Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (replies will contain SPOILERS)

Hieronymus Graubart wrote:
So you agree that Scorpius belongs to ? I don't remember a single scene that requires him to be in Slytherin.

He was sorted into Slytherin in Scene 4 - almost a replay of Draco in SS.  "Scorpius was expecting this - he kind of nods and half-smiles.  There's cheering from the Slytherins as he joins them."  I would have thought the Houses might have changed a little in 19 years - - - and I might have thought Scorpius was hoping, "Not Slytherin!"   Also - if students are concerned about the rumors that Scorpius is Voldemort's son, would Slytherins welcome him?  Would any house welcome him?  Who wants the spawn of Voldemort in their House?

I though Hermione was a little young to Minister of Magic, but what irked me more was her nagging at Harry to do his paperwork.  That seemed like Thorne's attempt to tie in with the books, not anything of real meaning, and it was bad dialogue.  They aren't 12 any more with Harry needing to be prompted to do his homework.  It made both Harry and Hermione seem childish - and I couldn't really believe that Harry could have become Head of Magical Law Enforcement if he didn't keep up on his paperwork.

As far as Divination and the centaurs, I took Bane's comment to be more bad dialogue, not something that had real meaning.  It seemed like another attempt to tie in with the books.

Don’t the students habitually cheer when their house gets a new member (unless it’s as unexpected as a Potter sorted into Slytherin)?

Yeah, the Slytherins cheering when their house gets "Voldemort’s son" may look like there are still lots of Voldemort supporters in Slytherin, but this would contradict everything else we see.

I would like to believe that Scorpius and Draco’s complaints are based on listening too much to the few nasty guys who always stuff it down their throats, while most people actually don’t believe the rumour, or just don’t care, because it’s your choices, not your ancestry, that define who you are.

Alas, there is also the possibility that the Slytherin students in the joy of the moment just forgot who Scorpius is assumed to be, and only remembered later.

Scorpius and everybody else’s expectation was obviously based more on family tradition than on his personality, but he was content with the Sorting Hat’s decision. So, did he not hope "Not Slytherin!" because Slytherin isn’t assumed to be bad, or did he hope that being "Voldemort’s son" in Slytherin might be marginally less bad than being "Voldemort’s son" in any other house, only to be proven wrong? Either way it looks like Slytherin has changed, if it ever really was as bad as many readers of the books have seen it *pointing to my Slytherin Observations for the first five books*.

I don’t get why Scorpius

had to be in Slytherin so that Albus could also be in Slytherin.

Do you assume that Albus only got into Slytherin because he told the Sorting Hat something like, "My poor friend Scorpius was sorted into evil Slytherin; I must join him there, because otherwise he can’t bear it"?

SPOILER: Although the second timline’s Albus and Scorpius are now vanished due to the weird rules of time travel, everybody remembers them to have been friends for three years while Albus was in Gryffindor. Why couldn’t Albus be in Slytherin and be Scorpius friend while Scorpius were in Hufflepuff?

Disappointing? Did you miss the point that Albus is only in Slytherin to show that being in Slytherin has never been the problem? I’m still not sure what his problem is, but I’m quite sure what it isn’t.

And now I nearly convinced myself that Scorpius not being sorted into Hufflepuff is a red herring to distract us from realizing that his problem never was being in Slytherin or being assumed to be Voldemort’s son or even being a Malfoy, his problem is just being a nerd. Well, maybe a nerd and a Malfoy. That may be an especially bad combination.

And jumping in...

Yes, I think the two boys had to be in Slytherin, so the "Slytherin is evil" message that comes out clearly in all 7 books could at last be corrected and balanced. JKR must have had a few regrets about being so deterministic about the sorting process.

I hated Hermione becoming Minister for Magic. She's not Machiavellian enough. In my cynical view, that would only happen in an unrealistic, ideal world, and one of the great strengths of the Harry Potter universe was its unflinching reality. Fudge, Scrimgeour - they were believable Ministers for Magic, but Hermione, no. The world doesn't change so much, even after the defeat of someone like Voldemort.

