Chapter 34: A Profitable First Year
There could not be two Evil Overlords running around, and, as fun as the potential endless mind games there could be between the two of them, there were just risks that he was not willing to take.
Of course, the chance of that risk actually coming true seemed to be shrinking by the day. No matter what he did, it seemed like people around him seemed to be getting stupider and stupider every second. Except for mayble Professor Dumbledore. And he just couldn't be friends with Professor Dumbledore.
So he decided that he would have to settle for Jerry's internal companionship at this point.
Jerry didn't have an eidetic memory, but Tom supposed that having to view everything from a third-person perspective made you that much more sensible about the world.
Having an intellectual equal (and, for someone of his calibre, that automatically amounted to "rival") in a separate body would definitely be interesting, but not worth the trouble – whatever enriching experience he might receive from said person could not possibly outweigh the consequences that might befall him should he lose.
In any event, Tom didn't need personal companionship. He wasn't trying to sound heartless or cold – it was simply true.
He didn't feel for people, and it wasn't because they were all so far below him (although, admittedly, that was part of the problem). He just had no grasp on appreciating a foreign personality whatsoever.
Tom reacted properly to people because he knew how to do it and what it meant to them, but as far as he was concerned, Lestrange licking his boots clean and Lestrange insulting him was the same exact thing, barring amusement.
He did not require emotional support from other human beings. It was simply that certain people, and certain behaviors, resolved his boredom better than others.
When it came to an actual and present danger, of course, it was a completely different story.
Hence the reason why the amusement an intellectual rival might present could never convince him to overlook the idiocy of letting him or her live. And also the reason why he would never even consider making the mistake of cloning himself.
But he agreed with Jerry that staying up late, practicing mind control, instead of studying with everyone else, had been a much more profitable use of his time.
Hey – the country was still struggling to get out of the economic downturn, so all the stocks in general were still extremely low.
And, according to Jerry, once 1939 hit and World War II started (because oneof them wasn't enough for Europe, oh no), they would skyrocket like no tomorrow. How could anyone not expect him to take advantage of that? Pawning a few diamonds (magically pseudo-conjured, via the pressurized graphite method) was sufficient to get him more than enough startup money to invest in a ton of stocks in war-related companies.
He would need somewhere (multiple somewheres, actually) to stash all of that cash without the government breathing down his neck.
Luckily, thanks to the fact that he was still gaining profits from his partnership with Flourish and Blotts' over the whole "Eraseable Quills" thing, no one looked twice at him getting regular bank statements.
If he had just been like he used to be at the beginning of the year, then maybe teachers would wonder what a ward of the state like him was doing with money of his own.
And also, now that he was marketing printer paper (which was both easier to use and cheaper than regular parchment), the Gringotts bank statements didn't look any different from Muggle-delivered ones.
Now if only he could start setting up secret accounts into which he could divert some of this money…then he could actually start buying out people and things that mattered, like the more important offices in the Ministry of Magic and the Daily Prophet.
Oh, well. He had barely been in this world for a year. He could wait another six years, whereupon he would become a legal adult and there would be less scrutiny of his money.
Other than that, however, there wasn't much to be done over the summer, since the economy would still be stagnating for a while.
Tom did continue to perfect his mind control, invisibility, and magical disguises – all of them extremely fundamental skills, if you really thought about it (which most people didn't) – and, coincidentally, also the three basic tenets of world domination (which was pretty scary, since a good chunk of wizards could perform all three skills adequately) if you used them properly (which was not as scary, since application was literally easier said than done).
He also started expanding his magic map to include pieces of Magical London, which was a lot harder than it sounded, because London was HUGE.
But Tom had an entire summer, so he at least managed to get the important parts, as in, the places where world leaders actually visited. (No one cared about the slums a hundred years ago, and no one cared about them now – and Tom definitely wasn't going to go down any shady alleys anytime soon. Maybe one day he'd figure out how to mind-control someone to walk into there for him and stick the specific tracking charm linked to his magical maps onto the brick.)
At least all that practice had helped him make the Tracking Charms stronger, so they could monitor regions larger than he grounds of Hogwarts, too.
All in all, his summer hadn't been wasted, and his first year had been equally profitable.
If only he could figure out why the food rule still wasn't working.
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