Time-turning

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 167440

Bart wrote:
> OK, here are a few key events on the "line", in order:
> 
> 1) Harry hears the axe fall.
> 2) Shrieking Shack incident.
> 3) Harry & Sirius meet the Dementors. 
> 4) Harry and Sirius get their souls sucked. <snip the rest>

Carol responds:

But they *don't* get their souls sucked. Time-Turned Harry prevents
that from happening:

"A paralyzing terror filled Harry so that he couldn't move or speak.
His Patronus flickered and died. 

"White fog was blinding him. He had to fight . . . *expecto patronum*
. . . he couldn't see . . . and in the distance he heard the familiar
screaming . . . *expecto patronum* . . . he groped in the mist for
Sirius, and found his arm . . . they weren't going to take him.

"But a pair of strong, clammy hands suddenly attached themselves
around Harry's neck. They were forcing his face upward . . .  He could
feel its breath . . . It was going to get rid of him first . . . He
could feel its putrid breath . . . His mother was screaming . . .  She
was going to be the last thing he ever heard--

"And then, through the fog that was drowning him, he thought he saw a
silvery light growing brighter and brighter . . .  He flet himself
fall forward onto the grass . . .  . Facedown, too weak to move, sick
and shaking, Harry opened his eyes. The dememtor must have released
him. The blinding light was illuminating the grass around him. . . .
The screaming had stopped, the cold was ebbing away . . . .

"Something was driving the dementors back . . . . It was circling
around him and Black and Hermione . . . . They were leaving. . . . The
air was warm again . . . 

"With every ounce of strength he could muster, Harry raised his head a
few inches and saw an animal galloping away. <snip> It was a bright as
a unicorn. . . . Fighting to stay conscious, Harry watched it canter
to a halt as it reached the oppposite shore. for a moment, Harry saw
by its brightness someone welcoming it back <snip> Harry didn't
understand. He couldn't think anymore. He flet the last of his
strength leave him , and his head hit the ground as he fainted" (PoA
384-385).

*Harry's soul has not been sucked.* A Dementor has come close enough
to put its hands on his face and tilt his head back, and he's sick and
weak, in about the same shape as Dudley is on Privet Drive in OoP. Nor
has Sirius Black's soul been sucked: "It was going to get rid of him
[Harry] first."

Harry, Hermione, and Sirius Black have all fainted from the horror of
the encounter of the encounter with the Dementors. (Ron is already
unconscious from Pettigrew's spell.) Snape, who regains consciousness
just as the Dementors are leaving, conjures stretchers for all of them
and takes them back to the hospital wing. Had Time-Turned Harry not
saved himself and Black (and Hermione), Snape would have found only
soul-sucked bodies. At most, he could have rescued Ron. As it is, he
takes all four back to Hogwarts, making it possible for Harry and
Hermione to Time-Turn and rescue themselves. The whole scene only
makes sense if everything happened once, simultaneously, even though
Harry and Hermione experience it twice.

I realize that the chapter title, "The Dementor's Kiss," is
misleading, but the kiss doesn't happen, or Harry would have been in
the same state as Barty Crouch Jr. Instead, he merely feels cold,
hears screams, feels the dementor's putrid breath on his face, and
thinks he's going to die, sees a bright light, watches the dementors
retreat, sees the Patronus returning to someone, and faints. The first
two steps in this process, and the faintness, exactly match every one
of his other encounters with Dementors, even Boggart Dementors. The
Dementor gets close, very close, but it never actually administers the
kiss, either to him or to Black. *There is no alternate reality in
which Harry is soul-sucked, no reversal of that state. It never happened.*

Carol, wondering if Bart might be confused by the medium that must not
be named, in which it does seem as if Black, at least, was soul-sucked
and got his soul back (which does not happen in the book)