my thoughts on the Time Turner (Re: a long long thread)

[Alina]

No: HPFGUIDX 100511

NOTE: you are in danger of being Confuzzled. Turn back now if you've got no
time and energy for time travelling paradoxical headaches.

A rather valid point has been brought up in the span of our latest
discussion about time-turners: why not just use it to fix all the mistakes?
Harry could go back and save Sirius, save Cedrict, etc. etc.

However, I think Rowling might have foreseen that issue arising and I think
that's why she was very specific and careful when writing the end of POA.

For one thing, when H&H went back in time, they didn't avert deaths that had
already happened, because no death has happened. I think this comes with the
issue of understanding how the time turner works in the first place.

I think, that when we were reading the scene in which Harry first finds out
about the time-turner and Hermione uses it to get them back three hours into
the past, at that time H&H were running up to the infirmary door and
Buckbeak was carrying Sirius away.

In order for the Time-Turner to make sense in the context of the books, we
have to assume that time and history and the potterverse are rigid,
perdetermined and unchanging. Kind of takes away the whole concept of free
will and choice. Or it could be on a smaller scale: Only death is rigid and
irreversable and happens no matter what.

If Harry was to go back to save Cedric then it would turn out like the movie
The Time Machine (haven't read the novel, that's why not referring to it).
Cedric would end up dying still, just a different death no matter how Harry
tried to change it.

Then instead of a universe with one timeline from which no one can stray, we
can imagine a universe consisting of many timelines that all intersect where
someone dies.

Erm, I think I've confuzzled myself by this point so I'll shut up now.

Alina.