A/N: Anyone that knows me pretty much knows I have issues being serious... This short story came about from a chat conversation between myself, Colubrina, and Brightki so, really, you can hold them at least partially responsible. We were discussing fic and Tomione and I was musing over the fact that pairings having babies are so often a thing. When are they going to have babies? People ask for almost every pairing...except for Volmione. So me, being me, was like hey, I can do fluff too. I can do fluff. With babies. My way.

Volmione babies, folks. Just the thing you've never wanted to see. :) You're welcome.

Ternion of Trouble

Voldemort tucked the bundle of scrolls beneath an arm, tugging a piece of parchment from the top of the stack to scan the runes once more as he made his way to the Minister's Grande Suite.

This would work nicely, QUITE nicely for the next stages of the plan…

He waved a hand to open the doors to the room he'd come to share with the esteemed Minister for Magic as well as his second and, he had to admit, much more talented 'creator' and…whatever else it was that they were. Tom Riddle had never been one for 'relationships' and his growth into the Dark Lord Voldemort also warranted little time for gallivanting around with soft, troublesome creatures like women, so his experiences had been few and far between before his latest resurrection. It was perhaps this lack of experience that had left him completely off his guard as he stepped into the room to speak with his Lady.

"Hermione," he said without looking up from the parchment, "I found these in the archives, you should have a look at them. I require your eyes on—" His words were cut off by a resounding slap and Voldemort dropped everything in his arms in favor of drawing his wand in an angry flourish. His lip turned up in a snarl and the tip of his wand was leveled on what appeared to be the rather upset, crying face of the witch he'd come looking for.

"You!" she hissed venomously. Hermione slapped his wand arm aside in such a mundane movement that he faltered and his brows went up in surprise. "YOU!" she snarled again, this time stepping into his small circle of space, jabbing him in the chest with a finger. "YOU did this!"

Voldemort recovered his composure and tried to step away from the tiny fuming witch only to find her shadowing each one of his with one of her own. He shot her a disgruntled look and wrenched her small prodding finger from his chest to give her his best menacing expression; she merely glowered in response. "I did what, Hermione? You shall have to explain yourself rather than trying to skewer me with your manicure."

His bland sarcasm pulled another growl from her throat and she ripped her wrist from his grip in favor of pacing away toward the nightstand by their bed. Voldemort opened his mouth to speak but was halted by a stick-like object being thrown violently towards his head. He waved a hand to slow its velocity and plucked the thing out of the air to examine it more closely.

It wasn't a wand that was for certain.

It was about the length of his hand from heel to fingertip, flat and only as wide as his thumb. The thing was a rather sterile looking shade of white and had a small window cut into one bit of it where there lay a curious assortment of blue lines of varying shades.

Voldemort frowned and tossed the thing onto the foot of their bed, returning his attention to his Lady who was now scrubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms and muttering obscenities beneath her breath. With a sigh and a silent plea for patience, he approached her once more, earning him a feral sounding growl, though she finally allowed him to pry her hands from her face. His Hermione looked up at him with great big puffy red eyes, her bottom lip drawn between her teeth, and she swallowed, stifling her tearful hiccups.

Voldemort sighed. "Are you hurt?"

Her eyes narrowed but her bushy head shook back and forth in the negative.

"Bleeding?"

She scoffed in a spiteful sounding way but her head shook again.

He tilted his head and watched her eyes focus on somewhere off to his side. He tracked their focus to the odd white stick again and, with great exasperation, asked, "Insane?"

Hermione's glare snapped back to his face, lips peeling back in a savage baring of teeth and she hissed, "I'm PREGNANT, you prat!"

Voldemort stared down at her for a long, hard moment.

He was waiting for the punchline.

He was waiting for her to explain or amend her statement perhaps…

His lids lowered and rose in quite possibly the slowest, most skeptical blink of his entire life.

"Sorry, what?"

He wasn't sure what it was about the question that tipped it all over the edge, but the next second, his angry – Merlin, she'd been so angry – little witch had flung herself against him and was bawling into his chest with her fists wadded in his robes. She was spouting the rudest obscenities he'd ever heard of between blubbering tear ridden babbles and his mind just kept circling back to the one word—

Pregnant.

"…your bloody fault!"

Pregnant?

"…I had PLANS! I can't run the world while changing nappies!"

Preg-nant. But…

He stopped her in the midst of her tirade with his hands on her shoulders and gently pried her from him. "Hermione," he began reasonably, "…what? HOW?"

