Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #375, 13 Years Later
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast 375! I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: We are going to start off several months of Half-Blood Prince discussions today, not by jumping into our Chapter by Chapter, which we announced last week, but we are going to talk about Half-Blood Prince as a whole. And similar to what we did with Order of the Phoenix last month, we’re going to talk about the theories that people had before the book came out, so it’ll be interesting to revisit what we were all thinking. But first, some news. We’ve been off for a couple weeks. Did you guys have nice breaks? It was because of you two that we didn’t record last week.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Where were you? What were you doing?
Eric: Well, I mean, the Fourth of July weekend is… or Fourth of July mid-weekend; it was kind of like two weekends in a row there. But yeah, it was really nice. It was a good time.
Andrew: Okay. Well, what did you do, Micah? Where were you?
Micah: I had to work. I don’t have as fun of a excuse as Eric does.
Andrew: Oh.
Micah: But yeah, no, but also took off some time this past week with the Fourth of July holiday, so that was nice. But now back and ready to go.
Eric: Yeah, Micah was so busy that I went to hand deliver his MuggleCast mug – I was at a wedding over in New York City – and I had to leave the mug at the lobby. He wouldn’t even come out of his room, he was so busy working.
Andrew: [laughs] Really, Micah?
Micah: I wasn’t there. No, no, I wasn’t at the hotel when you were there. [laughs] I was at the other building or facility or whatever.
Eric: Okay, that’s the story we’re going by, but anyway…
Micah: Well, can I just say also how random it is that the one weekend that we’re taking off, Eric is going to an event that is literally within… where you were staying was, what, how many miles away from where I was?
Eric: .4? .4 miles away from where you were. Yeah, we had both…
Andrew: That’s crazy.
Eric: Well, my mom had not wanted to drive near the airport, so we decided to stay overnight in Tarrytown, Westchester, White Plains area in New York City. Not necessarily upstate, I’ll say that for the record…
Micah: No, it’s not upstate.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah, north of LaGuardia, north of the city. And it turns out that Micah’s work hotel that they put him up in for the weekend is .4 miles down the road, and so on the way up to Connecticut – which is actually the wedding hotel – the next day, I had to drop off the gift for Micah, but I did not get to see him. He was a very busy dude.
Andrew: That’s crazy. I’m with you, Micah. When Eric comes and drops stuff off for me, I just tell him to leave it on the sidewalk.
Micah: [laughs] You just let Brooklyn answer the door.
Andrew: Right, right.
Eric: By the way, I have your mug, too, Andrew.
Andrew: Great.
Micah: But I will say, yeah, the mugs look awesome. I’ve actually used it a few times since getting it for some morning coffee, but they look great. I’m looking forward to see what the patrons have to say about them.
Andrew: You know, my mom saw them on Twitter and asked for one. Can we get her a mug? Would that be possible?
Eric: What Hogwarts House is she?
Andrew: I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to… she wants blue just because she likes the color blue.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Andrew: But if I asked her what House that correlates to, she would have no idea.
Eric: I think we can do that. I think that the world owes her a debt for birthing you.
Andrew: Thank you. That’d be appreciated. “Mom, what House is the color blue?” “What what is the color blue?” “Mom, it’s a Harry Potter thing.” “Oh.”
[Eric laughs]
News
Andrew: Anyway, so while we were off for two weeks, Cursed Child announced not one, but two more productions. They are coming to San Francisco in Fall 2019, and Hamburg, Germany in Spring 2020, so these are the fourth and fifth cities that Cursed Child will be opening in. The San Francisco one I was surprised by, because we already have a permanent one in New York, and based on what the press release was saying, it sounds like this is going to be staying in San Francisco, probably forever. It said that the people who are working on this particular production have “worked their magic to provide the ideal West Coast home for the production.” So that sounds like it’s not just a limited time stop and maybe it would go down to LA and then maybe out to Phoenix or something like that. No, it sounds like if you are on the West Coast and you want to see the Cursed Child, San Francisco is where you’re going to see it.
Eric: Yeah, I think that kind of makes sense. It’s probably expensive, or more expensive to tour than it is just to put staple places like theaters strategically placed across the globe, where, like you said, people can come to. I am looking at the HarryPotterThePlay.com website now, and it shows, of course, London and New York and Melbourne, and it’s funny because if you look at the names of these theaters, they’re all very rich. London is the Palace Theater, and New York is the Lyric Theater, and in Melbourne, it’s the Princess Theater. If you go down to Hamburg, it’s the “meh” theater.
Andrew: “Meh” theater? Uh-oh.
Eric: There’s an R at the end. It’s Mehr!, with an exclamation point.
Andrew: Oh, I see.
Andrew and Eric: Mehr!
Andrew: It’s German, so it’s kind of angry.
Eric: It’s very close to “meh,” as in who cares?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But pretty funny. Pretty funny little German thing there.
Andrew: Yeah. So the theater that it’s going to be housed at in San Francisco, it’s got shows booked through the end of this year, and then it’s going to start getting ready for Cursed Child. And it sounds like that’s going to be an all-year preparation process.
Eric: Sure.
Micah: So all the money, though, that Cursed Child makes, does it just go to renovating theaters so that they can perform there?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: For new…?
Andrew: Right, right. It also, by the way, makes sense that it’s not touring, because there’s so many large set pieces and it’s a very complex show. We’ve spoken previously about how impressive the magic is on stage; it makes sense that they couldn’t tour certain elements of it. But I do wonder… okay, so now we have the East Coast. We have the West Coast. Is a Midwest location next? Are there enough theaters downtown, Eric, to host Cursed Child and other shows? Because I feel like that’s one reason that LA didn’t get the Cursed Child; they don’t have many theaters.
Eric: That was the question I had about why San Francisco. And forgive me, but I’d like to hear from people; I’m ignorant to whether or not San Francisco has a big theater scene. But Chicago does. I mean, Chicago has probably seven or eight regular theaters for Chicagoan Broadway, and oftentimes they test shows here before going to New York. I saw The Addams Family with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth before it came out, and War Paint, that show about Elizabeth Arden and…
Andrew: SpongeBob tested here. The Cher Show is here right now and is going to move to Broadway.
Eric: The Cher Show just opened! Yeah, exactly, so they test the shows here. But the really long staples that have stayed here were Wicked… for a very long time Wicked sales here, I think, either rivaled or compared to… or it ran longer than that in New York. So Wicked was huge here, but that’s the last time I remember. But hey, that’s about witches, sort of.
Andrew: Well, and Hamilton is here. I know it’s not as long as Wicked, but Hamilton is here seemingly permanently.
Eric: Yeah, you’re right. And they’re touring, right?
