Headscratchers / Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Knowledge of Delphi

• How can Delphini's existence be a secret? According to Word of God, there's a quill in Hogwarts that records the births of all wizarding children in the UK. That's why Muggle-Borns get Hogwarts letters and Squibs don't. So did the Death Eaters use a Confundus Charm on it?
  • Considering the fact that the Death Eaters were in charge of the school around the time she was born, I'd say one of the Carrows did it.
  • Actually, now that I look again, it records their names when they first manifest undeniable magical powers, so it can be well after birth, so the Carrows wouldn't have been around, and it's supposed to be a very powerful artefact, anyway: https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-quill-of-acceptance-and-the-book-of-admittance
  • It doesn't seem as if anyone actually checks the book because it's perfectly capable. According to the Pottermore post, human hands have not touched it in centuries. It's unlikely "Delphi Riddle" would really stand out amongst hundreds of thousands of names any way. Ask anyone who has ever worked in an enrollment office how many people they can recall off the top of their head. Exactly.
    • But "Delphi Riddle" isn't an ordinary wizard name. Having her name pop up on Hogwarts's enrollment list eleven years after the War would be like having "Marvin Hitler" or "Jethro Mengele" show up on a list of incoming freshmen at the University of Berlin in the early 1960s. Even if there's some way to prove she's not related to the genocidal maniac everyone remembers, someone is going to ask questions.
    • Actually it's more like Luanne Besarionis dze Jughashvili, few people called Voldemort by his last name.
    • While he lived. It's not like his real name was unknown; and after his death, I'd be surprised if his true identity wasn't made public. After all the horror and pain he caused, learning that he was just a man with an ordinary name would be a comfort.
    • Not to mention that, despite the fact we don't get any solid population numbers, it's made clear that there are far fewer wizards than Muggles in the UK. Delphi's first-year class would've been much smaller than that of most schools, making it easier for someone to recognize the Riddle name and raise a few pertinent questions.
    • We don't know if her official name is 'Delphi Riddle'. It's more likely she would have been given some other last name if the intent was to conceal her identity. And the quill recorded that name.
    • So why did no one question why she didn't show up at Hogwarts, register at another school, or homeschool? It's probably safe to assume that parents of children opting out of Hogwarts, even if it's to homeschool, need to submit some sort of paperwork documenting their choice. If the Rowles didn't do this, they could be suspected of child abuse and be investigated by the authorities; if they did, then they would still have to reveal Delphi's existence to someone.
    • I thought that Delphi was homeschooled under the pretense of being ill. Wasn't that what she told Albus and Scorpius? Just because she lied about who she is doesn't mean she lied about everything. Maybe she was given an inconspicuous surname and they Confunded everyone who questioned her health. After all, she did convince everyone, including Harry, that she is a Diggory even though Amos didn't have any brothers or sisters.
    • I don't know how birth certificates work in Britain, but Bellatrix (presumably) wasn't married to Voldemort when she had Delphi - if she was, then she's guilty of polygamy - so the baby was probably given her surname, and not Tom's. A name like "Delphini Lestrange" would almost indubitably draw a lot less attention than "Delphini Riddle." And we know that the book doesn't specify who the parents are, or else all Tom's searching for his father was unnecessary.
    • I don't think the name wouldn't draw attention, given that the only known Lestranges are infamous Death Eaters.
    • Maybe it would, but without the surname to connect her to Tom, no one would have any reason to suspect that she was anything more than Bellatrix's child with her own husband, since we know he knew about her too. And plenty of magical children are homeschooled - with one of her terrorist parents dead and the other locked away in Azkaban (until he escaped), there'd be little reason for people to be concerned about her upbringing. And there has to be other Lestranges besides the two brothers.
    • Crimes of Grindelwald also reveals that the Lestrange family has a separate branch that lives in France. Not all of its members have to have a connection to the Death Eaters, just like how a descendant of Salazar Slytherin could've gone to America and founded Ilvermorny.

Marauder's Map

• Why does Harry tell Albus that he's locked away the Marauder's Map? He only told McGonagall to use it in an alternate universe that no longer exists.
  • Because Albus and Scorpius confessed to everything. And given the trouble they were in already, he wanted to make sure that Albus knew that was not available for more trouble.
  • Except for the key differences, the events of universe 2 still happened in the restored timeline of universe 1 (there wouldn't just be a "time hole" in universe 1 where/when universe 2 took place).
    • Yes, but that raises a plot hole because in Universe 1, Albus and Scorpius are both Slytherins, which makes it almost impossible for Harry to have separated them the way he did in Universe 2, where Albus was a Gryffindor. In Universe 1, they share a Common Room.
    • Even in Universe 1, he still could've separated them, just not as drastically - for example, making sure they were kept apart from each other except for during classes and after hours in their dormitory.

Giants

• Why are there giants with winged tattoos in the main universe? Hermione mentions this early on and it seems like it would be a Chekhov's Gun, but the Augurey wings are only a symbol of the dark forces in an alternate universe.
  • Well the Giants (some) are known Dark Lord supporters, so them being on the move is a hint that some dark forces are once again moving. It would seem that Delphi was building an army just as Voldemort did. It just doesn't seem as if it went anywhere.

Reasons for a child

• Why did Voldemort and Bella even have a child? He was convinced he would live for eternity, so what use would there have been for an heir? It's incredibly out of character for him.
  • One could guess that Bellatrix could've used a love potion on him.
    • Given that sex under a love potion is basically date rape, why didn't he kill her for that? Especially considering that it would mirror his own conception?
  • Or Bellatrix could have gotten his DNA in some other way that didn't directly physically violate his person, but still was either unknown or unwilling. If she didn't directly assault him, then he might spare her because of her passionate desire to give "all her sons to the service of the Dark Lord."
  • Because sometimes people have sex for reasons other than wanting to have a child.
    • Voldemort is technically still human, and sex is on the bottom level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. He's either masturbating or he's sleeping with his very willing underling who is openly obsessed with him.
    • Unless he's asexual, which seemed fairly likely in the original series.
    • Except it's not uncommon these days for characters to be labeled "asexual" when their creators actually intended them to be low libido.
  • An heir would be out of character, but a minion makes more sense. After all, the plan was for him to be immortal, not his followers. If one of his followers wants to give birth to his child, the child can be a follower from birth. Minions don't last forever and therefore have to be replaced at some point.
  • It is also possible that Voldemort considered any "heir" to be a potential future living horcrux or even a receptacle for his soul if his current body was too badly damaged.
    • Or even a potential alternate source of bone dust if he ever needs to be restored to corporeal form again. Tom Riddle Sr.'s skeleton isn't going to last forever and his mother was probably buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, but if other first-degree relatives are suitable sources for bones, having an occasional kid he can outlive and then harvest the bones from would ensure that any future flesh-bone-blood ceremony will have one component immediately to hand.
  • Willingly having a child is a bit of a stretch given Voldemort's ideals. Any kid he had would be a Half-Blood like himself, which he hates. He expected Bella to marry and reproduce with Rodolphus so as to bring forth more Pureblood children, after all, despite neither of them actually caring for one another. It is odd that he would have a child. Logically, either he did plan on using her as a horcrux or minion (but begs the question of why, when he wanted only 7 in the first place), he didn't intend on reproducing after a sexual encounter with Bella (which seems out of character in general) or, Rodolphus is lying and Delphi isn't Voldemort's daughter at all.
    • I'm not truly convinced Voldemort really cares too much about the whole 'Pureblood' issue. He openly hates non-humans and sees wizards as superior to muggles, but with wizards he seems to simply respect power and skill and rarely mentions their parentage. His Death Eaters are racist, but he might simply be playing up his own feelings to manipulate them.
    • True, Snape is half-blood and was very up in the DE hierarchy, almost second in command.
    • Voldemort knew he had already lost a Horcrux by this point, the diary (he'd also lost the ring, but didn't know it), so a new Horcrux would be a replacement for that.
    • So why wouldn't he use another inanimate object to replace his lost Horcruxes? Even Dumbledore understood that using a human being as a Horcrux was a very risky endeavor, what with free will and all, and raising said human being to be a Horcrux from birth is still no guarantee of loyalty. If he really and truly wanted a human Horcrux, he could've just used Bellatrix.
    • Because there was nothing left that could act as a symbol of Voldemort's status as Slytherin's heir. Voldemort's ego drove him to use symbols of what he perceived as his own majesty as horcrux's. Bellatrix represented none of that, but a human of Slytherin's bloodline would. Furthermore, Dumbledore noted that Voldemort had far more influence over Nagini that is usual for a parselmouth, which makes sense when one remembers that a living horcrux has a mental connection to the horcrux creator. So, raised from birth with the Dark Lord's mental manipulations and possession, a human horcrux would be little more than a slave. And with their capacity for magic, Voldemort would effectively be able to be in two locations at once. That could be why she was just called 'The Augury' in the evil timeline, she wasn't a person, not really, just a puppet for Voldemort.
    • Could it be because Voldemort wanted to prove his manhood after being reborn, add to that the fact that Voldy had a kid with Bella when Rodolphus couldn't "proving" that Rodolphus was the "problem" in this case?
    • I find it hard to believe that 1) there was absolutely nothing in the wide Wizarding World grand enough to be Voldemort's Horcrux, and 2) that he wouldn't settle for something he was guaranteed to be able to control before he placed a piece of his soul in an unpredictable human. He couldn't have found a symbol of magic itself, a relic of Merlin's or some strange treasure in Knockturn Alley or Lucius Malfoy's basement, worthy of bearing his soul? Leaving aside the argument of whether or not he'd be able to control Horcrux!Delphi, she, as a Horcrux, has one massive drawback: Unless she makes her own Horcruxes (which could wreak havoc with her own Horcrux status) she is going to die one day. If she isn't killed in battle, she's going to die of natural causes. It's inevitable. When Harry died, the Horcrux in his scar "died" too, so when Delphi dies, Voldemort will be down a Horcrux. Choosing an inanimate object as a Horcrux is a far safer option.
    • The death by natural causes part applies to Nagini too, though, and we know he made her a Horcrux anyway. Perhaps making a creature a Horcrux makes it immortal as well as near-indestructible. After all, the full process involves complex Dark magic that alters the nature of the object, not just putting part of your soul in it. Harry was never a proper Horcrux, as confirmed by Word of God.
    • While it did make the inanimate Horcruxes near-indestructible, making a living being immortal—especially a human being—seems like a bit of a stretch. Even if it's not, information on Horcruxes is hard enough to come by as it is. It's possible that Secrets of the Darkest Art only contained instructions on how to make a Horcrux, as the knowledge was forbidden and reviled enough to make the book rare. Furthermore, Nagini could have been an experiment, a test to see if Voldemort could make a living being immortal by making them a Horcrux. Were that the case, it seems unlikely that he'd test it on a human being until Nagini had far exceeded her natural lifespan. If the experiment fails with Nagini, he's lost one piece of his soul. If it fails with Nagini and Delphi, he's lost two pieces.
  • How about he wanted to try using the power of love but didn't know anything on the subject? I mean how many times was he defeated because someone use the blood magic bond between family, maybe he wants a piece of that action? It isn't that out of character if you remember he thought changing his wand was how he can kill Harry despite not being at all how wands magic work.
    • There's a rather sizable difference between wands and the abstract concept of love. Wands are tools of magic, in-universe. They're something Voldemort understands, if imperfectly. Love is something he does not comprehend and sees as useless.
    • Yes the wands didn't burn Voldemort's face when he tried killing an eleven-year-old or stopped him from finding Harry when he was growing up. This is not an abstract concept that reflected his killing curse the Power of Love is a real magic in the wizard world, one that Voldemort has so many reasons to try understanding after the multiple defeats against it. Even if it's just "let's have a kid maybe it will boost my wizard power" reasoning at least he tried learning from his defeat.
    • He tried to piggyback on Lily's protection of Harry, and it worked. Why wouldn't he try to piggyback on, say, Narcissa's love of Draco, or some other source of familial affection that didn't require him to sire and provide for a child, necessitating that Bellatrix would be incapacitated for several months before and after giving birth? Not to mention the fact that as he felt no love toward his mother or anyone else, the notion that his hypothetical child might not feel any affection toward him could have very well occurred to him. Piggybacking on another parent's love seems like the easier option here.
    • Well, he already had plans for the Malfoys after Lucius screwed up the prophecy and Bellatrix is kind of useless aside from her devotion, so, yes, let her off for seven months to give a baby and blood magic instead of having her doing whatever she was doing during most of her offscreen time in the last book.
    • "Useless aside from her devotion"? She's the undisputed master of the Cruciatus Curse. She made it through Azkaban without giving into despair and left that prison only slightly more insane than when she arrived. In Deathly Hallows, Harry's narration calls her "a witch of prodigious skill and no conscience." Bellatrix is many things, but useless is not one of them.
    • And as Snape said: it served nothing but the gesture was cute. Did Voldemort put her in charge of the school where they teach the Cruciatus spell? No, he asked the Carrows to do it. Was she ever put in charge of leading an attack? No, she is too insane. Even Macnair had a bigger role than her in the scheme of things by convincing the Giants to join their side. But hey narration said she was good.
    • Torturing two characters into insanity, even if it happened off-screen, makes her skill with Cruciatus the opposite of an Informed Ability. Voldemort was absolutely not given to keeping useless minions around out of pure sentimentality; the fact Draco was allowed to live past the end of Half-Blood Prince was probably due more to Voldemort's desire to continue punishing Lucius than any supposed value Draco may have had as a follower. Vindictiveness, yes; sentimentality, no. Furthermore, we see Bellatrix's skill with Cruciatus in the DH chapter "Malfoy Manor;" we see her skill in battle during the Battle of Hogwarts and in the Department of Mysteries. The argument that her skill in magic was an informed ability can only be made if it discounts those moments.
    • She had trouble against 15-year-old kids during the department battle, she died during the battle of Hogwarts, and torturing someone to insanity can be done without magic. Like sure she isn't The Millstone but having Voldemort think he can't find a replacement for her when the only tasks given to her is hurt people and "prodigious skill" is kind of a reach when none of the scenes given here are outside regular Death Eaters (again, a nobody like Macnair recruited Giants to their cause and Wormtail, who Voldemort would love to see dead, displayed far better skills than her). So yes using her as part of a magic ritual instead of an enforcer sounds like something Voldemort will do.
    • The 15 year old kids were losing until the Order showed up, even then the Death Eaters still had an advantage until Dumbledore himself arrived. Also, Bellatrix was the only Death Eater who deflected Dumbledore's spell and the only one that escaped. She IS canonically skilled, at least in dueling.
    • Meta objections or no, by all evidence within the series, Voldemort treats her as though she is highly favored and indispensable. Wormtail is treated like a dog kept around solely for the purpose of kicking when Voldemort is angry; Bellatrix is not.
    • The book says that Bellatrix's husband, after being released from Azkaban, is the one who told Delphi about Voldemort being her father, as well as explained the prophecy to her about "unseen sons murdering their fathers", and that he explained she was the one to fulfill it. It wouldn't make sense for a loyal Death Eater to pass the revival of his master onto someone else, when all he would've needed to do the deed himself was a Time-Turner, so maybe Voldemort was the one who heard the prophecy originally, leading him to conceive a child and naming that child as the one who would revive him if he died. (This also might explain why she was named "Delphini", considering the famous oracle of Delphi in Ancient Greece.)
    • If her main function is torturing people to insanity is there any reason why she couldn’t do that pregnant? I mean, maternity leave in most countries is done in the last trimester, that means most women do their normal chores for six months, so except from leading an important attack or battle (which I thing she never does anyway) there’s no reason why she can’t do other useful things for the cause, like making potions, applying imperius curse, torturing people or whatever she does off screen. As for “Voldemort treats her as though she is highly favored and indispensable” well, there you have, maybe is precisely because she has sex with him.
  • The Potter wiki suggests his sleeping with Bellatrix was a reward for her efforts, given her obsession.
    • Though given A. Voldemort's apparent lack of interest in sex or romance throughout the original series, B. his fundamental selfishness, and C. the fact that he saw his Death Eaters' allegiance as his rightful due (note that he even calls favored ones like Bellatrix "servants") it seems odd that he would do something he either had no interest in or found distasteful to reward someone he saw as beneath him. Favored and useful, yes, but still beneath him.
  • Personally, I don't see how "planned on never dying" correlates to "shouldn't want to have a child for any reason, ever." Considering how the Augurey seems to be Voldemort's second-in-command, of sorts, in the Bad Future, he probably sired her as a way of ensuring he would have at least one loyal follower that he wouldn't have to control through fear. He did spend 14 years as a formless ghost because most of his Death Eaters were too cowardly to seek him out.
  • A child would not necessarily be loyal to him. Children can turn against their parents, see Sirius Black for instance. If Voldemort's child inherited his personality - power-hungry, utterly selfish and sociopathic - then he or she would turn against him.
    • To start, you don't directly inherit someone's personality, only a propensity for certain behaviors, at most. Second, the child would be loyal to him if it were raised to be — examples like Sirius tend to be the exception, not the rule. Delphi managed to grow up to be unfailingly loyal to Voldemort even without him and Bellatrix there to foster that loyalty, so it's doubtful they'd have much trouble trying to mold her into his most loyal follower.
  • Guys. You're forgetting something. VOLDEMORT CAN STEAL BODIES! And piggyback on people. If Horcruxes do not give agelessness? Well...he could possess her like he did Quirrell, and it's possibly one of his blood would be more suitable.
  • Maybe he wanted to do more research into "love magic" after all the trouble it gave him, so he created a child that Bellatrix would "love" and who would be loyal to him so he could see if he could exploit the benefits.
  • There's no guarantee he actually slept with Bellatrix, even if Delphi is his daughter. He could have used a ritual to impregnate Bellatrix without actually touching her - considering how averse to touch he seems (unless he's giving Draco awkward hugs or poking Harry on the forehead), a magical ritual sans touch seems more likely.
    • Either that, or Bellatrix might have stolen his DNA and done her own ritual.
    • Or, at the very least, if Bellatrix and Voldemort really did have awkward sex, he probably awkwardly embraced her afterward and said, "Well done, Draco! Well done."

