Harry Potter and the Cursed Child returns to the beloved characters of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Draco Malfoy, who were children in J. K. Rowling’s original series but in this play are all grown up with children of their own. In particular, Harry and Draco struggle with how to connect to their sons Albus and Scorpius, because Harry largely grew up without parental figures and Draco had a difficult relationship with his own father. Harry and Draco often have trouble knowing how to raise their children because they don’t see their sons on their own terms—instead, they constantly compare Albus’s and Scorpius’s experiences to their own childhoods. In this way, the play suggests that the key to a strong parent-child bond lies in being open with one’s children and acknowledging them for who they are, not for who a parent wants them to be.
Harry and Albus struggle with their relationship because Albus doesn’t feel that Harry truly understands him or his problems. Unlike Harry, Albus immediately struggles to fit in at Hogwarts: Albus is placed in Slytherin House rather than Gryffindor, and he doesn’t show Harry’s same talent for Quidditch or school. As a result, he feels completely “disappointing,” and kids make fun of him for not being like his massively famous father Harry. Over the years, Harry tries to prop up Albus’s excitement about Hogwarts even as Albus continues to be bullied, but this only makes Albus feel less understood. Harry always viewed Hogwarts as a place of magic and belonging, while Albus views it as a place where he feels like an outsider. At the beginning of his third year, Albus highlights this discrepancy, saying, “Just cast a spell, Dad, and change me into what you want me to be, okay?” Harry’s inability to understand Albus’s perspective and reset his own expectations for his son creates a deep conflict between them, as Harry also fails to see Scorpius as an individual. Instead, Harry dislikes and distrusts Scorpius solely because of the rivalry that Harry and Scorpius’s father Draco share. But in splitting up Albus from Scorpius, Harry fails to see that Scorpius is Albus’s most crucial friendship, which in turn widens the chasm between Harry and his son. Dumbledore’s portrait attempts to show Harry where he is going wrong, explaining, “You must see Albus as he is, Harry.” Trying to heed this advice, Harry is more honest with Albus about his feelings and earnestly listens to Albus’s own struggles, enabling them to reconcile. Only by understanding Albus on his own terms is Harry able to build a better father-son relationship.
Draco and Scorpius face similar challenges, as Scorpius is very different from Draco, and Scorpius feels that his father misunderstands him. Scorpius tells Albus when they first meet, “father-son issues, I have them,” and later he tells Albus that sometimes he can feel his dad thinking, “How did I produce this?” This sense of being unrecognizable to his father—of feeling like he isn’t what Draco wants in a son—creates their “issues.” In an alternate timeline in which Voldemort lives, Draco’s disappointment comes to the fore. When Scorpius starts asking questions about the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco says, “I did not bring you up to be sloppy, Scorpius. I did not bring you up to humiliate me at Hogwarts.” Even though this is in an alternate, darker timeline, it reveals some of the underlying conflict in their relationship. Scorpius doesn’t feel that he is what his father wants him to be, and as a result, their relationship is strained. Later, Harry ties his and Draco’s situations together, explaining, “We have both tried to give our sons not what they needed, but what we needed.” In this way, Harry acknowledges that both he and Draco are parenting based on themselves, not actually listening to or prioritizing their sons, and that has damaged both of their relationships. But like Harry, Draco starts to recognize Scorpius for who he is rather than who Draco wants him to be—particularly when he realizes how much of his wife Astoria’s kindness and courage he sees in Scorpius. As a result, they, too, are able to reconcile and appreciate each other anew by the end of the play.
Harry and Draco’s struggle to connect with their sons is rooted in the lack of openness and understanding that they had with their own father figures. Like Scorpius, Draco felt misunderstood by his own father. He reveals that he “never really fancied being a Ministry man,” but it was his father’s dream for him. Draco’s father also opposed his marriage to Astoria, which created a deep rift between them. Harry, meanwhile, has a reckoning with Dumbledore’s portrait at Hogwarts, acknowledging that Dumbledore was like a father figure to him. He critiques Dumbledore for abandoning him when it mattered most and leaving him in “places he felt unloved.” When Dumbledore admits that he loved and was trying to protect Harry, Harry replies that it would have been nice to know this when he was growing up. Weeping, Dumbledore acknowledges, “I couldn’t see that you needed to hear that this closed-up, tricky, dangerous old man… loved you.” In this way, the play again affirms that not feeling fully accepted or understood by one’s parents hampers a strong parent-child relationship, while being open and honest and trying to fulfill a child’s needs fosters better relationships.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Parenthood ThemeTracker
Parenthood Quotes in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
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…
HARRY (finally losing his temper): You know what? I’m done with being made responsible for your unhappiness. At least you’ve got a dad. Because I didn’t, okay?
