Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #452, Essence of Goat (OOTP 16, The Hog’s Head)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the wizarding world. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: And on today’s episode, we are discussing Chapter 16 of Order of the Phoenix, “The Hog’s Head.” But first, we have some news and a little bit of feedback. Everybody still following J.K. Rowling on Twitter?
Laura: Sure.
Micah: Don’t everybody jump at once.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: I haven’t actively unfollowed her yet. Maybe I should get on that. Thank you for the reminder.
Andrew: No, no. Well, J.K. Rowling does seem to be back. I don’t think we brought this up last week; I think we recorded before she got tweeting, but she announced on Twitter last weekend that the fifth Cormoran Strike book is finished, and she took a picture of the script, and it looks big. She didn’t give a release date yet, but now that it’s done, I would assume that it’s going to be released by the end of this year. Here’s the thing: I haven’t finished Lethal White yet, I’m embarrassed to admit; not because it’s bad, but just because it’s a big, dense book. Anyone else here read Lethal White?
Eric: I’m in the exact same position. I was liking Lethal White, but I stopped reading it.
Micah: I finished it, so I’ll save the group here.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: No, I’ll definitely get caught up.
Andrew: So we don’t have a release date yet, but I would assume it’s going to be by the end of this year. And J.K. Rowling has previously said, I think, she has more than seven of these books planned total, so this could be going on for a while. The other thing is, I had read an interview recently – now, this interview was a good year old when I read it a few weeks ago – but J.K. Rowling said that she was going to be working on a children’s book first before finishing Strike book 5, so if that plan remained accurate, then she may already have a children’s book finished as well, and it’s one she said she had lodged in her head for a while, and she never… she just needed to put pen to paper, and she was finally getting around to doing it. So I wonder – and we brought this up in the Slug Club hangout last weekend – I wonder if she might have, or might be about to, secretly publish a children’s book under a pseudonym, like she did the Cormoran Strike series. And I think it would be more important for her to publish under a pseudonym, publish a children’s book under a pseudonym, because if she went out and published a children’s book under J.K. Rowling, everybody is going to compare it to Harry Potter, just like they would have Cormoran Strike but tenfold, because it’s another children’s book.
Eric: Right.
Laura: Do you think at this point she’ll be able to pull that off, though?
Andrew: Well, I think she learned from the “mistakes” in publishing Cormoran Strike, so now she probably knows how to really publish secretly without getting noticed. [laughs]
Micah: I can’t really see her going down that road again because I feel like she learned her lesson with Robert Galbraith. And regardless, it’s going to come out at some point that she wrote that book, and it’s going to be compared to Harry Potter anyway. What’s the point in trying to cover it up? I don’t think that she’s finished this book; I think a lot of her time was sidetracked by having to rewrite the third Fantastic Beasts movie, and she was probably a lot closer to finishing the fifth Cormoran Strike novel, and that probably also got put on the back burner for a little bit. I would have thought that that fifth book would have been out sooner.
Andrew: I just love this idea that there’s a secret J.K. Rowling book sitting on bookstore shelves right now and we have no idea. [laughs]
Micah: One other piece of news we wanted to touch on – and I’m sure most of our listeners know about it at this point – was the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant last weekend. And he was actually a very big Harry Potter fan, and he created a book series; I don’t know that we ever talked about it or even mentioned it in the news on this podcast, but it’s called The Wizenard Series, and it’s written by an author named Wesley King. But he was ultimately, Kobe, the one who had the idea to create this series, and he drew his inspiration from Harry Potter, and it’s, I think, now a four book series? The fourth book is coming out in March. Not sure if that’s going to change at all, given what happened. But I thought it was worth mentioning, and obviously really sad for me, personally, with my job.
Andrew: Yeah, his death was really shocking. And as you say, he’s a huge Harry Potter fan. After his passing, I found this article from GQ from February 2015, cataloging every time he’s mentioned Harry Potter in interviews. And he’s been a big fan going back to August 2007, when he said on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he named his dog “Dumbledore” because his dog was all white.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: So yeah, he was a huge Harry Potter fan, so we thought we should mention that on today’s episode. Just a really tragic and needless passing.
Micah: Absolutely.
Andrew: And I’m sure he wanted to instill the lessons of Harry Potter into all of his four children.
Eric: And this Wizenard series is about a basketball team, is it not? I’m reading the description here.
Micah: Yeah, it’s probably worth reading at least a piece of this description so listeners have a sense in terms of what it’s about. It says, “Magic doesn’t seem possible for the West Bottom Badgers. They’re the lowest-ranked basketball team in their league, and they live in the poorest neighborhood in Dren. Nobody expects them to succeed at anything.” So I think just a lot of ties to what certain individuals face growing up, adversity. And he was a big champion of youth and making sure that they all had the resources available to them that they needed, and he was a big proponent of youth basketball, specifically for young girls, and so I think that a lot of that is reflected in the writing of this series.
Andrew: We also have an email here. This is from Isabella.
“I am Isabella. I live in Australia and I am 10 years old. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
So panel, let’s just take these one by one.
“My first question is about Threstrals. So you have to see someone die to be able to see them, but didn’t Harry see his mother die? So why did he only start seeing Threstrals in his fifth year?”
Laura: I think J.K. Rowling answered this, didn’t she? It’s something about the death really needing to sink in.
Eric: Yep.
Laura: And Harry was so young when his mother died; even though he witnessed her die, he doesn’t have a clear, visceral memory of actually seeing her physical death, which he gets with Cedric in Book 4. But to be fair, I’m pretty sure J.K. Rowling answered this before Isabella was born.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That’s what I was just going to say, yeah.
Micah: Well, she’s also younger than our podcast, too, which I’m not sure how that makes all of us feel.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Oh, it makes me feel… anyways.
Eric: It’s a good question, because it is a kind of plot hole. Even after Cedric Diggory dies, the empty carriages are actually mentioned at the end of Book 4, so in order to get around that, or write around that, J.K. Rowling did say that it needed to sink in, so it’s not until the beginning of year five that Harry starts seeing them.
Andrew: Next question:
“I have some more questions about Time-Turners. If you went back in time, let’s say 1,000 years, would you still age? If so, what would happen?”
No, you would not age. From what we’ve seen, you don’t change age at all if you’re going backwards or forwards.
Eric: Well, Time-Turners outside of the Cursed Child take… every time you turn them, it takes you back an hour. So you would probably age while you were turning the thing long enough to go back 1,000 years. That would take you a couple years.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, okay, that’s true. Unless there’re super Time-Turners that let you just turn once for an entire year instead of an hour.
Eric: Yeah, but then once you get back there, you would age as normal because time would be linear again. The interesting thing that I wish that J.K. Rowling accounted… but it’s more like… I don’t think she needed to ever touch on it, which is why she didn’t. But Hermione, because of all the hours that she spent doing over in Book 3 in her third year, probably is, I mean, at least a year older than her birth date says because of the time that she spent living in the past. And it’s crazy because if you go back 24 times, well, that’s an extra day that you’ve aged. I mean, it’s inconsequential, but Hermione should… technically, if she did the math, has two different birthdays because she’s a couple weeks…
[Micah laughs]
Eric: By the end of the year, let’s just say she’s a couple weeks older.
Micah: As long as you’re on top of this, Eric, then that’s all that matters, because I can’t do the math.
Andrew: Yeah, here’s the thing, Isabella – and you’ll learn this about life in general – Time-Turners are very confusing, and they’ll just never make sense, kind of like life.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: I feel like Time-Turners are something that would give you gray hair because it just seems like a burden on the body to be traveling through time like this.
Laura: Yeah, I have wondered if there is some toll that using a Time-Turner repeatedly takes on you.
Andrew: There should be. There should be a consequence.
Laura: I wonder in Book 3… we always assume that Hermione’s fragile mental state was due to the load of classes that she had, but I wonder if using the Time-Turner so frequently had something to do with that as well. It had to have thrown off her sense of time. We saw her getting increasingly confused about where she was supposed to be, and I wonder if that was more than her just getting confused about her schedule because she was being overworked.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: That’s a great point.
