Harry & Dudley flee an abusive Vernon - to Severus Snape. Severus finds a home for himself & the boys with dragons and hunt the Horcruxes from there. The dragons - especially one - become their allies. Tom R is VERY different.
— Summary on FanFiction.net
3 Slytherin Marauders is an AU Harry Potter fanfiction written by severusphoenix
, found here.
Petunia Dursley, Dudley Dursley, and Harry Potter leave 4 Privet Drive and — after Petunia recovers from being shot — take shelter on a dragon reserve, thanks to Severus Snape. With help from Lucius and Draco Malfoy, Rosmerta, Tom Riddle, ex-Auror Hugo Savage and a dragon named Yvane, they start hunting Voldemort's Horcruxes.
3 Slytherin Marauders provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Vernon Dursley, like in canon. Once his wife and son stop ganging up on Harry with him, he turns his anger on them as well, not helped along by his budding alcoholism. Unlike in canon, Petunia is not abusive.
- Animal Stereotypes: Dora is a cheetah animagus, Lucius is an arctic fox, Harry is an osprey, Draco is a gyrefalcon, and Tom's is a black dragon. Dudley's patronus is a bear.
- The Atoner: Dudley and Petunia Dursley, Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Tom Riddle, and eventually Aunt Marge.
- Awful Truth: When confronted by Dora regarding his cover story Tom just can't bear to lie to her and tells her the truth about his origins.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Tom Riddle from the diary is terribly embarrassed about being sorted into Gryffindor — the house of "goodie-two shoes" and "cannon fodder".
- Badass Family: Harry, Snape, Rosemerta, Dudley, Petunia, Lucius, Draco, Tom, Dora, Beth, and Victoria become one through adoption or marriage.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: Scrimgeour's faction of Aurors. He maintains that anyone marked by Voldemort is permanently guilty (regardless of evidence), directing his faction to bend and twist any law possible to punish anyone they deem "dark". His chosen Aurors are a blend of corrupt and bumbling, such as those only holding onto their rank due to their family connections.
- The Bait: The Aurors have Lucius the "Death Eater traitor" spend a night in lockup in order to lure more Death Eaters out of the woodwork.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Draco throws a tantrum about his mother trying to take custody of him, and Lucius demands the Ministry workers stop whatever they're doing and assist him... so that Arthur Weasley can sneak in to find evidence that Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge are plotting to steal Harry away from his family.
- Bears Are Bad News: Dudley's patronus is a bear.
- Best Friends-in-Law: Snape and Lucius; Snape adopts Harry and Lucius marries Petunia and adopts Dudley.
- Big Brother Instinct: Tom with Harry, Dudley, and Draco.
- Big "NO!": Tom Riddle when he's sorted into Gryffindor. In a more dramatic example, Snape when Harry's name comes out of the Goblet of Fire.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Dumbledore. He hides behind his "kindly old grandfather" persona but he dumped Harry at the Dursleys and paid Vernon to abuse him so he can later swoop in and "rescue" Harry and indoctrinate him so that he will gladly die for the greater good. He has some guilt that Vernon went beyond his request to "toughen Harry up" into abuse, but excuses it due to the pressing need for a hero.
- Bond Creatures: The house elves. Also Yvane.
- Break the Haughty: Lucius while on the run from the Ministry. He has to adopt the persona of a halfblood handyman and wear Muggle casual clothing.
- Bullying a Dragon: Literally, when a Death Eater attacks a dragon that befriended Harry. He got his Just Desserts (though the dragon later complained that he gave her indigestion).
- Byronic Hero: Snape snarks that Sirius is just a poor "misunderstood Byronic Hero."
- Captain Obvious: In Chapter 116, Draco called Dudley that, prompting Dudley to call him "Lieutenant Sarcasm".
- Calvin Ball: Harry, Dudley and some friends play water polo with a frisbee and rules thought up as they go along.
- Clones Are People, Too: Tom, who grows to become a very different person from his other self.
- Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Snape and Lucius drop hints that Tom is Voldemort's son to anyone enquiring about where he came from. It's such a good lie that they've even got Voldemort believing it, since he has a long history of raping witches and can't dismiss the possibility one of his victims living long enough to have a child.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Tom hates it when someone flirts with Dora. She's just as bad when someone flirts with him.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Lucius's animagus form is an arctic fox.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Dragons vs. dementors. Dragons near instantly win due to their fiery breath.
- Dark Is Not Evil: As demonstrated by Snape, Lucius, and Tom. They spend a great deal of time trying to turn Slytherin House into people willing to use manipulation and trickery to protect others, and a great deal of their opposition refuse to believe this at all.
