Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #706, Pink Kitten Club (OOTP Chapter 27, The Centaur and the Sneak)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the world of Harry Potter. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: We are your Harry Potter friends talking about the books, the movies, and the upcoming TV show, so make sure you follow us in your favorite podcast app; that way you’ll never miss an episode. And this week, we are getting out the face wash – but it probably won’t help against Hermione’s wrath – because we’re discussing Chapter 27 of Order of the Phoenix, “The Centaur and the SNEAK,” all caps. But first, a couple of announcements. Little programming note: We will be off next week for the Memorial Day holiday here in the US, so we hope all you Americans enjoy the unofficial start to summer as that gets underway. And in the meantime, if you love this show and want to help us keep this show running smoother than a meeting between Albus and Cornelius, visit Patreon.com/MuggleCast and pledge today. You’ll get instant access to two bonus MuggleCast episodes every month; you’ll also get ad-free episodes, a new physical gift every year, and a lot more. In the latest bonus MuggleCast, I put together something special for our audience. It is finally here. As Pride Month approaches, I am pleased to release the “Never Sever Us” audiobook.
Laura: Oooh.
Andrew: This is my Cursed Child fanfiction that follows Albus and Scorpius, because even though it was clear they were in love with each other during the play, the play decided to go a different way with their story. I was not happy with it, so I wrote my own fanfiction fixing it all. It is extremely graphic! Adults only, please. Again, this is available on Patreon, but this is also available as a one-time purchase on our Patreon for $8. MuggleCast will donate 50% of proceeds from the sale of this book to the Trevor Project, which is a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth, and your purchase will also include a PDF version of the manuscript. “Never Severus Us,” currently available nowhere else. This is the place to get it, so enjoy, everybody.
Eric: Who narrates the audiobook?
Andrew: Yours truly.
Eric: Oh.
Andrew: Yeah, and we have another bonus MuggleCast coming up later this month, right, Micah?
Micah: That’s right, Andrew. We did some hot takes from the Harry Potter series, some of which relate directly to Order of the Phoenix. Laura, honestly, I couldn’t help but think of you as I was going through all the Reddits and subreddits that I could find for Harry Potter hot takes, because it reminded me so much of Harry Potter fanfiction, and I am blown away by some hot takes that are out there.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: Very much like, I would say, Andrew’s warning. Maybe not as graphic for this bonus MuggleCast, but there are definitely some adult topics that we’re going to get into talking about, so…
Laura: Definitely.
Andrew: For example, the Shrieking Shack was Moony and Padfoot’s shag pad. Ooh, that’s fun. Other great ways to support us: You can pick up merch at MuggleCastMerch.com. You can leave us a review in your favorite podcast app, and you can tell a friend about our show. Meanwhile, over in our overstock store, we also have MuggleCast “19 Years Later” T-shirts available for purchase. These are only available while supplies last, so visit MuggleMillennial.etsy.com to grab yours. And finally, visit MuggleCast.com for quick access to all this information and lots more, like our contact form and the Quizzitch form.
Chapter by Chapter: Time-Turner
Andrew: Now it’s time for Chapter by Chapter. Order of the Phoenix Chapter 27, “The Centaur and the Sneak.”
Eric: We had a lot of fun naming the last episode to discuss this chapter. It was MuggleCast 464, called “Dumbledore Gone Wild.”
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “Ooo-hoo-hoo!”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: I think that’s pretty accurate. And it was released on May 5 of 2020; here’s a small clip from that.
[Ticking sound]
Dumbledore: Three turns should do it, I think. Good luck.
Ron: What the…?
[Bell dings]
[Whooshing sound]
Robotic voice: Episode 464.
Eric: Nobody was expecting the golden goose, Dumbledore himself, to come out and say, “I did this.”
Andrew: Right.
Eric: And so everyone is forgiving Harry’s transgressions because they’ve gotten a much bigger prize.
Andrew: Yep, exactly.
Laura: Dumbledore even says this; he’s like, “This is a bit like trying to find a Knut, but actually finding a Galleon.”
Eric: And we know from our recent Quizzitch that there are 29 Knuts to a Sickle, and 17 Sickles per Galleon. That’s like 493 Knuts.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Wow. Good for you, Eric.
Andrew: Fudge is rich.
[Ticking sound]
Dumbledore: Mysterious thing, time.
[Bell dings]
Laura: Did we all have COVID in that episode five years ago?
Andrew: [laughs] Probably.
Laura: We all sound super stuffy and miserable, so I was like, “Were we all sick?” [laughs]
Eric: It’s a classic tactic of making the audio from past years worse, so that we sound better currently. I went and manipulated that old clip.
Laura: Oh, shoot.
Andrew: It was released May 5. I think we were hungover from Star Wars Day the day before. “May the Fourth be with you.”
Laura: Ah, yeah. Like you do.
Micah: Or we’d just been cooped up for two-three months.
Andrew: That too. Starting to lose our minds.
Laura: Yeah, we were like, “This can’t last much longer, can it?”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Oh, man.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Laura: Anyway, let’s get back into this chapter, and thought that we could pick it up by focusing the first part of our discussion around Firenze and his class; that really is the focal point of the first half of this chapter. So there is a lot of excitement coming off the last chapter with the announcement that Firenze is going to be the new Divination teacher, primarily, I think, on the parts of students like Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, who are very taken by this very handsome centaur who’s going to be teaching them. As a reminder and a connecting the threads moment for us, Firenze is the centaur who saved Harry in the Forbidden Forest during Sorcerer’s Stone, a.k.a. Philosopher’s Stone, and much like five years ago, Mars is shining brightly in Firenze’s classroom turned planetarium.
Andrew: I really enjoyed that the “Mars is shining brightly” got referenced again.
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: I made that connection myself while reading because that’s one of those iconic lines from the first Harry Potter book.
Laura: “Mars is bright tonight.” And Hagrid is like, “Cool. How do we get out of here?”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Anyway…”
Laura: But Hermione is already starting out this chapter kind of shading Firenze. She’s being, I guess, too cool for school in this instance. While everyone else is impressed by him, she’s pretty dismissive, right, Micah?
Eric: I think Parvati and Lavender are trying to have one up on her, like, “Oh, Hermione, you were too cool for school last Divination teacher. What about now?” And she’s reacting kind of defensively.
Micah: She definitely is, and it’s a bit surprising that she isn’t more open-minded about what I would call a creature teacher.
Eric: [laughs] I love that.
Micah: But the comments she makes about Firenze are offensive, if we’re to be truthful here in this moment, and the fact that Hermione says that she doesn’t like horses is a bit out-of-character for her, I have to say. And not only that, she doubles down when Parvati calls out the fact that “He’s not a horse; he’s a centaur.” Her response is, “Well, he’s still got four legs.”
Laura: Yeah, come on, girl.
Micah: And I don’t know if it’s just – and we can talk more about this – the lack of interest that she has in a subject matter like Divination, the fact that maybe she doesn’t really like Parvati or Lavender all that much… but still for her, especially the fact that she is so adamant about something like SPEW, to reference Firenze in this way, who’s now a professor of the school, that just doesn’t seem in line with her character.
Eric: I would agree. I do think that… because this is the very opening paragraph of this chapter, and it shows the passage of time, to me, I read it with a little eye for just being one of those things where if you take it out, it’s controversial, but if you put it in, like, “Oh, and this was happening, and this was a conversation at lunch and then they went to this class,” it’s less impactful. It’s less scandalous, I think, when viewed in the context of “The chapter had to start somehow.” If it were at a pivotal moment in someone’s day, or there was, I don’t know, more of an intention behind that moment, I think it would have been a little bit even more damning for Hermione. Her comments aren’t great, but they do just start a chapter that has so much else going on.
