Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #580, Sorting Too Soon (Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapters 7-8)
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: And we’re joined by a guest today. You might recognize him as the actor who played young Sirius Black in Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Rohan Gotobed! Hey, Rohan. Welcome to MuggleCast.
Rohan Gotobed: Hello.
Andrew: Hi.
Rohan: Thank you so much for asking me on. I’m very excited to be here.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s our pleasure to have you here. We’ve been in touch with you over the years, and we reached out a week or two ago, so glad to have you on the show.
Rohan: Yeah, it’s good. I mean, what episode is this? 580? And we’ve finally got to the bottom of the barrel, which is me. We’ve finally got to that stage.
Andrew: No, oh my God! No.
[Andrew and Rohan laugh]
Rohan: But no, I’m really excited to be asked on. Yeah, I’ve listened to the show a lot, and I mean, I’ll say this now, just to get it out of the way, but I know a lot of people were listening during lockdown. It was kind of a really good time to come back to Harry Potter and listen to MuggleCast. So yeah, thank you very much.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s our pleasure to have you here, and you brought some great notes today to the discussion, so we really appreciate that, and excited to discuss these chapters with you. I have to note to our listeners, Rohan is wearing a Sirius Black T-shirt today.
Laura: Heck yeah. You’ve got to represent.
Eric: He’s wearing the shirt of the band he’s going to see to the concert, kind of a thing.
[Laura laughs]
Rohan: It is that thing you sort of do get every single bit of merchandise, sometimes ironically, sometimes unironically.
[Andrew laughs]
Rohan: Every version Sirius Black T-shirt I’ve got in some form. I think this specifically is the special one you can get at Platform Nine and Three Quarters King’s Cross.
Eric: Oooh.
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Rohan: So whenever you see it, regardless of how much it is, my mum will buy it for me and give it to me at Christmas.
Andrew: [laughs] That’s pretty great.
Eric: I love that. I mean, what a cool claim to fame, though. I mean, even to Sirius Black! It’s amazing.
Rohan: Yeah. I know you’re the big Sirius Black fan, Eric, so I’ll take that. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, since 2002, yes.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Eric, what is it like to meet Sirius Black?
Eric: To meet my hero? I mean, it’s amazing. It’s about what you’d expect, really.
Rohan: I mean, hopefully, at some point I will turn into Gary Oldman. That’s the dream.
[Everyone laughs]
Rohan: So we’ll see when that happens.
Eric: Aren’t we all hoping for that metamorphosis?
Andrew: Well, you kind of have the Sirius in Prisoner of Azkaban hair right now, so you’re halfway there.
Rohan: Yes, that’s true. I do need to get it cut. Thanks for the reminder.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: No!
Rohan: Yes, for anyone who can’t see it – podcast medium – it’s about to my shoulders at the moment, but it’s because I’m growing it. I’m doing a small play in the UK at the moment, so I’ve grown out for that. We finish next week, at which point I’m going to have a nice haircut just in time for it to get cold.
Laura: Well, it looks great, and I think that’s what Andrew was alluding to. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, I was not saying you look like an insane prisoner or something who’s on the run and wanted.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Well, Rohan, in addition to acting, you’re also directing these days.
Rohan: Yeah, well, I’m predominantly more of a director, especially in theater, and sort of a writer as well at the moment. So we were talking before the show, because I teach writing now as well for young people in the southwest of the UK, which is great. As you can imagine, Harry Potter comes up a lot. But I’ve almost been surprised by how much the same references… when I was their age, it would be Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Hunger Games. Those are the same things that come up every week. Surprisingly little Twilight. Twilight never comes up…
[Andrew laughs]
Rohan: … in a way that is sort of interesting, what, ten years later? Yeah, that’s not something that’s mentioned in the same way.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: I guess there never needs to be a shorthand for a codependent abusive relationship.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: There’s not a needing way to communicate that in general conversation.
Andrew: So let’s get your fandom ID, Rohan.
Rohan: Yeah, of course. So I’m going to try and do this as succinctly as possible. My favorite book, I’m going to say Order of the Phoenix. My favorite film, I’m going to say Prisoner of Azkaban. Though, because I feel like it never gets a shout-out, and rewatching them in lockdown, I think Deathly Hallows – Part 1 is very underrated, and I think if you watch it as a character-led film, I think it’s brilliant. Hogwarts House, I’m afraid I have to be lengthy. I think Gryffindor, but I’m very much… basically not Hufflepuff. No offense to Hufflepuff.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Rohan: When I was a kid, I always thought Ravenclaw, and then I did one of those Hogwarts House tests, and I think it said I was basically a joint Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin.
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: It was like, “67% you’re that, and then 30% Hufflepuff.”
Eric: Hey, you’re right. I don’t know there’s a better way to say that other than “Definitely not Hufflepuff.” Okay, great.
[Andrew laughs]
Rohan: And then finally, favorite Harry Potter character. I’m going to say… I mean, I always go back to Hermione or Lupin. Though again, actually, rereading the books recently, I have got a lot more respect for Harry than I used to.
Andrew: Aww.
Rohan: So I’d say Hermione and Lupin first, and then Harry. Come on, fair play. Put some respect on that name. He’s the main character for a reason.
Eric: That’s so interesting, too, because Harry… I mean, who thinks of that as their favorite character in Harry Potter? But you should, kind of, because you’re with him, you’re in his head, the most. I appreciate that take.
Rohan: Yeah. We were talking earlier… in my writing group today, we were talking about our least favorite characters in our favorite bits of media, and one character… someone did say, “I don’t really like Harry in Harry Potter,” and I went, “Well, why are you reading it then?”
[Everyone laughs]
Rohan: If you don’t like Harry, then there’s not that much there for you.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, I think you need to take another Hogwarts House Sorting test, because you need answers. That would drive me crazy if I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t sleep at night! So get on WizardingWorld.com, or I don’t know, go to the Studio Tour over there and tell them to put the hat on you or something. [laughs]
Eric: Show up and look bedraggled and be like, “Can you please Sort me?” And they’ll take care of you, I think.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: “Help me.”
Micah: This is the perfect opportunity with the upcoming chapter to Sort him.
Andrew: Yes, that’s true.
Eric and Laura: Oooh.
Rohan: Is that the aim by the end of today’s episode?
Eric: Yeah, we’re going to Sort Rohan by the end of it. Okay, Rohan. Tell us, are you feeling snaky, particularly?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Anything about your morning this morning?
Rohan: We’ll see when we get into the Seven-Word Summary how snaky I’m feeling.
Eric: Oh, okay. All right.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Okay. Well, great. Thanks for sharing that.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary (“The Sorting Hat”)
Andrew: And with that, we’ll jump into Chapter by Chapter this week. And so we’re starting with Chapter 7, “The Sorting Hat,” and as usual, we will begin with the Seven-Word Summary. And darn it, it looks like I’m start starting off today.
Micah: You’re up.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Thank you, Micah, for picking me to start. Hmm. Okay.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Andrew: Students…
Micah: … arrive…
Rohan: … into…
Laura: … the…
Eric: … Great…
Andrew: Capital G, because Hall…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … nervously.
Rohan: Perfect.
Eric: Yes.
Andrew: Oh, cool.
Laura: Bravo, everyone. I was scared on this one. [laughs]
Micah: I was very scared.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion (“The Sorting Hat”)
Andrew: And actually, that transitions perfectly into the first discussion point.
Micah: Yeah, so we are now officially at Hogwarts. These are two pretty meaty chapters, lots happening. But I wanted to start off by asking, what do we make of the whole Sorting experience? I ended the Seven-Word Summary with the word “nervously,” and these students are extremely nervous. And this seems like a pretty high pressure situation to put 11-year-olds through on their very first day at school.
Eric: What surprised me the most in reading it is just how nobody seemed to know that this was what happens at Hogwarts? Some of these students have older siblings, for instance, especially Ron, but Fred and George somehow get to make up this lie about wrestling a troll. And Hermione, who’s part of the group; Harry looks over and she’s talking about what spells she might need to use once they get into the Great Hall, but she, we know, has read Hogwarts: A History back to front at least on one occasion. So what’s the big secret here? They somehow managed to… maybe for the purpose of hazing first years, nobody is allowed to speak of the fact that it’s just a hat on a stool? You’ve just got to sit down, and it takes care of everything?
Andrew: Yeah, that does seems surprising that Hermione wouldn’t know. I think it’s more of a writing choice and a reader experience choice than anything else.
Laura: I think so too.
Rohan: What do you think would have been Harry’s reaction if Hagrid had sat him down beforehand and gone, “So you go in the hall, and there’ll be a hat. Just put on the hat, and it’ll decide basically the rest of your life.”
Andrew: “It’s old. It’s got a mouth.” [laughs]
Eric: Maybe he would have been relieved? I don’t know. But it is interesting. It does work perfectly to build tension if you’re a reader and you’re experiencing this for the first time. It’s exciting. What could it be? What couldn’t it be? I feel sad for Harry, who just feels inexperienced because he hasn’t had the leg up that he would have if it weren’t for the Dursleys. He didn’t even know he was a wizard until the last month; now he’s here and he has to do some kind of test, and again, in front of everybody? So it does work perfectly in the writing, but it’s funny to look at it the other way and go, “Wait a minute, nobody knows about the hat?” Especially you would think that some of the Sorting Hat’s songs would be legendary, because they’re so good.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Maybe they purposely want to avoid telling the students about the hat, because if they knew about the hat prior, the students might be thinking about how to manipulate it. Sort of like Harry was like, “Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.”
Laura: Yeah, trying to get a true representation of the person. They don’t know what they’re walking into. Yeah, that makes a certain amount of sense.
Rohan: I guess it’s interesting… I’ve not read the last book for a while, but doesn’t Harry tell Albus Severus at the end of the epilogue that you can choose?
Eric: He says the hat takes your choice into account.
Rohan: Yeah, but so all these years later, he’s now going, “Yeah, no, everyone knows about the hat. Everyone knows about the Sorting.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh, that’s true.
Rohan: “I’m not going to let you go through that hazing in the way I did.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah, I guess after Neville pulls the sword of Gryffindor out of the hat, after Voldemort sets it on fire, the hat probably becomes more legendary after Book 7…
[Eric laughs]
Laura: … and maybe it’s impossible to keep it a secret at that point.
Eric: It’s already a legend of itself; it’s Godric Gryffindor’s hat, the most prominent relic from a thousand years ago. But yeah, somehow nobody’s ever heard of it for the purposes of this chapter.
Micah: So what if these students don’t get the House that they want? We were just talking about the epilogue. Do you think they can petition, or is it really taking into consideration what’s going on inside of these students’ heads? And honestly, if they’re so nervous, they’re probably bouncing around all these different ideas inside of their head, like, “Don’t want to go here, don’t want to go there. What if? What if?”
Andrew: They’re not clear-headed when they’re being Sorted.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, they might be at their worst. [laughs]
Micah: I’d be scared. I’d probably be shaking.
Andrew: You combine that with the first day in the Great Hall, especially if you don’t have family who have ever been to Hogwarts before. This is an entirely new experience.
Laura: And you’re in front of everyone; that’s the other thing. It’d be one thing, Harry even notes this, if he was able to do it not in front of the entire Great Hall. It’s just a ton of pressure, especially at that age.
Eric: I think the thing is, ideally, any Sorting wouldn’t be a death sentence. The way that it’s… I think for the purposes of the book, there’s all this rivalry, and Slytherin is the evil House and all this stuff. But in reality, what you’re actually doing is just giving yourself a smaller family, these groups that you’re going to get to know, whose interests align with you. You have the same type of personality or same learning style in a certain way. It’s really a net positive; it can only be a good thing to be Sorted, but it’s presented as this sort of definitive, “This is your identity moving forward, and you will always be known as a Slytherin” kind of a thing, so it feels more rough than what it really is. I think objectively, it’s a good thing, but when you try and define people solely by their House, it becomes a problem.
Rohan: I feel like that’s McGonagall’s approach at the beginning of the chapter as well. She sort of goes, “Look, they’ll be like your families.” She says it very matter-of-factly, and then doesn’t… it’s the children themselves that sort of build it into this big scary thing. And I still wonder, almost going in cold is actually quite nice, because it means that if they’re having to, I don’t know, a couple of months down the line, where you had heard all these different stories about, “Okay, Gryffindor is better than Ravenclaw, Ravenclaw is better than Slytherin, etc.,” then actually you’d be overthinking it a bit more, whereas actually just going in, “I have no idea what’s going on,” you’re just grateful for wherever House you end up at, and you don’t really think about, “Oh, what would have happened if I’d ended up in Ravenclaw rather than Gryffindor?”
Micah: And what’s interesting is that we’ve really only had the setup for two of the Houses prior to this. In the last chapter, we learn about Slytherin, and then Hufflepuff gets kind of crapped on, and does in one of these chapters as well, which we’ll talk about. But I was curious, do we recall any experiences ourselves at school where we were in front of large groups of people, particularly when we were younger, and we started to get those butterflies in our stomachs, similar to what these students are going through? And I think, Rohan, you had an example from when you were in school.
Rohan: Yeah, well, slightly… so when I went to university, so I was probably about 18. But we had something that actually, thinking about it, is very similar to… I wouldn’t say the Sorting ceremony, but that idea of being paraded in front of the older students. So I did drama at university, and the first weekend of what we call Freshers’ Week, we got to the university a bit early, and we each had to make a 15-minute new version of a Greek myth, and it was all to do with the work that you did at the course. So I was part of a group doing Theseus and the Minotaur, but the idea is you had two days to rehearse this play, and you’d do it quite comedically, so it was quite funny, nothing too serious. And then on the Sunday evening, you then perform it to the second, third years, lecturers, all these people. And though you met them a little bit over the couple of days, suddenly you go in on the Sunday evening and it’s like, “Okay, it does feel quite intense,” because you’re performing to all these much larger, taller, more intelligent kids who have got drinks in hand…
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: … being really supportive, but it is a bit like a baptism of fire. So that’s definitely… I think some people had a lot of nervous butterflies going into that. But I guess on the other hand, maybe this is a good thing about the Sorting, is it meant that by the end of that weekend, you already have a good circle of friends that you’d gone through a show with, three or four, five, six people, and you knew you could trust each other. And then also, you’d done that thing. You got in front of the whole school, or the whole uni, or the whole cohort, and you never had to do that again. You never had to go through that again. So I guess similarly for the students here, once you’ve done that, you’ve passed. You’re a student.
Andrew: You’re good. Yeah, you’re over that mountain. Yeah, I think the only thing I can compare it to was I was in band in elementary school and middle school, so performing for fellow students was a little nerve-wracking. I also did a couple of musicals in middle school, elementary school. I was the dog in the Lewis and Clark musical in elementary school…
Eric: Ohh.
Andrew: … and I had my own solo. Something about it being a rough life, R-U-F-F, because it’s a dog.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. Where is the VHS video of this?
Micah: Yeah, do we have pictures?
Andrew: [laughs] I’m sure deep in the Sims family archives is the VHS tape with me performing that. Yeah, we need to dig that up. But yeah, but it is very nerve-wracking to be on stage in front of other people. But I think the Sorting Hat is a unique level of nerve-wracking because you are being judged in front of everybody. [laughs] And you don’t really have time to defend yourself. And what if it’s a House that…? We’re being set up to believe Hufflepuff sucks in these early chapters. What if you had that in mind too, and the Sorting Hat screams “Hufflepuff”? You might be really embarrassed by that. It’s unfortunate.
Micah: Well, the first student that gets Sorted goes to Hufflepuff, right? It’s Hannah Abbott.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And the second one too.
Micah: Yeah, you’re right.
Rohan: Whatever happens, you’ve got a big table cheering for you. So I do feel like even if you’re terrified at the moment, it’s that elation afterwards.
Eric: That’s a great point. The thing for me, too, is even though… as value neutral as you try to make the Sorting ceremony, sometimes the hat shouts it out right away. Sometimes the hat takes a minute. So the hat itself is not being like, “I’ve got to kind of…” Malfoy’s doesn’t even touch the head; he’s ten feet away, and it goes, “SLYTHERIN!” So there’s a huge difference here. There’s a reason why you could make certain inferences about people based on it, and that’s because the Sorting Hat, it’s really not a standard process. Everybody wears the hat, but the hat itself, it can take anywhere from instant to a moment to a minute, and sometimes it even talks with you, like in the case of a Hatstall. Sometimes it really doesn’t know.
Micah: Yeah, I mean, you could literally start to sweat in the amount of time that it takes the hat to make a decision. But let’s talk a little bit about the pros and cons of Sorting. I think we talked a little bit about do we think it’s right to divide young kids into different Houses? Does Hogwarts Sort too soon? That’s something we hear later on in the series. What if certain students feel as if they don’t meet the expectations of their House? What do we think the psychological impact of that could look like? Harry at one point is even concerned he won’t be Sorted into any House, and he’s going to be sent back to live with the Dursleys.
Laura: Yeah, I think it’s an interesting point, because there is a certain level of utility to Sorting the students, right? It goes to… they have to be able to have a place to live, they have to have classmates who they collaborate with closely, who they’re going to classes with, so there’s some organization behind this. And Rohan, you might have some context here that we don’t have as Americans. When you go off to a boarding school or a university situation, is there a similar system? Obviously, it’s not… there aren’t values assigned to which House you’re put in, I imagine, but I think they do put kids in different Houses, don’t they?
Rohan: That’s a good question, actually. I’m not 100% sure, because I didn’t go to a private school, so I wasn’t in a house system. But I do know, oddly, because of Harry Potter and the popularity of Houses, it’s become a thing now that some of the schools I used to go to have now got house systems.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew and Laura: Oh my gosh.
Rohan: And I don’t quite know how… I think the idea there is it is a bit more… all of them have equal value, so they’re all named after Greek Gods or some sort of interest – trees, something like that – and it’s a bit more about mentoring, so sort of ensuring that younger students have an older person that they can approach or they know, and it’s that idea, which makes sense and is probably useful that age.
Laura: It is interesting, and it feels like that’s a healthier way to approach it, honestly, than saying, “You go to this House because you’re brave. You go to this House because you’re cunning.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: That can pigeonhole kids.
Eric: We can talk about who has it worse? I think it might be the Gryffindors. They’re expected to be brave. If something happens, it’s like, “Well, okay, go ahead.”
Rohan: “Is there a Gryffindor on this plane?”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Right, exactly. That’s exactly it, and that can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re a first year. But at least first years and seventh years are all in the same dormitories, so there’s actually quite an array of experiences within your dorm, and that’s another thing that actually might be good about the Sorting system, because where else would you interact with an upperclassman that is six or five years older than you who has more experience? Now, we don’t see Harry doing it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen where there’s a larger getting-to-know-you with the other Gryffindors and with the other… everybody who’s been at Hogwarts a while. I think there could be a really wonderful sort of creative… in the books, the organization happens around Quidditch matches and things like that, but there would be an infinite number of reasons why you would interact with a third or a fourth year, because you’re sharing the same space.
Andrew: Yeah, I think there’s a special sense of community and teamwork that comes with Sorting the students into Hogwarts Houses. I’m also thinking if you’re going off to live at the school, you want to quickly build up a group of friends, and the House system can provide that for you. It’s just like joining a sports team; you get similar benefits there. And the point system, for as fast and loose as the teachers will play with points, it can maybe drive the students to perform a little better than maybe they would otherwise, and hopefully act better so they don’t get any points taken away. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I like the points. We’ll see it be abused, and I don’t think it’s ever used properly in the whole series. [laughs] But it’s a good idea, and it, I think, inspires you to be… it incentivizes you to be a good student.
