Paradoxes; Harry and the Patronus - was another wacko theory

[ReturnOfTheMutt at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 108644

meltowne at yahoo.com writes:

> .  That's because the terrible two were 
> supposed to be with Arthur, getting firewood, while the others were 
> getting water.  I always thought that escaping from their Dad, using 
> the time-turner to go to the future to see the end of the match, and 
> then calculating their re-entry into the timestream before the match 
> without Arthur noticing anything would be pretty tricky


While thinking about fwd time turning, I realized that our views on what 
happened down by the lake have to be incorrect.

I'm confused about something I haven't thought about.  Nothing says the time 
turner goes only one way.  So when you go backward it goes like this:

Time of origin will be O.  The time an hour prior to this will be called P 
(for past).  The you who is living during the time from P to O for the first 
time without any time turning will be called 1.  The you that is living that time 
for the second time, after time turning will be called 2.  The you that 
continues to live past O will be 3.

You go back an hour.  From P to O two of you exist at the same time as 1 and 
2.  At O, 1 stops existing in that time to go back to the future, becoming 2.  
When 2 reaches O the time turning has ended and he enters 3, the regular 
timeline.

What on earth would happen if you took a trip an hour into the future?  
You've got O for your take off time, L (later) for when you land in the future.  1, 
the original you, ends up in L.  While 1 is in the future for the first time 
around [(though this will never ever be seen which is why time travel pisses 
me off.  You go to the future.  You see stuff.  You snap back to your original 
self.  You know things that affect how events from the present to the future 
that place.  You avoid them so that they don't take place.  If they don't take 
place in the altered timeline, the past you who is about to jump never learns 
about them, never avoids the pitfalls, so they happen.  Gah, paradox I can't 
put into words).  Let me say this another way.  Harry was saved by what he 
thought was his father.  He goes back in time, and realize that it was himself who 
saved himself AND THAT IS THE REASON HE CAST THE SPELL.  But the he had 
already been saved.  It's not possible for him to have actually been attacked the 
first time around because...  

This is the only way that I see that the events could have gone down: Harry's 
being attacked by the dementors by the lake.  Somebody other than himself 
with the patronus saved him.  It couldn't have been him; the only reason he saved 
himself when he went back in time was because he knew he'd already done it, 
which couldn't have been possible the first time the timeline played out (or he 
wouldn't have been saved and he wouldn't know to save himself.  It would be a 
paradox, and I have to argue because I don't like him.  He was saved because 
he saved himself and he saved himself because he'd been saved.  It doesn't 
work.  You can't have both at the same time.

So somebody else saved Harry.  It was not efficient.  That person could have 
been somewhere else.  The Trio or whoever it was that saved him and knew about 
the time turner decide to use the time turner so that Harry can instead go 
back and save himself.  They knew it wouldn't change anything for the negative 
because the events would be similar to what already played out (we'll never 
know what it was that played out since the timeline was destroyed when Harry went 
back and saved himself, preventing it from existing).  Harry goes back and 
saves himself, but in a way that he's not clearly recognizable from across the 
lake.  The first Harry, the one being attacked is saved.  That starts a whole 
new timeline where Harry ends up across from the lake from himself (he could be 
there for any number of reasons.  It doesn't matter).  He saves himself, and 
we pick up with the Harry that just got saved.  That Harry is the one from 
who's point of view we see the part of the book where all of this happens.

timeline 1: Harry is attacked by the dementors by the lake.  He is saved by 
somebody else.  Bad things happen that that somebody else could have prevented, 
so, after the fact, that somebody else tells Harry to use the time turner to 
go back and take care of himself while they take care of business.
timeline 2: Harry is attacked by dementors.  He is saved by himself.  The 
Harry doing the saving is aware of timeline 1.
timeline 3: We're back in timeline 2 where Harry is being attacked by 
dementors.  The Harry at the end of timeline 3 saves him.  When Harry gets to the 
point where it's time to save himself, he remembers savior Harry from 2 and saves 
himself, this time having no knowledge of prior events ( I don't know what 
other people knew during the other timelines, I'm only focusing on Harry.  On 
P411 US, Harry is looking for his 'dad' to appear to save him.  He doesn't know 
which way he's coming from, which means that there could be a slight 
difference in the way he approaches the dementors and the way he did the first time he 
saved himself, and he wouldn't realize it because he'd been preoccupied with 
the dementors when he was attacked.  Time line one never comes to exist because 
of timeline 3.

I know a lot of what I said prolly doesn't make sense.  If you don't get it 
email me.

I haven't had such a headache since Back To The Future.  Tell me if I'm 
overthinking this.

When you time turn into the future and you get injured, do you return just a 
moment after you left with your new injured body, or do you create a new body 
when you time travel which stop existing and allowed your conscious to snap 
back to where you left off.

-Mutt