Transcript – Episode 113
[Show music begins]
Caleb Graves: This is Episode 113 of Alohomora! for December 6, 2014.
[Show music continues]
Caleb: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Alohomora! I’m Caleb Graves.
Rosie Morris: And I’m Rosie Morris. We are actually the only two hosts today, but we’ve got two very special guests: Amanda and Zack. Would you guys like to introduce yourselves?
Zack Luye: Ladies first, by all means.
Amanda Walters: [laughs] Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m from Australia. I’m a bit of a Slytherin through and through. And yeah, I’m very, very excited to be here. [laughs]
Rosie: [laughs] We’re excited to have you.
Zack: I’m excited as well. Thank you guys for having me. This chapter that we’re speaking about today is something that is very, very near and dear to my heart.
Rosie: It is a good chapter.
Zack: It really is. That’s putting it mildly, I’d say.
[Rosie laughs]
Amanda: It has some awesome characters.
Zack: Yes.
Rosie: I really think there’s an omen today with the episode number. 113? That’s just unlucky.
Zack: Ah, I like that. That’s nice, actually.
Caleb: Indeed. So before we move on, I do want to say that Amanda is not fully showing how dedicated she is to being a Slytherin…
[Amanda laughs]
Caleb: … because I met Amanda this past summer at a LeakyCon, which Zack was also at…
Zack: Mhm.
Caleb: … and I met her while she was wearing one of the most impressive Bellatrix cosplays that I have ever seen. It’s pretty stellar.
Amanda: [laughs] Thank you.
[Rosie laughs]
Amanda: I was pretty proud of my Bellatrix. I was able to premiere it at LeakyCon this year, so… yeah.
[Caleb laughs]
Zack: The thing about Amanda’s Bellatrix costume is that the employees of Universal are kind of skittish about allowing her to even exist within the park because when she goes, it’s like a celebrity is there.
[Caleb and Rosie laugh]
Zack: Hundreds of Muggles are like, “Ah, picture with her! Picture with Bellatrix!” And she’s like, “I’m just one of you. I just want a Butterbeer, please.”
Amanda: The first time I was there I had a huge line of people waiting for pictures, and I’m like, “I have to keep going! I don’t want to get kicked out! I came all the way from Australia!”
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: You should start charging; you’d get your money back to actually afford the flights. [laughs]
Amanda: Yeah, absolutely.
Zack: True.
Caleb: So before we get started on the discussion, we want to remind you guys that we are discussing Chapter 35 of Order of the Phoenix, which is “Beyond the Veil.”
Zack: [ominously] “Beyond the Veil.”
Amanda: Ooh.
Rosie: We would also like to take a very quick moment to thank our sponsor Audible. Exclusively for fans of Alohomora! they are offering a free audio download. They have over 150,000 titles to choose from, so head over to audiblepodcast.com/open to get yours now.
Caleb: So first we’re going to recap some of your comments from last week’s discussion, and the first comment comes from Hufflepug, and it says,
“The hosts touched on this briefly when they were talking about the brain room, but it would be cool if there was a room where they studied magic in general. Questions could include where it comes from, whether it’s available everywhere in the universe, how wizards and witches manipulate it, and why Muggles can’t use it. It would probably have its own separate room rather than just the brain room because it seems like magic is not just present within people but rather in the environment.”
Zack: Hmm.
Amanda: That’s cool. I agree.
Caleb: Yeah, so they talked a lot last week about the different rooms of the Ministry and we’ll talk about a couple of them here today, but… ugh, there’s got to be just so many more rooms in the Department of Mysteries that we don’t even see, that maybe we’ll get to see on Pottermore. But I definitely want to see more.
Rosie: I don’t think we will because they’re all mysteries.
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Caleb: Oh, that’s true. Dang.
Zack: This is something that… just in general, the subject of what’s inside of the Department of Mysteries has been something since I was, I guess you could say, a kid. It’s been so many years since this book came out. It’s just plagued my mind and has been a part of just… I’ll wake up sweating in the middle of the night and be like, “What does it mean? What does it mean?”
[Amanda laughs]
Zack: Was that Merlin’s brain that they were keeping in the brain room? Is that his memories that we’re seeing when it flies across the room…?
Caleb: Oh.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: It’s just there are so many things. There are so many answers that we’ve yet to be given and I just feel like there is so much more there. There’s so much.
Amanda: That’s very frustrating.
Rosie: Isn’t that an amazing piece of world-building, though? To create an entire place where it’s allowed to just be, “Yeah, there are no answers. We’re just going to say it’s amazing.” [laughs]
Zack: That’s true. It was bold of her to do that. And I feel like she does a great job of rounding out a lot of things in the story, especially as it reaches its head…
Rosie: Mhm.
Zack: … but this is a chapter, and the chapter previous… there’s so many unanswered questions that still, like I said, to this day that my friends and I… and I know that we are sitting here and just thinking, “What is the answer to this?” And it means so much within the story.
Caleb: Have you guys thought much about this specific question: Where magic comes from, why Muggles can’t use it, etc.?
Amanda: Absolutely.
Caleb: Because I feel that’s a big question. I mean, we definitely don’t want to go too in-depth because we could talk hours about that probably.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: But I’ve always thought it was a genetic basis.
Amanda: Some sort of genetic gift to be able to channel it and refine the magic that generally is in the universe.
Caleb: Yeah, yeah, and that it’s more than just one genetic trait; it’s a couple that have to coincide in just a precise way.
Zack: It’s strange because young Tom Riddle has this sort of inert awareness of his surrounding powers. And when I say surrounding powers, I mean his connection with the world around him. And he is able to manipulate it in a lot of different ways. And I feel we get a great example of it later in this chapter when Dumbledore… I don’t want to skip too much ahead, but when he does the hook and line and sinker move and he pulls Dolohov back. I think it was Dolohov. And we see that magic is not just limited to unlocking doors and putting fires in a grate. It’s literally what the person can bend it to.
Rosie: Mhm.
Zack: And I think that that knowledge is evident to magic being such a larger thing than, I don’t know, what you can point through a wand. Do you know what I’m saying?
Amanda: Yeah.
Caleb: Mhm.
Zack: It’s so interesting.
Rosie: Magic is just science we have yet to understand. [laughs]
Zack: Yes.
Caleb: There you go. All right, the next comment comes from SeekerHolly and it says,
“When the hosts were discussing the large number of prophecies in the hall, I was surprised nobody brought up one of the other new, Halloween additions to Pottermore. In Chapter 34 of OotP on Pottermore, JKR tells us about Naming Seers. Witches and wizards used to commonly consult these Seers (for a hefty chunk of gold) before their children were born to find a name that would best sum up the future personality/fate of their child.
Although this practice is becoming increasingly less common in the wizarding world, I would assume that a big chunk of the prophecies in the Hall of Prophecies are the predicted names of various magical children. As the hosts said, it’s hard to believe that there are 97 rows of significant prophecies. It would make more sense that a few of these rows are dedicated purely to individual names of children that some Naming Seers predicted during the past few hundred years.”
Rosie: If so, I would imagine they were all marbles rather than… they’re going to be tiny.
Amanda: Yeah.
Caleb: [laughs] Yeah, I wonder if the size is proportional to something to do with either the importance or the length of the prophecy.
Rosie: Yeah, I think so. You don’t really need a massive thing to contain just a little name. [laughs]
Zack: [laughs] Just a spare bit of parchment.
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: Exactly.
Zack: I’d like to think that the Hall of Prophecy is filled with just an unbelievable amount of important things that we aren’t aware of that will happen maybe one day because prophetically speaking, it doesn’t have to be something that is even in the same millennium as the prediction, which is what makes it so interesting. So really, there are so many things it could be. But I think this makes a lot of sense because there is a lot of prophecies there. As you read this chapter, there are so many prophecies and a lot of them are destroyed, so I’d like to think that maybe some of the less important things that were destroyed were just people’s names. Just shallowly, their names.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Amanda: But I also thought that it could be prophecies from around the world; the wizarding world in Europe keeping tabs on what’s happening maybe in the wizarding world in America or Australia, and seeing what prophecies are coming up there. I don’t know. I just find the name thing a little bit mundane.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: What kind of prophecies do they have in the Australian wizarding world, Amanda?
Amanda: They come on the backs of koalas.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: Oh, okay. Backs of koalas and in the pouches of kangaroos.
Amanda: Yeah.
Caleb: [laughs] There you go.
Zack: Love it.
Caleb: All right, the next comment comes from Elvis Gaunt and this is on the blue candles in the Department of Mysteries.
“When the hosts were discussing the meaning of blue candles, the first thing to come to my mind was Nearly Headless Nick’s Death Day party. There were blue candles along the passage leading to the party hall/dungeon and there was a large chandelier with midnight blue candles in the hall. Are they related?
