Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #428, “Finishing Sorcerer’s Stone, 13 Years Later”
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 428. 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 finally complete our Chapter by Chapter series for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Back in 2006, we started this, and for some reason, we never finished it. We got through every chapter except for the final chapter, and here we are, 13 years later. We’re finally taking care of it.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: This is like the MuggleCast epilogue. “13 years later.” [laughs]
Micah: It really is.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. And what’s also interesting – and Micah pointed this out when we were recording Episode 427 – when we were doing the Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter by Chapter back in 2006, Deathly Hallows wasn’t released yet! So we had this great discussion last week about how Book 1 connects to Book 7. We now have all this extra information, so this Chapter by Chapter that we are going to do today is going to be very different than the series we were doing back in 2006, not only because Deathly Hallows is now out, but because we’re also 13 years older. We have different perspectives on the Harry Potter series, we’ve grown up a lot, but we’re still MuggleCasting. So we’ll complete that today.
Eric: What a week it’s been, right, guys? Since our last episode recording?
Andrew: Oh, it’s been great. I’ve gotten coffee…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Same here.
Laura: I went to the bathroom.
Micah: Same here.
Andrew: And looked at a picture of Kevin Steck’s dog.
Eric: Aww, Belle.
Andrew: We are recording this right after Episode 427. Back-to-back recordings for us this morning.
Micah: And there’s a reason for that, right, Andrew?
Andrew: Laura is going on vacation. Is that the reason?
Laura: Yep. Scheduling conflicts. [laughs]
Micah: Well, so are we.
Andrew: Are we?
Micah: Well, it’s a business trip. It’s a business trip/vacation.
Eric: Yeah, next week, it’s important to remind everybody, we will be in Orlando, Florida. There is a survey on the website. If you can come and join us, we’re looking to do a meetup on Thursday night, the 15th of August, and we hope to see you guys there. But I guess it’s important just to mention that next week’s episode, 429, will come a little later in the week. We’re not sure exactly what we’re going to do for it, but Andrew, Micah, and myself will be in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter riding Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure… good stuff.
Micah: You left out a few words, but that’s okay.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: You don’t remember them all.
Micah: You don’t want to see the magical creatures, apparently.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Well, you also forgot to gasp and take that huge intake of breath before you spat out the whole name.
Eric: [takes a deep breath] Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure.
Laura: There we go.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Nice.
Andrew: Got it right.
Eric: Okay. All right.
Micah: Well, we should let people know, too, that we will be in Orlando for Podcast Movement, which is a podcast convention down there. Not sure if any of our listeners also do podcasting; I’m guessing maybe a few do. Or if they’re going to be down there, let us know.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a great opportunity to… you know, I think we’re going to learn a lot about how to podcast after… [laughs] This is Episode 428.
Andrew: Yeah, we should finally learn something.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: It’ll be great to be with other people in the industry, and I think we will learn some things. That’s why I want to go. I want to learn.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely.
Wizards Unite
Andrew: So actually, a few weeks after Podcast Movement, there’s going to be a Harry Potter event in Indianapolis. Wizards Unite is having their first real world gathering, their first big official event. Niantic, who created the game, has done this multiple times with Pokémon Go; they are wasting no time launching one of these for Wizards Unite. It’s going to be in Indianapolis. Tickets are now on sale; you have to enter a raffle within the app for the chance to be able to buy tickets. By the time this episode airs, they might not be selling tickets anymore, but I wanted to let everybody know that I did get a ticket for Saturday. You can only… so the event is Saturday and Sunday, but you can only get a ticket for one day. I chose Saturday. If you’re going to go, keep an eye out on our social media channels. I’m going to have some sort of meetup with everybody, with all of our listeners who attend, and we will all stare at our screens together. Make sure you bring a backup battery, because I have a feeling our phones are going to drain very quickly playing this game all day.
Micah: How is your overall Wizards Unite experience going? Mine is pretty good. I’m still playing.
Andrew: I’m still playing.
Laura: Same.
Andrew: Yeah, I like it. I’m having fun. I really like these limited time events that they do because you can collect extra things, and they put more stuff out on the map, it seems, and there’s extra challenges to complete, so it’s fun.
Micah: What level are you at?
Andrew: 16.
Micah: Okay.
Laura: I’m still level 8. I will say, something I didn’t realize and something that I find kind of annoying about the gameplay is that sometimes in order to level up, you have to remember to open up the daily assignments and actually collect rewards. And to me, it’s like if I’ve met the requirements, just give it to me. Don’t make me have to remember to go in and collect it. Because I had a whole bunch that I just hadn’t collected because I didn’t know, so I went in and collected all of it, and then leveled up twice.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But isn’t it satisfying to click that big “Collect” button? I think that’s why they make you do it, because you kind of feel good pressing it. I know I do.
Laura: I mean, I’d feel good if it was a pleasant surprise.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Laura: “Here, have all this XP.”
Andrew: And I like the daily rewards just for opening up the app. This morning, because we’re at the end of July… all the big stuff is at the end of the month, if you’ve been opening it up every day. I got 1,000 XP just for loading up the app this morning.
Eric: What?!
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: Yeah, baby.
Eric: That is nuts.
Micah: And I am convinced that somebody who works on this game listens to the podcast, because as you mentioned on… I think it was either last week or the week before, Laura’s suggestion to add the spell count to the home screen. But then I also saw recently that they added the suggestion that we had about going into battle and having a limited number of spells. I saw yesterday; it told me, “You only have five spells. Are you sure you want to enter that?”
Eric: [gasps] And then you were like, “No, I’m going to cast Protego four times, and it won’t be effective, and then I’m going to lose and die.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: You’ve got to create those potions to regain your health in battle.
Eric: Oh, that’s right.
Micah: So Laura, I’m just saying, if by next week we see a feature added that you can just click a button in settings to automatically collect your winnings?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: No, I don’t want that.
Laura: You know what? I am totally open to Niantic taking our feedback into account, but I would appreciate a royalty check or something.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Oh, that’s too much.
Micah: Or just level you up, right? Bump you up to level 50?
Andrew: [laughs] Cheat?
Eric: Just take comfort in knowing… this is what I would do, take comfort in knowing that our feedback as Harry Potter fans is benefiting all Harry Potter fans in general with a better gameplay experience.
Andrew: All right, I’m about to hit “Collect” for dining at an Inn two times today, and it’s going to feel so good. You ready? Here I go… oh, yeah. Ooh, yeah, that felt good.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: How much does your Inn give you? Is it three? Five?
Andrew: Well, it varies, of course. It seems to be random. Sometimes three, sometimes five. I’ve seen sometimes seven.
Micah: The Inn by where I work is crappy. I always get three.
Laura: Same.
Andrew: Oh, you’ve got to move somewhere else.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: And actually, my Inn by work disappeared the other day. Has this ever happened to anybody?
Andrew: No.
Eric and Micah: What?
Laura: I loaded it up and the Inn just wasn’t there anymore, and I was like, “What the hell?”
Eric: Inns shutter and close. It’s this economy, Laura.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Not enough people were getting spell energy.
Andrew: You know what’s the worst? When something rare shows up and you get so excited and then it departs.
Laura: Oh, I hate that so much!
Micah: Me too.
Andrew: Ugh, it’s the worst.
Laura: You cast one failed spell and then it’s like, “The Confoundable has departed.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: You don’t even get a second crack at it! Like, come on.
Micah: Right. Also, I want to know how when I cast a Masterful spell, how it doesn’t work.
Andrew: That should be a guaranteed… it should work.
Eric: Like the Master Ball in Pokémon.
Micah: Exactly. You can’t break out of it.
Andrew: Right. Now, in theory, a Masterful spell has a higher chance of working; that must be how it works. But yeah, it should be nearly guaranteed.
Micah: Right, right.
Andrew: I feel like I’ve been casting more Masterful spells. I think I’ve definitely improved my swiping on the screen.
Laura: So I will say something that annoys me is I’ll cast a spell, and the spell will maybe be… it’ll be Great, right? And it won’t work. And then the following spell I’ll do will be a Fair spell, and that one will work, and I’m like, “What the f? Come on, guys.” Is it that I weakened it with my…?
Micah: They just want you to use your spells up.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: That’s what it is.
Eric: “Buy more spells.”
