For Harry, the hardest thing about Hogwarts was moving around undetected. Keeping his movements free from the prying eyes of the students or the Headmaster, was more of a chore than the ridiculous homework assignments they received.
Honestly, why did he need to write a foot of lines explaining the importance of wand movements when he could do it wandless? Sure, he had to keep it a secret or risk having even more scrutiny, and it was essential to train the idiot children's minds, but it was grating on his adult intelligence. Especially with his enhanced memory, thanks to Occlumency. He had a new appreciation for spies that went undercover and stuck to their unique identities, pretending to be a child while only showing enough talent to beat Hermione was exhausting.
Still, the worthless assignments were starting to get on his nerves just as much as not being able to explore the castle without ghosts, students or paintings following his every move was. Even though there was not a rush to examine Hogwarts for all of its treasures, it irked him that he was so restrained. It had been two weeks since he had bound Snape as his most loyal protector and he had yet to even check out the Room of Requirements!
All it would take was for one of his house-elves to teleport him directly there, but his room kept having constant visitors thanks to his reputation skyrocketing from taking down Snape! Since there was no rush, he had shelved his plans and continued instead to build his public persona of a tolerant, friendly and approachable, yet distant loner that was willing to help those that asked.
He needed just the right balance that would keep all walks of wizarding life happy, from the traditional purebloods to the ignorant muggle-born. Harry thought that he was doing well because after his run-in with Snape, he only had to beat down two third-years students before Slytherin left him alone. Malfoy had even contacted him for the Pureblood history lesson they had talked about, and boy was that enlightening.
It seems that Snape had done quite well in appeasing the Slytherin's anger. This was done by 'quoting' that 'Potter had shown rather remarkable Slytherin traits and confessed that he would have chosen Slytherin for his house if he was not ignorant of their world and needed to commit all his time to rectify it.'
When Draco had met him on Sunday, two days after the incident, for his lesson on Pureblood Traditions, he had excitedly regurgitated his head of house's speech and warning to stay clear of Potter.
"Did you really threaten to alienate the whole of Slytherin to the wizarding world by claiming my godfather was training us to attack you?" Draco blurted out as soon as they were behind the closed door of an empty classroom.
Seeing that Draco was more intrigued than angry, Harry couldn't help but show off a bit. "Well, he did publically aligned himself against me for the second time unprovoked and then had all of your house staring daggers at me. So I merely mentioned how it would look if I called my three good friends the Minister of Magic, the Head of the DMLE and Rita Skeeter to inform them of his 'behaviour'. The fact that he is most likely a marked Death Eater would just be the icing on the cake."
Draco's eyes bulged at the implications. The hero of the wizarding world was being attacked unprovoked by the whole of Slytherin house on the Head of House's orders. Even his quite limited eleven-year-old mind still managing to wrap around the fact that it would be disastrous if that news got out. Draco Malfoy might be just as impulsive like any other child, but he had learnt enough from his father to see how that story would go, especially if his godfather was an unknown Death Eater that escaped a trial!
"And he just let you go without punishment? Not even a detention?" Draco asked in disbelief.
"We came to an agreement. Any hate Snape had for me was because of my father, and after I so blatantly blackmailed him, we decided to call a truce. I would not provoke him and be on my best behaviour, and he will not judge me for my father's mistakes.
Ah, he also had to remove any resentment our disagreement might have caused in your housemates. Don't want to automatically pit myself against Slytherin after I chose Ravenclaw to stay away from that bullsh*t. Got enough on my plate without adding schoolyard fights into it. Already had to beat sense into two third-years." Harry explained.
After a bit more back and forth, Harry gained an in-depth look of Draco Malfoy's political and world views. It explained a lot of why he acted the way he did in canon after Harry rebuffed his friendship. The eleven-year-olds clumsy attempt at making friend had backfired spectacularly and forced him into an antagonistic relationship to regain his 'honour' for the slight.
The spoilt child had not even noticed that Harry Potter was ignorant of the wizarding world's politics and had accidentally made himself look like a bully to a victimised child instead of a confident Noble Heir. That first meeting had locked the two into opposing sides, especially with the encouragement from Dumbledore's plant, Ron 'the bigot' Weasley.
No purebloods other than the Weasleys ever made an effort to even talk to Potter after Ron had so thoroughly isolated him. The read-headed bigot had destroyed any chance of any political alliances with other Pureblood Families with his brainwashing that they were all muggle haters that treated muggle-borns like servants. Of course, he wasn't too far from the truth, but he had prevented any assistance that could have made his life so much easier.
Draco continued to fill Harry in on everything he needed to know that would help him become a Pureblood elitist from a child's point of view. When they parted ways, Harry thought that he had made a good impression on Draco that would allow for positive future interactions.
But while most of what Draco had to say was valuable information on the relationships between the Noble Houses, a lot was just regurgitated propaganda that his father had forced into him. Harry wondered how Narcissa had let Lucius get away with the sh*t he filled Draco's head with, she was rumoured to be a smart witch after all.
