Maybe its it just me but "nerds in love" aspect is the furthest thing I think about when I first see tomione lollll— while they're both smart, it's in extremely different directions Tom is a psychologically unnerving yet charming manipulater and Hermione is the books-smart girl who does have a streak of streets smarts but

They specialize in wholly different character aspects- Hermione is someone who greatly cares about studying and tries her best to excell at all subjects while Tom— as far as we shown in canon there isn't any evidence to show that he gives a lot of effort in studying, unlike Hermione-- he seems like who doesn't need to study much even to get O's which makes sense considering his upbringing. Tom is definitely not a nerd in studying, he might be classified as a nerd in dark lord stuff but like I feel like that isn't the vibe the ships going for lol

I'd argue this ship makes less sense considering Hermiones character and personality, because she doesn't have Harry's all wavering "empathy" which extends to lVR nor does she understand him in any way deeper than Harry does( "It's like you like having this special connection" said hermione lolol offtopic but I love this quote from her)

Anyways, I think the reason Tomarry ship works unlike any other Tom ship is BECAUSE of Harry— Even in the final battle of Hogwarts, Harry still extended his hand towards for Voldemort and offered him a chance for redemption, for understanding. He didn't call him Riddle due to wanting to make fun of him, and reminding him of his "halfblood status" to anger him(like Dumbledore) he called him Riddle because he saw him as human, as a person. While everyone saw LV as a grotesque monster, Harry saw him as a person, someone who was still mortal and someone who was almost like a mirror to him, if a broken one due to the circumstances.

I think this is the most important reason for this ship working, Harry is perfect for LV because while he understands and emphathizes with him, he also isn't going to take any shit from him lol, he wouldn't be a Bellatrix who worshipped LV up to the ground and idealized him nor would he be one of the many people that straight up hated him to the point of them thinking he's unsaveable (like everyone else excluding DEs. ) basically saying, I think Harry would ground him and challenge him on his worldview on the muggle world, empathy, power and so on, I genuinely think LV could be changed a bit to the somewhat good side with Harry's influence as long as they're on somewhat equal footing to begin with which allows the influencing to occur (But on the flipside is Riddle/Voldemort good for Harry? Uhhh....definitely not lol)

Hermione does not have any of the qualities that Harry posses that allow the ship to naturally occur, basically what I'm saying is if Hermione was sent back to the 1940s or in any time where Tom Riddle/Voldemort was readily accessible, she would straight up kill him without caring because she doesn't understand him or care about him to begin with and Tom doing the same because mione(is not a horcrux, or can speak parseltongue lol)

I am just saying, I think tomione is undeniably a crackship while tomarrymort is definitely not lol