#Mi’lord AU

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Tommary fic idea:

1945: Tom through some animagus transformation gone wrong gets himself stuck as a cat living in Knockturn Alley. Turns out you can’t successfully become an animagus if you don’t have a complete soul (which given the lack of information on Horcruxes, Tom found out the hard way.)

1995: Harry, escaping from the Dursley’s during the summer, ends up renting a cheap flat in Knockturn above Borgin & Burke’s where he works as a shop assistant. While working there, Mr. Borgin is always complaining about this mangy, feral, cat living in the alley & how its always stealing things from the shop (because Tom had not stopped trying to get back to his original form). He tells Harry that he’s tried to kill it multiple times, but the damn thing somehow always gets away & if Harry sees it to kill it on sight.

Of course, Harry doesn’t do that, he starts leaving a part of his lunch in the alley every day for Tom. Slowly over a period of weeks, Harry earns Tom’s trust (well, not trust, but Tom starts looking at Harry like a free meal ticket) & Harry starts venting out his life to what he thinks is a cat. (Except this cat is oddly intelligent & at times, Harry swears it understands him & wonders if maybe it’s part kneazle.) Until one day, Harry asks Tom if he just wants to move in to the flat upstairs.

& since the flat is better than the Alley, Tom agrees. (Harry still leaves the window open to the fire escape, so Tom can come & go as he pleases.) Then cue all these funny cute scenes of Harry forcing him into a bath, of trying to get Tom to eat canned catfood, of Tom bringing back his stolen items to Harry’s flat & Harry constantly moving them back down to the shop (telling him he’s gotta stop stealing from the neighbors), Harry & Tom sleeping in the same bed with Tom splayed out over Harry’s face, of Harry trying to get him to wear a collar with a name tag so people stop thinking he’s a stray, Ahhhhh! So cute! & when Harry has to go back to Hogwarts at the end of the summer, he ends up taking Tom with him.

Eventually, I imagined that Harry figures out Tom is not in fact a cat & endeavors to help him return to his original form & by that time Tom is utterly smitten. They end up with a successful partial transformation, turning Tom into a human with the cat tail and ears, & Harry is not prepared for how handsome Tom is or how cute he is with the tail & ears. & of course, Tom ends up seducing Harry. He seduces Harry a lot.

But he refuses to wear the damn collar. It’s not happening.

Inspired off of this tiktok :

Whoops 😅 I started writing it. Oh well 🤷‍♀️

[livesincerely]

hopes are kindled (on scraps and ashes)

Or: something, something, a one shot/offshoot from the Merlin AU. Also on Ao3.

00000

Once again, the Lady Theophania lays her small, delicate hand across the breastplate of Jack’s armor, batting her lashes in a demure, courtly fashion. As he watches them David feels the polite expression he’s been wearing for the last half hour start to crack and splinter.

He slips away before anyone can notice or comment on it. He knows better than to let his disappointment get the better of him—knows intimately the futility of the feeling—but still his stomach churns, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

Poor, foolish, lovestruck idiot.

His feet carry him to the simple sanctuary of his quarters, though it’s something of a cold comfort. The tourney starts in earnest a few hours after mid-meal so he has an excuse to make himself scarce; there are still plenty of weapons to be sharpened, shields to be polished, horses to be dressed and harnessed.

Not that he expects his absence to be noticed, David determines, a touch bitterly. Any such… attentions will most certainly be directed elsewhere.

He can still make out the faintest roar of the growing festivities despite the thickness of the stone walls. Gritting his teeth against the urge to scream, he reaches for a pile of mending that still needs to be finished, hoping for some kind of distraction, then nearly jumps out of his skin when the door behind him creaks open.

It’s Jack—of course, it’s Jack. So distracted by the dark cloud of his thoughts, David hadn’t noticed him following.

He pastes a smile across his face. “Shouldn’t you be entertaining your guests, mi’lord?”

“Don’t,” Jack says, expression pained. “Don’t call me that.”

David raises a brow. “And since when did you start objecting to your title?”

“Since you started saying it like that.”

And suddenly David is exhausted, weary right down to the marrow of his bones, sick to death of this same old song and dance. Tired of impossibilities kindled on scraps and ashes.

“What is it you want, Jack?” he sighs.

Jack steps out of the doorway, moving further into the room, and the door swings shut behind him. David allows him to approach, holds his ground and lets him close the gap between them.

“The way you looked at me just now, at the banquet,” Jack starts in a low, serious voice. “I never want to see that look again.”

