PLS tell me about rue & tom!!!
They’re a mess of a relationship who go from friends to enemies to allies to lovers and I am endlessly fascinated by them. I’m putting more of my rambling under the cut because I just know this is going to get long.
So important background on Rue’s story. There were two things I wanted to do when I was creating her character. 1) I wanted to create a story that had elements of a psychological thriller/horror, paired with a dark romance that has twisted/subverted fairy tale vibes. 2) I wanted to complicate the strict black and white portrayal of light and dark magic, Gryffindor vs Slytherin. I’ve always been obsessed with hp fic and meta that deals with the trope of “dark is not evil.”
With that said, now onto this disaster couple. Second Year Rue finds the diary, not Ginny. She opens the pages and begins to write, desperately seeking some kind of connection, a true friend, who loves magic as much as she does, understands the pain of a terrible childhood, and agrees with her doubts about Hogwarts and Dumbledore. She’s always been too observant, distrustful of the way things are manipulated. But she can’t share these thoughts with Harry, an atlas of a boy already who has too much of a burden. But the diary, Tom, is her confidant, and she opens her soul to him. But Tom can’t control her quite like he does to Ginny in canon and he can’t force her to open the Chamber and unleash the basilisk (there’s a plot reason™, but spoilers).
So Rue keeps the diary for years. She excels in her classes because of natural talent and because Tom helps her. She begins branching out, learning more and more about the forms of magic. She is first drawn to and is then encouraged by Tom to look into dark magic (which I’m treating as not evil but that’s a different rant).
For a long time, they don’t know how they are connected. Rue shares very little about Harry being the one to defeat Voldemort, mostly focuses on talking about Dumbledore and the expectation he puts on Harry while Tom subtly tries to find out about what became of him, and he’s the first to realize how they are already unintentionally connected. By the time Rue does find out Tom Riddle became Voldemort, it’s been so long and she cares so much about him, it sends her reeling. This memory of the boy who is her dearest friend and closest confidant is the precursor to the monster who killed her parents, who marked her brother, and she struggles to reconcile that.
Meanwhile Tom, he genuinely planned on just manipulating Rue like he did to Ginny in canon. But this poor bastard finds himself caring about her, finding her to be like-minded and understanding of his own rage and ambition. There’s an element of calculation in everything he does. Manipulation is so easy for him, but it comes to a point where he realizes what he wants is complicated by Rue. I don’t buy into the whole ‘he can’t love because he was convinced under a love potion’ cause lame. I think he becomes scarier if he is capable of true and deep feelings, but of course, they’re not at all healthy, cause he’s definitely a psychopath still.
The best way I can demonstrate their dynamic is this future scene: Tom will tell Rue he loves her, but it’s partly a ploy to manipulate her and partly because that must be the name for the feeling he has only when she is near. Rue doesn’t hesitate to answer “You don’t. Don’t start lying to me again.” And she tells him what they have isn’t love. It’s too dark and twisted for that. This isn’t a love story, it’s a horror story, but it’s theirs. It’s a mutual kind of possession.
So yeah, that’s my dark magic disaster ship. I do adore them because they are so interesting, but 100% this is not a relationship anyone should want lol.
Here’s a gif of them, as a treat, for reading this very long rant.
