Transcript – Episode 197
[Show music begins]
Michael Harle: This is Episode 197 of Alohomora! for July 9, 2016.
[Show music continues]
Michael: Welcome, listeners, to a brand new of Alohomora!, MuggleNet.com’s show about Harry Potter!
[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Michael: Because we’re not rereading the books anymore. But we’ll tell you a bit about that in a minute. I’m Michael Harle.
Alison Siggard: I’m Alison Siggard.
Kat Miller: I’m Kat Miller.
Caleb Graves: And I’m Caleb Graves. And we are so pleased to have with us for this new format of the show, our very first in this way of things, Sara Molnar. Sara, thanks for joining us. Say hello to the listeners.
Sara Molnar: Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me.
Caleb: Thanks for joining us. You are a brave soul for joining us in this next edition.
[Caleb and Kat laugh]
Sara: I am honored. I’m honored.
Kat: Tell our listeners a bit about yourself, yeah.
Sara: Well, I am from Ohio. I started reading Harry Potter, actually, about the fifth grade so right around age 10 or 11, and it really got me more into reading than anything else had up until that point. And I used to keep count of how many times I have reread the series, but I lost count a long time ago. And I actually started listening to you guys back in September. So it really hasn’t been that long. I was looking for other Harry Potter nerds to talk about Harry Potter with, and you guys were perfect. And actually, I started listening to you guys right after some family members of mine also died, and listening to you guys was really comforting, and it was just nice to listen to something that made me happy for once.
Michael: Oh, wow. We’re sorry for your loss…
Sara: Aww, thanks.
Michael: … but we’re very happy that we could be there to help you out, and we’re so glad that we can have you on the show today. Now, here’s a layered question.
[Caleb, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Michael: First of all, what Hogwarts House are you? But we have a follow-up to that now, but what’s your Hogwarts House?
Sara: I’m a Hufflepuff.
Michael: Woo, Hufflepuff, yay!
Sara: Yup. Hufflepuff pride.
Michael: And of course…
Caleb: Are we ready? Because we haven’t announced our own. We haven’t even done ours yet.
Kat and Michael: I know.
Michael: It’s big. But we’ll ask Sara first since she’s the guest. Sara, what is your Ilvermorny House?
Sara: Good question. I’m not actually sure, but I think I would probably lean toward the heart.
Alison: Pukwudgie!
Sara: That one! Yes.
Caleb: Pukwudgie, yeah.
Michael: [laughs] Well, that is a perfect question to reveal that, yes, listeners, this week, as you were hoping and asking for of us on Twitter, yes, we will be discussing the new Ilvermorny school of magic writing on Pottermore from Rowling. This is our first topic-based episode. It won’t be our only one on this topic. We are actually going to go ahead and separate out the Sorting quiz of Ilvermorny for a separate episode at a later time because we want to focus on the story right now that was written. But of course, the discussion of the Houses will probably come up, at least be touched on here. And as Sara has been so kind to do with us today, we ask you, the listeners, to please hold on tightly and bear with us for this episode because this is brand new for us as much as it is for you guys, and we are hoping that you will all be contributing your feedback to us in the comment section at alohomora.mugglenet.com, so we can keep growing the show with your feedback, as we’ve always wanted to do, and make sure that we include you, the listeners, in structuring this new version of Alohomora!
Kat: Well said.
Michael: Thank you. I try.
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Michael: And speaking of our listeners helping us out with the show…
Caleb: … we want to take a moment to let you know that this episode is sponsored by Amy Ward on Patreon. Thank you, Amy, so much for supporting us on the show.
Alison: Yay! [claps]
Caleb: What you guys and Amy specifically this week do for us is the reason why we can still keep doing a show like us, even after the reread, and having really great discussion topics, and if you want to support us on Patreon like Amy has, you can become a sponsor for just as little as $1 a month. Really, that does go a long way. It’s what’s propping us up, so thank you so much, and you can check us out on patreon.com/alohomora, and we will continue to release exclusive tidbits for our sponsors there.
Kat and Michael: Thank you, Amy.
Alison: Thanks!
Michael: Thank you for being our first Patreon sponsor on our new format. We very much appreciate it.
Kat: Michael, are you going to, I guess, acquiesce to the request of all your Twitter followers there and read the story?
Michael: Oh, yeah, yeah, I did get a few requests to read the Ilvermorny segment. The thing was, I was thinking about it, and this is the problem with when I do these kinds of things, is I was like, “Ooh, I could do all these different voices and add in all these sound effects and things,” and then I was just like, “This is getting really complicated.”
[Alison laughs]
Michael: So I’m going to see if I can resist the temptation to make it overly elaborate and maybe just do a straightforward read, but we’ll see how it turns out. I really would like to do that because my roommate, Leandra, had the pleasure of hearing me read it aloud to her before she got Sorted, and she enjoyed hearing it aloud, and it was fun to read aloud, actually. It’s a really neat piece of writing, probably, in my opinion, one of Rowling’s better, if not best, recent pieces of writing on Pottermore.
Alison: I agree with that.
Michael: So yeah, I would love to give that a try for our Patreon sponsors.
Kat: Awesome. I think that they will super appreciate that. And I’d love to hear it too, so selfishly, I want you to do it.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Kat: Please.
Michael: Which leads perfectly, I guess, into our discussion on Ilvermorny for today. And I suppose the first thing we want to look at before we get into specifics is discussing what our overall impressions were of this new piece of writing. Anybody want to go first and give their thoughts?
Alison: Sure. Well, funn[il]y enough, I wasn’t even in America when I first read this.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Which was a little bit ironic.
Michael: [laughs] Yes, you were busy gearing up to watch Cursed Child…
Alison: [sighs] I was.
Michael: … so you were in a completely different mindset for…
Alison: I was!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: And it came very unexpectedly, so I actually read it and took the Sorting quiz on my phone in a hostel in the middle of London.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: So that was fun. But yeah, I actually agree with you, Michael. I think this is one of the best bits of writing that ha[s] come out in a while. I thought it was absolutely beautiful, that she did some really interesting and clever things that tied to the British wizarding world and I’m sure, things that will tie in to Fantastic Beasts. And I just thought it was overall just a really lovely story that… It was very Harry Potter-esque, and I was very pleased with that.
Kat: It did feel more like Jo than other stories that have come out recently, so I guess what I appreciated about it… And also, yeah, what I appreciated about it is, she got so much flack for the other stories that she wrote about the history of American magic and all that stuff. I’m not saying that I disagree with that in any way, shape, or form, but I like that the response to this was generally overall very positive. And Jo didn’t seem to mess with a lot of history too much. I mean, a little bit, which… We’ll get there, but I appreciated the fact that this seemed perfectly between history and her world, which is where Harry Potter sits for me. So yeah, it felt very Jo to me, and I really loved that about it.
Caleb: Yeah. So the thing that I really enjoyed was, it reminded me… The one thing on Pottermore previously I really thought of when reading this was when we first got the expanded Malfoy family history on Pottermore going generations back, and I felt, like Kat was just talking about, that story I loved so much because it was woven into actual history so well, and it was just so seamless how it could be… She did exactly what she did in the books; she made everything seem so real. And I felt this was the first thing I had read since then on Pottermore that felt the same way, and I was just… I’m sure most people couldn’t not read it but in one sitting, and that was the first time that had happened in a long time.
Sara: I was actually… I feel like we are so immersed in the story, obviously, that takes place in England and with Hogwarts and everything that it was surprising to hear about other wizarding schools. You don’t even think about it, [but] when we first learned about Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, […] it was surprising to hear about, but once I got into it, I loved reading it. I thought it was very interesting. And like you guys said, it blends [the] historical with Jo’s world, which I totally agree with.
Michael: Yeah. It’s funny because when I’ve just finished… It’s so funny that I thought with this… after the big reread on Alohomora! that I would take a break from a Harry Potter reread…
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Michael: … and Leandra immediately asked me to read aloud Harry Potter to her, so I read Philosopher’s Stone – I read the British edition for the first time – and we talked about… I know that this was discussed throughout the series – but especially during the discussion about Sorcerer’s Stone when we had started the reread – but Sorcerer’s Stone/Philosopher’s Stone avoids that bit of meshing history with wizarding history. She really wasn’t doing that too much. The only thing that comes up is Nicolas Flamel, and that’s the plot point, but otherwise, there isn’t really a lot of that explaining historical things via wizards being involved. That’s something that we’ve now come to expect from Harry Potter, especially now that we’re going into Fantastic Beasts, specifically fitting it into the 1920s era in New York City, knowing that certain things were going on in that time when Sorcerer’s Stone was trying to be timeless. So it’s funny that we’ve developed this expectation that there should be a meshing of history into it, but as you mentioned, Kat, I think this was a much more successful attempt at that than the previous “Magic in North America” releases because we had talked about it a little bit, but they were so thin to me. They felt like they had been forced, like Warner Brothers had held a gun to her head…
[Alison laughs]
Kat: Aww. It’s true.
Michael: … and said, “Do these to lead up to Fantastic Beasts!” [laughs]
Alison: See, but those also… The thing about those is, those feel like they’re more just her notes that someone was like, “Put this in narrative form,” where they were just notes of her trying to world build, whereas this felt like an actual narrative. Which is what I think makes it so much better. [laughs] It’s not her trying to figure out all the background that needs to go on for this to work. She has that established in her head for this story, and so she’s able to give us the narrative that feels complete.
Michael: Yeah, because the only story that had a narrative in those four releases was the one about the young girl who got tricked, and in… Wasn’t it by a Muggle or something? See, this is how unmemorable these stories to me were.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Even I don’t remember them well.
Kat: Yeah, I don’t remember anything about them. It’s… Yeah.
Michael: But there was a simple-minded poor, little, air-headed witch who was tricked, I think, by… She might have been tricked by a Scourer or something like that. She’s what led to America being more strict with their wizarding laws than the UK. And that really wasn’t even a narrative that I think was so embraced by the Potter community. Those four writings were just not talked about in the way that this has been. The conversation is still going pretty ridiculously strong about the Ilvermorny information.
Kat: Thus this episode of Alohomora!
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Michael: Yes! [laughs] We’re doing nothing to stop that, are we?
Alison: Nope!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: But we wanted to try, listeners… Again, bear with us. We’re trying out a few new things here. We are going to get to all of the major discussion topics about Ilvermorny and this piece of writing, but we wanted to present each… Each of the hosts on the show wanted to present some questions and focus areas that we want to look at as we’re going through this to really highlight and guide the discussion. It’s basically like a proper literature circle critical analysis that we’re trying with here. Let us know if you like it.
[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Michael: Let us know if you don’t, and we’ll see how this will go in [the] future. Of course, too, as we’ve discussed in planning these episodes, we know that we’re not going to be strictly looking at information quite as definitive as the Ilvermorny stuff from Pottermore. We will be looking at Harry Potter topics that are more broad, more specific from different sources, so this format may be changing in [the] future. So we want to hear what you guys think. But to start, we wanted to present our focus areas. I’ll start by saying that I would like to look more at the development of Ilvermorny because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff there, especially in how it ties to Hogwarts.