The witch growled again. "I-am-pregnant you dolt! Surely a wizard such as yourself understands how THAT works. I know they don't very well teach biology at Hogwarts but—"

"Of course I know how that works!" He snapped. "I meant…how? With you—" His face turned sour at the number of distasteful ways to talk about the subject and finally he said, "I thought I was sterile. What with the whole…my body being destroyed twice nonsense."

Hermione pulled away again and began to pace, throwing her hands up in defeat. "As did I! I mean, I don't know about your first resurrection, but I had to collect the remnants of all your horcruxes, siphon what was left of your magical energy from the lot of them, fix your pendant and then funnel it all back into that before I was even able to begin going about the process for recreating your body! It wasn't really difficult, truth be told, but you were well and truly GONE!"

Voldemort watched her pace. Listening to her describe the steps of her preparations for his second resurrection so offhandedly - as if it were easy, just time consuming – caused him to recall just how extraordinary of a witch the woman was. He felt his dick stir at the ease in which this creature of the light wove dark magic to her whim and, with the shiver that coursed down his spine as his length brushed along the inner fabric of his robes, he recalled why it was she was so distraught in the first place.

She huffed again. "—I just don't understand! When did this happen?!"

He recalled a very particular session of heated rutting – for there really couldn't have been anything else they reasonably could have called it – in a board room several weeks ago where she'd ended up flat backed on a desk with her heels up around his ears. Voldemort remembered how eagerly she'd taken him and the sorts of impassioned noises that had fallen from her throat in that session and idly wondered if that was, of all their meetings, the culprit for their 'when.'

He ignored the additional distracting throb between his legs and focused once more on the distraught witch before him. "We can just get rid of it then."

Hermione stopped in her pacing, one hand over her belly and the other over her open mouth looking positively aghast. "WHAT?"

Voldemort resisted the urge to roll his eyes and simply held his hands up. "You are the one stating you had 'plans.' There are a slew of spells that can remedy your distaste of the situation if you do not want it—"

"I didn't say I didn't want it!"

And it was his turn to be utterly dumbstruck.

Blinking several times, unsure if he'd heard her correctly, he composed himself enough to not stutter when he asked, "You…DO want it?"

Hermione's cheeks lit up in a bright shade of red and she ducked her head, the hand hovering over her stomach still resting there protectively. "I…don't NOT want it…"

Voldemort's eyes narrowed and his hands flexed a few times before he carefully, oh-so-carefully, stepped closer. He reached towards her hair but hesitated for a long, tense moment before finally smoothing his fingers over her curls. She turned huge, frightened yet still somehow monstrously fierce eyes up at him and both her hands came to rest over her abdomen in a defensive gesture. A flush of heat ran through him from head to toe when he understood that she was knowingly considering having his sprog more than she was considering…not.

"Hermione—" He unconsciously extended a hand towards her stomach.

"Tom Riddle," she warned and reflexively jerked away, bumping back into the nightstand. "Don't you dare!"

When he stepped in once more and was met with the point of her wand beneath the hollow of his chin, he chuckled. Wrapping a hand gently around her wrist, he caught her stare and flashed her that wicked smile of his, pleased to see the lines around her eyes ease just the smallest bit as he kissed her palm. "I would not dream of it, my Lady." The tightness to her shoulders lessened more and he reached for her again. When she wove her fingers through his and cautiously tugged it into place over her stomach with, he noted, her wand still shoved firmly against his throat, his smile widened. His fingers flexed and his claw tipped thumb rubbed a small set of circles over her abdomen. "I simply believe that a…change of plans is now in order."

Hermione eyed Voldemort carefully, watched the way he was watching her midsection as if she were already swollen and as if there was anything he could already see or feel from her there. She lost track of how many minutes actually passed, but there was a glint of something very peculiar in his eyes that did nothing to set her teeth on edge and everything to release the last of the tightness in her spine instead.

Tiredly, Hermione sighed, finally removing her wand from his jugular and setting it back onto the stand behind her. His eyes slid up to her face and for the shortest moment, they seemed alight with emotion that could have belonged in any other man before it was immediately shuttered away. She averted her stare in favor of looking to the spot where their hands joined and the way his thumb continued stroking a soothing pattern over her still flat belly. Smiling behind her fall of hair, she mused, "I would agree, since, Tom, you are to be a father."

Her smile twitched into a grin when his grip tightened into something she could only have described as 'possessive.'

Change of plans, indeed…

Another A/N: It only gets worse folks. Lord Voldemort has opinions on baby things.