Time-Turning as a Cure-All

[Robert Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 88671

The main reason time-travel is not a clumsy and very unsatisfying 
plot device is that you can make up any rules you want.  "You can go 
back in time to participate in saving Buckbeak, but not to kill Tom 
Riddle."  It is not like there are some laws of physics involved — 
it's all science fiction.  This means JKR can make up any laws she 
likes to make it come out the way she wants.  And that's too easy 
and therefore not a very satisfying in the end.

Second, the whole distinction between "you can go back in time to 
participate in events so that they occur the way they really did" 
and "you can't change what already has occurred" doesn't really 
hold.  In an editorial over at mugglenet, they analyze the night 
Burkbeck was saved in POA to show (as JKR has it) that Buckbeak was 
never really killed — but they have to admit that history after 8:45 
PM that night was changed.  And if history has to be changed, why 
can't you go back and just kill off Tom Riddle?  (Also JKR has 
McGonagall telling Hermione that there are instances of wizards 
going back in time and killing their earlier selves -- so under her 
theory you can change history.)

Third, time-travel is fun if you don't think about it too much.  
Consider Harry making his Patronus on the night Buckbeak was saved.  
Harry1 sees Harry2 produce a Patronus and so he knows he (Harry1) 
can do it.  But this is the Chuck Berry Paradox from the movie "Back 
to the Future" where the Michael J. Fox character learns Chuck 
Berry's guitar licks off Chuck's records but then teaches Chuck 
those same licks over the telephone — in effect the earlier Chuck 
Berry learns his licks from the future Chuck Berry.  There is no 
point in this circle for Chuck to actually create the licks.  And 
the same problem applies to Harry: he can make a Patronus because he 
already did it because he can do it . . .

All in all, if time travel becomes an essential part of the final 
events in the series, I will feel cheated.  We will have been 
wasting time reading and thinking about an unsatisfying sci fi novel.