Lady A, I completely agree with you about the bad dialogue. In fact I thing the kids have become rather boring, stereotypical adults. I liked Albus and Scorpious and their "bromance". Verity and Julia, do you remember the Five Words story we wrote about Scorpius and Albus becoming friends?

I hated the time turner plot, but I'll rant about it in another post.

So you don’t turn this Time-Turner, you press down upon it. That’s quite better for long-range operation, even if twenty-five turns would take you back twenty-five years instead of twenty-five hours. The First Task wasn’t exactly on September, 3rd, twenty-five years ago. But I would like to know how you tell the Time Turner how far you want to go. Are their dials for years, months, days, hours and minutes? Has it a touch screen? Is it operated by mind connection?

I like the description of time turning over, but how do they show that on stage?


Ludo Bagman got it wrong (but nobody ever pretended that Ludo was a smart guy). Even getting zero points in the First Task is not the end of the tournament for Cedric. He is in a binding magical contract and still has to do the Second and Third Task anyway.

What happened? Did Cedric’s wand hit Albus – hard? The reaction came a bit late. So, is it just an application of the general rule that time travel is dangerous, so you may be hurt?

And what happened to Ron?


Why is Dumbledore’s portrait in the Hospital wing? I guess it’s actually some other painting and Dumbledore is just visiting.

It’s September, 4th, now.

Apparently this timeline’s Bane said the same words about Albus as the prime timeline’s Bane (emphasizing the "fact" that a time traveler is the same person over all timelines?), and Harry got it all wrong.

I must say it now: I don’t like time travel stories, because usually they show that the authors didn’t think it through. (Surprisingly, the time travel plot in PA is an exception. Rowling kept it internally consistent, and if we insist that there must be more to know about time travel than we have seen, the inconsistencies we run into while trying to kill Tom Marvolo Riddle in the orphanage – or to understand why this can’t be done – are our faults, not Rowling’s.) The time travellers conveniently remember the prime timeline and are still the same characters, although different experiences in the changed timeline should have informed different personalities? What happened to the Albus everybody remembers to have been in Gryffindor for the last three years?

Is he just reacting to Bane’s divination, or is this timeline’s Harry more controlling than the Harry we knew in the prime timeline?


Ron certainly isn’t the Ron we knew in the prime timeline (and I don’t care that he wasn’t the Ron we knew in the books, that’s just playing to the back row again). This Ron doesn’t want anything to do with joke shops, and "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes certified nose-stealing breath" certainly didn’t happen in this timeline. Is this caused by Padme’s rational Ravenclawish influence?

I wonder what else didn’t happen. If this timeline’s Harry took stricter measures against bullying in the family, he may never have felt the necessity to tell Albus that he shouldn’t be afraid of being sorted into Slytherin, and that in case it really mattered to Albus, the Sorting Hat would take his choice into account.

What? If students could really choose a house where they don’t fit, for frivolous reasons like winning a bet, how could we take the houses serious anymore? Maybe that’s the message, Joanne K. Rowling making fun of fans who take the houses far too seriously and obsess over Pottermore’s Sorting Hat, openly confessing that they ignored the terms of service and continued making account after account and being sorted again and again until they got the house they wanted.

But actually, everybody believing the story of Albus persuading the Sorting Hat to sort him into Gryffindor, just to spite Panju, doesn’t make it canon. Since Albus conveniently doesn’t remember and the Sorting Hat doesn’t tell, it’s entirely possible that Albus didn’t need to do anything, because Gryffindor had been the Sorting Hat’s first choice anyway. We don’t even know what made Panju believe that Albus couldn’t get into Gryffindor. Maybe he had listened to James too much .


If McGonagall and especially Ginny weren’t so bewildered, I would guess that this Harry being different from the Harry we knew is caused by not having been friends with the Ron (and Hermione) we knew, for the last twenty-five years. But this timeline’s McGonagall and Ginny must have known this Harry for the last twenty-five years, so he is just overreacting to Bane’s divination in ways nobody can understand? McGonagall and Ginny remembering the prime timeline’s Harry because they aren’t affected by the change themselves wouldn’t make any sense, right? But how can I be sure that Rowling’s concept of long range time travel does make sense? I don’t see where she’s trying to go here.

