PLATFORM NINE AND THREE-QUARTERS — SUMMER, PRESENT DAY
Steam expands all over the stage. We're still on platform nine and three-quarters but time has ticked on mercilessly. The steam dissipates to reveal the platform in a very different state. The faces on the wanted posters have been replaced with the enchanted portraits of RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE, FENRIR GREYBACK, AMYCUS CARROW, ALECTO CARROW, a faceless silhouette marked BLITZFANGER, and another with the scarred Death Eater mask of the AUGUREY. Plastered haphazardly over the edges of these are adverts for the upcoming release of a new tell-all book, "The Life and Lies of Harry Potter" — an unauthorized biography by RITA SKEETER. And if that weren't enough, emblazoned over it all in messy red spray-paint are the words "Blitzfanger Rises".
The stationmaster is attempting to clean off the paint, wand aimed, as PARENTS look on in concern. They are waiting for the Hogwarts Express to return with their children. This was not at all what they had expected to greet them. And yet, for some, there is a sight even worse. There is a man hunched into a shadowed corner of the platform — disheveled, unshaven, and sleeping with his mouth open. It is none other than HARRY POTTER, brandishing a nasty cut on his cheek. REPORTERS wait impatiently for him to wake. Nearby PARENTS cannot help but comment as the world goes on outside HARRY's dream.
PARENT 01: He's a mess — a grieving mess.
HARRY (mumbles in his sleep): Albus?
PARENT 02: You know, he hides it well, but —
PARENT 03: You call that "hiding it well"?
They all frown, thinking. The whistle blares again, stirring HARRY. He leaps awake. His hand immediately goes to his forehead and he winces from the stabbing pain. HARRY looks easily a year older sitting there against the wall. He slumps, then stands. HARRY thinks he's seen ALBUS, then realizes he isn't there.
HARRY (raspy): Where did you go, Albus?
The parents continue to whisper as HARRY stumbles on, not even an inch of the man he was.
PARENT 01: Are we sure that's even Harry Potter? Seems like a different man to me.
PARENT 02: That's someone who used to be a hero.
PARENT 03: Someone who has given up.
PARENT 04: Have you heard the rumors? Potter hasn't been to the Ministry in weeks. He might get the sack.
PARENT 05: I hear he's gone rogue. He's obsessed.
PARENT 03: To think, we used to look up to him.
PARENT 02: Merlin knows what he's suffered.
PARENT 04: I'm sorry for his loss but it's his own fault.
PARENT 01: How could you say such a thing?
PARENT 04: Sons need their fathers.
PARENT 03: No, if the mother had been in the picture...
PARENT 04: What did he expect, leaving a Time-Turner lying about?
PARENT 02: Merlin knows...
PARENT 01: Poor boy.
PARENT 04: Lost his marbles in there, that one did. Broke out of prison thinking he was bloody Voldemort.
PARENT 01: Dementors drive the young ones mad, I hear.
PARENT 03: That, or he'd taken a Confundus Charm to the head.
YOU ARE READING
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (The M. Clifford MOD)
Fanfiction"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 the father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where...
