Time travel is dangerous! (part 1)

[phanbu]

No: HPFGUIDX 88930


> I also don't see any special mission that DD/Ron would have sent Ron 
> to carry out. 

"Voldie's army is encamped on the other side of this hill," Harry
whispers to Albus, Ron and Fred (or is it George?).  "I think that
we should wait here until nightfall," he adds.

"Not all of us," Dumbledore intercedes.  He pulls out a timeturner
which has been hidden in his robes for the past several weeks.  With
a heavy heart, remembering exactly how it happened when he was the
young man named Ron Weasley, he continues, "I  have a special task 
in mind for young Mr. Weasley."  With his trembling, wrinkled hand, 
he passes the magical device to Ron and asks him to give it about a
bizillion turns.  "That should be enough," he says.

Ron's brother grabbed him trying to stop him from turning the thing,
"He hasn't told you about your mission yet."  But it was too late, 
they had dissapeared into the mists of time.  That was okay, though.
Albus knew that he didn't need to reveal the mission to them.

The Weasley brothers awoke at the side of the rode, in a town that
they barely regognized as Hogsmeade.  They were surrounded by a 
crowd of people wearing frillier than usual robes, one calling for 
a doctor.  Ron's head was spinning, but George (or was it Fred?) 
was the first to catch on.  He called out, don't worry about us; 
were perfectly healthy, just a little banged up."  And with a huge 
grin he announced, "I'm Aberforth, and this is my brother Albus."

> I only said that such a scenario can be managed in WDID 
> without a paradox. This is because *any* scenario can be managed in 
> WDID, as long as you take care not to change the past.  However, such 
> scenarios might get so weird (while still fully consistent!) they 
> would be practically unbelievable. I suspect that you still do not 
> comprehend how weird and cruelly deterministic is the situation of 
> DD/Ron condition under WDID. Ron knows that Harry was not warned 
> about the prophecy. That this is why he went to the DoM, and that 
> Sirius died because of it. So according to your scenario DD/Ron knows 
> it too.  

The 18-year-old Albus (a.k.a. Ron) knows very little of what an
older Albus will learn.  JKR need only explain the few things that 
Ron learned before he was sent to the past, which is really not 
that much. (Why couldn't he prevent Tom Riddle's rise to power?
Why did he go to London just before the discovery of the CoS?
Why didn't he tell Harry what was in the prophecy?  etc.)

Other things don't need to be explained away, and in fact answer
many questions.  (How did DD know that Harry found the mirror?
How did DD know about the resue of Buckbeak?  How did he know about
the DA?)

> He have known it during the whole Year 5, and during all the 
> years before that, and he can't warn Harry, he can't warn Sirius, or 
> prevent it in any other way, and he most probably knows why he can't 
> (he was the mastermind behind the PoA time travel, after all). He can 
> tell Harry that he must try these fine chipolatas by the table, but 
> he can't add  "and don't let Voldemort lure you into the DoM because 
> Sirius will die". 

We don't know if he said these things or not.  He can say these 
things if he wants to; it will still be impossible to convince Sirius
or Harry not to go to the DOM.  He can make any decision that he 
wants, it just turns out that it is the same decision that he made
before timeturning (and this is why WDID is so confusing), because 
it is the same time as it was the first time around, just seen from a 
different perspective.

> I think I would have gone insane in such a 
> situation. And the whole dramatic speech of DD by the end of the Year 
> 5, how he did not tell Harry about the prophecy in his first year 
> because of this, and in the next year because of that, and so on, it 
> is not only an outright lie but completely besides the point. He did 
> not tell him because he could not. I still find this scenario 
> revolting. Personally, I can't believe JKR is tricking us in such a 
> nasty way.

I agree.


 - Phanbu