Fear of a name

• What's with "Voldemort Day" and "For Voldemort and valor" in the Bad Future? The fact that nearly everyone was too terrified of Voldemort to use his name was a pretty big worldbuilding point throughout the original series, and was even a plot point in the last book. Why is everyone using it so casually now?
  • And am I the only one picturing Voldemort chuckling sheepishly and saying "I'm a role model."?
  • Because he's won, so those who support him can throw it around all they want. People who opposed him were afraid to say his name, almost in a "speak of the devil" way. His followers - especially the more fanatical ones - would probably like it.
    • But many of them—like Umbridge—were around during the First Wizarding War, when everyone avoided saying his name. You'd think they'd keep calling him the Dark Lord out of habit, at the very least. Besides, Voldemort might want a bit of fear and awe surrounding his name, to increase his godlike persona.
    • Also, even the Death Eaters never used his name, they always said "Dark Lord".
    • Maybe having a daughter took away some of the fear surrounding his name? If you have a child, maybe you don't seem so godlike anymore, because a god doesn't need children. I also find it funny that only Snape says "Dark Lord" during the Bad Future scene, even though he's supposed to be good.
    • In the Bible, Jesus might not be the technical son of God, but his existence didn't diminish his followers' reverence toward God. It seems more likely that Delphi would be seen as something akin to a demigod or lesser deity because of her parentage, rather than her existence diminishing her father's reputation.
    • Well Death Eaters are fanatics so it's more a do not pronounce the Lord in vain kind of people while the moderate sympathizers are all "praise the lord Voldemort". I mean what was the point of changing his name if he didn't want people to say it.
    • 1) Because he hated his old name, and 2) fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. And the fanatic argument is kind of weak, considering that religious fanatics in Real Life not only respect God and his Son to the point of wailing about the moral decay of modern society when a cartoon character says "Oh my God," but insist everyone else do the same. Furthermore, I seem to recall some Death Eaters growing offended when Harry said Voldemort's name aloud.
    • Death Eaters who play as death squad and rely on terror get offended if the name is not being feared but the blood supremacists who believe Voldemort is their savior want the name to be worshipped, Sirius did say in the fifth book that before the bodies were found his family viewed Voldemort as a promising lad who was doing the right thing and were glad Regulus joined the Death Eaters. So it's possible that after he won the war and try making the world has his image Voldemort want to be viewed as a savior of wizard virtues instead of He-who-is-a-villain.
    • But an image makeover has little to do with whether or not people feel comfortable saying his name. Judaism holds that G-d is benevolent, and yet Jews consider his name to be so holy that they don't speak or even write his true name, omit the vowel in his common form of address (as seen above) and usually call him "Hashem," meaning "the Name." Even if Voldemort did want all of that reverence surrounding his name gone, which seems highly unlikely, it would take far longer than twenty years to get everyone out of the habit of substituting for his name.

How is Snape alive?

• How is Snape still alive in the bad future? Assuming the only difference is that Cedric killed Neville thus affecting the different outcome. Snape should have been killed by that point. At no point before Snape's death did Harry ever confront Voldemort giving him the opportunity to kill him. So Harry's death couldn't have spared Snape and even then Voldemort would likely have still killed him for control of the elder wand as he would have been unaware he had just killed its last master.
  • A reasonable theory is that Cedric killed Dumbledore to prove his loyalty. He would still have had the opportunity to kill Neville before his death by Voldemort's hands. However the play makes no mention of Cedric having done this.
  • Scorpius told Snape that he had killed Dumbledore without being scoffed at.
    • Two words. Butterfly Effect. There's no telling how Cedric being a Death Eater could have affected events from 1995 onwards. Him killing Neville and preventing the destruction of the Nagini Horcrux may well be just one among millions of divergences.
    • True, but for a point of divergence as relatively recent as 1995, the changes to the timeline have to be easily traceable. Outlandish divergences like the ones shown at the end of the short story from which the trope draws its name can be written off as the result of a POD predating humanity. But for a POD in 1995, the changes have to be logical and easily traceable to the POD.
    • Maybe, but there's no way to know exactly how the addition of Cedric to the Death Eaters' forces changed things; maybe he suggested a different plan of attack that drew attention somewhere at a crucial moment and cost more lives, which led to Harry trying to confront Voldemort earlier than he did in canon, with the result that Voldemort spared Snape because he found that the Elder Wand was working for him once again.
  • A more likely Butterfly Effect might have been that Cedric somehow figured out that Snape wasn't the master of the Elder Wand, and told Voldemort this.

Broken prophecies

• If prophesies can be "broken," shouldn't there be a ton of precedent for it across thousands of years of wizarding history, to the point that everyone would already know it's possible?
  • There is and most well-read people probably do. Dumbledore addresses it in book 6, remember? When he's giving Harry the speech about how the prophecy doesn't 'force' him to do anything, he tells us directly that many of the prophecies in the Department of Mysteries didn't come true.
  • Not every prophesy is even heard by the people it talks about. Like the only reason He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named even heard the prophesy was because a third party overheard and told him. There's a lot of prophesies Harry noted in the Hall of Prophesy that are "dim", like burnt lightbulbs. Presumably, those are the ones what never came true.
  • Or they're ones that have already come true, hence can have no further influence on the world as it currently stands.

Other plans for time travel

• Instead of going back and taking the risky route of blocking their earlier spells, why not just go back to when they first arrived in the past and tell them not to go through with it? This would also prevent their earlier selves from going back and trying again. The risk of a Temporal Paradox isn't really much higher than the plan they went with.
  • Likely a case of Never Shall The Selves Meet. In "Prisoner of Azkaban", this trope was more or less invoked as one of the dangers of time travel. Changing the past discreetly without calling too much attention to oneself is logically a FAR safer course of action than interacting with one's past self.
    • They could've just blocked the spells without being seen. Or caused an accident to prevent the spells from being cast.
    • Isn't that exactly what Scorpius does in the end?

Silly rumor

• Why do a lot of people take the rumor that Scorpius is Voldemort's son seriously? I could see conspiracy theorists taking the rumor seriously but having it circulating throughout the mainstream population is unlikely. First of all, it’s established that time turners can’t turn back time that far so why would a lot of people overestimated time turner’s abilities? Also, why would the Malfoys go through the process of time traveling and approach Voldemort in order to him to impregnated Astoria? From the wizarding war, Draco was very fearful of Voldemort in the knowledge that he was disposable pawn so why would he want to meet Voldemort in the past considering the risks and dangers? Time travel itself is already dangerous even back a few hours and without Voldemort so traveling back several years and meeting Voldemort alone would interfere with the past and would adversely affect the future. Voldemort might kill future Malfoy or torture information out of Malfoy. In addition, Scorpius is practically a splitting image of young Draco Malfoy down to the hair and face for physical evidence. Even if Malfoy is infertile, why would he go through all the trouble of traveling back and asking Voldemort to be the surrogate father? Are there no eligible wizards in the present day?
  • Not to mention the fact that as a whole, the rumor is just…silly. It sounds like something you'd see on the front page of the Quibbler on a day when Xenophilius Lovegood felt uncharacteristically mean-spirited. You'd think most witches and wizards would hear the rumor, scoff, and go back to their lives.
  • True, Harry had lived through some attacks of malicious and silly rumors but that only pushes the question wider: why are wizards so prone to it?
    • Which begs another question: Why did no one suggest a paternity test? Even if the wizards don't have one, for whatever reason, Hermione (or anyone familiar with the Muggle world, really) could suggest they use a Muggle one and magically verify the results. With how difficult the rumor makes his son's life, you'd think Draco would jump at the chance to dispel it; not to mention the fact that some of the more paranoid might want reassurance that Voldemort's son isn't attending school with their kids. Yet everyone acts like it's still 1952 and proving Scorpius' parentage is impossible. Why?
    • A ''person'' is smart. ''People'' are dumb, stupid, panicky animals.
    • They're not panicking. The war had been over for years by the time Scorpius was born. By the time the play begins, British witches and wizards have had eleven years to discuss the rumor, and not one of those conversations led to the rumor being picked apart and held up in all its implausible glory? Rumors surrounding American presidential candidates have been debunked more quickly and more soundly than that.
    • Probably the same reason these rumors persist in the real world. Yes, Scorpios' paternity could be proved by a test, but those who really believed the rumors could claim the test results are fake (and if it's a Muggle test...all the more reason for them to disbelieve it).
    • But if a similar rumor were disproven by a paternity test in Real Life, the vast majority would believe the paternity test. They know paternity tests can be trusted. The people who didn't believe the paternity test would be on the fringe, widely regarded as conspiracy theorists who were not to be taken seriously. Yet the Wizarding World has made the Scorpius rumor mainstream. Why did no one question it? And why did that questioning not go anywhere?
    • The Wizarding World has been known to fall on false rumors. They never believed Harry in book 5 when he warned them that Voldemort has returned, so maybe people were on hyper paranoia mode after being lied to by Cornelius Fudge that whole year. Even when Hermione, the new minister, tried to reject the rumors, it's safe to say that Fudge left quite the impression.
    • But at the time, the idea that Voldemort—who had been confirmed dead for years after a brief reign of terror—was back from the dead seemed to fly in the face of the facts that British wizards knew. In other words, when Harry claimed that Voldemort was back, that was a ridiculous rumor to Wizarding Britain. Although later confirmed as true, humans aren't known to accept every ridiculous-sounding rumor at face value simply because one ridiculous rumor was once confirmed. And the notion that Scorpius is Voldemort's son has far, far less of an impact on the average wizard's life than did the notion that Voldemort was back from the dead. It seems more likely that British witches and wizards would treat the Scorpius rumor with a healthy degree of skepticism, while grudgingly admitting that it could be true.

Bathilda's hobbies

• Bathilda Bagshot was a historian. Her job in no way involved potions. Why would she have pearl dust in the first place, let alone leave it lying around where Albus and Scorpius could steal it?
  • Adult wizards in general probably keep some basic potion supplies in their house - even if it's not your specialty or profession, I'm sure it's useful to able to make the less complicated ones from scratch if need be. There are enough household-y type potions (i.e. Boil-Curing, Hair-Raising, etc.) that it would make sense.
  • Because it wasn't the pearl dust she had. Pearl dust is in the love potion. She had the Demiguise reactant.
    • So why did she have that? There's no sense of how common a potions ingredient that is. It could be used in everything from soap to sausage casings, or it could be a fairly rare ingredient that a historian would never need.
    • Just because she was a historian, it doesn't mean she didn't have other interests. We know very little about her (long) life.

Trust in Snape

• Ron and Hermione trust Scorpius because Snape vouched for him. How on earth did they trust Snape? Because Scorpius said without contradiction that Snape had killed Dumbledore. After that, no one on Dumbledore's side trusted him until he dumped out his memories on Harry, and even after that Harry had a hard time convincing anyone of Snape's being one of the good guys.
  • The implication is that Snape has been secretly collaborating with them for a while, so presumably they learned to trust him a while back in that particular timeline, off-screen. Heck, perhaps in that timeline he showed *them* his memories to gain their trust.

Fidelius Charm

• James and Lily are meant to be in hiding in Godric's Hollow, protected from discovery by the Fidelius Charm. Now I can accept that their house might have been visible to the time-travelling characters - the Fidelius Charm has several inconsistencies through the books - but why the hell do they take baby Harry for a walk through the village when they're living in fear of the greatest Dark wizard in the world?
  • Because babies need fresh air once in a while.
    • Then why didn't they extend the Fidelius Charm over the house's back yard, too? It wouldn't be much space, but it'd give them fresh air and safety.
    • The true nature of the Fidelius Charm, and its true capabilities, are never made clear in the books. One way to look at it is that it conceals a secret and not a location. The Fidelius Charm wasn't hiding Godric's Hollow. It was hiding the secret that "James and Lily Potter lived at Godric's Hollow". Probably, as long as James and Lily were able to remain relatively inconspicuous, they would be protected by the charm even outside the house (though probably there might be some kind of range within which the protection works).
    • In DH, Harry and Co. are hiding in Grimmauld Place, which is concealed by a Fidelius Charm, and they have to exercise extreme caution when entering and exiting, lest the Death Eaters surveilling the place see them outside the Charm's protection. The capabilities and limitations seem pretty clear to me.
    • The Fidelius Charm on Grimmauld was specifically tied to "The Order of the Phoenix is at Grimmauld Place" - in other words, it's designed to preserve the organization and the building, not all individuals who know the secret, and since Harry and company are not part of the Order despite being Secret-Keepers, the protection for them is only on the location. They, themselves, are not under the Charm, which means the Charm only guards them within the confines of the house. James and Lily's secret must have been worded such that the protection extended over the actual people as long as they remained in Godric's Hollow.
    • The difference is that the DE knew that Grimmauld Place was a probable place of hiding for them, whilst they have no idea where in the whole world L&J are hiding.
  • Deathly Hallows tells of how the boundaries of the charm can apparently fluctuate, depending on the circumstances — it's mentioned that Harry and friends have to walk a certain distance away from Shell Cottage before they're out of range of the charm, whereas the charm over #12 Grimmauld Place lapses once you leave the front doorstep. Lily and James were probably protected by a charm that allowed them a bit more freedom than being confined to their house; it might've been over their street or even the entire village.

Why was Albus in Slytherin?

