[HPforGrownups] Re: Time Turners

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 142265

smilingator4915:

> This issue seems to pop up every few weeks... and it all depends on
> how you view time travel in the Potterverse. If you believe that when
> Hermione and Harry traveled back in time and CHANGED the events that
> happened (i.e., saved Buckbeak from death after he had already died,
> rescued Sirius after he had already been "kissed"), then you would
> definitely find it "absurd" that you can go back in time to fix some
> things but not everything that goes wrong.
> However, I believe that JKR provided more than enough evidence that
> when Harry and Hermione used the time turners, they did not "change"
> anything. I think that we saw the same events happen, but from two
> different points of view. However, if you read CAREFULLY, you can see
> that the second perspective we observed was no different than the
> first time we witnessed the events. In other words, the first time we
> were privy to the observations, we THOUGHT Buckbeak was killed and we
> THOUGHT Sirius was going to be kissed by the dementor and we WONDERED
> who saved Harry, Hermione, and Sirius from the dementors by the lake.
> However, from the second time we viewed the story, is was KNOWN that
> Buckbeak was not killed, we KNEW Sirius was rescued and flew away on
> Buckbeak and we KNEW Harry that time travelled saved non-time
> travelling Harry, Hermione, and Sirius.
> Complicated, yes... but that's what I love about this book! I thought
> JKR did an outstaning job of fooling me the first time with the events
> and then throwing in the time travelling twist and carefully placing
> clues that showed that the events NEVER changed; we just viewed them
> from two different perspectives.
> So, why can't Harry just time turn and save Dumbledore and Sirius
> (besides the fact that it seems the time turners were destroyed)?
> Because you can't change what happened in the past.


Magpie:

Warning--twisty time-talk ahead...

I assume this keeps coming up because what you described doesn't make any 
difference to the question of why Harry didn't use the Time Turner to save 
Sirius in OotP.  This isn't a disagreement over how Time Turners work, but 
just a comment on how the author chooses to write the scene.  It's not "the 
past" that didn't change in PoA at all, it's the narrative.  Yes, the first 
time Harry and Hermione saw, without realizing it, Buckbeak being saved etc. 
But WHEN did Harry and Hermione do all that?  They did it in the future, 
when the two of them decided to use the Time Turner.  At the point Harry is 
"seeing" the false execution he has not yet made the decision to go back in 
time to save Buckbeak.  The fact that Buckbeak never died at all within the 
narrative of PoA (we thought he did, but had we had a better pov the first 
time we would have seen Harry and Hermione save him then too) just tells us 
how the author decided to write it.  From her god's eye perspective, she 
decided to show us the already changed future.  She could just as easily 
have shown us Buckbeak dying, then have Harry go back in time and show us 
him saving Buckbeak, and just have everyone remember Harry as always having 
saved Buckbeak because the past was changed.

So why can't they do that in in OotP?  They can't just not do it 
because...they didn't do it.  The fact that we don't see a Future!Harry 
saving Sirius shows us Harry never used the Time Turner, not that he 
couldn't--I mean, what would have happened if, moments after the battle, 
Harry had grabbed a Time Turner and gone back in time?  I can see no reason 
why it wouldn't work.  To say that the past can't be changed, and wasn't 
changed in PoA, is to deny Harry and Hermione's decision and action of using 
the Time Turner and saving Buckbeak by saying you can't use the Time Turner 
unless you are going to use the Time Turner.  But when do you go from being 
a person who can't use the Time Turner to someone who is going to use it to 
someone who has used it and therefore can use it?  The logic gets circular.

For instance, from 10-11, let's say, Hermione takes Arithmancy. Then she 
uses the Time Turner to take Divinations.  From Harry and Ron's pov, 
Hermione "always" took Divinations, because she experienced the hour with 
them.  If Divinations and Arithmancy were in the same room we would see two 
Hermiones in the class, just as there were two Harrys and Hermiones in PoA. 
But from Hermione's perspective, she took Arithmancy *and then* she took 
Divination.  She remembers two hours where everyone else remembers one.  She 
remembers an hour when she took Arithmancy and had *not yet* taken 
Divination. When Hermione misses a lesson it's because she forgot to turn 
her clock back, not because she couldn't turn her clock back because she 
wasn't in the lesson--that's backwards.

The reason Harry doesn't save Sirius in OotP with the use of the Time Turner 
is, I think, far more mundane: the Time Turners are all destroyed in the 
battle (symbolically, they can no longer go backwards, only forwards).  And 
I think that was put in partially to answer this question, because there 
really is no other reason they can't use the things.  Except to say that 
they can't do it because the author didn't write the scene that way, which 
isn't something the characters can be aware of themselves.

-m