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

[quigonginger]

No: HPFGUIDX 124117


 Kristen wrote (and I am snipping most to get to the point I want to 
address):

> So here is my question, now in the present do current!Harry and 
> current!Hermione have a choice about using the time turner?    Can 
> they choose not to go?  Can they go back 4 hours?  Can they go back 
> 2?  
> 
> If they do use the time turner and only go back 3 hours everything 
> works out as it did in the now past  (e.g BB is saved).   But if 
they 
> don't choose to use the time turner then what happens?   Do TT!
Harry 
> and TT!Hermione suddently disappear from the hallway?  Does bb die 
in 
> the now past?  

Ginger:
Let me use a simpler example and we'll see if I can make myself 
clear.  (I doubt it, but it's worth a shot.)

About 45 minutes ago, I went in the other room and got a strawberry  
soda.  About a half an hour ago I was "in the office". (Read loo).
The strawberry soda is now on my desk.

If I were to time-turn, hide in the spare room until I heard my self 
head to the loo, and sneak an orange soda into the room, would the 
srtawberry one still be there?  Yes, it would, but the previous 
paragraph would have read "About 45 minutes ago.....is now on my 
desk.  There was also an orange soda on my desk when I returned from 
the loo, and I have no frggin idea where on earth it came from."

Since there is no orange soda on my desk, I can safely assume that I 
did not time-travel in any way that I have yet noticed.  Had there 
been a soda appearing out of nowhere (note that I obeyed the part 
about not seeing myself) then I could conclude that I had time-
travelled or that I was bonkers.  Or that someone had broken into my 
house and brought me a soda.  Or that I was having an Intellectual 
Interlude (read senior moment), and that I'd gotten it myself.

I think that's why they have to be so careful when time-turning.  
Someone might notice that sort of inconsistancy.

Back to HP:  I think that if Harry and Hermione hadn't time-turned 
that Beaky would have indeed died.  They wouldn't have been there to 
save him, so he'd have been still tied up when McNair went out.  
Sirius would have been kissed because Beaky would have been dead 
rather than flying to his rescue.  

Now for the part where headaches come in:  Harry didn't survive 
because he time-turned, he time-turned because he survived.  Harry 
could never have chosen to time-turn, because had he not done it, the 
first writing of events from his POV would have ended with the 
word "SLURP" and that would have been the end of the series.

In other words, as Steve (bboymn) oft aptly puts it, time only 
happens once.  TT Harry arrived at 6 pm.  Original time Harry uses 
the time-turner because of that event in the past.  Reverse cause and 
effect, as I believe it was Steve who said recently. 

We usually make our decisions *thinking* about what may happen in the 
futute, but it is the circumstances of the past that put us in the 
situation where we have to make the decision.  In Harry's case, the 
past (an hour previous when he was saved) made him decide to time-
turn, he just didn't realize that it was part of his decision.  He 
only thought of Sirius and Beaky.

I wonder if that's why DD said "If all goes well, you will be able to 
save *more than one* innocent life tonight.  (Emphasis mine).  Harry 
actually saves several, if you count those whom he saved from 
dementors.

Well, how was that?  Clear as mud?  *sigh* I thought so.
Hope it helped someone, Ginger