Transcript – Episode 11

[Show music begins]

Caleb Graves: This is Episode 11 of Alohomora! for September 9, 2012.

[Show music continues]

Caleb: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Alohomora! I’m Caleb Graves.

Rosie Morris: I’m Rosie Morris.

Kat Miller: And I’m Kat Miller. And our special guest this week is Matthew Ziff. For those of you that don’t know him, he’s an actor and badass Quidditch player for University of Miami. So, say hey to everyone, Matt.

Matthew Ziff: Hello, thanks for having me on the show, guys.

Caleb: Yeah, thanks for joining us.

Kat: Tell us a little bit about your experience in London. I am very anxious to hear about it.

Matthew: Okay. So, you guys know I went to London and played for the US Quidditch team in the summer games, and it was crazy. It was so much fun, everybody was really nice and really cool, and it’s just what happens when you get twenty… I think we were twenty-four from our team plus however many people that were from the other teams. So, probably fifty to a hundred people together who are all like minded, who all really want to have a lot of fun and go and play Quidditch. I mean, what’s better than that?

Kat: Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah.

Matthew: It was really a blast. Really, everybody had a fantastic time. We got to play some really good Quidditch. We were really excited to be there.

Kat: And you guys took home the gold, so…

Matthew: Yeah.

Caleb: Started off a good tradition for the Olympics, just golds all around.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: So, Matthew, what are your thoughts on Quidditch becoming an Olympic sport? Do you think it will ever happen? Do you think it is a good idea? What do you think?

Matthew: I think… at the moment, I don’t think it is ready for it.

Caleb: Mhm.

Matthew: I know that a lot of the publicity that was done talked about possibly wanting to become an Olympic sport, and I think while that would be amazing, I think that we should focus more on having all the teams getting a lot of younger people to play also. But if it was in the Olympics, I mean, that would be pretty freakin’ cool. [laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, I agree. Well, maybe we will see it in the future then, as it gets bigger.

Matthew: Hopefully.

Kat: Hope so.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: We’ll see.

Caleb: All right, well, we’re going to go ahead and jump into the episode for this week. So, we’ll start as usual commenting on the… getting you guys’ comments from our discussion from the previous episode when we kicked off Chamber of Secrets with the first two chapters. So, the first comment comes from the main site and this is on the topic of Dudley and Harry being BFFs, and the user is Hulk-Harry:

“Harry and Dudley are more like brothers than cousins. They have lived together almost their whole lives. I think deep down Dudley does care about Harry but was afraid to show it because of his parents. Vernon and Petunia show both extremes of bad parenting. Dudders probably isn’t aware how bad his and Harry’s relationship really is as I have known a few siblings (more common with brother-sister) who fight all the time and seem to hate each other but eventually grow out of it.”

Kat: Yeah, I’m not sure Dudley hates Harry at all but yeah, I agree with this comment actually. Totally, I think that Dudley does in some way care for Harry and is just totally afraid to show it. Because, I mean, he shows his true colors in the last book, right?

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: I think he grows to care about Harry more. I don’t know if he necessarily cares about him all that much at this point. And the idea of them being more like brothers than cousins, I think Dudley has grown up his entire life with having this extra boy in his house that isn’t his parents’ child. I think there’s a certain amount of kind of… I don’t want to say jealousy because obviously it’s not because Harry is mistreated. But there’s that kind of idea of the person that shouldn’t be there, and I think that plays a big part in their relationship when they are young, like Dudley is the true child and Harry is just the extra that doesn’t really count.

Matthew: Yeah, I agree with that. There is a lot of evidence for that in the books. You kind of see that Harry doesn’t really get treated as well and maybe… yeah, I agree with that.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Caleb: But Rosie, they have been together since as far as Dudley can remember. Do you think that is still that much of an issue? It’s not like Harry came ten years into Dudley’s life. They were there together almost from birth.

Rosie: Yeah, but they were treated differently from birth as well. I mean…

Caleb: Okay.

Rosie: …the whole time they were never treated like siblings, they were never given equal treatment in that way. Even though they were together, they were always kept seperate.

Caleb: Yeah, that’s fair. I do agree with this person’s comment though, that they fight all the time but eventually grow out of it. I can remember how much my brother and I fought when we were younger. I mean, it was terrible. He dislocated one of my fingers, I put a hole in his head…

Kat: Oh my God. [laughs]

Matthew: Oh, wow.

Caleb: We were rough. But my brother is one of my best friends now, so I definitely can relate to this point.

Kat: Wow.

Caleb: Sorry, a little snippet of my life.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: And we’re going to move on before people think I’m abusive. [laughs] So, the next comment is about the synopsis that we read for Chamber of Secrets, and this comes from the forums from ZeoRegrediens:

“I have Bloomsbury British editions of the books because those are the ones sold here in Australia. The summary on the back is not the same as the one you guys read out on the show. This is what the British version says: ‘Harry Potter is a wizard. He is in his second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Little does he know that this year will be just as eventful as the last…'”

Hmm, interesting.

Rosie: Yup, that’s what’s on the back of my copy.

Matthew: That’s interesting.

Caleb: So, that’s all it says?

Rosie: That’s all it says and then there’s two quotes from newspapers about Jo’s writing.

Kat: Wow, that’s incredibly short.

Matthew: Yeah, that’s kind of…

Rosie: It is.

Caleb: Yeah, that’s so much more vague than ours, but I think that kind of makes sense, thinking about what you’ve mentioned about the adult versions of the UK books, Rosie. How they’re kind of not as over-the-top and I think that sort of fits into that characteristic of the British edition.

Rosie: Yeah. This is the children’s edition though, that has the short blurb on the back.

Caleb: Oh, okay.

Matthew: Oh, okay.

Rosie: I think it’s mainly because half of the back cover is actually taken up by a gorgeous watercolor of Hogwarts. So, I think the picture kind of takes precedence over the writing here.

Matthew: Well, that kind of makes up for it. [laughs]

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Kat: What does the adult version say? Does it say anything?

Rosie: I don’t know, I don’t actually have the adult version. [laughs] But they didn’t come out until a few years, I think, after Prisoner of Azkaban came out.

Kat: Oh right, right.

Caleb: That’s so interesting.

Rosie: So, as a selling point, it’s very little to go on.

Caleb: Yeah. Huh.

Kat: Yeah, I mean, it gives no hints whatsoever.

Rosie: No. I wonder if the hardback has a different blurb because the paperbacks would have come out kind of by the time the craze had already started. I think the hardback might have been a harder sell.

Caleb: Right.

Matthew: Maybe they thought that at this point, people already sort of knew… I mean maybe they first started reading, and then seeing this they said, “Okay, well we know sort of what to expect already, a little bit.”

Kat: It’s possible, yeah.

Caleb: And on that note, it’s kind of interesting that they sort of expect that with the British audience but apparently not so much with the American audience because we get so much more.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Well, I mean it just kind of plays into everything. We keep saying they think Americans are dumb, maybe that’s it.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: That’s true.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: We just need more recap.

Caleb: All right, well thanks for bringing that up. And our next comment comes from one of our moderators on the forums, KyKid942, and it’s about Harry’s location and Dobby. And he says:

“Harry’s address wasn’t really a secret; he was getting mail delivered by owl post, so Hogwarts had his address (and remember that Lucius was on the board for Hogwarts at this time, and so could have easily gotten access), his friends had his address, and the Ministry had his address. For all we know, there is the equivalent of a phone book for wizards, listing name, address, and Floo Network names (Diagon Alley, the Burrow, Diagonally (aka Knockturn Alley), etc.) that can be used.”

Kat: Hmm, yeah. I never really thought of that, I guess.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Wouldn’t that be really dangerous for Harry, though? I mean, surely he’s there to be protected from all of the dark wizards, even if it’s not Voldemort. There’s still a lot of his followers that would have been after him.

Kat: Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Now, something that I’ve always wondered about, but how do the owls know where to go? [laughs] Anybody ever think about that? Like they know exactly where to go.

Kat: They’re smart? I don’t know.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, I guess I kind of always took it for granted.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? With the idea of owls and the Floo Network? And they’re just incredibly talented, for some reason.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: So says Jo.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Well that works, I guess.

Rosie: But I guess the owls have always… they’ve always kind of represented knowledge and that kind of intelligence, so perhaps they just have that extra knowledge that they need.

Kat: Yeah, like the wise old owl, I guess.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: That makes sense.

Kat: Yeah, but…

Caleb: I think it’s interesting, the possibility of a phone book. [laughs] Can you imagine that in the wizarding world?

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: I wonder how large it would be. Would it be for everyone in the wizarding world or just in the UK area?

Caleb: And maybe it’s really fast. Like you can just open it up and say the name and it pops up on the page.

Kat: Oh, maybe.

Caleb: Magic.

Kat: That would be cool.

Matthew: It’s magic.

Kat: But I still…

Rosie: Like Google.

[Caleb and Matthew laugh]

Kat: Like Google. I still don’t think Harry’s address would be in there.

Rosie: No, me neither.

Caleb: Probably not.

Rosie: Definitely not.

Matthew: They’re trying to keep it a secret.

Rosie: Not on Privet Drive.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: But then if the government has control over what can go in there and what can’t, hmm, I don’t know how I feel about that.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: The government would have his location because obviously they need to know to keep an eye on him, but I don’t think general wizards would have access to that.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: But then Dobby and house-elves have their own branch of magic, as we’ll find out later on in our chapter discussion. That’s what the Weasleys say, so Dobby might have some kind of location magic.

Kat: All right, well let’s just move on. Now we’re going to recap the special feature last week, which was Noah’s Close Read. And we talked about all the instances in the first couple of chapters where the Dursleys were compared to animals. And we got a great comment, again from ZeoRegrediens on the forums. It says:

“Jo likes describing people as animals, and not just with the Dursleys. We have people like Scrimgeour who is described as a lion, Pettigrew looks quite rat-like, Voldemort is snake-like, Madam Hooch has yellow hawk-like eyes, etc, etc. I like the idea that this is something Harry has picked up from the Dursleys. He compares people to animals. But then that kind of contradicts how he refers to Dobby as ‘someone’ versus ‘something’ on his bed earlier. So, it might just be something Jo likes to do and not a reflection on Harry.”

Caleb: All right. Well, I think it is interesting that he does refer to Dobby as, quote, “someone” and then we have all of these other animal comparisons going on for the actual humans. It’s kind of an interesting dynamic.

Kat: And there’s so many of them. When I was reading today’s chapters – which, again, we’ll get to – I just kept finding more and more and more. And I think since we’ve talked about it, they’re kind of jumping out at me now.

Caleb: Mhm.

Rosie: I think it’s a good way of describing people for children’s books because children will know the animal qualities more than they’ll know a vast amount of descriptive words at this point. So, by describing people as animal-like, it really gives them that kind of idea of that particular quality.

Matthew: Something to connect with easier.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah. So, it’s like a way of simplifying for children.

Caleb: Yeah, it’s very basic imagery, so it helps.

Rosie: But it also makes it more magical because of what we know about Transfiguration.

Caleb: Yeah, that’s true.

Matthew: I never really realized. I guess I just didn’t notice all of these when I was reading, but that’s… now that it’s pointed out like this, it’s pretty cool.

Kat: Yeah. So, the next comment we got is again from the forums. It’s Killey2011, and here she says:

“Did anybody else notice that the first words we hear from Dudley are ‘I want more bacon’? Kinda funny considering he was half-transfigured into a pig less than a year ago.”

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: That is pretty funny. And I must say, I always want more bacon, so…

Kat: [laughs] Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Matthew: Bacon is amazing.

Kat: I never noticed. That’s pretty much the first line of dialogue in the book.

Caleb: It’s kind of where we left Dudley, I guess, other than the end of the book where we don’t get much, but we kind of leave him in this state where he’s a pig. [laughs]

Kat: Right.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Kat: I don’t know, it’s pretty funny. That was a good comment.

Caleb: So Rosie, you weren’t on the show last time. Did you have any thoughts about how she uses the animals other than what you mentioned for imagery? Did you notice it, reading back through?

Rosie: Yeah, definitely. Especially with my chapter from later on. There’s a nice moment where Molly is described as… I think it’s either tiger-like or panther-like, something like a wild cat. And yeah, I think it’s a really interesting way of bringing those characters to life in a way that young children will understand because… I don’t know about other countries, but we’ve definitely got a lot of wildlife shows on our television screens in England. So, we’ve got a lot of that kind of reference material that children will have actually seen. But it also gives them that extra quality, it really does bring them that magical side. Especially with all of the Patronus and Animagus magic that we see, everyone is related to an animal in some kind of way and it’s a nice way of complementing that. But at the same time, the comment earlier said about Dobby being referred to as “someone” rather than “something” and I think that is a reflection on Harry. That is Harry seeing a magical creature as a person and not just a magical creature. There is a different association with that than there is with the animal descriptions.

Caleb: Yeah, I think that was a really conscious choice by Rowling when she used that instead of saying “something”, or whatever else Harry might have said. I agree.

Kat: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Matthew: It would be interesting to see how the centaurs and all the other animals like the trolls or anything like that that he sees… to see if he refers to them as “someone” or “something” instead.

Kat: Hmm.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: It might be an interesting thing to check.

Caleb: Yeah, that’s a good point. And just thinking more… she uses animals so much as we know. I’m just trying to think… I can’t think of another author, another book that I’ve read, where it’s so prevalent like it is with these, now that I’m thinking about it more. I mean, I know we talked about Animal Farm last episode, but that’s kind of an obvious one because of the nature of the book. But she definitely uses it more than any author that I can at least think of right now.

Kat: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, again except for the obvious books.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: I think there is a lot of animal description definitely in English literary history. I’m a medieval specialist when it comes to literature, so I’ve done a lot of Chaucer and things like that. The Canterbury Tales, a lot of the people in that do have animal descriptions. There’s the pardoner whose hair is rat-like, you’ve got a lot of these… especially rats, actually. Rats have a huge association in literature because they always were considered plague-bringers and things like that. Or you’ve got, I guess, the idea of ravens and cats and things in gothic literature, things like Edgar Allan Poe and The Raven. You’ve got all those kind of things that I think she’s drawing on with her animal imagery.

Kat: So it’s a very British thing then, is what you’re saying.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Possibly.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Maybe you guys just don’t have enough animals. [laughs]

Kat: Maybe.

Caleb: I think I told you guys this at LeakyCon, but we had to read some of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English when I was a senior in high school and I had to memorize the prologue for my teacher.

Matthew: Oh, wow.

Caleb: And I still… it’s one of those things that you just memorize and you don’t ever lose, so I still have it for the most part memorized.

Kat: Well, let’s hear it!

Caleb: I don’t think I want to do it right now, though.

Matthew: Yeah, you do.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Come on!

