If there’s a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?
In canon, Dumbledore is called away for some business (Supreme Mugwump duties?), and I presume the same happens here. Now, why Dumbledore didn’t time-turner to both be at that business and here is harder to say—unless Quirrel explicitly used the time-turner prevention on going back more than X hours to send a message to Dumbledore preventing him from using his time-turner? I didn’t look closely enough at those rules to figure out whether or not it would be likely to work (and don’t have the time to pull out the relevant bits of HPMOR).
One way of preventing Dumbledore from using a time-turner is to have the disturbance take place at Azkaban. And after Bellatrix’s breakout, it shouldn’t be difficult to have him consider another potential Death Eater escape as a matter of absolute emergency requiring his personal intervention.
Of course, Azkaban is the one place Quirrell can’t act in directly, so he’d probably want to Imperius an off-duty Auror or something.
In the Azkaban arc, they were able to Time Turn away from Azkaban, do some preparation, then arrive after being informed of the breakout. I don’t think this would work to prevent Dumbledore from using a Time Turner to be in two places at once.
In canon, Dumbledore is called away for some business (Supreme Mugwump duties?), and I presume the same happens here. Now, why Dumbledore didn’t time-turner to both be at that business and here is harder to say—unless Quirrel explicitly used the time-turner prevention on going back more than X hours to send a message to Dumbledore preventing him from using his time-turner? I didn’t look closely enough at those rules to figure out whether or not it would be likely to work (and don’t have the time to pull out the relevant bits of HPMOR).
One way of preventing Dumbledore from using a time-turner is to have the disturbance take place at Azkaban. And after Bellatrix’s breakout, it shouldn’t be difficult to have him consider another potential Death Eater escape as a matter of absolute emergency requiring his personal intervention.
Of course, Azkaban is the one place Quirrell can’t act in directly, so he’d probably want to Imperius an off-duty Auror or something.
In the Azkaban arc, they were able to Time Turn away from Azkaban, do some preparation, then arrive after being informed of the breakout. I don’t think this would work to prevent Dumbledore from using a Time Turner to be in two places at once.