Andrew: Yeah, I do think it is her prejudices about Divination. Trelawney has left a very bad taste in her mouth, and she doesn’t feel optimistic that a “horse” is going to be any better, so that’s what I think mainly is at play here.
Eric: The cool thing is during this chapter, we see how wrong Hermione is and how cool the class is. Everyone who attends, I think, is pretty much blown away, so I think also it’s maybe a writing trick to lower our expectations, so that when we get to that part of this chapter, we’re like, “Oh, wow, that was actually fabulous.”
Laura: Yeah, I think that this is also Hermione acting out of character because she’s being petty, and we see this from her at a few points in the series; we’re going to see it again in Half-Blood Prince when she’s trying to make Ron jealous over his relationship with Lavender. So Hermione, when she’s feeling socially threatened, I guess, and she’s being petty back to somebody, she’ll throw some low blows and some things that she wouldn’t normally say. It’s certainly not something that she would say to Firenze’s face – in fact, I don’t think she would behave towards a centaur with anything but respect – but what you say about people behind their backs also says something about you, and I think this is a lesson that Hermione is going to have to continue learning. I mean, she’s a good person; I don’t think this makes her a terrible human being, but it shows that she has biases, and she allows those biases to undermine her perceptions of how valuable the people are around her, right? So I just think this is one of those areas where Hermione has some room to mature.
Andrew: Every once in a while she throws us a curve ball. Just, “Wow, I would not expect that of Hermione.” We’ve discussed before, too, how she can be a bit of a baddie when she needs to be. I’m thinking right now of setting Snape on fire in Sorcerer’s Stone.
Eric: Oh!
Laura: True.
Andrew: It wasn’t him who was messing with Harry. [laughs] She just kind of… she, again, has these curve balls that you don’t expect from her, but it keeps me humble when it comes to my thoughts on Hermione. She’s not perfect.
Eric: Well, I know we’ll bring this up later, but the situation with Marietta shows Hermione’s harder edges as well.
Andrew: Yes, and in that case, I think it was a good idea, but we can get to that.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: Well, Eric, you called this out a couple of minutes ago here, but turns out Firenze’s class is actually really cool, and I would argue that he brings a new level of credibility to the discipline of Divination. As a matter of fact, he does so to the extent of saying, “Yeah, humans, y’all are subject to your limitations, and there’s only so good that humans are going to be at this.” And even when I think it’s Lavender tries to push back about something that Trelawney had taught them, and Firenze is like, “Yeah, Sybill Trelawney is also human, so she is also subject to the same limitations as the rest of you.” And it’s a little humbling, I think, for everybody to realize that there are aspects of this discipline that are much more cosmic and macro than people could ever conceive of, because people are just kind of inherently self-centered, and we like to think of ourselves at the center of the universe, but we’re really not. So this was cool.
Andrew: What?!
[Laura laughs]
Eric: It’s true.
Andrew: I think Hermione should have attended this class. Maybe she would have had a very different feeling about Firenze quickly had she did because of what Firenze says here, and my takeaway from Firenze’s message to the class is he’s preaching, and he’s about quality over quantity. Firenze says that he doesn’t know if Trelawney is a true Seer or not, but centaurs, he says, can take up to a decade to read the stars and figure out what’s going on in the universe. They’re not about rushing to judgment, whereas it seems like anytime any sort of “prediction” pops into Trelawney’s mind, she has to blurt it out immediately. “Oh, Harry, you’re going to die, by the way, really soon.” Cool, thanks. That’s great to hear as a child.
Eric: Right, and it’s also about, I think, the content of what the predictions are being made too. Firenze is very much adamant that the types of things you divine from things like stargazing are the big moments, not whether you’re going to have a nice afternoon, and so I think there’s that aspect and the much removed aspect of not centering it around humans at all. I just really love this lesson; I think it’s pretty fantastic. It seems like Firenze came into this with a degree of emotional awareness, aware that the students have probably, many of them, never seen a centaur before. They’re going to make some comments that would be offensive. Dean, I think, puts his entire foot in his own mouth in this chapter, and quickly is like, “Ooh, sorry, I didn’t mean to…” But again, just really, this comes from having a rich world where humans are not the only sentient race, so the idea that these other magical creatures also practice Divination, and it makes sense that it would be a different form of Divination, makes this, again, a really interesting subject.
Laura: Yeah. And I wanted to ask y’all what we make of Firenze’s vibe in this lesson, because we’re simultaneously in a lesson where we’re learning about the high stakes of this discipline and Firenze foretelling that there is a war just around the corner and talking about the dire circumstances that’ll play out, but then at the end of the lesson, he’s like, “But don’t worry about it if you don’t see any shapes or signs in the smoke in the fires I’m having you burn, because humans aren’t that good at this anyway. You can’t control the arc of the universe, so don’t worry about it.” It just feels very inconsistent to me, because on the one hand, there’s incredibly high stakes with predicting a war, but on the other, saying, “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, so it’s fine.”
Micah: Do you think it’s hard conceptually for the students to understand the way in which Firenze is teaching? I’m not sure they’ve been in a class like this before, where even the teacher is saying, “Look, what I’m putting out there may not be 100% true, and I’m cool with it.”
Andrew: Yeah, it’s so refreshing. Well, and compare that to Trelawney being like, “Read these tea leaves and tell us what they mean.”
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Or “Write some… log your dreams in your dream diary and decode them,” like there’s something actually within the dreams that you’re supposed to take a message from. It’s very refreshing how Firenze is teaching compared to Trelawney.
Eric: Did you guys peek at the reference to mallowsweet leaves, which is a big Hogwarts Legacy herb?
Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: It’s what you drop on the Merlin trials. I am quite sure that I didn’t really know what that was the last time we went through this chapter, so very exciting there.
Laura: Yeah, it’s great to know what herb you’re going to have to drop on 300 different Merlin trials to do the same five puzzles over and over again.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: One of the other things that I find to be interesting to look at is Trelawney’s classroom versus Firenze’s classroom. So often we’re told about how Trelawney’s classroom is this really stuffy, perfume-infested…
Andrew: Hot.
Micah: … hot, yeah, you’re right. It’s suffocating in a way. So is that the right learning environment for students, versus this beautiful replica of the Forbidden Forest where students are just very relaxed and they can stretch their legs and lean up against rocks and trees and they have the stars above them? It’s something to be said for creating an environment where students can more readily learn.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t think Trelawney’s classroom, as we just described it, would be a good environment to clear your head within.
Micah: No.
Andrew: [laughs] That is not a good space to practice Divination. That said, I can’t… I want to give Firenze credit for the design of this classroom, but it was Dumbledore who set this up for him, right? To recreate the experience of being in the forest, so Firenze felt like he was more in his natural habitat. So I love the classroom, but I can’t give Firenze credit for it.
Eric: I’m not 100% sure, because Firenze does this thing with his arm where he lowers it and the lights go down, and he’s definitely got some form of magic.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, they probably worked on it together. Ultimately, Firenze can’t teach them in the forest, not even on the edge of the forest the way Hagrid does, because he’s been banned, right?
Eric: That’s a whole thing.
Micah: You bad, bad centaur.
Laura: He’s been expelled from the herd. He literally has a hoof-shaped bruise on his chest.
