Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #771, Grimmauld Goss (DH Chapter 10, Kreacher’s Tale)
Cold Open
Andrew: We ran to the Apple Store, we logged on to MuggleNet.com and the Leaky Caldron – Melissa and company were there too – and we reported the news. [laughs] Remember, it was on the radio too. “And J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore is…”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That’s really… it was on the radio in the New York City taxi cab.
Eric: And the people at the Apple Store were like, “You guys want to buy anything?”
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: I’m Laura.
Andrew: And we’re your Harry Potter friends, here to talk about the books and the movies and the upcoming TV show, so follow us in your favorite podcast app for new episodes every Wednesday. This week, keep in mind that windows to the past sometimes hurt a lot, because we’re discussing Chapter 10 of Deathly Hallows, “Kreacher’s Tale.” And joining us for today’s episode is one of our Slug Club patrons, Hanna. Welcome, Hanna, to MuggleCast.
Hanna: Thank you for having me.
Andrew: Thanks for joining us Americans. And can we get your fandom ID, please?
Hanna: I am definitely a Hufflepuff; all the tests say that. My favorite book is Prisoner of Azkaban… no, that’s my favorite movie. My favorite book is actually this book, Deathly Hallows.
Eric: Oooh.
Andrew: Perfect.
Laura: Love that.
Hanna: And I know I’m in the minority, but I actually really enjoy the camping scenes.
Andrew: Oh!
Hanna: So that’s one of the things that make it my favorite book. And my Patronus, I think I remember, was a grass snake back in the Pottermore days.
Andrew: And what is your favorite house-elf, in light of today’s discussion?
[Eric laughs]
Hanna: Well, there’s not that many house-elves we really get to know, but I will always have a soft spot for Dobby.
Andrew: Aww, good. And I must apologize to the house-elves; I said, “What is your favorite house-elf?” Who is your favorite house-elf? You all are creatures, not things. Well, anyway, welcome, Hanna, to the podcast. I guess it was meant to be that you’re on this episode, because your favorite book is Deathly Hallows, and also, we’re catching you right before you’re coming over to America, so the timing just is coincidentally perfect.
Micah: Can I ask one more question? Did you read Deathly Hallows in English or was it Norwegian?
Hanna: No, I read the first maybe four books in Norwegian first, and then I switched to English.
Andrew: Why did you switch, out of curiosity?
Hanna: Because I got older and started learning more English, and then I just wanted to read it in the original language.
Andrew: Oh, okay. Awesome. Well, welcome, and excited to hear what you have to say on today’s episode. Before we go any further, though, it’s time for this week’s Quizzitch question.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: All right, this is one of my more favorite ones. This week’s Quizzitch question: What item of Mrs. Black’s is Mundungus Fletcher said to have run off with and presumably sold? Kreacher specifically mentions a particular item of Mrs. Black’s.
Andrew: Also, before we get into Chapter by Chapter, we want to give people who use Apple Podcasts in particular a heads up: If you are a member of MuggleCast Gold on Apple Podcasts – that’s our paid subscription there – we are aware of an issue preventing you from getting ad-free and bonus episodes. Unfortunately, Apple has been taking their sweet time fixing this for us, which has been very frustrating, but we are talking with them. And we know this is frustrating because you want the ad-free episodes and the bonus episodes, so you can actually contact Apple if you’re unsatisfied and would like a refund. We would totally understand if you want to do that. Offering refunds is out of our hands; you have to talk to Apple directly. That said, if you would like to move to our Patreon instead, we do have a link in the show notes this week that lets you claim a free month of access to the Dumbledore’s Army level of our Patreon, which will get you the same benefits as what you’ve been getting on Apple Podcasts and more. So check out that link. Sorry for the trouble. Wish we could do something about it, but it’s been out of our hands. And this is the only way to communicate.
Eric: And Tim Cook’s personal cell phone number is as follows…
Andrew: [laughs] He left Apple. He doesn’t care anymore.
Eric: Oh, sorry.
Andrew: John Ternus.
Eric: John Ternus. Okay, yeah.
Andrew: [laughs] Hey, you’d better Tern a solution around for us, John Ternus.
Eric: Ahh!
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Otherwise, I’m going to Tim Cook…
Micah: You.
Andrew: Never mind, I can’t threaten Apple employees on their platform.
Eric: I actually for a second forgot that we successfully roasted Wizarding World Gold by creating MuggleCast Gold and calling it that.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Oh, I was wondering why you were laughing. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I just… that was one thing that slipped my mind for a minute.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: So without further ado, it’s time to get into Chapter by Chapter, and we’re discussing Chapter 10 of Deathly Hallows, “Kreacher’s Tale.” And we’ll start with our Seven-Word Summary. Here we go.
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Laura: Kreacher…
Hanna: … makes…
Micah: … Harry…
Andrew: … listen…
Eric: … to…
Laura: … his…
Hanna: … tale!
Andrew: Wow, we took that one literally with the title. That’s great. Good job, everybody.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Oh my gosh.
Micah: I don’t know that he really “makes” Harry listen, but…
Andrew: Well, he wants to listen.
Eric: Harry has a vested interest; he needs to know.
Laura: I think it’s worth arguing that it forces Harry to feel a little bit bad for Kreacher.
Eric: Yeah, there’s a ton of emotion in this chapter, and you don’t expect to feel what you feel, but a big, big reveal… essentially there’s, I think, two surprises in this chapter, and both of them pack an emotional wallop.
Micah: I honestly, I think, need therapy after these two chapters that we’re about to…
Andrew: I know!
Laura: Yeah, these are rough.
Andrew: I’m doing the next chapter. I’m not looking forward to…
Micah: They’re heavy.
Andrew: Yes! Guiding y’all through it, because yeah, it’s dark.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Eric: And speaking of dark, Harry is kind of in a dark place here. Not just because Grimmauld Place is not properly lit.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But he wakes in a sleeping bag in the morning. He’s the only one awake. Ron and Hermione might have been holding hands when they were asleep…
Andrew: Oooh!
