PoA: an explanation of the time/patronus paradox (NEEDED)

[sharana.geo]

No: HPFGUIDX 67894


Stlcole wrote: (I edited, cut out some parts)
>
> PoA: an explanation of the time/patronus paradox
>
> In PoA, Harry travels back in time to save himself  of course, he
> can only travel back in time to save himself, because he already
> saved himself, or DID HE? There was something in OOP that helped
> me resolve this time/patronus paradox of PoA differently.
>
> In any case, the alternative theory (the second gunman hypothesis)
> that I now favor is that that Harry did NOT cast the FIRST
> patronus to dispel the dementors that were attacking Harry or
> Sirius. Someone else cast the FIRST and only the FIRST patronus.
> Harry cast all subsequent patronus (in this endlessly repeat time
> loop).
>
> So we are lead to think that Harry remained alive because his
> future self saved his current self. I always hated this paradox:
> in fact, to me it was the worst / least-sensical part of the whole
> Harry Potter saga.
>
> But if in fact, there were two different patronus spells cast --
> the FIRST one (the Unicorn) and Harry's thereafter (the Stag) --
> then I believe JKR wrote very cleverly. We cannot know which
> alternative is right because JKR has purposely avoided giving
> enough facts to dispell my alternative hypothesis (which I call
> the second gunman hypothesis). This ambiguity enhances the
> probability that the second gunman hypothesis is correct.
>
> JKR clearly does not indicate what either Dumbledore's or Lupin's
> patronus was. Either Dumbledore or Lupin could have been in
> position to cast the FIRST patronus to dispell the Dementors. So 
> could many other characters, for that matter. When Harry steps out
> to cast the SECOND patronus, the other gunman (the one on the
> grassy knoll) withdraws, fearing to be seen by Harry. This last
> point is a requirement for the events in the time stream to switch
> from the unknown patronus caster to Harry.
>
> There is the other odd theory that Lupin is really James. And
> maybe the time/patronus paradox resolves towards this theory.
>
> The somewhat cumbersome explanation for Lupin's James-like
> appearance is either that Harry is mistaken, or that Lupin, in
> order to handle being an out-of-control werewolf, must risk
> abandoning the Lupin/werewolf disguise, and show himself (in
> hiding) as James. Thus James/Lupin is hide, but then decides to
> rescue both his son and his best friend when the dementors appear
> (thus, the FIRST patronus). 

I'm one of those who supported the "Lupin is James" possibility, but 
allow me to correct you on something. The theory says that James and 
Lupin switched bodies (using the Switching Spell) at some time for 
some reason before James was killed (Maybe they were just 
experimenting, the way Fred and George do). So Lupin was the one who 
died while inhabiting James body. Maybe it was a surprise attack and 
they never had the chance to switch back to their own bodies. It is 
not that James is in disguise as Lupin because he chose to and he 
can decide when to come out of it; he just can't, it's not a 
disguise, it's his new body, but he is the same person, so he casts 
a Stag Patronus. I know that the Theory has holes, but there was no 
evidence to prove the contrary either. I must admit that after 
reading OoP (finally, after waiting 11 days for it to arrive at the 
bookstore, me being the first person on the waiting list), this 
Theory is less likely to be true, although still not PROVED to be 
wrong. 

 Stlcole continues:

> When Harry casts the second patronus, he has to step out into the
> scene, looking for his father. James cannot act and be seen, so he
> must let Harry cast the patronus (the second and subsequent
> patronus). Ironically, Harry's father who is there, cannot show
> himself when Harry shows up to look for his father, thus forcing
> Harry to save himself. The irony of that possibility gives it some
> force.

ME:

I am SO glad Stlcole brought this discussion up, as I was thinking 
about this last night. 

My initial interpretation of the PoA time-travel stuff was the 
existence of the "second gunman possibility" as you called it: That 
there was someone else that initially cast the Patronus (other than 
Harry), and that at some time-loop, Harry changed the facts and cast 
the Patronus himself. (And one possible explanation I thought of was 
the "Lupin is James" theory, as to explain who could be the first 
Patronus caster. And yes, I would love to find out if someone, 
particularly Dumbledore casts a Unicorn Patronus).

Then I had a rather interesting discussion with some members where 
they explained to me one of the time-travel theory's that I never 
accepted before: the one that establishes the Paradox that Harry 
really did save himself, and I understood it, and came to the 
conclusion that, as being magic, sometimes, the consequences 
happened before the causes, so to say. Once the consequences had 
occurred (Harry was saved), this magic forced the fact that the 
cause had to happen (Harry use the Time-turner). I came to accept 
this as a valid theory too. After all there are many time-travel 
theories proposed in our Muggle world.

As Stlcole says, the events in OoP seem to suggest that the "second 
gunman possibility" makes more sense. Although I'd love to hear what 
the other members with whom I discussed the Paradox Theory think 
about it. 