Rosie: Go on, Caleb.

Caleb: I remember:

“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote…”

I’m not going to go through the whole thing because it’s really long.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: Speaking in tongues! [laughs]

Caleb: But the last line is the best because of the bounce of the line.

“The holy blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.”

Yeah.

Kat: Whoa.

Rosie Yeah.

Matthew: That’s really cool.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Love it. So that’s for you, Ms. Campbell-Ferdick, if you… will never hear this show…

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: …but if she did, she would be really happy about that.

Kat: Good job!

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: Thanks for humoring me, as I go back to high school.

Kat: Any time.

Rosie Well, as you just said, I wasn’t on the show last week. But we had Noah’s posed question for the week, so I shall now go through some of the answers that we got for that. So the question itself was:

“As we know from quotes from J.K. Rowling and our knowledge of the series, house-elf magic is often times described as different from the magic of humans. Our question to you this week is, simply, how so? Did Dobby’s different magic enable him to slip through the Fidelius Charm protecting Harry? Let him fool Mafalda Hopkirk?”

Caleb: So before we jump into responses, I didn’t really say anything about this last week because I was hoping people would cook up whatever response they wanted. But I don’t think the Dursleys house is actually under the Fidelius Charm, right?

Kat: Yeah, I don’t think so.

Rosie: No, me neither.

Caleb: It’s not ever really mentioned and if you think about all the people who have access, the Dursleys’ neighbors would never know where they are.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: The Masons wouldn’t be able to get there, even the postman. So maybe that was just Noah cooking up, so we just let him run with it.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah. Well, I think we were all still in a fog of sickness last week.

Caleb: That’s true.

Kat: So we probably just didn’t…

Caleb: So we have some true fans out there angry because we just went against canon, but still some good responses so we’re going to go through them. Yeah?

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs] Okay, so this is from the main site and again it’s from ZeoRegrediens and it says:

“So how is house-elf magic different to wizarding magic? Well, magic would be a type of energy, right? I think it is similar to how there are different types of light, so there are different types of magic. I think it’s different just because the magic is being produced by a different species. Just as their bodies and cultures are different from wizards, so is their magic. So their magic isn’t always bound by the limitations and constraints that wizarding magic is.”

Caleb: Yeah, I agree with that. That makes sense. I mean, I think we definitely know there’s that difference in magic and it’s interesting to relate it to bodies and culture.

Matthew: It’s really interesting about the different types of light thing, but I think the different species part is a lot more, maybe… that’s how it is. Is there evidence that other species besides humans and house-elves can use magic? Did you guys ever pick up on anything like that? Because maybe others have it different also.

Caleb: We see goblins doing magic, at least some.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah.

Caleb: It’s not really put to much description. We don’t really ever see centaurs doing much magic.

Rosie: I guess their prophecies…

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: …are kind of magic.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: But that’s more reading stars.

Caleb: It’s not more in-your-face, for lack of better phrasing.

Matthew: So then that would make sense, the different species. So like you just said, the prophecy or the house-elves and the goblins and the humans all have different types of magic.

Caleb: Right.

Matthew: That’s pretty cool.

Rosie: I guess we have things like pixies as well, but I guess their real magic is just flight and things. So it really depends on what we define as magic and I guess that’s what they mean by the different types of light. You’ve got different types of magic as we would define them, I guess, in a spectrum.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: That’s true.

Caleb: I like that.

Kat: Yeah, I do too.

Caleb: A spectrum.

Kat: The spectrum of magic. Yeah.

Rosie: Cool. Okay, we’ve got another comment from… I think it’s CloverLover, and this is also from the main site and it says:

“The most visible difference between house-elf magic and wizarding magic is that house-elf magic doesn’t require a wand. Both have some kind of inner power but wizards need to channel it into one area in order to perform spells.”

Kat: Right. I mean, wizards are the only species, I guess, on the spectrum that carry wands. So yeah, obviously there are kinds of magic that don’t require wands. And even wizards, can’t they do wandless magic?

Caleb: They can.

Kat: But it’s very difficult though, right?

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: Yeah, the wand is kind of like a conjugate that allows them to perform the magic. Whereas house-elves and goblins and things seem to be able to tap into it without the need.

Kat: Maybe it’s because they have long pointy fingers.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: It’s all in the fingers.

Matthew: Their fingers are their wands.

Kat: That’s right, yeah. Because the goblins use their fingers to open the doors at Gringotts.

Caleb: That’s true.

Rosie: They’ve got kind of like a magical touch.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Ooh, I’ve thought of another magic. Dementors and their magical kiss.

Matthew: Okay, yeah.

Rosie: Does that count as magic do you think?

Caleb: Yeah, so they have to get some good lip gloss going for their…

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: …magic to be primed up. And for the centaurs, it’s just having a really elegant mane. That’s where their power is.

Rosie: [laughs] So, we’ve got a comment from our forums by CentaurSeeker121 and it says:

“I think JKR said that house-elves had their own brand of magic, but what effect does having to serve a family have on that magic? Are they restricted to just using their magic for menial tasks? When Dobby was serving the Malfoys, all of his attempts to help Harry failed (the intercepted mail, crashing of the pudding dish, closing the barrier at Platform 9 3/4, tampering with the bludger, et cetera) whereas after Harry tricked Lucius into freeing him, Dobby was able to openly blast him away when he tried to hurt Harry.”

So do you think wizards put restrictions on house-elf magic?

Matthew: Maybe they’re bound to some sort of contract that does limit their magic.

Caleb: A blood contract.

Matthew: So that they can’t hurt their master or something like that.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I can’t imagine it being set up to where they’re able to go after their masters, or else we probably would have seen Kreacher…

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: …messing with Sirius, trying to kill him or something.

Kat: But there are obviously loopholes because Kreacher does, pretty much, disobey Sirius.

Caleb: Yeah. I think that’s what they try to do.

Rosie: Kreacher never actually disobeys though, does he? He just…

Matthew: He just complains a lot.

Rosie: …interprets… yeah.

Caleb: Yeah. That’s… yeah, I think…

Kat: Well yeah, he finds the loophole. Yeah.

Caleb and Rosie: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah. How about when house-elves have to punish themselves for doing wrong? Do you reckon that’s a magically-influenced kind of punishment? Or is it just house-elves having a strong sense of guilt?

Caleb: Ooh, that’s a good question. Because my first instinct was it’s magically-bound, but then I was like, it might be guilt. Because that’s kind of the vibe I get from Dobby in that first scene we see him with Harry.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: And also from Winky later on when she’s kind of punishing herself by drinking.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: That’s not going to be a magically influenced thing…

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: …because it’s not actually…

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: …kind of a real punishment. It’s just her doing it to herself.

Caleb: They’re just raised in this self-deprecating environment.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah, it’s ingrained in them. Yeah.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: I think it’s both, honestly. I do. I think it also depends on how long the house-elf has been with the family.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: I feel like you’d have less guilt if the house-elf was only there a couple of months as opposed to his whole family for four generation had served the family.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: We’ve got another comment from SocksforDobby, which is a perfect username…

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: …for this discussion, and it says:

“As for Dobby getting past the Fidelius Charm, this may be a stretch but if a house-elf in Hogwarts heard Dumbledore talking about where Harry was then maybe that house-elf would be a Secret Keeper and if Dobby talked to that house-elf then he would be a Secret Keeper too. House-elves probably know and see way more than people give them credit for, just like the staff in manors and mansions in old English novels. The maids and staff knew and saw everything. They were just really loyal usually and didn’t talk to people outside. House-elves are bound to their families and so have a sort of forced loyalty but they also probably know a ton of things. Dobby broke his loyalty to the Malfoys by trying to protect Harry and could have done the same thing and told another house-elf who also wanted to make sure Harry was safe.”

So that all relies on Noah’s mistake but…

[Everyone laughs]

Rosie: …it’s an interesting idea.

Caleb: Even though it isn’t under the Fidelius Charm, it’s still a really valid point because they obviously know a lot and that argument still holds, that… yeah, I really like the comparison to the staff in manors and mansions. So maids and butlers, they obviously overhear a lot, and their loyalty to the family, however much it may be, sort of holds them back from spilling too much.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: But that obviously wasn’t Dobby’s case because…

Caleb: Right. Dobby is the exception to the rule in almost every case of house-elves.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah, that is very true. [laughs]

Rosie: But I think that idea holds really strongly when you come to see Kreacher because he’s kind of forced to be loyal to the name of Black, even though he doesn’t want to be. So, eventually he will break his loyalty, but in a way that is still loyal to the family…

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: …to go to the Malfoys rather than anything else.

Kat: Right.

Caleb: Even though Sirius is scratched off the family tree, he still does.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: And our last comment is from NightStrike91 on the forums, and it says:

“Dobby Apparating to Harry in that scene without having to is why I brought that particular scene up; to firstly make the point that house-elves seem to be able to Apparate to people rather than locations (seen more times with Kreacher), and secondly to show that Dobby could come to, without any master’s call. To me, that, together with the scenes from CoS, fits into the theory of the ‘elfin magic’ being capable of Apparating to persons directly instead of locations without the master/elf-bond.”

Caleb: That’s a really clever point.

Kat: Yeah. So I think they’re talking here about a much further scene in one of the later books, I believe. But yeah, the point makes sense. I guess I never thought about the fact that they can Apparate to people rather than locations.

Caleb: Yeah, exactly, because every time we sort of see it broken, that’s our expectation of the limitations of wizards – that’s what they’re doing. They’re Apparating to people.

Kat: Yeah. It’s like they’ve got some telepathic capability where the wizard can call on them and they just…

Caleb: Especially if…

Kat: …appear.

Caleb: …they’re the master, as we…

Kat: Right.

Caleb: …see with Kreacher. And Dobby, for that matter. Well, I guess not so much with Dobby – we don’t ever really see him Apparating for the Malfoys. But definitely with Kreacher.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: I think Dobby always sees Harry as a kind of master whether he is or not as well. I think…

Caleb: Yeah, he just sort of an adopted one.

Rosie: …he wants to serve Harry. Yeah.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Maybe there’s this idea of a call, which is a need. So whenever their master needs anything, the house-elf can feel it. Do you think that might be something? So they… it doesn’t matter where their master is. They will always be able to transport to that person.

Kat: Kind of instinctually, you mean?

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: They have a bond with them.

Kat: I mean, yeah. That makes sense. I wonder how that works.

Rosie: I guess, with wizarding Apparations, they need to visualize the place that they have to transport to. Maybe house-elves can just visualize that person. Maybe wizards could too, if they tried. We don’t know. But they just need to visualize that one person that they want to go to and then no matter where they are, that’s where they will go.

Kat: I feel like if wizards could do that, Voldemort would have figured out a way to do it.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: True. [laughs]

Matthew: Yeah, because we don’t ever see any wizards, like human wizards, do that.

Rosie: But then wizards don’t pay any attention to their house-elves. Maybe if they did, they would learn something.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah, I mean, that comes up time and time again in the books, doesn’t it?

Rosie: Yeah. It could be a new branch of magic that’s waiting to be discovered.

Kat: Someone get on that, right?

Caleb: Do it.

Matthew: Yeah.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Okay, so let’s jump right into the chapters that we’re going to be discussing this week, and they are Chapters 3 and 4: “The Burrow” and “Flourish and Blotts.”

Rosie: So, I have got the chapter of “The Burrow” this week, which I’m really happy about, and we start off with the Weasleys outside of Harry’s bedroom window, which is always fun. Who wouldn’t want a Weasley…

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: …appearing in a flying car outside their bedroom, whisking them away on an adventure?

Kat: I would take it. Yup.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Think of that happening to you tommorow, if a flying car just showed up outside of your window.

Matthew: How excited would you be? [laughs]

Caleb: I would probably pass out.

Rosie: It’s the perfect start to any story, isn’t it?

Matthew: Yeah.

Kat: My house is one level, so…

Caleb: Yeah, I’m on the first floor of my apartment complex.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: So, it’d be less exciting but I would probably…

Kat: It’d be a really low-flying car.

Caleb: But if it gets that six inches off the ground, I am stoked about it.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: I missed last week’s discussion, but did you guys… what is the front cover of Chamber of Secrets in your books? Because for us in England it is the flying car with only Harry, and Ron, and Hedwig inside it. But that’s from later on, of course.

Caleb: It’s in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry holding onto Fawkes.

Rosie: Okay. I just think the image of the flying car on the front cover of Chamber of Secrets for us is just… it’s going to make any little boy want to read the book, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve just said that that would be the perfect start to any adventure, and that is exactly the image that we’re presented with on the cover.

Kat: Yeah, your covers are a lot more subtle…

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Kat: …than ours. Ours jump right to the point.

Caleb: Yup.

Matthew: [laughs] So that goes along with our really long descriptions, too.

Caleb: [laughs] Yeah.

Kat: Yes.

Caleb: Totally.

Kat: Exactly.

Rosie: [laughs] But yes, we start with Ron and Harry having a conversation through the bars on his window. And we discover that Ron has been writing letters all throughout the summer. When did Dobby actually give Harry his letters though, you know? Has Harry really not been able to contact them back in any way? Is it just because Hedwig has been locked up?

Kat: Well, how long was Harry locked up?

Rosie: It’s only been three days.

Kat: It says three days later, so…

Caleb: Yeah, he has no way to get back to them because Hedwig is locked up.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: So…

Kat: So he’s probably read them but just can’t write back, yeah.

Caleb: Mhm.

Rosie: Yeah. In that case, how did Dobby get hold of the letters? I mean, surely owls are meant to be delivering to that one person.

Caleb: He tackled the owl and beat it to a bloody pulp.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Kat: Oh my gosh.

Matthew: He stole them.

Rosie: So maybe it’s not Errol’s fault. [laughs]

Caleb: That’s actually what happened to Errol. Errol was a perfectly fine owl until Dobby got a hold of him.

[Rosie laughs]

Matthew: That’s why Errol can’t fly anymore. [laughs]

Rosie: Oh no! [laughs]

Kat: So do you think he like sat outside Harry’s window?

Caleb: Yup. Like a true stalker.

Rosie: And collected the letters.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: With those big green tennis ball eyes. Creepy.

Caleb: Harry has no idea how many nights he’s slept with those eyes watching him.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Oh my God.

Rosie: Very creepy.

Kat: Lovely.

Rosie: Okay, moving swiftly on. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

Matthew: Yes. [laughs]

Rosie: We finally discover a bit more about the Weasley family, and we learn that Arthur works for the Ministry. And there’s actually been a Hank Green song recently about the fact that there’s only a few workplaces in the wizarding world, like you can only work for the Ministry, Gringotts, or Hogwarts. Why are there so few workplaces that we find out about in the wizarding world? What do you guys think?

