Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #579, Stop the Huffle-Hate! (Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapters 4-6)
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 have three more chapters in our Chapter by Chapter series this week, but first, just wanted to briefly acknowledge it’s been a busy week or two in the UK, and since these books are based in the UK, Laura and I just wanted to plug our latest episode of Millennial real quick.
Laura: On that show, Andrew and I are joined by our good friend Pam every week to talk about our Generation Y experience. We’re talking current affairs, pop culture, and pretty much any and everything in between to unpack why these stories matter and how they affect Millennials. Eric and Micah have even been known to grace us with their presence on the show here and there. And this week, we centered our conversation on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the positive and negative implications for the UK and the Commonwealth around having a royal family at all, and we kept it fun by using Shakespearean insults throughout, so that was a good time. [laughs] So if you are following the royal family, or you just want to learn more, check out our latest episode. We are Millennial on your favorite podcasting app, or head over to MillennialShow.com. And one final note here: Millennial is intended for young adults and older, so please keep that in mind as you are thinking about which podcast to subscribe to next.
Andrew: Thank you, kids.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, we just wanted to mention that because of how big of a week it’s been, and we’re really proud of that episode, so do check that out.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary (“The Keeper of the Keys”)
Andrew: But with that all said, let’s dive straight into Chapter by Chapter. We’re going through another three chapters of Sorcerer’s Stone this week, and we’ll start with Chapter 4, “The Keeper of the Keys.” And as always, we will begin with our Seven-Word Summary. Eric, you are starting things off this week. You didn’t start any of the Seven-Word Summaries off last week.
Eric: By design, Andrew. I don’t like doing it.
Andrew: I noticed!
Eric: The pressure was too much.
Andrew: Yeah, well, now we’re turning the tables back on you.
Eric: Okay.
Andrew: So here we go.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Eric: Suddenly…
Laura: … Hagrid…
Micah: … bursts…
Andrew: … through…
Eric: … the…
Laura: … door…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: … bam!
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: There it is.
Andrew: Perfect.
Laura: It’s our first one.
Eric: I would have used another adjective, Laura, when it came to you.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: I would have said “tattered door” or “broken door” or “destroyed door.”
Laura: Yeah, yeah, there we go.
Eric: It works fine.
Andrew: Micah made this way better, I think.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: I agree.
Eric: At least we didn’t end in “hurray.”
Micah: I did think about that, by the way.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: “Yay!”
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion (“The Keeper of the Keys”)
Andrew: So this is a pretty straightforward chapter. We’re really just seeing Hagrid come in, talk down to the Dursleys, and introduce Harry to the wizarding world and tell him who he truly is. Couple things I want to focus on in this chapter: The letter that Dumbledore left with baby Harry is mentioned, and this is the one that Petunia is later told in Order of the Phoenix to remember. In this chapter, Petunia has a very angry response to Hagrid saying, “How could you not have told Harry?” And “He hasn’t known. How could you?” I’m wondering if her angry response here, which Harry notes feels like she’s been holding onto for years, hints at all at her once desire to have become a wizard like Lily. Or is this rant an act for Vernon? Or both, maybe.
Laura: I think it’s both.
Eric: Yeah, I think definitely in the power dynamic – I’ve talked about this before – Vernon kind of defers to Petunia for how to feel about everything, so I think that she’s definitely making it known that she’s still very angry about this. But yeah, she’s definitely been holding it in for so long, and Harry picks up on this. It’s just as terrifying as this is to have his aunt be screaming, it does feel still, reading it, like a relief, because this has all been going on… this dynamic between how the Dursleys view about the wizarding world and Dumbledore and Hogwarts and Harry’s destiny that is coming fastly through the door. I just think it’s finally out in the open, being a relief, now that even Harry can interact with it because they just kept it from him totally.
Andrew: A relief. That’s an interesting way to describe it.
Eric: They wouldn’t even acknowledge that there was an existing problem, and now Petunia just knows everything. And leave it up to Hagrid to really bring that out, I think, in the Dursleys, because of his equally… well, even more valid righteous fury that they didn’t tell him anything.
Micah: We talked a little bit about this on the last episode, where Harry is that constant reminder for Petunia of what she was never able to fully achieve herself, especially when the letters start showing up. But I do agree; I feel like this is a major release point for her. She’s been waiting to say this for a long time. There’s a couple lines that I noted here where she says, “I was the only one who saw her for what she was – a freak!” But I also feel like deep down, she’s saying to herself, “But I wanted to be a freak too.” So there’s some of that happening.
Eric: Hypocrisy.
Micah: And then of course referencing mummy and daddy and saying, “It was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!” So you can see that clearly there’s something going on here with Lily feeling less than with her parents.
Laura: Yeah, 100%.
Eric: You mean Petunia?
Micah: I’m sorry. Yeah, Petunia.
Laura: Yeah, Petunia. Yeah, I agree. I think that this is something that Petunia has had to hold on to and stare at Harry every single day, and probably every single time something weird has happened with him, she’s had this inkling that it’s his magic, because she saw her sister go through the same thing growing up, right? It’s why she thought she was a freak. So she’s watching Harry start to inherit his magic, and it’s slowly rising over the years, it’s slowly bubbling up, and she’s like, “Oh, no, no, no,” thinking that if she puts her head in the sand and denies it, it won’t be real, and now it very much is real. [laughs] A giant bursts down their door.
Eric: This also explains a little bit deeper into why Harry… I mean, Harry was always punished for doing magic accidentally, but it’s not like Petunia went to send him to see some analysts, right? She never was spooked by anything that Harry did, and she could have been, but she knew. She knew what was behind it. So even when the sweater really shrunk in front of her or the hair grown overnight, yeah, Harry was nervous about it, but I think anyone who was either trying to parent properly would have tried to have Harry assessed or exorcised, or anyone who didn’t already know what was going on. Things could have been a lot worse, I think, for Harry, but yeah, it’s clear that Petunia just really tried to squash it out. And it’s sad, because after her failed relationship with her sister after Lily dies, Petunia really had a second chance with Harry. She could have really decided to foster his difference, say he’d be a little freak or whatever, but she could live vicariously through him instead of choosing anger like she did the whole time Lily was alive.
Andrew: Yeah. But on the other hand, I guess she couldn’t, because how would Vernon have reacted to that? This could have potentially destroyed the marriage.
Eric: It is a game changer, yeah, yeah, if she shifted plays in the middle of the game.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, she’d probably be better off if that marriage dissolved, is my thinking.
Eric: [laughs] No, they’re perfect for each other, Laura. I’ll fight you on that.
Andrew: It’s kind of sad, because what if Petunia is actually super cool? But we’d never know because that ball and chain Vernon is really dragging her down.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: But there’s something to be said for the fact that she goes to the complete opposite end of the spectrum from what her sister is, right? She goes to Vernon, which is as boring and plain and… there’s probably a lot of other adjectives we can come up with about Vernon, but…
Eric: Bigoted.
Micah: Yeah, and it’s unfortunate that she goes that route, because to that point, she could be really cool. We just don’t know.
Andrew: Cool Petunia. Let’s get writing that fanfiction.
Micah: I’m sure it exists.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Probably. There’s a fanfiction for everything. Switching gears a little bit here, though, because throughout this chapter we see Hagrid reference so much to Harry, “Your parents are famous, you’re famous,” and we see some examples of how that plays out for Harry a little bit later in this conversation, but it took me back to last week’s conversation when we were talking about Dumbledore saying, “Harry is famous before he can walk and talk; it wouldn’t be good for him to be exposed to this right now.” But we also know that fame can just be really hard on kids in general. There are some really sad real life examples where fame has not gone well for child stars, for example. So reflecting on last week’s discussion, I’m wondering if we think Harry is more prepared to face this now than he would have been to grow up in a wizarding culture.
Andrew: He’s still just 11, though.
Laura: Still feels very young.
