There are too many principals who interact with Harry afterwards for that explanation to be the easiest unless the story we have read is the False Memory that Future Harry implanted in his prior self after he shoved causal theory into a refrigerator and dropped it into Puget Sound.
That was originally where I was going with that, but further evidence of Harry’s plan (the lack of any use of time-turning until at least six hours after the fact) has pretty well falsified my prediction.
Next easiest: Harry goes back 5 hours, sends a note to original Harry explaining exactly what he has to do to save Hermione; original Harry does the heroics, including setting up a fake death and writing the directions he got, while future Harry executes the actions in the chapter, failing to prevent the death. There’s a maneuver somewhere in there where future Harry then snaps his fingers, goes back one hour, and somehow initiates the course of events described (probably by blackmailing time).
The theories have now gotten more unlikely than that Harry got the timey-wimey ball and is prohibited by an unstated rule from preventing a plot event.
There are too many principals who interact with Harry afterwards for that explanation to be the easiest unless the story we have read is the False Memory that Future Harry implanted in his prior self after he shoved causal theory into a refrigerator and dropped it into Puget Sound.
That was originally where I was going with that, but further evidence of Harry’s plan (the lack of any use of time-turning until at least six hours after the fact) has pretty well falsified my prediction.
Next easiest: Harry goes back 5 hours, sends a note to original Harry explaining exactly what he has to do to save Hermione; original Harry does the heroics, including setting up a fake death and writing the directions he got, while future Harry executes the actions in the chapter, failing to prevent the death. There’s a maneuver somewhere in there where future Harry then snaps his fingers, goes back one hour, and somehow initiates the course of events described (probably by blackmailing time).
The theories have now gotten more unlikely than that Harry got the timey-wimey ball and is prohibited by an unstated rule from preventing a plot event.