The Tortoise and the Hare(brained, Completely)
"You do know we should have found them all by now, right?"
Harry didn't look up from the biography of Voldemort he was currently reading. He was already in a bad mood because the author refused to use Voldemort's actual name in a book about him, and he was sick to death of all this He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named nonsense twenty times per page. Already in a bad mood, he let Ron's question hang in the air like a poisonous fume as he counted slowly backwards from fifty, desperately trying to remain calm.
"There isn't a timetable for this sort of thing, Ron," Hermione said, her voice rather tight, and as much as Harry appreciated her sentiment, he was annoyed enough at the moment that even the sound of her voice talking about the Horcruxes was enough to set his teeth on edge.
"Yeah, I know, but even so, we're not going to spend the rest of our lives bouncing around from one wrong location to the next, never finding anything but old bottle caps and the odd handful of Muggle money coins some idiot dropped so we can have another terrible take away dinner before disappearing again at dawn, are we?" Ron said.
"Maybe we will," Harry said in a deathly quiet voice, still not raising his eyes from the biography.
Ron laughed in a completely cheerless way as though Harry had just told a particularly weak joke, but he was the only one.
"I'm being serious," Harry said. "I've no idea how long it will take to find the other ones. I had hoped we'd be done by now, but then if we're going by hopes, I'd hoped we'd just bump into them at the Burrow, toss them in a convenient pit of lava, and the war would be finished before Fleur and Bill's wedding. That didn't happen, so no, I don't know if we might not spend months or years or the rest of our lives tracking down parts of Vol…"
"Don't!" Ron interrupted, and Harry very nearly finished the word just to annoy him but stopped.
"Fine. Of You-Know-Who's soul," Harry said.
"This is ridiculous," Ron mumbled, wadding up a scrap of paper he'd been scribbling on and throwing it at the wall of the tent. "We're never going to find them."
"We've got one," Hermione said, motioning to the locket that was sitting on the table and emitting an unsettling pale green glow, possibly in reaction to the argument. "That's more than we had."
"But it's still here," Ron pointed out. "We haven't gotten rid of any of them yet!"
"The diary's been gone for years thanks to Harry, and Dumbledore managed to get rid of the ring," Hermione said, though Harry noticed she didn't mention that Dumbledore's hand had been slowly withering away as a result. "With the locket, that's half of them already, and that seems fairly reasonable, I think. It's going to be hard. We aren't likely to stumble upon them by accident or find one hidden in the tent, Ron!"
Harry scratched his forehead absently. Either his scar was hurting again or he was getting a headache. He wasn't sure which.
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," Hermione said cautiously. "We're looking for new Horcruxes, but maybe we should be trying to destroy this one instead first."
The locket's glow intensified a barely perceptible amount, but Harry could feel it more than see it. That thing did not like the topic of conversation. Well, good. Hermione was probably on the right track then.
"How? Stab it with a basilisk fang? You don't have one of those sitting about in that little beaded bag of yours," Ron said, then stopped. "Wait, do you?"
"No, I do not," Hermione said primly. "Those are more than a bit difficult to get. Thankfully basilisks don't just wander about Britain dropping their teeth all over the place like mad hens laying random eggs."
"Mad hens laying random eggs?" Harry repeated slowly.
"Well, I couldn't think of another metaphor. If you can, bully for you. And as the tooth fairy didn't turn out to be among the real creatures I had formerly thought to be mythological prior to my Hogwarts letter, it's not like we can just request one from her catalogue either," Hermione said. "There are other ways, though."
"Like what?" Harry asked.
"Something severely destructive, obviously," Hermione said. "Dragon fire might do the trick, or possibly having a Gorgon stare at it. A nuclear detonation might be able to end the bloody thing if we absolutely had to use Muggle technology."
"A new clear what?" Ron asked.
"Trust me, you're happier not knowing," Harry said, then turned back to Hermione. "Okay, assuming we leave off our list weapons capable of destroying a small country in one go, how are the other options looking?"
"Rotten," she said, rubbing her forehead. "I haven't actually come up with a way to approach anything that dangerous without getting us all killed."
"Harry fought a dragon before. Why can't he do it again?" Ron asked, and Harry thought there was a definite edge in his voice.
