Paradox of Time Travel in PoA

[tylerswaxlion]

No: HPFGUIDX 132140

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "davenclaw" 
<daveshardell at y...> wrote:

I think it is logically impossible to say that Harry was ALWAYS 
saved by a time-traveling Harry, when Harry didn't get the  
opportunity to go back in time until after the encounter with the 
dementors.  

Tyler:
If you accept time travel, then there is no *logical* problem.  You 
are confused b/c the cause happens AFTER the effect, which is not 
something that actually occurs in the real world.  It happened here 
because they time-travelled.  They really moved within TIME--to the 
SAME time and the SAME place.

To Harry, he casts the Patronus *after* he had been rescued.  But to 
EVERY other observer, in the Potterverse and outside of it, TT!Harry 
cast the Patronus **at the same time** that OriginalRunThroughHarry 
is being killed by the dementors.

Imagine the Dementor attack happens at 11 pm.  Let's put times to 
Harry's perception of events.  At 11, Harry gets rescued, returns to 
Hogwarts, and an hour later, 12 am, travels back in time.  Now, by 1 
am, he rescues Buckbeak.  At 2 am, Harry casts the Patronus.  At 3 
am he's back in the infirmary safe and sound.

There.  All events in order, cause happening before effect.

Where the conundrum is--Harry travelled in time.  He didn't really 
save Buckbeak at 1 am.  He saved him by 10 pm.  He didn't really 
cast that Patronus at 2 am, he cast it at 11.

Which is why he didn't die.  His future self was in the **past**.  
The travelling occurs in TIME as well as space.

You are also confused b/c of the plethora of badly written time 
travelling stories that have an "original time" and then an "altered 
time" that happens subsequently.  

I say 'badly written' not b/c they aren't entertaining, but b/c they 
are logically impossible.  You wouldn't really be TRAVELLING in TIME 
if events occurred one way and then were changed.  You would be 
travelling to a DIFFERENT time and space.  A different timeline and 
universe.

Davenclaw:
He was about to be killed, and if he had been killed, he never would 
have had the opportunity to go back in time.  

Tyler:
Exactly!  You've got it!

Davenclaw:
It is only after he went back in time and saved himself, that that 
version of events became the one-and-only version of events that 
everyone knows of and remembers.  

Tyler:
And you lost it.  There are no other versions, though I like 
your "instant amnesia" theory.  

Harry travelled in time.  The "first" time through he saw himself 
cast the Patronus, but thought it was his father.  This *is* the 
original timeline.  This is how events occurred, the first, last, 
and only time they happened.  Buckbeak NEVER died.  We do see all 
the events that happened.

Davenclaw:
I just don't see how you can ignore this and just happily accept 
that he ALWAYS was there to save himself.  That is only the 
perception left in everyone's minds as a result of the time-travel.

Tyler:
No.  It's not a perception.  If you travel within a single timeline 
within a single universe, you can't change the past, because it has 
already occurred.

Davenclaw:

Perhaps that is the disconnect here: everyone else is describing 
events as they are understood within the Potterverse, whereas I am  
complaining that we, as outside observers, are left out of the 
series of events that were not tampered with.

Tyler:

No, Davenclaw, I'm not only describing what the Potterverse 
understands.  I'm describing what OCCURRED in the Potterverse.  
Events were always, as you say, tampered with, b/c future people 
were in the past.  The fact that they came from the future a time 
that hadn't happened yet?  That's what time travel is!

Obviously it doesn't make you happy to think there is 
some "original" timeline that JK Rowling just didn't bother herself 
to write about.  And that's because there ISN'T another timeline.  
She wrote about the one, original timeline.  

I think she did a bang-up job of writing a perfectly logical single 
timeline time-travel story.  Everything is tight.  The only paradox 
is that they time travel.