Transcript – Episode 21

[Show music begins]

Noah Fried: This is Episode 21 of Alohomora! for January 27th, 2013.

[Show music continues]

Noah: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. I’m Noah Fried.

Rosie Morris: I’m Rosie Morris.

Kat Miller: And I’m Kat Miller. And our special guest this week is someone whose voice you probably know. He’s on quite a few podcasts, including MuggleNet’s own MuggleCast. It’s Eric Scull!

Eric Scull: Hey, everybody!

Kat: Hey, Eric! Thanks for coming on the show.

Eric: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I hope to have a lot of fun.

Noah: How long have you been podcasting, Eric Scull?

Eric: Ooh. Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answer, Noah Fried?

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Oh, just for our listening audience. It’s been many years.

Eric: Yes, of course. Of course. Well, actually, we celebrated our seventh anniversary of MuggleCast last August, so this would be about seven and a half years of Harry Potter podcasting.

Rosie: Wow.

Kat: That’s crazy.

[2013 MuggleNet Fandom Calendar promo begins]

Ron: Hey, Harry. Working on that Potions essay for Monday?

Harry: Uhh, it’s due Friday, Ron.

Ron: What? No, you’re pulling my leg.

Seamus: Hey, Harry. Doing that essay quite early, aren’t you?

Ron: See? It’s not due until next Monday. Right, Seamus?

Seamus: Erm, I thought it wasn’t due until the Monday after next.

Parvati: Well, I already did mine because it’s due Thursday.

Ron: What are you talking about, Parvati?

[Harry, Parvati, Ron, and Seamus argue]

Hermione: What is going on here? I’m trying to do my Charms homework.

Ron: Hermione, when’s that Potions essay due?

[Harry, Parvati, Ron, and Seamus argue]

Hermione: Hold on! Let me check my calendar from MuggleNet. It has all kinds of important dates, such as future conventions, birthdays, and important events in the wizarding world.

Ron: Yeah, but what about homework?

Hermione: Ahh, here we are. Yes, I thought so. That essay is due… tomorrow.

[Harry, Parvati, Ron, and Seamus groan]

Michael: Start 2013 off right with the new MuggleNet Fandom calendar. Each month features photos and drawings from various corners of the Harry Potter fan base, as well as historical dates from all seven Harry Potter novels and Harry Potter birthdays for characters, actors, and your favorite MuggleNet staff members. Visit MuggleNet.com to preview the calendar and get your own copy today.

[2013 MuggleNet Fandom Calendar promo ends]

Noah: We had a lot of great discussion last week about our opening of Prisoner of Azkaban. A lot of great comments and, actually, a re-opening of the abuse debate because on the forums… and we’d actually like to kind of end that discussion, if we can. I know Rosie has talked to me about it, just this question of, was Harry actually abused by the Dursleys? We actually have a comment from the forums. Rosie, would you like to give us that first comment?

Rosie: Sure, our first comment was from LumosNight3 and it says:

“I’m from the US and I fully agree with Rosie. I’m sorry, but until JKR tells us Harry was abused or until we come across a hundred percent full proof evidence that Harry was abused, I really see this as exaggeration to get a certain point across to the reader.”

So, you guys came up with some quotes that respond to that, didn’t you?

Kat: I did, yeah. The one that I found is from an interview back in 2000. Jo was at a writing festival. Of course now I completely miss the actual… oh, Vancouver Writers and Readers Festival, there we go. It was in November of 2000, and she gave an interview to Cinescape Magazine. And this is in reference to Dudley, actually. She says:

“I like torturing him. You should keep an eye on Dudley. It’s probably too late for Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. I feel sorry for Dudley. I might joke about him, but I feel truly sorry for him because I see him as just as abused as Harry, though [probably] in a less obvious way.”

Noah: Okay, so I mean, there it is, right? She says the word “abuse”.

Eric: And applies it to the Dursleys’ parenting.

Noah: Rosie, what do you say to that?

Rosie: There have been a lot of comments on the forums this week about the kind of definition of abuse. And I think she is talking about a very different kind of abuse than the kind of physical abuse that you guys have been leaning towards in our discussions previously. Noah, did you want to read your quote?

Noah: Yeah, I want to jump into it but before I do, Eric, we haven’t heard from you on the question of was Harry actually physically abused by the Dursleys? What would you say to that?

Eric: You mean physical abuse?

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: Yes.

Eric: No, I would definitely side on the side of Harry was abused but it’s very… it’s mental abuse. It’s not…

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: I don’t think at any point, it became anywhere physical where Vernon would hit Harry. I mean, I think the closest you get is the physical act of barring Harry in his bedroom. You know, in the second bedroom.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: Or physically relocating Harry to the cupboard under the stairs. You know, childhood. That’s the most physical, I think I’d say, that the Dursleys ever got with Harry. But that’s not to say he wasn’t abused verbally, mentally. I think that’s… a very stronger case could be made for that.

Noah: Well, that of course is the argument because sometimes that form of abuse is just as bad, if not worse, than actual physical punishment.

Eric: I completely agree. But if it’s a question of was Harry was physically abused by the Dursleys, no, I don’t think so.

Kat: So, we got an email actually from someone. Her name is Jessica Carius and she sent us a quote – I just remembered this, guys, as we were going through…

Noah: Whoa.

Kat: …and it’s on page 35 of Philosopher’s Stone, the UK edition. It says:

“Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, , and computer in his sports bag.”

Noah: Hmm.

Kat: So, isn’t that proof right there that the Dursleys have no problem whatsoever hitting their kids?

Eric: I would say that’s more like a slap. I mean‚ okay, I’d hate to downplay any physical violence that any child may have encountered. But I think the whole “hit him round the head” in that scene in Sorcerer’s Stone or Philosopher’s Stone, it’s supposed to convey this issue where Vernon was in a hurry to get out the door and he had no patience for his kid. I really don’t think that it could be said that he really hit Dudley a whole lot.

Noah: Right, right.

Rosie: I don’t even think that it’s really a full slap. It’s not like he’s been punched in the head or properly slapped across the face. Literally, he’s just had kind of a little clip on the ear kind of thing.

Kat: But he still definitely hit him and I feel like…

Eric: If I could bring it around to this chapter – not to really negate that point, because it doesn’t, but in recent chapters here Vernon had the opportunity as Harry was storming out after he had blown up Aunt Marge, Vernon says, “You put her right!” And Harry says, “No, she deserved it,” and he runs off into the sunset with his trunk. Vernon could have physically stopped him, especially if you’re looking at the choreography of the movie, Vernon was standing in front of the landing of the stairway and Harry was on it. And I see that as a great opportunity for Vernon, if he were physical, to restrain Harry. Harry is this little thin, nothing boy, and if Vernon were at all physical, if their abuse was physical in nature, I think Vernon would have physically restrained him. And in that same chapter, Aunt Marge is talking to Harry about his parents in front of him, verbally assaulting his parents, “Oh, must have been a criminal,” and, “You can tell by the breed of this boy that he’s terrible.” Having to sit there and endure that verbal abuse really caused Harry to flip out. That, I’d say, was a moment of the most, worst abuse he’s seen at Privet Drive, which is, I think, what caused him to run away.

Kat: But didn’t Harry have his wand out and that’s why, probably why, Vernon didn’t hit him?

Noah: Yeah, wasn’t Vernon scared?

Rosie: Yeah, but that’s just a twig. Vernon doesn’t really know what magic can do. Sure, he knows that…

Kat: Right, which is why he’s so scared of it.

Rosie: But he’s also… if you were threatened by someone who was just holding a stick at you, you wouldn’t necessarily experience the same amount of fear as you would if someone has a gun, if you’ve seen that kind of backlash of what that item can do. He would easily be able to go and restrain him, I think, at that point.

Noah: This is moments after he has blown up Vernon’s sister. He probably feels defensive for his family at this point and he has no idea what to expect because more than a gun where he has some kind of notion of what’s going to happen, this is a – as you say – a stick. Vernon has absolutely no concept of what’s going to happen, which makes him even more scared, I think. Which is why he doesn’t physically attack Harry.

Rosie: You guys are now saying that the idea that Vernon is afraid of Harry will stop him being that physical abuser, but Harry doesn’t show the same amount of fear that you would expect from someone who has been physically abused by someone throughout the books. He is not afraid of the Dursleys in the same way that you would expect him to be if he was being constantly abused in the way that you guys are suggesting.

Noah: This is true. So, yeah, that points to a hole in my argument.

Kat: No, I don’t think so because I think Harry is older now and has a lot more confidence and he knows that he can use… I mean, he even says in the chapter, “Well, what’s the point? I can use more magic because I’m already expelled.” So, he’s not afraid to use magic at this point. He’s not afraid to fight back, is the way I look at it.

Noah: Well, let’s… I have one more…

Kat: Yeah, read your quote, Noah.

Noah: Yeah, I have one more quote. Maybe it can add a little bit of dimension to the discussion. So, this is from the Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection DVD and it’s an interview between Steve Kloves and JK Rowling. And it’s actually fairly recent, just a few years ago. Steve Kloves, of course, wrote many of the movies. I believe for Order of the Phoenix, he didn’t write that movie, if I’m remembering correctly. But for most of the movies, he wrote them. And of course, as a writer, this interview with JK Rowling is really cool because she wrote the original text. So, this is him: “There was this part in the script when he was in the cupboard, [Harry]. I invented him a spider named Alastor who he talked to. And he used to nick broken soldiers out of the rubbish bin, and he lined them up on the shelf, this broken army that Dudley had thrown out.” JK Rowling says: “It was such a great image, the broken army.” This is Kloves speaking again: “And he used to talk to them, and the point was that he seemed slightly mad when I wrote the first draft. When Hagrid appeared, you thought he was out of his imagination for a minute, like he had summoned this guy.” Rowling: “I think that’s a fabulous point, and that speaks so perfectly to the truth to the books because I had it suggested that to me, more than once, that Harry actually did go mad in the cupboard, and that everything that happened subsequently was some sort of fantasy life he developed to save himself.” Kloves: “No, and that’s where it came from. It came from the book. When you read the book, you make it pretty clear that he’s an abused boy.” Rowling: “Totally. Of course he is.” Kloves: “And so, there’s darkness there, and I would go with that.” So, looking at that, at least in terms of JK Rowling’s context of what abuse is, Harry is abused.

Kat: Although I feel like this quote actually, specifically speaks to – quote, unquote – “the madness within.” This speaks more, I think, to Harry’s psychological madness and abuse, as opposed to the actual physical…

Noah: Proof of there actually being physical abuse. Yeah, that’s true.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: It’s all about mental abuse, verbal abuse, and neglect. I really don’t think that the kind of physical aspect comes into it. Sure, like we’ve said before, there’s the frying pan incident and there are little clips around the air and things…

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: …but nothing that would be properly harmful in the way physical abuse to a child.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: The other thing to consider, I guess, is that Dumbledore put Harry with this family. I really think that he didn’t leave him there to dry. He must have known a little bit about what was going on and I really don’t think he would have left Harry – no matter how strong the blood tie is between Petunia and Lily – with a family that would physically assault him on sort of a regular basis.

Kat: One would hope, anyway. But…

Eric: Well, he does leave him with them and they verbally assault him all the time and physically move him into a cupboard and all that other stuff, which is terrible and actually brings more to light about Dumbledore. But…

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: And really, he’s only doing it to save Harry from getting an ego. I really don’t quite understand. [laughs] But there is abuse there. It’s just… I don’t think it’s physical either.

Noah: All right. Well, the frying pan that Kat referenced was in Chamber of Secrets and Harry actually had to literally dodge this frying pan that Petunia would have hit him with for punishment. But hearing all you guys speak and these comments, I think I have to change my own opinion because… I want to agree. I don’t think there’s too much physical, actually physical, abuse. It’s definitely more on the…

Kat: Weak, Noah. Weak.

[Eric laughs]

Noah: No, it’s not weak. I’m reinforming my opinion because I think it shows… it really shows when you can actually take in what people are saying and change your opinion, and I want to do that to some degree. I think there’s definitely aspects of physical abuse, but I’m going to go on the record and say that it is not all bad because if you were reading a real story about physical abuse, it would be a lot more in your face, and you would get that and we’d feel Harry’s pain. But…

Kat: Well, obviously it’s not all physical abuse. I think the point was that he is, at some point, physically abused. Maybe not on a regular basis, but I still believe that he definitely was.

Noah: Well, I’d even say the fact that Ripper chases Harry up into a tree for several hours, that’s physical abuse in my mind.

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah. Putting Harry in the cupboard, depriving him of food is physical abuse, more than it is…

Rosie: It’s neglect more than physical abuse. Different definition.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Eric: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that’s true too. So, we’re not trying to downplay abuse here, like Harry is abused.

Rosie: No.

Eric: But unlike Roald Dahl, whose books like James and the Giant Peach for instance, or Matilda, have, I would say, greater instances of physical abuse.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: Maybe not Matilda. But I just think…

Rosie: No, definitely. Matilda with the chokey.

Eric: The aunts… yeah, the chokey. Exactly.

Noah: There’s throwing kids out of windows, for God’s sake.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: The aunts and the uncles and the teachers. Although, shout out to Pam Ferris who was Ms. Trunchbull and Aunt Marge, but…

Rosie: That’s actually one of the comments that we’ve had on our main site, by LioMorris.

Noah: Whoa.

Eric: Yeah.

Noah: Mind blown.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So, I say, at this point, we leave the abuse discussion to the forums.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: We’ll let the fans continue to fight it out. I mean, the discussion that’s already going on there is crazy. People are pulling stuff from all over the place. So, if you want to join in the discussion and have your point heard, head over to the forums.

Noah: And, to be honest guys, I think we’ve beaten this one to death.

Kat: Haha, pun intended?

[Eric laughs sarcastically]

Noah: Yeah, of course. And it’s terrible. We don’t condone abuse on any record, but, [laughs] in any case, yeah, go to the forums if you want to continue this debate and it might come up, kind of like the Desk!Pig comes up on occasion.

Kat: Right.

Eric: I would consider… I guess in closing, in my closing if I can add a sort of closing remarks, even though I haven’t been following this debate in your previous episodes…

Noah: Certainly.

Eric: …but just keep in mind the role of the Dursleys throughout the entire series to guide Harry along, and not that there can be any positive to physical abuse necessarily, but, as a result of his abusings from the Dursleys, Harry grows to be a very levelled, modest boy who cares a lot about everybody’s opinion, and this leads him to recruit people for Dumbledore’s Army and treat them all with respect and all of these insecurities that Harry feels as a result of being relegated to a cupboard actually grow to make him into a better leader.

