Time-turning (Was: World Building And The Potterverse)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 167402

Jordan
> And there are no closed timelike loops involved. A closed timelike 
loop
> is when a single object sent back in time from (say) 5:00 to 3:00 
_is_
> its own past self, never existed before 3:00, and doesn't exist 
after
> 5:00.
> 
> Your problem seems to be with the fact that it could just as 
easily have
> resolved as Harry being killed by Dementors and no-one ever going 
back
> in time. But the selection between those resolutions is completely
> arbitrary, and even if one is more probable than the other, 
improbable
> things do happen randomly on a quantum level.

Magpie:

I can't speak for the other poster, but I don't see why this makes 
it any more sensible for myself, or any more "serious" than the 
other kinds of Time Travel in story. The only difference between PoA 
and, say, Back to the Future, seems to me to be that in Back to the 
Future the writer has Marty McFly experience time in a linear way 
(as we all do), and then go back and change it, and then return to 
the future with his same experiences so that he remembers the way 
time originally spooled out before he made the decision to go back 
in time. It had to have spooled out that way the first time since he 
hadn't yet done it, based on how we experience time.

In PoA it seems like the only difference is a different gimmick. JKR 
chooses to show the version where Harry #1 sees Harry #2 come back 
in time, only she hides it so he doesn't know that's what he's 
seeing. If there was an alternate universe where Harry #2 didn't go 
back in time, it's lost to Harry's experience. In Back to the 
Future, once Marty changes time, everyone else forgets the existance 
of the original way time worked (or they are replaced by different 
versions of themselves who lived different lives). He himself 
doesn't forget it because the writer doesn't want him to, though he 
probably should. After all, if he's had a different life maybe he 
wouldn't have gone back in time at all, which would erase the 
possibility anyway. (The movie gets around this by saying that in 
this universe, too, Marty had gone back in time.)

I always think of that with PoA because so often I've heard it 
explained that the only reason Harry is able to go back in time is 
because he already did it, and that this somehow makes the time 
travel in PoA more logical than in another story, and that I don't 
get. For instance, one problem with time travel in fiction is that 
it's essentially a reset button. If you've got it, why not use it? 
Why not save Sirius in OotP if two books ago Time Travel was easy 
enough that people used it to take extra classes and save an animal 
(and Siirus again). And people would say no, Harry couldn't go back 
in time--not just because the Time Turners were destroyed, but 
because he didn't see his future self do it. But to me that seems 
obviously more about how the author chooses to write Time Travel 
than how Time Travel works. Harry not seeing his future self would 
only mean that he didn't go back in time, not that it would somehow 
now be illogical to do so where it wasn't before, right? That, to 
me, is what creates a loop. It's saying Harry can only choose to do 
something if he's received a sign that he's already chosen to do it--
so then where is the moment where Harry makes his choice? It's seems 
like what it's really saying is that we know Harry won't go back in 
time because according to JKR's rules if she's going to show Time 
Travel we'll "see" it (even if we don't realize it) before we know 
about it.

Since we experience time in a linear way, isn't there an unknown 
pocket here? What happened in that pocket of time after Harry #1 met 
the Dementors, but before Harry#1 became Harry #2 and saved himself? 
We don't see that pocket of time in JKR's narrative stream, but 
wouldn't it exist? (And why should the alternate versions of the 
characters conveniently go away when they're finished?) How did 
Harry #1 go on to become Harry #2 without the help of Harry #2 who 
did not yet exist? 

-m