed his hands to his face, and
//Harry saw that Albus Dumbledore was weeping. “I should not have said, such
//things to you - I should not, have resented, your innocence -”

// 14721
//Harry stared at the wizard for another second, and then Harry turned and
//marched out of the black room, down the stairs, through the office -

// 14722
//“I really don’t know why you’re still on his shoulder,” Harry said to Fawkes.

// 14723
//- out the oaken door and into the endlessly turning spiral.

// 14724
//Harry had arrived in the Transfiguration classroom before anyone else, before
//even Professor McGonagall. There was Charms class earlier, for his year, but
//that he hadn’t even bothered trying to attend. Whether Professor McGonagall
//would make today’s class he didn’t know. There was something ominous about all
//the empty desks beside him, the absence at the board. As if he stood alone in
//Hogwarts, with all his friends departed.

// 14725
//According to the class schedule, today’s lesson was on sustained
//Transfigurations, all the rules of which Harry had learned by heart back when
//he was Transfiguring a huge rock into the small diamond that shone on his pinky
//finger. It would be a theoretical subject, rather than practical, for the rest
//of the class; which was a pity, because he could have used a dose of
//Transfiguration’s trance.

// 14726
//Harry noted distantly that his hand was trembling, to the point where he had
//trouble undoing the pouch’s drawstring as he drew forth the Transfiguration
//textbook.

// 14727
//__You were monstrously unfair to Dumbledore,__ said the voice Harry had
//been calling Slytherin, only now it also seemed to be the Voice of Economic
//Sensibility and maybe also Conscience.

// 14728
//Harry’s eyes dropped down to his textbook, but the section was so familiar it
//might as well have been a blank parchment.

// 14729
//__Dumbledore fought a war against a Dark Lord who deliberately set out to
//break him in the cruelest possible way. He had to choose between losing his war
//and his brother. Albus Dumbledore knows, he learned in the worst possible way,
//that there are limits to the value of one life; and it almost broke his sanity
//to admit it. But you, Harry Potter - __you__ already knew better.__

// 14730
//“Shut up,” the boy whispered to the empty Transfiguration classroom, though
//there was nobody there to hear it.

// 14731
//__You’d already read about Philip Tetlock’s experiments on people asked
//to trade off a sacred value against a secular one, like a hospital
//administrator who has to choose between spending a million dollars on a liver
//to save a five-year-old, and spending the million dollars to buy other hospital
//equipment or pay physician salaries. And the subjects in the experiment became
//indignant and wanted to punish the hospital administrator for even thinking
//about the choice. Do you remember reading about that, Harry Potter? Do you
//remember thinking how very stupid that was, since if hospital equipment and
//doctor salaries didn’t also save lives, there would be no point in having
//hospitals or doctors? Should the hospital administrator have paid a billion
//pounds for that liver, even if it meant the hospital going bankrupt the next
//day?__

// 14732
//“Shut up!” the boy whispered.

// 14733
//__Every time you spend money in order to save a life with some
//probability, you establish a lower bound on the monetary value of a life. Every
//time you refuse to spend money to save a life with some probability, you
//establish an upper bound on the monetary value of life. If your upper bounds
//and lower bounds are inconsistent, it means you could move money from one place
//to another, and save more lives at the same cost. So if you want to use a
//bounded amount of money to save as many lives as possible, your choices must be
//consistent with __some__ monetary value assigned to a human life; if not
//then you could reshuffle the same money and do better. How very sad, how very
//hollow the indignation, of those who refuse to say that money and life can ever
//be compared, when all they’re doing is forbidding the strategy that saves the
//most people, for the sake of pretentious moral grandstanding…__

// 14734
//__You __knew__ that, and you still said what you did to Dumbledore.__

// 14735
//__You deliberately __tried__ to hurt Dumbledore’s feelings.__

// 14736
//He’s__ never tried to hurt __you,__ Harry Potter, not once. __

// 14737
//Harry’s head dropped into his hands.

// 14738
//Why had Harry said what he’d said, to a sad old ancient wizard who’d fought
//hard and endured more than anyone should ever have to endure? Even if the old
//wizard was wrong, did he deserve to be hurt for it, after all that had happened
//to him? Why was there a part of him that seemed to get angry at the old wizard
//beyond reason, lashing out at him harder than Harry had ever hit anyone,
//without thought of moderation once the rage had been raised, only to quiet as
//soon as Harry left his presence?

// 14739
//__Is it because you know Dumbledore won’t fight back? That no matter what
//you say to him, however unfair, he’ll never use his own power against you,
//he’ll never treat you the way you treat him? Is this the way you treat people
//when you know they won’t hit back? James Potter’s bullying genes, manifesting
//at last?__

// 14740
//Harry closed his eyes.

// 14741
//Like the Sorting Hat speaking inside his head -

// 14742
//__What is the real reason for your anger?__

// 14743
//__What do you fear?__

// 14744
//A whirlwind of images seemed to flash through Harry’s mind, then, the past
//Dumbledore weeping into his hands; the present form of the old wizard, standing
//tall and terrible; a vision of Hermione screaming in her chains, in the metal
//chair, as Harry abandoned her to the Dementors; and an imagination of a woman
//with long white hair (had she looked like her husband?) falling amid the flames
//of her bedroom, as a wand was held upon her and orange light reflected from
//half-moon glasses.

// 14745
//Albus Dumbledore had seemed to think that Harry would be better at that sort of
//thing than him.

// 14746
//And Harry knew that he probably would be. He knew the math, after all.

// 14747
//But it was understood, somehow it was understood, that utilitarian ethicists
//didn’t __actually__ rob banks so they could give the money to the poor.
//The end result of throwing away all ethical constraint wouldn’t
//__actually__ be sunshine and roses and happiness for all. The prescription
//of consequentialism was to take the action that led to the best net
//consequences, not actions that had one positive consequence and wrecked
//everything else along the way. Expected utility maximizers were allowed to take
//common sense into account, when they were calculating their expectations.

// 14748
//Somehow Harry had understood that, even before anyone else had warned him he’d
//understood. Before he’d read about Vladimir Lenin or the history of the French
//Revolution, he’d known. It might have been his earliest science fiction books
//warning him about people with good intentions, or maybe Harry had just seen the
//logic for himself. Somehow he’d known from the very beginning, that if he
//stepped outside his ethics __whenever there was a reason,__ the end result
//wouldn’t be good.

// 14749
//A final image came to him, then: Lily Potter standing in front of her baby’s
//crib and measuring the intervals between outcomes: the final outcome if she
//stayed and tried to curse her enemy (dead Lily, dead Harry), the final outcome
//if she walked away (live Lily, dead Harry), weighing the expected utilities,
//and making the only sensible choice.

// 14750
//She would’ve been Harry’s mother if she had.

// 14751
//“But human beings can’t live like that,” the boy’s lips whispered to the empty
//classroom. “Human beings can’t live like that.”