May be a downfall

i wish for knowledge i wish for power i wish for immortality

room of requirement:

best i can do is a hoarder’s warehouse and a cursed wardrobe to commit tax fraud with

borgin minding his business in his own shop

cabinet: vomits out a 16-year-old dark wizard unannounced

borgin clutching his chest: TOM WHAT THE HELL

tom brushing dust off his sleeves: i apologise for the cardiac event but i will be using this weekly now

borgin: …you’re going to what

tom: optimise distribution

Duality of Tom Riddle

same weekend:

-teleports through cursed cabinets to run illegal trade -holds crying girlfriend and whispers devotion -writes six essays -gets blackout drunk inventing his supervillain name

history will fear him but all his friends remember is flying shit

Slug Club recruiting Ginny Weasley in 1996: cool bat-bogey hex. You’re in.

When you’ve been badly traumatised by prodigies so now the bar is “funny hex, good family, probably not a fascist.” Slughorn's character development was lowering his standards from “future Minister” to “unlikely to become Voldemort.”

may: show me magic tom: i cannot. there are laws may: bad ones? tom, experiencing ideological foreplay: continue

tom: i value solitude may: knocks every evening tom: disgusting. same time tomorrow?

Tom Riddle explaining underage magic restrictions to May like: unfortunately if i use one little spell outside school the ministry will snap my wand may: so the government is stopping you from being cool? tom: i had not considered phrasing it that way but yes may: so you’re a wizard with parental controls tom: i will be murdering legislation soon

may: can you make my father kind tom: yes may: how tom: well... may: ?? tom: don’t look at the sofa

edmund miller: who are you tom riddle, thirteen years old, standing in his parlour with a wand, a traumatised daughter, and the audacity of a government department: family improvement services

tom: I fixed your father may: he has free will, right? tom: define free

tom: your father is quite a snake lover now may: he was not yesterday tom: yes, well, people grow

edmund: every father hopes his daughter finds a friend as decent as you tom, who tortured him yesterday: sir you flatter me

edmund miller woke up like: wow what a lovely morning my daughter is home her friend is very polite I sure do love snakes now for some reason

tom: i cannot afford anything in knockturn alley knockturn alley: have you tried being useful to criminals tom: no but i am listening

tom riddle walking into borgin & burkes with ten galleons and a dream: i would like one anti-trace amulet please

burke, immediately clocking the born legilimens orphan with criminal potential: best i can do is mentorship, fraud, and a father figure with terrible ethics

burke after five minutes with tom: this child is ominous, broke, brilliant, and morally portable. put him in the back room.

borgin & burke really saw a thirteen-year-old orphan ask for illegal anti-trace equipment and said, finally, unpaid labour with ambience.

tom: at last, a place where my talents are appreciated may: what talents tom: secrecy, crime-adjacent thinking, mental invasion, object cataloguing may: ... tom: also punctuality may: i’m happy for you :) tom, glowing because the world finally noticed him: good :) may internally: he’s leaving me tom internally: fascinating. she’s attached. may: ... tom: anyway look at my illegal necklace

may: so you’re magic but not allowed to use magic tom: correct may: that is stupid tom: finally. political clarity.

tom: i am bound by statute may: what if you were not tom: I have been asking myself the same question for the last two years

may miller: my father is drunk and violent and i need help tom riddle, thirteen years old, legally a child, spiritually a solicitor for hell: favour for favour

may: make him stop tom: permanently? may: I DIDN’T SAY THAT tom: no but you had excellent subtext may: tom, I need my father fixed tom: have you considered replacing him with me may: what tom: what also tom: btw if i solve your father can i live in your house forever may: ...?? tom: unrelated. edmund miller behind the door: why do I hear boss music

may seeing moving pictures for the first time: THIS IS SORCERY tom, a sorcerer, deeply pleased: yes obviously keep going

tom riddle: ...i am going to maintain control ...i will reveal only the minimum necessary information ...i will not become emotionally invested.

