Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Time May Change Him, But He Can't Trace Time
The Time-Turner takes us back (in time) to when we wrote about the Time-Turner as a symbol in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Way back then, we said,
In a way, playing with time is too much like playing God, which is pretty much the problem with the power-hungry Voldemort in a nutshell.
Gosh, it's almost like we could see the future.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, though, the Time-Turner has a positive effect on the story. With it, Harry and Hermione save the day. Ah, to be thirteen again, when time travel was all harmless fun and games.
But the characters in The Cursed Child learn that time travel destroys lives. Because this is a script, the Turner itself is only described once, with the line "It shines out alluringly." (1.5.7)
Dangerous things often do—remember the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
The lure of time travel is difficult to resist…much like the human tendency get stuck thinking of past memories. But as you know—if you've seen basically any time travel movie—that if you mess with the bull (of the past), you get the horns (of the present).