The Power, Time Travel and Occlumency

[vmonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 108553

Amey:
I don't think time travel will be used to do anything that important. 
Saving Sirius was one thing, (after all, he did not live much on 
borrowed time. I wonder if Dumbledore knew that Sirius was anyways 
going to die not much later and maybe that's why he wanted to save 
him from a fate which was much worse than death in a duel, trying to 
save his godchild.), but saving Potters is a wholely different thing.
When Dumbledore says that *the consequences of our actions are always 
so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very 
difficult business indeed...*, there is also one more side to this, 
if we change something by time travel, it is going to have very 
complex impact on the world. Think of Tom Riddle, if he is adopted by 
some good family, then he does not hate the thought to go back to 
orphanage. This might induce him not to stop attacks when he opened 
the Chamber, or he might not open the Chamber at all. He might marry,
might have children, and then someday they might open the Chamber. I 
am not saying that opening the Chamber is a must, and that it must 
happen irrespective of anything else. But nobody knows the 
consequences, and so Dumbledore (or should I say JKR) will not take 
that chance. IMO any ending which involves massive time travel will 
leave more questions unanswered than solving the questions.

vmonte responds:

If time-travel comes back Harry is not going to be able to save his 
parents, period. The problem with time-travel stories (and why I 
usually hate them) is that (as several fans have posted) they can be 
used as an easy fix. I would feel seriously cheated at the end of the 
series if at the end of book seven we were to see James, Lily and 
Harry holding hands with Lily proclaiming: "I knew you would save us. 
Look it's starting to fade, the scar..."

I think that JKR has built some rules into time-travel. I believe 
that DD warns Hermione of the consequences in PoA because there are 
rules that need to be followed.  You could actually make things worse 
when you mess with time-travel and history. You could kill a bad guy 
but in the process allow an even worse bad guy into power. Maybe 
Voldemort would have never come into power if DD didn't defeat 
Grindelwald in the first place. Who knows? DD is definitely messing 
with time somehow, and I think he has made some serious mistakes. 

vmonte