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Hey, brother.
My goodness, my gracious you guys.
Sometimes I think we have already made a video covering every single word
that was written from the start of the Harry Potter series to the very end of it.
But just this past yesterday we were asked a question over on our Instagram that was so simple, so elegant,
so to the point, and also kind of difficult to answer it simply how do Time Turners work?
Now I will be the first to admit that I am not always a fan of time travel as a plot device.
It always feels to me like a not so specific way to undo certain doom
and to be clear, it's not that I love doom or anything.
It's just I don't like things to be inexplicably un-doomed either.
You know what the thing is?
Stories, movies are kind of like the opposite of seeing a magician do a trick.
Like, ultimately, knowing how the trick was performed typically makes it a little bit less exciting.
Like, in that case, I'd rather be mystified. When it comes to stories,
on the other hand, I want the explanation. How did the rabbit get inside the hat?
It is simply not enough to say that it was just there.
That's where it comes from.
Rabbits don't come from hats! At least, I'm pretty sure.
But that being said, I will say that I have always liked
how time travel is specifically used in the book Prisoner of Azkaban.
For me as a young reader, I've really loved the fact that as I was going through the story,
I wasn't picking up on all of the little cues or being dropped around Ron and Harry,
or for that matter, how and why it was never really addressed how Hermione
was supposed to be taking multiple classes at the same time.
- Where did you come from? -Me? I've been here all this time.
So in the end,
it was a really fun and exciting mind blowing moment for eight year old me to have it all explained.
You watch it unravel, and then for all future reads, I get that like "I'm in the know" feeling
where it's like, "Ooh, I caught that. I spotted that."
Probably also get a little superior somewhere along the way.
Like "Oh, Ron and Harry, could you be more clueless?"
Actually, to be fair to Ron's specifically, he did seem appropriately concerned,
but didn't have the power of persuasion to get anybody else to give it another glance.
Beyond all of that, though, Prisoner of Azkaban also plays by my favorite set of rules
when it comes to time travel, which is the idea that anything
that happens as a result of time travel always happened in the first place anyway.
Meaning once you go back in time, anything you that do back in time happened the first time anyway.
Harry gets hit in the back of the head with a rock because
Time-Travel-Harry is also there at the same time.
What ultimately makes this form of time travel fun is really
just getting to see it from multiple vantage points, which I have to tell you for me
It's just so much better than the like
crazy butterfly effect ramifications that can happen in other forms of time travel.
If, for example, Ron
goes back in time and gets everybody to actually pay attention to the fact
that Hermione is doing a bunch of classes
at the same time then everybody is like, "Wow, Ron, you're a genius."
And it completely changes his entire career at school
- Only I'm Head Boy
That would be so lame.
But either way, whenever time
travel is involved, it also introduces a variety of really interesting questions.
Like, for example, how do Time Turners work in the first place?
And does Hermione
Actually age a little bit every time she travels back in time, like does she ultimately become older?
Today, we attempt to explain how do Time Turners?
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Okay guys time turners I bring all of this up because of what is known in the fantasy genre as magic systems.
There are two obvious systems, one being hard magic versus soft magic
and the way that these are implemented in different stories varies drastically.
Hard magic is usually magic that can be explained within the context of the story.
There are rules as to how it works within the wizarding world.
The most obvious example of this is going to be all of the wand lore
Any of the spells cast with wands in order to cast any spell you first need,
you acquire a physical magic wand.
You need to know the incantation and the associated one movement in order to get the desired results.
-EXPELLIARMUS!
[screams]
if you were to compare this kind of magic to other fantasy stories, it might be considered
kind of soft. Like there's no in-universe sciencey explanation
as to how any of it is working, what energy is actually going into making the spell work, and
what type of physical toll is it taking on the Wizard to cast a spell in the first place?
Or, and barring a few exceptions within the Harry Potter series,
what are the limitations of these spells?
Because they kind of seem like they'll all work under most circumstances.
Gamps law, though, people - can't make food. Can summon fish from the river but can't make it.
But within the confines of the Harry Potter series, this is going to be our hard magic.
We are at least given some guidelines as to how the magic works.
On the other end of the spectrum, though, there is what is called soft magic,
which at no point in time is anybody even attempting to explain how it works.
It just simply does, because magic.
Take, for example, the Mirror of Erised, or Harry's invisibility cloak, or even the sword of Gryffindor
These artifacts are special because they are. They are one of a kind, entirely unique.
And with that comes unique abilities
that nothing else can do.
And no one ever really even attempts to explain it.
Like Harry's cloak is very different from everybody else's invisibility cloak.
His cloak isn't made with Demiguise hair or has a disillusionment charm placed over it
that could potentially wear out.
It is a cloak that renders the wearer invisible completely. Always.
The best explanation we ever get is that death himself made the cloak, which feels at least somewhat unlikely.
Which ultimately brings us back to the time turners, because I think we can take this same kind of logic
and apply it to them and see if it helps us answer any questions.
Do they fall more into the soft magic category?
Meaning they are just incredibly unique, magical artifacts that can do what they do?
Or are they more hard magic and how they work can actually be explained?
And then, of course, also answering the other question, which is simply is Hermione actually older
at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban
because she spent so much time going back and living back to the present?
Magic system question, though, first:
the first thing we need to determine
is whether or not time travel within Harry Potter is soft or hard.
And my answer to that is it's a little bit of both.
Let me attempt to explain. The author herself
At one point in time has actually said
that she feels like she played a little bit too fast and loose with the inclusion of Time Turners.
So, of course, made for a fantastic plot device inside of the book Prisoner of Azkaban.
But then they also kind of posed problems into the future of the series.
Because any powerful, magical object that can accomplish
anything usually comes with some other drawbacks, at least from a writing standpoint.
Basically, in this case, if we can go back in time, why do we ever let anything bad happen?
We can always drop back and fix it.
Like after Harry returns from the chamber with Quirrell and Voldemort in his first year,
Dumbledore could have just pulled out a Time Turner,
gone back in time and been in the chamber with Harry when this happened to make sure
nothing bad actually happened to him.
But if he eventually decides to go back in time to be there for Harry,
then he always decided to go back in time and be there for Harry,
which means that Dumbledore was always there in every version of this story.
You see how it kind of like takes the stakes out of everything.
In any case, the problem of Time Turners as a plot device in the series
is ultimately resolved in Order of the Phoenix, specifically in the Department of Mysteries.
It's not explicitly stated that all the Time Turners are destroyed inside of the battle, but
at the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, Hermione does confirm this
Ah, I always knew
you'd find it hard to squeeze me into your timetables, even if you applied for Tom Turner's.
We couldn't have.
We smash the entire stock of ministry time turners when we were there last summer,
it was in the daily profit.
What's kind of interesting about the fact that this is where that happened to be destroyed is that it
means this is where they exist when they haven't been lent out to students for use at school.
But in addition to that, I believe the reason why they are stored here
specifically is because this is where they were created.
We actually do know from an article about Time Turners on Pottermore how they came to be in the first place.
According to Professor Saul Krueger, "As our investigations currently stand,
the longest period that may be relived without the possibility of serious harm to the traveler
or to time itself is around 5 hours. We have been able to encase single hour reversal charms,
which are unstable and benefit from containment in small enchanted hour glasses
that may be worn around a witch or wizard's neck and revolved according to the number of hours
the user wishes to relive." This is where
I think we can start to get an answer to the question of whether or not this is soft or hard magic.
Because basically what this article is suggesting is that the power of time travel is able to be diluted
or taken from its source of raw power and placed inside of these necklaces that we know as Time Turners.
This is what leads me to believe that time travelers fall under the category of hard magic.
The time turners themselves do not create their own magic.
They are not individually unique or specifically extremely powerful on their own.
Really, what they are in the simplest form are containers. This would make them
much more similar to the other invisibility cloaks that we've seen within the series,
which rely on either a specific material or spell in order to render the wearer invisible.
If the cloak is made entirely of demiguise hair then yes, we can't see you.
But we can also explain why that happens.
Even if the explanation is a made up creature, it's still an explanation.
So what it really does is beg the question as to what is the Demiguise in this example
what are the workers in the Department of Mystery
tapping into in order to gain the power that they are then placing inside of the Time Turners?
And interestingly, the answer to this question I think both explains how Time Turners work and also gives us
some insight into whether or not Hermione actually aged when using the time to lose herself.
I find it extreme interesting that the time prisoners
are held within the Department of Mysteries, because if there is anywhere within the entire series
that is chock full of objects that fall into the soft magic category, it's there.
And if anything, I think even within this particular universe where magic
just freely exists, this department exists. Wizards know there is magic.
This stuff shouldn't be mysterious to them.