Rosie: Sure.

Eric: Which is not to say that the abuse is good, but I’m just saying to keep in mind too, just the overall role of the Dursleys in this series.

Rosie: Yeah, to be a hero who overcomes adversity, you’ve got to have the adversity to overcome.

Kat: Right, exactly.

Eric: Well said.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Very good.

Rosie: Okay, so on a slightly lighter note…

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: …we had lots of other discussion on our forum this week and this comment comes from Have A Biscuit Potter on our main site, and it says:

“I would have loved it if you had mentioned the Pocket Sneakoscope that Ron sends to Harry for his birthday. Jo uses it to foreshadow Scabbers actually being Pettigrew. Ron says, ‘It kept lighting up at dinner last night.’ Ron blames this on the fact that Fred and George had put beetles in Bill’s soup, but I find it more likely that it is reacting to the presence of Pettigrew in his Animagus form. (I think it’s hilarious that the twins were dropping beetles in Bill’s soup. Too bad one of them wasn’t Rita Skeeter!)”

Kat: [laughs] Oh, God.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah, I actually thought about that after the fact that we missed or, for some reason, didn’t bring up the Sneakoscope, but I definitely agree that that’s what it’s doing with the foreshadowing.

Rosie: So, do you think it’s always… the only time it ever goes off is because of Scabbers being Pettigrew? Or… because I’m sure there are other examples of it going off because of the beetles in the soup or because of using Errol when he wasn’t supposed to or that kind of thing.

Eric: This is why it’s great about Jo’s writing, if I can just add in here, that we get this item that suspicion or doubt is cast on it from day one as to whether or not it works, but you can treat it throughout the examples in the books, even he has the Sneakoscope for a long time, you can treat each and every one of those examples as being proof that it actually does work. For instance, the presence of Scabbers. So, I just really like going through every time the Sneakoscope goes off to really try and go back and figure out why it’s going off, treating it as if it isn’t broken.

Rosie: Definitely. It’s kind of like a piece of dramatic irony, the readers know something that Harry and the rest of them don’t.

Eric: Exactly.

Kat: This is the obligatory genius moment right here on the show.

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Just saying.

Noah: But if it was Pettigrew, shouldn’t it be buzzing all the time? Maybe just… it happens when he’s having a particularly malicious thought, maybe?

Eric: When he’s around.

Kat: I think it’s only when he’s nearby.

Rosie: Or when he’s maybe being most human. I mean, being a rat for twelve years, I think you would probably lose some of your qualities, you’d become the rat almost. But when you’re… he was listening in to conversations or doing something that was particularly human while he was being the rat, I think that’s the moments where it shows up.

Eric: That’s a good point. We know he was listening to the conversation because they were talking about Sirius Black at dinner, weren’t they? And that’s when he started losing hair, when he found out.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Right.

Eric: So, there’s that.

Noah: But just another question: How does the Sneakoscope even know?

Kat: It’s magic.

Eric: Magic.

Rosie: It’s enchanted.

Kat: It’s not alive. It’s magic.

Noah: Don’t just say “enchantments” because that’s impossible. It must be… [laughs]

Kat: It’s not alive, Noah. That’s it.

Rosie: Wizarding tech.

Kat: That’s right.

Noah: All right, fair enough.

[Kat laughs]

Eric: It’s like the Uncertainty Principle, to bring science into it or physics. It’s the Uncertainty Principle. The Sneakoscope can only tell you that something is amiss. It can’t tell you what’s amiss.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: So, how it gets that information is kind of… I don’t want to say a moot point, but it’s like the Remembrall.

Kat: Mhm, right.

Eric: It can tell you that you forgot something, but it can’t tell you what you forgot.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: It’s just another one of those devices that’s supposed to be ironic.

Noah: All of these little ironic, clever devices that are actually devices that you can use. But, yeah, we go into a lot of physics on this show and about how these things are actually made and we have no answers, but I’m always willing to ask the questions.

Rosie: You’re always trying to point them out that they’re alive. [laughs]

Kat: I was just going to say, he likes to ask if everything is alive.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: We need to make you a shirt that says that.

Noah: Well, I think I might be moving on that, too. I think it’s… there’s potentiality that they’re not alive and that it’s just magic, but I’ll get to that later in the chapter discussion. [laughs]

Kat: Okay. [laughs]

Rosie: So, one of our other fairly heavy discussions that was going on in our forums this week was the idea of equating ugliness with evilness. So, this comment is from Firebolt and it says:

“One of the most good looking people in the book is the worst – Voldemort. The whole thing when we see him in memories as Tom is that he is both good looking and, when he wants to be, ordinary. Terrifying combination. I’d disagree with the message, too – if anything it says that the ‘bunch of misfits’, as Hagrid calls them, are the heroes.”

Noah: Yeah, but Firebolt, what happens when Tom Riddle gets more evil? What happens to him? He gets kind of ugly.

Kat: He does, but I still think he was evil. I mean, even when he was good looking, he was a pretty bad dude.

Eric: When he… the murder of Hepzibah Smith for instance, he was still a youth working at Borgin and Burkes, and…

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Yeah, but I think it doesn’t necessarily get rid of the ugly equals evil debate because if evil is actually choices versus nature, if it’s actually choices instead of nature, as Tom Riddle makes certain choices, he becomes more evil in my opinion and he becomes uglier. And that seems to fit in the ugly equals evil debate of the series, which is that all of the evil or devilish characters are uglier, fatter, darker, horse-faced, to some degree.

Rosie: Okay, well, let’s go back to some of our comments because we’ve got some brilliant ones here that kind of all work off each other and we’ve got one from thegreenflametorch that actually goes straight into what you were saying just then, Noah…

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: …which says:

“Think of our heroes (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Sirius, Lupin, Ginny, Luna, Neville, Fred, George, et cetera). Ugly characters never get to be the heroes in media. Why is that? Are not-conventionally-good-looking people doomed to be evil human beings just because of their genetics?”

Eric: Hermione has really big front teeth. Lupin’s a werewolf, who’s pretty ugly when he turns into a werewolf, and especially if you’re judging him by the Prisoner of Azkaban visual effects. Very ugly werewolf. But they’re not necessarily… you can’t necessarily draw that line so quickly.

Rosie: Yeah, definitely. And we’ve actually got another comment from Lupin Patronus, who we’ve had on the show a couple of times, and it says:

“Harry’s got knobbly knees, untidy hair, and looks rather gawky overall, by Rowling’s description. He grows into his features a bit by ‘Order of the Phoenix’, but he never becomes stunningly attractive. Hermione never tames her hair or takes an overwhelming interest in her outward appearance, and Ron remains lanky and awkwardly built throughout the series. As to some of the others thegreenflametorch mentioned, Lupin appears older than his age, Sirius is gaunt, Neville is rather stout until the very last book (and he only loses the weight due to the stress of his situation) and Fred and George are short (shorter than Ron) and stocky.”

So, by the actual descriptions within the books, they are not the good looking characters that everyone thinks they are, due to their good looking actors in the movies.

Noah: True, but I still feel like words like knobbly knees, untidy hair, and these other characters who are defined by their relatively cute or slightly abnormal descriptions, but they also have this sense of innocence about them too or childishness, these are all also good characters. So, it’s different. Maybe in the movies, these characters are a bit more physically attractive because it’s all visual. But in the text, I think Jo is doing a very similar thing that the movies did, just in a different way because you have these descriptions of characters that are gentle. And give me a character who is big and scary looking who… I was thinking in my head, “Oh wait, what about Hagrid?”

Rosie: Hagrid. [laughs]

Noah: But even Hagrid has that nice look to him that we instantly get, but do you… generally, anybody who we see that looks potentially dark or mysterious, especially physically, they turn out to be evil. Except for Snape. He’s that one dude in the middle who goes against the whole…

Kat: He’s still kind of a jerk, though.

Noah: He is still kind of a jerk.

Rosie: Okay then, Noah, I give you one word and that word is Malfoy.

Noah: You see, I don’t find… I don’t think he’s that attractive.

Kat: Well…

Eric: I don’t think he’s that evil.

Noah: He’s not that evil.

Kat: Yeah, I don’t think he’s that evil either.

Rosie: How about Lucius Malfoy, though?

Eric: Oh?

Rosie: Who is very evil, but is also fairly good looking in his descriptions.

Kat: Well, here we have a quote from HufflepuffSkein on the forums, which I think will actually maybe help with this discussion. And look, I said the username right this time. Woo-hoo!

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: It says…

Eric: That’s a great mix, a great mesh. HufflepuffSkein, I like that.

Kat: Yeah. It says:

“I’m fascinated by the discussion here [on the forums]. It actually connects with something that really sparked my pondering while rereading these chapters. Abnormality versus normality: Vernon is very concerned about not revealing Harry’s ‘abnormality’ to Aunt Marge and Harry promises to ‘act like I’m normal and everything’ to get Vernon to sign the Hogsmeade permission slip. ‘Normal’ is such a problematic term because it presupposes a standard by which everything is judged. The Dursleys are judged harshly by wizard ‘normal’ and Harry is judged harshly by Muggle/Dursley ‘normal.’ The normality/abnormality is relative. The hosts have commented many times on the fact the Dursleys just want to be normal. But they want their normal. Not ‘Alohomora!’ Muggles’ normal, and certainly not Harry’s normal. We may judge those aspects of the Dursleys’ normal (such as emotionally abusing Harry, or stereotyping ‘weirdness’) but we cannot lose sight of the fact that our judgment is based in our own normal. Perhaps the debates on abuse or stereotyping above come down to perspective in a similar way to the idea of ‘normal.'”

Rosie: That’s an interesting comment.

Noah: As an English major, we kind of deal with looking at texts and the fact of getting out of our own heads to really talk about something. And of course, you can always make the argument that we each as individuals have our own ways of looking at things which are subjective, but at least the whole point of the English major for me at college is to try and look things as objectively as possible. And you do that best by noting repetitions and the ugly-evil strand in the Harry Potter series continues throughout. And that thing is… I can objectively say that. And then when I make the observation or kind of conclusion about what that means, that is highly subjective. But I’m still rooted in that original repetition, so I feel like the fact that ugly and evil is continued throughout just makes me think more and more that there is some kind of normal, as HufflepuffSkein… that JK Rowling herself subscribes to and that’s intensified in the book. And that is making… again, that’s kind of aligned with this cultural mass-media thing of in our own society we tend to demonize those who are ugly. And that seems to come across in the books.

Kat: I mean, that’s very true but I still think that this comment is very valid. I mean, everybody’s idea of – quote, unquote – “normal” is very different. And I feel like we have to take that into account when talking about who thinks who is normal.

Eric: Just kind of re-evaluating this based on the argument I’ve heard here, it’s true that something like knobbly knees isn’t as unattractive as being described as being toad-faced like Umbridge.

Kat: [laughs] Right. Very true.

Eric: But then part of me says, well, Umbridge also makes her own choices. But that’s also not part of this argument, which is to say that she’s evil because she’s toad-faced, right? Or evil and ugly are still the same thing. But I think biblically, isn’t it said that, “When the devil comes back,” and forgive me here, I don’t necessarily know the passage, but when the devil is said to return he will seek influence, like political influence, political power. Maybe this is just pop culture’s spin on it, but essentially he’s going to be good looking and attractive the way young Tom Riddle was and he will gain power through his being attractive.

Noah: Yes.

Eric: That parallel just reminds me of young Tom Riddle.

Noah: Absolutely.

Kat: Hmm.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Because you’re going to put your vote on Tom Riddle. You’re not going to put your vote on Voldemort who’s ugly, has no nose, and has kind of betrayed his own soul. But when he was growing and his… let’s say his true form was not quite there yet, he was extremely attractive.

Kat: Very true.

Rosie: It’s the Snow White poisoned apple principle. It may look fine, but on the inside it’s rotten.

Noah: Oh! So, Eric, you’re saying that in these books we have to be skeptical of attractive people and that is the… and that kind of message goes against the other character descriptions.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think Rosie said it better but also that’s the thing. If you’re attractive – even in the books – you can abuse that the way young Voldemort did in order to seek, to influence people, and to get your own way, and that sort of thing. It’s almost like the prettier people are the more dangerous and the more evil.

Noah: Right.

Eric: But I don’t know. That’s neither here nor there. I don’t know where that falls in the argument except to say that again young Tom Riddle was very pretty and he was still… I don’t think he necessarily got more evil, to be perfectly honest…

Rosie: No.

Eric: …when he started losing his nose and all that stuff. I just think…

Kat: Oh no, I agree. I think he was bad to the core the whole time.

Noah: So, you disagree with Dumbledore that, “It is our choices, Harry, that truly define us”?

Eric: All of his choices were made. It’s the actions that hadn’t been made yet when he chose to alter his own form.

Rosie: Yeah, he made choices when he was young that were still evil.

Noah: Yeah, but would you say his root evilness stayed pretty consistent throughout his entire life, or did he become more evil over time as he learned and as he actually physically made Horcruxes? Because that would be… that’s my take, honestly. Each person throughout his choice… once they make certain choices, you become that. And especially as his soul was destroyed, he became more evil. So, it was kind of more of a process. And then again, this was created specifically by choices, not by any inherent value he had, which I think is one of the core beliefs of the series.

Kat: Didn’t Jo say that the only thing that would have made a difference in his life is if his mother hadn’t died? So, I feel like…

Eric: I think she said that.

Kat: Yeah. So, I feel like he was doomed. He’s doomed from the beginning. I mean, from the minute his mother died giving birth to him…

Noah: Right.

Kat: …he was doomed. He was evil. Simple as that.

Noah: All right.

Eric: There does seem to be quite an emphasis on blood in the series then after all, if you think about it.

Kat: Mhm. Very much.

Noah: That’s just weird to me because it flies in the face of the choice thing that…

Eric: It does.

Noah: …is so always consistent. You know what I mean?

Eric: Yeah, it does. And I agree with that. There is that inconsistency where because he is a descendent of Slytherin and his uncle and his aunts and all them and his mother were all crazy. Like completely crazy. Especially his mother, which was crazy in love. At least that was kind of a positive thing. But because of his blood and the fact that his mother wasn’t there to raise [him], he’s pretty much doomed to fail. Now, it’s not to say… it’s still not to say he didn’t necessarily have a choice. You know how that’s a little different?

Kat: I still think though that, Noah, it doesn’t really fly in the seat of the, “Our choices, Harry,” because Voldemort didn’t have to make those Horcruxes. Just because he was evil doesn’t mean he had to go to the length that he did, and those were his choices.

Noah: So, you think his choices were just a… kind of… because he was the person that he was?

