Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #676, Big Fudge is Watching (OOTP Chapter 2, A Peck of Owls)
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: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: And we are joined once again by Meg! Hi, Meg. welcome back to MuggleCast.
Meg Scott: Hi! It’s wonderful to be back on.
Andrew: Always excited to have you on, so welcome back, and looking forward to getting all of your wonderful insights. What’s your favorite book in the Harry Potter series, Meg?
Meg: My favorite is Goblet of Fire, and it’s also my favorite movie, which I know is kind of controversial.
Andrew: Interesting.
Meg: But it’s just… it’s the one that I enjoy watching the most.
Andrew: Okay, okay. Fair enough.
Meg: In fact, I’d say Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite book in the series.
Andrew: [gasps] Don’t you dare insult her while she’s in the room!
Meg: I know, I know.
Eric: Listen, I know that you two are in a relationship, Andrew. I’ve seen the TikTok, okay?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: You’re so close with that huge hardcover book.
Andrew: I love this baby. I love Order of the Phoenix.
Meg: It does have a lot of really good points; it’s just a lot of it is just depressing.
Andrew: Well, on today’s episode, we will be discussing Chapter 2 of Order of the Phoenix, “A Peck of Owls.” We are currently going Chapter by Chapter through the Harry Potter books every week here on MuggleCast, so make sure you are subscribed to the show for free in your favorite podcast app. And also, we are releasing full video episodes on YouTube, YouTube.com/@MuggleCast, or just search for “MuggleCast” on YouTube. And don’t forget to follow us in your favorite social media apps; just again, search for “MuggleCast.” Before we get into Chapter by Chapter, we do want to note that this episode was recorded before Maggie Smith, who played Professor McGonagall, passed this last Friday, so we will pay tribute to her on next week’s episode of MuggleCast.
Chapter by Chapter: Time-Turner
Andrew: Well, let’s jump right into it today. We’re discussing Order of the Phoenix Chapter 2, “A Peck of Owls.”
Eric: That’s right, but first, let’s warm up our old Time-Turner! And by old, I mean new; we just got this thing last week.
Andrew: So this is our new segment on MuggleCast where we look back at the last time we discussed Order of the Phoenix on the show, so here we go.
[Ticking sound]
Dumbledore: Three turns should do it, I think. Good luck.
Ron: What the…?
[Bell dings]
[Whooshing sound]
Robotic voice: Episode 228.
Andrew: The Dementor had affected Dudley, so Harry carries Dudley back to Privet Drive, and while on their way, Harry asks Figg why she hadn’t told him she’s a Squib!
Eric: God, everybody’s keeping…
Andrew: “Dumbledore’s orders,” says Mrs. Figg. Uh-oh! Harry continues to…
Micah: That bastard.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: … feel left out of the loop.
Eric: Dumbledore’s orders.
Andrew: Pig for slaughter.
Eric: Seriously! This is not even keeping secrets about Voldemort from Harry, who is potentially compromised.
Andrew: Right, this is a simple thing.
Eric: This is preventing Harry from having any friends.
[Bell dings]
[Whooshing sound]
Robotic voice: Episode 434.
Laura: True.
Andrew: Exactly.
Eric: So you pretty much have Tonks, Emmeline Vance, and Dung are the three that he doesn’t currently know.
Andrew: And Mr. Tibbles.
Eric: And Mr… well, that’s the thing, is Figg has a legion of Kneazles that we are not…
Andrew: [laughs] A legion.
Eric: A whole army of Kneazles that we are not taking into account.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Maybe they do guard duty.
[Whooshing sound]
[Ticking sound]
Dumbledore: Mysterious thing, time.
[Bell dings]
[Micah laughs]
Eric: The Dumbledore dislike goes back way far.
Andrew: Also, a good reminder of how audio quality has improved on MuggleCast.
Eric: Basically, this segment is an ad to go listen to less quality past MuggleCasts so that you can really appreciate the current thing we got going.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: Before we get into the nitty gritty of today’s episode, I just want to say I think this is an amazing chapter. It is chaotic. It is fast-paced. It is funny. It’s a seesaw of emotions for the reader and Harry, and the magic and the non-magical worlds are colliding as Harry and the Dursleys unpack what has happened. I was just reminded, reading this chapter again, how good it is.
Eric: I’m going to agree with you, honestly! I’m still a little woozy from Harry’s behavior in the previous chapter, but I’ll be darned if rereading this this past week, I didn’t be like, “Well, wow.” This is actually… there’s a lot that happens. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Micah: I agree; it’s a chapter of revelations. Figg being a Dumbledore informant is immediately one-upped by Petunia’s familiarity with and connection to the wizarding world, which nobody saw coming.
Eric: You’re right. There’s this huge reveal that’s five years in the making with the whole Mrs. Figg thing because she’s mentioned in Book 1, and then there’s this even bigger one of Harry’s aunt.
Meg: Yeah, Harry even has this thought during the chapter where he’s like, “It was so weird to see the pristine kitchen and to have all this information hitting him at once like the two worlds were colliding,” and I do remember feeling that when I was reading this chapter for the first time, and rereading it the other day, being just… you don’t see these worlds collide that often, and when they do, it’s in a chapter like this, where a lot is happening, and it really is a headache of a chapter. Rereading it, you’re learning so much; some things are getting answered, but more questions are coming up. And also, Harry is slugging Dudley around, and then Dudley throws up, and then Harry has a headache, and then Vernon’s vein is throbbing in his temple, and it’s the hottest day of the year…
[Andrew laughs]
Meg: There’s a lot of discomfort in this chapter, I think.
Eric: Well, apparently somebody else who’s uncomfortable is, in fact, Dumbledore. Here’s a quote from Mrs. Figg:
“‘Keep your wand out,’ she told Harry as they entered Wisteria Walk. ‘Never mind the Statute of Secrecy now, there’s going to be hell to pay anyway, we may as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg. Talk about the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery… This is exactly what Dumbledore was afraid of.'”
So here’s a question: Does Mrs. Figg mean that Dumbledore suspected that Harry would be attacked on Privet Drive? Or does she mean that someone from the Ministry would attempt to contrive means by which Harry’s attendance at Hogwarts and his credibility were conveniently placed into question before the start of term? What do we think?
Micah: Yes. [laughs]
Eric: Great. Okay, main discussion one is done. We’re going on.
Micah: Moving on.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I interpreted this as Dumbledore anticipating a situation where Harry would need to use magic, and that the Ministry would use that as an opportunity to pounce, and that’s exactly what happened.
Eric: Yes.
Meg: I wonder if Dumbledore also, maybe just knowing Harry, knowing that Harry would be frustrated at being kept out of the loop, would… even without the threat of a Dementor coming along, if something else would cause Harry to perform magic, just out of frustration, like the way that Aunt Marge was blown up just by Harry’s emotions. I wonder if Dumbledore is sitting in his office thinking, “You know, maybe what I’m doing here isn’t the best idea.” It’s really just turning Harry into a ticking time bomb for something explosively magical to happen.
Andrew: Yeah, he’s on edge. He’s in the dark. The events of Goblet of Fire just happened. We even saw last chapter that Harry did get a little angry at Vernon and pushed him away without trying to. At least, that was my read on that sentence.
Eric: Yeah, if Dumbledore is thinking about this in his office, it’s got to be his office in Ibiza, because I don’t think he cares.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Oh, he’s not back yet.
Eric: Yeah, he’s not pondering hurting Harry’s feelings, because you would think he would just be better at guarding against it. Or giving Harry a friend, some way to keep him… because you don’t need to tell him everything to show him some level of companionship. Harry, I think, at his root just feels abused and neglected, which of course, he’s always been, but this year, more than ever, it’s even more true.
Micah: And let’s not forget that Voldemort is back at this point, too, so certainly that’s running in the back of Dumbledore’s mind. We were talking about, “Could something happen that could spur Harry into action?” Certainly something that Voldemort contrives and tries to do. That’s a possibility here as well.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, definitely. He doesn’t know where to look, and when you’re that paranoid, even when he finds out that he’s been watched, it’s almost worse because nobody made contact, treated him like an equal. Essentially, this is a book where Harry is definitely old enough to be treated like an adult, and I know that argument comes up later in the book, but he’s not. So my real question is… of course, we found them at a bad time. Their protection is only as strong as its weakest link. Weak link, meet Mundungus Fletcher. And my big question is: It obviously had to come down to Dung at this moment, but could Dumbledore have invested in more manpower to Harry’s protection? Or even eyes at the Ministry that could have circumvented? Dumbledore actually has to do a lot of running around at the end of this chapter, we hear about, so could Dumbledore have been better prepared for this, I think?
Andrew: The more eyes at the Ministry idea, I think, makes more sense to me than maybe more manpower on Privet Drive. Just thinking it’s easier to hide one person than several people at Privet Drive. And with Figg and Mrs. Tibbles… Miss Tibbles… whatever the cat’s name is.
Eric: Mr. Tibbles.
Andrew: Mr. Tibbles! Excuse me.
Eric: How far you’ve forgotten your favorite Kneazle.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: You got Tibbles, you got Figg, you got a rotating selection of Order members… that sounds like enough to me, and it’s a nice way to stay out of the way while having a couple of pairs of eyes at the scene.
Micah: And Dumbledore does have informants at the Ministry. He has Kingsley; he has Arthur. But he sent the riffraff, the dregs of the coffee, to look after Harry in Mundungus…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … and sorry, Mrs. Figg. Mrs. Figg, as we talked about in the last episode, can’t do anything worth a damn to protect Harry, and Dung is so unreliable that why would you put him in this situation? And I think that it’s Dumbledore’s planning that leads to this situation in the first place. So it’s a bit ironic; Dung Disapparating sets a sequence of events in motion that ultimately results in Harry versus the Dementors, and as we mentioned in last week’s episode, more reliable, more accomplished personnel certainly should have been put into place. I think we can all agree on that.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Meg: It’s funny because in the previous chapter, when Harry hears the crack, he’s imagining… he’s like, “That sounded like Dobby,” and at one point he turns around to be like, “Is Dobby here right now?” And I was reading that, and I was like, “I wish Dobby were here right now.”
Micah: I know. Harry needs a hug.
Andrew: Aww.
Meg: Harry needs a hug. Harry needs a little friend to be there, being like, “It’s going to be okay, Harry Potter.” And what do the house-elves at Hogwarts do during the summer? Dobby would probably…
Eric: Extra cleanings.
Andrew: Deep clean the school.
Eric: Yeah, I was going to say! They have it even worse.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: They’re not in Ibiza.
[Meg and Micah laugh]
Meg: No.
Eric: Unless they’re propping up Dumbledore’s feet.
Andrew: One element of the scene that really didn’t sit right with me is Figg getting Harry and Dudley back to Privet Drive, because Figg doesn’t really give Harry any suggestions for what to say to Vernon and Petunia. And I guess on one hand, she’s so frazzled by what happened, she’s not thinking straight, but I think this should have been part of a backup plan, too, just in case something did happen. What was going to be said to Vernon and Petunia?
Eric: This is a great point. Presumably, she knows Vernon and Petunia on a personal level, in the way that adult neighbors do. They know her well enough to know that Harry would have a sufficiently miserable time staying with her, which is why she got to babysit him all the… when he was younger. So they clearly know each other socially enough for Figg to have some advice, so I love this idea that there could be advice.
Andrew: Well, and to extend that point further, if Figg said, “Hey, Vernon, Petunia. Dudley,” I don’t know, “tripped and fell” or something like that, made up some excuse…
Eric: [laughs] “He fell down some stairs.”
Andrew: Yeah, they would be more inclined to believe her than Harry, because she is a trusted adult neighbor.
Eric: Well, so we keep talking about how Figg can’t do anything because she doesn’t have magic – she couldn’t fend off the Dementors, she definitely can’t lift Dudley – but she could actually give him that social backup that he needs by staying with him.
Micah: True.
Meg: Counterpoint: Mrs. Figg has met the Dursleys so many times that she hates them, and she’s like, “I’m not going to talk to them.”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Meg: “This was not in my job description.”
Andrew: Or they don’t trust her anymore because they think she’s wacky.
Eric: It might be… there is a question about how the Dementors… the timing of this all, because I think it really is when Harry leaves Privet Drive – he’s over on Wisteria Walk – when the Dementors come. Maybe the Dementors were out there all day in the sweltering heat, and they could only find Harry…
[Micah laughs]
Meg: Chain-smoking?
Eric: Well, because otherwise it’s a huge coincidence, right? That they descend the second he’s in a compromised position.
Micah: I’m glad you brought that up, though, because talking about watching Harry, I was curious: Did Umbridge know that Dung Disapparated and used that as her opportunity, knowing that his security was no longer in place? Presumably, she would have had to have some kind of tabs on Harry to be able to send the Dementors, and I don’t remember if this comes up later on in the book, but otherwise it’s just open to chance.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, that’s why I think maybe she sent them a few hours ago, not this exact moment, because otherwise she has eyes on Privet… you’re not supposed to be able to have ill will toward Harry and be able to see what he’s doing on Privet Drive when he’s on Privet Drive. That’s the whole purpose of Lily’s protection, so it’s a bit interesting. But Figg, the one successful thing she does do – besides satisfactorily threaten Mundungus Fletcher’s life and to maim him – is to actually just get Harry back onto Privet Drive where he’s safer. I think that’s the part of it that he would have maybe faltered at, because he’s so overwhelmed right now that just having her to talk with him… I know she’s not lifting the boy or helping much, but that motivation is really important to get Harry back onto Privet Drive where he’s safe, because I think that might have been where the security failed here.
Meg: Yeah, she kind of brings him back to the real world, and if she hadn’t shown up, Harry might have run off with his wand to find more Dementors and ended up in more trouble.
Eric: So we do make it back to the Dursleys – thanks, Figg, for next to nothing – but we’re not alone. After it comes to the open what has happened, something’s happened to Dudley, we begin to get a series… I said a “kerfluffle” of owls. I wanted to say “peck,” but that’s been taken.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: And one we don’t know who it’s from? So if this was Dumbledore’s worst fear, if Dumbledore suspected that the Ministry of Magic would expel Harry from Hogwarts and come straight for his wand, he was right. And I’m just shocked because the very first letter Harry receives is, in fact, “You’ve been expelled from Hogwarts, and we’re going to snap your wand.”
Andrew: And for the reader – and Harry – the first time you’re reading this, this is shocking. I think I still remember the feeling of seeing this letter come in, like, “Whoa, that happened so quick. This is unbelievable. It’s all over.” Harry is experiencing that exact same feeling, and they do cite the severity of the breach as the reason for taking the wand. And I guess using a Patronus in the Muggle world is what’s so severe about this?
