Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!

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Once the muggle medical team had finished assisting Harriet with the afterbirth, they comfortably settled mother and baby before they left the room to finally give the new family a chance to bond.

Harriet sighed as she let herself rest against Tom while their newborn enjoyed his first meal.

Tom chuckled as he reached out and let his index finger gently rub his son's chubby cheek.

The baby's eyes were closed as he nursed, his tiny hands on either side of his mother's full breast.

"Isn't he adorable?" Harriet asked as she gazed down at their son.

"He's greedy." Tom quipped. The baby's happy little grunts filled the room while his father scoffed, "There won't be any left for Daddy at this rate."

"Daddy doesn't need any." Harriet said as she threw Tom a scowl of feigned irritation.

"Daddy always needs Mummy." Tom answered with a husky undertone in his smooth voice.

Harriet breathed a sigh of exhaustion as she looked at her incorrigible alpha.

"I suppose you've figured out what to name him too? Like you did when Mae was born?" Harriet asked, "If you don't mind, I'd like more of a say this time."

"Of course, sweetling." Tom smiled as he bent his head and gave her a loving kiss, "Go on….."

"James." Harriet nodded, "I'd like to name him James after my father………And Arthur, after Mr. Weasley. He's always been like a dad to me. I think James Arthur goes well together, don't you?"

"Oh, yes." Tom nodded as he flashed Harriet a sly smile, "Actually, I think both names will compliment 'Thomas' nicely."

"'Thomas'?" Harriet frowned.

"Yes, sweetling. Can't you hear it now? Imagine in the future when they call out his full name as he walks into the room, strong, handsome, smart…..Thomas James Arthur Riddle, III. Doesn't that have a profound ring?" Tom grinned.

Harriet sighed quietly as she contemplated the limits of her stamina.

After the birth, did she truly have enough energy left to battle Tom over their son's name although he had technically humored her request?

"But we won't call him 'Thomas', will we? Or 'Tom'?" Harriet pressed, "Promise me we won't! It's confusing enough sometimes with you and your father, I can't imagine if there were three instead of two."

"We can call him whatever you wish, my love." Tom reassured her as he kissed her lips again, eager to soothe his mate in an effort to easily gain what he wanted, "As long as 'Thomas' is his legal first name, I will be satisfied."

"James….." Harriet mused as Tom kissed her again, purposely using her storm of postpartum hormones to curtail her feistiness and coax her into submission, "We'll call him 'James'."

As Tom pulled away, he noticed Harriet's eyelids growing heavier and heavier as a sudden wave of exhaustion threatened to drag her into the depths of restorative sleep.

On instinct, he moved to let her fully lean against him while he cradled their newborn in his arms.

Alone in the room with no one to see, after baby James had eaten his fill and released his mother, he blinked as he watched his father snake around Harriet's sleeping form to lap at the few droplets of unwanted milk he had carelessly left behind.

Baby James frowned while Tom gazed at him with his dark eyes narrowed in a silent signal of dominance.

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An hour later, a nurse entered the room to check on her patients.

She instantly whisked baby James off to the nursery as she shooed Tom out to let Harriet sleep.

Ordinarily, he would have protested against being cast away from his mate's side, but Tom took the unexpected opportunity to speak frankly with his father.

While Harriet napped, Tom junior found Tom senior sitting patiently in the maternity ward's waiting room.

"Son!" Tom senior smiled as he stood up once Tom junior approached, "How is she? Did everything go well?"

"My wife and newborn son are fine, no thanks to you, Father." Tom junior snapped.

He stepped close to whisper to his parent in a low voice he was certain no one else could hear, "How could you do this?! How could you bring her here for care?! To a hospital run by……by people like you?!"

Tom senior shrugged as the enchantment he operated under dulled his reactive emotions, "With all due respect son, people like me go to hospitals like this all the time and are treated perfectly well. The receptionist told me this unit alone welcomes over one hundred new babies each year, it's perfectly safe."

"Why didn't you send for me?! I could have called the midwife!" Tom junior snarled.

"I didn't know how." Tom senior shrugged, "The girl was in too much pain for me to try and find a way, that's why I brought her here instead."

Tom junior swallowed thickly as he fought to restrain himself, knowing there were too many witnesses nearby to harm his father, "I expect you'll never let another one of my children be born in a muggle hospital……..Do you understand……Father?"

"Of course, son." Tom senior nodded with the fake smile the Imperious Curse pulled onto his face, "I understand. I will never let another one of your children be born in a muggle hospital."

Tom junior scowled as he stared into his father's face.

He saw Tom senior's critical error in judgment as unforgivable.

Knowing Tom senior's murder would be harder to pass off than the Minister for Magic's, Tom junior began to coldly assess just how useful it would be to continue keeping his father alive.