Kat: Yeah. I mean…

Noah: And they were going to happen. It was kind of destined to happen.

Kat: He could have spent the rest of his life just being kind of a jackass.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: You know, like an evil, rude dude torturing animals. And I mean, trust me, that’s a bad guy. But to go to the lengths that he did, those are the choice he made and therefore he completely corrupted himself.

Noah: Yeah, but, Kat, if you’re telling me that it was in his nature to do this and it was going to happen and it was indoctrinated by fate, I can’t blame him. I can’t blame the guy because he didn’t have a choice, honestly.

Kat: Yeah, he definitely had a choice. There’s a complete difference I think between being kind of rude and awful, and being evil. Voldemort was evil.

Rosie: It’s the choice of the Three Brothers, isn’t it?

Kat: It is.

Rosie: The story of the Three Brothers at the end where you either face Death by killing, you face Death by hiding, or you face Death by dwelling on those that you’ve lost.

Noah: Yeah, but you guys have already…

Rosie: And Voldemort was definitely the Elder Wand rather than…

Noah: You guys have just told me that he doesn’t have a choice because of his blood, and now you’re telling me that he does have a choice? I’m very confused.

Kat: He doesn’t have a choice. He can never be a fully good person. He’ll never be happy, he’ll never love. That doesn’t make him evil.

Rosie: He has a choice in how he acts.

Kat: He chose to be evil.

Noah: Hmm.

Rosie: But to go back to the, kind of, ugly versus evil discussion and everything we were talking about before, I think a large amount of it comes into the idea of stereotyping. Anyone who has ever read anything by Dickens, for example, will be able to see he uses people’s physicality and people’s looks to reflect their kind of inner characters; not necessarily in the way we would expect from the modern world around us. We wouldn’t expect all fat people to be horrible in the same way that we did with the Dursleys, but it’s that idea of caricaturing these people to the point of absurdity that makes them so different from our normal character of Harry in terms of everyone’s kind of normal, not necessarily the Dursleys.

Kat: Right.

Noah: True.

Rosie: But he is the average Joe character who is faced by crazy people all around him and that’s why we get so many of these characters that just seem so absurdly different visually.

Noah: Well, Rosie, it’s interesting you brought up Dickens because he was actually paid by the word that he wrote. And when he wrote, he was writing for an audience of course and he wanted to excite people, especially during a time in England where different groups were being marginalized and joked about. I think that’s why he made certain stereotypical characters. That’s why it’s always been done, to make that final sale. And in a way I feel like JK Rowling selling to children with these… by creating these funny characters that are evil because it’s a heuristic. We can easily jump up on it and understand what’s going on and kind of see the whole story lay out, but it has this other effect of making us view non-attractive people in our own life as not so cool. So, that’s what thegreenflametorch I think was talking about. We don’t have to get back into it, but I think that we’re just going to have a fundamental disagreement about that one for a while and that’s fine.

Rosie: Okay.

Kat: That’s what we do on this show.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: It’s cool.

Rosie: [laughs] Everyone is entitled to their own opinions; we just like to talk about them first.

Kat: That’s right.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So, Rosie, I think you’ll actually like this next comment. It’s from the forums from JessFudd.

Rosie: Okay.

Kat: She says:

“I’m only a few minutes into the episode…”

Referring to Episode 20.

“…so I don’t have anything of real substance to say, but I love LOVE that you guys did what I do in my head all the time – assume that Rosie is part of the magical world just because she’s British. I guess in my head, Great Britain is inherently magical, and so is Rosie!”

Rosie: Oh, thank you very much. [laughs] Of course I am. I own a wand after all.

Kat: That’s right, basically.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: And you’ve been to Hogwarts how many times now? Like twelve?

Rosie: Oh, it’s my second home.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Oh, yeah. Exactly.

Rosie: However, JessFudd did later on come back with something a bit more substantial to say.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: And she joins in our discussion about Errol, and it says:

“Errol seems to me like a proud owl, sort of grandfatherly, and I feel like he’d confidently take on any parcel that he would have as a younger owl. I can imagine Molly or Ginny asking, “Is that going to be too hard for Errol to carry?” and Errol [definitely] sticking out his leg as to say, “I’m not dead yet!” Maybe I think that because I have a grandfather, who in his ’80s, still refuses to admit that he can’t do all the things he used to. Also, the way Errol gets annoyed by Pig, I feel like he’s an old school owl, the way old men or veterans look at young people and tell them to pull their pants up and tell them what it was like to work with their hands.”

I can definitely see that. Errol is that kind of stalwart character who will do whatever he wants to and do whatever he can try to do even if he’s not necessarily quite able to do it in the way he used to.

Noah: I wish… does anyone have any lines from the book or quotes? Because I just… maybe I’m not getting a full sense of Errol’s character, but I feel like I don’t remember… I remember him always kind of struggling along. Are there any great lines? I mean, I can’t really expect you guys to call them up out of thin air, but maybe if some fans want to post in the comments some areas where we get Errol’s character, because where is this kind of veteran guy?

Kat: I think we kind of just always see him as flopping over, sad. Kind of…

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: …out of breath. But I see that. I think too, it comes across in the type of owl that he is because he’s a tawny owl, correct?

Rosie: Mhm.

Kat: So, he’s got kind of that flat face. And I don’t know, I thought the comment was great. JessFudd, I’m totally with you on that one.

Noah: Well, I’m going to need to see some evidence before I can get behind it.

Kat: Right.

[Eric laughs]

Rosie: I think that we’ll see the evidence when we get to the next book, with Pig.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: So, we’ll talk about that in a few episode’s time.

Eric: I think definitely the two owls – or the two creatures – with the most personality – excluding Crookshanks – are Pig and Hedwig, is the one who nips Harry on the fingers when she doesn’t get fed or when she wants more food. Hedwig’s got the personality. Errol, I would have to say is probably more scarce in the details on Errol.

Noah: Hmm.

Eric: But perhaps when Pig is zooming around the train compartment and Errol is there like, “What the hell is going on?”

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Eric: Maybe there’s some kind of grandfatherly “tuck your pants in” sort of thing. But you’re right, I can’t recall any specific quotes on that. However, I do think that it’s a very interesting insight or that anybody has this insight to an owl. It’s pretty cool.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: It’s funny you should say that Hedwig has the most personality other than Pig because we’ve got another comment from PuffNProud on the main site, and it says:

“Hedwig seemed like too proper (and picky) a lady to have a relationship with Errol.”

This is going back to a discussion we had last week.

“She was probably saving herself for some studly Great Horned Owl.”

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Kat: That’s great. And that’s a response to our title for last week, “Errol and Hedwig Sitting in a Tree.”

Eric: Oh my God.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah. So…

Noah: And now I totally want to launch into a destruction – sorry, a discussion – about how Hedwig reflects femininity in the series, but…

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: …I don’t think I should go there.

Kat: You should probably do that as an app special feature…

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: …so that the fans who haven’t downloaded our app yet can do that and they can listen to you talk about that.

Noah: That sounds like a good idea.

Kat: Perfect.

Noah: I think I will do that, Kat. [laughs]

Kat: Perfect. All right, so we’re going to jump into our recap on the special feature last week which was Pottermore, In-Depth. We have one comment and I think that that quite honestly speaks to the lackluster amount of information we got from Pottermore. So, the one comment we have is from IHateSpiders on the forums. It says:

“Something I’ve wondered about with Aunt Marge is, how many wizards has she unknowingly come in contact with? I wondered if Colonel Fubster is a wizard, but Rowling said in a chat that he is a Muggle. Maybe he has a housekeeper or gardener that is magical and made Marge’s glass break the same way it did when Marge insulted Harry. I could see an adult wizard doing something that would get her to stop insulting The Boy Who Lived without actually hurting her – someone who just wanted to learn a little more about the Muggle world first hand so they took a job with Fubster.”

Eric: I think it’s a little bit of a stretch to presuppose that all of these Muggles that we know all have wizards among them. Of course, we only know of Muggles that are around wizards because the book focuses on the wizards. But just remember that the wizarding population of Britain is supposed to be very small in comparison. And wizards in general are a very small community compared to the large Muggle world. I don’t think it’s right to say that Marge needed to be ever approached by another wizard besides Harry Potter.

Kat: Right. No, I would agree.

Rosie: This is all coming from the idea that Marge’s glass breaking… when she said that the glass has broken before within the kind of discussion that we see within that chapter where Harry has definitely broken that glass, it’s just because she’s got a strong grip like she says. Glasses do break occasionally when people are holding them. And Marge is likely to break some more than other people without wizard intervention.

Kat: Yeah, so there we go. That’s the recap from the special feature last week. Short and sweet.

Eric: Hurray!

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: So, anyway, here’s the Question of the Week from last episode. I’m just going to read it real quick.

“Early on in ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, we find out that the Weasley family has won a wonderful prize of seven hundred Galleons through a ‘Daily Prophet’ drawing. We also learn that they spend most of this grand fortune on a trip to Egypt.”

You know, maybe they could have spent it on some food or a better house, but they didn’t do that.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: [continues]

“So we started to wonder, why would so much money be needed, given the way wizardkind is able to travel, seemingly so cheaply? Our question is this: What are the expenses of wizarding travel? Could a lot of this money actually go to traveling from the UK to Egypt? And as the magical community travels about the world, what sort of international guidelines might they have to follow when traveling into other countries?”

So, I really like this question because I don’t know too much about wizarding travel in general because we know there are many ways to do it, but how do you do it with a huge family? Side-Along Apparition? And then what kind of restraints are there when you do that? So, here’s the first comment from LilyCarnationRose:

“According to the HP Lexicon, intercontinental apparition is quite difficult, so that particular mode of transport might have been off the table for the Weasleys. Even if Molly and Arthur could do it, I imagine they wouldn’t want to risk the kids getting hurt. I’d be willing to bet a lot of that money went towards lodging and food, too – it must be hard keeping a gaggle of teenage boys fed! Mmm, falafel.”

[Kat laughs]

Noah: All right, so that comment kind of switched quickly. [laughs] But yeah, I don’t know about Side-Along Apparition but we’ve seen the woes of splinching, so it’s possible that they didn’t do that. But then how do we think they got across? Here’s another comment from JNA:

“Perhaps there is a Ministry-approved wizarding travel agent that would set up a Portkey for a cost, or maybe there is an international service akin to the Knight Bus. Both options would likely cost a fair amount to transport all of the Weasleys. As to what guidelines there would be for wizards traveling internationally, I think they would reflect the Muggle guidelines in each country, as this is often dependant on the culture and attitudes of a nation, something that is largely shared by wizards and Muggles.”

Yeah, what are your guys’ thoughts about that, just in terms of restrictions and quite honestly how they got to Egypt?

Eric: For me, I think it’s important to remember that the wizarding community, again, is very, very, very small compared to the Muggle community. So international travel – we haven’t heard about it, obviously, maybe in the Harry Potter book series, but the Ministry of Magic, of all of magic, is in Britain, and they get away with it because the population isn’t that big. So, maybe it’s just something that hasn’t really been…

Noah: Hmm.

Eric: .. as strongly regulated in all these different countries, I think. But I like the question because it’s like, well, you can get from one place to the other with a Portkey like nothing. [snaps fingers] Setting it up, maybe there’s a little fee, but it seems like, in terms of paying for jet fuel, [laughs] you don’t need to worry about it. Harry has never had to pay a toll to use the Floo Network.

Noah: Right.

Eric: So, I think it is interesting how they spent that money. I think it’s a worthwhile question to ask, but I don’t really know the answer to it.

Noah: Haven’t we found in the comments that… isn’t Floo Powder kind of expensive?

Rosie: Yeah, it’s meant to be quite rare and expensive.

Noah: Remember that?

Kat: Yeah.

Eric: Interesting.

Noah: Okay, so that… yeah, because that’s something there, so that makes me think that other ways might also be expensive. But to these comments, I think it’s more likely that they spent all that money on merchandise there or different activities.

Kat: Yeah. I still think, however they got there, the travel was probably cheap. I mean, it would be cheaper than if they were wizards in the US trying to get to Egypt.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Because at least they’re on the same… I mean, not the same continent, but mass of land, so to say.

Noah: Aren’t there magic carpets as well? Isn’t that a real thing in the Harry Potter series?

Eric: Yeah, that is a real thing. That is a real thing.

Rosie: They’re not sanctioned in the UK, though.

Eric: Oh.

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Not for family travel.

Eric: You’d essentially travel by broom until you get to the border, and 30,000 feet above the border, you’d switch to a magic carpet.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: If you think about it, there are so many different ways to travel: by Thestral, dragon, broom, Floo, Apparition…

Rosie: Well, we know that when we get to the Thestrals later on we hear that Dumbledore uses them for long journeys. So, yeah, maybe there is some other kind of long journey travel…

Kat: Something we don’t know about, probably.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: But then, yeah, I guess the question is if travel is cheap – I agree that travel should be… probably cost them next to nothing – how do they actually spend seven thousand Galleons in Egypt? Especially with Bill probably having a house to stay in since he works and lives there.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Though it might just be a small apartment because he’ll be on his own or with friends.

Eric: You know, that’s the weird thing. This is maybe a detraction, but how do wizards deal with a small apartment? Will they put a… they put charms on it so it’s bigger on the inside, right?

Rosie: That’s true. [laughs]

Noah: You just probably… they could probably make an airport hangar-size room.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Kat: That’s probably true. Hmm. So, maybe they’re just really frivolous. No, that’s not true because that’s not the Weasleys. Yeah.

Noah: [laughs] The Weasleys. They do use some of the money to buy Ron a wand.

Rosie: That’s true.

Kat: Right. Which I can’t wait to talk about, by the way.

Eric: Seven Galleons, yeah, right.

Noah: Right, and one more comment from RoseLumos:

“I guess the bigger question is if the magical community is recognized by the British government. If you are a Muggle Brit and plan to travel to Egypt, you would need to get a passport and a visa through the government which would recognize you as a citizen. Are wizards legally citizens? I can only really speak for the United States, in which, upon your birth, you get a Social Security number. From then on, you report to the government every year to file taxes. Does the same go for wizards? Do they get a formal birth certificate from the government? Or is there another legal system through the Ministry of Magic that tracks the population?”

Eric: This is an interesting question because if you’re Muggle-born, of course you get a Social Security Card…

Kat: Right.

Eric: …because you think you’re a Muggle for the first eleven years.

Rosie: In the US. Not here.

Eric: Okay. That’s fair.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: But remember back in Deathly Hallows they have everybody on some kind of books, so…

Rosie: Yeah, I think…

Noah: For the Snatchers, right?

