Milky Moor posted:

Don't ask how society changing would alter things that are actually finite like, say, living space, and let's not get started on things it'd exacerbate like anthropogenic climate change and resource consumption. And the generational shift from when people die? No, wouldn't happen. Democracies of the eternal voter wouldn't result in any problems.

Milky Moor posted:

More importantly, people getting really mad about the existence of death as a concept wouldn't get even more weirdly Goonish about it when death becomes rarer, assuming the immortality isn't perfect immortality. "If you argue that it is inevitable for robot-body hard drives to crash, then you're arguing pro-death! PRO-DEATHER!"

Milky Moor posted:

If we lived for two-hundred years or five-hundred or a thousand and if death only came from violence or Super AIDS, it'd still be a mark of immaturity to argue that anyone who accepts death as a concept is pro-death.

ungulateman posted:

death is bad, which is why we should take the million of dollars yudkowsky wants and invest it in basic healthcare and food/water for the multiple billions of people who still need it, rather than making rich white nerds live forever

Tiggum posted:

This argument works on literally anything. All you're saying is "progress is bad because bad things might happen and maybe we wouldn't be able to come up with solutions."

I would certainly be arguing that we should have more reliable hard disks and backups. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't everyone? Replace "hard drive crashes" with "cancer" and see how it sounds. Live long enough and you'll get cancer, it's inevitable, so I guess we should just let nature take its course and not treat cancer any more?

It'd be a mark of loving stupidity to not still be trying to cure Super AIDS and prevent violence.

No one is arguing that Yudkowsky isn't stupid. Obviously there are many, many better uses of money than whatever he wants to do with it.

Milky Moor posted:

You remind me of an old man I used to talk with. He was adamant that no matter how bad it got, no matter how much of the permafrost was melted away, no matter how many species went extinct, no matter how much of the oceans were acidified, that "someone, somewhere" was going to develop a golden bullet to fix and even reverse climate change because that's what science does. Like scientists are wizards who will pull humanity from the brink.

Same thing here. 'If we all become immortal, society will magically create a solution'. There's this idea that scientists can just magic up utopian strong immortality if enough people believe in it and you're an idiot to argue that it 1. might not be possible and 2. even if it was, there are huge other factors to think about. What, you're so worried about dying and being remembered only as SA Poster Tiggum that you need to get this vehement over it? It's weird!

Come up with a solution, then, if I'm being so obstinate and my objections are so obvious. What do you do when people don't die? Let's assume the world up is made up of people who hit their prime and stop aging (let's say 25) and our medical technology has advanced to such an extent that even grievous wounds can be healed immediately and all sickness is a thing of the past, which seems to be the world some posters in this thread will expect to magically happen because it is "progress".

As I said, accepting the possibility of death is the sign of a mature person. It's a sign of the immature person that equating someone accepting death as a part of life is arguing for death. It's a very surreal thing to see people insisting that immortality - something that'd utterly alter human nature to an extent that it'd dwarf any other discovery in human history - would just be something like the telephone. Oh, people will just adapt. We'll figure out a "solution" to this, because we believe in the deified Science. We will slay the dragon named death with the weapons granted to us by Science, and I hope no one wonders what it reveals about the author's insecurities that they wrote death up as a terrifying beast that eats people at random.

Let me know when they cure entropy, human nature, fix up things so our planet can support the people we have even now, implement progressive social welfare to account for the conditions we're facing with the labor market right now, find some new way of accounting for the generational culture shift that arises from old people at the top dying, and, while we're at it, create some kind of working FTL engine so we can spread our numerous trillions out across the stars and I'll start taking the claims of people who get so hysterical about dying somewhat more seriously.

As it is, it's watching like watching people seriously consider a magic bullet that'll end all of society's woes, because that's the root of all evil: people get old and die, people get sick and die, people die and no one's going to remember me.