Eric: … so that just makes Harry feel lonely and miss Ginny. But the words that Muriel had said and the whole situation from the wedding are still weighing pretty heavily on Harry. He feels resentment toward Dumbledore for not telling him more. He feels like maybe Dumbledore didn’t care about him at all. And he kind of makes the decision… and this is a very good decision if we ever find ourselves in a place like this, sort of spiraling anxiety-wise. Get up and do something, and that’s exactly what Harry does. He gets out of his sleeping bag, which I mean, there are probably some comfy beds in the house, but I guess it’s strategic for them to all be in the same room together.
Andrew: Old beds, though. Oh, yeah, that too. I thought you were going to say, “If you have anxiety, just go and snoop around people’s bedrooms.”
Eric: [laughs] That too, honestly. You ever go to a strange person’s…?
Laura: Like Hogwarts Legacy?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yes, exactly! Just even if they’re sitting at their dining room table eating their soup or chowder or something, just burst open the door. Sorry, I had chowder recently.
Andrew: Yeah, and this is one nice moment across these next two chapters. So he does go into Sirius’s bedroom, and he finds that Lily had penned a letter to Sirius thanking him for the birthday present for Harry. And I was thinking about this scene more yesterday; this is a huge moment for Harry in his life. This is, I think, the first time Harry has read letters from either of his parents. He’s seen photos before, but here is a physical handwritten letter. As Harry notes, his mom’s hand went across these pages, put these words to paper. He’s also seen them in the mirror, he’s going to talk to his parents at the end of the book, but this moment he’s hearing his mom speak, in a sort of way. And the gravity of the situation is noticed here. Harry’s hands go numb, and he describes the letter as “miraculous paper” and a “treasure, proof that Lily had lived.” So this is just massive for Harry, and I’m happy for him.
Eric: It’s huge, it’s absolutely huge, and I think this is the most real Lily that he’s ever going to encounter. I mean, we could question whether the Resurrection Stone is actually her spirit. And he’s spoken with her, or they’ve spoken to him, when they came out of Voldemort’s wand at the end of Book 4, but that was like an echo of a shadow of a spell. And the mirror is the mirror. I feel like having this artifact is, again, like the book says, proof that she existed, but it’s the most direct link, and he can read her words as she put them down and just get the best picture of her. It’s really sad that all Harry has after all this time is a letter, and I mean, maybe the closest he’s come is also Snape’s worst memory, which is a third-party Pensieve reconstruction of Snape’s memory. Or no, that is from his mind during Occlumency. But yeah, so this is the nicest and friendliest… and certainly Harry was just feeling that people weren’t caring about him, that Dumbledore didn’t care about him. Here are people – his mom, his dad, and his godfather – who really do care about him. And so I think the letter makes Harry whole in a way that he needed to be made whole.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, you get this call-out from him that she writes her g’s the same way that he does, and that each one of them is like a friendly wave from the page. It’s just a connection to her that he probably never imagined having.
Hanna: It is really touching. And I mean, I never lost my parents, but I can only imagine. Because even with a live parent, it’s nice to see what you’ve inherited from them and how you are like them in a way. And he gets concrete evidence that he has something in common, like the g’s and those little things.
Andrew: Yeah. And also, dead or alive, it’s nice to receive a handwritten letter from somebody. I know Harry didn’t technically receive this from Lily, but when you get a handwritten card from somebody, that’s extra meaningful, especially in this digital age.
Laura: Yeah. It was also kind of like a literal picture, but also it painted a word picture of what his life was like when he lived with his parents.
Eric: Briefly.
Laura: Something he hasn’t gotten, you know?
Andrew: Yeah. So what was painted, Eric?
Eric: Well, he’s got a photograph of himself on a toy broom.
Andrew: [singing] “Look at this photograph…”
Eric: It’s nice to see her correspond with the other Marauders, to see in a way that James’s friends became her friends, and they have this relationship where she thanks him for the gift he gave and says, “We hope to see you soon.” It’s very touching, and it’s a completely unique and unexpected insight that we get.
Hanna: Well, I just thought right now that isn’t it also typical that it’s the woman writing the thank you letter, even though it was the dad’s friend who gave it to him?
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yeah, the emotional labor, the organization of the… yeah, it is.
Hanna: But it is really sweet, and it is good to see that she became friends with them, because we know the relationship was kind of complicated at times.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: I think when you grow up, some of those… you let the bygones be bygones.
Eric: I’ll have everyone know that me and Meg both wrote our thank you cards for people who gave us cards at our wedding, and it was… we wrote it by hand. I apologize to any of the recipients. My handwriting is godawful.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: But we did write about 40 cards.
Micah: Wow. What I find really cool about this is Harry is almost stepping back in time when he enters Sirius’s room. We know the room is very much still set from Sirius’s childhood, but also, this is a glimpse to the past, and Harry doesn’t get – going off of the point that was raised earlier – too many moments where he can really sit with and enjoy something that is tied to his family. And given everything that he has already gone through in this book, it’s just a nice moment for him to separate and to not necessarily be around Ron and Hermione, although they are very upset that he just went off on his own, and they didn’t know where he was.
Andrew: Yeah, I understand that. I love the photo that was included was Harry riding a broom, because of course, that is sort of in a way foreshadowing Harry’s eventual skills, and it suggests that he was born this way.
Eric: Baby.
Andrew: He was just naturally talented when it came to riding brooms and playing Quidditch. But I’m also kind of surprised that Sirius never directly brought this up to Harry, that he bought Harry his first broom, because it feels in character for Sirius to kind of brag, like, “Hey, I’m the reason that you became a great Quidditch player.”
Eric: Well, and when he gave him the Firebolt in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Andrew and Laura: Right.
Eric: That’s not the first broom that he got for Harry.
Andrew: That is a great call-out, yeah.
Eric: I love that. And you mentioned this; when Harry rides a broom in year one at Hogwarts, it feels like he’d done it before. It felt natural and normal, and it’s probably because he spent…
Andrew: Is that mentioned?
Laura: It is.
