Harry Potter and The Cursed Child

Warning:

• Save some tears before getting into Hogwarts now. You’ll most probably cry at the end for ruining your childhood or teen memories.
• Spoilers Ahead! (They may not be in order, though.)

Forget the playful Harry you have in mind. Now, try imagining him as an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic and the father of three school-going children. Initially, even doing this seemed quite difficult for me but was also slightly convincing that muggles aren’t the only species who are overworked. All our wizards from the original Harry Potter (HP) series are very well placed in their professional sphere.

The book starts with the elucidation of the stranded father-son relationship between Potter and his second son, Albus. Just as Albus feared in the climax of the HP series, the sorting hat puts him into Slytherin initiating a new bond of friendship. I didn’t expect to like someone from the Malfoys. Also, it was astonishing but Draco behaved as a better parent than Harry.

Within the first 50 pages, you’d find the new generation already in their third year at Hogwarts.

Ron doesn’t remember his own wedding. His characterization was so poor that he doesn’t do anything other than cracking stupid jokes. He was portrayed so dumb.

Our wizards don’t use magical words even when required, making me wonder if magic spells had turned obsolete with the last volume.

Potter suddenly gets obsessed with Lily’s blanket out of nowhere. I am unable to recall its specification in any of the older series. He says he didn’t have any father figure in life when growing up. Who were Sirius, Arthur, Remus, Hagrid, and Dumbledore? Didn’t these men love Harry enough to be recognized as father figures?

When did they start allowing parents into Hogwarts? Was that a privilege to ‘the-boy-who-lived’? Another puzzle!

There’s a time turner around which the whole plot revolves. Who controls that? What happens with the change of events? What’s the climax after all the chaos it creates? These form the crux.

The progeny of Potter and Weasleys know every single event that had taken place before years, esp. at the Triwizard Tournament. The readers aren’t hinted at how they got to know the details.

You-Know-Who has resurrected and Harry is dead. Moreover, the Dark Lord’s relationship status isn’t single anymore. I couldn’t find if it was out of love or lust. But, he’s married and even has a child [Shedding Tears!]. Guess which character could’ve been his wife, and let’s discuss that in the comment section!

Another destroyed character was Cedric. I wonder how one of the kindest characters turned into a dark death-eater unable to bear a silly humiliation.

The characters move to and fro in time numerous times to only reset the world the same way it was at the beginning of the book. Please don’t compare this with the beautiful time travel depicted in the ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’.

I felt happy for the characters that weren’t present and saved from butchery – Sirius, Tonks, and Remus. (There are a few others I couldn’t recall).

Remember, it’s not a novel but a play (written in 2016 by Jack Thorne). It has a script that’s very much different from the main series with very few peeks into the magic world. For me, in spite of little humour present, it was more like a dump of relationships and lifeless characters. There are so many more scenes that bothered me. Anyway, let me stop here.

As someone who enjoyed reading all fantasies of Harry Potter in teens and having lived with them in movies, I was honestly disappointed with this book. The charm and the spark that HP volumes had created is greatly missing. My mistake when opening the book was that I expected more from the HP series and ended up with my expectations falling to the ground.

I’ll never dare to open this book for a second read. It’s definitely not the eighth story, but just a script for the play. The Harry Potter series rightly ended where it had to. However, if you still want to introduce yourself to the new characters of the magic world, go ahead!