Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #416, Not Sorry (HBP 25, The Seer Overheard)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 416. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: On today’s episode, we are going to discuss Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “The Seer Overheard.” We also have This Week in MuggleCast History. Micah thought, “Let’s bring it back,” so we’re bringing it back.
Micah: Yes, we are.
Andrew: I’m excited about that.
Eric: Also an important week in Harry Potter history, right? Battle of Hogwarts week.
Andrew: Yes, good transition.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: We were all looking forward to J.K. Rowling’s annual Battle of Hogwarts apology, we were all glued to Twitter on the morning of May 2, and nothing! J.K. Rowling decided not to issue an apology. This is the first time in five years, so I guess she’s moving on.
Laura: You know, I don’t blame her.
Micah: She’s tired of being sorry.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Right. Well, and the other thing is, if she did it… she’s been facing a lot of backlash lately. If she did it, people would come out and say, “J.K. Rowling, stop changing things,” and she didn’t want to deal with that. So yeah, I’m with you, Laura. It’s a little bit of a bummer because it was a fun thing to look forward to. Oh, well.
Eric: Something fun was I think she did, however, change her profile picture and header image on Twitter on that day, which I think is a giant middle finger to everybody. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, agreed. [laughs] That’s weird.
Eric: She still hasn’t tweeted in two months, but she went on that day to make an update, and it was not her annual apology of killing a character.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Interesting, interesting. So we have another year ahead of us before the next Battle of Hogwarts anniversary, and maybe she will return to Twitter, and maybe she’ll return to making those apologies.
News
Andrew: Warner Bros. is kind of apologizing. They announced last Monday, right after we released our last episode, that Fantastic Beasts 3 has… well, they didn’t say delayed. They said, “Hey, everybody, we have a release date for you now.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And it’s three years after Crimes of Grindelwald. It is November 12, 2021. And filming is going to begin next spring, so nothing’s even happening for the next year!
Eric: Wow.
Laura: Ouch.
Andrew: [sighs] Yeah. So we had expected it to come out November 2020, because 2016, 2018, 2020. Space ’em out two years apart, makes perfect sense. And then reviews were kind of mixed for Crimes of Grindelwald, and…
Micah: Kind of?
Andrew: [laughs] And we had heard those reports that J.K. Rowling took the script back and was working on it a little more, and we spoke about how WB’s now ousted CEO said that they need to make some changes. And now, Eric, you highlighted this one quote from the Warner Bros. press release announcing the new release date. They said, “We are incredibly excited about and have confidence in the Fantastic Beasts series. We all believe this release date will give the filmmakers time and space to allow their artistry to truly flourish and deliver the best possible film to our fans.” So this is an admission that they need to work on it, right?
Eric: It’s an admission, at the very least, that the new film will have time and space. The filmmakers now have time and space to allow their artistry to truly flourish and deliver the best possible result. Yeah, so I think it is… it has something to do with… they might be saying that the last film was rushed. That might be an implied, not overtly stated kind of a thing.
Micah: Right.
Eric: These statements are tricky.
Micah: They’re not going to… right, to your point, they’re going to wordsmith it as best as they possibly can, and we can read between the lines. But I’d just like to point out, last week when we were making our predictions for apologies in the Battle of Hogwarts, I did say that J.K. Rowling was going to apologize for killing the Fantastic Beasts series in two films, and this is about as close as you can get from a prediction standpoint.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: You won, Micah.
Micah: Thank you.
Andrew: Yeah, you were right. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, man.
Micah: Just making that point.
Andrew: You’re the seer we overheard.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: But people like us… so we’re not going to spend the whole episode on this, but I did want to ask, are we a little worried that they’re going to lose fans over the next three years? Three years is a long time. People’s lives change in… we’re now two and a half years away. We are all actively engaged in the fandom every week, thanks to this podcast, and you listeners are also actively engaged, thanks to this podcast and other podcasts you might listen to. But then there are the casual Harry Potter fans who, for the next two and a half years, they might watch a movie on TV every once in a while, they might go to a Harry Potter trivia night, but nothing’s keeping them actively engaged in the fandom. So are we going to be losing some of these fans over that time?
Eric: Right.
Micah: No.
Andrew: You don’t think so? You don’t think this long gap is going to affect the box office, potentially?
Micah: It may slightly impact it. I was actually having this conversation with somebody yesterday, and they pointed out the fact that Harry Potter, really, at this point, is on the level of Star Wars in terms of fandom. Think about how long it was between those films, those episodes, being released. People still went to the box office. People still went to the movie theater. This is just a delay. Now, I get that it’s a different side of the Potter series. It’s not even Potter, really; it’s a completely different story with some characters that we know. But I don’t see the core fan falling off. Maybe the casual fan, to your point, Andrew, is going to lose a little bit of interest, but at the end of the day, they’re still going to want to know the story.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: I think there is something to be said for momentum, though.
Andrew: Exactly.
Eric: And if the Fantastic Beasts series did have momentum, it does not anymore, so they’re going to have to… and I’m sure the whip-smart people at Warner Bros. will be able to come up with a marketing campaign that effectively excites everybody again, but we’re going to need a little bit of a memory, a reminder of what has gone by. And I think leading into the new film, I think there should be a concentrated effort to remind us what we like about the Fantastic Beasts series, and kind of get our… this time period could be a pox on the momentum, or it could be a nice reset button that really allows a lot of us, over time, to forgive and forget some of the worse or less cool parts of this past two movies.
Laura: I think the only thing that worries me is that this big break adds so much pressure to the expectations of the third film, and there’s already a lot of pressure there, right? Because hardcore fans are expecting something phenomenal to make up for the disaster that was that second movie, and now we have to wait even longer. So if it doesn’t deliver, that will be disappointing, and I don’t know what the future of the series would be after that point.
Andrew: Right. For the record, I’m happy to see this delay if it means the film is going to be fantastic. It’s worth it. It’s absolutely worth it.
Laura: Same.
Andrew: Because as I’ve said previously, the franchise is on the line right now! The sanctity of the franchise is on the line right now. They can’t pump out two, three more movies that are trashed by critics and by a lot of fans. And in fairness, I know even some of our listeners out there, they really liked the movie, and good, but it needs to be liked by more people.
Eric: Yeah. You know what would be great? If J.K. Rowling would write a book in a year or two that comes out in the summer, and it’s just like, “Here’s where the Fantastic Beasts series… here’s where our characters currently are at,” in book form…
Andrew: Yeah, that’d be cool.
Eric: … that kind of, maybe through character development, hints at some of the threads that are going to be plucked in Movie 3. That might be pretty cool. And we don’t know yet what the time difference is going to be between films; we suspect not very long, but at the same time, the next three films have to eclipse the next 13 or 15 years of Harry Potter history.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: So I’d like to see maybe a book, just as a change of pace for this franchise. I really think this franchise has suffered from not having that book, and I think we should have one.
