Tommy, boogeyman of Wizarding Britain (Harry Potter)
England is awful.
Really - she blames her previous life as an american for even thinking otherwise. It's all "america sucks everywhere else is better!" but the second you leave the country it just solidifies "actually everywhere sucks ; and please go back to america you're loud and don't know how to measure things correctly."
Which, yeah she figures that's kind of fair. She was considered loud and bad at measuring in her own country, not to talk about the rest of the fucking world.
So yeah, she gets it. Really, if she had any choice in the matter she'd go back to her tiny little state in her shitty country.
But also, she isn't an american. In fact, she was born in some weird slums in the middle of what was definitely not modern day anywhere. She's never even gone into the proper city, let alone gone across the ocean.
Yet.
She remembers being american.
You may be thinking; "It's not that big of a deal - culture shock sucks, yeah, but it's workable. Shouldn't the fact you seem to have much bigger issues bother you more? Really, living in London can't be nearly as alarming as the fact that you remembers life like, roughly fourty years in the future right?"
You are so fucking wrong, and it hurts that she had to tell you that.
Because she doesn't just live in London - which is like, the more compact version of those creepy urban american streets. No, no she lives in the slums of London.
Not even the usual slums of London, she lives in the fucking magical slums of London.
Yeah, because apparently that's a thing.
Listen maybe if her life didn't read like the backstory for some magical hidden society fantasy book she'd care a little more about this reveal. But really, even before being born into the slums of said magical society - her life always had a certain vibe of 'backstory to a coming of age children's story.'
Honestly, an American girl who moved constantly because of her parents' work? An only child who was completely average in everything she did and only had polite acquaintances, instead of friends? A girl who always had too big of an imagination when she was young?
Yeah, honestly she probably should have expected this one.
She kind of worries for sticking out though, an american in a city of British people isn't very subtle. She was honestly half convinced for a while that america was a social experiment to see how quickly someone could be pointed out as a foreigner in any crowd.
Americans just have this strange air about them, very obvious in crowds of non-americans.
Then she got a letter for a magical boarding school located in Scotland, and well - you know how she just said americans tend to stick out in a crowd?
Take that, and multiply it by ten ; and you can begin to imagine what a prepubescent american looks like in a crowd of british children in a magical boarding school in scotland during 1991.
Yeah, fucking yikes.
To add insult to injury? The old ass hat said more or less in this specific sequence, 'Stay away from the hufflepuffs, you'd do something awful there I can tell.' then 'Ravenclaw may have fit, but you don't have the love for knowledge like they do. If they think information is something to be shared, you think it to be something to be hoarded.' then 'You may stage a rebellion against magical society with the entirety of gryffindor running on good intentions at your aide if I leave you with them for more than ten minutes.' then finally 'no no, best be-' "SLYTHERIN"
Which, like ???
She actually got a pretty solid teacher that showed up to her own corner in the outskirts of Knockturn - that explained stuff about magic and sorted out her living situation - she stays at the school all year long, and has a room in the leaky cauldron funded by the school for the summers. That aside, on the topic of hogwarts houses, she was told basically "Slytherin is more often then not full of purebloods - you won't be going there for obvious reasons. If anything I expect you to be a Ravenclaw ; you have nothing to worry about there, Flitwick tends to look after his house."
Now she pins the teacher with an accusing glare moving across the completely silent hall - sans her own footsteps as she walks to the table.
Then suddenly, the great hall elects to ignore the entire thing because "Oh my god harry potter."
She doesn't know a harry potter, or why he's important, but damn did that put the hall in a good mood.
Of course, the slytherins are not 'the entire hall' - the slytherins are in fact so much not the entire hall everyone is still gaping like a fish in silence at the fact some random no name is in their house ; literally.
She didn't have a name. At all. She was born in the slums of fucking knockturn alley - she literally raised herself. She does not have a name ; her parents didn't even give her one. Apparently to the magic book in hogwarts that writes down the name of every magical child ever born (which like, hello? Privacy please?) she's just. blank. An empty slate.
So yeah, hogwarts literally doesn't have a name down for her. Being called up to the sorting hat was an experience - apparently as a placeholder she's been given the name Tommy O'Nokturn.
Let her repeat it again - Tommy fucking O'Nokturn.
It's like the magical equivalent of John Doe, apparently. The fact she was born and (self) raised in knockturn had nothing to do with it - corpses that can't be identified by any magical means just so happen to show up in knockturn more then any other place in wizarding britain, so therefor ; Tommy O'Nokturn. She complained about the fact her name was Tommy, as well - frankly, a dainty little girl - but she was just given an unimpressed stare - which she can admit shut her up with only minimal grumbling.
See? She can get a clue sometimes!
Despite her misgivings she got over it fast, because, well - she was reassured "really most people won't get the phrase at all - you'll only get the occasional confused look from a pureblood, maybe - but they won't have any reason to talk to you in the first place, so you'll be fine."
Which was now void, considering she was in the middle of the house full of the most purebloods in the school.
She'll be lucky to make it through the school year even half forgotten, at this rate.
She blames america. Yeah it has nothing to do with this current situation in theory, but she still blames america anyways. It's just her first instinct as a former american - when in doubt and life is poor, just blame the country.
She thinks this situation most definitely counts as in doubt and poorly living; so she's doing what she does best - that is, blaming all of her issues on her former home country.
