Headscratchers / Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Time Turners

The Trouble With Time-Turners

• Why didn't Snape see Harry and Hermione twice on the map when he uses that to find everyone? And why didn't he also see Peter Pettigrew listed if he saw everyone else?
  • He didn't see everyone else, he only saw Lupin going down the passageway to the Shrieking Shack. He didn't see Harry, Ron, Hermione, Pettigrew, or Sirius because they were all off the school grounds when Snape saw the map, in the Shrieking Shack or in the Forbidden Forest.
  • Snape looking at the map wouldn't have seen the past Harry, Ron or Hermione because they had gone off the boundaries of Hogwarts into the Shrieking Shack. However if he looked at the map he could have seen future Harry and Hermione but wouldn't think anything of it because they would be the only ones on the map. And they were in the forest at that point waiting for everyone to come out. So Snape looks at the map, maybe sees Harry and Hermione in the forest and then arrives at the Shrieking Shack to find them there. He assumes they just got there before him.
• Ok, let's try this again. I have the following scenario in mind: after the kids tell Dumbledore the whole tale in the infirmary, he travels to the past, conceals himself, sneaks to the Shack, and waits. After the company emerges from the passage, Lupin and Pettigrew morph, Pettigrew darts to the forest... and Dumbledore nails him, unnoticed by the kids! Even if the most powerful wizard in England is somehow unable to catch a rat, he could've taken an owl or a cat with him. This wouldn't have broken the past in the least, since Pete's post-escape fate was unknown anyway. Thus they'd have Sirius acquitted and Voldemort's return postponed or prevented altogether, and at Dumbledore's discretion, he could recruit Pettigrew to his cause and sent him to find V when it suited him (i.e. when Potter was properly informed and prepared). Are there any flaws with this plan, or did Dumbledore just conveniently "omit" this opportunity for the sake of plot propulsion?
  • To my knowledge, they only had one Time Turner, and it was Hermione's. Harry and Hermione had to go back to save Buckbeak, since Dumbledore presumably knows it already happens. Besides, your plan involves a centenarian wandering around a forest occupied by a hungry and out-of-control werewolf and dozens of Dementors looking for a rat that knows the forest infinitely better than he does. Without getting caught, seen on the Marauders' Map, or being even the slightest bit late in returning to the castle. Dumbledore is powerful, but he's not God.
  • The delight of time travel is that it allows you to Take Your Time, both in the present and in the past. D could meet H&H from their quest, ensure that Black successfully escaped, see Fudge off, calm Snape down, then borrow the Turner from Hermione (and maybe Cape from Harry), go to the Shack and use the Turner to go, say, ten minutes before the company emerges from the Shack. After that, it's all technicalities. A magic rat-trap, an owl, a cat - I flatly refuse to believe that THE Dumbledore wouldn't think of something to catch a single puny rat (remember, he had time he needed to prepare in the present). So nope, he wouldn't have to wander anywhere, there was nobody to look at the Map at that moment and he had nowhere to be late to. I still see no flaws in the plan.
  • First of all, just as a general point, the entire message of the way the Time-Turner was presented is that it doesn't allow you infinite chances to take as much time as you need and then go back and fix it — there's a time frame that has to be adhered to punctually, and if you press your luck too hard, you will see or be seen by someone you're not supposed to and this will fuck everything up. Using it multiple times in the same area on the same night is just asking for trouble. Secondly, to address your specific concern, Dumbledore would never have been able to capture Pettigrew after the fact because it manifestly had not happened in the timeline as it originally stood. He certainly couldn't have done it the way you're describing, after Harry and Hermione had already freed Sirius, because if he'd had Pettigrew that whole time, then they could have proven Sirius's innocence and there wouldn't have been any need to break him out of Flitwick's office, and H&H's whole mission would have become a pointlessly risky and stupid waste of time. And if he'd done it instead of sending H&H anywhere, how would he have covered it up adequately? It would have looked to everyone like he'd talked to Sirius and listened to Fudge and Snape insist his story was nonsense/lies and then checked with H&H [at which point he would have borrowed the Time-Turner and gotten his past self out of the way and done his thing and arrived back inside the castle (all without being seen) and had to fake the entire previous three conversations wherein he didn't yet know that Sirius was innocent] and then suddenly piped up with, "By the way, Minister, I have Peter Pettigrew alive and Stunned in my office, and no, you can't ask how I knew he was alive or on the grounds or when I caught him or why I didn't mention this before, but why don't we question both him and Black and see if we can't get to the bottom of this?"
  • First. Unlike H&H, D, being the freakin' Headmaster, obviously didn't have to worry about being caught on the grounds or gone missing for some time, and, being the freaking Dumbledore, he could easily conceal himself from casual eyes (including his own). And as for the Map, D didn't know about it. Second. I don't see a problem with D catching Pete behind the scenes just like Buckbeak was rescued behind the scenes. Third. H&H obviously had to go to the past because Harry had to save himself from Dementors, as it had already happened. After they return, D could borrow the Time Turner and go back himself. Again, no problem. Finally, with D being one of the most respected people in Britain, I see no problems in explaining the matters to Fudge in as many details as desirable. (something to the sound of "Cornelius, if you somehow failed to notice, you and your ministry have fucked up TWICE already: twelve years ago, when you nailed an innocent guy and now, when one of your Caspers nearly ate my student. How about you quell your curiosity and I make sure they don't sue the collective guts out of you? That's great, I always knew you were a reasonable man deep inside.") Not that he couldn't tell the truth. Again, no problem.
  • How would you know if Dumbledore could disguise himself from Dumbledore? He can see through Invisibility Cloaks by sheer virtue of being awesome. Even Mad-Eye needs a magical artifact to do that. Moreover, Dumbledore sent Harry and Hermione back in time to save Buckbeak because he knew that they'd gone back in time to save Buckbeak. Dumbledore knew that he didn't go back in time to catch Pettigrew, or at least assumes that he didn't, because he's seen no evidence of it. Third, there was a werewolf out there. He knew that Harry and Hermione would make it through okay because they'd already made it through okay; he didn't know that about himself. Fourth, he didn't know where Peter had gone. Even if he was standing just off to the side of the screen waiting for Wormtail to scamper up to him, he didn't know what Peter did in the original timeline that would now be changed because of Dumbledore. What if Wormtail distracted a single Dementor, making it slow down a few seconds? What if that one Dementor would have given Harry or Sirius the Kiss before Time Travel Harry could cast the Patronus? You don't muck around with time travel. You just don't.
  • (New troper to the conversation here) Dumbledore had well over a decade to study that specific invisibility cloak (so you don't know that he wasn't using a magical artifact that allowed him to look through that specific cloak, or at least tell him where it was and who was under it), and Mad-Eye was really Barty Crouch Jr., which I hope will excuse his lack of seeing through invisibility by virtue of being awesome. Dumbledore didn't know that he hadn't gone back in time to catch Pettigrew until he never went back in time to catch Pettigrew, or at least until Pettigrew showed up elsewhere a year later and Dumbledore knew that going back would be futile. He couldn't have changed anything that he knew had happened, up to however accurately he thought he had interpreted the information he was given (which, succinctly, was that everyone survived except the fencepost, Lupin ran off, and Wormtail went somewhere towards the forest). Until a year later, he almost definitely didn't know that Pettigrew was still free, and he knew roughly where he was to have been in rat form. Not going back to locate and catch Pettigrew was prioritizing for time, which is a bit of a silly thing to do when you've got a time machine that works like the time-turner, or can easily borrow one. Unless Dumbledore had information that made him feel it was better to let Pettigrew get away (such as that the direction he ran would take him straight into a colony of acromantula, and that Pettigrew doesn't know what acromantula smell like or had a slight head cold, or that that specific werewolf or werewolves in general were impervious to anything he could quickly use to non-lethally neutralize it without attracting the attention of everyone on the grounds), it's just an example of a time-travel induced Idiot Ball (and if that's not a trope already, which I think it was at one time, it should be).
  • Dumbledore specifically had knowledge that Harry and Hermione went back in time and everything turned out okay for it. Thus, it was safe for him to send them back. He did not have knowledge as to whether or not he went back, and thus it was unsafe (and phenomenally illegal) for him to go back himself to capture Wormtail. And if he doesn't catch Wormtail the first time he goes back, he'll have to either try again or let it go. Every time he doesn't catch Wormtail increases the chances for him to get caught by himself or someone else. Finally, we know that there can't be a way to non-lethally neutralize a werewolf, otherwise the Wolfsbane potion wouldn't be such a big deal. They wouldn't have had to stick Moony in the Shrieking Shack; they could have just sat him down near sunset, Stupefied him (or whatever) and kept at it until daybreak.
  • Funny thing is: he DIDN'T have such knowledge. He'd sent H&H to the past BEFORE they returned to him and reported their success. At best, he could guess it when he saw that the Hippogriff was gone. He told H&H to go to the past because it was a right thing to do. Next, what some people forget (or don't get) is that the time line is invariant - i.e. there is only one way the events ever happened or will ever happen. Remember, in the "normal" course of events (without time travel) Harry would've been killed by Dementors, but it never happened, although in that moment he had no idea that he was going to travel to the past and save himself. This means that in any particular moment, the space-time continuum "knows" what will happen in the future and how it might alter the past. This means that if D decided to go to the past, in that moment of decision-making he would've already existed in the world where he travelled to the past. Nothing would've changed and could be changed because it had already been changed. Dumbledore-2 could've sent Dumbledore-1 a note of success or even appear in his office with Pettigrew in a cage - it doesn't matter. The success was guaranteed because H&H succeeded, even though D would've been there near the Shack, and he would've been there in the past because later he would decide to go to the past.
  • Agreed! Plus, Dumbledore seems like the least likely person to freak out if he saw a future version of himself walking around. The only reason that makes sense for sending H&H is that, like so many things he had them do/allowed them to do, he wanted to make sure they'd gain the experience they'd need down the road (for example, because of his time-travelling, Harry is finally able to do the Patronus charm, which factors into the plot many, many times later on).
  • Next, on the exact technicalities of capturing Pete. For the love of Abaddon, Dumbledore is the freaking Dumbledore! THE headmaster of the school and THE most powerful wizard in the world! Who was going to "catch" him? No, seriously, who?! Himself? That's ridiculous - what do you think he would've done, blasted himself? As for the capture, he didn't need to neutralize Lupin, he didn't even need to be there in person - just place some area-effect spell that stupefies everything rat-sized or something like that, then take a broom, make yourself invisible, and over-watch the scene from above like a good strategist does. Done.
  • "If Dumbledore had just used a magical spell that has never been used in the books that I just made up on the fly, he'd have succeeded! Come to that, in Back to the Future, why didn't Doc Brown just use the Make-Marty's-Parents-Fall-In-Love-Machine that I just decided he must have had in his garage?"
  • Right. I mean it's not like the series was the biggest offender of New Powers as the Plot Demands EVER. And it's not like the characters used "spells that have never been used in the books" all the time. But for the most powerful wizard in the world to contrive an area effect rat-trap? Yep, that would've been a colossal Ass Pull, all right.
  • Yeah. It would have been. Even if a reasonable person might assume that the spell exists somewhere in the no doubt millions of charms and jinxes that have been developed over the years, why would Dumbledore know it? "Because he's Dumbledore, he's the shiniest bestest wizard that ever was," blah blah blah. Every bit of magic we've seen him use, there's a reason he would have learned it. Mastering a rat-catcher spell for no apparent reason is kind of weird, though. He's not a rat-catcher. He's not an exterminator. He's not a zoologist. Dumbledore would show up at the last minute with the rat in tow saying, "Wait, Minister, fortunately I have captured the real culprit with a bit of magic that I learned for what is no doubt a good reason during my adventures some years ago. Allow me to conveniently resolve the plot." And finally, do we ever even see any area effect spells get used in the books? Certainly, places get charmed, but they're generally specific addresses: Hogwarts, James and Lily's house, the Burrow. As far as I recall, it's never been "a patch of land about fifteen meters by twenty meters, provided there's a rat in it."
  • He wouldn't even need a specific rat-catching spell: "Accio Scabbers" or "Accio Pettigrew" would have worked just fine. It's mentioned that H&H&R didn't use this because they didn't learn it until the next book, but it seems fairly certain that freaking Dumbledore would have a working knowledge of this common and useful spell.
