Time travel is dangerous! (part 1)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 89082

> Chris:
> > People have wondered about Ron, if he is a time-displaced 
> dumbledore, not stopping Voldemort while he's still building up 
> power.  Probabuly - Ron acted to prevent LVs mother from becoming 
> pregnant, but ended up sleeping with her himself and getting her in 
> the family way.
> > 
> > Time may be harder to alter than we think.
> 
> Geoff:
> Am I being particularly thick tonight or are you suggesting that 
Ron 
> is Tom Riddle's father?
> 
> The development of your theory would be /most/ interesting.

Neri:
Regardless of the juicy stuff, there is certainly a nice time-travel 
theory here: It is possible to change the past, but the course of 
events is resistant to such changes, and in the long run they don't 
have any effect. Kind of the opposite of the butterfly effect. You 
don't have to assume LV's father was Ron!DD. The idea is that with 
any father we get a Tom Riddle. Only his name would not be Riddle, I 
guess. But you can even manage a scenario where Tom's name *is* 
Riddle. That's easy: Riddle the father meets another witch and sires 
Tom with her. The other witch will turn out to be also Slytherin's 
descendent, of course.

>From the point of view of Ron!DD, however, this is not very different 
from the theory in which changing the past is always for the worse. 
Both mean that he can change events but is always foiled. I discussed 
the problems with this in part 2 of the original post.

If I try to recap the problem with the whole Ron!DD theory, it is 
like this: If Ron!DD doesn't change the past because it is 
impossible/dangerous/useless (pick your favorite), then what is the 
point of DD being Ron in the first place? It doesn't advance the plot 
in any way, only makes Ron!DD very frustrated. If, on the other hand, 
Ron!DD does manage to change the past, then why did all the sad 
events in the books take place, and what does JKR do with the events 
of the alternative history (the one "before" the events were 
changed). I doesn't help that, according to canon, Ron knows many 
things about current and past events, and that DD is so powerful.

Neri