hermione time travel device

• Magical objects
• Malfoy family possessions
• Minerva McGonagall's possessions
• Plot to restore Lord Voldemort
• Time travel
• Português do Brasil

Time-Turner

• View history

A Time-Turner was a magical device used for time travel. It was a special timepiece which resembled an hourglass on a necklace. [1] [3]

The British Ministry of Magic encased an Hour-Reversal Charm in the time turners they created, for additional stability. The number of times one turned the hourglass corresponded to the number of hours one travelled back in time. However, they could only stay in the past for five hours at a time, without the possibility of serious harm to the traveller or to time itself. [1]

However, by 2020 , two other "true" kind of time-turners were created. The prototype only let the time traveller stay in the past for five minutes, while the improved model let them to stay in the past for as long as they wanted, and return to the future when they wanted. [5]

• 1.1 1993-1994
• 2.1 Typical Time-Turners
• 2.2 Theodore Nott's Time-Turners
• 4 Behind the scenes
• 5 Appearances
• 6 Notes and references

History [ ]

1993-1994 [ ].

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger use a Time-turner

Hermione Granger received one from Professor McGonagall in 1993, so that she could attend more classes in her third year than time would allow. Since McGonagall made her swear to not tell anyone about it, she did not mention it to Harry Potter or Ron Weasley until the end of the school year, when she and Harry used it to travel back in time and save Sirius Black and Buckbeak from certain death . Special permission from the Ministry of Magic had to be sought to allow Hermione to use one, but her academic record ensured that permission was given. [3]

Hermione found her third year stressful with the extra class load, and therefore decided to drop Divination , which she despised, and Muggle Studies , which she did not find very useful, given that she was a Muggle-born . This allowed her to have a normal schedule once again, and she returned her Time-Turner. Ron was disappointed that Hermione did not tell her friends about it, despite her promise to McGonagall. [7]

The entire stock of Time-Turners, located in the Time Room , in the Ministry of Magic were rendered useless during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996. While not "destroyed" per se, due to the way one of them fell when their counter was knocked over, the entire stock was trapped in an endless loop of falling over, un-falling, and then re-falling, in an endless cycle for all eternity, and was thus unable to be used. [2] [8] However, it is possible that other countries around the world would be willing to lend their own Time-Turners to the British government if asked.

By August 2020 , Theodore Nott , while working for Lucius Malfoy , created a prototype of a time-turner, presumably in the hope of saving Voldemort from his fate. The prototype only let the time-traveller stay in the past for five minutes, although they could travel as far back as they wanted. [5]

Nott eventually created a better and improved model, which let the time-traveller stay in the past for as long as they wanted. They could also use the device to return to the future when needed. While Malfoy kept the improved model, which was eventually passed down to his son, Nott kept the prototype. Even though they both owned something which could be used to save Voldemort, neither of them tried. [5]

In August 2020, Harry Potter, in his capacity as the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement , retrieved the previously unknown Time-Turner at the home of Nott. Being a "true" Time-Turner, it had the potential to cause catastrophic effects on time, and Nott was arrested for creating such a dangerous device. [5]

Although it was hidden in the office of Minister for Magic Hermione Granger , it was later stolen by Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy , who intended to use it in order to save Cedric Diggory and return him to his father . They created a disastrous sequence of events and alternate realities , finding that they could only stay in the past for five minutes. They managed to correct events and set time right with the help of the alternate Hermione, Ron Weasley and Severus Snape . [5]

When they were were abducted by Delphini , she used the time-turner to travel back to October 1981 to save her father . She then destroyed it to ensure she would not be forced to return to the present via the five minute restriction. [5]

However, in the present, Draco Malfoy revealed he had the improved Time-Turner from his father , that would allow him to stay in the past for as long as he wanted; he had always had to resist the urge to use it to see his deceased wife one more time. Along with Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione, they travelled back in time with help from a message sent by Albus in the past. They stopped Delphini by the combined might of both generations, and then returned to the future. [9]

Typical Time-Turners [ ]

A common Time-Turner

Time-Turners that were issued by the Ministry of Magic have an Hour-Reversal Charm placed onto them. They had a limit of travelling back a maximum of five-hours, which is the determined safety limit to the person and the fabrics of time. The Charm placed on them was unstable on its own and benefited from a container. [1]

Many different types of Time-Turners

The Ministry had a limited quantity which were not easily replaceable. [1] During the Battle of the Department of Mysteries , the Ministry's entire stockpile were destroyed and they were not repaired nor replaced. [2] Hogwarts students can apply for such a Time-Turner in order to take more classes, but they must undergo a large amount of screening process and must follow the most stringent set of rules, such as not abusing its powers nor let any outsiders know about it. [3]

Theodore Nott's Time-Turners [ ]

A pair of Time-Turners were created by Theodore Nott while he was working for Lucius Malfoy . There were two in total, and they were not restricted by an Hour-Reversal Charm, allowing one to travel back years or even decades. The prototype was kept by Nott until the Ministry found it following his arrest by Harry Potter. It was made of inexpensive metal and was not the finalised version; although still far more powerful than any Time Turner that had preceded it, the user could only stay in the past for five minutes before being sent back to the present. [5]

However, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy retrieved it and proved (albeit unintentionally), that a person could create enough damage with catastrophic results in such a small window. When Delphi took it, she destroyed it while still in the past, and proved that the device would then allow the users to stay in the past indefinitely. [5]

Nott was arrested when he was found to have created and being in possession of such a dangerous device. When Albus and Scorpius were found using this device, they were very close to being expelled by Headmistress Minerva McGonagall , had she not been understanding enough from her experience with their parents. Nevertheless, she barred them from all future visits to Hogsmeade , cancelled all their Christmas and Easter holidays , and gave them a multitude of detentions, while their parents gave them a severe scolding. Delphi was later arrested for using the device in an attempt to alter the timeline illegally, along with the cold-blooded murder of Craig Bowker Jnr with the Killing Curse . [5]

Lucius kept the second "true" Time-Turner as he enjoyed collecting powerful artefacts. The finalised device gleamed like gold, and was not restrained by a five-minutes duration. By his son Draco Malfoy 's belief, Lucius originally commissioned the creation of the Time-Turner to save Lord Voldemort from his fate , but ultimately decided not to. He passed the Time-Turner down to Draco, who used it to save Albus and Scorpius by travelling to the past. The device allowed them to return to the future by their own choice, instead of waiting for five minutes. Harry Potter told him that had the Ministry found Draco with the dangerous device, he would be sent to Azkaban for it. [5]

A Time-Turner while in use (Harry and Hermione in 1994 )

Time-related magic is unstable, and serious breaches in the laws of time result in catastrophic events. [1] According to Professor Saul Croaker : 'Just as the human mind cannot comprehend time, so it cannot comprehend the damage that will ensue if we presume to tamper with its laws'. Possible scenarios include a wizard or witch killing their past or future selves by mistake, [3] or altering one's life path in such a drastic fashion that it can result in temporal anomalies such as un-births , [5] making it imperative for users to practise discretion and operate in secret lest they encounter their past selves and do irreparable harm. [3] While not as potentially dangerous as skipping five centuries, even the re-use of a single hour could still have dramatic consequences and the Ministry of Magic enforced the strictest guarantees if it permitted the use of these rare and powerful objects. Time-Turner possession was hedged around with literally hundreds of laws, and the most stringent laws and penalties were in place to prevent their misuse. It would have surprised most of the magical community to know that Time-Turners were generally only used to solve the most trivial problems of time management and never for greater or more important purposes. [1] [5]

The consequences of meddling with time could be as severe as creating an alternate timeline, such as one in which Lord Voldemort was never defeated and still ruled. In this case, however, the person who had used the Time-Turner, if they still existed and weren't Un-born , would still have memory of the events of the original, un-corrupted timeline, but would have to learn second-hand the nature of the changes which had been made. [5] The alternate timeline apparently disappeared when the changes were "fixed". Another consequence of traveling long distances through time was that time itself could have been disturbed by such a serious breach of its laws. Such was the case after Eloise Mintumble returned from her five century trip. Tuesday following her reappearance lasted two and a half full days, whereas Thursday shot by in the space of four hours. The Ministry of Magic had a great deal of trouble in covering this up. [1]

According to Professor Croaker's law , the longest period that could be travelled back in time without serious chance of harm to the traveller or time itself is around five hours. [1] [10]

Behind the scenes [ ]

• In the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , while the importance of not being seen while travelling back in time is stressed, Harry and Hermione pass by the Clock Tower Courtyard while following their past selves. However, the executioner was sitting there, sharpening his axe . As such, he could have seen two pairs of Harrys and Hermiones. It may have been that he was too focused on sharpening his axe that he did not notice the second Harry and Hermione coming through. In addition, there is a scene played wherein Ron sees future Harry and Hermione enter the room at the same moment that their past selves disappear to travel back in time.
• In the book , when the Time-Turner is used it takes the person back to the location where they were present at the time they'd gone back to. However, in the film adaptation , when the Time-Turner is used it leaves the person in the same place they were when they turned time back. The GBA video game version has the user appearing at an entirely random place (i.e. Harry and Hermione use it in the Hospital Wing and appear at the Forbidden Forest ).
• The possibility of time travel within the Harry Potter universe could have caused significant problems, but characters appear to use them for trivial tasks that have no effect on existence as a whole. The one notable use of a Time-Turner within the book canon , the Rescue of Sirius Black and Buckbeak , obeys the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle . This theory of time-travel, stating that "Nothing can be changed because anything a traveller does merely produces the circumstances they had noted before travelling," is incidentally reminiscent of J. K. Rowling 's employment of self-fulfilling prophecy. However, references to catastrophes that can take place when time travelling (a reference to a wizard travelling to the past and being killed by his past self in Prisoner of Azkaban , or Eloise Mintumble 's time-travelling mishap in Pottermore in which several people end up un-born in the present) seem to go against Novikov Principle, indeed creating paradoxes. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child also shows that reckless use of a Time-Turner can result in the creation of an alternate timeline .
• Knowing that time-related magic is unstable, there might be different ways to experience time through magic. This would explain catastrophic events as with Eloise Mintumble , paradoxes as result of poorly performed time-related spells, and/or apparent differences between the experience of time travel through authorised Time-Turners in Prisoner of Azkaban and that through unauthorised Time-Turners in Cursed Child .
• When Eloise Mintumble time-travelled and changed things, it was noticed by other witches and wizards from the original timeline who went to retrieve her. When Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy time-travelled and changed things, the people from the original timeline did not believe they could retrieve the students. Harry Potter remarks that the Time-Turner cannot help them, because they do not know to what time the students went.

What could possibly be a time turner worn by McGonagall in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

• It is possible that Minerva McGonagall was wearing a Time-Turner in a deleted scene from Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald .
• It is unknown what the effect of excessive Time-Turner use might produce. The user might still age while within an hour produced by the Time-Turner, and if so, then for wizards or witches such as Hermione, constant use might age them faster, adding days, weeks, or even months onto their internal chronological clock. It is also unknown how this applies to later on in life. If Hermione was perhaps a month older by using the Time-Turner during her third year [11] , then biologically her seventeenth birthday might arrive a month earlier than her calendar birthdate might indicate, which might cause the Trace to have been lifted earlier as well.
• In LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 , there are grandfather clocks throughout Hogwarts which allow Hermione to use her Time-Turner to transport herself and her teammates back in time to complete certain objectives. One of these includes a mission where Harry and Hagrid hatch Norberta 's egg.
• The Time-Turner is one of the many collectables offered by the Noble Collection .
• Hermione Granger's Time-Turner is David Heyman 's favourite prop from the films. [12]
• You can hear quiet ticking as a background sound during part of the Time-Turner episode of the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban .
• In Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery , after botching his first date Barnaby Lee , repeatedly commented he wished he had a Time-Turner to redo the evening.
• Injuries acquired during time travel age up in a different manner than the time-traveller. When Albus Potter was injured after travelling twenty years in the past, his injury aged twenty years (according to Madam Pomfrey) even though Albus himself remained the same age. Similarly, Eloise Mintumble may have been injured when she was retrieved by her colleagues, ageing her up hundreds of years.

Appearances [ ]

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (First appearance)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (video game)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (play)
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Possible appearance) (Appears in deleted scene(s))
• LEGO Harry Potter
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• Harry Potter for Kinect (Mentioned only) (Appears in photographs)
• The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
• J. K. Rowling's official site
• Wizarding World
• Harry Potter: The Character Vault
• Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
• Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells
• Harry Potter: Magic Awakened

Notes and references [ ]

• ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Writing by J. K. Rowling: "Time-Turner" at  Wizarding World
• ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , Chapter 35 ( Beyond the Veil )
• ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 21 ( Hermione's Secret )
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• ↑ This quote comes from the " Harry Potter Sticker Kit ", containing a plastic replica of the Time-Turner used on the film.
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 22 ( Owl Post Again )
• ↑ Blue Peter (CBBC) interview with JK Rowling, confirming that all the MoM time-turners were destroyed.
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , Act Four, Scene Four
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , Act Two, Scene Sixteen
• ↑ Assuming an average usage of 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, for a period of 9 months, this would add up to approximately 24 extra days.
• ↑ See this video
• Harry Potter
• 1 Harry Potter
• 2 Tom Riddle
• 3 List of spells

How Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban's Time Travel Works

It’s been a couple weeks since we began delving into the world of time travel here at CinemaBlend, but to us, it’s felt like a minute. Time being relative and all, it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we’ve last met. What matters is we’re here, yet again, to look into the world of time travel at the movies, and the best part is this week’s exploration not only doesn’t require a time machine per se, we also don’t have to worry about scavenging an outfit once we’re back in the past. This week, it’s time to turn through the sands of time in the 2004 feature film adaptation of J.K. Rowling ’s novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban !

Yes, as Hogwarts’ sage headmaster Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) once said time is a “mysterious thing,” that is also “powerful, and when meddled with, dangerous.” But, as with anything else matching that description in the Harry Potter universe, that doesn’t stop some of our beloved fictional wizards from using them in a pinch. It’s time to solemnly swear we’re up to no good, as we dig into how the time travel of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban works.

The Time Travel In Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban drops a lot of bombshells in one fateful moment within the Shrieking Shack at Hogwarts. Sirus Black ( Gary Oldman ) is still very much alive, and is also a good guy/godfather to Harry Potter ( Daniel Radcliffe .) But a whole bunch of wizarding intrigue happens, and the end result is that Sirius is sentenced to death upon his capture. Which leads to director Alfonso Cuaron ’s big on screen time trip, where not one, but two lives hang in the balance.

Who's Time Traveling?

Hermione Granger ( Emma Watson ) and Harry Potter take the important journey through time. However, Ms. Granger has become a dab hand at the temporal arts throughout Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , as we eventually learn.

From When To When?

The big trip sends Harry and Hermione back to earlier in the evening where the big reveal about Peter Pettigrew’s (Timothy Spall) villainy takes place. Hermione’s other trips were also relatively small jaunts as well, as she was previously using the time turner to attend multiple classes at the same time throughout her third year at Hogwarts.

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

The Purpose Of Their Trip?

When Hermione Granger initially started time traveling, it was to double her course load in Year 3. With classes relevant to her interests happening at the same time, she’d be able to have her brain food and eat it too. However, the big trip sees Hermione and Harry trying to prevent two big tragedies: the executions of Buckbeak the Hippogriff and Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black.

How Time Travel Happens In Harry Potter

If you want to time travel in the Harry Potter universe, all you need is a little bit of jewelry. More specifically, you’ll need a Time Turner , a device which, upon first glance looks like a necklace with an hourglass built in. Good luck finding one though, as the entire lot of them were believed to have been held by the Ministry of Magic. Hermione got special permission to use one for her classes as long as she abided by the rules. First impressions would suggest that whoever wears this beauty is either a huge Boggle or Pictionary fanatic, or just likes to keep track of the time. The latter assumption, as it turns out, couldn’t be more appropriate.

To use the Time Turner, all the wearer (or in the case of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’s pivotal journey , wearers) has to do is turn the embedded hourglass once for each hour they want to go back, and they’ll be transported back to that time. According to Dumbledore’s instructions, three turns were all that were needed for this trip, which sent Harry and Hermione back from Midnight to 7:30 that evening, right before Buckbeak was to be executed. With a little magic math, we can calculate that one turn equals an hour and a half’s worth of time travel. That’s fine for a quick trip back into the past, but if one wanted to go further, it might be suggested that you put in a couple extra arm days at the gym when preparing.

A really neat feature to the Time Turner is the fact that, depending on how big your chain is, you can fit multiple travelers in for a trip to the past or future. As long as you and your intended companions can wear the chain together, the timeline is your oyster. The rationale behind all of this time traveling falderal is the same force that drives 90% of the Harry Potter universe: pure magic!

Can History Be Changed As A Result Of Time Travel In Harry Potter?

In the case of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , time travel is something that doesn't seem to really change the course of events. Everything from Hermione throwing rocks to attract Harry’s attention to Buckbeak not actually being executed to saving Sirius from the dementors happens on both sides of the Time Turner's use. We're merely seeing them from another point of view, which shows that the executioner's axe chopped into a pumpkin (the fence, in the book), and that it was Harry who saved his past self with his stag Patronus.

From where things stand in the film, it looks like Hermione Granger and Harry Potter are officially students of the Kyle Reese School of Time Travel, as we've got ourselves a predestination paradox here. (Also, in the books, Hermione never throws those rocks. But this is a movie, and those sorts of markers really help in the storytelling.)

Though this was a loop of events that were always going to happen, there are still rules to follow. As Hermione explains to Harry in the book, Professor Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith) warned her that horrific things could happen if one time travelled irresponsibly. Like, say, killing oneself in either the past or the present, which is sort of referenced in the film during Dumbledore's own warning to Hermione. His instructions were merely that she and Harry couldn’t be seen by anyone, which also warrants a tip of the Sorting Hat to one Dr. Emmett L. Brown and his views on time travel; but also muddies the waters as to whether or not the young wizards could ever really change anything.

As long as Harry and Hermione have accomplished their goals, and make it back to their starting position by the time they left, without running into their past selves, the timeline will presumably remain undamaged. Which, in turn, closes the predestination loop, and lets everyone return for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire .

Luckily for us, everything is pretty above board in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , and what we witness is a pre-determined flow of time that seems like it was always going to happen the way it panned out.

However, a quick spoiler alert’s worth of information, if you want to read about time travel going horribly wrong in the Harry Potter universe, you’ll want to check out the text to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child . Let’s just say the Back to the Future influences on time travel in this universe run way deeper in that particular story. Plus, you could go back quite far in the timeline if you really wanted to, as that Time Turner apparently operated on some different principles. With that, we’ll add one final caveat when it comes to time traveling in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter : make sure you’re traveling somewhere safe, as the spot you're standing is where you’re going to wind up.

What Are The Consequences Of Time Travel In Harry Potter?

Thanks to the keen wit and rule following of Hermione Granger, and with some help from Harry Potter of course, Buckbeak and Sirius Black are allowed to escape into the night. With their freedom won, and their lives spared, Sirius can now go into hiding, hoping that his name will be cleared and that things will die down enough for Harry to be able to come live with him. However, dark times wait ahead, as the course of events in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban weren’t changed so much as to alter history’s flow too heavily.

Peter Pettigrew still escapes from captivity, and Professor Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) resigns after it’s revealed to the world at large that he is, in fact, a werewolf. So the world of Harry Potter keeps turning in the same orbit that we would have expected, by and large. But when it comes to Buckbeak and Sirius, those changes are definitely large enough to make all the difference, and they wouldn't have been possible without the Time Turner.

Temporal Mischief Managed

And here we are, back where we started, at the cusp of a new time travel exploration. If it’s alright with you folks, it feels like a good time to relax with either a good cup of tea or a large brandy. But that doesn’t mean our temporal revels have ended; in fact it’s quite the opposite. However, before we announce next week’s excellent adventure, we’d like to take the time to thank you, the fans.

We’ve gotten feedback requesting some adventures we’d been planning on covering, like the Kelvin timeline of Star Trek , and other movies we hadn’t thought of tackling like the Lost in Space reboot from 1998. Gary Oldman just can’t stay away from time travel, can he. In addition to those requests, we have plans for the rest of the time traveling escapades from the Star Trek film series , as explorations of Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact are also on the board.

However, for next week, we have a most triumphant entry in the works. While we teased it a couple paragraphs above, we can now come out and say that next week’s time travel lesson will encompass the adventures of Bill S. Preston, Esq and Ted Theodore Logan; or as they’re better known to the world, Bill & Ted! It’s time to face the music, as the Wyld Stallyns are about to ride again, and it’d be most non-non-heinous if we didn’t jump into their bogus journeys throughout all of time and space. So tune up your air guitars and meet us at the Circle K next week, as we’ll pick apart the strange things that are afoot in the Bill & Ted universe.

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

10 Billie Eilish Red Carpet Looks That Challenged Norms For Women’s Fashion

The 32 Best LGBTQ+ Movies As Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes

Kristen Stewart Is Making Another Vampire Movie, And As A Twilight Stan I'm So In

Most Popular

• 2 Marvel’s Fantastic Four Reboot Has Cast Paul Walter Hauser, And I Already Have An Idea On Who He Could Be Playing
• 3 After Watching Jackass Forever, I Totally Get The ‘Promise’ Johnny Knoxville Made To His Kids About Making Another Movie
• 4 Britney Spears' Hotel Stay With Boyfriend Turned Chaotic With Cops And Paramedics Called Over 'Out Of Control' Behavior
• 5 Taylor Swift’s All Too Well Almost Didn’t Make It Into The Final Cut Of The Fall Guy, And I Kind Of Wish It Hadn’t

Harry Potter: How Does Hermione’s Time-Turner Actually Work?

Of all the magical items in the world of Harry Potter, none stand out more than the Time-Turner used in the Prisoner of Azkaban.

There are many things that make  Harry Potter so compelling, but the most obvious thing is the intricate universe. From the spells to the society of witches and wizards that secretly populate the world, the Wizarding World makes our world seem boring in comparison. And some of the  most interesting things shown throughout the series are the magical items, such as the Marauder's Map or the Sword of Gryffindor. However, out of all the stand-out items, the most fascinating is the Time-Turner, wielded by Hermione Granger in the franchise's third installment,  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Time-Turner gives Harry and Hermione the ability to go back in time to save Sirius Black and Buckbeak from an unsavory fate. Hermione had been using it throughout the school year to take extra courses above her full course load, and when Dumbledore suggests they can save someone by going back, they immediately take advantage of the opportunity.

RELATED:  Harry Potter: What Are Voldemort’s 7 Horcruxes - and How Were They Destroyed?

Time-Turners are definitely not a toy, and it's a testament to Hermione's mature demeanor that she even received one to use in the first place. They are heavily restricted by the Ministry of Magic because time-related magic is considered extremely unstable, with even slight breaches in time causing potentially catastrophic results. For additional stability in the Time-Turner device, the Ministry placed Hour-Reversal Charms on them that enable the device to go back in time for a maximum of five hours, which is deemed the safest allowable time. The number of times one turned the Time-Turner backward corresponds to the number of hours traveled.

Many people were worried about time-travel magic, especially during the time when Lord Voldemort was thought to be gone. If someone went back to the past and messed just one wrong thing up, the timeline where Voldemort was in power could very easily be restored. It was a huge risk, both on a personal level and on a larger scale. Therefore, the Ministry kept a tight grip on these devices, which is why Hermione receiving one is such a big honor.

RELATED:  Anakin Skywalker vs. Harry Potter: Which Chosen One Reigns Supreme?

The risks of using a Time-Turner means the user needs to fully operate in secret while they are in the past, lest they disturb the occurring timeline and cause a rippling butterfly effect. It doesn't help that the Time-Turner can include another person -- it can transport as many people that can fit within the necklace's chain. This is why the Ministry of Magic has literally hundreds of laws in place surrounding the use of the device.

However, despite it being a dangerous magical device, the Time-Turner can certainly be used for good when in the right hands, such as Hermione's. Not only did she use it for the mundane task of simply doing more schoolwork than the average student, but when presented with an opportunity to save someone's life, she uses it in the most responsible manner she can. No other magical item in the world of Harry Potter contains such risk yet yields such rich a reward.

KEEP READING:  Harry Potter: Remus Lupin’s Patronus Is... Exactly What You Think

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Wait, How Does Time Travel Work in Harry Potter ?

Spoilers ahead for those who haven ’ t finished  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Now that the script of  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child  has been loosed upon the world, we can talk all we want about the mechanics of the new Potte r play. There’s a  lot to discuss : Scorpius and Albus’s friendship, the fact that nearly every  Potter  adult works for the government (or runs a prank store), and the greatness of the Trolley Witch.

But above all, there is  Cursed Child ’s persistent use of time travel, thanks to the use of an uber-powerful Time-Turner (or pair of Time-Turners, technically) that can carry people years back in time. And, as so often happens when time travel is involved, inconsistencies and questions have resulted. Let’s try to make sense of this.

It seems we’re dealing with two different theories of time travel: In the play, time travel creates alternate futures. In the books, it all occurs in a single loop.

In the play, our main travelers are Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, who jump back in time to the Triwizard Tournament in order to save Cedric Diggory from his untimely death, which happened near the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire . Much in the style of Back to the Future , Albus and Scorpius’s actions in the past radically alter the future. When they disarm Cedric during the tournament, they also rejigger Ron and Hermione’s romantic history, making Ron end up with Padma Patil and erasing poor Rose Granger-Weasley from existence. In trying to fix that by traveling back to the second stage of the tournament and embarrassing Cedric, they create an even worse future where Voldemort wins.

By depicting this kind of time travel, Cursed Child deviates from the model used in the Potter books, where time travel operates within a closed loop instead of generating alternate timelines. Consider Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban : Hermione’s Time-Turner only allows her to go back in time for a few hours, and she only uses it to take more classes. Still, at the end of the book, Hermione breaks the rules, going back in time to save Sirius Black and Buckbeak. This all happens in a single loop: Harry and Hermione don’t alter the future so much as ensure that the past all goes in the right order. Before Harry goes back, for instance, a mysterious wizard casts a patronus to save him from some dementors. After time-traveling, Harry realizes that he is that wizard, and casts the patronus himself.

If Cursed Child operated according to the same principle, then Albus and Scorpius’s meddling would be incorporated into the central timeline: They would’ve already meddled in the Triwizard Tournament, and Cedric would’ve already died anyway — sorry, Robert Pattinson .

So if Cursed Child  changes how time travel works, is it not  Harry Potter canon?

Though J.K. Rowling wrote a great example of single-loop time travel in Azkaban , her descriptions of how time travel works in the Potter world are less consistent. In that book, Hermione mentions that “Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time … Loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!” In a post on Pottermore ( here’s a screenshot for those without accounts), Rowling describes one witch who got stuck in 1402, and changed the course of the lives of those she met so dramatically that “no fewer than twenty-five of their descendants vanished in the present, having been ‘un-born.’”

To the extent that Cursed Child explains itself, it does give one bit of new time-travel info: Scorpius mentions “Professor Croaker’s law — the furthest someone can go back in time without the possibility of serious harm to the traveler or time itself is five hours.” Perhaps, after that point, the rules of time travel shift. The universe can stitch discrepancies into a single timeline, but big alterations make it change course. That might not be satisfying, but hey, magic!

Going by that admittedly shaky rule, it seems that each successive trip to the past rewrites history, so the alternate futures we see in Cursed Child  would simply cease to exist once Albus and Scorpius set things right. As much as those reshuffled Ron-Hermione relationships provide fodder for fanfic writers, everyone should be happily settled in the one central timeline by the end of the play.

If writing about time travel is such a mess, why bother?

Time travel is a notoriously messy subject to bring up in fiction, and J.K. Rowling herself has said that she “went far too light-heartedly into the subject” in the series. In that same Pottermore post, she adds, “while I do not regret [introducing time travel] ( Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my favourite books in the series), it opened up a vast number of problems for me.” Rowling quickly had Hermione return her Time-Turner, and later destroyed the Ministry’s entire supply of Time-Turners in the fifth book to help prevent any number of plot holes. “When writing fantasy novels,” she concludes, “one must be careful what one invents. For every benefit, there is usually a drawback.”

Why do Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany return to that invention in Cursed Child ? Storywise, it allows them to return to some of  Potter ’s crucial scenes (Voldemort’s attack on Harry’s parents, for instance) and to revive some major characters (oh, hello, Professor Snape). It also lets Cursed Child ratchet up the stakes, but retain the same central conflict, in the now-familiar pattern in so many franchise extensions. Jurassic World had a T. rex , but even bigger; Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a Death Star, but capable of destroying even more planets; Cursed Child has Voldemort, but also Voldemort’s daughter and a whole future subjected to his rule. You wanted “more Harry Potter ”; you got “ Harry Potter times ten.”

In the Potter universe, by adulthood, the fun is pretty much over. In the play, the adults’ lives, and their relationships, seem to have stalled out – there’s a moving moment where Draco and Ginny mention that they were both jealous of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s friendship. The new generation, on the other hand, live calmer lives, but always under the shadow of their parents’ accomplishments. “It’s tough,” Delphi says as she seduces Albus in one scene, “to live with people stuck in the past, isn’t it?” The time travel, in the play, seems to stand in for that nostalgia; it’s dramatic shorthand for people corroded by the past. As that time travel proves, if you go back to the past again and again, the world starts to fall apart.

• harry potter
• harry potter and the cursed child

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 50: May 3, 2024
• 18 Jokes That Would Get Jerry Seinfeld Canceled Today
• One of the Biggest Movie Flops of the Year Is a Streaming Hit. Now What?
• Time for a Sugar Rush
• Mariska Hargitay Says Weinstein’s Rape Conviction Was Overturned for One Reason
• Summer House Recap: A Cold Shower
• The Idea of You Is a Mostly Not-Guilty Pleasure

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Magic/Time-Turner

• 2 Extended Description
• 4 Questions
• 5 Greater Picture

Overview [ edit | edit source ]

A Time-Turner in appearance is a small, sparkly hourglass, often worn as a pendant.

Extended Description [ edit | edit source ]

A Time-Turner allows for limited time travel; turning the Time-Turner over once causes everyone within the attached chain to go one hour back in time. It also appears that it allows for some control over where in space they will appear. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Hermione uses this extensively to attend more classes and exams than would be physically possible; for instance, we see on her first day at school that she is taking three classes at the same time. The Time-Turner is loaned to her by Professor McGonagall under the conditions that she use it strictly for attending classes, and that she never allow herself to be seen using it. Hermione does somewhat break this injunction at the end of the book , when she and Harry use the Time-Turner to revert to a time three hours earlier so that they can save Sirius Black . At the end of that book, Hermione drops a class, which she says will put her onto a schedule that is at least humanly possible; she returns the Time-Turner to Professor McGonagall.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , part of the battle at the Department of Mysteries takes place in a room devoted to the mystery of Time, and Neville , aiming a Stun jinx at a Death Eater , misses when the Death Eater ducks. The spell hits a glass-fronted cabinet containing a large number of hourglasses, which Harry recognizes as Time-Turners. The cabinet falls over and smashes, and then immediately returns to its prior state, only to fall and smash again and again.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , Hagrid , resigned to the fact that none of the Trio are taking his course, mentions that he knows their schedules are full, and reckons that they might have been able to fit Care of Magical Creatures in if they had Time-Turners. Hermione tells him that the entire collection of Time-Turners at the Ministry were destroyed, and that there are none left in the world as far as anyone knows.

Analysis [ edit | edit source ]

The Time-Turner is an incredibly useful device; even with the need for precautions, it would be amazingly useful to have the ability to go back and do over the past. The Time-Turner is a device that could destroy any mystery, and make anything possible: with a Time-Turner, Voldemort could "fold" himself, and three of him could face one Harry, thus making his final victory assured. Presumably, it is because it is possible to misuse this device that the author felt they should be destroyed in the battle at the Department of Mysteries.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , Dumbledore , speaking of a different event, mentions that something is very deep magic and not well understood by anyone. This implies that there are other areas of magic that are extremely obscure. We could safely expect one of those to be time, as an entire subdepartment at the Ministry is devoted to it. It is entirely possible that the witches or wizards who created Time-turners initially were unable to pass on the secret of how they did so; likely they were naturally adept at manipulation of time, and were unable to pass on their knowledge because no other adept was then available. So while to a Muggle observer, it seems obvious that someone should have just made more Time-Turners, it is quite possible that no living witch or wizard knew how.

Questions [ edit | edit source ]

Study questions are meant to be left for each student to answer; please don't answer them here.

Greater Picture [ edit | edit source ]

• Book:Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter

Navigation menu

• Entertainment
• The Trouble With Time Travel in the <em>Harry Potter</em> Universe

The Trouble With Time Travel in the Harry Potter Universe

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child .

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is finally here. The script of the West End play was released July 31 at midnight — Harry’s birthday , for those who somehow do not know — giving Potterheads a new tale about the Boy Who Lived.

Written by Jack Thorne and based on a story by J.K. Rowling , Thorne and John Tiffany, the play begins 19 years after the events of The Deathly Hallows , as Albus Potter (the youngest son of Harry and Ginny) and Rose Granger-Weasely (the daughter of Ron and Hermione) head off to Hogwarts for the first time. While on the Hogwarts Express, Albus befriends Scorpius Malfoy (the son of Draco and Astoria) who informs Albus that many people believe his real father is Voldemort rather than Draco, a rumor based on the belief that someone used a Time-Turner to allow the Dark Lord to impregnate Astoria.

For those who need a quick recap, Time-Turners were first introduced in the third book of Rowling’s series, The Prisoner of Azkaban , when Hermione was given one by Professor McGonagall in order to fit extra classes into her school schedule. Hermione keeps the device a secret for most of the book before using it to send herself and Harry back in time to prevent the death of Sirius Black — a mission that proved successful.

However, the Ministry of Magic’s entire store of Time-Turners — including the one Hermione once possessed — is eventually destroyed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in The Order of the Phoenix .

At this point, you’re probably wondering why anyone would believe the rumor about Scorpius if the Time-Turners were truly destroyed. Well, when Theodore Nott — one of Draco’s old Slytherin cronies — is arrested during Albus and Scorpius’s third year at Hogwarts, it comes to light that he just so happens to have a functioning one in his possession.

The rest of the story develops as Albus and Scorpius steal the device from the Ministry and use it to try and prevent Cedric Diggory from being killed during the Triwizard Tournament, setting off a butterfly effect that threatens to change the course of wizarding world history.

Now, here’s where things get complicated. The characters in Harry Potter have dabbled in time travel before, but never to such a large degree. In Prisoner of Azkaban , the HP universe seems to adhere to the Novikov self-consistency principle , which states — in very broad terms — that time is a closed loop. Basically, you cannot change the past through time travel, you can only fulfill it. This is best summed up by Harry in the Prisoner of Azkaban movie when he says, “I knew I could do it this time because, well, I’d already done it,” after conjuring the Patronus that saves his past self and Sirius Black from the Dementors.

Stories that involve time travel often struggle with this point, from Back to the Future to Stephen King’s 11-22-63 : You can change the past, but then everything that follows creates a universe in which the new reality seems like it was always the reality. This concept is problematic because it produces a universe in which the past is dependent on a future that is dependent on the past — i.e., Harry cannot survive unless his past self survives, but he won’t be able to travel back in time to save himself unless he originally survives.

Confused? There’s more.

Rowling also has both Hermione and Dumbledore emphasize the dire repercussions of allowing your past self to see you — you’ll go mad — meaning you can, in fact, disturb the closed loop and produce a scenario that doesn’t result in the creation of the present from which you originally came. This detail muddies the waters of the series’ time travel system, as it introduces questions such as, why couldn’t a Time-Turner have been used to stop Voldemort?

Essentially, without rules governing what can or cannot happen, any number of paradoxes can arise from characters’ forays into the past — people can even be “un-born.”

Rowling has since tried to explain this inconsistency by stating that the farthest a person can travel back in time without “catastrophic” consequences is five hours. In a post on Pottermore , the author wrote from the perspective of the Department of Mysteries’ Professor Saul Croaker to stress this particular point.

“As our investigations currently stand, the longest period that may be relived without the possibility of serious harm to the traveller or to time itself is around five hours,” Croaker says. “We have been able to encase single Hour-Reversal Charms, which are unstable and benefit from containment, in small, enchanted hour-glasses [Time-Turners] that may be worn around a witch or wizard’s neck and revolved according to the number of hours the user wishes to relive. All attempts to travel back further than a few hours have resulted in catastrophic harm to the witch or wizard involved.”

While the limit to the amount of time one can go back is changed to five minutes in Cursed Child , it is enforced by having characters who overstay their welcome be forced back to the present. However, the rules seem to have changed. While Rowling previously seemed to indicate that one could only reverse time five hours from the present moment without risking permanent damage, characters are now able to travel back for five minutes to any point in time.

And although Albus and Scorpius’s trips back to the Triwizard Tournament all have serious consequences, when Draco shows up with the “perfected” Time-Turner — one without the five-minute limit — near the end of the story, the whole group returns to the night Voldemort killed Harry’s parents without upsetting the course of the future in the slightest.

Now, all of this is not to say that Cursed Child isn’t a perfectly enjoyable read. In fact, the play has received rave reviews . However, some fans have expressed disappointment about the inconsistencies it introduces, saying it seems more like a fan fiction than a continuation of Rowling’s beloved series.

Basically, the moral of the story is: read at your own risk.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• How Far Trump Would Go
• Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
• Saving Seconds Is Better Than Hours
• Why Your Breakfast Should Start with a Vegetable
• 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
• Welcome to the Golden Age of Ryan Gosling
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]

How Does Harry Potter's Time-Turner Actually Work?

T here is no other series that fully captured the hearts of an entire generation the way that the Harry Potter books and movies did. Part of the reason for this is the captivating and magical aspects of the Harry Potter universe that set it apart from our own mundane world. J.K. Rowling introduced many magical items that grasped the imagination of Potterheads everywhere, and one of the most fascinating items is the Time-Turner-but how does this time-traveling necklace actually work?

The magic of time travel was first introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban . Throughout Harry, Ron, and Hermione's third year, Hermione is acting pretty strange and somehow manages to double book her schedule, something that truly perplexes Ron. 

By the end of the year, we find out that Hermione has been using a time-traveling necklace called a time-turner to allow her to travel back in time and be in two places at once. While Hermione is supposed to keep the time-turner a secret, Dumbledore instructs her and Harry Potter to use the device and go back three hours in order to save Sirius Black and Buckbeak from their executions. 

While time travel is an interesting concept to include in children's fantasy series like Harry Potter, and is a creative way for the Golden Trio to get themselves out of a pickle in year 3, inventing a device like the time-turner raises many questions that J.K. Rowling most likely wasn't prepared to answer.

In fact, we learn very little about the time-turners in the series, and Rowling ends up destroying the rest of the time-turners owned by the Ministry of Magic at the end of Book 5, no doubt to try to resolve any plot holes time travel would likely create in the overall story. 

Still, from the little that she described, we can create inferences to try and understand how exactly time-turners work in the Harry Potter universe. Essentially, the time-turner is a tiny little hourglass connected to a chain the user wears around their neck.

The hourglass is charmed so that for every turn, it will be transported back by one hour, and the necklace is charmed so that any wearer (even multiple people wearing the same chain) will be transported through time and space with the hourglass.

Time-turners were not considered playthings by the Ministry of Magic, and in fact, many witches and wizards in the Harry Potter universe were scared of the catastrophic consequences that could be brought on by the use of time-turners. For instance, if a time-turner fell into the wrong hands, it could mess up the timeline and even bring back Lord Voldemort. 

Because of this, the Ministry kept a tight hold on all time devices and kept them locked away in the Department of Mysteries. They also added hour-reversal charms to the devices, making sure that all time-turners had a maximum time travel capability of only five hours. 

The consequences that could arise from a time-turner falling into the wrong hands could be detrimental, so it makes sense that the Ministry of Magic would be strict about who they allowed to use one of these devices. Which is what makes it so strange that a 13-year-old student like Hermione is allowed to use one in order to take a couple of extra classes.

Sure, Hermione's grades were better than Harry Potter's or the rest of her classmates, but is that really enough for the Ministry of Magic to allow her to use such a powerful device when grown wizards and witches are denied the privilege?

This is just one of the plotholes that the time-turners introduce to the Harry Potter series, and while it seems strange that the Ministry allowed a 13-year-old access to some of the most powerful magic, it can be explained away by the fact that most of the Ministry was run by complete idiots anyway.

While some fans have wondered if the time-turners created additional plot holes, like why didn't the trio travel back in time to kill Voldemort rather than having to go through the Horcrux scavenger hunt, this is also explained by the fact that time-turners are maxed out at a five-hour time-reversal.

Despite its inherent danger, the time-turner is a fascinating magical object that deserves to be explored in deeper detail (although not like it was in Cursed Child -that story is simply not canon, in our opinion). While we don't know its exact science, it would be fascinating to learn more about how time works and how magic influences time in the Harry Potter universe.

The post How Does Harry Potter’s Time-Turner Actually Work?  appeared first on GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT .

GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT

• Bill Murray Changed The English Language With One Line In Ghostbusters
• The Hugh Jackman Thriller On Netflix That Will Make You Sweat With Tension
• New Star Wars Series Canceled, Creators Fired

• Articles with information from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Hermione Granger's possessions

Time-Turner

• View history

The Time-Turner was a device capable of time travel that resembled an hourglass on a necklace. The number of times one turns the hourglass corresponds to the number of hours one travels back in time. It is extremely important that the user of a Time-Turner not be seen by past or future versions of themselves unless, of course, said versions are aware of their usage of a Time-Turner. A possible scenario is a wizard or witch killing their past or future selves by mistake. It is unknown if there is a limit to how far into the past a Time-Turner can travel.

• 2 Behind the scenes
• 3 Appearances
• 4 Notes and references

History [ ]

Hermione Granger and Harry Potter used a Time-Turner in 1994 .

Hermione Granger received one from Professor McGonagall in 1993 , so that she could attend more classes in her third year than time would allow. Since McGonagall made her swear to not tell anyone about it, she did not mention it to Harry or Ron until the end of the school year, when she and Harry used it to travel back in time and save Sirius Black and Buckbeak from certain death. Special permission from the Ministry of Magic had to be sought to allow Hermione to use one, but her academic record ensured that permission was given.

Time turner-close up

Hermione found her third year stressful with the extra class load, and therefore decided to drop Divination , which she despised, and Muggle Studies , which she did not find very useful, given that she was a Muggle-born . This allowed her to have a normal schedule once again, and she returned her Time-Turner. Ron was disappointed that Hermione did not tell her friends about it, despite her promise to McGonagall.

The entire stock of Time-Turners, located in the Time Room , in the Ministry of Magic was destroyed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996 . [2] [3]

Behind the scenes [ ]

A silver Time-Turner.

• It is possible that Barty Crouch Jr. , Percy Weasley , and Bill Weasley used Time-Turners, as they were all each known to have achieved twelve O.W.L.s .
• It is unknown when or if the Ministry of Magic replaced the Time-Turners that were broken during the battle in 1996, or if it is even possible to recreate or replace a Time-Turner.
• In the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Harry and Hermione were seen by the executioner twice, having walked past him scowling, then ran past him again while "retracing their steps."
• In the book , when the Time-Turner is used it takes the person back to the location where they were present at the time they'd gone back to. However, in the film version , when the Time-Turner is used it leaves the person in the same place they were when they turned time back. The video game version has the user appearing at an entirely random place (i.e. Harry and Hermione use it in the Hospital wing and appear at the Forbidden Forest ).
• The possibility of time travel within the Harry Potter universe may seem to allow many plot holes, but characters appear to use them for trivial tasks that have no effect on existence as a whole. The one notable use of a Time-Turner within canon, the Rescue of Sirius Black and Buckbeak , obeys the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle . This theory of time-travel, stating that "Nothing can be changed because anything a traveler does merely produces the circumstances they had noted before travelling," is incidentally reminiscent of J. K. Rowling 's employment of self fulfilling prophecy, but while prophecies within canon are relevant only to the degree that characters place relevance on them, as the books state Harry Potter and Tom Riddle could walk away and void the prophecy if they chose to, the same cannot be said for the series if any major events within the books or the Harry Potter universe as a whole have been related to the Time-Turner's misuse.
• This does not, however, refute the idea that people can change the past through the use of an object like the Time-Turner.
• It is unknown what the effect of excessive Time-Turner use might produce. The user might still age while within an hour produced by the Time-Turner, and if so, then for wizards or witches such as Hermione, constant use might age them faster, adding days, weeks, or even months onto their internal chronological clock. It is also unknown how this applies to later on in life. If Hermione was perhaps a month older by using the Time-Turner during her third year [4] , then biologically her seventeenth birthday might arrive a month earlier than her calendar birthdate might indicate, which might cause the Trace to have been lifted earlier as well.
• In LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 , there are grandfather clocks throughout Hogwarts which allow Hermione to use her Time-Turner to transport herself and her teammates back in time to complete certain objectives. One of these includes a mission where Harry and Hagrid hatch Norberta 's egg.
• It is also a possibility that it is impossible to change the past, leaving a Time-Turner to only let users see what actually happens at another place. Examples that can explain this is that in the actual time, Harry was also hit by a snail shell, and Hermione still heard the crack of a branch. Which was what happened in the past .
• The Time-Turner is one of the many collectables offered by the Noble Collection .
• Part of the inscription on Hermione's Time-Turner - " nor have I yet outrun the Sun " - seems to suggest that Time-Turners can only travel backwards in time, not to the future. Alternatively, this may suggest a limit on how far back the Time-Turner may travel. It is possible that Time-Turners can only travel as far back as the beginning of the day.
• Hermione Granger's Time-Turner is David Heyman's favourite prop from the films. [5]