  • First. HE. HAD. A. TIME. MACHINE. He had all the time in the world to prepare (already explained it above). Learn a rat-catching spell. Invent a rat-catching spell. Consult any number of qualified rat-catchers, zoologists, exterminators, name it. Get himself an intelligent rat-catching creature (hint: Hermione and Harry both own one). Second. No, D would show up with demorphed Pettegrew in shackles, Sirius would be acquitted, and V's resurrection would be averted, and then hardly anybody would care how he did it. Finally, yes, yes we do see area-effect spells. The age-detecting spell that protects the area around the Cup in GoF. The protection charms Hermione casts on their camping grounds in DH. V's Taboo, that covers the whole of England (if not the whole world).
  • As it is now, they won, more or less. Wormtail got away, yes, but Sirius escaped the clutches of the Ministry, everyone avoided both the Dementors and the werewolf. They didn't know that Peter would raise Voldemort at that time, so your point about Voldemort's resurrection being averted is invalid because it's not an argument Dumbledore could have made in his own defense (which, given that time travel is illegal, he would have to make, and your situation creates the obvious and notable existence of at least two Dumbledores). Finally, Harry and Hermione were effective in their time travel because they created a stable time loop: they avoid creating a situation that would keep them from going back in time in the first place. If Dumbledore goes back, makes it obvious what he did, and then takes away his past self's reason to travel back, I don't know what would happen. I'm leaning towards unpleasantly, however.
  • OP: Yes, they did know, they heard the prophecy. No, D wouldn't have to make arguments, 'cause acquitting a wrongly accused is much more endearing to the public then allowing a dangerous criminal to escape, so Fudge would hardly nitpick, and even if he would, D could always act mysteriously and pretend he went after Pettigrew and captured him without any time travel, cause he's just that awesome (worked all the other times). No it doesn't, cause who was supposed to see future-Dumbledore in the Forbidden Forest at night (needless to say, the Time-Turning was to be done right there)? Finally, if Dumbledore decides to go to the past, it means he's already been there and everything has gone fine. Nobody can change the past - it has already happened with all the possible alterations in account.
  • There is the possibility that Dumbledore had seen the second version of Harry and Hermione running around at some point. If he knew there were two versions of them running around, then, since he knows about the Time Turner, he concludes that they had gone back in time. If they had gone back in time, he wouldn't have been able to use the Time Turner until they had already gone back. When they were back in time, he was with the Ministry representatives so he wouldn't have been able to leave and go get the Time Turner off them. And the first thing that Harry did when he saw Dumbledore again was tell him that Sirius and Buckbeak had escaped, so Dumbledore would have been unable to change that sequence of events.
  • Yes, all of that is most likely true, so? Sirius and Buckbeak were fine, there was no need to change anything on their affair. We're talking about capturing Pettegrew after he escaped from the heroes at the Shack - it doesn't interfere with any other events, that's what makes it so easy.
  • Does it mention in the books how far out the Hogwarts anti-apparition wards go? Maybe they were close enough to the edge for Pettigrew to get outside and apparate away while the dementors were after Sirius and Harry
  • Dumbledore didn't want to kill Pettigrew. Simple. It's made obvious in the books that Dumbledore likes to believe the best of people, and he probably hoped that Peter wouldn't do what he thought he was going to do.
  • Who said anything about killing? Capturing Pettigrew was a matter of proving Sirius was innocent. And then the bastard was going to Azkaban, but I dare you tell me he didn't deserve it.
  • I think you guys are missing something. Going back in time and getting caught by a normal person wouldn't bother Dumbledore, and the only reason they advise against meeting yourself in the past is that it messes things up if you don't know about time travel. Dumbledore, on the other hand, being Dumbledore, has probably known about time turners since they were invented.
  • The psychological ramifications are a huge problem, though, because while your present self knows where your past self is, your past self only knows they have just run into someone who appears to be you. Even Dumbledore can't go around assuming that anybody who looks like him and knows some random password is him from three hours in the future, and never telling another person is useless with Legilimancy.
  • But knowing where he was will allow him to avoid himself.
  • Someone mentioned this before, but the intelligent time-travelling wizard/witch will make sure to invent a unique "code spell" that only they would recognize, before the time and date to which the wizard/witch will time travel. That is, he/she will cast the spell in the event that he/she runs the risk of running into his/her past self (because of the code spell, the wizard/witch's "past self" will already be forewarned). Anyone can take advantage of the Stable Time Loop this way; no problem at all if one is prepared.
  • I have a good explanation as to why Dumbledore didn't go back in time to stop Pettigrew. On the night the whole climax happened, he might have had his mind on catching Pettigrew and clearing Sirius's name. However, he decided to (like a reasonable person) ask Harry about the details of the whole ordeal and decide how best to approach the situation and when to get Pettigrew. So, what happened the next time he was talking to Harry without others listening in on them? Harry told him Trelawney's prediction. Dumbledore knew that Trelawney is capable of a true prophecy, so he already knew that the timeline was set on him NOT catching Pettigrew, and so any attempt was doomed to failure due to the Stable Time Loop and You Can't Fight Fate nature of time travel.
  • Well, the prophecy didn't set any time constraints, did it? "The faithful servant shall set forth to seek for his master"? Sure, he shall, for about ten seconds before he's nailed. "The Dark Lord will rise again"? Why not, let the reformed Pettigrew bind him into flesh, so that Aurors could immediately grab him and stuff him into the deepest pit of Azkaban until all the Horcruxes are destroyed and Harry dies.
  • Has nobody ever considered that Dumbledore doesn't want to clear Sirius' name? Dumbledore wanted Harry to stay with his blood relatives until his 17th birthday so that he'd be perfectly protected. He didn't want Sirius to die, but he also didn't want Harry to live with him, so he simply let Wormtail get away.
  • Of course we have. And the conclusion was that denying an innocent man his long-deserved chance to clear his name and live a normal life, denying a kid the chance for the long-deserved happiness and facilitating in Voldemort's resurrection and therefore all the innumerable casualties it is bound to lead to in order to protect that kid from enemies who are all dead, disembodied or imprisoned, instead of explaining to him why he should stay with Dursleys, makes DD an even bigger douche and moron than all other alternatives.
  • I wouldn't be surprised at all even if Dumbledore had all of those in mind back in Book 3. Voldemort WAS going to come back to power at some point, regardless of whether Wormtail was captured or not. If so, casualties don't even need explanations. As for Sirius, too bad - there are bigger things at stake than one man's innocence. Harry Potter? Sure, he might not be as happy as he would hope, but at least he'll be alive, which is important, because in Dumbledore's Batman Gambit, Harry WILL and MUST end Voldemort. And what do you mean his enemies are all dead, disembodied, or imprisoned? Voldemort may be "less than the meanest ghost" and some of his followers may be imprisoned, still others are all waiting and biding their time, waiting for the second coming of Good Ol' Tommy. Given how crucial Harry Potter is as the key to Voldemort's permanent death, as well as some of the light shed on Albus Dumbledore's personality in Book 7, none of these is news to me.
  • Believe it or not, in LEGO Harry Potter, there's a part in the Shrieking Shack stage where Lupin and Sirius construct a mouse trap for Pettigrew. But presumably it only works in the Shrieking Shack because it was a much smaller area.
  • Here's a possibility. If Dumbledore had traveled back in time to capture Pettigrew, what would have made the most sense to do, and therefore what he probably would have done, is to capture him, stun him, tie him up, and then either find a way to discretely deliver Pettigrew to his past self, or, alternatively, thrown him on top of the unconscious pile of bodies after future Harry saves them from the Dementors, and past Harry faints, but before Snape wakes up. Since none of that happened he concludes that he must never have gone into the past in the first place, and so can't now because it would disrupt the Stable Time Loop. In other words, he knows what he would have done if he had time travelled, but since that didn't happen he must not have, and so he doesn't do it.
  • No. The only sensible way was to capture Pete, wait somewhere for his past self to travel back in time, and then return to his office, call Fudge and resolve the matter.
  • The shock of seeing your past or future self has been credited in-universe as the source of tragedy and therefore time travel is a risky deal. But if Time Turners are so much a fact of life in this universe that they hand them out to 13 year old girls to help them attend classes, why would anyone be that surprised by it? Especially when other forms of creating body doubles exist so openly (like Polyjuice Potion)?
  • They wouldn't. Hermione is most likely blindly repeating what Prof. McGonagall must've told her, and Harry doesn't question her, because he's an idiot.
  • To give a TL;DR on this; the Stable Time Loop is in full effect, the predestination paradox prevents people from changing the past; thus they have no motivation for going back in time to begin with. Hermoine was exempt from this because her shenanigans didn't involve changing the past to undo an action, but she was simply drawing herself a newer path.
  • 1)Only Harry ever heard the book 3 prophecy (remember Hermione leaves Divination FOR GOOD before Easter)
  • um it says in the book that McGonagall had to say a bunch of things to get the MOM to give it to Hermione.
  • There's a possibility that no one has bothered to think of. If Time-Turners require stable time loops, there logically must be circumstances where you are stopped from going back in time. It is entirely possible that DD heard the entire story, concluded that he easily could capture Peter without altering anything, ran upstairs to get his own time turner, tried to go back, and it refused to work because he would have, despite his best efforts, caused a paradox. Perhaps, for example, he would have inadvertently ran into and delayed Snape as he headed to Lupin's office, so he didn't see Lupin on the Map. Or Lupin attacked him at some point. Or one of any millions of things that could have changed things. However it would have happened, because DD's trip would have caused a paradox, he simply was not allowed to go back in time.
  • This has been disproven by Word of God: In Pottermore, there are examples of wizards time-travelling and erasing other peoples' existence, causing them to be un-born, and causing a Thursday to last four hours. Time travel is clearly unstable and volatile, and not restricted to stable time loops.
  • And this can even be extended. Perhaps he did go back, with a bad plan, because he couldn't use a good one. Maybe any plan that put him close enough to succeed might have put him close enough to cause a paradox so he wasn't allowed to go back with that plan. So he was forced to try a stupid plan, like wait at the gates of Hogwarts, and he did this, and it didn't work. Then he goes and waits in the Shrieking Shack and that doesn't work either. And so on and so on. And eventually he's forced to conclude this won't work.
  • And the reason it might not work is that even it capturing Peter technically doesn't violate the prophesy, if Peter had not escaped, the events of that night probably would not be prophesy-worthy. So capturing Peter might have resulted in the prophesy never having been made, which would means everything would not longer be a stable time loop. (Nice job breaking things, Harry. All you had to do was not tell Dumbledore something.)
  • It once again appears to me that people have a misconception about time travel, as presented in HP (I know, presumptuous, but please bear with me). Merely going back and interfering does not cause paradoxes. Case in point: Mc Nair vs. Buckbeak. In the normal course of events Mc Nair exits Hagrid's shack, sees BB and kills it. But then/before the kids arrive from the future and steal BB. Does this eventuality cause a paradox and/or prevent the TT from working? Obviously not. Why? Because the "normal cause of events" had never happened. Not "no longer happens" - never happened. There's only one timeline, and at every point it is already affected by all possible interferences by time travelers. That is what the awesome power of Time Turner is - not change the past, but shape the past. So if DD ran into Snape or was attacked by Lupin or anything, then that's way the events had gone. The same goes for Trelawny. If capturing Pettegrew negates her prophecy, then she hadn't made it. The only way a paradox could occur is if DD's actions in the past absolutely prevent him-in-the present from going back to the past and enacting them. And since he knows about time travel and can always just give himself instructions to go to the past and do so and so, that's hardly an issue. And no, "but that's not the way it was shown to happen" is not a valid argument. Once you introduce time travel, cause and effect become bilateral - that is the decisions of present define the past as well as the future. If a you have a compelling idea that requires going to the past (and stopping V from resurrecting is as compelling as they get), then it means you exist in the universe already affected by your time travel, so you can (and in fact have to) safely go. Therefore, if DD's decision not to go after Pettegrew in itself makes no sense, then neither do the past events that stem from his inaction.
