Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #690, Does Dumbledore Spy Through Chocolate Frog Cards?! and More Muggle Mail
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the Wizarding World fandom. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: I’m Laura.
Andrew: And this week, raising your hand? Totally fine and won’t land your friends in detention, because we are taking your questions on Order of the Phoenix and some of our other recent discussions here on MuggleCast. And joining us for today’s episode is one of our Slug Club patrons, Evalynda. Hey, Evalynda. Welcome.
Evalynda: Hi! Hello, hello. I’m so excited to be here on this episode.
Andrew: We’re excited to have you too. Thank you so much for joining us. And we’ve known you for a few years now; we see you pop into the Slug Club hangouts, chat there from time to time, and we see you in the Discord too, so it’s great to have you on. Can we get your fandom ID?
Evalynda: Yes. Okay, so my favorite book is Half-Blood Prince. My favorite movie is Sorcerer’s Stone. I am a very proud and loyal Hufflepuff. I Hufflepuff till I die.
Eric: Aww.
Evalynda: [laughs] And my Ilvermorny House is Pukwudgie; my Patronus, oddly enough, is an aardvark; and then my all-time favorite chapter is “Secrets of Riddle.”
Andrew: Oooh, excellent.
Laura: Yeah, good choice.
Evalynda: It’s grown on me, actually.
Andrew: Okay.
Evalynda: I don’t know if you guys have found this by doing the Chapter by Chapter, but we’ve grown up with the books, so now that we’re older, you see it through a different lens. And with me being a clinician, “The Secrets of Riddle” has so much depth to it, and when I was in grad school, I had to do a case study and I chose Voldemort, so that was a very good deep dive into how he became who he was.
Laura: That is so cool.
Andrew: Yeah. You mentioned your Patronus is an aardvark; I’m kind of jealous of that because I used to love Arthur, the book series and TV show as a kid.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Evalynda: Oh, yeah!
Andrew: Did you like Arthur, too?
Evalynda: I did love Arthur.
Andrew: Oh, jealous.
Evalynda: It’s also one of my favorite memes.
Andrew: The fist?
Laura: Oh, yeah, the fist. The clenched fist.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Think a lot of us are feeling that meme right now.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Evalynda: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: All right, well, we have a lot of great emails today, and we’re looking forward to getting Evalynda’s feedback on all of them as well, but first, a couple of announcements. We are in the thick of the colder months season, the winter season, so please check out the MuggleCast Cozy Comfy Combo Pack to stay warm this winter, and to help you stay warm further, we are offering the Cozy Comfy Combo Pack at its lowest price yet, $20 for the beanie and the socks. And only ten of these combo packs remain; we are down to the end here, so we would love to move them. You can purchase yours at MuggleMillennial.etsy.com; we’ll have a link at the top of the show notes, too, so you can easily access them. The beanie and the socks are both so comfortable. Eric passed along some socks recently to me – some extra MuggleCast socks, not just any old socks.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Definitely check those out, listeners; it’s a great way to support the show. And while you’re there, check out other MuggleCast merch, like signed album art, MuggleCast 15th anniversary T-shirts, or you could just purchase the socks. But the Cozy Comfy Combo Pack is the only way you can get the beanie right now, because we’re down to just a few beanies left, so don’t miss out.
Eric: Amazing. And this weather is no joke; I have a burst pipe in my apartment building.
Andrew: Oh, no!
Laura: Oh my gosh.
Eric: The coldest weather. First time. Everything’s okay, but it’s important to stay warm. And you know what? Just buy some extra socks; put them on the pipes.
Micah: You should have kept those socks, clearly.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, you sent me bags of socks.
Micah: There’s a return slip in that box, right?
Eric: I want to be clear; the socks I gave Andrew were also new. They were all… they have not been worn by me. I’m not passing along MuggleCast merch that I have worn. I’m sorry if I did that; we would have to charge more.
Andrew: I was going to say, for some people, it’d be a selling point.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. So anyway…
Andrew: Well, and I’m wearing the beanie every day, multiple times a day.
Eric: It’s really warm.
Andrew: It is cold right now. Yeah, it’s very comfortable, so don’t miss out on that. Merch purchases help support the show, and with us flying into a new decade of MuggleCast, we could really appreciate your support at Patreon.com/MuggleCast as well. Become a member today and enjoy instant access to lots of great benefits, including two bonus episodes of MuggleCast every month, stickers, livestreams, ad-free episodes; you can become a MuggleCast co-host one day, like Evalynda is right now, and your support goes to running this independent podcast. It helps us spend less time in the boring, terrible Muggle world, and more time talking and living in the wonderful wizarding world, so thanks, everybody.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: And with that, it’s time for our Muggle Mail episode. And we are going to start today with some feedback about Books 3 and 4, and then we will get into Order of the Phoenix feedback.
Micah: Yeah, sometimes, Andrew, you’ve got to clean out the bottom of… new year, new us. We’ve got to clean out the bottom of the Muggle Mail bag.
Andrew: Yeah, refresh everything. I agree.
Eric: [laughs] “The bottom.” There’s 50,000 emails in there.
Micah: Oh, there’s so many emails.
[Evalynda laughs]
Andrew: So we have one voicemail this week, and here it is:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, y’all, my name is Kayla. I’m a Hufflepuff from Nebraska, and I just wanted to send this in because it is something I’ve found kind of interesting in the Goblet of Fire, but I think it’s pretty interesting how the author wrote for there to be a champion that hangs out with each of the Houses. When Fleur first gets to Hogwarts, she sits with the Ravenclaws. When Krum gets to Hogwarts, he sits with the Slytherins. Harry is obviously in Gryffindor. So it only makes sense that the champion for Hogwarts would be Cedric in Hufflepuff, because the author probably was thinking it would be a good idea to have a champion in each of the Houses. And I just think that’s pretty interesting, and wanted to share it with y’all. Thanks for listening. Bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Thanks, Kayla.
Laura: I love that.
Andrew: Yeah, it is… so was it purposeful? It must have been, then, to have a champion in each “House.”
Eric: Yeah, whether unconsciously or not, the pairing of the students when they first sit with a House at Hogwarts that’s sort of been predetermined by the time they get there. I remember talking about this during that chapter. Definitely it helps when you have four of anyone competing if they have the most complementary and different personalities, which is modeled after the same four personality types that make up the Hogwarts Houses. So it makes sense to me.
Micah: It’s such a great play off of our House unity conversation from last week.
Eric: Ohoho!
Micah: I was thinking, too, Fleur takes Roger Davies to the Yule Ball, who is also in Ravenclaw, so I wonder if…
Eric: And Viktor takes Hermione, who is from Slytherin, as we all know.
