Transcript – Episode 55
[Show music begins]
Patrick Musilek: This is Episode 55 of Alohomora! for November 2, 2013.
[Show music continues]
Rosie Morris: Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Rosie Morris.
Patrick: I’m Patrick Musilek.
Laura Reilly: And I’m Laura Reilly. And here today we have two guests. Our first guest is Alex. Thank you very much for joining us, Alex.
Alex: Thank you for having me.
Laura: Would you like to tell a little bit about where you’re from or anything else? Your house?
Alex: I’m Alex, I’m 13, I’m from Atlanta, and I am…
Rosie: What’s your Hogwarts house?
Alex: Oh, yeah. I’m in Slytherin, which is awesome.
Laura: Ooh, very cool.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: I mean, I’m a Gryffindor, but I’ll let you stay.
Alex: [laughs] Thanks.
Laura: Also, thank you for joining us, Patrick. Patrick is one of our three editors and has been for a really long time. Thank you so much because he’s stepping in last minute for Eric who had to cancel, so thank you very much for joining us, Patrick.
Patrick: Oh, no problem. I tried to do as much prep as possible in the few hours that I’ve had. Just to let people know a little about me, I’ve been with the show since about Episode 4, so I mean, for a while now, but I am a Ravenclaw, so…
Laura: Very cool. And where are you from?
Patrick: I’m from Omaha, [Nebraska,] the middle of the country.
Laura: Very cool.
Rosie: So we actually have each house represented today. That’s quite cool.
Alex: Oh, that’s awesome!
Laura: Oh, yeah! That’s always exciting when that happens.
Patrick: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how our opinions differ.
Alex: Ha ha.
Laura: Definitely. So exciting news that you might have seen if you follow us through social media or the homepage: We have been nominated for the People’s Choice Podcast AWards.
Laura and Rosie: Yay!
Laura: And we are nominated because you guys, the fans, sent in your votes for us, so huge thank you. You are all super awesome. And it’s also really cool because we’re not the only ones who are nominated. We are nominated for Entertainment and People’s Choice, but our MuggleNet sister podcasts… two of them also got nominated. So Hogwarts Radio has been nominated for Best Produced, and MuggleNet Academia has been nominated for the Education category. So you should vote for all of us because you can because none of us are competing against each other, which is awesome. So you can vote daily through November 15. You must use a valid email, and once you’ve submitted just check your email, and click on the link. If you do not do this – click on the link to verify your email – the vote will not count, which is very sad. So thank you so much for getting us this far, and it would be really awesome if you could get us a little bit further.
Rosie: We’re all really, really grateful, and all of that will be on our website as everything… as normal, so you can find out more information on there.
Laura: We’ve got a real nice new, fancy banner…
Rosie: We do.
Laura: … because we are a nominee.
Patrick: Just as a reminder, we want to remind all the fans to read Chapter 17, “The Four Champions,” of Goblet of Fire so that you can listen along and get the most out of this podcast.
Rosie: We would also like to take a quick moment to thank our sponsor, Audible. Exclusively for fans of Alohomora!, they are offering a free audio download. They have over 150,000 titles to choose from, so head over to audiblepodcast.com/open to get yours now.
Patrick: Okay, so now we want to go into the chapter discussion from last week and get some comments and thoughts that other people had from the website and from calling in and everything, and our first comment is actually an audio clip that we’re going to play now from Hufflepuffskein. So let’s listen to that right now, and then we’ll discuss her thoughts.
[Audio]: Hi, y’all. This is Leah, or Hufflepuffskein on the forums. I was thinking about Eric’s dilemma regarding why the Aging Potion didn’t work to trick the Goblet of Fire. As a simple answer, I think Dumbledore expected students to try it, and so he created the Age Line using magic that would detect if the entrant used an Aging Potion, and I’m sure, being the smart guy he is, he thought of other possible methods that students might try and so put in countermagic for those. I also think this connects to Kat’s idea that the Aging Potion is simply aesthetic, used to change one’s appearance. Could it be that the reason Fred and George and the others came out with long beards is that the Age Line detected the use [of the] Aging Potion and then accelerated it like crazy so that they age much more than they intended and end up with old man beards like Dumbledore?
Laura: Yeah. I wasn’t on last week’s episode, but I also agree with what Kat is saying about the Aging Potion being only aesthetic. I think how I [saw] it happening was pretty much exactly like how the movie interpreted it, where they weren’t all wrinkly, old men. They just had the beards, and it was more comical. So I also agree that they didn’t physiologically morph into a 90-year-old man. That would be pretty scary. But I think… yeah. I definitely agree.
Rosie: I like the fact that this shows Dumbledore is a prankster as well. He didn’t know exactly what the students would try to do, so he did something funny to counter it. It’s just a nice way of showing he’s the fun Headmaster. [laughs]
Patrick: Well, and I like the idea that it brings up that he was planning… if this is true – that he specifically created this one defense for this specific way around – I like the idea that he maybe had to think of other things that could happen. I just have sort of always thought that whoever was trying to get through the line – over the Age Line – that they would grow a beard and that that would be it. But it’s interesting to think that there might be other defenses if other people tried other ways around or different things. So it opens up some interesting questions, too.
Alex: Well, see, what I’m really confused about with this is that Fred and George are really close to being sixteen – I mean, seventeen – and they’re using the [Aging] Potion, and [if] it’s simply an appearance thing, there isn’t going to be much change in appearance, and so, I really don’t see how it’s going to help.
Patrick: Yeah, and that’s how… the comment was hitting on that fact that because they specifically used an [Aging] Potion, the defense that Dumbledore actually put on it was to accelerate the [Aging] Potion way beyond what they intended it to do, and that’s how they ended up getting their beards and aging just crazily.
Alex: Right.
Laura: Yeah.
Alex: I really like that Dumbledore.
Patrick: So the next comment comes from forums, and it’s from StoneHallows, and it says,
“It makes me wonder what would happen if you didn’t try to be ‘older’ but just ignored the rule and tried anyway? Would you still grow a beard, or would something else happen? Obviously you wouldn’t be allowed to enter, regardless of if you tried to trick the Goblet or not, but what would happen if you didn’t try to trick?”
So this goes back to what we were saying. It brings up what else you could do. But even if you weren’t trying anything – if Colin Creevey just stepped over the line to try to put his name in the Goblet – what would happen?
Rosie: I think he still would have gotten the beard. I think it’s a kind of thing where it’s just a reminder that you needed to be older. So whatever happened, you would get this reminder of age in the form of facial hair for some reason. I like the fact that it doesn’t discriminate between genders as well. Girls can get beards, too. It’s funny.
Kat: Yay.
Patrick: Oh, yeah, definitely. So the next comment comes from the main site, and it’s from Madam Lestrange. She says,
“In this episode, you guys were talking about the decision of Beauxbatons to sit with Ravenclaw and Durmstrang to sit with Slytherin. I think that this was a plot device so that when the champions are chosen, itís almost as if there [were] one champion from every house (Gryffindor: Harry, Hufflepuff: Cedric, Slytherin: Durmstrang/Krum, Ravenclaw: Beauxbatons/Fleur).”
So I like this. I think that it’s… it helps the reader organize your thoughts a little bit more as you’re reading, and it helps [you] maybe identify with the entire school as a whole.
Alex: And I think it also sort of goes along with the Durmstrang/Dark Arts connection from last week, where Draco had his whole “Durmstrang has the Dark Arts” thing.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: Yeah, we had another Audioboo message saying something very similar, and I think it would be kind of a boring year for all of the Ravenclaws if they didn’t have Fleur, and it would be a boring year for the Slytherins if they didn’t have Krum…
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: … so it helps for the actual students there as well as for the readers having someone to root for.
Laura: Yeah.
Alex: They wouldn’t have anyone to cheer for.
Rosie: Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s true.
Rosie: [laughs] But if they didn’t have those two, do you reckon that the Ravenclaws would have gone, perhaps, with…
Laura: I think everyone would have supported Diggory.
Alex: I think they just would have done that because everyone’s just like, “Yay, Cedric Diggory is awesome. Harry Potter is not.”
