Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #763, Zero Potters, Maximum Chaos (DH Chapter 4, The Seven Potters)
Cold Open
Laura: So I think in a way, Dumbledore is involved. He just can’t stay out of it. He can’t just be dead. Go away, Dumbledore.
Andrew: [laughs] Get out of here already!
Grace: Such a drama queen.
Andrew: We don’t need you anymore.
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’re your Harry Potter friends, gathering to talk about the books and the movies and the upcoming TV show, so make sure you’re following us in your favorite podcast app, and that way you’ll never miss a new episode every Wednesday. And this week, we hope you like the taste of goblin piss – who wrote this? – because we’re downing some Polyjuice to discuss Chapter 4 of Deathly Hallows, “The Seven Potters.” That was a Micah line, wasn’t it?
Laura: I was going to say, you know who wrote that. [laughs]
Eric: Who is listening right now going, “Ah, yeah, love that stuff. Oh, yeah. All right.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Well, I thought we could borrow a bit from the movie, because it is a line from the movie…
Andrew: Ohh.
Micah: … and it is in tribute to the individual that we will be losing in this chapter.
Eric: Oh, of course, the fallen warrior.
Micah: Yes.
Andrew: Aw. Well, helping us with today’s discussion is a longtime member of the Harry Potter fandom, and author, Grace Candido-Beecher! Welcome, Grace, to the podcast!
Grace Candido-Beecher: I am thrilled to be here. I’m weirdly enough mentally still stuck on the goblin piss line.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Grace: I’m trying to get myself past it, and we can do it together, holding hands.
Andrew: It gets a little weird here occasionally.
Grace: You said in tribute to Moody, and then all I could picture was like, so Moody’s Polyjuice tastes like goblin piss? I completely…
[Andrew laughs]
Grace: It’s very fun, though.
Andrew: Just another day working with Micah.
[Grace laughs]
Micah: It’s a line from Deathly Hallows – Part 1.
Andrew: Yes, yes.
Micah: To which Fred and George respond, “Just trying to defuse the tension.”
Andrew: Grace, you just published, back in April, the book Voldemort: An Unofficial Exploration, so tell us about the book.
Grace: It’s got my heart and soul in it. [laughs]
Andrew: Aww.
Grace: Voldemort is on the back of my head directing me. That’s how I wrote it.
[Andrew laughs]
Grace: It’s an exploration of Tom Riddle’s life, basically the psychology and the events behind what makes you into the kind of person that does the things that he does. A lot of the unanswered questions are discussed; a lot of fan theories are in there. A lot of really fun research went into it, so I am thrilled that it’s finally out and I get to share it with the world. Tom has been a character I’ve always been interested in. He’s always discussed at a surface level, but not at a deeper level, and I wanted to put something out into the world that gave people permission to say, “Oh, I really do want to discuss these deeper issues with this character.”
Andrew: In a way, maybe are people hesitant to discuss him because he’s such an awful being?
Grace: Yes, but also, it’s like there’s half of the people who feel like they don’t want to discuss him because he’s awful, and there’s another bit of the fandom that thinks that he’s basically laughable and doesn’t deserve discussion, that he’s just this surface level character. I love the deeper issues that come with Tom Riddle’s character. In going through the book and creating it, I felt like I had a greater appreciation for the character, and weirdly enough, if you can learn to love this character, you can learn to love darker aspects of yourself, and you could look them in the face and say, “I want to embody a better person. I want to face those things rather than shielding them away.”
Micah: This is very interesting.
Grace: So it’s an exercise in empathy in a lot of ways.
Andrew: This is a great way of selling the book.
Grace: Thanks. That’s what I’m hoping, baby.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Micah?
Micah: Well, Andrew just regularly talks about wanting to create Horcruxes, so I’m a little concerned that maybe he shouldn’t read this book.
Andrew: This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is my opportunity.
Laura: Oh no.
Andrew: It’s time to lean into my evilness.
Grace: Well, I’ve got instructions included at Chapter 7. [laughs]
Andrew: No, no. [laughs] That would be amazing if you did.
Grace: There is a lot of Horcrux discussion.
Andrew: That’s awesome.
Grace: There’s some speculation on what goes into making them, but we can discuss that another day.
Andrew: So listeners, we’ll have links in the show notes to check out Grace’s book.
Grace: Also, the audiobook is out too, if you would prefer that medium.
Andrew: Oh, fantastic. Okay, cool. Grace, per MuggleCast tradition, we also need to get your fandom ID. Can you give us that, please?
Grace: You got it. My favorite book, Chamber of Secrets; favorite movie, Goblet of Fire; Hogwarts House, Slytherin; Patronus, cat, I think? And oh, my favorite Voldemort line. Well, there’s always the classic, “There is only power and those too weak to seek it,” and there’s… oh my God, what’s the…? I quoted it in an art piece that I did. “Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.” Yes, I did get that off of Google. I don’t have it memorized. I’m so sorry.
Andrew: [laughs] That’s okay.
Grace: Generally, if we’re talking about a favorite Tom scene, though, I really love his introduction in Chamber of Secrets, where he’s this 16-year-old gloating the whole time. It’s just so much fun to read. I love going through that scene with him.
Andrew: Fantastic. Well, welcome to the show again, Grace, and we’re looking forward to all of your wisdom today. Needless to say, I think listeners are already gathering that you know your stuff, so can’t wait to discuss today’s chapter with you.
Grace: Thank you, and I’m honored to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, and I’ve been a fan of this podcast for ages.
Andrew: Aw, thank you. Well, the pleasure is all ours.
Grace: You guys are incredible.
Andrew: Oh, thank you. We appreciate that. Before we continue, though, it is time for this week’s Quizzitch question.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: This is a play-along Quizzitch, as a reminder to everybody. We’ll be answering this later in the episode. The question is: Which Order members’ homes are mentioned as some of the 12 potential safe houses in this chapter?
Andrew: Listeners make this show possible, so if you love MuggleCast as much as Mundungus loves an Irish exit, we would love your support in a bunch of different ways. First and best, head over to Patreon.com/MuggleCast and become a member of our community today. To thank you, you’ll receive new bonus episodes of the show every month, also ad-free episodes of the main show, access to our recording studio, an on-air shout-out, and lots more. We can’t do this without you, so thank you in advance. And we’d also appreciate if you left us a review in your favorite podcast app, or told a fellow Muggle about our show. Finally, you can visit MuggleCastMerch.com to buy official show gear. Before we jump into Chapter by Chapter, I also just wanted to mention I recently traveled over to Europe, and y’all, I’m walking through the streets of Rome, I’m on the phone with my mom, and we walk by a family of three. And I’m not listening to the streets around me; I’m talking to my mother. And Pat and our two friends go, “Andrew, Andrew,” and I’m like, “What?” They go, “That person just asked if you’re Andrew from MuggleCast.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I was like, “Mom, I gotta go.” I turn around and I talk to this guy. I didn’t get his name. I got his son’s name, who he was carrying; his son’s name was Miles. And we took a selfie. And it was just so bizarre to be in Rome of all places and I bumped into a MuggleCast listener. So it was a very cute moment, and my friends were very impressed that somebody recognized me from the podcast. [laughs]
Micah: Nice. Were they also on vacation, or were they from Rome?
Andrew: No, they were Americans; they were also on vacation. We were just heading back to the train station too. It’s like, what are the chances of that? And it was a hot-ass day.
Micah: Magic.
Eric: I was posting your daily itinerary to the interwebs, Andrew, by the way.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I was like, “Stalk Andrew! He will like it.” No, no, no.
