Chapter 10: The Barrier and the Fools Who Fail at Muggle Clothing
Tom had to depart from Wool's Orphanage in regular attire, in order to blend in with the rest of the environment.
Thankfully, though, that was the only concession he had to make that day, as Mrs. Cole had deemed him responsible enough to get to the train station without running into trouble or taking mysterious detours through shady alleys.
Along the way, Tom managed to make no less than three old people faint with his failed attempts at mind control, and decided to save the practice for later.
I TOLD you, but did you listen? No! You're lucky that all they did was faint, because if heads suddenly started exploding you'd be in big trouble!
Okay! Fine! I said I was sorry! I don't see what the fuss is all about!
It's called "giving yourself away," you idiot. People don't conquer the whole damn world in just a day! You can wait a week or two as you get settled in Hogwarts and figure out the best targets and points to practice.
Ugh! Fine. You don't have to whine so much about it.
I'd rather not get expelled or thrown into Azkaban for using magic on some random Muggles and making them faint. Honestly.
What? We're way beyond the orphanage point, aren't we? Sure enough, the public trolley had stopped in front of the train station, where many other wizard families were presumably going to take their children to the Hogwarts train.
Some of them were doing a horrible job at trying to be Muggle, and these men in dresses and striped bathing suits were garnering some rather odd stares (honestly, how difficult was the concept of shirts and trousers? You people WEAR these clothes underneath your robes on a daily basis!).
Others, probably the rich and proud purebloods, didn't bother to dress up at all, and were strolling along, robes and all. Ironically, these people were less obtrusive than the failed attempts at dressing up like Muggles, because wizard robes were basically little more than fancy trench coats that didn't have pockets.
They certainly looked less insane than men in dresses.
At least the funny sights were enough to get Jerry to stop throwing a fit at him. All right, so what he did was stupid. But at least he picked his targets carefully.
They were all different people on different trains, so it wasn't like they'd single him out as the greatest common factor anytime soon, and anyway, old ladies fainted all the time.
God, they're so wonderfully clueless, aren't they? Tom asked.
Reminds me of an old joke I heard, Jerry snickered.
What? Tom asked, interested.
Now, normally, he hated jokes. Especially the stupid ones that other kids in the orphanage told. They were usually senseless puns or something immature and related to human excrement.
With Jerry (and most other adults, he suspected), however, a "joke" was usually something far more subtle and often cutting in nature.
It was too bad that about a third of the time, Jerry would refuse to tell him said joke – usually on the grounds that Tom was too young for that sort of joke. (In that case he wouldn't actually announce that he had a joke – he'd just snicker quietly to himself and refuse to explain why he was laughing.)
Now, Tom didn't quite understand why Jerry could say that he was too young for something as simple as a joke and then lecture him on twenty-first century scientific principles, but who was he to judge?
All of the jokes he had heard from Jerry so far would go way over the heads of the other eleven-year-olds in the orphanage. Perhaps those secret jokes in Jerry's arsenal were really just that advanced. Tom couldn't wait until he was old enough to understand them.
He didn't like a lot of people, and he certainly had no need for something as useless as love, but Jerry was quite an amicable and amusing companion.
And since they shared the same mind, anyway, he supposed he should have gotten used to Jerry's presence sooner or later.
They weren't exactly the same person, but they might as well be, and that was as good of an excuse for him as anything for liking a different person than himself. (Tom, personally, divided people into three groups – the useless, who were meant for subjugation, the useful, whom he allotted time to proportional to their levels of usefulness, and companions. Of the last group, there was only one person in there, and that was himself. And, by default, Jerry, who was also a part of him.)
So when Jerry said that he had a joke, it usually meant that something darkly good, or at least informative, was coming, and it would do him well to listen.
Either that, or dead babies.
All right. It's not so much of a joke as a life lesson, as said by this one Prussian general: "I divide my officers into four groups – the intelligent, the stupid, the hardworking, and the lazy. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities.
The hardworking and intelligent are fit for general duties. The lazy and stupid can have some use in menial tasks. The intelligent and lazy are fit for positions of highest command, for they will find the most efficient ways to complete a given task."
And what of the stupid and hardworking officers?
"They are a menace and must be disposed of immediately."
Tom snorted aloud and hastily pretended that he was sneezing. Like those idiots who are trying so hard to dress like Muggles and still failing?
It would probably be a lot better for the International Statute of Secrecy that those people just not be allowed to leave their homes, yes.
…And this is why we will change on the train.
"Change" is a bad word…really, you're just pulling a robe over your regular clothes.
True, true.
It was not long before they found the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. Besides the completely arbitrary nature of the number, Tom had to wonder if these people ever thought things through before doing something.
Surely, someone had to realize that putting a portal right in the middle of one of the busiest crossroads in England would draw attention?
Or was there some secret spell that made Muggles ignore a whole crowd of randomly dressed people walking straight at a brick wall and then disappearing?
There probably is. But we will NOT be attempting that until we master basic mind control first, all right?
No making people's eyeballs pop out of their heads; I GOT IT.
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