Rosie: I think that it is the Ministry that would have wizarding births… there’s probably a wizarding births and deaths department in the same way that the Muggle government has a department that would give off birth certificates and things.

Noah: Except it’s in the Department of Mysteries, and it’s a bunch of wizards sitting around a table. “Can we bring them back? Let’s try.”

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Doubtful.

Eric: No, it’s actually three old ladies with thread, is what it is.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: [laughs] The Fates, yeah. In terms of the needing to be a British citizen to travel to Egypt, if you were traveling through Muggle transport, then sure, like if you were trying to get on a plane or something, but I’m guessing that the Ministry would have ways of getting you… I won’t say a fake passport, but a passport that would pass as a Muggle passport.

Kat: Oh, how interesting.

Rosie: But I think that there must be some kind of other way of traveling that would bypass Muggle airports and things.

Noah: Rosie, are you suggesting the black market in the Muggle world is run by the Ministry of Magic?

Rosie: [laughs] Maybe. Maybe it’s run by Death Eaters.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Eric: You could always Confund your local TSA agent.

Kat: Oh, that’s probably true, too.

Rosie: That’s true, yeah. Or transfigure something so that it looks like a passport.

Eric: Exactly.

Noah: That about ends the discussion of the Question of the Week.

Kat: Good, so then let’s jump into the chapters for this week, which are Chapters 3 and 4, “The Knight Bus” and “The Leaky Cauldron.”

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 3 intro begins]

Michael: Chapter 3: “The Knight Bus.”

[Sound of bus horns and car alarms]

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 3 intro ends]

Noah: Man, can I just say, Michael Harle doing these little intros before the chapters – great. I love this guy.

Kat: Yeah.

Caleb: Hey, you fans, do you love this guy? This guy is great.

Kat: Yeah, he’s pretty great. Thanks, Michael!

Noah: This is cool. Thank you so much. You should stick around. You’re not even here, but I hear your voice.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: Anyway, jumping into Chapter 3. So, as we know from last time, Harry has just left the Dursleys in a storm. He blew up his aunt, and he’s going anywhere. He doesn’t care where. He thinks he might get expelled from Hogwarts, but he doesn’t care. He’s pretty badass right now.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: And there’s one line on page 30 where he’s talking about, “How can I explain myself to the Muggle police? I’ve got all this magic stuff with me. I’m carrying my wand.” And I thought that was really funny. What would Harry actually do in that situation, or what would any of us do if we’re caught with all of this magic stuff?

Kat: He’d be forced to… well, he doesn’t know how to Confund or alter memories. I have no idea. Lie?

Noah: What if he’d gone rogue?

Rosie: Well, there’s the… that’s what the Muggle Liason Office in the Ministry of Magic does. They step in for people like that.

Kat: He could say he’s a magician. Haha.

Eric: He could.

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: But then again, he is a thirteen-year-old kid. They’ll probably think he’s just messing around. Take him back to his parents slash the Dursleys.

Kat: Right, probably. That’s true.

Noah: I just keep thinking that in this section Harry has kind of decided that he’s gone rogue to some degree. He already thinks he’s being expelled from Hogwarts, and the Ministry is after him, so who knows what he could have been capable of if somebody tried to attack him.

Kat: He had crazy eyes.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: No, it doesn’t say that. I just imagine it in my head.

Rosie: Do you really think that he’s not worried at this moment, Noah? You’re saying that he’s all badass, and he’s just going to…

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: …go and attack whoever comes near him, but I think he’s literally panicking at this point. He’s… this is the darkest moment for him that we’ve seen in the books really, other than the adrenaline-fueled fights against Voldemort that he’s been through.

Noah: Oh, sure. I’m just thinking that because it’s so… such a stressful moment, what could he be brought to potentially?

Kat: Well, you notice at the bottom of page 31, it says “Harry shivered,” so I feel like that right there is the adrenaline leaving him because when you are coming down off an adrenaline high, you tend to get cold.

Rosie: Sure.

Kat: So, I feel like right there at the bottom of page 31 is kind of where it hits him, and he’s like, “Oh eff, what am I going to do now? Now what? I’m screwed.”

Rosie: But also he’s outside at night in England. It’s cold.

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yes, but it’s also, what, July?

Rosie: Still going to be cold.

Kat: Yeah, but not…

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: I don’t think it’s going to be cold enough for him to be shivering.

Rosie: Maybe not.

Noah: So again on page 30, there’s another line: “There was a funny prickling on the back of his neck that made Harry feel like he was being watched.” And of course we know this is happening once this big black dog is approaching Harry. That the dog…

Kat: Wait, what book are you using? That you’re getting…

Rosie: He’s using the English version.

Kat: Oh, I was going to say…

Noah: I’m using the British version.

Kat: I was going to say, it’s on page 33 in my book.

Noah: All right, so for everyone, for all intents and purposes, I am using the UK edition because this is the true text. Let me just be clear.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: This is the true text of the Harry Potter series.

Kat: They’re exactly the same.

Noah: No, they’re not.

Kat: Except for a few key things.

Rosie: No, they’re not.

Noah: There are words in here that I have never even seen before in my entire life. I didn’t even know they were in the English language.

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Noah: But she used them. It’s like I’m actually reading the true Harry Potter books. You have no idea what I’m experiencing. Anyway, on page 30 it says: “There was a funny prickling on the back of his neck,” and then, there’s another line: “He sensed rather than heard it.” So this got me thinking, and I think I’ve brought this up before. Here’s Harry’s Spidey-sense again. He can sense that there’s something around him. Is this his natural ability coming into play, or is it because he’s magic? Because he’s magical, he has a hypersensitivity to the world around him.

Kat: Are you saying that he’s been bit by a magical spider?

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Sorry…

Noah: No, no.

Kat: …I just had to take your role for a minute.

[Noah laughs]

Rosie: Maybe it was Alastor in his cupboard.

Kat: That’s right!

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: I would prefer to call it wizzy-sense. How’s that? His wizard-sense instead of Spidey-sense.

Rosie: Didn’t we call it his scar-sense before?

Kat: Oh, yes! We did. Scar-sense.

Noah: But scar-sense only works with Voldemort because…

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Oh, right.

Noah: …he feels the Horcrux around. This is…

Kat: So wizzy-sense.

Noah: Is this his wizzy-sense, or is this Harry’s natural ability inherited by his parents that if he wasn’t a magic person he would have anyway?

Rosie: To be honest, I think it’s his fictional sense. It’s the fact that he is a character in a book that needs to have some kind of progression. [laughs]

Kat: [laughs] Right. So true.

Noah: What did you just say?

Kat: And also…

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: …I can almost always tell when somebody is staring at me.

Rosie: Yeah, it’s a common idea that your ears are burning when someone is talking about you.

Kat: Right, exactly.

Noah: Well, let me just… well, what about all those phrases about how Muggles don’t notice things? I think if you’re a witch or a wizard, and you have magic in you, you have this ability because of magic to sense everything more deeply. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe because you sense things more deeply, you’re capable to do magic. But in any sense, I think this wizzy-sense is a real thing.

Kat: [laughs] That’s the best word. I’m sorry.

Noah: [laughs] So eventually, Harry is confronted by this dog, or he sees it because he casts Lumos, because at this point he’s casting magic spells this way, left and right, because he doesn’t care what happens to him, because he’s gone rogue. And he sees the dog, but then there’s a blinding light. He moves back. Using his wizzy-sense. I don’t know how he figured it out. And the Knight Bus comes down. The line is: “A second later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights had screeched to a halt exactly where Harry had just been lying.” So my question to all of you: If had his Spidey-sense/wizzy-sense not enacted, would Harry have died in the street?

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: No, I don’t think so. I think the Knight Bus wouldn’t have hit him.

Rosie: Well, maybe it’s the Knight Bus’s power. The fact that it wouldn’t hit buildings and things. Maybe it’s moved him out of the way.

Kat: Perhaps.

Noah: Whoa. Whoa.

Eric: No touchy, touchy. Don’t touch the Harry.

Kat: That’s right.

Noah: That is… Rosie, I love that answer. Because we know that barns and stuff will jump out of the way, too. I didn’t even think about that. That is such a great answer…

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: That’s wonderful.

Noah: …that I would like that to be the answer. So, here we have the Knight Bus. What a better time to jump into the new Pottermore information, which actually goes into detail about the Knight Bus and where it comes from. So Eric, would you like to read the Pottermore information?

Eric: Absolutely.

“For witches and wizards who are Floo-sick, whose Apparition is unreliable, who hate heights or who feel frightened or queasy taking Portkeys, there is always the Knight Bus, which appears whenever a witch or wizard in urgent need of transportation sticks out their wand arm at the kerb.

A purple, triple-decker bus, it has seats during the day and beds at night. It is not particularly comfortable, and I would advise against ordering hot drinks even if offered, because the bus’s habit of leaping from one destination to another at a moment’s notice can result in a lot of spillage.

The Knight Bus is a relatively modern invention in wizarding society, which sometimes (though it will rarely admit it) takes ideas from the Muggle world. The need for some form of transportation that could be used safely and discreetly by the underage or the infirm had been felt for a while, and many suggestions had been made (sidecars on taxi-style broomsticks, carrying baskets slung under Thestrals) all of them vetoed by the Ministry. Finally, Minister of Magic Dugald McPhail hit upon the idea of imitating the Muggles’ relatively new ‘bus service’ and in 1865, the Knight Bus hit the streets.

While some wizards (mainly pureblood fanatics) announced their intention of boycotting what was dubbed ‘this Muggle-esque outrage’ in the letters page of the ‘Daily Prophet’, the Knight Bus proved hugely popular with most of the community and remains busy to this day.

The Knight Bus was so-named because, firstly, ‘knight’ is a homonym of ‘night,’ and there are night buses running all over Britain after normal transport stops. Secondly, ‘knight’ has the connotation of coming to the rescue, of protection, and this seemed appropriate for a vehicle that is often the conveyance of last resort.

The driver and conductor of the Knight Bus in ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ are named after my two grandfathers, Ernest and Stanley.”

Noah: So cool. Yeah, I wanted to have that all read because I think, especially the ending part of that section, is really cool because we see that the Knight Bus posed a problem for magical communities in the world because it was adopting this Muggle technology in a way.

Eric: Well, this answers the question, too, which I believe is in the document, about why is it called “knight” instead of “night.”

Noah: Yes.

Eric: “Knight” with a “k.” I really love the answer.

Noah: Because a knight comes in and it saves people, usually a damsel in distress when I think of “knight.” But this is Harry, who is certainly not a damsel.

Rosie: You need to read more about knights then, Noah.

Noah: No, I know. They’re also fighting dragons and…

[Kat laughs]

Noah: …other stuff. I’m just using my heuristic sense about it. But, yeah, so that answers that one. I have to admit, when I first read these books when I was younger, I thought “Night Bus” like “night.” Like “It’s night time.” Even though it says clearly “Knight” like a…

Noah and Rosie: With a “k.”

Kat: Right.

Rosie: But that’s the pun because it is a night bus. There are night buses without the “k” in the UK. It’s a common thing, that you would find a bus that runs at night just when Harry finds it at night. But this is his knight in purple shining armor that comes and saves him when he needs it.

Noah: Yeah, these puns were lost on my twelve-year-old American sense.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: You guys are just too smart for me. But yeah, back to the question. Did the bus kill Harry? Did it almost kill Harry?

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Who knows, who knows. I think if you have any thoughts on that, just head over to the comments section. So then…

Rosie: I’ve actually got a discussion in my forum, over on the forums, that is about the comedy of this scene. How it is Harry’s knight in shining armor that kind of breaks the tension of his darkest moment that happens at the beginning of this chapter. So, go over there and join in.

Noah: All right, nice plug for Rosie’s forum there.

Rosie: Thank you. [laughs]

Noah: So then on page 31, Stan Shunpike comes out and says, “What’s your name?” And Harry says, “Neville Longbottom.” Saying the first name that came into his head. And there are tons of connections to Harry and Neville in this chapter. And I thought, wait a moment, is this a foreshadowing to the prophecy? The fact that Harry and Neville will be tied together forever? And what does it say about Harry that he aligns himself with Neville? Because it’s the first name that pops into his head. Is this me, or…

Kat: Wait, I was going to say this is circle theory because this is Book 3 and we find out about that in Book 5.

Rosie: Yeah, definitely.

Noah: Whoa.

Kat: It is funny because as I was reading I was thinking to myself, “Hmm, what connections are there between Book 3 and Book 5?” And I think…

Noah: Bada bing, bada boom.

Kat: I think this is the first one.

Noah: Right, and we’ll continue to mark those as they happen. But yeah, she is… Jo is really big with the foreshadowing.

Rosie: Because what other reason would he have to think of Neville at that moment? Why is Neville the first name that pops into his head?

Eric: He’s thinking of somebody who is unimpressive, who they won’t already know. And so in that way, he’s doing a disservice to Neville, [laughs] but I don’t think it’s… it’s not meant to be read that much into it. But he’s thinking of somebody who… if he were to just say Harry Potter, they’d know, oh, Harry Potter is…

Noah: Oh, yeah.

Eric: They know the way he looks like. They’d be able to disprove him if he picked somebody famous, so he went with Neville Longbottom.

Rosie: That’s something that’s always bugged me. Why don’t people know who Neville is as much as they know who Harry is? Neville’s parents were really famous Aurors.

Eric: Yeah, but still it’s among a very niche community of people who work for the Ministry or people who’ve seen Aurors. The larger wizard community that Stan and Ern are a part of wouldn’t really know a particular first – or in this part – third-year Gryffindor student who goes to Hogwarts. They live in the outside of Hogwarts realm.

Rosie: I guess. But they might recognize the name Longbottom.

Eric: Longbottom, yeah. For sure.

Kat: And here’s something I just thought of. Going back to our ugly-evil conversation, it talks here that Stan was only a few years older than Harry “with large, protruding ears and quite a few pimples.” So, here we are getting a bad, kind of an ugly description of somebody who – at the moment, at least – is very innocent and not at all evil.

Eric: Though later he’s suspected to be a Death Eater.

Noah: Yeah, he becomes evil.

Kat: Well he is, isn’t he? Right.

Noah: So, Kat, I mean…

Rosie: No, he’s never actually a Death Eater himself. He’s…

Kat: I’m pretty sure he flies through the sky and is the one that shot…

Noah: Yeah, he is.

Kat: Didn’t he shoot a spell at somebody?

Rosie: But he’s under the Imperius Curse.

Noah: But that’s not really confirmed, is it?

Rosie: I think Harry firmly believes it.

Noah: But does that mean that it’s true?

Eric: Hmm.

