The plots of the original Harry Potter books as well as theCursed Child all show the power of love to inspire bravery. In the play, Albus and Scorpius’s friendship strengthens them as they face bullies, a vicious trolley witch, and ultimately a dark wizard. Likewise, at the end of the play, Harry is only able to fight the dark witch Delphi and ensure that Voldemort does not rise to power again with the help of his friends and family, affirming explicitly that their shared love is what allows them to win against dark magic. Thus, the play suggests that it is the love anchoring friendship and family—rather than any inherent personal valor—is what allows them to overcome whatever obstacles they have to face.
Albus and Scorpius’s friendship is an anchoring force in their lives, as they are able to fight bullies and other obstacles solely because of the comfort they find in each other. Albus and Scorpius are both often bullied—Albus because he doesn’t boast the same accomplishments as Harry, and Scorpius because people believe that he is Voldemort’s son. From the outset of their time at Hogwarts, the boys become instant sources of comfort to each other. When Albus is surprisingly placed into Slytherin House instead of Gryffindor, Scorpius immediately welcomes Albus and says that they can stand together. Even in what is a devastating moment for Albus, Scorpius’s friendship helps him feel less alone. Similarly, when Scorpius’s mother Astoria dies, Albus’s friendship alone provides some solace for Scorpius. Even though Albus doesn’t know exactly how to comfort his friend, Scorpius tells Albus that he only needs to come to the funeral and “be [his] good friend.” Friendship alone helps them brave the struggles and tragedies in their lives. Then, when Albus decides to save Cedric from his unjust death at the Triwizard Tournament, he tells Scorpius that he’ll “entirely mess it up” if Scorpius doesn’t come with him, and Scorpius agrees to go. This again affirms how Scorpius’s friendship gives Albus the bravery to do what he believes is right. He knows that only with his friend’s help can he accomplish what he sets out to do.
By contrast, Albus and Scorpius feel desolate and alone when they can’t be friends, affirming how they need each other’s friendship and love to face the challenges in their lives. Believing that Scorpius is dangerous, Harry tells Albus that he and Scorpius cannot be friends. A silent scene on a Hogwarts staircase reveals just how lonely they are as a result, as they run into each other and look at each other with “abject loneliness.” Later, Scorpius approaches Albus anyway to ask him to help correct a mistake that they made when they traveled back in time. Scorpius has the Time-Turner and could easily go back himself, but the fact that he believes he can only do it with Albus’s help shows how, without each other’s friendship, the boys aren’t able to overcome their problems. Scorpius’s father Draco even approaches Harry to tell him how devastated Scorpius is when kept apart from Albus. Draco says that being alone can send a person to a “truly dark place,” that Draco and Voldemort were also lonely as children, and that this caused them to do horrible things. In this way, Draco emphasizes how friendship and love can help people fight their own demons as well as external obstacles. Even when Scorpius is alone, he uses his friendship with Albus as a source of comfort and bravery when he encounters soul-sucking dementors in the alternate timeline. Snape, a professor, tells Scorpius to think of Albus to overcome the dementors. When he is able to correct the timeline and Albus returns, Scorpius tells his friend, “You may not have been there Albus, but you were fighting—fighting alongside me.” His and Albus’s friendship—even in Albus’s absence—thus helped him maintain his bravery.
The ending of the play—in which Albus’s friends and family join together to defeat Voldemort—drives home that courage and power come from love. When Harry is fighting the dark wizard Delphi alone and she proves stronger than him, she taunts him for being weak. Harry acknowledges that he’s not strong enough to face her alone, but at that moment, Albus, Hermione, Ron, Draco, and Ginny arrive to help, and Harry says, “I’ve never fought alone, you see. And I never will.” Having friends and family in his life not only makes him braver, but it also provides him with the support he needs to defeat dark magic. At the end of this encounter, Harry also relies on their love for emotional strength. He has to watch his parents die, knowing that he can do nothing to stop their deaths without disrupting the future. Hermione says that they’ll “all witness it,” and Harry takes hold of Ginny and Albus’s hands for support. Knowing that they are there allows him to witness his parents’ deaths and work through his grief rather than trying to stop their deaths, showing how their love both allows him to be vulnerable and makes him strong.
