Long post on old time-turner threads

[Amanda]

No: HPFGUIDX 82244

Because I *did* promise, I have gone back and read the time-travel 
posts Silmariel indicated (79045, 79099, and 79635). Commentary 
follows for each.

79045--A post by Laurasia. Eloquent and in my opinion, absolutely 
correct and spot-on. (raises glass to Laurasia, forgets self is a 
geist, pours butterbeer through self onto floor)

79099--Silmariel's response to Laurasia. In general, I get the 
same "feeling" from Silmariel's logic as I do (no offense, Pip, Wolf, 
Melody) from the Magic Dishwasher. Yes, I suppose, given a lot of 
coincidences and stretches of the imagination, your interpretation 
*might* be possible--but it's not the best fit to the canon.

A few specific comments on 79099:

Silmariel: Why would Hermione use the tt when she has been caught? 
What for? To get a class? Even if she had not been lectured, it 
wouldn't be a sensible thing to do. 

Amanda: Are you kidding? When she missed a class that was on 
something she is *certain* will be on the exam?

And if you are correct, it wouldn't matter if she'd been caught, as 
soon as she went back and changed time, that future would have been 
altered and the boys would no longer remember she had ever missed 
Charms.

(Laurasia:) Who cast the Patronus the first time?
 
Silmariel: Snape.

Amanda: ROFLMAO!!! Wow, I'd never seen this proposed. Seriously. I'm 
sorry. There's not a shred of canon to support this. Nowhere, never 
anyplace, *ever* in canon has it been even *remotely* hinted that 
either Harry or James resembled Snape in the slightest. Yet the 
caster of the Patronus looked so much like James that Harry believed 
it *was* James. Who have we been told resembles James to an amazing 
degree? Harry.

Nor is there a shred of canon to indicate that Snape even knows how 
to cast the Patronus charm; there was a lively thread (before OoP, I 
believe) as to the likelihood of his even being able to, given that 
it requires a happy memory and Snape doesn't seem to be too gifted in 
that area.

(Laurasia:) Where was s/he [the caster] the second time? Or, Why 
didn't s/he try to cast the Patronus the second time?

Silmariel: Pretending to be unconscious and he didn't need it, H2 was 
there to cast it.

Amanda: I defy *anyone* to float unconscious while a hundred 
dementors approach as closely as they do. And that is where Snape 
was, floating unconscious *very close* to Harry and Hermione. He 
would have had to get himself across the lake in the blink of an eye 
to have cast the spell, even if he was not unconscious and the 
dementors weren't affecting him too.
 
Silmariel: The first set doesn't include the vision of James.

Amanda: Yes it does. Harry's thoughts immediately after the attack, 
and those while he is talking to Hermione while waiting with 
Buckbeak, indicate that it was what Harry *saw* of the caster that 
made him believe it was James.

Silmariel: Harry loses vision, Snape cast patronus, Harry gets focus 
again, Snape invents the first lie he can, something as 'did you see 
him, Harry, by the lake' 'who' 'no one' and then 
goes 'unconscios/vague' again, as if he where almost unable to move.

Amanda: I find this a bit hard to follow--but Snape does not speak to 
either Harry or Hermione after the attack; they are unconscious. He 
could not have fed them a lie.

Silmariel: It has to be refined, but it is a good starting point.

Amanda: It doesn't hold water. It's not just a bad fit to canon; 
canon contradicts it.

(Laurasia:) If Harry can change time and suffer no consequences, why 
not just send one version of himself back to use Buckbeak to rescue
Sirius, and another version of himself to catch Wormtail?

Silmariel: Because he has been lectured on what you can and can't do 
in time travel, and believed explanations?

Amanda: Harry has NOT been lectured on time-turners. Harry had never 
even *heard* of time turners until about an hour and a half before 
that instant. All he knows of time-turners is the hurried explanation 
of Hermione.


78635--Talisman's highly entertaining and well-constructed refutation 
of Laurasia, and another post by bboy which I didn't read. I *love* 
her (her?) model with the marker and the action figures.

Her interpretation of the flow of time--singular for those outside 
observing, multiple and serial for those doing the time-jumping--
absolutely agrees with mine.

I am intrigued by her statement that Harry had to survive the 
dementor encounter, in order to exist, in order to be in place to 
cast the Patronus spell. It bears weight. However, I have read more 
than one science fiction story which comes down to the fact that 
fooling around with time involves paradoxes, and it may be that JKR 
simply didn't think this deeply about the ramifications of Harry 
saving himself.

I think the elegance of her construction, having Harry so much more 
closely identify himself with James and boost his own self-confidence 
through this event, is worth the inconsistency. And I think it is 
just that, an inconsistency, possibly a Flint--because canon fits 
what these posts have called the "single time stream," better than 
any other interpretation.

One comment I call out:

Talisman: Laurasia maintains that Travelers have always achieved 
their goals, before ever using the Turner, and that they don't 
actually change anything. 

Amanda: Not exactly. What I think she maintains, and what I maintain, 
is that the Travelers are always there. This is, to lift a phrase, 
time-travel at its deepest, most impenetrable. Choice must play a 
part, and it defies our intuition to have something that *has* 
happened depend on a choice that has not been made yet, or even 
confronted yet. I think we must fall back and paraphrase Harry: they 
do it, because they already have. It's just one of those things that 
works out. It's a Mystery; that's why it's in that Department.

But do they always succeed? No. In fact, with this whole "can Sirius 
be saved" thing, I've been saying they may well have tried. Some of 
the pyrotechnics and spells we see in the confusion of battle may 
have been would-be rescuers. My point has been that even if they 
tried, they failed, because it didn't work and Sirius died. Which 
means that even if Harry gets the idea to try it in Book 6 or 7, all 
that will happen is that he gets to see Sirius die again. Do you 
Sirius people really want that?

~Amanda