Time travel ???

[Nightcrawler]

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my favourite books in the series; it introduces Sirius, and was the first HP book I read. I really like the way it sets a "dark" atmosphere for Goblet of Fire and OotP. It was (and probably will be) the only book that doesn't need some form of Voldermort as the villian.

However... as much as I loved that book... when an author relies on the concept of time-travel to move the plot along... it is almost always a really bad idea. It just opens up so many holes. Why can't they use the timepeice thingy to save Sirius twice? Why can't the go back and kill Tom Riddle as a pimply faced teenager? Or kill Wormtail and baby Voldermort in the graveyard scene of GoF? Or even use it in trials to prove who is innocent and who is guilty?

...No, instead they give it to a little girl so that she can pick up a few extra classes.

The idea of a small object that can alter the reality of the entire universe is a little on the rediculous side, even for a story about wizards and witches.

I kinda liked it when Harry realised that his future self had created his own Patronus, but apart from that, I would have much preffered Rowling to steer clear of the whole time-travel issue. I have not seen one person pull it off convincingly.

Anyone else agree?

[Alice I]

Wow!

Ok you make some very good points here.
Why give such a dynamic object to a student?
But remember Hermione was not trying to alter the future or the past so that is why the Ministry allowed for it in the first place, and when DD had Hermione and Harry use it to save Sirius and Buckbeak the circumstances allowed for it to actually work as long as they were Extreamly Careful.

As for going back in time to kill LV at various times there is still the issue of place.
The time turner is used for time travel not distance and there wasn't anyone else in the graveyard except the bad guys.

To save Sirius at the ministry it would not work unless someone other than the participating parties in the battle were to do the time traveling so who would that be? I mean the Order was there fighting, the trio was there along with Neville, Luna and Ginny.
And that sort of use of such a powerful devise would not ever be sanctioned by the Ministry especially to save a convicted murderer (even though we all know he was innocent)
DD was very nervous about allowing Hermione and Harry to use it in POA as he admonished them several times to make sure that they are not seen.

Using time travel as a means of how did you put it:

when an author relies on the concept of time-travel to move the plot along... it is almost always a really bad idea

Well that has been done many times succesfully by great authors such as Issac Asimov, Rod Serling, Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury etc...
So I guess I have to disagree with you there.

I can see your point that using time travel in a story leaves openings for questions so it is one of the jobs of the author to identify those holes and plug them so to speak.

Well you did ask for opinions

[Nobby]

it's very true nightcrawler

why didn't the ministry use the turner to go back and kill Voldie as a baby if he's causing so much trouble?

But the thing is, wouldn't killing voldie alter the lives of everyone who ever meet him? but as people suggest that will are connected to everyone in six steps, killing voldie would change the whole world's lives! surely they wouldn't want to do this!

Do you get what i mean?

[Female_alien]

I have to copy Alice and say "WOW!" cause that's just the first word that came to my mind when I read what you wrote.
But, it's not as easy... Nobby is right - since Voldermort was a bay it has passed 20 years and more - imagine the changes his unexistance would bring to the magical world. Good cahnges, yeah, but so big that that's just impossible.
But - they could've come back to he graveyard and save Cedric!!! That was possible!
I'm confused, but I do agree with you nightcrawler

... it is almost always a really bad idea. It just opens up so many holes

[pallas artemis]

What I want to know is if the time turner will be important later? Like it or not she has used it and therefore since timetravel is possible in the HP world, who else might use??

[Groo]

yeah! i strongly agree with you i had posted something similiar in some other thread, when someone argued that since Hermione was an ideal girl, the ministry complied. but then, Hermione DID misuse the TT didnt she? (we dont generally think "misuse" as she saved Sirius but she did flout the ministry laws)
so the whole point of giving the TT to a person was undermined.

and agreed, that you cannot erase the history of Voldy as it is too complex as Nobby says, but you can get him now, after his rebirth to stop the impending damage which is bound to happen now. use it to kill Voldy before he again relives those 20 years

[Alice I]

Again I must add that the Time Turner will displace a person in Time not Space.
How does one go back in time to the Graveyard when noone (not even Harry) knows where that graveyard is except the bad guys.

If DD himself were to use the Time Turner to go back to that moment in time he would find himself at Hogwats.