Micah: Yes.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Because I was wondering, do the students from Beauxbatons spend time with the Ravenclaws? We don’t really see it, but that kind of reinforces what Kayla was saying.
Laura: Yeah, I feel like I remember us talking about the similarities between Beauxbatons students and Ravenclaws, and Durmstrang and Slytherin, and why they gravitated towards each other. So yeah, I think you’re on to something there.
Evalynda: Yeah, I can see them kind of having mutual… I don’t want to say agendas, in a way? And I can see them getting along. And I mean, that’s the whole point of the Triwizard Tournament, is to foster those connections.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, thank you, Kayla, for sending in that voicemail. And listeners, we love hearing you, so if you have any feedback about any episode, please load up the Voice Memo app that’s on your phone already, record a voice message – keep it around 60 to 90 seconds, ideally – and email that to MuggleCast@gmail.com. Again, we love hearing from you, so please send in those voicemails when you have something to say. Of course, most people email us, so for the rest of the episode, we will be reading some emails we received, and thanks to everybody who submitted feedback over the last couple months. As always, we love getting this feedback. It’s really awesome hearing what you all think about our discussions and the Harry Potter series.
Laura: Our first piece of Muggle Mail comes from Charlotte, who’s writing about Karkaroff’s true motivations.
“Ahoy, y’all. I have been listening to y’all for about two years-ish, but I’ve gotten very behind. I was listening to your episode ‘For the Love of Chicken Tendies,’ and had a thought. This was about the chapter in Goblet where Karkaroff insults Poliakoff, calling him a ‘disgusting boy.’ In this episode, you were talking about how these were the schools’ best students that they were putting forth, but it got me thinking… what if these weren’t Durmstrang’s best students? We know Karkaroff favors Krum and wants him to be the champion, so what if he rigged it? Bring his worst students to ensure Krum was selected? Just a thought. You guys are amazing, and thank you for being my Harry Potter friends! P.S. this podcast is older than me.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oof.
Laura: All right, Charlotte.
Eric: This is a lot to take in.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That was really complimentary and then made me cringe a little bit. Because of us, not because of you.
Eric: We do not need any postscripts on any Muggle Mail. Don’t need it. Can do without.
Andrew: [laughs] With peace and love, peace and love.
Eric: Peace and love. I think this is wonderful, and it goes a way to explaining how Karkaroff feels about a kid who supposedly may also have been a champion. That solves a problem I didn’t know we had.
Andrew: Yeah, it seems like a great way to rig it. Just bring a lot of bad people, and then your favorite who’s also really good and has a good chance.
[Laura laughs]
Evalynda: Do you think that he was using him in a way for his own glory and ambition? Almost using him… if he was rigging the competition, kind of like when we’re too old to be in the game, we focus on the younger generations and get glory through them, living through them in a way.
Andrew: Right, living vicariously, I was just going to say.
Eric: I think absolutely the relationship between Karkaroff and Krum feels that way. What else does this disgraced former-Death-Eater-turned-school-headmaster really have going for him otherwise?
Micah: That was going to be my point, is let’s not forget his backstory. Let’s not forget who he is. His ambition, the fact that he is a former Death Eater, certainly, I think, lends itself to what you’re saying, Evalynda, that he would certainly come into this probably more so than any of the other headmasters that we see – more so than Dumbledore, more so than Maxime – wanting to win this.
Evalynda: Yeah, almost garnering a legacy in a way.
Micah: Yeah, that’s a great point. Our next email comes from Vanessa, who wants to know about Remus Lupin’s condition.
“In Prisoner of Azkaban, when Remus Lupin describes how during his werewolf transformations he bit and scratched himself, could that be interpreted as a form of self-harm? Especially looking at his story through a lens of the AIDS epidemic. I know many of those affected by that epidemic did not have the best support or acceptance from others, likely leading some to have suicidal ideologies and commit self-harm. Do y’all think Remus Lupin scratching himself could be a representation of declining mental health and self-harm as a way to relieve that?”
It’s a very loaded question.
Eric: But I think it is clear that that could be one reading of that story.
Andrew: Yeah, “one reading” is a good way to put it, because I also do think werewolves, dogs, this is typical animal behavior. They will bite themselves; they will scratch themselves. But Vanessa is also pointing out, during the transformation, I would think when you are transforming or after you transform, you might be a little uncomfortable in this new form that you’ve just taken, so you might need to scratch. It’s kind of like putting on a new shirt; you have to adjust it a little bit so it’s fitting right. But I agree, this is a good reading of it too. And we know… we’ve discussed – if not here on this show, then definitely online – that Remus’s condition is symbolic of the AIDS epidemic, so I think it is a fair read.
Evalynda: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that it could be a possible interpretation. Self-harm, in a way – not to speak on this lightly – for some people, it’s a way to alleviate emotional pain and emotional suffering, and I think in combination with, I guess, animal behavior. So I don’t think it’s a direct one-to-one correlation, but there could be some hidden underlying undertone to that based off of his experience.
Eric: That’s an interesting… yeah, because Remus did not have a lot of control during that whole situation.
Micah: Part of me wonders, too, because it’s described as him biting and scratching himself, could it have been preventative, or he was trying to prevent the transformation from happening? He was trying to not allow himself to go from human to werewolf? I think that’s also a possibility. But let’s move on to a much more lighthearted subject and email.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: What could be more lighthearted than Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog Card? This message comes from Eden.
“Hey y’all! This is Eden, your 14-year-old Gryffindor.”
By the way, MuggleCast turns 20 this year.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: That’s at least two so far.
Eric: Yeah.
“And I have an interesting idea to share with you guys. So we know Dumbledore appears on many Chocolate Frog Cards, and in the wizarding world, pictures have consciousness and can communicate. I was thinking – what if Dumbledore uses this as a way to check up on things? For example, when Harry was on his first train ride in Sorcerer’s Stone and got the Chocolate Frog Card with Dumbledore on it, Dumbledore winks and walks out of the frame. Presumably, he goes to tell the real Dumbledore that Harry Potter has arrived on the train. Maybe while good old Albus is sipping a margarita on a beach in the Bahamas, he’s using Chocolate Frog Cards to spy on people. But then again, should we really give him that much credit? Thanks so much, and I freaking love y’all!”
Andrew: Aww.
Eric: Well, we freaking love you, too, Eden.
Laura: I love this.
Eric: Yeah, this is great.
Laura: Especially when you think about the fact in this book, when he gets kicked off the Wizengamot, he says the only thing he cares about is that they don’t kick him off the Chocolate Frog Cards.
Eric: Oh my God, that’s his lifeline!