Andrew: That’s amazing. Wow.
Eric: It’s so tender. And you know what else is tender? Harry nearly killing the cat that they have.
Micah: There are a lot of popular fan theories out there – and I can’t remember if it’s ever been fully debunked by the author – but that Crookshanks is the Potters’ family cat. And I believe on a previous episode we made the decision to declare this canon, but just in case, I don’t think it can hurt to do it again.
Eric: Agreed.
Laura: Yeah, why not?
[“I declare canon!” sound effect plays with thunder]
Andrew: It makes too much sense, so we’ll just go along with it.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Add it to the Wikipedia.
Micah: We never get a full description of the cat. It is kind of comical, though, when you think about it, right? There’s so many cats in the wizarding world. Why would it be Crookshanks?
Andrew: People want it to be true. That’s all. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I like this theory better than that Lily is Crookshanks, but the idea that they could have owned Crookshanks previously is great. And that explains why he’s so grumpy; he nearly got squished by baby Harry.
Andrew: Hanna, I think I actually saw a cat in your shot earlier.
Hanna: Yes.
Andrew: What do you make of this theory?
Hanna: I mean, we do know that Crookshanks is not a normal cat, but… so how old would it be? 17?
Eric: Oh.
Hanna: That’s pretty old, but maybe they live a lot longer. So it’s possible. My old cat was 20.
Andrew: A magical Kneazle.
Laura: Yeah, do Kneazles have longer lifespans? That’s a good question.
Hanna: But I like it.
Eric: There are a few other factoids uncovered by the letter, including that Lily mentions Dumbledore having James’s Invisibility Cloak. Now, we’ve known about this; after all, when Harry receives the cloak, the letter says, “Your father left this in my possession before he died.” But the way that Lily is talking about it, she’s talking about missing Sirius, about wanting to visit, and she seems to suggest that if Dumbledore didn’t have James’s cloak, James would use it to break containment, to basically leave their extra protected hiding, and go and see Sirius. We also learn that they live near Bathilda Bagshot, and apparently… this actually… what I liked about this is it furthers the connection between Bathilda and Godric’s Hollow and solidifies for Harry that they really need to talk to her to get more info on Dumbledore. Lily specifically calls out that Bathilda has “the most amazing stories about Dumbledore,” and I’m just like, “Oh boy, I can’t wait. What’s she going to say?”
Micah: I bet she does.
Andrew: And would spend a lot of time with the Potters too, so I think that sparks a natural curiosity for Harry to hear more and more about…
Eric: Oh yeah, a family friend.
Andrew: Yeah, and to hear more about his parents, especially after this letter, getting a glimpse into his early life.
Eric: Yeah. But just as soon as it started, it’s over. There’s a missing page to the letter, and Harry can’t find it in the rest of the stuff in the room, and it’s sad. But the closing line, the last sentence, says, “It seems incredible that Dumbledore…” So what do we think…?
Micah: Oh, the fun that we could have with that.
Laura: I know. “Seems incredible that he had a summer romance with Grindelwald.”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Which is pretty much…
Laura: Pretty much what happens.
Micah: … the correct missing piece here, because we find out later, when Harry views Snape’s memory, that the rest of the sentence has to do with Dumbledore’s association with Grindelwald, and Lily just can’t believe it. And so I’m curious, what exactly did Bathilda share with Lily about these two?
Andrew: Yeah, which makes… some people have criticized the author for only saying that Dumbledore was gay after the book came out. I guess here’s a little bit of proof that she was kind of hinting at it, but it’s still not a strong enough case that she was actually hinting at it.
Eric: Right.
Laura: Yeah, this book also came out after she announced that Dumbledore was gay, right?
Eric: No.
Andrew: Oh, no, she announced it after Book 7.
Laura: Oh, maybe I got it mixed up. For some reason I thought it was when she was doing a reading of Half-Blood Prince, but I guess it was Deathly Hallows.
Eric: It was like October of ’07.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: A few of us were there.
Laura: Yeah, that’s true.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: We launched to our feet to…
Andrew: We ran to the Apple Store… this is a true story, because this was before smartphones, and we had to report it on MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Eric: Logged into the old FTP.
Andrew: We ran to the Apple Store, we logged on to MuggleNet.com and the Leaky Caldron – Melissa and company were there too – and we reported the news. [laughs] Remember, it was on the radio too. “And J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore is…”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That’s really… it was on the radio in the New York City taxi cab.
Eric: And the people at the Apple Store were like, “You guys want to buy anything?”
Andrew: [laughs] “No, we’re writing for our Harry Potter website right now. Leave us alone.”
Laura: “Yeah, we’re breaking news over here.”
Andrew: “But by the way, this is a great iMac. I’ll buy one someday.”
[Ad break]
Micah: But no, I agree with what you’re saying, Andrew. I think that it was probably just more the shock of the association between the two of them that they knew each other when they were younger. But I think the larger piece that I left out, the missing piece that I left out, was that… I said this is when Harry views Snape’s memory. It is Snape that steals the second half of this letter, along with the photo, right? And what’s he doing with that photo?
Hanna: Being a creep.
Eric: Nothing good.
Andrew: No comment. What’d you say, Hanna? Being a creep? [laughs]
Hanna: Yeah, or pining.
Andrew: I think that’s what Micah is implying.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, it is creepy. Well, because the other part of the letter he steals, too, is the very end where it says, “Love, Lily.”
Eric: Yeah, that possessive sort of… and it’s like, “Listen, dude, you don’t have other letters from Lily? Lily never wrote you a letter once in your life? She knew you and you were friends for five years.”
Andrew: You would think so, he had another one.
Eric: Get your own stuff. The idea that he just comes and ransacks this… augh, gross.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But oh well. So turns out, yeah, he should have left a note. Harry should have left a note explaining where he was, because he gives Hermione and Ron a good fright. But they locate him, and the way that Hermione reacts to the letter is really touching. And she knows why and how it means so much to Harry, and it’s just very… Harry has moved on when he eventually approaches Regulus’s door, but when he calls out to her, she assumes he’s picked it back up to read it again, and I’m just like, “Yeah, obviously.” This is a really kind of touching moment and a great opportunity for Hermione to feel good for Harry for having found this. But here is our R.A.B., guys. Drumroll. We found him, Regulus Arcturus Black.