Eric: Well, yeah, it is still very young. I just have to believe, going back on what we were saying last week, literally anything would have been better than the Dursleys. I really, really believe that, especially rereading these now, because I think what we’re meant… as a kid, I would think, okay, Harry’s coming from nothing made him very humble, right? And it was this great thing, the great attractive quality in a hero who, when he learns he’s famous or has money, doesn’t care. He’s like, “I got by this far without money. I don’t need to brag, show it around, or whatever.” And yeah, sure, being modest is a great character trait, and one we find in a hero, but he literally believes he’s worthless. He literally believes he does not deserve any of this. So there’s a little bit more of a dark side to his modesty, which is he has very low self-esteem, and that’s caused by the abuse that he got. And so I think there must have been a way to raise Harry, in another world, where he didn’t get so much… learned to value himself and his own decisions. Maybe it would have made him a better student in school.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah. It is hard to say, though, and we see it really in the next chapter when he goes to Diagon Alley, how he starts to handle that fame, and there is a level of modesty to it; he seems pretty controlled. But certainly I would imagine if he grew up knowing who he was, that that could have easily created a massive ego for him and gone to his head really quickly, where maybe he would have been more closely aligned with the Draco Malfoys of the world.
Laura: Or more like his dad when he was younger.
Eric: That’s a really interesting point, and he’s kind of pre-susceptible to being an arrogant prat. [laughs] That’s really interesting. I mean, if Sirius raised Harry, Harry would probably have a big head about him, just knowing that was where Sirius and James both kind of failed.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: I do wonder, though, if we’re thinking about these “What if?” scenarios… we know that Sirius has this problem in the core books of seeing Harry as James, but I wonder, if he had had the opportunity to raise him, if that would have still held true.
Eric: Yeah, he would have definitely seen Harry from a young age, and they would have grown apart. He wouldn’t have inherited Harry when Harry was basically his dad’s age, when his dad died instead.
Laura: Right.
Micah: I’m curious… we see that it’s Hagrid that Dumbledore tasks with going to pick up Harry from the Dursleys, and Harry is reluctant at times throughout the course of the chapter to really believe everything that’s going on around him, and I’m wondering, is Hagrid the right person here? Do we feel that he’s overly convincing in his claims, or is it more so the way that Vernon responds, right? Vernon denies; Vernon has this backlash with everything that is coming out of Hagrid’s mouth. So I’m wondering, is it more the Dursleys that convince Harry that this is all true than Hagrid himself? Because if you had this big giant show up in the middle of the night out of nowhere to tell you that you’re a wizard, I’m not sure that’s so convincing.
Andrew: Right, and he’s got sausage links pouring out of his pockets, an owl, all these odds and ends, which… [laughs] He seems like he’s this nutty person who just happened to show up on this little rock island. I think it’s both, because there’s a key moment in this chapter where Hagrid says to him, “You ever make anything happen that you couldn’t explain?” I might be quoting the movie more than the book, but this happens in the book as well. And Harry realizes, “Oh yeah, I popped up on the roof. I made that glass disappear.” He has done a bunch of strange things, so it does all start to click for him. So I think it’s the combination of him finally being able to explain all the odd occurrences that he’s been able to make happen, and the Dursleys losing their minds.
Eric: Right, they wouldn’t react quite the same if they didn’t know it was the truth. And there’s some crazy thing about the truth, which is it’s really… you can tell that there is a truth that’s been levied towards them, leveled towards them, and they just have to meet it. So I think it’s equal parts. Definitely the Dursleys’ reaction would indicate that Harry has been lied to, and convinces him to just go off with this guy through Diagon Alley. As far as whether he’s the right guy for the job, yes, excellent. 10 out of 10, no notes.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I feel very confident.
Andrew: Oh, we’re going to get there. We’re going to debate that in the next chapter…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: I can’t wait.
Andrew: … because I have some serious doubts.
Micah: [laughs] He’s certainly the most imposing and threatening figure to send, and maybe that was part of the decision as well, knowing Vernon, because Vernon does stand up to Hagrid at points throughout this chapter, even though he eventually…
Eric: He’s got a gun!
Micah: He does. But he inevitably backs down. But yeah, I mean, and of course, there’s the whole tie back to Hagrid bringing Harry to the Dursleys’ in the first place, so only natural that he would take him into the wizarding world for the first time.
Laura: Yeah, and he does say that Dumbledore alluded to him that Harry might be difficult to track down, so I think Dumbledore knows that the Dursleys, in some capacity, are trying to evade this news, and he sends Hagrid, who looks as not normal as I think the Dursleys can imagine. And it’s an intimidation factor, right? But Hagrid is also a big teddy bear, and that, I think, comes across in his conversations with Harry. So I kind of think Harry has no choice here. I mean, he’s looking at his adoptive family, who have lied to and abused him his entire life, freaking out because something they’ve been hiding from him is coming out, and he’s being told, “You’re a wizard. Come with me. We’re going to go do magic stuff.” It kind of seems like the choice was made for him.
Andrew: This conversation is also making me think maybe Dumbledore wanted to send Hagrid not just because he could be menacing with his stature, but also maybe he knows that Hagrid will step over the line a little bit in terms of what he should or shouldn’t be doing. And Hagrid mentions to Harry several times in these chapters that we’re discussing today, “Don’t tell anyone anybody I did this, I did that.” Maybe Dumbledore knew he would throw a spell at the Dursleys if he needed to, whereas other wizards maybe wouldn’t. [laughs]
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Laura: I think Dumbledore knows.
Eric: Hagrid is of age; they’re not technically tracing him anymore, so when he does magic, it’s like, off-the-grid magic.
Andrew: He can get away with it, yeah. Oh, that’s so interesting. I’d never thought of that before. But now I love that Dumbledore purposely sent him because he knew he’d create a little trouble to get the job done.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And Laura, off of something you said – maybe we can just talk about this now – “When Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin’ hold of yeh,” right? You mentioned that line that Hagrid says. Yeah, but what is Dumbledore doing then if he knows all this? If he knows Harry is going to be hard to get a hold of, and he knows everything that’s going on with the Dursleys, again, this just speaks to his inability to actually care properly for Harry at a young age. It’s clear he has some level of insight into what’s going on, and he’s not doing anything about it.
Laura: Yeah, for all of the work that we know Dumbledore did about deprogramming himself from the Gellert Grindelwald days of the greater good, I think the greater good still kind of haunts Dumbledore, and we see that in cases like this, where it’s like, “Hey, the important thing is that Harry has the blood protection. That is the number one goal; everything else is ancillary,” right? So I don’t know if we give a Dumbledore “You liar” score there, but…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: It’s up to you guys. I’ve got a sound effect ready if we’re ready.
[Laura gasps]
Eric: You made it?
Andrew: I made… something.
Micah: Well, he’s not lying. He’s actually telling the truth when Hagrid says that it might be tough getting a hold of Harry.
Laura: But there’s also some omission happening there. I feel like that’s kind of Dumbledore’s bread and butter. [laughs]
Micah: I’m for it.
Andrew: Calling him a liar here?
Micah: Yeah, why not?
[Dumbledore Lie Count sound effect plays]
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Beautiful.
Andrew: So here’s another interesting part from this chapter: Vernon says, and this line made the movie too, “I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!”
Eric: God, I can hear it.
Eric: This is… [laughs] Yeah, “I am not paying for some…” And I think many readers, if you’ve already read the Harry Potter books, you might agree with this description of Dumbledore. Speaking of Dumbledore being a liar, he can be a bit of a crackpot old fool. What I also found interesting about this line is that we did learn later from the author that Hogwarts is allegedly free to attend, because the students’ tuition is funded by the Ministry of Magic. Okay. But I feel like this is a retcon, a very clear one, because it’s also mentioned in the next chapter that Harry will need money.
Eric: He needs money to get him started.
Andrew: Yeah, to get him started, and maybe it’s like shopping for school supplies. But I feel like this is something Hagrid would have mentioned in this chapter or Chapter 5, that Hogwarts is actually free. Not necessarily to Vernon, but maybe to Harry, because Harry is concerned about the fact that he doesn’t have money.
Laura: Yeah. I do wonder – and maybe some of our UK listeners could help fill in the gaps for us here – are there any boarding schools that are government-subsidized in this way? Because when I think about life over here across the pond, if you send your kid to a boarding school, you are absolutely paying for it. [laughs]
Eric: Well, but there’s not a government that relies 100% on your kid getting sent to a secret boarding school to learn very secret gifts, so maybe not.
Laura: That’s true. I mean, it could be part of the International Statute of Secrecy, right? That could be the justification for why the Ministry pays for tuition.
Eric: Yeah, there’s an incentive for them to train the students up, first of all, but then also to keep them totally separate from the general populace for most of the year.
Andrew: Even if Hogwarts wasn’t free, they’d probably give Harry a free ride, a scholarship of sorts.
Micah: There’s probably one in his name already.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly!
Eric: The Chosen One scholarship? “Oh, Harry won it again.” [laughs]
Andrew: Hagrid is like, “He’s been down to join Hogwarts since he was born,” and in that case, school should probably be free for you, especially if you’re an orphan, especially if you’re the Chosen One, especially if Dumbledore is really going to need you. [laughs]
Eric: I love this idea of the shrewd Harry, where he’s like, “Hmm, seven Galleons for wand. Can you make that three? I know I have a big destiny ahead of me.”
Micah: “Come on, Ollivander.”
Eric: Haggling with all the shop owners for all of his stuff. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, he should get a free ride everywhere. He should get a complimentary wand. It’s the least Ollivander can do for helping Tom Riddle.
Eric: It’s literally the last wand in the store, so he’s like, “You’ve wasted my time, sir. You said you’ve been doing this how long? Since 382 BC? Come on, do better.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Also, considering what we find out his brother wand did…
Andrew: Yeah! Right.
Laura: … I can see him being like, “Hey, you made the wand that caused all of this, so…”
Eric: “Can you knock two more Galleons off the…? I’m just going to take this. Bye.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Come on.
Micah: It is, though, just such a classic Vernon Dursley line. “That kid’s not getting any of my money.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Right.
Eric: Yeah, that much is clear. They made that decision long ago.
Andrew: After he wastes so much money on Dudley.
Micah: Yeah, great point.
Odds & Ends (“The Keeper of the Keys”)
Andrew: Couple odds and ends. Just wanted to mention again Hagrid and the many things in his pockets. He’s able to cook sausage right there on the spot. That sausage wasn’t refrigerated in his pocket; I’m a little grossed out by that. He’s able to boil tea. This is also an animal welfare nightmare; he’s keeping a live owl in his pocket and then sends it out into a storm to let Dumbledore know his mission was successful. By the way, I believe a couple months ago on our Patreon – or it’s in a video coming up – I have this foot tall Hagrid statue. I bought it from Hallmark 15-20 years ago when they…
Micah: It was on the first one.
Andrew: Oh, it was in the first one. Okay.
Micah: I watched it.
Andrew: Okay, thank you.
Micah: No problem.
Andrew: And it’s a beautiful statue of Hagrid, but he’s got sausage links hanging out of his pocket in a reference to this little scene.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And thinking back to that makes me happy. Hagrid also mentions being expelled from Hogwarts, but doesn’t explain why. We’ll hear about that, of course, in the next book.
Laura: Right. I love how quickly he brushed that off. He was like, “Ah, don’t worry about that.” [laughs]
Andrew: “I’m a cool wizard. Don’t ask questions.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I also thought it was… and I know we mentioned it briefly earlier on in this discussion, but Mr. Dursley brandishing a weapon is just even more cartoonishly funny when you consider that Hagrid, being half-giant, would very likely not be injured by a gun. So Hagrid didn’t even need to take the rifle and bend it, but he was just doing it to show Vernon, “Okay, sir, sit the heck down.”
Andrew: Can wizards be seriously injured by guns?
Eric: I think many of them. The fact that… I think Hagrid could still be greatly inconvenienced by a gun. [laughs] Could poke his eye out still, right? I mean, not all of him is covered in giant skin.
Laura: That’s true. I guess I’m just thinking about… we see Stunning spells and how they just bounce off of him later on in the series.
Eric: That’s energy, though. That’s not a… he’s still got flesh; he can be pierced by it. My general rule is unless you can Arresto Momentum the bullet, all wizards can pretty much get shot and killed by normal guns.
Laura: Okay.
Micah: It says more about Vernon, though, the fact that he went out of his way to purchase a rifle for this expedition to the island.
Laura: And I’m guessing he didn’t know how to use it.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Yeah, that’s the other thing I was going to say.
Laura: Just a guess.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: One of the other big things, though, that happens in this chapter is we get Voldemort name dropped. I don’t know if it’s for the first time; I think it happens in the first chapter as well, right, when Dumbledore is talking with McGonagall? We get a little bit more context to what happened to Harry’s parents, but I thought it was particularly interesting as they start to talk, Hagrid and Harry, that Hagrid says that he doesn’t think Voldemort “had enough human left in him to die.”
Laura: Yeah, very interesting.
Micah: Even early on, we’re getting hints of Horcruxes, although not explicitly stated.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: And Hagrid doesn’t even know that, right? He doesn’t know anything about the Horcruxes, but the fact that people who are pretty well-connected in the wizarding world can make that assumption says something about where the story is leading us.
Eric: That’s a good point, yeah. But what shocked me the most about all the Voldemort stuff is he says it right in front of the Dursleys, so now even Dudley knows what Harry’s parents’ deal was, and you can’t take that back or can’t undo that. I’m sure Petunia and Vernon learned something, too, when Harry was talking about it, even though they knew the general beats. It would have been in the letter.
Micah: Yeah, and it speaks to his dreams as well. We’ve gotten a couple mentions through the first few chapters of Harry’s dreams and him seeing this blinding green light that he wrongly associates maybe with being a traffic light, but now obviously we’re getting a little bit more insight into that.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary (“Diagon Alley”)
Andrew: So let’s get into Chapter 5, “Diagon Alley,” or [imitating Harry using Floo Powder in Chamber of Secrets] “diagonally.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: And Laura, are you ready?
Laura: No, not really, but we’re going to do it.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Laura: Magic…
Andrew: … is…
Eric: … being…
Micah: … shown…
Laura: … in…
Andrew: … the…
Eric: … shops.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Oh, wow.
Andrew: Okay, I’ll give that one 1 out of 5 stars.
Laura: Yeah, I led y’all down the wrong path. I apologize. [laughs]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion (“Diagon Alley”)
Andrew: Well, I mean, I think you were right to start off with “magic,” because really, this is Harry entering the wizarding world and experiencing all the magic for the first time.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: And he’s delighted by it. He’s a celebrity, cauldrons galore, owls, whimsical shops, vampires, hags, brooms, his gold, a mystery package… and this is all thanks to Hagrid being his caretaker. But like we were getting at earlier, is Hagrid, who noted that Dumbledore trusts him and he’s very proud of that, being irresponsible at times? And let’s talk about why I think he can’t be trusted. Midway through their Diagon Alley errands, Hagrid goes off for a drink because he claims this somehow will take care of the motion sickness he had after riding into Gringotts. Now, I’ve been on Escape from Gringotts at the Wizarding World. I’ve been on some coasters, sometimes against my will.
Micah: You never left me to go get a drink.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah!
Laura: No, that was me. I did.
Andrew: I get motion sickness very easily, and after I get off a coaster, my solution is never to go drink alcohol. So I just… look, I love Hagrid. Unlike the rest of this panel, I think… I might be the biggest champion of Hagrid on this panel. But I think he may have been the wrong choice because of this and some other examples. [laughs] But does anybody want to defend him? Do you think maybe he was making it up that he went to get a drink?
Eric: I find it pretty hard to justify walking away to get a drink when you’re literally the only connection this boy has to anyone, and you yourself only met him. Hagrid doesn’t know enough of Harry’s character to know that he won’t get in immediate trouble, or decide… even at this point, you could really screw something up. Harry could just decide to trash the place in some kind of rant. Who knows?
Andrew: Or run away in a panic.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Or Hagrid also knows that Harry is a celebrity. Everybody knows him, so you also run the risk of a ton of people suddenly swarming around Harry and badgering him with questions, and where’s his bodyguard, so to speak? Who’s going to protect him?
Micah: Right. If the Leaky Cauldron was any indication of what could happen to Harry…
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: … where the one woman shook his hand 50 times before he was finally able to get away…
Eric: She kept coming back for more.
Micah: Yeah, she kept coming back for more. I agree with that; I think it’s very negligent to leave an 11-year-old child… it would be like taking them literally to a theme park and just saying, “You know what? Go explore this store here. I’m going to go get a drink for a couple minutes.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Reasons. Yeah, well, I think, too, that although… to play sort of the counterpoint to that, most of the most important discoveries of your self happen when you’re alone in a big city, right? I think that speaks to me as I travel looking around. It’s the same thing that Harry does in year three, by having an extra week in Diagon Alley. He kind of forges his own path. He’s way too young now to be doing it, but the experience with Ollivander, the experience with meeting Draco in Madam Malkin’s for the first time, just would have hit differently, or would not have occurred at all if Hagrid were right there watching over him, so I think… I’m not saying there’s wisdom in what Hagrid did, but it has the fortunate side effect of Harry really does kind of start to come into his own because he is on his own.
Micah: Yeah, that’s fair. And I know I equated it to a theme park, but I think it’s more like being in a foreign country for the first time and being left on your own.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: I mean, I definitely see the disadvantages of leaving Harry alone at this stage in time. However, I did want to talk about the time in which this story takes place, and ask y’all, if you remember being kids… we all grew up in the ’90s, the early 2000s. There were plenty of times where, at age 11, I would say starting around that time, I was allowed to walk into a store by myself, and it wasn’t a big deal. I don’t think parents do that quite as much anymore because of the current state of the world, but it was pretty common, and it wasn’t seen as a big deal. So I think that’s part of this. The other thing, I think, is I don’t think Hagrid actually went off to get a drink. I think that he told Harry that, but he turns up really quickly with ice cream cones for the both of them. Remember, Harry gets into Madam Malkin’s, she puts the cloak over him, she begins pinning it, and he exchanges a few lines of dialogue with Draco. And then suddenly, Hagrid is in the window holding ice cream cones, and I think that Hagrid wanted to surprise Harry, giving him a little bit of a defense here.
Eric: Aww.
Laura: Even though Harry is excited to be learning about the wizarding world, it’s probably starting to get a little overwhelming, and ice cream is the most familiar thing that Harry sees in Diagon Alley this day.
Micah: Do you think he had second thoughts and then didn’t go and get a pick-me-up?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah, maybe he was like, “Ah, poor kid, let me get him some ice cream.” Possibly.
Eric: He stepped away just to throw up, and then he went right over to the…
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: But doesn’t he also have a flask in his jacket?
Laura: He does.
Eric: Somewhere in there, yeah. The other thing it could have been is damage control, because Hagrid knew that if Harry ever met Florean Fortescue, a.k.a. the coolest wizard in the entire world, he never would have left the parlor, he would still be there for years, so Hagrid had to go and get the ice cream thing out of the way first.
Andrew: Yeah. So another example here, while Hagrid is off getting ice cream/getting rid of his nausea, Harry has his first encounter with Draco, though he’s not named in the scene. But reading it the second time, you know this is Draco. And since Hagrid is absent, Harry is left to deal with this rando, who Hagrid probably would not have let him interact with had he been present. And thanks to Harry’s convo with the mystery boy – this is, I guess, the one good thing that comes out of it – Draco quickly becomes less appealing to Harry because he’s prejudiced, he talks poorly of Hagrid, he sounds entitled, and he hates on Hufflepuff. Now, let’s take a little moment here to pour one out for Hufflepuff…
Eric: Thank you. Thank you.
Andrew: … because we get several lines that start the Hufflepuff hate amongst readers for decades to come here in the Muggle world. So there’s this line from Draco: “Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” [laughs] And then Hagrid! And I think we brought this up on the show a few months ago. Hagrid says, “Everyone says Hufflepuffs are a bunch o’ duffers,” and Harry gloomily predicts that he would be put in Hufflepuff. This is the beginning of Hufflepuff being treated as the lesser House by readers.
[Eric sighs]
Andrew: And I just… this is another ding against Hagrid. Who does Hagrid hear this from to begin with? He says “everyone.” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah. Well, when you work at a school, you hear it every day.
Micah: Dumbledore.
Andrew: But not just that, he passes it on to Harry like it’s fact! As an employee of the school himself, he should be lifting up every Hogwarts House. I just… I don’t know if this is a bad writing decision. I don’t know if this is just reflective of Hagrid’s character…
Laura: You know, Hagrid is just keeping it real.
Andrew: [laughs] Ouch.
Eric: He’s telling it like it is!
Laura: He’s telling it like it is, and he’s not passing judgment on Hufflepuff; he’s just saying, “Yeah, a lot of people think that they’re lame.”
Andrew: He kind of is, though.
Eric: “Many people are saying…”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Right, when you say, “Many people are saying,” you are passing judgment yourself. [laughs] Unless you cite specific people, you are passing judgment. It’s you who’s saying that.
Laura: Yeah. Well, and I would say he’s also not actually a teacher at this point; he is Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: But I think… we can talk about this when we get to Prisoner of Azkaban, if we feel like we see him become more neutral in his approach towards the Houses once he’s a teacher. I think that would be really interesting to look at.
Eric: That’s a good point.
Andrew: He still on the payroll.
Laura: He represents the school, yeah.
Micah: He’s an adult.
Andrew: It’s still inexcusable to me.
Eric: He’s supposed to be impartial. I know Snape is too.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And he’s an adult. Let’s not forget, he’s the first adult interaction to the wizarding world officially that Harry has. I just kind of took this, though, as part of the information drip that we’re getting as readers, and that Harry is getting. And there’s that line – I don’t remember if it was in this chapter – where Hagrid just says to Harry, “Oh, I forgot how much you don’t know about the wizarding world, that there are Houses.” And so is this a misstep on his part? Yeah, but we also get a Slytherin setup too, so that only really leaves two Houses for Harry to be Sorted into.
Laura: Right. We get, to Micah’s point, the beginning of Slytherin being set up as the bad House. Hagrid says, “You know, Hufflepuff would be better than Slytherin. There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.”
Eric: Yeah, we know that’s not strictly true. Yeah, we know that many of the bad guys for the next couple years are going to be hailing from Ravenclaw.
Laura: Right? [laughs] That’s what I was thinking too. It’s like, “Huh, funny.” Because especially in this book…
Eric: Quirrell.
Laura: … who we’re looking at being the bad guy, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, and then Lockhart next year. And Pettigrew was Gryffindor, so…
Andrew: Well, so let’s just take a quick vote here. Was Hagrid the right person for the job? Just to recap some positives, he did successfully help Harry get everything on his list and bought him an owl, which was very sweet.
Eric: Aww.
Andrew: Harry doesn’t die, so that’s a big plus.
Laura: And I think Hagrid does a great job of gaining Harry’s trust, which was really key in making him comfortable going off to London with a stranger. There’s one point in the chapter that really sticks out to me where Harry is talking about his insecurities. He thinks he’s going to go to Hogwarts and he’s not going to be good at magic; he’s going to be so behind. And Hagrid says, “Yeh’ve been singled out, an’ that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a great time at Hogwarts – I did – still do, ‘smatter of fact.” And Hagrid would know how hard being singled out is, so this is really coming from the heart, I think.
Andrew: Yeah, and then the negatives. [laughs] Now let me go back to hating on him.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: What we just discussed. Plus, he admits to Harry – and I mentioned this a little while ago too – that he’s doing some things that Hogwarts and the Ministry shouldn’t hear about. And he does put a tail on Dudley; he does leave the Dursleys stranded on an island, seemingly. I don’t know how they got off of it.
Eric: [laughs] Maybe they wrote to Dumbledore. They had to catch a bird, and then Petunia wrote a letter.
Andrew: Yeah, or maybe Dumbledore just thought about it himself. “Wait a second, if Hagrid… he probably took that boat. Oh, damn. I’ve got to go save the Dursleys.”
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Laura: Do y’all think that’s why the Dursleys leave Harry at King’s Cross the way they do in the next chapter and drive off laughing? [laughs]
Eric: “See ya.”
Andrew: Oof, that is vicious.
Micah: Can we think, though, of somebody else who would be better suited for this role other than Hagrid?
Andrew: I agree.
Micah: Because I feel like if it’s Dumbledore, then it’s like, “Whoa, teacher’s new pet.”
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: I don’t know that it would set… I just feel like Hagrid is the right fit because he’s soft as it relates to Harry, right? He’s a comforting presence, despite his size – I don’t think Harry is really intimidated at all by him – but yet he’s imposing enough to do all the things that need to be done in these chapters, and protecting Harry.
Eric: I’m trying to think of somebody that would have been worse. McGonagall. The Dursleys would not be alive anymore if McGonagall had showed up at the Hut on the Rock – they would have never been found – for their attitude, and especially because McGonagall would have been like, “I should have known 11 years ago when I first met you guys that this is just bad.”
