Why is Hermione upset when she misses Charms?

A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about the trap that is time travel. It seems at first like a pretty fun and clever device: create a way for your characters to travel back and forth in time and then watch the fun ensue.

But, if you look at the concept too closely, if you explore the possible consequences of time travel on your narrative, you really might want to think twice before you employ it.

As much as I love The Prisoner of Azkaban -- it is, in fact, my favourite of both the books and the films -- I still believe that the introduction of the possibility of time travel to the Harry Potter universe  in this third novel is an strategic and dramatic error on the part of author.

The following passage from about two-thirds through the book jumped out at me recently as I listened to the Jim Dale audiobook version of The Prisoner:

Hermione was sitting at a table, fast asleep, her head resting on an open Arithmancy book. They [Ron and Harry] went to sit down on either side of her. Harry prodded her awake. 

'Wh-what?' said Hermione, waking with a start, and staring wildly around. 'Is it time to go? W-which lesson have we got now?' 

'Divination, but it's not for another twenty minutes,' said Harry. 'Hermione, why didn't you come to Charms?' 

'What? Oh no!' Hermione squeaked. 'I forgot to go to Charms!'

Hermione laments this mistake for some time, to the point where she brings it up later, having found out that Cheering Charms might just be on the exam.

"So what?" you ask. "It's a fun scene. It's neat to see Hermione not quite in control for once!"

And yes, it is an interestingly little scene, intended both to show Hermione in a more vulnerable situation and to pique our interest: just what is up with our favourite witch?

But think about it a little more deeply. We learn later that Hermione is in possession of a time turner, which permits her to travel back in time to attend several classes that are scheduled at the same time. She has been using it all year. As we learn at the start of term, she uses it on one day each week so that she can attend Divination at 9 a.m., then go back in time to attend Muggle Studies at 9 a.m., then travel back in time again to attend Arithmancy, again at 9 a.m.

Once she learns she has missed Charms class in this scene, why doesn't she just excuse herself, travel back in time and attend the class? Rather than freaking out and feeling unprepared for the exam, why not use the time turner, as she has done all year, to travel back and go to Charms?

And then you have to ask yourself: why is Hermione so tired? With the time turner, she could easily travel back in time once she's finished her homework each evening in order to go to bed at an appropriate hour so that she is well rested for the next day.

Say she studies until 3 a.m.. Fine. At 3 a.m., she spins the time turner six times, goes back to 9 p.m., and goes to bed. A good night's sleep follows and all is well!

Of course, if Hermione were to go just that, if she were to re-live an average of eight hours every day in order to keep up with her classes, her homework and her sleep, she would end up significantly older (about four months older) than the others at the end of the school year. Would that make a difference in their lives? Would the others notice?

I'm not sure but, because of the introduction of time travel, these are questions that have to be asked.

And they are just minor questions, raised by the brief scene reproduced above. As I've mentioned before, why doesn't Hermione go back in time far enough to stop Voldemort in the first place? Or at least to the point where Peter Pettigrew/Scabbers is easy to catch?

Time travel drives me crazy, dramatically

I hate time travel in stories.

Why?

Because, if the characters in the story can travel through time, it means that nothing matters. That any major plot development can be undone. That any death can be circumvented.

Simply by having a character travel back in time and avoid the development, stop the death from happening.

The movie Star Trek: Generations is a case in point. In that film, the writers establish that any character who enters a particular zone (called the "Nexus") can choose to leave the Nexus again at any point in time and space.

Great.

When Captain Picard enters the Nexus, therefore, he has the ability to go as far back in time as he wants and change history. Nothing that has happened in the past is therefore set in stone. He can go as far back as he wants and CHANGE EVERYTHING bad that's happened.

Once that fact is established, the plot loses all sense of suspense. There is nothing at stake anymore.

And then Picard chooses to emerge from the Nexus just in time to stop the bad guy from destroying an innocent planet -- chooses that moment rather some earlier moment where he could, for example, stop his beloved brother and nephew from dying in a fire (a major plot point earlier in the movie), then block the Klingons from interfering and then find the bad guy and arrest him before he can do any harm.

Picard's decision makes no sense. In the context of the reality established by the movie, Picard (the film's hero) is, in fact, a fool.

So when J.K. Rowling introduced the possibility of time travel in book three of the Harry Potter collection, I cringed. Really and truly I did. She had fallen into the trap. Nothing else could possibly matter if characters can travel back in time. Nothing bad that happens is ever permanent.

To her credit, Rowling makes excellent use of the time-travel trap in The Prisoner of Azkaban by having her characters travel back in time to save Sirius and Buckbeak.

She actually does it really well. It's a surprisingly exciting read and one of my favourites of the seven novels.

But it begs the Picard question. If they can control how far back in time she travels simply by spinning the Time Turner more or less times, why does Dumbledore not send them back far enough to allow Ron to capture Scabbers, lock him in a box and then use him to help clear Sirius' name without all the drama?

Or send them back 14 or more years to stop Voldemort before he really got started? If Voldemort is stopped before he kills Harry's parents, none of the terrible things that followed upon those murders would have happened. No one would have suffered.

In fact, why didn't Dumbledore himself go back in time right after he realized Tom Riddle was going to be a royal pain in the bottom and put a stop to Riddle's shenanigans?

Sure, we fans can invent all kinds of rules to avoid these questions: Time Turners can only take a person so far back in time and no more, for example. But Rowling doesn't make such rules clear in the book.

Now, in The Order of the Phoenix, Rowling tries to make this right. Or at least to remove time travel as an option that could be used to avoid the final battle of Hogwarts. She has all of the Time Turners destroyed in the Department of Mysteries (and allows us to develop a fan rule that no one alive is capable of making a new Time Turner).

Fine. Great. But I still think the introduction of the possibility of time travel in the magical world of Harry Potter serves to undermine the drama throughout the course of Harry's adventures. Rowling would have been better off not introducing it at all.

Even if it meant having to change the plot of the magnificent third book completely.

In a later blog entry, I'll talk about how I feel that Rowling's introduction of Felix Felicis, of the talking portraits in the Headmaster's office and of the idea of the Taboo also raises significant dramatic problems for these books.