Andrew: His name’s on the door. Cracks the case. I have feelings about this, though. This was obvious back in Half-Blood Prince when they found this note signed R.A.B. I know there was a big debate in the fandom, but wasn’t people’s hesitation, assuming it was Regulus, that it was just too obvious of an answer, and that’s why they didn’t believe it?
Laura: That’s what I recall.
Micah: But I think the pool of candidates can only be so big at this point, right? You can’t… you could, but are you really going to introduce a brand new character that has no affiliation, let’s say, to a wizarding family that we know, or is a member of the Hogwarts staff, or however you want to insert R.A.B. into the story? I think it was too easy because we’re closing in on the end of the story, and there’s only so many options it could legitimately be.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: It’s also three initials. It’s not like it was just signed “R,” or “B,” or “A.” Yeah, if it was “R,” okay, Remus, Regulus… the list goes on.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: R.A.B. is way too specific!
Eric: Well, it’s somebody who we already previously knew has access to Voldemort, and that’s why it’s brilliant. And the exact story of how he came to be in a position to leave a jaunty letter bragging about discovering the Dark Lord’s secret is also told in this chapter. So it’s just nice that when we get the payoff of who R.A.B. is, or when we get that reveal, we also get an extremely detailed payoff as to how it came to be R.A.B.
Micah: Right.
Eric: So it’s kind of… I really like that it happened in the same chapter, because if this was revealed it’s R.A.B., and then we didn’t hear why or how R.A.B. was R.A.B., what the significance was to the story, for more chapters or an entire camping season away, I think it would have felt less good than what it does.
Laura: Yeah, and honestly, I think that’s why, in retrospect, R.A.B.’s identity wasn’t really supposed to be some big mystery to the reader, because we had been introduced to the Black family tree, right? So it was a very easy connection to make. I think the real reveal is what exactly he did, how he was connected to the Horcrux and the cave, and how Kreacher was tied up in all of it. And ultimately, figuring out what happened to Kreacher that may contribute to why he is the way he is.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: The other piece of it, too, was that with R.A.B. being Regulus, you could draw a connection to Grimmauld Place. You could draw a connection to the locket from Order of the Phoenix.
Laura: Right.
Micah: So that’s what made it, I think, a little bit easier when there was all the speculation that was going on. But Andrew, I think you said this on a previous episode, though: Who puts their middle name on their door?
Andrew: [laughs] Well…
Micah: Unless you’re just super proud of it.
Andrew: Maybe he is super proud of it. I could see that. Was Sirius’s middle name on the door too?
Micah: And his last name too.
Andrew: Yeah, the last name.
Eric: Orion.
Laura: He had his full name.
Andrew: What if the parents did it?
Laura: I want to say something.
Andrew: Okay. Uh-oh.
Laura: Because I feel like in the movie, the way this is done really makes no sense, and it makes it just stupid obvious. But I like the way it’s done in the book, because in the book it basically… he has a sign on the door that’s like, “No one is to enter this space unless your name is Regulus Arcturus Black.” That feels very teenage.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: That absolutely feels like something a moody teenager would do, so I accept it.
Andrew: And to that point, I thought Laura was about to admit that she had her full name on her door as a child. [laughs]
Laura: Absolutely not. No, no, no.
Andrew: But did anyone here have a name plate on their door or something like that?
Eric: I did. I had one of those parking signs that says, “No parking,” or “Eric’s parking only. All others will be towed.”
Andrew: Oh. [laughs] Right, right.
Eric: I also… it’s so funny that we’re talking about whether it’s a teenager thing to do, but yeah, I actually went by Eric James Matthew – my confirmation name – Padfoot Scull, so there are places where I put all five names for myself as a teenager.
Micah: Geez.
Andrew: Sounds like you, yeah.
Eric: I was too much, for sure. So I guess it was a thing; I guess I can’t knock Regulus’s way of doing things. But yeah, we get to meet him. And Arcturus, by the way, is the fourth brightest star in the night sky. If you follow the curved handle of the Big Dipper, it points to or leads to Arcturus, and Regulus really is the brightest star in his family for what we learn in this chapter he does.
Andrew: It’s an amazing story.
Eric: Certainly most important to the plot and the destruction of the Dark Lord. Sorry, Sirius, I think Regulus got you beat in that front. So it’s very intuitive. But unfortunately, all attempts to locate the locket in this room do not succeed, and after a very long time, hours tearing apart this room, they’re forced to conclude that they don’t know where it could be.
Andrew: Yeah. And when they realize they may have thrown out the locket…
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: … that is an incredible moment. So we know – we come to learn quickly, thankfully – that Kreacher did end up saving it. But if it had truly been thrown out, this would have been one of the worst possible outcomes. How would they have found it? It would be in some random landfill, I guess, unless it got Evanesco‘d away. Maybe that’s how they dispose of their trash.
Eric: Oh.
Andrew: And funnily enough, that would have been one of the best places for Voldemort to hide a Horcrux, just to throw it out, because nobody would ever find it.
Eric: Yeah, throw it away.
Andrew: It’s a needle in a world of a haystack. It just would have been impossible to find. And I think we’ve all had this type of feeling before; you realize you’ve lost something, and you just know it’s gone. You’re never seeing it again. So I mean, they would have been screwed, right? The story would have been over. [laughs]
Micah: Harry would be walking through landfills trying to speak Parseltongue to different…
Andrew: “Harry Potter and the Seven Landfills.” There you go.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: “Accio locket, Accio locket, Accio locket…”
Eric: Or just take a boat across the ocean, drop it down the Marianas Trench, just drop it to the bottom of the ocean. Nobody’s ever going to get that.
