A Mistake in the Time Line (Harry Potter theory)

Hello, dear humans and fellow aliens!

Today, I’m going to a part of the theory universe I promised myself never to go.

Harry Potter.

Theorizing about it gives me huge goose bumps and everyone always disagrees a lot because I read the books when I was nine and never picked them up again. I just decided to move on with my life and read other things, I tried to find something better. And I did.

Oh, my god, Mrs. J.K. Rowling, don’t kill me! You’re a great inspiration to me! I’m sorry but I prefer “Percy Jackson”!

And I’m also sorry, that this isn’t really a theory, I’m just pointing out a huge mistake in the plot.

Let’s begin!

So, from the title, you probably know this is about “The Prisoner of Azkaban” (what a great name, if I could create names like that easily, I’d write more stories about parallel magical universes where everyone has weird names).

One of the things I never really understood about that book since I was nine was that it used two opposite time travelling theories: the Fixed Timeline Theory and the Dynamic Timeline Theory.

Let me explain…

Imagine you wanted to prevent World War II by murdering Hitler as a child. A perfectly understandable goal. To distract everyone from the fact that you just kidnapped a child from the past, you replace him with another one, very different. The parents never notice and still raise him as their actual son, which leads to him becoming the actual Hitler, which means that the child you have was never Adolf Hitler, the one you used to replace him was.

That is the Fixed Timeline Theory.

Then, imagine you wanted to do the same thing. You go there, you kidnap him, you replace him. You have the actual Adolf Hitler in your custody, the child you replaced him with doesn’t share his ideals, the world is safe.

That is the Dynamic Timeline Theory.

Basically, in the first one, you can never change the timeline when travelling because you would already have changed it in the past while, in the second one, you can change the events and change the world (yey!).

What happens in “Harry Potter” is that, when Harry and Hermione travel in time to save Sirius and Harry casts a Patronus to scare away the dementors in the lake, to protect his past self.

But, you see, that’s not possible. J.K. Rowling is using two different theories.

If you use the first theory, the Fixed Timeline, on that part of the story, you get these events:

1.  Harry and Hermione successfully travel back in time

2.  In the lake, Harry casts a Patronus to save his past self, like his past self has seen in the past

3.  They don’t save Sirius Black or the hippogriff, because they were already un-saveable in the past, which completely eliminates their chances of surviving, since future Harry and future Hermione would already have tried to save them and failed

It’s kind of sad to think about it in that way…

Now, let’s analyse it with the Dynamic Timeline Theory:

1.  Harry and Hermione successfully travel back in time

2.  Harry casts his Patronus on the lake

3.  They save Sirius and the hippogriff and everyone lives happily ever after (until book 5, where Sirius dies)

That looks perfect, right? Everyone is happy and cheering and no one major has to die until a few books later! Perfect ending for a children’s book!

It’s just that… it’s not possible.

We know, from “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” (cool book, by the way) that the time-thingy with a name I don’t know because I didn’t read the books in English…

No, wait, it’s a time-turner.

We know that the time-turner works according to the Dynamic Timeline Theory, since the same thing happens when I described the kidnapping of baby Hitler by this theory, where there would be no World War II. I am sure of this because Scorpius creates two alternative timelines when using the time-turner: one where Cedric Diggory became a Death Eater and Ron was married to one of the Parvati twins (oh, dear god, such a terrible future!) and another one where Albus, James and Lily were never born because Harry Potter died and the Malfoys were really important people because Voldemort ruled over the world.

Then, how is it possible for Harry to not change the future by casting his Patronus on the lake?! It is specifically stated in the book that it was him on the lake, that it was a thing he had already done before because it was his Patronus.

So, if the time turner works accordingly to the Dynamic Timeline Theory, who is it on the lake?

I know exactly what you’re thinking. I know your first guess.

Severus Snape!

No. You’re wrong. Don’t make that face, you’re absolutely wrong, you’ve never been wronger. Remember all the times you answered wrongly to an obvious question on a math test? You’re wronger now.

May I remind you that his Patronus is a female deer, not a deer like James’s Animargus?

There is one characteristic that differences the females from the males.

Male deers have horns. Like, huge horns coming out of their head. If you don’t believe me, look up pictures of male deers, you’ll see what I mean. And no, I’m not confusing them with mooses.

So, it couldn’t have been Snape, it’s not possible.

Who on earth could have a Patronus that looks like Harry’s…?

I don’t know, none of us do. We’ll never know, I just wanted to point out this mistake.

Ah, that wasn’t so bad! I could do this again someday!

Now come one, give me all you have, I can take your sassy comments about every single mini-mistake I made here.