Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #667, That’s My Killing Wand! (GOF Chapter 34, Priori Incantatem)
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 this week, prepare for another installment of Voldemort did an oopsie-poopsie by not thinking things through. [laughs] Oopsie-poopsie? Oopsie-whoopsie.
Laura: Oopsie-poopsie! You never heard that term?
Andrew: Oopsie-poopsie.
Eric: This makes me uncomfortable.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Me too, me too.
Laura: You know what, though? There is one bonus: Harry gets a family reunion out of the whole situation, so silver linings.
Andrew: Well, helping us with today’s discussion, we are joined by one of our Slug Club patrons, Elizabeth. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: Glad to be here.
Andrew: It’s nice to have you. Thank you so much for joining us and for your support on Patreon. Can we please get your fandom ID?
Elizabeth: So favorite book, I went with the Half-Blood Prince. It’s a good one, getting the backstory of Voldemort. Favorite movie, Order of the Phoenix. Love to hate on Umbridge.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Elizabeth: And then I’ve gone to different family members to movies, but this was one where I didn’t have Harry Potter friends in the area to go with, and I think my sister I usually go with had gone. But I had a coworker friend who was very big into Harry Potter and he invited me to tag along with him and his girlfriend when they went to the movie, and so that was a special memory because about five or so years later, I ended up getting tough phone call that he had passed, and so just having that memory with him was just meaningful. And then I wasn’t able to travel back to the area for the funeral but I had someone else who went, and they had some of his posters or different things from the movie, so I have a little banner from one of the movies that had belonged to him, so I have that as a keepsake.
Andrew: That’s really sweet.
Laura: That’s really touching.
Elizabeth: Not to be too much of a downer, but I wanted to shout out the memory of Seth, was his name.
Laura: Yeah, 100%. I mean, we all have such deep connections to these stories and to each other because of them, so I’m really happy that you felt comfortable sharing. Thank you for that.
Andrew: And have that memory to remember him through.
Elizabeth: I think he was Gryffindor, so he was brave until the end.
Andrew: Aww. And what’s your Hogwarts House?
Elizabeth: I’m kind of torn between being Gryffinpuff or Huffledor. And then Patronus, the Nebelung cat.
Andrew: Okay, unique.
Laura: Oooh, that’s cool.
Elizabeth: For those that are watching, I have a cat Patronus necklace that I got at LeakyCon.
Eric: Ooh.
Andrew: Perfect.
Laura: Oh, that’s so beautiful.
Andrew: Yeah, awesome. Well, welcome again, Elizabeth, and it’s thanks to support from listeners like Elizabeth that we are a weekly podcast, doing a complete reread of the Harry Potter series as we get ready for the Harry Potter TV series adaptation. That’s my new line for everybody now, by the way.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: We’re doing this complete reread to get ready for the TV show; that’s been the plan all along. Wink, wink.
Laura: Of course it has been. Why wouldn’t it be?
Andrew: [laughs] Visit Patreon.com/MuggleCast to pledge and receive benefits like bonus episodes of MuggleCast, access to the MuggleCast Collectors Club, ad-free MuggleCast, and more.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: And without further ado, it’s time to get into that reread of Harry Potter, and this week, we’re discussing Goblet of Fire Chapter 34, “Priori Incantatem.” And we will start like we always do with our seven-word summary.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Laura: Echoes…
Micah: … confront…
Elizabeth: … the…
Eric: … dark…
Andrew: … past…
Eric: … and…
Elizabeth: … spells.
Andrew: Laura, I love that you started that with “Echoes.” That’s a good way to kick it off.
Eric: It was good. It was good.
Laura: Yeah, sometimes the opportunity presents itself. The seven-word summary is a challenge, and I do like it when I get the chance to kick off the summary because I feel like it’s less pressure to have the first word, because you’re like, “I get to decide the direction of this.” So I was excited for this one.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Laura: But actually, Eric, I think it was you that had put in a brief mini discussion about “Prior to Priori.” [laughs]
Eric: Mostly so I could call this little pre-section “Prior to Priori.” I thought it was a… yeah.
Laura: Right, I mean, it’s very clever, and I don’t want to take credit for it.
Eric: Well, look, we were discussing this. The chapter is pretty straightforward. There is this whole thing with Priori Incantatem, but prior to that, prior, there’s just this brief little moment for Voldemort to continue chewing with his food, or chewing with Harry, essentially. And part of it has Harry receiving the Cruciatus Curse, which sounds awful when Harry is under it, and it’s pretty much the worst thing you could feel sustained. But the thing that really got me excited was seeing and reading the Death Eaters’ reaction when Voldemort then tries the Imperius Curse. He wants Harry to give up or say he’s had enough, and when Harry resists the curse, it’s quite a moment. And I’m thinking that because we got this huge recap, I mentioned the last time we did this chapter, Voldemort is feeling kind of chatty. We already found out that people believed maybe baby Harry had some hidden powers, that he was maybe stronger than Voldemort and that’s why Voldemort failed, and so Voldemort moments ago was trying to disprove this, but he’s like, “I’m going to kill the boy.” And then when he can’t successfully complete the Imperius Curse on him, that’s actually more in the favor of, “Wait a minute. Did we just watch this young boy resist the Dark Lord’s curse?” And it’s wild.
Laura: Yeah, and this isn’t the first time we get to see Harry do this. Earlier in the year, when Harry was being put under the Imperius Curse during Defense Against the Dark Arts, I think it was Moody who had him under the curse trying to make him do a dance or something silly, and Harry was just like, “Nope, I’m not doing it.” So he’s already had practice resisting the effects of the Imperius Curse by Voldemort’s right hand man. Even though Peter Pettigrew thinks that he’s the right hand man, he’s not really. He’s not that important. [laughs]
Eric: Well, he did just lose… he just cut off his right hand, so it goes to somebody else. But are you suggesting, Laura, that Fakey, as we’ve been calling him, has inadvertently trained Harry for this moment of resisting Voldemort?
Laura: Yeah, I think so. Throughout the year.
Eric: What could his possible motive be for that?
