Abendroth Blutjager's Guide to Harry Potter

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The Future Lies in the Past, part five: MoM, Can I Borrow the Time-Turner?

I want to start this post out with an excerpt from MuggleNet/Leaky Cauldron's interview with JKR:
MA: Here at the end you sort of get the feeling that we know what Harry's setting out to do, but can this really be the entire throughline of the rest of the story?
JKR: It's not all of it. Obviously it's not all of it, but still, that is the way to kill Voldemort. That's not to say it won't be extremely an torturous and winding journey, but that's what he's got to do. Harry now knows - well he believe he knows - what he's facing. Dumbledore's guesses are never very far wide of the mark. I don't want to give too much away here, but Dumbledore says, "There are four out there, you've got to get rid of four, and then you go for Voldemort." So that's where he is, and that's what he's got to do.

ES: It's a tall order.
JKR: It's a huge order. But Dumbledore has given him some pretty valuable clues and Harry, also, in the course of previous six books has amassed more knowledge than he realizes. That's all I am going to say.
ES: It seems like it would be impossible. If Harry had gone to the cave, he never could have done it on his own, it seems like.
JKR: Well, I'm prepared to bet you now, that at least before the week is out, at least one of the Horcruxes will have been correctly identified by careful re-readers of the books.

Ooh.... Well, there's the locket he saw at #12 Grimmauld Place, the wand on the purple pillow at Ollivanders, the Hufflepuff cup...somewhere. Other sleuths have asked about that tiara Harry saw in the RoR in HBP.... Others think Harry (or his scar) is a horcrux, but I wish to avoid that argument...for now. Still others consider the possibility that the (now cursed) opal necklace once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw...another topic lacking proper canon (though opals would be perfect for any Ravenclaw, what with opals having to do with sight and the unused powers of the mind...but that's perhaps for a later discussion)....

JKR is suggesting the locket found at #12 Grimmauld Place, since she mentions horcruxes right after the question about Harry in the cave, but is that horcrux aready destroyed by the time we see it in OotP? I think so. However, Harry still has to find it and make sure it's no longer a viable horcrux.

JKR says the journey is going to be "torturous and winding". This suggests Harry has a lot to do in a "short" amount of time, and how do we give him more time? By letting him go back in time.

How will he go back in time? I see four options, so far:
1] He gets hold of a time-turner that wasn't destroyed,
2] Ron's new watch might have time-travelling abilities,
3] Harry might inherit Dumbledore's watch, which might be capable of time-travel, or
4] The Room of Requirement (or "Come and Go Room") might be able to send Harry back in time.

I'll have to add to this later, but I might put it in a new post...we'll see.

So. It's a tall...no, huge order. And Dumbledore has given Harry "some pretty valuable clues".

Anyone else think that Harry will use the Room of Requirement, or "come and go room", in order to travel back in time directly, or that he could use the RoR to supply him with anything he'd need for the trip? In OofP, Harry's DA practice room seems to have taken or copied Moody's Foe Glass. Why couldn't the room supply Harry with a working time-turner or some other time travel device?

There's also the chance Harry could "smuggle" a time-turner out of the MoM. Not only does he have supporters working there, but he was able to access the DoM back in his 5th year at Hogwarts. It would be silly to assume that all of the time-turners broke that night.

Third way to get a time-turner: borrow one from a supporter who has had one in possession since before the raid at the DoM....

The Future Lies in the Past, part four: Not Changing the Outcome, Only Causing It

This will address question #7 in great detail.

Here's an excerpt from the MuggleNet/Leaky Cauldron interview with JKR:
MA: Was there anyone else present in Godric's Hollow the night Harry's parents were killed?
JKR: No comment.
[All laugh.]
JKR: I'm sorry!

Okay, so I think the real answer is "yes"....

Now, I've recently extended my theory to include the events in the cave when the real locket horcrux was stolen. However, I gave question #7 answers to that bit in a previous post. So, here I'm focusing on the things that Harry might have done during and after Voldemort's attack on the Potters....

This will require re-reading all six books, so bear with me. I'll make changes to this post as I find good evidence to support my theory, so look here for updates.

Just for reference, here's my original question #7:

7] How will his actions affect the outcome while he's "living in the past"? What bits of canon can give us clues that he is there, not changing things (since PoA showed us that can't happen) but making things happen as they do?

PS/SS gives these clues:
I'm still re-reading this book right now, looking for canon to support my theory...so check back later! :)

The Future Lies in the Past, part three: Making a Living in the Past

This concerns question #'s 2, 3, 4, and 5.

