*MY* confusion about the Time Turner

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 124074


>>Sandra:
>Time travel is only infuriating when it's handled badly, as it was 
in PoA. When it's done with all the pitfalls and traps sorted out and 
addressed (The Guardian Of Time), it's huge fun. There's been lots of 
comments about the Time Turner, and it all boils down to one major 
flaw - how could a future version of yourself go back in time to save 
a terminal tragedy happening to yourself - all on the same night?
<snip>
>It simply doesn't work, and I think people are beginning to see 
that. I'm surprised it took so long, because it had been driving me 
mad (kind of) for a while. I thought I was being dim, but having had 
some really bizarre theories suggested, I know it's just a plot-flaw.<

Betsy:
I don't think the Time-Turner is a plot-flaw.  JKR just uses time 
travel in a different way from most other works of fiction.  (Which, 
frankly, I think is a good thing.)

Traveling back in time is itself a paradox.  So fiction writers 
handle it in different ways.  JKR is doing the, what happens, 
happens, and nothing is really changed, thing.  Tammy, in the 
beginning of this thread, does a great job explaining this.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/123943

And Steve/bboyminn does also.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124004

I *have* seen something similar to this method in Diana Gabaldon's 
Outlander series - but her people travel so far back in time it's 
difficult to get the immediacy of the effect JKR shows us in PoA.  
(There's a part where a man tries to stop his many times great 
grandmother from doing something in the present that comes close, but 
not with the same effect as Harry and his Patronus.)

The big question I've had was how Dumbledore was aware of the 
possibility that Buckbeak escaped through time manipulation.  I 
wonder if one of his many office gadgets alerts him to Time-Turner 
use (handy to regulate a student's use of such a device) and that 
cued him in to keep an eye out for irregularities.

Betsy, who tries not to think about the time travel and moonrise 
stuff too often, and prefers to just go with the flow. :)