  • Now for the practical part. Sure, he could run into Snape or Lupin or something. He could also trip over his own beard, fall onto his own wand and die from it, and he wouldn't even need to go the past for it. Just because you can invent some obscure way for him to screw up, it doesn't become even remotely plausible. He's Dumbledore for Khorne's sake! It's his school. He can become invisible, he can get a broom and fly around, he can watch the memories of every participant of the events, and all he has to do is catch one lousy rat! I can make up a handful of sure ways to do it on the spot: place some weak area-effect stunning spell that would work on a rat-sized creature only (don't tell me he couldn't do it, just don't), b) put Imperio on Pete after he emerges from the passage, c) visit Hagrid's shack earlier, turn Pete to human, Confound him and order to go to DD after he escapes, then order him to turn back to rat and forget the whole conversation (or, again, just put him under Imperio), d) take McGonagall with him, so that she turns into a cat and captures Pete. I wouldn't mind so much if this bloody affair wasn't so trivial and simple, and if it didn't lead to so much death and suffering in the next parts, all of it completely unnecessary.
  • The whole thing is pretty simple, but not the way you seem to think. The Time-Turner does not exist to facilitate going back to the past and then changing it. If you experience certain events and then go back in time, everything will happen the exact same way. X happens, then Y, and then Z. If you use a Time-Turner to go back, X will happen and then Y will happen and Z will happen, but nothing you do will make B happen instead of X. When Harry and Hermione go back in time and save Buckbeak, it's not like he died the first time around and they rescued him and thus changed the past. They go back and X happens again (only now they know that the swish of the axe wasn't to kill Buckbeak, but because the executioner was pissed that Buckbeak somehow escaped). If Buckbeak was executed originally, but H&H went back and saved him, then they would be changing X into B (actually changing the past). It was the same with the Dementors and the stag Patronus; after going back in time with Hermione and leaving her at Hagrid's shack, he runs to the lake expecting to see his father. He hides and waits, watching as the Dementors draw closer and wondering when James will appear to save them... until he realizes that he conjured the Patronus and not his father. What's so interesting with the whole Time-Turner thing is that Harry and Hermione don't go back in time to change the past, they go back in time to ensure that everything happens the exact same way it happened before. Hell, Harry wanted to chase down Peter after they get back to the Hogwarts grounds and Peter escapes, but Hermione asks how Harry expects to find a rat in the dark in the Forbidden Forest, and reminds him that they're supposed to rescue Sirius so they shouldn't get too far from him. And it probably would've put him too far from the lake to go back and conjure the Patronus in time, and the Time-Turner doesn't let you change the past, so Peter escaped. So really, Dumbledore would not have been able to catch Peter himself for the simple reason that him catching Peter never happened, and he knows he never went to catch Pettigrew, so no matter what he would've done Peter would always get away. He is Dumbledore, but even he can't rewrite with the past. (After all, if you could change the past, then why not go kill Tom Riddle before all of this Voldemort shit even starts?)
  • Yes, the Time Turners obviously do let you change the past. No, BB wasn't actually executed originally, but he was going to be executed originally, and the kids changed that, retconned that eventuality out of existence. So of course it happened exactly the same way as they experienced it before, because it was the same event, just seen from different points of view, but it doesn't restrict the freedom of the time travelers. They aren't playing out some script somebody wrote for them - they are writing the script. I'm avoiding the "Harries, Dementors and Patronus" case because it does come dangerously close to the paradox territory, and I have no idea what would've happened if Harry acted differently, but it's hardly relevant. DD capturing Pettegrew did not immensely lead to a paradox, "Dumbledore would not have been able to catch Peter himself for the simple reason that him catching Peter never happened" is circular logic and simply doesn't mean anything, akin to "this statement is wrong". He cannot now he never went to the past, and there has to be a reason why he wouldn't want to go to the past, otherwise he goes and had gone. If he goes but fails to capture Pete despite his best efforts, then he fails, sure, but, again, you cannot just reason that "well, then that's what happened", because it's Dumbledore and a lousy rat. There has to be an equally good reason why he'd be unable to use any of the half-a-dozen ways already listed above or any others that were missed.
  • Oh dear. Buckbeak's execution was not "retconned" in any way whatsoever. Harry and Hermione only heard the axe hit something and assumed that BB was now dead, when in reality their future(?) selves had already freed BB and the sound they heard was the executioner axe something in rage.
  • Oh dear indeed. Yes, yes, it was. BB was going to be executed, and would've been executed if H&H hadn't come from the future and prevented that. It doesn't matter what anyone heard or assumed - there're two alternative ways the events could unfold - BB either dies or lives. Without the time travel, and hence never, it was the first, with it, and hence always, it was the second. Hence the retcon.
    • Yeah but no. there is no retcon, as Buckbeak never died. H&H were always there from the future and always saved him. the sound you hear of the axe is always the executioner hitting it into the ground in frustration. This is a stable time loop, there is no time line where H&H havent yet come back and Buckbeak died. there ino retcon as everything happened how we saw it in the later part of the book.
  • And as for saying that "Dumbledore would not have been able to catch Peter himself for the simple reason that him catching Peter never happened", that is exactly the way it works. It's made abundantly clear that, if you go back in time and do something that never happened the first time, there will be serious repercussions. It doesn't matter how great of a wizard Dumbledore is (or how great Pettigrew isn't). In fact, you easily could argue that Dumbledore didn't change the time line precisely because of everything he knows. He is fully aware that making something happen different the second time is incredibly dangerous. He probably wanted Pettigrew captured as much as everyone else, but there's no telling what nasty stuff would happen because of it. Dumbledore might be one of the most powerful wizards who ever lived, but it's kind of like death: no matter how powerful you are, there is no way to fully resurrect someone. And no matter how powerful you are, there is no way to change the timeline without serious repercussions. Being a witch/wizard doesn't mean you have free reign to do anything you could ever think of. There are rules to follow (e.g. no resurrection, no creating food from nothing) and we do get to see first-hand the results of using magic in a way it wouldn't: Voldemort splitting his soul to achieve immortality, which fails spectacularly.
  • He just addressed all of that. "That is exactly the way it works" - no, because all the "they saw it the *first* time through the timeline" stuff still ONLY happened because they went back in time to make it happen. If Dumbledore had gone back in time to catch Peter, then Peter would have ended up caught the first time and then Dumbledore would have gone back to make it happen.
  • Thank you. Besides, when they said "It's made abundantly clear" I presume they refer to that one time one teenage girl hastily spurted some vague nonsense to prevent one teenage boy from doing something stupid. There's no elaboration on what those "serious repercussions" are, and no reason to believe it's an issue, because they "do" things that never happened "the first time" - that's the definition of time travel. To start, "the first time" there are no interlopers from the future''. Then they come, and it's not "the first time" anymore - it's whatever they make out of it.
  • It might be a matter of priorities; which do you think is the more pressing concern, the rat running around the forbidden forest in the dead of night with a werewolf and dementors flying around, or the man about to have his soul sucked out in a few minutes? Punishment was being carried out as they spoke, and I suspect it wouldn't be resolved so easily as storming in and saying, "We found Peter Pettigrew, he's innocent!" Especially if Sirius Black was just spirited away on a condemned Hippogriff, (evading the law).
  • But why would Hermione have to prevent Harry from doing something stupid, if the very laws of time travel prevent him from doing something stupid? If he can't mess up the past while time traveled, then she shouldn't have to be worried about him potentially messing up time in the first place.
    • Because the only reason time travel in the Potterverse results in a Stable Time Loop is 'because' of the Ministry's strict laws on time travel. Before the Ministry came up with those laws, they conducted risky experiments that had serious effects on time, such as their last major experiment resulting in the next Tuesday lasting two and a half days, and the following Thursday shooting by in four hours. Harry had been told by Hermione they cannot be seen by their past selves, and he wasn't when he saved his past self because he 'knew' he didn't and 'knew' he initially believed he saw his father before reaching that point in time. It's not the laws of time travel, it's the Ministry's laws 'on' time travel that prevented Harry from monumentally screwing up the timeline.
• (As if this folder wasn't tl;dr already....) I can think of two things that might stop Dumbledore from borrowing Hermione's Time-Turner to go back and catch Wormtail. And I do believe there must be a good reason Dumbledore didn't do it, because he's not an idiot.
  • First, a given Time-Turner may be keyed to an individual witch or wizard for the duration of it being lent out by the Ministry. Hermione was assigned this particular Time-Turner, and she is the only person for whom it will function. By tossing the chain around Harry too, she was able to bring him along, but she wouldn't have been able to give it to him and send him into the past without her. Therefore, Dumbledore couldn't just ask Hermione to hand over her Time-Turner for a quick trip, because it wouldn't work for him. Hermione going along herself for another trip to the exact same area she's already in twice would raise the chances of problems exponentially.
  • Second, this time travel is one-way! Those who say Dumbledore could have taken all the time he needed to plan, create a new area-effect rat-catching spell, etc. are ignoring the fact that if Dumbledore took weeks or months to prepare, he would then have to re-live all of those weeks or months, the long way 'round again, without ever being spotted or found out. If he captured Wormtail, he would have had to hide himself and his captive, keeping them both fed and sheltered and hidden from every kind of message to Dumbledore that might end up going to the wrong Dumbledore, and prevented Wormtail from escaping and causing any more trouble (and Wormtail likely would not be cooperating to avoid causing time-travel paradoxes), until he finally got back to the time he'd set out from. The longer he takes to prepare, the more difficult all that becomes, and the more likely that something will go wrong. For these reasons, it's also possible that there are limits to how far back an individual Time-Turner can take a person. One assigned to a student to allow her to go back and re-do a few hours to take classes (and possibly take a nap) might have a maximum "range" of, say, four hours. By the time Dumbledore got the whole story, all the details he'd need to avoid running into any of the Harrys and Hermiones and werewolf and Animagi and Dementors....he could already be past that window for Wormtail's escape.
    • Both are legitimate concerns, but nothing unsolvable. I've already presented a way to capture Pettegrew. Right after the kids return from their trip, go several hours back, go to Hagrid's hut, where Pettegrew currently resides, and put him under Imperio/Confundus and give him the following command: act natural, but after being exposed do everything in your power to survive and escape without harming anyone, then go to location X. As for Hermie, make her invisible and tuck her in some empty room to wait for you.
• While there are umpteen possibilities for what Dumbledore could have done, the real question is should he? We're all assuming that him going back in time and meddling in Pettigrew's escape would result in good consequences. But what if makes things worse? Dumbledore has been around long enough to know what's safe to meddle with, so it can be taken for granted that if he could have done something then he would have. A cynical view is that he might fear he could cause Harry to end up kissed by the Dementors - and if Voldemort finds another way to return, that's their best weapon against him gone.
  • Seconded. As for letting Pettigrew be gone, it's like why Gollum had to be set loose in Lord of the Rings: mercy has unforeseen positive consequences. Dumbledore even lampshades it when he says that Voldemort wouldn't want a person in life debt to Harry as his servant... Granted, in the end it only resulted in nothing more than Pettigrew dying while unable to kill Harry, but Dumbledore might be forgiven for thinking that something more substantial could be gained from it.
  • It's possible that he already knew Harry and Hermione went back in time. The escape of Buckbeak is suspicious, and maybe Dumbledore glimpsed either of them in the act through the window (he does at one point in the movie call to sign the form in what could have been a stalling tactic). The Dementor incident is also very unusual; Snape was the one who first told Dumbledore that a Patronus repelled them, and maybe he could identify the animal. And maybe Dumbledore then asked the Dementors why they retreated, and they were able to say a wizard who looked like Harry cast the Patronus. So with those hints, Dumbledore concludes that Hermione has already used her Time Turner - and so gives her and Harry the information they need to get Sirius out and what alibi they'll have.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 2: Electric Boogaloo