But to me OoP brings up even more questions to the whole time-travel 
stuff...
The whole scene in the Time Room is really weird to me.

page 790 US ed.:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The jet of red light flew right over the Death Eater's shoulder and 
hit a glass-fronted cabinet on the wall full of variously shaped 
hourglasses. The cabinet fell to the floor and burst apart, glass 
flying everywhere, then sprang back up onto the wall, fully mended, 
then fell down again, and shattered...
--------------------------------------------------------------------

So we are watching a time loop from its very first loop. The cause 
came before the consequence. The light hit the cabinet (cause) and 
the consequence is a bubble where time is looping (the mending and 
shattering of the cabinet). 

1.- Extension of the bubble: It is a bubble where time loops, the 
bubble seems to be big enough to affect only the cabinet, and maybe 
it's immediate surroundings. Why only the cabinet and not everyone 
in the room? These seem to have a different behavior than the Time 
Turner Hermione used.

2.- How many hourglasses were in there? Which one of them determines 
how much time to go back to start looping? Are we seeing the effect 
of many loops, each caused by a different hourglass? Some of them? 
Only one of them? (It only went back a few seconds).

3.- How are the "experts" going to fix this mess and stop the time 
loops?

Lower on the same page (790):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry expected to hear a clunk, for the man to hit solid glass and 
slide off the jar onto the floor, but instead, his head sank through 
the surface of the bell jar as though it was nothing but a soup 
bubble and he came to rest, sprawled on his back on the table, with 
his head lying inside the jar full of glittering wind.
<edited>
All three of them raised their wands again, but none of them struck. 
They were all gazing, openmouthed, appaled, at what was happening to 
the man's head.

It was shrinking very fast, growing balder and balder, <edited>

A baby's head now sat grotesquely on top of the thick, muscled neck 
of a Death Eater as he struggled to get up again. But even as they 
watched, their mouths open, the head began to swell to its previous 
proportions again...

<edited: Then Death Eaters head shrinks again and he pulls his head 
out of the bell jar>
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Here we have another time-bubble, working differently or so it 
seems. 

4.- This one does not seem to have any kind of way to control how 
much back in time it will travel. It went back many years (not 
hours, or seconds), and just as quickly it came forward the same 
many years. (In PoA we thought that you just had to wait to return 
to the original timeline to get out of the loop, and you had to turn 
the hourglass around once for each Hour you wanted to go back in 
time).  So did the Death Eater get lucky his head did not travel 
back in time to before he was born? Is there some kind  of mechanism 
that determines that the loop back in time is to when the living 
organism reaches it's "baby state"?

5.- So there are physical changes to the person who travels back in 
time, if we apply this to Hermione's time travel, then she did not 
age more than everyone else. I remember many of us discussing 
theories of time traveling by different characters and calculating 
their ages based on their use (and abuse) of the time-turner. I 
remember especially someone proposed the idea that Voldemort lost 
his battle against Harry, thus becoming Dumbledore who traveled back 
in time to help Harry fight against himself (another Paradox like 
Harry and his Patronus). I remember assuming that the person who 
travels back in time continues aging normally and by my calculations 
that theory could not be possible because it does not line up with 
Dumbledore's and Voldemort's current age. But using this method (the 
jar), it seems that if a person travels back in time, he gets 
younger too.

6.- Only his head shrank, it was the only part of him inside the 
time-bubble. It does not matter that his head was attached to his 
body. In PoA, Hermione and Harry both traveled in time together 
because they roped their necks with the Time-Turners chain, not 
their complete bodies. Different methods...

7.- And once the head is out of the bubble, it stays the way it was 
at the moment it got out of the bubble. I see why they believe that 
messing up with time can have fatal consequences; it seems to 
support the Theory that by traveling in time, a person CAN change 
history, as opposed to the idea that the time-travel is a means to 
justify a time paradox like Harry and his Patronus.

In page 793 we see that the baby-headed Death Eater is walking 
around without control and in page 794 it says that this Death Eater 
continues to bang into things while the cabinet keeps 
shattering/mending itself. 

8.- So we are clearly witnessing two different time-bubbles effects 
that we are clearly aware of. The cabinet continues looping and the 
baby-head stays as a baby head once it's out of the jar (What a 
mess).

This brings me to something Nemi (Constance) said:
> The phrase that gets me about this is that when the kids first
> notice the veil, it is waving, as if someone had just gone
> through. It could just refer to people dying generally and passing
> through the veil, but typical to JKR, it could have some
> significance, especially having the veil room so close to the time
> room and the artifacts there. Could it be like the sounds of two
> people rushing and a door slam that was the foreshadowing in PoA.


And yes, it seems possible. The scene where Harry first enters the 
Veil room: page 773:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
He (Harry) had the strangest feeling that there was someone standing 
right behind the veil on the other side of the archway. Gripping his 
wand, he edged around the dais, but there was nobody there.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe there was someone there invisible, it could have nothing to do 
with another time loop (maybe Dumbledore was there, observing), but 
maybe it did. 


It seems to me there are several forms of time-traveling; each form 
may obey to different rules or laws of physic (as we Muggles would 
explain it). The MoM is experimenting with this stuff.

I think that many of those clues that JKR said she had to fit in 
this book, come from these few final chapters. I think we still have 
a lot to see in the last 2 books about this time-travel stuff. And I 
most certainly need to rethink all these time-travel theories from 
PoA and OoP.

I'm utterly confused...

Any ideas?

Sharana