Rohan: And it does seem like it’s something that kind of gets dropped later on in the books, and certainly… there’s never a mention in the scenes with adult wizards. They’re never going, “Oh, I can’t trust him. He was in Slytherin as a kid.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Right.
Rohan: Also, it always feels like it’s a nice thing, kind of like your stabilizers riding your bike. It’s useful at this stage in education, and then once you’re a grown wizard, you’re like, “Oh, that was stupid, wasn’t it?”
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: “Can’t believe we all fell for that ‘Gryffindors are brave, Hufflepuffs are loyal’ stuff. Now it’s just we’re all human wizards living our lives.”
Eric: That’s a good point.
Micah: You had a point in here, too, about how McGonagall pretty much just sets them up for being very on edge before they even get into the Great Hall.
Andrew: So McGonagall says, “I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.” But I wonder what that means. Maybe Rohan, you could provide light on that. Maybe that’s more of a British phrase, “smarten yourselves up”? Should you dress the part?
Rohan: It’s definitely a sort of thing a teacher or a formal adult would tell you to do, yeah, smarten yourselves up. I guess that means like, I don’t know, do your tie up and do your top button up and all those things.
Andrew: Okay.
Rohan: It’s sort of “Look smart, look proper,” which I guess makes sense in the context that she’s telling Ron to get the dirt off his nose or whatever.
Eric: Smudge off his…
Laura: Yeah, that makes so much more sense, because reading through an American lens, I’m like, “She’s telling them to rack their brains and try to think up all the most useful information to be as smart as they can for whatever they’re about to walk into.”
Eric: Which Hermione then does.
[Laura and Rohan laugh]
Eric: To smart yourself up. Okay, okay. So it’s kind of like, “Straighten up, straighten your tie.”
Rohan: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Micah: And Rohan, you had a really good point here when McGonagall mentions that “Your House will be something like your family.” That might set off some alarm bells for Harry, given how he was raised.
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: 100%. He’s probably sat there going, “Oh my God, what are they going to do here? What’s this school?”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I’m so glad you brought that up, because Harry’s only basis for comparison is the Dursleys, full stop. And there’s two moments in this chapter, I think, where he compares it to the Dursleys. So when they get in the Great Hall, he says the Dursleys’ entire house could fit in here. It’s funny that he’s using that as a unit of measurement, but it’s literally his only point of reference, of how big something is, is how big the last place he lived was, and it’s very endearing to see Harry kind of compare it to that. And when he sees the Sorting Hat, he says, “Oh, Petunia wouldn’t have let it in the house.” It’s that ragged and dirty.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: And it’s funny, though, because having done the first few chapters of the book, you understand who these characters are, and so it’s also a good frame of reference for us to further characterize the things at Hogwarts that are strange and unusual.
Andrew: Something that I wanted to talk about was when Harry puts on the hat, and the hat says that Harry has “talent, oh my goodness, yes.” What do we think the hat is specifically referring to here?
Rohan: Expelliarmus, Harry’s mastery of that spell.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Rohan: Straight in, it’s like, “Oh, I get it. I get it.”
Andrew: He senses the Expelliarmus is real good in Harry. It’s an interesting comment. What first jumped to my mind was maybe his Quidditch talent, just seeing his physical abilities, maybe?
Laura: Oh, yeah. True. That’s a good call-out. I was thinking that the hat could see Harry’s defeat of Voldemort as an infant.
Eric: Which definitely involved skill and was not at all due to a prophecy and an accident.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah. Well, still, though, it had to come down to the choice that Voldemort made, and all of the sort of confluence of events that led to Harry being able to survive that event, right?
Eric: He could have said, “There’s luck, oh my goodness, yes.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: “You’re the most lucky student I know.”
Laura: But I’m just imagining the hat being like, “Hey, I Sorted that guy when he came to Hogwarts. He was real messed up, and this guy yeeted him out of existence as an infant.”
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: I was going to say, I hope the hat says this to everyone. “Talent, oh my goodness, yes.”
[Laura laughs]
Rohan: If it just sort of goes, “Oh, unlucky, mate; you’re going to struggle here,” then I think that would put you off a bit more.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: To that point, though, Laura, do you think the hat could be sensing Voldemort, the part of his soul that’s in Harry, and that’s what he’s picking up on and saying, “Talent, oh my goodness, yes”?
Andrew: Oooh.
Laura: Yeah, I think that’s always been a theory, right? Because the hat tells Harry, “You would do really well in Slytherin. Putting you in Slytherin would put you on the path to greatness,” and I think it’s because the hat is picking up on the piece of Voldemort’s soul that’s living in Harry’s head.
Eric: Yeah. I think we’re meant to believe that in Book 2, too, when Harry confronts the hat and the hat doubles down, and is like, “Yeah, no, you’d be a great Slytherin.” I think, too, knowing about Harry’s interactions with Dudley, he is kind of quick-witted in certain moments, and he is able to really quickly outsmart Dudley. I know it’s not this huge feat, but even I am surprised sometimes by Harry’s witticisms, comebacks. I think he’s got really a knack for… given the courage, he really does defend himself pretty well, and if given time, he really does succeed in a lot of things that he attempts. So there is a way to describe that, and it is talent, but it’s so interesting to think about what specifically the hat can see or is looking at, because we really don’t know. And I like it being vague, it fosters this type of discussion, but it’s really interesting to see, is he just looking at Voldemort? Who was ridiculously talented, did great things, terrible things, but great.
Rohan: Two points here: One, I wonder how much of it is about going, “Oh, I remember your parents; they were really talented, so you’ll be talented as well.” It’s that sort of thing. But I also wonder, in terms of that Slytherin path to greatness versus Gryffindor, I feel like Slytherin, because of the cunningness, you always get good leaders and then lots of followers, like Riddle and his Death Eaters, and then Lucius, and then obviously Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle. And I wonder if the idea that if Harry was in that House, then effectively it’d be him and Malfoy, and everyone else would be following them. But in Gryffindor, he’s actually surrounded by lots of other strong-minded people who sort of… and this is quite good in the books, is that generally throughout the books he’s quite unpopular, and they’ll have a go at him, and they won’t be happy with him. And so actually, that might be what’s best for Harry’s development, is him being a bit unpopular, him being in the middle of the pack, as opposed to being the cool, special one in Slytherin.
Eric: That’s a great point.
Micah: I really like that.
Andrew: Yeah, that is.
Micah: Well, Andrew, you love the Sorting Hat so much that you want to give it its own spinoff television series.
Rohan: I love this. This is… can I steal this and pitch it, please? [laughs]
Andrew: Absolutely. Oh, I was so excited writing this, and this is a new recurring segment within Chapter by Chapter called “Max that!”
[“Max that” sound effect plays]
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: In this new Chapter by Chapter segment, if we come across a line, a scene, an element that makes us think, “Huh, I wish I knew more about that,” or “Huh, I wish we spent more time exploring that,” we have this segment called “Max that,” in which we pitch a TV series for HBO Max that can expand on what we’re looking at. We’re doing this segment because a Harry Potter spinoff TV show on HBO Max is inevitable, so here are some ideas for Warner Bros. to pursue. This show is called “The Sorting Hat: A Wizarding World Tale.” So this is a miniseries in which we discover the origins of the Sorting Hat, and we’ll see how Godric got the hat. Maybe it has an interesting story, or maybe it’s just a random hat he had lying around, or just found on the street, and was like, “Oh, nice hat.” We would learn how the founders equally placed their intelligence in the hat, how they gave it Legilimency so it could read minds…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … and how they worked out the kinks of the hat. It could not have been perfect originally. I’m imagining that in its first couple of years, the Sortings were often wrong, and it caused absolute mayhem at Hogwarts. For example, humble would-be Hufflepuffs are sent to Slytherin, and they don’t fit in, and this causes a nightmare child development scenario. [laughs] And we can also learn that the hat itself once had an existential crisis and wanted out of the Sorting Hat gig, but Godric gave it a talk about its importance.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And ever since then, it’s believed in its purpose and it’s been okay in its role. And then also, is the hat fully sentient? Can it think on its own? Can it just run off and do what it wants? I have lots of questions about the hat, and I would love for them to be answered in “The Sorting Hat: A Wizarding World Tale.”
Laura: Too, Andrew, as the creator of this idea, I’m wondering when you talk about the hat having an existential crisis and wanting out of the gig, do you think that was a crisis of conscience because the hat itself wasn’t sure if it was being used to Sort too soon?
Andrew: Oooh, I wasn’t thinking of it that way, but yeah, I could see that being an episode of the show. Being like, “I don’t want to Sort them this early, Dumbledore. Take me out of this, Godric.”
Laura: “I’m creating a lot of mental health issues for these students by Sorting them this soon.” [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. But I think fans, us fans, would really love this type of TV show, too, because it’s all about the Hogwarts Houses, which people are absolutely obsessed with. And we’ve seen Wizarding World Inc. really lean into the Houses more and more over the years. I think in the early days, it was just Gryffindor merchandise you could buy, but now they really lean into all the different House merchandise. And we’d also get to see the founders, and we’d learn more about what it means to be in each of the Houses, which would really excite fans. So this ticks a lot of boxes.
Laura: I agree.
Rohan: The question I have to ask, Andrew, is who would you cast to play the voice of the Sorting Hat in this?
Andrew: You, Rohan, of course. You.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Rohan: Oh, thank you. I’ll take that.
Andrew: How about David Attenborough? [laughs]
Rohan: Yes.
Andrew: Let me Google famous British actors.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: Benedict Cumberbatch.
Andrew: Ian McKellen!
Eric: Oh, Ian McKellen. Yeah, of course.
Andrew: Benedict Cumberbatch, oooh.
Laura: He would be good. Is this live action or is it animated?
