Voldemort - Blog Posts
For my slytherin peers ✨💚
The whole Harry Potter series is basically just a noseless idiot tries to kill a boy seven times killing a lot of people instead then he ended up dead and it’s a very sad happily ever after.
House Biases
Ok so we are all clearly never going to be over the fact that Dumbledore is hella biased towards Gryffindor/Potter and how Snape was incredibly biased towards Slytherins. Nobody has talked about how the Hogwarts students are biased, I mean in the books where Harry hasn’t fucked shit up and got to see the sorting these little ELEVEN year olds would get booed for being Slytherins. How do you think those muggle-born Slytherins (we all know they exist) felt, the might not’ve even known who Voldemort is, they just knew they got into the house of ambition. Those eleven year olds would’ve been confused and hurt. Then they continue to be shunned by a majority of the school and some of the teachers, when there were quidditch matches between Gryffindor and Slytherin it was unsafe for either house to walk around alone. Yes, I’ll admit there have been terrible Slytherins like Voldemort, but I fear the people who stab me in the back more than I fear those who admit they’re evil. Voldemort was evil he never tried to tell others he wasn’t, Dumbledore on the other hand kept all his cards to himself, he manipulated people and was hella secretive. What about Peter Pettigrew? The Harry Potter characters focused on the evil Slytherins, MERLIN WAS A SLYTHERIN FOR FUCKS SAKE! The greatest wizard of all time was a SLYTHERIN!
Thank you for attending my ted talk.
sirius and regulus are eavesdropping on their parents while they’re discussing politics, and are texting each other whatever they hear.
sirius: did she just say that voldy’s going to enforce a marshmallow?
regulus: a martial law, you gormless git.
Voldemort: i'm going to check ur loyalty by reading your mind
Draco: potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter potter
Voldemort: what the fuck
James knotted the rope as tight as he could. The fraying fibers cut into Peter’s shoulders like twine making a hay bale bulge, but he couldn’t help the urge to check that Harry was still asleep upstairs.
His eye twitched the longer it was trained on Peter’s pale, sweaty face. And his fists clenched tightly around the wands in each hand. He didn’t miss the way grey eyes flickered down to ebony wood. He was scared, James realized with a bit of a start. He was shaking in the chair like a cornered animal.
His sandy hair was choppy, like someone had taken shears to it as a punishment. His face was breaking out, splotches of red like hives throughout his skin. His teeth were yellowing, and his nails were caked in dirt and overgrown.
He began to cry, and James’ curiosity quickly changed to fury.
“What are you weeping about?” he demanded, watching his volume. Peter wailed, only stopping when he bowed his head at James’ pointed wand at his nose.
“I’m sorry!” he stammered through each syllable.
James thought of Snape and Regulus answering vaguely whenever he asked about Peter. Saying he was serving Voldemort from one manor to the next. Staying hidden for the sake of keeping Sirius locked away. He briefly wondered if they’d held back more information to spare him the feeing he had in that moment.
Lily’s face appeared in front of him, the walls of their old home like blurry shadows behind her. He didn’t hear anything when her mouth moved, but he recognized the terror in her eyes. The tears that had fallen as she’d said goodbye.
“How could you do it?” he asked, hollow to Peter’s wide, fretful eyes.
“He made me,” Peter pleaded. The fingers of his left hand wriggled. “He made me vow to serve him until my death.” He shivered, as if the memory he’d conjured up made him weary. James felt like he was back in front of the television. “An unbreakable vow.”
James felt his heart break. It caught him off guard, and he sought to figure how it could have splintered even more. Instead, he stuffed a cloth napkin in Peter’s flapping mouth.
“I hadn’t asked you to do so much,” he waved his wand and watched as thin strings of silvery magic wrapped around Peter like cords of wire. He looked his betrayer in the eye, “Funny how you’ve made everything worse for yourself just on your own.”
He heard light taps above them, signaling his son’s rise.
the “fic” mentioned in the tags
harry potter au where james is still alive, but lily still sacrificed herself.
i’m thinking she had her wand, james didn’t, she made him take harry and run. and she was so infuriated and frightening, that james listened to her, praying to the whole universe that she would make it out alive. they had their final, desperate kiss. and then she was running towards the explosion at their doorstep.
he ran into the darkness, grabbing his broom and sobbing with his sleeping son in his arms as blue and green lights flashed through their windows. he took off and forced himself not to look back. because he would’ve ruined everything if he had.
he made it somewhere over the ocean, looking over dark waves as the sun rose again. he was freezing, but harry was watching him silently from his blanket. they were still in their pajamas. harry had always loved their broom rides, but he didn’t giggle like he usually did.
they eventually go into hiding. he reads about lily’s death through the paper, dealing with the grief on his own.
he reads about sirius’ arrest, and peters death. then, he reads about voldemort slowly taking over the ministry one department at a time. making it harder and harder for muggle born witches and wizards to come and go. then, it’s remus’ arrest after killing fenrir greyback in a blind fit of werewolf bloodlust.
he grieves again, because he’s truly alone.
while out shopping, polyjuice potion disguising him as he sorts through produce, he catches a cat watching him from the stoop of the small store. then, a familiar nose that makes him grab his son. then, a rippled vision of his best friend.
he pays five minutes later, because harry was much too thin to go a day without good food. and he tries to run. but, he’s quickly caught, and the flurry of spells he tries to send at the men are deflected with awful, sympathetic grimaces.
he doesn’t relent until the cat finally transforms, a cold hand patting his cheek as his favorite professor pulls him into a tight embrace.
it takes possibly too much convincing, but eventually he’s making them chai, and keeping harry protectively close. they ask him to rejoin the order, to let them protect him. protect harry.
he screamed at them, only catching himself haphazardly when harry began to cry. but he’d been so full of wrath as they spoke, like he hadn’t experienced the torture of own failure. like everyone he’d ever loved wasn’t gone.
all, except his son. he wouldn’t allow the order to fail them a second time.
he’d never seen severus or regulus look so defeated. like he was someone they cared about, and they weren’t sure how to comfort him. like they were friends. he bluntly reminded them that his friends were as good as dead. minerva teared up.
he packed everything up with a rushed spell, and took harry away with the three of them still sitting behind steaming mugs.
he took to teaching harry everything he could. going through old books that his own parents had collected. some of his own from school, which held idiotic notes that he’d cry over late at night.
a few months after harry had turned five, it was severus (of all people) who found them again.
lol. this got too long and i’m still thinking about how the plot would go. i’ll possibly post more parts as i think of them. i already know if or when i do write this as a proper fic, it’ll be long. i crave james angst i fear. possible ship recommendations would be appreciated for consideration. i don’t promise anything, but romance can make things so much more tragic 🤭
AU where Dumbledore is all like: I should have known Tom was evil. His mother date raped his father and that was how he was born. He doesn't understand love and never will.
