Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Everyone loves Harry Potter but sometimes you think the decisions that Harry makes are weird and irrational. There’s where Harry Potter and the methods of rationality comes in. This is a Harry Potter Fanfiction written by author Eliezer Yudkowsky.
In this alternate universe, Harry’s Aunt Petunia marries an Oxford University Professor Micheal Verres instead of Vernon Dursley. When Harry’s parents are killed by the Dark Lord, Harry is raised lovingly by his relatives. He learns about the scientific method when young and applies rationality to everything that he does doing experiments and thinking logically about events.
There are 6 books in the series and the entire plot is about Harry’s first year at Hogwarts. He is sorted into Ravenclaw and becomes best friends with Hermione Granger from Ravenclaw and Draco Malfoy from Slytherin. Yup… Spoilers ahead.
This book was surprisingly addictive. I originally started listening to this as an audiobook, however it was so good that I imported the book from hpmor.com into a mobi format so that it would be easier to read on my kindle. I devoured the 6 books as a whole in about a week.
It was kind of annoying knowing that Quirell was the bad guy all along but it was interesting seeing how Voldemort was able to maipulate even the rational harry potter. This book also offered a different prespective of Albus Dumbledore. We all knew him as this really good saint and hero of the Old Wizarding War in the orginal cannon, but here we learn about the dark side of Dumbledore and how he supposedly killed Narcissa Malfoy which acts as a reason for Malfoy’s hatred towards Dumbledore. Although Harry thought that Dumbledore was this evil old man for most of the book, he soon realises that Dumbledore was the sane one.
The scientific experiments with Malfoy were really interesting as Harry had to convince Malfoy that all the stories and “facts” that he learnt from his father was wrong. The story developement clearly showed how Malfoy was against the idea of Muggleborns having the same magic power and blood purity as Purebloods. However, Malfoy eventually does understand science enough that he has to deal with the grim reality that Purebloods were not any better than Muggleborns. He had to hide his discovery and beliefs by spinning off tales of how he was just plotting a master plan.
One thing that I did not like about this book is Harry and Voldemort breaking into Azkabhan. Yeah I understand that Dementors were bad and stuff but no one really discovered who was behind all these. And Harry hide this whole thing from everyone. I had this feeling of “Will they find out that it was actually Harry who broke into Azkabhan and released Bellatrix Lestrange” every single time that they mentioned the incident. Ahhh. 😒
Overall this book was really good at offering another perspective of what could have happened if the boy who lived was brought up by decent people. This is certainly something that I would want to read again. Maybe more slowly the next time trying to find various easter eggs…
Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash