Thaumaturge
7/15/2011, 11:38 PM
For those of you who have read the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban book (the ORIGINAL and therefore TRUE printing), you have no doubt noticed what seems to be a horrifying error on the part of its author, JK Rowling. Allow me to summarize thusly:
Background
Hermione Granger, the know-it-all wizard girl who nobody really likes but she serves important exposition purposes, is in possession of perhaps the most powerful magical item yet seen: a time turner. She needs it so she can take more classes. However, it comes in useful, surprisingly, in saving some lives... this time (Who would have ever thought of that, Dumbledore?).
So, Harry Potter and Hermione the Girl go back in time to do some ****, but while they are there, they have to stay out of sight, lest their past selves see themselves and screw up all kinds of stuff. Thus, they spend a few hours creeping around the bushes and spying on themselves doing all the things they did a few hours earlier...
Or do they?
*ahem*
The Alleged Error
On the first run through (on page 380) Harry and his cohort are leaving the secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow tree. Crookshanks (Hermione's cat) goes up first to step on a special knot on the tree to keep it from whomping the rest of them. Next follow Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron. Then Sirius Black magically guides an unconscious Snape up out of the tunnel. Then Harry and Hermione go. Lastly, Black exits.
Now, when Harry and Hermione are watching this same event take place from the bushes on page 408... what happens is... (emphasis mine)
"They saw Lupin, Ron, and Pettigrew clambering awkwardly out of the hole in the roots. Then came Hermione. . . then the unconscious Snape, drifting weirdly upward. Next came Harry and Black."
That's not the way it happened the first time.
The Suspects
There is only one possible explanation... Someone else is meddling with time.
But who and why?
Who else knew about the time turner? Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster. The Ministry of Magic. Professor Minerva McGonagall. Let's think about these suspects.
My first guess would be Albus Dumbledore, but he is such a useless twit that he'd never bother to actually to do something that required him to be interesting in the least.
The Ministry of Magic? Worthless, cowardly bureaucrats, all of them.
McGonagall? She's barely a character. Why the hell would she want to do it?
It's a difficult question indeed. It makes no sense for any of them to meddle with time travel. So, for now, let's move on to exactly what could have happened to change the time-line in such a seemingly trivial way.
The Missing Link
Someone in the procession (Lupin, Pettigrew, Ron, Snape, Hermione, Harry, and Black) had to have been affected for the order of their exits to be different, yet they would clearly have noticed something strange had a time-traveler done anything to them. We are, of course, ignoring one other character who was there: Crookshanks, Hermione's pet cat. Might he have been affected by the time-traveler, indirectly causing his owner Hermione to move forward in the queue? The cat was in the lead the first time around; he has to be in order to keep the rest safe from the Whomping Willow. Curiously, he is not mentioned the second time around. Clearly, he has to be there, otherwise they all would have gotten whomped. Why wouldn't he be mentioned? He's actually an important character; a lot of the book is spent on Crookshanks issues. Why is JK Rowling ignoring his obvious presence here?
What could he be doing? Just standing there, pressing the knot? That would have been easy enough to mention. Plenty of other mundane details are mentioned in the goings-on. Maybe he was doing something that Rowling felt would be too awkward or inappropriate to address in a (first-and-foremost) children's book. Pooping? No, not only was Rowling comfortable addressing such topics in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (its subtext is all about her bathroom hang-ups), but also why the hell would any of our suspects want to travel back in time to cast a Pooping Spell on a cat? It would make no sense.
The Cat-****ing
That leaves one last possibility: Crookshanks was porking some other cat. Right there under the Whomping Willow. JK Rowling has, at this point, yet to show any willingness to address porking. And it makes sense in our inquiry: Perhaps Hermione heard the tell-tale sounds of cat-****ing, thought "Crookshanks! No!" and dashed ahead of the unconscious Snape in the queue to leave the tunnel to stop the cat-porking. It's a workable hypothesis.
