Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #374, The Department of Mysteries
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 374. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Andrew: We’re joined by one of our Slug Club members this week over on Patreon. Hi, Sarah.
Sarah: Hi, guys.
Andrew: How are you doing? Where are you hailing from?
Sarah: I am in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania right now.
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Eric: Wilkes Barre! Good old Wilkes Barre.
[Sarah laughs]
Andrew: Well, welcome to the show. Thanks for your support.
Sarah: Thank you.
Andrew: And I think we have a fun episode for everybody today. We’re going to be talking about the Department of Mysteries and the prophecy, to wrap up a month of Order of the Phoenix-themed discussions. And we have a little bit of news to discuss as well, some drama in the fandom. Uh-oh.
Micah: What’d you do, Andrew?
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: Not this week. No trouble by me this week. But first, let’s get Sarah’s fandom ID, learn a little bit about her. What’s your favorite book, movie, Hogwarts House, Ilvermorny House, and Patronus? Please say it in all one breath.
Sarah: Okay, here we go. Favorite book Prisoner of Azkaban, Order of the Phoenix, Gryffindor, Pukwudgie, and basset hound.
Andrew: Okay. Thank you. And where were you for the midnight release of Order of the Phoenix?
Sarah: I wasn’t allowed to go. It was always timed around the night before my family and I would leave for vacation, so the only midnight book release I ever made it to was Deathly Hallows.
Andrew: Okay. Well, if you’re going to attend one, I guess that’s probably the one to go to.
Sarah: Yeah, I had to put my foot down and say, “I’m going! I have to!”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So wait, were you on a family vacation during each of these? Is that what you were saying?
Sarah: Yeah, so we would always leave the next day, so my parents would be like, “You are not staying out till midnight and then getting up early the next morning and getting in the car.”
Eric: That’s really unfortunate, because Book 5 was in June. Book 6 was the end of July. It just seems like… I don’t know. They had it in for you.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a weird coincidence. I was going to say maybe your parents just purposely did that to keep you from going out.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: “Oh, the family vacation is… when is the J.K. Rowling book coming out? Okay, that day.”
Sarah: [laughs] They were secretly trolling MuggleNet just to know.
Andrew: Right, right. [laughs] Anyway, thanks for joining us today. Have you ever attended any official or unofficial fan events?
Sarah: Other than book releases and just random parties… well, yeah, I guess book releases would be considered unofficial fan events. And gone to trivia nights and such. So there’s just a sprawling amount of unofficial fan events out there that you could go to.
Andrew: Yeah. Oh my God, imagine if they started cracking down on trivia nights. That would be the worst, Eric. What would we do?
Sarah: They’d be coming for me.
[Micah and Sarah laugh]
News
Andrew: So there’s this report in The Associated Press about a week ago about Warner Bros. cracking down on unofficial fan events. There have been a few popping up, across America at least, over the past few years. As we all know, Harry Potter is still massively popular, and people are looking to celebrate near their hometown. So Warner Bros. is now saying it’s necessary to halt unauthorized commercial activity. One example is one that takes place in Chestnut Hill; that’s in the Philadelphia area. Philip Dawson, the Chestnut Hill business director, said “Warner Bros. reached out to his group in May, letting them know new guidelines prohibit festivals’ use of any names, places, or objects from the series. That ruled out everything from the meet-and-greet with Dumbledore and Harry to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.” This fan event had those types of things, and now they can’t do that. So at first they were thinking they might shut down, but then there was a follow-up report. This particular event in Chestnut Hill is going to change its name to “Wands and Wizards.” [laughs]
Eric: There you go. They found some words that weren’t copyrighted, I guess.
Andrew: Yeah. What do we think about this? Is Warner Bros. reaching too far?
Eric: Well, Chestnut Hill in particular has been massively popular, and I have never been, but I’ve heard about it. You always hear about entire families going and having a wonderful time. This was its eighth year. This was going to be its eighth year; this is not something that just sprung up yesterday, and the timing is a bit concerning to me that Warner Bros. is all of a sudden cracking down or making these changes. It makes me wonder if they’re going to stop at festivals or go on to podcasts and other things that happen to currently be out there. So I saw this, and I yelled “Fire,” and quick grabbed my extinguisher.
Micah: So this is the last episode of MuggleCast, by the way.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: We’re not going to make it to quadricentennial existence, or even 375.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: Well, thanks to things like free speech, we’re allowed to talk about Harry Potter, but back in the early days – some of our oldest listeners might remember – Warner Bros. actually didn’t like the album art that we were using, because we were using the Half-Blood Prince book cover, and they actually got us and PotterCast removed from the iTunes store for a short while.
Sarah: Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Andrew: And then we don’t know what happened exactly, but we did get restored.
Micah: J.K. Rowling.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: No clue who was involved. But we’ve definitely been concerned about our Patreon, for example, over the past couple years, because I feel like if Warner Bros. wanted to, they could probably come for us, and they haven’t yet. And this is also, by the way, why we launched Pickle Pack all those years ago, because we were selling T-shirts with “MuggleCast” on them, and Warner Bros. eventually cracked down on that. So we were like, “Fine, we’re going to do something. We’re going to make money a different way.” So we launched Pickle Pack. [laughs] And we called it Pickle Pack because there’s no words like “Muggle” in that title.
Eric: Yeah, they don’t own “pickles.”
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Muggle, pickle… yeah, it’s all the same. I just wonder why now, right? So we’re several years after books and movies have been released; I know Fantastic Beasts is a whole ‘nother conversation. But do Warner Bros. really care? I mean, I think at the end of the day, they’re still very comfortable with the amount of money that they’re making from this franchise; it’s billions and billions of dollars, and certainly a fan fest in Chestnut Hill is not taking away from their bottom line. At the very end of the day, this is minimal amounts of money compared to what they’ve made from this franchise, and I would think they would want fans to keep the spirit alive, right? To not let it just trickle down and go off into the sunset, not that that’s ever going to happen with this series. But we’re, what, 11 years after the last book has been released, and the movies is, what, five or six years? So I just think that they’re doing themselves a disservice, and honestly, it’s bad press for them. So I think they just… there are certain situations, of course, where they should step in, and they have every right to, but I don’t think this is one of them.
Eric: Well, they’re updating the guidelines, is what the article said is what Warner Bros. told Chestnut Hill. I mean, if they’re having events that say “Meet Harry Potter” and “Meet Albus Dumbledore,” sure, I can see how that would be a problem. It’s reasonable that some rando out there thinks it’s going to actually be Albus Dumbledore, an officially-sanctioned-by-Warner-Bros. character, when it’s not, right? So I think Warner Bros. needed to step in at some point. Because I’m 100% in support of festivals occurring that celebrate these books. I’m 100% in support of families coming. I mean, that’s what this is, at the end of the day; it’s a family event.
Micah: But didn’t you do one not that long ago? You dressed up as Lockhart?
Eric: Yeah, for Aurora, Illinois, which is also mentioned in this article from Philly Voice. Aurora, Illinois had to change their Harry Potter festival between last year and this year almost entirely, and it was another one of those situations where the entire town is involved. Businesses are banding together to recreate themselves in it with a Harry Potter edge, and it’s cool. And do they make money? Honestly, yes, they do, from foot traffic. They make money. But it’s in a spirit that I think is vital to the community, not over “Let’s all screw Warner Bros. out of a buck.” I mean…
Sarah: If I were Warner Bros., I would encourage that spirit.
Eric: Yeah, but they’re going to make us call it rinky dink wizard festival, wands and boats and… [laughs]
Andrew: I think maybe these events have gotten too popular, because one of these in this AP article… well, actually, the Chestnut Hill one got 45,000 fans last year. That’s huge. And then another one in Ithaca, New York, I guess, got 20,000 fans, so that’s a big event to do for a brand without official endorsement. And maybe Warner Bros. is seeing how popular these got and realized, “Well, other towns are going to look at this and be like, ‘Oh, crap, we need to launch our own as well,'” and then before you know it, there’s hundreds of Harry Potter events going on around the country.