Oh. David hadn’t thought he’d noticed, preoccupied as he was. But Jack’s always been more observant than most.

“Of course,” David says, embarrassment curdling over his tongue. “It won’t happen again.”

“Dave, that’s not—“ Jack runs a hand through his hair, his mouth pressed into a hard, flat line. “That’s not what I meant.”

It’s inconvenient that David hadn’t managed to grab that mending. If he had, it would’ve given him something to do with his hands.

“Davey,” Jack starts again. “You can’t honestly think I’m interested in courting anyone but you.”

David’s heart ricochets off his ribs.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he says tightly, crossing his arms over his chest like a shield. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but as I’m aware of it, it doesn’t matter what you want.”

A long pause. Jack’s footsteps echo against the flagstones as he approaches.

“Davey,” he implores gently. “We can't just give up.”

“It’s not giving up, Jackie,” David says. “It’s accepting that there’s no fight to be had! It’s understanding that we can’t— That we can’t—“

He makes himself stop, his eyes stinging against a prickle of frustrated tears.

Straining for the last vestiges of patience, he says, “Brooklyn is an important kingdom, an essential ally. Your council is all but insisting you create a formal alliance with them, and with Lady Theophania being so obvious in her affections—“

“She offered me her favor,” Jack tells him, and David thinks he might have genuinely choked on that information for a moment.

He hears himself say, “Well, I suppose that’s that—“

“She offered her favor,” Jack clarifies sharply. “I declined, seeing as I’m already spoken for.”

It takes David a moment to catch on. “You’re already… What, me?”

“Who else, Dave?” Jack says, on the verge of shouting. “Who else could possibly hold a candle to you?”

“Keep your voice down!” David hisses. “Someone’s going to hear you!”

“Because it’s some great secret?” Jack asks, sardonically. “As if it’s not written all over my face, as if it’s not painfully obvious to everyone in the Five Kingdoms exactly how I feel for you?”

“Jack,” David says, shaking his head as if that will keep the words from reaching him. “Stop it.”

“You said that you’d only gift your favor to me,” Jack continues, undeterred. “Was that offer made sincerely? Or merely in jest?”

David swallows. “If memory serves, that’s not precisely what I said—“

“Dave,” Jack interrupts, and there’s an almost angry edge to his tone. “Did you mean it?”

“Of course I meant it,” David says. “But surely you know that you can’t actually accept.”

“And why can’t I?” Jack asks, jaw stubbornly set.

“Oh, shall we go through the list?” David snaps, throwing up his hands. “Because even disregarding the alliance with Brooklyn, there’s the fact that you’re the prince, that you’ll one day be the king, and you’ll need a queen to give you heirs? Or the fact that I���m a peasant—a sorcerer—and that I even dare to breathe in your presence is grounds for execution? Or, how about the fact that you’re Prince Johnathan Francis Sullivan Kelly of Manhattan and I’m nothing, no one at all—“

It’s wrong to say that Jack appears, per se, but that’s certainly how it feels. That one moment Jack’s watching him with those depthless eyes and the next he’s suddenly in front of him, one hand curled around David’s chin, his thumb just brushing over his lips.

“Davey,” Jack says, intense and intent, and David’s caught, tangled in the snare of him, utterly helpless. “My darling. My dearest one. You are everything.”

David's eyes squeeze shut. They’re so close that when he hangs his head, their foreheads press together.

“The kingdom must come first,” David says, because one of them has to. “Manhattan, your people, must come first. You know that as well as I; affairs of the heart cannot come before duty.”

“I,” Jack says, the words full of venom, “am so sick and tired of fulfilling my gods-forsaken duty. Of sacrificing every inch of myself for the good of the kingdom.”

A shared breath.

“But you’ll do it anyway,” David murmurs, a statement of fact.

Jack takes in a shuddering inhale.

“…But I’ll do it anyway,” he quietly agrees.

His touch lingers for another moment—David thinks he’ll remember the heat of his hands, the strength of his grip, until the day he dies—before drawing away.

“I’ll fight in the tourney unadorned, then,” Jack declares, grimly resigned. “Because it’s your favor or none at all.”

It bubbles up, urgent and unstoppable. “Wait.”

David reaches up with trembling fingers and carefully unties his neckerchief from around his neck. Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he wraps the fabric around Jack’s arm, tying it off just above his elbow.

“Blue, for Manhattan,” he says, because that’s what it’ll look like to anyone else who sees it: that Jack has chosen a blue marker to represent his kingdom. It’s only the two of them that will know better.

