Act four, scene five

GODRIC’S HOLLOW, OUTSIDE JAMES AND LILY POTTER’S HOUSE, 1981

ALBUS: We tell my granddad and grandma?

SCORPIUS: That they’ll never get to see their son grow up?

ALBUS: She’s strong enough — I know she is — you saw her.

SCORPIUS: She looked wonderful, Albus. And if I were you I’d be desperate to talk to her. But she needs to be able to beg Voldemort for Harry’s life, she needs to think he might die, and you’re the worst spoiler in the world that didn’t turn out to be true...

ALBUS: Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s alive. We get Dumbledore involved. We do what you did with Snape —

SCORPIUS: Can we risk him knowing your dad survives? That he has kids?

ALBUS: He’s Dumbledore! He can cope with anything!

SCORPIUS: Albus, there have been about a hundred books written on what Dumbledore knew, how he knew it or why he did what he did. But what’s undoubtedly true — what he did — he needs to do — and I’m not going to risk messing with it. I was able to ask for help because I was in an alternate reality. We aren’t. We’re in the past. We can’t fix time only to create more problems — if our adventures have taught us anything, they’ve taught us that. The dangers of talking to anyone — infecting time — are too great.

ALBUS: So we need to — talk to the future. We need to send Dad a message.

SCORPIUS: But we don’t have an owl that can fly through time. And he doesn’t have a Time-Turner.

ALBUS: We get a message to Dad, he’ll find a way to get back here. Even if he has to build a Time-Turner himself.

SCORPIUS: We send a memory — like a Pensieve — stand over him and send a message, hope he reaches for the memory at exactly the right moment. I mean, it’s unlikely, but... Stand over the baby — and just repeatedly shout HELP. HELP. HELP. I mean, it might traumatize the baby slightly.

ALBUS: Only slightly.

SCORPIUS: A bit of trauma now is nothing compared to what’s happening... and maybe when he then thinks — later — he might remember the faces of us as we — shouted —

ALBUS: Help.

SCORPIUS looks at ALBUS.

SCORPIUS: You’re right. It’s a terrible idea.

ALBUS: It’s one of your worst ideas ever.

SCORPIUS: Got it! We deliver it ourselves — we wait forty years — we deliver it —

ALBUS: Not a chance — once Delphi has set time the way she wants she’ll send armies to try and find us — kill us —

SCORPIUS: So we hide in a hole?

ALBUS: As pleasurable as it will be to hide in a hole with you for the next forty years... they’ll find us. And we’ll die and time will be stuck in the wrong position. No. We need something we can control, something we know he’ll get at exactly the right time. We need a —

SCORPIUS: There’s nothing. Still, if I had to choose a companion to be at the return of eternal darkness with, I’d choose you.

ALBUS: No offense, but I’d choose someone massive and really good at magic.

LILY exits the house with BABY HARRY in a pram, she carefully puts a blanket on him.

His blanket. She’s wrapping him in his blanket.

SCORPIUS: Well, it is a moderately cold day.

ALBUS: He always said — it’s the only thing he had from her. Look at the love with which she’s put it on him — I think he’d like to know about that — I wish I could tell him.

SCORPIUS: And I wish I could tell my dad — well, I’m not sure what. I think I’d like to tell him that I’m occasionally capable of more bravery than he might think I am.

ALBUS has a thought.

ALBUS: Scorpius — my dad still has that blanket.

SCORPIUS: That won’t work. If we write a message on it now, even really small, he’ll read it too soon. Time will be spoilt.

ALBUS: What do you know about love potions? What’s the ingredient they all contain?

SCORPIUS: Amongst other things, pearl dust.

ALBUS: Pearl dust is a relatively rare ingredient, isn’t it?

SCORPIUS: Mainly because it’s pretty expensive. What’s this about, Albus?

ALBUS: Dad and I had a fight on the day before I went to school.

SCORPIUS: This I am aware of. I believe it kind of got us into this mess.

ALBUS: I threw the blanket across the room. It collided with the love potion that Uncle Ron gave me as a joke.

SCORPIUS: He’s a funny guy.

ALBUS: The potion spilt and the blanket was covered in it and I happen to know for a fact Mum hasn’t let Dad touch that room since I left it.

SCORPIUS: So?

ALBUS: So it’s coming up to Hallows’ Eve in their time as well as ours — and he told me he always finds that blanket, he needs to be with it on Hallows’ Eve — it was the last thing his mum gave him — so he will look for it and when he finds it...

SCORPIUS: No. Still not getting you.

ALBUS: What reacts with pearl dust?

SCORPIUS: Well, it is said that if tincture of Demiguise and pearl dust meet... they burn.

ALBUS: And is tincture of (he’s unsure how to say the word) Demiguise visible to the naked eye?

SCORPIUS: No.

ALBUS: So if we were to get that blanket and write on it in tincture of Demiguise, then...

SCORPIUS (eureka): Nothing would react to it until it came into contact with the love potion. In your room. In the present. By Dumbledore, I love it.

ALBUS: We just need to work out where to find some... Demiguises.

SCORPIUS: You know, rumor has it Bathilda Bagshot never saw the point in witches and wizards locking their doors.

The door swings open.

Rumor was right. Time to steal some wands and get potioning.