Transcripts

Transcript – Episode 117

[Show music begins]

Michael Harle: This is Episode 117 of Alohomora! for January 3, 2015.

[Show music continues]

Michael: Welcome, listeners, back to Alohomora!, our global reread of Harry Potter I’m Michael Harle.

Alison Siggard: I’m Alison Siggard.

Eric Scull: I’m Eric Scull.

Kat Miller: And I’m Kat Miller. Guys, it’s 2005!

Alison: Woo-hoo!

Eric: Yay!

Kat: Yay!

Michael: Yay! It’s a new year, and with a new year comes the end of our read of one of the Harry Potter books. We are done with Order of the Phoenix.

Kat: I think it’s very… what’s the word? Not “serendipitous,” but something of that nature, that we ended a book at the end of the year.

Michael: It’s “kismet”? Or “fortuitous”?

Kat: Start fresh.

Michael: The time lined up; everything lined up very well.

Kat: Yes, it all lined up very well. What are you guys looking forward to in the fandom this year the most?

Michael: Reading Half-Blood Prince and not Order of the Phoenix.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Order of the Phoenix is such a good book!

Michael: Bye-bye, Order of the Phoenix.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Bye. See you later.

Alison: I’m glad we’ve gotten over this one.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: Let’s be honest.

Kat: Mean.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Is there… because we don’t get Fantastic Beasts quite yet, right?

Alison: No.

Michael: Right. So… and we don’t get the West End play, so… [laughs]

Alison: No.

Eric: And we don’t get the Wizarding World of Los Angeles.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: We do get The Casual Vacancy if that helps.

Alison: That’s true.

Kat: And also, I mean, of course Expo Patronum.

Alison: Yes! I was just going to say that.

Eric: Ooh, yeah. I’m looking forward to that.

Kat: So yeah, that’s going to be awesome.

Eric: This is actually… correct me if I’m wrong, guys, but this is the ten-year anniversary of when Half-Blood Prince came out.

Michael: Is it?

Alison: Really?

Kat: ’04?

Michael: Let’s see.

Eric: No, ’05, honey.

Kat: Oh, right! ’05. Oh my God.

Eric: It’s 2015. [laughs]

Kat: Okay, it’s only been 15 hours. Cut me some slack.

Eric: Okay. All right, all right. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah. Half-Blood Prince came out July 2005.

Alison: Oh my gosh.

Michael: Yeah, it did. July 16, 2005.

Kat: Wow.

Eric: So as we’re going through it, it’ll be… these words will already have been ten years on the page. It’s crazy.

Kat: Wow.

Michael: This is the year of Half-Blood Prince. Yes!

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: I mean, we do have a few things to get to before we get there, though.

Michael: Yes, we do.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Like today, on this episode, where we are going to wrap up Order of the Phoenix with a nice pretty bow before we ship it out. And of course, too, the big deal with of course what comes with a book wrap is also a movie watch. Eee!

Alison: Yay.

Michael: We’re doing our movie watch Saturday, January 3 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. There are many time zone converters, listeners, out there if you want to find out what 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time means in your time zone. But please join us because we watch… well, we watch the movie, but we don’t actually watch the movie together. But we watch it together, but we can’t stream it because that’s not legal. But we watch the movie, we comment on it, and then we get together, and we talk about what we watched, and we have you, the listeners, call in to give us your thoughts. And so we need you to make the movie watch a good, strong show, so please join us for that Saturday, January 3 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Kat: But of course, before we wrap up the book… well, I guess that’s part of wrapping up the book because this is the book wrap episode…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Anyway, we’re going to go through some comments from the discussion on last week, which was of course the very last chapter, Chapter 38 of Order of the Phoenix. And our first comment here comes from skgai. It says,

“‘Order of the Phoenix’ is about demolishing Harry’s foundations. Dementors destroy his idea of safety in the beginning. Umbridge destroys his home. Dumbledore destroys their relationship and therefore his key to all answers. Voldemort destroys his dreams. And Sirius'[s] death destroys Harry’s illogical conception that Sirius and all the ones he loves will always be there with him. The reason for this chapter’s title is that this is the moment in the series where Rowling starts to make Harry whole again (and in the process wiser and understanding). That is the Second War: making Harry whole. So you should feel unsatisfied at the end of this book. Harry has been […] shattered.”

Eric: Oh, that’s nice.

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Michael: I like this comment just because I like that it’s a different take on what the chapter title means. Because usually we figure Rowling’s chapter titles are pretty straightforward in what they mean, so I like that there’s a double layer to that idea. Because that also addresses the conversation that Caleb, Alison, and I had last episode about how each of us left Order of the Phoenix. And I did say I left and continue to leave the book unsatisfied, but I think it is intentional, absolutely. Like skgai is saying, this… which is why I kind of find the way that the book does end, why I was complaining about it, because I feel like it does try to kind of give you a happy ending where it really shouldn’t be. It’s like, “All of Harry’s friends came to the train station and beat up the Dursleys. Yay!”

[Kat laughs]

Michael: It finally happened. I’m like, “No, [laughs] there'[re] still some consequences here that haven’t really been dealt with fully.” But yeah, I do think the book is supposed to leave you a little emptier than any of the Harry Potter books prior to it.

Alison: It puts the Band-Aid on this wound so it can start healing.

Michael: Yes. And them you get to Half-Blood Prince, and it’s all healed!

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: I just remembered. Yeah, no, Half-Blood Prince is a great book; I really love it. But I remember leaving this book, and I just felt so attacked that we had been broken in this way.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: That’s what makes it so good. [groans] Sorry.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Pain is gain?

[Michael laughs]

Kat: I won’t go that far.

Eric: Oh.

Kat: But since I wasn’t able to put my two cents into it last week because I was sadly sick for the episode, I really enjoyed the ending of this book, not because it seems to be like this false sense of happiness, but as you all know, the “Lost Prophecy” chapter is my absolute favorite chapter. It’s my favorite in the entire series, and I felt a sense of relief at the end of this book. Finally, I know where things are headed and where we’re going and what’s coming next and all the things that we have to not necessarily look forward to but to conquer and everything that’s going to happen. So I felt more not disappointed or unwhole; I felt energized and anticipatory toward what was next. So…

Michael: Good!

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Eric: Well, I think the good news is that we would never have to wait so long for a Harry Potter book again.

Michael: Yeah, that was the thing that I… because there were whispers that the next book was already in production, and there was that anticipation that we weren’t going to have to wait so horribly long ever again, which was nice. So…

Kat: That’s true. But moving on, our next comment here comes from RoseLumos. She says,

“When it comes to Umbridge and the centaurs, the way I always looked at it was as a mirror situation to the very beginning of the book when Harry and Dudley were attacked by the [D]ementors. Dudley also came out of the attack barely talking and looking quite traumatized. We know that Dudley was in that state because he saw himself as he truly was – spoiled and privileged. I wonder, if even for a second, Umbridge was also troubled by what she saw – that these beings whom she had always seems as primitive and as non-human-like are really an intelligent and civilized people. If she was dragged away to the centaur village as some people speculate she might have seen the centaurs as they really are and have realized that she was wrong. Of course, we see that she didn’t learn her lesson later in Deathly Hallows, but I wonder as she was sitting in the hospital wing [whether] she was questioning everything she knew about herself. Either way, I think the hosts are right – JKR would never joke or make lighthearted comments about sexual assault.”

So this is a topic that I think we’ve skated around quite a few times, never really talked about.

Michael: Oh, we stabbed directly at it last week. I think we came to a pretty… our conclusion, like the one in this comment from RoseLumos, was that, again, Rowling would never make that into a joke because the characters do laugh at it [in] the end. So we really didn’t think… because she is so sensitive about… and consciously aware of many issues out in the world, and yeah, I don’t think that’s what… it’s not a joke that way. There’s nothing funny about that.

Eric: Right, so that can’t be what happened, because the characters joke about it.

Michael: I do think that’s a really interesting concept that Umbridge had a moment of self-reflection that she was so repulsive to herself.

Alison: I like it.

Eric: I think it’s uncharacteristic that they would drag her off and then show her all the inventions that they came up with and all the cool things that they made.

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Eric: “We have a freight elevator because we can’t do stairs.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: “It’s made out of ropes. Look.”

[Michael laughs]

Eric: No, it’s… no.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: Well, I think just seeing that they’re not wild, maybe, is what this comment is trying to say.

Eric: They drag her off to retaliate for what she did to them. There is no… if she doesn’t get sexually assaulted, I’m surprised, because they were very vicious about dragging her away.

Kat: I’d agree with that.

Eric: So… the last thing that I think that they did was try [to] reason with her about why she’s wrong. Because that’s more of a sitting and talking thing, and that’s not at all the impression that I got when they carried her away.

Kat: Yeah. And I’m sure Jo is very much aware of the mythology behind the centaurs. So I’m… this is going to sound bad, but why would she have done it otherwise?

Michael: Well, we talked last week about the… that perhaps the centaurs are more comparable to a Narnian centaur, which I think they are in that they’re off from the traditional depiction. Because it’s not suggested that Narnian centaurs do that. They’re warriors, just like these centaurs are, but they’re not sexual beasts. It’s not remotely suggested in that way. And Rowling has said – as we mentioned last week – that on Pottermore, she talked specifically about vampires and zombies and Inferi and how she was very careful about making different portrayals than had originally been seen in fiction before of these kinds of mythological characters. And if you listeners, if you’ve read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which obviously you should because it’s going to be a movie, there are sections where she takes a jab at mythology and says, “Muggle mythology is wrong. This is actually how it is.

[Eric laughs]

Michael: So there are plenty of cases where she doesn’t use the original myth or she purposefully subverts the original myth.

Eric: Maybe they made her a cup of coffee.

[Kat and Michael laugh]

Kat: Sat around and had tea.

Michael: I’m sure that just the shock of being dragged around by a centaur was enough to send her to a fit, so…

Alison: I like this comparison between Dudley and Umbridge, though. I think that’s…

Michael: Yeah. That I do like.

Alison: … a pretty [unintelligible] point for what’s going on.

Kat: Moving on from Umbridge to Voldemort, our next comment here comes from Martin Miggs. Do you think he’s a Muggle?

[Alison, Eric, and Michael laugh]

Eric: He’s pretty mad.

Alison: Is he a mad Muggle?

Kat: Yeah, he is. [laughs] It says,

“If Voldemort heard the prophecy and learned Harry had a power ‘the [D]ark [L]ord knows not’ how do you think he would react? I doubt he would realize it would be love, but would think Harry had some powerful magic of some sort. Maybe he would attempt to avoid confrontation with Harry. Would he avoid inviting Harry to the forest to face his fate if he had heard this information?”

Alison: No. I’m going to say no. Just because Voldemort is so prideful and thinks he is the best at everything, so I think he would think that he could overcome Harry anyway.

Eric: Yep. Yeah, I think so too. Considering Harry was one year old at the time, too. He may not have directly attacked him. He may have studied him for a little while. It would have been like Harry being babysat by Voldy for a couple [of] months.

Alison: Oh, gosh. [laughs]

Eric: Until which time Voldemort decided that he definitely wasn’t special and tried to kill him, thereby giving him the power the Dark Lord knows not. Or giving him the special scar and all the magic that came with it.

Kat: I mean, this is going to sound bad, but I understand where Voldemort is coming from in this sense. He has been alive quite a bit longer than Harry, so I would feel like he definitely wouldn’t avoid confrontation, I guess is what I’m getting at. Because he knows that no matter what power Harry might possibly have, he’s older, wiser, more powerful… magic-wise, anyway.

Michael: Oh yeah, I mean, he’s made a Horcrux, for crying out loud. Even at that point, he has split the soul. That’s the wizarding equivalent of splitting the atom. If you’ve done that, you start to feel pretty sure of yourself.

Alison: Well, doesn’t Dumbledore even say at one point that that’s one of Voldemort’s downfalls, is he underestimates other power? He underestimates anything that he can’t do.

Eric: Yeah. No, I agree with that.

Kat: Yep, definitely. Or last comment here comes from Snatch the Snitch. This is a funny one but a good one. It says,

“Looking back on this book and I guess the series as a whole, I don’t feel like Umbridge got what she deserved (in the books[, anyway]). I was left unsatisfied. I’m glad she ends up in Azkaban for life, but I would’ve liked to experience something more as a reader. Her death maybe? Honestly, there was a point when I wanted her to die more than Voldemort. Getting taken [away] by centaurs and traumatized just wasn’t enough. Especially since we see her in Deathly Hallows back to her wicked ways. Anyone else think she should’ve joined the Headless Hunt?”

[Alison, Eric, and Michael laugh]

Alison: This comment makes me think of… there’s a meme floating around on the Internet where it’s BBC’s Sherlock and the journalist who’s in all pink, and they say, “Moffat delivers whatever we wanted the end of Umbridge to be.” I don’t remember exactly what is says, but that’s what made me think of.

Kat: I haven’t seen this meme, but I wish to see it. I wish to see it.

Alison: Oh, it’s funny. It’s a good one.

Michael: I think the thing that’s most unsatisfying about Umbridge’s fate, especially post Deathly Hallows, is that she’s just in Azkaban, which is completely Dementor-free now. So she’s just in prison. That’s her sentence for all the horrible things she’s done, so… and it is frustrating because post Order, the fact that she does come back in Hallows because it’s that thing where you’re like, “Oh, I guess we’ll let her go, slap her on the hand and let her go.” And of course, being who she is, she’s just going to go back to doing exactly what she did. It’s similar to Rita, with Hermione being like, [as Hermione] “Naughty Rita, you get to stay in a jar for a few weeks and not write for a year, and then you’ll be a good person.” Which Hermione genuinely thinks is going to happen, so… and then of course, Rita goes right back to where she started.

Alison: But that’s real life.

Michael: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s a cautionary thing. As children, there’s not much they can do to Umbridge. I guess at the end of the book, you’re just hoping that eventually they get her back. I mean, it does hurt, though, like Snatch the Snitch said, to find out that she has not reformed following this incident, whatever it was, that she continues… I mean, aided by the anger of the Horcrux, of course, ends up becoming one of the foremost people who are backing the registration and all of this other stuff in Book 7. So it is pretty sad to see that some people you just can’t change.

Kat: Especially… I was just furious when she shows up at Dumbledore’s funeral…

Alison: Oh my gosh.

Kat: You have no place to be there, lady. That made me so mad.

Eric: I forgot that happened.

Michael: Yeah, that’s horrible.

Kat: If I [were] there, I would’ve been like… [makes slapping noise] that’s me smacking her.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: That was a very good slap.

Eric: I want that on the sound effects. Whenever somebody texts me, I want that to be Kat slapping Umbridge.

Kat: Well, there you go. I’m sure Patrick can make that happen for you. But there you go. That is our very last recap of Order of the Pheonix.

[Alison, Eric, and Michael] Aww.

Kat: Yeah, I’m the only one who’s sad about it. Let’s be honest.

[Alison, Eric, and Michael laugh]

Eric: There are better books ahead – one, specifically.

Kat: Yes. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Alison: Okay. So then I guess we’ll move on to our Podcast Question of the Week responses. So the question, written by Caleb, was, “We learn from Nearly Headless Nick that he stayed behind as a ghost because he was too afraid to move on. But was there more to it? Was there a more specific reason that might have kept him behind? A love, a purpose in life, or something else? Take it a step further. If Sirius had stayed behind, what might have been the single biggest motivating factor to keep him behind? Being a godfather to Harry, his growing friendship with Harry, or something else?” We pretty much had a concensus on both characters from our responses, so… we had a couple [of] different little variations, though, so I picked those out. So our first comment on Nick comes from They’ve Taken My Wheezy, which is a fabulous username.

Michael: Yes, [They’ve] Taken My Wheezy, why haven’t you called me yet? We’re such a good match.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Alison: Okay, and they say,

“Nearly Headless Nick is nearly headless for a reason. He was executed. Whatever the reason was, his death came to him knowingly. He had to walk to the executioner, possibly watch the world around him as he lay his head down and wait for it to be chopped off. Gruesome, disturbing, out of his control. The fear of death must be incredibly strong in anyone facing execution, and perhaps the reason behind his execution made Nick ever more fearful.”

So this one is just saying that he made the choice because the moment he was killed was so full of fear, which I think is a great point, and lots of other commenters agreed.

Kat: Do you think, though, that it’s that last-minute of a decision? I feel like it has to be something that you’re consciously aware of that’s what you want to do for longer than just the moment before you die.

Alison: I think it could be the tipping point.

Eric: No. The impression that I got was, you don’t know for sure that becoming a ghost is a thing that you can do until after you’ve died. That’s my impression anyway.

Kat: But you don’t die. If you become a ghost, you don’t die.

Eric: You do die. A ghost is not a human being. A ghost is not a person.

Kat: But you don’t die. He never goes to the other side. He doesn’t know what death is like.

Eric: Right. But do you think it’s like a King’s Cross scene, where you can move on or not, make the conscious choice that “Yes, I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted out of life. I’m going to take the train on” or… that kind of thing?

Kat: I think the King’s Cross thing was a unique thing.

Eric: Well, I mean, that specifically may have been, but is it not too dissimilar? Because you can be a really religious person and believe in the afterlife, and that may inform your decision or change whether or not you come back, but some people aren’t those types of people. Some people aren’t expecting it at all. I think in the case of Nick, he wasn’t consciously thinking about the afterlife. He was pretty much tied to the fact that he was about to be executed, and when he was executed, it became a thing where he, for whatever reason, didn’t want to die, and that transferred his consciousness, and he became a ghost.

Kat: Hmm.

Alison: I still feel like…

[Alison and Kat sigh]

Eric: Because it’s never said that just religious people can come back as ghosts or just non-religious people can become ghosts.

Kat: It’s just wizards.

Eric: Well, wizards. Well, yeah, religion/wizards is another thing.

Michael: [laughs] Thanks to Twitter.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Yeah, as we recently learned, yes.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: I don’t know. This is a tough one. I still personally believe that you have to be conscious of what you would do. Don’t all of you have an answer to the question “If you were a wizard, would you stay as a ghost or move on?”

Michael: Oh my God. Move on.

Kat: No, seriously.

Alison: Oh, yeah!

Kat: Just think about it in your head. You know what you would do, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Alison: For sure.

Kat: Yeah, so I feel like it’s something that you decide unconsciously and it just is. I’m not sure that it’s a last-minute decision.

Eric: So it’s like, “Do you want to be an organ donor or not?”

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Tick the box, and then later when you die, it’s determined whether or not you become a ghost or whether or not your organs are used for medical science or transports.

Kat: Well, I still think… okay, I still think it’s a conscious decision, but I don’t think that you can just change your mind at the last second because you’re scared of death. I feel like it’s something inside of you where you’re either going to be a ghost or you’re not.

Alison: But I think if you were at a gray point, if you weren’t sure, then…

Kat: Yeah, something like that. Tipping point, like you said.

Alison: Yeah, it could’ve been a…

Kat: Yeah, that has potential. I’ll give you that.

Alison: All right, our next comment comes from RoseLumos who says,

“I think that a reason Nick may have stayed [back] was not just because he was afraid of death – he might have never experienced the death of a close friend o[r] family member. I can see how someone who has never lost a loved one would view death as scary and lonely. It would mean leaving everything behind. However, someone who has experienced a loss can realize how much there is in death and can imagine being reunited in the afterlife. If Nick only had living loved ones it would be scary to leave everything behind for the unknown.”

And kind of along with that, ISeeThestrals says,

“I think if Nearly Headless Nick had stayed behind for a loved one, he knew he would eventually have to accept her moving on from life if she didn’t make an imprint to stick around as a ghost. This is the risk ghosts take. They are extending their time on earth for an everlasting false life, yet they must know that they will find themselves alone if their relations ch[o]ose not to make the same choice. If not solely for the fear of death, Nick may have chosen to remain behind to become of better assistance to others. He was sentenced to death for accidentally causing Lady Grieve to grow tusks when he tried to fix her teeth. His desire to remain behind may stem from a need to make a better name for himself among young wizards who might have considered him something of a failure.”

Eric: Hmm, I like that.

Kat: That’s interesting. Yeah, I haven’t thought of that.

Eric: I mean, considering the life of a ghost and being like… I love how it says, “If your partner in life doesn’t… chooses not to stay behind,” that it’s an extremely lonely existence. Yeah, it’s possible he wanted to redeem himself and wanted to so much that it overwhelmed his other emotions. That’s interesting.

Kat: Although seemingly, he’s very proud of his nearly headless stature even though it makes him mad. I feel like, in some way, he’s proud of that.

Eric: “They never took the full thing.”

[Alison laughs]

Kat: That’s right. That’s right. Exactly.

Alison: I think RoseLumos’s comment is interesting as well, that part of the fear comes from having never experienced…

Eric: Well, he’s never like made his peace. He’s never made his peace with that. If you don’t… him [having] witnessed the death of a family member or a close friend… do we know that he hasn’t witnessed the death of a close friend or family member?

Kat: No, I don’t think we know that.

Alison: I don’t think we do.

Eric: Oh, that’s like a hypothetical. I mean, yeah, if you’ve never been through the grieving process or witnessed somebody close to you and realized that it’s all part of life’s process, you would grow to fear it, I think.

Alison: Do we know how old Nick was when he died?

Kat: Oh, I’m sure we do. I’m sure somebody’s figured it out.

Alison: That’s probably on Pottermore somewhere.

Kat: I don’t know. I mean, he looks older, but that’s John Cleese.

Eric: Well, he’s just cast older.

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Kat: But yeah, who knows? I suppose. And it’s funny because RoseLumos’s comment… I – just a little personal story – have had a few close people in my life die, but I still toil with the “If I were a wizard, would I come back as a ghost or not?” And there'[re] a lot of reasons behind that, but I can’t say that her comment is 100% valid because just because you’ve experienced the death of somebody doesn’t mean you’re still aren’t a little nervous about the whole process.

Michael: No, well, I think the books make that clear that if you’re not… if you don’t have some fear of death, that you’re a fool. There’s a healthy amount of fear involved when facing death, which Harry will, of course, have to have in the final book. Listeners, if you haven’t ever read this particular book, too – which if you enjoy Harry Potter, you definitely should read this – read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. That has informed my views on whether I would want to live forever or not in a half-life. Very fascinating concepts in that story that tie in really well to Harry Potter.

Eric: Good recommendation. I’m going to write that down.

Alison: So moving on to the second part of the question, where we’re talking about Sirius, the second part of RoseLumos’s comment is,

“When we put Sirius into this situation, we can see why he would have ‘moved on.’ He had lost so many people he knew that moving on would bring him closer to them. Besides…I think that Sirius has lived quite a sad adult life. He has either been a prisoner in Azkaban or a prisoner in his house since he was a young man. He hasn’t had real freedom in 14 years. The idea of Sirius coming back to be a ‘prisoner’ of life would not be appealing to him. Sure, he could have spent time with Harry and Remus, but in the whole history of life that time he spent with them would only seem like a moment. The idea of being stuck in life long after everyone has passed on would probably seem like torture to him.”

I think that’s a very, very interesting idea that Sirius would see this as being a prisoner for longer.

Kat: Yeah, I think it’s totally valid. Completely.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: I love RoseLumos classifying him as a prisoner both in his own house, and of course, he’s the prisoner of Azkaban. That’s really cool. That fits so well.

Kat: Props.

Eric: Mad apropos.

Alison: Adding on to that again is ISeeThestrals again, who says:

“In the case of Sirius, I do believe he would want to stay behind for Harry if he made such a choice but […] for himself as well. His life was cut short when he was sentenced to Azkaban, and once he escape[d] he was still forced to live like a prisoner with no freedom. As a ghost, I think Sirius would have felt freer than he had in his current life, believing he could, in a sense, relive his life for the better even though life as a ghost could become a kind of prison. Depending on when a wizard must make an imprint, if they must do so before they die or if it occurs somewhere afterwards, Sirius might have been caught in the moment of wanting to participate in the war if it’s the latter. Knowing the trouble ahead, he would want to be there to help stop it, as he tried to do for the Order. Like Nearly Headless Nick, he wants to be of help. For much of his early life he was considered worthless by his own family, and since gaining a family of his own in Harry and Lupin, he would want to fight along with them and help in any way he could.”

So two different ideas. Would being a ghost make Sirius a prisoner, or would it make him more free?

Kat: Both.

[Alison and Eric laughs]

Kat: No, no, I do. I think both theories are completely valid. Obviously, I think the prisoner theory suits Sirius more, but I do think that he would have a happy time as a ghost for a while. Not forever, but for a while.

Alison: Hmm. That’s true.

Kat: I could see it as him being fairly happy with that decision for, I don’t know, a hundred years, and then Harry dies and who does he have left?

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: I’m trying to think… ghosts do seem to have limited freedom in terms of the places that they can haunt. I believe that’s regulated.

Alison: Is it?

Eric: We get that from Moaning Myrtle, at least, when she mentions that the Ministry forces her to remain at Hogwarts after she tries and haunts that girl…

Kat: Olive Hornby.

Alison and Eric: Yeah.

Eric: … for the rest of her life. The Ministry seems to have some sort of control over where ghosts can be.

Michael: I think that’s more if they become a nuisance to a particular individual, though.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: But really, do you think that being a ghost… “I lived never being able to travel the world. I’m now a ghost so I want to go travel the world.” You really can’t, by the evidence in the books, learn a whole lot or… you don’t have the same human desires once you’re a ghost necessarily.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: You have some, and it’s like… ghosts and portraits are often compared in discussion in terms of who is what – and I know that’s all been answered now by J.K. Rowling – but ghosts, to me, have always seemed like… your essential character traits are probably still there but you don’t have the same drives that humans do to see the world. You’re limited, in my opinion, to the reason why you’d stayed behind and you’re limited to do that. It’s like, “I want to stay behind so I can haunt somebody.” That’ll always be you. You will be miserable trying to inflict misery on others. And I don’t know what Nick’s reason was for staying behind, but Sirius… I think he would be limited to a small… if he’s just trying to see Harry through, which I think is the most likely reason he would stay behind as well, that would be his mission. He would probably stay at Grimmauld Place and he would always be there to offer advice or whatever…

Kat: I hope he wouldn’t pick Grimmauld Place.

Alison: Ugh, that would be awful.

Eric: Yeah. Well, they dusted it out, right?

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Alison: That’s true.

Michael: But anyway, talking about Sirius, there’s something I want to bring up, too, which is that I feel like maybe the fact that he was passed corporeally through the Veil or whatever – his body disappeared – may have arrested the process of becoming a ghost, and maybe he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

Alison and Kat: Oh.

Kat: That’s possible.

Eric: It’s not a typical way of dying. We figured out not everybody… when they die, they don’t go through this specific Veil, and he seemed to have gone through it. It’s debatable. Michael, do you remember this? He was hit with a curse, but was it not the Death Curse? Or was it the Death Curse?

Michael: Hmm. See, this is a thing that fans are still unclear on because the way it’s written is that Bellatrix shoots a red curse first at Sirius and that’s the one that misses and he laughs. And then the narration says that she shoots another curse at him and people thought that from that, the text implies that she shoots another red curse at him, which is a Stunning Spell or something like that, and that the fall through the Veil killed him. But I believe, especially after Deathly Hallows and what happens to Bellatrix in that book, I believe she did actually kill him. I’m pretty sure she shot a Killing Curse at him. It does not say it’s a green curse but with…

Eric: It does not say green?

Michael: No, it does not say green textually.

Eric: Okay. Interesting. So yeah, I question whether or not Sirius was, I guess, trapped or unable to become a ghost.

Kat: Because he might not have died from “conventional manners”?

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: Manners, yeah.

Kat: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. I could see that.

Alison: All right. Well, thank you for answering our Podcast Question of the Week, our last one for Order of Phoenix.

Eric and Kat: Aww.

Michael: Yay!

Kat: Shush! Shush!

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: No yays! No yays allowed.

Michael: Well, my punishment is that I have been assigned to book wrap.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: You love doing… I thought you liked doing book wrap.

Michael: I do like book wrap. I do like book wrap, actually. I’m a bit more suited for movie discussion but book wrap is fun because it is fun to actually go back and reflect on some of the things we were thinking all the way back when Order of the Pheonix was on its way and when it was released. So here we go with the official book wrap of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Alison and Eric: Woo.

Michael: [laughs] And what we always like to do first, to start off, is take a look at the dedication, which we usually look at at the beginning of the book and we also like to look at at the end and see if anything about the book itself further informs this dedication. And it’s a very simple one, actually, compared to some of Rowling’s previous ones that we’ve seen. It simply says, “To Neil, Jessica, and David, who make my world magical.”

Alison and Eric: Aww.

