Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #459, Magicare For All (OOTP 22, St. Mungo’s, Part 2)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: We hope everybody is doing well. We tried to take everybody’s minds off of the craziness of the world right now; we hosted a live edition of Quizzitch last week, and we didn’t bring this up on Episode 458 – we apologize – because we kind of came up with the idea at the last minute. But we did that on Wednesday and it was a lot of fun, so thanks to everybody who participated. We had over 700 people involved, and it was really cool. We were basically hosting a trivia night that you would see at a bar, but we actually know our Harry Potter, so all the questions and answers were correct.
Eric: [laughs] It was a lot of fun.
Micah: It really was. As you said, it was just a nice break from everything that was going on, and I know a lot of people that commented really just appreciated that opportunity to get away and just have a lot of fun, and that’s what it was. Even Fudge, the Minister for Magic…
[Laura laughs]
Micah: … at least in this book right now… he joined us at the top of the show. Thank you to Cornelius.
Laura: Yeah, and we gave away some fun prizes, too, right?
Andrew: We did. We gave away a MinaLima print. One of the prizes was an edition of a Harry Potter book you don’t yet have, some Funkos, one of the Harry Potter puzzles that we can’t stop talking about… those are all sold out, by the way, on New York Puzzle Company.
Eric: Really!
Andrew: And on Amazon, and everywhere else. Everybody is buying puzzles right now, I guess just to keep themselves busy. We do hope to host another edition of Quizzitch Live in the weeks ahead; more details to come. But congratulations to all the winners of our first ever Quizzitch Live: Nathan, House-Elf Liberation Front, Julia, Insufferable Know-It-All, and Margo. And you can see a list of the top 500 participants on MuggleCast.com. So yeah, it was a great time, and we’re looking forward to doing that again, because I just don’t think you see something like this online anywhere else.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: I mean, I hate to be egotistical about it, but… [laughs]
Micah: Well, you’re going to soon. Other people are going to follow in our footsteps. We’re the trendsetters, just like we were with this podcast.
Andrew: As usual, as usual.
News
Andrew: So let’s talk a little bit of news. Actually, the only news item we have this week is that J.K. Rowling has been back on Twitter recently. She’s trying to calm the public, and she’s trying to encourage everybody to stay indoors during this pandemic.
Micah: [whispers] She’s back.
Andrew: [laughs] And there have been a couple of interesting tweets. I was very alarmed when a Lord Voldemort account with 270,000 followers tweeted J.K. Rowling, “Stay safe, Jo.” She replied, “You too, Voldy.” Heart emoji.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Um… he’s the enemy!
Laura: Yeah, but she’s his creator.
Eric: Yeah, you always love your children, even the bad ones, right?
Andrew: And I guess she’s saying we all need to come together right now, put our differences aside. Who cares if he wants to kill half-bloods and Muggles? Doesn’t matter.
Eric: Right, right.
Laura: Well, he’s dead, so…
Andrew: Clearly not.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: He tweeted J.K. Rowling. I think she’s also confirming that Voldemort is alive after all.
Eric: Oh, gosh.
Andrew: I mean, we read the Cursed Child; he does come back. I think he came back again. Cursed Child part three.
Eric: It’s so fun to see, though, J.K. Rowling interact with one of these parody accounts, whether it’s Voldemort or Hagrid or Harry Potter himself or anything like that. Just seeing any artist interact with parody accounts of their own work is always a good time over on Twitter.
Andrew: She was tweeting pictures of her dog and her; that was cute. This tweet was kind of interesting: She said that she plays Mario Kart. I wouldn’t have pegged her for a Mario Kart player.
Eric: Yeah, this was awesome. Somebody asked her, “I’m completing a school project about you.” Or actually, it was a teacher, who said, “I’m using you for my sample project,” and she said, “Any little-known fun facts about yourself you won’t mind sharing?” And she said, “My favorite color is pink. I always play as Yoshi in Mario Kart.” And she’s just started rereading Catch-22, which she first read aged 22, and she got a tattoo last year. So she just outright gave these lesser-known facts. What matters the most to me is that she and I have the same taste in characters for Mario Kart.
Andrew: Interesting. I like playing as Mario himself, or Tanuki Mario.
Eric: Classic, classic Mario.
Andrew: She did say, “I got a tattoo last year, but not a Harry Potter tattoo. That would be ridiculous.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Why, Jo? I think you should.
Eric: Somebody asked her about that as a follow up, and she said, “It would be like getting my own face tattooed on me.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Like, “I have a face on my face; I don’t need it on my self.”
Laura: That’s fair. I wonder what this tattoo is of.
Eric: I know; now I’m really curious.
Andrew: Yeah, we need to know, Jo. But I mean, okay, but Eric has a MuggleCast tattoo. Is that the same thing or no?
Eric: Right, MuggleCast is our project. It’s what we created together, so it works for me.
Andrew: Yeah, but Harry Potter is her project.
Eric: Well, you know what she should do, is she should get the movie poster of Philosopher’s Stone, the first one, because that’s a project involving multiple people. So that should be tattooed.
Andrew: [laughs] Just a sleeve tattoo of Sorcerer’s Stone?
Eric: Yeah! Listeners at home, write in with what you think J.K. Rowling should get as her next tattoo. We’ll pick the winner and barrage her on Twitter and suggest it.
Micah: Do you think she can actually show it on social media?
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh my God.
Micah: Where she elected to get this tattoo?
Andrew: You think she may have gotten it on her booty?
Micah: Well, maybe slightly above.
Eric: God.
Laura: You think J.K. Rowling got a tramp stamp, Micah?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I want to know who J.K. Rowling’s tattoo artist is, because that person has got to have nerves of steel.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, you don’t want to screw up J.K. Rowling…
Laura: Yeah, you don’t want to mess up J.K. Rowling’s tattoo.
Eric: That’s true.
Andrew: She probably went to a celebrity tattoo artist. There must be trusted tattoo artists within the celebrity community, right?
Micah: I could see Tom Felton doing it.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Tom Felton doing J.K. Rowling’s tattoo. All right, I think it’s time to move on.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, but real quickly, knowing now that her favorite color is pink, it reminded me of Umbridge, of Professor Umbridge. Umbridge being a woman who wears pink ironically, and was based off a real person that J.K. Rowling once knew who wore pink to be extra feminine. And so J.K. Rowling liking pink is a huge – not stretch – a huge flex, I think, because she sort of lampooned the color previously.
Andrew: Right, yeah. Last week we mentioned that they were putting together some more Harry Potter at home initiatives. They haven’t announced any more of those, by the way, but maybe in the next week or two we will get to see what those are. But yeah, it looks like J.K. Rowling is back on Twitter for the time being. We’ll see how long she sticks around. Still not sharing any new Harry Potter information, really, by the way; I think she’s sworn off of that because she would just get attacked every time she was adding to canon on Twitter, which I liked and which was great for the show.
Micah: I think so. Why not? It gives her… she’s not doing anything else. Cormoran Strike 5, done. Fantastic Beasts 3 script, done. I mean, she could obviously hang out with her kids and her husband, but…
Laura: Yeah, but like, why?
Andrew: [laughs] When you can be on Twitter talking to strangers?
Micah: She could play Mario Kart online with the rest of us.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Laura: Exactly.
Micah: That’s what we need. We need her username, Andrew, so we can play with her.
Eric: Jo, give us your Nintendo Switch online account name.
Laura: Think about your priorities.
Andrew: Yeah, Jo, let me beat you in Mario Kart.
Laura: Do you think she’s playing Animal Crossing?
Andrew: Oh. I don’t know. I mean, she plays The Sims, and The Sims is similar to Animal Crossing, so I bet. Or she’s probably playing Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 or something, I would guess.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: That’s really the only place to play it, to be honest.
Andrew: Nah, the Switch one is great. Also Double Dash.