Eric: I mean, I think it’s fairly predictable that they’d be centered on or around book anniversaries or Harry’s birthday or… I don’t know. I just think there’s probably a better way to… if Warner Bros. were to say, “So, you want to do a Harry Potter festival,” and release a public guideline. Like CBS, in fact, recently… if you remember the big Star Trek: Axanar controversy, there was this fan film that crowdfunded itself to be able to make a couple of new Star Trek episodes that were unofficial, but they used fan funds to actually build a movie studio, like a proper Hollywood-style movie studio, millions of dollars, and the quality was going to be so close to actual TV production quality that CBS said, “Wait a minute, no, this can be confused for official product. You can’t do it.” And so they set out guidelines that were very bullet pointed about what can and can’t be in a fan production. That’s what I want from Warner Bros. for these festivals. They don’t own every word we would like to use in the… “Wands and Wizards,” thank God, they can still use that, but things like “wizarding” or “Harry Potter festival” or “Muggle,” I think they need to really lay down what is and what isn’t okay, so that we all understand. Transparency will get them out of this hole where they’re seen as just these trolls that come out and ruin a good time for families. And that’s what I love about this Philly Voice article; the headline photo is these two little boys with scars on their forehead, looking a little bit upset.
Andrew: You’re breaking the kids’ hearts!
Sarah: [laughs] Yeah, and exactly; you could turn it around into a positive so easily, just by offering guidelines as far as the brand rather than going right in and shutting it down.
Andrew: Yeah, and maybe ask for a cut. “You want to use our stuff? Fine, give us 10%.”
Eric: It’s licensing, yeah. Although, actually, that’s the agreement they had with Aurora, I think it is. They asked for… I don’t want to misquote it, but it was something like 33% of proceeds or something.
Andrew: 33%? We’re giving Warner Bros. 50% from our Patreon!
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Damn. We need to renegotiate.
Eric: I’m cutting that out. [laughs]
Andrew: Why? It’s a joke. Warner Bros., don’t you dare ask for us to rebrand our Patreon. We got the Pickle Pack graphics ready to go. We will change it.
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: [sighs] I will say, though, the first person I thought of asking when this came out was Heidi Tandy, who’s a longtime friend of the show and fandom intellectual property lawyer. She knows all about this stuff. It turns out our friends over at the Hogwarts Radio podcast have beat us to it, and she is their guest for their 200th episode of their podcast, because I’m sure they get in deep over what actually is the law.
Andrew: We have so much to get to today, but first, it’s time to tell you about this week’s sponsor, Blue Apron.
[Ad break]
Main Discussion: The Department of Mysteries
Andrew: So it’s time for our main discussion about the Department of Mysteries and the prophecy. It has been, like I said, 15 years since Order of the Phoenix was released, and to celebrate, all this past month we’ve been holding Order of the Phoenix discussions. So first of all, to start this discussion, just a brief recap of what the Department of Mysteries is. It is one of the most mysterious areas in the wizarding world; I think that’s fair to say. And the prophecy is the most crucial element to Harry’s story, the reason that this is all happening. Harry repeatedly sees the Department of Mysteries and the Hall of Prophecies through his connection with Voldemort through the course of Order of the Phoenix, and we as readers are wondering, “What is this? What is this? Is this real? Is he just having a dream?” Little do we know that Voldemort is manipulating him. And this was, of course, depicted on the cover of the US Harry Potter book, of the US edition of Order of the Phoenix. The Department of Mysteries is a place where wizards study the world’s most difficult questions. The people who work there are called Unspeakables, as they are not allowed to talk about their work, adding to the mysteriousness of it all. And in Order of the Phoenix, we basically fly through the Department of Mysteries. We don’t get to spend as much time there as we may have wanted, and due to the fast-paced nature of the scene, we just get very few details. So that’s why we’re talking about it today, to try to figure out some of those details. We’re going to focus on the rooms. We do get a glimpse into some of them, but there are other rooms we don’t get to hear about at all, so actually, at the end of today’s discussion, we will see what some of our listeners think could be in those other doors. Let’s start with the brain room. So presumably, this is the study of the human mind, why it’s so complicated. Is that what you guys think the brain room would serve?
Eric: Could be.
Sarah: I think also memory, because when they fly out, they do have that trail of… it looks like movie film, of memories. So there could be some study of memory and the mind in that way as well.
Eric: I just get the feeling that some of these rooms might work together as well, based on what we saw of the time room, but I can talk about that later. I don’t know if it also might… they might study the mind/body problem, like what the mind’s relationship is to the soul, or what is consciousness? Having a bunch of… the room is basically a long rectangle room with this tank and a couple of desks, and I just really wonder… it’s just not apparent. This is how, 15 years later, we don’t have an answer to this. We never went back, and it’s very kind of just creepy. It’s like body horror. They think they’re fish floating around in the tank, and nope, it’s brains.
Andrew: It is very disturbing because you also wonder where they got these brains from. Is this like a donor situation? An organ donor situation? Could they be extracting the brains of bad wizards and good wizards and comparing the different brains? Are they looking at the brain power? Would they want to see a brain like Voldemort’s and see why he’s such a powerful wizard, or in that line of thinking, why Dumbledore is such a powerful wizard?
Micah: Possibly. And what I find interesting about all of these rooms is they’re things that we want answers to, right? If you look at all of these different rooms that J.K. Rowling created within the Department of Mysteries, they’re things that we currently are studying and don’t really have a whole lot of answers to, right? Whether it’s the brain, or whether it’s love, whether it’s death, and we all have these questions about how does the brain function? And how are we able to solve and cure for different diseases? Perhaps that’s something that they’re looking at within this room as well.
Andrew: I do it find it interesting half of these rooms are studied by Muggles, but the other half aren’t. Like the veil room, death; I don’t know if that’s really studied by Muggles. The Hall of Prophecies, obviously, that’s a very wizarding world thing. And then the time room. I don’t think…
Micah: Time, planets… well, no, I think there are certain scientists that study time and history and astronomy.
Eric: Absolutely.
Sarah: And philosophically we approach death.
Eric: Yeah, there’s all realms of thought. The crazy thing is when you get into quantum physics, and it’s science, but you end up… all the subjects of study become one. They all become the same thing. When you are studying the planets, but then all of a sudden you’re talking about the planets over time and how a planet formed, or when you get to the subatomic level, where there’s particles that don’t even behave according to time, it’s all one thing. But these different areas of study, it just excites me, because I think that wizards would probably have, I don’t know, a little bit more of a foothold on some of this stuff because of what they’re able to discern from their magic. I’m not suggesting wizards solved it, but maybe Harry or Hermione or somebody who worked at the Ministry later… and Hermione as Minister might have been able to just ask an Unspeakable – maybe they can tell the Minister what they’re up to – and really get some answers on this stuff, because it’s such a tease of J.K. Rowling to take us to these rooms, and we don’t really have any answers – besides what we know about the prophecy in the end – about how relevant it was.
Micah: But I think that’s the point, though, is that there aren’t supposed to be answers to these questions, because J.K. Rowling herself doesn’t know what the answer is in a lot of these different cases, and so I think that’s why it was so often… or that’s why it was left open to interpretation by the reader, and that’s probably why we as readers didn’t really come back here.
Andrew: I do have one theory. I think these two areas connect. I think when you pass through the veil, your brain is automatically removed and placed in that brain tub.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Because we don’t know anything about the veil. We don’t know anything about the brain room. It makes sense to me; if you’re dumb enough to walk through that mysterious curtain, we need to study your brain and figure out what the heck is wrong with you.
Eric: I’m thinking about that Steve Martin movie, The Man with Two Brains, where the brains are talking, and he puts a woman’s brain in his body and there’s… I don’t know; there’s some joke about it…
Andrew: Is there a veil?
Eric: … but it’s kind of weird; the brains are just… they creep me out. And when they attack Ron, or when Ron is scarred by them, it’s very interesting, and just kind of this whole… all of these rooms are slightly sinister, I think, which is very… it works to set the mood, but otherwise is very kind of creepy, and I want to move through it as quickly as this group did.
Andrew: Well, yeah. I do wonder, though, does the wizarding public know that brains are extracted and held here? I think what’s creepy about it most of all is that they kind of just float in a glass case. They’re not stored. [laughs] They’re just hanging out.
Sarah: And all these wizards in desks just look at them all day.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: I like that they’re roaming free like fish. It’s kind of like there’s… it strikes me as to prove that they’re still alive, right? Like somehow wizards have managed to separate a brain from a body and the brains still survive. That’s definitely something scientists are working on right today with cryogenics and things like that. Can you separate the brain from the body in the case of the body falling apart? And can you transfer it and put it…? Looks like wizards found a way to do that, so it’s kind of cool.
Andrew: I do wonder if there’s a Pensieve kind of thing going on here as well. Are they extracting memories and studying people’s memories to get a better hold of history, perhaps?
Eric: Yeah. Well, the question about donors, it was asked by George and Kevin on Twitter as well, and I certainly hope it is consensual. Although Kevin also suggests maybe the brains in this tub are from all the people who went Wormtaily on Cursed Child.
Andrew: That is very rude. I don’t appreciate that.
Sarah: They’re coming for you, Andrew.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I don’t appreciate that. I’m locking my brain. I’m going to get cremated. Anybody here, would you be willing to have your brain donated to the Department of Mysteries?
Sarah: I don’t know what they’re doing with it, so I don’t know. Probably not. [laughs]
Andrew: Sounds like a resounding no. [laughs] I am an organ donor, though, on my ID.
Eric: Well, good. That’s saving lives.
Andrew: And yeah, I wouldn’t mind if it my brain went to the brain room. That’d be cool. I’d podcast from the other side.
Eric: That would be awesome.
Andrew: “Hey guys, I finally found out what happens in the brain room.”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: “But Andrew, you’re dead.” [laughs] All right, let’s move on to the death chamber and the veil. Definitely a very interesting and critical part of this scene. Of course, it’s where Sirius dies. [weeps] When we first are introduced to it, Harry is actually drawn to it. J.K. Rowling writes that Harry had “a very strong inclination” to walk through it, and he gazes at it for a period of time and is mesmerized to the point where he’s not paying attention to Hermione. Hermione is trying to talk to him, but Harry is just staring at it. I’m wondering, does the veil have magical properties that draw somebody in? Why is he so drawn by it? Is it just like, “Oh, that’s pretty to watch,” like a fountain, or is there something else going on?
Eric: For me, the idea that there’d be this physical veil, this barrier in between two ancient stone pillars, is kind of J.K. Rowling’s way of making something that’s clearly a metaphor literal. The barrier between life and death has been described historically as like a veil, passing through the veil, shuffle off the mortal coil, going through… in the wizarding world, because of course wizards would be studying life and death, she’s made it a literal veil. There’s a magical force barrier that’s between these two pillars, and it’s in some room on a stone dais. But it’s supposed to be a metaphor, it’s supposed to be just whatever it is, but I think this is very much a method by which wizards can study life and death, but particularly the other side.
Andrew: And how do you think they study the other side, then? You think they can access it? Or come back?
Eric: That’s a good question. It’s the same way that I would say we probably study… now I’m thinking of Stranger Things, but going into the other side with a protective suit on, or throwing something through, sending probes through… maybe not people, because we see what happens to Sirius; he doesn’t come back. But I would imagine, either through volunteers or through spells or some kind of practical physical testing, they’re seeing or maybe just recording what the whispers are to kind of try and decipher what’s going on on the other side, or what the world of the afterlife or the unknown really is.
Andrew: [whispering] “There’s nothing over here. Stop your research. Don’t worry about it.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: What do you think, Micah?
Micah: I think that Harry hears what he hears, and Luna as well, because they’ve experienced death, right? And the others maybe not as much, at least not to this point. And so it’s kind of the same thing as the Thestrals; they can see them because they’ve seen somebody pass. And Harry, more so than anybody else, has had some pretty traumatic experiences in his life. So it’s just… I also wonder, and this reminds me of… I don’t know what episode it was; I’m going to have to look it up. But I feel like we’ve talked about this a little bit. Was the Ministry constructed around this? Or how is this even built? That’s what I wonder.
Sarah: Yeah, was it there first? Or did they bring it in from somewhere?
Micah: Right, and who would be powerful enough to almost create something like this?
Andrew: Well, yeah. I don’t think the veil was there.
Eric: Well, if it wasn’t there, it was built.
Andrew: Well… hmm. Yeah, okay. Well, what I’m saying is I don’t think they built the Department of Mysteries around the veil. Is that what you were asking?
Eric: Well, yeah, because if that’s just where this happened… because you can’t transport it, presumably.
Andrew: Right. Oh. Well, maybe. I would guess that they discovered it somewhere and transported it, but I could also completely support the argument that they somehow built this. Some ancient wizard.
Micah: Because it’s amphitheater-like, right? That’s how it’s described in the books.
Eric: An amphitheater?
Andrew: Yeah, it’s on a dais.
Eric: Yeah, it reminds Harry of the courtrooms. It’s almost like it is a more ancient room than the other ones. I love that old theory about everything being built around it. But yeah, it’s just… maybe that’s just the nexus, or the hub where the actual portal is. So maybe as you die, you’re transported to wizarding London to pass through. Or if it’s just one of many openings, one of many holes in the layer between realms that exist. Maybe other Ministries of Magic have the portal as well.
Andrew: Thankfully, Hermione talks Harry out of getting too close to it, or potentially walking through it.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Hermione does tell Harry that she has a very bad feeling about it, and as a reader rereading it, you know what going through it means, so it is stressful rereading it that second time, because you worry about Harry. [laughs]
Eric: Harry is definitely… Harry wants to jump through it. He wants to do a cannonball. He’s interested… and you read it and you’re like, “Oh, Harry loves to die. Okay, great.”
[Sarah laughs]
Andrew: This is the trio; they like putting themselves into danger. They like exploring things that they shouldn’t, and this could have been a massive mistake. Sarah, what do you think of the veil and the death chamber?
Sarah: I think it’s definitely interesting, and I wish we revisited it later in the books. There were a couple of things that rereading it it reminded me of. The way that the veil moves felt a bit Dementor-like, the way that Dementors are described, and of course, the way that they are portrayed in the movie. And I thought that the way Harry is drawn in was somewhat similar – obviously, it’s another side of the coin – but somewhat similar to the way that the Mirror of Erised kind of draws him in as well.
Andrew: So do you think there’s somehow a connection there between the Dementors and the veil?
Sarah: I think it could be possible either that the veil was based on the Dementors, or that they sprang from it, because they stand at a really strange point of this veil between life and death. They remove your soul. Well, what becomes of your soul once it’s removed from your body? Is that dying or not?
Andrew: Yeah. Can we just close up the veil and never have any more Dementors to worry about? What if that’s the source of them?
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: I feel like if you close up the veil, people can no longer die or pass on to the other realm.
Andrew: Really? You think it’s that powerful? It’s controlling death?
Eric: Well, as a representation. It has to exist so that people can pass through. I don’t know. It’s so interesting; I’m thinking of Greek myths now, where the hero goes to the underworld and comes back. But what Sarah was saying about Dementors… I remember Dementors were a made creature, weren’t they? They weren’t naturally occurring? I’m not suggesting wizards made them, but I seem to recall somewhere… and now I’m frantically looking it up on the Wikia about how they came to be. But I could definitely see them coming out of the veil or having their cloak being made of the same material.
Andrew: Yeah. You do bring up some good connections, Sarah. And by the way, this brings up another question about security at the Department of Mysteries, but we’re going to save that for the end of this discussion, because it was way too easy for them to almost kill themselves.
Sarah: 100%.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: But as for what’s beyond the veil, do you think it’s just black emptiness? Sorry to say his name in this moment.
Eric: Oh, too soon. Too soon, Andrew.
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: Do you think it would be…? The alternative is it’s an opposite world, where it’s like the Upside Down in Stranger Things?
[Eric and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: Not necessarily, but I wonder if the whispers are suggesting that there is a sort of middle area that these people might be in, and they’re all kind of hanging out, stuck in perpetual nothingness.
Eric: Maybe it’s a giant library, and everyone’s saying, “Shhh.”
Andrew: Yeah, no, I don’t… I just feel like the whispers kind of suggest that all these people end up in a different place other than death.
Sarah: Like a wizard purgatory?
Andrew: Right, but that would be just as bad as death, because you’re just stuck there. It’s not like you’re in the Upside Down or anywhere else, I don’t think. You’d just be in a boxed room.
Eric: Well, and we think of all the other times we’ve been in purgatory in this book or in this book series, like Harry with King’s Cross, where Dumbledore doesn’t recognize what it is because it’s different for everybody. And Harry says, “Oh, this is King’s Cross,” and then Dumbledore was like, “Oh, so it is.” But it’s this purgatory which so few people must actually get to, that gives them the opportunity to go on or fall back. It strikes me as being deeply personal, but Harry hears more than one whisper coming through the veil. So it is very interesting.
Sarah: I wonder if Harry… because Harry and Luna are the two that can hear them, I wonder if Harry and Luna were hearing different people.
Andrew: Oh, maybe you hear who you’ve seen die?
Sarah: It’s possible.
Eric: Cedric is talking to Harry through the veil. “Don’t let them besmirch my name, Harry. Don’t let them make a play where I become a Death Eater. It would never happen. Never.”
Andrew: [laughs] Or he’s mad at Harry. [whispering] “Why did you do that? Why did you let me die? You should feel guilty.”
Eric: Would Harry have died if he went through the veil, do we think?
Andrew: Yes. Sirius did; why wouldn’t he? Oh, maybe because he’s the Chosen One?
Eric: Yeah, he’s the Chosen One, because the prophecy, and the… I feel like this is relevant. The Killing Curse itself rebounds off of him the first time. The Killing Curse doesn’t work on him the second time because it kills the Horcrux that’s inside him. Do you think he would have been able to survive a trip to the other side, given that he’s special?
Micah: Probably.
Sarah: Basically it would take more than a curtain to kill him?
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Eric: Well, the funny thing about Sirius Black… and I remember memes afterwards on the Internet were just “Sirius Black, proud son of pure-blood wizards, killed by curtain.” The other thing is that Sirius Black actually is hit with a curse before falling into the veil, and so it’s infinitely ambiguous as to whether or not he was dead before he fell into it.
Andrew: It just seems so unfair that Harry would get an exit door, whereas nobody else would.
Eric: Yeah, but that happened in King’s Cross too. [laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I mean, you’re only at the fifth book at this point, so if he went in, he’d have to come out at some point.
Andrew: Well, yeah, or the series could have just ended early. Surprise, guys. It’s not a seven-book series.
Eric: Or the part of him that came out would be the Voldemort Horcrux part of him in Harry’s body. [laughs]
Andrew: Would we have walked through the veil? Would curiosity have gotten the better of us? I’m just going to say it; I would have walked through it, because I’m stupid like that. [laughs]
Micah: I think it goes to your point, though, about security, which I know we’re going to talk about here…
Andrew: Let’s talk about it now. Go ahead.
Micah: … because this is clearly a very, very powerful and dangerous thing that exists within the Department of Mysteries, and to just have it completely unprotected… and understand there are Death Eaters that are inside the Ministry at this point, so who knows the people that could have been taken out? Maybe we never hear about that. But the security is so lax at this point, and what’s to stop you, Andrew, from doing that? Nobody’s there to tell you, and there’s no alarms that are going off, or even warning you that you shouldn’t come close to this veil.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: “Do not touch.”
Andrew: Yeah, there should be signs. At least a “Do not touch, do not walk through, do not approach.”
Sarah: You just have to hope you have a Hermione there.
Andrew: Yeah, I know. “I have a bad feeling about this.” Yeah, and I mean, so the only security… and I think Micah brings up a good point; because the Death Eaters were there, presumably they knocked out a few security guards so that Harry wouldn’t be stopped. However, it still seems too easy. The only security built into the Department of Mysteries seems to be these revolving doors in that sort of Department of Mysteries atrium, where they keep rotating around so you can’t really keep track of which one you’ve been in or where you should be going or even exiting. Hermione does smartly realize that she can mark the doors so they can start keeping track of which ones they’ve been through. But yeah, it doesn’t seem like there’s much security down there. It seems like a big oversight, considering the veil is probably the most dangerous thing in the wizarding world besides other wizards.
Eric: Yeah, there should definitely be signs. There should definitely be, I don’t know, some easy way of explaining, or some books or some research that is readily apparent next to the veil about where they’re conducting their study. It’s unlikely that these Unspeakables would just keep it all in their head, what they’ve learned. I don’t see that working from an academic government standpoint.
Andrew: Right, yeah. It’s like in these Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies, there’s warning signs everywhere.
Eric: Yeah!
Andrew: And it’s mostly for the staff and the scientists, but they still put them out there. The veil is just… it kind of reminds me of something you’d see in a haunted house. People would just be drawn to walk through it just for the hell of it. “Sure, it’s there, I’ll go through it.” Looks so innocent, and yet it’s the worst thing imaginable.
Eric: And death claims one more for its own.
Andrew: Yeah. Not to mention, if God forbid there are wizards out there who are suicidal, they might see the veil as an easy way out, and that’s another reason it should be super protected.
Eric: I wonder if Harry and his Invisibility Cloak could go through. [laughs]
Andrew: I think he would still die.
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: No, I mean, it’s an artifact of death, right? Death can’t find him when he’s under there, so maybe he can go through and it would protect.
Andrew: That’s interesting. All right, let’s move on to the locked room, a.k.a. the love room. So this is a room where they study love. They do keep it locked, because people do crazy things when they fall in love. [emotionally] Don’t I know it?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And they want to make sure people don’t go in there, drink a love potion, and then start doing nutty things. J.K. Rowling has actually been quiet about all of these rooms. We were all hoping that in future books we would revisit the Department of Mysteries, or maybe J.K. Rowling would say more on her website or something. She didn’t really say anything, and I think maybe at the time she thought that when she was planning on doing the encyclopedia, she would actually write more about it in that encyclopedia, but she didn’t. However, she was asked several years ago, back on PotterCast when she did that podcast, about the love room. She said,
“It’s the place where they study what love means. So that room, I believe, would have at its center a kind of fountain or well containing a love potion, a very powerful love potion. You know that the first time they ever enter Slughorn’s Potions class, and he starts talking about Amortentia, the love potion, and he says it’s the most dangerous one in the room? Well, that’s what they would have found in the love room.”
And then she goes on to say,
“So you would see wizards and witches taking it; they would study the effects. The room of course has to be locked. And there’s this thread running through the books, what love does, and it raises people to the heights of absolute heroism, as in Lily, Harry, Neville, and also leads them into acts of foolishness and even evil, which is Bellatrix and also Dumbledore. He became foolish, he lost his center, his moral center, when he became infatuated. So that’s what it does; that’s what makes it dangerous.”
Interesting comments there.
Eric: Yeah, I wasn’t expecting a literal vat of love potion in that room. I expected, kind of like the veil, a force that can’t be tamed. This is where we have insight into just pure energy or something. When the lock melts Harry’s lock-pick, I was just like, “Oh, wow. That’s clearly something very dangerous in there.” And I get it; it’s dangerous. But if it’s just people, Ministry employees using the buddy system to feed each other love potion and then presumably the antidote, that’s less exciting to me than what my imagination came up with.
Sarah: Yeah, I think I always assumed that it was whatever was in the room – not some spell – that melted the key, and that made it seem super dangerous and intimidating, and why would you want to go in there?
Eric: Because it doesn’t make sense that this room should be so heavily protected against Harry Potter when he gets into literally all of the other rooms so easily tonight.
Andrew: Right.
Sarah: There’s actually a line at one point when he opens one of the doors. It just says, “It swung open easily.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Yeah, I mean, I know that the Death Eaters want him to get to the Hall of Prophecy, but it’s not like, “Oh, there’s nothing in here. Just lock it.” I don’t know.
Andrew: Okay. So yeah, the love room. I can completely understand why it is so secure. I mean, and J.K. Rowling did bring up great points about the power of love in the series, and thus why it needs to be protected so much. It would be interesting, too, one day if J.K. Rowling… she has been clear in the past couple years that she only is going to write what she actually feels passionate about writing. It would be fascinating to see a book, like an academic book by the “Unspeakables,” talking about what they have discovered in the Department of Mysteries.
Eric: I want that.
Andrew: Let’s move on to the planet room. So this is presumably the study of the galaxy that we live in, but is there something more here? Because why would this be in the Department of Mysteries? Why does it have to be so hidden?
