Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #474, There’s Something About Harry (OOTP 37, The Lost Prophecy)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the Wizarding World fandom. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: We will discuss the penultimate chapter of Order of the Phoenix this week, and we also have some Muggle Mail to get to. But first, some news!
News
Andrew: The Sorcerer’s Stone chapter readings are now wrapped up. This quarantine gift has ended, and the final chapters were read by Claudia Kim and Dakota Fanning; they read “The Forbidden Forest.” And then for the final chapter, they had three families from London, Bellfast, and Brooklyn read the final chapter, “The Man with Two Faces,” and the author herself read a few of the final pages, as I predicted.
Micah: What I found so interesting about this, though, is that in the email blast that was sent out – I don’t know if they did the same thing on social media – they didn’t refer to the author by name. They just said “a surprise,” as if people wouldn’t guess who that was going to be.
Andrew: “A special surprise.”
Micah: But I did find it very interesting they did not use her name.
Andrew: I don’t know; they could have just wanted to keep it a surprise, genuinely. But so when I saw that, I just loaded up the video and I skipped to the end to find out who it was.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: I didn’t watch the whole thing. But that’s it; that’s all wrapped up now. Also, like we said last week – and this episode is going to be published to everybody the day we are doing this, so some people might still miss out – but we are having our next Quizzitch Live installment Tuesday night, July 21 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. That is the publication anniversary of the final Harry Potter book, so that’s why we’re doing it on Tuesday. And as you can imagine, this one is going to be Deathly Hallows trivia-themed, so tune in for that. Micah and Laura, you guys are working on the questions, right?
Laura: We are.
Andrew: You want to tease us? What can we expect?
Laura: Ooh.
Micah: What do you got, Laura?
Andrew: You guys haven’t started writing the questions, have you?
Micah: Don’t… excuse me.
Laura: Uh, yeah we have.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Brush up on your Horcruxes. Brush up on your Peverells.
Laura: Yep. Pay attention to the small moments.
Andrew: Oh.
Laura: But there are also some easy wins in there for folks. We’re not trying to screw anybody over.
Andrew: Okay, cool.
Micah: Like last time, the first round will be a very quick flash round. You’ll have I don’t know how many seconds to answer, but they’ll be rapid fire type of questions, and then we’ll get into the real tough stuff.
Andrew: Okay, cool. And if you miss the live event, you can rewatch it after the fact, so you can still play along. Check that out on MuggleCast.com; we’ll have it embedded there.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: Okay, it’s time for Muggle Mail.
Laura: All right, this first email comes from Sara. Sara says,
“Great work on the ‘Why J.K. Rowling is Wrong about Trans People’ episode. In listening to the end, I noted you are planning to discuss more about Harry Potter fans, and it got me thinking about how the fandom affected people being fans of other things. I know lots of people say that Harry Potter got them to be readers, but Harry Potter got me into being a big fan of something. I dove headfirst into Harry Potter, devouring the books, finding and listening to MuggleCast, discussing theories online, etc. That sprung me into being a bigger fan of my favorite hockey team (learning more about the players, history, etc.) and a huge Star Wars fan (fan theories, novels, etc.) The Harry Potter fandom was intoxicating to my young self and I came to crave that super-fan feeling from other areas, so now my adult self is probably a bigger general fan of things I like than maybe I would have been otherwise. Did anything like that happen to any of you? Would you credit the Harry Potter fandom for getting you into just being a fan?”
Andrew: Absolutely.
Laura: Heck yeah.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: For Laura and I, we really dived into the Twilight fandom as well.
Laura: We did, yeah.
Andrew: I mean, we were running a Twilight fansite, “Twilight Source.” We had a Twilight podcast. I think we were just very excited at the idea of another fandom being close to as big as the Harry Potter fandom. Now, the Twilight fandom kind of burned out quickly after the final movie was released, whereas Harry Potter stuck around longer, and I think that’s a testament to the quality of the core series. But yeah, for me, it was probably Twilight, and The Hunger Games too. I’m looking for the next big one. Where is it? I want to dive into a big fandom again.
Eric: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And just to reiterate what was already said, too, reading was a big deal for me after Harry Potter. I did read Twilight, Hunger Games, all that because I was… I guess Harry Potter decoded for me how a lengthy story with a new fictionalized world should be written. So yeah, it definitely got me into being a big fan of these other things. I will say, I was a fan of X-Men and The Mummy before Harry Potter, so those do predate, and I was on chatrooms and stuff about those. So I was a fan of stuff before I found Harry Potter, but Harry Potter set the bar real high and kept me thirsty for more.
Laura: I would agree with that.
Micah: Yeah, I agree with what everyone has said so far. And for me, I think it was just a gateway into the fantasy world. And I think about Game of Thrones – not necessarily a connection that most people would draw, between Harry Potter and Game of Thrones – but maybe it’s that natural progression from a more young series and then into a more – way more – adult series. Because I think about what did I read in that area before Harry Potter? And maybe it was The Hobbit, but I had to do that because it was for school, and I never read in full the Lord of the Rings series. So I would say Harry Potter was really a starting point for me. I’m interested to know what hockey team this is that Sara is talking about, that she became so passionate about.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: But that’s kind of a cool twist, because she went from reading to sports. But I’m always interested to hear about how Potter opened up the door just in general for people to be really passionate readers, no matter what it was about, what the books were about at the end of the day.
Andrew: But you and Eric also were a part of a Game of Thrones podcast. I thought you guys were going to bring that up.
Eric: That’s right.
Micah: Yeah, we were.
Andrew: I mean, Harry Potter, I think, led you to that, because you wouldn’t have been involved with that podcast otherwise, I think.
Eric: Well, and it’s so interesting to think of Game of Thrones as being a grownup Harry Potter. It predates Harry Potter by 20 years, or seven years, I guess. But the real excitement came from doing a fantasy series, at least for me, that contains sex and death as well.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: All right, let’s go!
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But yeah, well, and I was going to say the thing about that, too, that was so interesting is that you mentioned that the series started before Harry Potter. Harry Potter has now finished, and has been finished for over ten years, and yet we still don’t really know how the A Song of Ice and Fire series truly ends.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: We know how it ends on HBO, but we don’t know how it ends by George R.R. Martin.
Andrew: Right. And every once in a while he pops up with a new blog post. “I’m working on it, you guys. I am. I promise. Winds of Winter, coming soon.”
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Laura: Let’s just hope that however he ends it is more satisfying than the HBO ending.
Andrew: But yeah, that’s a great question, and maybe we can talk about that more in a future episode, because fandom has played a huge role in all of our lives.
Micah: That could be a whole episode. And when you said the podcast, too, Andrew, the reason why I brought up the books not being finished… it was kind of similar, in the sense that we could theorize about what would happen down the road, similar to what we did after Half-Blood Prince was released. All right, this next email comes from Brandon, who says,
“Re: not learning more about the Department of Mysteries, I agree this is a major bummer, and I was also convinced we were going to go back to the veil in later books. But I have come to think of the Department of Mysteries as a physical embodiment of deepest mysteries that all humans — wizard and Muggle — ponder. These include: death, time, love, the universe, fate, and consciousness. These are all the things that in the Muggle world I believe can never be fully understood. Therefore, I think we will never learn substantially more about their corresponding rooms in the Department of Mysteries, as that is J.K. Rowling’s way of reminding us of their ‘unknowability.’
I also believe the Department of Mysteries has a darker side: the militarization/weaponization of these ideas. This department is basically the science (‘magic’) research arm of the government, and in the Muggle world, this usually involves a mix of basic research and defense-oriented projects (I’m a biophysicist, but in academia). The brains in the brain room might help Unspeakables learn about consciousness, but they also do a lot of damage to Ron. The veil is described to be located at the center of an amphitheater. To me, this makes it likely an execution room, similar to, though likely older than, the execution room in MACUSA. In both rooms, people feel a calling to the dead, with Tina seeing images of her mother as a way to make the execution process more humane. I think the voices beyond the veil might serve a similar purpose. Thanks so much for what you do; hope you and all your families are safe.”
Micah: And that is from Brandon. Great email.
Andrew: That was a great email. Thank you, Brandon.
Eric: Yeah, I always forget about that execution scene in MACUSA, but I love the connection drawn here between that and the voices that Harry hears behind the veil.