Andrew: Right. So I’m selfishly hopeful that Chicago is the next city to get Cursed Child.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: But this is good news for people on the West Coast. LA, as far as I can remember – and I might embarrass myself here because I was living there for nine years – but I can only think of one theater that can host a major production like that. I know it hosted Wicked for a while, the Pantages Theater. It hosted Hamilton when it was touring for a while. I feel like that’s where Cursed Child would go, if it could at all, and that theater is right down the road from the Wizarding World theme park. It’s a short jaunt up the 101; you could practically walk there. So it would have been very cool if Cursed Child got that theater and there was the play and the park in the same city; that would have been a major draw. So I imagine that LA was trying to get the show, but they just didn’t because of the limited number of theaters.
Eric: That is interesting, yeah. Well, maybe, like Micah said, with all the profits, they could just build a new theater in LA.
Andrew: That’s what I… I mean, they really could do that in a major city, because it’ll be successful from now until the end of time, so why not build your own theater? [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, why not?
Andrew: Anyway. Little other news I wanted to mention: It is summertime, so we get all these Harry Potter anniversaries during the summer. Chamber of Secrets turned 20 years old this month. It was published in July 1998 in the UK; it came out a year later in the United States, June 1999. Happy birthday.
Eric: Happy birthday, Chamber of Secrets. You know, I hear people lately talking down on this book, and I think it was a perfectly fine direct sequel. I like it a lot. I think it expands the world in really key ways.
Andrew: People were hating? Where were you seeing this?
Eric: There was a ranking that several of your Hypable writers did on Twitter last night.
Micah: Wow. Your writers, Andrew.
Andrew: [laughs] “Your people.”
Eric: Your people were talking about it, and Chamber of Secrets was dead to last on some of these. I could be getting the facts wrong, but I’m pretty sure…
Micah: Well, you realize some book has to be.
Eric: Well, some book does have to be, and maybe that just means that all the other Harry Potter books are good. But I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the Basilisk and people don’t like the idea of the Petrification or something. I think it’s all brilliant. I just want to say, for Chamber of Secrets‘s birthday, Chamber, I love you.
Andrew: Well, I’m sorry that I’m saying this on its birthday, but the earlier books I would rank low on the list. I like the later books because they’re darker. They’re heavier.
Eric: Harry is more mature.
Andrew: Yeah, they’re deeper stories.
Eric: Sure.
Andrew: So I would place those early three in the bottom three, to be honest with you. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, 3 is my top, though. 3 and 6.
Andrew: But it sounds like, Eric, what you’re saying is that maybe I should look for new people, new writers.
Eric: [laughs] No, no, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. I’m saying…
Andrew: Well, I mean…
Eric: Maybe Hypable should do an article month celebrating the merits of Chamber of Secrets to make up for it.
Andrew: Well, I don’t know. I think you’re right; maybe I should hire new people. And hiring is challenging. I know this. It can be a struggle to find the right person to hire at Hypable. But there’s one place you can go where hiring is simple, fast, and smart, a place where growing businesses connect to qualified candidates. That place is ZipRecruiter.com/MuggleCast.
[Ad break]
Andrew: I’m sorry, Karen, Danielle, and Kristin. You’re being replaced. I blame Eric.
Eric: [laughs] I see what you did there. That was a nice tie to the ad.
Andrew: I’m going to go to ZipRecruiter and say, “You must love Chamber of Secrets.”
Eric: All three of them put it as their bottom two, I swear. All three of them.
Micah: So it wasn’t the last one.
Eric: Well, within their bottom two.
Micah: The argument you can make there, of course, is that if it’s seventh, that means that it’s the best.
Andrew: Oooh.
Eric: First is the worst. Seventh is the best. Is that how that works?
Micah: Well, seven just…
Andrew: Third is the one with the hairy… dog.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
13 Years of Half-Blood Prince
Andrew: Anyway, so Half-Blood Prince turns 13 years this month – it was published July 16, 2005 – and what better time than now to kick off, finally, [imitating Dumbledore] after all this time, Half-Blood Prince Chapter by Chapter? We said previously… when we first started this podcast, Half-Blood Prince had just came out. The book was only about a month old, so we were speculating about Half-Blood Prince left and right. We were kind of just going all over the map talking about various elements of the sixth book, so that’s why we never did Chapter by Chapter. But it just doesn’t feel right not doing Chapter by Chapter for this book. We’re completionists.
Eric: Yeah. I mentioned, too – I think we all mentioned – we’re reforming the segment and adding some really cool new features to it, new shiny things to make it real exciting and update it for the year. But I think the whole section and segment will be justified if we can just get more Andrew Sims doing Dumbledore impressions.
Andrew: [laughs] I’m happy to do that. That’s one voice I enjoy doing.
Eric: I love that, dude.
Andrew: All right. [laughs] Well, before we do Chapter by Chapter – and that’s going to start next week – we wanted to talk about the book on a whole, and we thought we could start with some stories about midnight release parties. Did either of you go to midnight releases for Half-Blood Prince?
Eric: Micah?
Micah: I don’t think so. I’m trying to remember; it was 13 years ago at this point, but…
Eric: Ah, we’re so old.
Micah: Yeah. Well, I think it’s worth saying, though, too, that this is about the time that I found MuggleNet and that I started to get involved with you guys and the podcast, because the podcast came about as a result of the sixth book, right? So I don’t think so. I really may have just been one of those people that went and picked up the book and that was it.
Eric: Wow, from non-midnight-release person to MuggleCaster in three months flat.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It’s never been done before; it will never be done again.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: We should have asked you if you went to a midnight release party. That’s an important factor in hiring people.
Eric: Yeah, we would have vetted you. Our vetting wasn’t what it used to…
Micah: You didn’t have ZipRecruiter back then.
Andrew: No, no.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Did you go to one, Eric?
Eric: I was at… yes, there was one in the downtown district. It was this brand new downtown district. They had just spruced up Hudson, Ohio, and they had this whole downtown area that was really, really cool, with this brand new smoothie shop and the town’s orchestra, or the Ohio Philharmonic, or the local… one of the local branch of the orchestra came out and played songs inspired by – or songs that were similar to – Harry Potter. I’ll never forget them marching down the street in this brand new downtown district, so half of it was still under construction, but it was wide open spaces, kind of like a field, playing “Night on Bald Mountain.” It was just really, really cool. Everybody got really into it, and the Learned Owl bookstore organized the whole event. And I just remember being very full on love for Harry and mango peach smoothies.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So it was a good way to spend the Book 6 evening.
Andrew: Yeah. I actually didn’t go to a Half-Blood Prince midnight release party. I went to 4, 5, and 7.
Eric: Oh.
Andrew: And I’m not sure why. However, I did preorder the book via Amazon, and it’s funny; I still remember to this day… I visually remember going to the mailbox and pulling the book out of the mailbox, because Amazon had wrapped them in special boxes for release day, and it was just so exciting to get that darn book in the mail. But I wish I could remember why I didn’t go to a midnight release. I think I was kind of impressed by the fact that Amazon was able to deliver it on release day, because I’m a nerd like that, so maybe I just wanted to try it.
