Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?

[Martin Soilleux-Cardwell]

No: HPFGUIDX 54004

Stacy Forsythe wrote:
[fairly large snip of first bit of excellent post which has helped me 
understand the time-turner a lot...]

> I'll admit, the Harry/Patronus example is more troubling to me than 
the 
> others because Harry actually escapes death by the intervention of 
a future 
> Harry who has already done so.  But it still works out if you 
remember that 
> there's no need to imagine the three hours running "twice."  It's 
the same 
> three hours, but Harry and Hermione *live through it* twice, 
producing two 
> simultaneous copies of themselves that are doing different things.  
One 
> Harry is being nearly Kissed by a Dementor; the other is across the 
lake, 
> casting a Patronus to save the first one.

Stacy, I am happy with *most* of what you write. But it is the 
closing assumption that bothers me. I understand the way science 
views time paradoxes, but since this is Muggle science and the Wizard 
world can produce stuff so odd from our viewpoint(1) I have no 
problem at all in allowing a time paradox (if there is one, and 
having read your post I'm not sure there is any more!) or if what 
occured that night isn't a time paradox because it occurred in the 
Wizard world.

However, I would like to go back to my initial point, if I may. There 
is only one person who knows who cast the first Patronus, and that is 
JKR. Harry *thinks* it was himself because no other information that 
he has fits the events, and the only alternative (which I think he 
was 'hoping' for initially as he made his way around the lake) was 
that his father had cast it.

I agree that Harry1 saw a Patronus as the Dementors closed in and 
agree that Harry2 was in fact on the other side of the lake at the 
time. But if you consider that another person *did* cast Patronus1, 
and for reasons of his own did not want Harry2 to discover him, and 
hid/fled, then Harry2 more or less has to come to the conclusion that 
Harry1 saw Harry2 cast Patronus1 and so Harry2 then in fact casts it.

Am I making sense?

I think readers assume Harry2 cast Patronus1 because Harry2 assumes 
it. But the possibility exists, and the facts we are given in the 
book don't contradict that possibility, that it *was* someone else 
that Harry1 saw cast Patronus1.

Personally I am quite happy for Harry2 to have cast it, but when I 
read that chapter first time around I have to admit there was a lump 
in my throat and a faint hope that Harry might encounter his dead 
father. My own father died many years ago and the wish to get the 
chance to see him again is always present. JKR has mentioned in 
interviews that only some dead wizards come back as ghosts and why 
this is will be revealed in a later book. So I am keeping an open 
mind that it may just have been James by the lake after all... 

(1) Newton's and Einstein's laws do not always apply when you are a 
Wizard.

"Martin"