Kat: And I’m going to pull out my snaky side today, and I really want to explore the ties to Slytherin House and Salazar Slytherin himself.
Alison: And since I just came back from Britain and I am an English nerd, I’m going to look at Isolt’s childhood and the connections to Jo’s British wizarding world and the literary tradition from Britain in general.
Caleb: And I took something a little more narrow: This is the use of the love magic, the power of love, which wakes up Isolt and James when they were under a very deep sleeping spell. Because this is a huge connection, of course, to [the] Harry Potter story, so I want to see what we think about that.
Michael: But we’ll dive into the main discussion here. The story starts by telling us… This was a thing that a lot of people were asking because, of course, when we got the last writing from Pottermore about… not Hogwarts, but all of the schools all around the world. It was revealed that Ilvermorny existed as the American wizarding school. But the map was just ambiguous enough that a lot of Canadians were crossing their fingers, hoping it was just over the border.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: And that didn’t end up being the case. In fact, Kat is probably the closest out of all of us to Ilvermorny.
Kat: Yeah, it’s in Massachusetts at the highest peak of Mount Greylock, which is less than an hour from my house. So that’s cool.
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Kat: That’s ool.
Michael: Have you ever been to Mount Greylock?
Kat: No, I haven’t. But one of our senior journalists, Jessica and I, already have an outing planned for later this summer, and we’re going to write an article on finding Ilvermorny…
[Michael laughs]
Alison: Nice!
Kat: So be on the lookout for that.
Sara: That sounds fantastic.
Kat: Yeah. I can’t imagine we’re going to find it, being Muggles and all.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Sorry, No-Majs. But we’re going to try really hard. [laughs]
Michael: But yes, we finally…
Kat: So that should be fun. I was very excited that it was in Massachusetts. I know the Canadians were very disappointed, but it’s really close to Canada.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Massachusetts is really close to Canada, guys. Just pretend it’s Canada. Just pretend.
Alison: Well, I think it’s important, too, to remember that she just… As far as I understand, the way she’s written some things, this isn’t the only wizarding school in America; this is the biggest, most prestigious one. From some of her writing on wizarding schools, it sounds like there'[re] smaller ones dotted around the rest of the world, so I’m sure there’s one in Canada somewhere. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, the writing does say “[t]he great North American school of magic,” so there could be smaller ones. But this is definitely like the Hogwarts of North America.
Alison: Yeah, yeah. But don’t give up hope, Canadians. [laughs]
Michael: That did open up some discussion that I know the MuggleNet staff has been having and a lot of fans have been having about one of the issues being, what was the Salem Witches’ Institute that we encountered in Book 4 if it wasn’t a major school?
Kat: [laughs] It was BS, I think, is what it was.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: And what does that…? Is it realistic to think that there is only one major wizarding school in the US? But I think, one, it’s worth keeping in mind that Rowling did clarify that even though these schools have been revealed, there are still more. She hinted at that through Twitter because somebody said, “Hey, where’s the Australian school?” And her response was “Just keep your eyes peeled. That will come later.” So it would seem there’s a school in Australia, and there is no major school revealed to have been located in the East other than the one in… Mahoutokoro in Japan. And I highly doubt that the entire population of…
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: … East Asia can fit in Mahoutokoro. [laughs] So there’s got to be at least… I would imagine there’s a school in India and China, at the very least.
Caleb: Jo tried to pull a numbers game with the Hogwarts student count, but she cannot fool around with this one.
Alison: [laughs] Nope!
Michael: Nope! That’s not possible. I feel, though, that… She explained, too, in the writing about the other wizarding schools, that we have a warped idea of how many wizards are out there. There really aren’t that many in relation to the general population. And a lot of wizards choose to homeschool their kids rather than send them to boarding school, because that’s their only other option.
Kat: Hogwarts is free, though, isn’t it?
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: Except books and stuff?
Michael: I think Hogwarts has a fund for students [who] can’t pay their own way.
Alison: I think that’s just for books and robes and stuff.
Kat: I think that’s for books and stuff, though.
Alison: I’m pretty sure it’s free.
Michael: Yeah, they don’t have a tuition.
Sara: I think it says in a writing somewhere that it was free, doesn’t it?
Caleb: I think it is.
Alison: Pretty sure that’s when Dumbledore goes to talk to Tom Riddle. He says it’s free, but there’s a fund for robes and books and supplies.
Kat: Homeschooling would be an interesting topic for [the] future because I feel like, why would you ever do that if school is free? But anyway, moving on… [laughs]
Alison: Well, you could be like Isolt Sayre’s aunt. [laughs] Because she was homeschooled, which leads us into…
[Michael laughs]
Alison: … talking about Isolt’s childhood, which is our first topic. Look at that great segue. Good job, guys.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Wonderful, Alison.
Michael: We planned that.
Alison: Thank you. I try. So yeah, that’s our main focus of this story that we get. Our heroine is Isolt [pronounces “SAY-er”] Sayre. Is that how you say that?
Michael: That’s how the voice of Pottermore says it. In the beautiful videos, [it’s pronounced] Isolt strong>[pronounces “SAY-er”] Sayre, so we’ll go with that.
Kat: VP. The VP.
Alison: [laughs] VP. Awesome.
Michael: Yeah, Voice of Pottermore, if you want to ever be on Alohomora!…
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Come on Alohomora! We want to know who you are! [laughs]
Kat: It’ll probably be like the Pottermore Correspondent and be all secret.
Michael: Ah, what a twist!
Kat: You never know.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Anyway, so the first thing we learn about her is that she was actually born in Ireland in… I am so sorry. I’m going to butcher this because I am terrible at Celtic spelling and things, but she grew up in [pronounces “Coom-LUG-ra”] Coomloughra.
Michael: [pronounces “COOM-luh-gruh”] Coomloughra.
Alison: [pronounces “COOM-luh-gruh”] Coomloughra.
Michael: It’s prettier if you’re Irish and you…
Alison: Yeah, I’m not.
Michael: It’s [pronounces “COOM-luh-gruh”] “Coomloughra” and I believe, [pronounces coom-cah-LEE] “Coomcallee.”
Caleb: Say the vowels at the front of your mouth.
Alison: [pronounces “COOM-luh-gruh”] “Coomloughra” and [pronounces “coom-cah-LEE”] “Coomcallee”?
Caleb and Michael: There you go!
Alison: All right, sweet.
Kat: That’s better.
Michael: And those are real places in Ireland.
Alison: Yes. So it talks about her very happy childhood. I really picked up on this idea that her father called her Morrigan as her nickname, which got me looking into a little bit of research. Usually, the name is translated into the Phantom Queen, but etymology in different languages – several different languages, actually – revert to ideas around “nightmare.” The Morrigan of mythology is associated with fate, especially with foretelling death. It’s also associated with sovereignty and cows, representing wealth and the land. And she’s often seen as a warrior goddess who appears as a crow. So why, for this very happy idyllic girl that we’re getting this story for, this kind of connection besides the obvious that she’s a descendant of them in this story?
Michael: I’d be more interested to know exactly… I’d almost want to hear it from somebody who’s Irish and knows more about this. Because it sounds like Morrigan is very steeped in Irish mythology, and Rowling acknowledges that and puts more Morrigan into her canon. I guess warrior goddess would work in that from the get-go, she’s associating Isolt with being a very strong, independent character.
Kat: I know we don’t ever find out [which] Hogwarts House she would be, but the crow really makes me think… And talking about this warrior goddess and all this stuff and how she’s independent and talks about the land and all that, I feel like she could be in any House in a way.
Caleb: Yeah, I was waiting to see which House you were about to say because I was like, “You’re saying so many different Houses here.”
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I feel like it’s the perfect backstory for somebody who helps make a school because she’s so much of everything.
Michael: I guess crow works in terms since she personally associated herself with Ravenclaw.
Kat: Yeah, that’s the obvious connection, I suppose.
Michael: But I like that idea that she has a piece of all four Houses within her.
Alison: Yeah, I do too.
Michael: That explains a lot about how she develops Ilvermorny.
Alison: But before she gets to that, the other big thing we get about her childhood is that her parents are killed and she is kidnapped by her aunt – and Michael, you said this earlier – [pronounces “gorm-LAY”] “Gormlaith”?
Michael: Yeah, I believe it’s pronounced [pronounces “gorm-LAY”] “Gormlaith” or [pronounces “gorm-LEE”] “Gormlaith.” Listeners, as far as we know, it’s not [pronounces gorm-LAITH] “Gormlaith,” if that’s how you were reading it.
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Michael: But Gormlaith Gaunt has a much lovelier… It rolls off the tongue much better. So I believe it’s [pronounces “gorm-LAY”] “Gormlaith” Gaunt.
Kat: Yeah, it doesn’t sound like the name of an estranged sister who lives in Hag’s Glen, right?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: It’s much more beautiful than that. [laughs]
Alison: But that actually estranged sister and aunt kidnapping brings up a lot of really interesting connections. The first one that actually popped into my head – maybe because I went and saw this musical when I was in London – was Matilda. It sounds very, very similar to Miss Honey’s story. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read it – which how have you not read Matilda? – Miss Honey and Miss Trunchbull… I see lots of parallels there with the aunt who somehow kidnaps their niece and is, in a lot of ways, abusive. Which also draws some connections to Harry, then. And we’ve talked about how the Dursleys, especially at the beginning of the series, are seen as these Roald Dahl caricatures. [They’re] very traditional British children’s story antagonists.
Michael: I definitely see that in the writing. And I think it’s worth noting, because I personally thought it was beautifully done: Listeners, if you read the piece without watching the video that Pottermore did, make sure [to] go back and watch the video because it gives a pretty great picture of how these characters look. And Gormlaith is this perfect… She’s got her hair pulled back in a tight bun, and she’s very, for lack of a better word, gaunt.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: She’s very like a schoolmarm. She’s dressed all in black and very tightly laced.
Kat: But is that video canon? I’m just kidding.
Alison: [laughs] Oh, gosh.
Michael: The neat thing about the video is, it seems to have based its aesthetic off of “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” Because the characters are all made out of wood-cut carving, and they used music from the Harry Potter films for the first time on Pottermore.
Kat: Which felt very odd to me, to be honest.
Michael: They’re bleeding through with a few things.
Kat: Yeah, I don’t like it. Make them separate, keep them separate.
Michael: It’s too late for that.
Kat: I know.
Michael: I can definitely see that Roald Dahl imagery because, especially when it’s revealed why Gormlaith did what she did, that’s pretty absurdly extreme measures to take to indoctrinate your niece.
Caleb: Yeah, just a bit.
[Alison and Caleb laugh]
Alison: Just a little bit there.
Michael: Insane.
