I can’t help but think that Harry dropped an incredible idiot ball on deciding to go to Azkaban. I don’t mean his deciding to trust his Professor and Mentor. I’m having trouble reconciling Harry’s timeline with either his or (more importantly Quirrel’s) decision making style.
8 AM—“Well, I have a big day of breaking into Azkaban today. So much to set up, I’ve got to be super careful!”
3 PM—“Hmm, it seems that the failsafe Quirrel setup in case anyone believes I was involved in Azkaban was triggered. Better go through with the plan anyways.”
5:55 PM—“Hey Mr Quirrel, our failsafe triggered and McGonagall suspects me of illegal use of my time tuner, indicating something went terribly wrong. Think we should abort the plan?”
6 PM—“Welp, time to go to Azkaban!” . . . “Oh no! It’s going horribly wrong, how could we have ever anticipated this?!?”
I’m aware you can’t use a time tuner to solve problems, but from Harry’s/Quirrel’s point of view the most logical action would be to abort the mission and send back the note to prevent paradox. I can understand that Harry has already been established as acting irrationally at this point in time. However, it is unimaginable that Quirrel, a planner far more than one level above me, would simply ignore the failsafe being triggered and continue onward.
The only option I can fathom is that Quirrel intentionally planned on failure and had them go forward with the plan anyways. But this doesn’t explain why Harry doesn’t use it as very strong evidence that Quirrel is evil and out to get him. Harry doesn’t even reflect on the fact that, in retrospect, going onward even after they knew the failsafe was triggered was an idiotic move.
This seems be either a glaring plot hole or an idiot ball, but I may be misunderstanding all interactions of time travel or getting the timeline wrong.
Harry got the note from himself at around 3:10pm. He left for lunch with Professor Quirrell in the late morning, went back in time, went to Azkaban, went back in time again to Mary’s Room, and was grabbed by Dumbledore and rescued at around lunchtime. Those two time-loops did not intersect; they are separate time-loops.
So not only did they break into the most heavily guarded prison ever, not only did they break out the[*] most dangerous criminal known to be still alive, not only did they get away with it all to boot, but they did it BEFORE LUNCH!
[*] (assuming that MoR!Voldemort already killed Grindelwald)
(OK, I know, they had plenty of time in their own personal timelines to eat lunch. And they didn’t finish until after lunchtime. But still.)
I am afraid that I am too used to intelligent fictional characters having supernatural powers of planning and foresight. I suppose it is much easier to have readers be impressed with intelligence if smart characters are simply omniscient rather than acting rationally at all points. Therefore, if you were to be writing Quirrel with maximum intelligence, he simply MUST have planned it all at the earliest possible moment. It didn’t occur to me that they could just be making the best of a bad situation, since that doesn’t maximize the illusion of cleverness. He’s a very smart human; he’s not L/Light.
I’ll try not to be so hasty to make assumptions in the future and scan for any unspoken assumptions that are coloring my view when reading MoR. On further reflection, that’s a good general life lesson too.
Harry was tested (via Veritaserum) after the Daily Prophet incident. The fact that he is being tested in regards to Quirrell’s illegal activity is not evidence of it’s failure, it only shows that it’s impossible enough to make someone suspect Harry Potter was involved.
A flashback where Quirrell explains the failsafe to Harry might have helped, though. For example, he would have foresaw the hide-from-dementors nature of Patronus 2.0 as a clue for Dumbledore (which is probably what prompted him to make this particular failsafe in the first place). How much of it did he explain to Harry?
It is not really important, however. The moment Harry recieved the message at 3PM, he was committed. DO NOT MESS WITH TIME!
Still, your question made me notice my (possible) confusion, so… good one.
The alarming thing about being tested isn’t that they tested Harry specifically; it is that they were aware that tests needed to be performed at all. Had the plan gone successfully, nobody would have ever have known that Bellatrix was removed. Remember that the entire advantage of Patronus 2.0 (to Quirrell) was the undetectable nature of it. It allowed a person to commit a perfect crime without the guards or dementors being aware that a crime ever occurred.
From the point of view of Harry, sitting with his invisibility cloak in the empty room at 3:00 PM, only a small number of possible futures could exist:
No note—Either the plan will go successfully, Harry shall be captured/killed in the attempt, or they abort for some other reason.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Passcode note—Harry will not be apprehended, but the plan will fail in some way and Harry is a suspect. Or Harry will chose to abort the mission and send back a false passcode preserve a stable time-loop. This is the result that actually occurred and is the only one that confirms a definite partial failure.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break. The problem is that both Harry and Quirrell act as if No Note was received. In the TPSE chapters, we do not see characters who are aware that their plan will be detected. They do not seem to act as if their plan is definitely going to partially fail. Neither does Harry take heart in nor mention the fact that he has already survived escaping Azkaban. Contrast with the same situation in cannon!PrisonerofAzkaban where it is a major plot point.
