Not strong Enough

Chapter 1: The start of everything

September 28th 2520

Harry was alone. Everyone he had ever known and loved was gone, and he had nothing left to do but watch over their descendants grow old and die as well. He could only watch helplessly as he remained stagnant. Harry had endured countless cycles of birth and death over the  centuries of this until it finally ceased. Though Harry was physically unmarked by time, he was just an empty husk of a man within. He had no purpose, no family, ultimately no will to live. 

Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, had remained forever youthful with the body of a man in his early 20s. His face was unmarked by time. It was the same face that confronted and killed his only chance to crossover to the afterlife, thus damning him to a life of immortality and loneliness. It was the same face that killed Voldemort, Tom Riddle, the-boy-who-was-never-loved, the Dark Lord. Harry had killed his only chance of dying. The prophecy haunted him even now, decades later.

The irony was quite great.

Harry longed for death. The only comfort he found was talking to his family portraits. For a few years after their deaths it was enough, but after a few centuries,  it was just a sad reminder of what he had lost. Now all he had was emptiness, in his life, home and purpose.  Thinking back, he had always had a feeling of emptiness deep down, but with a life free from Voldemort, getting married, starting a family and career distracted him from it. Now all he had was time on his hand, sentenced to endure eternity alone. All he felt now was a feeling of cold and emptiness, like his soul was missing.

Since the Battle of Hogwarts, something has always felt missing. He chalked it up to the horcrux inside him being destroyed. He assumed because the horcrux had been inside him for so long that the loss of it was  the cause of his feeling of emptiness. 

Sipping a glass of Firewhiskey in a gold rimmed, crystal glass gazing into the fireplace in his study, surrounded by his wife and children's portraits who were all in slumber, Harry was drowning in memories and lost in thought, mostly of Tom Riddle: his childhood, the choices he made, the kind of life he lived, and compared it to his own. There were many (too many, he thought darkly at times) similarities: physical appearance and emotional abuse during their childhoods, cases of neglect, both orphans, half-blood heirs to ancient Pureblood houses, both possessing a great amount of power and an affinity for magic. The world was at their fingertips, power within their grasps, opportunities to different paths of life that could affect the entire Wizarding World if they so choose. They were so similar yet so different.

The one difference  that mattered was love. Harry had been loved his entire life, even before he was born. He was brought into the world by the unconditional love of his parents and their friends. He always had some form of it throughout his life— the remnants of his mother's sacrifice, the family and friends he'd created, and even the adoring Wizarding public. He always had someone looking out for him, even if it was unseen to himself at the time. Tom Riddle had nothing of the sort. He was born alone and died alone.

Harry thought back to Dumbledore and Slughorn's memories  where he learned long ago that Tom was a manipulative, antisocial but charming lad in his youth who had cast away any chance of love and companionship in favor of gaining followers, power, and control.

He thought about what type of person he would be dealing with, trying to change.

He classified Tom Riddle as a sociopath: the evidence was all there.

A lack of empathy, the ability to manipulate those around him, charisma in abundance: Tom Riddle was a charming lad, able to charm those around him for whatever he desired. He used his dark handsome features— composed of high cheekbones, thick dark wavy hair, unblemished pale skin and hypnotizing dark eyes— to get what he wanted from his two victims: There were also definite signs of  pathological lying and a lack of remorse: lying had come naturally to Tom; he never batted an eye.

When Tom was asked if he had stolen from the other children in his conversation with Dumbledore, he had promptly denied it. And when he was caught, he did not apologize or seem ashamed. If anything, he immediately focused on another thing he did not have or could do, something that put him in a weaker position than Dumbledore.

The topic of Nature vs. Nurture plagued his mind when thinking of Tom Riddle. After a long time of thought he concluded Tom was the product of a lack of nurture. If only he had been nurtured and guided like Harry was.  Tom Riddle was cunning, smart, and resourceful. He was not designed to be mediocre. A true Slytherin at heart. He could have been so much more than a dark twisted shadow of a man he had turned into. So much raw potential!

While living with the Dursleys was less than desirable with often emotional, mental, and physical abuse, he still had love in his life.  Love, that was the biggest difference.

'How different would have life been for Tom Riddle and the rest of the wizarding world if he had genuinely been loved.'

Tom Riddle never had a mother's love, never had healthy interactions with adults and children. He grew up with the mentality of surviving at all cost. Something his Slytherin traits helped him in but over time warped him into something so dark and fearsome, unhuman. Evolving into something darker and darker each time. Harry tried to understand why Tom Riddle feared death when he welcomed it. He concluded that the lack of love was a factor in this. Harry had friends and family to look forward to seeing, who would welcome him with open arms. Tom Riddle had no one, a father who abandoned him, a mother who did not have the healthiest ideas and practices of love and devout followers that followed out of fear. He did not have anyone who cherished him, loved him.

A plan formed in his head to right wrongs from the past. He was not naïve. He understood some things were out of his hands, sometimes it was simply their genetic makeup, they were too pre dispositioned for certain particularities. But he could not let that deter him. He had one chance. One chance to finally rest and be rid of such emptiness. One chance to right a wrong.

The thought of final rest invigorated Harry, a new purpose to set a fire in his heart. While drinking the last of his fire whisky, he thought to himself how similar him and Tom were. One longed for immortality but barely lived while the other who yearned for a simple life with loved ones was cursed to walk the earth without them.

He was going to go back in time, and he was going to change it all. He was going to give Tom the one thing he never had: Love. Harry went to his desk and grabbed the Time turner, it was a beautiful dainty gold necklace, ordained with emeralds around  the hourglass he had modified himself for personal use. It was tied to him, it brought him back and forth through time with more certainty and ease compared to other Time turners.  Truthfully he used it  like an addict. When talking to the portraits of his dead family and friends just wasn't enough to drive away the loneliness he would go back and just observe, sometimes when the loneliness was overwhelming, he'd transform into random people or things just to be in his loved ones vicinity. Pensieve's over time became unsatisfying, too limiting.  The time traveling made it easier to forget, easier to pretend his life was the same. Harmless at first but eventually turned into a terrible dependency. He needed love in his life again. How better to feel the effects of  love then by giving it to the one who needed it the most. Tom Riddle. In turn hopefully he would have been a positive enough influence to undo what had already transpired and ultimately find himself in death's embrace.

Disregarding that life and fate were fickle beings that answered to no one,  with a twist of the Time turner, Harry left to go into the past with little as possible from the present time to make the travel through time as unchallenging as possible. Unfortunately, time travel even five hundred years later was not an exact art to master, it was only marginally easier traveling back and from his own time due to what Harry assumed was familiarity. Harry hypothesized that his magical core could recognize and guide him back and forth  to different evolutions in his magical core because it was one and the same. While the world warped around him, Harry hoped luck was on his side to be sent back to a time where Tom Riddle was still redeemable; to love him, change him, and make a new, better future.

AN: Hello guys I didn't write this story , I found this in AO3 the creator is Sayon_170 please check her out she has amazing work , thank you 😊.