So when this became available, while I didn't go out to the midnight sale (although I wish I had), I did pick this up at the start of a date night out with my husband. "Let's stop by Barnes & Noble before dinner" I casually dropped. He agreed. Target acquired.
So this book ended up in my hands on Friday night. And then I began reading. And every time I could snatch a spare moment, I read. Until Sunday night came along and through bleary eyes, I finished it around 11 p.m. Way past my bed time, but totally worth it.
So much of my liking of this book really has to do with getting to be in the Harry Potter world again. Hanging out with old friends, who are still my age - real life Harry Potter is only three months older than I am (shhhhh.... I know there is no "real life" Harry Potter). I've consigned myself to my Hufflepuff fate, I have recognized I married a Slytherin. Yes, yes, I really am this big of a dork.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child picks up where Deathly Hallows left off - namely Platform 9 3/4 where Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione are dropping their kids at the Hogwarts express. (I'm hoping the stage director managed to make them not look quite so old as they looked at the end of the last movie - because again, I'm the same age as Harry and I don't think anyone I know my age looks quite that old at 37).
Again, Harry is advising Albus Severus Potter that being a Slytherin is not such a bad thing. And then it happens, Albus meets Scorpius Malfoy on the train, they become best friends, and Albus, wanting to cement the friendship with Scorpius, becomes a Slytherin.
Time fast forwards as we see Albus is isolated except for his one friend, he bears the burden of being Harry Potter's son and he can't seem to get out from under the weight of it. Meanwhile, Harry, as Minister of Magical Law Enforcement, realizes he is not connecting with his son and is reading his own childhood into Albus' problems. His friend Hermione, Minister of Magic (of course), cannot seem to help him, nor can his wife Ginny.
So Albus becomes increasingly surly and depressed. He gets a horrible idea after his father is visited by an aging Amos Diggory who berates Harry for letting Cedric die all those years ago. Amos wants Harry to use a recently confiscated time-turner to go back in time and save Cedric. Harry knows this is a fools errand. Unfortunately, Albus does not. He believes his father is being selfish, sacrificing others for himself. So he makes a plan with Scorpius to break into the ministry, steal the time-turner and go back in time to save Cedric.
However, as can be expected, changing the past can have unintended consequences. And in this case, the present changes in slight ways. When Scorpius and Albus return to the present, Ron and Hermione are no longer married, and therefore their children, Rose and Hugo, have never been born. Scorpius is crestfallen as he's been in love with Rose since the beginning of the play. And Cedric is still dead. So the boys make a plan to return to the past another time to mess up Cedric's second task at the tri-wizard tournament.
This second trip has even more-dire results as it allows Voldemort to rise again and thrusts them into a horrible reality where death eaters rule and Delores Umbridge is back as Headmaster of Hogwarts. Scorpius - now alone because Albus was never born, must find a way to fix all of this, so he calls upon Hermione, Ron and Severus Snape (oh Snape, I'm so glad we get a chance to properly love you after despising you wrongly for so many books).
Scorpius does manage to fix the mistakes he and Albus made, and if that was the end, it would be enough, but there is someone else who knows of Albus and Scorpius' actions, who decides to use the time-turner to their own ends to bring back Voldemort. There are too many spoilers in the rest of the story to keep going, but you get the drift.
So I was so so happy while reading, because I really do love the characters and the Harry Potter world. But there are a couple things I had questions about or wasn't really too keen on:
- How old is Amos Diggory? He's in a nursing home, but it's only been 22 years since Cedric died, so even if Amos was in his 40s before then he'd only be in his 60s now, hardly a super old guy.
- Only a mention of Neville but no actual Neville parts? Boo.
- Ron really is an afterthought in this whole thing. He's a stay-at-home dad while his wife is the Minister of Magic, but this play kind of made him a pitiful bumbling mope. This is not how I saw Ron ending up at all. It's disappointing and doesn't do the character and his growth over the prior books justice.
- I forgot how much 13 year old dialogue is lame.
- And this is probably the biggest one, the Albus/Harry disconnect wasn't there for me. I began to think perhaps Albus was gay and in love with Scorpius who was not and therefore all these statements about Harry not understanding Albus and why he was upset and not listening to him made sense. But, that's not it. So when it came time for them to "work it out" I wasn't really sure what the issue was. So I think the dramatic tension was kind of a let down.
Other than that of course, I loved this book and I'm so glad it's in the world. Now, for it to come to a theater production near me. This really only gets 4/5 Stars because the story feels only derivative of the earlier books. While it plays catch-up on the "where are they now" theme, it misses some of the real beauty and dare I say, Magic? of the originals.
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