Micah: But that’s in part what’s made it so much fun as well, is that there isn’t a book. There’s frustration – we’ve talked about that – in not being able to go back to some sort of written text, but I also think that’s what makes it enjoyable, because you don’t know where the story is going. You don’t have the books right in front of you to be like, “Okay, well, I know that this event is happening in Movie 4,” and I think there’s something to be said for that. It’s also really interesting to me to watch how when we were reading the Potter series, there was always that expectation of another movie, another movie, another movie, and there was never any fear that Deathly Hallows wasn’t going to be made. If anything, it was how many parts was it going to be cut into, right? And now here we’re sitting, we’re talking about Fantastic Beasts, and it’s clear that they’re really doing a deep dive here. They’re really reassessing where this series is, because to points that have already been made, if this next film doesn’t live up to expectations, it could very well be the end of the Fantastic Beasts series.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: To be clear, I don’t want a road map book. I want a book that… if J.K. Rowling’s failure as a screenwriter is not being able to show character motivations very well, I want a book that is already set during the time period of the first two movies. Something like that. I don’t want answers as to what’s coming, but I think that having more of a basis in narrative and prose would allow us to get a little bit more on board with where some of the plot lines are in the current series that were introduced and what her intentions for them were. I don’t know. I just… it’s a sad time to be completely without J.K. Rowling, because I think J.K. Rowling would have some interesting things to say about each of these developments.
Andrew: Well, when you first said, “I want J.K. Rowling to write a book,” I thought you were going to say, “I want her to write a tell-all.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: She can call it “What Happened,” and we can hear how we came to this moment. [laughs]
Eric: I don’t feel like I demand… I’m not demanding accountability from her, but I want her to be able to flourish. All I want for us as a Harry Potter fandom is to be able to see the Fantastic Beasts series the way J.K. Rowling sees it, the way J.K. Rowling, David Yates, and David Heyman see it, and apparently attempted to do with the second film, but I don’t know what the hell they were doing because it was very confusing.
Micah: I do wonder, though, given all the trouble that seems to have come out of this last film, if J.K. Rowling will go to somebody like Steve Kloves and get his input on this upcoming film, given how much work he did in screenwriting all of the Potter films with the exception of Order of the Phoenix.
Andrew: I think so, definitely. Yeah, I think so. And look, J.K. Rowling, she’s an author; she’s not a screenwriter, and there’s no reason to blame her for that. She just… she isn’t skilled at writing screenplays. I bet she’s been receiving help behind the scenes even since before the first movie, because it’s a very different process.
Micah: And I’ll just say, final thought on this, that it’s unfair to put it all at her feet.
Andrew: Definitely.
Laura: Right.
Micah: I think you need to remember that David Heyman, David Yates, have been involved in this series from very early on, especially David Heyman. So if they’re comfortable with what was the final product of Crimes of Grindelwald, it’s just as much their responsibility as it is J.K. Rowling’s.
Eric: Point well taken.
Laura: Yeah, this was a group effort. [laughs]
Eric: What are we going to do for three years?
Andrew: Oh, gosh. I don’t know.
Laura: This podcast, I guess.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Vacation.
Andrew: Well, yeah. And we know… we have some ideas for what we’re going to do with MuggleCast over the next two and a half, three years. I think we’ll be fine. I would like to see Pottermore, J.K. Rowling, or Warner Bros. do something. I’m still harping on this Harry Potter TV series. Warner Bros., they’re going to be launching their own streaming app to compete with Disney and Netflix. They need some originals, some exclusives, and I really think a Harry Potter TV show would be perfect for that. But I won’t get into that again.
Micah: I think we should just all go to Orlando and ride Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure on a continuous loop.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure.
Micah: I knew I missed a couple words.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I want to know what everybody’s going to be calling it, like the tourists who have no clue what it’s called. What are they going to actually call it when they’re asking for directions? Like, “How do I got to the Hagrid ride? How do I get to that adventure ride?” “Sorry, sir, what adventure? Every ride is an adventure.”
Laura: It’ll be the Hagrid roller coaster.
Andrew: Yeah, there you go.
Micah: But there’s two of those, no? Aren’t there?
Andrew: There are two Hagrid rides. [laughs]
Laura: Oh, yeah, you’re right!
Eric: The motorbike one.
Andrew: All right, just want to give everybody an update on our Patreon. The signed album art cards have arrived in Chicago; they look great. Laura, your signature looks great.
Laura: Oh, thank you.
Micah: Great job shipping those, Laura.
Andrew: Yeah, good work, good work. And Micah, Eric, and I will be signing them together in a couple weeks. If you want to get your own, join us at Patreon.com/MuggleCast, and pledge at the Dumbledore’s Army level or above. You’ll be eligible to receive one if you remain a patron for at least three months. You must join by the end of July, though, in order to receive one, because we want to get our list together, so do that soon. And by pledging, you’ll also receive instant access to lots of other benefits, including our recording studio and bonus MuggleCast. We released one last week in which we asked, “What if Draco Malfoy died by Harry’s Sectumsempra curse?” And we had a great discussion there. So again, Patreon.com/MuggleCast. Thank you, everybody who is supporting us. Because of you all, we are weekly again, and we are going to be weekly until 2025 when Fantastic Beasts 3 is finally released.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: So we have lots of time to fill, and we’re looking forward to it.
This Week in MuggleCast History
Andrew: So Micah, you also wanted to look back on what we were up to this day in history, this week in history.
Micah: Yeah, this is always a cool segment, given that we’ve been at this now for almost 14 years, to take a look back and see what was happening all those years ago. And the first one that popped up was Episode 265. We released this on May 8 of 2013, and we were just talking about the theme park. The Wizarding World Orlando confirmed that it was expanding; it was going to be creating Diagon Alley, and we actually analyzed whether a fire-breathing dragon was a good idea in 100 degree weather.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Because that’s the kind of stuff that we talk about.
Andrew: Well, and now we can address that in hindsight, I think it ended up being fine. You can feel that fire when the dragon does roar. You can feel the fire on the ground, even though it’s very high up. And it’s hot, but it’s only for a second.
Eric: Yeah. [laughs] We didn’t know ice dragons were a thing back then, so…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: That’s what they should’ve made.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: And we also wondered how exactly the Hogwarts Express was going to work.
Andrew: And we still don’t know, because it’s just magic.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: A pulley system. That’s the answer.
Micah: Well, that’s interesting. I read that as we didn’t know that it was going to go between the parks, but maybe we did. I’d have to listen to the episode.
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Eric: I think it might have been the ticket aspect, which they’ve really integrated seamlessly by doing a faux King’s Cross and kind of have your ticket taker be your ticket scanner guy. It’s pretty cool. And I knew there wasn’t that much room in the back lot for that; they really crammed it in, but they made it work. In the end, I’m just excited because of how really well they pulled off Diagon Alley.
