Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #440, Return To Sender (WW Gold Review, OOTP Chapter 7, ‘The Ministry of Magic’)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the Wizarding World. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Hey, everybody’s back this week.
Eric: Yay.
Andrew: Hooray!
Laura: Woo!
Andrew: Hip-hip hooray. We’re on our weekly ride. Choo-choo!
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: On today’s episode, we are going to discuss Wizarding World Gold, the new premium membership to the Wizarding World, and of course, we have Chapter by Chapter this week as well. Couple of news items to start off the show with: Cursed Child, little update there. Previews have begun in San Francisco, and it will officially open on December 1. Kind of crazy to think that there’s… I think at this point we’re up to four Cursed Childs running every night across the globe.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It’s kind of beautiful. And they also announced – speaking of Cursed Child – that the cast for Cursed Child Germany has been announced, and even though I’m half-German, I don’t want to try to pronounce these names.
Eric: Ah.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: So congratulations to them anyway. Actually, they’re not hard. Sebastian Witt, Jillian Anthony, and Markus Schöttl. Congratulations, guys.
Micah: That sounded fine to me.
Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Also, I just want to give a shout-out to one of our listeners, Julie. She contacted us via Instagram the other day; she got into a car accident while listening to MuggleCast!
Laura: [gasps] Oh my God, is she okay?
Andrew: Yeah. Well, okay enough to Instagram us, at least. [laughs]
Laura: Okay.
Eric: She sent a picture of the car; it is in bad shape.
Andrew: Yeah, so she said she was listening to Episode 429; she was 16 minutes and 8 seconds in when she got hit by a car. So it wasn’t her fault, and insurance is handling it all, but she said she can’t continue listening to that episode, and I said, “Fine.”
Laura: Oh, I don’t blame you.
Andrew: Yeah. I’m wondering if we should mark that as a cursed episode on our website.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh, does iTunes have that designation where they have “Explicit,” and below that is “Cursed”?
Andrew: [laughs] “Explicit,” “Cursed,” “Somebody got into a car accident while listening to this episode, so you might not want to listen to it.” No, but she’s okay. I just wanted to give her a shout-out, and we’re going to send her a couple things to make it a little bit better. We can’t offer her a new car because we’re not Oprah; we don’t have that kind of money.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: If only.
Andrew: But we do have some things laying around.
Micah: The real question, though, is did she get into an accident because she was listening to the show, or while she was listening to the show?
Andrew: Are you saying we’re dangerous?
Micah: Just… who knows? Well, we should check out at… 16 minutes and 8 seconds, did you say?
Andrew: Yeah, what happens there.
Micah: What we were talking about.
Laura: Ooh, yeah.
Andrew: I’m sure it was nothing crazy important, but she said she was hit by another car, so it wasn’t her fault.
Micah: Oh.
Andrew: Unless they were listening to MuggleCast too.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Does this become part of the police report when they come to scenes of accidents? There’s a little check box that asks, “Were you listening to MuggleCast during your drive?”
Eric: Yeah, probably.
Andrew: Yeah, or any podcast, or “Were you listening to an artist, and maybe they were making you drive faster, so you were driving a little more dangerously?” There have been times, though, where when I’m listening to a podcast or a radio show and I’m laughing so hard, I’m considering pulling over because I just can’t focus on the road; I’m in tears.
Eric: Well, we implore all of our listeners to drive responsibly while listening to our show.
Micah: And we’re glad that Julie is okay.
Eric: Definitely, absolutely. That’s things you can’t control. I’m so glad you’re okay.
Laura: All right, well, one of my favorite parts of doing MuggleCast is connecting the threads between the Harry Potter books, which is coming later this episode, but right now, we’re going to take a short break to hear about a very different kind of thread.
[Ad break]
Andrew: Laura loves all the threads, don’t you? [laughs]
Laura: I do, especially really, really comfortable ones.
Micah: I like that intro, though. That was very creative.
Laura: Oh, thank you.
Andrew: Well, Micah, you have an ad in a little bit. I hope you have a creative intro as well. I know I do.
Micah: Maybe, maybe not.
Andrew: Uh-oh.
Micah: We’ll see. Let’s face it; I mean, we asked Laura to transition from talking about a car accident to doing a ad on the show, and I thought she did a very good job.
Andrew: That was great.
Laura: I will say, at first the Third Love ad was somewhere else in the episode, and I saw it had moved and I was like, “Ah, crap.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Mini Discussion: Wizarding World Gold
Andrew: Anyway, so let’s discuss Wizarding World Gold. This is the new premium membership from WizardingWorld.com, the former Pottermore. It’s only been about a month since they transitioned to WizardingWorld.com from Pottermore. They are offering this new annual membership; it’s $74.99 a year, £59.99 in the UK. It’s £59.99 quid. They are offering fans a welcome gift, including J.K. Rowling’s original Hogwarts sketch, a personalized key, and Curios journal, which I’ll talk about in a moment, and an enchanted key – is that what they call it? – [laughs] membership pin, so you get a pin. You also get access to the seven Harry Potter ebooks while you’re a member; you get discounts to Cursed Child, Studio Tour; I think there’s a Wizarding World theme park discount as well. You get priority access to tickets, merchandise, and collectibles. There will be special subscriber events in Muggle places around the world, and there will be more collectible pins. However, to get those additional collectible pins, you will actually have to go somewhere to get them. They will not be mailed to you like the first pin was.
Eric: I have a question: Is this fee…? The $74.99… you guys pre-ordered it. Is it a monthly…? Because if you break it down, it’s…
Andrew: No, flat rate.
Eric: One flat rate. So once you do it, you’re in. You’re in the money. You’re there.
Micah: $75 plus tax.
Andrew: Yeah, you’re committed for a year.
Eric: Wow.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: Micah and I signed up. I have received the journal already, and the journal is probably the biggest selling point, because as we’ll discuss in a moment, there’s really nothing else particularly special here. This journal is customized to you; it matches your House color, so mine is blue because Pottermore thought I was a Ravenclaw. It has my name printed in the book several times. It celebrates my birthday. Basically, it’s a month-by-month journal, and there’s pictures from Cursed Child, the Harry Potter movies, the Harry Potter books, everything in this one book; they really brought it all together. And on each page – and again, each page represents a month – there are questions like, for example, December: “If you were staying at Hogwarts for Christmas, what would you do?” And you can write in your answer there. That’s basically the whole book. There’s really… it’s cool because it’s customized to you; like I said, it has your name printed several times and celebrates your birthday on that month’s page. There’s this cute area in the beginning where it talks about your House, and it has a couple things to say about you and your House with the letters of your name. So for example, mine says “Always (A) try to be logical, even when it’s a bad day”; “Never (N) lose your hunger for learning”; and so on and so forth. But other than that, there’s really nothing special here. Why do you guys think Wizarding World Gold came into existence?
Eric: Money. But I don’t know; this is what I’m questioning. I don’t know who this is for, necessarily. I mean, you guys signed up right away, so I’m assuming there was some kind of… of all the perks, what really interested you guys when you signed up?