Andrew: So sorry I didn’t get your name, but I did get your son’s name, and it was nice meeting you. What, Laura?
Laura: It’s this unmistakable voice that you carry with you everywhere you go.
Andrew: [laughs] You know how weird it is to have friends with you and you get recognized by a listener? That is just… they’re like, “Oh, wow, you really do have listeners on your podcast.” [laughs]
Laura: I have to say, I’ve never had that happen. That sounds wild.
Andrew: It makes me blush. Anyway.
Laura: Well, you’re not expecting it in the moment.
Andrew: Exactly, yeah.
Grace: But since you were in Rome, you were talking to tua mamma.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Pat actually did hear somebody go “Mamma mia,” and he was very satisfied by that.
Eric: Authentically? An authentic “Mamma mia”?
Andrew: Yeah, authentically.
Grace: There are people in my family that say “Mamma mia” authentically. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh, wow.
Eric: There you go.
Andrew: I love that.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Anyway, all right, so let’s get into this week’s chapter. We’re discussing Chapter 4 of Deathly Hallows, “The Seven Potters,” and we’ll start with our Seven-Word Summary mini-game.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Andrew: Moody…
Micah: … helps…
Grace: … Harry…
Laura: … escape…
Eric: … safely…
Micah: … from…
Andrew: … Voldemort.
Laura: Hey, look at that.
Andrew: [laughs] That one went great. That one went great.
Eric: That was an example of a…
Grace: That one was logical.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: That was a pretty linear one. I’m proud of us.
Andrew: That’s the most we can ask for, that it ends up logical.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Micah: Before we get to Moody being able to help Harry escape Voldemort, a bunch of folks need to transform into Harry, and I think where we last left off – because it’s been a while since we recorded an episode – the Dursleys are no longer at Privet Drive, Harry is there by himself, he is about to turn 17, and he gets a knock on the door, or at least the back door. Is it the back door? I’m trying to remember.
Eric: Yeah, and he goes out and lets everybody in.
Micah: They come in through the garden. But anyway, as we all know, there is this plan that is put in place for six of Harry’s closest friends to transform into him, and I wanted to, at the outset, just discuss: Do we think that this plan is brilliant, or unnecessarily risky? And maybe it’s both.
Eric: I think what helped me weigh that question is, in the chapter, getting reintroduced to what has changed, in that the Death Eaters are now pretty much in control of the Ministry. So Pius Thicknesse, who’s in charge, has actually outlawed the adding of Privet Drive to the Floo Network, he’s made it illegal to get Portkeys to or from, and then there’s one more. Is it Apparition? There’s a third way of protection that’s just completely out. And so looking at what is available to them, I think this plan is brilliant, because they do it without breaking the law. Even though the concern is, of course, just to get Harry safe, their options have been severely limited by the fact that the people in charge that want to harm and capture Harry have been doing everything they can to litigate and make it all much more dangerous.
Andrew: Yeah. I also just like the symbolism of Harry’s people being the ones to help him this time around. He’s been doing, as we talk a lot about, the whole saving people thing across the series, and now it’s his turn to get assistance from others, and I think that’s just a very poetic moment for this final book in the series. It is crazy risky, though. I don’t know, if I was one of these six other people, if I would be willing to volunteer to do this, but it also just speaks to how brave everybody in this situation is, and how they’re all willing to fight for the greater good.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, if you’re Fred or George Weasley, the target that’s on your back? Yeah, you’re an Order member, and yeah, you’ve peeved off some Death Eaters, but your target number is way down on the list compared to Harry Potter, Undesirable Number One. It’s like, “Ooh, I’m going to transform into looking like my best friend, or like the hero, the Chosen One.” You’re putting a much higher profile around yourself for that period of time.
Laura: Andrew, I was going to ask, what if it was one of us? What if it was Micah?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: No? You wouldn’t do it for Micah?
Andrew: No comment.
Laura: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, okay, fine. I’ll do it for all of you.
[Laura laughs]
Grace: Should we all transform into Micah?
Eric: I would absolutely transform into Micah for an hour!
Laura: Yeah, 100%!
Andrew: The Seven Micahs.
Eric: Because then I’d get to use his voice!
[Grace laughs]
Eric: I’d get to say all the inappropriate things that… actually, I’d get to say all the nicest, least inappropriate things that I don’t think have ever been uttered by Micah.
Andrew: If I get to wear the glasses he’s currently wearing, I’m definitely in.
Micah: All right.
Eric: They’re really nice glasses.
Grace: They are really nice glasses.
Micah: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Grace: We’ve got two pairs of really nice glasses here. If you’re not looking at the video, guys, you’re missing out.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: So of course, hindsight is 20/20, and we can look back and know that, yes, this was risky. It was successful, but there was a lot of collateral that came with it. So I’m curious, do any other options come to mind that maybe were a bit overlooked?
Grace: Feel free to correct me on this, because I’m not certain if this was ruled out for some reason. Why wasn’t Harry just transformed with the Polyjuice Potion rather than having seven other people transform into him?
Eric: Oh, so none of them are Harry.
Grace: Yeah, so no one’s Harry.
Andrew: [laughs] The Zero Potters.
Grace: They walk out of the house as just a bunch of randos.
Eric: “The Zero Potters” would be a great chapter title.
[Grace laughs]
Eric: That’s a good question, kind of, because then they would spend the first ten minutes following and shooting spells at everybody. That’s really interesting.
Andrew: Well, that’s the thing. They know where Harry is; he’s got to be at Privet Drive, right? So somebody walking out of that house has to be Harry Potter. That’s my only…
Grace: In a weird way, does it? What if the ploy was, I don’t know, maybe someone else takes the Polyjuice Potion, Harry stays in the house, and then they take off afterwards or something. Or maybe… oh, maybe there is the Seven Potters plan, but Harry actually gets an unregistered Portkey, and then they just deal with the legality of that issue later. They break the law and just completely don’t even care about it. My idea was maybe the Portkey gets mired in some kind of paperwork later on; they make sure that the legality of it doesn’t actually go to any sort of court system.
Andrew: Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Just go through with it; deal with it later. [laughs]
Grace: Yeah, because it’s like, if they’re going to mire the escape in legality issues, why not just break the law and try to mire that in legality issues as well?
Micah: What about the sewer system?
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, build a tunnel. That idea came to mind as Grace was talking too.
Grace: It reminds me of… the idea that when Tom came back in the fourth book, the plan that he had was so buck wild that Dumbledore, I think, had a lot of trouble reading the next move. He knew something was going on, but he wasn’t sure exactly what. I feel like this is the same ideology where it’s like, they know something is going on, but they don’t know exactly what. The Death Eaters are trying to figure out what the heck is going on. So in a sense, the crazy idea of Seven Potters works in that way. It’s like, keep them guessing, you know? I just feel like it’s a lot of resources wasted in a lot of ways, because you could have just hid Harry or you just could have broken the law.
Andrew: From a reader perspective, though, it’s so fun. This is such a cool idea.
Grace: Bingo.
Andrew: And I mean, Polyjuice is just throughout the series, and this is an original twist on the Polyjuice Potion premise that we’ve seen so many times. My only other idea was how about a Disillusionment Charm? That’s what they use to get to Privet Drive in the first place. They all become these chameleons and blending in with their surroundings, so why not just use that to get him out? And that way, they’re kind of all wearing Invisibility Cloaks.