Laura: I wonder if he even thought that Voldemort would be putting Harry under Imperius to begin with? If he’s thinking in a very linear fashion about the point of getting Harry to Voldemort, it’s so that Voldemort can kill him. Maybe he wasn’t anticipating that Voldemort was going to want to play with his food a little bit. Maybe he thought he’d want to get it out of the way more quickly. Maybe he didn’t anticipate that Harry would be able to resist the curse in the moment. I think that’s actually one of the ways that Fakey also didn’t completely think things through; I think he was taken by his own genius, and he thought he was going to be able to lord these Unforgivable Curses over the literal object of his Dark Lord’s failure, and it didn’t work. So I think that was probably a surprise to him, and probably why it never happened again, or why he never tried to do that to Harry at other points in the year.
Eric: That’s a really good point. In the later books, I don’t think Voldemort ever tries that specific thing again, so I think this moment makes him scared of Harry a little bit.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, he should be. You got beat by this kid as an infant, and here you are again. [laughs]
Eric: It’s funny because it is a sort of… I was going to say tenuous; is that a word? It’s really a fragile relationship between Harry and Voldemort here, because Voldemort does fear Harry, but he’s not prepared to admit it. And I know, Micah, I think it’s probably you, because it’s always been you, when we were discussing the Imperius Curse in class earlier in the year, you asked, “Is it the Horcrux that is what gives Harry this advantage to resist the Imperius?” The fact that you’re trying to control somebody who kind of has two minds about it, and so Harry is literally like, “Why would I dance? I don’t want to dance. Why would I jump? I don’t want to jump.” So it’s interesting to see if maybe the Horcrux is what’s giving Harry the ability to resist Voldemort, whose mind he literally shares.
Micah: So I do think that there is the possibility that the Horcrux played a role in the resistance of the Imperius Curse, just knowing the fact that Voldemort is very skilled in the Dark Arts and he himself likely would not have allowed something like the Imperius Curse to affect him. There’s that, but I also think Harry is very skilled at Defense Against the Dark Arts. Now, we could get into the whole conversation about whether or not that’s because he has a Horcrux within him, but I would like to give a little bit of an edge to Harry here, though, just given the fact that he was trained by Barty Crouch, Jr. earlier this year and he has shown the ability to resist the curse before, and there’s a lot of willpower within him in this particular chapter.
Laura: Elizabeth, as a Gryffinpuff, would you say that this strikes you as a uniquely Gryffindor moment, Harry being able to resist the Imperius Curse being cast on him by Voldemort?
Elizabeth: I think it’s got that Gryffindor grit, but also still has a little bit of maybe the Slytherin want to show them a little bit with the cunning.
Laura: Yeah, that’s actually a really good call out. I think sometimes we can be quick to attribute acts just on their face look like bravery; we’re really quick to be like, “Oh, that’s a Gryffindor thing,” but in reality, to have the drive and the motivation to be able to work through something like that, I can totally see that being a Slytherin trait. So it’s a good point. Well, getting into our main discussion, I really wanted us to talk a little bit about how Priori Incantatem works. Obviously, we know the mechanics of it, as described in the chapter. Harry and Voldemort, because their wands share brother cores – their cores are both phoenix feathers that come from Fawkes the phoenix, who is also conveniently Dumbledore’s phoenix – they cannot fight each other. So what happens is they’re essentially connected and resisting fighting each other, and we see these little bulbs, orbs of light begin to appear along the spectrum that is linking these two wands, and Harry has the intrinsic instinct that he doesn’t know what those things are, but he’s going to focus all of his attention on trying to push them away from his wand to Voldemort’s. But before we go too far down the rabbit hole of what happens in this chapter with Priori Incantatem, I think we have an old school name origin that Micah brought for us today. Can you can you share, Micah?
[Name origin sound effect plays]
Andrew: I always add the “Whoa” part.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: So I’m going in the Wayback Machine to the name origins section of MuggleNet.com, but this actually came straight off of Google, but I thought it could be fun to decipher what exactly the spell means, right? And it is rooted in Latin. “A priori” is a Latin phrase which means “from the earlier,” and the word “incantatem” is a Latin word that means “to sing” or “to recite,” and that’s very appropriate here, given the fact that we get spells or echoes from earlier on when Voldemort used his wand, and that there is a lot of phoenix song that is present in this particular moment. So I thought that was fun.
Andrew: Could you say that the phoenix singing is what is extracting these spells from earlier? What comes first; you know what I’m saying? Because “sing” or “recite” is the second word in this phrase, in this magic, I’m just wondering if the singing is what is actually causing the extraction to occur, since it’s such a big part.
Laura: Oooh.
Eric: I like that a lot. I think this is ultimately a different Priori Incantatem than the one that we see cast in the woods at the Quidditch World Cup, isn’t it? Amos Diggory grabs the wand that Winky used and just recites “Priori Incantatem!” and they see the Dark Mark get cast.
Laura: Right.
Eric: It’s a shadow of a spell. That part’s similar, but what’s not similar is this phoenix song, because the phoenix song wasn’t there originally. I would question whether Voldemort also hears the phoenix song, or whether that’s exclusive to Harry. Part of me that says it isn’t exclusive to Harry is knowing that the two wands share a phoenix core, but the phoenix song…
Micah: I don’t know that Voldemort would care either. I don’t know that that’s probably in his mind, because…
Andrew: [imitating Voldemort] “I don’t have time for music! Who cares about this?”
Micah: “I gotta find my nose.”
Andrew: “Shut up, bird!”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Well, it’s just interesting because phoenixes were a very big blind spot in year two for Tom Riddle. This Voldemort didn’t have those experiences with Harry in the Chamber, but phoenix song there related deeply to Dumbledore and related deeply to Harry being in need. And so it’s an interesting connection that I don’t think is ever given a real explanation for why this Priori Incantatem is different and why the phoenix is there.
Micah: It’s also very comfortable for Harry, and anything that’s comfortable for Harry likely would not be comfortable for Voldemort.
Elizabeth: I actually did find something because I was wondering about that with their phoenix cores, and so I was checking, looking for more about phoenixes, and in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it actually does bring the whole hearing the song aspect into it.
“Phoenix song is magical: It is reputed to increase the courage of the pure of heart and to strike fear into the heart of the impure.”
Laura: Ooh.
Elizabeth: So that was pretty exciting to read. I was like, “Oh, if Harry was hearing that song and it was motivating him, what was Voldemort hearing that might have been putting some fear into him?”
Laura: Yeah. I actually love that find, because it explains why Harry is able to focus on propelling the beads towards Voldemort’s wand and why Voldemort is more vulnerable to it. That’s a really great find. Thank you for looking that up.