Kat: That’s the extremism of that line from way back then, right?
Sara: That’s what I was just going to say: Doesn’t Dumbledore say that the Gaunts are crazy? They squander all their money and everything.
Kat: Fanatical, Jo calls them, yeah.
Alison: We see that in Marvolo quite clearly, I think.
Michael: Yeah. And as she had explained before with the Gaunts, years of inbreeding didn’t do anything to help their mental states.
Caleb: Exhibit A.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: What year is this? This is the…
Alison: This is the 1600s.
Kat: 1600s, right. So maybe they weren’t…
Alison: Isolt was born in 1603.
Kat: Right. Maybe they weren’t super inbred at this point, which is why she has moments of sanity in between the…
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Not necessarily, though, because they’ve been around… The Malfoys have been around since the medieval ages, right? Since the 1200s, so…
Kat: I suppose that’s true.
Michael: She doesn’t have much going for her at this point. [laughs]
Kat: I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Michael: Well, that was a great connection with specifically Matilda. I like that you found a specific Roald Dahl [book] that that fits because that’s a really… especially [because] Roald Dahl has this tendency to have characters like that who are the embodiment of pure goodness – and Isolt, in many ways, is that. And then his evil characters, or his bad characters, are thoroughly bad. I was thinking… and I saw parallels starting here and then further down throughout the story, and I couldn’t… It was funny because I saw them more in the adaptation than in the original fairy tale, but I was thinking of Tangled. Not so much Rapunzel, but specifically Tangled.
Alison: I thought that too. Yeah, I definitely saw that one too.
Michael: It’s almost beat-for-beat with the idea of her aunt kidnapping her and trying to keep her for herself and give her this idea that the world is a negative place when it’s not. And as we’ll see later, even Gormlaith’s demise is pretty much Mother Gothel’s ending in the movie.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: So there'[re] a lot of interesting connections. I guess the Rapunzel story is a framework for a story like Matilda or a story like Isolt’s, as far as being sheltered from the world for a lengthy period of time and then discovering that the world is different than the impression you were given.
Kat: Or Harry’s, for goodness’ sake.
Michael: Yeah, Harry’s does fit that, yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of parallels with Harry in this story.
Kat: Which is good, because I feel like, again, that helps reinforce what we’ve all talked about, how it feels more like what we’re used to from Jo. Which is good.
Michael: Yeah, she said that in the most recent trailer, actually, for Fantastic Beasts when she was talking about Newt, but she was also talking about all of the main characters from Fantastic Beasts and saying that her characters are these people who are on the fringe of society. Her heroes are people who are rejected by society or don’t fit with social norms, and her goal with those stories is to give them a place, so I think that’s what’s maybe been missing from a lot of the Pottermore writings, is even some of the characters she’s introduced through Pottermore don’t have that quality like Isolt does. So I just happened to… I was curious to know just a little… I was actually looking [for] more about Isolt’s name and the origins of it, and I came across that Isolt, when she decides to finally escape from Gormlaith and head over to the Americas on the Mayflower – she’s pretty much the christening group for America – she takes the name Elias Story. And Elias Story was a real individual who was on the Mayflower and apparently did die during the first winter…
Caleb: Or did he?
[Kat laughs]
Michael: Or did he? So Rowling wasn’t just pulling that one out of thin air. Elias Story… There’s not much known about him, so it’s a perfect name to use. Other than that, there was a certain piece with how he was documented that indicated that he wasn’t yet of age – he wasn’t around 18 to 21 yet – so he was young. And again, all we know is that he may have died during the first winter. I think it’s cool too. I don’t know much about the meaning of the name Elias, but I just love that the last name is “Story.” What a perfect surname for this. She must have just seen that on the Mayflower roster and was like, [as Rowling] “Oh my God, I have to use this.”
Kat: Well, actually, no. Isolt’s name is… What’s the word? You scramble it, so…
Caleb: Anagram.
Alison: Oh!
Kat: Yeah, that’s the word. So if you scramble it, that’s how she got, I think, the wizarding name.
Alison: Hey!
Kat: don’t know if she started with one and went with the other, but it seems like she probably started with Elias and then changed it to an Irish-based name.
Michael: Oh my God, that’s crazy. I just love… I’m looking at the names now, and I’m like, “Oh yeah! Anagram.”
Kat: And they’re both five…
Michael: She did the Tom Riddle thing.
Kat: She did. She Riddled it.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: I did not come up with that, just btdubs.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: That was someone on Twitter [who] pointed that out to MuggleNet; I don’t remember who it was. Thank you, because I am definitely terrible at anagrams. I don’t think I could have figured that out ever.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: That was awesome.
Michael: Yeah, I had no idea. That’s very clever.
Kat: Yeah. That’s our Jo, right?
Alison: [laughs] Always.
Michael: So Isolt… A lot of things happen to her, and we’ll get to some of the other creatures she meets because that’s a big part of her story. But there was a question I wanted to ask in terms of her eventual husband, James, because the interesting thing about James is that he’s a Muggle, through and through. The first time she meets him, he knocks himself out with a pair of wands that he shouldn’t be using…
[Alison laughs]
Michael: And I found it fascinating because James is the (I think) first thorough, proper example that we see of a Muggle who is extremely, heavily involved in the wizarding world. But I just don’t understand how that’s possible because as we’ve seen, Muggles have limitations with what they can see in the wizarding world, and she says that by the end, he’s become Headmaster of Ilvermorny. And to me, as lovely as a sentiment as that is, what can he do as the headmaster?
[Caleb laughs]
Kat: How can he even see the castle?
Michael: Yes!
Alison: Well, I wonder how much… Since he was so influential in founding it, I wonder if over…
Caleb: It just didn’t work right.
Alison: Yeah. Or if in all of his years of being with Isolt and their adoptive sons and their kids and all of these magical people, that he’s almost come up with coping mechanisms to be able to figure out, “Okay, there’s a shimmer off in the distance. It must be this.” I feel like that’s something he could probably figure out after being so long immersed in this world.
Michael: The thing that confuses me even further with James is that, as we later see, he and Isolt have two daughters, and one of them, Martha, turns out to be a Squib, and as the story says, she ends up being a little… She doesn’t go full-on Aunt Petunia on them, but she disconnects from them because she doesn’t really have anything to contribute, and she can’t really be a part of that world. And you would think with James being there that at least she would have him to relate to, but it doesn’t seem to be that way because James stays with Ilvermorny until he dies, but Martha goes off and marries a Muggle and has a normal life, which suggests that there were elements about Ilvermorny that she couldn’t experience or see or didn’t mean anything to her, despite that she grew up there.
Caleb: Yeah. I mean, for me, it was that James was holding on [and] was there because of Isolt, that they were obviously in love and so he wasn’t going to leave her. But for the daughter who’s a Squib, it’s a different thing. I mean, I guess it’s similar because [they’re] her parents, but she has the ability still to go out and find her life, whereas James has found his life with Isolt and Ilvermorny.
Kat: Yeah, it’s a different kind of love, [is] what you’re saying. Yeah.
Caleb: I’m not articulating very well, but…
Kat: No, I know what you mean. It’s just like a child growing up and going off to college and just never coming home. It’s that same type of disconnect in a way, finding your own life.
Michael: I guess. It still just raises a lot of questions for me about how James functions in this world because we had a lot of questions, I remember, when the writing came out about ghosts and poltergeists and who can see them and who can’t. And we raised the question of whether Filch can see Peeves because in Book 5, Mrs. Figg can’t see Dementors, and so again, that just raises the question again for me of what can James see and not see? He sees the Pukwudgie – he sees William – but that seems to just be so extreme. I get that he can be involved legally because there wasn’t a magical congress yet, so there [are] no laws preventing him from being involved with wizards, but at the same time, it just blows my mind that he can be as involved as he was.
Kat: Now, remind me; does he have a wand?
Alison, Caleb, and Michael: No.
Kat: Okay. I didn’t think so.
Caleb: But he helps make the wands, right?
Alison: Yeah, with his woodworking skill.
Sara: Doesn’t he also help build the actual Ilvermorny building as well?
Alison: He designs it. I think it said he designs it, and then Isolt builds it with her wand. So he’s like the architect, and…
Kat: So I’m going to pretend that he walks around with some sort of variation of a Disillusionment Charm or the Bubble-Head Charm…
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: … something like rose-colored glasses that allows him to see everything.
Alison: Oh, I like the glasses.
Kat: Some sort of enchantment, I feel like, has had to be put on him because… I mean, unless Muggles can see everything unless it’s taken away from them. Which is, I guess, a whole other track.
Michael: Maybe there is an element of when they’ve been broken into it like he was because I remember the big explanation that started this discussion; it was around Prisoner when Harry asks Stan and Ern about why Muggles can’t see the Knight Bus because it should be hard to miss, and Stan just says, [as Stan] “Well, Muggles don’t see nothing, do they?” And it keeps going with the tradition of Grimmauld Place and the Leaky Cauldron and the idea that it’s there, and there is a charm on it, but overall, there’s a piece of wizards where they’re counting on Muggles to just reason away weird things that they see. But I guess, if they have seen it, something about that enchantment or that natural ability to ignore it breaks, and maybe that allows them to see more because this is all… I suppose part of this is meant to lead up to Fantastic Beasts because Jacob is a No-Maj, and he’s going to be heavily involved with the plot, so in fact, the whole thing is hinged on him opening up Newt’s case, right?
Alison: Yeah. That makes me think, then – and also, I’m thinking about things, for example, that are in the Fantastic Beasts book – that Muggles can see everything, and that wizards are trying to hide things specifically, so James must have been discounted from that.
Kat: Perhaps.
Michael: Well, yeah, maybe there are charms that can allow him to see things – like you were saying, Kat, with the glasses – but if there is some kind of charm that actually takes that off for him specifically.
Kat: Well, if there’s a charm that allows Dumbledore to Apparate in and out of Hogwarts, then there’s got to be a magical exception charm or something.
Alison: We also get a little bit of a backstory on some adoptive sons with a familiar last name: Chadwick and Webster Boot. Those are fun names. I like those names; they’re very wizarding world. [It] seems that later we learn that Webster goes back to England and marries a Scottish witch and that their children – or their descendants – are educated at Hogwarts, which makes me think Terry Boot, a random character, has to be descended.
Michael: Yeah. And he’s in Ravenclaw!
Alison: [laughs] I wonder, then… I mean, we don’t get much about Terry Boot, but I wonder if that’s a family thing, if that started getting passed down from Webster, and it’s almost like a Weasley line of Gryffindor, but the Boots are all in Ravenclaw.
Michael: [laughs] Ravenclaw.
Kat: That’s fun. I like that. We can pretend that’s true.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Yeah, people were pretty quick to embrace this as “It’s Terry Boot!” And Rowling hasn’t confirmed it…
Alison: I think it’s there.