Micah: Got rough last night.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: He’s open about it, though, which is the really interesting thing. Whereas Hagrid, who’s getting injury after injury and keeps it all secret, Firenze is 100% clear with, I think, all the students, why and how the circumstances were around this very obvious bruise on his chest, and it has to do with his culture. And I don’t know, I really come away from this chapter going Firenze is probably one of my favorite characters. He’s right up there with Sirius Black, y’all, because he’s just cool. He’s just neat.
Laura: Yeah, I agree. And to that point, Micah, you called out here that Firenze is pretty progressive for a centaur.
Micah: Yeah, he is, and I think we get that from some of the story he gives us, and the fact that he has been banished. He references how in the past he’s been chastised for certain things, like letting Harry ride on his back, back in Sorcerer’s Stone, almost like he’s – not to borrow a term from Hermione – but a “common mule,” right? And the other centaurs do not look favorably upon that. And the other thing that gets brought up is the fact that he agreed to teach here at Hogwarts; he agreed to come and work for Dumbledore, so it is interesting to see that there are things like customs and power dynamics that exist amongst the centaurs, just like they do amongst the wizards.
Laura: Yeah, I also find it interesting to debate what does Firenze actually believe? Because he espouses a lot of the same rhetoric we hear from the centaurs about how in the cosmic sense, none of your tiny day-to-day human affairs or lives really matter that much, so there’s no point in interfering. But Firenze interferes all the time; he interferes in Book 1 when he rescues Harry, and he interferes here by basically filling this position so that Umbridge can’t put another Ministry loyalist in at Hogwarts.
Eric: Oh, right.
Laura: So I’m like, “Is that really what you think, Firenze?” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, bold moves for a pacifist.
Laura: Right, right.
Micah: Well, and we know that there is a confrontation coming at the end of this book between Umbridge and the centaurs, and so I wonder is this a little bit of a hint for us as readers that that’s coming down the line?
[Ad break]
Laura: All right, and we’re back, back with Firenze, the world’s most stunning Divination teacher in his planetarium classroom.
Andrew: Oooh.
Laura: I know, it sounds so sexy when you put it that way, right?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: But Firenze also makes it no secret to anyone in the classroom that he and Harry already know each other, and he uses…
Micah: Hey, Laura.
Laura: Yeah.
Micah: You might say that they’re fir-iends.
Andrew: Oh, there’s the dad joke for the episode.
Laura: There it is.
Eric: Ohhh. Oh, man.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: You know what? I was wondering when it was coming. I knew it was coming; I was like, “It has to be during the Divination lesson. It’s going to have to do with Firenze.” I’ll give that one a seven out of ten. That was pretty good.
Micah: Thank you.
Laura: Yeah, that was pretty good. But Firenze also uses this opportunity to speak a little more at length about the coming war and the fact that we’re actually not really in a period of peace; we’re just in a period of calm between two wars, so have fun, children. But what I loved about this – and it feels like a little more malicious compliance from Dumbledore – is that Firenze is well within his rights to talk about the coming war because this directly has to do with the discipline that he’s teaching, so he’s in adherence with Educational Decree whatever the hell it was that said teachers couldn’t talk to students about anything that they weren’t experts in.
Eric: Yeah, I wonder why Umbridge isn’t supervising the first lesson held by the new teacher. That’s kind of her job now, isn’t it?
Laura: Yeah. Ooh, ooh, alternate headcanon: Because we see that the students are initially heading towards the staircase because they’re trying to go up the tower, what if Umbridge did the same thing, and no one thought to tell her, “Do you really think a centaur is going to be able to get all the way up there?”
Andrew: Right. “Where are they? Hem-hem!”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Also, a regular horse might not be able to climb a ladder, but I think a centaur could figure it out.
Andrew: I think he could, too. Just use his upper arms to climb that ladder.
Laura: That’s a lot.
Andrew: I don’t know.
Laura: But he’d have to get all the way up to that tower first. He’d have to climb all those stairs.
Eric: Again, I think he could do it.
Micah: MuggleCast in no way endorses animal cruelty.
Andrew: Well, who the hell wants to go in that classroom anyway? Least of all Firenze. It’s stuffy and hot. It smells like Trelawney and all her bad perfume.
Eric: No, given the alternative, I would absolutely take the forest classroom.
Laura: Yeah, for sure.
Eric: And it’s even an improvement for the classroom. Usually the classroom is not this cool either. It’s disused; nobody uses it. It was perfect, and Dumbledore’s plotting here – and Firenze’s acknowledgement, or his helping out by preventing the Ministry from interfering further at Hogwarts – is definitely a solid. I kind of wonder how Firenze is supposedly grading all of this, because Divination, his type of Divination especially, doesn’t seem very precise or measurable, but that’s probably the last concern. I mean, Dumbledore doesn’t care how the teachers grade.
Laura: No. [laughs]
Eric: And Firenze is cool enough to just kind of impart what wisdom he may have.
Laura: Well, I think he’s also doing Harry a solid here, because this timing, the timing of Firenze coming in, being very impressive, clearly über qualified to be teaching this subject, and saying, “Yeah, kids, there’s a war coming,” right on the heels of Harry’s Quibbler interview? Whew, chef’s kiss. Could not have asked for better timing. I think Firenze is helping to seal the deal with a lot of Harry’s peers here.
Eric: I definitely think he’s making people more… whether they realize it or not, softening the blow about a future war when it devolves, as like, “You heard it here first.” I think there’s that element to it. And yeah, can we talk about how Firenze shakes Harry’s hand, and it’s really friggin’ cool that Harry knows a centaur?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: They’re on speaking terms with him, and he asks him to stay back after class. And that’s totally unrelated to boosting Harry, but it nevertheless has the effect of boosting Harry’s cool factor. It’s the first of two times in this chapter where another creature – totally non-human, one of Harry’s close confidants and friends – comes right up to him in front of all these people and has important things to say to him. It really shows how worldly Harry is. It shows that while the Daily Prophet was busy maligning Harry for who knows what and all this random stuff, he actually is a pretty cool guy who has a lot of connections throughout the larger world.
Andrew: Yeah, I was going to say I think this helps give Harry some much-needed standing right now amongst his peers. It helps him look like a more trustworthy figure, even though they’re all just kind of being introduced to centaurs. And I think it says a lot for how Harry is handling this too; he’s not being braggadocious about this encounter right now.
Eric: “You guys, look!”
Andrew: Yeah, right, exactly. Like Draco might have if he was friends with Firenze or anyone else kind of cool.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: “Professor, Professor, can we get a selfie? Father would love this” kind of a thing.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Oh, God.
Micah: It’s also important to keep in mind – Eric, you made me think about what’s coming later on in this book, and what Harry has already seen – and that’s the Fountain of Magical Brethren, and I think that there’s some through-lines here to the points that you raised with the fact that he is on good terms with Firenze. Dobby shows up later on in this chapter, and the centaur and the house-elf are part of that statue that do come to his rescue a little bit later on.
Laura: I love that. That’s a great call-out.
Eric: It is really cool. Too bad we don’t get a friendship or an understanding with Griphook for two more books.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Nah, they’re goblins.
Eric: Okay!
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: Hey, if Hermione can do it, so can I.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, wow. Yeah.
Laura: Wow.
Micah: Just kidding.
Laura: Well, Firenze… not every secret that he knows is something that can be found in the stars. He also knows what’s up with Hagrid, because he gives Harry a pretty cryptic message to pass on to him, literally just saying, “He would do better to abandon it. His attempt is not working.” Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean to Harry, we can’t know at this point, obviously, but Harry soon after tries to bring this to Hagrid, and Hagrid very quickly brushes him off and says, “Some things are more important than a job,” when Harry is expressing his concern that, “Hey, Trelawney just got sacked, and you’re basically next on the chopping block. Can you please be careful?” And Hagrid is like, “No, this is more important.” I mean, it’s his brother. I get it.