Eric: Betrayed by his own wand core. Voldemort… that wasn’t on his bingo card.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Yeah, maybe he should have taken note, because it happens again a few books later.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. Voldemort is not a learning creature; I think we’ve come to realize this. He makes a lot of the same mistakes over and over again. But while we’re talking about phoenixes, specifically the phoenix feather cores of Harry and Voldemort’s wands, I had a question: Since we find out that both of those wand cores come from Fawkes, do we think that Fawkes was keyed in any way into what was happening in the cemetery? Did Fawkes know?
Eric: Yeah, Fawkes got a little itch on his tail where the feathers used to be that made this wand. He’s like, “Ooh.”
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: That’s how he knows something’s about… is going down right now, yeah.
Eric: His tail’s a-tinglin’.
Micah: You joke, Eric, but was he just hanging out in Dumbledore’s office humming the whole time? Dumbledore sitting there with his legs crossed up on the desk; he knows what’s going down.
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “Ooh, I love this song.”
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: Probably.
Laura: Well, Dumbledore is at the maze, right? He’s still…
Micah: So we think.
Laura: Yeah. [laughs] Micah doesn’t trust Dumbledore.
Eric: Dumbledore just peaced out, went back to his office.
Laura: He’s like, “Oh, whatever. They’ll be back when they’re back.”
Andrew: I do like the idea of it just simply being a tingle that Fawkes is experiencing right now, given that Fawkes is within these wands and something very powerful is happening right now. So I’m sure Fawkes is being notified in some way.
Laura: Yeah. It’s like a phantom feather situation.
Eric: I mean, when it was in the Chamber of Secrets, Fawkes was able to fly down and actually enter the Chamber. But I think this is a little far for Fawkes to all of a sudden appear, so the phoenix song instead, which is emblematic of the core of their wands… I think it’s… now I’m convinced, based on our conversation and what Elizabeth found, that Voldemort does hear it, and that’s why he’s really extra unnerved, in addition to this just being magic he’s probably never seen before and certainly wasn’t expecting to prepare for, I think. Yeah, it’s probably that they both can hear it.
Micah: It’s telling, though, that given all the preparation that he’s done for this particular night, he didn’t think it through any further than just his body being regenerated and that he was going to go and kill Harry. He doesn’t anticipate that something else could potentially get in the way, and given what’s happened to him previously, I think that’s a massive blind spot.
Eric: Is it an oopsie-poopsie?
[Micah laughs]
Laura: That’s an oopsie-poopsie.
Andrew: An oopsie-voopsie. Add that V for Voldemort. A voopsie.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: I was going to bring this up later, but Voldemort is also just wasting time once he ends up dueling with Harry prior to Priori Incantatem, because he’s doing Crucio, he’s doing Imperio… he could have just AK’d Harry right at the outset and gotten this over with really quickly, but instead, he wants to put on a show for the Death Eaters. He wants to probably make Harry suffer for a longer period of time, and he’s very confident he’s going to win, and it’s Voldemort’s ego getting in the way again.
Laura: Yeah. My man has a massive hubris problem, for sure.
Andrew: [laughs] “My man.”
Laura: And it’s ultimately his downfall.
Eric: Well, that’s why I love in the movie version, he’s just happy to be alive. He’s like, [imitating Voldemort] “Yeah, yeah!”
Andrew: [laughs] “Body! Body-ody-ody-ody!”
Eric: “I’m a body-ody-ody!”
Laura: See, I hate that, personally.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, that’s fair. Still your favorite movie, though.
Laura: No. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, it’s not?
Laura: No, it’s my favorite book.
Eric: I thought it was both. Okay.
Laura: No. I have more love for the Goblet of Fire movie after we did our commentary on it, I have more appreciation for it now, but it’s not my favorite movie.
Eric: Okay, that’s my bad.
Laura: That’s a tie between Prisoner of Azkaban – I know, blasphemy – and Deathly Hallows – Part 1.
Eric: When we return from this ad break, there will be one fewer MuggleCaster.
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: [laughs] We’re kicking her off the show.
Laura: Elizabeth, do you want a job?
[Everyone laughs]
[Ad break]
Andrew: Speaking of Priori Incantatem and just how it works, I do love the visual of the wands meeting and then the beams of light were shooting up and around them. And in Muggle terms, I was kind of envisioning this as two beams of water basically hitting each other, and because they’re not going to go into each other, they just kind of go outward. But I was wondering if y’all saw any other symbolism here with the way the light is reflecting out, if you will. Is it almost kind of a circular… it’s cyclical, in a way?
Laura: Yeah. Well, it also separates Harry and Voldemort from the Death Eaters, right?
Eric: They become lifted up; they’re sort of levitated, sort of like the rules of gravity and nature don’t apply. You’re really given the sense, based on the description of things, that this is not something that happens commonly, and that this is something that is just way different type of magic. So I really like that there is that spell barrier between Voldemort, Harry, and the rest of the Death Eaters. But then also, they’re lifted up and set down maybe 100 feet, somewhere different than where they took off from, and it’s just this wild, weird connection, this fluke of whatever spellcraft is supposed to do.
Laura: Okay, so Eric, I’ve got to ask you about Harry’s instincts here. I love the notes that you’ve added here, because I think in general, you’ve been someone over the history of the show who has been really attuned to Harry’s instincts and how they serve him, so just curious for your thoughts around his instincts with knowing – while also not quite knowing – what to do with this beam of light and these beads that are sliding down it towards his wand.
Eric: Yeah, I’m grateful to dive into this a little bit, because I’ve been critical of Harry at times. He’s not a great student, but he is a hero. He’s not just the hero of these books; he’s a hero. And a lot of what he has that gives him the ability to overcome Voldemort, as we were just talking about, comes from Voldemort himself. But there’s something here that I think goes a little bit beyond that, and it’s really Harry’s gut instinct and this voice that tells him, “Don’t let go. Don’t let go of your wand.” And furthermore, Harry intuits – even though this is magic that probably not even Voldemort has ever seen before – Harry nevertheless gets this sense that what he’s got to do is angle his wand and get the beads to not ever enter his own wand, or it would all be over for him. And this is not something that you can teach. This is… I don’t even think this is magic taught at Hogwarts. The only type of people who mess with this type of magic are Ollivander, who makes wands. And so the fact that Harry is able to reasonably guess what to do… now, I mean, us, we’ve all played a bunch of video games where there’s a beam coming at you and you’ve got to get the beam back, but for Harry, this is entirely new and scary, and he nevertheless has this keen insight on what to do. And so I don’t know where that comes from, but I do tend to think of it as being Harry’s and not something Voldemort gave him, and not something… well, maybe his parents gave him because they’re both good Order of the Phoenix members. But yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
Andrew: I definitely like your points. I think there is something inherently concerning about seeing a beam or a bead head towards you in the middle of a duel like this. It’s almost like tug of war. Just instinctually, you’re like, “This is getting too close to comfort for me. This means Voldemort’s side of this duel is about to take me down, so I need to push back really hard.” So I think there might be just a symbolic hint here, too, that “I don’t want this bead hitting my side of the table, because it’s not going to go well for me.”
Eric: Right. Like, “This came from him? Oh, this is not going to be good.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I get that. That’s your natural survival skills. Once a book, Harry is… it’s down to this for Harry, always. There’s always a moment. But yeah, this advanced magic, the idea that he can even control this, goes back to why he was so good at the Patronus Charm, why he mastered that a bit faster than everyone else. He struggled at first, but eventually he got there a lot sooner than other people do. And so… riding a broomstick. Harry is just naturally gifted. I think this is what makes him a good hero, is that he can do these heroic acts.
Micah: I do like the point you brought up about it being instinctual, and I think part of it, too, is the fact that Harry realizes the playing field has been leveled, that Voldemort in this moment is just as scared of what’s going on as he is, and that, to some extent, gives Harry an upper hand, because given where he was just a few moments earlier, this is the best possible scenario for him to be in, even with that little beam coming towards him.
Andrew: It is noted in the chapter that Voldemort had no more expected this than Harry had, and it’s another miss by Voldemort because he just admitted last chapter that he made a mistake in forgetting about the power of love, and here’s another event he wasn’t prepared for.
Eric: It’s that hubris that Laura mentioned. It was like, “Oh, it was the power of love; I fixed it. Ha, ha, ha.” Wait, you don’t actually know what it is you’re talking about because you’re still ten ways to Sunday connected to this boy, and you can’t kill him.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: He hasn’t figured that part out yet. But Harry is ultimately successful, and when these beads reach Voldemort’s wand, Voldemort’s wand begins emitting these echoes that we talked about at the top of the episode with the seven-word summary, and they are the most recent people that Voldemort has killed in reverse order. So we start with Wormtail’s hand, [laughs] but we also get people like Bertha Jorkins. We get Frank Bryce. We get Harry’s parents. We get Cedric. Cedric comes after Wormtail’s hand; I had that out of order.
Andrew: J.K. Rowling had the order messed up, too, so don’t worry about it. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah, that’s honestly…
Andrew: And we’ll talk about that in a minute.
Laura: Yeah, me messing that up is not as big of a deal as her messing that up, or her editors, quite frankly, messing that up.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: But Dumbledore really does describe… because Harry thinks these are ghosts at first, and we can understand why, because they talk to him and they circle around in this arena that has been formed around Harry and Voldemort, and they’re encouraging Harry but taunting Voldemort, so it’s easy to see why he would think that they were ghosts. But Dumbledore describes these as reverse echoes, so they would maintain some characteristics of their living selves, but not actually ghosts, and it makes sense because they’re not permanent, right? Their time with us in this chapter is very short.
Eric: They buy Harry about 30 seconds after the connection is broke, which is just enough time. They also know things that it’s impossible for Harry to know. It’s interesting because I was reminded of the Resurrection Stone scene in Deathly Hallows, where I think it’s explained that they’re just reflections of what’s in Harry’s heart. But James, for instance – the reflection echo of James – tells Harry to go back to the Portkey, and there’s no reason that Harry should believe that that would work, and the only way he could know it is if James’s knowledge is shared with Voldemort’s knowledge. Because these came from Voldemort’s wand, which is an extension of Voldemort himself and Voldemort’s magic, maybe these echoes know it because Voldemort knows it.
Laura: Hmm. That’s so interesting.
Micah: Yeah, that was something that stood out to me, too, is the knowledge of the functionality of the Portkey. It seems very strange that they would know that.
Andrew: Well, somebody’s got to give him the advice. I mean, Cedric’s body isn’t about to wake up again and be like, “Head for the Portkey! Don’t forget about the Portkey!” But yeah, that is convenient, I guess, let’s say.
Eric: I guess Voldemort could have shouted at his Death Eaters, “Don’t let him get near the Portkey! It’ll take him back!”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Actually, I would have preferred that, I think.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: It’s interesting, though, that Cedric asks Harry to take his body back, because that’s just a level of awareness and object permanence that this echo has to have, to understand, “My physical form is laying there dead. I want it to go back to my family.”
Andrew: Could it be because it’s so recent that the echo still remembers the body there? To your point about object permanence.
Laura: Yeah, maybe. Very likely.
Eric: There is something here about… and it’s all the times we see there’s an echo or imprints of departed souls. There’s ghosts; there’s portraits. A lot of these are impressions of the people with varying parts of their personality, and it’s very interesting. But you’re right, I think, Laura, in pointing out the Cedric connection; that he’s emotionally invested in and tells Harry to take his body back would be something a ghost would say, I think, more than a portrait.
Laura: Yeah. I think it might explain why we never see these sorts of echoes again; I think because they’re a little too confusing to explain and differentiate from ghosts.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: Apart from the fact that they don’t linger very long, but that’s about it. I did have a “What if?”
[“What if?” sound effect plays]
Laura: What if Voldemort had not been deterred by the phoenix song, and had been successful in making Harry’s wand spit out echoes of recent magic he’s performed?
Micah: Snooze fest.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Why? Why would it be a snooze fest?
Micah: Is anything even going to come out of Harry’s wand?
Eric: Probably not. Expelliarmus?
Laura: Yeah, I mean, you would see former spells that he did, like the recent ones, like Impedimenta and…
Eric: Couple of Death Eaters might have gotten hit with a shadow of Impedimenta.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: No thanks. I’m good with the way it played out.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Well, I do think it could have been impactful, though, because if let’s say an embarrassing or basic spell or two came out, maybe Voldemort sees that and he’s like, “That’s all you got? You don’t do anything better than this? You’re the one who brought me down, and you’re just doing some Accios? You’re lazy. Get up and pick up that quill.” So maybe it could have thrown Harry off his game a little bit if Voldemort had new things to trash talk him with.