Andrew: Ohh.
Evalynda: Oh my gosh.
Eric: That’s the only way he stays connected!
Laura: I’m just saying.
Eric: Oh, man.
Micah: It’s his legacy.
Eric: That’s like being imprisoned but still having Internet access. It’s being grounded, but still being able to have Internet access.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Honestly, there’s enormous fanfiction potential here, I just want to say. If someone’s looking for an idea, that could be a really fun one. [laughs]
Eric: And I know we never quite see it in the wizarding world, but if wizards and witches could just skidoo into paintings or become painting versions of themselves, then you could have the real Dumbledore there making the rounds on his Chocolate Frog Cards.
Andrew: But then I think this begs the question, does this mean that every other person on a Chocolate Frog Card can also spy on whoever is holding the card? Or did Dumbledore just… he was Dumbledore and came up with his own idea?
Eric: Well, think about how Phineas Nigellus Black… there’s at least two portraits of him that we know. One is in the headmaster’s office because he used to be a headmaster, and the other is a Grimmauld Place, which Harry, Ron, and Hermione take with them in her bag. And so there’s only really one subject, and he goes back and forth.
Andrew: Maybe it was part of Albus’s licensing agreement, like, “You can use my face, but I have to be able to spy.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, or it might just be a happenstance. I mean, the funniest thing about that is when Harry is like, “He’s gone!” and Ron just says, “You can’t expect him to hang around all day.” He’s got other appointments…
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Dumbledore is one of the most photographed wizards of this century.
Micah: I will say, I do like how Eden realized the error of her ways at the very end in asking, “Should we really give Dumbledore that much credit?”
Andrew: [laughs] Picture her…
Eric: For spying on people, invading privacy, causing security issues? Yes, absolutely.
Micah: It does seem up his alley, to be honest with you. He is the master manipulator.
Evalynda: Another security nightmare.
Andrew: [laughs] Oh, we got an email about security nightmares. Stay tuned.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: It’s starting to sound like a personal security nightmare.
Evalynda: Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about that. That’s so creepy. I mean…
Andrew: It is. It’s a fun theory, though. [laughs]
Evalynda: It is fun. I would love to see where he pops into.
Andrew: Yeah. All right, this next email is from Cal on the casting of Severus Snape.
“Hey, MuggleCast! So I was listening to the last episode about the casting of Snape. I wonder what you may think of my concern. To me, if they were to cast someone of color, it may change how Harry and James are seen. Harry initially came to Hogwarts suspecting Snape without noticeable cause, and James bullied Snape when they were children. I just don’t want it to be seen as racial bias. Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Sirius are characters that racial change wouldn’t affect. Just curious about your thoughts on how that could change the interpretation of the series. Thanks for everything you do.”
Eric: That’s an interesting one.
Evalynda: I love this question.
Andrew: What do you think, Evalynda?
Evalynda: Okay, so being a person of color, I actually think that changing his race would add complexity to his character. And I think it kind of begs the question, if we don’t change his race, who are we protecting? Because I think that… right? Are we protecting James’s reputation, or are we also protecting Snape’s? Making him another race adds a little bit of complexity and another sense of otherness. I know definitely growing up as a Harry Potter fan, I too have felt that otherness, and I think that this is something that other people can relate to, and it’s definitely a reality for a lot of people. So I can see how it can raise some concerns, but I also think that it can be something worth exploring.
Andrew: And I think in the TV series, they could explain why James was bullying Snape better than maybe we see in the book, and then there won’t be potential assumptions about, “Oh, there’s just racial bias going on.”
Evalynda: Definitely, definitely. And I mean, we don’t have to assume that that’s why he’s bullying; it could also just be a hidden undertone. But I still think that it’s something worth exploring.
Laura: I agree.
Andrew: Yeah, and worth opening up the series to a more diverse cast, because I think what you were saying, Evalynda, was that the series is very white; the Harry Potter movies were very white. They started working on that in Fantastic Beasts; we definitely saw more diversity in… well, even Cursed Child, but also Hogwarts Legacy. They’re finally putting in place a more diverse cast that J.K. Rowling should have put together to begin with.
Evalynda: Yeah, we’ve come a long way. We also have to consider when these books were created, and then where we are now. And I think it would be unfair not to consider, I mean, current context and culture.
Laura: Right. Yeah, honestly, it would make it feel kind of dated, if I’m being real. It would be like, “When was this made?”
Andrew: And what new does the TV series add if it isn’t making some bolder changes? I was talking about this when we were talking about Snape. People were like, “Oh, why don’t they cast Adam Driver? He’d be a perfect Snape.” They just want it a continuation of Alan Rickman’s portrayal.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Take some risks! Change it up a little bit!
Evalynda: Yeah, don’t back down from a challenge.
Eric: Ooh, there’s a good line.
[Ad break]
Evalynda: Our next one comes from Kim, regarding Petunia and Vernon’s upbringing.
“Hi there, MuggleCast friends. I’m so glad I found you. I started listening when you were doing Chapter by Chapter for Goblet Of Fire, and have been listening ever since. I believe you recently talked about whether or not we should feel sorry for Petunia. I think yes, we should feel sorry for her, because I think there is a possibility that she is abused by Vernon, or at least she fears him. He is the one always yelling and dishing out the punishments and threats. Maybe she has to keep the house clean because that is what Vernon expects, like in the movie Sleeping With the Enemy. Petunia comes from a kind family, as seen in Lily. Vernon comes from bullies, as shown in Aunt Marge. It took a lot for Petunia to stand up to Vernon and allow Harry to stay in later books. I’m not saying she is innocent in her behavior to Harry, but maybe there is more to her story.”
Andrew: I think this is a really good observation.
Eric: I will say, there are times in the book when Vernon is fearful of Petunia and what Petunia’s reaction to things might be. The perfect read on how their relationship works and what it looks like probably doesn’t exist, but it’s definitely a very interesting pairing that I don’t find myself often thinking about. What makes them tick?
Micah: I’m curious, given your background, Evalynda, what you think of this dynamic, this relationship.
Evalynda: Yeah, I think that the glimpses that we see don’t tell the whole story, so I think we would need to know more about… I mean, we know a little bit more about Petunia’s motivation, but I see glimpses of perhaps maybe a little bit of emotional abuse, perhaps. But I think that I would have to know a little bit more, if that makes sense, of their relationship dynamic, but I can definitely see it a little bit.
Micah: I think we’ve talked a lot about how Vernon really normalized Petunia’s life after Lily going off and getting into Hogwarts and Petunia being rejected, and then, of course, everything that happened with Lily and James. But it doesn’t mean that Vernon isn’t abusive, as you were saying, verbally, emotionally towards her. Though it does seem like the abuse that he shells out is primarily directed in Harry’s direction, and I think it’s because he represents everything that Vernon stands against, and was raised in a way… we see it in his sister, in Aunt Marge, was raised very much the same way. Anything that doesn’t fall in line with his point of view and his version of normal is considered to be less than, and he does everything in his power to ensure that Harry has an extremely rough upbringing as a result.
Laura: Yeah, because he’s resentful, right? It was very clear that he didn’t want anything to do with that side of Petunia’s family, and then having this kid dropped on his doorstep in the middle of the night after his parents were killed was… I don’t even know if that was an outcome that Vernon could have been paranoid about. Who thinks about that, right?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: I also think that there’s probably a part of him that feels like he’s going to get revealed to the rest of the world. Because how much convincing did it likely take initially from Petunia that this world actually existed, that magic was a real thing? Because he seems like somebody that would never concede to that.
Eric: I mean, that’s an interesting question. I think maybe that’s how they managed to bond over their dislike of Harry. Vernon doesn’t like the situation of having to raise this other kid, and Petunia is like, “Well, he’s family, but also, we don’t need to treat him as such, because I hated my sister and resented her. And so there’s this world, it’s absolutely crazy, but I promise I’m not crazy. I don’t like it, and you don’t have to like it either.” And he’s like, “Oh, this sounds good. Let’s abuse this child.”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: How long do you think it took Petunia to tell Vernon about Lily and the wizarding world? I just don’t see Petunia sharing that on a first date.
Andrew: [laughs] That’s a fun question.
Eric: There was… oh yeah, like, how long were they dating? Because I think… wasn’t there in assorted additional materials the author wrote that Lily and James probably met Petunia and Vernon at least once and it didn’t go well? And the impression that Vernon got distinctly was that James was looking down at him and/or made fun of him? I think that was written somewhere that that happened, and that’s always kind of been my headcanon, is like, oh, there’s sort of an elitist kind of edge to this relationship, where Vernon resents the fact that James… and you know James would kind of have an air of supremacy about the situation, especially if Lily, for instance, told him in advance, “Hey, they don’t really like wizardkind.”
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: James would see that as a challenge.
Andrew: So in writing on Potter-No-More.com – now HarryPotter.com – the author did write that Petunia and Vernon met James, and the couples fell out. Vernon attempted to patronize James by suggesting that wizards live on unemployment benefits, and grew angry when James told him of the solid gold his parents had in the wizarding bank Gringotts.
Laura: Oof.
Eric: Yeah, because of all that shampoo!
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: All that Sleekeazy’s hair potion.
Evalynda: You can definitely see how they align, because it comes from a place of insecurity for both of them, right?
Eric: That’s interesting.
Evalynda: “I’m trying to outshine you because of my own deficiencies,” and I think that’s the one thing that Petunia and Vernon have in common. That’s the one thing that kind of connects them.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: Wow.
Micah: LunarLycan in the Discord said something similar, Evalynda. They said, “Or Vernon loves Petunia very much that when they met, he knew how hurt Petunia is because of her sister, so he’s become overprotective of her.”
Andrew: It’s such a fascinating dynamic.
Eric: Apparently, there’s many ways to read this relationship.
Evalynda: There’s so… that’s why I said that I would definitely need to know more, because there’s so many ways to interpret it. I don’t know if I necessarily see it as overprotection, as more so… sometimes in those type of relationships we fall in line and we dissociate, and we try to put up false pretenses, and we get so far into it, you just kind of keep moving along with it. So I don’t know; I would have to know more.
Andrew: Here’s how the revelation went down, Laura: “She confessed the truth during a tear-stained date, in Vernon’s dark car as they sat overlooking the chip shop where Vernon had just bought them a post-cinema snack. Vernon, as Petunia had expected, was deeply shocked; however, he told Petunia solemnly that he would never hold it against her that she had a freak for a sister, and Petunia threw herself upon him in such violent gratitude that he dropped his battered sausage.”
Eric: I didn’t know this was a whole damn chapter of a book.
Micah: Or a fanfiction. That could go in a totally different direction.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Did you say HarryPotter.com, Andrew? So it’s no longer WizardingWorld.com?
Andrew: Yeah, we talked about this.
Laura: They changed the branding.
Andrew: It was Pottermore, and then WizardingWorld.com, and now it’s HarryPotter.com.
Eric: Yeah, I forgot.
Laura: You know what’s really sad about this? This almost makes me wonder if Petunia loves Vernon because he hates her sister and he chooses Petunia over her sister, and Petunia kind of feels like she’d spent her entire upbringing being second best to Lily.
Eric: Oh, so she’s settling because… that’s interesting.
Evalynda: I can see that, almost like a relationship of convenience. Yeah, and she tolerates him because he chose her. It’s the one person in her life who makes her a priority, in a way.
Eric: Now consider that they’re basically Harry’s parents, for intents and purposes, and Dudley’s mom and dad, and ask why that family has had issues.
Laura: All right, well, we are moving into Order of the Phoenix feedback now, starting with Iris, who wrote in about preparing for Harry’s arrival at Grimmauld Place. Iris says,
“Hi y’all, I was just listening to Episode 679, ‘The Order of the Phoenix.’ You were discussing why the adults didn’t prepare for Harry’s arrival and what to say to him about the status of it all. I was thinking maybe they did, and they have been bickering about in their meetings for the last three days, since they knew Harry would be joining them at Grimmauld Place, but they couldn’t come up with anything they could all agree on. This would explain some of the tension in the room and the way Molly and Sirius suddenly explode. Love the show; thanks as always for the discussions. Iris from Germany (#HufflepuffPride).”
Andrew: I love this theory because it’s clearly a dysfunctional family at Grimmauld Place, and yeah, they are unprepared because they couldn’t all come to an agreement on how to handle Harry once he arrived. Makes sense to me.
Eric: They almost couldn’t even come to an agreement to an agreement to be civil to each other.
Andrew: Yeah, no. Thanks, Iris.
Eric: Thank you.
Micah: We also heard from Ben, who had a question about Seamus Finnigan. He says,
“Hey, MuggleCasters. Based on the episode where you discussed Chapter 11 of Order of the Phoenix, I’d just like to ask ye about Seamus Finnigan. In England you go to secondary school at 11, but here in Ireland you go about 13 or around there. So if Seamus lives in Ireland, what was the excuse they gave to his primary school to say he was no longer going to attend? What do all Irish Hogwarts attendees do about this? Love to hear your thoughts on this, Ben.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I’m wondering… sure, he’s Irish, but I’m wondering if he moved to England with his family, and thus was moving through school differently. I tried to look this up on his Wikipedia. I didn’t really see any information about when he may have moved.