Appearances [ ]

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (First appearance)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (video game)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Mentioned only)
• LEGO Harry Potter: Characters of the Magical World
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
• J. K. Rowling's official site

Notes and references [ ]

• ↑ This quote comes from the " Harry Potter Sticker Kit ", containing a plastic replica of the Time-Turner used on the film.
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• ↑ Blue Peter (CBBC) interview with JK Rowling, confirming that all the MoM time-turners were destroyed.
• ↑ Assuming an average usage of 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, for a period of 9 months, this would add up to approximately 24 extra days.
• ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3FP-nmkFL0&feature=relmfu
• Harry Potter
• 1 Tom Riddle
• 2 Regulus Black
• 3 Lucius Malfoy

Harry Potter: Time-Turners, Explained

The time-turner is a rare magical object in the Harry Potter franchise.

The Har ry Potter franchise is full of magical objects that don’t exist in the real world and one of those magical objects is a time-turner. While some of the magical lore in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and the media that has spun out of them are rooted in existing magical stories, like magic wands, time-turners are unique to Rowling’s stories. They have only appeared in a handful of chapters of the Harry Potter media, but when they do, the audience knows that the story is about to change in a big way.

Time-turners place a unique spin on the idea of time travel. In fact, even within the Harry Potter franchise, there are multiple types of time-turners and numerous rules that accompany their use. The time-turner first appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and became a significant piece of the plot in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as well.

RELATED: Harry Potter: Dementors, Explained

What Is A Time-Turner?

A time-turner is a device used to take a witch or wizard back in time. It resembles an hourglass attached to a chain. The chain allows for the magic user to know the specific field the time-turner’s power is applied to, which is why it’s worn like a necklace.

Time-turners utilize an hour reversal charm. In order to use the time-turner, the witch or wizard wearing the necklace turns the hourglass over the number of hours they wish to go back in time. Each turn is the equivalent of one hour. It’s not advisable for people to spend more than five hours in the past because they could change the events of the future, create a paradox, or even create an alternate timeline altogether. Time magic is very risky in the world of Harry Potter .

How Is The Time-Turner Used In The Story?

Time-turners are rarely used in the Harry Potter franchise. When they’re introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , it’s a surprise to both Harry Potter and Ron Weasley . Their friend Hermione Granger uses a time-turner in order to take extra courses during their third year of school. Because it’s a magical item heavily regulated by the Ministry of Magic, Hermione has to get special permission to use it. Professors Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore require her to keep her use of the time-turner secret from everyone and to only use it for class.

Hermione breaks that rule with Dumbledore’s permission to save the life of Sirius Black. She and Harry use the time-turner to go back a few hours so that they can rescue Sirius from being apprehended by authorities, and so that they can stop Buckbeak the hippogriff from being executed for snapping at a student. They only use the time-turner for those events, catching up to the very moment they activated the time-turner, and effectively closing what could have been a time loop.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , a stage play set after the events of the Harry Potter novels, also features the use of a time-turner, but not the same ones that are regulated by the Ministry of Magic. Instead, it’s revealed that at some point after Voldemort’s defeat, one of his Death Eaters experimented to create a “true time-turner” that didn’t have the same hourly restrictions. With a true time-turner, the witch or wizard using it could go as far back in time as they wanted to and didn’t have to return to their present in just five hours. Supposedly, it wouldn’t cause adverse consequences, but the children of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy take the true time-turner, try to change the past and end up creating an alternate timeline that their parents then have to fix.

Why Are Time-Turners Not Used Anywhere Else?

Because of the complications that can arise from time travel, time-turners are heavily restricted in use. Only those approved by the Ministry of Magic can use them. Precautions are taken to ensure that no one can create a time paradox, erase their existence, or even go mad from seeing their future selves. That is a very real possibility that Hermione points out to Harry when he questions her keeping the use of the time-turner secret.

Excessive use of a time-turner can even age the person using it. For example, Hermione uses the time-turner to attend all of her lessons in her third year. Even if she only has her two extra classes three days a week, that’s at least another six extra hours in her week. After a full school year, that would be another 9 days added to Hermione’s age. While that doesn’t seem like much, if a witch or wizard is using a time-turner every day for multiple hours, they could eventually add years to their life.

Of course, one of the reasons that time-turners are not seen throughout the Harry Potter franchise very often is because Harry and his friends inadvertently destroy the Ministry of Magic’s supply of them. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , Harry and a group of his friends sneak into the Ministry of Magic, believing that Sirius Black has been kidnapped by Voldemort. What they don’t know is that it’s a trap. While they battle Death Eaters, a stray spell hits the Ministry’s storage area for time-turners. Because of the way a single time-turner falls, the entire supply of time-turners are caught in a perpetual loop, falling, crashing, and ending up back on the shelf before doing it all over again.

Fans have speculated that Hogwarts teacher Minerva McGonagall was actually wearing a time-turner in a deleted scene from Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindewald , but that is set long before the events of the Harry Potter books and movies. The chain of her necklace resembles the time-turner design used in the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban . If McGonagall had her own experience with them, it would help to explain why she is so willing to help Hermione Granger use a time-turner to further her studies. That, however, has never been proven.

Of course, it’s also never stated in the Harry Potter franchise whether other wizarding communities around the world have their own time-turners or their own version of a similar magical object. The Ministry of Magic as the audience sees it is in charge of governing the magical community of Great Britain. It’s entirely possible that outside of the Ministry’s jurisdiction, time-turners are in use in other areas of the Harry Potter universe.

NEXT: Harry Potter: How Many Wizarding Schools Are There?

Time-Turner

• View history

A time-turner is a wizarding device used for time-travelling. It first appears in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban .

• 4 Notes and sources

A time-turner is a tiny, sparkling hourglass attached to a very fine, long gold chain. Everyone who wants to time-travel has to be inside the chain. The number of times they turn the hourglass is how many hours they want to travel back in time. Their surrounding dissolves into a blur of colours and shapes when they are travelling, and they feel like they are flying backwards. They land in the location that they were in at that time, just seconds before their past-self arrives. [1]

Time-travellers have to abide by natural and very important wizarding laws. They cannot be seen or change what happened in the past. Being seen will cause horrible things to happen like killing their past or future self. They have to hide right away before their past-self arrives. If anyone wants to use a time-turner, they have to get special permission from the Ministry of Magic , pleading why they can be trusted. [1]

History [ ]

Hermione Granger wanted to take every subject at Hogwarts in her third year , but she wouldn't have time to attend every lesson. Professor McGonagall wrote letters to get her a time-turner, arguing she was a very trustworthy and intelligent student who wouldn't use it for anything but her studies. She was successful, and Hermione was given her time-turner on her first day of her third year. She promised she would never tell anyone she had it. [1]

Hermione's friends were confused by her timetable because she had lessons at the same time. [2] [3] She kept disappearing when she was heading towards lessons, then suddenly appearing when her lesson was about to start. She started struggling with her school work, falling behind on the workload and forgetting to go to lessons because she was losing track of time. [4] At Easter, she decided to give up Divination . [4] She later also gave up Muggle Studies after finding both subjects useless and needing time for a normal schedule.

In June, Hermione used the time-turner to take her and Harry Potter three hours back in time to save Sirius Black and Buckbeak . Harry was very confused and struggled to understand that he can't change anything in the past. He had to be held back to stop him intervening. Harry learned time was self-fulfilling when he found out he had saved himself, Sirius and Hermione earlier that night by using a Patronus Charm to drive the Dementors away. Knowing he had already produced it earlier gave him the confidence to do it in the future. [1]

Harry and Hermione had to be back in the Hospital Wing by the time they had time-travelled at. Dumbledore needed to ensure they weren't suspected of helping Sirius escape so he needed to lock her and Harry in the Hospital Wing. They had a very short window before people like Cornelius Fudge and Severus Snape will have learned Sirius escaped and go back to the Hospital Wing. [1] They got back in time right before Fudge did. Snape suspected they had been involved but he didn't have any evidence. [5]

Hermione gave her time-turner back at the end of year after dropping two subjects. Ron was disappointed she didn't tell anyone she had one earlier in the year. [5]

• The use of a time-turner was for a trivial task in the Harry Potter book series which didn't have any effect on time itself. However, laws and consequences do still exist. If the past and future-self cross each other, it has an effect on their mental state but without time itself changing. The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that contradictory causal loops cannot form, but that consistent ones can. [6]

Notes and sources [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 21
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 6
• ↑ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 16
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 15
• ↑ 5.0 5.1 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Chapter 22
• ↑ Wikipedia: Novikov self-consistency principle
• 1 Ravenclaw
• 2 Slytherin
• 3 The Polyjuice Potion

Photo via allnightavenue/Flickr

What’s going on with time travel in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’?