Eric: Yeah, this is a big question for me. It sounds like… well, Harry doesn’t go in this room right away. It’s Luna, Ginny, and Neville, I think, who are… they find him and they’re like, “Hey, we were floating in this room with the planets.” So there’s…
Micah: I think it was Ron, because he talks about throwing Pluto at somebody.
Eric: Oh, “We saw Uranus.”
[Sarah laughs]
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Eric: But there appears to be a zero gravity element inside that room, which is interesting, but I don’t know what the purpose is necessarily.
Andrew: Well, maybe it’s beyond the planets that we know, so maybe they’re studying further reaches of the galaxy. Maybe they’re trying to find the Star Wars galaxies. Maybe they’re trying to find other life forms. Maybe they know about other life forms out there, and they’re studying them.
Micah: Like alien wizards?
Andrew: Yeah! Wizards in space.
[Eric and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that’s possible. That’s a creepy question, because I mean, we still have to worry about whether we have aliens here in the Muggle world to worry about. [laughs] But I do think wizards would be able to defeat aliens.
Eric: You know how Harry is in Diagon Alley in one of the books, and he passes by a complete working current replica model of the universe and it’s just like 50 Galleons? He could afford it, and he’s just like, “Man, I’d never have to look at a star chart again,” because this whatever-it-is is a globe or something, but it’s a astronomical model of the universe. So this department in the Department of Mysteries has to be better than that somehow.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: You have to be able to do something different in this room than what you can do at home with your consumer-purchased working model living replica of the solar system. So I don’t know if they’re… if you touch a planet, is there now a crater on that planet? Crazy kind of magical… what’s the magic element?
Andrew: Maybe you’re transported to the environment of that planet. You’re not actually transported, but maybe the room transforms into the environment of that planet. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Micah: That’d be cool.
Andrew: And then maybe they can test firing spells in zero gravity?
Sarah: Or study the planet itself, if it’s an exact replica. There’s no need for a shuttle mission to Mars if you can just go to this planet room and click on it, per se. [laughs]
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: Exactly.
Eric: There has to be some wizard element where magic allows them to do something that the rest of us couldn’t do, and that’s intriguing.
Micah: But we do see them study astronomy in the series, so it’s kind of good to see that wizards, they’re studying some of the same things that we study. And it kind of goes back to the point that I made when we first started the discussion about a lot of these rooms that we’re being taken into; in the Muggle world, right, in “real life,” people are studying these things. People are still trying to understand them. So I think that we can kind of make that connection from our world to theirs.
Sarah: It’s like they have an enhanced version of every study that we could possibly want to go into.
Andrew: Right. And I just think the reason that this might have to be hidden away, getting back to my getting kind of transported… not transported. Why do I keep saying that? Being able to experience these different planets’ environments, I think that would be a highly sought after technology in the Muggle world, so that might be why they have to keep it to themselves, because they don’t want others experiencing it. It would be too much demand. All right, so before the Hall of Prophecies, there is the time room, and this is… Pottermore says it’s speculated to be where the Time-Turners were invented.
Eric: Jesus.
Andrew: We do know that Time-Turners are stored here, and all the Time-Turners end up being destroyed due to the fight that occurs here. So the time room is kind of interesting, because even though the Time-Turners were destroyed, they end up making a few more, as seen in the Cursed Child
Eric: Yeah, I think the reason J.K. Rowling said they were all destroyed was to help prevent plot holes in Books 6 and 7, because anything bad that happens, you would presumably be able to fly to London, get a Time-Turner, and reverse it. So it made sense that she’s just like, “Yeah, they’re all gone.” But come Cursed Child, they need to have some fun with the greatest hits of Harry’s past, so there needs to be more.
Andrew: Yeah. Do we think this is where Time-Turners were invented? I don’t know why Pottermore says “speculated” to be. I don’t know if they’re referencing fans are speculating…
Micah: Like they’re not the ultimate resource.
Eric: They could just tell us, yeah.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Micah: We’ve had this conversation, and they always say “speculated.” It’s like, you know. Why are you speculating?
Sarah: You’re the source.
Micah: Yeah, I think why not? And we see sort of the chicken and the egg, and one of the Death Eaters unfortunately falls into the bell jar, right? And his head starts to kind of age and then de-age. And it suggests, though, at least from what we’ve seen from all of these rooms, that wizards are far more advanced in the study of time than we are at this point in our history, right? Especially if this is where Time-Turners were invented. The fact that you can go back in time and change things, at least as far as we all know, that’s impossible for us to be able to do.
Eric: Yeah, the room where they studied time, got so good at knowing about time that they learned how to manipulate it, and then harnessed that ability and turned it into now storage for these devices. It makes for a great visual thing, though. Not just what happens to the Death Eater, which is more, again, body horror. It’s terrifying to think of a de-aged baby in a grown man’s body, just the baby’s head crying and confused…
Micah: Benjamin Button.
Eric: … and Hermione even says, “You couldn’t hurt a baby.” But when the Time-Turners are destroyed, they’re stuck in kind of this loop. They’re falling off the shelf and exploding and then unexploding and going back onto the shelf in kind of a loop. And the whole room is like that, so these things that are happening are happening… like the chicken and the egg, for instance, too, going back into the egg after it has hatched and grown old. It’s just kind of a very weird interesting phenomenon for J.K. Rowling to write about. This is probably my favorite room, just because if you look around it, you can very easily see what’s going on and think, “Huh, that’s pretty cool.”
Andrew: Since Hermione has experience with Time-Turners at this point, I’m kind of surprised that she didn’t try to grab one and go back 20 minutes and try to prevent them running into the Death Eaters or something like that. [laughs] “All right, now we know this was a mistake. Let’s not be baited again. Let’s stop ourselves from being baited.” I don’t know, lock down the Department of Mysteries for real this time.
Sarah: Unwrap the mirror?
Andrew: Unwrap the mirror. [laughs] Wake up those Department of Mysteries security guards that are hidden in a closet somewhere, and get them to stop the previous trio from entering again. Okay, so let’s move on to the Hall of Prophecies. This is the room where… this is the critical moment for Harry. So they start looking for Sirius and they come across Harry’s prophecy. It was Trelawney, said to Dumbledore. I’m going to try to do an impression of this now. I haven’t practiced this, so God help me. [imitating Trelawney] “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice…” [coughs] “… defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hands of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…” So how are you doing, Dumbledore?
[Everyone laughs]
Sarah: That is exactly how that went, I’m sure.
Andrew: What does Dumbledore do after Trelawney just vomits this out of her mouth?
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: What he does is he says, “You’re hired. You have the job.”
Sarah: [laughs] Forever.
Eric: Forever and ever and ever.
Andrew: Yeah, because Dumbledore didn’t trust her at first, and then that happens. So Snape overhears this conversation, but only hears the first part of it because Aberforth stops him, right?
Eric: Yeah. You know, it’s unclear, though, at what point they barge in, because it’s not like Trelawney has ever been able to just stop mid-prophecy. So maybe there was just a scuffle where Aberforth saw Snape, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, moved him away, and then waited for the prophecy to be done before interrupting Dumbledore. Do we see this scene or do we not see this scene in Book 7?
Andrew: No. Oh, in 7. I think…
Sarah: I don’t think so.
Andrew: But how do we find out about it, then?
Sarah: We see Snape going to Dumbledore and saying that Voldemort thinks it means Lily.
Eric: Harry finds out at some point that it was Snape who overheard the prophecy and betrayed it to Dumbledore.
Micah: Right, but he only hears the first part.
Andrew: Right, right. And so that’s why Voldemort has sent the Death Eaters to go and retrieve the prophecy via Harry, because Harry – and this is how the Hall of Prophecy works – Harry is the only one who can retrieve it. Or Voldemort could, but Voldemort is not about to walk into the Department of Mysteries, as he says.
Eric: Here comes the question about the Hall of Prophecy, though: Surely there is a way for Unspeakables to remove the prophecy from the shelf. They either have special gloves or a special spell to study, because otherwise this is just a storage locker for the infinite amount of prophecies that are going to be made. As a room of study, there has to be a way for an Unspeakable to take Harry’s thing down and listen to it.