Verity, this is the only one I could find - [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] It is story #126 - Professor Longbottom and the puzzling plant. It seems to be more about Lucius and Neville, and not so much about the kids. My thanks to PAH for organizing the Five words stories archives so well!

Since Delphi was prepared for stealing the Time-Turner – having brewed the Polyjuice Potion in advance – it’s reasonable to assume that she was also prepared for using it. She probably broke into Theodore Nott’s house and copied the instruction manual before she ratted Nott out to the Ministry.

I wondered what’s going on with Ludo Bagman there, too. Maybe the scene fits movieverse better? I don’t remember.

Since nobody knows how time travel and changing history should work, we should give JKR some leeway there, that’s what artistic license exists for. Since Albus and Harry’s dysfunctional relationship doesn’t depend on who’s married to Ron, or on whether Albus is in Gryffindor or in Slytherin, or on anything else that is different, as long as nobody else is involved Harry and Albus have the exact same conversations in both timelines. That’s how multiple timelines in the Potterverse work.

In the second timeline, Rose wasn’t present to give Albus the impetus to jump off the train! I didn’t even notice that, probably because Rose is so unimportant.

I guess this just means that Rose wasn’t really important there, too. Albus and Scorpius would have run away anyway. If Albus hadn’t spent so much time on talking with Rose, he would have found Scorpius earlier. He would have had time to tell about Amos’ visit last night, and while telling and thinking about what had happened, he would have come to the conclusion that his father isn’t trustworthy and doesn’t care and obviously had lied to the old man to get rid of him. And then he would have run away with Scorpius to ask Amos why he believes that the Ministry has a Time-Turner and what exactly he knows about it. That’s what Delphi must have expected in the first place, because her plan can’t depend on unpredictable events like Rose telling Albus that the Time-Turner actually exists. (Delphi looks more and more like a Mary-Sueish mastermind, but she still makes mistakes.)

Harry is in it’s-all-Malfoy’s-fault-mode, no further investigation necessary.

Is this still September, 4th?

They changed the curriculum. Patronus Charms weren’t fourth year stuff in Harry’s years.

Ah, Polly Chapman and Yann Fredericks are back. Does this mean that they are Gryffindors? Defence Against the Dark Arts classes weren’t shared over houses.


Time is passing. Are we still in September or already in October now?


We get another action scene where the special effects team can show off.


I understand that Albus needed to talk to someone, but owling Delphi wasn’t smart. Although Ron and Hermione are so weird, he just trusted that she would be the same Delphi he knew and that she would know about the attempt to save Cedric? Owling her could have backfired if she had been changed, too. And since Albus admits later that he still doesn’t understand everything that’s going on, he had no guaranty that Delphi wouldn’t be changed.

The history books changed but not enough

What exactly does this timeline’s Delphi know about that? Since she didn’t travel through time, she shouldn’t remember the prime timeline and can’t ever have seen the unchanged history books. She can only know what Albus owled her. She may or may not remember that she tricked this timelines Albus into saving Cedric – there’s no obvious reason why this shouldn’t have happened in this timeline, too – so she may not have been surprised when Albus reported back to her. But she may have been a bit confused when Albus reported changes that can’t have happened, because Hermione and Ron had never been married.

I’m not sure how determined this Delphi is to go through with the plan, and how much she genuinely tries to help two friends to get together again.


Finally we are beyond these pesky house and family rivalries, but it may be too late.


Scorpius did the research and found a neat causal chain.

• Hermione spotted suspicious Durmstrang students before Cedric was disarmed.
  
• Hermione suspected that Viktor had sent these students to sabotage Cedric.
  
• Hermione turned down Viktor’s invitation for the Yule Ball and went with Ron – just as friends.
  
• Ron didn’t get jealous und thus never realized that he loved Hermione.
  
• Ron didn’t feel obligated to stay with Hermione the whole time and danced with Padme, too.
  