NOPE! He's just an autistic child who grew up in an abusive environment during the Depression and World War II and developed an antisocial personality disorder as a result!
Dumbledore: You shouldn't steal. Stealing is bad.
Little Tom: But why?
Dumbledore: Stealing is wrong.
Little Tom, frustrated: But why???
Orion, trying to explain how a spell works: You just have to feel it.
Tom, deadpan: I beg your finest pardon?
Dumbledore: How well can you empathize, Tom?
Tom, who mentally cannot put himself "in other people's shoes": That's a made up word.
Dumbledore: Tom seems too good at masking his true nature around others. I am the only one who sees him for what he is.
Tom, almost vibrating with overstimulation: If someone gets into my personal space without permission again, I will stab them in the eye.
Voldemort: Step aside, silly girl.
Lily Potter: Please, not Harry!
Voldemort, who had a plan:...
Voldemort, internally: Crap. Now what am I supposed to do?
Useless AU where Harry Potter, in his quest to understand Voldemort in order to hunt Horcruxes, does the Wizarding world equivalent of cyber stalking the man and now knows more about the Dark Lord than the Dark Lord knows about himself.
Bellatrix: I am his most loyal! His most trusted!
Harry: oh, yeah? How does he like to cut up his sandwiches?
Bellatrix:
Bellatrix: ...Triangles
Harry: TRICK QUESTION, BITCH! HE PREFERS DINOSAUR CHICKEN NUGGETS!
So my brother and I were watching Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets and I was wondering why we never see or even read about Anglia ever again. My brother said would it not have been awesome if when Harry turns himself over to Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows that the Anglia comes out of nowhere and runs Voldemort over.
Look at these beautiful Regulus comics!
There are more chapters on the artist's page, please check it out, it's absolutely stunning.
The Prodigal Brother part 1
Alr. I know that I just made this account today but I quite literally can't hold it in.
But when I was reading Harry Potter fanfics with gender-bending involved, I expect the characters to still stay the same (or at least have the majority of the personality still intact). But when it comes to characters such as Severus Snape or Voldemort, the personalities are being changed until they are unrecognizable from the original character in the story, and that pisses me off more than anything (although, with my favorite characters: not so much) because why are they now acting maternal/parental when they were not in the first place??
Not The Save River, Not The Same Man
Dramione/Tomione, M, 4K, One Shot
Now published on AO3
The building pressure in her abdomen felt treacherous, but there was little point in guilt. The man she left 89 days ago would not be the same person now.
That was the price of playing with the past. She unstitched the fabric of her future with every step that she took. Its threads spooled beneath her feet.
[CW: Non-con due to identity issues, memory loss, implied torture.]
Kinda surprised I haven't found a horcrux hunting fic where Regulus "I will betray the Dark Lord for my house elf" Arcturus Black (canon), or maybe, Regulus "I love magical creatures, Care for Magical Creatures is my favourite class at school" Arcturus Black (fanon), frees the dragon from Gringotts while stealing Helga Hufflepuff's cup from Bellatrix's vault (just like the Golden Trio do). But instead of it just flying off, never to be seen again, they become friends and Regulus brings a whole ass dragon to help him kill Voldemort.
or something like that...
It’s really weird to read a harry potter fic as a marauders fan. like in marauders tom and voldy is like the villain in almost every fic and in harry potter fics hes like “😍😎💀🥀🥺”
For me Voldemort knows many languages (for example French seeing his anagram) but his favorite is Latin and in fact he loves using Latin words and tried to create an anagram in Latin before discovering that no name that came out satisfied him.
Hi again!
I have to say that I throughly enjoyed your take on Draco Malfoy and his family. There are things that I hadn’t thought of, and agreed. Others, not so much.
Firstly, if you want to publish your own version of the rewrite, go ahead! It’s a difficult task, for sure, but it can also be so much fun. Also, you said you weren’t sure of where to publish it, I recommend you do it on AO3 since it’s a platform made specifically for fan fiction and they don’t get any kind of profit so it protects you as a fanfiction writer and them. Hope this helps!
Now, on to your view on Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy.
For the longest time, I believed the same thing as you did. But it wasn’t until very recently that I changed my mind a bit. I think that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy were the products of generational trauma—this is not to excuse their failings as parents and people, don’t misunderstand—, just like everyone else in the Sacred Twenty-Eight. They are people who grew up in an environment where they are forced to give up all control over their lives (they cannot even choose who they marry), they’re taught so many vile things throughout their childhoods—actually, they don’t even get to be kids. There’s just so many things wrong with these people.
But I do agree that Lucius might’ve been emotionally and mentally abusive, and it really would explain Draco’s desperate need to make him proud. However, I don’t think that means that Lucius didn’t love his son. I simply think that Lucius was stuck in a cycle he couldn’t or didn’t know how to break. This parenting style that Lucius uses is likely the same one his parents used when raising him, which would be the same his grandparents used on his parents and so on. It’s an endless loop of children learning that you have to hate a group of people for no reason and marry your cousin to keep the family line “pure” and gain as much power as possible because only then will you be deemed respectable. And Lucius clearly wants Draco to become respectable a young man in the wixen world, to have such an easy life such as his own.
Narcissa, on the other hand, I believe to be much more gentle and nurturing towards her son. She’s also stuck in a cycle, but she’s also seen firsthand what happens when you break it and what happens when you don’t. Narcissa had two sisters, Andromeda and Bellatrix. Andromeda disappointed her family to the point of being disowned—which, I should remind you, is the worst that could happen to you when you’re from a family like theirs—when she married a muggleborn and renounced her place as a Black. Now her family doesn’t acknowledge her existence unless it’s probably to discuss how much of a disappointment she is/was. Then you have Bellatrix, who followed the steps so many had carved before her, but it probably cost her her sanity with the way she behaves. But Bellatrix is the gem of the family, and she’s doing so well, she’s so respectable; she married a cousin who’s rich and very convenient and follows the Dark Lord and became a part of his inner circle. And this is without bringing her cousins, Sirius and Regulus, into this mess. Who would you follow?
