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A ripple in the wards alerted Voldemort to someone approaching just a moment before the door he'd constructed especially for this purpose opened, and Nagini entered his study.
He lifted his head from the book he'd been reading, ready to ask her how the first trial of this particular iteration of the enchantment went — he'd crafted the thing around what he'd started thinking of as Nagini’s door from scratch and especially for this purpose, so he knew there would always be room to improve upon it — when his attention was caught by how distended her stomach was now, in contrast to how it was when she left just an hour ago.
“Nagini, what have I said about hunting without me?” he said, frowning down at her. Nagini was far better company than most of his followers most days, but that didn't mean he'd stand for her outright defying him.
“No pets someone would miss, but I checked this time! It said it wanted to come.”
“It said?”
He rather doubted whatever she ate could have physically asked her for such a thing, nor that it would have actually wanted to be eaten. Sometimes, he came face to face with the hard limits of snake intellectual capacity and rather wished he could do something about it.
“Yesss, you will see. A moment,” she said, and then immediately started retching, right there on the carpet, in the middle of his study. He wasn't squeamish by any means, but he really thought they'd gotten past the worst of the house breaking years ago.
Completely oblivious to his steadily growing displeasure, or else choosing to ignore him, Nagini kept at it, steadily moving the bulging up her throat inch by inch. If he watched closely, he thought he could see it wriggling, which meant it might not be entirely dead yet.
He recalled the last time she regurgitated something that was only mostly dead, a kneazle that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After it was first captured, swallowed, and regurgitated it processed to lead her on a merry chase through all three floors of the Riddle house before tearing up the grounds. The lawn still hadn't recovered from that mess, not that he especially cared about appearances, especially what muggles thought of him.
Well, he was hardly going to be able to get any more work done while she was acting out like this, and he could at least muster enough patience to wait until she was finished before he expressed the full extent of his displeasure.
Damage mitigation would be the best use of his time while he waited, he thought, and so he set about spelling the carpet impervious to various fluids, and then the bookshelves, the various couches and armchairs and cushions, and on and on. He had perhaps uncharitably thought of this particular list of spells as his toddler-proofing list from when Nagini first joined him, though to be fair, at the time she had the tendency to try to eat everything in sight, or else to poke at and try break it, or knock it over and get proceed to her belly torn up on the various splinters and shards she'd make.
Really, he had thought she was grown past this phase by now, and finding she wasn't was rather more disappointing than he was expecting this day to be.
Finally, she stopped her retching, and Voldemort refocused his displeasure on Nagini only to see that an actual human child was sitting on the carpet beside her. It was rubbing at its eyes with tiny fists and trying to clear it's face, though he could tell at a glance that it was far too covered in the usual, disgusting mess of Nagini's last meal to have any hope of succeeding.
“Nagini…” he started.
“Look! It wanted to come!”
Voldemort felt a headache coming on, and instead started again, “Nagini, their parents are going to be looking for them, you can't—”
“Nuh uh,” the child babbled, and Voldemort held onto his patience by a thread. It was probably just making sounds, imitating what it was hearing, except Nagini completely overreacted to the noise.
“Yesss, little snake, tell Tom. This is a much nicer place to build a nest, isn't it? Feel how soft it is,” she said, slithering around the child as she spoke.
The child obligingly patted the rug as she passed, but Voldemort still wasn't buying it.
“Where did the door take you today, Nagini?” he asked, already thinking through how much of a pain it would be to find the exact right spot to dump the kid before its absence was noted.
He was going to have to find a way to record which location the portal spell opened to, wasn't he? Nevermind how genius he'd been, to introduce a randomization element to the more typical class of portal spells, to take her to one of a pre-selected list of parks in the British Isles and back, but the very nature of the spell resisted the kind of highly ordered observation that would allow him to note the selected location down.
Which wasn't to say he couldn't do it, only that it would be extremely annoying and take quite a bit of time to get right.
“A park,” she said, entirely unconcerned. She was focused on peering at the child's face far more than Voldemort thought was strictly necessary, as it started playing with her pile of vomit in what had to be the most disgusting example of finger painting he'd ever seen.
“What kind of park?” he grit out.
“Grass, trees. Nothing to eat,” she said, still focused on the child more than him.
How exceptionally unhelpful. As though he couldn't have already guessed she hadn't found the child in the middle of a bloody forest.
“Nagini, I'm trying not to draw any attention, we have to take the child back—”
“BackbackbackbackBACK,” the child babbled, gaining volume with each repetition. They punctuated the last one with an enthusiastic slap to the puddle of vomit, and Voldemort saw drops of it land on the top of his bookshelf, the backside of an armchair, the ceiling, and even within the child's mouth.
This was so much worse than any mess Nagini had ever created for him. Nope, he had to put an end to this as soon as possible.
“Child,” he said, aiming for a tone that was calm and measured. “We're taking you home. Do you know where that is? Where do you sleep?”
The child's lip wobbled, and his enthusiastic splashes petered off.
“Cu-cubububuurd,” it said, “No cubbard, nonono.”
“Child—”
“NO CUPBOARD, NOOO!” it shrieked, and well…that was about as clear as anything wasn't it?
“We can try, Nagini,” he said. How a random toddler she found came to be a parselmouth, Voldemort had no clue, but he could take it in for one night.
“One night,” he emphasized, looking at the child with a bit of trepidation. "Then it has to go home."
This child was going to be the death of him, he just knew it.