Why a Time-Turner won't work for GH (WasNewbie theory - Harry at Godric's Hollow

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 163932

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
> 
> Carol responds:
> Suppose that your speculations are correct and Time-Turners exist in
> all varieties, distinguishable by size. Suppose that the kids find a
> Time-Turner in the rubble at Godric's Hollow, miraculously
> undiscovered by the Aurors who investigated the Potters' deaths and
> unbroken after sixteen years. Suppose that they figure out that it
> must be, say, a weekglass. Hermione, the practical one, calculates
> that they'll need exactly 835 turns. All they need to do is stand
> there, making sure that nothing distracts the person turning the 
> Time-Turner to make him or her lose count, for 835 seconds (roughly
> fourteen minutes). That's *if* it's a weekglass and they've identified
> it correctly. If it's a dayglass, they have to stand there waiting for
> 5,844 seconds (1.6 hours). Perseverance, luck, concentration,
> patience. It could be done, I suppose, even by seventeen-year-old or
> eighteen-year-old kids. But again, they'd have to be sure that it's a
> dayglass. I'll suspend my disbelief for the moment and assume that
> Hermione can do that.
> > 

Carol I buy your other arguments for why the kids shouldn't and won't
go back in time but the practical aspects you outline in this paragraph 
are simply no barrier at all. Hermione's hour glass time turner was
a little hour glass with a ring at the top and a chain that ran through
the ring so she could wear it around her neck and to define who the
time turner acted on by cramming them inside the loop of the chain
when it was used. 

Is it an hour glass, week glass, year glass, etc? Turn it back one turn
and see. Problem solved, well unless it happens to be a millenium
glass!!!

Hold the chain for the time turner in both hands with the time turner
itself between them and twirl the chain, you can get several turns,
perhaps many turns, per second this way. It won't take terribly long
to go back even with an hour turner. 

You don't have to count. Once you know the calibration of the time
turner twirl it for a time you guesstimate is much less than needed
check how far back you've gone and plan the next twirling session
from that information. Approach your goal slowly as you get close
and if you overshoot, so what? All you have to do is kill time while
you wait for your target day and hour to come up. Hermione can 
spend it studying.

That is how muggles would do it though. These kids are wizards.
Just charm the calibrated turner to spin the required number of
times at a spin rate that produces the total trip through time in
a minute of your subjective time. Magic makes life easy!

Magic makes life too easy though. Hermione convinces you to not
save your parents but now you have over a decade to quietly find
all the horcruxes (perhaps you leave Nagini if she is one and the
diary) and disarm them or prepare them for disarming. When the
night of the rebirth comes up you zap the horcruxes, apparate to
the Riddle house, disable Peter, kill Nagini, and then give babyMort
a long lecture before you zap him too. Then you tie Peter up for Cedric
and your "other" self to find with a note pinned to his chest that reads
"Harry, I believe you were looking for this. BTW, Voldemort is 
dead forever, his horcruxes (ask Dumbledore) are toast, and I've gotta 
dash. Signed, a close friend."

That still gives you a few years to kill until it is time to rejoin your 
time line at Godrics Hollow. Perhaps the three of you decide they
can most profitably be spent partying on the road with the 
Grateful Dead. Hermione will be a hard sell on that one....

No, I don't think we will ever see a time turner again and if we do I 
will lose all respect for the author. She never should have introduced
them but I will give her a pass because she *seems* to have realized
that, if belatedly. The only time travel stories I have ever liked are those 
that are played for laughs and in the hands of a talented author they 
can be wickedly funny.

Ken