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: But I mean, all the Gryffindors are happy for Harry, so wouldn’t one of the other houses be happy for him, too?
Alex: Well, yeah, I guess I get that, but well, Gryffindor is still not really everyone because there’s even his best friend. Ron is going against him. Because he’s thinking that he cheated with the Age Line.
Rosie: That’s true.
Patrick: Yeah, and it seems odd to me that nobody else really questioned it, but I mean, I guess if you’re looking at it from their point of view, it’s just [that] someone from their house is going to be represented in this giant event that’s taking place in the wizarding world, and they’re just happy about it. But I still think that a lot of the kids would have felt a lot of resentment toward Harry because I mean, technically he shouldn’t have been allowed in the tournament in the first place, so…
Rosie: Sure. We’ll discuss this a lot more later on because that’s obviously the chapter that we’re going through today, so keep those thoughts in mind. [laughs]
Patrick: Exactly. So our last comment from last week’s show comes from the forums, and it was by Tweak6. She says… she or he says,
“I always imagine Ludo Bagman as Boris Johnson…”
[Alex and Rosie laugh]
Patrick:
[continues]
“… the Mayor of London. Competely. He embodies ‘overgrown schoolboy’. For non British people, Boris is that man [who] got stuck on a zip line during the London Olympics.”
I’m sad I missed that.
“He’s also the guy [who] during his recent trip to China told them that Britain loves international students because Cho Chang, a Chinese exchange student, was Harry’s first girlfriend.”
Laura: Oh, Boris.
[Patrick laughs]
Alex: You don’t even know how much I love this.
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: That is great.
Laura: Yeah, I think probably… I mean, I pretty much know Boris Johnson largely for the zip line incident. [laughs]
Alex: Yeah.
Patrick: I missed that. I’m disappointed about that.
Rosie: Oh, it’s on YouTube. You can find it easily.
Patrick: I’ll have to do that.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: It’s pretty great.
Rosie: It’s hilarious because Boris is actually… or “was.” He’s not anymore since he became Mayor of London, but he was my local MP. So you can often…
[Alex laughs]
Rosie: … see him wandering around my town, especially on Christmas. He does all of his shopping on Christmas Eve. But it’s just hilarious. I could definitely see this being Boris. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah.
[Patrick laughs]
Laura: All right, so I think that wraps that up, so we’re going to move on to our Podcast Question of the Week responses. And this question asked… it was pretty broad in that it asks pretty much “What’s the deal with the Goblet of Fire?” whether that be its history, what you think it was initially used for, the powers it actually has… so all that jazz. We got a ton of responses. So this first comment comes from FredWeasleysGhost, which is the worst username…
[Alex laughs]
Laura: … I’ve ever seen. Right in the feelings.
Alex: I’m so sorry!
[Patrick laughs]
Laura: Right in the feelings. But anyway,
“I think it would be really cool if the Goblet [were] part of King Arthur’s legend. Merlin, knowing King Arthur needed help picking the knights for his round table, forged the goblet and enchanted it to pick the names of the bravest and best. Later, when the Triwizard Tournament was formed, it was enchanted to pick only three competitors, but because the enchantment was added later, and not when it was first created, Barty, Jr, was able to use a strong Confundus Charm to trick it into picking a fourth.”
So this person actually wasn’t the only person to make the connection to Merlin and King Arthur, but I liked their comment. So yeah, what do you guys think about that?
Rosie: I think it’s a bit of an inevitable connection with any goblet, really, isn’t it?
Alex: Mhm.
Patrick: Mhm. Yeah.
Laura: Yeah, because a lot of people were talking about the Holy Grail and making that connection, especially because someone pointed out how J.K. Rowling once said that the original working title in her head was The Cup of Destiny for The Goblet of Fire, and then she ended up – or something like that – going with Goblet of Fire because it had that Cup of Destiny feel to it. So yeah, and people associated that with the Holy Grail, and then with the Goblet of Fire, so yeah, I think it’s definitely an interesting parallel.
Rosie: I like that she went with “Goblet of Fire” rather than “Cup of Destiny” or whatever, though, because I think it’s more earthy, isn’t it?
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: It’s less grand, and you can believe it more.
Laura: Yeah.
Alex: I don’t think “cup” is awesome enough to be the Goblet of Fire.
Rosie: No.
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Laura: Which… I don’t know if you guys talked about this already. This is kind of a movie thing, but the Cup is pretty simplistic in the books. It’s pretty much literally that.
Rosie: Yeah.
Laura: It is just a cup. Whereas in the movie it’s this grandiose thing that’s all metal and stuff, but anyway… all right, so then this next comment comes from HallowsMaster97, and it says,
“I always thought the Goblet of Fire was made specifically for the Triwizard Tournament, but then it was cleverly pointed out that the Goblet failed to recognize the false fourth school…”
… which – side note from me – was pointed out by spectacularlyhypothetical. As a username. Okay. Anyway…
[Patrick laughs]
Laura:
[continues]
“The Triwizard Tournament is over 700 years old, so the Goblet must be older than that. Perhaps it was used to pick the best wizards in another competition, and then it was just configured, so it chose the best wizard out of the given schools. It is an ancient magical artefact and was probably created by a very powerful wizard. Also, I found the connection between the Goblet and the Unbreakable Vow very interesting. They both seem to have the same sort of enchantment [that] binds the wizard to a contract. However, I don’t think a person would die if they didn’t bid the Goblet[‘]s contract. They couldn’t possibly allow that in a tournament for students. And I found this really intriguing: the Goblet and the Unbreakable Vow are both linked to fire in some way. The Goblet creates sparks and bursts of fire whilst choosing the wizards, and the Unbreakable Vow links two wizards using flames. Fire is known to represent power, and both the Goblet and Unbreakable Vow are undeniably powerful. The Goblet and the Vow hold great power over a wizard once the contract is sealed.”
Okay, so I’m going to break that down – the two points. First half of it was pretty much saying that the Goblet was made… had to be made before the Triwizard Tournament because if it [had been] made only for the Triwizard Tournament, then it would know to only pick tri schools.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: So yeah. But if it [were] just something that was general for competitions, then that’s more easily done, that it would get a fourth.
Rosie: I think it still could have been made for the Triwizard Tournament.
Patrick: Yeah, I agree with that.
Rosie: I mean, you can create computer programs and things that would only… that you can change the details of, so it would recognize a fourth…
Laura: Yeah, that’s true.
Rosie … so I don’t see why you couldn’t do that with magic as well.
Laura: And the second half of this is… it’s funny to me that they’re saying, “Oh, they couldn’t possibly allow them to die in a sporting event…”
[Alex, Laura, and Rosie laugh]
Laura: … but it’s pretty much… all the tasks are pretty lethal.
Rosie: It’s all they know. [laughs]
Patrick: Yeah.
Alex: I know, let’s put the seventeen-year-old wizards in a tournament to the death, sort of…
Patrick: Mhm.
Laura: Right, so I think it’s funny… it’s putting a lot of unearned faith in saying, “They wouldn’t let that happen.”
Rosie: You have to remember also that the concept of childhood – and trying to keep children safe and pure – is only really a hundred or so years old, so seven hundred years ago they wouldn’t have cared at all.
Alex: Go die, children.
[Patrick laughs]
Laura: That’s true.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: I didn’t think about that. Yeah.
Patrick: Which is pretty much Hogwarts’s general stance on child abuse anyway.
Rosie: [laughs] Back to the Middle Ages. Sure, why not?
Patrick: Oh, yeah.
Rosie: If you’re older than eight, then you’re an adult.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: And moving… connecting from what the connection between the Unbreakable Vow and the Goblet are, this next comment is from cassandra vablatsky. And it says,
“The idea of a ‘”binding, magical contract”‘ is curious, IMHO – another example of ‘”magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable”‘ (POA22). For instance, I always wondered what would have happened if Harry had simply refused to participate in the Tournament? What if he had run away from Hogwarts as he briefly imagines doing (in his fear) before the First Task? The adults seem to agree that he *must* go through with it. No-one suggests otherwise, however worried they are about Harry (not Dumbledore, Sirius or even Molly Weasley). ‘”They’ve all got to compete,”‘ says Moody-Crouch (GOF17). Or what? Dumbledore had earlier warned ‘”that this Tournament is not to be entered into lightly … There can be no change of heart once you have become champion”‘ (GOF16). So is this like the Unbreakable Vow? Is Harry risking his life to compete because the alternative is certain death if he doesn’t? This might explain why it was so important to exclude underage students – but surely it would be too dark a concept for what is essentially a sporting contest?”
Alex: Yeah.
Laura: I find this really interesting.
Alex: It’s really interesting that they’re linking it to the Unbreakable Vow, because we’ve sort of… in Book 6 we see that it’s used for these really serious things and it doesn’t seem like it’s a thing that they’ll use, but now it’s being used for a common wizarding thing, and it doesn’t really seem like a thing that’s used a lot. It seems like something that’s super serious, so I think that puts more light onto how big of a deal this tournament is in the wizarding world.
Rosie: What do we reckon is the punishment? Do we really believe that there’s going to be certain death if he doesn’t compete? Or… I mean, it’s interesting in connection to the Second Task, where he almost misses it. He was asleep and almost was late. What would have happened to him if Dobby hadn’t woken him up?
Laura: That’s true. I… that was kind of… another person commented – and forgive me, I cannot remember who – but if it was just a matter of being compelled? Not even physically a magnetic pull, where he’s running and it’s like, “Nooo,” and he’s being dragged back by the invisible force, but more like that just the circumstances would have it that he just literally could not avoid it. So what you’re saying with the Second Task, yes, we could say that it was Dobby that woke him up, but is it a matter of, oh, Dobby woke him up because there was no way he could get out of it, so forces worked that way, or something?
Alex: Mhm.
Laura: I don’t know.
Patrick: Well, and see, the interesting thing to me about this – and maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit later, when we get into the chapter discussion – but the interesting thing about this is that they’re saying that Harry can’t get out of it because his name’s come out of the Goblet. Now, his name has come out of the Goblet because we know somehow someone used powerful magic to get it in there. I mean, at this point we know that it was Barty Crouch. But doesn’t that lead one to think that the obvious alternative to that would be, can’t Dumbledore or someone use even more powerful magic to re-enchant the Goblet or do something to take Harry out of this obligation, to get him out of his obligation to be in the Tournament at all in the first place?
Alex: See, what I’m finding really interesting is how… with what Laura was saying with the comment she read. It’s like, the Goblet is some sort of really powerful object, and it’s manipulating these events in time around it, and I’m sort of wondering where these enchantments come from and what type of magic this is?
Rosie: It does seem to be very old magic, doesn’t it?
Patrick Yeah.
Alex: Like really, really old.
Rosie: Yeah. So, what was the point? Why have a tournament of wizards for eternal glory? Who decided that they wanted to do this thing? I want to know the history of the Triwizard Tournament. Where are those books that Hermione read?
[Alex and Patrick laugh]
Laura: There was a lot of comments that I just couldn’t get to that related it very much to the Grecian Olympics.
Rosie: Sure.
Patrick: Hmm. Yeah.
Laura: Basically saying that it was 700 years ago, very much a tournament of strength and the idea of a Wizard Olympics, but I don’t know why it necessarily had to be students, but…
Alex: See, I’m getting sort of the vibe of a gladiatorial game. Maybe that’s sort of where it fits in in history…
Laura: Right, yeah.
Patrick: Mhm.
Alex: … because it’s like competing in these dangerous tasks for not really any good reason.
Laura: Besides just glory. I mean, I guess they get money, too.
Alex: Yeah.
Laura: But then again, I mean… I guess you can make the case that that’s really what the Olympics are.
Rosie: Yeah, we’ve had that throughout history. Like you said, with the gladiators, the Olympics, even jousting and things, medieval tournaments. There’s a lot of history of people wanting to prove that they’re the best of something without really any reason why. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah, and it’s also that they are seventeen. Well, I guess only the age restriction was put on it for this year, but I was going to say if it was maybe a coming-of-age, proving-you’re-a-man-type business, but I don’t know. And this last comment comes from Justin Allison and it says,
“When I heard this question on the podcast the first thing I thought of was the Fountain of Fair Fortune as seen in Tales of Beedle the Bard. Hundreds of wizards and muggles alike flocked to the Fountain to benefit from its supposed magical powers even though, as the narrator reveals to the reader at the end of the story, “the Fountain’s waters carried no enchantment at all”. I think the Goblet of Fire might be similar. Maybe it’s nothing more than a fancy lottery system that gains its respect from the legend behind it rather than from what it actually does…As far as the binding magical contract, maybe this is just all in their heads. Crouch is the kind of person who likes to follow established rules. Maybe he accepts that the Goblet can force people into competing because that’s what he’s always been told.”
And I abridged that a bit, so…
Rosie: I think that one’s pushing it, perhaps, a bit far. I don’t think that Dumbledore and everyone would be taken in by that.
Alex: Yeah, I don’t think Dumbledore would… I mean, I get Barty Crouch because he’s really obsessed with these rules, but I think Dumbledore – if he would have been able to realize – I don’t think he would have been fooled by a fancy lottery drawing. I don’t know.
Rosie: It makes you wonder if someone’s ever tried to run away and then it’s proven that it’s not possible.
Alex: Oh, that’s…
Patrick: Well, you’ve got to think of it too in context of back when the tournament was actually going on, it probably… I don’t know how regular it would have been. Was this an annual thing? Or every four or five years? But you would assume that back in that day everyone knew what it was and so you wouldn’t even attempt to put your name in unless you specifically wanted to be apart of the tournament. And then, if that’s the case though, I don’t think anybody would try to run away because they would already have known what was in store for them before they put their name in the cup.
Rosie: True.
Laura: I have a side question and this might be cut out if I’m just totally wrong, but I’m just asking. In the book, does it say when Harry… it… his name gets pulled, does it say, “Harry Potter dash Hogwarts?” Because I know he… it was saying that he was put under a fourth school and I was just wondering if he put the “School of Magic,” whatever.
Rosie: We never see the actual piece of papers. It’s only Dumbledore that sees it.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: So it’s possible, but…
Laura: So yeah, I would imagine that Dumbledore would read it and be like, “Hmm, Harry Potter, Rutgers University.” It’s like…
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: Yeah. Well, do we actually… when Dumbledore is interrogating Barty Crouch Jr. at the end, does he specifically say that that’s what he did? Or are we just taking it on fake Moody’s word in this chapter that if he was the one doing it, that’s what he would do? Is that the only thing we’re going off of? Or is that…
Rosie: I think he definitely does say it in the interrogation at the end as well, but he does say it in this chapter as well.
Laura and Patrick: Okay.
Laura: I was just thinking of that.
Rosie: He probably just adds an apostrophe somewhere or something.
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Laura: Yeah. Hogwarts with a “Z”.
Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]
Alex: Gangsta Hogwarts.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: So okay, I think that wraps up our Podcast Question of the Week, but I just want to take a moment again to talk about Audible. Something that was really great… I actually truly used Audible this past week using our slash open because I had so much to do for school and I had to read an entire novel for my midterm in two days.
Rosie: Ouch!
Laura: And I just didn’t have enough time to sit down and read. So while I was walking to class and while I was doing my dishes and literally while I was showering, I just had this book playing and it made me finish the book so much faster. So yeah, Audible is really great for that in the sense of school. So go to Audible.
Rosie: Yeah. Honestly, my house is just so full of books that I don’t have the space for anything more either, so I will most likely get my next book on Audible as well. After all, Audible is the best place for all of your audio downloading needs. And right now, Audible has a great special offer for US and Canadian listeners. They can visit our unique link, created specifically for them and get a free audio download today, right now. They just have to go to audiblepodcast.com/open.
Patrick: You can also download it using Audible’s listener program, which basically allows you to purchase book credit at a super low monthly rate and then you can use it at any time for anything that Audible offers, which is pretty cool.
Rosie: And with over 150,000 titles, you have a lot of options. Head over to audiblepodcast.com/open and start downloading directly to your computer for easy listening on burned CDs, MP3 players, or even on your iPad, iPhones, or Androids. Again, the website made just for you is audiblepodcast.com/open. So visit audiblepodcast.com/open for your free download today. How many times can we say the same link in the same little section?