Eric: That was a viable option, I have to say. And I remember people at the release party who didn’t buy it that night, because they’re going to go to bed anyway pretty soon after getting home from this event, and they did the Amazon thing.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: It was like, “Well, I have it in the mail for me tomorrow. I won’t even need to worry about it.” And then there were the people that did both and bought it at night, and they had a second copy delivered in the morning. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. That was probably one of the first times people started being really impressed by Amazon. Like, “Whoa, they can get it to us the day of release? That’s so awesome.”
Eric: Which is interesting to put a year to that, because that was a long time ago.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a good point.
Micah: I wonder if they had special trucks just for those books, because I would assume that there were, what, hundreds of thousands of preorders that they had to deliver, if not millions?
Andrew: Yeah, and they probably had to keep them under lock and key until midnight, so they had to… they couldn’t get into the mail system earlier than midnight that day. You know what I’m saying?
Eric: Oh, interesting.
Micah: And what did you do, though, Andrew? Because at this time, you’re running arguably the largest Harry Potter fansite in the world, and you’re getting it on the release day – you hadn’t gone the night before – which means you probably had to stay offline until you finished the book.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, I remember… yeah. I can’t remember what happened. [laughs] I don’t know.
Eric: It’s all a blur.
Andrew: That was the days of dial-up, too, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to stay offline.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I had a flip phone at best, so it’s not like I was going to easily see spoilers, but yeah. So we asked on Patreon.com/MuggleCast for some of our supporters to share their midnight release stories. Taylor said,
“It was my first midnight release party, and my best friend and I went as Ginny and Luna, mainly because we had red and blue shirts and used red and blue towels as our ‘robes.’ My parents thought we were too young at 12 to go by ourselves, so my dad embarrassingly stayed with us the whole entire time. *eye roll emoji* I started the book in the car and did not put it down until 6:00 the next morning. I immediately jumped on MuggleNet to get all the reactions because I was in so much shock, and I also needed to read Hinny fanfic right that very second.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: You know, I don’t blame your dad for staying with you the entire time. If you’re 12, it’s pretty young to be on your own.
Micah: Yeah, that is.
Eric: Laura says,
“I was at a two-week-long sleep away camp and was so upset about missing the release date that my mom drove three hours to pick me up a few days early and take me to Barnes & Noble for the release party with friends that night. I got home exhausted, but stayed up all night to read the book. I got a lot of flak from camp friends for leaving early, but it was worth it!”
Andrew: Another Laura here:
“My original plan was to wake up and go to the store early on the day the book came out with my best friend and pick up our books. However, my cousin had other shocking plans. She happened to be shopping at a local supermarket at midnight and saw the book out and got me my copy, so she came to my house at 2:00 a.m. banging on my back door and startling me awake. We did not have cell phones at this point. I was really out of it and simply wanted to see how many pages the book had, however, my eyes glimpsed the last line; I was not wearing my glasses, and I thought the last line of the book was ‘Harry walked away from Hermione and Ron’s graves’ (totally not the line, lol), and I went to bed terrified for my two favorite characters, and when I finally read the last page with my glasses two days later, I found it funny.”
Micah: Graves?
Andrew: [laughs] Wow, that’s terrifying.
Micah: There you go. Miranda said,
“I remember going to Barnes & Noble with my mom for the midnight release (we were/are both huge Harry Potter fans). I don’t remember much else about getting it, but I do remember having to go to day camp that following Monday and not quite being finished reading it yet. I got yelled at for not playing kickball with everyone else and reading Harry Potter instead. I kept reading anyway.”
Eric: [laughs] Sarah M. says,
“I was in Australia… not sure that they did midnight release parties, and I wasn’t into Potter at that time, but I worked in a mall with a bookshop, and I remember at least two occasions when I was working and there was a line that snaked past my shop and out of the mall front door. People young and old dressed up in capes and hats with fake wands, owls, and cats to purchase their new book. I’m a huge reader, so I loved the sense of excitement that a book was generating (but it still took me another decade to get interested enough to read it for myself).”
Huh, tough sell. And now she’s a patron of ours. Welcome, Sarah.
Andrew: We read all these comments before recording. Thanks to everybody who shared the stories. It’s nice to read all these; brings back some good memories. But so let’s talk… we have a couple things we want to talk about regarding Half-Blood Prince. I think one of the most interesting things about the development of the book – and this is very well known – J.K. Rowling originally wrote parts of Half-Blood Prince originally for Chamber of Secrets, to the point where Half-Blood Prince was almost the title for Book 2. I wonder if it would have ranked higher on people’s lists if Book 2 was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: If there was more, I don’t know, Snape backstory?
Andrew: Right, but it was all cut and eventually moved to Half-Blood Prince.
Eric: It’s just so interesting, because I often think of Chamber of Secrets being a really, really good direct sequel. You learn more about Harry’s enemy in a really cool way, because you see him when he was at school. And if there was more Snape stuff, like getting into what Hogwarts was like for Snape growing up, or he and his friends, that he called himself the Half-Blood Prince… I mean, if the title of Book 2 was almost Half-Blood Prince, surely there would have been a lot more Snape in Chamber of Secrets, and I don’t know if that would have cast a dark cloud over… I mean, an even darker cloud over all the murders with the Basilisk and stuff. But because Snape didn’t really have anything directly to do with the Chamber of Secrets getting opened either time, I understand why it doesn’t fit. But it’s interesting to think what would have been.
Micah: Yeah. It does and it doesn’t, though, because the Horcrux, to me, is the key piece that ties both of these books together. We found a Horcrux in Chamber of Secrets, but we didn’t realize that we found it, and if you would have had this backstory, things would have come to light a lot sooner, and you can see how the flow would have been disrupted, right? Because you’re taught about Horcruxes in part in Half-Blood Prince. If you would have gotten that all the way in Book 2, you would have known how Voldemort was able to do the things he was doing and what his overall plan… or at least, you probably could have guessed at it. So I think the fact that she separated them had a large part to do with the truth about the Horcruxes.
Eric: It’s so interesting.
Andrew: I think the other thing is that Harry comes to admire the Half-Blood Prince before knowing who he is, and then Harry, once he learns from Snape himself that he is the Half-Blood Prince, he’s like, “Whoa. Wait, what? I admired this guy. This is a weird feeling.” So suddenly… so if this was in Book 2, Harry would have had these conflicted feelings earlier about Snape instead of hating him for the first few books, and I think hating Snape for, what, books basically 1 through 5, even 6, works well for the plot because as a reader, you’re supposed to not like him too, and then once you learn that he’s actually working for Dumbledore against Voldemort, it’s like, “Whoa.”
Eric: Yeah, we’re just not sure about him for a very long time. In fact, that’s probably the mystery of the Harry Potter books, is Snape’s loyalty. There was a whole book about it coming out right before the seventh book: The Great Snape Debate. I think it was from Scholastic. But you just kind of… it would have tipped the hand a little bit, and the rest of the books would not have been as open to be about any one just thing. The fact that we were able to continue to question Snape’s loyalties until the bitter end is pretty exciting. I like that he’s a bit of an enigma, and I like that each book slowly colors in that… slowly paints that painting instead of giving it to us all at once or too soon.