Eric: Doing magic in front of a Muggle? Not just in a Muggle area, but in front of a Muggle?
Meg: But it’s a Muggle that knows magic exists.
Andrew: That’s a good point.
Eric: Okay, say more.
Meg: That should be something taken into consideration there.
Andrew: And they also note that this wasn’t the first time he did magic outside of school, so they do have a couple of valid reasons for punishing him somehow.
Micah: However…
Andrew: However what? Dementors? [laughs]
Micah: No. Well, first I was going to say it’s also a defensive magic, which is important. He wasn’t just attacking somebody; he was defending himself. You’d think that that would come into play here, but obviously it doesn’t. But you mentioned he got… it was referenced that he had done magic before, but let’s not forget back in Book 3, “We don’t send wizards to Azkaban for blowing up their aunts!”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I mean, he was completely absolved of any responsibility there, so it’s almost like they’re cherry picking here a bit.
Eric: Almost.
Micah: And the decision-making is coming directly from Fudge, right? We can pretty much agree on that? And the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, not even close.
Meg: I think Harry could have done the most wholesome, altruistic spell that exists; there could be a spell that a wizard can only use that spell if it’s to save someone’s life, and even if Harry had used that spell, that letter would have been ready to go. They were just… they’re so anti-Harry in this book that they’re ready to send it out at the drop of a hat, without even, like, “Well, it’s in front of his cousin, who knows about magic.” They’re like, “Don’t care. Doesn’t matter.” I also thought it was just so funny and bureaucratic how the end of this letter is “Hoping you are well,” when it’s this terrible, “You’re being expelled, we’re going to destroy your wand, you have committed a horrible breach of magic… but we hope you’re having a great summer.”
Andrew: [laughs] It almost implies to me that this is a canned template that they have ready to send out at any time.
Eric: Sure.
Andrew: Because we all have our pre-written email signatures. “Best. Thanks. Have a nice day. Sincerely.”
Micah: “Cheers.”
Meg: Yeah, that’s just how Mafalda Hopkirk signs off.
Andrew: “Hoping you are well.”
Eric: I’ve been manually typing mine this whole time!
[Andrew and Meg laugh]
Eric: How do I set that up? You gotta help me.
Andrew: Mine’s “Thanks for listening, I’m Andrew.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That should be mine, actually.
Micah: “Choo-choo.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. Well, I think the point, too, that these Muggles know about magic should be an exception to the Statue of Secrecy, because the bottom line is he’s their family, and they know what he is, and so you almost can’t punish him for this.
Micah: The fact that he’s Harry Potter should be an exception to the rule. [laughs]
Eric: Well… yeah, but this year it’s not. Maybe in year three.
Andrew: One point I wanted to bring up was about Arthur’s quick letter to Harry. He said, “Do not surrender your wand.” And this was making me wonder, does Harry have a right…? Do wizards have a right to continue possessing their wand, unless they want to surrender it? And what happens if they don’t surrender it?
Eric: Yeah, if they do have a right to keep their wand, nobody told Hagrid. His got snapped.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Although he does still have it. But yeah, it’s a bit interesting there. But I think that when you’re a student at Hogwarts, your wand is like your license to do magic. It’s your binding thing, and so they snap it because you’re not fit to do magic by… you never got your magical GED, your permit, I guess, to use it.
Micah: I could only imagine Ministry officials showing up at Number Four Privet Drive after everything that’s happened. We thought Vernon’s vein was bulging in his head earlier in the chapter?
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
Micah: Because he also… doesn’t he make a comment in this chapter, too, about “Oh, your lot are in government? This explains so much.”
Andrew and Meg: Yeah.
Eric: Pretty fun dig, honestly. But yeah, if government wizards showed up – presumably again, because they probably helped Dudley last year – he’d lose it.
Meg: Well, he’d be having an aneurysm because he’d be hating it, but then they’d be taking Harry’s wand away, and he’d be like, “Oh, actually, this is pretty good.”
Andrew: [laughs] He would be torn about the situation.
Eric: He wouldn’t know whether to be happy or…
Meg: Until Harry says, “Actually, Mr. Weasley said not to surrender my wand,” and they say, “Oh, okay, never mind,” and then everybody leaves.
Eric: Well, it’s a rare streak of rebellion.
Andrew: And that’s the thing, would they duel at the Dursleys’ house then until they got Harry’s wand away from him?
Meg: Right.
Eric: How would that…?
Andrew: Of course, Vernon would hate that.
Eric: Yeah, it’s so interesting that Arthur is like, “Don’t let them take your wand.” And he’s basically saying, like, “Don’t go quietly.”
Meg: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And it’s such an interesting… I mean, the priority is probably… the priority is “Don’t let them get your wand.” The assumption is ideally a nonviolent method of doing that would be better; evade them instead of cast a spell. But ultimately, once they snap your wand, it’s over. Like, yeah, other wands can be yours, they can choose you, too, but there’s no going back, especially from Harry’s wand in particular.
Meg: Well, unless you’re Dumbledore and you have the Elder Wand. You can just Reparo that right there.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yeah, that’s true.
Micah: Harry’s has kind of already served its purpose last year.
Eric: Last year? Well, it needs to again!
Micah: So time for a new one.
Eric: It needs to again. Yeah, I was going to say, I guess knowing what we know now, you could probably use… Dumbledore could just fix Harry’s wand for him, even if they had to collect it off a scrapyard or something in the magical world. So here are the succession of letters. You do get the letter saying you’re expelled. He does get the letter saying he’s expelled. The second one’s from Arthur saying, actually, that Dumbledore has arrived at the Ministry, so his vacation is cut short, unfortunately. “Sorry, bartender of JJ’s in Ibiza. Gotta go.” And the Ministry actually reverses course, sends him his third letter; this one says, “You’re not expelled. And by the way, that thing about your wand, it’s pending a hearing.” This is what the first letter should have been. This is very reasonable. It’s like, “Listen, you’re in trouble, kiddo. You have to come to court.” That alone is terrifying.
Micah: I just imagine Fudge sitting there, as soon as it happens, “Hit send, hit send, hit send!”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Maybe he already sent it a couple hours ago, and it just found Harry because he wandered off. I don’t know. You just don’t know. A letter…
Andrew: Has anyone here ever been in court, like as somebody who needs to be in court to defend…?
Micah: As a jury member.
Andrew: Oh, okay. I had to go to court to get a speeding ticket overturned.
Micah: Oooh.
Andrew: Yeah, that was scary, too. Not fun at all.
Eric: Well, and the worst part is even when a well-meaning judge is critiquing your wording or something. It’s like you can tell they want to help you out, but you’re still doing things wrong. It’s very stressful. I’ve had a few tickets myself. [laughs]
Andrew: That literally happened to me. You’re doing the “Yes, Your Honor. No, Your Honor.” I said yes or no when I should have said the opposite, [laughs] and then he looked at me like, “You definitely meant yes.” Or no; I can’t remember. This happened over ten years ago.
Meg: And then he snapped your wand.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, womp-womp. So did anyone think…? Because this is a lot of owls. They’re finding new and inventive places to show up from. For some reason, they’ve stopped going through the open window. I don’t remember Vernon shutting the window; they just start coming through the chimney instead, so I don’t get it. But did anyone think that it’d just be easier if wizards had cell phones? Because all these owls getting cross… get your group chat going. Have the Floo Network pop up.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Have some kind of conversation here. It’s 1997 or something.
