what are some headcanons you have for tom? or for harry? (or for them as a couple?)
For Tom:
He has feather-light footsteps, a skill he honed as a child while stealing trinkets, and sometimes sweets from shops near the orphanage. If you're not looking right at him, he can pass by completely unnoticed; not a single sound.
Tom developed a sweet tooth in childhood, having eaten more stolen sweets than the orphanage's meager food ever provided. Over time, he came to favor darker, bittersweet treats, partly because overly sweet candies carried memories he had no desire to revisit.. until the pull of wanting outweighed the weight of remembering, and he returned to indulging his sweet tooth despite it.
Like Harry, Tom suffered from malnutrition in childhood due to poor nutrition. Unlike Harry, who gradually recovered with better meals and Quidditch, Tom despised physical activity and saw it as a waste of time, so he relied entirely on magic to fix his issues. It left him with a certain superficial fragility.
Tom's fear of death isn't only the horror of becoming as vulnerable as anyone else, doomed to an inevitable end. It is even more intimate; the thought that every memory, every hard-won piece of knowledge, might simply vanish with him. It is like being erased forever, and to him, this is not a natural cycle of life reaching its end, but a verdict of insignificance, where his past, present, and future are collapsed into a final nullity: his death.
Tom overthinks constantly, which pushes him to craft elaborate plans and contingency scenarios long before anything actually happens. He feels he needs that sense of control to avoid being caught off guard. It's not a choice.
The ideal image he cultivated at Hogwarts — and his skill at maintaining it — was a direct reaction to how intensely emotional he truly is. Those emotions surface elsewhere, but it is with Harry that they emerge most clearly.
For Harry:
Harry's moral code is more flexible than his emotional resilience or his core personal values. Since he pushes himself toward independence and is reluctant to trust authority, he weighs his decisions based on what truly matters to him and the people he cares about. His morality is real, but it's adaptable and deeply personal. He doesn't act purely from emotional outrage over right vs wrong, but from what he believes will be most beneficial in the long run.
Harry isn't modest about spending money; he appreciates finer things and doesn't hesitate to pay for the best when he feels it's worth it.
Like Tom, Harry also tends to overthink a lot, but in his case it usually pushes him toward action, toward doing something, even when that action is reckless and impulsive. Also, it's not a choice.
He draws many of his conclusions on his own, without voicing them to friends or even to people he trusts. It is a habit he has never managed to outgrow, ingrained since childhood.
Harry has a possessive streak he disguises beneath layers of protectiveness. Once someone truly belongs to him — friend, lover, or otherwise — he quietly catalogs every detail about them. Both Harry and Tom carry deep-seated abandonment issues.
Harry would be a very well-liked professor if he ever took on the DADA position. He would be the sort of teacher who doesn't strictly follow rules, but instead prioritizes what he believes to be most effective. His classes would be entirely practical. Still, after a while, he'd grow bored.
For Tomarry:
Tom is far clingier and more touch-starved than Harry, and his possessiveness is more consuming than Harry's. Tom doesn't care about respecting boundaries, and even when they fight badly, he insists on sleeping wrapped around Harry. Harry has grown used to it.
Tom loves having his hand and neck kissed, and Harry exploits it whenever Tom is upset but Harry sees no reason to escalate into a real fight. To Tom it feels like an act of devotion; to Harry it's simply affection.
No matter how stable their relationship gets, Tom will never fully stop trying to subtly manipulate Harry or steer situations, his behavior rooted in compulsion. It naturally clashes with Harry's own inclination to take charge, born from his restlessness and need for agency.
In bed, Tom loves being served, while Harry loves serving; for Harry it's actually a way to feel in control, and for Tom it is like weaponizing his submission to command every ounce of Harry's attention, satisfying his own obsession.
In any universe or timeline, they belong to each other. The prophecy is merely a tool to bridge their worlds, regardless of the outcome it predicts, they are destined to meet. It's a force greater than either of their wills or desires.
Harry isn't just Tom's equal-and-opposite; he is the essential mirror Tom would need to truly confront his own insecurities. In another outcome, from a different angle, the prophecy could just as easily mean that the defeat of Lord Voldemort doesn't have to mean destroying him as a person.