Laura: Or even I’m just thinking about the fact that the Dursleys just left with Dedalus Diggle, right, in a car. What if, as part of this, they had smuggled Harry out with the Dursleys, met up with them at some undisclosed location, picked him up there, and then done the Seven Potters thing from the undisclosed location? Maybe.
Grace: What I’m hearing is we should have been on the team planning this. They should have called us, gotten these ideas. [laughs] It also reminds me of there are so few… it’s just like the first wizarding war where there were so few Order members and they’re trying to pull from a pool that… try and get water from a stone. There’s not a lot to draw from here.
Micah: I think that’s one of the biggest challenges, and it seems like it pops up in a couple different places where you just see how stretched thin they are. So I wanted to ask, since we always like to talk about our favorite headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, do we think he would have come up with a little bit better plan? A safer plan? Or was this his plan all along?
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Laura: Is Dumbledore known for coming up with safe plans?
Eric: He’s supposed to… well, safe plans, no.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: But he’s the chess master, right? That’s the general understanding of Dumbledore. He’s the great strategist, and he knows where to put people and do what. I’m surprised that so many of these plans seem Dumbledore-less in their conception, because he really had a lot of time and was more familiar with the inner workings of Voldemort than pretty much anyone else alive, except Grace, of course.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Eric: And so he could have come up with a number of contingencies.
Grace: He should have called me.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, they should have called you. But he could have come up with, I don’t know, a book of contingencies that would outlast him, so hey, in the case of needing to move Harry from Privet Drive, see subsection B, page 34, and then you go to it and it’s like, “Oh, use Polyjuice, or tunnel out, or C, mire it all in legal stuff later. Break the law.”
Grace: [laughs] Break the law, yay.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: That’s just Dumbledore’s number one go-to.
[Grace laughs]
Andrew: You would have thought Dumbledore had some sort of plan in mind for eventually getting Harry out of Privet Drive. I mean, he’s been safe there for the last… for his whole life.
Grace: I don’t think he could have foreseen the Ministry being compromised that early, though. That’s a rough one. Dumbledore is a very clever and intelligent individual, but I feel like in a lot of ways, we turn to him saying, “Why? Why don’t you plan? Plan all of the things; come on,” and it’s like, he doesn’t know everything, and I feel like Dumbledore works at his best when he’s defending, not attacking. He’s much better at planning for an eventual something, like trapping an attacker. He does this with Tom all the time, where it’s like, in these early books, he knows how to trap and contain. I feel like when it comes to you have to move forward with an issue, it takes him a while to do it because they’re very complicated issues, and it’s possible that maybe just the Horcruxes took up all of that time. The hunt had to be a lot, and it did end up taking it out of him. But I think personally, I don’t think he would have pushed Mundungus about it.
Laura: I think there’s some 4-D chess happening from beyond the grave here.
Eric: Because he does… don’t we see Snape consult the portrait of Dumbledore about this?
Laura: Yes, Snape consults the portrait. And I know that the idea of Seven Potters technically comes from Mundungus as far as the Order is concerned, but let’s be real, Mundungus didn’t come up with that on his own.
Eric: Yeah, he was Confunded by Snape.
Laura: Yeah, Snape planted it, right? So I think in a way, Dumbledore is involved. He just can’t stay out of it. He can’t just be dead. Go away, Dumbledore.
Andrew: [laughs] Get out of here already!
Grace: Such a drama queen.
Andrew: We don’t need you anymore.
[Grace and Laura laugh]
Micah: It’s true. It’s surprising, though, that Snape would want seven Harrys when he can barely deal with one.
Andrew: [laughs] [imitating Snape] “My worst nightmare.”
[Ad break]
Micah: I did want to pay a little bit of tribute to our good friend Mad-Eye Moody, as we will lose him a little bit later on in this chapter. He has a really great line, and I don’t think it’s there by accident, when he says that “Our only chance is to use decoys. Even You-Know-Who can’t split himself into seven.”
Grace: I love it. I love it so much.
Andrew: This is an insane line to include. It’s just like it’s almost too much for me. Why do you love it so much, Grace? [laughs]
Grace: I have no idea why I might love that so much. That’s crazy. Wild. Like he could split himself into seven! That’s crazy!
Eric: Oh my God. Okay, the jazz hands really help. For me, it illustrates… it’s a great line. It illustrates how disparate, how different the tiers of knowledge are, the circle of trust that’s around Harry. Even as these people are laying their lives on the line, really only Harry, Hermione, and Ron alive know that, in fact, that’s exactly what Voldemort has done! And presumably Snape, to some degree. But so it’s interesting to hear Moody say this, because Moody is far and above the best protector here, he’s the best soldier that the Order has, and he’s the one… I know we’re going to ask this question later, but if I could pick a guy to ride with, it would be Moody, and then slightly Kingsley. But Moody is just who you think of when you think of a Order member who is a protector who will save you and get you to safety, and so the idea that he doesn’t know the enemy well enough to know what it is in fact that has enabled the enemy to survive all of this time… I mean, presumably nobody knows, but Harry does, Hermione does, Ron does. So that illustrates that for me.
Grace: Well, it’s striking that you should bring this fact up, because that’s how Tom’s Death Eaters work as well. No one knows all of the information; they all know bits and pieces.
Eric: Right.
Grace: And I think the main difference here is that Dumbledore doesn’t pit his followers against each other. Tom pits his followers against each other to gain his favor; it’s just a control tactic that he uses, and Dumbledore is very much a peace and love and warmth kind of person. So they just work a lot in reflection. Whenever you’re talking about how Dumbledore runs his career, you’ll usually find there’s some kind of reflection of that in how Tom does the same.
Micah: So the Seven Potters – and we’ve talked a little bit already about Dung and Harry – but to complete the set, we have Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Fleur. Which one surprises us the most? Putting Mundungus aside because he’s the easy choice, I think, out of the lot.
Andrew: Fleur. She doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of this group. She hasn’t been a very active member of the Order of the Phoenix in terms of fighting or guarding. I just… I don’t… that puzzle piece doesn’t fit to me as much. But Micah, you had a good observation about why she might be there?
Micah: Yeah, I wondered if it was a bit of a thank you for saving her sister – even though she wasn’t really at any kind of risk – in Goblet of Fire.
Eric: Makes sense. I mean, she’s about to be his in-law. Or, well, once Harry marries Ginny. But she’s about to be the Weasley family member.
Andrew: Yeah, and the Weasleys are very much tied to Harry. The Weasleys are his adopted family.
Eric: So she’s basically like a de facto sister to Harry. Give or take a month, give or take 30 days.
Andrew: Yeah. I like this, Micah, and even though she doesn’t say this out loud, I think we could probably go with this. And this also ties into an observation I’ve been making the last few chapters of Deathly Hallows thus far, which is that the story is paying so many tributes to the preceding books, and this is just another one, I guess.
Grace: It’s good that you should bring that up, because my immediate thought was none of these people surprise me because, in the very rudiment definition of the word, this chapter feels very fan service-y at the beginning, where it’s just like, “Hey, remember that guy? They did that thing in that book, and this girl acts this way and does this thing. Ha ha!” It feels very like we’re giving a lot of shout-outs to previous adventures through characters and how they act, and then things get serious later on. But none of them surprise me because these are people that we want to call back to, we want to keep in the mind of the reader.
Eric: And these are the people that are going to be fighting ostensibly the good fight throughout the year when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are off doing their thing. We at least get a little bit of time to spot who the resistance are.