Harry’s saga essentially begins when his mother, Lily, sacrifices herself to save his life. Her love protects him, and characters repeatedly explain that love is “the only spell Voldemort couldn’t understand.” In this way, the play explicitly shows that love is crucial to defeating evil, and it is what sets worthy, victorious heroes apart from treacherous villains.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Friendship, Family, Love, and Bravery ThemeTracker
Friendship, Family, Love, and Bravery Quotes in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
ALBUS: Dad…
ALBUS pulls on HARRY’s robes. HARRY looks down.
Do you think—what if I am—what if I’m put in Slytherin…
HARRY: And what would be wrong with that?
ALBUS: Slytherin is the House of the snake, of Dark Magic… It’s not a House of brave wizards.
HARRY: Albus Severus, you were named after two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.
ALBUS: But just say…
HARRY: If it matters to you, you, the Sorting Hat will take your feelings into account.
ROSE: The rumor is that he’s Voldemort’s son, Albus.
A horrible, uncomfortable silence.
It’s probably rubbish. I mean… look, you’ve got a nose.
The tension is slightly broken. SCORPIUS laughs, pathetically grateful.
SCORPIUS: And it’s just like my father’s! I got his nose, his hair, and his name. Not that that’s a great thing either. I mean—father-son issues, I have them. But, on the whole, I’d rather be a Malfoy than, you know, the son of the Dark Lord.
SCORPIUS and ALBUS look at each other and something passes between them.
ALBUS: At Harry Potter and his disappointing son.
HARRY: What does that mean?
ALBUS: At Harry Potter and his Slytherin son.
[…] HARRY look at ALBUS, concerned.
HARRY: Al—
ALBUS: My name is Albus, not Al.
HARRY Are the other kids being unkind? Is that it? Maybe. if you tried making a few more friends… without Hermione and Ron I wouldn’t have survived Hogwarts, I wouldn’t have survived at all.
ALBUS: But I don’t need a Ron and Hermione. I’ve—I’ve got a friend, Scorpius, and I know you don’t like him but he’s all I need.
HARRY Look, as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to me.
HARRY: Albus, I want you to have the blanket.
ALBUS: And do what with it? Fairy wings make sense, Dad, invisibility cloaks, they also make sense—but this—really?
HARRY is slightly heartbroken. He looks at his son, desperate to reach out.
HARRY: Do you want a hand? Packing. I always loved packing. It meant I was leaving Privet Drive and going back to Hogwarts. Which was… well, I know you don’t love it but…
ALBUS: For you, it’s the greatest place on earth. I know. The poor orphan, bullied by his uncle and aunt Dursley…
ALBUS: When Amos Diggory asked for the Time-Turner my father denied they even existed. He lied to an old man who just wanted his son back—who just loved his son. And he did it because he didn’t care—because he doesn’t care. Everyone talks about all the brave things Dad did. But he made some mistakes too. Some big mistakes, in fact. I want to set one of those mistakes right. I want us to save Cedric.
SCORPIUS: Okay, whatever was holding your brain together seems to have snapped.
ALBUS: I’m going to do this, Scorpius. I need to do this. And you know as well as I do, I’ll entirely mess it up if you don’t come with me. Come on.
SCORPIUS: From the moment I first heard of it, I was desperate to go. I mean, Dad didn’t much like it there but even the way he described it… From the age of ten I’d check the Daily Prophet first thing every morning—certain some sort of tragedy would have befallen it—certain I wouldn’t get to go.
ALBUS: And then you got there and it turned out to be terrible after all.
SCORPIUS: Not for me.
ALBUS looks at his friend, shocked.