Micah: I really liked his connection to what we don’t know in the real world, they also don’t know in the wizarding world, and so they need to study these things just like we do.
Andrew: Yeah, man. It’s about the journey.
Eric: [laughs] So we got another email from Jacob Z. He says,
“On your most recent episode, #473, Micah mentioned how Harry was chasing after ‘the one responsible for Sirius’s death,’ a.k.a. Bellatrix. This got me thinking: Bellatrix has committed a lot of crimes and fully deserves to be in Azkaban, but if she were tried specifically for the murder of Sirius, how would it pan out in the court of law?”
So I had this idea from Jacob’s email, and he bullet points a certain very few key points about the murder of Sirius Black by the crazy person, Bellatrix, and I thought it would be great to do a little segment on MuggleCast called Wizard Court, where we each take the side of somebody’s the defense, somebody’s the prosecutor, somebody’s the judge, and somebody’s the jury. And we’re just going to do a quick mock through, run through, using Jacob’s email as the defense for Bellatrix Lestrange.
Andrew: Okay.
Laura: All right, and I think you assigned me as the judge, Micah as the jury, and then yourself and Andrew as the defense and prosecution.
[Gavel sound effect plays]
Laura: We’re going to determine whether the defense or the prosecution goes first. Andrew, pick heads or tails.
Andrew: Heads.
Laura: Okay, I’m flipping a coin. All right, it is heads, so you, the defense, are going first.
Andrew: Yes! Okay, so Eric, you want me to just read his points, right?
Eric: Yeah, yeah, probably one at a time, and then I’ll rebut each time.
Andrew: Okay. All right, so point one – and again, this is from Jacob: “From what I can tell, Bellatrix does not hit Sirius with the Killing Curse, so in this sense, she does not ‘murder’ him.”
Eric: I mean, okay, if you toss a penny off a skyscraper and it hits somebody from way up high, sure, you didn’t intend to hit somebody, but it still hits somebody and it kills them. Bellatrix is culpable for Sirius’s death. Whether or not she hit him with the Killing Curse, the end result was his death.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay. Defense number two: “If she intended for her curse to cause Sirius to fall through the veil and ‘kill’ him, then she would seem to be fully guilty of the murder charge. But do we think Bellatrix knew about the veil and what would happen if Sirius fell through it? If yes, she seems guilty, but what if she didn’t know?”
Eric: I feel like the end result is the same. She has just murdered this other person in cold blood. She’s in the Death Room of the Ministry of Magic. How could she not know what the repercussions of her actions would be? Ignorance is not an excuse.
Laura: Um, stepping in here for a second. There is a difference between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, so I would like for the jury to disregard hypothetical points about what we think Bellatrix might have been thinking.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Of course, your honor.
[Eric sighs]
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: All right, and my final defense: “One could also consider whether Bellatrix was firing Killing Curses towards others prior to hitting Sirius. If she was generally aiming to kill people that night, this probably wouldn’t help her in court.”
Eric: Bellatrix is a loose cannon. She must be restrained. Why are we even trying her? She’s an escaped felon! She belongs in Azkaban. Why is she even here in this courthouse? We must seize her! [laughs]
Laura: Well, we must remember that she is on trial for the murder of Sirius Black. She is not on trial for any other offenses.
Eric: She’s a Death Eater! She supports the Dark Lord!
Laura: Do we put people in jail for supporting evil people?
[Eric sighs]
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: All right, jury, how do you feel?
Micah: So this is not the official verdict. This is just us talking right now?
Laura: Yeah, this is just us conferring.
Andrew: Yeah, you guys are talking in the judge’s office.
Micah: Bellatrix is a damaged individual who clearly needs a lot of psychological help, and we’ve seen her track record prior to this. She clearly, clearly enjoys torturing people, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she knew what she was doing when she fired that spell. And not only that, she bragged about it after the fact that she did, in fact, kill her cousin, so I’m finding it hard to come to a decision around anything other than first degree murder.
Laura: Correct, yeah. This is certainly some context that would have been helpful in the courtroom.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Sorry, Judge.
Laura: But yes, I would tend to agree. The evidence would seem to be overwhelming.
Micah: I don’t know that she had the intent in that moment to have him go through the veil, but she certainly was behaving prior to that with intent to do harm and to kill not only her cousin, but pretty much anybody else in that room, maybe even including some Death Eaters if they got in her way.
Laura: And children.
Micah: Yes. She tortured a child not long before that.
Laura: Yeah, it really isn’t relevant what her method of killing is. If the intent was there and she succeeded, then I agree she is guilty.
Andrew: All right, judge and jury, I’ve got another trial to get to. Can you make your decision?
Micah: Sure.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: In the case of the Ministry of Magic versus Bellatrix Lestrange, we find the defendant guilty of first degree murder.
Andrew: Woooo-hoo!
Laura: [singing] “Celebrate good times, come on!”
Micah: We’re going to get lots of emails from lawyers, I have a feeling.
Laura: Yep, yep.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: That was Wizard Court.
[Gavel sound effect plays]
Andrew: Court is adjourned!
[Gavel sound effect plays]
Andrew: I spent $2 on that; we have to play it a couple times this episode.
[Gavel sound effect plays]
Andrew: Get our money’s worth.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: I was like, “It’s perfect. That sounds just like a gavel.”
Andrew: It is a gavel. [laughs]
Eric: There you go.
Andrew: Okay, so before we discuss the penultimate chapter of Order of the Phoenix, I want to give you the ultimate advice for your mouth.
[Ad break]
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: And now it’s time for Chapter by Chapter. This is a very big chapter. We might be here for three hours discussing this.
Micah: Yeah. You ready?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Get some coffee or water or a pillow. Whatever you need.
Andrew: Because Dumbledore tells Harry – allegedly – everything. And so yeah, this is Order of the Phoenix Chapter 37, “The Lost Prophecy,” and we’ll start with our Seven-Word Summary. Dumbledore…
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Micah: … tells…
Laura: … Harry…
Eric: … some…
Andrew: … of…
Micah: … the…
Laura: … truth.
Andrew: Yes! That’s what I was hoping for.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: All right. We did it. And that’s basically the chapter, everybody.
Andrew: Fantastic.
Micah: We’ll see you next week for Episode 475.
Andrew: I told you we should summarize.
Micah: Yeah, that’s a great summary. It doesn’t do much for details, but it encapsulates this.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Micah: And it took us 36 chapters to find, I would say, even more than that. And I know this came up, Andrew, when we were texting pre-show about how this is really five books in the making, this whole conversation. This was a huge reveal at the end of Order of the Phoenix, because we get so much information out of this conversation between Dumbledore and Harry, and yet, the great part about it is it’s not even the full truth.
Andrew and Eric: Right.
Micah: And we’ll talk more about that, and some comparisons to Deathly Hallows a little bit later on. But let’s start back in Dumbledore’s office when Harry first gets there. And you were saying “everything” earlier, Andrew; well, “everything” seems to have repaired itself, according to Harry, during the headmaster’s absence. And I just thought that this was a little bit weird, because I didn’t think anybody had been in Dumbledore’s office. Umbridge has her own office somewhere in the castle. So is this just meaning that after he Disapparated, and there was that whole skirmish that went on with Fudge, that it’s been repaired? Because I would think it would have been totally fine from the last time he was there. I’m just saying I don’t even know why it would be damaged to begin with.
Eric: I think it’s just due to Dumbledore’s tumultuous exit.
Micah: Oh, that’s a good point.
Laura: Yeah, I think the suggestion here is that Dumbledore’s office is somewhat sentient and can repair itself.
Micah: Huh, okay.
Eric: I think the Sorting Hat took it upon itself to clean up a little bit.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: And it sang.
Eric: It probably… yeah, it leaned over and a broom came out of it, and then it picked it up somehow and swept.
Andrew: [imitating the Sorting Hat] “Oh, I think this room’s not pretty. I’ll tidy up today.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Oh, keep going, Andrew. You’ve got the whole song.
Andrew: [imitating the Sorting Hat] “The headmaster would want it that way. After all, he’s gay.”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Andrew!
Micah: Well, along those lines, one of the portraits says, “It has been very dull without him, very dull indeed.” So I want to know, does Dumbledore throw parties on the down-low when nobody’s around? It’s just him and the portraits?
