Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Parenthood
Time, Mistakes, and the Past
Friendship, Family, Love, and Bravery
Reputation and Expectation
Death and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
Scorpius barges in on the Potions classroom, amazed to see Snape. Snape dismissively tells him that just because Scorpius acts like a king doesn’t make everyone his subjects. Scorpius asks for help: he knows that Snape was watching the Death Eaters and spying for Dumbledore. Snape snarls at the accusation, knowing it’s very dangerous.
In the primary timeline, Snape was killed by Voldemort while secretly working for Dumbledore’s interests, and so he represents another person who was inadvertently saved by Albus and Scorpius’s actions. But his reaction to Scorpius’s statement that he was spying for Dumbledore illustrates again the danger in reputation, because Snape knows he can be killed for what Scorpius is saying.
Themes
Scorpius tells Snape that there’s another world in which Voldemort was defeated at the Battle of Hogwarts. He explains how he used a Time-Turner to try to save Cedric Diggory by preventing him from winning the Triwizard Tournament, but they turned him into a different person. Scorpius discovered that because he was humiliated, he became a Death Eater—but Scorpius can’t work out how that changed the Battle of Hogwarts.
Scorpius’s explanation reveals how Cedric’s humiliation then prompted him to become a Death Eater, confirming how Scorpius and Albus actively trying to change the past actually made the world worse. Unlike the first time they tried, in their second attempt they were able to accomplish what they set out to do, but the play demonstrates the unintended consequences of such success, and therefore implies that it’s better not to get caught up in trying to fix the past.
Themes
Snape explains that Cedric killed Neville Longbottom in the Battle of Hogwarts. Scorpius realizes that Neville originally killed Nagini, Voldemort’s snake, and because Nagini didn’t die, Voldemort couldn’t die and so he won the battle. Snape then tells Scorpius to get out before he alerts Draco about Scorpius’s nonsense.
Snape’s explanation demonstrates how Cedric becoming a Death Eater had even greater ramifications, again confirming the danger in changing or trying to fixate on the past, because one never knows how things might have been worse, not better.
Themes
Scorpius brings up the only thing he can: he knows Snape loved Harry’s mother Lily and asks how he could know that if he hadn’t seen the other world. He says that he knows Snape is a good man—Harry Potter named his son Albus Severus. Scorpius then begs Snape for help, and hearing this, Snape agrees. He opens a hatch at the back of his classroom, whisking Scorpius away to a hiding place under the Whomping Willow.
Here Scorpius brings up how Snape’s love for Lily’s mother has inspired his own bravery—both in the alternate timeline, in trying to protect Harry while working as a double agent for Dumbledore—and here, in helping Scorpius correct the problems that he has created.
Themes
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