Jazerus posted:

you're the one being bizarrely vehement hth

Milky Moor posted:

Milky Moor posted:

Same thing here. 'If we all become immortal, society will magically create a solution'. There's this idea that scientists can just magic up utopian strong immortality if enough people believe in it and you're an idiot to argue that it 1. might not be possible and 2. even if it was, there are huge other factors to think about. What, you're so worried about dying and being remembered only as SA Poster Tiggum that you need to get this vehement over it? It's weird!

Come up with a solution, then, if I'm being so obstinate and my objections are so obvious. What do you do when people don't die? Let's assume the world up is made up of people who hit their prime and stop aging (let's say 25) and our medical technology has advanced to such an extent that even grievous wounds can be healed immediately and all sickness is a thing of the past, which seems to be the world some posters in this thread will expect to magically happen because it is "progress".

Milky Moor posted:

As I said, accepting the possibility of death is the sign of a mature person.

Tiggum posted:

I don't know where you're getting this "magic solution" idea from because no one (not even Yudkowsky) is suggesting that that will be a thing.

Jazerus posted:

it's the tone mostly, it makes it seem like you think you're arguing against a child

Tiggum posted:

It's not about not accepting the possibility of death, it's about not accepting the inevitability of death.

Tunicate posted:

Case in point; Yud believes that sufficiently powerful AI will overcome thermodynamics, so the heat death of the universe is not an endpoint for his hyperimmortality afterlife

Xander77 posted:

This is a relatively interesting point of view I have not encountered in the past. Class thread, do you have any thoughts to share?

Pvt.Scott posted:

Even if immortality could be granted to everyone, not everyone could be guaranteed to receive nor desire it. Anti-vaccers are proof of that.

Death is actually p good. Think of the Grim Reaper as ribbed (lol) for her pleasure. It enhances the life experience.

Tiggum posted:

It's not about not accepting the possibility of death, it's about not accepting the inevitability of death. Saying that death is actually good and necessary implies that there is a good and right time to die. If so, when is it? What's the cut-off age at which we no longer offer medial care? When do you want to die?

Milky Moor posted:

Death is inevitable, though?

You are going to die. Everyone you know is going to die. Whether that's tomorrow in a freak car accident, in ten years from heart disease, in sixty in your sleep, or a hundred when a hard drive consciousness backup fails, a thousand when a freak Gamma Ray burst takes out the Earth, a few million when the Sun goes nova...

Everything dies.

Even if we had 99.99% perfect hard drive backups, like you raised earlier, that's still 0.01% of people who are going to 'die'. And, given enough time, all things resolve to one.

Sure, if you think we're going to solve the laws of physics to render death no longer inevitable then, okay, whatever, I guess we'll say death is no longer inevitable. But at that point you're indulging in fantasy, not hoping for any real sort of conversation or dialogue.

Pretty weak 'gotcha' questions, though. Again, like I said, apparently if you accept death, you either want to kill people or want to die yourself. It's just as ridiculous as Yud's notion that if you believe in the afterlife you should kill people.

Death Bot posted:

This is a weird convo to have in a series where the first book ends with a guy taking the secret to guilt free immortality to the grave and Dumbledore just kinda says "living forever is a silly human wish"

Death Bot posted:

This is a weird convo to have in a series where the first book ends with a guy taking the secret to guilt free immortality to the grave and Dumbledore just kinda says "living forever is a silly human wish"

NihilCredo posted:

Perplexing indeed, this deviation from the original. Why, at this rate I'm beginning to suspect that in HPMOR Voldemort isn't defeated by the power of love either!

21 Muns posted:

I genuinely recommend that if this thread ever finishes Methods Of Rationality, it moves onto "Ginny Weasley And The Sealed Intelligence". It appears to be sucking Methods' cock at first but gradually reveals itself as a Christian tract wherein Eliezer Harry is the antichrist

90s Cringe Rock posted:

I'd read that if it had some sick big yud burns and was 9700 words long. I'm not quite stupid enough to read 97000 words of it though.

Milky Moor posted:

Death is inevitable, though?

