Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

“ROSE Al. We need to concentrate.

ALBUS Concentrate on what?

ROSE On who we choose to be friends with. My mum and dad met your dad on their first Hogwarts Express you know…

ALBUS So we need to choose now who to be friends with for life? That’s quite scary.

ROSE On the contrary, it’s exciting. I’m a Granger-Weasley, you’re a Potter—everyone will want to be friends with us, we’ve got the pick of anyone we want.”

Rose stresses the importance of making friends right off the bat, highlighting the importance of this theme throughout the play. Rose’s and Albus’s different responses to this challenge also point to their contrasting temperaments.

“SCORPIUS Did you really think she’d come to us? Potters don’t belong in Slytherin.

ALBUS This one does. I didn’t choose, you know that? I didn’t choose to be his son.”

Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, prompting even Scorpius to note that Potters don’t belong in Slytherin. Besides displaying how out-of-place Albus feels, his response shows the bitterness and resentment he has begun to feel about being Harry’s son.

“DELPHINI We don’t choose who we’re related to. […] It’s tough to live with people stuck in the past, isn’t it?”

In a conversation with Albus, Delphini refers to Amos, whose niece she is pretending to be. Although she is not related to Amos, her words ring true for Albus’s situation—he didn’t choose to be related to Harry, a father who is unable to connect with him partly because of the unresolved trauma he still carries.

“GINNY You can be honest with him, Harry…that’s all he needs. […] Albus is different and isn’t that a good thing. And he can tell […] when you’re putting on your Harry Potter front. He wants to see the real you.

HARRY ‘The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.’ […] Dumbledore.

GINNY A strange thing to say to a child.

HARRY Not when you believe that child will have to die to save the world.”

Ginny advises Harry to be honest with Albus, understanding that that is what the boy needs. Harry, however, is reluctant to do so because of what Dumbledore once told him. Harry is unable to see how his situation was vastly different than Albus’s, and because of this, he continues acting out a pattern of behavior that is irrelevant and inadvertently harmful to his relationship with Albus.

“SCORPIUS/HARRY Why didn’t you tell me?

ALBUS/RON My dad says he wishes I weren’t his son. Hardly a conversation starter, is it?

[…]

SCORPIUS/HARRY I know the—Voldemort thing isn’t—true […] but sometimes, I think I can see my dad thinking: how did I produce this? […] My point is—there’s a reason—we’re friends, Albus—a reason we found each other, you know?”

Scorpius finds out about what Harry said to Albus during their argument and sympathizes with him about it. The kindred experiences the boys share with respect to the complicated relationships with their fathers contribute to them having an instant connection. Scorpius recognizes this, acknowledging the inevitability of their friendship.

“DELPHINI Then go. But—just know this… today you get an opportunity few are given—today you get to change history—to change time itself.”

Delphini sees the boys off as they undertake their first trip into the past. Her words foreshadow the eventual and metaphorical changing of history that Albus and Scorpius will experience—they repair relationships with their respective fathers that had been strained due to each of their histories.

“SCORPIUS From the moment I first heard of it, I was desperate to go. I mean, Dad didn’t much like it there but even the way he described it. […] All I ever wanted to do was go to Hogwarts and have a mate to get up to mayhem with. Just like Harry Potter. And I got his son. How crazily fortunate is that.”

Hogwarts signifies different things to different people. For Harry, it meant home and comfort, though it spelled the opposite for his son Albus. On the converse, while Draco did not enjoy his time there, Hogwarts is home for Scorpius because of the friendship he finds there, which, in a full-circle moment, is with Albus, Harry’s son.

“HARRY I’ve never asked how you felt about me naming him after you, have I?

DUMBLEDORE Candidly, Harry, it seemed a great weight to place upon the poor boy.”

Dumbledore’s magical portrait weighs in on Harry’s choice of name for his son. Dumbledore has seen the consequences of extraordinary expectations being placed on young shoulders in how it played out with Harry; his astute response stems from what he has realized through this experience.