2] Can he confide in anyone from the past that he's from the future? Only if the person he confides in either gets charmed (Fidelius Charm, Memory Charm, etc.) or is about to die. This is why I think Harry could show himself to Regulus Black; we all know Regulus dies soon after finding the real locket horcrux, Harry cannot save him - it's already happened, so he can reveal himself to Regulus.

3] Will he take on a fake identity and interact with people, or will he have to stay physically hidden and isolate himself completely? I think he will show himself to at least one person, and he'll be himself. Otherwise he will probably keep himself hidden. I really don't think he'd pull a Barty Crouch Jr. on us and take Polyjuice Potion, at least not for an extended amount of time.

4] Where will he live and how will he provide for himself? As hard as it might be, he might first have to stay in the cave that Sirius was during GoF, or he might stay in the Shrieking Shack. Of course he wouldn't stay in that cave or in the shack while anyone else was there, so he'd have to move out before the events of PoA. Within days after Harry's parents are killed, Sirius gets arrested for Wormtail's supposed murder. At that point he might be able to use the place Sirius bought with his inheritance from Uncle Alphard...as long as he can gain access to it. Update 6/14/06: What if the reason the locked chamber in the Department of Mysteries is locked is because Harry is living and studying in there? We think that room is where love is being studied. Didn't Dumbledore (or maybe it was JKR?) say that Harry needs to learn about love, in all its forms?? Where better to learn more about it than where you can study it, especially if you have gone back in time and can't study out in the "real world"?
Money is an easier issue, actually. According to the notice at Gringotts, access to his vault would only be denied if the money "never" belonged to him. Remember that never means "not in the past, not at present, and not in the future". We know that it does belong to him because it "will" belong to him as soon as his parents die. We also know that Sirius's money (the Black family vault) belongs to him because it "will" belong to him after Sirius dies. He might have to be careful about accessing the Black family vault, though, until Mrs. Black dies. Most likely, Harry will make a trip to Gringotts before setting off on his temporal journey anyway. This will tide him over until he figures out he has access to the bank accounts.

5] How long must he stay in the past? I mean, once he's in the past and has accomplished what he intended can he speed up time to return to the present, having barely aged, or does he have to spend roughly 16 years in temporal isolation from those left behind, making him much older than his peers when he comes back? Though he will have aged some by the time he returns to the present, I don't think he'll be stuck in the past for nearly 16 years. As we move from one book to the next, the narrator comments how time seems to be speeding up. I think this is a clue that Harry is able to wind the time-turner (or whatever he uses this time) forward in order catch back up to the present. The one situation we've seen so far of time travel has Harry and Hermione going back in time for only three hours, and they use every bit of that time completing their tasks. What happens if you go years back in time to do something that takes merely minutes, hours, or days?

I think of a time-turner this way:
1] Before use it is completely unwound.
2] Winding it up sets its coordinates and transports you back to that chosen time period.
3] Once you are in the past the turner starts to unwind again.
4] Left alone it will unwind at a regular pace. You will move in time at the same pace as everything else around you.
5] Forcing it to unwind faster causes time to speed up.
6] Once you have returned to the present the time-turner is completely unwound again.
7] Any attempt to speed ahead into the future might cause the time-turner to break.

If Harry uses anything other than a time-turner, it will probably work in a similar fashion -- able to go back in time and fast-forward to the present, but unable to go into the future.

Friday, May 26, 2006

The Future Lies in the Past, part two: Update!!

I have had an epiphany!

Harry doesn't just go back in time to when his parents were killed in Godric's Hollow...he goes back even farther...to when Regulus was alive.

Stuff added 6/13/06:

This will give some answers to the big question #7 of the time-travel theory:

The following is a post I made to GW's New Clues 6 Discussion board at www.Mugglenet.com.

Re: CLUE: Full Circle

Quote: Originally posted by galadriel waters: Hagrid said it -- "jus' like old times" (throws out his chest ) There are so many things that remind us of the beginning of the series. Even though we didn't go through it last time -- Voldemort is back. It does somewhat feel as if things have come full-circle -- possibly a trigger to start a whole new perspective? (end quote)

I'd like to append my theory about Harry going back in time. Instead of him "just" going back to Godric's Hollow to witness his parents' deaths, I now think he'll go back in time before Regulus died...and he'll take Sirius' mirror with him.