Caleb: Oh, I think there’s plenty more. We just… it’s not immediately important to the story, so we don’t hear as much about it.

Kat: Yeah. I like to think that there’s a lot of freelance positions, like you can write and you can work for experimental lab companies and make broomsticks, that type of stuff.

Caleb: Yeah, because we hear of all sorts of companies through the series that are operating in Diagon Alley, and…

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: That’s true.

Kat: I think those are probably just the big ones.

Caleb: Yeah.

Matthew: They’re just really the most important for the story.

Caleb: Yeah, and just like it is in the States. You know, we’re obviously immersed with government, media, and school. So…

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Fair enough. We’d just really like to know more about kind of simpler wizarding jobs.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: [laughs] So how much has Harry told his friends about the Dursleys? Did Ron never really suspect what was happening to Harry when he never replied? He seems really surprised that Harry’s just not been writing back, even though he’s just arrived with bars in front of the window.

Kat: I think that Ron is just so used to his cushy, happy life that the thought of being trapped behind bars in your bedroom would never occur to him, ever.

Caleb: Just think, there were some nights in the Gryffindor common room where Harry just started bawling in his four-poster bed and he only had Ron to tell his horror stories from the Dursleys. So Ron… I’m kidding, guys. This didn’t happened.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Well, it did in some fan fiction somewhere.

Matthew: Oh, God.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: The slash kind.

Caleb: Oh no, I was not going there. But now I’ve probably just ignited that. I just meant Harry is, like, reliving his horror stories. Anyway…

Matthew: He had to at some point have told his friends about them, just for the fact that they probably asked. Like if you were to actually see about all the times that you don’t see them in the books, like what are they doing in between? I don’t know. You never see them just sitting down and having a chat.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: And I think they were starting to get worried because in the next chapter when we get to Molly, she says that if Harry had not written back that she and Arthur were going to go get Harry because they were getting worried too.

Kat: Like good parents.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: So maybe Ron just doesn’t…

Caleb: Ron is pretty oblivious a lot of the time, so…

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah, that’s what I mean. He probably just wasn’t thinking about it.

Rosie: He’s just more offended that Harry didn’t write to him rather than worrying about his friend.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: Yeah.

Rosie: So we move on a little bit, and obviously Harry is worried that he won’t be able to go back to Hogwarts, and the Weasleys kind of laugh at him slightly and say, “Don’t worry, we’re going to get you out.” And they start ripping the metal bars out of the brick wall of the house.

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: How does no one wake up? I don’t understand this. If they can wake up for owls hooting, why does the sound of metal being ripped out of brick not wake them up?

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: Surely it had to be loud.

Kat: I feel like it would shake the house too, a little bit.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Something being ripped out of a brick wall. I would wake up, personally.

Caleb: Maybe Vernon is so used to being around drills? Maybe he has to go to test sites, or he’s always being rattled around with drills, that it’s normal for him.

Matthew: Maybe somebody in the house just snores so loud that they’re just used to it.

Caleb: Yeah. Maybe…

Rosie: [laughs] That’s true.

Caleb: I feel like Dudley is a really heavy sleeper, so I’m not surprised that he didn’t wake his butt up, but…

Rosie: What about Petunia? Petunia has always struck me as a very alert person. She’s always looking for gossip, so I think she would be a very light sleeper. [laughs]

Caleb: She wouldn’t do anything though, until Vernon does anything though. She’s probably…

Matthew: She would wake him up.

Caleb: Yeah.

Matthew: So she might wake him up, though.

Kat: Yeah, she’s not the actionable half of that marriage.

Rosie: But no one does wake up at this moment, and they ask Harry to climb into the car. And Harry points out that all of his Hogwarts stuff is actually in the cupboard under the stairs, in his old room. So Harry may not be in the cupboard under the stairs anymore, but his entire wizarding life is locked away there. I think that’s kind of poetic, almost. Sad.

Kat: Sad. It’s very sad.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Well, he sort of has to hide it because he can’t use magic outside of Hogwarts, obviously. But he sort of has to hide the fact that he’s a wizard from everybody else if he wants to just get though his daily life.

Rosie: But could he not just keep his books in his room? Obviously Vernon is the one that’s locked them away, but surely locking them away with Harry would make more sense than kind of scattering them around the house.

Kat: No, I don’t know. I think that he probably thinks that the less access Harry has to it, the better. The unhappier he will be.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, but poor Harry has to suppress the most natural thing for him.

Rosie: But people who never have to suppress the most natural thing to him are Fred and George, who are always up to mischief, and here they actually tell us that they know Muggle tricks as well as wizarding ones. So they pull out the traditional hairpin and unlock Harry’s door to go and get the trunk. How much do you reckon this is going to be Arthur’s influence? The magical versus Muggle influence that Arthur seems to bring.

Caleb: Yeah, I definitely think that’s where it comes from. I think that’s where all of Arthur’s curiosity about the Muggle world and meddling and things, if any one gets passed down to Harry… excuse me, to Fred and George.

Kat: Yeah. Have any of you ever tried to pick a lock with a hairpin?

Matthew: Yes.

Kat: It’s incredibly hard.

Matthew: I have.

Kat: You have?

Matthew: Yeah.

Kat: Did you do it?

Matthew: Yeah. It took a while, but it worked.

Kat: Yeah, right.

[Rosie laughs]

Matthew: Yeah, it’s difficult. [laughs]

Kat: See, I think that this speaks to Fred and George. They’re very persistent, and I feel like this is just… it fits right in with their personality. Not just the lock-picking part, but the fact that they practiced and that they know how to do it.

Matthew: They probably also, since they are such tricksters, they probably said, “Well, we’ve got a whole bunch of wizard ones. I wonder if there are any Muggle ones that might be entertaining.” So they might have looked and even with Arthur’s influence, that might have said, “Oh, okay. Well, here, let’s go check this out or check that out.”

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: I guess they’re also underage, so they’re technically not allowed to use magic outside of Hogwarts still. So all of their mischief would have to be Muggle-based. It would have to be without magic if they wanted to do it outside of Hogwarts.

Kat: Yeah. That’s true. I completely agree with that. Yeah.

Rosie: So the twins go downstairs, and they bring back Harry’s trunk which is already packed, being the perfect student that Harry is, he’s all ready to go despite not having access to his trunk. And they bring it back and they push it into the car, showing the good teamwork that Ron, Harry, and the twins have. But unfortunately, Harry has forgotten Hedwig, and she hoots loudly to remind him that she’s there. No wonder Hedwig is always upset with Harry if he keeps forgetting her and locking her up all the time!

Matthew: How do you forget your owl? [laughs]

Rosie: Exactly!

Kat: I don’t know that… yeah, that’s…

Rosie: I’m sure she wasn’t standing completely still. She would have been moving around, and you would know to remember that she was there.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: But unfortunately, despite not waking up for the brick walls and the metal ripped apart.

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: Vernon does wake up at the hoot of an owl, and he shouts and he runs, and eventually he sees Harry climbing into the flying car. And he shouts, “He’s getting away! He’s getting away, Petunia!” Surely, the Dursleys would be happier seeing Harry leaving them than trying to keep him locked up in that room with the owl that’s been annoying him for the entire summer.

Caleb: But it’s Vernon losing control on something, and he can’t have that.

Kat: Yeah. It’s making Harry happy to leave the house, and Harry is not allowed to be happy.

Matthew: He just doesn’t want Harry to be happy.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: Ever. At all.

Rosie: That’s true. And Harry is very happy, as you can see by the return of his amazing personality that seems to have sprung out of nowhere since last year, so he makes the joke of, “See you next summer!”? calling out at them…

Kat: Yeah. [laughs]

[Caleb and Matthew laugh]

Rosie:…as the Weasleys all roar with laughter. He’s really become a joker, and I think that’s definitely run in the Weasleys’ influence.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: Involved.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: But Ron says, “Step on it,” and Fred flies the car out and away from Privet Drive. How does Fred know how to drive a Muggle car? Surely he hasn’t been able to have driving lessons or anything with Mr. Weasley. Do you reckon it’s easier to drive a flying car than one on the road? There’s going to be less to crash into.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah.

Caleb: You don’t have to worry about staying in a lane, so…

Rosie: This is true. [laughs]

Matthew: Well, maybe Arthur had taught him, just as being such – so involved in the Muggle world, maybe he learned and he taught Fred just because.

Kat: My God, I cannot see Arthur driving a car.

Matthew: [laughs] No, that would end terribly.

Kat: It sounds almost more dangerous than the… yeah, it sounds more dangerous than the twins driving the car. I don’t know, because Arthur is just so excitable, I feel like…

Caleb: Oh my gosh.

Rosie: He’d get distracted by all of the buttons.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I think it’s probably just easier to drive a flying car, not necessarily in general, but as far as… like Caleb said, staying in the lane, and all that, so…

Matthew: Have any of you ever flown a plane?

Kat: No.

Caleb: I have not. Have you?

Matthew: Yes, I have…

Caleb: What?

Matthew: …and… yeah, when you’re up in the air… when you’re actually up in the air, there’s not really a whole lot to do, actually. [laughs]

[Kat laughs]

Matthew: I mean, I’ve only flown smaller airplanes, but you basically set your throttle and you steer, and you can go up, down, side to side, and it doesn’t really matter that much. So it’s… there’s nothing there, so I guess it probably would be a little easier to be flying than to have to actually drive on a road.

Caleb: Yeah.

Matthew: There’s certainly less to have to pay attention to.

Caleb: Yeah, and now that I think about it, I actually have flown a plane. My cousin flies, and I’ve gone up with him in a three-, four-passenger Cessna…

Matthew: Yeah.

Caleb:…and I co-piloted with him, and I got to take over for two minutes before I started hyperventilating, so…

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: So yeah, it was actually really cool. But yeah, so… yeah.

Rosie: And a magical flying car probably has more regulations and things on it, as in it would be able to power itself slightly more easily than a plane, using magic, so maybe…

Caleb: Totally.

Rosie: …it’s actually really simple to drive a flying car.

Kat: Well, and the funny thing is… so we’re going to talk about Pottermore later, but we learn in Pottermore that quite a lot of people had magical cars, so this just…

Caleb: Right.

Kat: …feeds into that, I guess.

Caleb: Mhm.

Rosie: So Harry and the Weasleys start discussing what has been happening over the summer and why Harry hasn’t been writing back. And he tells them all about Dobby’s warning, and the Weasleys really start to question it. They wonder whether it is a kind attempt of Dobby trying to save Harry’s life, as Harry just assumed was correct. Harry’s quite a very trusting person. But the Weasleys are slightly more devious and they suspect slightly more, and they wonder if it’s just trying to stop Harry from returning, whether there is a wizard trying to play a trick on him. And straight away, Harry and Ron realize that there is someone in Hogwarts that would want to play a trick on him: Draco Malfoy.

Caleb: Yeah, and it’s like Harry halfway guesses this connection between Dobby and Draco, and he doen’t know, yet, that he’s actually right.

Kat: Oh, right, yeah, because Harry doesn’t know what family Dobby serves currently, so yeah. That’s funny.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: He always seems to get these guesses half right, and he never quite finishes the thought in the right way. [laughs]

Caleb: I think it’s funny because I think, first time reading it, I passed over this, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s kind of funny,” but would have never thought that Dobby actually belonged to the Malfoys even though, as you’re reading it, it really does add up and make sense, and then…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: …at the end of the book, you’re like, “Oh. That was right.” Hmm.

Kat: Do we really think this is Draco’s kind of joke? I mean, do you think he would do that? Do you think he’s able to do that?

Caleb: If he could…

Matthew: I don’t think so.

Caleb: …I think he would, but I don’t think he would be able to.

Matthew: Yeah, I just feel he woudn’t be able to do that. Maybe it’s physically possible for him to do that, but maybe Dobby just wouldn’t? I don’t know. Does that make sense?

Rosie: I think Dobby would have to if Draco asked him to, and I think Draco is perfectly capable of asking him to. I just don’t think he would care that much. There’s not that big of a deal about Harry returning to Hogwarts. Draco would have more fun tormenting him within the school than trying to stop him from coming back.

Kat: That’s true. Do you think that the children in the families… I’m just thinking about who the house-elves serve… do you think that they serve the head of house more so than the rest of the family? Lucius could tell Dobby to leave the house and do certain tasks, but Draco really only has say over him while he’s in the manor.

Caleb: Or until he’s of age. Until he’s seventeen.

Kat: Right.

Caleb: I think, yeah, it’s somewhat diluted until he reaches that wizarding age.

Rosie: I just think that anyone within the family would have control over Dobby. I just… I think that the head of the family would be able to overrule other people’s orders.

Caleb: But what if Draco told Dobby to go jump off of the third floor balcony? Would he have to do it?

Rosie: Probably.

Caleb: I just don’t… I see…

Rosie: They have to punish themselves so much.

Caleb: I see Draco trying that, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t know.

Kat: Yeah, me too.

Rosie: I see it happening. I just don’t see Dobby maybe dying from it. They seem to be very resilient.

Matthew: Well, he’s…

Rosie: I think he would be able to.

Caleb: What if he said, “Dobby go cook yourself in the oven”?

Matthew: I think, yeah, if he jumps off, and he can just Apparate to the ground.

Caleb: What if he said, “Dobby go cook yourself in the oven”?

Kat: Oh my God.

Matthew: That’s terrible. [laughs]

Kat: Caleb! [laughs]

Caleb: Well, I’m just trying to hit an extreme here. [laughs]

Matthew: Part of their unwritten contract or something, maybe you can’t…

Kat: Yeah.

Matthew: …abuse the house-elves. I don’t want to say “a pet,” but yeah, maybe it’s something like you can’t tell them to abuse themselves.

Kat: I don’t know. I think that that’s pretty much encouraged.

Rosie: Yeah, they do abuse themselves when they do anything wrong, and I think Dobby in particular is very mistreated throughout his entire service to the Malfoys, but I don’t think that they would be able to abuse them to the point of death.

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s more what I meant.

Rosie: Except for the Blacks, where they get to behead them.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Caleb: Why don’t the fans try to write us up a standard for the contract for the owning of house-elves as put out by the Ministry of Magic?

Rosie: Everyone should join Spew. [laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, here’s your chance.

Kat: S.P.E.W., Rosie! [laughs]

Rosie: I’m sorry. S.P.E.W. [laughs]

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, I want the regulation for it. I feel like there’s a piece of legislation. Something.

Rosie: It would make a brilliant essay. Someone write that for us.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: Ooh, it would. That’s true. It would.

Matthew: I’m really interested to see how people would word everything and how they would actually do that. That’d be really cool. And when that would have been made… like what year, I guess, because you never… there’s no history of when… or is there? Somebody correct me if I’m wrong… of when house-elves started serving…

Caleb: Yeah, I don’t think there’s an actual marked date on that.