Diving into the heart of the plot device behind 'cursed child.'.

Michelle Jaworski

Posted on Aug 4, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 8:18 am CDT

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child .

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is already giving Harry Potter fans plenty to chew on , whether it’s about Ron’s ill-advised gift to his nephew or the continuity of Draco Malfoy’s hair . But the biggest headache of all might be in the very device the play chooses to tell its story.

In the two-part play , Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy (the sons of Harry and Draco, respectively) steal a Time-Turner that has the ability to travel back in time longer than five hours—the maximum amount of time a wizard or witch can travel without having a profound effect on time or themselves—so they can prevent Cedric Diggory from dying at the end of Goblet of Fire . Their attempts to do so by sabotaging him during the Triwizard Tournament results in a number of alternate realities—one with devastating ramifications.

Time travel is a tricky plot device, no matter which sci-fi or fantasy story you’re talking about. With the exception of Prisoner of Azkaban , the Harry Potter series doesn’t even touch on time travel. But when it did in Cursed Child , it painted a much different picture than the one J.K. Rowling wrote nearly 20 years ago.

How time travel worked in Prisoner of Azkaban

Throughout the year, Hermione Granger secretly uses a magical device called a Time-Turner that allows her to attend all of her classes, and it’s not until the book’s climax that time travel plays a crucial role: Hermione and Harry use the Time-Turner to go back in time in order to save Sirius Black, an innocent man, from a fate worse than death.

Rowling doesn’t go into too much detail about the semantics of time travel in the wizarding world, but she emphasizes just how dangerous it is to muddle with time. Hermione warns Harry that countless witches and wizards have killed their past or future selves, thinking they’ve gone mad, due to time travel, and she needed special permission from the Ministry of Magic to even use it. But for the most part it goes off without a hitch. They work tirelessly to not be seen by anyone—save Buckbeak—and rescue Sirius, and Harry rescues everyone with a powerful Patronus Charm (after he believed he saw his dad cast it).

While the concept of time travel isn’t touched on too much, Harry and Hermione’s time travel is in line with a causal loop . Even though they went to “change” time, those events had already been changed. Harry cast the Patronus Charm to protect himself, who would later go back in time to cast that same protection spell. The Time-Turner, in the books, also had the ability to transport the wearer near their location at the time they traveled back to. (The film’s version of the Time-Turner transports Harry and Hermione back in time, but they remain in the Hospital Wing when they go back.)

Hermione returned the Time-Turner to Professor McGonagall at the end of the book because she couldn’t do another year of time travel for her classes.

The Time-Turners made one more appearance. In Order of the Phoenix , the Ministry’s supply of Time-Turners are destroyed during the battle in the Department of Mysteries and caught in a time loop, so nobody can use them.

That’s simple enough, right? But Cursed Child blew everything we know about time travel in Harry’s world out the window.

https://twitter.com/kateleth/status/760368823040024577

Time travel in the realm of Cursed Child  and the alternate reality where Voldemort won

Meanwhile, the way time travel is used in Cursed Child , when something substantial—or seemingly inconsequential, such as a 15-year-old Hermione running into Albus and Scorpius before they disarmed Cedric in the First Task—is changed, it can alter everything.

Hermione’s interaction with Albus and Scorpius, who were in Durmstrang uniforms, made her distrust Durmstrang students so much she turned Viktor Krum’s invitation to the Yule Ball down, which eventually led to her and Ron never marrying. (She also became a Hogwarts professor instead of Minister For Magic, which come on, she’d have had that ambitious drive regardless.) But Cedric still died, being all the more determined to win the Triwizard Tournament.

Their interference during the Second Task, however, resulted in Cursed Child ’s Darkest Timeline : Cedric survived (only to become a Death Eater), but that meant Harry died during the Battle of Hogwarts and Voldemort cemented his control, but Ron, Hermione, and a still-living Severus Snape continued to fight in Dumbledore’s name.

The catch in the newly discovered Time-Turner, which the Ministry of Magic secured from Theodore Nott (a former classmate of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco), is that it has a time limit. You can only travel back in time for five minutes, and you have to be in the same location where you want to travel—so the time travel logic is more like Prisoner of Azkaban the movie than Prisoner of Azkaban the book.

The time limit is thrown out the window after Delphini, the secret daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, crushes the Time-Turner she used to travel back to October 1981 from June 1995 to stop Voldemort from killing Harry in the first place so he won’t set the prophecy involving him and Harry into motion. (Albus and Scorpius, who traveled with her in an effort to stop her, are stuck in time with it. It’s a bit hard to follow at times.)

All seems lost until the revelation of another secret Time-Turner, one that works without the time limit—and in true Lucius Malfoy fashion, is plated in gold. That allows Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Draco to travel to 1981 after receiving a hidden message through a Love Potion-stained blanket . By the time they thwart her plans, they know better than to interfere with Voldemort’s attack on a 15-month-old Harry and his parents, as heartbreaking as it is to watch.

Rowling wasn’t always a fan of time travel as a plot device

Rowling didn’t actually write Cursed Child —that honor goes to playwright Jack Thorne—but she worked on the story with Thorne and director John Tiffany. The plays have her stamp of approval as she promotes the plays on Twitter and she asked fans attending preview performances to #KeepTheSecrets , and according to Rowling, fans should consider Cursed Child canon .

Pottermore , an official Harry Potter site that functions like the Encyclopedia we never got, is also generally considered canon. Aside from getting sorted into Hogwarts and Ilvermorney houses and getting peeks into upcoming projects like Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts , Pottermore has information on pretty much everything you’d want to know about Harry’s world . Everything from Draco’s life story to Harry’s family tree , why the Dursleys don’t like Harry , and information on newly revealed wizarding schools are available on the site, and some entries are sectioned off in “collections.”

But at one point, Pottermore revealed that Rowling had some pretty interesting thoughts on Time-Turners and time travel and the potential holes the very possibility could open up for future books.

On a Pottermore page from July 2013 that’s no longer live (its last archive is dated March 2016 , months after Pottermore’s redesign ), Rowling made a special entry about Time-Turners, which was revealed after you clicked on a special item in Pottermore back when Pottermore was more like a semi-interactive game.

From its first sentence, which says that “time travel is possible in only a limited sense even in the magical world,” Rowling’s concept of time travel is very different from what we eventually learn in Cursed Child .

View post on imgur.com

The entry covers the basics of Professor Croaker’s law , which Scorpius states in Cursed Child is that “the furthest someone can go back in time without the possibility of serious harm to the traveler or time itself is five hours” as well as the kind of catastrophic harm that comes when someone travels in time outside that period. (One witch was trapped in a five-day period in 1402 and aged 500 years after returning to her present, along with several people being erased from existence.)

The beginning of the entry reads like a page out of a history book, but the bottom section, called “J.K. Rowling’s thoughts,” allows Rowling to pull back the curtain and reveal her mindset on particular items or characters.

I went far too light-heartedly into the subject of time travel in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban . While I do not regret it ( Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my favorite books in the series), it opened up a vast number of problems for me, because after all, if wizards could go back and undo problems, where were my future plots? I solved the problem to my own satisfaction in stages. Firstly, I had Dumbledore and Hermione emphasize how dangerous it would be to be seen in the past, to remind the reader that there might be unforeseen and dangerous consequences as well as solutions in time travel. Secondly, I had Hermione give back the only Time-Turner ever to enter Hogwarts. Thirdly, I smashed all remaining Time-Turners during the battle in the Department of Mysteries, removing the possibility of reliving even short periods in the future. This is just one example of the ways in which, when writing fantasy novels, one must be careful what one invents. For every benefit, there is usually a drawback.

Harry Potter fans noticed the page had gone missing around mid-June —about a week after previews of the plays debuted at the Palace Theatre in London. The Time-Turner entry isn’t the only page missing from the newer Pottermore , but none of the others (so far) have as big of an effect on a new Harry Potter story as the apparent retcon regarding Time-Turners.

So can J.K. Rowling nix HP canon?

There are a couple of ways to look at this.

One, Rowling did scrub her own canon. She, Thorne, and Tiffany wanted to create a story involving years-long time travel, and at some point during the creation of Cursed Child  the Time-Turner entry was no longer accurate to what they crafted. If there is a hierarchy of canon for Harry Potter, printed works might trump what’s written on Pottermore, although the ability for Rowling and the Pottermore staff to edit and remove entries could delegitimize Pottermore as a source for Harry Potter information and make it harder to keep track of canon.