Laura: Crackpot theory.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: All right, it’s time for a quick break to hear from one of my favorite sponsors.
[Ad break]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: It’s time now for Chapter by Chapter. This week, we are discussing Chapter 16 of Order of the Phoenix, “In the Hog’s Head,” and let’s start with our seven-word summary. Micah.
Micah: Yeah, I’m trying to think how I want to start this off, though.
Laura: He’s thinking.
Andrew: We’re going to start… we’re going to add a theme song to this segment, and it’s going to be like Jeopardy where we have 30 seconds to create the entire thing.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Shady…
Laura: … happenings…
Andrew: … occur…
Eric: … within…
Micah: … Aberforth’s…
Laura: … dingy…
Andrew: … bar.
Laura: Yay!
Andrew: I was hoping you were going to say “goat.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: “Within Aberforth’s goat,” and then I would have said zoo or chamber or something like that. [laughs]
Laura: Goat chamber?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, still no answer from J.K. Rowling on your direct reply to her, Andrew, right?
Andrew: Yes. Well, we could talk about that in a moment, once we get to the goat scene in this chapter. But I want to start off just by asking do you guys pay close attention to the chapter art when you’re reading the books? [laughs]
Eric: Sometimes.
Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: I looked at this one for “In the Hog’s Head,” and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I never noticed this before. The chapter art depicts the Hog’s Head sign, right? But on the sign is a decapitated hog’s head. And okay, I get that. But there’s blood surrounding the hog’s head, and it’s sitting on top of parchment to collect the blood? This is disgusting.
Laura: I mean, that’s how it’s described in the chapter.
Andrew: This is a children’s book.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: Not anymore.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: We’re in Order of the Phoenix, baby.
Andrew: I was just like, “Wow, okay, that’s really graphic.” I mean, you don’t see this in the theme parks; you don’t see the blood surrounding the decapitated head. I was just like, “Oh my goodness.”
Micah: Now you’re making me think, though, what is there actually outside of the Hog’s Head in Orlando?
Andrew: It’s a hog’s head, but no blood, and no blanket underneath.
Micah: But that’s on the wall, though, right? When you walk in, it’s beyond the bar.
Andrew: Right, but on the sign as well.
Micah: What about outside? Oh, okay.
Andrew: On the side as well, it’s a hog’s head. It’s a side angle, though; it’s not direct on like this is. Anyway, I was just really disturbed by this, something I had never noticed before.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I think it’s just meant to add to the fact that this is a place that kids probably shouldn’t be going to on the regular.
Andrew: Yeah. And I mean, if I was a vegetarian or vegan I would be repulsed, and I would never walk in here.
Laura: I mean, I’m a 90% vegetarian/10% pescatarian, and I don’t know that this would stop me from walking in somewhere.
Andrew: You wouldn’t on principle? See, I would on principle.
Laura: No, but I mean, I don’t know; my views are maybe different than other folks, so I think this is a “To each their own” type scenario.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: I’d be interested, too, to learn more about why it’s called the Hog’s Head.
Andrew: That’s very British, isn’t it? You see bars that have weird names like this.
Eric: Also, there is a preoccupation with hogs in the general geographical area. They’re in Hogsmeade; there’s Hogwarts School up the hill.
Andrew: Oh, right.
Eric: I don’t think I ever made that connection before, but yeah, there’s something…
Micah: Well, you just did.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: Maybe there’s a native boar population.
Andrew: Well, right, that’s probably the backstory of Hogsmeade; it was a old boar farm and it turned into a village and they named it Hogsmeade.
Eric: Yeah. It doesn’t explain where the goats come from, but if there were hogs, then that makes sense.
Andrew: They also don’t mention mead.
Micah: But don’t you worry, we’re going to talk about goats.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I’m not trying to jump the gun; it just keeps coming up.
Micah: Well, to start off the chapter, though, Harry is going through a bit of indecision, trying to figure out whether or not he, in fact, wants to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Hermione kind of is needling him for, I think it’s about several weeks, isn’t that it? And even though he doesn’t want to do it on the surface, it’s referenced that subconsciously, he kind of digs the idea. And I think if I were him, he’s probably thinking in his head, “Oh yeah, check out my Patronus, Cho.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Coming up with things that he can do to show off a little bit. Don’t you think?
Andrew: Yeah, that would get a girl for sure, to be leading these classes. And I really like that Hermione let Harry think on this on his own for a couple of weeks, because if she were nagging him daily, that probably would have pushed him away more.
Eric: Agreed.
Micah: And probably the more that he’s experiencing Umbridge over the course of these weeks, the more he is inclined to want to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts as well.
Andrew: Right, yeah.
Micah: So I was wondering, was there ever a situation that we felt that we learned a particular subject better from one of our peers than we did from a teacher?
Laura: I will say for me, I’ve never been in this kind of situation. I have been in a situation where we had a really, really intelligent teacher; they themselves were very skilled in their field but were not a good teacher, and because of that, we were all struggling, so we did form a study group so that we could try and learn this stuff together. But that’s the closest connection that I have to this; it’s never been anything like where the teacher was completely incompetent and didn’t actually know anything about the subject they were teaching.
Andrew: Well, what about podcasting? I mean, we’re self-taught there.
Laura: We are.
Andrew: And personally, I would say I was taught by… I brought up meeting Leo over the summer, my podcast idol.
Micah: Oh, what a moment that was.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I thought Eric and I just needed to vacate… actually, everybody just needed to vacate the hall. It was just… I didn’t know what Andrew was going to do.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: No, I’m glad we saw it. I’m glad he didn’t drop and fall over and faint, because we would have had to carry him back to the room, but…
Andrew: I’m glad you guys did, too, because I blacked out. I don’t even remember what happened.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: I had to have you guys retell the story. No, but just learning through listening to other podcasts, I think, also taught us in a way, at least me.
Micah: That’s really interesting because I’m trying to think back to middle school or high school, if there was something that I was more easily able to learn from a friend or a classmate than from a teacher, because there are definitely moments where whether the teacher is just completely inept at what they’re doing, or there’s just another way of learning something and maybe your classmate understands it better and they can communicate to you in a different way how to go about learning the subject.
Eric: I was in… I was very young; it was before middle school. I was in a chess club, and it was fun because it was peer taught versus being taught by a teacher, and it’s not like a teacher couldn’t teach chess, but the whole entire appeal was that it was fellow… third graders? I don’t know; it was a long time ago. I’m not that great at chess in the end, so maybe I should have opted for the official tutelage.
Micah: You don’t go to the park and play against old men? That’s not you?
Andrew: [laughs] I could see him doing that.
Eric: Yeah, if I could fall into one Pixar short, it would be that one.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I think it’s called For the Birds, maybe?
Andrew: Yes. Yeah, that was one of their early ones.
Eric: It was A Bug’s Life. It was before A Bug’s Life or something. But I wouldn’t… I’m 100% that old man.
Micah: No, what? No, there are kids that go and play against… it’s good for fostering relationships. I wasn’t joking. If I were actually decent at chess, I would consider doing that.
Eric: Yeah, it would be a really good time.
Andrew: I did also like that J.K. Rowling noted that Harry was planning lessons in his head because I think we all experience this a lot, where we start letting our imagination run wild…
Eric: Yes.
Andrew: … and when you do that in your head, when you’re kicking something around, that’s when you know that this is a good choice for you.
Eric: Definitely.
Micah: Well, let’s go inside the Hog’s Head, where ultimately, Hermione decides that this should be the place for the first meeting of Dumbledore’s Army, and wanted to take a quick look at some of the clientele.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Is this what you do when you enter a bar, Micah? You size everybody up?
Micah: Yeah, you’ve got to survey the scene. You’ve got to see who’s around you, what’s going on, and I think…
Andrew: Who you might have to fight.
Micah: Sure!
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Just me? Okay.
Eric: You guys have a very different approach to going in bars than I do. I look at the drink specials, I think, first.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: I’ll start with the first individual, and then how about Laura and Eric, you could read the other ones?
Laura: Sure.
