Time-turning (was: Snape and DADA)

[macfotuk at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 112533

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Cathy Drolet" <cldrolet at s...> 
wrote:
> Siriusly Snapey Susan
> "Not to mention what kids think of it.  I've explained several 
times 
> to my 8-year-old daughter about how Buckbeak never did die.  But 
in 
> her mind, he DID, and Harry & Hermione simply went back and 
CHANGED 
> THE PAST so that he didn't die the second time.  Now, THAT much of 
TT 
> I understand--that she is wrong about Beaky--but I can't seem to 
find 
> the language to help her grasp it. <<snip>> hoping this was 
helpful to someone besides 
> myself."

Mac interjects:

I always saw this as a 'Schroedinger's cat' thing (not that I ever 
understood this either!!!!), but esentially buckbeak is in an 
unknown state when they TT - dead or alive? By intervening they 
change this to alive. I think JKR gives a few suggestions that 
before TT the state was in fact dead, but yes we don't know. the 
reality (sic) was that for a period of time there were two Harrys 
and Hermiones, Harry 1 and Hermione 1 *believed* buckbeak dead but 
because Harry 2 and Hermione 2 rescued him he wasn't, in fact. 
Should a pupil or teacher check in two classes that Hermione was 
taking simultaneously during the PoA year they would see her in both 
and perhaps wonder how, but of course it doesn't happen because (a) 
it shouldn't because it's unlikely and (b) it wouldn't serve the 
plot.
 
> DuffyPoo:
> I would like to poll kids in the reading age of these books.  I 
would just bet most of them are thinking like your daughter.  None 
of this helps me, however.  I think because it doesn't exist in 
reality (for those of you who think it does, humour me) everyone who 
writes TT writes it to their own specifications.  In the most recent 
Time Machine movie, the Time Traveller went back in time to save his 
fiance.  He could not do that because, without her death, he didn't 
invent the Time Machine (or didn't invent it that quickly, at any 
rate).  But there were not two of the Time Traveller existing in the 
same place at the same time.  When he went back to the park to save 
his fiance from death, there was only one of him...at least that's 
how I remember it.
> 

Hmmm TT is always difficult - e.g. back to the future. But in Jean-
Claude Van Damme's TimeCop a future and past version of the same 
person DO meet and catastrophically obliterate one another. A kind 
of matter/anti-matter thing. In HP of course Harry sees himself but 
his past self sees his future self as being his father and, 
moreover, rescues himself - always thought that was a VERY clever 
bit of the plot because without TT HP would be no more and this is 
one of the most significant reverberations of DD's comment 'you may 
just save more than one life tonight' just before he asks them to do 
it. Indeed, he must have known that TT was necessary because he will 
have known that otherwise Harry would have been dead - kissed by a 
dementor (assuming that HP CAN be killed by a dememntor - not sure 
If I believe this - i.e. only LV has the power to vanquish HP).