• Since Ron wasn’t distracted ogling Hermione and Viktor, Padme enjoyed being with him.
  
• I guess that Padme never had a male friend who wasn’t a boyfriend and thus believed that enjoying to be together meant love.
  
• Ron reacted to feeling to be loved, something he had not gotten from Hermione so far, and attempted to love Padme back.
  
• Under Padme’s influence, Ron turned into this comically serious guy.
  
• Lacking Ron’s loving support, Hermione didn’t feel confident to "do some good in the world" (DH  7) pursuing a career in the Ministry, and became a bitter Hogwarts teacher.
  
• All this may or may not have affected Harry and other persons, too.

Note for further reference that all this had very few to do with Cedric Diggory and the time travellers’ original goal. Note also that this is not the only, and thus predictable, outcome of Hermione spotting Albus and Scorpius in Durmstrang robes. Every choice made on the way mattered, and thus it could have gone in many different ways.

I’m pretty sure your dad is exactly the same. Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Married to Ginny. Three kids.

That’s true on a superficial level. I’m not sure whether it’s also ironic. Are Harry prime and Harry two meant to be different personality-wise?

Ah, Professor Croaker’s (an Unspeakable of the Department of Mystery, seen in GF 79 and here revealed to have apparently been in the Time Branch) law still exists:

the furthest someone can go back in time without the possibility of serious harm to the traveller or time itself is five hours.

This could once be found on (old) Pottermore (not yet named after Professor Croaker then), together with the tragic story of Eloise Mintumble, who travelled from 1899 back to 1402, causing a lot of damage while being stuck there for five days, aged five centuries on her return to 1899 and died in St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries shortly after.  

Since finding new texts by J.K. Rowling on Pottermore has been more work than fun lately, I don’t know whether this was taken down or was just never transferred from old Pottermore to new Pottermore (I’m also not aware of what else might not have been transferred – yet). Mintumble’s corollary – While you don’t become younger when travelling backward through time, travelling forward you will always age one year per travelled year, regardless of whether your time travelling speed is sixty minutes per hour or six-hundred years per second – is apparently not longer canon, if it ever had been.

And finally we see why Harry had to give the Invisibility Cloak away. The plot demands that it is available at Hogwarts.

Minerva McGonagall is the best.

Well, the Pottermore entry didn’t make much sense, too. How became Eloise Mintumble trapped for a period of five days in the year 1402? Did she forget how to reverse the four-hundred-ninety-seven years reversal charm? Did she loose her wand so that she couldn’t cast finite incantatem? Was her long-range Time-Turner broken? How did the Ministry retrieve her? Did they send a rescue team causing more damage? How did the rescue team survive? Did they age five centuries, too? What catastrophic harm happened to time travellers who went back further than a few hours, but less than a few years? Why did the same harm not happen to Eloise Mintumble? Or is aging five centuries the serious harm that happens to everybody who travels back more than five hours? Why was this not realised for many years?

I actually prefer the current state of affairs. Time travellers may be randomly hurt, as seen with Albus‘s mysterious injury. Although it’s not spelled out, the probability of being hurt and the severity of the potential injuries probably increases with time-wise distance. Up to five hours is relatively save – Hermione never got more than an occasional scratch or bruise on a random body part that Ron and Harry never noticed – but travelling too far, like some centuries, results in nearly certain death.

SPOILER: Since Delphi’s wish to bring Voldemort back doesn’t depend on who’s married to Ron, I guess her actions and her interactions with Albus and Scorpius were exactly the same in both timelines.  

Didn’t Rita Skeeter write about Harry’s "girlfriend" dumping him for Viktor in the prime timeline? Spying around the champions, in this timeline she certainly noticed that Harry’s "girlfriend" turned the other champion down because she didn’t trust him to play fair, but then dumped Harry anyway for his best friend, just to be dumped by Ron for Padme Patil. That’s the type of scandals Rita liked. Of course she spread it out in her book about the four triwizard champions. Rita may have overheard Hermione accusing Viktor to have sent his friends to disarm Cedric, or this detail may be Scorpius’s guesswork. I don’t think that Scorpius knows too much there.