Matthew: …humans.

Kat: Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Matthew: So I wonder when that… if that was something… if this was actually a piece of legislation or whatever… when that sort of thing would have come into effect, what year.

Rosie: I definitely don’t think there is legislation because of what we know of the Blacks and Kreacher’s history, we see generations of house-elves’ heads mounted on the wall, don’t we?

Matthew: Maybe it’s not necessarily legislation from the Ministry of Magic, but maybe it’s some part of the ancient wizarding world that in ancient history, it was just sort of a magical bond. Sort of like the Unbreakable Vow, this is a thing that’s always going to be there.

Caleb: Hmm. I like that.

Kat: Interesting. Mhm.

Caleb: So let us know what you guys think.

Kat: Yeah, send it in. You know the email by now.

[Rosie and Matthew laugh]

Rosie: Okay, so as soon as Harry says the name “Draco Malfoy,” George turns around and says, “Not Lucius Malfoy’s son?” So immediately we get the idea that our favorite villan from the first book has a father who is worse than he is. We get this idea of the family history of evil, and I guess we start to get the idea that Lucius is going to become important later on. But, the next thing we know, they’re talking about the fact that Mrs. Weasley would really like a house-elf. And it just got me wondering, the Weasleys are a pure-blood family. Why don’t they have any gold? We see that Harry has plenty of gold from his family’s side. We see that the Malfoy’s are an old family with gold. There are plenty of these very rich, pure-blood families, so why isn’t the Weasleys’ family one of them? Is it just that they’ve got too many children over too many generations?

Matthew: They have so many children.

Caleb: They do.

Matthew: [laughs] There are so many Weasleys.

Rosie: But we know that Arthur was a seventh son as well, so it’s not just their current family that has been spread out.

Caleb: Yeah, when we get to the Pottermore part, we’ll talk more about why some families are in that position. But I would love to know more about the Weasleys’ history about why… or the state of previous generations. Where they may have been.

Kat: Yeah, I don’t think that being a pure-blood family automatically means that you’re loaded.

Rosie: But I think there’s… the idea of pure-bloods within the novels is very much like the idea of old money within society in England, and I think in America as well.

Matthew: Yeah.

Rosie: You’ve got the idea of that kind of money that comes with the family name and the family blood, all that kind of thing. And I think the Weasleys seem to have… they used to be part of that, but they seem to have lost it somehow. Mrs. Weasley was a Prewett, wasn’t she? And Mr. Weasley…

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: They’re both found on the Black family tree, at some point.

Caleb: Mhm.

Rosie: So they do have branches into that, but their money seems to have disappeared, with, I guess, too many mouths to feed.

Caleb: Yeah, we know the Potters, James’ parents, must have had quite a bit of money because that’s pretty much how he got money to then leave to Harry.

Kat: Right.

Matthew: And it’s all saved in the bank, so…

Caleb: Right.

Kat: Yeah, I think that that’s it. Just too many children, too many generations.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: Spread themselves too thin, so there’s nothing left over for inheritance.

Matthew: Well, yeah. How many Weasleys are in Ron’s generation, there? The parents have a lot of kids, plus Arthur is the seventh son. It would make sense…

Rosie: How many cousins and things they must have as well?

Matthew: Yeah, how many cousins do they have? It would make sense that, if they did have money at one point, that it was just spread out so thin that they’re just not that anymore.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: So we get our first look at the Burrow, which, going along with this idea, it’s not the grand mansion of the Malfoys. It’s not some brilliant, old money house. It is, essentially, an old pigsty with extra rooms that have been added on top, until it just kind of looks like this higgedly-piggedly mess all held together by magic. And I think that’s perfect for the Weasleys, don’t you think? Not the pigsty aspect of it, but the idea that it’s perfectly tailored to their family. Everyone has a room that’s their own that’s just attached on, and they all connect together in some magical way. And it really works with the name of the Burrow. Everyone is just kind of a warren, I guess, of the family.

Kat: I feel like part of the description isn’t so much describing the Burrow as it is describing the Weasley family themselves.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: “Stuck together,” “piled on top,” “held up by magic,” just…

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: It feels more like a description of the family than the structure.

Caleb: I thought it was really clever of Rowling if she did this intentionally to… as Harry is observing the Burrow, he says, “There were four or five chimneys.” It’s not one or the other… nothing is exact. I think that just sort of adds to this disorder and everything of the Weasleys. [laughs]

Rosie: Definitely.

Kat: Yeah. They’re very unkempt, aren’t they?

Caleb: Mhm.

Matthew: It sounds like how it’s described, though. It sounds like a cool place. From the movies, now I want to live there. That’d be so cool.

Caleb: Yeah. Totally, I want to hang out.

Matthew: [laughs] That’s such a cool-looking place.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: It does strike me as extremely kind of old English to me. I mean, since my trip to America I learned… I talked to you guys quite a bit about the fact that everything was very square in Chicago.

Kat: Yeah.

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: Everything is very kind of… everything is set on your grid plan. But in England, we’ve got all these kind of houses with odd angles and kind of tiny doors, and everything that doesn’t really quite work with a modern society, and I think the Burrow is perfectly in that kind of tradition.

Kat: Yeah, it’s a little more quirky.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Which fits the family perfectly.

Rosie: So going along with the idea of names, we learn that the Weasleys now have two owls, and their names are very appropriate to their characters and their kind of roles within the house. So we’ve got Errol, which essentially sounds like “error.” He’s always getting things wrong.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Kat: That’s true.

Rosie: Never quite does what you want him to do. And then we’ve got Percy’s new owl.

Matthew: Stavius Fault?

Rosie: And Percy’s owl is called Hermes, and he’s the Greek messenger god, which is slightly pretentious. [laughs] It’s very, very Percy to name his owl after a messenger god…

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: …don’t you think?

Kat: I do, yeah. Very much.

Rosie: So I think this is a further example of Jo being absolutely perfect in naming her characters to reflect their personalities. And we find out a bit more about Mr. Weasley and the fact that he works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office within the Ministry. I just… why does he work there if he’s going to misuse these magic… these artifacts himself? Is he just trying to keep himself out of trouble, or is he maybe looking for new items, or just trying to keep the bad wizards away from the Muggle items that he loves, whilst ignoring harmless ones like himself?

Caleb: I just think it makes sense that he works there, given his… how much he sort of likes that area, and his own curiosity. I mean, I don’t think he’s in that job for his own benefit. I mean, I think that would go against Arthur Weasley’s personality. But… I mean, he has a natural knack for dealing with those sorts of items, and it’s obviously something he sort of explores harmlessly in his own time.

Kat: Yeah, I agree with that completely. Yeah.

Matthew: And he’s always so interested in them. It just kind of works. It makes sense that he would work there.

Kat: Yeah. I feel like he knows quite a bit more about Muggles than he lets on.

Caleb: Or that most wizards would, which is why he fits into that role pretty well.

Kat: Right. And he enjoys writing the loopholes, if they…

Caleb: [laughs] Right.

Kat: …so please him, yeah.

Rosie: See, I think that’s kind of the most important thing about his job: he’s always kind of trying to keep himself out of trouble as well, otherwise he’d be something like a Muggle Liaison officer or the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts or something.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: He’s deliberately in that Muggle Artifacts office for a reason.

Caleb: But I don’t think that’s his primary reason for being there. I don’t think he seeks the job just for his own personal reasons of wanting loopholes. That’s something of a byproduct, but I don’t think that’s his main motivation.

Kat: An added bonus, yeah.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah. Maybe he just likes the items more than the people.

[Caleb laughs]

Kat: Probably. He doesn’t strike me as a people person. I mean, he’s very kind and whatever, but I see him as more… he’d rather sit in his workshop and tinker with his plugs than go to a party and socialize.

Rosie: Yeah. So the Weasleys arrive… the Weasleys and Harry arrive outside the Burrow, and the first thing they do… they park the car, they get out, and they start walking towards the house, and there of course is Mrs. Weasley. And to go with our animal description from earlier, she’s now described as a “saber-toothed tiger.” She is about to attack because they have obviously taken the car without permission, and we really see for the first time that kind of mother’s anger and the mother’s kind of guilt aspect, and she really knows exactly what to say to express how angry she is to her kids.

Caleb: Yeah, definitely intimidating. Reading this as a… what would I have been? I don’t know, twelve, thirteen-year-old? I was kind of… it definitely reminded me of moments where my mom got pretty stern with me. So… [laughs]

Matthew: I think that description was meant so that people… I know I was young when I first read this, so people of that age could sort of understand… maybe… because I think describing as like a saber-tooth tiger, or something to that effect is easier to wrap your head around as a young kid, rather than a long, drawn-out description of how angry she was.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: It really gives that kind of image of her snarling these words out. She’s really kind of biting. But also, at the same time, you’ve got the kind of idea of the tiger being kind of a family-based cat. You’ve got that she’s the… I think tigers are quite proud, aren’t they? I’m trying to remember my kind of animal imagery…

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: …from metaphors and things, but they’re very solitary, but very proud, and obviously, they’re ginger as well, so that works well with the Weasleys. And I think just that kind of snarling image, they’re very strong, and Mrs. Weasley is a perfect description of a saber-toothed tiger.

Kat: I’m going to take Noah’s role on this one and say, do you think it’s a commentary on Mrs. Weasley’s age because saber-toothed tigers are old and extinct?

Rosie: That’s true.

Caleb: But she’s not that old.

Rosie: No. [laughs]

Kat: Well, no. I was just taking the… Noah’s angle from it.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Had to throw it out there.

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: I think it’s more that she’s more vicious…

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: …than… plus kids like dinosaurs and things that are extinct.

Kat: That’s true.

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: That works as well. [laughs]

Kat: That’s true.

Rosie: But this whole rant really is very reminiscent of the later rant that we see within the Howler, so I think it’s important that we get this now so that we can kind of project that description of her onto that kind of animate, but inanimate letter that we get later on.

Matthew: You can kind of use the description now that you’re given so that when… yeah, when we see the Howler later, it’s like, “Oh okay, that’s just how she yells at people.” That’s like…

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: …sort of what we’re used to.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Good point.

Rosie: One of the things she says is, “You just wait until I tell your father about this.” It’s kind of that really common threat that, for most families, I guess, would work. The father is the head of the household, and he is the scary figure. But within the Weasleys, it just doesn’t work. Does she really expect Arthur to do anything?

Kat: I think she hopes that he’ll do something. But…

Matthew: Yeah, maybe she thinks that he might, but in all honesty, I would… I could very much see him saying, “Oh, how did the car… how did it work? What was it like in their town?” Something to that effect. [laughs]

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, he’d be more worried about… well, exactly, being more worried about the car than his children. [laughs]

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Whereas Mrs. Weasley, obviously, is worried about the children. So…

Rosie: Yeah, but eventually, she sort of rants herself out and kind of brings them back into the house, and the Weasleys’ house is Harry’s very first experience of wizarding dwelling that he can remember. Obviously he had Godric’s Hollow when he was little, but he doesn’t remember any of that now. So how normal is the Weasleys’ house, as Harry’s first experience? I doubt it would be what every wizard lives in.

Matthew: I don’t think it’s a normal house. I think that wizards probably have… some probably have regular houses, but I think that the fact… what we said earlier, the Weasleys having their house so chaotic, and Harry, this being his first experience with it, I think it just… it makes a lot of sense to have this be his first real interaction with it.

Kat: I was trying to think of what other houses we see and really, the only other one we ever really enter is the Lovegoods, right?

Rosie: Mhm.

Caleb: Yeah, and we know it’s pretty weird, so…

Matthew: Well, we see eventually towards the end of the series back at… the name I’m forgetting right now, [laughs] we see another house that is relatively normal, don’t we? In Deathly Hallows?

Caleb: You mean at Shell Cottage or…

Kat: Oh, right, Shell Cottage.

Caleb: But I guess that’s a little… that’s not really a normal house. It’s more of a cottage.

Matthew: In Godric’s Hollow, don’t we see…

Caleb: Oh, in Godric’s Hollow…

Rosie: Oh yeah, that’s true.

Caleb: Yeah, Bathilda Bagshot’s house.

Matthew: Yeah, I mean, at least, I know we’re not there right now, but the descriptions there are sort of normal.

Caleb: Yeah, it seems like a fairly normal house. Yeah.

Rosie: But within the Weasleys’ house itself, there are lots of kind of magical things happening there. There’s… I guess most of this is kind of movie influenced, but there’s knitting that’s knitting itself and there’s the washing-up that’s been doing itself through magic. How much experience of magic do you reckon wizarding kids get compared to Muggle kids? Because even if they can’t perform the magic themselves, they’re still kind of immersed in a lot of magic around them.

Kat: Quite a lot. Actually I feel like they would learn more of the household-ie stuff, like cleaning and healing and… because they don’t teach that at Hogwarts, which…

Rosie: No, not that we see.

Kat: Right.

Matthew: They probably… maybe they expect… at Hogwarts they expect the families to teach that kind of stuff…

Rosie: We hear Tonks, isn’t it? Later says that her mother used to teach her the packing spell and things like that?

Matthew: Yeah, sort of you expect a parent to teach a child basic household stuff. Maybe that’s just a part of growing up in the wizarding world, that you just sort of learn this stuff. Even though you can’t really use it yet, you just kind of sort of know it for later when you can.

Rosie: Right.

Kat: But not math… no math.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: No math.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: No math.

Rosie: In which case, why does no one around Harry ever think to kind of show him this kind of stuff? Would you reckon that it does… I mean, and we just don’t see it in terms of the story? Do you reckon Mrs. Weasley takes him aside one day and shows him how to do the washing-up?

Caleb: I don’t know…

Matthew: I feel like… yeah, I feel like at some point, we probably… I mean, we don’t see it, but I feel like her character is someone that… and Harry’s curiosity… in a part that we don’t see, I could totally see her be starting the spell, and then Harry being, “Oh, how do you that?”

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: And she’s like, “Oh, here, let me explain it to you.” But it’s not really like a major story point, so it probably just wasn’t shown.

Rosie: No. But it is incredibly sweet. [laughs] So one of the things that we do see within the Weasleys’ house is the wizarding radio, the wizarding wireless. And it just… it makes me wonder why that one particular Muggle artifact seems to be so prevalent in wizarding communities. They have this whole wireless network, but why do wizards have radio and not TV? Is it just that they’re used to moving images, anyway?

Kat: Well, we’re actually going to talk about that a lot later, in the Pottermore section…

Rosie: Okay.

Kat: …because we learned a lot about technology, so yeah.

Rosie: Sure, okay.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Not to spoil it all, I want to talk about it later, though.

Rosie: Okay, so listeners: Keep listening.

Kat: That’s right.