Kat: Boo.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: No, I’m just kidding. No, it’s just I like the ones that are more mystical, and that we had to figure out. This one’s easy.

Michael: Exactly. Probably the big, major… probably the highlight of this particular one is David, out of those three names. David was Rowling’s brand new baby son who she was pregnant with during the writing of Order and who she had right before Order was released. So that was a big deal for her and would lead to affect some of the future Harry Potter stuff. But I think that’s definitely a new mother dedication, right?

Kat: Yes, it is. Very much, very much.

[Michael laughs]

Alison I think it’s sweet.

Eric: That’s not to say that it’s bad. Come on, I love this. This is peaceful. This is simple, blissfully simple. I am glad there’s not another puzzle to figure out.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: I like puzzles. Ravenclaw.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: It fits with this book, doesn’t it? Because this book is talking about Harry and Harry’s relationships and so she dedicates it to the most important people in her life as she kills off one of the most important people in Harry’s life.

[Eric, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Michael: “Isn’t that nice? I still have a whole family, unlike my characters.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Sorry, Harry. Not.

Michael: So the dedication is a motherly dedication that is also a slap in the face to her fictional characters. That is the conclusion there.

Alison: [laughs] Probably not intended.

Kat: How nice.

Michael: Not much to take apart there. It’s definitely a reflection of where Rowling was at at the time. So after the dedication, we also like to take a look at the particular summaries that we get from both the US and UK editions because the summaries are very informative, I think, about how the different countries anticipated the books because we were given different bits of information. And the US ones, as per usual, are much longer. [laughs] And this one begins with: “There is a door at the end of a silent corridor and it’s haunting Harry Potter’s dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night screaming in terror? Here are just a few things on Harry’s mind.” And then we got… actually, I think this is the first time we got bullet points of things that were in Harry’s year.

Kat: Oh, yes.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: “A Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey. A venomous, disgruntled house-elf. Ron is Keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The looming terror at the end of term Ordinary Wizarding Level exams. And of course, the growing threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. In the richest installment yet of J.K. Rowling’s seven part story, Harry is faced with the unreliability of the very government of the magical world and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he finds depth and strength in his friends beyond what even he knew, boundless loyalty, and unbearable sacrifice. Though thick runs the plot, as well as the spine, readers will race through these pages and leave Hogwarts, like Harry, wishing only for the next train back.”

[Eric hums “Hedwig’s Theme”]

Michael: Oh, Scholastic, you did such great summaries.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: There is no mention whatsoever of Sirius or really… it doesn’t necessarily give you a…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Let’s talk about what’s left out because they do bullet points. So the four bullet points that are in the book; are they the… if you were to break this book down – having read it now again recently – into four or five bullet points, would these be the ones? Would Ron becoming Keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team have made your four point bullet list?

Kat: No.

Michael: Not if… I mean, this summary, I feel, is what a good movie trailer should be.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: It’s not giving away all of the major points.

Alison and Kat: Yeah.

Michael It’s giving you a good… and especially because I think Scholastic was very shrewd in their marketing tactics with Harry Potter. This kind of marketing for a children’s book was unseen at this point until Harry Potter.

Eric: And I remember getting this summary… even some of one of the chapters before the book was released.

Michael: Mhm.

Alison: The first sentence. Sorry.

Eric: Yeah, the excerpt where he’s in the bushes, right?

Kat: Mhm.

Alison: Uh-huh.

[Alison and Eric laugh]

Eric: … getting it before it came out and it really heightened the excitement.

Alison: So I was in third grade when this book came out and it was the first book I remember waiting for. I don’t remember waiting for Goblet of Fire. But I remember reading this and reading the first part of that first sentence, and I cut out the little article that had the first sentence in it and I had it pinned to my bulletin board for months and months and months. I may even have that article still. But yeah, it was a big deal, especially because we had to wait so long.

Michael: Yeah, to get this summary was… and again, the reason I say, too, that it was such shrewd marketing on Scholastic’s part is… to recall back, they were the ones who decided to rename the first book because they were aware of the perception for American readers, and I think, very much, this summary is very aware that kids reading this book were going to have a harder time with this book compared to the other Harry Potter books. Because this really hypes up the suspense and action of Order of the Phoenix. “Oh, there’s a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! Quidditch! There is going to be more Quidditch! There’s horrible… there’s testing and there’s unreliable government. And it’s exciting. Kids, read this exciting book!” And it’s going to take a while. This book is going to take a while to reach that point. And I think Scholastic was just very aware of that and said, “Okay, let’s get them hyped so that as they coast through these first chapters, that they know that something really great is coming… is on its way.”

Alison: And I think it’s nice, too. It harks back to things we know about. We know about Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers…

Michael: Yes. We know about house-elves.

Alison: … we know about house-elves. We know Ron wants to play Quidditch. We know that OWLs are coming up. We know Voldemort is back. We know these things from the last book, so it’s tying all of these things back so that readers will be more excited that these questions will be answered, and these things will keep going, that they know.

Michael: Yeah. I do remember when I first read it, my heart absolutely broke when I read the line, “A Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey,” and I was like, “No, I want another good one!”

[Everyone laughs]

Alison and Kat: Yeah.

Michael: “It’s been so long since we’ve had a good one!” That was so disappointing to read. And then I was especially surprised, I remember, when I read it and it ended up being a woman. And I was like, “Oh, interesting.”

Alison and Kat: Mhm.

Eric: Yeah, I thought that that… I was surprised by that as well…

Michael: Mhm.

Kat: You know what this summary… sorry, Eric. This summary – at all – doesn’t read to any of the really emotional turmoil that happens in this book.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: “Harry has a crappy year. There are times when he wants to rip his friends’ heads off.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Alison: There’s lots of yelling.

Eric: “He is seen crying, he’s…” yeah, no.

Kat and Michael: Yeah.

Michael: Well, and I think it heightens those kinds of emotions by, “Unbearable sacrifice,” “Boundless loyalty,” “Screaming in terror…”

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: They really just injected those things that really aren’t quite that with just a bit of oomph.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: So yeah, there’s definitely quite a buildup in this summary. But it was a summary that was very much talked about, I think, unlike any other Harry Potter book summary up to this point.

Eric and Kat: Mhm.

Michael: And then over in the UK, what they got was, “Harry Potter is due to start his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His best friends Ron and Hermione have been very secretive all summer and he is desperate to get back to school and find out what has been going on. However, what Harry discovers is far more devastating than he could ever have expected.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: It’s so lame.

Michael: You’re welcome.

Eric: I would not read this book if I picked this up.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: So they got the first chapter and through the Veil, basically, in this description.

Michael: [laughs] Yeah. And the hardcover that I’ve got here… because I do have the British hardcover… the little bit on that that’s expanded is… because the last line is a bit different; it says, “However, what Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down.”

Eric: Hmm.

Michael: And then it says, “This is a gripping and electrifying new novel full of suspense, secrets, and of course, magic, from the incomparable J.K. Rowling.” And that’s it.

Kat: Ooh, incomparable. That’s truth.

Michael: Incomparable! [laughs] So… and yeah, that’s pretty much all they got, was, “Guess what? Harry is going back to school and there are secrets to be discovered.

Eric: Is it possible… I know Rosie is not on to answer to this, but is it not possible that those two posts are the equivalent of each other? Just for British readers who are so much more astute and so much more ready?

[Michael laughs]

Eric: The words used in that may seem bland and unexciting to us, but then the British are just like, “Ooh, devastating.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: “Ooh, secretive. Desperate to get back to school! That’s exciting!”

Kat: It’s so Downton Abbey.

Alison: Oh, gosh.

Michael: As much as we laugh at that, I would be interested. I know we have quite a few listeners in the UK and Europe.

Kat: Mhm.

Michael: European and UK listeners, please let us know what you thought of this summary because it is interesting to… because again, just as much as Scholastic was very shrewd and on it with their marketing, I’m sure Bloomsbury knew what was on their hands, and knew their audience. I know that Bloomsbury, of course, was not quite at the same renowned publishing level as Scholastic, of course. But they still… they’d been doing this for a while now. [laughs]

Eric and Kat: Yeah.

Eric: And I mean, the US uses phrases like, “Looming terror,” and, “Unbearable sacrifice,” and those are buzz phrases that hook us.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: The UK seems a little lacking in that.

Michael: Mhm.

Kat: Well, and, too… I mean, I think we’ve said this before, is that Americans need that stuff to get excited.

Michael: Yeah. Mhm.

Kat: And Brits really don’t because Americans are stupid. That’s what it comes down to.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: Well, yeah. Well, there’s absolutely nothing… there’s nothing deceptive about this summary.

Alison: No.

Michael: Like we were saying… the way that you said, Kat, how there’s no… rather than just put the emotional turmoil in the US summary, they’ve just injected it with hormones; versus here in the UK version, they’re like, “Oh, there’s devastating secrets.” And that’s the extent of it.

Kat: Mhm. Scandalous.

Michael: Scandalous! Secrets at school! Who would have heard? Who would have thought? Intrigue!

Eric: Deception!

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: I just want to say, we’re not making any fun of them at all.

Michael: No, not at all. [laughs] We’re really making more fun of ourselves, UK listeners, because, as we pointed out in the past, Scholastic was very aware that American children readers were kind of derpy…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Wow.

Michael: … and needed a lot of encouragement to read these books.

Eric: There’s a word from the 2010s.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: So a little history about Order of the Phoenix: We want to start off by talking a little bit about what Rowling was up to and her state of mind at the time. Rowling has stated – looking back on Order of the Phoenix – that she would go back and edit down the book further if she was able to, saying that it was too long. Rowling, as we know, planned to kill Arthur Weasley, but decided to give him a reprieve because she just couldn’t bring herself to do it, and of course as we know, somebody else died in his place. But we’ll get there later. Potter fans waited three years between the releases of the fourth and fifth books. There were actually a few reasons for that.

Kat: She was making babies. Sorry.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: Yeah. Well, one…

Eric: Wow. Wow.

Alison: Okay.

Michael: Yes, David was on his way, but… and she had said this in interviews; around the end of Goblet of Fire, she was actually, in her mind, hoping that there was a way that she could break her arm so that she wouldn’t have to write because she was at such a burnt-out point. And that burnt-out nature stayed with her through Order of the Phoenix and she was also dealing with the Nancy Stouffer trial. Nancy Stouffer was a woman who brought up a case against Rowling that she had plagiarized her work.

Kat: Nice try.

Alison and Michael: Yeah.

Michael: What happened in the end, of course, was that Ms. Stouffer falsified most of her documents. [laughs]

Eric: Wow.

Michael: She attempted to say that Rowling… she was very upset about the word “Muggle,” which she claimed she had created. And she tried to pull some similarities between her books and Rowling’s, but again, it all ended up being falsified and of course Rowling had not only herself but Scholastic and Warner Bros. on her side to back her up. But the trial took so much out of Rowling and distracted her so much that she stopped writing; stopped work on Order of the Phoenix for a long time. But the book was finally finished and as the series was already a global phenomenon, the book forged unheard of pre-order records with thousands of people lining up outside bookstores on the night of June 20, 2003 to secure their copy at midnight. I’m sure we were all those people. I know I was.

Kat: Uh-huh.

Alison: Sadly, no. My mom wouldn’t let me stay up that late.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Regardless about how I feel about the book as a whole, this release party, standing in line, waiting for this, is one of the five nights I would go back to in a time machine because it was just so much fun. It was one thing after another, just unparalleled fun.

Michael: Where were you, Eric?

Eric: Oak Park, Illinois, actually. Where I am now. [laughs]

Michael: Oh! [laughs]

Eric: A couple of blocks away. It was that formative of an experience that I had to hang around the corner from where it happened.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Yeah, I was in Oak Park and it was the first MuggleNet book party that we had done.

Michael: Mm! Mhm.

Eric: There were two. One was in Illinois with… I was with pretty much all of Emerson’s family and then Emerson was in London with Jamie.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: And they were at Waterstones handing out MuggleNet stickers at their release party.

Michael: Oh, wow. And Kat, where were you?

Kat: I was on Martha’s Vineyard with a friend. Got the book and Carly Simon was there! So that was exciting.

Eric: Oh, cool!

Kat: With her dogs.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Yeah, there were seven people at the bookstore, so not a super big celebration but it was fun. So it was good.

Eric: Did the dogs get their copies of the book?

[Alison laughs]

Kat: They did, yeah. They did. Yep, they each walked away with it in their tiny little mouths.

Michael: Alison, did you have to wait until the next day?

Alison: Actually… so this is the first one I waited for. I had to wait a few months because my mom bought the book.

[Kat and Michael gasp]

Alison: I’m the youngest of four and we’ve all read them, but I was obsessed. And I had to wait a few months because my mom bought the book and didn’t tell me she bought the book and she hid it from me so she and my siblings could read it before it became permanently attached to my hands.

Eric: Wow.

Alison: And I actually found out at school one day; I think my sister slipped up and said something and I screamed and I was like, “Why did you not tell me?” And we had to go home and I had to have it right then and I… it’s one of my favorite memories from growing up. I would get up every morning, really early, actually, and my house would be quiet and I would go get the book and sit in the living room. The sun would be coming up behind me and I would sit and I would read it and I read it three times in a row or something like that.

Kat: Aww, that’s a really nice memory, actually.

Alison: Yeah, it was a good one. But I was so angry. [laughs]

Kat: Understandable. Months! Oh my gosh.

Eric: So your emotions matched Harry’s?

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: [laughs] Well, for myself, I went to a small independent bookstore for the release here in Albuquerque.

Eric: Yay.

Michael: The bookstore still exists; it’s called Bookworks. And I was there with a few friends. I think that was my very first Remus Lupin costume. Yes, it was. My very first one.

Alison: Aww.

Kat: Did you have the nose?

Michael: No, that costume was very different. I had a black, really thick… my dad’s bathrobe.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: And a green formal shirt on and slacks and brown shoes and then I had drawn scars on my face with a Sharpie. [laughs]

Alison: Aww.

Michael: And I didn’t have time to sew patches on so I literally cut squares of color out and just taped them to my robes.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Oh my God.

Michael: And I printed out a list of spells on a piece of paper and I crumpled it up to make it look ancient and old and that was my Lupin costume. Yeah, it was pretty hardcore.

Alison: That’s awesome.

Kat: Is there a photo of that somewhere? Please?

Michael: Yeah, there is. Yeah, I will pull photos for you of this costume.

Kat: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that needs to be a thing.

