Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #376, Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 1
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast 376. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Andrew: And we have a guest this week, one of our Slug Club members. Hey, Chris.
Chris: Hey, everyone. How you doing?
Andrew: Good, how are you? Thanks for joining us.
Chris: I am doing fantastic. I’m super excited to be here; this has definitely been a dream for me.
Andrew: Awesome, awesome. Well, it’s so good to have you on. Hailing from Florida, where you were telling me before the show that you and your wife… girlfriend…?
Chris: Yeah, my wife.
Andrew: Instead of going to the beach, you go to the Wizarding World parks to vacation. I think that’s awesome. [laughs]
Chris: Yeah, that was our spot for weekend vacations, and I’ve been… thankfully I live close enough that we were able to go a lot, so for Hogsmeade and then for the opening of Diagon Alley, and we’ve been able to spend a lot of time there.
Andrew: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, yeah, thanks for joining us. It’s good to have you on. This is an exciting episode because we are starting our Chapter by Chapter Half-Blood Prince series, finally, after all this time. I’ve said before; we’ve avoided it because when we first started MuggleCast, we were talking about various bits and pieces of Half-Blood Prince, so when it came time to do Chapter by Chapter for it, we were like, “But it felt like we already did Chapter by Chapter for it.” But now more time has passed, and it just wouldn’t be right if we did Chapter by Chapter for six of the books, but not the sixth book, so we are going to start it today. And funnily enough – and we’ll talk about this in the news in a moment – we’ll probably start it this week, but then the next two weeks we’ll go back to Crimes of Grindelwald…
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: … because it looks like the trailer is going to be coming out next… well, this upcoming weekend at Comic-Con. So we’ll talk about that in a moment, but first, Chris, let’s get your fandom ID. In one breath, please give us your favorite book, movie, your Patronus, your Hogwarts House, and your Ilvermorny House.
Chris: My favorite book is Deathly Hallows, my favorite movie is Goblet of Fire – minus that one line we all know about – my House is Ravenclaw, Ilvermorny House is Horned Serpent, and my Patronus is a marsh harrier.
Andrew: I hadn’t heard that one before. Marsh harrier?
Chris: Yeah, it was new to me. And when I first saw it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, my Patronus is a fighter jet!”
[Everyone laughs]
Chris: But no, it turns out that it’s like a falcon. It’s a bird of prey that’s indigenous to England, so that’s pretty cool.
Andrew: That is pretty cool. And what is your favorite chapter in Half-Blood Prince?
Chris: Favorite chapter has to be “After the Burial,” where Harry takes the Felix Felicis potion, and I love it just to see how that magic affects him, but we’re also diving into the memory that Slughorn has to give him and a little bit of Lily along with Hagrid. So it just has everything for me.
Andrew: Yeah, very cool. You also told me when I first spoke to you a few days ago that you really love this chapter that we’re talking about today, “The Other Minister,” right?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. This is probably my favorite opening chapter to a book.
Eric: And who doesn’t love this awesome, beautiful chapter?
Chris: Exactly.
Andrew: [laughs] Well, before we get to some news, some congratulations are in order for two of our listeners, Nicki and Robert, who actually were both guests on the show themselves a few months ago. They had a baby!
Eric: Aw!
Andrew: The child’s name is Declan, and their friend Katie wrote in to tell us about Declan. She said, “Nicki and Robert welcomed their future little Ravenclaw into the world on June 16! Both mom and baby are healthy and well. I promise you he is the sweetest, most adorable little person. He’ll be one month old on Monday.” And she thought this would be a great time to let us know, so happy one month birthday, Declan. [laughs]
Micah: Good timing.
Andrew: Yeah, and congrats to Nicki and Robert. That’s very exciting.
Micah: See what we do on this show? We make babies.
Eric: We make baby announcements.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Listeners, you should all have more babies, and we will make this a regular segment.
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, like I’ve said before, we’re all kind of growing up together, and this is a natural part of life.
Eric: That is true.
Andrew: Some of our listeners are now having children. [laughs] I’m sure many people who listen to the show have had children in the past 13 years.
Eric: Listeners, if your children are graduating high school or getting their PhDs in college, just let us know. We’ll shout out.
Andrew: We’re just like the friendly uncle now. “Oh, so-and-so just graduated! Oh, so-and-so just had a child!”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: “Oh, so-and-so just got their first car! Congrats.”
Eric: But seriously, Nicki and Robert, congratulations.
Andrew: Yeah. And I’m jealous of Declan, having two parents who are huge Harry Potter fans. You know that Declan is going to get the illustrated editions read to him very young. He’s going to get some cool Harry Potter gear. That’s awesome.
News
Andrew: All right, so let’s get to some news now. There is some news ahead of Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald being at San Diego Comic-Con. Looks like WB has been planning a little bit of pre-event hype to get everybody excited for what’s to come at Comic-Con. There were some interesting comments made by producer David Heyman about Grindelwald, and these comments really excited me. He said that the film is,
“‘about the dangers of absolutism and fundamentalism. We see that in Grindelwald.’ A year on, he’s on the brink of escaping prison and trying to unite the magically powered to crush the merely human. His means to achieving this, unlike those of Potter’s Voldemort, are not just fire and fury. ‘For me, Grindelwald is a scarier villain,’ says Heyman. ‘He’s very persuasive. One can see the rationale in his arguments – which doesn’t mean his methodology is right.'”
So that’s pretty cool, and I think that’s a great way to promote the film. “Grindelwald is scarier than Voldemort.” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I would totally agree. It’s a great way to promote the film. And it’s kind of an interesting thing that exists in Harry Potter canon; we had this big, big bad before Voldemort, but we don’t know anything about him because he’s not really in any of the books. And now that subject matter is ripe for the picking and you can actually say something like this, like, “Oh yeah, by the way, Grindelwald was totally scarier,” and have it not feel like you’re just trying to outdo the previous… it works on two levels, right? As a sequel to Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts having a scarier villain than the Harry Potter books or movies works really well for them, but also storytelling-wise, it’s like, “Well, why not? Why couldn’t he have been scarier?”
Andrew: Yeah. Chris, you had some thoughts on this, too, right?
Chris: Yeah, actually, I think that Grindelwald’s ideals could appeal to a wider base of the magical community, since unlike Voldemort, he’s not just out for pure power; he’s actually looking to elevate all of that magical community above Muggles. Voldemort focused on that pure-blood superiority and that kind of divided… if you weren’t a pure-blood, you didn’t get as much out of it. Now, I’m kind of making assumptions, since we don’t know Grindelwald’s full plan quite yet, but he seems to want to elevate them all, so I can definitely see how a lot of that magical community might want to get behind that, especially if they’re in a repressed magical community like the US.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a great point.
Micah: Yeah, that is a great point. And I also think Voldemort, from an appearance standpoint, is scary physically, right? You look at him; kids would get scared. But Grindelwald, on the other hand, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, so to say that he’s even worse, there has to be more of a psychological play to him than there was with Voldemort, and that, to me, is scary.
Andrew: Yeah. And we’ve heard in these synopses about this film that people are going to have to choose their sides, and Heyman is saying here that he’s very persuasive, so I’m thinking that he’s going to be persuasive to the point of being able to maybe push Tina or Queenie to his side.
Eric: Yeah, we’ve devised in the past that he’ll probably divide the group, the quartet. Somebody, one or two people – or God, maybe it’s everybody against Newt – will change sides, and it will be a huge part of… maybe not this movie, but the series. There’s four more movies to go past the first one, five total, and it just seems like they’re really gearing us up in these comments to prepare for Grindelwald to take over and a lot of their loyalties.
Andrew: Yeah. I think, based on what we’ve seen so far promo-wise, Jacob is going to be on Newt’s side. But yeah, but I’m just thinking now I can’t remember much promo material for this film so far depicting Newt with Tina or Queenie.
Eric: No, everybody’s on their own, kind of. It’s pretty weird.
Andrew: Yeah, which could hint at them being separated in terms of their thinking.
