Transcripts

Transcript – Episode 32

[Show music begins]

Eric Scull: This is Episode 32 of Alohomora! for May 25, 2013.

[Show music continues]

Eric: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the show. I’m Eric Scull.

Caleb Graves: I’m Caleb Graves.

Rosie Morris: And I’m Rosie Morris. And today we have two very special guests who are fans of the show, and [they are] John and Alyssa Jennette. And John is actually TheGreatOm from AudioFictions, so we’re really glad to have you guys on the show.

John Jennette: We’re glad to be here.

Alyssa Jennette: Thank you. We’re so excited.

Caleb: So tell us what’s been up with AudioFictions lately.

John: Oh, well, what has been going on lately? Basically just getting back into the game after our break. We’ve done at least one round of everyone having fictions out and getting back into the game, and it’s been really good. We are also going to be having a panel at Leaky[Con] in Portland, so that’s really exciting. It’s the first time we’re going to have some sort of venture like that. So the first time I’ve ever done anything of that sort. So that’s really exciting. So we’ll be glad to… Michael and I will be there.

Alyssa: And I get to tag along, so I’m super psyched.

[John laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, that’s really great. Eric and I will both be there also in Portland, along with Kat and Laura. So we’ll be able to have podcast mania…

John: Exactly.

[Eric and John laugh]

Caleb: … at the LeakyCon. That’s pretty huge, I guess.

Rosie: So before we start today’s chapter, we need to remind you all that we are reading Chapter 20 of Prisoner of Azkaban, “The Dementors’ Kiss.” So make sure you’ve read it before you listen on because you’ll get all the details.

Caleb: And we are really excited to announce something new to the Alohomora! website. Fans of Alohomora! can now purchase the Harry Potter eBooks and audiobooks directly on the Alohomora! website. And here’s the special offer. You can get 10% off if you purchase the entire series, which, if you haven’t bought them, yet, why would you buy just one book? Right?

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: You want to buy the whole series. And both the eBooks and audiobooks are available in a variety of languages. For the audiobooks, [they’re] available in German, Italian, [British English], and US English. And then the eBooks are available in [Spanish], German, [British] and US English, French, Italian, and Japanese. And you can also get the eBook only of Beedle the Bard, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and . Those three… the proceeds will go to charity, of course. Lumos and Comic Relief. So once again, just to sum up, the really great new thing on Alohomora!‘s website, which is alohomora.mugglenet.com, [is that] you can purchase the Harry Potter eBooks and audiobooks and get 10% off if you buy the whole series. Check out the link on the Alohomora! website.

Eric: Okay, and you guys know how we roll here. Before we get into the chapter that we’re discussing this week – Chapter 20 – we want to read and source… we’ve sourced some of your feedback via the forum at alohomora.com/forums or on the main site. And we’ve gathered your feedback on our previous episode, and some of you brought up, as always, really interesting points. So the first point comes from Kelsey. [She] say[s],

“Something else you brought up was ‘Why didn’t Sirius tell anyone Peter was guilty when he was caught? Just admit that they were all Animagi and all that.’ The answer to this is that Sirius thought Peter was dead just like everyone else! He saw him blow up the street and knew they found his finger afterward. Sirius has no way of knowing Peter had escaped; he had no reason to even consider the possibility until he saw his picture in the newspaper!”

Caleb: Yeah, that’s legit. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah, ties up a little loose end there.

Caleb: Yeah.

[Eric laughs]

Alyssa: Well, that’s true, but on the flip side, I mean, even if Sirius had told them that, would they really believe him? I mean, all of the evidence is pretty much against him. Thirteen people, whether they are magical or not saw the confrontation that went down, and it looks like Sirius drew a wand and was going to murder somebody.

Eric: Yeah. And he would have. He would have killed Peter if Peter [hadn’t been] too quick for it.

Alyssa: I agree.

Eric: But I think the things to take away from this are that eye witness accounts are far from accurate. We realize that. That’s even true to real life. And I don’t think Sirius helped his case by just laughing loudly as…

[Alyssa laughs]

Eric: … he was being escorted away by the police.

Alyssa: That’s a very good point.

Eric: [laughs] Okay, this comment continues from Kelsey. [She] say[s],

“The whole Peter situation actually reminded me of the fact that murderers killing themselves after or while committing their crimes (examples being school shooters and suicide bombers) is very common in the real world. They do it for any number of reasons (guilt after the fact, not wanting to go to jail, or just because the person in charge told them to), any of which could have applied to Peter in this situation. So from Siriu’s perspective, it’s perfectly believable that Peter could have killed himself. Anyway, the point is that Sirius didn’t say anything because he thought Peter was dead, so there was no point. Also, as he says, he did feel responsible for the Potters’ deaths, so that was probably another reason he allowed himself to go to jail without a fight.”