Michael: We hung out at the store and it was really exciting. It was just so cramped. Bookworks is a lovely little store but they had all these activities that were… it was funny because one of the activities they had was they hid those Ferrero Rocher chocolate balls around the store like they were Snitches and you had to go find all the Snitches.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Aww.

Michael: But what was so funny about it was that amongst the large crowd of Potter fans, there were twenty regular shoppers who were like, “What’s going on here?”

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Whoops.

Michael: And we were barging by them looking for chocolate and there was a real owl and everything…

Alison: Ooh!

Kat: Cool.

Michael: Yeah, it was pretty exciting. So that was my Order of the Phoenix experience. But despite… now, the big thing with Order of the Phoenix, of course, just as with Goblet of Fire, was that there was a huge – but Order of the Phoenix on a much larger level – there was a huge security contingent around this book.

Eric: Right.

Michael: As Cheryl Klein has discussed with us when she guested on the show, there were some major things that she had to do to get the book over here. I don’t know if it was for this one in particular but I think she did that for Deathly Hallows. But there was some work for these books where very specific people could only have the script. It was insane.

Eric: Yep.

Michael: And there was a lot of reports on this. But what ended up happening… despite this, thousands of copies were still stolen from Earlestown, Merseyside; a warehouse on June 15, 2003. So there was a bit of an early leak.

Kat: Whoops.

Eric: This was five days before the book came out.

Kat: That was my 21st birthday.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Kat: No joke, that’s my 21st birthday.

Michael: Marked with a horrible occasion, but it’s okay.

Kat: I’m not saying that I was involved…

Michael: Well…

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Kat was really good to herself that year for her birthday. She gave herself a thousand copies of a Harry Potter book.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: Well… luckily, despite this… because I think the breach that was much more egregious – and we will see that with the next book – was the results of Half-Blood Prince and people flipping to the back of the book and… as you’ll see…

Alison: Oh, yes.

Michael: If you look up on YouTube, you’ll find plenty of horrible videos of people…

[Alison laughs]

Michael: … spoiling Half-Blood Prince for people, and this didn’t quite happen with Order. Consider that in 2003 the Internet was a little different, listeners, and it was not quite as easy to spread information so quickly.

Alison: I still had it spoiled.

Michael: Ah. Yeah.

Eric: Ooh.

Michael: It was still possible if you weren’t careful, but of course…

Kat: I didn’t… none of my other friends read the books…

Michael: Mhm.

Kat: … except the one that I was with, and we sequestered ourselves, so…

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Kat: … we were okay.

Michael: Astonishingly, five million copies were sold in the first 24 hours that the book went on sale…

Eric: Wow.

Michael: … breaking records as it always did. Rowling, for her part, was at the Royal Albert Hall doing a Q&A and live reading with Stephen Fry that night – which I am very lucky to have a video copy of. It was actually shipped out to book stores the next year for Half-Blood Prince‘s release…

Eric: Oh.

Michael: … on CD.

Kat: Hmm…

Michael: Rowling does an absolutely amazing reading of the scene where Harry is getting career advice from McGonagall and Umbridge is in the background.

Eric: Oh, no way.

Michael: Her Umbridge voice is astonishing, by the way, listeners.

Kat: Is this on YouTube?

Michael: I looked up on YouTube and I couldn’t find it.

Alison: Dang it.

Kat: Damn.

Michael: Yeah. So, like I said, that thing just kind of fell into my hands.

Eric: Sharing is caring, Michael.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: I don’t want to get in trouble… but yeah, that is what she was up to, and she answered a lot of questions from fans. Her audience was full of thousands and thousands of young British schoolchildren. As she said in the interview with Stephen Fry, it was quite a marked difference from Sorcerer’s Stone when she was going to stores and reading to about two people.

Eric: Mmm.

Michael: So she was asked a lot of questions about major theories in the books. The biggest ones she was asked about were about Snape, and she wouldn’t answer any of them.

Eric: Ugh!

Michael: [laughs] She kept saying, “You have to wait.” And with that in mind, there were some very interesting theories that popped up after Order of the Phoenix. And Kat, I know the big one that you were wanting to discuss is the one surrounding the “Neither can live while the other survives” line from the prophecy.

Kat: Yeah, it’s this awesome theory about the two lines where “One must die at the hand of the other,” and “Neither can live while the other survives.” So there is this big theory about whoever dies or whoever kills the other one – whichever one lives after one of them dies – because we always assume that one of them would die…

Michael: Mhm.

Kat: … but we didn’t know who, of course. The person who lived would then be immortal because they could only die at the hand of the other one.

Eric: Right. Because if you were to take Harry and Voldemort and look at them, you’d be like, oh, they’re alive now. But then there’s this line that says, “Neither can live while the other survives.” So it’s like, what does it mean to really live?

Kat: Right.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Right, that’s what it is.

Kat: I think it’s a… we don’t know that Harry’s not immortal…

Eric: He won’t be.

Kat: I don’t know… no, I know that…

[Eric laughs]

Kat: … but I’m saying it’s still something that still could be valid and talked about and discussed and I just think that’s great. I think it’s a great theory.

Eric: There was with this prophecy – the prophecy itself is so well-worded – there are other interpretations, too of the same lines, “Neither can live while the other survives,” like there’s a third party. There’s this “other”…

Michael: Mmm.

Kat: Oh!

Eric: “Either must die at the hand of the other”…

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Eric: [unintelligible] … of all the others, “While the other survives” is like talking about somebody who is not Harry or Voldemort.

Michael: It’s Neville!

Kat: Is it Lost?

Eric: It’s Neville, we know this.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: The Island. It’s the Island.

Eric: Ah, it’s the Island.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: Oh, gosh.

Eric: Yeah, so there’s so many… I will say there is a certain depth in the mythology and depth in the story that this book had that allowed for these types of theories to form finally, because you get this prophecy that really is behind everything to begin with.

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: This explains or is supposed to explain somewhere within its words exactly why Harry wasn’t just killed by Voldemort all those years ago and why Voldemort was in fact stopped at that point. It’s something that’s such a big deal that it really sparked a lot of very interesting theories.

Michael: So, in addition to that theory that ran around, of course everybody’s eyes immediately targeted to the ever-popular Mark Evans, who…

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Ah yes, Mark Evans.

Alison: Oh, man.

Michael: And my goodness, was Mark Evans quite the thing! Mark Evans stayed around for quite a while until, I believe, Melissa Anelli finally shattered that with an interview with Rowling, and Rowling said, “I am so sorry.” [laughs] “That was just…”

Eric: We talked about that during that chapter, right?

Alison and Kat: Yeah.

Kat: I think we did. Yeah.

Eric: It’s like J.K. Rowling, even on her website, time and time again had to keep dispelling the rumor like, “I wish I had never written this”…

[Alison laughs]

Eric: … “I would’ve changed his name.”

[Michael laughs]

Eric: “It snuck past me”…

Kat: She should change it for future editions!

[Michael laughs]

Eric: People still think she’s lying.

Alison: [laughs] Oh my gosh.

Eric: People still think there’s totally another Mark Evans, like a thing behind him.

Michael: So yes… and that threw the fandom into quite a turmoil for a while until that was confirmed about what the real meaning of that was, which was of course nothing at all.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: You know what’s funny about that, though? Now that I think about the latest batch of Pottermore stuff that was released is the fact that the Railview Inn that they go to is in Cokeworth…

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: … where Lily Evans grew up.

[Kat and Michael laugh]

Alison: [laughs] Oh, gosh.

Eric: So in the first book she has them going to Petunia’s hometown basically to escape the letters. So the idea of having relations nearby you or whatever appealed to the Dursleys. Yet there’s this Mark Evans who has the same surname, and he’s just a block away from where Harry is currently living. But oh no, that just can’t be.

Michael: That’s crazy.

Kat: It sounds like you’re on that team of people who don’t quite believe that.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: I don’t know. Look… I don’t know what to believe anymore.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: And in the world of the fandom, thanks to this book – and I actually talked about this on the final live AudioFictions show – which, listeners, you should go watch on YouTube; it’s up there if you haven’t seen it yet – but there was an absolute explosion of Harry Potter fan fiction, especially with the Marauders genre, thanks to that one scene we got that was a flashback. MuggleNet’s own fan fiction site would start in the next year, in 2004, and would be absolutely deluged in Marauders fan fiction, which it still is. So that was a major turning point in the fandom. I think this book really set that off because this was the first definitive exploration of that generation. We actually got to see them in action.

Kat: And that’s when the Internet really kind of exploded, too…

Michael: Yes.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: … because that was my last year of college, and I remember that they had Internet cafes back then, so you could go in and rent some time on the AOL… [imitates AOL beeps]

[Alison, Eric, and Michael laugh]

Kat: … all those weird noises that it used to make. And I’d be like, “Mom, I have to check my email, okay?” And it was like two little emails from nobody that were like spam.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: But yeah, I remember this time very fondly since I was older.

Michael: Well, yes…

Kat: I remember a time before the Internet, and I remember how much it changed when the Internet really exploded.

Michael: And in this same year, [laughs] we’re going to say something that some of you may not even understand the significance of, and that word is MySpace.

Alison: Oh gosh!

[Michael laughs]

Alison: What?

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: Who space? My who? Your space? MySpace of course came along as the pre-Facebook, but very different from Facebook, and the way that things were shared was absolutely phenomenal. And so that did allow for a lot of Harry Potter related things to be shared on a social media platform, which was kind of the first time that was happening.

Kat: And they tried to make a comeback and failed.

Michael: Yeah, no. Bye-bye, MySpace.

Kat: Sorry, MySpace.

Michael: You’re done, sweetie.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: I forgot I had a MySpace; I’ve got to see if that’s still around.

Michael: MySpace at least has Justin Timberlake, so… there you go. But the other big thing was that one year later we would also get – in the interim between Order and Half-Blood – we would also get Rowling’s official website, the pre-Pottermore.

Alison: Oh! I loved it.

Eric: Yeah.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: Loved it.

Kat: So good.

Michael: And you guys, if you weren’t around, get yourself to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine…

Alison: Oh my gosh! It’s brilliant.

Michael: … and go back to this amazing website that existed where the homepage was a facsimile of Rowling’s desk, scattered with gum wrappers and papers and coffee stains. And you would click on all the different things to go to different sections, and what some of those sections had were Dark Marks, like Pottermore has now, which you had to click to see all of the amazing information.

[Kat makes crying noises in the background]

Michael: [laughs] Kat misses those days.

Alison: The door… the door was the greatest thing.

Kat: Why did she have to get rid of it, guys?

[Michael laughs]

Alison: I don’t know!

Eric: How many hours would we all sit just staring at the door?

Kat: Oh, so good. But couldn’t she have just done “jkrowling.com/harrypotter” and kept it?

[Alison, Eric, and Michael laugh]

Kat: I mean, come on, Jo!

Michael: Yes, listeners, we can guarantee what you see on Rowling’s site now is not remotely close to what was there before.

Alison and Kat: No.

Michael: And there were secrets even in the little radio that you could tune.

Eric: Yeah.

Alison: Yes.

Eric: There was a cell phone…

Michael: It was astonishing. If you go to MuggleNet, I believe we still have the page up with all of the old secrets.

Kat: We do! Yep, it’s all there, all the information is there. And there’s an image of it and everything.

Alison: [unintelligible] … and I used it, and I looked up everything.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: Exactly.

Michael: And also worthy of note, Harry Potter was just exploding in pop culture as well, and I just had to share one of my favorite personal commentaries on the Harry Potter hysteria. Listeners, if you’ve never watched it – interestingly this came out before Order of the Phoenix, and it was kind of a commentary on the release time between Goblet and Order – but there was an episode of the animated children’s show Arthur, called “Prunella’s Special Edition.” And it’s where the character Prunella gets she’s a very big fan of their version of Harry Potter, which is called “Henry Skreever.”

[Alison, Eric, and Kat laugh]

Michael: She buys a copy of the book from the UK and it ends up coming the next day, but it’s a Braille copy and she can’t read it. [laughs]

Kat: Whoops.

Alison: [laughs] I do not remember this!

Michael: And everybody else has a copy and they’re reading like crazy and she can’t get the book anywhere. And it was such a great parody. Mr. Ratburn flies in on a car and he’s like, “Mr. Morris, the mangling maple needs trimming.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: It was absolutely genius. And this era was where a lot of children’s TV shows were picking up Harry Potter parodies and doing full-fledged stuff. So Harry Potter was just absolutely at its height. People were so happy to welcome it back after a three-year hiatus…

Kat: How old were you guys in 2003?

Eric: Fifteen.

Alison: Ten, or nine.

Kat: Oh, God.

Michael: How old was I?

Kat: Just checking.

Michael: I need a calculator because I’m a fine arts student.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: I don’t do the maths.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: Let’s see…

Eric: Carry the one…

Michael: I was fourteen. [laughs]

Kat: Okay.

Alison: Wow, I feel like a baby.

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: You are.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Alison: I know.

Eric: Babies are cute.

Kat: Aww.

Michael: Notably as well, Rowling’s Order of the Phoenix won, as usual, tons of awards: the Fiction Prize at W.H. Smith People’s Choice Book Awards 2004, the American Library Association’s Notable Book, the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, Booklist Editors Top Choice of 2003, Booklist Top Ten Fantasy Titles for Youth, Best Children’s Books of 2003 Awards, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio 2004 Gold Medal, and New York State Children’s Choice Award Nominee. These were just some of the many awards that were given to Order of the Phoenix. Order of the Phoenix was quite possibly the first book to meet with some tepid critical reception compared to the other books. While it was still heavily praised by the critics, there were quite a few mentions that this one was a very different take on the series than before, and many reviewers found that a positive but a few found that a negative. And of course, in 2007 we would be receiving the Order of the Phoenix film release. At the time [in 2003] we were still waiting for the Prisoner of Azkaban film.

Eric: We were a year away, actually.

Michael: Yes, we were still waiting, just as there was a gap unfortunately for the fandom, which I think was possibly one of the hardest things on all of us. While we were waiting for the book, we were also waiting for the movies. The one smart thing that happened between that time was that EA Games saw fit to release Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup to fill the gap. Thank God for that.

Eric: Gosh, was that game that old?

[Alison laughs]

Michael: Yeah, it was.

Kat: Mhm.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Because that is my favorite game for PlayStation 2.

Michael: Yeah, that was an amazing game.

Kat: It’s fun.