Rosie: In terms of the fact that we as a reader are led by Harry and his opinions, yes.

Noah: Interesting, I like it.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: But yeah, it was just something I picked up on, so…

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: No, very good point. So, Harry enters the Knight Bus and it’s the crazy ride of his life. “Take it away, Ern!”

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Noah: Except minus the little Jamaican head which is only in the movie, but I still think the movie captured the scene. Very… that’s one of my most favorite scenes of the entire franchise, actually. But that is what happens, it’s a very bumpy crazy ride, and actually various things bump out of the way as the Knight Bus drives. Lampposts, letterboxes, and bins jump out of its way, which begged me originally to ask, are they alive? But then I was like, no, these are Muggle objects. No way are they alive. Which actually forced me to reconsider everything I’ve ever said on this show…

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: …because I honestly think that was just an enchantment and if that was just an enchantment, then like…

Rosie: Everything is.

Noah: …everything are just enchantments and I’ve been spinning my wheels about…

Kat: No, don’t go that far because there are things that have sentient life, like we’ve talked about before.

Noah: Right.

Kat: It’s just this happens to be that the bus is pushing them out of the way. No, they are not alive.

Eric: The thing with it is, furthermore, is that if anybody has ever gotten into a car accident with an inanimate object before and said, “Oh, that lamppost jumped right in front of me.” [laughs]

Kat: Right.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Eric: “That mailbox came out of nowhere,” you know?

[Noah laughs]

Eric: Clearly it was fixed to the ground where it was cemented in and nothing jumps out in front of you, but in this case it’s the opposite of that. Jo has inverted it and had inanimate objects, stationary objects, having to jump out of the way of the bus, which is pretty cool that you could drive that recklessly with no repercussions whatsoever. Unfortunate, of course, for the passengers.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: It’s interesting in terms of the discussion we had during Chamber of Secrets with what would happen if Ron was trying to drive that car through the Muggle streets.

Kat: [laughs] Oh, it would be very much like this.

Rosie: Here we have the answer. [laughs]

Noah: Well, I think there are ultimately two answers to this question. Either the Knight bus has some acting enchantment which works on whatever it’s in the way of to just make it move and maybe even was able to do that to Harry to some degree – which, Rosie, you said which I think is an awesome theory – or everything is secretly alive…

[Kat laughs]

Noah: …and when those things sense magical objects, they just dance out of the way because they are secretly alive.

Eric: Like Toy Story.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: I propose a third option, which is that the Knight Bus travels through wormholes and the…

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: …objects only appear…

Rosie: Through another dimension.

Eric: The objects only appear to jump out of the way to anybody who is in the Knight Bus, but in reality they are not those objects at all. They are just reflections or shadows of those objects in a different realm.

Noah: Oh.

Rosie: The universe bends around…

Eric: You know, moving or hurtling through space and time the same way… anything that looks like it’s stationary is actually hurtling at, like, 66,000 miles an hour because…

Kat: Yes.

Eric: …it’s on Earth.

Kat: Oh, you so belong on this show, Eric. Just saying.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: So maybe it’s the bus that’s bending, not the world around it.

Eric: There is also no spoon, Noah.

[Noah laughs]

Rosie: There is no spoon.

Noah: You got me. There is no spoon, guys.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: So then on page 33, Harry gets… well, actually Stan Shunpike is reading the Daily Prophet, and we have another vision of Sirius Black, and then Harry is like, [as Harry] “Who’s Sirius Black?” [back to normal voice] We have another one of those great moments. And Harry begins to read the article, and it’s about how Fudge has talked about how he’s given Sirius Black’s name and description to the Muggle Prime Minister and is actually being… not offended, but criticized by other ministries or other governments, wizard governments, around the world. It’s not really well thought out, I guess because they still have some stereotypes against Muggles, and that makes me think: Is the wizarding world’s… or not wizarding world… is the UK’s government, the Ministry of Magic’s treatment of Muggles in that area more liberal than in other parts of the world?

Rosie: I would say that Voldemort is a specific threat within the UK and the same with the Death Eaters. We don’t really hear about an international threat from him, so we as a community would need to be more in touch with the Muggle Prime Minister and the Muggle community of England and the rest of the UK in order to protect them as well as us… [laughs] as well as the wizarding community.

Kat: Oh, she did it again!

Rosie: [laughs] I did it again. From the threats of the Death Eaters and things, and Sirius Black is a main example of that.

Noah: Rosie, is there something you’re not telling us?

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Of course there is. Come on.

Eric: I think, too, Sirius did kill a wizard but twelve Muggles got the brunt of it.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Hypothetically. So, it’s important to know that even though they have some idea of where Sirius is heading, they will also need to canvas Muggle areas. There’s a lot more Muggle areas in the world for Sirius to be hiding in, and it really does…

Rosie: Mhm.

Eric: …to point to Fudge’s argument, make a lot of sense for him to inform the Muggles about it, even though they just think he’s an escaped convict.

Noah: Yeah. This whole section just makes me think that Fudge is talking to the… introducing himself to the Muggle Prime Minister every time… is something that only he does, that that’s not done everywhere, you know? And he probably gets a lot of flack from that, from maybe old wizarding families and conservative groups who say, “We shouldn’t have any connection with Muggles.”

Rosie: At the same time, I think it’s probably due to the UK’s size as a country. We are a small country compared to things like the US, so we are in a lot close contact between the two communities. So, you would need to have a lot more kind of a talk – a conversation between the two ministries…

Kat: Right.

Rosie: …which you might not necessarily have to have in other countries because there might be a more distinct divide between the two communities.

Noah: Yeah. I kind of wish some more information could be clarified on Pottermore. That would be…

Eric: Once we get to the beginning of, what is it, Book 6? “The Other Minister”?

Kat: Right. Yup.

Noah: Exactly.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: And can we just take a second and talk about Sirius’s name? Because I just want to say how brilliant it is. Without looking at it, just saying it: Sirius Black.

Noah: [in a mysterious voice] Sirius Black.

Kat: It gives you… exactly. You think about some seriously dark, black, evil person…

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: …and I just think it’s a brilliant name.

Rosie: It’s more pronounced in the US that you guys say “Serious” instead of “Sirius”, the “E” instead of the “I” sound, which has become a huge thing – “Siriusly?” – on the Internet.

Noah: [laughs] With the “I”?

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: Yeah, with the “I”.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: But yeah, the whole idea of the Black connotations…

Kat: Right.

Rosie: …being dark and mysterious and evil. Yeah, it’s a brilliant naming.

Kat: I just think it’s great. It’s one of my favorite names for sure in the books.

Rosie: And it gives you foreshadowing straight away if you were really thinking about Sirius and the name “Sirius”, the fact that it’s the dog star.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Oh, really?

Rosie: You’ve got that clue straight away that you don’t even…

Kat: How did I miss that?

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: Just like Remus Lupin in this book. If anybody knows Latin…

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: …it’s over, you know the end of the book.

Rosie: Romulus and Remus.

Eric: Yeah.

Noah: [laughs] But then another Black connection, on page 34, Harry sees the image and says, “Black looked like a vampire.” Well, I just thought of a connection in my head. Did you guys know that Gary Oldman played Dracula?

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah.

Noah: In the 1990s movie?

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: Epicly bad movie.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: I love that movie. [laughs]

Eric: Here’s an interesting… I wanted to say something about this, too. “Black looked like a vampire.” We’ve also compared Snape to a giant bat before – those examples are in the books. But I think… it’s interesting, it’s like a red herring because Black isn’t a vampire, although he’s also an Animagus, so he is something other than human, so Harry is, I guess, right in that assumption. But really, the only reason he looks like a vampire is because he looks pale, and the reason he looks pale is because… we don’t have enough information at the moment, but he’s been dealing with Dementors which suck the life out of you.

Rosie: He looks lifeless.

Kat: Well, and being trapped in a prison not getting any sun I imagine would do that to you as well.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Not enough vitamin D.

Kat: Right.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: And all that blood he’s been sucking probably also…

Kat: [laughs] Oh, God.

Noah: …contributes to his overall look. On page 35, they’re talking about Azkaban and the fact that Sirius got himself out, and Ern says, “I’d blow meself up before I set foot in that place.” Dun dun dun.

Kat: Hmm.

Noah: Random foreshadowing. Why she does it, I don’t know. But for us readers who have read these books so many times…

Rosie: I have never picked up on that one before.

Kat: Wait, tell me. What are we foreshadowing?

Rosie: The fact that Peter literally blew himself up before he had set foot in that place.

[Eric laughs]

Kat: Oh, right! [laughs] I got it now, okay.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Well, it was Ern that was saying it, so I was like, what?

Rosie: Yeah, but it’s a brilliant link that I’ve never picked up on before. Well done, Noah.

Noah: Yeah. So, I can just imagine as she’s writing she’s joking with herself, “Ha, ha, ha.”

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Kat: I’m sure she is.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Oh, gosh.

Noah: This is how it happened, but…

Kat: She’s cheeky.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: She’s so cheeky. Cheeky monkey, Jo.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Oh you, come on the show.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: There’s the title right there, of this episode.

Noah: [laughs] Okay.

Rosie: “Cheeky Monkey Jo, Come on the Show.” [laughs]

Noah: So then, after a wild ride, Harry finally makes his way to London and the Leaky Cauldron.

Eric: Oh wait, I’m sorry. I wanted to point something else out.

Kat: Go ahead.

Eric: During that talk, they’re talking about Sirius Black and Harry reads the newspaper article. They say to Harry, “Oh yeah, no one’s ever done that before, have they? He’s broken out of Azkaban, the wizard prison.” But actually, what we learn later is that it’s all… as a matter of fact somebody else had broken out of Azkaban before, it’s just that nobody knew about it. And that was Barty Crouch, Jr.

Rosie: Yeah, that’s true.

Eric: Had in fact… by the time of Book 5 – I’m sorry, Book 6 – with the mass breakout of Azkaban, it’s like old hat to really have an escaped witch or wizard from Azkaban prison.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: So, it’s interesting to mark the sharp decline in the security, the way we perceive Azkaban as being an excellent prison because in the end we find out that it’s run by these monsters and that there are ways of evading them.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Well, didn’t Barty get out by switching with somebody else?

Eric: His mother, yeah.

Rosie: His dead mother, yeah. Dying mother.

Noah: Wow, what a guy. [laughs] A real quality guy. So anyway, they make their way to the Leaky Cauldron and then they get out… or Harry exits the bus, only to find Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, right there. Ernie and Stanley are shocked because here’s the Minister of Magic just hanging about. He picks up Harry and just explains to him that he’s not going to be in any trouble, it’s all taken care of. And Harry is obviously very skeptical. But there was a nice little gem of a quote here that I thought might actually help us with the abuse debate, even though now, as I’ve said, we’ve thoroughly throttled that thing to death. So, here’s what Fudge says: “They are your family, of course, the Dursleys. And I’m sure you’re fond of each other very deep down.” And this is from Harry in his mind: “It didn’t occur to Harry to put Fudge right. He was still waiting to hear what was going to happen to him now.” So, I just thought the way that language was framed, how kind of cold it was. Harry is saying right there that there is no deep-down fondness, at least for him and the Dursleys. The way it’s written, it’s just so cutting to me.

Kat: It seems like he’s waiting… he’s obviously waiting for something to happen. He’s waiting for the reaction, the blowup, the whatever. I see what you’re saying, totally.

Noah: This is all in his head, too. “It didn’t occur to Harry to put Fudge right.” He just allows Fudge to go on because he just wants to hear what his punishment is going to be. But I think it speaks to his psychological damage, ultimately, because there’s no love there. There’s not even a glimmer of hope that there’s something there.

Eric: The way the quote is translated, the doc doesn’t do it justice. In the book there is actually a whole lot more ellipses where it’s like, “I’m sure you’re fond of each other… very deep down.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Because Fudge at this point has probably heard that the Dursleys are unpleasant people from all the people who had to deal with them.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Maybe went there. Possibly.

Kat: Doubtful, but yeah.

Noah: Or… you don’t think he went there to set…

Eric: I don’t think he went there, but somehow he knows enough about them to say, no, your uncle is actually pretty upset, but as long as you don’t come home during any of the vacations, you’ll be fine. He kind of knows. You get a sense of what kind of people they are, very quickly.

Kat: Right.

Noah: We’ve been talking about this matter of abuse so many times and I think we all agree that this whole experience shaped Harry in the way he was going to be. And I think it’s bigger in the series than we give it credit for sometimes, but…

Eric: I just think whenever he gets a sock from them for Christmas and he is like, okay whatever. I really… at this point I don’t think that it affects him. I don’t think Fudge saying…

Rosie: Yeah, he is completely over it.

Eric: Yeah, I think he is over it. I think he is a bigger person, he doesn’t even care. So when Fudge is like, “I’m sure you care about them,” he is like, “Okay, they’re family. Whatever, let’s just get on with it. What is my punishment?” I really don’t think it states to a bigger sense of…

Rosie: No, me neither.

Eric: Not being able to mention the abuse or anything to the Minister of Magic is just… he really just wants to figure out how this is going to impact his wizarding identity, which he sees as being the more important one.

Noah: Well, I disagree with the both of you. Eric and Rosie.

Eric: Okay.

Noah: And that’s my disagreement, and we’re just going to have to settle that outside.

Eric: That’s okay.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: With violence. No, not with violence. [laughs]

Kat: Oh, boy.

Noah: But Kat, what side do you fall on? If Eric and Rosie have picked a team… “Not Abuse Harry” is going to do fine.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: No, like I said, I feel like, yes, part of it is he is over his whole relationship with the Dursleys, but I do still feel like he is waiting for… like just what it says in the quote. He is waiting to hear what is going to happen. He is still waiting for something. So…

Rosie: He is not waiting for physical punishment, he is waiting to know whether he has been expelled from Hogwarts.

Kat: No, I didn’t mean a physical punishment. I definitely feel like here…

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Kat: Yes, I don’t think the Minster abuses Harry.

Rosie: No, yeah. [laughs]

Kat: No, I…

Noah: Wouldn’t that be funny if Harry thinks that’s going to happen. [laughs]

Kat: No, I do think that he is waiting to be scolded in some way.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Absolutely, and…

Eric: And during this whole situation when Fudge says to him, “Oh yeah, we don’t send people to Azkaban for blowing up their aunts,” there’s a quote in the book and it’s like, this is actually in contradiction to the past direct dealings that Harry has had with the Ministry. And he tells Fudge that much. Hey look, a house-elf crashed a pound cake and I got an official warning.

