#tomlily

tomlily | chapter 1/3 | mature | 4.5k words | on ao3

omg ok im gonna answer this super quickly before the other asks because i know your stupid italian wifi gets turned off in 10min…….

james. obviously (+maybe harry?)

this might be controversial….. but petunia?? it’s an act of love from toms pov, cutting lily free from all the misery she’s caused lily. he makes it a whole thing, an event, to kill petunia. and lily is the belle of the ball <3

dumbledore!!!!!!!!!! KILL THAT MAN !!!!!

tomlily | chapter 3/3 | mature | 10k words | on ao3

It’s a revelation though, or it feels like one at least, when she wakes up again that same morning. The only way for her to get out of this miserable loop is to kill Voldemort, and so Lily dedicates herself accordingly to the task. 

tomlily | chapter 2/3 | mature | 9k words | on ao3

aaaaaa hiii this made me so happy <333 i’ve decided it’s Time for us to have a proper chat about tomlily….. @quillkiller and i’s second-born child

the first thing you need to know is that they’re both sociopaths (sociopath lily oh how i looove youuu)..... i made this post before about the quote 'beautiful monsters composed of every individual perfection' and how it relates to lily, but i think it's interesting to consider in terms of her being a sociopath (this is actually how our first tomlily convo began, way back whenever it was). her making sure that every part of herself is viewed as perfect, carefully curating her public image - she's the miracle muggleborn! so smart, so kind, so helpful and friendly and every single good characteristic! a shoe-in for head girl, the perfect prefect, responsible and hard-working and everything that anyone could possibly want from her! and she's good at it too. everyone sees her exactly as she wants them too..... not unlike our good friend tom marvolo riddle when he was at hogwarts...........

i think one of the central parts of their relationship is the concept of immortality. they’re both kind of made up of the same sort of thing. they’re the same at their cores. both of them showed up at hogwarts as muggleborns thrust into a completely new world and they’re both so determined to succeed and be more than what they came from and to have absolutely everything, to have their cake and eat it too!!!!! for lily, this comes in the form of being revered, putting herself on a pedestal, she’s going to Leave Her Mark and be remembered and she doesn’t care what she has to do to get there (btw i really recommend this fic about sociopath lily, it’s so so interesting and i think nearly entirely encapsulates my vision of her……). the idea that if she can’t be immortalised in her deeds while she’s alive, she’s going to become immortal in her death, martyring herself. she’s a saint, she’s a puppet master, she’s as close to a god as a girl can get.

without. of course. resorting to actual immortality. which is the path tommy boy chooses. obviously. i think there are such parallels here. he’s a presumed-muggleborn, in slytherin, the house of the ambitious and the pureblood supremacists, he’s got the biggest god complex known to man and he grew up in an orphanage in london in the middle of the blitz!!!! all factors that contribute to his fear of death and his desperation to be More Than That. more than just another orphan killed by a bomb. more than just another nameless muggleborn lost in the pureblood-centric society. more than anything that anyone has ever seen before. he’s going to make a name for himself, and he’s going to make sure that nobody ever forgets it, and he’s going to be immortal. he’s going to be more god than man (even if it makes him a monster).

anyway. taking them together, as you can see, they’re cut from the same cloth (although side note!! i think lily’s lack of fear of death gives her the potential to be even more dangerous than tom is….) and bc of this, they’re the only ones who can see under each other’s carefully curated masks (although!! another side note… i think they each have another person who can - dumbledore for tom, and petunia for lily, but that’s not entirely relevant rn).

they understand each other and they want to cut each other open and burrow their way into each other’s rib cages. they kill people together - lily is much more messy w it, all blood under her nails and on her teeth. tom prefers the cleanliness of an avada kedavra but the blood gets all over his clothes anyway from when he touches lily. also cannibalism and intricate blood rituals that bind them together forever and intertwining themselves so thoroughly that nothing could ever separate them (although! another side note! jen and i don’t think they’re at all interested in sex. the other things they do (murder etc) are far more intimate and romantic and exciting to them!!!!).

and in the end, they’ll kill each other, pull each other apart and devour each other entirely. the only person who could possibly kill tom is lily, and vice versa, they’re the only ones that would have the right to, or the power to, or deserve to etc etc. at the end it’s always them, a ticking time-bomb. them and a knife or a gun or a curse or a fire and their teeth sinking into each other and their blood flowing through each other’s veins and over each other's dying bodies. bc tom is the only one that Sees lily and lily is the only one that Sees tom, and they recognise themselves in each other and it’s soul-deep and dangerous and nasty and hungry and knowing and self-destructive and so so so sooooo interesting to me

lily who, instead of marrying james, goes completely off-piste and moves to knockturn alley after graduation. she has some sort of crisis, realises that she can do whatever she wants rather than what everyone else has projected onto her, yk the drill. she works in one of the shops there - maybe with some sort of crazy vampire boss, that could be so sexy - and starts to delve into the dark arts and blood magic and necromancy and the like……

eventually she meets this mysterious older woman - tom riddle - who also works in knockturn alley, in borgin & burke’s, has apparently worked there for years and years. lily is Intrigued by her. alongside that, while hunting down some sort of rare illegal ingredient, lily also comes across lord voldemort, the shadowy leader of the wizarding black market. no one knows who they are, their real name, where they came from, but voldemort basically runs knockturn alley - ruthless and efficient. and tom is Intrigued by lily, starts trying to seek her out, ‘bumps into’ her all the time, both as tom and as voldemort, and obvs at some point lily figures out the whole secret identity shtick etc etc

bc we've been talking about them.... handpicked from @quillkiller and i's shared pinterest board <3