Andrew: Yeah. So Jo said, speaking about this – cutting stuff for Chamber and moving it to Half-Blood Prince – she said, “It became clear to me during the writing of that book that I had two major plot points here that really did not work too well together side by side, so one had to be pulled out. It became clear immediately.” So what are these major plot points? Eric, you have a couple ideas, I think.
Eric: Yeah, Micah, I like your idea about the Horcruxes. I was trying to think of… obviously the diary, which is a Horcrux, is super, super huge for Chamber of Secrets, but it serves to illustrate – as I said earlier – who Voldemort was, and Voldemort as a kid, and this whole thing about “There was a boy called Tom Riddle” that you learn about in Chamber of Secrets, sort of at the very end, is intriguing and exciting. And so I think that’s definitely the diary, its influence over Ginny, some of the early stuff as it pertains to Voldemort, because we’ve only seen him once before at this point, as a hidden figure in Albania and then the back of Quirrell’s head. But we learn a lot more about Voldemort and what he did to the Chamber of Secrets in the Chamber of Secrets book. So I think that’s one of them. And then I guess the other one is just Severus’s time at Hogwarts as a kid. I mean, that to me, how he became the Half-Blood Prince is… you can kind of see how it might have fit if we’re talking about other people’s school experiences other than Harry’s, but I don’t know. I just think maybe that those… because Jo said they were side by side, the plots were side by side, or they didn’t work together side by side. I think that might be because they were, I don’t know, similar or all about something that wasn’t Harry. Not sure on that, but I think it’s basically Voldemort’s time at school and Snape’s time at school. And you know what? Half-Blood Prince is also about Voldemort’s time at school, so I think she just kind of utilized the backstory and the Pensieve and stuff a lot better in Book 6 to tell simultaneous stories about our heroes or our villains.
Andrew: And even in Order of the Phoenix, we’re starting to get hints about Snape at Hogwarts. We see some of his memories, and Harry starts to realize that maybe his dad was a bit of a D, unfairly.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah.
Andrew: So that’s something that maybe could have been considered for Chamber of Secrets as well, and then was pushed and then spread out across Order of the Phoenix, and then, of course, Half-Blood Prince.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, Dumbledore does tell Harry about his father saving Snape’s life at the end of Book 1, so that might have set it up for going into better detail right away in Book 2 about Snape being bullied by James, that sort of thing.
Andrew: A little relic that once was.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: So in preparation for today’s discussion, I actually went back and listened to some of the earliest episodes of MuggleCast. I skim through because it’s hard to listen to kid versions of ourselves, doing a very different podcast, and audio quality was very different. It’s hard for me to accept that I once okayed such a production. But also, we were speaking so fast. My God.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Like excited teenagers?
Andrew: Yeah, basically.
Micah: We all mellowed out.
Andrew: Yeah, well, you and Jamie in particular talk really fast. I would say Ben talked moderately fast. I was talking a little fast, and of course, the higher voice. Eric definitely sounds younger. But listening to some of that, it just feels like some of… it feels like it was yesterday. It’s really weird that I can remember some of that stuff. But anyway, one question… we were playing a lot of voicemails in the early days even, like the Episode 4, we were already doing voicemails, and we had a lot of people calling in about what they thought about Half-Blood Prince and how it could lead into Deathly Hallows. And of course, one of the big discussions was the Horcruxes. There was one voicemail saying, “Who will help Harry search for the Horcruxes?” Of course, we thought Ron and Hermione, but Eric was also hoping for Ginny, which cracks me up because to this day, you’re still gunning for justice for Ginny.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: I guess that’s true. Book Ginny is really cool.
Andrew: “Where’s the Ginny Funko?”
Eric: Oh, yeah, where is the Ginny Funko? But book Ginny is… and Ginny is not once illustrated in the Chamber of Secrets illustrated.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: They have 119 illustrations? Not one of them is of Ginny, and she’s a huge part of Chamber of Secrets, a.k.a. top book.
Andrew: I think you have a crush on Ginny.
Eric: Now I’m all fired up. Thanks, dude. Yeah, but Ginny is great, guys.
Andrew: But we were also wondering if Harry could accept help…
Eric: Right.
Andrew: … which I thought was kind of interesting. And yeah, I think he gets a lot of help and accepts it in Deathly Hallows. There was a voicemail about the Godric Gryffindor Horcrux being the Sorting Hat, but Jamie was wondering how Voldemort could have broken in and Horcruxed the Sorting Hat. We still don’t know, by the way, how to create a Horcrux.
Eric: Well, it’s weird. He does it with the tiara. He literally breaks into Hogwarts and besmirches the diadem, so that’s pretty close.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. We were also wondering if Voldemort knows when one of his Horcruxes is destroyed. We definitely learn the answer to that; I mean, Voldemort gets enraged.
Eric: That’s in the movies.
Andrew: Oh, it’s not a book thing?
Eric: It’s a movie-ism. I’m pretty, pretty sure that in the books, the only way he knows they’re gone is when he goes to the empty patch of grass outside Little Hangleton where Dumbledore took the ring. Because I mean, in the movies, it’s very visceral that he feels it when they’re destroyed, but in the books, there’s that line from Dumbledore that’s like, “I’m pretty sure he’s so far removed from his detached souls at this point that he would not be able to feel or tell.”
Andrew: All right. Chat, if you have anything to add to this, let us know. I’m curious.
Micah: I think you’re right, Eric. I distinctly remember it being a movie thing where he really feels that connection of the Horcrux is being destroyed. Though it would make sense for it to be the case that as a part of him is being destroyed, he would feel it. But I guess technically, it’s not really a part of him; it’s a part of somebody else.
Eric: Well, he might be feeling more mortal, right? Just slightly more like death is something to be afraid of, maybe.
Andrew: Because Harry feels when he’s happy in the book, and when he’s angry.
Eric: Yeah, that’s true, and that’s a Horcrux connection.
Micah: But it would have probably made Harry’s task that much more difficult if Voldemort could have felt every time a Horcrux was destroyed, because you would think that he would have been able to easily prevent against the others being found.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Oh, he would have hidden them right away.
Andrew: “Oh, there’s only four left… only three left… only two left…”
Micah: Right. And the movie did it right, I think, because it also made you start to believe that because both Harry and Voldemort were feeling the same thing, that there was this inevitable connection of Harry being a Horcrux, and once that’s finally learned, you know that Harry has to confront his fate.
Andrew: So getting back to these early episodes, and related to this, Kevin was wondering if J.K. Rowling set up the book so that Harry has to reveal to Voldemort that the Horcruxes are gone. He was kind of envisioning this end scene where it’s like, “Guess what? All the Horcruxes are gone. It’s time to die.” [laughs]
Eric: I think Harry has that in his showdown with Voldemort, though.