Andrew: Right, so that raises the question, why would Voldemort have to get Harry to do it? Why not get an Unspeakable to do it?
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Or are the Unspeakables impossible to track? Can he not track down any of these Unspeakables to take advantage of?
Eric: Yeah, I wonder.
Andrew: They live among us.
Eric: I mean, one of the Unspeakable dies earlier in the year, I think. Maybe they tried to recruit one?
Andrew: Oh. Hmm. But yeah, so assuming they can’t access the prophecies, what else would they be doing there? Do they believe that these prophecies just shouldn’t be accessed by anyone, even the people who they concern?
Eric: That’s interesting. It’s not like you get an owl that’s like, “Hey, you have a pending voicemail. Come and check out this prophecy.” I’m sure some prophecies are vague enough… actually, this is answered in the book, too, that the question mark that’s inscribed on the ball or the shelf is a question mark because it is unclear that it was Harry Potter, because it could have been, as we know, Neville Longbottom as well. So somebody’s analyzing this prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy, and only later wrote Harry Potter, and only later could Harry be the one to retrieve that prophecy.
Andrew: Yeah. I’m just reading now that Unspeakables actually cannot remove prophecies from the hall.
Eric: And there has to be a way to listen to it without smashing it, though.
Andrew: Well, maybe the Unspeakable brings the person who it concerns to the hall, and is like, “All right, please take this down. Let’s study this together.”
Sarah: But do they hold, then, to the belief that anyone concerned in a prophecy, maybe they shouldn’t hear it, because it could affect…? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s perfectly reasonable.
Eric: I mean, if they can’t take them down, how do they put them up?
[Sarah laughs]
Micah: Magic.
Andrew: Yeah, right. Where do they come from to begin with? It is interesting how that works. Maybe…
Micah: Clearly, there’s a lot of them, too, right? I mean, they’re not all coming from Sybill Trelawney. There’s got to be other… who manufactures them? Are there other Seers out there? Is there…? You go to Diagon Alley and you put a quarter in a machine and a prophecy…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Or a Galleon, sorry. Not a quarter. There seems to be quite a few, and I guess they probably build up over time, but yeah.
Andrew: There should be a prophecy machine in the Wizarding World park.
Eric: Oh, that would be amazing!
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: Where you pop in a quarter and you get… a little fortune come out.
Micah: Fortune cookie?
Andrew: Yeah, in a little orb. That’d be so cool. Actually, and as Victor is pointing out in the Patreon livestream, he says, “It’s amusing that there are so many prophecies in the Hall of Prophecy despite McGonagall saying that true Seers are very rare.”
Eric: Well, I mean, I’m assuming centuries and centuries of prophecies occurred.
Andrew: So they’re all stored here, huh?
Eric: The thing is, I think some of them are bound to be way too vague for anyone to know specifically who they’re intended for. So again, it would be impossible to code the prophecy so that only the intending parties could hold it or get it off the shelf, because some of them are clearly not going to announce anyone specifically by name. But it’s almost as if once a real prophecy is made, the magical world knows. It’s just like J.K. Rowling’s explanation for the Hogwarts list of wizards; once you’re born, some magical scroll records your name. It just knows. Seems to be the same kind of magic.
Andrew: Ah, so mysterious. So Dumbledore finally says to Harry, “Sit down, Harry. I’m going to tell you everything.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And this is where he shares the prophecy. Do we forgive Dumbledore for withholding this information until now? Because now everything makes sense for both Harry and the reader, and yet, we’re five full years into the story now, and Dumbledore is just revealing it. I actually can forgive Dumbledore, considering Harry is still so young. [laughs] Even in his fifth year at Hogwarts, it’s probably still too young to know that you’re going to have to kill Voldemort.
Sarah: Yeah, I would agree with that as well. I mean, that is a huge responsibility to shoulder when you are a 15-year-old student and still trying to be just concerned about your exams, your life, and, “Oh, hey, guess what? You have to go kill the baddest wizard of all time.”
Andrew: Should Dumbledore maybe have taken him out of classes after this? Why does poor Harry still have to go to classes?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: He’s got enough to worry about.
Eric: He wants to feel normal.
Andrew: He’s got to save the damn wizarding world. He doesn’t have time to take freaking Potions. It’s not fair.
Sarah: He gives his prophecy over as like a hall pass to get out of Potions.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. “Sorry, I have to go save the wizarding world. Sorry.”
Eric: “Sorry, I’m the Chosen One.” Yeah.
Andrew: “Can’t make it to class today.”
[Eric sighs]
Andrew: “I am the Chosen One.” Micah, what do you think? Was this the right time to tell Harry, or should he have told him years prior?
Micah: I think he doesn’t have a choice at this point. And he still doesn’t get the full story, right? Because he doesn’t find out about Snape, and who knows what kind of animosity that would have caused? Even more than what currently exists between the two of them. I agree with you; I think that you can forgive him, especially once he starts to talk about how much he cared for Harry, but I think in this particular case, Harry not… what I can’t forgive him for is the lack of interaction between the two throughout the course of the year, because ultimately, as Dumbledore admits to in part, he feels responsible for Sirius’s death, and had Dumbledore maybe just been a little bit more willing to speak with Harry, that doesn’t necessarily end up happening, right? So I feel like his behavior towards him and his unwillingness to interact… and we understand why, right? He doesn’t want the connection there. But I feel like that was a little bit of a cop-out. Dumbledore is arguably the most powerful wizard at this point; he could have found a workaround. There’s something that he could have done that would have allowed Harry and him to be a little bit more able to interact.
Eric: Yeah, I agree. And knowing… if you can believe that Dumbledore really didn’t know for sure about Horcruxes until he discovers it with Harry at his side in Book 6, he certainly has inklings, right? He certainly has these ideas, and in Book 5, he’s ignoring Harry because he has this inkling about the scar. But short of giving Harry classes for Occlumency with the teacher that he absolutely despises, he doesn’t do enough to really explain to Harry why it’s important, or Harry doesn’t get how important it is to make sure that what he’s seeing is reality. It just… all of the circumstances of this book, how Harry was hoodwinked and Sirius ended up dead, pretty much does fall, in my opinion, to Dumbledore, because he created this monster, and he created the sense of being trapped that Sirius felt all year, and that caused Sirius to run out. So it just… Dumbledore does have a lot of things to answer for, I think, at the end of this book. As much as he may love Harry, or as much as he may know, he doesn’t actually know everything anyway, and he made some big mistakes.
Sarah: Right, like you didn’t have to burden him with the specifics of the prophecy, but he could have at least said, “Hey, there’s this thing in the Ministry that only you can get, and Voldemort is going to try to trick you there, so be careful.”
Andrew: Right. And I guess his way of doing that was setting him up with Snape to block that type of situation from occurring, but clearly it didn’t work. But Dumbledore should have known that.
Eric: Yeah, and I mean, the beginning of Book 6 could have rather been the beginning of Book 5, with Dumbledore and Harry on a road trip. It’s like, “Hey, you’re at the Ministry for this court trial? While you’re here, let’s go over to the Department of Mysteries. There’s something I want to show you.” Boom, boom, boom. Knock it out at the beginning.
Andrew: And then that does raise the question, would Harry even be allowed in there? Do they allow these people in there to begin with? [laughs] Because we still don’t know that officially.
Question of the Week
Andrew: All right, so we asked our Patreon supporters, what other rooms could be within the Department of Mysteries? We got some fun responses here. Katie said, “Dark magic, in an effort to learn how to more easily defeat it. Though I could see this going horribly wrong.” Courtney says, “There probably is a room that maps out the essence of magic itself, its origin, and maybe even the tangible existence of magic… I’m kind of thinking about like how dust is in Golden Compass. Is it super taboo to mention another?” I like this one; this is from Jennifer. “I’d like to see a Q branch-esque R&D room where there are wizard engineers experimenting with new inventions and creating new spells. Everything is top secret and need-to-know. I could also see a room that has security cameras on every underage wizard to monitor their use of magic.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “It seems like the kind of creepy thing the Ministry would’ve put in place.” That would be a major violation of privacy. I don’t think the parents would be cool with that either, because…
Sarah: Well, that’s why it’s Unspeakable.