Eric: It’s wild, though, how distracted Hagrid is this year. Remember when Hermione was trying to help do him lesson plans so that he wouldn’t get sanctioned, and then he ends up getting sanctioned, but he didn’t care because he’s so distracted by Grawp now? Even the warnings that are coming from other creatures telling Hagrid to desist are being completely ignored.
Micah: He’s not good at his job anyway, so that might be part of the reason why he doesn’t care.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Oooh.
Eric: Yeah! Maybe that makes him not good at his job, and also not being… yeah.
Micah: But I will say that there may not be a line that I relate to more in the Harry Potter series at this point in time than “Some things are more important than a job.”
Laura: Yep.
Micah: Hagrid just throwing out some real world advice there for anybody who’s reading along with us.
Laura: That’s some real talk.
Andrew: And poor Harry, who has yet another mystery on his hands. This guy can never escape some questions haunting him. [laughs] “What is this about now?”
Micah: Well, and another task. He’s got to go tell Hagrid.
Andrew: Yeah, right. [laughs]
Micah: And that could get him in trouble because he doesn’t want to be seen by Umbridge.
Andrew: Yeah. Can’t he figure out another way to get the message to Hagrid, Firenze?
Eric: I like that. That’s pretty funny.
Laura: Well, unfortunately for Harry, this is not the only thing he’s going to be trying to do to fly under the radar this chapter, but this next thing is an area where he’s unsuccessful. So the DA is meeting, and I would say again upping Harry’s cool factor, he is finally introducing Dumbledore’s Army to Patronuses, so they’re learning how to cast those now. And so far, only Hermione and Cho are able to produce full Patronuses, which I think is an important reminder to call out that Cho is also really gifted academically, and this is a likely sign that she excels in her courses. We don’t really get to see much of this side of Cho; most of what we get to see is her being a teenager, grieving some pretty significant trauma. But I think sometimes, because that’s so heavy, we tend to forget that there’s this other side to her character.
Micah: Well, of course she’s gifted, Laura. She’s a Ravenclaw.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I know; I just had to represent for my girl, you know?
Andrew: Yeah, of course…
Eric: I appreciate this, yeah.
Andrew: No, go ahead. I was just going to do a dumb joke.
Eric: What? Oh, please. Now I really want to hear it.
Andrew: I was just going to say of course she’s talented, because she caught Harry’s eye. See? Dumb.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Well, I was going to mention, too, her Quidditch playing, which, the reason that I… so it’s to a detriment of understanding and appreciating Cho’s character, given what she, by extension of Marietta, does in the next couple of chapters. The fact that Harry is banned from Quidditch means that we also won’t get to see Cho do some really cool things in a match. So that’s another area where she’s really good at something. She’s super cool; she’s their team’s Seeker. She and Harry have a lot in common. That never comes up, really.
Laura: Well, I thought that we could also talk about the Patronus forms that Hermione and Cho have; I think it speaks to both of their characters. So Hermione’s is an otter, and in Celtic and other folklore, the otter is often characterized as friendly and a helpful creature, and it’s often given the name “water dog,” alluding to these qualities. They are cheerful, curious, and mischievous by nature. Otters are also highly social pack animals, who never stray far from their family.
Andrew: Aww.
Laura: And Micah, you have a fun call-out here. It’s always a good one to observe.
Micah: I do, that otters are, in fact, part of the weasel family, so perhaps this was a little bit of a hat tip to the fact that Hermione would be joining the Weasleys in the not too distant future.
Andrew: When I read that note, I was like, “Is Micah trying to call Hermione a weasel?”
Micah: No.
Andrew: “Or is it a Weasley reference?” Well, I never know with you.
Eric: I’m pretty sure that this revelation exists in the first 20 episodes of MuggleCast.
Micah: It does. I remember bringing it up.
Eric: Yeah, the otter/weasel connections. It’s amazing.
Micah: And Jamie’s mind was blown. [laughs]
Eric: Yes, I think Ben blows Jamie’s mind. He’s like, “Is there a connection?”
Micah: No, no, I did.
Eric: It was you? Oh my God.
Micah: It was me, yeah, yeah.
Eric: Okay.
Micah: Don’t give Ben credit for my…
Eric: Sorry. Geez.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: And I even went back through that episode recently, damn.
Andrew: I would have loved to have a otter Patronus, because you think about how cute otters are, and that’s the thing taking down a Dementor? That sounds amazing.
Micah: It’s also probably worth mentioning that the author adores otters, so it’s not surprising that this Patronus was given to Hermione.
Andrew: Ah, okay.
Laura: Yeah, otters really are the cutest. I got to go to an otter encounter at the Atlanta aquarium last year, and I got to boop their little noses.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I got to touch their little nosies. They’re so cute.
Andrew: Did you actually say “boop” when you booped their nose?
Laura: Yeah, yeah, of course I did. How could you not?
Andrew: “Boop! Boop! You look like Hermione’s Patronus.”
Laura: They’re so cute.
Andrew: Laura goes to a lot of animal encounters. She went to a red panda encounter a couple of years ago.
Laura: Yep. I’m going to do a capybara encounter soon, actually.
Eric: Capybara! Take me with you!
Laura: Yeah, I will take so many pictures.
Andrew: Are you going to boop their nose?
Laura: If they’ll let me. I think my Patronus is a capybara now, if I’m being real with you.
Andrew: I want to boop!
Laura: I’ll boop your nose next time I see you, too, Andrew. Don’t worry. [laughs]
Andrew: Okay, sure. [laughs] It’ll happen three years from now, and I’ll be like, “Why the hell is Laura booping my nose?”
Laura: Yeah, you’ll be like, “Why are you touching me?”
Andrew: She’ll be like, “I didn’t forget.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: This show just got so adorable.
Laura: Well, getting back to these Patronuses, Cho’s Patronus is a swan, and swans are associated with love, fidelity, innocence, grace, and transformation. I thought transformation was a really key word here, right? Because you hear the old adage about going from being an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, and I think in this regard, the transformation really refers to the emotional distress and the trauma that Cho has to navigate in order to get through that and be able to be a better version of herself on the other side of it. I don’t think we ever really get to see that, unfortunately.
Eric: No, I was going to say… I like that a lot; I was going to say she transforms from being a girlfriend material for Harry to absolutely not.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Well, that’s true. That’s true. That’s one transformation that she makes, but I like to think that maybe there’s a longer implication here. But we’ll never know. [laughs]
Eric: We should have gotten more of Cho in Book 7 after the cards are all on the table and had a big moment with her.
Andrew: I think you could also say she was kind of forced to transform after losing Cedric so suddenly.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Transform into a stronger version of who she already was, just because of going through something so traumatic.
Eric: So over on Spotify, we’re going to be creating the Cho Gets Swole playlist. Submit your Cho tracks.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Well, unfortunately for the DA, Dobby shows up to give Harry some very unwelcome news, which is that Umbridge knows and she is on her way to bust them. And unfortunately for Dobby, we kind of get to see a repeat of the pattern we saw in Chamber of Secrets, where Harry had to watch Dobby beat the crap out of himself for giving Harry a warning.
Andrew: Yeah, and good thing he is able to get out the word “she,” like, “she’s coming.” Because otherwise, I don’t know if Harry would have figured it out as quick as he did, because Dobby is – like you’re saying, Laura – resisting giving details. Poor guy.
Micah: Why, though? Is it because he technically works for Hogwarts? Is it a bit of PTSD in terms of what he would normally do if he betrayed the Malfoys previously? Because he doesn’t work for Umbridge. I mean, he works for the school.