Eric: Hm. Okay. Well, there you go.

Caleb: Yup.

Alyssa: Well, I’m sorry, one thing. I feel like – I mean, that makes sense definitely – that’s a really great real world example, and that’s a really good parallel. But also, if Peter was… if Peter’s sole… one of his sole motivations was trying to basically save his own life, why would he just give it up like that? Right off?

John: Peter didn’t necessarily go into it planning to kill people. He was just running from Sirius. Sirius was the one with murder on his mind then over Peter.

Eric: Do you two think it was accidental that he cornered him in the middle of a public street?

Alyssa: You know what? I think that’s hard to say. I think it was good for Peter to be able to have witnesses. I got the feeling that Peter didn’t plan to fake his own death. I think that was one of those “Well, this is my option.”

Eric: Well, he cut off his finger. That shows premeditation. I always thought of it as Peter [having] cleverly cut off his finger and [leaving] it somewhere to be found and then stag[ing] a scene and allow[ing] himself to be seen by Sirius. That’s how I always thought of it.

Alyssa: I guess that depends on how long before the confrontation he cut his finger off.

Caleb: Mm.

Rosie: I think he would have cut it off during the confrontation. I think the faking his own death wasn’t a long-term plan. It was a very short-term plan in the fact that he probably thought it up during the actual confrontation because there were literally no options left for him. I mean, his best friend knew that he had betrayed his other friends, and his master has fallen, and yeah, there’s nothing left for him, so he might as well just go and be a rat for a couple of years [laughs] and escape all of the retribution that would happen after it. So yeah. And Sirius didn’t say anything because he thought that Peter was dead. He’s got that guilt factor, so yeah, I would believe that everyone else is gone, so he might as well serve his time as well, sadly.

Alyssa: Yeah, he definitely has a lot of guilt.

Rosie: Yeah, but you’d think the whole “Lupin is still around” factor… he knew that Lupin wasn’t guilty if he believed that Peter was, so why didn’t he go to Lupin?

Alyssa: Well, that’s not necessarily true; it’s not mutually exclusive. He might have still believed that Lupin was a spy.

Rosie: That’s true, but then you’ve got… 50 percent of your friends being spies is quite unusual. [laughs]

Caleb: And depressing. Oh, my God.

Alyssa: Well, no one said Sirius was the brightest grain in the box.

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Eric: I think there is a lot of great discussion about that topic, though, about Sirius’s trust for Lupin, also, on our forums…

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: … so I would just point all our listeners to that point in particular because I sourced a bunch of comments that said something quite similar to that. So next comment comes from Hufflepuffskein – I always loved that name:

“You guys discussed in a previous episode (I think in reaction to an animal association made about Molly Weasley) that animal imagery is often used in children’s literature and even adult literature to evoke certain essential qualities about the person or thing being described. This practice of essentialism is I think deeply engrained in how JKR develops several aspects of her story. The animals she chose to highlight, with the Marauders for example, are chosen because they offer essentialized insights into those people. Your question of the week about James as a stag was founded in this construct of essentialism. I write all this as a reaction to Eric’s discussion about the vagaries of animals (white rabbits, etc.). While I don’t disagree that animals are complex and known for lots of different things, I think JKR invests heavily in the essentialist tradition to use animals as a medium to express certain characteristics and essentialized types in very short space. In the previous episode, I think Rosie discussed the fact that by the mere mention of a lion, understandings of pride, courage, [and] boldness are evoked. I think that by and large JKR counts on our ability to understand the essential characteristics of the animals she highlights as a means to illustrate her story in our minds.

“Also, this got me thinking: If Lupin [weren’t] a werewolf, what do you think his Animagus would be? What about a horse? He is calm and intelligent but has spirit. I’d love to hear other ideas too!”

Caleb: Quite the comment. [laughs]

Rosie: See, that’s interesting.

Alyssa: It is.

Rosie: Thank you for referring back to my previous comments, but I think that Lupin would still be a wolf. Not the kind of scary werewolf creature but the majestic wolf. The actual natural wolf in its main form is quite calm and intelligent and has that kind of spirit animal idea to it as well. So I think – and obviously with his names – Lupin would still be a wolf.

Caleb: Yeah, I was actually going to say the same thing.

Eric: Really?!

Caleb: I agree.

Eric: That seems like a cop out or an easy decision to make.