Andrew: Live action.
Laura: Okay, because as you were describing it in my head – and I think it’s when you talked about the hat running off – I’m seeing it as an animated feature.
Andrew: Oh.
Laura: Because I can see quirky things like that happening in animation. I mean, it’s still magic, so I suppose that could happen in a live action, but for some reason it feels like this could be very comical in an animated setting.
Eric: Well, that perfectly transitions into what would be my idea for an HBO Max series, which is a Lego stop-motion sort of adventure.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: I love that.
Eric: And the reason this is on my mind is I’m at my girlfriend’s family home and she has this old Harry Potter Lego set that is Harry Potter getting Sorted…
Andrew: Oh, I love that one!
Rohan: Oh, wow.
Eric: … and he’s on a pedestal… it has a spinning wheel that is all the Houses, and it’s Harry on his little… on the stool, and he spins around too, and it’s the most nuts thing. I’ve never seen this before as a Lego set, but it would be funny to see. You know how they do Lego stop-motion? It would be funny to see a series on that based on that.
Andrew: That would be cool. If they don’t do it, you make the series with that little Lego set.
Eric: Yeah, I’m going to take apart this Lego set and get it going.
Micah: I would love to see the hat just going back and forth and bantering with Dumbledore behind the scenes.
Andrew: [laughs] Just bothering him all day?
Micah: Or just criticizing him too.
Eric: Oh, yeah, he’d be like, [imitating Dumbledore] “Sometimes I think we Sort too soon.” [imitating the Sorting Hat] “Well, then change it.”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: “Ya idiot.”
Eric: “Nobody says you can’t do that.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I can also see the hat having some job dissatisfaction because it’s like, “I literally have one day a year that I have work to do. What do I do the other 364 days?”
Eric: Oh, we already know this, though. He prepares the next year’s song. He has to write one hit UK wizarding single every year, and it’s tough.
Laura: Takes 12 months.
Rohan: Do you think they’ve done that? Do you think they’ve recorded it for Christmas number one or something? They get the Sorting Hat?
Eric: Oh, that would be great. That’d be fantastic. [singing] “Christmas is all around me…”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Wait, oh yeah, the Sorting Hat should have a Christmas album. That would be so nice.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Just like the Backstreet Boys are releasing a Christmas album this Christmas.
Eric: It’s about time.
Laura: Andrew, I think you should record Christmas carols as the Sorting Hat, and we should release it as the Sorting Hat’s number one Christmas hits.
Micah: Oh, I love it.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: If somebody would like to write a Sorting Hat Christmas song…
Micah: I’ll write it.
Andrew: Okay. Write it, Micah. I’ll do my best. We’ll find a nice holiday jingle.
Micah: Is this going to rival “Don’t Let It Be July”?
Andrew: [laughs] Maybe. It might. It just might.
Micah: All right, so one of the other things I wanted to bring up in this chapter happens at the very end of it. We see Harry really having one of his first dreams. He has one a little bit earlier on in the book, but it’s about his parents. I’m curious what this one may tell us about what is going to happen towards the tail end of this book, but maybe also as we look ahead to future books as well. And the quote is, “He was wearing Professor Quirrell’s turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. Harry told the turban he didn’t want to be in Slytherin; it got heavier and heavier; he tried to pull it off but it tightened painfully – and there was Malfoy, laughing at him as he struggled with it – then Malfoy turned into the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, whose laugh became high and cold – there was a burst of green light and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.” Obviously, I think there’s stuff that we could draw upon from later on in Sorcerer’s Stone, but I think some of this could also tie to Half-Blood Prince.
Eric: And Deathly Hallows. I mean, just the hat tightening around his head when he tried to pull it off is very Slytherin’s locket to me. There’s a lot of Horcrux-y stuff going on here, which is very, very, very interesting to me.
Micah: Yeah, I thought about particularly when Malfoy turns into Snape, and then there’s that flash of green light, reminded me of the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore gets killed.
Andrew: Oh, wow. Oof.
Eric: Yeah, it’s interesting how the book has, right out the gate, started blaming Snape for Harry’s scar hurting and things like that, so I’m sure that’s why Snape is so centered in this dream. But the idea that the turban is talking to Harry is very much like what Quirrell is currently going through; we know his situation with Voldemort. And then also with the Horcrux connection, is the Voldemort part of Harry telling him he should be in Slytherin? Because there’s bias there and pride for his destiny in his House. Is he talking literally about his own ancestry when Harry has this dream? It’s totally… there’s a lot to consider.
Andrew: There’s a ton of angles here, yeah. Talking about the turban talking to Harry, I’m thinking it’s a real-time look at what’s happening between Voldemort and Quirrell.
Rohan: I was going to say, is it sort of the…? I’m trying to think of other times he dreams in the early books, because obviously from Book 5 onwards, it becomes such an important part of his relationship with Voldemort. So is that kind of foreshadowed here? This is the closest we get between them until he’s resurrected, isn’t it?
Laura: I think you’re right.
Eric: I mean, dreams are just such a perfect low stakes way to write foreshadowing, but it’s executed so well. I mean, there’s this one. I think in Book 2, there’s one where he’s in the zoo or he’s in a cage, and Dobby is talking with him through the bars. Just all of the dreams are always dripping with meaning and impactful foreshadowing.
Laura: Well, and what I think is so clever about this… and we had a similar situation, though it wasn’t a dream sequence, when we talked about Harry at the zoo earlier on in the book, where he is speaking with the snake, and I think as readers, we are intended to believe that Harry is just totally personifying, when really there’s something deeper going on there in that Harry speaks Parseltongue. And here I think we’re intended to see this as a stress dream, right? It really reads as a stress dream. Harry is feeling a lot of imposter syndrome. He is very overwhelmed, although he’s happy to be in this new world, but he doesn’t quite know his place in it yet, so it seems totally natural for him to have a dream like this. But when you consider the events that come later in this book and in future books, there is so much foreshadowing laid out here that you wouldn’t pick up on the first time reading this through.
Micah: Definitely.
Odds & Ends (“The Sorting Hat”)
Micah: So let’s talk about some odds and ends. Laura, you had some good ones.
Laura: Yeah, so something I picked up on that I guess had never jumped out at me before, but it does now: Fred and George catcalling Lavender Brown after she gets Sorted into Gryffindor, when she’s walking over to the table. [laughs]
Eric: She’s the first Gryffindor, though. They’re very excited, and they’re 13, and she’s 11.
Laura: Yeah, no, no, it’s just an interesting descriptor, right? I’m not assigning a value to it; it’s just really interesting reading it through the lens of being in my mid 30s. Also, the time that this was written in versus where we are now, it was just something that I noticed more now.
Micah: If they had howled like a wolf at her, that would have been a lot of foreshadowing.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: [wolf whistles] Oh my God, Micah.
Andrew: I saw that Percy admitted that Dumbledore is a bit mad, which is kind of funny to hear after Vernon calls Dumbledore a crackpot old fool.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: So Dumbledore is kind of being set up in these early chapters to be a nut, and yet these descriptions of him don’t really stick to Dumbledore later in the series. At least, I don’t think so.
Laura: Well, depending on who you talk to, I guess, right?
Eric: This superficial talk about whether Dumbledore is nutty goes by the wayside because people are actually trying to accuse him of either not being able to be a headmaster or not being able to be the leader of resistance, and you have to kind of set all that crazy talk aside and be like, “No, he’s my man.”
Andrew: And then also, as a reader, you’re seeing these key scenes between Harry and Dumbledore, and it’s like, okay, you know he’s a thoughtful, nice guy. Yes, we criticize him, but he’s not nutty or a bit mad. But he is too.
Eric: All the best people are.
Andrew: He’s unique.
Laura: And it is interesting because even though Percy does concede here that, “Yeah, he is a bit mad,” he also says, “What are you talking about? He’s the greatest wizard of all time.” It’s really funny to see Percy’s admiration for Dumbledore at this stage, given what we know comes later in the books, and Percy’s later affiliation with the Ministry.
Andrew: Also, Seamus says his mom didn’t tell her husband that she was a wizard until after they were married. Seamus’s dad had a nasty shock, but I don’t know. I think that would kind of be cool, right? What’s the issue with that, other than not coming clean earlier?
Eric: Yeah, all relationships are trust-based, right? And it’s kind of like… I know exactly how this went down. It was like, “Sweetie, so you love me, right?” And once you’re married to somebody, you’re like, “Yes, honey, what happened? What did you do?” And she’s like, “Actually, I’m a witch, and our kid’s going to be banging things around,” and there’s all this magic, all these noises in the house more than usual. It’s a lot to put up with. I think it’s a significant… but when is the right time to tell somebody?
Andrew: When is the right time? I’m thinking third date, third or fourth date.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Yeah, I was going to say, probably before you get married. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because that’s a pretty key part of yourself that you’re not sharing with the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.
Eric: Well, I can see that being heavily regulated. I can see the government having a very specific “When do you tell somebody?”
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: Because if you think about the Statute of Secrecy, you actually just can’t tell everybody on the first date that you’re a witch or wizard. Although they’d probably think you’re crazy, and not think another day on it. But yeah, you have to be in a serious enough relationship that telling the person doesn’t risk exposure, maybe?
Laura: Right. But there has to be some point between serious relationship and marriage where the government is like, “Yeah, okay, you can tell him.” [laughs]
Eric: Pretty interesting.
Laura: But that’s probably one of those little intricacies we may never get an answer to. Speaking of the family talk that happens at the table, Neville says that his family thought he was “all-Muggle,” which I thought was interesting because we know that really the term for that is “Squib.” So did the idea of Squibs just not come about until Book 2? Was it not conceived of at this point, or was this a writing device to get the point across without doing a ton of info dumping about what Squibs are?
Andrew: I think it’s that too, yeah. It could just be a friendlier way to explain it to a child as well. That’s all I think is going on.