Michael: … but I would have to say it’s pretty likely that he’s a descendant. So…
Kat: Because he’s mentioned more than once, so it’s not as if she just picked a random name and… right? I mean, he is mentioned multiple times throughout the series, Terry.
Michael: Yeah. Because hopefully this isn’t another Mark Evans whoopsies. [laughs]
Alison: Oh, gosh.
Kat: That’s what I was just thinking, yes. Yes, Mark Evans situation, right.
Michael: Poor Mark Evans. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, hopefully not. I thought that was fun, though. It definitely really brought us back into Harry’s story and all the parallels that connected this story to Harry’s story, which I thought was fun.
Alison: Yeah. There [are] a lot of those, actually. Breaking down all the parallels to Harry’s story – I think we’re going to get to some of them later – but I mean, I started making a list. [laughs] There’s an attack and a parent’s protection; we’ve got a pure-blood-loving enemy versus a Muggle/No-Maj-accepting hero; love magic, which I think you wanted to talk about, Caleb…
Caleb: Yeah, yeah.
Kat: Let’s do it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about blood magic.
Caleb: So it wasn’t until you had just brought… I can’t remember who just brought it back up that James almost pulled another James – or I guess, more a Lily – from Harry’s story. I was actually thinking about the other part of the blood: the power of magic. So then I remembered that there [are] two aspects of this. So I’m going to read these two paragraphs, just to frame us. So this is when Gormlaith is attacking Isolt and James, and their adoptive sons are there and their two daughters are there as well. So this is just two paragraphs of it.
“It was this that pierced the enchantment lying over Isolt and James. Rage and magic could not wake them…”
And sidebar, this is after Gormlaith has put them under an enchanted sleep.
“… but the terrified screams of their daughters broke the curse Gormlaith had laid upon them, which, like Gormlaith herself, took no account of the power of love. Isolt screamed at James to go to the girls: she ran to assist her adoptive sons, Slytherin’s wand in her hand.”
So that’s Part 1 of the love magic happening; it’s what woke them up. And then,
“Only when she raised it to attack her hated aunt did she realise that for all the good it would do her, the sleeping wand might as well have been a stick she had found on the ground. Gloating, Gormlaith drove Isolt, Chadwick and Webster backwards up the stairs, towards the place where she could hear her great-nieces crying. Finally she managed to blast open the doors to their bedroom, where James stood ready to die in front of the cribs of his daughters. Sure that all was lost, Isolt cried out, hardly knowing what she said, for her murdered father.”
And then William shows up to save the day. So I actually wasn’t sure how to… I had to stop and think about this for a second, the first part, that the girls’ screaming is what woke them up from this enchanted sleep. And I almost thought, “Man, that just sounds too easy.”
Alison: Oh, I disagree. I think that’s such a parent thing. I mean, I feel like… I was actually just babysitting my one-year-old niece today, and I can tell when something’s wrong with her if I’m across the house. [laughs] So I can only imagine what my sister, her mom, actually is like. And I just feel like that’s a very parental intuition, that you can tell when your kids are in trouble. And I think that’s speaking to that.
Caleb: Yeah. No, I get the parental intuition. I think that’s what she’s playing on – she being Jo – to say this power of love works, that when the girls scream that’s enough to break this very deep magic. But I just thought, almost, that Jo was trying too hard to make that similar power of love magic be an important thing that saves the day in this story just like it was for Harry.
Michael: Well, yeah, this opens up just a lot more questions, rather than helps us answer the questions we raised during the reread about love magic…
Caleb: Right, because this was the only… Sorry to interrupt, Michael, but I just wanted to throw this in there that this is the only other substantial time we see love magic happening other than – we spent, like you said, so many hours talking about multiple times over the series – what happened with Harry, so…
Michael: Yeah. It’s just… The thing I was thinking of… and I realized that that doesn’t fit because, listeners, if you’ve examined all of the Wizard Cards that came out with the video games, which are canon, in the Prisoner of Azkaban video game, Rowling began incorporating a few fairy tales into Harry Potter canon with the Wizard Cards. So “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty” are wizard canon. And Sleeping Beauty’s… the card that relates to her is actually in the hag section because the witch who… her name is something else; it’s not Maleficent because that’s Disney’s name for her. But the witch, she has a card, and the card explains that when Sleeping Beauty went to sleep, she was under the influence of the Draught of Living Death, which seems to be what Gormlaith used on Isolt and James. But then the wizard who woke her up… I was thinking, “Oh, well, he kissed her and that was another example of love breaking a spell,” but in her canon, that’s not what happened. He smeared his lips with Wiggenweld Potion, and that woke her up when he kissed her. [laughs]
Alison: Oh, gosh.
Michael: So [it’s] not quite as romantic and doesn’t work with the love piece, so we don’t have a canon example of love breaking through the Draught of Living Death.
Kat: Although, however, why rub it on his lips and kiss her? Why not just rub it on her lips? I feel like the kiss is an important part of it, yes.
Michael: So yeah, this combined with love. There we go. That’s a good way to put it. I don’t know. I like it because it ties into… because there are so many parallels. I like that it works. I do think, though, that it does… If we examine it from the structure of the Harry Potter world, it does raise a lot of questions.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Caleb: Right, because the whole thing with Harry was it was the sacrifice that was birth out of love that saved him and then protected him at the end of the series. And I don’t want to downplay what familial love is, but this is… Here it doesn’t take any extra act. The mother and father’s love is enough. Which isn’t to say that’s not a lot, but it was a great act in Harry Potter, in his story, that sacrifice that gave him the protection. Whereas here, I don’t know. I don’t want to say it makes it seem like the power of love loses its unique value, but it almost waters it down a little bit for me.
Michael: Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s just a different… We’ve got a different setup.
Caleb: Yeah. I guess there'[re] also levels into what happens. With Harry, it’s the Killing Curse; here, it’s obviously something not quite as powerful.
Kat: And I wonder if that’s the major difference, the intent behind what is being done to them, if that makes sense.
Sara: Do you think, somehow, the power of the love makes “regular magic” more powerful? I don’t know if that is what I’m trying to say. Do you know what I mean?
Alison: Always.
Kat: Yes, yes, because Jo has said numerous times that the emotion and the feeling you have behind your magic fuels the fire, so to say. So yes, most definitely I think that the kind of love and also the power and the deepness of that love makes a big difference, personally.
Michael: What’s interesting with this aspect of this setup is that we’re going, again, from the idea that Isolt and James are broken out of the charm by something that is completely pure. Babies, children are considered as a story device to be an example of pure goodness, and I think that’s an element of this love too, that it comes from something pure. And that gets muddy too, of course, with what Rowling revealed with Umbridge, but that goes back into stuff like the Patronus Charm and what you guys are speaking to of how pureness can fuel magic as well. Or pure intent. Something so raw as that, I guess.
Caleb: Yeah. So yeah, that was the thing that stuck out at me the most as far as the similarity. And then, of course, we have the next paragraph, the last one that I read, where we have another parent, father named James, who “stood ready to die” as the text says, which is an obvious comparison. I’m kind of surprised she’d name him James. It’s almost like with… What’s the book called? Why can’t I think of it? Her first book after Harry Potter?
Kat: [The] Casual Vacancy. His name is Barry.
Caleb: [The] Casual Vacancy. Barry Fairbrother. We went from Harry to Barry.
Sara: You have to think, though, James is a pretty popular name…
Alison: Yeah, that’s very true.
Sara: … back in that time, though.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s true. That was one of the adoptive names also.
Alison: And I like that she has switched the roles, where it’s the James who is, in this one, staying behind with, trying to protect the kids in the crib. And then there’s that flip-flop of Lily and James. And then James and Isolt, what they’re doing in this situation, with Isolt running out into the fight with no real weapon, [and] James is staying behind, and then we had James running at Voldemort while Lily stayed behind.
Kat: I think the only major issue, and it isn’t even really a major issue, is that it would be really hard for Potter fans to even separate the two because of that direct parallel. So not that we want to, but should we ever decide to, it would be really difficult. So…
Michael: And for me, that raises another question surrounding James -and this is a “could have, would have, should have” – if he died, would that have enacted the same kind of magic?
Caleb: I say no.
Alison: Yeah, I have no idea.
Michael: Would he have made a protection spell over the rest of the family if he died?
Alison: Because does it have to be the parent who’s magical? Or does it have to be the child who’s magical? [laughs]
Michael: That’s what I was wondering because…
Kat: Because James is this weird, special Muggle, right? So…
Michael: He’s special, but he’s just a Muggle.
Caleb: Because the girls… The daughters have his blood/DNA, and they’re… or one of them is magical.
Alison: Ooh, what would that…?
Kat: That’s a tough question. I don’t…
Alison: That’s a good question too.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: If it’s the child who has to be magical, would it have only protected the one and not the other one?
Caleb: Ooh, I’m convinced that it would have protected both of them had he been able to give it to them. Even though he was a Squib, because I think that enough of the magical element, whatever, is there. I’m sure…
Kat: It’s the blood, right?
Sara: That’s true, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah. But I don’t think he can give them the protection because he doesn’t have the blood magic, whatever.
Kat: Right, the magic isn’t in his blood.
Michael: No, because there are other instances, too, where we have gotten clarifications such as Muggles cannot become ghosts; only wizards can become ghosts. Muggles cannot turn into werewolves; if they are attacked by a werewolf, they will die. But wizards can, potentially, withstand a werewolf attack.
Caleb: Although [laughs] now I’m going to rebuke myself because then how else could it have worked for Harry to be protected at the Dursleys’ house because he gets it because of Petunia, whose blood is not magical?
Michael: Aha!
Caleb: I guess it’s a little bit different, though, because he gets the protection from Lily, who shares blood with Petunia.
Kat: Yeah, it is reinforced by Petunia, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah. I still think this is different. I’m still going to say that he can’t give them the protection.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: You know what we need? We need a side-by-side comparison chart because I feel like if we can make direct parallels between the two stories, it will help us figure out how that blood protection relates to everybody better. Somebody draw that up, please.
Caleb: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a definite answer, but there [are] definitely some clear comparisons you can make. She made a complex web on both sides.
Michael: In my head, I’d love to fancifully think that he would have if he had died, just because I feel like if he didn’t, that would be counterintuitive to Rowling’s lessons in Harry Potter. I guess we won’t ever really know because James didn’t die, which is wonderful. I have to say, too, that when I read the story the first time, I was on the edge of my seat because I was like, “They can’t all make it out of this!”
[Alison laughs]
Michael: This is a Harry Potter story. Nobody’s…
Alison: The whole family dies!
Michael: The whole family cannot survive, and it happened again when I read it out loud to Leandra because she actually was, the whole time… Once we got to the portion of the story where Gormlaith showed up in America, she just started going, “Oh no!”