Kat: Right.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: So, really this whole scene is about the fact that the Minister of Magic himself needs to supervise Harry’s protection for reasons Harry won’t know for another chapter or two, which is that…

Noah: Right.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: …their biggest criminal, their biggest security leak in the history of the wizarding world, happens to be coming straight for Harry with him in the cross hairs and the Minister of Magic himself is charged with protecting that information and Harry.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: And that’s really what’s going on, and so all of these different dealings and things that Harry is mentioning like, “No, you should be throwing me out here,” and Fudge has to say, “Well, surely you don’t want to be expelled. Then there is no problem with it, la la la la la.” But what’s really happening is Fudge himself has to guarantee Harry’s safety…

Kat: Right.

Eric: …which is why he tells him to stick to Diagon Alley, not go off into the Muggle world so that Harry would be protected by crowds. Not that crowds really deter Sirius Black – come on, he killed thirteen Muggles – but whatever.

Rosie: Kat, if you wanted another link between this book and Book 5 – if you think about McGonagall and the famous line, “Have a biscuit, Potter,” here we have Fudge saying, “Have a crumpet, Harry.”

Kat: [laughs] Very true.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Very true.

Rosie: There are little links all the way through.

Noah: Biscuits and crumpets are very different things.

Rosie: They are very different. [laughs]

Eric: I need… I’m going to go get some Tastykakes after this.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Mmm, Tastykakes.

Eric: They have the butterscotch crumpets.

Kat: I’m going to have a Tim Tam.

Noah: My roommate loves those. He stuffs those into his mouth like nobody’s business. Do you guys… and this is the last comment of the chapter for sure, but do you think that Harry would have been expelled if Sirius Black wasn’t on the loose? Because that seems to be Harry’s idea of what would happen.

Kat: Probably.

Rosie: I think that one is a clear example of not being able to control magic.

Eric: Mhm.

Rosie: So, it’s the same as any underage magic, so I don’t think he would have been expelled.

Noah: No, I agree. I don’t think he had a choice, but it sounds like he would probably have been expelled again. Would Dumbledore have had to come in earlier and save him? Hypothetically, of course. This is a “what if” kind of…

Eric: Possibly. I mean the thing about the charm to levitate the pound cake is that that’s fairly direct – nobody accidentally does a levitation charm.

Noah: Right.

Eric: With the exception of maybe Harry accidentally… well, he didn’t levitate. I guess he somehow apparated on the top of his school roof. I’m sure you guys talked about that in Book 1.

Kat: Mhm.

Eric: But I think that a levitation charm is much more intentional, much more very clearly you can scold somebody for that, whereas an accidental inflation of one’s relative under extreme verbal torture… I think Harry… definitely there would have been some kind of politic about it, but I just don’t think he would have been expelled. It’s nonverbal, is the other thing. That has to count for something, the fact that Harry didn’t utter a spell and make it happen.

Kat: Hmm, that’s true.

Noah: Yeah. But I feel like they can detect magic, and Harry definitely used some kind of spell objectively, but he just… it wasn’t intentional, so what if the Ministry can’t see intent? They can only see the magic done as…

Kat: Right, but what Eric is saying is he didn’t actually mutter any words, so I feel like that would make the difference, for sure.

Noah: Yeah, but would the Ministry be able to prove that or would they just say, “Oh, I see an inflation charm”?

Eric: Well, somehow they know. They definitely knew there was an inflation charm because they showed up on the scene. He didn’t have to call anybody.

Kat: Right.

Eric: And the Dursleys wouldn’t have known who to call. I mean, who do you call when magic has been performed? They don’t have any phone numbers or any…

Noah: Ghostbusters?

Kat: I knew someone was going to say that. I knew it would be you.

Eric: Yeah. I was going to say it myself, but I let Noah do it.

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Eric: No, but really, they had to have known the charm was performed, so there’s that. But I do think – especially extenuating circumstances aside – there would have been some penalty for Harry, but I think he would have gotten out of it just because it was an accident, in the face of great physical or emotional stress. It’s the risk anybody takes letting a wizard kid, after he’s been found to be a wizard, still live with Muggles or around Muggles. But it’s the same risk that they take, coexisting with Muggles.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: There’s an Accidental Reversal… or Accidental Magic Reversal Squad specifically for that reason. It happens.

Noah: Yup. And as you said, they must have known it was an accident because Fudge comes and says, “Oh, it was an accident. It’s not a huge deal.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: All right, well that pretty much wraps up my chapter discussion. It was not too long a chapter, but we certainly had a lot to say about it.

Kat: There’s a lot of good stuff.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Good stuff.

Rosie: Yeah. I think that chapter needs to be finished off though with a quote from the end of it, which is: “‘It’s been a very weird night, Hedwig,'” which just perfectly sums up…

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: …Harry’s attitude towards everything that’s happened in that chapter.

Kat: Totally true.

Eric: Oh, we missed: “How does Hedwig find Harry?”

Rosie: That’s true.

Kat: Because she’s a smart owl.

Rosie: Hedwig is the most clever owl in existence. [laughs]

Noah: She could be stalking him.

[Eric laughs]

Rosie: Oh God, Noah.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Hedwig is really Dumbledore, is that what you’re trying to say?

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Wait a second.

Rosie: That would change everything.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah Wait a second.

Kat: Don’t go there.

Eric: What role could Mrs. Figg have played in this whole event? Do you think she could have called the Ministry when something happened? Do you think she’s always sort of…

Rosie: Mrs. Figg is nowhere near it. She’s in her own home a couple of streets away. I don’t think she…

Noah: No, but she’s watching. She’s keeping an eye. She’s in the bushes out there with her binoculars.

Kat: But her cats, right? Mr. Tibbles? Isn’t that his name? Tibbles?

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Tufty?

Kat: Or is… Tufty?

Eric: Tufty? Mr. Tufty?

Rosie: Not within the house at this time.

Eric: I just see her as a very… that’s a very interesting image of Arabella Figg, sitting at home, and she has her cat informants, or her Kneazle informants, come to her and report on the goings-on of the whole neighborhood.

Kat: I think that’s probably why she has so many cats.

Noah: She’s right on the scene with the Dementor attack, in Book 5, so I think she’s kind of watching Harry. I think she’s kind of following him around.

Rosie: No, no.

Kat: Well, at that point Voldemort is back, so that makes sense.

Rosie: At that point they are specifically watching Harry. I don’t think… sure, she’s placed there to keep an eye on him throughout his childhood, and that’s why he’s always going to her over the summer holidays and things, when the Dursleys can’t be bothered to look after him anymore or take him on holidays with them. But I don’t think that she has an active role in his life until the Order of the Phoenix starts up again and she’s specifically asked to watch him.

Noah: I mean, sure, but I’d like to see a little bit more information about her, because if you think about it, as a Squib, Harry is literally her only connection to the wizarding world, or maybe like a big substantial connection. It’s very possible that she has a weird obsession with him and has been following him for days on end.

Rosie: She’s in contact with Dumbledore and people.

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: Harry is not the only connection.

Noah: Right, but Dumbledore’s solemn request to watch him. To what degree she takes that seriously is really up for speculation.

Kat: Good, well, thus ends Chapter 3. Let it go, Noah.

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah.

Noah: [laughs] Okay.

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 4 intro begins]

[Sound of doorbell ringing]

Hermione: Chapter 4: “The Leaky Cauldron.”

[Sound of cat meowing]

Hermione: Oh, Crookshanks. No.

[Sound of glass breaking]

Hermione: No, no, no.

[Sound of cat screeching]

Hermione: Don’t do that, Crookshanks.

[Sound of glass breaking]

Hermione: No, stop. Stop, stop. No, Crookshanks. Oh dear.

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 4 intro ends]

[Kat laughs]

Rosie: Okay, so a few days have passed and Harry is still in Diagon Alley, and he’s really getting used to being on his own for the first time with a decent amount of freedom, which he has never really experienced before because he’s always been either with the Dursleys or stuck at Hogwarts, where he has a certain amount of freedom but not to go shopping.

Noah: Aha!

Rosie: What was the “Aha” for, Noah? [laughs]

Noah: I just saw that line and I was like, “Abuse! He hasn’t had the freedom to do anything.” [laughs] But…

Rosie: No, just being a child. [laughs]

Noah: Okay. [laughs] Enough of that.

Rosie: So, yeah, this is a week where all he can do is explore a street of shopping, which no one really gets the chance to do because there’s always other kind of requirements. So, it’s quite nice that Harry finally gets to explore the wizarding world to his heart’s content.

Noah: Mhm.

Rosie: And it got me wondering, is Fudge paying for Harry’s stay at the Leaky Cauldron? We never find out specifically how long he is there for, but it seems like it would get quite expensive, you know, bed and breakfast every day. What do you guys think?

Kat: It’s part of the Weasleys’ trip money? No, I’m just kidding. [laughs]

Eric: [laughs] That’s where it went.

Noah: I think this is a government funded little vacation, for two weeks.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: I wonder how much money that was.

Kat: Three weeks, I think, right?

Eric: Well, again, for Harry’s own protection, right? That’s everybody’s priority?

Kat: Right.

Eric: It’s…

Rosie: It’s like a witness protection program.

Eric: Yeah, exactly.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: It’d definitely fall into…

Noah: Paid for, probably, by wizard taxes, which we haven’t even begun to talk about on the show.

Kat: And we’re not going to right now.

Noah: [laughs] No.

Rosie: [laughs] But we are going to talk about finances because Harry is practicing good financial awareness, and not spending all of his money at once, and resisting the temptation to spend it all on ice cream.

Eric: This time that he spends on his own at Diagon Alley, like you say, exploring the shops – this is a very formative couple of weeks, I want to say, for Harry. He has to learn financial responsibilities like, well, there’s going to be… he wants to buy the Firebolt immediately when he sees it. He wants it more than anything else in the world. You know, gold cauldrons, things like that. And he’s like, “Well, I have quite a few more years of school ahead of me, better not.”

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: And he doesn’t ask for the price of the Firebolt. He just wants to, but he doesn’t because he’s smart like that. But also, he does his homework; he has this great situation worked out with Florean Fortescue, who I have to say is one of the nicest old men of the series…

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Eric: …who just gives him free sundaes every half an hour…

Kat: That we never get to meet… [unintelligible]

Eric: …and sometimes helps him on his homework.

Noah: I’m pretty sure he was a Death Eater for a while…

Kat: Oh, Noah.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: …but it turned out that he wasn’t.

Eric: Yeah. But I’m just saying, in general this is the first time Harry gets to be his own person on his own, free of the school year, also free of his friends. This is where you find yourself, when you have the choice of deciding how to occupy your time, how to spend your days. And I just have to say I admire Harry but I also completely can relate to, I guess, my teen years. If you ever go somewhere that’s new and exciting and you have the freedom to really just walk around and see other people, it’s very formative, and I’m really glad that this is part of what makes this book my favorite of the Harry Potter books, because Harry has the opportunity to do this.

Rosie: What would have happened if Tom Riddle had had the opportunity to live in the Leaky Cauldron rather than his orphanage over the summer and have that freedom to be himself for the first time? What do you think would have happened?

Eric: The orphanage is an interesting question because that is obviously a very horrible place. It’s where all the forgotten children go and all that stuff. But that’s an interesting question. But I will say – to kind of half-ass answer that question – I think Voldemort did have quite a lot of time to himself – especially after Hogwarts – that he devoted to, of course, finding out the Horcruxes and finding out his own lineage and things like that. So…

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: …he focused his energies…

Noah: But Rosie, what an interesting point because that makes me think that what if Voldemort became who he was because of the orphanage and it’s actually a structural issue, and this entire series is JK Rowling’s hitting at orphanages?

Kat: But he’s in the orphanage because his mother died, so that’s the thing that ultimately made him what he is.

Noah: Oh, yeah. Do you guys think that – [laughs] to completely segue – Sirius knew that Harry wanted the Firebolt so badly because he was actually kind of dipping into Diagon Alley occasionally and seeing Harry honestly eyeball the Firebolt? And it’s possible that he wouldn’t go there because it’s too busy and you might get noticed, but I know how rash Sirius is. I wouldn’t put it past him to be watching Harry even at this moment.

Kat: I’m sure that he followed him at some point.

Rosie: I’m not sure. I don’t think that he would have ever known that Harry really wanted the Firebolt. I think that when he knows that he accidentally destroyed the broom later on, he would have tried to make that up to Harry by getting him the best broom possible, which at this time was the Firebolt.

Noah: Right. But potentially if Sirius is watching him even now, but you seem to be suggesting that he’s probably not in Diagon Alley watching him.

Rosie: I think that it would have been too hard for him to get in there.

Noah: Hmm.

Rosie: Either as Sirius or as a dog, why would Tom have let a dog through the wall?

Kat: He could have snuck in with somebody. I mean, nobody knows about his form except for Lupin and Peter Pettigrew and…

Rosie: Yeah, but he is a large dog. He’s not something that can just hide and sneak past. I mean, we see him later on kind of begging off Muggles and things. He’s very noticable as a dog.

Noah: Yeah, but I think at this time in his career he’s very satisfied in his disguise and I wouldn’t put it past him. And we know that you can also get through there through Floo Powder. There are different ways to get into Diagon Alley than just through the Leaky Cauldron. So…

Rosie: How does a dog say, “Diagon Alley,” when it’s stepping into a fire?

[Eric laughs]

Noah: The same way an owl does.

Kat: [laughs] I knew you were going to say that.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Anyway…

Noah: They have their own language.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Moving on. [laughs]

Noah: [laughs] Sorry.

Eric: I just thought of an owl in a fireplace, and I wouldn’t want to think about…

Rosie: We’ve had this discussion before. We’ve asked how owls migrate the country, or navigate the country, to deliver the post and whether the Floo Network was involved.

Eric: I see. I just thought that they just kept flying. Why wouldn’t anybody just assume the simplest answer? They fly that great distance.

Rosie: Because it’s Noah! [laughs]

Noah: [laughs] Because it’s me!

Kat: We concluded they all end up in a little place called “Hoot.”

Rosie: [laughs] But, as we were discussing the Firebolt, it is a nice bit of foreshadowing here for Book 4 where we discover that the Firebolt has been ordered by the Irish Quidditch Team for their international matches for the following year in the build-up to the Quidditch World Cup. So, that’s just a really nice little detail that might get missed in this book, but it’s foreshadowing for the next book. Then we enter other shops, including Flourish and Blotts, where Harry has to go and buy all of his school books and for the first time he makes the connection that the Monster Book of Monsters might actually be a school book. And we get this kind of cage full of this edition of the Monster Book of Monsters, and it just gets me thinking, why has no one told the shop manager how to deal with these books? Who is it that makes them and publishes them? It’s bad practices from the Wizarding University Press.

