The veil, located deep within the Ministry of Magic, held the souls of those magical persons who passed on. It was meant to be a cathartic place, where those who had passed on could quickly make the transition on to the true afterlife. Call it what you may, Heaven or Hell, after leaving the veil, those souls went somewhere. Those wizards and witches who died were almost always meant to die, they were simply just not ready to move on. But they did, because it had been their fate since before they were born.
Millennia after millennia, as spinners of the thread of life, the Fates had never been challenged. The pawns were manipulated the way Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos had planned. Not one living soul, muggle or magical, mortal or immortal, had ever dared try the sisters.
The sisters held lives in their hands, every single day. They appeared in maternity wards, visible to few, only to disappear for various lengths of time, appearing again at deathbeds. Forget the basis of genes and sexual reproduction, the Fates created every living thing in Earth's history.
However, there was one thing that walked the Earth the Fates did not create. There never was a thread of life for Tom Marvolo Riddle. There never should have been a Lord Voldemort, and he never should have caused the pain, and strife, and discord that he did.
Strife, and Discord... Sure, Eris had enough fun to last a lifetime. He caused more than enough trouble for one mortal lifetime, but the god of strife and discord was not mortal. Hitler was amusing, as was the Russian revolution, and the assination of "United" States President Lincoln. But every amount of trouble he caused paled in comparison to the Trojan War ages and ages ago. True, the time of the gods was far different than that of those on Earth, but being predisposed with a superiority complex caused all to have shortened patiences, and Eris suffered the most.
So he decided to impregnate a woman. A demigod had not yet made an appearance in the twentieth century, and to be technical, still had not. Eris wanted to cause all the problems... Simply being he separated himself and impregnated Merope Gaunt with himself after parading around as Tom Riddle.
Over the years spanning Tom's "lifetime" and the two wars he participated in, countless scores of wizards and witches were killed, and even almost as many muggles, before their time. The veil became crowed, for the sisters of Fate had never planned to put so many together at one time, but being beyond magical, it was never full. As time went on, those newcomers to the veil let go a little easier. They knew what the war would bring, and while never ready to die, were a little more prepared.
But there were two men in the veil that could never move on. A few years had passed, when normally souls move on within days... weeks at the most. They were destroying the veil, unraveling it at the seams. Neither men deserved to die when they did, and both men deserved redemption from the mortal world. One man, physically imprisoned for almost half of his life refused to let go. Another man, emotionally imprisoned for all of his life wanted nothing more than to move on. Yet neither could.
Confused and distraught, the Fates looked on as the unraveling of the veil unraveled the galaxies. The grieving processes mortals must go through were not taking place... People were living in denial. Mount Olympus was slowly, but surely, crumbling to pieces. Cracks in the afterlife were beginning to show, and it was all snowballing.
There was almost nothing the Fates could do. They tried everything possible to get the two men to move on, but nothing worked. Even Hades could not force or allow the two men to move on. Instead, they remained there, bickering like school boys once more. Finally, every last shred of hope diminished, the Fates... or all the gods rather, lowered themselves to talking to mere witches and wizards, hoping they knew something, could do something.
It was an act of desperation, for if they failed, everything would simply cease to be.