That will know the truth.

Jack lifts David’s hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to the tips of his fingers. “For Manhattan,” he agrees solemnly.

And when he exits, he carries David’s heart away with him.

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

I saw a cat photo today an I couldn’t resist redrawing it for my Mi’lord AU. It’s very messy but I think it adds to the charm in a way.

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

*Harry being woken up in the middle of the night by Mi’lord stealing food out of Harry’s kitchen*

Harry: …you couldn’t just chase a roach like a normal cat? You had to take a whole bloody chicken?!

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

What Tom Riddle stuck as a cat think he looks like threatening Harry:

What Harry actually sees:

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Harry finally manages to give Mi’lord (Tom Riddle) at bath in the Mi’lord AU

Harry: There! Don’t you feel better?

Mi’lord (Tom Riddle):

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

I love this parallel in the Mi’lord AU wherein both Harry & Tom refer to each other as a little beast ❤️

Harry:

“And Harry, if he was being honest with himself, probably should’ve left the mangy, feral beast on the street where he found it.”

Tom:

“Tom had just about enough of the little beast.”

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Harry in the Mi’lord AU sees a stray cat digging through the rubbish.

Harry: Ah, reminds me of my youth—

Me Writing: What youth? You’re only 14, grandpa.

Quote:

He empathized with the stray. When he had first seen it, it had been digging through the rubbish bins behind a seedy pub, looking for scraps to eat, and all the sudden Harry had been transported back to his youth.

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Mi’lord AU: Concept Art Mi’lord (Tom Riddle)

Otherwise known as the six-nine year old man who stupidly thought he could do an animagus transformation fifty years ago and has been stuck as a cat ever since. A very, angry, feral boi with dagger paws. Dagger paws that he will use and use often.

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

I swear this Mi’lord AU has just turned into an excuse for me to draw cats 😆 But I can’t help it, Tom Riddle as a cat is too funny 😂

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

This is another image living in my head rent free for the Mi’lord AU

Otherwise know as Tom taking a swipe at Harry in his sleep because he moved his stuff (stolen hoard) & he’s real salty about it 😤

[As someone with 3 cats this image is too relatable btw.]

Just a rough sketch for now, might polish it up and color it later.

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Mi’lord AU Dialogue Draft # 4

Ron (eyeing Mi’lord suspiciously): Mate, I think your new cat might be evil.

Harry (unphased): Might be? There’s no doubt about it, Ron. Once I saw him knock a blind woman’s cane out of her hand, steal a man’s money pouch, and pop a child’s balloon all within ten minutes. I’m a hundred precent certain if Mi’lord was a person he’d either be locked up in Azkaban or a totalitarian dictator.

*Mi’lord hisses and knocks a glass of pumpkin juice over Ron’s & Harry’s potion essays*

Harry: See! This is what I’m talking about!

Ron (trying to dry his homework): Then why do you put up with him?!

Harry: What was I supposed to do, let him starve?

Ron: I would’ve! Bleeding cat!

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Mi’lord AU Dialogue Draft #3

*Harry & Tom still playing Cards Against Humanity*

Harry: I knew you were a weird cat, but I don’t think I realized how weird until this game.

*draws card*

Harry: My memory of last night is pretty hazy, I remember [blank] and that’s pretty much it. What do you remember?

*Mi’lord paws card*

Harry: Slaughtering innocent civilians…

Given what I know of you that tracks.

Inspired by this TikTok:

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Tom Riddle counting all the money he’s stolen in the Mi’lord AU

Harry: No! No! Why are you like this?! I said I should be charging you rent, but I didn’t mean that you needed to go out an steal it!

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Mi’lord AU Dialogue Draft #1

Albus Dumbledore: Oh, Harry, my boy, I see you have a new…cat?

Harry: Yes, sir. (Harry hold up black mangled stray he rescued from Knockturn Alley) This is Mi’lord.

Dumbledore: What an amusing name. Is he friendly? (Dumbledore reaches out to pet it & gets swatted) Ah, it appears not.

Harry: Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!

[Mi’lord (Tom Riddle) visibly seethes.]

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

Me to my brain: “I’m supposed to be working on something else, I got a mountain of laundry to do, a growing grocery list, and a half finished chapter of another fic to complete—“

My brain to me: “Write a part 3 to the Mi’lord AU.”

Me: “I guess I’m writing a part 3 to the Mi’lord AU.”