Michael: So yes, at least we got the Quidditch World Cup, which was very loosely based on Quidditch Through the Ages. So we still had some gaming to do at least in the interim, and I believe around that time we also got the Harry Potter Lego Creators. There was a Lego Harry Potter game before Lego Harry Potter, you guys. So, we still had some things to keep us busy in the interim, but it was a quiet three years actually for a while.

Alison: Was that when Fantastic Beasts… or was that earlier?

Michael: Fantastic Beasts, I believe those were right… that was right… was that after Goblet? Let’s check.

Kat: Yeah…

Alison: I don’t remember.

Eric: What was the question?

Michael: Did she release those in the gap, Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch?

Alison: I feel like they were.

Michael: I think you’re right.

Eric: They were released, I thought, between [Books] 3 and 4 actually.

Kat: ’05… no.

Michael: Let’s see… schoolbooks…

Kat: 2001.

Alison: Oh. Never mind.

Kat: I don’t know… I had no idea.

Eric: It was right after Book 4.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah, that’s in the gap. No, those three years were incredibly fruitful even without a book to read. The first two movies came out, which got me into the series, and those companion books came out.

Michael: Yeah, the companion books were great.

Eric: At Comic Relief.

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: Yeah, and really just in general, I think the wait either directly contributed to or just happened to also feature… so many more people getting into the books.

Michael: Mhm. Absolutely.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: So Rowling, despite all of your grievances that you have about this gap, we appreciate all the effort you went to to keep us in this fandom for those three interim years.

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: So, it still worked out pretty good.

Eric: They were a crucial three years.

Michael: Yes. So that’s the book wrap for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. But of course, we still have one little bit left before we pack up Order.

Eric: Yes! We may have just done the wrap, but we haven’t talked about the wrapping yet.

Michael: Oh!

Eric: And by wrapping I mean the cover.

Kat: Nice transition.

Alison: That was great.

Michael: Beautiful!

Kat: I’m going to send you…

Eric: We’re going to talk about what these books are wrapped in.

[Kat and Michael laugh]

Eric: So let’s talk about these book covers. In this document here that we’re all viewing, we have a really impressive collection of foreign book covers for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The coolest thing about this is, listeners, you can view these along with us while you are listening, just by going to the Alohomora! website, alohomora.mugglenet.com. And in the post for this episode we will have a slider of each of these book covers, I assume with captions as to what country they’re from, right?

Kat: Yes. Mhm. Yep.

Eric: And in the same order in which we discuss them. So let’s start at the very beginning of the alphabet. It’s a very good place to start with Albania.

Kat: Hah!

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Why “hah”?

Kat: Because isn’t that where Voldemort spends a lot of time?

Alison: Oh.

Eric: Oh yeah!

Kat: Albania.

Alison: Oh!

Eric: You know what? Now that we talk about it, isn’t that Voldemort in the upper right hand corner of the book?

Alison: Is it? I was wondering who that was.

Kat: I think it’s…

Michael: Is that supposed to be Voldemort?

Kat: It might be.

Eric: It’s the sun. It’s the golden sun, it looks like, flying around with a face.

Michael: What’s it… oh, you know what? It’s got a ribbony thing coming out of it, too.

Eric: Sinewy kind of thing.

Michael: What is that thing at the bottom right corner, you guys?

Alison: I don’t know.

Michael: What is it?

Eric: It’s an old man.

Michael: What is that?

Kat: A centaur?

Michael: No, because it only has two legs, right? It looks like…

Alison: That we can see.

Kat: Grawp?

Michael: What is that?

Eric: He’s holding a ribbon around like he’s blindfolding himself.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: It looks like a man. He’s bearded…

Alison: Uh-huh.

Eric: It’s a humanoid feature…

Kat: It looks like on the left side there’s a partial one because we can’t see the full cover of course, only the front.

Eric: Mhm.

Michael: Oh yeah, there’s another one on the other side.

Alison: Is it just like…

Eric: That may be something that typically is an Albanian thing. There might be two men that are the weavers of stories that just appear on book covers.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: Maybe.

Eric: I have no idea.

Michael: They’re on every cover. [laughs]

Eric: There’s some really interesting stuff on this front cover actually.

Kat: Harry looks very warm.

Michael: Yes, he does.

Alison: It looks like he has hair. Rapunzel’s hair from Tangled is wrapped around his head.

Michael: It’s his scarf.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Oh, that’s a scarf. Or it’s hair from the old man’s legs.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: That man is very hairy. [laughs] He’s very hairy.

Kat: I mean, that could be a woman. There is a hint of a bosom there.

Michael: Yeah, there’s a little bit of breast there, okay.

Eric: But there’s a beard, though.

Michael: Yeah, there is a beard.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Maybe. I mean, it’s hard to say. Maybe it’s a dwarf. Maybe this is Lord of the Rings.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Maybe it’s a dwarf woman.

Kat: Yes. Maybe.

Eric: [as Gimli] “They have beards just like the men.”

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Really interesting stuff though.

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: Voldemort has a body though at this point, so I guess maybe it’s not Voldemort.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Maybe it’s a Dark Mark?

Eric: Yeah, it could be.

Michael: Oh, there you go.

Kat: Do we see the Dark Mark in this book?

Michael: Only on the tattoos. I don’t think they actually shoot it in the air.

Kat: Yeah, right.

Eric: Are we in agreement that the central most object besides the publisher’s little logo is the phoenix?

[Everyone laughs]

Alison: Yes.

Eric: That is Fawkes. And it looks kind of like Fawkes is breathing out this man, with this face…

Alison: Oh yeah…

Kat: Oh yeah!

Eric: The sun… fire…

Michael: Yeah, and Fawkes is notably completely pale white.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Maybe it’s Dumbledore.

Michael: Oh yeah!

Eric: You know what? It’s probably just the fire anthropomorphized.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: Like, the presence of fire has turned into…

Michael: “Harry Potter de…” [mispronounces Albanian translation for “Order of the Phoenix”] [laughs]

Kat: I’m sure that’s completely right.

Michael: I’m sure it is. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah. I just… now I want to take an anthropology and history course to figure out each of these cultures. What makes this art appear on each of the books?

Alison: Yeah…

Michael: Right.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: I know.

Michael: Absolutely fascinating.

Eric: Because these covers, we always kind of made a thing of… there were always a few posts on MuggleNet about the different covers. They always showed up – we had them in the book section – but there was very little context, and I’d love to see more information about this because they were always weird to us. But to them, they’re probably just as flashy and hype-y as the American cover was to us.

Michael: Well, yeah. For some reason, for them this attracts their eye and makes them want to read the book.

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: Because a lot of it… listeners, make sure and listen to the show where we interviewed Kazu Kibuishi about the new American paperback editions of Harry Potter, because we had some great discussion about what goes into putting these covers together. It’s quite a process in itself, almost as long and big of a process as writing the book.

Kat: That was like forty episodes ago.

Michael: Mhm.

Kat: Oh my God.

Alison: Oh, wow.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: Yeah, because he joined us for the Goblet of Fire chat.

Michael: Yeah, he was here for the Goblet of Fire book wrap.

Kat: The book wrap.

Eric: Well, let’s move on to China, which I think is a really quite cool cover.

Michael: Yeah, good job, China. This is a good cover.

Eric: This is…

Alison: This is a nice one.

Eric: Good job, China.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: China probably gets an award. I think what we’re looking at is a Thestral.

Alison: Oh, I thought it was Fawkes.

[Everybody laughs]

Michael: That’s a cool Thestral.

Alison: That’s the main change in translation…

Eric: It’s a scaly…

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Right? Like wow, phoenixes are really messed up in Asia!

[Everybody laughs]

Eric: No, I think it’s definitely a Thestral. It looks like a dinosaur with…

Alison: Oh, I see a hoof now.

Kat: It looks like a dragon.

Eric: Yeah, it looks like a dragon…

Michael: It looks like Norbert.

Eric: But… the Thestral is kind of looking down on the Hall of Prophecy where Harry is with his wand doing Lumos… lighted tip and a hooded figure which could be Voldemort. It’s probably Lucius Malfoy…

[Michael laughs]

Kat: A hooded figure…

Eric: Yeah, a hooded figure is waiting for him on the other side of the shelves. And this is very clearly watercolor art, right? That’s just the medium. It looks like that is the medium that was used, and it’s really smooth and the use of color on this cover is fascinating.

Kat: You know what kind of gets me is that it’s all buried under Hagrid’s hut.

Eric: Yeah…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Yeah, that’s the weird aesthetic choice here…

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: They took a picture of Hagrid’s hut from the movies. [laughs]

Alison: [laughs] Yeah.

Kat: Well, if you notice too, in the bottom right-hand corner…

Alison: There’s that logo.

Kat: … is the American HP logo.

Michael: HP logo, yeah.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah. And then the only actual English letters are “J.K.” on the front.

Michael: Mhm.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, we can’t even read this one.

Eric: I don’t see that. Where is that? Oh, J.K. Yeah.

Alison: The prophecies are huge.

Kat: I mean, you could try.

Michael. No.

Eric: Hagrid’s hut – the mysteries underneath Hagrid’s hut.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: What’s underneath Hagrid’s hut? That’s pretty cool. You could… if you were not informed as to what book this was or what series this was, you could make certain guesses as to what the book would be about. It’s like, oh, they have to go underground underneath the hill and all these…

Kat: What’s the Thestral coming out of?

Alison: I think that’s why I thought it was Fawkes.

Michael: A chimney.

Kat: Is it a Pensieve? Because it looks like there’s a person standing in front of it.

Eric: A cauldron? Could it be…

Kat: Oh, it could be a cauldron.

Eric: Oh, that could be Harry and Dumbledore looking into the Pensieve maybe.

Kat: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Eric: It is kind of a faded… because I think there’s two bodies if you look at what would be the first thing’s body. It’s a green blob – and I don’t mean that offensively…

[Kat and Michael laugh]

Eric: … and then there’s another greenish color and they both appear to be attached to heads and fingers that are grasping the…

Michael: Oh, God.

Eric: Really interesting stuff.

Michael: I just plugged “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” into the Google Translator to see what it would be in Chinese. I’m so sorry, listeners: “Ha li-bo te yu fenghuang she sunsu.”

Eric: Okay. This has to be a thing that you do now for every book.

[Everybody laughs]

Eric: You attempted it for Albanian and I thought that was very bold and very…

Michael: Incorrect.

Eric: … exciting.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: But now it’s a thing that you do. So thank you, Michael.

Kat: You know, the guest on our very first episode – my best friend, Hope, who’s the one who actually got me into the Harry Potter novels – she speaks Mandarin and so I’ll have to ask her…

Eric: Yes, please.

Kat: … if she knows what this says. And if that pronunciation is even remotely correct.

Michael: Yeah. I’m so sorry, China. That’s a lot of people to apologize to.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: That is. You’re going to have to shake each and every one of their hands.

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: Get on that. Good luck.

Eric: Next country, of course, we go to Denmark. And Harry is stifling laughter…

[Everybody laughs]

Alison: What is he doing?

Michael: He’s got a cough!

Kat: I think he’s giggling to himself, yeah.

Eric: The Thestrals are also having a good time.

Michael: Those are good Thestrals, though.

Alison: They really are.

Kat: Sharp teeth. Ooh.

Eric: Yeah. Terrifyingly sharp teeth.

Kat: They’re scary.

Alison: Overbite.

Michael: What’s in the back? What’s that…

Eric: Glossed over eyes. That’s the Veil.

Michael: Oh!

Eric: Isn’t it?

Alison: Is it?

Michael: Is that what that is?

Eric: It kind of looks like a stone…

Alison: It looks like a Death Eater.

Kat: Phallus?

[Michael laughs]

Eric: No, I was going to say… I wasn’t going to say obelisk either, which is phallic. I was going to say “a stone slab covered in a curtain.” That, to me, is a veil but that’s…

Michael: I really… the thing that…

Kat: Is it Azkaban? Maybe it’s Azkaban.

Michael: I think it’s the veil. That makes sense.

Kat: It doesn’t look… it looks like a stormtrooper helmet.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Or Darth Vader’s helmet; it’s not very veil-y looking.

Alison: Is it a Death Eater? Is it one of the Death Eater’s, do you think?

Eric: Huh.

Kat: Maybe.

Michael: I will say that, despite our interpretation of “yeah, it looks like Harry’s stifling laughter,” the colors used are very dark and very cool, again in addition to the American… using the color of blue to show certain coldness… these colors are not warm and inviting as, perhaps, previous colors have been.

Kat: But brown is a warm color.

Alison: It’s very…

Eric: Earthy. Brown is earthy.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: I know we have listeners from Denmark, and I want… Denmark listeners, please explain to us what you feel the symbolism is of Harry covering his mouth because, to us, it looks like he has… he’s either giggling or he has a cough, but…

Kat: He could be whispering.

Michael: That’s what I was…

Alison: Yeah, I was going to say.

Michael: Is it supposed to be representative of all the secrets in Order of the Phoenix?

Kat: Oh…

Michael: Is that the idea?

Eric: Secrets will be revealed.

Michael: Harry Potter Og Fonixordenen.

Kat: It’s probably like… I’m not even going to pronounce it.

Michael: It’s by Gyldendal.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Kat: Jake Gyllenhaal wrote this.

Michael: Jake Gyllenhaal.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: Let’s move on to…

Kat: I love these covers.

Alison: Oh my gosh, this is probably one of my favorites. [laughs]

Kat: They’re so great. They’re so good.

Michael: This is amazing.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: In particular, Umbridge is probably… if you could see people like Shallow Hal, if you could see people how their personalities are…

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: … this would be Umbridge.

Alison: It’s the best representation ever.

Michael: To a tee. She is described as toad-like, and this is actually a human toad that we’re seeing here.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: With a bow, with a nice bow.

Michael: That’s what’s so interesting, I think, about the Finnish covers is that they do take things way more literally on their covers than any of the other covers do.

Alison: Well, Harry looks angsty, so they got that right.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: Harry does look a little upset, which is good, and who I take to be Ron is trying to suck a human being into his nose.

Alison: [laughs] That’s James. It’s James Potter.

Eric: He’s trying to get rid of it. Oh…

Kat: That’s not Ron; it’s not a ginger.

Michael: Yeah, that’s James.

Eric: Oh, well, I just assumed they… but that’s clearly Hermione in front.

Alison: Or Sirius?

Eric: So Ron gets the shaft?

Michael: Is that Hermione?