Death Bot posted:

I mean I know this is nothing new but it is constantly surprising to me the amount of work put into this even though the author hasn't read the books, doesn't know much about them, doesn't understand and even doesn't agree with the morals put forward, and on top of that doesn't seem to particularly like the setting or the characters at all?

Tiggum posted:

You can acknowledge that death is extremely likely without going to the crazy extreme of accepting it as inevitable. If you think death's inevitable then you may as well just kill yourself right now, there's no point in prolonging it.

reignonyourparade posted:

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with a theme of a series, and in fact I would consider "fanfiction as a way to explore your philosophical disagreement with a theme of a series" about as literary as fanfiction can get. Big Yud is clearly bad at it but all this "heh clearly he doesn't GET the series " is dumb as gently caress.

Troper Yud posted:

So... that line about Did Not Do The Research hurts a bit. I tried to read the later books after Prisoner Of Azkaban, I just couldn't make my brain to it. The problem might have been that I already knew the plot from having read fanfiction and seen the movie, and that took out the tension. Or it could just be that the series lost whatever mysterious factor made it fun for me personally to read before then. The point is, I tried to read it, and when I couldn't, I read the Harry Potter Wikia and did the research as best I could. I admit that I made a mistake with Snape, and now that I know what it was, and look back at the Wikia entry on him, I don't even know how I got the impression that Snape was Lily's boyfriend... but I did read it and managed to keep the misapprehension anyway. If there's some kind of appropriate trope for that sort of dumb screwup, I guess I deserve it...

But the Did Not Do The Research trope, according to its main page, is for people who could have easily known better and didn't even try to read the manual because they just disrespected the subject matter. And that is seriously not me, and the current page gives the impression that I disrespect the Potterverse too much to bother doing the research, which is seriously not true.

Although it might be illuminating to realize that I'm writing this fic in the Potterverse, not so much because I adored the original books, but because I liked reading Harry Potter fanfiction. That might be the other reason I couldn't read further than Prisoner of Azkaban; I'd read those three books before encountering any fanfiction, but after that, my brain started comparing the children's-book Harry to all the fanfiction for grownups I'd read. With that said, I immensely respect the fact that J. K. Rowling got literally millions of children interested in reading. Writing children's books is a totally different task from writing for grownups. I can't write children's books. And unless this fic turns on millions of adults to rationality, it won't ever be comparable to the real-world literary accomplishment represented by Rowling's Harry Potter. But nonetheless, what I personally ended up enjoying was the universe of Harry Potter fanfiction that came afterward.

(And the reason my big screwup was with respect to revelations made in Deathly Hallows was that a lot of the fanfiction I read was written before then.)

quote:

The tea itself was something whose name Harry couldn't even pronounce, or at least, every time Harry had tried to repeat the Chinese words, Professor Quirrell had corrected him, until finally Harry had given up.

Harry had maneuvered himself into getting a glimpse at the bill last time, and Professor Quirrell had let him get away with it.

...

And it still tasted to him like, well, tea.

...

There was a quiet, nagging suspicion in Harry's mind that Professor Quirrell knew this, and was deliberately buying ridiculously expensive tea that Harry couldn't appreciate just to mess with him. Professor Quirrell himself might not like it all that much. Maybe nobody actually liked this tea, and the only point of it was to be ridiculously expensive and make the victim feel unappreciative.

quote:

"Lord Malfoy is Albus Dumbledore's opponent," said Professor Quirrell. "At least for this present time. All Britain is their chessboard, all wizards their pieces.

quote:

Consider: Lord Malfoy threatened to throw away everything, abandon his game, to take vengeance on you if Mr. Malfoy was hurt. In which case, Mr. Potter...?"

...

"Dumbledore kills Draco, makes it look like I did it, and Lucius sacrifices his game against Dumbledore to get at me? That... doesn't seem like the Headmaster's style, Professor Quirrell..."

quote:

"The Headmaster can be very persuasive, Mr. Potter. I hope he has not persuaded you."

"Heck no," said Harry. "Didn't fool me for a second."