Andrew: Yeah?
Eric: In the Great Hall, he kind of tells him, “You were foolish.” And remember, he keeps calling him Tom. I don’t know.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t know either. Evidently… now I’m questioning everything. My mind is evidently so plagued by the movie. [laughs]
Eric: Oh. What did the patrons respond?
Andrew: Well, Nolan said, “It’s a movie thing, just like Harry and his Horcrux senses tingling whenever he got close to them.” [laughs]
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: Senses tingling. Spidey Harry. So let’s talk about questions we had… let’s back up now; we should have probably spoken about these first. Some big questions heading into Half-Blood Prince. Micah, what do you think were some of the biggest ones?
Micah: There were definitely a lot of them, and I mentioned this was about the time that I found MuggleNet, and one of the areas that I used to frequent on MuggleNet was the editorial section. I think it was probably one of the best-known sections of the site, and one of the authors over there, Brandon Ford – who we actually had on the podcast many, many years ago – wrote a section called the Underground Lake, and I always used to anticipate these editorials coming out to read about theories on the remaining books. And I think probably the biggest question going into the sixth book is: Who is the Half-Blood Prince? I mean, we always liked to dissect and pick apart the title of these books and try and get a sense for what they mean, but there was a lot of theorizing that was going on out there, and Brandon himself, I think, as Eric put in here, pointed out that he didn’t really think that it was going to matter who he is, but more so what was his significance to Harry? But there was thought that Harry was the Half-Blood Prince; Voldemort was the Half-Blood Prince…
Eric: McLaggen. [laughs] J.K. Rowling revealed that a character that was going to be introduced in Book 6 was named McLaggen. We were like, “Hmm, is he the Half-Blood Prince? Interesting.” Fun little things like that. And even the… was it Rufus Scrimgeour? The lion mane…
Micah: The introduction of the Minister, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, was also… people thought he was the Half-Blood Prince, because lions are the kings of the jungle, and their kids are the princes. So there was a lot of royalty, a lot of royal hints being dropped. Anvil-sized hints, as we used to call them. But the identity was huge. And Brandon, in his article about whether or not it matters, did point out that all of the elements that get the title, even if they’re sort of mundane… like the Goblet of Fire doesn’t really… it’s not the goblet itself that matters, but it is the connection to Harry, and Snape’s connection to Harry, as we’ve just been discussing, is a long time coming to fruition in this big reveal, that I think it’s pretty clever to look at the titles in this way. And in general, the Underground Lake, which is preserved on MuggleNet, is really kind of cool. It really helped in developing this discussion, because all of the old theories are still there. It’s just easy to find.
Andrew: Yeah. And I think what was also significant was just learning that Snape was half-blood, learning… Voldemort is somebody who’s only after pure-bloods, and then for Snape to be half-blood, that’s a pretty big deal.
Eric: Yeah, and Voldemort.
Andrew: For such a powerful wizard to be half-blood, I mean, really. What on earth?
Eric: Oh, gosh. Yeah, well, some of my best friends are Muggle-born.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: What I find interesting, though, is I don’t think I ever read something where you dissected the title and you pull “Prince” out of it as potentially being a surname, as being somebody’s last name. Everything that I saw looked at it as just there was some… not necessarily royalty, but there was something to do with somebody’s lineage. It wasn’t… nobody hit the nail on the head and said, “Oh, Prince is actually somebody’s last name.”
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: Or the artist formerly known as Prince. I think that, too, it’s really kind of cool that J.K. Rowling, who is the expert name-dropper of all time, held back from putting the surname “Prince” into the world prior to Half-Blood Prince, that she was able to hold back so that we couldn’t guess it. She reused “Evans” a couple times to mean not people at all related to Lily Evans, but withheld “Prince,” so that was kind of clever and cheating at the same time.
Micah: Right. One of the other big questions coming out of Order of the Phoenix and heading into Half-Blood Prince was, “Remember my last, Petunia.” Or Andrew, if you would like to…
Andrew: [lacklusterly] “Remember my…” [coughs]
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I just mumbled.
Micah: Does Dumbledore need some coffee before he gets going?
Andrew: [laughs] [imitating Dumbledore] “Remember my last, Petunia. Remember my last, Petunia! Petunia… remember my last.” [angrily] “REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA!”
Micah: All right.
Eric: We’re keeping all of this.
Andrew: Perfect.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: So yeah, this was a big reveal in the fifth book. There was clear correspondence that took place between Dumbledore and Petunia prior to the Howler that gets sent at the beginning of the book, right?
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: Presumably.
Andrew: I was very excited about this particular element of the story, because it was nice to hear that Dumbledore did have some communication with the Dursleys. We were always led to believe that they completely… they put up a tall wall between themselves and the wizarding world. So for Petunia to accept a little bit of communication from Dumbledore I thought was good. It made me happy. It hinted that she cared, that she was somewhat interested in taking care of Harry.
Eric: Yeah, and it kind of maybe softens the blow that for most of Book 5 Dumbledore is avoiding Harry when you find out that he’s corresponding with Petunia, or the voice that you heard from the Howler in the beginning of the book, which Harry does not recognize, was actually him. It still gives the impression, like he said, that he’s corresponding, that he’s working to protect Harry still. I mean, it’s in that moment that Petunia decides that Harry has to stay at Privet Drive, even in spite of all the trouble.
Andrew: She cares. She wants to protect her sister’s son.
Eric: She just knows the importance of it. And once again, the Underground Lake article does a really good job – Brandon does a really good job – of sort of bullet pointing what his “last” may have been, because we later find out that it was really just the one letter that said everything that Dumbledore left with Harry on the doorstep, that that is the letter or the last correspondence that he’s talking about. So in reality, Dumbledore has not very much been communicating with Petunia at all.
Micah: But they did as children.
Eric: They did as… yeah, that’s the other thing.
Micah: Well, I should say Petunia, as a child, did write to Hogwarts and get denied.
Eric: That history is really cute, and obviously very important for Petunia, because I think Dumbledore was probably respectful enough to this Muggle child to let her know that, yes, unfortunately, it would not be possible for her to study at Hogwarts. But I think he figured out a way to let her go gently. And she still carried those resentments, but I think as far as Dumbledore is concerned, she has some kind of weird soft spot for him.
Andrew: Jordan, who’s listening live, adds, “I don’t know if she was interested in taking care of Harry, but more so taking care of the last part of Lily.” Yeah, good point.
Eric: Well, that’s… okay. That’s cool.
Andrew: I mean, they kind of go hand in hand, but I think that makes sense.