As for whether Lucius and Narcissa married out of love or not: I think it started out as the typical arranged marriage, but they slowly fell in love as their relationship continued to grow. I like to think they’re the perfect example of a couple growing in love rather than falling. And I believe that this love and mutual respect that they share in this marriage would explain why Lucius listens to Narcissa and often does as she asks. You’re right about Narcissa using tradition to convince her husband to allow Draco to attend Hogwarts, but Durmstrang is also a very well-respected school of magic—especially amongst dark wixes like themselves. But Lucius knew that Narcissa wasn’t ready to have her only child live so far, and gave in.
With all of that said, I like to think that Draco knows what love should look like. He knows how to treat his lovers (regardless of gender), and he knows that communication, respect and love are the keys to a successful relationship. I would even dare to say that he was a romantic at heart, even if he didn’t show it. Draco might’ve been a bit soft, as he was a child growing and trying to make a name for himself while the world changed around him constantly. His views were sick and twisted due to the environment he grew up in, but this can all be changed over time.
Draco probably had a very complicated relationship with his parents, because they weren’t the best but I don’t think their mistakes were from lack of love—more from lack of acceptance. Draco is allowed to be angry and distant, he’s allowed to leave his parents to rot in Azkaban for all the hardships he’d had to endure because of them. But as someone who grew up in a toxic environment, it’s difficult to keep that mindset when you know the love was there and that your parents were working with what they knew and thought to be right, even if their views were misguided.
Also, I’d never thought of Draco being into goth until you brought it up and honestly, I’m really digging it. So thank you for that!
Finally, I have a love-hate relationship with Drarry mostly because I love my personal headcanons on Hinny and Drastoria. Not to mention that a part of me prefers Albus and Scorpius to be together rather than Draco and Harry.
Anyways! Thank you! 💞
Hi, what are your thougths about Draco Malfoy? I really like your rewrite, but I always feel like Draco could be like, the catarsis of a familiar chain. The one who survived his family toxicity and became a better person. I'm just saying he had potential.
Hey Anon! I apologize for taking a bit to respond, I haven’t been on Tumblr very much. But this is an excellent question, so thank you for the opportunity to discuss it!
Draco Malfoy is a complex character. He comes from a rich family that are proud members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, who followed the Dark Lord until they couldn’t anymore. From afar, many would think that they’re the perfect example of evil people. However, as we look closer, all we see is fear.
We see Lucius trying to protect his son whenever Voldemort put him on the spot. We see Narcissa going behind the Lord’s back to protect her child. We see Draco being forced to do a lot of things out of fear and out of wanting to keep his family safe.
I believe that Draco really was as obnoxious as we meet him as in the first book/film. But, like all children, he grew up. As the war intensified, his actions became less about getting a reaction out of Hari and more about keeping himself and those around him alive—which is something that Hari fails to see at first.
I like the idea of Draco getting a redemption arc, but I don’t think it would be easy for him. I mean, sometimes I imagine him attempting to disappear into the muggle world for a few years where he learns a lot more about the world and himself. Who knows what he might have done during that time? Worked at a bakery shop? Maybe.
In my visions, though, Draco always comes back to the wixen world and becomes a Healer. He apologizes for his wrongdoings and is actively looking to make things better.
Do Hari and Draco become friends or more? I’m not sure yet, but it certainly doesn’t happen until a couple of years after the war’s over.
On a somewhat different note, this is one of the things I love about the rewrite. I get to explore so many different family dynamics and how the kids respond to it. Some people change for the better, others for the worst, and others don’t change at all. It’s interesting to see how I slowly watch them unfold and bloom.
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I'm starting to get really interested in exploring the depths and realms of a sub Voldemort...
I'm sorry, but Voldemort is an incredibly complicated and dark person whose character centers around the fact that he never loved anyone or respected people who highly valued love. Any ship with Voldemort (if it's romantic) will therefore require some tweaking of circumstances to actually make him fall in love with someone. It is possible to keep him in character, but those circumstances didn’t exist in canon.
Voldemort isn’t a normal person, not even someone like Snape. It would be pretty hard for him to fall in love with anyone. He’s been avoiding love his entire life on purpose, so of course his life would have to change in some way for him to fall in love. He can’t be as "comfortable" as he was in canon.
So I think all Voldemort ships are fanon, but there’s nothing wrong with that! This is fandom, and we can play with fiction however we like. But people who call tomarry shippers delusional and say tomarry Voldemort is ooc baffle me. Do they think any Voldemort in any ship is ooc too then? Are they against fanfiction? I don't know! 😭
Snarry and Tomarrymort are the most mentally stimulating ships I know
Harry is the only person who came close to truly knowing who Voldemort is. That’s why I ship Harrymort.
You mean to tell me that Voldemort internalized muggle prejudice and other societal biases, yet he’s not a misogynist too? That he somehow doesn’t have sexist or homophobic biases like everyone he surrounded himself with for decades? Suuure
I love a blushing, giddy, nervous-around-Harry old Voldemort.
my favorite type of tomarrymort is actually Voldemort at the ripe age of 70 discovering feelings of true love compassion towards Harry and suddenly acting like a giddy teenage girl who writes about her crush with added hearts in her diary
The last part is...interesting 😧 But the rest is absolute gold!
Thoughts on Peter Pettigrew? And if you ship him with anyone, who?
thank you very much for the ask, pal! peter is a fascinating character and i always enjoy properly thinking about him.
because - let's be honest - he really goes under the radar, in both canon and fanon. he's extraordinarily cunning, ruthless, powerful, adaptable, emotionally literate, intelligent…
and yet you wouldn't get that impression if you take harry's narrative at face value. even after peter escapes at the end of prisoner of azkaban/cuts his own hand off in goblet of fire.
[which is one of harry's most interesting character traits - his tendency to split the world into black-and-white "good people" and "bad people" is something we talk about a lot, but he also has a tendency to split the world into "special people, who have agency" and "unspecial people, who don't"... hence his attitude to characters such as stan shunpike.]
but the main thing i find fascinating about peter isn't actually the way his talents are overlooked by the text. it's the way he embodies one of the series' central messages: that "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live" [PS 12].
when dumbledore says this to harry, it's as advice on how to deal productively with grief. and obviously that's a good and healthy message to receive - especially for the children who are philosopher's stone's intended audience.
but the statement has another application, which ties to another one of the series' themes: that all that glitters is not gold.
so much of the overarching seven-book narrative is about jealousy and longing - harry's longing for a family, ron's jealousy of harry's fame, petunia's longing for magic and jealousy of lily, snape's longing for lily and jealousy of james, etc.
