Harry Potter Is All Grown Up With Children In J.K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’

Harry Potter is all grown up for the latest venture by J.K. Rowling, a stage play entitled, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. As if Harry’s haunted childhood wasn’t enough, the saga continues with Potter as a father himself to a boy sentimentally named Albus Severus after mentor characters to the young Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. To bring Harry Potter back to life again, the stage play will reportedly pick up on Harry’s life 19 years after Deathly Hallows.

In the final Harry Potter film in 2007, Harry finally avenged his parents and defeated Voldemort while simultaneously saving his own life. “For neither can live while the other survives,” as goes the prophecy revealed to Harry by his psychic instructor Sybil Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The final scene of the last film included a hint to Harry’s future as you see Harry and Jennie Weasley walking across Platform Nine and Three Quarters with a young boy, complete with his magical kit and white owl.

To excite fans, J.K. Rowling released a synopsis of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on her Harry Potter fan site Pottermore. Rowling reminds fans of the perils of Harry’s childhood and how the life of his son, Albus, is so familiar to him. In short, Harry never wanted to be “the chosen one,” and now Albus will struggle with being the son of “the chosen one.”

“It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

“While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

In the case of the eighth and long overdue Harry Potter story, the darkness is coming from Potter’s little boy who cinema theorists predict will follow in the footsteps of former characters like Tom Riddle and the dreaded example of Voldemort. In a similar setting like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and a reminiscent storyline, the only thing different about this new Harry Potter work is that it is a play. In her synopsis, J. K. Rowling revealed the behind-the-scenes making of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The play will be performed in two parts, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Within the two-part play, Rowling promises to tell an “exhilarating” story as she prematurely dismisses any ideas that a play was the wrong way to go. In a recent statement, Rowling explains why Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is meant for the stage instead of a book or the big screen.

“The story only exists because the right group of people came together with a brilliant idea about how to present Harry Potter on stage. I’m confident that when audiences see ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ they will understand why we chose to tell the story in this way.”

To create Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling partnered with scriptwriter Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany. Excited to show Harry Potter in a new way, through theater, Rowling has been dropping hints left and right about what will happen in the play. The latest reveal was of the official artwork for the play, which shows young Albus Severus Potter huddled up in a bird’s nest.

Tickets for J. K. Rowling’s eighth story, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, will go on sale begging October 30. The Potter play is expected to begin running in the summer of 2016 in London’s West End.

[Image via J.K. Rowling/Pottermore]