POA Prongs Patronus

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 100424

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Brenda" <Agent_Maxine_is at h...> wrote:
> Alina wrote:
> > Harry kept on waiting for his dad to show up somehow,
> > and then realized that it wasn't his dad he had seen, but his own
> > time-travelling self. He produced the Patronus, knowing his could 
> > this time because he had already seen himself do it several hours 
> > earlier.
> 
> 
> This is actually the part from PoA that REALLY REALLY confuses me, 
> and this confusion was intensified after watching the film 
> adaptation.  I'm wondering, are certain time periods destined to be 
> revisited?  For example:
> 
> 1. Hermione throwing the rocks to the hut so that they'll get out.
> 2. Hermione wondering if that's how her hair looks like from the back 
> (that line cracked me up, i didn't think HErmione cared about her 
> appearance too much just yet..) and the "past/before" Hermione 
> hearing herself.
> 3. Of course, there's the werewolf-calling-out, and the Patronous, 
> etc etc..
> 
> My question is, will those incidents have occurred if they didn't go 
> back in time?  It certainly seemed to me that they happened because 
> the future H/Hr had interferred, and somehow the circumstances at 
> that time *knew* that they were to be revisited and corrected??  This 
> strongly reminds me of a scene from The Matrix with the Oracle and 
> Neo. (this, of course, is a very rough transition of the 
> conversation, I'm at a school library right now, I don't think the 
> staffs will be too pleased if I started watching the MAtrix here...)
> 
> - Oracle: "Oh, and don't worry the vase"
> - Neo: "What vase?" [and at that instance he breaks it..]
> - Neo: "how'd you know.."
> - Oracle: "the real question is, would you have broken it if I didn't 
> tell you?"
> 
> Also, whatever happens to people/lives/circumstances that are not 
> involved with those who turned the Time Turner?  Do they just simply 
> go back in time and re-live the whole thing without knowing?
> 
> Brenda (who is now more confused than ever, and who also started 
> embracing her always-confused-and-dull brain ever since joining the 
> group.. wells there HAVE to be the silly/non-perceptive ones for 
> someone else to be smart.. it's all relative after all..)

This is why Chief O'Brien, the engineer in played by the wonderful Colm Meaney in two of 
the Star Trek series, says, "I hate temporal mechanics."

The problem with them is that fiction works as a form of entertainment because there is 
an illusion of causality. The author sets up the expectation that characters' actions have 
certain outcomes, and that those outcomes are, to use Aristotle's phrase, 'inevitable but 
unexpected.' 

Once you introduce time travel, the illusion of a causal chain of events goes out the 
window. 

Most authors deal with it as Star Trek and JKR have done, with heavy injunctions and 
taboos not to change the past. But Harry's conjuration of Prongs pushes that injunction to 
the limit, and Cuaron clearly wanted to play along and push it even further.

Remember, a lot (if not all) of the changes made in creating the movie are there to 
externalize the parts of the book that happen inside Harry's head. Books are inherently 
psychological, where films are by necessity an art form of action and visual imagery.