Micah: Definitely.
Andrew: It’s so fantastic how you can take the Hogwarts Express from one Harry Potter land to another, and move between theme parks. I’ll never get over that.
Eric: It’s great.
Micah: Yeah. And actually, this next one is timely, too, given our recent discussion about the upcoming Fantastic Beasts film. So Episode 144. This was on May 4, 2008, so 11 years ago.
Eric: Wow.
Micah: It was titled, “Manly Mathematical Men.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Okay.
Micah: So Laura, I’m just going to go and take a guess and assume that you were not on this episode.
Laura: No, I was not.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: A lot of these involved Jamie, and when Jamie was involved, we came up with some interesting episode titles.
Laura: Yeah, he’s an interesting guy.
Micah: He definitely is.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: The big story on this episode was that Potter left the New York Times Best Seller list for the first time in over a decade.
Andrew: Huh.
Micah: And fans thought it was the end.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, couldn’t blame us.
Micah: And here we are, 11 years later.
Laura: Yeah, I was going to say, wait 11 years and… [laughs]
Eric: We weren’t counting on script books and screenplays. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, well, and of course… yeah, I mean, Cursed Child, that shot to number one, and I think that was number one for a few weeks. It was never as big as one of the original seven books, but in this era of publishing, it did very well.
Micah: And then just a couple of honorable mentions. Episode 89 was May 6 of 2007. We did our trailer talk for Order of the Phoenix, so if people want to get a sense for how far this podcast goes back, all the way back to the fifth film being released.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: “David Yates looks like he’s going to be a great director!”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: That was before Book 7 came out too. Remember, the first hundred episodes of this podcast were before Book 7.
Micah: And Episode 38, way back, May 7, 2006. It was titled “A Very Moody Podcast,” and people can probably guess who we talked about in that episode. It was one of our character discussions, and so if listeners who are relatively new want to go back and get a sense for some of the episodes that we did over a decade ago…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … we did a lot of character analysis, including this podcast, which was about Mad-Eye Moody.
Laura: I loved those character discussions. Those were a lot of fun.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: It’s very funny to read the show notes, too, with a lot of the questions that we came up related to these characters, because we’re just…
Andrew: “What’s going to happen to Moody?” Also, this month in MuggleCast history, Andrew was born, so I hope you are all preparing your gifts.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Oh, that’s right! The big 3-0.
Andrew: Shh. What? The big 2-0? Yes, that’s right, turning 20. Very excited, very excited.
Laura: [laughs] One of us, one of us…
Eric: Yeah, right? Welcome to the club. How are you celebrating?
Andrew: I don’t like parties. Me and Pat might go down to Nashville, I’m thinking, over Memorial Day Weekend just to go exploring, but yeah.
Laura: That’ll be nice.
Micah: I’m glad you’re going to be 20, Andrew. It’s really wonderful. That means you started this podcast when you were 6 years old.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Well, yeah.
Micah: And you sounded like you were 6 when you started it.
Andrew: Absolutely, absolutely.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: All right, it’s time now for Chapter by Chapter. This week we’re discussing Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “The Seer Overheard.” Laura, kick us off with the Seven-Word Summary.
Laura: Harry…
Eric: … discovers…
Andrew: … who…
Micah: … listened…
Laura: … to…
Eric: … the…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: … prophecy.
Laura: There you go!
Andrew: You guys caught me off guard. I didn’t realize I was ending it.
Micah: We made it as simple as possible.
Laura: I was like, “Andrew, you can’t not know what comes next.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Did you read this chapter, Andrew?”
Eric: I was waiting for you to turn it on its head. [laughs]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: But I know, Eric, there was something right at the beginning of this chapter that bothered you. It kind of shocked me, but tell us: What upset you?
Eric: Yeah, so thanks for putting me in charge of this chapter discussion this week. [laughs] Appreciate it. You know, I read this chapter three times to prepare for this episode this week…
Andrew: Wow.
Eric: … and I’ve got to say, Book 6 being my second favorite of the seven Harry Potter books behind Prisoner of Azkaban – I think they’re both exceptional books – I came across a take that I’ve never had before as it pertains to Book 6. What do you guys think? I think the end of Half-Blood Prince might be a bit rushed.
Andrew: What?
Eric: Yeah, I think the end of Book 6 – starting with, if not this chapter, the one right before it that we’d read last week – I think the end of Book 6 is a little rushed. There’s a lot of information here in this chapter – and it’s not just how the chapter starts, which I’ll talk about in a minute – but there’s a lot of information, and Harry doesn’t really have time to process it, because we’re off to the cave, we’re off to destroy Voldemort, we’re off to save the castle from Death Eaters, we’re off to mourn Dumbledore… it’s a lot of big, big, big plot points, but it feels to me kind of like, especially with this chapter, might be a little rushed.
Andrew: And that’s because at the start of this chapter, we hear that Harry is overjoyed by all the attention being on him and Ginny, versus him and everything else he’s up to.
Eric: Well, we can start there. I was hoping for your guys’ general feedback on whether you think it’s rushed.
Andrew: No, I don’t think so, and I’ll explain why once we get into the details of this first point. I see what you’re saying. I mean, I guess it’s… I like that it’s all coming together in the final few chapters. It keeps it action-packed.
Eric: Yeah. Okay, well, I’ll just mention it then. There’s a three week time jump. Harry finally gets the girl; he kissed Ginny at the end of the last chapter, and all of a sudden, it’s three weeks later. And Harry is elated; he’s overjoyed to have finally found somebody. The castle is all abuzz with the gossip, J.K. Rowling writes. But it’s been three weeks and I’m just like, “What? How’s Draco doing? Is Draco okay?” Because he was bleeding out the last time we saw him, and it’s like it’s not a big deal. Three weeks later, all of a sudden… and in doing this, J.K. Rowling not only, I feel, robbed us of our characters… he’s our hero, he finally got the girl, and we don’t get to see it? What’s going on with that? But also his… if this book can be said… if you can break down Half-Blood Prince to having an A plot and a B plot, the A plot is clearly learning how to defeat Voldemort. The B plot is all these teenage hormones, and I don’t think it’s a satisfying payoff to the entire B plot of this book to have a chapter where your hero finally gets the girl, and then a three week time jump, which is described as being the best times of Harry’s life, and we don’t get to see it. That feels weird to me. Am I crazy?
Laura: I don’t think you’re crazy, but I do wonder if she had included that, if it wouldn’t have felt a little bit like story whiplash. Because we would have gotten this three weeks of just carefree happiness, and then all of a sudden, Harry goes to the cave.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: So it might have felt a little too stark, and that could be why she decided to put the time jump in there.