Noah: It’s bad for business, honestly. You’d think they’d put a little note on the box, “Stroke the spine.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: I think they put an insert in each of the pages, but the Monster Book ate it.

Noah: It ate them, yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: It’s possible.

Rosie: That’s true.

Eric: Then again, it’s not much of a publishing blunder as The Invisible Book of Invisibility.

Noah: [laughs] No, that’s…

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: That’s so true.

Rosie: How many books do you think the wizarding world creates that you just simply can’t use?

Kat: Oh my God, so many.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Eric: Well, then again, how many real books do you think we make that are just not useful? [laughs]

Rosie: Probably a lot.

Kat: That’s true.

Rosie: But not in the same way. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah.

Noah: Well, you guys know me, I’m kind of burning to ask a certain question. That’s kind of…

Rosie: I think we did that last week, though.

Noah: Yeah, but I didn’t ask Eric.

Rosie: Okay. [laughs]

Noah: Eric, do you think The Monster Book of Monsters is alive? To some degree?

Eric: Oh, God.

Noah: Does it have sentience?

Eric: No. No, I…

Rosie: Okay, that’s that then. [laughs]

Eric: I think it’s a gimmick. I think it’s a gimmick. It’s bewitched to behave as if it were an animal. It has basic instincts like wanting to eat you, but I don’t think it needs sustenance, and I don’t think it excretes anything.

Noah: So, maybe it’s a lower form of life than everything around?

Eric: No, I wouldn’t… I would compare it… I would say it’s as alive as the chess pieces that McGonagall transfigures or the Hogwarts statues. I would say it’s exactly as alive and no more alive than those.

Noah: All right.

Eric: And I was surprised by this, but we found out a little later that the chess pieces – I think it was from JK Rowling – were bewitched to pretty much behave as if they are sentient humans, almost.

Kat: Right.

Eric: She almost put a very human charm on them, which I wouldn’t have suspected. I would have just assumed it was a “Listen for commands” kind of spell, but it was actually closer to her brand, which is Transfiguration. She transfigured them, but I don’t think they have a soul. So, I don’t know.

Noah: Right, right, that’s the thing. It’s just kind of interesting how there are all these devices or even things that have near-human emotive function or just animal function. And I talk about that on the show all the time.

Eric: Muggles do it too, with artificial intelligence with a motorized hand or robotics that are designed to imitate life. But it’s not life, and it’s not the same life. That’s why it will forever be called “artificial intelligence,” right?

Noah: Right.

Eric: Because it’s not the biological chemicals firing in the brain, it is instead this imitation of life.

Noah: No, that’s an excellent comparison.

Kat: That’s a very definitive answer, Eric. Very good.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: Thank you.

Rosie: [laughs] So, Harry goes deeper within the shop and asks for his books for Divination, and while there, he notices a table which is full of death omen books, including What to Do When You Know the Worst is Coming and – what is it? I can’t find it – Predicting the Unpredictable: Insulate Yourself Against Shocks and Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul. And on this table he notices that on the front of one of these books you have a black dog, large as a bear, with gleaming eyes. And this dog is the Grim, which is a death omen. And it just made me think, does Sirius know about his resemblance to the Grim? Or is it just a massive coincidence?

Noah: Maybe he knows it works in his favor because when people see the dog, they get scared and they want to run away.

Kat: Oh, that’s a good thought.

Noah: And that’s why…

Rosie: But he’s a friendly dog.

Eric: I think the thing of it is, too, that the real Sirius – the human Sirius Black – is mangy because he has been in a prison cell for x amount of years. The dog is equally as ragged because of the same reason. Once he is out of Azkaban for a little while, the color returns to his human face, he’ll appear more friendly…

Noah: Yes, yes.

Eric: …more well groomed as a dog as well. I don’t think anybody has pointed out that resemblance to Sirius Black. That’s just me guessing. It’s obviously extremely convenient for the purposes of this story because Harry wonders if he’s about to die. That’s extremely important.

Rosie: Sure.

Eric: But I don’t think… I think it’s one of those things that’s in Harry’s world and not necessarily did ever occur to Sirius.

Rosie: I think it’s quite nice as an example of the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy, which is obviously a massive theme within the rest of the books.

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: So as a subtle introduction to that idea, it’s quite nice. But it gets me thinking, Harry is slightly freaked out, not massively so. Should he be a bit more worried that he might be about to die again? Or is he used to it because he’s almost died three times now, and he’s just…

Eric: Old hat?

Rosie: He can handle it. Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, I was just going to say it’s old hat to him.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: He laughs in the face of danger.

Noah: If someone is not threatening his life a given day, then it’s not a good day.

Eric: It’s not a day, yeah.

Noah: It’s not really a day at all. [laughs]

Eric: It’s actually the previous night.

Rosie: Must be a Tuesday. [laughs]

Noah: [laughs] I’m thinking of a whole host of Chuck Norris/Harry Potter jokes that are just…

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Oh, gosh.

Noah: That could come, but it’s just going to take some time.

Rosie: So a few more days pass, and we finally get to see Ron and Hermione again, and they’ve already done most of their school shopping. And they sat once more in Florean Fortescue’s ice cream parlor. We hear that Mr. Weasley has been gossiping again, and that Ron and Hermione know exactly why Harry is there and what he has done. Does Harry ever get annoyed that he has no privacy when it comes to the Weasleys?

Eric: Maybe, but I think that overall he welcomes family. You think of the way that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are behaving, that he discovers them chatting about him in such a way later on in this chapter. I just felt when reading it how fortunate Harry really is to have these two grown adults who are having an entire discussion about his safety and whether it’s right or not to discuss with Harry the problems.

Noah: Yeah.

Eric: I was just thinking Harry is so lucky to have these two people who care greatly about him and who are discussing his welfare at such a length.

Rosie: Sure. It’s definitely nice in contrast to the previous relationships we’ve seen throughout the book.

Eric: I would say for Harry it has to be nothing but a welcome feeling, really.

Rosie: It’s nice to know that they care. Yeah.

Noah: Yeah, and, Rosie, how much privacy did he have for the first eleven years of his life?

Rosie: In terms that they didn’t really care what he was up to, quite a lot probably. He could just live his own life in the cupboard under the stairs.

Eric: I think he actually did describe that once as pretty freeing. Maybe I could be wrong there, but they just really didn’t care, so he would go on Dudley’s computer when Dudley was away and all that stuff.

Rosie: But, we have seen that Ron has finally got a new wand to replace the one that has broken in the last chapter, and I know that Kat wants to discuss this a lot. So, the description in the book of his wand is, “It’s a brand new wand, fourteen inches, willow, containing one unicorn tail hair.”

Kat: All right, so this is interesting. I’m going to read the description for willow. It says:

“Willow is an uncommon wand wood with healing power, and I have noted that the ideal owner for a willow wand often has some (usually unwarranted) insecurity, however well they may try and hide it. While many confident customers insist on trying a willow wand (attracted by their handsome appearance and well-founded reputation for enabling advanced, non-verbal magic) my willow wands have consistently selected those of greatest potential, rather than those who feel they have little to learn. It has always been a proverb in my family that he who has furthest to travel will go fastest with willow.”

I thought the part about the non-verbal magic was very interesting. It says, “a well-founded reputation for enabling advanced, non-verbal magic.” How many times have I brought up the fact that I thought Ron was doing non-verbal magic? Just saying.

Noah: You have. You totally called it.

Kat: Mhm.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So, I think that this…

Rosie: But also the fact that he’s got that innate insecurity in things is a very suitable wand wood for him.

Kat: Right. Very much. And it does say that those that show the greatest potential, rather than those who feel they have little to learn, which, I think, is so true about Ron. Completely true.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: And, do you have any… do you have the bit about unicorn hair? I can kind of rift because I know a lot about it.

Kat: Yeah. Unicorn. Okay, it says:

“Unicorn hair generally produces the most consistent magic, and is least subject to fluctuations and blockages. Wands with unicorn cores are generally the most difficult to turn to the Dark Arts. They are the most faithful of all wands, and usually remain strongly attached to their first owner… Minor disadvantages of unicorn hair are that they do not make the most powerful wands (although the wand wood may compensate) and that they are prone to melancholy if seriously mishandled…”

So…

Rosie: That is just the perfect description of Ron, really, isn’t it?

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: Prone to melancholy if mishandled. [laughs]

Kat: [laughs] Yeah, that’s so…

Rosie: Very faithful.

Kat: That’s so true.

Rosie: It makes me sad that he loses his wand later on.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: I think he gets it back, though, thankfully.

Eric: I forgot about that.

Rosie: So, in terms of Ron, his wand is definitely matching his personality. We’ve spoken at length about wands and our own experiences with Pottermore, so we will skip over that, but definitely within the book, wands definitely suit their characters. Okay, so Hermione says that she’s still got ten Galleons left after her shopping, and it gets me thinking, doesn’t she need any money at Hogwarts? She’s about to go and spend it all on a pet. But, apparently, that’s what they go and do. So, they go to the Magical Animal Emporium – Magical Menagerie, even – and it’s weird that all of the animals in there seem a bit strange. They’re all animals with magical qualities rather than the animals that we’re used to seeing with our Hogwarts students. Rather than a rat or a toad or a normal owl, we’ve got rats that are skipping and doing odd things.

Kat: I want the rabbit that turns into a hat. [makes a popping sound]

Noah: Yeah, exactly. Makes it easy for the magician.

Kat: Right, exactly.

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: So, Hedwig is incredibly normal compared to all of these creatures. And we finally get to meet Crookshanks, who already knows there’s something strange about Scabbers, and he’s a big, grumpy, ugly looking cat that Hermione just completely falls for. Do you think that there’s some kind of link between her personality and his that she feels this connection?

Kat: I think she likes him because he’s a ginger. [makes a “click click” sound]

Rosie: [laughs] Maybe that’s true. I hadn’t thought about that one.

Noah: Whoa. That’s an excellent connection. I never thought about that.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Do you think Ron is grumpy and ugly looking as well?

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Kat: No, but, I mean, he is definitely a ginger. So…

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Do you see any subtle connections between the two characters?

Kat: No.

Noah: Or the cat and Ron, rather?

Kat: Nope.

Noah: Besides being ginger, because that would be an indication of…

Rosie: Maybe it’s something we should look out for during the book.

Kat: Yeah, something to keep an eye on.

Rosie: Keep an eye on that one, Noah.

Noah: Yup.

Rosie: [laughs] So, we get so many comments about the fact that Sirius is still at large. We get… he’s mentioned practically every other page, just in case we forget. And here we see that he is once again on a paper that Mr. Weasley has been reading. And we get pompous Percy walking through the door. He is the second Head Boy in the family, and the Weasley twins say, “And last,” to which Mrs. Weasley says, “I don’t doubt that.” And again, poor Ron! Even now Mrs. Weasley is probably thinking that he would never be Head Boy over Harry. He’s always second position.

Kat: Aww.

Noah: But don’t you guys think that Ron would have been Head Boy had things not gone differently?

Eric: Well, they were prefects.

Rosie: [unintelligible] …Ron and Hermione together?

Eric: He was a prefect, why wouldn’t he be Head Boy?

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Well, because who were the other prefects in their year, right? Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley…

Rosie: Which is…

Eric: Complete tosser, that one.

Kat: Right.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: But I mean…

Noah: Eric…

Rosie: But do you not think that Ernie is quite similar to Percy?

Kat: Justin Finch-Fletchley, maybe. But not Ernie. I don’t know. Hard to say. I don’t know that Ron necessarily would have been Head Boy. Hermione would have been Head Girl, I think.

Noah: I think it would have been Ron.

Rosie: Yeah. The Ministry of Magic is sending cars to pick up Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys to take them to Platform 9 and 3/4. And is this extreme concern for Harry, or is it just a publicity stunt? Is it just the Ministry trying to look like they’re doing something while they can’t find Sirius?

Kat: Hmm. A little bit of both.

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: I think there’s a lot in this book that could be seen to be undermining the Ministry and how it works, including all of the stuff about the prison and how it continues to fail so many times.

Noah: I think this book is intensely political.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: It’s all about… and maybe some of it inspired Casual Vacancy to some degree.

Kat: It’s possible.

Noah: I have no proof, but this is my take for the first few chapters.

Rosie: Again, it’s something to look out for throughout the book. So if you find a moment where the Ministry is being undermined, write it on the forums.

Noah: Yup.

Rosie: And Harry goes downstairs to find the rat potion – the rat tonic, even – that Ron has picked up for Scabbers, and he overhears Arthur and Molly arguing over what’s best for him. And again, yeah, it’s a very parental scene. Eric has already said this, it’s nice to see people actually caring about Harry’s welfare. But it got me thinking, is Harry happy not knowing? Or has not knowing something ever stopped him from having his adventures? Or does the knowledge actually spark the adventure? And if so, why isn’t Harry more afraid or more…

Noah: Why does he have this apathy?

Rosie: Yeah, why doesn’t he want to face…

Noah: I think if Caleb was here, he would tell you. He’s a Gryffindor. He’s just looking for adventure. And as we’ve talked about, someone is threatening Harry’s life pretty much every day. He’s got Voldemort to look out for, so just one more guy is not so much of a big deal.

Kat: And I think he would have found out eventually. We’re going to talk about this whole… later, but I think Harry definitely would have found out eventually, regardless.

Noah: Oh yeah, but I think in terms of just now, he craves adventure, especially if it’s about him and…. he’s a Gryffindor, so he wants to take it on. So, I definitely say it sparks something in him.

Eric: He’s just very matter-of-fact, too. He just doesn’t see the point of people jumping around the situation. If some convicted murderer is coming straight for him, and has said that he’s coming straight for him, he’d rather know. This is why he still says “Voldemort.”

Rosie: Yeah, fear of the name…

Eric: And everybody else says “You-Know-Who,” even on the Knight Bus.

Noah: Exactly.

Eric: They’re like, “You-Know-Who this, You-Know-Who… what, you mean Voldemort?” And they freak the hell out.

Rosie: There’s nothing to be afraid of except fear itself.

Eric: Yeah. They freak out and he just doesn’t care because he’s like, “I’m over it.”

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs] One of the things that the Weasleys are arguing about, Arthur says that Black lost everything the night that Harry stopped You-Know-Who, and he’s had twelve years alone in Azkaban to brood on that. And like we were saying earlier, I really love how many snippets Jo writes that are true, but not in the way that you think they are. So here, Arthur means that Black lost Voldemort, and all of his power when Harry stopped him, but actually, everything that Black lost was Lily and James, the trust of Remus, the friendship of Peter, the opinion of the entire magical community, and his freedom. He ended up in Azkaban for no reason whatsoever.

