In Defense of Tomione

My friend @ariel-riddle told me in frustration that a recent group conversation about Tomione devolved into ship-hating and people saying that shipping Voldemort/Hermione was like shipping Hitler with Anne Frank. She suggested that I turn my response into a full post, so here it is.

Tom Riddle is not Voldemort and Voldemort is not Tom Riddle.

Most Tomione stories are set in a time travel AU where Hermione goes back to Tom’s Hogwarts years in the 1940s. Canon Voldemort is in his 70s in the 1990s. He’s literally gone through 50 years of live and change and losing his body and dividing his soul multiple times.

The Voldemort we see in 1990s canon Harry Potter has been killed once and has a regenerated body. If murder cleaves the soul in two, as stated by Slughorn, and it’s an equal divide, then noseless, hairless red-eyed Voldemort had only 1/128 or 0.78125% of his soul left after making all of his horcruxes plus the accidental one he made in Harry. (see the math and a graph of what percentage of his soul went into various horcruxes here)

There is almost nothing human left in Voldemort in the 1990s.

Tom Riddle in Hogwarts has no more than one or two horcruxes in his latter years at school. He still retains some of his humanity. He’s not a dictator at this point. He’s not built an army. He’s not terrorizing the magical world. The potential is obviously there, and he’s already on a dark path, but he’s not a lost cause the way Dumbledore seemed to think of him.

Tom and Hermione are two halves of the same whole.

What could the future Lord Voldemort and Hogwarts’ most well known muggleborn heroine have in common? Plenty, actually.

They’re both described as the brightest students of their time. They have some of the highest marks Hogwarts has seen in a very long time. In terms of academic brilliance the two people who come close to meeting Hermione’s high achievements that we know of in canon are Tom Riddle and Draco Malfoy (who came in second to Hermione in marks throughout school). They’re both among a handful of characters in the series who are magically powerful enough that the can perform wandless magic.

They’re both thrust into a world they know nothing about. Tom may be the heir of Slytherin but he’s raised as a muggle in a muggle orphanage. They both only learn about magic at 11 when they’re invited to Hogwarts. They both struggle to fit in at Hogwarts. Hermione is friendless until Harry and Ron save her from the troll, and she’s discriminated against based on her heritage throughout the series. Tom is viewed as a muggleborn when he comes to school and is sorted into Slytherin, a house notorious for its views on blood purity. They both struggle to find their place in the magical world and be accepted by their peers.

In a lot of ways, Hermione is the yin to Tom’s yang. She’s light, he’s dark. She’s truly muggleborn, he’s the heir to a Hogwarts founder. He goes on to create the Death Eaters, she becomes an Order member. He has never known real love, she loves so much and so deeply that she’s willing to die for her friends.

But what about time travel?

Tom Riddle was born in 1926. Hermione Granger was born in 1979. It’s a ship that requires either an enormous alternate universe setting where they’re born in the same time period OR time travel.

Harry Potter is a series in which time travel is canon. Time turners exist. Hermione has one for an entire book. If you accept that Cursed Child is canon (I don’t, but I’m including it for the sake of argument), then it’s even possible to jump decades through time.

Time is not an insurmountable barrier to this pairing in fanfiction. And unlike other ships in the Potter fanfiction world, Tomione does not require that either character change their sexuality, their blood status, or their biological relationships to anyone else in order for Tom and Hermione to be together.

Tomione is about redemption.

Look, I know the trope about the girl who can save the bad boy from his dark path is a tale as old as time, and there’s a reason for that. We like it. Stories in which the sheer force and power of the woman’s love changes a man for the better and saves him from a dark path resonate with women in a patriarchal world in which women generally have less power and are typically shoehorned into nurturing roles. Think about that. In a world ruled by men, the power of a woman’s love is enough to overcome and transform even the most powerful man. Can you see why women like this trope? You see it in Star Wars with Reylo and to a lesser extent Han/Leia. You see it in Twilight where the force of Bella’s love makes Edward literally reject his own nature to be with her.

Back to Tomione. This is a ship about the potential to change the world. It’s an exploration of the idea that no one is truly irredeemable. Knowing what Tom Riddle goes on to do, what he eventually, tragically, becomes, is it possible to save him before it’s too late? THAT is the idea behind Tomione. Are we as humans - magical or otherwise - ever truly past the point of no return?

It’s CANON in Harry Potter that the power of love is a power Voldemort knows not, that love is one of the most powerful forces in the world. The power of love can save the world. When you think about that, the idea that Hermione’s love and light is capable of saving Tom Riddle becomes a logical extension of canon.

Tomione is the idea that Tom can be turned from a darker path, that his dark future can be altered, that his soul can be saved by love. By the love of a woman who equals his intelligence and magical power, who is the light to his dark. If that’s not the most fucking optimistic thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.

In Defense of Tomione

Adventures in MBTI #101