Chapter 08

School was boring.

There was no other word that fit the feeling that the very idea of school now engendered in Harry James Potter. It was a rather odd feeling to know exactly what the teacher was taking pains to convince the rest of his classmates to study. Yet he had no real opportunity or the inclination to demonstrate that he had already mastered these (to him) petty topics. He would have cursed at Richards, who was the one who had convinced him to read ahead and use his burgeoning intellect at his own quicker pace. On the other hand, Richards was feeding his newly burgeoning appetite for higher knowledge. And that too with books and ideas that he had never even imagined existed. It literally was a whole new world.

Not that it made up for the horrible, horrible school. Even if ninja were supposed to be patient fellows, sitting in a class of people who were starting to literally turn into drool monkeys was doing him no good at all.

Harry in a definitive way could claim an average eleven year old's knowledge. And despite frequent sensationalist reports of child prodigies, Harry knew quite well that in the overall grade of human potential, smarts like his were very very rare. In the 2 weeks that had passed since his return to school, he had found that simply trying was more than enough to further increase the distance between him and the rest of the human sheep he spent his day with. It was not a very encouraging thought - for the rest of humanity at least.

The sciences were fascinating, after all, learning to use the world around you was a very important skill for a ninja, and understanding how the world works gives you quite a head start in that department. Language of course, he was cultivating at his own pace. After all, people listen when somebody speaks well. And in the world of today, English was very very widespread. Art was something he had a very moderate interest in. His abundance of practice in the garden had, out of necessity given him an extremely steady hand, one that if he set his mind to it, he could use with great effect to make his vision to reality. Unfortunately, his actually not bad pieces of art were the ones done at home and shown to Richards and Richards alone. Simply the way the art teacher looked at him told him that her mind and soul were infected with the plague of 'Harry hating' the Dursleys loved to spread.

Seriously, the amount of influence his so called normal relatives seemed to wield made him question for a second if the Dursleys had high level connections to some crime syndicate or the sort. Then again, if they did, they'd get minions to make his life a living hell(which it technically already was).

Whatever the case, Harry was quite convinced that all of Surrey was convinced of the quality of juvenile delinquency present in 'That Potter boy'. He could see it in the way everyone who was considered sane seemed determined not to see him, hear him or acknowledge his existence. Those little glares, the ever present hint of disapproval and the slightly upturned noses that everyone who deigned to speak to him had. Only his newly practiced observation skills allowed him to be aware of the full scale of the negativity that was directed at him. Pitiful fools, all of them...

While normally this sort of thing might have broken the victim eventually, reducing all of his newfound spine to jelly, Harry dealt with it by reminding himself that he could drive the Dursleys insane with genjutsu anytime he chose. It was quite an effective image, certainly it made him sneer at the stupidity of these people who thought themselves above him and his existence. But now when he thought about it, it certainly suited him. While being branded a criminal was rather annoying, it served to distance people from him, and whatever said and done, if the only thing anyone could say about him was that he was supposed to be a juvenile delinquent, even a Surrey based police officer would be unimpressed. Anonymity, even if negative was, especially for ninja, is quite a valuable thing to have. and in this manner, he wasn't forced to hide behind a facade of politeness, hiding his skill and intention all Kabuto like.

The trend of 'ignore Harry Potter' behavior was best seen in the teachers. All day, he sat at the back, with no fear of any interruption to his activities whatsoever. They came in, sat down and did their other stuff normally. When it came to roll call, the teachers skipped over his name. Instead, they chose to look at him from the corner of their eyes, as if to confirm that the abomination they simply could not eliminate had indeed dirtied their esteemed class by his very presence.

It was so amusing now, when he thought about it. For a while, it had contributed to a growing resentment when he first started school. But now, it was buried in the certainty that he was better than them by simply choosing not to exact his revenge upon these self deemed superior human beings, in spite of his clear ability to do so.

Since nothing he did was going to change what happened around or to him, Harry decided had decided that he might as well make use of this behavior. Last year, he had only dared to read ahead in the same academic topics and areas that were taught in school. Granted, it was giving him the equivalent of a full 3 years head start on his classmates in his studies. Something, which at the moment was quite useless, but there were now so many things he just had to learn. Things so wonderful, that meekly trying not to avoid everyone was going to get him nowhere. So he decided that if he was going to take advantage of this constant apathy, he would use it in the most effective way possible.

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