Querencia

And it all begins.

Choose.

The voice echoed through Death's head once more.

Choose one. Neither can exist while the other lives.

Death shook the thoughts out of his mind.

No. He wouldn't choose. Not today.

Staring down at the two scenes in front of him, he sighed.

He couldn't stop this. He knew that. No one could stop Fate. Not even Fate herself.

But he could delay it.

Perhaps delay it long enough for the situation to be forgotten completely.

He knew it was wishful thinking.

Of course it was.

It was Fate.

And no one dared to try and change it.

But perhaps, he could be the first.

Just this once.

He would let them live. Both of them.

Just this once.

Just until he had to choose. Just until there was no other choice.

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00:07am. 1st August. 1980.

It could be attested that Thomas Marvolo Riddle was most definitely almost always a perfect picture of calm and resourceful. Despite his young age, he had very quickly risen up within the ministry of magic and charmed his way into attaining many powerful political alliances. One reason, however, being his title of Lord Slytherin. A title however attained after his rise to fame. A title that had only either hindered his attempts at pleasing the light and deepening the dark's desire to join his 'ranks'.

However, now, as he paced back and forth on the pale marble floor with his hair dishevelled and his footsteps echoing around the silent corridor disrupting the falling moonlight, someone could protest that they had viewed it all wrong. Upon the eve of August, he had rushed in harried and disorientated. His usually impeccable appearance long gone and his charming words failing on his tongue as he pleaded with the mediwitch to help his wife.

But, if one is in the hallway of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical cures and injuries, especially if they are in the corridor which Tom currently is residing in, they are almost never calm.

The sound of a door being opened suddenly overpowered Tom's footsteps.

Tom's feet suddenly pause in movement as a slim figure dressed in white uniform emerged from the room he was continuously pacing outside of. Standing in the middle of the doorway, stood a middle aged mediwitch with greying black hair swept back and tied into a tight bun and amused dark brown eyes.

He rushed to her and blurted out the only words he could bring himself to speak.

"How's my wife?"

The mediwitch took a moment to answer. Smoothing her hair back and tucking a stray piece of hair, that had fallen out behind her ears, she answered in a smooth, calm voice.

"Your wife is perfectly fine Lord Riddle-Slytherin."

Tom's brown eyes, completed with flecks of gold, purple and red, examined the mediwitch for a minute, and when he seemingly found what he was looking for, he finally asked the question he dreaded to find the answer to.