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

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25404

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Aleks" <aleksrothis at y...> wrote:
> 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

I suppose it depends on the kind of reader you are.  With first-time 
foreshadowing, the ideal situation the author is going for is where 
the reader WONDERS, but does not SPECULATE.  Or at least not to a high 
enough degree to figure it out.  But of course this can always be 
thwarted by someone who is excessively analytical.  I'm one of these 
people so I guessed the time-travelling part as well and, even worse, 
I picked up on many of the second-time foreshadowing hints the 
first-time around and figured out a good deal of them (but not all, 
thankfully).  Although this is cool in a way, I'm nevertheless kind of 
jealous of people who don't do this, because they get more enjoyment 
out of letting themselves simply be swept along with the story.  It's 
really not that they have less analytical capability, they can just 
turn it off more easily than I can.  Many of these people, if they put 
the book on hold and pondered it to death might also figure out these 
things the first time.

But mechanically speaking, I agree with you that even for the average 
child reader JKR might have been a tiny bit over the top on her 
foreshadowing of Hermione's secret.  It wasn't too impossible to guess 
some sort of time travelling, especially with it being the modern day 
flagship of plot-twists practically. :)  But at least the 'how' 
details were impossible to guess, since we had no idea of the 
existence of time turners.  Still, it could've been done a bit 
sneakier.  But with all the other 'doozies' of plot-twists (namely 
Scabbers/Peter) in that particular book, it was probably wise of JKR 
to have one slightly less surprising twist.  Like I said, if you 
stretch credibility too far, no one will like your plot-twists, no 
matter how brilliant.

Oh, and on an unrelated note to Tabouli, yes, your medal is indeed in 
the mail, but did you read the disclaimer?  (I think it's at the very 
bottom, below my name.)  You might find it a bit difficult to tell 
when it has arrived or not.  :)

-Luke