Harry was tested (via Veritaserum) after the Daily Prophet incident. The fact that he is being tested in regards to Quirrell’s illegal activity is not evidence of it’s failure, it only shows that it’s impossible enough to make someone suspect Harry Potter was involved.
A flashback where Quirrell explains the failsafe to Harry might have helped, though. For example, he would have foresaw the hide-from-dementors nature of Patronus 2.0 as a clue for Dumbledore (which is probably what prompted him to make this particular failsafe in the first place). How much of it did he explain to Harry?
It is not really important, however. The moment Harry recieved the message at 3PM, he was committed. DO NOT MESS WITH TIME!
Still, your question made me notice my (possible) confusion, so… good one.
The alarming thing about being tested isn’t that they tested Harry specifically; it is that they were aware that tests needed to be performed at all. Had the plan gone successfully, nobody would have ever have known that Bellatrix was removed. Remember that the entire advantage of Patronus 2.0 (to Quirrell) was the undetectable nature of it. It allowed a person to commit a perfect crime without the guards or dementors being aware that a crime ever occurred.
From the point of view of Harry, sitting with his invisibility cloak in the empty room at 3:00 PM, only a small number of possible futures could exist:
No note—Either the plan will go successfully, Harry shall be captured/killed in the attempt, or they abort for some other reason.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Passcode note—Harry will not be apprehended, but the plan will fail in some way and Harry is a suspect. Or Harry will chose to abort the mission and send back a false passcode preserve a stable time-loop. This is the result that actually occurred and is the only one that confirms a definite partial failure.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break. The problem is that both Harry and Quirrell act as if No Note was received. In the TPSE chapters, we do not see characters who are aware that their plan will be detected. They do not seem to act as if their plan is definitely going to partially fail. Neither does Harry take heart in nor mention the fact that he has already survived escaping Azkaban. Contrast with the same situation in cannon!PrisonerofAzkaban where it is a major plot point.
Edit: There is the possibility it is related to “Azkaban’s future cannot interact with it’s past”, but then you run into the problem of Harry being able to send the note at all. If they abort or are just more paranoid on their mission, Azkaban’s future is still effecting its the past either way.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break.
But so is this. A message ‘Abort! X, Y and Z bad things will happen if you try!’ can be reproduced and sent back in time perfectly well—and this kind of thing has been observed already in MoR.
They may be trying to avoid sending more information than necessary into the past, since there are known limitations on that. (No information can be sent more than 6 hours in the past, even through a sequence of time-turners.) I can’t think of a situation where it would be safe to send the information that something has gone wrong but not the information about how, and maybe they can’t either, but they could just be playing it safe.
One obvious option is that Harry might have chosen to commit to sending a note back with opaque instructions to himself either way, even if no test were being performed. In that case, getting the note would mean only that he returned in one piece. Is there an advantage to that?
Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn’t get a note and went on with the plan.
Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we’re merely following the one that did in the narrative.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
Harry was tested (via Veritaserum) after the Daily Prophet incident. The fact that he is being tested in regards to Quirrell’s illegal activity is not evidence of it’s failure, it only shows that it’s impossible enough to make someone suspect Harry Potter was involved.
A flashback where Quirrell explains the failsafe to Harry might have helped, though. For example, he would have foresaw the hide-from-dementors nature of Patronus 2.0 as a clue for Dumbledore (which is probably what prompted him to make this particular failsafe in the first place). How much of it did he explain to Harry?
It is not really important, however. The moment Harry recieved the message at 3PM, he was committed. DO NOT MESS WITH TIME!
Still, your question made me notice my (possible) confusion, so… good one.
The alarming thing about being tested isn’t that they tested Harry specifically; it is that they were aware that tests needed to be performed at all. Had the plan gone successfully, nobody would have ever have known that Bellatrix was removed. Remember that the entire advantage of Patronus 2.0 (to Quirrell) was the undetectable nature of it. It allowed a person to commit a perfect crime without the guards or dementors being aware that a crime ever occurred.
From the point of view of Harry, sitting with his invisibility cloak in the empty room at 3:00 PM, only a small number of possible futures could exist:
No note—Either the plan will go successfully, Harry shall be captured/killed in the attempt, or they abort for some other reason.
Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.
Passcode note—Harry will not be apprehended, but the plan will fail in some way and Harry is a suspect. Or Harry will chose to abort the mission and send back a false passcode preserve a stable time-loop. This is the result that actually occurred and is the only one that confirms a definite partial failure.
I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break. The problem is that both Harry and Quirrell act as if No Note was received. In the TPSE chapters, we do not see characters who are aware that their plan will be detected. They do not seem to act as if their plan is definitely going to partially fail. Neither does Harry take heart in nor mention the fact that he has already survived escaping Azkaban. Contrast with the same situation in cannon!PrisonerofAzkaban where it is a major plot point.
Edit: There is the possibility it is related to “Azkaban’s future cannot interact with it’s past”, but then you run into the problem of Harry being able to send the note at all. If they abort or are just more paranoid on their mission, Azkaban’s future is still effecting its the past either way.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.
But so is this. A message ‘Abort! X, Y and Z bad things will happen if you try!’ can be reproduced and sent back in time perfectly well—and this kind of thing has been observed already in MoR.
Have we had the version with X, Y and Z listed? (I agree that we have had Abort! messages reproduced and sent.)
No, haven’t. This seems to indicate a failure of rationality of the part of the time turner users. :)
They may be trying to avoid sending more information than necessary into the past, since there are known limitations on that. (No information can be sent more than 6 hours in the past, even through a sequence of time-turners.) I can’t think of a situation where it would be safe to send the information that something has gone wrong but not the information about how, and maybe they can’t either, but they could just be playing it safe.
One obvious option is that Harry might have chosen to commit to sending a note back with opaque instructions to himself either way, even if no test were being performed. In that case, getting the note would mean only that he returned in one piece. Is there an advantage to that?
Let’s speculate.
Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn’t get a note and went on with the plan.
Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we’re merely following the one that did in the narrative.
That’s not how time-turners work in canon, nor in this fic (other fics notwithstanding). See TVTropes:Stable Time Loop.
Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.