Eric: He works for the school.
Andrew: But I do sort of feel like it’s in a house-elf’s DNA to just not share another human’s secrets, whether or not they are owned by that person.
Eric: It’s interesting because we also had Firenze in this chapter choosing not to tell Harry Hagrid’s secret. Now Dobby, we know, is a good little informant, but it’s interesting that Dobby says that the house-elves were told not to warn. I want to know what…
Micah: So that’s probably an Umbridge directive, right?
Eric: Yeah, but what does that look like? Because house-elves shouldn’t even be on Umbridge’s radar, unless she used one to help with Marietta maybe? Because it’s implied later that Umbridge sat there trying to spell Marietta better, and maybe she’s like, “I need a house-elf for this.” But under what circumstances would Umbridge reach out specifically to the house-elves to specifically tell them “Don’t warn these people”? She could actually have just run up and got them at that time, busted them. So it’s very interesting.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, unless she knows about the connection Dobby has to Harry.
Andrew: Maybe.
Laura: Which she could.
Eric: If she told Dobby specifically not to rat it out, then Dobby is an extra GOAT for actually being able to still do that, because I do think that… because as a professor of Hogwarts, Umbridge has the authority to order the house-elves around; they have to obey her in the same way that they would have to obey someone else. Dobby is a free elf; he kind of just chooses to work for Hogwarts. Old habits die hard; maybe he still feels that to his soul, has to punish himself for divulging secrets of his master. So there’s that, but then he also kind of works for Harry, so when Harry says, “Don’t hurt yourself anymore,” he also has to abide by… it’s just weird. He thanks Harry graciously for commanding him in that way. It’s kind of an interesting test, I guess.
Andrew: Micah, you dived into the transcripts and you found proof that you had that otter/weasel connection?
Eric: Oh, come on.
Micah: I did; that’s the beauty of having the transcripts. And shout-out to Meg, although I believe, since this was Episode 20, it’s likely I was responsible for this transcript.
Eric: I bet.
Andrew: Oh, so we don’t know if this is entirely accurate. Maybe you rewrote history.
Eric: Ohh.
Micah: Well, you could go back and listen to the audio.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: If you want to pull that for this upcoming episode, I think that would be fantastic.
Eric: Yeah, this is the one I remember. [imitating Jamie] “Is there? Oh my God!” Yeah, amazing.
Micah: So it… there were a lot of “Oh my God”s thrown around after I made this revelation that the weasel and the otter are related.
Andrew: Ben said, “Oh my God. Micah has discovered the key to the Harry Potter shipping series. Do you guys see that?”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: That’s why I remember Ben being there, is because he said, yeah, that.
Andrew: That is a significant comment, because we didn’t know at the time that Ron and Hermione were eventually going to get married, so it truly was a key.
Laura: Eh, we knew. I think we…
Andrew: Did we?
Laura: Yeah, I think we knew.
Andrew: People hoped.
Eric: I had the same thought, Andrew. I had the same thought that it was particularly looking forward.
Andrew: [laughs] It was likely, but we didn’t know-know.
Eric: Well, we did have Book 6 where Hermione is very, very, very upset about Ron and Lavender.
Laura: I mean, also Book 4 with the Yule Ball.
Andrew: Yeah, but there’s that young love, and then it falls apart sometimes, Laura. Don’t I know it?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Like Cho and Harry. Two ships.
Micah: I mean, it might be worth pulling the clip just to hear Jamie alone, but…
Andrew: [imitating Jamie] “Oh my God, Micah, that’s absolutely awesome.”
Micah: There’s nothing better than a Jamie reaction like that.
Eric: No.
Micah: There really isn’t.
[Ad break]
Laura: All right, and we are back on the heels of Dobby warning Harry and company that Umbridge is in route, so the DA scatters. They don’t do it in the most efficient way; they all literally cram into the doorway to try and all get out at the same time, and it creates a bottleneck at the door, and it’s taking people a long time to get out. And ultimately, this results in Harry being one of the few, I believe, who actually gets apprehended, and he gets apprehended by none other than Draco Malfoy, who is delighted to hand Harry over to Umbridge. And I thought it was really interesting to compare this scene to the moment in Deathly Hallows at Malfoy Manor where Draco has another opportunity to hand Harry over, that time to Voldemort, and he’s a lot more hesitant about making that decision because the stakes are higher. In this, Draco gets to feel giddy because his schoolboy enemy might be getting expelled, but then in a couple years’ time, when the consequence is death, Draco realizes he’s in over his head.
Eric: He’s learned the value of human life, or at least Harry’s life. Maybe he’s in over his head so much, and he knows Harry is the only one that could really pull him out of it.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, and given what we know about… given how sensitive this organization is and how important it is to keep it under lock and key, it is surprising that they didn’t have some sort of emergency plan if this type of situation did arise. Sure, we have Hermione’s jinx to prevent anybody from spilling, but it was still possible Umbridge and company could find out. At the least, they should have done a sort of fire drill to prevent what you’re describing, Laura. I mean, this is exactly why we practice, and why you hear, “Single file line; no running. Everybody be calm.” They weren’t following any of those rules. It was “Let’s scram!” [laughs]
Micah: I will say the way they did it in the movie was actually really well thought out, right? They used the Marauder’s Map, and they were sending people out almost in waves, if I’m remembering correctly, so that… or at least… maybe that was another… that wasn’t that particular scene. They did it previously, right? When they were trying to leave the Room of Requirement. But I think to your point, Andrew, utilizing that type of a tactic would have gone a lot better for them if they were using something like the Marauder’s Map to see, “Okay, where is Umbridge? Where is Draco?” All these other folks who are after them, and then strategically… who’s to say the room wouldn’t have given them a back door?
Eric: An exit, yeah.
Micah: Or who’s to say the room would have let Umbridge in? So it feels like they weren’t prepared for this moment. They just go into panic mode.
Eric: They should have scouted the route a little bit more.
Laura: [laughs] Scout the route!
Andrew: Not that again.
Eric: I think adding the… no, I mean, they’re in the Room of Requirement. They could probably say, “We need two more exits.”
Micah: Exactly.
Eric: But this just shows that this was only ever maybe a temporary meeting place or temporary thing. They don’t know what they don’t know until it’s too late. Really, the only person who prepared for any of this is Hermione, and you’ve got to give her a little bit of credit.
Laura: Yeah, it is unfortunate that they don’t… I don’t think they fully understand how the room works at this point, because don’t we later discover that if they had just thought to the room, “We also do not want to be discovered; don’t let anyone in here,” the room probably still would have let Umbridge in, but she wouldn’t have been let into the same room?
Eric: Right, the next book Draco does that to keep Harry out.
Laura: Yeah, exactly. So it’s unfortunate that they don’t know this at this point, but I guess it’s also convenient for the plot.
Andrew: Yeah, I think they also just sort of got so excited by the concept of the Room of Requirement that they really didn’t bother to think much further. Like, “This is foolproof. This is cool as hell.”
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: “And Dumbledore used to pee in here? That’s weird. Anyway.”
[Laura laughs]
Micah: He still does.
Eric: Oh, man.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Well, speaking of Dumbledore, we’re going to his office next. Umbridge hauls Harry there, and Dumbledore, McGonagall, Fudge, Percy, Kingsley, and Dawlish are already waiting. I was wondering what the timeline of this was. How did they manage to assemble all of these people in Dumbledore’s office so quickly after the DA gets busted? Did Umbridge have enough notice of the meeting that she had time to get everyone together so that she could say, “Just wait 30 minutes and I’m going to bust them and bring the ringleader up here to the office”?
