You Should Know: Meta Archive
Nov. 22nd, 2020 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoFor You Should Know (Tom/Hermione)
Originally posted chapter-by-chapter on tumblr.
No meta was written for Chapters 1–3.
So this fic was born of the very real “write what you want to read” impulse and one thing I desperately want to read more of is a struggling, relatable Tom Riddle. I know his character isn’t ~meant~ to be that, but what the heart wants, etc. In this chapter I’m suggesting some of the ways I think Tom might reasonably try to cope with his stressors, and though they’re not healthy or good, I wanted to show him trying to be a better partner to Hermione through his acknowledgment of his own failings. No, he will not be the best boyfriend ever because he comes home on time each night, but it’s such a concrete and achievable aim that of course he would gravitate to it as a way of demonstrating respect. Tom’s emotional life is held together with string and tape and I imagine that he would translate most emotions into purposeful action rather than internally processing them. (That’s also why I think he’s so taken by Hermione—she’s a natural at mindless gestures of affection and each one is a wonder to Tom.)
Also, I’d like to take a moment to just acknowledge the absurdity of canon Voldemort strolling back into Wizarding Britain in his 40s and expecting everyone to jump to his command. Almost every one of his schoolmates had a spouse and kids by then, positions in the Ministry, Wizengamot, etc etc actual life responsibilities, and they just agreed to prioritize an insurgent paramilitary movement without issue? Yeah, no way. My Tom’s going to see that rich, comfortable bureaucrats aren’t actually great starting points for a political uprising.
The sex scene at the end of this chapter was the motivation for this entire part. Fic in general tends to build up to love declarations slowly, and I really wanted to write the first “I love you” moments for both characters so that they were (a) too fast and (b) delivered super awkwardly, because I so rarely get to read that. We saw Tom declare his love in Ch. 3, and he’s motivated to do so because thinks it’s the correct next step for this relationship, and he doesn’t personally value love enough to fret about saying the word. Hermione finally gets to say it in this chapter, and she gets to use her declaration to communicate acceptance. There’s just no reason for “I love you” to only be written when characters are truly, madly, soul-achingly in love with each other, imo.
The Tomione fandom seems to be all about the sex, and I’ve read a lot of good sex for these two, but I haven’t seen as much uncomfortable, weird sex. And like, Tom’s been fucking gone for a decade, lord knows what his sexual experiences have been like during that period, he’s absolutely not going to be an engaging sex partner during their first time back. Sometimes you help a guy get off because he needs it and you love him.
Of course, combining the love declaration and the hand job was necessary. My Tom and Hermione very intentionally have no artifice between them, and if Tom’s not the handsome young charmer sweeping her off her feet, then Hermione’s stuck loving him (or not) based on the mess that he actually is.
Also, I very much enjoy Abraxas’ presence, whenever he shows up. I like to think that he and Tom are/were actually friends, even though Tom doesn’t really know how to process that. Putting Brax in this role where he has to somehow placate Tom’s egotism, serve as a confidant, and give relationship advice all at the same time is really fun.
Ok, so we’re just about halfway done, and now that my characters are in place, I have to start reconciling their positions into a somewhat-believable ending.
I get to do two things starting in this chapter that I’ve been looking forward to. The first is that Hermione starts to be involved in Tom’s plotting: she’s not doing the daily work of it, but she sees the structure of his organization and learns how he’s thinking. There’s no way that our girl would be content to just sit by and let Tom do whatever he wants without consulting her, but I think, equally, that she’s smart enough to realize that if she wants to influence him, she needs to both slow down the process and study all of the information available. Does she have to manage this by turning their flat into a command center, complete with chalkboards? No. But this is the same person who, as a girl, created color-coded study schedules spanning an entire year, so yes, she absolutely will. I think it also helps her dissociate the reality of Tom’s actions from the broader mission.
The second is meeting our lovely horcruxes, and through them, snapshots of Tom at different times he’s been off-screen in this fic. I love horcrux fics (Here’s an old one that I enjoy: Into the Horcrux by Adelaide). They’re incredibly fun, but they’re necessarily limited in scope. This story just plays with them, and I liked getting to write, frankly, shittier versions of Tom. I figure the horcruxes are pretty negative presences, most of the time, but that could manifest in a few ways, so we see malevolent ring Tom, indifferent cup Tom, and my baby, bratty diary Tom. A lot of depictions of Tom don’t have him really changing his personality in any way from the time he makes the first horcrux, unless he goes mad, but dude was a cocksure kid running a schoolyard gang at 16, and he doesn’t rise to power until his mid-40s. Some of that self-assured smarminess must have worn off. The contrast between the brat and the adult is fun, especially writing Hermione’s reaction to his overwhelming good looks at that age. He’s too young to really appeal to her at her current age, but having her confront him and go, “oh shit that’s why everyone loved him,” is, I think, a necessary moment for her to understand who Tom is. They both still wrestle a lot with his current appearance, and this should help her understand his current insecurity better.