Micah: Well, we have to talk about it on the show, so that was reason number one.
Andrew: Right, that was a factor. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, okay, yeah. Okay, we’re going to review… yeah, sure. Because this key and Curios, this journal, it’s personalized. I watched the Potter Collector’s review of it; he pages through the book. And yeah, it’s nice, and it’s cute that it’s personalized, but it’s like… this reminds me of day planners. I love day planners; I loved in high school, getting a day planner and having it have all the space for me to write all my stuff, and those were the only years I used a planner. But it was really well done and really beautiful, but $74.99 is so steep. That’s a lot.
Micah: Well, my thought process, though, behind it was just give it a year and see exactly what they’re able to deliver on. $75 is a high price point, but going back to what you said earlier, Eric, if you break it out by month, it’s actually not terribly expensive, but I wonder month to month what exactly it is that they’re going to be able to deliver for people who are signed up to this service. And for example, Andrew, when you were talking about these collectible pins, they send you the first one, but then you have to travel to other places in order to collect. Now, how are they going to make that work? Is it just you’re able to show something that designates that you’re a member of this community, and they’re going to give you the pin? Or are they going to charge you additional money for the pin? I’m interested to see how they make that work.
Andrew: I think they’re free, and I think you have to show that you have a membership through the Wizarding World app.
Eric: Probably you show your passport that we all made when WizardingWorld.com launched.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: But yeah, the thing about the annual charge and it being flat rate is you can’t back out. Because it would be about $6.25 a month if you divide that up monthly – US dollars – but they don’t want people signing up for the first month, getting the really cool book, and then leaving. Because all the other perks – besides the pins – the other perks are what, discounts to one of their very expensive things across the globe, like theme park that’s $185 a day park to park minimum, $420 tickets to Cursed Child, we’ll never forget… so this is really rubbing me the wrong way, that it’s not more of a monthly thing, so that people with less money can still…
Micah: But maybe that’s something that they look into down the line, recommendations that they’ll receive. And maybe they tier it, too; maybe Gold is the highest tier, and depending on the level of success that this ends up having, maybe they do Wizarding World Silver, Wizarding World Bronze, and people are able to buy in at different levels. But just looking at it at the surface, I’m not going to disagree. Right now there isn’t a whole lot that’s overly appealing about this offer. I think they’re going to really have to have some notable things that come out in the next couple of months to try and draw people in and validate for people like myself and Andrew having spent $75.
Andrew: Yeah, we’re Gold now, baby. Give us the goods.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: So do you get a new journal every year?
Andrew: That’s something else I wanted to bring up. They are calling this a welcome gift. A welcome gift implies that it’s one and done, so I’ll be very curious to see if they send out another physical gift next year when you renew.
Eric: Well, next year and next $75.
Andrew and Laura: Right.
Laura: Exactly.
Eric: It’s just the thing is there are planning companies that you can send… I could gather up all the pictures of me doing Harry Potter stuff over the last 17 years with my friends and send it to one of those companies that actually make planners, and you would get back much the same, only it would be even more personalized than the month of my birth and the thing in the front, and it would be less money. I don’t know.
Andrew: Keys and Scullios, the new membership from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: I hate taking the negative line on this, but Wizarding World Gold… we were worried about it at first, that it was a way for Warner Bros. to really scrape the bucket to get more money from people, and I’m sorry, but these perks seem frivolous.
Andrew: Well, and that’s what I wonder about. Why do they need the extra money from this? Why not just release a new Harry Potter video game, ten new Harry Potter product lines; they’ll make the same amount of money that they’re going to make from Wizarding World Gold. My other hang-up is that there’s nothing really happening in the Wizarding World right now. I just think the timing here isn’t the best. If there was a Harry Potter TV show happening, if the movie was coming out, Fantastic Beasts was coming out next month, if J.K. Rowling was rocking and rolling on Twitter or Pottermore with all this new content, okay, something’s happening, so yeah, let’s buy into the Wizarding World. Let’s invest in it in a way. But right now, it’s a very quiet period. Also, Disney does do something like this called D23 and it’s very popular, and they send out a quarterly magazine, and people really like it because there are a lot of benefits involved with that. But there’s also a lot happening in the world of Disney on any given month…
Eric: That’s a good point.
Andrew: … and the Wizarding World, not so much.
Laura: I don’t necessarily think that this is just an attempt to make some extra money. Having members subscribe to you is beneficial for more than just financial reasons; it shows engagement in your community, which ultimately makes your franchise more profitable in the long run. And also, when you’re talking about anticipating year to year growth, you can reference things like current annual membership holders, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that was something that they’re experimenting with and that it’s not just a quick cash grab; I think it’s probably got long term…
Eric: Cash grab prospects.
Laura: Yes. [laughs]
Eric: Okay, yeah.
Micah: And just for some reference, we did talk about Wizarding World Gold back on Episode 418; I looked it up really quickly. I think this was when I was in Chicago and we did a live episode, Andrew, in your living room, and Patrick was on the show and we talked about it. I think we were pretty critical of it then, too. Clearly, Andrew and I have been swayed by the dark side and become members. But a lot of what Laura just said makes total sense, and I think for something like this, you just have to give it time to develop. This is very new for them, and they may be looking around, Andrew, to your point, at companies like Disney and others who are doing these premium services, and why not jump in and be part of the party and see how successful it’s going to be? We shouldn’t forget how popular Potter is, and I know right now it’s limited, but it’d be interesting to see, once it opens up to more countries, how successful it is in those countries as well.
Eric: It’s just such a bold price point to not allow monthly, to start out of the gate. I think this is not Warner Bros.’s first rodeo there. They’re not as big as Disney, but they are up there in terms of money. They really could have made this…
Micah: But they want you for a year; that’s the thing. And then you benefit, hopefully, from that throughout the entire year; you’re not just limited to a month. I think, honestly, I would go this route. I think going monthly at the start, they run a very high risk that people are just going to pull out, versus having them on board for a year, they can really show what they can offer, and then the hope is that they renew in year two. I’ve got to check and make sure I’m not signed up for automatic renewal, though.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I don’t think that exists just yet.
Eric: You reserve the right to…
Andrew: Many of our patrons agree with us. The majority of people are not going to buy Wizarding World Gold, but some people said they’re excited about it. And to just jump back to our earlier conversation really quick, the journal was enticing to me; that is one reason I definitely wanted to sign up, because I wanted to get a look at this thing. It is beautiful. I also want to point out that a couple of our patrons, for example, Brittany said, “I’m terrible with things that are exclusive,” and somebody else said that they have bad impulse control, and I think that really hits at what’s going on here. This is for people who are die hard Harry Potter fans who want absolutely everything. They barely have to be convinced to buy something; as long as it’s got the Harry Potter logo on it, they will buy it. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. They’re just super fans who want to collect everything, and I think that’s what this is for: people who want to have everything and have some disposable income.
Laura: Yeah, and honestly, I don’t begrudge people for that. I’m not personally feeling compelled to do this right now because I tend to agree with Eric; I think the price point is pretty high when you weigh that against the benefits that are offered. However, this time next year, if they’ve maybe doubled their benefits, I could be maybe persuaded into looking at this a little closer. But for right now, the price point just doesn’t match what they’re offering, in my opinion. But I also don’t begrudge people who find value in it. That’s fine, too.
Andrew: Yeah, Laura, let me love my journal.
Eric: Me personally, I’ve crested more of an activist hill, where I’m just like, “Well, I’ve got to stop buying everything that I see with Harry Potter on the front and I’ve got to start contributing to… I don’t know, Planned Parenthood and stuff.” I want to do some good in this world, and this $6.25 a month, or this $75 a year, seems like a great opportunity to do that instead of this journal.
Andrew: Let’s quickly share what we would actually want out of Wizarding World Gold. I would like to be able to stream the movies through the app. They are letting you read the ebooks through the Wizarding World app, which I think is pretty cool, so having the movies easily accessible, I think, would be neat. And also, new information from J.K. Rowling. I want J.K. Rowling involved with WizardingWorld.com/Pottermore.com. And of course, I know that would annoy people, because then they’d be like, “Oh, you have to pay to get new content from J.K. Rowling, that sucks,” but don’t worry, it’ll all leak out. It’ll be fine.
Micah: Well, that’s something I think that’s worth talking about, too, is that with these premium services, a lot of times what happens is the benefits that do end up being the online benefits leak anyway, so you’re going to have a chance to see things that may be exclusive to Wizarding World Gold whether they like it or not. But along the lines of what you were talking about, Andrew, I would love to see bloopers from the films. This is something that’s been a longstanding issue for Potter fans, is that on the extended editions of the DVDs and Blu-rays, they never released bloopers, and I want to see them.
Andrew: Micah wants a chuckle.
Micah: That’s right.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Give him the bloops.
Micah: And the not so serious answer for me is I want the journal delivered by a real owl.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And any other thing that comes in the future needs to be delivered by an owl.
Andrew: That would be cool.
Laura: This is a very serious answer: I want a history of the Department of Mysteries. I want more information about it, how it came to be, what all of the random things that we see going on in there at the end of Order of the Phoenix are about. If y’all remember back in… I don’t want to say the early days of MuggleCast, but it was around before Deathly Hallows came out. I was convinced that we were going to go back to the Department of Mysteries because there were so many unanswered questions.
[Andrew fake cries]
Laura: We didn’t and I was very disappointed, so I would love to get more information there. And also, I’m serious, I would like a pet Niffler.
Andrew: [laughs] Like a stuffed animal? Or a real one?
Laura: No, a real one.
Andrew: Got it, okay.
Micah: A real one?
Eric: Yeah, if they could just genetically engineer a Niffler, that would be pretty cool.
Micah: A stuffed one? I mean, she could buy a stuffed one from somewhere.
Eric: Well, but Laura, this Wizarding World Gold subscription is a Niffler.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: It’s going to eat all your money, and it’s going to leave you feeling hollow and robbed.
Laura: Oh, that’s the irony of it.
Andrew: Micah wants an owl. Laura wants a Niffler. Eric, what animal do you want from Wizarding World Gold?
Eric: I’m not sure. I made a joke; I mean, my not so serious answer is out of Wizarding World Gold that I would want to refund. I mean, it’d be fun if after a year’s time they actually do refund everybody, saying, “Hey guys, we took the $74.99, we invested in Lumos, we’ve cured poverty, we’ve cured children in cages. Here you go. Here’s your money back. Thanks so much for being part of such a good cause.” Because J.K. Rowling is very philanthropic with her money; she’s always put things towards charity. This is something that is… the gaping chasm that J.K. Rowling left when she got off the Internet is still felt. This does not have J.K. Rowling in it at all that we’ve seen so far, and we feel the loss. This is just not… this doesn’t have that heart behind it. And so anyway, I do agree with what you were saying, Andrew, about there being nothing going on at the moment. It would be cooler if the TV series was going on. What I would love is actually weekly production videos from the set of the new Fantastic Beasts film when that kicks off in a couple months. That would actually really get me to be envious of not having Wizarding World Gold. I know that in the past, Warner Bros. has operated off of this strict “No spoilers, no insight at all, highly curated, redacted videos when we do share them about the Grindelwald stuff,” but that’s not working for me. I want to go behind the scenes of the movie that’s in production while it’s in production, so that I can guarantee that… I don’t know, that the Harry Potter fandom isn’t going off the rails with more movies that don’t make a lick of sense.
Andrew: [laughs] Can Gold members come to the set, please? That’d be pretty cool. I’ll pay $200 a year for that.
Eric: [laughs] So I definitely want them to be more, what’s the word, open about the works that are in production, the works of canon that are being updated, and I think Wizarding World Gold is a great opportunity to talk to the most passionate members about that.
Andrew: Right, and then you would feel like a true member. You would feel like you’re a part of a team.
Eric: Absolutely.
Andrew: All right, well, we’ll continue updating everybody as new information is released as it pertains to gold. And I just want to say, if you want to support a part of the wizarding world that is out here that does this out of honest to goodness passion, join our Patreon, Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We’re not doing it so we can buy another yacht; we’re doing it because we love Harry Potter. But we do need your support. [laughs] And I think you get more benefits, and the benefits are better.
Laura: Yep.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And we guarantee a yearly gift. I don’t know if we can say the same of Wizarding World Gold.
Eric: Right.
Micah: Sometimes multiple gifts a year, right? This past year was album art and the tote bag.
Andrew: And we delivered those by owl.
Micah: We did.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Next year’s gift is a Niffler, so that everybody here is happy.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I’m going to subscribe.
Andrew: [laughs] I’m pledging to myself.
Micah: Well, today’s episode of MuggleCast is also brought to you by a company that I think that both Dobby and Dumbledore would really, really love.
[Ad break]
Andrew: My mom got me Bombas socks last Christmas, and she said, “They are the most comfortable socks you’ll ever own.” I’m like, “Have you been listening to the MuggleCast ad? How did you know that tagline?”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: I love getting socks for Christmas.
Andrew: Yeah, that time of year is perfect.
Laura: Because also, I don’t want to spend my money on socks.
Andrew: Right, right, that’s no fun.
Laura: So it’s nice when somebody else gets them for me. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, for sure. All right, I know what to get Laura for Christmas now.
Laura: Exactly.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: A Niffler and socks.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: All right, time for Chapter by Chapter. This week, we are discussing lucky number seven, Chapter 7, “The Ministry of Magic,” and we’ll start with our seven-word summary.
Eric: Today…
Micah: … will…
Andrew: … be…
Laura: … the…
Eric: … day…
Micah: … Perkins…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Um…
Laura: You got this, Andrew.
Micah: Yeah, you got it. Come on.
Andrew: I’m forgetting what happens to Perkins.
Laura: It’s more about what Perkins does. He saves the day. Kind of.
Andrew: Today will be the day Perkins… alerts.
Laura: There we go.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: All right.
Andrew: That is awful.
Laura: I was going to say “remembers,” but…
Andrew: Oh.
Micah: I was going to say “shines.”
Andrew: “Shines” is good.
