Counterfactuals, Prophecy and Timelines

I didn’t have to wait long to encounter another story of magic and time travel. One nice perk about having a holiday is being able to get back into bed after a nice breakfast on a cold winter morning and cozy up to a good book. I had been saving Harry Potter and the Cursed Child just for this purpose! Previously I had considered whether I should read the play before watching the live theater production, and one of my colleagues (a Potter-fan) convinced me it was worth doing so. I was not disappointed!

[Spoiler alerts if you keep reading!]

While the script lacks some of the rich description of the surrounding environment (since presumably that is part of the stagework), the narrative has Rowling’s deft touch even though this is a collaborative effort with two other writers. The story moves along briskly with appropriate twists and turns. The central characters, Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, are well-developed as the narrative proceeds. Their fathers, Harry and Draco, have important parts to play. At its heart the story is about fathers and their children. A number of these relationships amongst other characters also make their appearance in the script. Ron and Hermione also make their appearances, while Ginny and McGonagall have more minor roles to play. A new and interesting character named Delphi is also introduced, and I expect her to feature again elsewhere in the Potterverse.

While time travel plays a prominent role in the story, it does not take away from the centrality of the father-child relationship arc, but instead supports the main storyline. By traveling into the past to change an event, in an attempt to influence the future towards a “desired” outcome, a counterfactual scenario can be truly experienced viscerally rather than entertained distantly as merely theoretical. That’s probably why thematic games will always have a following. There’s something about exploring “what if?” scenarios that is fascinating. It explains why Reacting To The Past has proven immersive and engaging in history classes, and why folks like me continue to enjoy complex boardgames, even ones that attempt to recreate life on earth.

In the Potterverse, time travel is not difficult if you are able to get your hands on a Time Turner. Book 3 (Prisoner of Azkaban) is my favorite book in the series with its very clever use of the Time Turner. The difficulty is obtaining this magical object since its use and distribution is under very strict control by the Ministry of Magic. It’s likely they have a Chrono-Division somewhere in the Ministry, alluded to in Book 5 (Order of the Phoenix), akin to the ChronoGuard in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. Baddies of all sorts should be trying to get their hands on them; oddly enough that doesn’t seem to happen in the original seven books of the Harry Potter series. Instead, different characters try to “change the future” by acting or reacting to Prophecies.

The bootlegged Time Turner used in Cursed Child is an inferior version, since it is only allows the user to go back in time for a very short five-minute window to make a change. Would the interference enough to significantly change the future on a large-scale, or would it be a mere ripple that affects minor local conditions but essentially not alter the flow of the great river that is the time-course. This is a key conundrum explored in science fiction; there is a rich trove of literature, movies, TV, and storytelling. I’ll be skipping that long discussion. In Cursed Child, the five-minute window means the user is immediately returned to the present (but possessing only one linear timestream of consciousness) – although it would be the present as affected by whatever modification was made by the quick trip into the past. In this book, the effects are significant and the user quickly realizes that the change did not have the desired effect imagined in the grand scheme of things. When one is focused on trying to change the outcome of one isolated event to change the situation in a future isolated situation, the sheer complexity of interactions is nigh impossible to fathom. The moral of the story: The “if only… then…” rationalization is almost always too simplistic in terms of actual outcomes. We are lousy at predicting the future.

This brings us to the question of Prophecy. In the Potterverse, it predicts the future in some way. In Book 3, the seer Sibyl Trelawney goes into a temporary trance during Harry’s final oral exam and predicts the reuniting of the Dark Lord and a trusted servant. In Book 5, Voldemort chases after a prophecy concerning himself and a potential adversary. The prophecies both have a certain vagueness and specificity. Voldemort assumes he is the “Dark Lord” referred to in the prophecy, probably correctly, and essentially self-fulfills the prophecy by attempting to kill the year-old Harry Potter. But it didn’t quite turn out the way he expected. So by “knowing” something about the future, he attempts to change the present. This parallels the time-travel instances in Cursed Child where knowing something about the present fuels the attempt to go back in time and alter a past event.

The Book 3 prophecy is much more specific referring to an event that would happen the very night it was made, so it is clear how it is fulfilled at the book’s conclusion. Interestingly, if the word “tonight” was not in the prophecy then the trusted servant could be Pettigrew but it could also be Crouch Junior. I think that’s a potential flaw in the early book – the over-specificity of the prophecy. But is it possible for prophecies not to be fulfilled? If Voldemort had chosen not to attempt to kill Harry, or if he had not heard the prophecy (it wasn’t made to him after all, and he only knew the first half), would it not have come to past? Possibly. But him being Dark Lord-ish, it was probably only a matter of time before he fulfilled it because this happens to all tyrants as a matter of history. So there might be a counterfactual system where Harry is not the “Chosen One” although the broad strokes of the prophecy are likely to be fulfilled. Could Pettigrew have been stopped on that eventful night in Book 3? Possibly, given the Time Turner allowed the possibility of second Harry stopping him. But rule-following Hermione restrains him. So perhaps Prophecy is not an iron-clad future prediction. Although in all cases, the prophecies are fulfilled. In Cursed Child, this takes place in an alternate timeline.

Can Cursed Child be classified as Book 8 in the series? The narrative meshes well with events in the previous book, hinting at the possibility that the series of outcomes along the main timeline could form a continuum with the previous seven books. The time-altering nature of the story however opens the possibility that this is Book 8a, and there could well be a Book 8b, 8c, etc that follow different timelines. This allows for endless possibilities (a la the Terminator movies). One can imagine also drawing in prequels such as the Fantastic Beasts movie. The Demiguise makes a cameo appearance, except interestingly in Cursed Child, the invisibility is used rather than its future prediction capabilities. The book is also a reminder that interest in counterfactuals is strong! I predict we will see more of this type of literature.

A good card game that explores time travel, paradoxes, alternate timelines and counterfactuals is Chrononauts by Looney Labs. As a bonus, you will probably learn some history. The game is zany and fun, and I’ve logged over 200 games in the past 15 years or so. I recommend the original game first before you try its sequel Early American Chrononauts also by Looney Labs. For a zany book series that is also intellectually stimulating I recommend Jasper Fforde.