Alison: No, I think it’s…

Kat: I don’t think it’s Hermione.

Alison: It’s Sirius. [laughs]

Kat: I think it’s Sirius. Because look, they’re holding the jammin’ Pensieve in the corner there.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: So they’re holding the Pensieve. Okay, so it’s Sirius with… it’s Snape’s worst memory where Snape is hanging upside down.

Kat: Yes.

Michael: Yeah, look at Snape in the background. He’s like, “Ohh.”

Alison: Oh my gosh.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: He has the expression when the Peanuts gang sings.

Michael: Yes.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: With a giant O in their mouth. Yeah.

Michael: Oh, look, I didn’t notice Umbridge has her hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Alison and Kat: Yeah.

Eric: Her claws, her slimy claws.

Michael: Her talons on Harry’s shoulder.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Eric: Michael, you want to try the title?

Michael: Harry Potter ja Feeniksin Kilta.

Kat: That’s probably pretty accurate. It looks like the… it must continue a bit, too, because you can see a bit of the wand.

Eric: Yeah, that James is holding.

Kat: Yeah so, I wonder if… oh God, I wish we could find the full version of these covers.

Eric: Full jackets.

Kat: Yeah, the full jackets.

Michael: I like that Harry is wearing a beanie, too.

Kat: Yeah, it’s super cute, right?

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: To distinguish him from James.

Alison: Harry the hipster.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: That’s right; that’s funny.

Kat: Cute. I just like that the Pensieve says “jammin’.” [laughs] It says something.

Michael: “Jammin”?

Kat: It looks like J-A-M-M-I, and I just assume that there’s an N-G at the end.

Eric and Michael: Jammies. [laughs]

Kat: Oh, it could be “jammies.”

[Michael laughs]

Kat: That’s true.

Eric: Jammies. [laughs]

Michael: Well, an interesting change happens when we get to the cover for Germany…

Eric: Oh, God.

Michael: … which is that J.K. Rowling is now called Joanne K. Rowling.

Eric: Yeah. That is very interesting.

Kat: Was it like that on Goblet? I can’t remember.

Eric: Quite possibly.

Kat: I can look.

Eric: Perhaps Germany, perhaps something about it dictated that she needed to use her first name or needed to use a female name to signify people that it was a female author, something like that. Or maybe it just would be better received, not sure.

Michael: Looks like, yep, her full name is on Goblet, too.

Kat: Huh.

Eric: I mean, I imagine it would be the same throughout the series but not… across country lines it changes.

Kat: Yeah.

Alison: Interesting.

Eric: So this is actually one of the most… I like this cover a lot. It’s in the circular room; there’s very little that’s abstract. It’s the circular room with the 12 or 13 doors. Harry and his friends are all… what do we call them? The dream team? Are all looking up ahead to a door that has opened. The phoenix is casting a shadow…

Kat: Which is so inaccurate it’s not even funny. Because you would not get that shadow from that light source.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: You definitely wouldn’t.

Alison: It’s true, yeah.

Michael: It’s a bright light…

Eric: It’s magic.

Kat: Yeah, but look…

Alison: But it’s coming from the wrong direction.

Eric: Well, Kat, you’re the photographer, so I’m going to say that you’re probably right, but…

Michael: But it’s pretty, though, isn’t it?

Eric, Kat, and Michael: It’s pretty.

Alison: I really appreciate Harry’s one raised eyebrow.

Kat: Yeah.

Alison: It just makes me laugh.

Michael: He always looks like that on the German covers. He’s like sassy Harry cut out of a block of wood.

Kat: His hair looks less like worms on this one, though, so that’s good.

Alison: Yeah, it’s still green.

Kat: Yes, but it’s the tinge of the room, I think.

Alison: Oh, okay.

Michael: This is a good cover. Even if the lighting is wrong, as Kat pointed out, I really like the perspective of the circular room. That’s really cool.

Kat: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah, me too.

Eric: Harry Potter und der Orden des Phönix. Ja.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Ja? There you go.

Kat: That was very angry. Good job.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: It was so angry. It was just like the book.

[Alison and Eric laugh]

Kat: That’s true, that’s true.

Eric: And interestingly, we get over to Italy. If this is correct, Italy’s cover is very quite similar… it’s almost the same image as Albania. And it’s impossible to say which came first because we just don’t know, but Italy and Albania appear to share a similar cover with the only difference being the wording of the actual titles in the different language.

Kat: Woah, whoa, whoa, wait, how close are they to each other?

Michael: They’re the same!

Alison: Yeah, they’re…

Kat: No, no. I meant in the world.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: Yeah, that was what I was saying: They’re the same.

Eric: I don’t know.

Kat: Oh. It’s only an hour flight, so I guess it makes sense that the covers are similar.

Michael: Look, though, there’s writing on the… there’s some weird, almost transparent letters in the background inside the frame of the… yeah.

Alison: Oh, yeah.

Michael: I don’t think… were those are on the… yeah, those aren’t on the Albanian edition.

Kat: And what is that thing under the double T? Oh, that’s the end of the… see, it looks less like it’s coming out of the phoenix, the little sun Voldy.

Eric: Yeah, the phoenix has moved a little bit…

Michael: That’s weird. So they would have access to the different layers. They took all the objects and pulled them apart slightly and added the smeary letters.

Eric: I guess so…

Kat: No, I think the phoenix is in the same place. It’s just, the lettering takes up the gap.

Eric: You’re right. That’s very interesting.

Kat: It looks more like an Italian cover because… actually, no, because if you look at the Goblet of Fire Italian cover, this is the one that had the little mice on it for the first one? The style doesn’t really fit with the other Italian covers. Or maybe it does. I can’t decide. But they’re in the same region of Europe, so that makes sense.

Michael: Harry Potter e l’Ordine della Fenice!

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Nice.

Alison: My brother-in-law speaks Italian. I’m sorry…

Michael: I know, I feel that there’s so many people I have to answer to after this is over.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Michael is digging his grave.

Michael: Yep.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: If I could guess, I’m glad I’m not you. Japan?

Eric: Japan? No.

Alison: Ooh, I like this one.

Kat: I love these covers.

Eric: Japan has really amazing… I would love to see the rest of what Japan has done, but this is a very cool shot of the silhouette of clearly Sirius wandering about London or being a sort of a lone wolf that in the background is either the advanced guard who’s coming to bring Harry to his house or… and in the background, there'[re] Thestrals and stuff.

Kat: I think it’s everything because look, you have clearly people in the phone booth in the bottom right corner, Sirius, you have Grimmauld Place and the Advance Guard, you have Thestrals flying overhead in the sky there…

Might: So pretty.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: It’s gorgeous, right? And what is that next to the light pole? Is that Kreacher?

Michael: Is that a house-elf?

Eric: Yeah, must be. Looks like a little… is that? Oh, yeah, that’s the order standing at number 12 in the background, huh? Or their shadows.

Alison: I just have to say, the sidewalk, when I first saw this I thought it looked like Sirius was chained. Like the dog was chained to… but its the sidewalk now I look at it again, but I was going to be really excited about that symbolism.

Michael: That’s beautiful.

Kat: Yeah, it’s really pretty. I always really liked these Japanese covers. They’re impossible to find, by the way. I’ve looked for sets of the Japanese books, and its impossible.

Michael: The color palette is just… there’s the blue from the American edition, but that splash of red and pink really just… that’s what pulls it over the top. That’s beautiful. I really love the pink light coming out of the lamppost. It’s gorgeous. Hari Potta to fushicho no kishidan.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Impressive. Okay. Now we talk about the Netherlands, which has really cool shots of airborne Thestrals – that’s great – flying into the setting sun. Which is a great scene in the book, and I think it’s captured pretty well.

Michael: It’s captured beautifully; it’s very cinematic.

Kat: These are always super realistic-looking covers. And I always appreciate that about these, and there’s… if I remember correctly, the other ones didn’t have any actual humans on them either.

Michael: Yeah, this is something we haven’t really mentioned yet, but this is the first of the series where a lot of the covers aren’t showing characters. Order of the Phoenix more than any of the other books took that approach, and the assumption was that this, again, a three-year gap and really, there wasn’t that much revealed about what was coming, and the covers didn’t really tell… some of the covers didn’t really tell that much more. And this definitely takes that approach.

Alison: I do like that they’re suggesting that the Thestrals gallop in the air as they’re flying because they’re all at different…

Kat: That’s true.

Michael: It looks like the Pegasus in Fantasia

Eric: You can see, I guess, Harry’s hand holding on.

Michael: Oh, yeah! Right at the center on the neck! Or somebody’s hand. And somebody else’s foot in the left, actually.

Kat: Oh, yeah! That’s right, what about the bottom one?

Eric: And maybe somebody’s back? Maybe somebody’s hunched back?

Michael: I think it’s their robes whipping out behind them.

Kat: Oh yeah, that’s true. And then fire or something on the spine. Potentially.

Michael: Oh yeah, that looks really cool.

Kat: These are cool covers.

Alison: I like them.

Kat: I like those. Is that an apple up at Jo’s name?

Eric: I thought so, too. It’s actually a phoenix.

Kat: Oh yeah, you’re right. It’s a bird.

Eric: It’s a profile shot of a phoenix, which I assume is an icon that was used on the spine as well.

Michael: Oh, that’s right. They always put a magical animal in that area.

Kat: That’s right.

Michael: Because it was Sirius for Prisoner of Azkaban or something like that, right? Yeah.

Kat: That’s right. That’s right.

Michael: Oh, interesting.

Kat: I remember that.

Michael: Harry Potter en de Orde van de Feniks.

Eric: There you go.

Michael: Ja.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: Well, now we get on to the Russian cover, and I like this a lot.

Alison: This is a very different one.

Eric: Mostly because it’s different.

Kat: It’s a little freaky, right?

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: Quite freaky. Quite, quite freaky. It’s the prophecy.

Kat: With a snake inside of it.

Alison: Wait, it’s not… oh. I thought it was the “in essence divided” thing.

Michael: Oh.

Alison: Which I thought was an interesting thing to pull out.

Michael: Oh, you mean the little device that Dumbledore uses.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric Oh.

Alison: It could be the prophecy though.

Michael: I think it’s the prophecy based on the… because the device isn’t quite described to look like that.

Alison: That’s true.

Eric: So it could be either.

Michael: Is that Nagini trying to get the prophecy…

[Alison laughs]

Michael: … realizing that she has no opposable thumbs?

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: No hands, yeah.

Michael: Aww, it’s a disappointed snake.

Alison: “Let me wrap it with my tail.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: She’s like, “Darn it.”

[Alison laughs]

Michael: These are very… I don’t remember the other ones from Russia, but this particular one is very much in a similar vein to the adult UK covers, right?

Kat: Mhm.

Michael: But it’s still different. But it’s definitely the same style.

Kat: The reflection or what else we’re seeing inside the prophecy is weird. There’s a window?

Alison: Oh.

Kat: And maybe a person standing on the right? Whatever that other white thing is? I don’t know, I can’t really tell.

Michael: Russia, you need to get on that Photoshop job there.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: No, I like it.

Michael: Get rid of that glare. [laughs]

Kat: It’s very bizarre. Very bizarre. But it’s nice. It’s a good cover. I like how it looks like it says “toppen hopper.”

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Sorry, Russians [who] might listen to this show.

Michael: Harry Potter i Orden Feniksa.

Kat: Is that Google Translate helping you out, there?

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: Nice.

Michael: Whenever I can’t read them, I’m using Google Translate. And I’m sure it’s very accurate.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: He hits the pin on the nose.

Eric: Has Google Translate ever let us down?

Michael: Never. [laughs]

Kat: Never ever.

Eric: Picking up the pace here, we move on to Spain. Very cinematic-type image of Harry in distress, holding the glowing orb and with his wand drawn running through. You get this by the motion blur on the flames that he’s running through the Hall of Prophecy. Very, very cool shot. It is just Harry.

Alison: I like that a lot.

Kat: I’ve always liked these covers.

Michael: Yeah, they use it looks like a pastel look to their covers. They’re very soft. It’s interesting because their covers tend to be adapted from Mary GrandPré’s works, but they have a much softer, more child-like feel to them. But that’s a good one.

Kat: And they’re pretty flat, too. If you look, there’s not a whole lot of dimension in that…

Eric: Yeah, just in the way that the room seems to curve at the top…

Kat: Right. And that’s about it.

Eric: … a little bit, which is really cool.

Kat: And then you can tell that the room’s moving because the flames are going sideways.

Michael: Yeah, that’s cool.

Kat: So I don’t know. I’ve always liked those covers. They feel very ethereal. And you can actually see Harry’s scar in this one, which is nice because you can’t see it in a lot of them.

Michael: I feel bad because I can’t… the proper way to say his name would be roll the “R,” but even though I live in New Mexico, I can’t roll my “R”s.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: It would be Harry Potter y la Orden del Fénix.

Kat: Very sexy, Michael.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: . Gracias. [laughs]

Eric: And next we move on to Sweden…

Michael: Oh my God. [laughs]

Eric: … where Harry is about to go into battle on winged…

Kat: Riding Umbridge.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: I’m just kidding.

Eric: No, no.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Riding what is clearly the Thestral, but…

Michael: But the most bad-arse Thestral that you…

Kat: It’s so comical, but…

Eric: This is so awesome. This is so cool. Harry is determined. Look at Harry. He’s just like, “I am rescuing my godfather right now.”

Kat: This is the Batman version of Harry Potter.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: And look at the sky. Look at the break of the clouds.

Alison: He’s riding one-handed, like, “Let’s do this.”

Eric: The sky is such a cool color that offsets the Thestral.

Michael: It’s gorgeous.

Eric: The Thestral is a creature of shadow, but the light source, the sun in the background, is just really cool.

Michael: That’s gorgeous.

Kat: It is. It’s really pretty, although the horse is a little… what is that Disney horse that has the giant teeth?

Alison: Oh…

Michael: Disney horse with the giant teeth.

Kat: He’s very old. He’s from the very, very early Disney cartoons.

Michael: Oh, Horace Horsecollar.

Kat: Yep, there you go.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: Totally reminds me of him with the giant…

Michael: Oh, Horace Horsecollar, of course.

Kat: Derp.

Michael: I’m looking him up.

Kat: Derp, derp, derp, derp, so…

Michael: Oh, that’s funny. Harry Potter och Fenixorden. Ja.

Eric: There you go.

Kat: I like how you do the accents, too.

Michael: [laughs] The very stereotypical accents. I’m sorry, listeners, but that’s how we work in the voice-over world.