Firstly, please accept my apologies for bringing math into this fic; they say to write what you know, and I have a particular comfort zone. I hope the descriptions of graphs were relatively intelligible.
Secondly, let me talk about Hermione. Hermione’s a tough character for me, because she’s often an author-insert in both the original canon and fan representations, and so her set of possible character traits is fairly broad. To be blunt: I hate a lot of Hermiones. So, in writing my Hermione, I had to face the challenge of making her interesting and tolerable for me to write while still having humanity and flaws, so she’s not a secondary character in her own romance. One of the things that defines her, for me, is this sense that she thinks herself exceptional, and therefore is allowed to make exceptions to the rules, but feels very strongly that everyone else should play by those rules without exception. As a teen, this quality can make her character intolerable (she’s ~~not like other girls~~), but with the mellowing influence of adulthood, it can take on a more self-aware tone.
Her scene with Amandine in this chapter is my go at playing with this idea. She’s annoyed—rightly so—by the way her friend dismisses her for being an unmarried woman of low birth, but she doesn’t recognize that she does the same thing in return because of her friend’s lifestyle. She wants, craves, recognition and respect (our girl is a striver) but when given the opportunity to buy in to that society, she rejects it. She married the handsome pureblood but divorces him rather than have a child. (Which, to be clear, would have been my choice as well, but she does not consider compromise or the fallout of that rejection.) She is dismissive of Amandine’s choice to divide responsibilities in her marriage, thinking it makes her a weak-willed woman. She’s kinda rude in her blatant disinterest in her friend’s kid. So Hermione has this moment of revelation about how of course the purebloods would fall behind Tom, because they fall in line behind the patriarchs, which is both partly true and yet still insulting to the agency of the wives and mothers and sisters in these households. And then Tom sweeps in, and he’s so much fucking better than Hermione at playing the pureblood social game, and that is what first gets her to think of him as Voldemort. Not the use of Dark Arts, not the murder, not the horcruxes—the fact that he plays the social games by the same rules as everyone else and earned respect because of it.
Yeah, so, this is definitely my favorite chapter. I might prefer some scenes in other chapters more, but as a complete product, this one just makes me happy. It’s like when someone talks about a movie or tv show having a scene that’s one long take, but in written form. Very satisfying.
Today I have a disconnected assortment of thoughts about the content of the chapter, not sorted in the same order as the events of the text, apologies for the mess.
Playful sex: I want to read more of Tom and Hermione just having fun when they’re fucking. Yes, yes, the dramatic/angsty/angry sex is super hot and all, but I was converted when I wrote this interaction. Light roleplay and Hermione on top? Yes. They’re smiling and sentimental and two people in a long-term commitment. Please consider writing a playful sex scene into your next tomione, and fucking tell me so I can read it and love it.
I do think Tom hugged the sad first-years, he’s not just riling up Hermione. Of course, bad hugs are still hugs, and Tom was the worst sort of hugger. Like, do you think he bent/kneeled down to hug these short children at their level? No way. He awkwardly hugs their head because he doesn’t understand that the appeal of intimate human contact is to relate to the other person. He definitely never relaxed his arms, either, and probably indulged students with patronizing head pats that he learned from Slughorn. But the dude tried, because he was going to be the perfect Head Boy, and that meant consoling children sometimes, especially when he could do so in front of the professors. Here’s another fun situation to contemplate: Tom giving friendship/romance advice to nervous tweens. Realistically, it was probably a lot of “focus on your studies, there’s time for that later,” but hypothetically: Knights of Walpurgis assigned to spying on third-years so Tom can give precise instructions for how to resolve a love triangle.
Finally, I just want to take a moment to appreciate that both Hermione and Tom are mega-nerds and unironically would conduct formal presentations for the other’s benefit in their own home.
Big reveal moment for Hermione’s plan, yeah? I didn’t keep anyone waiting too long.
I’m certainly not the first author to write Tom as starting a school, but I am always surprised it doesn’t happen more often. The man has absolutely no eye for detail and tends to get obsessively focused on one thing at a time; there is no personality more academic than that (this is not an endorsement of that personality, which I share, and I am too familiar with its downsides). Anyway, I like to think that he was just sort of humoring Hermione’s pitch until she said that thing about a castle and then he was 100% committed. I think her argument is a good one, it’s just, the Founders’ reputation was built over centuries and that is a long time to wait for power, but a magic castle is something to be excited about today.
Do you enjoy the Bellatrix cameo? I think I was too mean to her, to be honest, but I couldn’t have them bumming around in the early 1970s and not acknowledge that Bellatrix was there. Little Lucius is my fav, that precious poncy child.