“HARRY I thought for a long time I wasn’t a good enough dad for you because you didn’t like me. It’s only now I realize that I don’t need you to like me, I need you to obey me because I’m your dad and I do know better. I’m sorry, Albus. It has to be this way.”

After finding Albus in the first alternate world, Harry decided to tighten security around his son. Bane’s warning has driven Harry to the point of unrealistic anxiety. The worry about Dark activity stirring, coupled with his own experiences of having been isolated by Dumbledore in the name of protection, leads Harry to act similarly with his own son.

“DRACO I can’t talk to him either. Scorpius. Especially since—Astoria has gone. I can’t even talk about how losing her has affected him. As hard as I try, I can’t reach him. You can’t talk to Albus. I can’t talk to Scorpius. That’s what this is about. Not about my son being evil. Because as much as you might take the word of a haughty centaur, you know the power of friendship.”

Draco pleads with Harry to stop keeping their sons apart. Draco sees what Harry cannot—that their respective anxieties and griefs have led to disconnects with their sons and that friendship has the power to heal.

“DRACO My father thought he was protecting me. Most of the time. People say parenting is the hardest job in the world—they’re wrong—growing up is. We all just forget how hard it was. […] I think you have to make a choice—at a certain point—of the man you want to be. And I tell you that at that time you need a parent or a friend. And if you’ve learnt to hate your parent by then and you have no friends… then you’re all alone. And being alone—that’s so hard. I was alone. And it sent me to a truly dark place. For a long time. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. […] Tom Riddle didn’t emerge from his dark place. And so Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort.”

Draco reminds Harry of Voldemort’s past and their childhood to stress the importance of friendship. This conversation calls to important themes explored in the play—the power of friendship in lending resilience during crises and the weight of fame and legacy in parent-child relationships.

“SNAPE You’re risking everything—

HERMIONE We get this right, Harry’s alive, Voldemort’s dead and the Augurey is gone. For that no risk is too great. Though I am sorry what it will cost you.

SNAPE Sometimes costs are made to be borne.”

Snape willingly sacrifices himself for the sake of a better world. Later in the play, Albus and Scorpius will attempt to do the same with Delphini, just as Harry will allow his parents to be murdered to allow Voldemort’s eventual downfall. Snape’s response, and the other instances of sacrifice that it foreshadows, shows how destiny and free will interact in complex ways, in the play.

“PROFESSOR McGONAGALL You are so young. You’re all so young. You have no idea how dark the wizarding wars got. You were—reckless—with the world some people—some very dear friends of mine and yours—sacrificed a huge amount to create and sustain.”

Professor McGonagall reminds the boys and their parents of the long history involving Voldemort and the many sacrifices that have been made. It is a reminder of the deep trauma that the older generations in the play still carry with them and how it influences their responses to various incidents that take place.

“ALBUS I thought Harry Potter wasn’t afraid of anything?

HARRY Is that how I make you feel?

ALBUS I don’t think Scorpius said, but when we returned after failing to fix the first task, I was suddenly in Gryffindor house, nothing was better between us then either—so the fact that I’m in Slytherin—that’s not the reason for our problems. It’s not just about that.

HARRY No. I know. It’s not just about that.”

After arriving back in the original timeline, Harry and Albus talk honestly about their strained relationship, marking a turning point in their relationship. This foreshadows the eventual conversation they will have at the end of the book when Harry confides in Albus about the different fears he has—their relationship, by then, has drastically changed for the better.

“SCORPIUS Cedric was a different person entirely—dark, dangerous. My dad—doing anything they wanted him to. And me? I discovered another Scorpius, you know? Entitled, angry, mean—people were frightened of me. It feels like we were all tested and we all—failed.

ALBUS But you changed things. You had a chance and you changed time back. Changed yourself back.

SCORPIUS Only because I knew what I should be.”

Albus and Scorpius talk about the alternate worlds they glimpsed. Scorpius’s assertion that he could make a change because he knew a different reality points to how awareness is the key to exercising free will.