Eric: “Harry, I feel so sorry for you.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: “You don’t know any good spells. You should just walk away. I’ll come find you in two years. Get better.”
Andrew: “Evanesco? Did you just…?”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “What were you using that one for?”
Laura: Hey, listen. Listen.
Micah: To get rid of the oopsie-poopsie.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, Harry is like, “Listen, that maze was long and big; it was dark…”
Laura: “And there were no port-o-potties.”
Eric: “There were no port-o-potties!”
Laura: [laughs] Micah, I hear what you’re saying about it being a snooze fest, but I have to ask… and I wanted to ask everyone about this, because it strikes me as odd that everything recent coming out of Voldemort’s wand in reverse order is all killing people. Is every single spell he has done in the last year the Killing Curse? Has he never had to Lumos or Alohomora? [laughs]
Andrew: That’s what Wormtail is for.
Eric: Wormtail to do it for him, yeah. Although, presumably Wormtail used Voldemort’s wand to kill Cedric just then because…
Laura: Right.
Micah: And Frank Bryce.
Eric: Well, here’s the thing… and Frank Bryce. But it was hard for Voldemort to use a wand, and that’s why Lily and James are even in the picture here, is because without a body, even with his little infant body, you only get Frank Bryce murder. Voldemort was not holding his own wand. I wonder how Voldemort…
Micah: And presumably not for Bertha Jorkins either.
Laura: Right?
Eric: Well, because he broke her Memory Charm, presumably with a series of Crucios. But I don’t even know what Crucio would look like in reversed or shadow form.
Micah: A lot of this work was assisted by Wormtail.
Eric: Yeah, so maybe Wormtail’s wand had all the other spells on it, and Voldemort preferred to use his phoenix feather wand for the killing.
Micah: What I find most striking, though, is that there was really nothing at all in between Bertha Jorkins and the Potters.
Laura: Right, that’s the other thing. [laughs]
Eric: Well, he went 13 years without a body. He didn’t have an arm.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Right.
Micah: So Bertha was the first thing that his wand was used on in 13 years?
Andrew: Does that not surprise you, though? I mean, Voldemort is a sick person.
Micah: That’s what I’m saying.
Andrew: I would not be surprised if he had… like, that’s his killing wand. That’s all he does with that wand.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: He doesn’t turn on the lights. He doesn’t Accio a quill. He doesn’t clean up when he oopsie-whoopsies on the floor.
Eric: There’s the episode title. “That’s my killing wand.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, it’s not stated, but Voldemort’s wand should be buried in Godric’s Hollow, in the rubble of the former Potter house. There’s no reason to think that Voldemort’s wand would have made the journey with him through the ethereal plane after Voldemort lost his body and was ripped from it, essentially. There’s no reason to think that his wand would have gone with him, so maybe Wormtail must have taken it with him to find him in Albania. There’s no reason Voldemort had his wand the last 13 years.
Laura: I like the idea of Wormtail, after he fakes his death and incriminates Sirius, using his newfound anonymity as a dead person to go to the wreckage and the rubble of the Potters’ house and dig out Voldemort’s wand.
Micah: Elizabeth, what do you make of all this?
Elizabeth: It seems like it’s only recalling the deaths, so I wonder if there’s something to the Priori Incantatem where it’s limited to what kind of spells it could bring back.
Andrew: It could be, yeah.
Laura: That’s interesting.
Elizabeth: I mean, because we don’t see anything of Harry’s in the mix.
Andrew: And certainly, it’s more cinematic for only the people he has killed to come out of the wand.
Eric: If this were Hogwarts Legacy, you would get that symbol that you had to learn with the controller to get the spell the first time.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: You would see that pop out like shadows.
Andrew: I alluded to earlier that Rowling got the deaths out of order when they were coming out of Voldemort’s wand; I’d forgotten about this until I was doing some research for this chapter. In the first edition of Goblet of Fire released back in July 2000, James actually came out of the wand first when it should have been Lily, and this was corrected in later editions of the book. Fans had questions about this when they read it. Even still today, there’s new Reddit threads popping up because people buy used copies of the first edition of Goblet of Fire, and they’re like, “Wait, what? Why is James coming out first?” Rowling was getting so many questions about this that she actually posted a little piece on her old website in the FAQ section, and she said at the time… so the question on her site was, “At the end of Goblet, in which order should Harry’s parents have come out of the wand?” And then Rowling confirmed,
“Lily first, then James. That’s how it appears in my original manuscript, but we were under enormous pressure to edit it very fast, and my American editor thought that was the wrong way around, and he is so good at catching small errors, I changed it without thinking, then realized it had been right in the first place. We were all very sleep-deprived at the time.”
So I think at least a couple of us probably have this incorrect edition of Goblet of Fire, which is pretty cool. And now when I go to used bookstores, I’m going to start keeping an eye out for those first edition Goblets, because that seems valuable to me as a Potter fan and collector. That’s something I’d like to have multiple copies of.
Laura: Well, yeah, then you flip it on eBay.
Andrew: Yeah!
Eric: It’s kind of world breaking, too, to think that maybe James somehow survived his duel with Voldemort and was there longer than we thought he was.
Andrew: Yeah. Right.
Eric: If you really take it as not a mistake, you can extrapolate some fun fan theories or whatever from there.
Micah: To me, maybe it’s not a major oversight, but it’s still something that should have been caught by an editor.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty critical scene.
Eric: Are you even reading these books, bro?
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: I do love how she throws her US editor under the bus specifically. I didn’t realize this was a US edition-only issue.
Micah: That’s Arthur Levine, right?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Well, and we’ve joked a lot about this book being rushed, and we’ve mostly meant it as a joke, but this might be the single piece of concrete evidence that this book truly was rushed. I mean, Rowling even admits on her site that they were under enormous pressure to edit it very fast, and they were sleep-deprived at the time. This was the last book she wrote under deadline, and it’s probably because of things like this.
Micah: I just can’t imagine the number of eyeballs that read that book before it ends up being published. And I know there was a lot of secrecy around the Harry Potter series because they didn’t want information to leak. But how many people do we think read that book before it went to publication?
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: I can see it being easy to miss, though.
Andrew: Yeah. And when people are editing a book, they’re looking more for a forgotten word or a typo. Stuff like that. Maybe there are fact-checkers who also worked on the Harry Potter books. I don’t know.
