[HPforGrownups] Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?

[Taryn Kimel]

No: HPFGUIDX 53464

Norm:
I have always wondered exactly what happens in PoA to allow Harry 
(and Hermione and Sirius) to escape from the dementors after the 
Shrieking Shack episode. As I see it, there are two possibilities:

1) Harry tries to conjure up a Patronus, but fails; he then sees 
somebody on the far bank -- who he thinks is his dad -- and also sees 
the "stag Patronus" coming to rescue him. When he goes back later via 
the Time-Turner, he realizes (from his perspective on the far bank) 
that it wasn't his father there, it was HIM, and he conjures up the 
powerful "stag Patronus" to save "his other self."

<snip>

The text (which I'll get to in a minute), seems more strongly to 
suggest option 1). However, it seems to me that in order to be able 
to go back later to conjure up a Patronus to save himself, somehow 
Harry needs to be saved -- by himself, by his father, by Dumbledore, 
by *someone* -- in the first place in order to survive to then come 
*back* via Time-Turner to do it later. 

Me:
You're not quite comprehending the version of time travel JKR is using. /Harry/ saved himself. By going back in time, Harry did not /change/ the past. He, in fact, /caused/ it. In this version of time travel (which I've seen in plenty other books and movies), you can't actually really change the past. You simply cause it. It's always been caused because you were in the past... It's a bit hard for me to say, I guess. ^_^;; It's like a big pretzel (as said in Kate and Leopold, probably a bad example as it only used time travel as an excuse to set up a romantic comedy). A better example would be The Time Machine. You don't change the past because, if you /did/ change the past, you wouldn't later go /back/ to change the past because the reason for you to change the past would be nonexistant. In The Time Machine, a man tries to go back to save his dead lover from being killed. He is unable to, because if he /did/ save her, then he would have never gone back in time to save her. I really hope this makes sense. ^_^;; Harry was saved by himself. There is only one timeline, in a sense.

--Taryn

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