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Well, yeah - plot holes accumulate when a series is plotted out one book at a time, and it doesn't matter which series we're talking about.

Quoting from entry #5 in this list of plot holes:

cracked.com Wrote:We're picking on Harry Potter especially for this because after they use the time machine that one time, that was it. For the rest of the saga, the entire wizarding world is under siege from a magical Hitler, and they never again find the time travel useful? Despite all the people who die in the Harry Potter series (and post Azkaban, they start killing them off like it's a Friday the 13th movie) he never goes back and saves any of them?

Selfish prick.

I assume the easiest way to address this particular plot hole - "Why not simply use the Time Turner to assemble an army of Harrys, Dougs, etc. and take down Mouldyshorts once and for all?" is to paper over it - make sure Doug never finds out about the existence of time travel in the setting. But it might be fun to come up with a reason not to use it... or a reason to use it, and have it go wrong... or go horribly right.

("Mouldyshorts" is from the Sluggy Freelance parody of HP, BTW. It comes to mind because it's a setting where the Time Turner is used to short-circuit the entire plot.)

Well, IIRC, the Department of Mysteries' entire rack of time turners was explicitly destroyed during the Ministry Battle at the end of Order of the Phoneix, and that was the stockpile of them. So by the time anyone would have thought to use them, they were already gone. I don't think their manufacture was ever explored, but I seem to recall the implication that the supply of something critical to them was also destroyed.

The plot of The Cursed Child is built around a Time Turner constructed in secret by the Malfoy familiy and what happened everytime the original history was altered. I believe in one of the timelines Cedric became a Death Eater.

Now, as to how canon is it? YMMV, but my headcanon is that Cursed Child is just fanfic written by Rita Skeeter

It is a known fact in the Potterverse that time travel can be horribly dangerous:

Quote:When Eloise Mintumble travelled back in time to the year 1402, in 1899, there was a major breach of the laws of time, with catastrophic results. For one, Madam Mintumble was stuck in the 15th century for five days, and when she was finally retrieved to the present, her body had aged five centuries and she later succumbed in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Also, there were at least twenty-five people (all of them descendants of people Mintumble had met in the past) who vanished into thin air, effectively becoming un-born. Finally, the Tuesday that followed the ordeal lasted two and a half full days, while the following Thursday lasted only four hours.[1]

[1] Pottermore - New From J.K. Rowling: Time-Turner

Given facts like those and Doug's chaotic magic, he probably wouldn't want to risk such a tactic.

(09-22-2020, 06:16 PM)Shepherd Wrote: [ -> ]It is a known fact in the Potterverse that time travel can be horribly dangerous:

Quote:When Eloise Mintumble travelled back in time to the year 1402, in 1899, there was a major breach of the laws of time, with catastrophic results. For one, Madam Mintumble was stuck in the 15th century for five days, and when she was finally retrieved to the present, her body had aged five centuries and she later succumbed in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Also, there were at least twenty-five people (all of them descendants of people Mintumble had met in the past) who vanished into thin air, effectively becoming un-born. Finally, the Tuesday that followed the ordeal lasted two and a half full days, while the following Thursday lasted only four hours.[1]

[1] Pottermore - New From J.K. Rowling: Time-Turner

Given facts like those and Doug's chaotic magic, he probably wouldn't want to risk such a tactic.

Why we don't mess with recursive time loops...