Holy cow, guys, 60+ reviews for one chapter? Keep up the awesomeness!

Obligatory pre-chapter warning: If you go to church every Sunday and enjoy it, please brace yourselves. I swear I don't know where all these awful jokes come from.

Also: Last chapter, someone called kk asked to translate this story into Chinese. Yes, you have my permission to do so, but remember to give credit, and send me the link so I can post it on my profile. You don't have to wait for this story to be finished before you start translating.

"#211. I will leave no loophole unraveled."

" – UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Okay, er, calm down, Tom! Maybe this one is screwed up! We'll find another one!

Jerry, help me!

Tom, calm down.

HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO CALM DOWN?

Look, for all you know, it could be me.

What?

We forgot to account for me. You have a perfect memory. I don't. Hell, the reason why I haven't ever told you my "real" name yet is because I seriously don't remember what it is.

So you're saying that the red smoke that says I forgot something in spite of my perfect memory is actually you not remembering your own name.

Among other things.

Jerry, this is serious.

And I'm being serious. Remembralls just pick up anomalies in your memory pathways, which can either be generated by artificial rearrangement of stored information. And you know what else causes anomalies inside your brain? An entire alter ego wedging itself in there.

You sure?

Positive. Look – why don't you just – ignore this, for now. I'm sorry I got you that idea. When we learn Legilimency, we can – I don't know, Legilimize ourselves in the mirror, and then you can dig through your own memories personally.

Can you do that?

The standard Obliviate isn't like the mind-control spell we're trying to do, right? It only suppresses memories. It doesn't wipe them.

Okay. Fine. Fine. I understand.

…But Jerry?

What?

What if I've actually been mind-wiped?

Then we'll find that memory.

…And maybe we'll find some of mine, too.

All right. We'll…piece your memories back. And then we'll do this Remembrall thing again. And then…what if it's still red?...

We'll burn that bridge when we get there.

…So, do we need to go on some magical quest to piece your memories back together?

I think I'll be fine doing it myself. You'll notice that I'm remembering a lot more things about the magical world than when you were one. If I need anything I'll let you know.

If that goddamned thing is still red when you say you're done, I'll kill you.

Riiight.

Spurred with a new purpose, Tom had managed to perfect his personal mind-control spell by the end of the year. And, despite Jerry's pleading, he absolutely refused to refer to it with Jerry's supposedly brilliant dubbing, Conperviate, on the grounds that it sounded absolutely ridiculous. Also, because he was getting a little bit of revenge on Jerry for calling all of the other names he had come up with stupid as well.

Look – we need a way to distinguish it from the other three known spells! Confundo, for a subtle manipulation that allowed the user to still act like themselves, Imperio, for those moments when you needed absolute control immediately, and Obliviate, so no one would suspect that they had ever been under any external mental influence. It makes perfect sense!

…It's a stupid name.

Well, what do you suggest?

…I don't know, but it's stupid all the same.

Tom still wasn't sure how the Ministry would react to an unregistered spell, but he didn't want to find out. Just because there was no written law against it didn't mean that the mass of doddering old conservatives wouldn't act all offended and appalled, anyway. Not so much against the magic itself, but against the atrocity that a little first-year half-blood kid with no magical parents to teach him might be still smarter than they were, pre-established advantages and all.

Although, come to think of it, not having an actual formal rule against random spell creation, while good for him, was also stupid. Really. There were laws requiring Animagi to register themselves, but there was nothing against people just randomly inventing potentially much more hazardous things, like, say, an entirely new, untraceable, ultra-powerful mind-control spell that didn't even have a name or incantation!

Well, there were – but the creators didn't have to publish any new spells until they were complete, so theoretically, anyone could just create anything and claim that all of the unwelcome aspects of the spell were simply mistakes that they were trying to fix. Only, Tom wasn't sure how he'd be able to spin the existence of a mind-control spell of such depth in his favor…

Hmmm…

"Excuse me, honorable Wizengamot people, but I was actually trying to make a spell that could help people regain lost memories. You know, like a Remembrall, but one that actually tells you what you're forgetting. It's just not working in the way I intended…"

You think that might fool them?