• This book introduces Time Turners, a device that controls time and is kept within the Department of Mysteries. Even entering the Department of Mysteries without authorization will get you a nice fat prison sentence. So it raises serious questions as to why the Ministry of Magic entrusted a 13-year-old-girl with the most powerful magical artifact ever crafted for a completely mundane reason.
  • Hermione explains that McGonagall wrote various letters attesting to the Ministry that Hermione was a model student and wouldn't use it for anything but getting to her classes. (If you didn't know by this book that Hermione is majorly opposed to breaking rules in all but the most extreme circumstances, you're hopeless.)
  • So what? It doesn't matter that she's rule-abiding and the best student in the class. It's hard to believe that the Ministry would give out such a powerful device in order for a student to take classes for the same reason that it's hard to believe that a real world government would loan an elementary school student a nuclear bomb for a science fair project. Besides, she broke rules plenty of times in the previous two books in order to get to the Stone and into the Slytherin Common Room.
  • The fact that Time Turners exist — not just one, but many — implies that there is a reason to use them. And the Ministry probably has a list of what those reasons are. Besides, this was the Ministry of 1993, back when the official party line was "Give Harry Potter special treatment." It's possible that all the letters she wrote got rejected, until McGonagall wrote directly to the Minister and said, "Harry's biffle wants to take a few extra courses, give us a hand, won't you?"
  • Biffle?
  • Best Friend For Life. BFFL. Biffle. There you go.
  • Also, it's a pretty large leap to assume; Time-Turners are kept in the Department of Mysteries, trying to get into the Department is a big no-no; therefore, having a time-turner is a big no-no. There is a LOT more stuff in there then just the Time-Turners that are reason for keeping people out.
  • Not a large leap at all. The device allows you to alter the world as you see fit and there's not even a 1% chance a ban on them isn't in effect. "All the special letters" and "On behalf of Harry Potter's best friend" explanations might work for her getting a hold of one, but it certainly doesn't make sense that they wouldn't even regulate it.
  • The book seems to somewhat imply a self-enforcing Stable Time Loop rule, given that an entire shelf of them exists in the Unspeakable department and, as was mentioned in the argument above, you don't mess with time if you can actually mess up time. The laws of the universe and magic most likely wouldn't allow it. Now, logic dictates that Hermione's warning to Harry about revealing himself to... himself was mainly dumbing it down for him, as a clever witch like Hermione would have come up with a signal in case she ever did run into herself accidentally, if that was possible. More likely, if you try to tamper with time, by, say, using a Time Turner to go three hours back, spying yourself in Hagrid's hut, and bursting in wand blazing to kill Ron's rat, the fact that that hadn't happened in the timeline would make you blow up and anything you did go virtually unnoticed.
  • There's a plan that some armed forces in England do, which is that the armed force in question will pay a student's university fees in exchange for the student being in the employ of that armed force (that is, if they're still the kind of person that's suitable for the armed forces). Maybe it's like that? Hermione got top grade in everything - if you could provide a student like that the means of being able to take - and hopefully still excel in - every lesson on the Hogwarts curriculum, then wouldn't she at least owe the Ministry for providing her the means of taking all those subjects? If they could get a student who passed every subject that Hogwarts provided, then the Ministry of Magic would probably want to sink their claws into them as soon as they can, so giving Hermione a time turner would be a pretty good way to get her on their side.
  • WMG: Hermione herself appeared to the relevant Ministry bureaucrat, holding the device up. So they had to give it to a "previous" Hermione to ensure the Stable Time Loop.
  • Ack, that made my brain hurt.
  • Other theory: McGonagall wrote letters to the Ministry that the school needs them. God knows why the Ministry would give time-turners to a school, but y'know, highlighting the important points might help. Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, blah blah, we need 'em. She wrote numerous letters, with every one making Fudge giving in a little more. When she finally has one, she gives it to Hermione without the Ministry knowing. A little un-McGonagall, though.
  • I know it's fantasy, but they under explain things. She says, don't change anything. Well, by displacing air and taking up *space*, you're changing things. By stepping on grass, you're changing things. Changing space and time using a body that technically should only exist in another point in space and time . . . and how can you be several seconds/minutes/hours *older* than the time that you're physically existing in? Shouldn't the universe implode or something?!
  • But if she went back in time, then she has always existed at two points in space in the same time period (as due to her going back in time there is no "timeline" where she wasn't there) and therefore any air displaced etc was always displaced.
  • It's a Stable Time Loop. Their future selves were already there the first time around, before they had travelled back in time. There have always been two versions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione running around between 8:55 p.m. and 11:55 p.m. on June 6, 1994; there has never been a timeline in which they did not go back in time then.
  • Look up Schrodinger's Cat. To dumb it down, all realities can exist simultaneously in a given space as long as you're not looking at it, but when you do, it collapses immediately into the one you can see. We haven't quite worked out HOW that works in real life, but if you apply it to the books, then as long as you're not seen by anyone while Time-Turner-ing, then there aren't two conflicting 'realities', and it's all fine and dandy. Not that I could see why someone who's admitted to be bad at maths has a grasp on quantum physics, but there you go.
  • Doesn't the book imply that Time-Tuners are occasionally used by students with large class loads, and that McGonagall had to write the letters to get special permission because Hermione was only a 3rd year? I got the impression that some of the older students were given the occasional Time-Turner to allow them to get to class.
  • It's revealed in Cursed Child that most Time-Turners can't take anyone more than a few hours into the past, which significantly mitigates the damage one could cause.
  • Perhaps the Ministry liked the idea? It's shown that Time Turners are studied in the Department of Mysteries, so maybe they liked the idea of giving a student one for the sake of research. With Hermione being a model student and Child Prodigy it makes her almost the perfect candidate. I can imagine some Unspeakables getting excited at the idea of a study being done to see if Time Turners can be used for help with school work.
  • Maybe because Hermione seemed to be one of the few students able to defeat Voldemort (which turned out to be true) but needed to learn many things quickly (by using the Time-Turner) in order to succeed.

