Fanfic as a more displined form of speculation (was: Adopted!Harry)

[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 57984

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "m.steinberger" 
<steinber at z...> wrote:
> Sorry that Time Turning Turns some people off. The rest of my 
theory involves more TT, but this part follows the standard "can't 
change the past" approach.
> 
> In brief: Harry is 18, V is gone, and he's about to consider a 
peaceful life in the future when D tells him that back when he was 1 
yr old, his 18-yr-old self had appeared at Godric's Hollow (5th 
person) and had blocked the AK, wraithing V and dying in the 
process. Now (year 7), Harry has a choice: he can go back 17 years 
to maintain the time-line, save his infant self, and allow his 
infant self to grow up to defeat V at age 18 - but now Harry will 
have to die - or he can stay put at age 18, which would change the 
time-line because 18-yr-old Harry wouldn't be there to save infant 
Harry. Would infant Harry die? Would V become a wraith? Would V take 
over the world instead? Would anyone ever defeat V in the end? No 
one would be able to say for sure how the time-line would reshuffle 
itself if Harry didn't volunteer to go back and save himself. Maybe 
Harry will just evaporate and the world will now be in the 17th year 
of V's dominion. Maybe some other scenario altogether.
> 
> What does Harry choose? Essentially, he has to decide whether the 
18 years he's had so far have been meaningful enough to justify 
dying at 18 to ensure that those 18 years will have happened. I 
propose that JKR will present the dilemma so that the reader has to 
answer that question, too. Were the seven books we will have read so 
wonderful that we wish Harry to allow himself to die in order to 
ensure that he lived as an infant and gave us the satisfaction we 
had in reading about him? Or will we say that, fun as following 
Harry was for us, he should allow the time-line to be altered for 
the chance of living longer, even though the likelihood is that 
Harry will never have been?
 
Me:

I don't think most people have a problem with Time-Turning in 
general; although some people have voiced a dissatisfaction with 
JKR's having used this to solve the saving-Sirius-and-Buckbeak 
problem in PoA, I know of many, many people who cite PoA as their 
favorite book in the canon thus far.  I reckon that your view may 
hinge on how much you consider this to be 'cheating,' or perhaps how 
much exposure you've had to time-travel stories in science fiction 
and fantasy (too much, I suspect, might make you more jaded about it 
rather than more accepting).

Many folks are also divided about fanfiction.  Some people think 
it 'contaminates' one's perception of the canon, while others find 
it to be a more disciplined form of speculation about the canon, 
even more so than posting on a list like this, as it forces the 
fanfiction author to really think about the implications of the 
theories that he/she is proposing and to work out as many of the 
details as possible (assuming that's what the person is doing with 
the fanfiction--some is more wishful thinking or 'what-if,' rather 
than speculation about what has happened or will happen).

Unfortunately, if the theory at the top of this post were put into 
the form of speculative fanfiction, it would be full of plot holes 
and inconsistencies, both internal inconsistences and canon 
inconsistencies.  First, it contradicts canon to suggest that the 
curse only rebounded onto Voldemort because someone else blocked 
it.  It doesn't matter who blocked it, Harry or someone else--this 
idea negates Lily's sacrifice and also is contrary to what we know 
about the Killing Curse.  (It also turns Dumbledore into a liar.)  
According to the canon books it CANNOT be blocked.  From what JKR 
has told us, it is far more likely that the reason that Voldemort 
turned into a 'wraith,' to use your terminology, is that he had more 
power than anyone else around, so that was what was necessary to 
nearly destroy him.  (It is strongly implied that others tried and 
failed.)  All of that power turned against the source of all that 
power--him--produced a result no one had ever seen before, and the 
curse only rebounded upon him because of Lily's sacrifice.  It's 
always been emphasized how singular the event was.  The theory that 
a time-traveling Harry--or, as I said, ANYONE--'blocked' the curse 
makes it seem that people went around blocking the Killing Curse all 
the time.  Not according to JKR they didn't. 