Hard to say. Some of the more close-minded people wouldn't believe that a half-blood would be capable of spell creation at second year…

I was actually talking more along the lines of Professor Dumbledore.

No. Absolutely not.

But he likes me!...right?

The point is, the man has had experience with being tricked, and will not hesitate to change his opinion of someone's true nature if proper evidence is presented before him.

We can't be that bad, right? I mean, it's just mind control. Wizards do it all the time. Confundo, Obliviate, the works. They could make an argument against Imperio, since it is an Unforgivable Curse, but our mind-control spell doesn't work like Imperio, does it? And as long as we lie through our teeth and pretend that we haven't been practicing it on anyone else, just test objects, we can't get into trouble for being curious, right?...

Maybe. Look. I'm not a mind reader. You're not one, either – at least, not yet. And neither of us can predict the future. Professor Dumbledore might be forgiving. Or, he might not.

Why not?

Once upon a time, he liked Grindelwald, too, before the man ever became famous. It didn't end so well for him. As a result, he has always had a sharp eye on the lookout against any other potential Dark Lords.

Grindelwald…you mean the extremist in Germany right now? The one who's stupidly trying to take over the world with an ARMY of all things?

Yes. That one.

Huh.

Should we cheer Grindelwald on? I think we should. Even though he's being an idiot, he's still going to create a massive deal of damage that we can use to our advantage when the war has ended and there's a massive power vacuum like, everywhere.

Why are you preaching to the choir, kid? I already know conquering the world with war is stupid. I was the one who told you that Jesus Christ was the closest anyone ever got to world domination.

Ah, yes. Jesus Christ. My hero. If only he lived for one or two thousand more years. He might have seen it happen. He was too damn nice; that was his problem. He should have been more politically inclined, at least – even if that might have undermined his status as the "bringer of peace" a little bit.

Seriously, though. He was the Son of God! If God can smite all the sinners he likes, I don't think anyone else would fault The Holy Son for doing the same.

I don't think those were Jesus' original intentions, but okay…

Look, all I'm saying is that if he had simply "accidented" Judas, he wouldn't have ended up with nails stuck through his wrists. Then again, part of the reason why he became so popular was because of him martyring himself to save all of mankind…hmmm…

Seriously, though. Self-sacrificial deaths have just been the most overused declaration of love in all of literature since then. It's all Jesus' fault. If it hadn't been for Jesus, I wouldn't have had to suffer through eight hundred pages of Jean Valjean being such a goddamned saint. God, I hated that book. In fact, I hate all of those books where the main character always has to be such a hero and save every damn person he meets. When will we have a book where the main character just takes what he wants and doesn't get any karmic repercussions? And when I say "book," I mean fiction, not history books.

I mean, just think about all of the world rulers who exploited their subjects and sent their armies to plunder and pillage all the neighboring small kingdoms, and lived out their lives in their nice golden castles. Sure, we hear about other asshole rulers getting themselves beheaded or overthrown, but the majority of cruel kings never faced any punishment! Hell, Thomas Edison stole pretty much everything he did from Nikola Tesla, and what did he get for it? Let's see, he died mostly peacefully, as a rich man, surrounded by loving friends and family. And what did Tesla get as compensation? Absolutely-friggin' nothing.

That was the most beautiful rant I've ever heard.

I'm being serious. All of that nice and happy BS about "loving thy neighbor" and "do unto others as you would have done to yourself" or some tripe like that never did anyone any good.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery" is my favorite line.

What is adultery, anyway?

Something for adults.

No shit, Sherlock.

Mind your language.

Will you stop saying that, you hypocrite?

Excuse you.

Excuse you – I think I deserve to know a little more! Anyway, I am more of an adult than many adults in this world.

Well, in this case, you're not yet a grown-up.

Ugh. I hate you.

Speaking of Jesus…

No! No changing the subject this time!

Hear me out! I have a brilliant idea! Honestly! We should totally resurrect Jesus! No – better yet – just stage the Second Coming of Christ with a bit of magic and…*poof!* That's about a third of the world behind you, right there! Maybe more, if we include the agnostics now begging for mercy.

