Harry Potter and the Cursed Child book review: Where love still trumps death

Hermione Granger is the Minister of Magic (fist pump!), Harry is Head of Magical Law Enforcement (why didn’t he become an Auror since he clearly doesn’t like paperwork?!) and Ron Weasley has inherited Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (but, of course), the joke shop started by his brothers Fred and George. They’re older but not particularly wiser, and nobody is failing more at their parenting goals than Harry — no matter how hard he tries, his relationship with his second son, Albus Severus, is nose-diving faster than you can say Molliare (Rowling has finally named the cushioning charm so that we can cast it at Rajiv Chowk metro station during rush hour).

Albus Severus, named after Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape, is terribly burdened by the greatness of his name and his lineage. In a cruel twist of fate, the Sorting Hat places him in Slytherin, where he forms an unlikely friendship with Draco Malfoy’s son, Scorpious. The two echo Harry and Ron’s epic friendship, especially since the young Malfoy is hopelessly in love with Albus’ cousin, Rose Granger-Weasley. But when a Time-Turner is confiscated from a former Death Eater, it unleashes a series of events that could set the clock back to the darkest days of the magical world.

The plot moves very quickly, almost reminiscent of ‘Deathly Hallows’, where the action never gave up and every new chapter threw a new challenge at Hogwarts’ brightest wizards and witches. Rowling and her co-writers pack in a wealth of detail in Part One, but never shift the focus from the true joy of this story — young Potter and young Malfoy’s friendship.

Since the start of the series, Rowling has consistently stressed on the importance of choice and agency. “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be,” Albus Dumbledore said in ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’; and if that weren’t true, characters such as Severus Snape, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin would never have been recognised as the heroes they truly are. It is not simply our destiny that shapes us — we are moulded by the friendships we form, the relationships we embark upon. For it is harder to love than to hate; one is a spark that keeps burning against the odds, and the other, an errant flame that seeks to destroy everything in its wake. And only true friends learn to tell the difference, together.

In comparison to Hermione and Ron, Harry has always come off as a slightly one-note character whose goodness and sense of fairness are bordering on saintly. Heck, even Dumbledore got messed up in bad company! However, in the ‘Cursed Child’, we see a 37-year-old Harry who must navigate fatherhood tentatively, having no father-son relationship of his own to draw upon. An orphan, Harry has hankered for a father-figure and found them (first, in Dumbledore, then Sirius), only to lose them. He wasn’t really “the boy who lived”; he was “the boy who survived”, and with very little to call family. Albus Severus understands none of this — the shadow of his father’s celebrity eclipses his individual identity, leaving room for little else but bitterness.

Every little thing Rowling does is magic? Not quite. ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ works because it is a play, a quasi-sequel to an enormously successful series. As a book, it would have fallen short in several departments, but as a script, it paints such a vivid picture of Rowling’s magical world that one wants nothing more than to watch the actual performance on stage. Part One is better written than Part Two — Rowling’s strength lies in setting up a plot, and she exerts an exceptional command over the pace, till she rushes to tie up loose ends for the denouement. Only twice has she has delivered a perfect book in terms of plot and pace in this series — in ‘The Prisoner of Azkaban’ and ‘The Goblet of Fire’.

But nothing can take away the thrill of a Harry Potter story. Sure, it’s not the greatest fantasy series ever written, but it is the closest to our world. ‘The Cursed Child’ will resonate with us because our deepest hopes and fears are mirrored in Harry and Albus Severus, our need for friendship and acknowledgement is reflected in Scorpious, and because, sometimes, our capacity to love can trump death.

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Parts One and Two
(Based on an original new story by JK Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne)

Hachette

343 pages

Rs 899