Micah: It is. But anyway, that actually makes me think, though, about the scripts for the fourth and fifth Fantastic Beasts movies. She has all this time now. She could just write these things, bang them out, and maybe the movies get made quicker as a result?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Maybe. Sounds like wishful thinking. I think they’re going to want to space the movies out two years apart, like they were trying to do initially.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: We do have one email this week. This is from Veronica.
“Hello, MuggleCasters! I’m a new listener. Started listening just before Christmas!”
Welcome to the show, Veronica.
“I wanted to comment on your recent discussions regarding Thestrals, specifically how Harry did not see them at the end of…”
Wait, what? G-O-… Goblet of…?
Micah: I think she just calls it GOF.
Andrew: Oh. [laughs]
Micah: I’ve never heard that before.
Andrew: “… at the end of GOF when leaving Hogwarts. I just finished reading GOF for the billionth time and wanted to share a line from the book with you. In the US paperback edition, on page 725, the ‘horseless carriages’ are mentioned. However, the point of could possibly be from Hermione and not Harry. The line reads, ‘Hermione turned away, smiling at the horseless carriages that were now trundling toward them up the drive, as Krum, looking surprised but gratified, signed a fragment of parchment for Ron.’ I’d like to propose a theory. Harry is waiting for the carriages to arrive and is talking to Krum. It is during this time that the carriages apparently arrive and the scene quickly changes and they are already on the train. Perhaps he did not ‘see’ the Thestrals because he was distracted by all of the commotion and conversation with Fleur and then Krum. Wonder what your thoughts are? Thanks for all of your work on the show! Stay healthy!”
Eric: Yeah, Rowling addressed this. This was why she had to say that death needs to “sink in” for people to be able to see Thestrals, because there was this error where she wrote that Harry didn’t see them in Goblet of Fire. So this was her… she since corrected to be like, “Well, even though Harry had seen Cedric die, he hadn’t really lived with it long enough to see a Thestral.”
Laura: Yeah, I do kind of like, though, that Veronica was thinking about ways to explain the error, like Harry is clearly preoccupied with other things in this scene. So while J.K. Rowling has explained to us why this is, I think this is a good reading. I like it.
Eric: Yeah, if he glimpsed, say, the backside of a carriage, it’d be like, “Oh, those are the horseless carriages,” without him noticing that there was somebody there in front of it, yeah.
Micah: Well, based on your explanation, though, too, Eric, maybe if he did turn and see, he would say, “Oh my God, why is there just a horse head sticking out of nowhere?” He’s only processed, like, half of what’s happened to Cedric.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Do you think that you see Thestrals incrementally? Like, partially?
Micah: Maybe.
Eric: I love that idea.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Okay, it’s time for Chapter by Chapter, and we are discussing the back half of Chapter 22 this week, “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.” And we will start with our seven-word summary.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Andrew: Harry…
Laura: … ventures…
Micah: … to…
Eric: … the…
Andrew: … hospital…
Laura: … with…
Micah: … family.
Laura: There we go.
Andrew: Best one yet. That gets an Outstanding.
Eric: Yeah, we’ll poll our Facebook patrons group about…
Andrew: Oh, they’ve been doing it themselves. We don’t even have to.
Micah: Oh, really?
Andrew: Yeah, in the Facebook group.
Micah: How have our grades been?
Eric: Poor. Think we got a couple of votes for Troll last couple weeks.
Laura: [laughs] Aw, they love judging us, guys.
Eric: This will set them right. Everybody can agree this was an outstanding seven-word summary.
Micah: This really was.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Eric: It’s interesting, Micah, that you should say that Harry ventures to the hospital with family, because as this chapter starts, Harry seems to be questioning how close he is to the Weasleys.
Micah: Yeah, but I think that is natural given what’s happened. This isn’t just a normal set of circumstances, is it? Harry feels directly responsible for this family grief.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, to view himself as… and Sirius. He’s looking across the room at Grimmauld Place and saying, “Me and Sirius are intruders on this family grief.” I’m thinking, but the Weasleys have done nothing but accept Harry from day one on the train platform with Molly helping him board the train, to coming to stay at the Burrow, being rescued from the Dursleys in Book 2… at least for three or four years now, Harry has been a surrogate child, and no more so than the beginning of this book when Molly is fighting Sirius for control over Harry. So I think it makes a little bit of sense, but Harry by now should feel like he can mourn with the Weasleys for Mr. Weasley being attacked.
Laura: But I think he’s also struggling with the feeling that he was the one who attacked Mr. Weasley at this point, and he’s feeling a great deal of guilt over it, and that’s got to be mixed up and painful and hard to deal with. Because on the one hand, it’s true that Mr. Weasley would have died if Harry hadn’t had the vision; on the other, Harry feels complicit in what happened to him.
Andrew: Right. Not to mention – and we didn’t discuss this last week – but the Weasley kids were suspicious of Harry when he was telling this story. They couldn’t help but feel like maybe he was involved in attacking Arthur, and that also makes Harry feel very insecure.
Eric: It certainly services the cliffhanger at the end of the chapter.
Micah: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say I think they have very good reason to feel somewhat suspicious when Harry is telling a story, given what we learn at the end of the chapter.
Eric: You know who’s not suspicious is Sirius Black. Harry actually is able to tell him what happened. They’re hiding in a cupboard or cabinet or something before breakfast; wherever they are, it’s dark. They don’t even turn on a light. Harry can barely see Sirius’s face. But he tells him everything that happened and Sirius is just like, “Ah, you’re tired. You should get some sleep.” And I’m wondering, why doesn’t Sirius take it a little bit more seriously?
Andrew: Well, is he just trying to…? He knows what’s going on, right? Or has a better sense of what’s going on than Harry does. He might have his guesses, at least, and he doesn’t want to scare Harry at this point, and probably, per Dumbledore’s orders, he doesn’t want to give Harry more information.
Eric: My take on it was that Sirius himself just never dealt with this kind of thing. Possession, not really in the wheelhouse. All the Marauders have extensive experience with whatever the heck makes the Marauder’s Map tick and turning yourself into an Animagus and all this other cool stuff, but this just seems to be out of Sirius’s element. I don’t think he properly respects the nuance that Harry saw something through another creature’s vision. Sirius unfortunately, even though he’s being godfatherly by telling Harry to rest and get sleep, he’ll feel better, and that’s all good, he doesn’t seem to really understand what could be at play here.
Micah: I tend to agree with that. I think that when you look at what he was able to do in terms of comforting the Weasley family initially when they arrive, and getting them to settle down and being more mature, versus this moment… Harry is just looking for answers, and I think this is just another example of him not being able to get them. He’s not able to get the answers he needs until he’s able to overhear the conversation at the end of this chapter, and I don’t necessarily know that that’s Sirius’s fault in this moment; I just don’t think that he’s… if he was talking to Lupin – Harry – in this moment, I feel like he might get some more insight into what could possibly be going on, and Lupin knows how to kind of cut those corners. But I actually don’t think Sirius knows from Dumbledore what’s happening. I think he’s intentionally kept out of the loop because he would just blab it all to Harry.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: He must have his suspicions, though.
Laura: Yeah, I just tend to agree that… and this is not a slight against Sirius; I know that this will probably rub some people the wrong way…
[Eric laughs]
Laura: … but I don’t think that Sirius would be fully equipped to have that kind of conversation. I agree that somebody like Lupin would be more capable of approaching something like that.
Eric: And Lupin knows Harry better from having taught him at Hogwarts. Having gone through the whole Patronus thing, like, “When I see Dementors, I hear my mother,” Lupin is already clued into some of Harry’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities in that way, so he’d probably be able to take it a little bit more seriously that Harry is feeling very vulnerable right now.