Now that would be awesome. I can already walk on water. We were doing buoyancy spells in Charms class just yesterday. And I'm a natural at public speaking. And healing lepers with a single touch shouldn't be too hard to learn, either. There are charms that can turn water into wine and increase the amount of food we have, too. So why the hell was Jesus so special?

Maybe it was because he did it without a wand.

So? So can I!

Maybe you're the second coming of Jesus, then.

Maybe I AM.

Agreed.

We are so amazing.

Yes. Yes, we are.

Where were we again?

Something about not getting caught creating a mind-control spell that is, at this point, probably more dangerous than even the Imperius Curse.

Yes, Tom didn't think that it would end well for him if Professor Dumbledore discovered that he was experimenting in mind control…even if he tried to pass it off as an attempt at simple memory relocation. Something told him that the old Transfiguration teacher wouldn't be as stupid as the rest of the Wizarding World…

Not that he was, you know, dumb enough to let anyone find out. Why would anyone know? His spells didn't show up on his wand, and he could change his own appearance with just a single thought. A bit of Transfiguration and some illusionary spells, and he could be mistaken for any other old wizard. He wasn't at the natural skill level of a Metamorphmagus yet, but there really wasn't any point in being able to turn your hair bright pink without the aid of a wand unless you were attempting to infiltrate a colony of alien space pigs.

On one hand, his mind control methods were really useful. On the other, it still had some issues. Like all mind control spells, it lost effectiveness if someone was exposed to it long-term, or if the distances between them got too far and the connection broke. And besides, Tom could only use it on one person at a time, since he only had one wand. If he wanted to use them in the future, at all, he'd have to come up with a better way.

But for his current purposes, (like messing around with randomly selected strangers, both wizard and Muggle alike, so they opened bank accounts in Switzerland under fake identities for him using the money received from selling the magically conjured graphite turned into diamonds on the black market – also done through mind-controlled middle men), it was adequate. He had made sure that none of his little worker bees remembered what they did or who he was (or even saw him, since he got them all when their backs were turned). But, if, by some freak accident, they did manage to catch a glimpse of him, then all they would have seen was a middle-aged woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes, or a bald man with a beard, or a little girl in a red coat, or an obviously completely innocent-looking tall man with well-combed dark hair and a curly moustache in a black fedora and trench coat with upturned collars.

As a result of diverting all of his energy into these little projects, when the final exams actually arrived, Tom could proudly say to himself that he had done absolutely zero studying.

Well. Zero studying on the subjects actually tested in first-year finals.

Wingardium Leviosa. Oh, please. Like anyone needed eight entire syllables just to make a damn feather float.

After all, if he had to decide between memorizing who got pushed into what bog at the start of the third Goblin Wars, or perfecting his mind control technique, he'd choose the latter. You never know when you might have to Confund, Imperius, and Obliviate a person all at once, all the while still having a completely clean wand. He was a future Evil Overlord, for Merlin's sake. He simply didn't have the time to even think the words – whatever the incantation was, as he hadn't bothered to come up with one in the first place, anyway – every time he wanted someone to do something for him.

On the other hand, Flourish and Blotts had loved his idea of marketing a whole line of study guides, if the amount of revenue deposited straight from the pockets of desperate procrastinators for about two pages of Sparknotes had said anything…

Tom honestly did not feel very bad at all about not caring one whit about his grades. See, for an Evil Overlord, not caring about grades wasn't the same thing as not caring about one's education. For him, an education was how what he learned could be applied to his goals. Exactly what the teachers believed he was learning was completely irrelevant. The only reason why he even tried was because no one would ever respect an idiot past school. Oh, they might crowd around a popular, dumb jock, all right, but no one ever remembered any Quidditch players past school unless they played for a professional league, and even then that was debatable considering the vast number of people who simply weren't fans.

Maybe, in a different life, he wouldn't have settled for anything less than the best, but after spending an entire lifetime with someone like Jerry, Tom realized that, after a certain level, grades were only there for point manipulation. After all, a 94% and a 98% both translated to an A, in the Muggle world, and for a person of Tom's natural talent and Jerry's resourcefulness, there really wasn't any difference in reward between maximal and minimal effort. The Law of Decreasing Marginal Utility and all that.

