Just Another Book About Harry Potter Ships

Tomarry & Harrymort (Tom Riddle/Harry & Harry/Voldemort)

SHIP NAMES: Tomarry, Harrymort, Pottermort, Voldarry, Tom Riddle/Harry, Harry/Voldemort, HP/TR, HP/TMR, HP/TRJ HP/LV, S.S. Sssssssss, S.S. Intertwining Philosophies

THOUGHTS: Hnnnnnghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh NO. WHY. As a Certified Fandom Old™, I really should've expected this one to be high up in the rankings, but I'm still consistently surprised to see JUST how popular it is. Seriously, why??? I mean, people are allowed to ship whatever the hell they want, sure...but WHY?!

I think it's pretty clear why someone would dislike either one of these iterations (and I will get into why I dislike them soon enough, trust me!), but first I'm gonna try my best to understand why someone might find one of these iterations appealing. Let's separate them into Tom and Voldemort for a moment, because I know most shippers of either Tomarry or Harrymort see them as separate ships, so I'm going to treat them as such:

For Tomarry, the diary version of Tom Riddle's sixteen-year-old self articulates some of his and Harry's similarities in book two, and we find out more similarities throughout the series: both boys are orphans who were raised without loving families, and both were raised as Muggles and didn't know about the wizarding world until the age of eleven, though both were aware to different degrees of their unusualness. Both considered Hogwarts to be their home and loathed being forced by their Headmaster to go back to where they grew up (Harry to the Dursleys' and Riddle to the Muggle orphanage) over the summer. Additionally, they share wand cores (which is extremely rare), the ability to talk to snakes, similar physical features (tall and good-looking with jet-black hair), and a thirst to prove themselves (as the Sorting Hat commented about Harry when trying to place him in Slytherin). They are intimately connected through fate (the prophecy, Riddle marking Harry as his equal and rival through the use of the Killing curse, and later on their mind/soul link due to a piece of Riddle's soul residing in Harry), as well as being future mortal enemies. As with many other Enemies to Lovers ships in this fandom, they fall into the tropes of Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, hero vs. villain, Order of the Phoenix vs. the Death Eaters, and "good"/"light" vs. "bad"/"evil"/"dark," as well as facing each other on opposite sides of the war. In addition, Harry and Riddle are literary foils for one another; Riddle is how Harry could have turned out, as a fellow orphan raised by neglectful Muggles without loving family and isolated from other people his age (and vice versa).

Basically, there are actually a surprising number of reasons why people might ship them, and many Tomarry fics use Time Turners (or time travel more generally) to bridge their age gap by sending Harry back to the Riddle's time at Hogwarts. Shippers might also build a slow-burn relationship between Riddle's diary soul self and Harry, instead of sending Harry back in time, once again closing the age gap and giving them the chance to interact on more equal footing. Sometimes Harry redeems Riddle, but often these fics explore the possibilities of a Dark!Harry, so expect dark themes, unhealthy relationships, possessiveness and violence, and generally some fucked up shit.

Much of this, of course, also applies to Harrymort, but with a 54-year age gap (which makes Voldemort old enough to be Harry's grandfather, or even his great-grandfather) and the facts that Voldemort is a genocidal mass murderer who hates Muggles, Muggle-borns, and even pure-bloods who don't agree with his supremacist ideas; tortures and kills people for fun; wants to take over the world and subjugate anyone or anything that gets in his way; and is based off real-life murderous tyrants who committed horrible atrocities. How romantic! /s (which, just in case some of you never go on Reddit, /s is a marker of sarcasm.)

Okay, so, now onto my opinion! Which is that I really dislike both of these ships and avoid content created for them at all costs, because WTF. The fact that people even came up with these two ships, much less that they're so popular, baffles me. Riddle was already a murderer and certified Dark Wizard by the age of sixteen (AND he murdered/tortured animals and hurt other kids on purpose as a child, which is a telltale sign of psychopathy), but at least with the literary parallels between his teenage self and Harry, I can sort of understand why fans latched onto his and Harry's relationship, even if I'd never ship Harry with such a manipulative, bigoted, murderous bastard. But as Voldemort, he was gunning to murder Harry before he'd even been born, tried to murder him on multiple occasions, murdered his parents with zero remorse, was hellbent on destroying his life, and, not that this matters when the other reasons exist, but it's worth restating that he's 54 years older than Harry! Again, Voldemort was a genocidal mass murderer, pure-blood supremacist, and sadistic bastard who canonically was heavily implied to not understand or feel love, nor did he feel remorse, guilt, or empathy. So why on EARTH would I want to ship him with Harry???

I know that many fans who ship this are into the whole exploring Dark!Harry and fucked up relationships thing, so my arguments about how Riddle/Voldemort was/is a terrible, abusive person would be moot for them, because the whole point is to explore that darkness, and in that instance, to each their own. BUTTT, for the shippers who ship Riddle or Voldemort with someone like Harry or Hermione because you think that he would've or could've turned out differently if he'd just "found love" at Hogwarts or something... That kind of ideology is one of the worst manifestations of the "he's damaged, but I can change him" trope, which I hate because it establishes unhealthy expectations and sometimes traps people in abusive relationships. Love is powerful, sure, but love is NOT something that can magically fix people's problems! If someone is callous, cruel, nasty, abusive, damaged, or traumatized, they need professional therapy, NOT a boyfriend/girlfriend/romantic partner! We need to stop teaching young people (and young girls especially) that they could be the one to "change" "bad" people for the better with the power of "true love." Life doesn't work like that, and people who believe that will only end up hurt in the long run and/or in unhealthy, potentially abusive situations that could scar them for life. AGAIN, if someone ships Tomarry or Harrymort and completely understands that it's fiction and just likes to explore dark themes in their fiction, that's one thing. But romanticizing abuse, especially if it leads to romanticizing it in REAL LIFE and not in fiction, can be dangerous, so just make sure to look out for that.

Anyway, the bottom line is: while I can sort of understand why fans might ship Tomarry, even if it's really fucked up and I have no interest in that whatsoever, Harrymort is just baffling to me. Either way, though, both of these ships are a huge NO THANKS BYE from me! Harry deserves SO much better than a genocidal murderous bigoted maniac!!!

RATING: 1/10: for Tomarry, ONLY because I can hypothetically understand why people might find it interesting; 0/10: NOTP to the max! for Harrymort, because seriously, WTF y'all.

FANDOM RANK (AS OF JUNE 2022): #10 (Tomarry) & #21 (Harrymort)

Let me know what you think in the comments! And please remember to be as polite as possible!

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