Alyssa: His name is Remus Lupin.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Eric: I think of wolves as being… I think of the alpha wolf. I think of wolves [as] being lone wolves. Something like that. So I couldn’t say I have a better suggestion.

Alyssa: Remus is incredibly lonely.

Eric: Yeah, but Lupin… the fact that he’s surrounded by friends… I don’t know that I would make that same connection.

Alyssa: But he wasn’t until he went to Hogwarts.

Eric: Yeah.

Rosie: Wolves are pack wolves as well.

Caleb: And even after… in his adult life he’s very lonely, too, even though he has people around him. They’re always somewhat distant. And it wasn’t really until Tonks sort of breaks into that, and even that was a challenge.

Eric: I think it’s because he’s a werewolf, though, because he’s so segregated. So it’s funny.

Alyssa: Yeah, that’s true.

Eric: It’s like a circular…

Caleb: Well… yeah, yeah.

Eric: It’s a loop, though. It is a loop, you’re right. I mean, if we could remove the werewolf from Remus Lupin…

Caleb: Hmm.

Alyssa: We’d lose a lot of the character, obviously.

John: We’d have an entirely different character.

Caleb: Which I think just reinforces what this person is trying to say about essentialist tradition…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: … in Rowling’s writing.

Rosie: Yeah, there’s so much… Lupin wouldn’t really exist as a character if he hadn’t been a werewolf. There was so much of that storyline embedded into his character that you really can’t separate the wolf from the person.

Caleb: Hmm.

Alyssa: Much like werewolves. [laughs]

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Eric: Well, very cool. And we have another quick comment from ChopDopple on the forums. And they say,

“About Crookshanks possibly going with Hermione’s parents to Australia, that couldn’t happen [since] Crookshanks was at The Burrow during the wedding, at which time Hermione has already modified her parents’ memories.”

But okay, so the question “Where in the world is Crookshanks, Hermione’s cat?” goes on for another week and lives strong on our forums.

[Alyssa laughs]

Rosie: But I guess if he was left at The Burrow when they Apparated out, then hopefully Mrs. Weasley is looking after him.

Caleb: Ah, she just kicked him to the curb.

Rosie: He must be stuck with the family.

Alyssa: I mean, she has enough kids…

Caleb: Yeah.

Alyssa: … I’m sure she can handle a cat.

Eric: So that concludes our sourced comments just in general for last week. But then, of course, we have to get to the Podcast Question of the Week. And this is one that I think Noah and Caleb in particular were very adamant about last week on their differing views.

Caleb: Indeed.

Eric: So let’s hear what our listeners thought. I love this ability to just ask people what they think. Because one of us may be correct, and it can’t be two of us.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Eric: The question from last week was, “What is Severus Snape most motivated by in the Shack with Sirius, Remus, and the memory of James? Is it his need for revenge from school days? His love and loss of Lily? His need to prove himself right to Dumbledore? What is the biggest motivator of this rather complex character?”

Rosie: Such a tricky question.

Eric: First answer comes from Silverdoe25. They say,

“I think this was vindication for the way the Marauders treated Snape at school. Snape had a horrendous childhood: unhappy parents, neglected. Hogwarts, which he looked so forward to, became something of a disappointment with the taunting her endured from James and Sirius. Not noly did James bully Snape, but he [also] represented everything Severus did not have. Snape pursued the Dark Arts, even thought he knew Lily did not approve. He carried with him a basic insecurity, which caused him to seek comfort in power. In the Shrieking Shack, I just think he wanted to be right, especially where Remus and Sirius were concerned.”

Caleb: Yes.

Alyssa: Yeah.

Caleb: I’m so down for Silverdoe25 right now.

[Eric laughs]

Alyssa: That’s a very good answer.

Eric: How down are you, Caleb?

Caleb: So down. Because I think… well, I mean, it’s not exactly what I argued last time, but I think it’s pretty close in that my view was that his biggest motivation at this point is overall wanting to be able to prove himself right to Dumbledore, and I think it’s with… because of these reasons like that – Remus and Sirius, what’s going on – he wants to feel validated in Dumbledore’s eyes. And I think that’s a similar idea that’s going on here. So word.

Eric: Okay. Now let’s get on to the next one, though. You may not be as down with LumosNight3, who says,

“I think Snape is motivated by Lily here…”

Caleb: Ugh.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric:

“… he almost always is – but in this scene, I think Lily is a smaller motivation.”

Caleb: Oh! Okay.