Eric: Yes, it’s all on napkin somewhere you’ve got to look at from the Elephant House.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Wasn’t it confirmed that before kids go to Hogwarts, they’re usually homeschooled?
Eric: I think… well, maybe wizard children are?
Laura: Yeah, no, that’s what I mean, before they go to Hogwarts.
Evalynda: Yeah, so maybe there wasn’t a backstory needed if he was homeschooled.
Eric: Well, it’s interesting because, to Laura’s point, I think, too, how do you just…? Do you disappear from the community? What if the parents are still active members of the community? Their kid is just not… I mean, their kid is very clearly not home, and then also not being taught in any of the schools nearby. Do they always say, “Oh, my son went to boarding school somewhere”?
Laura: Probably? I mean, that’s kind of what the Dursleys do with Harry. They say they’re sending him to St. Brutus’s, whatever. But also, I would think that wizard families and communities… I would imagine that they’re not really invested in the local community that way. They’re not paying property taxes, right?
[Eric laughs]
Laura: So there wouldn’t… there’s not Child Protective Services looking for wizard children, I think.
Eric: Yeah, I just think they can fund the tax man every time he comes to the door to collect.
[Everyone laughs]
Evalynda: Although, there should be CPS in some of these wizarding families.
Eric: Oh, shouldn’t there be? Yes.
Evalynda: The amount of times I would have filed a report on the Dursleys… I mean, they’re not wizarding, but the many reports I probably would have filed, I’m just saying.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Okay, well, now let’s talk about some other definitely very functional families, namely that of the Blacks. This one’s from Katie.
“Hey, MuggleCast! During the most recent chapter discussion, ‘The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black,’ I thought about something that left me frustrated. Throughout the story, when we hear about extended family, they’re almost always dead. The Potters, the Evanses, etc. When looking at the tapestry, Sirius said that Andromeda was his favorite cousin. She’s alive and well. Not only that, her only offspring is ever-present in his home. Why isn’t Sirius connecting more with this part of his family? Especially since his only remaining best friend is getting cozy? Is he not allowed to go visit the Tonks family? Are they not a safe house yet? Why couldn’t Andromeda come to Grimmauld Place? It feels like another example of Dumbledore isolating a troubled person instead of helping provide the support they need. Would love your thoughts; love the show! Katie.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Would Dumbledore do that? Can we really suspect him of doing something like that?
Andrew: Well…
Laura: No.
Eric: Oh, really? I think so. [laughs]
Laura: Oh, sorry. What I meant to say is I can’t see Dumbledore doing this. He does not take that additional half-step to say, “Oh, what could I do to make this person more comfortable right now?”
Eric: Oh, right. What I thought of while reading this was that Sirius is still not… the word of his being a good guy actually is not out yet, so maybe… in certain circles it would be; certainly among the Order it would be, and we know Andromeda is in the Order, at least as of later. But I wonder if maybe Sirius didn’t reach out to his favorite aunt because there was controversy, or maybe just because he’s been so focused on getting Grimmauld Place ready. But I agree; I’d love to have them hang out and have tea together, especially because Tonks sees Sirius on a regular basis.
Andrew: I also think this could very well be something that is happening off page. It’s something we would get on WizardingWorld.com. And we also know Sirius wants to spend a lot of time with his godson, so I think there’s a couple different answers here. But yes, it does seem like this should have been addressed, especially when, like Katie said, Sirius is telling Harry that Andromeda was his favorite cousin, so why don’t you keep in touch, yo? Maybe they write to each other.
Eric: Yeah, maybe.
Micah: Eh…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I feel like given how isolated Sirius was, this would have been a nice way to make him feel a little bit better.
Andrew: Definitely.
Eric: [imitating Dumbledore] “Sirius, go see your cousin.”
Andrew: Maybe Dumbledore was planning on giving him permission next book.
Micah: Oops.
[Andrew and Evalynda laugh]
Laura: I could also see how maybe it’s hard for Sirius to try and make those connections. We have to remember all these fond memories he has of very specific people in his family are from quite a while ago when he was a good bit younger, and he’s been through a lot in that time. He’s probably a completely different person now than he was before he went into Azkaban, so I could see it being really tough to pick up relationships with family members who were close to you before all of that happened to you.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s true.
Evalynda: I mean, the outside world goes on without you, so I can only imagine the challenge it would be to reconnect due to how people are different. So many things change.
Andrew: Agh.
Evalynda: I know; it’s kind of heartbreaking.
Andrew: That’s a sad thought.
Eric: Probably feels left behind.
Andrew: But a great point, though.
Eric: Don’t mind the sound of my breaking heart.
Evalynda: [laughs] I mean, also, too, I can’t imagine all of the oversight of… there’s so much in the air at Grimmauld Place, so many unsaid things, so many feelings, so many people are going through different things. It’s hard to keep track of everything, so kind of like what Laura was saying, I doubt someone is thinking of that, or thinking of comforting him, or what would make him feel better.
Eric: Here’s an interesting addendum from LunarLycan, who says, “Andromeda is not supposed to show her face before Harry sees Bellatrix; otherwise he will be conflicted.” You remember this happens from the other direction when Harry finally meets Andromeda, and she looks like Bellatrix.
Andrew: Ahh.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Eric: And he’s like, “Wait a minute, that face!” But it’s attached to a nice person.
Andrew: All right, well, we are going to regroup after discussing all these feelings, and when we come back, we’re going to talk about our treatment of Arthur. We’ll be right back.
[Ad break]
Andrew: All right, so Marta has some thoughts on our feelings on Arthur in recent episodes.
“Hi, MuggleCasters. I’m writing for the first time, as I usually listen on the run and can’t remember all the things I wanted to tell you. I’m now stuck at home with COVID and enjoy some quiet time when someone else tackles my class of 25 7-year-olds.”
Well, glad you’re getting a break, Marta.
Laura: Feel better.
Andrew: Even when, yeah, you’re battling COVID.
“So what I wanted to share is that you have been much too harsh on Arthur in the last episode! I get it that it can help when you are prone to anxiety to have practice runs of things, but not everyone needs them! I couldn’t even imagine having a wedding rehearsal! I hate rehearsing things; it stresses me out more! I actually reread the chapter and Arthur was giving really reassuring vibes. Yes, he was checking the map a lot, but who isn’t if they are traveling on public transport in a new place or rarely? Harry helping him with the money was surely a planned distraction so he would stop thinking about the hearing for a moment. They were at the Ministry super early and everything went really smoothly. Until the hearing got rescheduled, of course, but that wasn’t Arthur’s fault. Maybe it’s my age or my upbringing in an eastern Europe block country in the ’80s, but I often think you exaggerate the security issues of the magical world.”