Andrew: I think so. The portraits, the Sorting Hat, Fawkes… Minerva; I bet she comes in for some late-night gossip sessions about what’s going on at the castle. Maybe some Netflix binges. I could see Dumbledore getting drunk on sherry…
Micah: Oooh.
Andrew: … and talking to any portrait that’ll listen to him.
Eric: There must be some rules about what the portraits overhear and can take with them elsewhere, though. I was thinking about this during this chapter, but all of these portraits are there when Dumbledore tells Harry “not everything,” and I think that’s just really opening the whole world up to a lot of… it’s basically a security issue if those portraits ever go and tell someone else.
Andrew: Yeah. Sort of like how in journalism things can be off the record, I would assume that by default, anything that’s said in Dumbledore’s office is off the record. They can hear it, but they can’t report it elsewhere.
Eric: Got it. Right.
Micah: Yeah, it’s a bit of a brotherhood or a sisterhood of all the former headmasters and headmistresses that whatever’s said here stays here, and I do think that we get some really great interaction between Harry and some of the portraits. And there’s a few establishing moments, particularly from one of the portraits – and I don’t know that we ever learn who it is – but they say that Dumbledore thinks very highly of Harry and that he holds him in great esteem. And I just think that that is laying the groundwork for what is about to follow in this entire conversation, because we know that Dumbledore acts the way he does because of the fact that he does think very highly of Harry and does hold him in high esteem. But it’s a quiet few minutes inside of Dumbledore’s office, and Harry is really inside of his head the whole time, and he continues to blame himself for what happened to Sirius. And I think, though, that’s totally normal; the wound is still extremely fresh from what has just happened hours ago, and I don’t know that he ever gets over what happened to Sirius and feeling blamed for being responsible.
Andrew: Yeah, and it’s barely even hours that have passed. I mean, we’re reading these chapters one week at a time, but I think it’s really only a half hour, 45 minutes, you know?
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: So yeah, the wound is still very open and very fresh. And it’s kind of surprising that Dumbledore does want to talk to Harry so quickly. Maybe give him the night, at least, to grieve?
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: Right, because the first thing that he says to him when he comes in is that “I know how you’re feeling,” or Andrew, if you want to do that quote. But does he?
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “I know how you feel.”
Micah: Isn’t that the classic thing to say to somebody, and it just doesn’t resonate?
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Yes, but let’s talk about why Dumbledore might be feeling that way. Is it because he’s also lost somebody? He’s probably lost a lot of people; I think the person who jumps to mind quickest is Ariana. But maybe Dumbledore can also relate to Harry over the fact that they’ve made big mistakes, as Dumbledore cops to later in this chapter, and Harry is feeling like he’s made a big mistake. Dumbledore has made some big mistakes, too, with Harry.
Laura: Yeah, and given the fact that Dumbledore is not quite sure who cast the deadly blow that killed Ariana, he carries that with him. He’ll never know if he was the one who was directly responsible for killing his sister, so I think in that regard, he can definitely understand how Harry is feeling, because Harry certainly played a part in creating the narrative that allowed Sirius to die.
Micah: And I just think, though, that the way that he approaches it with Harry… it was mentioned, why not give him a night to just rest and try and process some of what’s happened? The nature of the conversation isn’t even “I’m sorry.” Those aren’t the first words that come out of Dumbledore’s mouth. It’s “There’s no shame in what you’re feeling. This proves you’re still a man.” All these quotes, they just seem so disconnected. And Dumbledore blames age a little bit later on; I think this is an age moment for Dumbledore in not knowing how to properly interact with a teenager in this moment.
Eric: Well, if his primary goal were to comfort Harry, I think he would give him more time, but his primary goal, I think, really, throughout this chapter is to cover his own ass, so he needs to relay very specific information to Harry. A compromised Harry is all he’s going to get, and he needs to “explain” some of his reasoning behind not telling Harry the full story, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really hold a lot of water. This information should have been shared with Harry from the beginning of this book; Dumbledore even acknowledges that. But yeah, Dumbledore is just trying to cover his own ass. I don’t think he’s actually trying to relate to Harry in these moments. He’s asking for forgiveness without actually apologizing.
Laura: I think also tonight Dumbledore has seen the effects of what an uninformed Harry will do, and he needs to stop that dead in its tracks, because Harry is now grieving, he’s upset, he’s angry… who knows what he would go out and do if Dumbledore let him out of his office right now? And that is the last thing Harry should be doing, is trying to leave Hogwarts and seek vengeance and go after Voldemort, which he would most assuredly do if Dumbledore did not fill him in on all of these finer details to make it very clear to him, “Hey, listen. Things have to be a certain way, and you’re going to have to operate within these parameters.”
Eric: So he basically disarms the time bomb that is Harry Potter.
Andrew: [laughs] Did anyone else find it kind of funny how this played out with Dumbledore refusing to let Harry leave?
Micah: Yes.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: This could have been multiple pages, in my opinion, of just “Let me out.” “No.” “Let me out.” “No.” “Let me out!”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Sounds like something from A Very Potter Musical. I could see them doing a bit.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Yeah, totally.
Eric: And he’s just like, “By all means, continue destroying my stuff. I daresay I have too much.” That’s how I feel! Can I have a Harry Potter come and destroy some stuff in my apartment? I need to declutter.
Micah: I thought it was very much a parenting type moment, but it’s almost the opposite, right? Because when a kid is in trouble, you have to have a talking-to with them, and you don’t want them to just run out. But here, it’s almost like Dumbledore is the one who’s the offender, and he’s keeping Harry in because Harry needs to hear the truth. But it reminded me almost of a “Sit down” type of moment. “You’re not leaving here; you’re staying. We’re having this type of conversation.” And not long after that, Dumbledore does take full responsibility for Sirius’s death, at least as it related to Voldemort’s ability to trick Harry into coming to the Department of Mysteries. How did we feel about this moment and Dumbledore taking responsibility? Because I don’t think it does much for Harry, at least not right now.
Andrew: Yeah, not right now. If I were Harry in this situation, I would not suddenly think, “Oh, phew. Thank goodness; it’s not my fault.” Because Harry was still on the scene; Harry was still the reason that all of them gathered that night. I mean, they’re both responsible, really.
Laura: It is interesting to read this, though, especially through this particular lens that we’ve been taking in Order of the Phoenix, of being like, “You could have told Harry at any point. At any point in this book, somebody could have told him what’s up.” And I feel like that’s a theme that we keep revisiting. Like, “Why are we keeping this a secret from Harry?” And rereading this and seeing that Dumbledore places that blame on human error, it at least felt a little bit cathartic to me, because I was like, “Okay, so you know you messed up.”
Eric: Yeah, he actually says, “If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you.” Okay, that’s a pretty direct statement of fault on Dumbledore’s part.
Micah: It definitely is, and he really routes a lot of this in the failings of age. And he not only mentions this once, but twice, and I’m just wondering, is it right for him to almost be having a senior moment here, Eric, as you asked? He says, “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young… and I seem to have forgotten lately.”
Eric: This is a misdirect. Because up till this point… Dumbledore has just shown himself to be the most competent wizard in the entire universe right now by his performance at the Ministry of Magic. There can be no doubt that there’s nothing Dumbledore can’t handle. And then for him to come to his office and be like, “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m old, and I love you.” It’s kind of a cop-out, and it’s unfair. Now, in the next book, when he’s got his hand decrepit and the curse is wearing on him… we do get a lot of Dumbledore’s mortality in the next book, but we’re just not there yet, so him blaming his own age or saying that his age makes him more removed from Harry’s situation could not be further from the truth. Dumbledore is very actively hiding behind age as an excuse, in my opinion.
Andrew: I actually understand where Dumbledore is coming from, though, because he is around 150 years old; that means he’s literally 135 years older than Harry. So yeah, he might forget what it was like to be a child, because that was a really long time ago. Do any of us vividly remember our life 10 years ago? 15? 20? No. I mean, those memories fade over time, so add an extra 100 years to those memories.
