Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production

*some spoilers to follow*If I’m being honest, I never originally intended on reading this story. I adore Harry Potter, I just felt that the story was better left as is after the epilogue of the Deathly Hallows. But then my book bestie morphed into the pushiest book pusher that ever pushed and suddenly I found myself having already finished and wondering how I ever thought I could not read this. Setting aside all the vast amounts of criticism this has received (i.e. this isn’t written by Rowling, it reads like fan-fic, it’s not even a book but a screenplay) it ended up being more than I could have ever hoped for.“Hogwarts will be the making of you, Albus. I promise you, there is nothing to be frightened of there.”Taking us right back to the epilogue of the Deathly Hallows, we get to see Albus getting on his first train to Hogwarts. And his discussion with Harry regarding the possibility of him being placed in Slytherin. We’re not given the detailed account of his time spent at Hogwarts, but rather the generalized impression that Hogwarts isn’t quite the sanctuary for him that it was for his father. The comprehensive details of the world are also missing from the screenplay but for those of us who have already read the first seven books, that world is emblazoned upon our minds and no rehashing of details are necessary for us to fully comprehend each and every scene.Cursed Child manages to smoothly connect many major plot points from the original novels: the infiltration of the Ministry of Magic by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (Deathly Hallows, book 7), the Tri-Wizard tournament and Cedric’s death (Goblet of Fire, book 4), time turners (Prisoner of Azkaban, book 3), the perpetual battle between good and evil, and the important father-son relationships that have been a focal point of this series from the beginning. It also makes a less than obvious point of showing how seemingly inconsequential deaths end up having a much larger impact in the grand scheme of things. With the help of a time turner, we’re shown snippets of how the world could have been with the simplest of changes. The variation of possibilities was both shocking and horrifying. What I most enjoyed was how this wasn’t simply a new set of adventures with a new set of characters but rather recognition of the fact that the actions of the past was not a given end to that story, but that they inevitably had an effect on the future of their own children.Harry: “How do I protect my son, Dumbledore?”Dumbledore: “You ask me, of all people, how to protect a boy in terrible danger? We cannot protect the young from harm. Pain must and will come.”While we do see the original characters and what they have become 19 years later, the focal point is on their children, primarily Albus and Scorpius who become immediate friends on the Hogwarts Express. Albus has a severely strained relationship with his father, Harry, and has difficulty living up to not just the enormous importance of his father, of the great men he was named after, and because of the fact that he was in fact placed in Slytherin rather than his father’s house, Gryffindor. It’s easy to see from the original stories how understandable it would be for Harry to not be the perfect father, considering his own lack of a permanent father figure. He does what he feels is best even when it is quite clearly not best, and the scenes between the two are often painful and heartbreaking. Scorpius, son of Draco Malfoy, also suffers from a poor relationship with his father due the actions of his past as well as Draco’s own relationship with his father, Lucius.In October of this year I decided to do an impromptu re-read of the Harry Potter series on audio. I have re-read books 1-3 numerous times but I tend to run out of steam and have never been able to re-read books 4-7. Well, I finally overcame my hangups and completed my first re-read of Goblet of Fire. Due to the majority of this story centering around the storyline from The Goblet of Fire I chose to do my second re-read of the year (ha) of Cursed Child since the storyline was still so fresh in my mind. It works extremely well if you treat it as a #4.5 book as well, granted, it’s vital to know the outcome of the series as a whole in order to fully appreciate how it ties everything together and illustrates the growth of these characters.“Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe.”Yes, perfection is an impossibility, and while there were many things I would have personally changed, this still managed to hit all my Harry Potter feels as perfectly as possible. Cursed Child reinforced my love of both the original stories and characters by growing them in legitimate ways, it gave me new characters to love (primarily Scorpius <3), and it removed the stereotype associated with Slytherin house by showing that not all associated are necessarily evil. #slytherinpride

Listen. Harry Potter was a children's series with adult themes but above all, it was a children's story. I'm not sure what people seemed to expect from this book. It won't change your life. It's not the greatest work of literature ever written. It's for fans of the Harry Potter universe to further explore the Harry Potter universe. Is it as good as the original ones? No. But if you expected it to be better or on par with the original books, then the fact that you are disappointed is your fault.As for a review of the play. No major spoilers. It is good. Not great and not terrible. There are a lot of new things being tried here. Some work, some do not. One thing I was a bit disappointed with was that the Harry Potter universe wasn't really expanded upon. I didn't learn anything new about the world which was always a joy as a child. But as they packed so much into the play already (too much actually, the pacing was very jumpy and far too fast to build the tension and emotion that the books achieved), I understand that they wanted to focus more on characterization. I'll just note one thing I loved and one thing I hated. (Mild Spoilers but you learn this in the first 10 pages). Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy become best friends and that's awesome. I always despised the prejudice against Slytherin and thought it was hypocritical for the rest of the school to shun them because of a few bad eggs. One thing I hated was that Harry Potter ends up being somehow stoic and unemotional as well as childish and whiny. I get it. He has to have grown up but still be flawed enough to show growth throughout the story. He does come off as annoying sometimes though. But if you watched Legend of Korra, they did the same thing to Harry that they did to Aang.As for people complaining about the plot? Let me explain in two words: Time Turner. Time Travel is the thing that everyone thinks they know everything about even though they don't because we don't really know anything about the fourth dimension. So yes, in a sense it is stupid, but you're also reading a series about how a baby was able to defeat a really powerful, ambitious and ruthless super-villain because his mom loved him a lot. As for all fiction, it requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. Anyways, once overcoming the whole nonsense with time travel, it does open a ton of fascinating and touching scenarios. One in particular involved a character I did not expect to see in the play but was happily surprised when he showed up.Read the book. Formulate your own opinion. But at the end of the day, remember it's a children's book for enjoyment. Don't take it too seriously. You aren't reading Dante or Shakespeare. Try to enjoy it and I promise (most of) you will.