Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Excitement, Apprehension, and Other Feelings

So, in case you've been living under a rock without internet for the past few weeks or so...WE'RE GETTING HARRY POTTER BOOK EIGHT.

People have been saying how much they want a book eight since the day after Deathly Hallows came out. And now it's here! Well, almost. Even if it's not out until the end of July, it's a thing that's happening! Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will be a book. It will have a plot. And pages. And WORDS. And I don't know how I feel about it. So let's do what I do in times of potential crisis and make a list:

• Firstly, and very importantly, I am excited! Going back into the wizarding world for the Fantastic Beasts movie was exciting enough, and now we get a book! We get more of the characters we all love from the existing series! We get new characters! But at the same time, we really have no idea what we're getting. There's so many possibilities!
• BUT. At the same time, I am very apprehensive, and that's going to be the rest of the post. If you want unconditional excitement, I'm pretty sure that the rest of the internet is bursting with it. I'm going to use this post to be hesitant about my excitement. 
• This isn't a novel. It's a play. And I've had very mixed experiences with plays. I like Shakespeare, but I can't think of any more modern plays that I've liked. Is it the fact that they've all been required reading? Is it the genre itself? I just don't want to end up disliking this just because it's a play. 
• J.K. Rowling is not the only (or even the main) author/playwright. I don't want to say that this play is going to be worse than the rest of the series just because it's not Rowling, but at the same time, I can't imagine anyone else writing Harry Potter. The series so far all has that same feeling, and this probably won't have that. And I don't want to let go of it.
• We're going to get middle-aged Harry. And Ron, and Hermione, and probably a bunch of other people. This is probably one of the most cliché things I can say, but I grew up with these characters. Harry Potter and American Girl were my two formative reading experiences. I'm used to all of these people being children or teenagers! And I know they grow up, and I've thought about their adult lives, but it just seems so weird. And on a related note, middle-aged main characters means no Hogwarts. I will miss Hogwarts desperately. (And. Wait. If decades have passed, does that mean that McGonagall could be...dead? Because that's absolutely NOT ALLOWED.)
• After nine whole years since Deathly Hallows, I'd come to terms with Harry Potter being over. I thought the series ended quite well. I thought we got enough information about the future to keep imagining, while still having most of the story resolved. I definitely didn't want it to be the end of hearing about the wizarding world, but I'd have been okay with it being the end of Harry Potter. (By that, I mean the end of the story staying the same. I'd have loved hearing more about his Hogwarts years.) And now...it's not the end. I feel like I'm not as happy as I should be. I'm conflicted.

And finally, where I cross the line from apprehension to include a bit of actual fear: What if I don't like it?

I have loved Harry Potter for literally as long as I can remember. I could go on rambling pretty much forever about how much I love it, but it all leads up to the same point: I'm worried that if I don't like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it will affect how I feel about the rest of the series. I don't want anything to ruin Harry Potter for me, especially not Harry Potter itself. I can't even imagine a world in which I don't love Harry Potter, but in a few short months, depending on how I feel about book eight, I might not.

I'm trying to keep my hopes up - really, I am. But my hopes for Cursed Child are not nearly what they were for Deathly Hallows. I'm not saying that I expect it to be worse (though that might be how I sound with all the things I'm worried about), but I definitely expect it to be different. I don't even know what my expectations should be, and I don't want to have a bad impression of the book just because I guessed wrong.

How do you feel about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child? What's your favorite Harry Potter book so far? Who's your favorite character? And, possibly the most important question of all, which house are you in? Tell me in the comments!