[Everyone laughs]
Patrick: You’ve got to drive the point home.
Rosie: We do. And to drive the next point home, we are now going to start Chapter 17.
[Goblet of Fire Chapter 17 intro begins]
Ron: Chapter 17.
[Whispering noises]
Ron: “The Four Champions.”
[Goblet of Fire Chapter 17 intro ends]
Rosie: So in the last chapter we heard that Harry’s name has been pulled from the Goblet and we pick up straight away as the next chapter starts. Everyone is staring at Harry who is struggling to believe what has just happened. Were you guys shocked when it happened the first time you read it? Can you remember?
Alex: I wasn’t really because Harry always gets himself in to the… they’re not going to have a big wizarding tournament and Harry’s not going to be in it for some reason.
Rosie: Yeah, it’s kind of inevitable. [laughs]
Laura: I mean, the cover is spoilery in that regard.
Rosie: That is true.
Patrick: Yeah.
Alex: Oh, look! It’s him battling dragons! But he’s not going to battle dragons in this book or anything.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: Right.
Rosie: Considering they’ve mentioned dragons so many times already as well and there’s one on the front cover, it’s like, “Oh, right, okay. Surprise!” [laughs] But as we are not at that point yet, we see McGonagall rushing up to Dumbledore as soon as the name is pulled out to whisper in his ear as Dumbledore looks on with a concerned expression. What do you reckon McGonagall is actually saying to Dumbledore at this point?
Laura: Just pretty much echoing what she says out loud, I believe, later of…
Patrick: What the heck?
Laura: Yeah, this can’t happen.
Rosie: But even she doesn’t have a solution, which is sad.
Patrick: I imagine her immediately thinking, instead of just being, “How did this happen?” immediately thinking, “Why did this happen?” Going up to… the reason she runs up to Dumbledore right away rather than just standing up and going, “What’s going on?” is because she immediately thinks, “Okay, something’s going on here,” run over to Dumbledore and we’ve got to try to figure it out.
Rosie: I like how much she cares for Harry as well. I mean, she’s the head of house. She doesn’t actually have to go out of her way as much as she does for Harry and the other two and I think she really does care for the little boy without his parents. She’s another mother for him.
Laura: Aww.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: But Harry turns to his friends and immediately protests his innocence, but they just… even Ron and Hermione just sat there staring at him not really saying anything and no one in the hall seemed to believe him. So when Dumbledore calls him up to the top table, everyone just watches and you could hear the buzzing, whispers growing louder, but there’s no heckles or anything. You’d expect Draco to stand up and shout something. But even Hagrid’s astonished. McGonagall may rush up to Dumbledore, but Hagrid’s just sat there staring as well. Why didn’t any of his friends stick up for him?
Alex: Okay, this scene, it’s sort of… especially in the book and in the movie, it’s just a wakeup call. Not everyone’s going to be there for you and understand what’s going on all the time and this is the first time we see Dumbledore and he’s not completely all-knowing and he’s just, he doesn’t know and he’s completely baffled by this.
Patrick and Rosie: Mhm.
Laura: Yeah, I think, pretty much the reason why his friends don’t stick up for him is the same reason that Ron eventually doesn’t support him, because they just don’t necessarily support it either. I think Hermione’s probably terrified or whatever.
Rosie: True, Hermione later says that she knew straight away from his expression, but she’s even stunned at this point, which is sad. People who are not stunned, however, are the people in the portraits who are starting gossiping straight away, but this is actually in the next room, so Harry is cast out of the Great Hall into the next room and the portraits in there are gossiping. So, how did they know what happened? The other champions didn’t hear, but apparently, the portraits have got very good hearing.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s interesting. I… there must be some sort of a chain of… I mean, I don’t know. We find out later that Violet runs up and tells the Fat Lady what happens, but are there actually any portraits in the Great Hall?
Rosie: Not that I knew of, but perhaps there are?
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: Maybe I am getting confused with Wizarding World.
Alex: Do they exactly know… do we exactly know that they’re gossiping about Harry? I mean, it’s an exciting thing in and of itself even without the fourth champion. I mean, they might be gossiping about that. But maybe when Harry walks in, then maybe they’ll start gossiping about that. Who knows what portraits do.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: That’s true. Maybe they know the procedure and they know that there shouldn’t be a fourth kid entering at this point.
Alex: Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: That’s why they are gossiping. So we then get a nice little description of the three champions as they are currently in the room, looking rather intimidating to Harry’s young eyes. And I thought it was interesting that Krum is standing apart from the other two, described as looking brooding as he always is. But you’d think, I mean, Fleur doesn’t really seem to care about anyone else other than herself. Krum is a famous wizard and she doesn’t seem to be affected by it at all, considering her Veela powers that she later uses on other people. Do we get a wrong impression of who Fleur is based on I guess fandom writing about her? Because we always see her as very self-centered and very almost fake, I guess, but she’s not particularly interested in falling over other famous people. She just cares about herself. [laughs]
Laura: I wouldn’t call her fake ever.
Rosie: No?
Laura: I think more as the exact opposite. She’s 100 percent open about her opinions. She’s not being like, “Oh my God, Hogwarts is so pretty.” She’s like, “Eww, what is this?”
Rosie: That’s true.
Alex: [in a French accent] “Zis little boy.”
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: Yeah, I think she’s the opposite of fake.
Patrick: Well, in this specific instance too, you got to think that she was really hoping that her name would get picked out of the Goblet, but it actually was. So she might… despite how confident she is and the fact that she is half Veela, she might actually be feeling a little bit scared and a little apprehensive and so she’s over there with the other two champions excited and like, “Oh, what’s going to happen next?” Whereas Krum, he’s so used to all this attention and when his name was picked from the Goblet, I’m sure he was excited, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to have him roll his eyes too, like, “Oh gosh, here were go.” So it’s… if you look at it from that point of view, Krum is so used to everything, he’s just off in the corner chilling like, “Okay, let these guys have the spotlight for a little while.” Whereas Fleur is sitting there maybe a little bit excited and maybe a little scared too.
Laura: And also, I mean, her thunder is getting taken in that regards too.
Patrick: Mhm.
Laura: Same for Cedric.
Patrick: Yeah.
Laura: Especially Cedric.
Alex: Because now all the…
Patrick: Yeah.
Alex: … focus is on Harry because he’s just this thing that nobody’s used to seeing, the fourth champion.
Rosie: True, but they don’t know it yet and when Harry enters the room, Fleur asks if they want her and the rest of the champions to go back into the Great Hall. So she thinks that he’s just the messenger.
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: And it seems surprising to me that she doesn’t know who Harry is. This is Harry Potter!
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Laura: Well, I think she knows that it’s… does she know that it’s Harry? Or I think she still… I would think that she knows that it’s Harry, but just doesn’t think he’s there for a purpose. He’s Harry the messenger boy.
Rosie: Mhm.
Patrick: Well, and the room is probably dark too. She probably didn’t necessarily be able to… she probably wasn’t able to see. “Oh, just this little kid coming in to tell us to go back out there.”
Rosie: That’s true, he’s not particularly impressive yet. [laughs]
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: However, Bagman is the next person to enter the room and immediately tells them all what has just happened, that Harry is the fourth champion…
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: … and that it’s a very odd situation, but he doesn’t seem to be too worried. Do you think he’s just enjoying the spectacle of the occasion? He doesn’t ever seem to fret about the fact that this young boy is now going to now be be facing dragons.
Patrick: Oh, absolutely. He’s just really excited that something completely unique is happening and that he’s part of it. He’ll be able to… whatever it is, he’ll be able to use it to his advantage somehow and he just is immediately happy.
Laura: Telling stories.
Patrick: Yeah.
Alex: He’s going to tell this one at parties.
Rosie: [laughs] That’s true.
Laura: Right.
Rosie: He’s almost as annoying as Lockhart except that the story’s actually happened to him.