Micah: And to raise a red flag, I don’t know that Sirius is taking this information as seriously as he should be, and even though the conversation happened with Dumbledore and McGonagall present earlier, I just feel like Sirius is being way too dismissive. I don’t know if, after this conversation, he does go back, maybe, and talk with Molly or he talks with others, but he just seems to be very complacent with this information.
Andrew: Well, that’s why I think he’s trying to mislead Harry, but yeah.
Eric: Yeah, we’ll see. So it’s kind of touch and go. This is where we left off our discussion last week, with Molly entering and saying Mr. Weasley is okay. We recently did a bonus MuggleCast over on our Patreon about Arthur Weasley, the choice to keep him alive, to spare his life, basically; we know that J.K. Rowling, while writing this book, almost killed Mr. Weasley. But now that we’re on this chapter, I had a few extra questions to ask about, really, what would it look like in the book? This would presumably be the chapter where Molly comes in and says, “He’s gone.” Just how to view how that would change things for this book.
Andrew: To lose such a big character in the middle of the book would have seriously changed the dynamics of the rest of the book, because I can’t imagine the kids moving on from this for the rest of Order of the Phoenix.
Eric: Right?
Andrew: So I’m very glad that she didn’t kill Arthur for that reason alone. And I sound like David Yates or David Heyman talking about the adaptations when I say this, but the pacing.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It would have slowed down the pacing of this book, I think. And they did need a win, and this was a win. This was a feel-good moment in a much needed area when a lot of bad things are going on. And for Harry to have to deal with not only potentially being “possessed” by Voldemort, but to also have lost a father figure to him, and for the Weasleys to have lost their father, it just would have been so, so awful.
Laura: I think it would have further complicated the plot, too, just in terms of the Order of the Phoenix and their secrecy, and that could even trickle down to Dumbledore’s Army at Hogwarts, this idea that Mr. Weasley is murdered by some creature outside of the Department of Mysteries, and the kinds of questions that that would raise for the Ministry, like, “What was he doing there?”
Andrew: Right.
Laura: I don’t think that is something they would publicize. They talk about this in this chapter, that there’s no reporting on this because the Ministry does not want it out there that something like this happened on their premises, but I think that it would make them very suspicious, and given that so many of the Order members actually work at the Ministry, this could have put a lot more people in danger, too.
Eric: That’s a good point. And I wonder if it still would have happened at Christmas, or if she had decided that he was going to die, whether or not it would have happened closer towards the climax of the book.
Andrew: Right, yeah. That would have been so awkward for Arthur to die in the middle, and then you still have an entire half of a book to go through. [laughs] Like, put me out of my misery already.
Eric: [laughs] She’d have to write about every one of his kids’ grief.
Andrew: Yeah, for the rest of the book.
Eric: Yeah, so it would have just been untenable for him to die right now.
Andrew: And then Hermione would have been so jealous. Like, “Ugh, Harry, why couldn’t I have been the snake so I could have seen somebody die? And then I could have seen Thestrals.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: “I’m so jealous, Harry.”
Micah: Are you back on this Hermione serial killer kick now, Andrew?
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: I like what Laura said, though, and I don’t think it would have only impacted the Weasley/Order/Ministry storyline; I think it would have been a much quicker exposure for Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and I don’t know if J.K. Rowling was ready to do that at this point. Because if Nagini ends up killing Arthur, then that’s proof that something sinister is going on, and I think eventually it would have led back to Voldemort, given some of the other things that happen in this book – that have already happened in this book, actually. And I’m also wondering, too, how they would have celebrated Arthur’s life, because really, the big funeral scene is for Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince, and Sirius, the way that he’s killed at the end of the book, it’s quick, it’s clean, and that’s it, the book is over, and you don’t really get a chance to mourn for him. And I don’t really know that there would have been a big memorial for him there outside of the Order, who is there, versus the Weasley family, I feel like it’s probably a pretty big, extended group.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I guess that would have… at least we would have gotten one proper funeral this book. Sirius just goes through the veil and that’s it.
Eric: Yeah, there’s not even a body.
Andrew: An Arthur funeral would have been so sad. I mean, it probably would have happened at the Burrow, and Molly and all the Weasley kids would be crying, and Harry would feel guilty.
Eric: Do you think it would bring Percy back into the fold a little bit faster? Because doesn’t it take till…?
Andrew: Oooh, that’s an interesting question. Yeah, he would have been there, but it probably would have been awkward, I think. I don’t know if he would have had a change of heart in terms of who he’s loyal to at the moment.
Eric: It’s always so clever to see, though, that we believe that it was totally possible for Arthur to have died. It was real touch-and-go. She shows urgency in this chapter, but for the reasons that I think we’ve uncovered, it really would have ruined the book if he had died – in its current state with how it’s planned out.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: As such, it’s kind of clean and neat how Sirius exits. Harry does trash Dumbledore’s office, but it’s really only Harry that mourns him that we see. And it’s clean; it happens at the end of the book. She managed to present a emergency-level event here at Christmas and still do the back half of the book, which is really cool. I think it’s really good story-plotting.
Andrew: Yep.
Laura: Yeah, and I also just think that in terms of choosing Sirius to die as opposed to Arthur, I really think that Sirius plays out his arc in this book, and had he lived and been present for all or part of the rest of the series, there would only have been two options: It would have been Sirius remains on the run and therefore cooped up at Grimmauld Place or somewhere, and is super moody about it, or there has to be an arc clearing his name so that he can come out in the world and be involved in everything, which drastically changes the direction of the series.
Eric: Right. It’s true, yeah. I mean, as being a Sirius fan, I’d love to have seen what that would have looked like; maybe Fudge himself sees Peter Pettigrew at the end of the book instead of Voldemort, and is forced, therefore, to clear Sirius Black of all charges, and what that looks like for the government. But yeah, I guess we’ll never know.
Micah: This was also just a further reality check for us as readers as to how dangerous things really are at this time, and I think also for the characters as well, to have Arthur experience this near-death moment, and to know that it could have easily gone the other way. It just shows how dangerous times are right now, and I think that was the point that J.K. Rowling was trying to get across, that any of these characters could go at a moment’s notice.
Andrew: So Arthur does live, and it’s time to go see him at St. Mungo’s, and this is our introduction to this wizarding hospital. It’s located at the front of a shuttered department store called Purge and Dowse Ltd., which I think was one of our Quizzitch questions a couple of weeks ago.
Micah: It definitely was. It’s a clever name for a storefront that allows you to get into a hospital, I thought, because of the words “purge” and “douse.”
Andrew: Purge your germs. Douse your germs? Purge yourself of your illness?
Micah: I mean, when you think about maybe dousing a cut… to your point, purging yourself of germs or an illness. I just… J.K. Rowling, ladies and gentlemen.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: It’s a good joke. To our point that we were just making about J.K. Rowling really conveying the seriousness, here’s a book about a boy going to a wizard school, and there’s not just one, but several chapters set at a hospital. This is getting very real all of a sudden. And it’s funny because Mad-Eye Moody and Tonks, who are along with them on this journey to the hospital – presumably for a little beefed up extra security – Moody gives Harry a backstory of how they found this building. It’s in the center of London on a bustling Muggle street, and you see all these Christmas shoppers going by, not really paying attention to this dilapidated storefront.
Andrew: And this is the part I can’t really believe. So you enter the hospital by walking through this glass after talking to this dummy in the window, and nobody pays any attention to this building, so that’s why they can just walk through the glass and nobody notices. I don’t really believe that, but okay, I’ll suspend my disbelief for this moment.
Laura: I mean, it’s the same principle as Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
Andrew: Right, yeah.
Eric: And the Leaky Cauldron as well.
Micah: And Grimmauld Place.
Andrew: Well, Jo’s taken this too far, then.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Come up with another way. I like the entrance to the Ministry, through the toilet.
Eric: Yeah, I agree. And I think this is obviously the Muggle entrance. There’s probably a way to Floo Powder into Mungo’s, but this is the public entrance.
Micah: That’s actually a really great transition, Andrew, when you were saying that you could flush yourself down to the Ministry, because Moody actually makes a comment about how the hospital couldn’t be underground like the Ministry because it’s just unhealthy.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: And I thought that this was a subtle indictment on the part of J.K. Rowling about politics in general just being unhealthy, and that’s why they’re underground. Also why you flush yourself down the toilet to get there.
Laura: Yep.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, that’s just being a civil servant. But yeah, I think that the hospital, it being important that it’s above ground, also speaks to – I want to say ancient, but not really that ancient – recent historical remedies of getting fresh air, right?
Andrew: Right.
Eric: People a hundred years ago, if they were diagnosed with tuberculosis, were sent to live by the sea because of fresh air, and it has some benefits; there’s some documentation of that actually improving the symptoms. So the hospital being above ground means they can open a window.
Andrew: Yeah, and I mean, who wants to be trapped underground? The Ministry does have those fake windows, but then you have to deal with these people who are in control of the weather.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And that sucks, and we spoke about that earlier.
Micah: Yeah, you can’t piss them off, otherwise it’s going to be a hurricane.
Andrew: Yeah, for like, weeks.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: But yeah, I think… I like that they tried to build this above ground, and they didn’t bother putting it below ground. Health benefits aside, you would feel like they would figure out how to make it work underground; send some fresh air down there via pipes or more of these fake windows and have some air blowing through the fake windows.
Micah: What’s funny to me, though, is that MACUSA is above ground as a Ministry, and usually Americans have to follow in the footsteps of everybody else in terms of things like being more conscious of workplace benefits and… I don’t know, maybe that’s just my own personal feeling. But the fact that MACUSA had it right before the British Ministry did.
Andrew: MACUSA also had standing desks first.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: And treadmill desks, too.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. I’m glad you brought up MACUSA, because that effect is what I picture when they’re walking through the glass, the same effect of Tina taking Newt through the door.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. Right.
Eric: Where if you look in one door at something, but you actually go in the other one and all of a sudden it transforms into what you see. And I think it’s funny because David Yates was… his first film was the Order of the Phoenix adaptation, which famously omitted the hospital entirely, and yet he still gets to do a cool going-into-the-building shot later with MACUSA in Fantastic Beasts 1.
Micah: And while you’re on that point – I know I brought it up a little bit later on in the document – but do we feel like there’s a missed opportunity on the part of David Yates, David Heyman – I know, pacing, Andrew – but to not include St. Mungo’s?
Andrew: [imitating David Yates] “The pacing, the pacing.”
Micah: It’s a place that’s referenced throughout the entire series up until this point. You always hear about this person going to St. Mungo’s, that person going to St. Mungo’s. And you had a chance to create St. Mungo’s, and you didn’t.
Eric: Yeah, but they also created the Ministry in this movie, and the budget for those sets is just so grand.
Andrew: Yeah. The Ministry alone, I think, was a big one for them to tackle, and then they got Grimmauld Place… well, I mean, every movie has a lot of sets, but it’s probably just a time thing, too. They just didn’t want to introduce the hospital in this two hour and change movie. There just wasn’t time for it.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Eric: And the Department of Mysteries is in this book. I think they just asked Jo, “Will this ever really come up in the future?” And she could safely say at that point, “No.”
Andrew: Right. If the hospital played a pivotal role in Deathly Hallows, then maybe they introduce it here. Because didn’t she say, “Hey, you want to include Kreacher”? That was one she insisted on.
Micah: So the budget for St. Mungo’s went to Kreacher.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, doesn’t Kreacher look great?
Laura: Yeah, it’s why his model looks so good.
Eric: And St. Mungo’s is fantastic in the book because you get all the levels we’ll talk about. It’s a really wonderful back half of this chapter, which is partly why we’re separating it into two discussions, is because there’s a lot to talk about here. But the fifth film is so tight, and it manages to convey pretty much everything character-wise just by having an injured on the mend Mr. Weasley show up at Christmas dinner and raise a glass to Harry.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: And that one little moment, which takes place over 30 seconds, completely covers everything to do with the hospital, minus the Neville subplot for the rest of this book, so I thought it was really clever.
Micah: But isn’t one of those scenes actually deleted?
Eric: I’m not sure about that.
Andrew: We’d have to look it up.
Micah: I believe it’s a deleted scene.
Eric: In the hospital?
Micah: No, no, no, one of the Christmas scenes.
Eric: Oh, interesting.
Micah: But anyway. But I also don’t like hearing about budget, because you’re talking about the highest-grossing film franchise of all time – maybe not anymore, with Star Wars – but the point being they have money, okay?
Andrew: [laughs] I think it has to do with time.
Micah: I agree.
Andrew: But look, if we ever get a Harry Potter television adaptation, they’re going to have all the time and money in the world, and we can go to St. Mungo’s. And then they’re going to do a backdoor pilot, and we’re going to get a St. Mungo’s television series, like Grey’s Anatomy or Chicago Medical.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Those shows are hits.
Eric: They are hits. There was, I want to say, a miniseries about the Healers; it was a fan…
Andrew: I think you’re right.
Eric: … yeah, which was so cool, and I’m pretty sure it should be available by now, streaming. I think it was a couple years ago I heard that they were funding for it. But yeah, so there’s a lot here in St. Mungo’s, and that’s the kind of thing I think a television series – to your point, Andrew – would really relish being able to do, because there’s all sorts of people. Harry is on a quest; they’re going to see Mr. Weasley, but there’s all sorts of people that are just injured that are in the waiting area and in the lobby, not sure where to go. There’s a man whose shoes are eating his feet and he can’t help but dance around. There’s a woman who is behaving like a tea kettle.
Andrew: The cool thing about St. Mungo’s and visiting it is it shows us everything that can go wrong, and when we touch on the departments in a couple of minutes, it really breaks down just how many issues come up with magic. But to talk about Mungo’s in general, since this is our initial introduction to the hospital in the Harry Potter books, we had a couple of other questions. First of all – and I think these two are pretty related – how is it funded? And do wizards have health insurance? These are things that J.K. Rowling never actually talks about. Presumably, it’s funded by taxpayers; now, we know we never… I don’t think J.K. Rowling has ever said if wizards pay taxes, but you would think so, because this money’s got to come from somewhere.
Laura: Yeah, I feel like this is probably intended to be similar to the British National Health Service. I mean, she’s probably basing it off of the Muggle equivalent.
Andrew: And for us dumb Americans, what is so great about the National Health Service?
Laura: Oh, I’m not super well versed on it, [laughs] but effectively, people pay taxes and then they don’t have to pay out the nose to go to the doctor.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. That’s the bottom line.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Something we’d love to see in America, maybe.
Eric: Well, but we know that Lucius Malfoy also funds St. Mungo’s, or contributes to the Community Chest for St. Mungo’s Hospital, and that kind of has a…
Micah: What a guy.
Eric: Yeah, there’s kind of a little weird connotation there about what a current and active Death Eater being one of the main – or the only – people that we know that is giving money to this institution.
Andrew: So St. Mungo’s has a Patreon, kind of?
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Micah: Well, yeah, the Fountain of Magical Brethren.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Laura: Yeah, most hospitals do. I mean, hospitals have donors.
Andrew: Right, right. Yeah, and then you get your name in a brick or something like that.
Laura: Right, you get a medical building named after you.
Andrew: Yeah, or a MuggleCast mug.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Various benefits.
Micah: Don’t forget, Harry donates at the beginning of this book.
Eric: Oh, yeah. That’s right. He says, “If I get out of this hearing, I’m going to chuck a Galleon or whatever into the…”
Micah: He empties his whole bag, though, doesn’t he?
Eric: Oh, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right. He does. So it’s very doctor’s office-y, kind of. There’s people reading old magazines, old copies of Witch Weekly. But the one thing that kind of follows the thread of Lucius Malfoy donating to the hospital is security at this hospital is kind of a joke. There’s not a formal check-in process.
