Disclaimer: Not mine! Why are you looking at me like that? I'm telling you it's not mine!

Note: This story is not linear and as such this occurs before 'Bad Day?' That said, continue on—and please review at the end! All opinions are welcome. There's also a slight reference to D/G and the scariest thing in the Muggle world.

How Salazar Got His Name

Ginevra Riddle sat at the table surrounded by dozens of books and a few pieces of parchment, absentmindedly running her quill across her chin as she thought. She didn't even look up as her husband entered the room. Tom's brow puckered in surprise, usually if anyone but him entered the room Ginevra's head popped up and a curse was on her lips, while he entered she always looked up, or if she didn't, she at least said something.

"What are you doing, my Dark Lady?" Tom asked curiously, coming up behind her and putting an arm around her shoulders.

"Trying to come up with an appropriate name for our baby, Tom." Ginevra said, looking up at him with a slight frown of annoyance on her face. Tom had been less than thrilled about her pregnancy and had gotten childish enough to try and ignore it completely, or at least, refused to talk about it.

"That again?" Tom asked angrily as he sat across from her at the crowded table, picking up a piece of much-scribbled on parchment. "I don't see why you insist on…Harry? You actually thought about naming our son after that…that…do-gooder?"

"Oh, 'our son' is it now?" Ginevra asked sharply. "After five months of 'it' and 'your condition' now suddenly you're claiming him as your son?" She very nearly snapped her quill as her frustration poured out. "Well, darling, you haven't wanted to have anything to do with your son, and so I've been trying to come up with a name on my own, since you've wanted no say in anything else."

"But…but… Harry-bleeding-Potter? Naming my son after that…that…bastion of goodness and light?" Tom said, torn between being frustrated over her pregnancy and the idea of his offspring, however unhappy he was about having offspring, being named after his archenemy. "I don't see why you insist on having children, how do you know he's not a potential usurper to the throne?"

"You're not going to live forever, Tom." She said, raising an eyebrow, "protest all you want, honey, but this is reality and you're no longer immortal. You're always wondering about the faithfulness of your inner circle—this way you have an heir, someone you can train up, besides, don't you want to see what lour love has made, my dashing Dark Lord?"

Tom grunted in response. "I suppose it couldn't hurt." He ground out, biting down on his pride. He thought about it a moment. "A Dark Prince," he said, testing out the idea out, not admitting to his wife he was starting to grow on him. "But what in the underworld possessed you to think about naming him 'Harry?'"

Ginevra put her face into one of the books, hiding her grin. It had worked. Tom's need for knowing everything going on in his house led to his acceptance of their son. However, she had to answer his question. "He did save my life, you know."

Tom shifted in his seat slightly. "Wouldn't have killed you." He said sullenly.

"Don't fool yourself, darling, yes you would've, but that's all right, I love you anyway, I did marry you, after all." Ginevra said, patting his head. It was humorous to see how much like a little boy the oft-terrifying and much-feared Dark Lord looked like right now.

"True." Tom said, looking up. "You know, that's a bit odd, when someone tries to kill you its not exactly traditional to marry them six years later."

"No one ever accused me of being normal." Ginevra said, shaking her head. "No on Harry then?" She asked with a wicked grin.

"Damn right." Tom groused, "I can't believe you even thought about that!" He tapped his chin, "why not name him Tom?"

"Too confusing." Ginevra replied, shaking her head. "I'm not having two Tom's in the house. A constellation, perhaps?"

"Orion?" Tom suggested.

"That's the name of Draco's eldest, so no." Ginevra said, tapping her quill on her chin. "Hmm…Draco…d'you think…?"

"Absolutely not!" Tom said vehemently. "You were too close to him." He thought a moment, "Erasmus?"

"Blaise's newborn." Ginevra said shaking her head and then sighing, frustrated. "Barnabas?"

"No, I don't like it." Tom said, shaking his head. "The kids will call him Barney, or some other horrendous nickname. I will have no purple dinosaurs in this family!"

Ginevra gave him an odd look—shook her head and continued on with her list of possible names. She decided she didn't want to know about purple dinosaurs. Had Tom been experimenting with new potions again? "Ares?"

"I like it," Tom said contemplatively. "But Ares Riddle doesn't flow nicely. The rhythms are too choppy."

Ginevra stifled a snort. Rhythms? Flow? The Dark Lord who could throw six Avada Kedavras in one breath was talking about rhythms and flow? Oh, what the Death Eaters would say if they knew. Well, maybe Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't see anything odd about it, but everyone knew they were poofs so that didn't count, besides, she had always thought they were more than a little damaged. She thought back to her experience in the Chamber, the first time she had ever seen her husband and was struck with a fit of genius.

Labour hadn't been that bad—Ginevra had amazed the muggle midwife by barely vocalizing her pain. Ginevra had endured many things much worse. The Cruciatus Curse came to mind, as did her wedding, with the blood bonding that had occurred between her and Tom. This was painful, but in an almost transcendental way. The midwife had warned her against horrible pain, but it had been almost like a release.

"Well, I've never, in all my days as a midwife seen something like this!" The well-bred, salt-and-pepper-haired English woman said, feeling that in her thirty years as a midwife for some of the most influential couples in England she had never seen a woman deal with labour with such stoicism and she was sorely tempted to say grace. After hours of childbirth she left the room and smiled at the dark-haired man. "You have a son. You can go in and see them, if you wish. I'll just be on my way."

The man walked in and as she left the palatial home she could have almost sworn she heard the young woman say, "Leave her, Tom. Let her be." She shook her head, the poor woman must have wanted a daughter so badly that she was treating the boy as a girl; either that or she was so tired she hadn't noticed the baby's gender. The muggle midwife would never know that had it not been for Ginevra's exhaustion, happiness, and budding maternal instincts she would have died on that night; the last thing she saw a flash of green light and the last thing she heard a clipped, refined voice enunciating the most-feared Curse in the Wizarding world.

At that moment Professor McGonagall happened to be watching the quill and parchment that wrote down the name of every magical child in Britain at the moment they were born and was shocked to see it read: Riddle, Salazar Ares. She stared at the name and shuddered, knowing that she had to report to Dumbledore. How could something like this be possible?

The mystery led the Order in quite a tizzy—they knew Voldemort to be dead, but then how could there be another Riddle born? The final (and uneasy) consensus was that it was a Muggleborn descendant of Voldemort's father. No one really believed this, but none dreamed that tucked away in a large home was an incarnation of Tom Riddle, holding (because Dark Lords never cuddle) his newborn son, while sitting on the bed of his wife, (the long-missing, presumed dead) Ginevra Weasley, who was delighted that said Dark Lord's dormant paternal instincts had awoken the minute he saw the dark-haired, blue-eyed child.

End.