Harry Potter and The Cursed Child hit the bookstores on 31^st July, 2016 and it has been causing an insane amount of excitement  across the globe. I finished the book in a week which was quite a surprise because it’d take me 3 months to finish a book like that but TCS, being the script of a play made it quite a fast read.

What I don’t understand is why most of the reviews online were based on the previous books and nothing on the play itself. Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley have three beautiful kids and the middle one  seems to be going through a confused phase in his life. Showing that even great wizards have trouble with teenage kids is probably the most modest way of teaching lessons to the reader. If you have read all the books and watched all the movies, then there’s nothing to stop the deluge from your tear glandsonce you cross the second page of the play. Ron and Hermione’s marriage is one of the best marriages in the wizarding world and their daughter is a perfect amalgamation of them both. It’s hard to say that she hasn’t developed an overpowering sense of likeness about herself because even though she does not have many appearances, you will instantly fall in love the way she reflects a young, bold and fearless Hermione Granger.

Being a massive Draco Malfoy fan made the read even more exciting. Every line you read ticks off those memories and you will jump at all the insane connections that each of the books make with this play. The entire play revolves around a messed up time-line (any ideas Barry Allen?) and how the history’s most famous wizard/celebrity kids try to save it. We get glimpses of the Triwizard Tournament and the long gone but not forgotten Cedric Diggory and his ever enthusiastic father Amos Diggory, taking you down  memory lane, overworking  those tear glands. For people who are saying that the play was dry and nothing new has been established, it’s not called for. This is not a hero defeats villain story at all. This story is about regaining faith in magic and being someone’s light in the darkness (as said by Scorpius Malfoy). It would be safe to say that  people expected way too much from this instalment when they shouldn’t have. People who watched the play in London would agree to this since they watched the characters come to life in front of them. Not judging people who have read the script but reciprocating with every line of the play is a massive task which only comes to those who have been faithful ‘potterheads’ from the first chapter of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Even then, the faithful have turned their backs and gone cold. Why not accept the work for its merit without comparison, why so much of expectation?

There’s always got to be one crucial symbol to the plot and this one delivers  perfectly.  You know that moment when you realise what the name of the book means and you have to close the book and sit there in pure enchantment? Yes, you will do the same thing with this one too. The symbol on the cover of the play is beautiful and means a lot to the story-line. I’ve had friends who say – “I immediately knew who the villain was” and they are no longer my friends. Sure, take a guess who’s trying to kill whom but painting it on your face does not make you cool. Remember when we found who Darth Vader actually was? That was one of the biggest cinematic reveals in the history of movies and people who say otherwise need to be sacrificed to Firenze and his tribe.

A lot of people wouldn’t realise how important a few characters are but in the end, it’s like a firecracker going bonkers in the sky. The best part of the play is the friendship that grows between Harry’s and Draco’s sons which is oddly satisfying. They might be a little reckless down their ‘We will save Cedric’ rampage and completely flip the universe, making Neville Longbottom disappear and Ron marrying Padma Patil, giving us possible plots of the whole story. What if – that happened? Would you still root for it? What if? That’s a dangerous question, isn’t it?
If you ask me what my favourite part of this play is, I’d say reading it. It’ll make you accept the fact that you can’t change time or live in the past. You can’t ask for anything bigger than this and people who don’t agree need to re-evaluate their existence.