*MY* confusion about the Time Turner

[Tammy Rizzo]

No: HPFGUIDX 124197

> 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.

Now Tammy Rizzo:
Exactly!  Those who wonder why Jo didn't do time-travel 'right' (meaning 'like so-and-so did 
in this other book I read/movie I saw, that was really great' instead of meaning 'internally 
consistant') are rather annoying, at least to me.  Each story-universe where they use time-
travel has to be evaluated on its own, not in relation to other time-travel stories.  The key is, 
is time-travel used consistently within the story where it's used.  I think that Jo was very 
consistent (allowing a few maths-related Flints, perhaps).  Nothing in the way PoA was 
written indicates to me at all that she uses a 'changeable past' version of time-travel.  I 
woudn't have any problem accepting a 'changeable past' version, if she'd decided to use 
that, of course, but she didn't.  She uses 'what happened happened'.

> Alshain:
> 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.

Now Tammy Rizzo:
Exactly.  You can't mess with causality, even in the little things.  Of course, even the littlest 
things could turn out to be big things later, you never know.

> Alshain:
> 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.

Now Tammy Rizzo:
Precisely.  The future, being still plastic and changeable, holding uncertain outcomes, is the 
only thing that can be affected by time-travel, as used in PoA.  

> Alshain:
> 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 

Tammy, LIKEWISE very happy about not having to deal with temporal physics, as she 
never did well in gym.

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

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