Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #419, Snape Loves Dumbledore (HBP 27, The Lightning Struck Tower)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 419. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Laura Tee: I’m Laura.
Pat Fincutter: I’m Pat.
Andrew: And we’re joined by one of our Slug Club members this week. Hello, Alicia.
Alicia: Hey, how’s it going?
Andrew: Good! How are you? Where are you in the world?
Alicia: Very good. I am in New Brunswick, Canada, which is far east Canada.
Andrew: Far east, which is good because we’re recording early. So it’s nice to have you on; let’s get your fandom ID. Give us your favorite book, movie, Hogwarts House, Ilvermorny House, Patronus, and one question you really want J.K. Rowling to answer.
Alicia: Okay, favorite book, Prisoner of Azkaban; favorite movie, Half-Blood Prince; Gryffindor; Wampus; my Patronus is a fox; and I kind of struggled with a question for J.K. because I feel like I don’t really have any questions for her, really.
[Eric laughs]
Alicia: But one thing that I have sort of wondered was about Ollivanders. How does he make enough money to stay open? Because I feel like the amount of customers they would have wouldn’t be very many. They sell to the new students every year, right? Because their primary business is from Hogwarts students, correct?
Andrew and Eric: Right.
Alicia: But I mean, they only sell each wand for, what, seven Galleons? Yeah, I mean, maybe from time to time someone has a wand that breaks that they need replaced or something like that. And I know it’s an old family business, but I almost wonder if it’s maybe government-funded? Do you think that’s possible?
Eric: Oooh.
Andrew: Yeah, I like that question. Maybe he’s getting business from Harry Potter fans year round.
[Alicia and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Like, a lot of businesses. He’s got the high season, and then nothing.
Alicia: Exactly. What is the revenue of that place? It can’t be very high.
Eric: Well, you touched on it when you said it’s a family-owned business. They are makers of fine wands since, what, 382 BC?
Alicia: BC, yeah.
Eric: So maybe they already own the building, the shop. Maybe they own the shop where it’s located and therefore have very little overhead.
Alicia: Oh, they would definitely own the building by now, I would say. [laughs]
Eric: So they’ve been nothing… they’ve been in the black since, I don’t know, 150 BC.
Alicia: So they just don’t have to sell many, I guess.
Eric: Yeah, that would probably be my guess.
Alicia: Yeah, that makes sense.
Andrew: Maybe he runs a gambling ring in the basement.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: Or a house-elf fighting…
Alicia: A little side business going on. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Anyway, it’s nice to have you on, Alicia…
Alicia: Thanks.
Andrew: … and thank you for supporting us on Patreon.
Alicia: You’re welcome. I am happy to be here.
Andrew: Awesome.
Pat: I’m jealous that your Patronus is a fox. I’ve never heard anybody else being a fox before, and I want to be one.
Alicia: It’s pretty cool, right? I feel like I’m one of the very few people that’s happy with what they got as their Patronus.
Pat: Yeah, it’s awesome. I love foxes.
Alicia: It’s the same as… Seamus has the same one as me, I guess.
News
Andrew: You know, it’s perfect timing, actually, that you are on, because our sole news item this week is about Cursed Child coming to Canada! It is the sixth production.
Alicia: Oh, so exciting! I know.
Andrew: So it’s going to be… it opens Fall 2020 at Toronto’s Ed Mirvish Theatre. How far are you from Toronto?
Alicia: If I were to drive, it would be about a ten-hour drive. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Alicia: Flight-wise, it’s not very far. I would fly.
Andrew: Have you seen it yet?
Alicia: I haven’t, so I do intend to fly there when it comes.
Andrew: Excellent, excellent. It’s pretty mind-blowing to me that by Fall 2020, there are going to be six iterations of Cursed Child running nightly around the world. That’s a lot of Cursed Child happening.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Alicia: Taking over the world.
Andrew: Truly. And you have to think that they’re not done yet. Eric, Hamilton is closing here in Chicago, which is a pretty big deal because it’s been open for, what, three years?
Eric: Yeah, and I can’t count how many friends of mine play the lottery daily to this day, still.
Andrew: Yeah, I know Pat has done that. I did it for a while.
Pat: Yeah, I’ve won the lottery twice.
Andrew: But one of our listeners… and of course, this is how it always goes, as soon as you hear that a show is closing. One of our listeners saw Hamilton in Chicago, Lizzie, and she got talking with a security guard, and the security guard claimed – take this with a huge grain of salt – but the security guard claimed that Cursed Child is coming next to Chicago at that theater.
Eric: [laughs] Oh my God.
Andrew: It might be wishful thinking, but I can’t… I don’t know. New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and Chicago? That seems like too much Cursed Child.
Eric: And Melbourne.
Pat: Yeah, I can’t picture it. Also, that theater is too small for the staging that they use, so they would have to do so many revamps to that specific theater for Cursed Child to even work in it. Which would be good, because that theater is designed very, very poorly.
Eric: Is it the Nederlander? Where is this?
Andrew: CIBC.
Pat: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Andrew: I know my Chicago theaters.
Pat: I’ve seen a number of other shows there, and just the layout of the audience is terrible. And Cursed Child, I know everybody is going to want to have a good seat, so they would have to do a lot of revamps for that space.
Andrew: I feel like Chicago is too close to New York for them to open another Cursed Child here. There are a lot of big cities in the Midwest, so I guess that could be the reason why; it’s just easy for people to get here. I don’t know. We’ll see. That would be crazy.
Eric: Didn’t they say when they first…? In my brain it’s rattling around, this old interview with John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, where they were like, “You will be able to see it.” [laughs]
Andrew: Right.
Eric: “You will be able to see this show.” And we thought it meant livestreaming to movie theaters, which is a much cheaper way of doing than what they’re already doing.
Andrew: No, they actually meant, “We’re going to open it in every city in the world.” [laughs]
Eric: Every city above a certain population is going to get their Cursed Child.
Andrew: [laughs] But we have said… I think we’ve speculated, “Will it tour?” And it just seems unlikely that it would tour, because the show pieces are so big that you can’t carry that around. Anyway, so yeah, it’s been a bit of a slow news period, but that’s okay, because on today’s episode we’re talking about “The Lightning-Struck Tower” from Half-Blood Prince.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: But first we have some emails. Laura, do you want to read the first one for us?
Laura: Sure, this first one comes from Jacob. Jacob says,
“In this week’s episode (418), you were talking about the question of if your soul would be split (thus allowing you to create a Horcrux) if you perform assisted suicide to someone who was dying, like in hospice care. You said that you think that since ‘they’re still dying,’ your soul would split. I think this is definitely not true. Here’s a quote from ‘The Prince’s Tale’:
“‘If you don’t mind dying,’ said Snape roughly, ‘why not let Draco do it?’
‘That boy’s soul is not yet so damaged,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I would not have it ripped apart on my account.’
‘And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?’
‘You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation,’ said Dumbledore.”
One of the reasons Dumbledore wants Snape to kill him is because if Draco did it, it would be murder; Snape doing it would be a mercy. Killing someone who wants to die, like someone in hospice, is not murder, and thus the soul would not be ripped.”
Laura: I like it.
Eric and Pat: Yeah.
Andrew: Me too. Good point.
Alicia: Yeah, I agree with that. I remember when I was listening to the episode when you guys were talking about that, I felt the same way, because it’s just such a harsh thing to do that if it was out of mercy, I don’t think… doesn’t seem like something that would rip a soul.
Eric: I guess that ties into Dumbledore’s… what he says about how the only way to fix it is remorse, and so that kind of does tie into why it wouldn’t work if it is a mercy act, because you have to have regret to do it, and that would actually heal the soul back together. So if it’s something you don’t already want to do, or are doing for a friend, that doesn’t necessarily fit the criteria needed to split the human soul.
Andrew: Yeah. I didn’t have a good answer prepared, admittedly, when we spoke about this two weeks ago, because I was pretty wine-buzzed by that part of the show.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: This was the one we did live, right?
Andrew: Yes. Yes, it was. Next email is from Lainey:
“I’ve been listening to you guys off and on for the past four or five years as a fully dysfunctional mid-20-year-old! I love being able to keep up with what’s going on with one of my favorite obsessions. I’ve called in once before, but since I’m an intermittent listener, I’ve yet to hear if I’ve been aired. But the question I have now is super simple and I hope might benefit others! I have yet to purchase the HP films because my roommate had them before I moved out, and let’s be honest, I could just get the new Warner Bros. streaming or wherever the movies get added, but I’d love to own them! Is there a special set, or editions of the movies you would suggest so I get the best bonus features and extra stuff?!”
Andrew: This has been a problem, I feel, because there aren’t any major boxsets with the deleted scenes and everything all in one. I would say the best boxsets to get are the Ultimate Editions, but I don’t even think they sell them brand new anymore.
Eric: They might… I don’t… did they ever go on Blu-ray?