Micah: Right. I agree with you, Laura, and I think that we do get a sense for the development of their relationship in mentions throughout the course of the beginning part of the chapter, and I just don’t think for J.K. Rowling that this was a focal point for her story in the latter part of Half-Blood Prince. They got together, she knew that they were going to be together for the foreseeable future, they’re going to end up married with kids, and we got a lot of those hormones, though, Eric, to your point, throughout the course of this book, and are you really going to want to read – kind of going off what Laura said – three chapters about how Harry and Ginny are running around the grounds of Hogwarts snogging each other?
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Well, the answer is yes, because Ron and Lavender… relationships are presented as these awful, horrible things. The relationships we have been forced to endure for Harry Potter are Harry and Cho, which is just sad. It just didn’t… the timing wasn’t right. And then Ron and Lavender, and we got chapters and chapters of Ron and Lavender and how it upset Hermione and all this stuff, and when we finally have what’s presumably a mutually consensual and healthy relationship, we don’t get any of it, and it’s just a shame. The chapter starts off with Ginny laying against Harry’s legs, and I’m like, “This is nice!” They’re joking about a tattoo that he may or may not have. It’s hilarious, but it’s all assumed. And I became less angry at the film when rereading this chapter, because if you wonder why the movies underserve Ginny, it goes back to the books. The books underserve Ginny. The books just skip three weeks of what could have been the most important character development. I mean, Harry… we don’t need to see anything explicit. Let me be clear: I’m not asking for explicit romance scenes. J.K. Rowling, for good reason, just isn’t interested in that; that’s fine. But what I wanted to see was… when Harry eventually breaks up with Ginny, as he does at the end of this book, and he talks about some of the happiest moments of the last couple months, and they’ve been like a dream and all this other stuff, I want to feel the payoff of that by having a few scenes where we see why Ginny is good for Harry, where we see where they really connect to one another. Maybe we could have a few scenes, let me just guess here, where Ginny soothes Harry over his discomfort about Draco, or maybe where Tonks comes out of the woodwork. We feel that her storyline was underserved and wrapped up weirdly; what if Tonks now finally reveals to Harry that the reason she’s been mopey and leaving her post all year is because she’s in love? And Tonks can finally have that catharsis. I’m saying if there was at least one more chapter before “The Seer Overheard” and “The Cave,” where we allow Harry to live in the romance of it all, it would not only pay off the B plot of this book, but possibly be better for the book overall.
Andrew: I’m happy for Harry. I like the paragraph that J.K. Rowling wrote about this. He’s been happier than he could for a very long time, but we don’t need any more. Let’s move on.
Eric: I mean, okay, I’m fine with moving on, but does anybody else have any other comments?
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you to the extent that Ginny as a character feels very underdeveloped in the books. I’ve always felt this way. I mean, you can all go back and listen to our bonus MuggleCast where we talked about is Ginny a fully developed character, or is she just a Mary Sue? I don’t feel like she’s very well-developed, and perhaps including some of this additional context would have helped with that, but I feel like the big problem here is that she wasn’t very well-developed before she got into a relationship with Harry, and as we all know, you’ve got to be a whole person before you get into a relationship. You can’t be half a person. That’s not going to work. Come on, Ginny.
Micah: No, and the last point I’ll just add about it is I think that where we are in this story, it is now about the Half-Blood Prince. It is now about Horcruxes. It is not about Harry and Ginny, even though this has finally happened. If they would have come together earlier on in the book, I think, Eric, you would have gotten a lot more development of their relationship throughout the course of the book. But because of where we are, and they’re finally coming together at this moment, Harry’s focus needs to be on other things. It needs to be on the Prince. It needs to be on traveling with Dumbledore. It’s just not a focal point for J.K. Rowling.
Eric: I mean, presumably he’s had three weeks of bliss, so we’ll just have to take J.K. Rowling at her word for it. But Hermione has got a secret, y’all, and she comes up to Harry. He’s reminiscing about a particularly blissful afternoon lunch, whatever he did with Ginny, whatever, we didn’t see it. And Hermione comes up and throws a piece of paper at him and says, “Hey, I want to talk about the Half-Blood Prince.” Harry is a little reticent. She says, “I found this person. This person, Eileen Prince, who was captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Club.” And Harry, first of all, doesn’t even want to hear about it; he’s sick to death of Hermione bringing up the Prince, but he kind of really scoffs at the idea that this woman could be the Half-Blood Prince. And first of all, he says to her, “I know it’s a boy. I know it’s not a girl. I just do.” But he’s kind of scoffing at Hermione, and we know, thanks to the benefit of the end of the book, that Hermione has pretty much struck gold here. So what are our thoughts on this interaction between Harry and Hermione?
Andrew: Well, I think it’s hilarious that he’s convinced that it’s a guy. [laughs] “There’s no way a prince could be a girl.” And I mean, he’s right that it is a guy, but for him to assume so strongly, to be so convinced that it is a guy, is a little too far at this stage.
Laura: Yeah, but let’s think about the time this was written.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: I don’t… this takes place in the ’90s.
Andrew: It was before we tore down those gender constructs.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Well, I think we’re still tearing them down, but yes.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: So I’m not surprised, and I don’t feel particularly offended by having read that or anything. I also don’t think that it makes Harry in any way sexist.
Andrew: No.
Laura: I know this was a point we wanted to touch on.
Eric: Well, here’s the text: “They looked at each other, and Harry realized what Hermione was trying to say. He burst out laughing.” I’m like, that sounds a bit harsh, right? That sounds a little bit like… “You think she was the Half-Blood…? Oh, come on,” he says.
Micah: Yeah, but also remember Harry is 16 years old. I think we’re forgetting… I like Laura’s point of the time it was written, but also remember how old Harry is. It doesn’t absolve him of acting fully in this way, but I also think that Rowling makes a point of having Harry internally react once he starts to process how Hermione is feeling as a result of what he’s just done, because it was almost as if he was punched in the gut, and he realizes, having grown up with Hermione, he believes that a girl is just as capable of a guy as achieving great things, and the fact that he’s even able to process that shows, I think, that the sexist argument is probably a little bit…
Laura: Now, I will say I think that he’s very biased in thinking that he can “just tell” that the tone of the writing came from a man. There’s definitely some bias there, and that kind of thing is certainly rooted in cultural sexism. But it doesn’t mean that he automatically thinks that women are not capable of this kind of achievement; it just means that he has very stereotypical interpretations of what the gender roles are in written format. And I mean, there’s definitely some room for growth there, and I actually really like the point that Micah brought up about that sort of internal struggle that Harry has when he realizes that Hermione thinks he’s being sexist, because this is what should happen, right? If you’re having a conversation like this in your day-to-day, and something comes out of your mouth that can be interpreted as sexist, and someone pushes back on you, this is how you should feel on the inside. This is the correct reaction.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: That’s a really good point. She says, “You don’t think a girl could have been clever enough to do it,” and he just kind of takes a minute and is like, “But wait a minute, I know you, and I’ve known you all my life.” [laughs] Yeah, he comes back. But he’s still… so separately, he’s still not willing to really forsake… he’s not really ready to give up the high esteem with which he holds the Prince, so he’s really learned nothing from his attack on Draco, unfortunately.