All the subjects studied in the Department of Mysteries are very much related to humanity and yet seem beyond our comprehension. Kat mentioned that blue was considered a colour of divinity. Don’t we label what we do not fully grasp and beneficial to us, as the doings of god or the divine?”
Amanda and Zack: Hmm.
Caleb: My thing is… I don’t know if I would have thought too hard – twice – about the blue candles without it being raised up on the show. I don’t know.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Zack: Well, there’s certainly a connection between the Deathday Party and this. That’s interesting.
Caleb: Yeah, that is interesting. I would never have thought about that.
Zack: I don’t think that she would have just casually flickered that in. But then again, it could just be for the sake of a really cool bit of album cover, or the book cover. Because when I first saw that I was just like, “This is going to be an insane book. Look at those blue candles!”
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: Yeah.
Zack: “Harry looks so grown up!”
Amanda: It is certainly better than our cover. [laughs]
Zack: Yeah, sorry about that.
Rosie: What is the Australian cover like?
Amanda: It’s the same as the European cover.
Rosie: Really? Okay.
Amanda: It’s got the phoenix on it, which is completely unrelated, almost, but… [laughs]
Rosie: Yeah, they just saw the word phoenix and ran with it, really.
Amanda: Yeah.
Rosie: Never mind. See, the blue candles reminded me more of Hermione because we know that she has always done little blue flames. That is her little signature thing.
Zack: Ah, that’s good.
Rosie: So if you are chasing that divine route, then what does that say about Hermione? Interesting.
Caleb: She’s a goddess.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Zack: So many unanswered questions!
Rosie: It’s all in the Department of Mysteries.
Zack: Yeah. I love it. That would be the first episode I come in and guest on with you guys. All of these are open-ended and we could literally speak for hours on all of this, literally on candle color alone.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: Absolutely. And the final comment that we are going to check out is actually an audioBoom that one of our listeners left for us so we are going to play that now.
Audio: Hi, my name is Podge. I’ve been listening to the show a long time now, and after last week my friend Jack asked me a question relating to the episode. In Chapter 34 of Order of the Phoenix we saw Harry call Sirius’s name through the veil in the Department of Mysteries. And my question to you is, did Harry doom Sirius by doing so? Or was it a coincidence? Or maybe it was just foreshadowing by Jo?
Caleb: So basically the idea is that earlier while he is in the Department of Mysteries, Harry calls Sirius’s name into the veil when he’s in the Death Chamber. And this questioner is wanting to know if he has somehow doomed Sirius by doing that because we know in this chapter Sirius falls into the veil. Or if this is just coincidence. Or if it’s foreshadowing.
Amanda: Dun, dun, dun!
Zack: Oh, that’s excellent. That is really cool. What if there’s a guy…? Obviously, we’ll probably get into whatever is on the other side of the veil, but let’s say someone was listening and they’re like, “All right, well, I know this guy will probably be around soon and he is doomed to make it.”
Caleb: Like Death from “The Tale of the Three Brothers”?
Zack: I don’t want it to be Death because I think that’s just a little too simple.
Caleb: Ah, fair.
Zack: But I mean, if… okay, let’s say that the veil is a gateway to X and Y. Maybe it makes sense that Death is just posted up on the other side just in case. Maybe that’s where he sleeps.
Amanda: It could be foreshadowing, but not necessarily J.K. Rowling’s foreshadowing; just foreshadowing of the way this veil works, that it knows Sirius is going to soon be part of it. So maybe it’s calling to Sirius and Harry is picking up on it and can sense Sirius is going to be around there. Oh, it’s all a bit creepy.
Caleb: That gave me chills a little.
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Caleb: That was a really good thing to pull out, Amanda.
Amanda: Thanks.
Zack: Or Harry was going to the Department of Mysteries to look for Sirius and it just so happened he heard some stuff and thought, “Hey, maybe Sirius is there,” and that’s all it means. [laughs]
Rosie: Yeah. But I think it is incredible foreshadowing to say it because reading it the first time, you would never think, “Oh, this might be Sirius’s death later on.”
Amanda: Yeah.
Rosie: But reading it again you do get the chills down your spine, going, “Oh, no, don’t say that!” That kind of thing.
[Amanda laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Rosie: On the nature of the veil itself… you said this about Death in the “Tale of Three Brothers” a second ago. The Invisibility Cloak is meant to be cut from Death’s own cloak.
Caleb: Uh-oh.
Rosie: The veil is also described in a very similar way to the Cloak is described. Could it be another piece of Death’s cloak?
Caleb: Oh, snap.
Amanda and Rosie Ooh.
Zack: Oh, man. [laughs] I can’t answer this right now.
Rosie: It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Zack: See, I wasn’t prepared for new theories.
Rosie: There’s always new theories. [laughs]
Zack: Oh, man. I like that. See, that’s interesting because there’s so much connection between this veil and the Hallows in general, especially when we get the descriptions later on in Deathly Hallows where the resurrected dead appear to be in the world of the living just behind a veil; with a veil over the top of them. And I always connected the two things, but connecting that with the Cloak and his robe, essentially… that’s awesome. That’s so cool.
Amanda: And it also makes the Invisibility Cloak seem a bit more dangerous. Just put it on the wrong way and you could kill everybody.
[Caleb and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: That’s what happens when it’s inside-out.
Amanda: Plot twist.
[Caleb and Rosie laugh]
Zack: Hmm. And Dumbledore always knows when Harry is underneath it. Interesting.
Amanda: Dumbledore is Death?
Zack: No.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Zack: I can’t say that. I can’t say that.
Rosie: But Dumbledore does have the Elder Wand.
Zack: He does.
Amanda: Ooh.
Zack: Mmm!
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: We do like theories. [laughs] And we have some amazing theories coming from you guys in our response to last week’s Podcast Question of the Week. The question itself was,
“In this chapter, the group goes into the Hall of Prophecies and Ron coincidentally finds the prophecy that has Harry’s name on it: labeled, ‘S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D. Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter.’ We know that at one point the question mark related to both Harry and Neville, and was later changed to Harry’s name. Given the enchantments surrounding the Prophecy, who can or cannot take it off the shelf, and knowing what we do from Dumbledore’s conversation at the end of this book, is there any chance at all that Neville could still take the Prophecy off from the shelf? Also, what exactly is enchanted? The ball? Is it the shelf? Is it the paper? Could someone change the piece of descriptive paper, and would that then allow other people to pick up the Prophecy?”
And we had lots and lots of conflicting ideas and lots of great discussion happening about whether a certain idea is correct, or the nuances of it, and that’s what we really like to see. So there are some amazingly long posts. I’ve taken odd paragraphs from several, so please do go and read the rest of these comments on Alohomora!‘s website because they are brilliant theories. So to start us off, we have a comment from WizardorWhat, which is thinking about the protection on the prophecy cast by a wizard and they say,
“My understanding of the spell is that there is a fixed list of those who can touch the prophecy, and that anyone else is excluded. Given this, I don’t think that Neville could be covered. Whoever cast the spell stopping third parties from touching the prophecy must have had some sort of contact with whoever drafted the label. If the label drafter had wished to include Neville, he would have written ‘Harry Potter, or possibly Neville Longbottom.’ Instead, the label makes no reference to Neville. I think it’s pretty clear that the spell-caster would have taken the same approach. Actually, I think that Harry is quite lucky that he was able to touch the prophecy, since the label drafter clearly wasn’t certain that he was a subject of the prophecy. It might have been that only Voldemort could touch it, since he was the only person who the label drafter definitely knew *was* a subject of the prophecy. Harry got lucky, and not for the first time.”
Amanda: Ooh, what if he didn’t get lucky? What if it was part of the Horcrux that helped him be able to pick it up?
Caleb: Ooh, ooh…
Rosie: Ooh.
Caleb: Yeah, because I was thinking about this rereading. I don’t know because the question mark kind of throws this off. The Horcrux at least puts it a little bit up for debate.
Rosie: Interesting. [laughs]
Caleb: But then wouldn’t Nagini be able to get it?
Amanda: True, but Nagini didn’t get that far.
Caleb: But she’s… yeah, and plus Harry’s still a little more connected – well, obviously quite a bit more connected to it then Nagini. So he sort of should be able to because of the question mark plus Voldemort’s Horcrux. Maybe that makes up for the question mark.
Amanda: I do like the imagery of Nagini trying to roll a prophecy along with her nose.
[Caleb, Rosie, and Zack laugh]
Zack: That’s excellent. Yeah. [laughs]
Rosie: But this whole theory relies on the idea that one particular wizard and another wizard making the label have to actually decide who is in control of being able to touch this thing…
Amanda: Mmm.
Rosie: … rather than some other kind of force involved. So what do you guys think? Is there going to be one particular person whose job it is to assign these prophecies to certain people?
Zack: Well, someone’s got to spin the glass.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: Got to spin the spun glass.
Amanda: It really relies back to how the prophecies get there though.