"I should hope not," said Professor Quirrell, still in that very calm tone. "I would be extremely put out to discover that the Headmaster had convinced you to throw away your life on some fool plot by telling you that death is the next great adventure."

"I don't think the Headmaster believed it himself, actually," Harry said. He sipped his own tea again. "He asked me what I could possibly do with eternity, gave me the usual line about it being boring, and he didn't seem to see any conflict between that and his own claim to have an immortal soul. In fact, he gave me a whole long lecture about how awful it was to want immortality before he claimed to have an immortal soul. I can't quite visualize what must have been going on inside his head, but I don't think he actually had a mental model of himself continuing forever in the afterlife..."

quote:

"One last question," Harry said, as Professor Quirrell's coat lifted itself off the coatrack and went floating toward the Defense Professor. "Magic is loose in the world, and I no longer trust my guesses so much as I once did. So in your own best guess and without any wishful thinking, do you believe there's an afterlife?"

"If I did, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell as he shrugged on his coat, "would I still be here? "

Tiggum posted:

Just because something appears to be inevitable doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop it. Maybe we can't stop it, but neither you nor I nor anyone else knows that for a fact, and it is a crazy radical idea to say that we shouldn't be trying. It's basically the whole purpose of medicine. There's stuff like palliative care and cosmetic surgery that's not about keeping people alive, but the vast majority of medicine is about staying healthy, ie. holding off death. Why do we worry about diet and exercise and not smoking and making safer cars and so many other things? Because we don't want to die.

You can acknowledge that death is extremely likely without going to the crazy extreme of accepting it as inevitable. If you think death's inevitable then you may as well just kill yourself.

Ravenfood posted:

No, we​ do all of​that so that we can live well. I've been in a position to talk to people about their wishes at the end of life, or their family's, and there are huge numbers of people who chose to let their loved ones or themselves die based on their expected quality of life despite the technical ability to keep them alive.

As for the latter paragraph, that's loving dumb and really needs no refutation because it's just...loving dumb. We can accept that something is inevitable but can be delayed and​that acceptance of the first is good but efforts to delay it can also be good. I don't see how that's a contradiction at all.

21 Muns posted:

I think there's a difference between accepting that death is inevitable in our current situation and accepting that death is cosmically inevitable. The odds that your grandpa with a terminal illness can be prevented from dying are about nil, but accepting that doesn't mean accepting that that's the ultimate destiny of everyone.

Even a lot of important world religions satiate the natural human desire to live forever; they just do so with supernatural aid that even works after you're dead. Eliezer Yudkowsky thinks Christians don't really expect to live forever, but I don't think a devout Christian would agree with him at all. "Here's how you can live forever" is one of the most common pitches religions make.

quote:

A sudden gust made Draco flinch, and try, impossibly, to press his body even closer to the stone, which felt like ice and smelled like ice. Some utterly pointless instinct seemed convinced that he was about to be blown off the outer wall of Hogwarts, and that the best way to prevent this was to jerk around in helpless reflex and possibly throw up.

Draco was trying very hard not to think about the six stories worth of empty air underneath him, and focus, instead, on how he was going to kill Harry Potter.

"You know, Mr. Malfoy," said the young girl beside him in a conversational voice, "if a seer had told me that someday I'd be hanging onto the side of a castle by my fingertips, trying not to look down or think about how loud Mum'd scream if she saw me, I wouldn't've had any idea of how it'd happen, except that it'd be Harry Potter's fault."

quote:

Despite the surprised protests of both generals, the soldiers of the combined army had insisted on calling themselves Dramione's Sungon Argiment, and produced patches for their insignia of a smiling face wreathed in flames.

But Harry's soldiers had all blackened their own insignia - it didn't look like paint, more like they'd burned that part of their uniforms - and they'd fought all through the upper levels of Hogwarts with a desperate fury. The cold rage that Draco sometimes saw in Harry had seemed to trickle down into his soldiers, and they'd fought like it hadn't been play.

quote:

It had developed that, yesterday, Harry had carefully demonstrated to Granger exactly how to Transfigure the gloves he was currently wearing, which used something called 'gecko setae'; and how to glue Transfigured patches of the same material to the toes of their shoes; and Harry and Granger had, in innocent childish play, tried climbing around the walls and ceiling a little

quote:

And that, also yesterday, Harry had supplied Granger with a grand total of exactly two doses of Feather-Falling Potion to carry around in her pouch, "just in case".

