[HPforGrownups] Re: Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?

[Dave Hardenbrook]

No: HPFGUIDX 53840


Thursday, March 6, 2003, 11:00:27 AM, drtruman wrote:

d> Actually, it still doesn't dispel my most basic question, which comes 
d> back to temporal displacement. Doesn't Harry1 *have* to cast a 
d> successful Patronus in order to be able to return later (as Harry2)? 
d> Irrespective of what Harry2 then does or doesn't do when he returns, 
d> if *something* hasn't otherwise saved Harry from the dementors, how 
d> can he come back from the future?

This has come up many times before on the list, namely because it
remains one of the most mind-bending problems in the series.  Harry
has to go back in time to save himself, in order to go back in time
to save himself!  It other words, we're stuck with an apparently
unresolvable temporal paradox in which two events separated in
time are each other's cause and effect.  The only two viable
resolutions seem to be that either (A) Everything in the Potterverse
is predestined, which undermines the series' recurring theme of
the importance of our choosing our own actions; or (B) The Harry
that first saves -- er -- "our" Harry is actually from another,
parallel universe, which raises the question of where did *he*
come from?

I think someone should make this a fanfic challenge.  Someone finally
wrote a novel to resolve the 100-year old paradox of how the
Tin Woodman and his severed flesh-and-blood head can co-exist as
sentient beings; why not someone try to write a fanfic to resolve the
"closed timelike loop" paradox of Harry, the time-turner, and the
patronus?  (And hopefully in much less than 100 years!)

-- 
Dave