Rosie: Mhm.
Amanda: I always imagine them as some sort of magic upon the room as they just appear, which means the magical force might know who they’re about and it’s… so many questions! [laughs]
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: I like that. There’s a lot of different mechanics involved, yeah.
Rosie: Yeah. That theory goes along with what SeekerHolly is saying, and they say,
“I have always operated under the assumption that the prophecies magically appear when made, and they adapt to the actions made by the people about which the prophecy was made.”
These get very confusing, these sentences. [laughs]
“So when the prophecy first entered the Hall of Prophecies, the only definitive person about whom the prophecy was about was Voldemort. However, as soon as Voldemort carried out part of the prophecy and marked Harry as his equal, the label adapted to this change and included Harry’s name. Just as JKR has made evident throughout the series, it’s our choices that shape our lives. So when Voldemort chooses Harry as his equal, that changes the properties of the prophecy. Therefore, I do not believe that Neville could have removed the prophecy in 1996. However, I do believe he could have theoretically removed it before Halloween of 1981.”
Caleb: So I like this idea, but then… once Voldemort chooses Harry, wouldn’t the question mark not be present anymore?
Rosie: Well, I guess it would be there to show that there was at one point some doubt. Because you’ve got to have a record of its transition as well as its final decision.
Amanda: Yeah.
Zack: Yeah, that makes sense.
Caleb: Sure.
Zack: It’s interesting whether or not they appear or whether or not they’re put into their place.
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: But I’d like to say that if they are put into place, there is certainly one or two witches or wizards that has a full-time job doing that, because there are plenty.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. It’d also require people actually declaring when they make these prophecies.
Rosie: Yeah.
Amanda: If someone makes a prophecy that they don’t want to share, the Ministry would still need to know about it for their own safety maybe.
Zack: Yeah.
Amanda: So I imagine it’s part of the magic of the room that they appear.
Zack: Mhm.
Amanda: I agree, SeekerHolly.
Zack: Yeah.
Rosie: [laughs] One thing that I find interesting that’s only really occurred to me with this discussion is… the first time we really get to know Neville, what is the thing that he’s holding? Picture Neville in Book 1, Movie 1. What is the thing that immediately links Neville?
Zack: Remembrall.
Rosie: Remembrall, which is a tiny glass sphere…
Zack: Mhm.
Rosie: … like these prophecies.
Caleb: Huh.
Rosie: It’s just kind of… the parallels – you’ve got the circular story thing happening here again, where you’ve got Neville and Harry. Harry is the one that actually manages to catch the Remembrall from Malfoy, and you’ve got a battle over a little golf ball. It’s interesting.
Zack: Oh. That is very cool.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: And then later on, you have actually Malfoy’s father trying to catch a ball from Harry.
Rosie: Yeah. It’s pretty much exactly the same scene – Neville has it, he’s trying to pass it to Harry, Malfoy gets in the way…
Caleb: Hmm.
Amanda: Wow.
Rosie: Same thing happens.
Caleb: Dang!
Zack: Yeah. Just the…
Rosie: It’s so clever!
Zack: … congruency in her writing is magical, if you think of it. Literally there’s too much.
Rosie: So many of these literary moments today.
Zack: Yeah.
[Rosie laughs]
Rosie: Another interesting link to another magical object comes from Olivia Underwood. This is an extremely long and detailed post but it’s amazing, so go and read it on the website. But here’s a small snippet from it:
“My theory is that the glass spheres made by those working in the Department of Mysteries are related to Snitches, which have flesh memories (Scrimgeour in book 7 is perfectly aware of this, which makes me wonder about its use within the Ministry). Using that ‘touch’ technology the Ministry made the glass respond or ‘open up’ only to those who are connected to […] said prophecy. It can only be taken down by the touch or hands of those who are part of the prophecy. So even with gloves, you can’t take it down, and it would have defensive magic like an electric fence.”
Zack: Hmm.
Rosie: What do you guys think?
Caleb: I’ve also wondered, should Trelawney be able to remove it because she made it?
Rosie: Hmm.
Amanda: And then by connection, could Dumbledore have removed it? And if he knew that they were after it, could he have saved them all the bother and just…
Caleb: Right.
Amanda: … put it in a vault in Gringotts? [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. He heard it, his name’s on it…
Amanda: Yeah.
Rosie: I think they’ve always said that it can only be removed by the people who the prophecy’s about, rather than…
Caleb: Yeah.
Rosie: … that related to the prophecy.
Caleb: That comes up in this chapter – they explicitly say that. But also, I still wonder if there are some things that are sort of open to…
Rosie: Interpretation?
Caleb: Mhm. Yeah.
Rosie: Possibly.
Zack: Well, I wouldn’t want to be one of the ones to test that theory out.
[Caleb and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: No.
Caleb: Yeah, I wonder what happens if you try grabbing and you can’t.
Rosie: Well, we’ve seen a few of them, haven’t we?
Zack: Yeah.
Rosie: Wouldn’t you say that was what happened to…
Zack: Broderick Bode?
Rosie: … the guy in… yeah, Bode.
Caleb: Oh, that’s true. Right, right, right. Yeah.
Zack: Brains got addled.
Rosie: Not good.
Zack: Not good.
Rosie: Speaking of addled brains…
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Rosie: … we’ve got the idea that the glass orb and the prophecy is possibly a memory. And this comes from TicklethePear, which is a brilliant name. They say,
“What if the sphere is nothing more than a glass orb encasing a memory? I imagine Dumbledore ‘reporting’ the prophecy to the Ministry and providing a copy of the memory to be preserved. At the time, I believe Harry and Neville would’ve been able to remove the prophecy as it could’ve applied to both of them. The Ministry would’ve enchanted the orb as such. However, once Voldemort ‘marked him as equal,’ effectively ‘choosing’ Harry, the spell would’ve been revised accordingly. As for the paper, I think it’s just that: handwriting on a slip of paper to keep the orbs organized.”
Zack: Mhm.
Rosie: So this is interesting because you’ve got the smoky memory that you see inside the Pensieve, which is inside the glass orb which doesn’t match the description. Again it links to Remembralls – memory, little glass orb – and I do like the idea of Dumbledore actually providing a copy of the memory. And that could easily be done by anyone who’s listened to a prophecy and then gave it to the Ministry… or the Ministry managing to get a copy of the memory in some form in order to make these orbs. I like it.
Zack: Yeah, that’s a lot of work for the Ministry.
Rosie: It is a lot of work.
Zack: What’s going on with the Seers and what are they up to?
Rosie: Yeah. But there are… I think there’s quite a few… no, there are only a few Seers that actually have the power to make proper prophecy. See, I don’t even think the name’s a proper prophecy. I think that’s just them making up scams.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: I don’t know.
Zack: Keep the Unspeakables busy…
Rosie: Exactly. [laughs]
Zack: They need job security.
Rosie: But I think… I’ve always been on the side of “the prophecies make themselves.” But if there was one thing that was going to convince me that the Ministry are making the prophecies instead, then it would be this, that it’s a record of a memory that is provided and then encased.
Zack: Well, it would certainly be a testament to the strength of magic in that room and in that entire place in general if it were able to wrangle in a graphical representation, like when the orb is shattered and we see the floating eyeballs and we see her glasses, and we see her sort of physically in front of us giving this recount of the memory of the prophecy. That’s some powerful magic because she was pretty far away, and again there was really no warning – it just happened.
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: And what’s to say of the prophecy in the third book as well?
Amanda: I did wonder if that third book prophecy had to be in there somewhere.
Rosie: True, yeah.
Zack: It’s interesting. I mean, if they populate in there automatically, it’s just like, hmm…
Caleb: Yeah.
Rosie: That would be interesting to find out. Tell us, Jo. Tell us more! [laughs]
Amanda: I think it would be the only way to explain why there are quite so many.
Rosie: Yeah.
Amanda: Because to have so many you’d have to have every prophecy made in there.
Rosie: But if it’s not there, then that would mean that this was happening. Because Harry hasn’t provided a copy of his memory of the event, and he’s the only one that saw it.
Caleb: Mhm.
Zack: Right. I’m really glad that we’re going into this…
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: … because for all of you listening at home, this is truly just a very geeky… we’re talking about…
Rosie: Yeah. This has no relation at all to… [laughs]
Zack: … how prophecies got into the Department of Mysteries, and we’re just scratching our heads. So you’re getting your money’s worth in this podcast, people.
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: This is a Harry Potter podcast. Enjoy, because we’re going deep.
Rosie: So let’s take it a little less deep perhaps. We’ll go into a huge gaping plothole instead.
[Caleb and Zack laugh]
Rosie: SnuggleswithNifflers – again, an amazing name – says,
“My huge question with this is more how the dream team was able to blast the Hall of Prophecy apart, and in turn open and listen to prophecies that were not about them. This seems like a pretty gaping hole. Voldy could just have had someone use their wand to levitate or blast the prophecy open. If you don’t need to touch it with your skin to get it off the wall and open, then theoretically anyone could open any prophecy using magic, as long as they didn’t physically grab the orb.”
