*MY* confusion about the Time Turner (getting long here)

[Tammy Rizzo]

No: HPFGUIDX 124003

> Tammy Rizzo first wrote:
> 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.
> 
> To which Laurasia replies:
> Whilst I realise that you were asking a rhetorical question, the
> question certainly persists. Why is there no unanimous understanding
> of Potterverse Time Travel?

Now Tammy R says:
Actually, it wasn't a rhetorical question.  I *HONESTLY* cannot fathom why there's such a 
confusion about such a simple and straightforward concept as the Time Turner.  It's just so 
*basic*.

<snip for length>

> Laurasia continues:
> JKR has spent a good deal of time showing us the importance of
> choices. And she gets the most credible, experienced and wise
> character she has (Dumbledore) spout freewill/choice rhetoric at
> regular intervals. 
> 
> In which case, mustn't time be malleable? If JKR wanted to prove to us
> that every character has freedom of choice, mustn't she be showing us
> a version of Time Travel where characters go back and radically change
> past events? Undoing outcomes; changing events to their own choosing;
> creating a history that follows their conscious decisions instead of
> tolerating the events as they are throw at them.

Now Tammy R says:
I don't think a fixed Timeline negates choice or free will, not at all.  Nor do I think that choice 
or free will demands a malleable Timeline.  What happens is what happens is what happens 
is what happens, and that's all there is to it, but what happens happens because of the free 
choices that people (or characters) make.  They make the choice, they do whatever, and 
that *IS* what happened.  If they had made a different choice, something else would have 
happened, but what *HAPPENED* is what happened.  THAT is the choice they made, it's 
made, it's done, it's happened, and it cannot be changed, no matter how many times they 
might Time Turn back to try, because anything they might try to do to change what 
happened *HAS ALSO ALREADY HAPPENED*, it's part of what has already happened, and 
that's all there is to it.

> Laurasia again:
> But she doesn't. Instead JKR shows us Hermione hiding behind Hagrid's
> Hut pleading with Harry that he *CANNOT* burst in and seize Pettigrew!

Now Tammy R:
Of course Harry can't burst in and seize Pettigrew.  Hermione won't let him.  In the time 
when he _thinks_ he MIGHT have been able to do something like that (which he never did, 
because he never did, and so he never did), she's too busy trying to get it through his head 
that he can't do it, so his *percieved* opportunity goes by.  But that's not a paradox -- that's 
just what already happened.  

> Laurasia: 
> Why is Harry's freedom of choice so resolutely BLOCKED? Why not send
> Harry and Hermione *4* *turns* back so they can nip down to Hagrid's
> ahead of time and whisk Wormtail out of the jug?

Tammy R:
Harry's freedom of choice isn't being blocked here by anything other than Hermione's rather 
INSISTANT attempts to dissuade him from trying to change things.  It's not that he doesn't 
have the choice, it's that he DID choose . . . to listen to Hermione.  If he had chosen 
something else, then something else would have happened, and it might or might not have 
been noticed by their earlier selves.  But Harry DID make a choice (even choosing not to 
decide is still making a choice, after all), and this choice leads to what happens -- they stay 
where they are at the time.

And Dumbledore only suggested that three turns should be just about right.  Hermione is the 
one who CHOSE to take his suggestion.  If she had chosen to go back earlier and get 
Wormtail out of the milk jug, then THAT is what would have happened, and everything 
WOULD have gone differently, but it all happened the way it happened.  She didn't go back 
to an earlier hour to get Wormtail, so she didn't go back to an earlier hour to get Wormtail.  
Not that she COULDN'T -- just that she DIDN'T.  She didn't think of it, or she didn't think she 
could do it, or whatever, but she CHOSE to take DD's suggestion of three turns.  Harry, on 
the other hand, simply stood there wondering what the heck was Hermione doing.

> Laurasia: 
> JKR shows us a pair of feet and a door slamming in the Entrance Hall 3
> hours before Harry and Hermione leave to make them. We have seen the
> _cause_ shown before the _effect_. 

Tammy R:
You mean the _effect_ before the _cause_ there, right?