Eric: Yeah, Book 2 is all about those dirty words, right? “Mudblood” and “Squib” and all that deepening of the world. “All-Muggle” works perfectly for the current verbiage. But it’s interesting, too, to see how Neville either… whatever relationship he has with Frank and Alice Longbottom is not at all part of this whole discussion of his larger family. I wonder if at that point he has been introduced to his parents, if he’s… what the thing is there, because this is all about his gran and her brothers and sisters that are hanging him out of windows by his ankles, and not at all about his parents who were the strongest and best Aurors of their age. There is no way he would be all-Muggle if you take into account who his direct parents were.
Micah: It’s a good point. We also get introduced to the House ghosts, everybody except for the Grey Lady. And Harry actually asks Nearly Headless Nick specifically about the Bloody Baron and why he has that silver blood all over him, so maybe that’s why we don’t get told about the Grey Lady, because it’s her blood!
Eric: Oh, it’s so cool. That’s so good. And talk about a Book 7 reference in Book 1. It’s actually Seamus that asks Nearly Headless Nick about the blood.
Micah: Oh, is it?
Eric: Yeah, but I mean, we know how important that story is. It doesn’t get a payoff for a very long time.
Laura: And Nick is so polite. He’s like, “I’ve never asked him.”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: And it’s like, how many hundreds of years have y’all been floating around this castle and it’s just never come up?
Eric: They don’t interact. Everyone’s terrified of the Baron. But that’s the funny thing, is – and this comes up with Peeves too when they talk about getting the Baron – everyone maybe senses without knowing that the Baron’s story is more tragic and more evil than your typical “How did you become a ghost?” type story. They give him a wide berth, and I think he sort of exudes that. Maybe it’s his own unhappy demeanor because of what he has done, kind of a thing.
Rohan: But you can’t also exorcize him, so he sort of… if you found out what he did, it’d be like, “Well, I sort of just have to stay hanging around you for the rest of eternity.”
Eric: [laughs] Yeah.
Rohan: It’s not a happy situation either way.
Eric: Plus, the Grey Lady wouldn’t hang out with him, obviously.
Laura: Right.
Micah: We also get the first instance of Harry’s scar hurting. He thinks it is because of Snape, who’s staring directly at him, but we obviously learn later on that it is due to Quirrell and Voldemort being on the back of his head.
Rohan: Can I mention as well… there’s a couple of things that I picked up on reading this. I mean, first of all, because I know a lot of people talk about the writer’s… we’ve talked a lot already about foreshadowing, world-building, all those big things. I just want to draw attention to all of Harry’s peers who are never mentioned or seen again for the rest of time.
Laura: I know!
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Rohan: Just the ones I picked up on: We’ve got Morag MacDougal, Sally-Anne Perks, Moon, Lisa Turpin… the writer, she wrote lists of all these people in Harry’s year, all the stuff like that.
Micah: Yeah, yeah.
Rohan: Never mentioned in a Potions class or Defense Against the Dark… they never come up to him and go, “Oh, Harry, how’s it going? Do you want to go to the Yule Ball?” or whatever. Just… they vanish.
[Andrew laughs]
Rohan: Vanish for the rest of the however many thousands of words are in the books.
Andrew: I think that’s an amazing point.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: What does that say about Harry? Come on, Harry. Keep up with your fellow classmates. [laughs]
Rohan: So unsociable.
Eric: Maybe that’s how they prefer it? You know how hard it is to keep your head down in a school of all magic where all these things are always happening? They just put their head down, they just did their studies, they got out of Hogwarts, and you know what? They made something of themselves. They’re not seeking the glory, noteworthiness of a J.K. Rowling Harry Potter book.
Rohan: Or maybe there’s a reason they’ve been scraped from the rest of the books.
Andrew: Oooh, yes.
Rohan: What’s the fan theory behind that?
Eric: Yeah, Lisa Turpin was a very, very dark person.
Laura: Well, I think the common thread here is that I think most of those characters are Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. [laughs] We mostly hear about Gryffindors and Slytherins.
Andrew and Micah: Oh.
Andrew: Here we go again.
Eric: That’s a fair point.
Micah: Good point, yeah.
Rohan: Are they in Puffs?
[Everyone laughs]
Rohan: We just see the Puffs in another play or book just about those characters for the seven stories.
Laura: Right? This is Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff erasure, and I will not stand for it.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Too late.
Micah: I will say, the name I was most surprised to see was actually Blaise Zabini, who comes up much later on in the series.
Eric: Well, now there’s an example of probably the author consulting the list, going, “Okay, I’m going to have somebody else here who’s in that House and has been with them the whole time, but it won’t seem new.”
Rohan: Quick question, which is obviously Dumbledore doesn’t tell the prefects about the Philosopher’s Stone or why it’s going… there’s a line Percy says, “Oh, he’d at least have told us as prefects,” and I was just wondering why Dumbledore has done that. But surely he thinks it’s fairly secure that he’d at least tell the prefects, going, “Look, this is why it’s in there. Don’t tell anyone.”
Andrew: Well, yeah, especially when Dumbledore is like, “The third floor corridor to the right is strictly forbidden.” As soon as you say that, of course students are going to try to get close and try to see what’s up over there. So I think that’s all the more reason to tell the prefects, so they can actually be prepared for the inevitability of students trying to go to that door.
Laura: Yeah, and if he wanted to protect that information – because again, the prefects are still teenagers, right? – he could just be like, “Yeah, there’s a three-headed dog we’re having to store in there. It’s very dangerous. Please keep the kids away from it.”
Eric: But even that, the word would get out, and people would be like, “Three-headed dog? Where? I haven’t seen or heard about one of those since Greek mythology!”
Andrew: Yeah, “I want to see that!” Right, right.
Rohan: Also, who of the students will actually be interested in a Philosopher’s Stone? Because they’re all so young, they’re like, “Why would I want a stone to live forever? I’m 11. I’m fine.”
Eric: “I’m already going to live forever,” yeah, yeah. That’s an interesting point. It’s just about the secrecy surrounding… you really can’t tell anyone, and you shouldn’t have to. It’s above all their pay grades.
Rohan: Finally, because I know you’ve already been talking about some issues with Dumbledore throughout these books, I picked up on his line after they do the lovely, funny scene of singing the Hogwarts school anthem, and the Weasley twins do it to the funeral march. And Dumbledore says that “music is more magical than anything we do here,” and I just thought, “Well, if only he had the power to include music on the curriculum.” [laughs] It’s always that thing of, oh, they could do English, maths, whatever, but they don’t do music. They’ve got the choir in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Micah: We have to work in a Dumbledore lie here somewhere. He’s lying to the students about what’s going on in that corridor. Maybe we can get a sound effect, Andrew?
Laura: Ah, that’s true.
[Dumbledore Lie Count sound effect plays]
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Nice.
Andrew: Okay, so we’re up to three now, I think.
Laura: That’s so good, Andrew.
Andrew: Oh, thanks, thanks. I added a little reverb, so it sounded like Dumbledore was in Hogwarts.
[Everyone laughs]
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary (“The Potions Master”)
Andrew: Okay, let’s move on to Chapter 8, “The Potions Master,” and let’s kick it off with the Seven-Word Summary.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Eric: Eagerly…
Rohan: … Harry…
Andrew: … begins…
Laura: … classes…
Micah: … with…
Eric: … angry…
Rohan: … teacher.
Andrew: Teacher? Teacher? Is that what you said?
Rohan: Yeah.
Eric: Trying to get in there that Snape really has a damn chip on his shoulder, doesn’t he?
Laura: Indeed.
Micah: Yeah, we’re definitely going to talk about that.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion (“The Potions Master”)
Micah: But this is the first week of classes, and a lot happens. We get introduced to a lot of different professors. And I just want to start off by asking: Do we remember what it was like to return to school for that first week of classes?
Andrew: It’s exciting.
Micah: I think maybe initially there was a little bit of anxiety, but after that, yeah, I think it was exciting. Most people excited to go back to school, see your friends…
Andrew: You went to Walmart, you got some new clothes for the school year ahead, you got a new notebook, it’s fresh, you got some new pens… there’s a exciting feeling of newness when you start the school year. You see your friends again; you see your teachers again. Been a few months. Everybody’s still, here in America, got their summer tan. It’s a good time. I like the start of the school year.
Laura: Yeah, it’s nervous excitement, right? That’s what it always was for me. But I will say, for Harry, he’s starting a new school year, but it’s in a completely new school, new environment, he’s surrounded by new people, so it’s not the same as his experience returning to Hogwarts in year two and onward, right? There’s, I think, a lot of nervousness here, and where I’m able to identify – I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this on the show – when I was 11, which just feels very apropos to today’s discussion, we moved states. So I moved to a completely new state, which meant I was starting middle school, the sixth grade, in a completely new state. I had no friends, I didn’t know anybody, and your girl threw up on the first day of sixth grade because she was so nervous.
Eric: Aw.
Andrew: Laura, oh my goodness.
Micah: Nice. On anybody?
Andrew: Where did you throw up?
Laura: No, not on anybody, but in my homeroom classroom. [laughs]
Micah: Oh, okay.
Rohan: Imagine if Harry had done that during Potions. That would have been…
[Eric and Rohan laugh]
Laura: I know! How many points do you think Snape would have taken then?
Eric: A million. [laughs]
Andrew: [imitating Snape] “A million points if I have to clean it up.”
Micah: But it would be so worth it.
Andrew: [laughs] Aw, Laura.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. The thing for me about back to school was always about the smells.
Laura: Yes.
