Schroedinger's Hippogriff (was: Time Travel in the Series)

[Dave Hardenbrook]

No: HPFGUIDX 19716

At 08:55 PM 5/29/01 +0000, Colonel Astudillo wrote:
>at any rate, they do not hear buckbeak get killed, they only think
>he's killed.  or something like that, my memory is really vague.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I think in the Hogwarts
Universe at least, the past can be changed without invoking paradoxes
and "closed timelike loops", *provided* that the persons doing the
changing haven't witnessed the outcome... H, R & H didn't actually
*see* Buckbeak's execution, and what they heard had another possible
interpretation, therefore the past was changable, like the paradox of
Schroedinger's Cat -- Neither cat nor hippogriff are definitively dead
until "the box is open" (so to speak) and they're *observed* to be dead.
Likewise, Harry *could* save everyone from the Dementors because
he saw what he *thought* was his father, but it could actually
have been Harry.  And also, the reason Hermione could *not* go back
and attend the Charms class she slept through is because Harry,
Ron, Flitwick, and the whole class had already mentally registered her
absence... It was too late to change anything in this case.



                         -- Dave