Not that Padma would have followed them, anyway. She wasn't crazy.

Draco carefully peeled loose his right hand, stretched it over as far as he could, and slapped it down on the stone again. Beside him, Granger did the same.

They'd already swallowed the Feather-Falling Potion. It was skirting the edges of the game rules, but the potion wouldn't be activated unless one of them actually fell, and so long as they didn't fall they weren't using the item.

Professor Quirrell was watching them.

The two of them were perfectly, completely, utterly safe.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, was going to die.

...

"I wonder why Harry is doing this," said General Granger in a reflective tone, as she slowly peeled the fingertips of one hand off the wall with an extended sticky sound. Her hand plopped back down again almost as soon as it was lifted. "I'll have to ask him that after I kill him."

It was amazing how much the two of them were turning out to have in common.

quote:

"Draco," whispered Granger's voice, and Draco looked down.

That might have been a mistake. There was a lot of air underneath her, nothing but air, they were on the edge of a rooftop that had jutted out from the main stone wall of Hogwarts.

"He's going to come help me," whispered the girl, "but first he's going to Luminos both of us, there's no way he wouldn't. You have to let me go."

It should have been the easiest thing in the world.

She was just a mudblood, just a mudblood, just a mudblood!

She wouldn't even be hurt!

...Draco's brain wasn't listening to anything Draco was telling it right now.

"Do it," Hermione Granger whispered, her eyes blazing without a single trace of fear, "do it, Draco, do it, you can beat him yourself we have to win Draco! "

There was a sound of someone running and it was coming closer.

Oh, be rational...

quote:

It was taking a bit of an effort for Daphne Greengrass to keep herself quiet, as Millicent Bulstrode retold the story in the Slytherin girls' common room (a cozy cool place in the dungeons running beneath the Hogwarts Lake, with fish swimming past every window, and couches you could lie down in if you wanted). Mostly because, in Daphne's opinion, it was a perfectly good story already without all of Millicent's improvements.

"And then what?" gasped Flora and Hestia Carrow.

"General Granger looked up at him," Millicent said dramatically, "and she said, 'Draco! You've got to let go of me! Don't worry about me, Draco, I promise I'll be all right! And what do you suppose Malfoy did then?"

"He said 'Never!'," shouted Charlotte Wiland, "and held on even tighter!"

All the listening girls except Pansy Parkinson nodded.

"Nope!" said Millicent. "He dropped her. And then he jumped up and shot General Potter. The end."

There was a stunned pause.

"You can't do that!" said Charlotte.

"She's a mudblood," said Pansy, sounding confused. "Of course he let go!"

"Well, Malfoy shouldn't have grabbed her in the first place, then!" said Charlotte. "But once he grabbed her, he had to hang on! Especially in the face of approaching certain doom!" Tracey Davis, sitting next to Daphne, was nodding along in firm agreement.

...

Yeah!" said Charlotte. "He's a witch dropper!"

"You know why Atlantis fell?" said Tracey. "'Cause someone like Malfoy dropped it, that's why!"

Daphne lowered her voice. "In fact... what if Malfoy's the one who made Hermione, I mean General Granger, slip in the first place? What if he's out to make all the Muggleborns trip and fall?"

"You mean - ?" gasped Tracey.

"That's right!" Daphne said dramatically. "What if Malfoy is - the heir of Slipperin? "

"The next Drop Lord!" said Tracey.

Which was far too good a line for anyone to keep to themselves, so by nightfall it was all over Hogwarts, and the next morning it was the Quibbler's headline.

quote:

"I, ah... I don't have much experience apologizing, I'll fall to my knees if you want, or buy you something expensive, Hermione I don't know how to apologize to you for this what can I do just tell me? "

She kept reading the book in silence.