Laura: They were like, “You wanted this spell counter? Well, watch your spells disappear, Laura.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Yeah. The one thing I’ll say that I really have benefited from is that there’s no Fortress that’s close to where I live, so I’ve actually been walking down to the boardwalk here. I live very close to the beach, and there’s a boardwalk down there, and there’s a Fortress on the boardwalk, and I’ve just gone there and just battled, and it’s… I’m saying it’s good to get you out of the house and walk a little bit.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s my situation. I’ve got a Fortress down at the end of the street, and I kind of have a routine now when I walk Brooklyn; I stand and battle the Fortress, and then I can collect that little bonus.
Micah: But are you very self-conscious, though? Because people obviously are walking past me all the time on the boardwalk, a lot of people use it, and I’m just wondering, are they thinking, “What’s this weirdo doing that’s just sitting on this bench playing this game?”
Andrew: I mean, at least in my area, it’s pretty common because people play Pokémon Go too. In fact, when I was walking Brooklyn a few days ago, two people were sitting on a bench, and they brought up the Blast-Ended Skrewt out loud. They were like, “Oh, that’s the Blast-Ended Skrewt!”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I was like, “Oh, I know what they’re playing.” All right, hold on. I’m getting one more high before we move on. I’m about to collect the bonus for returning ten Foundables. Here we go.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Oh, yeah. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, just got a potion. Oh, that felt so good.
Eric: And coming up next on MuggleCast, our unhealthy relationship with our phones and technology.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
MuggleCasTBT
Andrew: All right, so time now for MuggleCasTBT. This is a Cursed Child prediction. This was from June 3, 2016, Episode 293, when some new photos were released of the cast in their roles.
[Audio clip plays]
Andrew: Let’s talk about Harry, actually. In this group photo, once again, he’s kind of in the dark compared to Albus and Ginny.
Eric: It’s a metaphor.
[Selina laughs]
Andrew: I think it is a metaphor. I really think so. Do you notice how he looks…?
Eric: Oh, this is creepy. I’m just seeing the photo now. That’s really creepy. Wow.
[Andrew laughs]
Selina: Right?
Eric: Sorry, sorry. Go on.
Andrew: Does anyone else think it’s a metaphor? It hints at that Harry may be the one who’s more disturbed or more… I don’t know, battling some serious demons more than Albus?
Selina: Could be.
Brittany: I think they’re both going to. But he’s battling them in the background, whereas Albus has to battle them in the foreground.
Eric: Ahh, he’s in the foreground. Love it.
Andrew: Okay, okay. Into that, into that.
[Audio clip ends]
Andrew: So yeah, we didn’t know anything about the Cursed Child plot at that point, and we were just speculating. But that ended up being correct.
Laura: Little did y’all know, that picture was taken shortly after Harry gave Albus a moldy old baby blanket, and Albus was like, “What the f is this?”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: That’s why he’s not smiling in the photo.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. And that was Selina who was there with us, and I don’t know who that other girl is. I don’t recognize… I’m embarrassed to say. I’ll have to look at it in the show notes.
Eric: It was Brittany. Brittany Lovely.
Andrew: Oh, Brittany, who writes for Hypable. I’m sorry, Brittany.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: All right, time now for Chapter by Chapter. We are going to do Chapter 17 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Like I said, our last Chapter by Chapter for Sorcerer’s Stone was June 4, 2006; it was Episode 42. And we don’t know why we never did the final chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone for Chapter by Chapter. We may have just forgot.
Eric: Yeah, no idea why we didn’t do it, but it’s kind of thrilling to finally be reaching this chapter. And I’ve got to say, by the quantity of the notes we took, I don’t know that we would have done this episode, this chapter, justice if we did it 13 years ago, so it’s just as well.
Laura: I don’t think so.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. So we’re going to put our new Chapter by Chapter spin on this one. We’ll start with the Seven-Word Summary.
Laura: All right. Quirrell…
Andrew: … surprises…
Eric: … Harry…
Micah: … with…
Laura: … Voldemort’s…
Andrew: [laughs] … head…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: Oh, great. One word left… attached.
Andrew: Okay, that works.
Laura: Okay, there we go.
Andrew: I wanted to do “half head” or “gross head” or… I don’t know.
Eric: Yeah. “Quirrell surprises Harry with Voldemort’s head attached.” Yeah, I like that. I think it’s great.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: So Laura, will you take us through this chapter?
Laura: Yeah, so we kind of touched on the transition from Chapter 16 to Chapter 17 a couple weeks ago, where there’s that just beautiful cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 16, where it says, “It wasn’t Snape. It wasn’t even Voldemort.” And then you turn the page, and it says, “It was Quirrell.” And that’s the ultimate dun-dun-dunnn! moment.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I remember reading that as a child and being like, “Holy crap!”
Andrew: [in a high voice] “Oh my gosh! Mom, it was Quirrell!”
Laura: [laughs] But what I love about this, and what I think is so interesting about it, is we see a big shift in Quirrell’s character at this point. He very quickly assumes a tone that is out of character for him, and he sounds like Voldemort. So when Harry communicates that he had suspected that he would be meeting Snape here, Quirrell says, “Severus? Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn’t he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat.” And that’s almost a level of meta awareness in the books; it is kind of useful for all of the villains in these books that Snape is such an obvious choice.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. And it sparked, I think, not a few “Snape is a vampire theories” as well.
Laura: Oh, yes. I remember all of the “Snape is a vampire” theories, yeah.
Eric: To have your… well, there are probably fanfiction, too, of that, where he was revealed to be a vampire.
Laura: Probably.
Eric: But yeah, having his own colleagues kind of suspect him… and this is what Quirrell is talking about with Harry in this chapter, is how all the other colleagues assume that Snape is in it for himself, that he wants Gryffindor to lose at Quidditch… all this other stuff really works in Quirrell’s favor, and so Quirrell was able to successfully even dupe Dumbledore, for the most part, the entire school year.
Micah: This reveal also sets into motion the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher issue that we run into throughout the course of the series, and so he’s sort of the first casualty. But is this his first year teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, though?
Eric: I think it is, Defense Against the Dark Arts. The HP Wikia has it listed that he was the Muggle Studies teacher who this year became the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but that source is not cited.
Andrew: But the curse had been in place for a while.
Eric: Yeah, but for Defense Against the Dark Arts position, there had been several teachers before Quirrell. You know what I’m saying? Once it’s… like Snape, once he became the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, he had one year in that role and then left.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: Yeah, and then I always interpreted this… because Eric, you have these notes here about Quirrell’s background. Hagrid notes in Chapter 5 that Quirrell had taken a year off to go out and get some firsthand experience, which is when he met vampires in the Black Forest, and of course, Voldemort, we later learn. But I always interpreted that as like he was an academic who didn’t have any applied experience, so he went out to the real world to get that, and because of his experience with “vampires,” he was then qualified to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Eric: Ahh.
Laura: That’s how I always thought about it, but I don’t know that there’s anything in the canon to actually support it.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, except Hagrid calling him a brilliant mind. But it’s worth mentioning, it’s been confirmed by J.K. Rowling that Quirrell was a Ravenclaw student. So how unique is it that we have a bad guy who’s not a Slytherin for once?
Andrew: J.K. Rowling was setting us up to think that all Houses would have bad people, and then she kind of forgets that by Book 2.
Eric: Although I guess Gilderoy was also a Ravenclaw, wasn’t he? Lockhart? She’s really hating on Ravenclaws here.
Laura: Well, she does a good job of showing that there are weak-willed people in all Houses, right? Because we get Quirrell. We get Hepzibah Smith, who’s a Hufflepuff, right? She was very weak when it came to Voldemort. Then, of course, Pettigrew, who’s a Gryffindor. So you get to see examples of weak-willed people when it comes to Voldemort from all Houses, which is pretty good.
Eric: That’s a really good point.
Andrew: Nobody’s perfect.
Laura: Correct.
Micah: Except you.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: You said it, not me.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: So Eric, you also have some really interesting Pottermore info on Quirrell here I was hoping you could share.
Eric: Yeah, this is the coolest thing about… when we were doing our Chapter by Chapter of Book 1 in 2006, Pottermore was not a thing, and J.K. Rowling wrote… this is one of the few pieces she actually wrote for that site, was this delightful backstory on… or not backstory, but overview of Professor Quirrell. And I recommend reading it; we’ll put it in the show notes. But here’s two blips that I thought were valuable. She talks about his character, which we’re analyzing. She says,
“I saw Quirrell as a gifted but delicate boy, who would probably have been teased for his timidity and nerves during his school life. Feeling inadequate and wishing to prove himself, he developed an (initially theoretical) interest in the Dark Arts. Like many people who feel themselves to be insignificant, even laughable, Quirrell had a latent desire to make the world sit up and notice him.”
