Paradox of Time Travel in PoA - Before & After

[meltowne]

No: HPFGUIDX 135997

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at y...> wrote:
 
> First, all time travel will create a paradox, even the best thought
> out methods; there is simply no escape from that. However, let's not
> lose perspective regarding the nature and degree of paradox in PoA; 
it
> can be small or it can be large depending on nothing more than a
> person's perspective. Personally, I choose the small pain free
> perspective.
> 
> First, let's look as what Dumbledore knows. He know that Buckbeak
> escaped, but he doesn't know how or why. He knows that someone who
> looked like Harry's father saved Harry from the Dementors, and 
that's
> about it.
> 
> Remember, that at the time that Dumbledore makes his point about
> needing 'more time' /Sirius has NOT been saved yet/; that occurs in
> the future. There is nothing Dumbledore can do about saving Harry;
> somehow that worked itself out. There is nothing Dumbledore can do
> about saving Buckbeak because that also seems to have worked itself
> out, but there is something he thinks he might be able to do about
> using Buckbeak to save Sirius, which, again, has not happened yet.

Actually, do we know that Dumbledore doesn't know how Buckbeak 
escaped?  Remember that he often seems to have a far better sense of 
what is happening around him than anyone else.  I think it is 
possible that he already knows or has deduced that H&H went back to 
save Buckbeak (or he knows that H&R did it, but since the current H&R 
don't recall doing it - hence he know that they will at some point go 
back in time).  Again, that does not mean he has no free will in 
sending tham back.  He suggests that they can save more than 1 
tonight.  Harry might think he means 1 more than Sirius, but maybe he 
means 1 more than Buckbeack who has already been saved.  Notice he 
never mentions anything about Buckbeak's fate.

It's sort of like the scene in Bill & Ted's Amazing Adventures, where 
Bill reminds himself to go back and borrow his father's keys and hide 
them, and then finds them where he is going to hide them.  Just 
because you know you are going to do something doesn't mean you don't 
at some point have a choice.

I know it's movie contamination, but while Harry saves himself from 
the Dementors, Hermione also saves them from Lupin by howling.  
Perhaps you can argue that there is a certain amount of entropy, and 
that the timestream will correct itself to avoid any paradoxes.  

Then also remember the way these books are written - they are largely 
from the point of view of Harry, and presumable his remembrances.  
Perhaps that is our biggest hint as to why there appear to be no 
paradoxes - When H&H go back, if they change time, maybe they also 
change their own memory of what happened.  Maybe "it always happened 
that way" because Harry remembers it that way.  There may have at 
some time been a slightly different set of events, but nobody 
remembers them because they are no longr part of the current time 
stream.