and it's also about how this jealousy and longing leads us to see what we want to see - ron becoming convinced that harry's feelings for hermione are romantic, lupin's inability to criticise james leading to his rage when harry's appalled at him walking out on tonks, the death eaters being convinced that voldemort is a champion of pureblood oligarchy, fudge refusing to believe that voldemort has returned etc.
as both ron and harry learn after ron stabs the locket-horcrux, you have to live the life you actually have and you have to know the people you know as they actually are. you can't imagine them into something they're not, become sad and/or angry when they fail to meet expectations it was always impossible for them to fulfil, and then let that sadness and anger fester until the poison within you can no longer be contained...
which is the peter pettigrew special, really...
sirius' assessment of peter in prisoner of azkaban comes in clutch for us on this point:
"Because you never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you. Voldemort's been in hiding for fifteen years, they say he's half dead. You weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all of his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you?" [PoA 19]
i love this line for a lot of reasons - especially sirius' tacit admission that he and james once met that criteria of "biggest bully in the playground" - but i particularly like the way it aligns peter with [dumbledore's assessment of] voldemort's school friends:
"As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts." [HBP 17]
peter is fundamentally someone ambitious seeking shared glory. and he does this - like, it's implied, quite a lot of death eaters - by putting on his rose-tinted glasses and deluding himself into believing that the person he expects to share that glory with him actually will share it... until everything comes crashing down and he's forced to see that they actually think of him as unworthy of sharing anything with. and his fury becomes toxic.
because peter is someone who inherently views himself as a follower.
lord voldemort would never - to borrow sirius' phrase - do something for someone else unless he could see what was in it for him. but voldemort's selfishness is because he sees himself as the unparalleled superior of everyone he meets - there's no need to help those under you if they're the only people who benefit!
peter's selfishness is slightly different - everything he does is in pursuit of vicarious glory. he wants to be praised and rewarded by a leader he's made more powerful. he doesn't want to be that leader himself.
peter the marauder
indeed, canon emphasises that this is what attracted him to james and sirius:
To Sirius' right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the much-admired rebels that James and Sirius had been. [DH 10]
obviously this is harry's subjective view ["much-admired rebels" is a bit of a stretch, let's be real…], which the text does acknowledge ["or was it simply because harry knew how it had been, that he saw these things in the picture?"].
but harry's assessment of the teenage peter here matches the one we're given across the series:
"Pettigrew... that fat little boy who was always tagging around after them at Hogwarts?" said Madam Rosmerta. "Hero-worshipped Black and Potter," said Professor McGonagall. "Never quite in their league, talent-wise." [PoA 10]
James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom farther and farther away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. Wormtail was watching him with his mouth open. Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn't tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. [OotP 28]
peter is set up as someone who's understood by everyone not to occupy the same role in society [both "society" as in the social ecosystem of hogwarts, and as in wizarding society more generally] as james and sirius.
this is almost certainly for class and blood-status related reasons - and hello to another anon on this point:
the fact that the only parent mentioned in the text is his mother strongly suggests that he's a half-blood with a muggle or muggleborn father [which his narrative parallels with snape, his narrative relationship with voldemort, and his narrative contrast with barty crouch jr. also support].
the way his mother is spoken about by other characters in prisoner of azkaban - especially fudge: "black was taken away by twenty members of the magical law enforcement squad and pettigrew received the order of merlin, first class, which i think was some comfort to his poor mother" [PoA 10] - sets her up as the passive figure in her relationship to the state [the ministry deigns to provide her with comfort], thus implying that she was ordinary, middle-class, and respectable, but lacked the class-based social power to occupy a more active role in the relationship.
[contrast her, for example, with someone like augusta longbottom, who is a much more active figure narratively.]
but she also can't come from a working-class background, because otherwise voldemort wouldn't seek to humiliate peter by making him live in snape's slum house as his servant.
but peter is also set up as someone who - while he accepts that james and sirius are his superiors and doesn't want to usurp their positions - nonetheless thinks that the two of them will do all they can to increase his chances of helping them accrue more glory, thus allowing the glory he shares in to be all the greater.
and why not? after all, he has plenty of evidence that they'd be capable of doing this, given the lengths they go to for remus…
i think he can be very easily understood as somebody who thinks that - once the three of them have nailed the animagus transformation and achieved their goal of supporting remus during the full moon - then the next thing on james and sirius' list of priorities is putting in a similar level of effort on his behalf.
indeed, the text does imply this - in snape's worst memory, peter goes from being positioned with remus as james and sirius' inferior:
Snape was on his feet again, and was stowing the O.W.L. paper in his bag. As he emerged from the shadows of the bushes and set off across the grass, Sirius and James stood up. Lupin and Wormtail remained sitting.
to being physically positioned with remus but clearly wanting to be an active member of james and sirius' shenanigans:
Lupin was still staring down at his book, though his eyes were not moving and a faint frown line had appeared between his eyebrows. Wormtail was looking from Sirius and James to Snape with a look of avid anticipation on his face. [...] Wormtail was on his feet now, watching hungrily, edging around Lupin to get a clearer view.
to physically joining - but still being excluded from equality of power with - james and sirius:
"How'd the exam go, Snivelly?" said James. "I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment," said Sirius viciously. "There'll be great grease marks all over it, they won’t be able to read a word." Several people watching laughed; Snape was clearly unpopular. Wormtail sniggered shrilly.
to being positioned as sirius' equal under james' leadership:
"Well," said James, appearing to deliberate the point, "it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean..." Many of the surrounding watchers laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included.
to being included as both james and sirius' equal:
But too late; Snape had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James' face, spattering his robes with blood. James whirled about; a second flash of light later, Snape was hanging upside down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of greying underpants. Many people in the small crowd watching cheered. Sirius, James, and Wormtail roared with laughter. [OotP 28]
but this symbolic ascent towards james and sirius recognising and including him isn't what actually comes to pass, is it?
[and as a little shipping-related aside... this is an immaculate wormbucks or padtail premise.]
clearly, peter's experience from the beginning of his sixth year onwards [so from the autumn of 1976] is one in which his hero-worship of james and sirius [and it is just james and sirius - if he felt aggrieved enough by remus that he wanted to implicate him in the potters' deaths he absolutely could have done so] begins to crumble...
and then to fester...
until he's reached a point where the following isn't something he believes is actually true:
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" [PoA 19]
[this - as an aside - is one of the major differences between harry and james/sirius. harry's understanding of loyalty and sacrifice is much less transactional: "dumbledore knew, as voldemort knew, that harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it" [DH 34].]
and decides that he should probably transfer his loyalties to the much bigger bully who's just arrived on the scene.
enter lord voldemort.
peter the death eater
while there are some key differences [peter is the one who has to approach voldemort, rather than the other way round, and - as i've said here - i think voldemort withholds the dark mark from him to keep him striving], peter's recruitment by the death eaters has a huge amount in common with draco malfoy's.
