Time-Travel and Being Honest to a Work of Fiction

[Richard Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 132198

I think it is clear from four things JKR says in the POA that under 
her theory we can change history:

(A) Hermione tells Harry that "Nobody is supposed to change time" 
when Harry wants to get the Invisibility Cloak (p. 398 US ed.).  She 
says we not "supposed" to change time — not "Nobody can change 
time."  Thus, changing time must be possible.  This was the perfect 
place for JKR to state that "Nobody can change time" but she makes it 
clear that we can change time.  Also note that Hermione speaks 
of "breaking one of the most important wizarding laws."  That too 
must refer to changing history because time-travel per se is not 
illegal.  Laws are against only possible actions. It makes no sense 
to have a law against something you couldn't do even if you wanted 
to.  I haven't checked the hunting laws in state, but I sure they 
don't say "You cannot hunt dinosaurs" — it wouldn't make any sense to 
have such a law since we couldn't hunt extinct animals even if we 
wanted to.  And the same applies here: there would be no law 
proscribing changing time only if such change is possible.

(B) Hermione tells Harry that McGonagall told her that "loads of 
[time-traveling wizards and witches] ended up killing their past or 
future selves by mistake" (p. 399 US ed.).  That is definitely 
changing history: the "earlier" wizards have been eliminated by time-
travel events from the history that produced the time-traveling 
wizards.  How can you go back in time and eliminate someone from 
history without changing the past?

(C) Harry says "There must be something that happened around now that 
he [Dumbledore] wants us to change" (p. 396).  Also notice that time-
traveling Harry wanted to change things by running out of the forest 
when he and time-traveling Hermione were hiding there and getting the 
Invisibility Cloak (p. 405) and getting Wormtail (p. 408).  She had 
to grab and stop him.  She only expressed concern about being seen, 
but the fact remains that Harry would have changed history.  If Harry 
had stopped Wormtail or had just gotten the Invisibility Cloak, all 
the events of that evening from that point on would have changed, and 
he could have gotten them if Hermione had not intervened.

(D) Dumbledore, who is supposedly the greatest wizard of our time and 
no doubt knows about time-travel, warns Harry and Hermione about 
being careful because time-travel's consequences are complicated and 
unpredictable (p. 426).  But if nothing changes, it does not matter 
whether we are careless in the past or not.  If history is 
unchangeable, Dumbledore's comment about the consequences being 
unpredictable is wrong: the consequences would be completely 
predictable because we know precisely what will happen up to the time 
of the time- traveling.  In fact, there is nothing to predict because 
we already know exactly what will happen and there is nothing we can 
do about it.  Also, we wouldn't have to be careful since we couldn't 
change history even if we wanted to.  You could trip over things, you 
could be as clumsy as Tonks — it just doesn't matter because you 
can't affect the past.  For that matter, you could go back with a 
machine gun and shoot up the place — or you could take a nuclear bomb 
and nuke the place — and it wouldn't change anything because the past 
is "fixed" and unchangeable.  Thus, Dumbledore's warning to be 
careful doesn't make sense unless we might accidentally or 
intentionally change history.

	* * *
Just looking at the actions and skipping what the characters say is 
one way to proceed.  In the "real world" that might work, but my 
concern is that JKR's is a work of fiction, and if we do look only at 
the actions and ignore what the characters say, then we are ignoring 
a big chunk of what she actually created.  Even if we can come up 
with a good theory that fits the limited part we choose to look at, I 
can't help but think that we are imposing a theory on her story that 
isn't hers if we have to come up with ways to explain away the rest 
of what she wrote.

In other words, even if we can come up with a theory that fits part 
of what she created, it is just that — a theory that only fits part 
of what she created.  That is, even if our theory fits the action 
part, it doesn't explain what she created if we still have to dismiss 
everything the characters say.  The theory doesn't really cover all 
that the author presented.  And if looking at JKR's complete account 
presents problems for time-travel, well we're stuck.  We can't 
say "But if we only look at part of the story, there are no 
problems."  We have to go with all that is given.  (And there still 
are problems: I have not seen any "history cannot be changed" 
theories that explain how Harry got past the Dementors. Some people 
in effect just say "Don't worry about it!" which is no explanation at 
all.)

It is true that we can't always trust what the characters say — they 
have been wrong.  But it always something we learn later that shows 
they were wrong.  I can't see how anything could change what the 
characters said in the POA episode — e.g., is JKR going to have 
McGonagall or Hermione or someone else say that they were mistaken 
about time-traveling wizards killing their former self, or have 
Dumbledore say that we don't have to be careful about our actions 
during time-travel because we really can't change what is going to 
happen anyway?  Any theory that requires explaining away every single 
syllable that JKR puts in her characters' mouths cannot be 
acceptable.  Certainly until we are shown that the characters were 
wrong we have to accept what JKR has her characters say on the matter 
of time-travel at face value if we are going to honest to the story.

We have to be leery when people say that they know more about a topic 
that a writer of fiction is writing on than the author herself.  
Writers of fiction are not constrained by other people's theories.  
We can't approach time-travel in the Potterverse based on quantum 
physics or what we have read in sci fi. HP is a work of fiction and 
JKR is the only phyisicist in the Potterverse —  she can make up any 
theory she likes.

The bottom line is we must take JKR at her word over someone else's 
theory that requires dismissing what she has her characters say.