Micah: Yeah, but then if it was just a text message, would Petunia or Vernon have received anything? Or would they have been witness to it in the same way? Probably not.
Eric: That’s a good point.
Micah: Unless because they’re Harry’s caretakers, right? Maybe they would have gotten something. But I also don’t see Vernon or Petunia as email/cell phone type of people. They’re very old school. I could see maybe a flip phone. [laughs]
Eric: I don’t know; Petunia’s got the push alerts on TMZ, for sure.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: I like the owls because I like how many there are in this chapter. I like how fast they arrive; that’s really impressive. It just makes it way more entertaining. And also, it really annoys Vernon, which is a lot of fun as well for us.
Micah: Agreed.
Meg: And it’s more of the juxtaposition against the pristine, clean kitchen to imagine feathers all over the place now.
Micah: And owl droppings, hopefully. So Andrew, a question, though: Do we think there’s some magic tied to how these owls are traveling? Because this information is coming pretty much in real time.
Andrew: It is a good question. Can they expedite the owls? Are these a special type of owl that can get a message out faster? It makes sense that the wizarding world would have this faster type of delivery to replace something like text messaging, like Eric is describing, so…
Eric: Well, don’t they…? In Hogsmeade, the owls… isn’t there different tiers for how fast you want? Like, the nicer looking owls get it in a day and a half, and then there’s lower…? I seem to remember incorrectly. There are different tiers of owls. But what’s interesting for me is the one addressed to Petunia, which we know is a Howler, is addressed the same way Harry’s Hogwarts letters are. It says “Petunia Dursley, The Kitchen, 4 Privet Drive.” Who’s watching her?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: How do they…? They’re not supposed to be able to look in the window and see where Harry is, let alone where Petunia, a Muggle, is. This is terrifying power.
Andrew: Well, right.
Micah: And what triggers that, though? That’s the other thing, is did Dumbledore have that Howler made years ago and was just waiting to send it at the right moment?
Eric: He has one for every room of the house that she’s in.
Andrew: I’m going to say you write the name on the envelope, and you write the address itself, and then there’s some magical line that fills itself in. It identifies where exactly this person is. There’s still that question: How do you figure out where a Muggle is? A wizard you might be able to more easily explain, but a Muggle like Petunia, how do you know she’s in the kitchen? It’s fascinating, and I think Petunia was fascinated too.
Meg: There’s got to be some magic there. Because actually, I looked into this a little bit – I did some research – and the top speed of the average owl is 40 miles per hour. And Surrey, where Harry and the Dursleys are, is about 25 miles from London, which is where the Ministry is and it’s where Grimmauld Place is, which is where Sirius and presumably Arthur, at the time, are. So based on that, unless the first owl was sent right after Harry did the Patronus Charm, like, if it was triggered by that, and then it just took half an hour, 45 minutes, to get there… yeah, maybe it was something like that, but then there’s the thing that Dumbledore’s comes right after Vernon is like, “All right, kid, you’re out of here. Get out,” and when Vernon and Petunia are first starting to think, “Yeah, okay, maybe we should get rid of our terrible nephew.” And it’s like, right then is when the Howler comes. So there just has to be some kind of magic there about just keeping tabs on what is happening right at that moment, who is standing where, who is in the kitchen at that time, because that’s how the letters to Harry are also, in Sorcerer’s Stone.
Andrew: Right.
Meg: It’s like, “The cupboard under the stairs,” and then I think…
Eric: “The smallest bedroom.” That’s a little bit of sass there.
Micah: Big Brother.
Meg: “The Hut on the Rock.” It might even have been, like, “The floor next to the couch of the Hut on the Rock.”
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Meg, when you were talking about the speed of owls, I was like, “And these aren’t even unladen owls!”
Meg: Yeah, no!
Eric: These are very much laden.
Meg: Laden or unladen? African or European?
Andrew: Nice research, Meg. Sam is also wondering, “Maybe it’s a relay of owls.” I guess that could make sense.
Eric: Oh, they… I’d love to see… I’m thinking of a foot relay in the race where they have batons, but of owls, and they toss the letter.
Meg: The owls passing it along to the next one.
Eric: No, it is satisfying, because it is fast paced. As soon as you begin to worry that Harry is going to get kicked out, you then have Petunia saying, “No, he needs to stay.” All right, well, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Harry’s aunt in a few moments, but first, let’s hear a word from our sponsors.
[Ad break]
Eric: Welcome back. Okay, let’s talk about Petunia Dursley, who knows a lot more, it turns out, than she was letting on. So Harry is kind of bemused. He is struggling to defend himself, make sure the Dursleys know it wasn’t him; it sure looks like it was him. But ultimately, he’s very patient during the whole owl debacle. He’s able to just… he has no other choice but to sit there and… because every letter is telling him to sit there. But he’s, I think, a little comforted knowing that people are taking care of him, and something really strange is going on, ultimately. But the shock comes when Petunia recognizes… well, first, even before Dumbledore’s letter, she realizes what Dementors are, and this is unbelievable. He’s trying to defend himself. He’s like, “It wasn’t me; there’s these Dementors.” And Petunia kind of defends it. I mean, she at least knows, and it’s probably not a fact that you forget what they are if you overhear them. But this goes back years. This is literally… it’s literally said the only other time Aunt Petunia has ever spoken about Lily in front of Harry is that one time in front of Hagrid at the Hut on the Rock when she called her a freak, so this idea that she would have been overhearing conversations or literally betray any knowledge of the wizarding… I think Petunia even surprises herself here.
Micah: It’s also validation of Harry’s story in this moment, the fact that she knows what it is he’s talking about, and I think that goes a long way with Vernon because Vernon otherwise probably would just assume that Harry is making up a bunch of stuff here. And I also think this is just a reminder that Harry is a child still. We know he’s a teenage boy, but both him and us as the reader don’t know everything, and this whole chapter has that theme running through it, going back to when we were talking about what we enjoyed so much about the chapter earlier. Yeah, the revelation of Figg and then the revelation of Petunia. It reminds me of when you’re a kid and you recognize that your parents or whomever know a lot more than you think they do.
Eric: [laughs] Right.
Micah: And this is one of those examples.
Andrew: But the interesting twist here, too, that is Harry had every reason to assume that Petunia really did not know anything about the wizarding world, or care.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: I mean, as is noted in this chapter, she has never acknowledged its existence. She has been firmly on Vernon’s side. And of course, there’s more to come with this storyline, but this is a big deal, seeing Petunia recognize what Harry is talking about, while Vernon is also coming up with six or seven different words for Dementors, like “Dementoids,” other things, which was funny.
Meg: “Dismembers.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: “Dismembers,” yeah, yeah. But just Harry – we were using this word a lot last week – he’s so isolated, and he has actually, in a funny way, a partner in Petunia, because somebody’s believing and understanding what he has to say, not to mention when he brings up Voldemort in a little bit, too. Petunia recognizes that. So I just loved getting this ever so small hint that Petunia actually was curious about the wizarding world and was envious of Lily. And as was mentioned, Vernon seems surprised that Petunia remembers, too, and gets in lockstep with her by the end of the chapter, especially after the Howler comes in. I’ll read the quote from Petunia:
“‘Back?’ whispered Petunia. She was looking at Harry as she had never looked at him before… for the very first time in his life, Harry fully appreciated that Aunt Petunia was his mother’s sister… he was not the only person in the room who had an inkling of what Lord Voldemort being back might mean.”