I’m also uncertain about the use of magic in the first part of the chapter. I don’t find myself drawn to writing things like duels or great feats of magic, so I have no real sense of, like, is this something people find believable? Is Hermione’s reaction in line with expectations? Writing magic is more awkward than writing sex.
Also, more (relatively) playful sex, because these two deserve fun.
I really did just want an excuse to have Hermione unpack and find his old school clothes, of course. Who wouldn’t give an arm and a leg to get to wear Tom Riddle’s Slytherin sweater, you know?
So we’re at a point, now, where I want to keep to the big picture and not get bogged down in the daily drama of “building and running a school,” which is hard work and could fill 100k words, but I also don’t want to give the impression that they ran through the process without any roadblocks to resolve. I really love them in these mundane moments of domesticity and collaboration. Writing them makes their relationship feel settled—like they’re not just a single disagreement from collapsing, like they’ve got this solid foundation between them, and I want that for these two. I want them to be happy, I want them to accept each other’s idiosyncrasies.
Which is, I suppose, why I wrote a silly proposal fake-out moment. They’re already committed, and my pet peeve is wedding scenes, and I promise they’re going to continue to deepen that commitment but like, a proposal and a wedding just aren’t how these characters define themselves or their relationship. Tom getting to use his preferred name in public—that is a huge defining thing for him. It’s also a really clear choice to at least shelve his blood purity politics for now, because goodness knows he can’t front that political platform with the name Tom Riddle, and that’s probably the biggest gift he can give to Hermione to show her that he trusts her.
Also, we are three chapters off from the end, and probably < 1k words more writing from me in order to complete those chapters. I’m so fucking sad about that. I love these two so much, they’ve been such a joy to write, and I want to end their story where it should end and not drag it out, but.... god, I don’t want to start over with a different Tom and Hermione. I’m going to miss them so much.
So, Tom Riddle had to eventually reckon with the damage he had done to his soul. Now he has.
I’ve said this before, but I will reiterate that this fic is, in many ways, my response to the tropes and norms in the HGTR ship. One of the expected story beats that I wanted to play with was the big, dangerous soul restoration, first by circumnavigating the actual restoration and instead making it this weird patch job (some broken things never go back together the same way again), and now by taking the explosive magic and physical risk out of the situation. I’m really happy with the result. Tom feeling emotions is one of my fav things to read and write, and I enjoy holding on him here, letting him have space to process his current life situation and realize that it’s… good? And he likes it? And he’s not a rigid bastard, actually, he’s a compromising member of a committed partnership with someone he loves. And he can be that thing and still be Lord Voldemort, opening himself to Hermione does not commit him to forgiving someone like Dumbledore, softness in one part of his life is not incompatible with his ambitions.
I want them both happy, by the end of this, and I don’t think he’s quite there at this stage, he’s still too unfamiliar with positive emotions to process happiness, but he’s beginning to reach a place where he could be. I think he’s content.
Hermione is happy, but that comes more easily to her, and she’s already adept at balancing multiple feelings at once. Her current point of growth is letting go of the idea of being “good,” at least according to how she’s been raised to think of “good people.” Tying herself to Tom so permanently is a big step for her. I really didn’t want this to read as Hermione being a self-sacrificing beacon of light, and I hope that lands, because I want to be very clear: this is a selfish action on her part. She is selfishly restoring something to Tom, the person that she loves, not because it is an inherently good or redeeming thing to do, but because she wants him to be stable, even if he uses his renewed stability to do bad things, as long as she gets to stay with him in this really quite good relationship. She’s choosing them and their relationship over a greater good, which probably demands, idk, not enabling the murderer. She’s not suddenly throwing away her personal boundaries or moral values, she’s not going to start killing or hurting people, but she’s living in the space where she values Tom over the lives of those he has hurt.
Also, let’s talk about the hair thing.
This scene came to me before I had even worked out the details of the soul restoration and I may have laughed myself silly imagining Tom freaking out about his temporary hair loss. Magic in HP is such a mess that there’s a huge range of possible ways it could work, and it’s just… so funny to me to imagine that in giving him back his original hair color, it would make him regrow it all the normal way. Abraxas is my stand-in for a semi-rational outsider, and putting him in here to witness the absolutely tragic over-reaction of Tom and Hermione was delicious. Tom is, of course, devastated in the immediate wake of the loss, but I imagine he’s secretly pleased that he’s going to look a little younger, even if it’s bittersweet because he really had enjoyed the gravitas afforded by having salt-and-pepper hair. Our boy is learning to process multiple conflicting emotions at once.
And we get to contemplate Tom with fuzzy, short hair as he grows it out. Precious.