It wasn't as if she had any idea how Harry could apologize, either.

Right now she was just feeling a sort of odd curiosity as to what would happen if she kept reading her book for a while.

Xander77 posted:

I'll sound as a broken record here for a moment - who here is optimistic enough to assume that the plot thread regarding Hermione and Draco ever amounts to anything?

Cavelcade posted:

I had checked out before this point when I stumbled on it myself.

Does it really go nowhere?

Xander77 posted:

Ted Rall's "My war with Brian.

quote:

"Romantic? " Hermione said. "They're both boys! "

"Wow," Daphne said, sounding a little shocked. "You mean Muggles really do hate that? I thought that was just something the Death Eaters made up."

"No," said an older Slytherin girl Hermione didn't recognize, "it's true, they have to get married in secret, and if they're ever discovered, they get burned at the stake together. And if you're a girl who thinks it's romantic, they burn you too."

"That can't be right!" objected a Gryffindor girl, while Hermione was still trying to sort out what to say to that. "There wouldn't be any Muggle girls left! "

quote:

She'd kept on reading quietly, and Harry Potter had kept on trying to apologize, and it had soon dawned on Hermione that Harry had realized, possibly for the first time in his life, that he'd done something annoying; and that Harry, definitely for the first time in his life, was terrified that he'd lost her as a friend; and she'd started to feel (a) guilty and (b) worried about the direction Harry's increasingly desperate offers were going. But she still had no idea what sort of apology was appropriate, so she'd said that the Ravenclaw girls should vote on it - and this time she wouldn't fix the outcome, though she hadn't mentioned that part - to which Harry had instantly agreed.

The next day, practically every Ravenclaw girl over the age of thirteen had voted to have Draco drop Harry.

Hermione had felt mildly disappointed it was that simple, though it was obviously fair.

...

"You've got no idea what this is about, do you?" said Draco, sounding amused.

Harry had read a fair number of books he wasn't supposed to read, not to mention a few Quibbler headlines.

"Boy-Who-Lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant?" said Harry.

"Okay, you do know what this is about," said Draco. "I thought Muggles hated that?"

"Only the dumb ones," said Harry. "But, um, aren't we, uh, a little young? "

"Not too young for them," said Draco. He snorted. "Girls! "

quote:

Harry's other hand held the roof in a reflexively terrified grip, his fingers white on the cold, cold stone.

You could know with your conscious mind that you'd drunk the Feather-Falling Potion. Knowing it with your unconscious mind was another matter entirely.

It was every bit as scary as Harry had thought it might have been for Hermione, which was justice.

"Draco," said Harry, controlling his voice wasn't easy, but the Ravenclaw girls had given them a script, "You've got to let me go!"

"Okay!" said Draco, and let go of Harry's arm.

Harry's other hand scrabbled at the edge, and then, without any decision being made, his fingers failed, and Harry fell.

There was a brief moment when Harry's stomach tried to leap up into his throat, and his body tried desperately to orient itself in the absence of any possible way to do so.

There was a brief moment when Harry could feel the Feather-Falling Potion kicking in, starting to slow him, a sort of lurching, cushioning feeling.

And then something pulled on Harry and he accelerated downward again faster than gravity -

Harry's mouth had already opened and begun screaming while part of his brain tried to think of something creative he could do, part of his brain tried to calculate how much time he had left to be creative, and a tiny rump part of his brain noticed that he wasn't even going to finish the remaining-time calculation before he hit the ground...

quote:

"I should have foreseen it myself," Professor Quirrell said, his voice crisp with disapproval. "Some number of girls tried to summon Mr. Potter to their own, particular arms. Individually, I suppose, they all thought they were being gentle."

Oh.

quote:

"Consider it a lesson in preparedness, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell. "Had I not insisted that there be more than one adult witness to this little event, and that both of us have our wands out, Mr. Lupin would not have been available to slow your fall afterward, and you would have been gravely injured."

