Changing the past (was: Re: Who conjures the Prongs Patronus?)

[Troels Forchhammer]

No: HPFGUIDX 54023

At 18:45 20-03-03 -0500, Edward Post wrote:

The inviolability of the past:

>And then Troels kindly answered:
>
> >You might say that they had to go back in time to ensure that the
> >past happened correctly - the way they had experienced it before.
>
>But to keep the statements consistent, don't we have to accept that if
>something went 'wrong' it cannot be changed.

Exactly!

>In this particular incident, Dumbledore says to Harry and Hermione that MORE
>time is needed to rescue Sirius and Buckbeak.  As soon as he uses a relative
>term, didn't Dumbledore indicate the goal was to make something change?

I took this to refer the extra three hours Harry and Hermione gets by 
'doubling' them (going back allows them to use those three hours doubly by 
being two places at once).

Having said all this, I realise that some of the descriptions Hermione 
gives of how wrong things can go if one attempts to change the past, 
actually involve a changing of the past (she mentions killing one's former 
self), but it is, IMO, significant that nothing happens during that chapter 
('Hermione's Secret') that actually changes anything. We are treated to a 
new viewpoint of the exact same events, which in some cases significantly 
changes our perception / interpretation of the events, but nowhere is 
anything /actually/ changed.

Having a definitely scientific turn of mind, I tend to disregard the 
examples Hermione gives as stories she has been told to frighten her from 
attempting to change the past, or something like that - I focus on her 
insistence that they should /not/ do anything that risks introducing a 
'new' event ...

I would find it very difficult to accept that magic could change something 
as fundamental as time, but that (I know) is just me ;-)

Troels