As we near the end of our story, I wanted to give just a taste of how Tom and Hermione are working together. It’s not the focus of this fic; we’ve been working through them building a foundation for their relationship, and now that it’s pretty established, I wanted to pull back and just show moments of how they interact. Running a university together could be a whole story in and of itself, I think, and it would involve a totally different arc and set of challenges.
So I give you some slice-of-life fluff instead, as we approach the end. I adore these two as a unit. They’ve got their idiosyncrasies for sure, but what I hope comes across is that they function together, and they’re used to accommodating their partner’s needs. That doesn’t save them from stressful situations or disagreements, but they compromise or put the other person’s needs first sometimes, and so they’re a healthy pair. That’s all I really wanted to do for them: write them into a decent long-term relationship.
I can be honest, here: I wanted to write a happy ending. I did not have the constitution for an unhappy ending when I started this, and maybe more than that, even, I did not have the constitution to write a very unhealthy relationship between Hermione and Tom. I didn’t want to see her treated poorly. I didn’t want to write Tom as an irredeemable villain. Those stories have been told well before, but that’s not what I can offer. However, it’s sort of an absurd notion, right? A Tomione with a reasonably healthy relationship as the endgame? Especially without making it a time travel story, or an AU where he has no horcruxes, it’s going to require some suspension of disbelief.
I wasn’t interested in a reformed and repentant Tom. He’s interesting to me as a messy person. One prevalent norm for depicting his life is that he’s been a relatively successful leader of his terrorist organization since his teen years, and that was the first assumption I threw out. If we instead let him be this guy with tons of potential who never really took off after school, perhaps because he’s too unwilling to work within the existing systems of power, and he’s surrounded by wealthy and successful peers, he ends up being in a fascinatingly vulnerable state. I added the complication that he’s not so pretty anymore, fucking around with all that Dark magic, so that he’s in a suitable place to be responsive to Hermione’s first approach. For my Tom to work, he needs to still have access to his humanity, including his vulnerabilities, and having him facing the prejudices of the wizarding world / not being God-tier Lord Voldemort is important for that. He’s not a good guy—he murders, tortures, etc.—but even bad people enjoy physical affection or have to pay bills. I based a lot of Tom on myself and my partner so that he would feel real, and he is absolutely the character I relate most to in this story.
Hermione, likewise, I wasn’t interested in flipping her into a dark character, but I also didn’t want to write her as an angelic savior sent to purify Tom’s soul. I think I was a little less successful w/ writing her, to be honest—I struggle with her character for myriad reasons, including that I just don’t tend to like many depictions of Hermione, so it was a challenge to balance her negative traits in a way that made her interesting but not intolerable to write. I like the Hermione I wrote. I just also think she might tend toward a bit more of a savior archetype than I was hoping. Anyway, the key motivation for her was that she had to be a very normal person, despite her big brain. My Hermione is initially captivated by Tom because she’s already built him up in her head as this perfect guy, so when he shows interest in her and is a reasonable, if casual, partner, she becomes deeply infatuated with him. All of her acceptance starts from that place of already liking or loving him, and wanting to keep him in her life. It was important, to me, to show her as a very normal woman in those early chapters—lots of tomione fic has Tom explicitly stating that she’s “not like other girls,” and I find that concept as poisonous in fiction as I do in real life. My girl falls for Tom precisely because she is like other girls and cannot be expected to hold her heart separate from what appears to be a normal relationship. She’s invested enough to hold on to his companionship, even as she’s setting reasonable boundaries for just how involved they’ll be, and she doesn’t totally break down until he reveals his horcruxes. But by then, they’ve built up enough trust for her to eventually accommodate them.
The challenge was to write this relationship progression so that it wasn’t a toxic dynamic. Too much blind acceptance from Hermione and Tom becomes manipulative; too much concession from Tom and he loses his essence. There are so many decisions along the way in this story that resulted from long discussions with myself about what would actually be believable. The idea of starting a university, for example, was a major leap of faith for me, because I wasn’t sure if readers would think it was “enough” for Tom, but I’m so happy to see that a lot of people liked it. (It clicked for me as the right path when I thought about what became the dialogue: “Become Salazar Slytherin.” World domination isn’t the only form of power that I think Tom could enjoy.) And I really, really wanted no toxicity! One of my earliest planning notes from the story is that Hermione should always have the ability to walk away unharmed. Tom keeping her around through threats was not allowed.
I hope that the themes that come through, for readers, are acceptance and communication. It’s a story that meditates on the work it would take to build their relationship. It’s not particularly dramatic, there’s not much of a plot, and they’re very clearly versions of the characters that are slanted in a favorable direction for my aims. However, I think both Hermione and Tom are recognizable, and I’m really pleased with the slower pace that I think is afforded by their ages/life circumstances. If you read it, I hope you enjoy it!
Originally posted chapter-by-chapter on tumblr.