Micah: But I don’t blame him.
Eric: What?!
Micah: I will actually stand in defense of the Half-Blood Prince and his book.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Okay.
Micah: Now, I know you ask, has he not learned anything from what’s happened to Draco? And when Ron and him are talking, it’s noted that Harry’s “conscience squirmed” when that was brought up. He clearly feels responsible for what’s happened. We learn Draco has made a full recovery. But there’s also the fact that throughout the course of this entire year, he’s used this book, and there’s just one time that he takes one thing that was on one page and utilized it. And he should definitely be held responsible, but if you look at the larger picture, everything that he’s learned has only benefited him. So I don’t begrudge him defending the Half-Blood Prince, and it just seems like Hermione is constantly trying to prove him wrong, and I don’t know. I’m willing to defend him.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, I will point out what is… where it says his conscience squirmed, it says, “his conscience squirmed slightly,” is actually the full quote. So I think it’s…
Andrew: [laughs] He felt bad, but just a little bad.
Eric: He felt a little bad about Draco. A little bad. That’s kind of where that…
Micah: Yeah, I do think, though, if you look at the fact that it says “For enemies,” and then there’s this spell, given how good the Half-Blood Prince has been at Potions, his ability or her ability to be able to come up with completely new ways to enhance these potions that are being made, Harry should have really thought about what kind of spell was going to hit Draco when he did what he did, because… I’m just saying, the level of intellect of this person is very, very high, so he should have expected some sort of really bad outcome to happen.
Laura: Yeah. And I agree with your defense of Harry; I think understanding the position he’s in… he’s young. He’s very vulnerable to these figures who remind him of himself. Look at Chamber of Secrets; he also defended Tom Riddle’s diary, even after being told not to trust something if you can’t see where it keeps its brain. So that’s clearly a lesson he hasn’t learned. But also, in defense of Hermione, she’s a much better big picture thinker than Harry is, so he’s only able to conceive of the Prince in this small sphere of influence that he’s had on Harry’s life, whereas Hermione is able to see the bigger picture consequences of what a book like this can mean, and that’s why she’s so against it. And I think that’s sort of the disconnect these characters are having, is he’s interpreting her criticism as being solely of him, and maybe she’s not doing a great job of presenting the bigger picture of why this book is problematic by drilling in too much on Harry effectively cheating in Potions. But I think that’s where the disconnect between these characters lies at this moment.
Eric: I think that’s brilliant, and it’s also a good segue to just a little praise point for Hermione. I think it’s unbelievable that she really uncovered this Eileen Prince article, this old Gobstones article in the Daily Prophet, in the library. Good for her. Was this not just amazing investigative journalism on Hermione’s part, knowing that we know she’s on the right track? It’s amazing.
Andrew: Without Google. I mean, that’s the most impressive part.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Imagine anyone trying to find a random person’s name in some archives without Google these days.
Eric: You have to read every name!
Micah: She really wants to prove her point.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: She’ll do anything to prove her point.
Eric: She’s hell-bent.
Andrew: Works around the clock for 72 hours.
Micah: Also worth connecting the thread, though, with Chamber of Secrets, because Hermione is the one who ultimately discovers what is in the Chamber and what’s attacking all these students in the school, and she, in Half-Blood Prince, begins to unravel the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. And I don’t think, again, that’s by coincidence that she’s at the center of discovering, really, the secret of each of these books.
Eric: And in both cases, she discovers something, but isn’t really able to reveal it until after the fact. She will soon discover who the identity of the Half-Blood Prince is, but it won’t matter because Snape has killed Dumbledore and Harry is chasing him down, and Snape will just tell Harry about that. So her information is really brilliant, but it’s kind of cut short because the plot gets in the way.
Micah: Yep. And actually, in bonus MuggleCast, we are going to discuss what if Hermione discovered the truth about Snape being the Half-Blood Prince in that particular moment? Would it have been too much info for Harry to find out about in one chapter, given what he learns about Snape not too long from now?
Eric: Yeah, so let’s start heading on over to Dumbledore’s office. So instead of Gchat – or we mentioned not having Google – we’re still using the 15th century method of communicating messages. Jimmy Peakes comes and hands Harry an invitation to Dumbledore’s office again. So Harry is going, but on the way, he hears a noise, and he hears a noise, and it’s this clutter of sherry bottles dropping, and quickly running over to it, he discovers Trelawney. Professor Sybill Trelawney is upside down, ass over tea kettle on the ground.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: She’s been kicked or thrown out of the Room of Requirement. What is going on here? We find out that she actually got into the room, that she was using the Room of Requirement to store her sherry bottles because of nasty rumors that she’s trying to quell, and we find out that she got in but somebody else was in there. And this sheds a lot of light onto Harry’s whole journey this whole book of trying to get into the Room of Requirement. The last time we actually saw what phrases he was using, they were all Draco-focused. “Show me the room that Draco is in. Show me the room Draco is using.” Trelawney just presumably went, “I need that place to store my stuff,” just like Harry did in the previous chapter with the tiara, and she got in. She got in with Draco in there, which means Harry could have gotten in. This whole year, Harry could have gotten in when Draco was in there, even, if he had just said the right thing.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s an interesting development. When I was reading this chapter, I’m also wondering why she needed to hide…? So the rumors were, what, she’s an alcoholic? Is that what we’re supposed to assume?
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, maybe you are, Trelawney, and you should just own it.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Maybe not an alcoholic, but maybe you just drink a little too much.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. But apparently she’d been using the room for years, and she was not aware students knew about it. So Harry is really super interested in this idea that… or Trelawney says she heard somebody whooping? Like, “Woo”?
Andrew: Whooping, I guess, is how I… “Whoop! Whoop!” Doesn’t sound like a noise Draco would make, but okay.
Laura: I know. I just imagine him in there, like, “Whoop!” [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, I would picture him more like Bowser from Mario being happy. Like, “Ahahaha!”
Eric: “Muahahaha!”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Well, especially after what’s just happened to him. He’s in no physical condition to be whooping.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, doesn’t it hurt the diaphragm that he just got severed from the Sectumsempra spell? [laughs] But Trelawney says she would hazard a guess that it was a male, Harry knows instantly that it’s Draco, and Harry, who’s on his way to Dumbledore’s office, suggests that she accompany him. However, the plot happens, and Trelawney is so thrown off by what she’s just heard that she begins to talk about how Dumbledore… well, first of all, Dumbledore has told her to visit less, which I want to talk about, because can he do that? And what exactly does this say about how Dumbledore…?