"I was getting a dragon away from an egg, not asking it politely to blow fire on a locket while not roasting us along with it," Harry said sharply. "If you happen to speak Dragon, please, enlighten us to the etiquette of the finer points of the situation there."
"I bet Hagrid would know how to do it," Ron said. "Too bad we can't get in touch with him. Or maybe we could try soaking it in Acromantula venom of something."
"Not strong enough," Hermione said. "I checked."
"Another dead end," Ron huffed, staring at the ceiling and looking sullen. "This is impossible. I think we should all just go home and deal with the Death Eaters some other way."
"What home?" Hermione said coldly. "In case you've forgotten, Harry doesn't have one anymore and neither do I."
"You could both come to the Burrow," Ron said softly. "Mum wouldn't mind."
"Ron, you know that Harry would be killed there immediately, and so would I most likely, and really so would you," Hermione said. "We've had this argument before. There isn't any 'home' to go to."
"Then we go somewhere else, somewhere they won't expect, like, I don't know, India or America or Peru or something, and just wait it all out," Ron said.
"While our friends die waiting for help in the meanwhile?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, well, better them than us, mate," Ron said angrily. "We're getting nowhere!"
"Yes, we are!" Hermione said loudly. "You just need to be more patient!"
"Fast is a lot better than patient," Ron said, folding his arms decisively.
"Not always," Hermione said, and Harry was surprised to see that a smile was playing around the corners of her mouth. He hoped against hope that once again they were about to be saved by Hermione's apparently inexhaustible treasure trove of weird tales and batty legends.
"Why do I have a feeling this just triggered a memory of a story?" Harry said.
"Because you are being highly perceptive," Hermione said.
"Whatever," Ron said, waving his hand dismissively, but Harry could tell he was still intrigued by the darting look he shot towards Hermione when she thought her attention was elsewhere. "Those things are daft."
"Not always," Hermione said. "This one has a very clear moral to it. Aesop's usually do since they're fables rather than regular fairy tales."
"Is there magic in it?" Ron asked, betraying a bit of interest.
"No, but it does have talking animals," Hermione said.
"Fine, let's have it then as we aren't going to be picking up more bits of You-Know-Who's soul this evening," Ron said.
"Please?" Hermione said, folding her arms every bit as tightly as he had done earlier.
"Okay, okay, fine, please tell the story," Ron said.
Hermione seemed to consider whether Ron's politeness was sufficient or merely feigned (Harry personally thought it was the latter) before sighing and settling into her usual cross-legged storyteller position on a cushion.
"Once upon a time, there lived a hare and a tortoise," Hermione said.
"I take it you mean the rabbit-like thing and not the stuff on your head," Ron immediately interrupted.
"Yes," Hermione said.
"What's the difference between a rabbit and a hare anyway?" Ron said.
"Well, they're in the same family, but hares tend to be bigger than rabbits, and their ears are longer. Also, rabbits usually live in big groups but hares prefer to be solitary or live in pairs," Hermione said immediately.
"Seriously, is there any topic you don't know about?" Ron said.
"I'm not all that up on Quidditch," Hermione said with a shrug.
"So you just know about dull, unimportant stuff," Ron muttered under his breath, and thankfully Hermione either didn't hear it or decided to pass it over.
"Also I had a pet rabbit when I was little," she said.
"Named?" Harry asked.
"Flopsy," Hermione said. "I liked Beatrix Potter."
"Who?" Ron asked.
"A Muggle writer of children's books, usually about talking animals. She painted pictures to go along with them that are really quite pretty," Hermione said.
"Do they move?" Ron asked.
"Of course not. I said she was a Muggle," Hermione said.
"Oh," Ron said. "That still seems so weird to me: stationary pictures. Unnerving. It's like they're dead or something."
"Thank you, Ronald, you have just succeed in making my childhood memories seem macabre and depressing," Hermione said, and the way she was holding her head, Harry suspected she might be developing a splitting headache. Again.
"Okay, so there's a tortoise and a hare, which is not a rabbit," Harry said. "Now what?"
"So what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, then?" Ron immediately asked before Hermione could get a word out of her mouth.
