Time travel in JKR books

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 159264

> jdl3811220:
> 
> Hi Raven Heart (I love that screen name by the way.)
> 
> But they DID alter history when they undid Buckbeak's death. They
> HAD already killed Buckbeak before Harry and Hermione used the time
> turner. They altered time and undid it. They changed history, the
> space time continuum, whatever you want to call it. So, in theory,
> they could alter history and prevent/undo Harry's demise.

Magpie:
Actually, they didn't.  They *thought* they undid Buckbeak's death, 
but the whole time what they had heard was their rescuing him.

Though it's really not, imo, that they can't change history.  It's 
that JKR writes it so that the history we see can't be changed.  The 
way she writes Time Travel in her books, we know there won't be any 
Time Travel that changes what we saw the first time--it can 
reinterpret it, but it can't change it, because no one has any 
memory of times that were changed. 

It's actually not that different than Back to the Future.  Marty's 
family has no memory of the lives they lived before he went back in 
time.  When he returns they think they've always been this way, that 
things always went the way they did in the movie.  Where there is a 
difference is that Marty himself recalls his original life even 
after he changes history.  He has no memory of the altered history.  

Since no future people saved Sirius, for instance, we know they 
won't use the TT to save him.  It's that they can't because they 
didn't, not they don't because they can't, if that makes sense.


-m