#wizard trotsky's a dumpster fire

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

I really like Tequila from Lee's world. What would that weird Tom/Ginny combination be like if Lee had never returned to the HP universe? Would they become more like October Tom? Or something else entirely? How would Tequila handle the mad creature their main soul has become?

Oh man, you give Tequila far more credit than I do.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to Tequila below as “he”, mostly because it’s really Wizard Trotsky at the wheel in “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds”. He just happens to rock Ginny Weasley’s adolescent body.

Tequila’s a hot mess, a dumpster fire, and it doesn’t matter if he’s pining after Tom Riddle’s childhood friend Ellie Potter, if Tom is stuck in a diary only to be released to confront Ellie/Harry Potter, or if he’s stuck in a diary and released only to find out Ellie Potter isn’t even there. Tequila will always be a mess.

Let’s say Lee never showed back up. Tequila’s life would be one of hilarity and woe.

Wizard Trotsky likely would have continued masquerading as Ginny, i.e. being Tequila, out of a sheer lack of ability to answer the question “what the hell do I do now?” That’s why he stuck around as Ginny in the first place. 

So Tequila goes to Hogwarts, milks “I’m an invalid, woe is me, I can’t go to class cough cough I am traumatized by snakes on planes” excuse for as long as he can get away with it (which is forever) and ends up with decent marks (having gone through Hogwarts twice now) but not nearly as good as he once had or, say, Hermione has because he’s gotten profoundly lazy. Sadly, this still puts him ahead of 50% of Hogwarts’ population.

Similarly, Tequila’s effort at impersonating Ginny Weasley is half-assed at best. However, because Ginny went through an incredibly traumatic experience, no one gives him shit for it or wonders “Hey, is this really Ginny?” Due to this, Tequila’s soul is dying inside even more than usual. He doesn’t even have to try around these assholes. He could walk up to the wall, spray paint “I am Voldemort, bitch!” and they’d probably just try to console him.

Lee showing back up out of the ether is the most exciting that has ever happened to Tequila possibly ever. It’d be better if Lee wanted to do epic ninja battle, so Tequila could prove how cool and not useless he is and defeat his prophesied enemy, but even Lee just being in the castle, insulting everybody, and lighting all of Hagrid’s pets on fire is amazing.

But anyways, Lee never shows up.

Tequila gets a pretty good idea of who the original Death Eaters were thanks to gossip but there’s not much he can do about it as all the Death Eaters (aside from the ones in prison) have disavowed Voldemort out of self preservation. His showing up as an adolescent schoolgirl just doesn’t have the same effect  and it’d be a little hard to prove who he is given that he doesn’t even really know these people.

Not to mention that Voldemort was this distant thing in the future for him and he has no idea how to actually go about doing any of that. The actual Voldemort has many years experience on him in recruiting, guerilla warfare, logistics, etc. 

Tom Riddle was in dueling club one time, it was great, he learned things.

So Tequila likely wiffle waffles a lot, telling himself, “One day, I’m going to run out on all these assholes, return as Voldemort, and then Granger will cry” only to sigh and realize it’s far more realistic to start from fresh. Besides, why just try to redo what his other half did, he wants to be his own person (a better more competent version! He won’t get blown up by any toddlers!) and that means finding his own cause. And if he can make Dumbledore’s Order his Order, then great.

Not to mention there’s the disturbing possibility that Voldemort’s not quite dead. Now, Tequila can give this credence as being the horcrux, he knows that Voldemort’s not really dead. He’s amazed Voldemort managed to blow himself up with a baby, amazed, embarrassed, and offended, but Tequila isn’t willing to completely throw out the idea that Voldemort’s this evil wraith who occasionally possesses muggle studies professors. Not exactly on Tom Riddle’s bucket list, but clearly, the original screwed up everything and doesn’t even deserve Tequila’s respect.

(Tequila went through a brief, extremely brief, period of wondering if he should seek out the main soul and help him return it to power. Being the horcrux, technically, he should probably serve the original soul.

Then he remembered that asshole had one job, only one job, and he ruined it. Tequila was shoved into a diary for nothing and look what happened. Now there’s a national Harry Potter Day. Clearly, the wrong half of Tom Riddle was put out of commission and if you want it done right you’ve got to do it yourself.)

So, in 1994 without Lee’s involvement, Voldemort returns from the grave. Because I’m realistic, Neville probably dies. Sorry, Neville, you lived a good if short life and I’m sure you gave it the college try. Dumbledore falls into despair and “THE WORLD IS DOOMED!” mode now that all his even remotely prophesied children are MIA and immediately gets the Order of the Phoenix together.