Andrew: Yeah, I guess so. But yeah, developing new spells. That could be fun. Because where do these originate from in the first place? Sean says, “A room studying Muggle-borns and Squibs. Why magic comes to certain Muggle-born children and why it doesn’t to Squibs.” Yeah, that’d be interesting.
Eric: Oh, yeah. So a blood room, basically.
Andrew: Yeah. Connor says, “Department of keeping things from Harry.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That’s the prophecy room.
Eric: Actually, that’s located offsite. That’s located in Dumbledore’s…
Micah: That’s Dumbledore’s office.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: The prophecy should be moved there. Place in the back, under lock and key.
Eric: Agreed.
Andrew: Jenn says, “I’ve always thought there was a creatures department, where they research magical creatures and their properties. In addition, they have records of every current living magical creature and any that are extinct.” No, Jenn, that’s in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander.
Eric: Yeah, you know, though, I think that due to Newt’s work there should be a some kind of magical study, or maybe that’s just a regular department in the Ministry for Magic, is for the regulation and control of magical beasts. Maybe that’s where they have their encyclopedias.
Andrew: Newt should own a zoo at the end of Movie 5. He opens up a zoo.
Micah: Sounds good.
Sarah: That’d be awesome.
Andrew: And then that’s what they’ll build at Universal.
[Everyone laughs]
Sarah: Bunch of animatronic hippogriffs and stuff running around.
Eric: Oh, I was going to say a bunch of horses with stuff glued to them.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: Karen adds on to Jenn’s idea. “I would like to think that we will find that after the Fantastic Beasts are finished, magical institutions such as the Ministry would be equipped or dedicated to helping these kids with things like the magical trace and working to prevent children from suppressing their natural gifts.” That would be nice. And then Sarina says, “A library full of the most dangerous books known to wizardkind.” Sort of like the restricted section.
Eric: Dangerous books.
Micah: I like that.
Sarah: The super restricted section.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: You thought your library had bad books; wait till you come into our section. X-rated.
Eric: “60 Shades of Grey.”
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: That’s funny. Thanks, everybody who submitted those over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. Also on Patreon this week, we are going to have a bonus MuggleCast about the fall of Lucius Malfoy, which begins, really, with this chapter, this area of Order of the Phoenix.
The Department of Mysteries in the film adaptation
Micah: And one other thing I wanted to bring up in this discussion before we move on was the movie, because I think, Andrew, you mentioned this earlier, but we don’t get to see really anything outside of the Hall of Prophecy and the veil in the films. And I feel like, given that, Eric, you had said on a previous episode, is Order of the Phoenix the shortest film outside of Deathly Hallows – Part 2, right?
Eric: Yeah.
Micah: And it’s the longest book.
Eric: Yeah, it’s also Sarah’s favorite.
Sarah: It is, actually, yeah.
Micah: Do we get cheated a little bit, though? Because you also get the sense as you read through this part of the book that everybody sort of takes a hit in this part of the series, right? They’re all kind of scarred in some way, right? You don’t know if Hermione is alive; Ron gets attacked by the brain; Neville gets his nose broken; Luna gets tossed across the room; you don’t know about Tonks until Mad-Eye tries to revive her. You never have that real sense of despair for anybody when you’re watching the movie outside of what inevitably happens to Sirius, so I just wonder, could more have been done here?
Sarah: Yeah, I do agree with that. That is a failing of the movie, is that you don’t get that urgency, that sense of urgency and danger for anyone outside of Harry and Sirius in these scenes.
Eric: Well, we heard… over on Twitter, Antti Björklund also asked, “Why weren’t the other rooms portrayed in the movie?” Is there a good answer other than maybe timing that they didn’t go into them? Is it because they don’t get paid off later, and it’s almost like a rule of thumb? It’s kind of like why they didn’t have… God, what was it? Was it Dobby? Well, Dobby wasn’t in a bunch of movies, but certain answers in the movies where they just don’t include because there’s no payoff eventually, right? There’s just no… they knew it wasn’t going to amount to anything, so they didn’t bother including it. Then there’s the things they tried to include, like Snape’s worst memory, which were cut down so much that they may as well not be in the film.
Micah: Right.
Sarah: Yeah, when there is a payoff, you don’t really get it, because you didn’t get enough at the beginning.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: It would be similar, though, in Sorcerer’s Stone when Harry is going through all those different trials, that basically he just goes from dropping down the trapdoor straight to confronting Voldemort. You know what I mean? And they even cut out the potions section of that.
Sarah: I was so disappointed about that. That was my favorite part of that.
Eric: Well, it would just be Harry and Hermione staring at a bunch of bottles and talking through the problem with their head. I don’t know.
Andrew: The time room… when I was rereading this, I felt like the description of it was meant for a movie.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: This is part of it: “He knew it at once by the beautiful, dancing, diamond-sparkling light. As Harry’s eyes became more accustomed to the brilliant glare he saw clocks gleaming from every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room, so that a busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. The source of the dancing, diamond-bright light was a towering crystal bell jar that stood at the far end of the room.” To me, that would have been such a very cool scene to see in the movie, just bright and clocks everywhere, all ticking. I don’t know.
Eric: Completely agree.
Micah: Also, the brain room. Ron getting attacked.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, we already saw that in Sorcerer’s Stone, I guess. Maybe that’s why. “Devil’s Snare!”
[Sarah laughs]
Listener Feedback
Eric: A couple of Twitter questions to wrap up. Andrew Hill asks, “My question is which room do you think was the most dangerous to examine for wizards?” So what’s the most dangerous thing to be around, or room to be in? Probably the brains, right? Those things are vicious.
Andrew: Yeah, the brains. The veil if you’re stupid. I mean, what kind of precautions do they take to avoid not falling in? Who’s to say…?
Sarah: [laughs] From what we can see, none.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t trust my fellow Unspeakables to push me in.
Eric: Oh, yeah, not to push you in. MadLuellen asks, “What is the Department Mysteries for, anyway? To try and create new magic from the study of these mysterious things? Or should it just be called the Department of Protection, as it really just holds dangerous things like thoughts, love, death, and time?”
Andrew: The purpose is to have a greater understanding of the world.
Eric: I think there is some R&D being done, especially if Time-Turners were invented here. That they are actively creating things based on what they find.
Sarah: Based on what they come to understand about these mysteries of life.
Eric: And speaking of mysteries of life, the final question on Twitter: LeeBiBunny asks, “Do they know when the world will end?”
Andrew: Well, if they could use the Time-Turners to somehow go forward in time, maybe they could find that out.
Eric: And with the planet room, if the planet room and the time room were combined, you could see the beginning of the universe and the end of the universe.
Andrew: Oooh.
Sarah: I’ve got to wonder if they’ve actually tried that. How far do these Time-Turners go back? Could they take it back to the Big Bang?
Andrew: I’m going to guess no, because I feel like in the Cursed… I mean, if we’re considering Cursed Child canon, weren’t those newer Time-Turners the only ones that could go back far?
Sarah: Further, yeah.
Eric: More than a couple hours.
Andrew: And for longer periods of time.
Eric: Those are Time-Turners, but what we’re seeing in the time room is weird pockets of time energy that’s not quite a Time-Turner, so I wonder if that… the physical device has a limit; the machine that we build has a limit. But time itself is… I mean, because the Death Eater who’s a baby went back 30 years or whatever.
Sarah: In a very specific way.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And again, it would have been very Hermione, in my opinion, to go into the time room and go save Sirius. [laughs] Go back in time.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: She’s clever like that. She could have figured it out.
Sarah: She did it once.
Andrew: Right! Yeah, she did save Sirius once.
Micah: She’s like, “Yeah, did it already. Not going back again.”
Sarah: [laughs] “Not worth it.”
Andrew: Maybe she’s like, “Maybe he was just destined to die. I have to just let it happen this time.”
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Andrew: All right, if anybody has any feedback concerning our discussion today, feel free to email it in to MuggleCast@gmail.com. There’s also a feedback form on the website. Or – and this is the best way to get in touch with us – you can call us. 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453.
Quizzitch
Andrew: So let’s do some Quizzitch, and then we have an announcement about what we’re doing in July.
