That’s right — a trailer for a live theater experience. If you wondered what, if anything, the opening of a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child production in california might mean, you have the beginning of your answer.

We’ve been discussing all the products that the Wizarding World franchise has been putting out of late. It’s something like the order of the day as we await the rollout of the WizardingWorld.com website that has swallowed PotterMore and will charge a subscription fee for access to Gold Status members’ material. See ‘The Problem with Monetizing Harry Potter.’

Yesterday I learned that the ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ stage production company has produced a soundtrack album. And I mean ‘album.’ It’s a pair of long playing 33 1/3 vinyl records that comes in a real record-album. Check out the article on TheaterMania.com.

I love analog recordings. I have a collection my wife is currently cataloging that covers 47 shelves in our bookcases and we guesstimate includes more than 7,000 records, 33 1/3, 45, and 78s. All of it classical and opera except for the 78s. I have more records than books, and, frankly, that’s saying something. [If you want this library, all Near Mint or better, make an offer!] The resurgence of LPs, consequently, is something of a thrill to me.

But why would Rowling, Inc., decide that vinyl was the way to go for their Cursed Child soundtrack? LPs make up an increasing percentage of music sales every year; some estimate it is more than 10% of dollars paid for recorded music. Has it become such a big deal, though, that the Potter marketers decided it was worth the risk of a fail? Or does this medium mean maximizing profits on gift-purchases especially in theaters? Very few presents are as fun to hold and look over again and again as a new record album.

I have read plenty of reviews of this play-as-staged and been part of podcast discussions with Potter Pundits who are Broadway zealots and attended the productions in London and New York. Not once has anyone I can remember mentioned the music. And yet now we have a soundtrack of just that. Who has been asking for this? Is it just fodder for collectors and souvenir Nifflers? 

Let me know what you think. I’m still scratching my head over this news.

I have worked the same Muggle job in Oklahoma City since 2011. One of my fellow ‘Team Members’ who has been with me all this time there recently traveled to New York City to watch ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ on Broadway. He reminded me yesterday that he was the first to tell me the play’s title when it was announced and that it would feature Albus Severus Potter and Scorpio Malfoy. He said he was astonished that my response was to tell him that, “Of course they’ll be friends and be sorted into Slytherin House together; the boy’s initials are A. S. P.” I told him, in what seemed to him a fit of clairvoyance, that their unlikely friendship would begin on the Hogwarts Express and finally resolve the Gryffindor-Slytherin divide.

I had forgotten all this but it does sound like what I might have said. The only piece of fan fiction to ever be published at HogwartsProfessor.com was in the frenetic months post publication of Deathly Hallows. From Helen, 9 November 2007:

Please excuse me for inflicting a spot of fan fiction on this illustrious thread, but… I wrote this snippet very shortly after I read DH (and yes, before I heard John speak at Biola). I think John must have trained me to notice the right things…. 🙂

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The hat settled softly over the boy’s head, completely hiding his green eyes. The bridge of his nose tickled where the brim rested.

“Hmmm… So you’re the younger one. I remember all of you, of course. You’re quite like your father and your brother. What shall be done with you?

“You’re bright enough to go in Ravenclaw, but I think I won’t put you there. Learning isn’t your first passion.

“A strong sense of loyalty and fair play here… ah, that’s why you were afraid of where I might put you, isn’t it? You don’t like underhandedness and double dealing. Well, there’s very little of that in Hufflepuff. But somehow I don’t think your gifts would be best employed among the badgers.”

The boy thought, “Gifts?”

“Yes, child, you have many. You’re brave as any Gryffindor, certainly, but I believe your greatest gift is the one your grandmother had: to see the good in your friends, so that they can become what you see. Are you brave enough to let me put you where your gift is needed most?”

A tiny nod from the boy under the hat.

“Well then, remember that there’s nothing wrong with ambition if you choose your means and your goals rightly, and go help remake your namesake’s House. Go to SLYTHERIN!”

Albus Severus Potter scrambled down from the high wooden stool and went over to sit at his new House table, next to an obviously gobsmacked Scorpius Malfoy.

“Your father’s going to go off like a Blast-ended Skrewt when he finds out where you got Sorted, Potter!”

“Nah, Dad’ll be all right. He named me after Headmaster Snape, didn’t he? Hey, maybe I was supposed to be here in Slytherin! Do you know what my initials spell?”
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We now return you to more edifying reflections.

This story has expanded from Helen’s original to include a first meeting on the train, in which Scorpius and Albus compare their different but comparable family miseries in a shadow of Harry and Ron’s first conversation. Rose Weasley, sorted after both Malfoy and Potter, chooses Slytherin House as Harry chose Gryffindor during their Sorting Hat experiences.

Could this have inspired the ‘Cursed Child’ script writing trio? Sure. But I guess it’s a fairly well choreographed next step from Harry’s conversation with Albus on the Hogwarts Express platform and one too many other fan fiction writers must have followed to claim any originality. Wasn’t one of the chief complaints about Cursed Child that it reads like fan fiction? Isn’t it still?