Time-Turners v. Marauder's Map

• Why did Lupin only see one Harry and Hermione when he was looking at the Maurader's Map in his office?
  • The Time-Travelling Harry and Hermione spent most of their time hiding in the Forbidden Forest, didn't they? Perhaps they were outside of the map's boundaries. Or maybe they were far enough away from the part of the map Lupin was looking at, and he didn't notice them.
  • Same reason Harry never noticed that there were three Hermiones running around at 9 am each day: if you're looking at the Map to determine where a specific person is, and you spot their name somewhere on it, you stop searching rather than check if their name appears anywhere else.

The Trouble With Time Turners 4: Insert Title Here

• So, we know from the rock-throwing instances that what people do when time travelling has already happened. So, if it's already happened, then how can you change anything?
  • Per Word of God, Time-Turners suffer a bit from Timey Wimey Time Ball. Essentially, if you perform your changes in a way that's consistent with what happened the first time around, you'll have Tricked Out Time and the timeline will resolve itself, even somewhat altering your recollection of the first timeline — giving the illusion of a Stable Time Loop. And if you throw all caution out the window and change the past in a decisive manner, then you may create an alternate timeline (which will most likely be a Bad Future), or, if Time's feeling spiteful, you'll be eaten by the Clock Roaches (meaning you'll be erased from Time).
  • After you are finished changing things, you will find that it has already happened. Time travel is complicated.
  • Your past self will never know what your future self has done until you physically go back in time and realize. Hermione remembers that someone threw a stone into Hagrid's house and they realized the execution committee were coming. But she never finds out who did it until she's gone back in time. She notices that Fudge is coming but they aren't leaving the house. She remembers how they found out and throws the stone. That is the way it happens and that is how it will always happen. Hermione will always not realize until the moment where she throws the stones.