Kat: That’s so true.

Rosie: It’s very tragic.

Kat: I never thought of it that way, that’s so true.

Noah: But do you think in some capacity Arthur is referencing the fact that he lost both James and Lily? Because even though they obviously think Black turned, were they not as good friends with Black or Sirius and James and Lily when they were first fighting Voldemort? It kind of sounds like that. Because if they… the amount of camaraderie that goes on after the fact kind of suggests that they’ve been old friends.

Rosie: Even Remus turns against Sirius, so I don’t think that Arthur would be saying that Black is ashamed of losing Lily and James. At this point, he believes that Black lost the Dark Lord and his rise to power.

Noah: Right. They all do.

Rosie: He believes he’s a Death Eater. We also learn that Dumbledore doesn’t like the Azkaban guards, so we’re already being told to fear them before we even meet them, as we will in the next chapter. And we go back to the idea of the book, which was What to Do When You Know the Worst is Coming, and Harry says, alone in his room, “I’m not going to be murdered,” and his mirror replies, “That’s the spirit, dear.”

Kat: [laughs] I love that.

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: But by the end of this chapter, we know pretty much everything we need to know for the rest of the book. We know that Sirius has escaped, and that he’s determined to go to Hogwarts for some reason. We know that the disliked Azkaban guards will be there to guard Harry, and this is against Dumbledore’s better judgment. We know that Scabbers is looking unwell and that Crookshanks is after him. And with that, we are ready to board the train back to Hogwarts.

Kat: Yay!

Noah: [laughs] Yes.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: That’s true, we are definitely all set up at this point for the rest of the book. Which is great, I like that it’s kind of out of the way early. Okay, so let’s move on to the special feature this week, which is actually not going to be Pottermore In-Depth. It is going to be What If?

[“What If?” intro begins]

Michael: What If?

Harry: But, Professor Dumbledore, what if the Sorting Hat had put me in Slytherin?

Dumbledore: It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are.

[“What If?” intro ends]

Kat: And the first one we have is from HufflepuffSkein again. It says:

“What if Harry had gone to the orphanage? How would the story be different?”

So, instead of going to the Dursleys, what if Harry had in fact gone to the orphanage? Let’s take the whole blood thing out of it. How would Harry’s story itself be different?

Noah: Well, you can’t go on without blood, because doesn’t that kind of define his character?

Kat: But I’m saying just take the blood protection out of it. I think that what the heart of this question is asking is, how would Harry be different? How would Harry approach the world differently? How would he act differently? How would his choices be different?

Rosie: There’s a certain amount of guilt that Harry feels throughout his childhood, I think, of being the one that survived out of his family. And that’s all put there because of the fact that he’s with family throughout his childhood. A family who doesn’t like him, doesn’t like his parents, he’s kind of constantly reminded that they have gone and kind of what he could have had. Whereas with an orphanage, I think there wouldn’t necessarily be so much of an emphasis on his previous family. I think it would have been a different situation growing up and it would have made Harry into a different person, whether or not that would have been extremely different from who he is when he gets to Hogwarts, I’m not sure, but…

Noah: I mean…

Rosie: …it’s an interesting question.

Noah: I think he… personally I think he would have had a very similar experience that Tom Riddle had because he would have maybe developed camaraderie around the boys his age, had some friends which would have been good, but then he’d also be developing these magical skills, and it’s possible that he might have been bullied for them.

Rosie: But one of the main differences between Harry and Tom is that while Tom is in the orphanage he is using his powers to hurt people, whereas Harry is constantly using his powers – whether he is aware of them or not – to get away from people or to do acts of kindness or to release the snake from its captivity. They are very different people, even when they don’t actually know how to control their magic.

Noah: This is true, but if he was bullied maybe in the beginning, potentially, in this hypothetical situation, and that led him to use it in a protective way, he could have… what if he could have developed like Voldemort did?

Eric: I think in both cases nobody was around for Harry, even when he was with the Dursleys, nobody was around to usher him into the magical world, until such time as his eleventh birthday when Hagrid came and Tom Riddle when Dumbledore came and told him why he was special. They have no guidance growing up in a Muggle orphanage and that’s important, but I think Harry and Voldemort would have been two different people or the same people that they are. If Harry had gone to the orphanage, he still would have used his powers in a protective way, to evade capture the way that he did when he was a child and didn’t know what he was doing.

Kat: Do you think he would be as nice and as humble as he is?

Eric: That’s a good question because he would have grown up with a lot more people who had also had no family, so maybe what Rosie was talking about – the guilt of being the sole survivor – might have been muted a little bit more because every foster kid is, well, potentially an orphan in an orphanage.

Kat: Right.

Eric: So, I don’t know what effect that really would have had on him, but it’s interesting.

Kat: So, our next What If? question then is: What if Sirius had spoken to Harry before he got onto the Knight Bus? So when Harry first saw him, instead of just creeping on him…

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Kat: …if he had actually showed himself and spoken to him, what would have happened?

Rosie: I think it would have been an incredibly different book, but it gets you… would Harry have been afraid of him if he thought he was just a Muggle prisoner that had escaped? Is it the fact that Harry then learns that he is a wizard and learns all of his backstory that makes him…

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: …truly afraid of Sirius?

Noah: Because if Sirius could have explained everything just then, he could have been like, “Hop on my back, son.”

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Noah: And then they would have… they could have pounced and they could have just gone off into the distance and…

Rosie: They could have used the entire year planning how to get back at Peter rather than…

Eric: Yeah.

Noah: He wouldn’t even have had to go back to Hogwarts. He could have just had a father.

Rosie: He would have still gone back to Hogwarts.

Eric: The first thing I think I see Sirius saying to Harry when he transforms out of the bush into his human form would be like, “Hey, you got any dog food?”

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Eric: That’s, for some reason…

Noah: He has this weird affinity.

Eric: But I don’t think Harry – or Sirius – was in no fit state to talk to anybody, even as a human, because he is still fresh out of Azkaban and on the run, and I think… he’s actually…

Rosie: That’s true.

Eric: Even by the time we get to the Shrieking Shack at the end of the school year, Sirius is way too rabid still, even as a human. He is way too bent, hell bent on revenge that he really isn’t thinking clearly, he really isn’t taking into account… like Remus has to hold him back and be like, “This is what Harry wants,” and trying to appeal to his humanity.

Rosie: That’s true.

Eric: Sirius’s humanity takes at least a year to really return to him.

Rosie: So, why do you think that Sirius goes to Harry at that moment? Why do you think he goes to Little Whinging? Or [pronouncing it differently, with a soft “g”] Whinging, even. Do you think it is to reassure himself that Harry is okay?

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah?

Eric: Yeah, I think so.

Rosie: In which case, that just proves that Sirius is good.

Eric: Doesn’t Sirius mention it to Harry when he says, “Hey that was me, but I just wanted to check on you”? Doesn’t he say that at the end of…

Rosie: I’m not sure.

Kat: I think so. He apologizes for scaring him.

Eric: Yeah, something like that.

Rosie: Which just proves that he’s an awesome godfather. He really… he’s the first person that we see that really does care, other than the Weasleys. But the Weasleys have their own family to care for and Sirius literally only has Harry.

Kat: That’s true. Okay, so then our very last What If? question is… and we brought up this briefly in the last chapter, but what if Harry hadn’t overheard Arthur and Molly discussing Sirius? If he never learned about that Sirius was after him, and his past and all of that.

Rosie: I don’t think that it would have changed anything if he hadn’t overheard because I think Arthur would have taken him aside and told him what he needed to know. He would have eventually found out the same information, just in a different way.

Noah: I mean, he has to have the talk sometime.

Eric: Don’t Hermione and Ron know?

Kat: Do they?

Rosie: No, they don’t know.

Kat: I don’t think so.

Rosie: Harry tells them.

Eric: Oh. Hmm.

Kat: Okay, well…

[Noah laughs]

Kat: …I guess that about [laughs] wraps that up. That’s the end of our special feature for this week.

Noah: Okay, and now we go to one of my favorite sections, the Podcast Question of the Week, which we pose to fans every episode and then you can put some of the answers on the Alohomora! site and we will select a couple of those answers and read them out on the show. So, the Question of the Week this week is this: Sirius Black is able to brood on his hatred for Harry in Arthur’s theory of why he was able to escape from Azkaban because Dementors take the happy thoughts away, leaving only the bad and negative thoughts, which gave him this momentum and energy to leave Azkaban. However, would Azkaban actually be a safer place if Dementors fed on dark thoughts? Meaning, the prisoners would only retain those moments of true, non-vindictive joy from their lives. If that were the case, then Azkaban would be something like a massive stream of anti-depressants being thrown on the prisoners and by virtue of that, them being too happy to leave.

Rosie: It’s like a rehabilitation center rather than a prison.

Noah: Yeah. I think that also has a whole host of ethical concerns attached to it, but we’re throwing it to the fans, so go ahead to the Alohomora! website and we’ll read some answers on the next episode.

Eric: Yeah, essentially because Dementors eat your dark thoughts, or eat your happy thoughts, what would happen? What would be different if they ate your bad thoughts and you could only think good things?

Noah: Exactly.

Kat: That’s such an interesting thought, I’m really excited to hear what the fans say.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Definitely.

Kat: And so, I guess that about wraps up the show for this week. We want to thank you, Eric, again, for being with us. Brought some great insight to the show, hope you enjoyed yourself.

Eric: It was my pleasure, I very much hope to be back.

Kat: Yes, absolutely, for some chapters later in the book, right?

Eric: As many as you’ll have me.

Kat: Okay, great. [laughs]

Noah: Great.

Rosie: And if you, too, would like to be on the show, then you can email a clip of yourself to alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com. Remember, you need to have the appropriate audio and recording equipment. And you can also submit content on the Alohomora! website, and we read through everything, so that’s definitely a great way of getting on the show.

Kat: And in the meantime, if you just want to stay in contact with us, send us a note, a love letter, whatever, you can follow us on Twitter at @AlohomoraMN. You can “Like” us on Facebook at Facebook.com/OpenTheDumbldore. And as always, you can give us a call at our phone number, 206-GO-ALBUS, that’s 206-462-5287. And of course, our main website is Alohomora.MuggleNet.com and our email, alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com. And, one more reminder, as always don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunes and leave us a review. We love reading those and highly appreciate it, so thank you.

Noah: Yup. And we have a store. You can go ahead and buy Alohomora! T-shirts just by going to the Alohomora! website and clicking on the banner up top. It says “Store” in big letters, and you have access to the Alohomora! T-shirts. You can get them in different colors, you can get sweatshirts, you can get T’s for whatever you need.

Kat: Tank-tops.

Noah: Tank-tops. And we’re also about to release a new line of Alohomora! T-shirts with all the inside jokes that we have, so great ready. Get excited for some Desk!Pig kind of merch. Wizard, werewolf, unicorn, basilisk, wizard, phoenix. Maybe some host shirts in the future. Just a lot of cool stuff. So, definitely keep watching that store link, and we’ll be sure to keep you all updated when we make any significant updates there.

Rosie: We’re also hoping to have iPhone cases, tote-bags, water bottles – lots of things other than just T-shirts in the future, so do keep checking back.

Noah: Yeah. And again, we’ll make sure to let you all know when we come out with the new stuff. We also have an app which we’ve talked about a lot and that great video on YouTube that goes along with it. And as Kat said before, I’m actually going to be putting a vlog on there in which I talk about lots of different things. There might be some Mandrakes in there, there might be some talk about owls and the potential gender stereotypes that they become aligned with. So, it’s available in the US for iPhone and Android – in the UK, it’s only for the iPhone – at $1.99 or 99 pence. And on it, again, we have host vlogs, we have bloopers, transcripts, different endings for the show – those are pretty cool because I often do crazy stuff during the episode – and much more, so definitely go and check that out.

Rosie: And there is a poll at the moment on our Alohomora! main page where you can vote for what kind of things you’d like us to be creating, so definitely go and do that and help us out.

Kat: Yes, please do.

Noah: Yeah. And if I may make one more announcement: I’ve been posting a lot of Quibbles on MuggleNet. So, many of the Alohomora! fans know about Quibbles. They’re these essays or theoretical discussions brought up from the Harry Potter series, and Alohomora! is one of those great things and sections on the site where fans can actively talk about these theories. And what I’m asking everyone to do, please, if you ever come up with an essay – I’m calling them Quibbles, but they can also be essays or theories, whatever – send them to this email account: mugglenetessays at gmail dot com. That goes straight to me, and then I’m going to feature those essays right on MuggleNet’s main page. So, we can really facilitate some of this great Alohomora! discussion and get it mixed in with the general news posts because you fans have a lot of interesting things to say.

[Show music begins]

Noah: And that about wraps up our show. I’m Noah Fried.

Kat: I’m Kat Miller.

Rosie: And I’m Rosie Morris. Thank you for listening to Episode 21 of Alohomora!

Noah: Open the Dumbledore!

[Show music continues]

Kat: The one comment we have is from IHateSpiders on the forums. It says:

“Something I’ve wondered about…”

Hold on, I’ve got to sneeze.

Noah: She doesn’t say that in the comment.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: Kat is just making up her own comments at this point.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: Fixing my hair, fixing my hair.

[Eric laughs]

Kat: Noah just likes to feed the editors stuff to put at the end of the show. That’s really what this is.

Noah: [laughs] No.

Eric: Who are the editors?

Kat: Jon and Patrick.

Eric: Ah, hats off to you guys for handling this show. I can’t imagine…

Rosie: Handling Noah.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: What?

Eric: You’re fixing your hair for an audio podcast!

Noah: [laughs] I want to look at… were you watching Hercules on ABC yesterday, too?

Eric: No, I was actually not watching Hercules. I was making a legitimate Greek reference.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: Oh. Well, I just made a fool of myself.

Eric: I’m jealous that you got to catch Hercules on ABC yesterday.

Noah: It was followed by Aladdin.

Kat: Wow.

Eric: Wow.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Anyway…

Noah: That about ends our…

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: …Question of the Week discussion.

Rosie: We didn’t really discuss more of that comment, though.

Kat: Yeah. Noah, it’s not over yet.

Noah: Well, that about re-opens our Question of the Week discussion, for more commentary.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Eric: What’s on the other side of the Dumbledore, guys?

Rosie: That’s a good question.

Kat: [laughs] That’s a very good question. Theories and… Noah.

Eric: I realize you guys are all about opening the Dumbledore.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: It’s just my face. You literally open the Dumbledore and it’s just my face peeping through.

Rosie: Creepy.

[Kat laughs]