Andrew: The only person who came to mind for me was McGonagall, but I do agree, Hagrid’s more rugged, down-to-earth handling of Harry probably is more of what Harry needs right now, rather than a more strict experience that McGonagall or maybe someone else, maybe another Hogwarts professor, would have provided.
Laura: Well, and I think, too, about… have any of y’all ever had a mentor? It could either be in a school setting, a work setting, whatever, and although that mentor is affiliated with the institution that you’re joining, they’re still your initial connection to that. They’re your safe space to be able to share your insecurities and to ask all the questions that you maybe think are dumb questions, and because of that relationship, that person just tends to keep it more real with you. I think Harry needs a really gentle introduction to the wizarding world, and Hagrid gives him that. For better or for worse; there are clearly some areas where Hagrid could maybe improve on his babysitting, but I think overall, he was the right choice.
Micah: I also would just add: I don’t think Hagrid would really lie to Harry, unlike other people we know.
Laura: True.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, fair, fair. Okay, you’ve all convinced me. I’m going to go ahead and say he was the right person for the job, even though there are some serious aspects here that I’m questioning.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: But he was good enough. I’ll say that. Good enough.
Laura: You would never let Hagrid babysit Brooklyn?
Andrew: Absolutely, positively not. No.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: He does have dog biscuits.
Andrew: So this is a big chapter for Harry. He’s entering the wizarding world, like I said, for the first time. And of course – very big moment for Harry – he goes to Ollivander to get his wand. But I’ve got some questions about Ollivander. So we meet this older gentleman who knows every wand he’s ever sold, and what a character! This guy just right out of the gate admits he sold the wand that gave Harry that scar and killed his parents. “Oops, sorry about that.” Except he didn’t even apologize. He also does say, “If I’d known what that wand was going out into the world to do…” and then he trails off. Would he have not sold that wand?
Eric: He absolutely would’ve.
Andrew: I feel like it’s his… yeah! It’s his duty as a wandmaker to give each customer a wand. It might pain Ollivander to not sell a wand, not because he’s money-grubbing, he’s just a straight-up businessman, but I feel like that was what he was born to do: give wizards wands. Find the right wand; give it to them.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Here’s the thing: He’s eccentric. Ollivander is just an old eccentric, and that’s the kind of thing… after all that time with him, Harry is not sure if he likes this guy, and it’s just perfect. It’s perfectly played, and I think pitch perfectly adapted into the film, getting John Hurt to do it.
Laura: Agree.
Eric: Because he says some really weird things, and he’s allowed to be prideful of his long history, the fact that he remembers every wand he’s ever sold, but it’s creepy and it’s off-putting, and you’re right to call him out on his line: “If I knew then what the wand was going…” He would have done nothing different.
Micah: Right.
Eric: And in fact, he seems impressed by what was done by the wand that was held by Tom Riddle.
Andrew: Yikes!
Micah: By the way, that’s such a Ravenclaw line, too, from Ollivander, that he remembers every wand he’s ever sold.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yep. Well, and to be able to be really neutral about talking about levels of magic. He says great and terrible things were done with that wand, so he is acknowledging that it wasn’t good for anybody, what happened as a result of Tom Riddle getting that wand and later becoming Voldemort, but you can’t deny the level of magic and the ability that comes with it.
Eric: All of that murder. Very impressive.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah, and I mean, it again comes back to it being our choices that define who we are. And I think Ollivander is alluding to that here when he says, “We can expect great things from you,” and maybe there’s a tinge of hope there. Maybe he’s thinking this is redemption for this wand core that did so much damage before.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: But something else I would bring up: I don’t think Ollivander knows that Harry didn’t know his history until the day prior. I think Ollivander is assuming that Harry knew what happened, so in his mind, this is not news to Harry; he’s just plugging in a gap with some additional information. He has no idea this is completely overwhelming to Harry. And I also wonder, if Harry hadn’t found this out from Ollivander, but he found out from someone else years later – let’s say Dumbledore dropped a truth bomb on him in the office, and was like, “Oh yeah, by the way, your wand, Voldemort’s wand, they’re brothers” – I think it actually might have been worse for him to find out later.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: I think we get moments in these chapters of establishing connections early on between Harry and Voldemort, and this is one of them, right? That their wands share these brother cores. The scar gets mentioned a couple of times in these chapters, and then of course, the info dump that Harry gets from Hagrid about what happened that night. So I think it’s important that it’s set up early on that these two are very much connected to each other.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: It’s just another reminder that Harry is really getting thrust into the reality of his world very quickly, and you just feel terrible for him. Okay, yeah, it’s good that he does hear this information, but just keeping in mind that he is an 11-year-old, this is all really tough stuff to hear. All while experiencing imposter syndrome, which we’ll get to in a little bit. But this next moment really excited me because of an interview we had on the show a couple months ago. Harry chooses the right wand, and red and gold sparks shoot out. Gryffindor colors. And when I read this, I remembered that when we had on the original Philosopher’s Stone illustrator on the show a couple months ago, Thomas Taylor, we had asked him why Harry was wearing a red and gold scarf on the cover when he’s at Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Clearly, he hadn’t been Sorted yet, so why is he wearing a Gryffindor scarf? He thought he got a red and gold description from Chapter 2, but reading this line in the book, this appears to be – and I did a little search to see if there was another occurrence – the first time red and gold are specifically mentioned in the book, so I think Thomas Taylor decided to put a red and gold scarf on Harry because of the red and gold sparks coming out of his wand.
Eric: That checks out. It seems very like, “What are the colors of magic in receiving the wand that’s meant for you? Well, it’s red and gold, according to the book.”
Andrew: Yeah. We need to email Thomas Taylor and tell him we figured it out.
Eric: And be like, “Hey, we found it.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: “It took us a couple months, but we figured it out.”
Eric: Yeah. Well, I wonder if everyone’s wand shoots red and gold sparks when they get the right one.
Andrew: Well, it is a good question. It’s also like, is this a foreshadowing moment?
Eric: Of him being a Gryffindor?
Andrew: Yeah.
Eric: It’s like, the Sorting Hat technically Sorts everybody, but Ollivander knows a couple of days early, the color.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Maybe Ollivander is the Sorting Hat. Dun-dun-dun!
Eric: Yeah. Ooh, major twist.
Andrew: Any theories here about the sparks? The colors?
Eric: I mean, aren’t all sparks kind of red or kind of gold? They shoot… I’m thinking of welding metal; those are all kind of red. So maybe what Harry is seeing is just light in a really interesting way. But I know that when they’re doing their detention in the Forbidden Forest, and Fang and Hagrid are there, and Harry encounters Voldemort, they’re instructed very specifically to send up either red sparks or green sparks, depending on if they’re safe or if they’ve encountered a problem, so there are spells that do differentiate the color of sparks that come out of your wand; I don’t know what they are. But so the fact that it came out red does seem to indicate that Harry will be a Gryffindor.
Laura: Yeah, and I wonder, too… because there’s no particular spell being cast at this point; the wand is just reacting to being held by Harry, and it gets me thinking about what are some other times where we’ve seen sparks randomly emit from a wand with no clear magical purpose other than just to be there? And so I’m trying to think if those always align with a person’s House colors, or if it can just be dependent on the situation. Maybe the wand’s in a really good mood that day.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Well, here’s my connection to it: Dumbledore was a Gryffindor, and Dumbledore’s phoenix/familiar is the one whose wand core.. the tail feather’s in the wand core for Harry, so maybe it was red and gold because that’s just the color that the wand would innately be through that connection.
Laura: Yeah, maybe it has to do with the core.
Eric: Yeah, the phoenix.
Laura: Maybe unicorn hair is like silver and blue or something like that.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: Ravenclaw.
Laura: Yep.
Eric: Dragon heartstring would be green and black.
Micah: I like that, but at the same time, I like the idea that it was also a little bit of foreshadowing on the author’s part that Harry was going to be Sorted into Gryffindor.