- Dark Mistress: Mrs. Zabini becomes this (unwillingly) for Voldemort.
- Dating Catwoman: Lampshaded with Tom and Dora. She's an Auror-in-Training and he hails from a "dark family", and unknown to the wizarding world is an alternate copy of Voldemort himself.
- Deadpan Snarker: Snape, naturally.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Vernon, who dies in a drunk driving incident after his family flees him.
- Uncle Algie, after falling into a bog and being eaten alive by the magical creatures living in it.
- Theodore Nott, who is killed by his Death Eater father for refusing to take the Mark and serve his master.
- Distressed Dude: Harry is, as per usual, frequently in peril and spends most of the story being
- Domestic Abuse: Vernon towards Harry, like in canon. And towards Petunia and (eventually) Dudley at times, unlike in canon.
- Double Standard: When Dumbledore is manipulating everyone around him for a good cause, he gets called out for it. When Snape and Lucius do the same, they get applauded for it. This mostly goes uncommented on in-story.
- Drowning My Sorrows: After learning the truth about the Dark Lord, Lucius gets very drunk... and stays that way for a very long time.
- Engineered Heroics: Dumbledore. He's engineering a catastrophe when he leaves Harry with the Dursleys so he can "save" him later.
- Evil Counterpart: Inverted since Tom is Voldemort's Good Counterpart.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Dora overhears Dumbledore and Moody's speculation that "Tom" is the Dark Lord's son.
- Fan Boy/Fangirl: Dudley and Marge are big fans of Doctor Who.
- Freudian Excuse:
- Tom was almost molested at the orphanage by an older orphan, only just managing to avoid it by an accidental spell hurting the older boy and killing his pet rabbit in retaliation.
- Lucius had a terrible relationship with his father, who molded him to become a "proper" head of the family by literally beating him into shape. Anything he actually enjoyed was cast aside as unnecessary.
- Future Me Scares Me: Tom is horrified when he learns what Voldemort has done.
- Good Is Not Dumb: Arthur Weasley thinks up a diversion that impresses Lucius Malfoy.
- Grave-Marking Scene: After venting about his abandonment issues, Tom leaves flowers on his father's grave. Voldemort stumbles across the flowers and can't figure out who would give that S.O.B. flowers.
- Groin Attack: When her ex showed up and threatened Harry, Rosmerta hit him with a hex that does this.
- Happily Adopted: Harry, Tom, and Beth by Snape and Rosemerta. And Lucius and Petunia get married so Dudley and Draco become step-brothers, and after finding her they adopt Lucius's daughter Victoria as well.
- Heel–Face Turn: Lucius Malfoy, after learning that the Dark Lord is a lying (half-blood) Hypocrite.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Two especially stand out.
- Yvane presses Tom into using his Animagus form to save Harry at the graveyard, at the cost of his consciousness passing on.
- Tom, unfortunately, had to sacrifice himself to break the last Horcrux - his own body. Thanks to the return of the Elder Wand, Death is happy to return him on Dumbledore’s prompting.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: Tom remarks that a lecture in History of Magic "set the kneazle among the jarveys".
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Lucius covertly hexes Hermione for annoying him. He accidentally hexes himself as well, due to how he had to hold his wand while casting the hex.
- Vernon gets himself killed via drunken road-rage.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Lucius, on more than one occasion. Snape, when Petunia's owl-carried letter pleading for help reaches him.
- I Want Grandkids: Voldemort, of all people, when he learns of Tom's existence.
- Identical Grandson: Snape makes everyone (even Dumbledore) think that Tom Riddle is Voldemort's son to explain the resemblance.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Lampshaded with Tom Riddle. When some of the Weasley clan meet Tom they assume him to be an arrogant, wealthy, pure-blood Jerkass. They later find out he grew up in an orphanage and is overcompensating.
- Insistent Terminology: Dumbledore and other members of the Hogwarts staff often uses words like "pranks" and "schoolboy spirits" for what normal people know as "bullying."
- Irony:
- Because of his desire to protect Harry, Tom Riddle is sorted into Gryffindor.
- Because of his resentment and scheming Neville is sorted into Slytherin.
- Because Lucius Malfoy insists on gloating to Arthur Weasley, Arthur's bosses assume he must be very important and well-connected.
- I Wished You Were Dead: The moment that kicked off the plot was when a girl named Lila verbally tore into Dudley for being such a bully to Harry, capping it off by wishing that he and his family would die. In a later chapter, while investigating the boys' disappearance, Dumbledore comes across Lila, who is clearly upset by the whole affair.