Edit: There is the possibility it is related to “Azkaban’s future cannot interact with it’s past”, but then you run into the problem of Harry being able to send the note at all. If they abort or are just more paranoid on their mission, Azkaban’s future is still effecting its the past either way.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break.
But so is this. A message ‘Abort! X, Y and Z bad things will happen if you try!’ can be reproduced and sent back in time perfectly well—and this kind of thing has been observed already in MoR.
They may be trying to avoid sending more information than necessary into the past, since there are known limitations on that. (No information can be sent more than 6 hours in the past, even through a sequence of time-turners.) I can’t think of a situation where it would be safe to send the information that something has gone wrong but not the information about how, and maybe they can’t either, but they could just be playing it safe.
One obvious option is that Harry might have chosen to commit to sending a note back with opaque instructions to himself either way, even if no test were being performed. In that case, getting the note would mean only that he returned in one piece. Is there an advantage to that?
Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn’t get a note and went on with the plan.
Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we’re merely following the one that did in the narrative.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
3 PM—“Hmm, it seems that the failsafe Quirrel setup in case anyone believes I was involved in Azkaban was triggered. Better go through with the plan anyways.”
Isn’t that a Harry version that’s gone back in time again a few hours?
Edit: It actually might be nice if Eliezer could provide a diagram that has everyone’s worldlines to help keep track of this. It isn’t as bad as Primer but it is getting there.
Indeed. Harry’s personal timeline looks like this.
Wakes up, does morning stuff.
Goes to lunch with Professor Quirrell.
Azkaban!
Back in time to be picked up by the Professors at Mary’s Room.
Receives coded note, delivers message to Professor Flitwick.
Reports to McGonagall’s office, receives message to be passed to Flitwick.
Back in time one hour from 9 PM to send coded note through Slytherin mail to Margaret Bulstrode who will/did bring it the rest of the way back to 3 PM using her own time turner.
Visit to Dumbledore’s office to hear his theory on Bellatrix’s escape, and it turns out, to help Fawkes yell at him.
I can’t help but think that Harry dropped an incredible idiot ball on deciding to go to Azkaban. I don’t mean his deciding to trust his Professor and Mentor. I’m having trouble reconciling Harry’s timeline with either his or (more importantly Quirrel’s) decision making style.
8 AM—“Well, I have a big day of breaking into Azkaban today. So much to set up, I’ve got to be super careful!”
3 PM—“Hmm, it seems that the failsafe Quirrel setup in case anyone believes I was involved in Azkaban was triggered. Better go through with the plan anyways.”
5:55 PM—“Hey Mr Quirrel, our failsafe triggered and McGonagall suspects me of illegal use of my time tuner, indicating something went terribly wrong. Think we should abort the plan?”
6 PM—“Welp, time to go to Azkaban!” . . . “Oh no! It’s going horribly wrong, how could we have ever anticipated this?!?”
I’m aware you can’t use a time tuner to solve problems, but from Harry’s/Quirrel’s point of view the most logical action would be to abort the mission and send back the note to prevent paradox. I can understand that Harry has already been established as acting irrationally at this point in time. However, it is unimaginable that Quirrel, a planner far more than one level above me, would simply ignore the failsafe being triggered and continue onward.
The only option I can fathom is that Quirrel intentionally planned on failure and had them go forward with the plan anyways. But this doesn’t explain why Harry doesn’t use it as very strong evidence that Quirrel is evil and out to get him. Harry doesn’t even reflect on the fact that, in retrospect, going onward even after they knew the failsafe was triggered was an idiotic move.
This seems be either a glaring plot hole or an idiot ball, but I may be misunderstanding all interactions of time travel or getting the timeline wrong.
Harry got the note from himself at around 3:10pm. He left for lunch with Professor Quirrell in the late morning, went back in time, went to Azkaban, went back in time again to Mary’s Room, and was grabbed by Dumbledore and rescued at around lunchtime. Those two time-loops did not intersect; they are separate time-loops.
So not only did they break into the most heavily guarded prison ever, not only did they break out the[*] most dangerous criminal known to be still alive, not only did they get away with it all to boot, but they did it BEFORE LUNCH!
[*] (assuming that MoR!Voldemort already killed Grindelwald)
(OK, I know, they had plenty of time in their own personal timelines to eat lunch. And they didn’t finish until after lunchtime. But still.)
Thank you, that clears up my confusion.
