Save the girl ... Save Tom Riddle

Chapter 23

Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are the life among the dead

All this time I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something more
Bring me to life

_____

March 1945
Hogwarts

Susan didn't talk with Tom about her first meet with the strange boy in Hogsmeade because she soon forgot about it and got distracted by their hobbies.
But after the second meeting, Tom was the one who found her sitting on the floor with a shocked face. And she had to tell him everything.

"Maybe in the future there will be time turners able to go back to many years early" she wondered thinking back again to the device the strange boy used to disappear.
"And put the whole reality in danger? But it must be a good sign. In the future I'll be so great that some coward wizard had to decide to even change history to stop me" he evilly grinned to himself, shifting from the hard expression he kept at her when she uneasily revealed that she already met that young stranger before.
Susan eyed him with worry, the nightmares on his future were back to tease her after months in which she wanted to believe he gave up on his dark ambitions for her.
"He said I'm gonna die" she said quietly shifting his attention on her.
"I won't let it happen" he stated confidently.
"That you will kill me" she corrected hoarsely remembering the stranger boy's words. Worse than Grindelwald. Three words she wasn't able to repeat, a tickle on her neck reminding her Tom's hands trying to strangle her and Grindelwald's dagger cutting her skin.
Tom took her face into his hands forcing her to stare right into his dark eyes "I will never ever do that".
She swallowed nodding slightly "I trust you. And I won't blame you if some reasons will push you to do that".
"No way" he pulled her at him hugging her tightly "And you promised you will never leave me, remember that".

Later Susan wandered into the library, craving for knowing more about time travels, which was something she always found fascinating but forbidden. There were many things in her past she dreamed of changing, only the thought of the possible bad and irreversible consequences persuaded her that changing the past didn't worth the risks.
She could have saved her parents, she could have saved Tom from the muggle orphanage, she could have prevented him from finding the Chamber of Secrets and killing his father, she could have done many other things. But time was something extremely fragile and not even the most skilled wizard could control it.
Susan felt bitterly envious towards the stranger boy. Perhaps he had nothing to lose so he was ready to destroy his own reality. Or maybe his present time was so desperate he wanted to stop something really bad from happening in his past. But his intentions were getting the opposite results, it seemed to her. She noticed Tom's darkest side awakening even if he tried to hide it, she didn't need to read his mind to guess what were his thoughts.
Susan nervously fumbled through old articles and reports, looking for the few experiments on time travel.
She knew the Department of Mysteries had a stock of Time-Turners. Maybe the Ministry itself pushed the young boy into a dangerous and pointless mission.
She found a report by Professor Saul Croaker on time-magic and read greedily:
"As our investigations currently stand, the longest period that may be relived without the possibility of serious harm to the traveller or to time itself is around five hours. We have been able to encase single Hour-Reversal Charms, which are unstable and benefit from containment, in small, enchanted hour-glasses that may be worn around a witch or wizard’s neck and revolved according to the number of hours the user wishes to relive.

‘All attempts to travel back further than a few hours have resulted in catastrophic harm to the witch or wizard involved. It was not realised for many years why time travellers over great distances never survived their journeys. All such experiments have been abandoned since 1899, when Eloise Mintumble became trapped, for a period of five days, in the year 1402. Now we understand that her body had aged five centuries in its return to the present and, irreparably damaged, she died in St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries shortly after we managed to retrieve her. What is more, her five days in the distant past caused great disturbance to the life paths of all those she met, changing the course of their lives so dramatically that no fewer than twenty-five of their descendants vanished in the present, having been “un-born”.