Andrew: Yeah, I’m inclined to think that’s a little bit of what’s going on here, but I do like these theories that y’all are sharing. So reviewing his best day ever, Harry is experiencing some imposter syndrome. Everyone knows him and admires him, but Harry doesn’t have the memories of why he deserves the accolades, and he recognizes he hasn’t had a day of education about magic, so it’s just a very strange situation for him. Like, “Everybody knows me, they think I’m really talented, but I don’t know a lick of magic – at least magic that I’m trying to do purposefully – yet.” I think it’s one of the first times, if not the first time, that Harry is thrust into a difficult situation at too young an age. It’s not normal for an 11-year-old to experience imposter syndrome, and I feel really bad for Harry here. He’s put into, like I was saying earlier, all these very adult situations that no child should ever have to go through. Maybe we can have a little discussion here about imposter syndrome. Do y’all remember feeling it at 11? I was maybe feeling it starting around 16/17.
Eric: Yeah, you have to be told your limits or decide that for yourself before you realize you can’t attain something. But much of my childhood, thankfully, was just like, “Oh, I’ll try and do something until I’m told I can’t or find out that I can’t.” So doubting myself didn’t come into… I mean, I was nervous about things like trying out for the school play, but I think the first time I really started doubting myself or had imposter syndrome was later in adolescence or closer to adult age.
Laura: I feel like I’ve experienced some kind of imposter syndrome in multiple stages of my life, and honestly, the first time I really remember feeling it, I was around 11 or 12, and it was when we moved states. We moved from Texas to Georgia during the summer, I was starting middle school in the fall, and of course, that’s a very tumultuous time for anyone, I think, and I felt a lot of pressure starting at a brand new middle school in a brand new state where I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have any friends, I felt like I didn’t belong, I didn’t know what my place was there… and I didn’t have a name for that feeling at the time, but it was definitely imposter syndrome for sure. And then I think just going on throughout life, there are really normal times where it crops up. Anytime you’re moving. I think about even starting podcasting; I remember being on the first episode I was on of MuggleCast, being like, “I don’t know if I should be here.” [laughs] And I think starting a new job is always another really great example for something maybe more current in all of our lives that we’ve experienced. So yeah, the struggle is real.
Eric: Definitely starting MuggleCast for the first time. It was such a wide audience. Definitely feeling like I had to prove that I could do it.
Andrew: Yeah, and obviously, MuggleCast has never been as popular as Harry Potter, the character in the wizarding world…
Eric: Well…
Micah: Eh, we were close.
Andrew: … but the show was very popular, and being younger, we were like, “Wow, people really like the show. Why? It’s just us.” So it’s a similar situation to what Harry was experiencing, actually.
Micah: Yeah, I agree with all the examples that have been raised, and have experienced some of that myself. What I’m curious about, though, with Harry though, too, is that does he feel this way because also for the first time he’s being treated like a human being by Hagrid?
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Micah: And he’s never been treated that way before. Hagrid gets him ice cream; Hagrid takes him out for a meal before he gets the train back home.
Andrew: Buys him an owl.
Micah: Yeah, he gets gifts.
Andrew: A good gift. [laughs]
Micah: He’s not used to any of this. People are friendly to him and have conversations with him, and so yeah, I’ve got to imagine that’s factoring into this too.
Laura: Yeah, agreed.
Andrew: Yeah, I think you’re right.
Odds & Ends (“Diagon Alley”)
Andrew: So some odds and ends. Hagrid tells Harry that Fudge is always asking Dumbledore for advice, and this is interesting because when you think to Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and Fudge is denying that Voldemort has returned, which was an insistence of Dumbledore’s. Oh, how times have changed. Also, Hagrid mentions, “Crikey, I’d like a dragon,” which is a nice little bit of foreshadowing. Students may, according to the Hogwarts supply letter, bring an owl, cat, or toad, but we don’t see a ton of other students bring animals. This made me think. I would think a lot of students would want to bring one of these three animals to have a pet, a friend at school. Especially if you’re joining this new school and you might not know anybody, that might be comforting to you to have a companion. Just imagine how chaotic Hogwarts would be if every student was bringing a cat, owl, or toad. [laughs]
Eric: The common room would have all these water bowls for all the pets. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah! There’d be noise all the time.
Micah: You do have an owlery, though, right?
Andrew: Yeah, so they stay there, but there’s not a toadery.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: There’s the Black Lake.
Andrew: [laughs] Oh, okay. Maybe there is a place for all these animals to go.
Eric: It is so arbitrary to have those three animals and only those three animals allowed. It’s kind of like, what about the student that has this cherished ferret or guinea pig or something?
Micah: Well, you need a lot of Evanesco going on. That’s what I’m thinking.
Laura: Yep. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, definitely.
Andrew: It just makes me think it’s just another way Hogwarts can be so chaotic with all these animals potentially running around at the school.
Eric: Well, I think it’s mentioned at some point that toads have fallen out of fashion. I think Hagrid may even say that, which is so funny when Neville has…
Micah: Cue Neville.
Eric: Yeah, poor Neville.
Laura: It’s Hagrid being like, “Oh, no, those aren’t in fashion anymore. You will be made fun of. Let’s get you something else.” [laughs]
Eric: “It’s such a faux pas.”
Laura: Well, we also, in this chapter, get the first mentions of Bathilda Bagshot, who obviously becomes extremely important later on in the series. We also see our first mention of the Nimbus 2000. And Hagrid notes to Harry that Gringotts is hundreds of miles under London; I had forgotten about this. Obviously, we knew Gringotts was underground, but I had forgotten how far underground it was. And Hagrid also goes on to talk about the dragons that are guarding high security vaults, and he alludes to how impossible it is to get out, which is a nice thread to connect to Deathly Hallows, because we know what happens there.
Andrew: And hundreds of miles under London.
Laura: Yeah!
Andrew: You’re getting close to Earth’s core.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: I mean, it must be pretty hot down there. I’m surprised the gold doesn’t melt.
Eric: Oh.
Laura: I was wondering about the geological impacts of being that far underground, but I wasn’t going to go there.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: No wonder Hagrid was feeling sick. He was having a heat stroke!
Eric: I just did the math – or not, I googled it – and it’s actually 1,800 miles to the Earth’s core, so they’re probably at 300-500, I’d say, so not all the way there. But I like the idea that wizards could immediately be superior at digging. No Muggle means could get that far down, so they’re protected by living underground or having their bank vaults be down there. I think it’s cool. I really like it.
Micah: A couple notes on my end. Actually, Laura, you reminded me when you mentioned Bathilda Bagshot; we also get our first mention of Newt Scamander on that list as well for Harry to pick up a copy of Fantastic Beasts. We also meet Professor Quirrell for the first time, and I was wondering – I think, Eric, you had the answer here – how he’s able to touch Harry in the Leaky Caldron with no consequence. We know what happens at the end of the book, but it appears that he is not yet fully possessed by Voldemort at this time, right?
Eric: Yeah. It’s not until the blunder where they do get into the bank vault… and I’d love to know how Quirrell does it, but it’s not until after that point when they get there – Quirrell gets in, it’s too late, the stone has been taken – that Voldemort decides he has to something like “keep a closer eye” on Quirrell. Quirrell tells Harry that at the end of the book.
Laura and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And it’s also the first of two books where we meet the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in Diagon Alley.
Eric: Ooh.
Laura: Great call-out.
Micah: One other thing – this was a fun note – when Harry is in Ollivander’s, he talks about the wands that his parents had, and he mentions that Lily’s wand was good for Charms, James’s wand good for Transfiguration, which of course we know comes into play in a couple of books from now.
[Eric laughs]
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary (“The Journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarters”)
Andrew: Chapter 6, “The Journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarters.” Chapter 5 ended with the Dursleys just running away from Harry cruelly. It was really inappropriate; it makes me sick. But then we get an introduction to a really wonderful family. And to kick things off, let’s start with the Seven-Word Summary.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Micah: Aboard…
Laura: … the…
Andrew: … train…
Eric: … Harry…
Micah: … meets..
Laura: … the…
Andrew: [laughs] … Weasleys!
Laura: There we go.
Andrew: Yay.
Micah: All right.
Laura: Hey, this is our best summary of the day, I think.
Andrew: I think so too.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I don’t know that it’s technically accurate, but okay.
Laura: Well, he means some of them.