may: TOM THERE’S MAGIC? SHOW ME. SHOW ME NOW. DO A WAND THING. tom: I would be committing a crime may: then COMMIT A CRIME. tom: marry me in twelve years

tom, experiencing shared joy for the first time: oh no. this is significantly worse than desire. also tom: this is the best person i have ever met

ivy the snake, wrapping herself round tom and may’s joined hands: by the power vested in me by absolutely no one, i now pronounce you weird and worse

i hate london i hate summer i hate muggles i hate boiled cabbage i hate this fucking place

may miller sitting in the corridor: hi :) tom: unfortunately i will now be rearranging my entire personality around this event

may: you’re a bloody menace tom, internally already engraving this on a wedding goblet: she understands me chapter 1 tom: she is scrawny and common and not remotely my type

chapter 1 tom, five minutes later:

sits beside her so no one else can

tells her magic is real

asks her tarot cards for life advice like a normal dictator

summons a snake to flirt for him

responds to being laughed at in the most Slytherin way possible

experiences one moment of peace and becomes possessive about it instantly

not remotely his type btw

I cannot disclose my headcanons without giving huge ass spoilers for the fic (tho, even the existence of this blog is a huge ass spoiler already), but I think it's so damn arrogant of Dumbledore to say "Riddle had no friends" while also admitting there was whole fucking circle of people around him at school. What a bully teacher! It's like "oh, I see you've made friends... None of them likes you anyway, bitch." Impossible. What can I say, I fucking cheered when he flew off that tower.

English. I used to write in Polish in my teens, then I acquired a terrible writer’s block that lasted over a decade. During that time I lived abroad and pretty much lost the ability to express myself beautifully in my own language — I hardly ever spoke Polish unless I was calling my mum, and I lost so much vocabulary during my first five years away.

I have Obsidian Pen to thank, because I read her Blood and Gold, became so obsessed with it that I translated it into Polish, and it somehow, magically, gave me my Polish back. It happened so fast I can hardly believe it — like a floodgate opening in my brain.

Then, just as I finished the translation, I got the idea for the plot of May Be a Downfall. And I started writing.

The first version of chapter 1 was awful! I posted it, but the further into the story I got, the less I was satisfied with it and ended up rewriting it, I think, ten times. But the more I wrote, the better I got. I'm glad you found my story after I reworked the beginning, lol.

So this work and Blood and Gold, I would say, saved me. I love writing more than anything, and having a decade-long writer’s block was a brutal torture.

I am so happy you love the story.

trauma

constitutional history

soul horror

eugenics

may please understand i am like this for a reason

may, bringing breakfast upstairs: :) tom, already inside dead husband’s wardrobe wearing john’s shirt: it fits may: that is literally insane tom: and yet may: and yet

everyone else in romance novels: and then they reunited in tears and tenderness tom and may: and then they reunited in branding failed sex trauma disclosure corpse-adjacent domesticity and a seminar on metaphysical population decline

may: i killed him tom: yes may: you should be proud of me tom: i am. a little. ghost of John in the room: man, not the shirt. be serious

‘kneel’ crazy thing to say to the girl who just realised you think murder is an administrative tool

may reading tarot: maybe the cards mean you’ll have to get rid of me one day :( tom, who has personally reorganised heaven earth and municipal reality to keep her alive: girl be serious

may: you look at the world like you’re god tom, getting horny in 12 different dialects at once: finally a woman who gets it

there is something so beautiful about a man feeling seen and reacting to it like he’s just been proposed to on a moonlit balcony

nothing more romantic than being seen for who you truly are and who you truly are is unfortunately tom riddle

tom riddle, who has spent six months trying to wake his basilisk: …oh. I get it now.

tom riddle carefully orchestrating a flawless assassination on dumbledore: • calculates patrol routes • guides a 60-foot magical murder snake through the castle pipes • perfectly aligns the strike geometry

random student returning from the kitchens at 11pm: hi :)

tom: you have GOT to be fucking kidding me

tom riddle: -watching the basilisk strike perfectly -watching dumbledore drop -thinking the problem is solved

next morning: “they’re stable”

tom: oh for fuck’s sake

things tom riddle discovered while trying to use a basilisk as a precision weapon:

basilisks do not respect tactical timing

basilisks get distracted by nearby prey

basilisks cannot distinguish “target” from “random student”

basilisks absolutely will ruin your assassination geometry

everyone else during OWLs: answering arithmancy questions

tom riddle during OWLs: -cheating via legilimency -training a basilisk -planning murder -carefully crafting the perfect alibi

meanwhile somewhere in the castle... girl crying in bathroom: 💀

tom, five minutes later: well, fuck.

as the voice of the youth, I cannot support this motion as written.

also tom, 48 hours earlier:

yes absolutely add correspondence surveillance and corrective ideological instruction. make it harsher. no harsher. perfect.

griselda marchbanks: we must protect students from ideological recruitment

tom riddle, who literally radicalised half of Hogwarts himself:

yes absolutely dreadful. horrific even. have you considered how this will affect the children emotionally

lestrange in committee: yes, board of governors is absolutely on board

lestrange in wizengamot: 👁️👄👁️

lestrange watching tom dismantle the bill publicly: pleased aristocratic silence