Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: A Punch To Your Childhood
A proud nerd, born and raised, inheriting her love of all things geek from her father. Comics lover, writer, artist, chainmailler, cosplayer, binge watcher, and baker of incredible chocolate chip cookies, not to brag or anything.
No. 4: Digging Out The Time Travel Crutch
Credit: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was by far my favorite book. It introduced the sadly ill-fated friends Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, an array of great monsters like boggarts and werewolves, and brought in a really brilliant and believable use of time-travel with the 'time turner'. Later, in Order of the Phoenix, all the time turners were destroyed, making any possible alterations to the time-line, good or bad, impossible.
Okay. Great. Makes sense.
Everything's good, right? Wrong!
A defective time-turner surfaces in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, allowing the user to go back for several years, but only for five minutes. For as brief as five minutes is, Albus and his little buddy Scorpius sure do make a royal mess of the time-line. Not just once, but twice!
In total, Albus and Scorpius (eventually joined by Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and Draco with an unbelievable SECOND TIME-TURNER!!!) go back four times.
We get the time-line where Albus and Scorpious tried to make Cedric lose; Ron married Padma Patil, and Hermione turned into an even more snarky and bitter version of Severus Snape and somehow became the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor instead of Minister of Magic.
Next, we get the depressing time-line where Albus and Scorpius humiliated Cedric and he became a Death Eater; Harry died at the battle of Hogwarts, Voldemort has become king of the world, Snape is still alive and Umbridge runs Hogwarts. In that one we got to see Hermione and Ron as wanted resistance fighters, which is kind of cool until they both get their souls sucked out by Dementors. Finally, in the end, everyone goes back to October 1981 to stop Delphini from aiding her father. Harry does a crap job transfiguring himself into Voldemort to trick her, then every one cries together watching the real Voldemort kill James and Lily.
Happy times all around.
All the time travel rules have been destroyed. All the alternate time-lines are sad and useless.
Source: Time
Sad
With its wacky plot, uncharacteristic characters, and insanely inaccurate time-line, it reads more as a poorly thought out fan-fiction than an actual part of the Harry Potter series. I'm just going to pretend the books ended at seven and ignore the fact that I ever read this disjointed train wreck.