Micah: “There was a man at the bar whose whole head was wrapped in dirty gray bandages, though he was still managing to gulp endless glasses of some smoking, fiery substance through a slit over his mouth.” So maybe it’s… what’s the guy’s name, who played the Mummy? Or who’s in The Mummy?
Eric: Yeah, Imhotep, played by Arnold Vosloo. I’m also a Mummy aficionado.
Micah: Yes, that’s who’s at the bar.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Check out Eric’s Mummy podcast.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Yeah, he loves those movies; that’s why I asked.
Laura: Hey, those are great movies.
Eric: They’re really good.
Andrew: Didn’t know Eric was a fan.
Laura: Then we also have “Two figures shrouded in hoods sat at a table in one of the windows; Harry might have thought them Dementors if they had not been talking in strong Yorkshire accents.”
Andrew: Well, that could have just been an act, Harry. You didn’t have to let your guard down over the accent.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Right, the Dementors are definitely linguistic masters.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Love to go to bars.
Eric: Can I just say what an awesome bit of world-building that is, though, just the mental image of Dementors, but then the jarring aspect of a Yorkshire accent?
Laura: I just imagine…
Eric: I’m assuming that it’s a joke, and I’m assuming that Yorkshire accents are a little off-putting to an outsider. I don’t know for sure; I’m not going to google it just yet. I don’t want to offend anybody. But it’s deliberately meant to take him and… well, it takes Harry – and it’s deliberately meant to take us – for a little bit of a “Huh?” double take moment.
Laura: For some reason I imagine these to look like Sith Lords.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Look, Dementors need a drink too every once in a while, so if they’re not getting soul, then they need some firewhisky.
Laura: All that soul sucking is really soul-sucking.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, it must be. It must be.
Eric: This shady character, turns out, is… well, I think they’re all probably hiding something they’re not telling, but “In a shadowy corner beside the fireplace sat a witch with a thick, black veil that fell to her toes.” Now, we later find out that this was Mundungus Fletcher, and he’s so covered up because he’s technically banned from the bar. And I know in a minute we’re going to talk about Aberforth and just what kind of establishment he’s running here, but it seems to have employed a “Don’t ask” policy about its inhabitants, and so somebody like Dung is able to quite successfully hoodwink Aberforth into coming back even long after he’s been banned. And I don’t know what act you have to carry out in order to be banned from a place like this. It’s probably pretty bad, right?
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. This bar takes in everybody, so that’s a good point.
Micah: Dementors, apparently.
Andrew: Yeah. Yorkshire Dementors.
Micah: But I would assume that Mundungus was doing something that was even bad for Mundungus. We know that he likes to deal in illegal trading, so I’m sure if he was utilizing the Hog’s Head for that, that Aberforth would not be very kind to that type of behavior. Unless it was goats; unless he was trading goats.
Eric: Ohh.
Micah: Or maybe he did something bad to the goat.
Andrew: Yeah, that would be a bannable offense.
Micah: I mean, maybe he tried to charm the goat himself.
Eric: I was going to say, it is a good thing that it turns out later that it is Mundungus, because the word gets back to Dumbledore quite quickly as to what Harry is planning. And I think we may have to look in the upcoming chapters for examples of Dumbledore making it explicitly easier, as best he can, for the group to operate.
Micah: Now, one question I did have about this was: Is Mundungus just there by chance? Or is he actually placed there by Dumbledore? And if so, how would Dumbledore even know that this group was meeting?
Andrew: I would assume that he was placed there, because if he was banned from there, why would he be there? Does he just go there for fun, to see if he can get around Aberforth? I guess that’s possible.
Laura: [laughs] I think it’s possible that he was placed there for a separate purpose, and it was just convenient that Hermione decided this was the meeting place, just because we know from the past, for example, this is where Hagrid met with a disguised Quirrell in order to take Norbert’s egg, for example, right? So there have been shady happenings that happen in this bar in the past, and I could see Dumbledore very much wanting to make sure that this base is covered in terms of people trying to infiltrate Hogwarts.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: I wanted to go back to something that Eric said about world-building, because Order of the Phoenix is one of those books that really takes us to places that we may have heard about in passing, but now we actually get to experience them. I’m thinking about the Ministry of Magic, the Hog’s Head, later in this book St. Mungo’s, right? So this is one of those books where we finally get a chance to experience what these places have to offer, and man, the Hog’s Head definitely has some interesting things to offer us.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s funny reading back this description of the Hog’s Head, because my view of it is now what I see in the Wizarding World theme parks, and it’s attached to the Three broomsticks, which I don’t think is canon…
Micah: It’s clean.
Andrew: Yeah, and it’s clean, too. Right. [laughs] It’s like, they couldn’t possibly make it… I mean, it’s not sleek and sexy; it is definitely a bar that you would see in suburban England, in farm country. But yeah, it is noticeably cleaner. And they’ve got that big hog’s head behind the bar, and it moves and oinks every few minutes. It’s definitely one of my favorite places in the Wizarding World park. But if I were stepping into it in the book, I probably wouldn’t really want to be there.
Eric: No, definitely not.
Laura: I don’t know; I love dive bars, so I think I would give this a chance.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: A chance.
Eric: Laura, what constitutes a dive bar? Because there seem to be inches of filth on the floor in this place.
Andrew: Yeah, isn’t that too far?
Laura: Maybe, but I think it also depends on the interpretation of the person walking into it. I think it’s very clear that Harry doesn’t want to be here, right? I don’t know; I like places with character, and I feel like the Hog’s Head definitely has character, so I would give it a try.
Andrew: True.
Eric: [laughs] If I were to go into the Hog’s Head, I would probably bring with me my best counter-jinxes for food poisoning, and some kind of healing charm, because it’s dirty, it’s dingy, and for some reason, Aberforth is wiping the glasses down with his own dirty rag, a dirty rag that seems to have never been washed.
Andrew: Augh! No thank you. I’ll bring my own glass.
Laura: Well, Flitwick did recommend bringing your own glasses, so that’s a very good point.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: He did, but what is going on? Does he…? How is Aberforth in business, is a question I wanted to ask. This place trades on, obviously, less savory people coming and drinking, but if you can’t even wash a glass, you should not be behind the bar, dude.
Andrew: Well, so like Laura, a lot of people like dive bars, and they have their bars that they frequent. And I bet at one point, the Hog’s Head was a significantly nicer place, and as time goes on, Aberforth does a progressively worse job of keeping it up, and now he’s at the point… maybe he owns the place; maybe he doesn’t lease it, and he doesn’t really need to impress anybody, and he doesn’t need to make a lot of money, so he has his regulars, and that’s fine, and then every once in a while, somebody comes in to form a group that they want to hide from the Ministry.
Micah: I’d play a bit of devil’s advocate, though, and say that experiences can be deceiving, and this is probably exactly how Dumbledore would want Aberforth to be set up. We know that there’s some tension between the two of them, and obviously, when we first read Order of the Phoenix, we don’t have the context for the backstory of what happened with Ariana. But I wonder if, because this is a magical world, that people see what they want to see. They see a dirty bar, they see dirty glasses, they see a dirty rag, but maybe that’s all a bunch of charms. Maybe that’s just perception, and in fact, the glasses are clean, the floor is clean… I don’t know, but… maybe I’m taking it a bit too far.
Laura: No, I don’t think so, because I don’t think the appeal of the Hog’s Head is to go for their drinks or whatever food they might offer; the appeal is that it’s somewhere that you can go and be highly anonymous.
Andrew: It’s a good point.
Micah: I like that. Who knows? Like I said, maybe the glasses look dirty, but in fact, they’re not going to do you any more damage than drinking out of a mug at the Three Broomsticks. Let’s talk about Aberforth.
Andrew: Yeah, you love this guy.
Micah: [laughs] Well, we don’t even know who he is right now. He’s just the barman.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: And he “sidled toward them out of a back room. He was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long gray hair and beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Harry.”
Eric: [laughs] Hey.
Andrew: Hmm, why is that?
Micah: I wonder why.
Andrew: And I love that his first words to Harry was just, “What?”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Because this is the antithesis of Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore: well-spoken, has all these amazing lines… and then Aberforth’s first word is, “What?” It’s just a perfect contrast.
Laura: Yeah, and I mean, really throws you off the scent. Did any of us, when we were reading this book for the first time, suspect that this was Dumbledore’s brother?
Andrew: Right. No.
Laura: I didn’t.
Andrew: If Aberforth walked up and said, “What do you want to drink? It is our choices that tell us who we really are.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That would have been suspicious.
Laura: “You must choose between what is right and what is easy.”
Eric: That’s a funny mental exercise, is to picture Albus instead of Aberforth behind the bar.
Andrew: Yeah. [laughs]
Micah: It is noted that the bar smelled of goats, and I wanted to know – and maybe this is a question for J.K. Rowling – what exactly do goats smell like? And would you ever walk into a place and say to yourself, “You know what? Smells like goats in here.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Well, I think… I was reading a couple interviews because I wanted to get to the bottom of why Aberforth loves goats so much, and it seems like J.K. Rowling dropped that little descriptor in there as a throwback to Goblet of Fire, when Dumbledore had said that Aberforth got in trouble due to the spells he was casting on a goat, so it was a connecting of the threads, if you will. It was a little reference for readers, so they could be like, [gasps] “Is this Aberforth? Another goat reference?”
Micah: Then I think, to Laura’s question earlier, maybe we should have been quicker on the uptake. If Harry is saying that this man looks vaguely familiar to him and this place smells like goats…
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
Micah: I’m sure there were theories out there after Book 5 was released that this barman was, in fact, Aberforth.
Andrew: Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Micah: But what do you imagine it smells like, though? Is it like when you go to a farm or a petting zoo and it has that musty smell?
Laura: That’s what I think.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. You’ve been to a petting zoo. Goats do have a smell.
Andrew: And Micah, you don’t have to pretend that you don’t know what goats smell like. I mean, you obsess over goats yourself, and you have…
[screaming goat sound]
Andrew: Right, you have that goat. You know. Don’t act like you’re above knowing what goats smell like.
Eric: Well, that goat is plastic, to be fair.
Andrew: [laughs] Oh, really? You don’t say.
Micah: Yeah, it’s not scented.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Can somebody send Micah a scented goat, please?
Eric: Yeah, we need to get on that.
Micah: [laughs] I was just going to say, that company that we referenced for the holidays, they should make a goat-scented candle that you can purchase.
Andrew: Oh, there you go. Yeah, Laura would buy that. She loves a good dive bar with a goat smell.
Laura: Yep.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Micah: I’m afraid to google it, because I’m sure it probably exists.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: What, goat candle?
Micah: Goat candle, yeah.
Laura: Oh, I’m sure it does.
Micah: Goat-scented. Let’s see. Hold on.
Eric: The most interesting thing that I find about just how dingy and Aberforth being in charge, is maybe it is all a ruse, truly all of it. I mean, maybe Aberforth does have a thing for goats, but I was thinking back to what I said earlier in the chapter about Dung being there and telling Dumbledore about Dumbledore’s Army, but now I’m concerned that I might be misremembering it. Maybe it was Aberforth who actually tells Dumbledore about Harry’s group and everything that happens. Aberforth… even in the last book, when Dumbledore was like, “I’m not even sure my brother can read,” there was a funny joke about that. But clearly, Aberforth is competent enough that he can read, and he passes on, so it’s just… the platform to discredit Aberforth is… and I don’t think it’s a brotherly rivalry. I think genuinely, Albus goes out of his way to pretend that Aberforth is nobody, is out of the picture, is an oddball, when in fact, he’s using Aberforth really as a spy, basically.
Micah: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew: So I’m looking it up now. Dumbledore does eventually know about the meeting, but we don’t know if he heard it from Aberforth first or Dung first, at least from what I’m seeing.
Eric: Yeah, there’s potentially two Order members there.
Andrew: Yeah. And did Dumbledore know that the place smelled like goats? How much did he know about this meeting?
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: I would just like to point out that I Googled “goat-scented candle,” and among the scents that came up was a butterbeer candle.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Smart advertising by that person.
Laura: Yeah, they were like, “Okay, for search terms: goats.”
Micah: Yeah, good SEO by that person.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Right, exactly.
Micah: There’s also… I’ve learned that there is goat milk soap by googling “goat-scented candle.”
Laura: Oh yeah, that’s a thing.
Andrew: We’re getting everything but a goat-smelling candle, unfortunately. Somebody make that for Micah, please. But so the whole goat thing… this has been a running joke here on the podcast, and I thought since goats are brought up in this chapter, we should take a little detour. What is going on with Aberforth and goats? At an event at Carnegie Hall over ten years ago now, an 8-year-old asked J.K. Rowling, “In the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore said his brother was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat.” And apparently, when this kid said this, J.K. Rowling buried her head and started laughing.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Wait, were we there for this? Yes.
Andrew: Yes, we were. And the 8-year-old continued, “What were the inappropriate charms he was practicing on that goat?” J.K. Rowling said, “How old are you?” He said 8.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: J.K. Rowling: “I think that he was trying to make a goat that was easy to keep clean, curly horns. That’s a joke that works on a couple of levels. I really like Aberforth and his goats. But you know, Aberforth having this strange fondness for goats – if you’ve read Book 7 – came in really useful to Harry later on, because a goat, a stag, you know. If you’re a stupid Death Eater, what’s the difference? So that is my answer to YOU.” And I still remember her going, “to YOU.” [laughs] So she has an answer for adults. And let’s face it, Aberforth is sexually attracted to goats. I mean, that’s absolutely what she is implying. We did tweet her from the MuggleCast account a few days ago, asking, “What is the adult answer to this question?” She has not replied, unfortunately. But everyone, please like that tweet, so maybe it floats to the top of her mentions.
Micah: Can she reply, though? I mean, is that…? Does it meet Twitter’s Terms of Service?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Can she say what he’s up to?
Andrew: I see a lot of graphic stuff on Twitter. I think that’ll be okay.
Eric: J.K. Rowling banned from Twitter for posting an answer to an old question about goats.
Andrew: [laughs] I’m retweeting our tweet right now. Maybe that’ll help her notice it.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: But yeah, so it’s funny, right? It doesn’t carry the story forward at all, but J.K. Rowling’s got a weird mind sometimes.
Laura: I don’t think people give Monty Python enough credit in terms of its influence on this series. There’s a lot of her humor that’s very Python-esque in these books, and this is one of those things. It’s not a direct reference to Monty Python, of course, like the fact that the password to the Gryffindor common room was “Cockroach Cluster” – that is a direct tip of the hat to Monty Python – but this just feels very in line with that brand of humor, so I think that she was heavily influenced by that, and that comes through in the books.
Andrew: It’s just one of those things. If you’re a child and reading this, you don’t think twice about it, but reading it later, you’re like, “Huh, okay.”
Laura: Yeah, it’s like when you go back and watch kids’ movies as an adult, and you catch on to all of the breadcrumbs that were left for the adults, and you’re like, “Ohh.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Yeah, I mean, the other thing is, if he’s really into that, there’s a whole forest full of centaurs that he could probably explore a relationship with? Instead of…
Laura: I think they would wreck him.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: Like they do to Umbridge at the end of the book.
Micah: Wait, by the way: fanfiction. Was there ever anything like that? [laughs]
Laura: No.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: What about with Aberforth and his goat? I’ve got to imagine there’s fanfiction.
Laura: No!
Eric: I hope it was consensual. That’s all I’ll say.
Laura: Can it be consensual? Can a goat consent? [laughs]
Andrew: No, no.
[screaming goat sound]
Eric: Only if it’s a transformed goat. Only if it’s, like, goat Maledictus. Somebody tweeted us that the goat was Credence.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, that was a good theory. I could buy into that.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: No!
Micah: I just realized, is the reason that I got this goat because it screams, and that’s what the goat in the Hog’s Head does?
Andrew: Oh my gosh.
Eric: Every time you do that, think of the plight of Aberforth’s goat.
Andrew: All right, it’s time to move on.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: You wanted to bring it up.
Andrew: [laughs] We’ve gone too far.
Micah: So shifting gears, let’s talk about Ron and Aberforth. Not in that way.
Andrew: Okay, no screaming.
Micah: But he thinks that he could swindle the barman for some firewhisky, and I was thinking – again, this is all about perception versus reality; looks can be deceiving – I think it’s highly unlikely Aberforth would sell anything to Ron besides what he could get, which would probably just be butterbeer.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: What do you guys think?
Laura: Agreed.
Andrew: Yeah, Ron’s got a little chip on his shoulder for some reason.
Laura: Yeah, he’s too confident.
Andrew: He feels like maybe because the atmosphere is so relaxed in here, and this is such a different world to him, he feels like he could get it. But yeah, I don’t think he could. You can ask for firewhisky at the Hog’s Head in the Wizarding World parks, though, right?
Micah: I think so.
Laura: Is it just Fireball?
Micah: Probably.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, or whiskey, I think. I don’t know.
Micah: With some goat milk thrown in.
Andrew: They have a whole bar back there. They don’t advertise it, but I’m pretty sure they’ve got a full bar back there. I’ve brought Fireball to the Wizarding World theme park, one of those little shots of it.
Micah: Flasks?
Andrew: [laughs] No.
Micah: You regularly keep a flask on you, don’t you?
Andrew: Oh, yes, I’m an alcoholic.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: No, but I’ve taken a little shot of Fireball to the park with me, then pour it into my butterbeer, which, of course, is non-alcoholic, and they never made an alcoholic version because they want it to taste the same for everybody, whether or not you’re a kid or an adult. So yeah, and it’s actually really good. It’s perfect. I don’t want to say I recommend bringing alcohol into the park, because that’s probably not allowed, but bring alcohol into the park and pour it into your butterbeer. It’s really fun.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Well, Micah and I actually had a secret… we did one of the secret drinks at the Hog’s Head, didn’t we?
Micah: Yeah, we did. It was their version of a Long Island iced tea.
Eric: Yeah, there’s a drink not on the menu, and it’s a Hog’s Head iced tea. I think I’m remembering that correctly.
Andrew: But is that official secret, or is it just, like, that bartender who does it for people? You know what I mean?
Eric: I got the feeling that it was official unofficial.
Andrew: Okay.
Eric: We were told about it by the person we were with, and we all got it and it was amazing. And it’s kind of like a Long Island; it’s just… but it is a lot of different alcohols, as goes in a Long Island, and so I do think they have probably a full bar back there.
Micah: Yeah, it set me up well for getting on the Hagrid ride.
Andrew: [laughs] Oh, yeah, I bet.
Eric: Waiting in line. It’s a breeze.
Andrew: Oh, I thought you were going to say it made you nauseous.
Micah: Maybe I had it afterwards, because I just…
Eric: I think we all had it afterwards.
Micah: I think it was after. Yeah, I needed a drink after that ride.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: But that goes to your point, Andrew; they clearly do have a full bar at the Hog’s Head if they’re making their version of Long Island iced teas.
Andrew: Yeah, which is interesting. I don’t know why they do that, but they do.
Micah: Eric, I know you wanted to talk a little bit about how this place stays in business. We touched on the dirty cups and the crappy floor, and Flitwick saying that you need to bring your own cup, but anything else you wanted to trash on the Hog’s Head about?
Eric: I mean, occasionally when they have groups of 25-30 students who are dejected by the level of education they’re receiving at Hogwarts, it does a little boom for business. Six Sickles times 25; Aberforth got a couple Galleons out of them. But yeah, it just doesn’t seem like it’s a tenable business – what’s the word? – strategy. The Hog’s Head exists for the purposes of the story because it has to. And we know that it attracts an entirely different clientele; people who want to do the shady dealings that are good for the plot need to go there, but it doesn’t… and J.K. Rowling doesn’t really touch on the fact that there are… it is an inn as well; there are rooms above it, which is where I think Trelawney had her interview, and Aberforth again stepped in and grabbed Snape from overhearing the prophecy. Aberforth has been at the center of all of Albus Dumbledore’s dealings for a real long time, and it’s very well-concealed behind this facade. But yeah, besides being Dumbledore’s secret base of operations in Hogsmeade, the Hog’s Head does not understandably stay in business.
Andrew: I don’t think anything in Hogsmeade really is there to make a lot of money, stay in business. It’s just… in these wizarding communities, everybody’s just, I don’t know, following their passion. Living their life. I don’t know. Cut this out; this is stupid.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: No, I actually, honestly, genuinely felt that that was true when you were saying it.
Andrew: Yeah. Remember a few months ago I said everybody’s weird in the wizarding world? Basically, that’s what’s going on in Hogsmeade, too. Everybody’s just weird. They don’t care about the Google reviews of the Hog’s Head.
Micah: Yelp?
Andrew: They’re not doing things to get five star reviews; they’re just doing it to make ends meet.
Micah: Yeah, I would assume the Yelp review for the Hog’s Head would not be very good.
Andrew: No.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But there’s a… look, and I bet that they wouldn’t take the wizarding world version of credit cards either. I think that’s a cash-only bar.
Andrew: Yeah, so they don’t have to pay taxes on any of that.
Micah: Exactly, exactly.
Andrew: Aberforth totally hates taxes. Sorry.
Micah: Come on, I mean, there are places we all walk into where we say to ourselves, “How does this place stay in business?” And it doesn’t have to be a dingy-looking place like this. I mean, there could be other places where you think to yourself, “They still sell this?”
Andrew: Right.
Micah: You know what I mean? So I feel like the Hog’s Head is a version of that. But let’s talk about the formation of Dumbledore’s Army. There’s quite a large group that shows up at the Hog’s Head. All of the Hogwarts Houses are represented except for Slytherin, and I wanted to note that because I think it’s important. House unity is something we’ve talked a lot about as we’ve gone through Chapter by Chapter of Order of the Phoenix, and it’s actually nice to see that there is pretty solid representation from both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.
Andrew: I like how you say, “House unity is important,” and then you say, “No Slytherins; that’s nice to see!”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Is it simply because they just couldn’t be trusted?
Laura: Yeah, I doubt Hermione would have thought that there was a single Slytherin that they could trust at this point.
Micah: Is there a Slytherin out there that we would consider being a member of Dumbledore’s Army? If we had to pick one?
Andrew: Probably just the ones that we don’t know about.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Because any Slytherin that J.K. Rowling lifts up, usually they just… she’s doubling down on this idea that Slytherins are bad people.
Laura: Maybe Leta Lestrange?
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Micah: That’s a good one.
Laura: If she existed in this timeline. At this point, the Houses are so polarized that I don’t know that they could trust anyone in Slytherin, and I don’t think that it’s inherently because as soon as the hat says you’re a Slytherin, that means you’re evil. I just think that at this point there’s just so much of a divide between them, and they’re all… as we see a little bit later in this book, Umbridge has Slytherins totally on her side.
Eric: I think also we find out that Hermione wasn’t that trustful of even the people she did invite. These 25 people, by signing the paper that they do, she heavily jinxes that and, I think, doesn’t effectively tell people what she’s done. She kind of glosses over the fact that there’s this huge magical enchantment. But it shows the level of secrecy that Hermione is employing, shows that she’s wary and that she really doesn’t at this point trust even these House members, so bringing a Slytherin on was completely out of the question.
Micah: Agreed.
Andrew: We’re in the very early days, this is a very sensitive subject, and we can’t risk it this early on. I mean, you can’t really trust any of these kids, really. And we’ll talk about this sign-up sheet in a moment, because that seems extremely risky as well.
Micah: Yeah, absolutely. Putting your name down on something like this would definitely make me nervous.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. Hard pass.
Micah: Now, this is something that Harry was concerned about from the get-go, and he says that Hermione had “decided to display him like some sort of freak,” because of all the questions that are being posed to him, particularly as it related to what happened to Cedric and with Voldemort at the end of Goblet of Fire. I thought Hermione maybe could have thought a little bit more about how to get things going, because of course people are going to want to know about Cedric. That is just inherent in anybody who is at Hogwarts and was there last year and is now there this year.
Eric: It’s definitely natural, and I think Harry needs to concede or realize that these people who want to know… and the vast majority of them have showed up to hear this story, at least as part of a perk of going to this dingy bar, because why else would you? He has to concede that it’s not just about, “Oh, this crazy Harry Potter who’s been so officially discredited has to… let’s get his side.” They genuinely are interested in figuring out what they don’t know. I think that there’s no malice, like, “Oh, Harry is a freak, and needs to tell us…” It’s really because they’re ready to listen, and I think there needs to be a little bit of a credit given to everyone who did show up. They’re also getting rid of their Hogsmeade trip; they’re spending it in here instead of at Zonko’s or… I mean, I know we know Fred and George already went there, but to the other places they would go. They’re giving up a Saturday for this.
Andrew: Yeah, I think we’ve touched on this before, and I feel like these kids deserve to know. I don’t blame them for wanting to hear directly from Harry; I think that’s very natural, and I would want to hear directly from Harry as well. So I think in hindsight, maybe this could have been planned a little bit better, and they could have just come out with the story. Harry could have just come out with the story right out of the gate, got the elephant in the room out of the way, and Harry would have them in the palm of his hands, and he could easily get these people signed up for Dumbledore’s Army.
Laura: Yeah, I think also, this is an example of one of Hermione’s blind spots, which is that she’s only able to see the desire to learn, so when she’s communicating this opportunity to people, she sees them lighting up and she sees them being really interested and assumes that they’re interested for the reason she’s interested, right? But she’s forgetting the fact that she has such access to Harry that she actually knows what happened, whereas something that was pointed out to Harry earlier in this book is, “Hey, all the school knew was that you came back holding Cedric Diggory’s dead body, and that Dumbledore told everyone Voldemort was back. That’s it.”
Micah: Yeah, it definitely could have been a better job done on the part of Dumbledore, in terms of informing the students of exactly what happened. But I think he also probably, at the time, didn’t want to put Harry in the position that Hermione is putting Harry in now. It’s one thing to talk about it in front of 25 people, never mind hundreds of people. Maybe it’s not Harry that has to do it, but still. And the Ministry obviously wants to cover this up as much as possible, so Dumbledore and Harry are certainly not getting any help from them. But I also wonder if it’s a bit of insecurity on Harry’s part, too, because putting aside what happened to Cedric, if he’s to talk about what happened, it’s another one of those instances where there’s a bit of luck, right? Priori Incatatem, I don’t think he was expecting for that to save his ass, much like his ass has been saved in the other books. And so I thought it would be interesting – because they do talk a lot about his accomplishments throughout the series – if we were to give OWL grades to the things that he has done in these first couple of books, what grades would we assign to them?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Okay.
Micah: So number one, in Sorcerer’s Stone, is besting Quirrellmort by touching his face and rescuing the Sorcerer’s Stone. Do we think that…?
Andrew: Outstanding. That’s an O. Outstanding.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: Right out the gate.
Andrew: He’s young, first year at Hogwarts. He’s already bringing down Voldemort. Outstanding.
Eric: And with his touch, too. Voldemort was so ill-prepared to deal with that.
Andrew: Right. Yeah, yeah. Imagine having so much power with your hands.
Micah: Okay.
Eric: Agreed.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: How about killing the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets? Let’s not forget, he had some assistance.
Laura: I think that’s… I would give that an Exceeds Expectations.
Eric: I agree.
Laura: Because we have to remember, he killed the Basilisk, but he also destroyed a Horcrux.
Andrew: Right, and nobody expects you to be able to kill a giant snake when you’re 12 or 13.
Eric: Well, and one you can’t even directly look at.
Andrew: Right. If I saw that thing, I would definitely run away, so Harry is definitely a better person than I am. Run away and cry.
Eric: But he does get mortally wounded from the encounter and would have died, so definitely Exceeds Expectations.
Micah: But you have to give an assist to Fawkes, though, because without Fawkes, Harry… yeah, we only have two books in the series.
Eric: [laughs] Those were good books.
Andrew: I’ll give an O to Fawkes. Good job, Fawkes. O for you.
Micah: How about saving himself and Sirius from all of those Dementors in Prisoner of Azkaban?
Laura: Outstanding.
Eric: I would say Acceptable.
Laura: Really?
Micah: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, I’m not as impressed by that one. I’m more impressed by killing a giant snake and Voldemort.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: But he produces a fully-formed Patronus, which is something that even adult wizards can’t do, and he uses it to fend off a huge amount of Dementors.
Andrew: Yeah, but Laura, think about doing that in the video game. It wasn’t that hard. You just hold A and then you press the B and you’re done.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: It wasn’t difficult.
Eric: My argument is not going to be about the video game, but that’s a good point. But my argument is I think even though it’s an impressive feat, we cannot fully attribute it to Harry, because Harry sees what he thinks is his dad doing it, and when it comes back around, he says that the happy thought he thought of that was so powerful that it crushed them all and scared all the Dementors away, was the thought that he had already done it before, which is cheap. It’s not the same kind of self-fulfilled luck or wonderful dancing around the swinging tail of a giant beast, centuries old beast… it’s not the same. It’s just not. It’s standing there and going, “I have self-confidence. Boom.” Acceptable, okay? It got him through the book. It saved some lives. It was a good call.
Laura: Ooh, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: All right.
Micah: Okay, we can do that. For Goblet of Fire, actually, two things: One is the completion of all the Triwizard tasks. The second is what I mentioned earlier, defeating Voldemort in the graveyard for at least enough time for him to escape and get back to Hogwarts.
Laura: I would give that an Acceptable.
Micah: Okay. Which part? Both?
Laura: Definitely completing the Triwizard tasks.
Micah: Because he had help from…?
Laura: Literally with every single one, yeah.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: I would give him an Exceeds for fending off Voldemort, though.
Eric: Yeah, again, he was boosted by luck, but you’re facing down the barrel of a gun, and how Harry behaves is exactly the way that it… I’m with Andrew; I would run away and cry.
Andrew: Anytime he faces Voldemort, that’s an automatic O for me.
Eric: [laughs] I heard that in the Simon Cowell voice, Andrew. “It’s an O for me.”
[Everyone laugh]
Andrew: I was thinking Randy Jackson. “It’s a no for me, dog.” [laughs]
Eric: Oh yeah, “It’s an O for me, dog.”
Micah: Sorry, dog.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Pitchy, pitchy.
Micah: And then just to include one thing from Order of the Phoenix, defeating the Dementors in Little Whinging.
Eric: O.
Andrew: That was good. In all these moments, poor Harry is acting with virtually no preparation. He sees none of this coming. And really, it’s all O-worthy, but we’re trying to think a little more critically here.
Eric: I would give the Dementors at the beginning of Book 5 the O, versus the Dementors at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, because in the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, he’s drained, he’s not a particularly happy camper, but for the sake of his cousin’s life, he has to muster up the ability to do a Patronus. And again, it’s fully corporeal, and again, it kicks their asses. So I would say, again, that the Order of the Phoenix thing should get an O, and it’s better than the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Micah: So as this group is forming, there’s a lot of back and forth with different characters. J.K. Rowling does a good job of shining a light on Zacharias Smith and Luna and Ernie Macmillan. And the bit with Zacharias is funny because I believe at one point Fred and George threaten him with sodomy.
Andrew: Oh my gosh.
Laura: Yeah, they kind of do.
Micah: I forget what they say they’re going to shove up his you-know-what…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … but it’s probably one of their defective products.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: There was a bit of humor in this chapter. I did want to call out Luna because she’s definitely not feeling Hermione at all so far in Order of the Phoenix. She mentions that Cornelius Fudge has an army of Heliopaths, and I think Hermione basically says that they’re not real, or that Fudge definitely doesn’t, and Luna says, “Just because you’re so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you -“ and I think it’s Ginny that cuts her off, but yeah, Luna coming through strong in this chapter.
Andrew: That’s a good line, especially after Harry is asked to tell the Cedric story.
Micah: And there’s truth to that. I mean, Laura kind of alluded to it earlier with Hermione always being of the mindset of learning and not necessarily thinking through things in other lenses, and I think Luna kind of… well, not kind of; she does bring that to light.
Laura: Yeah, and I think that this is how Hermione gets balanced out since she’s not in Divination anymore, because the last character to treat Hermione this way was Trelawney telling her, “You don’t have the inner eye; you desperately cling to your books as though those are the only things that matter.” And since Hermione is not in Divination anymore, Luna is stepping in. I think it’s a good thing. But do we ever get it confirmed whether or not Heliopaths are real?
Micah: They’re supposed to be these fiery spirits, and I put a picture of one in there that in my mind definitely would not scream Cornelius Fudge.
Laura: No.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, it wouldn’t scream Fudge, but I think they could exist within the universe. And here’s the thing: At least for the Quibbler‘s sake, I hope Heliopaths are really a thing that can be around, because it’s double duty for Xenophilius to be publishing these allegations if you have to, one, believe that Fudge is using them, but two, believe that they’re even a thing that exists in the first place. It would be so much easier for Xeno to publish something that actually exists is what Fudge is using. You know what I’m saying?
Micah: They look like something maybe Death Eaters would ride.
Andrew: Yeah, that would be cool. It would also be cool if these actually made an appearance in Fantastic Beasts. J.K. Rowling just subtly confirms that these are real by having them appear in that movie series.
Eric: That reminds me, though, isn’t it the Matagots are the cats that they are…? They are spirits. They are spirit beasts. So I would actually say that Crimes of Grindelwald lends a lot of credence – not intended, the pun – to the idea that Heliopaths exist.
Micah: Yeah, possible. I mean, to me, this just looks like J.K. Rowling’s version of a Rapidash.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Yeah, and then Ernie does a great job of pointing out something we’ve talked about in the last couple of episodes, the fact that Umbridge is an ineffective professor who just is not preparing them well for their third year exams. And you get to see, from the perspective of a Hufflepuff, that that’s important to them. They want to pass their exams. Time to sign the contract – not in blood – but this is scary, man.
Andrew: Yeah, I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t put my name on this piece of paper. This is a very… this is a group that could get in worlds of trouble if they were found out, and it seems really risky to be putting your name on this. I don’t care how organized Hermione is; crazier things have happened in the series. She could very well lose this piece of paper, or somebody could make a copy of it and that could leak. Like, no. Just no. I would not put my name on this.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Also, can we just talk about how not slick Hermione is here? She’s very much like, “Uh, I think we should all sign this paper…”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: How should she have done it?
Laura: I think that she probably just could… she’s smart; she could have taken note of who was there…
Andrew: Oh, yeah, mental note.
Laura: … and then applied the jinx in some… you know what I mean? There could have been a way to apply the jinx, I would think, that didn’t require making people sign their names.
Andrew: Or maybe just first names, or everybody comes up with a nickname and writes that down, and then you could still do a roll call with those nicknames later. Yeah, there’s definitely some other options here.
Laura: Or you have people sign it at the beginning of the meeting. Yeah, I feel like people don’t think as much about putting their names down at the beginning of something, but then at the end of it, when they’re like, “Oh, this is kind of subversive; maybe I shouldn’t put my name on here…”
Andrew: Right. “You want to hear what happened in that graveyard? Put your name down.”
Micah: What happened? Oh, I thought you were going to tell me, Andrew.
Andrew: No, no, I’ll tell you another time. When we’re at the Hog’s Head.
Micah: But I think there’s a level of defiance about it, too, especially for characters like Fred and George. They can’t wait to write their names down.
Eric: Right. Yeah, I think each of the students takes their own time getting to the mental state of “Oh, this is fun, breaking all the rules.” But that’s fine. Your mileage may vary. People are… what they are doing is technically not… well, it’s not against the rules now, but as of their first meeting, it will be. They’re openly defying Umbridge, but they have to. The whole reason these people showed up is the possibility that they could get taught and really learn things that they all agree that they need to know. They’re all there because Umbridge’s lessons suck.
Micah: Right. And the chapter really wraps up with there needing to be a decision about where they’re going to meet, how frequently they’re going to meet, so there’s still decisions that need to be made. And what I found a little bit odd was the way that the chapter does end, and that’s with them talking about these budding relationships. So Ginny being with Michael, and then Harry and Cho, which we’ve seen building up over the course of these first 15 or so chapters. But I just thought it was funny that Harry turns to, I think it’s Hermione, and says about Ginny, “Oh, is that why she talks now?” Because she finally feels comfortable around Harry; she has a boyfriend and she’s not enamored with him anymore.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I don’t know. I feel like it almost demeans Ginny’s character, in a way, for Harry to say that about her. Am I the only one?
Laura: I think it also shows how little attention he’s paying to her, because she’s really been out of her shell for this entire book.
Eric: But she had a shell; she’s out of it. It is a funny falling action to discuss relationships, and how Cho lingers at the end of the… she’s gathering her purse or bags or straps or whatever. And even her friend Marietta is like, “Come on. Cho, come on.” But she wants to stay back so she could, I don’t know, wave to Harry or something.
Micah: Watch, yeah. We’ve all been there.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Something else I think that’s interesting here is that we get Michael Corner and Cho Chang. Don’t they end up getting together after Harry breaks up with Cho and Ginny breaks up with Michael?
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: That would be super convenient.
Laura: I think that that’s actually what happens.
Andrew: No, it is. Yeah, I’m looking it up right now.
Micah: Get me the fanfiction on that, Laura.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: So Harry’s ex and Ginny’s ex get together?
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: That’s what happens.
Eric: That’s totally unexpected.
Micah: It’s because when Harry was making out with Cho he accidentally said “Cedric,” and…
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That would be me for sure.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But one other point to raise here before we wrap up the chapter: Eric, did you have this in here? It’s how Michael Corner is referred to?
Andrew: Oh, that was me. Yeah, so he’s referred to as “the dark one,” which I don’t think has aged well. To just call him “the dark one” in the book? Eh.
Laura: I wonder if this is – and UK listeners, I’d be really interested in your feedback here – I wonder if this is cultural and that it’s not necessarily intended to refer to race, but rather somebody with dark features. So dark hair, dark eyes…
Andrew: Yeah, it’s possible.
Laura: Because this is definitely how he’s cast in the film.
Andrew: Right, he’s white.
Laura: Because I looked up the actor, and he is white, but he has very dark hair and dark eyes, and I wonder if this is a way that you commonly refer to somebody who just has darker features.
Andrew: On the other hand, the movies did switch the race of some characters…
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: … so it wouldn’t surprise me if they just cast him incorrectly.
Laura: But I’m also not sure that the books ever explicitly state Michael Corner’s race at all, apart from this descriptor.
Andrew: No.
Laura: And J.K. Rowling never shied away from describing Dean Thomas as black, for example, so I’m not sure why she would openly say, “Dean Thomas was black,” and then be like, “Michael Corner was the dark one.”
Andrew: Right, right.
Laura: It just feels like a disconnect, so I’m wondering if this is intended to refer to something different than that, just to play devil’s advocate a little bit.
Andrew: Could also just mean emo. I’ve described you as the dark one, Laura, at times.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Because you’re emo as hell.
Laura: I was such an emo kid in high school, and I’m still an emo kid in my heart, and you can’t take it away from me.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: All right.
Micah: Yeah, I don’t know if it applies to emo, just because we don’t know Michael very much at this point…
Andrew: Yeah, I’m just kidding.
Micah: … so appearance would be probably the only point of reference that we have.
Andrew: He’s the dark one who heads into the Muggle world and shops at Hot Topic.
Laura: Hell yeah.
Micah: It’s also not good because the only other “dark” reference that we really have in terms of referring to somebody in this series is the Dark Lord, so not a good move, probably, by J.K. Rowling here.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: All right, well, that does it for Chapter 16 of Order of the Phoenix.
Andrew: Time now for the Umbridge Suck count. Somebody put something here.
Eric: Yeah, I did. We touched on this a moment ago, but the fact that all these people show up… Umbridge sucks so badly, her classes are so ineffective, that 25 people who don’t know each other all show up at the mere whisper of there being an alternative educational option, to a bar that’s weird and dingy, and they give up their Saturday to do it. So I say we should add to the Umbridge Suck count because she is clearly… it’s not just the trio that she’s not reaching with her – I don’t know – the usefulness of the subject matter, but across grade levels, Umbridge sucks so badly that all these people are like, “Oh my God, we need to start learning. We’re not learning a thing.”
Micah: Does that mean that the Umbridge Suck count is now at 28 or 52?
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I think we should…
Micah: You only have to play it once no matter what, but I think it’s a fair question.
Andrew: I think just one. Up by one.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I think that there is enough suckage coming throughout the rest of the book that we don’t need to inflate the score at this point.
Andrew: Yeah. So let’s add one to the board.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Laura: [laughs] Oh my God.
Connecting the Threads
Andrew: And now let’s connect the threads.
Laura: A couple of small threads in this chapter, but they are really interesting. The first one is about Sirius. Harry feels a pang at making his first Hogsmeade trip of the year; this is because he’s recently told Sirius not to come to Hogsmeade to see him because he’s afraid that somebody will recognize his Animagus form. But Harry is now remembering, when he lines up to go to the village, that he wouldn’t be going if it weren’t for the fact that Sirius had signed his permission slip in the third book. The other thing that jumps out at me here is this whole environment of a student-led resistance in the Hog’s Head. Sirius would have loved to be here for this, and I think that given the opportunity, he would have done a better job emceeing this whole thing than Hermione did, just because Sirius has this experience with the Order. So I think it’s one of those moments where he couldn’t be there, but Harry really felt his absence.
Andrew: “So kids, you want to be a rebel. Let me teach you about that.”
Laura: [laughs] “Except for the fact that… the going to Azkaban part. Don’t do that.”
Andrew: [laughs] “Don’t go that far.”
Laura: And then also the Hog’s Head is a really important thread to connect to other moments in the series, particularly the fact that this is where Dumbledore met Trelawney all those years ago, and where she gave the iconic prophecy that kicked off all the events of the series.
Andrew: Cool.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, time now for MVP of the Week. I’m going to give it to Hermione for putting this whole thing together in the first place.
Eric: Yeah, it worked out.
Laura: I’m going to give it to Ron for mostly making sense and keeping the meeting on track. He’s the one who really, with the assistance of Fred and George, whips people into line and keeps the focus on the goal at hand, as opposed to being obsessed with what happened to Cedric Diggory. So I’ll give it to him for being a good friend. Even though he’s not a great brother in this chapter, he is a good friend.
Micah: I’ll give my MVP to the guy who has the best dive bar in Hogsmeade.
Laura: Heck yeah.
Micah: Aberforth.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And he’s hosting the first official meeting of Dumbledore’s Army.
Eric: I think the meeting happens in spite of him entirely, but okay. I’m going to give it to…
Micah: No Hog’s Head, no meeting.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, okay. Actually, you’ve convinced me. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you, Aberforth, for doing the bare minimum to uphold and maintain this establishment.
Andrew: Thanks for keeping the walls up.
Eric: [laughs] Which with magic is so much easier to do. I’m going to give mine to Ginny for rounding up some more people for the cause, Michael Corner, of course, but also his two other Ravenclaw friends, Anthony Goldstein and… I forget the other guy… Terry Boot. But that’s a situation where Hermione did not reach out to them; it was actually Ginny talking up the meeting. So Ginny was actually a really good hype man – or hype person – for Hermione’s idea, so I thought that was a really good moment of them working together.
Andrew: I think it’d be a great running joke if you gave the MVP of the Week to Ginny every week, even if she wasn’t even in the chapter, but you just grasped for straws and tried to come up with something.
Eric: Is it thin here? I think she really did…
Andrew: No, no.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Andrew: But it just made me think, because you’re a Ginny fan, it’d be funny.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: Anyway, let’s rename the chapter. Order of the Phoenix Chapter 16, “The Greatest Of All Time,” otherwise known as “The GOAT.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Get it? Double meaning.
Micah: Got it.
Andrew: I was really proud of that one. Dreamt that up at 5:30 this morning.
Micah: Good job.
Laura: I’m going with Order of the Phoenix Chapter 16, “These kids are not slick.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Order of the Phoenix Chapter 16, “Goat [censored].”
Andrew: Please censor that.
[screaming goat sound]
Laura: Just censor it with the goat screaming.
Andrew: There you go.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 16, “Where Nobody Knows Your Name.”
Micah: I love it.
Andrew: If you have any feedback about today’s episode, send it on in – MuggleCast@gmail.com – or go to MuggleCast.com and use the contact form. We also love to hear from you, really hear from you, so record a voice memo on your phone if you have a moment, and send that to MuggleCast@gmail.com.
Micah: If you have a phone.
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, it’s time for Quizzitch.
Eric: Yes, last week’s question: What does Luna say Fudge’s army is made out of? Real cool to have this opposition happening during the time that they are forming an army. But the answer is, of course, Heliopaths; we mentioned this during the chapter discussion. Whether or not we believe they exist is another thing. But correct answers were submitted to us over on Twitter, as usual, by people including Andrea Feezor, KngofKngs, Jason King – lots of kings – Samwise Potter Skywalker, Count Ravioli, Hannah E., The Cat’s Pajamas, Reese Without Her Spoon, Michael not Eric, and Tara.
Micah: Michael not Eric?
Andrew: What?
Micah: Why not just say Michael?
Eric: Yeah, somebody’s name is Michael not Eric, and they’re at @MichaelnotEric on Twitter.
Micah: All right.
Eric: I wonder if that’s a reference to Alohomora. I’m not sure. Nope, it says “I am Michael. I like stuff.” Okay.
Andrew: Interesting. I like stuff, too, Michael.
Micah: I like stuff too, yeah.
Eric: That’s weird because my Twitter bio is “Big fan of stuff.”
Andrew: Oh, maybe you’re his role model. Anyway, what is next week’s question? This week’s question?
Eric: Next week’s question is an interesting one, a moment I completely forgot occurred in the books, although there are many, to be fair. Who visits Harry during History of Magic?
Andrew: Huh. I don’t know.
Eric: Harry gets a visitor next chapter. It’s crazy.
Andrew: All right, coming up in bonus MuggleCast today, we’re going to play an old favorite, Make the Music Connection. We haven’t done that in a while, so we’re looking forward to doing that, and I think we’re going to connect these songs to Order of the Phoenix. So this will be fun, and I’m a little scared because we haven’t done this in so long. You can listen to that over on Patreon, Patreon.com/MuggleCast. You get two bonus MuggleCasts every month, and you get a lot of other benefits as well, including access to our livestreams; you can join us on Saturday or Sunday morning each week and tune in as we record. You will also get this year’s physical gift. You will also get early access to our show notes. You will also get early access to the episodes themselves, and a whole lot more. At this point if you pledge, you’re going to have access to four years of bonus material, so there’s a lot there, and it’ll keep you entertained for a while. Also, by the way, we have some new artwork that we made; check it out on our social media channels. And we were able to get that made thanks to our listeners supporting us via Patreon. It’s because of that support we get to do cool things like this. We made this new artwork to reach new audiences. We learned at Podcast Movement, which was also funded by Patreon, that we should have some artwork or some photos depicting our smiling faces together, and we said, “Wait, we would actually have to get together to take a group photo. To heck with that; let’s just get some artwork done.” And it was a win-win. We didn’t have to see each other, and we got some beautiful artwork made.
Laura: Yep, just the way we like it.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Thanks to Emily Kardamis for that.
Andrew: Yeah, she did a great job; check it out on our social media channels. And it’s littered with Easter eggs, including a goat, so we hope you enjoy that. Again, Patreon.com/MuggleCast is where you can support us. Thank you. We really appreciate your support. Thank you, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Goodbye.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.