Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?

[Badger]

No: HPFGUIDX 53855

Message 53840
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 20:45:39 -0800
From: Dave Hardenbrook 
Subject: Re: Re: Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?
>>>>Thursday, March 6, 2003, 11:00:27 AM, drtruman wrote:
Actually, it still doesn't dispel my most basic question, which comes 
back to temporal displacement.  Doesn't Harry1 *have* to cast a 
successful Patronus in order to be able to return later (as Harry2)?  
Irrespective of what Harry2 then does or doesn't do when he returns, 
if *something* hasn't otherwise saved Harry from the dementors, how 
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? >>

Having been a life-long fan of time travel stories, theories, 
paradoxes, etc., I hold that time travel exists primarily for the 
participant.  This means that Harry2&Hrm2 (technically) are able to 
alter anything they choose to change as in their own past, that 
change has already taken place (by the future selves).  That is how a 
wizard can kill his own past self, as Hermione warns (not just being 
able to kill one's future self).
In one of the best time-travel stories, the now tough to find David 
Gerrold novel "The Man Who Folded Himself" ("MWFH") echoes best my 
theories: that should the time traveller alter something in his past 
that did not actually take place in his past, he is therefore 
creating a new alternate timeline.  He meets varied versions of 
himself, even "past selves" he knows he did not do, so they were from 
alternate timelines.  He realizes if he were to go back and strangle 
his infant self in his crib, then he would still exist, but only in 
an alternate timeline in which "he" had never existed/grown up 
(and "merely" a dead baby in his arms).  The narrator edits and re-
edits various histories to the point he can barely remember the 
original version.  The novel (almost more of a novella) shows up now 
and then on eBay; I'm pretty sure that officially it is out of print.

There is also what is called the Holographic Universe theory, well 
explained by the late Michael Talbot in his book "Holographic 
Universe."  In quantum theory, if one considers the universe (reality 
and/or our perception[s] thereof), as a "liquid hologram," just as 
one can take a glass-plate hologram, snap it in two and instead of 
two halfs of a hologram, have two *full/complete* holograms (just 
different perspectives), one can thereeby access various aspects of 
the hologram that is reality, "proving" clairvoyance, time travel, 
etc.
I may have to get myself another copy; mine is deep in storage.  Its 
ISBN is 0060922583 and it is available at alldirect.com for all of 
$12.13 ($8.68 w/$3.45 S&H).

If (our) Harry2 (the one we follow in the book) did not conjure 
properly the Prongs Patronus, and watched himself be destroyed by the 
Dementor, he would therefore be considered "outside the time/space 
envelope," his having returned from an *alternate future*, in which 
this alternate past (from his perspective) was "messed" up (to put it 
delicately [bg]).
He would also still be able to remain and continue schooling, being 
only a few hours older than his current (destroyed) self.  Kind of a 
creepy way of looking at it, but that's time travel.  One has the 
closed loop theory (such as in PoA) and the alternate time-line 
theory ("MWFH," "Back to the Future II," etc.).
One of my favourite time travel aspects is the Uncreated Object, such 
as best illustrated in the excellent movie "Somewhere In Time."  The 
watch shows up for the first time in 1910 or whenever, brought back 
in time by Christopher Reeve.  After there for a while he "gets 
distracted" (by the modern day penny) and he is pulled back into his 
present, Jane Seymour's future.  The watch remains in the past in 
Seymour's possession.  She eventually realizes her lover was from the 
future: she ages and when she discovers him as a playwrite, she 
visits him, gives him the watch and asks him to "Come back to me."  
He researches, and (with the watch) manages to project himself to his 
past, her present.  The watch itself was Never Created.  It merely 
exists, and for a finite period of time.  The watch exists only 
during that period of decades, from when it first appears with him 
*IN* the past to when he brings it from the present *TO* the past.
Time travel.  Gotta love it.

<< 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!) >>

(While I'm impressed I'm not the only one [in this list] to have read 
Baum's 19 Oz books [g]), I recall the flesh/blood head in the 
cupboard as being alive but not really aware that he "is" an/the 
original aspect of Nick Chopper's meat self.  To what novel do you 
refer?

realbadger, a loyal Hufflepuff
geoffreygould.notlong.com