Laura: Yeah, and also just think about when we were young. I mean, we’re still young, obviously.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: [singing] “When we were young…”
Laura: But when we were teenagers, we all remember the adults in our lives who did not relate to us very well because they didn’t know how to deal with kids.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: A lot of people forget what it’s like to be young, and good people forget what it’s like to be young, and I think that’s totally possible for Dumbledore here.
Eric: But it’s still a misdirect. Forget being young; he forgets how to be human. You don’t need to learn or understand how to be young. Harry is grieving! Harry is grieving the loss of his uncle. You can relate to Harry on a human level without knowing more than two things about Harry: He has just lost his godfather, and he feels responsible. Dumbledore is really going to say, “I’m sorry, Harry, I’m disconnected from you because my age”? Really?
Micah: I can see both sides of this.
Laura: Yeah, I don’t really think that’s his intent. I mean, we know what he later goes on to say about his affection for Harry playing into this too. And I think we’ve all had a moment where we don’t want to break bad news to somebody that we care about, because we don’t want to hurt them.
Micah: It is a massive internal struggle that Dumbledore is going through, because he hasn’t just protected Harry since he arrived at Hogwarts; he’s been protecting him for his entire life. And so I think that what he probably wasn’t anticipating – and he mentions this – is that closer-than relationship that he talks about, between headmaster and student, and Dumbledore is a grandfatherly type figure for Harry. Maybe even great-great-great-great-grandfather, since, Andrew said, he’s 150 years old.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: But Harry hasn’t had that many established father figures in his life, and those that he has had, he’s lost. And I think you see throughout this chapter, if you’re able to put aside some of the shortcomings of what Dumbledore says, that Dumbledore does really care about Harry. Even the portraits mention it early on in the chapter; that’s why I wanted to bring that up, because I think it establishes a lot of what Dumbledore is about to explain to Harry and why he’s done things the way that he’s done them. But at the same time, I do think Dumbledore is playing the long game here, and he loves Harry; there’s no question. But he’s also in his own mind trying to figure out, “How do I defeat Voldemort?” And Harry is now the answer to that question. The one thing I didn’t like, though – and I thought it was a weak argument on his part – was the fact that he stayed separate from Harry for this entire year because he was afraid of Harry being used to spy on Dumbledore, and I thought that was very selfish, and I thought Dumbledore could have found a better way to deal with that.
Laura: Yeah, like he could have been the one to teach Harry Occlumency, and then Harry probably would have figured it out and done well with it and been able to block Voldemort out. The end.
Andrew: Yeah! Yep.
Eric: Dumbledore just cares about winning, I think, is the real problem here. I think part of him cares for Harry in his own way, but if you really look at this chapter as a whole, and you consider all the things Dumbledore is not telling Harry at this moment – which we’ll get into in another moment – you realize that this is just another Dumbledore con. This is just a little “Entice him with a little bit of information here.” Dumbledore is getting everything he wanted. He’s telling Harry this information, sure, but he always had to eventually do that, so he’s only telling Harry what Harry needs to know now, and he gets to continue to manipulate him. The only benefit out of this whole conversation is the wonderful set of circumstances in Book 6, when he’s teaching Harry directly. I think you’re right; Dumbledore is inspired to take a different approach, possibly because of how badly the Occlumency situation failed, that he’s then doing the one-on-one lessons with Harry in Book 6.
Laura: I think this is also representative of Dumbledore’s god complex, and also that he never really truly gets away from that “greater good” mentality that he had when he was young. I think he really struggles not to let that creep in to how he handles things in his present, and it’s the same reason why he very purposefully avoids putting himself in major positions of power, like why he continually turned down the post for Minister of Magic. Because he knew, “I actually want the power, and that’s not a good thing,” and I think he recognizes that weakness in himself to think, “I know what the greater good is, and I get to decide what that looks like, so I’m going to steer the ship.” And we see how that doesn’t always play out the way he thought it would, especially in this book.
Eric: Right.
Micah: Yeah. And one of the things that he says to Harry is that “On those rare occasions when we had close contact, I thought I saw a shadow of him,” being Voldemort, “stir behind your eyes,” and we know this to be true, but I think it’s only because Dumbledore allows for this emotion to build up in Harry to the point where he does want to physically harm him. And I think we’ve talked about this in previous chapters, but I think it’s a mix both of how Harry is feeling, but also how Voldemort is feeling. And I don’t like this argument, because again, Dumbledore could intervene here and find a better way to mitigate the situation. Harry is with his friends, right? He’s in Grimmauld Place, which is the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. So Dumbledore is fine with Voldemort being able to penetrate Harry’s mind inside of Grimmauld Place and see around the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, but not for him to be in a room with Dumbledore? It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. It seems like a flawed argument.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, if Harry really does have this huge defense against Voldemort thing in his ability to love, Dumbledore would need only trigger that anytime he’s worried about Voldemort spying on him and Harry. He should just… Dumbledore could have private Occlumency lessons with Harry this year, but at the beginning of every one of them have him talk about how much he loves Sirius or something like that. Like saging the air, like just getting Harry to bring that up so that Voldemort would be deterred.
Micah: Well, speaking of spies, we have two of them that play a big role in what Harry learns in this chapter, and the first of them is Kreacher, and Dumbledore goes through the entire story of how Kreacher betrayed Sirius, betrayed Harry, betrayed the entire Order to the Malfoys. And this was one of those examples where what Sirius said several months prior was taken literally; Kreacher acted, really, on what Sirius told him, even if he was interpreting it the way he wanted to, and it results directly in Sirius’s death. If not for Kreacher’s betrayal – and I know we probably can back it out several more steps – but if not for Kreacher’s betrayal, they’re not sitting and having this conversation in Dumbledore’s office right now.
Laura: And it’s such a painful moment, because we’ve spent the entire book watching multiple characters, primarily Hermione, reminding Sirius and the others of the dangers of mistreating somebody like Kreacher. It ends up becoming this self-fulfilling prophecy, and Dumbledore, I think he states it perfectly, that Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards.
Eric: And it’s just gut-wrenching as a reader, because you’re being forced to confront the idea that this man you’re mourning, this man Harry is mourning, was a flawed guy, right? He, in some regard, is responsible for his own downfall, because he caused this situation with Kreacher to be so out of hand.
Laura: Yeah, and there was, I thought, an interesting connecting the threads moment here in this revelation: We learn that the way that Kreacher drew Sirius away, so that he wouldn’t be there when Harry called him through the fireplace, was he harmed Buckbeak, so Sirius had to go tend to him. And we know Buckbeak and Sirius’s fates have been intertwined ever since the end of Prisoner of Azkaban. The whole point of rescuing Buckbeak was also to save Sirius, and in this case, rescuing Buckbeak leads directly to Sirius’s death.
Eric: Man.
Andrew: This is why Buckbeak should not have been housed at Grimmauld Place.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It was too small of a room for him anyway.
Laura: But he and Sirius are fugitives together! They have no choice.
Andrew: Let Buckbeak run free.
Laura: They can’t!
Andrew: Oh, he can. Put him in the Forbidden Forest or something. It’ll be fine.
Micah: Could dye his feathers, right?
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, they all look the same, don’t they?
[Eric laughs]
Micah: It’s just a little magic, right? It’s not like they’re going to throw a red paint can over him or something.
Andrew: I would have flown Buckbeak over to another country. Problem solved.
Micah: Give him to Newt. Newt is still around.
Laura: I mean, he’s old AF, but…
Micah: He can handle Buckbeak. But anyway, yeah, I wanted to go off of what you were talking about earlier, Laura, with the fact that Kreacher is what he’s been made by wizards, because Dumbledore makes a really great connection back to the fountain from the last chapter, and he says that “The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.” And I think it’s a tie not only to the last chapter, but it’s a tie back to what we saw in the forest with the centaurs and Umbridge, and even before that, with Hagrid. The fact that Dumbledore is saying this, I think, is really important for future books as well, and the relationships.
Laura: Right. I mean, he’s recognizing that we are all stronger if we’re united, but we have so damaged our relationship with other members of our community that that unity is on thin ice, if not already broken ice.
Micah: And if you’re to compare it to the statue that shows up in Deathly Hallows, I think that you could probably draw some interesting parallels, because while the Magic Is Might statue is, in fact, very direct, and this Fountain of Magical Brethren is also… it’s indirectly showcasing wizard dominance over all these other creatures; it’s just not as flashy as the one we see in Deathly Hallows. So they’re not all that different, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.