Eric:

“One of the first things Snape says directly to Sirius when he is at one of his angriest points is how sweet vengeance will be. Of course James and Lily are a huge part of Snape’s character development, but let’s not forget that the world doesn’t revolve solely around these two people, not even Snape’s world. I think that in this particular moment, he is focused on the pain that Sirius and Lupin caused him and the consequences that followed from it for the years to come. James and Lily aren’t even here, but we’ve seen throughout the course of the book how much contempt Snape willingly shows towards Lupin and in speech, towards Sirius before this confrontation.”

Caleb: [snaps] Damn, that’s me snapping in approval.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Eric: So I guess LumosNight did say that. Okay then. Next – our third commenter – we have a voicemail, so we’re going to play that for you right now. This is from jessfudd:

[Audio]: Hi, this is Jessica – jessfudd from the forums – and I just wanted to comment on the Podcast Question of the Week. I think that Snape’s main motivation in this chapter was that he’s finally had the upper hand on the Marauders. We’ve never seen that before in his life that we know of, and I think if you look back at the flashback that we see later in Book 5 or whatever, he’s acting most like his adolescent self in this chapter. I certainly think that other motivations play into it even if Caleb says that’s a cop out. Clearly, he’s a complex guy, and he has a lot of reasons for being angry, but I think his main motivation is he has the chance to get [back at] the people who got him all through his childhood, and I think that is what fuels his anger and the way that he carries himself in this chapter, so anyway, [those are] my thoughts about the Podcast Question of the Week. Love the show. Keep it up. Bye.

Eric: So Caleb, somebody else agrees with your point. I’m surprised we don’t have more…

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Eric: … support for Noah’s theory.

Caleb: Yeah, and to be clear, jessfudd. I was saying if… for as far as the cop out goes, I agree that there are many other motivations, which is why Snape is so complex. I was just wanting people to actually pick one that sounds… that they think is the biggest motivator. So yeah.

John: I just think that it’s fair to say that Snape – especially since this is about Remus and Sirius and by extent Lily and James as well – has a lot of “authority” on that because he knew them, and he grew up with them, so I feel like his opinions to Dumbledore saying, “Look, this is how I feel about Lupin. This is how I think about Sirius,” while they may not be the true ones, [are] sort of his forte. He’s like, “No, I know these guys.” So I think there is a lot to say for him just saying, “This is my moment. I’ve got a little more expertise on these guys than say Quirrell or Lockhart or someone previously,” so this is sort of his one chance that he kind of missed, and I think that’s a contributing factor to what really pissed him off, especially at the end of the book.

Rosie: I love the idea of him reverting to his adolescent self, though.

Alyssa: Same here.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Because if you do have that long gap between seeing someone, you do immediately go back into that place when you do see them again.

Alyssa: Especially when it was so traumatic.

Rosie: Yeah. So seeing Sirius again after so long would immediately put you back in that situation of all of that anger and all of that need for vengeance. So yeah, it’s definitely… I agree that that would be a main motivation there.

Eric: So it would have to do more with his tormenting than what later happened with Lily being betrayed by one of them.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Hmm.

Rosie: Although, if he still thought that Sirius was responsible for Lily’s death… although he himself is partly responsible for Lily’s death. Yeah, it’s a tricky one. [laughs] What’s the next comment?

Eric: We’ve grabbed this next comment for you all, but it’s from somebody named OrWorseExpelled, and somebody on this panel pointed out that that was actually their comment. So I’m going to let the OrWorseExpelled among us read their comment.

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: Well, that was me, and they didn’t just pick it because I’m on the show this week. It was completely coincidental. All right, so I straddle the fence a little bit as well although I’m leaning toward the side of Noah, and I said,

“To me, Lily is always at the forefront, but that doesn’t preclude the many other motivations and feelings that make Snape the complex character he is. Snape was not only responding to the person that allegedly killed Lily but [also] to one of the people (two or them, including Lupin) who treated him [poor]ly based on his house and social class. There is the overarching motive of his desire to capture the ‘bad guy,’ but Snape definitely relishes that the bad guy just happens to be a bully that tortured him for several years.

“It’s also VERY important to note that Lily dropped Snape and Janmes and his crew of ‘good’ guys – it would definitely chap Snape to find out that one of the people Lily trusted to be ‘good’ ended up being an agent of the Dark Lord (while this might seem ironic or hypocritical, don’t forget that Snape changed sides before the betrayal occurred). It would definitely make Snape eager to not only get revenge on Sirius for his bullying or for killing Lily, but it [also] sort of proves to Lily (as futile as that is) that Snape was the ‘good’ one in the end.”

Rosie: Good comment. [laughs]

Eric: Interesting insight. Yes, he’s still trying to prove to Lily that she should’ve went with him.