Zack: Mmm.
Amanda: It’s true, this happens. Not good.
Caleb: So do you think there’s some possibility of a plot hole there? I think that it would… this specific prophecy is Voldemort wanting to hear it specifically himself, but he couldn’t get into the Ministry himself and he didn’t trust his Death Eaters to hear it and relay the message to him.
Zack: Also, he didn’t know at first that taking it off the shelf was off the table.
Caleb: Yeah.
Zack: So I feel like he would also not necessarily have the knowledge that Reducto would put him in the right spot to at least hear it once.
Rosie: Yeah, he’s learning on the drop a bit. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, very cautious with it in general. So I wouldn’t want to go just start breaking things.
Zack: Mhm.
Rosie: Thank you all so much for your really interesting comments. As you can tell, by the fact that we’ve just spent so long discussing them, we love theorizing the nitty-gritty of what actually goes on in this world. Please remember to keep sending them in and do go back and read them – the rest of the comments – because the theories this week were amazing.
Have you guys managed to see the Mockingjay movie yet? [laughs] I’ve been really busy and I’ve been looking forward to the weekend to try and catch it, but I just… we’ve been going into the details of this book and I’ve completely forgotten the plots of all the others. So I think I really need to reread the last book or something before I go and see that movie.
Caleb: Well, I have seen the movie. I saw it the week it opened – it was really great – and I had to start to think about some of the things that were different in the movie from the book, especially now that we’re getting ready for the last half to air next year. So I think probably a really great option would be to listen to the audiobook. Because like you, Rosie, [I’m] super busy and it’s a really great option to catch up on a book either you’ve already read or a new one you’re wanting to read. And a great option for that is Audible, which is the best place for all your audio downloading needs. Right now, Audible has a really great special offer for all of our US and Canadian listeners. They can visit our unique link, created specifically for them, and get a free audio download today. They just have to go to audiblepodcast.com/open.
Rosie: You can also download it using Audible’s listener program. Basicially you purchase book credit at a super low monthly rate, and you can use it at anytime for any product that Audible offers.
Caleb: With over 150,000 titles, you have a lot of options. Head over to audiblepodcast.com/open and start downloading directly to your computer for easy listening on burned CDs, mp3 players, and even your iPad, iPhone or Androids. Again, the website made just for you is audiblepodcast.com/open. So visit audiblepodcast.com/open for your free download today.
All right, so now we are going to move into this week’s chapter discussion.
[Order of the Phoenix Chapter 35 intro begins]
Harry: Now!
Bellatrix: Chapter 35.
Ginny, Hermione, Luna, Neville, and Ron: Reducto!
[Sound of spells going off, shelves creaking, and prophecies breaking]
Bellatrix: “Beyond the Veil.”
[Sound of shelves and prophecies crashing down]
[Order of the Phoenix Chapter 35 ends]
Caleb: All right, so this chapter…
Zack: Bum-bum-bum…
Caleb: … so many things. We start with the Death Eaters appearing in the Hall of Prophecy just behind Harry and the gang, and of course they want the prophecy and they want it intact. Harry learns some minor details about the prophecy from Lucius. The kids make a break to escape from the Department of Mysteries but have to fight off the Death Eaters through many of the weird rooms inside the Department. Ron gets attacked by a brain. Harry then stumbles his way to the Death Chamber, the Order suddenly shows up, there’s a lot of dueling that happens, Dumbledore finally shows up, and then we get the big battle between Bellatrix and Sirius. All right, the first big overall point is the Death Eaters appearing…
[Sound of a dog barking]
Amanda: Oh, sorry.
Caleb: Oh, there’s a dog.
Zack: They’re here!
Rosie: He doesn’t like the Death Eaters.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: So the first thing I thought about this is, “Can you just Apparate into the Department of Mysteries, specifically the Hall of… well, any part of the Department of Mysteries?” I wouldn’t think so.
Zack: No.
Amanda: It seems too easy, like Voldemort could have been there months ago.
Rosie: They must have already been there.
Caleb: Yeah, they were just lurking.
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: Well, I mean, if these kids can get in, I don’t think it’s much of a challenge for the Death Eaters…
Caleb: That’s fair.
Rosie: That’s true. [laughs]
Zack: … or the members of the Order to find their way in either.
Caleb: So Harry keeps demanding them to tell him where Sirius is, and he’s not handing over the prophecy, and they’re all laughing at him because of course they know that Sirius is not there. We, as the reader, don’t know yet. But Lucius delivers a pretty biting and reality check line for Harry. He says, “It’s time you learn the difference between life and dreams, Potter,” and I just had to think, “God, of course. Harry, how can you be so stupid?” First off, my biggest thing with the whole thing – and I know I haven’t been on with the past couple of chapters, so I need to get it off my chest now…
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Caleb: … is all this time… so much time has passed since Harry first thought he saw Sirius, and so many things have happened, but mostly, so much time has passed. Life if Sirius [were] there, brother’s already dead.
[Rosie laughs]
Caleb: There’s like no hope for him. There’s been so much time that’s passed. Harry, it’s been half a day already. It’s very frustrating.
Rosie: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true. He has been saying that his scar has been prickling, so he knows that he’s being tortured but he that he hasn’t had the death blow yet.
Caleb: Yeah.
Rosie: But that’s just presuming that Voldemort actually cares enough that it would be a strong burst of emotion, actually killing him.
Caleb: Right, yeah. I just think that Harry is being irrational, but what’s new?
Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]
Zack: Well, think about it, though, Caleb. We’ve got essentially an entire book where Voldemort has been… I don’t want to say “brainwashing” Harry, but he’s been definitely conditioning him to think so much about this doorway, to think about this hallway into this chamber, and then finally, he sees the resolution of this, and it’s his Sirius [who’s] there, and he’s in trouble. I just feel like there’s so much, including just the will of You-Know-Who that is inside of Harry at this moment that’s taking up so much of his brain space and pushing him in that direction.
Caleb: That’s fair. Also during this conversation where they’re trying to get the prophecy, Bellatrix is being mad reckless with the way she’s handling it.
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Caleb: Azkaban has certainly destroyed her sense of being able to follow a plan, if she ever had one in the first place. I figured Amanda would particularly enjoy this scene.
Amanda: [laughs] Oh, yes. I love Bellatrix. Oh, even before she got Helena Bonham Carter-fied, there’s just something about her mad evil.
[Caleb laughs]
Amanda: Awesome.
Rosie: It’s just completely out of control.
Zack: Azkaban did not do her favors as far as her looks are concerned, but she is still Bellatrix, striking.
Rosie: You could say the same about Sirius, though.
Zack: Yeah?
Caleb: It’s true. It’s in the blood.
Zack: Peas in a pod. They have their genes, right?
Caleb: Yeah. Despite all that’s going on, Harry still manages to keep control of the situation pretty well. He talks his way through it. He loses track a couple of times, but he does a pretty good job, which I thought we don’t see, actually, Harry able to handle situations this well in this manner very often, where he’s able to talk through a situation and keep people going instead of going nuts trying to get the prophecy, keeps them pretty cool and basically keeps control of the conversation, which I wondered if he’s playing off of Hermione recently doing this with Umbridge. I mean, Hermione is obviously a pro at this. She’s excellent at this kind of thing, but we don’t really see Harry successfully do this very often.
Rosie: No.
Zack: Thinking of Fawkes, Chamber of Secrets, stalled a little bit there.
Caleb: That’s true. He did do it there.
Zack: But yeah, no, you’re right, though. In this case, I think that his drive here, Caleb, was basically because he knew how much he messed up, and he had to just do whatever he could not to get them killed because to lead them into a trap in the Ministry of Magic, in the Department of Mysteries from their safe place in the school, let’s get real, that is some serious, serious stuff.
Amanda: Yeah, rereading it, my heart was breaking for a minute in that moment of “He has to be here. This is awkward; he’s not here.”
Caleb: [laughs] Awkward, to say the least.
Rosie: “I should have listened to Hermione again.”
[Amanda and Caleb laugh]
Zack: It’s less about him being embarrassed in front of his friends. They’re also under the risk of dying, and it’s so serious.
Rosie: Yeah, he’s there to save one person, and he’s put five more at risk. Yeah.
Caleb: Yeah, and although he does come to terms with it in the last chapter, Hermione tries to carefully bring up – but it’s unsuccessful – that he basically has this complex of wanting to save people, and Voldemort is abusing that, and this is the moment where, even though he does not specifically say it, he has to come to terms with the fact that she was right, and he led them all into danger because of that.
Amanda: Well, Lucius calls him out on it. He tells Bellatrix how he likes heroics, so it’s a well-known thing about him.