Andrew and Alicia: Yeah.
Alicia: I actually have the Blu-ray boxset, but there’s no extra scenes or…
Eric: Because the ones… the Ultimate Editions I was thinking of were four-disc sets of DVD, and they had… the first DVD was the movie, but the second DVD was actually the movie with deleted scenes built in. They did that at least for the first four Harry Potter films, but it was only on DVD that I can recall. The other thing to consider is that I have these Blu-rays of the Harry Potter series that I got. They’re double discs, so it’s Movies 1 and 2, Movies 3 and 4, per set at Walmart for $5 on Black Friday, and it was amazing. I was like, “Okay, I can upgrade. I can get HD.”
Alicia: Wow.
Eric: It was like a double feature… you know the brand; it’s like Walmart does these special double features. The problem is, the HD Blu-rays that I have, the aspect ratio is so vastly different than what I remember, so I’m actually comparing images because I’m actually working on revamping the Caption Contest over on MuggleNet, but looking at the images… I started out with fullscreen DVD – fullscreen, the four by three – and the height that you get in those shots is so wonderful and beautiful. I actually prefer those.
Andrew: Hmm, interesting.
Eric: Because it’s just so much of the frame, and what I’m at least nostalgically familiar with gets cut off to fit the very, very wide box, widescreen type thing.
Alicia: That’s a good point.
Eric: So I kind of lean towards the old school… as old as you can get for your quality standards would be my advice.
Andrew: VHS, baby.
[Alicia and Eric laugh]
Eric: The little tracking at the bottom.
Laura: I have a confession, y’all, and it’s interesting because this just came up in conversation last night: I don’t currently own any of the movies.
[Alicia gasps]
Andrew: What?
Eric: You fake fan.
Laura: I know, and it’s because growing up we always got the movies for Christmas or whatever, and even by the time I was moved out, I would still get them as Christmas presents, and I guess they just sort of became fixtures at my parents’ house. So they still have them, but I don’t have my own set. And last night, Marc was like, “Yeah, you have to get a set,” and I was like, “Well, why? I mean, I can stream them if I really want to watch them.” And he was like, “No, you’ve got this awesome Harry Potter Lego set figurine that we have all set up in the living room. We’re getting our House banners and putting them up in the office…”
Andrew: You are? Wow, that’s cool.
Laura: “… you can’t not have the movies.” [laughs] Yeah, so we’re going to get the hanging banners hanging from the ceiling. We’re going to get the Ravenclaw and Slytherin ones and put them up in here.
Andrew: Don’t bring this up, please. Now Pat is going to have this idea in his head. He’s going to ask me to do it in my place.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Yeah, so I think it’s something I have to invest in, too, because apparently I’m a fake fan if I don’t have them. [laughs]
Pat: Well, wasn’t there that one…? The Hogwarts… I don’t remember the name of it, but it was a cube where there was the hidden compartments to find a special DVD that had extra stuff in it and stuff.
Andrew: Yes.
Pat: Doesn’t that one have all the extra stuff?
Andrew: Our friends Andrew and Edward have that, Eric.
Eric: Yeah, they do. And when they were doing the Ultimate Editions, or… yeah, I think it was called the Ultimate Editions. They did a documentary, and it was a seven or eight-part documentary, and each separate movie had one part of the eight-part documentary. So it was like, looking at casting, looking at special effects, looking at makeup on each of these films… and so I think that Hogwarts Collection, it was called – the one that Andrew Edward have – has all of those transferred to HD. And I’m trying to figure out… there’s an eight film collection boxset that’s $55 from Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, everywhere you go, but you’ll have to check the reviews specifically to see if they have those individual documentaries.
Andrew: Yeah, that whole scene is a mess right now, and my guess is they’re not going to release the perfect boxset, because everybody, as we’re saying, is moving to streaming. And Laura, I actually don’t have physical copies of the movies either, so don’t feel too bad.
Laura: Okay, cool.
Andrew: If I were to buy physical copies… yeah, I guess I don’t need to buy them now, since Pat is moving in soon, and he has them. But if I were to get copies of the movies, I would just buy streaming. I can’t subscribe to this idea of buying movies anymore; they just take up space. No, thank you.
Laura: That’s my thing too.
[Alicia laughs]
Eric: Well, it’s Harry Potter. You know you’re going to get your money’s worth. You know you’re going to get your money’s worth; it’s Harry Potter. You don’t ever need to reference or turn on… what if HBO Go doesn’t load or something?
Andrew: [laughs] Well, then I’ll go outside.
Eric: [laughs] “I’m done doing whatever I’m going to do. I’m going to take a walk. I’m going to walk Brooklyn.”
Andrew: I’ll read the books. [laughs]
Eric: Well, so where are people streaming now? Because I’ve heard two things; I’ve heard HBO has them now, but somebody else was also able to through the ABC app?
Andrew: No, no, no. So HBO doesn’t have them anymore. They did for a time, and it was big news. It was last year, right at the start of the new year, they put all the movies there. But NBC, since NBC… I don’t know; it’s a whole thing. They’re at Syfy. You can stream them through Syfy or one of those channels. It’s an NBC-owned channel; I know that much.
Eric: I think one of our patrons was talking about being able to stream them with the deleted scenes put back in.
Andrew: She was, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, which is a weird thing to want to do, but that’s cool.
Andrew: But here’s the thing: Warner is about to release their streaming app at the end of the year, and it’s a good bet that all the Harry Potter movies will just be there. And if they’re not going to do their own TV show, Harry Potter TV show, then I would imagine that they would have the extended editions available on Warner Streaming, whatever they end up calling it.
Eric: Yeah, good point.
Andrew: Whatever it will be, it won’t be as good as Disney Plus. I’ll tell you that much.
[Eric laughs]
Alicia: They do have it on Netflix, too, I’m pretty sure. But I know the Netflix here in Canada, they only have half the series.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s not available Netflix US; I know that much. But yeah, some countries do have it on Netflix. It’s weird. The whole streaming situation around the world is so weird.
Eric: That’s why I’m not going to be on streaming, because they could take away what you’ve already purchased, because technically you’ve only purchased a license.
Andrew: It’s true.
Alicia: Exactly. They have the control.
Eric: Exactly.
Andrew: I love Spotify too much, so I just ignore that line of thinking.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: No, I love Spotify, too. The playlists are very intuitive, and… death to Apple Music.
Andrew: [laughs] I agree with you, actually.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Eric, do you want to read the next email?
Eric: Yeah, sure. This comes from Julia. She says,
“Hi, MuggleCast! I just wanted to say, thank goodness the locket was the Horcrux that Dumbledore helped Harry to find (or, well, its decoy, which still needed to be found). Capable as the trio were, I do not think they would have been able to find it without him. Sure, they pulled off the Gringotts heist, but they knew mostly what to expect and could prepare for it. The cave was the wildcard, and I can’t help but assume that Dumbledore was very deliberate in his choice of which Horcrux to go after with Harry. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Julia.”
Eric: We talked about this. We are all of this opinion, I think.
Andrew: I had never thought about it, really, this way, but that’s a great point. [laughs] I mean, who of the trio would have been the one to give their blood initially? Would it have been Harry, I guess?
[Alicia laughs]
Eric: Ron would have just been stuck in that antechamber for hours.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: He would have tripped and skinned his knee.
Pat: I’m sure Ron would have given his blood, but it would have been a prime moment for Hermione to shine with all the sensing the magic and all that kind of stuff.
Andrew: Oooh.
Eric: But that’s something you feel; it’s not something you can read. I would argue that none of the trio could do it. It had to be Dumbledore.
Andrew: I don’t know. Yeah, I guess so.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, we’ve never seen anybody else in the series be able to do that, right? At least my interpretation was that that is something that only a very learned wizard would be able to accomplish, you know?
Andrew: Yeah, totally.
Eric: Dumbledore praises himself for being able to find the boat also, and if Dumbledore pats himself on the back over something, you know it’s something the kids can’t do. And given the weird weight association, or magical… what is it? The boat weighs your magical ability. Those three wizards, maybe they wouldn’t be able to even cross the lake. If the trio did get into the cave, they wouldn’t be able to find the boat or ride in it, maybe.
Alicia: I agree with that.
Andrew: All right, one more email. It is the longest, so I will take it, because I put it in here. This is from Stephanie.
“I was listening to the latest episode (Next Level Magic) and wanted to weigh in regarding this ‘Harry is the worst at everything’ debate. I know it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek, but I can’t help but feel that most of us give Harry a rough time (Eric).”
[Alicia and Laura laugh]
“I’ve always thought of Harry as a slightly above average student. He’s the best in his year at DADA but sucks at History of Magic. While controversial, I think the Half-Blood Prince’s book shows that Harry could have been a bright Potions student. He can effectively follow the instructions to create a perfect potion; he just never had a supportive teacher in that subject.