Micah: What do you mean, could he do it? “Don’t come to my office.”
Eric: I mean, Trelawney has been bothering him all year. We’ve seen her in his office at least once before, complaining about the centaur and all this stuff. But Dumbledore should be a little bit… I mean, as a headmaster, as a manager of this staff, can you really tell a teacher to not come see you?
Laura: Yeah, you can.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, but Laura, isn’t that wrong? I mean, as the headmaster of the school, you should be welcoming your teachers as often as they want to visit you.
Laura: Not if they’re coming into your office to constantly be prejudiced and complain about other beings who are not like them.
Andrew: Right, yeah.
Laura: It does reach a point where, if somebody is coming back and repeatedly complaining about the same thing again and again – you’ve given them the same answer 50 different times – you’re going to be like, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, so unless you have something else you want to bring to my attention, don’t come back.” [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. At this point, she’s just like a nagging fly that Dumbledore can’t get rid of, for reasons we’ve already discussed, so he’s just stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Micah: I think it has a lot to do with what she wants to tell him, though, and he obviously already knows what inevitably is going to happen to him, and he’s probably just a little bit tired of hearing it. But it is surprising, though, going all the way back to Order of the Phoenix, how protective he was of her in that book when Umbridge tried to boot her from Hogwarts, that he would now be taking a different approach towards her. But maybe he’s just busy and he doesn’t have time to deal with Trelawney’s predictions.
Laura: Well, I also think he doesn’t want to give any credence to this theory, right? Because it’s not going to work out if he starts sort of lending her credibility on these predictions.
Eric: So we’re talking about these cards that she’s pulling for Dumbledore, and much like she did with Harry in Book 3, she’s really starting to predict Dumbledore’s death.
Micah: Right, yeah. And we’ve probably talked about this at some point and done a character discussion on Trelawney, but she’s supposedly a descendant of the great Seer Cassandra, and I think it’s actually mentioned in this chapter. And Cassandra in Greek mythology was fated to accurately predict the future but have nobody believe her, and I think Trelawney has a bit of that going on, particularly with this prediction about Dumbledore.
Eric: Yeah, there’s even a good joke about how “Harry knew all too well what it was like to be the object of Trelawney’s predictions,” because she says, “You were a fantastic object. I miss having you in my classes; you were a great object.” And he’s like, “Yeah, pfft, I know what that felt like.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So even Harry is able to not blame Dumbledore for telling her to visit less, but he does want this extra evidence against Draco, so he wants her to come with him to the office. But that only lasts so long, because within a minute or two, he’s about to leave her and run up to Dumbledore’s office, storming on his own. He finds out that Trelawney… she talks about her first interview for the job of Divination, and Dumbledore was there, and of course, we know what happened is she gave the prophecy that implicated Harry or Neville and Voldemort and that whole thing. But what we didn’t know is that Snape, Severus Snape, was apprehended by Aberforth Dumbledore halfway through the meeting. Trelawney doesn’t really have a clear image or clear picture of what happened, because she was in a trance state, but Snape overheard the prophecy, and Harry never knew that it was Snape, and Dumbledore kept this information from Harry.
Andrew: Yeah. So my stance on this is that Harry did not need to know. It would not help Dumbledore make his case for Snape to Harry. So I find it kind of unfortunate, actually, that Harry did find out, but on the other hand, as a reader, it’s a pretty fascinating development.
Micah: It shows a lot more of Snape’s character to me, though, given him having done what he did, in overhearing the part of the prophecy, and then taking that back to Voldemort, to still be willing to treat particularly James in the way that he does towards Harry, knowing that he played a part in his death, whether directly or not.
Eric: Oh.
Micah: The fact that he… for all of the bullying and teasing that went on while they were at school together, he paid him back in about as well as you can pay anybody back for something.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: And the fact that he still behaves in this manner, and he still has this chip on his shoulder, and he treats Harry the way he does because of it… I mean, Snape is a pretty shitty person.
Eric: It’s a really good point.
Andrew: Absolutely.
Laura: Yeah, well, the only person that he felt remorse over was Lily; let’s be clear. I don’t think he cared about James. I don’t think he particularly cared about Harry, either.
Eric: Yeah. It just… for me, this is information overload. This comes at a point in the book when I don’t know what to do with this.
Micah: That’s why there’s no time for Ginny and Harry.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Well, no, I mean, I can deal with that information. With the Snape thing, it’s so tacked on to the end of this… we’re about… so I mean, Harry confronts Dumbledore, and you know what Dumbledore is like? “We’ve already talked about this. I’m not interested in what Draco and Snape are doing together. I found a Horcrux. You want to come?” And it’s just… Harry… Dumbledore gives him some reasons why he hasn’t told him, and this, that, the other thing, but there’s no room for this information in this chapter, because Dumbledore has found a Horcrux, and Harry wants to go! And so this information, which is potentially earth-shattering… you could end an entire book with just this info.
Micah: No, but don’t you understand? That’s the whole point. You’re building the case against Snape. It’s starting… it’s already started, but now you know that he was the one who overheard the prophecy. You’re going to find out that he’s the Half-Blood Prince. He kills Dumbledore. So now all the cards literally are being stacked against Snape, and this is part of that. I mean, this piece of information is huge for Harry, and it justifies his behavior, his feelings towards Snape. If for any moment he was ever considering potentially even having the slightest nice thing to say about the guy, it’s all out the door now.
Eric: I mean, he still names his…
Micah: He absolutely despises him. And there’s a huge contrast going on, right? Because at the end of the day, Snape has been helping him this entire year, so it’s just a very interesting sort of balance between those two sides.
Eric: Yeah. I just… I’m actually surprised how Dumbledore is kind of taken aback; he did not expect this information to come out when it did.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: And there’s a period when Harry bangs on his door and comes in and starts accusing him. He kind of really doesn’t know what to say. He whitens a little bit; he doesn’t move. There’s an extended period of time where Dumbledore doesn’t react, and then he says, “How did you find out? Who told you?” So it is kind of crazy, but at the end of the day, as you guys said, they have business to attend to. So the Harry and Dumbledore thing… and you can read it. I had excerpts, but it’s just too long, and just read in the book. It’s great. But Harry still is of the mindset that Draco is going to try something, and Snape is going to try something, and even though Dumbledore talks about, “Do you really think I wouldn’t leave Hogwarts with accurate protections in place? La, la, la, la, la,” Harry still goes home and arms all of his friends. He gives them Felix Felicis, he gives Hermione the Marauder’s Map, says, “You’ve got to round up all the Dumbledore’s Army members and tell them that something is going down tonight. I will be with Dumbledore.”