No meta was written for Chapters 1–3.
Chapter 4
So this fic was born of the very real “write what you want to read” impulse and one thing I desperately want to read more of is a struggling, relatable Tom Riddle. I know his character isn’t ~meant~ to be that, but what the heart wants, etc. In this chapter I’m suggesting some of the ways I think Tom might reasonably try to cope with his stressors, and though they’re not healthy or good, I wanted to show him trying to be a better partner to Hermione through his acknowledgment of his own failings. No, he will not be the best boyfriend ever because he comes home on time each night, but it’s such a concrete and achievable aim that of course he would gravitate to it as a way of demonstrating respect. Tom’s emotional life is held together with string and tape and I imagine that he would translate most emotions into purposeful action rather than internally processing them. (That’s also why I think he’s so taken by Hermione—she’s a natural at mindless gestures of affection and each one is a wonder to Tom.)
Also, I’d like to take a moment to just acknowledge the absurdity of canon Voldemort strolling back into Wizarding Britain in his 40s and expecting everyone to jump to his command. Almost every one of his schoolmates had a spouse and kids by then, positions in the Ministry, Wizengamot, etc etc actual life responsibilities, and they just agreed to prioritize an insurgent paramilitary movement without issue? Yeah, no way. My Tom’s going to see that rich, comfortable bureaucrats aren’t actually great starting points for a political uprising.
Chapter 5
The sex scene at the end of this chapter was the motivation for this entire part. Fic in general tends to build up to love declarations slowly, and I really wanted to write the first “I love you” moments for both characters so that they were (a) too fast and (b) delivered super awkwardly, because I so rarely get to read that. We saw Tom declare his love in Ch. 3, and he’s motivated to do so because thinks it’s the correct next step for this relationship, and he doesn’t personally value love enough to fret about saying the word. Hermione finally gets to say it in this chapter, and she gets to use her declaration to communicate acceptance. There’s just no reason for “I love you” to only be written when characters are truly, madly, soul-achingly in love with each other, imo.
The Tomione fandom seems to be all about the sex, and I’ve read a lot of good sex for these two, but I haven’t seen as much uncomfortable, weird sex. And like, Tom’s been fucking gone for a decade, lord knows what his sexual experiences have been like during that period, he’s absolutely not going to be an engaging sex partner during their first time back. Sometimes you help a guy get off because he needs it and you love him.
Of course, combining the love declaration and the hand job was necessary. My Tom and Hermione very intentionally have no artifice between them, and if Tom’s not the handsome young charmer sweeping her off her feet, then Hermione’s stuck loving him (or not) based on the mess that he actually is.
Also, I very much enjoy Abraxas’ presence, whenever he shows up. I like to think that he and Tom are/were actually friends, even though Tom doesn’t really know how to process that. Putting Brax in this role where he has to somehow placate Tom’s egotism, serve as a confidant, and give relationship advice all at the same time is really fun.
Chapter 6
Ok, so we’re just about halfway done, and now that my characters are in place, I have to start reconciling their positions into a somewhat-believable ending.
I get to do two things starting in this chapter that I’ve been looking forward to. The first is that Hermione starts to be involved in Tom’s plotting: she’s not doing the daily work of it, but she sees the structure of his organization and learns how he’s thinking. There’s no way that our girl would be content to just sit by and let Tom do whatever he wants without consulting her, but I think, equally, that she’s smart enough to realize that if she wants to influence him, she needs to both slow down the process and study all of the information available. Does she have to manage this by turning their flat into a command center, complete with chalkboards? No. But this is the same person who, as a girl, created color-coded study schedules spanning an entire year, so yes, she absolutely will. I think it also helps her dissociate the reality of Tom’s actions from the broader mission.
The second is meeting our lovely horcruxes, and through them, snapshots of Tom at different times he’s been off-screen in this fic. I love horcrux fics (Here’s an old one that I enjoy: Into the Horcrux by Adelaide). They’re incredibly fun, but they’re necessarily limited in scope. This story just plays with them, and I liked getting to write, frankly, shittier versions of Tom. I figure the horcruxes are pretty negative presences, most of the time, but that could manifest in a few ways, so we see malevolent ring Tom, indifferent cup Tom, and my baby, bratty diary Tom. A lot of depictions of Tom don’t have him really changing his personality in any way from the time he makes the first horcrux, unless he goes mad, but dude was a cocksure kid running a schoolyard gang at 16, and he doesn’t rise to power until his mid-40s. Some of that self-assured smarminess must have worn off. The contrast between the brat and the adult is fun, especially writing Hermione’s reaction to his overwhelming good looks at that age. He’s too young to really appeal to her at her current age, but having her confront him and go, “oh shit that’s why everyone loved him,” is, I think, a necessary moment for her to understand who Tom is. They both still wrestle a lot with his current appearance, and this should help her understand his current insecurity better.
