The matron wouldn't have noticed the woman if it weren't for a distinct cry of a young babe. It was piercing and clear. She knew this sound like the back of her hand and immediately drew towards it.
The scene of a woman barely clinging to life was something she sadly had seen before, a child was silent within her arms. For a moment, it seemed as if the babe was already gone but as another wail pierced the air the silent child blinked. The woman's eyes briefly made contact to the matron's before they rolled into the back of her head and her arms went limp, the child rolled from her arms behind a rubbage bin. As the matron scrambled to reach the babe she found another hidden away, swaddled in starlight. The babe's eyes were a-light with weariness but just as piercing as her cry had been.
--
The orphanage did not sit on a hill, as most do in storybooks, instead it sat at the end of a galley of buildings, its odd tower rising into the sky.
The matron had overseen the children within the house for many years. She had seen many children pass away before their lives had barely begun.
When she had first brought the two new babes into the nursery, a small rectangular room with only a few prams, she suspected that the boy would slip away quickly. He refused to eat, instead he stared blankly at her his eyes never keeping from her while she took care of him and the other child. He watched her every move, eyes slanted and as fierce as a serpent. She had never found a babe quite as unnerving till she had brought him to the home.
The other child was the opposite of the other quieter infant, seemingly full of life, eyes always sparkling with what could have been mistaken as mischief if it weren't for how young she was.
The oddest thing about the two was that they were never apart.
She had assumed at first that they were brother and sister, but their differences were uncanny. The boy child looked vaguely of the woman in the alley with his dark features but the girl child was light incarnate.
Hair like the twinkling stars in the night sky and mismatched eyes, one golden and the other crystal blue.
The matron would leave the room with the two in separate prams and when she came back, only moments later, she would find the girl in the same pram as the boy.
--
It was one such evening when the matron re-read the note found within the thin swaddle the boy child was in. It was simple straight to the point, written in a shaky but elegant script.
His name is Tom Riddle after his father.
Please keep him safe.
There was no note for the other child. The matron caressed the fine fabric the girl had been wrapped in. It was odd. It was so much richer of fabric, one she had never seen before, softer than silk and more durable than any linen. Along the border of the pale blue, still glittering, blanket there was a name glistening in silver lettering: Nova.
--
The two did not speak often, as they grew into toddlers, but when they did it was usually in low hisses that frightened the other children. When they weren't whispering softly to each other, they stared into each other's eyes as if communicating through them.
As they grew, the wonder of the two faded and soon the matron found herself with an emotion she had never had before when it came to her young charges: fear.