Eric: What?!
“Being a wizard or a witch comes with risks, just like being a Muggle teenager. You can’t change this. You need your share of disappointments, worrying, stressing, and taking risks! I speak as a teacher and a mum of two nearly-teenagers. Hogwarts is actually quite well protected. Sure, the security fails many times, but remember it is war time (or the years that directly precede the war) and you can’t protect everyone or predict every scenario in such times. Love listening to you guys and sometimes disagreeing quietly. I need to get my daughter, a huge Harry Potter fan too, hooked. It would be good to exchange thoughts with her.”
Andrew: Yes, Marta, please tell your daughter about us.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I love this.
Andrew: Everybody, be nice. Marta has COVID right now.
Eric: Oh, right.
Andrew: We don’t want to stress her out more.
Eric: Ten days from now, write back again.
[Everyone laughs]
Evalynda: Maybe she…
Micah: This was the episode… oh, go ahead.
Evalynda: I was just going to say, she’s in a COVID haze. She doesn’t know what she’s…
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Oh, no, no.
Eric: Yes, that’s so forgiving!
Evalynda: I’m just kidding.
Andrew: Brain fog.
[Andrew and Evalynda laugh]
Eric: I have serious respect – this is not a joke – I have serious respect for anyone that thinks we overstate something and tells it to us, so that’s great.
Micah: Yeah, well, and I was going to say that this was the episode where mostly I criticized Arthur. So by now, hopefully Marta’s COVID has long passed, and I do love the fact that she says she loves listening but quietly disagreeing.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I think that’s kind of the whole point of doing what we do.
Eric: It is.
Micah: And I just don’t think it would have been fair to analyze that chapter and not criticize some of the things that Arthur was doing, given that he is the adult in the situation.
Eric: I think it was a perfectly fair question. I don’t think we were too mean to him; “Hey, couldn’t there have been a little more prep?” But I also see this perspective, too, and maybe Harry needs those near death experiences to keep his heart pumping.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: Well, and at the end of the day, it’s all a dialogue, right? Even, I mean, on this panel, we disagree with each other all the time.
Eric: No, we don’t. Kidding.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: But to your point, Laura, it is a dialogue, and that’s also why we do these Muggle Mail episodes.
Micah: Yeah, these are a lot of good points.
Andrew: Yeah, they are.
Eric: It is just funny to have a few points like that. Like, “Hogwarts is not overly a security nightmare. Arthur Weasley was not lazy.”
Andrew: And you need security nightmares to instill some fear in these kids and teach them some lessons. I actually kind of agree with that. It’s like, a kid doesn’t know what pain is until he trips and falls, or touches a knife or something.
Eric: You’ve got to fall off your bike before you…
Andrew: Right. On the point about Arthur, I did see this theory brought up somewhere right after we had recorded this episode that Marta is referring to, and the theory was that the reason he’s acting so floored by the Muggle world all the time is to make Harry feel more at home about joining the wizarding world. They’re both entering these new spaces, and that helps Harry feel more at home. I thought that was really sweet.
Evalynda: Aw, I love that.
Andrew: Right?
Evalynda: They’re both just trying new things. Oh, and I do agree with the resilience component, right? We do need to expose ourselves to challenges. However, Hogwarts is still a security nightmare. [laughs]
Eric: Look, there’s… yeah, there’s a little bit of risky behavior, and then there’s mortal danger, and the kids are plunged into mortal danger a lot more often than you would think that they should be.
Laura: Yeah, and I will say, what I appreciate about this email is the perspective that it offers, too, because I know when we’re talking about security nightmare, a lot of that is very tongue-in-cheek. We’re having fun with it, and we’re not actually advocating for Hogwarts to be bulldozed and shut down and everything.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Although…
Laura: But I feel like it is really reminiscent of the time in which we’re discussing these books and these issues, because we’ve got to remember these books were coming out in the ’90s. We know the timeline took place… starts in the ’80s with Lily and James, and goes through the ’90s with Harry and friends being at school. And we should just think about how much more dangerous things were when we were kids. Think about the stuff we were allowed to get into. It was a lot more common for kids in our age group to be autonomous during the day; especially in the summer, we would go out and we would hang with our friends, and we would go wherever it was we wanted to go, and it wasn’t a big deal.
Micah: No cell phones.
Laura: [laughs] Yeah, no cell phones. No means of contacting our parents.
Andrew: If we were out, we were gone. [laughs]
Evalynda: Until the street light came on.
Eric: My dad talks about playing as a kid in a pile of rubble from a factory, and there was mercury metal, which is a heavy metal that’s very toxic.
Laura: Oh, gosh. [laughs]
Eric: Just open from broken thermometers or whatever, and he’s playing with it.
Micah: Cool.
Eric: It honestly explains a lot.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: But yeah, I think there’s also… there’s a point where it’s supposed to be comical. It’s supposed to be a security nightmare because that’s the joke, and the humor of the series and the adventure is that, “Oh no, Harry is…!” So there is that element. But I think what we were going for, I think, in the early days, when this whole security nightmare thing was gaining steam five or six years ago – we just heard that clip on the last Time-Turner – I think it was that as an adult now, we see how much more danger there really was versus when we had the rose-colored glasses of “This is just a fun place to go to school.”
Laura: Exactly.
Eric: That said, none of us are parents, and so to have Marta write in and be like, “You know, as a mom of teens, you’ve got to let them have dangers,” that’s the door swinging the other way, going, “Maybe we are overreacting.”
Micah: But I also think, too, that this email and then the Iris email, it shows that the adults in the series are also fallible, and I don’t know that necessarily on a first read of this series, and when we’re first analyzing this, that that’s something that you pick up on, right? We’re adults now, so as adults, we can see those same missteps that Arthur is making, or that Molly and Sirius and the other members the Order are making in not preparing for Harry to show up, but they’re just as fallible as the rest of us.
Eric: That’s a great point.
Evalynda: Yeah. And I definitely think maybe the kids can see that too. I mean, I do remember even in our own lives, when you come to a point and you realize your parents aren’t perfect.
Eric: Right.
Evalynda: Yeah, it’s right around that age too.
Andrew: Well, we have another email now, and we’re asking Evalynda to read this one. It is a lengthy one, Evalynda.
Evalynda: Okay.
Micah: And if you thought the last one was critical…
Evalynda: I know. Oh my goodness.
[Evalynda and Micah laugh]
Eric: This is good. This is healthy for us. The blood is pounding.