I am afraid that I am too used to intelligent fictional characters having supernatural powers of planning and foresight. I suppose it is much easier to have readers be impressed with intelligence if smart characters are simply omniscient rather than acting rationally at all points. Therefore, if you were to be writing Quirrel with maximum intelligence, he simply MUST have planned it all at the earliest possible moment. It didn’t occur to me that they could just be making the best of a bad situation, since that doesn’t maximize the illusion of cleverness. He’s a very smart human; he’s not L/Light.
I’ll try not to be so hasty to make assumptions in the future and scan for any unspoken assumptions that are coloring my view when reading MoR. On further reflection, that’s a good general life lesson too.
He doesn’t know about Azkaban in the morning.
Harry was tested (via Veritaserum) after the Daily Prophet incident. The fact that he is being tested in regards to Quirrell’s illegal activity is not evidence of it’s failure, it only shows that it’s impossible enough to make someone suspect Harry Potter was involved.
A flashback where Quirrell explains the failsafe to Harry might have helped, though. For example, he would have foresaw the hide-from-dementors nature of Patronus 2.0 as a clue for Dumbledore (which is probably what prompted him to make this particular failsafe in the first place). How much of it did he explain to Harry?
It is not really important, however. The moment Harry recieved the message at 3PM, he was committed. DO NOT MESS WITH TIME!
Still, your question made me notice my (possible) confusion, so… good one.
The alarming thing about being tested isn’t that they tested Harry specifically; it is that they were aware that tests needed to be performed at all. Had the plan gone successfully, nobody would have ever have known that Bellatrix was removed. Remember that the entire advantage of Patronus 2.0 (to Quirrell) was the undetectable nature of it. It allowed a person to commit a perfect crime without the guards or dementors being aware that a crime ever occurred.
From the point of view of Harry, sitting with his invisibility cloak in the empty room at 3:00 PM, only a small number of possible futures could exist:
No note—Either the plan will go successfully, Harry shall be captured/killed in the attempt, or they abort for some other reason.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Passcode note—Harry will not be apprehended, but the plan will fail in some way and Harry is a suspect. Or Harry will chose to abort the mission and send back a false passcode preserve a stable time-loop. This is the result that actually occurred and is the only one that confirms a definite partial failure.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break. The problem is that both Harry and Quirrell act as if No Note was received. In the TPSE chapters, we do not see characters who are aware that their plan will be detected. They do not seem to act as if their plan is definitely going to partially fail. Neither does Harry take heart in nor mention the fact that he has already survived escaping Azkaban. Contrast with the same situation in cannon!PrisonerofAzkaban where it is a major plot point.
Edit: There is the possibility it is related to “Azkaban’s future cannot interact with it’s past”, but then you run into the problem of Harry being able to send the note at all. If they abort or are just more paranoid on their mission, Azkaban’s future is still effecting its the past either way.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
But so is this. A message ‘Abort! X, Y and Z bad things will happen if you try!’ can be reproduced and sent back in time perfectly well—and this kind of thing has been observed already in MoR.
Have we had the version with X, Y and Z listed? (I agree that we have had Abort! messages reproduced and sent.)
No, haven’t. This seems to indicate a failure of rationality of the part of the time turner users. :)
They may be trying to avoid sending more information than necessary into the past, since there are known limitations on that. (No information can be sent more than 6 hours in the past, even through a sequence of time-turners.) I can’t think of a situation where it would be safe to send the information that something has gone wrong but not the information about how, and maybe they can’t either, but they could just be playing it safe.
One obvious option is that Harry might have chosen to commit to sending a note back with opaque instructions to himself either way, even if no test were being performed. In that case, getting the note would mean only that he returned in one piece. Is there an advantage to that?
Let’s speculate.
Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn’t get a note and went on with the plan.
Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we’re merely following the one that did in the narrative.
That’s not how time-turners work in canon, nor in this fic (other fics notwithstanding). See TVTropes:Stable Time Loop.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
I know Azkaban is warded against time travel, I don’t know in what way that would play havoc with a time loop that passes through Azkaban.
Isn’t that a Harry version that’s gone back in time again a few hours?
Edit: It actually might be nice if Eliezer could provide a diagram that has everyone’s worldlines to help keep track of this. It isn’t as bad as Primer but it is getting there.
Harry didn’t go back in time to 3 PM.
Indeed. Harry’s personal timeline looks like this.
Wakes up, does morning stuff.
Goes to lunch with Professor Quirrell.
Azkaban!
Back in time to be picked up by the Professors at Mary’s Room.
Receives coded note, delivers message to Professor Flitwick.
Reports to McGonagall’s office, receives message to be passed to Flitwick.
Back in time one hour from 9 PM to send coded note through Slytherin mail to Margaret Bulstrode who will/did bring it the rest of the way back to 3 PM using her own time turner.
Visit to Dumbledore’s office to hear his theory on Bellatrix’s escape, and it turns out, to help Fawkes yell at him.