*MY* confusion about the Time Turner

[eloise_herisson]

No: HPFGUIDX 124172


> cdayr wrote:
> "I agree with you about all of these motivations for H/H to hurry 
and
> turn back in time. However, I've also always believed that they have
> to hurry because they have to save Sirius *before* he gets soul-
sucked
> in current time."
> 
> Del replies:
> I thought so too, at first. But after reflection, I realise that it
> doesn't have to be that way.
> 
> As long as Harry and Hermione end up Time-Turning, then their 
doubles
> *are* roaming around anyway. So even if they had Time-Turned a 
couple
> of hours later, they still could have saved Sirius.

Eloise:
This is probably true (time travel makes my head hurt, so I don't 
like to think about it too much). *I* think they have to hurry 
because otherwise it would make the story much difficult to tell. ;-)

Potentially we'd end up with two narrative time lines going on, 
either explicitly or implicitly, one where Fudge sets the Dementors 
on Sirius and one where he doesn't and these would need somehow to be 
reconciled with each other or else they would bring even more to the 
fore all the questions we ask about time travel. If they didn't 
rescue Sirius *before* he was soul-sucked, then I think we'd end up 
in an uncomfortable situation where events which we knew to have 
happened had actually *changed* (or events which we had apparently 
witnessed were found not to have happened) and that's very difficult 
to get your head round. Well, my head anyway.

I think JKR has been very clever in the way she has avoided these 
issues. I don't pretend to understand quantum mechanics, but it does 
seem to me that with Sirius locked away on his own, we have a 
situation similar to Schrodinger's cat. As Sirius, like the cat in 
the box, can't be seen, we can posit two possibilities: either he's 
there, waiting to be soul-sucked or he's been rescued. I believe that 
quantum law would say he was in a superposition of states, both there 
and not there (and I'm sure I'll be corrected).

It's the same situation with Buckbeak. JKR avoids a situation whereby 
he *is* executed, but then isn't. Again, at the critical moment of 
rescue he can't be seen by anyone in the present time, only by TT!
Harry and Hermione. Either he might be there, or he might have 
escaped. We can argue, I think, that Harry and Hermione didn't change 
anything, instead they controlled the outcomes of two situations 
where one of two variables was possible.

~Eloise