So right there, we’re seeing sort of an ambition inside Quirrell and a studiousness that allows him to pursue, and we know he ends up locating, Voldemort. I mean, I don’t know that he’s the only one looking for Voldemort, but he’s the one who finds him, and I think that speaks to Quirrell’s prowess, really, as a… I don’t know what you’d call it, a scholar or somebody who’s apt to looking into places where nobody else is looking.
Laura: Yeah. And he’s ultimately, as I said, though, weak-willed, right?
Eric: Yes.
Laura: Because he talks to Harry about how before he met Voldemort, he had all of these ideas about good versus evil, and that Voldemort was the one who showed him that “there is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”
Eric: Yeah, great quote. That quote was later taken out of context for Laura Mallory and all those people who were against…
Laura: Ugh.
Eric: Because there was no nuance there, where it’s like, well, a villain says that, so of course it’s not an edict of the book. It’s not what J.K. Rowling believes, because the villain is saying it.
Laura: Yeah, but that would require those people to actually read, which is too much.
Eric: I know.
Micah: Yeah, that’s what I was just going to say.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: But yeah, on Pottermore, J.K. Rowling says, “a much stronger-willed Voldemort.” Quirrell didn’t know what hit him. And I would encourage everybody to go and read that. But the interesting thing that she also says – because this is post-Book 7 that J.K. Rowling is writing this – she says,
“Quirrell is, in effect, turned into a temporary Horcrux by Voldemort. He is greatly depleted by the physical strain of fighting the far stronger, evil soul inside him. Quirrell’s body manifests burns and blisters during his fight with Harry due to the protective power Harry’s mother left him in his skin when she died for him. When the body Voldemort and Quirrell are sharing is horribly burned by contact with Harry, the former flees just in time to save himself, leaving the damaged and enfeebled Quirrell to collapse and die.”
So for a brief period of time, there’s a ninth Horcrux, or the Horcrux that is a container of a soul, the part of Voldemort’s soul that used to have his body, is now having Quirrell’s body. Kind of interesting.
Laura: Yeah, and what’s so interesting about this is we don’t know this at the time as readers, but when Harry is asking Quirrell, he’s like, “You mean he -“ Voldemort “- was there in the classroom with you?” And Quirrell says, “He is with me wherever I go.” And little does Harry know that the same is true for him.
Eric: Ohh, yeah.
Laura: Right? And it’s so interesting because in this case, Voldemort very willingly turned Quirrell into this temporary Horcrux, whereas with Harry, it was completely unintentional.
Eric: Yeah, and that part of Harry is sort of dormant, whereas the part of Voldemort in Quirrell gives him orders and essentially sees out the back of his head for a year.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Yeah. Very terrifying. So definitely, Pottermore on Quirrell… I remember thinking whether or not Quirrell would come back in the later books, because it really… the book does not conclusively say if he dies or not. The book is more concerned over whether Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel will die than the guy that Harry essentially murdered in the chapter.
Micah: But they’re just… he’s chilling out with the Basilisk corpse.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: “Yo, Quirrell.”
Micah: Yeah, no, I actually… something came to mind when you were talking about Voldemort being a part of Quirrell. I’m curious: Did he always wear the turban?
Andrew: Hmm.
Laura: I was wondering that too.
Eric: I’m thinking no, but that’s why that story had come out that he found vampires or hags in Albania, because then he allowed the rumors to propagate that there was garlic inside the turban.
Laura: Yeah, I seem to recall early on in the book when we see Quirrell at Hogwarts that there was some comment made about the turban being new.
Eric: Yeah, he was known to other wizards, but his turban was not.
Micah: Because to Andrew’s point of Hogwarts being a security nightmare…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: When did I bring that up?
Micah: … if you’re the headmaster of the school, and all of a sudden one of your teachers comes back to Hogwarts after summer, and they have this thing on… it could have been on any part of the body that was visible, but he’s wearing this turban, and weird stuff starts to happen at your school… I don’t know, maybe you should investigate.
Eric: Maybe Dumbledore isn’t prejudiced against turban-wearing people. Maybe he’s one of the few…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Well, that’s not what this is about.
Andrew: Do you think from this book onward, people were immediately suspicious of anyone wearing a turban, who hadn’t before, because they could be the new host of Voldemort? [laughs]
Laura: I don’t know. I mean, the wizarding world is so eccentric that I don’t know that something like this would immediately jump out as a cause for concern.
Eric: A startling fashion choice by one of his…
Andrew: But even after Quirrell? Even after what was going on with Quirrell? I feel like you would start wondering, like, “Where is Voldemort hiding now?”
Laura: I mean, how widely publicized was this, though? I don’t think that we ever saw any kind of Daily Prophet reporting on “Lord Voldemort is back and manifests himself on the back of a Hogwarts professor’s head.”
Andrew: I mean, that’s a pretty scandalous headline. I would print that on the front page.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: If you were Rita?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah, but I mean, the Ministry doesn’t even accept that Voldemort is back until the end of Book 5…
Andrew: Right, true.
Laura: … so I don’t think that this is public knowledge.
Micah: And Eric, it’s not trying to make it a religious thing at all; I’m just saying that it just happened to be that that was what was written by J.K. Rowling. And actually, I would be interested if J.K. Rowling would have taken a different approach to writing, because we know this book was published in 1997, prior to 9/11. I’m curious to see if she would have received a lot more backlash if the book had been written post-9/11.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, as it stands, a turban is just a great way to conceal the fact you’ve got a second face and it’s protruding out of the back of your head. I mean, it could have been a cowboy hat, or… I don’t really know how else to…
Andrew: [laughs] A cowboy hat.
Laura: Yeah, I don’t think that it was intended to be reminiscent of any kind of religious headwear that we associate with, because I feel like the way it’s described – because Micah, you mentioned 9/11 – the way that the turban is described and the way that it’s portrayed in the film is not something germane to Islam, for example, right?
Micah: No, not at all.
Eric: Yeah, and the actor is not an Islamic actor.
Laura: Right. I think that it was just kind of a convenient… and I don’t know, Quirrell, he seemed always pretty quirky, like quirky Quirrell.
Eric: Quirky Quirrell.
Laura: So I feel like when he came back, people were probably just sort of accepting, like, “Yeah, this is a weird dude. He just spent a whole bunch of time in Eastern Europe with vampires. Who knows?” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, and I mean, it’s worth noting – like with Lockhart, too, in Book 2 – the other teachers, they may have their concerns, but they mostly just let Dumbledore let the teachers do whatever they want.
Laura: Yeah. Well, sort of finishing up a little bit of analysis on Quirrell’s character before we hop into the rest of the chapter, we also have some notes here about his special gift with trolls?
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Which is… it is so bizarre, right? It’s this one-off thing, and we never really hear anything about it again.
Andrew: He’s a trollologist. Newt is a magizoologist; he’s a trollologist.
Eric: The troll whisperer.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Right, exactly.
Micah: I could use him in Wizards Unite, actually.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: But I found that line is just… knowing that he is a Ravenclaw, just kind of it’s almost like he’s bragging a bit. He’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got a special gift with trolls. I know how to control them. I know what to do with them. Look at me.” That’s kind of how I looked at that.
Andrew: Yeah, and many of us are fascinated with particular types of creatures, let’s say; we all have our favorite animals. And maybe for Quirrell, his favorite beast was a troll. He loves the size.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, just the way you can smell them coming a mile away… it would not be my first choice of…
Laura: I wonder if he developed this gift while he was on his real world adventures there.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: Because I mean, really, we are led to believe that he doesn’t get that much real world experience and exposure until he takes that year off, so I’m wondering if that’s also when he developed his relationship with trolls.
Eric: Yeah. And it does say, to connect it back to Pottermore real quick, that as soon as Voldemort learned that Quirrell had a teaching post at Hogwarts, he immediately came after him. He strategically knew that that was where he needed to be, so it’s just… what shocks me the most, learning about the circumstances around Quirrell and Voldemort this entire year, is that Voldemort was, in body, at Hogwarts all year. Did he check up on the diadem? What level of consciousness and awareness did Voldemort have the entire year he was back at Hogwarts? Did he open the Chamber of Secrets? Go check out, say hi to the Basilisk? He was there an entire year under Dumbledore’s nose, and that, more than anything else, surprises me that there weren’t somehow spells or alarms that got set off when something so evil was so close.
Laura: Is it that he wasn’t powerful enough yet? Because I’m thinking about, for example, we see Ginny Weasley lose huge patches of time in Chamber of Secrets, which leads me to believe that, yeah, he probably was checking up in the Room of Requirement, he probably was revisiting his old haunts, and Quirrell might not have even been conscious when those things were happening.
Eric: Well, in this chapter, Voldemort says Quirrell drank unicorn blood for him, so maybe… that’s a heck of a thing to allow your follower to remember, right? Drinking a… it wasn’t just Voldemort took over and then did the drinking. It’s kind of weird, the symbiotic relationship. But I’m glad you brought up Ginny Weasley in Book 2, because it is a little bit of a difference. They’re both technically kind of Horcrux actions, according to J.K. Rowling, but in the diary, it saps Ginny’s power and tries to create its own self. Young Tom Riddle will probably be full-bodied. It wouldn’t be the same thing as Voldemort growing out the back of Ginny’s red head…
Laura: Right.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: … which is sort of weird and different.
Andrew: Red head specifically.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, her red… her ginger… I was thinking her long ginger hair. I’m writing fanfic, so I’m like, “Oh, her long ginger…”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: It’s all about the details.
Laura: But yeah, I mean, for these first couple of books, Voldemort’s attempt at coming back is to try and sap energy from a host, right? In Quirrell’s case, it’s physical; in Ginny’s case, it’s spiritual. And I think after he realizes that that’s not really going to work for him is when he starts planning his eventual return for Goblet of Fire, in which he actually obtains his own body.
Andrew: I’m with you, Laura. I think the fact that Voldemort was so weak at that point that he was just undetectable in the school, but it is extremely disturbing that he is in the school, however weak he may be.
Laura: Well, it goes back to your point that Hogwarts is a security nightmare.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: You know, it is really… I’m glad you bring that up; it is really a security NIGHTMARE!
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Yep. Shouldn’t they have a Voldemort detector at the school?
Andrew: Yeah, well, Filch has that Dark Detector, right? Or wait, that’s in Wizards Unite. What does he have? That thing that he waves over… in Half-Blood Prince… in one of the books, he has something that he’s waving over students to make sure they’re not sneaking… yeah, it’s in Half-Blood Prince.
Micah: Yeah, when they’re arriving at the school.
Laura: But then it…
Andrew: Right, exactly. They need something like that, but to detect a…
Laura: Right.
Micah: Do we think that Snape’s Dark Mark bothered him at all with Quirrell in the school?
Eric: That’s such a good question, and plot hole, kind of.
Laura: It does make me wonder if there’s ever any small mention, and I wouldn’t be surprised of Snape grabbing his forearm or something.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, his shin gets bitten by Fluffy, and he’s holding that a bit, but…
Andrew: But let’s say that happens; what would go through Snape’s mind? “Oh, maybe I’m feeling it because Harry got hit by Voldemort when he was a baby, and now he’s here.”
Eric: Yeah, I don’t know.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, it is worth pointing out that Harry doesn’t feel the pain in his scar unless Quirrell actually physically touches him. It’s kind of twinging a little bit before they make physical contact, so I wonder if Snape would have needed to be in closer proximity to Quirrell in order to feel it, which could explain why Snape is sort of trailing Quirrell the whole year. That could be part of it; he could have a sense of it.
Micah: Right. We know they get close in the Forbidden Forest with each other. Is it odd that Voldemort, as far as we know, never reveals himself to Snape, who’s supposed to be his most loyal subject?
Eric: Yeah. I mean, this is covered in the “Spinner’s End” chapter, just how Voldemort did not feel that he could trust Snape. Ultimately, Snape is able to convince him that in their interactions between Quirrell and Snape, that Snape simply thought because Voldemort hadn’t revealed himself to him that Quirrell was just in it for himself, and wanted the stone for himself. So it’s perfectly explained, wrapped up in a neat little bow. But I absolutely would like to be a fly on the wall and have insight into what Voldemort was thinking when Snape was confronting Quirrell.
Laura: Well, looking ahead to the rest of the chapter, something that’s super interesting about this: As I was reading it, I felt like this entire chapter was just a connecting the threads conversation waiting to happen.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Because I was going through and I was like, “Oh, we can just sort of have touch points throughout the chapter of things that happen,” but everything that I hit, I was like, “Oh my God, this is a parallel to Book 7, to the end of Book 7.” So I figure we could just go over each of those things in chunks, but then there are also some nice little hints at other plot elements that are to come that we’ll touch on as well. So the first one I wanted to talk about in connecting the threads is Snape saving Harry. So in Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 17, Quirrell tells Harry, “I’d have managed [to knock you off your broom] before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you.” To which Harry responds, “Snape was trying to save me?” And then he proceeds to spend the next seven books still thinking Snape wants to kill him.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: “Snape is the worst. He’s bad.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Well, and that’s what I was getting at last episode: Should the debate over Snape being good or bad have ended right here? I mean, why would Snape have tried to protect him otherwise? To string him along?
Eric: I blame Dumbledore. I blame Dumbledore because Dumbledore really… in order to conceal to Harry the secrets of the Marauders’ true backstory, he just tells Harry that James saved Snape’s life, and the debt has now been repaid. Dumbledore is very much not counting on Snape to continue to do questionable activities right in front of Harry. So I think he thinks the lie is going to work, or revealing a little bit of information here is going to keep Harry satisfied. But it doesn’t. We know it doesn’t work.
Laura: Right. Well, an interesting tie to this is in Deathly Hallows Chapter 33, in which we’re seeing all of Snape’s memories right after he has died. We see a memory from Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, in which Snape and Dumbledore are talking. Snape is complaining about how Harry is arrogant, how much he dislikes him, and Dumbledore says, “You see what you expect to see, Severus… Personally, I find him an engaging child.” Then it says, “Dumbledore turned a page, and said, without looking up, ‘Keep an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?'”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Ahh.
Laura: Now, do we think that Dumbledore suspected Quirrell, or do we think that Dumbledore merely suggested this because he knows about the curse on the position?
Eric: That’s a good question.
Micah: I think the latter. I think he knows that eventually Quirrell is not going to be at the school anymore, so he wants to make sure that… and who knows the timing of this conversation in year one? Has stuff already started to happen that would make Dumbledore suspicious, potentially, of Quirrell? It’s a good question.
Laura: Yeah. I would expect that this conversation would have happened near the beginning of the school year, because earlier on, Snape is complaining about Harry, and to me, that indicates that he’s just had his first interactions with Harry in Potions class, because he’s calling him lazy and arrogant; he’s just like his father…
Micah: [laughs] Right. And the connecting the thread piece about Snape saving Harry… we know that he does what he does in this book by preventing him from falling off his broom, but in Deathly Hallows, he sends his Patronus with the sword of Gryffindor to destroy the locket Horcrux. So again, in a way, he is saving Harry in both books.
Eric: Wow. Yeah, nice. I think, too, if it had been… what just occurred to me was that this curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position… Andrew’s question; would he know because of knowing that Quirrell is not going to be in the position for very long? Seeing as how it was Voldemort that put that curse on the position, if Quirrell needed to remain at Hogwarts another year, I think Voldemort would have made that possible, would have lifted his own curse. I don’t know that it was a conscious curse on Voldemort’s part, but if for some reason the stone wasn’t accessible until the following school year, maybe Quirrellmort would have gotten to stay on.
Laura: Quirrellmort. [laughs]
Micah: So what do you think? Tom was just walking out of the school one day and he’s like, “Curse this position!”, and that’s how it happened?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I mean, there’s not a… I really doubt there’s a specific incantation you can utter for that curse, because we talked about this when it came up in Half-Blood Prince, but there is a massive amount of variables that has to go into a… nobody at all can occupy that position for longer than one full term, and it’s just the 15 or 27… we did the math, but the 20-odd people who encounter that all have different circumstances surrounding their departure?
Micah: And who…? If you’re another member of the staff, you have to be saying to yourself, “What is going on here?” And if you’re a parent that has your kid… “Why is the teacher changing every year? My child cannot get consistent education from a good professor…”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: “… because every year something’s happening. They’re being attached onto by Dark wizards, they’re losing their memory and ending up in St. Mungo’s, they’re turning into werewolves, they’re being impostered by Death Eaters…” Think of all this… I want J.K. Rowling to write a history of the Defense Against the Dark Arts position leading up to Quirrell taking over the role.
Eric: I mean, by the time he gets to Lockhart, he has no choice. And Lupin was even a last choice, and Moody was the same way. People are starting to catch on that this is not just a cute, quizzical affectation of Hogwarts here.
Micah: Right.
Laura: And I also have a feeling that probably before Harry was introduced to Hogwarts, probably a lot of the reasons that people left the position were pretty mundane. I think that the introduction of Harry into this world is what brings a lot of the darker outcomes to people losing out on that position at the end of the year, because obviously, Harry is drawing Voldemort back into the fold, right? Because he’s somewhere where Voldemort… he knows a lot about the castle, he’s able to infiltrate it really easily, so of course you’re going to see a lot of dark intentions surrounding the fact that, “Hey, we can trade out the Defense Against the Dark Arts position every year. That is our way in.” But looking back at the chapter, we see that Harry really has to rely on an intuition that’s actually pretty mature for his age, right?
Eric: Definitely. And he has this instinct when Quirrell is monologuing to basically keep him talking; he realizes that the longer he keeps Quirrell talking, the longer it’ll take for him to get the stone, and that’s really… Harry doesn’t have many powers or many abilities, but he has this intuition to stall, and it works. I mean, eventually we find out that Dumbledore comes just in time to pull Harry off of Quirrell’s body, or Quirrell off of Harry’s body, and that Harry did very nearly die, and it’s all because Harry stalled. The same events could have happened five minutes earlier, and Harry would have died. So we see this a lot from Harry, because even through most of the book series, he doesn’t have a lot of magical talent or skill. He relies on his intuition to survive and Expelliarmus quite a lot.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: And so it’s just good that J.K. Rowling wrote way back in Book 1 that there seems to be… whenever Harry is in real, real shit, real heavy shit, he always gets this little voice in him that tells him what to do, and it tends to really work out in his favor.
Laura: Yeah. And I mean, Hermione notes this during the potion challenge, right? In the previous chapter, that book smarts aren’t everything, right? And it really is Harry’s intuition that carries him through all of these encounters with Voldemort.
Andrew: What else could Harry have done in this moment, though, other than stall? That was basically back against the wall, there’s nothing else he could do. He could try to fight Quirrell, but he probably feels like he could lose in a duel.
Eric: Absolutely.
Laura: He’s also tied up at this point too.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Yeah, ropes. And I mean, that’s kind of what shocks me, and I want to ask you guys this: Does it seem realistic that Harry escapes this? It’s a grown man against an 11-year-old boy, and do we have any…? I think the specific set of circumstances… it’s a mark of the writing that I think it does clearly indicate why. We get the why Harry survived out of all of this.
Micah: Yeah. I totally forgot that it was Dumbledore showing up to actually save the day, because in the movie, Harry defeats Quirrell/Voldemort, and we see Quirrell die…
Andrew: Right.
Micah: … and Voldemort, his essence escapes out of the chamber that they’re in, and then Harry wakes up in the hospital. But we’re told in this chapter that Dumbledore actually saves Harry, essentially.
Laura: Yeah, he pulls Quirrell off of him.
Eric: I wonder if they had any words between one another.
Andrew: Do you guys prefer the book version or the movie version? I guess the book version is preferred for me because it’s a little more realistic, an adult coming in.
Laura: Same.
Andrew: We were just talking about an 11-year-old fighting him. It seems less likely. However, his mother’s protection, that is very powerful and more powerful than anything, and so I guess it is realistic, in this world of fiction, for Harry to have the power to defeat Quirrell with his mother’s love.
Micah: As Eric likes to say, it works for the book and it works for the movie. I’m paraphrasing, but don’t you have that line…?
Andrew: That’s a great point, Eric.
Micah: What works for the book works for the book; what works for the movie works for the movie.
Eric: I don’t know that I’ve heard myself say that before, but I agree with it completely.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Implicitly, even.
Micah: You’ve definitely said it before.
Eric: Yeah, okay. Well, and I do like the movie version.
Micah: But let’s also talk about what Dumbledore has done by putting Harry in this situation in the first place.
[Eric blows a raspberry]
Micah: It’s extremely dangerous. Like, “Oh, yeah, I got to London, and then I realized I probably should go back.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Well, because he realized he was fooled into leaving the school in the first place, right? I don’t think that that’s… can we fault Dumbledore for that? They figured out a good way to get him out of the school, they came up with some good fake letter or something, and…
Micah: Come on, Dumbledore.
Andrew: I don’t know. I don’t blame him.
Laura: Do we think he was actually fooled, though? We’re going to touch on a couple of quotes later on in the discussion that kind of make me wonder if he was actually fooled into leaving.
Micah: Yeah, I don’t really think that he was fooled at all, to be honest with you.
Laura: No.
Eric: But he did go to London. He didn’t just sit up in his office ticking away the hours, going, “Well, I wonder if…”
Micah: He spends the end of the chapter bragging about how smart he is because of what he did with the stone, yet he’s fooled by a simple letter that tells him to come to London? Come on.
Eric: Maybe it was a letter from Credence saying, “Hey, I’m doing well, but I could really use your…”
Micah: Oh, boy.
Eric: You just never know.
Laura: Well, and so here’s my question about why I think that Dumbledore probably wasn’t fooled here. So we learn later in the chapter why Harry was able to obtain the stone from the Mirror of Erised. So in this moment, Voldemort orders that Quirrell put Harry in front of the mirror to see what he sees. Harry lies and says, “Oh, I see myself, I’ve won the House Cup for Gryffindor, Dumbledore is giving it to me, etc., etc.” What he’s really seeing is himself with the Sorcerer’s Stone in his pocket, he winks at himself, and then all of a sudden, he feels the weight of the stone in his pocket, and this is because only somebody who wanted to find the stone but not use it could actually get the stone from the mirror, and that anybody who actually just wanted to use the stone would see themselves drinking the Elixir of Life, but they wouldn’t actually get it. Now, my question is, who other than a child would have that reaction to the Sorcerer’s Stone? A child… the concept of immortality to a child is probably… I at least think to my own childhood, where death was this weird concept, because as a child, it’s really hard to wrap your mind around “gone forever,” right? I remember being a child and a really close family member of mine passed away, and my parents were explaining death to me. I was five years old, and they explained that he had died, and I was like, “Oh, well, when will he be back?” It’s really hard for children to wrap their minds around that idea of immortality. So why would a child want to use the stone? So the only way a child could see the stone in the mirror is if they just wanted to find it, which makes me believe that Dumbledore knew that he needed a child’s mentality in order to achieve that with a mirror.
Eric: I love that. I think that’s low-key brilliant. But my question is, why would he make that the trick of the mirror, versus just making the stone forever protected by the mirror? It actually puts Harry at greater risk that Harry figures out how to get the stone out of the mirror.
Laura: Right, but that’s what makes me think this is all intentional, and that Dumbledore wasn’t actually fooled.
Eric: Yeah, but I mean, the implications of that are terrifying, because if he always meant Harry to have the stone in his pocket, then he always meant Quirrell to be able to get it. If Harry hadn’t won the mirror, the stone still would have been protected beyond that last level of enchantment. “We can’t figure out Dumbledore’s magic, then we’re screwed. We’re going to be here forever.” So kind of weird that he would let Harry get the stone at all.
Laura: Well, there is something coming a little bit later in the chapter that maybe explains that a little bit, Eric, and we’ll get to that in a little bit.
Eric: Okay, I can’t wait.
Laura: [laughs] So this is another connecting the threads moment, and it’s Harry’s encounters with Dumbledore post-Voldemort confrontation-induced unconsciousness and delirium.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: So in Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 17, “[Harry] felt Quirrell’s arm wrenched from his grasp, knew all was lost, and fell into blackness, down… down… down… Something gold was glinting just above him. The Snitch! He tried to catch it, but his arms were too heavy. He blinked. It wasn’t the Snitch at all. It was a pair of glasses. How strange. […] Harry stared at him,” him being Dumbledore. “Then he remembered: ‘Sir! The stone! It was Quirrell! He’s got the stone! Sir, quick -‘ ‘Calm yourself, dear boy, you are a little behind the times.'” So we see Harry go into this unconsciousness during his encounter with Quirrell and Voldemort, and he wakes up, and the first person that he encounters is Dumbledore. They’re in the hospital wing, it’s very bright, all of the linens and everything in there are white. And then we look at Deathly Hallows at the end of Chapter 34, beginning of Chapter 35, after Harry has sacrificed himself in the Forbidden Forest. “He saw [Voldemort’s] mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.” Chapter 35 picks up saying, “He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. […] Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there.” He tells Dumbledore, “‘I should have died – I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!’ ‘And that,’ said Dumbledore, ‘will, I think, have made all the difference.'” So in this case, we also see Harry coming to this consciousness in this brightly lit, almost heaven-like area in a panic, right? And Dumbledore sort of assuaging that panic a little bit by explaining to him, “Hey, pump the brakes a little bit. What you’ve done is actually going to make the difference,” and he’s trying to catch Harry up. So I thought it was really interesting to see that Harry has these two moments in these two books on either end of the series in which he’s playing catchup while Dumbledore is in this sort of god-like state directing him.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I think it also just comments on the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore, and how Dumbledore is… I hate to say “the protector” when he sets him up for so much trouble, but the protector, the father figure, the calm voice at the end of the day.
Eric: Yeah. And here’s a little tidbit: I don’t know where it would go, but I think it’s worth noting in this chapter, Harry hears voices when he’s passing out.
Laura: Yes. Yeah, he hears his mother scream. He doesn’t know it, but…
Eric: But she says something like, “Harry,” or it’s like, “Come to me, Harry.” I’m going to find it. But it’s crazy because to me, it seemed a lot more Priori Incantatem memory shadow people than it did seem like a historical event. And why would Harry’s parents have anything to do with that particular moment necessarily otherwise?
Laura: Interesting.
Eric: Yeah, I’m blown away, but I’m finding it in a moment.
Laura: Well, while you look for that, I also wanted to bring up that in this chapter is also where we get the first hints at the prophecy. This is where Harry starts asking Dumbledore questions, and Dumbledore gives that very beautiful description of the truth as a beautiful and terrible thing, and something that we have to be very careful with. And Harry asks Dumbledore, “Why would [Voldemort] want to kill me in the first place?” And Dumbledore says, “Alas, the first thing you ask me, I cannot tell you. Not today. Not now. You will know, one day… put it from your mind for now, Harry. When you are older… I know you hate to hear this… when you are ready, you will know.”
Eric: Garbage.
Laura: Yeah, and this… at the time you’re reading it, and you’re thinking, “Oh, he means ‘When you’re ready, maturity-wise, you’ll know.'” But actually, it’s “You’ll know when I’m setting you up for death.” [laughs]
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: And it kind of goes to that moment in Deathly Hallows where we see Dumbledore telling Snape he can’t know until the absolute right moment what he needs to do.
Micah: But do you think an 11-year-old would have been able to process the prophecy at this point?
Andrew: Right.
Laura: Oh, no, absolutely not.
Andrew: And we wrongly assume that he can sometimes, because he does come off as so accomplished and smart, and able to handle that type of thing, but we have to constantly remind ourselves that he is an 11-year-old, 12, 13, 14… even towards end of the series, he is still very young.
Eric: Yeah, when he learns about the prophecy.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Wise beyond his years, but you’ve just got to remember that.
Eric: Yeah. That’s the quote, that whole, “The truth is a terrible and powerful thing and should be treated…” That’s the quote of a manipulator, of a master…
[Laura laughs]
Eric: … of a person who has no intention of telling you the truth, who has every intention of lying to you right in your face.
Laura: But I do appreciate that Dumbledore talks to Harry like an adult. He never treats Harry like a child.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. I found the voices quote. “Harry jumped up to his feet, caught Quirrell by the arm, and hung on as tight as he could. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off – the pain in Harry’s head was building – he couldn’t see – he could only hear Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells of ‘KILL HIM! KILL HIM!’ and other voices, maybe in Harry’s own head, crying, ‘Harry! Harry!'” So I don’t know. I don’t know that Lily dying would have been like, “Harry! Harry!” So there is something weird going on there.
Micah: Do we think it could be Dumbledore, even, at that moment?
Eric: Oh, possibly.
Laura: Maybe.
Eric: Yeah, maybe.
Laura: Looking at another reference we get, we actually get a reference to the Invisibility Cloak, which is one of the Deathly Hallows.
Eric: Ah!
Laura: And Dumbledore’s eyes “twinkle” at its mention.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I thought this was interesting because he describes that James Potter used to use that to sneak down to the kitchens, and that was sort of the justification for Dumbledore being so happy at its mention. Do we think that it’s purely out of fondness for these memories, or do we think that he still attaches a residual significance to the Hallows and to Grindelwald?
Andrew: I think it’s both, but I would say more so the significance to the Hallows and Grindelwald. Just memories. And I think it’s also meaningful to see Harry now in possession of it.
Micah: Yeah, especially given the temptation in Half-Blood Prince when he comes across the Resurrection Stone, you would think that he still has some longing for that level of power. It may be subconscious, but he’s sitting there in that moment, and he possesses two of the three Deathly Hallows; all he would need to do is call Harry into his office to grab the third. So I almost wonder if he’s giving away the Invisibility Cloak in Sorcerer’s Stone to distance himself from one of the Hallows, knowing that he is… because he’s always in some way, shape, or form… it seems like he always has two of the three, right? So for a period of time, he’s had the Elder Wand and the Invisibility Cloak both in his possession.
Laura: Interesting. Well, looking at another connecting the threads moment between the end of Sorcerer’s Stone and the end of Deathly Hallows is “Death is a choice.” So looking at Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 17, where Dumbledore lets Harry know that the stone is going to be destroyed, which means that Nicolas and Perenelle are accepting the fact they’re going to die, and Harry is a little bit flummoxed by this that they would choose to die. Dumbledore tells him, “To one as young as you, I’m sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
Andrew: One of the most beloved quotes in the series.
Laura: Yes, definitely. And then this is… oh, it’s so beautiful. In Chapter 35 of Deathly Hallows, “King’s Cross,” Harry is talking to Dumbledore, and he has this moment of clarity where he’s like, “Well, I have to go back, right?” And Dumbledore opens that choice up to him and lets him know that it’s up to him, whether he wants to go back or not. Harry is kind of surprised by this, and asks him, “Well, I have a choice?” And Dumbledore said, “‘Oh, yes. We are in wearing King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to… let’s say… board a train.’ ‘And where would it take me?’ ‘On,’ said Dumbledore simply.” So what I love about this juxtaposition is in Book 1, we have Nicolas and Perenelle, who have made the conscious decision to die, and then we have Harry making the conscious decision to live in Deathly Hallows.
Eric: That’s great.
Laura: And what’s so great about it, too, is they both come as the result of chats with Dumbledore. So in Sorcerer’s Stone, when he’s describing this to Harry, he literally says, “Yeah, I had a little chat with Nicolas, and we decided it was the best choice.” And very similarly, he has this little chat with Harry, after which Harry decides going back is the best choice.
Micah: Right, and that decision ultimately protects those that he is fighting alongside, and ends up allowing them to win the Battle of Hogwarts.
Laura: Yeah, he basically gives them the same protection his mother gave him.
Andrew: And it’s also very beautiful, this quote from Sorcerer’s Stone, because this is the best way to explain this to a child. “It’s like going to bed after a very long day.” And then you get to the very end of the series and you’re having a similar discussion, but in a very adult way. “You now get to pick.”
Laura: Yes.
Andrew: Wow. Like you said, just looking at these two next to each other, it just really shows where the series has traveled.
Laura: Yeah. And it really does drive home that point about making right decisions versus easy decisions. I think in the case of Nicolas and Perenelle, it would have been easier… I mean, clearly they like being alive; they’ve been alive for so long. It would have been easier for them to try and find some other way to protect the stone so that they could continue living, but they made the hard choice to accept their death. Whereas for Harry, it would have been way easier for him to die because he’s in this place where he feels no pain, he doesn’t even have his scar, he is at complete peace, and it would be totally understandable for him at this point to nope out, be like, “Deuces, I’m not doing this anymore.” But he makes the hard choice and the right choice to go back. Moving on to another final connecting the threads moment here, and it’s a small one, but it’s about James and Snape. So we touched on this earlier; Dumbledore communicated to Harry that James had actually saved Snape’s life, and later on, we learn that this is because Snape followed the Marauders to the Whomping Willow, and James ultimately rescued him, because wasn’t he about to be attacked by Lupin?
Eric: Yeah.
Laura: Yeah, so James rescues him, and we actually see in Deathly Hallows Chapter 33, Snape’s memory of Lily confronting him for being ungrateful about James saving his life the other night.
Eric: Huh. I’m going to reread a lot of Snape’s memories. These really all have the really cool connections here. [laughs]
Micah: Right?
Laura: They all connect back to Book 1! It’s amazing.
Micah: It’s really like the movie didn’t do it justice with the flashback.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Shocker, shocker.
Laura: Well, they can’t have known, could they?
Andrew: No.
Laura: This is the big problem with the movies coming out before the books were finished.
Micah: Ah, true.
Andrew: And this is what they’re going to fix with Harry Potter the TV show.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Yes, I agree. So touching on the very end of this chapter, I did want to bring up that Hogwarts is indeed a security nightmare, as Andrew said. And Eric, this is the point that you were talking about earlier: whether or not Dumbledore’s departure for London was intentional or not. Harry says to Ron and Hermione, “I think [Dumbledore] sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know.” And this is further supported by the fact that prior to Harry’s confrontation with Quirrell, he gets the Invisibility Cloak back, and it has a note on it that says, “Just in case.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I forgot, they leave it up at the Astronomy Tower when they’re meeting Charlie. Oh my God. And how did Dumbledore find it if it was invisible?
[Laura laughs]
Eric: I think we asked this last time. I think it’s due to his familiarity with the Hallow, like Micah was saying.
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Certain magic leaves traces.
Andrew: Laura…
Laura: What?
Andrew: I also want to make you a producer of the Harry Potter TV show. I’m still thinking about it. You can just be solely in charge of connecting all the threads…
Laura: Yes.
Andrew: … and making sure all the foreshadowing is there.
Laura: Oh my God.
Andrew: Because people would love that, and you clearly love monitoring all this and connecting them. So I think…
Micah: There you go.
Laura: Dream job.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Please.
Micah: You can be the one who… you know how every time a show starts up, it’s “Previously on…”? That would be great for you, especially when we get to Book 7.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh.
Laura: Yeah. [laughs] Ooh, maybe we can start doing those for MuggleCast. “Previously on MuggleCast…”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: So I wanted to bring up this point about the end-of-term feast, where Dumbledore’s last-minute action of adding 170 points to Gryffindor’s House tally has them beat Slytherin for the House Cup by ten freaking points after Slytherin is already locked in as the winning House. I’m sorry, but that is blatant favoritism.
Micah: It really is.
Andrew: Yeah, but it’s deserved.
Laura: Is it?
Andrew: They just brought down Voldemort. I mean, come on.
Laura: Not Gryffindor House. Gryffindor didn’t bring down Voldemort; Harry did.
Andrew: The people in Gryffindor. And Harry deserves a win at the end of this year, he deserves some recognition for his efforts, and what better way than to have his House win the House Cup? I think it’s completely deserved.
Laura: I feel like there’s a clear beginning and end date for tallying House points, right? And once a winner has been decided before this end-of-year feast, it’s locked in. You can’t add any more House points. It’s cheating.
Eric: The banners have already been decked out.
Laura: Yeah!
Eric: And Slytherin doesn’t have feats of strength that they can compete in now last minute to regain their title. It’s said and done. It’s final.
Andrew: Well, I do feel bad for the Slytherin kids. Not Draco, but everybody else I feel bad for…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … because it must have felt like a punch to the gut. But this is a feel-good moment for the reader.
Micah: Of course, it’s a great moment in the movie too. But where’s the 100 points for Snape saving Harry’s life earlier in the book?
Eric: Ohhh.
Andrew: You don’t award teachers points.
Eric: Teachers points? Yeah. [laughs]
Andrew: Come on.
Laura: So I’m thinking about this at a real world level, right? Kids can totally identify when there’s favoritism happening, and it contributes to a lot of problems later on in life. Maybe all of these Slytherin children watching the headmaster, who himself is a Gryffindor, stealing their win away from them at the end of the year… these people are not going to grow up to admire this person, right? If you’re trying to turn the legacy of Slytherin House around, this is not how you do it.
Eric: [laughs] Dumbledore created 150 enemies that day in one fell swoop. I think that this is all valid discourse; I also did the math, and the original points… see what this tells you about Hogwarts. The original points are 312, 352, 426, and 472, and they end in 2 or 6, which is all divisible by 2. So I’m going to say the average points you’d get for doing something is 2 points or 12 points, because all these 2s everywhere… it ends in 2. So I’m thinking for Dumbledore to give 50 points, they spent their whole year every day of the school year… let’s say there’s 180 days – I don’t know how many days there really are – and each House only ended up with something in the 300s or 400s. The fact that Dumbledore awards 170 bonus points is ridiculous, because that’s eight months’ work.
Andrew: Okay, but we know why he awarded that many points. It’s to get them ahead of Slytherin.
Eric: That’s exactly it, so it only proves that it’s favoritism, because if we’re talking, I mean, 50 points? You never…
Andrew: I think it’s completely justified. Y’all are crazy.
Laura: Shenanigans. Andrew, as a proud Slytherin, I’m surprised at you.
Andrew: Well, like I said, it would suck for Slytherin students, but I think it’s a justified award.
Micah: Well, and look: How many years in a row had Slytherin won the House Cup?
Eric: Six. This was going to be their magical number seven.
Andrew: Would you guys have rather J.K. Rowling set up the book earlier to award Gryffindor the House Cup, or Slytherin wins it at the end of the year? I mean, Slytherin can’t win the House Cup at the end of the year after what just happened.
Micah: I would have been fine with 50, 50, 50, 50, so 200 points. But it’s the way that Dumbledore goes about it – to the point that Eric made, and Laura made – favoritism that they win by ten points thanks to Neville.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Yeah, and then…
Andrew: I wish it was just by one point, just to annoy you guys even more.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: No, but… so here’s the thing, though: It’s so blatant because the Slytherin banners are already up, and Dumbledore waves his wand and takes them down and puts up the Gryffindor ones.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: If you wanted to do this, you should have done it before everybody was seated, thinking that they were going to win, and then you snatch their victory away from them. That’s so rude.
Eric: There is something very cruel.
Andrew: Well, it sucks to be Slytherin, example number 5,000.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: And going back to a more serious note – and this is another kind of connecting the threads – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone/Philosopher’s Stone ends at King’s Cross Station, as does Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lovely.
Andrew: Beautiful, beautiful.
Micah: And worth noting – I think we mentioned this on a prior episode connecting Movie 1 and Movie 8 – the actor who portrays Albus Severus in the epilogue is actually the baby from Sorcerer’s Stone.
Laura: Oh, really?
Andrew: Is that true?
Eric: No, no way.
Micah: It is true. We can look it up, but I’m pretty sure.
Laura: Micah, did you make that up? [laughs]
Andrew: I’m googling it. Are you sure this wasn’t some fake news? No, it’s false, Micah. Sorry, you read some fake news somewhere.
Micah: I tried to throw one in there.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: BuzzFeed literally wrote an article on Micah’s fake news. No, baby Harry Potter from the first film didn’t play Albus Severus Potter in Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
Eric: That’d have been great, though.
Laura: Yeah, that was a missed opportunity.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Although, maybe that baby can’t act. I mean, maybe it grew up and just didn’t have talent.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Maybe the baby ended up hating Harry Potter.
Laura: Oooh.
Andrew: Read the books and was like, “I had a role in that? Ew!” All right, so I have to step out of the episode. I have to go to a wedding. But Laura, I just want to say, great job today.
Laura: Oh, thank you.
Andrew: You and only you. Great job.
Laura: No, everybody was part of it.
Andrew: Yeah. No, you’re right. It was a great discussion, and sorry I have to leave early. You guys can do a voice for me when you’re reading my MVP of the Week and Rename the Chapter.
Laura: Okay, that’ll be fun.
Eric: So you got an urgent letter to London, right? You’ve got to go?
Andrew: Yeah, I’ve got to go. Nothing’s going to happen while I depart for London.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Got the mark on my knee, so I’m ready to travel around London. So I’ll head out. All right, bye, everyone.
Laura: All right, bye, Andrew.
Eric: Bye.
Laura: All right, well, we just talked about connecting a lot of threads, and now I’m going to share some information from one of our sponsors about a different kind of thread, ThirdLove.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
[Ad break]
Eric: That was a thread.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: And maybe some wire.
Laura: Yes, definitely.
Notable Chapter Quotes
Micah: So one of the segments that we actually did when we did Chapter by Chapter over a decade ago was Notable Chapter Quotes, and I think we actually pulled our own favorite quotes from the chapter.
Eric: Oh, wow!
Micah: Many of these have already been touched upon, but I just wanted to make mention of the fact that this particular chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone has a ton of notable quotes. So Laura, I think you mentioned this one earlier from Quirrell, when he says, “There is no good and evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it.” Laura Mallory’s favorite. Another Laura’s favorite quote, actually.
Laura: Yep. Very different Laura.
Micah: Yeah. Actually, for those of you who don’t know who Laura Mallory is, just Google her and you’ll get a sense.
Laura: And we have a whole bunch of really old episodes where we’re not very…
Micah: We call her.
Laura: We did try to call her. [laughs] Yeah, she didn’t pick up.
Eric: Did we get a voicemail? I forget.