So, which possible time-traveler benefits from sending a cat for Crookshanks to pork? Dumbledore? No, he clearly likes young boys. The Ministry of Magic? They might be ineffectual and cowardly, but they are at least dignified. McGona... oh god.
Professor McGonagall, the Cat-****er
McGonagall, as we know, is an Animagus. She can transform into a cat at will.
But why? Well, obviously, because she wants to get porked, but I mean, why does she need to do it then and there?
Why can't she just **** the cat any old time? No alibi. If she does it in the present, then McGonagall is missing and, hey, what's that strange cat Crookshanks is ****ing? Too easy to get found out, especially with Albus Dumbledore as the headmaster.
"Okay, okay," I hear you saying, "so it makes sense for her to travel back in time to do her cat-****ing, but why do it at that exact time when so much is at stake? Why not travel to an ordinary time when past-McGonagall is grading scrolls up in Gryffindor tower or teaching her Transfiguration class? She'd have her alibi, and her cat-****ing wouldn't interfere with the important Sirius Black-related plotline." I must admit: You've obviously given a great deal of thought to the idea of time-traveling cat-****ing. But you're overlooking an important point: Not only does McGonagall have to avoid being caught cat-****ing, she also must not be caught time-traveling without authorization. And what is the most likely way she'd be caught? If she inadvertently caused a wrinkle in the time-line, if she caused something to change.
Therefore, she had to travel to a time where there was already a known time-traveler so that any changes to the time-line would be attributed to him or her. Hermione the Girl was the only authorized user of the time turner, so McGonagall's only options were the times when Hermione was using the time turner. Every other instance of Hermione using it was simply to attend class. If she was attending class, her movements were all witnessed and documented. There was no opportunity for her to cause any time-related ****-ups out in the gardens near those two cats ****ing. Therefore, Professor McGonagall's only choice was to get porked by Crookshanks under the Whomping Willow in the middle of the plot.
There now. As they say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
(I warn you, though, if you have a later edition, this whole plotline has apparently been removed, one assumes because of complaints from parents about the implicit cat-****ing. I take this as a confirmation that I am right about all of this.)
Background
Hermione Granger, the know-it-all wizard girl who nobody really likes but she serves important exposition purposes, is in possession of perhaps the most powerful magical item yet seen: a time turner. She needs it so she can take more classes. However, it comes in useful, surprisingly, in saving some lives... this time (Who would have ever thought of that, Dumbledore?).
So, Harry Potter and Hermione the Girl go back in time to do some ****, but while they are there, they have to stay out of sight, lest their past selves see themselves and screw up all kinds of stuff. Thus, they spend a few hours creeping around the bushes and spying on themselves doing all the things they did a few hours earlier...
Or do they?
*ahem*
The Alleged Error
On the first run through (on page 380) Harry and his cohort are leaving the secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow tree. Crookshanks (Hermione's cat) goes up first to step on a special knot on the tree to keep it from whomping the rest of them. Next follow Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron. Then Sirius Black magically guides an unconscious Snape up out of the tunnel. Then Harry and Hermione go. Lastly, Black exits.
Now, when Harry and Hermione are watching this same event take place from the bushes on page 408... what happens is... (emphasis mine)
"They saw Lupin, Ron, and Pettigrew clambering awkwardly out of the hole in the roots. Then came Hermione. . . then the unconscious Snape, drifting weirdly upward. Next came Harry and Black."
That's not the way it happened the first time.
The Suspects
There is only one possible explanation... Someone else is meddling with time.
But who and why?
Who else knew about the time turner? Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster. The Ministry of Magic. Professor Minerva McGonagall. Let's think about these suspects.
My first guess would be Albus Dumbledore, but he is such a useless twit that he'd never bother to actually to do something that required him to be interesting in the least.
The Ministry of Magic? Worthless, cowardly bureaucrats, all of them.
McGonagall? She's barely a character. Why the hell would she want to do it?