• Why did the Sorting Hat put Albus in Slytherin? He doesn't show any tendencies towards ambition or cunning, he was scared of the prospect of being Slytherin, and McGonagall calls him out on being brave and stupid like his Gryffindor father. What did the Hat see in him?
  • Possibility A: Harry wished not to be placed in Slytherin because he didn't want to be evil; Albus wished to go to Gryffindor because he was afraid of being put in Slytherin — wanting to be a Gryffindor out of fear automatically disqualifies you. It's possible that he did aspire to be greater than or at least as great as his dad (which is why he feels so frustrated about living in the shadow of his dad's fame) — he didn't just want to have fun at Hogwarts, he desperately wanted to prove himself. The Sorting Hat did say Harry had "a thirst to prove yourself" right before considering placing him in Slytherin and then deciding Harry's disdain for the House's values meant they were incompatible; maybe in Albus's case, that desire to be great was most prominent, and while Albus thought his chances of that would be best if he were he sorted into Gryffindor, the Sorting Hat knew such ambition belonged in the house that most valued ambition.
  • Possibility B: This (along with Pettigrew's house placement) reinforces Dumbledore's theory in Deathly Hallows that the Sorting Hat is not infallible.
    • Pettigrew wasn't mis-Sorted. He may lack Gryffindor bravery, but he has the Gryffindor desire to show off, be important, be the centre of attention... Not everyone in Ravenclaw is book smart, not every Hufflepuff is loyal, not every Slytherin is ambitious, and not every Gryffindor is brave. Some people simply embody the negative traits of a House and thus, belong there. Gryffindor house has a lot of people who just like attention. Ron and the twins are a prime example of this, and many Gryffindors are very self-important, like Percy and McLaggen. There's more than just one facet to a House, and they have overlap in places.
  • Possibility C: Either consciously or subconsciously, Albus wanted to be with Scorpius, the first real friend he made in the wizarding world, the first peer that actually seemed to get on with him for him and put zero undue pressure on him for his parentage.
  • Possibility D: All of the above.
  • Possibility E- The play just wanted to do something shocking and put Albus in Slytherin just because he didn't want to go there. There might be no in-universe reason other than "He doesn't want to go there, so let's put him there, and that'll let him be in the same House as Scorpius which is convenient to the story somehow, but Scorp doesn't even fit Slytherin's traits but his parents were Slytherins so it counts". Something like that, I imagine.
  • Albus and Scorpius do have some Slytherin traits: They're resourceful, trust only a select few people, prefer operating behind the scenes, Scorpius is cautious and tactical rather than headstrong, Albus can be pretty ruthless and is naturally suspicious of people. They do lack ambition and cunning but still seem more Slytherin than Gryffindor.
    • That said, the play basically ignores the possibility of them being Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws which would both fit better. For Hufflepuff: Their loyalty to each other is the heart of the whole play, both have a strong sense of justice, Albus's Establishing Character Moment is being tolerant enough to befriend a Malfoy despite all the prejudice, Scorpius is endlessly forgiving of anyone who mistreats him and both avoid attention and the spotlight. With Ravenclaw Scorpius's geekiness and love for learning are more significant than any of his Slytherin traits and Albus is very witty and quick-thinking. But thanks to plot reasons and shock value (Possibility E), the play acted like Slytherin or Gryffindor were the only two options.
    • One reason the sorting is such a tricky subject is probably because there's a bit of overlap between the traits each house values; for example, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor are both concerned with loyalty, bravery, and self-improvement, it's just that one of them is also a bit of a show-off while the other is humbler and more modest. Ravenclaw and Slytherin both value intelligence, although Ravenclaw is more geared towards conventional wisdom whereas Slytherin is more cunning and opportunistic. Slytherin and Hufflepuff, both concerned with hard work, but Slytherins do it for ambition and to achieve goals, Hufflepuff does hard work for hard work's sake. Gryffindor and Slytherin, both concerned with succeeding, getting ahead, but one of them is still loyal and sticks with their friends, while the other is pragmatic and will stoop a lot lower to get what they want.
    • As for where the two kids fit in, one of the biggest flaws in Albus is that he feels inferior to and is often compared to his father at his age, even though Harry wasn't always the well-received champion Albus thinks he is. The main reason he wants to go back and save Cedric is in hopes of one-upping Harry (Slytherin) rather than an innate sense of justice or self-improvement (Gryffindor/Hufflepuff) and resorts to shady and criminal methods in order to do so (Slytherin), sneaking behind everyone's backs and breaking into the Ministry. Scorpius is a bit harder, but then again, he probably wants to live up to the family name (which fits with ambition), even if he is very meek, bookish, and shy, he does eventually join Albus in his antics of sneaking around and time-travelling, and there's also the possibility that he asked to be put in Slytherin. The Malfoys seem to have been sorted into the Slytherin house for at least a number of generations, and as much as Draco might've matured since his years at school, I can't see him advising Scorpius to choose any house other than his own.
  • I can. Draco ended up in such a bad situation for the last two books in large part because he caved to familial pressures. Join Voldemort. Do what he says. Salvage your family's tattered reputation. For Draco, it led to massive failure, a nervous breakdown, and almost certainly some form of PTSD. That's the sort of thing that makes a lasting impact on a teen. With all that horror in his past, I think Draco would be more likely to avoid sharing his opinions on Hogwarts Houses (or any other contentious topic), allowing Scorpius to gain information on them from other sources (Hogwarts: A History, perhaps?) and make up his own mind. He probably wouldn't want to make Scorpius feel as though he had to do something out of obligation to family.
  • Agreed. Draco does a lot to free Scorpius from the legacy of being a Malfoy and son of a Death Eater. It seems highly unlikely that he'd pressure or encourage Scorpius to choose Slytherin - if anything he might hope for other houses. Malfoy gunning for Gryffindor would be a step too far - especially as a lot of the kids who are most anti-Death Eaters/come from war hero families would be there - but him wanting Scorpius to have an easier life in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff would be entirely possible for adult Malfoy. So if we assume neither Albus or Scorpius "chose" Slytherin - why would they? It made both their lives horribly uncomfortable - while Albus has enough traits to naturally go in Slytherin ^note  As mentioned above: one upmanship, disobedient, underhanded methods or just wanted to be with Scorpius, Scorpius himself comes up pretty thin for Slytherin justification - he's resourceful, strategic and that's about it. But the story wouldn't work if the pair were in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff.
  • Perhaps the deciding factor for why Scorpius would want to be a Slytherin was no other than Astoria: a woman gentle enough to marry a former Death Eater, only because she loved him. It wouldn't be surprising to picture her explaining to young Scorpius that she had chosen Draco not despite being a Slytherin, but because of it. She could emphasize on Slytherin qualities enough to convince Scorpius that Slytherins are the coolest. And she may well have been a Slytherin herself.
  • Per the Sorting Hat, Harry would have been a good pick for Slytherin. Dumbledore pointed out that Harry had many qualities Slytherin liked in his students. So if the fan theory that the horcrux in Harry was why he almost ended up in Slytherin is false, and it is Harry himself who was Slytherin material, why should it be surprising that his son was?

Other plans for time travel 2

• How come nobody wondered if it would have been a better idea to instead take a piece of paper (or parchment) with a list of horcruxes and their locations, write them down, then time turner themselves outside of Dumbledore's office (or where the order of the phoenix would be), then leave it there and say it is addressed specifically to someone like Dumbledore? If the time is a concern, at least put it in around say, third or fourth year after the diary was destroyed, so that they would know what to look for? Or maybe instead, you know, warn Cedric himself?
  • Because that was never their intention. They only wanted to stop Cedric from dying. Not help defeat Voldemort.
    • But why? That would be akin to someone having the power to go back in time, prevent WWII, the Holocaust, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and then passing up on all of those opportunities so they could save Private Ryan. Is it a good thing to do, on its own? Absolutely. Is it better than preventing a war and saving dozens, if not hundreds, more lives from being needlessly wasted? Absolutely not. And then, of course, there's the fact that if they prevented the war and stopped Voldemort early, they'd save Cedric anyway.
    • DO NO MESS WITH THE TIMELINE. Albus and Scorpius were persuaded that saving Diggory was just a little change with the only consequence of making an old man happy. They never had the intention of rewriting history at large, just saving a spare.
    • But why not? Scorpius and Albus are good people. Both of them have at least one parent who was involved in and psychologically damaged by the war. Both of them grew up hearing stories about people who died far too young, and they certainly learned about the human rights abuses propagated by Voldemort's side (sending Muggleborns to Azkaban, anyone?). What kind of decent person wouldn't want to prevent that? Yes, it would mess with the timeline, but it seems like refusing to prevent the deaths of innocent people when you have the power to do so is more irresponsible than changing history.
    • Again, DO NOT MESS WITH THE TIMELINE. The play openly shows how the idea of saving Cedric transformed everything into a nightmarish future. There is no telling how doing something, even if it seemed the right thing to do, couldn't create even worse consequences for the future, maybe even ones that couldn't be undone. Destiny and fate are things meant to happen, undoing those can lead to only more pain and disaster and both boys understand this in the end, that what happened made them (and their parents) the people they were and trying to change it isn't worth the cost.
    • That answer just leads to further questions.....
    • Unintended consequences are a reason not to do anything, regardless of time-travel.
    • In that case...
    • Perhaps Albus and Scorpio wanted to do more, but were trying to test the waters first, see if their actions make the future better or worse. If things had gone smoothly, they might have decided to do more good deeds with their time travel, with the ultimate goal of making the timeline better. But this would have eventually led to the inevitable dark future as a consequence of screwing with history.
    • It would be a very bad idea to tamper with the timeline in this fashion. In fact, the book shows this. They tried to save Cedric, and Voldemort won. One tiny change and they damn near permanently wrecked their world. Even if they successfully stopped Voldemort early, this would have huge negative consequences for the rest of the timeline. For example, any number of people who met and had kids because of the war now don't meet, or meet later, or earlier, so they don't have kids or they have different kids. You just made the families they have now cease to exist. Even worse, Voldemort is 100% beaten already. If you mess with time, you are giving Voldemort a second chance. It would be like trying to stop WWII by giving a tiny but real chance we'd have had a late 20th Century global thermonuclear war.
    • Albus was an angry teenager. His basic plan was "do the opposite of what my Dad would do." Dad refuses to help Mr. Diggory? Albus will do the opposite. Particularly since he was contrasting Mr. Diggory's devotion to his son, with his own father's coldness towards himself.

Other plans for time travel 3

• If Albus and Scorpius were worried about causing mayhem in the future, why didn't they choose a less obvious way of getting Cedric to lose the Tournament in the first place? Their methods are fairly obvious sabotage. Why didn't they do something more subtle, something that could be attributed to the wizard equivalent of swamp gas or a weather balloon, not to mention something less likely to bruise Cedric's ego? Even if the possibility of embittering Cedric never occurred to them, the possibility of leaving behind a lot of questions and arousing suspicion should have.
  • The overarching reason he joined up with Death Eaters was over his frustration and humiliation at not winning the tournament, especially when it was an illegal fourth champion from his own school that beat him to it. Plus, by the time they found out about how their actions affecting his actions affected the world, it was already too late to go back and try something more subtle.
    • But that reason directly contradicts his characterization in Goblet of Fire, where he was a genuinely Nice Guy who exhibited no anger or bitterness whatsoever at having Harry as an illegal competitor. Hell, he even agreed to split the victory with Harry during the final challenge, saying that it only mattered that it was a Hogwarts victory.
    • 1.) I don't see what that has to do with the question at hand, and 2.) That is completely and undeniably true, but it's a mis-characterization the book/script/play expects us to go with. Apparently, all that humiliation just went to Cedric's head...I guess. It's really weird, I agree, but the only way Cedric can live in the end is if he loses the tournament. If he loses the tournament, he joins the Death Eaters, kills Neville before Neville kills Nagini, leading to Harry being unable to kill Voldemort and allowing Voldemort to kill Harry, and the world falls to ruin. Unless the boys are okay with that, they've got no choice but to not interfere.
    • 1) It has everything to do with the question at hand. If Cedric's original characterization would preclude him from becoming bitter at his loss in the Tournament, then the play can't say that he became bitter over his loss in the Tournament without taking him radically out of character. 2) So why on earth did Albus and Scorpius not do something less humiliating to get him out of the Tournament? Why didn't they Polyjuice themselves as Healers and convince Dumbledore that one of the Tournament's challenges would pose a serious risk to Cedric's health? Or, if you want something more low-key, what's to stop them from just appearing in the maze just before the third challenge and, wearing gloves, stealing the Cup/Portkey? There are a hundred different ways Albus and Scorpius could have gotten Cedric out of the Tournament without humiliating him, so my question is: Why did they not use one of those methods instead?
    • Because by the time they've altered the timeline so that he doesn't end up winning the tournament, they've seen how the circumstances they created have changed the world so drastically that Voldemort was able to take over, forcing them to go to Bad Future-Hermione, Bad Future-Ron, and Bad Future-Snape for help just to fix the problems they've already caused. At that point, I'd be wary of trying to readjust the past in any way whatsoever, let alone if it involved Cedric and the tournament. Not trying to change anything was probably the first smart thing Albus and Scorpius considered doing in this story.

When spares are spared...

• Why in Merlin's name did Cedric's survival have such a detrimental effect on the future? Let's leave aside his Ron the Death Eater treatment. Let's say that, despite his canon characterization as the nicest of Nice Guys who wouldn't let even as big a loss as the Triwizard Tournament define him, he lets it define him, becomes evil, and kills Neville Longbottom. Couldn't someone else draw the Sword of Gryffindor and kill Nagini? Or find some other way to destroy that particular Horcrux? While we're on the topic, if Harry died in the Battle of Hogwarts, it's not like his death would've automatically killed everyone in the Order and Dumbledore's Army. His allies could've rallied around him in death the same way they rallied around him in life. Furthermore, Cedric was not a high-ranking member of the Order, and thus would not have been able to relay any game-changing information to Voldemort. So the question remains: Why does Cedric's survival and subsequent taking of the Mark have such a detrimental impact on the future?
  • As others have said, the narrative rules of timeline changes are that any and all attempts to 'fix' things through time travel only make things worse. Chaos theory and the butterfly effect writ large. Added to this is the fact that Cedric is a charismatic and skilled young wizard, and having him alive for three more books is a LOT of butterflies.
    • But simply chalking it up to the Butterfly Effect doesn't make sense, with Cedric's survival as the point of divergence. If that is the instigating event, then all changes to the timeline have to be traceable to said event. Voldemort winning the war isn't out of the realm of possibility, but if it isn't directly related to Cedric's survival, then an alternate explanation should be given. As it stands, Cedric becoming a Death Eater = Voldemort winning the war doesn't make any sense. Seemingly insignificant changes to history would logically change the future, but those changes have to ring sound. Chalking it up to the Butterfly Effect simply isn't enough.
  • It's mentioned that the real divergence in the timeline was Cedric killing Neville. If that happened before OotP, Neville was instrumental in getting out of the ministry alive. If it happened before DH, Neville drew the Sword of Griffindor and killed Nagini.
    • Surely Neville wasn't the only person capable of doing those things.
    • It could just be that, in a stroke of bad luck, no one else happened to kill Nagini in this timeline.
  • In the book version of Deathly Hallows, before going into the Forbidden Forest to die, Harry makes it a point to tell Neville to kill Nagini if Ron and Hermione don't manage to, since they were the only ones who knew that she was a Horcrux. In that sense, it would make perfect sense that no one else would've killed her if Ron, Hermione and Neville failed to - what would make them think that killing the snake would've been important to defeating Voldemort?

Escaping the Hogwarts Express

• Are Sirius Black and Fred&George the only ones before Scorpius and Albus to try to get off the Hogwarts express?
  • Probably not, but they must be the most recent.

