Please do not read this if you want to avoid spoilers. I do NOT want to ruin anything for anybody and it will be ruined. Read at your own risk.
" Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is the next installment of the "Harry Potter" series, set 19 to 22 years after the Battle Of Hogwarts. It's spectacular, because you get to see what all your favorite characters (except Luna, unfortunately) are doing and how they're holding up, plus the added bonus of seeing how all of this stuff is affecting their kids.
It starts off pretty much exactly how you'd expect, us tailing the Golden Trio as they say goodbye to their kids on Platform nine and three quarters, Albus worrying about being in Slytherin and it's nostalgic to say the least. We haven't stood at that platform, really, since the sixth book/movie and it's amazing to be there again, see the sights and hear the sounds.
But that's pretty much where it ends.
Personally, reading the play for the first time it was sad to realize how much the Trio had changed. Nineteen years is a long time but they really had changed in that time frame. Harry seems less understanding, especially with his son, and Ron and Hermione, while in the play, aren't really major players here so we don't see an overabundance of them. All we really see of them is bits in the AU's that take place and at the end.
Speaking of Alternate Universes.
That's pretty much the premise of the entire play. All Time-Turners have been destroyed because of the Battle at the Department of Mysteries in book five, so when one is suddenly confiscated from Theodore Nott, the Death Eater, everyone is pretty surprised. So surprised, that Amos Diggory, someone we haven't even thought of since book six at the most, is sitting in the Potter living room talking about bringing Cedric back from the dead. That's "dead" depressing, that's what it is, because we have to imagine exactly what Harry has to remember because, hello, we were there too in book four.
And then we find out that Albus, Harry's son, has a trouble streak more impossibly large than Harry's when he was 14. He steals the Time-Turner, right out of Minister Hermione's office and gets Amos's neice, Delphie and his best friend, Scorpius Malfoy, to help him go back in time and stop Cedric from completing the first task in book four.
The consequences are were I start loosing the ability to suspend my disbelief. See, in the AU that follows them changing time, Ron and Hermione are not together, Albus is in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin and Harry is being COMPLETELY unreasonable to the point where he's being a jerk to McGonagall and she really doesn't do much about it, which is the unbelievable part.
They say that Hermione and Ron don't get married because when the boys changed time they dressed up as Durmstrang, so she had suspicion they were cheating, hence, no Viktor Krum, no jealous Ron, no marriage. BUT WAIT. He, in this AU, would've been dating Padma Patil, so wouldn't that have sparked a jealous Hermione like it did when in the real Universe he dated Lavender? I mean her jealousy prompted them to date just as well as his did in book four, probably more so since it happened closer to when they got together.
Second Au, when they go back in time again and humiliate Cedric in the second task. When they come back he's a Death Eater, kills Neville, Voldemort reigns supreme, Draco is A-Okay with being the leader of the Aurors and doing God knows what under Voldemort, Harry's dead (Albus isn't alive) and Hermione and Ron are living in the Shrieking Shack with Snape. This world is a literal mess. So Scorpius has to fix everything on his own, even though he didn't even want to go to begin with.
First off, I HIGHLY doubt Cedric would've become a Death Eater just because he lost the tournament. Sure, it was humiliating and sure it probably got him bullied a little bit. But Cedric's life was literally perfect before the tournament so why does that one thing set him off the edge? He was a Prefect, Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, great grades, repeatedly described as handsome, popular and he had Cho Chang, so why was this one thing such a big deal?
Continuing on, after Scorpius stops that reality from being a thing we suddenly are dropped into the biggest most intense plot twist I have ever seen in my life. Delphie ends up being Voldemort's and Bellatrix's daughter who was told about a prophecy where if Harry dies at the hand of Albus, Voldemort will rule. Okay, what?
Excuse me, but then she'd have to be born around the time we were reading the books, right? Right. Supposedly she was born right before the Battle Of Hogwarts at Malfoy manor. So I have a few questions.
Why does Draco not know his aunt is pregnant? Even if he didn't know it was Voldemort's he would've at least known since both of them were living there at the time. Wouldn't he have wondered why she was pregnant one minute, baby no where in sight the next?
Why would Voldemort have a sexual relationship with Bellatrix anyway? Yes, Bellatrix is believable here, she was obsessed with him, but her behavior in the books does not really tally that well with someone who's done the deed with Voldemort, it screams that she wants to... not that she has.
Why, if Delphie is the daughter of Voldemort, be okay with being falsely associated with the Diggory's? Sure, their purebloods but in light of things, how did she know that Cedric was the key to all of this? Why is he?
Why is Neville detrimental to the killing of Nagini? Are you telling me that Harry wouldn't have time to tell anyone else? He couldn't have told George, Ginny, McGonagall, even Draco? Seeing as Neville would've probably died earlier, when Harry decided to sacrifice himself, I'm sure he would've run into someone else he could've told.
Then once Delphie kidnaps Albus and Scorpius she takes them back in time to the third task where they actually MEET Cedric in the maze who saves them thinking it's part of the task. Albus even tells him his dad loves him and Cedric is like, okay, and goes on.
We know later, Harry saves Cedric from Krum and that's why they win together at the end of the third task but why doesn't he say anything to Harry? "Hey, have you been to that part in the maze where two kids are tied up by a crazy person?" I mean, the "obstacle" doesn't really match the theme the rest of the maze has, unless Cedric is just oblivious.
Now this question goes more toward Harry's Muggle relatives, mostly Aunt Petunia. In the play before all of this goes down, Albus is given a blanket from Harry that he says he got from Petunia which was his mother's. While that's very touching it seems to be not in character. Petunia did love her sister, but she resented her since Lily went to Hogwarts. She resented her so much she abused her sister's only child, but your telling me she got weepy over a blanket and kept it all those years and on top of that, later, gave it to Harry? I don't think so.
And then last but not least, where was James and Lily the whole time this was going down? At school? Seriously? While their brother is lost in time trying to stop the Dark Lord from rising again, James, James Potter, is sitting in Transfiguration learning how to turn a bird into a cup? I feel like that's unbelievable just because of prior knowledge we have of James. I mean he's James Potter. And he does nothing. Weird.
So while the play is a great story with great writing, as a continuation of the characters set down in the books there's a few things that I believe just don't add up. Of course, JK Rowling knows her characters better than we do so these choices probably make sense I just wish I knew why.
