Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne (Scholastic Books, July 2016)

WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Generation X? Generation Y? Nah, son, I’m part of Generation P—Generation HP to be exact. Like many twenty-somethings around the world, I grew up with the original Harry Potter books and movies, waiting up eagerly until midnight for each release, dressing up as my favorite characters, and writing bad fanfiction and publishing it on the internet. When they announced the released of a new Potter story, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I was ecstatic to be returning to the world I know and love. On the other, it was a new medium (a play script instead of a book), and I wasn’t sure how much of it was written out of love and how much of it was written out of a desire to milk the Potter cash cow to the very last drop. But, of course, I pre-ordered it from Amazon, read it in three straight hours, and here we are.

The script opens exactly where the Potter books end, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione ushering their children onto Platform 9 3/4 for their first year at Hogwarts. It’s a nice gesture to the fans, showing us that even though almost a decade has passed since the last book, nothing has changed. It also functions to orient us firmly on the timeline, something that will become extremely important later on. As it turns out, the main plot device of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is time travel.

Harry’s middle child, Albus, is plagued by the fear that he can never live up to his father’s massive legacy. Hoping to step out of the shadows and prove himself, he and his best friend (the one, the only Scorpius Malfoy) hatch a scheme to steal a Time-Turner and save Cedric Diggory’s life. With the help of Delphini Diggory (Cedric’s cousin), the pair go back in time three successive times to the Triwizard Tournament, attempting to stop Cedric from winning the third task and subsequently being murdered by Voldemort. But, as they find out, time-travel is a messy thing, and each interference creates an alternate reality.

It’s a lot to pack into one book. The staged version, broken up into Part I and Part II, runs a full five and a half hours. Even then, many of the scenes are extremely short (some lasting only one or two pages), and it often felt rushed and unfulfilled. Frequently, we the reader didn’t have time to settle in before we were whisked away to another time or place. Add in all of the constantly-changing timelines (hopping from past to present and back again often with little cue), and it was sometimes difficult to keep track of what exactly was going on. This could be a flaw of reading the play instead of watching it; as the staged version has been receiving some rave reviews, I imagine those of us who only read it are missing out on something magical (pun intended).

The majority of the story walked the line between magical camp and just plain ridiculousness. In one scene, for example, Albus and Scorpius decide they aren’t going to Hogwarts that year. They decide the best way to avoid school is to jump off the roof of the Hogwarts Express…. while it’s moving. This isn’t the most bizarre part of the scene, however. When on the roof, they are stopped by the Trolley Witch (known for giving out sweets to the students), and it turns out there’s more to the old woman than meets the eye.

TROLLEY WITCH: These hands have made over six million Pumpkin Pasties. I’ve gotten quite good at them. But what people haven’t noticed about my Pumpkin Pasties is how easily they transform into something else. . .

She picks up a Pumpkin Pasty. She throws it like a grenade. It explodes.

And you won’t believe what I can do with my Chocolate Frogs. Never—never—have I let anyone off this train before they reached their destination. Some have tried—Sirius Black and his cronies, Fred and George Weasley. ALL HAVE FAILED. BECAUSE THIS TRAIN—IT DOESN’T LIKE PEOPLE GETTING OFF IT. . .

The TROLLEY WITCH’s hands transfigure into very sharp spikes. She smiles.

So please retake your seats for the remainder of the journey.

During this scene, and many others throughout the book, I found myself wondering, “am I secretly reading fanfiction?” Don’t get me wrong—I love fanfiction, but there was something about The Cursed Child that was so fantastical, so absurd, that it was hard to accept that this latest installment was actually canon.

At the end of the book (I did warn for spoilers), we discover that Delphi, who had been helping Albus and Scorpius, is not in fact Cedric Diggory’s cousin, but the long-lost child of Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. It’s a twist that fans have been speculating about for years, but in The Cursed Child, it seemed too easy. It felt like a cop-out that, instead of creating a new villain for a new generation, we were handed a repackaged version of the original Big Bad.

If this had been any other book, in any other series, I doubt I would have made it past the first one hundred pages. But nostalgia, dear reader, is a funny thing. Despite all of its flaws, The Cursed Child kept me spellbound (no pun intended), racing through page after page. No matter how much it may have seemed like a caricature, I have to say that I loved it. Like many other Potterheads I know, I would read about Harry, Ron, and Hermione sitting on a couch and watching Netflix if it meant I could return to the world that I loved. Reading The Cursed Child felt like curling up into your favorite sweater, or taking a bite of your mom’s apple pie. It felt like going home.

What are your “cozy sweater books”? What books can you always count on to make your day?