Time-turning as literary device (was: Just a comment about Lupin's malady)

[vmonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 109565

Eleanor responding to SSSusan's post:
If by "changing the past" you mean "going to the past and doing
something that made a difference to someone", yes, they did that.
They rescued Sirius and Buckbeak. That was the point of going back.
Harry conjuring the Patronus was the same sort of thing, only not
planned.

If you think Harry really changed the past, i.e. made history happen
differently from how it originally did, then you have to suppose there
was a timeline where he didn't conjure the Patronus. Then you'd have
to explain why he thought he'd seen someone do it and how he got away
from the Dementors. I think we're intended to assume Harry did see
himself, and that all the things he did in the past had always
happened, but he just didn't know about them.

I hope this makes a bit more sense!

vmonte:

Perhaps, the reason the PoA time-line (in which Harry and Hermione 
time-traveled) appears to look as though H&H never changed history 
(we see Harry before he TTs saving himself, Buckbeak appears to have 
never been killed, etc.) is only because DD's strategy always worked 
in this instance. Dumbledore knew that H&H would be successful, and 
the events unfold as though it had always happened in this manner.  
 
vmonte