Offensive rumor

• Why did no one find the "Scorpius is Voldemort's son" rumor offensive? The War was a national tragedy, for Wizarding Britain. For comparison, think of people who propagate conspiracy theories around national tragedies—let's go with 9/11 and Sandy Hook truthers. Those people are hated by the general public for using a national tragedy to call attention to themselves, tearing open old wounds to do it. The Scorpius truthers are doing the same thing. They're using the birth of a child to remind society of the War and all its casualties, insisting that it's not over, that this child will one day turn out just like his supposed father. Again for comparison, let's say a few Sandy Hook truthers claimed Adam Lanza fathered a child, who would grow up to be just like Daddy. The few people who took that rumor seriously would be despised by everyone, seen as morally bankrupt Attention Whores out to ruin the life of an infant; and the vast majority of Americans would just want to let sleeping dogs lie. Why did the Scorpius truthers escape the same fate?
  • Conspiracy theorists are like weeds, they never stop coming no matter how many you pluck out of the ground. Even to this day, there are people who insists things like the Moon Landing never happened, and JFK was killed by something bigger than one man with a rifle, aliens built the pyramids, 9/11 was an inside job, Anastasia survived her family's execution by the Bolsheviks, etc. So it's not surprising that the wizarding equivalent of conspiracy theorists would drool over the prospect that Scorpius is Voldemort's son.
    • But those conspiracy theorists all have one thing in common: They aren't taken seriously. If someone never talks about the moon landing without adding air quotes, that person is going to be duly mocked by most of the population. 9/11 and Sandy Hook truthers are despised by most Americans. People who believe aliens built the pyramids are mocked relentlessly. Those theories are just as ridiculous as the Scorpius rumor, and yet the theories are dismissed and reviled while the Scorpius rumor is prevalent enough to make Scorpius' life difficult. My point is, the Scorpius rumor is a conspiracy theory. The lack of evidence and sheer ridiculousness of it should preclude it from mainstream acceptance. The fact that it went mainstream makes Wizarding Britain look like a bunch of crazies who don't bother thinking critically about anything.
    • You’ll be amazed on how many people outside the USA do believe that the 9/11 was an inside job. It might be a minority in America but not so much in other countries.
  • That's beside the point. Within the US, 9/11 truthers are pariahs, because the tragedy struck so close to home and they're using that national tragedy as a means to propagate their own warped views. In Wizarding Britain, the war struck close to home, and thus conspiracy theorists who pounced on the war would, in all likelihood, be viewed in much the same way as 9/11 truthers are in the US.
    • Not quite. In this case we are talking about a conspiracy theory about Voldemort’s alleged son. The exact analogy for the 9/11 conspiracy theory would be like if they were saying that Voldemort was a Ministry’s puppet and that all the war was part of a Ministry’s conspiracy to have more power and violated basic civil laws. That’s the analogy. Saying that Voldemort has an illegitimate son would be this world equivalent of saying that Kim Kardashian is Osama Bin Laden’s illegitimate daughter, weird? Yes, it will cause outrage and people felt upset because how disrespectful it is? No, because there’s a difference between the people involved in causing the tragedy and the tragedy itself. Actually a lot of real life theories about Hitler’s illegitimate sons did circulate after the war in Germany and not by pariahs, the German government even run an official investigation about it.
  • I give up on this, too. You keep your opinion and I'll keep mine, savvy?
  • Good point. My only other answer to this is that all we heard was the "Scorpoius is Voldemort's son!" side, and one of the sub-plots revolved around refuting that rumor so of course it's going to look like everyone and their grannies buy into this asinine theory. It doesn't help that this was perfect fodder for other Hogwarts students to rag on Scorpius about. I'm sure most of the Wizarding world doesn't really care who the kid's dad is, they're just happy Voldemort's not back again.
    • That's certainly a possibility. It does make me wish the "Here's a bulleted and numbered list of reasons why that rumor makes no sense" side had been given some page/screen time. Even just a line or two, something like "Oh, it says here that former Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt was admitted to Saint Mungo's. He heard the Scorpius rumor and rolled his eyes so hard he sprained them" would have gone a long way toward making Wizarding Britain look less prone to taking rumors at face value.
    • Wait—I thought of something else. Draco approaches Harry and asks him to use his influence as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement to shut the rumors down. If things had gotten bad enough for Scorpius that his dad felt the need to try and get law enforcement involved, then most British witches and wizards can't be willing to dismiss the theory. If it's gotten that bad, then the adults aren't rolling their eyes at "kids these days;" they're actively and/or passively spreading the rumor themselves.
    • Or the opposite can be interpreted too. Law Enforcement can act because is just a minority spreading rumors, as in real life with people with weird ideas like the anti-vaccine movement and Scientology, if the majority of the population was into it then there’s no practical way to fight it legally.
  • Please elaborate on that argument.
    • If 90% of people believe the “Scorpio is Voldemort’s son theory” then there is nothing law enforcement can do. What, arrest the entire Wizard population? The Wizard government seem to be democratically elected as we see the Minister worry for popular opinion, so if the majority of the population believe the theory it is very unlikely that the government will risk enrage that majority by taking legal measures against them, if on the contrary the theory is marginal and followed only by a small group, then legal measures can be taken with no quarrels from the government.
  • Who said anything about arresting them? First off, that's a hallmark of dictatorships; and second, I think what Draco had in mind was more of the "issue an official press release denying the existence of Time Turners, or at least maintaining that there were none in existence at the time Scorpius was conceived and born" variety.
  • The Wizard community as a whole is incredibly backwards and superstitious, so terrified of Voldemort that they refuse to even say his name. They'll believe anything about him, including that he had a son, and their ability to drown out naysayers who state unpopular opinions is well established.
  Harry: Voldemort is alive!
  Everyone else: Stop being an Attention Whore, Harry!
  • Okay, but in this play, people say Voldemort's name as casually as they'd say anyone else's, to the point of celebrating a holiday called "Voldemort Day" and ending conversations with "For Voldemort and Valor" in the Bad Future; and in the main timeline, they're not too shy about saying his name, either. This seems to imply that Voldemort has, to some extent, been de-mythologized. After his reign of terror, de-mythologizing the man responsible for said reign would be not only a priority for the new government, but a comfort for the people who were harmed by it. And, I'll reiterate: The rumor is extremely silly. It doesn't just involve Voldemort, but hinges on the notion that Draco, a man who was mistreated by Voldemort for two years straight, would willingly take his sweet and kind wife back in time to dance the Paphian jig with the man who had mistreated him, in hopes that his wife would become pregnant with the offspring of the man who left his father to rot in Azkaban for a year. Even if the finer details of Draco's life aren't known to the public, then the fact that Lucius was left in Azkaban for a year and Narcissa's lie at the end of DH at the very least would be a matter of public record, casting serious doubt on the notion that this family would want Voldemort's son around. This rumor isn't superstition around Voldemort. This is willful idiocy.
  • With regard to whether the rumor is offensive, I try to remember that it's being directed at the Malfoys, of all families. Even among the fanbase, they're notorious among Death Eaters for having avoided prison time after the war ended, and even with Narcissa saving Harry from Tom, it makes sense to me that some people would suspect such an influential pure-blood family of never fully giving up their evil ambitions. The more outlandish details of the rumor probably don't sound that way to the residents of the Wizarding World, either.
  • In addition, speaking as an American who remembers the horror around 9/11, I think the situation is completely different. The rumors would be more akin to the situation from Goblet of Fire where Little Hangleton fully belives that Frank the gardener murdered the Riddles, despite there being no proof other than 'he was taken for questioning.' For a real world example, say that a woman had returned to her home town heavily pregnant, and given birth roughly 8 or so months after Hitler died and the war in Germany ended. Her parents were Nazi party officials and she was known to have worked for Hitler as a maid. I don't view it as inconceivable that one person starts whispering that she was pregnant with Hitler's child and that it would spread like wildfire. The situation is even more likely given that it's probably now common knowledge that the Malfoys worked for Voldemort in the 1st War, escaped punishment, returned to him in the 2nd War, and by all accounts have now escaped punishment again.
  • Also, the rumor itself and the fact that it got started aren’t inconceivable considering Tom did have a child with one of his followers; it just wasn’t with Draco’s wife and didn’t have anything to do with Time Turners. In that sense, it’s not at all like any 9/11 conspiracies because we know for a fact there was a secret child of Voldemort running free and that they were even trying to bring their father back into power.

Keeping Delphi secret

• Why did Voldemort want to keep Delphi's existence secret? When Delphi was born, he had won. He controlled the Ministry of Magic through an Imperiused Minister, a kangaroo court was sending Muggleborns to Azkaban on flimsy charges, and a Death Eater was in charge of Britain's only wizard school. Voldemort had no reason to believe his winning streak would end anytime soon. The only reason he would need to hide Delphi is if he were already losing and afraid she would be his only legacy and/or hope of returning to life. As he essentially ruled the UK by the middle of DH, one would think he would announce his daughter's birth with great fanfare. Why all the secrecy?
  • His obsession with the prophecy would never allow him to take his victory for granted for as long as Harry's alive. He might have put some brave facade in public but it was just that. A facade.
    • But having a daughter has nothing to do with defeat or victory; and actually, revealing he has a daughter would be a pretty solid strategic move. If his enemies know he has a child, it would make them think twice about killing him; and if someone got close to it, he could always pull the "You would leave poor Delphi fatherless?" card. He could then use the Delphi card to smear the memory of anyone who made an attempt on his life. Additionally, if he plays himself up as a doting father and a loving partner to Bellatrix, his allies would have an extra bit of ammunition to throw at their detractors—"Have you seen how much he loves his little girl? He can't be that bad!" Such arguments might sway The Quisling types, too.
    • Voldemort doesn't understand love, though. He can't play himself up as a doting father or a loving partner. If he had known how to do that, he would've regretted everything when Harry gave him the chance. Because Voldemort doesn't understand love at all, I think Delphi was kept secret even from him. I don't think she was planned at all. Had he known about her, I'm sure he would have abandoned her. He always does everything on his own if he can help it; Delphi would have been a nuisance.
    • Understanding love isn't necessary to fake it. He wouldn't have to actually be a doting father and loving partner; he'd just have to put on a show for the newspapers. Anyone can smile down at an infant with their arm around their partner long enough to fool someone like Rita Skeeter, and when the photo shoot was over, he could get back to business.
    • That may be true (although the image of it in my head is awfully similar to that awkward hug with Draco in the films), but I think my other point still stands. Voldemort rarely relies on anyone, so I doubt he would care about a daughter. I still think she was kept secret from Voldemort as well.
    • How? The notion that Bellatrix's pregnancy could be kept from Harry and Co. is a little wibbly, but somewhat plausible, as they rarely saw or interacted with her (although Hermione should've known when she Polyjuiced herself into Bellatrix in the last book) but Voldemort would've interacted with Bellatrix far more frequently. Symptoms like morning sickness and fatigue would've demanded an explanation; and if he demanded she abort so as to be in top shape for the fighting he'd want her to do, he would've known if she failed to do so.
    • Delphi can't have been secret from Voldemort. You're forgetting that the play says she was conceived because he wanted an heir of strong magical lineage. Which is the only reason he would sleep with Bellatrix, or anyone, in the first place.
    • How would Hermione have known Bella was/had been pregnant when Polyjuicing into her? I didn't get the impression that it quite worked like that.
    • Voldemort used a figure head to rule as the Minister of Magic, so that the public wouldn't know if Voldemort was ruling them or not, and he could be free to roam the country to his leisure. So there was no need to have a kid for publicity.
    • It's not that he'd have a kid specifically for the publicity; I agree that there was no need for it. I'm more just wondering why he didn't take advantage of the good publicity Delphi could've afforded him.
    • Maybe he did, but he was undercover in that period of time anyway, so if he thought in using Delphi for publicity it had to wait anyway.
  • Perhaps he wants to use her as material for a spell, as he used his father's bones, and doesn't want anyone to interfere. As mild evidenced toward this, she was unknown in the future where Voldemort reigned, though Scorpius could just have missed her.
    • So why didn't he do it immediately after she was born? It seems that if Voldemort wanted a child for a spell badly enough to conceive one with Bellatrix, when it is strongly implied throughout the series that he has no interest in sex, why wouldn't he perform the spell as soon as possible?
    • Some spells require very specific and especial characteristic, so the spell could require the daughter to be of a certain age and not newborn.
    • I don't think Voldemort would have gained any good publicity for publicly announcing "I've had a child." People opposed to his rule would have seen it at the very least as an attempt to establish hereditary monarchy. Only his true followers would have been happy. The Order of the Phoenix wouldn't have stayed their hand at all if the opportunity had come to kill Voldemort, I don't even think Harry, who knew the pains of being an orphan, would have been fooled into showing mercy.
    • Also, about why Voldemort would want a child, just because he's incapable of love doesn't mean he's free of the need to breed. Real-life sociopaths have said that they at times want to have children for all sorts of reasons, either the desire to establish a lineage or to bind the other parent more closely to their control. Possibly he just wanted to get it on with Bellatrix and her falling pregnant was met with just the shrug of his shoulders and his idea of "good, a new servant I can train to be completely obedient."

Baby blanket

• This may be me being dense but, why did Petunia keep Harry's baby blanket if she (a) hated Lily and her son and (b) tried to do everything in her power to make sure Harry never found out about his parents? Also, how did Vernon not find it all these years and not get rid of it?
  • Guilt, maybe, or a sense of duty to her sister. Though it does seem odd that Vernon never found it in the 30+ years since Harry was left on their doorstep, since if he demanded Petunia throw it out, she probably wouldn't put up much of a fight.
  • (OP here) My only guess is that maybe she pretended for Vernon that it was just a regular dishcloth and one day, when it got too old/worn, she washed it and kept it among her personal things (I doubt Vernon would dare root through her stuff) but not in a very obvious spot where he'd see it.
  • I suppose she could've mixed it in with Dudley's baby things, too.
  • Wait, how would Dudley know that this particular blanket was actually Harry's? It's not like there was a name on it, and unless Petunia told him where it was in her final days, he would have no clue... I'm overthinking this, aren't I?
  • Oh, that's a good point. She could've kept it separated from Dudley's baby things, but then that brings us back to the question of how Vernon never found it over the 17 years Harry was under their roof, and the 20+ years after he left. Because really, if he found it after Harry had already moved out, he probably would've asked if it were Dudley's, and Petunia's "No" would've led him to throw it out. So, no, you're not overthinking this.
  • (OP again) OK, I think I figured it out: Petunia mixed Harry's baby blanket in with Dudley's baby stuff, and if Vernon ever asked her who owned the blanket all she'd have to do is lie and say it was Dudley's. Vernon would've just accepted it as truth and moved on. Years later, presumably after Vernon died first, Petunia, knowing she was about to die, either told Dudley the truth behind that blanket/left a note for him to read when he goes through her things. Specifically, one way or another, she lets him know the blanket belonged to Harry. Whether she asked Dudley to send it on over to him, or Dudley opted to do it himself is unknown.
  • Not really sure why Vernon possibly coming across it was an issue. All my baby stuff is kept in a tote in corner of our storage room, and Vernon Dursley's been established as a character who, if you take something he doesn't like, shove it away, and keep it out of his site, he'll gladly go about without complaining. What reason would he have for going through a bunch of baby stuff anyway?
    • Sentimentality, perhaps. He teared up when seeing Dudley in his Smeltings uniform, so it's not implausible that he might see Petunia going through Dudley's baby things one day and join her in a trip down memory lane.
    • I could picture that, but it still requires Petunia storing the blanket belonging to her nephew with her son's things, which I can't really imagine even a very normal person doing. Couldn't you just picture Petunia being paranoid that her sister put some sort of magical enchantments or some such on that blanket? (Which, funnily enough, Albus and Scorpius sort of did.) As if she would let something like that get mixed in with all of her little Dudley's things?!
    • Which brings us back to the question of why Petunia kept it in the first place, if she was afraid of hidden enchantments.
    • Well, the enchantments part was just a hypothetical reason why she wouldn't keep it with Dudley's things, as I still think it's weird that she would do that, anyway. As for why she kept it, magic or no, it's the same reason she kept Harry (partly): her Hidden Depths. She may not be appreciative or welcoming toward Harry's magical lineage, but he's still the only son of her only sister. She may not have much of a practical use for the blanket or any real reason to keep it, but it's probably her (and Harry's) last momento of Lily, and she just couldn't bring herself to get rid of it.
  • Where else would she put it but with Dudley's baby things? The books made it abundantly clear that outside the stuff Harry brought home from Hogwarts, there was little to nothing within the Dursley household that belongs to him, specifically. So either Petunia used it as a dish-cloth and hoped Vernon never threw it out when it got too old/dirty, or she just snuck it into Dudley's things out of a sense of guilt.
    • Not to mention that there's a pretty big problem with passing it off as a dishcloth: baby blankets and dishcloths look entirely different. So if Vernon ever found a baby blanket in one of the kitchen drawers, he'd ask his wife why she was using one of Dudley's baby blankets as a dishcloth, which would force her to either come clean about it being Harry's, or lie and say that she was mistaken and move it over to storage alongside Dudley's baby things.
    • More importantly, the real problem with the "passing it off as a dishcloth" theory is that it ignores the fact that it's Harry who scrubbed the dishes for many years in the Dursley household. There's no way Petunia would risk letting Harry get a look at the thing, lest the boy start asking the kind of questions that'd make Vernon blow up at both of them. Most likely, Petunia just shoved the thing into the back of a linen cupboard, trusting that her husband wasn't the sort to change bedsheets or otherwise perform housework, so would have no reason to look in there.
  • There are plenty of places in a house where you could put something so your husband wouldn't find it - in an attic, perhaps, or the deepest corner of a linen closet, especially when he's not specifically looking for it. I've already explained why Petunia would want to keep the blanket, and there are a variety of places in which she could do this without having to pass it off as a dishrag or otherwise risking Vernon coming across it.
  • I think we're all forgetting something here: Petunia is not Vernon's servant, nor is she a kowtowed and oppressed wife. We don't see Vernon and Petunia argue a whole lot, but the one time their opinions do clash (when Vernon wants to throw Harry out at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix), Petunia wins. If she insisted on keeping the baby blanket, Vernon might grumble about it, but he wouldn't force her to get rid of it.

