[HPforGrownups] Re: Time Travel Paradoces

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 57758

Barb appears to have caused much distress to Lissa when she wrote:

<HUGE snip>

>However, I still don't believe that in the Potterverse time cannot
>be changed.  For the most part people seem to be of the opinion that
>it SHOULDN'T, and the Time-Turner itself has severe limitations, but
>the fact that Hermione warns Harry that wizards who had fooled
>around with time (she doesn't say with Time-Turners, but TIME, so
>there must be other ways to do time travel) had killed their past or
>future selves.

<and another snipette>

>So unless Hermione misspoke when she said that wizards had killed their 
>past AND future selves, it is in fact possible to change timelines, 
>because the wizards who had killed their past selves would have done 
>exactly that.

I think there's a combination of both of your two ideas in play here. A 
time-Turner is perhaps the *safest* method of time travel known to 
wizardkind, which is why Hermione was offered it.

After all, each of the books to date has introduced at least one method of 
travelling in space (flying motorbike, broomstick, Knight Bus, Floo, 
Apparating, Portkey), so why can't there be more than one method of 
travelling through time?

The thought had crossed my mind before that if the basic form for travel 
JKR has given the kids is Floo powder, a very "magical" substance, why has 
she given Hermione a piece of *technology* to travel through time? The 
concept of a time-travelling Floo network tickles me pink, I must say. Step 
into a chimney, use a different power, and turn up in a different (or even 
the same) chimney at some other point in time. Or a time-travelling Portkey.

Furthermore, Time-Turners appear to work an hour at a time. As wizardkind 
has discovered the means to travel through time, it would make sense that, 
just as the methods of travelling through space have their limitations, 
some other mechanism for longer-distance travel through time should also 
exist.

As for Barb's second notion, Hermione has a definite tendency towards 
exaggeration and hyperbole, and I can just see her (or McGanagall, when she 
issued the Time-Turner) stretching the truth about the TT's use just a 
little. Hermione's just the kind of person who would be impressed/scared 
off by the notion that she might kill herself, in order to restrict use of 
the TT to attending two lessons simultaneously. I find Dumbledore's 
statement that "you must not be seen" (which, as I observed in a previous 
discussion on this topic, is the only time in the books to date that 
Dumbledore has been so adamant about something that he repeats himself) to 
be the key in all of this.

I maintain that the past cannot be changed, but should the TT'd person be 
seen in circumstances in which their past self was not present, tragic 
consequences with which we have not yet been acquainted will necessarily 
and absolutely ensue.

In another message, Lissa made the point that time travel as a concept is 
too huge and valuable to serve as nothing more than a plot device for one 
book, and that it should, by rights, have some kind of larger significance 
within the series. Indeed, Polyjuice was introduced as an (IMO) unnecessary 
plot device in CoS (the kids could have accomplished what they did pretty 
much as easily with the Invisiblity Cloak), only for it to become a major 
element at the core of GoF.

There's another parallel I wish to draw: the various plot devices we've 
encountered have been used by both the "good" and "bad" sides:

Polyjuice in CoS, and the Portkeys at the beginning of GoF were used by the 
"good" side in order to explain their use so that the "bad" side could make 
use of them by the end of the book; Animagery was used to good effect by 
Sirius, but to bad by Wormtail and Skeeter; there are other examples.

In view of the above, I fully anticipate the use of some form of time 
travelling by the "bad" side before the series is out. Not necessarily a 
Time-Turner, but quite possibly some as yet unidentified method which will 
be hinted at before it becomes part of the relevant book's resolution.

This is the point at which Hermione's insistence that time travellers can 
cause serious injury to themselves or others will come into its own. No, I 
don't expect Voldemort to time travel to engineer his fathering of Harry, 
Harry's becoming Voldemort's father, or both of them being the same person.

I'm perfectly aware that this is a lame idea, but something like a murder 
which is revealed to have been committed by a time travelling DE (perhaps 
to the extent that the victim and perpetrator are the same person) wouldn't 
surprise me. Who might be involved and how the situation is resolved to 
make it sufficiently BANGy is the main reason I have my doubts. :-)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, open to ideas