I love that Ron/Hermione is a universal (multiversal?) ship, transcending the timelines. Especially after the often misinterpreted [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].


Hogwarts is still connected to the Floo network? Did the trolls arrive at their party? Have the giants held their wedding? Did the werewolves report to the Ministry and solemnly swear that they aren’t up to no good? Harry, and under his influence, McGonagall too, have been a bit single-minded lately. Just keep Albus away from Draco and nothing bad will happen? Keeping bad things out of Hogwarts isn’t necessary, because the evil is already there, but can’t easily be expelled?

Cedric used a Bubble-Head Charm to swim through the lake.

That’s what he did in the prime timeline. But in this timeline, he failed the First Task because he didn’t have his wand and thus was not able to get the Golden Egg, listen to the song and prepare for the Second Task. So, did he just know the Bubble-Head Charm by heart when he realized that he had to go into the lake, or did he come up with something else on the spot? I hope Albus did the research. We didn’t see him do it. We didn’t see him get the Gillyweed, too. Well, I expected plotholes.

Didn’t Albus pay attention to the rules? Floating Cedric out of the lake and away from the task doesn’t take him out of the competition. Even if humiliated Cedric wanted to step back, he is still in a binding magical contract and still has to do the Third Task anyway. But it’s possible that Harry wins before Cedric, with zero points from the previous tasks, is even allowed to enter the maze, or that demoralized Cedric at least can’t go fast enough to catch up.

I don’t know how a "large Victorian sink" works. Do students really fit through?

This Marauders’s Map is mysterious. I thought it only shows who’s where now. When Albus and Scorpius used the Time-Turner, they should just have vanished from the map. (They should have been visible on the map in the past, if somebody had bothered to look then.)


I won’t rant about "out of the competition" and "out of the tournament" again.

What is Voldemort Day? Celebrating the Dark Lords final victory? But why is it in autumn, when the Battle of Hogwarts, where Harry apparently died, is supposed to have happened in spring?

Did Harry, Ron and Hermione, rather than going on the well-hated camping trip, try to organize the resistance at Hogwarts, making the Battle of Hogwarts happen early? Did nobody tell them that they should destroy the Horcruxes first? What happened to Dumbledore? What else was changed? (You don’t expect that everything from Harry winning the Triwizard Tournament alone to Harry’s coup on the school failing went just as it went in the prime timeline books, right?)

SPOILER: Although Voldemort obviously won in this timeline, Albus and Scorpius didn’t fulfil the prophecy, so Delphi’s plan technically failed.

At the first task, Delphi at least tried to travel through time with Albus and Scorpius. If she had done so, and the change of history had saved Cedric, Delphi would have been there to confiscate the Time-Turner, so that Albus and Scorpius couldn’t just turn around and turn everything back. But Delphi prime gave in far too fast, so that can’t have been the plan, and Delphi two didn’t even try. Since Delphi didn’t travel through time, Delphi three isn’t aware of previous timelines, and since everything is just as she likes it, she never intended to change history; even the prophecy doesn’t have a reason to exist in this timeline.

I’m sure now that Delphi believed that Scorpius is an "unseen child", too, and that her plan was set into motion when she found out that Albus and Scorpius had become friends. She expected that the unseen children, by turning time to spare the spare would kill both their fathers, so both wouldn’t return to the new timeline. Big mistake!

I don’t know what Delphi expected would happen to the Time-Turner, but even if somebody found it, nobody in this timeline would know that history had been changed and how the Time-Turner could be used to change it back, so she probably hoped that the new timeline would be safe.

I still don’t see why Delpi believed that everything would happen just like it was prophesied with only one spare to spare, when the prophecy talked in the plural there, too.

There is no evidence that Albus and Scorpius went directly from the library to the bathroom together, and with the sink I fell into a common trap, forgetting that this is a magical world where handbags can be bigger on the inside. As I said in the introduction, we should expect that lots of events are let out to keep this short. So, Albus went to get some supplies (not telling Scorpius that these would be gillyweed and fireworks), while Scorpius stayed in the library to look up the spell that would make them fit through the plumbing, and then they met again on the first floor. Okay, we didn’t see them cast the spell, so that’s a bit sloppy.