Laura: Aw, Perkins. Lived his whole life just to let Harry Potter know he was late for his hearing.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: [sings] “Perkins, always something fresh and new.” That’s what I’m thinking of right now. The restaurant.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Eric: So let’s get started, then. This chapter is kind of a quickie. It’s definitely less complicated to talk about than our last chapters, which have had lots of people in Grimmauld Place not getting along.
Andrew: This is an introductory chapter of sorts, isn’t it?
Eric: Yeah, yeah, because it leads into… so the next chapter is the hearing itself, but this one, you kind of get a nice little ride in the tube. So Harry wakes up; he has not had the best night of sleep, and I love this text from J.K. Rowling. She writes, “Harry awoke at half-past five the next morning as abruptly and completely as if someone had yelled in his ear.” And I feel like I’ve definitely woken up or popped awake and had it feel just like this before.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: And your heart’s racing.
Eric: What is that? Yeah, it’s anxiety, right?
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: And a nightmare, maybe? Sometimes? Maybe not in Harry’s case, but…
Eric: Yeah, it’s definitely very fitting of something that has occurred to me as a person, but I never would have expected to read it in a Harry Potter book.
Andrew: But he also had a restless sleep, and I was wondering, when do we have restless sleeps? For me, it’s usually the night before a flight, because I usually take a really early flight, and it’s not necessarily that I’m scared, it’s that I’m worried I’m going to oversleep and miss it.
Micah: Same here. I would say maybe going back to when I was in college, if I had a big presentation or an exam coming up – same thing now, if I have a big presentation at work that I have to give – maybe you get a little bit edgy the night before.
Laura: Yeah. Also, for some reason, if I have to be somewhere substantially earlier than my normal schedule, I’m really nervous the night before because Atlanta traffic – Micah, you know this – is just a disaster, so if I know that I’m going to be going somewhere really early in the morning when traffic is insane, I’m worried that I’m going to oversleep and then end up being late and be in a rush and be all flustered, so I will definitely have a restless sleep before that.
Micah: It’s funny that you say that because I was down there for work earlier this year, and I was somewhere outside of Atlanta; I was not very close to where the airport is. And the person who picked me up… I probably left for my flight at like, 5:30 in the morning to take an early flight, and he was just like, “You’re very lucky that you left at this time, because had you left 20 or 30 minutes later, it probably would have taken you another hour just to get to the…” instead of the 25 minutes that it took to get there.
Laura: Yep.
Eric: Kind of how Chicago is too. But yeah, so I agree definitely. Before big presentations or meetings that are earlier than your scheduled even wake up time… there have been days where I had to be somewhere long before I usually get up, and I just worry that my schedule; I worry I’ll oversleep… and for Harry, it’s also that his entire life – his future – is out of his control, and this is a huge source for anxiety. So when he crosses the room, J.K. Rowling writes he “stepped out onto the landing, and closed the door softly behind him. Trying not to think of the next time he would see Ron, when they might no longer be fellow students at Hogwarts…” This is rough. Harry is very concerned about this hearing.
Micah: This also speaks, though, to the world that your mind creates for you in these types of situations, specifically when you’re talking about his relationship with Ron and how they may no longer be fellow students at Hogwarts. His mind is already creating the outcome for him before he’s even had a chance to have breakfast.
Eric: Somebody get this kid a book on the power of positive thinking.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: But he’s also going to a place he’s never been before. He’s going to be in front of people he’s never met before, and people who are very high up in the wizarding world at the Ministry, so I can completely understand why he has such a grim outlook. Plus, his uncle is like, “No, you can’t stay with me.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And Dumbledore is nowhere to be found. All these bad things are happening at once. Nobody’s helping him, except Molly, who’s combing his hair and giving him toast.
Eric: Yeah, I did like that he does have a small seeing-off party, a party of people to see him off. He does go down to breakfast and he wasn’t expecting the kitchen to really have anybody, but there’s five or six people there – Tonks is there, Molly is there, Remus is there – and so this is a real nice… they aren’t necessarily… I mean, I think that they all wanted to be there for him, even though… they don’t necessarily engage in conversation with him, but their presence, I think, serves to calm him.
Micah: It’s a support system for him, definitely. And I wouldn’t certainly have expected that many people to be up at that time of the morning, but again, a lot of these characters are out probably at all random hours of the evening doing things for the Order, so there probably is no set schedule the way that we would think of it.
Laura: Right.
Micah: The one thing that did jump out at me, though, during this conversation was our first mention of Rufus Scrimgeour, and it’s when Lupin is talking to Tonks, and he says to her, “What were you saying about Scrimgeour?” And she responds by saying, “We need to be a bit more careful, he’s been asking Kingsley and me funny questions.” And this is typical J.K. Rowling dropping a name of a character very, very briefly in the seventh chapter of Order of the Phoenix, and he ends up, of course, becoming Minister at the start of Half-Blood Prince.
Eric: Nice. Yeah, that’s very nice.
Andrew: And sometimes she does drop random names in and it serves absolutely no purpose, so when you see “Scrimgeour,” you’re probably just like, “Eh, okay, whatever. Not a big deal,” when actually, it’s a very big deal.
Eric: Yeah. And I wonder what questions he’s asking; I mean, he’s probably asking them why they’re doing their regular Ministry work shift down outside the Department of Mysteries. [laughs] Because aren’t they standing guard over the corridor as their job?
Laura: Yeah, but aren’t they using invisibility cloaks?
Eric: Oh, okay.
Micah: Yeah, well, we do learn later in the chapter, though, that Kingsley is the one that is responsible for the hunt for Sirius, and so I wonder if Scrimgeour is catching on. I mean, he’s an Auror. Isn’t he the head of the Auror office?
Eric: I believe so.
Micah: Or am I giving him too high praise at this point in the series? But yeah, I’m sure he’s wondering why Kingsley is feeding him a bunch of BS. He seems like he’s a pretty smart guy, from what we learn from him in Half-Blood Prince.
Andrew: He did become head.
Laura: Yeah, he’s definitely far more competent than Fudge.
Eric: Yeah, for all the good it does him. But yeah, so I mean, pretty much things at Grimmauld wrap up. It’s just small talk; Harry doesn’t really invest himself. So Mr. Weasley takes Harry to work with him, which is kind of exciting. We get to see the Ministry of Magic, and that, I think, is where this chapter really shines. It’s sad that it’s under these circumstances that Harry first comes to the Ministry, but we actually get to see… and this is, again, it’s just such good writing by J.K. Rowling. We get to see the public, the front-facing Muggle, if you will, visitor entrance to the Ministry of Magic, and so Harry and Arthur’s trip, they use Muggle means of transport to get there, because we speculated before, side-along Apparition was not invented by J.K. Rowling yet, clearly. This is the second time where they could have just done this, the first being the Advance Guard could have just popped him out of there, and the second time, Arthur could have just side-along Apparated him into work with him, because he does Apparate daily to the Ministry.
Andrew: But Arthur says he wants to make a good impression by showing up the old fashioned way, no extra magic, especially because he’s in trouble right now for using magic. So it makes sense to me, and I thought that was well played.