All I ever wanted to do was go to Hogwarts and have a mate to get up to mayhem with. Just like Harry Potter. And I got his son. How crazily fortunate is that.
ALBUS: But I'm nothing like my dad.
SCORPIUS: You're better. You're my best friend, Albus. And this is mayhem to the nth degree.
ALBUS enters and walks up one staircase.
SCORPIUS enters and walks up another.
The staircases meet. The two boys look at each other.
Lost and hopeful—all at once.
And then ALBUS looks away and the moment is broken—and with it, possibly, the friendship.
And now the staircases part—the two look at each other—one full of guilt—the other full of pain—both full of unhappiness.
DRACO: My father thought he was protecting me. Most of the time. People say parenting is the hardest job in the world—they’re wrong—growing up is. We all just forget how hard it was.
As hard as he tries to resist them, these words resonate with HARRY.
I think you have to make a choice—at a certain point—of the man you want to be. And I tell you that at that time you need a parent or a friend. And if you’ve learnt to hate your parent by then and you have no friends… then you’re all alone. And being alone—that’s so hard. I was alone. And it sent me to a truly dark place. For a long time. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. You may not understand that, Harry, but I do—and I think Ginny does too.
SCORPIUS: Have you heard me, Albus? This is bigger than you and your dad. Professor Croaker’s law—the furthest someone can go back in time without the possibility of serious harm to the traveler or time itself is five hours. And we went back years. The smallest moment, the smallest change, it creates ripples. And we—we’ve created really bad ripples. Rose was never born because of what we did. Rose.
SCORPIUS: Sometimes—sometimes I find myself thinking—maybe they're true too.
ALBUS: No. They’re not true. And I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t think Voldemort is capable of having a kind son—and you’re kind, Scorpius. To the depths of your belly, to the tips of your fingers. I truly believe Voldemort—Voldemort couldn’t have a child like you.
Beat. Scorpius is moved by this.
SCORPIUS: That’s nice—that’s a nice thing to say.
ALBUS: And it’s something I should have said a long time ago. And you don’t—you couldn’t—hold me back. You make me stronger—and when Dad forced us apart—without you—
SCORPIUS: I didn’t much like my life without you in it either.
SNAPE: Listen to me, Scorpius. Think about Albus. You’re giving up your kingdom for Albus, right?
SCORPIUS is helpless. Consumed by all the dementor is making him feel. And SNAPE knows he needs to open his heart to save him.
One person. All it takes is one person. I couldn’t save Harry for Lily. So now I give my allegiance to the cause she believed in. And it’s possible—that along the way I started believing in it myself.
SCORPIUS steps decisively away from the dementor.
SCORPIUS: The world changes and we change with it. I am better off in this world. But the world is not better. And I don’t want that.
ALBUS: And why was I so determined to do this? Cedric? Really? No. I had something to prove. My dad’s right—he didn’t volunteer for adventure—me, this, it’s all my fault—and if it wasn’t for you everything could have gone Dark.
SCORPIUS: But it didn’t. And you’re to thank for that as much as me. When the dementors were—inside my head—Severus Snape told me to think of you. You may not have been there, Albus, but you were fighting—fighting alongside me.
DELPHI: Two of you? Choices, choices. I think I’ll kill the boy first. Avada Kedavra!
She fires the Killing Curse at ALBUS—but HARRY throws him out of the way. The bolt smashes into the ground.
He fires a bolt back.
You think you’re stronger than me?
HARRY: No. I’m not.
They fire bolts mercilessly at each other as Albus rolls quickly away and slams a spell into one door and then another, opening them.
ALBUS: Alohomora!
HARRY: But we are.
ALBUS: Alohomora!
HARRY: I’ve never fought alone, you see. And I never will.
And HERMIONE, RON, GINNY, and DRACO emerge from the doors, and fire up their spells at DELPHI, who screams out in exasperation. This is titanic. But she can’t fight them all.