Argument

• During the scene where Albus Potter rejects Harry's gift of the baby blanket and throws it against the wall and tells Harry to the effect of, “I wish you weren't my dad!”, why didn't Harry just slap him? I know he would be veering close to Vernon Dursley territory, but after that Kick the Dog moment? Why didn't Harry do something beyond a stern telling off?
  • The only reason I can think of is a meta one: Having him go beyond a stern telling off would've made him too Unintentionally Unsympathetic. In-universe, I'm drawing a blank.
  • (OP here) OK, this time I was being dense. The reason Harry didn't slap his kid because it would be what Vernon Dursley would do. And like Harry said at the end, he implied he was going to try and be the exact opposite of Vernon. If child abuse is something Vernon regularly did, Harry wouldn't do it.
    • Though it does add a layer of irony to his attempts to separate Albus and Scorpius, what with Vernon's attempts to not only restrict his contact with Ron and Hermione, but to cut him off from the entire wizarding world.
    • However, Harry was doing it because he thought it would help protect Albus, whereas the Dursleys ostracized Harry because of their own bigotry. Also, unfortunately, some parents end up resorting to doing what they know. Harry admits later in the story that he didn't have a stable father figure to look up to throughout his life, so as much as he tries to abstain from the worst of what the Dursleys did to him, there might still be parts of him that end up taking after them, whether he wants them to or not.

Dangers of Time-Tuners

• Why time-turner can be given for taking school extra classes if it's that dangerous? Like I get Hermione is serious and if someone tells her screw up and you cease to exist she won't do it but students can get their stuff stolen or lost. It's kind of a poor risk reward system.
  • I don't believe there was a confirmed case of anyone besides Hermione getting one - possibly Percy in Chamber of Secrets, as well - but both of those characters are both uber-sticklers for the rules and were probably made aware in great detail of the dangers of going back past a certain time for a certain time. Albus and Scorpius are both much more irresponsible and got their hands on one by stealing it from the Minister of Magic's office, for a very petty and insignificant reason.
    • Harry wasn't able to go to Hogsmeade and buy candy without a signed permission slip in Prisoner of Azkaban. Why would they be so lax about giving a student the power to change the course of history?
    • I'd like to point out that while it's highly likely that McGonagall and Dumbledore could have let Harry in Hogsmeade without the form being signed (I mean, McGonagall let Harry be on the Quidditch team despite it actually breaking rules and protocol), maybe McGonagall was more worried about Harry wandering off away from the castle and running into a crazy mass-murdering maniac named Sirius Black (according to the wizarding community at the time) during that time of the year.
    • I don't really see how those two are comparable. For the purpose of attending two classes at once, a Time Turner was given to one known student. That's all. A very rule-abiding, over-achieving student at Hogwarts, and the best in her year. I wouldn't really call that "lax". Making a special exception for a student like that and bypassing the need for a permission slip for one particularly unremarkable one are two different things.
    • They aren't. That's the point: Bypassing the permission slip requirement for a trip to the candy store would be a simple thing that wouldn't carry much risk at all, especially considering Harry's family situation, and even Dumbledore was a stickler for that particular rule. Giving a time travel device to a thirteen-year-old (model student or no, it's still an extremely powerful artifact that we now know is capable of altering history and the present with it) carries the risk that said thirteen-year-old will misuse it. Even though Hermione isn't the sort to abuse a powerful magical artifact (and the Ministry would know it) accidents happen.
    • I find it unlikely that a three-year model student like Hermione would've intentionally done anything dangerous with it if she were only interested in using it for school, lived a relatively normal (for a witch) lifestyle, and was told the details regarding how dangerous it was if you went back to far and did the wrong thing. And the kind of mess Albus and Scorpius caused being caused on accident by a girl who was only going back an hour or two (and always in the same place, with plenty of responsible teachers and staff around) doesn't seem all that likely.
    • I agree that she wouldn't do anything intentionally, but as I said before, accidents happen. Something entirely outside her control could cause her Time-Turner to malfunction; and when you put a powerful magical artifact in a school with a bunch of teenagers, the chances of an accident skyrocket. Again, Hermione is not the danger here; the other students are. She wouldn't be careless with the Time-Turner, but what if someone found out what she had and overpowered her? Or what if she were harmed by one of Hagrid's very dangerous creatures in his class, dropped her Time-Turner, and Crabbe or Goyle found it? The point isn't Hermione's track record, which I agree is excellent. The point is the environment into which the Time-Turner is being inserted, and the question of why the Ministry would even take that risk.
    • That's a lot of "ifs", if you ask me. Everything you've said is extraordinarily hypothetical, and the scenarios mentioned could be applied to a lot of things in our world and Harry Potter's - does that mean we shouldn't do them, if there's a small possibility something could go horribly wrong? I'm sure the staff wouldn't have given the Time-Turner over to her if they thought there was any concern over it malfunctioning, or any reason to suspect that another student might try to take it from her if they found out. (Plus, Hermione could always just defend herself if that happened, or even use the Time-Turner to evade them and go see McGonagall in a time when it's safe.) And as for being injured by one of Hagrid's pets...Forgive me, but that sounds a little bit silly. Especially after what happened with Malfoy, I don't think Hagrid would let anyone near enough to any dangerous creature for them to be hurt by it, and it still hinges on Hermione somehow losing the Time-Turner during the attack, someone else managing to find it and not deeming it right to return it to her, being able to recognize what it is, and having a reason to try travelling back in time.
    • And your hypothetical situation of someone finding the lost Time-Turner (which is a lot more likely than you think—school-age kids lose things all the time and while Hermione might be brilliant, she's still human and a young teenager) hinges on the person who finds it not fiddling with it to see what on earth it is—and since fiddling with unknown objects is human nature, it's pretty unlikely that something screwy wouldn't happen. Once this person is in the past, they can change the future without even trying; all they have to do is get in the way of a pivotal moment or say something that causes a historical figure to change their mind; contrariwise, they could wind up captured by Voldemort's minions (depending on the year they landed in) and forced to reveal the future's secrets under Veritaserum. Furthermore, the thought of Hermione being assaulted out of her Time-Turner isn't silly when you consider that, say, Crabbe and Goyle may not be a match in magic, but they do outstrip her in brute strength; and the fact that Real Life violence happens much faster than it does in movies. If they decided to ambush her and beat her senseless, she probably wouldn't even have time to shout a curse. This scenario isn't limited to Crabbe and Goyle as the perpetrators, either; just get Hermione outnumbered by a few students with wands and/or improvised weapons and catch her by surprise.
    • For your first point, that's true, and I did fail to consider it - however, in a world where magic like the different kinds we've seen throughout these books exist, I'd be surprised if there wasn't, say, a spell that kept you from losing something or a spell that always keeps something on your person or around your neck or something. Secondly, I don't really see why you've brought up Crabbe and Goyle, considering they've been portrayed as Dumb Muscle characters since Day 1. Even if Hermione were foolish enough (and I feel it's been established enough that she's not) to leave the Time-Turner visible on her neck where everyone can see it, I doubt they'd either get a good enough look at it to realize what it was, or consider the potential it could have in the right hands...which theirs are clearly not, anyway. (Plus, how many students at Hogwarts know what Time-Turners look like or what they do, anyway? I don't believe the books ever say.) And finally, again, you're basing your entire argument on the occurrence of one or two specific outcomes in the wake of an everyday incident that may or may not happen during the year. "Oh, Hermione, I'm afraid I simply can't run the risk of giving you this Time-Turner to help boost your school performance, because if you happen to get into some sort of accident, and in that accident you happen to lose it, and someone happens to come across it before you recover it like the diligent student I know you are, and they happen to know what it is, what it does, and how to work it, and they happen to have some desire to go into the past with it, and they happen to do so before you've come to see me about its disappearance..." There's just way too many unlikely variables there for McGonagall to deem it too much of a risk, especially for her best, smartest, most competent and diligent student.
    • First, there can't be a spell to keep you from losing something, or to keep something around your neck, because that would make Remembralls obsolete. Why buy a crystal ball that reminds you when you've forgotten something if you can just put a spell on it for free? Secondly, Crabbe and Goyle were simply an example; however, I contend that they were a solid one, because if they saw the little Mudblood with something shiny they didn't have, they could want the shiny thing and decide to take it from her. Their very status as Dumb Muscle makes them a threat in that regard. As for how students at Hogwarts can know what they are and what they look like—no, Harry didn't know what they were, and Ron seemed to have no idea, either. However, in the play, Draco mentions that his dad was having a Time-Turner made, and Nott was arrested with a prototype; so clearly, there are wizards outside the Ministry who know what Time-Turners are, what they look like, and what they are capable of. It's not too much of a leap to say that the children of these witches and wizards could learn from their parents, or that they could've heard rumors of devices that let you travel through time. Finally, no, that is not at all what I was arguing; I don't recall making any of the points you refute. My argument was that the very lack of common knowledge regarding Time-Turners would make the Ministry think them so dangerous to the uninitiated, because the uninitiated would find it, fiddle with it (as people do with objects they can't identify) and wind up in the past. Again, Hermione's diligence has nothing to do with this. It's the environment into which the Time-Turner is going—a school filled with students as young as eleven and a mischievous poltergeist who likes to pick on those students—that poses the danger.
    • Your argument still hinges on someone finding out about Hermione having the Time-Turner, when it's more than likely she would've kept it hidden and out of sight, and being able to take it from her when she's an extraordinarily talented witch who's shown to be more than capable of defending herself. Your analysis of Crabbe and Goyle also makes them sound more like two seven-year-olds - I was saying that they were too dumb to consider the possibilities of using a Time-Turner, if they were to even recognize it, not that they were infantile enough to try taking from her on the sound basis of "Ooh, it's shiny!" And finally (again), Remembralls are a.) designed to inform you of whether there's something you've forgotten, not specifically something you've lost, and b.) they were evidently low-key enough for Augusta Longbottom to be able to send one to her first-year grandson, so for all we know, they could just be some cheap, dollar-store type of trinket that isn't as infallible as you think it is. (Especially once you consider that it doesn't even show you what it is that you've forgotten, so it's clearly not the best tool for someone to have.)
    • This line of arguing is getting too heated. If someone else feels the desire to argue this or other points, they may feel free, but I'm going to bow out now.
    • If you want a less debatable answer, the Time-Turners in the original books could only go back about five hours or so, which isn't enough time for anyone at Hogwarts to cause any significant damage. The ones in Cursed Child can go back farther because they're more advanced, on account of being made 20 years after the original series takes place. There's nothing saying they aren't more carefully regulated, as a result.