[more on which... here.]
voldemort must win him over by validating his belief that james and sirius [and also dumbledore/the order] don't take him and his talents seriously, that they need to be punished for this, and that when peter has humiliated them, he will have the time of his life basking in the glow of the victorious voldemort, who will also reward him spectacularly.
this is what voldemort does with quite a few of his minions - including regulus [another fantastic ship for peter], barty crouch jr. [likewise], and, of course, snape [which flops], all of whom have that corrosive perception of themselves as always being overlooked.
in the first war, then, voldemort must be pretty nice to him.
[or as nice as voldemort ever gets...]
the threats and the punishment come later.
[as another aside, the implication of canon is that voldemort's use of violence against his minions is relatively infrequent - and only used in specific circumstances - in the first war. the egregious torture he subjects them to in the second - and the fact that he does this publicly - shocks, terrifies, and humiliates even the most ardent first war loyalists. i think we can assume, then, that peter returned to voldemort expecting to find him in the same "you catch more flies with honey" mode as in the first war. he was mistaken.]
the contempt 90s!voldemort holds peter in is iconic - so many of his best lines are times he's mocking him!
but something which always stands out to me is that voldemort's contempt for peter is inextricably linked to his previous position as one of the four marauders.
[indeed, i find it fascinating that voldemort says that peter "faked his own death to escape justice" [DH 33], because the only thing he can mean by "justice" in this context is that peter should have let sirius murder him...]
and the most explicit demonstration of this is the fact that he always calls him wormtail.
this is a fascinating twist on the way voldemort plays with the language of intimacy with his death eaters. his favourites get referred to by their given names, while the rest are referred to more formally, using their surnames:
"Severus, here," said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. "Yaxley - beside Dolohov." [DH 1]
and, of course, his ultimate favourite gets referred to by her nickname.
but peter isn't being called wormtail by the dark lord as a show of affection... it's an expression of disregard.
it's clear that the voldemort of the second war deeply understands that peter's life between the potters' deaths and his unmasking at the end of prisoner of azkaban [that is, the period when he didn't get the glory he wanted, he just got a dead james, two friends who want to murder him, and a master who hates him] made him start to regret his resentment of james and sirius for not living up to the versions of themselves he'd invented in his head - especially following sirius' death, when he receives a second demonstration of voldemort's contempt for him, since the moment sirius is out of the picture, the dark lord declares him surplus to requirements and dumps him on snape.
voldemort also knows that peter can only suppress these regrets and pretend they don't exist for so long...
and so everything about their second war relationship is voldemort pre-empting a betrayal he knows will come, when peter's long-buried grief for his friends comes roaring back. hence him setting up peter's silver hand to kill him when his loyalty wavers.
or, more succinctly:
"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?" [DH 33]
peter the [un]man
there's one final thing which i think is really interesting about peter's portrayal in the text, and that's his relationship with gender.
he's someone whose presentation as unmasculine is consistent across his appearances - and is consistently intended to be belittling. but he's also someone whose lack of masculinity is used both to underscore his villainy [and to emphasise that it's the worst type of villainy - to quote jkr, "i loathe a traitor"; peter is the most reprehensible villain in the doylist text's eyes] and to misdirect the reader away from it.
before he's unmasked at the end of prisoner of azkaban, peter is associated narratively with neville:
A hatred such as he had never known before was coursing through Harry like poison. He could see Black laughing at him through the darkness, as though somebody had pasted the picture from the album over his eyes. He watched, as though somebody was playing him a piece of film, Sirius Black blasting Peter Pettigrew (who resembled Neville Longbottom) into a thousand pieces. [PoA 11]
and - therefore - is associated with a lack of masculinity in a fond way. neville is a character the reader is supposed to like, but not a character the reader is supposed to aspire to be like.
the text uses both peter and neville's appearance - especially the fact that both of them are noted to be fat [neville gets described as "plump", which is understood as slightly more polite, but the meaning is the same...] - to emphasise this. they're soft and shy and unsporty. they're passive, in contrast to harry [and james'] masculine vigour. they're both followers, but in a good way.
or, they both occupy the role female characters tend to: conduits for the male characters' deeds and desires, but lacking the agency to have deeds and desires of their own.
[hence why i am extremely compelled by @whinlatter's theory that the best lightning-gen parallel for peter is ginny...]
this is the tone of the secret keeper swap. peter is chosen by james and sirius precisely because they understand him as a vessel. he can contain and surround and envelope the potters and keep them safe that way, while sirius - who embodies the active qualities of a masculine protector - protects them by fighting and running and being hunted.
but - of course - peter doesn't perform this feminine protector role. he corrupts it. and this another way the text underscores that he's its worst villain... he bastardises a role typically associated with motherhood.
he and sirius are set up narratively as the parallel to james and lily: sirius is the masculine figure, the father, the "take harry and run"; peter is the feminine, the mother, the "refuses to stand aside".
once peter is unmasked at the end of prisoner of azkaban and his corruption of his maternal role is revealed, the text's presentation of his unmanliness then becomes something used to emphasise how vile and creepy the reader is supposed to find him.
it does this while maintaining the corrupted motherhood metaphor - hence him having to nurse voldemort's pseudo-infant form in goblet of fire, and hence him being positioned as inferior to barty crouch jr., who joins voldemort and peter, his "wife", to take the narrative role of voldemort's son and heir.
this is extremely interesting, since the text typically uses a lack of maternal or pseudo-maternal experience to indicate that its female villains [especially bellatrix and umbridge] are to be understood as villains by the reader. the exceptions, petunia dursley and walburga black, are fascinating parallels for peter, given the way that they also embody the corrosiveness of resentment and the impact it has on truly being able to grieve.
but peter also becomes a second, specific form of unman once he's unmasked...
the eunuch.
it's really striking that - from the latter chapters of prisoner of azkaban onwards - peter is frequently associated with the theme of voyeurism:
But Ron was staring at Pettigrew with the utmost revulsion. "I let you sleep in my bed," he said. [PoA 19]
Snape held up a hand to stop her, then pointed his wand again at the concealed staircase door. There was a loud bang and a squeal, followed by the sound of Wormtail scurrying back up the stairs. "My apologies," said Snape. "He has lately taken to listening at doors, I don't know what he means by it." [HBP 2]
the sexual undertone to these associations is really significant, because - when combined with the presentation of peter as a follower/an outsider looking in and with the presentation of him as lacking in virility - it renders him sexless, but in a specifically jealous way. he's not voldemort, whose canon presentation as aromantic is used to underscore his villainy by implying there's something "wrong" with him... he's someone who should have been able to access the "normal" structures of love and family, but who has self-castrated himself from this "normality" due to his corruption arc, and who is forced to watch from the sidelines coveting what others have and regretting his decisions and loathing himself.