This would explain several things about the switchout of the locket:
1] Who was R.A.B.? Regulus Black, without a freakin' doubt! If the book translations didn't cement it in your mind, then think about this: Why else would the mirror be so useful if Sirius gave his away to Harry? Who would have had the other mirror? Regulus!
2] Why did KJR say it's important, plotwise, for Sirius to die? Because Sirius might get in the way of a Harry who needs to use the mirror and go back in time.
3] Who went with R.A.B. to the cave? Harry (before he turns 17). An adult witch or wizard couldn't have, since Regulus was at least 17 when he took the locket. Kreacher would have treated Harry differently in OotP if Regulus and Harry had involved him in any way. Kreacher probably would have been sworn to secrecy about what Regulus and Harry had done, but he might display recognition of Harry as someone he met long ago. If it were Kreacher and Regulus w/o Harry, I think Kreacher would have found a way around the house-elf's "contract" and told on Regulus once he figured out the implications of what Regulus was ordering him to do. If that had been the case, Regulus's name probably would have been burned off the Black family tapestry.
4] Why does no one seem to know what really happened to Regulus? Regulus had to keep it a complete secret what he was doing, not just because he was stealing a horcrux, but also because he was interacting with someone from the future.
5] Does Regulus drink the potion? I think so. If they are prepared for the consequences, Harry can ply Regulus with the drink just as he did with Dumbledore.
6] How did Regulus actually die? Probably from the potion. He only lasted a few days after taking the locket. Most-likely this potion is a poison that has no antidote, and a bezoar won't help. This also helps explain why R.A.B. said in the note to the Dark Lord that he (R.A.B.) would be dead long before Voldemort even found out the horcrux was gone! This also explains why JKR wants to make it clear that some poisons have no antidote. This is serious Rule#3 here! There are no coincidences! It could also be that before the poison gets the chance to finish him off, Regulus goes to the Dark Lord or other DE's and openly defies them. Voldemort wouldn't know about the destroyed locket horcrux, so Regulus (like Sirius says) probably wasn't considered "important" enough for Voldemort to kill personally. A DE would cast AK on Regulus. Not only would it look like Regulus had been killed for leaving the DE's, but immediate death by AK would probably be preferable to a slow and painful death by that poison. This poses a new question: Which DE AK's Regulus? Anyone want to guess it was Snape?
7] Why would Regulus be willing to drink a fatal poison? If Regulus was anything like his brother he'd believe some things are worth dying for, and this would definitely qualify.
8] Who destroys the horcrux and when? I think the fact the locket won't open is a clue that it's already been destroyed! That's why it won't matter what Mungungus stole from the house. If he took the locket, it could be anywhere now, and Harry won't have to look for it in the present.
9] How did the locket end up at #12 Grimmauld Place? Harry and/or Regulus destroyed the horcrux, then Regulus took it to #12 Grimmauld Place (for whatever reason) shortly before he died.
10] Why is the locket at #12 Grimmauld Place not completely demolished if it's already a destroyed horcrux? The most-recent FAQ poll at JKR's website had three questions. The one that won had to do with the death of a Secret-Keeper. In her answer to the question, JKR starts by saying that's not the question she would have chosen. One of the questions that lost had to do with horcruxes. The question was whether destruction of a horcrux included destruction of the object. If she had answered that question instead, I'm willing to bet she'd say "no, the object doesn't have to be destroyed". This would explain why the locket at #12 is still intact! Yes, just like old times!! Harry will work on his horcrux hunt at least partially during VoldWarI. Now that he knows what to expect in the cave, he can go back in time, use the mirror to contact Regulus, figure out what that potion was so that they can prepare for replacing it, go to the cave, do the switchout, and leave again. By the time Harry sees the locket at #12 Grimmauld Place it's already a destroyed horcrux.

Quote: Originally posted by AbyBlutjager:
Quote: Originally posted by brodie14: This is quite an interesting idea. I mean, every Time Turner in the entire world couldn't possibly have been in the MoM when most of them were destroyed. witchwannabe, that's intriguing, but maybe the Time Turners aren't able to be turned forwards - like one of those one way things? Like how some clocks can't be wound backwards, only forwards? That sort of thing. Though, in the movie, it did look pretty easy to make a mistake and turn the TT the wrong way (what if you held it the wrong way?!). And this does relate to the current thread, in case any mods are reading this: TTs were a major part of PoA and a minor part of OotP, thus they are also coming "Full Circle" in book seven if they reappear. (end quote)
Exactly. As I suggested above, perhaps time travel had more importance during OotP than we first thought! Coming full circle, indeed. (end quote)

Yeah, and my theory about Harry and Regulus stealing the locket means time travel has a major hidden importance in OotP!! How do you like that?