> Laurasia: 
> The normal understanding is that cause must always come before effect.
> Until we see and experience the cause, the effect cannot exist. Until
> we see Harry *go* back in time, he cannot already *be* back in time.

Tammy R:
No, the effect can and will and does exist, whether we have experienced the cause or not.

> Laurasia: 
> The only way we can see effect *before* cause is if Time is
> predefined. If Time is fixed then order isn't important. If Time is
> fixed then the future is not dependant on the past. 

Tammy R:
The PAST *is* fixed.  The past cannot be changed.  The future is dependant upon the past, 
in that what has gone before helps to form the choices that the characters make, but the 
future is NOT fixed, until it has passed and become the past, and has *become* fixed.

> Laurasia: 
> Time and
> cause-and-effect could flow backwards or forwards or back and forth
> because the future isn't defined by actions in the past- it has
> already been decided.

Tammy R:
No, that doesn't follow at all.  A fixed past does not require a fixed future, nor does a fixed 
past negate choice.  Cause and effect still holds sway, whether the cause or the effect 
*happens* first, timewise.  WE see the effect of TimeTurning only after DD makes his 
suggestion to Hermione.  That doesn't mean that the effects that we *didn't realize* were 
effects of that cause didn't happen until after DD made his suggestion.  We didn't realize 
that the footsteps and the closing door were an effect of the TT until after we'd seen the TT 
being used, but that doesn't mean that the footsteps and closing door hadn't HAPPENED 
yet.

Cause and effect are still joined in the journey through Time, even if a minor swirl or eddy in 
the Timestream makes them SEEM to come in reverse order.  Where there is a cause, 
there is an effect, but also, where there is an effect, there *IS* a cause.  Somewhere.

> Laurasia: 
> If Time is fixed, then it makes perfectly plausible to see the effects
> of Harry and Hermione's Time Travelling before we see the cause of
> it. 

Tammy R:
If it's happened, it's happened.  In that way, Time is fixed.  But what is yet to come is yet to 
come and is yet to be shaped by what has already come to pass and the choices people 
make because of what has already come to pass.  The future is not fixed, only the past.

> Laurasia: 
> But, back to choice. How the hell can Time exist in a predefined
> fashion if JKR's most significant theme is that it is our choices who
> define who we are? *THAT* makes apparently no sense, right?

Tammy R:
Actually, according to DD, it's our choices that SHOW who we are, not define who we are.  
But to answer your question, as I've been saying, it's only what has already happened that 
has already happened.  If it is yet to come in the unshaped future, then it hasn't happened 
yet.  And all the choice in the world cannot change what has already come to pass, though it 
can and does shape the future.

<snip of logic and logistics of fixed vs. malleable Time>

> Laurasia: 
> BUT, why is this logic never wheeled out to contradict the presence of
> Prophecies? Isn't a Prophecy proof that a future event is known before
> the cause of it has come into play? Is it because Prophecies work in
> vague and cryptic ways? Is it because there is only a mystic voice
> telling you what the future holds, instead of a character's own memory
> and eyes? Is it because a Prophecy is only appears as a guide, not an
> indisputable fact? 

Tammy R:
Now we're touching on a real-world facet here.  I have absolutely no problems with a true 
prophecy reflecting an unshaped future based upon a set-in-stone past, but that's because 
of my religious upbringing.  I also have absolutely no problem believing in an all-knowing 
God who knows exactly what we're going to do before we do it, even though WE choose in 
the here-and-now what we're going to do.  Free will and prophecy have never been 
contradictory in my personal belief system in real life, so I have NOOOO problems with it 
here, either.

> Laurasia: 
> What does "fixed" mean anyway? Does "fixed" mean no character chooses
> their own actions, or does it mean they just aren't aware of their
> choices yet, but Time is (magically...)? 
<snip of rest of excellent post>

Tammy R:
As I've been saying, what has happened has already happened, thanks to the choices made 
*as* things happened, but it's only the past that is set and unchangeable.  The future is 
undetermined and very, very plastic.  Every character is still free to make their own choices, 
but the choices that they have *already* made, and what has *already* happened because 
of those choices, has already come to pass, and cannot be changed.

***
Tammy Rizzo
ms-tamany at rcn.com

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