[HPforGrownups] Free Will and Time travel

[Kathleen Kelly MacMillan]

No: HPFGUIDX 1340

>Actually, I think HP falls more into the second category.  Remember
>Hermione's insistence that she and Harry can't change time - they can only
>do what really did happen in their past reality.  Thus they can steal
>Buckbeak and rescue Sirius, because that happened before they travelled
>back.  Also Harry can produce that Patronus because his past self had
>already seen it happen.  BUT they can't take back the Invisibility Cloak and
>stop Snape going to the Shrieking Shack because they've seen him go there
>already and preventing it would screw time up.


Yes, but they don't KNOW that those things happened because they travelled 
back.  Remember, they think that Buckbeak was really executed and that they 
heard Hagrid crying out of misery.  They don't realize until they see it fron 
the other perspective that nothing changed.  (I feel like I am talking in 
circles--this is hard to contemplate!).  And the only reason they couldn't 
take back the INvisibility Cloak is because they didn't.  It's not that they 
COULDN'T, it just didn't happen that way because they didn't do it.  Because 
the two time-scenes are happening at the same time; we just see them from 
different perspectives at different points in the narrative.  They actually 
didn't CHANGE anything.  They just determined the course of events from the 
beginning.  Which was the point I was trying to make about free will (I 
think).  There was no time when they weren't there, because they were there 
both time.  OKay, I am getting really incoherent now!  All I can do is 
fervently quote Harry:
"This is the weirdest thing we have ever done!"

That about sums it up for me!

Kathy