Time Travel in PoA

[Susan Atherton]

No: HPFGUIDX 49099

>Sharana wrote:
>Again, what is at stake? Going to Azkaban? Yes of course, but you 
could also say, "Your very lives are at stake if you see your other 
selves", because they wouldn't understand and try to kill you.
>Again, if you cannot change time (or history), regardless of the 
circumstances, then why bother to make a law about it. There will be 
no alternate outcomes to the use of the TT. Why send someone to 
Azkaban?

Me: Gah!!! Because you CAN change time. Harry and Hermione have already saved Sirius when Dumbledore even tells them to go back and do it. But Dumbledore doesn't know that. He just knows Beaky escaped. Harry and Hermione don't know that. Sirius does, but Sirius is in the tower - except he's not, he's on Buckbeak's back somewhere :)

Dumbledore knew that Buckbeak wasn't executed. He knew what happened there. However, if HHR hadn't left when Hagrid told them to, BB would have died. HH2 couldn't have saved him, because HH1 would see them. You can NOT see yourself when you go back in time, not because you might accidentally kill yourself, but because it's a paradox. As soon as you see yourself - scratch that, as soon as you RECOGNISE yourself as you... well, I don't know what happens, but to borrow the words of Doc Brown, the universe would implode etc. But that's a worst case scenario - the destruction may be limited to our own galaxy. :) If H1 saw H2 up close, he would have recognised him. But H2 would not have seen that when he was still H1. Therefore H1's present ceases to be consistent with H2's past, and H1's future is no longer H2's present. But if H1's future isn't H2's present, then H2 can't be in the situation where H1 can see him, because H2 shouldn't be there. But he is. That's a paradox, it's like an illogical loop that doesn't work and can't be possible. The only way you can see yourself is the new version recognises the old version but NOT the other way around. I think. Oh, now I'm getting a headache too...

>Sharana also wrote:
>Wizards have traveled in time and ended up killing themselves, so 
the use of the TT is extremely restricted. Imagine that Voldemort 
uses a TT to travel to the point James and Lily are kids. Why not 
kill James there? 

Because James and Lily didn't die when they were children. It's the Schroedinger's Cat Uncertainty Principle thing. If Harry and Hermione hadn't just heard the swish of the axe and stuff, if they'd actually seen Buckbeak being rescued, they would have known Buckbeak escaped even if they didn't see themselves helping him. But then they wouldn't have thought Buckbeak needed rescuing. Buckbeak didn't die and then come back to life - you people who are arguing about the Harry-being-Kissed-person-X thing should maybe include that - he always escaped with Harry and Hermione. They just THOUGHT he died because they didn't see him. But James and Lily have been seen by hundreds of people to be alive in their twenties. Therefore, Voldemort can't kill them without changing time. And if he changes it enough, like that (remember D'dore KNEW Beaky escaped and so knew H&H could save him without changing time) he could create an alternative future in which he never travelled into the past and so he couldn't have killed them... and then we're in paradox country again :)


Am I rambling? Am I making sense? Answers on a postcard ;) 

Susan
(who is starting to think buying Back To The Future on DVD was a bad idea)
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"The Germans are a cruel race. Their operas are six hours long, and they have no word for 'fluffy' " --Edmund Blackadder


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