Eric: And then the other thing that… Heyman called it this political thriller. He called this a political thriller; I’m like, that’s really interesting. So they’re trying to get into sort of the psychology of how this works, how a strong argument… and he says “doesn’t mean he has the right methodology.” Kind of reminds me of what the MCU is doing with Thanos, right? Because Thanos is arguably one of the best villains, if not the best villain in the MCU right now, and he’s got this idealism that you can kind of maybe get behind. “Oh, the universe is overpopulated. Okay, great.” It’s something we all worry about, as far as are there enough resources for everybody? That kind of thing.
Andrew: Are you saying that you’re on Thanos’s side?
Eric: I’m 100% on Thanos’s side.
[Chris and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Oh my God. That’s disgusting.
Eric: No, I saw an interview with Josh Brolin, and I think it was Steve Colbert who just said, “Instead of… if the galaxy is overpopulated, you could just have snapped your fingers and just as much made twice as many resources for everyone.”
Andrew: Right, exactly.
Eric: And that blew my darn mind, and I was like, “I’m no longer on Thanos’s side.” But I’m saying you have a villain who’s this huge, huge, huge dude really taking over, but he’s got the wrong angle on… so he’s not willing to compromise, and that might be his problem. But his arguments are persuasive.
Chris: And on that, since we have Grindelwald trying to persuade people to his side, do you think we might see this movie kind of two different viewpoints? Where we have Grindelwald on his viewpoint, trying to win people to his side for this coming battle, and then you might have Dumbledore on the other side, trying to get Newt and gather others, and this is the movie where we’re building the sides for the future movies and the future war?
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Micah: Definitely.
Eric: It’s just so interesting because the Statute of Secrecy limits everyone to not working with the Muggles, so even if they’re on the Muggles’ side, of the side of the Muggles, they still have to act independently from Muggles, which is so interesting.
Micah: What was troubling to me, though, is the other quote that David Heyman provided in that Dumbledore is going to use Newt to get close to Grindelwald.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: This is huge.
Micah: And he refers to Dumbledore as a master manipulator.
Andrew: Yeah, he says, “Remember what he did with Harry?” He said, “He manipulated Harry.” That tells you everything. And we’ve spoken about this on MuggleCast before: Remember how Dumbledore spaced everything out across the series? I think that’s what’s going to be happening in Crimes of Grindelwald as well. I like that this annoying Dumbledore is going to carry over to these earlier films. [laughs]
Eric: I was not expecting this at all. Here’s the full quote, by the way; it offers a lot of insight.
“‘Newt is refusing to have anything to do with the Ministry of Magic [after the events of the last film].’ Finding Grindelwald’s weak spot is going to need a new agent, in the shape of Dumbledore. […] He and Grindelwald have a complicated romantic history, meaning Dumbledore knows him better than anyone, and how to use Newt to get close to him. ‘An important thing to remember about Dumbledore,’ says Heyman, ‘is that he is a master manipulator. He manipulated Harry.’ Magic can solve a lot of problems, but sometimes it’s no match for a bit of political maneuvering.”
Bringing up Dumbledore’s manipulation of Harry is a huge blow to me, thinking that Dumble-damn is going to be a flawless human being played by Jude Law, and that we’re going to see a lot of the questionable practices that Dumbledore practiced on Harry, we’ll see him manipulating Newt in similar kinds of ways, and that’s kind of scary.
Andrew: I’ve said this before; I think we’re going to look back at this first film and it’s just going to look like garbage compared to the rest of these movies.
Eric: Really?
Andrew: I think this series… because I think it’s going to get so much more interesting. I just think plot-wise, we’re going to be getting so much deeper, and this Dumbledore/Grindelwald battle is going to be so interesting to watch. There’s still four more of these. I don’t know that… the first one was just about the beasts; there wasn’t really anything to it.
Eric: Well, I would actually pay for four more films that are just about beasts.
Andrew: Eh.
Eric: Running in a field, galloping across the prairie… I would see those.
Andrew: Well, there are films like that. They’re called Twilight. People glitter.
Eric: That was laying in a field and sparkling.
Micah: Jurassic Park.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Exactly, where’s my [hums the Jurassic Park theme] kind of thing for Fantastic…? Definitely.
Andrew: Newt should get his own theme park at the end of this. That would be nice.
Chris: I’m totally with that.
Andrew: [laughs] All right, let’s move on to one more story. Speaking of Newt, a new photo came out from the movie, and it’s actually pretty interesting. It shows young, young Newt as a Hogwarts student, here played by Joshua Shea, and he appears to be in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, and Dumbledore is behind him, teaching what is probably about boggarts. And the reason I say that is because in the spring, you might remember, we spoke about WB screening a clip in which Newt sees his boggart for the first time and it’s – spoiler – an office desk.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And we had heard about this scene because some media who… WB didn’t release it, but the media who were there said that this is what the scene was, including a big Harry Potter fan, so I trusted them to be accurate in their reporting. [laughs] So now we have a photo of this scene, and it’s very interesting, and it does raise the question again: Why is Dumbledore teaching boggarts? By the way, I say “boggarts” really weird. Boggarts, boggarts, boggarts. I don’t… anyway, why is he teaching this scene? Because according to canon, he was the Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts. So what’s going on? Is Jo changing things on us?
Eric: Yeah, is Transfiguration just not interesting for the movies? I mean, Maggie Smith, if they had given her the opportunity, would have crushed it.
Andrew: [laughs] You think they should have brought back Maggie Smith?
Eric: Yeah! Well, I mean, no, but if Dumbledore is not teaching… I think the reason that he’s here is because it’s important for Dumbledore to know what Newt’s flaws are, especially if he’s going to manipulate him, or what his fears are, and so having him teach Newt in the boggart scene makes perfect sense. I think this is the scene where Dumbledore sees that he has a perfect field agent right ahead of him, because literally – it’s a bit on the nose – but Newt’s boggart is a desk because he fears most, above all, a desk job, having a desk job and not getting out and traveling the world.
Andrew: Right. So I guess the question is, then, is J.K. Rowling going to explain this, why Dumbledore is teaching this class? Was Dumbledore just substituting that day? Which I think would be the easiest, cleanest way of explaining this.
[Eric laughs]
Chris: I think Dumbledore could also… I mean, we knew he was the Transfiguration teacher, but maybe that’s the position that he held for such a long time that it defines his teaching career. But I think it also opens up maybe he could have just been the DADA teacher for a couple years.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s perfectly reasonable as well.
Chris: Because honestly, I think Dumbledore could probably teach any class at Hogwarts and be an amazing teacher.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: It’s true.
Andrew: But some people have been trying to say, “Oh, this isn’t… maybe this is a Transfiguration class,” but we know boggarts are taught in Defense Against the Dark Arts. This is clearly the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom; that bony thing is hanging from above.
Eric: The dragon.
Andrew: You can see the classroom. It’s the same classroom as it was in Prisoner of Azkaban. There’s a lot of evidence here suggesting this is DADA.
Eric: Yeah. And I’ve got to say, the evidence is overwhelming. I mean, I think when it first came out that they screened this thing in Defense Against the Dark Arts, we thought it was a typo, but now it’s just gone way beyond that.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Like, no, this is legitimately the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom in all the movies except the first one, but yeah.
Chris: And looking at this photo a little closely, now that you’ve said the thing where Newt’s boggart is a desk, I’m looking at Dumbledore’s face really closely, and it almost looks like he’s going, “Really? That’s your boggart?” Like he’s in disbelief.
Andrew: Yeah, and Newt’s kind of got a look on his face like, “Oh, damn.”
[Andrew and Chris laugh]
Andrew: By the way, this actor looks just like Newt. The hair in particular. They did a really good job making him look similar to Newt.
Eric: Somebody had a comment – I wish I could find it – but they were just like, “Man, I’m tired of… what is this with Dumbledore in a suit? What is this? Don’t we get any really gay, flowy wizard robes and high heels? High-heeled boots?”
Andrew: [laughs] High-heeled boots.
