*MY* confusion about the Time Turner

[alshainofthenorth]

No: HPFGUIDX 124173


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at y...> wrote:
> 

<snip a lot of good stuff written by cdayr and Steve>

> The sense of urgency is to resolve the events of the night before
> Sirius's fate becomes (generally) irrevocable history. 
> 
> If Sirius had been kissed, I think time travel could change that
> history, but I think that making such a substantial change to the
> timeline is an extremely unpredictable and dangerous thing to do. 
> 
> To substantially change history in a significant way could spawn a 
new
> alternate timeline in which extreme changes occur to the present and
> future that are seemingly unrelated to the changed event. Again, the
> recent movie "Butterfly Effect" is based on the concept that small
> changes in the past, create HUGE changes in the future.
> 
> Just rambling a bit.
> 
> Steve/bboyminn

Alshain:

When it comes to Time-Turning, cause and effect, I think it's more 
important than ever to view all the differing concepts of time travel 
as separate and independent of each other. What happens in "Butterfly 
Effect", "Twelve Monkeys", "Back To the Future" etc. is essentially 
irrelevant to the end of POA, because it's a different part of the 
sub-created multiverse and obeys different rules. The HP-verse only 
follows its own set of parameters -- equally well one could ask why 
elves aren't tall, beautiful and immortal since they are in Middle-
Earth, or why a wand is necessary for magic since Will Stanton 
doesn't need one in The Dark Is Rising, and so forth. And in this 
independent world, you don't mess with causality. Once a thing has 
happened, it stays that way.

There are two classes of events in the end of POA: Certain and 
uncertain outcomes. Only the latter are affected by Time-Turning. 

Let's take Flitwick's class in Cheering Charms as an example of a 
certain outcome. Either Hermione knows that if she didn't attend it, 
she can't go back and change the past, or she Time-Turns back in 
order to try to attend it (and Hermione being Hermione, I'd be 
surprised if she didn't try. Okay, that's conjecture.) But even were 
she to Time-Turn back a hundred times, she wouldn't be able to attend 
the class. Once she didn't attend, she didn't attend. I don't think 
the rule of messing with causality applies only in cases of death, 
but in all cases.

Buckbeak's "death" as perceived by HRH is an example of an uncertain 
outcome (though an imperfect example). HRH's perception of the event 
is a great example of building a theory on inadequate facts. 
Dumbledore, who was present, could theorise about what had happened 
from a somewhat better position and turned out to be correct. But 
it's important to note that Buckbeak wasn't the reason why HH Time-
Turned -- they did it to affect something that was about to happen in 
the near future, the outcome still being uncertain. The thought that 
Buckbeak might not be dead doesn't strike them until later.

At the point of Time-Turning, Sirius' fate is still an uncertain 
outcome, and at this point, Dumbledore isn't any wiser than HRH. 
Imagine Mr Black taking the position of Schroedinger's cat. Once a 
Dementor has kissed him, the wave function collapses, and his fate 
changes from "uncertain outcome" into "certain outcome". Irrevocable 
and beyond all help, just as the case with Hermione missing a class. 
I interpret Dumbledore's hurry (as you say, it'd have made much more 
sense to have Harry and Hermione do it later) as a sign that Sirius 
achtually is in mortal peril. Not a hundred Time-Turners could save 
him after the Kiss.

Alshain, very happy that her dissertation doesn't deal with temporal 
physics