Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #450, Weekend at Hogwarts (OOTP 14, ‘Percy and Padfoot’)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the wizarding world. I’m Andrew.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: I’m Laura.
Andrew: Eric isn’t here this week, but we are joined by Pat once again. Hi, Pat. Welcome back.
Pat: Oh, hey, I’m back.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Laura: Welcome!
Andrew: Micah is also back too. Micah, you went searching for biscuits last week, right?
Micah: That’s right. I was actually working on the lease agreement for my new shop here in New York City. I didn’t know if you guys talked about it on the last episode, but I’m opening up a store here in the Flatiron District.
Andrew: Oh, that’s fantastic. Congratulations. We didn’t know that was you.
Micah: Four stories.
Andrew: Yeah, what’s on that fourth floor?
Micah: Can’t tell you.
Andrew: Ooh.
Micah: It’s like the Department of Mysteries.
Andrew: Is it a goat petting zoo?
[Laura laughs]
Micah: You’ll have to find out. Come and visit.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Micah, this must mean you have a lot of money. I have questions.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: I’m not surprised.
Micah: But in all seriousness, was in Chicago this past weekend. Got a chance to see Andrew.
Andrew: Yeah, we partied it up.
Micah: Went out for some pizza and some beer. Patrick, I’m disappointed that you didn’t join us, but apparently Andrew didn’t invite you.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Just know that whenever I’m in town…
Andrew: I needed one-on-one time. I needed one-on-one time with Micah, you know? Just me and him, talking life, talking Harry Potter.
Micah: Yeah, that’s true. We don’t see each other in person all that much, so I understand. But Pat, know that anytime I’m in town, it’s an open invitation. Andrew doesn’t have to invite you.
Pat: Aww.
Andrew: Wow. Well…
Pat: I’ll just leave five minutes after him and show up.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, just tail him wherever he’s going.
[Pat laughs]
Andrew: If I brought him, I couldn’t have put it on the MuggleCast credit card, so…
Micah: Oh. Yeah, you could have.
Andrew: I didn’t want to do that. Oh, I could have? Okay.
Micah: You’re asking the wrong person about spending money on the MuggleCast card after what I did during the holidays with the giveaway.
[Andrew and Pat laugh]
Andrew: Micah would have been like, “Have two pizzas, Pat, because you’ll be on next week.”
Micah: Well, I kind of did that. Remember, we were like, “Should we go with the medium?” I’m like, “Go with the large. Take some home.”
Andrew: “Go with the extra large.” Believe it or not, we do spend our money wisely, I do want to clarify, despite the jokes here on the show.
Micah: Yeah. And on Friday – we’re recording on Saturday – so yesterday, I got a chance, finally, to go over to the Lyric Theater in New York City. I work in the city; it’s not that far away. But every time – and I think twice before I’ve gone over there – the store where you’re supposed to pick up your pin for Wizarding World Gold was closed, and I think it’s a miss, number one, to not include the hours of the store in the Wizarding World app. I think that would be very helpful. But I did go online and looked it up, and left work just a little bit early – because they closed at five o’clock – to get over there. I finally got my pin, and I felt bad because they only had ten minutes until closing. But you know when you show up in a store or anywhere right before they’re about to close, and they give you that look?
Andrew: Right, they’re like, “Ughhh, not another one.”
Micah: So I said to the guy, I’m like, “Look, I’m only here for a pin.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And so he walked me through the process of how to go about it.
Andrew: So you got your pin. Are you happy?
Micah: I got my pin! Yeah, it’s cool. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: It’s one of Dumbledore. It says, “Those that we love never truly leave us.”
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a good one. I would want that one. Pat is also a new Wizarding World Gold member; I gifted it to him for Christmas, though I gave it to him on the day J.K. Rowling sent out that tweet, and it just felt a little…
Laura: Eugh.
Andrew: It wasn’t the best day to give him Wizarding World Gold.
Laura: Yeah, I also got – because that day was my birthday, coincidentally – and I also got a couple of birthday gifts that were Harry Potter-themed. And I was initially so like, “Oh, yay!” And then I was like, “Ahh.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: “Ehhh.” Yeah, and Pat, you got the journal. You like the journal, right?
Pat: Yeah, it’s cool looking through it, how they customize it. I didn’t realize that they would start everybody’s journal different. My next month after I redeemed it is February, so mine starts in February, which is kind of cool because then you’re getting the full year and not having to miss out on a few months, or go back and retrace what you did or whatever.
Andrew: Yeah. Wizarding World Gold has done a couple of interesting things so far: They did an early release for Harry’s Patronus Funko, and they just announced the other day new Harry Potter Moleskins. Moleskins are very popular journals, and they have teamed up with Wizarding World to do some official ones. And they look beautiful; I’m actually really tempted to buy these. And it’s doubly tempting when Wizarding World Gold is like, “You can get early access to these journals and they’re 20% off.” That’s been interesting to see. But at this time, Wizarding World Gold still isn’t…
Micah: Gold?
Andrew: I don’t think any of us would super recommend getting it.
Micah: No.
Andrew: It’s not something that every Harry Potter fan needs.
Pat: Right.
Micah: Especially if you have to go to a place three times just to get a damn pin.
[Andrew laughs]
Muggle Mail
Andrew: Okay, so we have Chapter by Chapter this week for everybody; looking forward to discussing Chapter 14 of Order of the Phoenix, but first we have some emails. Speaking of merchandise, this email is a follow-up to last week’s discussion. It’s from Robbie.
“As a wand collector, I hope these House wands are actually the wands of Godric, Helga, Rowena, and Salazar. This would be the most unique new way for them to create a new wand product, and it fits with my hope for a HBO Max Founders TV series. I own one of each Noble Collection wand, as well as wands from the parks and custom wooden wands (112 different wands in total). Many subscription boxes have released House wands that simply have a badger or snake handle, and I hope that isn’t the case here.”
So that’s interesting. So there have been House wands out there.
Pat: I love his idea.
Laura: Yeah, I agree with Robbie here. I really hope that it’s not just a generic, like, “Here’s your House emblem” wand. It would be really cool if it was specific to the founders.
Andrew: Well, Micah, this is apparently your store. Do you care to confirm or deny?
Micah: I can’t comment at this time…
Andrew: Wow.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: … but let’s just say Robbie may or may not be onto something here.
[Andrew and Pat laugh]
Andrew: Great.
Micah: Though I will say…
Andrew: What do you think…?
Micah: Oh, go ahead.
Andrew: What do you think of that store, Micah? That they’re building.
Micah: I think it’s really cool. I’m quite honestly surprised that they didn’t do something like this sooner, but I’m sure getting the right property in New York City is not the easiest thing to do if that’s always where they wanted to build something like this. Though, what they have at least available for us to know what’s going to be there, it sounds really cool. I’m interested to check out this cafe section with the coffee – I know you talked about it on last week’s episode – and the butterbeer, and it seems like it’s going to be a destination for people who live in New York, not just people who are visiting from out of town, so I’m excited.
Andrew: All right. Laura, do you want to read the next email?
Laura: Sure, the next one is from Darin of Salt Lake City.
“I just wanted to touch on the last few chapters of Order of the Phoenix where you’ve been discussing prefect duties. We learn later on that only teachers can take away House points. We learn this when Malfoy first becomes part of the Inquisitorial Squad. He takes away points from Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ernie, and Ernie confronts Malfoy about it, telling him that only teachers are allowed to take points.”
Andrew: Hmm, okay. Thank you for that clarification.
Laura: Yeah, thanks for doing that homework for us.
Micah: The next email comes from Pat, who says,
“In reference to Episode 449, I think you all forgot about everything Hermione tried to do in Book 4 to boycott house-elves working at Hogwarts. Before she created SPEW, she went on her own hunger strike for a few days and tried to convince others to do the same. That is also when she tried to get Fred and George to tell her how to get into the kitchens to talk to the house-elves. She then realized that her doing it alone wasn’t going to change anything, which is when she started wolfing her food down to get to the library to research house-elf history and founded SPEW.”
Andrew: Ooh, thank you for those reminders, Pat. And this is actually the Pat here on the show today.
Pat: Yeah, I was going to say, this Pat sounds real smart.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: No, this is great because I specifically last week was like, “Okay, Hermione, there are other things that you can do apart from trying to trick them into picking up your wooly hats that you’re leaving all over the common room.” And it’s true, she did do all these things. It’s a good reminder. But I still kind of question the way that she’s doing this in Order of the Phoenix.
