History Fanfic / InTheBleakMidwinterTheLoud

* SourGrapes: To an extent. Very early on, The Riddles initially try and act and imply that they're a pureblood family. Unable to get away with this lie, they quickly pivot to acting like they're a wealthy halfblood family which they successfully get away with. On multiple occasions, they then talk about how stupid blood purity really is to multiple other wizards. One can't help but think that' to an extent, it's because they were unable to get away with pretending to be purebloods. Albeit, at least some of their thoughts must be genuine for Tom often does think about inbreeding in a negative way both in the magical and muggle worlds.

--> She had the gall to direct his attention to that particular region of her anatomy, and simultaneously demand a sophisticated action like speech?

'''Tom''': Yes. And I assure you that she was a pureblood, of an older and purer family than yours. Just think, if the [=McKinnons=] stay focused on blood purity for long enough, one day they'll achieve greatness like this.

* GreenEyedMonster: Tom is too polite to let it show or affect their working relationship (much), but he secretly hates Ignis, who he thinks looks like a tramp even disregarding his werewolf injuries, for drawing Hermione's attention away from himself and unknowingly sees him as romantic competition. When Hermione agrees to try brewing Wolfsbane for Ignis, he secretly hopes that Ignis gets poisoned by the potion and dies. Complicating this is that his experiences with Merope have made him refuse to acknowledge that he is, in fact, in love with Hermione. At first anyways, while he still often judges him internally in the narrative, it's clear that Tom becomes fonder of Ignis overtime. Even if he himself doesn't realized that.

* GreenEyedMonster: Tom is too polite to let it show or affect their working relationship (much), but he secretly hates Ignis, who he thinks looks like a tramp even disregarding his werewolf injuries, for drawing Hermione's attention away from himself and unknowingly sees him as romantic competition. When Hermione agrees to try brewing Wolfsbane for Ignis, he secretly hopes that Ignis gets poisoned by the potion and dies. Complicating this is that his experiences with Merope have made him refuse to acknowledge that he is, in fact, in love with Hermione.

* SavingTheWorldWithArt: Tom pragmatically decides that it would be expedient to fight for werewolf rights because their downtrodden status and prejudice preventing them from holding down steady employment makes them an economically unproductive demographic. He proposes paying a writer to compile a werewolf version of ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin'' to bring their plight into the public eye in the hopes that their lot will be bettered, like how that book led to the end of slavery in America, so that he can better extract profit from them. The result is a lurid romance called ''Loup Garou'', serialized in ''Witch Weekly'', about a brave, gallant werewolf who falls in love with a beautiful girl.

* MetaphoricallyTrue: Tom is very careful to not outright lie to any wizards in any ways that could be found out and frequently lies by omission or says things in a way that subtly guide people towards reaching conclusions that are advantageous to him. For instance, he tells Serpens Malfoy, who already suspects that Tom isn't a Pureblood, that he isn't a muggleborn wizard, and lets Serpens decide that means he's a halfblood, not that he's (gasp) a completely magicless muggle playing at being a Wizard.

* HeroicWillpower: Tom was able to break through Merope's Imperius long enough for him to get away from her -- this is a difficult feat even for wizards, much less a muggle with no experience with magic, and Hermione is genuinely impressed by it. He realizes after mere moments when his drink has been spiked Veritaserum, and with no knowledge of the potion's existence or how it works, he's able to successfully resist babbling (almost) everything truly incriminating with careful use of truths until he takes advantage of his state and turns the tables to get him to go away. He also, despite being a muggle, begins to learn Occlumency and has his first success when he misdirects Hermione and thinks of a different playing card instead of trying to brute force block her from figuring out which card he drew.

* MalignedMixedMarriage: Tessie Prewett's family is very displeased that their daughter is marrying Algie, a Muggle, even though that Muggle is heir to an Earlship and a very large family fortune. Axel went so far as to blame Tom for introducing her to Algie and ruining her honor and challenged him to a duel, which Axel lost. Tom manages to convince Hermione to be his date by reminding her that merely being seen at the wedding will piss off blood purists, as it will be taken as a political statement in favor of mixed marriages.