Micah: It is healthy.
Evalynda: Okay. All right, so this one comes from Kneazle Lady on Episode 689.
“After listening to MuggleCast for ages, I was moved to write by SEVERAL comments from this episode. (Sorry!) On the topic of House unity, remember that many classes include students from multiple Houses. If professors wanted to goose up House unity, they would force their students to partner up with members of a different House in their classes. Even if they didn’t do that, spending time with those other House members several hours a week in class seems like a prime opportunity for people to connect/work together. (Just an aside on this topic: I’m thinking of the best and worst matches of Houses for class. The Slytherins often pair with Gryffindor, which makes total sense. I imagine pairing Slytherins with Hufflepuffs might lead to some very tense classroom situations… unfortunately.)
I can’t see Harry either objecting to the way Fred and George experiment on younger students, OR telling Ron and Hermione about the money he gave Fred and George. Remember first under what circumstances he gave the money. Harry ‘won’ the Triwizard that was both rigged for him, and led to the death of another student. He feels the money is tainted, AND he doesn’t need it. Far from believing he’s done a noble thing by giving his friends seed money for their business, he’s inoculating himself and the money against what it stands for. He’s ashamed to have the money, and glad to be rid of it. Telling Ron and Hermione seems out of character for Harry, and also brings back all the issues surrounding how the money came to him in the first place. That’s not somewhere Harry wants to go, especially at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix.
Also, the only way I can see it occurring to Harry to address the use of first-years as test subjects would be for him to go directly to Fred and George. ‘Hey, mate, maybe go easy on the testing when you don’t know the risks, okay?’ What in Harry’s character or past actions provides any evidence that he would (depending on your point of view) narc on his friends, or seek counsel from, say, a teacher about anything?
Finally, Ron the prefect: I agree that Dumbledore gave him the job to help him grow up. However, as with so much else at Hogwarts, there’s no guidance on how to do the job, and certainly none on how to get people your own age and younger to listen to what you have to say. Maybe every prefect should have a prefect from the previous year as a buddy or guide! No, that makes too much sense. Never mind. Love the show!”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: That’s great. Yeah, like a mentor. I like that idea. Well, and I love the point, too, that Harry won the Triwizard Tournament winnings, but since it was rigged and it led to the death of Cedric, he feels that the money is tainted and that he doesn’t need it, so that was a really good point there. All good points, really. Appreciate the feedback.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: All right, well, now we have some feedback we received on social media. Clara said,
“Hot take: There’s a good case for Harry deserving prefect. Part of being a leader is not being afraid to be assertive and stand up for the little guy. Harry does that more than anyone, starting in Book 1 when he stands up for Neville versus Malfoy.”
Eric: Aw.
Andrew: Realfishchi – something like that – said,
“I loved the coverage, but find you treat Sirius very unfairly. He was unfairly in prison for 12 years without a trial, lost his best friend(s), and then had to be on the run for a year, and now is cooped up and listening to Snape teasing him while being worried about Harry. He never had a proper chance at coping and healing, so Molly’s treatment and comments were way out of line and awful.”
Andrew: And now, this interesting observation from Jennifer: “I heard Hogwarts flying lessons described as equivalent to horse riding lessons at posh boarding schools (making Quidditch like polo, and only those who can afford brooms/horses can compete.”
Laura: Oof.
Andrew: I like it.
Eric: Yeah, this is recent that this idea was brought to us about how exclusive it is, and really loving the discomfort that that brings thinking about it.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s so unfair that you can have an advantage in the game by having a better broom, like we see Lucius buy all the Slytherins the brooms.
Eric: Yeah, this is one of the newest emotions I’ve felt about these books that I’ve read so many times, so I’m really loving it.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: I’m like, “Oh, Quidditch is problematic.”
Andrew: And finally, Jenna W. said, “Have you discussed that the wizarding world only has a fifth grade math and reading education? Sure, they can fly a broom, but who balances the books?” Good point.
Eric: What books? Just make more books.
Micah: The goblins.
Eric: Yeah, oh, right.
Evalynda: Good point.
Eric: They’ve outsourced the whole books thing to other races.
Andrew: Well, that’s the math side, but what about reading? Yeah, maybe there’s some extended reading courses. What are those called?
Eric: Their newspapers have pictures, so they don’t…
Micah: That move.
Eric: Yeah, they’ll talk to you, too.
Andrew: It’d be cool if you can point your wand at a book or the Daily Prophet and be like, “Read this to me.”
Evalynda: Oh, I would love that.
Eric: Oh, yeah, like “The cow says…” And then you point your wand and it goes, “Moo.”
[Andrew and Evalynda laugh]
Laura: I feel like something like that must exist.
Evalynda: Could you program it to play different voices as it reads?
Andrew: That would be cool.
Laura: Yeah, it’d be a good idea. I mean, it feels like an accessibility thing. Yeah, I don’t know why they wouldn’t have it.
Eric: “Audiobookicus” or something.
Lynx Line
Laura: All right, well, now we are going to move into our Lynx Line, which is our newest benefit on Patreon where we ask a question specifically for our Slug Club level patrons every week to feature their answers on the show. Thank you so much to everyone who supports us at Patreon.com/MuggleCast for answering this week’s question, which is about y’all’s biggest takeaways from Chapters 6 through 12 of Order of the Phoenix. We want to know if you have any additional takeaways that maybe we haven’t talked about on the show, anything that you think we might have completely missed or glossed over. So I’m going to go ahead and dive in with Emily’s response here. Emily says,
“My biggest takeaway has been the relevance to real life, in particular, the way the Daily Prophet is seeking to control information. As silly as it may sound, TikTok is a major source of news and information for a lot of people, and the recent (although brief) ban reminds me a lot of how the Ministry was seeking to control the public. Even more so when TikTok came back and a message was shown thanking a man who wasn’t even president yet. On a separate note – OWLs and all the teachers warning kids about them definitely reminds me of preparing for state testing as a teacher.”
Eric: Oooh.
Laura: Great callouts there, yeah. The TikTok stuff feels… to be honest with you, the timing of Order of the Phoenix right now is just, like, chef’s kiss.
Eric: I thought it was good last time we did this book. It’s even better – worse, question mark? – now.
Andrew: And this is why I personally… I think I speak for everyone when I say this is why we enjoy doing Chapter by Chapter again, because we’re talking about these books and how they relate to our present-day lives as adults in this current world that we live in, so it’s just very interesting to see the different messages that we get out of these books as we age and reread them.
Evalynda: Honestly, it just hits too close to home, but it just shows how we can apply cultural context to how we interpret the books now. Just gives it a deeper meaning.