Micah: Further building off of what you were saying, Andrew, just in terms of the tributes of sorts, it made me think when I was looking at the fact that there are so many members of the Weasley family who are present for this particular adventure, where you have obviously Ron, Fred, and George, but then also you have Arthur and Bill, who are serving as protectors and presumably being put… I mean, we can probably argue who’s in a bigger position of risk, the protector or the Harry…
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: … but I mean, they’re all in grave danger, and they’re all… these are five members of Molly’s family that are willing to go out there and risk their lives for Harry. I mean, that’s a lot.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. That’s half of her family, immediate family.
Grace: Also, not to forget Fabian and Gideon Prewett were also lost in the first war, so there’s been a lot of people in the Weasley family line that have been lost. And honestly, it just makes… oh, God, it makes me think about Molly and her boggart over and over again when it comes to stuff like this. They are constantly putting themselves in danger; it’s no wonder she’s having a conniption over this all the time. I would be too!
Eric: Well, the other aspect of that, though, is that the Weasleys are all, to a person, Gryffindors, and Gryffindors are brave, and this may be them exhibiting their House trait, essentially, by always being the leaders in the battle.
Andrew: And on Molly, I’ll just add – I don’t know if it’s this chapter or the next chapter – but she’s worried sick about everybody getting back.
Micah: It’s next chapter, yeah. So the pairings are also very interesting, and I’m going to let probably Grace talk a little bit more about that in a second, but I wanted to call out the fact that Ron got paired up with Tonks, both of whom either are or become future Aurors. Even though I know, Eric, you noted here, Ron is not too excited about his partner. [laughs] And then Hermione is paired up with Kingsley, both of whom become Minister for Magic. So I don’t know if that was intentional in any way.
Andrew: The latter one is awesome. I’ll pretend that one’s intentional.
Micah: Okay, I like that one.
Eric: Yeah. I think Ron just always pictures Tonks as for the clumsy person and not as the person that was Mad-Eye’s protégé and a competent Auror, because she’s more personable than all that. She’s not stodgy like Mundungus is. I think Ron maybe has some very traditional ideas about who’s a good warrior based on what they look like, and some of the things that Tonks has done to entertain everybody over the years.
Laura: Which is kind of funny because Ron is not exactly graceful himself.
Micah: It’s very true.
Eric: Yeah, who do we dislike sort of the most is people who remind us of ourselves, maybe.
Laura: Yeah, that’s true.
Grace: A lot of judgment coming from Ron over here.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Grace: He’s definitely feeling the teenager that he is. He is definitely a teenager in this scene. [laughs]
Eric: He’s got some growing yet to do.
Micah: And the one other pairing I did want to talk about briefly was Harry and Hagrid, because it is Hagrid who brings Harry to Privet Drive in Philosopher’s Stone on Sirius’s motorbike, and they depart on Sirius’s motorbike in this chapter.
Grace: I know I called it ring theory in the notes, but I’m thinking back on it now, and I’m like, maybe… because this is a thing. Yes, it’s ring theory, and that is very distinctly the Privet Drive scene. I feel like it’s better ring theory if you consider that Hagrid takes him out of the forest at the end of the book. That’s, I think, more solid ring theory to the very beginning of the book. So yes, it’s ring theory, but I feel like the better example of it is for later on. So I’ll call myself out on that. How dare you, Grace? How dare you bring up ring theory right now? [laughs]
Andrew: No, no.
Laura: No, I think the imagery works in both cases, though.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. And I just… often on the show, we’re calling out ring theory and connecting the threads, and I love that we do this on the show, and we note so many cool parallels and threads throughout the series and whatnot. But this one in particular had to be very intentional. There’s no way it was not intentional.
Micah: Especially with the bike. That’s an added element. It’s not just Hagrid coming to take Harry away; it’s that they’re riding the same motorbike that they rode in on. Plus a few additions from Mr. Weasley, which we’ll chat about in a little bit.
[Andrew laughs]
Grace: The Mario Kart additions?
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Micah: Yeah, exactly. But you have some really great analysis here on the Seven Harrys, Grace.
Grace: Yeah, thank you so much, by the way. In the Voldemort book, there’s a section where I go through each of the Horcruxes and I compare them to the seven deadly sins, and go through as to why each one pertains to them. And it was a lot of fun for me to parse that out, but I think the most fun part of this exercise is asking other people what they think, because you can literally organize this in any way you want. It’s a very fun little character analysis thing to do. In opposition to the seven Horcruxes being the seven deadly sins, I see Seven Harrys as seven divine virtues. And if you do not know what a divine virtue is, I only learned recently because I was studying the seven deadly sins. So the Encyclopedia Britannica says that it was “One of the first iterations of the seven heavenly virtues was offered by the 5th century writer Prudentius in his poem Psychomachia (‘The Contest of the Soul’). His seven virtues included chastity, faith, good works, concord, sobriety, patience, and humility.” We’re going to go with the ones that are more commonly known now; it’s humility, chastity, gratitude, patience, diligence, temperance, and charity. And I matched them up in a specific way, but please feel free to match up your own way. This is the fun part of it. I said that Ron was humility because he will be forced to come to terms with his own self-loathing, and in doing so, realizing that the strengths he didn’t consider to be true before are true now. He keeps the party together and focused upon his return, and he supports Hermione’s causes and supports Harry’s mission in doing so.
Andrew: I think that’s perfect.
Grace: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I labeled Hermione as chastity in regards to how she views romance, because she waits until Ron shows her the proper respect and understanding before she admits her feelings and admits to their connection. I put Fleur as gratitude because, as the note that we were discussing before, where she knows that she owes Harry a debt of gratitude for saving her sister, she pays it forward here in this extremely dangerous and large plan. I would say Mundungus is patience because he waited for the right moment to dip.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Pretty generous, but yeah.
Grace: Exactly. I would say that Fred is diligence because he is hardworking and ambitious, and he knows his goals and aims for them without fail; this includes defending Harry. George is temperance because he’s ready to let Fred be the leader of their dynamic duo, but still believes in his convictions just as strongly without being recognized for it. And Harry is charity because he’s ready to give his life to save the world.
Andrew: Aw.
Grace: Ta-da!
Laura: This is wonderful.
Grace: Jazz hands again. I hope you don’t mind. It’s a theme here.
Andrew: And snaps. No, I think this is perfect too. In terms of rearranging any of these, nothing super jumping out to me, other than I just hate that Mundungus gets any of these. [laughs]
Grace: I feel bad that Mundungus is even a part of this.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Grace: I really do. I feel for him. Even though he shows a lot of cowardice in this moment, I really don’t think he should have been included, period. He did not sign up. He has shown in the past that he is not dependable in these ways. Why could it not have been six Harrys?
Eric: Here’s a question… well, isn’t seven the most magically powerful number?
Andrew: Because there’s two numbers we use all the time, yeah, seven and twelve, in the Harry Potter series. It’s illegal to use any other number.
Grace: You’re right. What was I thinking?
Eric: Yes, that is true. They will get sued. There would be a protracted court battle about it. But no, the thing about Mundungus… you’re right, he’s been unreliable, Grace; I find that 100% true. What I was thinking, though… it came to me when I was reading this chapter. I was like, “Wait a minute, Dung is actually really, really good, though, historically, at getting out of scrapes.”