The Future Lies in the Past, part one: HP's Numerology Reading Revisited

I've been thinking lately about what might happen in Book 7, like everyone else, and I'm working on a theory about time travel. You might scoff at my idea, I once thought Harry wouldn't/shouldn't/couldn't time travel again either, but JKR hasn't shut down that path. Matter of fact, when asked about the possibility of another time travel sequence, she said she couldn't answer.

Meanwhile, we know Harry has to learn more about what happened in the past before he can confront Voldemort. It's part of the means to an end. A pensieve only works if you can gather all the memories you'd need, and though he might be able to gather several, some memories have been lost (along with the people who carried them). Other memories will be protected and not shared. Still others might be tampered with, like the one Slughorn gave to Dumbledore. Harry could read up on history (recent and ancient), but what he finds in books and periodicals might be (um, yeah... will be) tainted with extreme bias. Besides, he wants to see things firsthand that have only been guessed about because the parties involved either can't or won't tell the story. What can a wizard do to learn about past events at his own leisure and without the veil of someone else's preconceptions? I mean, it's hard enough to deal with one's own prejudices...and all of the clocks are ticking. He can travel back into the past.

In PoA, Hermione uses a time-turner to "make time" for all of her coursework. Later Harry and Hermione travel back about 3 hours, their actions saving lives (and souls). Might Harry, in Book 7, travel back much farther in time?

Basically, I'm trying to see if canon will support the idea of Harry going back all the way to October 31, 1981...to see for himself what happened the night his parents were killed.

This is a tall order, I know. Many questions must be answered, like:
1] Does he "travel" alone or does he take trusted friends with him, and does he travel light or take as many handy items as he can carry on his person?
2] Can he confide in anyone from the past that he's from the future?
3] Will he take on a fake identity and interact with people, or will he have to stay physically hidden and isolate himself completely?
4] Where will he live and how will he provide for himself?
5] How long must he stay in the past? In other words, once he's in the past and has accomplished what he intended can he speed up time to return to the present, having barely aged, or does he have to spend roughly 16 years in temporal isolation from those left behind, making him much older than his peers when he comes back?
6] What will time travel back that far gain him? Sirius once said some things are worth dying for, so what's worth reliving for?
7] How will his actions affect the outcome while he's "living in the past"? What bits of canon can give us clues that he is there, not changing things (since PoA showed us that can't happen) but making things happen as they do?
8] What vehicle will he use to travel through time...a time-turner that hasn't been destroyed...or something else entirely?
9] From a writer's perspective, how can JKR manage cramming so much time and experience (if she intends for Harry to spend an extended amount of time in the past) into 800 pages or less...when OotP, covering a single year, was longer than that?
10] How can the septology cover 7 consecutive years if the 7th book ends up covering several years?

I'm sure there are other questions, and I'll continue to look for them, as well as answers to all the questions. I'll post my "findings" in several segments.

Here, I wish to revisit part of the numerology reading I have been working on for Harry, specifically what I found and said about Soul Urge and Inner Dreams. This will address question #6 (and to a lesser extent #7) from above. Harry's number for both personality aspects is 7, which suggests isolation to gain knowledge and wisdom. At the time of my original numerology post, I thought the reading must be whack because surely Harry just wants a family. However, we must remember that the Mirror of Erised only shows us our deepest desire for the moment. Harry saw his parents and other relatives because he had no family to speak of, and it created a hole that needed to be filled. Since then he has basically been adopted by the Weasley family and might end up marrying Ginny. If you look at Harry standing around all the Weasleys, what do you see? A young wizard who looks a lot like his dad, a young (and very popular) witch who has red hair (like his mom), and several of the witch's relatives, also possibly having red hair -- you see a grouping that looks suspiciously similar to what Harry originally saw in the Mirror of Erised! Looks like he has essentially fulfilled that desire already.... What does Harry see at the end of PS/SS? Himself with the Philosopher's Stone, and he fulfills that desire immediately.

So, what am I getting at? If Harry looked into that mirror again, say early on in Book 7, what would he see? Himself standing over a dead Voldemort (and possibly a dead Snape, but I'd rather not think about that too much)? Maybe, but isn't that the final goal? What if there was something more presssing, like a desire to be prepared for the confrontation? He might see himself surrounded by supporters and arsenal (magical and otherwise). Or maybe we should consider what he says about Godric's Hollow. He wishes to return there because it's where his journey begins... spiritually, if you will. He might see himself amongst the ruins of the house where the attack took place or at their "gravesite", taking in the sight, recovering memories long-forgotten, mourning his parents, and gaining some sense of closure. What if he visualizes his desire to destroy the remaining horcruxes? He might see himself with artifacts, such as the locket and the cup, and Nagini. (On a side note, could the mirror tell him what the fourth horcrux is? Not a road I wish to walk, since canon is skimpy on that mirror....)