Eric: Yeah. So there’s a question here, because they do take the tube, and Mr. Weasley cannot contain his enthusiasm for broken ticketing machines. [laughs] Harry is like, “Mr. Weasley, that one’s broken.”
Andrew: Still amazing.
Eric: And he’s still standing by it, yeah.
Andrew: And it was making me wonder what tech in 2019 would fascinate Arthur Weasley. Not AirPods, because they already have wireless sound, I think, so that’s not really a big deal. Not virtual reality, because they have ghosts and portraits, so they’re kind of familiar with that.
Laura: I think the scooters, like the Bird scooters and the Lime scooters.
Andrew: Yeah, that’d be pretty cool.
Laura: He’d be like, “Wow, Muggles have found a way to not have broomsticks, but have a good substitute for them.”
Andrew: “Can they fly?”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: They could be enchanted to fly.
Andrew: Get on it, Arthur.
Eric: That is kind of funny. That gets me to think that drones and things would be just the digital substitute for owls or anything else you bewitch to hover. So much of our technology could be seen as keeping up with whatever wizards are doing.
Micah: What about a police car or an ambulance or firetruck going by? How do we think he would react to that?
Andrew: [laughs] Why, because all the flashing lights?
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: Definitely there is a fixation with the utilities, meaning gas, fire, police. Doesn’t Arthur at one point call them “please-men”? Or is that Ron? He would be really content to sit in a lobby of a police station for hours. [laughs] For hours.
Laura: I think that he’s just thoroughly enchanted by the way that Muggles have found all of these technological work-arounds that achieve a similar impact as magic.
Andrew: Right. He’s basically a Muggle who’s fascinated by the wizarding world; he’s just the reverse. I never thought of it that way.
Laura: Although, I will say here, reading this chapter had my anxiety… my anxiety brain was like, “Oh my God,” because it seemed like he didn’t really know where he was going when he was taking Harry to the visitor’s entrance of the Ministry…
[Eric laughs]
Laura: … and Laura’s brain, Laura’s anxiety brain, if I don’t know where I’m going and it’s something really important, the day before I’ll do a test run.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Laura: I will actually go there to make sure that I know the way to get there so that day of, I don’t have to stress about that.
Eric: So Arthur Weasley absolutely should have taken the visitor entrance maybe the week leading up to the hearing.
Laura: Yeah, or at least the day before.
Eric: I think that’s completely reasonable, honestly.
Laura: Come on, Mr. Weasley.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And then speaking of the visitor entrance, there’s the phone number to dial to activate the elevator in the phone booth, and one reason that I love this is because J.K. Rowling just says he has to dial 62442, but she doesn’t actually say that it spells magic, so you don’t know that unless you go and actually grab a phone or you’re listening to a non-existent Harry Potter podcast at the time or you’re on MuggleNet.com, and you’re like, “Oh, crap. I didn’t even think to look at the phone. It does spell magic.”
Eric: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it’s not even like she says it in sequence or she specifically draws attention to the numbers; she has Arthur going, “Okay, let’s see… six and two and four…” and I mean, in 2003 when this book came out, maybe alphanumeric dial pads were a little bit more common, but it’s one of these things that’s lost… I can already feel it being lost to time, where 20 years from now, people reading Harry Potter will never understand this. They will never see it.
Andrew: We’re keeping it alive, though.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, we are.
Andrew: Call us. 1-920-3-MUGGLE.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Micah: Well, it reminded me a lot of J.K. Rowling’s website when… I forget what you unlocked for dialing “MAGIC” into the phone on her desk there, but that was something that was a throwback for me.
Andrew: And fun fact, at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley, there is a British phone booth outside London, and if you dial 62442, I believe you hear something. I don’t think I’ve actually done it yet, but it does work.
Eric: It says, “Welcome to the Ministry of Magic,” I think, or it plays a tone. But I will say, too, we often give credit to the movies or talk about something that’s not very well adapted, but this whole approach to the Ministry thing with Dan Radcliffe and Mark Williams as Harry and Arthur is amazing. He walks backwards through the… what is it, the turnstile? Down the tube.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s always really funny to watch.
Eric: I love the music. I love the scene. I consider this to be one of the best parts of the movie, to be honest.
Andrew: And he tries to mimic the Muggles movement when swiping the pass and he can’t get it to work, right? That’s really funny.
Eric: And Harry fixes it for him, yeah. So I have to say, great job in the adaptation; I think it really captures the wonder of the moment. I mean, in Harry’s head, it’s dread, [laughs] dread and shock, and he’s not in a good place, but at least we can appreciate the level of world-building that’s happening here. Of course, we don’t know at this time, but J.K. Rowling is setting this place up to be the final battleground. This is where the end of the book takes place, so a lot of this what would seem to be superfluous detail is actually going to help us when we have to come back to the Ministry at the end of the book, which is really, really cool. So yeah, speaking of world-building, so they go down. They’re in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. You can see the fireplaces, where one side people Apparate in, other side, people Apparate out. And then there’s also this… I know we’ve talked about this in the past, but it’s a big deal: The Fountain of Magical Brethren, and somebody here had notes about it.
Micah: Yeah, the first person I thought about as I was writing these notes was Laura, because I wanted to know what her reaction was to this.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: But the way I… this is one of those instances where reading the book back as an adult versus as a kid, you have a little bit more of a perspective on what’s happening here. And certainly, having read through the entire series helps, but I made note of the fact that while many often take offense, and rightly so, by the “Magic is Might” statue that we see later on in the series, this statue is really no better, as it is a false representation of the current state of the wizarding world. Magical brethren? First, the goblin, centaur, and house-elf are said to be looking up adoringly at the wizard and witch. Secondly, we know how witches and wizards have treated these creatures, so they are anything but magical brethren.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: They’re pretending, but there’s a reminder there who’s on top.
Laura: Yeah, that is some revisionist history bull.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And to that point, I thought this was really interesting that you brought it up, because there is a real statue of Christopher Columbus in Washington, DC, and there is an indigenous person represented as sort of a secondary figure on that statue. And the statue bears this inscription; it says, “To the memory of Christopher Columbus, whose high faith and indomitable courage gave to mankind a new world,” which is, again, revisionist effing history.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Right.
Laura: That’s not how it happened, and the statue does nothing to talk about the horrors that indigenous people in the Americas faced as a result of Christopher Columbus’s discovery.
Eric: Yeah, if given all the facts, that indigenous person would not pose for that statue.
Laura: Right.
Eric: And they likely never asked one to.
Micah: And in many ways, the Magic is Might statue… at least it’s real in terms of its representation, and nobody’s pulling any punches in terms of what they’re trying to get across, whereas with the Magical Brethren statue, it’s misleading. And I think that speaks to… I’m sure it was there prior to Fudge, but I think that it’s a very solid representation of sort of the false pretenses that Fudge represents as well.