* MetaphoricallyTrue: Tom is very careful to not outright lie to any wizards in any ways that could be found out and frequently lies by omission or says things in a way that let people come to conclusions that are advantageous to him. For instance, he tells Serpens Malfoy, who already suspects that Tom isn't a Pureblood, that he isn't a muggleborn wizard, and lets Serpens decide that means he's a halfblood, not that he's (gasp) a completely magicless muggle playing at being a Wizard.

** We know almost nothing about what the Riddle family was actually like as people in canon, other than that they were Voldemort's paternal family, that Tom Sr. rejected his son on sight, and that they were so disliked by their community that nobody attended their funerals, and this fic expands on their characters based on their known backgrounds as landed gentry. The story extrapolates out Tom's personality based on some canon aspects of Tommy, such as his arrogance, manipulation skills, ambition, and obsession with appearances, and then extrapolates personalities for Squire Riddle and Mary Riddle to make them each one half of their son.
** The story also elaborates on several canonical wizarding characters from the era. Tom befriends Quintessa "Tessie" Prewett, for instance, who would become a Great Aunt to Ronald Weasley some fifty years later and whose dress robes Ron would wear to the Yule Ball.
* OriginalCharacter: Canon is relatively thin on characters alive in the late 1920s, so this fic fills out the cast by necessity with quite a few of its own.

* RichLanguagePoorLanguage: In this fic, Little Hangleton is located in Yorkshire, [[OopNorth in the north of England]]. Tom once had the accent to match, and he hated it so much that he trained himself to speak a perfect Queen's English befitting a man of status, to the point that he apparently sounds stuffier than Algie's elocution tutor.

** Tom goes out with his friends to see a comedic opera, ''Theatre/TheSorcerer'', which to his surprise is about a betrothed couple secretly dosing everyone in their village with a love potion. Tom, who lost months of his life and was sexually assaulted under the influence of a love potion, [[DudeNotFunny does not find this funny at all]] unlike the rest of the audience, and has Dobby Apparate him home partway through the first act when he starts to panic and dissociate, after the characters in the play decide to go through with the potion. He misses the ending, where the titular sorcerer who supplied the love potion in the first place is denounced and killed by the rest of the characters, and he's ''almost'' sad that he missed that part.
* SickeninglySweethearts: Squire Thomas and Mary Riddle are very much in love with each other even after multiple decades of marriage and they still gross out their adult son with their kisses and flirty banter.

* PowerPerversionPotential: When Ignis comes to lunch at the Riddle House while Polyjuiced into Tom, Tom's father muses that it might be entertaining for sexual partners to use in the bedroom, for the sheer novelty of exploring a different body from what you're used to without resorting to adultery, much to Tom's discomfort. To Tom's even greater discomfort, his mother seems intrigued by this when she cheerfully tells her husband that she'd like to discuss that further with him later.

* BreastExpansion: Hermione takes a wet-nurse potion so that she can feed the infant Tommy, and one of the effects is that it enlarges her breasts because they're literally engorged with milk, to the point of looking disproportionate on the bony, half-starved frame she sports for the first year or so of her time with the Riddles. Flat chests happen to be in style, though, and Tom's narration frequently points out her "unfashionable" figure. When Mrs. Riddle takes the potion so she can feed Tommy while Hermione's out, Squire Riddle makes it quite clear that he enjoys this particular effect on his wife, [[ParentalSexualitySquick much to Tom's discomfort]].

* CatharticCrying: After Cecilia refuses to believe in magic and that he's not mad, Tom breaks down in tears and tries to hide it because he thinks his crying looks hideous. Hermione pulls him into a hug anyways so that he can cry on her shoulder, which he does until he's completely cried out, releasing all of his sorrow and the stubborn hope that he might get Cecilia back. Several years later, Tom repays the favor to Hermione when they narrowly survive [[spoiler:their meeting with Lord Woolsey]] and she cries from fear and rage, and he lets her sob into his chest until she feels better.