PoA: an explanation of the time/patronus paradox

[oliviawood06]

No: HPFGUIDX 67961

(If you find this boring or confusing just skip down to the 
alternate theory.)


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sevenhundredandthirteen" 
<sevenhundredandthirteen at y...> wrote:
> Olivia Wood responded to stlcole's original post as such:
> 
> <snip stuff about why she thinks it was James Potter>
> (About Buckbeak)
> >Maybe 
> >Dumbledore, being such a great wizard and all, was going to turn 
> >Buckbeak invisible or banish him away anyway, but then didn't 
have 
> >to do it because Buckbeak dissapeared by himself. Maybe he saw 
Harry 
> >and Hermione in the trees and assumed they were going to try to 
help 
> >Buckbeak, not even knowing they were from the future. 
> 
> What intrigues me about this assumption is that by assuming this 
to 
> be true you have to accept that there was only *one* plane of time 
> which Harry2 and Hermione2 went back to. You see, you are making 
> Dumbldore1 (before he sends Harry and Hermione back in time) to be 
> feelni the affects of Harry2 and Hermione2 before they're actually 
> gone back in time. This works perfectly if there is only one plane 
of 
> time- that is, that when you go back in time you are not 
transported 
> to a parallel dimension, but are tranported to the actual past 
that 
> will only ever occur once. If there was only *one* plane of time 
> where people go back in time and can interact with themselves then 
> this copletely dispells any theory you had about James Potter 
casting 
> the Patronus- you see, for someone else to cast the Patronus there 
> has to be *two* planes of time- the first time (where you are 
> theorising that it was James Potter, not Harry) and the second 
time 
> (a parallel dimension caused by the Time-Turner being put into 
use) 
> where it was Harry.
> ~<(Laurasia)>~




I visualize time travel as a sort of rubber band that you pluck when 
time-traveling, and it'll vibrate back and forth untill it will 
eventually fix itself and straighten out. You can't break time; for 
example you can't travel back in time and kill your past self
(whatever Hermione might say) because then you wouldn't be there in 
the future to kill yourself in the first place. Whenever someone 
messes with time, time has to run through an (in)finite number of 
possibilities to get to one that works, and that's what happens. 
Like if Harry messed up the first time, before he went back in time, 
and then when he did go he fixed it but didn't tell himself he did 
so he wouldn't know to go back in time later and prevent it from 
happening, it wouldn't work, so he'd have to go back in time for 
something else(the original problem now being nonexistant) and find 
a way to fix that, unintentionally preventing the original problem 
from happening(so he wouldn't have to go back in time to fix that 
again), and if he didn't, he'd just have to do it over and over 
again until it all worked out(please excuse the run-on). Of course, 
from his point of view, he only time-traveled once, and it just 
happened to work out, becouse none of the other possibilities ever 
actually happened. 

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself effectively, and since this is 
about time-travel, which is pretty illogical by itself, I'm not sure 
it's possible to explain it very well. Does anyoe know what I'm 
talking about? It makes sense to me, in any case.

Anyway, to get back on topic, I think I'd catagorize myself under 
the 'one plane of time' believer, since none of the 
other 'dimensions' or possibilities exist or ever did exist. That's 
pretty much the basis of my theory; James Potter, being dead and 
all, can only cast a patronus to save Harry if the need for such an 
action is later eliminated by Harry traveling in time and doing it 
himself, so that James Potter never did cast the patronus.

Alternative Theory:

Okay, considering what the Prophecy in OoP says about Harry killing 
Voldy or Voldy killing Harry, it would have been impossible for 
Harry to have been kissed, since the terms of the prophecy hadn't 
been fulfilled yet. So maybe Harry wouldn't have been given the 
second chance, the ability to time-travel from the future to prevent 
his own death, if it wasn't for the 'greater magic' that ensures the 
fullfilment of prophecies and such matters. Not to make this 
religious or anything, but if I was the powers that be, I might 
consider overlooking a minor time paradox in order to fullfil a 
majar prophecy. Any thoughts?