[HPforGrownups] Re: Time-turning

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 167539

> Dana:
>
> No, Hermione does not forget to go to class; she fell asleep after
> hiding in the common room until it was time to fill in the place of
> her historical self, this is already after she had taken her second
> class.

Magpie:
Sorry, to be honest I don't have the book in front of me and I'm going on 
vague recollections of just how she screwed up.
Unfortunately, since I don't have the book in front of me, reading your 
comments on the scene is just confusing.:-) But I assume you're correct in 
what you're saying.

Regardless we both have the same view of exactly what Hermione is doing when 
she Time Travels, and why she doesn't use the TT to go to the class she 
missed later. It's not worth the effort and confusion.

zgirnius:
If you agree with me that that laws of nature and magic in the
Potterverse show that the past cannot be changed, a different decision by 
Harry or Hermione would mean the following:
1) Bucky would have escaped the headsman, (Dumbledore witnessed the 
non-execution).
2) Harry and Sirius would have survived the Dementor attack by the lake 
(since by the time the decision faced Harry and Hermione, that moment was in 
the past).
3) The sentence of Dementor's Kiss on Sirius Black would have been carried 
out to the great horror or Harry and Hermione.

Magpie:
This is confusing, because if Harry and Hermione had not Time Traveled we 
would have had a different series of events than the ones we saw. JKR wrote 
things happening with the interference of Time Traveling Harry and Hermione. 
Harry and Hermione time traveling is filling in things that have already 
happened in the narrative. The cause and effect are reversed 
chronologically, but they still work the same way. If they had made a 
different decision, the outcome would have been totally different from what 
we saw. They'd have a past they hadn't affected.

Zara:
This last, is the only point at issue, as it is the only event
occuring in a hypothetical future after Harry or Hermione chose
differently. The first two events had *already happened* at the time
the choice was made. Odd though it may seem to you, Harry and
Hermione's decision does not matter in a universe under those rules.

Magpie:
I don't understand how it doesn't matter. It seems to me it does matter very 
much, we're just seeing it in reverse order. JKR wrote the results of their 
decision first. But at the moment of decision, if Harry had made a different 
choice, things would be different. Neither he nor Hermione are operating on 
the idea that the past can not be changed. If the past can not be changed so 
they didn't think there was a reason to use the Time Turner in that 
instance, it would result in a totally different sequence of events. He and 
Hermione would not just have made a different decision, they would have 
experienced a different few hours leading up to the decision.

Once Rowling wrote the version she had to come up with a decision on their 
part that fit everything we saw. Just as Draco must decide to fix the 
Vanishing Cabinet because the DEs are going to come through it in a later 
chapter. In both cases, the effect has already been written, so of course 
the cause is going to happen too.


> Magpie:
> Similarly, on the days Hermione forgets to use the Time Turner to
> attend a class, she has skipped that class for the day. She's got
to
> spin it to be in it.:-)

zgirnius:
If I am right, the High and Mighty Creatrix of the Potterverse
says, 'spin it all you like, you will *still* not be in it' in this
case. If Hermione knows this because someone has endeavored to
explain the laws of time in her universe to her prior to equipping
her with a Time Turner, it is an alternate explanation for why she
does not bother. (One I find convincing - had I half her obsession
with classes, I would have gone back several hours - after all, in
the hours after that she could grab some much needed sleep).

Magpie:
You mean that events would just conspire against her somehow to make her 
miss the class regardless? I agree they would). Do you mean the WW is ruled 
by a sort of fate that cleverly keeps people from fixing mistakes, or that, 
just as before, once Hermione's been written as missing class, we know that 
she's missed class? I mean, Hermione does spin it and get in it most days. 
She's also always going to be living in what Dana calls the End Time, which 
means any Time Traveling she does in the past will become part of everyone's 
past, including their memories.

> Magpie:
> If
> everyone just said "we can't ever change the past" there would be
no
> use for Time Turners.

zgirnius:
Second, I mentioned in an earlier post an alternate use for travel
into the past - to find out what really happened then. Pensieve
memories can only be used if you know of a witness, and the witness is 
willing and able to share the memory. (Not to mention that the only Pensieve 
we have ever met belongs to Albus Dumbledore).

Magpie:
True--I was thinking only of the use that the TTs are used for throughout 
PoA--to alter something in the way a particular hour was spent.

zgirnius:
Ah, so we do disagree. I really think that wizards *cannot* change
the past, that it is a physical and magical impossibility of the
unoverse in which they live (just as they cannot, for example, bring
back the really dead, per Rowling). I further suspect that some of
them even know this, as I discussed upthread.

Magpie:
Again, are you saying that there's tricks of fate to keep them from changing 
anything they are aware of having happened? Hermione is able to take two 
classes at once only because she has a Time Turner which allows her to take 
one class and then go back and take a different class. She isn't "changing" 
the past in that she's still takes the first class, but now there's two 
Hermione's taking two different classes, which is a change.

Zara:
I would certainly insist that we have *never* seen a wizard change
the past. And noone and nothing wiped our memories. <g>

Magpie:
So how does that work? Hermione takes class for two hours. The first hour 
she's taking Charms. She has not yet taken Arithmancy. It makes more sense 
to me to assume that during that hour of Charms there was no Hermione in 
Arithmancy, and then when Hermione went back in time and did take Arithmancy 
whatever existed of the Arithmancy class that was going on when Hermione was 
*only* taking Charms stopped existing, replaced by the one with Hermione in 
it in her second hour. I don't see why this would be a strange idea, given 
that we see actual Hermione's ceasing to exist due to her Time Travel.

zgirnius:
If I am right about the rules, and about Hermione knowing them, then
she ought to have believed there was no way to save Bucky, because
she thought she had heard him die (which was upsetting enough,
especially with all else going on, that a failure to think logically
would be credible). Unless she understood DD's hint to mean that
Bucky had survived (as I understand it in light of the rules I deduce
from canon). In that case, she might have made her choice in the same hope 
with which Dumbledore offered it, namely that she rescued him while somehow 
getting Sirius free too.

Magpie:
Seems like Hermione's going back to save Buckbeak might be a big hint that 
the rules aren't exactly rules, but more just the way things happen. If I 
see a second Hermione come in and save me, and deduce that she's used the 
Time Turner she's had all year, I wouldn't call that a rule that time can't 
be changed, I'd call it knowing what Hermione was going to do before she did 
it, due to the Time stuff. I don't see how Hermione is supposed to approach 
her double schedule without thinking she's changing time. That would be how 
she experienced it, wouldn't she? She took an hour of Charms by herself. 
Then in the next hour she took Arithmancy, this time knowing there was a 
historical version of herself in Charms, which she must later replace. At 
the point before she used the Time Turner, during that hour, there was only 
one of her in one classroom. If she forgot to use her Time Turner that day, 
it would stay that way.

-m