[hence my absolute conviction that the reason he's not at home on halloween 1981, when sirius goes to check on him and finds his safe-house empty, is because he's snuck into the potters' house in rat form to watch james and lily be murdered...]
and this idea of peter as somebody unsexed or castrated is really interesting as a lens to examine one of his most sinister moments - his role in the torture and murder of bertha jorkins.
nb: there is a discussion of rape in what follows.
i liked this post by @pangaeaseas - and the discussion in the notes -about voldemort's treatment of peter surrounding his capture of bertha jorkins. but i thought it was interesting how a lot of this discussion focused on the ways voldemort is insulting peter's intellect in this context... and not the ways he's attacking his sexual prowess.
the text is pretty clear - not least in the enormous victim-blaming undertone to the way many characters [especially male ones] talk about bertha's disappearance - that peter brought bertha to voldemort after convincing her that he wanted to engage in some form of consensual sexual encounter [described by voldemort, in pg-13 terms, as a "nighttime stroll"]. voldemort's astonishment at peter managing to accomplish this isn't so much him being shocked that he had the way with words/quick thinking abilities to talk bertha into going with him, it's him being shocked that someone he considers to be so unmanly as to be impotent managed to pull.
and then - it is heavily implied, both in the text itself and in jkr's statements since publication that her editor looked like she wanted to be sick when she described how voldemort was restored to a rudimentary body - to rape:
"He was the penis able-bodied servant I needed, and, eunuch poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to violate a woman follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth." [GoF 33]
Hi, one more question!
I read Tomarry fan fiction with time travel, and when they write that Harry is taking Tom from the orphanage, for some reason they write that Harry expects that if he gives the love and care that he was deprived of, then Tom will become a different person. That is, Harry projects himself onto Tom and expects the same reaction from him that Harry himself would have had if he had been taken away from the Dursleys. And also, I do not understand the authors themselves believe that if you give a child (Tom) everything he wants and do not limit him at least somehow, that he will grow up to be a morally better person? Or do they think that Harry is so narrow-minded and does not understand that punishments and rewards are needed for proper upbringing? That it's not enough to just say "don't do this because it's wrong for a moral reason", but to provide a logical explanation that would be based on logic and pragmatism, which would sound clearer to Tom? What do you think about it?
Anyone could write whatever they want, and I'm not going to diss any specific fics or authors. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Harry going back in time to raise Tom fics because it's just not to my personal taste. So, this isn't the kind of scenario I really think about for Harry's and Tom's characters.
In general, though, I think Harry understands Tom and how he thinks more than fanon often gives him credit for. I also think Tom isn't as evil incarnate as some fanon paints him as. I don't think he's super moral, but I don't think he is especially cruel either.
Like, Tom doesn't do immoral things because he doesn't know what's good and what's evil, he is an intelligent capable adult — he knows very well what he's doing is evil, he just doesn't mind doing evil if he thinks it's necessary.
And he has morals. He regrets needing to kill Snape, he dislikes unnecessary death and bloodshed and actively avoids it in the first war. He doesn't want to kill students in the battle of Hogwarts and calls a ceasefire to let them regroup and treat their injuries to the detriment of his own side. He hates cowardice and treachery. He derides Wormtail because he betrayed his friends, yes, that betrayal helped Voldemort, but Voldemort despises cowardly traitors as a rule and his morals are important to him. He hates pretentious purebloods and he shows this contempt in how he treats his followers. Tom has a moral core all on its own with his shitty upbringing, it's just, kinda messed up and he's a practicality-over-morality kind of person most of the time. I'm saying most because he doesn't allow himself to cheat when trying to kill Harry. He just has to kill Harry properly, in a fair duel, because of his own morals and ideals. I also think Tom would be insulted by the concept of cheating at school, for example.
I mentioned in the past the fact Voldemort's favorite spell is the killing curse kinda shows that he has some twisted sense of morality. I mean, in a world where you can burn and cut and torture people with magic there are so many cruel and painful ways to kill someone, and yet, Voldemort's go-to spell, when he isn't making a point or torturing someone for a specific reason, is Avada Kedavra. The Killing Curse is a painless death, even Voldemort considers it a merciful death. It's quick and painless and efficient. This is the death he gave James and Lily because he respected them and didn't want them to suffer unnecessarily. This is the death he chooses for anyone he doesn't have a specific reason to torture because he is against what he deems as unnecessary cruelty. Snape's death is the only real death that is unnecessarily cruel but I think it has more to do with JKR needing a way for Snape to get Harry the information he needs rather than be accurate to Voldemort's character as he was shown thus far.
Like, he has some weird sense of morality, and even with the evil things he does, like murder, he knows they are bad and he does so anyway. Sometimes, he does so regretfully, in the most merciful way he can, and other times, when he hates someone, he relishes in it. It's not about not understanding good and evil or not knowing what morals are, it's about caring about morals less than about whatever goal he wants to accomplish, and sometimes that goal is to humiliate the crap out of Lucius Malfoy, or to showcase how great he is and be dramatic about it. But the fact he has his twisted morals and considers himself merciful is part of what makes him so interesting to me.
I like shipping people that almost nobody ever thought of shipping together and have the potential to be really interesting.