Eric: I wouldn’t have seen it as a continuity error.
Andrew: I do still consider this a pretty big oversight, the fact that this made it to print.
Eric: Yeah, it is a big deal, but I think also, if I were J.K. Rowling’s editor in this book, I probably would have taken her word for it if the text originally said this. This is a weird thing with magic. Maybe it’s an opportunity to leave the clue that James survived the initial assault with Voldemort; this would be a perfect way to launch the “James Potter is Remus Lupin in disguise” theory.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Because James wouldn’t have died until, let’s say, years later, so he’s showing up here after Lily. But it’s just one of those things where maybe it would have… I’d like to think I would have done the right thing and be like, “Jo, are you sure about this?” But I probably just would’ve been like, “I’m going to let her go.”
Micah: If I were the US editor, my rationale would probably have been that James died first, therefore he should appear first. That’s probably what he was thinking.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: I agree.
Andrew: Exactly. And I do think it is a little more cinematic – I’m using that word a lot – for Lily to come out last because she is so crucial, arguably more crucial than James, so it makes more sense for Lily to come out last, the grand reveal, the grand finale.
Laura: Yeah. I think it’s interesting in the movie how they have them come out basically at the same time. Do y’all remember that?
Andrew: So they didn’t have to worry about it in editing. “Who comes out first?” “Eh, who cares? They’re coming out at the same time.”
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Why does it stop at the Potters? Why doesn’t it keep going to the Riddles?
Eric: Right. Well, the Riddles were many years ago, but other people during the first war… I think because we’d have no emotional connection to them.
Micah: What is time, really?
Andrew: Cinematic. Got to end on the Potters.
Eric: We wouldn’t know who the other people are. It’s like the way the Mirror of Erised works in the book where Harry sees dozens of cousins and aunts and uncles and all these other people, that we’ll never, ever, ever, ever meet, in the Mirror of Erised.
Micah: Yeah, I mean, if Voldemort kept going, it would have been more echoes than Death Eaters in the graveyard.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And Dumbledore says that later on.
Micah: Oh, does he?
Laura: Yeah, he says, “If it had continued going, I expect you would have seen more of his victims.”
Micah: Wow.
Laura: Yeah, so it would’ve just kept…
Eric: So it’s just as many to make an impact, to startle Voldemort, to buy Harry the time he needs, and to get him a little bit closer to his parents, which is… I think that’s very important in these books, that gradually you get closer and closer and closer. I think this really comes to a head when he visits Godric’s Hollow and their house and their graves in Deathly Hallows. But it’s nice to get a little tidbit. And in the next book, he sees James in the Pensieve, so it’s even closer.
Laura: All right, we are going to go pick up our copies of Goblet of Fire and see if we can find any more editorial errors, but first, a few quick words from these sponsors.
[Ad break]
Andrew: So I want to talk a little more about the movie adaptation. Is it just me, or does this whole push and pull of the bead – I was talking about this a little bit earlier – come off as hokey? The same thing happens in the book, and I think it works in the book, but when you’re watching the push and pull of the bead in the movie, it’s like [gasps] “It’s going that way. [gasps] It’s going this way. Which way is it going to go?”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It’s just a little corny to me. I don’t like it. And I feel like we also saw this in at least one other Harry Potter movie, maybe even a Fantastic Beasts movie, and it’s just…
Eric: Well, that’s my problem with this. This would be okay even in the movie version if it were the only time we saw it. Instead, it seemed like they do this a lot – good call on Fantastic Beasts too. It seems like there really is just a lot more of what should be Priori Incantatem, which should be this very specific thing that only occurs whenever Harry and Voldemort’s wands meet, becomes the visual language of spellwork to some extent. They overused it.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, even Voldemort and Dumbledore have it in the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, which makes no sense.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Well, and I’m pretty sure that’s… but that’s written differently when you get to that book. It’s really, really cool. There’s elemental control of powers and stuff, and that’s ultimately different than this bead of light explanation. But the movies kind of fell flat in differentiating them.
Andrew: I don’t like that duels work that way in the movies.
Laura: No. Well, it’s wrong. Honestly, this is one of my biggest pet peeves, because I agree with you, Eric; after Goblet of Fire in the movie, it was like they decided, “Oh, every single duel needs to be Priori Incantatem because it looks cool on the screen,” and it’s like, “But it doesn’t make sense.”
Andrew: Who do we blame for that? David Yates, David Heyman, David Barron? Pick a David, any David.
Laura: No, this was Pre-Yates, right?
Andrew: No, but he saw it in Goblet, and then was like, “I want more of that.” [laughs]
Laura: Oh, no. yeah, I guess we have to blame David Yates again.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: No. Mike Newell.
Laura: I’m just kidding.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: It’s just there’s not a cohesive… I think it was an entire department of people that decided what they could do. I like the idea that the spells look almost liquid. That doesn’t usually… it’s like molten lava flying off of Harry’s beam. But I think it suffers from the fact that we see it repeated later.
Micah: I feel like in the course of the show, we’ve talked about how we just generally don’t like spells in the movies. And we’ve looked even at how spells were created in some of the… not fanfiction, but what the equivalent is for fan-made Harry Potter films, and a lot of them were a lot better than what we saw in the Harry Potter movies.
Eric: It’s just hard to… I mean, how else would you represent somebody is shooting a thing of energy-like substance at somebody else, somebody else is receiving it and repelling it? What does that look like? It looks like exactly what we see in the films. There’s not a lot of ways… you can’t make it invisible, because then you wouldn’t really see anything. Ultimately, I don’t know what I would have done differently in this scene.
Laura: Yeah, I would just not reuse an effect that was intended for a very specific purpose.
Andrew: Yeah. I just want to see the spells fly, visually fly at somebody. Different colors, maybe different forms; one’s a star, one’s an orb, one looks like a… I don’t know, a Sorting Hat. [laughs]
Eric: Again, those symbols that you have to learn to do them in the games. That would be fun.
Andrew: Yeah, sure, sort of like that. That could be interesting. Like fireworks; you know how fireworks, they can do different shapes with fireworks? Like that.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: Well, ultimately, Harry’s parents, their echoes let him know that the echoes will be able to distract Voldemort for, as Eric said, about ten seconds, but just long enough to give Harry a chance to make a mad dash for Cedric’s body and the Portkey. And true to his word, because he’s just a good person at the end of the day, he does take Cedric back to Hogwarts. He has to Accio the cup over to him.
