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How does Time travel work in Harry Potter universe?


In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the logic behind time turner travel seems to obey a Stable Time Loop or Causal Loop, where you fulfill what has already happened.


However in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,




after the reintroduction of time travel, time turners now seem to work in a Back to the Future/Time Cop kind of way, creating alternative timelines, even though in the end they fix them.



My question is: How does time travel really work in the Harry Potter universe? Are these two canon works really compatible? Should we dismiss incompatibilities as plot holes or is there really a good unifying explanation?



Answer



TL;DR: Magic


I think the easiest way to reconcile this is by thinking about what was changed, and how far back they traveled.



said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Hasn’t your experience with the Time-Turner taught you anything, Harry? The conse- quences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed ... Professor Trelawney, bless her, is living proof of that.



In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione only traveled a few hours back in time, and they fixed or altered their own events that we the reader didn't actually know the outcome to. The events did not have time to have ripples that drastically altered the world around then, and Rowling wanted to tie in a time loop style event.



Scorpius and Albus, on the other hand, went back in time 20 years to firmly established events, which massively altered the course of history and, in one instance, resulting in Albus not even being born.


We know that, even in Prisoner of Azkaban, that Hermione states that these "Back to the Future" style time traveling is possible.



‘Exactly! You wouldn’t understand, you might even attack your- self! Don’t you see? Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time ... loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!’



Its clear that even originally time travel could act in this way, however, for the sake of her plot in Prisoner of Azkaban Rowling tied it up neatly in Time loop Scenario.


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