Micah: Uh-oh, Andrew.
Eric: I know, Andrew, prep the clip. But there’s not a formal check-in process. There is a main desk, but it’s a disinterested blonde witch. There’s a giant sign telling you where you need to go, and she will kind of tell you if you’re still confused, but there’s… Harry did not need to say his name. The Weasleys didn’t need to check in. It’s not like the Ministry, where you need a badge to get you through. They can presumably… they’re told just to go to the floor that they need based on their ailment and show up.
Andrew: This is outrageous! This sounds like a…
[“It’s starting to sound like a security nightmare!” sound effect plays with sirens]
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: I got mad that time.
Micah: You really did.
Eric: [laughs] You really did! But Bode… I mean, Harry bumps into the would-be murderer of Bode in this lobby; he’s just going up to… he’s asking what ward he’s… I mean, this is a nightmare.
Andrew: Maybe there’s some underlying magic that’s keeping everybody in check. But yeah, it does sound like it’s another security nightmare! It’s just a thread of the series.
Eric: Yeah, and I wonder how much of it… I mean, at Hogwarts, I tend to think a lot of the security issues are for humor or strictly because of plot, but in this case, it might represent something a little bit more akin to innocence of the government, right? They don’t… because nobody’s been assassinated in the hospital wing before, presumably, that they don’t know to expect it, which is poor planning in terms of whoever’s running security. All the Aurors should know better. But yeah, also, we know from a future chapter that Gilderoy Lockhart is in here still, and wouldn’t people just be able to come and visit him without…? Wouldn’t he get mobbed, basically, if word ever got out? Because there’s no security; there’s no door person or anything else.
Andrew: Well, maybe there is, because he’s not getting mobbed.
Eric: Yeah. So pretty interesting stuff.
Micah: I don’t know how the National Health System really works in the UK, but to me, this just sounds like an overcrowded emergency room or an overcrowded arrival area, which isn’t uncommon here in the United States, where you just have people waiting around to see doctors.
Laura: Yeah, I don’t think it’s uncommon anywhere, to be honest with you, because I’ve also lived in… I didn’t live in the UK, but I lived in a country that had an equivalent of the National Health Service, and even though you had great doctors and you didn’t have to pay crazy amounts of money to see the doctor, you still had to wait. [laughs] It’s every emergency room scenario that you imagine, where you walk in and there’s people with various ailments just sitting there waiting to see the doctor.
Micah: Yeah, and so that begs the question, is this really the visitor’s entrance, or is this the emergency entrance? And are they the same?
Eric: Yeah. I mean, they didn’t make Arthur Weasley stand in line here.
Micah: Yeah, where did he go when he came? He didn’t come through the window, did he?
Eric: Well…
Andrew: Maybe they Portkeyed him or something, straight to where he needed to go.
Eric: [laughs] Oh, God, a Portkey would make it worse. Can you imagine being tugged in your belly when you have broken ribs?
Andrew: Probably not a good way to bring him in. How about those Healers, though? We don’t see any of the characters in Cursed Child go on to become Healers, so one wonders how they do become Healers. I mean, we don’t… there’s really no physical education class in Hogwarts to learn about the body.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: You don’t once see Madam Pomfrey taking on an assistant or an intern. It would be cool if there were interns that were out of Hogwarts but went back to Hogwarts to intern for Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing, and you’d get a sense that there’s some kind of tertiary education for Healers.
Andrew: But you did spot an assistant of sorts, Laura?
Laura: Yeah, so there is a Trainee Healer that’s mentioned in this chapter – I don’t have their name – but it’s on the ward that Mr. Weasley is in. There’s a plaque that shows who the Healer on call is, and then it also references a Trainee Healer who’s working with that person. So I’m guessing it’s some kind of apprenticeship program that gets people up to speed on this.
Andrew: Yeah, and we’ll learn more about this in the spinoff series.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Let’s talk about the departments at St. Mungo’s. So we have the ground floor, “Artifact Accidents.” Cauldron explosion, wand backfiring, and broom crashes. First floor, “Creature-Induced Injuries,” like bites, stings, burns, embedded spines. [shudders] God.
Laura: How does that happen? [laughs]
Andrew: What does that mean? Like, your spine is…?
Micah: What creature does that?
Andrew: What does that mean? A spine is twisted in a knot or something?
Eric: It must be common enough, because it’s one of the four categories of this whole floor. [laughs]
Andrew: I’m going to Google it and probably regret this.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: I see a lot of cactus in this image search for some reason. All right, moving on. Second floor, “Magical Bugs.” Contagious maladies like Dragon Pox, Vanishing Sickness, and Scrofungulus. Sounds fabulous.
Micah: Sounds delicious.
Eric: I’m fascinated by Vanishing Sickness.
Laura: Yeah, me too. [laughs]
Andrew: What would that be like?
Eric: Like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, where you’re just slowly untethering from existence?
Andrew: Oh, you feel sick from… I see, yeah.
Eric: Something like that.
Andrew: Third floor is “Potion and Plant Poisoning,” like rashes, regurgitation, uncontrollable giggling. [laughs] So when that… Gillywater, is it called?
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, when that gets out of control, I guess? The fourth floor, “Spell Damage.” Unliftable jinxes, hexes, and incorrectly applied charms. And finally, the fifth floor is the visitors’ tea room and hospital shop, so you can get a T-shirt to remember your visit. Exit through the gift shop, please.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Where are the Mungo’s mugs and shirts and hoodies and backpacks in the theme parks?
Andrew: Well, luckily, nobody needs to go through the hospital there. Nobody’s flown off of Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure yet, so they don’t need the hospital.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Isn’t it weird you have to go all the way to the top to get to the rest area?
Andrew: Yeah, it seems kind of backwards. I don’t know if the Wizarding World theme parks need a hospital land, because the parks are supposed to be escape from the bad things.
Eric: Well, it just… I was joking that they go above and beyond to do the travel agency of the wizarding world, and Hogwarts Railways has its own brand logo, and you know that’s not a thing because the Hogwarts Express only goes one place, but they do it anyway. So I’m like, “Well, they missed a merch opportunity.”
Micah: So does Globus Mundi, right?
Andrew: Globus Mundi, yeah, that travel agency.
Micah: And we don’t even know what that is.
Andrew: It’s in the park. We don’t know why they bothered with all this Globus Mundi. I bought a hoodie just to be on the cutting edge, but kind of regretting buying that because it serves no purpose.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: We thought it might have to do with Fantastic Beasts, but it didn’t.
Eric: Well, not yet. You would think that J.K. Rowling, who came up with the logo – it’s a wand and a bone intercrossed – she’s given them pretty much all you could hope for in having a logo to come up with to put on merchandise, and they haven’t done it yet. So who knows?
Micah: Well, WB, if you’re listening – Universal, if you’re listening – pay Eric some royalties.
Laura: We would like a 10% cut, please.
Eric: Of all St. Mungo’s merch.
Andrew: If we were wizards and witches, which floor do we think we would end up on, inevitably?
Laura: Oh, definitely the third floor.
Andrew: Potion and Plant Poisoning?
Laura: Yeah, for the uncontrollable giggling.
Andrew: Aww.
Laura: I’d have too much Gillywater and just…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I would probably crash my broom a lot.
Andrew: Yeah. I lack patience, so I would probably mess up spells quite often, because I feel like they take focus and they’re very delicate to perform, so I feel like I’d be screwing them up a lot. So I would end up on maybe the fourth floor, the Spell Damage floor.
Micah: For me… well, I kind of agree with Eric with the broom crashing. I don’t know how good I would be at that. Took me a while to learn to ride my bike, so I can only imagine what a broom would be like.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. I would be in traffic court for broomsticks. I know that’s not St. Mungo’s, but I’ve been to real traffic court, [laughs] so I just know that from a broomstick perspective, I’d be in the same place.
