*MY* confusion about the Time Turner

[Tammy Rizzo]

No: HPFGUIDX 123943

Okay, so I am honestly confused here.  I just cannot understand this.  Maybe someone can 
help me?  My problem is . . . HOW can anyone POSSIBLY be confused about the Time 
Turner?  It's so simple and straightforward, after all.  Everything happens as it happens, as it 
has always happened, as it will always happen; nobody changes anything, nobody *can* 
change anything -- 'Time' only happens once, no matter how many times a character travels 
through it.  All a Time Turning character can do is what he's already done, so what *IS* the 
big confusion?  There is no 'first time/second time' of anything -- it's all THE ONLY TIME.  
Different perspectives from different trips through 'time' bring light to different parts of the 
incident, but it's all THE ONLY TIME, and anything that happens is what has always 
happened and what will always happen.  It's *SO SIMPLE*!

Harry and Hermione saved Sirius and Buckbeak because they saved Sirius and Buckbeak.  
Buckbeak had never been killed; they didn't CHANGE the outcome of the executioner's visit 
-- they'd already rescued Buckbeak before the executioner had come out to kill him. Harry 
saved himself and Sirius from the dementors at the lake because he saved himself and 
Sirius from the dementors at the lake.  Hermione couldn't go back and take the charms 
class she had missed because she had missed it.  Nobody can TimeTurn back to save 
Sirius at the MoM, because Sirius *DID* fall through the Veil, nothing can change that, and 
any attempts to change it will still only result in what has already happened, because any 
attempts to go back and change it will have already been incorporated into what has already 
happened, because it HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.  Simple.  Straightforward.  Why, oh 
WHY, do people get confused over it?  <shaking head>  I just don't understand that.  There 
*IS* no paradox, no matter how you look at it.  

And before anyone brings up Hermione's thing with wizards who had killed their past or 
future selves, my take on that is simple -- she's very bright, she reads a lot more than I do 
(and I have two or three books-in-progress in every room of the house), but she's also under 
a lot of pressure during the year of PoA, and under conditions of near-hysteria (her panic 
over missing class) and constant sleep deprivation (remember, they often stay up past 
midnight working on homework, which she's done TWICE as much of, in TWICE as much 
time, and she doesn't Time Turn for more sleep), and in cases like that, the brain simply 
wouldn't always correlate data properly.  Anything she quotes as simple fact must be looked 
at with that possibility, that she MIGHT have been just a LITTLE bit confused *that year*.  
Sure, wizards could kill their future selves, but not their past selves.  I think she read in the 
book that wizards had experienced their future selves being killed BY their past selves.  The 
danger isn't to the timeline (nothing can change what has already happened), but to the 
wizards themselves.  I mean, YOU try staying up for 24 hours straight, getting maybe four to 
six hours sleep, and doing it all over again, day in, day out, for ten months, while also 
making sure that NOBODY catches on to what you're doing, and see if YOU don't make a 
mistake or two with your fact-retention.

As for the idea of Time Turning back to GH to affect (as in 'exert influence on') the events 
there, or even to effect (as in 'cause to happen') the events there . . . well, from what we 
know of TTs, they move you backwards in time.  That's it.  From there, you have to trudge 
forwards in time the same way as everyone else does.  So, while it would be practically 
impossible to TT back in time to the events at GH (does anyone think they could possibly 
keep track of how many hours that is, and therefore how many turns of the TT it would 
take), it is not theoretically impossible to TT back there.  But it wouldn't change anything at 
GH, it would simply be what had already happened, and whoever DID try to TT back to GH 
would be faced with re-living the years between then and now, and not being able to make 
ANY changes for that whole time, because whatever they did on their second trip through 
the intervening years had already happened anyway.

***
Tammy Rizzo (as opposed to the other Tammy, who's not me)
ms-tamany at rcn.com

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