Eric: The hell is all this office crap they have them in? I’m like, “You know what? You’re right.” I’m actually sick of that trend in the movies to erase… it’s the erasure of Hogwarts robes. At least the students in this class are all in robes, but come on, give us some of the long-bearded Dumbledore, flowy, violent pink kind of outfit garb. This is garbage, just having him in a vest, a sweater vest, although he looks pretty good in it.
Andrew: Stop sweater vest washing, Warner Bros.
Eric: #HighHeeledBoots.
Micah: Anyway, one question I did have was: Do you think similar to what we saw in Prisoner of Azkaban, where we got to see Lupin’s worst fear, do you think we’ll see Dumbledore’s?
Eric: I wonder.
Andrew: Oooh.
Micah: And what would it be?
Chris: A pair of old, dirty socks.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Right, yeah.
Eric: Correct joke.
Andrew: I will also add that since this photo was released, I’d say there’s a good chance of this scene being in the trailer that comes out next week. And speaking of that, WB hasn’t announced it, but there is going to be a Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald panel at Comic-Con, and the last time they were there two years ago for the first movie, they released a trailer, so it’s highly likely that a trailer will be out. And as they always do these days, the trailer will probably be released as soon as it screens at Comic-Con, so stay tuned for that this Saturday. And our plan at the moment is to try and record basically right after the trailer airs, so boys, be ready to record.
Eric: Marking it down.
Andrew: Mark it down. [sighs] Crap, I’m just realizing… wait, is the panel Saturday? Yeah, I think it is. All right, I’m flying on that day, but we’ll make it work.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Or maybe I just won’t be on the episode. I don’t know. Anyway.
Eric: We’ll figure it out.
Andrew: All right, so before we get to Chapter by Chapter, this week’s episode of MuggleCast is sponsored by a company that I love, BeachBody on Demand.
[Ad break]
Connecting the Threads
Andrew: All right, we’ve got a workout ahead of us now. We are about to embark on Chapter by Chapter for Half-Blood Prince, finally. [imitating Dumbledore] “After all this time.” We’re going to start with Chapter 1, “The Other Minister.” So for this series, we are going to introduce a couple of new segments that will be scattered throughout. We’re still going to do our normal thing where we go into the chapter and look at various elements, but we’re also going to have some fun, too, with some games. First of all, Eric, we want to look at the threads. Throughout this book, we’re going to be looking at how each chapter connects to others. This one actually connects to other books, right?
Eric: Yeah, in a huge way. You basically… whereas in the early Harry Potter books, the first chapter was kind of always “Harry lived with his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia, and they were mean to him, and he had just gotten back from Hogwarts, the magical school where he defeated Voldemort.” It’s very expository and not 100% subtle. This time, we get a run-through, because this chapter is essentially the Muggle perspective of all of the times that the Wizard Minister Fudge has contacted him. We get a recap of the previous books, but in a really super interesting way; in a way that even if you had read all the other books leading up to this – which you should – you still get new information, or it’s exciting to have this perspective of things. So it was a really original way to do the natural, necessary exposition. But also, in general… this chapter, we know from J.K. Rowling in a 2005 interview, was going to start off another book originally, or J.K. Rowling tried to place this chapter at the beginning of other books, but for whatever reason, it didn’t line up.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, and I think it makes sense for this chapter to have been delayed, because in Half-Blood Prince you get many more examples of how the Minister of Magic – in this case, Fudge – had to come back to the Prime Minister and be like, “Oh, just letting you know we’re on top of this. We’re on top of that.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: There’s a bunch of stuff that is added up now.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And it makes sense now that there’s a war on, or as the war builds, that it makes sense that the Muggle Prime Minister would be seeing more of Fudge, and that now would be the time where the readers get an idea about it as well. This wouldn’t have made sense in earlier books, because we had no real need to know what the wider world was doing, but now, as the world grips for Voldemort’s return and ascension to power again, it makes perfect sense.
Chris: And I think due to the age of the reader at the time that Chamber of Secrets was coming out, hearing all these political terms and how that works might have turned off some readers, especially… I know that when I was that age, if I was 11 or 12, it would have gone a lot over my head, and I get the decision to delay it a little bit.
Eric: I remember being turned off by the politics of a small town, as indicated in the first chapter of Goblet of Fire. I would have gotten into Harry Potter a year and a half before I ended up getting into Harry Potter if it weren’t for “The villagers of Little Hangleton don’t like the villagers in Big Hangleton and they…” It’s like, “Oh my God, what is going on?” So 100% agree. Hard agree on that.
Micah: Yeah, I think that it’s a really good point, especially coming off of the first book, to go into the start of the second and you’re presented with these two political figures talking to each other. They probably, at that point, would not have had as much to discuss, which I think has come up already – you guys mentioned it – all the events that are gone through leading up to this point. I mean, these are the two worlds coming together, essentially, to deal with this massive threat that’s in front of them. And probably get into this a little bit later, but there’s no clear way for the Muggle Prime Minister to assist here; he’s more just kind of the informed component of these two. But yeah, I think that this is the right time. And just because it was brewing in her mind for 13 years, I don’t necessarily think that means that it was going to be the initial chapter in Chamber of Secrets.
Andrew: Right, right. And this chapter does bring up very interesting questions about Muggle/wizard relations, which we are going to dive into in today’s discussion.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: But let’s dive into this chapter. So I think it’s fair to say the opening chapter goes somewhere we probably wouldn’t have expected: the Muggle Prime Minister’s office. This is an area we hadn’t seen before. and what makes this chapter unique is that we are getting, we are seeing a Muggle perspective in the series for once, something that we don’t really, other than when we spend some time with the Dursleys. And like I said, this is really our first look at how the Prime Minister and the Minister for Magic interact.
Eric: Yeah, and I love that it’s sort of reluctantly; the Ministers don’t really like each other, or that the Muggle Prime Minister doesn’t like Fudge. Let’s be real, who would? But he just kind of sees him, even in title, the “other” Minister; it’s just kind of off to the side. “I really don’t want to deal with you unless I have to.” But he’s so powerless. When Fudge comes, it’s usually, or almost always, to report bad news. And what I love about it is that there’s a… I think the whole reason Fudge shows up is because there’s some rule somewhere that says that he has to. When something is going to be affecting Muggles, he’s got to come and tell the Muggle Prime Minister. He doesn’t want to do it. We know for him, politically, he wouldn’t do it if he could get out of it, but there’s some rule somewhere, something in the rulebooks, he says, that makes him have to announce himself. So it’s just kind of… nobody likes doing this, but here we are again.
Micah: To be fair, though, all of the problems that the Muggle Prime Minister is facing are due to what’s going on in the wizarding world, right? So it’s only fair that Fudge tell him the truth.
Chris: I really love how this intro sets the tone, kind of sets the stage for the entire book. Because when we left off in Order of the Phoenix, we had Harry being vindicated, the Order is backing him up, saying that “We’re with you,” the Ministry is starting to make changes, and we kind of leave on this somewhat hopeful attitude that going into the future conflict, everyone’s with Harry, and we’re facing that head on. And in the meantime, that situation has changed a little bit. Now we are seeing that Voldemort is in the open, making attacks against wizards and witches and against Muggles, and that the Ministry isn’t quite equipped to handle this. There’s actually a quote in the book where it’s the Muggle Prime Minister’s opponent talking, where it says “A grim mood has gripped the country,” and I think that sums up not only the Muggle world, but the wizard world as well. And that helps us to get in the mindset, to understand the setting that all of the future events are taking place in.
Andrew: Yeah. By the way, I mentioned getting the Dursleys’ perspective. Evelyn, who’s listening live, says we don’t really; we get Harry’s view of their perspective.
Eric: No, that’s wrong. The first chapter of the first book, “The Boy Who Lived,” is all about Vernon Dursley, and it’s inside his head as well.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. All right, so we spoke about how it’s Fudge’s duty to notify the Prime Minister of what’s going on, but it’s a little disturbing how much access he has to his office. Fudge is able to enter through the fireplace seemingly whenever the hell he wants.
Eric: Well, never unannounced.