Like Molly x Voldemort, Molly x Sirius, Ron x Voldemort, Andromeda x Bellatrix, Lucius x Hermione, Blaise x Ron and so much more 😄
Wow so many interesting points I've never considered 😍
Hi, do you have an analysis for why you prefer bottom Tom? Most fics have him as a top, but I'm very interested in your perspective ma'am.
well, the short answer is because i want to and because i can.
the longer answer is that i just don't find any of the arguments for why voldemort would never bottom under any circumstances to be as convincing and definitive as their proponents claim them to be.
my issue - to be clear - isn't with people having a preference for reading or writing about him being a top. it's with the fact that him only being a top - and not only that, but him being repulsed or humiliated by the idea of bottoming - is typically presented as such an objective fact that preferring to read or write about him being a bottom provokes responses which range from the simply annoying - "this is out of character!" [any fic in which he consensually shags his prophesied child-enemy is out of character, be serious] - to the genuinely troubling - "it's disgusting! voldemort is a real man and real men don't want anything up their arses!".
obviously - let's be real - a lot of the arguments about why bottom!voldemort is impossible are just typical "slash fandom reinvents gender roles" shit - they essentially boil down to "omg no harry would bottom because he's the girl".
but others do come with more weight behind them. and two of these are:
that the gender norms voldemort was raised with would inculcate in him a big lump of internalised homophobia which would make him see bottoming as feminine, and - in seeing it as feminine - see it as weak, humiliating, dependent, and incompatible with his understanding of control and power. that voldemort would be horrified by the idea of being penetrated, because he would see it as something which polluted or profaned the body he considers to be sacred.
i do think it's possible to argue both of these points robustly, using actual readings of the text rather than just vibes. i've just never found any of these readings compelling.
and the reason why all comes down to this:
"I knew I was different," he whispered to his own quivering fingers. "I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something." [HBP 13]
he's talking about something specific - how he's always known that he's a wizard - here, of course. but we can also take this statement and use it to think more generally about how he views being perceived as deviant, strange, or wrong by the norms of the society in which he lives.
by which i mean... he's somebody who believes that being different makes him special and that people who try to punish or shame him for his difference are idiots who simply haven't yet worked out that he's superior to them in literally everything he does. he's not someone who perceives being different in a self-flagellating way - he doesn't think there's something wrong with him, he doesn't think that his difference makes him a pathetic or unimpressive person. and he's also not somebody who views being criticised or punished for his difference as something which causes him sorrow or anxiety. it causes him rage - because it inconveniences him [it creates obstacles he has to overcome, although he entirely believes he can overcome them] and because it doesn't recognise his self-conception as the protagonist of reality:
Riddle's reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious. "You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course - well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!" "I am not from the asylum," said Dumbledore patiently. "I am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to the school, nobody will force you -" "I'd like to see them try," sneered Riddle. "Hogwarts," Dumbledore went on, as though he had not heard Riddle's last words, "is a school for people with special abilities -" "I'm not mad!" [HBP 13]
you can entertain a very dark reading of this scene - in fact, i have - but it's also possible to entertain a liberating one, and see the child voldemort as someone who has always been proud of his difference and prepared to defend that pride in the face of censure, and who is absolutely delighted to be given the language to define and describe his difference and to be given access to a community of people who are similarly - in his words - special.
all of which is to say... the standard interpretation in fandom seems to be that a queer voldemort would fall somewhere on a spectrum from indifferent to his sexuality to actively ashamed of it.
but i think it's much, much more plausible that he'd actually be proud of it, and for his statement - "i knew i was different... i knew i was special" - to be used as the starting point for how we might imagine him realising that he's queer.
and this is why the "he'd have so much internalised homophobia he'd never bottom" argument always falls flat for me - it rests on an assumption that queer men having to grow past a childhood/teenage fear that there's something wrong with them is the default position. it overlooks the fact that there are many ways for somebody to come to understand their own sexuality.
and that two of those ways are "defiantly" and "spitefully". aka the lord voldemort special.
something which always stands out to me about the canonical voldemort, both when he's a good-looking teenager/young man and a monstrous, serpentine adult, is that - even with all the phallic symbolism which surrounds him [enormous snakes and ultra-powerful wands and so on] - the text presents him as somebody who comes across as fairly effeminate:
he's typically described - as we can see from this excellent analysis from @said-snape-softly - as speaking "softly" or "quietly". when he isn't, he's often "shrill", "shrieking", "screeching", or "screaming".
he has a hair-trigger temper and he's extremely emotionally volatile.
he's typically described as moving in ways which have similarly feminine connotations - he "drifts" and "glides". while the primary doylist reason for this is clearly so the reader associates him with snakes, ghosts, and dementors, it ends up giving him a quality of movement which is fey, rather than powerful and purposeful. indeed, we only ever see him do one thing which requires physical, as well as magical, prowess - duelling. but, like fencing - which is its real-world equivalent - good duellists aren't people who are physically strong or imposing, they're people who are cunning and nimble [and the other men the text emphasises are good at it are snape, flitwick, and harry - with harry's quick reflexes being explicitly given as a reason why [i.e. GoF 34] ]. his ability to fly is a demonstration of his magical power alone, since it allows him to circumvent the need to use a broom, which does appear to require physical strength [hence why the only main characters who aren't fond of using brooms are either women or fat, cowardly little boys like neville...]
building on this, he's often described in ways which make him sound quite physically fragile - he's very thin, he's very pale, he's always cold, every time his heartbeat is described it seems to be irregular and so on.
his reputation in his teens and young adulthood is as a "polite [and] quiet" goody-two-shoes who "showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all" [HBP 17]. i think that point about aggression is really important - it builds on what mrs cole tells dumbledore about it being "very hard to catch him" bullying other orphans [HBP 13]. he's not dudley - or james and sirius - using his physical talents to subdue and control people. he's sneakier... more insidious... indeed, in chamber of secrets, ron explicitly compares him to percy - somebody else the text presents as fairly effete - in order to complain about him "squealing" - aka, running to tell a teacher, like a girl, instead of settling things like a man - on hagrid [CoS 14].
when he's a young man, living alone for the first time, the text thinks it's very important to tell us that he has "slightly longer hair" than he does at school [HBP 20]. "slightly" is obviously the operative word here - i don't think he's strutting into hepzibah smith's house in a twenty-four inch lace-front - but we can certainly imagine him with the sort of greaser or pompadour haircut which was understood in the 1950s as being a bit counter-cultural...
of the five horcruxes which are objects - rather than harry and nagini [who is, of course, female] - three [cup, diadem, locket] originally belonged to a woman and are acquired from a woman, two [cup, locket] are acquired by killing a woman using a stereotypically female murder method [poison], two are connected to voldemort's rage at his mother being disparaged [locket - he's furious to hear hepzibah say that merope must have stolen it, ring - he attacks morfin immediately after morfin calls his mother a "slut"]. and all five of these horcruxes also depend on women to introduce them into the narrative in a way that facilitates their destruction: the diary is given to ginny; dumbledore puts on the ring in order to speak to his sister; the locket is associated both with walburga's grief [it's literally moved from the cave - voldemort's grave for his mother - to the house which is walburga's own tomb!] and with umbridge's performance of femininity; the cup is given to bellatrix [and the text is very clear that both she and voldemort understand it as having only been given to her, rather than to her and rodolphus] and is then destroyed - albeit off-stage - by hermione; and harry is given the tools to acquire the diadem by cho, luna, and mcgonagall, although he has to overcome the obstacles of alecto carrow and helena ravenclaw to get hold of it. harry - of course - also only becomes a horcrux because of a woman - lily's - sacrifice.