Micah: And in this moment, too, we get the reference to “that awful boy” was the one who was telling Lily about Azkaban. Now, in this moment, we’re meant to think that it’s James. Who else could it possibly be? But in all likelihood, this is a reference to Snape.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely.
Meg: And that’s poignant for multiple reasons, and one of them is that when you’re first reading this book, before the later books came out, you’re imagining that it is James, in which case, Petunia heard James and Lily talking about this 15 years ago. But in discovering the truth later in Deathly Hallows that it was Snape, and that she overheard this when they were young children, that really shows that this has been in Petunia’s head for a lot longer than you would think. And when you think about the things that you remember from when you were 10 years old, it is the things that are the most groundbreaking and earth-shattering that are… those are the specific things that you’re going to remember from that time when you were that age, is when it’s something that has made an emotional impact on you, and that’s what this did, enough for Petunia to remember these silly words “Dementors” and “Azkaban” all this time later.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: Especially because she wanted to go there herself. I think that’s probably why it sticks with her.
Eric: Well, yeah, she’s probably…
Micah: Not that she wants to go to Azkaban. I’m sorry. She wants to go to Hogwarts.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: No, no, yeah.
Andrew: We understood what you meant.
Micah: Maybe she wants to go to Azkaban. I don’t know.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: She’s probably holding on to every shred… she’s secretly caring about and trying to remember everything she ever heard about the wizarding world, because I’m sure it still bites, it still hurts her that she’s not a part of it, I think, easily. But it also… I feel sad for 10-, 11-, 12-year-old Severus Snape, whoever’s telling Lily about these Dementors guarding Azkaban, the wizard prison. Why does a 12-year-old concern himself with stuff like this? We know his home life was not great, and his subject matter always tended to the darker stuff. But it’s just kind of sad because if Petunia overheard it, it means it was something that young Snape was probably really fascinated about, and that’s just sad. You know who we probably don’t feel sad for? Vernon. He is a little out of his depth, though. It’s rarely been two against one and he’s the one, but in this case, he’s just out of his… he doesn’t have… he’s so unmoored. This reminds me of Book 1 when he’s trying to go easy on Petunia, but she’s clearly more involved than they both would want her to be.
Andrew and Meg: Yeah.
Meg: So frequently Vernon is the one making the rules and yelling at Harry while Petunia just kind of watches, but in this moment, her saying these things, it really… he hands it over to her because he doesn’t know what to say. That’s when he starts taking it all a little bit more seriously. He changes his tact. He stops yelling at Harry, and instead is like, “Okay, so tell me more about these Dementoids?”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Right.
Meg: And yeah, he really is unmoored. And it’s funny when he then kind of finds himself back on solid ground when he’s talking about the Dementors, and to Dudley, he’s like, “Ah, I see. You fought ’em off. You gave ’em the old one-two.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Harry has to be like, “Disclaimer, community note: You can’t give the Dementor the old one-two! It won’t work!”
[Meg laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Micah: I do think there’s something to be said, though, for Vernon’s ignorance. Even in this moment, it’s still coming through, the fact that he can’t call Dementors by their actual name. It’s not because he’s not smart enough, or that he’s mishearing what his wife or his nephew are saying; he’s just choosing not to, and that just shows his clear lack of respect for anything from this world.
Meg: And there’s even that funny thing where he’s like, “This Lord Voldy whatsit?” And Harry is like, “I can’t believe that wizards would scream in fear hearing that name and Vernon can just say it like it’s no problem, but he can’t handle the word ‘wand’ or ‘magic.'”
Andrew: Yeah. And on the point about Vernon getting in lockstep with Petunia after she gets this Howler, that point is punctuated by the fact that this chapter ends with Vernon saying, “You heard your aunt, now get to bed.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: He just did a 180. He was ready to kick him out of the house. He had a whole great speech. “I’m done dealing with you and all this magic and these owls and all this crazy stuff you’ve brought onto my doorstep. Never darken my doorstep again,” he says.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: He just totally flips when Petunia gets this.
Eric: Well, he’s laying down the law, no matter what the law is. He’s just laying it down.
Andrew: I love that the chapter ends with him just flipping like that. Now, on this Howler that just simply says, “Remember my last, Petunia.”
Eric: So many problems with this.
Andrew: Well, first of all, I think Petunia is low-key excited to get something from the wizarding world.
Eric: “A letter! It’s my Hogwarts letter, you guys!”
Andrew: “Yeah, and it’s creepy, but it knows exactly where I am standing right now in the kitchen.”
[Micah laughs]
Meg: An owl brought it!
Eric: It’s a little exciting, yeah.
Andrew: I think she’s excited! It’s a chaotic scene, but I think she’s happy.
Micah: I think under any other circumstance, she would be very happy. [laughs] Not at this moment.
Andrew: Okay.
Micah: There’s too much other stuff going on. But I like your idea, Andrew.
Andrew: I’m excited for her, I’ll just put it that way. I’m excited for her to finally get her letter. [laughs]
Meg: I can imagine that maybe she’s thinking to herself, “God, I thought I’d be excited when this day came. Turns out I’m terrified.”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: “This thing is screaming at me.”
Meg: “This day sucks.”
Micah: I think terrified is right, because perhaps deep down she knows what it is.
Andrew: Yeah. But Eric, you are not a fan of these words?
Eric: Yeah. I’m sure we’ve said it before: I think there’s a few very key errors here. It’s a weird thing for Dumbledore to say. The weirdest thing about this is it works. Petunia, who we don’t know has ever had a face-to-face conversation with Dumbledore in her life, recognizes Dumbledore’s voice and knows exactly what “Remember my last” means. Last what? Harry, who’s heard Dumbledore in all states of agitation, all states of humor and everything, knows Dumbledore intimately, even at this point when he’s only 15, knows Dumbledore’s voice like the back of his hand, and doesn’t recognize the voice. And I don’t get it, but it’s clearly…
Andrew: But all caps? Does he know all-caps Albus? [angrily] “REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA.”
Eric: You know what? No, because in Goblet of Fire, he said it calmly. You’re right.
Meg: That’s right.
Eric: So Harry has never heard screaming Dumbledore. But why has Petunia? Why has Petunia? Last what? Last correspondence?
Andrew: Who else has spoken to her in the wizarding world? So she doesn’t have many people to run through in her magical Rolodex.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: I love how short this letter is, this note is. “Remember my last.” You said it, Eric: Last what? From a reader’s standpoint, it’s just incredible how short this is and what it’s alluding to. I love it.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, we do…
Meg: It’s very succinct.
Andrew: And the impact that it has on Petunia. Love it.
Eric: Brevity is the soul of wit. She’s terrified to get this, and she knows that it means she has to stop being a horrible human, which is great. It somehow achieves… in a chapter where we talked about all the things Dumbledore did that went kind of wrong for him, this is 100% success for Albus.
Micah: I don’t think she’s being a horrible human being here.
Eric: No, not here.
Micah: I don’t think Vernon is being a horrible human being here. We could talk about it, but…
Andrew: He’s not?
Micah: No.
Eric: If she had said he has to leave… she actually puts up and says, “Okay, the boy has to stay.” And this has been answered by the author; “Remember my last” means the last correspondence, presumably the letter that he left with Harry on the doorstep, and it may have laid out exactly how the magical protection is going to work, explaining that they need to give Harry a house or it’ll be awful. So that is the connection that she’s making in this moment.