Andrew: Well, yeah, but it’s still rude to be able to go into the Prime Minister’s office when you have urgent matters to tell him. [laughs] That’s just not right. That’s inappropriate.
Eric: So what should he do instead?
Andrew: Well, first of all, the fireplace where he enters should be in the lobby or in another room. [laughs] And second of all, the portrait that warns him, that warns the Prime Minister that Fudge is about to enter, should probably also be somewhere else, maybe in the Prime Minister’s secretary’s office.
Eric: But then that increases the amount of people who need to know that it’s a thing, right? And isn’t it more secure if he goes directly into the office? Because the only person who’s in that office, the person in that position of the Prime Minister, and due to the Statute of Secrecy, it makes sense that the fewest people possible would know about the other side. If you have somebody talking to his secretary or somebody going in through the lobby fireplace, that’s going to attract attention because the lobby’s a populated area, versus just his office.
Andrew: How about no portrait that can always watch you, and how about no fireplace where you can always enter a private room? How about you just send a letter; send an owl. [laughs] I just think it’s a huge invasion of privacy for not one, but two elements, two paths of communication to be in the Prime Minister’s office.
Chris: Yeah, and for the Prime Minister, he has no control of when it happens. And you could have a different method, whether it be owls or Howlers or whatever it would be. But even with the portrait, I think it’d be better if it worked that the Prime Minister could deny, or say, “Oh, we’ll set up a meeting Thursday at 1:00,” but really, the portrait and wizardkind don’t seem to really care. They’re just barging right in whenever they please.
Andrew: Yeah!
Micah: And especially coming off of the heels of the discussion we just had with Grindelwald and his rise to power and this manipulation that he’s able to do over the wizarding community, rallying them to their cause. I mean, this is a perfect example – and I don’t want to steal Chris’s point here, but – of demonstrating some sort of… almost like you’re a better entity than the Muggles are, right? Like you’re superior to them because you can show up when you want. You have this entrance, this grand entrance through a fireplace, which the Muggle Prime Minister obviously can’t do. Andrew, you mentioned the fact you have a portrait in there that watches over you at all times, and not only that, but they’ve tried to remove this portrait how many times? It hasn’t come off the wall. It just demonstrates, in my mind, sort of this air of superiority. Even the mention of – what I presumed they were going to say – the President of the United States has a call with the Muggle Prime Minister that evening. They’re like, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll mess with his mind and he’ll forget. He’ll call you the next day.” Again, that’s that feeling of superiority that you can just intervene. What if there was something extremely pressing that this president had to talk to the UK Prime Minister about? Now it’s got to wait, but it could be very important to the Muggle world. We don’t know. But clearly the wizarding world wins out in this situation.
Chris: Oh yeah, I totally agree that it seems to be set up to portray wizards as omnipresent and all powerful, and that we see everything, and just the taking away of the Prime Minister’s agency is a big fact of that. The other thought that I was having was it may have been a way of defending wizardkind, to make them seem more powerful.
Eric: Exactly.
Chris: That way, the Prime Minister would be like, “Okay, we can never really go after them, because they have so much influence and they’re all around us,” which kind of hides that they are, in relation to the general Muggle population, a much, much smaller number of people.
Andrew: What cracks me up is that they were probably asking… the Prime Minister may have asked, “Oh, why are you doing it in this fireplace? What the hell?” And Fudge was probably like, “We can get through any fireplace; it isn’t your choice. We just come and go as we please.” When really, that fireplace has probably been bewitched for the Floo Network, right?
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And that portrait, just a simple Permanent Sticking Charm.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Eric: For sure.
Andrew: All right, we’ll move on to the next one, I guess. So given that an election campaign is going on… this is mentioned in the first chapter, that the Prime Minister is in a campaign and his opponent is blaming him for all the troubles that have been going on across the country. I wonder if the Prime Minister should have considered telling his country or the world that bad things happening like the bridge attack were entirely out of his control. But then I wonder what could have been said, because he admits himself that he doesn’t tell anybody that he talks with a wizard, because people would think he is crazy.
Eric: Yeah, and that’s really convenient for Fudge. Fudge says the same thing, like, “Oh, who would believe you?” Unfortunately. And it’s not good, especially on an election year, to appear like you’re cracking up, that you’re going insane. If you just all of a sudden blame wizards and witches on this kind of stuff, well, it just wouldn’t be fashionable.
Andrew: Right.
Chris: Yeah. I think also for the leader of a country to admit that “We don’t have any control,” that’s not what the population really wants to hear. They want to hear their leader being strong and taking care of things. So I think politically, that could be problematic for him, if he just tried to say, “Oh yeah, we can’t do anything about it.”
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Eric: Also, his Junior Minister is quacking like a duck.
[Andrew and Chris laugh]
Eric: So it just… now is not the right time to start claiming that crazy things are happening, even though it’s totally true. I think him finding out that all the stuff was caused by the wizarding side allows him to be a little bit indignant, as he is to Fudge, but Fudge again is here with strict purpose and is not really sympathetic to it.
Andrew: But this did also make me wonder, given the enormity of this war – and this has the potential to bring up a ton of other questions – but should the Ministry have considered lifting the International Statute of Secrecy? Because the Ministry, as we hear in this chapter, is overwhelmed with containing the trouble that’s been caused by Voldemort and the Death Eaters. It may have been helpful to come out to the world, so to speak, and say, “Hey, this horrible person is trying to ruin the world. We need help. We need to spend less time wiping minds and more time getting more people on our side to fight this guy.” On the other hand, this would have brought up a host of other problems, because all Muggles would have been like, “Wait, what? What is going on? There’s magic?”
Eric: Yep. Panic, fear… this is something you can’t undo. I do wonder… I mean, they’d probably have to convene a whole group of hundreds of wizards to rule either way about overturning the Statute of Secrecy.
Chris: Yeah, and I think on that, it could even backfire and embolden Voldemort to really go after the Muggle population, since now they know about him and are actively fighting against him. Because up to this point, the Muggle attacks were to bring people to his side, to please the supporters who wanted to attack Muggles and saw them as lesser creatures. But in this chapter, it also sounds like he was bargaining with Fudge of “I’m going to attack Muggles unless you do this,” and if they suddenly know about all of wizards and witches, they could become fair game. And I’m just thinking if Voldemort figured out some way to wipe out a city’s memories – kind of like what happened in Fantastic Beasts, except this time it’s all of their memories – and he could really go after them using all this mind control and all the other powers he has, like giants and Dementors.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: That’s a good point. It just seems like they really need help right now. They really need as many people on their side as possible, because the Ministry has screwed this up so far.
Eric: They really have.
Andrew: But on the other hand, pulling back the International Statute of Secrecy would have been a huge deal and would have had repercussions forever, so I don’t know. It was just something to consider. Also in this chapter, I found it interesting Fudge does kind of lie at one moment in his explanation to the Prime Minister. Fudge says that he’s been doing everything to stop Voldemort in his tracks, because the Prime Minister was like, “Well, what have you done about it? Why can’t you just stop him?” Fudge is like, “Oh, I have tried to do everything.” But this isn’t true, because he was in denial for the longest time! And as we’ve spoken about, I think, during our discussions on Order of the Phoenix last month, this would have been a very different story if Fudge did acknowledge… if Fudge did believe Harry and Dumbledore in the fifth book. They could have gotten started on this fight sooner, but now they’re too little too late, and that just really bugged me, and it reminded me why I was glad to see in this chapter that Fudge was pushed out.
Micah: I think he’s been doing everything in his own mind since he saw Voldemort face-to-face, and so in his own line of thinking, yes, he is doing everything that he possibly could, so that’s how I interpreted that exchange. But to your point, I do feel like if he would have acted way sooner, it would’ve been a much, much different outcome. And couple of the questions I had – one of them may tie into what we just spoke about – but does Fudge ever consider enlisting the help of the Muggle Prime Minister at any point, and would he even know what kind of support to provide? It’s not like you can give over the Royal Army or whatever the equivalent is in the UK and say, “Okay, here, take these 500 men and women and go use them to fight Voldemort.”
