Chapter Text
This shouldn’t be possible, thought Tom, staring down at the glowing green light that informed him that yes, it absolutely was.
Speaking to snakes, he could handle.
Magic being real and utterly fascinating, he could handle.
But this?
He was male, for Merlin’s sake!
But thinking back on it, two weeks ago he had tried that ancient life ritual. The Sanskrit one. And maybe his Sanskrit wasn’t exactly fluent.
At all.
He was huddled in the Prefect’s bathroom with the Healer’s Seventh Edition Symptom Finder open on his lap and his wand in hand. Letting the phoenix-feather infused stick of wood clatter to the ground, he thunked his forehead against the toilet seat.
Thank Merlin he was a Prefect. If anyone found him like this… his reputation was dead.
Not that it wasn’t already doomed. According to the massive book, it’d be fairly obvious around twelve to sixteen weeks in - subtract four, because it had been two weeks since the ritual and according to the book, he should be counting from his last menstrual period, which, being male, he hadn’t had, but that was approximately two weeks…
They’d know in eight to twelve weeks! More like eight, apparently, because Tom was quite slim, and was a first time mother…
Mother.
It was odd, to apply that word to himself. He knew, of course, that he had had a mother, but he had never met the woman and didn’t care to, if she couldn’t be bothered to live and raise him.
He would do a better job than she had. He would be there for his child.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t made the decision to keep it - but then he read to the next paragraph and discovered that he could not, in fact, terminate the pregnancy without killing himself.
He was feeling rather attached to the poppy seed-sized blastocyst he now knew he had.
Merlin, he was getting sentimental now!
He rested his hand against the flat surface of his abdomen, wondering what, exactly, that ritual had done to his body, and how this had happened.
Was it a miracle or a nightmare?
The nausea, the tiredness, the aversion to Malfoy’s obnoxiously-scented hair gel, it all made sense now.
He was going to have a baby.
A baby!
He, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Heir of Slytherin, was pregnant with a child.
The thought had him shaking with laughter, and soon, retching into the toilet bowl.
At breakfast the next morning he scooped what food didn’t make him ill onto his plate, no longer feeling bad about his desire for sugar now that he knew his body was supporting another organism.
His Knights were giving him weird looks.
“What?” he snapped.
“You, uh… normally hate french toast,” replied Thaddeus Nott, who had replaced Abraxas in sitting next to Tom after the hair gel stench problem had made eating impossible.
“Oh.” Tom supposed he normally did. Usually he complained to no end about the disgusting, steaming, egg-coated bread, but today he’d heaped it onto his plate and submerged it all in copious amounts of maple syrup.
And by Merlin, it smelled heavenly.
Tom did not grace his Knights with a proper response, instead devouring two platefuls of the syrupy delight. Although he knew it was months too early, he could almost feel the blastocyst-turned embryo jump for joy. He wasn’t sure where it was supposed to be implanting into, but whatever he craved, the baby would have!
Potions proved to be a difficulty.
“Please put the newt livers in,” Tom said stiffly. Usually he was very hands-on with Potions, but everything stank and it was making his head swim almost as much as his stomach.
“This many?” Now Lestrange, the idiot, was waving the awful livers in front of Tom’s nose! Tom gagged, throwing up a little into his mouth and forcing himself to swallow it back down. He couldn’t let on what the problem was. Silently, he nodded, and shot a discrete freshening charm at his mouth.
Even then, it wasn’t enough, for the potion brought the vomit back up, and Tom was forced to run out of the classroom, despite Professor Slughorn’s surprised cries, and all the way to the nearest loo.
Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple.
Professor Dumbledore was walking past, and when Tom hurtled past him with a hand clamped over his mouth, he changed course and followed.
Dumbledore came into the loo to find Tom hunched over the toilet, emptying the contents of his stomach into the bowl.
“Tom, my boy!” said Dumbledore, sounding concerned.
Tom didn’t have the energy to try and make the Transfiguration Professor go away. He rested his head against the toilet, feeling sweat creep down his back.
Dumbledore was peering into Tom’s pasty-white face. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m not sick,” mumbled Tom, wrapping his arm around his stomach. There was nothing visibly there, but he wouldn’t let anyone harm the embryo there.
“May I remind you that I have just seen you throwing up,” said Dumbledore.
Tom stumbled to his feet. “I can show you.”
He led Dumbledore to the library, into the Restricted Section - the librarian frowned at seeing Tom there during class time, but was appeased by Dumbledore’s presence - and to the book of rituals he had used. He opened it to the page on the Sanskrit life ritual. “This. Do you read Sanskrit, Professor?”
“Very well, my boy… oh! Oh, Tom, you… this ritual?”
Tom nodded, leaning back on the shelf, feeling incredily exposed and fragile. Was this it? Was this the end? Dumbledore would destroy him, now he knew of Tom’s quest for immortality, and kill the baby, too…
Dumbledore closed the book.
“You’ve been going through this alone, my boy?”
Tom nodded, mortified at the tears he felt welling in his eyes.
Dumbledore stepped toward Tom, who dropped to the ground, trying to scuttle away, shielding his abdomen, tears now flowing freely down his face.
“I will not harm you,” assured Dumbledore, coming closer. Tom curled up in a ball, knowing the efforts of his body to guard his child were futile in the face of magic. But he could not run, fear kept him rooted to the spot.
Dumbledore put his arms around Tom, and squeezed. Tom pressed his face into Dumbledore’s fine suit, sobbing openly. “Don’t kill me!” he begged. “Don’t kill my baby!”
“I will not harm you,” repeated Dumbledore, but Tom was too deep in the throes of panic to hear.
He cried himself to sleep in Dumbledore’s arms, and did not wake even when the older wizard brought him to a comfortable bed.
Dumbledore, for his part, was enormously relieved. With a baby on the way, Tom would love another being, and find other aspirations than ruling the world.