Kat: He is also super skinny in this cover. Boy needs to be eating.

Michael: But it’s accurate.

Kat: It is. That’s true.

Eric: Yeah. Okay, guys, this next one from Ukraine…

Alison: Oh my gosh.

Michael: Yay. [laughs]

Eric: This is so cool. This is like Harry Potter meets Richie Rich.

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Michael: So much gold.

Eric: He’s just like… he has scored himself a golden fountain. He’s just one life and… except it’s not to last because somebody’s just shot the head off the wizard, and all these people are running around playing freeze tag all around him.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: It’s a battle at the Ministry, but it’s weird because it’s not the first time that we see open air, and we assume we’re outdoors, but we’re not.

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: It looks like it’s open air, but it’s not the Great Hall.

Michael: Yeah, it looks like… there'[re] elements of it that look like the American cover for Deathly Hallows, right?

Kat: Mhm.

Alison: Right.

Eric Where they’re, I guess in the end, not outside as we had initially speculated. They were supposed to be in the Great Hall at the beginning of… in Deathly Hallows cover, right?.

Kat: Yeah, that’s the sunset that you see in it, the red and the orange. Or the sunrise, I assume.

Eric: Although in that case, the ceiling is bewitched to look like the sky, and that’s not the case with the Ministry.

Kat: Right. At least not here.

Michael: I love these covers. I am determined to get a set of these absolutely gorgeous covers because the neat thing, too, about them is, like Kazu’s paperbacks, the spines make a little neat artwork of their own, which…

Eric: Aww.

Kat: Oh, really?

Michael: Well, yeah, and they couldn’t have been pre-planned. I think the artist just made them as they went, but they make a really neat little thing of their own, and yeah, these covers are… I think… what’s interesting, too, about these covers is that, like Mary GrandPré’s, they matured from very somewhat abstract covers to very definitive depictions of what’s happening. Because there’s a lot of weird symbolism in some of the earlier Ukrainian covers.

Kat: They’re super mega awesome!

Michael: Yeah, I like Harry… Harry is wearing trainers. [laughs]

Kat: I know.

Michael: With no socks.

Kat: At first I was like, “Is that a battleship or something?” and then I realized it was his sneaker.

Michael: His sneaker. [laughs]

Eric: It’s not a battleship.

Kat: [laughs] I mean, you never know. What I like, too, is if you notice one of the wisps – the one under Harry’s hand – is turned into a snake.

Eric: Oh, that’s cool.

Alison: Ooh.

Michael: Ooh, yeah, look at that. That’s awesome.

Kat: And his prophecy is in his left hand, and he’s like, “I am God.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: It’s actually hovering above his hand. He is a god.

Michael: It’s so cool.

Alison: He looks so young.

Michael: Well…

Kat: Well, I mean, he’s only 15.

Michael: I think compared to how he looks in the older Ukrainian editions, there’s definitely a notable maturity that’s been added.

Alison: Oh, okay.

Michael: But yeah, he does look young.

Kat: And look, there’s an actual dead person on the stairs.

Eric: I was going to say…

Kat: And Hermione actually has bushy hair.

Michael: Yeah, Hermione is kicking butt over there on the right side of the cover.

Kat: Although, maybe that’s not Hermione.

Michael: I think that’s Hermione.

Eric: I think it is.

Michael: Because the ones in blue are the students.

Kat: Hmm. Oh, right. Fair enough.

Michael: I like the wizard at the top left who’s like, “Woo.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: I won [unintelligible] of nothing.

Kat: Right. He’s like, “Ah, I am the champion.”

Michael: I wonder if that’s Sirius.

Alison: Oh.

Michael: Right before he dies.

Kat: No, Sirius is the dead one.

Michael: Oh, he’s the one on the stairs.

Alison: Are we sure?

Michael: Could be Bellatrix.

Eric: No, that’s a Death Eater.

Kat: I mean, how do you know it’s a Death Eater?

Eric: Because they’re in black.

Kat: Everybody’s in black except the students.

Eric: No, the students are in blue. Everybody else is in black and the white… oh, you mean it could be an Order member?

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: I just said it’s Sirius.

Eric: No, Sirius’s body goes through the veil, though; it doesn’t hang around on the stairs.

Kat: But maybe it does.

Michael: Harry Potter i Orden Feniksa. It’s pretty close to the Russian version, actually.

Eric: It’s a pretty…

Michael: Because it’s Ukraine, so yeah, they’d be… but yeah, those are… I like the… who is this publisher? A-Ba-Ba-Ga-Da-Ma-Ga.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: You missed that one accent. Fail.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Oh, God.

Alison: Oh, gosh.

Kat: So funny.

Eric: And finally, we get to the much-awaited Vietnam[ese] cover…

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: … and this is actually… for those of you who don’t know, the UK has two different editions, or started out having two different editions, adult and children’s edition. And this is actually the same cover as the UK adult edition only with the Vietnamese language…

Kat: And the number 5 in the O [in] “Potter,” which I found odd.

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: I think it’s cool. I’m wondering if that’s where they put all the numbers for all of their…

Kat: I don’t know. It’s just weird. It feels so random and arbitrary. I get it, but it’s just…

Eric: Well, it’s like on the spine of the US books, right? It says “Year 1, Year 2, Year 3…”

Kat: Well, that makes sense.

Eric: It’s just like doing that, though. Yeah, it’s a pretty cool phoenix.

Kat: Rising from the flames.

Michael: Once again, and this is the tact that the UK took with their approach is, it’s just a phoenix. It’s…

Eric: Right, the adult editions never have people…

Michael: No.

Eric: It’s always about one icon that represents…

Kat: To make them not embarrassing so [that] adults can read them.

Michael: Well, no, because this is is like if you took the UK children’s edition and you just added some really awesome shading and depth to it, and suddenly it’s…

Alison: It looks so fierce.

Michael: Statue of the most awesome phoenix of awesome.

[Alison laughs]

Michael: Harry Potter và h?i phu?ng hoàng J.K. Rowling.

Eric: Okay. The US full cover we have talked about at length already on our show…

Michael: Ah, it’s so pretty.

Alison: There’s a snake on there.

Eric: It’s the one a lot of us have. The jacket…

Kat: We never talked about this cover. What you talking about, son?

Eric: We talked… I remember talking for, like, two hours about this.

Kat: No, we did not.

Eric: Yeah, when we started with this book.

Michael: Back on MuggleCast, right?

[Alison laughs]

Eric: No, no, when we started the book… when we started going through this book, we talked at length about the tall man and the shadow and whether that was Snape or Sirius and who each person was. I swear on Alohomora! we talked about this.

Kat: Hmm.

Eric: You’ve got the candles, you’ve got Harry looking one year older and not two years, not more, just one year older than he did in the last book…

Michael: Yes, well, he’s dressed… this is where I think Mary GrandPré’s art took a very interesting turn. This is where she started using one color only. Goblet of Fire started that, but she really took it to the max with Order, and what was… as far as theories went – because we got this cover, of course, before we got the book – is a lot of people were like, “Who are those people on the back?”, and probably the most interesting one was that nobody knew who Tonks was, and a lot of people thought she was a guy.

Eric: Yeah, no, I remember confusing… I think I got everybody wrong, like the wrong gender, the wrong…

Michael: Yeah. [laughs]

Eric: Just all wrong.

Michael: Well, I don’t know if you guys can see this this way, and I used to be so confused by this, but you know how that’s Moody’s cloak? That’s the neck of his cloak and that’s his hand reaching around the door?

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: To me, the neck of his cloak looks like a hood, and it looks like a separate person reaching over to a door to me.

Kat: Oh.

Michael: That’s what I first saw.

Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah, like it’s somebody who’s just behind…

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah, like a hood of a… like the Emperor Palpatine is coming out…

Michael: Yes!

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: I used to think it was just…

Eric: I can see that.

Michael: I used to think it was a Death Eater or something like that, and then somebody told me, “No, that’s Moody. That’s his hand,” and I was like, “Oh, I’ve been looking at this wrong for so long.”

Eric: The wisps still turn into a snake.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: I know, I love that!

Michael: That’s really cool.

Alison: I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before.

Kat: Yeah, I’ve never noticed the snake.

Michael: The other notable one that we don’t have on the list is that of course… I don’t think we have it here…

Eric: The deluxe?

Michael: Yeah, the deluxe. Mary GrandPré, for these last three she did deluxe editions, which come in pretty boxes and the cover is on the box. And then the deluxe edition is on the cover, and it depicts all the Order flying to Grimmauld Place, which is also really beautiful.

Eric: That’s cool.

Alison: I really like the font of the “and the Order of the Phoenix.” I like that…

Michael: The wispy smoke?

Alison: … flowy… I don’t know what it is.

Michael: Yeah, because the subtitles font is done by Mary GrandPré so….

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: She always designs it differently.

Eric: I think honestly some of Mary GrandPré’s best work [are] these deluxe covers.

Kat: Yeah, right?

Alison: I have never seen these.

Eric: That’s a really cool building. And it’s… if you notice, Grimmauld Place is like ghostly.

Michael: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: It’s faded out. It’s in the center, but you can also see the buildings on either side of it and they’re… it overlaps the other two buildings.

Michael: That’s very clever.

Kat: Who are the cloaked… [in an English accent] the hooded figure ?

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: I just hear Hermione every time I say “figure.”

Eric: Oh, it’s Bella and Narcissa a book early!

[Everyone laughs]

Alison: Just wandering down the street.

Kat: Whoops.

Eric: Just chilling.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Ah, that’s a good question.

Michael: What’s the note that’s on fire? Right there.

Alison: The note from Dumbledore.

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: Oh, the Howler.

Eric: Oh, yeah.

Kat: And the… oh my God, do you guys see the glasses hanging off the fence?

Michael: Yeah.

Alison: Oh!

Kat: Interesting.

Michael: Those are Dumbledore’s glasses.

Eric: Oh, whoa!

Michael: That’s cool.

Kat: Whose are those?

Alison: Dumbledore.

Michael: Probably Dumbledore’s.

Kat: Why?

Alison: They’re the half moon ones.

Eric: A book early!

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Again. And what’s the little package in the left corner, in the grass?

Michael: Oh yeah, a little…

Kat: Is that a doggy bag from Sirius?

Alison: That looks like a rat.

Michael: Somebody did a ding dong ditch, you guys. On Grimmauld Place.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Oh.

Michael: That’s cool.

Kat: Wow, it’s really pretty. I do want to know [in an English accent] who the hooded figures are, though.

Michael: “Hooded figures.”

Alison: I like how it looks like all the people on the brooms are dive bombing this building.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: And what are the two red… oh, there [are] a couple of red stars.

Michael: Yeah, they’re stars and planets.

Eric: That’s Mars.

Kat: Mars is bright tonight.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: And there’s five of them.

Michael: That’s pretty.

Kat: Who do we think is the legs? Who’s the legs?

Eric: Harry.

Alison: The shoes are wrong.

Kat: I don’t think he wears pointy shoes.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: No, no, no, not pointy… well, pointy but… they have heels but only little heels.

Alison: Remus.

Kat: Oh, it could be Remus. I see him as being stylish.

Eric: Probably Remus.

Michael: Yeah, those are nice shoes, Remus. Well done, sir. Nice heel on those shoes. [laughs]

Kat: I mean… those are flats, kids. Let’s be honest.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: Yeah. [laughs]

Eric: With the US version we continue to cheat because we have so many that we’ll be discussing.

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Michael: So greedy.

Eric: And of course the next cover that we’re going to analyze is Kazu Kibuishi’s Order of the Phoenix.

Kat: Ah.

Michael: Beautiful.

Kat: The front and the back. I love the front of this book. Oh, it’s so pretty. Although Hogwarts is a little too Japanese looking for me. But the clouds and the sun and the Thestrals…

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Oh, they’re beautiful. I absolutely love it.

Eric: Except Harry has been possessed.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: His eyes are glowing. It’s a very Ghostbusters 2 style, like Janosz, with the laser eyes kind of thing.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: But overall it’s much more muted in color than the other ones on Thestrals that we were looking at earlier. Like the Netherlands I’m looking at now, of course, or in particular Sweden had [a] really bright sunset. This is more muted, but it fits.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: I think the use of purple is really nice.

Kat: Yeah, because clearly those other countries have never been to Scotland in the evening.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Because it’s never dark.

Kat: Because those colors… [laughs] yeah.

Michael: Well, once again and what’s so fascinating about this is that Kazu, of course, didn’t do these covers over a period of years – he just did them all in a shorter amount of time. And yet, he still kind of continued that motif of maturing the color palette.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Mhm.

Michael: Because the first four that he did are very colorful and this one is definitely more muted in comparison.

Kat: And then especially the back cover, which if you all remember we exclusively premiered on MuggleNet, the one of the dream team, as we say, in the circular room.

Eric: With a quote that gives everything away.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Yeah. “We’re coming with you, Harry.”

Michael: Kazu got to choose these quotes, so…

Kat: He did.

Alison: I love that he chose Neville…

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: I know.

Alison: … for this book.

Eric: That’s important.

Kat: Super important. You know what really bothers me, though? My OCD hates this back cover because everything is so off center.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: It’s so bothering me and I can’t deal with it.

Eric: I didn’t notice.

Michael: They’re not standing in a perfect triangle like they do in the films.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: No, it’s not that. It’s that the quote is centered but then the…

Alison: They’re not centered.

Kat: … little citation is off to the right…

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: … a little too far.

Michael: Right aligned.

Kat: And then the group of people are to the left of the point.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: It’s killing me. Plus Luna kind of looks like Lucius…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: … from the background from behind, [laughs] so it’s like…

Eric: No.

Kat: Sure, got the long blonde hair going on.

Michael: I like with the back covers… because Kazu does this with all the back covers, is that you usually only see the characters from their backs.

Kat: Right.

Michael: There’s a few that have a front-facing group or character, but mostly it’s from the back. And what I liked about this, not only that sense of… which he said what he wanted to do was that you’re kind of walking into an adventure but also that… it’s very similar, I think unintentionally, to the approach that Pottermore takes…

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: Keeping them… yeah.

Michael: … where they explicitly don’t want to draw faces because they want to let the readers imagine the faces.

Kat: Right.

Michael: Kazu does use faces on his covers, but I think that’s a really great approach to kind of leave that to the reader.

Eric: We talked about the UK adult edition because it was very similar to Vietnam, but now we’ve reached the UK children’s edition, which…

Alison: Yay! I have this one.