Andrew: And I know Voldemort, in part because of his ego, he wants to hide these in special places, so he never would have considered… “I couldn’t dare throw my locket in the trash.” But it would have been kind of a brilliant idea. [laughs]
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: I agree. [laughs] I just… it’s great that we find out that Kreacher saved it; it’s just part of the tragic tale that Kreacher wasn’t really able to destroy it, and there’s a bit of a… there’s a moment for a letdown here because we will learn exactly what became of Regulus, but his note in the locket, in the fake locket that Harry read at the end of the last book when he got it, says basically, “Hey, Dark Lord, you’re screwed. I intend to destroy this right away, and you’re slightly more mortal, jerk.”
[Laura laughs]
Eric: We learn that that was not successful at all, that Kreacher tried everything and couldn’t destroy it, and so there’s one more thing to do. There’s one more Horcrux Harry has to destroy. We can’t just consider the locket destroyed, which makes the loss of Dumbledore, I think, hurt even worse, because it was all for naught. When I was reading Book 6 the first time, I assumed that although this was the fake locket that Harry now has, that the original had been destroyed, and we just find out… this is confirmation that’s not the case at all. They’ve still got to get it.
Hanna: But if they hadn’t found the fake locket, then they probably would have spent a lot more time figuring out who or where the real locket is.
Laura: Right.
Eric: Oh my God.
Hanna: So it wasn’t all for nothing, but I see how it would feel that way.
Eric: That’s an incredible point, actually, too, is they wouldn’t… if they hadn’t found the cave…
Hanna: There wouldn’t be the R.A.B. mystery.
Eric: Yeah, that’s a crazy thing to contemplate. Wow. So I’d like to get into talking about Kreacher’s story, because it does occur to Harry, “Hey, who’s the master of all things in this house? Who’s familiar with this family and everything in the house? Oh, it’s Kreacher.” He calls upon Kreacher, and now we learn that Voldemort came calling to his follower Regulus when he needed an elf, and Voldemort basically needed someone that wasn’t himself to test and try a potion that was what we saw during the cave, the potion that would make you absolutely miserable and deathly thirsty in the cave. And Voldemort’s idea is to use a disposable creature, a.k.a. Kreacher, to do it.
Andrew: Yeah, I was going to say, he didn’t just need an elf; he just needed some disposable being.
Micah: Yeah, somebody who is expendable, which is pretty much anybody to Voldemort. But I just wondered what Kreacher saw when he drank the potion. I know it’s a very tortured experience for him, just like it is for Dumbledore. But we speculated a lot when we were doing Chapter by Chapter of Half-Blood Prince of what Dumbledore was envisioning, what he was experiencing. I’m curious, for Kreacher, what did he see?
Andrew: Freedom.
Eric and Laura: Oh.
Andrew: Happiness.
Laura: I think it does mention that he called out to his mistress for help.
Andrew: He did.
Laura: But I’m just envisioning that he’s probably seeing something that’s emblematic of the deep insecurity that he carries that none of these people who he has devoted his life to actually care about him.
Eric: I think, too, he would probably see all of his regrets. It’s not too far away for me, in my mind, of what you would see or hear when a Dementor comes crawling, that you are reliving your worst moments.
Laura: Right.
Eric: So I just picture that time he burned the toast accidentally, but not in a comical way, just a “I’m a bad elf; I’ve displeased my masters” kind of a way, just being forced to encounter that in a very real way, where your memories start to attack you, basically, is what it felt like watching Dumbledore go through it.
Andrew: Micah, what do you think?
Micah: I think it would be some version of what was mentioned. Maybe even seeing his mistress or Regulus being tortured, because they do mean, clearly, something very personal to him. But I just think that whatever this concoction is, it draws out your worst possible fears and then amplifies them probably 10, 20, 100 fold. And you feel bad for Kreacher. You feel horrible for him in this moment.
Eric: Yeah. The craziest thing to me is that Voldemort screws up big time, because after drinking the potion, after being assured that it works exactly as intended, Voldemort just leaves. He leaves Kreacher on the island and takes the boat away and disappears, assuming that Kreacher will just die there, that the Inferi will get him or something. And they do; they do get Kreacher and drag him down to the bottom. But like, way to not care about your followers’ items that they gave you, or house-elves that they gave you. Voldemort is depriving a well-known pure-blood family of that family’s elf, and doesn’t even care about it. If you’re a Death Eater, and your Dark Lord comes and borrows one of the most valuable… not to mention friend, but one of the most valuable servants to your household and doesn’t even bring it back in good shape, what the hell are you doing here? That would turn a follower against you, or at least so doubt that you had your mind on straight or were a good guy. Right?
Andrew: Well, yeah, that’s the thing. He just assumes that Regulus is going to stay in line and he’s not going to have any issues with this, and it’s just another flaw in his plan.
Laura: Yeah, well, again, this is another… Regulus clearly has love for Kreacher.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Laura: Voldemort doesn’t understand that.
Micah: And the most important thing here, though, is that Regulus gave Kreacher very explicit direction to return.
Eric: Right.
Micah: And had he not done that, Kreacher probably would be one of the Inferi that Harry encounters in Half-Blood Prince. And that speaks to the bond that exists between house-elf and family, or at least in this case, between Kreacher and Regulus. And we see it at other times in the series, right? With especially the Crouches and how Winky has such loyalty to Barty Crouch, Jr. So I wonder, when these house-elves are so close to, essentially, the upbringing of these children, does it create a deeper bond between them than would otherwise exist between house-elf and master?
Eric: We had a few questions, though, from Hanna about Kreacher.
Hanna: Well, yeah. Do we ever find out how old Kreacher is? How long he’s been with the Black family?
Laura: I don’t think so, but it seems to be implied that he’s older because of the amount of white hair that’s coming out of his ears, I think is… presumably he was born there at Grimmauld Place, and he spent his entire life there. And I mean…
Hanna: How old do house-elves get?
Laura: That’s a good question. Does anyone know?
Andrew: In the case of Kreacher – and this is eerie – he died… actually, yeah, I guess we don’t really know.