And if it is, then how come?
And the simple answer is they can't. Wizards can't explain how this magic works.
And as a refresher of other really bizarre items we find in the Department of Mysteries,
there are the tentacular brains that attack Ron, a room that is just full of solar system.
And of course, the veil that serious falls into that is just quite literally a portal to death.
It also contains every single prophecy that has ever been made,
which also means that the ability to see the future is truly unique,
making fortune telling both completely real and also not teachable at all.
To that end, Trelawny: terrible teacher.
Also correct.
100% of the time. If you'd like to find out more, check the video by clicking the card.
But back to the Department of Mysteries, where we also get to enter the time room,
where I'm sure it comes as no surprise where we can probably start to get some answers.
The time room is covered floor to ceiling in every direction of clocks of all different types.
It contains a glass shelf full of all the Time Turners and at the very end of the room is a glass bell jar
where a hummingbird is quite literally
going through the processes of life just over and over and over again on repeat.
And it's that bell jar that I think holds the answers that we're looking for.
In the ensuing battle, Hermione stuns a death eater who crashes into this very bell jar,
at which point his head starts to age down to a baby and then back to adulthood and back again,
over and over again.
So I think that this bell jar must be the soft magic that is worked with to create the hard magic
time turners. How does it work? We don't know.
But we have time travel in a jar that we are then able to siphon off into these tiny devices.
But the devices we do understand and they have rules.
Every time you turn the hourglass over, you could travel one hour back in time.
As we move ourselves back to the Hermione question, my first instinct here was to believe
that whenever Hermione was using the time Turner to go back in time,
she was also aging herself backwards by an hour or 2 hours, however far back
she went, meaning that like for every hour that she went back in time,
whenever she brought back to the present, her net age would remain the same.
But Hermione's situation is quite a bit different than what we're seeing happen to the Death Eater
The Death Eater in this example has effectively poured time travel all over himself
and is feeling the effects of time travel without ever actually leaving the present.
It's exactly what we see in Avengers Endgame, where they try to send Scott Lang back in time.
He also ends up turning into a baby, and it's because what they're doing is pushing time
through him instead of him through time.
Hermione, on the other hand, travels with time away from the present, meaning in her case.
I do think that every hour she goes back in time is an additional hour she has existed.
She ages up by that hour,
meaning at the end of the school year, she is actually aged more than she should have.
The question is by how much?
Well, we actually have a fairly comprehensive breakdown of what Hermione's schedule
looked like in her third year.
And what we concluded is that she needed to use the Time Turner
five times per week, twice on Mondays and three times on Thursday.
Also apparently they have Saturday classes. Did you guys know this?
Because this was literally the first time we ever learned this bit of information, while in the meantime
they're just not going to class at all on Tuesday, and Wednesday.
What's up with that? What is this madness?
Also, if I'm reading this correctly, it means that she had Arithmancy twice on Thursday.
I don't know about you guys but seems like a rough Thursday. Anyway on that note
time for the fun part: math.
Assuming she has the typical 36 week school year and she's using it five times per week
That means she used it a total of 180 times plus I guess an additional
like 3 hours for the whole Sirius Black thing.
So that is 183 hours divided by a 24 hours in a day, which gives us 7.625 days she aged.
She is basically one full week of her life older at the end of the school year.
Honestly, no wonder she's so much more mature than Ron and Harry [laughs].
It all makes sense now. -Yeah but I was talking to you there
and now you're there!
And we actually have to take this idea one step further because what are the other characters that we know
took all 12 OWLs which means he almost certainly also had a time
turner is one Percy Weasley. That's right hope you're ready for math again just like Hermione on Thursday.
Also who was even remotely surprised that Percy is older than everybody else even more.
It's like he was older than everybody else to begin with. But because he did pass all 12 OWLs
we're going to assume that he's stuck with the schedule from year three all the way through year seven.
With that being the case, it would mean that he would have aged up five additional weeks,
which is shockingly low to us, who can't really comprehend why he acts like he's 30.
-I happen to be a school prefect. -Honestly,I'm 32 and he's still he seems older than that. So...
...something else. Anyway, guys, that is how we believe Time Turner's work.
Let us know what you think in the towel section down below.
But guys, as always, thank you so much for watching.
Be sure to like this video abd subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.
If you'd like to hear more information about how Percy almost certainly had a Time Turner,
you can check out this video right here. Otherwise, until next time: Bye.