Chris: This is a question that I had, too, and looking through, I can’t see a point where Fudge ever requested that, or it seems like he doesn’t really even treat him as an equal, and he kind of treats him as a bad chore, like we had previously discussed. But I think the Prime Minister could really have been valuable, because we see time and time again throughout the series where Fudge is trying to get advice from other people, including Dumbledore, and as the leader of a nation, I could definitely see that the Prime Minister has some experiences of maybe not dealing with dragons or with some type of magical problem, but maybe he’d had to deal with a hostile foreign nation or a hostile government that they had to deal with and sharing those experiences. So I think if Fudge brought him in a little bit, it might have helped Fudge stay in power a little bit longer; maybe not ultimately, but maybe have handled it in a better way so that they could have hardened the Ministry against all of the incursions by Voldemort.
Eric: There is evidence of the governments working together in this chapter when Sirius Black breaks out, because Fudge asks the Muggle Prime Minister to put it on the news that there’s this escaped convict, which… this was so interesting. So the quote in the books: “You’ll put out that warning, then? Excellent. Well, I hope we don’t see each other again! Good night.” He’s asking him about Sirius Black. This is something that we see in the beginning of Prisoner of Azkaban, that it’s on the news, right? It’s on the Muggle news that Sirius Black broke out. We know that now, based on this chapter, it’s because of a direct correspondence between the two governments, and the two governments are working together. So that whole cover story about Black being a dangerous convict who escaped, obviously not from where he escaped from, is correct. It’s a ruse, but the whole cooperation, and the fact that it got out so early and so quickly that Sirius Black had broken out and was dangerous and might be hiding up with Muggles, I think that’s an example of it succeeding. I think it’s an example of the governments working together being a good thing. They really nipped that in the bud. If Sirius really were a bad guy, the awareness that people had about his escape was top notch, was super what it should have been.
Micah: Right. Okay, do you think that other heads of state have similar relationships with their Muggle counterparts?
Eric: It’s interesting.
Micah: Seraphina Picquery – does she have a relationship with the President of the United States? Or even in present day… [laughs] I can’t even imagine Trump.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: But thinking through something along those lines. I know we’re obviously in the UK, so that’s why we’re getting this interaction, but just wanted to throw that out there.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: I think you need to. I think it’s the responsibility of all Ministers for Magic – I feel like I’m getting up on my soapbox now – but it’s the responsibility of the Ministers for Magic to have a good relationship with their Muggle counterparts, because of situations like these that could arise. They do exist in the same world. Yes, they’re hidden, but they do still exist in the same world, so they need to have that relationship, to look out for each other, not just when violence occurs, but maybe for the environment, or maybe where things are just being built. [laughs] Or just where people are at any given moment, whether it’s the Muggles or the wizards. I don’t know; there just is a multitude of reasons why they should be working together, or at least have a line of communication open, but not a fireplace in the Prime Minister or the President’s office. All right, so moving along here, we learn in this chapter that Fudge and Scrimgeour have been trying to make Harry Potter their poster boy for the Ministry. It’s hinted at; we don’t really get much information, but this is what we learn later on. To make it sound like things are okay at the Ministry, the idea was Harry Potter would come out in support of the Ministry and be like, “Yeah, they’ve got things under control,” and wizards would be able to look at Harry Potter, who they now trust, and then be able to trust the Ministry, because Harry Potter and the Ministry would suddenly be tied together. We understand that Harry wouldn’t want to do the Ministry any favors at this time, because the Ministry has been ignoring him and Dumbledore. But was that actually helpful, I wonder? Would it have been better for Harry to come out in support of the Ministry? Because if we’re all in this together, if we calm the people, maybe this will go a little better. There’s something to be said for giving the public the impression that things are in control. But on the other hand, it might put wizards under the illusion that they need not help fight this war, so… [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, it would create a fabrication of safety, right? They’re not safe. And I think Harry’s problem with it is that the government is doing ridiculous things like arresting Stan Shunpike and all this other stuff, so Harry wishes he could get behind the government; he just can’t, because they’re still sort of inept and not doing the right thing.
Chris: Yeah, it sounds like the Ministry is really trying to get someone to put everywhere… that would say, “Look, our actions are okay, because Harry Potter is the Chosen One and he says that’s okay.” But just like you said, Eric, they’re still doing those things such as arresting Stan Shunpike and trying to justify that the ends justify the means, and I think that Harry being a part of that could embolden them to do more of that.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: “The Chosen One chooses YOU to be calm and trust the Ministry.” [laughs]
Eric: I like that. [laughs]
Chris: I really want that poster series now. I really want the Harry Potter propaganda posters.
Andrew: [laughs] Maybe MinaLima made them for fun. We should ask them if they ever made some.
Micah: So in this chapter we get the first introduction to the new Minister, Rufus Scrimgeour. And one of the things that was a big reveal, right off the bat, was the description that J.K. Rowling had provided to us months in advance of the book being released, and just his initial description, I think… there’s something about him – even the Muggle Prime Minister notices it – that presents a much more steady hand than Fudge. Obviously, Fudge has been through the wringer; he’s completely disheveled and gray-haired and tattered clothing at this point, but I think a lot of that was his own doing and his own inaction. But for Scrimgeour, it’s said he “looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks of gray in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace even though he walked with a slight limp.” And I remember also people thought that this was a description of the Half-Blood Prince. Clearly not.
Eric: Or Godric Gryffindor.
Micah: Yeah, that was another one. But that would be quite a feat for Godric to pull off.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Does anyone else remember being a little disappointed when they found out that this description that we were debating about forever was just the new Minister for Magic? It just seemed a little disappointing to me, because there were so many more exciting ideas, like Godric Gryffindor or the Half-Blood Prince. [laughs]
Eric: Well, at this point, I don’t think it had ruled out that he could be the Half-Blood Prince, so that would be cool.
Andrew: Well, that’s true, that’s true.
Eric: I will say, at least in this chapter, he seems pretty cool. He seems competent, right? He’s arguing with the Muggle Prime Minister about the Muggle Prime Minister’s security, saying he’s not impressed with it. This is huge. He seems… and I think it’s Harry’s impression later, way later, but somebody makes the comment, “You can totally see how the public would elect this kind of a leader after Fudge.” He just strikes you as being very competent and battle-worn.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: In a good way. He instills confidence in… the “getting it done” factor is real high.
Andrew: And I think as a reader, you were very relieved to see somebody now, a new person in position who presumably won’t screw things up as much as Fudge did.
Micah: Or so we think. One of the questions that I threw out here is why do we have any cause to trust him? How do we know he’s not somebody who’s supporting Voldemort?
Andrew: J.K. Rowling wouldn’t screw us over twice, would she? No, I don’t know. I think it was just refreshing to see somebody new in that position, and that’s why we naturally might have trusted him at the beginning.
Micah: I agree. No, I agree with you; I’m just saying, when I first read Half-Blood Prince, I don’t think I ever would have even thought that there was a possibility that this new Minister could be working for the Dark side, so to speak, even though it’s certainly… obviously we know that that’s not the case, but why not? It would be a power play by Voldemort.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: It is so interesting to get that power play, that bribe that Fudge mentions just recently, that the reason all those Muggles were killed on the bridge was because he threatened unless Fudge stood aside for him and literally let him become the new Minister for Magic… Voldemort pulled no punches there; he really just flat-out asked to become the new head of the wizarding government, which was weird.
Andrew: So another interesting development in this chapter: We learn that Kingsley has been working undercover as the Prime Minister’s secretary.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And he’s apparently very efficient at getting through work; he can do it twice as fast as anyone else can. Hmm, wonder why that is? What do you think this tells us, Micah?
Micah: I think that it says that there’s major concern on the part of the Ministry that Voldemort or his followers could try to either tamper with or do terrible things to the Muggle Prime Minister. Though, that said, if we’re going back to our earlier discussion of that air of superiority, you feel the need to put somebody like Kingsley in place because you don’t feel like the Muggle Prime Minister has the appropriate protection to deal with Voldemort or the Death Eaters.
