A/N: Part two. Voldemort does wallpaper?

Ternion of Trouble

If anyone had told her Lord Voldemort would have been one of those fathers, she would never have believed them.

She could understand his obsessive need for planning; it made sense to have all their ducks in a row. Hermione figured that was probably one of his better qualities before he'd driven himself into insanity via the dark arts.

Ghastly as he was to look at, though not nearly as much as he'd been before she got her hands on his essence and resurrected the man herself, he also proved to be devilishly charming. With the way she was falling to his say on room and crib design for their coming baby, she could definitely see how he would have been able to charm the masses into genocide. She'd never known anyone that could argue the point on ivory inlaid crib banisters and rocking chairs but after his hour long tirade, she, too, was convinced that they needed them.

Those and the chiffon draperies to lighten the feel of the nursery.

Hermione sighed to herself and was rubbing her swollen belly as she waddled into her bedroom only to find her recently crowned husband – for he had decided he was traditional enough to not want their babe born out of wedlock – thrusting his wand at objects and moving furniture about in the extension of the suite where he wanted to add an alarming number of baby things. She sighed heavily again. The man didn't sleep…no, really, he didn't actually require sleep. He was an anomaly. He existed when he should not. He was a very insult against the natural order of things and, as such, required no natural sustenance or rest.

It gave him far too much time to decide which wallpaper he preferred in the baby's room.

He'd decided on the vertical stripey kind and with as many hours as he'd spent in the room trying things out, she'd let him have it.

"Tom," Hermione began with tired irritation, "what are you doing?"

Voldemort turned sharply at the sound of his true name and brightened at the sight of his plump witch. "Ah, just in time," he said, gliding over to her.

Hermione was determined to remain annoyed with him, though it proved to be difficult some days when he would flash her this wickedly evil yet still somehow boyish grin as he kissed her fingertips or her knuckles or swept her into the cradle of his arms right before he went on his decorator's tangents. Today, he took her hand in his own and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist before tugging her arm up to loop around his neck and pull her into a rhythmic sway.

A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth though she tried to resist it. "In time for what?"

"To provide your opinion on this rug." Voldemort rocked them in time with a silent tune until she was turned to see the new circular area rug he'd positioned between their original suite space and the new portion of the room.

Hermione eyed the rug and its charming yet bold colors that somehow managed to incorporate their preferred taste of bed linens as well as some of the newer shades of furniture she'd agreed upon. She hated to admit it, even to herself, as she loathed to continue encouraging him but…the rug really did tie the room together. "It is not an unpleasant rug to look at."

He huffed and ceased their dance, releasing her and tossing his hands up in exasperation. "You are a difficult woman."

"Who you insisted on marrying."

"NO child of mine shall be born a bastard!" Voldemort turned and pointed a stern and wholly unamused look at her.

"I would venture a guess that blood binding resurrection ceremonies probably, at least at one time, would have counted as an equivalent to marriage—"

He hissed at her. "Technicalities!"

She waved off his temper and waddled to plop herself in one of her husband's more brilliant ideas of a slider rocking chair and put her feet up on the matching slider ottoman. "I don't oppose the idea of our marriage, I was just making a point."

Voldemort whipped his wand out again and flicked it at her with a silent command and her chair and footrest took up an easy sway reminiscent of their earlier dance. She made a contented noise at the spell and wriggled further into the cushions. He took a second to admire the way her sleepy face was barely peeking over the swell of her breasts and belly at that angle before he returned to rearranging low, child friendly bookshelves and filling them to the brim with the easiest reads for dark magic tomes he could think of. He was eager to lose himself in his preparations once more, having rejected his wife's earlier suggestions of letting any of their idiot minions take up the task lest he find himself with a less than perfect arrangement.

Hermione watched him with lidded eyes in a companionable silence for a long while until finally she murmured, "I'm hungry."

