For many in my generation, Harry Potter means childhood. The seven books in the series were some of the first that we ever read, the first books that made us really passionate and interested in the written word. We've gone to book and movie midnight releases. We've dressed up as our favorite character for Halloween, maybe even more than once. Harry Potter has, in essence, shaped an entire generation of children.

Which is why "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" was such an exciting announcement.

In September of 2015, J.K. Rowling announced that there was going to be a Harry Potter play performed on the West End, a new story about the children of the Golden Trio. Harry Potter fans across the world exploded with excitement, and when the book of the play was released on Harry Potter's birthday (July 31st) fans were already waiting at their local Barnes and Noble. I wasn't one of them, because I had my birthday party on the 30th, but soon after I got my own copy and promptly read it within the span of two hours.

I didn't like a single word.

Now, that may seem surprising. You might be thinking, "How can someone be a Harry Potter fan and not like a Harry Potter book?" Easy. It wasn't a good representation of the Harry Potter universe. It didn't read like any of the other books, and not simply because it was in script format. None of it made me think of the characters that I had grown up with and loved. They felt like two-dimensional versions of the three-dimensional people that I grew up loving. And on top of that, the story hardly touches on our main heroes. It's all about their children.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Now that that's out of the way. Cursed Child isn't the story that die hard fans wanted from Rowling. Fans on tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and other forms of social media have been desperate for another Potter book basically since the last one came out in 2007. They've taken to fiction publishing sites such as Archive of Our Own (A03) and Harry Potter Fan Fiction (HPFF) to tell their own version of what they wanted to happen "Nineteen Years Later," as well as before and during Harry's years at Hogwarts. Many also write their own versions of what they think the Marauders (Harry's Father's friend) did in their seven years at Hogwarts, trying to fill gaps in the canon (written word from Rowling) with their own ideas and words. Cursed Child tears apart everything that readers wanted for Harry, and everything we thought we knew about the Boy Who Lived.

In the first seven novels, Harry is essentially saved by his high capacity for love; he survived Voldemort's first curse due to his Mother's love, was able to put the same protection on those at the Battle of Hogwarts because he was willing to die for them all. In Cursed Child, Harry tells his son in a fight that he wishes that he (Albus) wasn't his (Harry's) son. The Harry that we grew up with would never say something like that. Not in a million years. It completely goes against everything Harry stands for, and it was a shock to readers.

Another shock from the play was the flat interpretation of Ron and Hermione Weasley-Granger. The only truly accurate character choice is the hyphenation of their last names. Everything else came across as strange and out of character. It was as if someone who sort of skimmed through the books and the Wiki pages for Ron and Hermione tried to write their characters. Ron is a stereotypical jokester Dad, laughing at everything and always trying to make light of every situation. Hermione is Minister of Magic, uptight and sticking strictly to the rules. To a casual fan, this would seem alright, but for someone who's read the books multiple times, this characterization is completely different than the first novels.

One of my main issues with the play is that it doesn't tell us much about the main characters from the original series. When you read a Harry Potter novel, you want to hear about Harry and his friends, or at least about characters we already know, such as Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius, and more. Cursed Child followed Albus Potter, Harry's son, and Scorpius Malfoy, Draco's son, through their time travel adventures. Yes, it was kind of interesting to learn about these new characters, but they felt very rushed and sort of thrown together with pieces of the personalities of the characters around them. They came across as childish and immature, and it was just hard to read.

This probably seems rather harsh, but I'm only being completely honest. It wasn't anything like I wanted it to be, and I can honestly say that I didn't enjoy it. Maybe other people did, but for a long-time Harry Potter fan such as myself, I found the play to be a complete and total let down.