Andrew: We know that you love wearing your Hogwarts robes. Do you ever walk around with a broom as well?
Eric: I don’t. You know, no broom has given me the sufficient lift that I crave.
Andrew: Why don’t you try that vibrating broom that they used to sell?
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Those are, like, three feet tall, flat. I will say, Micah, you and I at LeakyCon came across Peter, the Potter Collector, and he had the new… I think it was… was it a Firebolt or a Nimbus broom? And it looked real snazzy.
Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: [laughs] I’m on eBay. You can buy a new-in-box Harry Potter vibrating broomstick. On the box, it says, “Jump on broom. Fly me.” This little kid riding it.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I don’t think you’d want a used version of that.
Eric: No.
Laura: Who thought that was a good idea?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: The broom that Peter had was the first broom that I said, “I actually want this.”
Andrew: Just a reminder, my birthday is coming up in about two months, and I would love an unopened vibrating broomstick.
Laura: Okay, we’ll bear it in mind.
Eric: How much is it on eBay?
Andrew: $120.
Laura: Yeah, we could split that three ways.
Eric: Ehh…
Micah: All right.
Andrew: You can use the MuggleCast debit card, maybe, too. I can do a review of it.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Yeah, but…
Laura: I don’t know. Maybe that should be for…
Micah: Can you put that on social media? I don’t think so.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I think that review should go on Millennial. I don’t think it would be appropriate for this show.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Tend to agree there. Let’s talk a little bit about Broderick Bode. I know, Eric, you mentioned him earlier, but he has a visitor that just works his way right past the inquiry witch, and there’s no security, to your point. And this is a little just drop, a little bit of a mention on the part of J.K. Rowling about somebody going to visit him, and we obviously learn later that he’s murdered while at St. Mungo’s, and we know that he, of course, is in this position to begin with because he was Imperiused by Death Eaters. So it’s just really disconcerting, because what if that person wanted to go visit Arthur?
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And don’t they do it with a plant? It’s like, a secret Venomous Tentacular, something like that? And it’s just… and so some Healer is just like, “Oh, it’s a potted plant. That’s cute; you brought your person flowers. We’ll put it by his bedside,” and then it’s a perfect cover story because in the middle of the night, it just strangles him, and you’re just like, “Oh, crap.” It just goes to show that they’re completely unprepared. They don’t take security seriously.
Micah: Well, not only that, I mean… and I don’t know that we ever learn who this person actually is that drops off the plant; could be totally wrong. But it’s mentioned that they have a trumpeted ear, or an ear trumpet; I forget exactly how it’s described. But shame on Moody, Tonks, as Aurors, that this person is literally standing right next to Harry, and they have absolutely no clue either. So I think the Order is a security nightmare, to be honest with you.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Let’s start awarding security nightmare points to various characters and places.
Andrew: [laughs] Well, if we reboot Chapter by Chapter, we can just keep a tally of all the security nightmares across the entire wizarding world.
Eric: Oh my God.
Micah: When we finally do go see Arthur, it’s mentioned that he’s in the Dai Llewellyn ward, and “Dangerous” Dai Llewellyn was a very famous Welsh wizard and Quidditch player for the Caerphilly – hopefully that’s how you say it – Catapults, and was noted for the risks he took during a match. Now, despite all these risks, that’s not how he ended up tragically passing. He died when he was eaten by a chimaera while on holiday in Greece, and his death resulted in a day of national mourning for all Welsh witches and wizards.
Eric: [laughs] So they’re going to the ward for serious bites, and Dai Llewellyn, this famous Quidditch player, was eaten alive by a chimaera. Pretty sick, but completely fitting with Jo’s humor. And here’s something else: So that bio, I’m pretty sure, actually comes across in Quidditch Through the Ages.
Micah: It does.
Eric: That book that J.K. Rowling wrote in 2000 for Comic Relief, and here is one of the very few references to J.K. Rowling’s other collected works in a regular, main Harry Potter book, and I flippin’ love it. I can’t get enough of this inter-connectivity.
Micah: And Laura touched on this earlier when she mentioned Healer-in-Charge; the name of the Healer-in-Charge is Hippocrates Smethwyck, and I just thought this was a nice name origin on the part of J.K. Rowling, given that Hippocrates is considered to be the father of modern medicine. So Arthur Weasley is in good hands if the first name of this Healer-in-Charge is any indication.
Laura: It’s just classic JKR.
Andrew: Arthur’s wounds, we learn, won’t close up due to the type of snake bite that he has, so he needs to stay in the hospital a little bit longer, and they’re continuing to give him blood-replenishing meds.
Eric: Yeah, the thing here is I want to know why specifically the wounds won’t close. We get it; Nagini is an unknown species of snake, but I wondered, is the specific reason that the Healers of St. Mungo’s…? This is your first line of defense against pretty much anything out there. Why don’t the Healers find – or can’t they find – an antidote? Is it because Nagini is a special type of snake, either that she’s the only person we know who is living with a Horcrux willingly, that there’s some kind of Dark Magic or curse in her bite as a result of that, or is it because she’s a Maledictus as well? What exactly about it prevents the Healers from being able to see to Mr. Weasley completely?
Andrew: I think it’s a hint that this is a big threat for Harry. I think that’s just J.K. Rowling’s implication. And like you said, this is a unique creature that they haven’t had to deal with before.
Micah: I thought that when Dumbledore sent away Fawkes earlier in the chapter that was going to be to come cure Mr. Weasley…
Eric: Ohh.
Micah: … because Fawkes has a history of healing snake bites.
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Oh my God! That’s a huge plot hole, actually.
Laura: Yeah, come on, Dumbledore.
Andrew: You see this phoenix fly into St. Mungo’s; maybe that would have been a little much?
Eric: It doesn’t even need to go to St. Mungo’s. It could go straight to the Ministry and just cry on Arthur.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: And it doesn’t need to fly into St. Mungo’s. It can Apparate, right? Just appear.
Micah: To spy on Umbridge.
Andrew: Well, I mean, the presence of a phoenix in St. Mungo’s would have been a little odd. Maybe if they couldn’t have patched him up after a couple weeks.
Eric: Wait, why don’t they just have a team of phoenixes as Healers at St. Mungo’s, and they just cry on the wounds and heal everybody?
Andrew: There you go.
Eric: This is a huge plot hole.
Laura: Well, I think they’re incredibly rare, so I don’t know if they could have a team of them.
Andrew: Breed ’em. I know a guy in Oklahoma who may be up for the task.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Laura: I was going to say, Andrew, you sounded like you were from my parts just then. [in a southern accent] “Breed ’em.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Wow.
Andrew: Joe Exotic, I think he can make some phoenixes.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Oh, man.
Andrew: Everybody – well, adults – please watch the new Netflix series, Tiger King. It’s the best thing I’ve ever watched.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: It’s pretty amazing. But I think as with anything now, with Nagini, we can look back with the knowledge that she is a Maledictus, but I don’t know that that necessarily, at the time J.K. Rowling was writing Order of the Phoenix, was factored into the equation. I think it’s more because she is a Horcrux and she’s carrying this Dark Magic inside of her, and kind of similar to how we’ve seen other Horcruxes, already with the diary, but now even more so as we head into Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, I just think they have this added effect, and that’s probably what was causing Mr. Weasley to not be able to heal up right away.
Andrew: Well, speaking of werewolves – we just mentioned them a couple minutes ago – Arthur has a werewolf neighbor.
Micah: I just found it highly coincidental that Arthur mentions that Bill was just in to see him and visit him at his bedside, and that he has this werewolf neighbor. Just… maybe not foreshadowing; that’s not the right term. But Bill just leaves. The werewolf gets mentioned. I don’t know.