Andrew: Well, also… and by the way, Dumbledore is like, “Of course I’ve got the school taken care of!” Meanwhile, two chapters ago, Harry is walking through the front door because it was unlocked for some reason.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: And no, that wasn’t the Felix. That was bad security at Hogwarts.
Micah: Right. He’s got one student being attacked by a necklace in Hogsmeade, and then he’s got another falling down poisoned. His security is terrible. That’s why I said it’s almost comical, Dumbledore’s comment to Harry about second guessing his ability to protect the school, and that’s not even to mention when he is there, the security is terrible.
Andrew: It is a running joke. I love it.
Micah: So why wouldn’t Harry go and arm his friends and tell them what they should do?
Laura: Do you think that’s part of Dumbledore’s assumption? That he’s like, “Do you really think I’d go off and leave the castle defenseless?”, knowing that Harry is going to go and give all of his friends the heads up, and maybe that’s the security Dumbledore is talking about? [laughs]
Micah: Maybe.
Eric: That’s so twisted. That’s such a twisted idea. [laughs]
Andrew: He’s always thinking three steps ahead.
Micah: But not only that… yeah, but for this entire year, he’s allowed the school security to be compromised by Draco. Knowingly, in many respects.
Andrew: Right, because he knows… I mean, can you fault him for that, though? Because he knows this is how the plan needs to go.
Eric: Because he wants Draco to live, yeah. I don’t know. Dumbledore is in maximum bullshit mode right now.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: He was thrown off by Snape overhearing the prophecy. He wasn’t expecting that.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I guess so.
Micah: He’s off his game.
Eric: [laughs] So the interesting thing about going back a second to the conversation that they have, Dumbledore is still protecting Snape’s deepest secret, the whole love thing that he has for Lily. What he says to Harry is, “You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life and the reason that he returned -“ and he gets cut off. It’s all here, really, that Snape loved Lily, but Dumbledore is stopping short of telling Harry that, and I do respect that about Dumbledore. It’s really not his place to tell Harry what happened. The only way that can happen is if Snape tells him some way.
Andrew: Also so fascinating to read this knowing what we know now.
Laura: I think also the point in Dumbledore not providing Harry more context here is that that context would have fallen flat. Harry wouldn’t have viewed it as legitimate or genuine, and he would have just laughed it off and been like, “Well, that’s completely ridiculous. How could Snape have loved my mother? F off, Dumbledore.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Or he could have believed Dumbledore and just been really repulsed by that idea. Like, “Ew, I could have been the child of Snape? Oh my God, no. Gross.”
Micah: Or “Why is Snape creeping on my mom?” There’s that side of it too.
Laura: [laughs] Just sliding into those DMS.
Eric: Oh my God.
Micah: Given the state of mind, yeah.
Eric: Maybe if we didn’t have the cave to get off to, there could be a real big moment, a Snape moment of forgiving Snape. But ultimately, it’s too early to do that, because as you say, Micah, the end of the book is all about vilifying Snape and then he kills Dumbledore. So I do see… that is a point well taken. You mentioned there’s a connecting the threads here.
Micah: Yeah, just Dumbledore leaves the school quite frequently, actually.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: In this book, we know he’s off hunting Horcruxes, but he’s forced to leave the school in Chamber of Secrets when stuff goes down. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t leave in other books, but just connecting those threads together.
Andrew: Good one, Micah. Love it.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Thank you. He always seems to leave the school when important things are going to happen, even Sorcerer’s Stone.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: Where was he?
Eric: He got an important owl to the Ministry of Magic, but then realized that it was an error and came back. You know, you never see Voldemort and Dumbledore in the room together at the same time. Oh, wait, you do in Order of the Phoenix, I guess. But anyway, Harry and Dumbledore… the chapter is coming to an end. They go to Hogsmeade, and a couple of things about Hogsmeade we learn in this chapter. One, that it was Aberforth who was guarding the room where the interview was taking place; he at least is aware enough of what everybody in his bar is doing that he apprehended Snape. And this kind of was good indication that for whatever shit Aberforth talks on Albus in Book 7 when we meet him properly, they had a very good working relationship that dates all the way back to the ’80s, the early ’80s. So for the last 15 years, for all intents and purposes, Aberforth has really been Albus’s number one spy in Hogsmeade. I mean, everything from being able to identify Voldemort’s specific followers that had joined him in Hogsmeade, waiting for him to get the Hogwarts job, to apprehending Snape and probably saving the world, all came down to Aberforth. So massive props to him.
Micah: Mad props.
Eric: Yeah, mad props.
Micah: So there are three things that I thought about, reading what you wrote, Eric, and interested to get your thoughts. One is that at the end of the day, they’re brothers. Regardless of what’s happened… we’ll learn about, hopefully, if the future Fantastic Beasts movies are released, what happened to Ariana. But they are family. The second is both are members of the Order. And the third is that there’s this ugly-looking Death Eater snooping around Aberforth’s bar; of course he’s going to be somewhat suspect. I personally believe that his goat found Snape, told Aberforth, and Aberforth came and…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: The goat is the security mechanism in place. People don’t realize.
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: That’s interesting. How long have you been holding this theory from us?
Micah: [laughs] I think I should tweet J.K. Rowling.
Andrew: I like it.
Laura: [laughs] I have a question: So they’ve got this big, beautiful castle, Hogwarts, which is a school. Why is he performing job interviews in the Hog’s Head?
Andrew: Sometimes you just want to get out, Laura. You want to shake things up. Have you ever gone on one of those walk and talk interviews? I did that once.
Eric: What?
Andrew: When I was interviewed for an Apple Store at the mall, we didn’t interview in the Apple Store; me and the manager walked around the mall. It’s kind of like that.
Eric: That’s really interesting.
Micah: Okay.
Eric: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, Dumbledore takes some interviews in Hogwarts and takes other interviews outside of it. It seemed fated that it should be in the Hog’s Head, though, because we know that the barman over there came in use when dispelling riffraff. Yeah, I don’t know.
Micah: It’s also mentioned towards the end of the chapter, though, that Dumbledore frequents both the Three Broomsticks and the Hog’s Head, so clearly he does conduct his business outside of Hogwarts.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: And who knows? Maybe he’s meeting up there for a little something-something.
Andrew: What?!
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: I mean, look, I work from home, so I’m a little bit of a different situation, but you like to get out. You like to shake things up. And if Dumbledore is working and living at Hogwarts, you want to go outside and remind yourself that you’re not trapped somewhere 24 hours a day.
Micah: Yeah, but I’m just saying, they’re both bars. Maybe he’s in the market.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I never took the Three Broomsticks and the Hog’s Head to be places where gay men meet and do whatever. [laughs]
Eric: Definitely the Hog’s Head.
Andrew: Next time I’m at Universal, I will see if I’ve been missing anything.