Rosie: [laughs] Okay, so they all sit down, and they eat breakfast, which Mrs. Weasley has just cooked for them. And then suddenly we get this kind of a blur of a girl run in, squeak and then run out again. And that is our first sighting of Ginny within this book. We saw her briefly at Platform 9 3/4, but this is the first time we’ve really had an interaction with her. And it’s always embarrassing to accidently meet your crush whilst wearing your pajamas.

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: So I don’t blame her at all for squeaking and running away.

Kat: Especially at that age.

Rosie: Yeah. But it’s interesting that later on Ron, or possibly one of the twins, says that it’s really rare to see Ginny be shy.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: And Harry is really the only person that Ginny is ever shy around. What do you think that says about her character and her ideas of romance?

Caleb: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, she’s still really young. I guess, at this point, she’s eleven or so.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: So I think it’s just a product of her being really young and shy, and just that cute boy, I think, for her I guess it’s what girls experience. I guess I wouldn’t really know that. But…

[Everyone laughs]

Matthew: Ladies, do you have any commentary on this?

[Caleb laughs]

Matthew: You’re probably better on this subject…

Caleb: Yeah.

Matthew: …than us.

Kat: No, I think Caleb hit it on the head. Yeah. That’s about it.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: Oh, okay.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: Success. I tapped into the girl’s mind. [laughs]

Rosie: I guess, for Ginny, meeting Harry is kind of like meeting the prince of your fairy tales.

Caleb: While in pajamas.

Rosie: She’s grown up with stories about him.

Kat: While in pajamas.

Rosie: While in pajamas. Yeah. Exactly.

[Caleb and Kat laugh]

Rosie: It’s like the end of Cinderella, but rather than Cinderella meeting the prince in her ball gown, she’s meeting her in the…

[Caleb laughs]

Rosie: Meeting him in the rags that her parents… her stepmother has forced her to wear.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Poor Ginny. [laughs]

Caleb: Aww.

Kat: Obviously it works out, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.

[Everyone laughs]

Rosie: That is true. [laughs]

Caleb: But in that moment her world is just awful.

Kat: It’s true.

Rosie: Yeah. But within the story it’s a very brief comment, and we move swiftly on into de-gnoming the garden. And I just wanted to know… is there no magical way of doing this? Could Mrs. Weasley not have just waved her wand and done it herself? She sends out Fred and George, which just seems to be asking for trouble for me.

[Kat laughs]

Caleb: Maybe there’s just animal cruelty or creature cruelty, doing it with magic.

Rosie: Yeah, what would Hermione say? [laughs]

Caleb: I mean, Hermione would not have it.

Matthew: There’s definitely got to be a way that they can do this magically, but I think that… and not even on an animal cruelty type thing or creature cruelty level… maybe it’s just… maybe they’re just enjoying it, so they’re just doing it for fun.

Caleb: Maybe it’s a chore that Mrs. Weasley can give her kids to keep them busy.

Matthew: Yeah, to keep them out of trouble…

Caleb: Yup.

Matthew: …except, not really. [laughs]

Rosie: That’s my other question. Is this the normal way of de-gnoming your garden or is it just Fred and George having fun just flinging gnomes around?

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Well, I mean, this is the only example Jo gives us so it must be the only way.

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: I’d like to think there’s probably a more efficient means to keep them out, but maybe not many people have to deal with gnomes. I mean, we don’t really know.

Kat: Right. It’s true.

Matthew: I don’t know. I’ve never had to pull a gnome out of a garden. So… [laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: So then we have another interesting example of a magical creature within Jo’s world that isn’t necessarily the same as magical and mythological creatures in other books. We have the same kind of character, but portrayed in a different way. So obviously Harry then points out that Muggles have garden gnomes as well, but they resemble more the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves idea of little man in little hat with fishing rod…

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: …as opposed to this kind of little potato creature that really makes sense with the kind of mythological gnome aspect, where gnome means earth dweller, and it makes sense that they would look like a potato that they had grown underground.

Caleb: Yeah, and they can talk. I wish we had more backstory on the gnomes in the wizarding world because I feel like…

[Kat laughs]

Caleb: …that’s a missing story.

Matthew: That would be really interesting to see the perspective… the events from the perspective of gnomes, and house-elves…

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: …and all the other creatures you don’t really hear from.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: Definitely.

Kat: Maybe they just have a limited vocabulary. “Leave me alone.” “Don’t touch me.”

Rosie: “Get off me.”

Kat: Yeah.

[Everyone laughs]

Matthew: And that’s all they can say. [laughs]

Kat: [laughs] Right. Exactly.

Rosie: [laughs] Have any of you ever read the Artemis Fowl series…

Matthew: Yeah.

Rosie: …by Eoin Colfer? Yeah?

Matthew: Yeah.

Caleb: I have not.

Rosie: They always struck me… because they came out around the same time as Chamber of Secrets did originally, and they have the same kind of gnome creature within their stories, and I think that is a very traditional…

Matthew: View of them.

Rosie: …kind of mythological view of gnomes. And there is a brilliant character in Artemis Fowl – you guys should read it if you can – and I think if you want to know more about names within Harry Potter, read Artemis Fowl for that kind of idea.

Matthew: Yeah, it gives a really good description of… they describe them very similarly, so it’s really interesting to see how the gnomes are in that. And then if you can take that back to this and be like, “Oh okay, that sort of makes a little bit of sense.”

Rosie: Yeah. And then Mr. Weasley turns up, he’s home from work, and he explains what he’s been doing all day. And we get our very first mention of Mundungus Fletcher, who is a troublemaker right from the start. We hear Arthur say that he tried to hex him when he was trying to kind of confront him about a Muggle artifact. So why is Mundungus in the Order later on if we know that he is this bad character? And he’s been introduced right from the very beginning. Why is he then trusted later on as part of Harry’s guard?

Caleb: Probably just so Dumbledore can keep him close. And maybe he is resourceful in certain ways that lets the order keep a closer eye on him.

Kat: Yeah, I’m pretty sure one of the twins says that… or maybe it’s Lupin… says that it’s good to have thieves and stuff in the Order.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: Yeah, so…

Matthew: Get a different perspective that they wouldn’t normally have.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: Mhm.

Kat: But I just like the mention because it’s yet another name drop. She does so many of these and I love it.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: I’m loving reading back through the books because you notice them so much more, because the first time you would have read this name and just have completely forgotten about it.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: And when you see Mundungus later, you forget that he’s already been mentioned. You think he’s being introduced as a new character.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: And we actually knew about him from right at the very start. So yeah, I love those details.

Kat: It’s just like Mafalda Hopkirk, right? Because isn’t that the witch that Hermione turns into?

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, thought so.

Rosie: Definitely, yeah. So Mr. Weasley has done this whole kind of rant about his work day, and then the Weasleys announce that Harry is here. And Mr. Weasley turns around and says, “Harry who?” as if anyone in the world didn’t know who Harry was going to be.

Kat: [laughs] Right.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: That is just another reason to love Mr. Weasley because Harry just wants to be a normal kid and Mr. Weasley really treats him like that. He’s just… “Yeah, Harry who?” Not Harry Potter, just Harry.

Kat: I think that also speaks to his general air of obliviousness, quite honestly.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Matthew: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.

Kat: Yeah. He’s just… I mean, there’s so many people already in his kitchen he’s not going to notice another person.

[Matthew laughs]

Rosie: The only non-ginger person in the room. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah, exactly.

Rosie: So Ron takes Harry up to his room so that they can get settled in and Harry can start to feel at home, and we see that on Ron’s door, there is a little plague that says “Ronald’s room” and how sweet is that? That just makes it that little homely touch.

Kat: That’s true. It’s very cute.

Rosie: Yeah. And then we open the door and Ron’s entire room is decorated in the orange colors of the Chudley Cannons.

Caleb: Yup.

Rosie: And it’s just a perfect example of how Quidditch teams within the Potter world are exactly like football teams or soccer teams in the UK. So many young boys across the country will have their rooms decorated with their team colors, and it just shows that Ron is that perfect little typical twelve-year-old with his Quidditch team wallpaper, his comics, his tank of frog spawn on the side. He’s just the perfect character to appeal to any twelve-year-old boy.

Caleb: Yup.

Rosie: And I agree with Harry, when Ron is looking around his room and saying, “It’s not much,” and Harry turns around and says, “It’s the best house ever.” I definitely want to live at the Burrow.

Matthew: It’s a cool house.

Kat: Yeah, it’s definitely a cool house.

Caleb: It is.

Kat: I really want them… just going back to Ron’s comics, I so want them to release versions… not versions. Episodes? What are comic book books called?

Rosie: Issues?

Kat: Issues! That’s the right word.

Caleb: Issues, yeah.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: I so want them to release issues of The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. I’m just saying. It sounds brilliant.

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah.

Caleb: That would be cool.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: J.K. Rowling, if you’re listening, put it on Pottermore too. That would be cool.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Or fans, yeah, [laughs] because it’s probably not going to happen on Pottermore.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: So fans, go for it.

Kat: That’s right. [laughs] Someone draw it for us.

Rosie: Submit them to Alohomora!

Kat: We ask a lot of our fans.

Rosie: [laughs] We do.

Caleb: I also ask a lot of J.K. Rowling, assuming she’s listening.

[Caleb, Matthew, and Rosie laugh]

Kat: We can play.

Caleb: One day.

Rosie: One day maybe.

Kat: Yeah.

Matthew: That’d be interesting to know if she does listen. That would be cool.

Caleb: Maybe if I get to go to the New York city thing, I’ll ask her. When she’s…

Rosie: To The Casual Vacancy?

Caleb: Yeah, The Casual Vacancy press event. Anyway…

Kat: Yeah, you and the twelve other million people who want to go to that.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: It’ll happen. I’m going to be there. But I won’t waste a lot of time on that.

Kat: Right, yeah, yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: So we wrap up Chapter 3 and move into Chapter 4, which is titled “Flourish and Blotts,” which we sort of know about from before, the first book, but we actually get to go into the store this time. And it opens up with Harry obviously still at the Burrow and he immediately gives a sharp contrast between the Dursleys’ and the Weasleys’ houses. He describes the Dursleys’ as neat and ordered, with the Weasleys’ being strange and unexpected, which just makes it that much more exciting compared to what Harry is used to. And Harry notices that there is a talking mirror that says, [in a deep voice] “Tuck your shirt in, scruffy,” [back to normal voice] and I’m just… I wish I really had a mirror that talked to me because think about it, you get critiqued before you even go out, so…

Kat: Right. That was a good voice, by the way.

Caleb: Thank you.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: And…

Matthew: Do you think that mirror is actually alive or just has… and it has a conscience? Or do you think it just talks about clothing?

Kat: Wait, is Noah here?

Caleb: [laughs] I know. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Noah is going to be so happy…

Kat: Are you channeling him?

Caleb: …that you brought that up.

Kat: Wow.

Caleb: Good job, Matthew.

Kat: Yeah, no. I do not think it’s a sentient being.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: But what if the mirror was a little too judgy?

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Then I feel like I might break it if it said something mean to me.

Kat: Yeah I could see that. But that’s your Gryffindor temper.

Caleb: That’s true. But just a…

Rosie: I do feel that mirror would probably be more of a Fred and George trick rather than a Mrs. Weasley trying to be nice to her son.

Caleb: That’s true.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: And the big difference that kind of wraps up contrasting the two places, is Harry’s… or as the narrator it says… it was the fact that everybody there seemed to like him. So that’s the first time he’s really in a home where people enjoy his presence and I think that was important.

Kat: He finally feels the love.

Caleb: Right. He finally gets to know what a home is like.

Kat: Right. A proper home, yeah.

Caleb: Yeah, and as Harry continues to amble through the Burrow, we get more of Ginny being really awkward and shy, which just keeps playing in to this crush that she has, and Harry doesn’t really know how to deal with it because he’s just as awkward.

Kat: Do you think he realizes it’s a crush?

Caleb: Maybe. I guess I always assumed, but…

Matthew: Probably not at first, but eventually.

Caleb: Or maybe not a crush, but just sort of like a fascination. Eh.

Kat: I don’t know. I feel like boys especially at that age are oblivious to that stuff.

Matthew: Yes.

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Matthew: Yes. [laughs]

Caleb: That’s funny.

Matthew: Yes, we are.

Caleb: [laughs] And so we finally get letters from Hogwarts. Harry figures out that his letter… because the owls again know everything, that his Hogwarts letter has come to the Burrow and they get their book lists. And Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk is on there, as we might expect. But then there’s this huge list of all these books from this dude named Gilderoy Lockhart. And later we figure out, obviously, that Lockhart is a teacher and I’m just thinking, do individual teachers get to choose their books? You would assume they get some say in that, but is there no approval by the headmaster or headmistress? Because why would Dumbledore allow Lockhart to profit so much by requiring students to buy all of his books?

Rosie: His books are meant to be instruction manuals, so as long… I mean Dumbledore hired him, trusting him that these were his own ideas, so it’s just evidence of his own prowess.

Caleb: Do you think Dumbledore saw through that and hasn’t seen through the books yet?

Kat: Well, that’s what I was thinking. I think that Dumbledore realizes that Lockhart is full of BS, basically, and… but he’s so desperate for a teacher that what other choice does he have?

Caleb: And that’s part of the deal…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: …that Lockhart gets to put all of his books on the list and that’s the condition that he teaches?

Kat: Yeah, maybe.

Caleb: I’m a little disappointed in Dumbledore in that.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: Poor Weasleys, having to buy 89,000 books for one year.

Kat: I mean, how many books is it?

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: There’s, like, seven or eight or something.

Kat: Seven. Wow.

Rosie: But Lockhart is the famous author of the time. I guess there’s going to be a charity shop somewhere of Wizarding books, so you’ll be able to find some cheap copy someone has given back.

Caleb: Right. Well, after this letter, it’s not the only letter coming Harry’s way. We find out that Hermione has sent a letter and she comments on how Errol is… well, Errol first flops down and barely makes it to get the letter there… and Hermione even comments in her letter that Errol is on his last wing. I’m just thinking: Poor Errol, he’s just not making it these days.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: After Dobby got done with him, he just can’t…

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Right, yeah [laughs]

Matthew: Dobby.

[Kat laughs]

Caleb: But notice, guys, that at the end of Hermione’s letter… because she addresses it primarily to Ron. It says, “Dear Ron, and Harry if you’re there.” It ends with, “Love from Hermione.” They’re already in love.

Kat and Matthew: Aww!

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: That is so sweet.

Caleb: Probably not. But Hermione is… I guess, do girls start just using “love” at that age because that’s sort of just a common closing to a letter?

Kat: I didn’t, but Hermione is very caring and very proper. So maybe for her…

Caleb: Right.

Kat: …that’s just normal.

