I really wanted to go to sleep early tonight; however, I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and it unfortunately has made me too mad to sleep.  While in many ways it has been the best of the series so far, I find the time-travel and end sequence of events to be nothing shy of disastrous.  In fact, while the novel could of—and really should have, since I’m sure at least one editor saw it—be somewhat fixed without too much trouble, it details certain events so well as to prove their very own impossibility.  This isn’t to say that the story doesn’t have some interesting ideas regarding time travel, for it does, but they are not properly developed by any means.

Now, I know that some people might say that these are children’s books and that magic doesn’t exist (how can you assess a magical world of witches and wizards?) and these sorts of things; however, the book does establish certain rules and uses the world that we live in as its model.  For instance, gravity still exists—it can be defied though not ignored, and likewise, the body remains the same, bones break, people bleed, Harry Potter has bad eyes, even if these things can be more easily mended.  Life and death do as well.  God knows Harry wishes his parents were alive, but their lives seem out of reach.  Time is no different.  The time in these books is not unlike our own.  Also, while this book is meant for children, that isn’t justification for a lousy time-travel sequence not to receive criticism.

Anyway, to get to the problem, simply: Harry died and the book should end, but it doesn’t because we pretend that he doesn’t die so he has the opportunity to save himself.  That might seem a little dense, but I’ll explain.

Towards the end of the book Harry and Hermione are at the shore of a lake, witnessing dementors attacking Sirius Black from afar.  Dementors then attack them as well.  Harry, Hermione and Sirius are, nonetheless, saved by Future Harry.  Dying Harry witnesses this, though not completely accurately, and he mistakes Future Harry as his own father.  This is a particularly troubling and inexplicable example of a predestination paradox.  Critically, Harry is saved by Future Harry; however, it is very important to understand that Future Harry can only come to be if Harry survives.  If Harry, who has no one from his own time to save him, doesn’t survive the event of the dementors’ attack, he cannot possibly live to the point in time where he uses the Time-Turner to return in time and save himself.  It is—unfortunately— very clear from Professor Snape’s account that Harry could not possibly have survived without the Patronus Charm that Future Harry casts, and therefore—again unfortunately—his survival depends on a Future Harry, and Harry, at this point, has no future.

Sometimes a diagram is worth a thousand words:

A =============[C]====== B

                              C ====== [B]>>>

Event “A” is three hours before midnight (the supposed start of the events and the time the Time-Turner returns Harry and Hermione to).  Event “C” is Harry dying to dementors.  Event “B” is Harry and Hermione using the Time-Turner to go back in time.  To make it from point A to point B, Harry must survive point C; however, Harry cannot survive point C without already having made it to point B and, only then, traveled back to point C to save himself.

This problem is very hard to overlook.  It is the most fundamental problem, but it is certainly not the only problem.

In the case of Hagrid’s hippogryph, simply too much time passes between the event of the execution and the rescue.  Consider that Harry and Hermione make it back in time and rescue the hippogryph: the hippogyph lives, and in the several hours that follow this, this becomes known.  Again we are stuck with a predestination paradox.  It is at dusk—let’s say nine o’clock for the sake of a timeline (I know it’s late! but we are told they travel three hours before nearly midnight with the Time-Turner)—that the hippogryph is to be executed yet it doesn’t die.  In fact, nobody witnesses the hippogryph die, including Harry, Ron and Hermione.  Everyone, of course, is forced to accept that it managed to free itself or was freed.  If the hippogryph is known to survive, why then at just before midnight, when Hermione and Harry use the Time-Turner, would they ever consider freeing the hippogyph that everyone already knows escaped?  It is more than likely that they would have heard of its escape.  Or, for that matter, a better question is perhaps: why would Dumbledore even suggest that its life could be saved? It has already been saved by this time!

So, I’ve been facing frustration with this for hours, and I don’t think it had to be this way.  While time-travel posses many problems, it is possible that it could have at least been ambiguous enough as to allowed room for plausibility.  Maybe Snape could have saved Harry without the help of the Patronus Charm?  Maybe Harry could have been alone at the lake with the dementors and Hermione could have done something to assure that he survived the event and thus enabled him to go back in time?  In both cases the Patronus Charm might have appeared, perhaps to save Sirius Black from dying (which is to say becoming a sort of zombie, since they don’t kill the body just the self).  Would that not be reason enough to travel back in time?  Returning to the diagram, only Harry technically has to make it from A, through C, to B to go back an do any number of beneficial things at C.  It is just critical that he live long enough to go back in time…

All in all, I just wish a little more were given to this.  For being such a popular book and having so much potential in a quite rich storyline, I merely wish it were better worked out…