Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

HARRY: He was working for you?
DRACO: No. My father. He liked owning things that no one else had. The Ministry’s Time-
Turners — thanks to Croaker — were always a little vanilla for him. He wanted the ability to
go back further than an hour, he wanted the ability to travel back years. He’d never have used
it. Secretly I think he preferred a world without Voldemort. But yes, the Time-Turner was
built for him.
HARRY: And did you keep it?
DRACO reveals the Time-Turner.
DRACO: No five-minute problem, and it gleams like gold, just the way the Malfoys like it. You’re
smiling.
HARRY: Hermione Granger. It was the reason she kept the first, the fear that there might be a
second. Hanging on to this, you could have been sent to Azkaban.
DRACO: Consider the alternative — consider if people had known that I had the ability to travel in
time. Consider the rumor that would have been given increased — credence.
HARRY looks at DRACO, understanding him perfectly.
HARRY: Scorpius.
DRACO: We were capable of having children but Astoria was frail. A blood malediction, a serious
one. An ancestor was cursed . . . it showed up in her. You know how these things can
resurface after generations . . .
HARRY: I’m sorry, Draco.
DRACO: I didn’t want to risk her health, I said it didn’t matter whether the Malfoy line died with
me — whatever my father said. But Astoria — she didn’t want a baby for the Malfoy name,
for pureblood or glory, but for us. Our child, Scorpius, was born . . . it was the best day of both
our lives, although it weakened Astoria considerably. We hid ourselves away, the three of us. I
wanted to conserve her strength . . . and so the rumors started.
HARRY: I can’t imagine what that was like.
DRACO: Astoria always knew that she was not destined for old age. She wanted me to have
somebody when she left, because . . . it is exceptionally lonely, being Draco Malfoy. I will
always be suspected. There is no escaping the past. I never realized, though, that by hiding
him away from this gossiping, judgmental world, I ensured that my son would emerge
shrouded in worse suspicion than I ever endured.
HARRY: Love blinds. We have both tried to give our sons not what they needed, but what we
needed. We’ve been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we’ve blighted their present.