Caleb: Yeah. Exactly. And Bellatrix rebukes Harry for naming Voldemort as his actual name, unlike what most people do, obviously, and it was interesting because she says, “You dare besmirch his name with your half-blood’s tongue?” And almost immediately, Harry brings up the point that “Oh, did you know Voldemort?”
[Zack laughs]
Rosie: Half-blood, too.
Caleb: “He’s kind of a half-blood, too, so a little bit hypocritical.” We don’t get the chance – because the conversation’s moving so quickly – to know if Bellatrix actually knew that. Judging by her very reactionary response, it seems like she didn’t know that. Do you think that that’s true and that that’s the case for most of the Death Eaters?
Rosie: Bellatrix comes from the house of Black, and they’ve got that family tree, and I’m fairly sure they would know the pure-blood families and that Riddle wasn’t one of them.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s what I figured, but…
Zack: So [few] people actually knew that Riddle ended up being You-Know-Who is the thing.
Rosie: Yeah, I guess.
Zack: So it’s strange.
Amanda: I feel like they would’ve known, but there'[re] real-world examples of people pushing an agenda where they themselves don’t actually fit their own criteria.
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: Of course, right.
Caleb: Yeah, there’s obviously a very big parallel. Obviously, Hitler is a big one.
Amanda: Yeah, well, that’s what I was thinking, but yeah, I think it’s more his ideals that they believe in and are following, and yeah, if he [were] Muggle-born, I don’t think he would’ve quite gotten away with it so much, but yeah, definitely, they’re following him regardless of his blood type.
Caleb: Yeah.
Rosie: And he is incredibly powerful.
Zack: Exactly, it’s like, “Well, at the end of the day, you’re half-blood, but you’re pretty much whole blood to me. You could do lots of things.”
[Rosie laughs]
Caleb: So then Bellatrix tries to stun Harry and misses. We briefly mentioned it earlier – orbs being destroyed and the prophecy being released – but here, we get… I don’t know, I feel like J.K. Rowling doesn’t do anything without purpose, and she gives us just a few pieces of this prophecy that was destroyed… “at the solstice will come a new… and none will come after…” So I wonder what that prophecy is about. I feel like she wouldn’t have told us if it wasn’t at least somewhat interesting.
Zack: When I was a kid, I reread this 57 times, at least.
[Amanda and Caleb laugh]
Zack: I could not get over this. I’m exactly the same school of thought.
Rosie: When was Deathly Hallows released?
Caleb: Deathly Hallows was 2007 summer.
Amanda: Wow.
Rosie: Was it, by any chance, July 21…?
Caleb: I don’t know.
Rosie: … which would be the summer solstice?
Caleb: Oh.
Rosie: I think it was.
[Caleb and Zack laugh]
Caleb: Damn!
Zack: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Rosie: It’s the last book. On the solstice came a new book, and no books came after.
Zack: You could absolutely… oh my God.
Amanda: Oh.
Rosie: Deathly Hallows was released July 21, 2007.
Zack: Holy smo… [laughs]
Caleb: I can’t handle this right at this very moment. I actually can’t handle this.
Rosie: [laughs] Have you guys never [known] that one before? That’s a known thing, that that was that prophecy.
Caleb: No, I definitely did not know this.
Zack: Wow, no.
Rosie: I’m fairly sure that it’s been talked about before. Or maybe that’s just within my own circle. [laughs]
Zack: Well, I do not want it to be this prophecy because of the latter piece of the prophecy: that none will come after.
Rosie: That’s true.
Zack: I do not want it.
Rosie: But then she has done extra bits since, but yeah, on the solstice came a book, and no books have come after.
Zack: Wow. I’ve never put those two together, honestly.
Rosie: Yup.
Zack: I feel like I’ve wasted my time thinking about the veil now. I’m just shaking my fists.
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: Goodness.
Rosie: It’s a good day for theories.
Amanda: Yeah.
Zack: Absolutely. That’s excellent, that’s exciting. I just got a new thing of Harry Potter in my brain. You can’t ask for that all these years after the final book. That’s just awesome. Thank you.
Caleb: So as we mentioned just a second ago, while this conversation is happening, Lucius reveals that part of this whole ploy was because Harry has this hero complex, but he also is surprised that Harry doesn’t know more about the prophecy itself because he would have thought that Harry’s natural curiosity would have led him to the prophecy in the first place, so this makes it seem like it was a good decision for Dumbledore not to tell Harry about the prophecy, and whether that was Dumbledore’s intentions or not for not telling him, who knows? However, maybe Dumbledore didn’t make such a good move as far as not disclosing things with Harry, as is often the case. We learn the only people – we’ve talked about this, so we don’t actually need to go in-depth – who can retrieve a prophecy are those about whom it was made, but even though Dumbledore’s withholding might have made some sense because it wouldn’t have made Harry curious, it’s crappy for Harry that he’s learning about this prophecy from Lucius Malfoy, a prophecy that pretty much reveals all the substantial details about Harry’s life.
Zack: Yeah. What a person for it to come from.
Amanda: I love that moment where he’s just like, “Wait, what? What is this about?”
Zack: He’s trying to make the plan with Hermione, and he’s like, “Hold on, I’m getting a little distracted from my distracting plan.”
[Amanda laughs]
Zack: I don’t know. There’s a lot to be said here, honestly.
Caleb: Dumbledore has got to do better.
Zack: Well, I mean, I think that they expected Harry to be more insolent than he is, and this just goes to show the strength of his character. Harry Potter was not concerned with this. He has taken what Dumbledore has told him, and he has cherished all of it, and he hasn’t demanded more yet, and we haven’t seen the angry Harry necessarily yet, but we will, we will.
Amanda: Well, he didn’t know there was more to demand about this.
Rosie: Yeah.
Zack: Exactly.
Rosie: Harry is still learning magic. They’ve got an innate curiosity about things that they’ve grown up with where Harry’s like, “Yeah, someone will tell me in good time.” And that’s a difference between them. I’ve just realized that after completely blowing your minds with the July 21 thing, summer solstice is June 21.
Zack: No!
Rosie: So close.
Caleb: You shouldn’t have even said anything. I would have believed you!
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Rosie: Yeah, but then I’d have all of the listeners yelling at me and going, “Ah, it’s wrong!”
Caleb: Oh, God. We’ve probably already gotten 30.
Rosie: Sorry.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: So that means that there’s something else. What was on the solstice that came to be?
Zack: I’m so happy that it’s not that.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: Because I don’t feel like she’d go back on the prophecy in her fifth book of her masterpiece of a series, so yeah. Good, good.
Caleb: That’s true. So since we learn this from Lucius, we now know that Harry is holding this prophecy that names pretty significant details to pretty much everything that has happened to him in his life. But while this conversation has been going on, Harry and Hermione have been whispering even though… somehow, the Death Eaters didn’t notice this… that the…
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: Those masks, man. They obstruct their vision and their hearing, right?
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. And they’re whispering that they’re going to knockout some of the prophecies to create this diversion to get away, and they do just that. When on Harry’s signal, suddenly everyone knows the plan, prophecies get shattered all over the place, and they take off. But they get split up. Harry, Hermione, and Neville get split up from Luna, Ginny, and Ron, and we do hear from Lucius, who’s talking from the other side of the door from Harry, Hermione, and Neville, that there is quite the crew of Death Eaters present. He mentions by name Nott, Jugson, Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Crabbe, Dolohov, Macnair, Avery, Rookwood, Mulciber. So there are a lot of Death Eaters there.
Rosie: Jugson is the first time we’ve heard that name as well. All the others we recognize, but Jugson is the only time he’s present.
Caleb: I think so. Isn’t it the first time we’ve also heard of Mulciber?
Rosie: Hmm… possibly.
Amanda: Is this the first time we’ve heard of Rodolphus? Is he in the…?
Rosie: No, he’s Bellatrix’s husband.
Caleb: Husband, yeah.
Amanda: No, yeah, I just didn’t remember if he was in Goblet of Fire. The memory.
Caleb: It think it only mentions Rodolphus and Rabastan maybe slightly in other places, but I’m thinking only when the breakout happens. But yeah.
Rosie: I think the Lestranges are mentioned in Goblet of Fire as two of the people missing from the circle.
Caleb: Oh.
Amanda Yeah.
Rosie: I’m fairly sure Mulciber is in that circle or maybe on the breakout. I’m not sure. I think his name is mentioned somewhere else.
Zack: They’re also the memory of yelling about the Longbottoms and just being pissed off in the courtroom. I just want to know which of these are some of Jo’s friends that she’s named after Death Eaters.
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: I’m like, these are some strange names. She’s got a friend with the last name of Jugson? That’s cool.