Eric: Okay, okay.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion (“The Journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarters”)
Andrew: So we go from the worst family in Harry’s life, who, as I said, laugh as they leave him helpless in King’s Cross, to the best! We meet the Weasleys. And the first impressions here represent most of these characters for much of the series. We learn that Fred and George are pranksters. Ginny is fawning over Harry, which arguably is some foreshadowing as well. Molly is already deeply caring for Harry too; she tells Fred, “Don’t you dare ask about Voldemort” when Fred has that idea pop into his mischievous mind. So Harry and Ron meet each other on the train, and they comfort each other. Ron tells Harry that he won’t be out of place as a student, and Harry tells Ron that even he, Harry, deals with hand-me-downs, just like Ron does. Instant friends; they’ve got a connection here. They mutually help one another out, and I just really love that scene as an introduction to each other. Made me think, what’s the oldest friends we have? Because just in this moment, Harry and Ron become instant friends for life.
Eric: Well, I’m pleased to say that I have had a friend since I was about four years old.
Andrew: Wow.
Eric: We used to live next door to each other. We obviously live in different states now, and in fact, he moved away when I was nine years old. His name is Josh. His family moved to Maryland, but our mothers were close, and so we kept in touch, and we got to hang out pretty much every year. We would go down and visit them; I would sleep over for a couple of days. It was this wonderful thing. So as to the question, how did you…? Was it love at first sight? Definitely we just vibed, and that’s still the case. We just vibe. It feels really good to have a longtime friend.
Andrew: Other than y’all, I can’t say I have any longtime friends. [laughs]
Eric: Well, also, you’re my longterm friend. I mean, 17 years?
Andrew: Yeah, I thought Eric was going to bring that up, but he didn’t. It’s okay. It’s fine.
Eric: No, actually, I…
Laura: [laughs] Andrew is going to start crying.
Andrew: [emotionally] It’s fine. It’s okay. I saw a lot of heart emojis here; I thought that’s where you were going to go, but it’s okay.
Eric: 17 years is a long time!
Andrew: No, it is, for sure. But my oldest friend I met… my current oldest friend – an active friend – I met in seventh grade.
Eric: That’s great.
Andrew: Yeah, Harry’s got me beat, though. It is impressive that you meet another friend at 11 – or you said 4 – and you stay active friends for life. And sometimes I see this on Facebook, people celebrate this, and that’s great. I’ve never had this, though, at least not that far back.
Laura: I’ve been making friends off the Internet since a very young age, which is funny because I think at the time it seemed weird to most people, but now it’s pretty normal. My oldest friend apart from y’all – y’all are the next oldest friends – is my friend Tiffany, who I met when I was six or seven years old? And the reason I knew her, or that I still know her, is because our moms – and my dad as well, to an extent – they all wrote Star Trek fanfiction together online. [laughs]
Eric: Um… okay?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: So that’s how they all met, and we ended up moving to Texas, which is where Tiffany and her family lived, and so my parents and her mom just started getting together, and as a result, she and I met and became friends. And it’s one of those friendships where we don’t talk every day or super often, but when we do get together, it’s like no time has passed, which are some of my favorite kinds of friendship. I feel that way about y’all too. We don’t get to see each other in person very often, but when we do, it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. We just kind of pick things up where we left off.
Micah: Yeah, I definitely agree. Those are the best, that just when you get together, you just can have conversations about anything, and things feel normal, like – as you said, Laura – no time has really passed at all. Similar to Eric, yeah, I have a friend going back to elementary school age that I’ve just known. I actually have a group; we’ve pretty much all stayed in touch with each other, and certainly we’ve all moved to different parts of the country and started families, but I think anytime we get together, it’s just very easy and fun. So it was nice reading this about Harry and Ron, how they were just able to connect instantaneously, and you knew that it’s a friendship that would last a lifetime.
Andrew: Did you know, according to a study in 2019, the average American has three friends for life, five people they really like and would hang out with one-on-one, and eight people they like but don’t spend time with one-on-one or seek out.
Eric: Okay, I guess you guys are my three friends for life, then.
Andrew: There you go!
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I feel fortunate I have more than three friends for life. It’s y’all…
Andrew: Showoff.
Laura: … and then one or two people outside of this panel.
Andrew: I think maybe this is a benefit of podcasting; you can get ahead of the average. If you’re podcasting with people for a really long time, presumably you like them, and then outside of podcasts, you have some other friends, actually. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: I mean, I think I’m a little lower on the friends that you would hang out with… or excuse me, eight people that you like but you don’t spend a ton of time with one-on-one. I don’t think I have eight of those. [laughs] I think that number is less.
Eric: I can think all of our Slug Club members I would hang out with one-on-one. There’s dozens. I have so many friends.
Micah: Yeah, I feel like that part of it probably changes as you get older. When you’re younger, you probably have people that you like, and you really want to spend time with but don’t, but I think as you age, you’re like, “Eh, they’re not worth it.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: If they don’t reciprocate and want to spend time with you… that’s what it seems like.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: It’s not transactional, but it does have to kind of serve… it has to contribute to your wellbeing in a way.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: I mean, honestly, time is the most valuable gift you can give somebody.
Andrew: Yeah, and it’s hard to manage friendships, relationships, especially if you’re juggling multiple and long distance friendships. Relationships are difficult to manage. But yeah, it was just really great to see this instant connection between Harry and Ron, and I’m glad it was set up that way. On the other hand, though, Harry meets Hermione, and I don’t really get any strong feelings from Harry about Hermione in this scene. He meets Draco, too, but those feelings have already been established, and he makes the connection that he met Draco back in Diagon Alley. But Hermione, I don’t see any quick feelings like he gets about Ron. Am I missing something here, or does it just take a while?
Eric: I think it’s intentional in the writing because they have to build up to the whole troll scene, so Harry doesn’t necessarily, like, “Yeah, this girl’s awesome.” But she’s also a girl. Everyone else so far has been Harry’s same gender, and he grew up with Dudley. He knows boys totally fine.
Andrew: Ohh. That’s an interesting point.
Eric: All these boys on the train. Yeah, so I mean, Hermione comes in. Look, I think she might be a little off-putting. She’s very know-it-all-y, she’s very kind of just different, just a totally different energy, and Harry just doesn’t know what to make of it. I think some of it has to do with the fact that she’s a girl.
Laura: Yeah, maybe he doesn’t know how to talk to girls.
Andrew: Well, yeah, exactly. If you are…
Eric: I mean, imagine that. When would he have had any practice?
Andrew: Well, right. And if you are straight, you might naturally just be like, “A girl? Oh, God, maybe this could be it. Maybe she could be the one.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: So naturally, you’re a little standoffish because you don’t want to screw that up.
Micah: I also just think that Harry and Ron are having a good time. Harry hasn’t had probably anything like this throughout most of his childhood, where he’s just hanging out with his new best friend on a train to Hogwarts, and they’re enjoying themselves, right? They’ve got Chocolate Frog Cards, they have candy…
Andrew: Yeah, Harry is spending up a storm.
Micah: … rank corned beef sandwiches… and he’s learning about the wizarding world, too, from Ron.
Laura: That’s the thing Hermione brings. Speaking of imposter syndrome, she is very clearly overcompensating here for this perceived deficiency that she feels, maybe feeling like she’s behind, because growing up her whole life she didn’t know about wizards and she only very recently figured out they existed. So she’s trying to catch up very quickly here, and she’s trying to show off the work that she’s done, I think, to make a place for herself among these other students. She doesn’t know what their parentages are, right? So she’s just assuming that it’s going to make it easier for her to belong and fit in if she shows that she gets it, right? And Harry is very open about not getting it, and he is okay with asking questions even if they do make him feel dumb, so there’s an interesting juxtaposition between these two here.
Eric: There’s also this… I mean, we know Hermione is deeply insecure, especially about many things, but she’s also very take charge in this moment. She comes in there, she’s helping Neville out with the whole toad thing, she’s assertive, and I just think she’s got a lot of good qualities that we shouldn’t discourage girls from having. But yeah, Ron and Harry have just never seen anybody like her at all.
Micah: Yeah, but I also think she’s the second one to come in and ask about the toad, and it’s like, “Didn’t we already deal with this? Like we said, there’s no toad here. Can we go back to chilling?” Again, remember, they’re 11 years old. I don’t think anybody’s questioning motives here.
Laura: Yeah, and girls are also just socialized to be more helpful, so I think that is an element of what’s going on here too when we think about some of the differences that they might have seen in their upbringings that inform the way they are in this chapter.