It's pretty therapeutic, honestly. She should blame all her issues on abstract concepts more often. It does wonders for her psyche, honestly.
oc knows. nothing about harry potter. it literally did not exist in her universe. let's just say hypothetically in her original universe the big magic book franchise was like, skulduggery pleasant or something.
anyways Tommy here is a fun character so let's talk about her a little
Tommy O'Knockturn's name is a mix of stuff I threw together. apparently in britain slang for the army everyman is Tommy Atkins - but a school naming an 11 year old girl solider is a bit strange yeah? I liked the concept though, so I kept the Tommy part in.
O'Knockturn is a bit of a strange one, see originally I planned on naming Tommy here Tommy Knockturn ; then I decided that's tacky, so what about Tommy Van Knockturn instead? But that's also tacky, and kind of brings out the fact she's from knockturn too much.
Light derailing here ; My writing process is I write first, come up with details on the spot, and move on. I come up with a start and I make a middle and end for that start. So I hadn't got Tommy a name by the time the sorting was happening ; and then I decided ; well I want to set up the weird tension Tom has with the slytherins, but the entire SCHOOL vs Tommy seems a bit unfair yeah? How to fix that?
Then I remembered Ohhhh right harry potter is like, practically every child's hero in canon. like actual bedtime stories are written about this fucker. so I decided most of the school would probably forget about eerie little Tommy if Harry potter showed up ; but slytherin wouldn't because they pretty clearly knew Harry Dark lord slayer Potter is pretty clearly not going into slytherin. so they'd have time to stew on Tommy, but the rest of the school minus a few perceptive students (maybe cedric and one of the older weasleys? and maybe hermione will remember too.) outside of slytherin will not care all that much
But then I realized, "oh, slytherin would probably care more about draco's sorting then the weird firstie. draco has, you know; connections." and because Knockturn Tommy would come before Malfoy Draco and Potter Harry in sorting order ; so I needed to fix that.
I found my perfect solution ; "O'"
O' means, generally ; 'the direct male descendant.'
and I thought, yeah ; Tommy O'Knockturn would be the perfect everyman for unidentified magical corpses yeah? Because Tommy, directly of Knockturn? Plus O'Knockturn is before Potter while also being after Malfoy ; but not directly after Malfoy. That's Nott.
The reason why I imagine Tommy O'Knockturn to be such an eerie name to purebloods is because if "harry potter" is the name people are told good guy stories about, "Tommy O'Knockturn" is the boogeyman that parents use to scare their kids. To most purebloods magic is everything, so corpses even magic cannot identify actually terrifies them conceptually.
So for the younger years (I'd imagine 1-3 maybe?) it's a mix of genuine terror that causes apprehension, for the middle grounds (3-5) it's more of a "what are the odds? bad omen" kind of stuff, and for the older years they probably decide it's not their problem. the more nosy ones might look for information on "Tommy O'Knockturn" passively but eventually find nothing in specific to THIS tommy o'knockturn and let it go because it's not that important, honestly
++ if anyone was wondering, slytherins are NOT the bad guy here. I read one bleach and hp crossover that characterized slytherins as just 'the most easily entertained house on campus. honestly they have so much freetime and for what' and I decided 'what if slytherins are just giant humans cats. like a bunch of asshole cats that scratch the shit out of people, but cats all the same. what then.' and decided I liked the plotline that slytherins are just (metaphorically) human cats who pretend to be snakes because their founder was positively obsessed with snakes because of the fact he could talk to them and they needed to preserve house unity. modern day slytherin are like the kind of cats that would scratch out your eye and act like they don't know why you're so mad about it just to piss you off and I love that for them
the reason this oc isn't from a universe with hp in it is BECAUSE the preexisting stigma she has against slytherin would be more concrete if she. yk. knew basically all of them DID end up joining the creepy murder guy in the end. here she's playing devils advocate because she looks at the tiny 11 year olds and goes "okay but how are these tiny little bratty cats evil. explain it to me rn."
my plotline was going to be something like;
-Tommy looks at the pathetic social life of her like, seven peers in total and decides "why not befriend every slytherin in my grade" and fights the uphill battle that is trying to befriend people who are terrified of you and think every action you do is malicious (kind of like how other houses treat slythrins and something something irony)
-the obligatory occasional skulduggery ref (maybe something about true/given/taken names because I find the fact our protagonist was just. GIVEN a name so funny)
-idk, improvise from there. go crack if I feel like it. theodore nott is scared of chickens, daphne hates astronomy bcz her sister is in the "galaxy pattern" phase, draco does not know what a cat is (for some reason) and adores them after researching them because tommy calls him "bristling cat" to his face once and he is curious (he starts taking it as a compliment after that), zabini and tommy bond over a mutual intense distaste for sushi because I can, the world in my oyster and the pearl is for the taking or however the phrase is meant to go.
maybe I'll go slice of life ; make a fun fic about the fact that like, there's a total of 12 orphans that need housing that attend hogwarts and they all have rooms on the leaky cauldron floor booked out for that single use. shenanigans ensue as they all get to know each other and get used to their presence.
all of this is again, highly unlikely ; I am literally exhausted just thinking of it - my hands couldn't take it. fun idea to tinker with though.
EDIT NOTE, like 2 days later // same thought process for the name stuff ; but I changed it to O'Nokturn because the other one looked dumb. Might change it to O'Noktirn or smth if I think it flows better
ahhh sorry for the rambling in the notes !! got carried away with concepts again, ignore that if you want lol most of it really isn't relevant to the fic itself ; I just got tired and decided "yk what. I could do SO much with this. what if I did. I won't, but what IF I did."