Chapter 25: When Your Hand Cramps But Your Ambition Doesn't
What Tom was earning from this entire exchange was the growing desirability in the eyes of some of the older boys, who actually knew what they were doing and recognized the deception for what it was.
Lestrange was giving up some of his own power to the "no-name Mudblood (even though I know that you're probably not Mudblood)" and Tom was milking it for all its worth. Even more so at this crucial time of shifting politics.
Though Lestrange was the heir to a powerful family, he was not mature enough to openly declare himself as head of said family yet. Tom, on the other hand, was already demonstrating himself to be someone with clear use.
The only tricky part was maintaining this façade of "usefulness", because they could drop him at any second once Lestrange finally stopped acting like a petulant child.
Tom knew that status-wise, he could never surpass Lestrange, who, for all his faults, would still always be of superior birth.
Therefore, he needed to show that he had something that Lestrange did not, and at the moment, it was everything but blood – intelligence, cunning, and magical prowness.
Just a few years. Just a few more years until both Abraxas Malfoy and Orion Black graduated from Hogwarts.
That was more than enough time for Tom to secure himself as the de facto leader of Slytherin.
It wasn't like Tom actually needed their patronage, but getting insider information was so much easier when you were actually allowed inside.
Slowly but surely, the tight-knit circles of elitist Purebloods were cracking open, and Tom was always in the right places to sneak right through.
Just look at what I did to this place with a few well-placed words and an innocent smile.
I'm so proud of you.
sniff
Other than the secret drama in Slytherin House and the exchanges with Professor Dumbledore, however, school life was ridiculously monotonous, and it took Tom all of his self-control not to just randomly jump up and start burning things down out of frustration.
Especially when it took people forever to answer simple questions when all he wanted to do was just move on. Not just students, but teachers, also. There were disadvantages to stopping education in basic math at the age of eleven.
WHY IS EVERYONE SO FREAKING STUPID?
It was at times like this that Tom seriously appreciated Jerry's "experience" – for example, the old trick where you hide a smaller book inside of a bigger book, or, better yet, just temporarily Transfigure the covers.
It wasn't like he could get in trouble for not paying attention – he had memorized the damn things already. That technique had been especially useful for Binns' class, since everyone slept in it anyway (except for Minerva, and he supposed Filius, the maniacs) and Binns didn't care either way about who paid attention or not.
History of Magic ended up being one of the most fruitful classes he had in Hogwarts, mainly because he actually didn't have to pay attention in it. Unlike Defense Against the Dark Arts, where every other week involved a practicum of some sort.
Not that Tom hated Professor Merrythought – she knew what she was doing, at least – but he just felt that there were better ways to spend his time. At least she rarely, if ever, gave any homework – unlike pretty much every other damn class.
It was always write a blah-inch essay on some topic, and damn was it a boring waste of time. Tom didn't understand why they had to write essays. A list of items or a worksheet would have shown the teacher equally well that they understood the theory.
Once again, Jerry came to the rescue.
Write bigger.
I can't do that; they can tell when you're BSing. They're not 100% stupid!
Not kindergarten big! Just make your letters rounder and more elongated. If you make the loops in each letter short, your writing will LOOK tiny. You can't tell the difference character by character, but trust me – after a page or so it really adds up.
But then there will be room for more lines.
That's why you make the LINES in your letters nice and tall. That way, you'll get massive line spacing, massive word-to-word spacing, AND still look like you're writing more.
Oh. I see. That's actually pretty smart.
And make your punctuation bigger! Put double spaces after your periods! Make the spacing between each line 1.5 character heights instead of 1, and make the margins 1.25 inches all the way around instead of 1 inch.
You don't think they'll call me out on that?
As long as you write neatly and have all the information in there, in an organized format, they could care less.
Really? Are you sure?
Use the structured paragraph format I showed you! It's the simplest and most BS way to organize information. You can waste so much space with transitions, and a topic and conclusion sentence. AND it's really helpful in making sure you answer the entire question.
Are you sure the teachers won't want to see something…I don't know, a little less scientific?
Look – the Herbology teacher is super chill, as is the Charms teacher. Professor Dumbledore and Professor Slughorn both like us. The Astronomy teacher and Professor Merrythought don't assign essays. And the only class in which you might get docked points for not being fancy enough is History, and that's taught by a friggin' ghost.
But wizards aren't supposed to make sense, are they? It's easy for you to talk about messing around, but for me, I have to make sure I'm the best at everything I do in order to hold on to my position of power.
I know you're trying to save time so we can start working on other things, but it's going to start being especially annoying if we do really well at first and then all of a sudden we crash and everyone starts looking down upon us.
Oh, how cute. You actually still care. Trust me, Tom. You'd have to try to fail in something as easy as school.
I'm not talking about failing, but it might be harder for us if teachers think we're trying to get out of doing proper work. Life is miserable when there's that one teacher who hates you for no good reason. Well, they might have a reason for us…
There's going to be thirty other kids they'll want to pick on before picking on you of all people. In fact, they're probably going to like you for being concise and writing big enough for them to see.
Imagine how many of these they'll have to grade, and imagine how many more will be shitty. Do you really think they're going to take out a ruler to the one good essay out of a dozen bad ones?
Whatever you say, Your Majesty.
Ooh – and here's a good one. Start a new paragraph as early into the line as possible. Still the same amount of words, but more blank space. And make your indents nice and big, too.
Even though Tom worked significantly faster than the average human being thanks to his intelligence and Jerry's tips, however, his hand could only move so fast before it started cramping.
It wasn't that Tom was against hard work and practice…he just preferred to practice at things that he knew he'd be able to use in the future, rather than mere rote memorization of first-year-level facts.
This is so stupid!
Wait – hold on. I have an idea…
What is it?
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