"Turtles are amphibians that need to be near water, though they are capable of walking about on land, while tortoises are mostly land animals," Hermione said through gritted teeth. "There are further differences that can be observed, but is that sufficient?"
"I suppose, but I still think they ought to just call them big hermit rabbits and dry turtles," Ron said. "Go on, though."
"Thank you," Hermione said. Not for the first time, Harry wondered whether Hermione had a blood pressure cuff in her bag and what it would read if it were currently on her arm. "As I was saying, there were a tortoise and a hare. The hare was always bragging about how fast he was."
"Is it really bragging if it's true?" Ron asked. "Because they are. Fast, I mean."
"Yes, it most certainly is bragging," Hermione said. "If it's true, then the person, or hare in this case, shouldn't need to be spouting off about it every few seconds. It gets annoying."
"Fair enough, but really, how many topics of conversation would a hare have anyway?" Ron said.
"Vegetables?" Harry suggested. "The weather? Predators? Grass quality?"
"The status of other talking animals?" Hermione said. "Creating hare-based oral literature and poetry? Developing a system of writing? Questioning the nature of the universe and a hare's place in it?"
"Yeah," Ron said, unimpressed. "Boring. Then again, there's no Quidditch to talk about, so I can't blame them. Though I suppose they could invent some kind of pseudo-hare-Quidditch."
"Pseudo-hare-Quidditch?" Hermione repeated, and Harry really was starting to worry a little about whether or not she might run screaming out of the tent into the wilderness one of these nights.
"Sure, they could weave goal posts out of meadow grasses, though I suppose that'd be hard without thumbs and all, and maybe they could use butterflies in place of a Snitch, oh, and Quaffles could be, I don't know, potatoes or wild onions or something," Ron said.
"What about broomsticks?" Harry said, becoming intrigued with the idea against his will.
"Hmm," Ron said. "I suppose they could ride on moles or badgers or any other animal that would stand for it, and they could release hornets instead of Bludgers and beat them off with fern fronds or cattails or what have you."
Hermione looked back and forth between the two boys.
"You're obsessed. Completely obsessed. You do know this, right?" Hermione said.
"Bit more interesting than discussing the weather or bragging about how fast they can run," Ron said.
"Yes, because bragging about Quidditch is so much more wonderful," Hermione muttered so low that Harry barely caught it before she went on.
"Regardless, the hare was confronted by the tortoise, the slowest of all the animals, who took him to task for his conceitedness," Hermione said.
"Tortoises are not the slowest of all animals," Ron said at once.
"No, they're not, but perhaps they're the slowest of all the talking animals in this story," Hermione said.
Ron paused for a moment before shrugging and saying, "I will accept that since there is no evidence to the contrary."
Hermione shot him a look that Harry swore he'd seen McGonagall use, but she kept plodding on.
"The tortoise said that he wanted to challenge the hare to a race, and after the hare was finished laughing at him and realized the tortoise was in earnest, he decided to humor him and agreed," Hermione said.
"It is pretty ridiculous," Ron said.
"Perhaps so, but the other animals all gathered around, and they plotted out a course that went all around the great field where they lived and looped back to the start once more. The tortoise and the hare stood beside one another at the starting line, and at a signal from a fox, who was the judge, they took off. As expected, the hare rocketed out of sight before the tortoise had barely moved at all," Hermione said.
"Okay, now I feel kind of sorry for the poor tortoise, even though he did set himself up for total failure," Ron said.
"He took on a nearly impossible task," Hermione agreed, "but he kept at it, plodding along with determination."
"Meanwhile the hare had lapped him already," Ron said.
"No, actually the hare started to show off," Hermione said. "He was so full of himself and so absolutely certain he would win that he purposely slowed down. Finally, he decided that he was tired, so when he came across a great shady tree, he decided to take a nap for a while."
"A nap? Now that's just insulting, that is," Ron said.
"It could certainly be seen that way," Hermione said. "The hare slept for a long while, but the tortoise kept going forward, never stopping. Finally, the hare woke up to realize that he had slept far too long, and the tortoise was only a few steps from the finish line. The hare put on a tremendous burst of speed, nearly as fast as a lightning bolt, but the tortoise managed to cross the line a split second ahead of him to the cheers of all the other animals, proving that slow and steady wins the race."