Eric: My big question is where do they keep getting all the house-elves from whose heads are on the posts of the stairs on the way over? Because we don’t… is there a Mrs. Kreacher that we don’t know about?
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Probably not. He doesn’t seem like a fellow who’s experienced love before.
Laura: No.
Eric: But were there originally…? Did the Black family originally have a series of house-elves, right? How do you get…?
Laura and Micah: I’m sure they did.
Andrew: So the author actually did respond to somebody on Twitter back in 2017, what happened to Kreacher. [laughs] Rowling said, “He died aged 666,” and left it at that. So that almost sounds like a joke, but yeah, so I think we have to take that with a grain of salt if we’re trying to find an actual answer.
Micah: I think it’s reasonable to think that house-elves can live to be several hundred years old.
Andrew: Definitely, yeah.
Hanna: So he maybe raised not just Sirius and Regulus, but maybe their parents and their grandparents too.
Laura: Likely.
Micah: But the way he refers to Mrs. Black, though, as “Mistress” makes me think that she might have been his main person.
Laura: She’s the matriarch.
Micah: She is. I did want to ask, though, as the story starts to unfold with Kreacher, do we see any similarities between Draco and Regulus? They think that they like what Voldemort is selling, but once they get a taste, they have legitimate second thoughts.
Eric: I like this. I like this a lot.
Andrew: Yeah, I definitely see the similarities there, because I think everybody experiences this in their life one way or another. You think you’re going to be interested in something. Not this evil, but you think you’re going to be interested in something, and then you start experiencing it and, “Eh, it’s not for me.” Because from the outside it might look fun and sexy and desirable, but then you get involved and you’re like, “Never mind. But hey, at least I tried.”
Laura: Have y’all heard that saying of like, “Oh, the leopards won’t eat my face”?
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Laura: And then they find… they’re like, “Oh, crap.”
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: We’ll kind of address that next episode.
Eric: You have a choice when you find that out, and the choice that Regulus makes – although we don’t know him very well – the choice that Regulus makes is to basically seek out and destroy whatever it is that Voldemort is doing. And so Regulus must have been profoundly affected by Kreacher’s story, and to decide then and there that Voldemort needs not to live forever as a result of that is a heck of a thing. When you read the letter, to borrow a term from Drag Race and the gay community, the letter is really [censored], and it’s…
Andrew: [laughs] We can’t say that on air.
Eric: Can’t we? Okay, maybe we bleep it. Well, anyway, that one’s for the Discord people.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But anyway, the letter is very [censored], and it’s like, “Hey, I’ve found your secret. You’re going to be a little bit more mortal, ha ha.” And it’s just like, man, Regulus really had a mission all of a sudden. He went from being this indoctrinated boy to someone who’s actively… I think he goes further than Draco at getting himself out of the situation; it’s just a shame that Regulus does not live to enjoy…
Micah: Regulus is a man of action. Draco may be still a little bit too immature to take that action. But I think it’s a situation where clearly, when Kreacher shares the story, Regulus says to himself, “He did what to you?” And he’s willing in that moment to make a decision, saying, “Oh no, this is not going to hold up.”
Hanna: I see two main differences between them, and that is that Draco wants to get out when he realizes that he’s not capable of doing the evil things that he’s asked to do, while Regulus is mad at how evil things are being done to creatures that he cares about. And Regulus is also more motivated to stop him and not just get out, while Draco, I think he just wants out, and then he doesn’t really care what happens after.
Eric: So Micah, you had a great question of really what turned Regulus here.
Micah: Yeah, we know that it’s Kreacher’s story, but I’m kind of curious what makes him go the extra mile in terms of saying, “Okay, I’m going to go to the cave, I’m going to sacrifice myself, and I’m going to ensure that Kreacher is the one who now destroys this locket, this Horcrux.” But Kreacher described Regulus, when he approached him with these plans to return to the cave, as being “disturbed in the mind,” and the only other time that I can ever remember that kind of description is with the Imperius Curse. So I know it’s probably more so Regulus is just deranged with this idea, he’s just overcome by the emotion of it all, but “disturbed in the mind” sounds like we should be picking up on that.
Andrew: I don’t know if I agree… so I think what’s going on is Regulus was just deeply disturbed by what Voldemort was doing to his house-elf. Again, Voldemort does not know about love or caring for somebody.
Eric: He crossed a line.
Andrew: He crossed a line, exactly. That should be… Voldemort should respect Regulus’s family members, his people…
Eric: People’s property.
Andrew: Right, and to not… and to throw his house-elf away – again, like you said, Eric – crossed a line. So I think maybe when Kreacher is talking about him being deeply disturbed, Regulus was deeply disturbed by what Voldemort did, and then just became driven to exact revenge on him. I think the deeply disturbed attitude was like, “F this, I’m screwing him over.”
Eric: Yeah, and it goes against everything that Regulus previously had held dear. Maybe the “disturbed in the mind” speaks to Kreacher not realizing or not recognizing Regulus, kind of like his brother, had a rebellious streak. It manifests in Sirius by hanging up all these pictures of girls and blazing Gryffindor pride all over the bedroom, but for Regulus, here’s a guy who did everything right, he believed in the cause, and now he’s contemplating ruining the Dark Lord. It’s just like… that’s the rebellion that Regulus is planning.
Micah: I like that.
Eric: You guys, I just thought of this: What if Regulus had not died when he goes and retrieves the locket? What if he hadn’t been dragged in? What if, in fact, Regulus was still alive at the time of Book 7? What would that relationship look like, or how would it be different? How would it change the plot of the book?
Andrew: Would he have been a member of the Order? Could he have saved Sirius?
Eric: Or would he be somebody that shows up…? Yeah, maybe for other reasons he didn’t interact sooner than this, but Kreacher is like, “Oh, you guys are asking about the locket. Okay, it’s time for me to reveal my master!”
Micah: [laughs] Well, he would have been much better option to go on the run with them than Lupin.
Eric: Oh, yeah, the quest! Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s… I got chills.