Andrew: It’s a nice peek into all of the things that can go wrong in the wizarding world. And it’s kind of scary to know that somebody who was just bitten by a werewolf is in bed in the same room as you.
Eric: And threatening to bite you. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, he does it jokingly, right? But you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Laura: Yeah. Well, and we see Mrs. Weasley express some concern about this, being like, “Well, Arthur, is it safe for him to be in this room with you?” And I think that’s really interesting, given the fact that we’ve talked on the show before about how werewolves could be a representation of people who suffer from blood-born illnesses in the Muggle world, and how those people are so often socially shunned and discriminated against. And Molly is, of course, super well meaning, and it would never be her intention to discriminate against somebody, but I think this is an example of how fear can motivate people to say or do things that they might not necessarily agree with under normal circumstances.
Andrew: Yeah, agreed.
Eric: I just love that Arthur is pretty much being a Chatty Cathy. He loves it there. He’s reading the paper when they come in. He’s been talking to the werewolf, trying to cheer him up; didn’t really work, oops, oh well. He’s kind of really in his stride right now.
Andrew: Isn’t he being a Chatty Cathy to keep the kids from asking him what happened and where he was, exactly? Because he’s refusing to tell his kids. The kids are trying to find out. Harry really isn’t pressing it because, well, he lived it. He’s not answering their questions, and it’s a little disturbing if you’re a child and you want to avoid the same fate. I mean, for all they know, Arthur was just out gardening and a snake attacked him.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: It’s a pretty big snake.
Andrew: Yeah! Well, and so you should tell your kids… I don’t know. I get why he’s not telling the kids, but at the same time, if this was my dad and he had just been attacked, I would want to know everything, and I feel like I would deserve to know everything.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And the twins are the ones that really push it, and it reminds me of scenes in the movies with Arthur where he is trying to give information but then he gets the eye from Molly, and so he pulls back and goes in a different direction, and I feel like there was a lot of that. And I know… I think it’s Fred who ultimately pushes to the point of saying, “Were you guarding the thing that he’s after?” And that was just kind of end of conversation right there.
Andrew: So Arthur does happily bring up the case of the regurgitating toilets, which are brought up earlier in this book, and it turns out it was Willy Widdershins. I believe we had spoiled that earlier in our Chapter by Chapter series; sorry for anybody who wanted to… was in suspense. [laughs] But yeah, so Arthur is just trying to steer the conversation away and talk about Muggle things like toilets.
Micah: Yeah. And not only that, I mean, I think Willy is responsible for some doorknobs that have bit people, and those people are in St. Mungo’s, Muggles. And I just love how despite everything that’s going on, Arthur is over the moon about Muggles being in St. Mungo’s, and he wants to meet them.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: He literally wants to get out of bed and go and find them and just kick it and have a conversation with them. It’s amazing.
Laura: I mean, they’re going to have their memories wiped, right? So who cares?
Andrew: So the kids are kicked out of the room, and the adults have a talk with Arthur, and of course, the twins set up the Extendable Ears to tune in to the conversation. And Moody floats the idea that Harry might be possessed by Voldemort, and that’s where the chapter ends. Very terrifying, and it probably checks out for Harry, because he just saw through Voldemort’s snake.
Laura: Yeah, and he’s having to hear this alongside his friends who are hearing it, too, and he rips the Extendable Ear out as though that’s going to stop everybody from hearing what’s going on. This is such a cliffhanger.
Andrew: And of course, not entirely accurate, so at least there’s that. But at the moment for the reader, it’s pretty terrifying.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And the fact that Moody says that “We’ve always known the Potter kid is a little off.”
Andrew: Ouch.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Dude. First off, look in the mirror, bro.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Secondly, you have a magical eye and you don’t see these Extendable Ears?
Andrew: I guess he’s just not looking that way.
Eric: Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s happy to insult Harry to his face right through the door. [laughs]
Micah: I think he’s still loving that bowler hat that he was wearing to St. Mungo’s earlier on in the chapter, and it’s just still tilted over the eye so he can’t see anything.
Laura: Yeah, you know what? I think it just makes him feel sassy, too.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Sassy Mad-Eye.
Andrew: Was it irresponsible of Arthur to not have a talk with Harry after this? Because he doesn’t, as far as we can remember. I just… Harry deserves an explanation here.
Eric: But Arthur doesn’t have the info, really, to be able to give the explanation, right? It’s really Dumbledore who’s the only person who can explain what’s going on, Dumbledore who’s working behind the scenes with a cover story to explain why Arthur was down there, and Dumbledore waits till after Christmas break to bring in Occlumency and tell Harry, “This is what we need to do moving forward.” Dumbledore, should, I think, have made an appearance trying to explain things a little sooner than he does.
Micah: Agree.
Andrew: I just really feel like Harry is owed some extra information at this point. Sit in on that little adult chat; let him do that, at least, but just leave out the part where Harry might be possessed by Voldemort. I don’t know. He’s owed some information here. It’s really unfair.
Micah: I’m actually surprised that Harry is willing to do the Extendable Ears in this situation. I don’t know if it’s a bit of… I know it says he grins when he learns that he’s actually going to be a part of it, because it seems like Fred and George are cool with him now; I don’t know that they ever weren’t, but at least in his mind, there was some hesitation there. I’m just surprised that… I mean, what does he think he’s going to overhear? What does he think that is going to be said? I mean, it’s almost expected, for the most part, how this conversation plays out given what we know as readers, so I’m just surprised that Harry allows this to happen, because it just seemed like a foregone conclusion that they were going to hear that Harry was inside the snake when it happened.
Laura: Maybe he thought that they were going to give more details about what Mr. Weasley was doing.
Andrew: Yeah, where he was.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: These are all adults that he, for the most part, trusts. I don’t know if I would say he trusts Mad-Eye; I think he’s afraid of him. But I don’t think that he imagines that, in a conversation between the adults in his life about him, that something like, “Well, we always knew there was something off about the Potter kid…” I don’t think he imagined that being said.
Micah: And not only that; we learn that Molly had a conversation with Dumbledore that morning about him. I just… to me, for him to have to hear all of this, on top of the fact that it’s going to be revealed that he was in Nagini’s head, mind, whatever when this all happened, it’s a lot to take on, because he still feels isolated by these very people that are in this room having this conversation, because Dumbledore won’t man up and have a conversation with him. I don’t know.
Andrew: It’s not that he has to man up. He’s trying to keep his distance so Voldemort doesn’t know, right? We spoke about that last week.
Micah: Yeah, but again, Harry is 15. He’s a kid.
Andrew: I know. It’s unfair, Micah. I agree.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: But this is just the cards that we’ve been dealt.
Micah: Yeah, that is fair. That is true. I just feel like Harry probably has the biggest knot in his stomach at the end of this chapter. And one thing, though, I did want to go back to the beginning of this part of the chapter, because I thought that it was… you were talking about Moody just before and how Harry is afraid of him, and I think it’s quite the opposite with Tonks, despite the fact that he doesn’t want to have a conversation with her at the time about what happened. She asks him, “Do you have any Seer blood in your family?” But then she says that basically, the experience that he had could be very helpful, and I thought that was just, again, a nice little nugget on the part of J.K. Rowling to show how while Voldemort obviously takes advantage of this in this book, Harry’s ability to connect with Voldemort on this level does prove very helpful by the end of the series.
Eric: Yeah, Tonks kind of… again, it’s probably just she’s so recently been off Auror training, but they probably teach you to use as much as you can to your advantage, even if it is a perceived complication or obstacle.
Andrew: All right, so the Umbridge Suck count remains unchanged at 49 because she makes no appearances in this half of the chapter.
Connecting the Threads
Laura: All right, well, that takes us to connecting the threads, and actually, I just thought… I have two here for this half of the chapter, but while we were just talking about Harry listening to a discussion being had about him in St. Mungo’s, it made me think of a third one.