Chapter 7
Firstly, please accept my apologies for bringing math into this fic; they say to write what you know, and I have a particular comfort zone. I hope the descriptions of graphs were relatively intelligible.
Secondly, let me talk about Hermione. Hermione’s a tough character for me, because she’s often an author-insert in both the original canon and fan representations, and so her set of possible character traits is fairly broad. To be blunt: I hate a lot of Hermiones. So, in writing my Hermione, I had to face the challenge of making her interesting and tolerable for me to write while still having humanity and flaws, so she’s not a secondary character in her own romance. One of the things that defines her, for me, is this sense that she thinks herself exceptional, and therefore is allowed to make exceptions to the rules, but feels very strongly that everyone else should play by those rules without exception. As a teen, this quality can make her character intolerable (she’s ~~not like other girls~~), but with the mellowing influence of adulthood, it can take on a more self-aware tone.
Her scene with Amandine in this chapter is my go at playing with this idea. She’s annoyed—rightly so—by the way her friend dismisses her for being an unmarried woman of low birth, but she doesn’t recognize that she does the same thing in return because of her friend’s lifestyle. She wants, craves, recognition and respect (our girl is a striver) but when given the opportunity to buy in to that society, she rejects it. She married the handsome pureblood but divorces him rather than have a child. (Which, to be clear, would have been my choice as well, but she does not consider compromise or the fallout of that rejection.) She is dismissive of Amandine’s choice to divide responsibilities in her marriage, thinking it makes her a weak-willed woman. She’s kinda rude in her blatant disinterest in her friend’s kid. So Hermione has this moment of revelation about how of course the purebloods would fall behind Tom, because they fall in line behind the patriarchs, which is both partly true and yet still insulting to the agency of the wives and mothers and sisters in these households. And then Tom sweeps in, and he’s so much fucking better than Hermione at playing the pureblood social game, and that is what first gets her to think of him as Voldemort. Not the use of Dark Arts, not the murder, not the horcruxes—the fact that he plays the social games by the same rules as everyone else and earned respect because of it.
Chapter 8
Yeah, so, this is definitely my favorite chapter. I might prefer some scenes in other chapters more, but as a complete product, this one just makes me happy. It’s like when someone talks about a movie or tv show having a scene that’s one long take, but in written form. Very satisfying.
Today I have a disconnected assortment of thoughts about the content of the chapter, not sorted in the same order as the events of the text, apologies for the mess.
Playful sex: I want to read more of Tom and Hermione just having fun when they’re fucking. Yes, yes, the dramatic/angsty/angry sex is super hot and all, but I was converted when I wrote this interaction. Light roleplay and Hermione on top? Yes. They’re smiling and sentimental and two people in a long-term commitment. Please consider writing a playful sex scene into your next tomione, and fucking tell me so I can read it and love it.
I do think Tom hugged the sad first-years, he’s not just riling up Hermione. Of course, bad hugs are still hugs, and Tom was the worst sort of hugger. Like, do you think he bent/kneeled down to hug these short children at their level? No way. He awkwardly hugs their head because he doesn’t understand that the appeal of intimate human contact is to relate to the other person. He definitely never relaxed his arms, either, and probably indulged students with patronizing head pats that he learned from Slughorn. But the dude tried, because he was going to be the perfect Head Boy, and that meant consoling children sometimes, especially when he could do so in front of the professors. Here’s another fun situation to contemplate: Tom giving friendship/romance advice to nervous tweens. Realistically, it was probably a lot of “focus on your studies, there’s time for that later,” but hypothetically: Knights of Walpurgis assigned to spying on third-years so Tom can give precise instructions for how to resolve a love triangle.
Finally, I just want to take a moment to appreciate that both Hermione and Tom are mega-nerds and unironically would conduct formal presentations for the other’s benefit in their own home.
Chapter 9
Big reveal moment for Hermione’s plan, yeah? I didn’t keep anyone waiting too long.
I’m certainly not the first author to write Tom as starting a school, but I am always surprised it doesn’t happen more often. The man has absolutely no eye for detail and tends to get obsessively focused on one thing at a time; there is no personality more academic than that (this is not an endorsement of that personality, which I share, and I am too familiar with its downsides). Anyway, I like to think that he was just sort of humoring Hermione’s pitch until she said that thing about a castle and then he was 100% committed. I think her argument is a good one, it’s just, the Founders’ reputation was built over centuries and that is a long time to wait for power, but a magic castle is something to be excited about today.
Do you enjoy the Bellatrix cameo? I think I was too mean to her, to be honest, but I couldn’t have them bumming around in the early 1970s and not acknowledge that Bellatrix was there. Little Lucius is my fav, that precious poncy child.