Rosie: And she’s never really had all that many friends, so maybe it’s just a nice… she enjoys being able to write to someone, so it’s, “Love from Hermione.” Aww.

Caleb: Mhm, yeah.

Kat: And maybe she does love them but on a platonic level.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: At least right now.

Rosie: Friendly level.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: So after Harry and the Weasleys go and play a little bit of Quidditch and everyone uses his broom because theirs are not as good, we get to where they’re about to head off to Diagon Alley. Harry starts thinking about how they don’t have as much… the Weasleys don’t have as much money as he does because one of them makes a comment about how it’s going to be a struggle to buy all their textbooks and everything. He makes a comment about the Dursleys… can’t remember what the exact line is, but he says something where he doesn’t want the Dursleys to know he has all this magic because their disdain for gold would not reach to… or disdain for magic, I should say… reaches to his amount of gold. So it’s kind of like the one exception that the Dursleys would hate about magic, of course, something with money. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

Kat: But you can convert… you can change the money, so I think it’s good that Harry never told them.

Caleb: Yeah, definitely.

Kat: Because they probably would have made him convert it.

Caleb: Absolutely.

Matthew: Taken all of it.

Kat: But how would they have gotten it because they wouldn’t have let Harry go into the wizarding world to get it and they sure as heck would have never gone.

Caleb: I don’t know. They may have… again, allowed an exception because, again, of the money they’re getting out of it.

Matthew: Yeah, they probably would have if they knew. They seem like the kind of people that would force him to go get it.

Rosie: Yeah, they wouldn’t have gone to get it themselves; the goblins would never have let them either.

Caleb: That’s true.

Kat: Do you think Muggles aren’t allowed in there?

Rosie: No, I think they probably are allowed because I think Hermione would have gone with her parents, but I don’t think… I think the goblins would know the difference between someone accessing someone’s vault for good reasons and someone taking someone else’s money.

Caleb: Yeah, they’re clever.

Kat: Okay, you mean if they were by themselves.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Okay.

Rosie: Or even if they were with Harry, I think they would be able to tell a certain amount of coercion.

Caleb: Hmm. Well, the Dursleys… excuse me, not the Dursleys, because they don’t use Floo Powder.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: The Weasleys and Harry are getting ready to Floo themselves to Diagon Alley, and this is Harry’s first introduction to Floo Powder. And so I started to think… I don’t think we’ve talked about this before – I don’t think we would have – but what is the correct amount of Floo Powder? Because it just says they grab a handful. But do you need more depending on if you’re going farther? What happens if you do too little? Do you burn alive because you didn’t take enough Floo Powder?

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Oh my God!

Matthew: That’s a good question.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Because if you’re just grabbing… I can’t imagine that it’s an arbitrary amount because then the Weasleys would probably try to ration it because of money.

Kat: Well, it says in the book that Fred took a pinch of glittering powder.

Caleb: Okay.

Kat: So it doesn’t seem like you need…

Matthew: That much.

Kat: …all that much. Maybe you just need it to…

Matthew: Maybe…

Kat: Maybe that’s not what transports you; it just makes the fire into a transportation device.

Matthew: Maybe it’s like the wand where it channels… like maybe the Floo Powder channels the magic into allowing you to travel. So it doesn’t matter you use, kind of thing.

Kat: Yeah, you could pour the whole bucket on there or whatever and it would be…

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: Maybe it’s only one transportation, like you only get to go to one place no matter how much you put in.

Caleb: Okay. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of the way most public transportation systems work, right? Like in Chicago, I noticed when we went you paid so much to get on no matter where you get off.

Kat: Right.

Caleb: But it’s different in DC, and I think it’s similar in the Underground over in London. Correct me if I’m wrong, Rosie, but in DC you paid based on distance.

Kat: Destination.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah, you do.

Caleb: But in Chicago and New York, it’s like flat rate.

Kat: In Boston, it’s flat rate too. Yeah.

Caleb: I think the DC Metro was modeled after that, the way it’s set up over in London. So that’s interesting to think about. Anyway…

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: …the Weasleys are kind of all over the place, trying to explain Floo Powder to Harry. I’m thinking, if I was in this place, I would be screaming for them to shut up and just tell me…

Matthew: [laughs] How to use it?

Caleb: That’s kind of mean.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: But yeah, they were throwing advice at him from every direction. It’s no wonder he screws up.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: He throws the Floo Powder in and obviously really tough because you have ash and everything… I guess not hot, but the ash makes him cough up and choke. He doesn’t say it clearly and he ends up in Knockturn Alley, specifically in Borgin and Burkes, the strangest store you will never go to. I just love the description of the store. It’s immediately you know Harry is in a bad place.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: I mean, have you guys ever been alone where you kind of just end up in the wrong place and you know that you have screwed up big time?

Kat: No, I was a goody two-shoes.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Well, even by accident. I feel like I’ve done this, where I’ve been exploring places and…

Matthew: You just get lost.

Caleb: And you end up in an alley…

Rosie: Accidentally gone into a staff area or something like that.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: I know in some cities that I’ve gone to, there’s some areas that you just drive in and all of a sudden you make a wrong turn and you’re like, “Oh, I probably shouldn’t be here.”

Caleb: Yup. Definitely me.

Matthew: One of those moments.

Kat: That’s true. I remember feeling like that when I was in Memphis. That’s true. Yeah, scary.

Caleb: Well…

Kat: Sorry to anyone who lives in Memphis.

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Half of [unintelligible] stopped listening.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: So Lucius and Draco come in the store, Harry is trying to escape, but obviously he can’t run out and be seen by them. And Draco is complaining about Harry and doesn’t know that Harry is there, obviously, and Lucius actually tells Harry to chill out… or excuse me, tells Draco to chill out on the Harry-hating because of the perception that it might create since he brought down the Dark Lord. So I thought this was an interesting sort of contrast in this moment between how mature thinking Lucius is, whereas Draco is still stuck in that schoolboy sort of mindset.

Rosie: Yeah, why is Draco talking about Harry at this point? I mean, he hasn’t seen him all summer. Why is he still so obsessed with this boy? [laughs]

Kat: Because I think Draco is just… he’s really jealous of Harry…

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: …in so many ways.

Matthew: Maybe going back to school made him think about how either, “Oh, I have to deal with him again.”

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: What do you think Draco does in the summer when he’s not doing anything school related?

Kat: Tortures Dobby.

[Caleb and Matthew laugh]

Matthew: That’s terrible.

Kat: [laughs] I don’t know.

Matthew: That’s a good question, though. What…

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: His homework.

Rosie: The wizarding pastimes.

Kat: His homework.

Matthew: Does he have summer work?

Rosie: I guess he has some friends within Slytherin and things as well, so he’d probably meet up with them.

Caleb: Yeah, possibly.

Rosie: They can do evil things together.

Caleb: Right.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Burning ants and stuff. No?

Caleb: Yeah.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Lucius starts talking to… is it… I can’t remember now if it’s Mr. Borgin or Mr. Burke.

Kat: Borgin.

Caleb: Okay. So Lucius starts talking to Mr. Borgin and he’s not wanting to buy anything, but he’s actually wanting to sell. And he’s talking about how the Ministry has started doing raids and Mr. Borgin asks if he has been targeted yet. And I love this quote because Lucius says: “I have not been visited yet. The name Malfoy still commands a certain respect.” And I’m just thinking, yeah, he’s badass. He knows.

Matthew: That’s so badass.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: It is, and we’ll obviously talk about this in the Pottermore stuff but God, even though they’re the quote “evil family,” they’re so baller.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: They can sort of push people around if they want to.

Kat: Yeah, no, totally.

Caleb: And Draco, of course, is mulling about the store as Lucius does business and he starts noticing some things. It was interesting re-reading it this time, because the first time you don’t think much of it, but he spots the Hand of Glory and Mr. Borgin tries to sell it to him. He also spots the Opal Necklace, and these are both things that Draco eventually uses in the series.

Kat: Mhm.

Caleb: So I think it’s some really clever foreshadowing and interesting to read back this time.

Kat: Yeah, it’s just yet another one of those things where I don’t know if any of you have heard of this before where the books on the opposite end of the spectrum parallel each other. So Book 1 and Book 7, and 2 and 6, and 3 and 5.

Matthew: That’s interesting.

Kat: So these items that he sees now are items that he uses in Book 6.

Caleb: Oh, yeah. That’s interesting. I was just thinking about that as you were saying that.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: That’s really kind of mind blowing, actually.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: And Lucius and Mr. Borgin are talking more about the selling, and I think Draco brings something up about Hermione, isn’t it? And they’re talking about the blood heritage, and Mr. Borgin actually says something. His quote is: “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere.” And this was a little surprising to me. He’s obviously dealing with a lot of probably pure-blooded families and what in the world makes him want to say this in front of Lucius Malfoy, of all people?

Kat: I don’t know. What do we know about Borgin? Is he a pure-blood?

Matthew: They run a creepy store.

Caleb: I would think so. I mean, doesn’t this… well, yeah. I mean Tom Riddle interns at this store, right?

Kat: Right. Mhm.

Caleb: So… obviously he’s selling dark objects. I mean I guess dark magic doesn’t necessarily automatically relate to…

Matthew: Evil.

Caleb: …pure-blooded families, but it seems like that’s just an uncharacteristic statement from him. Especially with the company he’s in.

Rosie: I guess it depends on how he says it though. I mean, it could be that “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere,” apart from here. Borgin is trying to be complimentary to Malfoy, I guess, in a way.

Caleb: Oh, gotcha.

Rosie: It’s kind of the wrong way of going about it.

Caleb: He does really quickly correct, or I guess explain himself when Lucius says, “No, not so much from me.” I ain’t playing with that.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Eventually Harry does get out of this dark shop and Hagrid is the one that comes to his rescue while some old lady is trying to sell him creepy stuff. What was it that she was trying to sell him again? I don’t even remember.

Kat: Fingernails.

Caleb: Yeah. Fingernails.

Kat: Or toenails.

Caleb: Good god, lady. What are you doing selling that anyway?

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: But Hagrid gets him out of there.

Matthew: Maybe it could go in a potion.

Caleb: Yeah. [laughs] And Hagrid gets him out of there and he’s reunited with everyone in Diagon Alley. And I really like this moment because Harry immediately tells Ron and Hermione about the Malfoy encounter. And it’s like immediately the first time the three of them are together again, the trio aspect is locked in and they’re already talking about it.

Kat: Yeah, they’re already whispering about things. Yeah. They’re plotters.

Caleb: Exactly. But it’s just that first moment. He’s been with Ron for a while. But then the instant the three of them are together, it’s like back to it.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: Yeah, there’s no “Hi, Hermione, how was your summer?” It’s just, “Let’s go have adventures.”

Matthew: But aren’t those the best kinds of friends?

Caleb: Absolutely.

Rosie: Yes, definitely.

Kat: What house are you, Matthew?

Matthew: Gryffindor.

Caleb: Yes.

Kat: Well, there you go, that makes sense.

Rosie: Yes, adventurous.

Caleb: I’m with that. And as Harry, Ron, and Hermione are going through Diagon Alley, they stop and get some ice cream, and the flavor of this ice cream, strawberry and peanut butter – that is gross. Does anybody like that?

Kat: Eww.

Matthew: I don’t know. I would try that.

Caleb: I mean, I would try it. I like both of those things quite a bit, but I can’t imagine them together.

Matthew: Yeah, exactly.

Rosie: Do they actually have them together? I’d forgotten that.

Caleb: I mean, it just says…

Rosie: Are they not just each one having an individual one, so one has strawberry and one has peanut butter?

Caleb: No, it’s like hyphenated, I think, so it’s “strawberry-and-peanut butter ice cream.” Yeah. “Three large strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice creams.”

Rosie: Eww.

Caleb: So they should be together.

Matthew: I kind of want to try that someday. I wish I knew how to make ice cream.

Kat: Well, you could probably buy peanut butter ice cream and cut…

Matthew: Put strawberries into it.

Kat: Or buy them both and mix it together. Eww. It sounds awful.

[Everyone laughs]

Rosie: I guess the wizarding world likes weird flavors, with Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

Caleb: That’s true. Exactly.

Kat: Can I just say that I enjoy the grass one? It actually tastes very good.

Caleb: Eww. No.

Kat: It doesn’t taste like grass. It doesn’t.

Matthew: What does it taste like?

Kat: Green.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: If it can taste like a flavor? I’m not sure, it’s just very sweet.

Caleb: That’s really bad news because that’s just going to motivate some kid to start going out there and eating some grass because they think it’s going to taste the same, and then parents are calling the company because their children are eating the grass.

Kat: Well, then they aren’t paying very good attention to their kids, are they?

Matthew: And that’s their fault.

Kat: That’s right. Anyway.

Caleb: So everyone gets back to Flourish and Blotts, the title of the chapter, and they’re going to buy some books. And, apparently, this Gilderoy Lockhart bloke is having some event inside the bookstore. And this is our first big wizarding celebrity because at this point we don’t really know much about Gilderoy Lockhart, but now it’s clear that he is something, people are crazy about this guy. And not in the way that Harry was a celebrity for defeating Voldemort, but this superstar as far as a book publisher and adventurer or whatever else he’s pitched himself as, and he uses Harry in the moment to double up the fame. This quote, he finally figures out, or he releases that he’s going to be a teacher: “He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me,” and at this point, I think Gilderoy Lockhart is vomit worthy and I kind of already have an idea of what he’s going to be like. What about you guys in this moment?

Matthew: Gilderoy Lockhart is “that guy.”

Caleb: Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: You just know, he’s just “that guy.” It’s pretty funny.

Rosie: But Kenneth Branagh is completely perfect casting for him in the movie.

Kat: Oh yeah, brilliant. Yeah, I completely agree.

Caleb: I wish I could have played this role in the movie. I feel like it would have been so fun to just go all out and be the most ridiculous…

Matthew: Go huge.

Kat: Well, practice up for LeakyCon then.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: No, I don’t know, I feel like with, especially with all the flashing bulbs all around and all the witches that are all dazzled by his beautiful white teeth, I don’t know, it…

Caleb: He does have some nice teeth.

Kat: Yeah, it’s a little vomit worthy, but I think it fits.

Caleb: That’s true.

Rosie: Yeah. He’s just the worst kind of celebrity, and it brings up a brilliant contrast to Harry’s fame in that moment.

Kat: Yeah, the “attention seeking” and the “I want to shrink into the shadows.” Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: And while he’s announcing this, we obviously figure out that we have a new Hogwarts professor, so that’s kind of an exciting moment because we don’t know yet about this trend in Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but it’s kind of exciting to know something new about Hogwarts.

Kat: That’s right.

Rosie: Yeah, it’s not going to be same old, same old.

