Time Travel in Harry Potter

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book, books, Destiny, fantasy, fiction, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, time travel, urban fantasy

I love the Harry Potter books, but this was one aspect that bugs the bageebers out of me.  I hate predestination in novels because I feel like it cheats the characters by negating their free will.  How is this related to Harry Potter?  Because of the scene at the lake in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, time is a solid, unalterable line.  Unlike in other scenarios where the person goes back in time to alter events, in Harry Potter, if it was possible to alter an event, you would have done so already, thus making your decisions irrelevant.  If this is going to ruin Harry Potter for you, please stop reading.

Causing Fate

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books, Destiny, Emlyn Chand, Farsighted, Fate, fiction, Kung Fu Panda 2, Oedipus, paranormal YA, Sophocles, theater, young adult

Oedipus, Farsighted, and Kung Fu Panda 2. What do they have in common? In each, a character brings about their own Fate by acting to avoid it.

Oedipus
Oedipus learns of a prophesy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. What he doesn’t know, is that he’s adopted. He runs away from home, trying to keep the prophesy from coming true. Thinking he is away from his parents, he stabs a stranger on the road and marries an older woman, thinking he has won. As it turns out, the stranger was his father and woman, his mother. By running away from the people he thought were his parents, he brought about the prophesy trying to avoid it.

This post includes spoilers for Kung Fu Panda 2 but none for Farsighted.