Eric: Right.
Laura: No, you’re completely right because I think the Fountain of Magical Brethren is described as having the house-elf and the goblin and the centaur all looking in awe at the witch and wizard, very clearly positioning the witch and wizard as being the leaders, the chosen ones, right? So it’s definitely implied that that is the social structure of this world. And the Magic Is Might statue is just more honest about some members of the magical community definitely viewing it as a hierarchy and themselves as being at the top of the totem pole.
Micah: I think it goes back to what you said on the last episode; this fountain and what it represents is almost like it’s hiding in plain sight, what it truly means. Just one other thing on Kreacher before we move on to Snape: Dumbledore mentions that he was able to persuade Kreacher to give him the information he needed, and I’m just wondering what that entails, because Dumbledore is on his soapbox here talking about proper wizard/house-elf relations and relations with other creatures, but yet he says that he’s able to persuade Kreacher to get the full story, so I want to know what exactly that means.
Andrew: Slapped him around.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I mean, it’s a question, because when Harry gets Kreacher to tell the story of what happened with Regulus, doesn’t he do so via empathy? He connects to the elf. I do not think Dumbledore – who’s, by the way, on his way to the Ministry to fight what is sure to be Voldemort – is going to take his time trying to get to know Kreacher in order to convince him to tell the truth. Dumbledore had to do some quick magic that absolutely would have forced Kreacher, against Kreacher’s own will, to confess exactly… although he does say Kreacher laughed, so maybe it’s not exactly that difficult.
Micah: So he tickled the truth out of him.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Well, wait, didn’t Dumbledore say he used his Legilimency skills to find out? Like, he didn’t actually read his mind, but he can tell when somebody is being truthful or not?
Micah: Yes, so he could tell that he may not have been telling the truth. But then he also mentions that he was able to persuade him to give him the information he needed, so I’m just curious what that means. And again, it’s kind of contradictory to everything that he’s saying about the fountain a little bit later on, because if he forced him in that moment to get that information, physically or with magic, then…
Andrew: Well, Dumbledore is into knitting, and house-elves like clothes. So Dumbledore made him something. Maybe he showed him how to knit.
Micah: It was a knitting session.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Make your own clothes.
Andrew: Kreacher was like, “Okay, I’ll tell you. We’re best friends now.”
Laura: No, I think I could see this being, one, Kreacher is clearly very proud of himself, and two, we know Dumbledore is a skilled Legilimens, so he can start picking up on some of the omitted details, and kind of start persuading Kreacher in a conversational manner by being like, “So how did you draw Sirius away so that Harry wouldn’t see him?” And then Kreacher was like, “Oh, haha, I hurt the hippogriff,” so I could see it going like that.
Micah: Spy number two: Snape. We learn a lot about what he did to make sure that Sirius was okay, and I think, much as we theorized back in the chapter where we’re inside Umbridge’s office, Snape does contact Sirius immediately after what happens, and he picks up on what Harry was putting out there. And we also learn from Dumbledore that the Order has more reliable means of communication than Harry using Umbridge’s office and her fireplace to go to Grimmauld Place. We also learn that he provided fake Veritaserum to Umbridge to use on Harry, so a lot of good is showing through here for Snape. But the one piece that was the biggest blunder was Occlumency, and here again, Dumbledore blames this on his age and says it’s an “old man’s mistake – that some wounds run too deep for the healing,” and he’s referring to the connection between Harry and James and the fact that Snape cannot let it go. Was this a big mistake? I think we’re in agreement, Occlumency lessons was a big mistake on Dumbledore’s part. But is it fair to blame age here again?
Laura: What I don’t understand is there’s a point a little bit later where he’s like, “You have no idea how closely I’ve been watching you, Harry.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: And I’m like, “Okay, if you were watching him that closely, how did you not know this was a problem?”
Eric: Yeah, yeah. The Snape/Harry thing… and this is the one thread that keeps getting tugged on every year, that Snape has this bias that he can’t… I mean, and if Dumbledore willingly and knowingly put Snape and Harry in the same room and the Pensieve is in there, you can bet there’s going to be some way of… Harry is going to figure out all that stuff about his dad. There’s just no way it’s not going to happen. And if Harry were doing his job, he would start seeing into Snape’s mind, and Snape doesn’t want that. So this was a pressure cooker; this was always going to be a bad idea. And you’re right, Laura; Dumbledore looking closely at Harry… he should just know from the past several years. Think about how manic Snape was after the Sirius Black thing at the end of Book 3; he was ready to move mountains to make sure that Harry suffered. And Dumbledore turning a blind eye towards Snape’s more insidious tendencies as it pertains to Harry is to blame, not any age thing. Dumbledore wants to believe the story that he wants to believe.
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “I see you when you’re sleeping. I know when you’re awake. I know if you’ve been practicing Occlumency, so practice Occlumency for goodness sake.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Exactly.
Micah: Oh, we’ve got to save that for Christmastime. It’s your new hit single, Andrew.
Andrew: [laughs] Dumbledore is coming to town.
Micah: Let’s jump into Dumbledore’s story. This is the sit-down moment where there’s a major info dump, and it pretty much takes us all the way through the end of this chapter. But we learn quite a bit, the first piece being why Harry needs to live with his aunt and uncle, and Andrew, I don’t know if you would do the honors here. These next few quotes, I think they’re important, so I think only Dumbledore can read them.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay. [imitating Dumbledore] “But I knew too where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated – to his cost… While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge.”
Micah: So I’m curious why Dumbledore couldn’t give Harry this bit of information earlier. This seems fairly straightforward. “You’re safe when you’re at your aunt and uncle’s home.”
Andrew: Right.
Micah: This would have probably solved a lot of problems in the first couple of books in terms of Harry running away and doing all sorts of things. This seems fairly straightforward to me.
Andrew: Well…
Eric: Yeah, it’s funny because in the past books I think he’s asked about this, and he’s just like, “Oh, it’s proper for Harry to have family.” I think McGonagall asks him, too, “These Muggles? Really?” And Dumbledore evades and is just like, “Well, it’s best for him to be with his family.” What he’s really saying is “I’ve set up protection that is ultimate, ultimate against Voldemort for you, Harry.” The reason he’s telling Harry now is because it relates to why Voldemort couldn’t possess him.
Andrew: Well, but Dumbledore would also have had to tell Harry that Voldemort wants to kill him. He’s actively trying to kill him.
Laura: Harry already knows Voldemort is trying to kill him every year. [laughs]
Eric: Well, he’s conveniently figured that Voldemort is, right? But now he knows it for sure.
Micah: It’s just such a wishy-washy type of explanation, though, because Harry obviously is not spending all of his time inside this home. He’s going out; he’s doing different things. He’s going to school, and I’m talking about before he ends up at Hogwarts, right? And we know that Voldemort is at this point still trying to reemerge in some capacity, so he doesn’t have Quirrell yet; he doesn’t have a full body. But still, it seems a little bit… there seems to be something missing. Because just to say that “As long as you can call it home, you’re safe,” but you’re not there all the time. It’s not like Harry is in the bedroom 24/7/365, so I always just…
Andrew: Dumbledore says, “You have to check in once a year. As long as you return to the Dursleys’, you’re good, once a year.”
Micah: Hotel Dursley?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, Hotel Dursley.
Laura: What if he just checked in on social just to be like, “I went to Number 4 Privet Drive,” but didn’t actually go?
Andrew: Like on Facebook? He did a little checkin?
Eric: Oh, you guys remember…? What was the place where you lived…? Before Facebook checkin, where you could become mayor of a place?
Andrew and Laura: Foursquare.
Eric: Foursquare! Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
Andrew: I was obsessed with that.
Eric: Harry is the mayor of… yeah, I think we all were a little bit; it was fantastic. But so as long as Harry doesn’t lose his mayor status of 4 Privet Drive, then the magic is bestowed upon him to keep him safe.
Andrew: [laughs] Harry and Voldemort both trying to become mayor of Number 4 Privet Drive.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: It’s also quite a calculated risk that Dumbledore takes in giving Harry to his aunt, because what if she said no? Then what does Dumbledore do? Because he says, “I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if [Voldemort] ever returned to full power.”