Laura: I think it also would have complicated Harry’s inheritance of Grimmauld Place and Kreacher if Regulus was alive.
Eric: [laughs] Oh, that’s right.
[Ad break]
Micah: But why didn’t he just grab Regulus and Apparate back, Kreacher? He didn’t have to leave him there.
Eric: Yeah, I guess that’s true.
Micah: Anyway.
Eric: Well, but that shows Regulus’s love, because his orders were to “save yourself.” He didn’t want… he valued Kreacher’s life over his own, but also forbade Kreacher of ever telling the Blacks what had happened. So that’s just… Kreacher describes…
Andrew: Interesting. Maybe he’s afraid of Voldemort… [sighs] It sounds… I don’t want to belittle him by saying he’d be afraid of Voldemort, but what if when Voldemort found out that the locket was switched, he would probably come after Regulus, right? So he’s like, “I’m going to be a dead man anyway, so I’ll just die here.” I don’t know.
Laura: Well, and he’s probably trying to protect his family.
Micah: True.
Eric: Yeah. But just hearing this, and especially straight from the house-elf’s mouth, having Kreacher talk about Mrs. Black discovering that her son is missing and not being able to tell her why, because he’s been expressly forbidden to, sounds like a really devastating 10, 15, 20 years that Kreacher has lived, and I don’t know how you read this chapter without feeling just a tremendous amount of sympathy for everything that Kreacher has been through, the loss that Kreacher has suffered.
Andrew: And Regulus too. I mean, I just… you see Regulus in a whole different light after this, and I love it.
Micah: Totally.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Micah: But this is also another blind spot for Voldemort, because does he never ask the question what happened to Regulus, one of his followers, one of his Death Eaters?
Eric: “Who?”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But really, though.
Micah: Yeah, well, that’s my point. You’d think that he would be somewhat concerned that this person just up and disappeared. But I really did want to… I know we’re going to wrap up this chapter. We’ve clearly had a picture in our minds of Kreacher for much of this series, and I think it’s safe to say that our perspective on him changes quite a bit in this chapter after hearing his story. I’m not excusing his behavior, I’m not excusing the things that he says, but it reminded me very much of you never know what someone else is going through. I feel like we hear that a lot these days. The assumption is just this is a miserly old house-elf who is a pure-blood maniac because he’s following in the footsteps of the family that he serves, but there’s a lot more that was happening beneath the surface, and this also justifies what I know we’ve talked about before, that J.K. Rowling very much wanted Kreacher to be kept in the Order of the Phoenix movie, and this is the reason why.
Andrew: Yes, good point.
Micah: Even though I don’t think Deathly Hallows does a great job of this story.
Eric: Right. Yeah, no, it definitely… Kreacher is not a bad elf; he just had a bad day for every day of his life after Regulus died.
Andrew: [laughs] And he’s got some issues with the whole “Mudblood” thing. He could tamp down on that.
Eric: Yeah, he still uses more slurs than should typically be… he’s not polite society. And a really, really touching moment – probably my favorite thing Harry does ever – is Harry pulls out the fake locket, the one that has so much personal significance to Kreacher, is symbolic of what he lost, is symbolic of what he loved, and gives it to him. I mean, let’s be real. Harry doesn’t need this.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a decision that pays off too. It’s a gesture that Sirius, who Kreacher betrayed, would not have done. And I think it just further… of course, Kreacher was going to obey Harry no matter what, but I think this just further inspired Kreacher to get the job done as it pertains to finding Dung and that locket.
Eric: It changes everything. I mean, it’s something that Griphook is going to tell Harry later, right? That “You are a most unusual wizard,” and it’s just like… Harry’s thinking to do this completely changes Kreacher’s trajectory, and is what gives Kreacher, I think, that extra buy-in to do everything that he does. I mean, Kreacher, at the Battle of Hogwarts, shows up wearing the locket.
Andrew: Yeah, he’s so proud of it. Crying for…
Micah: With a frying pan, too, if I remember correctly.
Eric: Yeah, he’s got the locket and a frying pan.
Micah: But yeah, it’s the beginning of a… I won’t say a beautiful friendship, but it certainly softens Kreacher. And we even see it start to pay dividends in the next chapter when he comes back with Mundungus, and just the back and forth that the two of them have with each other, Harry and Kreacher do. It’s almost comical in a way. But I think it’s safe to say that Harry learned a lesson that Sirius never seemed to. Do we agree with that? As it pertains to Kreacher?
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Hanna: Yeah, he does eventually. I think at first he starts being nice just to get… not just to get what he wants, but mostly. But then he realizes that he’s a real person – or creature – with feelings, and he respects that.
Eric: I love it. Well, does that conclude our discussion of “Kreacher’s Tale”?
Andrew: I think so.
Lynx Line
Andrew: But we have the Lynx Line now, and the question was: How does Sirius and Regulus’s teenage bedrooms compare to your own? Did you have school pride? Did you have swimsuit models adorning your walls? What was your room like compared to the Black kids? How about you, Laura? What was your room like?
Laura: Yeah, so mine had lots of band posters on the walls. Think punk rock, Green Day, The Clash, The Ramones, stuff like that.
Eric: Aw, hell yeah.
Laura: Definitely had a Sex Pistols poster on the wall. And I painted my room. I painted one of my walls completely black – I wanted a black accent wall – and then I painted the inside of my closet Avada Kedavra green, which some of y’all might remember because that was my recording studio.
Andrew: Yes, yes!
Laura: So I had this green closet that I recorded in all the time.
Eric: Oh my God.
Laura: Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. And then in terms of the tidiness, my room looked lived in. It looked like a person lived in it. It was not something out of a magazine that looked staged.
Andrew: That’s a polite way to say it was a mess. Am I interpreting that correctly?
Laura: I mean, it wasn’t a crazy mess. But I also… I mean, to this day, I’m not going to win Housekeeper of the Year or anything.
Andrew: Got it. I think I had way more Harry Potter merchandise than the Black kids did. Yeah, a lot of Harry Potter merchandise in mine. And it was tidy.