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Caleb: So while these three – Harry, Hermione, and Neville… they do a pretty good job with their spell working, defending themselves. There’s a brief scare were Hermione just barely escapes a Killing Curse because the Death Eaters – of course – have no hesitation to fire those off. Neville uses [the Stunning Spell], but he misses the Death Eater, and this creates a really interesting effect. He hits the glass cabinet that has various hour glasses, which Harry realizes later are probably Time-Turners. The cabinet repairs itself and then shatters again, and the process repeats itself, so we know there’s something going on with time and repairing itself but still going through that process again. This sets up for when Hermione Stuns the Death Eater. He falls back, and his head falls into the bell jar, and a weird thing happens. His head shrinks very fast, goes back to a youthful state until it’s basically a baby’s head. But his body is the same as it was when he fell, so it’s very disproportionate [laughs], and his head does the same thing as the glass cabinet did. It goes back to his regular state and then reverts to the baby state, so it goes through this time cycle. And funnily enough, when he gets free, Hermione stops Harry from attacking him because she takes issue with him hurting a baby.
Zack: I’d agree. I mean, clearly, he went back in time, and he’s a baby now. [laughs] I don’t want to curse a baby. There’s just something about it.
[Amanda laughs]
Caleb: It’s such a shame we didn’t get to see this scene and so many of these scenes in the movie.
Zack: Absolutely.
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: I can understand why they didn’t, though.
Zack: Just, well, a disappointment.
Amanda: This chapter has some of the creepiest imagery in all of Harry Potter. That Death Eater baby head? The first time I ever read it, I was just like, “Gah! No. No, no.” [laughs] I’m glad we didn’t see that.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: Not me. I think that would have been awesome.
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: But this is the ultimate answer. Hermione would not eat the Desk!Pig.
Amanda: True.
Rosie: And you two have no idea what that means. [laughs]
Amanda: Oh, I know. I know.
Rosie: You do. That’s good.
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: Zack doesn’t.
Zack: Clearly, J.K. Rowling is trying to say so much within these battle scenes that she’s not coming straight out and saying, which is so interesting. We’re seeing it through the mind of these 15-year-old kids, and they’re just trying to stay alive. But when we see how the Time-Turners are being affected, the way they were shattered and the way that the shelves are repairing itself, and we’re seeing the way that the bell jar works with this guy, when he even leaves the bell jar, his head is stuck in its position? I feel like, just for me on a surface level, it’s doing nothing but cementing just how serious the work that they’re doing in the Department of Mysteries is, for one. Not to mention everything that I could, again, harp on for, like, four and a half hours, but.. yeah.
Rosie: [laughs] It also ties up a major plot problem for Jo because if she left those Time-Turners unbroken, then everyone could just say, “Well, why didn’t you just go back in time and fix this point?”
Zack: That too. [laughs]
Caleb: There you go.
Rosie: By destroying them all, she completely erases that possibility and therefore makes it a lot easier for herself to carry on with the plot.
Zack: I feel like they certainly need to hide this bell jar, though, because it’s literally better than any anti-aging cream that there is.
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: If I could just hop in for a second and just shave off five years of my life, it’s like going to the gym but better.
Caleb: There you go.
Amanda: We hear about it going into the baby, but I want to know if it went into rotting… like completely reverse the other way. Ugh, no. Too much.
Caleb: Yikes.
Zack: That’s a bit much, yeah.
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Rosie: But then if it went to that stage, then the head would have to die and then come back again, so can the jar resurrect people?
Caleb: Oh, gosh.
Zack: I don’t know. It’s just how young will it…? Well, it took him down to a baby’s head, and then it took him to the other direction.
Rosie: A baby, yes. So not ultimate tiny.
Zack: So maybe it just goes to the point of inception of youth, maybe of actually being born, and then to the original position of the person [who] fell inside of it.
Caleb: Yeah. Because the Time-Turners don’t go forward, so it seems like this is only one direction travel. So as they move on, they run into Dolohov, who sends a streak of purple flame that hits Hermione, who gives a tiny…
Caleb and Rosie: “Oh!”
Caleb: … and passes out. This is a scary moment because…
Rosie: It’s terrifying.
Zack: Absolutely.
Caleb: It’s just such a subdued response, and you’re like, “Oh my God. What? Did she just die?”
Rosie: This was more terrifying than the baby head. This was like, “Jo can’t kill Hermione! What? What?” Because remember? Everyone was terrified because we knew someone was going to die. We knew someone died in this book, and then Hermione gets hit in this scene, and it’s terrifying.
Zack: The worst part for me was that she had just silenced him, so I didn’t hear any incantation. I didn’t hear what he did. I was like, “What did you do to her?”
Caleb: Yeah. That would have been also cool in the movie to see some impressive wandwork without the verbal side and just like, “pfoo.” And then Neville manages to get his wand broken when he gets a kick landed to his face, which is unfortunate because it’s his dad’s wand.
Amanda: Well, I actually think that’s really important for Neville because this chapter is really where Neville comes into his own, and by having his wand boken, he gets a wand that’s for him next year. This chapter…
Rosie: “The wand chooses the wizard.”
Amanda: Yeah. If he hadn’t have been here for this, who knows? He might not have been the wizard he was in Deathly Hallows.
Caleb: Yeah, I thought about that because obviously, Ron looses his hand-me-down wand to damage and gets a new wand, so I thought about that. That’s definitely an interesting point.
Zack: Ooh. That’s excellent.
Rosie: The symbolism here as well, though, with the fact that it was his dad’s wand. This is the moment where Neville steps out of the shadow of what happened to his parents and becomes his own character. So by getting his own wand from this point on, the dad’s history completely gets left behind, and he becomes his own hero rather than the one [who] is borrowing from his dad.
Caleb: Yeah. Because he’s about to face that history in just a second.
Amanda: It really gets cemented in a few moments when he confronts what changed his life.
Caleb: Yeah. While Harry tries to get nose-bleeding Neville, who can barely talk, to take Hermione out of the Ministry and raise the alarm…
Rosie: “Stupefy!“
[Zack laughs]
Caleb: But Neville refuses and wants to stay behind. I just think this would have been such… Because they didn’t know the Order was coming, right? We all obviously know they’re coming. But this seems it would have been the most reasonable option, is to get out of the Ministry, get people out who are safe – because they just figured out Hermione is alive. Neville knows how to read a pulse, thankfully – and get some help.
Zack: Spoken like a true Slytherin, Caleb.
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: Well, I mean, logically, you can’t do anything right now. You don’t have a wand. You can’t talk. Hermione is passed out. I don’t know.
Zack: You’re right.
Caleb: But regardless, Neville stays behind, and I guess it’s good that he does. They make it back to the circular room and are rejoined by Ron, Ginny, and Luna. Ron is giggling very oddly; something has clearly just happened to him. Ginny has a broken ankle, and somehow, out of everyone, Luna is the one [who] is unscathed. She is the only person not really injured at this point.
Rosie: But that’s brilliant. She’s the oddball for not being hurt.
Caleb: Yeah, I love it. I think it’s really great.
Zack: Still the oddball. Even now.
[Rosie laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. And Luna tells them how they were stuck in the planet room, and it was really weird, and Ron makes the joke, Harry, we saw Uranus up close.”
[Caleb and Zack laugh]
Caleb: Classic Ron.
Zack: Cheap comedy. Jo, I wasn’t disappointed.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: “We saw Uranus up close. Get it?” So good.
Caleb: And then Luna says about how she blows up Pluto, which was really unfortunate. Which… I’m pretty sure this book came out before the scientists decided to discount Pluto as a planet.
Rosie: It did.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Zack: She knew. I know she knew.
Caleb: Damn it, Jo.
Amanda: Foreshadowing.
Rosie: It’s her fault!
Zack: This is where the idea came in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s mind to begin the whole campaign against Pluto not being a planet. He was like, “Hmm, Luna blew up Pluto…”
Amanda: JK’s foreshadowing level went up like…
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: Well, what if that prophecy that we read earlier is actually something really, really serious? Like she’s foreshadowing humanity’s efforts against some real evil? Talk about theories.
Amanda: Dun dun dun.
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Zack: A bit heavy.
Caleb: Okay, so next they get to the brain room, which I know they talked about quite a bit last week on the episode, but there’s obviously a new development this week. The Death Eaters managed to get in with them through another door, and Ron, in his genius, says, Accio brains.” Great idea, Ron. Everyone stops to watch. Everyone is entertained by what is about to happen. Harry and the gang do. The Death Eaters do. Popcorn is served.
[Amanda and Rosie laugh]
Caleb: Ron touches the brain, and the brain starts constricting him. And by this point, Luna and Ginny have both been knocked out, so there’s…
Rosie: No one to help.
Caleb: Yeah. Luna, Ginny, and Hermione are out. Ron is being constrained by the brain. Neville can’t speak and is bleeding everywhere, and there’s…
Rosie: But Ron is not just being constrained by the brain. He’s left with welts on his arms from this brain. The thoughts scar him, and just knowing Ron’s story and what happens with him in Deathly Hallows and the fact that he has to battle his own thoughts to destroy the Horcrux and all of that stuff, this brain is incredibly powerful.
