Chapter 20: The Art of Lying to a Man Who Sees Through Everything
In the end, though, Tom couldn't really complain, because it had been a perfect gateway for Jerry's idea of the whole "I want world peace" sob story. (Wanting world peace wasn't something you randomly bragged about in regular conversation – these sorts of things had to have the right hooks to make it look like it came out of the blue. Certain things seem much more powerful being mentioned "by accident".)
"I'm glad to see my students so excited about learning," Professor Dumbledore would always tell them, his eyes twinkling.
"This is all just so exciting," Minerva gushed, and Tom noticed that she was subconsciously trying to make her accent less heavy in response to Lestrange's jibe on their first day. "Oh, and is that a phoenix, Professor Dumbledore?"
"Yes. This is Fawkes, my familiar. He normally stays in my office, but I thought I'd let him out today."
"He's so beautiful…"
Tom made sure to shut off his ears when he noticed the phoenix opening its mouth.
What happens if it starts singing, and we don't see it in time?
I don't know.
I'm actually curious. What does that thing sound like?
You want to risk it while Dumbledore's here?
I could blame it on my orphan upbringing.
But you're too goody two-shoes…it'll shake your credibility…
But I'm curious, dammit.
You're insufferable.
And you aren't?
True.
"Tom? Tom?"
"What? Oh, sorry. I got lost for a moment," Tom said sheepishly, his hearing returned to him.
"Wasn't that such a wonderful song, Tom?" Minerva asked.
"Yes. It was brilliant."
Damn, I missed it!
Well, if you're really curious to see how you'll be affected, go and talk to Fawkes when Professor Dumbledore isn't looking. You have the map for a reason.
Can Fawkes blab on us?
I don't know. Ask.
"I love everything about this place!..." Minerva was still saying.
"I see. And you, Tom? Hogwarts is suiting you well, I hope? Certainly it is much different from the schooling you have received thus far."
"I'm adjusting quite well; thank you for asking, Professor. Say, I was wondering, can you speak Phoenix? Or are there any ways of communicating with your familiar?"
"Not an informational bond, but an emotional bond. Phoenixes in particular can tell what their companions' feelings are, and know exactly what to do to help them in a bad situation. But if I left the classroom, for example, then he wouldn't be able to tell me who wasn't doing their work."
"Well, that's just silly that they're not working!" Minerva sniffed. "Why are they even at school, then?"
"Some people just don't see the purpose," Tom shrugged. "But that's quite all right. Maybe they don't work very well in classroom settings. Your class is very hands-on, though, so that isn't a problem for us."
"In terms of not completing your assignments, you two are the least concerning out of all my students," Professor Dumbledore chuckled.
Yes! Crisis averted!
I still wanted to see how I'd hold up against phoenix song, though. Hmmm…
Eventually the conversations devolved into things like future careers, mostly at Minerva's steering.
That girl was just crazy about everything. She was already planning for her final exams, and the midterms hadn't even come yet!
And we're planning decades ahead for when we finally conquer the world. But that's hardly worth mentioning, right?
But we're not stressing out about it! At this rate she'll be cramming for her N.E.W.T.s before third year!
Why does she even think that's necessary? It's school. It caters to the middle of the bell curve. We're so many standard deviations above the mean it hardly even matters –
Glad to know we learned statistics from the same sources.
Oh, shut it, Jerry.
You seem rather overly concerned about Minerva's business.
What has that got to do with anything?
Minerva's dream for the future was easy – she wanted to be a teacher from the very start. And Gryffindor House was fine, thank you.
A little boisterous for her tastes – Tom noticed that unlike all the other Gryffindors, Minerva actually had a very strict, conservative, self-disciplined approach to public behavior – but nice.
That wasn't a problem – in fact, it only made Tom's standout behavior from Slytherin House less unusual.
He had always belonged with the Slytherins, and was as Slytherin as Minerva was Gryffindor (in those seriously stereotypical ways in which House names became adjectives, as if that was all that encompassed a person).
And yet he wasn't like the other Slytherins. Which seemed to be a contradiction – but really just showed Tom how narrow-minded the House system had made people.
Really, qualities like "brave" or "ambitious" or "smart" or "loyal" could be taken so many different ways that the methods in which one could embody those qualities were endless. And yet the House system had reduced them all to stereotypes.
Smart=bookworm. Brave=idiot. Ambitious=evil. Loyal=worthless.
Could not the most vicious of soldiers, who ripped out their enemies' bowels on the battlefield without second thought, also be loyal – to their nation, to their Queen or King or Czar or whatever President was across the sea now? Apparently, not with those marshmallows.
Could the quietest "no" in the world also be in Gryffindor? Nope, because all of them were loud and rude. Did "smart" have to mean buried in books all day?
Discoveries weren't made just by studying from predetermined materials. And who said all ambitions involved climbing the staircase to power in the political stage? (While Tom certainly meant to step on people on his way to the top, he didn't care so much about those silly Purebloods' subtle insults over wine and caviar.)
The trouble was, those people were in those Houses. They were just never noticed underneath the banner, and so they ended up becoming one with the rest of the masses.
Until Tom came along and turned Slytherin House upside-down. Because, unlike the others, he knew he was different and went out of his way to make sure people knew it. Subtly, of course.
In any event, with Minerva out of the way, Professor Dumbledore had asked him next how he liked Hogwarts and his new House so far, what he wanted to do with himself, yadda yadda yadda.
"My experience with the Sorting Hat was really interesting. He – she – it – was very pleasant company, actually. I almost didn't want to get off the stool," Tom lied through his teeth.
Minerva smiled. "I know. I sat on there for so long; the Hat just kept thinking and thinking. I wonder how the Founders made somethin' like that. It must be very powerful magic!"
"Hogwarts is full of secrets," Professor Dumbledore said sagely. "I should consider myself lucky if I knew even half of them."
"Me, too."
"Aye, it truly is a majestic place," Minerva grinned. "Sometimes I wish I could change houses when I liked, just so I might get to visit all of Hogwarts. I almost got put into Ravenclaw with Filius, but at the last moment I decided that I needed to be brave more than I needed to study. Not that studying isn't very important, too."
She looked at Tom expectantly, like she wanted him to share his own conversation with the Hat, too. Which Tom did. Not that he'd tell the truth, of course.
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