Paradox of Time Travel in PoA - Before & After

[komagata_mai]

No: HPFGUIDX 137361

allie says:
> 
> I posted on this topic a long time ago and only got the "it only 
> happened once" answer in reply, very unsatisfying.  Does anyone
have 
> any other ideas??  Have any been posted already that I haven't 
> seen?  Who saved them the first time around???
> 

So If there was such ain idea in the HP universe of Multiple
timelines (in order to go back 
in time, you make a new past, with the timetraveler in it) it would
be a paradox. In the 
multiple timeline scenario, you can go back in time and kill your
grandfather. However, in 
the multiple timeline scenario, you cannot be your own grandfather,
the child born of you 
would not be the same kid as yourself. 

JKR uses the one timeline version of timetravel. Time is like a
spatial dimension, and there 
is only one-dimensional (it does not branch out). All of time exists
at the same time, you 
just happen to experience sequentially as a consequence of being
human. The TimeTurner 
basically creates a second copy of yourself at that moment in time,
and the two harry's act 
independently at that moment in time. Its as if all of time was
conceived of "at the same 
time", the characters just experience it in that order, so it seems
to create a paradox.

For example, when Hermione misses charms, she cannot just turn the
timeturner back an 
hour and go to charms now that she is reminded of missing charms.
Because it didnt 
happen that way. There is no alternate timeline where Hermione can go
to that charms 
class. She didnt go, and no amount of her wanting to go will change
the "past" so to 
speak.

Ultimately, you could get into a big debate of how this view of time
is deterministic and 
undermines the whole concept of a character being able to make
choices. (can harry really 
"choose" to use the time-turner when he knows it happened already?)
but that is a whole 
other debate. 

mariana
lurker.