Matthew: Do we really ever, when they’re not at Hogwarts, we don’t really hear a lot about Hogwarts, like the goings on, regular stuff that happens there.

Caleb: Right, I mean we do in Book 7 when it’s talked about.

Matthew: Well, yeah, later.

Kat: And Book 5, but that’s it, really.

Caleb: Yeah, they’re pretty far removed until they get, sort of, back in the magical atmosphere.

Rosie: Isn’t it interesting that we’re getting all this in Chapter 4? I mean we’ve had, I guess, Dobby’s warning in Chapter 2, but so far there really hasn’t been much kind of intrigue or plot within the story. I mean…

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: …we don’t really know where Harry’s adventure is going to go after everything that happened in Book 1.

Caleb: Yeah, Dobby’s warning sort of built up suspense, but it’s kind of been forgotten…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: …at this point.

Rosie: Yeah. So the fact that Lockhart is going to kind of… the fresh start at Hogwarts, it definitely makes him more interesting of a character.

Caleb: Yeah.

Matthew: That’s true.

Kat: Mhm.

Caleb: And Draco comes up and starts making fun, starts pissing people off like he does, and Ginny actually sticks up for Harry. This is the first time Harry sort of hears Ginny say anything around him, and of course Malfoy makes the joke that Potter getting himself a girlfriend. And of course this can’t stop here. It escalates because Lucius comes in and Arthur comes in, and all of a sudden they’re fighting and beating each other up. I thought this was a little out of character for Arthur, almost, because I wouldn’t expect him to do that in the middle of Diagon Alley. I think it’s also interesting that he does it after Lucius insults the Grangers but not his… not after he insults his family.

Kat: Well, the exact quote is that it says: “The company you keep, Weasley. And I thought your family could sink no lower.” So I think it’s a little bit of both. I think Arthur is really proud of his family regardless of their state in the world.

Caleb: Hmm.

Matthew: He seems like the kind of guy that would be very… yeah, very proud of his family. Very proud of what they have accomplished and very protective of his family and his friends. So if somebody insults his family and friends, he’s going to do everything he can to defend them.

Rosie: He’s also very interested in Muggles, obviously, and he doesn’t like the pure-blood attitude of insulting Muggle-borns.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Muggles especially. The fact that he’s sticking up for the Grangers is definitely not out of character for Arthur. The fact that it’s against Lucius just really shows how much of a Gryffindor Arthur is, I guess. It’s showing how much he doesn’t care about Lucius’s status. He will stand up for his own rights and his own ideas.

Caleb: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I guess I was more thinking that he works for the Ministry, he’s a public official, thinking he’s out in public where people see him. But I guess it’s just… this Gryffindor side takes over at the offense that’s from Lucius.

Kat: So you’re thinking why did he beat him up when he could insult him with words?

Caleb: Yeah… but thinking about that Gryffindor aspect again…

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: …he’s going to be much more… to act than try to think of some clever comeback.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: But after this gets broken up and Molly is furious at Arthur, and she is pissed. Even as Arthur is trying…

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Caleb: …to ask a question of the Grangers as they try to leave, she just gives him a look, and he knows he is done…

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: …and Harry makes a last remark that he is not a fan of Floo Powder…

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: …so he does not think he’s going to be using that much in the future.

Kat: He’s very picky about his modes of transportation, isn’t he?

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: He is. [laughs] And that wraps up the fourth chapter, so… and we… it’s not really a cliffhanging chapter. It’s kind of like, “Huh. All right, that part’s over.”

Rosie: But soon we will be going back to Hogwarts, so the adventure starts soon.

Caleb: Right, hopefully.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So we’re going to jump into our special feature now, which, by request of many, many of you is Pottermore, In Depth. We’re going to talk about Chapters 3 and 4, which have a plethora of information in them. I feel like it’s the most information we’ve been given so far in just these couple of chapters. We’re going to start out in Chapter 3, Moment 1, where we learn about technology. So the first little bit we learn is that wizards don’t really care for or use the internet. And there’s even a quote that says:

“…when you can communicate with friends and acquaintances by means
of owl, fire, Patronus, Howler, enchanted objects such as coins, or
Apparate to visit them in person…”

And then I was like, “Well, who really needs Facebook?”

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: In that account, when you can just email someone. How would you guys most communicate with your friends you think? What would be your preferred method?

Caleb: I mean, I think…

Rosie: In real life or in the wizarding world?

Kat: If you were a wizard.

Caleb: Well, I think it’s the easiest to… I mean, if you want to see them, you’re Apparating.

Matthew: Yeah, I think I would Apparate a lot to go visit. But I really like writing, so I would probably send a lot of owls.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: I often wish that someone would invent teleportation, so I would definitely go with Apparating. As unpleasant as it sounds.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Personally.

Rosie: I like the idea of having the two-way mirror. We know that Sirius and James used to talk using the mirrors that Sirius gives Harry later on.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: I think that’s kind of a magical Skype, almost. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah, that would make it a lot easier almost for you and I because you’re so far away and I can’t text you.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Or something. Yeah.

Caleb: Mhm.

Kat: And in this section we also learn that there was, albeit very briely, a corporation whose goal was to create a wizarding television station. I know you brought this up before, Rosie…

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: …it was called the British Wizarding Broadcasting Corporation.

Caleb: Of course. B-W-B-C.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: Oh, I didn’t even catch that. That makes sense.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah, that’s what BBC stands for. British Broadcasting Corporation.

Kat: Well, I knew that. I just for some reason didn’t…

Caleb: Right.

Kat: Okay. What kind of programs do you think would be on this station? What would they have?

Caleb: Hmm. I mean, I would think they would have at least some televising of Quidditch matches, probably.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Ah.

Matthew: There might be something like how you have The Food Network…

[Caleb laughs]

Matthew: …where they teach you how to make food.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: Yes.

Matthew: Some sort of how to cook with magic.

Caleb: Think of if it was successful enough too, when the reality TV boom happened, and there was reality TV for the wizarding world.

[Everyone laughs]

Matthew: Gosh.

Kat: Oh my God.

Matthew: Wizarding duels all the time.

Caleb: Yes.

Matthew: Fights break down.

Kat: What would that show be called?

Caleb: What if there was an X-Factor for the wizarding world? And Celestina Warbeck was one of the judges?

[Kat and Matthew laugh]

Kat: What would some of their tasks be? What would they have to do?

Matthew: On which? On the X-Factor one or the…

Caleb: X-Factor is just singing.

Kat: Oh, X-Factor is just singing. I’m thinking of the other one. The…

Caleb: Britain… or America’s Got Talent is what you’re thinking of.

Kat: No no no, I’m thinking of Fear Factor. That’s the one I’m thinking of.

Caleb: Oh.

Matthew: Oh. I don’t even want to think about that.

Caleb: Oh gosh.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: Wizarding Fear Factor would be terrible.

Kat: Like kiss an Acromantula or something?

Rosie: Eww. Don’t say that.

Caleb: Oh my gosh.

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Sorry, arachnophobia. Sorry.

Caleb: Nightmares ignited.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So then we move on to Chapter 3, Moment 3, and I love this. This is the Burrow chapter and this is de-gnoming the garden. And I love that they put this little game in; I thought it was so much fun. And I actually want to challenge you guys to a gnome-tossing contest.

Matthew: Ooh.

Caleb: Oh dear.

Kat: The person that tosses their gnome the furthest gets bragging rights for at least the rest of the book.

Caleb: Hmm. Okay…

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: …I’m going to get mine up.

Kat: All right.

Caleb: I’m going to try.

Kat: All right. Me too.

Caleb: If it’ll load.

Kat: Okay. Mine is… all right. And I love it because you only get, what, ninety seconds, I think? And it’s hard. You guys have done this before, right?

Caleb: Yes.

Kat: Here we go.

Matthew: It’s hard to get used to.

Caleb: I haven’t…

Kat: Oh shoot, I just missed one.

Caleb: I haven’t done it in a long time, so it’s going to…

Matthew: Ooh. Threw him into a wall. Oopsies.

Kat: Oh, whoops.

Caleb: Ah! He made… God.

Kat: Yeah…

Caleb: Oh, that’s a pretty good one.

Kat: You know what I hate is when they hit the wall. Oh, oops. Oh no, I missed him.

Caleb: Oh, I got a good one there.

Kat: How far?

Caleb: I’ll tell you when I’m done because maybe I’ll get a better one.

Kat: Oh no. I try to miss the ones that are close to the wall because they’re so hard to throw over the wall…

Caleb: Oh, shoot. I hit the wall.

[Rosie laughs]

Matthew: Oh, another one into the wall. [laughs]

Caleb: This is going to be such a…

Kat: Oh, I got a good one… oh, not so good.

Caleb: I’m sure the editors are going to love editing this moment.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Oh my gosh, stop moving so another one can… thank you.

Kat: Don’t you hate that?

Caleb: Yes.

Kat: Stupid. All right. But I thought this was so brilliant. I mean…

Caleb: Ugh.

Kat: This is one of my favorite parts of the new Pottermore info.

Matthew: It’s fun.

Kat: I haven’t gotten any past the stump yet.

Matthew: I got one. My furthest so far is eleven… twelve. I just got a twelve.

Caleb: No!

Kat: Oh man, Matt is going to win. Oh.

Caleb: No, I beat Matt.

Kat: Oh wait, oh wait, oh. Man, I did a lot better the first time I played this, can I just say. I guess I’m out of practice with my gnome-tossing skills.

[Caleb, Matthew, and Rosie laugh]

Matthew: I think this is the best I’ve ever done on this.

Kat: Oh, crap. I only have 16 seconds left. Hurry up. Give me another one.

Caleb: Oh, that was a good one. Oh, no. He didn’t bounce. Dang it.

Kat: Come on.

Matthew: I ran out of time.

Kat: Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yes… ugh. Nope, that was bad.

[Matthew laughs]

Caleb: All right, my time is up.

Kat: Mine too.

Matthew: Me too.

Kat: So my furthest was 10.46, which is so bad.

Matthew: My furthest was…

Caleb: What were you, Matthew, again?

Matthew: …twelve.

Caleb: I think I win, I got 13.36!

Kat and Matthew: Oh!

Kat: Man.

Matthew: Nice.

Caleb: Yes!

Kat: I did so much better the first time I played. I forget what I got, but it was a lot better than 10.46.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: All right, well Caleb, you win. Lucky you.

Caleb: Yes!

[Kat laughs]

Matthew: Aww.

Caleb: Rosie, did you play?

Rosie: No, I haven’t actually got there on Pottermore yet. I need to catch up.

Kat: Well, it’s a lot of fun. You’ll have to let us know when you get there.

Caleb: Yeah, and guys out there, see who can beat me because I think that is the farthest I’ve gotten. 13.36.

Kat: Yeah, that’s really good. Those are some good gnome-tossing skills.

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: Good job. Okay, so moving on to the next little bit, we’ve got Chapter 4, Moment 3, and this is in Borgin and Burkes and the information is on Malfoy – on Draco specifically. And I love this because we finally learn what his wand is. I mean, I think we knew before, did we?

Caleb: Hmm, I don’t remember…

Kat: I don’t think so. I think we knew parts of it, but not official, right? Anyway…

Caleb: Yeah.

Kat: …so it’s a hawthorne wand with unicorn hair, it’s ten inches, and it’s springy. So I just wanted to read the hawthorne description since none of us had hawthorne when we talked about wands in the first book. So it says:

“The wandmaker Gregorovitch wrote that hawthorn ‘makes a strange, contradictory wand, as full of paradoxes as the tree that gave it birth, whose leaves and blossoms heal, and yet whose cut branches smell of death.’ While I disagree with many of Gregorovitch’s conclusions, we concur about hawthorn wands, which are complex and intriguing in their natures, just like the owners who best suit them. Hawthorn wands may be particularly suited to healing magic, but they are also adept at curses, and I have generally observed that the hawthorn wand seems most at home with a conflicted nature, or with a witch or wizard passing through a period of turmoil. Hawthorn is not easy to master, however, and I would only ever consider placing a hawthorn wand in the hands of a witch or wizard of proven talent, or the consequences might be dangerous. Hawthorn wands have a notable peculiarity: their spells can, when badly handled, backfire.”

And I thought it was great. I feel like… given all we know about Draco…

Caleb: Yeah.

b>Kat: …it’s the prefect wand for him.

Matthew: Definitely.

Matthew: Yeah.

Caleb: Especially as he progresses through the series.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Mhm.

Kat: The part that I did find interesting is that his core is unicorn hair, and it says that the wands with unicorn cores are generally the most difficult to turn to the dark arts…

Rosie: Hmm.

Kat: …that they’re faithful and that they remain strongly attached to the first owner. So I mean, I guess that makes sense because Draco had such a hard time actually being a baddie, a full on baddie.

Rosie: Yeah. It’s interesting also that it says that they are faithful to their first owner because Draco gets disarmed so many times and Harry eventually gets his wand, and obviously with the Elder Wand thing, that becomes really important. But the idea that his first wand would always remain loyal to him is quite nice.

Kat: Do we know what happens to Draco’s wand?

Matthew: Do we ever find out?

Caleb: Does it…

Rosie: I know that in the movie he asks for it back, but I’m not entirely sure if that happens in the book.

Caleb: Well, no – doesn’t Harry or Hermione end up with it? I think Harry does, right?

Rosie: Yeah, Harry uses it in Deathly Hallows and Draco corners him and asks…

Caleb: Oh, right. Got you.

Rosie: …for it back because his mother’s wand doesn’t quite work for him.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: But he obviously doesn’t get it because he’s using Draco’s wand when he’s duelling with Voldemort, yes?

Rosie: Yeah, because his own wand…

Caleb: Right, because he won the allegiance of that wand.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Right, so what happened to it after that?

Caleb: Maybe Harry gave it back?

Matthew: He might have.

Kat: Maybe, I don’t know. I was just curious if we knew. Okay, and then the information about Draco specifically goes to say that he grew up as an only child in the Malfoy Manor, and pretty much from the first time he could talk it was made clear that he was very special, a really gifted wizard not only because he was a pure-blood and a wizard, but because he’s a member of the Malfoy family. So I was thinking about what do you think that that brings? What do you think the Malfoy name actually brings to the power? Is it just because it’s so old and ancient? Or is it something else, like an inherent something?

Caleb: I mean, I just think as the Pottermore info continues, it’s just through history a very upward family. They’ve always been in the higher ranks of wizarding society, and it’s just kind of… I mean, it’s obviously been passed down, even in modern times.

Kat: Okay, so you think it’s more of an economical power as opposed to an actual, physical strength?

Caleb: Yeah, I don’t think necessarily they’re more magically able than others, but…

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: No. Yeah, it’s the idea of the Malfoy line has always been kept pure. It’s the same as the Blacks and the Gaunts and all of those, the names that seem so important to pure-bloods. To be associated with that name is to have that importance that that line gives you.