Eric: Yeah. I am on the wizard side of this, though, because if you…
Micah: No, I am too. I’m just saying it’s another example.
Eric: No, it definitely is. I will say, too, knowing that the Junior Prime Minister was attacked, and his behavior now, his addled brains are the result of a poorly performed Imperius Curse, means that this wasn’t Voldemort going up to the Junior Minister and causing him to do the Imperius; we know Voldemort would have succeeded. It’s open season on government officials. Probably some random teenager was sent to Imperius the Junior Minister; some random person who didn’t even know how to do the spell correctly was sent after this guy to cause havoc, and I think that that’s the sinister part about all this, is it’s open season. Pretty much just anybody who’s supporting Voldemort can go and attack a member of the Muggle government, especially really high up people, and unless they intervene, unless somebody like Kingsley is watching the door of the Minister’s office, you really can’t protect against magic because the Muggles are just ill-equipped. They don’t know what they’re looking for.
Chris: Yeah, it seems that the Muggle security force, just like you said, wouldn’t know how to respond. And I think it might even be possible that they found out about that Junior Minister acting weird because Kingsley was there to alert them, so they’ve got this early warning system kind of built in, since he can listen in and hopefully intervene.
Micah: But couldn’t the approach have been Fudge showing up and saying to the Muggle Prime Minister, “Look, all this is transpiring; we feel that it’s in your best interest to have one of our best working right by your side,” instead of “Surprise, the guy who’s been working so diligently for you for the last however many weeks is actually one of ours”?
Eric: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 100%. And the fact that Fudge tries to justify it; “Well, are you dissatisfied with his work?” And the Muggle guy is like. “No, no, no”; he’s like, “Well, then there’s no problem, then, is there?” It is this air of arrogance and superiority.
Andrew: Air of arrogance. And Chris, you think that this scene involving Kingsley – well, the mention of Kingsley – gives us a better sense of Scrimgeour, too, right?
Chris: Oh, absolutely. When he is talking to the Prime Minister, I think he shows that he’s very intelligent, he’s very logical, and he has a lot of confidence in his own methods and abilities. And before he became the Minister of Magic, he was the Head of the Aurors, so he has a lot of abilities, and obviously is really good at what he does. But I also think that he is incredibly used to getting his way, probably because in the past, his way was the right way, but he does have a tendency to steamroll over people, and I think you see that later in his interaction with Harry, where he just expects him to join. So I really think that he does not really lead by inspiration, but he leads by power, and that he’s not really winning people to his side, more that he’s forcing them in some way, that “My way is the right way, and there’s no other way.” And since he’s used to getting that, he does tend to fall back on some of Fudge’s techniques where, “Oh yeah, everything’s fine; you’re safe,” and having that air, or that appearance of looking good, even though things might be falling apart.
Andrew: It’s a great point. Eric, you want to take the next one?
Eric: Yeah, so here’s a throwaway line that I want to know more info about. Maybe we can speculate. Fudge, admitting he was wrong about Black, says, “Turns out we were – er – mistaken about Black. He was innocent after all. And he wasn’t in league with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named either. I mean, all the evidence pointed – we had more than 50 eyewitnesses – but anyway, as I say, he’s dead. Murdered, as a matter of fact. On Ministry of Magic premises. There’s going to be an inquiry, actually.” Dot, dot, dot, dot… I want to know what came of this inquiry. There’s some government look into how the Ministry of Magic was infiltrated by Voldemort and his followers that led to the death of a now innocent man on Ministry of Magic premises. Where’s the hearing? When does this actually occur? We’re hearing about it at the beginning of Book 6; Sirius’s death is fresh on all of our minds, but what information do they uncover about how it was that Voldemort got in? Because this is one of the lingering questions I have coming off of Book 5, and I know we just did our month talking about Book 5, but how did Voldemort get…? Why were there so eerily few people at the doors of the Ministry? How was Harry and the children able to get in? And whatever comes of this inquiry? What are the punishments exactly? And is it just that the government is so corrupt at this point that this inquiry maybe never even gets to happen? Or if Harry were in fact to league up with Rufus Scrimgeour, would he have gotten insight into what transpired at this hearing, and would he have been able to ask Rufus about what exactly happened to get better clarity?
Andrew: I think it does have to do with the Ministry being corrupt at this point, and I think an inquiry would probably just be embarrassing for the Ministry.
Eric: Good point.
Andrew: It would just make them look bad. So if there was one, a report may have been quietly published and filed away, not reported in the Daily Prophet, because we know the Daily Prophet is in the saddle with the Ministry, so to speak. So yeah, I think it would just be hidden away. Maybe there wasn’t even really an inquiry. He was just saying that to act like the Ministry had it together and was doing their duty.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know, but it’s one of the questions I plan to ask J.K. Rowling for sure.
Andrew: Well, as somebody who loves Sirius so much, I understand why this is still bugging you.
Micah: Tweet her.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: What’d you say, Micah?
Micah: Tweet at her.
Andrew: [laughs] Tweet at her.
Eric: Yeah, you know what? That’s actually a good… I’ll do that today.
Micah: That’s a substantiated question that probably nobody has asked before…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: … so I think you should, and I’m serious. Pun intended.
Eric: Look, due to your encouragement, I’m seriously going to do this.
Andrew: I tweeted her about answering the Dumbledore teaching DADA, and no info yet. I said, “Please save the fandom from infighting! We’re not…” And then somebody was like, “Why don’t you just wait till the movie?” And I was like, “We’re not going to survive until November!”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: We’re going to be decimated before then. So Chris, to wrap up, you wanted to talk about the magical government controlling the Muggle counterpart?
Chris: Yeah, one thing when reading this chapter and seeing the methods that the Ministry uses, the question I had was how much control do these magical governments have over their Muggle counterparts? As we see Fudge barging in, they’re replacing personnel, they can influence foreign presidents to forget to call, so that was one thing that was going through my mind, was how much control do wizardkind have over Muggle governments?
Andrew: It is a little disturbing. They can effectively do whatever they want. They can wipe minds without any repercussions, without asking permission of the Muggle government. As we see, they can install lines of communication into the Prime Minister’s office without permission, without giving them a choice. [laughs] I think they have a disturbing amount of control.
Chris: Yeah, and it seems like for now, they just use it to “Okay, I have to inform you that dragons are coming into the country,” but I can see this being severely abused. And even maybe before Order of the Phoenix, when you have Time-Turners available, and not to get into the whole “Time-Turners do everything,” but you could even have someone misusing that to reset something to better wizards because they don’t like what a Muggle government is doing.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Interesting.
Andrew: And then there’s the Muggle government that doesn’t really want to push back, I guess, because they are kind of… not grossed out, but they don’t get this wizarding world. They don’t truly understand it. So they just try to keep a distance, and they don’t want to say no to them, because who knows what these wizard guys can do?
Chris: Well, yeah, we saw even Fudge when he first meets the Prime Minister, he turns a teacup into a gerbil. And even though that’s an inanimate object and he turns it into something cute, he definitely made an impression, and you might be thinking, “What if he turns me into a ferret,” just like we saw Malfoy?
Andrew: [laughs] Right. “What if he kills me? What if he sends this Voldemort guy after me? What if he sends a giant after me?”
Chris: Yeah, because they do seem like they are everywhere, just in their interactions, yeah.
Eric: I would like to maybe give the other governments of the world the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe only England – and let’s be real, the US – would abuse that power given to them, that maybe other Ministries have a more symbiotic, more friendly, more cooperative relationship with their counterparts. Still not to the point where it breaks the Statute of Secrecy, but I get the feeling that the leader nations who are having this happen to them are using the rise of Voldemort or the threat to justify a lot of this surreptitious behavior, but it’s not necessarily something that all wizards are doing to all Muggles.
Chris: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I like that.
Micah: But it also affects his constituency, right? Everything that’s going on, all these points that are being raised by Fudge in these conversations, whether it’s the bridge, whether it’s the hurricane, whether it’s these reports of people being killed… wasn’t it Susan Bones…?
