Transcripts

Transcript – Episode 128

[Show music begins]

Eric Scull: This is Episode 128 of Alohomora! for March 14, 2015. It’s Morfin Time!

[Show music continues]

Eric: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another exciting Morfin version of Alohomora! I’m Eric Scull.

Kat Miller: I’m Kat Miller.

Alison Siggard: And I’m Alison Siggard. And this week’s guest is Yulie. Welcome, Yulie!

Yulie Gurrola: Hi, hi!

Eric: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yulie: Well, I am currently an intern in oncology clinical research at Loma Linda, and when I’m not doing that, I am going online for a clinical research master’s.

Alison and Kat: Whoa.

Eric: So are you a…?

Eric and Kat: … Ravenclaw?

[Everyone laughs]

Yulie: Yes.

Kat: Yay!

Yulie: Well, actually, Ravenclaw… I identify more with the creative imaginative side than I do with the logical smartypants side.

Eric: Logical smartypants side. [laughs] I get that. Creative, imaginative… I like that. I like that a lot. And since we’re making good time so far in this episode, spend some time; tell us how you got into Harry Potter.

Yulie: Well, I was actually not a reader, so in fourth grade my teacher had a habit of reading us books, and she commented that she’d really like to read us the Harry Potter series, but because of controversy she was not going to get into that…

Eric: Ooh.

Yulie: … so when I was in fourth grade, it was when the first Harry Potter movie came out and so she encouraged all of us to go watch it, and I went to watch it, and I was like, “Oh my God, there’s a book series and there’s more to the story!” So from those little Scholastic magazines I ordered the first three.

Eric: Oh, I love those magazines.

Alison: Those were the best.

Yulie: Yes, and I actually connected so much with Harry Potter because during that time we had a family staying with us and so I had given up my room, and me and my sister – at that time period – were sleeping in my mother and father’s walk-in closet.

Kat: Oh!

[Alison laughs]

Eric: So it was like Harry’s cupboard.

Yulie: Yeah, except it was much bigger than Harry’s cupboard because it was a walk-in closet and we were a fourth and first grader.

Eric: Oh, okay.

Yulie: And we had a TV in there. They had actually set up this little TV for us to connect our Nintendo so we wouldn’t bother…

Eric: No kidding!

Alison: Nice.

Kat: And they still have that in their closet and secretly use it, don’t they?

Yulie: No, now the walk-in closet is my dad’s office where I am sitting right now.

Kat: Oh, full circle.

Eric: Hey, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So you remember reading Harry for the first time in the same room that you’re in now.

Yulie: Yes, and because I read Harry… so on top of that I was not a reader. When I went into Harry Potter I full on became a reader so my dad came in… well, not came in, but he saw his closet light turned on at 2:00 in the morning and so he opens the closet door and I’m on the chapter where Harry is seeing that it’s Quirrell, and so he’s like, “Go to sleep.” I’m like, “No, no, I have two more chapters left.”

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: “Dad, just two more chapters.”

Yulie: Yeah, and so he just looked at me and he closed the closet door again and I went back to reading.

Eric: I love the early books; the way that they have that hold over your reader. I mean, I feel like maybe later because the book was so big… Book 5; I was just like, “Okay, I’ll set it down now,” but the beginning… the first sentence of every chapter is important, like the one you just mentioned: “It was Quirrell‚” is the first sentence and you’re just like, “What? I thought it was Snape! I thought it was… what’s going on?” And you absolutely have to read forward. The chapters are so good.

Kat: Well, I guess speaking of really awesome dads…

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: … we should remind everybody that this week we’re going to talk about Chapter 10 of Half-Blood Prince, “The House of Gaunt.”

Eric: I thought you were going to say awesome chapters because this is one of them, too.

Alison: Yeah, I was going to…

Kat: Okay, it’s an awesome chapter, too, but speaking of…

Eric: Yeah. It’s Marvolo time. That does not have the same ring to it.

Kat: Marvolo? Interesting. Marvolo.

Eric: Before we get into “The House of Gaunt” chapter, we’d like to discuss a little bit about last week’s chapter, which we read, and I believe that was the self-titled “Half-Blood Prince” chapter. So here are some comments. We had, again, another amazing week of comments on the Alohomora! main site. We had 199, I believe, at the time of my last looking.

Kat: God. Wow. Thank you!

Eric: Yeah.

Alison: It’s… oh my gosh.

Kat: [claps hands] Claps.

Eric: Yep, entire conversations, entire philosophical trains of thought and movements are occurring on our wall right now. We’re super happy about it.

Kat: Oof. Brilliant.

Eric: So thank you to all. In advance, thank you to all the people. Even if we don’t read your comments, we promise that we did read your comments, and we absolutely love it. So more on that later. The first comment comes from… oh, a little preface here. Michael and I were on last episode, and you know that when we get together, we talk a lot and we tend to have a lot of the same agreements. Okay, one of us or both of us happened to mention that we didn’t feel like the Half-Blood Prince mystery was that big of a deal, and true to fashion, listeners, just like we’ve relied on you in the past, we got some feedback immediately about that comment. So here’s two of them. First one from They’ve Taken My Wheezy! and this person says,

“I truly believe […] the identity of who[m] the Half[-]Blood Prince is important […] because the Prince shows us exactly what can be done by pushing the boundaries through magic. Magic in the raw, defying the standards set by the norm. The Prince shows how great and how dangerous experimental magic can be.

Knowing that the Prince ends up being Snape shows us how dangerous and powerful he is. At the same time we learn that he is the Prince we also learn that he is ‘evil’! As readers, we don’t know that Snape is a double agent. All we know at this point is that Snape is on the bad side.

Harry put faith into the Prince, saw greatness and evil in him, and the prince ends up being the worst possible person. Snape had influence on the chosen one indirectly. It is an extremely scary situation.”

So if we ever needed somebody to play up this whole fact that Snape is in fact the Half-Blood Prince, I would say They’ve Taken My Wheezy! did a pretty good job.

Alison: I really like this. I like how they say he puts his faith into the Prince’s; he’s greatness and evil. It highlights the parallels. Again, I think at the end of Book 7, Harry says he sees the parallels between himself, Snape, and Voldemort, and it’s interesting to see how Voldemort goes directly to the evil, Harry goes pretty much directly to the greatness, and we have Snape right in the middle. I like seeing those parallels between them all.

Eric: Yeah, that’s very similar to a really good comment we also got a little later as well. So I love how many people, too… a lot of these conversations, everyone was on the same wavelength and they were just enriching and responding to what each other said, so that was super, really cool. Next comment, though, comes from Ellen Dawn, who says,

“I really enjoyed the conversation this week regarding the purpose and relevance in figuring out who[m] the Half-Blood Prince is. For me, it was more than showing that Snape really is a genius. To me, it was to assist the readers’ belief in the betrayal at the end of the book. The introduction to the Half-Blood Prince in this chapter shows only his genius. But as the book progresses we start to realize that he is a darker wizard than we had originally thought. By the time Sectumsempra rolls around, we are sure the Half-Blood Prince is a very dark individual. I mean, come on, he was inventing spells to literally slice open his enemies. Then we learn it is Snape. To me, this solidified my hatred for Snape and lead me to be much more inclined to accept the possibility that he actually may have been on the dark side all along. It was like the book was showing the real Snape and that he had never really gotten over his obsession with dark magic.”

Kat: So my question is: Do we for sure know that he invented that spell?

Alison: Yes.

Eric: I think it’s either… yes. I think it’s pretty heavily implied.

Yulie: Yeah, at the end of the book he does say, “How dare you use spells that I invented?”

Kat: Doesn’t he say, “My own spells against me?” Something like that?

Yulie: Yeah, yeah.

Kat: Yeah. Okay, that’s what I thought.

Alison: And I think when Harry is looking through the book he notices there’s a lot of… I think it’s Sectumsempra, where there’s a lot of crossings out and retrying things until he gets the final one.

Eric: So I think in regards to this comment, too, that this mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince is is really meant to give a certain momentum to the next book, which is something that we haven’t necessarily seen before in terms of… so because it’s the penultimate book, it has mysteries that are a little bit more keeping in mind the next book in the series.

Yulie: So in Chapter 28, when Harry and Snape are down on the grounds, Snape shouts, “You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them! I, the Half-Blood Prince!”

Kat: Ah, okay.

Eric: That was fast. Good, fast quoting.

Kat: Yeah, also, the most anti-climactic moment in any movie ever, ever. Just ever. I’m sorry.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: “It was I. The Half-Blood Prince.”

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Yeah. But… yeah.

Eric: Well, that’s what we were saying. But both Ellen Dawn and They’ve Taken My Wheezy! and many, many, many other users wrote in very eloquently speaking as to how that actually is a big deal, even though it was downplayed in the movie. So moving on, though, the next comment comes from ScarletGhost. And this is half of the comment but it’s the half that I liked the most. [laughs]

“One thing I wanted to mention that was touched on briefly in the discussion was how Hermione said Snape sounded like Harry. I take this as one of two different ways. […] 2) I have often seen Harry, Voldemort, and Snape attributed to the three brothers from Beedle the Bard. Voldemort is the one who died for power, Snape is the one who died for love, and Harry is the one who greeted death as an old friend. The wand, the stone, the cloak, each are represented by these characters. Therefore, I think this is a nice way to tie them all together, with their appreciation for magic, specifically dark magic; even if Harry wants to deny it, it’s there.”