"Sir! " said the man - Mr. Lupin, apparently. "You should not say such things to the boy!"

"Who is -" Harry started to say.

"The only other person who was available to watch, besides myself," said Professor Quirrell. "I introduce you to Remus Lupin, who is here temporarily to instruct students in the Patronus Charm. Though I am told that the two of you have already met."

Harry studied the man, puzzled. He should have remembered that faintly scarred face, that strange, gentle smile.

"Where did we meet?" said Harry.

"In Godric's Hollow," said the man. "I changed a number of your nappies."

quote:

Lupin's temporary office was a small stone room with a small wooden desk, and Harry couldn't see anything of what Mr. Lupin was sitting on, suggesting that it was a small stool just like the one in front of his desk. Harry guessed that Mr. Lupin wouldn't be at Hogwarts for long, or use this office much, and so he'd told the house elves not to waste the effort. It said something about a person that he tried not to bother house elves. Specifically, it said that he'd been Sorted into Hufflepuff, since, to the best of Harry's knowledge, Hermione was the only non-Hufflepuff who worried about bothering house elves.

quote:

(Harry himself thought her qualms rather silly. Whoever had created house elves in the first place had been unspeakably evil, obviously; but that didn't mean Hermione was doing the right thing now by denying sentient beings the drudgery they had been shaped to enjoy.)

quote:

"What about my..." Harry searched for a word that didn't raise them higher or put them lower... "other parents? I want to know, well, everything."

"A tall order," Mr. Lupin said. He wiped a hand across his forehead. "Well, let us begin at the beginning. When you were born, James was so happy that he couldn't touch his wand without it glowing gold, for a whole week. And even after that, whenever he held you, or saw Lily holding you, or just thought of you, it would happen again -"

...

"Mr. Lupin?"

Something about Harry's voice must have reached the man, because he stopped in mid-sentence.

"Was my father a bully?" said Harry.

Remus looked at Harry for a long moment. "For a little while," Remus said. "He grew out of it soon enough. Where did you hear that?"

Harry didn't answer, he was trying to think of something true to say that would deflect suspicion, but he didn't think fast enough.

"Never mind," said Remus, and sighed. "I can guess who." The faintly scarred face was pinched in disapproval. "What a thing to tell -"

"Did my father have any extenuating circumstances?" Harry said. "Poor home life, or something like that? Or was he just... being naturally nasty?" Cold?

Remus's hand swept his hair back, the first nervous gesture Harry had seen from him. "Harry," Remus said, "you can't judge your father by what he did as a young boy!"

"I'm a young boy," Harry said, "and I judge myself."

quote:

"It was the thing to do if you were in Gryffindor," Remus said, slowly, reluctantly. "And... I didn't think so back then, I thought it was the other way around, but... it might have been Black who got James into it, really... Black wanted so much to show everyone that he was against Slytherin, you see, we all wanted to believe that blood wasn't destiny -"

...

"No, Harry," said Remus. "I don't know why Black went after Peter instead of running. It was as though Black was making tragedy for the sake of tragedy that day." The man's voice was unsteady. "There was no hint, no warning, we all thought - to think that he was to be -" Remus's voice cut off.

...

Remus looked quite uncomfortable. "I suppose I could tell you when you're older, but really, Harry, it's not important! Just something from our school days."

Harry couldn't have put his finger on exactly what tipped him off; it might have been something about the exact tone of nervousness in Remus's voice, or the way the man had said when you're older, that sparked the sudden leap of Harry's intuition...

"Actually," said Harry, "I think I've sort of guessed it already, sorry."

Remus raised his eyebrows. "Have you?" He sounded a bit skeptical.

"They were lovers, weren't they?"

There was an awkward pause.

Remus gave a slow, grave nod.

"Once," Remus said. "A long time ago. A sad affair, ending in vast tragedy, or so it seemed to us all when we were young." The unhappy puzzlement was plain on his face. "But I had thought that long since over and done and buried beneath adult friendship, until the day that Black killed Peter."