Eric: Yeah, it’s the mark of a wide enough… the world needed to be wide enough to begin with, or the books needed to be just deep enough to facilitate this type of thing. But they are, and they have been, and so the fact that we go back to this 20 years later and still are finding things speaks to the quality and the depth of the source material.
Evalynda: Definitely.
Eric: Here is a message on our Lynx Line from Rachel, who says,
“My biggest takeaway has to do with the Hogwarts education system and how we don’t actually see much teaching. There’s no ‘I do, we do, you do’ from what we can see…”
I assume that’s a teacher thing.
“… nor is there corrective instruction. Maybe that’s more standard in the UK, especially in the early 2000s, for professors to talk at students rather than to them, but it doesn’t seem like a healthy learning environment. We see McGonagall and Sprout model how to do things, and Lupin, but that may be it. Loving the deep dive coverage, and look forward to each new episode!”
So is that a teacher thing? The “I do, we do, you do”?
Micah: Maybe in the UK it is.
Eric: Well, what strikes me is that I did my first year of college abroad in New Zealand, which is also a British style of education, and it was all lecture-based. Nearly all of it was “Go in this room, sit for an hour,” and if the teacher was good, you would get notes that were what you were going to be tested on. But it was a totally different style than what I’d had up to that point, and so I wonder if it isn’t, in fact, as Rachel is suggesting, that Hogwarts and the more British style is a lot more of that… maybe dry in the wrong hands. Nevertheless, teachers talking at you instead of to you.
Micah: It feels like it builds a little bit off of what we were talking about last week, too, with Snape and his approach to teaching students, and I know I hit on him pretty hard saying that I didn’t think that he was a very good teacher, so Rachel proves my point. Anyway, Jennifer is going to bring us home. She says,
“My biggest takeaways from Chapters 6-12 include the themes of friendship, the introduction of Dolores Umbridge, and the unfairness of the entire trial of Harry. While Harry was rightfully angry and upset by the injustice of his expulsion and being left in the dark of what is happening in the wizarding world, I feel that Dumbledore showed more confidence in Harry right after the Triwizard Tournament. Harry felt isolated from Ron and Hermione, and was jealous of the time they had spent without him. The expulsion and the thought of losing his one true home loomed over him. It takes some time for him to overcome his feelings, but Ron and Hermione stick by him. Now, Dolores Umbridge – what a character. She may be equally as evil as Lord Voldemort, and she isn’t even a Death Eater. She’s the sneakiest wizard in the books. Definitely one of the most polarizing characters introduced in the series. The trial in front of the entire Wizengamot was so over-the-top as to be absurd. Why did the Ministry see fit to intimidate a 15-year-old kid? It was underage magic. Blowing up Aunt Marge had bigger implications than the Patronus. Dudley knew Harry was a wizard; Aunt Marge did not. Just wanted to say that your Chapter by Chapter coverage has been great. Thank you.”
Andrew: Thanks, Jennifer.
Eric: Yeah, I loved hearing that. Similarly, the listener that wrote in and said that she started hearing us during our Chapter by Chapter of Goblet of Fire. That was so recently! People are still finding us, and they still find what we do exciting.
Andrew: I know. Warms our hearts. [imitating Dumbledore] “After all this time.” Yeah, and I think reading some of Jennifer’s thoughts reminds me that – getting back to a point I was making – when we get older I think some of these things that Jennifer was bringing up outrage us a lot as we get older. It’s like, “Well, I’m an adult now. I can’t imagine being this way to a child.” Whereas when we were a child, maybe we could have expected it more, simply because we didn’t know what it was like to be an adult. So now we’ve seen both; we’ve lived both sides of this experience – as a reader, at least.
Eric: [laughs] Right, we’re looking backwards at these adults in the books going, “That’s not how you adult.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: As if we know, but we have more of a foothold on it than we used to.
Andrew: Right, right. And how we’d like to think how we know how we would treat children, and it’s better than how Harry and company are being treated in this book and other books, like with Snape, too.
Micah: But that does it for the feedback. Always enjoy these episodes.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s fun to get everybody’s feedback. And thanks, Micah, for rounding up the feedback, and thank you, listeners, for submitting so much great feedback. Even if we didn’t read yours today on air, we do read it all behind the scenes, and like I said, we do love receiving and reading all of it. And don’t forget, concerning the Lynx Line – the little segment we just did there – you can participate in that benefit every week by becoming a member at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. It’s one of many perks on our Patreon, and your support is a huge help. And if you have any feedback about today’s discussions or any future Chapter by Chapter discussions, you can contact us by emailing or sending a voice memo recorded on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com. And next week, we’ll get back to Chapter by Chapter; we’ll dive into Order of the Phoenix Chapter 13, “Detention with Dolores.” Eugh.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Quizzitch is taking a break this week; it’ll be back next week. Check out our other weekly podcasts, What the Hype?! and Millennial, for more pop culture and real world talk from the four MuggleCasters. Coming soon on What the Hype?!, we’ll discuss the newest season of Outlander, and talk about cozy video games, and over on Millennial, we’re discussing the early moves by the Trump administration, and discussing things we were told as kids that turned out to be lies. Food pyramid, anyone? Remember the classic food pyramid?
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: Or being told that if you swallowed gum, it was going to stay in your stomach for seven years?
Eric: I’m still waiting for that gum tree.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Free gum, everybody.
Andrew: These shows are brought to you by Muggles like you; listener support is the only reason we’ve been able to podcast for 20 years, and there’s many great ways to help us out. I brought up a couple of them today. MuggleMillennial.etsy.com is where you can find the MuggleCast beanie and socks in a combo pack for their lowest price yet. Let us help you stay warm this winter, and you’ll also be helping the show. Apple Podcasts subscribers can sign up for MuggleCast Gold, which gets you instant access to ad-free and early releases of MuggleCast every week, plus two bonus MuggleCast installments every month. And I’ve mentioned the Patreon a couple times, so I won’t get into the details again, but Evalynda, thank you so much for being a supporter of MuggleCast for many years now. And thank you so much for all of your thoughtful analysis today.
Evalynda: Thank you guys for having me. This has truly been something special, so thank you.
Eric: Aww.
Andrew: Oh, thank you. Well, listeners, if you enjoy the show and think other Muggles would too, tell a friend about the show, and we would appreciate a five star review in your favorite podcast app; that helps us spread the word as well. Last but not least, visit MuggleCast.com for transcripts, social media links, our full episode archive, our favorite episodes, and more. All right, thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Evalynda: And I’m Evalynda.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
Laura: Bye, y’all.
Eric and Micah: Bye.