Alex: Oh, I just realized that comparison! That’s…
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: Yeah. [laughs] All of the other teachers – the head teachers at the other schools – and McGonagall and Snape then enter after sorting out the rest of the school. I like that that detail is in there so that you remember it’s not all about Harry and that there are the rest of the school out there as well that’s functioning normally.
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: They all have to get sent back to their dormitories even though Harry has left the room and this is the moment that Fleur calls Harry, “A little boy.”
[Alex laughs]
Rosie: Which Harry obviously objects to, which is like, “Aww, poor Harry.” [laughs] This scene makes me question why Snape is there. I mean, you can understand why the heads of the other schools are there and why his head of house is there, but Snape’s just there to stir up and gloat, isn’t he?
Alex: I think so. I don’t… there’s no real reason for Snape to be in there. He’s not connected to Harry in any way.
Laura: Because Sprout isn’t there, right?
Rosie: No.
Patrick: Right.
Laura: So… right.
Rosie: He’s literally just there to be there to be Snape and to sneer down his nose.
Alex: It’s just like, “I am Snape. I can be wherever I want.”
Rosie: And of course, this is the famous scene as seen on our T-shirts, where Gambon is not perhaps the best impression of Dumbledore.
Alex: [imitating Michael Gambon] “Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire!”
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: “Dumbledore asked, calmly.” What more do we need to say, really?
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: It’s just completely wrong.
Laura: Le sigh.
Rosie: Yeah, and there’s been some great discussion around social media and on our forums about the fact that this scene is just not how it was suppose to go.
Patrick: Yeah, well, this is the moment that we finally realize that Dumbledore is crazy!
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: Yay! I was really tempted to when I was… when MuggleNet hosted the Harry Potter Oscars and I was making all the videos – the nomination videos – for that, I was really tempted when making the Best Adapted Screenplay one…
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: … to just play that scene and just put the text over it that just says, “He said, calmly.”
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Laura: But I felt like that was biased a little bit, so…
Rosie: Potentially. There has been a lot of great discussion that it’s not Gambon’s fault as well and that it’s all director’s influence and all of that kind of thing, so it would be interesting to see whether it’s in the screenplay down as “calmly” or if it was changed right from there.
Patrick: In the grand scheme of things too, it really doesn’t matter, and it does build tension for the movie because what they’re doing is hitting home the fact that for the first time, like you mentioned earlier, Dumbledore isn’t in control of the situation, he doesn’t know what’s happening, and so that does really help to hit that home, that something’s going on.
Rosie: Yeah. So moving on, we see Karkaroff suggest resubmitting the names of the other students so that each school can get two champions and equal out the playing field a bit, but it says that the goblet can’t be relit, so this is interesting going back to our previous discussion about the goblet. How does it know when a tournament begins if it’s not being lit by the wizards that light it? It seems that it has it’s own consciousness that knows what’s going on.
Alex: I’m wondering how do they know when it can be lit again. Is it battery charging? What’s happening?
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: Is there some kind of scroll that they all sign? But then why couldn’t you just do that again and say that there’s just two tournaments running simultaneously?
Patrick: Yeah. If there is this binding magical contract that we already talked about, just starting another tournament immediately would create more binding contracts to have another. I think, like you just said, there would have to be two running at the same time because we’ve already established that you can’t not have the tournament, so…
Rosie: But I guess if you’re doing a simultaneous tournament, then you’d have to have seven champions rather than six because Hogwarts would still need to be represented in that second tournament.
Patrick: Oh! No, that’s true.
Alex: Oh, yikes!
Rosie: So it’s just… it’s very complicated.
Patrick: Well, and the thing that struck me as weird too while I was rereading the chapter is that Karkaroff immediately goes to this, “Well, we need two champions, too.” My first thought would be let’s try to get Harry out of this, and they’ve already talked about that a little bit, but no one specifically said that that’s not going to happen at this point yet…
Rosie: Yeah.
Patrick: … and so I was wondering why did he jump to that immediately? But when you think about it, it does make sense because it would get two more, another chance for his school to win.
Rosie: It’s really interesting to me that everyone is more interested in the tournament than the safety of the students.
Patrick: Oh, yeah.
Rosie: Maxime says, “It’s like giving Hogwarts two bites of ze apple,” and all that kind of thing, and it’s just…
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Which is a very valid point, though. I’m kind of on her side there. It’s super unfair!
Patrick: Oh, yeah.
Rosie: Yes, it’s super unfair, but poor Harry!
Alex: Poor Harry, but oh well, poor us. Poor other schools.
Rosie: It’s just is the tournament really worth that much? It’s only a thousand Galleons and so-called eternal glory that no one ever really knows about them again.
Alex: I think it’s odd that we don’t hear… this supposedly eternal glory, but we don’t hear about any other Triwizard Tournament members.
Rosie: Yeah exactly.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: We don’t know a single other competitor from the past.
Alex: Eternal glory for five seconds.
Rosie: Exactly. [laughs]
Patrick: Well, another interesting thing to think about too is, are we just going to assume that this is the last Triwizard Tournament that ever takes place?
Alex: I think it should be.
Rosie: Interesting. I think, if it’s been resurrected this time, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be resurrected again once Voldemort is out of the way.
Patrick: Well, but at the same time, the Triwizard Tournament from now on might always be associated with, “Oh yeah, Voldemort came back last time.”
Rosie: True, so it’s like a jinx. Don’t do it.
Patrick: Yeah, I think that really puts a damper on future Triwizard Tournaments.
Rosie: It’s like saying “beetlejuice” three times.
Laura: Yeah.
Patrick: Exactly.
Alex: I’m sort of seeing… what we’ve been discussing is the history of the Triwizard Tournament and the modern Triwizard Tournament. I’m wondering if there’s any relation between Ancient Greek Olympics and modern-day Olympics because there’s… I’m wondering if it’s been updated, but then again there’s still…
Rosie: Yeah, it’s massively different. Yeah, you can see the tournament’s been updated as well.
Alex: But they’re still having children possibly dying, so probably not very much.
Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]
Patrick: Well, does the goblet know what the three tasks are going to be before people enter their names? Is that a factor in how it picks who deserves to be a champion?
Rosie: That would be interesting.
Laura: That would be really interesting. I like that idea.
Patrick: I don’t know.
Rosie: I guess one thing we could compare the goblet to is the Sorting Hat. We’ve never really made that connection. Maybe it has this consciousness that…
Laura: Yeah, that was a lot of the questions that people commented on Podcast Question of the Week responses. We were getting so many good responses now, it’s making it more difficult to narrow it down.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: But yeah, there was lot of… something hypothetical that made the connection to the Sorting Hat and saying that it was, yeah, this unconscious, sort of animate object.
Rosie: So we just retired the T-shirt, but is it alive?
Alex: So I just got this idea of the Sorting Hat and the Goblet of Fire… the Sorting Hat finally having a sorting buddy.
Rosie: Aww.
Laura: I don’t think the goblet talks, so it would probably be really one-sided friendship.
Alex: Poor, lonely Sorting Hat.
Patrick: Mhm.
Alex: Does the goblet spit out words like love notes?
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: It’s spitting out charred pieces of paper. “I love you, Sorting Hat.”
Patrick: Well, they were alluding to that in last week’s episode, that Dumbledore has a very intimate relationship with the cup…
[Laura and Alex laugh]
Patrick: … so maybe it just likes to spread its love around.
Laura: Oh dear.
Rosie: Okay.
Laura: I did not hear that.
Rosie: At this point in the story, Moody enters and immediately says, “Convenient, eh?” Perhaps Moody’s Canadian.
[Laura and Patrick laugh]
Rosie: Sorry. It’s interesting that he really does go into the monologuing thing here, but I’ll get that in a second. A side note is that there are three ex-Death Eaters in this room now on this anniversary of Voldemort’s downfall.
Laura: Oh.
Patrick: Ooh.
Rosie: And none of them know each other. Well, Karkaroff and Snape know each other, but…
Alex: Oh! Oh, that just reminded me, this is the nineteenth anniversary – well, when we’re recording now – is the nineteenth anniversary of this happening. So yay!
Rosie: It is. We’ve managed to do really well on our timing because the First Task is also going to be November 24…
Alex: Oh, that’s fantastic.