Payoff for crimes

• At one point in the "Worst Future", Draco Malfoy mentions that it's his job to pay off the Muggle Prime Minister in gold as a result of Voldemort's senseless killing of Muggles. The few questions I have about this are:
  • With Voldemort having taken over, how are things possibly civil enough between the two worlds to make payment in exchange for mass murder at all possible? And no matter how civil, what sort of Prime Minister would be willing to accept that kind of a negotiation?
  • What's the point of paying him off in the first place? The Prime Minister still has to deal with the murders, and what's he going to do against an army of all-powerful wizards in the event that they don't pay him for it?
  • Why is the Prime Minister still in office? If Voldemort succeeded in killing Harry and taking over the British magical community, why wouldn't he just kill the Prime Minister and put a figurehead into office in his place, thereby giving him complete power over magic and Muggles alike, and the freedom to kill and have his people kill them as they please?
    • Let's just assume the Prime Minister is that stupidly corrupt but somehow immune to the mind control spell (If the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is canon, some muggle can resist memory wipe). My guess is that either Voldemort doesn't want the world to know he is taking over yet (Britain is probably not the only place with wizards government, overthrowing the muggle government must be a big no-no)and need someone who knows how to make killing spree not that alarming to Muggles or Voldemort kind of lost his drive after killing Harry and prefers simply murdering at random and making Voldemort Day a thing.
    • But why wouldn't Voldemort want to take over the UK in one fell swoop? If he's has open control over the entire nation, then it will be far easier to ferret out opposition and make examples of said opposition. Leaving the Masquerade in place only invites pesky Muggle journalists to investigate mysterious deaths and disappearances; and if the PM is, as you said, stupidly corrupt, then his citizens will vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity. If things are as bad as they seem in Scorpius' glimpse of the Bad Future, then there should already be protests going on, which would further threaten Voldemort's clandestine hold over the Muggles.
    • Not to mention, it still calls into question why the PM has to be paid off at all, no matter how corrupt he may be to be willing to accept it. At the very least, it's a massive waste of wizard gold.
    • If Voldemort would want to take over Britain but chances are he can't, it's a thousand to one against the British Muggles and they can call international help and the wizard equivalent of NATO deciding to stop his war if it goes out of the wizard communit. So instead he pays the Prime Minister who knows how Muggles react to killing spree and to blame diverse group (there is probably five groups who would commit terrorism in England before even the biggest lunatic reporters scream wizards), they need a Prime Minister the same way the ministry of magic needed one when the war in the books start happening: To label monsters attack as natural disaster, to blame Sirius Black or someone else for an explosion and label terrorists every undesirable. It's like a Vichy Earth until there is enough wizards to steamroll Europe. The better question is why the book Prime minister accepted covering up a war happening in his country when he wasn't paid?
    • A thousand to one sounds like rather improbable odds. We're never told precisely how many wizardfolk there are in the UK, let alone the world, but they're a small enough minority to make remaining in hiding the more attractive option. However, let's assume that it is a thousand to one odds that the Muggles will win. If Voldemort's victory was that certain, why in Merlin's name did he not go for it?
    • A thousand muggles for one wizard, not a thousand to one for the muggles to win. Voldemort's reach mostly extended to the British wizards community he will lose if he breaks the masquerade because that will get him the muggles and the wizards from other countries. He needs someoen to keep the charade hidden until he has a strong enough army to go to a bigger war.
    • If that's the case, then why is he in a position to bribe the PM to keep quiet about terrorist attacks on his soil? Either the PM is such an idiot that he's going to be voted out of office in the next few weeks, or he's so corrupt that he's going to be voted out of office in a few weeks, or Voldemort has the entire country in his pocket and he isn't revealing himself because….reasons? It seems rather inconsistent.
    • So the PM (corrupt or not) is gonna go publically and say: “you know all the recent deaths that we have? A Wizard Did It [laughing from the audience], no, really I’m serious, wizards do exist and they are killing people…” then he is put in a mad house. I think some readers tend to forget that we as an audience know that wizards exist in the HP universe, but normal humans in that universe would have the same reaction we would have if someone says wizards exist, especially if that someone is a prime minister. So, even if the PM is not corrupt and does want to make the thing public knowledge, no one would believe him and he has no way to prove it. So, it will be easier to take the money and say “hey, terrorists do it”.
    • Or, the PM could actually be Voldemort's figurehead for most purposes, and works for money. Voldemort showed in book 7 that he would prefer to leave in place an apparently intact government secretly under his thumb than take over openly in most cases. The PM takes gold from the Wizarding World, keeps some of it, and uses the rest to bribe a bunch of other people to help him with the cover up.
• Why does the international community not factor into the Bad Future? In Real Life, the things Scorpius glimpses would almost certainly be considered terrorism, and they would dominate international news reports for weeks. If anyone got wind that the Prime Minister was being bribed to try and keep things quiet—and given how nosy modern journalists are, they absolutely would get wind of it—there would be a massive scandal that would, in all likelihood, expose Voldemort's shadow regime. This isn't because the international community likes to poke into other countries' affairs, but because if there are terrorists blowing up bridges in the UK, then France, the US, and other nations that have been affected by terrorism will want to know if said terrorists pose a threat on their soil. So why is this not happening? This sort of thing should be sending every media outlet from Canada to Japan into a frenzy, but from the way Draco reacts to it all, the world seems to be shrugging its collective shoulders and letting the UK deal with its own incredibly effective, incredibly slippery, terrorists.
  • How are they supposed to figure out it's done by wizard? In the books they can mask giants attack as hurricanes and a bunch of people winded up dead too yet they just told the Prime Minister to shut up and let wizards handle it and he did. Bribing him makes way more sense than just telling him "Yo,wizards, your predecessor didn't say shit because he thought no one will believe and so will you" and if that's the usual way other country like U.S.A or France also have their own wizards ordering the muggle government to treat it like it's a third world conflict. The international community might heard of it but they'll rather protect their countries if it just affects the U.K (which their wizards community will warn if it goes out of hand)
    • The stuff Scorpius witnesses can't be passed off as a natural disaster; and the fact that it's happening often enough that Draco treats bribing the PM as a common occurrence means that other nations are going to become suspicious. Furthermore, the books take place in a pre-9/11 world. One effect of 9/11 was making world leaders and citizens more suspicious (and even outright paranoid) when it came to random acts of violence. In the books, these events could maybe be passed off as anomalies; in our current political climate, not a chance. And even if they don't realize it's wizards doing it, they can still figure out that a shadowy terrorist network is directly or indirectly responsible for the random acts of violence. Muggles might not have magic, but they're not idiots.
    • Muggles believed twelve people died by the hand of a man with zero background and apparently he had a gun that creates an explosion. And again other countries probably have wizards telling them it's better to ignore it because if people break the masquerade now it's gonna be a worldwide Witch Hunt and Muggles purge so yes they are willing to let Britain burn. I mean sure they know violent acts happen there they also know they got bombed in July but they won't send their army there or investigate further. There were 145 terrorist attacks reported last august across the world few of them got international help about it.
    • They were told at first that it was a gas explosion, and when Sirius escaped, not much context was needed, as it was believed that he was an immediate threat. And I really don't see the US or France "letting Britain burn," no matter how many wizards they had telling them otherwise, because if Britain burns, who's next? The way they see it, it's a threat to international security.
    • Ignoring the Muggle international communities, I'm more curious about the magical ones. Fantastic Beasts introduces an International Confederation of Wizards, which sent a delegation to meet in New York for what they thought may have been connected to Grindelwald's terrorist acts in Europe. Why wouldn't they have done the same thing once Voldemort took over Britain?
    • Probably for the same reason no one stopped Hitler from taking over Germany. Whilst Grindewald was an international terrorist trying to make damages in several countries, Voldemort seem to be focus on Britain only. Generally no one intervenes if the dictator is from one of the big powers and is (at least at first) focus inside. Ask Putin.

Canonity

• So...Is this canon with the rest of the series? Has there been any word on that? Or no?
  • I think it is supposed to be canon; wasn't it touted as the eighth Harry Potter book?
    • It's supposed to be canon, from all evidence, but the Fanon Discontinuity is strong with this one.

Using the Time-Turner

• If Lucius Malfoy had a Time-Turner that allows users to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, why didn't he ever plan to use it? Between OOTP and DH, his entire life went kablooey: he failed Voldemort pretty spectacularly for the second time (the first being when he failed to prevent the Diary Horcrux from being destroyed in COS), he'd been imprisoned in Azkaban for a year, he'd emerged to find that his son had been the victim of a failed Uriah Gambit with the entire preceding year being an extremely stressful Hope Spot, and even been forced to relinquish his wand, thus rendering him powerless for the remainder of the war. It's implied that Lucius never fully recovered from all that, especially his time in Azkaban, so if he had the means to go back and prevent that chain of events from ever happening, why did he, according to Draco, have no interest in even using the Time-Turner?
  • He probably knew it wasn't a good idea to mess with the past as the consequences are unpredictable.
  • All things considered, he also came out of the war pretty well-off, as he was able to keep himself and his wife and son out of Azkaban, even if it was at the expense of some of his prestige - that'd had already been going down for him since Chamber of Secrets. It's not as if he'd want to try bringing Voldemort back to life if it would only be to win some of his favor back.
    • I never said he'd want to go back and win Voldemort's favor back; I think it'd actually be more likely for future!Lucius (knowing everything that happens to him and his family and the raging PTSD he's stuck with) for him to convince past!Lucius to take his family and flee the country before things got bad. It's such a simple solution to the Time-Turner question, and it involves such minimal risk to Lucius and his family, that I'm having a hard time seeing why he wouldn't at least attempt it.
  • Where was it ever said that Lucius was stuck with PTSD? He's lived almost his whole life being a pureblood supremacist and a supporter of Voldemort and the Death Eaters - there's nothing to suggest the last year or two of the war would've left him that traumatized. And, again, he came out of it pretty good, all things considered. Depending on when he had the Time-Turner made, it's more than possible that he just didn't find it worth the effort if he'd gotten over what had happened by that point.
    • He was left to rot in Azkaban for a year. Sirius Black only stayed sane because he could both transform into a dog (thus making it more difficult for the dementors to affect him) and had a non-happy thought to anchor him, and Lucius had neither of these things. When he was released from Azkaban, he found that his son had been the victim of a failed Uriah Gambit, caused by his own errors, and his family had fallen entirely out of Voldemort's favor—which, with a villain who "treats his allies as badly as his enemies," is extremely dangerous. Voldemort could have killed Draco (or any of the Malfoys, really) at any time, and gained nothing but praise from the other Death Eaters. Lucius could have been forced, at any moment, to watch his son die as painful and as humiliating a death as Voldemort wanted to give him. And given Draco's many failures, it's preposterous to assume he wasn't tortured for said failures, and that Lucius wasn't Forced to Watch at least once. Now, what were you saying about him not having PTSD?
    • Just because crappy things happen to you doesnt automatically mean you get PTSD. Plus half of the crappy things you've listed are hypoyetical whatifs with no evidence in the books that they did happen, so the idea that he doesnt have PTSD is perfectly valid.
  • Word of God is that even after everything that happened to him, Lucius (as well as Narcissa) never really got over his feelings about blood purity - as a result, it's said that family visits were tense and uncomfortable, and that Draco did his best to keep his parents from influencing Scorpius. Clearly, the endeavors of his past didn't leave enough of a lasting impact on him for him to want to go back and change anything. (It also hinges on when Lucius had the Time-Turner created; I don't believe Draco ever specified that.)
  • The simplest explanation is that he knew better than to tamper with time like that. So, he goes back in time. He warns his earlier self to run. His earlier self runs. And Voldemort hunts him down and kills his entire family. If there is even one chance in ten that this would be the new outcome, it would be smart to stick with the timeline that leaves his family alive.

Siring Delphi

• Disregarding all those character-based reasons why Voldemort might not want to have a child, how would it be physically, biologically possible for him to sire one? I've heard that he's roughly 71 years old by the end of the original series - is it even possible for a man to viably procreate at that age?
  • Yes, most men are fertile at any age, Charles Chaplin had a daughter when he was in his sixties. He probably do needed some viagra though [or the magical equivalent].
  • Wizards seem to age slower, or at least not feel the effects of age, as much as Muggles. Albus Dumbledore was 115 when he died. While Muggles have lived up to 120 years old, no 115 year old Muggle is going to be able to go running around a cave of Inferi throwing fire spells or dueling Voldemort blow for blow in the Ministry of Magic.
  • The Horcrux probably also arrests the physical aging process. Someone who wants to rule the world eternally like Voldemort is probably not going to be interested in crossing the Moral Event Horizon to gain immortality if all you get is Age Without Youth.
    • I find that very unlikely. Horcruxes are purely Soul Magic — it prevents the soul from passing on to the Afterlife, but it doesn't do anything about the body^note I don't see even how it possibly could. It's a soul anchor. It doesn't have any other powers whatsoever, except the additional protection spells Voldemort put on each individual one.. That's the entire reason Voldemort was stuck as a formless spirit from 1981 til Fourth Year. All that being said, most agree that the Resurrection Potion that revived him in 1994 restored his body to its appearance at the moment of his death, meaning he would have physically been in his 60's by Seventh Year. As for Voldemort not wanting to get into an Age Without Youth situation, one does get the impression he just made a Horcrux as soon as he learned how to do it he was so terrified of dying. And besides, take Dumbledore who was still a master duelist with no apparent disability at age 115; take his predecessor Armando Dippet who was nearly four hundred years old when he retired from being Headmaster of Hogwarts; a healthy lifestyle combined with well-cast Healing Magic clearly goes a long way, not to mention that, while he may have been reluctant to rely on one, I could easily picture Voldemort creating a Philosopher's Stone as an additional safeguard once he was secure in his victory.
    • The Horcruxes don't protect the body from being killed but it is implied that they might have some physical effect on the wizard. Voldemort didn't always look like a snake-man, remember?
  • Jo explained that James's parents were old "even by Wizarding standards" when they had him, so it's probably that Voldy could still have a child even at 75. Biologically it's possible for men to still be able to father children at that age, but women wouldn't be able to.

Headmaster Snape

• Why isn't Snape still Headmaster in the bad timeline? Voldemort would have had no reason not to give him the job like he did in the regular timeline, and no reason to demote him back to Potions Master. (Nor can I see any compelling reason to move Umbridge from her job in the Ministry to being Headmistress of Hogwarts - did he just get bored and decide to do a bit of minion-shuffling?) And on a Doylist level, wouldn't it be more plausible for Snape to be hiding Hermione and Ron on the premises if he was in charge, with access to all the vaguely-specified powers the Headship gave Dumbledore?
  • In-universe, maybe Cedric becoming a Death Eater led to a specific set of circumstances in which Dumbledore was killed by someone else, meaning Snape never had the chance to "prove" his allegiance to the Dark Lord and so wasn't deemed worthy of being given the post. Just a guess.
    • Doesn't work - as pointed out above, in the dark timeline Scorpius says Snape killed Dumbledore and no one questions it.
    • I can't find anywhere in the book where no one questions Scorpius claiming that Snape killed Dumbledore - Snape is the only one he mentions it to, and his response is that it's a dangerous allegation and that he'll be in deep trouble if he tries to make any more. It was very common knowledge that Dumbledore was killed by Snape, so there would be no reason for him to try to deny it if it also happened in this timeline.
    • IIRC, Snape being on Dumbledore's side was the dangerous allegation that he was denying.
  • Maybe Snape was ousted for being insufficiently cruel as headmaster but was allowed to get his old job back to keep him from rebelling.
  • Maybe Umbridge was the one who duelled him to the death instead of McGonagall. This troper got that from a dream he had last night.

Grief counseling

• So there's no grief counseling in the wizarding world? It would have solved a lot of problems. Amos would know that Harry didn't just view Cedric as the "spare", right?
  • Amos never thought that Harry viewed Cedric that way. He and his wife knew in Goblet of Fire how guilt-ridden he was over Cedric's death. Delphi was the reason he was making such a fuss over it now.
  • The wizarding world is still stuck in the past about some things, so I wouldn't be surprised if There Are No Therapists.
    • They probably wouldn't have as much need for therapists, what with the existence of Pensieves and whatnot. Pouring out all their thoughts and worries to a complete stranger might seem odd to wizards who have more magical means of helping themselves.
    • Pensieves are rare, and only used by powerful wizards, ones skilled in Legilimency and Occlumency. There are most certainly no therapists in the Wizarding World though. Since wizards are so thoroughly conditioned to regard wizarding society as perfect and beyond reproach, they probably think therapists are a silly muggle concept.

Why doesn't she just kill them?

• Delphi acknowledges the concrete fact that neither Albus nor Scorpius has any use to her now that they've screwed her out of humiliating Cedric, so once they're all taken back to 1981, why doesn't she just kill them? She's an extremely powerful witch, their wands have both been snapped, she's already shown herself as being capable of killing without a second thought, and there are a number of ways in which they could seek out help in order to stop her, even if doing would involve messing up the future even more.

Durmstrang robes

• Why disguise themselves as Durmstrang students when visiting the first Task? Point one: there was little risk that anyone would identify them as not belonging to Hogwarts; in his 6th year, Harry still couldn't recognize many of his fellow students. Point two: since the Durmstrang contingent was smaller than the Hogwarts one, there was a higher risk that real Durmstrang students would know they were fakes. Point three: they didn't have the right accent or background knowledge for the role.
  • 1.) They thought no one would take a passing glance at two students they'd never seen before if they were identifiable as being from a different school. 2.) Weren't they standing amongst a bunch of Hogwarts students during the scenarios in question? There weren't any Durmstrang students around to notice them. 3a.) Not having a certain accent wouldn't be an issue, since Durmstrang seems to accept students from all across Europe. Draco Malfoy mentions his parents were considering sending him there rather than to Hogwarts, only deciding against it due to how far away it was. 2b.) What background knowledge? All they were doing was going back in time, casting a spell at Cedric, and then leaving. They didn't require any background knowledge for that.

