Labor of Insanity

Oneshot

~~4 Weeks~~

Nagini was the first to know. She told them so at early dawn one morning. They both thought she was, in a word, nuts. In another word: delusional. It took them until sunset that next day for them to believe her, because at that point they just wanted her to shut up about such an impossible notion. So they performed a simple spell that would easily disprove her obviously faulty sense of smell. Only…it didn't.

Harry Potter was pretty sure he was doomed.

~~7 Weeks~~

'I'm going to kill the brat!' the Dark Lord Voldemort thought maliciously. ' After…after I lie here for a while...'

Lord Voldemort, ruler of the British Wizarding World, was lying on the cold tile floor of his bathroom. His eyes were closed, and his arms were resting lax at his sides. A black silk dressing robe covered his otherwise bare chest, which rose and fell as he consciously took slow, even breaths.

A voice broke his attempts at calming meditation.

"Tom! I got it!"

Voldemort—or Tom Marvolo Riddle, as only a very small number knew him by—growled (it could also have been a whine, but nobody would ever tell him that) at the exuberant interruption that caused the break in his concentration, and he tightened his clutch on his wand to point it at the interrupter standing in the doorway.

"Cru—"

He stopped, as even that partial syllable caused his stomach to heave uncomfortably. Just as well, since if he hit the Potter brat with the Unforgivable he might be liable to drop the potion in his hand and Tom would only have to wait longer for it.

"Ah, heh," Harry coughed nervously. "Here's the potion for your stomach." The young Lord Riddle by marriage approached his seven week pregnant and very pissed off husband, a small bottle of a pale yellow potion in his one hand. A potion that, while designed to relieve the drinker of morning sickness, tasted vile enough it could also induce it. Voldemort wondered if this was Snape's passive-aggressive revenge for all his misdoings in the past. Harry would mix honey into it, but the improvement in taste was meager at best.

Harry knelt down by Tom's head and helped him sit up a little so he could down the morning sickness cure. The Dark Lord drank it in one fell swoop and promptly squeezed his eyes shut as his gag reflex aimed to reject the potion. After that, though, he was relieved to feel his stomach calming. Harry had placed the empty bottle on the floor and was rubbing soothing circles in Tom's scalp. From one irritant to the next.

"Stop that!" Tom snapped. "It's annoying."

Harry stopped.

"This is entirely your fault, you know."

Now, Harry could argue that it wasn't he who experimented with all sorts of Dark Magic throughout his youth and adulthood. Apparently something Tom did gave him the ability to bear children. How was Harry supposed to know that the once-or-twice-a-year event where he topped during sex would result in a pregnant Dark Lord? For Merlin's sake, Tom was a man! There was no way anybody could have predicted this! Male pregnancy is not unheard of in the Wizarding World, a world of extremes, but usually it was confined to magical creatures and folk tales.

Harry, of course, did not voice this aloud. He very much liked having his unmentionables still attached to him. As it was, he didn't think he could bring himself to ever top again…no matter how nice that sort of birthday sex was. He was happy enough letting Tom have his way with him from now on (which was neither here nor now these past few weeks, to Harry misfortune). Tom hadn't gotten pregnant the first two years they were together, one as lovers and the other as spouses, but at this point Harry wasn't sure he would take the risk of his husband ever getting pregnant again now they knew it was possible. Not to be mistaken, he was absolutely thrilled that he was going to be a father—they were having a baby!—but he rather liked the British Islands and didn't want to see them blown to smithereens if Tom had a hormonal attack. Which, so far, such events were promising to be spectacular.