Zack: Rosie, come on. That’s good right there. I’m just like, “Woah, I never thought about that.”
Rosie: [laughs] Yeah, I’m a fan fiction writer. I theorize all the time. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, we’ll learn more about Ron. I haven’t read ahead of the chapter yet, but he talks about it in the next chapter, so… but this brain. They’re holding a monster in this container.
Amanda: Creepy images Type 2. This is the other. But when Jo describes it as it flying across the room with film going out behind it, I wonder if that’s how they’re studying the brains. Somehow they get them out, and they can look at all the film and see what’s going on in there. Ugh.
Zack: It’s so exciting. Just compounding this with the planet room they were in before, it’s like, okay, so first off, they’re studying the human mind. So they’re not focused on only magic. They’re trying to figure out lots of things scientifically and biologically, obviously, but as well as studying our solar system and our immediate cosmos, and I’m sure, however that affects the magical world is probably the focus of their study. But it’s so interesting and exciting knowing that J.K. Rowling inputted this. Even though she didn’t get into it with lots of detail, she still made a point to give us these places and to make it clear that they’re important.
Caleb: So Harry takes off running to draw away the Death Eaters because none of the others [is] in any place to defend themselves, and he thinks the Death Eaters will follow him because of course, he still has the prophecy. Somehow it’s not been shattered yet. And he stumbles his way ever so conveniently down into the Death Chamber. Shortly after, Neville does join him, where all the Death Eaters are in there, and this is where the Death Eaters figure out who Neville is, and Bellatrix starts to taunt him because of what she’s done to his parents, and she uses the Cruciatus Curse on him. Which is just really, really difficult to deal with.
Amanda: Unless you’re in a Bellatrix cosplay, and then it’s this really weird headspace because you’re stil like, “Yeah, Bellatrix! Oh no, Neville!” But “Bellatrix!”
[Rosie and Zack laugh]
Zack: That is strange. You’re torn. It’s hard for you, I’m sure.
Amanda: Oh yeah. Jumping way ahead, Deathly Hallows – Part 2, I might have… No, Deathly Hallows – Part 1. I might have laughed when Dobby died. I was sitting there dressed as Bellatrix.
Zack: That’s horrible!
Caleb: Woah.
Amanda: I was dressed as Bellatrix! Strange headspace.
Zack: This is the chapter for you to be on, though, because I mean, Bellatrix really… She’s taunting, and she turns to him. She’s like, “Oh, wait, you? Oh, I know your parents.” She’s so proud of what she’s done.
Amanda: She is.
Caleb: Yeah, she thrives off it.
Zack: She just loves it. Yeah, she loves it. This is what she’s all about.
Amanda: So vindictive. Evil.
Caleb: And at this point, Neville was the only one really left, and he is now pretty much put at the mercy of the Death Eaters, and Harry knows he has no other way out. He’s basically cornered. He’s pretty much ready to give up the prophecy over to Lucius when boom! All of a sudden, the Order shows up.
Zack: Bam!
Caleb: Oh, okay, so Sirius wasn’t at the Ministry all along. Whoops!
Zack: He’s here now!
[Caleb, Rosie, and Zack laughs]
Caleb: And is joined by Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley.
Zack: Oh, man.
Caleb: Off to save the day.
Zack: Oh, man. [laughs]
Caleb: The Order and the Death Eaters start going all crazy dueling in the Death Chamber, but while this is going on, Macnair manages to get to Harry and starts choking him to death. No one seems to notice. Like, “We’re here to save Harry, but we stopped paying attention.” Obviously, I’m kidding because they’re preoccupied with defending themselves. The ever-proficient wizard, Neville manages to save Harry, though, not by using magic with Hermione’s wand, which he has taken, but by jabbing McNair in the eye with the wand.
Zack: Still counts.
Rosie: Much more effective.
Zack: Still counts.
Caleb: Sometimes you’ve just got to resort to the most simple method.
Rosie: Painful too.
Zack: This was just… I mean, guys, could you really sit still when you were reading this for the first time?
Caleb: No. Even this time, I was racing over sentences.
Zack: How do you deal with all of these people just – bam! – bursting into the Death Chamber like, “Here we are.”
Amanda: It’s also something that bothers me about this scene a little bit. Because we come across Moody. He’s passed out on the floor, obviously injured. I mean, the kids have obviously done really, really well to get this far.
Zack: [laughs] That is very true.
Caleb: That was my next point, is…
Amanda: Considering they’re kids, relatively unscathed, to get to this area, and then Moody is out, considering he’s one of the top Aurors. It’s just… [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I was about to say, is that it doesn’t take long for Moody to get knocked out, and Tonks gets thrown off of something pretty quickly and gets knocked out, so two down already.
Zack: That’s true.
Caleb: It doesn’t take them long.
Zack: The only difference is that the kids were running, and these guys were straight-up ready for a fight. They went right into the fray.
Rosie: And kids are smaller targets.
Zack: That’s true.
Rosie: They’re tiny.
[Caleb and Rosie laughs]
Caleb: There you go.
Zack: I would think that even the most vicious Death Eater, at the same time while he’s casting curses at kids, he’s like, “But they’re kids.”
Caleb: I don’t know. Some of them were throwing off Killing Curses no problem.
Rosie: Yeah. Hermione would be dead if she had been one step to the left.
Caleb: So Neville manages to gain hold of the prophecy from Harry, and he has it in his pocket. Then his robes tear, and the orb falls out and smashes into a step. So the prophecy doesn’t get destroyed by people battling or attacking anyone. It’s just because the way he’s trying to get up, the robe tears and smash. But no one can really hear the prophecy because there’s so much dueling and loud noises going on, so Trewlaney’s words are lost on everyone.
Zack: This is where I just want to ask if you guys, especially Rosie, if the robe ripping has some kind of parallel with something later in the series.
[Caleb, Rosie, and Zack laugh]
Rosie: Just, Neville doesn’t really have good clothes so…
Zack: Okay. That works.
[Caleb, Rosie, and Zack laugh]
Caleb: And is just prone to accidents. [laughs]
Zack: Yeah, okay, there we go. There is a parallel then.
Rosie and Zack: “Why is it always me?”
Caleb: So as this is going on and the prophecy has been destroyed, all of a sudden, Dumbledore shows up like a God…
Rosie: Woo! [trumpets]
Caleb: … with his face white and furious.
Rosie: Yay.
[Zack laughs]
Caleb: Harry thinks they were saved, but little does he know…
Zack: Oh.
Caleb: But Dumbledore has been gone since he ejected himself from Hogwarts when the Ministry was there, and he’s just been chilling on a beach somewhere ever since.
[Rosie laughs]
Amanda: Rubbing sunscreen into his nose.
Zack: Lotion on his nose, yeah.
Caleb: And when he shows up, it immediately changes the scope of the battle. One Death Eater tries to get away. I think Dumbledore pulls him back somehow, but everything else stops except this family battle between Sirius and Bellatrix going on. So…
Zack: Imagine how fast it happened.
Rosie: Prepare yourselves.
[Zack cries]
Caleb: So the battle actually… I forgot that it happened so quickly because for some reason, in my mind… and I don’t know if this is movie canon creating this, but the battle is much more elaborate in my mind than it is here in the chapter because when Harry turns to the battle, it all happens very quickly. Sirius taunts her, says something – “Is that the best you got?” – and she hits him square in the chest. Sirius’s eyes widen in shock. He sinks backward through the ragged veil. Harry sees the look of mingled fear and surprise on Sirius’s face, and then he disappears behind the veil. Bellatrix immediately knows she has succeeded. She screams triumphantly. Harry thinks Sirius will come right back out on the other side, but well, he doesn’t. Harry runs for the veil, but Lupin stops him. He’s of course scared Harry is going to run right in after him, and he says, “There’s nothing you can do. He’s gone.”
Amanda: I had forgotten with my reread that Sirius was fully conscious of him falling backward into this veil because in the movie, he’s hit with [the Killing Curse], so he’s dead. There’s that weird fall backward, but he… it makes me think of when you’re up on a ladder or something, and you have that slight moment, and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to fall.” But no, this is him actually falling, consciously going, “Ohh, okay.” I’d love to know if he knew what the veil was and knew that this was it because…
Zack: Maybe he felt something…
Rosie: Lupin seems to know what the veil is, to prevent Harry from going toward it.
Amanda: Jo describing his look of fear… it just sends a chill up my spine. To be fully conscious of “this is your last moment” as you’re falling backward…
Rosie: Especially when, the moment before, he had been so happy and so triumphant and just…
Amanda: Yeah, it’s horrible.
Caleb: Yeah, and I mean, there may be a brief moment where, as he’s on the threshold, he may be experiencing both worlds just briefly, and so that terror might reflect what he’s going to. Not just death itself…
Rosie: No, don’t say that! That’s horrible!