[Alison and Kat laugh]

Eric: It’s very pretty. It really is. It looks great when you’re holding it, too. It’s a bright yellow.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: It’s a bright flaming phoenix.

Michael: It looks so much better in person than it does on the Internet, you guys.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: It really does, yeah.

Kat: It has a lot more depth.

Michael: Yeah, it looks so flat when you look at it on a JPEG.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: But it does have depth to it. It’s not… I’ve never been… I feel bad about this because I know the UK listeners get upset when we say this because they feel we’re being really elitist and we probably are, but I’ve never been much of a fan of the UK children’s editions. I have them, but I’m not much of a fan of them.

Alison: Oh, see I love them.

Eric: Yeah, me too.

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: I actually prefer the adult editions of the UK.

Alison: Oh, really?

Michael: Yeah, I like the adult editions.

Alison: I love the children’s ones. I think they’re fun. [laughs]

Michael: I think…

Kat: No, they’re really pretty.

Michael: They are very pretty.

Kat: They’re just not…

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: Where I think the Order of the Phoenix children’s edition really wins points is the back.

Alison: Yes.

Michael: Because there’s a depiction of the statue. It’s just the statue in operation in the hall of the Ministry, and that’s really well done. That looks fantastic.

Alison: And there’s the exploding water.

Michael: Yeah. It’s great.

Alison: I like how the phoenix almost looks so happy, though. [laughs]

Michael: Hey, this is going to be a fun book, you guys!

[Everyone laughs]

Alison: A little deceptive, but…

Michael: Oh yeah, I haven’t been…

Eric: How do you say this book cover?

Michael: [in an English accent]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”

Eric: Ah, there you go.

Michael: I forgot the American one. [in a nasally American accent]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: [in a nasally American accent] Very well done, Michael.

Kat: Like, [emphasizes the “R” sound]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”

Michael: Oh my God.

Eric: The Order of French Fries and Burger King.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: I’m so hungry right now.

Michael: HP OotP.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: See, listeners. We can make fun of ourselves too.

Eric: Yeah, there we go. Finally. They were waiting for that.

Michael: Oh wait, that’s the children’s edition, so it has to be more like [in a high-pitched English accent]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” [laughs]

Eric: Aww!

Alison: Aww, that was cute.

Kat: Cute.

Eric: So guys, the UK is catching up to the US on how many times they’re willing to redo and resell…

[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]

Eric: … the Harry Potter covers. It used to be… they started off real strong because they had adult and children’s for each book, and I thought that was cool but also questionable. Now they have… in addition to the UK children’s and UK adults of old, they have the Signature edition. And then they also have… Jonny Duddle artist, I believe, did… what would you even call them? These are brand new, right? These are in response to Kazu Kibuishi’s new age…

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: I think they’re the new children’s covers.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: Because there’s new adult covers too.

Eric: Okay, and then the new adult covers is the one that we’re looking at that’s purple, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: Yep. Mhm.

Eric: So they’re completely remaking the children’s and the adult versions, which they used to do. And then in addition to that, there’s the Signature. So let’s look at the Signature version first because this is a very cut and dry… white background, color-pencilled on, which I really like.

Michael: This is like Harry Potter QVC.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Oh, I like these covers!

Michael: Oh no, they’re pretty but that’s what it makes me think of. They’re all kind of based on a gems and diamonds kind of look.

Kat: You know what I wish? Or maybe I don’t wish. Is that… you see the label of the prophecy? I wish you could actually read it.

Eric: Oh.

Alison: Ooh.

Michael: It looks like it was pretty well written out, even if it’s not quite… [laughs] the scratches on it are very well done.

[Alison and Eric laugh]

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: It looks like it’s really etched on there.

Michael: That’s the one you have to say like [in a posh English accent]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” [back to normal voice] That’s the posh one. [laughs]

Kat: That is the posh one.

Eric: [in a posh English accent] I’m not sure whether to have this book with the red or the white.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Yeah, I’ve got to get it myself. Next time I’m in London… I know when this is going to be, but next time I’m over there I have to get this copy. And the others because I want to know what the others look like.

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: But moving on to the UK new adult version. Very interesting typesetting or very interesting font used, but I like it. It’s an image of… it looks like the stag, right?

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: It’s not a Thestral. Is it a… Thestrals don’t have antlers, do they?

Alison: No.

Kat: No, that’s a stag.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: Is it supposed to be a stag fighting the Dementors at the beginning of the book?

Alison: Oh!

Kat: Oh! I think so!

Eric: Oh!

Kat: That is a Dementor behind “Rowling.”

Alison: There we go.

Eric: Yeah, behind “Rowling” is a Dementor. That’s cool.

Michael: Somebody confused Order of the Phoenix with Prisoner of Azkaban.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: This was supposed to be the Prisoner cover but then they were like, “Eh…”

Eric: “No.”

[Michael laughs]

Eric: No, no, no, I like that they picked the Dementors attacking Little Whinging in the tunnel.

Michael: It’s unusual, yeah.

Alison: Yeah, it’s different.

Eric: Yeah, totally not the usual scene to grab from this book.

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: Well, I like that it’s bold and yet kind of flat.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: And very adulty.

Michael: It looks like… yeah, the font reminds me of… what was his name? Was it Saul Bass [that’s] the guy that did all the stuff for the Hitchcock movies, with the font?

Kat: Yes.

Michael: Yeah.

Eric: It’s kind of like that, yeah. It’s very… it reminds me of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, the way that book is laid out with the… it’s the same thing that Michael was talking about. It’s a very pulpy feel.

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: The letters themselves pop.

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: J.K. Rowling! Harry Potter! And the Order! Of the Phoenix!

Alison: I like that they used the ampersand instead of “and.”

Michael: Yeah.

Kat: I love the ampersand.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: That’s my favorite symbol on the keyboard.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: I like it.

Eric: And now we get to the new children’s editions of J.K. Rowling. This one is… you said by Jonny Duddle, Kat?

Kat: Yep. Jonny Duddle.

Eric: This is another really cool, really well-captured color scheme. And you see Harry does look young.

Kat: He looks like a girl.

Michael: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah, he does a little bit.

Eric: No…

Kat: Totally. That is a sweet-ass pixie haircut he’s got going on.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: I think that’s the one failure for me with Duddle’s new covers, is that he doesn’t mature Harry as good as the other illustrators do.

Alison: Yeah.

Michael: He pretty much keeps it looking exactly the same throughout the whole seven.

Kat: Yeah.

Michael: But otherwise, oh my God. These are gorgeous.

Alison: That Thestral is so fierce.

Kat: [snaps fingers] Girl!

[Alison laughs]

Michael: That Thestral uses L’Oréal because he’s worth it.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Man, if the wind changes, Harry is going to choke to death on that Thestral’s hair.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Uh huh. Yeah.

Eric: If the Thestral ever stops ascending.

Michael: I really like Jonny Duddle’s version of Hogwarts.

Kat: Me too.

Alison: Oh, I was going to say I’m not a fan of that.

Michael: Oh, really?

Alison: Yeah!

Eric: It’s less Japanese, as Kat said, of Kazu Kibuishi’s. It’s kind of more movieish.

Kat: It’s very Burrow-like.

Alison: Yeah. And I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a castle.

Eric: It’s very narrow.

Michael: It’s a little small.

Alison: A solid, imposing castle.

Michael: See, it reminds me… and listeners, if you find your old Harry Potter merchandise and if you have any of the old Harry Potter trading cards, even though they were all done by different artists, they all had a general guideline to follow with their artwork, and one of those was that Hogwarts essentially has to look the same in all of their art. And I really like how they did Hogwarts in that version, and this is close to that. This isn’t quite as epic as their version, but it’s closer. I think, I mean, honestly, the movies have made the most iconic version of Hogwarts possible. You just really can’t revise it. But I think this was a really good try. [laughs]

Eric: Again with the setting sun.

Alison: Yeah, I like that.

Michael: Allows for very good covers. And the new Harry Potter logo. They really revamped that. [laughs]

Eric: That’s just so starry.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: It’s so magical.

Michael: I like that they…

Eric: Oh, oh, oh, the lightening bolt in the O.

Michael: Yeah, they moved the lightening bolt.

Eric: That’s a Mockingjay-type thing.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Oh, yeah.

[The Hunger Games whistle plays]

Eric: Love it.

Michael: I feel that one’s just Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Kat: It’s just quiet. And lovely. Quiet and lovely.

Michael: How many more covers will be released between now and when we finish Half-Blood Prince?

Alison: Oh my gosh.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: To those listeners who are still with us, we hope that you enjoyed our going through each of the covers of the Harry Potter books for Order of the Phoenix. It’s a special treat that we get to do every time we wrap [up] a book.

Michael: And with that, we say goodbye to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the book. Bye-bye!

Alison: Woo! [laughs]

Kat: Peace out. I’m crying a little bit. Single tear. It’s okay because I love the next one.

Michael: I am [Banish]ing my copy as far away from me as I can.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: I didn’t make you like it any more?

Michael: No. [laughs]. I’m going to be honest: No.

Kat: Mean.

Michael: Actually, this reading definitively puts it on the bottom of my list.

Eric: Wow.

Michael: Yeah. And not because it’s […] a bad book. It’s still an excellent book on its own merits. It’s not even that the book is bad. I think it’s my personal reaction to the book, how it just makes me feel. I don’t like feeling that way after reading Harry Potter.

Alison: Yeah, that’s true.

Michael: It leaves me so sour and tired that I’m so ready to “Oh my God, Half-Blood Prince. Come here, Half-Blood Prince.” It can’t happen soon enough. [laughs]

Eric: I was worried I wouldn’t feel happy about Harry Potter again until Half-Blood Prince came out. I was like, “This book was lovely.”

Kat: But it gave you something worth fighting for!

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Well, I felt exhausted. I felt betrayed by the author [whom] I loved.

Kat: Wow.

Eric: Because she killed Sirius. But I was just like… yeah. It’s a miracle that all of us kept reading, I think.

Kat: Not me.

Michael: Well, I think she put us through our paces, more than any other children’s author ever has.

Eric: Yes. It’s nice to be challenged.

Michael: Yeah. Absolutely.

Eric: This book was challenging in many ways.

Alison: I have come to appreciate it a little bit more, I think, through this read.

Kat: Good girl. That’s the right answer.

[Michael laughs]

Alison: It’s still down near the bottom of my list.

Kat: Bad girl.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: Wrong answer.

Alison: [laughs] But I have come to appreciate it. I just can’t wait till we get to Deathly Hallows. I’m excited for that, but…

Kat: Soon, soon, soon, dear.

Eric: Alison, you’re going down.

Alison: Oh, no, she writes so beautifully.

Eric: When we get to Deathly Hallows.

Michael: Alison and Eric, that’s between the two of you. You guys are going to be in a duel.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: That’s going to be a duel.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: I can’t wait. That’s going to be good.

Alison: All right, well, after this enormous episode, [laughs] if you would still like to be on the show…

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Alison: … we are now scheduling for Half-Blood Prince, which, as you can tell, some of us are excited about. So go to our “Be on the Show!” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. You don’t need any fancy equipment – just a set of Apple headphones – and we look forward to hearing from you.

Kat: And in the meantime, if you want to keep in touch with us, you can find us on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN, [at] facebook.com/openthedumbledore, [and] of course, on Tumblr at mnalohomorapodcast. Our phone number is 206-GO-ALBUS (206-462-5287), and you will be using that phone number during the movie watch as well, should this episode actually happen to be released before the movie watch.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: There you go.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: And of course, don’t forget, you can always leave us an audioBoom over at alohomora.mugglenet.com. It is free. All you need is an Internet connection and a microphone, and keep it under 60 seconds, please. Thank you.

Michael: And I do just have to stress: Make sure [to] get your stuff in for Half-Blood Prince if you want to be on the show, listeners, because we’ve already had comments from people who are sending in their stuff. Half-Blood Prince is going to be really popular, I think. So get on that.

Kat: Yeah, some of the episodes are already scheduled out, so…

Michael: And while you’re submitting your stuff to be on Alohomora!, make sure [to] visit our store, where we have sweatshirts, long-sleeve tees, tote bags, and [laughs] flip-flops.

Kat: I am going to buy some of those flip-flops, and I’m going to wear them at the Harry Potter Celebration.

Michael: It’s especially humorous here in New Mexico because it’s 14 degrees right now.

Alison: Yeah, I was going to say, “There’s snow.” [laughs]

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, we had snow today.

Alison: And it’s cold.

Michael: Yeah, we woke up to snow. But there is also so much more! So you can laugh about the flip-flops and then move on to other items that might be more pertinent right now. We also have ringtones that are free and available on our website, alohomora.mugglenet.com. Make sure [to] check them out.

Eric: And there is the smartphone app, which is available on this side of the pond and the other.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Eric: Prices do vary. You can get the app on both Android and iOS devices. And this app will get you access to transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings of our podcast episodes, host vlogs, and more content. All for [the] betterment of man. It’s a good time.

Alison: We should have an extended edition of this episode.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: And this one felt like a Peter Jackson movie.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Well, I think that does it for Order of the Phoenix and Episode 117. I’m Eric Scull.

Michael: Bye-bye, Order of the Phoenix. I’m Michael Harle.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

[Show music begins]

Alison: I’m Alison Siggard.

Kat: I’m crying for you, Order of the Phoenix.

[Michael laughs]

Kat: I’m Kat Miller. Thank you for listening to Episode 117 of Alohomora!

Eric: Open the Dumbledore.

[Show music stops]

Alison: And then shut it on Order of the Phoenix.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

[Show music continues]

Eric: Half-Blood Prince, here we come!

Kat: You guys are so mean.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Oh, man.

Kat: I love it.

[Show music continues]

Eric: I know, right? And in the same order [in] which we discuss them. So let’s talk about Vietnam.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Michael: Let’s talk about ‘nam!

Eric: Somehow, this has ended up… this was alphabetical. But for some reason, Vietnam is at the top of the document.

[Alison and Michael laugh]

Kat: Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened. It was def-… oh, wait! Vietnam is at the bottom. You can erase it.

Alison: [laughs] Vietnam is on there twice.

Eric: Vietnam is also at the bottom. Why is it…? Vietnam is here twice, so I guess we’re talking about Vietnam twice.

Kat: Let’s start with Albania.

Michael: That’s amazing. That’s great.

Eric: Okay. All right. We’re going to talk about… okay.