Another plot hole: I also don't understand the 'but now Harry will 
have to die' part.  How does Dumbledore know this? Is it a 
prediction of Trelawney's?  (And HOW many times has she predicted 
his death?)  This is just conveniently thrown in as a given without 
any explanation.  Blam.  Harry will die at 18.  The problem is, we 
only know of one way to travel back through time at this point: The 
Time-Turner.  I wish folks would stop suggesting that it's possible 
to travel back through years and years with a device that only lets 
you go back one hour for every turn!  Haven't we had enough people 
posting about how long you'd have to turn the thing to go back a 
significant amount of time?  

And there's another Time-Turner caveat which has been mentioned 
repeatedly: you can't travel FORWARD with the Time-Turner.  After 
using a Time-Turner to travel back in time to save himeself, Harry 
would have to live the years 1981-1998 as an 18-35 year old.  It's 
the only way we know of for Harry to get back to his departure 
point. So he wouldn't be an eighteen-year-old after saving himself--
the only Harry who would be left in the world after the 18 year old 
Harry traveled back through time would be the 35 year old Harry 
who's been living through the same 17 years as an adult.  If, at 
that point, he defeats Voldemort, he will have lived for about 35 
years, not 18, so even if he does die in the process, he will have 
lived well past his adolescence and might even be married and have 
kids.  (Don't forget the details!)

Another thing the fanfiction author would have to consider: During 
those seventeen years, Harry would very likely have spent a 
tremendous amount of time restraining himself from sending himself 
Christmas and Birthday presents, hexing the Dursleys when they're 
not looking, or warning himself about things like what would happen 
by his insisting that Cedric take the tournament cup with him.  This 
guy would have to spend seventeen years sitting on his hands, 
knowing every bad thing that's going to happen to himself during 
that time, and probably feeling constantly tempted to change that.  
(And knowing about others' tragedies, too.  He'd have to let Sirius 
just sit in Azkaban all those years.  At least he didn't know 
before!)  Plus, he'd have to live in the Muggle world, because in 
the wizarding world people would probably assume that he's the 
resurrected James Potter, but with a scar (and he'd have to explain 
the eye color), which would mean that they'd expect him to take care 
of his son (not to mention explain being alive), which would in turn 
change what he knows of his early life. 

See?  When you write speculative fanfiction, you need to consider 
the radiating ramifications of every proposed change, and sometimes 
the changes can snowball in the most surprising way.  I know; I 
wrote a long and complicated Harry-travels-back-in-time-to-save-his-
mum fanfiction.  In addition to Voldemort not having fallen, the new 
world that resulted included such changes as none of the characters 
that, in canon, were born after October of 1981 being born, the USSR 
still existing, no Muggle-borns being allowed to attend Hogwarts and 
even the driving age in the UK being slightly lower.  You have to 
consider a huge number of details.  (For folks who like reading 
alternate history fantasy, I highly recommend Harry Turtledove's 
works.  Turtledove is very, very good with the details of what would 
happen had the South won the US Civil War, for instance.)  

For any time travel theory of this sort, you have to think of a way  
for a person to travel back in time (other than a Time-Turner) if 
it's more than a few hours, although that would be truly 
speculative, as JKR has not written about any such thing as yet.  
You would also have to do better than saying, "Harry will die at 18" 
with no explanation of how anyone has come by this knowledge.  These 
would actually not be difficult things to work out in a fanfiction, 
but in this theory they haven't been worked out at all. (Creating a 
time-travel spell for a fanfiction would not contradict canon; to 
imply that a Time-Turner works differently than the way JKR has 
described would.)  The real problem I have with the theory is that 
proposing that someone merely blocking the Killing Curse aimed at 
Harry led to Voldemort's fall also contradicts canon, and one of the 
most important messages of the series (Lily's love being stronger 
than Voldemort's power).  In the end, it just doesn't stand up to 
scrutiny.   

--Barb

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