Kat: Hmm, that’s always been one of my favorite memes, whoever put that together.

Alison: Mhm.

Kat: I actually one thousand percent subscribe to this theory. I love it, love it, love it.

Eric: That Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are the triad of the Deathly Hallows?

Kat: Yeah. Mhm.

Eric: I’ve never seen that before. I like it.

Kat: Oh my God! It’s so brilliant. I love it.

Alison: Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Eric: No, I see 100,000 people with that tattoo on them…

[Kat laughs]

Eric: … but no tattoo have I seen has it labeled, “H,” “S,” and “V” on each one, so maybe I’m not looking hard enough.

Kat: Wait, it could be VHS!

[Everyone laughs]

Yulie: That’s brilliant.

Alison: Throwback.

Yulie: No, what I just thought of right now is we know that Voldemort is descended from the Peverells and Harry is also descended from the brothers. And I’m not sure if we know much about the Prince line, but is it possible that Snape is also a descendant from the brothers?

Alison: [gasps] Whoa.

Eric: Hmm. So they’re all related.

[Alison laughs]

Yulie: I think it’s a possibility because in this chapter we found out that Tom Riddle… or that the Gaunts are a mixture of Slytherin and Peverell blood.

Eric: That’s true.

Kat: That’s entirely possible. I mean, we don’t have Snape’s story yet, so… full story…

Eric: Oh, gosh. Yeah. We’ll get that at the very end of Pottermore, won’t we?

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: I mean, you never know.

Eric: Mhm.

Alison: Uhh… yeah.

Eric: Do you know? Is that why you say that? Do you know?

Kat: No, I don’t know. God, I wish I knew. I don’t.

Eric: Oh, okay. You have to ask. Well, glad we could clear that up.

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: [laughs] Last comment that we’re going to read comes from ScarletGhost:

“One thing I wanted to point out that wasn’t in the podcast was how Slughorn told Harry Lily was ‘dab-hand’ at potions herself. This could’ve been one of the things [she] and Severus bonded over in school.”

Kat: Oh.

Eric: And the reason I read it like that is because I actually never thought of it like that.

Yulie: Yeah.

Eric: It seems very obvious.

Alison: I don’t know if I would necessarily say they bonded over it at school because they were already pretty good friends. So maybe it was something they did together, though, but I wouldn’t say it was the thing that brought them together.

Eric: Well, in a lot of replies to this comment people were suggesting that maybe the reason Lily was so good was because Snape taught her, or…

Alison: Oh, yeah.

Eric: … which I liked as a thing to consider. It also means that… I mean, patience, I think, is a big part of potion-making. So they had that same sort of temperament, which points to them being romantically compatible, I guess, if you really want to stretch it. But yeah, it was an interesting thought. So thanks to ScarletGhost for that. And I wanted to shout-out to just one of the discussions; here are the players: There is FatOldFart, ScarletGhost, HowAmIGoingToTranslateThis, SnapeCracklePop… [laughs] are the players all discussing Snape’s handwriting. And this is actually one of my favorite all time questions that gets raised up here; is if Snape has written on the board before in class. The question, I think, also was whether or not the students use their books that much – or that often – with Snape as a teacher or if he just wrote instructions on the board. If he wrote instructions on the board, did he use his own special advanced, obviously, improvement instructions? And if so that, why wouldn’t Harry – or Hermione, especially, who pays more attention – have recognized the handwriting?

Kat: Ooh, ooh, I have a piece of movie trivia that goes along with this. Do you want to know?

Eric: Yeah, yeah!

Kat: Okay. See if anyone of you can guess: Who did Snape’s handwriting in the Half-Blood Prince’s book?

Yulie: J.K. Rowling.

Kat: No.

Yulie: Aww.

Eric: Eduardo Lima.

Kat: No. What’d you say, Alison?

Alison: Alan Rickman. I’m guessing.

Kat: No, but that would be very cool. No, Eric was closest. It was actually Miraphora Mina.

Alison: Oh.

Eric: There you go. It was a woman’s handwriting, right?

Kat: Mhm. As Hermione deftly pointed out.

Eric: As Hermione guesses.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: That’s right.

Yulie: About the handwriting thing, I may be totally and completely wrong, but in my head the teachers wave their wand and the chalk writes itself and so would their handwriting translate if they made the chalk write itself? Or am I just completely making up that?

Kat: Mm. No, because I bet the chalk has its own handwriting.

Eric: Yes.

Alison: Well, Umbridge does that. She just taps the board and things appear. It’s like super-fast typing. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah. Well, and there were a number of comments as to that as well. There’s simply too many to put in; that’s why I summarized it and named the players. But people suggest that he writes in different script or something; makes it nicer or more legible than his handwriting would be anyway.

Alison and Kat: Mhm.

Eric: Kind of like when you’re typing a letter and it’s immediately more legible than if you were scrawling it. And also, we had the argument from somebody that he was really cramped for space in the book. So that’s why it’s even more difficult to read; is because he’s having to fit everything into the margins of the book.

Kat: That’s true.

Eric: So his handwriting on a chalkboard or whatever would be a little bit better to read. So very interesting thoughts. Keep them coming over on the forums, over on the main page… thank you all who commented.

Alison: And moving into, again, the potions classroom – different teacher – onto our Podcast Question of the Week responses. So just a reminder, our question last week was,

“What would have happened if Malfoy had won Slughorn’s competition and received the prize of Felix Felicis? What would Malfoy’s lucky day reward him with?”

So we got a lot of really good answers to this question, so I picked a couple. And the first one is from skgai, who says,

“If Malfoy would have taken the potion (which is a ghost plot I think JKR intentionally wanted us to ponder), he would have realized he no longer needed the Vanishing Cabinet fixed first. He could kill Dumbledore right away and then go back and fix the cabinet later in the day so that the Death Eaters could see how he succeeded. However, the ending would stay the same. The situation would happen where Dumbledore is wandless and Draco has him cornered, but he never would have done the deed. He would have become depressed and not gone to fix the Vanishing Cabinet and the effects of the potion would have worn off. I don’t think Dumbledore could have convinced him to get protection from him and there would have been a weird year of the attempted murder just being known by each party, but both doing nothing about it.The only other scenario I see is that the potion understands that it’s actually luckiest for Draco to get Dumbledore’s protection in which case a situation would have arisen where Dumbledore could have gotten through to Draco much the same way Harry finally gets through to Slughorn. (What [that does] to the Unbreakable Vow I don’t know, though). The potion would have to consider an exceptional [number of] possibilities to know what is actually lucky in this scenario. In the first scenario the potion just has to be lucky for the task Draco most wants to accomplish.”

I think this is interesting because it’s making the point that the potion knows what’s actually lucky and the person taking the potion doesn’t know what’s lucky. Do we think it actually works that way? Or is it lucky in the way that the person who’s taking it wants it to be?

Kat: So in essence, what you’re asking is, is it alive?

[Alison laughs]

Kat: I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding.

Eric: Oh gosh. There was… again, that’s one of the discussion threads on the feedback post, and I don’t think any one theory is better or worse than the other. There’s a lot of discussion on it as well, and I don’t have an answer. I like to think that the potion is sentient and omniscient or omnipotent and knows everything, because I just think it’s a cool way to behave. But if you get back and break it to the ingredients, there’s not any reason to suspect that it’s super-smart like that. I don’t know, it’s just… the potion, I think, just heightens your awareness or opens your mind a little bit more to possibility. I think that’s what it is.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: There are certain things you can accomplish. There’s certain success you can gain just through sheer wit or will or luck, and I think that Felix does those things. It gives you… for instance, in the case of Ron, even though he didn’t ever get Felix Felices, he thought he did and it just allowed him to be more confident. It’s like that. I mean, Harry takes it and hears a voice or a little nudge here and there, but I think it’s ultimately giving him the observation skills that he so desperately lacks otherwise and the confidence to follow up and trust his intuition – its heightened intuition. That’s what I think.

Alison: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that, rather than the potion knowing more where this person needs to go.

Yulie: Well, I just got this weird parallel to science when you said that if you break it back down to its ingredients, do the ingredients really matter? And so my science brain just jumped up and [said], well, we’re all made up of atoms and if you break us down, we’re not really all special and magical. But when you put us together in the order that you put us in, yay!

[Eric and Yulie laugh]

Alison: All right. Our next comment is from Sharona Lumos, who says,

“I feel like the potion would have helped Draco find a way around Vold[y]’s task. Draco doesn’t really want to kill DD. You can’t exactly call the day you kill Dumbledore a lucky day, right?! I think Draco would feel most ‘lucky’ if he somehow got around killing DD and saving his parents at the same time. This would mean DD would die without being killed (the curse of the ring finally getting to him) or Snape killing him early. The necklace, the mead and the vanishing cabinet would have all been unnecessary. Even if Draco took the potion with the intention of ‘this is going to help the necklace/mead kill DD’, it wouldn’t have turned out that way.”

So this is one of those – a thread that was going on in a lot of our responses – that it would somehow help him not kill Dumbledore but not get into trouble and save his parents.