Micah: The thing that I’m trying to… with the Dursleys, for all their faults, in this case, I really do believe that Vernon is trying to protect his family. And once he learns that Voldemort has returned, and he understands what that means, that directly puts his family in danger. The Dementors directly put Dudley in danger, and they were after Harry. And so what he’s looking at now is a situation where essentially, because of this protection, Dumbledore has indirectly put his family in danger by making this the safe haven for Harry. Now, Harry had already been there enough time for the summer. He could have gone to the Burrow; he could have gone anywhere else. And I don’t think that Dumbledore, honestly, is thinking enough about the Dursleys in this moment. And we don’t really see it come into play until Deathly Hallows, when they need to hightail it out of town to be safe. But they could have been put at risk, and were put at risk, much earlier, and so I don’t blame Vernon for what he says. I mean, he’s just looking to protect his wife and his son.
Eric: I guess that’s fair.
Meg: He saw a curse happen to Dudley, made him grow a tail. He saw his sister get blown up over the dining room table. And now, this has happened with the Dementors. And I honestly think that if Harry had not performed a Patronus Charm, if the Dementors had performed the Dementor’s Kiss on Dudley, I think even Petunia would be telling Harry to get out. Because I think there is a certain loyalty that Petunia feels to Lily to take care of her son… Andrew, you put in here, the doc, “We don’t know it now, but Petunia does love Harry and her sister.” And I think that, yeah, Petunia loved Lily, but I don’t think that Petunia loves Harry. I think that Petunia and Snape have a lot in common, both just having very isolated childhoods, wanting to have something they couldn’t have, and feeling this… owing it to Lily to take care of Harry because of their love for Lily, not out of any love for Harry. It’s like when Dumbledore says to Snape, “Oh, don’t tell me that you’ve started to care for the boy,” and Snape is like, “No, this is for Lily still!” I imagine that is what Petunia is thinking this whole time. She’s like, “I hate this kid, but I let my relationship with my sister fall apart because I was jealous of the life that she got to have doing magic.” So I think that the reason that this letter works, this “Remember my last, Petunia,” is because Petunia is like, “Yeah, I do owe it to my sister.” So I think she does love Lily, she did love Lily as her sister, but I think she loves Dudley more than she loved Lily, and so if Dudley had lost his soul that day, I think Petunia would have been saying, “Yeah, no, I’m done. Get out of here. I don’t care.”
Eric: In further support of the Dursleys. I can’t believe I’m saying this. But isn’t getting your soul sucked out through your nose one of the most horrible ways you can imagine dying? [laughs] I mean, the particular nature of what would have and almost did happen to Dudley is extra unsettling.
Andrew: Meg, I agree with you that Petunia definitely loves Lily more than Harry. I do have to still think, though, that Petunia does love Harry to some extent. That is still blood; that is still her sister’s son, so I think there has to be a little bit of love there. And then you put in the wizard element as well; I mean, he also has something that she’s always wanted as well, so she might maybe admire that about him. But I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t say that Petunia doesn’t love Harry at all, but I do also agree that at the end of the day, if Dudley were to have been kissed by the Dementor, she would have kicked Harry out because that is her son, and he died on Harry’s watch.
Meg: Yeah. I just think of all the aspects of abuse, the malnourishment, the locking him up for days at a time, and I’m like, “That can’t be love.” But then that really gets into a more serious discussion about other abusive parents in the real world, and can you abuse your children and love them at the same time? Which is just a whole other conversation, I think.
Andrew: And the Vernon factor, too, there.
Meg: And the Vernon factor.
Andrew: I mean, how does she juggle these two things? Lily versus Vernon.
Micah: I wonder, too, if in fact he did leave, would that have broken the protection? Is her giving him that directive and then him acting on it… does that fracture any protection that was in place? Could Harry not go back a year later and have that same protection from Petunia?
Meg: Probably. I think he could go back later, but it wouldn’t be there anymore, because I think Dumbledore even specifically says to Harry, “As long as you thought of Privet Drive as home, the protection is there.”
Andrew: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Micah: [laughs] I don’t think he ever did.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Well, it’s his home in spite of everything.
Andrew: But it was given to him as a home. It is offered to him as a home, yeah. So we got feedback from our listeners about this chapter, and we will get to some of that, but first we’re going to take a quick break. We will be right back.
[Ad break]
Lynx Line
Eric: Okay, and here is the question we asked on our Lynx Line: We’re talking about the wizarding world justice system, and asking what do you think could be improved upon better? So in Chapter 2, the Ministry of Magic expels Harry from Hogwarts and says a team has been dispatched to destroy his wand, all without a fair trial. Does that law serve anyone? Furthermore, the way in which Dumbledore fixes things makes a lot more sense. Hearing first, then decision to either expel and/or snap Harry’s wand. But what else are we forgetting? This is the same Ministry that will fail to seriously inquire about how Dementors ended up in Little Whinging, and nobody’s expecting Dementors to have been the reason for Harry’s underage magic. So what adjustments to the Restriction of Underage Sorcery, or what adjustments to the trace, should be revised or thrown out completely, and in what ways to create a more fair situation?
Andrew: So yeah, thank you to patrons who participated in the post at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. You can pledge at Patreon.com/MuggleCast to join in on the conversation each week. Here are some of the answers. This first one comes from Jenny:
“I think the wizarding world justice system is terrible. No one seems to get fair trials. Sirius was imprisoned for 12 years without a trial. Hagrid was taken to Azkaban in Book 2, just because the powers that be figured he was guilty. They seem to care nothing for evidence, testimonies, innocence, etc., and the only punishments seem to be broken wand or Azkaban, and nothing in between. That’s not justice.”
Sums it up really nicely. I mean, it is so unfair that Harry is going to have his wand broken and he’s expelled from Hogwarts, and he doesn’t even get a say in the situation. Now, Dumbledore does come to his aid, but that’s traumatizing to know your life could be flipped upside down so quickly by the government.
Eric: At least this time it’s because of something that he cast, and not something a house-elf cast in front of him.
Micah: All right, we heard from Nathan, who said,
“Breaking a wand is a major plot hole. Harry does magic, albeit simple, in both Sorcerer’s Stone and Prisoner of Azkaban without a wand, and there’s nonverbal spells. We also know that a broken wand still works, examples being Ron in Chamber of Secrets and Hagrid with his pink umbrella. What’s stopping Harry from going to Ollivanders and getting another wand?”
Eric: [laughs] I bet that…
Andrew: And you have to think Dumbledore would help him with that. He would call up Ollivander and be like, “Yo, my boy needs another wand.”
Eric: “Hey, Garrick…”
Andrew: “Those jerks at the Ministry broke his first one, and he didn’t deserve that.”
Meg: Yeah, we see characters like Ron and Neville get new wands. All right, Steph says, “This is what happens when Hogwarts students only learn Charms, Transfiguration, etc., and nothing about law, ethics, or basic critical thinking skills.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, no! It’s endemic at this point. Nobody who’s studied government…
Andrew: How to protect yourself when the Ministry comes for you.
Eric: Not only that; nobody who’s making these laws actually studied law, so that’s why they’re coming up short. It’s awful. Eleanor writes,
“Where do I start… innocent until proven guilty and a process is what is needed. The trace should be able to tell, ideally, what spell was cast. An alternative would be Priori Incantatem, and there should be an investigation into the circumstances.”