Andrew: Umbridge yelled, “Aurors, assemble! Hem-hem!”
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: And that’s how they got there so quick.
Eric: Well, she says that Marietta came to her slightly after dinner, so it really couldn’t have been that long ago. To have the Minister for Magic and two Aurors there, it’s absolutely perplexing that they’re all here in time for this.
Micah: Right. Does he not have anything more important to do with his time? He’s the Minister for Magic, but he’s dealing with these juvenile delinquents.
Andrew: Who are tied to Dumbledore. I think that’s a big driving factor for Fudge to be here right now. He gets to win against Dumbledore.
Eric: And unlike Dumbledore, who doesn’t wish to be monitored so he takes Thestrals when he’s leaving Hogwarts and stuff, Fudge could have just Flooed, especially because Miss Edgecombe is in charge of that network.
Micah: Oh, I’m sure that Umbridge has Fudge on speed dial.
Andrew: But Micah is just wondering why Fudge is bothering to go there to begin with, I guess. I think Fudge and Umbridge have the hots for each other, too…
Micah: Oooh.
Eric: Oh, maybe.
Andrew: … and they’re going to help each other out where they can. They’re going to be with each other when they can.
Eric: It’s probably a movie-ism where she has a picture of him on her desk.
Andrew: Oh, right! Yeah, that’s more evidence.
Eric: I think it’s also important to realize that they’re probably chomping at the bit for anything to discredit Harry specifically.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Eric: Especially following the Quibbler article, they need any dirt they can get. And so I think we’ve seen Umbridge over the last couple of weeks really, really try and do anything to discredit or stop Harry, and so that’s why the Minister, too, is personally involved in this, because they think they’re going to be able to expel him.
Andrew: He wants to be able to vouch for what Umbridge is saying as well, firsthand. “I witnessed the downfall of Harry.”
Eric: And the fact that Percy is there to… they need as many legal witnesses so that… whatever they were planning on doing was horrible.
Micah: That’s such a great point. I didn’t really think about that, that this really has to do with the story that was in The Quibbler, and that’s why you do have so many powerful figures present, including Percy, which he instructs specifically to get an owl to the Daily Prophet for the morning edition once Dumbledore comes clean.
Eric: “Hey guys, we finally have something horrible to slam against Potter!” For the first time in months.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Yeah, I definitely think the point about how high stakes that interview was… I mean, Harry flat out named alleged Death Eaters. I mean, we know they’re not alleged, but to everyone else they are. But I think the other thing is, too, Fudge is not doing a good job of keeping his side of the street clean. I mean, they just had a mass breakout at Azkaban, the Dementors have clearly chosen a side in the war, and he doesn’t exactly have good news to be delivering to his constituents, so it’s all about deflection and optics, like it’s always been with Fudge, ever since we met him.
Eric: Wow.
Laura: He’s the worst. But speaking of someone who’s also kind of the worst, the traitor is discovered to be Cho’s friend, Marietta Edgecombe.
Micah: All goes back to Cho.
Laura: Yeah, I know. I know. As Eric called out earlier, Marietta spills the beans to Umbridge not long before this meeting happens, and it’s because her mom works at the Ministry, and she was worried about her mom’s job, allegedly. But we also know that Marietta has always kind of had a foot out the door when it came to the DA; she only came to the first meeting because Cho wanted to go.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: She was the weak link.
Andrew: Yeah. I still have a hard time accepting, though, that Marietta was worried about her mom’s job. How is her mom’s job going to be on the line if nobody is ratting out the DA? This is a pretty small, trustworthy group, I think, with the exception of the person who ends up ratting them out, so I just don’t really get it.
Eric: It must have to do – and I agree, we do have to do some legwork here of the behind-the-scenes things – but it must be that Umbridge is putting pressure on every… or Fudge is putting pressure on Umbridge and everyone else to get dirt on Harry no matter what, or to root out spies or corruption or fraud wherever they can find it. Because the whole situation is that Marietta’s mom, then, is probably complaining to Marietta, going, “I’m so stressed out at work; I don’t know if I can do this for much longer. They’ve got me monitoring Floo Networks.” And Marietta, who’s young, impressionable, maybe a bit vain, maybe not the sharpest Ravenclaw in general, is doing the right thing. I mean, it’s just… this is the point of, I think, how this oppression sort of works, is that you make things horrible for so many people that they just have so much to lose; they retreat in themselves, and they start thinking about what they could lose by not complying. And they’ve already lost so much because of the oppressive state, but they could lose so much more if they don’t comply, and I could easily see Umbridge singing a song to this tune with Marietta. And to Marietta’s credit, she doesn’t really tell her a whole lot, although that’s also due to Hermione’s spell kicking in.
Laura: Yeah, because what is it that Umbridge says? She catches one glimpse of herself in a mirror and immediately freaks out. So I think Marietta…
Micah: I would too.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I would too, but I think Marietta would have kept singing like a canary if she hadn’t been jinxed.
Micah: And it’s an important distinction, too, because I know the movie, as we’ve pointed out here, does Cho dirty, and they use Veritaserum as the means to which the truth gets revealed about Dumbledore’s Army. That’s not the case here. Marietta went, as far as we know, willingly to Umbridge, as you were talking about, Eric, because of her mother’s situation. But we also learn from Umbridge in this chapter that her mother has been helping the Ministry monitor the Floo Network at Hogwarts, so presumably she had a hand in Umbridge almost catching Sirius just several chapters ago. And we don’t know Marietta’s mother; we don’t know who she is as a person. She could be somebody who might think along the same lines as Umbridge or Fudge, and maybe she doesn’t believe Harry’s story, maybe she doesn’t trust Dumbledore, so she could be putting a lot of pressure on her daughter to do things on her own behalf.
Andrew: True.
Laura: Well, and I’m sure Marietta probably feels a lot of pressure, because she has to know what would happen and how it would look if the DA did get busted and it was revealed that Madam Edgecombe’s daughter was in this subversive, anti-establishment group that was actively fighting Dolores Umbridge.
Andrew: The old Rita would have had a lot to say about that in the Prophet.
Laura: Right.
Micah: I mean, who left the list? Honestly, that’s just…
Andrew: That was such a bad…
Laura: I know.
Eric: Well, listen, they weren’t supposed to be able to get in the room, though. I hate giving Pansy Parkinson any credit, but the fact that she went in there is pretty badass.
Andrew: It’s still just such clear evidence. Was the list even hidden? I don’t think it was, right?
Laura: No.
Andrew: It was just pinned up somewhere. [laughs]
Laura: They had it on the wall.
Andrew: I do want to say on the jinx, with it putting “SNEAK” on Marietta’s head and basically traumatizing her, I think the fact that Umbridge can’t come up with a counter-jinx to fix this, and also doesn’t truly know if, by talking more about it, if it’s going to get worse, it just speaks to how great of a jinx this was by Hermione, so I have no issues with her putting this jinx on everybody who signed that piece of parchment.
Eric: In addition to how it looks, you’ve got to imagine it doesn’t feel great too. They’re purple pustules. Like, hello. That’s probably awful.
Andrew: Yeah, sometimes I’m in pain with just a little bit of acne.
Eric: It’s true.
Andrew: I’m like, “I can’t move my face right now.”
Laura: Snitches get stitches.
[Micah laughs]
Laura: That’s what Hermione said.
Micah: I was wondering, though, was Hermione actually inspired by Umbridge? Because this is not all that dissimilar from the detention that Harry has, and “I must not tell lies” being etched into the back of his hand.