ALBUS: And you think that was unlucky? I don’t.
HARRY: You wish me dead?
ALBUS: No! I just wish you weren’t my dad.
HARRY (seeing red): Well, there are times I wish you weren’t my son.
There’s a silence. ALBUS nods. Pause. HARRY realizes what he’s said.
No, I didn’t mean that…
ALBUS: Yes. You did.
HARRY: Albus, you just know how to get under my skin…
ALBUS: You meant it, Dad. And, honestly, I don’t blame you.
There’s a horrible pause.
You should probably leave me alone now.
HARRY: Albus, please…
ALBUS picks up the blanket and throws it.
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.
HARRY: I’ve never asked how you felt about me naming him after you, have I?
DUMBLEDORE: Candidly, Harry, it seemed a great weight to place upon the poor boy.
HARRY: I need your help. I need your advice. Bane says Albus is in danger. How do I protect my son, Dumbledore?
DUMBLEDORE: You ask me, of all people, how to protect a boy in terrible danger? We cannot protect the young from harm. Pain must and will come.
HARRY: So I’m supposed to stand and watch?
DUMBLEDORE: No. You’re supposed to teach him how to meet life.
HARRY: How? He won’t listen.
DUMBLEDORE: Perhaps he’s waiting for you to see him clearly.
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.
HARRY: “Love blinds us”? Do you even know what that means? Do you even know how bad that advice was? My son is—my son is fighting battles for us just as I had to for you. And I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me. Leaving him in places he felt unloved—growing in him resentments he’ll take years to understand—
[…]
DUMBLEDORE: No. I was protecting you. I did not want to hurt you…
DUMBLEDORE attempts to reach out of the portrait—but he can’t. He begins to cry but tries to hide it.
But I had to meet you in the end… eleven years old, and you were so brave. So good. You walked uncomplainingly along the path that had been laid at your feet. Of course I loved you… and I knew that it would happen all over again… that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damage. I am no fit person to love… I have never loved without causing harm.
A beat.
HARRY: You would have hurt me less if you had told me this then.
DUMBLEDORE (openly weeping now): I was blind. That is what love does. I couldn’t see that you needed to hear that this closed-up, tricky, dangerous old man… loved you.
DRACO: Astoria always knew that she was not destined for old age. She wanted me to have somebody when she left, because… it is exceptionally lonely, being Draco Malfoy. I will always be suspected. There is no escaping the past. I never realized, though, that by hiding him away from this gossiping, judgmental world, I ensured that my son would emerge shrouded in worse suspicion than I ever endured.
HARRY: Love blinds. We have both tried to give our sons not what they needed, but what we needed. We’ve been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we’ve blighted their present.
HARRY: The part of me that was Voldemort died a long time ago, but it wasn’t enough to be physically rid of him—I had to be mentally rid of him. And that—is a lot to learn for a forty-year-old man.
He looks at ALBUS.
That thing I said to you—it was unforgivable, and I can’t ask you to forget it but I can hope we move past it. I’m going to try to be a better dad for you, Albus. I am going to try and—be honest with you…
HARRY The boy who was killed—Craig Bowker—how well did you know him?
ALBUS: Not well enough.
HARRY I didn’t know Cedric well enough either. He could have played Quidditch for England. Or been a brilliant Auror. He could have been anything. And Amos is right—he was stolen. So I come here. Just to say sorry. When I can.
ALBUS: That’s a—good thing to do.
ALBUS joins his dad in front of Cedric’s grave. HARRY smiles at his son and looks up at the sky.
HARRY: I think it’s going to be a nice day.
He touches his son’s shoulder. And the two of them—just slightly—melt together.
ALBUS (smiles): So do I.