Right, they could cast it on Harry’s wand.
“We know that the trace isn’t wand specific. It arguably should be, as an addition to allow for these follow-up enquiries.”
Yeah, I agree. Somewhere where I would start reforming this is all about “What was the intention behind,” and none of this “We’re just going to come snap your wand and complain about it later” business.
Andrew: You could almost see a form of magic with all these wands where the tip of the wand is not only where the spell comes out from, but there’s also a little camera in there, so you can see who they are shooting it at.
Eric: Ohh, a GoPro? Little wand GoPro?
Andrew: I could see that in a Fantastic Beasts movie when they’re trying to bend canon to make it work to their will. [laughs] Yeah, a little GoPro, exactly.
Eric: Yeah, they’ve done that a bunch.
Andrew: Right. Rachel said,
“We don’t know a ton about these laws. I think it’d be more appropriate to confiscate the wand and then destroy it after a hearing or punishment has been decided, because the charges may not warrant expulsion, and then the kid could get the wand back.”
Also, that would be very… I’m just talking myself now; it’d be very hurtful as a child to see your wand get broken in half. That was a big moment for you to get your wand, and then it gets snapped in half when you’ve only been at school for four or five years?
Meg: Being like, “That wand chose me.”
Eric: Yeah, aww. “But it chose me.” Oh, now my heart is broken.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It’s bad enough when the teacher takes your cell phone because you were on your cell phone, and she puts it in her desk and you can get it back right at the end of class. That’s hard enough, but to watch her stomp on the cell phone? Then you have to cry to your parents… it’s awful.
Andrew: Yeah. Rachel goes on,
“This has really gotten me to think about data privacy and government oversight. Not only do they know magic was done, they know the exact spell. Does that ability to trace magic really stop at 17, or do they just not follow it as closely? Could they still trace a person of interest? We don’t know. Maybe this is an extreme example, but I’m thinking about how outraged or afraid people would be if it came out that our data and actions online were being tracked by the government, and I feel like tracing magic is similar. I know it’s important to keep the magical world a secret, but I also don’t like the ‘Big Brother is watching’ vibe.”
Eric: That’s what happens with the taboo, isn’t it? In Book 7? When somebody says the word “Voldemort” and they immediately know who you are, where you are…
Andrew: Yeah, Big Fudge is watching you. Be careful.
Eric: [laughs] Big Fudge.
Andrew and Meg: Big Fudger.
Andrew: Episode title.
[Andrew and Meg laugh]
Micah: Big Fudge. And finally, we heard from Stephanie, who says,
“Clearly, Fudge is ‘weaponizing the justice system’ (a familiar phrase lately in US politics) to remove the threats to stability in the wizarding world. Because we don’t know much about the specifics of these laws, it kind of feels like the administration is the issue here, and maybe not the laws themselves.”
Eric: Right, this is targeted, and Dumbledore points this out later – might be a movie-ism – but he says, “Surely it’s regular procedure to have a full council to decide a simple matter of magic in front of Muggles.” And it’s true, the deck is stacked against Harry. If Fudge had nothing to do with the Dementors, which he didn’t – it’s plausible deniability; Dolores planned that specifically – he nevertheless is jumping on every opportunity to discredit Harry. He wants his wand broken. If Harry is wandless, he would perceive him as not a threat anymore to the lies that he’s trying to tell.
Andrew: Well, thanks again to everybody who participated at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We’re loving this new Lynx Line segment, and we’ll continue to post questions with each chapter weekly.
Make the Personal Connection
Eric: I want to hear what your guys’ personal connections might be. Is there anything in this chapter that resonates with you for something that occurred recently?
Andrew: Yeah, so Harry, in this chapter, gets this really bad news that he’s going to be expelled, and they’re going to snap his wand, and it reminded me of when you receive really bad news in your own life. The thing is that you might get this bad news and it might be true. You might end up being expelled. Your wand might be broken; turn that into whatever example that’s happened in your own life that was terrible and actually did happen. But things always do work out in the end. My Make the Personal Connection here is I’ve been through really tough situations in my life, and things have always worked out. Always.
Eric: That’s really… I mean, I’m glad to hear it. It definitely is…
Andrew: Yeah, and I try to keep that in mind, even as bad news comes up in the future too. It’s like, “Yes, things are bad, but it will get better. Things will get better. You will get through this.”
Eric: There’s that line in Fantastic Beasts: “Worrying means you suffer twice.”
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. “Everything happens for a reason,” as is said. You might lose a job, but then one door closes, another one opens. If Harry actually was expelled from Hogwarts, he would have gone on to become a best-selling author, or had a really successful podcast about his life as the Chosen One.
[Meg and Micah laugh]
Eric: He should dip into his family fortune and start selling hair potion.
[Andrew laughs]
Meg: My personal connection was a little more lighthearted. Reading about all these owls flying in reminded me of something that I experienced several summers ago during a sort of extended family reunion at my grandparents’ home in Vermont. There were four nights in a row where every night, the sun would set, and then all of a sudden, there would be a bat in the house. And later we found out there was one just living in the attic, and bats are crepuscular, so they hunt at dusk, and so it would be time for dinner every night, and they’d try to get out of the attic and somehow end up in the house.
Andrew: Oof.
Meg: And they fly very quickly. They swoop. I had a lot of inebriated aunts, uncles, and cousins when this was happening, so there was a lot of screaming.
[Micah laughs]
Meg: The dogs were barking. And yeah, three nights in a row, I was tasked with getting the bat out of the house. And I did my research, and it was a little brown bat, and less than 1% of those carry rabies, so I felt pretty confident in getting them outside, back into the outdoors.
Eric: I thought you were going to say you did your research on how to do it, but didn’t you just take a towel to them?
[Meg laughs]
Eric: And say, “Here, batty, batty, batty!”
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Meg: Well, I did have the idea… I was like, “I’m not going to grab a bat with my bare hands, even if the risk of rabies is very, very low.” But it’s hard to… I tried to catch them with the towel in the air, and they’re just real fast.
Andrew: I bet, yeah.
Meg: And they use their echolocation, so they’re like, “There’s a towel there; I’m going to swoop in the other direction.”
Eric: Oh, it knows how to avoid the fast…? Oh, man. Sometimes it get…
Meg: Eventually they would just land on the floor, and they’re really cute when they’re on the floor, just crawling around a little bit.
Eric: So then you invited it in to stay.
Meg: And then I would throw… yeah, well, that’s what I wanted to do, but my aunts and uncles were like, “You can’t do that.”
Eric: I bet at one point, your uncle was probably like, “Enough effing bats!”
[Andrew laughs]
Meg: “Enough effing bats!” My mom was probably thinking that. So I just threw a towel over them, and then I’d scoop them up and take them outside and look at their little puppy faces, say, “Goodbye, peck of bats.”
Eric: “See you tomorrow.” So you’re saying they never plugged that hole?
Meg: They did. They did eventually get someone to come… which is why, in the last few summers, we haven’t had any bats.
Eric: Great.
Andrew: Oh, good. Crisis averted.
Meg: But we’ve had raccoons in another house; that’s another story.
Eric: See, that was a harrowing situation, and it got better.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Meg: Yes! Exactly.
Andrew: It always gets better.