Eric: This is something that gets a payoff immediately in Book 6, though, like I said. I like that Dumbledore has learned from his mistake about Snape teaching Harry, and goes to teach him in person. But he rebukes, I think, openly, Petunia and Vernon for doing the bare minimum, basically, to enable this protection. When he’s talking about this protection, it’s interesting, but he is also going to openly chastise the Dursleys two chapters from now, in chronological time, for doing the bare minimum.
Micah: Dumbledore then just kind of goes into his excuse rant, is what I like to call it, where he talks through all the years that Harry has been at Hogwarts up until this point, and why he couldn’t tell him the truth, or why he failed to tell him the truth. He uses the fact that he cared about Harry too much, and that was the biggest barrier to him burdening him with the prophecy, which we’re going to talk about a little bit later on. But I’m not in disagreement with Dumbledore here; I don’t think that him not giving him the full information in year one, maybe year two, is really that big of a deal. But I think year five may have been a little bit late, and especially for Sirius, that Harry didn’t have this information. I think if we were to pinpoint a spot in the series where this information made sense… clearly, at the end of Book 5: too late. But where would you think that this information would have been best given to Harry?
Eric: Book 4.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: I was going to say Book 4 too.
Eric: Probably the end of the last book, because up until that point, Voldemort wasn’t really coming for him. If you think about the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort at the end of Book 1, Voldemort wanted the Sorcerer’s Stone/Philosopher’s Stone. He wanted immortality. Book 2, it’s about a remnant of Voldemort’s soul trying to get mortality for the first time again; Voldemort is not coming for Harry. At the end of Book 4, Voldemort is coming for Harry, and so the topic becomes really, really relevant then, and also, there seems to be a lot of time for talking at the end of Book 4. You get the gleam of triumph; Harry and Dumbledore are very much in each other’s presence. I think that would have been the time to be like, “By the way, just so’s you know, there is a prophecy, and this is why Voldemort is so hyper-fixated on you, but let me tell you why that was wrong.” All Dumbledore needed to do was expound on the gleam of triumph to be like, “I know you just saw me wink there for a minute and go glossy, but here’s why I think this is a good thing,” and then he just immediately goes into the prophecy.
Andrew: But in Dumbledore’s defense – I just want to say – we’ve all been in that situation where we want to delay as long as possible telling someone something that they don’t want to hear, that is going to ruin their lives, that is going to upset them. And yes, this is really important information for Dumbledore to tell, but Dumbledore is trying to not ruin Harry’s life, as he lays out in this chapter. He’s trying to delay that for as long as possible. And again, he’s a teenager.
Micah: Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, but I also think of the fact that it’s not like Harry is living a happy life.
Andrew: The dream life? No? [laughs]
Micah: If you think about everything that’s happened to him over the last four years at the school…
Andrew: Right.
Micah: … Dumbledore tries to, again, explain that away by saying, “I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school, and I could not bring myself to add another – the greatest one of all.” And yet still in this moment, he’s lying to Harry, because the greatest burden is not necessarily the fact that Harry has to be the one to destroy Voldemort; it’s that Harry is probably going to have to die in some capacity in order for Voldemort to be defeated, because he has a Horcrux living in him. So even in this moment where Dumbledore is saying that he’s giving him all the information, he’s really not, and I do think Dumbledore knows at this point.
Eric: Right. It’s all about the selective information dissemination, and the whole thing about it is that Dumbledore is just giving Harry what he needs when he needs it, and not a second sooner.
Micah: Which brings me to what he talks about in this conversation, which is he says, “What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy?” That is a very haunting statement for somebody who’s supposedly on the side of good to be making.
Laura: I feel like he might be criticizing himself here.
Eric: Right.
Laura: But still, I mean, I think it does go to show, again, Dumbledore leaning into that god complex and assuming that he knows what needs to be done and that he alone can make those decisions.
Eric: Harry is not happy or well. Harry, at this point, is ready for a blow like this to come. He’s suspected it for some time, so a little bit of clarity would not only be helpful – Harry would appreciate it – but it would have been, as we find out now, life-saving as well. If Dumbledore had just been clear from the get-go, from the end of last year on, things would have been much better.
Micah: And again, though, this is a lie, because “What do I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people…?” The people who now are being sacrificed, though, are not nameless and not faceless. Even Sirius now has died in his attempt to “protect” Harry, and Harry himself will need to be sacrificed in order for Voldemort to be defeated. So I’m almost going back – or going forward, I guess – to Deathly Hallows, when Snape says, “You raised him like a pig for slaughter.”
Eric: That is one of my favorite episodes of MuggleCast, by the way.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: When after reading Deathly Hallows, we first get into the whole, “What the hell did Dumbledore do to Harry?” And I think it’s called “Pig for Slaughter,” right?
Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: I think you’re right.
Micah: I think it is. Let’s get to the prophecy, the lost prophecy. I don’t really think it’s lost, because they found it.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: It’s found now.
Micah: A couple chapters ago.
Eric: Dumbledore had it all along, y’all.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, this is the other thing, that so much time could have been saved. Dumbledore had it the whole time. They didn’t even need to deal with the Department of Mysteries to begin with. It’s so senseless.
Eric: No! And going forward to what he says in Book 6 about his memory being more pristine than other wizards… [laughs] Like, just get over yourself, dude. But he’s had it in his memory because he happened to be in the room. It’s unbelievable. Is anybody surprised that Dumbledore was the one that this prophecy was told to or in front of?
Andrew: It’s very lucky.
Laura: I mean, it explains why he kept Trelawney around all this time.
Eric: Yeah, that’s a good point.
Micah: Now, Dumbledore/Trelawney – Dumble-awney, Andrew, that’s what I’m going to call you – are you able to give us a little rendition of the first part of this prophecy?
Andrew: Oh, sure, just the first part? That’s fine, actually. That’s probably all my throat can take. [imitating Trelawney] “THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES… BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEIFED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…” [coughs]
Micah: Thank you.
Andrew: [hoarsely] You’re welcome.
Micah: Go get some water.
Andrew: [hoarsely] Okay.
Laura: So I wanted to talk about Harry and Neville and what I view as being their biblical counterparts here. Harry’s story arc is very much reminiscent of the Christ story arc, and Neville being sort of Harry’s counterpart, I would argue, is representative of John the Baptist. The reason I say this is because both Jesus and John’s births were foretold, and actually in Luke 1:15, it says John would “be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from birth.” So he is another messiah-like figure, but John actually foretold the coming of a messiah figure that would be greater than himself. And what I think is so cool here is that this prophecy could have referenced either Harry or Neville, but Neville was born before Harry, so it kind of mirrors that same story arc of John foretelling Jesus’s coming, because Neville was born on July 30 and Harry was born on the 31st, so I thought that mirrored that relationship.
Andrew: Interesting, yeah.
Micah: Definitely. I doubt that that is coincidental.
Laura: No, not at all. I mean, especially if you read the final chapters of Deathly Hallows and then you compare them to the resurrection of Christ, there are some striking similarities.
Andrew: Interesting.
Eric: Huh.
Micah: Very cool.
Laura: But anyway, I digress.
Micah: I can’t remember if J.K. Rowling has talked about her faith before, but I’m almost certain that that is a factor in all of what you’ve just referenced, Laura.
Laura: Yes, she is definitely Christian, and I would be very surprised if this wasn’t all quite intentional.
Andrew: You hear that, Laura Mallory?
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Micah: Better un-burn those books now.
Andrew: [laughs] And I think that’s very common if you are religious. I don’t know how religious she is, but I’m also thinking about songwriters. If they’re religious, they will frequently reference the Bible in their writing.
Eric: You write what you know.
Laura: Well, yeah. I mean, look at other fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis; also deeply religious, and you can find a number of religious themes and story arcs in his writings.
Micah: Aslan.
Laura: Yeah. God. [laughs]
Micah: Yep.
Eric: Old Testament God. Cranky God.
Micah: So the first part of this prophecy basically means that the person who has the only chance of defeating Voldemort for good was born at the end of July. Laura referenced Neville as being the other possibility – this happened nearly 16 years ago – to parents who had defied Voldemort three times. I’m curious what both Frank and Alice Longbottom and James and Lily Potter did to defy Voldemort three times and what that looked like, because I feel like that would be cool to read.