I’m also uncertain about the use of magic in the first part of the chapter. I don’t find myself drawn to writing things like duels or great feats of magic, so I have no real sense of, like, is this something people find believable? Is Hermione’s reaction in line with expectations? Writing magic is more awkward than writing sex.
Also, more (relatively) playful sex, because these two deserve fun.
Chapter 10
I really did just want an excuse to have Hermione unpack and find his old school clothes, of course. Who wouldn’t give an arm and a leg to get to wear Tom Riddle’s Slytherin sweater, you know?
So we’re at a point, now, where I want to keep to the big picture and not get bogged down in the daily drama of “building and running a school,” which is hard work and could fill 100k words, but I also don’t want to give the impression that they ran through the process without any roadblocks to resolve. I really love them in these mundane moments of domesticity and collaboration. Writing them makes their relationship feel settled—like they’re not just a single disagreement from collapsing, like they’ve got this solid foundation between them, and I want that for these two. I want them to be happy, I want them to accept each other’s idiosyncrasies.
Which is, I suppose, why I wrote a silly proposal fake-out moment. They’re already committed, and my pet peeve is wedding scenes, and I promise they’re going to continue to deepen that commitment but like, a proposal and a wedding just aren’t how these characters define themselves or their relationship. Tom getting to use his preferred name in public—that is a huge defining thing for him. It’s also a really clear choice to at least shelve his blood purity politics for now, because goodness knows he can’t front that political platform with the name Tom Riddle, and that’s probably the biggest gift he can give to Hermione to show her that he trusts her.
Also, we are three chapters off from the end, and probably < 1k words more writing from me in order to complete those chapters. I’m so fucking sad about that. I love these two so much, they’ve been such a joy to write, and I want to end their story where it should end and not drag it out, but.... god, I don’t want to start over with a different Tom and Hermione. I’m going to miss them so much.
Chapter 11
So, Tom Riddle had to eventually reckon with the damage he had done to his soul. Now he has.
I’ve said this before, but I will reiterate that this fic is, in many ways, my response to the tropes and norms in the HGTR ship. One of the expected story beats that I wanted to play with was the big, dangerous soul restoration, first by circumnavigating the actual restoration and instead making it this weird patch job (some broken things never go back together the same way again), and now by taking the explosive magic and physical risk out of the situation. I’m really happy with the result. Tom feeling emotions is one of my fav things to read and write, and I enjoy holding on him here, letting him have space to process his current life situation and realize that it’s… good? And he likes it? And he’s not a rigid bastard, actually, he’s a compromising member of a committed partnership with someone he loves. And he can be that thing and still be Lord Voldemort, opening himself to Hermione does not commit him to forgiving someone like Dumbledore, softness in one part of his life is not incompatible with his ambitions.
I want them both happy, by the end of this, and I don’t think he’s quite there at this stage, he’s still too unfamiliar with positive emotions to process happiness, but he’s beginning to reach a place where he could be. I think he’s content.
Hermione is happy, but that comes more easily to her, and she’s already adept at balancing multiple feelings at once. Her current point of growth is letting go of the idea of being “good,” at least according to how she’s been raised to think of “good people.” Tying herself to Tom so permanently is a big step for her. I really didn’t want this to read as Hermione being a self-sacrificing beacon of light, and I hope that lands, because I want to be very clear: this is a selfish action on her part. She is selfishly restoring something to Tom, the person that she loves, not because it is an inherently good or redeeming thing to do, but because she wants him to be stable, even if he uses his renewed stability to do bad things, as long as she gets to stay with him in this really quite good relationship. She’s choosing them and their relationship over a greater good, which probably demands, idk, not enabling the murderer. She’s not suddenly throwing away her personal boundaries or moral values, she’s not going to start killing or hurting people, but she’s living in the space where she values Tom over the lives of those he has hurt.
Also, let’s talk about the hair thing.
This scene came to me before I had even worked out the details of the soul restoration and I may have laughed myself silly imagining Tom freaking out about his temporary hair loss. Magic in HP is such a mess that there’s a huge range of possible ways it could work, and it’s just… so funny to me to imagine that in giving him back his original hair color, it would make him regrow it all the normal way. Abraxas is my stand-in for a semi-rational outsider, and putting him in here to witness the absolutely tragic over-reaction of Tom and Hermione was delicious. Tom is, of course, devastated in the immediate wake of the loss, but I imagine he’s secretly pleased that he’s going to look a little younger, even if it’s bittersweet because he really had enjoyed the gravitas afforded by having salt-and-pepper hair. Our boy is learning to process multiple conflicting emotions at once.
And we get to contemplate Tom with fuzzy, short hair as he grows it out. Precious.