Everybody lives in constant fear anyway, because we all know how Voldemort reacts if his subjects don’t do exactly what he expects. They are now more afraid that they may forget to say Voldemort’s name when it is required. Or they are all so fed up with him that they help the resistance by rendering the Taboo useless in ways that Voldemort can’t complain about.

Hi, everyone!

I've made it here finally, and let me apologize for commenting before reading previous comments, but this post will be about my first impressions (I've just finished the book), and I will read the other posts afterwards. These are really just my first feelings without discussing the book with anyone for the time being, and I've just put the book down so it's all probably very raw and very emotional. Read at your own risk.

1. First of all, I'm not going to be very critical right now. It was a good feeling to get back into the world of Harry Potter after so many years, and this feeling clouds my critical mind.

2. Secondly, I feel vindicated in my conviction that one of the main themes of the Harry Potter novels is parent-child relationships, especially father-and-son issues. That is the great theme JKR has (most of all) returned to in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Harry and Albus, Draco and Scorpius, even Voldemort and Delphi are new variations on the same theme that has had James and Harry, Tobias and Severus, Lucius and Draco, Dumbledore's father and Dumbledore, Lupin and his child, the Black parents and Sirius, Tom Riddle Sr. and Tom Riddle Jr. as well as others. It's all about parents not functioning properly, parents not being there, parents not understanding their children, parents not teaching their children what they should learn, parents who have not valued their children. Come to think of it, I have read all three Robert Galbraith novels, also written by JKR, and the father-son problem is huge there, too.  

3. I wonder who exactly the cursed child is. It seems to be Albus with the black cloud around him, and the curse could be the new prophecy that describes him as the "unseen child" who "will" kill his father. But prophecies can be broken. Scorpius, however, was born to a woman who carried and suffered from a "blood malediction" inherited from a distant ancestor, and Scorpius is also "cursed" with a rather sinister paternal heritage, not to mention the vile rumour that would make him a total outcast if it weren't for Albus and their friendship. Both boys may be "cursed" in some way.

4. Also, though I'm really not in a critical mood, I must mention that the idea that Cedric - good-natured, principled, successful and popular Cedric, with a normal, loving family background - could go dark (and become a Death Eater!) due to that sort of humiliation in a competition (which must have seemed like a spell gone wrong, and who hasn't had one of those?) seems a stretch to me. Still... it also seems to be a nod to the story of another teenager, one who didn't have the advantages that Cedric had, turning dark while suffering at least one major humiliation (and perhaps more) in the hands of the "good guys". Even if Cedric's alternative story is not very convincing, it does confirm a connection between being humiliated and growing up to become a Death Eater.

5. Which reminds me... Time Travel can still give me a headache, but I guiltily confess I enjoyed the scenes that brought back the "old" characters (though I suspect that those are the scenes most prone to criticism). And it wouldn't be me if I didn't admit that I consider the brief appearance of Severus Snape a special gift (although we are never told how he survived the battle in this alternate reality). It was especially good to see him not through Harry Potter's eyes. This is my favourite dialogue of the play (my very favourite lines in bold):


Hermione
     And - Snape? What does Snape do in this other world?
Snape
       I'm dead, presumably.
        He looks at Scorpius. Scorpius's face drops, Snape smiles thinly.
      You were a little too surprised to see me. How?
Scorpius
     Bravely.
Snape
     Who?
Scorpius
     Voldemort.
Snape
     How very irritating.
          There is a silence as Snape digests this.
     Still, there is glory in being taken down by the Dark Lord himself, I suppose.
Hermione
     I'm sorry, Severus.
             Snape looks at her and then swallows the pain. He indicates Ron with a flick of his head.
Snape
    Well, at least I'm not married to him.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snape
    You're risking everything-
Hermione
    We get this right, Harry's alive, Voldemort's dead and the Augurey is gone. For that no risk is too great. Though I am sorry    
        what it will cost you.
Snape
    Sometimes costs are made to be borne.
           The two look at each other, Snape nods, Hermione nods back.
    I didn't just quote Dumbledore, did I?
Hermione (with a smile)
    No, I'm pretty sure that's pure Severus Snape.