Eric: I love this. I love this entire discussion, and I think it does really well connect to the real world. And you see statues like this in government buildings; you just do.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Micah: And you don’t think twice about them; that’s part of the problem. For Harry, he’s like, “Oh,” reading the inscription, “if you throw money in there, it benefits St. Mungo’s,” so that’s almost a detractor in a way. The only other thing that I thought about with respect to the statue – because obviously, at the end of this book it plays a role in the battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort – I tend to think that these creatures respond the way that they do because of who Dumbledore is as a person, not necessarily because there’s this representation of magical brethren and that they would jump to the aid of any wizard that needed it in that situation. I think it’s more of who Dumbledore represents, and the fact that he wouldn’t look down on a goblin or a centaur or a house-elf.
Andrew: Yeah, bingo.
Eric: I hadn’t really thought about that.
Micah: And they didn’t do that in the movie, by the way. I was really pissed that they didn’t include that in the movie.
Eric: Yeah, but we’ll get to talk about it in due course in our Chapter by Chapter, and that’s almost as good. So we meet a guy next; Harry has to go and get his wand weighed by “a badly shaven wizard in peacock-blue robes,” and he’s apparently very bored at his job. He was reading the Daily Prophet. His job, I guess, is he weighs the wands on this scale, and the scale prints out, I imagine, little ticker tape, and says what the core is, what the length is, and stuff. And I’m sure it’s a very important job, what he’s doing.
Andrew: Oh, very important.
Eric: Yeah. But the most important thing about this guy for me, personally, is that his name is Eric, and Arthur Weasley is like, “Thank you, Eric,” and moves away. And I was like, “Oh, shit! This is great!”
Andrew: Did you cut out this page and hang it on your wall?
Eric: I should. I could. I can’t wait to get Jim Kay’s illustration of Eric.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, he’s going to get right on that.
Eric: It’s going to be great.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: And to be clear, I do not… I’ve never, ever, not once thought… I mean, no, I wasn’t even that big in fandom yet, but it’s always nice to see your name…
Andrew: [laughs] Are you wondering if J.K. Rowling put this name in here because of you?
Eric: Don’t worry, no. I know she didn’t.
Micah: Look, you’re not John Noe from Pottercast, who…
Eric: Named Dawlish.
Micah: Yeah.
Eric: No, no, no. It was way too early for any of that. But in the… and I’m not saying this as a podcaster, but as a Harry Potter fan…
Andrew: It’s nice to see your name.
Eric: You always… I think the brain lights up at like, some kind of special connection between you and J.K. Rowling, right? I don’t know.
Andrew: So I looked up our names to see if the rest of us have characters in the Harry Potter series. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. Three of us, including Eric, do have our name in the books. Guess whose name is not in the books?
Eric: Laura.
Laura: Yeah, that’s my guess, too.
Andrew: What’s your guess, Micah?
Micah: My guess is Micah.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Your guess is right. There is no Micah in the Harry Potter books. Laura, there was a Laura. So if anybody’s curious if their name is mentioned, all you have to do is just Google “Harry Potter character named” and then the Harry Potter wiki from Fandom.com will give you an answer. Laura was an individual mentioned in a book kept in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. [laughs]
Laura: Wow. I would be in the Restricted Section.
Micah: Yeah, I was going to say.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I just thought of a new Patreon perk. We can call it the Restricted Section, and that’s where people get access to you, Laura.
Andrew: There you go.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: You just kind of hang in the back. [laughs]
Andrew: Andrew was a Gryffindor student at Hogwarts in the 1990s; he became a Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. They took over the positions after Fred and George Weasley, who were given a lifelong ban by Umbridge. So my character actually had kind of a cool role. But sorry, Micah, nothing for you yet. Maybe in Fantastic Beasts.
Micah: Yeah, I would say I’m holding out hope for the Fantastic Beasts series.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Well, what’s your middle name, Micah?
Micah: Justin.
Andrew: Oh, well, there’s definitely Justins. Justin Finch-Fletchley.
Micah: Finch-Fletchley, yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, I love him.
Eric: Oh, yeah, there you go.
Andrew: But Micah doesn’t want to be a Hufflepuff. Ohh!
Eric: So Andrew, you had another comment here?
Andrew: Yeah, well, this whole scene just felt like a grim Take Your Kid to Work Day to me. We get this inside look at Arthur’s life as he runs into some of his coworkers, and they’re dealing with regurgitating toilets by anti-Muggle pranksters, which was interesting, and fire-breathing chickens. And it was also kind of funny to me that he deals with this type of stuff because his sons are the type of people who cause this type of trouble as well.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But I guess he doesn’t realize that? But it is cool, and the reason it reminded me of a Take Your Kid to Work Day situation is because I went to work with my dad probably once or twice, and it just seems like the same exact feeling. You’re getting this inside look; it’s this alternate world. It’s this adult world that you’ve never seen before.
Eric: Yeah, and definitely seeing how Arthur reacts to his fellows. And I mean, it is funny how surreptitiously Kingsley and Arthur have to have a public conversation with a private conversation, like, “Oh, and Molly is making meatballs; come by at 7,” kind of a thing.
Andrew: Yeah. “Getting real close to catching Sirius; I think I know where he is! Almost there!”
Eric: “Oh, yeah, really close! We’re getting closer.” It’s cool to see how your parents are regarded by their peers.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, exactly. “Oh, my parents have friends and co-workers. That’s interesting. I never knew that about them.”
Eric: There’s a whole other world or a whole other reality that you don’t get to see that your parents live day to day when you go to their office. My mom was a teacher, so I was at her school, but it was a different school district than the one I went to, so it was always very different and very weird for being so different. But yeah, it’s very much like that, for sure. And as for the anti-Muggle pranksters, I can think of nothing worse than a toilet that does not flush.
Laura: And it’s not just that the toilet doesn’t flush; it does the opposite of flushing.
Andrew: Sends it back.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: That’s mean.
Micah: Return to sender.
Andrew: [laughs] Return to sender.
Eric: Address unknown. No such person, no such zone. [sighs] It’s pretty terrifying. But J.K. Rowling world-building; we’ve already established she’s a pro. Speaking of, so a chapter called “The Ministry of Magic.” J.K. Rowling is like, “Okay, I’m going to tell…” clearly, a Ministry of the magical side of the wizarding world of Harry Potter, or of the wizarding world of the Harry Potter books, would have sections devoted to all the different branches of magic. Well, in one small elevator ride – because the elevator is narrated by that same cool female voice who is on the phone – we learn, and we just get… I’m not going to go through all of them, but we get a ton of, I guess, offices that are pointed out, named, and specifically said to be on each level of the Ministry of Magic. So Arthur and Harry are going down from level seven to level one, or is it up? I can never figure it out. I can’t figure out if they’re going down or up.
Andrew: Well, it must be down because they’re going underground, so…
Eric: Well, they’re already underground, so… because they go from seven to one, but then they have to go down to level nine for the courts. So I’m thinking nine has to be the bottom, which means they were actually… the atrium was at level seven, and then it went up earlier.
Andrew: I don’t know.