Preparation for battle...spiritual and emotional healing...horcrux hunt.... What will each of these "tasks" require? Time, and probably plenty of it. To some extent, isolation. Some gain in knowledge and wisdom, too. With this in mind, perhaps the Soul Urge and Inner Dreams results weren't as unreasonable as I first thought. Another part of the numerology reading was Birthday. It said he likes to travel and doesn't like to be alone. This sure lets him travel (space and time), though he might have to deal with extreme loneliness. Well, you can't have everything, can you now? (Sorry, I just had to use a pic of the tardis here. It's too cool...I told you I was a nerd.)

So, with four horcruxes to find and destroy, a final confrontation to prepare for, and his parents' "graves" to visit, wouldn't Harry's greatest immediate desire be for the time and opportunity to do all of these things? If Book 7 followed the same timespan as previous books in the series, how could Harry possibly accomplish his goals? Harry has never had to do so much, not on such a grand scale anyway, in one book. This means Book 7 would need to cover not a year in Harry's life but years, plural.

Here's where we get possible answers to #9 and #10 above. How lengthy must the book be to do this? JKR is trying her darndest to keep the length of Book 7 to no more than that of OotP, and she's already had to break two chapters into four. How can she fit so much time into so "few" pages? Give up the day-to-day pace of the previous books, where days or weeks might get skipped, and trade it for skipping months at a time, highlighting individual accomplishments and progress, as well as adversities and setbacks.

How can JKR have Harry spend extra years readying himself for the final showdown while the septology maintains an overall timespan of seven years? She sends him far enough back in time to prepare, while the characters remaining in the present are caught in temporal stasis. When he returns he battles Voldemort and the book ends in summer, roughly a year after it began. Besides, the timeline for the septology was never really 7 years to begin with. In case you forgot, PS/SS started October 31, 1981 and ended the summer of 1992. The first two chapters are not treated as a look into the past, but the present. Chapter three skips ahead into 1991. So, PS/SS actually covers a little over 10 years. We do learn about some things that happened to Harry during those 9 skipped years -- some accomplishments, some adversities -- all presented to us throughout the books as memories.

Here's a bit more regarding question #7 (though I'll address this issue in great detail as a separate post). Though we'd still see the world through Harry's eyes in Book 7, his perspective will have changed. He will see past events in his life from the outside and get to witness other events his younger self wasn't a party to. It's like he fell into a Pensieve filled with one really long memory.... Perhaps Harry's Pensieve lessons with Dumbledore serve a larger purpose than we might have previously thought. From peering into the Pensieve Harry knows what it's like to see into the past but not be able to interfere or to be noticed. From his time travelling with Hermione he has also found that when "cause=interfering", "effect=what ended up happening anyway". Let's not forget that the trio was alarmed by pebbles hitting Hagrid's window, and that those pebbles were actually thrown by an older Hermione. Buckbeak never died, the trio just thought he had; Harry and Hermione's actions had already saved him. Harry knew to cast his Patronus because he'd already seen it.

To be continued in a later post....

Monday, May 15, 2006

Poll about Snape


What do you think should happen to Snape, and what do you think JKR has in store for him?
Check this link out! Maybe post your choices as a comment here!
http://snape.mosteo.com/

Monday, May 01, 2006

My HP-inspired artwork...coming *someday*....

Okay, so this isn't a typical post about my interpretations of the Harry Potter septology.... I use lots of pics that I have found online, and I don't claim any of them to be my work, since they aren't!

However, I'm currently working on an oil painting that features my favorite Potions Master, and it will reflect my musical tastes, as it also portrays part of a Tool song.

Yep. I'm painting Severus Snape portraying imagery from Tool's "The Grudge".

Update: This one has the subtitle "Transmutate These Leaden Grudges into Gold".

Once it's done (once I decide not to mess with it anymore) I'll post it in this blog (probably this same post), and the original will be for sale!

If I'm not completely turned off by my own attempt at painting Severus, I have ideas for future paintings, including others that fuse characters with song lyrics....

Update: Other ideas for "The Grudge Series" paintings are "Wear the Grudge Like a Crown of Negativity", "Unable to Forgive your Scarlet Lettermen", "Saturn Ascends", and "Saturn Comes Back Around". I might not make all these paintings, but then again I might, so if you like my ideas please don't take them. Maybe you could tell me which ones you think I should pursue....

To be updated again someday!