I also like: "Strange, isn't it? What comes from within."

Snape is still "the bravest man I ever knew" among many brave men and women and the one ready to sacrifice the most. Hermione and Ron face the Dementors together, comforting each other with a true kiss and they know that they are going to suffer for an alternate reality in which they will be alive and victorious and happy. Snape sacrifices his soul (again!) for an alternate reality in which he will be killed. (And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?) And yet, in the dialogue above, he worries about Hermione... I find it very much in character how fast he comes to terms with the fact that victory means death for him (and life for Harry Potter).

I also like "every inch a hero", but reading about his "soft smile" and his message for Albus Severus Potter, I thought something very much akin to "overkill, mate"!  

6. I find Scorpius adorable.

7. It is still difficult to figure out Sorting. In Albus Potter's case, Sorting is like a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy - whatever you are afraid of, you make it happen by constantly thinking of it. In Scorpius Malfoy's case, it must be be pure family tradition, though we don't actually know whether his mother was a Slytherin or not. "What's in a name?" I feel justified to quote this, since even the rose (Rose) connection is there.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Rose Granger-Weasley apparently doesn't read Shakespeare. But perhaps she will, one day...  

8. Voldemort and Bellatrix producing a child... Hm. That takes some digesting. OK, Bellatrix was in love, but Voldemort seems to be too subhuman, too unnatural, too self-absorbed to be able to father a child, to be able to do anything that is life and not the destruction of life. I suppose it just has to be accepted though.

9. I was somewhere about half-way into the story when I seriously started suspecting Delphi. Does that count as good? Or is it terribly late? At first I only thought how an apparently otherwise sane adult could be so irresponsible and encourage two kids to do something so dangerous. Is she being incredibly stupid? What is her significance in the story? Oh... does she have her own agenda perhaps? Is she evil? I didn't see the Miss Voldemort thing coming though.

10. I enjoyed Hermione's riddles. I even figured them out, mostly. The one about the second half of Dementor gave me a giggle. That's pure Hermione Granger. And she doesn't even have to worry about Ron finding it out.

Julia H. wrote:
3. I wonder who exactly the cursed child is. It seems to be Albus with the black cloud around him . . .

I am way behind on my re-read, otherwise I'd comment on all the wonderful perspectives here, but at the end of the book I decided the cursed child was Delphi, and she was the "black cloud" surrounding Albus, since he was so taken with her and influenced by her.  (Although I'm still treating Bane's "black cloud" as mostly bad dialogue . . . .   )  And I was taking the word "cursed" in the sense of someone who is ill-fated, not someone who has been hit by a Wizarding curse.

Initially I did think The Cursed Child was meant to be Albus, but I had a completely different plot in my head after hearing the title.  Even before the play came out, I thought Albus Severus might be "cursed" by having the names of two legendary wizards and have a hard time living up to those names.

(Hey, lots of new comments. Hi, everyone!)

What happened to the wonderfully athletic natural leader Scorpius? Apparently he was replaced by the time travelling no-sports follower from the prime timeline. I don’t believe that time travel should work like this, but since I don’t believe that time travel should work at all, I’m going to accept that this is how it works in Potterverse.

Scorpius is highly valued, although his family fell into disgrace when Lucius failed to do his task in the battle of the DOM, Draco failed to kill Dumbledore and Narcissa failed to realize that Harry was still alive in the Forbidden Forrest?

For Voldemort and Valour.

What happened to the taboo? Did Voldemort take this to a new level? Since everybody must say his name now and not doing so would be suspicious, the members of the resistance who weren’t stupid enough to be caught when they said "Voldemort" earlier must get used to say it in public now, but then accidentally saying it in a place that’s supposed to be uninhabited will still give their secret meeting place away? All Voldemort has to do is filtering out all the false alarms from places where his subjects are expected to say it.