Eric: The smell of a new notebook, the smell of the classroom… which actually probably just – even before COVID – comes down to what cleaner they were using between days. But being in a classroom, the complete and utter silence, the lights off, if you’re the only one in there, either before or after class… there’s just something about it. I can go back there immediately in my mind right now. But thinking about the… so my in when reading this chapter of the books is thinking about how all of these classrooms and areas smell, like the greenhouses, all these different locations that have all of these exciting magical purposes and the spells they’re working on and things. It just must be amazing. I mean, there’s a reason we all wanted to go to Hogwarts, and it’s for things like this that it’s all described in such a really beautiful, lush way.
Micah: Definitely, yeah. And to complicate things for Harry even more, I mean, he’s in a brand new building, and things move, and he doesn’t…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: It’s almost like they need a map to know… I mean, he gets one later on in the series, obviously, but…
Eric: Huh. If only something like that existed, I was going to say. [laughs]
Rohan: I was going to say, it is ridiculous they don’t give them a map at any point. I used to have a student planner. You get your map, you get your timetable, all those things.
Eric: Oh, yeah, the student planner!
Laura: Right. We should make a Hogwarts student planner.
Rohan: Ooh, I’d get that, yeah. I think the thing I definitely related to as well, which is captured so succinctly in both these chapters, especially later on with the Snape lesson, is you just take everything so seriously as a kid. It sort of feels like everything is the most important thing ever, and it’s like when Harry loses, what, two House points? It’s like, “Oh my God, I’ve let the team… that’s me done. I’m just going to go back to the Dursleys’. I can’t hack it.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: The stakes are incredibly high.
Micah: Yeah, it’s like half one of those little beads that’s in the big vial. It’s not even anything. Two points? It’s nothing.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Well, we’re kind of indirectly but directly introduced to the two Heads of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw House. We’re not told specifically this, but Professor Sprout, right? Herbology teacher. The author refers to her as a “dumpy” woman, and I’m wondering, does this set the stage just for more Hufflepuff bashing?
Andrew: Yeah, a little bit.
Micah: Your Head of House is a dumpy woman. It could be in a loving way.
Andrew: Well…
Micah: But it’s the first time we’re meeting her.
Andrew: I mean, if I’m being generous, J.K. Rowling is just describing her clothing, because Herbology, you’re working with your hands in the dirt, so you’re just wearing crappy clothing that you don’t mind getting dirty. That was my read on it.
Eric: I think it’s an American reading to see it as a negative. I think it’s just another adjective. From what I’m finding in Google searchings with dictionaries, from the Oxford Dictionary, it’s just supposed to mean short and stout, of a person. It’s just a way of saying being short and thick in build. Dumpy does read like… to me, I know exactly where you guys are coming from. I’m like, “She looks like a dump.” [laughs] But no, I think it’s just another way of saying rotund.
Rohan: It’s definitely in that sort of tradition of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, very British sort of broad strokes, not always positive ways of describing people. But yeah, that feels very… I could see that in Roald Dahl’s writing, for example.
Eric: But it’s not a huge positive, and talking about Hufflepuff being maligned, especially in the earlier books, this fits right in with kind of that thing. Any inferences you would be making wouldn’t be necessarily super positive because we’re not being presented with something really awesome Sprout is saying.
Laura: Right, I mean, we don’t really get more about her until the next book.
Micah: Yeah, she has a big role to play.
Laura: Yep. [laughs]
Micah: How about Professor Flitwick? Huge fan of Harry’s, right, Eric?
Eric: This is great. [laughs] He topples over, and using the word “topple” is so funny, to just picture this teacher who’s shorter than usual just getting so excited by reading Harry’s name. He’s at the staff table the night before, presumably – he knows Harry Potter is in school – but just reading his name off, taking roll call, getting very excited, and just toppling backwards. I’m like, man, I really wish there was more of an opportunity in all the books to get more Harry and Flitwick communication here. Harry probably would not be a prime Ravenclaw candidate at any point, but I’d still like to see… because we know where Flitwick’s loyalties lie. I’m thinking about the swamp in year five too. Flitwick is an awesome teacher who we just don’t see enough of, so I think that maybe Harry and he should have had a few more scenes together. Would have been neat.
Rohan: I also love how surprised he is. He toppled over as if he’s not, A, known how old Harry is, and being Sorted two days earlier. As he comes into the classroom, he’s like, “Oh my God! Harry Potter? You’re here? What’s going on?”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: “What?!”
Andrew: He’s like a fanboy. It’s just like even though he knew he was coming, he still couldn’t contain his excitement. I guess it is kind of a big moment. I get it.
Rohan: Is it the fifth or sixth book? I think after the Quibbler interview, doesn’t Flitwick come up to him with some mice or something as well? Sweet mice, not just rats. [laughs]
Laura: I think so.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I had forgotten about that.
Micah: He does, yeah. Well, we’ve met Professor McGonagall already, but this is our first time in her classroom, and I think it’s interesting to parallel her or compare her with Snape, because they’re both very serious in terms of how they go about teaching, but they obviously have two very different styles in terms of how they treat the students. Hermione obviously shines through in this class. It’s the first of many times that we see her do that.
Eric: Yeah, and I just love the characterization of McGonagall kind of just being this hard teacher, because she’s Harry’s Head of House, and it just plays really well against Snape, because the question is raised whether or not Snape favors his House. It turns out, yes, yes, he very much does. But Harry is like, “Man, I wish McGonagall would favor Gryffindors as much. She wouldn’t have given us all this homework that she did last night.” It’s just very funny and very like, “Oh, woe is me. We have homework.” But the point I had was that Transfiguration has so far been talked about quite a bit in the book so far, and Hermione is talking about it, she’s asking Percy about it, telling Percy that it’s her favorite subject that she’s most excited to learn. And in our first Transfiguration lesson, they do indeed have to be transfiguring matchsticks into needles, and so it’s interesting to see Transfiguration get sort of the limelight. Other classes like Herbology, we just kind of go through, fly through; they don’t even say what they’re talking about. But with Transfiguration, it’s always interesting to read about what’s being transfigured into something, and yeah, it just… I really thought Transfiguration itself would be hugely prominent in this book and in the future books.
Micah: Yeah. Not to go back on what Laura was saying before about the dismissiveness of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, but if you look at it, the Herbology and the Charms class are the ones we at least initially spend the least time in, and then it’s the Gryffindor Head of House in Transfiguration and the Slytherin Head of House with Potions that we spend the most time in in this chapter.
Laura: Yeah. Well, and at this point in the story, I think that’s where the emphasis is most important, right? Because you’re seeing – again, to Eric’s point – this great contrast between McGonagall and Snape, and the big difference is McGonagall is very stern, but she’s also very fair. And Snape is just a bully, and he’s extremely unfair. So I think at this point in the story, those characterizations are the ones that are most important to come across, given where we know the book is going.
Micah: So Professor Quirrell, Defense Against Dark Arts professor. And we’re actually going to do a new segment here that we haven’t done before.
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: Fun segment. Mini Origin? That’s what you named it, Andrew?
Andrew: Oh, I mean, it’s Name Origins, right? We’re going to start doing Name Origins in Chapter by Chapter.
[Name origin sound effect plays]
Eric and Micah: Oooh.
Micah: I got chills.
Rohan: I thought I could hear Eric going “Oooh,” and I thought that was part of the sound effect.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, darn. No, that was just me.
Micah: Well, gotta cite your sources, so this is from MuggleNet’s Name Origin section, and I managed that section many, many, many years ago, so it’s possible I put this entry in. We’ll see how good it is.
Andrew: [laughs] It’s close to your heart, this segment is.
Micah: Yeah, it’s close to my heart. But there is a lot to be taken from Quirrell’s name, particularly his first name. I don’t know that we actually get it in the book, do we?
Eric: No, this was only ever discoverable by a Chocolate Frog Card, and it might not have even been in print. It might have been just digital only on either JKRowling.com or the trading card game, which I guess was in person. But yeah, this was kind of a deep cut, knowing Quirrell’s first name. You could impress your friends in 2005 if you knew Professor Quirrell’s first name.
Micah: Yeah, Quirinus. So the name Quirinus is derived from the words “co” and “viri,” meaning “of two men.”
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Wow.
Micah: So religious historians have argued that Quirinus and Romulus were originally the same divine entity that was split into a founder/hero and a God when Roman religion became de-mythicized. Furthermore, there is a connection between Quirinus and Janus Quirinus, the two-faced God. Janus was the God of both beginnings and endings, and was depicted as having one face looking forward, while the other watched behind, much like our dear Professor Quirrell.
Rohan: I can’t help but just think of that scene in the new Spider-Man where they go up to Octavius and they just look at each other, going, “Yeah, but what’s your real name?”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: It’s pretty much… once you know this deep cut, it’s basically like how Remus Lupin’s name in Latin is just Wolfy McWolferton.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: If you really know, if you really look at it, it’s like, Quirinus Quirrell was destined to have somebody else’s face on the back of his face, on the back of his head. [laughs]
Micah: Totally.
Rohan: Do you think if the writer didn’t put it in this book, do you think they might have come up with it later and sort of thrown it in as an Easter egg? Or do you think it was always sort of in the world-building of the first book?
Eric: I like the idea that it was in the world-building, just because there’s so much alliteration. Alliterative names are always super cool to read; they have a special magic unto themselves. But it doesn’t mean that it needed to be there. But I think it was.
Micah: And then the last name… I might have stretched this one out a little bit, but this name was perhaps derived from the word “quarrel,” which means an angry dispute or argument. It also sounds like “squirrel,” a nervous, nut-eating rodent that lives in trees.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: It’s true that he does act like a scared, shaky man to cover up his allegiance to Voldemort; we see that, actually, in this chapter. And the name could also be from “querulous,” meaning full of doubts and questions. So that is the name origin for Quirinus Quirrell. Now let’s go to Potions, and Andrew, thank you for this discussion topic: “Snape. Is. MEAN!”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That was my main takeaway from this chapter.
Micah: We are told in the previous chapter that Snape is after Quirrell’s job. So I’m wondering, with all the information we have now, do we think that Snape dislikes teaching Potions because it actually reminds him a lot of Lily and their relationship?