Andrew: Leaving a mark.
Eric: Physical disfigurement, maiming, that kind of thing.
Laura: Yeah, that’s a good call. I mean, we know that she’s inspired by Death Eaters when it comes to the coins.
Micah: Right, with the coins.
Andrew: As we all are.
Eric: Hermione went to a really dark place with everything to do with DA in this book.
Andrew: Again, she’s a little baddie. Our little baddie.
Eric: Didn’t…? I think the last book read-through of this book – or maybe it was Book 6 – Andrew, you were like, “Hermione is a serial killer” or something.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Do you remember? Do you remember keeping on saying that?
Andrew: I can’t say I remember that.
Eric: Okay.
Andrew: But I could see her killing if necessary.
Eric: There are times when she goes way, way hard, for sure.
Andrew: Also, it was really disgusting how Fudge is noticeably quiet when Umbridge grabs Marietta, trying to get more information out of her. Fudge is quiet while Albus, Minerva, and Kingsley are rejecting, like, “I have to stop you right there, Umbridge. You cannot do that.” Fudge doesn’t care, and it speaks to his character.
Laura: Oh, yeah, 100%. And speaking of his character, he’s about to be real enthused because the smoking gun itself, a.k.a. the DA list, is procured. Pansy Parkinson does grab it out of the Room of Requirement, and Umbridge presents this list with the title “Dumbledore’s Army” across the top. And it really is like Christmas has come early for Fudge, because he thought he was just getting a Harry expulsion in this week’s episode, but what he’s actually getting, or so he thinks, is an apprehension of Dumbledore.
Eric: You know what’s funny is Dumbledore has to point it out to him, the significance of it. He’s like, “Cornelius, uh…”
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “Uh, hello. Dumbledore’s Army, not Harry’s.”
Eric: And Cornelius is like, “Oh, what? Oh. What!” It’s unbelievable how… I love that you can see the dawning. You can see both sides, how they react during this whole meeting. You see everything from Harry hearing Kingsley uttering a spell – which is not cool; we talked about this, there was a whole debate last time – but to the way that Umbridge has to reveal what she knows, and Dumbledore is piecing that together to form the counter-story. You get to see every bit of new info get used immediately by Dumbledore in a wonderful deception, not to mention, which precedes a badass exit. So it’s really cool and slowed down, this whole scene.
Andrew: And we also see Albus very, very, very subtly tell Harry to not admit to what he did.
Eric: Yep.
Andrew: I mean, that was a very… it’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment as a reader, just because it was so subtle with how Dumbledore handled it.
Eric: Arrives just in time, too. Harry is like, “Yeh – no.”
Andrew: “Yeh – no. I don’t know anything, Fudge.”
Laura: It really does make me wonder what Dumbledore’s plan was before the list got presented and he saw the golden opportunity to play into Fudge’s biggest fear.
Andrew: Yeah. And we’ve got to give it to Dumbledore; he lied, and very quickly came up with this lie, it seems. And we have had this segment on the show called the Dumbledore Lie Count, but you three have wanted to use it as a way to criticize Dumbledore, whereas today we’re actually kind of using it in a good way. He lied to protect Harry! He lied for the greater good!
[Dumbledore lie count sound effect plays]
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Year one Harry Potter. Prepubescent Dan Radcliffe.
Eric: That’s what it took to bring this segment back – the Dumbledore Lie Count – is a time when Dumbledore lies, but it’s a good thing?
Andrew: It’s a good reminder that he ain’t all bad.
Eric: Actually, huge shout-out to one of our listeners, who pointed out that we had actually not done that segment in a while, and it turns out since Chapter 12 of Goblet of Fire on this read-through.
Andrew: Huh. Well, it’s almost like he hasn’t been lying.
Eric: “Surely he’s lied since then,” were going to be the next words out of my mouth.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So maybe we’ll have to do…
Laura: I mean, he literally in this chapter, before he takes his leave, he says to Harry, “You have to keep practicing Occlumency. I promise you’ll understand why very soon.”
Andrew: [laughs] Well, what is soon, really?
Laura: Yeah, what is time?
Andrew: I mean, one person’s soon is another person’s later. It’s all relative. It’s all subjective.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, though, what Dumbledore does here – and it is a good thing that Dumbledore does, because he’s keeping Harry at Hogwarts, which is where he’s safest – he’s keeping Harry at Hogwarts, where he can continue studying Occlumency, right? And hopefully try to keep those bad dreams at bay. We know he doesn’t, but Dumbledore tried. Dumbledore does have this badass exit that you just called out, Eric, and I know we have gone line by line through the scene before, but it really is very incredible how quickly Dumbledore acts. I think we see very similar energy from him the night that Mr. Weasley gets attacked, and Dumbledore is immediately jumping to action and sending portraits to do things and giving people instructions about where to go and who to talk to. And he does the same here; he incapacitates literally everyone in the room, except for Harry, McGonagall, and Marietta. He even incapacitates Kingsley, who is in the Order and on their side, but he knew that it would look suspicious if Kingsley had not been incapacitated. So he buys them a fraction of a moment to be able to say, “I’m not going to Grimmauld Place. Cornelius is really going to regret what he’s done now.” And he tells Harry, “Please do practice your Occlumency. It’s really, really important.” And Harry has that brief moment again where he wants to strike Dumbledore; Dumbledore makes brief physical contact with him, and Harry’s scar bursts into flame, or so it feels like.
Andrew: [imitating Voldemort] “Gah!”
Laura: [laughs] Yeah, and he does the Ralph Fiennes exclamation. So again, we’re still seeing that Horcrux connection waking up and growing stronger.
Andrew: Pretty epic scene.
Micah: One of the other things that I really loved about this scene in the movie is that you get the sense of just how intimidating a figure Dumbledore is, because you see the fear in Fudge’s eyes. You see the fear in Umbridge’s eyes when he says he’s not going to come quietly.
Andrew: And his transition out of the room; doesn’t he bring his arms up and clap his hands above his head, and that’s when Fawkes transports him? It’s pretty sweet. As Kingsley says, “Dumbledore’s got style.” In the movie, anyway.
Laura: Well, I think in the book, Phineas says that.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Odds & Ends
Laura: Well, that is our chapter. We’re going to get into some odds and ends.
Andrew: I just wanted to mention that there’s a mention of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander’s book, in this chapter. Harry forgets this book after leaving Hagrid’s class; at least he pretends to forget it so he can go back and have a quick word with Hagrid without Umbridge being afoot. And one reason this jumps out to me is this is actually only the second mention of the book in the series so far.
Eric: Unbelievable.
Andrew: The first mention in Book 1, and then we don’t get another mention until Deathly Hallows. Kind of surprises me when you think about what Fantastic Beasts turned into.
Eric: And it’s fun because the book had been published by then. It was published in 2000 – or no, 2001 – between Goblet and Order of the Phoenix, and so maybe the author was like, “Oh yeah, I remember this book,” after having written it now, just before writing this book.
Andrew: Wanted to plug it.
Eric: Yeah, but that’s worth checking out. I don’t know what versions they have in bookstores these days – buy used – but Harry and Ron write in the margins, and it’s a very fun, whimsical kind of thing.
Laura: I remember getting that and immediately paging through it to read all of the notes that they wrote in the margins.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: And the new version has a foreword by Newt Scamander after the movie was released, I believe, as kind of a tie-in.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: And I think there’s an illustrated edition now. They’ve expanded it in a few different ways. Same thing with Quidditch Through the Ages.
Superlative of the Week
Laura: And now we are going to get into our MVP Question of the Week. This week’s question is what is Dumbledore’s most Slytherin moment in this chapter? I think he has several.