Eric: Oh no.
Laura: Sorry, Eric.
Andrew: Oh, yes!
Micah: What do you mean, “Oh no”?
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Laura works very hard on this section every week.
Eric: I know, I know, I know, but do you mean the Three Broomsticks convo, Laura?
Laura: No?
Eric: Oh, you don’t? Because they’re talking about Harry being Sirius Black’s godson in the Three Broomsticks in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Laura: Oh. No, so that, I think, you could make a connection there. But I was thinking about this happening in a hospital and healthcare type setting. So actually, at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, after Harry, Hermione, and Sirius are attacked by the Dementors but before the Time-Turner sequence, Harry is lying unconscious in the hospital, and he comes to as he’s hearing Snape and Fudge talking about him. And Snape is talking… Snape is being very disparaging about Harry.
Eric: Yep.
Laura: And Fudge isn’t really doing much to quell any of what Snape is saying, other than to say, “Oh, well, we’ve always had a blind spot as far as the Potter boy is concerned.” So there’s this kind of implicit acknowledgement that, “Yeah, Harry is a little weird.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: And that’s what’s happening here. Nobody really confronts Mad-Eye and says, “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Everybody’s kind of like, “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” But I thought that was just a fun little connection. In terms of some other threads, we have the werewolf connection here, of course. So Arthur, to his roommate, is like, “You know, one of my best friends is a werewolf.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: And he doesn’t drop any names, but he’s using that connection to try and foster some kind of conversation with his roommate in order to show that he’s like, “I get it; I know what you’re going through.” And then contrastingly, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Snape, when he’s having to lecture on behalf of Lupin, lectures about werewolves, and also assigns the class an essay about werewolves in an effort to really try and drive the students to understand what Lupin is. So in both of these cases, Lupin’s identity is leveraged for some kind of gain; I think in Arthur’s case, it’s very innocent, but it’s leveraged nevertheless. And then we have Harry’s paranoia, especially as it relates to creatures. So in Prisoner of Azkaban over the course of the book, Harry is just becoming increasingly paranoid about his connection to the Grim and why this Grim keeps popping up, and why nobody else sees it, and what it means. And then in Order of the Phoenix, Harry has this very singular experience of viewing the attack on Mr. Weasley from the perspective of Nagini, which nobody else has seen, nobody else really quite understands, and it really serves to isolate him and further drive his paranoia about what his connection to this creature is, just like he did in Prisoner of Azkaban with the Grim.
Andrew: Yeah, interesting. Thank you for sharing those.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: Okay, it’s time for MVP of the Week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: I’m going to give mine to the different departments for really having it together at the hospital, so you walk in there and you know exactly where to go, and they can take care of the issues that you’re having. So good job, St. Mungo’s departments.
Eric: Yeah, I’m going to give it to Dilys Derwent. We saw her more in the first half of this chapter, but she gives Harry a little wink as he walks through the atrium, and she was responsible for alerting the Healers that made it in time to save Arthur’s life.
Micah: I’m going to give it to the inquiry witch. I know she got some shade thrown her way earlier on in this chapter discussion.
Eric: Yeah, she’s useless! [laughs]
Micah: No, she’s running point on all the traffic flow that is coming in through the emergency/visitors entrance, so kudos to you, inquiry witch.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Emergency/visitors. I’m going to give mine to George; it was his idea to pull out the Extendable Ears. He’s working on the pacing, you know? He’s pushing the story along.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: All right, and let’s rename the chapter now. Order of the Phoenix Chapter 22, “Part Two.”
Eric: [laughs] Very meta there, Andrew.
Andrew: Sorry.
Eric: Yeah, we did this twice now because we did it last week. But yeah, so instead of naming it the long title, “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries,” I just shortened it: “At Mungo’s.”
Andrew: I was actually… it’s funny you bring that up because I was just looking at the physical copy of Order of the Phoenix, and that chapter title barely fits in the header of this book.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: If it was two or three more words, they would have had to reformat this entire book to make that chapter title fit. It’s got to be one of the longest ones in the series.
Micah: Yeah, definitely. I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 22, “Bad Eye, Moody.”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: He misses the Death Eater and he misses the Extendable Ears.
Eric: Oh, man.
Andrew: Some eye.
Micah: Should have been Bad-Eye Doody.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Useless. Security nightmare. I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 22, “Magicare for all.”
Eric: Aww.
Micah: Love it.
Andrew: [in a booming voice] “Magicare for all! Vote for me!”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: If you have any feedback about today’s discussion, or you have a question about Chapter 23 of Order of the Phoenix, send it on in; MuggleCast@gmail.com, or you can use the contact form on MuggleCast.com. You can also send us a voice memo. Please do that; we love hearing from you. Just record a message using the Voice Memo app that’s already built into your phone and then email that file to MuggleCast@gmail.com. Just try to record in a quiet place and keep your message about 60 seconds long. No longer than that, please.
Micah: Now, am I wrong, or is the next chapter the Lockhart/Longbottom at St. Mungo’s piece?
Laura: Yes, I believe so.
Micah: That’s the real interesting part about St. Mungo’s. In my opinion, anyway.
Andrew: Okay.
Micah: But this discussion was great. I’m not trying to… anyway.
Andrew: It was fun.
Micah: Quizzitch.
Quizzitch
Andrew: It’s time for Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: What color robes do the Healers of St. Mungo’s wear? Well, as of this chapter, it turns out they’re lime green. Correct answers were submitted by Arrogant Luck, Megan, Viyana, Sarah Russe, Caleb, Samwise, Jenny Beez, Cassie Drake, Catherine Jones, Terri Gan, Kate Young, and Meg writes in and says the robes are “as lime green as Billy Eilish’s hair.”
Andrew: [laughs] It’s just become a big trend. Everybody’s going with that look now; I see it out on the streets.
Eric: Yeah, I saw it in a Snapchat filter the other day.
Andrew: Wow. Who needs to color your hair when you could just use the Snapchat filter?
Eric: Right? So much cheaper.
Andrew: Looking at you, Laura.
[silence]
Andrew: Laura went to the bathroom.
Laura: I did not. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh.
Eric: Salons are closed anyway, so it’s probably for the best.
Andrew: There you go. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah, exactly.
Micah: Just say, “Evanesco.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, man.
Micah: It’s all gone, right?
Laura: Yep.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Micah: Anyway.
Eric: So next week’s question…
Micah: Speaking of gifts.
Eric: What does Harry get Ron for Christmas in year five? Going to find out next chapter.
Andrew: Do you follow us on social media? We are @MuggleCast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Not only do you get show previews, show clips, fun Harry Potter content that we find online, but you will also be notified about future live events that we do for the public, including those Quizzitch Live matches that we hope to do more of in the weeks and months ahead. That was just so much fun, and it was just so different from what we normally do. We’ve got to do that again in the future, so we will. We would also love your support at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We’ve gotten a lot of new patrons recently, and it makes us feel so good, and we’re having fun recording personalized messages to each of you as you pledge. So visit Patreon.com/MuggleCast, and once you pledge and you pledge at that Dumbledore’s Army level or higher, you will have access to years of bonus MuggleCast and all kinds of other bonus content. If you can’t pledge at the Dumbledore’s Army level, there is a lower level, and that will get you access to our livestreams. Thanks, everybody who is tuned in right now listening to this unfiltered, unedited version of the show. It’s a lot of fun, because you get to hear us trying to make it through an episode, [laughs] and the bloopers that come along with that, and our pre-show banter and our post-show banter, and there’s a little chatroom so you can chat with fellow listeners and us as we are recording. So no matter…
Micah: Andrew, you sound like my Bonjoro video.
Andrew: Oh, nice. I’ll have to tune in to some of those, those personalized videos that you’re recording for our patrons. So thanks again. Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We really appreciate your support. And that does it for this week’s episode of MuggleCast. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.