“DELPHINI It took me a long time to discover your weakness, Albus Potter. I thought it was pride, I thought it was the need to impress your father, but then I realised your weakness was the same as your father’s—friendship.”

Delphini’s assertion that Albus’s weakness is friendship, which is the same as his father’s, is ironic. Besides displaying that Albus and Harry are more similar than Albus believes, their friendships strengthen them, and their friends eventually help them to defeat Delphini.

“DELPHINI The prophecy must be fulfilled. We will fulfil it.

SCORPIUS Prophecies can be broken.

DELPHINI You’re mistaken child, prophecies are the future.

SCORPIUS But if the prophecy is inevitable why are we here trying to influence it? Your actions contradict your thoughts: you’re dragging us through this maze because you believe this prophecy needs to be enabled—and, by that logic, prophecies can also be broken—prevented.”

Scorpius’s explanation for how and why prophecies can be broken points to the theme of destiny versus free will explored in the play. It also indicates, once again, that awareness allows one to exercise free will, successfully breaking the illusion of inevitability.

“HARRY Love blinds us? Do you even know what that means? Do you even know how bad that advice was? My son is—my son is fighting battles for us just as I had to for you. And I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me. Leaving him in places he felt unloved—growing in him resentments he’ll take years to understand—”

Harry confronts Dumbledore about the ways in which the latter treated Harry growing up, in the name of protection. Harry finally sees that he is repeating an old and irrelevant, even harmful, pattern of behavior with his son—one that he unconsciously inherited from the most influential father-figure in his life: Dumbledore.

“DUMBLEDORE Harry, there is never a perfect answer in this messy, emotional world. 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 them your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe."

Dumbledore’s advice to Harry points to the shades of grey present in the play. Just as Harry, the hero of the wizarding world, is flawed and imperfect, Delphini, the antagonist, has some redeeming (or, at the very least, relatable) qualities. More important than being good or perfect is being honest.

“DRACO There is no escaping the past. I never realised, though, that by hiding him away from this gossiping, judgemental world, I ensured that my son would emerge shrouded in worse suspicion than I ever endured.

HARRY Love blinds. We have both tried to give our sons not what they needed, but what we needed. We’ve been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we’ve blighted their present."

Draco and Harry have a conversation about how they have tried and failed to protect their sons. Harry’s response displays the dawning of insight—he recognizes that he has been operating from the past and projecting his worries and fears onto his son, rather than seeing him as he is.

“HARRY I shouldn’t have survived—it was my destiny to die—even Dumbledore thought so—and yet I lived. I beat Voldemort. All these people—all these people—this boy Craig, my parents, Fred, the Fallen Fifty—and it’s me that gets to live? How is that? All this damage—and it’s my fault."

Although several decades have passed, Harry still keenly feels survivor’s guilt about the deaths and sacrifices made so that Harry could triumph over Voldemort. This confession displays the kind of hold that trauma can have over someone, influencing motivations and decisions in implicit and powerful ways.

“HARRY I’d do anything for him.

GINNY Harry, you’d do anything for anybody. You were pretty happy to sacrifice yourself for the world. He needs to feel specific love. It’ll make him stronger, and you stronger too."

Ginny understands her son’s needs well and how Harry ought to fulfill them. Albus has grown up in a vastly different world than his father, one that is safe and secure. Harry, who has always borne the weight of the world on his shoulders, struggles to show his son intimate and specific love.

“HAGRID Hello, Harry Potter. I’m Rubeus Hagrid. And I’m gonna be yer friend whether yeh like it or not. ’Cos yeh’ve had it tough, not that yeh know it yet. An’ yer gonna need friends.”

Hagrid finds a newly-orphaned infant Harry in the ruins of his parents’ house. This seminal moment defines the rest of Harry’s life. Thus, Hagrid’s promise of friendship to Harry is highly significant, especially coupled with the knowledge of all the things that Harry eventually endures and overcomes and how he does it.