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“Already Optimized” by Florian_Dietz


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A Harry Potter fanfiction. Based on the world of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, diverging from canon.

Harry had been having, by any objective measure, an excellent week.

On Monday he had demonstrated, to his own satisfaction and Professor Flitwick's visible alarm, that the Hover Charm could be generalized to any object regardless of mass if you conceptualized it as a momentum transfer rather than a force application. On Wednesday he had worked out why Neville's potions kept failing — the textbook instructions assumed clockwise stirring, but the underlying reaction was chirally sensitive, and Neville was left-handed. A trivial fix. Neville had cried.

On Friday evening, buoyed by the week's successes and looking for a specific reference on crystalline wand cores that he was certain would unlock a further generalization of his momentum framework, Harry was in the Restricted Section.

He had access. Professor McGonagall had granted it after the Hover Charm incident, in a tone that suggested she was choosing between supervised access and finding him there anyway at 2 AM. A reasonable calculation on her part.

The book he wanted wasn't where the index said it should be. In its place was [...]

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First published:

February 18th, 2026

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wHpchCq6gxJHHdfD5/already-optimized

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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