Micah: I mean, Cedric is delaying his departure massively.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Wow.
Laura: Are you saying that Harry should be like, “Cedric, you’re already departed. I gotta get out of here.” [laughs]
Eric: “Cedric, you’re dead weight. Don’t slow me down any more than you already have.”
Andrew: “One of us gotta come out of here alive, and it’s clearly not you.”
Laura: “Don’t stop me now.” Having his Freddie Mercury moment.
[Andrew laughs]
Elizabeth: Cedric’s body could have been his Swiss Army Man. Could have been shield.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, man.
Laura: That’s amazing. I love that parallel.
Eric: That’s great.
Laura: But Harry is ultimately able to to get away, to travel back to Hogwarts with the Triwizard cup Portkey, but it’s pretty scary because Voldemort and the Death Eaters are right on his heels; I mean, to the point where Harry can see Voldemort’s glowing red eyes approaching him as he catches the Portkey.
Micah: One question I did want to ask before we wrap up was the Death Eaters, right? Voldemort tells them to stand down throughout this whole process, but I’m curious what would have happened if they did try and intervene. Do we feel like Priori Incantatem would have protected both Harry and Voldemort from any outside spells?
Laura: Yeah, I think so.
Eric: I like the idea of it being basically like the bubble that eventually surrounds Hogwarts, where you try and touch it and anything that penetrates it goes to ash. I’d like to believe it’s something like that, because there’s so much powerful next-level magic going on that the outsiders really can’t… nor would they, because if they stepped in and messed it up, they know Voldemort is coming after them and is going to blame them.
Andrew: Just them floating, too, I think suspends them in time as well, so if the Death Eaters did try to attack them, they wouldn’t be able to.
Eric: It’s so funny because gravity may not seem to apply to Harry and Voldemort, but it does apply to the echoes coming out of the wand. Bertha Jorkins comes out of the wand and then hits the ground and she has to pick herself up.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: All the people that come out of Voldemort’s wand hit the ground and have to brush themselves off. [laughs] Like, what’s going on? Gravity is weird right now, but I like how weird it is. I like how it’s not explained.
Laura: Yeah. The only other thing I would add about why the Death Eaters might not intervene: I think a big part of it is that they’re cowards. Voldemort calls them all out for this in the last chapter, saying, “None of you came looking for me. You’re only back because you’re afraid. You felt your Dark Mark burning and you got afraid, so you only returned out of fear. The ones who didn’t return out of fear, they’re at the top of the list, but all y’all are on notice.” He definitely put all of them on notice last chapter, so I think it’s fitting of all of their characters that they would see something that they don’t understand, that they weren’t expecting to happen, and be like, “Ooh, I’m just going to leave this to the boss.”
Andrew: Yeah. By the way, shout-out to HallowWolf, who shared with us the trope called “Beam-o-war,” and it’s what we’ve been talking about and criticizing in the movies after Goblet of Fire. And at TvTropes.org, it lists every single time the Beam-o-war has been used across all media, and there have been a lot of times this has been used. So thank you for sharing this. It’s a very common trope, evidently. [laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. Well, and to something that HedwigsTheme said on our Discord as well in response to the Death Eaters, is “Heck yeah, I bet half of them,” meaning the Death Eaters, “want Harry to win.” And that’s an interesting point, too; a lot of them wouldn’t choose to be here if their life didn’t depend on it. Ultimately, they try their best to shoot spells at Harry when he does break free, but yeah, that’s a good call too. I think they’d prefer that this matter were just handled and they could go back to living their life before they knew Voldemort was coming back.
Laura: Right. Well, to bring us home, Micah, you put together a fun little game for us about these echoes.
Micah: Yeah, I thought we could have a little bit of a good time here. We know that when the echoes are emitted from Voldemort’s wand, that as they come out – maybe with the exception of Wormtail’s hand – they say very encouraging things to Harry to try and spur him on. But it’s also noted that they say some not so nice things to Voldemort.
Andrew: I love that you caught that. I would have glossed right over that.
Micah: And while we are privy to what is said to Harry, we are not privy to what is said to Voldemort, so I thought we could have a little bit of fun here and come up with some things that each of the characters would say to Voldemort.
Andrew: So Cedric definitely would have said, “WTF, man? I was trying to win a school competition, just like your dumb Tom Riddle ass would have.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: And I think Lily would have said, “You thought you’d seen the last of us, hadn’t you? Think again!” Or, “Harry is a better wizard than you will ever be!”
Andrew: I hope it’s the second one.
Eric: Just verbally dressing him down.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. Proud mama moment. I think that Frank Bryce would have said, “You wizards, get off my lawn!”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Good old man voice, Laura.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: I’m glad Laura got assigned Frank Bryce.
Eric: “Look at these hedges in the graveyard; they’re so overgrown!”
Laura: [laughs] I’m delighted. I love Frank Bryce. I wish we had gotten more of him, to be honest. He’s an interesting character.
Micah: Yes, he is. And for Bertha, I decided to go with, “Love the no-nose look, Voldy. You can Horcrux me anytime you want.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Elizabeth: And then for James, kind of in a similar vein: “How’s your big plan working for you, snot-nosed toe rag? Oh, wait.”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: I love that.
Eric: It’s perfect. James Potter the bully returns.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I love Lydia’s comment in the Discord: “You need a pedicure,” from Cedric.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Ouch.
Laura: That’s good.
Andrew: Let’s go get pedis.
Eric: Look at those toes, seriously.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: That’s a movie thing, but you know what, why not?
Laura: Hey, you know what? I am here for it. I declare canon.
Andrew: I’m sorry; I don’t have any recollection of Voldemort’s feet, and…
Eric: Oh, it’s totally a thing!
Laura: What? You don’t remember Ralph Fiennes putting his nasty ass foot on Robert Pattinson’s face with his toenails?
Andrew: I guess I looked away.
Laura: It’s horrible.
Eric: That’s a moment… okay, we were just kind of poo-pooing on the whole movie adaptation of the Beam-o-war. I’m going to go ahead and say that the toes thing is creepy and delightful, because in the book, Voldemort calls all the Death Eaters and they have to kiss the hem of his robe. What do you think is down there? His feet! And so making his feet hideous actually adds to the overall scene and how weird and sad it is for the Death Eaters.