Eric: Yeah. And I tend to agree with Brandon here; he says, “In a nutshell, I think this is what the letter contains. One: Condolences on the loss of her sister.” Yeah, I think that’s true. “Two: Full, detailed explanation as to how and why her sister died.” I do agree with that; I think that Dumbledore would have wanted to be as clear as possible, both if she wanted to tell Harry one day, and just because Dumbledore doesn’t hold that sort of information back from a fellow adult, right? I think he would have been respectful enough to explain it all, even though unbeknownst to him, Petunia would just repress it.
Andrew: And I think Petunia would have greatly appreciated so much detail into how her sister died, because nobody else was going to tell her. So she may have carried that appreciation through the rest of her life, and thus was willing to help Dumbledore out.
Eric: Third thing: “Who the child on her doorstep is -“ oh, yeah, I guess that would be helpful “- and the significance of the scar.” I think that there Dumbledore probably would have been a little bit speculating, a little bit vague on purpose, but he didn’t know. Nobody knew what it really, really was.
Andrew: Hopefully Lily would have been able to recognize that it was Harry. I mean, Snape can see Lily’s eyes in Harry, so certainly Petunia can as well.
Eric: Well, babies, when they’re so young, they’re so malleable. Number four: “The warning about Voldemort and his Death Eaters. At this point, Dumbledore won’t have known whether Voldemort is gone, never to return, or just resting. This section of the letter probably warns Petunia that Voldemort killed her sister in order to get to Harry, and that he or his followers may find her and try again to kill Harry, and that they (the Dursleys) could be in danger.” That’s an interesting point, that from that timeline, that period in time, the Dursleys may not have been safe if it weren’t, of course, for number five: the blood charm. And Brandon suspects that Dumbledore would have explained then and there – and I think this much is confirmed in canon – then and there that Dumbledore would have explained how the blood charm works as far as as long as Harry has some space that he can call home, that she will be protected, that her family will be protected, and Harry will be protected from any and all outside influence, Dark magic, because of the blood connection that is shared between the whole family. So I think that that’s pretty up to standards. I think that’s pretty… I think it makes a lot of sense that those sort of elements would all be in that one letter that Dumbledore refers to as his last.
Micah: All right, so just some other questions here: Where is Wormtail?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: He took a book off. Didn’t do much.
Eric: He did take a book off.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, he was out doing his thing, trying to help Voldemort.
Eric: It’s really weird that he’s missing from Order of the Phoenix. Such a long book, and we really just have no clue at all whatsoever. I mean, he’s huge in Goblet of Fire; he’s the one guy that brings Voldemort back to his body. And in Book 5, I don’t even… I’d be surprised if he was mentioned.
Andrew: He’s keeping Voldemort’s house clean, keeping him protected.
Eric: Well, that’s the thing: When he shows up in Half-Blood Prince as a servant of Snape – and now the movie is infiltrating my memory of just being this lurking at doors, bumbling housekeeper – definitely not what I think I or many other fans would have expected, that he would be so dishonored and so, I don’t know, just relegated to the side action. I mean, people thought he was on a huge mission.
Andrew: Another question, the classic we were asking at the end of every book: Who would take over Defense Against the Dark Arts?
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I don’t think any of us said it would be Snape.
Andrew: No. But I mean… yeah.
Eric: It was right there in front of us the whole time. It’s super, super clever.
Andrew: Well, you would have had to have thought it would have happened eventually, right?
Eric: Maybe.
Andrew: I don’t want to be like, “Oh, I knew all along,” but it just felt like a long time coming.
Eric: Yeah, it’s clever the way it happens, though, because it really drives the whole plot forward because it means that Snape is not going to be at Hogwarts another year, or it means that he won’t be in that position for longer than a year. It kind of works towards the end result of Snape leaving. I know he comes back as headmaster the next year, but it all builds towards that. And Harry being able to become an Auror; that conversation with McGonagall about, “Oh, Slughorn is perfectly fine to accept your dismal Potions grade in his NEWT class, so you can still become an Auror.” It was huge.
Andrew: Yeah. And speaking of Snape, another big question was why does Dumbledore trust Snape? And there was another editorial on this, right?
Eric: Yeah, Brandon guessed this one correctly, actually. Props to where it’s due. This was from October 7, 2004, and Brandon Ford predicted, “My theory is that Dumbledore caught Snape doing some illegal activity and had a talk with him.” So that’s pretty on the nose, pretty accurate. So it’s just so interesting, especially the early days of our podcast – like we were mentioning earlier – the beginnings of our Half-Blood Prince recap, and figuring it all out, what we hit on that is or isn’t 100% true. We’re still getting tweets about things we said in early episodes – before Episode 100, before the seventh book came out – about what was correct that we just randomly guessed. And I think that close enough reading, there are clues and there are things in these books that allow us to make these guesses, and I think our general gut feeling and talking with each other about these books for such a long time has led us to get… it’s gifted us with some, I don’t know, maybe intuition. But it is ultimately up to Jo to change that at any time, if she needs to.
Andrew: Yeah. To be clear, though, this illegal activity… you’re referring to his love for Lily?
Eric: No, his listening at the door in the Hog’s Head. He was trespassing.
Andrew: Oh, that. Yeah.
Eric: But I mean, in regards to specifically why Dumbledore trusts Snape. So I think that because he caught Snape listening, and he knows that Snape betrayed Lily with the prophecy, that Snape could later come back and say, “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” is all because he caught him trespassing at the Hog’s Head, I think.
Andrew: Right, right.
Eric: Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it is a stretch.
Andrew: Betraying Voldemort, you mean?
Eric: Betraying Lily. Yeah, betraying Lily and James by giving the prophecy to Voldemort.
Andrew: Okay, okay. But at that same time, Snape was earning Dumbledore’s trust by bringing the prophecy to him too.
Eric: Yeah, well, Snape came… the way I see it is he came back racked with guilt, and Dumbledore knew that this man was trying to atone for the sin of having… because he agreed to betray Voldemort only after Voldemort didn’t spare Lily. He asked Voldemort to spare Lily, and Voldemort, to his credit, was actually going to until she wouldn’t move out of the way.
Andrew: All right, so something else that we got out of this – or something else that came out prior to the release of Half-Blood Prince – were a few of the chapter titles. I don’t really remember speculating over these, but we did hear J.K. Rowling revealed “Spinner’s End,” Chapter 2; “Draco’s Detour,” Chapter 6; and “Felix Felicis,” Chapter 14. So Felix Felicis. Was that introduced prior to Book 6?
Micah: That’s a good question. It’s possible, as with many things in the Potter series, it got mentioned somewhere along the way, but I don’t think so, because I know that people actually thought that good old Felix was the Half-Blood Prince.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: “Felix is a person!”
Eric: Felix very much struck me as being a person. I remember thinking that, and I remember a lot of people thinking that.
Andrew: Really? So that was kind of the tease of that chapter, misleading everybody. Nobody knew what the hell it was, and it does sound like a person’s name.