Eric: So… this would go along with the potion being sentient, right? Here’s what you really want. Here’s how to actually accomplish that.

Alison: Yeah. I think so.

Kat: Although I think this is plausible later on, I don’t think it’s plausible for Draco right now. Because I think Draco right now 98% really does want to kill Dumbledore and really does believe in this mission.

Eric: Yeah, it’s only after he sees how hard it is that he realizes…

Kat: Yeah, exactly – that he waivers. Right, exactly. So I think this is valid for later on. Yeah… I had something else I was going to say and I don’t remember what it was.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: So if Draco can resist… if he can win that potion but resist trying it…

Yulie: So the next question is, when would Draco take it?

Alison: Yeah, I was going to say when he…

Eric: Sometime later in the year… yeah.

Alison: Would he?

Kat: Honestly, though, I think if he won it, he’d take it as soon as possible.

Alison: I would, too.

Eric: No, what I’m saying, basically… no, in response to what Kat was saying about how it wouldn’t really help him all that much now…

Kat: Oh, right, right.

Eric: … he would have to take it later. I’m saying if he took it now…

Kat: When would the optimal…? The optimal time would be much later.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: Much later.

Alison: But would Draco wait for the optimal time?

Kat: No, because he’s impulsive.

Alison: Yeah.

Eric: And his conviction is at its height right here.

Yulie: Well, Harry is really impulsive too, but he waits to use it…

Kat: Yes, but he’s not trying to murder somebody – well, he kind of is, but he doesn’t know that yet.

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: That sounds like a good segue.

Kat: [laughs] Right into this week’s chapter perhaps?

Alison: Yep.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: Let’s do it.

[Half-Blood Prince Chapter 10 intro begins]

[Hissing sound]

Morfin: Hissy, hissy, little snakey, slither on the floor.

[Hissing sound]

Dumbledore: Chapter 10.

[Hissing sound]

Morfin: You be good to Morfin or he’ll nail you to the door.

Dumbledore: “The House of Gaunt.”

[Pots crash to the floor]

[Half-Blood Prince Chapter 10 intro ends]

Kat: Okay, so Chapter 10 [of] Half-Blood Prince [is] a big chapter – “The House of Gaunt.” It’s a big one, guys. I’m excited for it. It’s Morfin Time!

Eric: There you go! You got it.

Kat: So in this chapter Harry goes off to his very first lesson with Professor Dumbledore. Luckily he has moved his detention with Snape. [laughs] So Harry is very happy.

Eric: It would be even luckier if he cancelled it.

Kat: Yes, yes. But no, he didn’t. He just moved it for him and Ron and Hermione are like, “We’re going to wait up, we want to know everything. Tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us! Please, please, please, please, please!”

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: So Harry goes and he learns that he is going to be told everything. He keeps his emo in check and does not blow up at Dumbledore thankfully, and because of that we get to wander down the memory of Mr. Bob Ogden. We learn some really amazing things about Voldemort’s past and just starting down this road of figuring out how to murder him. Yay!

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: Okay. [laughs] So the first thing I wanted to bring up before we get to talking about Bob Ogden – after Harry leaves the common room, he is on his way to Dumbledore’s office and he runs into Trelawney in the hallway. She’s shuffling a pack of “dirty-looking” playing cards, and they name a couple of them. And this is Jo so we know that they’re significant, and so I wanted to go through them. I actually always thought that they were Tarot cards, and only this time around… or maybe I caught it before but realized that they’re actually just normal playing cards.

Eric: Yeah.

Kat: But what I did is I actually found definitions of the equivalent in the Tarot deck…

Eric: Oh!

Kat: … and they’re actually very interesting. So the cards that Trelawney names out is the two of spades, seven of spades, ten of spades, and the Knave of spades. And in Tarot the spades equate to swords – the suit of swords…

Eric: Oh, yeah. Mhm.

Kat: … which is very interesting. So the first one here, the two of spades: in the book Trelawney says, “Conflict.” And the definition of the two of swords is this: “The inherent duality of the swords suit is shown here as the delicate balance of the two swords. The two of swords expresses this balance as a stalemate, a conflict between two equally matched forces, in which neither has the clear advantage. These forces can take on many forms: negative against positive, the impulse to act against the desire to stay silent, or knowing what to do against actually doing it. Such impasses are not easily resolved and they can lead to a long period of confusion and stagnation.”

Eric: Wow.

Alison: Oh, I like it.

Kat: [laughs] I know, it’s pretty brilliant!

Yulie: I also have a couple of notes on the two of spades, so…

Kat: Oh!

Yulie: I just have bullet points, but…

Kat: Let’s hear it!

Yulie: My bullet points are: failure to communicate, breaks in relationships, complete and forced change – and the next one is my favorite – bound to make a big difference in the coming months.

Alison: Oh!

Kat: Ah, so much, so much! So obviously there are four major players in this book: we have Draco, we have Snape, we have Dumbledore, we have Harry. So I don’t know if it’s possible to fit each character to one of these cards, but I thought maybe we could play a little game and see if we could figure it out.

Eric: That’s… I like that idea. Let’s read the others first, though.

Kat: Okay, sure. So the next one is the seven of spades or the seven of swords – Trelawney says, “An ill omen.” The definition says: “Stealing from anyone is a risky exercise, but stealing from someone who has both the ability and the motivation to punish you (such as the inhabitants of the military camp on the seven of swords) is often downright foolish. Such cunning and confidence are two of the hallmarks of the seven of swords, as it stands for those times when guile and diplomacy will bring about the results that brute force will not. But the seven of swords has that same double edge as the rest of the cards in its suit, and thus it implies that you can be the victim of such deception.”

Alison: Oh, man!

Kat: I know who I want that one to be. Okay, okay. Next.

Eric: Okay.

Kat: Ten of spades: Trelawney says, “Violence.” And the ten of swords definition is: “All they that take the sword, it has been said, shall perish with the sword. And the ten of swords is a card that shows us the real life implication of this proverb. This is the ultimate manifestation of the sword suit and its negative, destructive power. Even though only one sword would be needed to kill this man, ten were used. He has not simply been killed but annihilated. The ace of swords was a warning about using excessive force for evil purposes, and the ten is the inevitable result of that abusive power. Those who refuse to listen to the wisdom of the swords will eventually be impaled on them.” Mmm… so good!

Alison: Whoa.

Kat: Okay.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Last one: the Knave of spades. And Trelawney says, “A dark young man, possibly troubled, who dislikes the questioner.” The page of swords is the equivalent and it says, “When the diplomacy of the page of swords fails to achieve results, the knight will try it his way, the violent way. Violence in this sense does not refer to physical brutality but to a suddenness and apparent hostility that will threaten most people. And if they do not feel threatened, they will most certainly feel a little weary around the knight of swords. He is the essence of the element of air, almost completely removed from the realm of emotion, and all that is associated with him must be perceived accordingly. He can manifest in the type of three ways: as an event, as a person in your life, or as a part of yourself.”

Alison: Oh my gosh.

Eric: Gosh. I just think all four of these are Snape.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Right, okay, so I want… before we continue and say our thoughts, I really want the listeners at home to listen to that again if you have to and write down your thoughts and tell us, because we really want to know. I’m super interested to know what you guys think about this.

Eric: So between Harry, Snape, Dumbledore, and Draco…

Alison: Yeah. Oh, man.

Yulie: Okay, can I also add? So the numbers, I just thought it was really interesting that when Trelawney pulled out these cards… because it said she was shuffling them.

Kat: Mhm.

Yuiianna: But she pulls them out in ascending order.

Kat: Mhm.

Alison: Ahh.

Yulie: So that drew my attention to the numbers – two, seven, ten, and Knave, or Jack – and so I also looked at just the numbers. The two means balance, seven was mystery – and I know mystery is a really big part of this book – ten is completion, and she uses the word knave when most of us use Jack. And the Jack of cards – when I was looking at playing cards translated to Tarot cards, Jack could either be translated as page or knight. So I thought it was really interesting that she used the word knave instead of any of those other ones.

Eric: Yes.

Yulie: And I had the definition of knave somewhere, but I lost it.

Kat: I’m going to Google it because I’m curious. Google says: “a dishonest or unscrupulous man”…

Yulie: Yes.

Alison: Ahh.

Kat: … is the definition of a knave.

Eric: Okay, what about page?

Kat: Hold on. If I type in “define page,” it’s going to tell me…

Eric: I know, I know…

Yulie: Well, page is just the servant boy of the knight.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. It’s the…

Kat: Mhm. It says…

Eric: Like a squire?

Alison: Yeah. Kind of.

Kat: “A young person usually in uniform employed at a hotel…” Oh wait, that’s not…

[Everyone laughs]

Yulie: The Dark Lord wants to open a hotel, and Malfoy sets the billboard.

Eric: Have you guys seen The Grand Budapest Hotel?

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: I totally think of that.

Kat: I love that movie.

Eric: Lobby boy.

Kat: It was bloody brilliant. It was brilliant.

Eric; Lobby boy.

Kat: And it’s so funny that Ralph Fiennes is in that movie.

[Alison and Kat laugh]

Eric: Yeah, it’s really, really fun.