his favourite death eaters are a woman and a very feminine-coded man. but - more interestingly - what the text finds unimpressive isn't that he likes bellatrix and snape... it's that he leaves a lot of his dirty work to male minions who are characterised by their brutish strength - people like greyback, hagrid [who he makes carry harry up to hogwarts], rowle, gibbon, amycus carrow and so on. there's the heavy implication in the text that voldemort's preference for leaving the violence to others - as i'm always pointing out, his canonical kill count is really low; most of the murders in the series are done by other death eaters acting on his orders - is something we should see as weak.
the text associates him with this effeminacy - i think it's really important to note, given who jkr is - as a criticism. it's something - much like the text's presentation of him as aromantic, and the fact that the degradation of his looks via the creation of the horcruxes makes him look sexless/eunuch-like - being used to underscore his villainy. he's feminine-coded in a toxic way.
but let's take this in another direction [and let's also return to the actual question you asked me...] and read him as someone who has always had to deal with being perceived as queer by other people, and having that perception be associated with negative assumptions.
he's very easy to imagine as a child/teenager who's the target of ridicule from his fellow orphans/fellow students [for not being sporty, for liking to sit in the library for hours on end coming up with anagrams of his own name, for the way he walks and speaks] which hinges on the idea that his failure to conform to the expected conventions of "proper" masculinity mean that he's not a proper man... and that if he's not a proper man then... he's not straight.
but then we have to come back to the "i knew i was special" point, don't we?
voldemort's belief in his own superiority can - in my view - be used to read him as somebody who would embrace being camp or effeminate or whatever term we want to use, in order both to express his contempt for people who criticise him ["think i'm a messed up little deviant, do you, mrs cole? well, you don't know the half of it!"] and who conform to social norms he thinks are reprehensible ["oh, do purebloods frown upon bottoming, abraxas? well - guess what - so do muggles. do you agree with what muggles think?"] and to humiliate, subjugate, and control them ["you think i'm a faggot, do you...? well, you're right... i'm a faggot who's defeated you in battle and now i'm about to kill you... still feel like a man?"].
while - obviously - appearance/gender presentation has nothing to do with preferred sexual roles - the manliest men on earth can be bottoms! being femme doesn't prevent you topping! - i really do think that voldemort is someone who can be written entirely canon-coherently as thinking that the homophobic perception of bottoming as weak, powerless, or humiliating is complete nonsense, and who would actively flaunt his rejection of this perception as a way to mock people who subscribe to it.
after all, we see him do something similar in canon when it comes to his blood-status and social class. the death eaters - lots of whom are posh pureblood men who conceive of themselves as the most important people in the universe - are made to kneel at the feet of and kiss the robes of and be branded like cattle by and be at the beck and call of someone who's neither pureblood nor posh. there are - as lupin tells us - no wizarding princes... and yet the closest things the wizarding world has to an aristocracy are rolling around on the ground debasing themselves and calling a half-blood orphan "my lord".
voldemort does this to humiliate them. but he also does this to amuse himself - à la logan roy making men who've displeased him play "boar on the floor".
[wormtail being forced to care for him when he's in his half-form at the start of goblet of fire, for example. he's not humiliated in the slightest by his dependence on wormtail... wormtail is humiliated by it, and voldemort finds it hilarious.]
and so i think we can plausibly imagine him also deeply enjoying making his straight, married, "i would die before i let anything near my arse", "i'm not getting changed for quidditch with so-and-so there, he's queer", "i'd disown my son if i found out he let other men fuck him" death eaters grovel for the favour of someone who loves getting railed...
this deeply aligns with how voldemort understands things like power and control - and it's why the argument that he'd only top because he would regard it as the only way of being powerful and controlling never hits for me.
because this also rests on an assumption - that the bottom always understands themselves as the passive partner. i do think the fandom is broadly getting better at recognising that bottoms and submissives are different things [although the bar was on the floor...], but i think there's still a tendency to default to the idea that the two people involved in sex are an active partner and a passive partner, and that the passive partner is - for want of a better term - the receptacle.
the language used around bottoming reinforces this assumption. its voice is passive - the bottom is penetrated, is bred, is fucked, is taken - its verbs are passive too - the top does, the bottom receives.
but the thing is... this is just semantics. and it's a semantic argument directly rooted in misogyny, and the homophobia which stems from and connects to it.
and - since it's just semantics - we can change the language we use at any time to completely reconfigure the assumed power dynamic.
the bottom grants access. the bottom consumes. the bottom takes. the bottom absorbs. the bottom uses. the bottom captures. the bottom detains. the bottom grips. the bottom devours. the bottom permits. the bottom destroys.
the top is the person who's passive - who receives permission, who is granted access, who is consumed, who is absorbed, who is captured. the top is the person having their life-force leached from them. they're just a toy, just a piece of meat. they literally don't matter.
and the text already uses this sort of language - the language of consumption and capture and permission to cross thresholds and so on - to talk about voldemort's attitude to power, magic, and the body.
he drains the blood of unicorns; he uses up the life-force of the people and animals he possesses; he grows stronger by consuming ginny's secrets; he is restored to his body by taking from his father, wormtail, and harry; he takes the money dumbledore offers without feeling the need to thank him or regard it as a gift; he offers up gifts to people he wants to use for his own gain; he "doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their front doors" [OotP 6]; he hoards and conceals precious things; his soul is kept safe by being encased by the horcruxes; his locket is guarded by something which has to be drunk, which destroys anyone who assumes they can simply take it without his permission; he "would be glad to see anything miss hepzibah shows me" [HBP 20] and then seizes her secrets and uses them to bring about her doom; his descent from slytherin is proven by his control of the threshold of the chamber of secrets; he places himself and his talents at dumbledore's disposal, "i am yours to command" [HBP 20]; he controls snakes and they do his bidding; he drains the ministry of its secrets; he controls the dementors, who devour joy; augustus rookwoord "has lord voldemort's gratitude... i shall need all the information you can give me" [OotP 26]; he is the greatest legilimens - that is to say, he is excellent at pulling other people's secrets into his own mind and using them as he wishes - the world has ever seen; he has seen ron's heart and it is his; his followers live to serve him...
his followers are called death eaters, not death fuckers.
and so it's inarguable, really, that he'd have a legion of service tops under his command...