Micah: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
Eric: He’s probably not super often been arrested for… because he’s a criminal! He’s a criminal, so he is kind of weasel-y and… I think the thing where they misjudge him is they judge his self-preservation, and as soon as he’s able to Disapparate, he does, and that’s bad. But in terms of actually escaping without any harm coming to him, he succeeds 100%, and so I think that they were just hoping that he would use his skills, at being squirmy and getting away, for the greater good, and he just decided not to do that. So they misjudge him there, but they don’t…
Grace: I think that’s a really great theory on it. I think Dung is one of those characters where he’s among a handful of characters that I would love to see more scenes with, and there’s just not enough time in the story to do it, and he’s not important enough in the story to do it.
Eric: Right, right.
Grace: But diving deeper into Mundungus’s entire schtick, how he got involved with the Order in general, I would love to see something like that, just personally. I think he’s a really interesting character. I know it’s weird; I think that these weird side characters are very interesting, but I wish I saw more.
Eric: Well, I can’t wait for the Dung book, the Dung tell-all.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Grace: No, I’m good for now. I’m good.
Eric: You could call it “Heaps of Dung.”
Grace: That was so much.
Laura: “Heaps of Dung.” [laughs]
Eric: No, the other thing is that compared to… let’s look at the skill levels, right? Dung is an adult wizard, like him or not, and it’s perfectly fine and understandable if you don’t like him. He’s probably more skilled than most of these children, these literal children that are also posing as Harry. I mean, he’s at least completed Hogwarts, so he’s presumably more skilled than… let’s give him Ron and Harry. And then we know Fred and George are brilliant in their own way, but as an adult wizard, he’s probably been through more scrapes, probably had to issue more defensive curses from actual unsavory people in his time. He’s probably more experienced than we’re giving him credit for at escaping these…
Grace: But just because he’s experienced doesn’t mean he’s going to have the backbone to do something.
Micah: He’s not trustworthy.
Grace: Yes.
Eric: Yeah, they completely misjudge him. But in terms of his skillset, I feel like it’s unquestionable that he could, if he wanted to, have really helped them out here and been an asset to them, instead of just an ass.
[Grace laughs]
Micah: I think we need to learn more about him in terms of how accomplished he actually is in that area.
Eric: Well, but more than Harry and Ron, we agree?
Micah: Harry and Ron have been through some stuff.
Eric: That’s true.
Micah: I wouldn’t… and whether or not Harry is willing to use the appropriate spell, I won’t get into that.
Andrew: I just… I think we’ll talk more about this in next week’s episode, but talk about the numbers game and who you’re going to pick. I think another factor is that you probably want an adult over a child, because the adults have lived more of their lives already. They’re kind of easier to sacrifice or put in harm’s way. Because who else are you going to pull? If you’re not picking Dung, are you going to pick another student? Is that really the right choice? Are you going to put Luna into danger? Ginny?
Micah: Yeah, and then we will discuss that, but I think the other key issue there is are they of age, right? Because it’s probably more of a movie-ism where Moody says basically they’re of age; it’s their decision. You can’t tell them that they’re not allowed to take the Polyjuice Potion. This is when Harry is protesting. I don’t know. Luna is a year younger, right? So she wouldn’t be of age. Ginny is a year younger, so she wouldn’t be of age.
Andrew: Do you mean book-ism? I think Moody says that in the book too, no?
Laura: Even if he doesn’t, it’s implied, because we know all of these characters are of age at this point. Harry is the only one who’s not.
Micah: So shall we descend into complete chaos now that we’ve transformed into the Seven Potters?
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: They’re attacked almost immediately, and this would beg the question: Normally, should there have been an Advanced Guard? I’m rethinking the question now, even as we’re discussing here, because those people probably would have been killed immediately.
Eric: Yeah, and the purpose of an Advanced Guard, as we last saw it used, wouldn’t work here because there’s nothing to get out in advance of. They won’t be able to see the area where Harry and his friends are escaping from until the charm breaks, and so getting out ahead doesn’t necessarily serve that much of a purpose, because by that point, you’ll be ahead of the villains as well.
Grace: Yeah, doesn’t that basically give away the surprise of what you’re trying to do?
Eric: It’d give people a beacon of where to look and prepare.
Andrew: Yeah, because they were trying to throw them off as to when they’d be transferring Harry.
Micah: That’s why you go through the sewers.
Andrew: I guess they could have had an Advanced Guard go on a totally different day? I don’t know.
Grace: It’s not such that it’s a terrible idea, because you’re basically choosing one over the other. You could have the element of surprise, or you could have a safer passage. You don’t know what you’re going to find there, so I don’t know. Pick your poison, right?
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it, because you’re just putting more people in danger too. And how many Death Eaters do they have on standby ready to fight and try to identify Harry?
Micah: Quite a bit. More than they have Order members that are willing to participate in this exercise.
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
[Ad break]
Micah: Complete chaos at the end of the day, and of course, we’re going to end up following Harry and his journey with Hagrid to inevitably get to safety. But one of the early casualties that we do experience during this melee is Hedwig, and I had forgotten that Hedwig is still inside her cage. She is not out flying around, coming to Harry’s defense like she does in the movies, which I think actually gives her a little bit more of a send-off than just keeping her cooped up in that cage and accidentally getting hit with the Killing Curse. And I know we’ve spoken about this a lot on the show, but her death really does symbolize the end of his childhood more than anything. And going back to Hagrid, right? This is one of the first real items in the wizarding world… and not to call the owl an item, but you know what I mean.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: This was like a rite of passage, almost, to receive his Hogwarts owl from Hagrid, and then this unfortunately happens as they’re trying to escape Privet Drive.
Andrew: Yeah, and I think the author said in a post-Deathly Hallows interview that the intention to… that she decided to kill Hedwig to mark the end of his childhood. That was the whole reason that she did it. But it also, to me, feels like it’s the final nail in his childhood coffin. First Sirius, then Dumbledore, and now Hedwig. These are three figures who helped him get through Hogwarts and are now gone, and in some ways, he’s now on his own without these three in his life.
Eric: He’s definitely… when I read this chapter without any additional context that’s been provided to it, I just get struck with how brutal it is, especially because Hedwig is still in her cage, like Micah was saying. It’s brutal, it’s vicious, it’s unforgiving. It really sets the tone as far as how the rest of the book is going to be. Nobody’s safe. If the owl got it, nobody is safe.
Grace: Yeah, it really does start the story with a bang.
Eric: And that was Harry’s not just connection to the wizarding world, but connection to other wizards, his communication, his outside line. An owl delivering his mail. He’s going to be cut off from other wizards this entire book, and it’s because no one is there to help him correspond with the outside world as well, so it symbolizes, for me, isolation.
Grace: That’s an incredible point.
Laura: Ooh, and the fact that she’s stuck in her cage when she dies too. If you’re talking about isolation. Poor Hedwig.
Micah: She was his sidekick, too, in a lot of ways, right? She always knew where to go.
Grace: I feel like this death in tandem with Dobby’s death… Dobby’s death for me, I think, really marked Harry’s stepping into his role as a leader. I think those two almost… they’re not bookends, because they’re not exactly in the first chapter, but the one happening roughly in the beginning and one happening quite near the end really helps to develop Harry.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Kyle, who’s listening live on our Patreon right now, he also says he appreciates how senseless Hedwig’s death is, in that it speaks a lot to the world. And like we’re saying here, it does really set up what’s to come in this book. Nobody is safe.