Micah: For me, I think a pretty standard ’90s bedroom. School pride? Not a chance.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Didn’t really have any loyalty there. But I think, Laura, similar to what you were saying too, just posters were so big. I feel like in the ’90s especially, when you would go to a music store, you’d always be looking for a poster of your favorite band. So similarly to you, definitely Green Day, Nirvana, and a few others. It’s hard to remember back. [laughs]
Andrew: I know, right?
Micah: It’s like, “What did I have on the walls?”
Eric: Well, you mentioned posters. I definitely was also a poster kid. I had probably three posters, no matter what, hung up. And then what ended up happening… it actually changed after… I went to Europe right after graduating high school, and when I came back, I plastered all the walls with photos of places I had been, postcard type stuff of Neuschwanstein Castle, which is in, I want to say, Austria or Germany. And it’s the Disney Castle, is why I’m mentioning it. But I found a lot of art in Europe, too, and actually had drawings, like artists’ paintings of topless ladies, that my mom, for some reason, let me put up in the bedroom. They were tasteful. It was more of a Greek…
Micah: [laughs] They were tasteful.
Andrew: That’s how I tried to convince my parents too. Hey, it’s tasteful!
Micah: Because they were from Europe, they were more tasteful.
Andrew: “It’s art.”
Eric: Yeah, I swear, I was trying and failing just now to locate photos of it, but it’s… because I have a photo of my bedroom at that time. But everything was arranged in a sophisticated artistic way.
Andrew: Got it.
Eric: But yeah, there were topless ladies on my childhood bedroom when I was an adolescent.
Andrew: How about you, Hanna?
Hanna: I had no topless ladies, but if I had found topless posters of my favorite band, Tokio Hotel, I would have put it up, no question.
Eric: Oooh.
Hanna: I had a lot of posters of them. And then just a bunch of random knickknacks collecting dust. It was not dirty, but messy.
Andrew: The dust part is relatable to 12 Grimmauld Place. So turning to our patrons, Shannon said,
“My bedroom was adorned with cutouts from J19 magazines, Teen Beat, pictures I printed off of our home computer. I fell asleep every night to Daniel Radcliffe, Hayden Christensen, Justin Timberlake (ramen noodles and all), and Johnathan Taylor Thomas watching over me.”
Eric: JTT!
Micah: You all right there, Andrew?
Andrew: [laughs] No, Micah, I am not all right. “I also had many Polaroids with friends in foam picture frames from Claire’s and…” How do you pronounce…?
Laura: Delia’s.
Andrew: “… Delia’s, which now has a clothing line at Target! In the corner was my six CD changer stereo system.” Oh, yeah, that is very ’90s, early 2000s.
Eric: Oh my God. Wow. That’s very cool. We heard from another Shannon, who said,
“I used to write my favorite book quotes (a lot of HP ones…) on pieces of neon paper and collage them on the ceiling. I had a top bunk.”
Oh, that’s so cool! That’s really cool.
Micah: Oooh.
Laura: Very cool.
Micah: John says,
“I had a poster of the Chicago Bulls with Jordan, Dennis Rodman, and Scotty Pippen. I also had the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling.”
Yeah, those were big back then.
Andrew: I put that one in just for you, Micah.
Micah: Thank you.
Laura: Rachel says,
“I was a huge horse girl, so I had model horses and posters everywhere! I also had tons of books on shelves and in piles around the floor. As a kid, I had floral wallpaper, and one of my proudest early teen moments was convincing my parents to let me paint the walls a solid color.”
Andrew and Eric: Aww.
Hanna: Summer says, “I painted my room purple with teal trim (it’s a canon event).” Canon? What is that?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Like, book canon?
Hanna: I don’t know.
Laura: A canon event is like a relatable experience that a lot of people go through during points in their lives.
Andrew: Oh.
Hanna: Ah. Okay, well, apparently not to me.
“… but painted one wall gray to literally make it a Harry Potter wall. I used a poster book to cover the whole wall in Harry Potter posters. My wall was the perfect size to fit 11×17 posters across it for all eight movies in a row, which I was quite proud of.”
Andrew: And finally, Carlee said,
“My mom was big on decorating, so that meant strict rules about what we could put on the walls. I was allowed to paint my walls pale purple and decide the theme of my room (butterflies), and then I hand-painted multicolored butterflies all around the walls. Other than that, I wasn’t allowed to do much else.”
Yeah, you know, the parents kept things in control. Listeners, if you have any feedback about today’s episode, you can contact us by emailing us or sending a voice memo that you record on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com. Or, you know, this is 2026; there’s more modern ways to contact us. You can reach out on social media or comment on Spotify or in the YouTube comments.
Quizzitch
Andrew: Before we wrap up, it’s time for the answer to this week’s Quizzitch question.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Once again, the question is: What item of Mrs. Black’s is Mundungus Fletcher said to have run off with and presumably sold? The correct answer is her gloves. I’m picturing Princess Peach gloves, like elbow gloves. Very nice, very formal, very elegant, and maybe possessing of magical powers. But the correct answers were submitted by HallowWolf and Carlee in the Discord. Congratulations, you two. You win! And that wraps up Quizzitch, and that wraps up Chapter 10.
Andrew: Next week, Chapter by Chapter continues with Chapter 11 of Deathly Hallows, “The Bribe.” Hanna, thanks for joining us today. Again, glad we got you on for your favorite book, and also right before you came over to Americaaa.
Hanna: [Censored] yeah. Oh.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: That’s what I was waiting for.
Andrew: Yes, yes, that was the reference.
Micah: You have to leave that one in.
Andrew: That’s getting bleeped too. Sorry, there’s automatic censors these days we try to avoid from being given an explicit tag. But anyway, thanks, Hanna, and thanks for your support on our Patreon.
Hanna: Thank you so much for letting me join.
Andrew: Visit MuggleCast.com for links to our social media, our Patreon, our transcripts, our favorite episodes, and lots more. Thanks, everyone, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Hanna: And I’m Hanna.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
Laura: Bye, y’all.
Micah: Bye.