Eric: Yeah, I want that too. And what’s the difference between directly defying and indirectly defying? Does signing up for Dumbledore’s club, the Order of the Phoenix, count as defying Voldemort? Probably not. So are there three really close…? I’ve always pictured it as three really close run-ins with Voldemort, where maybe strategic locations that Voldemort is trying to seize, and these guys are separate but not together trying to escape him. It just strikes me as being more of a narrow encounter, but it’s sort of vague and up for interpretation, I think.
Micah: And the piece of information that’s left out here that we don’t receive is Voldemort was, in essence, covering his ass that night because he sent Bellatrix and the other Death Eaters to the Longbottom home, and we know what happened when they attacked Frank and Alice. But this title is actually growing on me; Neville Longbottom and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I know it doesn’t have the same marketing pop…
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: You can write the fanfiction.
Micah: Yeah, but I think that’s just because we’ve heard “Harry Potter” so much. If we had heard “Neville Longbottom,” I think over time we would have gotten used to it.
Laura: And then Harry could have been the clumsy, bumbling one in the series.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: “Who’s that Harry Potter kid?” I thought Harry asked an interesting question of Dumbledore, though, which was “Why didn’t Voldemort wait until they were older to see who in fact would have been the bigger threat?”
Andrew: Does Voldemort have patience? He just wants to kill now.
Laura: Well, also… yeah, he’s probably thinking it’s easier to take out a baby.
Micah: Little did he know.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: The second part of the prophecy says, “AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT.” And this just spurs a whole conversation about Lily’s sacrifice and love and the power that was residing within the room at the Department of Mysteries that could not be opened. And I think this goes back to Dumbledore yelling at Harry – well, he wasn’t yelling at him – but talking with Harry at the beginning of the chapter, talking about the fact that he is able to feel all the things that he’s feeling post-Sirius death, and that is what makes him different from Voldemort, and that’s what allowed him to escape Voldemort at the end of the last chapter.
Eric: The only problem I have with this is that a lot of people feel love. Maybe the point here is that Voldemort doesn’t, sure, but to have love be the saving grace that even saved Harry from Voldemort the first time, supposedly, is a little weak, because Voldemort murders tons of people, including Susan Bones’s mom. All these people surely have love, and it’s just not in the right configuration so as to be like a shield for them. But it always weirds me out just a little bit that it comes down to love, and Dumbledore is like, “Yeah, there’s a whole room at the Ministry for this,” because Harry as our hero is the only person who can wield love offensively in the way that he does, but it works for the story.
Micah: It definitely does. Just to wrap up the whole Neville/Harry discussion, Dumbledore makes the point that Voldemort chose Harry. He chose the half-blood. “He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far.” And I really liked this connection, the fact that the half-blood chooses the half-blood. He doesn’t go after the pure-blood family in the Longbottoms.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: It is interesting because this is a way of Voldemort elevating himself, right? He sees himself as the greatest threat, and in seeing himself in Harry, he’s identifying who he thinks his ultimate downfall could be.
Micah: Totally.
Eric: I think there’s a little bit of gloating here on the part of Dumbledore, too, because he brings up this whole “four times” thing. So Harry has defied Voldemort four times; his parents only made it as far as three times. And Dumbledore says this, and I’m thinking, is that a little self-congratulatory? “I’ve kept you alive so that you could defeat him four times, one more than your parents” kind of a thing?
Andrew: [laughs] Maybe a little bit. Dumbledore does want to take some credit for his – allegedly – master plan a lot this chapter.
Eric: Yeah, he does.
Andrew: “I did this. I did that.”
Eric: Yeah, I forgot that Dumbledore is keeping count here for Harry. Eh, well, it’s a little weird.
Micah: We also learn that – at least at this time in Dumbledore telling the story to Harry – that Voldemort didn’t know the full prophecy early on, and the reason why was because it was overheard, but it was only overheard in part by an undisclosed Death Eater. And the prophecy was given inside the Hog’s Head by Trelawney. No goats were present that we know about.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: No sacrifice pre-prophecy. But I’m just thinking in this moment, if Dumbledore tells Harry that it was in fact Snape that overheard the prophecy, what do you think would have happened? Dumbledore’s office was already kind of a mess; I think Harry would have just completely lost his shit.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, it’s pandemonium. But Dumbledore is so measured here about what he tells Harry.
Andrew: But reading this in hindsight is really frustrating, because just earlier in this chapter, “Sit down, Harry; I’m going to tell you everything,” and then he’s still keeping little details like this away from Harry.
Micah: Totally.
Eric: Yeah, and interestingly enough, he is still controlling the narratives to the degree that he’s lying to Harry’s face. And I’m not even talking about the lie of omission with Snape, which I think is huge, but he says that the Hog’s Head Inn was chosen by Sybill Trelawney for its cheapness, and that’s why she went there. We know that the reason the Hog’s Head was chosen when Dumbledore was interviewing Trelawney is precisely because Dumbledore’s brother is the bartender/owner there, and Dumbledore thought it would be best to have a little bit of backup. Dumbledore is conveniently, once again, omitting Aberforth from the entire narrative, and so when Aberforth is picking up Snape and overhears him and stopping the whole thing, it doesn’t come into play at all. He’s continually protecting his own – meaning Dumbledore’s – interests, and lies to Harry. Something as small as “Sybill chose the meeting place” seems like a small lie, but it ultimately unravels the greater plot in that Dumbledore has completely, from day one, been orchestrating this, and he orchestrates the revealing of this info to such a high level that nobody can compete with it.
Andrew: And it’s an insulting remark, because he’s calling Sybill a cheap-ass!
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Yeah! Cheapskate!
Laura: But I mean, ultimately he’s setting Harry up to only find out information when he deems it appropriate, right? Because Harry can’t find out the full truth at this point. He doesn’t think that Harry can know that he needs to sacrifice himself until the very end.
Eric: But that’s underestimating Harry, and it’s insulting to at the same time say, “I care too much about you that I haven’t told you the truth until now,” and then for Harry to get up from that conversation, and he still hasn’t been told everything.
Laura: And then he only hears the truth through the Pensieve.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: He doesn’t even hear it from Dumbledore directly.
Eric: Augh.
Micah: Right. And I think the whole Snape bomb would have made it impossible for Half-Blood Prince to have existed the way that it did…
Laura: Yep.
Micah: … if he knew the truth about Snape and the fact that Snape betrayed his parents to Voldemort, in terms of at least giving him the prophecy. And yeah, I just think he never would have allowed Snape to go up on the Astronomy Tower without physically trying to intervene. The whole dynamic between the two of them, not that it’s great in Half-Blood Prince by any stretch… but it just never would have worked.
Eric: And I agree with you, but so now does it mean that this is really smart for Dumbledore to stop telling the truth here?
Micah: Yeah, I think so. I mean, the last piece of the prophecy, “EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES,” I mean, that’s a big enough gut punch to Harry to task him with the responsibility now of being the one that has to kill Voldemort in the end.
Eric: Yeah, there’s only so much you could take, I guess.
Micah: And Andrew, what you have here about it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Because it’s one of those things where prophecies only tend to be fulfilled once people hear them and act on them, and even in some ways, try and not to have them happen.
Andrew and Eric: Right.
Micah: They take steps to… they think they’re trying to avoid it, but in essence, they’re fulfilling it by doing that exact thing.
Eric: Oedipus is a great example.
Andrew: Yeah, and this is the funny thing about this whole book series. It’s just Voldemort hears about this prophecy and then decides, “Well, I’ve got to take care of this now. I’ve got to kill Harry, because only one of us can live,” and it’s all because some crazy woman uttered a couple of sentences to Dumbledore in a cheap bar one night.
Eric: [laughs] The cheapskate.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: That’s how the greatest stories start, in a cheap bar.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: We should start making prophecies in dive bars.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Just start screaming random things.
Eric: “Here’s a new segment of the show where we pull out our voice memos and reveal prophecies that we have made the night before in cheap bars across…”
Andrew: [laughs] I’ll do it! I’ll do it! Let’s go to a dive bar together; I’ll start yelling random things.
Micah: Once you can finally go to a dive bar.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: Right. And then I’ll get banned from the bar for screaming in it unnecessarily.