Eric: I think I disagree with the premise that Snape dislikes teaching Potions. If you listen to him talk about bottling fame and stoppering death and all this stuff, he loooves Potions. He is a little bit too into potion-making.
Micah: Okay, I can see that.
Laura: Yeah, I agree with that, but I think we can also acknowledge that Snape would rather be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: That’s probably true.
Laura: And I love that this is established so early on in this book, because obviously, that becomes very important later on. But Eric, you’re totally right; the way Snape describes potion-making is very romantic. He says, “I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…” He has definitely romanticized this subject matter, and I think it’s in large part due to Lily.
Eric: Oh.
Andrew: That’s beautiful, actually. [laughs] And sad.
Laura: And creepy, a little bit?
Andrew: And creepy.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, so I have a problem with this only because Lily’s brilliance at Potions is mostly a movie-ism, isn’t it?
Laura: Does it?
Eric: I mean, Slughorn tells Harry in Book 6 that his mother was great, but I still think that might even be more so in the… I’m just trying to figure out if we can reverse engineer this to actually say that Snape stayed in his job because of his fascination with the… I think potions are the perfect topic for Snape, because they’re patient, they’re slow, they’re kind of morbid. It’s exactly his energy, exactly his energy, to be down in the dungeons with the pickled animals.
Micah: Yeah, and to that point, you know that there’s going to be plenty of opportunities for him to – well, the way that he does it – criticize his students, because there’s so many ingredients; there’s so many steps to everything that needs to be done in order for it to be done the right way. It’s probably like going to summer camp for him.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: No, that’s a great point. I mean, even… he tortures Neville in this first lesson with, “Oh, you put the quills in while the fire was still in the cauldron, you stupid boy!” It’s like, well, listen, if nobody’s followed a recipe list ever in their life, and now it comes down to… and not to mention, the stakes couldn’t be higher. You get boils all over your face if you screw this stuff up? This is awful. No wonder people don’t like this subject.
Andrew: Yeah, this is a very technical class, but you could say this about any class at Hogwarts for first years. It’s all brand new to them.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: Especially if you’re like Harry, or another student who didn’t have magical parents. So I just… the treatment is really just down to Snape choosing to be this way.
Laura: I agree, and to circle back and talk about why Snape is in this job and why he remains here, there’s also an element of where else is this guy going to get a job? Let’s be real, he is a former Death Eater. Not to say that that necessarily prevents you from getting jobs; clearly, some of them work at the Ministry. But he’s also just horrible to work with. He’s a miserable human being. Nobody likes the guy. Where else is he going to work except for the place where Dumbledore finds him most useful?
Micah: Oh, we need a top ten alternate jobs for Snape, and Photoshop him into, like, air traffic controller.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. Well, wait a minute, there is that guy who looks like Snape at the… this went viral at the airport, the gate agent who’s like, “Boarding plane 394.”
[Laura and Rohan laugh]
Andrew: He needs to work at the Krusty Krab, just like Squidward, because I always think of Squidward and Snape being the same character.
Eric: That’s great.
Rohan: Oh, very good.
Andrew: In terms of the treatment of Harry in this chapter, it is absolutely awful. When Harry has a little cheek with Snape about asking Hermione the question instead of him, I was actually surprised that Snape didn’t freak out more than he did in that moment, because if I were Snape in this moment, I would have a flashback to James all of a sudden, and I would have blown a gasket. I would have been so pissed off. So I’m almost impressed by how Snape controlled himself in this moment.
Micah: Well, he already got a few blows in, right?
Andrew: He did.
Micah: He had said, “Harry Potter. Our new – celebrity. […] Tut, tut – fame clearly isn’t everything.” It’s like every time he asks him a question, he has a dig ready to go. “Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?” And then you mentioned the Neville situation earlier. He says, “You – Potter – why didn’t you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he’d make you look good if he got it wrong?”
Eric: Yeah, that’s completely unfair.
Laura: Yeah. Do you think Snape prepped all of these insults the summer ahead of Harry coming?
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: He’s got a little notebook at home; just go through them.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah. Well, he knows Harry is coming to Hogwarts this year, right? Obviously he knows when Harry is coming of age to come to school, he knows to expect him, and he’s just been biding his time, being like, “I am going to show…”
Andrew: [imitating Snape] “I’m so excited.”
Laura: [laughs] “I am going to show that kid who’s boss.”
Eric: I’m glad you say it that way. It is about power here.
Laura: Yep.
Eric: It is about how Snape has all of the power. Harry, as a first day in Potions student, has none of the power, and because often when facing off against James Potter, they were maybe on even footing, or Snape was an unpopular kid, so he had much less power. This is Snape’s revenge entirely, and he’s been planning this for very long time, even if not specific insults. This is why Snape should never be a teacher, is because he relishes the power and the hold he has over these students and wields it as a violent weapon.
Micah: Absolutely.
Rohan: Then isn’t it quite funny that Harry has no idea who Snape is at this point?
[Eric and Rohan laugh]
Rohan: He’s just some annoying teacher.
Eric: You’re right, that is also the perfect… “Who’s this guy?”
Laura: He’s like, “Why do you hate me so much?” [laughs]
Eric: You’re right.
Micah: He even tries to get some information out of Hagrid later on in the chapter, and it just completely doesn’t work out in his favor.
Eric: Yeah! I love that.
Micah: Yeah, I mean, Snape makes a point of calling Harry out at every opportunity, even asking him questions he knows he won’t have the answer to. And part of me wondered with that, we know Snape is a Legilimens. Was he…? Because there’s moments in this chapter where it talks about how Harry is staring straight into Snape’s eyes. I’m wondering, is Snape doing a little bit of mind-reading, trying to get a sense: “What does Harry know? What can I ask him that he’s not going to have the answer to?”
Andrew: Wow.
Micah: Or does he just think Harry is an idiot and he doesn’t know anything because he grew up with the Dursleys?
Andrew: Could be a mix of both, I think. [laughs]
Eric: You don’t see anybody else raising their hand. The only reason anybody knows the answers to these questions is because Hermione is in the room and she has read the book.
Andrew: Which was not expected of them.
Eric: Oh, especially not of Muggle-borns, yeah, or anybody who grew up without a wizarding family. You wouldn’t have just the Standard Book of Potions in…
Andrew: Well, yeah, and it’s like, “How am I going to spend the final weeks of my summer? Reading my schoolbooks before school starts? Hell no.”
Laura: Right. Well, going back to Micah’s point, something that I thought was really interesting about this: Did y’all ever in school have a teacher that you just felt like had eyes in the back of their head? You couldn’t do anything; nothing got past them. If their back was turned and you were pulling some stuff, they knew. They always seemed to know. And I wonder if for Snape, that is his Legilimency.
Andrew: Ohhh, yeah.
Laura: I think with the Neville example… he wasn’t there when Neville misstepped with his potions ingredients, but he immediately knew what the problem was, which you could say, “Well, Snape is a very accomplished Potions Master, so of course he would know.”
Eric: Right, that’s my answer for that.
Laura: Or you could say maybe he is using his power to manipulate his students into thinking, “Well, how does this guy know everything?”
Eric: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s a good angle. I think you want to seem omniscient as a teacher, because again, you retain your power that way. But yeah, just looking at the Half-Blood Prince book, and knowing that you can crush these sprouts with your knife instead of chopping them to make a better potion, he knows exactly what went wrong with everybody’s potion at every instance, because he’s seen it a million ways. He’s that good at Potions.
Rohan: I think there’s something to be said… I think this is because of the films; we forget how young Snape is as well. Especially compared to the other teachers, they’re all meant to be, what, in their 50s at least? Whereas Snape is meant to be his early 30s, mid 30s at this point. So I sort of wonder if there’s a bit of, from Snape’s perspective, he’s like, “Well, I need to…” He’s the youngest teacher, in theory. He needs to prove himself a bit more and throw his weight around.
Eric: That is one of the most interesting angles I think we don’t often take. Because of the excellent casting of Alan Rickman as Snape, the age really is younger. He’s supposed to be Sirius and Remus’s age, and trying to marry the two concepts, and actually think of Snape as this youthful teacher that needs to prove himself, does change the reading a little bit.
Micah: And Rohan, I like your point here about Snape’s eyes being referenced like tunnels, because I think it says a lot about him and his personality. He’s just this dark, empty individual.
Rohan: I listened to the Stephen Fry audiobooks in the UK. I always think that line sort of… yeah, his eyes were dark; reminded Harry of long dark tunnels. I just think you get the character in, what, three words or something? It’s so brilliant.
Laura: And I love the contrast to Hagrid here, right? Because he notes that Hagrid’s eyes are just as dark, but that Snape’s eyes lack the warmth that Hagrid communicates through his eyesight. So very interesting comparisons.
Rohan: Hagrid is a hugger, and I don’t think Snape is a hugger, is he?
Laura: Yeah, no, I don’t think Snape is much of a hugger. [laughs]
Micah: Well, we didn’t think Voldemort was a hugger either.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: To wrap this up, Laura, you mentioned Hagrid, and we see both Harry and Ron go to Hagrid’s for the first time, and this sets up a series of trips to Hagrid’s throughout the course of the series. And to me, it’s always seen as this place of refuge, and I’m curious, did we ever have a place that we could go to when we were at school where we felt safe? Or did we have a teacher we could visit when things weren’t necessarily going our way? Because certainly, after the experience that Harry has in Snape’s class, this is a nice kind of getaway for him.
Laura: Yeah, what I used to do – and I wonder if anyone else here did this – I would go visit my old teachers from previous grades.
Eric: Yes!
Laura: Yeah, because at that point they’re not your teacher anymore, so you can just talk like people, and they can be there to be a support and a guide and a mentor. I definitely remember going to a trusted former teacher and confiding about some issues that I was having in school, and her being able to give me some really good advice that probably she wouldn’t have been able to speak so plainly with me when she was my direct teacher, right? So that was always very comfortable.