It’s not completely unprecedented; Lucasfilm announced that the Expanded Universe was no longer canon in 2014 so it wouldn’t have to keep track of and work around decades of story in regards to the new trilogy. In comparison, changing the rules of how time works when the internet is forever seems a bit odd.

(Also, sometimes mistakes end up on the site, such as Pottermore temporarily killing off Lavender Brown in one of its character files .)

Second, both assertions—that time travel was limited but it’s now possible to travel back years thanks to the creation of special Time-Turners—could also be true. More than 20 years pass between the events of Prisoner of Azkaban and Cursed Child , and the Department of Mysteries’s research on time travel could’ve been halted with the destruction of its Time-Turners in 1996.

The manner in which a Time-Turner takes someone back differs between the book and the plays, but that could potentially also be explained with the invention of the new Time-Turner, and it avoids writing in an explanation on how to transport a person from Point A to Point B when Point B occurred before that person’s birth. (Every event Albus and Scorpius travel to during Cursed Child  occurred before they were born.)

But this isn’t something that can be easily solved. Fans have debated what constitutes canon in Harry Potter for years, both during Rowling’s time writing the books (does what she say in an interview count?) and after Deathly Hallows ’s publication. Is canon only the seven main books in the series, or does it include everything Rowling’s ever said about a character on Pottermore, Twitter, and public events? Fans have largely agreed to disagree on the matter, regardless of when Rowling has said that a particular story is canon and especially when it involves  such a divisive story .

Until then, the debate rages on in real time.

Michelle Jaworski is a staff writer and TV/film critic at the Daily Dot. She covers entertainment, geek culture, and pop culture and has covered everything from the Sundance Film Festival, NYFF, and Tribeca to New York Comic Con and Con of Thrones. She is based in Brooklyn.

Featured Local Savings

Time Travel

"Don't you understand? We're breaking one of the most important wizarding laws! Nobody's supposed to change time, nobody!" -- Hermione Granger ( PA21 )

Time travel is an extremely dangerous magical effect which allows a person to travel back in time. Because of the potential for catastrophe should history be altered, time travel is all but forbidden in wizarding society. Certain magical devices can be used for time travel, but access to them is strictly controlled.

References from the canon

• Hermione once used a Time-Turner to repeat hours of the day and take more classes than would otherwise have been possible ( PA21 ).
• The Pensieve and Tom Riddle's diary allowed a form of time travel, although the person or persons traveling were not actually part of the time they entered. Instead, they became observers, unseen and unheard. This form of time travel is tied to stored memories and the traveller views the past from a vantage point near the person whose memories are used. This form of time travel might be better termed "memory travel." ( CS13 , CS17 , GF30 , OP28 , HBP10 , HBP13 , HBP17 , HBP23 , DH33 )
• Time is studied in one of the rooms of the Department of Mysteries; a Death Eater whose head fell into a huge bell jar in that room was changed from the neck up into a baby ( OP35 ).

From the Web

Time Travel in Harry Potter  by Sebastian “CornedBee” Redl

Pensieve (Comments)

Tags: brains change history memory time travel

Editor: Jeanne Kimsey

• 1907 : Merope Gaunt is born
• September, 1925 : Bob Ogden's initial visit to the Gaunt hovel
• circa December, 1925 : Merope Gaunt fools Tom Riddle into marrying her
• circa March 31st, 1926 : Merope Gaunt gets pregnant with Tom Marvolo Riddle
• December 31st, 1926 : Tom Marvolo Riddle is born
• August, 1938 : Dumbledore visits Tom Riddle's orphanage
• September 1st, 1938 : Tom Riddle starts at Hogwarts
• July, 1942 : Tom Riddle murders his father and grandparents
• 1942 : Tom Riddle meets with Professor Slughorn and asks him about Horcruxes
• circa June 12th, 1943 : Moaning Myrtle's Death
• September, 1943 : Tom Marvolo Riddle turns the diary into a Horcrux
• circa 1956 : Tom Riddle kills Hepzibah Smith, framing her house-elf, Hokey
• June, 1976 : James Potter publicly humiliates Severus Snape
• 1980 : Igor Karkaroff is captured
• July 30th, 1980 : Neville Longbottom is born
• 1982 : Karkaroff released from Azkaban
• circa December, 1985 : Arrest of Death Eaters who attacked the Longbottoms
• June 20th, 1996 : The Battle of the Department of Mysteries
• April 21st, 1997 : Slughorn finally gives up his memory to Harry, thanks to Felix Felicis

• Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Hermione Accessory Time Turner Necklace

• This item is sold by a third-party seller. The discount is provided by Amazon.
• This is a limited time discount.
• Discount does not apply to digital content.
• Discount good while supplies last or until withdrawn by Amazon.
• Shipping charges and taxes may apply to pre-discounted prices.
• Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the discount at any time.
• If any of the products or content related to this discount are returned, your refund will equal the amount you paid for the product or content, subject to applicable refund policies.

Purchase options and add-ons

Product details, about this item.

• HARRY POTTER TIME TURNER NECKLACE costume accessory complete with 12 inch metal breakaway chain and injection molded plastic pendant.
• HERMIONE GRANGER JEWELRY just like the Harry Potter movies with a spinning centerpiece inside the pendant.
• TIME TURNER HARRY POTTER NECKLACE comes inscribed with the same messages as the Harry Potter novels.
• LICENSED HARRY POTTER HERMIONE TIME TURNER NECKLACE for kids and adults to be used for playtime fun, dress up and role play as well as parties and celebrations.
• INCLUDES ONE HERMIONE NECKLACE with attached break away chain clasp and a BPA-free plastic pendant.

Buy it with

Related Climate Pledge Friendly items

PRODUCT CERTIFICATION (1)

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 requires textiles-based products to be tested against a list of 1,000+ chemicals, to limit those which may be harmful to human health. Certification focus: #ProductSafety and #ChemicalsUsed.

The Forest Stewardship Council certified products support responsible forestry, helping keep forests healthy for future generations.

From the manufacturer

• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 5 x 1 inches; 5.76 ounces
• Manufacturer recommended age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
• Department ‏ : ‎ boys
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ December 16, 2020
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Disguise
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08QTYGWF2
• #528 in Boys' Necklaces
• #1,951 in Kids' Dress-Up Accessories

Videos for this product

Click to play video

Best Gift for Harry Potter Fan, Time Turner Necklace Review

Sara Gonzalez

Looking for specific info?

Product description.

More Class Sometimes it seems like the days go by too fast. There are so many things to learn about. Learning about ancient runes is endlessly fascinating. Field trips to the standing stones, pictographs, and archeological digs are so exciting! Then there are all the wild magical creatures to learn about. Of course, the standard wizarding classes like potions, transfiguration, and defense against the dark arts are essential. Sure, you could always drop out of divination, but in the meantime, this time turner necklace accessory is sure to help with your wizarding schedule! Product Details This time turner necklace is perfect for playing pretend as well as topping off a costume! The time turner device is attached to a long enough chain to concentrate on in order to time travel. This prop can be paired with any of our Harry Potter robes but looks best with a Gryffindor robe, of course! Time to Play When you're pretending to be a student of Hogwarts, you have to be ready to think hard! This time turner prop will make you feel like one of Hogwarts best students. Who knows, maybe you'll even have a chance to save a Hippogryph if you play your cards right! - Necklace

Top Brand: Disguise

Customer reviews.

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers like the appearance of the necklace, mentioning it's cute and realistic. They also appreciate the details. However, some customers have reported issues with the material and quality of the product. They say it'd not survive daily use and is not well made. Opinions are mixed on value.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers are satisfied with the appearance of the necklace. They mention that it is very nice and the details on the necklace make it realistic.

"My daughter loves that and the details on the necklace make it so realistic ." Read more

" Super cute !My daughter is obsessed with Harry Potter and loved this added touch to her cloak." Read more

" Very nice " Read more

" Very chincy !!!..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the value of the necklace. Some mention it's super cheap and way cheaper than the price tag, while others say it'd be better off buying cheap costume jewelry.

"I feel this product was over priced ." Read more

"...It will work for our purposes but I don’t think it’s worth the cost ." Read more

"Very cheaply made and overpriced but the kid likes it" Read more

"Super generic plastic. Not worth the price ." Read more

Customers are dissatisfied with the material of the necklace. They mention that it's bulky, cheap, and generic. Some say that it looks like the material in the pictures.

"...But compared the the image for item description, it’s a painted plastic and it looks like it’s already chipping off...." Read more

" Plastic and not what we expected. Do not buy!!" Read more

" Super generic plastic . Not worth the price." Read more

"...You can't turn it from the knob. It's also not like the material in the pictures . It's bulky and cheap plastic...." Read more

Customers are dissatisfied with the quality of the necklace. They mention that it is not well made, and the whole thing fell apart.

"...Well the whole thing fell apart. This is not made well . If you're just going to look at it, you might be OK. But this is not made to be played with." Read more

"... This wouldn't survive daily use , but is perfect for a costume." Read more

" Very cheaply made and overpriced but the kid likes it" Read more

"...It is very cheaply made , has a real gum ball machine prize feel to it." Read more

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices