Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #456, A Giant Waste Of Time (OOTP 20, Hagrid’s Tale)
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: On today’s episode, we are discussing Chapter 20 of Order of the Phoenix, “Hagrid’s Tale,” but first, we have a couple pieces of Muggle Mail to address. First of all, Eric, you upset some people last week with your librarian comments.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Always making trouble; last week was no different. Letizia wrote in,
“Librarians most definitely should have a seat at the professors’ table. I’ve listened to your podcast for many years. I feel compelled to write now to set the record straight about secondary school faculty. Librarians are teachers. Yes, they manage a room full of books, but they also collaborate with classroom teachers, ensuring students have the right sources – print and electronic – for students to complete assignments. Librarians teach students how to do proper research; not everything is Google-able, and librarians guide and advise students on reading selections, how to cite sources, and assist with technology. Librarians have been portrayed rather poorly in the scant amounts of movies and books. Please don’t put Madam Pince in the same category as Filch. Librarians in public schools have master’s degrees; librarians at the college level often have two master’s and, in many cases, a PhD. Proud Ravenclaw.”
Andrew: So you were joking, right? [laughs]
Eric: I was absolutely joking. I was talking about the actress and not recognize her at first, always assuming she was Sinistra. I have the utmost respect for librarians; it’s really true. I have some close friends that are librarians. But I just think it’s wildly inconsistent who gets to be at the Hogwarts high table, and you see Hagrid up there before he’s even a teacher, so there’s a little bit of weird leeway there as far as who gets to be at the high table, which may have led to my confusion, but I just want to flat out apologize if anyone was offended by my comments.
Andrew: This is just a lighthearted email. We don’t have to take it too seriously.
Eric: Oh, okay. Phew.
Laura: I do think there’s some weird favoritism that happens at Hogwarts, and it’s a lot to get into, but it could be a really good bonus MuggleCast, so something for us to keep in mind.
Micah: Totally agree with everything that’s been said in this email. However, downplaying Argus Filch and his role, now are we going to get a bunch of emails from those who are responsible for the upkeep of schools and institutions?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, because custodians are people too.
Micah: Yeah, exactly. They work extremely hard.
Eric: And they’re not in their job because they couldn’t… yeah, I mean, they were the hardest-working people in my high school, guaranteed.
Andrew: Yeah, and they work long hours at night, all alone in the dark. It’s kind of sad.
Micah: You wouldn’t probably even want to touch some of the things that they find in the stairwells.
Eric: Oh, God.
Andrew: But Filch is kind of a bad person, so I don’t think we should really defend him, either.
Micah: But do we know Madam Pince, really?
Andrew: Well, she’s a librarian. All librarians are wonderful people.
Eric: With two master’s degrees. Let’s move on. [laughs]
Andrew: We also have this voice memo from Robert about Harry and Draco:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCasters. I’m calling about Episode 455, and particularly when Eric suggested that the bullying by Draco of Harry would invalidate any possible slash fiction about a relationship between them. Actually, this is one of the oldest tropes in romcoms, and shows up very frequently where two characters who can’t stand each other wind up falling in love, most famously in a movie called The Shop Around the Corner, remade as You’ve Got Mail, and also the musical She Loves Me. And it just happens that there is a currently a movie streaming on Hulu called The Thing About Harry, which is exactly this setup where two guys who were in middle school together, one bullying the other, wind up in a relationship.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Yeah, I went on a date with one of the costars of that movie, and it still hurts that he became a major star in Grey’s Anatomy. But anyway.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: This is actually what happened to Laura and I once. In the early days we hated each other, and then we fell in love.
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: So it happens in the real world, too.
Laura: And then there were certain other discoveries made that interrupted that love.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: See 30 seconds ago, when Andrew’s talking about the guy from this movie.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Also, Eric, I didn’t realize you had such a rough week last week. I thought it was a great episode.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, I’m glad people are listening. That’s all I hope for ever.
Andrew: Micah is calling it a great episode because Eric is getting attacked.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: He loves when Eric gets attacked.
Eric: Genuinely, I love the feedback because it allows me to grow.
Andrew: Yeah, of course.
Eric: And yeah, I think Draco was just especially bad last week. That’s all.
Andrew: I didn’t really… we didn’t talk about this more in the Chapter by Chapter discussion, but they do get along in Cursed Child and they work together to find their sons, and I think it signals that they were able to find some peace with each other. Were they best friends suddenly? No, but there was some resolution there.
Eric: Yeah, and definitely Draco’s arc in Half-Blood Prince really helps him to turn the corner into being a more reasonable human being.
Micah: I think also the fact that Narcissa saves Harry’s life probably has something to do with it as well.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, so before we get into Chapter by Chapter, just want to mention that we are now halfway through the book. Eric noticed this. I can’t believe we’re halfway through already, actually.
Eric: Yeah!
Andrew: This time is flying. Reading this again, has this changed how we feel about the book? At least for me, it’s been a while since I read Order of the Phoenix.
Eric: Same. For me, the things that stick out most are just how many opportunities Dumbledore would have had to be prominent, and he’s not taking them. You know Dumbledore is avoiding Harry as a general over-stroke of the book, but it seems like every chapter we’re asking the question, “Where’s Dumbledore?” So that definitely is sticking out a lot more. And then Harry’s bad temper is actually about exactly where I remember it being too. It’s not great.
Andrew: I was actually going to say I remember him being a lot angrier than he is, maybe because there’s still a lot more to come.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: But I don’t know; I just remember… the running joke with this book has always been, “Oh my God, he’s so angry, he’s so angry. All caps Harry, hahaha.” But he’s been able to keep it together for the most part.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Yeah, and especially at this point in the book, angry is not how I would describe him, but he gets there. We all know what happens at the end.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: For sure. I would say it’s different reading it for the story, which obviously you do the first time that you read it, versus reading it for analysis, because there’s a lot of things that we’ve talked about over the course of the first half of this book that wouldn’t have even dawned on me, probably, the first time that I was sitting down and reading Order of the Phoenix.
Eric: Yeah, for sure.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Okay, well, onward. Let’s go to Chapter 20, “Hagrid’s Tale,” and we’ll start with our seven-word summary. Hagrid…
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Laura: … returns…
Eric: … and…
Micah: … fails…
Andrew: Fails or bails?
Micah: Fails, with an F.
Andrew: … to…
Laura: Lord.
Andrew: What?
Laura: I’m trying to think of what to do. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh, all I heard was “word.”
Laura: … reveal…
Eric: … lies.
Andrew: Fails to reveal lies.
Laura: There we go.
Andrew: I would have said “everything.”
Eric: The linchpin is “fails.” I don’t know what he fails to do in this chapter.
Micah: Keep quiet.
Eric: The funny thing is every week, there’s somebody in our MuggleCast patrons Facebook group who asks the fellow patrons to OWL rate – the OWL grades – our seven-word summary.
Laura: Oh no.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: What did it receive?
Eric: Not yet; it just happened.
Micah: Oh.
Eric: But yeah, previous ones have gotten Acceptable. I think there may have been an Exceeds, but yeah, not sure.
Andrew: I say Troll across the board.
[Everyone laughs]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Micah: Well, Hagrid is back. Everybody get excited.
Eric: Woohoo!
Micah: It was the only good thing that happened, really, at the end of the last chapter. But I think this is a little bit questionable on the part of the trio, given everything that has just happened in the prior chapter, to throw on the Invisibility Cloak and run down to Hagrid’s Hut. Did they not learn anything given the punishment that Umbridge had just handed down?
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: It is surprising, but they see Hagrid as one of their best friends at Hogwarts, and given how long he’s been away, I think they have reason to… I think it makes sense that they wouldn’t even be thinking about their recent punishment; they just want to go down there and see where the hell he’s been.
Eric: It is a bit reckless; they’re not really taking the precautions they should be to go and do this. It’s like him being back is such a desperate… they so desperately need to see him, and see a friend and have a friend and have their friend back, that they aren’t smart about it.
Micah: And I do blame Dumbledore to some extent, because I feel as if – to the point about having a friend – if he was there for them to listen, especially given everything that’s just gone on, then they wouldn’t feel the need immediately to jump. Although maybe they would, because there is an excitement about the fact that Hagrid hasn’t been seen in a long time.
Andrew: Also, there is no way the trio can still fit together under the Invisibility Cloak.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I know J.K. Rowling notes that Ron has to crouch because he’s getting tall, but still, three people under one blanket?
Laura: I always got the impression that the cloak was larger than an average personal cloak would be, just because of them constantly being able to use this even at age 15.
Andrew: But then if it’s so large, when it’s just one person it would be so baggy and be flowing on the floor behind you like a bride’s dress, and you could be tripping over it.
Eric: What’s the word for the blankets you wear with the sleeves?
Laura: Snuggie.
Eric: Snuggie, thank you.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: I wanted to say ShamWow; that was something else entirely. Yeah, Snuggie. I always pictured it kind of like a Invisibility Snuggie. [laughs]
Micah: So Hagrid can’t tell the trio what he’s been up to despite their pleas, although it doesn’t take a whole lot of convincing on the part of Harry to make him spill the beans. But I think that begs the question, why wouldn’t Hagrid share where he’s been, what he’s been up to? Does he not trust, especially, this group of people?
Eric: I think we’ve seen this before, and it has to do with how seriously Hagrid takes all these missions from Dumbledore. He just seems to be… he is told to keep it to himself, because let’s face it, Hagrid is a bit of a blabbermouth, right? Give him a few drinks; you take him to a pub, and he’ll tell you how to get past Fluffy. I think that Hagrid, on his own road to self-betterment, is just really trying to be a little bit more tight-lipped, probably because Dumbledore has asked him to be.
Andrew: Right, exactly. But he flips when he hears that Harry has had some interesting stories that he could share as well. I just love that Hagrid can’t keep up his guard; we see this numerous times throughout the Harry Potter books. Because Dumbledore asked, it’s good that he tried, but he just can’t resist because he wants to know what the kids are up to. An eye for an eye.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah. And they don’t lead with “We are in the Order now,” or… they could probably… I guess I can see them trying to persuade Hagrid by saying, “We stayed at the headquarters all summer. We’re one of you; you can tell us.”
Micah: And in all fairness, Harry doesn’t really get a chance to share much of his story outside of telling him that he was expelled. Because I think Hagrid’d have a much different reaction to Umbridge showing up had he known everything that she’d done to Harry over the course of these last couple of months.
Eric: Definitely.
Andrew: Oh yeah, for sure. He would have killed her.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Fang could have just licked her face until she…
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: I do wonder if Hagrid doesn’t trust the kids, though. He really should at this point. They’ve been through a lot; they’ve been able to keep secrets that Dumbledore asks them to keep. It’s not like they leak stuff, so why not talk to the kids about it? This isn’t a particularly touchy subject, either, is it? “I went to the giants to see if they could be on our side during this upcoming fight.”
Laura: Well, I think that Hagrid has always placed a great deal of stock in Dumbledore’s opinion and Dumbledore’s trust in him; that’s really valuable to him. And I think also, we’ve seen a few examples throughout the series of Hagrid trying not to tell the kids too much because they’re kids. So he knows that he shouldn’t, but then he just gets carried away and ends up telling them way more than he should.
Eric: There’s also a history of them misusing the information he gives them, or he knows that they – he even says it in this chapter – that they’re up to… they concern themselves with this stuff that they ought not to meddle in far too often. And so if he tells them this, even though it’s seemingly innocent information, they’re going to… they could mount a quest now to go visit the giants if it was something that the plot of the book wanted them to do. They’re exactly the kind of kids who would go and do that and say, “Well, Hagrid failed at this, but we can do better,” so maybe that’s some of the hesitation.
Micah: And as he’s recounting his tale, at least the first part of it, we get a sense of where he’s been, and it seems like actually a pretty interesting trip to start. He’s evading Ministry officials. He’s watching out for Death Eaters. But he, of course, does find himself – as only Hagrid would – in a pub at some point during this trip, and to answer last week’s Quizzitch question, Hagrid had a slight disagreement with a vampire in a pub in Minsk. And the giants that they come across are in Russia? Is that true?
Eric: You’d have to do a map; all those countries are real close together in the mountains. I think several countries share a mountain range. They cross Poland. They go through Belarus. It makes sense it’s in that… it’s definitely in the Eastern European area.
Micah: All right, but this brought up the question, what do we know about vampires in the Harry Potter series? There is that occasional reference, but we don’t get a whole lot.
Andrew: So Harry meets Sanguini in Half-Blood Prince at Slughorn’s party, but yeah, we don’t get a lot. And I forgot that J.K. Rowling actually wrote a little bit on vampires for Potter-No-More; this was back in August 2015. This lives on on WizardingWorld.com. She said, “The vampire myth is so rich, and has been exploited so many times in literature and on film, that I felt there was little I could add to the tradition. In any case, vampires are a tradition of Eastern Europe, and in general I tried to draw from British mythology and folklore when creating adversaries for Harry.” So that’s why she does name check them a few times throughout the series. But I did find that interesting that she was like, “You know what? Everybody’s done a good enough job with vampires. I don’t need to add anything here.”
Eric: Right. It’s kind of nice of her to just acknowledge they exist and to place them generally where we would expect them to be placed, and then move on. But that Sanguini… we mentioned this on our recent chapter reread of that Slug Club chapter, but Sanguini seemed to be eyeing some of the female students quite hungrily, as I recall, and that’s a little… that makes me nervous.
Micah: Hungry for what?
Andrew: Mmm, their blood.
Eric: For blood.
Andrew: And it’s kind of funny that J.K. Rowling wrote that, “You know, vampire stuff, it’s been done a lot.” Meanwhile, Twilight comes up in popularity a couple of years later, just blows people out of the water; not necessarily because they’re… well, I guess the vampire angle was very important, but it was the romance that really made that.
Eric: That was the immediate successor to Harry Potter, wasn’t it?
Andrew: Yeah, it was.
Eric: Yeah. That’s so funny.
Andrew: Did any of you buy into the “Snape is a vampire” theory, by the way?
Laura: No.
Andrew: I didn’t either.
Eric: I kind of did. I definitely wanted to see it happen, but not for the least that in the last book, he leaves a bat-shaped… doesn’t he turn into a bat and escape?
Andrew: Well, he does fly away.
Eric: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Andrew: Or at least in the movie he does.
Micah: Yeah, there wasn’t a whole lot to that theory outside of his appearance, from what I remember.
Andrew: No.
Micah: Unless there were clear-cut examples where he wouldn’t go out in the daytime. I know that people would say, “Oh, his classroom…”
Andrew: Well, he did suck Harry’s blood in Book 3.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Eric: I think Sirius calls him an overgrown bat at one point. She definitely fanned the flame, I would say. This was something that Rowling took and had a little bit of fun with, as is her prerogative.
Andrew: Yeah, Rowling says sometimes he’s “described as looking like a large bat in his long black cloak, he never actually turns into a bat, we meet him outside the castle by daylight, and no corpses with puncture marks in the necks ever turn up at Hogwarts.”
Micah: He’s also very pale, though, isn’t he? He has a very pale complexion, too.
Andrew: Yeah, that too, for sure. And that hook nose and the long hair. He looks like a vampire for sure.
Laura: You know what, though? I have a pale complexion.
Micah: So what are you telling us?
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: I’m just saying, draw your own conclusions.
Andrew: And you do stay up late into the night.
Laura: I do, yeah. Did you see my tweet at 3:00 in the morning? Is that what you’re referring to? [laughs]
Andrew: No, no, I just know that you do. Now I have to look for this tweet. Oh, yeah, there’s Laura getting political in the middle of the night again.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: It would be fun to know what the disagreement was about. I mean, let’s imagine this scene, right? You have Hagrid, who’s a half-giant, and a vampire conversing in a pub. They’re probably a little bit tipsy. Maybe they add some firewhisky, and who knows what they’re arguing about?
Eric: Yeah. I agree, this is something that is destined to be drawn up, or I don’t know, explained in fanfiction, just because the mental image is funny. It’s just very humorous, seeing this half-giant and this, I imagine, sort of a diminutive vampire keeping to himself, and they manage to have a disagreement with.
Micah: Yep, absolutely. So I also think it’s important to mention that Hagrid is traveling with Madame Maxime, so I wonder if she’s in the bar there, too, just kind of sitting in the corner, shaking her head at Hagrid.
Andrew: “There he goes again, fighting with the other types.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Well, we eventually get to the part of the story about the giants and their interactions with them, and we learn that the giants live in seclusion, and Hagrid says that it’s really our fault. It was the wizards who forced them to go and make them live a good long way from us, and they had no choice but to stick together for their own protection. So this is a bit sad, this group that’s been forced to live on their own in seclusion following this wizarding war, and it seems like this probably has a bit to do with the Ministry.
Laura: Oh, definitely.
Andrew: Yeah, because they forced them out of town during the first wizarding war, and the giants… I mean, the giants were on Voldemort’s side, so they kind of deserved it.
Eric: I think, too, it’s predominantly because of the Statute of Secrecy, right? You need to control these Muggles from seeing… you’ve got to prevent them from seeing the giants. And Hagrid even says there used to be tribes of giants all over the world, but now it’s not that way, and I think it’s largely due to the wizards’ decision to prevent Muggles from being aware of their existence.
Micah: Yeah, and I wonder, are they on Voldemort’s side in the first war because of what he promises them? Or are they just basically coerced into supporting him?
Laura: I think they’re… both of those things could probably be true. And I think also, when you have any kind of population that is underrepresented and treated poorly, they’ll tend to respond to whoever wants to give them something good, right? So with the giants, they’re looking at the wizards, and they’re like, “We don’t have any dog in this fight, because y’all have treated us like crap the entire time.”
Andrew: Right.
Laura: But then maybe Voldemort comes up and starts giving them really lavish gifts, or maybe he starts making promises to them and really taking advantage of their place in this society to make them feel like they might get something special out of the arrangement, which they clearly don’t. [laughs]
Andrew: Right, something special. Yeah. Well, maybe Voldemort promised he’s going to clear their student loan debt, and they just fell in love with that idea.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: That’s how it happens.
Micah: Clear their student loan debt through attacks on Ministry speculation?
Andrew: Maybe.
Laura: Sure.
Andrew: That was a joke, of course, because there’s no tuition at Hogwarts and presumably other wizarding schools.
Eric: Oh!
Andrew: Remember J.K. Rowling said that once?
Laura: Yep, and then everybody was like, “How is this sustained?”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Talking crazy.
Eric: The normal way, though, right? Through taxes. [laughs]
Andrew: We need to ask her if there’s taxes in the wizarding world.
Micah: That’s a legitimate question, though.
Andrew: She’ll probably be like, “No.” [laughs]
Eric: Well, it’s post-scarcity, because magic helps you duplicate pretty much everything.
Andrew: Yeah, just make money. Is there a spell to make money? No, probably not. Otherwise, the Weasleys wouldn’t be poor, aww.
Laura: Right.
Micah: But could a giant go to Hogwarts?
Andrew: Probably not.
Laura: No.
Andrew: Security nightmare and all that.
Micah: Dumbledore would totally let a giant go.
Eric: Dumbledore’s relationship with the giants is a very interesting one. Dumbledore is a guy who knows a lot about a lot of stuff, but it is under his orders that both Olympe Maxime and Hagrid go and are told exactly what to do, even though… it’s confirmed in Goblet of Fire, right, that Maxime has giant blood? Does she say it’s a direct parent or a more distant thing, do you remember?
Laura: Well, I think Hagrid asks which of her parents it was, and she gets very offended.
Eric: Oh, that’s right.
Laura: Yeah, and it’s pretty telling.
Eric: But regardless, it’s this outsider in Dumbledore who helps them know what to do when they get to the giants. And I assume it helps that they look bigger than most regular people, that the giants are like, “Oh, something’s going on here; you’re not just wizards.” I think it makes sense to have envoys who are blood-related, just to ease the tension a little bit.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: I think so. And we can talk a little bit more about that, but just going back to the point of communities being forced to live in seclusion…
Andrew: It just made me think about the Native American populations here in Northern America. We, in a lot of ways, have forced them out, and it’s really sad. And now there’s still battles today over building pipelines, for example, through Native American lands, or building a wall down along the Mexican border and tearing up ancient burial sites.
Eric: That was horrible.
Andrew: It’s still happening today.
Laura: And I think that comparison can be applied more broadly to indigenous populations around the world, because this kind of thing happens to indigenous groups everywhere, even down to… Hagrid talks about how there used to be all of these tribes and there used to be so many of them, but they’ve been forced into seclusion and it has ultimately resulted in their death, and indigenous populations all over the world are dying out because of this very thing, because of governments forcing them to live in these… at least here in the States, it’s reservations, right? And you look at them at one point having so much land and such vast populations, but when you force people into a corner, that’s not a sustainable way of life.
Micah: It also is why they are so hesitant to receive outsiders, and we see that when Hagrid and Madame Maxime show up, the approach to them is that they need to wait a certain period of time before even going down and presenting them with these gifts that they’ve brought. And when they do so, they’re carrying it above their head. It’s almost a negotiation tactic that you would see with law enforcement, right? When you approach a scene that’s highly… there’s a lot of tension, right? A lot of times… at least on television. I’m not saying this happens in real life.
Andrew: [laughs] Detective Micah has some stories.
Micah: No, no, but as you approach the scene, right, usually what do cops always do? They show their weapon, or they put down their weapon as a sign of wanting to really engage with whomever they’re trying to talk down.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: They don’t want to make it violent.
Micah: Yeah, and that’s kind of what’s going on here.
Andrew: Right, and with holding the gift up, they’re like, “Focus on the gift! Not that half-giants are holding it, not that everyday wizards are holding it. Just focus on the gift.”
Eric: Well, and that these giants are, what, 25 feet tall? They could probably kill Hagrid and Maxime with a flick of their… if they’re not careful, a simple kick or punch or a simple blow from one of these giants, who might not even be thinking about it to kill them, could injure them very severely.
Micah: One of the questions that I thought about, reading this chapter, was what’s the value of aligning with the giants? If they’re a depleted population that seemingly want to be left alone, why even waste the time in approaching them?
Andrew: Well, two things: If Dumbledore doesn’t get them then the other side will, and he probably knows that Voldemort is pursuing them, so it’s better that they’re on the good side. And two, I mean, just from a physical standpoint, they are giant and can kick some serious ass, so they are good to have on your side.
Eric: Yeah, I definitely think it is the part of “The other side is doing it, so we have to,” because the Death Eaters, if left alone, could really have… I don’t know, really swayed them. And we do see, I think, some giants in the end getting to Hogwarts. But the other thing that I think, as far as what was gained: Hagrid seems to really be content with just that some of the giants know Dumbledore’s name and know that Dumbledore was an alternative, knowing that there is an alternative out there, no matter how distant. And by the time anybody gets to Hogwarts, Dumbledore has died – by the time any of the giants get there – so I don’t really know what the point is, but maybe it was just that they know there’s an alternative to the Death Eater side of doing things, and because ultimately the Death Eater is siding with the Gurg, who is now murdering a lot of his own people.
Laura: Do we think that the Death Eaters sort of propped up this new Gurg and encouraged him to kill Karkus and all of these other giants?
Eric: Probably, because killing is what they are going to want them to do when in the war with the wizards, so they’re probably going to back the most violent of them all.
Andrew: And if they, the Death Eaters, caught wind of Dumbledore pursuing the giants, then maybe they wanted to create some chaos within the group so that there was less of a chance that Dumbledore would be able to woo them. And if that’s true, it worked.
Laura: I could even see them wanting to create enough chaos to further wipe out the population so that they can’t be used at all.
Andrew: And by the way, this story on a whole is just a great example of the good guys not always winning. I actually really like that J.K. Rowling wrote this whole tale about them trying to pursue the giants and it was basically all for nothing. I mean, there’s a Grawp storyline to come, but other than that, they did lose this fight with the Death Eaters and Voldemort.
Eric: I agree. Yeah, they really did. And it’s kind of also a lesson to the consequences of bringing that gift; that Gubraithian fire that they led with, for instance, is a really cool gift – and props to Dumbledore for being able to create such a thing – but interference from Death Eaters aside, just he who has that prized possession, people are going to seek it. It’s kind of like the story of the unbeatable wand later on; it’s like, if you have the coolest gift, people are going to covet that and they’re going to want that, and that’s just human – or in this case, giant – nature, I think.
Andrew: That would win me over.
Eric: Right?
Andrew: Some everlasting fire, yeah. You know what people love in vacation rentals, particularly out west? Fire pits. Turn it on; just stare at the fire.
Laura: I think that this is also a good example, and can be applied to real life cases, of people assuming that they know what certain communities need, without thinking about what the impact might be. Sort of like intention versus impact, like, “My intent was good, but the ultimate impact of what I did actually made things worse.”
Micah: Absolutely.
Laura: And this is something we see a lot when people think they know what to do to help groups of people, instead of listening to what those groups of people need or want.
Micah: And along those lines, I thought that with this whole gift exchange, that Hagrid is blowing his load right from the start, right? He’s putting his best gift forward as the first gift, right?
Andrew: Well, maybe you need that.
Micah: Do you give the best gift on the first night of Hanukkah? No, you wait until the end.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I think it’s really important to lead with at least your second best gift because…
Micah: Well, yeah, okay, lead with the helmet. But I did want to touch on something: I would add another group – to Andrew, what you were talking about before – and that’s the Ministry. I think that the Ministry played a very large role in this, maybe even to the extent that we don’t really know about. We know that they’re tailing Hagrid and Madame Maxime in the early part of their journey, but I find it highly coincidental that the Death Eaters show up around the same time that Hagrid is taking this trip, and I’m wondering if the Ministry somehow, through Umbridge or through Lucius Malfoy, is not tipping off these Death Eaters to go to the same neck of the woods that Hagrid is.
Laura: Yep, and Umbridge makes it very clear here, in a few minutes later in the chapter, that she knows what Hagrid’s been up to.
Andrew: Oh, right. Yep. There’s your proof.
Micah: Now, is Hagrid truly the best envoy? He’s not the cleverest, and I’m not sure he’s the best negotiator if it came down to it.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And maybe that’s why Madame Maxime is there. But I just question Hagrid being the best person for this job.
Andrew: Physically, he’s best suited. They can try to break him in half, but it’s going to be tougher than it is to break a normal human being.
Eric: Yeah, he’s a natural envoy to the giants. It’s like sending anyone other than Remus Lupin to the werewolves. Outsiders are not viewed sympathetically, for good reasons.
Micah: But they seem to have had the most success, outsiders, with the giants. Clearly, Macnair and others were able to convince Golgomath to do what he did.
Eric: Yeah, but the movie version of Macnair is a really tall dude, too. [laughs]
Micah: Yeah, but he’s an executioner. He’s not a giant.
Eric: No, yeah. It’s true. It’s definitely… whatever tactic the Death Eaters are employing does seem to work, I would say, considerably better than what Hagrid and Maxime are doing. But I don’t know that Dumbledore could have sent anybody else that would have been better, other than Dumbledore himself. But this is just the situation. It kind of feels like Dumbledore is just so spread so thin, running every aspect of the Order, really.
Micah: I mean, he’s not in the first half of this book, so he could easily go to the giants, so he might as well be.
Andrew: He’s busy, though. That’s why he’s not in the first half of the book.
Micah: Okay.
Andrew: What, do you think he’s sitting around watching TV?
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: We’ll learn what he was up to in a future spinoff book, I’m sure, and/or television adaptation. But I think Hagrid actually proves himself as a great candidate to go and speak to the giants here. He does follow Dumbledore’s directions very carefully, and he did have some of the giants convinced.
Micah: But speaking of Dumbledore, is he a bit reckless in his approach? He does end up getting Karkus killed, as well as members of another giant family, once the Death Eaters really start to have some influence on Golgomath. It’s sad, right? Hagrid and Maxime come across this cave of giants who seemingly would have been on their side, and in the end, they end up getting killed. So I wonder if Dumbledore ended up creating more trouble than would have normally happened as a result of all of this.
Laura: I was just wondering – and I feel like this would be very Dumbledore – if the whole motivation behind this mission was to distract the Death Eaters and spread their forces thin. If we sort of with a wink say, “Oh yeah, Hagrid is going to be away for a couple months; don’t worry about what he’s doing,” and it becomes very clear to them what he’s doing, suddenly you have to send a few Death Eaters to follow him, and maybe some folks from the Ministry too. And maybe this was all in an effort to keep all eyes off of Dumbledore, or at least to make it a lot harder to monitor Dumbledore and all of the people who he has connections with.
Eric: Given that giants die from this, I would hope that it’s not so reckless that it’s just a distraction. I think it’s a genuinely… it would be a really good thing if giants did join the good side, or at least refuse to fight for Voldemort.
Andrew: Yeah, that would make a lot of sense.
Eric: So I think it’s valuable.
Micah: Absolutely. And I think it also goes back to the fact that the Order as a whole is becoming more and more isolated, given everything that’s going on with the Ministry. So the more folks that they can rally to their cause while all this is happening, while the Ministry is in denial, is important because once the Ministry finally gets on the same page as Dumbledore and the Order, it’s too late.
Eric: So I had to laugh at a lot of these giant names that we get there. A lot of them are… I forget what the literary technique is, but it’s almost onomatopoeia, but it’s not. But the giant named Karkus who was quickly killed, and his lifeless body, also sometimes called a carcass, is discarded to the bottom of a local lake. It’s really funny. Grawp, actually…
Andrew: Karkus, carcass. Fred, dead. I see what you’re saying.
Eric: Get it? But Golgomath is possibly derived from the number Google. We’re all familiar with Google. It’s… one to the 100th power? Ten to the 100th power. It’s a single digit one with 100 zeros afterwards. So this is a huge number, so J.K. Rowling names the biggest giant this biggest number, basically. It’s just fun little linguistic joking that J.K. Rowling is doing here.
Micah: There’s a bit in here about the actual battles between these giants, and I’ve got to imagine that makes a lot of noise when these giants are fighting each other, which makes sense that they’re up in the mountains. Because imagine you’re on vacation; you’re up in the cabin in the mountains of… I did look up; it is supposedly in Russia. But let’s imagine you’re there on vacation; maybe Sarah Palin is just across the way…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … and all of a sudden you hear these really loud, thunderous noises. And if you’re a Muggle, you can’t see this, right? So it’s got to be kind of odd.
Andrew: Yeah, you might think it’s a volcano or an earthquake, or some mining shaft just exploded, or… trying to think what else would make a loud noise in nature.
Laura: I do wonder if Muggles can see them, though, because Hagrid does talk about how Muggle bodies have been found after they discover giants, and they just get chalked up to mountaineering accidents.
Andrew: That would suck.
Micah: That would be weird to be eaten by something that you can’t even see.
Laura: Yeah. Well, and that’s why the giants were driven into seclusion in the first place, right? So that… you couldn’t just have giants walking around and maintain secrecy.
Micah: Speaking of Grawp, we don’t learn anything about what happened to Hagrid’s face in this chapter outside of him slapping some dragon meat on it. Hope that wasn’t Norberta, by the way.
Eric: [laughs] It’s not.
Micah: How do you know, though?
Eric: Because we hear about Norberta in the future tense, don’t we? In one of the future books. I think it’s Book 7.
Micah: All right. I’m trusting you on that.
Eric: Yeah, please do. It is a great visual gag, though.
Micah: He’s picking this up from a local market. You don’t know.
Eric: Well, I think it’s a valid question. How did Hagrid come upon this dragon meat? I think that’s a fair question.
Micah: That’s what took him so long to get back.
Eric: [laughs] He had to slay a dragon?
Micah: Yeah, cut it up. Make some steaks. Some go to Grawp. Some go to Fang. Where was Fang, by the way? Just chilling in the hut the whole time?
Eric: I guess.
Micah: Who babysat Fang during this? Dumbledore?
Eric: I mean, it should have been the children. But yeah, it might have been Dumbledore. Might have been…
Micah: That’s what Dumbledore has been doing this whole time.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Taking care of Fang. No, I kind of… obviously Hagrid doesn’t mention Fang on his journey, but I would totally see Hagrid taking Fang with him.
Micah: I don’t know.
Andrew: That’s what you do. You take your dog with you.
Micah: That would be a tasty snack for a giant.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Well, they keep Fang away. They don’t bring him down to the gift-giving ceremony.
Micah: That was going to be the third gift.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Maybe a really good friend of Hagrid’s pet-sat for a few months. Because clearly, Fang was not in the hut the entire time. And Hagrid just got back.
Andrew: Right. Well, maybe he just was…
Micah: Maybe it was Newt.
Andrew: Maybe he was just chilling in the Forbidden Forest. The dog is trained.
Micah: How about Newt? Newt is still alive.
Eric: Yeah!
Andrew: Newt has better things to do than watch somebody’s dog.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Unless he’s retired at this point.
Eric: Probably is.
Micah: Yeah, I would assume so.
Andrew: Fang would eat the Nifflers.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Eric: No, he would just play with them a little bit.
Andrew: And then eat them when he got bored.
Micah: So what do we think the Death Eaters said to Golgomath to convince him to kill Karkus and start to really rally a lot of the other giants to the Death Eaters’ cause?
Andrew: Well, I think he would recall what happened during the first wizarding war. “They drove you guys out. How could you want to side with them this time? Stay with us; we’ll take them down. You can live wherever you want.”
Eric: I can also see the Death Eaters using Imperius and using magic on the giants that is a lot more subtle. I can’t see the Death Eaters having the same negotiation skill or style that the good side has. I can see them being a little bit more, I don’t know, deliberate, and because they’re the side of bad, they can give in to the giants’ tendencies for infighting and violence. It’s almost like the work is being done for them when it comes to fighting over the supreme fire and all this other stuff. It’s like the Death Eaters barely need to say anything and the giants are on their side.
Laura: Yeah, I think all they needed to do was find the most violent of the giants and say, “Hey, we would support you being the new Gurg. And you see all those gifts that he’s getting right now? You’re going to get all those things.”
Andrew: [in a mysterious voice] “Fire.” Well, speaking of being the new Gurg, the trio said, “How do you spot the Gurg? How do you know which one is the Gurg?” And Hagrid says, “Easy, it’s the biggest, the ugliest, the laziest.” So is that just a rule amongst the giants? One goes and then the next comes in? It’s kind of insulting. “All right, here’s our new biggest, ugliest, and laziest Gurg.”
Micah: You walk up, you’re like, “Hey, ugly,” and everybody turns around.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: “Welcome.”
Eric: I think it’s just… this was the result, right? Because all the other giants have to get food for their Gurg, that it’s just by, I guess, over a period of time that whoever is the Gurg becomes the biggest, the fattest, the laziest.
Andrew: Ahh, I see what you’re saying.
Eric: Habitually, you know what I’m saying?
Micah: Yeah, so just because they don’t do anything around camp, everybody provides for them.
Eric: Yeah, exactly. It’s not like those are the qualities that the giants value; it’s that that’s the aftermath of the repercussions of being the Gurg is you…
Andrew: They turn into that figure, right. Sort of like… I’m kind of the Gurg here on MuggleCast.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: People call me the leader, which I don’t love, but I am definitely the biggest, ugliest, and laziest.
Eric: I will contest you on a few of those things, dude.
Andrew: Okay.
Micah: Yeah, I’d say you’re in pretty good shape.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, I’m jacked, baby.
Micah: You’re more like… you watch Game of Thrones?
Andrew: Sort of.
Micah: You remember Wun Wun?
Andrew: Nope.
Micah: Well, he was the giant that ended up siding with Jon Snow.
Andrew: Did you say Won-Won? That’s Ron from Harry Potter, dude.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Micah: Wun Wun.
Andrew: Wun Wun.
Micah: Close enough, close enough. Yeah.
Andrew: Oh, I see.
Micah: Did you look him up?
Andrew: Yeah, he definitely looks like me. [laughs]
Micah: Well, from a badass standpoint was what I’m trying to say.
Andrew: Got it, yeah. Thank you.
Eric: [laughs] The question that I had about Hagrid returning… we know that the events of the chapter… the meeting is interrupted and Harry can’t tell his story because Umbridge comes. But I initially had a lot of questions about, again, where’s Dumbledore? Wouldn’t Hagrid have reported directly to Dumbledore? There shouldn’t have been an opportunity where the kids can go visit him, and Umbridge can go visit him, and all these people can go… without him speaking to Dumbledore and doing a debrief. But then I remembered – and in this chapter, it is said – Hagrid does not take the normal route home, and there is an air of mystery about it. We know that it’s because he brought his brother back to the Forbidden Forest that the normal route of travel… and he would have been back months ago otherwise. He basically disobeyed Dumbledore’s orders. Hagrid has been up to something sneaky and so that, I guess, essentially is… I’m going to let Dumbledore off the hook. That’s why they haven’t debriefed yet, is because Hagrid took the long way home of his own volition, and that is not the plan.
Micah: Yeah, I would think that Hagrid’s first stop would be to Dumbledore. He even mentions that communication was near impossible because he was being trailed, and so they couldn’t communicate via owl. There’s probably other ways that they could do it, but yeah. But let Hagrid get a good night’s sleep in his own bed before he walks up to the castle and talks with Dumbledore. That’s probably not even a safe place for them to have that conversation. They probably need to do it somewhere in the forest.
Eric: Well, Dumbledore should come to him, though. There has to be a way of signaling… or Aberforth, for all intents and purposes, is a member of the Order even this early; he’s reporting to Dumbledore and everything else. Dumbledore could have said, “Go to the Hog’s Head and let the barman know that you’re there and I will be down in a minute.” They really could have planned a better debrief well before Umbridge’s prying eyes and ears came into play at all.
Micah: What about the Patronus? Don’t they communicate that way?
Eric: They do, later, but I don’t think Hagrid could conjure one.
Micah: But doesn’t he? Well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m misremembering, but don’t they communicate that way in Goblet of Fire?
Eric: I wonder.
Micah: When they find Barty Crouch, Sr.’s body, doesn’t Hagrid send a Patronus to Dumbledore? Or is it the other way around?
Andrew: It may have been the other way around. J.K. Rowling said Hagrid couldn’t produce a Patronus because it’s very difficult spell.
Eric: Yeah, we’re watching them…
Micah: Oh, so he can only receive one?
Andrew: Well, yeah, anybody could receive one.
Micah: That’s not cool.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: In defense of Hagrid.
Eric: We’re watching them struggle to conjure them in Dumbledore’s Army, and these are wizards with two or more years more experience than Hagrid ever got at school. And Hagrid’s wand is snapped in half, too; I mean, we know his umbrella basically works. But I think something about the Patronus Charm, for how it’s lauded and appraised, means that Hagrid can’t do it.
Andrew: Ashley, who’s listening live on Patreon, says, “Maybe Professor Grubbly-Plank puppy-sat Fang.”
Eric: I believe that.
Andrew: Didn’t think about that.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: All right, let’s talk Umbridge.
Andrew: Yeah, so Umbridge arrives.
Micah: She does, unexpectedly. And if you’re Hagrid, at this point, you’ve got to be kind of pissed off, right? This is the fourth person to show up on your doorstep since you just got back home.
Andrew: “Just got back; give me a break.” Yeah, I hate coming back from a trip and people want to talk to me? No, thank you.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Especially for how long he’s been away, and what he went through? I need at least a night to recuperate.
Micah: Exactly. And she does note the fact that there were footsteps – which we talked about earlier – leading up to the cabin, but none going back to the castle.
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it was terribly obvious that somebody else was just there. Not just the footprints, but the voices as well. This should have been a moment – I’m actually surprised this didn’t happen – where Umbridge exposes… utters some spell and the Invisibility Cloak comes up. Maybe she does a wind spell to blow cloaks around…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … because she must know that an Invisibility Cloak exists. And this should have been a moment where Umbridge catches the trio and the Invisibility Cloak gets confiscated, because it’s just so clear that somebody else is in that hut.
Laura: Yeah, I don’t think she’s a very gifted witch, so I’m not sure that she would have been able to do anything to expose them. All we see her do in this book is be on a power trip, and she just uses her authority to implement punishments and things like that. But I don’t think we ever really see her do anything particularly impressive with her magical abilities.
Andrew: And maybe also not gifted in a way that would make her actually think that somebody was hiding under a cloak or some other form of magical invisibility.
Eric: Right. I mean, it’s tense because she still searches nearly every square inch of the place and comes within a couple inches. Harry even has to suck in whatever gut he has as a 15-year-old so that she doesn’t bump into them.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: But given the evidence, it is pretty definitive that there’s somebody down there. I mean, really, the footprints are the smoking gun, so I’m surprised…. trying to think, if I were Umbridge, would I stick my hand out and run around? Do the unexpected? Because she does seem to be doing a more methodical search, and if they had needed to, the trio under the Invisibility Cloak could walk to the other side of the room when she’s over in one corner.
Andrew: Or just sit there until the people who are hiding revealed themselves. Then she wouldn’t have to do any magic; she’d just have to be stubborn.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: So I was wondering, have there been times where Harry has been caught? And next book, obviously, Draco catches him on the train, and that’s a really tense scene. But then, Eric, you also found a couple areas where Dumbledore is aware that Harry is using the cloak, but I think the first time that a bad guy actually catches Harry is in the next book, right?
Eric: Yeah, unless you count Mrs. Norris, I think Draco would be the first one to catch him. But what Dumbledore is doing, I seem to recall – correct me if I’m wrong, or if you guys remember this, please back me up – but I think Rowling actually said that the reason that it appears as though Dumbledore can see Harry when he’s under the cloak, or Dumbledore becomes aware of Harry’s presence, is because he is nonverbally casting the Homenum Revelio spell that we see a little later on, I think, in Deathly Hallows, and that is indicating to Dumbledore, at least, that there’s a human in the room, and that that spell is penetrating the cloak.
Andrew: Right, right. And when he does know that Harry is under the cloak in Chamber of Secrets, he glances their way. J.K. Rowling doesn’t write that “Dumbledore stared right at Harry; he had been revealed,” but Dumbledore does look that way, and that seems to suggest that the spell Homenum Revelio is alerting him to a human presence in a certain direction, perhaps.
Eric: Yeah, it’s lighting him up.
Micah: At least in the movie in that same scene, Lucius Malfoy reaches out and tries to grasp the Invisibility Cloak…
Andrew: Right.
Micah: … so I wonder, is that more just because he thinks somebody is there, versus knowing that somebody is present? Because it’s almost a similar type of scene to Chamber of Secrets, when Umbridge shows up and tries to catch the trio.
Andrew: Yeah. I don’t think Lucius was doing what Dumbledore was doing. I think, at least in the movie, it was just to create a tense moment. Like, “Oh my God, he’s about to be caught.”
Micah: And I still think that it’s very impressive that Dumbledore can do this with respect to Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, because it is one of the Deathly Hallows. It’s not your average Invisibility Cloak that Dumbledore can detect somebody under or see through, if, in fact, he’s able to do that. And there’s also this point in here about in Book 1, Dumbledore knows that Harry has been visiting the mirror, even though he’s been diligent about wearing the cloak. Dumbledore says, “I have other ways of making myself invisible.”
Andrew: Creepy.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah, I’ve always enjoyed that line from Rowling being that it appears in Book 1, because you’re like, “Oh, the wide wizarding world; there’s so many exciting things we’ve yet to discover.” And I’m glad that at least in this book, in Book 5, she introduces the Disillusionment Charm and how that feels, which is another way of making oneself invisible, so I’m glad that that thread gets a little bit of a follow-up.
Andrew: Yeah. So all in all, I’m just… I actually kind of wish that Umbridge caught them in Hagrid’s hut. I think they deserved it for the reasons we’ve brought up throughout the episode. And then, of course, it’s just so obvious that somebody else is there. Cover your footsteps, or sneak out the… I don’t know, something.
Micah: Yeah, I think this also creates a ripple effect for Hagrid and for the trio down the road because it immediately creates a situation where Umbridge doesn’t trust Hagrid, and I think we see further Educational Decrees that are a result of what they are doing right now.
Eric: Yeah, I think so too. And did we want to talk about just how obvious Hagrid’s lies are? [laughs] Because unfortunately, being put on the spot, I think it’s clear to anybody who doubted whether or not Hagrid was telling the truth that it’s clear that he’s definitely not.
Micah: Well, I think the only thing that really could be a legitimate situation is the teacup and the fact that Fang knocked it over. That’s believable, in my opinion. But the talking and the footprints, he can’t really explain away, and the fact that he says that he’s been away for his health…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: As he holds the dragon’s… yeah.
Micah: Maybe that’s believable.
Andrew: I wonder if he had that prepared, or he needed to come up with that on the fly, because he also should have been warned that somebody was back at the school who was going to be cracking down. He can’t really talk with anybody while he’s on the move because that would present a risk, but Dumbledore should have warned him, I think, right before he got there. Or Dumbledore should have been the one rushing down to see Hagrid as soon as he got back.
Eric: Yeah, I agree.
Micah: He’s there; he’s just invisible. He’s watching the whole thing.
Eric: [laughs] Kelly, over on our listening live feed, does remind us that Mad-Eye Moody – or rather, Barty Crouch as Mad-Eye – could see under the cloak as well.
Laura: Oh, yep. I do wonder here… Umbridge turning up so quickly, this makes me think that Filch, somebody who is constantly paying attention to what’s happening at the school, probably saw footprints in the snow and went and roused Umbridge, which would explain why Umbridge got there before, say, Dumbledore did. Because I don’t think Filch would go to Dumbledore.
Andrew: No, that’s… yeah, yeah.
Micah: That’s an interesting point. Yeah, and we know that he’s been working on something very special for his return to Care of Magical Creatures. Hermione is definitely not about it…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … and is cautioning him… she’s trying to caution him and to tell him, “Look, you mess up, you’re going to be out of here real quick.”
Andrew: And maybe this is one of the reasons that this scene exists in the first place, so Hermione can become stressed out about Hagrid’s lessons. Because this is the first of a few times where she tries to control Hagrid’s lessons, in fear of him being suspended by Umbridge.
Micah: Absolutely.
Laura: And this is also a really convenient point to drop another clue about Thestrals. Hagrid says he’s been bringing them on for years, and that he thinks he has the only domestic herd in Britain.
Andrew: We get to see them, so to speak, on [takes a deep breath] Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Universal Orlando Resort.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Oh my God, does that mean we’ve seen people die?
Andrew: Well, I mean, you see where they’re supposed to be, but you don’t actually see them.
Laura: Ohh, that’s cool.
Eric: The voiceover from Robbie Coltrane is like, “Don’t mind the Thestrals.”
Andrew: Yeah, they’re at the beginning of the ride. And maybe… I don’t know if somebody brought this up in the Patreon Facebook group, or… somebody said, “Wouldn’t it be cool…?” Or maybe I just dreamed this. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Thestral ride at the Wizarding World Park? And then I was thinking, how could we do that? Because you would want to sit on top of a Thestral, so would it just be a glass Thestral?
Eric: Right.
Andrew: So you’re sitting on something but you can’t see it. But then I was thinking, how could they keep that so clean where it looks invisible? That seems like a great ride idea, in my opinion. You’re actually sitting on something but you can’t see it. That’s magic. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah. Yes, it is.
Andrew: What’s so funny? That would be.
Micah: Sure, I like the idea. It would be a cool ride, especially when they go out over the Thames.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: In Order of the Phoenix.
Eric: Well, it reminds me so much of Flights of Passage, though, in Avatar land, where the beast is breathing underneath your legs. It’s awesome. Awesome experience.
Micah: All right, I think that wraps up this chapter. The trio head back up to the castle and somehow are not caught on their way back to Gryffindor tower.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I don’t know how that’s possible.
Andrew: The cloak, the cloak, the cloak. I mean, these guys are…
Micah: Well, and the Marauder’s Map.
Andrew: Well, I was just going to say, between the cloak and the Marauder’s Map, these guys are invincible. They can get away with anything.
Micah: Yeah. I would think Umbridge would be a little bit better at that than she is, but I assume she went off immediately to report to Fudge, and that’s why they get a free pass back to the Gryffindor comment room.
Top Ten (Seven)
Andrew: This chapter made us wonder: What if Hagrid was lying? What if he actually didn’t go to the giants? What was he really doing? And we thought we would bring back our Top Ten list idea from days gone by, but we wanted to change it to seven because… well, why not? [laughs]
Micah: Seven is a magical number.
Andrew: Oh, that’s the reason. Yeah, thank you. So here are the top seven reasons Hagrid was really missing in action, and thank you to some of our listeners who participated. This first one from Meg Scott: “He took a sabbatical to play flute on the Weird Sisters’ 1995 World Tour.”
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: He’s like Lizzo.
Eric: Oh, Lizzo plays flute?
