Paradox of Time Travel in PoA

[Jonathan House]

No: HPFGUIDX 132064

Hehe - it's interesting to see that the whole PoA time travel issue is 
still showing up time and time again (pun intended).

I think that Mrs. Rowling learned a lesson about using time travel as a 
plot device while writing PoA - it's a pain in the rear. Typically when 
writing sci-fi or fantasy stories about time travel the "rules" must be 
extremely limited, or the story quickly becomes ridiculous. If you don't 
have these rules it makes life a lot harder for the author. For 
instance, when Hermione accidentally fell asleep and missed Charms, 
there is nothing in the "rules" that we know about that would keep her 
from going back and making it to the class (we know that the turner can 
function at least 3 hours in the past, so no problem with how long had 
expired).

I've read through the discussions between Heather, Davenclaw and 
Bboyminn (and enjoyed them as well). Pardon me for jumping in here, but 
I can't resist adding my $.02 worth.

Davenclaw states that there is a sequence of events that occurred that 
were subsequently "erased" when Harry and Hermione used the time turner. 
Heather (and BBoyminn?) disagree with this, stating that there was only 
one set of events that occurred, and that Harry/Hermione were duplicated 
in that set of events.

Since we don't know all of the "rules" of how time travel works in the 
HP universe, there is no right answer to this question, but based on 
different theories in our boring universe, you may be both right. Let me 
explain:

Theory 1 - Re-written history: Early time-travel theories generally ran 
along the lines of "History happened a certain way, time traveler comes 
along and changes things, world changes to follow suit, only the 
time-traveler remembers the old history". Interestingly enough, this is 
where some of the most gnarly paradoxes come from, including the old 
"killing your grandfather" paradox (Heinlein and Bradbury have good 
stories along these lines). Later theories along this line generally 
follow the "multiverse" theory, which (strictly speaking) isn't time 
travel at all, but rather universe hopping. Example: History happens a 
certain way, time traveler wants to change it, but when they time travel 
they are really appearing in a parallel universe exactly like the 
original, except that the time traveler is now present. Original 
universe maintains it's history, and the new universe has always had the 
time traveler affecting events.

If this theory is in operation in the HP universe, Davenclaw is right, 
and there is either a version of the events that occurred that has 
subsequently been "re-written", or there are two parallel universes - 
one with Buckbeak and Sirius dead, the other with them alive.

Theory 2 - Timeline jumping: Timeline jumping is a theory about time 
travel that states that there are two reference frames - personal time 
and "world time". In this theory, world time is consistent and always 
flows the same. Time travelers have the ability to "leave" the world 
time and jump to different points in the world time line, in essence 
duplicating themselves (unless they have traveled to before their birth, 
or after their death). Since the world time line is never altered, there 
is always only one version of the events that occurred within it.

If this theory is in operation, that means that Harry/Hermione were 
always duplicated between 6 and 12 on that day, and there was no other 
set of events that had occurred.

Although the book does hint towards theory 2 (in my humble opinion), 
there is nothing there that says that theory 1 isn't valid.JKR wrote the 
duplicated time sequence in such a way that you couldn't tell what had 
occurred to Buckbeak (which would have given us the major clue) the 
first time through.

Again, I think that JKR learned a lesson about writing time travel here. 
Unless it is severely limited, it has the potential to blow huge holes 
in the plot. Here are a few examples:

 In PS/SS, Dumbledore could have picked up a time turner while at the 
Ministry and spun himself back to the point before Harry, Ron and 
Hermione met up with Fluffy.

In CoS anyone could have grabbed a TT and turned time back to prevent 
each attack, or find out where the basilisk was coming from (or even 
kill it).

We've seen the PoA issues.

In GoF, Dumbledore could have kept Harry and Cedric from touching the 
cup (or kept Barty from casting the portkey spell).

Harry could have easily saved Sirius in OOtP by grabbling a turner, 
throwing his cloak on (so that nobody saw him, neatly avoiding the "two 
Harry" issue), and blocking the veil when Sirius was blasted into it (or 
blasting Bellatrix before she got Sirius).

Ultimately, I think we have to just enjoy the story that JKR wove in PoA 
without trying too hard to reconcile what happened there with how our 
universe works.

Jonathan