Now maybe it would work if the person got themselves to the graveyard then used the time turner to go back in time and then wait, but that would mean that they would need to know where this graveyard is.

[Groo]

well, Harry knows that Wormtail took the bone of LV's father from a grave and LV clearly mentioned to Harry that "you are standing over my father's grave, a muggle... blah blah blah". so i think DD can put two and two together and figure out that the graveyard was Riddle's hometown, and DD already knows the place since he mentioned it to Harry in reference to Frank Bryce's death.

and there are other places that they can attack Voldy as well. like now it is known that LV resided in Crouch's house for a year with Wormtail.

[paintballdecoy]

I agree with you, Time Travel, unless it has certain absolute rules, then it really leaves huge gapping holes in the story, like why wouldn't they go back and kill voldemort when he was a kid? There possible could be some paramiters that JK hasn't mentioned, such as you really can't kill people. it just wont happen, or it wont matter.

[Fool on the hill]

There's a great science fiction book series called "Perry Rhodan", which explains the whole time travel thing very convincingly, but I think it's only published in a few (European) countries. Too bad, it's really great.

Well, let's imagine Dumbledore uses the TT to go back 60 years and kill young Tom Riddle. That would change SO much - the most obvious changes would be that the Chamber of Secrets wouldn't have been opened by T. R., Hagrid wouldn't have been expelled, there would have been no Lord Voldemort, the Riddle family wouldn't have been killed - many, many people wouldn't have been killed -, etc.

But then it would not only change much, but almost everything. Maybe, in a world without Voldemort, Dumbledore falls out of the window and dies in 1964. That could happen, you know, because everything's different. Perhaps in the "real" world Tom Riddle said something mean to a first year, who thereupon lost his self-confidence and didn't start to play Quidditch. In the Time Turner-world, there's no T. R. to say mean things and the first year turns out to be a great Quidditch player. Now let's get back to Dumbledore - say it's 05/15/1964 and he's standing at some window (maybe he wouldn't have been there if he hadn't used the TT!) - the promising Quidditch player throws the Quaffle and - hits Dumbledore. Dumbledore falls out of the window and dies. Ok, that was one strange example, but I hope you get my point

Now there are the huge and obvious changes. But there are a lot more not so obvious: Harry's parents worked for the Order. In a world without Voldemort, there is and was no Order - James had a lot of money, so he didn't have to work. Maybe James is bored to death now because he has no job and becomes an alcoholic or something. Harry would not be Harry, because he would be born two weeks later. He wouldn't wear glasses. He would dye his hair green and beat up people who like orange juice.
And - so - on. The Longbottoms, the Weasleys, all the killed families,...

Now I hope you understand what I mean - the consequences would be incalculable because so many things depend on Tom Riddle being alive.
Moreover I do believe that, if time travel was possible, you could only do things that are meant to happen. It's not like you're actually changing the future or the past, it HAS TO happen like this.

You see that in book 3 when Harry realises that he must conjure a Patronus to save his own life. Harry saw the Patronus before he went back in time. Besides, they didn't really change anything. Yeah, now I'm getting to what I want to say. If you read that chapter again, you will notice that they only thought Buckbeak had been killed etc. The things Hermione and Harry hear match with the things they heard before. They have to rescue Buckbeak and conjure the Patronus because it does happen like this. It's like they're only fate's marionettes.

To come back to the Perry Rhodan books, there they use a time travel thingy to go back in time and install a time bomb in a huge computer-like machine. The machine should work some thousand years, as it did before they went back, and then explode in their time, a few days after their travel, because there's no other way to avoid the security system. So there are no other consequences for the future (the future seen from some thousand years ago!) - the computer will work and everything will happen like it has to happen and then it will explode in the present and nothing from past will be changed. It then occurs a bit different and the machine isn't destroyed, but will obey them, but what I said is pretty much what it's about.

Therefore it is impossible to actually change the past.

Oh my god, that was long Please forgive me possible slips and repetitions.

[Groo]

* looks at the post dumbstruck *

WHOA!!!!

That has to be the most comprehensive post i have ever read in my life.except the theory of Dumbledore being killed by a stray quaffle i agree with you

Thats kinda what DD says to Harry "The consequences of your actions are so vast that it is impossible to predict the future"

looks like you are an avid Science Fiction reader,

[Alice I]

You are describing the Butterfly Effect Eichhoernchenkatapult

[Nightcrawler]

Anyone seen Minority Report? Fantastic movie, deals with some of the issues being discussed here (sort of).