- Jerkass: Mad-Eye Moody, Vernon Dursley and Sirius Black. Remus Lupin has shades of this as well.
- Just Desserts: McNair learns too late why you don't meddle in the affairs of dragons...
- Justified Extra Lives: The Deathly Hallows, the three gifts of Death to the clever Peverell brothers. Returning these items becomes a plot point on two occasions.
- Harry ends up dragged along with Sirius into the Veil. This is remedied with Harry’s invisibility cloak and the Resurrection Stone (which Harry had planned to use to talk to his parents for Christmas) by trading both to Death as compensation for letting them live. This also solves the plot line of Harry’s Horcrux scar.
- After the final battle, Dumbledore forfeits the Elder Wand back to Death in exchange for Tom, who stepped in front of an Avada Kedavra to sever his link to Voldemort.
- Knight Templar:
- Albus Dumbledore. He encouraged and paid for Vernon to abuse Harry in order to turn Harry into a weapon that would be completely loyal to him and would be okay with dying. Albus has some guilt for how far Vernon took his vague request to "toughen him up", but quickly justifies it with the threat of Voldemort looming.
- Rufus Scrimgeour refuses to believe that anyone even vaguely dark could be innocent, and will gladly persecute anyone who bears a Dark Mark on the slightest suspicion of a crime. He spends much of the story trying to remove Harry from Snape and Lucius' custody as a result.
- Like Father, Like Daughter: Lucius and Victoria, who are both imperious blondes.
- Literal Split Personality: Voldemort and Tom Riddle, previously known as the diary Horcrux.
- Living with the Villain: Tom with everyone. Though he's made a Heel–Face Turn it would still be very messy if his true Back Story was known.
- Long-Runners: Started in 2009 and finally finished in 2015.
- Loophole Abuse:
- The Goblins inform Tom that he can't completely empty out Voldemort's Gringott's vaults... so they leave him a single Knut.
- Fugitives can seek asylum at Gringott's because "Gringott's customers are allowed to count their gold for as long as they like". They can continue counting so long as they pay the goblin's fees, of course.
- Luke, You Are My Father: Exploited when Snape and Lucius pass off Tom as Voldemort's son. Later played straight when Lucius discovers Victoria, a little girl that bears an uncanny resemblance to him.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Scrimgeour throws Snape and Lucius into Azkaban without even charging them of any crime. One would think the Ministry would no longer try to do something like that after Sirius Black was cleared.
- Must Have Caffeine: Snape. As Harry says, "World's Best Father - After Three Cups Of Coffee".
- Noodle Incident:...[R]egistering one's [Animagus] form was really just [...] ensuring the wizard knew the magic well enough that ministry obliviators and curse breakers would not be summoned to a muggle's garden to deal with a partially transformed flamingo - one time of that was more than enough.
- Odd Friendship: Tom with Percy Weasley and Hugo Savage.
- One-Winged Angel / Scaled Up: Tom's animagus form is a huge black dragon.
- Orphanage of Fear: Where Tom grew up. Tom and Harry rescue Beth and Tori from one.
- Papa Wolf: If you try and hurt Harry Snape will end you if Tom doesn't do it first. Lucius is the same for Draco and Victoria.
- Parental Abandonment: Tom has these issues with his muggle father because as far as he knows his father just abandoned his mother for no reason. He also realizes that because his other self killed his father years ago he'll probably never know the full story.
- Pity the Kidnapper: After Voldemort possesses Lockhart, Lockhart begins driving Voldemort (more) insane.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Many older wizards recognize how powerful Tom is and find it a shame he just wants to work at the Dragon Reserve library instead of changing the world.
- The Resenter: Neville for Harry.
- Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Yvane, Hazelette, and Seti.
- Tabloid Melodrama: it seems the staff of the Daily Prophet has nothing better to do than stalk an 11-year old boy.
- Talking to the Dead: Harry and Snape visits James and Lily's graves at Godric's Hollow. Later Tom resolves some of his emotional issues after he visits and vents at his father's grave.
- Was It All a Lie?: Lucius loyally served the Dark Lord and believed in his cause. Then Lucius learns that the Dark Lord is a half-blood himself...
- Waving Signs Around: "FREE SNAPE! FREE MALFOY!"
- We Can Rule Together: Voldemort started making plans to get Tom under his thumb and accept his place as his heir from the moment he found out about his existence.
- Worthy Opponent: Lucius felt this way about Frank Longbottom.
- You Are What You Hate: Voldemort is a half-blood himself. Rufus Scrimgeour, who is very suspicious of Slytherins, is a former Slytherin..
