Chapter 18: The Room That Knows Exactly What an Evil Overlord Needs
Forget that right now. First, you need to go to sleep. Then, get your class schedule tomorrow so you know when all your free periods are and when the best time is for sneaking away without getting caught.
You make it sound so easy.
When you break a big problem into little steps, it actually is. Right now, all we need is practice.
Ugh. It's mind control. That's the hard part. It's the one thing that I haven't gotten control of! And of course I can't use living test subjects until I master it because I'll get caught, but I can't master it until I have test subjects.
Not a problem. I know a way. Go to sleep.
What about the immortality?
We'll research that, too, alongside the mind control. But don't be surprised if it takes a lot longer to figure something out.
Which is why we'll start now.
Exactly.
Why don't we just focus all on the immortality and master the mind control later?
You want to draw in your base while they're still young and stupid. And you are also – well, not stupid, but inexperienced.
You'll make mistakes. Or we might find ourselves in an unplanned situation and not be able to improvise in time. It's imperative that you learn how to wipe someone's memories properly. You can't get caught this early in the game.
Why can't we just kill everyone and be done for it?
Because, you idiot, people will fight back.
But ruling over a docile population is so boring!
Well, if you're mind-controlling people, and want to spice things up, just remove the mind-control from one person and watch the chaos if you're that desperate!
Oh, shut up, Jerry.
Right back at you, Tom.
Despite their ever-constant bickering, though, Tom and Jerry always could rely on one thing – they made the perfect team against an unfriendly third party.
When they were alone, they had to take out their daily hidden frustrations on someone – Tom because he had to actively hide it, and Jerry because he couldn't talk to anyone else anyway even if he wanted to – leading to the origin of what Jerry liked to describe as their "verbally violent" cat-and-mouse style word battles.
But otherwise, they were an inseparable team.
Literally.
The next morning, Jerry woke Tom up early as he always did (apparently the fact that he didn't have a physical body meant that his brain didn't have to recharge its chemicals, which meant that Jerry basically just didn't sleep).
Jerry, of course, couldn't control Tom's body, but he could be very loud and annoying when he wanted to be.
Tom was only lucky that Jerry tried his best to save that for when he was actually awake – while Tom slept, Jerry usually settled into a quiet corner to ponder life and do whatever he didn't want to verbally share with Tom.
And when he got bored of no longer having any human interaction, that was when he started jabbering away. Regardless of when the alarm was actually set.
Tom sometimes thought that Jerry did it on purpose, because Jerry's senses were just as linked to Tom's, and he knew Jerry could hear alarms just as well as Tom could.
But Tom was used to sleeping a little less than normal, anyways, and his body had adjusted accordingly, so he didn't fault Jerry too much for adding a few hours to his day.
One of the advantages to being the earliest riser when you live with roomates is the fact that you get private bathroom privileges, as well as the satisfaction of smirking down at inferior beings.
It's surprisingly condescending, to roll out of bed half-asleep with grime in your eyes, only to see someone else completely alert, dressed, and ready to go – it implies that you're lazier and less aware of your surroundings.
Also, since they were Evil Overlords, it was advisable to never fall asleep in a room where others were awake.
Just another way of asserting dominance.
There was a definite night curfew, but there wasn't any real limit to how early anyone could wake up.
Before sunrise was rather sketchy, but seeing as many teachers and other adults woke up at around five, also (though not today; it was the first day back), no one should fault the little first-year for not knowing the rules.
Five A.M. wasn't that unreasonable. A bit on the extreme side, perhaps, but not unreasonable.
Tom did want to get back before too many other people woke up, though. Breakfast wasn't served until 8:00, since classes on the first day started at 9:00, so most people wouldn't wake up until around 7:00, give or take a quarter of an hour. Leaving Tom that much time to do all his exploring of the castle.
Should I make myself invisible? Or will that be suspicious?
Hmmm…tough call. The paintings might blab if they see something wrong…but on the other hand, if you don't get caught…
I can sort of make myself invisible.
Go back into the bathroom and we'll see. We know we're there, so if we can't find ourselves, then people who aren't looking shouldn't be able to, either, as long as we don't bump into anything.
All right.
It took about another hour of practice before Tom could will himself into very good camouflage, but it still wasn't that great.
Invisibility, unfortunately, was one of those annoying skills that were ridiculously harder than making stuff float and grow and change into something else.
Whatever. It's not like you'll get into trouble. Just say that you're going exploring so that you won't get lost before classes start.
…We don't even have our schedules yet, though.
Potions is always in the dungeons, Astronomy is always in the Astronomy tower, Herbology is always out by the greenhouses, and the paintings will tell you where the Transfiguration, Charms, History, and Defense classrooms are.
Do they really make everyone take those same seven classes? I mean, I get the six on magic, but I read through the Astronomy curriculum.
There's absolutely no application that you can't get in the Muggle world, except for naming your kids like the Purebloods do.
Yeah, well, it's not a bit of a stretch for a first-year to deduce what all his classes are from reading his book list, right?
So Tom left the Slytherin common room and started going on a tour of the castle. Most of the paintings were still asleep at this point, which sort of rendered their excuse of asking the paintings about where the classrooms were void, but that didn't bother Jerry.
He just kept telling Tom to keep taking the staircases upwards, and walk with paranoia turned up to the max because, apparently, there were trick steps that moved randomly.
Disregarding the fact that this was a school full of kids, and a fall from that height could easily break someone's neck.
Tom eventually managed to get to the seventh floor without much trouble. To which he turned to Jerry and asked, Okay…so why are we here? Unless you want to get a nice view of the grounds…
Shh. Just turn a few corners until you find the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.
Why?
Just do it. Oh, you'll like this. It's so – it's so stupid like everything else here, but in a cool way. Really. It's just like magic.
If you insist…
Eventually Tom managed to find said tapestry of the crazy old man from the illustration in A History of Magic and paused. Found it. Now what? Oh, let me guess – secret door hidden behind the tapestry?
Yes, actually, but you're staring at the wrong side of the hallway.
Wait, what? That's a blank wall. There's nothing there…oh, wait. Is there some invisible door?
Yeah. Now walk back and forth between this patch of blank wall three times thinking, well, anything. More specifically, something that you need.
Well, I need to attain immortality in a way that DOESN'T drive me crazy and figure out a way to mind-control people, for starters.
Go ahead. Try it.
Tom frowned, but did as he was told, and wasn't even surprised anymore to see a door just randomly appear.
And let me guess…it's there?
Well, not quite, because that would be too easy, but it would still help.
So Tom entered the room, only to find books stacked all the way up to the ceiling, on everything currently known about immortality, mind control, and so on. And that was when Tom couldn't help but say out loud,
"Holy shit."
Language.
Like YOU'RE one to talk.
You're eleven. I'm...well, I don't quite remember how old I am, but I'm over eighteen.
You were a college student, right?
...Yeah. Yes. I did go to college.
I thought I'm supposed to be older than you.
Magic!
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