[Eric laughs]
MVP of the Week
Eric: And it’s time for our not MVP, but custom Most Something-Something of the Week. This week – great idea, Andrew – the most wicked Figg line. She’s had a lot of good zingers. She’s irate at the beginning of the chapter; she says a ton of funny stuff. What’s our favorite?
Andrew: Very colorful, yeah. And I want everybody to try and do their own Figg impression when reciting their line.
Eric: Oh, boy. Okay, all right.
Andrew: So mine is… and this is not going to be a good impression, but here we go. [imitating Mrs. Figg] “Oh my word, what a catastrophe… and you had to fight them off yourself… and Dumbledore said we were to keep you from doing magic at all costs… Well, it’s no good crying over spilled potion, I suppose… but the cat’s among the pixies now.” [laughs] The idioms are what kill me here, the back to back idioms.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: “No good crying over spilled potion.” “The cat’s among the pixies now.”
[Andrew and Meg laugh]
Micah: That was very good, though, Andrew.
Eric: That was incredible.
Micah: Give yourself more credit.
Andrew: [imitating Mrs. Figg] Oh, thank you! It’s my standard older lady voice, yes.
Micah: Grandma voice?
Meg: It kind of sounds a little bit like Mickey Mouse too.
Andrew: Oh, boy. [imitating Mickey Mouse] “Oh, boy!”
Meg: Figgy Mouse.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, God. Okay, I’m not sold on my impression, but great, wicked Figg line: [imitating Mrs. Figg] “‘I hope Dumbledore murders him!’ said Mrs. Figg furiously.” Yeah, I hope so, too, but it won’t happen.
Micah: Oh, I went with, [imitating Mrs. Figg] “I told him I’d flay him alive if he went, and now look! Dementors!”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Figg has had it!
Meg: My wicked line is one that she says that’s wicked towards Harry, not Mundungus. But it’s when she says, [imitating Mrs. Figg] “Good lord, boy, they told me you were intelligent.”
Andrew: Oh, that was a good one too!
Micah: That was good.
Andrew: She sounded weak, too, which is appropriate.
Meg: She’s frail, but she’s bold and strong.
Micah: This gives a whole new appreciation to Jim Dale and Stephen Fry. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, especially Jim Dale.
Eric: It’s not easy. They make it look easy.
Andrew: Listeners, if you have any feedback about today’s discussion, you can contact us by emailing or sending a voice memo recorded on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com, or you can use our phone number, which is 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. And next week, Chapter by Chapter continues with Chapter 3 of Book 5, “The Advance Guard.” Here comes the cavalry.
Quizzitch
Eric: And here also comes Quizzitch!
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week’s question: In reference to the drought that’s happening in the beginning of Book 5, what is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom? And we did go easy on people by saying guesses within three degrees would be accepted, and they could answer in Fahrenheit or Celsius. So the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom was in Coningsby, Lincolnshire on July 19, 2022. This is recent. And it was 40.3 degrees Celsius, or 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit. And remember, these homes are not equipped with your HVAC, so ouch, it’s a scorcher. Correct answers were submitted in both centigrade and Fahrenheit by Deb W.; Figg’s Fumbly Phone; “I didn’t look it up because I live in the UK, and it’s never warm here”… okay. It’s just a bunch of hocus pocus!; Jiggly Jane; That extra cringe when Aunt Petunia says Diddy…
[Micah laughs]
Eric: … The Black Lake plumber, no thanks to Hogwarts Castle. Okay, that’s an interesting week. Here is next week’s question: In honor of “A Peck of Owls,” in Scotland, the peck was used as a dry measure until the introduction of imperial units as a result of the Weights and Measures Act of what year? What year did Scotland’s Weights and Measures Act take effect, eliminating the peck as a unit of measurement? And guaranteed if a single person knew this without looking it up, that’s cool, and I admire you. But it’s okay; this is our open book quiz. Submit…
Micah: I feel like I should know. I was just there. [laughs]
Eric: You were just there! Micah, don’t they have a little sign that says “Established before the Weights and Measures Act” before you enter any bar?
Micah: Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up, though, because there is on the roadway sign “miles” instead of…
Eric: Kilometers?
Micah: Maybe not instead of; it may have both. But it has to do with when they were brought into the United Kingdom.
Andrew and Eric: Interesting.
Micah: I think I got that right. Anyway. Because normally you never see “miles” as distance in the UK.
Andrew and Eric: Right.
Micah: So maybe this is tied into this particular act.
Eric: I’ll give you a hint: It was before the Model T.
Micah: Okay.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So here is how you submit your Quizzitch answer: Please visit the MuggleCast website, MuggleCast.com/Quizzitch, or if you’re on the website, maybe checking out the lovely transcripts that Meg is working hard on every week, you might ponder over to click on “Quizzitch” from the main nav. And I look forward to the answers on this one. And oh, thanks to people who pointed out I accidentally locked answers before last week. I’ll do that right now, and they’re unlocked. So have fun.
Andrew: Yeah, we’re very excited to have transcripts for each episode of MuggleCast, and Meg is working diligently to get our most recent episodes transcribed after they are released, but also she’s been slowly but surely going through our back catalog to get that entire library updated. So thanks so much, Meg, for doing that for us.
Meg: You’re welcome. I’ve been prioritizing the previous Order of the Phoenix Chapter by Chapters, but also the Must Listens page, and it’s been very exciting for me to get to listen back to some of those Wall of Fame episodes.
Andrew: Cool. And you’re not sick of our voices yet.
Meg: Not yet!
Andrew: Cool! Great! Good to know.
Meg: We’ll see in another year, but so far we’re good.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: I keep checking in with her, really. It’s like, “Good morning, honey. Are you sick of my voice yet?”
[Andrew and Meg laugh]
Andrew: And she’s like, “Shut up.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: “A little more every time you ask,” I think she said, yeah.
[Meg laughs]
Andrew: Now, if we were doing our Figg voices in every episode, you probably would grow very tired of the voices. And our own voices would grow tired, I think, of doing that. It’s a win-win.
Meg: Well, it is exciting, Andrew, when I get to put in brackets “imitating Dumbledore” for some things you say.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Meg: Keeps it fresh.
Andrew: Well, this show is a lot of work, and we’re very proud of it, but we are an indie podcast. Your financial support is of the utmost importance; it is the only reason we’ve been able to podcast and run this show for 19 years. So if you’re interested in helping us out, there are two great ways. First, if you’re an Apple Podcasts user, you can subscribe to MuggleCast Gold, which gets you instant access to ad-free and early releases of each episode of MuggleCast, plus two bonus MuggleCast installments every month. And for even more benefits – and this is the best way to support us, because you get a lot more – visit Patreon.com/MuggleCast, and you get all the benefits of MuggleCast Gold, plus our livestreams, yearly stickers, a physical gift like a T-shirt, signed album art, a tote bag, or a mug. We do a different one each year. One year we did a wand, which is probably our best gift yet. You also get a video message from one of the four of us made just for you. You also get access to our private Facebook and Discord groups and a lot more, so check it all out at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. And if you enjoy the show and think other Muggles would too, please tell a friend about the podcast and help us spread the word by also leaving a five star review in your favorite podcast app. And visit MuggleCast.com for those transcripts, social media links, our full episode archive, our favorite episodes, Quizzitch, and much more. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Meg: And I’m Meg.
Andrew: Thanks again, Meg. Bye, everyone.
Eric, Meg, and Micah: Bye.