Micah: Yeah, definitely does. And the others, I’m sure there was speculation. I know, as we’ve kind of gone through the different editorials that Brandon has written, he speculated on all these different chapter titles. So I encourage people to head on over to the Underground Lake; all you have to do is Google it and it’ll come up, and take a look at it. And as mentioned, we spoke to him way back… I think it was Episode 55 of MuggleCast, so over 300 episodes ago? Is that fair to say? But maybe he’ll come back. We’re spending a lot of time talking about Half-Blood Prince over the course the next couple months.
Andrew: That’d be cool.
Micah: Definitely somebody who was good at picking apart theories, and like I said, it was always a great read.
Andrew: Spinner’s End is another thing we weren’t introduced to prior to Half-Blood Prince from what I’m seeing, so that’s something else that could have had wild guesses. Could have been the end of a spider. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, it’s so non-relevant to the plot; it’s just the street that Snape grew up on, right? But having it be released as one of the 37 chapter titles of the book, and you’re just like, “Oh my God, this is going to be huge.”
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Just so… like McLaggen, again. Like the character McLaggen, you just think it’s going to be so important.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: All right, so to wrap up today’s show, we’re going to have some voicemails. Let’s talk about some things outside of Half-Blood Prince. We’ve gotten quite a few voicemails over the past few weeks, so thanks to everybody who’s called in. Let’s listen to some of them now.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey guys, Timothy from Alabama here. Roommates and I were doing a Harry Potter drinking game the other night, and during one of my brief moments of lucidity during Goblet of Fire, I noticed that Dumbledore walks up to a cabinet full of artifacts and is talking about looking for details he might have missed about Voldemort, and he is staring right at a sort of sculpture of the Deathly Hallows symbol, what definitely looks exactly like it, just in sculpture form. And we know that Rowling was working with the filmmakers, but this was two years before the seventh book came out. And could be a coincidence, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about it before, and I just happened to notice it, and I was just wondering what you guys thought. Maybe she had shared with them this symbol and its importance to Dumbledore, and… I don’t know, just interested to hear what you guys thought. Love the show, thanks. Bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Yeah, there’s actually photos, and we’ll have to include this photo in the show notes. It is pretty surprising, especially when Dumbledore says that he’s looking for clues. Do you guys see this? I linked to it in the show notes. It really does look like the Deathly Hallows symbol, both of the things in the case. There’s triangular objects in there.
Eric: The one on the right looks like the Triforce from Zelda.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Yeah. But as Timothy points out, the timing makes it difficult to believe that this was done on purpose, because the movie came out in 2005, was probably filmed in 2004… Deathly Hallows the book didn’t come out till 2007. Did J.K. Rowling have the idea that early?
Eric: I think she’s talked about when she devised the symbol, the wand with the circle and the…
Andrew: But then the other question is would she bring that to them for that particular scene? I don’t know.
Eric: It would be an amazing coincidence if she didn’t, that’s for sure.
Andrew: Yeah. I’m going to side with coincidence.
Eric: Yeah, I’m going to… I’m going to guess that maybe Rowling knew.
Andrew: Because when has J.K. Rowling really ever done the movies any favors? [laughs]
Eric: Well, she’s told them what they couldn’t do. She saved us all from a Dumbledore telling Harry about a young girl.
Andrew: Yeah, but… I don’t know. This just seems so small. It’s amazing; if she did, it’d be amazing. But it just seems like… why would she go out of her way for this?
Eric: I can imagine, though – our caller said he was on a drinking trip – just being like, mind completely blown after looking at this in the cabinet.
Andrew: [laughs] Rubs his eyes to make sure he’s seeing correctly.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. That’s a cool way to experience this.
Micah: I feel like it’s come up before.
Andrew: Well, probably. I mean, I did find this Reddit thread on it from five years ago. [laughs] I don’t know.
Micah: It’s always tough because J.K. Rowling, you never know. But I’m going to go with… it’s hard. I want to say coincidence, but…
Andrew: Crazy coincidence, if a coincidence. But that’s life.
Micah: Your point was a good one, though, Andrew: Did she even know at that point that the Deathly Hallows was the direction she was going to take the seventh book in?
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Much less the symbol.
Andrew: Right, exactly. All right, let’s move on to the next voicemail.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. My name’s Caitlin. I’m a Michigan listener who’s currently in Connecticut for the summer. I just listened to your latest podcast and the beginning discussion about Warner Bros. cracking down on fan events. I think the weirdest thing about it to me is that wouldn’t Warner Bros. make money off of those things? Because who doesn’t go to buy a new T-shirt when there’s a fan event? I don’t know; I just thought that was an interesting point. And I do think that it might have something to do with Fantastic Beasts‘ upcoming release, in the sense that they really want to keep all of the other competitors for fan events down so that they themselves can have more fan events. Just my theory. Anyways, thanks for listening.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I stand by what I said a couple weeks ago; I think they are just trying to prevent things from getting out of control, because somebody watching, let’s say, that Philadelphia event might get their own idea to do their own, and then suddenly there’s another event with 50,000 people, and it just keeps snowballing and snowballing. They’re trying to put a lid on things, and that makes a lot of sense to me.
Eric: Yeah, to answer Caitlin’s question, Warner Bros. is not directly profiting off of… unless there’s an official merchandise store that’s selling official merchandise at these street conventions, these street festivals – which there is not – Warner Bros. is not directly profiting. Who are profiting are the businesses that are doing… your Etsy Harry Potter shops and things like that that are showing up for… or Harry Potter-adjacent, people selling suits of armor or hand-carved wooden wands. It’s not Warner Bros. They’re not selling… in many cases, they don’t have official merchandise or official vendors present at these things, but Warner Bros.’ solution to the Chestnut Hill people and the Aurora, Illinois people was to charge a licensing fee, and then Warner Bros. would have been making 33% of all profits or something.
Andrew: But I think her point was that in preparation for these events, you go out and buy official merchandise that you wear to the event.
Eric: I don’t know; I still have the same robes that I got 14 years ago.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I’m not buying another set of robes for… of course, I say that, and they’re going to come out with really cool Ilvermorny robes inspired by Grindelwald. But yeah, I don’t know.
Andrew: All right, next voicemail.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. This is Diana calling from northern Wisconsin, and I was just calling with a theory about the Deluminator. I was recently rereading Deathly Hallows, and I was reading about when Scrimgeour came and gave the trio their gifts from Dumbledore’s will, and he gives Ron the Deluminator, and he says, ‘This is unique, possibly one of a kind, believed to be made by Dumbledore himself.’ And so I started thinking, why did Dumbledore need something that worked in this way? Ron uses it to reunite with Hermione and Harry when he leaves, and so Dumbledore didn’t just need it to turn lights on and off, and did he use it in the same way to find somebody? And I started thinking, Ron only hears Hermione’s voice come out of it. He didn’t hear his parents or brothers, who surely said his name sometime in those months as well. So I started thinking, is it just if a person you’re in love with says your name you’ll hear it and be able to find them? Or is it anyone you’re looking for, if they say your name, you’ll be able to find them? And since the Deluminator is seen in the preview or the trailer for Crimes of Grindelwald, I started thinking, is this how Dumbledore is going to find Grindelwald? If Grindelwald says Dumbledore’s name, can he then find him? Anyways, I’m interested to hear your theories, your thoughts about why Dumbledore made something that worked this way. Bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I like that.