I wonder if wizards even know what they're doing half the time, or if they just rely on age-old principles from the thirteen hundreds when Europe didn't understand that being dirty led to illness even when the rest of the world viewed that as a topic of common sense.

Really, Tom. There's no point in competing in a system that you know you're so far above. As long as you know you're better than that – and you are, because you're a first-year doing nonverbal and wandless magic, making up your own spells – you don't need to prove that you're the best. Just do what you can to earn respect. Get your Os, get your O.W.L.s and get your N.E.W.T.s.

But don't piss off anyone too competitive, or else they'll hate me, right?

Well, that goes without saying.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have to dumb myself down.

I wish you didn't have to, either. But what are we going to do? If the world knew just exactly how smart you were…

…They'd chuck me in a madhouse in an instant.

Hey – consider this your wind-down time. You need moments of relaxation. These exams are the perfect excuse to slack off and daydream in.

An Evil Overlord, daydream?

You're not an Evil Overlord yet. Just enjoy your childhood and free time while you can. Being the god of the world has its fun, but sometimes, so does the mindless pleasure of taking a test too easy for you.

Considering that he had to work harder to make sure he tied with Minerva and Filius than to get a perfect score, Tom wasn't sure if he could actually count that as relaxation. It was hard, as a perfectionist, to force himself to answer certain things wrong in the right way. If he just did it all mindlessly, and answered things completely wrong, then teachers would get suspicious or think that he was just messing around and didn't care about their class. But if he made reasonable mistakes, then they could just pass it off as human error.

Tom's problem was that he didn't make mistakes. At least not with something like classwork. More complicated things, like forming plots to rule the world, sure.

But this stuff was so easy that he actually had to try harderto get a wrong answer than a right one. Even with Jerry babbling in his head, trying to distract him on purpose so that he would make mistakes. Even when he was multitasking with planning future schemes, he didn't make mistakes. Tom was simply so accustomed to all those mind-numbing, absolutely senseless problems on paper that he could probably take the final while sick with the flu after three whole days of no sleep and still get a higher grade than most of the class.

The saddest thing was, this legitimately was a reasonably challenging final exam for the other first-years. Even the smarter ones like Minerva or Filius.

He wondered if he would ever meet a person who felt the same way. And then he hoped he wouldn't, because that would be competition, and all competition would have to be eliminated. And eliminating someone who might finally understand him would be rather tragic, but it would have to be done. 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.

BONUS #3

(Sorry, guys! I forgot to post this one for the last chapter…anyway, happy 300 reviews! The 400 review one should come next chapter.)

Also hosted by boomvroomshroom

But not Tom and Jerry this time

Because they're participating

We're WHAT?

Because they're participating.

In WHAT?

EVIL OVERLORD JEOPARDY, OF COURSE

Oh you have GOT to be kidding...

AND THE COMPETITORS ARE:

…

…

…

…where are our competitors?

It's just us.

What? Why?

We, um, eliminated the other ones.

When?

Like three hours ago when you first introduced us.

Obviously there can't be more than one Evil Overlord in the same place.

Unless you count us as two different people.

But we're stuck together anyway.

Well, look. We can't play a game of Jeopardy if there's only one contestant.

We would have slaughtered them anyway.

Your fault for getting such weakling competitors.

Honestly.

Hey! No one but the Yu-Gi-Oh cast replied on such short notice!

You still watch that?

What's Yu-Gi-Oh?

I've actually never watched Yu-Gi-Oh. Just the Abridged version.

Oh.

Well, they were stupid anyway. This one guy tried to kill me by summoning holograms from cards.

…What happened?

Well, OBVIOUSLY, since they're HOLOGRAMS, they PASSED RIGHT THROUGH ME.

I meant what did you do to him?

I killed him. And dissolved his body in acid. Duh.

All right. Look. If I found better villains for you to compete against, would you at least bide your time for an hour trying to figure out the best way to eliminate them?

Well, I don't know where you'd find someone like that, but if they're strong enough that they take more than a bullet in the back to kill, then we don't have much of a choice, do we?

A/N: Tom and Jerry need your help! Do you have anything better than Conperviate? If you're on Tom's team, do something awesome or badass. If you're on Jerry's team, do something hilarious that will definitely leave Tom quite unamused.