The Trouble With Time Turners 5: the missed class

• This is something that always confused me. Why did Hermione miss the one charms class? She couldn't have forgotten, because as soon as she remembered that she missed it, she only has to turn the TT a bit and take the class. And even if she missed the class because she already missed it, it still brings up the question of why did she originally miss the class, and what's stopping her from going back and not missing it?
  • If she went back to take the class, Harry and Ron wouldn't have told her that she missed it and then she wouldn't have gone back to take it. And then they would have told her that she missed it and then she would have gone back, etc. Grandfather Paradox!
  • But why did she miss it in the first place? The problem with the above post is that if Harry and Ron hadn't told her, she still would've realized that she missed the class at some point, and immediately would have gone back in time to take the class. Unless there's some weird time-turner rule that makes it so she couldn't go back to the class, she shouldn't have missed it.
  • She couldn't go because she already knew that she didn't go.
  • Uh, what? Harry and Ron did tell her and saying that she could have found out without them telling her doesn't change the reality that they did. That's like saying, "Why did Harry live with the Dursleys? If his parents hadn't died, he wouldn't have lived with them." Harry's parents did die and saying that they might not have died doesn't change the reality.
  • quote from the post above mine "[if] Harry and Ron [hadn't] told her that she missed [the class] then she wouldn't have gone back to take it"
    I said what I said to show that there is no Grandfather Paradox. The whole thing about Hermione missing the class probably should have just been removed as it didn't have much impact on the plot and there's absolutely no reason for it to happen in the first place. On it's own it doesn't make sense because it feels like there should be stopping her from not missing the class that doesn't involve circular reasoning.
  • She missed the class because she'd missed the class. It was too late, people had noticed and all use of Time Turner results in stable time loop so it means she couldn't just go back because she hadn't. Don't ask me why, that's just how time travel works in the Harry Potter universe.
  • Ah, that's the problem with the Time Travel. Once you introduce it into the plot, words "too late" and "people had already noticed" become meaningless. Because the Time Travel adds something I call proactive cause-and-effect relation. That is, if somebody in the future decides to go back in time, it means that they are already existing in universe altered by their time travel.
  • I always thought that the way time travel worked was that you could not change things you know have happened or have experienced the affects of. If one can't then having stable time loops could work, otherwise they would collapse. In real life this would mean that you could not stop the twin towers from collapsing in 9/11 because you know that they do. In this case to keep a stable time loop she cannot be seen to be in that class after she knows she was not.
    Meaning, that if, for whatever reason Hermie ever decides to go back and take that lesson, it means that she had. The event of her not attending that lesson should've never existed, because she has no reason not to do it.
    Of course, that requires her having a mean to inform herself that she has to go back in time, since, indeed, Harry and Ron wouldn't be able to do it in the altered timeline, but I don't see a problem with that. We've seen at least two such instruments (Sirius' mirror and Hermie's coins).
  • Realize that time travel effectively means you switch cause and effect, and the stable time loop means you see the results of your time travel BEFORE you travel back. If Hermione notices that she missed something and apparently didn't travel back in time, she must conclude that she didn't go back that single time. She doesn't necessarily know WHY, but she can see it already happened. Complicated, no? This is why they don't just hand out time turners to everyone.
  • I understand and agree that, if she knows that she missed the class, then she cannot go to the past and attend it. My point is, this whole sequence of events (Hermie misses class, people see this, Harry and Ron tell her, she doesn't go back) has no reason to exist. Ever. Because in the present there is no obstacle that prevents her from going to the past.
    What mistake people make is they treat the described past events as something immovable, once and for all settled. Well, they are not. Proactive cause-and-effect relation means that your decisions determine not only your future, but your past as well. You gain the powers of God, by moving outside of the timestream and writing the script for yourself as you see fit. The only limitation is that in this script, in this "new" and, simultaneously, only timestream there has to be a feasible way for yourself to receive the incentive to go back and close the loop. To miss the class Hermie must choose to miss it for reasons unrelated to time travel (like, she's too tired or doesn't care), and I see no such reasons.
  • But that's it exactly, she was too tired and forgot. She's taking three more classes than Harry or Ron, for a grand total of twelve classes, and it's highly likely that she's only using the Time Turner to go to the classes that she couldn't physically possibly attend because they're all at the same time, and not to help her stay on top of her homework and studying without cutting into her sleep time, or to get in some extra sleep because all the extra re-lived hours she's spending are throwing off her sleep cycle. There was a whole subplot of the book showing Hermione to be increasingly overwhelmed with her course load, which is part of the reason why she dropped Divination mid-term, and the whole reason why she didn't continue with Muggle Studies after fourth year.
  • If you see no reason why she had to miss this class then you have problems. You see, the only reason they can "change" the past is that it's a "Schroedinger's cat" situation, i.e. the exact details weren't known and thus it could have been one of many things and the "change" she made was forcing the past to be a specific one of those "many things", by simply being there. Essentially, a "you change the past by observing it" situation. So when people had observed that she wasn't in that class, all versions of the past in which she instead was there became an impossibility for her. That is exactly why it is made into a point that you should not let your "past" selves see you, because if you do you might suddenly get into a situation in which all the futures that are still possible for you stop being possible and as a result you are written out of existence.
  • A good point, but it has two flaws - it's both anthropocentric and present-centric, if you like. You say "the situation wasn't witnessed, so it can be changed". But it was witnessed. Not by people, maybe, but by other creatures and things. Animals, insects, bacteria, plants. Something inevitably registered your presence/absence in some way. Hell, the matter itself - if you don't step on the ground, it technically "witnesses" your absence in that spot. Air is not displaced and consumed by your body, heat is not given out and so on. If the past witnessing the absence of the time traveler could prevent the time travel, than the time travel wouldn't have been possible.
  • No, that example is like saying the state of Shroedinger's cat is witnessed by the box - that's overthinking the concept, and ultimately makes no sense. Arguably, only things with a human level of sentience count.
  • No, that's bringing the concept to its logical conclusion, instead of arbitrarily excluding a reasonable concern that invalidates it. There's nothing inherently special about humans that should make them "count" exclusively - seeing a person means absorbing the modified light waves reflected from them, and it doesn't matter in the slightest if they're absorbed by the tissues of your eyes or the tissues of the wall. And anyway, this is only the first flaw. As I said, your argument is also present-centric, i.e. you claim that by observing a situation people make it impossible for the time-traveler to change. Except that the reason they observed it a certain way in the first place is the consequence of the time-traveler's decision to (not) affect it. A time-traveler doesn't change the past - they shape the past once and for all.
  • While she missed it because of two things 1) her coursework is catching up with her because she was (talking at this point 11 classes she left Divinations before Easter) and 2) during the break or when they were returning to the castle Draco said something nasty about Hagrid and Hermione not being herself-punched him in the face.
• To put all this more simply: Time-Turners can only go back an maximum of five hours at a time. In a world where Harry and Ron don't tell Hermione she missed the class, Hermione doesn't realize on her own she missed it until after the deadline to go back has already passed. Therefore in a world where they do tell her about it, there's no paradox because either way she couldn't have gone back. But aside from that, yes, time travel in Harry Potter is anthropocentric.

The Trouble With Time Turners 6: The One with the Funny Title

• Why was Hermione constantly bedraggled and exhausted from her extra courseload? She could take 3 hour midday naps with no issue at all.
• You can only use a Time-Turner so many times a day until you risk causing damage to the timeline; depending on her schedule, perhaps the classes and associated homework (which we know to be heavy for Arithmancy, at least) already ate up her allowed 5 hours, at least some days.
  • Hermione tends to take the rules seriously, at least when it isn't a life-or-death situation. Perhaps McGonagall told her she was only to use the Time-Turner to get to her classes and Hermione took that seriously.
  • But getting enough sleep is essential for productive learning! Certainly McGonagall would foresaw that and made the respective concession.
  • No she couldn't. If anyone caught her when she was supposed to be in class, and actually was in class elsewhere, she's just blown her secret. She was raising enough suspicion just using it for getting to classes.
  • The teachers, including McG, were in on it. The solution is as simple as throwing a cot down in her office for Hermione to use while McGonagall is teaching. Considering they went to the extreme of allowing her time travel, something as simple as a secluded spot for naps seems like a completely harmless request.
    Doubly so since it was her fatigue that was causing her to slip up in front of Harry and Ron oftentimes.
  • Every additional time travel nap would make her age a few hours. Over the course of five school years that would have cost her at least a month of her lifetime. Maybe that's why she was only allowed to only use the time-turner for classes and nothing else, to not make her age more than necessary.
  • A month? Seriously? As opposed to all the damage the lack of sleep would've done (and did) her, a month doesn't seem such a step price.
  • Just because Hermione wasn't getting sleep it doesn't mean she wasn't trying. Have you ever suffered from insomnia? You want to sleep and you're tired but your body won't physically let you. It's caused by stress. Hermione is an excessive perfectionist. She has the stress of all her coursework to keep up with, meaning she has to do additional sets of homework every night. She only does hours over again to attend classes happening at the same time. She still has only one evening to get her homework done and it's not like she can rewind time and have two of herself sitting in the Common Room sharing the work. She's still doing all the work herself. Likely pulling all-nighters and fretting about not getting the rest of her work done on time when she's supposed to be sleeping.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 7: Hunt for the Blood Orchid

• May I just ask... How old is Hermione? Think about it, she repeated about 4 hours of her life, every day, for a whole year...
  • 4 hours a day for a year is only about 60 days, so the same age as she seems to be to everyone else.
  • Even in the absolute worst case where she uses her time turner to go back 6 hours during every single day (including summer vacation) of a leap year, that still leaves us with 366 (days) * 6 (hours/day) = 2196 (hours) = 91.5 (days), or about 3 months. So, yeah, it doesn't make a noticeable difference.
  • On that note, Hermione has the power to make time out of thin air. She should have been able to get more sleep to counteract her additional classes and so not be as haggard by the end of the year.
• Fans might be overthinking this a bit.
  • That's what TV Tropes is for.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 8: The Quest for Peace

• The Time Turner was given to Hermione just so she could take extra classes. Wouldn't it make more sense to give it to Harry in case of an emergency? Furthermore, there must be more simple ways to take extra classes. The teachers could've come up with something less extreme.
  • Give a time machine directly to an Idiot Hero? Believe me, sooner or later, you will end up with a universe-destroying time paradox. The way they did it was pretty smart - the TT was within reach, yet in possession of someone with a working brain.
  • As someone who experienced being a bright thirteen-year-old girl: "Working brain" is accurate only in comparison.
  • It's possible that giving it to Hermione was the opportunity for an experiment - to see could the Time Turners be used to take more classes at school. In this case the Time Turner had strict conditions for its use, and could be regulated accordingly.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 9: Past Mistakes