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] “You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I am going to – what is the phrase? ‘Come quietly.'”
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: Amazing. All right, can’t do better than that. I think this unfairly maligns Dumbledore in the premise, calling him a Slytherin. That’s not great.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I don’t think so.
Eric: Okay. All right, well…
Laura: Merlin was a Slytherin.
Eric: Yes, he was. That’s the second mention of Merlin in this episode. My MVP for Dumbledore is the nonverbal signaling to Harry that Andrew mentioned; when Harry is about to confess all because he thinks he’s sure well and busted, Dumbledore is… Harry is like, “Yeh – no.” And yeah, good stuff.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Very cunning!
Micah: Dumbledore, would you do me the honors of reading this quote?
Andrew: Sure. [imitating Dumbledore] “Don’t be silly, Dawlish. I’m sure you are an excellent Auror – I seem to remember that you achieved Outstanding in all your NEWTs – but if you attempt to – er – bring me in by force, I will have to hurt you.”
Micah: [laughs] What I love about it – in addition to Andrew’s impersonation there – is just he personalizes it, right? That’s part of… he’s like, “Oh, I remember that you…”
Andrew: [laughs] “I remember you, bitch.”
Laura and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: “But even though you did so well, I could still kick your ass with two hands tied behind my back.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: And I have another, I think, similarly toned moment. And Andrew, I wanted to see if you could do the honor.
Andrew: Oh my gosh.
Laura: Because you’re the…
Eric: Oh, we’re all picking up quotes and having Andrew read them?
Andrew: I’m working double duty today.
Laura: You’re the best at Dumbledore impersonations.
Eric: Andrew, I did you a favor by choosing the nonverbal moment.
Andrew: Yeah, thank you.
Micah: Your screen does say “Dumbledore enthusiast.”
Andrew: It does, yeah.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: “Impressionist,” more like.
Andrew: So Laura’s quote that she wanted to highlight is “I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course – but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.” It was all over the place, but I didn’t practice.
Laura: No, it was good. Well done.
Lynx Line
Laura: So now we are going to turn to our Lynx Line. MuggleCast listeners who are members of our community over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast have answered this week’s question, and this week’s question was: If you had the ability to magically change the title of the DA roster from “Dumbledore’s Army” to something else, what would you change it to before Umbridge gets the chance to show it to Fudge?
Andrew: [imitating Dumbledore] Carlee said… [clears throat]
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Carlee said, “The Chudley Cannons Fan Club would probably fly under the radar, since no one cares about them except Ron!” Ohh!
Eric: I love the idea of like, “We know teams, group, societies, and clubs are banned at Hogwarts, but we just need to get together and support the Cannons, you guys!” Love that. Jennifer says, “The Vigilant Defenders.” Love that one.
Micah: Rachel says, “To borrow a term coined by Ron, the House-Elf Liberation Front.”
Laura: [laughs] Umbridge probably wouldn’t like that. Ning Xi said, “There is no club here. We just like to hang out.”
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: “Here are our names, written oddly formally.”
Andrew: The Not a Club club.
Laura: Yeah, we just want to chill.
Andrew: Eleanor said, “Extra Study Club. It’s accurate – they’re learning what they should be doing in DADA! And definitely flies under the radar.”
Laura: I like that one.
Eric: Zachary says, “I would say the Pink Kitten Club to pay homage to Umbridge’s obsessions, but for obvious reasons I’ll have to rename it Fudge’s Favorite Pupils. When she goes to rat them out, his inflated ego would take over and dismiss the accusation.” Oh, yeah.
Andrew: [to the tune of “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan] “Pink kitten club…”
Laura: I was thinking about the same thing! [laughs]
Eric: [singing] “Pink kitten club, pink kitten club… Meow…”
Andrew: It works a little too well. That has to be an episode title.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Parth says, “The Defense Against the Defense Against the Dark Arts Club.” Love that.
Laura: I like it. And Mev wrapped us up with “The Peculiar Toad Club for Toad Enthusiasts.” Yeah, Umbridge doesn’t have anything to push back on that, I don’t think.
Micah: No, that sounds like something she started when she was in school.
Andrew: I would join that. Hem-hem!
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Don’t forget, everybody, you can participate in the Lynx Line every week by becoming a MuggleCast patron at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We really appreciate your support. Thank you, everybody who does support us. If you have feedback about today’s episode, you can contact us by emailing or sending a voice memo that you record on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com. Remember, we will be off next week, but in two weeks, we will have a special episode of MuggleCast. Hope everybody has a nice holiday break if you’re in America, and hopefully many of you are spending time outdoors over Memorial Day weekend. While you’re doing that, check out our other weekly podcasts, What the Hype?! and Millennial, for more pop culture and real world talk from the four of us. What’s going on on What the Hype?!
Laura: Yeah, on What the Hype?! we’re covering a lot of different fandoms right now, so we are still actively covering The Last of Us, which is airing on Sundays on HBO Max. We are doing live reactions to new episodes at 10:30 p.m. eastern time on Sundays on YouTube, so please head on over to What the Hype?! podcast on YouTube to check those out. We also have a new episode out celebrating 25 years of Gilmore Girls and reacting fondly on that piece of cultural nostalgia. And additionally, we have a new feedback episode that will have come out by the time this episode of MuggleCast is released. So yeah, we’ve got a lot going on over there. Come check us out.
Andrew: And then over on the latest episode of Millennial, we’re discussing a decrease in alcohol consumption. What? Not because of Winky and I…
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: … as well as the rise of nonalcoholic beers, which I tried and spilled all over myself while recording the other day, so that was gross.
Eric: Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher, everyone. That is what I will say.
Andrew: Is that alcoholic or nonalcoholic?
Eric: It’s nonalcoholic. It’s amazing.
Andrew: Oh. Okay.
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, well, now it’s time for everybody’s favorite Harry Potter trivia game, Quizzitch!
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: This week’s question was: In banning The Quibbler, Umbridge only raises more interest in it. The concept of banning something only making it more popular is colloquially known as the Streisand effect, after actress Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for publishing a photo in 2003. The question is, what was the photo of? Andrew, why don’t you take this one?
Andrew: Her house!
Eric: That’s exactly right. And it was a fairly zoomed out photo of her home on a cliff, and I don’t think people really would have realized what it even was of until she sued and it got big, so heck of a thing. 33% of people with the correct answer did not look it up, and this week’s winners include Kyle; Patronus Seeker; No Quibbling with The Quibbler; A Healthy Breeze; Born Voldemort learning about world history; Irving Courtside; and Shout-out to my super cool sister, Anna. Hi, Anna. Here is next week’s Quizzitch question: The fourth planet in our solar system is Mars, named for the Roman god of war. What did the ancient Greeks call their god of war? Little bit of a fairly more well-known one this week, so enjoy submitting to us on the Quizzitch form on the MuggleCast website, MuggleCast.com/Quizzitch. If you’re already on the website – maybe you’re checking out the must listens, reading transcripts… say, for instance, Episode 20 was a good episode. Micah makes a really great point, you guys.
Andrew: The key to the…! What was the…?
Eric: The key to the whole shipping series!
Andrew: The key to the shipping series!
Eric: Oh my God. So yes, on MuggleCast.com, and click on “Quizzitch” from the main nav.
Andrew: Thanks, everyone, for listening. Don’t forget to visit Patreon.com/MuggleCast to support us. Also, please leave a review in your favorite podcast app, and tell a friend about the show. We’ll see everybody in two weeks. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Bye, everyone
Laura: Bye, y’all.