Forever Yours • Tom Riddle

Soulmates

March 30, 1938

Something akin to fate struck eleven year old Catalina Blanchard on a spring day in London, 1938. Just over a month earlier she had received her long-awaited letter to attend Hogwarts, but the next visit she took to Diagon Alley with her mother was not for school supplies. It was for the bank.

Normally the venture would involve a parent alone, but the house staff had begged Daisy Blanchard not to leave them with Catalina while Mr Blanchard was away. Anticipating Hogwarts, the girl's thirst for distraction had grown to terrorising the people serving her- all except the resident house elf, Lipsy.

"Where did you get that dress, darling?"

Drawn from staring out the window at grey London, Catalina looks at her mother with disinterest, "Don't know."

"It's very...mugglish."

"For good reason," she snaps, gesturing to the muggle man who had been sent by the car company to drive them to the Leaky Cauldron. He glances at them quickly in the mirror.

Catalina glares at the back of his head and 'accidentally' kicks the driver's chair, hard. She tucks her fist under her chin and slumps against the window again.

Then it happens.

Daisy does not notice the shift in the air. An indescribable halt to the normality of sitting in a car driving down a rainy street. For all the muggles strolling the footpaths, people in the other cars on the road, men smoking in their windows and women gossiping along the walls...nothing changes.

It does, however, for two children from completely different worlds- an orphan boy leaning against the mouth of a dark alley and a rich girl perched on the leather seat of a town car.

In what would become the doorway to a volatile future of love, misery, dreams and darkness, Catalina Blanchard meets eyes with Tom Riddle.

For an instance the world seems to stop. She can see nothing but him and his cruel brown eyes. Someone with such cold eyes could never love anything. He stares back at her, equal parts interested and disturbed.

They are alone together in a place that doesn't exist, and in the next instant, thrown back into reality as the car passes his corner by and turns down the next streets, removing them from one another's view.

Catalina feels changed all of a sudden, gasping out a breath she did not mean to hold. She pushes against the window with her hands in an effort to look out the back window, but she fails to see him.

Tom loses his sense of self and wanders around the corner with his eyes on the car, in awe if this new experience of magic. What was it? Some type of mind trick? Had the girl performed magic in the single second they saw each other?

He watches the car disappear down the road.

The euphoria of such an experience makes travelling through Diagon Alley nothing more than a bore. Normally Cat would stop at the Quidditch shop, or to browse a few dresses. But as she is lead through the beloved street, she sees nothing at all.

On her mind sits a pair of cold brown eyes. And so begins an obsession.

The sudden desire to see this boy again, to talk to him and find out his name, overcomes her once they're inside Gringotts.

"'M bored, mum."

Daisy swats at her daughter dismissively, trying to shut her up while she continues to speak to the goblin serving her. All sorts of people bustle around them, busy with their lives as they collect money or precious items.