Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 16: Professor Trelawney's prediction

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 190384

> June:
> Dumbledore would have known what really happened (in their time line)
> as it was in the past so he likely knew that it was unlikely that
> Hagrid would have let Buckbeak go or to have been careless with
> tying him up (remember Hagrid was afraid of the consequences if he
> let Buckbeak go) and it was obvious to everyone that knew Sirius was
> in the castle that he was going to get the Dememtor's kiss, so
> Dumbledore would have realized that at some point things had been
> changed and he would have known the only possible way that could have
> happened. That is why he sent Hermione and Harry because he knew for
> Buckbeak to be alive and Sirius to not be kissed that, they were the
> ones who had to have done it in the past (confusing lol). One thing
> though that really baffles me is, if they went in the past and Harry
> saved himself, it is logical that at some point he would have
> received the Dementor's kiss because there could not have been a
> first instance when he was there to save himself because he didn't go
> back in time yet, so how did he go back in time in the first place?
>
Carol responds:

If Harry had received the Dementor's kiss, he would have lost his soul and there would be no undoing it. He couldn't possibly go back in time *after* he had lost his soul any more than he could have done so if he had been killed. Harry was saved by his future self. If that future self had not returned in the one and only time line, Harry's story would have ended there. And, of course, Buckbeak would have been beheaded and Sirius would also have lost his soul.

The only problem I have is what Dumbledore saw and knew. I haven't read the chapter recently and don't have time to go back now, so I don't recall whether any of the Harrys and Hermiones and the one Ron were under the Invisibility Cloak. However, we do know that DD, unlike everyone else, can see under Invisibility Cloaks. If DD saw HRH in one place and HH in another, both under Invisibility Cloaks, he would have figured out that they went back in time and suggested the idea to Hermione to initiate what had, in fact, already happened.

Mind-boggling, yes, but logic does not demand that Buckbeak was killed and even less so that Harry was soul-sucked. Both types of Time Travel (one timeline or two) can be defended logically, but for this story, JKR almost certainly intends that Time-Traveling Harry and Hermione were there all along and came back to *prevent* "more than one innocent life" from being lost, exactly as DD says.

Carol, noting that TMTMNBN shows TT/Hermione throwing rocks that Hermione sees and feels, showing that TT/Hermione was there all along