Odds & Ends
Laura: Well, let’s go through a couple of odds and ends before we get into MVP of the week. Just wanted to call out that Peter is the one to give Harry his wand back so he can duel Voldemort, but he gives Harry his wand without making eye contact with him, and I don’t think Peter makes eye contact with Harry at all during this sequence in the graveyard, which I think is telling. I think he feels a little bit guilty; not enough to change the way that he would do anything, but I think that he can’t stand to look into the face of the child of his best friends that he had murdered.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a good call-out. Great observation.
Laura: As he should be. Oh, Andrew, HedwigsTheme in the Discord shared a picture of what we’re talking about.
Andrew: Oh, I didn’t need to see that. I did not need to see that.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Why would you show that to me?
Eric: Yes, if we had to see it, Andrew, you had to see it.
Andrew: That is… yeah, okay. No thanks. Ruining my weekend.
Laura: [laughs] And one other one that we have is Voldemort, when he asks Harry earlier in the chapter if he knows how to duel, Harry recalls that the only thing he ever learned how to do in the Dueling Club two years ago was Expelliarmus, which, while it feels pointless to Harry in this moment, ends up becoming Harry’s signature move, and ultimately is what he uses to defeat Voldemort in Deathly Hallows.
Eric: Harry gets all the wrong lessons from this duel.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Escaping really goes to his head. He’s like, “Oh, if it worked once, it’ll work every…” No, Harry, you barely escaped with your life; try a better spell! But it works.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, it’s time for MVP of the week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: And I understand this is abstract, but I’m going to give mine to the echoes, just for collectively giving Harry guidance and inspiration.
Eric: I agree; they’re cool. We never see them again. They’re cool. Specifically James for telling Harry about the Portkey; that’s my MVP of this week. It’s information otherwise he wouldn’t have, and that’s pretty cool.
Micah: I’m going to give it to Voldemort’s ignorance/hubris.
Laura: I never do this, and we almost never do this on this show, but I’m going to have to give it to Harry.
Andrew: Whoa.
Laura: Listen, he wins this duel with Voldemort. He does the right thing and takes Cedric’s body back. He still wins the Triwizard Tournament. He doesn’t care about that, but still…
[Eric laughs]
Laura: I mean, Harry has got it going on for a 14-year-old carrying the wizarding world on his shoulders.
Eric: Well, that’s true.
Elizabeth: And then I’m going to throw Wormtail a bone and give it to him, because he didn’t think to do away with the Portkey, thankfully.
[Laura laughs]
Elizabeth: Got a way back.
Eric: Yep, that’s good.
Andrew: Great point, yeah. Listeners, if you have any feedback about today’s discussion, you can contact us by emailing or sending a voice memo that’s recorded on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com, or by using our phone number, which is 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. And next week, we’ll discuss Chapter 35 of Goblet of Fire, “Veritaserum.”
Quizzitch
Andrew: And now it’s time for everybody’s favorite Harry Potter trivia game, Quizzitch!
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Yes, the last Quizzitch question was: What does the shadow of James Potter tell Harry he must do? The answer that I was looking for was “Get to the Portkey,” in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Last week’s winners were A Random Ravenclaw; Cheers to my cat, who, as Dumbledore says, has gone on to the next great adventure… aww. Dueling phoenix feathers and such foreshadowing as you will not believe, my dearest gentle reader; Dumble memories dash; Dumbledore’s giddy little giggle as he thinks about how much he complicates Harry’s life; Edward Cullen RIP; Elizabeth K.; Hufflepuffie Buddie; KennahDawnDishSoap; Peter’s missing finger is off somewhere picking Voldemort’s missing nose…
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Nice.
Eric: … I love that one. Portkey Express to Hogwarts; Snitch Please; Unnamed Death Eater #3; Vengeful Voldemort’s Vexed Victim Vowing Violent Vindication; WeaselBee; and Yer a Horcrux, Harry.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Now it’s time for next week’s Quizzitch question: Which three individuals appear in Mad-Eye Fakey’s Foe Glass when he takes Harry up there to kill him?
Micah: I know. Going to fill out the answer right now.
Eric: Well, Micah, yes, you should submit. You should submit using the Quizzitch form on the MuggleCast website, MuggleCast.com/Quizzitch. Or if you’re on the website – maybe reading one of our nice transcripts – click on “Quizzitch” from the main nav bar.
Andrew: We also encourage you to head over to YouTube and search for MuggleCast, or go to YouTube.com/@MuggleCast. We are now releasing full video episodes over on YouTube, so if you’re into video podcasts, we hope you enjoy that, and we also hope to discover new listeners that way as well. And speaking of listeners, the show is brought to you by Muggles like you. We don’t have a Ministry of Magic running the show; we’re just everyday Muggles putting together this podcast, flying by the seat of our pants like Voldemort executing his latest half-baked idea. But that does mean that we need support from listeners like you, so you can help us out in a couple of different ways. If you’re an Apple Podcasts user, you can subscribe to MuggleCast Gold, which gets you ad-free, early access to MuggleCast, plus two bonus MuggleCast installments every month. And there’s also our Patreon – Elizabeth supports us on Patreon – Patreon.com/MuggleCast. One of the benefits is you get to co-host MuggleCast one day, just like Elizabeth did today, and you get all the benefits of MuggleCast Gold, plus livestreams, our planning docs, a new physical gift every year – like this year’s T-shirt – and a video message from one of the four of us. So please check it all out at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. And there are seven-day free trials, as well as annual subscriptions to help you save a little bit of money as well. Last but not least, if you enjoy MuggleCast and think other Muggles would too, tell your friends about the show, and also help us spread the word by leaving a review in your favorite podcast app. Elizabeth, thanks for coming on again today. It’s been great having you on.
Elizabeth: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. It’s been a long time coming. It was so nice to talk to you all virtually face-to-face; I’m so used to being in the Discord, which is one of the Patreon benefits, but real fun to get to put some ideas into the show.
Andrew: And we saw you researching in real time, it seems like, too, so we appreciate that.
Elizabeth: A little bit.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: It was great meeting you in Portland as well.
Elizabeth: Yeah, same.
Andrew: Well, thanks, everybody, for listening to this week’s episode. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Elizabeth: And I’m Elizabeth.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
Laura: Bye, y’all.
Eric and Micah: Bye.