Andrew: Okay. So yeah, like a lot of these early chapters, there’s not a ton to discuss deeply, I don’t think. But the only other major note here is I think Harry is starting to be nudged towards Gryffindor, because it’s one of the Houses he’s not hearing bad things about. [laughs] He’s hearing Slytherin is made up of bad people, Hufflepuff is a bunch of duffers, Ravenclaw, eh, okay, but also Gryffindor. Ron wants to go to Gryffindor; I think Hermione mentioned something about Gryffindor as well. So he’s being nudged that direction, which is interesting to see.
Odds & Ends (“The Journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarters”)
Andrew: Looking at some odds and ends.
Laura: Yeah, so we see Scabbers for the first time. It’s real weird rereading this and thinking forward about connecting threads. Typically, I think we’ve always looked back to connect threads, so it’s very interesting to be able to do it this way. Real weird to think about the guy who betrayed Harry’s parents, and also just a grown man, just being in this train compartment with these children.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: And then also something I noticed that was just an interesting point when it came to some of the figures mentioned on Chocolate Frog Cards: We see a combination of real life historical figures that we would all be familiar with, as well as characters from lore and legend that are apparently, in this world, wizards. So we hear about Ptolemy, who was a real life mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist; we also get Morgana, who was a sorceress in Arthurian legend; Circe, who’s a goddess in Greek mythology; Paracelsus, who was a physician, alchemist, theologian, and philosopher. So we get Merlin too, who’s a very obvious one. But it’s something I really appreciate about these stories, is that they’re extremely grounded in some ways in terms of making it clear that this story very much takes place in our world, right? Because these are all people we’re familiar with. You would never read about Ptolemy, who we all learned about in math class, I’m thinking – that’s probably where most people are familiar with that name from – you would never, off the top of your head, be like, “Oh, yeah, that guy was a wizard,” and I just thought it was really cool that they were inserted in that way.
Andrew: And this is one of the big appeals of the Harry Potter series: It feels like it actually is happening in our world.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Stuff like this, or London and Diagon Alley being intertwined. It all fits together, and it’s a really exciting prospect. And this is why “Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home” also really resonates with people, because it really does feel like Hogwarts could be out there.
Eric: Also, they have that flourish-y old timey name, Ptolemy. Even as an 11-year-old – or probably 14-year-old – reading this, I didn’t know who these people were, but they have that fancy name that makes it seem real.
Laura: Right, and then you’re like, “Wait, real people had these names.” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, but they were wizards.
Laura: Yeah, it’s very cool. And then another Chocolate Frog note: We learn some facts about Dumbledore at this point, and we know that two out of three of these have been explained. So we get the Grindelwald connection later on, we also get the Nicolas Flamel connection later on in the book, but we’re still waiting to hear about the 12 uses of dragon’s blood. We still don’t know about that.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: After all this time.
Eric: There could be a five-film series on the 12 uses of dragon’s blood.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: They make a great martini. That’s actually one.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Also, I just wanted to celebrate how, like the two chapters that preceded it, the magic is laid on thick here. All the different and whimsical types of candy, like we mentioned a few minutes ago. There’s the moving portraits. As a reader – and I think this is something that initially hooked us – it’s thrilling to have so much thrown at us at once, and things we’d never seen before. And again, tying it back to the fact that it feels like the wizarding world is truly set in our world, throwing in all this new magic, all these very clever ideas… it gives you a dopamine hit, and you just want to read more. And I think all this magic and all this creativity is a big reason why we were so drawn into the book early on. And like a good television show, they’ve got to hook you early. This book hooks you early.
Eric: Yeah, it does. It’s beautiful.
Micah: Yeah, for me on the odds and ends front, I thought it was strange that nobody told Harry beforehand how to get onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters, right? When we were talking in the previous chapter about was Hagrid best suited to be the one…
Andrew: Another ding against Hagrid!
Micah: Yeah, or included in the Hogwarts letter. Maybe Harry misplaced that, given all the letters that showed up for him. But I feel like that’s pretty important, especially for… like Hermione. How did Hermione know how to get on? She probably read about it.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, she probably did. But yeah, I guess there is a good chance that you could be standing around at King’s Cross and overhear somebody, but that requires a little bit of luck.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: So yeah, it’s a really good point. And Hagrid just shouldn’t have left him that early.
Laura and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And Andrew, you talked about this other one kind of at the top, but the Weasley family dynamic. We get a pretty strong sense for this. Maybe the one we didn’t talk as much about is Percy, but just the way that he’s a little bit bullied by his brothers, and that he’s going to be a prefect. And also found it interesting the way that the twins talk to Ron in kind of that baby voice, and it’s the same one that Lavender uses a little bit later on in the series, calling him “Ickle Ronniekins” and stuff like that. I also really love the rite of passage – I think that’s worth mentioning – at the end of the chapter of the first years going over in the boats. I don’t know if we had any traditions like that when we went to school. Certainly not as cool as that, but…
Andrew and Laura: No.
Eric: I didn’t take a boat to school.
Andrew: Yeah, no boats.
Laura: No boats. [laughs]
Andrew: No, you’re right, though, it is an iconic moment, and of course a really special moment in the movie as well. And we get that iconic poster, and oh, it’s now the background of the MuggleCast Collector’s Club as well. [laughs]
Eric: Right. Hmm, interesting that that should happen this year, starting this year.
Andrew: Yes. Okay, so that’s Chapters 4 through 6 of Sorcerer’s Stone.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: But now it’s time for our MVP of the Week. And remember, with this new Chapter by Chapter series, we’re either recognizing a chapter or a wizard. So here we go.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: And I’m going to give mine to Ron. I just love that early connection between Harry and Ron, and I celebrate Ron for extending a hand to Harry, and the chemistry between them initially really warms my heart.
Laura: I’m going to give a most valuable chapter to “Diagon Alley.” This is Harry’s first introduction to the wizarding world, where he physically gets to be in it, and he’s not just subject to being approached by people who are wizards. And it’s our first opportunity as readers to see what that world looks like, interact with the characters there, see all of the quirky shops and the things that you can buy in them in Diagon Alley, and it really just sets Harry up to be prepared for Hogwarts, because that’s a huge adjustment.
Micah: I’m going to give it up for Molly Weasley…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: … because without her, Harry is not going to Hogwarts in his first year.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Laura: Fair.
Eric: Even though Hagrid didn’t take him all the way to the platform – he maybe should have done – my MVP is going to Hagrid. I just do think he was the perfect rough-around-the-edges guide into the amazing wizarding world and Harry’s destiny.
Andrew: Well, if you have any feedback about today’s episode, you can email MuggleCast@gmail.com, or you can use the contact form on MuggleCast.com. You can also send a voice message; just record it using the voice memo app on your phone, and then email us that file. Or we’ve got a phone number. 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. And next week on the show, Chapter by Chapter continues. We’ll be doing Chapter 7 through 9, maybe. Right, Micah? Or maybe we’ll do 7 to 8. Did you read the chapters already?
Micah: Yeah, we’ll see.
Andrew: We’ll see.
Micah: I have not read them yet.
Andrew: Okay. These episodes are already pretty long, so we might be going to two chapters sooner rather than later, especially if we have a guest on the episode. It looks like we will have a special guest on next week’s episode.
Micah: Working on it, but looking pretty promising.
Andrew: Cool, cool.
Quizzitch
Andrew: Well, it’s time for some Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: Who are the four known members of Dudley’s gang from Chapter 3 of Book 1? This, of course, excludes Dudley, who’s part of the gang. The correct answer is Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon. Correct answers were submitted by Colby Cheese, Bubotuber Pus, Broc, Salty Slytherin, Ravenclaw from Nebraska, Dobby Gets a Sock, Sophia the Ravenclaw, Luna Lovegood for Life, Artemus Fido Jr. II, Bort You-Know-Who, Gretel Leta, Elizabeth K., MuggleCast Is the True Eighth Story…
Andrew: Aww.
Eric: … Andrew and Pat’s Number One Shipper…
Andrew: Oh my goodness!
Eric: … and the Chosen Taco.
Micah: Wow.
Eric: Here is next week’s Quizzitch question: From which vault number does Hagrid retrieve the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone? Submit your answer to us on the Quizzitch website, MuggleCast website, MuggleCast.com/Quizzitch. Choose “Quizzitch” from the main nav bar.
Andrew: Make sure you’re following MuggleCast for free in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode, and leave us a review if they allow you to. Also, don’t forget to follow us on social media. We are MuggleCast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. That does it for this week’s episode. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.
Andrew: I love you, Hagrid.