Eric: I mean, it’s definitely not critical. It’s not critical, but it didn’t make any sense to me. So anyway, some of these offices that I mentioned, we’ve heard of a few, like the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, but what we haven’t heard of is the Pest Advisory Bureau, the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, Ludicrous Patents Office… the Floo Network has a headquarters here. It’s all the stuff you’d expect, but plenty that you wouldn’t.
Andrew: The Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. So they come up with excuses for why they saw magic and Muggles would buy it, I guess?
Eric: Maybe, yeah. But then there’s also the Obliviators and the people who… the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad.
Andrew: “Oh, that wasn’t a broom in the air; you were just tripping LSD. Don’t you realize?”
Eric: Yeah, “It was a weather balloon and swamp gas from the planet Venus.”
Andrew: Yeah, “It was a new bird that was recently discovered. It came from the Amazon.”
Eric: But this phrase “Muggle-worthy” reminds me of Newt Scamander’s suitcase.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. Yep.
Laura: Oh, that’s a really good point. Huh.
Eric: Kind of weird. So which of these departments – they are listed in our document – which ones would you guys want a book about? Like, meet the guy who heads the… although we already did the Department of Magical Games and Sports, Ludo Bagman. But which of these would interest you the most?
Andrew: We’re probably all in agreement on the Department of Mysteries, but that one aside, I think the Department of Magical Transport. I’ve always been interested in trains and subways and how those systems work, so I would like the Department of Magical Transport to learn about all that, how they get around.
Eric: Oh, yeah. That’s a great one.
Laura: Yeah, I’d be interested in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. I think in these books, we can see that they’re not really doing a great job.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: So you want to step in and improve it.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Yeah, or maybe make some recommendations.
Micah: Yeah. I’d be interested to learn more about the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, including the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, because aside from something like Sirius and Peter Pettigrew, we don’t really know a whole lot. I feel like there’s probably a lot of really interesting stories that have happened over the course of decades in the wizarding world, and it’d be cool to learn about some of the events.
Eric: Yeah. And for me, I’m interested in… I like the idea of travel, like you said, Andrew. I’m going to go with the Portkey Office, because I think they probably just regulate the times and how many Portkeys are registered at any given moment. They’re obviously busier when they do the Quidditch World Cup, but I just imagine a room with a shelf with lots of boots on it, but it wouldn’t be that way, because anyone can create their own Portkey. So I want to see what they do there. But yeah, so all of these departments, excellent work on J.K. Rowling for really fleshing it out. Some of these we will see.
Andrew: Yeah, how long did it take to write all this out? This must have taken a day at least.
Eric: Nuts. Yeah. I mean, she mapped it out. You can create a map basically based on each level and what’s on it.
Andrew: So we mentioned going underground, and Harry notes this as well, and he’s a bit confused by the underground windows as well because he’s like, “Wait a second, how are those windows? How are we seeing the outside when we’re this deep underground?” Arthur says that Magical Maintenance decides the weather every day, and he says – and this is kind of funny – that there were two months of hurricanes while that team was angling for a raise. But we know that weather can affect a person’s mood, so I feel like they are hurting the Ministry’s work output if they are making the windows have bad weather in them.
Micah: For sure.
Andrew: It should be beautiful, sunny, warm, the sun shining directly into the windows every day. That would make everybody at the Ministry happier. Why would they change the weather to anything else?
Eric: That’s leverage, right? I think you’re exactly right.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Well, that sucks. It should be their job to keep it sunny.
Eric: Well, it is, but they were striking.
Andrew: No, I know, but some days are probably cloudy and rainy. It’s not right.
Laura: I like rainy days.
Andrew: Well, you’re emo.
Micah: Every once in a while it’s fine, but I’m thinking how many people actually work in Magical Maintenance, versus how many people work in the Ministry? And how accomplished they are, they could easily point their wand at the window and change what’s going on outside, no?
Andrew: You would think so.
Laura: I mean, if they even have windows. We can see that in Mr. Weasley’s office he doesn’t have one.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And that can’t be helpful to his work output.
Micah: Yeah, I felt bad for him.
Eric: I love that you have to requisition a window. [laughs] And then it gets denied; Arthur says that the request… they didn’t seem to think that he needs one. It’s like a standing desk or a dual computer screen setup where it costs the company money to put it in and so you need to be a certain job title or or be a certain level of either seniority or whatever for them to do it for you.
Andrew: Yeah. I need windows when I’m working. I’m surrounded by windows on three sides of me right now, [laughs] and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I need to be near a window. I like Starbucks, sitting by the window, having a view.
Micah: You’ve got to have that natural light. It makes a huge difference in productivity.
Andrew: Exactly, and that’s why I can’t believe this team actually puts bad weather in those windows. I would love to have these windows in the real world. Instead of a Chicago winter, I can pretend I’m in the desert or down in Bermuda or someplace beautiful. That would be a great product. Replicate the feeling of the sun hitting you; get a tan in the process.
Eric: So as we wrap up the chapter – because it does end on kind of a surprise; they’ve changed the time of the meeting – but we do hear, as you guys mentioned earlier, Kingsley and Arthur have this conversation, and I found it really interesting that Kingsley, obviously an accomplished wizard, is being… he’s the guy who’s put on the job of finding Sirius Black. Sirius Black is a guy that he has dinner with every couple days, and Kingsley is in charge of the entire Ministry’s operation. So he has to be really careful by putting leads that seem to have at least enough substance that the wizards who are going out and trying to find Sirius – maybe it is, in fact, Scrimgeour, as we said – aren’t like… they don’t feel like the information is completely useless.
Micah: And one of the things that I found interesting was that Kingsley has left a copy of The Quibbler for Sirius to read, so clearly, there’s a very interesting story about him in there that Arthur says that Sirius will find very amusing. But I believe this is the first mention of The Quibbler in the Potter series? I have to go back and check. But if it is, it’s really kind of cool, because we of course meet Luna later on in this book.
Andrew: Yeah, I think it is the first mention. Again, a little more foreshadowing.
Micah: Yeah. And we also get an introduction a little bit later on, when Harry is being rushed to his hearing, to a character named Broderick Bode, and he is coming onto the elevator as Arthur and Harry are trying to get to the hearing. And Bode is, we learn later, an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries; he ends up being Imperiused by Lucius Malfoy to try and retrieve the prophecy, and he’s later murdered in St. Mungo’s, and Harry and crew come across him in St. Mungo’s, of course, when they’re there to visit Arthur. So again, groundwork being laid. Very brief mentions of Scrimgeour and The Quibbler and Bode, so while I know at the start we kind of talked about how this chapter doesn’t have a whole lot going on, but there’s a lot of little nuggets in here that are important to later on in the book.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: This is definitely setting the scene for a lot of things that come later, in this book, but also in the series. And I just want to take a moment to call out here how clever J.K. Rowling is with naming; I mean, even something as simple as naming this guy “Bode,” given what we know happens later on, does not bode well.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Right.
Laura: And I love it.
Micah: Yeah, so cool.
Andrew: And then, of course, naming that other guy Eric; I mean, that badly shaven, peacock-blue robes…
[Laura and Micah laugh]
[screaming goat sound]
Andrew: … just really bodes well. [laughs]
Eric: Badly shaven is definitely… honestly, I try to emulate the Eric from Harry Potter. I try and live my life based on the lessons…
Micah: You should dress up as him for Halloween.
