Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two

I'm probably going to be changing my rating of this over and over again. I'm so conflicted about how I feel about this thing and I can't decide whether I liked it or not. I felt better when I just read it as fanfiction instead of another Harry Potter story. I wanted to love this. And I partially did, but this also was more heartbreaking to me than Deathly Hallows. I loved the ending of DH because it essentially was a “they lived happily ever after” for Harry, Ron, and Hermione and the rest of the wizarding world. That made me content and at peace with the series being over, but coming back to it like this made me extremely sad. Ron was his humorous, loveable self, but was complaining of growing old and having pains in his legs from his age and it was just so hard for me to read about my childhood best friends as forty-year-old adults now.
Looking beyond the fact that I never wanted this story in the first place, I was a bit disappointed in the plot devices they chose to base the story around. Jo Rowling said in an interview a while back that she hated the Time Turner and wished she never put it into the third book. I agreed with her; messing with time and creating these loops is a bit tricky to work with and can feel gimmicky and lazy. So I was pretty surprised to see it back again and so prominent in this play. The entire premise of the story is driven by the one remaining Time Turner still in existence, and it just bothered me so much that Jo brought it back and gave it suck importance when she admitted she disliked it in the first place. Also, while going back to the past so often was an interesting way to tie the three Potter generations together, it just felt repetitive and painful. Too many times have we re-lived Lily and James' deaths, and I just don't think it had to happen a second time. I also found that quite a few of the plot devices were too convenient and lazy. There was Malfoy's secret Time Turner that he just happened to miraculously have when Scorpius and Albus were in danger; there was the miraculous transfiguration of Harry into Voldemort (what even?!); the whole manner in which Albus realized he could send a message to his father using that blanket and a love potion... okay, whatever. Voldemort had a secret daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange? ...oookay sureeee, I guess so... but it just felt too deus-ex-machina-ish for me. It just felt too easy with many of these things and made me feel tremendously underwhelmed. I didn't expect to see so many gimmicky plot devices here and I'm disappointed that I did.
So while I wasn't exactly thrilled with the story, there definitely were some parts that stood out to me and were truly excellent. I loved Draco Malfoy in this story and what they did with his character. He certainly grew and changed a lot from his childhood self and became a more complex, relatable character. We finally can sympathize with him a little more, and I loved his interactions with Ginny and how she was willing to listen to him. Scorpius, too, turned out better than I expected. It was so wonderful to see Draco's son be this kind, awkward kid who had a genuinely good heart. He was probably my favorite part of this whole story because of how he set himself apart from his dad and was such a good person and friend to Albus even despite their parents' pasts. Scorpius falling for Rose was cute as well, although that felt like it was pushing things a little too far to be tied up perfectly, but I'll take it. Finally, the scenes with Scorpius and Snape really moved me. It was so touching to see Snape learn about Harry naming his child after him and I honestly thought it was brilliant. Snape was a welcome surprise in this story, and his interactions with Scorpius were excellent.
Overall, I think I am glad I read this, despite the pain it brought back and the not-as-excellent-as-it-should-have-been plot and writing. Some of it was genuinely great, some of it, not so much. For now, I might still have to pretend that it's fanfiction and not entirely canon until I can read it again and decide. Thank you for giving me more Harry Potter, Jo, but I'm not sure this is how we were meant to get it again.