Eric: Amelia Bones.
Micah: Her murder is actually in the paper, or there’s a mention of Emmeline Vance being killed. And so all these things that are happening are ultimately impacting the image of the Muggle Prime Minister, not to mention the people that he is responsible for serving are in grave danger, and so I just feel like there’s a lot of being taken advantage of here. There is that sense and air of superiority that exists from the wizarding world down to the Muggle world, and I don’t know; that may be intentional on the part of J.K. Rowling. But I think just a final thought on this chapter is we head into Half-Blood Prince on this very dark, somber note, not unlike what we left the end of Order of the Phoenix with, with Sirius. So there’s that final interaction between the Prime Ministers where he’s basically saying, “Well, can’t you solve this easily? You can do magic,” and the response is, “Well, so can the other side,” and to me, that’s a very eerie way to head into the sixth book.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: It’s perfectly poignant.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: So we are now going to do a couple of new segments that we haven’t done before with Chapter by Chapter. First of all, the MVP, the most valuable player of this chapter. And I thought to make it interesting, there are four of us here; each of us had to pick somebody different. Two of us or three of us or four of us can’t pick the same character, so what happens is…
Micah: That’s tough for this chapter, though.
Eric: [laughs] There’s, like, six…
Chris: There’s four characters.
Andrew: Yeah, it’ll probably be tough for a lot of chapters, because you might have to grasp for straws, but that’ll be the fun of it. So for me, I think the MVP is Fudge for giving all of this information to the Prime Minister in an understandable manner. That’s not necessarily interesting, and that’s built on years of trust. And he did gain that trust with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister may have been a little… is a little creeped out by everything that Fudge… by this wizarding community, but he accepts it, and he believes Fudge, and I think that’s important, and that’s to Fudge’s credit.
Eric: Are we allowed to argue with the MVP?
[Chris and Eric laugh]
Andrew: You can disagree with me if you want.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Well, you’re going to disagree with me with your choice, I guess.
Eric: Oh, yeah. I guess all of our choices, if we choose different, we have to argue for them. But I mean, Fudge is doing the bare minimum. The bare minimum. But I do find him amusing; I do find reading about him amusing, so I don’t blame you for saying he’s the MVP. I mean, I kind of put a joke in for mine; I said the portrait that announces the Minister’s arrival, for having a highly useful, if boring, existence. Just some portrait. But on the off chance that that’s not a real person – because it is just an echo of a person – then I’m going to give the MVP slot to Amelia Bones, who, in this chapter… let’s see… page 13, it reads, “Amelia Bones. Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. We think He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named may have murdered her in person, because she was a very gifted witch and – and all the evidence was that she put up a real fight.”
Andrew: Aww.
Eric: So yeah, and there’s references in other parts of this chapter about how brutal… how grisly the crime scene was, and “The door was locked from the inside; the Muggles can’t figure out how they did it.” But yeah, whatever happened between Amelia Bones – poor Susan Bones’s mom – and Voldemort, was just this epic battle that happened offscreen, and Voldemort was probably so furious about how good a fight she put up that he probably did something very disgusting to her body in the end.
Andrew: So sad.
Eric: Yeah, but I mean, Amelia Bones, even though she lost the fight, she put up a hell of a fight, so MVP for her.
Andrew: I like your portrait MVP nomination, personally.
Chris: Me too.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: It’s just like, what a boring existence.
Andrew: But it is important.
Micah: Portraits are important.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: But he also has enough patience to sit there. Unlike a lot of the other portraits that we see at Hogwarts, he’s very focused, so he’s doing a pretty good job.
Andrew: That’s true.
Eric: I wonder if they pay him. It is a job, right? It’s a duty. I wonder if they pay him.
Andrew: But that person is dead, right? It’s like a ghost.
Eric: Maybe.
Chris: Just throw Galleons at the painting or something.
Eric: Well, he’s doing a job. What inspires that portrait to keep his job?
Andrew: [laughs] Well, maybe he’s a freaking creep, and he likes watching somebody work all day and do other private stuff in that office.
Eric: Oh, that’s funny. If there were an inner-office affair, the portrait would be the first to know about it.
Andrew: Creep of the chapter.
Eric: You could probably hang a shirt over it.
Andrew: [laughs] Hang a shirt.
Micah: Oh, wow.
Andrew: All right. Micah, who’s your MVP?
Micah: I went with Kingsley, for not just being a unbelievably productive secretary, but for being an undercover agent. He’s essentially putting his life on the line between anybody who would be coming to attack the Muggle Prime Minister. And for just seemingly blending in inconspicuously with no issue.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, he probably keeps up with Muggle football just so he can have water cooler gossip.
[Chris laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, does he hang out with coworkers after work, I wonder?
Micah: Go to the pub?
Andrew: Yeah, I guess that could be fun. All right, and Chris, what about yours?
Chris: My MVP is the Prime Minister for just not losing his mind with all this new information and having his dinnerware turn into animals. But it was also really cool being able to see someone learn about the magical community for the first time, and I think he kind of represents the reader, and especially since this is the sixth book, and we know a lot about it, for me, it kind of kicked back to reading Sorcerer’s Stone of, “Oh, we’re learning about all this new stuff and trying to keep up with it and trying to understand what a Muggle is and who Sirius is,” and especially – I think I need to agree with Eric – Fudge was doing the bare minimum. And so it seemed like the Prime Minister was hanging on to words like, “Oh, I’ve heard that before,” but I think he did a good job handling it and letting us kind of re-experience seeing magic for the first time.
Andrew: Yeah. All right, well, that was fun.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: And to wrap up today’s Chapter by Chapter, we are going to do another fun segment. Let’s rename the chapter. Let’s come up with a better title than the child-friendly, not funny one that J.K. Rowling came up with. And we’ll do this for every chapter as well. [laughs]
Eric: I think it is funny. I love this goal, though. This segment is fun.
Chris: This is my favorite new segment. This is great.
Andrew: Oh, good. So I have two ideas: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Surprise! The world is falling apart.”
[Chris and Eric laugh]
Eric: That’s perfect.
Andrew: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Cough, cough.”
[Chris laughs]
Andrew: Chris?
Chris: For me, it’d be Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Oh yes, that’s our fault too.”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Chris: Or Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Like that teacup? Now it’s a gerbil.”
Eric: [laughs] It’s the most misleading Chapter 1 title ever.
Andrew: “Uh… I need another teacup.”
Chris: Yeah. And finally – I think this is more in the lines of J.K. Rowling – but Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Fire, Mist, and a Lion.”
Eric: Oooh, I like that.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s cool.
Eric: I went – one also with my favorite MVP, the portrait – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “The Coughing Canvas.”
Chris: Oh, I like that one.
Andrew: Yeah, I like that too.
Chris: That could be a real one.
Micah: All right, I went with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Another Visit.”
[Andrew and Chris laugh]
Eric: Yep. Definitely from the Muggle perspective.
Andrew: Straight into the point. Or “Another Visit?!”
[Chris laughs]
Micah: Yeah, there you go. That had the better inflection.
Andrew: It’s the inflection that’s important.
Micah: Yeah. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “Ministry Mayhem.” And then the one I like the best, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 1, “The Fall of Fudge.”
Andrew: Bye. There could be… Eric, I’m thinking WB could make a coughing canvas that we could purchase to just hang in our homes. It just randomly coughs throughout the day.
Eric: And then it’s later revealed by the NSA that they’re spying on us all though it.
Andrew: Yeah. I think in our merchandise episode a while ago, I spoke about how Hallmark used to have a ton of cool Harry Potter stuff, and one of the things they had was a Fat Lady portrait, and it was motion-activated. There was a setting where it could be motion-activated, so it’d say something to you when it detected motion, but then there was also a button on it where you could make it talk. I used to think that was the coolest thing as a 12-year-old.
Chris: Oh, that was awesome.
Andrew: Oh, you had that?
Chris: No, I didn’t have it, but I really want it now.
[Andrew laughs]
Chris: I really want to find that.