Kat: And we were talking about Lord Voldemort owning… oh my gosh. [laughs] Okay. Now let’s hear it: who do you think is who? Let’s hear it.

Yulie: I had actually thought all the cards were referring to Malfoy.

Kat: But that’s not fun, that’s not the game.

Yulie: Yeah, I know the game.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: No, I said that about Snape though, too. I felt that way about Snape. Okay, let’s look at seven of spades real quick. This whole stealing from someone who has the ability and motivation to punish you…

Alison: I’m saying Snape.

Eric: … is like Harry stealing… it’s Harry stealing his own spells, basically.

Kat: What? No!

Eric: Yes!

Kat: No. Uh-uh. I don’t think so.

Eric: So I think that’s actually Harry, because this whole book he’s taking credit for Snape’s brilliance, basically. And if you have to put Harry in one of these categories, I think it would probably be that one.

Kat: Ooh!

Yulie: I’m trying to read these notes, since I have my own notes, and my notes aren’t really corresponding with what Kat put.

Alison: I…

Eric: Well, would your notes happen to shed any… if your notes agree with my theory…

[Alison, Kat, and Yulie laugh]

Eric: … that the seven of spades is Harry, then I want to hear them.

[Alison and Kat laugh]

Yulie: I just have bullet points, like on the seven of spades.

Kat: Mhm.

Eric: Yeah.

Yulie: So on mine, it’s just: advice best not taken, loss, obstacle to success, sorrow and quarrels, lying, deceitfulness, theft, irresponsibility. So that one, I think, bullet point is the one that matches more with what Kat put. And then, the number 7 equaling mystery.

Eric: Yeah, I mean, there’s the mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince is. I’d still say this is Harry.

Alison: I’m going to disagree with you and say the Two of Spades is Harry, just because there’s so much conflict for Harry right now. There’s the conflict of trying to figure out who Voldemort is so [that] he can get rid of him, the conflict of he thinks Malfoy’s up to something, but no one else does. Just everything that’s going on with Harry this year, I feel like there'[re] two sides, and he’s caught in between them.

Eric: If this were any other book, or rather, if this were the book prior, I would say, yeah, Harry is very conflicted. But Harry doesn’t even know at this point that he’s really trying to figure out all he needs to know about Voldemort to help kill him. That point hasn’t even been raised until…

Kat: The end of this chapter.

Eric: The rest of this chapter, it’s like, “Oh yeah, by the way, we’re looking at trying to figure out…”

Kat: Right, but you have to remember that this is Trelawney, so this isn’t Jo necessarily talking about this exact moment; this is Jo giving us a commentary about what’s to come.

Yulie: Exactly. Which is why I think that’s the genius of having it be Harry, is he doesn’t even know that this is where he is, and this is where he’s going.

Eric: I think it’s Snape because he’s in conflict between the two sides. He’s double-agent. And he can’t tip his hand one way or the other, except he already has, almost in both ways because he went and made the Unbreakable Vow, and then Dumbledore has been forced to fix that in what they have. So I look at this, and I see Snape.

Kat: The Two of Spades is Snape?

Eric: I look at the Two of Spades as Snape and the Seven of Spades as Harry. But that’s just me.

Yulie I think I agree with Eric. The Two of Spades is Snape, and the Seven of Spades is Harry. And though I like to lean toward all of them being Malfoy.

Kat: So I actually really see Dumbledore as the Two of Spades, specifically because of the line where it says “two equally matched forces in which neither has the clear advantage.” Because I really feel like Dumbledore… in this book, this is the only thing that gives him an advantage over Lord Voldemort.

Alison: Oh, see, I would say Dumbledore is the Knave of Spades just for the part that says, “He is the essence of the element of air, almost completely removed from the realm of emotion, and all that is associated with him must be perceived accordingly.”

Kat: Yep, that’s why I think that’s Snape.

Alison: Because I would put Snape as the Ten of Spades, I think. Maybe.

Eric: I think… we have… there’s no clear answer. But we have a disagreement, but we also have an interesting situation in this chapter whereby Dumbledore reveals [that] his hand is way tipped. He’s not in even balance here. He has the upper hand on Voldemort. Because he managed to procure, somehow, Bob Ogden’s memory before he died and has probably been holding on to it for, like, 20 years. And he seemingly has time traveled so many times through different people’s memories that he is able to give Harry all the information that he does at the end of this chapter about what happened next after this memory. And I just think… so there is no way that Dumbledore is in perfect balance here. He has the upper hand; he is absolutely a god-like creature at this point in this whole story. For how much he knows, he’s the only one who’s pieced together about the Horcruxes besides Regulus Black, which, can I just say, I want to know about Regulus Black. But Dumbledore is way in the advantage here.

Kat: […] so then how can you say the Two of Spades is Snape?

Eric: Because he’s always balancing both sides. It won’t benefit him to be all bad because then he won’t be able to achieve his redemption that he so desires, and he wouldn’t be able to be all good because Voldemort would kill him.

Yulie: Yeah, I see Snape as being the Two of Spades. I don’t necessarily think [that] Dumbledore has the upper hand, but he does have an advantage of having those memories and that Voldemort doesn’t know that he knows about the Horcruxes. But Snape would be the Two of Swords not because he himself is in conflict but because he is serving two masters, and that never works out well, […] so you have this ultimate evil and ultimate good, and Snape is just caught in between having to serve, and Dumbledore trusts him and is saying like, “Oh, he’s on our side.” But I don’t know, I’d like to think that Dumbledore may have perhaps doubted just as Voldemort had doubted. So that’s how I see Snape being the Two of Spades, not because of he himself being in a conflict, but because he’s just in between these two great forces that are in conflict. And he’s the balancing thing…

Kat: Okay, I concede. I actually, after that, will give you Two of Spades for Snape.

Yulie: Thanks.

Eric: Two of Spades for Snape.

Kat: I’ll give you that.

Alison: I’m seeing Snape as the Ten of Spades, just because the violence and the…

Eric: Oh, that’s Draco, though.

Kat: That’s Draco, totally Draco.

Alison: Oh, no, see, I see Draco as the Seven.

Eric: But Draco is the only one committing violent acts in this book, is the thing. He’s the one who’s outright attempting to murder.

Alison: But Snape is the only one who actually murders and then is murdered later on.

Kat: But, but, but, but, but, but, but…

Eric: That was a mercy killing.

Kat: Yeah, it’s a mercy killing. That makes a big difference.

Eric: He’s keeping peace.

Alison: But we don’t know that yet.

Eric: It’s not violence but, Draco is flailing messily in the book.

Kat: Wait, Alison, remember, this is Jo telling us what’s to come.

Alison: Yeah, yeah, so that’s…

Kat: Right, so… it’s Draco.

Yulie: On my notes – and I am going to go off my notes because this is what I worked on last night – Ten of Spades I have is “very unlucky card, wary of bad news, giving up victim, and martyrdom.” […] so I see Ten of Spades as being Dumbledore because he basically… he doesn’t give up, but he becomes the victim, and Snape is the scapegoat. Even though he did murder him, only Dumbledore and Snape know what’s going on. But I don’t know, sometimes I feel like that murder… I think I see Dumbledore accepting his death and not giving up, but I don’t know how to explain this.

Alison: No, I can see Dumbledore as the Ten of Spades, too.

Kat: Guys, I think there’s a superior Ravenclaw on this call today.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: I would definitely agree. Very creative, very imaginative in your observations, too.

Kat: Yes, I am very much enjoying your thoughts, Yuli. Very much.

Eric: Hats off to Yuli here. I will say with the Ten of Spades, which I’m trying to fit to be Draco again, even with martyrdom, even though he lives throughout the series and is alive 19 years later, his innocence is martyred [laughs] in this whole conflict – this greater conflict – and I think that’s probably why he would fit as Draco. So once again, I see Dumbledore as the Knave, Draco as the Ten, Snape as the Two, and Harry as the Seven.

Kat: See, technically, I think the Ten of Spades should technically be Voldemort probably, but he’s not in this game, so that’s cool.

Eric: Well, Voldemort is behind Draco. He’s the driving force behind Draco.

Kat: Right! There you go! Right!

Eric: I would substitute Draco for him.

Kat: Right. Okay. Cool. Cool, I agree. Okay, we could probably talk about this for another hour, so…

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Let’s not.

Kat: Yeah. No, let’s definitely not. Listeners, please, again, share your thoughts with us. We’re super excited to hear what you guys think. Make it to 400 comments this week, okay?

Alison: Oh my gosh!

Kat: Let’s do it!

[Everyone laughs]

Eric: Okay, Kat, you go through them.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: I’m not on next week’s episode. [laughs]

Eric: Oh, darn it. All right, I’m giving that task to someone else.

Kat: I’ll help if it gets to 400. How’s that?

[Alison and Eric laugh]

Kat: I’ll duel you for it.

Eric: That’s so generous of you, instigator Kat. That’s so nice.

Kat: Yeah, that’s me. Okay, so [laughs] Harry finally gets past Trelawney, and he says his acid pops password, which is the cutest thing ever. I love Dumbledore because he uses candy for his passwords. Man, after my own heart for real.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: And I love that the first thing Harry says, he’s like, “He didn’t clear the space for dueling practice!”

