Teenage Harry goes back in time to Godric's Hollow

[lucinda428]

No: HPFGUIDX 102005

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Tanya Swaine <swaine.t at x> 
wrote:
> > Now if Harry does go back, and survive as his late teenage 
self.  How the 
> heck does he get to the
> present again.  Would he have to live those 18 years while his 
baby self 
> grows?  Then somehow
> be in the same spot to merge at the time the time turner was 
> activated.  And if he is wandering
> around waiting in the sidelines.  I wonder as who?  If introduced.


I assumed that if he lived, he time-turned back again.   (However, 
see the par below for another option.)  That it's only because they 
go back such a short way that they have to do the synchronising 
thing in POA.  If he did time-turn back, Harry would still not 
remember the event (except baby memories) until he passes the age at 
which he'd gone back.  But you're right, it's not firmly established 
that the time-turner will take you forward as well as back.  I can't 
quite work out how it works for Hermione's lessons.

> 
> But as a whole, headaches all round lol.
> 
> However, I'm not quite clear.  Are you suggesting all three of 
them time 
> turned and are running around
> as youngsters then that night?
> 
> Tanya


I'm not really suggesting a theory at this point - just toying with 
possibilities. James wouldn't have had to time turn, and the other 
two ARE chasing each other in our present.  But I don't have a 
hypothesis that they're all there at once - I'm just saying any one 
of them could be mistaken for any other if they were.  

Maybe I should start a new thread with this, because this IS a 
theory, but the similarities between Harry and Riddle have always 
been the most interesting thing for me, the moreso after OOTP where 
Harry starts hiding the truth about being able to see through LV's 
eyes because he LIKES it.  I've been playing for a while with ideas 
along the lines that Harry and LV are not related, but are actually 
the same person, with time and choice being what makes the 
difference we see.  (Notice that JKR never lets us know what colour 
Riddle's eyes are - LV's are red but if Riddle's had been I'm sure 
there would have been Remarks, even in a nice school like 
Hogwarts :)  I haven't found a way to make this theory work 
properly, but there are lots of interesting aspects to it.  It's 
persuasive thematically because the effects of time and choice are 
so important in the series as a whole that I sincerely hope JKR 
isn't working towards a simple good-evil standoff.  It also opens 
the way for the prophecy to be unambiguously about Neville, of
course. 

It's not just that Harry looks like Riddle: it's that they're both 
Parselmouths, they're both powerful wizards even while in their 
teens, the Sorting Hat wanted to put Harry in Slytherin (against any 
sense that anyone else, including us, has of Harry to date), and 
depending on your definition of "open", they both arguably open the 
Chamber of Secrets.  (If you do accept that Harry does that you're 
straight up against it, because only the heir of Slytherin can do 
that.)  And they've got this connection through the scar: a 
connection which is expanding in OOTP.  Much of that has been 
explained away as the residue of the GH incident, but I have never 
trusted the cosy explanations Harry's been given about that - if 
they were all true, why couldn't he have been given them as soon as 
he got to Hogwarts?

The connection I'm really interested in is the similarity of their 
births.  Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but Riddle's parents were 
allegedly a Muggle and a witch (who therefore had to be the Heir of 
Slytherin at that point).  She died at some hazy time shortly after 
his birth, just like Lily, and the father disappeared and Riddle was 
placed in an orphanage.  Harry's parents were allegedly a 'Mudblood' 
(not a Muggle) and a wizard with a good pedigree, and they both 
disappeared not long after his birth too and he was placed among the 
Dickensian Dursleys.  (In what way James "disappeared" seems to have 
become a matter of concern among us in this thread.)  These are 
extraordinarily similar histories, particularly given that Riddle's 
is very blurred with time, he's not a very trustworthy witness, and 
his remaining rels were all bumped off before anybody could offer a 
contrary story.  

As I said, I can't make it work really properly, but I just think 
the similarities are too glaring not to mean something.  One of the 
points that has me stumped is that, if Lily's family really WERE 
Muggles, then Harry's wizarding ability (like his looks) comes 
through James, whereas if Riddle's story is right his powers must 
come through his mother, about whom we know absolutely nothing - 
which strongly suggests to me that she is a critical issue, 
especially given that she must be the Heir of Slytherin in her 
generation.  Can you remember whether Riddle's murdered father 
looked like him or not?

In answer to your first question, which is something I hadn't 
thought about before, that other option is that 18-year-old Harry 
disintegrates with the defeated LV because that's where THEY 
resynchronise (or just because the effect of thwarting the AK is 
that they do merge). So yes, then Harry DOES hang round for the next 
11 years in the shadows.  But Harry the baby develops of its own 
accord and makes different choices.  I realise I've got a jigsaw 
clue missing, because otherwise the plot would just repeat 
eternally, but I feel that some of it might be right.  I'd be 
delighted if anyone can suggest a rearrangement of the puzzle pieces 
that would make it work better.

Lucinda