A/N: When faced with fatherhood, who knew a terrible Dark Lord would embrace it so? Not Hermione, that's for sure.

Ternion of Trouble

Many months had passed since Hermione had seen her toes, though at every check-up, she made her best efforts to get a glimpse of them while waiting for the nurse and her doctor to come in and go through their routine. At first, Voldemort had detested and angrily protested her choice to use a Muggle "birthing" doctor – as he'd labeled her – for the monitoring and care of their baby, though his protests were swiftly silenced when she successfully set him on fire one evening. His wounds had been negligible but she'd made her point and he, albeit begrudgingly, accepted her decision so long as she would also be looked over by a Mediwitch of his choosing post Muggle visits. She'd agreed and Voldemort had been blissfully uninvolved with her modern Muggle care until she mentioned the fact that she was going to finally find out the gender of their unborn baby.

Hermione had wanted to keep their child's sex a surprise, but as her due date grew closer and closer, her curiosity was more than piqued as to exactly how big her baby was going to be. Some days, when she saw the size of her abdomen in their huge bathroom mirror, she speculated whether or not the myth of growing watermelons in one's gut were true or not and mused that she'd just swallowed a half a dozen of the seeds. She finally caved and decided the mystery was too much for her and let her doctor know that she would like to finally be made aware of the baby's sex at her next visit. Once Voldemort had been told of these plans, he'd subsequently demanded that she explain precisely what means of Muggle devilry they were to use to concoct such an answer for her. Unexpectedly, after she'd used the most off-putting terminology she could dredge up, he surprised her by insisting that he would accompany her to this visit.

Several glamour charms later and after some smart transfiguration spells for his clothing, a very "normal", very Muggle looking Tom Riddle sat impatiently in a chair next to where Hermione lay on an exam table. Hermione was wiggling, adjusting the papery sheet draped over her legs in idle fidgets and had her heels planted firmly in the stirrups jutting out from the foot of the table.

Voldemort watched her amusing herself with the patterns she was creating in the air by pushing and pulling her heels around in the metal cupping them and frowned intensely. "Have you had to wait this long every time you've come to this…place?"

Hermione stopped her fidgeting long enough to shoot him a look from the corner of her eye. "Yes, Tom, usually. It's really not that bad—"

"Not bad?" He questioned harshly. "Do they not know who you are? Who I am?"

She snorted and flopped her head back on the stack of surprisingly comfortable pillows. "They don't, actually. Nor do they care."

Voldemort made an utterly appalled noise in the back of his throat at that and rose sharply from his seat. "Absurd!" He huffed again and had the clear intention of going to fetch someone right then.

Hermione grabbed onto the pressed shirt sleeve of his transfigured outfit – he'd chosen a button down, press pleated slacks, and a matching blazer similar to his old school uniform at the time of his study at Hogwarts – and tugged him back into his seat. He fixed her with a heated glare and she just chuckled and stroked her knuckles along the fabric over his bicep. "Behave yourself, love," she mumbled sleepily, "I need them alive to do the exam."

Voldemort clucked his tongue at being so stifled but still preened under the endearment. His wife must have been truly exhausted to let such a thing slip. His typical frown affixed itself to his face as he repositioned himself in his chair so he was closer to her side. Taking her hand between both of his own, he then threaded his fingers through hers, resting them in a bare spot at her side on the cot. "We've a Mediwitch that can examine you just as well."

"But no ultrasound."

He sniffed at the mention of the Muggle device again. "I am certain they have just as many ways to detect the sex of our child in a proper fashion without all these sorts of-" He waved his hand at the machines in the room. "-aberrations."

Hermione cracked open an eye that'd fallen shut and there was that dangerous and dark glint there that came into it now and again. "Did you enjoy being set on fire, husband?"

Voldemort returned her narrowed gaze with one of his own and scoffed. "We are in a Muggle space, wife. You wouldn't dare," he said tartly, as if his immunity were guaranteed. No sooner than the words reached her ears did the air heat uncomfortably between them. His mouth dropped open in shock and, if he were truthful, the smallest hint of arousal at her tenacity. It may have snuck into his tone as his next words came out a bit more thickly than intended. "You would."

Her signature and most deviant smirk quirked her lips at him and his glamoured blue eyes darkened and flickered with the red she'd come to know most intimately. She felt his hands clench around her one and the sight of his tongue darting out to moisten his lips was far more delectable than it should have been.

Hormones, Hermione mused, were such a peculiar thing.

Particularly when one second she wanted to set the obstinate man before her ablaze and the next she wanted him to mount her from behind in her favorite and most indecent sort of way.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on perspective, the sound of a sharp few knocks and the emergence of the doctor and her assistant shattered their private moment.