Chapter 7: The Ethics of World Domination
After a few more weeks of spell practicing, Tom and Jerry eventually concluded that the "no magic outside of school" rule only applied once you started Hogwarts.
Therefore, they tried cramming as much as they could into their brains – well, more like Tom's brain (singular) – before that grace period was up and they would be restricted for another seven years.
Or, at least, be burdened with the inconvenience of walking all the way out of the orphanage into a different wizard's zone every time he wanted to practice magic over the summer.
Not that it was impossible to convince Mrs. Cole to let him go out with just a bit of charm and a false smile…it was just that she'd probably send some other kids to go with him to make sure he didn't get kidnapped or something.
And taking the time to give them the slip would be extremely annoying. Especially since everyone liked following him around everywhere. That was one of the downsides of being the nice kid that no one could hate.
Or, they could just find some younger Muggle-born children in the vicinity, kill their parents, wait for the government to relocate them to Wool's Orphanage, and subsequently blame everything they did on said other child's accidental magic.
It wouldn't be hard - Hogwarts apparently had this magical ledger that wrote down the names of all the magical children born in Great Britain at any given time.
Of course, they'd have to get away from the orphanage long enough to use magic in the first place...
Tom just didn't want the magical community to be able to track him down somehow. Unlikely, since he would be outside of his zone in the first place, but, you know. He'd have to make it look like they died through Muggle means. Like a gas leak.
Oh, that would be brilliant. Wait for the child to go off somewhere - at this point, the mother would probably be at home doing homely things, and the father would also be at home because he was unemployed thanks to the Great Depression - and then take a wrench to the pipes and wait.
Suffocation would be slow, but they could always hope for someone to unwittingly light a cigarette.
This is 1937, after all.
But they'd burn that bridge when they got there. Currently, Tom was simply holed up in his room and making the occasional knockers go away by saying, "Sorry, I'm busy right now. Maybe next time?" and smiling.
It was amazing, what you could do, by phrasing a command as a suggestion.
Tom was burning through all of his coursework with maddening ease. By the time August rolled around, Tom had finished every single spell mentioned in the first-year curriculum, and, being the genius he was, also memorized all his textbooks by heart.
Holy shit. And I thought Hermione Granger was joking.
What? Who's Hermione Granger?
Someone who was born in, like, 1980.
Was she important?
Sure. Yes. Yes she was.
Was she a witch?
Yes.
Was she important to me in any way? Like, the cause of my future downfall –
…Hey, look! It's a butterfly!
You are SO obvious. How are you my advisor to world domination again?
Hey. You're the one who has to lie to people, not me. I do the theoretical path to conquering, and you do the actual application.
The only problem they ran into was a certain passage in the Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. Something about basilisks, and how their venom could be counteracted by phoenix tears. Then there was a footnote describing phoenixes.
"Phoenixes are magical, immortal birds that, at the end of their lives, burst into flames, and are reborn from the fire. Aside from their healing tears, they are also highly intelligent birds whose tail feathers can be used in wand cores, and whose song can strengthen the pure and noble while striking fear into the hearts of the wicked."
...That might be a problem.
Yes. That might be a problem.
Wait - how do they even know who's wicked or not? Is there, like, Saint Peter in their brains or something?
Maybe it's a psychological effect.
Like that "look inside yourself" bullcrap?
Probably. I mean, it's hypocritical to call yourself good when you judge others for being evil, right? There's no real right or wrong...I mean, for all we know, serial killers are the greatest good this world will ever get, since humans are the greatest causes of pollution and habitat destruction to Mother Earth.
A little decrease in the surplus population would do us good...
Ahem.
...But not genocide! Because that's stupid, and it cuts down heavily on genetic diversity, which might be highly necessary next time there's some massive outbreak of an incurable plague! Right?
Ah, good, you're learning.
So are we evil?
Well...that's debatable. I mean, apart from the whole "taking over the world" and "eliminating your enemies" thing...
Well, killing billions of people would be a pain in the ass, yes. And it will get you noticed and reviled. But we won't be killing billions of people because that would be stupid.
Yes. Yes, it would be.
So are we evil? I mean, I don't think so, but that's just because I don't care about what anyone else thinks.
I think that we're totally reasonable beings for wanting the entire earth to ourselves. As long as no one is suffering needlessly, it should be fine, right?
And, well, from a Darwinist viewpoint, we're just ensuring the most comfort for ourselves, right? It's a matter of survival! We HAVE to control everyone in order to be absolutely certain that none of them are going to turn around and kill us! The phoenix song can't blame us for wanting to live, right?
Do you think it'll really take that BS?
I don't know.
Ugh. What happens if Professor Dumbledore wants to introduce us to his phoenix?
Well, theoretically, if we just eliminate our sense of good and evil, then it won't be able to affect us, right?
I'm not really sure if that will work.
Can you learn to just make yourself deaf?
I can try...it shouldn't be too hard, right?
There were many ways in which magic could be molded, some more easy than others. Thankfully, shutting off one's own senses, like changing colors of everyday items, were among the easy things.
In the privacy of his room, Tom pointed his wand at a book, lazily transfigured into a rabbit, and then snapped its neck, at which point it turned back into a book.
Apparently, you couldn't turn non-food items into food items or potential food items (or living things in general, it seemed – although you could certainly get them to act like living things).
For example, if you transfigured a rubber eraser into a pencil, say, the wood and graphite would remain wood and graphite.
But if you turned a rubber eraser into, say, a chicken, it would only look like a chicken until you tried to cut it up. Even a piece of chicken would fall apart back into a rubber eraser if you damaged it too much.
Figures, that the number one necessity of basic survival after air and water was unavailable to magic.
Which really worried Tom, because what if you swallowed something whole?
Say, someone transfigured a vial of poison into a vitamin pill that was meant to be swallowed, and the pill only turned back into poison when it hit the stomach acid?
Why don't we test it?
According to the tiny corpses littering the orphanage kitchen after Tom transfigured a few packets of the janitor's rat poison into bits of not-exactly-cheese – yes, that was a very, very real method of assassination.
Which begged the question, why didn't wizards outlaw this stuff a long, long time ago?
Let me guess…wizards are stupid?
Oh, very. I didn't even realize it until now.
How has no one been murdered this way, yet? There has got to be SOMETHING against this!
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