• "Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time...loads of them have ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!" Killing your future self, fine, I can see how that works. But how do you go back in time and kill your past self?
  • Maybe "killing" isn't the word so much as changing the course of events to kill your past self. For instance, going back in time to stop a death eater attack, but an escaping death eater recognizes you and kills your past self. If meant perhaps seeing your past self causes regret enough to kill themselves as a byproduct of the time turner.
  • Time can't be changed though, that's my point. If you go back in time and cause something to happen then that thing had always happened. A loop where your future self gets killed is fine, a loop where the past self is killed would be completely unstable. The progression of time from any individual reference frame is linear, but different reference frames follow different lines. From the reference frame of the Earth, all these events only happened once, but since the temporal line you're following is curved you see these events that only happen once at different times on your line. They still only happen once, so what had already happened can't be changed.
    • Again, Timey Wimey Time Ball. Successfully trick out Time, and the result is what looks like a Stable Time Loop. Actually trying to change the past compared to how you remember it is possible, but it just results in wacky paradoxes that might kill you, erase you and other people you knew from time, rewrite the present into a hellish Bad Future, or even cause a temporary Time Crash.
  • First off time travel is complicated. Under Harry Potter's rules for time travel we don't know what would happen if someone went back in time and killed themselves in the past. By use of the time turner it's possible, but the ramifications aren't clear.
  • If you change the past then it wasn't the past. It was an alternate universe that proceeded identically until that point. Changing the past is a logical impossibility. If you had a time machine and went back into the past, then tried to change something that you knew had already happened you would fail. Most philosophers who study this would say that you would likely fail due to circumstance. Something random would prevent you from changing the past for the simple reason that you have already failed to change the past.
  • It will seem that way to you but if someone else changes the past then you're either still in the same universe and see the ramifications or it never happened in the first place. So if you want to go that way everyone that killed themselves in the past went to an alternate history/universe while the effects still happened for everyone else. To reiterate my point time travel is complicated and has different rules depending on the fiction. In this case changes can happen even if the one that caused them won't necessarily feel them.
  • Yes, time travel is complicated. However, both of Einstein's relativity theories imply that past and future are not absolute, but instead are dependent on the frame of reference from which they are observed. There will be a frame of reference in which the event which the time-traveller is attempting to prevent occurs simultaneously with the event where the time-traveller is going back in time. As such, you are observing both the event and some-one attempting to prevent the event occurring at the same time. Thus, it is impossible for one of them not to happen, as you can see both of them happening.
  • And, yes. I am aware that I'm trying to apply relativistic physics to a children's book about magic.
  • Magic, which makes every other law of physics or metaphysics quietly back off and go whimper in a corner. Why would causality be any more exempt from this than, say, conservation of mass? Alternate universes and so forth only need to be surmised if you restrict yourself to what would be logical about time travel.
  • Answering the original question: if you kill your past self, then you take its place and again live the period of your life until the moment of time-travel. Then you go back in time and kill your past self, thus completing the cycle and locking yourself in a "Groundhog Day" Loop forever.
  • Simple, if one is startled enough and gets into a fight, it could be easy enough for future self to kill past self in the heat of the moment, and depending on how difficult changing that makes it to navigate it might be near impossible to hit the reset button.
  • I don't see the problem. Either Minerva was lying to Hermione to ensure her responsible behavior, or the Ministry (namely Unspeakables) was lying to the population so everyone wouldn't try to meddle with time. In fact, the Time Turners could be completely safe (at least for the Universe and the timeline in general). Maybe if some time traveler ever came close to endangering the timeline he just got wiped out and disappeared. That's why everyone should be careful with Time Turners.
  • Hermione could just be exaggerating their danger to Harry, who is a teenage boy with a tragic past and a heroic streak - exactly the sort of person who would do something stupid and noble and get himself killed.
  • With the Cursed Child out it's confirmed that no Time Turner until then went to the distant past - it was limited to several hours, so Grandfather Paradox is almost out of the question. But yes, if you do something to kill your past self, you're probably just wiped from existence, as shown there. The real headscratcher here is how the hell could anybody tell, but Cursed Child yet again offers a plausible version with several Time Travelers, only one of whom died in the process, leaving others to witness what happened. Or, as a matter of Fridge Brilliance, maybe there's something like Priori Incantatem for Time Turners, to regularly check any Time Turner for any time paradoxes caused by the Time Turner. If so, maybe the Ministry entrusted McGonagall or Dumbledore with this task; it would somewhat subtract from the drama since, essentially, someone else could have righted everything even if our heroes had failed to do that on their first Time Turner try, but it would actually have been more responsible and logical thing to do.

The Trouble With Time Turners 10: The Government Official.

• Dumbledore nicely explains away Harry and Hermione's activities at the end of the book by pointing out that he left them in the Hospital Wing, they can't be in two places at once. But hold on: he says this to Fudge, who (being the Minister of Magic) should know that Hermione has been using a Time Turner for the past year. Even though that doesn't prove she and Harry were involved in Buckbeak and Sirius' escapes, he already knows that a) they're friends with Hagrid, and wanted to keep Buckbeak from being executed, and b) they are convinced that Sirius is innocent. So is Fudge's incompetence an inability to put two and two together (especially because Snape was already blaming Harry), or simply him not remembering that Hermione has the Time Turner (which he presumably knew about, unless no-one thought to tell the Minister that they were loaning out a powerful, dangerous magical device to a teenage girl)?
  • Time Turners probably aren't his department. Managing them would go to the Department of Mysteries. Additionally, maybe he's seen the tests Hermione had to take to prove she was responsible enough to use a Time Turner and assumes she's too studious to use it for a criminal that may have attacked her.
  • Right, it's not like he would want to find the culprit rather than going to the media and admitting his screw up (you know, every politician's favorite pastime). And whether or not the TT's were his department, if he was even aware of their existence, the words "at two places at the same time" should've immediately rung a bell. And then it's as easy as confirming that Hermie has got and recently used one and sending an invisible observer to the past and witnessing the event in question, which he should've done anyway.
  • Does Fudge even know who Hermione is? He just refers to her as "the girl" when talking to Snape. He's the Minister For Magic and hearing Dumbledore call her by her name once is hardly going to ring bells. If he knows about the Time Turner at all, he probably just scanned the papers and authorized it. He's hardly going to commit her name to memory now.
  • He doesn't need to know her by name. Knowing that some Hogwarts student was used a TT should be enough. Or just knowing that TTs exist (and why wouldn't he), since he can always check if any were given to the school and to whom.
  • He was the Minister of Magic, which means he's probably got more important things on his mind. He probably doesn't even know that a Time Turner was loaned out. Plenty of other things slip by him (and his successor). Especially with Sirius Black on the loose.
  • *Sigh* "Or just knowing that TTs exist, since he can always check if any were given to the school and to whom."
    • *Double sigh* You have the benefit of hindsight and knowing that a Time-Turner was involved. The truth is that there are any number of magical ways to induce the appearance of one person being in multiple places at the same time, all of which are equally unlikely to have been done by third-years. Yes, Fudge could have investigated to see if Time-Turners were in use at Hogwarts. But this would have required him to start by promoting the unlikely possibility of Time-Turner involvement to a likelihood, when from his perspective it isn't any more likely than any of the other unlikely possibilities of other magical intervention, and *all* of those explanations are more complicated than "Harry and Hermione couldn't have done it." Fudge wasn't taking the idea of Harry and Hermione having been involved seriously, so he didn't stop to run through the odds of each individual outlandish way they could've done it in his mind.
  • Even if Fudge was in on Hermione being given a Time-Turner, we are talking about something that happen nearly a year before. What makes you think he'd remember her name or face during all that time, especially when he's already preoccupied with a botched hippogriff execution and a madman who just escaped custody?

The Trouble With Time Turners 11: Ancillary Applications

• Fact: Time Turners exist in the world of Harry Potter. Fact: One cannot actually change the past, but one can go back and form a stable time loop and/or casually observe. Fact: This technology is used to allow a 13-year-old girl to take extra classes, suggesting that they are well-enough understood by the Ministry to entrust to such a young child. Why, then, does this appear to be the only use to which Time Turners are put? Could not one, perhaps, send an Auror back under an invisibility cloak to watch a crime take place if it were a few hours ago. Even in a case where there is no trial, should not such a simple boon to criminal justice be standard procedure? 'Twould have been of use to a certain Prisoner of Azkaban.
  • In Sirius's case, the problem is that magical law enforcement just didn't give enough of a damn. They figured they'd caught him red-handed and they had enough else on their plates they simply couldn't be arsed. They didn't give him a trial at all. Plus, I doubt they'd have observed anything meaningful without knowing exactly what to look for. But going forward, it would be a pretty smart idea. Maybe Hermione might institute it, since she ends up working for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and has experience with Time-Turners.
  • Nope, she might not, because they all got destroyed in the 5th book, when Rowling finally realised how stupid the existence of such a Game-Breaker makes her entire story, since, unlike Sirius, the bajillion other cases when it would've resolved the plot in -2 hours, did not have the same excuse.
  • Which cases were these?

The Trouble With Time-Turners 12: "Where'd she come from?"