Other

• The Bad Future features Muggle-Borns being tortured in Hogwarts's dungeons. Sure, it sends a pretty chilling message about their place in society, but wouldn't that also set them up as martyrs/Woobies for those who don't agree with the Pure-Blood supremacy thing? Wouldn't hearing the screams of some poor stranger just strengthen the resolve of any double agents or resistance sympathizers walking Hogwarts's halls?
  • Anyone working against him was instantly set upon by dementors and turned into an empty shell. And it's easy to see why he'd do it in a school — where impressionable children are. Children don't think like that; they get raised hearing people being tortured and they theorise that they should keep in line or that'll happen to them. It's happening there to remind people who's in charge. Remember at the point in time that Scorpius goes to is twenty-two years after the war. Any resistance or sympathisers has really been depleted. So maybe it didn't start right away, but it became a gradual thing to keep everyone in line.
• Is Binns still working at Hogwarts in the Bad Future? If so, he poses more of a threat to the Death Eater regime than Snape does, since he can directly counter any revisionist history that might be force-fed to students. On top of that, he can neither be killed nor coerced into shutting up because he's a ghost. He can't even be Locked in the Dungeon because he can walk through walls. What threat could Umbridge possibly pose to a being that cannot be killed or permanently harmed in any way that we know of?
  • In book 5, chapter 28, it is implied that ghosts can be exorcised in some way. If Binns'd been causing trouble, that would probably be his fate.
    • Which would keep him from teaching anything conflicting with the Death Eater philosophy, but to anti-Voldemort families, it would reek of a cover-up.
  • Also, we know that a Basilisk stare can incapacitate a ghost, and I would not put it past Voldemort to be able to acquire another one, especially after he was no longer in hiding. Even if exorcism was off the table for some reason, they could have petrified him, stuffed him in storage somewhere, and invented some reason for him being gone (they could say that he got fed up with teaching history to decades of students that don't listen, that he hated the new regime and left, or that he took a vacation over the summer and never returned).
• When Albus and Scorpius go back in time, their only goal is to save Cedric Diggory. But why? They could have prevented Voldemort from rebirthing, destroyed his Horcruxes, and ensured the entire War never happened, which would have saved Cedric's life anyway. All they'd have to do is get a list of Horcruxes and leave it with Dumbledore, along with a warning about what was going to happen at the end of the Triwizard Tournament.
  • Was it ever said that they knew what/where his Horcruxes were? Plus, they were only going back to save Cedric for Amos Diggory — they never intended to do anything as large-scale as interfering with Voldemort's actions, only wanting to save the life of an expendable by keeping him away from the place where he was killed.
    • No, but I see no reason why, after the war, the true nature of Voldemort's immortality wouldn't be leaked to the press. Think of all the books Real Life writers publish on Hitler's atrocities and Stalin's means of controlling his people. The first confirmed case of a Dark wizard actually using Horcruxes in their lifetime would be bestseller material if only so British witches and wizards could make some sense of the evilest wizard they knew. I've chronicled my objections to their only wanting to go back and save one person on the Headscratchers page, so I won't rehash them here.
    • Probably because the mere existence, let alone the details of, Horcruxes were kept top secret, to the point of removing mentions of them in books and such. I don't see any reason why the Ministry would reverse its stance after Voldemort showed what happens if the wrong person got a hold of that knowledge, and very few people on the good guys' side (one of which is now dead) knew about Voldemort using them. It would be trivial for them to stay the course, and I really doubt Harry and company would really care all that much about getting the "truth" out. Heck, I'm not even sure there were any non-Death Eaters that knew about Voldemort's use of them by the war's end, other than Harry, Ron, and Hermoine.
    • What about restoring the public's trust? Even though it was under the control of an Imperiused Minister, the fact is that the Ministry of Magic turned against its own people for an entire year, a year when Muggle-Borns were put on trial in kangaroo courts and either excommunicated or sent to Azkaban, when the right to homeschool was done away with and a sizable portion of Hogwarts students were expelled. It won't be enough for Shacklebolt to say he's for the freedoms of all wizards; he's going to have to put his money where his mouth is, and restricting the press is, historically speaking, not a great way to show the public that you have nothing to hide. That The Ministry had nothing to do with Voldemort's Horcruxes is immaterial. If a writer — Harry or someone else — wants to publish a book on how Voldemort gained his immortality and The Ministry says no, that's going to look awfully suspicious to a public that will already be suspicious of its government. The suspicion doubles if the writer in question included no information on Horcruxes that could be considered vaguely instructional.
  • They're over-emotional fourteen-year-olds. One of them is relentlessly bullied, and the other has lost his mother. The whole idea is that they're dysfunctional and not thinking straight. Were you the most rational person when you were fourteen? Albus overheard his father denying a poor man the request to have his son again. He doesn't know the effect using the Time Turner could have — partially because his father hasn't explained everything to him.
  • They may have known that trying to change the course of the War could have done something to prevent their births (they heard how many stories about their parents' adventures growing up?) or change the future too much. But by just saving Cedric, maybe the timeline wouldn't notice.
  • Delphi was operating the whole thing, wasn't she? Because of the prophecy nonsense, she planted it in their heads that they needed to save Cedric to help Amos because Albus was completely unstable and blamed the entire thing on his father. They weren't really trying to reverse the war because they just wanted to stick it to Harry and save Cedric because of Delphi.
  • The motivating factor behind them saving Cedric traces back to when Voldemort ordered for him to die: "Kill the spare! It's mentioned at least once that Cedric's death was a tragic mistake that didn't need to happen; Harry could have gone to the graveyard on his own and still escaped thanks to the other ghosts from Voldemort's wand, and it was everyone's assumption that the outcome of the war would've been the same regardless. Albus and Scorpius didn't want to change the outcome of the war due to the profound impact it had upon the world, just like you wouldn't want to go back and preempt the onset of World War II. They only wanted to go back and fix something they thought would have no lasting consequences.
• Why are the vast majority of Cursed Child-era Slytherins Jerkasses? You'd think that all of the bad press their House received from the war would lead them to at least pretend to be nicer. Especially since the son of a war hero is now one of them. That's a golden opportunity to remake their House's image, and they squander it. Why?
  • It's possible that a vast majority of Slytherins are the children and grandchildren of Death Eaters, or of people who supported Voldemort's regime, or at any rate, some of his ideas about Pure-Blood supremacy. All the suspicion, fear, and possibly outright hatred directed towards their families no doubt bred resentment against the rest of The Wizarding World, which manifests itself in them being jerkasses. That said, we do not really meet too many Slytherins in the play, so we don't know the true extent to which they are all still jerkasses.
    • But Scorpius is the child and grandchild of Death Eaters, and he's a lovable geek. This is probably due at least in part to Draco turning his back on Death Eater ideology long before Scorpius was born and raising him accordingly, but why did none of his classmates do the same? Disillusionment would be a certainty for many Slytherins in Draco's year and below, after seeing where their parents' ideology got the world. It's fair to assume that at least some of them would raise their children the way Scorpius was raised, resulting in fewer Jerkasses.
    • It's entirely possible (as pointed out under Fridge Brilliance) that the children of disillusioned Slytherins who turned away from their own parents' ideology are present; they're just staying out of the rivalries at school, and since they're keeping quiet, no one bothers to note them.
    • I could be in the minority on this, but given how much attention is paid to the general nastiness of Slytherin House in the books (occasionally, especially in the first four volumes, to the point of leading the reader to assume that students choose Slytherin because they are morally deficient), it seems to me that the very presence of decent Slytherins would be noteworthy. Even just a throwaway line about how "most Slytherins keep to themselves these days" or "this year's batch of Slytherins is so much more friendly and helpful than they were back during the War" would be enough to establish their existence; the fact that their presence isn't noted carries the implication that they aren't present at all.
    • While I respect your opinion and thoughts, the above is a flawed argument. It's like saying "all the Ravenclaws are bullying Luna since we never see anyone from her own House treating her kindly." or "all Hufflepuffs except Cedric hated Harry during 'Goblet' because we never see any of them saying anything nice." (The second one is a bit of an exaggeration, but still.) Plus the whole "nice Slytherins keep out of the rivalries and are never mentioned because they're not worth noting" has probably been going on since Harry's early days; Malfoy was king of Slytherin back during Harry's school days and until Character Development and "Oh God; what have I gotten into?" kicked in, it wasn't really safe to treat anyone he looked down on (read: everyone who wasn't in Slytherin and probably certain people in it) well. Loud-mouthed bullies frequently gain power over others and stay that way until something drastic happens to shift power. The same thing is happening in the next generation because the rest of the school is all "Slytherins are pure evil; the last war proved that." since no one bothered to point out how not everyone who followed Voldemort was from Slytherin and the loud-mouthed Slytherins were raised by people who wanted the "glory days" back while their nicer but quieter house-mates are too timid (loosely speaking) to ever stand up for anyone.
    • ....but the assumptions about Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws are assumptions that the books themselves reinforce. Furthermore, if, after the war (a pretty drastic shake-up for Slytherin House so far as loyalties and power dynamics are concerned) Slytherin is still "ruled" by the equivalent of pre-Character Development Malfoy, that brings up some pretty Unfortunate Implications about Slytherin as a whole. Why were so many loud-mouthed Slytherins raised to believe that Voldemort had the right idea? Why were none of their Housemates taught to refute them? If their parents saw that the pro-pureblood rhetoric took their House into some pretty dark places during the war, one would think that they would raise their children to stand up to said rhetoric. The fact that no one does implies that the only decent Slytherins are cowards — which, again, brings up some pretty Unfortunate Implications about Slytherins and their character.
    • To me, it doesn't really speak well of the other Houses either. Gryffindors are supposed to be brave and noble; why don't any of them try to reach out to Slytherins since trying to make friends with someone often takes more courage than just going with the flow that says "They're evil trash; don't bother."? Ravenclaws are supposed to be wise and inquisitive; why aren't they discretely investigating to see which Slytherins are decent people and then try to build an alliance with them to dethrone the jerks, which, if they could get at least some Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in on the act, is feasible? Hufflepuffs are supposed to be inclusive and all about fair play; what exactly is fair and inclusive about tarring a whole House with the same brush? While it still doesn't speak well of the character of Slytherin as a whole, it's kinda hard to rock the boat when you're a minority with few options for outside help. Slytherins are known for their cunning and a desire to ensure their survival, and, unfortunately, Hogwarts, is an environment where survival often means going along with something you don't agree with or keeping your head down and your mouth shut.
    • So in other words, every Hogwarts House is terrible, the decent Slytherins are without allies on any side, and the teachers don't care?
    • Well, I'd phrase it as the awful ones run each House and the decent folks, in general, have no allies with the Slytherins being the worst off since a Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff who tried to break the mold would probably get a metaphorical pat on the head and a "Don't be silly/stupid/etc.; the way we're doing things works just fine." and subtle pressure rather than the crueler techniques the awful Slytherins would employ, though I wouldn't put it past any of the Houses to treat anyone like that as their generation's Luna Lovegood, but yeah; pretty much...And no one (not even war heroes like Harry or Neville) is bothering to fix the system because they can't see that it's broken yet. Maybe it could happen post-book; maybe not. But either way, there are still a lot of things broken after the Second War and not enough support to fix them yet.
    • Why was the war not enough to show teachers that the system was broken?
    • Heck if I know. Might be because the system was responsible for creating their heroes so obviously it's working just fine.
    • You know most teens aren't exactly the nicest people when they're in school. Bullying is what happens when you get a bunch of hormone-addled kids together for a long period of time. And as someone who can relate to what Albus went through, when you're bullied, you can sometimes develop a victim complex and assume everyone is out to get you. It could only have been a handful of people, but Albus just assumed everyone was attacking him over it. Scorpius calls him out for having a chip on his shoulder.
    • Pretty much. Admittedly, this isn't helped by the Sorting. Remember, you're Sorted at least partially by the personality traits you have and admire. Slytherin's trait is Cunning, as distinct from Ravenclaw's Intellect — getting what you want by being sneaky, rather than just by knowledge. That means that being sorted into Slytherin requires either being sneaky (Draco, Lucius) or admiring those who are sneaky (Crabbe, Goyle). This ironically means that the loudmouthed blood purity types are really not very good at being Slytherins...
  • I personally think they aren't, just like there were plenty of decent Slytherins back in Harry's era. I have no idea how many students there are in Hogwarts, but lets say about 100 per house. Both Albus and Scorpius are rather shy and thus probably wouldn't try to get to know all 400 Hogwarts students (I, personally, was glad when I learned the names of my 15 or so classmates because I don't socialize much and thus take a long time for that). They'd know each other, and the ones they had the most contact with. It's quite probable that most other students saw they didn't try to socialize with them, so they decided not to talk much with A&S either. That means the only ones they had much interaction with are each other and the bullies, thus everyone we see is either Scorpius, Albus, or a bully. Same thing in the books — Harry and Co didn't try to get to know any Slytherins, so the only Slytherins they mentioned were the bullies, leading readers to believe all Slytherins were like that.
• Why did the rumor that Scorpius is Voldemort's son gain any traction at all? Even within the context of the Wizarding World, it seems wildly implausible. A rumor that Scorpius was being raised to practice Dark magic, or that he'd cast his first Unforgivable before the age of nine, would've been more likely.
  • Furthermore, if the Wizarding World has a potion to cure the common cold, a potion to keep werewolves from going insane during the full moon, and a potion to regrow bones, why in the name of Merlin do they not have a paternity test?
    • Two reasons I can think of. 1) they do have the paternity test, but it's easy to fool by strong enough magic (like Veritserum) or 2) they do have said paternity test, but there's a bias that if you need to use it, there must be something you're hiding; otherwise why would you feel the need to prove anything? The latter is actually something that crops up in our boring real world; even if the proof comes back to show nothing bad happened, rumors will still fly and reputations can still get ruined. Just because the truth is proven/provable doesn't mean that reputations won't take damage or even be destroyed outright.
    • So why are paternity tests never mentioned? Draco tried to get law enforcement involved in squashing rumors about his son; on the scale of extreme reactions, running a paternity test and publishing the results in the newspaper is well below approaching the Real Life equivalent of the local police commissioner. If Draco had done that, one would think he would have said something about it when he went to Harry; or that Scorpius would have brought up said paternity test when he was bullied at Hogwarts. Furthermore, the notion that everyone would dismiss the results of a verified paternity test out of hand stretches credulity. Even if a vocal minority held to the idea that Voldemort was the father, there would still be people who believed the test results and said so. Additionally, I cannot see how the possibility of starting rumors that the Malfoy family had something mysterious to hide would be worse than having your child live with rumors that Wizard Hitler is his father. If Draco was willing to get law enforcement involved, then it seems like he would be willing to deal with the less severe rumors a paternity test caused. His reputation is already damaged; what's one more rumor, if it gets his son off the hook?
    • Furthermore, going back to your first reason: If wizarding paternity tests are so easy to fool, why on earth has no one introduced, or at least attempted, a tamper-proof design?
    • For the same reason no one tried to do the same thing with Veritserum; even if it was supposedly fool-proof with lots of data to back up that claim, people would still cry foul because it's nearly impossible to change deeply entrenched beliefs. It's been believed for so long that everyone who grew up when it could be fooled would have to either die off or be old enough to be going senile for the new beliefs to take. As for why it's never mentioned, it wasn't important to the plot. Maybe it happened off-screen and despite the results showing the rumors were false, people who were on the Light side of the war just trumpeted about how Malfoy obviously used some sort of magic to skew them in his favor and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Stupidity isn't illegal and apparently, even the second Wizarding War didn't render slander or libel illegal either.
    • Forgive me, but that's a rather weak defense. It essentially boils down to, "The older people thought it worked just fine, and none of the younger generation could be bothered to speak up to the contrary." If this happened in the Muggle world, we'd still be using tube television. Progress happens because people see that an established institution could use improvement, and set about improving it; and if something as useful as a paternity test was demonstrably not foolproof, then wizards would set about improving it until it was as foolproof as it could be. And what do you mean, it wasn't important to the plot? A good deal of conflict and characterization derives from the Scorpius rumor, so a paternity test or lack of one would definitely be important to the plot.
