[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Problems at the end of GOF!!

[Vivamus]

> Sandra:
> >It's not just 'HOW' but it's also 'WHY' - in so far as WHY didn't 
> >Dumbledore or MacGonnagle give the Time Turner a little spin and
> take out Lord 
> >He-Who-Is-Convenient at his great moment of weakness after the
> event, 
> >or prepare a little 'welcome' for him BEFORE the event.. oh the
> folly of 
> >the TT...
> 
> Exactly!  I really hate that Time Turner.  They can only use 
> it for trivial purposes... oh except in one case where they 
> managed to actually save someone, but that was because the 
> person was mysteriously saved and could only have been saved 
> with someone using a Time Turner, otherwise they wouldn't 
> have been saved.  Twisted, horrible logic.
> 
> Nicky Joe

Vivamus:

The logic is actually quite consistent; it just requires a little
non-sequential thinking to put it together.  Any dealing with time travel is
going to have problems, but if you think about it, there is a very clever
blending of both free will and predeterminism in the HP books.  Once it was
known that LV had gotten to the Potters and killed them, there was NOTHING
to be done, and no advantage in the use of a TT.   In GoF, no one on DD's
side knew that LV had returned to his body until AFTER Harry returned with
the dead Cedric, at which point, it was too late to do anything. 

One thing that COULD have been done, possibly, was to go to the graveyard,
hide and watch, but not interact, in order to identify any unknown DEs.  So
far as we know, that may actually have been done, although I doubt it (too
much risk for too little reward.)  I don't think even DD would try to take
on LV and all the DEs all by himself.

The logical rule that JKR seems to be using in time travel is, "you cannot
change the present.  What is done is done. You can only change the unknown
future by interacting with the past, and have an effect on the present about
which you do not know now."   So, you can go back in time and exercise free
will, but that exercise of free will cannot give rise to a present reality
other than the one you already know -- although it can effect great change
in the parts of the present not currently known, as well as on the (current)
future.  No paradoxes.

The logic is convoluted, I know, but it is also consistent, and it works, if
you realize that sequential rules won't work in nonsequential time. 

That may not be altogether satisfactory, but it does provide sound reasons
why the TT cannot be used in circumstances like those.

Vivamus