Ginny, being thirteen at the time, isn’t allowed because that would be ridiculous. Despite it being ridiculous to include thirteen year olds, Tequila is pissed that he’ll have to wait another god knows how many years before Molly lets him do what he wants.

Offscreen Dumbledore probably goes through varying levels of extremely horrifying solutions to the Tom Riddle problem.

First, he probably goes horcrux hunting. Unfortunately for Dumbledore, in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” and “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds” there are only two horcruxes and only one was intentional. Tom had originally planned to make seven but the hangover from the first one was so mind breakingly awful he went “New plan, I will make one horcrux, and then I will think of something else”. He never really got around to thinking of anything else.

Dumbledore, however, doesn’t know this. So he dutifully collects memories, banks on Tom’s ridiculously romantic nature, and starts going to places of importance. Not to reveal too much, but Tom actually laid several traps around for those poking their nose around looking for his horcrux. Dumbledore steps into several of these with not so good results.

Given that one of the horcruxes is Ginny and the other is still stuck in Konoha without any access to magic, Dumbledore is 0 for 2.

More, given that only Neville Longbottom was prophesied to have the ability to defeat the dark lord either Dumbledore has to somehow resurrect Neville or else get himself a new Neville. Because I love terrible, but funny, things let’s say he does both and we get a round of Pet Semetary (sometimes, dead is better, Albus) and pulling in Harry Potters/Neville Longbottoms from other dimensions (but miraculously not Eru Lee somehow, which is great for her because she’s busy having a terrible time in the third shinobi war). 

Back to Lee for a bit and why Dumbledore’s first solution isn’t just to desperately try and find her.

First, she is completely off the map and has been for years. She isn’t even registering as “dead” or “in mortal peril” she’s just gone. Somehow finding her and hoping, miraculously, for her blowing up Voldemort a second time just isn’t on the table.

Second, Lee’s involvement in the prophecy is... a bit wonky. This has been noted a bit in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” but the prophecy in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” and “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds” actually explicitly does not refer to her in that it specifies a male child born at the end of July. This is because the universe is falling apart and we’re all doomed, doomed, doomed, but that’s a different story. Point being, especially in this Lee-less version, Albus has no idea what’s up with Lee but he’s putting his money on Neville. Poor, dead, Neville.

Tequila meanwhile gets to read news of how everything’s going to hell in the dumbest way he can imagine. Voldemort clearly came back wrong and missing a lot of brain cells, even with a body he keeps not taking over the ministry even though they’re practically begging him to do it, and everything he does is not only a) very embarrassing but b) it prevents Tequila from rising into power and becoming amazing.

Clearly, he must be stopped, there can only be one Lord of the Rings.

Well, destroying him completely means destroying Tequila first, and we can’t have that. So Tequila comes up with the only reasonable solution: they have to seal Voldemort’s evil spirit away in some magical artifact.

Tequila drops out of Hogwarts, goes adventuring for a few years, finds some exorcism sword or something and learns how to use it. Comes back and anticlimactically defeats Voldemort while everyone else was busy panicking and Hogwarts was being invaded or some nonsense.

Nobody, not even Tequila, knows how to handle Voldemort’s sudden and very anticlimactic defeat.

Then Tequila recovers and shouts “Weasley is our king!”

Tequila, probably eighteen around this point, is voted the youngest Minister of Magic ever. With Dumbledore dead, Tequila strongarms his way into taking over the Order of the Phoenix, and everything’s coming up Tom Riddle. 

Only then Tom Riddle has that terrible sense of deja vu as the, “What now?” question hovers in his brain. Once again, he has absolutely no answer. Tom is the dog who has caught the car.

Congratulations, Tom.

TL;DR: Without Lee, Tequila would probably end up dealing with the original Voldemort himself/herself. He’s still a mess, he’s learned nothing, and at the end just finds out that actually, he didn’t want to be in power, being in power is stupid.

All he figures out is that he has no idea what he wants.

On the plus side, at least Dumbledore’s dead.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

You have some references to k-pop in your Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus fanfic, so I'd like to ask that in your opinion who would be the visual in a k-pop boy band, Lenin or Trotsky?

I did?!

This is especially shocking to me as I know absolutely nothing about K-pop beyond that it exists and it’s an intense industry.

But uh, knowing nothing about this, I’d say Wizard Trotsky as he’s younger? They’d just try to keep the fact that he’s a complete dumpster fire of a human being off screen. Best of luck to them with that.