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Part 1, Act 1, Scene 8
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
Harry wakes from his dream with pain shooting through his scar. Ginny wakes beside him, asking what’s wrong. Harry says he had a nightmare, but that he’ll be fine. Ginny says it can’t have been easy talking to Amos Diggory, but Harry gets upset, knowing that Amos lost Cedric because of Harry. Ginny replies that he’s being hard on himself—what happened wasn’t his fault. But Harry feels like he can never seem to say the right thing to anyone.
Just as Amos fixates on the past and his loss of Cedric, Harry reveals that he, too, worries about the past and what he might have done differently in order to save Cedric’s life. Even though what happened wasn’t his fault, his role in Cedric’s death and his inability to live up to the expectation that he is a hero who can save everyone weighs on him.
Themes
Ginny acknowledges that she heard Harry and Albus’s argument, and she knows Harry will say sorry and be honest about his failures and worries as a parent. Harry wishes he could understand Albus the way he understands James and Lily. But Albus is different, Ginny explains, and that’s a good thing—although Albus can also tell when Harry isn’t being fully genuine with him.
Even Harry understands the crux of his difficulties with Albus: that he doesn’t understand Albus’s perspective, and therefore has a hard time forming a bond with him in the same way that he is able to with James and Lily.
Themes
Harry says Dumbledore once told him that “The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” This made sense in hindsight, because Dumbledore believed Harry had to die to save the world. Ginny then asks how long it’s been since Harry’s scar hurt. With apprehension, Harry says 22 years.
This quote of Dumbledore comes from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, when Harry asks why Voldemort wanted to kill him as a baby. Dumbledore doesn’t tell Harry the reason, because, as Dumbledore notes, the truth might be too hard for Harry to hear at such a young age. But the quote also illustrates, again, that Harry’s relationships with his own father figures were complicated, as he never felt that Dumbledore was truly honest with him or understood him, just as Albus feels about Harry.
Themes