Laura: I don’t know, it just struck me as a weird interview, because didn’t she say that he called on her in her room where she was staying to have the interview?
Micah: See?
Laura: Can you imagine someone showing up at your hotel room to be like, “Okay, let’s just have the interview now”?
Andrew: That would be weird. I mean, that’s like what we see in this freaking Me Too era. That’s what Harvey Weinstein was doing, meeting with these women in hotel rooms. We know that’s not what J.K. Rowling was getting at, but… [laughs]
Eric: Do we think that Dumbledore somehow knew a way to coerce the… to bring on the prophecy? Because she said she hadn’t been feeling well. Trelawney says she hadn’t been feeling well and that she hadn’t eaten a lot that day, and she still to this day does not know that she delivered the prophecy when that happened. But do you think somehow the reason Dumbledore met her in her room was to force that kind of a reaction?
Andrew: But wait, he wouldn’t want the prophecy to happen.
Eric: He would want to witness it, if anybody does.
Andrew: Yeah, I guess that’s true. Like, “If it’s going to happen, it might as well happen in front of me so I can hear it, but I mean, it would have been better if it didn’t happen, period.”
Laura: I mean, it’s just a question of… can you know that a prophecy is coming?
Andrew: Is there like a little rumble in the ground?
Eric: Maybe there was a prophecy that a prophecy was coming and that he had to be there when…
Andrew: Oh, God.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: He cracked the skills. Yeah, my crackpot theory is Dumbledore controlled the circumstances of his interview with Trelawney because he knew that would happen, and what he wasn’t controlling was the Snape factor. Yeah, because I think it is a question, why do the interview there and not just across the way at Hogwarts? And Harry and Dumbledore are off. They leave the Hog’s Head after… or they’re in that street. Rosmerta is throwing somebody out of the bar; it’s a typical Friday night or whatever. And they Side-Along Apparate to the cave, which is next chapter.
Andrew: Dun-dun-dun…
Rename the Chapter
Eric: All right, so time for Rename the Chapter. Andrew, what’d you do?
Andrew: Mine is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “Whoop! Whoop!”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: That is a weird reaction to successfully fixing a Vanishing Cabinet.
Andrew: Draco didn’t do that. I want J.K. Rowling to rewrite these books and change that line.
Micah: Maybe it was one of the Death Eaters on the other side.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: “Did you hear that, Draco?”
Eric: It was Fenrir Greyback, and what he really said was “Woof, woof,” and it just translated wrongly.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I renamed the chapter Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dumbledore’s Office.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Micah, what was yours?
Micah: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “Snape, the Shitty Sneak.”
Eric: Okay. And Laura?
Laura: Mine is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 25, “Ron’s Tramp Stamp.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Nice.
Eric: “Funny little Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.” This is why I want a whole chapter of Ginny, because Ginny-isms are the best.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
MVP of the Week
Eric: MVP of the Week. Andrew, who’d you give it to?
Andrew: Definitely Trelawney, because Harry deserved to know that it was Snape. He needs that. He needs a complete picture.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I gave mine to Draco. It took him a very long time, but I think it’s still pretty impressive that he ended up fixing the Vanishing Cabinet and really achieving accomplishing his mission. Nobody thought that he would do it, but he got this far. He allowed the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.
Micah: I decided to go with Dumbledore, not Albus, but Aberforth for catching Snape.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Laura: And I went with Hermione for figuring out the whole Eileen Prince thing, even though Harry ignored it.
Micah: Cue the music.
[“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners plays]
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Come on, Eileen…” All right, so next week we will discuss Chapter 26, “The Cave.” Is that what it’s just called? “The Cave”?
Eric: “The Cave.”
Micah: Yes. I was there about a month ago.
Andrew: Yeah, good. So you’ll be able to give us a on-the-ground report from that experience.
Micah: Yes.
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, it’s time now for Quizzitch.
Eric: Yes, last week’s question: What unlikely companion does Harry find outside the Room of Requirement? And we know, based on our chapter this week, that it was Trelawney. Fairly easy, considering her confession is the highlight of this chapter. But congratulations, as always, to people who submitted the correct answer to us over on Twitter using hashtag #Quizzitch. They include, but are not limited to, Olivia Kenney, Hannah C., Cat, Count Ravioli, Liam, Sara a.k.a. Weensie, Sarah Davis, Karin Fröjdh, Julianna Coughlin, Marlena, Fluffy McNutters, Jason King, The Jessley Hallows, Tarot Devi, and Mandrake Patronus.
Andrew: Well said. “They include.” I like that new format.
Eric: Yeah, there’s too many to say everybody, but hopefully, if you keep entering, we’ll get you again.
Micah: Yep.
Eric: And next week’s question, although it’s a little bit of a spoiler: There are Inferi in the next chapter.
[Andrew gasps]
Eric: Yeah. What is the first spell that Harry shouts… that Harry directs to the Inferi?
Micah: Sectumsempra.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: That might be a contender. This could honestly be a multiple choice. I think the first one is a little silly, but we’ll see. We’ll see for sure.
Andrew: Okay. All right, if you want to get in touch with us about anything we discussed today, you can go to MuggleCast.com, and we have a contact form right at the top of the page. You can also just email us directly, MuggleCast@gmail.com; tweet us, Twitter.com/MuggleCast; follow us on Instagram, Instagram.com/MuggleCastPod. Micah, how’s getting Instagram.com/MuggleCast going?
Micah: It’s great.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: You haven’t done anything. You got my hopes up and you’re letting us down.
Micah: Andrew, this takes time.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also call us: 1-920-368-4453. That’s 1-920-3-MUGGLE. If you do call us, just keep your message around a minute, and try to record… try to call us from a quieter place. We would also appreciate your support at Patreon.com/MuggleCast; it is why the show is weekly. You will get instant access to tons of benefits, and if you pledge at the $5 level or higher, you will receive signed album art later this year over the summer-ish. Late summer, early fall. Just make sure you are pledged by July and you remain a patron for three months, and then you will receive the art. Which looks great, by the way. Really happy with our printer. They’ve done a great job.
Eric: Yeah, they did. Both years. I can’t wait to sign it with you guys. That’s going to be great.
Andrew: Yeah. And Laura, I already found the card, the first one that you signed; you wrote on it, “First card signed of 2019.”
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: Cute, cute.
Laura: I felt like that person… that recipient deserves to know.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. It’s cool little fact.
Eric: If we hit a thousand patrons this year, let’s give that to the thousandth patron.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: We’re not too far away for that, so we’ll do that.
Andrew: All right. And again, that’s all available at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. And speaking of Patreon, we are going to be recording a bonus MuggleCast right after today’s episode, asking, “What if Hermione discovered the truth about Snape being the Half-Blood Prince?” Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: We’ll see you next time. Goodbye.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.