I think a lot of this comes down to Hermione. Because Harry is asked to do something most adults can’t, he needs a genius best friend. Had J.K. Rowling not included Hermione, there’s no way an 11- to 17-year-old would have been able to complete these impossible tasks alone. While I love her in the books, I think this is a detriment of her as a character. Even as an 11-year-old, she’s smarter than most of the other students in the school. Next to her, everyone looks like a dunce. But why is Harry’s lack of genius abilities a problem? Why do we expect our hero to be more Hermione-like than Harry-like? I, personally, really enjoy that the hero is an average student who struggles with things we all do. In pop culture, I think it’s the default for the hero to be someone like Hermione. Sure, she has her flaws, but lots of people read her as perfect.”
Andrew: So I agree with that. Why should Harry be perfect? He doesn’t need to be.
Eric: Harry should not be perfect; I would agree with that. And I like the idea of rejecting the idea of Hermione being the main character just because it’s too easy. And I do agree; the trio all complement one another very well.
Alicia: Yeah, I agree with that too.
Eric: I just… there are many times while reading that I want more from Harry. That’s all.
Andrew: Okay, very diplomatic answer.
Alicia: I don’t know. I have some thoughts on that. Again, I think it’s great that you have someone average to be the hero, and also I definitely agree that Harry could have been a much better student at Potions if he had a teacher who didn’t have a grudge against him from day one. But I don’t think I would say that it’s a detriment to her character that Hermione is the genius best friend. I think if anything, her, Harry, and Ron working together as a team throughout the series creates one of the biggest and important roles of the series, which is friendship. And Hermione can’t help it if everyone else looks like a dunce compared to her.
Eric: Yeah, don’t hate on Hermione.
Alicia: Yeah, I mean, if anything, this is one of my favorite characteristics about her, is that she doesn’t try to dumb herself down to fit in. And I don’t know; I don’t think I really have any expectations of Harry to be more like her, and I definitely don’t think that she reads as perfect. I mean, if you look at the details… she did Confund Cormac that time, and she’s looked at as a bit of a know-it-all. She always shoots her hand up in the air. And a little while ago when she was jealous of Harry’s Potions success… I don’t think she reads as perfect, but I don’t think it’s a detriment to her character, is what I’m saying.
Andrew: Well, no, and in defense of Hermione, J.K. Rowling writes a billion times in the series how Hermione is so well-read. It’s not like Hermione is just pulling this out of her butt and it’s unjustified as a reader or from a writing perspective. It is justified because she is studious.
Alicia: She works for it.
Andrew: She earned it.
Eric: She’s taken the time to learn, which is why Harry’s Potions scores really get under her skin. And I don’t think, to just slightly disagree with this email, that Harry’s ability to read the very carefully laid out instructions in the Half-Blood Prince’s book mean that he’d be a good Potions student; I think it means exactly the opposite. He needed his hand held so badly to achieve those results, whereas if you have a basic understanding of Potions, you can get those sorts of results more intuitively.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: I agree with that. And I totally understand where Hermione has been coming from this whole book in terms of the Prince’s Potions book, because Harry is cheating.
[Alicia laughs]
Eric: Yeah. And I think a lot of this comes to a head when it comes time to read Book 7, because I think it comes down to whether or not you think Harry, realistically or satisfactorily, survives and makes it, Harry and his friends. And this comes back to our previous email, “Harry is the worst at everything,” because again, the cave; it’s super important that Dumbledore be the one to take him into the cave. They couldn’t have done that alone, I think we can probably all agree, and so does that have to do with them being teenagers? Sure, but also they haven’t been able to really study the relevant topics, and I think that that’s sort of an issue when it comes to defeating Voldemort.
Andrew: All right, so that was this week’s mailbag. And if you want to write to us, just go to MuggleCast.com and use the contact form, or MuggleCast@gmail.com, or hit us up on social media. Want to thank everybody who’s supporting us on Patreon; we just crossed the one thousand patron milestone, which is pretty incredible!
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: Thank you to everybody who has brought us to this major milestone, and if you’re still on the fence about doing it, now is a great time to sign up, because we do have signed album art going out very soon. Eric and I are getting everything together, getting ready to ship it. Eric, Micah, and I signed together; Laura signed it a few weeks before us, and that’ll be going out soon. You will see on Patreon that you have to pledge at the Dumbledore’s Army level to be eligible to receive it, so check it out. Patreon.com/MuggleCast. There are a ton of benefits over there.
Eric: We recently incentivized people to get us over that hump.
Andrew: We did. We said, “If you help us get past one thousand patrons, we’ll pull some leftover MuggleCast stickers out of the vault and send them to you.” And actually, I just dropped all those stickers into the mailbox this morning to the people who helped us.
Eric: Oh, very nice.
Andrew: So thank you for coming together, y’all.
Eric: And there’s something else too. [laughs] I’m going to give… the people who joined us, that put us over the one thousand patron mark when we did the push for it, are going to get an exclusive preview of upcoming Harry and Ginny fanfiction that I’m writing.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: And by saying it on this podcast means it’s real and I’m bound to do it now.
Andrew: Yes.
Alicia: I’m so excited for that.
Eric: Thank you. I’m filling in the three-week gap that was omitted between “The Seer Overheard” and the “Sectumsempra” chapter before it, so I will be writing that.
Andrew: I think that’s a great idea. You have your work cut out for you. You know exactly what portion of the series you’re going to fill in. You’re filling a need as well; people want to know, like you. A lot of Harry/Ginny fans want to know.
Eric: I’m just trying to… I feel like you must have when you wrote “Never Sever Us.”
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: You just want this couple’s love to be main stage, front and center.
Andrew: [laughs] Yes.
Eric: Although my version probably won’t be explicit, but we’ll see.
Andrew: Yes, mine was very inappropriate.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Highly inappropriate. We should post a link to that so everybody could check it out again. But yeah, so Eric will be writing his Hinny fanfic, as he wrote here, and everybody will get a taste of that at some point. But the people who helped us get past the one thousand milestone are going to get a look at it first.
Alicia: You’re going to keep it G-rated, Eric?
Eric: I don’t know about G-rated…
Alicia: Maybe PG?
Eric: Maybe H-and-G-rated?
Alicia: Okay, okay.
Andrew: I mean, mine was X-rated, so it’s going to be very different.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Mine will probably be PG-13.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. Okay, so before we get to Chapter by Chapter, we have a new sponsor for the month of June, and everybody listening is going to be interested in this one: the Wizarding World Figurine Collection from Eaglemoss Hero Collector. These are officially authorized by Warner Bros. Entertainment, and they offer a slew of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts figurines, from Harry and Hermione, to Newt and Queenie, to Fawkes and the Occamy. Every figurine has been sculpted in a classic movie pose at 1:16 scale, and what’s also cool about these is each figurine comes with a guide to the character. I thought this was a pleasant surprise when I opened up Fawkes – Fawkes was the one I was most excited about – and they give you this whole history of Fawkes and a key scene and the best character moments. These are really well done. Eric, you got the figurines too; which was your favorite?
Eric: You know, I was going to mention Fawkes too. Isn’t he perched on the Sorting Hat?
Andrew: Not on the Sorting Hat, but he’s on some sort of perch.
Eric: Yeah, it’s a golden perch. But you mentioned the movie pose, and my favorite would then be the Lord Voldemort, because this is very much the Priori Incantatem pose, where he is overwhelmed by the wand connection. At least that’s how I read Voldemort’s pose. So Voldemort and Harry… because Harry also has his wand raised. I’m just thinking about placement on my mantle for these figurines, and I’m going to have Harry and Voldemort dueling, as you do.
Andrew: Oh, yeah, that’s cool. With Fawkes, he’s actually to scale against some of my other Harry Potter collectibles, so I feel like I’m adding Fawkes to that collection, which is super cool. It was just a delight having him fit right in. And then one of the other nice things about the Wizarding World Figurine Collection is that you can collect them all and create this landscape of characters! So sign up for the collection at HeroCollector.com/Wizards, and get your first figurine – a spell-casting Harry Potter as seen at the Battle of Hogwarts – for only $9.95 with free shipping, and if you do it now, Hero Collector will add Hermione Granger as a year one student for free. So you’re going to get two figurines for ten bucks, and that includes free shipping. And what’s more, a free exclusive art print is included with every shipment, and then thereafter, two new figurines with detailed character guides and art print will be delivered each month for only $15.95 plus $2.45 shipping each.
Eric: Nice.
Andrew: So this is like a subscription service, kind of, where you get some new Harry Potter friends each week. And these are just beautifully designed. As a subscriber, you’re also eligible for special offers and free gifts personalized to the Hogwarts House of your choice. I know this is true because I went through the signup process, and it said, “Which House are you?” I said, [gasps] “Thank you for asking.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Plus, you can cancel your subscription at any time. So for full details and to take advantage of the special offer, visit HeroCollector.com/Wizards. And we’ll post a couple pictures of these on our social media channels, because everybody should check these out.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Okay, it’s time now for Chapter by Chapter. Half-Blood Prince, “The Lightning-Struck Tower.” As always, we’ll start with our Seven-Word Summary, and Alicia, you’re going to kick us off.