[Alison and Caleb laugh]
Michael: “Oh, Michael, you have to tell me, is one of them going to die?” And I was like, “I’m not going to tell you.” And she was like, “Oh, God!” And every time a new piece happened where one of them woke up or one of them went to battle her, she was just freaking out because she was like, “No, I love them all! They can’t die!” And then they didn’t, and she was like, “Wow! None of them died.”
[Alison laughs]
Caleb: This is new. I did not expect this.
Michael: Shocking! So yay, James didn’t die.
Alison: Yay!
Kat: Can we get back Hedwig now?
Alison: Oh my gosh.
Kat: And Dobby?
Alison: Please.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Michael: I do think that is a nice little… I like, like you guys said, the flip-flop, but I also think in a way – for me – that goes back to the question we had raised in the reread of why didn’t James’s sacrifice enact anything? Why did he just die, and that was it? And we came up with theories about why, but I like that we had another moment of a James who was doing something so noble and brave in that way for his family. I thought that was a nice… Just wait, because I think the fandom tends to shove James’s sacrifice to the side in favor of Lily’s. So it’s nice to have that reminder that, no, it was an even footing thing.
Alison: Yeah. Speaking of sacrifices and parallels, I also found it really interesting that the villain is destroyed because they use Dark magic unnaturally to preserve themselves. She just threw that into the end with Gormlaith that that’s one of the reasons why she’s destroyed, is because William the Puckwudgie’s arrow interacts with it? And makes her explode?
Caleb: Yeah, I want to see that happen.
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Michael: And apparently Rowling enjoyed the deaths in the Harry Potter movies a lot more than the fans did.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Yeah. No kidding.
Michael: Because she wrote it into one of her stories! I was like, “Oh, Bellatrix, Quirrell, Voldemort, this is how they died in the movie.” [laughs] That was interesting that she just threw that in like, “Oh, Gormlaith was maybe playing with curses.”
Alison: Yeah! [laughs]
Michael: No mention of that until the very end! Yeah, but too, though, she didn’t flat-out say Horcruxes and kind of implied that Gormlaith was playing with other things that worked like Horcruxes.
Alison: Yeah! I didn’t get it was Horcruxes.
Caleb: Oh, I definitely think it was other things.
Michael: Yeah, not Horcruxes.
Alison: Because then she wouldn’t have died.
Caleb: Maybe this goes into the books that are passed down to the Dark wizards and witches as failed attempts, so they have to keep trying new things until they finally get to a Horcrux.
Michael: Yeah, because of course, we know there are things like the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone.
Kat: Right. Which would have been around several hundred years already at that point.
Michael: Unicorn blood.
Caleb: It was something that rare that when people tried to duplicate the effect, the results aren’t always going to be too solid.
Michael: Yeah. And we seem to be asked to assume that Nicholas Flamel’s method did not utilize Dark magic. So if we’re looking at a Dark wizard trying to replicate it, definitely something could go wrong with that. At least in Rowling’s world, using Dark magic tends to make pretty much everything go wrong. So yeah, that was an interesting demise. It’s interesting to know there’s a history within the Gaunt and Slytherin family of playing with immortality. It wasn’t just Voldemort. I guess maybe that speaks to a bit of an irony, is they owned – for all of those years – a Hallow. They had one of the items of immortality, and they didn’t even know that they had it.
Alison: But I guess that even makes more sense to have them be the decedents of the second Peverell brother, who was trying to call someone back from death, that they’re trying to avoid it and delay it all throughout that line.
Michael: Yeah. I’m sure there’s more that we didn’t even pull out.
Caleb: No, oh, I’m sure.
Michael: Listeners, if you have caught any more parallels between this story and Harry’s story, make sure to note them in the comments for this week because we would like to see what you saw that ties back. Actually, speaking of something, here [are] some things that didn’t really tie back because they were brand new! We’re so used to seeing magical creatures, but we got a whole new set of them here.
[Kat laughs]
Michael: Nothing that we’ve seen before!
Kat: Which is great!
Alison: I love it.
Kat: I like that. I like when things are different and new.
Michael: Yeah! It’s fun, too, because we’re on a different continent anyway, so let’s play with some new animals. This time, we got a new terrifying creation called Hidebehinds. The name I’m not so sure of; it’s as straightforward as whatever that Swooping Evil is.
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Alison: The worst thing ever.
Michael: But the Hidebehind does exactly what it sounds like; it hides behind things very well. It can hide behind anything, and then when it decides to not hide behind something, it’s disemboweling you, so…
[Alison laughs]
Kat: What?
Alison: [laughs] She’s just determined to come up with as many things as possible to make me not want to be anywhere dark ever by myself.
Kat: I hear that.
Alison: Because there’re too many corners, and things hide in them.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: This is, like, the fourth thing that she’s created…
Michael: I didn’t find anything in particular about the legends of… anything that might have inspired the Hidebehind. Listeners, if you want more on that, I’m sure you can check out SpeakBeasty, one of our fellow podcasts on mugglenet.com. Because Aaron, one of the hosts, is always looking for the most horrifying beasts to discuss on the show.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: And I’m sure he’s just delighted [by] the Hidebehind.
Kat: I’m pretty sure that he has basically predicted these three animals.
Alison: Oh, he definitely has.
Kat: I feel like that they’ve talked about these beasts or something very, very similar to it. Yeah, they’re the experts on Fantastic Beasts and the likes. Definitely check it out if you haven’t listened, yeah.
Alison: Jo listens to MuggleNet podcasts. It’s fine. She’s just…
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: It is very obvious at this point that she listens to podcasts; let’s be real. You’re not fooling anybody, Jo. [laughs]
Michael: [laughs] The only thing I could find that tied into Hidebehinds in the Potter canon was it made me think of the Lethifold…
Alison: Also a terrifying thing.
Michael: Yes, probably. The funny thing is, Dementors are horrible, but if you haven’t read about Lethifolds, they’ve got something that can give them a run for their money. Because Lethifolds essentially do the same thing. They don’t hide in the same way where they can hide behind anything; they just basically look like a translucent sheet. So they disguise themselves as blankets and curtains, and then they pounce upon you and digest you.
Caleb: Which is always a pleasant thing to endure.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Yeah, it’s a slow, prolonged, horrible digestion or disembowelment, take your pick. And the same thing happens where they need pretty strong magic to be defeated. Hidebehinds, as we see, take two magical people at least to defeat one fully. And we don’t know how… The story doesn’t specify how Isolt and William take the Hidebehind down, but Lethifolds require a Patronus Charm, and that is the only known way to get rid of them. But speaking of William – not William Isolt’s father, but actually William the Pukwudgie – Pukwudgies, in Rowling’s canon, are distant relatives of the goblin, and that’s certainly seen in their attitudes.
[Alison laughs]
Caleb: I love it.
Alison: They’re so funny.
Michael: [laughs] You thought Harry was sassy?
[Alison laughs]
Michael: You haven’t met William. That’s his thing. He’s the old, curmudgeonly type. The interesting thing about William… and I looked to see if there was any hubbub about this, and there was not, but Pukwudgies are traditional Native American creatures. They are not something that Rowling made up. And it’s interesting because Rowling was so heavily accused for her appropriation in the North American magic stories, but nobody really said anything about the Pukwudgie stuff.
Kat: That’s because it’s the name of one of the Houses.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Yes, it does end up playing a big part in Ilvermorny later on. Which I thought was funny too because, of course, we do get that little bit at the end where William’s heart is softened by James’s naivete.
Alison: It’s so sweet. [laughs]
Michael: And that’s what makes… It’s very sweet. But at the same time, I just wonder… The Pukwudgies as a whole seem like a very obstinate disagreeable bunch, and the way that they were included in Ilvermorny strikes me as stirring up the controversy like the goblins would do or even the centaurs would make a hubbub about.
Alison: See? I don’t see them as inside being necessarily malicious or anything. In fact, every time I read something about Pukwudgies, the first thing that popped into my mind was April from Parks and Recreation because that’s just the kind of character I was seeing in this Pukwudgie.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: On the outside, they hate everyone, but on the inside, they’re just a complete softy, and they just love the people they love, and they’re good with it. They’re just going to put up the front…
Michael: Well, and the interesting thing about the Native American tradition of the Pukwudgie… and it does vary, depending on which Native American tribe you’re asking, but the general story… and there are only certain Native American tribes that even have the Pukwudgie in their storytelling tradition, but the Pukwudgie in general is actually said to have been a creature that wanted to help humans and assist humans, but humans considered them a nuisance, so then they turned against humanity. And now they screw with us.
[Alison laughs]
Sara: When I first read about the Pukwudgie and meeting William, I immediately thought of house-elves, and I thought of Kreacher.
Kat: Yeah. Especially because it says that the number of Pukwudgies that continue to work at the school all grumble.
Alison: They do get paid, though.
Kat: So there'[re] a lot of them.
Alison: So they’re a little bit better [off] than house-elves.
Michael: And we had supposed when we were discussing house-elves and goblins that those two races might actually be distant relatives because of their separate brands of magic and that maybe, somehow, house-elves were a branch off of goblins that ended up in servitude. So that would fit well with how the Pukwudgies get developed here. But yeah, they’re definitely an interesting creature, and it’s fun that they got developed as well as they did in this story. Probably the only other major creature that pops up… and this will lead really well, Kat, into your discussion, so maybe we’ll go into this next, but the Horned Serpent shows up. We’ve never seen one of these before. It’s a giant snake that lives in a pool, and it has a jewel in its head.
Caleb: What a peculiar creature.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Yeah. And it’s so interesting because this is one of the first times, I guess, where we’ve had… Okay, this is hard to explain because we’ve had so many pieces of this in Potter, but we’ve had dreams in Harry Potter through Harry that were dreams that are very interpretive and just very much like dreams. And then we’ve had dreams that were actually visions muddled with Harry’s dreams, and then we’ve had just flat-out visions. And here, the Horned Serpent does seem to be giving Isolt a vision of some sort and has this very deep connection with her. There’s a lot of complicated stuff going on here with the Horned Serpent. And it’s not explained. It’s just like, it is what it is! She has this connection with the Horned Serpent; he gives her a little hint, and then he is very friendly with her and gives her stuff, and that’s that. [laughs]
Kat: That’s par for the course with Ilvermorny, with the Houses. Because I feel like… and I know we’ll get there, and it’s a discussion for another time for the most part, but we got so little information on them. So I feel like there might be more to that story coming later, maybe, from Jo, is what I’m thinking? Which is why that might be very vague.
Alison: Especially because the president of MACUSA was in Horned Serpent. And I feel like that’s very telling of something to come in Fantastic Beasts.
Michael: Yeah, we maybe will even encounter a horned serpent at some point.
Caleb: Oh, I hope so.
Kat: That’d be cool.
Alison: Which… how are those different from basilisks, though? They sound so similar to me.
Kat: The jewel. I don’t know.
Caleb: Yeah. And this one doesn’t petrify/kill you.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: I wonder if the jewel is what houses its clairvoyant aspect.