[Eric and Kat laugh]

Alison: That’s so Gryffindor, though. He’s expecting action. He’s expecting movement.

Kat: He is.

Alison: Some spell to throw at him in a duel, but he doesn’t get that.

Kat: I know, it’s brilliant.

Eric: “Harry, the duel will take place in our intellect.”

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Kat: That’s valid.

Eric: It’s like, “Our minds will be the battleground.”

Kat: That’s very valid. So he’s like, “Dude, what are we doing tonight? What’s the deal?” And Dumbledore says, in all of his voice, “Well, I have decided that it is time that you now know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try [to] kill you 15 years ago, for you to be given certain information.”

Alison: One of my favorite things of Harry after that is when he’s like, “He can’t help but feel really upset because Dumbledore told him last year that everything would be fine,” and he thinks he’s lying to him again. It’s just like, “Harry, if you only knew.” [laughs]

Kat: Yep. I know. He manages to keep his anger actually bottled up below the surface a little bit.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: He almost whipped those little spindle-y things around the room again.

[Eric laughs]

Kat: You think Dumbledore fixed all of them?

Eric: Well, his response is, “You told me you were going to tell me everything last year.” [laughs] And Dumbledore has just the best… of course, you know it’s written that way. [laughs]

Kat: Of course.

Eric: He’s just like, “Oh, I told you everything I know, Harry.” “Oh, okay.” But he knows all this other stuff, too. [laughs]

Kat: And he’s like, “Okay, so now we’re going to jump into the realm of guesswork, and yes, it’s going to help you survive. So bear with me here, okay?”So he’s like, “Okay, we’re going to jump into the memory of Mr. Bob Ogden,” a guy who… we don’t actually know when he died. I looked it up; we don’t actually know that. We just know that it was sometime before this chapter.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: So it could have been last week for all we know. I don’t think it was.

Eric: And after Dumbledore got his memory from him. Dumbledore does not loot corpses. It’s important to know.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Right, that is… but I mean, they probably don’t have memories after they die. So I don’t think that’s possible.

Eric and Kat: Probably not.

Kat: So… and the thing that this made me think of, just very coincidentally, is he of the Ogdens Firewhisky family?

Eric: I think he is.

Alison: Probably.

Eric: I think that’s confirmed.

Kat: Confirmed? I couldn’t find it on the wiki.

Eric: If he’s not, then he could certainly use some Firewhisky after what happens at the…

[Alison and Kat laugh]

Kat: Yes. Yes, he could. Okay, speaking of what happens at the Gaunt house, okay, they’re in the memory, and they follow him down the lane, and he basically gets attacked by Morfin, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But I wanted to know, is this standard practice for Ministry of Magic employees to drop in to arrest somebody who didn’t reply to this owl that they sent? If that’s the case, then why didn’t somebody come to collect Harry for his thing? Is it because it was scheduled out? What’s the deal? Because this seems really foolhardy.

Yulie: Well, Marvolo said that he doesn’t accept owls, and maybe they did try calling and sending for him, and they didn’t respond, […] so they had to send someone.

Alison: Yeah, I think this is an unusual case. I don’t think this is normal.

Kat: It seemed pretty standard to me.

Eric: Well, Bob is the head of the department, so there’s that. I mean, he says as much at some point in this chapter. He’s the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He doesn’t need to be the one making this house call.

Kat: Right.

Eric: But he is. And I think that has something to do with… I mean, this is just showing off in front of a Muggle, but it’s also this very old family, these very crazy, deranged wizards who are performing the magic, and I think that, very smartly, he is the person who is really best at being able to deal with what they have to offer.

Kat: Like having put Harry with Voldemort.

Eric: It’s not an underling. It’s not an intern who showed up at the door. “Did you get our owl? Excuse me, sir, did you get our owl?”

[Kat laughs]

Eric: I am surprised the owl’s not nailed to the door, to be perfectly honest.

Alison: Oh, God.

Yulie: A little tidbit: Owls actually sometimes eat snakes.

Alison: Ooh.

Kat: That’s true.

Eric: Oh, so that’s why the Gaunts don’t like owls.

Alison: That makes so much sense.

Kat: Eric, I’ve just been thinking about this magical intern you were talking about [who goes to the door, and I have this funny thing running in my head right now. I’m sure you all can imagine it.

Eric: “Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Savior, the Ministry of Magic, our Government?” [knocks]

Kat: “Sir?”

Eric: “Sir?”

Kat: As he’s peering in the windows and “Hello?”

Eric: That teenager from The Simpsons who’s always got the voice cracking: “Oh, yeah, Sir? Hello?”

Kat: Cletus? Isn’t that his name, Cletus?

Eric: Oh, I don’t know. Is it?

Kat: I think so. I think it’s Cletus.

Eric: I’ve forgotten everything.

Kat: Cletus the intern. That’s such a magical name.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: But Bob Ogden, what was the question? Oh, so is it standard practice, is what you want to know?

Yulie: Oh, just another thing: I don’t think it’s standard practice, just based on what he’s wearing. I would assume if somebody… well, I don’t know. If they were used to going and retrieving people, then they would probably be properly trained in Muggle attire, and I just think it’s hilarious what he’s wearing. Because I imagine Sweeney Todd in… I’m not sure if you guys have seen the Sweeney Todd movie – Johnny Depp – where that one scene he’s on the beach. So I imagine that swimsuit.

Kat: Yeah, I had to leave the theater because I was getting so sick to my stomach with that movie.

Eric: Ohh, that movie.

Kat: It made me so sick to my stomach.

Eric: Now I want pie. Thank you so much.

Kat: Ohh, Eric, that’s disgusting.

Alison: Ohh, gosh.

Eric: No, no, no, no, no, no, kidding, kidding, kidding. Okay, okay. But I had a thought just there about what you were saying about him being not dressed properly because that might indicate that he doesn’t normally do house visits, but perhaps because of the severity of who it is… basically, they would have people who were better at being a little bit more covert about this kind of thing in a Muggle village, but they opted for skill versus blending in. They needed somebody who could handle any spell that was going to be thrown at them, and Bob – bless him – is able to handle when Morfin does that thing to his nose.

Kat: Yeah, the disgusting pussy thing. But why wouldn’t they send an Auror with him, then? I mean, I get it. He is the head of the Department of Law Enforcement, but that doesn’t mean he’s some badass wizard.

Eric: No. Yeah, we don’t know where or when he… when this is, necessarily. It’s before Voldemort’s… oh, it’s actually within a year of Voldemort’s birth.

Yulie: 1924.

Kat: Yeah, within a year of Voldemort’s birth, yeah. ’24. Ooh, ooh, guys, this is Fantastic Beasts era

Yulie: Ooh.

Eric: Ahaha.

Kat: Just saying.

Eric: The Gaunts can… oh, wait, they’re in Azkaban. Never mind.

Kat: That would be amazing.

Eric: That’s so cool.

Kat: Speaking of the Gaunts, I really like this little riddle, and I’m going to convince Michael to read it for us so [that] we don’t have to, but “Hissy hissy little snakey, slither on the floor. You be good to Morfin, or he’ll nail you to the door.”

Alison: It just gives me chills.

Kat: It’s brilliant. I love it. I don’t know, it doesn’t creep me out. I think it’s perfectly sinister and very brilliant. So Slytherin. I love it.

Eric: I really want Michael to read that in his best Marlon Brando voice.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Make sure you tell him that. Tell him that for sure.

Eric: [as Marlon Brando] Further on the floor, you’d be good… [back to normal voice] Yeah, something like that.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Oh my God. [laughs]

Alison: Though it’s got to be in Parseltongue, right? [laughs] With a voice-over of [speaks Parseltongue]. [laughs]

Yulie: If this is all in Parseltongue, how does Dumbledore understand this memory?

Kat: Because Dumbledore is the boss.

Eric: Ooh, that’s a good question. Does he? This is one of the coolest things about this chapter, right? Dumbledore just turns to Harry and is like, “I assume you understand what he’s saying right?” And Harry is like, “Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I?” and then he realizes that it’s all in Parseltongue. Dumbledore doesn’t really indicate specifically that he understands exactly what they’re saying word for word.

Alison: Is that why he brought Harry?

Eric: It’s weird because at what point would he…?

Yulie: That’s what I originally thought, but it seems to indicate that Dumbledore had already figured this out, and he was just showing Harry, so…

Kat: Well, I mean…

Eric: I mean, can you learn Parseltongue? I mean, it’s inherited, It’s by blood, is how they understand it. It doesn’t seem to be something you could study on, but then Dumbledore has always had a knack for languages. He speaks Mermish, for crying out loud. Most people can’t even pronounce…

Kat: And Gobbledegook, right?

Yulie: Perhaps he can understand it, but he can’t recreated it? That’s the logic I came up with.

Kat: The opposite of Ron, then.

[Everyone laughs]

Alison: I don’t think you would need to understand Parseltongue to understand what’s going on in this situation because I think most of the important stuff happens between Bob Ogden and Marvolo.

Kat: Yeah, I think you could…

Eric: When they’re talking in English.