Eric: Oh, yeah. I’m already badly shaven, so I’m halfway there.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Oh, boy.
[Ad break]
Andrew: All right, so our Umbridge Suck count is going to go up one today. We’re now at four.
[jazzy music and applause plays]
Andrew: That was the wrong sound; I apologize.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: That was actually pretty good.
[jazzy music and applause plays]
Andrew: Yeah, all right! Thank you, Umbridge!
[bell dings]
Andrew: I meant to hit that one.
Eric: We assume that she’s behind this change in time in the Ministry. She did set all these events in motion, so…
Andrew: Yeah, I blame her anyway.
Laura: Yeah, I think we can pretty easily pin this one on her.
Micah: Right.
Connecting the Threads
Andrew: What threads did you find today, Laura?
Laura: So this is definitely a thinner chapter in terms of connecting the threads, but there were still a couple of interesting things here. So obviously, the hunt for Sirius Black is a really easy thread that we can connect back to Prisoner of Azkaban. What’s interesting about this is that at this point in Prisoner of Azkaban, the Ministry is taking this search very seriously, and we see that Fudge is actually pretty flustered by the fact that they’re not making progress. But in Order of the Phoenix, we see Aurors deliberately sabotaging the search, in that Kingsley has all of these maps and pins showing where he thinks Sirius may be, when actually he knows that Sirius is just a few miles down the road.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And then in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Lupin introduces the boggart to the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, he blocks Harry from the boggart, wrongly assuming that it would take Voldemort’s form. And then, in Order of the Phoenix, around the same point in the book, Harry is appearing at a hearing for facing the thing that he told Lupin he feared most in Prisoner of Azkaban, which were Dementors.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, now it’s time for MVP of the week. I’m going to give it to the paper airplanes because without them, the Ministry employees would be getting pooped on all day, and that’s just not right. They don’t get sunshine; they should at least be able to enjoy not getting pooped on. So thank you, paper airplanes.
Eric: Right.
Micah: [laughs] And it’s a great reference point, too, because they do, in fact, have owls at the Ministry in Crimes of Grindelwald.
Andrew: Yes, they do.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: And in the Wizarding World theme park, if you go to the owlery, there’s just owl droppings everywhere. Not real, of course.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: But man, it is dirty. It’s a little gross, if you really think about it.
Eric: Yeah, next time you’re there, look up. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Or don’t, if you get skeeved out easily.
Micah: I gave mine to Perkins, who was able to alert Arthur and Harry that his Ministry hearing time and location had been changed.
Eric: Definitely.
Laura: Yep, came in real clutch there. I gave mine to Mr. Weasley. Even though I found his approach towards getting Harry to his hearing a little bit anxiety-inducing, at the end of the day, he was still pretty efficient, and he got Harry where he needed to be.
Eric: And I gave my MVP of the week to Molly, Because look, none of us know how this hearing is going to turn out, but even if Harry were expelled and thrown in Azkaban, she’s making meatballs.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Meatballs are such a… they’re such a hearty food in the right red sauce, that… man, it’s just… after a good day or a bad, meatballs.
Andrew: Yeah. I’m going to have meatballs tonight. Thanks, Molly.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: Now let’s rename the chapter. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7, “That’s 62442 for Magic.”
Micah: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7, “Take Your Convict to Work Day.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Lovely.
Laura: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7, “Where in the World is Sirius Black?”
Andrew: I have no idea!
Eric: I love all of you guys. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7, “The Place Where it Happens.”
Andrew: All right, if you have any feedback about today’s discussion or a question about Chapter 8, send it on in, MuggleCast@gmail.com, or send us a voice memo. Thank you to everybody who’s been doing that. I have a little tip, though: I’ve been listening to some of these voice memos. Everybody’s very close to the phone, I think because they feel like they’re just talking into the phone like a normal phone call. You don’t have to be, and everybody’s voice memos are very [gets close to the mic] loud and puffy like this, so maybe back away when recording the voice memos. [laughs] Thank you. Or you can call us, 1-920-3-MUGGLE. And by the way, we will have Mike from Potterless podcast on next week’s episode, so that’ll be fun, and he’ll talk about Chapter 8 with us.
Quizzitch
Andrew: It’s time for Quizzitch.
Eric: Yes, last week’s question: What time does Harry wake up for his Ministry hearing? The answer is half past five, or 5:30 a.m., and correct winners were submitted by Issy Marcantonio, Indira Ramirez, HallowWolf13, Robbie Stillman, and Count Ravioli. Oh, also – six people – Omar H. Congratulations to…
Micah: I was so hoping that my question would be answered by Count Ravioli.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: It’s a life goal. Congratulations. This game is, of course, played over on Twitter; send us a tweet, hashtag it “Quizzitch” with your answer, and your name will be read on the show. So next week’s question comes from the next chapter that we’ll be discussing: What is Cornelius Fudge’s middle name?
Andrew: Chocolate.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Cornelius Chocolate Fudge. Eric, we’re going to be playing some Quizzitch of our own this week. We’re going to Harry Potter trivia night on Halloween eve.
Eric: That’s right. That’s pretty exciting.
Andrew: Uh-oh. I’m scared. It’s been a while.
Eric: It really has.
Andrew: Yeah. Thank you to everybody who supports us on Patreon; Patreon.com/MuggleCast is where you can pledge to join our community today. People are listening live as we record right now. Thank you to everybody who’s tuned in, including Katie, Issy, Andrew – another Andrew – Amanda… Amanda also says, “This is way better than Wizarding World Gold, in my opinion. I mean, are they going to give me a tote bag to carry pickles in? No!”
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: I agree, Amanda, and we really appreciate everybody’s support. Again, Patreon.com/MuggleCast. If you pledge at the Dumbledore’s Army level or higher, you will get a physical gift every year. We are already talking about next year’s physical gift; we’re really excited about it. It is something that people really want – yes, a Niffler – so stay tuned. There are a bunch of other benefits there as well, so thank you, thank you, thank you for your support. It’s going to people who are just Harry Potter fans, who are just trying to create a great podcast for you, and by having funding, we’re able to make this a priority in our lives.
Eric: Definitely.
Andrew: We’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. I was checking out our reviews recently; Denise recently wrote, “Most of my friends are not big Harry Potter fans, so it’s nice to sit down and listen to an episode and feel like I was able to have a conversation with some equally obsessed fans.” Thank you, Denise. That’s what we do it for. I love being people’s Harry Potter friends, especially because I have no friends.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: So it’s a really great way for me to make friends. [laughs] No, but that’s one of my favorite compliments, isn’t it, guys?
Laura: Definitely.
Andrew: We’re happy to be here for you. So if you do take a moment to review us on iTunes, we would really appreciate that, because it helps us get discovered by new listeners. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Don’t forget, also, you can now scroll way back into our RSS feed to check out some of our classic episodes of MuggleCast, and follow us on social media: @MuggleCast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. That does it for this week’s episode. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Goodbye!
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.