Alicia: [laughs] Dumbledore…
Andrew: … goes…
Laura: … over…
Andrew and Alicia: Oh, wow.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Pat, you want to do a word?
Pat: Sure. Dumbledore goes over… the…
Eric: … lightning…
Alicia: … struck…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: … thingy.
Eric: [laughs] Oh, shaking it up.
Andrew: “Dumbledore goes over the lightning-struck thingy.” Yeah, “tower” would have been too predictable.
[Alicia and Eric laugh]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: So as a reminder, at the end of the last chapter they had just left the cave where they got the fake Horcrux, though they don’t know it yet, and Dumbledore has just said, “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.”
Alicia and Eric: Aww.
Andrew: Harry does take care of them; he successfully Apparates the two to Hogsmeade, and upon arrival, it’s very clear that Dumbledore is not well. He needs a little help getting around, and he jokingly says that was “no health drink.” This is one of the worst situations for a kid, though, right? When you have to take care of one of your parents, or a family member or an elder. You just never imagine it because, of course, you’re growing up, they’re always taking care of you, and then you ultimately end up taking care of them at some point. It’s just a really sad scenario. I know, Pat, you can kind of speak to this.
Pat: Yeah, a couple years ago my grandpa died of cancer, but near the end, it was very much somebody who was so strong that you looked up to for so long, and then I was having to help feed him, help bathe him, changed his adult diaper that he had to wear, all that kind of stuff, which you never expect you’d ever have to do. And you can just tell that it’s also so degrading for them to have to have you help them as well. My grandpa, I could just… even though he couldn’t really talk, I could tell, looking in his face, he’s just so embarrassed that he needed me and my grandma or my mom, anybody else to help with that. You never expect to lose that kind of function, and then all of a sudden you have to rely on all these people that you were always taking care of before.
Andrew: Yeah. And then for Harry – or kind of for you, Pat – you’re always looking up to this person, and then it’s just surreal to have to take care of them.
Pat: Yeah, you’re not used to seeing them in such a vulnerable state.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Yeah, and I think that is something that J.K. Rowling at some point must have been familiar with, because it is very delicately written, I think, here as well. We’re seeing this through Harry’s perspective, and so it is quite a loss. Dumbledore remains in sort of good spirits about it, which is good, through the end, and the situation is a little bit different because Dumbledore has sort of planned to die tonight; he always knew it was going to happen. But still, this feeling of tremendous loss of the man Dumbledore once was – now Harry is holding him, having to support his weight – is very clear in the book.
Pat: And I think it goes to show how strong their actual relationship was, because at the end of Book 5, you see Harry hating Dumbledore for not speaking to him the whole year, for not telling him the truth about so many things; he’s throwing stuff across his office. But then a year later, that relationship is basically fully mended; Harry is looking up to him again as one of the ultimate figures in his life, so it just shows that dynamic of real life family. I could… there’s so many times I was so angry at my grandpa, [laughs] but then a few months later – or not even a few months later, a few hours later – you could be back to exactly how you were.
Alicia: Yeah. I think Harry handles it really well, too; he’s not awkward, like, “Oh, I don’t know what to do.” He just kind of… I don’t know. He’s very aware of how Dumbledore might be feeling, and very careful and always looking at him, checking on him.
Eric: There’s kind of a lot of wisdom to what he told Harry of making him obey everything he said, because Dumbledore is capable of articulating exactly what he needs exactly when he needs it, and so as long as his faculties remain, Harry is able to help without needing to know. He doesn’t need to have that extra sense of “What do I do now?”, and he fortunately is spared that pain and agony of having to figure it out. Dumbledore just tells him what he needs, which is real good.
Alicia: Yeah, that’s true.
Eric: But I wanted to mention… so he does make that joke: “That potion,” meaning the one in the cave, “was no health drink.” Is that funny to you guys? Because I think it’s kind of supposed to be a joke that Dumbledore is cracking.
Andrew: Yeah, I think so.
Laura: Yeah, it’s-self deprecating.
Eric: Is it?
Laura: I think so, to a degree.
Eric: Okay. It’s just nobody was expecting the potion to be a health drink, so it’s just like, “That was no health drink!” It’s kind of funny. It’s like Dumbledore in his last moments… we’ll get to that later. He says a lot of funny things in this chapter that I do genuinely belly laugh at, so I think we’re really gearing up for a good Dumbledore finale here in the first opening paragraph.
Pat: Yeah, it’s like when you trip on something and you’re like, “Oh, dang, I’m real graceful.” It’s that kind of moment.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Yeah, sure.
Andrew: So Rosmerta spots them Apparating into town, and alerts them to the bad news that the Dark Mark has risen above Hogwarts, and Dumbledore requests brooms and that she alert the Ministry. Alicia, you had a question here.
Alicia: Yeah, so they’re trying to figure out how they can get back to the castle, and Rosmerta says, “Oh, I have a couple of brooms back at the Three Broomsticks.” But she said, “Should I run and fetch them?” And then Dumbledore is like, “Oh, no, Harry will do it.” Why can’t she Accio her own brooms? And I just thought that was really strange, because my first thought was, “Wait, is she a Squib?” And then I was like, “Oh, no, she can’t be, because she did do the Imperius Curse on Katie Bell,” right?
Eric: Yes. Yeah, so Draco Imperius’ed her. That might be what it is, though, is that if Rosmerta wanted to run and get the brooms, even though it would have been more intuitive to summon them, maybe that’s a delay tactic.
Alicia: Oh, yeah.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Rosmerta is still under the Imperius Curse – Dumbledore doesn’t know it, Harry doesn’t know it – so maybe she would have run back to the Three Broomsticks or whatever and then just dawdled, really not brought the brooms. It might have been a little bit more time for the Death Eaters to cause havoc up at the school if she had done that, and then Dumbledore is just like, “Oh, Harry can do it,” and he does it.
Alicia: And in his current condition, didn’t really notice… didn’t suspect anything.
Laura: I also think Dumbledore might suspect that she could be under the Imperius Curse. I mean, later on in the chapter, he kind of plays dumb to Draco when this comes up, but I’m not convinced that he wasn’t already suspicious about it, which could be him in this case saying, “Uh, no, we’re going to circumvent you and avoid you going back and being able to contact anybody else,” especially since later we find out how she was communicating with Draco.
Eric: Right.
Pat: Yeah, I like that.
Eric: If he had his suspicions, I sure hope they aren’t that deep, because that’s essential to… that’s akin to torture, really, allowing somebody that you know is being Imperius’ed to have their will taken from them over the course of a school year? If Dumbledore really had any inkling, that’s something he should have put a stop to.
Pat: I always read it as…
Alicia: Well, and he has that moment of realization later, too, right? Where he’s kind of like, “Oh, wait, yes, Rosmerta.” It’s almost like he’s just really realizing it for the first time.
Eric: Sure.
Pat: Yeah, I always read it as it was another moment of Dumbledore giving Harry confidence, like, “I know he can do this. This will help him get us to the castle safely again.”
Alicia: That’s a good point.
Eric: It has to be Harry that does it. Do you guys think it’s funny that there’s just some broomsticks hanging around in the Three Broomsticks?
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Alicia: Yes.
Eric: They’re just behind the bar or whatever.
Andrew: Now there’s just one broomstick. It’s now the One Broomstick.
[Alicia and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So speaking of these broomsticks, Dumbledore gets this burst of focus and energy when they’re riding the brooms back to Hogwarts. The quote is, “Harry glanced sideways at Dumbledore, ready to grab him should he fall, but the sight of the Dark Mark seemed to have acted upon Dumbledore like a stimulant: He was bent low over his broom, his eyes fixed upon the Mark.” And this reminds us of that perfect breaststroke that he did a chapter or two earlier.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And the surge that one of our listeners had brought up. This seems to be what’s going on here again.
Eric: If this were a yoga move, it would be called Seeker pose.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, right?
Eric: He’s bent low, eyes fixed upon what’s ahead of him…
Andrew: It’s his Snitch.
Eric: Yeah, I think Dumbledore was a Seeker in a past life.
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Andrew: “Harry looked over and said, ‘Dumbledore, you could have been a Seeker.'”
Eric: He says, “I’m more of a Chaser, really.”
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Andrew: And then you found a thread here.
Eric: Yeah, so when they’re on their brooms heading to Hogwarts… and I actually love that Harry glances over and he realizes that what Dumbledore is doing is muttering under his breath and reversing the spells that prevent people from entering…
[Andrew mutters unintelligibly like Dumbledore]
Eric: … because they’re going to be entering Hogwarts at speed, there would be a natural… I almost picture in my head a bubble, like what ended up in the final movie, a bubble shield. They would have just bounced right off had Dumbledore not been doing this. But Harry has a brief period of self-reflection and asks of himself… he’s feeling guilty about the people that he asked to stand guard while he was away. He was 100% right to do that, but he’s really worried that one of his friends are now dead, and so he asks himself… or the book says, “Would he be responsible, again, for the death of a friend?” And this, to me, connects the thread directly back to the end of Book 4 where Cedric Diggory died, and Cedric Diggory, in the end, was a friend of Harry’s, and so it’s kind of a connection to… and Harry feels very guilty about it; again, the cup wouldn’t have been a Portkey if it weren’t for Harry. So Harry has already begun to blame himself for the deaths of his friends, and this is kind of a crucial thing that Harry always does when it becomes this time of the book.
Andrew: Yeah. And what a terrible position to be put in as a child. But things happen fast; so upon returning to the school, they’re up at the Astronomy Tower, and Dumbledore immobilizes Harry just as Draco is arriving. So Dumbledore just wants to keep Harry out of the way so that everything that needs to happen happens.
Alicia: And then Draco… what’s the name of the spell that he uses on…?
Eric: Expelliarmus?
Alicia: Yes, thank you. I was totally blanking on that. [laughs] Yeah, he uses Expelliarmus on Dumbledore, and as he’s doing that, Dumbledore is casting that spell on Harry so that he’s not going to be able to move, or the body freezing one, and I just can’t imagine the guilt of knowing that you cost Dumbledore his final chance of defending himself. Not that it’s Harry’s fault, and it’s what Dumbledore wanted, but I can’t help but feel like that would be a heavy thing to have to live with afterwards.
Pat: Can you imagine if Harry was mid-run when he was immobilized and just tipped over?
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Broke his nose again.
Andrew: I wonder, do you get sore if you’re immobilized while in an awkward position? I guess not, because your muscles aren’t in use.
Eric: Isn’t there…? I think there is… you can cramp up if you get frozen in a weird… because gravity would still pull on your body, maybe?
Pat: But it’s magic.
Andrew: Damn, that would suck.
Eric: That would be awful.
Andrew: No one do that to me, please. So Dumbledore speaks to Draco in this scene in a way to me that’s very reminiscent of how he would speak to Tom in scenes we saw earlier in this book, with confidence and authority, and in a couple of instances, he’s one step ahead. For example, Draco says, “You don’t know what I’ve done!” And Dumbledore says, “Uh, yeah, I do. You tried to kill Ron and Katie, and you’ve been trying – poorly – to kill me all year.” And I just loved that this was reminiscent of Tom, and yet such an entirely different character. Tom willingly put himself into that situation, whereas Draco, he was forced into this, and he sees no way out. And then there’s this other line: “You have managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school, which, I admit, I thought impossible.” Is he telling the truth here about not knowing about Draco’s work? Because he knows everything else.
Eric: Yeah, but it’s specifically because, as they get into their conversation with Snape – and they have a little tussle as to whether or not Snape is working for Dumbledore or working for Voldemort – Draco says, regardless, he has left Snape out of his plans with the Vanishing Cabinet. And so Snape doesn’t know about what Draco is doing in the Room of Requirement, therefore Dumbledore doesn’t know what he’s doing the Room of Requirement, so Dumbledore is telling the truth.
Andrew: I don’t know. I don’t know if I necessarily believe that.
Alicia: Don’t you think Snape must have suspected it, though? I mean, he did make the Unbreakable Vow to help Draco as much as he possibly could, so I feel like there’s a lot on the line for him to know what he’s doing.
Andrew: Right. Wouldn’t Snape ask Draco, “So what are you doing about this?”
Eric: Yeah, Draco just won’t tell him. The only person who was following up that closely on Draco was Harry, and nobody was listening to Harry. If Dumbledore was to know about what was happening in the Room of Requirement, it would have been Harry who would have told him. Because Harry has just spent all year agonizing over it, and Dumbledore is just like, “Yeah, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
Andrew: It does not seem possible to me that Dumbledore would not be aware of something going on this serious at his own school.
Eric: But the alternative, then – playing devil’s advocate in lieu of Micah – is Dumbledore willingly allowed Death Eaters to enter the school while he himself was not going to be there, which I think Dumbledore would just never do.
Pat: Right. I agree, because Dumbledore… I mean, yes, he’s very good at hiding the full truth, but he’s always willing to admit when he’s wrong, or willing to admit when he doesn’t know something on top of that.
Andrew: He also lies to people in the moment, or isn’t entirely truthful. I don’t know. But anyway, Eric, another Connecting the Threads here you wanted to point out: This is the second time that poor Harry is laying paralyzed under the Invisibility Cloak.
Eric: Yeah, in this book! Second time in this book! This guy has no luck. He’s paralyzed; he’s under a cloak. What are you going to do? Nobody’s going to find him.
Andrew: This cloak needs to be upgraded to resist spells that paralyze you, or just resist all spells. That’d be pretty cool.
[Alicia laughs]
Eric: Well, it pleases me to no end that maybe it was Dumbledore’s familiarity with the cloak, because he had it for a period of time, that he knew what spells would work on it. Because some Invisibility Cloaks repel some spells, I think? I don’t know. It’s weird.
Pat: Yeah, most of them are impervious to spells, so Dumbledore either would have had to be extremely accurate in his aiming – maybe if the cloak swished up and he got Harry’s foot or something – but most times the cloak just absorbs the spell.
Eric: So pretty good stuff.
Andrew: So we also get info dump central here. And while I was reading this, I was thinking about the Cormoran Strike books from J.K. Rowling, because I feel like at the end of those books, each one, there’s a lot of info dumping going on. [laughs]
Laura: Yep. [laughs]
Pat: 100%.
Andrew: So we find out how Draco got the Death Eaters into the school, how he Imperius’ed Rosmerta, and notably, during all this, Draco is getting into the nitty gritty of what he’s been doing, and he speaks with detail and pride, to me. Despite working against Dumbledore, it seems like he’s seeking Dumbledore’s approval. He wants his headmaster to be impressed with his work, even though the work is to kill him. Did you guys pick up that vibe too?
Laura: Oh, totally.
Alicia: Yeah, definitely.
Laura: It’s interesting, because I feel like we’ve never really gotten to see Dumbledore and Draco interact, and Draco, I think – kind of like Harry is – he seems like he’s a pretty average student, and I think that he’s just seeing this really powerful wizard who he’s been told that he should hate, but he still wants that person’s approval, right? He still wants him to be impressed with how he outsmarted him, even though he really didn’t.
Eric: I saw a Draco Malfoy… I guess you’d call them truther? Over on our MuggleCast Patreon recently point out how Draco is always just behind Hermione at grades in school, so I think Draco is probably an above average… definitely above Harry.
Laura: Do we get that in the books?
Eric: I think that might be a thing.
Laura: I don’t remember…
Pat: There’s something that’s mentioned in Book 2 where Lucius is like, “Oh, this is the person you always let beat you,” about Hermione.
Eric: Oh, maybe that’s the concern. But I think the thing that I love about this Draco and Dumbledore confrontation is it comes out… at first Draco is just like, “I’m here to kill you,” and Dumbledore is like, “Okay,” and he’s like, “You should be afraid,” and he’s like, “You’re not really going to kill me.” And once they get past the pretense, it then devolves into… Draco is more forthcoming with his story, and Dumbledore is complimentary. This is the most amazing thing about Dumbledore, I think, is in his dying moments, he’s taking the time to give credit where it’s due and say things like, “Oh, I had no idea.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: “I didn’t think it was possible to get Death Eaters into the castle.” So he’s really… for me, it’s not that Draco is craving the affection. I think Draco could do just fine without it, even though it’s a blissful reprieve from having to act and kill. But it’s that Dumbledore is totally forthcoming with compliments, and so Draco is going to take them.
Laura: I think it’s also a cry for help.
Eric and Pat: Yeah.
Pat: And I do think that Draco is probably actually a really… I don’t know if “powerful” is the right word, but a very adept wizard in the fact that he was able to fix a Vanishing Cabinet on his own with no help whatsoever. Yeah, he communicated to Borgin and Burke to see when he’s passing stuff through to test it, but he did fix this incredibly complex magical cabinet on his own.
Eric: Yeah. And I mean, you could be lost forever, presumably. I mean, depending on the magic and how those things work… Montague being lost for an entire school year in some kind of a half-limbo is terrifying. And we don’t… there’s no wizard shop. There’s no wizard “Here’s how magical objects work,” unless it’s just a Portkey where you just cast a spell at an ordinary object. There’s no builders class for the kind of magic that Draco would have encountered in the Vanishing Cabinets, and in fact, Dumbledore’s insight that there must be a pair, and that’s how things work somehow in this magical world, is another one of those areas of magic that we just have never seen before.
Pat: Yeah, and I wonder if a part of it is just knowing that he has such a burden on him that if he doesn’t do this, his family is going to die, including himself. So I think that’s putting a lot of that stress on him to prove that he can do this and that he can save his family.
Eric: Yeah, and it kind of does break my heart a little bit. I don’t often find myself feeling bad for Draco, but he does say to Dumbledore that “Voldemort did say if I don’t do this, he will kill me,” and that blows my mind. It’s sort of towards the end there, but it was inferred, it was always implied, that Voldemort didn’t care if Draco lived or died in service of this task, but when Draco actually says to Dumbledore, “Voldemort told me he’ll kill me if I don’t do this,” that for me kind of hits a heartstring.
Andrew: Yeah. So yeah, he’s in an impossible situation right now. I do wonder if… so this whole time, Dumbledore is taunting him. “Okay, do it. Do it. Please do it.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And Draco is not doing it. Is it simply because Draco is not a killer that he’s not doing it? I wonder if he was a little bit older, would he have had more courage to do it? Because you look at his parents, who… at least Lucius, he’s a terrible person. Narcissa redeems herself in the next book. But I feel like if he was a few years older, he could have drank more of that Death Eater Kool-Aid and eventually turned into a cold-blooded killer. So what do you guys think? Why is Draco having such a hard time actually killing Dumbledore?
Laura: I think this boils down to what Dumbledore has said all along, which is that it’s our choices that define us, and this is Draco making a choice. I think you’re totally right, Andrew; I think he very easily could have gone down the path of becoming a cold-blooded Death Eater killer, but in this moment we see him falter, and ultimately he makes the choice not to proceed with killing Dumbledore, and that’s a major turning point for his character.
Eric: There’s also sort of the lore surrounding this great, powerful wizard. When you get up and actually face that person – “Oh my God, I’ve got to do it” – it is a moment for hesitation. And I think even if Draco was a killer – although I think he’s very firmly not – the moment of action, very few people can, I think, realistically behave the way Snape behaves, which is to show up and just blast him. There would naturally be a sort of hesitation, because I think the ramifications of what you’re about to do are implied, but they’re very apparent, I think, at the time of. And I wanted to bring up this comment that’s kind of gone through it the whole year when we’ve been doing Chapter by Chapter. I know, Laura, you brought this up, too, Draco’s heart not being in it, because we talk about some of the collateral damage – Katie Bell and Ron Weasley and all this stuff – but a point I wanted to make, and I kind of saved it for this chapter, is I don’t think Draco knew that his heart wasn’t in it until right now, until when he’s actually facing down the barrel of the… it’s easy for Dumbledore to say, and it’s very true and we all know it, but I think that Draco himself really thought that because he had to, that he could, and now he’s finding that those are two way different things, that now that he finally did everything he ever wanted to do, and it’s time for him to actually cast the spell, he’s finding that he can’t.
Laura: Right. And I think some of this speaks, too, to his upbringing, in that his parents probably kept him pretty insulated from their more violent tendencies. So Draco probably grew up hearing a lot of rhetoric at home, and he sort of adheres to those ideologies because that’s what he grew up with, but he was never actually put in the position to have to act on that, and now he is, and he doesn’t have what it takes to do it, he’s realizing.
Pat: Have you ever wondered, because his heart not being in it, if he were to cast a spell, if it would work? I remember back in Book 4, when fake Moody is like, “All of you could say this at me right now, and I would maybe get a nosebleed.”
[Everyone laughs]
Pat: I wonder if his heart not being in it, that if he were to actually say the spell, if it would even do anything.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a good question.
Laura: That’s a really good point.
Andrew: It would have been an off-green spell, and it would have only gone two feet…
Eric: Confetti would have come out of his wand.
[Alicia laughs]
Laura: Maybe it would have knocked Dumbledore over, but not blasted him off the tower. [laughs]
Andrew: Right, yeah.
Eric: It wouldn’t have ended well for Draco, though. To see him try and fail would have proven to the other Death Eaters that…
Pat: Right.
Eric: They might have blasted him right away.
Laura: And that really just… when you think about that, that’s such a good point that you brought that up, because when you think about the force of Snape’s spell, I cannot imagine what the intent behind that would have had to be in order for him to be able to pull that off. Because he didn’t want to do it.
Pat: I think just the pure emotion behind the spell is what threw Dumbledore over.
Eric: Yeah, let’s talk about that in a minute.
Andrew: Yeah, Dumbledore does offer Malfoy and his family protection, but Draco doesn’t bite. It also reminds me… this whole scene reminds me of early in the series when Draco was trying to encourage Harry to be on his side. Maybe that’s a movie-ism; I can’t remember. But Draco in the first book is trying to get Harry to be a Slytherin, be with him and Crabbe and Goyle, and Harry says, “No. I’ve got my friends. Get out of here.” And what we’ve just been talking about in the past few minutes reminds me of that, and how Draco, in this moment, is choosing a side, even though he doesn’t take up this protection. But I also wonder if Draco wishes he took this offer from Dumbledore, and how that would’ve changed…
Laura: I think he was about to.
Andrew: You think so?
Laura: Yeah, because there’s that moment where, after Dumbledore makes the offer, Harry observes that Draco’s wand kind of lowers a little bit, and right at that moment the Death Eaters burst in. So I think the timing is what kind of threw this off. I think if Dumbledore had had a few more minutes with him, he might have been able to convince him.
Eric: It’s pretty impressive work, too, to cover all that ground in such a short time.
Andrew: And so selfless of Dumbledore when he knows he has to die either way.
Eric: Yeah, that’s a good point. Well, and here’s my question about Dumbledore’s offer: He says to Draco something along the lines of, “We could hide you and your family when they come along, more completely than you could ever imagine.” Is he just offering another bunko Fidelius Charm? I say bunko because we’ve proven how they’re not effective at hiding people. Obviously it didn’t work for the Potters; it has its limitations on Grimmauld Place, as we find out. Does Dumbledore have anything under his copious sleeves besides another Fidelius Charm? Or would that be what he’d do for Draco?
Andrew: Well…
Eric: He’d be his Secret Keeper, or somebody would be a Secret Keeper.
Andrew: Maybe.
Eric: Because it is supposed to be a really effective charm, but when you’re dealing with Death Eaters and people you really can’t trust to keep the secret, it’s not actually that effective of a means of protecting.
Andrew: I have to think Dumbledore has numerous hideouts around the world where he could potentially protect people if he wanted to. He has friends. He’s got friends who can hook him up with security. I don’t know if it’s so much of a spell as it would be just physical locations that he knows are really good hideouts.
Laura: Maybe he’ll just hide them in the Room of Requirement.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: The room Draco is already familiar with.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Or maybe Nicolas Flamel’s place. Because… whatever happened to that.
Andrew: [laughs] Sure. And actually, speaking of spinoffs – Fantastic Beasts or Cursed Child – Draco does redeem himself, and that’s one of the nice things about Cursed Child. We see the… friendship? Between Harry and Draco in the Cursed Child, and it just hammers home that he really was able to redeem himself. And I can’t perfectly remember Cursed Child, but they have a bit of a rocky friendship, but it is a friendship, I believe.
Eric: He makes that joke about being bossed around by Hermione or something.
Andrew: Yeah, and they get along. They don’t… they fight once or twice, but it’s nothing too serious.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, there’s the contrivances of the plot about “There’s all these rumors about my son being sired by Voldemort…”
Andrew: Right.
Eric: All that crap. But yeah, when you get down to it, I think Draco definitely has matured, but part of that comes from loss, because he’s lost his wife, and so I think that a lot of his emotional growth in Cursed Child comes from just having lived a little bit, and I think he understands more than ever Harry’s position having suffered the loss of loved ones.
Andrew: Trelawney’s prediction was right in Chapter 25, by the way, while she’s reading the cards. The quote is, “‘If Dumbledore chooses to ignore the warnings the cards show -‘ Her bony hand closed suddenly around Harry’s wrist. ‘Again and again, no matter how I lay them out -‘ And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her shawls. ‘- the lightning-struck tower. Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time…'” Take Trelawney seriously!
Alicia: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, maybe that’s Dumbledore’s ignorance to Malfoy’s activities in the Room of Requirement. I mean, I don’t think that Dumbledore ignored it, because I think that’s a pretty big oversight on his part.
Andrew: I’ll agree with you, Alicia, because you’re our guest.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Eric and Laura, though, I’ll disagree with.
Eric: Let’s talk about these Death Eaters that burst in here real quickly before getting to the end. There’s a pretty substantial sort of conversation. I mean, they’re kind of all lingering there waiting to see if Draco is going to do it, and he doesn’t, and then Snape bursts in. But the conversations… each of them are named by name. We get a lot of insight into Fenrir Greyback, who, disgustingly, is there just for the kids. And there’s actually a fourth unnamed Death Eater that we don’t know who it is.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s not Bellatrix, who was there in the movie.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Great addition, but…
Eric: Yeah, I agree. The funniest thing is that really the rapport that… each of these Death Eaters are Dumbledore’s former students as well, which is benefits of being the only magical school in Britain…
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: … that Dumbledore knows them all personally. He humanizes them. In the movie I know everybody’s wearing these crazy, ridiculous masks, but Dumbledore calls them by name, and kind of really speaks to them – same way he’s speaking to Draco, really – as a teacher, as a mentor, and I think it really does curb their… not their resolve, because they are actually all adult Dark wizards and crazy and want to kill him, but he definitely slows them down a bit, and I think that’s a really crucial, I think, part to Dumbledore’s character in his final moments.
Laura: Well, I think he catches them off guard, right? Because he tells Draco, “We can hide your mother. They’ll assume that we’ve killed her, because that’s what they themselves would do.” And I think they’re a bit disarmed by the fact that they are confronting him and he’s being so cordial with them.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah.
Laura: If they were in his situation, that’s not what they would do.
Eric: Exactly.
Pat: Right, because he even has that line like, “Oh, you’re…” Or I think Amycus says, “Oh, you’re joking,” and he’s like, “No, I’m just being polite.”
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Alicia: “These are called manners.”
Eric: Yeah, the woman says, “‘Think your little jokes’ll help you on your deathbed, then?’ she jeered.” And he says, “Jokes? No, no, these are manners.” [laughs] He’s just being very polite to his would-be killers, and it’s a perfect Dumbledore moment, I think. I mentioned belly laughs; that line gets me. And I don’t remember reading that before, but this day, I can’t stop laughing about it.
Andrew: So I kind of skipped ahead a moment, but so Snape arrives, and with a “Severus… please…” Snape kills Dumbledore. Of course, one of the biggest moments in the series ever, one of the most shocking twists ever, the spoiler of all spoilers. [laughs] The reason for the “Severus… please…” That line is just so brilliant from J.K. Rowling, because “Severus, please” could go either way. Dumbledore did or did not want Snape to kill him. And of course, this all gets padded out in the next book. But wow, just an iconic moment. And so then there’s this quote that we wanted to talk about. So “A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.” So I think, Eric, you want to address the fact that this isn’t typically how Avada Kedavra works. However, based on what we were just talking about with it having to look like Snape really meant it, do you feel better about it?
Eric: Yeah, so what Pat said about it being extra emotion that pushed him over? I tend to view this as a coordinated effort on Snape’s part. I think the Killing Curse… we have seen it behave a little unusually when it gave Harry his scar and rebounded and stuff, but for the most part, the Killing Curse just kills you. In fact, taking it back to Goblet of Fire, it specifically said that there’s no trace. The Killing Curse leaves no trace. “A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued), the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health – apart from the fact that they were all dead.” So the Killing Curse really doesn’t… I mean, even their eyes stay open. The fact that Dumbledore got blown over the railing could be a mark of Snape’s emotion. It could also be the mark of this tremendous power leaving the universe or leaving the plane of life and all that, the life leaving Dumbledore’s body causing an explosion. But I think what’s more likely is that Snape just pushed his body over with a different spell so that the Death Eaters wouldn’t do something to it.
Andrew: I think that’s an excellent point.
Pat: Yeah, because Snape was teaching them nonverbal spells all year, so maybe he also used that to throw him over.
Andrew: It begs the question, can you do a two for one spell?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: So you do something out loud, and then you add on an extra filter to make him go far.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Yeah. I mean, this makes sense, too, because I think this is in the next book where we get the memories, but Dumbledore tells Snape to make it quick and not to let anybody torture him, and he particularly mentions Bellatrix, and he was like, “She likes to play with her food, so please just do this fast.” So I do think that, Eric, you bring up a good point about not wanting them to disfigure him or…
Eric: Yeah, you know one of them would have just taken a trophy of some kind, given the opportunity. Fenrir would have ripped a limb off just for fun. It was definitely Snape doing Dumbledore a solid. And I mean, one of the things that I read as my personal canon is that the reason Snape’s spell worked – we were talking a moment ago about Draco and whether or not he’d be able to perform it because he wanted to – Snape, I think, was angry at Dumbledore, not because he had malicious wanting to kill him, but what allowed Snape’s spell to work, in my headcanon, is that he’s angry at Dumbledore for making him kill him.
Pat: Right, that’s part of what I wanted to talk about, too. Because Harry, in my opinion, misreads Snape’s face – because the book’s obviously from Harry’s point of point of view – where he’s like, “The look on Snape’s face was of utter disgust,” or immense disgust or something like that, but I think that that’s more so just his grief coming across his face and building up that courage to do the deed to somebody that… I do actually think that Snape loves Dumbledore, and the fact that he needs to do this, it’s not a look of disgust; it’s just a look of grief and just immense emotion to have to pull this off.
Andrew: I read that the same way.
Eric: That’s great.
Andrew: Harry never gives Snape the benefit of the doubt…
Pat: Right.
Andrew: … so you could see why he misread the situation.
Eric: Yeah. Well, I just love that in the moment… it works perfectly for the book because – and in the chase that ensues, too – you just can’t believe what you’ve read! Snape and Dumbledore are both characters that we’ve known since Book 1. All of this time they’ve interacted with one another; they’ve both been teachers. For Snape to do this, it just… it sparked a million theories, because we’re just like, “Wait a minute, this guy’s supposed to be a good guy,” or, “Wait a minute, they’ve known each other for so long. What’s going on?” There’s elements of it being pre-planned and stuff that are sprinkled throughout the books, but you really don’t know until you know, and so this is an excellent, thrilling climax for this book.
Lynx Line
Andrew: So Dumbledore is dead. We thought we would pay tribute to one of the best characters of all time by reciting some of our favorite Dumbledore quotes, but we’re going to use quotes nominated by our patrons. Earlier this week, we asked “What is your favorite Dumbledore quote?” Now here’s the twist, y’all: We’re going to take turns reading these, and you have to either recite it in Dumbledore’s voice or a Micah voice.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: What?!
Andrew: Micah is not here this week. Yeah, yeah, that’s the twist.
Eric: The choices.
Laura: This is going to be hard.
Andrew: Micah is Dumbledore, in my opinion, so I thought it was appropriate.
[Alicia and Laura laugh]
Eric: Really? Because you’re my Dumbledore. Your Dumbledore voice is my Dumbledore head voice.
Andrew: Thank you. The vocal impression is the only part of Dumbledore I can do well. No perfect breaststroke…
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: … no flying on a broom staring at the Dark Mark, no knitting… all right, so we’ll take turns doing these. I’m just going to pop people’s names in. And first, read the patron who submitted it. These were all highly upvoted, so they are beloved quotes from Dumbledore. So Alicia, can you start, please?
Alicia: [laughs] Okay, so I did actually practice my Dumbledore voice.
Andrew: Nice.
Alicia: I figured out that it doesn’t actually sound like Dumbledore at all; it sounds more like Trelawney when she’s overcome with a prediction.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Alicia: So here we go. So this one is from Lourdes; sorry if I butchered that. [imitating Dumbledore] “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
Andrew: Nice! Good job.
Laura: I haven’t practiced this at all, y’all. I’m nervous. Okay, this one comes from Mandy. It says… I don’t know what to do!
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Do a Micah voice.
Andrew: Do Micah. You know how to…
Alicia: Just try and just see what comes out.
Laura: Do my Micah voice? Okay, I’ll drop down to a deep baritone. I don’t know if I can do it. Okay…
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: [imitating Micah] “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.”
Eric: See?
Alicia: Well done.
Eric: Who knew that the way to a good Dumbledore voice is through Micah? This is great.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I thought that was excellent.
Andrew: You sounded like Abe Lincoln to me.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: This next quote is from Hayley: [imitating Dumbledore] “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
Pat: All right, this next one is from Julianna: [imitating Micah] “I do love good knitting patterns.”
[Alicia and Laura laugh]
Alicia: That was really good!
Andrew: Whose voice was that?!
Pat: Micah.
Eric: It sounded like Adam Driver.
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, it did. This one’s from Diana: [imitating Dumbledore] “Dark times lie ahead of us, and there will be a time when we must choose between what is right and what is easy.”
Alicia: This one comes from Emmie: [imitating Dumbledore] “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Laura: That was good, though!
Andrew: That was.
Alicia: Thanks.
Eric: That quote we put on a MuggleCast T-shirt a long time ago.
Andrew: Yes. Yes, we did.
Eric: We are happening inside your head, if you listen with headphones.
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Alicia: Clever.
Laura: All right, the next one comes from Doug. It says, [imitating Micah] “Well – it’s just that you seem to be laboring under the delusion that I am going to – what is the phrase? ‘Come quietly.’ I am afraid I am not going to come quietly at all.”
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: And this last one is from Chloe: [imitating Dumbledore] “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
Andrew: Beautiful.
Laura: I like how our Dumbledore impressions are wobbly voices.
[Alicia laughs]
Pat: I know.
Andrew: Because he’s old.
Laura: No, but all of us do it, and we’re like, “Yeah, old people talk like that.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Well, goodbye, Dumbledore. We will miss you. It’s been a beautiful journey with you.
[“My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion plays]
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: We will miss your spirit, your inspiration…
You’re here
There’s nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
[Andrew weeps]
Laura: During that I was just thinking, because the Elder Wand plays such a role, it could be like, “My wand will go on.”
[Everyone laughs]
Alicia: Oh, that’s great.
Andrew: Brilliant. All right, well, we have to revisit my ride pitch for Universal…
[Alicia laughs]
Eric: Yes.
Andrew: … and we’ve got to do our MVP of the Week and Rename the Chapter, but first, it’s time for a word from another one of this week’s sponsors.
Eric: Yes, this week’s episode is sponsored by OpenFit.
[Ad break]
Andrew: Pat’s also on that fitness journey. He’s been using the company behind OpenFit for years. Right, Pat?
Eric: Do you stream it? Do you use Roku? Do you use…? What do you use?
Pat: I use my Apple TV.
Eric: Apple TV!
Andrew: Every day after work it’s workout time. He doesn’t have to go out again.
Eric: That’s fantastic.
Universal ride pitch
Andrew: So of course, Universal Orlando is opening… [takes a deep breath]
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure in just about two weeks, actually. Very exciting. I’ll be down there next week to check it out. And now that we’re doing the “Lightning-Struck Tower” chapter, what better time than to remind everybody about what I believe… this should have been the ride that they did next, but okay, it’s not. Maybe this will be the next ride that they build. So here’s my idea: Based on the classic Tower of Terror at Disney… I’m renaming the ride, in the spirit of the new Hagrid ride. It’s called Dumbledore’s Magical Astronomy Tower of Terror.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It is going to fling you over the battlement and down to the Hogwarts grounds…
Alicia: Oh, God.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … where you meet your untimely but necessary death. And here’s the high-tech element; I’m adding this to the ride. So the ride lets you be Dumbledore, of course, because you get to do that free fall, but you don’t fall until you whisper, “Severus, please.”
[Alicia laughs]
Andrew: And if you refuse to whisper this, you have no free fall, and you’ve wasted your time waiting in line two hours for the attraction.
[Alicia and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So that’s coming to Universal Orlando in 2022 to compete with whatever Galaxy’s Edge expansion happens next.
Pat: I fully support this, but only if, after you whisper it, all of a sudden the speakers blare, “And I’m free fallin’…”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: It’d be better if it was like a bungee jumping thing so you didn’t actually die.
Andrew: Well, there’s padding at the bottom, I guess, to catch you, maybe. Or a mat.
Eric: I kind of want it to play “My Heart Will Go On.” I think that was oddly perfect and fitting for…
Alicia: I agree, yeah. Definitely.
Eric: Maybe it’d be like Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Universal where you choose the song that plays when you get blown over the battlement. That’d be kind of cool.
Andrew: [laughs] Exactly.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, so now it’s time for our MVP of the Week. Mine is Draco Malfoy for not being that guy, for not being a killer.
Laura: Mine is Dumbledore’s sudden bursts of energy that got us to this point in the book.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, if we had to do a chapter that gave the MVPs to the same person more than once, it would rather be this chapter than any other. I gave mine to Dumbledore, too, this time for his last-minute sense of humor. I found when we were doing this Dumbledore poll about favorite quotes and stuff, and I was rereading the chapter for Chapter by Chapter, I found this quote that I just love, and it’s my new favorite Dumbledore quote of all time. But here’s the excerpt from the book. It’s page 586. Draco and Dumbledore are talking, and there’s this commotion downstairs, and the excerpt from the book is, “‘Somebody is putting up a good fight,’ said Dumbledore conversationally.” Kids could be getting murdered downstairs; he hears a rumble, and he’s just like, “Somebody’s putting up a good fight down there.” He knows it’s going to be fine.
[Alicia and Andrew laugh]
Alicia: I picked Snape, kind of for the opposite reason that Andrew picked: for being that guy, for being brave enough to kill Dumbledore when he probably didn’t want to.
Pat: And I picked Dumbledore because he went out on adventure. As my favorite Dumbledore quote from the beginning of the book is, when he says to Harry, “Let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” So the fact that Dumbledore loves it so much and he went out right after a big one.
Alicia: Nice.
Eric: Well, that reminds me of his quote from Book 1, right? “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” So there you go.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: And now renaming the chapter: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “If I Did It.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Did what?
Andrew: If you know what I’m referencing, you know. If you don’t, I just won’t say anything.
Eric: Oh, I’m so left out.
[Laura and Pat laugh]
Andrew: Just Google “If I Did It.”
Laura: Yeah, I mean, just go to Barnes & Noble. They probably have a copy.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Ask them.
Laura: All right, mine is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “‘You kill Dumbledore.’ ‘No, YOU kill Dumbledore.'”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Fun combo.
Eric: It is fun. I couldn’t pick, so I went with two. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “Snape Kills Dumbledore.” As somebody who reads the table of contents before reading the Harry Potter books for the first time, who reads all the chapter titles and all that, that would have been a huge spoiler that would have just destroyed me. But then the alternate title was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “A Show of Good Manners.”
Alicia: I like that. I picked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “Con-DESCENDING Dumbledore.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: “Descending.”
Andrew: You wrote “DESCENDING” in all caps!
Alicia: All caps! “Con,” as in, because we know Dumbledore likes to trick and deceive, and “descending,” for obvious reasons, and yeah, “condescending” overall, because he’s a little condescending to the Death Eaters and Malfoy when he’s talking to them.
Eric: It’s perfect.
Andrew: I love it.
Pat: So I think the chapter should be named Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 27, “Albus Dumby sat on a wall, Albus Dumby had a great fall.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: We’re all brutal.
Laura: This is what 15 years of podcasting does to you. You’re just completely desensitized.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I am not; I played a beautiful song for Dumbledore because it was a very serious moment. So that is Chapter 27. Only a couple more chapters to go.
Eric: Absolutely.
Andrew: Fast-moving chapters, too.
Laura: What are we going to do after that?
Andrew: Oh, we’ve got ideas. Shut down the show…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: No, we’ve got ideas.
Quizzitch
Andrew: So now it’s time for some Quizzitch.
Eric: Yes. So to recap, it’s been a couple weeks since our last episode, but the question from last week was: Where specifically in Hogsmeade do Harry and Dumbledore Apparate to? The answer was the High Street. They show up in the middle of the High Street in Hogsmeade. And correct answers were submitted by Hayley Hansen, Fluffy McNutters, Stacey Davis, Jason King, Marlena, Retta Gamboe, J.K. not Rowling a.k.a. Julia, Issy, Harry Potter Head 7, and Mandrake Patronus. So congratulations to all of those people. And next week’s question: Who was the person that Draco said was dead in front of Harry? So who’s the person that Draco took for being dead? And submit your answers to us over on Twitter at @MuggleCast, hashtag #Quizzitch.
Andrew: Okay. All right, well, thank you, everybody, for listening to this week’s episode. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram; Instagram.com/MuggleCast is where you can find us. Also Twitter and Facebook with the same username. We’d love your support over on Patreon. Like we said, we just hit one thousand patrons, which is an amazing milestone, and we’re a week or so away from shipping out the first wave of signed album art, so we can’t wait to see those arriving in everybody’s mailboxes, including yours, Alicia. Thank you again for supporting us, and we hope you had a good time on the show today.
Alicia: Yes, thank you for having me! This was so much fun.
Andrew: Good, good.
Laura: You were great.
Alicia: Oh, thanks! You guys don’t get enough credit for how much work this takes weekly.
Andrew: Yeah, thanks. [laughs] Thanks for saying that.
Alicia: So good job.
Eric: As somebody who’s about to put 2,000 labels on envelopes, I think that’s true. Thank you.
Alicia: [laughs] You’re welcome. You guys deserve all the credit.
Andrew: If you want to get in touch with us, go to MuggleCast.com and use the contact form. You can also call us; 1-920-3-MUGGLE. That’s 1-920-368-4453. We’ve also got that PO Box: MuggleCast, 4044 North Lincoln Avenue, Box #144, here in Chicago, Illinois, 60618. You can also email MuggleCast@gmail.com, or of course, just hit us up on social media. If you follow us on any of those channels, you know we’re paying attention. And we do read all the emails; we just don’t have time to reply and include them all on the show, but we love getting those emails. You guys send us some amazing theories and reactions and thoughts on everything that we’re doing, and we really appreciate it, so thank you. All right, that does it for this week’s episode. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Pat: I’m Pat.
Alicia: And I’m Alicia.
Andrew: Bye, everybody!
Eric: Later.
Alicia and Pat: Bye.