Pat: Oh, for sure.
Laura: Like, “What kind of impact do you actually think you’re going to have here?” But she goes on to be Minister of Magic later, so she probably fixes it then, hopefully.
Micah: I thought you raised a really interesting point on last week’s episode: Wouldn’t it have to be somebody at the level of Dumbledore that presented the elves with clothes in order to allow them to go? And maybe I’m wrong, but I was always under the impression that the house-elves that worked at Hogwarts, that it was – at least under Dumbledore – somewhat at will. And like I said, I could be completely wrong here, but it does seem overall, though, that the house-elves that work at Hogwarts are definitely treated better than the ones that we’ve seen throughout the course of the series, like Kreacher, and Dobby when he was with the Malfoys. That’s certainly not excusing the way that they’re treated as a people, but that’s always the impression I got. And like I said, I could be completely wrong.
Andrew: I think that’s a good point.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think they’re definitely treated better at Hogwarts, but at the end of the day, it’s kind of like the argument that you’ll sometimes hear people make about – and I don’t mean to take this to a dark place – but it’s kind of like when you hear people be like, “Oh, well, during slavery, these particular slave owners, they were nice to their slaves,” and it’s like, “Well, they were still slaves.”
Andrew: No, you’re right, you’re right. I think just all things considered, the point is that Hogwarts is probably a good place to work. We don’t know how Dumbledore treated them behind the scenes; there may be a lot more to that story that we don’t know.
Laura: Yeah, I wish we did know, you know?
Pat: And I think that the house-elves knew that what Hermione was doing wasn’t going to release them, I think, but I think they were just insulted by the fact that they were trying to be tricked, which is why they just let Dobby [pronounces it “Doe-bee”] be the only one to clean the common room.
Andrew: Dobby. Haven’t we gotten into a fight about this before?
Pat: Probably. I’m still going to call him Dobby. [pronounces it “Doe-bee”]
Andrew: By the way, this email really was from Pat. A few weeks ago he came up to me and said, “Andrew, this was wrong on MuggleCast,” and I’m like, “Don’t tell me that to my face. Email in.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: So then I’m looking at the email the other day before we invited him on this week’s show, and I see this email from him. [laughs] He didn’t tell me he was sending it.
Laura: I love it.
Micah: Is it really from you? Or is he just making that up?
Pat: Yeah, I had to.
Micah: Oh, okay.
Andrew: No, I’m serious, yeah. Final email today is from Barbara.
“I am a long-time listener (almost from the beginning) and probably one of your oldest (age-wise) fans. I respect your opinion and I need some advice. On my next birthday (a big one), I plan to get my first (and probably only) tattoo. I wanted to get a small lightning bolt. Since I made the decision, I have been very excited about it and was looking forward to the occasion (in April). Now that the whole trans controversy has happened, I am not sure what to do. Harry Potter has had a big impact on my life. Even though I am a straight white woman, the message of love and inclusion is very important. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts. Thanks for your help.”
Laura: I still think you should do it.
Andrew: I agree.
Laura: If it’s still something you feel strongly about, because Harry Potter is about much more than the writer. The fandom that has been created, the community of people who are loving and accepting of each other, I think is far more reflective of what Harry Potter is about than one of J.K. Rowling’s tweets, so I think you should get it.
Andrew: Yep.
Laura: I don’t think that you should let that stop you. I have a friend who’s actually in the process of having a Deathly Hallows tattoo design for her of the Three Brothers, because that story means so much to her, and she was like, “Yeah, I’m not going to let J.K. Rowling being out of touch on this topic… I’m not going to let that stop me from expressing myself and expressing how much this story has meant to me.” And I think that that’s also very apropos because we learn throughout the Harry Potter books that Dumbledore, one of the most revered characters that we respected and trusted and thought could do no wrong early on, he turns out to be a really flawed character.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: And I think that’s an important lesson for us to take away, is that everyone has some kind of flaw, and that doesn’t excuse it, but it also doesn’t mean that you have to take this black and white approach to what you like in your life.
Andrew: Right. That tattoo is about Harry Potter and your experience with the books and the fandom. If you were considering getting J.K. Rowling’s face tattooed on your arm, then we might be like, “Maybe think about that a little more.” [laughs]
Laura: Right.
Andrew: “Wait to see what else she does.” But this is specifically about Harry Potter, not J.K. Rowling, so absolutely go for it. I have to say, I think a lot of people are completely unaffected by J.K. Rowling’s tweet in terms of the relationship to Harry Potter. It’s still all about the story and the fandom. People aren’t… there isn’t going to be this mass departure from the Harry Potter fandom. There’s going to be a mass departure from loving J.K. Rowling as much as we once did, but for everybody in their day-to-day lives in this fandom, everybody still loves Harry Potter as much as ever. That’s not changing. Pat and I were at a Christmas party a few weeks ago, and the whole group – like, 20 people – got on the subject of Harry Potter. This was after J.K. Rowling’s tweet. It did not get brought up at all. Everybody’s still obsessed with Harry Potter as ever. It’s just… this doesn’t affect anything. And nobody’s going to look at your tattoo and be like, “Oh, well, did you see that J.K. Rowling tweet?” They’re going to say, “Oh yeah, that story is incredible, and that’s awesome that you got that tattoo.” So go for it.
Pat: Yeah, and I was telling someone the other day when they were asking about it, and I was like, “Well, Harry Potter, it’s still my religion; it’s just Jo isn’t my Jesus anymore.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Ooh, that’s a really good way to put it.
Andrew: “She’s my Satan!”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: No, that’s too harsh.
Laura: No, I don’t think that either. I think that it’s a very human thing to show the less than desirable parts of yourself, and I think that’s what we’re going through with J.K. Rowling right now. It doesn’t mean that she didn’t craft an incredible story about friendship and inclusion and the importance of loving each other. Her one tweet doesn’t take that away from us.
Pat: Yeah, and if that message is a part of the tattoo that you want, then that’s what you are going to remember when you look at it. You’re not going to remember everything else. You’re going to remember the part of the story that you love, and that’s what matters when getting a tattoo like that.
Micah: Yeah, I was going to say, I always would struggle with the fact of telling somebody to put something permanent on their body if it’s not something that they’re 100% committed to, but it seems like you had made this decision long before J.K. Rowling tweeted what she did, so I think if it still carries that level of importance for you, then why not?
Andrew: Who is your new Jesus, Pat?
Pat: Um… we’ll see.
Micah: Lupin.
Andrew: Dumbledore. I vote Dumbledore.
Laura: Ugh, I don’t think Dumbledore is a good Jesus either.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Pat: I mean, Sirius has always been my favorite character and he’s also super flawed, so I don’t know.
[Ad break]
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Okay, it’s time for Chapter by Chapter, and this week we are discussing Chapter 14, “Percy and Padfoot,” and we’ll start with our seven-word summary. Pat, you start. For “Percy and Padfoot,” Pat.
[Pat laughs]
Micah: Continue the alliteration.
Pat: I’m not continuing the alliteration. We’re just going to start with the day of the week, so Saturday…
Micah: … begins…
Andrew: … with…
Laura: Which way do I want to take this? I want to set you guys up for success.
Andrew: Aw, so thoughtful.
Laura: Yeah, I’ll just say… letter…?
Micah: You should say “S.”
[Andrew and Pat laugh]
Pat: Saturday begins with letter… sending…
Laura: Y’all can do it.
Micah: … from…
Andrew: … Harry.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: New rule; we have to complete this in 30 seconds. This takes way too long.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Laura: Yeah, I was thinking “and Quidditch.”
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Pat: Ahh.
Laura: “Letter sending and Quidditch.” It’s fine, it’s fine.
Pat: Yeah, I think starting with Saturday wasn’t the best. [laughs]
Laura: No, I think it’s fine.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Micah: All right, well, let’s get into the chapter discussion. And speaking of Saturday, I thought, “Saturday morning, ain’t nothing like it.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And we all get together on Saturday morning for the most part to record the podcast; I’m sure we’re all excited to get up and out of bed to do that.
Andrew: Wow, this chapter is already so relatable.
Micah: Isn’t it?
Pat: Yeah, and Harry didn’t sleep in, and we didn’t either.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: But I think we can all, for the most part, sympathize with Harry. The week that he’s had, maybe we’ve not had that rough of a week, but it’s Saturday. It’s the weekend. He’s ready to just kick it and relax and not have to think about too much of anything. Of course, we know that’s not what ends up happening, but it’s the weekend. Let’s relax. No homework. Hermione, stuff it aside for now. Don’t we all agree?
Andrew: Let him relax. Let him enjoy some #SelfCare.
Micah: Exactly.
Laura: It’s all about a balance, you know?
Micah: Exactly!
Andrew: I remember the days when I didn’t have anything to do over the weekend. That was good times. That doesn’t happen anymore as an adult.
Laura: Nope.
Andrew: Thanks in part to podcasting.
Micah: Exactly, blame the podcast.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And Harry gets up on the early side; he goes down and tries to start writing a letter to Sirius, and one of the things that he notes is the fact that it must have been really difficult for Ron and Hermione to try and write him letters over the summer. And I thought to myself, “Oh, really? So now you’re starting to sympathize with your friends and see how difficult it was for them to write you letters.” Now, did Ron and Hermione actually write him letters? I thought that was the whole thing was that he wasn’t hearing from them.
Andrew: He wasn’t hearing from them because I thought they were instructed to not write the letters for security reasons, and I guess they couldn’t come up with enough cryptic language to get a letter to him.
Micah: Right. Harry, though, does a really good job of hiding the truth in the letter that he crafts to Sirius. But as noted, it did take a little bit of time; it’s not like he could just sit down and say whatever’s on his mind, because he’s writing to a escaped convicted felon, and as we know from earlier on in this book, the Ministry is out looking for him, and it’s quite possible – and we learn more, actually, in this chapter – that the Malfoys are aware of the fact that Sirius is in London. It’s noted in the Daily Prophet a little bit later on. So what do we make of Harry’s ability here? I wondered if this is something that Harry innately has in him and he’s this clever, or is it just J.K. Rowling being a clever writer? Do we think this is something that Harry is good at, or is it just J.K. Rowling’s writing?
Pat: I think Harry has gotten good at it with how much he can’t mention anything dealing with magic when he’s home at the Dursleys’, so I think he’s always – at least for the past four summers – had to think of ways to speak to them when he has to that’s not going to set them off.
Andrew: Yeah, I agree with that. I think it’s also J.K. Rowling exercising her creativity, and it’s a fun moment to read in the chapter.
Laura: I think it’s also maybe a little bit of foreshadowing showing Harry’s competencies to be an Auror. This very much sticks out as a talent that an Auror might have.
Micah: That’s a great point. Some of the lines that he has in the letter that he’s writing to Sirius are “Professor Umbridge is nearly as nice as your mum,” “The thing I wrote you about last summer happened again in detention,” and “We’re all missing our biggest friend.”
Andrew: Yeah. This made me wonder how we would cryptically describe each other in a similar letter, if we couldn’t reveal anything about Micah. The deep-voiced one?
[Pat laughs]
Laura: Yeah, our bass-iest friend?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: And Laura, you would be our… something about your hair.
Laura: I was going to say colorful. Colorful friend.
Andrew: Colorful lady.
Laura: There we go. “We miss our colorful lady.”
Micah: Our colorful voice of reason.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: There we go.
Andrew: How would you guys describe me?
Micah: I would start out the letter, “Yeah, yeah, all right.”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: And then just go from there.
Laura: We miss our “Yeah, yeah, all right” friend.
Andrew: “Yeah, yeah, all right!” Very early on in the MuggleCast days, for anybody who doesn’t understand that.
Laura: Yeah. I would say, “We miss our ringleader friend.”
Andrew: Aww.
Micah: So Harry goes up to the owlery to send note to Sirius, and while he’s up there, he looks out one of the windows and into the Forbidden Forest, and it’s noted that he sees a Thestral kind of popping out and going back down. And I know it’s hard to think back, but if I were Harry, I think I’d be a bit concerned. I don’t know if when we were reading this through first time around, “What’s going on with Harry here, where he’s just seeing things?” And it would probably be a bit concerning.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, here in the Muggle world, the existence of creatures is binary – either they are or they aren’t – and here there’s this weird middle ground? But yeah, if I was Harry, I would be panicking over the fact that nobody else can see these except for Luna thus far, and I would probably go to a teacher and ask about it, because if he can see this and nobody else can, then he’s crazy.
Laura: I think the only teacher he would feel comfortable expressing that to is the one who’s not talking to him.
Pat: Right. I think if Lupin was still there, he may have spoken to Lupin, but…
Andrew: But even McGonagall? I mean, she’s a trustworthy figure. Or maybe Hermione? She has to know about Thestrals.
Micah: It’s a good point.
Laura: I mean, apparently not, though.
Pat: It’s kind of like the same thing in Book 3, where he’s seeing what he thinks is a Grim all the time and then realizing, “Oh, this isn’t really anything bad” later on. This is kind of the same thing where he is going to realize that the Thestrals aren’t really that ominous for him at some point; it’s just right now, he’s like, “Okay, am I seeing an omen? Am I not?”
Micah: Right.
Laura: Very true.
Micah: And they both symbolize death. I don’t know if we’re stealing Laura’s connecting the threads, but if we go back to Book 3 with the Grim and Thestrals, they both kind of have that same significance.
Laura: Oh, absolutely. And I think also there’s just an element of anxiety about being different here. I think Harry is hesitant to bring it up because he realizes nobody else sees them, and he’s like, “Oh, great, another thing that makes me stand out. Wonderful.”
Andrew: Right, he doesn’t want to announce it because it’s not going to help his case concerning Cedric. “Well, if he’s seeing these Thestrals that we can’t see, how do we know he actually saw Voldemort? Because we haven’t seen Voldemort either.”
Pat: Yeah, and I think when he mentions it in the beginning of the book to Ron, and Ron is like, “Yeah, nothing’s there…” Or is that somebody else that he says that to?
Laura: I think it is Ron.
Micah: It is right up face-to-face with Ron, I think.
Pat: Yeah, so I think that has maybe shook him a little bit, too, where he’s like, “My best friend is thinking I’m nuts, so maybe I just shouldn’t say anything to anybody and figure it out later.”
Andrew: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Micah: And you could tie it in, even going back further, to Chamber of Secrets when he’s the only one that can hear the Basilisk and he doesn’t know what that is or what the significance of it is. He has a history of hearing and seeing things that other people can’t.
Pat: Yeah, which emphasizes Laura’s point even more.
Micah: Well, while he’s up there, his crush shows up. Cho pops into the owlery, and first thing that comes to Harry’s mind is, “Let’s talk about the weather.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And I feel like we’ve probably all been there, right? When we’ve been having a conversation with somebody that we’ve been attracted to, and we can’t think of anything to talk about, so we default to something that probably we think makes us come across as being not as cool or interesting. It’s just, what’s the quickest thing that comes to mind? Oh, the weather. Let’s talk about the weather.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, and every business meeting ever over the phone starts with, “How’s the weather where you live? Well, let me tell you how it is.”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Nobody cares. It’s such worthless small talk. I hate it.
Micah: It’s throwaway. Poor Harry. But by the time the conversation is over, he’s feeling pretty damn good about himself, so it’s all right. Even though they started off on the weather, there’s smoother pastures ahead.
Andrew: [laughs] If I was at Hogwarts, I would probably start off with, like, “What spells have you learned recently?” Or like, “How’s your wand doing?” Or “How’s your owl?”
Pat: Yeah, especially since Cho is a year older, they are in different classes. They’re in different…
Laura: That’s true.
Pat: Yeah, there’s way more to talk about.
Laura: He could always be like, “Hey, do you see that boney, winged horse down there? Kind of weird.”
[Pat laughs]
Andrew: “Oh, you don’t? Me neither.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: “Just testing you.”
Pat: Hey, that could have been… maybe that was in a lesson that Cho already had. She could have told him right there if he would have asked her.
Micah: It’s true. One thing that they’re able to bond over, though, is Quidditch. And they talk a little bit about that, and Ron gets brought up in Harry’s mentioning the fact that Ron is now going to be a member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and Cho refers to him as “Ron the Tornado hater Weasley.” Or maybe I just made it up. I don’t know that she calls him “Ron the Tornado hater Weasley”; I think I just made that up.
Andrew: I think she says, “How’s the Tornado hater?” Maybe.
Micah: Something like that. The only reason I included that is because it was the answer to the Quizzitch question from last week.
Andrew: So twice in this scene, I thought it was interesting that Cho stands up for Harry. So she says, “You were really brave standing up to Umbridge like that.” And then just a couple minutes later when Filch barges in, she comes to his defense again, and that’s love.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: To defend somebody twice in the same hour. Like, wow.
Micah: Yeah. And Harry considers even showing Cho his hand during this meeting of the two of them, because he’s just so invigorated by the fact that she is calling him brave and saying that it was great that he stood up to Umbridge. It’s like you get your… it says his insides burned. It’s like he’s floating on air; he feels like a million bucks by the end of this conversation.
Laura: I think it’s funny that he has this impulse to show her his wound, because Malfoy does the exact same thing in Prisoner of Azkaban after he gets attacked by Buckbeak. He’s very much exaggerating the status of his wound – not saying that Harry is doing that here – but he does it largely, I think, to get attention from his peers, but primarily Pansy Parkinson, who’s fawning over him during this, and now Harry has this very same impulse with Cho.
Andrew: Yeah. And Harry has quickly learned that he can trust Cho and Cho will be understanding, and he wants emotional support from her.
Micah: But I also think it’s really important in this particular moment that Harry is receiving some sort of validation and some sort of support, and the fact that it’s coming from somebody who maybe isn’t necessarily in Gryffindor, who he’s known, and obviously Cho means a lot to him. But I just think with everything that he’s been through this year, everything that we’ve read about up until this point, the fact that he’s able to get some sort of support from somebody is important to him, because he hasn’t gotten a whole lot of that throughout Order of the Phoenix.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: And I think it’s important that it’s from Cho because they have shared trauma.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: And Harry is super relieved, when he first sees her back at school, that she doesn’t hate him and doesn’t hold him responsible for Cedric’s death, like everybody else seems to.
Micah: Yep. Well, Filch ends up crashing the party. He’s our second wand block of Order of the Phoenix; Ron was the first.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Filch is now the… I guess you can even throw Mrs. Norris in there too, so three wand blocks so far between Harry and Cho. But as you all said, Cho comes to his defense and really kind of saves the day, and Filch skulks off because there’s no proof that Harry was sending Dungbombs. So do we ever learn who sent Filch after Harry in this chapter? Who tipped him off?
Pat: I think it’s just Mrs. Norris running off because he crosses her path on his way to the owlery…
Micah: That’s right.
Pat: … and she runs off, and he’s like, “I’m not doing anything wrong!”
Andrew: If I were Harry, I would be head over heels for Cho at this point.
Micah: Harry is on cloud nine, though, leaving the owlery, and after he parts ways with Cho, he meets up with Ron and Hermione at breakfast. And I don’t think we touched on this; it maybe would have been two chapters ago. We kind of glanced over the fact that Hermione is now receiving the Daily Prophet to keep tabs on what is going on in the outside world. Another notch or feather in Hermione’s cap in this book, just given all the smart things that she does. And one thing that’s mentioned is that Sirius supposedly is hiding in London, and this is cause for concern, because we talked about, pretty extensively, how Sirius made a massive mistake by deciding to accompany Harry to King’s Cross, and it seems like now the hunt is in full effect for Sirius where he’s actually hiding.
Andrew: Yeah, and it confirms Draco’s hint earlier in the book that he knew that Sirius was on the platform when they went off to school. So yeah, it’s worrying, and for the spotlight to be turned back onto Sirius again is a big problem, because they don’t want that at all right now, and now Sirius has this extra pressure of staying under hiding. I mean, he could have stayed hidden and he wouldn’t have been in the newspapers and people would have just forgotten about him, but he had to go out there.
Laura: Well, as we learn later in the chapter, part of the fun for him is the risk of getting caught.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: And I was also wondering… I feel like we’ve probably touched on this at some point, but the use of the name “Snuffles” is not lost on me, given that Sirius gets snuffed later in the book.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And I’m just like, “Oh, this is so painful.”
Andrew: I think of that Sesame Street character, Snuffleupagus? Yeah, that’s it.
Laura: It’s endearing. On its face, it’s a super endearing name, but then you’re like, “Eugh, there could actually be a deeper meaning here.”
Micah: Yeah. It sounds like a name that you would give a puppy, right?
Andrew: Right. I’m going to name my next dog Snuffles.
Pat: I like Pancake better.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Um, okay.
Micah: There is one other article that draws attention of Hermione in the Daily Prophet, and it is about Sturgis Podmore, and it’s a very brief column that is written. And I thought we could read it here and discuss it a bit, because we did talk on a previous episode how Mad-Eye Moody mentioned that Sturgis was missing when he was supposed to be accompanying all the kids to King’s Cross. So it says, “Sturgis Podmore, 38, of number two, Laburnum Gardens, Clapham, has appeared in front of the Wizengamot charged with trespass and attempted robbery at the Ministry of Magic on the 31st of August. Podmore was arrested by Ministry of Magic watch wizard Eric Munch, who found him attempting to force his way through a top-security door at one o’clock in the morning. Podmore, who refused to speak in his own defense, was convicted on both charges and sentenced to six months in Azkaban.” So that is not good for the Order of the Phoenix.
Andrew: No. And as we learn later, he has been Imperiused, and maybe Moody was more concerned about this than we actually know, because yeah, this is a major problem for them. They have to be wondering, “Could another member of the Order go the same way?”
Micah: And why do we think the article was so short and basically buried within another column that’s in the paper?
Laura: I mean, I would assume that this… I mean, because we know the Daily Prophet is very much aligned with the Ministry at this point, so I don’t think the Ministry would want a lot of flashy front page coverage about the Ministry being infiltrated, right?
Andrew: Right, yeah, it’s not a good look.
Micah: It could lend credence to the fact that Voldemort could be around somewhere, or there could be evil forces at work trying to infiltrate the Ministry.
Andrew: However, if it was already established at this point that Sturgis was a part of the Order of the Phoenix, then this would have been a much bigger story for the Ministry, and they would have spoken about how Dumbledore’s crackpot gang of rebels are trying to break in, and…
Micah: Definitely. So after breakfast, it’s clear that Ron needs some help, needs some practice before practice at Quidditch, and he asks Harry straight up for some help. And I thought this was a cool bonding moment, a cool moment of friendship between the two of them that you don’t always get to see. And Harry really goes out of his way to help train Ron. Hermione isn’t too keen on the fact that they’re going off to play Quidditch; she would rather they focus on their homework, but I think Hermione is being a bit of a party pooper here. I think that especially Harry… Harry has had a hell of a week. Let him get on his broom and go fly around for a bit.
Andrew: Right. Yeah, I mean, Hermione is basically all work and no play, at least in this chapter, and it’s not really up to Hermione to decide what those two do. So I mean, she has a point about getting their homework done, but if they want to go play Quidditch, let them. And I also think Harry may be interested in helping Ron because, as we discussed earlier in our Chapter by Chapter series, Ron and Hermione are in position of power now, being prefects. Harry might feel a little cast aside; he doesn’t feel as important, so being able to train Ron might give him that feeling of importance that he could be yearning for, and being in a position of power with his Quidditch skills.
Laura: That’s true. I think also, just in some defense of Hermione, she knows that – she has four years of experience with it thus far – that these two not completing their homework and not putting in the study time results in more work for her when she has to correct her friends’ homework and hold their hands through it.
Pat: Yeah, and she also knows Harry has been in detention all week, so he hasn’t had time to even do homework, so I think she’s just thinking for Harry’s mental state later on, like, “You should do this now so that you aren’t going to be frustrated later.”
Andrew: Would you guys be like Hermione, always helping out your friends? I think I would get sick of it after a year or two.
Laura: So I always liked school, and I never minded coaching friends through assignments. Hermione takes it a step further, though, and she kind of does their homework for them.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: We see later in this chapter she’s just writing Ron’s essay for him. I would not do that. That is just a bridge too far. That’s cheating.
Andrew: Yeah! She’s got enough to do herself in her own schooling, and yet she feels like she has to help Harry and Ron all the time. That would just get really tiring for me after a couple years; I would just be like, “Yo, get it together and do it yourself. I’m not going to hold your hand through the rest of your lives.”
Micah: I think it’s about prioritizing, and right now for… I don’t know. It’s hard because for Ron, the focus for him, obviously, is Quidditch, and that he’s made the team and that he needs to deliver, and this is something that he’s always wanted to be a part of. And it’s mentioned, how many other members of his family have played Quidditch at Hogwarts? And we know Ginny comes on in the next book, and goes on to make a career out of playing Quidditch. So I think for Ron, that overshadows any work that he needs to get done for school, and for Harry, he’s just had probably his worst week at Hogwarts, and Quidditch is an escape for him. So that said, they should still be able to prioritize. “Okay, we’re going to take this amount of time to go teach Ron, and then we’re going to take this amount of time for practice, and then we need to spend the rest of the time that we have on our studies.” That’s just the way that it goes. As you get older as a student, you have to be able to figure that out. Hermione has been able to really do that since year one; Harry and Ron, not so much. But I agree, I think it’s a little bit extra that Hermione is doing the actual work for them. I don’t know if Percy’s letter has anything to do with that, though; if she really just feels that bad for Ron in that moment.
Andrew: That’s the impression I got. Her attitude kind of changed in an instant after that letter.
Laura: Because earlier on in the chapter, she tells them, “I’m not going to help you with your homework if you do this.”
Andrew: Right.
Laura: And Ron was like, “Do you think she was serious about that?”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Because I really need her help.” But before we get to Percy’s letter, we wanted to bring up an issue at Quidditch practice, which is that Draco and his friends are watching the Gryffindors practice. And that just seems like that shouldn’t be allowed, not just because it’s unhealthy to taunt the other teams, but they can also be picking up the strategies that Gryffindor are practicing, and that seems like something that would be illegal. You think about in football where each team’s plays are super secret, and they cut to the coach during the game and they’re covering their mouth so you can’t tell what play they’re about to call, and this is basically what the Slytherins are witnessing here.
Micah: Right, or compare it even to what’s going on right now in baseball with the Houston Astros and the sign-stealing that went on there.
Andrew: Exactly.
Micah: And if people aren’t familiar with that, I would just say Google “Houston Astros” and you’ll see the fallout that happened as a result of that. But it’s similar.
Andrew: Laura is a big sports ball fan. She knows all about it, right, Laura?
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: Following it very closely.
Micah: Aren’t we talking about that on Millennial on Monday?
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a big deal.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Laura is like, “What?”
Micah: That was a plug, too.
Laura: Yes, thank you.
Micah: I’m very much looking forward to joining Millennial on… Laura, do you know I’m going to be on the show Monday?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I do, yeah.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: Yeah, we talked about this.
Andrew: Micah is going to be on the other podcast that Laura and I do. It’s called Millennial; check it out. MillennialShow.com. Okay, anyway. Back to Quidditch.
Micah: It’s been years. It may even have been the last time we were talking about Order of the Phoenix on this podcast.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: That was probably the last time that I was on Millennial. But anyway. Yeah, I agree, though; I think that it shouldn’t be allowed, right?
Andrew: No.
Micah: Because I want to say, don’t Slytherins have closed practices at one point in the series? I feel like there’s something mentioned about how Snape booked the Quidditch pitch for the Slytherin team.
Andrew: Right, right, because they wanted to practice and they couldn’t because Slytherin beat them to it, I think.
Pat: Yeah, I think, though, I’ve always found it weird that their practices aren’t supervised. At some point they are, that Madam Hooch is there, but the majority of the practices, she’s not there to instill any rules at all.
Andrew: What is she doing?
Pat: Which, if you think about any other sport, there’s always a coach there, some sort of adult supervisor to keep everybody in check. Maybe if she was there, she would have been, like, “Nope, Slytherin out. Go home.”
Micah: Yeah, you know what this means, Andrew? This is yet another reason as to why Hogwarts is a security nightmare.
Laura: Yep.
[“It’s starting to sound like a security nightmare!” sound effect plays with sirens]
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Thank you for introducing that slowly so I had time to load up my sound effect for it.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: No, I actually wouldn’t say that this is a security nightmare. This is… we’ve been speaking in recent episodes about House unity. This just tears the Houses apart when they’re allowed to head down to the Quidditch pitch and taunt each other. Like, okay, have a rivalry between teams, but they shouldn’t be allowed to come down and bully them.
Micah: No, and like you said earlier, with football, maybe you’re working on different plays. And first of all, you’re trying to integrate a brand new player to your team, and you’re working on strategies. Somebody else’s team should not be able to see that.
Pat: Right.
Micah: That’s wrong. Fire Madam Hooch.
Andrew: Where is Madam Hooch? I mean, she’s got nothing else to do.
Laura: How do you know?
Andrew: I’m reading her Wikipedia right now.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: She’s a flying instructor, Quidditch referee, and coach at Hogwarts. She should… her office should be on the pitch, and she should be supervising everything that happens there.
Micah: Yeah, think about what happens to Katie Bell during this practice. If she was there, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up taking some of Fred and George’s bad product and needing to go to the hospital wing.
Andrew: Right. Not to mention, yeah, they’re still on Hogwarts grounds, but they’re outside the castle, and that does actually sound like a security nightmare when Voldemort is back.
Micah: And there’s these Thestrals flying around that Harry has no idea what they are.
Andrew: Thestrals. Dementors have been on the Quidditch pitch.
Micah: What did you make of the bad product moment by Fred and George? Obviously, they’re trying to help out Katie after she gets nailed by Ron, but that’s just an example, though, of… I don’t know what you can compare it to in modern day, but taking something… I know they’re testing out on themselves mostly, but you take a bad product before it’s been fully vetted, something like this can happen.
Andrew: Right. Something like this was bound to happen with their products, so I wasn’t really surprised. It’s a bummer that it happened to Katie.
Laura: No. I kind of felt… I feel bad for Ron here, though, because he takes so much crap off of Angelina for being nervous and dropping the ball and for throwing the ball too hard so that it hits Katie, but Fred and George are really the ones who exacerbate her nosebleed. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I think I gave her this Blood Blister packet, whatever, as opposed to the other thing,” and Angelina is just like, “Okay, whatever. Go to the hospital wing.” And she doesn’t give Fred and George any crap. Poor Ron. He’s just the new kid.
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: I was thinking about that too. Do you think Fred and George volunteer to take Katie to the hospital to cover their own butts, or to tell Madam Pomfrey the truth?
Laura: I don’t know. I mean, they definitely… they own up to it in front of everybody. They’re like, “Oh, I think we gave her this instead.”
Pat: Right, but Madam Pomfrey is a professor, technically, so she might be like, “Okay, they’re making up these products; I need to put a stop to this.” Or they can cover their own butts and not tell her the truth, so that she can’t try to stop them.
Laura: It’s true.
Andrew: They owe it to Katie to tell the truth so that she can be cured as quickly as possible. And own up to your mistakes; I don’t think they’re below that.
Micah: Do we think that they tried to slip her something else on the way up there so that it maybe counteracts the effects of what’s already happened to her?
Andrew: You would think so. You would think they would be prepared for this type of scenario.
Pat: Right, it wouldn’t surprise me. But if I was Katie, I would be like, “Um, no, I’m not taking something else from you.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Nothing else. Do not touch me. I don’t trust you anymore.”
[Pat laughs]
Andrew: “Bring me to Pomfrey, and by the way, where’s Hooch?”
Micah: Well, isn’t this a sort of a precursor, given what happens to her in Half-Blood Prince?
Andrew: Right, yeah. You think that’s bad, Katie? Just you wait till the next book.
Micah: [laughs] But going off of what Laura was talking about with Ron, when they get back to the common room, it’s clear that practice didn’t go all that well, but Hermione kind of jumps to the conclusion that the reason it didn’t go well was because of Ron, and Ron says exactly that to her. And do we think it’s a bit wrong of Hermione to jump to that conclusion, or do we think this is more like a moment of frustration for her, because she’s probably been sitting there all day doing homework and she’s just looking to let off some steam?
Pat: I think that she has every right to have this conclusion, because Ron came in in a mood anyways. It was kind of obvious that it was his fault just by the way that he was acting, so I think she just read the room and realized that he was really upset. If it wasn’t his fault, he probably wouldn’t have been upset, so I think she assumed correctly.
Laura: I agree.
Micah: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about Percy’s letter that Ron receives, and it’s quite loaded.
Andrew: It’s really awful, yeah.
Micah: We wanted to try and read some of these lines from Percy in a semi Dr. Evil voice, which I think we could probably just make up whatever we consider to be a sinister voice, because like I said, this letter is loaded. And I don’t know how much of it is Percy really feeling this way, or Percy just being in the moment and thinking that he’s hot shit because he works for the Ministry.
Andrew: [laughs] Right, and he’s riding high on this new story that’s about to come out in the Prophet, so he’s got this chip on his shoulder. I think he absolutely feels this way genuinely.
Micah: But what changed him? That’s what I’m trying to figure out, is he went to Hogwarts; he was prefect, Head Boy. I’m sure he respected Dumbledore during his time there, as well as the other professors. Now he transitions to another situation where he’s in a position of power, and he obviously respects the Minister.
Andrew: I just think he’s drinking the Ministry Kool-Aid. He’s in that world; he’s consuming their line of thinking every day. He’s been away from the resistance, i.e. his family.
Micah: Do you think it has anything to do with what happened in Goblet of Fire, though? That he’s trying to prove himself maybe even more, just given how bad the situation was with Barty Crouch, Sr.?
Andrew: Yeah, that too.
Laura: I agree. I also think Percy is an example of somebody who probably shouldn’t be in a position of power, just because whoever it is who’s giving him power, he just tends to, as y’all were just saying, drink the Kool-Aid and just think that they can do no wrong and they must be in the right, so I think that as soon as Percy transitioned out of Hogwarts and he lost that power, and got to the Ministry, he found a new kind of power.
Andrew: Yeah. So some of these quotes, like Micah said, they’re just awful. So he says, [imitating Dr. Evil] “Dumbledore may not be in charge at Hogwarts much longer.”
[Laura laughs]
Micah: That was good.
Laura: Yeah, it was good.
Andrew: Micah, do you want to try one?
Micah: Should I go Dr. Evil, or do I want to go really deep, sinister voice?
Andrew: Do whatever you want. Ooh, I want to hear deep sinister.
Micah: [in a deep, sinister voice] “You do not want to be tarred with the same brush as Potter.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Ooh, I just got shivers. Oh my God.
Andrew: Laura, do your wickedness.
Laura: [in a wicked voice] “I know that he can be unbalanced and, for all I know, violent.”
Andrew: “… and for all I know, violent.” [laughs maniacally]
[Laura and Pat laugh]
Micah: All right, Pat, you’ve got to do one. Pick one.
Pat: [imitating Dr. Evil] “I urge you to speak with Dolores Umbridge, a really delightful woman, who I know will be only too happy to advise you.”
Andrew: [imitating Donald Trump] “Your loyalty, Ron, should not be to him, Dumbledore, but to the school and the Ministry.”
Micah: Oh, Donald. Welcome to the show.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Oh, man. Okay, in talking about his parents: [in a sneering voice] “Petty criminals with whom they are currently rubbing shoulders.”
Andrew: Sickening. [imitating Donald Trump] “I sincerely hope that, in time, they will realize how mistaken they were and I shall, of course, be ready to accept a full apology when that day comes.”
Andrew and Laura: [imitating Donald Trump] “Sad.”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: That one actually works well in that voice.
Laura: Yep. [laughs]
Micah: Let’s talk a little bit about some of these statements. It’s certainly surprising to us as readers to learn that Dumbledore may not be in charge at Hogwarts much longer; that actually gets brought up a number of times in Percy’s letter, and he talks about taking a look at the Daily Prophet tomorrow, so not good news for Alby.
Andrew: Yeah, you almost don’t believe Percy, right? It could just be Percy talking out of his butt that Dumbledore might be on his way out soon.
Laura: Yeah. Well, and I think, too, at first, you kind of get the sense reading this letter that Percy has an over-inflated sense of importance, and you’re like, “Okay, how much do you really know?”
Andrew: Right, right. And we find out soon he actually does know plenty.
Pat: Yeah, because it almost comes off as him taunting them, like, [in a sing-song voice] “I know something you don’t know.”
Andrew: Right.
Micah: That gets to the whole point, though, of why Percy sent this letter in the first place. It starts off as a congratulatory note to Ron for making prefect, but do we think that he’s really happy for Ron/concerned about him, or do we feel maybe this is even an attempt by Fudge or Umbridge to sow some discord between Ron and Harry?
Andrew: I don’t think… no, I think Percy just wants to flaunt his inside knowledge, his position at the Ministry.
Pat: Yeah, if there’s any agenda behind it, I think that it’s to get another Weasley on his side so that he does have somebody in the family he can talk to regularly. Because I do think Percy misses being in contact with his family, so if he were able to get Ron onto his side with all the same views and everything, then he might be a little bit more happy and comfortable.
Andrew: And to me, Percy talks like Ron and Harry are merely acquaintances. He’s like, “Oh, that guy you know, Harry? Yeah, you shouldn’t be friends with him anymore.” Surely he knows that they’re actually best friends, and simply walking away from Harry is impossible. Not to mention Ron, of course, does not want to do that, because they are best friends.
Micah: Absolutely.
Laura: It does make me wonder if Percy is aware that his letter could be intercepted and read, because I mean, Harry stayed at the Weasleys’ house multiple summers and Percy knows how close they are, but maybe in the event that his letter is intercepted, he doesn’t want anybody reading it to know that he knows how close Harry and Ron are and that he’s oftentimes slept under the same roof as Harry.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I thought you were going to say he wrote it so that if it was intercepted, everybody could see how hard he was on his brother and how loyal he was to the Ministry.
Laura: I think that too.
Pat: I also… I’ve always kind of wondered if he maybe… the way that he’s speaking about Harry, maybe at one point Percy did have more friends, and when he became prefect, he cut them off because he knew that he was in power, so maybe he thinks Ron did the same thing where, because Harry didn’t get it, Ron has maybe cut him out because he has something to hold over him.
Andrew: Yeah, Percy definitely doesn’t have any friends, right? He’s got his coworker acquaintances, but who would want to be around this guy? I wouldn’t.
Micah: It’s very harsh words, though, saying that “you don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as Potter” and calling him unbalanced and violent. And I think it does hit Harry hard, even though he’s somewhat dismissive of it when Ron shows him the letter, and they kind of joke about it towards the end. But I do think this is a bitter pill to swallow, because this is somebody who’s part of a family that Harry has essentially considered himself a part of since the start of the series. And I don’t know if we’ve ever experienced moments like this, where we think we know somebody but then we learn the truth about how they really feel about us, and maybe we just overhear it, or we read something, and it’s like, “Whoa, where did that come from?” Totally unexpected.
Andrew: Well, I was just going to say, Harry is getting a taste of having his own crazy family members in his life.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Everybody’s got those, and now Percy is his, since he does consider himself a part of the Weasley family.
Micah: Yep. What do we make of Dolores Umbridge being “a really delightful woman”?
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Does Percy truly think that?
Andrew: Yes!
Micah: You think so?
Andrew: He’s lost his mind! Like I said, he’s drinking the Ministry Kool-Aid. And of course, Umbridge is a pleasant woman in the eyes of most people at the Ministry at that level. She wants to control Hogwarts; that’s an appealing part of her character. I mean, she is a nice person, other than her evilness. She’s very polite. She’s well-spoken.
Laura: Yeah, if she likes you.
Pat: Yeah. She’s very strategic in her niceness.
Laura: I also love the contrast here in the descriptions of Umbridge in these letters. Harry is being very sarcastic in his, like, “She’s almost as nice as your mum,” and then Percy is like, “a truly delightful woman,” and he’s completely serious.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: All right, let’s just spend a little bit more on Percy’s letter here, but as it relates to his own family, because that, to me, is probably more telling than the bit about Harry. He references the “petty criminals” with whom the Weasleys are “currently rubbing shoulders,” and then just flat out says that he expects an apology sometime in the future for all that they’ve been doing with respect to the Order of the Phoenix. Do we think Percy has a good idea of the fact that his family, particularly his parents, are in the Order? He references these “petty criminals.” Who is he talking about? Is he talking about Mundungus? Is he talking about Podmore, who’s now been sent off to Azkaban?
Andrew: Well, considering his view on Harry, I think he’s talking about that entire group of people. He just holds all these people in low regard, and I don’t know if he realizes he’s exaggerating here, but he is exaggerating by just putting this whole blanket “petty criminal” description over all of them.
Micah: Yeah, he’s definitely painting with a broad brush here, and it’s just sad to see that that’s what’s become of Percy, and this is how he views his family.
Laura: And given how much stress we’ve seen this put on the Weasley family, especially Mrs. Weasley, who you can’t say Percy’s name in front of her without her bursting into tears, could you imagine if she were to read something like this that her son said about her?
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Yeah, it would devastate her.
Andrew: Yeah, this would break her heart.
Micah: Well, the one benefit of all of this, as we mentioned just before, is that Hermione offers to help Harry and Ron out with their homework. And this was just one of the… I wanted to talk a little bit, though, about what do we think is going on inside of Harry’s mind and what’s going on inside of Ron’s? But do we think Ron is really embarrassed by this? What do we think the effect is on him? Let’s remember what he’s just been through as well with the Quidditch practice. I mean, he’s not having the best day either here.
Pat: I think he is embarrassed. I don’t think that if Harry and Hermione were with him… if he got the letter alone, I don’t think he would have showed them.
Micah: That’s interesting.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, they are used to Percy being this way, so it’s not like it would come as a shock to Harry and Hermione that he’s talking like this.
Laura: And he sits there and rips the letter up and throws it in the fire in front of Harry and Hermione.
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it’s embarrassing, but look, it’s just like when you have a crazy family member. You just say, “Oh, there goes crazy Aunt Sue again. We’re so used to her talking like this; it’s just more of the same.” Just family.
Micah: That’s fair. Well, speaking of the fireplace, Sirius shows up, and one of the things that Harry forgot to mention to Ron and Hermione is that he had sent a letter out to his godfather on Saturday morning. But I know this has been portrayed a couple of different ways in the films, right?
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: Sirius’s face popping up in Goblet of Fire is different from Order of the Phoenix.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s funny because I think the effect in Goblet of Fire was one of the worst effects in the Harry Potter series. It looks like Sirius is coming up for a breath? His face is the fire, so to speak.
Pat: Yeah, it’s in the embers.
Laura: Yeah, it’s the coals.
Andrew: Right.
Pat: Which I hated. I’m so glad they fixed it.
Andrew: And it was hard to make out. And then in Order of the Phoenix – and maybe we can link to this side by side; there’s a side by side that we found – in Order of the Phoenix he’s in the flames, as opposed to in the embers, and it looks better. It’s definitely easier to make his face out, but I think… I still remember the first time seeing that in Goblet of Fire. It was like, you can barely make out his face. So that was definitely a good change. But like I said, one of the worst special effects in the Harry Potter film series, in my opinion.
Laura: Oh, and I don’t know if you remember this, but we made so much fun of that effect on this show back in the day.
Andrew: Ohh. No.
Laura: We were like, “What intern made this?”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: “Did they run out of money for this effect so this is all they could come up with?”
Pat: Yeah. I remember being so angry when I saw that the first time. I was like, “What is this?”
Andrew: Really? Oh, yeah.
Pat: “This is terrible.”
Andrew: See, this is why they’ve got to redo the Harry Potter movies. Turn it into a TV show. Do the fire effect right.
Pat: Because how I think it should be done… do you remember at the end of the fifth movie when Bellatrix is sucked into the fire? That’s how I picture it should be. It should be their bodies surrounded by flames, not like an illusion in the flame.
Andrew: It was also just so surprising because the special effects in the Harry Potter films from start to finish were really good, even in the first couple movies before they knew what this would become, when the budgets may have been smaller. And of course, it was a different time; it was early 2000s. Those special effects were good. And then you get to Goblet of Fire and you see this fire effect, Sirius sticking his head through the embers. It’s like, “No. No-no.”
Micah: Yeah. Well, it was the same kind of thing with… I don’t know why it reminds me of Michael Gambon when Harry’s name pops out of the Goblet of Fire.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Micah: It’s almost like he needs sunglasses because of the effect. It’s like they could have done that a whole lot better, too. Well, speaking of the movies, we do talk about all the different things that Harry put in his letter, the first of which is Umbridge, and Sirius has a very iconic line that actually he ends up saying to Harry at King’s Cross, but it’s in the books delivered in this moment, and that’s “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.” And so this is Sirius’s interpretation of Umbridge, but I think it’s a mischaracterization because I think Umbridge would be somebody who would easily put on a Death Eater cloak and serve Voldemort.
Laura: Really? I’ve kind of always viewed her to be a bit like Sirius’s parents. He talks about them earlier on in the book and says, “Oh, no, no, no, they would have never been Death Eaters themselves, but they certainly thought the Death Eaters had the right idea.” So they were supportive of that ideology, but would not have actually put themselves in the fray.
Andrew and Pat: Yeah.
Pat: I think the same.
Micah: Really?
Laura: This is also why I said Umbridge was lawful evil in last week’s episode, because she’s just got… she so cleaves to the rules and how she can use them to benefit her own agenda.
Micah: Yeah, I guess that’s right. I mean, she clearly shares certain ideologies with the Death Eaters and with Voldemort, but she chairs the Muggle-born Registration Commission and she oversees those trials, and I believe that results in some of those people’s deaths. So I mean, I guess she’s, to your point, just a different kind of evil.
Pat: I think, too, she doesn’t see herself as needing to hide behind a mask where most of the Death Eaters do.
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: She’s willing to just be out there in the open, being herself, and really, much like throwing her point of view out there, where the Death Eaters are still hiding behind a leader and then also hiding behind a mask.
Andrew: Which is a worse way to describe Umbridge. She doesn’t even want to hide the fact that she’s a Death Eater; she just is without the mask.
Pat: Right.
Micah: Yeah, and she’s a pure-blood maniac, despite having Muggle parentage, at least on one side. So in a way, she is very much like Tom Riddle, very much like Voldemort. We learn that she drafted some anti-werewolf legislation not long after Lupin’s tenure at Hogwarts, making it very difficult for him to find additional work, and she recently campaigned to have merpeople rounded up, so I’m sure that would go over extremely well with the ones that live in the Black Lake.
Andrew: Yeah, and I mean, that one cracks me up because it’s like, they’re always in the lake, no? It’s not like they’re walking around on the streets, so why do they bother you so much? You never even see them.
Laura: I mean, it is definitely reminiscent of… there are certain ideologies here in the real world in which people want to have some kind of tracking on certain groups of people because they’re afraid of them, ultimately, with no good reason. Because pretty sure Umbridge never would go into a body of water, so I don’t know what she’s afraid is going to happen to her.
Micah: And there’s a really great article – I think we mentioned this when Andy was on the show – on WizardingWorld.com about Umbridge and her family history, and it really gives you a much clearer insight into who she is as a person and why she’s so power hungry, and the pure-blood mania. She’s really a truly evil person at heart. Couple other points of conversation between the trio and Sirius: Hermione advises Sirius on Kreacher, and that actually prompts a very quick subject change. So I think again, it’s just J.K. Rowling’s writing letting the reader know that it’s really important that Sirius and Kreacher try and find some common ground. We learn that the Ministry believes that Dumbledore is actually working to form an army at Hogwarts, and we know that that has payoff later on, so… and then, despite everything that’s going on, despite the article that we referenced in the Daily Prophet, Sirius thinks it might be a good idea for them to all meet up in Hogsmeade.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: This is just so, so completely reckless, and it just shows that Sirius is surely feeling the effects of being cooped up in Grimmauld Place, but he’s just not thinking straight.
Andrew: No, and he likes to gamble, like you said earlier. He wants to be reckless, and he’s looking for a hit of dopamine, and for him, that’s going out there and potentially getting himself in trouble.
Micah: And he compares him to James, to his father, but he says that the thrill would have been half the fun of it, or… I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but he needs to remember that he’s an adult now, right? And that he’s not talking to James; he’s talking to James’s son. And the risk now on something like this is far greater than something that the two of them, or the Marauders, would have been doing during their time at Hogwarts. We’re talking about Voldemort being back and him potentially putting himself in a situation where he could get killed.
Andrew: Yeah. J.K. Rowling doesn’t let Harry think on this line much, but I thought that this would hurt Harry, this line, “You’re less like your father than I thought,” because Harry prides himself in hearing about his father and how he is similar to his father, and then to hear from his father’s best friend that he’s actually not as similar to James as he once thought… I would be sad about that.
Laura: That’s hurtful, but I also think that this is a little bit of foreshadowing, because we learn later on in the book that Harry’s father was actually kind of a bully, and that Harry’s nature is actually a lot more like Lily’s, like his mother.
Pat: I think that’s also why she throws in at the end of the book when Sirius calls Harry “James” when they’re fighting at the Ministry. I think that’s why she throws that line in there too, just because we had this moment now so Harry can be like, “Oh, maybe I am a little hurt by this,” but then gets a little bit redeemed before she kills Sirius.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. That’s only in the movie, though, right?
Pat: I thought it happened in the book too.
Andrew: I thought we heard from people that that only happened in the movie. I’m pretty sure that’s a movie-ism.
Pat: Maybe.
Micah: But regardless, I mean, it’s still there, whether it’s the book or the movie.
Andrew: Well, yes. Not J.K. Rowling-approved, but that’s okay.
Micah: [laughs] Well, I assume she signed off on the film.
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
Micah: But I just think it’s tough for Harry to be put in this situation because he goes from the Percy letter, to Sirius, when that’s supposed to be sort of a uplifting moment for him, and the way that it ends, it’s got to leave him feeling like crap. It’s, like I said, bitter Sirius. He’s acting like a child, almost, in this moment where he basically slams the… think about with your parents; you slam the door on them when you don’t want to talk to them anymore. Or however you go about… you hang up the phone on somebody, is basically what Sirius is doing here.
Andrew: Yeah. All right, those are our thoughts on Chapter 14. The Umbridge Suck count will remain unchanged at 21, correct?
Micah: Really? You want to keep it at 21? We don’t want to give her one for the Percy reference?
Andrew: Okay. Yeah, I mean, she doesn’t appear in the chapter.
Pat: I think at least for the werewolf stuff.
Laura: Well, what about trying to tag the merpeople?
Andrew: My apologies. We need to punish her, so she’s going to get an extra two points today.
[Laura and Pat laugh]
Andrew: One for the anti-werewolf legislation…
[bell clanging sound effect]
Andrew: Okay, and then one more for wanting to round up the merpeople.
[bell clanging sound effect]
Andrew: Great.
Micah: And you’re going to work on changing that sound, right?
Andrew: Yeah, Micah gave me some work to do, and I’ll get to it, Micah. Don’t worry.
Micah: Okay.
Connecting the Threads
Andrew: Laura, what threads did you discover?
Laura: So there is this interesting correlation between Harry and Sirius in both Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix of both of them being prisoners, right? So in Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s because Sirius has literally escaped from Azkaban after being there for 12 years, but he can’t really be out in the open; and Harry, because he thinks that Sirius is trying to hunt him down, also can’t be out in the open. Because of this, Harry is not able to do things like go to Hogsmeade. He can’t have a normal childhood because of this. But he sneaks into Hogsmeade under the Invisibility Cloak in Chapter 14 of Prisoner of Azkaban, which slips and exposes him to Malfoy. Then in Chapter 14 of Order of the Phoenix, Harry has to dissuade Sirius from sneaking into Hogsmeade as Snuffles, because he knows that Malfoy can recognize his Animagus form and would probably report back to his father, which would then make its way back to the Ministry, undoubtedly. So there’s this definite theme of Harry and Sirius being – whether physically or socially – imprisoned, that is an arc that both of their characters absolutely have in common throughout both of these books. Then, in terms of the hunt for Sirius, it’s really interesting. Chapter 14 of Prisoner of Azkaban takes place immediately after the scene in which Ron wakes up in Chapter 13 to Sirius standing over his bed with a knife; in Chapter 14, Sirius evades capture and continues to be among the missing. But in Chapter 14 of Order of the Phoenix, Sirius is correctly pinpointed as being in London, so we have this nice contrast of Sirius being missing and then Sirius being located and reported in the Daily Prophet. And then we have this overall theme that happens a lot in Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix of Ministry interference at Hogwarts, and these chapters have a couple of, I think, pretty direct correlations. So we learn in Chapter 14 of Prisoner of Azkaban that Buckbeak has been sentenced to death for attacking Draco Malfoy, and then in Chapter 14 of Order of the Phoenix, Sirius is the one who reveals to Harry, Ron, and Hermione that Fudge is deliberately stunting their educational development because he’s afraid of the students rising up against the Ministry, so it’s definitely representative of an escalation in terms of how much the Ministry is interfering. But I thought it was pretty interesting that these events both happened in Chapter 14.
Andrew: Yeah, for sure.
Laura: Some pretty good planning on the part of J.K. Rowling.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, it’s time for our MVPs of the Week. I’m going to give it to Percy, believe it or not, just for reminding us that family isn’t perfect.
[Pat laughs]
Micah: Yeah, most valuable prick of the week as well.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Wow, two awards in one week for him. Good job, Percy.
Laura: Yeah. [laughs] I had a really hard time picking an MVP of the Week because I feel like everyone in this chapter is kind of garbage; nobody really stands out as having a great moment, and I feel like we see the worst of everyone here, so I think I’m going to have to give it to Sirius, just because he’s the only person who actually provides Harry with pertinent information about what’s going on. But he’s still a child.
Andrew: Well, there was one very good person in this chapter, right, Micah?
Micah: Yeah, I thought so. I would give it to Cho Chang. I thought she really came through for Harry when they were in the owlery, lifted his spirits up. Made him get that little nervous “I got a crush on you” feeling where his insides burned and he felt like he was floating on air. And to your point, Andrew, she came to his defense twice, and…
Andrew: That’s love.
Micah: That’s love, yeah. So Cho gets the MVP award.
Andrew: We all want a Cho in our lives.
Pat: I’m going to give it to the Blood Blisterpod, because without it, Harry and Ron would have been doing homework way later into the night.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: That’s fair.
Andrew: Is that the first time we’ve given the MVP of the Week to an inanimate object?
Pat: No, I gave it to the table one time.
Andrew: Oh, okay.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Well, that’s your thing when you’re on the show; you just don’t give it to people. Got it.
Micah: Could have given it to Hermes, also, for carrying that trash from Percy all the way to Hogwarts.
[Andrew laughs]
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: Let’s rename the chapter now. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 14, “Percy and the Big One.” That has, like, a triple meaning to it.
Laura: Yep. [laughs]
Micah: Please explain.
Andrew: Well, I mean, Percy’s letter, and Hagrid.
Laura: I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 14, “Weasley Shade,” because there’s normally a lot of shade directed towards the Weasley family, but in this chapter, there’s a lot of internal Weasley family shade being thrown around.
Andrew: The Weasleys strike back.
Micah: I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 14, “Weekend at Hogwarts.”
Andrew: You love the fact that it was set over the weekend.
[Pat laughs]
Micah: Yeah, it’s kind of like Weekend at Bernie’s.
Andrew: Right, I got it.
Micah: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie. It’s not really like Weekend at Bernie’s at all…
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: … but I kind of drew inspiration from that, at least from the title.
Andrew: Okay.
Pat: And I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 14, “Frustration and Procrastination.”
Andrew: If you have any feedback about today’s episode, email us; MuggleCast@gmail.com. You can also send us a voice memo that way. We need to get back to voice memos and voicemails. We apologize. Next week, we will discuss Chapter 15, so if you have any feedback about that chapter, please let us know, and we may air it on the podcast.
Quizzitch
Andrew: It’s time for Quizzitch. As Micah said earlier in the episode, last week’s question was: What does Cho refer to Ron as? The answer is “Tornado hater.” Congratulations to Anne, Reese Withoutherspoon, Tara, Stacy, Marie, and Samwise for correctly answering that question. This week’s question: McGonagall has been teaching at Hogwarts for how many years? Umbridge asks this question of McGonagall in the next chapter. This little line kind of came back to haunt J.K. Rowling after she put McGonagall in the Crimes of Grindelwald…
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: … because McGonagall’s answer doesn’t really line up with what we see in Fantastic Beasts.
Laura: Yeah, neither does her birthday, but…
Andrew: Right, right.
Micah: Small details.
Andrew: [laughs] So we can touch on that a little bit next week. To play, just tweet us. Our username is @MuggleCast. Also, use the hashtag “Quizzitch,” so we can easily find these answers. And by the way, if you want to follow us on social media, like I said, on Twitter, we are username @MuggleCast. We are also MuggleCast on Facebook and Instagram, so just search for us, and we would love if you liked us. Also, please join our community of listeners today at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. By doing so, you’ll be supporting this podcast; we’re only weekly because of you. Our Patreon actually just turned four the other day. It’s crazy to think that the Patreon itself has been around for four years now; that time has flown by, and we have some really exciting benefits coming up in the year ahead. I think you will want to be a part of our Patreon once you hear about our physical gift, and the sooner you pledge, the sooner you will get this year’s physical gift. So hit up Patreon.com/MuggleCast; pledge at the $2, $5, or $10 levels today. To get that physical gift, you will have to be pledged at $5 or higher. You’ll get access to our recording studio, so you’ll be able to listen live as we record on typically Saturday or Sunday mornings. You also get access to bonus MuggleCast; you’ll be a part of our focus group, our exclusive Facebook group, so many benefits, and you can access everything that we’ve posted over the past four years, so if you pledge today, you will have tons of content to go through. That does it for this week’s episode. I’m Andrew.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Pat: And I’m Pat.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.
Laura and Micah: Bye.