Rosie: Which is the same week that we’ll cover it on the show.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: We’ve done really well.
Laura: Wait, so are you saying this took place on Halloween that we’re talking about?
Alex, Patrick, and Rosie: Yeah.
Laura: Oh my God!
Rosie: So last week, it was Halloween. And this week, it’s still Halloween.
Patrick: Yeah, we haven’t touched on it yet, but for everybody listening, this is being recorded on Halloween.
Laura: Happy Halloween!
Alex: Yay!
Patrick: Obviously, at this point, we hope all of you had a very great Halloween and that no one was hurt eating apples with razor blades in them or anything like that.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: Yeah.
Rosie: So, as I just said, Little Crouch, as we have nicknamed him…
[Patrick, Laura, and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: … explains exactly what is going on in this scene, and he does his example of villain monologuing, but before it’s even happened, where he explains exactly how he did it and exactly what his plan was, and no one pays attention, even though Karkaroff actually accuses him at this point.
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: He even says, “You seem to have thought a lot about it,” and it’s true.
Laura: We found the answer to the mystery before it’s even started.
Rosie: Exactly.
Patrick: Mhm.
Laura: And none of us even noticed it.
Rosie: Nope.
Patrick: Brilliant.
Rosie: Which makes it even more satisfactory when you go back and read it and go, “Oh! I’m an idiot!”
Patrick: Yup.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: Obligatory genius moment!
Alex: See, what’s weirding me out about that is in the movie, what really bugged me was it showed Igor Karkaroff going into the room and closing the doors. I don’t even know what that was trying to allude to.
Rosie: It really tried to frame him as the bad guy, didn’t it? The movie.
Alex: Yeah, I’m thinking that because we already… we’re already set up to not like him very much, within the movie, and then we see him closing the doors, all suspicious eyes.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: I guess it’s harder to be subtle in a movie than you are in a book because we are still convinced that he is an evil guy in the book, but not quite to the same extent.
Alex: Right. I am getting that now.
Rosie: We’re also given more examples of the real Moody’s paranoia at this point. Karkaroff mentions his birthday present, which he was convinced was a basilisk egg and turned out to be a carriage clock.
[Alex laughs]
Rosie: Why do we not see this in later examples of Moody? He’s meant to be this paranoid guy, and he just seems normal later on.
Patrick: Well, clearly, being locked up in a trunk for an entire year, he wouldn’t be paranoid after that at all.
Rosie: [laughs] Exactly! He should be worse, and he’s not.
Laura: I feel like…
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: He should never leave the house again. [laughs]
Laura: We really don’t actually see that much of him.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. We don’t really actually see very much of Moody after this.
Rosie: We see him with the seven Harrys scene, where he…
Patrick: Yeah, he’s going to blow his buttock off.
Alex: Yes.
Rosie: Right.
Laura: We see him a little bit through Order and stuff, but I don’t think it’s really enough for something to happen.
Rosie: Okay.
Alex: I know. And we see him at the beginning of Book 5 and he’s like, “Oh, you were locked in a trunk for a year,” and he’s like, “Oh, whatevs.”
Rosie: We seem to… I guess it’s the introduction of Tonks, where she obviously revers him. The attitude of people towards him seems to be a lot more impressed later onthan it is at this moment.
Laura: Yeah.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: But maybe that’s just because there’s so many Dark wizards around that we don’t realize are Dark wizards yet.
Laura: And we find out that all of these people are Death Eaters in this book.
Rosie: We do.
Laura: It’s ex-Death Eater overload.
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: Well, I guess we spent the whole of last book thinking that we had an ex-Death Eater that then turned out not to be. This time it’s the opposite.
Laura: Yeah, making up for lost ex-Death Eaters.
Rosie: Yeah.
Patrick: Do we actually even know who the Death Eaters were until the Quidditch World Cup at the beginning of this book?
Rosie: That’s true. We didn’t. We knew that they were Voldemort’s supporters, but we didn’t have a name for them.
Laura: Right. That’s what I always forget rereading, when the introduce the concept of Death Eaters. I’m like, “Oh, wow.” Even Snape being a Death Eater, to me, they’re just concepts that are so ingrained in my brain that I forget that we didn’t learn about that for a really long time.
Rosie: And then we have one of my favorite lines in the books, where Little Crouch says, “It’s my job to think the way Dark wizards do, Karkaroff, as you ought to remember.” And it’s just another obligatory genius moment again, where Jo makes her characters say these ambiguous things that are true no matter which way you look at them. If it was Moody, then it would be true, and as it’s not Moody, it’s even more true.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: Because he is a Dark wizard, so of course it’s his job to think the way Dark wizards do.
Alex: Because he is one!
Rosie: It’s just brilliant writing. So we have Dumbledore asking the other esteemed wizards in the room for solutions. Anyone have any idea of how Harry can get out of this? And everyone stays silent, which is just sad. This is… these are your teachers. They are meant to be the greatest wizarding minds helping you out in every kind of way, and no one has any idea of how to get Harry out of a competition he didn’t enter.
Laura: And not they’re just like, “Oh, the fiery cup told us we had to, so we will.”
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: In the movie, there’s that scene where Dumbledore’s talking to McGonagall. That happens right after this scene in the movie, right?
Rosie: I haven’t watched the movie in ages.
Patrick: Well, there’s a scene where Dumbledore’s talking to McGonagall, and basically they agree together to let the whole thing play out to see what’s happening.
Rosie: All right. Okay.
Patrick: And I’ve always really liked that scene because to me that seems to be the kind of thing that could have actually happened in the book. It’s not just something we got to see because Harry wasn’t there.
Rosie: Sure.
Patrick: And so if you think about it that way, maybe Dumbledore isn’t… because I’m sure Dumbledore could have figured out a way to get him out of this. You can’t tell me that Barty Crouch Jr. is a better wizard than Dumbledore because he can fool the tournament and Dumbledore can’t. I just think at this point, Dumbledore is already trying to plan really far ahead.
Rosie: Yeah.
Laura: He’s almost curious what’s the meaning behind it.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.
Rosie: Maybe he also thinks that he can work to protect Harry throughout the tournament, so you might as well let it play out and try and get to the guy to reveal himself later on, whoever the bad guy is.
Patrick: And we also know he feels very strongly about Harry’s abilities. Maybe he legitimately is excited that Harry’s actually in the tournament. Maybe he thinks that he has a legitimate chance of winning.
Rosie: Maybe he has two Sickles on it.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: Maybe he had a bet with…
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: We see then, Mr. Crouch is described as coming out of a deep reverie. And I was just wondering, do we know if he’s under the Imperius Curse yet? Has Crouch Jr. already cast a spell on his father? Because all of the descriptions here make him sound very ill, and it sounds like he’s under a curse and being called upon in select moments and not really knowing what’s going on.
Alex: What if… I’m thinking because maybe if the curse is newer, it’s going to be stronger. I’m wondering if this is the effects because the curse is being cast right now. What if it happened in this scene?
Rosie: It could be, yeah.
Patrick: That’s interesting, yeah.
Rosie: He’s described as ill earlier on in the chapter as well, before Moody enters the room, but he’s not described as… this moment where he comes out of a deep reverie just makes me… we see this later on with other people when they’re called upon to talk, they reanimate under the Imperius Curse. So it could have just happened, yeah. We’ll have to keep an eye on him from now on.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: But yeah, poor Crouch, he’s definitely ill. Maybe before, he was just worried that his son has been misplaced.
[Patrick and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: Now he’s actually being controlled by him. But then we get a description of the First Task, to an extent anyway. They say that they’re not going to tell you what it is, but it’s designed to test your daring and that it will require courage in the face of the unknown. And then we get that main rule, the do not ask for help or accept help from your teachers. And it just… why does no one other than Harry help Cedric when everyone else is cheating? Pure little humble Hufflepuff Cedric. [laughs] Give him a break!
Laura: Humblepuff!
Rosie: Humblepuff! I like that. Even if… why isn’t Sprout helping out? Why is Hogwarts so much better than the other schools? [laughs]
Alex: If anything, even in the Second Task, Sprout should know about Gillyweed before Neville should, I think.