Scorpius is really popular in this timeline, even with the Gryffindors. Or is everybody in Slytherin now, because there aren’t other houses anymore?

And Potter is a swear word now.


Draco is Head of Magical Law Enforcement, although his family fell into disgrace when Lucius failed to do his task in the battle of the DOM, Draco himself failed to kill Dumbledore and Narcissa failed to realize that Harry was still alive in the Forbidden Forrest?


I would like to know how Scorpius found out that Cedric had become a Death Eater. Is Cedric Diggory on a list of honour displayed at Hogwarts: "Everybody who fought for Lord Voldemort in the Last Battle"? Wait, it probably is on display in the Ministry of Magic, otherwise Scorpius should have noticed it earlier?

Did somebody say "Snape”? Let me take a guess now: Among all the people who died in the war against Voldemort, Cedric Diggory sticks out because he was the first whose death Harry watched, and this affected Harry so much that he learned to see Thestrals. (Harry watching his parents die when he was fifteen months old didn’t count for that.) In a world where Cedic Diggory had not been killed in that night on the graveyard in Little Winging, Harry’s behaviour during his fifth year must have been different.

Being less emotionally upset, Harry may have been able to actually learn Occlumency, and thus couldn’t be lured into the Ministry. Being a little bit less determined to keep Sirius safe on all costs, Harry may have opened the gift that would allow them to communicate and thus couldn’t be lured into the Ministry, because he wouldn’t have talked to Kreacher. Either way or in many other possible ways that don’t even come to my mind, the Battle of the DOM didn’t happen, and the Malfoy family didn’t fall into disgrace. (Even if Scorpius actually had read A History of Magic, history books in this timeline certainly don’t tell about Voldemort’s failed plans, nor do they detail in which specific ways these plans failed.)

Since Voldemort couldn’t blame Lucius Malfoy for Harry not showing up in the Hall of Prophecy, Draco never got the task to kill Dumbledore and Snape didn’t step in. If Snape still killed Dumbledore so that he would not die from the cursed ring, he did it secretly, nobody knew about it and Voldemort had no reason to believe that killing Snape would make him the master of the Elder Wand, but he also didn’t trust Snape enough to make him Headmaster at Hogwarts.

But since we don’t know what Voldemort did instead of waiting for Dumbledore’s death or Draco’s failure, some of Voldemort’s actions may have gotten in the way of Snape mercy-killing Dumbledore, so that technically Voldemort killed Dumbledore through his cursed ring and thus became the master of the Elder Wand, seriously diminishing Harry’s chance to win the last duel.

It’s also possible that Voldemort, lacking the bad experience of the combat in the Ministry’s Entry Hall, thought at some time during Harry’s sixth year that now was the time to engage the aging Dumbledore directly. Since Dumbledore was already weakened by the cursed ring, Voldemort succeeded before Dumbledore could tell Harry about the Horcruxes, thus making the Battle of Hogwarts happen early.

Does all this make sense?


Scorpius found such a neat causal chain from two suspicious students in Durmstrang robes appearing at the Fist Task to Ron and Padme being married, but now he totally ignores how Cedric being alive must have affected Harry and apparently believes that Cedric did something terrible in the Battle of Hogwarts and this single event changed everything? Scorpius must be obsessed with the idea that Albus doomed himself when he added his own flavour of humiliation to the original task of saving Cedric’s life. There’s no other way to explain this. He doesn’t even ask why Snape is still alive. (Well, asking Snape that might be a bit rude.)

Cedric Diggory didn’t do anything significant. He only killed Neville Longbottom, who was totally unimportant in this timeline. Neville may not even have had the chance to proof himself in the Battle of the DOM. Was Neville really supposed to kill Nagini after all that must have been changed? How would Neville failing to kill Nagini explain anything?  

Since Cedric isn’t a famous hero who did something important, Scorpius probably didn’t find more than his name on some list of combatants, and we can’t expect to get any detailed information about how he turned evil. Since we don’t actually know what happened between the Third Task and the Battle of Hogwarts, there may have been much more to it than just "he was humiliated in the Second Task".