[Zack laughs]
Caleb: … but what’s actually on the other side.
Zack: I just think about the Sirius [who] has been shut inside of Grimmauld Place for so long, and this is him… “Nice one!” Harry has got his back. He’s throwing down [the Full Body-Bind Curse], and he’s fighting Bellatrix, and Dumbledore comes in, and I know we were so excited. I literally felt excited. You know how when you just feel…? Your eyes well up, and you’re just like, “Oh my God, he’s here!” And he’s handling the whole situation, just taking care of business. It’s like, why did this have to happen, and why did it have to happen so quickly? Why did…?
Amanda: You know why it had to happen?
Zack: Why? You tell me why.
Amanda: Because he was laughing on the battle field. If there’s one rule of Harry Potter, don’t laugh on the battle field. Fred learned it, Sirius learned it, Bellatrix learned it. Just yeah, don’t laugh while you’re fighting.
Zack: “Don’t gloat in general” is I think the message there. He was… because Dumbledore could have helped, but it just happened.
Rosie: There’s nothing fun about violence.
Zack: At least he was having fun before he fell.
[Caleb laughs]
Zack: In a strange way. This is where he was alive the most.
Amanda: Ugh, Bellatrix.
Rosie: So sad.
Caleb: Oh, and that is the end of our chapter, sadly.
Zack: I feel so bad. I was depressed when I finished it, when I reread it for this. I was just like, “[sighs] I don’t even know if I want to record now.”
[Caleb and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: We were so happy a second ago. Dumbledore came in, and we were all like, “Yeah, let’s go,” and then suddenly it’s “Ohh… Sirius.” [laughs]
Zack: I think that she to give that to us. She had to give us the white and furious face. She had to give us him coming in like a god.
Caleb: Yeah. Because he’s about to throw it down, and then…
Zack: Oh, he threw it down. Let me tell you… [laughs] So exciting.
Amanda: I’d forgotten he turned up so early in the battle.
Zack: Can you imagine the Death Eaters? What they were thinking in that moment? Honestly? Like, “Oh, this is it. We have to go now! We have to leave. Should I just jump through the veil?
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Amanda: Save time.
Rosie: So we’ve finished our chapter, and of course, that brings us to our Podcast Question of the Week for this week. And after a quick cry, we’re going to have to be serious. I’m sorry.
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: That’s the last pun today. I promise. But we are going to ask you to be Sirius! We want you to think about Sirius’s expression as he went into the veil. It’s that horrible, horrible question, but his widened in shock, and he had the mingled fear and surprise on his face. How much did Sirius know going into that battle? How much did he know at this exact moment of his death about what was actually happening and what he was leaving behind and what he was going to? This question is on the nature of the veil itself, so run with it. Tell us your theories. What happens when you cross on to the other side of the veil? Death by drapery.
Zack: Those will be exciting to get in. That’s cool.
Rosie: They will.
Caleb: Indeed. And we want to very deeply thank Zack and Amanda for joining us today. It was wonderful having you guys on.
Zack: Thank you.
Amanda: It’s been an absolute pleasure. [laughs]
Zack: Absolutely. I thank you, and I’m glad to come on with Amanda and all you guys. Rosie, I haven’t met you in person yet, but this is like a miniature Half 12 reunion.
Caleb: It is.
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Zack: It’s like the one thing we’re missing is the teen party playlist and some Jack’s Mannequin, Caleb, and then we’ll be in good shape. [laughs]
Caleb: Exactly. I’m going to be playing on the teen… what is it? The teen party? No.
Zack: Yeah, on Spotify.
Caleb: Teen party, yeah, during when I celebrate that exams are over. It’s definitely going to be my go-to.
[Amanda laughs]
Zack: Well, record that and put it on the podcast for the listeners.
Caleb: There we go.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: They will enjoy it. And thank you to everyone who is listening for dealing with myself. I’m very passionate about this stuff, and it’s some of the most favorite things ever, and this chapter is very important to me. So thank you.
Caleb: Zack, could you tell…?
Rosie: You could also say… Zack didn’t actually say it at the beginning of the show, but Zack is on a podcast called Game of Owns with Eric. So if you guys are Game of Thrones fans, you should go […] check that out as well.
Zack: If you’re into that kind of thing. We’d like to have you. I guess. Yeah, we just posted our 250th episode, so that was…
Caleb: That’s incredible, yeah.
Rosie: Congratuations.
Caleb: Congratulations on that. It’s super awesome.
Amanda: And if you’re in Melbourne, Australia, just happen to be listening, I run a Harry Potter fan group called Melbourne Muggles. Just find us on Facebook, and we’d love to have you come […] join us at some meetings.
Zack: They’re awesome. They’re legendary. They’re like a world-famous Harry Potter group, so pretty awesome. No big deal. Not to brag.
[Amanda, Rosie, and Zack laugh]
Caleb: And if you would like to be a guest on our show, just head over to the “Be on the Show” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. All you need is a set of Apple headphones or something comparable, and you’re all set. No fancy equipment needed.
Rosie: If you’d just like to contact us in another way, you can find us on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN [or] on Facebook at facebook.com/openthedumbledore. We are on Tumblr at mnalohomorapodcast. You can Skype us on 206-GO-ALBUS.
[Caleb laughs]
Rosie: That’s 206-462-5287. You can send us an audioBoom, like you heard earlier in the [episode]. You can do that just on alohomora.mugglenet.com. It’s free – you just need a microphone. Please do try [to] keep it under 60 seconds so we can include it on the show, and all you need to do is press the little button on the side of the screen.
Caleb: Rosie, do you realize you just said, “during the lesson”?
[Amanda and Zack laugh]
Rosie: Did I?
Amanda: Yes.
Caleb: The teacher is coming out.
[Amanda laughs]
Zack: Oh no.
Rosie: When did I say that?
Caleb: Just now.
Amanda: You just said it.
Caleb: You were talkinga bout the audioBoom earlier in “the lesson.”
[Amanda laughs]
Rosie: Let’s redo that.
Caleb: No, keep it. It’s great.
Zack: Let’s go back.
Caleb: Also make sure to check out our store that has really great products like sweatshirts, long sleeve tees, tote bags, flip-flops… though it’s way too cold to be wearing flip-flops. I guess unless…
Amanda: Not here.
Caleb: … you’re down where Amanda is. It’s pretty warm there, yeah?
Amanda: Oh, it’s… yeah. You need the flip-flops.
Caleb: [laughs] And so much more. We also have free ringtones that are available on the website. Finally, make sure to check out our smartphone app, which is available all over the world as far as we know, and if it’s not, then you’re in a very interesting place, perhaps Narnia.
[Rosie laughs]
Zack: It’s where they ride carpets instead of brooms.
Caleb: Prices may vary. It has things like transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and much more.
Rosie: And so ends today’s lesson. [laughs]
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: All right, well that’s going to do it for this week’s episode of Alohomora!.I’m Caleb Graves.
[Show music begins]
Rosie: And I’m Rosie Morris. Thank you for listening to Episode 113 of Alohomora!
Caleb: Open the Dumbledore!
[Show music continues]
Caleb: Harry learns some minor details about the prophecy from Lucius [pronounces “LOO-shuhs”] and… man, why did I say that? I meant to say… I can’t remember if I say Lucius [pronounces “LOO-shihs”] or Lucius [pronounces “LOO-see-us”] because…
Zack: Do you remember?
Caleb: … I can’t remember how I say it. How do they say it in…?
Rosie: It changes all the time. I say Lucius [pronounces “LOO-see-us”].
Caleb: Yeah, I do too, but why did I say it Lucius [pronounces “LOO-shuhs”] just now?
[Zack laughs]
Caleb and Rosie: I don’t know.
Caleb: I’m going to have to do that over.
Zack: I think that Lucius [pronounces “LOO-see-us”] would prefer that you call him Lucius [pronounces “LOO-see-us”].
Caleb: Yeah, I think it’s because I was thinking…
Rosie: I think he prefers “Mr. Malfoy,” actually.
[Amanda, Rosie, and Zack laugh]
Zack: Mr. Malfoy.
Caleb: I’m pretty sure that’s actually the only time I’ve ever said Lucius [pronounces “LOO-shuhs”] instead of Lucius [pronounces “LOO-see-us”]. Anyway, okay.
Amanda: It’s funny. When you’re saying the thing about the flip-flops, I was so tempted to be like, “They’re thongs in Australia,” but [laughs]…
Zack: They’re thongs. Yeah, that’s way too dirty for America. We love our violence and television. We love our violence in the streets, for that matter, but if there is any curse words or naughty language, it’s not okay.
Amanda: But it would make for a far more interesting store to have your Alohomora! thongs. It would make “Open the Dumbledore” a bit more like suggestive. [laughs] [sighs]
