Harry Potter And The Cursed Child (Unfinished Date)

          Harry Potter And The Cursed Child Summary

The four-act play begins 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was the final novel in the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter now has a respectable, if pedestrian job, as Head of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic. His wife, Ginny Weasley, is the sports editor for the largest newspaper in the magical world, The Daily Prophet. The play opens as Harry and Ginny take their second son to board the Hogwarts Express for his first year at the wizarding boarding school, Hogwarts. His name is Albus Severus Potter, a name that honors Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape, two mentors of the Potter-Weasley family who died while fighting the dark lord, Voldemort, two decades ago. At Platform 9 ¾, a train platform that only magical beings can access, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are also sending their child to Hogwarts. Her name is Rose Granger-Weasley.

 Hermione has become Minister for Magic, one of the most powerful positions in the magical world, and her husband remains his slightly goofy self and owns a shop, Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, in Diagon Alley, a well-known shopping street for wizards.

Aboard the Hogwarts Express, Albus becomes fast friends with a fellow 11-year-old named Scorpius Malfoy. Neither child realizes that their fathers were arch rivals at Hogwarts. At Hogwarts, Albus expects to be sorted into Gryffindor House, whose members are best known for their courage and loyalty. All of his family for generations have been sorted into Gryffindor. But as luck would have it, Albus is sorted into Slytherin, a house whose members are best known for their cunning and which has churned out several evil people, including the dark lord Voldemort. The only upswing to being in Slytherin is that he can be near his new friend, Scorpius, who was also (less surprisingly) sorted into Slytherin.

Over the next few years, both boys have trouble fitting in. Scorpius fends off rumors that he’s really the son of Voldemort, and many consider Albus to be a huge disappointment, who isn’t living up to his family’s name.

As Albus becomes a teenager, he and his father Harry become emotionally distant. Harry doesn’t know how to help his son, and Albus resnts having to live up to his famous father’s reputation. One day, the two have a big fight and Harry blurts out that sometimes, he wishes that Albus wasn’t his son. Shortly after the fight, Harry’s scar starts to hurt again, a reliable indicator of Voldemort’s approach, and he worries that Lord Voldemort has found some way to return to life. At work, he’s received a model of a Time Turner, a device that allows anyone to travel back in time to alter history. An old family friend, Amos Diggory, asks Harry to go back in time and save his son, Cedric Diggory, from death at Lord Voldemort's hands. Harry says he can’t help him, as the model device has not been proven safe. Albus overhears this conversation, and decides to go save Cedric Diggory himself. He persuades Scorpius to join him.

Act 1 ends with the two teenagers visiting St. Oswald’s Home for Old Witches and Wizards, where they talk to Amos’s caretaker, Delphi, about how to steal the Time Turner. Scorpius and Albus travel to 1995. They know that Cedric died because he won the Triwizard Tournament, so the boys sabotage his first task in the competition and disqualify him. Unfortunately, this creates an alternative reality where Ron and Hermonie never marry, and thus Rose Weasley-Granger, a childhood friend of Albus, is never born. In the present, Harry’s scar begins to hurt again, and, after conferring with a talking portrait of his old mentor, Dumbledore, he decides to keep Scorpius and Albus separated at Hogwarts. However, Harry changes his mind after talking with his wife and his old nemesis, Scorpius's father, Draco Malfoy. Albus and Scorpius use the Time Turner for a second time to save Cedric. They do so by humiliating him, which does force him out of competition, but also causes great bitterness to fester within him. When the boys return to present, Albus is absent, and Scorpius realizes that in this alternate reality, Harry Potter died and Voldemort is lord of all wizards.

In the third act, Scorpius realizes that Cedric was so hurt by their action that he joined the Death Eaters—members of Voldemort’s army—and killed some people who had been essential to defeating Lord Voldemort. Voldemort quickly takes over the Ministry of Magic to create an authoritarian regime. Non-magical beings (muggles) are frequently attacked by wizards for fun, and half-bloods, those who don’t have two magical parents, are routinely harassed at Hogwarts. But some things are better for Scorpius in this world: he is now very popular; the teachers love him; and his father occupies the prestigious position that Harry Potter had occupied in the original version of reality. Fortunately, Scorpius sees that things are better for most people in the real timeline, and he uses the Time Turner to restore events to their original shape. But Delphi, Amos Diggory’s caretaker, is revealed to be the daughter of Voldemort and his loyal follower, Bellatrix Lestrange; she steals the Time Turner and Albus and Scorpius follow her in order to retrieve it.

In the final act, Albus and Scorpius find themselves living through the fatal night that Voldemort tried to kill the infant Harry Potter. They infer that Delphi is trying to warn her father not to kill Harry, thus allowing him to live. The boys send a secret message to the future that adult Harry Potter is able to read. Draco Malfoy owns the final model of the Time Turner, and the two men, along with workers from the Ministry of Magic, travel back in time to stop Delphi. Harry uses magic to appear like Voldemort, and he successfully lures Delphi away from where the murder is about to take place. Harry’s parents are murdered; Voldemort tries to kill Harry and mysteriously loses all of his powers, and thus the original timeline is restored. Everyone returns to the present. Delphi, who in many ways is the cursed child, is sent to jail. Things return to normal. Scorpius asks Rose out on a date. Harry and Albus reconcile. The play closes with father and son at Cedric’s grave; Harry apologies for not being able to save Cedric.

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (2016) is a popular play that adapts the story of Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling, to the stage. It was written by English playwright Jack Thorne, who has also contributed to TV shows such as Skins and Shameless, and directed by the John Tiffany, a critically acclaimed English director. The play was a critical and popular smash hit, winning a record-breaking nine Oliver Awards (the English equivalent of the Tonys). Its themes include the pressures of growing up, acceptance of the past, and courage when facing the unknown.