It's a difficult question indeed. It makes no sense for any of them to meddle with time travel. So, for now, let's move on to exactly what could have happened to change the time-line in such a seemingly trivial way.
The Missing Link
Someone in the procession (Lupin, Pettigrew, Ron, Snape, Hermione, Harry, and Black) had to have been affected for the order of their exits to be different, yet they would clearly have noticed something strange had a time-traveler done anything to them. We are, of course, ignoring one other character who was there: Crookshanks, Hermione's pet cat. Might he have been affected by the time-traveler, indirectly causing his owner Hermione to move forward in the queue? The cat was in the lead the first time around; he has to be in order to keep the rest safe from the Whomping Willow. Curiously, he is not mentioned the second time around. Clearly, he has to be there, otherwise they all would have gotten whomped. Why wouldn't he be mentioned? He's actually an important character; a lot of the book is spent on Crookshanks issues. Why is JK Rowling ignoring his obvious presence here?
What could he be doing? Just standing there, pressing the knot? That would have been easy enough to mention. Plenty of other mundane details are mentioned in the goings-on. Maybe he was doing something that Rowling felt would be too awkward or inappropriate to address in a (first-and-foremost) children's book. Pooping? No, not only was Rowling comfortable addressing such topics in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (its subtext is all about her bathroom hang-ups), but also why the hell would any of our suspects want to travel back in time to cast a Pooping Spell on a cat? It would make no sense.
The Cat-****ing
That leaves one last possibility: Crookshanks was porking some other cat. Right there under the Whomping Willow. JK Rowling has, at this point, yet to show any willingness to address porking. And it makes sense in our inquiry: Perhaps Hermione heard the tell-tale sounds of cat-****ing, thought "Crookshanks! No!" and dashed ahead of the unconscious Snape in the queue to leave the tunnel to stop the cat-porking. It's a workable hypothesis.
So, which possible time-traveler benefits from sending a cat for Crookshanks to pork? Dumbledore? No, he clearly likes young boys. The Ministry of Magic? They might be ineffectual and cowardly, but they are at least dignified. McGona... oh god.
Professor McGonagall, the Cat-****er
McGonagall, as we know, is an Animagus. She can transform into a cat at will.
But why? Well, obviously, because she wants to get porked, but I mean, why does she need to do it then and there?
Why can't she just **** the cat any old time? No alibi. If she does it in the present, then McGonagall is missing and, hey, what's that strange cat Crookshanks is ****ing? Too easy to get found out, especially with Albus Dumbledore as the headmaster.
"Okay, okay," I hear you saying, "so it makes sense for her to travel back in time to do her cat-****ing, but why do it at that exact time when so much is at stake? Why not travel to an ordinary time when past-McGonagall is grading scrolls up in Gryffindor tower or teaching her Transfiguration class? She'd have her alibi, and her cat-****ing wouldn't interfere with the important Sirius Black-related plotline." I must admit: You've obviously given a great deal of thought to the idea of time-traveling cat-****ing. But you're overlooking an important point: Not only does McGonagall have to avoid being caught cat-****ing, she also must not be caught time-traveling without authorization. And what is the most likely way she'd be caught? If she inadvertently caused a wrinkle in the time-line, if she caused something to change.
Therefore, she had to travel to a time where there was already a known time-traveler so that any changes to the time-line would be attributed to him or her. Hermione the Girl was the only authorized user of the time turner, so McGonagall's only options were the times when Hermione was using the time turner. Every other instance of Hermione using it was simply to attend class. If she was attending class, her movements were all witnessed and documented. There was no opportunity for her to cause any time-related ****-ups out in the gardens near those two cats ****ing. Therefore, Professor McGonagall's only choice was to get porked by Crookshanks under the Whomping Willow in the middle of the plot.
There now. As they say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
(I warn you, though, if you have a later edition, this whole plotline has apparently been removed, one assumes because of complaints from parents about the implicit cat-****ing. I take this as a confirmation that I am right about all of this.)