Having the child of an 'imperiused' Death Eater shouting Mudblood at the top of his voice every chance he got was not a smart move. If Harry decided to make the young heir into a minion, he would need to curb the child's behaviour before he tarnished himself as an 'evil Slytherin' or a junior Death Eater.
Harry was undecided how he was going to play out the next several years and had been agonising over it in his spare time for the last couple of weeks. He had heaps of ideas but was hesitant to pick a path. He could either reintroduce Voldemort and moonlight as him in the dark, terrorising the Ministry while playing the Boy-who-lived and saviour in the light to take over the Ministry and introduce laws to legally enslave the whole of Wizarding Britain.
Or he could 'befriend' the heirs of prestigious Noble houses and take over by his already blinding reputation when the next Minister of Magic election happened. After all, he was not on any time limit, and his only goal was to destroy Dumbledore's reputation. Harry just wanted to do it from a position of power so he could snatch up all the benefits that would come with the fall of the Lord of Light!
Otherwise, he could just start Skeeter writing all of Dumbledore's dubious history while exposing incidents that the Headmaster covered up. That reminded him, now that Quirrell wasn't here and being his annoying stuttering self, there would be no troll incident to save Hermione from.
'Oh well, it was not like it was vital to befriend the isolated and ridiculed 'know-it-all' with how she was acting.' He thought to himself.
Harry realised that they were only children, but he didn't remember being that stupid when he was twelve. Hermione was bullied in the muggle world and had treated this as an opportunity to make new friends. Then she goes about it by being a teacher's pet and patronising all her peers with her memorised knowledge. Her social skills were non-existent, and Harry could only blame her parents for raising her as an ignorant SJW.
Who goes into a new culture/community to make friends only to turn around and judge it by the society she left because they hated her? It was typical SJW mentality to leap at any chance to be seen as a 'woke' hero by jumping into a situation without knowing all the information. The fact that she organised a campaign to free the Hogwart's house-elves against their will was just one example of her unwanted social justice. It even left the house-elves hating her!
As annoying as Hermione Granger was, the fact of the matter was that she would grow up hot and she was a hard worker. Harry could use her as the head of his muggle-born faction that would be 'fighting for their rights' while he entrapped them in magical contracts to 'protect' them. Really, Harry was going to use the next few years to play around while slowly maneuvering the Wizarding World into a dead end, he just had to choose how to do it.
'It would also have the added benefit to allow me to engineer a few situations so I could point out wizard stupidity while giving bond villain speeches to the people that annoyed me! Having the chance to laugh in his enemies faces was too tempting to ignore!'
'Holy shit! Did I really just think that? I sounded like a two-bit villain that disregards the evil overlord list only to get caught by those damn meddling kids! Has the ambient magic of Hogwarts started to affect me?' Harry thought to himself in rising horror.
That was the kind of thinking that would see him exposed and caught, hell, it was how Voldemort acted! Harry was completely sure it was not from any influence from the soul pieces he had consumed as he had erased every bit of personality from them before he absorbed them. No, it had to be from the saturated environment of Hogwarts itself! He had felt the magical saturation as soon as he had entered the protective wards, and it had made him feel alive and welcomed.
'Could this be the reason why ninety-nine percent of wizards were retarded? Could prolonged exposure to magic rich environments be the cause of the rapid decline of original thought and critical thinking? Did it lower inhibitions and make young wizards a slave to their desires? Did puberty and developing minds just cement the process?' So many questions flashed through his head that would need to be investigated!
After all, wizards before Hogwarts were powerful and were capable of incredible feats, they practically invented everything that was used today! Their culture was even years ahead of the muggle society! Then, after schools were founded around the world, and it became mandatory to attend magical boarding school, the magical society stagnated, and no new spells were created. Hell, a lot of them were even banned!
Even the Dark Lords were not exempt from stupidity! If Grindlewald had used the Imperius Curse or brainwashed the Allied leaders before kicking off WW2, he would have conquered the entire world! But instead, he and Hitler had stupidly tried to take on everyone at once and had inevitably been defeated.
Was Chad just not infected with wizard stupidity until now because he had an ad*lt mind in a child's body? Practically all children were isolated from magic until they turned eleven and then were exposed to a magically saturated environment while their personality and minds developed in their teenage years. Could he have just stumbled upon the reason wizards and witches were so backward?
Even muggle-borns like Hermione entered with new ideas and were heralded as geniuses only to finish school brainwashed and missing any critical thinking. Her choices in hunting for Horcruxes were what the average wizard would have done, blindly charging into the situation while firing off schoolyard spells. Not once did she sit back and think like a muggle, using every tool at her disposal.
Harry would have to observe himself carefully for any further signs of corruption, he could not afford to act like a retard. With his new hypothesis behind wizards lack of reasoning, a lot of Dumbledore's so-called plans made much more sense for their stupidity. The man had practically spent his entire life at Hogwarts! To announce to every student that there was a life-threatening danger behind almost no protection would see him harshly spanked by the Ministry if they ever found out.
Even now, Harry could feel the euphoric touch of magic as he hurried to his room so he could have a meltdown. He would need to invent an undetectable method to isolate himself from its addicting yet damaging touch, maybe something like the bubblehead charm...