Yulie: Well, not because the whole conversation when they talk about Tom Marvolo in between the Gaunts, that’s when you figure out who Tom Riddle is, when Merope…

Kat: Right, but I think Dumbledore probably already had a pretty good inkling about that and could infer, right?

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: Infer what was being said by the… whatever you just said.

Eric: Alison’s point is right, I think, because I was noticing when I was reading this. It is very animated. Morfin, when he drops down from the tree, is saying, “You don’t belong here. You have no right. You’re this, that, and the other thing,” and it’s just showing up as hisses – right? – to Dumbledore, presumably, but it’s very clear what he’s saying. It’s very clear that he doesn’t like the fact that this guy just showed up, so you don’t need to know what he’s saying to know what he’s saying. And then there is a great deal of the conversation that’s in English, just a little bit in the kitchen there. But when it moves on to Tom, the whole situation with Tom and Merope is actually something that Dumbledore later says is very well known. At least from a Muggle side of things, there are so many people – so many people – who gossip about the scandal, essentially, within the next two, three years – or however long it takes. I forget – but these [are] people who[m] I feel […] Dumbledore has clearly spoken to. So he has other sources that he won’t even get into or people in the pub from that age who would remember that story or be able to recount it. I feel like he’s done a fair bit of back work and then just funneled into just the few memories that would help him build the story to slowly and slower and slower lay on this fact to Harry that he’s going to die. [laughs]

Alison: I did have a question, though, as I was flipping through: Why is it…? Maybe this is just me being very bad at foreign languages, but it says Harry doesn’t realize that he’s speaking Parseltongue. How? [laughs] Does he just not register that he’s hissing instead of speaking English and he just understands it or is it just.. or is there just something strange about Parseltongue that just…?

Kat: I think Parseltongue for Harry is just like when you’re listening to someone else speak French. Because English is your first language, you’re hearing English in your head. Your brain is automatically translating it into the language, so Harry is hearing Parseltongue, but his brain is translating it into English.

Yulie: Yeah, speaking as a bilingual person, there are some times where I’ll turn on the TV or radio, and it’ll take me a couple of seconds to register that it is in Spanish. And I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, okay.”

Eric: Oh, interesting.

Yulie: And so also, when I was a kid, sometimes I went to Mexico, and I’d watch movies at the movie theatres in Spanish, and I don’t know if this happens to other bilingual people, but if I had only seen that movie in Spanish, I do not recall it in Spanish. I recall it in English.

Kat: See, how weird. See, the brain is so weird when it comes to languages and stuff because even when I’m signing – when I’m talking to a deaf person or whatever – sign language is very different from English. If you were to say, “I want some ice cream,” they would say, “ice cream I want” because they put the object of the sentence first, whereas we tend to put it after, so even then, when I’m signing to somebody in my head, I’m speaking English even though I’m signing something very different.

Eric: Right, you know what you have to form, and then that’s being translated.

Yulie: On, sign language – because I understand sign language too – it’s sometimes really hard for me to watch somebody who’s very animated in their hand movements because they’ll accidentally, actually, use an actual sign, and my brain will register something, and then I’ll realize that that’s not what they said.

[Eric laughs]

Alison: Okay, it’s just me being that bad at foreign languages, then.

[Kat and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Oh, I don’t speak foreign languages either. [laughs] Alison, I’m with you on this one.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Yeah, Ravenclaw power, baby!

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: High five, high five. Speaking of “power,” it struck me. Obviously, the blood lines are very big themes in this book, a very major theme, pure-bloods and half-bloods and all of that. I mean, being the name of the book, after all, but in this chapter, it is mentioned a lot. And obviously, it’s because we’re with the Gaunt, and they’re pure-blood, but the first thing that Marvolo says to Bob is “Are you a pure-blood?” And I get it that he’s obsessed with that but why? Why does he ask him that? It has always struck me as a really odd question even for someone who’s obsessed with that.

Alison: I think it has to do with the pure-blood mindset of superiority because he wants to know if he needs to treat him as some kind of equal or if he can totally throw him in the dirt. Because he’s not pure-blood.

Kat: That makes sense. Right.

Yulie: Another the other thing is, he’s wearing the Muggle clothing.

Eric: Yeah, just reading this chapter, looking at the digs Marvolo gives Bob, he cuts into him. Basically as soon as Bob gets to do the business that he comes there to do and is talking about the hearing, the summons, Marvolo stops talking about his blood and just starts talking about “Oh, so I had you pegged for a Muggle lover the moment you walked in here.” As soon as he says, “It’s actually against the law to attack a Muggle.” And it’s just this pettiness, this very lack of feeling, this entitlement to where you’re above reproach. And I think the end of the chapter, where Dumbledore is talking to Harry about it and talks about how the money had been squandered before Marvolo was even born, the fact that these people have been raised with this entitlement but not with the money that usually comes with that sort of thing. And so there’s just this mania, which we already know it as pure-blood mania, but there’s just this entitlement coupled with this extreme poverty coupled with this lack of real smarts. Dumbledore suggests that Marvolo doesn’t know how to make his own food. So it’s just like all these things are coming into this crazy, dangerous, because of blood, he’s got some magical prowess, creature. They’re caricatures of the absolute extreme of… I don’t quite what the right inoffensive word for this, but they are what we would call – I don’t know – hillbillies, maybe? I’m not quite sure.

Kat: Can I just say that just as you’re talking through this and thinking about it, the only thing that pops into my mind is the Dursleys?

Alison: Ooh.

Yulie: Well, I actually thought a juxtaposition with the Weasleys where they also didn’t have the money that is usually associated with pure-bloods, but they’re just completely and totally different in character and in family relationships.

Kat: Yeah, I thought of the Dursleys because of how Eric was saying, “They’re complete caricatures and how they are just the extreme of what they believe in.” They are the extreme. They’re the extreme pure-bloods.

Eric: And I think it’s the mutation of the blood, the mutation of all that incest. I mean, they mention cousins. That’s actually caused them to be missing a screw or two up high, so I feel like that’s what Jo is going for.

Alison: I’d agree with that.

Kat: I don’t know, I guess.

Eric: Well, I think about Marvolo and Morfin like that, and then I actually look at Merope, who is… Dumbledore refers to her as a slave or… she’s not free. Only after Marvolo and Morfin are fought off by a team of wizards that Bob brings back, and she has this freedom to pursue her own interests. And we know what she does with that…

[Kat purrs]

[Alison and Kat laugh]

Eric: … but she is really downtrodden, and she’s very downtrodden. It’s really hard to… I remember reading this for the first time and just thinking, “Oh my gosh. This is so intense.” Here, we have this inbred family who [is] lacking in intelligence but [is] succeeding in this fierceness and this hostility toward the entire world that they’re in, including each other, and I just feel very, very bad, and you’re supposed to for Merope, who – surprise! – turns out to be Voldemort’s mother, the last thing you would expect…

Kat: Spoiler alert!

[Alison laughs]

Eric: Yeah. Sympathetic character. It’s in this chapter, come on! This sympathetic character [that] you immediately want to see succeed in all of her endeavors because she’s just had the worst upbringing.

Kat: Who is – speaking of Merope – completely obsessed with that Muggle, Tom Riddle.

Eric: That cute boy down the lane.

Kat: “That cute boy,” yeah. Which, oddly enough…

[Eric laughs]

Kat: … is funny. We find out that… so the reason Bob Ogden is there to pick up Morfin is that he cursed a Muggle with really bad hives. We find out that that’s Tom Riddle, Sr. Which I just think is very… and isn’t it…? And don’t take this as me liking him in any way, shape, or form. Do we think that Morfin is trying to, in a way, protect Merope from being with this Muggle? In some misguided, very screwed up way, obviously, but I felt like it was some sort… not only was it him trying to keep him away from Merope, but I think it was also him very oddly and some – like I said – very messed up way protecting her, in some odd way.

Eric: Here’s some evidence: I mean, this is the first time Marvolo found out about that. And Morfin knew about it enough to act on it, knew about Merope’s affections, so I would say that it’s very obvious that Morfin kept that fact from Marvolo from before then, and maybe it’s because he wanted to go off and just attack him because he likes attacking Muggles, or it was, in fact, that he was keeping that secret, saving it for a rainy day when he could bring it out for effect, but he wouldn’t attack Tom Riddle without Marvolo knowing anything about it. So I would say there is a possibility that he was, in fact, protecting Merope in some way.

Alison: I can see it that way, but I can also see it as being a… He’s tormenting Merope by saying, “Oh, look, I know you have this crush on this guy, and so I’m going to go attack him while you’re looking at him.”

Eric: He’s dangling it in front of her. And I’ve got to say, “You’ve got to give props to the Ministry, who perform such a good Memory Charm that Tom is with his girlfriend, riding horses the next day and clearly doesn’t have any inkling what happened because otherwise, he would know to stay away from this shack.”

Kat: Poor Tom Riddle, Sr. He has been effed over by magic quite a few times.

Yulie: Let me tell you about Morfin and his weird brotherly love I just had in fan fiction land. I had a scene of Morfin coming across Tom and his girlfriend and realizing this guy already had a girlfriend and maybe had these feelings for his sister like, “Oh, even if she wanted him, she can’t have him” and “Oh, well, she doesn’t deserve him anyway. Hives on your face.”