Eichhoernchenkatapult; I like your analagy. Now that I think about it, it may not be a good idea to go back and let Fluffy loose in Tom Riddle's dorm. ...Or drop a bludger on his head. ...or Transfigue him into a mouse and feed him to Crookshanks ...or ...-you get the idea I agree, it would change too much in the future (I mean, present).


Still, I think it would have been a good idea to go back and save Cedric, thus preventing Voldermort from being reborn... and possibly feeding baby voldie to Fluffy or Norbert. ...or Crookshanks, or even a very hairy and hungry Prof. Lupin!
I realise that they would be standing in a totally different place, but they could always go back far enough to allow themselves time to get to the graveyard.

What I want to know is if the time turner will be important later? Like it or not she has used it and therefore since timetravel is possible in the HP world, who else might use??

Personally, I hope we don't see the time turner again.

...But then again... it would be kinda cool for Voldermort to use time travel to create a bizzaro, alternate universe where everything is evil, and Harry has to save the day and set things back to normal... and perhaps even battle his bizzaro alternate universe self Harry could destroy the time turner, set things back to the way they were and thus close up any impending plot holes.

...now I'm just getting carried away.

Although I would like to see a Harry vs Harry battle. Especially if one of them had green hair

[choki]

I guess the most important rule about using time turner is that you must not change history. Things that happened before can't be changed.
For example, Buckbeak's execution. There is no mentioning of anyone seeing Buckbeak's head on the ground. Buckbeak could have escaped on its own. Harry and Hermione used time turner to prevent Sirius from receiving the kiss of dementors. They didn't travel back time to save the already souless Sirius.

With greater powers, comes greater responsibilities...

[Nightcrawler]

When it comes to time travel, the word "history" is hard to define. When Harry & co go back and change something, they are altering the way that things in the future would otherwise happen. So, in a sense, they are altering the history of the future. Then again, the choices we make right now are altering the course of the future. Really, Hermione should only be able to study the same ammount of classes as everyone else. True, she went back in time as the events were happening, but that would be no different to going back after they had happened either. (I don't really like the idea of trusting such a powerful device to a kid come to think of it...)

In The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett, a wizard named Ponder Stibbons was trying to explain to another guy named Ridcully that if he stepped on an ant, he may in fact inadvertadly kill his grandfather. Ridcully replied with something to the effect of "Of course we can use the present to mess up the future! That's what it's there for!"



I'm sure if I was going to kill a hipogriff, I'd tie it down properly first. I suppose Buckbeak could have escaped on his own, but the chances of that are extremely low. I think that Rowling chose not to show us Buckbeak's severed head because that would make the books too scary for kids, and it would be gross and unnecisarry. The scene is quite traumatic as it is, I don't think that Rowling would want to overdo it. Besides, the books are fantasy, not horror.

I think it's safe to say that Buckbeak was killed the first time around, and as I remember, although we didn't see the death, we did hear it. (Although it has been a while since I have read PoA).

Harry and Hermione used time turner to prevent Sirius from receiving the kiss of dementors. They didn't travel back time to save the already souless Sirius.

I got the impression that Sirius did lose his soul (off screen) and Peevs was gloating about it. Harry then went back and changed that. Then again, I could be wrong.

Once again, the word "history" is getting in our way. I am in the present right now. Tomorrow (the future), I will consider this point in time to be the past. Nonetheless, whatever happened with Sirius, Harry & co were altering the future.

What is the difference between rushing back to the past and saving Sirius from the dementors kiss at the last moment, OR, waiting five minutes, then going back and saving the now, souless guy. Either way, Sirius would be saved from a fate that would otherwise leave him souless, so the end result would be the same. It wouldn't really matter.

It would be a bad idea to kill Tom Riddle because the end result would be unpredictable, however saving Cedric and killing baby Voldie and Wormtail in the graveyard would still be totally feasable. They would be altering history by killing Voldie... but what would that matter? When Harry got back to Hogwarts, only a few minutes had passed. They would acheive the goal that they are currently trying to achieve anyway.