Ron's face pulled into a scowl. "If you don't like Quidditch, you don't have to make fun of it!"
"If you can't criticise, you can't optimise. I'm suggesting how to improve the game. And it's very simple. Get rid of the Snitch."
"They won't change the game just 'cause you say so!"
"I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know. People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread."
A look of absolute horror was spreading over Ron's face. "But, but if you get rid of the Snitch, how will anyone know when the game ends?"
"Buy... a... clock. It would be a lot fairer than having the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the spectators, too." Harry sighed.
Ron reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of Wit-Sharpening Potion. His mother made it for him in case of an emergency, and this felt like an emergency. He didn't know a lot of things but he knew someone had to speak for Quidditch. For the Seeker and the Bludgers and for games of uncertain length, games not circumscribed by some cruel, Muggle contraption, games which might last a quarter of an hour or a fortnight. It might seem silly but so does music and dancing and chess and even love. Some of the best things in life are silly! Someone had to speak for the Snitch, that whimsical Snitch. It may not have been the emergency his mother intended. But it was one. And so he took out the bitter potion and drank deeply. The effect was immediate.
"The reformer," Ron said, "thinking some tradition quaint and ridiculous, designs some cheap solution and thinks himself a benevolent genie. If he has any power, he forces his design on those under his sway and thinks he's done them a favour. Such is the folly of the modern reformer. Such men think Rome at fault for not being built in a day."
Harry looked at Ron with new eyes. He was still a fool, but now he blathered in a sharper tenor. And all that from a potion? A potion that can make a fool slightly less foolish? Magic can do that? Wizards can make such potions and still like sports! He wondered if the magic could be made permanent. And if not, could it be attached to some article of clothing? A hat perhaps? Or a headband?
"Yes. This is a common problem. I have read Seeing Like a State and Red Plenty! But progress requires change! We would experiment, of course! Small trial games, or even split into two leagues and let the students decide which version of the game they like more. You agree that the point spread is a problem and the clock is the obvious solution!"
"As always with the modernist reformer," Ron said, his freckled face now swollen and ruddy, this being a side effect of the potion, "he notices a small problem and proposes to solve it with a large one. One suspects he desires more than anything to make his mark. The modest surgeon makes the smallest cuts, so small there is little evidence of his work at all. The reformist butcher desires disfigurement, some scar which screams, 'What you see here is the work of Man and not Providence!'"
Harry looked at Ron, annoyed. He was quite the ranter. It was very annoying when other people ranted. This potion-enhanced Ron was almost as bad as Dumbledore. Almost.
"What would you suggest then?" Harry asked skeptically.
"I would not remove the Snitch! You think the Seeker unnecessary? You think his game with the Snitch a separate one, a smaller, simpler game that subsumes the larger. But it is his seeming pointlessness that makes him, as a figure, so pointed. At any time the game can end by his hand, his movements nimble and quick and practised unlike the graceless pointers of your clock. You call the Seeker's game random. I call it fate. And there is much drama, tragedy and whimsy in the vicissitudes of fate!
"That is not a suggestion. You are not proposing any solutions!"
"Then I will propose this: if we must have a revolution, let us make it a microscopic one. You complain of the point spread; then we shall lower the prize for catching the Snitch. Let us set it to 11 so it breaks any tie. In this way we preserve the winding, wise streets of Rome rather than dismantling her stone by stone."
Harry thought about this for a bit. Maybe that potion was a little better than he thought.
"Acceptable," he said. "Do you mind if I have a sip of that potion?"
Ron looked at the bottle, the effects wearing off. He had a thought that perhaps it would be unwise to share what remained. Perhaps Harry should not have sharper wits. He was about to articulate this objection but his mind went fuzzy and dull, his once-ruddy face now pale. He was his usual self once more.
"Um, yeah. I guess," he said.
And Harry drank the potion. And from its taste alone he recognised the constituents of the brew from his textbook. And not just that but also the magical theory employed to devise the recipe. And he thought some more and deduced the generalised laws of intelligence augmentation and a means of translating these laws into movements of wand and tongue. He pointed his wand at his head and spoke those words of power that had just occurred to him.
