Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 16: Professor Trelawney's prediction

[June Ewing]

Nikkalmati:
> I agree with June that there are different ways to write time
travel and with Taya that JKR writes it as linear - that is- there
> is no loop, no double memories, nothing is changed, things only
happen once, although one person may see the same events at the
same time from different perspectives. That means Bb never died,
> and it really was Harry saving Harry at the lake. Harry never
lived through it a first time and came back - he only lived through
> it from two different perspectives.

<snip>

Query: What other methods could DD use to know the past? Even if we
> could go back, could we ever go forward? After all, there is no
there there, right? What is so terrible about meeting yourself in
> the past? What was it Hermione had been warned about?


June:
Nikkalmati, I liked what you had to say, it really got me thinking.
There are a few answers to why you should not meet yourself in the
past or the future. In Back to the Future 2 Doc Brown tells Marty "I
foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30
years older would put her into shock and she'd simply pass out. Or
two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which
could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of
the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted,
that's a worst case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very
localized, limited to merely our own galaxy. In Time Cop they say
that coming into contact with yourself in the past that you could
wipe out your own existence and in fact when Ron Silver's character
bumps into his past self he vanishes from existence.