Micah: Absolutely. And it’s really… it’s an interesting contrast, right? Sort of the chaos that’s going on, and just the casualty of Hedwig almost being a bystander of sorts in everything that’s happening. And these Death Eaters are firing off all of these curses left and right; they don’t really care who they hit, what they hit. But then we’re given this juxtaposition with Harry and Stan, where Harry, once Stan’s hood drops, can’t bring himself to do anything other than disarm Stan, and this is what gives him away ultimately to Voldemort. Which, in the movie it was Hedwig, which to me makes a lot more sense than just a teenager…
Eric: I like it. I like it.
Grace: Because what if someone else randomly used that attack?
Micah: Exactly. It is his signature spell.
Laura: Well, and he’s used it before. That’s why they recognize it.
Grace: And the Snape fans will be quick to remind us that Snape was the one who taught it to Harry initially, so it’s an interesting source.
Eric: Oh. Well, taught? Bullied into? Taught at the Dueling Club. But yeah, it’s a fair point all the same.
Micah: Right.
Grace: [laughs] Potatoes, po-tah-toes for Snape, really.
Andrew: And I think the Death Eaters know that it’s in Harry’s character to use Expelliarmus to just disarm rather than stun or kill, so that may have been another tell as well, as Lupin brings up to Harry in the next chapter.
Eric: Yeah, I feel like it’s a fair point that maybe some of the other students could have defaulted to that. Maybe not for the same reasons, if they recognized Stan, but because at that point, how many of them could really do an AK curse if they needed to, versus how many spells have they really learned over these years? It’s an open question, right? So maybe somebody gets Stunned, maybe somebody gets Impedimenta‘d, and the other person gets disarmed. What are you going to do? I’m just throwing whatever I can out here.
Laura and Micah: Yeah.
Laura: I do think it’s interesting, though, that Harry doesn’t want to stun Stan, just because he recognizes him. Because we see him using Stunning Spells at other points in this chapter. He’s described as using Stunning Spells, he’s described as using Confringo and Impedimenta and other things, so…
Micah: He’s playing Hogwarts Legacy. That’s it.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Yeah, he can only have four spells at a time on his wheel.
Eric: Oh, he’s got to change the wheel. It takes forever.
[Laura laughs]
Grace: And everything pauses and he changes the wheel. I’m way too lazy to map out the other wheel, so I just use one.
Andrew: Same.
Grace: So it’s always me swapping things out.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: I did have the second wheel. There were just too many fun spells.
Andrew: But it speaks to Harry’s heart. He knows Stan, and he doesn’t want to hurt him. It’s an impossible position to be in for Harry.
Eric: Yes, I agree with that.
Grace: It’s rough. And okay, this is maybe a little off topic: Do we ever get confirmation on was Stan being controlled? Was he a Death Eater at this point? Was he controlled and then turned into a Death Eater? I don’t think anything’s ever come down and said details on that specifically.
Laura: I thought he was Imperiused?
Grace: That was the implication, but we never get an answer as to if he initially was and then was turned, or if he just agreed to it.
Eric: Here’s my narrative of it, is he’s a bit of a bragger, right? He was telling people at the Quidditch World Cup about his crazy broom that could fly to the moon or whatever. [laughs] But at the point where he’s arrested, by the Ministry that wants to prove that it’s doing something, when in fact it couldn’t be further from the truth, he’s put in Azkaban. Who’s in Azkaban? Actual criminals, actual hardened criminals, and so they need victims to Imperius. So when there’s the mass breakout of Azkaban, which is talked briefly on in the next chapter, Lupin is like, “Well, do you think they were going to publicize it?” They take Stan, and he’s no longer in Azkaban, but he’s fully Imperiused. He’s taken over completely. So in this chapter, he’s shown as having a blank stare, is what Harry sees, is his blank face.
Grace: Ah, that might be it then. I think my theory – which doesn’t hold water at all, by the way – my theory was that him being in Azkaban with the Death Eaters swayed him to their side, because they were already saying that he was a Death Eater anyway, so the only way that he could go at this point was to just join.
Eric: A bit like the Barty Crouch, Jr. situation, where your father looks down on you so much, and then you become just the worst that you can be because you hate him and you hate authority.
Grace: [laughs] They agreed to give him a broom that took him to the moon. That was the problem.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I love that.
Micah: It’s wild that these ancillary characters like Mundungus Fletcher and Stan Shunpike can have such a major impact on the outcome of this chapter.
Grace: It’s bonkers.
Micah: And I think we can talk more about this when we get to the next chapter, but I really have a problem with… if the Order members – particularly Lupin – were so dead set against Harry using Expelliarmus, they should have told him at Private Drive, “Do not use this spell under any circumstances.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: “By the way, people are betting on Polymarket. There’s a bit of a pool going of what spell you’re going to use to defend yourself, FYI. Actually, Dung put $20 against you that you were going to use Expelliarmus.”
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Eric: “You’ve got to prove us wrong, dude. Don’t do that.”
Laura: Well, and I mean, isn’t Harry kind of making things worse by using magic at all, since the Trace is still on him?
Eric: Oh, yeah. Things might be happening so fast…
Andrew: Yeah, what else is he supposed to do, though?
Grace: But he’s around so many adults, right? They can’t… if he’s around a bunch of adults, it doesn’t register, exactly.
Laura: Right, so they can’t narrow it down.
Grace: The Trace is so weird.
Laura: But they can narrow down if there is magic happening around and under each person, right? So I guess they’re screwed either way.
Eric: Well, at this point, he’s of age. The second the charm breaks… or no, he’s not yet. Not for another two weeks.
Laura: No, he’s not. They’re leaving early.
Micah: I don’t understand the Trace anyway.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. It’s inconsistent.
Micah: Yeah, it’s an added inconsistency. One thing I did want to touch on very quickly, because I thought it was super cool and something I forgot about until I reread this chapter, was all the modifications that Arthur Weasley made to Sirius’s motorbike. The brick wall, the dragon fire… which, Grace, you had some really amazing analogies that maybe even will work their way into a title of this episode.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Grace: I said everyone is out there playing Grand Theft Auto, and Hagrid is playing Mario Kart, and winning, by the way.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: He’s blue shelling and banana-ing like nobody else.
Grace: He is. I would not be surprised if one of those buttons was the bananas coming out the back.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Eric: The bananas button, yeah. Absolutely.
Grace: There’s no looking back, too, whenever he does it. [laughs]
Andrew: And by the way, Micah, I’m kind of surprised you said you forgot about these modifications, because you might remember on the Universal coaster, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, there’s that big purple button on the front, and you press it at one point.
Micah: Ahh.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: There’s dialogue; I guess Hagrid says, “Press the button” or something like that. It doesn’t really do anything from what I recall, but it’s still just a reference to this moment, which I thought was really clever.
Grace: [laughs] Can you imagine? “Press the button!” And then nothing happens.
Andrew: I’m pretty sure nothing happens.
Eric: It technically saves the ride, because you’ve gone backwards a bit at that point. You need to go forwards again, past the end.
Andrew: Something should happen. Maybe sounds? I don’t know. [laughs] But anyway, I like that the button was there.
Grace: You should cast the magic. That should be what happens, is you actually cast magic.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: The craziest thing for me – and we’re not going to touch on this too much – but talking about Mario Kart and cartoony type stuff, the sidecar separates from the motorbike, and I had totally forgotten that this happens.
Laura: I forgot about that too.
Eric: Obviously, it’s a very precarious situation for Harry, who uses Wingardium Leviosa when he’s falling, and it keeps the… I don’t know how you Leviosa something that you’re sitting in, whether… because where is it levitating away from? Are you able to point your wand to control it? But anyway, it kind of keeps it steady a little bit longer than it otherwise would have. It’s a very aerodynamic sidecar. But it’s basically Looney Tunes logic.