It felt like an explosion of thought. He was no longer the same Harry. And the world soon - so very, very soon - would no longer be the same world.
Now do Quirrell, swigging a bottle, trying to convince ASI Harry to throw him a bone through acausal trade based on the possibility of this being an ancestor simulation. Good luck, Quirrell.
Ron reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of Wit-Sharpening Potion. His mother made it for him in case of an emergency, and this felt like an emergency. He didn't know a lot of things but he knew someone had to speak for Quidditch. For the Seeker and the Bludgers and for games of uncertain length, games not circumscribed by some cruel, Muggle contraption, games which might last a quarter of an hour or a fortnight. It might seem silly but so does music and dancing and chess and even love. Some of the best things in life are silly! Someone had to speak for the Snitch, that whimsical Snitch. It may not have been the emergency his mother intended. But it was one. And so he took out the bitter potion and drank deeply. The effect was immediate.
"The reformer," Ron said, "thinking some tradition quaint and ridiculous, designs some cheap solution and thinks himself a benevolent genie. If he has any power, he forces his design on those under his sway and thinks he's done them a favour. Such is the folly of the modern reformer. Such men think Rome at fault for not being built in a day."
Harry looked at Ron with new eyes. He was still a fool, but now he blathered in a sharper tenor. And all that from a potion? A potion that can make a fool slightly less foolish? Magic can do that? Wizards can make such potions and still like sports! He wondered if the magic could be made permanent. And if not, could it be attached to some article of clothing? A hat perhaps? Or a headband?
"Yes. This is a common problem. I have read Seeing Like a State and Red Plenty! But progress requires change! We would experiment, of course! Small trial games, or even split into two leagues and let the students decide which version of the game they like more. You agree that the point spread is a problem and the clock is the obvious solution!"
"As always with the modernist reformer," Ron said, his freckled face now swollen and ruddy, this being a side effect of the potion, "he notices a small problem and proposes to solve it with a large one. One suspects he desires more than anything to make his mark. The modest surgeon makes the smallest cuts, so small there is little evidence of his work at all. The reformist butcher desires disfigurement, some scar which screams, 'What you see here is the work of Man and not Providence!'"
Harry looked at Ron, annoyed. He was quite the ranter. It was very annoying when other people ranted. This potion-enhanced Ron was almost as bad as Dumbledore. Almost.
"What would you suggest then?" Harry asked skeptically.
"I would not remove the Snitch! You think the Seeker unnecessary? You think his game with the Snitch a separate one, a smaller, simpler game that subsumes the larger. But it is his seeming pointlessness that makes him, as a figure, so pointed. At any time the game can end by his hand, his movements nimble and quick and practised unlike the graceless pointers of your clock. You call the Seeker's game random. I call it fate. And there is much drama, tragedy and whimsy in the vicissitudes of fate!
"That is not a suggestion. You are not proposing any solutions!"
"Then I will propose this: if we must have a revolution, let us make it a microscopic one. You complain of the point spread; then we shall lower the prize for catching the Snitch. Let us set it to 11 so it breaks any tie. In this way we preserve the winding, wise streets of Rome rather than dismantling her stone by stone."
Harry thought about this for a bit. Maybe that potion was a little better than he thought.
"Acceptable," he said. "Do you mind if I have a sip of that potion?"
Ron looked at the bottle, the effects wearing off. He had a thought that perhaps it would be unwise to share what remained. Perhaps Harry should not have sharper wits. He was about to articulate this objection but his mind went fuzzy and dull, his once-ruddy face now pale. He was his usual self once more.
"Um, yeah. I guess," he said.
And Harry drank the potion. And from its taste alone he recognised the constituents of the brew from his textbook. And not just that but also the magical theory employed to devise the recipe. And he thought some more and deduced the generalised laws of intelligence augmentation and a means of translating these laws into movements of wand and tongue. He pointed his wand at his head and spoke those words of power that had just occurred to him.
It felt like an explosion of thought. He was no longer the same Harry. And the world soon - so very, very soon - would no longer be the same world.