Kat: Oh, like the trolls. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. It’s almost like a third eye thing. It holds some additional power of some sort. I don’t really know. It’s interesting, too, because the horned serpent is mostly portrayed in a positive light, but it does have this mystique about it that makes it ambiguous for a little while.
Kat: Kind of like the Slytherin House and how people feel about it, right?
Michael: Yeah! No, it really does lead into that discussion perfectly because it just has so many… It is the jumping off point for how Rowling treats Slytherin in this story.
Kat: Right, which is funny too. So we’ve touched on this throughout our whole conversation here, but just to reiterate: Gormlaith Gaunt, who was Isolt’s mother’s estranged sister, so her estranged aunt, actually was the one who kidnapped Isolt and was the murderer of her parents. Which… that sucks.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Her name… The meaning is “illustrious and splendid” or “queen and princess,” which I thought was the exact opposite of what you think of when you think of a Gaunt. Especially the Gaunts [whom] know from Harry Potter.
Alison: I think it speaks to their background, their background of this regal, very important wizarding family, and then we see how far they’ve fallen by the end.
Kat: Or is it self-importance?
Alison: There’s that too.
Michael: There’s a lot of that.
Kat: Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: And it’s funny, for all of the talk we get about the Gaunts and how well they’re connected, there’s not a whole lot of new information that we get about that house, really.
Michael: Yeah, because Gormlaith is on the fringe of the Gaunt family. Because as is mentioned, of course, Isolt and William think that with her end comes the end of the Gaunts’ family line.
Kat: Whoops. [laughs]
Michael: Not the case, so yeah, that was an oopsie. But yeah, it’s interesting to ponder how that came to be, that she drifted so far off from the rest of the Gaunts.
Kat: Yeah, we don’t get a whole lot of… Yeah, I wish we had a little bit more information about how she ended up where she ended up, Gormlaith. Because really, it just says that she was a fanatical pureblood who believed that her sister’s helpfulness to her Muggle neighbors was setting Isolt, her daughter, upon a dangerous path to intermarriage with a non-magical man. Which is exactly what happened.
[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Alison: Whoops!
Kat: So it’s one of those self-fulfilling prophecies again, which is also something else we see a lot in Harry Potter novels.
Alison: I do think it’s interesting, she has a whole section about how Slytherin’s wand that had been passed down; after it stopped working, Isolt planted it, and it sprouted this snakewood tree that resists anyone hurting it in any way, but the leaves contain medicinal properties. And then it says,
“This tree seemed testament to the fact that Slytherin’s wand, like his scattered descendants, encompassed both noble and ignoble. The very best of him seemed to have migrated to America.”
Which is just. I don’t know why I’m just latching onto that line. It’s so… What is it saying? There’[re] so many different ways that this could apply to things.
Kat: This is saying that Slytherin House doesn’t totally suck! Jo is finally throwing them a bone, I think, is what this is.
Sara: I thought that… Do we know about what year Ilvermorny was founded exactly?
Michael: Ilvermorny was probably founded in the mid-1630s or ’40s.
Kat: Yeah, late ’20s, ’30s. Yeah, because she was born in 1603.
Alison: And she came to the US in 1620.
Michael: She got to America in 1620.
Kat: Right. So late ’20s, ’30s.
Michael: Yeah, ’20s to ’30s.
Sara: Because I was thinking, around this time is when all these people were starting to persecute the Muggles and starting to hate on them and that maybe Salazar Slytherin was just saying, “Hey, we don’t want any more persecution, so let’s hate on the Muggles.” But I did look it up, and the Salem Witch Trials here in America did not take place until 1692 to 1693, which is a little bit later than when this is happening. But the Mayflower was… A lot of the Puritans were a lot of the founding members of America. And they were all very religious and very anti-magic.
Caleb: Witchcraft.
Sara: Yeah, “witchcraft.” That was the word I was looking for.
Michael: Yeah, I think that’s mentioned here in the story that that’s why Isolt chooses not to stay with them after they dock, because she realizes she won’t have any friends among them. So saying that by Salazar, seeing this persecution and this prejudice coming from the Muggle world…
Sara: Maybe he’s just trying to save the wizards from the persecution, basically.
Michael: That’s a really interesting way to look at it, that maybe he’s trying to just, in his own warped way, protect the wizarding world, I guess.
Kat: What I kept waiting for in this moment, in this little bit, the paragraph that Alison was talking about, that Slytherin’s legacy, when you’re reading the whole history of Ilvermorny, was I really expected a throw to Voldemort in here; they were talking about planting the tree, and I was like, “Oh, is it going to be a yew tree or something?”
[Michael laughs]
Kat: And I felt like there weren’t, with the exception of the line you mentioned, Michael, where they talk about how they thought it was the end of the Gaunt line, there isn’t really anything else that ties any of this to Voldemort or any of that. But I think that’s a good thing…
Michael: Yeah, me too.
Kat: Yeah, if she brought too much of that into it, it would just feel forced.
Alison: I feel like that’s what that last line is hinting at, is that we saw the worst of Slytherin’s line in Voldemort, and now here we’re seeing the best of Slytherin’s line in Isolt and her family.
Kat: What percent Slytherin is she? How much Salazar does she have in her? I know we just posted a family tree on MuggleNet; I haven’t examined it closely yet. So is she 25%?
Alison and Michael: Yeah, I don’t know.
Kat: How pure-blood is she, I guess is my question.
Alison: Isolt is completely pure-blood. It says that she comes from two pure-blood lines, and one of them is the Slytherin line, and one of them is the – oh my gosh, I literally just talked about this not that long – Morrigan line! Thank you. So her mother comes from the Slytherin line, and her father comes from the Morrigan line.
Michael: Yeah, and I really like… I hope it’s an aspect… Especially because the conversation about the Ilvermorny Houses has dominated the discussion about this story in the recent week, but I hope that’s something that’s not lost in this discussion of this story, is that it really is that line that you said, Alison, that Slytherin’s best moved over to America and that it’s not just embodied in the tree; it’s embodied in Isolt and in her actions in the New World. I think it’s fitting, too, symbolically, that the New World is a fresh start.
Alison: Yeah. That’s a very “American Dream” idea.
Michael: Yeah. And that goes into the symbology of a rebirth that maybe there was a chance for redemption for Slytherin and that Slytherin isn’t, perhaps, as one-sided as we get the impression of from the Potter books, which…
Kat: Yeah, why aren’t more Slytherins out here screaming about this?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I feel like what you said, Michael, it’s been such a… Everything has been so House and Sorting focused, that this has been pushed to the background. Slytherins, you need to rise up; be proud of this. I think it’s great that a Slytherin descendant is one of the founders of Ilvermorny. I love it.
Alison: I think it speaks to the idea of, you don’t have to go with… If your family has bad ideas or whatever, you don’t have to be exactly like that; you can make your own way and your own decisions.
Kat: You can be the Percy of your family!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Sara: You can make the choice to go a different way.
Caleb: I would put Slytherins above Percy any day.
Alison: Whoa!
Caleb: Except maybe at the very end.
[Kat laughs]
Michael: And there’s a new topic for another episode.
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: That’s a pretty constant Caleb topic, though.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: But yeah, I really like that idea that… Rowling has done some damage control for pretty much every House other than Gryffindor ever since the books ended.
Kat: Yeah, they don’t need any help. [laughs]
Michael: Yeah, so it’s nice that she gives that to Slytherin because, I think over the last few years, she’s really been boosting Hufflepuff.
Alison: As you should! Sorry. [laughs]
Michael: Yeah, obviously, I have no problem with that, but yeah, it’s nice to see Slytherin get this poetic ending. I just love [that] the tree that sprouts from it has medicinal properties, that it’s a healing tree. The last act of Slytherin’s wand was to provide healing properties. That was the other cool thing that I just have to point out, too, about Slytherin and in relation to the horned serpent, that I thought this was cool that if you have a core of a snake in your wand, you can use Parseltongue to shut the wand off.
Alison: Yeah!
Michael: Like, snake wands have security measures?
[Alison laughs]
Michael: That’s super cool! I wonder if the… I want to know if that works with other wands somehow.
Kat: I don’t know.
Michael: If you have a…
Kat: I feel like that’s a very Slytherin thing. It reminds me of the Chamber of Secrets and the whole extra security level. I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s very cool, though. I agree.
Michael: And it’s got that extra added component where it shuts off Isolt’s wand, but it can potentially shut off… It can also activate other wands that… Like with the horned serpent, it doesn’t shut it off. The horned serpent wand actually sends off an audible warning that there’s an imminent attack, and that’s what wakes up Chadwick and Webster, so…
Kat: Yeah, wands act so differently in America. It’s weird. And there’s yet another topic for another future episode.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Yeah, we’ve got a lot… I think we’ve got some good material with that because she has revealed the wandmakers of America. And I’m getting the sense that once we get to Fantastic Beasts, there’s going to be some non-traditional wands revealed in that movie. But…
Kat: I guess since we’re at this point, we should talk a little bit about Ilvermorny and its Houses, I guess, right? And then…
Michael: Yeah, and its structure. And actually, speaking as we were of wands, that’s perfect because Ilvermorny had until, I believe, the 1960s a very interesting policy, which was that you came to Ilvermorny and you selected your wand after you selected your House. You don’t go shopping for your wand; ostensibly, James and Isolt made all the wands that students get to select from. I mean, maybe in later years, I don’t know, maybe they were sourcing those wands from other wandmakers.
Alison: I think so. That would make sense because it says that then they also had to leave them there over the summer, which would suck.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: And then you got to take it when you turned 17. But still, that would suck! [laughs]
Kat: You know who would really hate that? Ron.
Michael: Yeah, that was the policy that was in place until ’65 because of Rappaport’s Law. Though at the same time when I read that, I was like, “Good on you, Ilvermorny. You figured it out quicker than Hogwarts did.”
[Alison laughs]
Michael: [laughs] To me… [because] Hogwarts sends all the students home, saying, “Don’t do magic while you’re at home or you’ll be in trouble,” but they send them home with their wands anyway. So in a way, it seems pretty logical to not send them home with their wands if they’re not supposed to use them anyway. But yeah, that was a neat little difference between the two. Another fun thing… Now, the thing that is interesting about Ilvermorny, in terms of its structure, is that it’s truly the American version of Hogwarts.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: Which makes sense because Isolt grew up hearing about Hogwarts and how it was structured and how it worked and everything about it. So [it] makes sense.
Caleb: [It] makes sense, yeah, to have that connection, but it also has its uniqueness to it that I really appreciated still.
Alison: Yeah, I do too. I love the robes. I love the… The reasoning for the robe colors is my favorite. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, I like that there was thought put into that. I’m not sure about the color combo itself, but I like the thought that there was a purpose behind it.
Michael: The robes are blue for Isolt, for her life-long wish to be in Ravenclaw House, had she attended Hogwarts, and mixed with cranberry because that was James’s favorite flavor of pie..
Alison: I love it! I love it so much!
