[HPforGrownups] Re: Paradox of Time Travel in PoA - Before & After

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

No: HPFGUIDX 136811

Sandra writes:
> To give yet another example (how many is it going to take?)
> How about if Darth Vader and Obi Wan are having their duel in
> Star Wars 4 like they did, and just before Obi gets killed, Darth is
> thrown to one side by a mysterious Jedi Mind Trick from a
> mysterious person.. who turns out to be Obi Wan from 2 hours in
> the future who only got there because he survived the duel!! It
> doesn't work, it's a cock-up, an enormous oversight, a lack of
> clear thinking, a great big mistake, a twist too far, and a major
> loophole.

I find this entire conversation fascinating, especially since people
are approaching it so scientifically while JKR obviously just didn't
give it that much thought.  (After all, this was the woman who pulled
out the timeturner deus ex machina in the first place.)  In my
opinion, everyone is approaching this just a little too
scientifically.  If you just take into account the fact that Western
thought generally accepts time as linear, things fit quite nicely,
though not necessarily scientifically.

Imagine that the HP universe is a singular timeline.  Imagine that
timeline as an actual line.  When Harry & Hermione travels back in
time, they create that line to loop back onto itself, thereby creating
a period when, for all intents and purposes, there are two timelines
in progress, though really, there's one timeline running over itself. 
The timeline, therefore, is polluted by itself until the point when
there is just one each of Harry & Hermione traveling around.

That's how I see time in most Western books (or at least the ones
where the author clearly hasn't thought through time travel & its
potential problems).  It's a theory that's worked quite well for me. 
Granted, it plays into the multiple universe theory (or is that many
universe theory?  I don't remember; anyone got a copy of their quantum
theories book handy?), and that creates problems of its own, but
that's neither here or there in the context of this conversation.

~Ali