Kat: Right, okay. I thought this next part was really interesting. It says that Draco was raised in a time of regret that the Dark Lord had not succeeded in taking over the wizarding community, but one of the most persistent rumors is that Harry was going to be a great dark wizard. And I thought it was really interesting that Lucius himself was a supporter of this rumor and that he was really hoping to have another master in Harry.

Caleb: Right, yeah. And that’s pretty much why Draco extends his friendship when Harry first arrived at Hogwarts. And maybe that sort of influenced from what he heard at home from his dad.

Matthew: He just kind of assumes that they should be friends because of all the stuff that he hears, and he assumes that Harry is just going to accept his friendship right away.

Rosie: Yeah. Because Harry is important and Draco is important. Therefore, they should be important together.

Matthew: Yeah.

Rosie: But Draco doesn’t understand that Harry doesn’t know that Draco is important.

Caleb: And not even… in doing all this, not even considering the grounds of Harry’s story… why he was killed, the fact that Voldemort killed his father, his mother put herself in front of him – when you consider that, you wouldn’t really guess that Harry would rise to be the next Dark Lord. But that’s sort of not even in Lucius and therefore Draco’s mind as they consider this possibility.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: I think they assume that if Harry was able to defeat Voldemort as a baby, he must have the kind of power that is corrupting. He has the kind of so much magic that he must use it to be powerful himself, otherwise it’s just a waste.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: Right. Which feeds into the… what we were talking about, I think it was on the last episode, how much exactly does Lucius know about the diary? And does he know it’s a Horcrux and obviously not because… where was I going with that?

Matthew: Well, maybe he wouldn’t give it up so easily if he knew it was a Horcrux. Like putting…

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Are you wondering if he thinks that Harry is a Horcrux as well? Do you think the dark magic is kind of transferred? I don’t think that Malfoy would have been aware of that.

Kat: No, I don’t know where I was going with that, but that makes sense.

Rosie: Okay.

Kat: Cool.

[Kat, Matthew, and Rosie laugh]

Kat: But obviously they quickly realize that Harry is not going to be a “better Voldemort,” so they don’t become friends. Basically Harry refuses to be Draco’s friend and that’s that. But the other bit of information that I thought was really interesting is that Draco had a bunch of different last names – or surnames – before it was Malfoy, and I particularly love that one of them was Spinks.

[Caleb laughs]

Kat: It just sounds like a really funny last name.

Caleb: Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: The other options were Smart or… what is that? Like…

Rosie: Spungen.

Kat: Spungen. Very interesting. And of course as we talked about on the dragon show, his Christian name comes from the constellation “The Dragon.” And she points out that his wand core is unicorn.

Rosie: So he’s very magical.

Kat: Right. Very magical all around.

[Matthew laughs]

Kat: So then we move on. Chapter 4, Moment 4 is all information about the Malfoy family, the whole history. There is so much information here that it’s just kind of ridiculous. It says that the Malfoy name comes from the old French, and it translates as “bad faith.” I thought that was really interesting.

Rosie: I love this detail.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: I know I’ve talked a lot about the Old English and Medieval stuff today, but this really ties into it again. I don’t know if you guys know about the rivalry between England and France.

Caleb: Yeah, of course.

Rosie: Have you guys heard of that? Okay, good. It just ties in so well, as Harry is the great English hero. He is like the King Arthur style, traditional English hero. And then to have his villain, his greatest enemy, Malfoy be French, it just works so perfectly within that kind of ancient rivalry idea.

Caleb: And just the way that Rowling was able to write – I’m obsessed with the Malfoy family, and I was even more so after reading this. Just the way she was able to tie it in to real history. I remember reading this when the Pottermore came out – what was it, like a month or so ago – just reading it, and I had to catch myself because I felt like I was reading real history. It made the Malfoys seem like a real family. The way she wrote it into history was mind-blowing.

Kat: Yeah. Obligatory genius moment, right here. We’re having it right now.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: Exactly.

Kat: Right, exactly. Yeah, how it talks about how they came over with the invading Norman army and… yeah, it’s just brilliant. Let’s see, it says that, “The Malfoys have always had a reputation, hinted at by their not altogether complimentary surname, of being a slippery bunch…” which I thought was really cool. Everything Rosie just said, totally true.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: “The Malfoys have never been above integrating themselves with the non-magical community when it suits them.”

Matthew: Which is interesting, because they hate on the Muggles so much.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: How much of that is Voldemort’s influence, though? How much of the current hatred of pure-blood is all to do with… sorry, Muggle-borns and Mudbloods… is all to do with Voldemort’s pure-blood ideal? Without that influence…

Caleb: He shifted the paradigm of what is expected.

Rosie: Yeah.

Matthew: I would think so, yeah.

Rosie: Without that influence, would it have been any different?

Kat: It does go on to say that because of their dealings with the non-magic community, that’s why they’re one of the richest wizarding families in Britain. And it’s also been rumored that for many years they’ve dabbled in Muggle currency and assets. So they’re probably buying and selling property and stocks and bonds, that type of thing.

Caleb: Definitely.

Rosie: Sure.

Kat: Which seems, I don’t know, in character but again out of character. I don’t know.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: I think in character for the family to try and get the gold, but maybe out of character for the current Malfoys.

Kat: Right. And of course we also learn that they were in opposition of the Statute of Secrecy when that was proposed to be written in 1692. Due in part to the fact that they would have had to stop dealing with Muggles so much, because it says in here that they were… they dated Muggles, and they were friends with Muggles. Which, too, I thought was really interesting. I can’t picture the Malfoys having a ball at their house and having Muggles there.

Rosie: How can they say that they are pure-bloods if they had this Muggle history? It’s interesting.

Kat: I don’t think they can.

Caleb: But they do anyway. As long as they can pitch it and make people believe it, they’ll go with it.

Matthew: Nobody questions it.

Caleb: Right, because they are the Malfoys.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Does it say anything in here about actually procreating with Muggles? I don’t think it does.

Rosie Maybe there are secret Malfoys that are Muggle-born all around England.

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah, it doesn’t say. But obviously once the statute came into being, of course they let everything go and they were the biggest supporters of all.

Caleb: Right.

Kat: And I thought this was interesting, too, that it said “no Malfoy has ever aspired to be the role of Minister of Magic.”

Caleb: Of course, they’d much rather be behind the scenes. That’s where the real power is.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: I suppose being the shakers and the movers.

Caleb: Yeah…

Kat: Making things happen.

Caleb: Maybe it’s not attached to their name, but they’re still getting what they want.

Kat and Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Oh, here’s the bit I was looking for. It says since the Statute of Secrecy came to be, “no Malfoy has married a Muggle or Muggle-born.” Although it says, “The family has, however, eschewed the somewhat dangerous practice of inter-marrying within … a small pool of pure-bloods”.

Caleb: Yeah. Which also makes a good parallel between royalty that we know from history.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: At least it doesn’t happen anymore.

[Caleb and Matthew laugh]

Kat: I guess that we know of, right?

Caleb: Hopefully not.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah. And then we just get a brief history of Lucius and where he came… we kind of already know all this through the books, that he was a Death Eater and he evaded prison and so forth. And then it says that Draco, who was saved by Harry in the Battle of Hogwarts, currently lives in the family estate in Wiltshire?

Caleb: Yup.

Rosie: Wiltshire.

Kat: Wiltshire. You say it so much more elegantly than I do, sorry.

Rosie: [laughs] Wiltshire.

Kat: That’s okay. So yeah, I thought that this… I know we kind of moved through that quickly, but there’s so much there that… I think it’s just great information. I love reading about the Malfoys. I feel like it humanizes them.

Caleb: Yeah, I mean it’s definitely my favorite new content. Well, maybe aside from McGonagall’s story, but so much information she gave us about the Malfoys that I have been waiting for for so long. So it was great.

Rosie: It just shows how amazing she is at world building. She’s managed to create this entire world that fits so perfectly within our own world that you can pick any time period and just know that there is a wizard somewhere there pulling strings and it’s generally a Malfoy.

Matthew: And be able to… and even to get this in depth with families, it’s so cool how she’s able to pull all that together and it works so well.

Rosie: Yeah. I do wonder how much she knew before writing for Pottermore or how much she’s adding since…

Kat: Yeah, I was…

Rosie: Because I doubt she had all of this when she was writing about Draco and Lucius.

Kat: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. How much of this she already had and how much she has recently written, yeah.

Matthew: That would be…

Rosie: But I don’t mind either way. It’s perfect.

Kat: Oh, right, right. Of course.

[Matthew and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah, I’m wondering, aside from Dean, who we know had an extensive backstory, who else do you think she has information like this on? I mean, obviously we hope for everybody and everything under the sun, but it’s just not possible.

Caleb: Yeah, I would like to know more about the Potter family, like James’s parents.

Matthew: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: And sort of going back to that paternal line.

Rosie: I think she would have a bit more detail on pretty much everyone on the Black family tree. She wouldn’t just put a name on there for no reason. She would know who that person is and how they are connected to everyone else.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: That includes the Potters and the Weasleys and how everything is branched out.

Kat: Mhm. Well, very good. I’m looking forward very much to the next couple of chapters of Pottermore. I really hope that they are as good…

Caleb: Whenever they come out.

Kat: …as these and that they come out soon.

[Everyone laughs]

Caleb: Good grief.

Rosie: Yeah, me too.

Kat: Yeah, please, Pottermore gods.

Matthew: No more waiting, please. Give us more, give us more.

[Caleb and Matthew laugh]

Caleb: And with a plea like that, how could they not?

Matthew: Exactly.

Kat: That’s right, exactly.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Cool.

Rosie: Okay, so Noah isn’t here again this week, so it’s back to me to be the Posed Question of the Week. And I want to say, thinking back to our earlier discussion and what we were just saying with the Malfoys, I really want to investigate the idea of pure-blood wizards as the old money idea and to what extent does wizarding gold actually effect wizarding status? We’ve just heard that the Malfoys were dealing with Muggles and trying to get as much money as possible, so to them money is power. But do we have any other examples of gold influencing popularity, other than the Malfoys within the wizarding world? Or is magic and blood status more important within their society? And if so, how rare is it that we get a society that values something more than gold in our world?

Kat: Hmm.

Caleb: Cool…

Kat: That’s a really interesting thought, yeah.

Matthew: That’s a really good question.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Good.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Yeah, I’ll be… I’m excited to hear what everybody thinks. I’m not sure… I need to think about that one in order to even form an opinion on it. I don’t know.

Rosie: Sure.

Caleb: I’ve got some good thoughts on that.

Kat: Yeah. Good.

Rosie: So if you our listeners have any thoughts about it, as usual this question will be posted as its own news topic on our archives. So just reply to that within a comment or go onto our forums and discuss it there.

Kat: Yeah. And we want to thank Matthew Ziff again for being here. You were a great, great host, so thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Matthew: Thank you guys for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Kat: Oh good, I’m glad. Good.

Rosie: Our pleasure.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: So with that, we want to toss it out to you guys. If you ever want to be on the show, just like Matthew or previous guest hosts, there’s a couple of ways for you to be featured on the show: You can first submit content on the website, or email something to us, or even give us good thoughts on the forums. As you hear at the beginning of the show, we always recap with some thoughts from you guys. If you are emailing a clip, make sure to send it to alohomora podcast at gmail dot com. Which is also where you should submit, if you are doing the clip to be a guest host. And just a couple of things to keep in mind for that, you need to have appropriate audio and recording equipment. It’s really important that you have that so you sound really great whenever our editors get your track.

Kat: And if in the meantime you just want to stay in touch with us, hear the goings on of our lives, you can follow us on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/OpenTheDumbledore. And for those of you on Tumblr, you can find us at MNAlohomora.Tumblr.com. And don’t forget, we also have a phone number where we get so many great voicemails. In fact, we have a really great one that I cannot wait to play for the movie show, just saying. You can call us at 206-GO-ALBUS. That’s 206-462-5287. And again, our website is Alohomora.MuggleNet.com and our email is alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com. And I just wanted to throw out real quickly, we still have about ten T-shirts from LeakyCon to sell. So if you are interested in a T-shirt, we have smalls and large and I think two mediums left. Shoot us an email at alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com and we will get you information on purchasing.

Rosie: They are available in the UK and Europe as well. I have some on this side of the pond, so don’t be afraid if you don’t live in America – you can order them as well.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: We also now have a brand new app available as some of you have already found out. It’s available in the US for both iPhone and Android, but in the UK it’s only iPhone at the moment. We are very sorry about that. We are trying to work on it, but we don’t entirely know what’s happening with Android in the UK. It’s $1.99 in America or 99p here in the UK. And it’s got some awesome interviews that we did at LeakyCon as extra features that go along with the show. We’ve got Mark Oshiro, Hank Green, Lev Grossman, and MinaLima who are the artists from the Harry Potter movies. There’s transcripts, there’s bloopers, alternate endings to our podcasts, host vlogs, and much, much more. So check out our promotional video and the link is in the show notes. So check us out and definitely download the app because it’s definitely worth it.

Kat: Absolutely.

Caleb: And also don’t forget to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Make sure you are following us there because it’s a quick way to get updates and it’s obviously free. And that about does it this week for us on Alohomora! Thanks again to Matthew for joining us. And to close it out, I’m Caleb Graves.

[Show music begins]

Rosie: I’m Rosie Morris.

Kat: And I’m Kat Miller. Thank you for listening to Episode 11 of Alohomora!

Caleb: Open the Dumbledore!

[Show music continues]

Unknown male voice: Alohomora! It’s the fandom’s hottest new global re-read.

[Phone rings in the background]

Unknown male voice: And that’s my phone.

[Phone continues ringing]

Unknown male voice: Alohomora! Ooh! [laughs] And now… ooh, boiled eggs. Ooh. Read every book. Saw every movie. Kids were playing Quidditch in the park across the street last summer. [laughs] I know! Hermione, Her-moy-nee. She just went Jewish on me. “Her-moy-nee! Your father’s feet hurt!” [laughs] Alohomora! Alohomora! [speaks nonsense] New, returning, young, old, and even the permanently spell damaged. Death Eaters. Bertie Botts. Bertie Botts. Bertie Botts. [laughs] Is that good? Is three Sickles and ten Knuts the same amount of money? Is that it or not? You so don’t want to be left out! So hurry, head over. Nargles are doing what? Oh, so that’s why the phone lines are down. You want me to schtick it up a little bit more? Sorry, we suspect Nargles. Sorry, we suspect Nargles. Sorry, we suspect Nargles. A little more reflectively? Sorry, we suspect Nargles. Sorry. [laughs] All right! Was it good? Ah, it was pretty good. It sucked.