Eric: I love that.
Andrew: So the Deluminator helps you find the person you love, and we’re going to see it make an appearance in Crimes of Grindelwald. We already know that; we saw it in the trailer. It is kind of weird that Dumbledore would be carrying that around again. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah. I mean, I think he gives it to Newt, and… I think it’s Newt and his brother in the graveyard or whatever that are using it to turn out lights. But there is that alternate purpose, the reminder that Dumbledore invented it and that it does something really funky about the one you love. Makes me think that Dumbledore might use it to find Grindelwald at some point.
Micah: Or Newt uses it to find Tina.
Eric: Tina, aw.
Andrew: Yeah. Or Jacob uses it to find Queenie! You know, I saw Ant-Man and the Wasp last night, and they had the Crimes of Grindelwald trailer, and it was cool to see on the big screen. But in the same row, a girl who was clearly a big Harry Potter fan was freaking out about the trailer; she was so excited for this movie, and it reminded me that a lot of people don’t really get all worked up about this Johnny Depp drama. I think for the mass majority of people, they’re just excited for another Harry Potter movie. They’re excited to go back to Hogwarts. So I don’t know; I was just thinking about how some people don’t care about what’s going on with Johnny Depp. [laughs] All right, one more voicemail here.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, MuggleCast. This is Nate calling in. Just wanted to give you a shout-out; you guys are my favorite podcast. But wanted to talk about… finished your episode last week, but just wanted to mention, when talking about the elements of Order of the Phoenix, why did Cho Chang get no love? You guys didn’t even address that, Harry Potter’s first love, which I was shocked you guys didn’t dive into. That stuck a little bit. That love shop fiasco that went down and she was all jealous about Hermione; I remember that was such a huge element of Order of the Phoenix when I read it. I would love your thoughts on that, if you thought it was funny, if it was cringe-worthy at the time when you were reading it, where you were at life when you were reading about that first romance, hear about some of yours, and just thank you so much. Appreciate you guys every week, highlight, and hope you have a good day.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Thanks, Nate. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think we talked about Cho Chang because it just doesn’t really serve the greater story. I don’t really recall having many opinions about the Cho Chang development in the book. I didn’t think their relationship was very good. You didn’t really get any chemistry between the two; they just had these crushes on one another, and Cho was only interested in Harry because of Cedric dying. She didn’t have feelings for him otherwise. The relationship was built on Cedric dying.
Eric: For me, I think that whereas Book 6 is all about, “Oh, romantic feelings are awkward, and relationships are awkward and they’re all messy,” Book 5’s relationship between Harry and Cho – which is the first – is just a mess, and you’re just like, “Oh, this is uncomfortable.” So whereas it’s drawn attention to how uncomfortable it is in Book 6, and you’re able to laugh about it a little bit, I just kind of get… it just feels weird to talk about Harry and Cho’s unfortunate love attempt.
Andrew: Cho was very unfair to Harry, though, during that Valentine’s Day date. It was very well established that Harry and Hermione were good friends at that point, and in fairness to Cho, Harry did a very bad job defending going to see Hermione. All he had to do was say, “Look, we’re just friends. Ew, Hermione? I’m not interested in her at all! I’m all about you, girl. Yo, let’s drink more tea and then go hang out with Hermione just for a minute, and then we’ll go back and have a kiss.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I agree. The point that you made about it… we were really focusing on larger plot elements. Not that it’s not important for Harry’s personal development outside of finding Horcruxes and defeating Voldemort, but yeah, got lost in the shuffle, I’ll say.
Andrew: And I didn’t know it at the time, but I mean, I wasn’t feeling any feelings about the relationship between Harry and Cho, between a boy and a girl, and I couldn’t figure out why at the time.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: It was 2003. “Why do I not care about this straight romance?” [laughs] Anyway, thanks to everybody who has been leaving us voicemails. If you’d like to call in with a theory, a question, a comment, feel free to hit us up. 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. Just one request: Try to keep your message to around a minute, minute and a half, and make sure you’re in a place where you’ll have good call quality. Sometimes we’ve got to scrap voicemails because they’re too long, or the call quality is really bad.
Quizzitch
Andrew: Anyway, time now for Quizzitch.
Eric: It’s Quizzitch time! Last week’s question was: What is the spell that Hermione uses to mark the doors in the revolving room? This is from the Department of Mysteries. The correct answer was Flagrate! It’s at least the incantation of this spell; it’s Flagrate. Also for this week, we accepted “Flagrante.”
Andrew: [laughs] Accepted these answers?
Eric: Believe it or not, half of these answers are “Flagrante.” I did a quick search and find on my ebook of Order of the Phoenix, and the word “flagrant” does appear earlier in the book, about Harry’s flagrant disregard for the rules, so it’s kind of cool. But anyway, correct winners from last week’s Quizzitch are Sean Evan, Jennifer Rapp, Cristiline, Max Nuding, Hannah, Lauren, Kelly Morgan, Lupita, Haley, Elsa, Sarah, Roshelle, Jason King, Kitty, William Walton, and Charlie Kay. So thank you all for participating. In order to play, all you have to do is tweet at us with this week’s Quizzitch answer and say, “This week’s Quizzitch answer is ____.” So upcoming question for this coming week is: Who are the two Order members that Harry runs into, in order, in the Half-Blood Prince chapter “Silver and Opals”?
Andrew: Okay. So next week we will start Half-Blood Prince Chapter by Chapter. If you have any questions or comments about Chapter 1, please write in or call us; we might include your thoughts on the show. We’re excited to get this started; like we said previously, we have some new elements. If you have any ideas for any new elements for this new Chapter by Chapter series, feel free to hit us up. We’ll be happy to take in any and all feedback. Want to plug our website, MuggleCast.com; it’s the hub for everything concerning this wizarding world podcast. There you’ll find links to our Twitter, which is Twitter.com/MuggleCast; our Facebook, Facebook.com/MuggleCast; and you could support us – there’s a link right at the top – Patreon.com/MuggleCast. You will get instant access to lots of benefits: You’ll be able to see our show notes in advance; you’ll be able to join us for livestreams we record every weekend. Thanks, everybody, who is listening live right now and chiming in in the chat. We have an exclusive Facebook group; we send out a physical gift every year; we record bonus MuggleCast installments that release monthly; we have monthly Google Hangouts for our Slug Club members; we also have the opportunity to cohost MuggleCast; and we have monthly wizarding world giveaways. There’s so much over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: And we’ll see you next time. [imitating Dumbledore] Goodbye!
[Eric laughs]
Eric and Micah: Goodbye.
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “Remember my last. Goodbye, Petunia.”