Kat: Oh, see? He’s so chivalrous.

Alison: Aww.

Eric: Oh, so chivalrous!

[Kat laughs]

Eric: Oh, it’s Morfin time!

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Crack open a light beverage.

Kat: Morfin time!

Eric: Yeah. Bless Morfin, the hero of this book. Ah, seriously.

[Aison, Kat, and Yulie laugh]

Eric: No, I feel like…

Yulie: That did not happen. It was totally and completely fan fiction. [laughs]

Kat: Fan fiction is brilliant.

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: Absolutely brilliant. Wait, is that a legit fan fiction or just something in your head?

Yulie: No, it’s just something I thought of. Yeah.

Alison: It probably is legit fan fiction, though. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah, you should write it because people would…

Yulie: If I don’t, somebody will.

Kat: Yeah. Exactly. So eventually, they end up getting in this massive fight because they talk about that whole interaction between Merope and them. It’s all in Parseltongue, so lucky for Harry, he gets it…

[Alison and Eric laugh]

Kat: … but somehow, Dumbledore knows, has figured it out, and is super impressed with the fact that Harry is not stupid…

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Kat: So that always made me feel really good. He’s like, “Oh, you’re keeping up. Good. I’m really glad.”

Eric: “Good! Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Pat on the back.

Kat: Right. “Really glad to see you’re keeping up.” The chapter ends with a recap of everything we’ve talked about, so I didn’t think we had to go into it too much, but Harry does figure out that Merope was Voldemort’s mother, and he’s like, “Oh, the Muggle [who] Morfin attacked, the man on the horse?” Yes, that is indeed Voldemort’s dad. And there was a line at the bottom of page 212 that kind of caught me: “‘And they ended up married?’ Harry said in disbelief, unable to imagine two people less likely to fall in love.” It’s just funny because I read that line and I thought of James and Lily. Because didn’t he think that exact same thing a year before?

Yulie: Oh my God. Yes, true.

Eric: Oh, yeah.

Kat: Obviously, very different people.

Eric: It shows you how much Harry knows about love.

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Because opposites attract.

Kat: [sings] “Opposites attract.”

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Oh, that’s such a good song. That music video is so good.

Eric: I will say, in regard to Tom Riddle, Sr., we know… for me, what I loved about approaching the cottage was you see the sign that says, “Great Hangleton this way. Little Hangleton this way.” Harry sees the graveyard, sees the mansion that the Riddles… I mean, he should recognize it, and he doesn’t, which is weird.

Alison: Yep. It’s dark when he was there last time.

Eric: Yeah, it was dark, but I feel like, for me, I’m just thinking, “Oh my gosh, we’re back! This is the same town. How cool is this that this is the same exact location where we’ve been before?” And we know from the opening chapter of Book 4 how it ends, how Voldemort tracks down Tom Riddle, Sr. and kills him in the drawing room, basically, Tom Riddle, Sr. and his parents. And I feel bad for this love interest of Tom Riddle, Sr.’s because I think it’s clear that he doesn’t get back together with her. I mean, he’s still living with his parents 16 years later or whatever, alone, and that’s why they didn’t find her dead as well, so…

Kat: Are you talking about Cecilia?

Eric: Cecilia. [sings] “Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart.” Yeah.

Kat: This is a very musical episode.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: I think it doesn’t quite work out with them, and that’s a shame.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: ll because the intervention of this tramp and his daughter, who really had the right intentions.

Kat: Did she, though?

Yulie: I don’t think so. She was just selfish.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: No! Nuh-uh. Okay, if you say that’s true love, then you’re calling what Snape has for Lily true love, and that is not true love.

Eric: That’s obsessive love. Well, okay…

Kat: That’s what this is too!

Eric: [laughs] I don’t think… I don’t blame Merope for one second for wanting something better than what she’s got – okay? – and also, seeing this Tom guy, who sometimes rides a horse by her place, as being an ideal. He is of a certain wealth, [which] she lacks. He is of a certain beauty, [which] she lacks, and that might not be true love. I think you’re right. It’s not true love, but it’s this infatuation that is born out of loss and suffering, and I think that there’s something very innocent about that. I think there is something very innocent about how Merope loves Tom, Sr.

Yulie: Well, as much as Merope is a sympathetic character, you can see the Slytherin in her coming out. I don’t know if we know they went to Hogwarts, but you can just see the Slytherin bursting out of her. That she wants something, and she’s going to grab it with whatever means necessary.

Kat: Snape and Merope are BFFLs. Okay, they are cut from the same cloth.

Eric: No!

Kat: Yes, they are cut from the same cloth.

Alison: Yeah. I agree with that.

Kat: I’m sorry, but you give somebody a love potion for a year and have his baby, and first off…

Eric: But why’d she stop?

Kat: Right. Okay, that’s the first stupid thing she did.

[Yulie laughs]

Eric: No, that’s the first Hufflepuff thing she did. I’m going to Sort her into Hufflepuff. She’ll be the first of her line.

Alison: Oh, no.

Kat: She is not a Hufflepuff, honey.

Yulie: No.

Kat: Uh-uh. But also…

Eric: Hufflepuffs are good at potions. This is a fact. It’s a fact.

Yulie: How, if Snape is the Potions Master and then Slughorn is the Potions Master? What evidence is this?

Kat: There’s no…

Eric: I’m outnumbered by other bad Slytherins. Darn.

Kat: But the thing that always made me giggle about this part is, I think about this love potion that he’s been on for however long, and then I think about Ron when he’s on the love potion, and I mean, I don’t know if love potion… it must affect people differently, but can you just imagine him walking around – Tom Riddle, Sr. – for a year like, “Oh, I love you. Oh.”

Eric: Yeah, doting on her every need.

Kat: Like, “Is she in there? Have I met her? Is she in there? Can I meet her? Can I meet her?”

[Alison laughs]

Eric: “Where’d you go?”

Kat: Right.

Eric: Mer Mer. Where’d you go Mer Mer? Or whatever he’d call her.

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: Mer Mer?

[Kat and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Yeah, so I think that’s a valid question. I feel like she could have learned a lot from him in that time too, like how to take better care of herself. He would have taken care of her, and I think that honestly would not stop short of cleaning and washing. She probably cleaned up.

Yulie: If he’s a rich person in [the] 1920s, I’m not sure how rich people are in – I don’t know. Wherever they are. Hamling… oh my God, I can’t pronounce things – that town, but wouldn’t he have servants and stuff?

Alison: Oh, for sure.

Yulie: So I’m just… this is the rich stereotype person, but how could he take care of himself and Merope if he had been taken care of his whole life? How did they survive?

Alison: I bet they had servants.

Eric: That’s a good question. He probably took some money…

Yulie: He eloped with a couple of his servants.

Eric: His parents were probably obligated to give him some money for them to go live.

Kat: [laughs] With Mer Mer.

Eric: Yes, Tom Tom and Mer Mer. The epic saga.

[Kat and Yulie laugh]

Kat: I am actually crying. Physically crying.

Eric: I’m so happy.

Kat: [laughs] Oh my God. I’m sorry. So Mer Mer and Tom Tom, they seemingly…

Eric: They have a baby.

Kat: They have a baby, right, exactly, and that is the satan…

Alison: Little Tom Tom!

Kat: I mean, it is Lord Voldemort. And I mean, that’s it. Harry goes on to say, “Well, why are we learning all about this? Is it important? Is it going to help me survive?” He’s like, “Yes. It does. And it’s going to.” And then he says, “Am I allowed to tell Ron and Hermione?” And Dumbledore actually contemplates for a minute, and then he says, “Yes. You can tell them because they’re trustworthy, and make sure you don’t tell anybody else, though. Just your two best friends [who] are also only sixteen. It’s cool.”

Eric: I love what he says about that too. He’s just like, “If word got out that I knew a lot more about Voldemort than I’m letting on, that would be bad.”

Kat: Yeah. Exactly.

Eric: And he’s right. I mean, if you think about it, there are so many people, even Malfoy, who could easily get word out of the castle or directly to all the bad people in the world, people who are taking over the Ministry, people who… there'[re] just so many ears – mostly Slytherin – who would be inclined to cause serious trouble. So I think it’s smart for Dumbledore. I don’t feel like, “Oh, you don’t trust me!” kind of thing is coming from Harry at all. I just think it’s very smart. Dumbledore is just being very safe.

Kat: Yeah, I mean, because those Horcruxes would disappear in a minute if he got wind.

Eric: That’s true.

Kat: Those would be moved, and on the way out, of course, Harry is like, “Oh look! That ring. That’s the one that…”

Eric: Ah, it’s so cool.

Kat: “That’s Marvolo’s ring!” And he’s like, “Yes, it’s the very same.” “Is that how you injured your hand?” “Op, op! Can’t tell you! Too late! Sorry!”

Eric: “Op! Op! Op! The tale is so cool. You’re not going to hear it from me now. Sorry.”

Kat: Sorry!

Yulie: It’s the most frustrating thing about this book.

Eric: Yeah. Because he keeps putting it off.

Kat: Thank you, good night. Yep, exactly. So…

Eric: I feel like there’s so much time travel. That’s not time travel, but that is time travel, having seen this ring in a memory that takes place 80 years ago, or however many and then to come in this office and have it be that actual ring… The memory was just an imprint of it, but this exists here and now in this time and space. It’s super cool.

