Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

HARRY: I’m sorry, Draco.

DRACO: I didn’t want to risk her health, I said it didn’t matter whether the Malfoy line died with me — whatever my father said. But Astoria — she didn’t want a baby for the Malfoy name, for pureblood or glory, but for us. Our child, Scorpius, was born . . . it was the best day of both our lives, although it weakened Astoria considerably. We hid ourselves away, the three of us. I wanted to conserve her strength . . . and so the rumors started.

HARRY: I can’t imagine what that was like.

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.

DRACO: Which is why you need this. I have been holding on to it, barely resisting using it, even though I would sell my soul for another minute with Astoria.

HARRY: Oh, Draco . . . we can’t. We can’t use it.

DRACO looks up at HARRY, and for the first time — at the bottom of this dreadful pit — they look at each other as friends.

DRACO: We have to find them — if it takes centuries, we must find our sons —

HARRY: We have no idea where they are or when they are. Searching in time when you’ve no idea where in time to search, that’s a fool’s errand. No, love won’t do it and nor will a Time-Turner, I’m afraid. It’s up to our sons now — they’re the only ones who can save us.

ACT FOUR, SCENE FIVE

GODRIC’S HOLLOW, OUTSIDE JAMES AND LILY POTTER’S HOUSE, 1981

ALBUS: We tell my granddad and grandma?

SCORPIUS: That they’ll never get to see their son grow up?

ALBUS: She’s strong enough — I know she is — you saw her.

SCORPIUS: She looked wonderful, Albus. And if I were you I’d be desperate to talk to her. But she needs to be able to beg Voldemort for Harry’s life, she needs to think he might die, and you’re the worst spoiler in the world that didn’t turn out to be true . . .

ALBUS: Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s alive. We get Dumbledore involved. We do what you did with Snape —

SCORPIUS: Can we risk him knowing your dad survives? That he has kids?

ALBUS: He’s Dumbledore! He can cope with anything!

SCORPIUS: Albus, there have been about a hundred books written on what Dumbledore knew, how he knew it or why he did what he did. But what’s undoubtedly true — what he did — he needs to do — and I’m not going to risk messing with it. I was able to ask for help because I was in an alternate reality. We aren’t. We’re in the past. We can’t fix time only to create more problems — if our adventures have taught us anything, they’ve taught us that. The dangers of talking to anyone — infecting time — are too great.

ALBUS: So we need to — talk to the future. We need to send Dad a message.

SCORPIUS: But we don’t have an owl that can fly through time. And he doesn’t have a Time-Turner.

ALBUS: We get a message to Dad, he’ll find a way to get back here. Even if he has to build a Time-Turner himself.

SCORPIUS: We send a memory — like a Pensieve — stand over him and send a message, hope he reaches for the memory at exactly the right moment. I mean, it’s unlikely, but . . . Stand over the baby — and just repeatedly shout HELP. HELP. HELP. I mean, it might traumatize the baby slightly.

ALBUS: Only slightly.

SCORPIUS: A bit of trauma now is nothing compared to what’s happening . . . and maybe when he then thinks — later — he might remember the faces of us as we — shouted —

ALBUS: Help.

SCORPIUS looks at ALBUS.

SCORPIUS: You’re right. It’s a terrible idea.

ALBUS: It’s one of your worst ideas ever.

SCORPIUS: Got it! We deliver it ourselves — we wait forty years — we deliver it —

ALBUS: Not a chance — once Delphi has set time the way she wants she’ll send armies to try and find us — kill us —

SCORPIUS: So we hide in a hole?

ALBUS: As pleasurable as it will be to hide in a hole with you for the next forty years . . . they’ll find us. And we’ll die and time will be stuck in the wrong position. No. We need something we can control, something we know he’ll get at exactly the right time. We need a —

SCORPIUS: There’s nothing. Still, if I had to choose a companion to be at the return of eternal darkness with, I’d choose you.

ALBUS: No offense, but I’d choose someone massive and really good at magic.

LILY exits the house with BABY HARRY in a pram, she carefully puts a blanket on him.

His blanket. She’s wrapping him in his blanket.

SCORPIUS: Well, it is a moderately cold day.