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Part 1, Act 2, Scene 20
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
The scene opens on a darker world, one in which Harry is dead and Voldemort lives and rules. Scorpius enters Umbridge’s office. She thanks him for coming to see her and tells him that he’s a student whom the faculty really value: pure-blood, a natural leader, athletic, helpful in rooting out the more troublesome students. While she speaks, Scorpius hears a scream but knows he has to control himself.
The play continues to explore just how different the world has become with Voldemort at its helm, and the problems that Scorpius and Albus have wrought in the wizarding world because of their attempts to change the past. It highlights the fascistic nature of the school, where only “pure-blood” students are allowed to flourish, while anyone who doesn’t follow that mold is labelled as troublesome and, it is implied, tortured.
Themes
Umbridge explains that, in the days since she pulled him from the lake, Scorpius has been odd: asking everyone about Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory. She asks what she can do to restore him to what he was, but Scorpius assures her he’s fine. She agrees to continue their work together, dismissing him with a wrist gesture that he tries to copy and saying, “For Voldemort and Valor.”
The salute and alliterative pledge to the leader at the end of this scene echoes real-world authoritarian regimes, such as Nazism. This parallel again emphasizes the awful consequences of what Scorpius and Albus have created. Additionally, Umbridge hints that the different outcome of Voldemort’s uprising has also resulted in Scorpius having a different persona and social situation: the Scorpius of this alternate future has a high reputation at the school, and he is a noted leader rather than being bullied and ostracized. In working to revert this alternative world back to the world that he knows, Scorpius will have to give up the status and reputation that he has here for his situation in the former world.
Themes
