Puddlemere, Beater 2, Chimaera: Write about someone who is two-faced or behaves differently around different people. Additional prompts: (quote) "Sometimes you lose the battle. But mischief always wins the war." - Alaska Young, Looking for Alaska by John Green, (song) Satisfied, Hamilton, (line) S/he was not a poet; s/he was a poem., (phrase) drop of a hat

Divination Task 2 - Tarot Cards: Write a role reversal AU (where characters take on the traits or background of another: eg. werewolf Sirius and animagus Remus). Note: My use of this plot/idea for this task was approved by Lo (Someone aka Me).

I got Fem!Tom's name by figuring out which rank in popularity the name Tom had in 1905 and taking the female name with the same place (which is Alice). The same principle did not work out for Merope, but the origin happens to be the foster mother of Oedipus, so I went with the name of his foster father instead (which is Polybus).

Word Count: 1,700

a world in which my only job is to marry rich

Alice Mary Riddle had been born on the seventeenth of March, 1905 to Mary and Thomas Riddle of Little Hangleton.

The midwife announces the fact that the child is a girl and Thomas's face freezes.

Mary takes the child, her daughter, from the midwife and huddles her close to her chest.

While the same can not be said for her husband, Alice is Mary's only child and she will do everything in her power to protect her.

The staff have their problems with Alice.
She's always getting to places she shouldn't, always doing things that are no fit for a Proper Little Lady like her.

"George doesn't get in trouble for this," Alice says after her parents take her along to their first party and she returns with her dress with a dress full of mud. George is just shy of a month older than her and quite literally the only one whose company she had actually enjoyed there, the only one who had been fun to play with. He's the first person 'of her station,' as her parents would say, that she actually likes.

"He's a boy; their rules are different," the nanny explains.

Alice, in all of her four year old glory, decides that she does not like this.

"That's silly," she declares.

She proceeds to ignore these 'different rules' for the rest of her life, and no one can ever bring her to stop.

They do try very hard.

Alice has just turned seven years old, and she has successfully talked her parents into giving her all the tutors she would get if she had been born a boy. Because George told her about what he learns and, to Alice, it sounds more important, more useful in this world.

"In addition to the more ladylike things, of course," she had told her father, "and if any of my tutors feel like my attention is divided in too many ways for me to reach my full potential, if they think I am slacking off, we can stop."

She had made the staff teach her say these words correctly whenever they were in the room to give her father the best of impressions when she does it.

None of her tutors ever complain, and she makes a deal with the staff that they don't tell her parents about the times she goes to sleep in exchange for her doing her best to make their duties easier when possible.

Alice is eight years of age, wearing trousers, and running around the manor's properties with one of the servant's kids that shares her nose and eyes the first time she comes in contact with the Gaunts.

"Marvolo, Morfin, and Polybus," her companion, James, tell her. "They're very odd people, living in a run down hut along the street. My Mum tells me to stay away from them."
"And mine told me to stay away from you," Alice reminds him. "Let's go and look at them." She has already run off, so James has little choice but to follow her.

They see the snake nailed at the door, look at each other, turn around, and run back.

What they don't know is that the younger son, Polybus, had seen them.

The next year, the Great War begins.

Many of the adults around her become soldiers, from the servants to George's father. Women become nurses.

Alice helps by taking on some of the servant's duties when she should be practising some of her skills.

She's a fast learner, a hard worker, and naturally a good actress. Her father never notices and she's never quite sure whether her mother does, but she certainly never says anything.

James is eleven and a half and Alice is nine, and they've known for years that they are half siblings.

They share some features like their nose and ears, while others, like the tone of their skin, couldn't be much further apart.

They know they are siblings, but they don't tell others that they know. No one, except for George, the only friend Alice has who is 'of her station'.

They have been acting like siblings since they met, either way.

Lucy gets hired by her father when she is barely fourteen — or, legally, sixteen — and Alice is just twelve.

It takes Lucy an entire month to realise that the trousers-wearing girl washing the dishes with her is actually the daughter of the manor's Lord.