Micah: I’m pretty sure we did. No, she definitely did not pick up.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: And then the rest of these are Dumbledore quotes. “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure,” when talking about the Flamels with Harry. And then a quote that actually Hermione says in the movie, and I think probably one of the more notable Hermione movie quotes, but Dumbledore is the one who says it in Sorcerer’s Stone when he’s talking with Harry. We didn’t really talk about this much in the chapter, but talking about “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself,” and it happens when they’re talking about Voldemort, obviously. And Harry actually has a moment not long thereafter when he’s talking with Hagrid, and he really kind of takes what Dumbledore is saying to him to heart, because the name obviously bothers Hagrid. And then the other quote, not as notable, but I think still is meaningful. “The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” So we touched on a lot of these during the discussion.
Eric: I’m surprised they gave Hermione Dumbledore’s line in the movie.
Laura: I’m not. They did that with Hermione a lot. They gave a lot of other characters’ really good lines to her. They did it to Ron all the time; they took all of Ron’s good lines and gave them to Hermione…
Eric: Oh, that’s true.
Laura: … which made Ron come across as an idiot in the movies, and I’m still salty about it.
[Eric laughs]
MVP of the Week
Laura: But now we can move on to MVP of the Week. Who wants to do their Andrew voice? [laughs]
Eric: Oh, God.
Laura: [imitating Andrew] Quirrell. I don’t know why I do…
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, Quirrell.
Micah: For obvious reasons.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. I guess he is the MVP. He made it really, really, really close to the end. Laura, who was yours?
Laura: I said Hermione’s owl…
[Eric laughs]
Laura: … for crossing Dumbledore in midair and having him be like, “Oh, silly me! I should go back.”
Eric: You think they did a little high five?
Laura: Little wing five?
Eric: Little wing five. [laughs]
Micah: I gave mine to Neville for getting those crucial ten points, which pushed Gryffindor over the hump and won them the House Cup.
Eric: It’s a good point. And I gave mine to Hagrid. We didn’t touch on this, but the gift he gives Harry in the hospital wing, it’s sort of a collaboration between Hagrid and Dumbledore. When Harry is in a coma for three days, [laughs] he writes to all these people that knew Lily and James and asks them to part with their old photographs and comes up with this album, which I just love this in the movie as well, because it just… even in the books, it would have more significance and more people that would show up in it. But the idea that all these people who had fond memories of Lily and James and photographs of them would contribute to this album, that Hagrid was the big crowdsourcer of this, I just think it’s probably one of the best gifts anyone ever gives Harry, if not the best across all books.
Laura: Yeah, I agree.
Micah: Definitely.
Laura: And Harry even gets emotional when he receives it.
Micah: Right.
Eric: I love that it opens the second movie. I really love that.
Micah: And I’d be curious to know who some of these other friends are. Aside from Lupin, we really wouldn’t know of anybody else that Hagrid would be reaching out to.
Eric: Exactly.
Laura: Other members of the Order?
Eric: Maybe.
Micah: Probably.
Eric: But it’s not really a photographing group where they’re like, “Okay, pause for selfie.”
Micah: You mean they’re not attractive?
Laura: [laughs] Well, they did have that one picture.
Eric: I mean, no, I’m just saying, when you’re working undercover to defeat the Dark Lord, it’s not like, “Okay, photo time. Let’s all take selfies.”
Laura: But they did take a group photo, remember?
Eric: They did take one group photo.
Laura: They’re like, “Order of the Phoenix, 1980…” or 1979 or whatever.
Micah: But I think… isn’t it mentioned that they reached out to old school friends? So it doesn’t necessarily have to be people who are in the Order.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Yeah, it could be people who shared the dormitory with any of them, or… yeah, I totally agree with that. Clearly, photography was in an upswing during the first Wizarding World War, though. That’s all I’ll say there.
[Laura laughs]
Rename the Chapter
Laura: All right, and now we can move on to Rename the Chapter. So who wants to do Andrew’s?
Eric: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Andrew went for the eponymous chapter title, which we found out on last week’s Quizzitch, or two weeks’ ago Quizzitch, was lacking from this book. This book did not have a chapter called “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I’m thrilled that Andrew decided to bestow that upon this final chapter.
Laura: I did Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 17, “Love Wins.”
Eric: Aww, because it does.
Laura: Yeah!
Micah: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 17, “The Flamels are [censored]. Screw you, Slytherin.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Can we say the F-word on the show?
Micah: Eric, just bleep that out.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: I like your chapter name.
Eric: Oh, thank you. I wanted this for the episode title. We’ll see. We were talking about Quirrell and his unique talents. I really enjoyed our chapter discussion, by the way; we definitely should do more of Book 1 this way. But I went for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone Chapter 17, “The Troll Whisperer.”
Micah: Nice.
Eric: Quirrell done it, everybody.
Laura: You think when Quirrell meets a troll, he’s like, “Look at me! I am the captain now”?
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Yeah, probably.
Micah: Yeah, exactly.
Eric: I wonder if he’d have been any help… I know it’s technically different races, but if he had repented, if he could have helped Hagrid tame Grawp. I know a troll is not a giant, but that was a thought I had during the earlier discussion.
Laura: Probably. I mean, he’s clearly very clever, just not very brave. That’s why he’s not a Gryffindor.
Quizzitch
Eric: Well, it’s time for Quizzitch. For those of you who listened to last week’s episode, we didn’t actually ask a Quizzitch question; we asked you to submit your Quizzitch questions to us for use in future Quizzitch games, and that’s an invite that’s open to everyone via our email, MuggleCast@gmail.com. But for next week, we do have a Quizzitch question, and it is as follows… this is a really, really good one submitted to us by Meg S., and it is: Which film actor who appeared in Movie 1 has the same birthday as the character he portrays? And this blew my mind when I looked it up and found out it was in fact true. There’s a film actor who was born on the same day and month as the character that they play in Harry Potter Movie 1.
Micah: Are they just in Movie 1?
Eric: I don’t want to narrow it down too much; I already identified the gender. And I’ll give another hint: The year is actually really close too, which is crazy. So definitely submit your answers to us over on Twitter, hashtag #Quizzitch, and we’ll see how many of you clever sleuths can get this one.
Micah: All right, so before we wrap things up, just wanted to remind everybody that we will be in Orlando just about a week from now, checking out Hagrid’s Magical Creature Motorbike Adventure, as well as attending Podcast Movement. Eric, are you excited?
Eric: I’m really super excited. It’s going to be great. I’m going to share a bed with you again, buddy. It’s going to be fun.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Micah: I didn’t know we figured that out yet, but yeah, can’t wait.
Eric: [laughs] No, you said weeks ago… you were like, “You can take the floor.” I was like, “Oh, okay.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: But yeah, the hotel experience, the con experience. I mean, I always… I miss this. This reminds me of the old days. And Laura, we’re sorry you couldn’t get off work to join us.
Laura: Yeah, well, I also have, actually right around this time, a friend’s bachelorette party.
Eric: Oh!
Laura: And it’s the one that we’re having at the Harry Potter-themed Airbnb.
Eric: [gasps] The one in Atlanta?
Laura: Yeah.
Eric: Oh, please take photos and video for Patreon.
Laura: Oh, I definitely will.
Micah: All right. Well, also want to remind our listeners that we’ll be in the Orlando area, that we will be doing a meetup somewhere on CityWalk. You can check our social media handles for that information. That’ll be taking place the evening of Thursday, August the 15th.
Eric: Lost day. 8/15, everybody.
Micah: And speaking of social media, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at MuggleCast. Have a lot of cool content that is going up on those channels on a regular basis. Thanks so much to our social media producer, Jule, who does a great job every single day posting content. I’m always excited to see what’s going up there. And of course, listeners can reach out to us in a number of different ways. You can send us an email, MuggleCast@gmail.com, or use the contact form on the website, MuggleCast.com. You can also leave us a voicemail; just dial 1-920-3-MUGGLE. That’s 1-920-368-4453. And if you’re feeling generous, you can always send something over to the PO box. That’s MuggleCast, 4044 North Lincoln Avenue, box number #144, Chicago, Illinois, 60618. Or if you just want to send Eric letters; you don’t have to necessarily send a gift.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: Just regular post works. All right, well, I think that does it for Episode 428. Look forward to seeing some of you in Orlando, and a reminder that we will be putting out an episode, but it will likely come out a little bit later in the week, as we will be running around the Podcast Movement convention.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely.
Micah: And the Wizarding World.
Eric: Thank you to everyone for listening. I’m Andrew! I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Micah: See everyone next time for Episode 429.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.