"No, it doesn't," Ron said, screwing up his face in disgust.
"Yes, it does," Hermione said, her voice rising a bit. "The tortoise won because he was determined, and the fastest one doesn't always win."
"No. That is absolutely not physically possible," Ron said firmly.
"Oh?" Hermione said. "Why?"
"Unless the hare was sick or asleep for days on end, no tortoise is going to beat him in a race," Ron said.
"Actually, it's entirely possible," Hermione said. "Let's say the racetrack was a full mile long. A tortoise will usually travel at about 0.17 miles an hour, which would work out to a bit less than five hours for him to complete the circuit. However, tortoises have actually been clocked at up to 5 miles an hour in some cases, so that would mean he could finish the lap in all of twelve minutes. Assuming this tortoise isn't quite that unusually swift, let's say he moves at three miles an hour. He could finish the trip in twenty minutes, which isn't a very long nap for the hare at all."
"Uh-huh," Ron said. "How fast does a hare run?"
"Oh, about 47 miles an hour in sprints," Hermione said. "But he couldn't keep up that pace terribly long."
"So, if my rusty maths are right, the hare could run a mile in less than a minute and a half?" Ron said.
"Your maths are fairly good, but it's closer to a minute and a quarter," Hermione said.
"Right. So the hare runs for, oh, say, a minute, then takes a twenty minute nap, wakes up, and can't finish the bit left over before the tortoise crosses the finish line?" Ron said.
"Those are pretty good approximations, I would say, and entirely feasible under the circumstances, so you've just proved my point: slow and steady really can win the race," Hermione said.
"Only if the hare is an idiot," Ron said. "If the hare actually took the thing seriously, he'd have won easily. It's not that the tortoise won, it's that the hare lost because he was downright stupid."
Harry glanced between them, afraid to admit that Ron certainly seemed to be right.
"But if the tortoise had given up or decided the race was too hard or not worth it or hadn't even tried it in the first place, it wouldn't have mattered that the hare was acting stupidly," Hermione said. "The tortoise's effort did make it possible for him to win."
"As long as the other fellow is so full of himself that the tortoise catches him napping," Ron said. "I guess the whole point is supposed to be that determination and patience get somebody to the goal, but it's really more that if you're a conceited git with an ego the size of Malfoy's, somebody will eventually trip you up and you'll lose because of your own arrogance."
"Why can't both of them be the moral of the story?" Harry broke in quickly.
"I'd always thought Aesop's fables tended to be more clear and single-minded, but yes, both could be valid interpretations," Hermione admitted.
"Fine. So if we're the ridiculously optimistic tortoise, we're hoping that You-Know-Who has such an overly inflated sense of his own invulnerability that he makes a dumb mistake, which is when we, blindly stumbling forward…"
"Tortoises are not blind," Hermione interrupted him, sounding a little desperate.
"Fine, but we're still stumbling forward, not even sure where the bloody finish line is, and hoping we have the good luck to catch him napping and win in spite of ridiculous odds," Ron said, looking disgusted. "That's bonkers."
"Yes, it is," Harry said, facing him squarely, "and that's exactly what we're doing. We might be the tortoise, and we're a long shot in any race, but if we give up I guarantee you that we and everyone we care about will definitely lose."
They sat in silence for a moment, really looking at how long the odds were on finding the missing Horcruxes, destroying them, and all three of them surviving the battle that would inevitably take place. Harry guessed that Fred and George wouldn't be putting their last Galleon down on that possibility. It was a stupid bet to take, and they wouldn't be such fools.
Then Harry realized immediately that he was wrong; they and everyone back home, and there really was still a home, were all gambling everything they had on the three of them, including their lives. It was humbling and terrifying but heartening at the same time.
"Fine," Ron said quietly, and Harry thought he had come to the same conclusion. "We keep going."
"We do," Hermione said.
"But I'd still rather we were hares without the overconfidence issues and could finish this up by teatime tomorrow," Ron said as he turned towards his bed for the night.
"Don't we all, mate," Harry said as Hermione blew out the candle, ending another day of searching so they could sleep for a few sweet, blissful hours and begin another day of searching tomorrow. "Don't we all."
