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[pink-caffeine]

Tomarry prompt — ar/tt

Basically, a Rule 63 HJP.

Tom Marvolo Riddle x fem!Harry,

Who is named as "Iolanthe Dorothea Potter".

"Iolanthe" means 'violet' (a name that would fit her in a more 'modern' time) flower, a name which neatly ties with Iolanthe Peverell as an ancestor.

"Dorothea" is after Dorea Black who will be James Potter's mother in this reality. This would also help in explaining why she looks like a Black despite her last name being Potter, which would be one of the conflicts of the story: a child arrives at Hogwarts with a Potter surname, it could just be one from the American branch although they usually prefer Ilvermorny, or maybe even from one of Henry Potter's rumored liaisons, she should be; but she looks like the Head Girl's clone, quite shorter than she was at 11 but the very same face, only without the elegance.

The Premise

Usually time travel stories related to Harry have him regressing age-wise if they do not keep him as an adult, but this idea instead has an 11-year-old female Harry who is still the dreamer she was when the story started, still 11, still hopeful, and in need of a confidante but also guarded especially with adults, maybe even more so now that she's a girl, a kid just trying to fit in the new world she was recently told she was a part of by a large friendly but rather odd man.

It's essentially just two muggle-raised orphans in their secondhand clothes meeting each other on the train to what they could call "home" finally.

The boy thinks the girl is weird, she talks like those that he sees when he wanders through the richer side of London when he can, Received Pronunciation they call it, but she wears a t-shirt too large for her size with shoes that look worn. Yet her trunk looked like one of those expensive ones he saw when he was buying his list, and while the tee was large on her body, the material didn't look cheap.

Iolanthe meanwhile meets a very handsome boy, a complete stranger who is also very new to this magic thing and also muggle-raised like her, maybe a muggle-born. She did think that his manners were rather crass, and no, it wasn't the cockney accent or his choice of words, he was rather polite with them, she thinks, much better than her cousin or his friends, but there was something with the way he looked guarded when he sat but open with his words when he spoke, quite blunt and unsubtle, almost unhinged. He seemed like he loved the sound of his voice, and she should have been annoyed but he was too entertaining without meaning to be.

The story delves through the experiences of being a presumed muggle-born, and a controversial "love child" in which is arguably the most traditional house in Hogwarts, Slytherin, where either one would have had them be ostracized inside but still allowed them a measure of privacy if they stayed alone, yet the two stuck with each other making them more visible not only to those within their House but to the whole school as well.

They are two muggle-raised children facing a rising anti-muggle sentiment across the whole school due to the effect of the two wars, muggle and magical, occurring during the period, and then, that's where they discover the power of names even more, a difference they would never be able to change. No matter the whispers that surround her, Iolanthe carries a known pureblood family name even if they weren't included in the Sacred 28 list, therefore, she would always be confused for one. They would expect her to know certain things and sometimes forget that she grew up differently. While try as he may to learn much of the wizarding world, Tom would always be reminded of his muggle ancestry and strangers were more prone to assuming he was a muggle-born, and undermining him for that simple fact.

Set in the 1930s, there is less enmity towards Slytherin House from the rest of the school, though Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry would always be explosive but that was just the order of things; and because the horrors of the 1st Wizarding War in Britain hasn't been experienced yet, there is even less consideration towards Muggle-borns and their plights. Even the most open-handed one among their professors, Albus Dumbledore had his own brand of prejudice when it came to their other world.

It features the unraveling and reconstruction of a young Tom Riddle, his effort to remove the traces of his upbringing, his try at mirroring the personas of who he deemed as the summit of pureblood refinement among his housemates, chiefly Romulus Lestrange, Walburga Black, and Abraxas Malfoy, his struggle to rise in the rigid Slytherin hierarchy, from an outcast to someone who had charmed everyone, weaponizing his perfectionism and excellence in academics to carve his own niche, and aided by the halo effect, though it is something he will not openly express as a strength of his. He may have arrived to Hogwarts skinny and malnourished but it didn't deter his face from taking center stage among his peers and the human tendency to gravitate towards beauty.

It also introduces the creation of the Knights of Walpurgis, which was pretty much an inofficial boys' club by their generation of Slytherin boys, the respective members of their motley crew, and a glimpse through their family histories, their illustrious images, the pretences they hold up, and the guises they blanket themselves under.

But the families that will have the spotlight will be the Potters, who are reaching new heights with Fleamont at its helm, and the Blacks with their manifold members who are all well-placed in society,

[pink-caffeine]

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things