    • What I meant was that not every part of the important backstory needs to be shown, especially since we don't know exactly what happened off-screen in canon yet (and if a magical paternity test is canon, I agree it should have at least been mentioned); pardon my phrasing. As for the defense being weak, the Wizarding World knows the absolute minimum necessary about Muggles and the Muggle world for each person's job and trying to be up to date on it like Mr. Weasley (even if he's still backward about it; see how he pronounces words like "electricity" or "telephone" [I know Ron's the one who said it but presumably he learned it from his dad]) is treated as "not being a proper wizard" (heck; adults don't know what guns are when Muggles have had those for centuries and can't blend in among Muggles to save their lives). And need I mention how easy it was for Fudge to say "Well, you don't have a teacher yet. Here's my toady to take over your classes. What; qualifications? Because I say so." about Umbridge, potentially depriving what amounts to the police of an entire generation of potential new recruits? I'm pretty sure that Britain moved past that stage years ago if they even went through it at all. I'm not saying that the above logic you state works in Real Life; I'm saying that the Wizarding World is backward enough that it might crop up as an issue more often than it does for us (they're still writing with quills; are actual pens that incompatible with magic?). And actually it took World War II to shake the world governments' notion that "when someone causes a war and then loses, you tax the hell out of them and then abandon them to make do." was infallible post-war diplomacy.
    • But Wizarding Britain already went through their WWII equivalent — twenty years prior to this story, actually — so they should at the very least be looking at ways to innovate their society. If the second war didn't cause progress, then wizarding society will head rapidly toward yet another war, yet another Voldemort, because they haven't learned from their mistakes. Furthermore, if a plot point only works because the entire world is holding the Idiot Ball, then it's not a very good plot point.
    • Can't say I can argue with that, hence why I'm completely ignoring this play in most, if not all, of my next-gen stories.
    • There are also social reasons for paternity tests not to exist. Who is the ruling class of wizard society? Pure-blood society. What does pure-blood society love doing? Performing revisionism on family trees, either to expunge "filth" from their genealogies or to falsify their supposed right to exist in the pure-blood social circle. The Blacks frequently disowned their children for their transgressions. Squibs are regularly hushed up. Pure-blood extremists like the Death Eaters are perfectly willing to pretend that half-bloods are actually pure-blood if the half-blood in question is talented enough and/or enough of an asset. Non-pure-bloods like Umbridge pretend to be related to pure-blood families to boost their own credentials. Hell, Voldemort himself is a perfect example of a half-blood who needs to pretend to be pure. None of that (barring the disownment of blood traitors, to a degree) is possible if there's a way to magically prove ancestry. So the pure-bloods, ironically, have every reason to not want a way to prove ancestry beyond a shadow of a doubt.
  • The impression I got was that it was mainly being spread amongst gullible Hogwarts students — particularly the 11-14 set. Former Death Eaters must seem like acceptable targets in-universe, hence why the rumour got any traction at all. And since Delphi has been implied to be raising an army, perhaps she encouraged the rumours herself.
    • To reiterate a point I've made before, if the rumors are bad enough that Draco goes to Harry and asks him to use his position as Head of Magical Law Enforcement to shut the rumors down, then the parents must be involved in spreading the rumors. Either they're sitting back and letting their kids spread a rumor they think is ridiculous, or they believe the rumor and they're spreading it themselves.
• When Scorpius noticed that Snape's Patronus is a doe, why would he know that it's related to Lily Potter? I don't think it's widespread information. You can argue that he's a bookworm, but surely that wasn't the kind of information you find from a book?
  • It's possible that Harry told Albus who told Scorpius, but this in turn begs the question of how in Merlin's name that came up in conversation between Harry and Albus, let alone two schoolboys who neither knew Snape personally nor had any reason to know what form his Patronus took.
    • Well, it's not unbelievable that Albus wouldn't be at least a little curious about one of the two men he was named after, and he and Scorpius seem the type to not really hide anything from one another, so they likely know pretty much everything the other knows.
    • Curiosity would explain why Albus knows, but as for Scorpius, I'm imagining Albus saying, "I learned about the guy I got my middle name from today. He was kind of a jerk, but also pretty brave. Died heroically. He had greasy hair and was in love with my grandmother. His Patronus was a doe, and his Social Security Number was...." Point is, it's an odd thing to tell your friend. Unless there's a good and rather specific reason for your friend to know it, that's not the sort of information most people just share.
  • Don't forget that the doe patronus is what led Harry to the sword hidden in the frozen lake — and destroying a horcrux. That's a pretty spectacular story to tell. When the kids ask "where did the doe come from?" then comes the explanation and context. And let's be real — the notion that Snape's love for Lily manifested itself in such a way is the sort of information certain members of the public would Squee over.
• Delphi's existence makes even less sense when you consider the fact that if Voldemort wanted a human being to serve as a future Horcrux, he could've just used Bellatrix. She's fiercely loyal, absolutely willing, and fully capable of protecting herself, should anyone learn the truth.
  • Where are you getting the idea that the only possible basis for her conception was so Voldemort could use her as a Horcrux?
    • I was refuting a common fan theory that she was raised to be a Horcrux. I don't believe I ever said that it was the only possible reason for her existence.
  • A great theory for her existence from the brilliant Anne B. Walsh: Delphi was a surrogate baby. Magically conceived and implanted in the woman she mentioned in Cursed Child as bringing her up, as Bellatrix's idea of a last-ditch backup. Voldie probably never even knew about her.
    • I suppose that's plausible, but it does beg the question (brought up earlier) of why the Wizarding World has so many useful spells and trinkets but the notion of a paternity test is entirely foreign to them. In the Muggle world, accurate paternity tests became possible in the 1960s and were further refined in the 1980s while the first successful surrogate pregnancy didn't happen until 1985. Determining a child's paternity is less risky overall than surrogacy; the danger of surrogacy increases substantially if Bellatrix's pregnancy was already in progress when she implanted Delphi into a surrogate. If Bellatrix was able to have a surrogate deliver Delphi with no apparent risks or complications, then why is it apparently impossible to determine Scorpius' parentage twenty years later? Why develop the magic for surrogacy (not uncommon in the Muggle world, but still far less common than traditional pregnancy) but leave paternity tests (useful for those old pureblood families dogged by rumors of their male heir going roadside with an attractive Muggle) to be forgotten?
  • For those that like to think she was conceived to become an heir, maybe Voldemort planned to declare her as his heir publicly, but he was busy looking for the Elder Wand first. The same night he finally gets it is when everything else starts falling apart for him. In the weeks between getting the wand and his eventual death, he just had too many loose ends to tie up before declaring an heir. Of course since we don't ever see into his POV, all we can go on is guesswork.
• Voldemort rules the UK when Scorpius appears in the main Bad Future. In DH, he made his intentions for the Muggle world clear, both verbally and through that creepy statue in the Ministry building. However, no Muggle nation would go down without a fight; even if the other side had magic, they have guns, explosives, and WMDs up to and including nukes. If Magical Hitler attempted a hostile takeover of the UK, it would spark a magic-vs.-Muggle war that would, in all likelihood, rage for years. Even if it ended with the majority of Muggle Britain evacuating or dead, the UK's allies would continue fighting Magical Hitler....to the extent they were able, as some of them would likely be embroiled in civil wars against their own pureblood extremists. Basically, the whole world should either be in the middle of a quarter-century-long war pitting magic against technology, or a post-apocalyptic wasteland littered with magical and radioactive fallout.
  • For all we know, there's a spell to disable nukes. Also, wizards would undoubtedly have an edge over Muggles. Wizards can easily disarm, stun or kill even armed Muggles with minimal effort. Not to mention, they have methods of concealment and transport that can evade even the most advanced Muggle surveillance systems (and considering that Voldemort would have started taking over Britain in the late 90's, the survelliance tools and weaponry available to Muggles would be even more limited than they would be today). So in a Muggle vs. Wizards war, the Muggles would lose easily. Having said that, judging by dialogue in the scene with Scorpios, Muggle society continues to exist and hasn't been totally taken over by Voldemort's reign, since Draco claims he would have to bribe the British PM to cover up the killings of Muggles.
    • First off, assuming that magic is even capable of disabling a nuke is a pretty big assumption, given how powerful those things are. It could be possible, but it doesn't seem likely, especially since wizard society is so distanced from Muggle society that Arthur Weasley thinks bath plugs are an amazing invention. Muggleborns are probably the only ones who even know what a nuclear weapon is, let alone how powerful it can be; and if one of them has an inkling of how to disarm one (which isn't likely, as they left the Muggle world long before they could pursue a career in nuclear engineering) they aren't going to tell Voldemort. Second, war spurs technological innovation. Just look at all of the inventions that came out of or were fine-tuned by WWII. If Muggles were faced with a magical threat, they would race to catch up—which wouldn't be as impossible as it seems, since the fact that Muggleborns were tortured for sport would cause many of them and their supporters to flee to the Muggles, offering their magic in exchange for protection. Magically enhanced weaponry would follow quickly.
    • As far as we know, it would only take someone skilled in Transfiguration to disarm a nuke... by turning it into a desk or or a cup or a tortoise. We know elemental transmutation doesn't necessarily require alchemical knowledge or a Philosopher's Stone, as the first lesson first year Transfiguration students are taught is to turn a matchstick (made of wood, phosphorous, sulfur, and a few more compounds not including steel or nickel) into a needle (modern ones are made of high carbon steel and nickel plated).
  • I think you're seriously underestimating just how powerful radioactive energy is, and how potent a poison radiation is. Turning a matchstick into a needle would require getting rid of very small amounts of phosphorus, sulfur, etc.; turning a nuke into something harmless would require getting rid of enough energy to wipe out a city, and enough poison to kill people in the surrounding areas.
    • You're assuming that there WOULD be a war, when in all likelihood, every important muggle leader would have likely been imperiused long before anyone knew there was a threat. They have no way of countering invisibility cloaks and apparition, either, so applying imperius to wide swaths of important politicians and military leaders would be trivial with just a slight amount of planning. With a thorough enough sweep, Voldemort would have little trouble taking over.
    • Heat sensors/infrared goggles may or may not be deterred by an invisibility cloak, but a pressure pad-equipped floor or a well placed, nearly invisible itself tripwire attached to a Claymore mine would do just fine. As for the problem of Apparition, assuming that we non-magic folk could not devise a barrier to it through some form of advanced physics, it's simply a matter of attrition. A wizard could apparate into a room and slaughter a dozen people with relative ease, but if he's unlucky even for half a second, or delays just a little bit, one well placed bullet ends the threat. Remember, these are people whose "duels" involve projectiles so slow the best defense against many of them is to just dodge. And considering how few wizards there are relative to Muggles, even with an average kill ratio of a hundred to one they would lose before they wiped out conventional muggle armed forces. A war of attrition is both one we are accustomed to fighting and far better off to attempt.
    • DH implies that an Invisibility Cloak wouldn't fool heat sensors and infrared, by showing that it doesn't fool Nagini, who is able to see Harry and Hermione when the two approach the Potter home under the true Cloak of Invisibility. They are invisible to sight, but any other sense is still able to locate someone under an Invisibility Cloak, as characters are shown to be able to hear, smell, and touch Cloaked individuals.
    • That's not even factoring in the potential damage that guerrilla warfare could cause. If a few Muggle freedom fighters learned that the people responsible for killing their families were headquartered in a hidden mansion somewhere near Wiltshire, those freedom fighters wouldn't shrug and say "Oh, well, we don't know where they are, so we're SOL." No, they'd get the best approximate coordinates available, pack the perimeter with explosives, and let 'er rip.
    • Voldemort has, at maximum, a hundred Death Eaters at his disposal. The population of the UK was, in 1996 (the year the Second Wizarding War began) 58.17 million. Even if one Death Eater can Imperius a hundred people at a time (which seems like a ridiculously high number, but let's go with it) that's only 10,000 people. Now, 10,000 people can do a lot of damage, but the Muggles who aren't Imperiused are going to fight back, or go into hiding. The Muggle Prime Minister knows witches and wizards exist, so when 10,000 of his countrymen start committing murders and other felonies out of the blue, he's going to remember that the last Minister of Magic told him that there were a lot of dangerous witches and wizards on the loose, and he's going to put two and two together. Even if the PM doesn't have a contingency plan in place for this eventuality (and if he's a leader worth his salt, he absolutely does; governments have plans in place for everything from nuclear war to pandemics) he's going to scrap one together to try and keep as many of his citizens alive as possible. Finally, remember that while a Muggle can be Imperiused, the act of being Imperiused does not endow them with the same powers as the wizard who cursed them. They're still just as fragile and fallible as they were when they had control of their own minds. So if an Imperiused Muggle goes after a police officer, that police officer can still neutralize that Muggle by ordinary means. In other words, yes, simple survival instincts will ensure that there will be a war.
    • Going by your assumption that a Death Eater can Imperius 100 people at a time, assume instead that they're Imperiusing unsuspecting wizards. 100 Death Eaters Imperius 10,000 wizards, who then Imperius 100 Muggles apiece? That's 1,000,000 Muggles. You have a pretty solid chunk of the Muggle population under Death Eater control instantly. Then each of the Imperiused wizards can move on to controlling or killing another 100 Muggles apiece.
  • So if it's that easy, why didn't Voldemort just have his Death Eaters do that in Deathly Hallows? Seems like it would've been much more prudent to simply Imperius hundreds of thousands of Muggles to keep the wizards in line, instead of going the puppet regime route. And there's no textual evidence that such an absurdly high limit is even possible.
    • Furthermore, if the Death Eaters are capable of Imperiusing large numbers of people at one time, then why did they not simply Imperius every important member of the Ministry during the final book? It would have solved a lot of problems. Additionally, it seems that there is some difficulty in Imperiusing more than one or two people at once; in HBP, there was a point where Draco had both Rosemerta and Katie Bell Imperiused, and Rosemerta was the only one who acted naturally. This could be attributed to Draco's lack of skill with the curse, his internal conflict over what he was doing, or both (depending on your interpretation of his character), but it does seem to set a rather small limit on the number of people a witch or wizard can Imperius at one time.
    • And then in DH, Harry has (during his first attempt at using the spell) no trouble using the Imperius Curse on Travers and Gornuk. Both behave under his control exactly has he directs them to. It requires very little of his concentration to keep them under control, likely because neither has had training in fighting the curse. This troper would say that Katie did not act naturally because Draco forced her to do something that Katie would never have done - and she was immediately spotted as being Imperiused by someone who knew her and who knew that Katie would never agree to deliver a secret parcel to a mystery recipient willingly. Note that skill at the Imperius curse doesn't guarantee that one acts naturally, it guarantees that the victim follows your orders. This is demonstrated in almost every situation we see the curse being used, because only Rosmerta was under specific command to act naturally. The curse also requires a fair amount of willpower to resist, much less to throw off. We are only ever shown the curse being thrown off by Harry, and when Gornuk is hit by the Thief's Downfall, which breaks all enchantments.
  • And yet one of Voldemort's Death Eaters announces that he has successfully placed an Imperius Curse on Thicknesse, as if it would have been difficult to manage. The whole thing is riddled with inconsistencies.
• In a series where death is supposed to be looked at as the next big adventure, is there any real reason why everyone is so adamant that Delphi can't just get a Mercy Kill? It's built up as no one wanting to sink to the level of murder, but isn't it a bit different in this case, as she's asking to be killed? I realize that she can't have death as a means of escaping other punishment, but that's not the reason any character gives for their refusal to do it.
  • In Britain, folks have a different attitude to the death penalty. It's viewed as barbaric and archaic. And that's what killing Delphi would be. The Ministry broke a lot of rules and played dirty at the end of the first war - trying and imprisoning several people without a trial and allowing Aurors to kill without concern. So it's entirely reasonable that none of the survivors of the second war want to repeat the same mistakes as their predecessors. Delphi is to be sent to Azkaban to properly pay for her crimes.
    • That logic kind of falls apart when one considers the fact that, a mere twenty-two years prior to this story, Azkaban was a Place Worse Than Death where an untold number of prisoners had been Driven to Suicide by starvation—one of the slowest and most painful methods of death. One step beyond that punishment was the Dementor's Kiss, a death sentence in all but name, where although the victim would still be breathing, they were quite literally an Empty Shell, unresponsive and incapable of recovery. Azkaban might be empty of dementors now, but there still have to be people who would see killing Delphi or having her Kissed as the better option, compared to leaving her in a prison from which she can potentially escape.
    • With that argument though, that just falls under the Real World issue of whether it's better or not to deliver the Death Penalty to a Criminal or give them a life sentence in general. Without a Wand, and since it's a Prison without Dementors now (I'd presume that there's just Wizard Guards now), Azkaban's basically just a normal Prison with Guards that know Magic now. So honestly, you can argue that Delphi escaping is just as likely as a normal person escaping from a normal prison really. And that kind of logic could just as easily lead to the argument that "We might as well not have prisons then". It's a more humane way of keeping Criminals away from Society now, and again, as said before, the Survivors of the Second War wouldn't want to play dirty and kill, especially when imprisoning people is a far less torturous means of keeping Criminals from harming people in this era.
    • Whether the death penalty is warranted or not is a completely separate and irrelevant matter, as the books make clear that mercy kills aren't viewed as the same kind of soul-twisting evil that outright murder is — that was one reason why Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him as opposed to making Draco Malfoy do it. Had the heroes told Delphi, "We can't kill you because you've taken the life of another person, and you need to face the punishment for your crimes according to the law," that would've been a better answer than "We can't kill you because we're the good guys and even in these circumstances, killing you would be wrong."