Time-turning

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 167495

---  "sistermagpie" <belviso at ...> wrote:
>
> Dana:
> > Sirius (in OotP) could have saved himself only if 
> > he saved himself the first time but he doesn't, it
> > is therefore irrelevant to compare these events. 
> > JMHO
> 
> Magpie:
> But I don't think it's irrelevent given the context I 
> brought that up, which was in response to the opposite
> of what you're explaining here. Others are claiming 
> that Harry was saved him his future self, period. 
> You seem to be saying that time did indeed happen 
> twice, and that the first time Harry #1 did save 
> himself. Iow, he didn't really need his future self to
> save him, he only remembers being saved by his future 
> self because the two times melded and he therefore 
> forgot the version where it was not his future self 
> that saved him.
> 

bboyminn:

Certainly we are all arguing valid theories of Time 
Travel, but really which is easier and which makes
the most sense? That multiple divergent inconsistent 
time-lines are spawned that eventually collapsing back
on themselves and merge into a whole new consistent 
time-line, or that the Time Travelers simple arrived 
at 6:00pm and were always there? There is a scientific 
corollary that says, the simplest solution is probably
the correct solution.

Again, and this is important, all the versions of time
travel that have been discussed here are valid and 
have been discussed by scientists, philosophers, and 
barroom patrons since the concept of time travel was
first conceived, and with roughly the same results 
we are having.

But, there is a flow to this story that isolates one
particular theory of time travel. There are clues
dropped to re-enforce that THIS is the model of time
travel that is being used. That flow, those clues, 
this model are the 'Time Only Happens Once' model.
Discussing it from other perspectives is certainly 
valid as a point of interest, but the selected model
seems crystal clear to me in the books.

When we see the events from the perspective of the
normal!Harry, someone IS THERE to save him, and that
/someone/ looks a lot like Harry. Harry's logical
mind, assuming he can't be in two places at once, would
have constructed a more logical alternate explanation.
The only other person that Harry knows that looks like
him is his father, so in that moment of confusion, he
reasonably concludes that it is his father. 

That is the /first/ account of the events as they 
actually occur. Someone who looks like Harry saved 
Harry. No alternate time-line, no alternate mystery 
savior, no alternate series of events, just Harry being
saved by someone who looks surprisingly like /HARRY/.

If, in what others are calling the first time-line, 
Harry is saved by someone who looks like Harry, then
all these other mysterious and unlikely time-lines
become very far fetched, especially when we see the
same events from the perspective of the Time Traveling
Harry, and discover, lo and behold, it was Harry who
saved Harry. No wonder the savior looked so much like
Harry.

Discussing all the alternate theories while fun clearly
goes against what JKR tried to make clear in the story. 
That the Time Travelers arrived at 6:00pm. They were 
there because Harry/Ron/Hermione heard them moving
around the Entrance Hall during the /first/ account of
the events.

Now, as to how this effects Sirius. If Sirius wasn't 
saved then he can't be saved at that time and place.
I'm not ruling out him being saved at some other later
time and place, but that is another subject. Using
the model that JKR clearly seems to be using, if 
someone was there to save Sirius, they would have
arrived in the past, and been lurking in the shadows
to intervene in the duel between Sirius and Bellatrix,
or possibly intervene at some earlier time. But since
no one did intervene, then the only logical conclusion
is the no one traveled back in time to save the day. 

Cause dictates Effect independent of the order of the
occurrence of Cause and Effect. The Effect is whether 
or not Sirius was saved, the Cause is whether or not
someone time traveled. Since the Effect did not occur,
we can only conclude that there was no Cause to 
precipitate the Effect; that is, NO ONE time traveled.

To the last and final point, from the Time Travel Model
JKR has laid out, it is clear that time/history SHOULD
NOT be changed, but it is not crystal clear that it CAN
NOT be changed. Nor is it clear what the consequences 
of changing history would be. We see in many time travel
movies such as 'Back to the Future' or 'Time Cop' or
the TV shows like 'Quantum Leap', that it is the job
of the hero to do just that, change time. We see from
'Back to the Future' that not all changes are good; in
fact, some are disastrous. 

In the Potterverse model, it seems that if history had
been changed, we would already know about it. If Sirius
or anyone, had traveled back in time to save Sirius, 
then that would already be a historical fact, but since
it is not, they did not.

Steve/bboyminn - who wishes he could travel forward in
time and find out the winning lottery numbers.