Kat: It is really cute.
Michael: I think that’s lovely in terms of just… It’s that wonderful sentimental humor that Rowling is really good at. It’s funny, but it’s also very sweet because James’s contributions to the school are lovably mundane. They just come from the most commonplace things, or basically the first thing that pops into his head.
Sara: It also reminds me of Thanksgiving because you always have cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, and they were the Pilgrims…
Alison: Oh yeah, that’s so awesome.
Michael: Yeah, that’s such a Pilgrim thing, isn’t it? [laughs]
Sara: That’s exactly what I thought of.
Alison: I love it!
Kat: I thought, too, this was a good time to have a brief chat about the Gordian Knot, which I looked up and I thought was really interesting because it is something that I had definitely never heard of before. But it is a legend that is associated with Alexander the Great, and it is often used as a metaphor for a problem that is impossible, a disentangling of the impossible knot. It’s not solved easily by loopholes or it’s referred to in the sense of thinking outside the box or “cutting the Gordian Knot,” which I think speaks a lot to her ancestry and where she’s coming from and how she has completely flipped where her ancestors may have wanted her to go, which I thought was cool..
Alison: Yeah, I like it.
Michael: Yeah, I thought it was funny too, because the idea, too, I think with Alexander the Great, as far as his story with the Gordian Knot, is that it’s solved by just cheating.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: That’s the only way to… [laughs] You have to cheat to solve it; you can’t actually undo it. You have to clip it, or snip it, to get it to undo itself. I don’t really know what that means in terms of the story. Maybe it’s just that… Maybe that’s represented by the deus ex machina of the Horned Serpent or the… I don’t know, maybe with Gormlaith exploding.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Or with William just showing up because she randomly screams her father’s name when she’s about to die. So maybe those are the cheats in the story that are acknowledged by the Knot. You see it a lot in the video, but it’s implied through the video and through the writing that the knot is all over the place in the imagery. It’s like a Hidden Mickey but all over Ilvermorny.
Alison: [laughs] Hidden Knots.
Michael: They put it in all of their artwork.
Kat: I love that parallel. That’s hilarious.
Michael: Hidden Knot. Because it’s interesting too because you can do that knot in a very simplified version or you can have a much larger, elaborate version of the knot. The video shows Isolt with a very simplified version of the knot as her necklace, but the Ilvermorny crest has a more elaborate knot. And there’s a mix of it all throughout the imagery of the school, so I do like that Rowling really looked to a lot of strong Irish mythology imagery in her stuff with Isolt. It’s not just here and there; it’s very much threaded through her story.
Kat: Does she have any Irish in her?
Alison: I don’t know.
Sara: I don’t either.
Kat: I guess nobody, then, has seen her Who Do You Think You Are? episode?
Alison: Nope.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Whoops.
Kat: Me either. Okay. It’s okay; we can’t all be perfect. It’s fine.
Alison: Someone listening has. They can tell us.
Kat: I’m sure, yeah.
Michael: I couldn’t help thinking, too, as you guys were discussing the idea of the Houses and the structure being so based on Hogwarts… I had wondered, too, because some people, some fans, had bemoaned that there weren’t more differences between Ilvermorny and Hogwarts, and since it was so intrinsically tied to Hogwarts, that some people were complaining that it didn’t really have its own identity in some ways. But – and we’ll get into this just a little bit with the Houses – we’re not going to touch on it completely, but we’ll touch on it just a tad, but I had also wondered, too, if this wasn’t… In addition to being a clever way to tie it back to the Harry Potter story, at the same time, maybe this also wasn’t just a little bone to the American fans by saying, “I know you want to go to Hogwarts so badly.” So I’m going to give you your version of Hogwarts, and it’s basically going to be Hogwarts.
Alison: And I think it works with American history, though, too, and the founding of America. We set up a lot of our institutions based [on] British institutions because that’s who was in charge. I mean, we’re going a little bit more forward in time, but we set up our Congress and a lot of things based [on] British parliament and the way things had been before, so it makes sense to me that it would be patterned after something that she knew.
Michael: Yeah. Maybe in a way that’s what makes this more successful as a story than the North American writings.
Kat: It definitely is, yeah.
Michael: There is that, I think Rowling was accused of being slightly unaware of certain aspects of American and Native American culture that made those stories fall flat in comparison to this one, and this one perhaps does succeed so well because it is more based on, like you said Alison, that importing of traditions and appropriation and changing British tradition into an American tradition. Of course, the big discussion is these four Houses that exist within Ilvermorny, so I’ll go ahead and read here this birth of the four Houses, and it comes from Chadwick and Webster hearing about Hogwarts from their mother and really liking the idea of having four Houses and Webster wanting to have house competitions, so they decided to all choose their favorite magical beast because Webster felt that if they named the Houses after themselves, nobody would ever want to be in them.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: So it starts with
“For Chadwick, an intelligent but often temperamental boy, it was the Thunderbird that can create storms as it flies.”
So we’re also going to get mention of two more animals. We don’t get a lot of background on these two other creatures that we hear about, but again, the Thunderbird was one of them.
“For argumentative but fiercely loyal Webster, it was the Wampus, a magical panther-like creature that was fast, strong and almost impossible to kill. For Isolt, it was, of course, the Horned Serpent that she still visited and with which she felt a strange sense of kinship.
“When asked what his favourite creature was, James was at a loss. The only No-Maj in the family was unable to consort with the magical creatures the others had begun to know well. Finally, he named the Pukwudgie, because the stories his wife told of curmudgeonly William always made him laugh.”
And I should also point out too that later on the story, mentions that the four Houses are said to represent different parts of the body, with the mind for Horned Serpent, the body for Wampus, the heart for Pukwudgie, and the soul for Thunderbird, while others say that Horned Serpent favors scholars, Wampus warriors, Pukwudgie healers, and Thunderbird adventurers, and as we’ll explore a little more, the Houses don’t quite select you in the same way that the Sorting Hat does. The Sorting works out a little differently, and we’ll get into that in a future episode of Alohomora! and before we reveal ourselves because we will tell you, listeners, finally, what our Houses are. But I do have to say the ending of this story is very bittersweet, the idea that William got a heart and that he can still be hanging around on the grounds, still an integral part of Ilvermorny. Maybe Kat can discover that when she goes to visit Ilvermorny.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Kat: Yeah, maybe I’ll find him.
Michael: Yeah, maybe you can do an interview with William the Pukwudgie and see what you can get out of him.
Kat: Okay, I’ll see what I can come up with, see what I can do.
Michael: But so all of us have stood in front of the four statues…
Caleb: We have.
Michael: … and we have been Sorted, so who would like to reveal their House first?
Alison: I’ll go because I already put mine online, so it’s out there.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: After taking the quiz quickly in a hostel in London, I was sorted into Pukwudgie, which… I was a little bit surprised. I thought I would. I mean, I’m not disappointed at all because I think it fits […] me very well, but I thought I was going to go more along the lines of Thunderbird because that also feels very right to me, with my personality, but I’m very pleased, actually.
Michael: And you were on an adventure as you were being Sorted.
Alison: Yeah, yeah, I will be honest. I have multiple Pottermore accounts, so I’ll probably go take it again sometime…
[Michael laughs]
Alison: … but I’m happy with Pukwudgie. I think it’s a great House.
Caleb: Alison and I are housemates because I’m also Pukwudgie. I was quite surprised by it. I thought that… I love these Houses because I am probably… A lot of people think they’re quite unique from Hogwarts Houses, and the way I think about them – but I know that’s for another episode – I thought it was going to be Horned Serpent, mostly just the way the questions were geared and the way I felt I was answering. I was very surprised, and I had to think about this for a long time, if I was accepting of this.
[Alison laughs]
Caleb: But I’m actually, like Alison said, very happy about it. I think it fits me very well. It’s interesting to Sort yourself as an adult versus self-Sorting yourself long ago when the books first started. I think that changed a lot of things. But yeah, I’m super happy about it, and man, William is awesome, so I’m hyped about it.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Michael: I’m so happy to hear we have two Pukwudgies already because I wasn’t hearing a lot of Pukwudgies…
Kat: Yeah, me neither.
Alison: Oh. See, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of Pukwudgies, but…
Kat: Huh. Well, not me.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I took the quiz before I read anything because I didn’t want my answers to be skewed in any way.
Michael: Oh, in reference to the story, yeah.
Kat: So I took that first, and I ended up in Thunderbird, which I did not expect whatsoever. I also expected to be in Horned Serpent. However, I’m okay with Thunderbird. It’s fine. I’m definitely an adventurer. I travel a ton, and I love to just explore. I don’t know how much I connect with the soul. But I’ll take it. It’s fine. Thunderbird. It’s cool. I mean, it relates to Ravenclaw. They are both birds. They fly.
Alison: [laughs] Caw!
Michael: Yeah, you still get to go, “Caw.”
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Yeah. I do, right. Although I’m not sure that’s what a Thunderbird sounds like.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Flap your wings as you caw, and there you go. There’s the Thunderbird.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: I can’t make a noise… There’s no audio noise for flapping of wings that I can make. I mean…
Alison: Okay, yeah, I know. Never mind. [laughs]
Michael: Well, I was tweeted about this matter quite a bit. I was tweeted by Ian Wagner, who wanted me to be in Wampus. I was tweeted by Stephanie, better known as Yo Rufus On Fire, who wanted me in Pukwudgie. [laughs] I was tweeted by David, our British listener, who I [unintelligible] in a previous episode…
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Hi, David.
Michael: … who is a Hufflepuff/Thunderbird combo and was hoping that I would be. And I can reveal…
Alison: Gosh, who are you? Harry Potter? Everyone wants you in their House.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: I’m everybody. I’m everything. I am a Thunderbird.
Caleb: Oh, we’ve got two and two.
Michael: Two and two. So I am quite happy with my Sorting. Like everybody else here, I was surprised because I was thinking I was going to get Pukwudgie.
Caleb: This is why the Sorting is so great.
Alison: I know! It’s so awesome.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Kat: It’s beautiful. And yeah, if you think about the pairings between us, they’re all different. Which I love. I love it, I love it.
Alison: What I love about this Sorting is that we have no preconceived notions about them. It’s not like when we got Sorted into Hogwarts, and I got Sorted into Hufflepuff and had an identity crisis for a week because I had never… It’s great because we can all just be like, “Yeah, that fits with me” instead of, “They put me in Slytherin. I’m a terrible person, and I didn’t know this about myself.”
[Michael laughs]
Alison: And I think that’s the best part of this, is that we’re all a clean slate, and so everyone can be like, “You’re this; that’s really cool. I’m this, and that’s really cool too.” I love it.
Caleb: Yeah. I will say, though, with… I will agree that that is the way people should be taking it. However, I immediately saw people already pulling the Hufflepuff move with Pukwudgie very quickly on Facebook.
Alison: Yeah, yeah. It’s the name.