Andrew: Yes.
Grace: It’s so good.
Eric: It’s like Wile E. Coyote when he runs off of the cliff…
[Grace laughs]
Eric: … and he’s able to keep going until he looks down and realizes, “There’s just air beneath me,” and then it, phwoof, like that.
Andrew: This makes as much sense to me as the Trace. I don’t see how this could actually work. I think Looney Tunes logic is a great way to put it, Eric, but I use that phrase in a less generous way. [laughs] I just don’t think this makes sense at all.
Eric: You do what you can. I think the point is… he’s already exhausted all of his spell repertoire, there’s some spells he found out he can’t use because they’re a giveaway, and he loses his best protector in this chapter. It’s just a mess, but I think it’s meant to set up the danger ahead.
Micah: Well, maybe it was also to set up Hagrid going full WWE…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: … and flying off the top rope of Sirius’s motorbike onto this Death Eater and plummeting all the way.
Grace: I love it. He does a Spear.
[Grace and Micah laugh]
Grace: It’s a WWE Spear; you just launch yourself.
Eric: He basically did a Snorlax body slam.
Micah: We do need a “Max that.” I couldn’t hear if you played it, Andrew.
Andrew: Oh, I didn’t play it.
[“Max that” sound effect plays]
Micah: Let’s wrap up talking about Voldemort, who apparently can fly now.
Grace: So cool.
Micah: He’s been alerted to the fact that Harry has used Expelliarmus, so he must have found the true Harry.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: And he’s got a big problem, though: His wand doesn’t work.
Grace: Well, Lucius’s wand doesn’t work, thank you very much.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Obviously the Voldemort author would say that.
Micah: Yes, Lucius’s wand is shooting blanks.
Grace: His wand also would not have worked. [laughs] Okay, firstly, I love the fact that Tom can fly, and for some reason, I remember the first time I read the book, I had a feeling that Tom could fly without the aid of something else, just because it seemed like a very fun villain thing to do, and to have it be confirmed in this book, I was cheering. I was absolutely cheering. I was jumping on my bed. I was having so much fun.
Eric: It’s a big deal in the book!
Grace: It is.
Eric: He’s the only one who can do it, and I’m sure you probably dislike, as I do, how Order of the Phoenix, the movie, all the Death Eaters are kind of smokey flying into the scene, and it just kind of ruins or cheapens…
Micah: I mean, in fairness, if Voldemort showed up on a broom, that’s not going to…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: That is not sinister.
Grace: It would probably be a scary broom if he had a broom, okay?
Eric: Maybe the author was… oh, yeah, the broom would be a bone like his wand is.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Grace: It would be in the shape of a snake or something. I don’t know.
Eric: He could ride Nagini into battle.
Andrew: Nagini, yeah! “Nagini, fly!”
[Grace laughs]
Eric: It’s a very still Nagini.
Grace: But I was reminded when I was writing about his ability to fly… I don’t know if anybody else has read the Interview with the Vampire series; I read it a long time ago. But I was reminded when I was studying the ability to fly how Lestat describes flight, vampire flight, and he describes it as being the furthest away from humanity that he’s ever been. It’s like he is the coldest being that he ever was; he is so departed that he’s not even walking amongst people. And I could not help but think when Tom is flying, this must be how he feels and how safe he must feel in this, because he is trying to make himself into some sort of deific figure, and basically departing from humanity, being able to only rely on solely his power – not on Thestrals, not on brooms, not on any sort of innate incantation – he can just fly. That must be so, so enthralling to him. It must be such a such a wonderful feeling to be departed from the rest of the lowly individuals around him.
Andrew: Oh, his ego must absolutely love this, that he has this power and nobody else does.
Grace: Oh, God. Well, this reveal is why Mundungus dips, remember? When they find him later, he’s like, “I didn’t know he could fly. That’s insane.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “I’m out. Bye!”
Grace: “Are you kidding me?”
Eric: “You telling me you would have done any different? You see Voldemort flying at you?”
Grace: [laughs] Oh my God.
Eric: He wasn’t even making any of the weird sounds like in the movie. “Nyahh! Euhh!”
Micah: That’s for later.
Grace: I’ve got to say, I know that there’s a lot of movie-isms about flight and about Tom making noises, and I embrace them all. They’re all very fun. It’s all different readings of the same character. I will say that in my mind, those don’t happen. [laughs]
Eric: Fair enough.
Laura: I agree.
Grace: I don’t know where they came from. I love an interpretation, and I’m enjoying it. Ralph Fiennes looks like he’s having a ball, which is great.
Micah: Grace, you had a couple of quotes here, though, that explain why Voldemort’s wand didn’t work.
Grace: Yes. There’s a section of the book that basically I look into the connection from the wands, and why it persists through them. Here’s the actual paragraph: “In a sense, Harry’s wand is a magical manifestation of Harry’s body given additional powers by Tom during a deadly encounter, powers that Tom knows nothing of, nor how to bypass… This burst of golden flames is another reminder of how Harry and Tom have twin cores not only in their wands but in their souls.” That’s from the Voldemort book, page 221.
[Andrew and Grace laugh]
Grace: That’s how I do all of my sightings.
Micah: Right behind you. You should go like this. Right? Isn’t that the book? There you go.
Andrew: Oh, it is right there. Yeah, yeah. Very cool.
Eric: The only other thing I could harken it to, because it’s a gold liquid that bursts out of Harry’s wand, reminds me of his Polyjuice Potion, which turned golden in this chapter when Harry puts his hair in. It turns to a golden color, so there’s something about Harry and gold, and specifically molten gold kind of a thing. I think that basically Harry was the proto Aurelius Dumbledore, the golden one.
Micah: The golden child.
Eric: Yeah, the golden child.
Grace: If you’re looking at Harry in terms of alchemy… there’s a lot of studies about Harry Potter and how alchemy connects into it. There’s Rubeus Hagrid being an individual, a ruby who takes an individual in and out of the story for transformation. I think Albus Dumbledore also has one. I forget what he is; I’m so sorry. But I know that Harry was specifically gold because he is alchemized. He is the perfect form of something else. He’s the one that you should be aiming for, basically.
Andrew: I feel like we talked about something along these lines on the show at some point. I can’t remember the details around it.
Grace: I’ve definitely boiled it into something unrecognizable, so I apologize for that. But the idea behind it is that.
Andrew: No, no, that’s not unrecognizable, because it’s jogging a memory.
Eric: Yeah, I remember talking about alchemy seriously when we were talking about Credence in Fantastic Beasts probably 3?
Andrew: That’s what it was. The golden one?
Eric: Yeah, because he was the golden one, he was the homunculus, potentially, and the pursuit of turning metals into gold was all… there’s so much alchemy. There’s even the character of Nicolas Flamel in the Fantastic Beasts movies that you know it was going to go towards something a lot heavier that never came to light, and also was not executed super well.
Micah: He was just Aberforth’s son.
Grace: I was so hoping to see Tom in those movies. My one-track mind. I was like, “It’s the year he was born! Come on!”
Eric: Yeah, one day.
Micah: We still have two more movies.
Eric: I wouldn’t have been surprised… yeah, they’re just parked, after all.
Andrew: So Grace, I love this quote that you read from your book, but I also find it interesting because the prophecy says, “Neither can live while the other survives,” and yet the wand here is preventing one from killing the other. Do you know what I’m saying? That’s almost like a… that’s at odds with each other.