Another month later, and they're sneaking away to kiss, employing James's help to keep it hidden from everyone else.

By the time Alice is thirteen, she's fluent in five languages, can play piano and violin, and her knowledge of math and history are excellent. Her sewing and embroidery is passable, but her art could still use a lot of work.

A much more exciting thing, however, is that not only is that the War is finally ending, but women have gotten the right to vote.

It's not something her father likes. "Next they'll give dogs the right to vote."

After you, it would only make sense, Alice doesn't say, no matter how much she wants to. Instead she nods, smiles, and finishes her meal quickly, secure in the knowledge that Lucy and James will listen to her rant later, and then if she really feels the need to she can write to George later.

Polybus Gaunt sneaks onto the manor grounds when Alice is fourteen. He's younger than her, but not all that much.

He tells her that he has liked her since he saw her all those years ago, that he has been sneaking glances of her when she is near his hut ever since.

"That's creepy," Alice informs him.

"It is?" Polybus looks just ashamed and dejected enough that she decides to give him a chance to redeem himself.

After all, if even half of the tales about his father and brother are true, then it's not like he ever had the chance to learn normal and acceptable behaviour.

Lucy gets fired when Alice is fifteen because someone had discovered the two of them kissing and told Alice's father.

She's not sure who, since Polybus, too, helps them sneak around by now, having since become friends and growing closer the more time they actually spend together.

Her father is the only one who can bring Alice to hide some of her fire — she still wears trousers, among other things — even if she doesn't know why.

She can't bring herself to tell him that all of it had been her idea in the first place, that she and Lucy had been kissing for years now, but at least she tells him that she shares some of the responsibility.

Alice is not sure she could have lived with herself if she had allowed Lucy to take the fall for her actions.

Right after that, Alice's father starts looking at potential husbands for her and Alice's stomach drops the second she hears of it.

For about three years, a combination of George — who had been against it the moment he had heard of it from both Alice's and James's letters — discouraging suitors, her denying them, James getting rid of replies before they are ever seen by anyone else, and later some of what Polybus claims to be magic, is working wonders.

Sometimes, Alice thinks that her mother might be in on it, too, but she can never be sure.

But then luck seems to end shortly after Alice turns nineteen.

"I have an idea," Polybus proposes. "You don't have to like it."

"Tell me," Alice insists.

The day before the man who is to engage Alice arrives at their manor, Alice says goodbye to her mother and she, James, and Polybus run away to London. They meet up with George and his wife Mary, who had been engaged pretty much since the moment of their birth and had had the luck to grow to love each other somewhere along the way.

The latter of whom brings some money that they use for a small and quick marriage ceremony between Polybus and Alice.

It's June of 1924 and they marry to get away.

They don't consume their marriage that night, but Alice could swear that she saw James joining George and Mary in their room.

By the time the next year rolls around, they get the news that Alice's parents are close to finding them and that her father has long since passed the line from mere anger to complete and utter rage.

"Your father might not accept the marriage if they have no evidence it has been consumed," Mary, heavily pregnant, points out. "I know mine would be prepared to do it at the drop of a hat were it me."

"I could make him accept," Polybus argues. They've learned long ago that his magic is actually real.

"No." Alice shakes her head. That just doesn't feel right.

She still can't bring herself to actually do anything.

It's only later, after Mary gives birth to a small girl that is definitely not George's biologically but cared for by him just as much, that she realizes it's the fact that Polybus is a man that prevents her from doing anything.

"So bring another woman along," George calmly responds when Alice tells him. "I can confirm that most double beds can handle it."

Now that's an idea.

It does not take Alice long to find a woman she would have like to bring into her bed.

There are many pretty girls, many she would have written poems about, if she had any skill in the area.

The problem is finding someone willing to go into bed with them.

And eventually they do.

Alice remembers the night her child had been conceived.

She remembers that night, and she will not regret that night for the rest of her days.

The girl they had brought to their bed had been as penniless as Polybus, but that did not make Alice want her any less. Not any more of a poet than Alice herself was, but a poem waiting to be written.

By the time her father arrives, Alice's son has been born.