Caleb: And I was like, “How do you get…?” Yeah, maybe the name? And then for the first… And I’m not going to get into this too much, but I’ve just got to get this off my chest because I know we’re going to talk about this on a future episode, but I understand now how Hufflepuffs felt when people hated on their House.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Caleb: Like, yo, that’s my family. Chill out.
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: We aren’t going to do this. You don’t know anything about us. Slow down. We good.
Michael: Yeah, we got the Pukwudgies on our side.
Alison: There we go.
Michael: Got so many more people who relate to us over in Hufflepuff.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: Sympathizers. That’s right.
Alison: There we go.
Sara: I did just finish taking the Ilvermorny Sorting House thing…
Alison, Kat, and Michael: Yay!
Sara: … while you guys were talking. [laughs]
Kat: And?
Sara: And I am a Pukwudgie…
Alison and Michael: Yay!
Sara: … which is what I thought I would be at the beginning. [laughs]
Caleb: Welcome.
Kat: Welcome to the House.
Michael: That’s perfect. I had… After I got Sorted, the next night I read it to Leandra and Sorted her, and she also joined Thunderbird with me, which we were very happy about since we’re both in Hufflepuff. So we were both Hufflepuff/Thunderbird combos, and actually, since we didn’t think… Even though we know Kat uses “ca-caw” for Ravenclaw, we decided that since Thunderbirds make storms wherever they go, for Thunderbird, we go… [makes sound of thunder]
[Alison laughs]
Michael: So that’s…
Kat: Okay, I can do that.
Michael: [laughs] That’s our Thunderbird sound.
Kat: Maybe I can’t.
Michael: Hmm?
Kat: I don’t think I can make that noise, Michael. [laughs]
Michael: You can’t make the [makes the sound of thunder] thunder?
Kat: [makes pitiful sound of thunder] No.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: I’ll practice.
[Michael imitates Kat with a sputtering sound]
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Yeah, that’s more of that. [laughs]
Kat: I’m looking because we did a poll on the MuggleNet Twitter, and let’s see, we had just over 2,000 votes within just a couple of hours. And 11% were Wampus, 41% Thunderbird, 21% Horned Serpent, and 27% Pukwudgie.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s about what I’ve seen.
Michael: Wow.
Caleb: It’s pretty representative.
Kat: Same. So Thunderbird is… Okay, and we are not going to compare these, and we’re not going to talk about it…
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Next episode.
Kat: … but it’s like the Gryffindor. Yeah. And I had a big crisis – we’ll get there – because… Sorry, I can’t… Okay, we can’t talk about it anymore.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Next time, next time.
Kat: It’s going to start…
Michael: We’ll save it for another episode that will come later down the line because now we can do that with topic episodes.
Alison: Yay!
Kat: Right, exactly. And I feel like we did a pretty good job on our first one here.
Caleb: I think that’s really what we wanted to tackle, isn’t it? We got to…
Kat: I think so.
Michael: Sara, how did we do?
Sara: I thought it was pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Kat: She’s like, “Ehh, six out of ten.”
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: You’ll barely pass. We’ll let you go with that.
Michael: That’s good; she doesn’t want to give us an A+ right off the bat. She wants to leave room for improvement, right?
Kat: Right.
Sara: I feel like it’s very interesting, though, because I feel like when you’re discussing a book chapter, you go more in chronological order, where with some of these topics, there’s not exactly a chronological order to go by, so it’s a lot different to talk about.
Caleb: I think future topics will be different because [with] this, we did have a story to go through, whereas [with] other topics, it will be very point-based, like what we did toward the end of the reread.
Kat: Well, we’re excited to hear what the listeners have to say about it. So guys, definitely give us feedback, please, because we want to grow with you and give you the show that you want. So let us know what you think, please.
Caleb: Absolutely. And we want to formally thank Sara for joining us for this first episode in this new format. Sara, it was really great to have you. Thanks so much for contributing and getting into this new way of things with us.
Sara: Thanks. I had a lot of fun, and it was great to talk to you guys.
Michael: And she got Sorted and everything!
Alison: Yeah!
Sara: I did!
[Michael laughs]
Kat: You’re welcome.
Alison: We have a good time here.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: And if you want to come join us on our good time, fun show, that we do cool stuff with, [laughs] go submit a topic because that’s a good way to get on the show because if you have a topic you really want to discuss, we want to discuss it with you. So go on over to our main site; up at the top there’s going to be a “Topic Submit” button, and you can just click on that. So go give us all of the things you want to talk about because there’s so much to talk about.
Michael: Yeah, listeners, if you want to talk about Ilvermorny, just because we did this episode on Ilvermorny, that is hardly the end of that topic on Alohomora! So if you want to specifically talk about it, let us know because you’re more likely to get put on a show about a specific topic if that’s what you tell us you’d like to be on.
Alison: Yes. And if you do get put on a show, all you need is a set of basic headphones with a microphone like you would get from Apple, nothing fancy. And we look forward to talking to you because the best part of the show is when we get to chat with you.
Kat: And you can chat with us at any time over on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN [or on Facebook at] facebook.com/openthedumbledore; our website, of course, is alohomora.mugglenet.com. And don’t forget that you can always send us an owl to audioBoom. Click over to aholomora.mugglenet.com, keep your message under 60 seconds, and you might hear yourself on the show. And just so you guys know, actually, we are not renewing our phone number.
[Michael makes buzzer sound]
[Alison laughs]
Kat: 206-GO-ALBUS is going away.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: So don’t call (206)-462-5287 anymore.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: It will be gone. So send us an audioBoom if you want to talk to us. It’s free, and you can do it on your phone; there’s an app. It’s really easy. Do that.
Michael: And once again, we want to remind you to please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com/alohomora, where you can sponsor the show for as low as $1 a month. You’ll get special perks for doing that, and it helps us to keep these topic-based episodes going and keep a space hosted for the Alohomora! archive because we’ve actually had some of you ask, “Will the show continue to be hosted?” so that you can listen to it if… because some of you have said, “I want to reread Harry Potter again, and I want to listen to the show from the beginning.” Yes! Especially if you help out with Patreon, we can keep it up for you guys to listen to. So again, check out our Patreon page at patreon.com/alohomora. And before we say our outros, we should also mention, too, [that] we’re trying to keep reminding you guys throughout the month of July… It would seem that almost all of us will be attending Cursed Child release parties, and we want to make sure and let you know where we will all be. So if you would like to come join us at the release party we have chosen, you can do that. I, for one, will be going to Book People in downtown Austin for my chosen release party.
Kat: Of course you ask me, and I don’t remember the name of the bookstore again. Come on. I’ve got to know that. Alison, go.
Alison: [laughs] I have already seen it, and so I am very, very, very excited to have that book in my hands because guys, I loved it. Loved it!
[Michael laughs]
Alison: And if you want to see my…
Michael: Spoiler: It’s good.
Alison: No, it is. I mean, it’s got a few issues, but the good outweighs the bad. And if you want to see my spoiler-free review of it, I actually posted it on my blog, which is on my Twitter, so go on and look at that because that was a good time, and I basically just loved it all. But I will be going to the Barnes & Noble in Salt Lake City. Still trying to nail down plans, but that’s where I will be. [laughs] In the Gateway Mall, I think. I should check that. But I think that’s it.
Michael: Caleb, where are you going?
Caleb: So I will sadly not be attending a party because I will be on an island in the Caribbean…
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Yeah, it’s a rough time. [laughs]
Caleb: … so if anyone wants to come find me, we can definitely party for Harry Potter at midnight in the Caribbean. Just let me know.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Caleb: We can read it on our iPads or something.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: So I’m going to be in Boston with – as I mentioned before – [the] senior journalist for MuggleNet, Jessica, at Porter Square Books. So MuggleNet is actually hosting the party there. So come, and we will have some fun prizes and some trivia, and you can meet some other MuggleNet staff members as well, so that will definitely be a good time. Porter Square Books in Boston.
Alison: And guys, I just have to say, I cannot wait until everyone has read it because this whole episode was torture because I wanted to say so many things that connected to Cursed Child, and I couldn’t say anything.
Kat: Hey! You’re… Don’t go there.
Alison: What?
Kat: Because that’s almost a spoiler.
Alison: No, it’s not!
Michael: Almost.
Caleb: It is.
Alison: You have no idea what I was talking about!
Kat: It is almost a spoiler!
Michael: She spoiled everything; why bother reading?
Kat: Shush, young lady.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Just so you all know, when we get to that point, I cannot wait to discuss it with everyone, so…
Kat: Well, we have less than a month to go.
Alison: Yep! [laughs]
Michael: And we have already said and committed to a read-through of Cursed Child and discussing it on the show. [laughs] Oh, thank God.
Kat: We haven’t worked out the details yet, so keep a watch out on our social media. We’ll let you know.
Michael: Yes. That is happening. But for now, it’s off to our respective Ilvermorny common rooms for the night. I am Michael Harle.
[Show music begins]
Kat: I’m Kat Miller.
Caleb: I’m Caleb Graves.
Alison: And I’m Alison Siggard. Thank you for listening to Episode 197 of Alohomora!
Kat: Open the Dumbledore.
Alison To Ilvermorny! Yay!
[Show music continues]
Kat: What do I do?
Michael: You open the Dumbledore.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: I… Ha, ha.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: No, you make… I know that. I need a…
Alison: An Ilvermorny-related something.
Kat: Yeah, I need a thing.
Michael: Say it in your best Irish accent.
Caleb: What’s the noise? [makes whooshing noise]
[Alison and Kat laugh]
Kat: Caleb did it better than I did.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: What’s the noise, Michael?
Michael: No, that was Caleb making that noise.
[Caleb makes whooshing noise]
Kat: That’s an explosion.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Yeah, that was a good… That was a thunderstorm.
Alison: That was a really good one.
Michael: That’s a severe warning thunderstorm.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: [makes whooshing sound] I mean, is that it? I don’t… Am I making the noise right? I don’t know. Does that make any sense?
Alison: [makes thunder noise] Yeah, we talked about it.
Michael: I don’t know. I have no idea.
Kat: I don’t either. I could say something else. Open the… I don’t have to say Dumbledore.
Michael: Open the William.
Alison: That sounds terrible. It sounds like you are going to dissect him. [laughs]
Michael: It does. Yeah, you can’t add another name onto that. [laughs] There are no other names that sound like doors in this story.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: Yeah, that’s true.
Michael: Open the Webster dictionary…
[Alison laughs]
Michael: … because I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. [laughs]
Kat: Should…? Maybe it will just be a normal one today.
Caleb: Yeah, it can be normal.
Michael: Yeah, we can do normal.
Kat: Do normal? Okay. Open the Dumbledore.
Alison: To Ilvermorny.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Sorry.
Kat: That’s… Okay, do it again and do it for real.
Alison: Okay, sorry. It just popped into my head right at the end, so… Okay.
[Michael laughs]