Eric: Sure thing. So time for Quizzitch now. Last week’s question was Order of the Phoenix-themed: Who was the last member of Dumbledore’s Army to sign the sign-up form while they were in the Hog’s Head? Correct answer is it was actually Zacharias Smith. And the people who sent him the correct answer were…
Micah: Oh, really? I thought it was Barnaby.
Eric: Barnaby Cuff?
Micah: No, no, Barnaby the goat.
Andrew: Micah, it’s not always about goats.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But he joined, I’m just saying. Maybe it was after they all left; he put his little hoof print on…
Andrew: [laughs] A little hoof print.
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: He was the most loyal member of Dumbledore’s Army ever.
Andrew: Aww.
Eric: RIP Barnaby. The people who sent in the correct answer to our trivia…
Micah: He’s still around. I don’t know why you said that.
[Sarah laughs]
Eric: Really? He survived the Battle of Hogwarts?
Micah: Yes. Aberforth survived, so… come on.
Eric: Okay.
Sarah: He wouldn’t leave without Barnaby.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: Long live Barnaby. The correct answers are tallied over on Twitter; just tweet at us with your correct answer. And last week’s winners are Anders Drew, Jennifer Rapp, Sean Brady, Caitlin, Never Siess, Sarah, Jason King, and Evan. Congratulations to those folks. And this week’s question is Department of Mysteries, Order of the Phoenix-themed. What was the spell that Hermione uses to mark the doors in the revolving room? And…
Andrew: Amanda just… oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Eric: And please submit your answers over on Twitter, and just tell us… somebody tweeted me the other day and was like, “Am I missing something?” I said no, it’s literally just create a tweet, at reply MuggleCast, and say, “This week’s Quizzitch answer is _____.”
Andrew: There you go.
Eric: Yep.
Andrew: Amanda, who’s listening live, says, “Maybe they keep the Infinity Stones in the Department of Mysteries.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: That would certainly be more secure, I think, than where these heroes were keeping them in Avengers: Infinity War. Get it together, guys.
Sarah: I mean, would it, though? Based on our experience with the security at this department?
Andrew: Well, based on what we saw in Infinity War, I think it’d be better than what they were doing.
[Sarah laughs]
Andrew: Come on, Doctor Strange. Hanging it around your neck. Dummy.
Eric: Well, Vision has it in his forehead. [laughs]
Sarah: Just like, “Hey, here it is. Come get it.”
Andrew: Put Vision into the veil so nobody can get him.
[Andrew and Sarah laugh]
Announcement
Andrew: All right, so fun announcement. Beginning in July, we are going to finally, finally do Chapter by Chapter for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!
Eric: What?!
Andrew: Yes!
Sarah: Oh my God.
Andrew: It’s been forever since we’ve done Chapter by Chapter. Half-Blood Prince actually came out months before we started MuggleCast, so in those early days of MuggleCast, we were just jumping around Half-Blood Prince, talking about various things, and that’s why we never did Half-Blood Prince Chapter by Chapter, because we knew in those early episodes we talked about various elements, but it doesn’t feel right to not do Chapter by Chapter. This has always bugged us, because we’ve done Chapter by Chapter for every other book in the series. So starting in July, we’re going to start Chapter by Chapter, and we’re going to put a fresh spin on it. We’ve come up with some new segments, and we’re continuing to develop those. And as it stands right now, I think we’re just going to focus on one chapter per episode, and there will probably be a period in the fall where we pause Chapter by Chapter to focus on Crimes of Grindelwald, and then we’ll get back to it once we have exhausted our deep dives.
Eric: So I’m a new listener of MuggleCast. I started listening in 2015. What is Chapter by Chapter?
Andrew: Chapter by Chapter is a segment where we…
Micah: Exactly what it sounds like.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, basically.
Eric: All right, exactly what you’d expect.
Andrew: So simple example, we’re just going to start with Chapter 1 of Half-Blood Prince, starting in July, and we will talk about various things that we want to talk about concerning that chapter. So it’s kind of a reread. And another reason we want to start it in July is because this July will mark 13 years since the book was published.
Sarah: And 13 years of MuggleCast, almost?
Andrew: Yeah, basically! Because we started in August 2005. When did you start listening, Sarah?
Sarah: August 2005.
Andrew: Oh, beautiful.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: Aw, well, thanks for listening forever. That’s awesome.
[Sarah laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, so we’re excited to do this, and we’ve come up with some cool segments that we’re going to do. And it’ll be a book club, so it’ll be fun. Better than Pottermore’s book club.
Eric: Yeah, it’s going to be amazing. It really is. The stuff we have worked out for this new version of Chapter by Chapter is really quite exciting, and I’m sure you’re all going to really enjoy it.
Micah: And I think with that, it’s worth mentioning – you said we’ll be starting in July – that we’re actually going to be off next week.
Andrew: Yeah, we’re taking a week off because a couple of us have things to do, and that’ll give us some more time to plan the beginning of Chapter by Chapter. We probably won’t start it with the next episode, with 375. We’ll probably start it with 376, which will be out July 9, I believe. So yeah, so everybody can look forward to that. And we’re definitely going to look for everybody’s feedback as we go through the sixth Harry Potter book, and that’ll keep us set for a while. And then, of course, we’ll continue doing other things on the show, but that’ll be the main discussion of MuggleCast in the months ahead.
Eric: I’m excited. Book 6 is my favorite book after Prisoner of Azkaban.
Andrew: Oh, okay. Cool. I already read Chapter 1 of Half-Blood Prince, and I have some notes, some things I want to talk about, so I’m excited to…
Micah: Do they relate to current day politics?
Andrew: Actually, no. [laughs]
Micah: Okay.
Eric: It is “The Other Minister,” right? That’s the first chapter of…?
Andrew and Sarah: Yes.
Eric: I love that chapter.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I’m disturbed by this portrait that sits in the other Minister’s…
Eric: And, like, coughs?
Andrew: Well, yeah. Coughs, and basically stalks the Muggle Minister. I don’t think that’s right. It’s creepy.
Eric: Surveillance state.
Micah: And wasn’t it a chapter that was initially considered for Chamber of Secrets?
Eric: You guys, we’re talking about it too soon.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Oh, I’m sorry.
Eric: No, yeah, Micah, your memory serves. It’s exactly right. I think she said it was going to be the beginning of 2, or the beginning of 3, maybe? And then settled at the beginning of 6.
Andrew: So we should talk about that and talk about how it would have been different. There are some very clear reasons why it would have been different.
Eric: Absolutely.
Andrew: Sarah, thanks for joining us, and thanks for your longtime listenership and support.
Sarah: Thank you guys for having me. It was a blast.
Andrew: Good, absolutely, yeah. And you’ve got a professional microphone too.
Sarah: Yes.
Andrew: The one that I use. I’m impressed. Good work. Good choice.
Eric: It sounds great.
Andrew: Why do you have that mic?
Sarah: I am trying to get a podcast of my own going at some point.
Andrew: Oh, cool.
Sarah: So that’s why I have the microphone, so stay tuned. [laughs]
Andrew: Awesome. Well, let us know if we can help.
Eric: What will it be about?
Sarah: My idea is to do one about hobbies that people have outside of their work, so I want to call it The Corporate Hobbyist.
Andrew: Oh!
Sarah: Just because I know so many people who have all of these things that they do that they’re not getting paid for; they volunteer to do it, but they love it. So things like geocaching, or there’s a falconry in the area that I could talk to. I’m on a roller derby league; there’s people involved in that all over the country. So there’s plenty of people that would want to discuss their passions outside of work.
Andrew: Very cool, yeah. Sounds like a good idea.
Eric: Yeah, let us know how it goes.
Sarah: I will.
Andrew: We’d be happy to let our listeners know when it’s live as well. So yeah, so that’s that. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and don’t forget our website, MuggleCast.com, is where you can get in touch with us. We’d love your support over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast; it’s where you’ll find the bonus MuggleCast this week, and you get lots of benefits, like ad-free editions of the show, access to our Facebook group, listen to livestreams, you get early access to each episode as we do it live, access to show notes… lots of stuff to get deeper ingrained in the world of MuggleCast. Maybe one day, Patreon.com/PicklePack, but for now, it’s Patreon.com/MuggleCast.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Sarah: And I’m Sarah.
Andrew, Micah, and Sarah:: Bye.