Rosie: Yeah.
Alex: And he only figured it out because of Barty Crouch’s plan thing.
Laura: Mhm. I do think it comes down to that it’s against the rules and they care about it.
Rosie: Yeah. Hogwarts just seems to take the competition less seriously than the other schools.
Patrick: Mhm.
Alex: But then there’s Hagrid and he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to be really subtle, but here’s the forest and here’s dragons, so…”
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: But we’ve seen Hagrid do that before. “Shouldn’t have said that. Should not have said that.”
Alex: “Should not have said that.”
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: But do we actually ever see what… or do we know what Cedric does to get his egg?
Rosie: I think that we hear from Moody that he told him to take a bath or whatever.
Patrick: Mmm.
Rosie: Oh, you mean to get the egg with the first task?
Patrick: Yeah, to get the egg in the first place.
Laura: Yeah, he transforms…
Patrick: Oh, a rock into a dog?
Laura: A rock into a dog, yeah.
Alex: Ron tells us.
Patrick: I wonder… I’m sure he had help from all of his friends and stuff. We don’t see what he does everyday. Maybe he did get help from one of the teachers or Professor Sprout.
Alex: Oh, I disagree entirely.
Patrick: Really?
Alex: Yeah.
Rosie: He definitely didn’t know about the dragons until Hagrid.
Alex: He definitely didn’t. That’s why he does the poorest.
Patrick: Hmm, okay.
Rosie: So we see that Dumbledore is looking at Crouch with mild concern here. That’s how he’s described. So it makes me wonder what he’s noticed. I mean, this was the most Crouch-like we’ve seen Crouch in this scene where he was actually telling the rules and describing it. Although he does kind of defer to Dumbledore to make sure he’s got it correctly. So it just makes me wonder, how does Dumbledore have so little control this year? He seems to notice the things that are going wrong, but he doesn’t seem to do anything about it. Is it just as you guys were saying earlier? He is controlled but he is wanting to watch it play out. Maybe that’s why they added that scene in the movie to give those answers.
Patrick: Mhm. I think that’s definitely what’s happening. He’s already decided at this point that it’s more important for him to figure out what’s going on than Harry’s safety. Which kind of goes against what we know what Dumbledore thinks about Harry, but I think he has enough faith in his skill to protect Harry that he’s willing to let it go and see what happens.
Alex: Yeah.
Rosie: Sure. So Dumbledore sends everyone off to bed. So Cedric and Harry head off up the marble staircase. We see Madame Maxime whispering to Fleur as they leave in French. I don’t think we actually get a description of what happens to Krum, but they all spread off into their separate ways. And Harry says, “Was anyone except Ron and Hermione going to believe him?” Because Cedric doesn’t. And then, yeah, poor Harry, not even Ron. The two people he thinks is going to believe him no matter what and not even Ron believes him. And he’s so aware of his limitations and he’s really intimidated by the older students at this point. This is one of the first internal monologues we get where he’s really kind of worried about what’s going to go on. But even then, he’s more interested in the who and why of how he ended up in the situation. Just… it proves that he really is a Gryffindor. He is so brave at this moment.
Laura: Yeah, definitely.
Patrick: And one question I had about this was once he goes back to the common room and then eventually gets to their room, where was Hermione during all this? I just picture her up in her own room just sitting there clearly going through her thoughts, trying to decide if she believes Harry didn’t do it or if he did. Is that what we think is happening here?
Alex: I can picture Hermione doing that. I think Hermione might be having some doubts also like everyone else, but I think she really wants to believe Harry. I just don’t know if she really can.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: See, I always thought that she was there comforting Ron, talking to Ron and trying to work out why he’s not trusting him. But obviously we don’t see this because Ron’s on his own.
Alex: Yeah, I agree.
Rosie: And we don’t see them in the common room talking beforehand and we never see Ron enter. So I wonder if Hermione has immediately run off to the library and is starting to research the Triwizard Tournament straightaway to help Harry out.
Alex: Oh, that sounds like Hermione.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s very plausible too. Yeah.
Rosie: Because she does believe him. We’ve heard that she saw it in his face that he definitely didn’t enter his name, but she also probably knows that there’s no way out of it. So this is the moment where she’s gone into planning mode. Perhaps, I don’t know. We never actually find out, which is sad. But before he actually gets to the party we hear him say, who could possibly want him dead? And then obviously the answer is Voldemort, and it refers back to the dream again. And Voldemort is present in the description a lot more in this than he ever was last year, yet Sirius is barely mentioned at all despite still being on the run and still being considered a bad guy. It makes me wonder why Crouch or Bagman – any of them, really – doesn’t mention Sirius as a possible person to put his name in the cup.
Alex: That’s a really good point.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: No one seems to worry about that.
Alex: Sirius does seem to be like…
Rosie: Forgotten? [laughs]
Alex: Yeah. I’m confused by this now that we’ve brought it up. It seems like we’ve had this person and he was a big deal last year, but this year we don’t care for some reason.
Rosie: It’s that whole “out of sight, out of mind” thing, isn’t it? You see it happen in the media quite a lot where you’ve got this escaped convict or whatever reported on for a week and then it just disappears. And especially considering the Ministry caught him and then he escaped again, perhaps it’s just being swept under the rug a bit. Or maybe Dumbledore has worked to try and clear his name a bit more as well, so there’s several things that have happened that we might not have seen.
Alex: Oh, wait… since he escaped from the Ministry, even though they already had him, what if the Ministry’s trying to tone down? Like, “We made a mistake. Let’s not talk about it at all.” What if that’s one of Cornelius Fudge’s early attempts to be like, “Okay, we are the Ministry. We are right. I don’t care.”
Rosie: Yes. I can definitely see that happening. Obviously it’s the end of this book that the Second War begins. Isn’t that the chapter?
Patrick: Yeah.
Rosie: Yeah. So we definitely see the earlier workings of that divide happening here perhaps. And then we encounter the gossiping paintings again. Violet has been telling all the Gryffindors exactly what happened in the room, even though as Dumbledore said, “It’s one of Hogwarts’ best kept secrets, so naturally the entire school knows.” Maybe this is why. It’s the paintings.
Alex: Hogwarts has no secrets.
Rosie: [laughs] Exactly. It just makes it seem very claustrophobic, doesn’t it? Even the paintings are going to be watching and talking about you. You can’t escape ever.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: But Gryffindor doesn’t care and just uses it as another excuse to party. Definitely not the house for an introvert. [laughs] It’s really nice to see that Fred and George are vaguely impressed and supportive of Harry, even if they’re a bit confused. And even Angelina doesn’t really mind that he’s entered. She says, “If it couldn’t be me, at least it’s a Gryffindor.” So it really shows that Gryffindor pulls together to support its own, even if it’s not what he wants! And, as we mentioned earlier, Harry heads upstairs to find Ron who gives him kind of a grimacing smile, which is… before the argument is quite nice, he’s trying to be supportive even though it’s obviously hurting him. He’s trying to fix this grin on his face. But why doesn’t Ron believe him? Is it just what Hermione says or is it something more?
Alex: I’m thinking that Ron, he likes… I think we’ve seen that he does like having attention and he does like having glory, and this is someone who really shouldn’t have this glory having it and he could have just as well had it, and he’s really angry just because he’s not the attention – none of the attention’s on him right now.
Rosie: So do you think that he actually feels betrayed by Harry anymore than he is worried about his own…
Alex: I think he is feeling betrayed. He’s like “Okay, I’m your best friend. Why are you not telling me about this? And why am I not getting any of this attention that you are?”
Rosie: Yeah.
Laura: I don’t think Ron necessarily expects the attention because nothing is deserved in this scenario.
Alex: Right.
Laura: Even if he was seventeen, in no world would he have ever been picked. It’s just… I think they were both looking forward to being on the sidelines watching and now once again it’s Ron just by himself watching Harry.
Rosie: Poor Ron. Do you think that Harry could have convinced Ron if he hadn’t been so stressed by everything that had happened at the party and the surprise of his name being called? Would he have been more focused and more able to convince him if he hadn’t started this argument and felt angry about everything?