Grace: Well, when you think… okay, so let’s hop back for a second and take a look at the scene where Harry’s wand imbibes the power. And I’ll pull the Dumbledore quote real quick. “I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who is both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him.” This is from the end of Deathly Hallows, and this is in the ethereal King’s Cross station. I think… when I talk about the moment where their wands connected in the graveyard in Book 4, it is to say that Tom is forcing an encounter between them, and he wants to prove his supremacy. And in trying to make that battle between them halt, to give himself a pause, Harry’s and his wands connect. And this basically is supposed to be a moment… Tom is looking for answers as to why he has been prevented immortality. He wants to create domination and immortality, and Harry and Dumbledore are the two people that are preventing him from doing that. The connection of the wands prevents him from killing Harry, transfers some of his power over, but is also supposed to teach him a lesson. And he isn’t listening to it; he isn’t ready to listen to it. But the lesson is supposed to be, “Pause before you act in these situations. You need to breathe. You need to connect with the people in front of you rather than attacking.” Tom is constantly attacking, thinking that it will gain him some kind of safety. I think that is part of the reason as to why neither can live while the other survives; it’s because Tom keeps pushing for the safety that he feels when he’s trying to basically implement domination. If he were to stop and breathe and think about what he’s doing before he does it, the core of him – the core of him that he has created, this Lord Voldemort – does not survive. He has to change into something else. Lord Voldemort is just a shield.
Laura: Well said.
Grace: What I’m basically trying to say is neither can live while the other survives. Tom’s ideology cannot survive if he just stops to think, if he stops to think about exactly what he is doing and the harm that it’s causing. He does no self-reflection because he is too afraid of what that might cause in him.
Andrew: Yeah. No, that is very well said. Thank you for explaining a little further.
Grace: Thank you. They’re complicated, these boys. [laughs]
Micah: All right, well, I think that wraps up our discussion of the “Seven Potters” chapter.
Lynx Line
Micah: But we do have one final question, which we asked over on our Lynx Line to our patrons, but we will answer it first. Which Order member would you trust the most if you were flying alongside them? And here’s the little caveat: It can be any Order member. It doesn’t have to be one of the Order members who were there that night. So Grace, we’ll start with you.
Grace: I’m so predictable. I said Snape, because he’s trained by Voldemort. [laughs]
Andrew: That’s exactly what I was going to say too, and I mean, the double agent thing. It’s perfect. So Snape.
Grace: I stole it. I’m sorry.
Laura: Tracks that the two Slytherins said Snape.
Grace: Hell yeah, baby. We know what’s up. We know what’s up.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I went with Kingsley.
Eric: Love it.
Laura: I feel like Hermione’s response to feeling reassured about that… I was like, “Yeah, I relate.”
Eric: Even knowing what happens to Moody, I still choose Moody. I think he just embodies that grizzled soldier, and so he’s who I would feel safest with. And I’ll tell you what, maybe we would stand a chance, because I would not Apparate away from him.
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: Aww.
Micah: You wouldn’t have provided a distraction where Moody’s attention was diverted.
Eric: That’s literally it.
Micah: There you go. I went with Arthur. I feel like he’s a great protector.
Eric: I love that.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, here’s what our patrons had to say. Broc said,
“First instinct is Tonks, but I want her on her A-game, not the grieving and emotionally turbulent version with boring mousy brown hair. If I can’t have her, I’ll take Kingsley. He just emanates confidence and raw power.”
Eric: Listen, Broc, if you can’t handle her at her mousy brown hair, you don’t deserve her at her fierce Auror-ness.
[Grace and Laura laugh]
Eric: I’m joking.
Grace: Amen. Cheers.
Eric: And next up, we have Matthew, who says,
“Mundungus. Hear me out: You take his wand away and keep him on a tether. His flailing and screaming will draw fire better than anything.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I’m not sure that’s a Dumbledore-approved method, but it might get the job done.
Micah: Yeah, but do you want the attention drawn to you? That’s the thing.
[Grace and Micah laugh]
Micah: Probably not. Zachary said,
“If it’s any Order member past or present, my pick would be either James or Sirius. Both are fearless when it comes to protecting their own, no matter how reckless it may seem. They both died in the process of protecting Harry, and I feel Harry in this instance isn’t ‘The Chosen One’ or significantly more important. If they were assigned this task, they would do it without hesitation for any individual, even if it meant their lives for the safety of others.”
Laura: It’s a good pick. Ash says, “Kingsley! As Vernon Dursley says, ‘Exactly – he’s the best!'”
Andrew: Michael says,
“Charlie Weasley! He was a Quidditch captain so he has the skills! And even though he was off in Romania, he’s still an Order member!”
Eric: Julie Ann says, “Hagrid. He is large and in charge!”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Well, yeah, can’t argue with that. “Or Tonks. She seems quick with spell work.”
Micah: Rachel S.: “Kingsley, no doubt about it.”
Laura: Yeah, lot of love for Kingsley here. Glo says,
“Arthur. Pure-blood but also under the radar, so the Death Eaters didn’t target him and Fred at all. And they arrived at the Burrow first.”
Andrew: And finally, Monet says, “Fred or George. They’re both good wizards and brave, and worst comes to worst, at least I’d die laughing.” Yeah, you know they’re cracking some jokes while they’re trying to escape the Death Eaters. Listeners, if you have any feedback about today’s episode, you can send us an email or send a voice memo that you record on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com. You can also reach out via Spotify, YouTube, or DM us on social.
Quizzitch
Andrew: And before we wrap up, it’s time for the answer to this week’s Quizzitch question.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Yep. So again, the question was: Which Order members’ homes are mentioned as some of the potential safe houses in this chapter? And the answer we’re looking for was Kingsley’s flat is mentioned; Moody’s place is also mentioned; Tonks’s parents, which is I assume her childhood home, so I’m counting hers; and of course, the Burrow. There’s bonus points if you got Auntie Muriel’s, except we’re not sure if she’s in the Order. Let’s just assume it.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: But those are the ones. So everybody’s house basically makes up the dozen or so buildings that receive protection. If you are playing at home, hope you got it.
Andrew: Next week we’ll discuss Chapter 5 of Deathly Hallows, “Fallen Warrior.” Grace, thank you so much for joining us today. We loved having you on, and can you please tell our listeners where we can find you online and where we can find your books?
Grace: Firstly, I am honored to have been on. Thank you guys for having me. It was an incredible experience. So much good conversation. Thank you.
Andrew: Indeed.
Grace: You can find my books pretty much anywhere online. You can get them from your local bookstores, you can also get them from Barnes & Noble, and if you can’t find them in either of those, Amazon is fine too. It’s all over the place, and it’s up in audiobook as well, as I said in the beginning. If you want to find me, @VoldemortBook is my handle on Instagram and pretty much everywhere else that I can get it. [laughs] Also, my personal website is GraceVictoria.net. And it’s been a pleasure. Oh, and also a million episodes of Alohomora. That as well.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. [laughs] Awesome. Thank you so much, Grace.
Grace: Thank you.
Andrew: We’d love to have you on again in the future too. Maybe another Voldemort chapter.
Grace: Oh my God, thank you. I’d be honored.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, of course. All right, well, thanks, everybody, for listening. Don’t forget you can visit MuggleCast.com for links to our social media, our Patreon, transcripts, our favorite episodes… we’ll have links, like I said, to where you can find Grace in the show notes of today’s episode, and there will be lots more on MuggleCast.com waiting for you. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Grace: And I’m Grace!
Andrew: Bye, everyone!