His wand arm stopped mid-flourish and his back muscles all tightened into a rigid line. Voldemort turned so very cautiously to peer at the witch over his shoulder to find her staring at him expectantly with exhausted yet dangerously expectant eyes. He'd decided she looked most like the evil predator she had grown into over the years of her – their – rule in these moments. While he had been released from his magical bindings a long time ago, the times where she uttered those fateful words, he felt a cold weight grow to immense proportions in his gut and, mostly, he recalled the one time he had brushed off her cravings.

If nothing else, Voldemort had been reborn a much saner, much more rational being his second time around. He favored more of the cunning he'd exhibited in his prime before the worst of his destructive descent into dark magic. His restoration of a degree of his sanity was truly a testament to Hermione's prowess with spellwork, especially considering how little she'd had to work with in bringing him back.

It was due to this that it had only taken that one time for him to realize the error of that particular decision to ignore his wife's cravings. Dealing with his witch at her best was a monumental task. Dealing with his witch when her hormones tended to outweigh a portion of her rational moments…

…it had ONLY taken one time for him to vow never to ignore the cravings again.

Voldemort halted his arrangements and padded over to his sleepy witch, reaching out and brushing away several stray bundles of glossy curls from her face. "What might I acquire for you, Hermione?"

She made a sweet noise in the back of her throat and leaned into his touch. "You don't have to get it…"

He snorted and waved his free hand dismissively. "If I won't trust the help with the tomes, what makes you think I'll trust them with feeding you? Now, what is it our child requires?"

Hermione chuckled at his phrasing but rubbed her stomach anyway. She traced the insides of her teeth with her tongue and put a careful bit of thought into it. "Apples," she said at last, though when he nodded and began to move, her hand darted out and caught his sleeve. "And hummus. Also some baked crisps."

Voldemort quirked a brow at her expression and how it grew more and more animated by the second as she thought of her bounty of foodstuffs.

"Chips," Hermione added, "But I want them fresh from…here, let me make a list for you." She silently summoned a quill and parchment to her lap and scribbled out several items onto it as well as the specific vendors or restaurants where she required them to be fetched from. Checking over the list a couple of times and scribbling one last thing at the end of it, she passed it confidently to her husband.

With a carefully schooled expression, Voldemort plucked the parchment from her and read it...he then re-read it to be certain he was seeing correctly. "You want me to go to Muggle London for chips?"

"Yes," she said quickly and defensively at his tone. "Is that a problem?"

His eyes flicked up from the paper to her face and the way she was chewing on the edge of her lip. His gaze narrowed and he refocused on the list once more. "No. Of course not, my dear." He was rewarded with one of her more affectionate, pleased noises and he shuddered at the way it eased away the iron weight in his gut with the sound.

Voldemort frowned again on his last check of the items.

"And brown sauce?"

"Yes."

"We have brown sauce." He could feel his wife's glare heating the side of his head as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"The fruity kind."

"You can't use the brown sauce we have?"

"I WANT the fruity kind for my chips."

He couldn't help the sneer at the idea of the fruity brown concoction slathered all over her chips. The idea turned his stomach, actually, but he'd never much cared for chips in the first place, much less to have them slathered in ANYthing.

"You didn't note that you wanted the fruity kind," he began to scold her and Voldemort felt the tickle of a plume brush over the back of his hand. When he looked up, her sweet, docile expression had twisted into something dark and dangerous and like…that one time… He took the quill from her quickly and above her earlier scribble included "the fruity kind" within parentheses and finished his earlier statement with a placating, "which can be easily amended, of course."

That pleased visage fell back into place and she resumed enjoying her magical rocking chair.

The briefest idea of smothering the smug look on her face beneath his palm was tempered by the fond way she hummed and rubbed her largely rounded abdomen, cooing sweetly at their growing babe with promises of "delicious vittles from daddy." He scowled at himself for allowing the tingle of warmth in his chest to linger as long as it did before shooing that away into the recesses of his mind and replacing it with a much more pertinent set of things to think about.

Apples. Hummus. Crisps – the ruffle kind, not plain. Chips from Walt's. Fruity brown sauce from the corner market.

Apples.

Hummus.

Ruffley crisps.

Walt's chips.

Fruity brown sauce.

Apples…

Hummus…