Eric: That’s an interesting angle. I remember being in class, and other upperclassmen who had had my teacher before would walk into our class during class and just hang out. [laughs] It was kind of a weird situation being not the older student that’s walking in for comfort. But yeah, the relationships that are changing, and old classrooms you used to go to… there was a lot of that, for sure, as far as seeking refuge. Or the guidance office, or the library. Once we started getting older and having free periods, that really opened up the school.
Andrew: That felt so cool.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: I was deeply involved in my TV tech program, and I had a very close relationship with my TV tech teacher, and I lived in that TV tech studio before school, lunch… I never ate lunch in the lunchroom in the cafeteria. [laughs] I was living in the TV tech room.
Eric: Well, and look at you now. Podcast mogul.
Andrew: And look at me now.
Eric: Media extraordinaire.
Andrew: That teacher recently called me his favorite student on Facebook because we happened to run into each other a couple months ago. Other alumni weren’t happy about that.
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: But they were just jealous! They were just jealous.
Odds & Ends (“The Potions Master”)
Micah: Some odds and ends from this chapter. Andrew, you have a really good one.
Andrew: Yeah, so a “funny smell” hung around Quirrell’s turban…
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: … and I was like, “Oh, God, what is going on under there?” I’m imagining it smelling bad because of Voldemort’s breath or something. [laughs] He hasn’t brushed his nonexistent teeth.
[Micah and Rohan laugh]
Laura: Well, how’s he going to do that?
Eric: How’s he going to brush his teeth? [laughs]
Andrew: Right, right. And he’s obviously just living on the back of Quirrell’s head, so what is…? Is Quirrell bathing? What is going on? It must be abysmal.
Rohan: That sounds like a sitcom.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Right.
Rohan: For HBO Max.
Andrew: “Max that!”
Eric: Quirrell with two toothbrushes, one for himself, one for Voldemort. He’s just like, “Quirrell, no! Not the baking soda!” He’s like, “Listen, being the Dark Lord is no excuse for poor dental hygiene.”
Andrew: This is making me want to vomit, like I’m Laura entering the sixth grade.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: This is just disgusting.
Rohan: I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting they had, though, where Voldemort was like, “So Quirrell, I want to be on the back of your head.” “Wait, what?”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Rohan: “Back of your head.” “Really? Yeah? All right.”
Laura: I wonder what the conversation about hiding Voldemort looked like too. They were like, “Well, I guess I could wear a hat? No, a turban.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And I wonder how Voldemort felt about that, if he was like, “No.”
Rohan: I think Voldemort suggested turban. He was like, “Right, I want a purple turban, okay?”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: It does seem on brand. [laughs] Some good setup in this chapter. Some nice little Easter eggs; notably, Snape asks Harry about the bezoar. Harry does not know what that is at this point, but it certainly comes in handy in Book 6. So again, more foreshadowing.
Micah: We also get a mention of when they’re talking about Filch and how he knows all of Hogwarts’s secret passageways. The Weasley twins are noted to also be very much familiar with them, and we know that certainly comes into play with the map and in Prisoner of Azkaban. And then I know we didn’t talk a lot about this, but it is mentioned when they’re at Hagrid’s about the break-in at Gringotts. Harry wants some more information, but Hagrid is not willing to give anything up to him at this point. Maybe if he had another drink or two, he would have spilled some tea, but that did not end up happening. And then Rohan, bring us home here. You have a really good point, and I don’t know how we missed this.
Rohan: I have a big point here. This is… cracked this case open. I mean, they get Friday afternoons off. Come on, what is this school?
[Andrew laughs]
Rohan: I mean, the private schools I know in the UK, they generally do classes on Saturday mornings as well, so my big point here is ultimately… in the previous chapter, we’ve already said Dumbledore loves music. So if only they had a bit of time in the schedule to let them do some music or sport or… I don’t know. I was listening to last week’s episode; I know you were asking about free places, or do people pay to go to school in the UK? And I think a lot of private schools in the UK are charities, so effectively they are exempt from tax, or they pay less tax for various reasons. But in order to do that, they have to do lots of extracurricular activities, and so students will go and volunteer with charities and other organizations. So why aren’t Hogwarts doing that? And so overall, this very much feels like the UK government attitude to the arts over the last couple of years, where it’s like, “Oh, we love music, we love theater, we love film, TV, Netflix, but wait, what? You want us to put time into the schedule to do it? No, why would we do that? What’s going on?”
Andrew: [laughs] “You want us to teach all this stuff? No.” It’s kind of like here in America, some places of work will offer summer Fridays where the employees can get off a little early because it’s summer, you want to head to the beach early or something.
Micah: Yeah, that never works. I’m just going to… as somebody who has had summer Fridays, yeah, those are tough to dip out at 1 o’clock.
Andrew: Actually get? Because you’re so busy.
Micah: You’re so busy, yeah, exactly.
Laura: Yeah, and it makes the rest of the week a lot harder too.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly! It’s like people talk… this is a whole other discussion, but the four-day work week. Look, sounds good to me, but that just means I’ve got to work harder those other four days. [laughs] That doesn’t… I don’t know if that’s going to work for me.
Micah: So good thing we shortened up to two chapters this week. [laughs]
Laura: Right?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
MVP of the Week
Andrew: We’re not done yet. Let’s do the MVP of the Week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: I’m going to do a most valuable chapter award, and I’m going to give it to the “Sorting Hat” chapter. I mean, that’s an incredibly important chapter and an incredibly important moment in the lives of all these students, so shout-out to you, “Sorting Hat” chapter, and shout-out to the Sorting Hat as well.
Laura: I’m also going to do a most valuable chapter, and I’m giving it to the other chapter we discussed today, “The Potions Master.”
Eric: Oooh!
Laura: There is so much laid out in this chapter that becomes incredibly important later on in the series, and again, I think it’s masterfully written, because you’re intended to believe that it’s all first day of school stress, imposter syndrome, feeling like Harry doesn’t belong in this world, when actually there’s a lot happening under the surface.
Micah: I’m going to give it to all those characters that Rohan mentioned that never show up again in the Harry Potter series…
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Oh, that’s good.
Eric: They kept their head down.
Micah: … but are doing the work behind the scenes to make things still run smoothly.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I love that. I’m going to give it to Professor Flitwick for the MVP, because unlike Snape, who wants to have all the power, I think it’s important every once in a while to fanboy your own students. So good for Flitwick giving Harry the whole “Ah!” and falling backwards. [laughs]
Rohan: And then I’m going to give mine to Percy, actually, because obviously Percy – perhaps rightfully – gets a lot of hate most of the time, but especially in the “Sorting Hat” chapter… we’ve not mentioned it, but he does take on Peeves and does quite a good job of getting him out of the way.
Laura: True.
Rohan: So I’ve got some respect for Percy. And being nice to Hermione and giving some good advice, I’d say.
Andrew: Awesome. If you have any feedback about today’s discussion, 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 give us a call. 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. Get that feedback in now, because next week’s episode is a MuggleMail episode.
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, it’s time for some Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: From which vault number does Hagrid retrieve the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone? The correct answer was vault 713. And a lot of people submitted the correct answer, including Andrea, Andrew and Pat’s Number One Shipper, Barry Otter, Brock, Bubotuber Pus, Buff Daddy, Cassius Dumbledork, Forrest the 9-year-old, Funny Folk in the Hog’s Head, Greta Leta, Kelsey, McCalla, Morgan, Pearl the Second, Salty Slytherin, Sir King of Kings, the Chosen Taco, Ravenclaw from Nebraska, and “You can call me Al.”
[Rohan laughs]
Andrew: I have a couple comments. The chosen taco is the Cheesy Gordita Crunch at Taco Bell.
Eric: Yes, yes.
Andrew: And Forrest the 9-year-old is why we don’t curse on this program.
Eric: Yeah, it was all for you, Forrest.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So for next week’s question, we actually have… so this is the hardest question I think I’ve ever devised.
Micah: Oooh.
Andrew: Whoa.
Eric: And so I’ve written specifically this is going to be for a thousand Quizzitch points, and that is going to be redeemable for a stuffed badger at our next live show, whenever that occurs.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Rohan: A real badger or a soft toy?
Eric: Not a taxidermied badger. According to Book 1, if you’re in the Great Hall facing the Hogwarts staff table, from left to right, what is the order in which the Hogwarts Houses are seated? Who’s on the far left, if you’re facing the Hogwarts table, who’s next, and who’s on the right? This is called out in the first book. It is not at all how it is in the movies, and the movies have wrecked my brain on this. So when I read it in the book, I’m like, “Wait, they’re where?”
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: So give me the four Hogwarts Houses, what order they’re seated at in the Great Hall, according to the book.
Andrew: Couple other reminders: Make sure you’re following the show for free in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode, and leave us a review if they allow you to. And don’t forget to follow MuggleCast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. And Rohan, thanks so much for joining us today. It was great having you.
Rohan: Oh, thanks so much for asking me on. It’s been a lot of fun.
Andrew: Yeah, you were perfect. You fit right in. Anything you want to plug? Instagram or anything else, maybe?
Rohan: I’m awful on Instagram, but you can follow me if you really want to. I’m mainly on Twitter, @Rohan_Gotobed, and then you can see my links and stuff through there. But I’m not going to plug anything because it’s so specific to the southwest at the moment.
Andrew: Okay.
[Eric laughs]
Rohan: I wouldn’t expect you guys to be flying over to see me in plays or whatever. But hopefully, sometime soon.
Eric: Oh, I’d love to.
Andrew: All right, well, yeah, we’ll follow you on social media and keep up to date there. So that does it for this week’s episode of MuggleCast. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Rohan: And I’m Rohan.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
Laura: Bye, y’all.
Micah: Bye.