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As Tom junior's conversation with Tom senior continued, Harriet opened her eyes as she roused from her nap.

She frowned as she sat up and found herself alone in her hospital room.

Her legs trembled, yet the desire to seek out her baby seemed unignorable as she slowly stood from her stiff bed.

She blinked as she realized the tubes in her arm were attached to a bag of fluid that hung from a metal pole with four rolling wheels.

Determined not to be held prisoner, Harriet grabbed the pole, pulled on the waffle robe the hospital staff had left on the nearby chair, and made her escape from her room.

At the end of the long, white hallway, she saw another woman in a matching gown and robe staring into a large window.

Curious, Harriet slowly made her way down the stark corridor until she stood beside the woman.

Her face brightened into a smile when she realized the window opened to the nursery and there inside, lay baby James as he kicked his little feet while he looked around.

"Hello." The woman greeted Harriet as she glanced over, "I think I've seen you before in town! Aren't you Tom Riddle's wife?"

"I am, yes." Harriet nodded, "Tom junior's wife, anyway. I'm Harriet Riddle, nice to meet you."

Harriet stuck out a hand in friendly greeting.

The woman flashed a kind smile of genuine warmth as she shook her hand and nodded, "I'm Amelia Trendell, the baker's wife, nice to meet you as well."

"Congratulations." Harriet smiled as she glanced from the woman's hospital attire to her attached pole with a bag of fluid, all of which matched her own.

"You as well!" Amelia laughed before she asked, "Born today or yesterday?"

"Today." Harriet nodded at her baby behind the glass, "March eleventh…….Thomas James Arthur Riddle III, but we're just going to call him 'James' for short."

"That's quite a name!" Amelia laughed before she smiled at little James and spoke, "He's a handsome one, isn't he? You should be very proud."

"Thanks, I am." Harriet nodded, "Did yours arrive today too?" She asked, not wanting to seem rude by basking in her own victory.

"About two this morning." Amelia smiled tiredly as she nodded at the baby who lay in a plastic bassinet beside James, "Sarah Lily Trendell. If you look closely, she's already got a few tufts of her father's red hair! It gave us both a good laugh!"

James and Lily.

Harriet was not a woman prone to crying.

Regardless, the mixture of hormones and her long-buried grief menaced her aching heart as she watched her son, James, turn his round, little face to smile at red-headed, baby Lily beside him.

"She's……beautiful." Harriet croaked as she tried to push aside her tears, "You should be quite proud, yourself."

"Look at them, I think they see each other!" Amelia laughed as she watched her daughter blink at the Riddles' baby, "Born on the same day, what are the odds?"

"Yeah….." Harriet sniffed as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and watched the newborns coo to one another, "...What are the odds?"

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Amelia and Harriet's meeting ended with both women exchanging contact information.

Little Hangleton's baker lived only a short distance from the edge of the Riddles' property.

As a result, Harriet happily befriended the muggle mother without a single thought.

She hadn't yet had the chance to tell her husband about her new acquaintance before Merope and Mae arrived at the hospital in response to Tom junior's summons once he finished berating his father.

Merope tended Harriet with all the loving, fretful kindness any mother would have shown their daughter while Tom assumed the difficult task of introducing baby James to his older sister.

"Look, Mae, isn't he small? He's little, isn't he?" Tom junior asked as he crouched next to Mae while he held his son securely in his grasp.

"I thought a baby would be smaller. Baby dolls are smaller than him." Mae frowned.

Tom ignored her comment as Mae clung to his leg and frowned at the newborn.

"He looks like a frog, Daddy." She scowled in disgust at her brother's squished, chubby face while he slept peacefully, swaddled in a blanket.

"He'll grow up to look different." Tom chuckled, "He is your brother, Mae. He is my son just as you are my daughter."

Mae's emerald eyes shot wide open in horror as she asked Tom, "You're his Daddy too?!"

"I am." Tom smiled at his eldest child, "And I love you both more than you'll ever know."

"But you can only be my Daddy!" Mae whimpered.

She gazed at Tom in stupefied shock, as if he had betrayed her in the most hideous fashion imaginable.

"Little one…." Tom chuckled, "You are both my children, but only you can be my princess. Your brother won't change that, Mae. No one will change that….ever."

"Do you promise, Daddy?" Mae frowned.

"I promise." Tom vowed as he placed his free hand over his heart in a solemn vow, "Besides, you and your new brother are already connected." He nodded at Mae and then the baby, "As siblings, he is a part of you and you are a part of him."

Mae frowned as she contemplated Tom's bizarre statement.

He chose his words poorly.

While Mae took comfort that her position in the Riddle family remained unchallenged, her heart began to soften towards her frog-like baby brother.

Her eyes widened in wonder as she blinked at the infant.

In her mind, abject hatred turned to curious fascination.