Very Little Foreshadowing? (was Re: Malfoy's Redemption)

[Aleks]

No: HPFGUIDX 25402

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., caliburncy at y... wrote:
> Interesting that a couple people have brought up Hermione's time 
> turner. This is interesting because people have said they thought 
this was a little obvious and, yes, it was because unlike second-time 
> foreshadowing, first-time foreshadowing is supposed to be.  
> 
> So it was supposed to be obvious that SOMETHING was up with 
Hermione's schedule, but not obvious what.
>
> This is when Ron first sees Hermione's schedule and says "Look--
they've got you down for about ten subjects a day.  There isn't 
enough TIME."  In the original text, "time" is italicized not 
capatilized.  But the emphasis is there.  And it's like Rowling 
dangling a carrot in front of our nose, expecting us not to 
> realize it.
> 
> And you know what?  Thankfully, we don't.  Did anyone know it was a 
> time-turner at this point?  No.  We may have had mild suspicions of 
> time shifting but that's all.  No firm conclusions.  > the time-
turner was accompanied by first-time foreshadowing it could 
> not have made an earlier innocuous appearance or the solution would 
> have been blatantly obvious.
> 
> -Luke
> 
> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., caliburncy at y... wrote:
> > The timeturner was different, though.  Sure, it was easy to see 
> > that "something" was going on with Hermione.  But could one tell 
> that she was able to re-live time, as opposed to cloning herself 
with polyjuice potion (hmmm-- I wonder what would happen if you tried 
> > that)?  So there was a lot of foreshadowing leading to the same 
> > result -- total surprise that it was a time-turner (something 
never before introduced in the book) that would be the tool needed 
for the  dramatic rescue at the end.  


I am also interested in how many people bring up the time-turner as a 
plot-twist that they didn't guess. Whilst I didn't understand exactly 
how Hermione was doing it, I did guess that she was 'time-
travelling' - reliving the hours over again so she could do more than 
one thing in the same period of time. This maybe be due to the heavy 
presence of time-travel in the X-Men universe (hey, did I mention I'm 
a huge fan...lol), but it seemed to me the only logical explanation. 
With regards to Luke's essay on foreshadowing (which was 
v.interesting IMHO) I thought that the time-turner was one of 
the 'verging-on-the-obvious' points (along with Lupin as a werewolf) 
where JKR foreshadowed it so heavily that it was possible to get on 
your first reading, unlike Scabbers-as-Peter, or Moody-as-Crouch Jr 
which were more the clues you could pick up with hindsight. 

Aleks
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*Time travelers, yes. Interdimentional and interstellar aliens, sure. 
Clones, why not? Angels and demons?* Domino gave a mental snort. 
*Right up there with pixies and fairies. Let's keep it real, people.*
~I'm happy to know you think I exist~ Cable thought.
~Only every second day.~ Domino retorted.
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