Chapter 12
As we near the end of our story, I wanted to give just a taste of how Tom and Hermione are working together. It’s not the focus of this fic; we’ve been working through them building a foundation for their relationship, and now that it’s pretty established, I wanted to pull back and just show moments of how they interact. Running a university together could be a whole story in and of itself, I think, and it would involve a totally different arc and set of challenges.
So I give you some slice-of-life fluff instead, as we approach the end. I adore these two as a unit. They’ve got their idiosyncrasies for sure, but what I hope comes across is that they function together, and they’re used to accommodating their partner’s needs. That doesn’t save them from stressful situations or disagreements, but they compromise or put the other person’s needs first sometimes, and so they’re a healthy pair. That’s all I really wanted to do for them: write them into a decent long-term relationship.
Chapter 13
I can be honest, here: I wanted to write a happy ending. I did not have the constitution for an unhappy ending when I started this, and maybe more than that, even, I did not have the constitution to write a very unhealthy relationship between Hermione and Tom. I didn’t want to see her treated poorly. I didn’t want to write Tom as an irredeemable villain. Those stories have been told well before, but that’s not what I can offer. However, it’s sort of an absurd notion, right? A Tomione with a reasonably healthy relationship as the endgame? Especially without making it a time travel story, or an AU where he has no horcruxes, it’s going to require some suspension of disbelief.
I wasn’t interested in a reformed and repentant Tom. He’s interesting to me as a messy person. One prevalent norm for depicting his life is that he’s been a relatively successful leader of his terrorist organization since his teen years, and that was the first assumption I threw out. If we instead let him be this guy with tons of potential who never really took off after school, perhaps because he’s too unwilling to work within the existing systems of power, and he’s surrounded by wealthy and successful peers, he ends up being in a fascinatingly vulnerable state. I added the complication that he’s not so pretty anymore, fucking around with all that Dark magic, so that he’s in a suitable place to be responsive to Hermione’s first approach. For my Tom to work, he needs to still have access to his humanity, including his vulnerabilities, and having him facing the prejudices of the wizarding world / not being God-tier Lord Voldemort is important for that. He’s not a good guy—he murders, tortures, etc.—but even bad people enjoy physical affection or have to pay bills. I based a lot of Tom on myself and my partner so that he would feel real, and he is absolutely the character I relate most to in this story.
Hermione, likewise, I wasn’t interested in flipping her into a dark character, but I also didn’t want to write her as an angelic savior sent to purify Tom’s soul. I think I was a little less successful w/ writing her, to be honest—I struggle with her character for myriad reasons, including that I just don’t tend to like many depictions of Hermione, so it was a challenge to balance her negative traits in a way that made her interesting but not intolerable to write. I like the Hermione I wrote. I just also think she might tend toward a bit more of a savior archetype than I was hoping. Anyway, the key motivation for her was that she had to be a very normal person, despite her big brain. My Hermione is initially captivated by Tom because she’s already built him up in her head as this perfect guy, so when he shows interest in her and is a reasonable, if casual, partner, she becomes deeply infatuated with him. All of her acceptance starts from that place of already liking or loving him, and wanting to keep him in her life. It was important, to me, to show her as a very normal woman in those early chapters—lots of tomione fic has Tom explicitly stating that she’s “not like other girls,” and I find that concept as poisonous in fiction as I do in real life. My girl falls for Tom precisely because she is like other girls and cannot be expected to hold her heart separate from what appears to be a normal relationship. She’s invested enough to hold on to his companionship, even as she’s setting reasonable boundaries for just how involved they’ll be, and she doesn’t totally break down until he reveals his horcruxes. But by then, they’ve built up enough trust for her to eventually accommodate them.
The challenge was to write this relationship progression so that it wasn’t a toxic dynamic. Too much blind acceptance from Hermione and Tom becomes manipulative; too much concession from Tom and he loses his essence. There are so many decisions along the way in this story that resulted from long discussions with myself about what would actually be believable. The idea of starting a university, for example, was a major leap of faith for me, because I wasn’t sure if readers would think it was “enough” for Tom, but I’m so happy to see that a lot of people liked it. (It clicked for me as the right path when I thought about what became the dialogue: “Become Salazar Slytherin.” World domination isn’t the only form of power that I think Tom could enjoy.) And I really, really wanted no toxicity! One of my earliest planning notes from the story is that Hermione should always have the ability to walk away unharmed. Tom keeping her around through threats was not allowed.
I hope that the themes that come through, for readers, are acceptance and communication. It’s a story that meditates on the work it would take to build their relationship. It’s not particularly dramatic, there’s not much of a plot, and they’re very clearly versions of the characters that are slanted in a favorable direction for my aims. However, I think both Hermione and Tom are recognizable, and I’m really pleased with the slower pace that I think is afforded by their ages/life circumstances. If you read it, I hope you enjoy it!