Andrew: Yeah, that’s her big thing.
Eric: Oh, wow.
Andrew: His name is Hizzo, though.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Number six: Chris Davis says, “He was out here just lookin’ for America, man.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Number five, Robbie Stillman: “J.K. Rowling was bored writing his Care of Magical Creatures class.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I bet there’s some truth in that one.
Eric: But she wrote Grubbly-Plank’s, though. She still has to write about the class.
Andrew: True. Yeah, but all those weird ways that Hagrid pronounces things, she didn’t want to write all that.
Eric: Oh, right, right.
Laura: Number four: I said that he was out filming a sequel to the Fantastic Beasts series.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Number three, from Alex Kay: “He never left. He was in his hut, hibernating after Madame Maxime broke his heart.” Aww. So he makes up this story in which Madame Maxime and him are on the road together, still clearly totally in love.
Micah: Number two: He heard some [censored] named Dolores was running Hogwarts and wanted none of it.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Fair enough. I think that would keep me away, too.
Andrew: Micah wrote that one.
Eric: [laughs] And here’s one that I wrote…
Micah: No, no, you have to go, “And the number one reason Hagrid was really…”
Eric: I know, I know, I know.
Micah: This is great. You’ve got to deliver on this, Eric.
Eric: I usually shy away from being the dirtiest mind in the room. Listeners under 20, cover your ears.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: And the number one reason Hagrid was really MIA: He was climbing Mount Olympe-us.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: Wow. Bow-chica-wow-wow.
Micah: Care to elaborate, Eric?
Eric: Nope.
Andrew: Because if giants are loud, then half-giants are probably loud as well, and they need to be away from everybody so nobody can hear them.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: On to the Umbridge Suck count; it currently stands at 40. Plus one for bothering Hagrid as soon as he got back after months away. Give him some time to chill!
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Andrew: Next one: questioning why footsteps would be leading to Hagrid’s door. He can have friends, all right? Just let him live. It’s okay he has visitors. So what?
[Eric and Laura laugh]
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Eric: And the third one was she didn’t let Fang, who’s clearly a good boy, lick her face. She wouldn’t accept the kisses.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Andrew: I am with Umbridge on that one.
Micah: Yeah, me too.
Andrew: I do not like dogs licking faces. That is…
Eric: You own a dog!
Andrew: So?
Eric: You don’t let Brooklyn lick your face?
Andrew: No, and he doesn’t, thank gosh.
Eric: That’s because he’s small, right?
Andrew: Maybe.
Connecting the Threads
Laura: All right, and we do have some threads to connect, some really fun ones that really throw back to the Buckbeak storyline in Prisoner of Azkaban. We can start with Macnair’s resurgence in this chapter; he was the one who was set to execute Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban, and we learn that he is on the Death Eaters’ giant recruitment force in Order of the Phoenix, and Hagrid recognizes him in the mountains. Then I also thought it was pretty cute that Hagrid was so surprised that Hermione would act like they would ever do anything dangerous in Care of Magical Creatures, given what happens with Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban. He’s very taken aback that she suggests they would do anything dangerous in class.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: It’s very Hagrid. And then also in Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione is the one who puts together Hagrid’s whole defense with the Ministry regarding Buckbeak, and now she’s vowing to write Hagrid’s lesson plans for him and to do anything that it takes to stop Umbridge from firing him.
Andrew: Poor Hermione doing all this for Hagrid.
Laura: I know.
Andrew: She doesn’t get any appreciation for it.
Laura: This always happens to women, too. It’s like, let’s just…
Andrew: [laughs] Nobody recognizes all y’all do.
Laura: Yep, it’s true.
Micah: And with all this, it makes me want to look up… when we were talking before about Fang. Does Fang take a similar approach to Fudge in…? It would probably be Chamber of Secrets, right? Not Prisoner of Azkaban. Trying to lick his face or do something along those lines?
Laura: Oooh, that’s a good question.
Eric: Yeah, not that I can recall. Maybe it’s all the cats on…? Oh yeah, no, that’s just… the cats are on the plates. I’m like, why is Fang so interested in Dolores?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I think Fang has just been darn lonely all these months.
Andrew: Yeah. Maybe it’s her perfume. You know she’s got some.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: Time for MVP of the Week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: I’m going to give it to Hagrid for risking his life at Dumbledore’s request.
Eric: I gave it to Hermione because she asks Hagrid if he had new information about his mother. Very astute.
Micah: I’ll give it to Madame Maxime for accompanying Hagrid on this journey, creating that international bond between…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Well, I wasn’t going there, Andrew…
Andrew: Suuure.
Micah: … but if you want me to. And also, quick wand work. She had some spells she cast in this chapter; we didn’t touch on that.
Laura: And I’m giving mine to Fang for not only being a good boy, but also for distracting Umbridge.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: All right, and now let’s rename the chapter. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 19, “Who is the ugliest of them all?”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Reference to the Gurg.
Eric: I named mine Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 19…
[“Eternal Flame” by The Bangles plays]
Andrew: Longest chapter title ever.
Laura: [laughs] Also, “I watch you when you are sleeping.”
Eric: Yeah, just like they do to the giants.
Laura: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true.
Eric: I think Rowling was on a Bangles kick when she wrote this chapter.
Micah: All right. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 19, “A Giant Waste of Time.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: True. That’s my favorite this week.
Laura: And I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 19, “Tall Tales.”
Andrew: Like he’s lying?
Laura: I think it’s like a bit of a double entendre?
Micah: Double meaning.
Andrew: Oooh.
Laura: They met with giants.
Andrew: Right, they’re big.
Laura: And Hagrid is trying to tell lies.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Oh, and the Death Eaters are tailing them.
Laura: Yep.
Eric: So “Hagrid’s Tale/Tail” could refer to the Death Eaters as well.
Andrew: And alliteration, wow. I just love these chapter titles this week. So much good stuff. If you have any feedback about today’s discussion, send it on in, or if you have a question about Chapter 20, MuggleCast@gmail.com is where you can reach us. You can also send us a voice memo; just please remember to keep it about a minute long and record in a quiet place. Just use the Voice Memo app that’s built into your phone and then email it to that same address. We also have the contact form on our website, MuggleCast.com; you can just click “Contact” at the top.
Quizzitch
Andrew: It’s time for Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: Where does Hagrid have a disagreement with a vampire? The correct answer was, of course, a pub in Minsk, which is in Belarus. The correct answers were submitted by Lacey, Tara, Meg Scott, Sara, CountRavioli, Caleb, Nicki, Jason, HallowWolf, Stacey, MichaelNotEric, and Auralie. Congratulations to everyone who submitted. Next week’s question: Who does Neville Longbottom say he saw die that allows him to see the Thestrals?
Andrew: All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening to today’s episode. We would love your support over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. If you enjoy what we do, we’re glad to hear that, and it’s because of support from listeners like you, so just head to Patreon.com/MuggleCast, pledge today, and you will get instant access to years of benefits, including many installments of bonus MuggleCast. And if you pledge at that Dumbledore’s Army level or higher, you will be eligible for this year’s physical gift. I think that does it for this week’s episode. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.