• A running gag in the film is that Hermione shows up partway into each class with no one having seen her enter. It's implied that this is a result of her using the Time-Turner to attend most of her classes. But how would that work? Even if her actions result in there being one timeline where she didn't attend a given class and one where she did, none of her classmates would somehow experience part of the first timeline followed by part of the second one. Instead, the weirdness ought to be "Where did she *go*?" or more specifically, "Why does she keep leaving us to go into cupboards or the bathroom, and coming out of different cupboards?"
  • Most likely, this is the result of the writer(s) only thinking of the time travel at a vague level and not working it out clearly. But one possible explanation actually fits nicely with another difference in the films. When Harry and Hermione use the Time-Turner, Hermione doesn't bother to hide from witnesses and they see everything in the hospital room rewind around them. When they appear, no one seems to notice. Perhaps the film's Time-Turner comes with a built-in Weirdness Censor that prevents people from "seeing" you pop in from the future, even though they can tell you're there after the fact. And for various reasons (learning to use the device right, dealing with the burden of her coursework, talking to professors after class, deciding not to go back *too* early given that she can only travel in hour increments) Hermione keeps arriving later than class had begun.
  • The film has to foreshadow Hermione's strange behaviour, or else the Time Turner will come as an Ass Pull. But I'm guessing is that when she goes back in time, she first makes sure she's already in the classroom where her next lesson takes place and then goes back. Presumably so she doesn't draw attention to herself by turning up late.
  • The film also changes a detail about the time travel from the books. In the books, you are transported to the location your past self was in at the time you go back to; in the film, you stay in the same place. Hermione therefore in the film has to first go to the classroom and then use the Time Turner. As she can only do hours and no specific minutes, it means she might occasionally be a few minutes late surfacing in the class.

The trouble with Timeturners 13: Sleep

• As the book goes on Hermione is more and more sleepdeprived and over the edge because she has been cramming more hours into a day than are healthy or meant for a human being. She is also described as being last to leave and first to enter the common room. Couldn't she theoretically go somewhere, turn back to dawn and catch an extra few hours of Z's? Or maybe even do so over the weekends? I understand she wouldn't after the Charms fiasco but...
  • There's a couple of factors at play here. First is that you can only go back a maximum of five hours at a time with the Time-Turner, which means that "returning to dawn" isn't always an option. That brings us to problem 2: given that a big part of being allowed to use the Time-Turner is ensuring that nobody catches on to the fact that you're in two places at once, being asleep while Time-Turned is the absolute worst thing you could do. At least if you get caught while awake, as Hermione nearly did a couple of times, you can try to think of some excuse, but that doesn't hold from a sleeping time-traveler. There's nowhere 100% private Hermione could go to sleep: imagine if, say, Parvati was in class with her, and had to run back to their dormitory to grab a textbook she forgot, and found other-Hermione asleep in bed. And the thing is, even if that isn't likely to happen, Hermione doesn't know that. She obviously isn't conscious of that happens around her while she's out, which means every time she wakes up, she's going to be freaking out about the possibility that maybe someone caught her and she just didn't notice. Then, problem 3: you have to remember that the Ministry sets policy about what isn't and isn't acceptable to do with the Time-Turners and it's possible that students are explicitly instructed not to use it just to get extra naptime and are warned about the danger early on. Yes, wizards are obviously pretty blasé about time travel if they're willing to use it as a solution to let students take extra electives, but too much time travel is still an undesirable element for the fabric of time in general.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 14: "Why?"

• Setting aside the way the Ministry hands a time-bending artifact to a teenager, there’s a baser problem - why would Hogwarts have the schedule laid out so that one would be necessary in the first place? One of the first hints Hermione has some way to time travel is her schedule overlapping, but as Ron reads off, three of the elective courses she’s taking are scheduled for the same time, and one of the elective exams was scheduled for the same time as a core class exam. Was Hermione the only person in those courses, or was Hogwarts handing those things out like after-dinner mints?
  • This might be an (indirect) result of another "oh dear, maths" moment from Rowling. Remember, she always envisioned Hogwarts as having way more students than it actually did. Perhaps she always envisioned that there would be more than one possible third-year Transfiguration class Hermione could have been enrolled in, ergo, without a Time-Turner, she would have either had her Transfiguration class at a different time and taken the elective, or she would have been ineligible for the elective that year. But since a) there are only like 10 Gryffindor students in their year and b) the trio always needed to have their classes together for plot reasons, there's only one timeslot where a Gryffindor could take Transfiguration, so it no longer makes sense for electives to happen at that same time.
  • Scheduling problems like this do occur in colleges in real life. So this is not at all unreasonable.

The Trouble with Time Turners 15

• In the movie, when we hear Hermione say "foul, loathesome" for the first time, in the background we see the gate where her future version should be, but isn't. Is this a goof, or does it have some meaningful implications for the Temporal Mutability? It does seem to contradict the subsequent events, where stones fly.
  • Chalk it up to the mundane reason - they didn't want to give away the twist by having Harry and Hermione obviously in the background. Plus it was the mid 2000s and they weren't thinking of CinemaSins nitpicking every possible aspect of the production like today.

Keeping the Time Turner

• Why didn't Hermione keep her Time Turner after the events in this book? Yes, she promised to take care of it and was responsible for it and all, but given how insanely useful Time Travel is to resolve ANY problem, wouldn't it be a good thing to have in case, you know, the Dark Wizard in service to Lord Voldemort succeeds in resurrecting him and he begins a campaign of terror over Britain and kills the Minister of Magic and institutes a rule of evil pureblood supremacists? I know the possibility of that happening are virtually nil but it seems to me like it might have been a useful ace in the hole to keep. And they even have a convenient magical felon to blame on the "missing" or "destroyed" Turner. And if the Ministry DOES happen to have a spell or charm that can let them track each Turner...I will remind you that Hermoine Granger has a time machine.
  • She probably realized that it was more trouble than it was worth.
  • At this point none of the kids think there's a war on the horizon. They don't learn that until the next book. Hermione probably didn't think she'd be in a situation where it would come in useful. And she did register to have one solely for taking extra classes - so if she's not doing that any more, she'd probably have to hand it back.
  • Indeed, why would Hermie think she's likely to be in a situation where a time rewriting device would come in useful? She only had been attacked by a ravaging troll. And then an evil wizard tried to steal a powerful artifact. And then another evil wizard sicked a monster on people, including her, resulting in her spending half a year in a coma. And another evil wizard, and also one of the most powerful people in the country, got royally pissed at her friend. And then an innocent man nearly got executed, except she saved him using a Time Turner, which happened just a day before she realized "that it was more trouble than it was worth". Oh, and another evil wizard escaped justice and was then at large. And holy crap, I didn't even think that she could've said Sirius destroyed it! That's brilliant and instantly eliminates all the problems with the Ministry! Now this is even more glaring than before.
  • Well Hermione is a stickler for the rules. And she was only given the Time Turner so she could do the extra classes. She dropped Divination and Muggle Studies because the workload was getting too much for her. So she'd have to tell the teachers she's dropping the classes, which means McGonagall will know she won't need the Time Turner - and will ask for it back. Hermione probably doesn't have a choice about keeping the Time Turner.
  • No, she's not. Should've brought that up much sooner - that excuse holds no water at all and needs to die as much as those stupid pumpkins[^note the ones Macnair smashed with an axe, which somehow proves time travelers cannot change the past, despite that happening because of them changing the past do. She's as much a rule breaker as the others, she's just the only one who feels bad and complains about it. She lies, she disrupts lessons, she steals, she lets her friends cheat on her, she cooks illegal potions, she partakes in after-curfew activities. You cannot tell me that after all that she would've suddenly hit a mind block regarding a device that had just let her save an innocent man from execution. Is everyone just ignoring that last part? Same goes for McGonagall. The potential usefulness of the Time Turner completely offsets any trickery she'd have to undertake to keep the thing in Hermie's hands, up to doing her homework for her. It's simply a matter of priorities.
  • You're missing the point. Hermione didn't want the Time-Turner anymore because time travel was ruining her life. She doesn't want to use time travel anymore because she spent a whole year doing it and it made her miserable. She doesn't want to have to even think about the potential uses of time travel, even if it's not a daily basis for class anymore, because the whole thing has been an enormous headache for her. Saving Sirius was great but going forward she would like to live life like a normal person. Is this a character flaw? Maybe, maybe not. Is it a plothole or a headscratcher? Not really, because this is the explanation Hermione gave us herself.
    • But she didn't have to keep using it for attending extra classes. In fact, she wouldn't be able to. Because the legend would've been that Sirius Black destroyed it. So, obviously they would've kept it safely in DD's office in case of emergency, and she would live life like a normal person but with the knowledge of the massive ace in the sleeve they have.

Time-travel and multiple Harrys

• During their little time-traveling escapade, Harry wants to strike preemptively and confront his past self and his friends, in order to keep Pettigrew-as-Scabbers from escaping before he even has a chance to. Hermione stops him by asking what he would think if an identical copy of himself burst into Hagrid's cabin, and Harry says that he'd think he'd gone mad. But why would that be his first reaction? He just drank a potion his previous year that let him flawlessly assume the form of someone else, and the Hermione in Hargid's cabin still has the Time-Tuner, too, so it would occur to her that time travel was a possibility...so why would Harry's first reaction to seeing himself saying things about the future be "I've gone mad, and I'd better kill this identical copy of myself who says he's from the future."?
  • And who is most likely to use Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as Harry and Hermione? Enemies of course. Harry's first assumption is likely to be that this is an enemy - and he's impulsive enough that he could attack them. If he does then it alters the flow of time so that they never discover Sirius was innocent (as this is before they've gone to the Shrieking Shack).

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