Kat: It would be about 70 years, because if this was ’24, this book takes place ’96-’97, so…

Eric: Yeah, 70 years. I mean, but this is the ring, and we know much more about this ring than even Marvolo ever hoped to. Oh, actually, I had a question about that. Do you think the knowledge just got lost down the years that the ring was in fact the Resurrection Stone? Because I think we know that Marvolo never really knew it.

Kat: No, I don’t think anybody knew. I don’t think that anybody expected the stone to be set into a ring. And I think that’s where it got convoluted and lost over the years.

Eric: Ohh. But because these are proud people who… you think they would boast about something like that.

Kat: Well, he does boast about it. He just has no effing clue what it is.

Eric: Right, but the…?

Kat: He just thinks its Peverell’s ring.

Alison: Doesn’t someone say, too, that they probably never read that fairy tale. They probably have no clue.

Eric: Oh, it has nothing to do with the fairy tale. The person who set it into the ring clearly knew what it was. Somebody somewhere knew what that was that they were dealing with and would have told their children. Right?

Alison: But the idea probably got lost throughout…

Kat: Well, not necessarily. I think that, as most urban legends do, not everybody believes them, so if you’re going to see this ring that has the Peverell crest on it, that doesn’t mean it’s the Resurrection Stone.

Eric: Well, okay, look at it this way, then. The person who has last used the Ressurection Stone would… wait, but he killed himself. Okay, nevermind. So there’s…

Kat: Yeah, I mean…

Eric: Okay, so innately, there’s this possibility that the only person who ever used the stone or knew what it was, was, in fact, the first guy and that somebody else just found it and thought it was cool and put it in a ring. Okay.

Kat: Yep. “Oh, look, it’s a Peverell crest. That’s really cool. Let’s put it in a setting. I’m going to give it to my…”

Eric: “Peverells? They lived next door to me.”

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Right. “I’m going it to my wife when I…

Eric: “Before they all mysteriously disappeared. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah. Exactly. So…

Eric: That’s funny.

Kat: But there we go. That’s Chapter 10 of Half-Blood Prince.

Alison: All right, and now, as we always do, we will move on to our Podcast Question of the Week for this week. So…

Kat: Which is such a good one, by the way.

Alison: Thanks. [laughs]

Eric: Ooh, can’t wait.

Kat: It’s so good. It’s really good.

Eric: Cannot wait.

Kat: It’s really good. I like it.

Alison: So at the end of this chapter, Harry and Dumbledore are talking about what they’ve seen in the memory, and Dumbledore says that Merope’s powers were suppressed by the way her father and brother treated her. This is paralleled a book later when we learn about Dumbledore’s sister Ariana, who also ends up going through some abuse and not showing her power. So however, we see that Merope’s powers simply seem to disappear until her father and brother are out of the way while Ariana’s burst out of her at different moments. So what is the difference between the two, and why do they react in such different ways? So head on over to alohomora.mugglenet.com and let us know what you think.

Eric: I love that question.

Yulie: He actually doesn’t have to wait until the next book to get a little snippet…

Eric: Yeah, a little preview, a little talking about Ariana. I feel like people were bringing up Ariana and Merope long ago. We were in Book 2, and somebody kept wanting to talk about it.

Kat: Well, Book 2 technically is the circle theory book to Book 6, so that makes sense.

Eric: Yeah, yeah. So finally, listeners – long-time listeners – here’s your chance. Start talking about it. Suppression powers…

Kat: Yeah, here you go. [laughs]

Eric: … and they’re effects on the wizarding world folk.

Kat: We want to hear what you think about Mer Mer.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: And Tom Tom.

Kat: [laughs] And Tom Tom.

Eric: And Vol Vol. Or Mort Mort. Whatever you want to call it.

Yulie: Oh, gosh. Everyone’s going to name their cats that, Tom Tom and Mer Mer.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: Tom Tom and Mer Mer.

Kat: It’s actually cute now that we’ve said it more than ten times.

[Yulie laughs]

Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it gets cuter the more you say it.

Kat: Won Won and Lav Lav. I mean, it’s a thing.

Eric: Right? It’s the same thing. We want to thank Yulia for joining us on our show.

Yulie: I really loved being here. [laughs]

Eric: Yuli, thank you so much for joining us. You were great, and your Ravenclaw was showing the entire time.

Kat: It was.

Eric: You did your House proud.

Kat: You did.

Yulie: Yay.

Kat: Thank you very much. You get 10 house points.

Yulie: Woo.

Eric: [laughs] Just 10?

Kat: Only 10, though, because you didn’t sneak out of school…

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: … and save it or anything. Only 10.

Eric: Only 10. Right, yeah.

Kat: Right, exactly.

Eric: If you had endangered a fellow professor, you’d have gotten 100.

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: Right.

Eric: Because Dumbledore is very soft on that.

[Alison and Yulie laugh]

Kat: Right, he is. Very much. And if any of you listening want to be on the show, like Yuli, I think you know how to do it by now. But just in case you don’t, head over to the “Be on the Show” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. You don’t need any fancy equipment. If you have something like an Apple set of headphones, you’re all set. All the instructions are right on the page. And while you’re there, don’t forget to download a ringtone of our awesome theme song. They’re free, yay.

Alison: And if you just want to keep in contact with us, we are on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN, on Facebook at facebook.com/openthedumbledore, [and on] Tumblr at mnalohomorapodcast. Or you can call us and leave us a message at 206-GO-ALBUS (206-462-5287). Or leave us an audioBoom on alohomora.mugglenet.com. It’s free. All you need is a microphone and just keep it under 60 seconds, please, so we can play them on the show.

Kat: And don’t forget about our store. Oh, guys, it’s almost flip flop season. It’s almost flip-flop season here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Alison: Oh, flip-flops.

Eric: Desk!Pig flip-flops.

Kat: It’s… well, we don’t have Desk!Pig flip-flops, but we should. That would be really cool. But we do have House shirts…

[Eric laughs]

Kat: … Desk!Pig shirts, Mandrake Liberation Front, Minerva Is My Homegirl, and so many more. We honestly are trying to come up with some designs. It’s been a little hectic because, if you all didn’t know, we are planning our very first live event, MuggleNet Live! Check it out: live.mugglenet.com. A lot of details. But we will have new shirts coming out very soon, we promise, promise. I think Eric has a really good idea for one, actually. So…

Alison: [laughs] I like it.

Eric: It’s Morfin Time.

[Alison, Eric, and Kat laugh]

Kat: I call red.

Eric: Okay. Well, there’s also these… oh, it’s going to be green. It’s just going to come in one color because he’s Slytherin. Never mind, maybe we can change it.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: Maybe we can make it multi-colored like a[n] Andy Warhol Morfin Time thing going on.

Kat: Dope.

Eric: I don’t know.

Kat: Okay. Cool. All right.

Eric: Play with some ideas. Yeah, yeah.

Kat: We could have a saber-toothed tiger in the background.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: [as a saber-toothed tiger] “Rawr!”

[Yulie laughs]

Kat: And a pterodactyl.

[Yulie laughs]

Eric: A little T-Rex.

Kat: [as a pterodactyl] “Aw! Aw!”

Eric: Oh, all in Little Hangleton.

[Alison, Kat, and Yulie laugh]

Eric: Between the mansion and the graveyard.

Kat: It’s perfection.

Eric: [laughs] I’m totally going to sketch this tonight. Okay.

[Yulie laughs]

Eric: There is also the smartphone app. It’s available on this side of the pond and the other. Prices do vary on this app of ours. You can find transcripts, bloopers, alternate episode endings, host vlogs, and much, much more. For more information, visit our website.

Kat: And I think we are finally out of footage from our trip to Universal.

Alison: Yep.

Kat: So it’s actually…

Alison: It’s my turn this week.

[Eric laughs]

Kat: Oh, Alison has it this week, so lovely.

Alison: Yeah.

Kat: It’ll be something…

Eric: Alison!

Kat: … super fun and dorky.

Alison: Hopefully. I actually…

Eric: You’ve got to show us the popcorn.

Alison: Okay.

Kat: Yeah.

Alison: Popcorn for sure.

Kat: Mhm.

[Alison laughs]

Kat: Okay, okay.

Eric: Yeah, 28 bags of it.

[Alison laughs]

Eric: I mean, might as well put them to good use. [laughs] Oh guys, this was another fun, fun, fun episode. Nice talking with you.

[Show music begins]

Eric: I’m Eric Scull.

Kat: I’m Kat Miller.

Alison: I’m Alison Siggard. Thank you for listening to Episode 128 of Alohomora!

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Sir?

[Show music continues]

Kat: Sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Can…? Hello, sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

[Show music continues]

Kat: Hello, sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Can you open the Dumbledore, please?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

Kat: Sir?

[Sound of a door knock]

[Show music continues]

Eric: One. Two. Three.

[Eric and Kat sing]

Kat: “Mer, mer.” [laughs] Oh my God. [laughs] I went “Mer, mer.” [laughs] I’m actually crying, like physically crying. Oh my God. [laughs] I’m sorry. [laughs] And with that [laughs] we end the chapter.