Micah: Yeah, I was going to say, we need a voice converter, Andrew, that we can speak and your voice comes out in that raspy prophecy voice that you did.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Before we wrap up the chapter, I just wanted to go back to Dumbledore and the fact that throughout all this – and there’s a lot of information that gets dropped on us here in this chapter – it’s still not clear, to me, anyway, aside from saying that he cares about Harry, why he chose not to give him more information earlier on, and I think there’s still a responsibility on his end to… or I should say, he should be taking responsibility for that fact, and… I don’t know. I’m disappointed in Dumbledore in this book.
Eric: Yeah, this sums up how I feel about the book as a whole. I know in a couple episodes we’re going to do an overall thing, but this moment with Dumbledore… what you just said, Micah, about how it doesn’t really, when you think about it, excuse Dumbledore’s actions. This book is full of these moments that we just have to live with, like Sirius’s death. It’s coming the whole book. Sirius suffers, he’s cooped up, all this stuff, then all of a sudden he’s got to rescue Harry, so he leaves, reckless, dies. And this whole book is just like that, so it’s not meant to excuse Dumbledore’s actions. He offers some apology, but I think at the end, it’s not going to cover or cut it completely. It’s just one of those things that Harry has to live with, because ultimately, those are the choices that Dumbledore made. It’s a gift to have some insight into what he says he was thinking, but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to live with it. And it’s like, angry Harry, at the end of the day, you’ve just got to live with it. It’s a little bit explained away that Voldemort was in his head, but it’s just the way the plot unfurled. And this is why I have trouble with this book in general, is a lot of things you just kind of have to stomach and live with. And it’s not bad writing; on the contrary, I think it’s important to have a story that isn’t neatly wrapped up about midway through, because it keeps the fight going.
Micah: I agree. I just think it’s very selfish, in a way, for Dumbledore to act the way that he does. It’s like, “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. You can’t look at me.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Like, grow up, bro. You’re 150 years old, yet a 15-year-old can’t look at you because you’re afraid of what’s going to happen? He’s not going to jump into your mind or physically attack you, even though that’s what he’s afraid of. I just… this whole approach that Dumbledore takes is very unlike Dumbledore in terms of how practiced and methodical he is, and I think I had it somewhere in the document: For how smart he is, he just makes so many simple mistakes.
Andrew: Yeah. No one’s perfect, Micah.
Micah: I know.
Andrew: If I ever see any of you at a bar again, I’m going to go in first, and then when you walk in, I’m going to scream, “THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO PODCAST APPROACHES!”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: You will get a lot of looks.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I love all these new segment ideas that we’re coming up with towards the end of our Book 5 read. And all of this info dump wraps up with an off-color joke about, “Hey, so also, you were wondering why I didn’t make you a prefect?”
Andrew: [singing] “Da-da-da, da-da-da, dun!”
Eric: Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So it’s a weird… again, about Dumbledore controlling the situation to a T, he decides when the convo is over, and that’s him deescalating.
Micah: Right.
Eric: Like, “By the way, one has to kill the other. And in case you were wondering, I knew your workload this year would be enough!”
Andrew: It didn’t brighten Harry’s spirits, though, I don’t think. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah, and doesn’t that…? It kind of sucks for Ron a little bit.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Womp, womp, womp.
Laura: It’s literally Dumbledore being like, “I would have given it to you, Harry, but I knew you were going to be busy.”
Eric: This is Ron erasure, people.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Poor Ron.
Micah: I would have given it to Neville.
Laura: Yeah, it’s true. He’s like, “You are the runner-up, so I’m going to make you perfect.”
Andrew: All right, so that’s the chapter. Big chapter, like we said at the beginning. No Umbridge in this chapter besides a passing reference or two, so the Suck Count still stands at 114.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: So let’s jump to MVP of the Week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: I’m going to hand it to Dumbledore’s various gizmos who fell to Harry’s wrath.
Eric: I’m going to give it to Dumbledore for lying through his teeth convincingly.
Micah: I’ll give it to the portraits for the warm welcome they gave Dumbledore upon his return, but also for some of the knowledge they dropped on Harry before Dumbledore showed up.
Laura: I’m going to give it to Snape, because without him, this all would have been way worse.
Andrew: True.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: Now let’s rename the chapter. Order of the Phoenix Chapter 37, “I’m going to earmark this one for the info dump, okay.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: That was J.K. Rowling talking to herself.
Eric: Oh, yeah. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 37, “A Lion in Dumbledore’s China Shop.”
Micah: I went with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 37, “36 chapters later, here’s why I never made you prefect.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: I went with Order of the Phoenix Chapter 37, “There’s Something About Harry.”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Does he have, like, the little hair thing too?
Eric: Oh, God.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Maybe.
Micah: That’s a good meme for social.
Eric: “Is that hair gel?” Yeah, it’s a good one.
Andrew: If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, send them on in; MuggleCast@gmail.com. That’s where you can also send us a voice memo. We’ve got to get back to playing voice memos. Micah, our mailbag keeper. Or you can go to MuggleCast.com and click on the contact form.
Micah: Send more voicemails. It’s crazy; last chapter of Order of the Phoenix coming up next week.
Andrew: I know. Big deal, big deal.
Micah: And then we’re done, right? We’ve completed all seven books in some way, shape, or form.
Andrew: We have, yes.
Laura: The end of an era.
Andrew: Thanks, everybody, for your patience. We’re jumping around everywhere, but we’re done now.
Micah: We don’t need to do, like, Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 17?
Andrew: [laughs] We’ll check our archive.
Micah: Or Deathly Hallows Chapter 12?
Andrew: We do have a Chapter by Chapter archive on MuggleCast.com, if you want to hear our discussions on any other chapters. And like we’ve been doing for Order of the Phoenix, those chapter discussions also have news discussions at the beginning of those episodes, so it could also be a nice time machine through the Harry Potter fandom as well, if you want to listen to any of those.
Quizzitch
Andrew: Okay, it’s time for Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: What does Phineas Nigellus Black call Sirius when Dumbledore tells him he’s dead? He says, “my great-great-grandson – the last of the Blacks.” Last of the Blacks. We can just ruminate on that for a little minute. That’s very depressing. The whole bloodline has snuffed out. Snuffles!
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Correct answers were submitted by Jeff Skellington, SupSarahhh, The Awesome Animagus, Ferrax, ReeseWithoutHerSpoon, Bort Voldemort, Young Susie Blood, Robbie Stillman, Jason King, and Count Ravioli.
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “Another family, gone.”
Eric: [laughs] And next week’s question: What is the last word of Book 5?
Andrew: [laughs] Fun! That’s a fun question.
Eric: Honestly, some people remember closing lines and can recite to you or place them, number them. This would be a good Quizzitch thing. But yeah, some people do keep that in mind, so it’s not just some kind of cop-out at a really difficult question.
Micah: Laura, are you taking notes for Tuesday night?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: We all know the final word of Book 7.
Eric: Or what it should have been.
Micah: What it should have been.
Andrew: Right. We know both of those. I believe the final word of Book 5 is “scar,” but don’t quote me on that.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: Oh. I was saying Deathly Hallows, not to give away a trivia answer.
Andrew: Oh, I know.
Micah: Isn’t it “well”? Isn’t that the last word?
Andrew: Yes, yeah.
Eric: “All was well.”
Micah: Supposed to be “scar.”
Laura: Yep. Well, I guess we can’t use that question.
Andrew: That’s their reward for listening all the way to the end of MuggleCast.
Micah: There you go. We’ll reference that during the live show Tuesday.
Andrew: Do follow us on social media as well; we are MuggleCast on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. That way you will stay up to date on the latest show developments. And we would love your support at Patreon.com/MuggleCast; that is the reason why we are a weekly podcast. And when you pledge today, you will get instant access to loads of benefits, including our livestreams, our planning docs, bonus MuggleCast installments, and every year, a new physical gift for those who pledge $5 or higher a month. And then we also do hangouts with listeners, we post behind-the-scenes previews… all kinds of things. Patreon.com/MuggleCast; thank you so much for your support. We truly could not do this show without you. Thanks, everybody, for listening as well. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: See you next time. Goodbye.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.
Andrew: This podcast is adjourned!
[Gavel sound effect plays]