Alex: No, only because I think he has a solid enough argument as it is, and I think Ron’s just being an immature fourteen-year-old boy.
Patrick: There’s a part in this when they’re – in the conversation they’re having – where Ron asks him, “Did you use the Invisibility Cloak?” Knowing what we know about the Invisibilty Cloak and it being one of the Deathly Hallows, do we think that the Deathly Hallow Invisibility Cloak would have gotten someone over the line?
Alex: I don’t think so. I don’t think the Age Line would have anything to do with him being invisible because it’s still a physical presence passing over the line. And the Age Line isn’t seeing; it’s sort of… I don’t know.
Patrick: Yeah, but we do know that Harry’s cloak is the one cloak that… being a Deathly Hallow we know that it can deflect curses.
Alex: Oh, yeah.
Patrick: And it’s basically a super cloak…
[Alex laughs]
Patrick: … so I don’t know.
Rosie: But it doesn’t actually cover the soles of his feet and that’s what’s going over the line so… [laughs]
Patrick: Yeah, and I was wondering about that too… but I don’t know. I thought it was an interesting thing to bring up because I believe that if you could find a way to get yourself across the line you could enter your name regardless of how old you were. I think the line was what was stopping the younger kids, not the Goblet itself.
Laura: Yeah.
Rosie: Yes.
Patrick: And I think that they could have used the cloak to get over the line, I really do.
Rosie: I think the cloak is problematic in this book because Moody can see through it. She hasn’t quite thought it through properly at this point.
Patrick: Mhm.
Rosie: So it’s hard to say because the rules change.
Patrick: I just like the fact that Ron specifically points that out.
Rosie: It’s true, yeah.
Patrick: Maybe that’s something Ron had thought about and never brought it up to Harry like, “Oh, we should try and use the cloak.” I bet if they would have, they could have gotten across the line.
Alex: I think… now that we’re talking about it, I think the cloak being a Hallow and the powers that the Hallows have that we’ve seen in the later books, I think they could probably pass over the Age Line.
Rosie: Maybe they could have used it in a different way. So, rather than covering yourself with the cloak and going over it, you could put the cloak over the line and made the line invisible and stepped over it.
Patrick: Ah.
Rosie: Use it as a bridge.
Patrick: That’s a good point.
[Rosie laughs]
Alex: When you said you could use it in a different way, I imagined him pulling the cloak up over his feet and potato sack hopping across the Age Line.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: That would also be fun.
Patrick: Yes. But at the same time, Dumbledore knows that Harry has the cloak and he’s the one who set the line, so there’s a whole argument that could be made there. It’s just interesting to think about that.
Rosie: True. So Alex, just to wrap up, since you are about the right age and it’s the right day, what would you have done if your name had been pulled out of the Goblet?
Alex: Well, this is probably me, but I would have absolutely freaked out because I can do none of these things and I did not do this and I’m confused. I am going up to my dorm to have a nap.
Rosie: Fair enough. [laughs]
Laura: Okay, so earlier in the show Rosie came up with a really good question that I think we’re going to use for this week’s Podcast Question of the Week. Do you think hypothetically if the Triwizard Tournament had existed without age restrictions back in the era when Voldemort went to Hogwarts, do you think Voldemort would have entered the Triwizard Tournament and been selected for that matter?
Rosie: Back when he was Tom Riddle…
Laura: Back when he was Tom Riddle, correct. So, “yes or no” question, let us know. And you can put those answers on the Podcast Question of the Week post, which will be on our main site.
Patrick: Okay. Well, that brings us to the end of our show, and we want to thank Alex for being our guest and having such insightful thoughts.
Alex: [laughs] Thank you for having me on.
Laura: And thank you, Patrick, for stepping in.
Patrick: Yeah, no problem.
Alex: Yay.
Laura: So if you would like to be on the show, head over to our website and check out the “Be on the Show” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. Please make sure you have appropriate audio equipment so you’re able to record. And in the meantime, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes.
Rosie: You can also contact us in all of the normal ways. So on Twitter it’s @AlohomoraMN; on Facebook it’s facebook.com/openthedumbledore. You can Skype us on 206-GO-ALBUS, which is 206-462-5287. Or you can use our new service Audioboo, where you can leave us a message directly on alohomora.mugglenet.com and it will be played on the show like our comment earlier. It’s completely free and all you need is a microphone to record your comment. Just to point out also, if your comment is not played on the show, you can still listen to everyone else’s comments. If you go to our Audioboo… let me find the link quickly. audioboo.fm/channel/alohomoraowlery, you can find all of the comments that people have sent in and listen to them and comment on those there as well – just to get you guys talking to each other vocally, which will be great. So do check that out.
Laura: And also, be sure to check out our store. Rosie mentioned today how the infamous “Goblet of Fire” scene that really is the polarizing scene of whether or not people are Team Harris or Team Gambon. Whatever your opinion is, go buy a T-shirt and prove it to the world.
[Rosie laughs]
Laura: And if the T-shirt isn’t your thing, you can also get that on a sweatshirt or a tote bag or other stuff, like the Alohomora! flip-flops, water bottles, travel mugs… more coming soon. And long awaited…
Rosie: Woo!
Laura: … the Mandrake Liberation Front and the Desk!Pig shirts are now available.
Patrick: Nice.
Laura: So there [are] over 80 products to choose from, there [are] ringtones that you can download, there [are] just… you can do so much shopping. Feel free to do that. Please do. [laughs]
Rosie: The ringtones are actually not in the store – they’re somewhere else on our site. And they are free, so you can shop for things that aren’t even costing you any money, so it’s brilliant!
Laura: You get a ringtone! And you get a ringtone!
[Rosie laughs]
Alex: Everyone gets a ringtone!
Rosie: [laughs] Also remember that you can download our app. It’s available hopefully seemingly worldwide. Perhaps not, we don’t know. [laughs] Prices do vary, so you can check what is your local currency and your local app store. You can find transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and more. And do check out our main site for more information on how to find your app.
Patrick: And we want to remind you guys one more time to please go out and vote for us. Voting actually started yesterday, so you’ve actually missed a day. So shame on you. But also, unless you did vote – in which case, you’ve done a great job – vote again today and tomorrow and the next day. But make sure you go vote for us. Not just us – vote for all the other MuggleNet podcasts. We all deserve it. We all know we’re the best and…
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: Help us achieve that greatness that we all know we’ve already got.
Alex: Yay!
Rosie: So to do that, you can go to podcastawards.com and vote daily. Remember to use a valid email or your vote will not count.
[Show music begins]
Laura: All right. Well, that does it. I’m Laura Reilly.
Patrick: I’m Patrick Musilek.
Rosie: And I’m Rosie Morris. Thank you for listening to Episode 55 of Alohomora!
Laura: Open the Dumbledore!
[Show music continues]
Laura: I won a donut eating contest yesterday.
Rosie: Oh. Congratulations.
[Laura and Rosie laugh]
Patrick: That’s awesome.
Laura: For a happy Halloween.
[Patrick laughs]
Rosie: And everyone in the UK as well, have a good Bonfire Night on the fifth of November.
Alex: Yay!
Laura: Is that a thing?
Rosie: It is.
Laura: I’m just curious, did you dress up for Halloween this year?
Rosie: Not this year, no. [laughs]
Laura: No? My costume this year is my favorite thing I’ve ever made.
Patrick: What is it?
Laura: I’m Madeline.
Patrick: Really?
Laura: Yeah.
Patrick: That’s pretty awesome.
Laura: It’s on my Instagram and my Twitter, so feel free to check that out.
[Laura and Rosie laugh]
Patrick: While we are off on a tangent here, over the last year, I’ve been growing a really long beard, specifically for the purpose of being one of the Duck Dynasty guys for this Halloween.
[Alex and Rosie laugh]
Laura: Oh God.
Patrick: Rosie, do you guys have Duck Dynasty over there? Is it popular?
Rosie: Not that I know of, I’m afraid. Sorry.
Patrick: Okay, because that would really strike me as an odd thing to cross the pond, because it just is…
[Rosie laughs]
Patrick: … so American. [laughs]