Andrew: I’m going to go look on eBay. I’m adding that to my list: vibrating broomstick and talking portrait Harry Potter. Oh yeah, and here it is. It can be yours. There’s actually four of them on eBay right now.
Eric: Oh!
Andrew: “Animated room alarm,” somebody is describing it as.
Chris: Oh, wow. That’s the weirdest alarm.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That would scare a lot of people. Oh, that’s great. I love that this is on eBay. All right, so that is Chapter by Chapter. We hope everybody had fun with this. And like I said, since we do have a Crimes of Grindelwald trailer coming up, we’ll probably skip Chapter by Chapter for another week or two, because there’s probably going to be a lot to talk about in this trailer.
Question of the Week
Andrew: But we also have a Patreon question for this week. Micah, was this you who created it?
Micah: It was. I also found some cool chapter art. I’m not sure where it’s from, but I’ve never seen it before.
Andrew: Oh, yeah?
Micah: I don’t know if you caught that. Yeah.
Andrew: Did you link it somewhere? What are you talking about?
Micah: It’s in the post.
Andrew: Oh, yes, I did see that. That’s pretty cool.
Eric: I love this. You said this was official?
Micah: No, I don’t know where it came from. Google images.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Andrew: It’s probably fan art.
Micah: Hopefully we don’t get sued. [laughs] But anyway, the question that we had… we asked a bunch of questions, just kind of “Hey, we’re starting out with Chapter by Chapter for Half-Blood Prince, and we want to know what patrons thought on the first chapter, and particularly not starting out at the Dursleys’, the whole relationship with the Muggle Prime Minister, and then thoughts, of course, on the new Minister, Scrimgeour.” So Sarah Molnar said,
“I love this chapter! I was so surprised not to start at the Dursleys’, but I loved hearing about how Voldemort’s reign of terror was starting to be noticed by the Muggles. I’m also amused by how hard the Prime Minister tries to deny his first meeting with Fudge.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Laura Duker:
“I was highly entertained with a Muggle perspective on the insanity of the wizarding world. Here’s this highly influential person that helps lead a powerful nation, learning about Dementors and He Who Must Not Be Named and Azkaban and trying to digest what it all means. Hilarious! I was sad it wasn’t in the movie.”
That’s one thing we didn’t talk about. This would have been an interesting movie scene.
Andrew: Yeah, it would have. It would have been a very cool cold open.
Micah: Well, yeah, because it starts with the bridge being destroyed, right?
Andrew: Yeah, it does. It could have been mixed in with that, like there’s a cut to the bridge being destroyed.
Micah: Exactly. Hailey Rose:
“One of my favorite chapters in the series! I’m glad J.K. Rowling waited to add it until this book. It’s perfectly placed right after the wizarding world finally having to accept Voldemort’s return. The Prime Minister has to deal with so many things going on that he can’t explain to the Muggle world, and I just feel bad for the guy. I found it interesting how with each time Fudge has visited the Prime Minister in the past, you can see him losing a bit more confidence and becoming more overwhelmed with each visit, and then with this last visit he’s just so defeated, exhausted, and mentally drained. He wasn’t a great Minister of Magic, but I still pitied him.”
Chris: Yeah, that was one thing I actually really liked to see, was that evolution of Fudge, but also the Prime Minister feeling bad for him. Just that the Prime Minister had the awareness to be like, “You’ve been really a pain, but I can still feel for you.” So that was a great part of that chapter.
Micah: For sure. And one more here; it’s a little bit of a different perspective on this chapter. Sean McKee:
“When the book first came out, I was extremely bored reading this chapter because it wasn’t about Harry or anyone that we know, but now when I reread it as an adult, I love and appreciate all the insight we get on how the goings-on in the wizarding world affect the Muggles.”
Andrew: Exactly. And that’s one of the reasons I’m excited to be doing Chapter by Chapter again; being older, rereading these books, and discussing them critically from an adult perspective.
Eric: Yeah. And spoiler alert: Harry is not in the next chapter either. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah! I mean, that’s rare, for two chapters to not depict Harry.
Eric: That’s where it really… for people who were just wanting to know where Harry was at, like Sean McKee, like… darn, man. She made you wait twice.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Maybe some people gave up on the book.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: “Aw, one chapter, okay. But two? No.”
[Chris laughs]
Andrew: “I stayed up till midnight for this book to read about Harry!” By the way, Micah, while you’ve been talking, I figured out where this art is from. It is fan art. It was on DeviantArt by Bakenius.
Eric: Huh.
Andrew: So good job, person. It was her first piece of fan art in years.
Micah: Oh, wow.
Eric: It’s really, really cool.
Andrew: The guy on the left looks like Bill Nye to me. Just a thought.
Chris: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
[Andrew laughs]
Chris: Nailed it.
Andrew: Nailed it!
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, that’s Chapter by Chapter for this episode, and we’ll wrap things up today with some Quizzitch.
Eric: Yep, and Quizzitch during these chapter episodes will be focused on the chapter we just read, to encourage all listeners to read along with us…
Andrew: Oooh, yes.
Eric: … if not before our episode, then certainly after, so that you can answer the question. But last week’s question, just as a reminder, was in the chapter “Silver and Opals” – that’s a bit ahead of us; it’s, like, Chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince – who are the two Order of the Phoenix members that Harry runs into? The correct answer by name is Tonks and Mundungus, although listeners did point out that the barman of the Hog’s Head, who is Aberforth Dumbledore and also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, is mentioned. Sort of a free-for-all there; sorry about that. But the winners for Tonks and Mundungus are Sara, Count Ravioli…
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: … Max Nuding, Ryan Nolan, Melanie Yuberg, Andrea Feezor, Charlie Kleher, Vanessa Cho, Tetracs Mender, Lauren, Daniel, and Robyn.
Andrew: Can Count Ravioli please win every week?
[Andrew and Chris laugh]
Eric: Count Ravioli… I feel like this might be Count Ravioli’s first entry, but I’ll double check.
Andrew: What a name.
Micah: Better not be their last.
Eric: And this week’s Quizzitch question, based on Chapter 1 of Half-Blood Prince: What is the name of the bridge that gets destroyed by Death Eaters? It does have a name. And to be clear, this is a book question, not a movie question. The bridge that gets destroyed in the movie is a different bridge entirely in central London.
Andrew: Augh! Of course. These people ruin the books for us by changing things.
Micah: You shouldn’t have said that, though, Eric. You should have made that part of the challenge.
Eric: Trick question?
Micah: No, no. Say it’s specific, obviously, to the book, but don’t say that it’s a different one in the movie, because you may trick some people, which is the whole point of this segment, isn’t it?
Eric: I guess it is. I guess it is. Okay, well, anyway, I know the names of both bridges.
[Chris laughs]
Eric: And you need to tell me for Quizzitch. Tweet at us at MuggleCast: “This week’s Quizzitch answer is ____,” and tell us. You’ll get a shout-out.
Andrew: If you do have any feedback about a chapter that we’re discussing, whether it’s coming up or we just discussed it, feel free to email it in MuggleCast@gmail.com. You can also tweet your thought to us; Twitter.com/MuggleCast is where we’re at there. We do also have a contact form on MuggleCast.com. We’d love to get some feedback, get some listener interaction while we go through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Another great way is through Patreon, and thanks to everybody who supports us over there. The Patreon Question of the Week – which, as you may have guessed, we do pretty much every week – we’ll probably keep it Half-Blood Prince-related while we do these episodes, so that’ll be another great way to get your feedback concerning each chapter. I think that’s all that we have for everybody this week. I know personally over the years, some of my favorite episodes of MuggleCast have been the trailer analysis episodes, so I look forward to next week, where we will discuss the Crimes of Grindelwald trailer, and when you watch it yourself, feel free to send in some feedback. I’m sure there will be a lot to discuss. Hey, Chris, thanks for coming on. You did a great job.
Chris: Oh, thanks for having me. This has been incredible.
Andrew: Awesome, awesome. And thanks for your long-time support and for being a listener for so long; we really, really appreciate your support. So I think that does it for this week’s episode. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Chris: And I’m Chris.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.