Caleb: So one thing that’s really interesting – I just thought about going through these comments – is obviously now we have the perspective of knowing Snape’s whole story, but when we all read this the first time, we obviously would have no idea what would eventually – or I guess, what did – happen with Snape in the past. So it’s really interesting to analyze it now knowing what we know about Snape, whereas it’s just so different reading it the first time through.

Rosie: Yeah, because we didn’t even know about the worst memory thing the first time we read it.

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: So it was literally just Snape appearing evil in the way that Harry always viewed him when he was younger. So yeah. It’s definitely interesting to look back at Snape’s motivations with the extra layers that he puts on later on but always had, really.

John: If you’re reading the book and don’t know any… if you’re just reading, and all you know is what’s in the book, the safest thing I think to say [what] caused Snape to be so angry at Sirius and Remus is that the map insulted him.

Rosie: [Rosie laughs] That’s true.

John: I think that’s the only connection you can make…

[Everyone laughs]

John: … at this point in the books. So he’s a very sensitive man.

Rosie: But does he actually know that the map is from them at this point?

John: Well, he doesn’t, but we do. So I guess that…

Eric: Hmm.

Alyssa: Well, Snape must have known that they had the nicknames.

Caleb: Yeah, I think he knows.

John: Well, he might have, yeah.

Rosie: Yeah, he would have known their nicknames, but we don’t know that he knows their nicknames.

Eric: Yeah.

Alyssa: Yeah, the audience doesn’t know that, yet. But that’s pretty much… [laughs] How dare you call me dirty and big nosed!

[John and Rosie laugh]

Eric: Okay, and then wrapping up our discussion – this seals it here – I think we have – what? – two for Caleb, one for Noah? We’ll see what HufflepuffSkein says about all this. HufflepuffSkein says,

“I see all the motivations as linked, and so they cannot be disarticulated. Sorry, Caleb.”

Caleb: Cop out.

[Rosie laughs]

“There is rarely only one answer to these sort of questions. […] Snape’s motivations are like a house of cards, each building up upon the others, fragile and unstable, until at last the man who can seem emotionless appears in the Shrieking Shack to shriek about his hatred and his vengeance. Perhaps the foundation is Lily, but because of her, all his motivations and emotions are intertwined and so must be understood as a complex whole. These are the reasons for the complexity of Severus Snape and why we all find him so intriguing.”

Alyssa: It’s very poetic.

Rosie: I completely agree.

[Alyssa laughs]

Caleb: I agree, but I still think it’s a cop out. I wanted you to choose one!

[Eric and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: But…

Rosie: It’s impossible to choose just one.

Caleb: Nah.

Rosie: There may have been a main motivation, but we are not Severus Snape, so we will never know.

Caleb: But that’s why… that’s the whole point of speculating. It’s the point of the show.

Rosie: And we’re speculating that there are so many motivations…

[Alyssa laughs]

Rosie: … that they all link in.

Caleb: Well, this comment does not go to Noah or [me]. So I feel like I win because I…

[Alyssa laughs]

Eric: Well, remember guys, just because this discussion is over on the show, doesn’t mean the discussion cannot continue on the forums or our main page.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: So definitely look into all that and those other places to continue this discussion of the motivations of Severus Snape.

Rosie: Meanwhile, we shall move on to our next discussion and our next chapter, the last one in this original timeline.

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 20 intro begins]

Sirius: Chapter 20.

[Sounds of Lupin’s werewolf transformation]

Sirius: “The Dementors’ Kiss.”

[Werewolf howls]

[Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 20 intro ends]

Caleb: All right, so here we come to what is one of the possibly shortest chapters in the whole series but also very jam-packed with a lot of important stuff. When I was reading it, I could not remember this chapter being so short, and then it was just done in two minutes. But it starts out with the crew – everyone trying to get out of the Shrieking Shack – and there’s this really great sequence of dialogue between Harry and Sirius as they’re getting out. And it starts with Sirius saying, “You know what this means?” and Harry responds, “You’re free.” And Sirius responds, “Yes, but I’m also – I don’t know if anyone ever told you – I’m your godfather.” And I thought this was really interesting because while Harry, at the forefront of his mind is… he already obviously knew that Sirius was his godfather. He’s thinking that, “Oh, Sirius is free.” But that’s not even at the forefront of his mind, even though he’s been in prison all these years. He’s really more now thinking about this opportunity he’ll get to have with Harry, which I think is really interesting.

Rosie: Yeah, I think this is the first time that we really actually see “Sirius, the person” rather than “Sirius, the escaped convict.”

Caleb: Mhm.

Rosie: This is the first time that he’s thrown off the demons and the Dementors, and we really get to see him thinking for himself for the first time.

Eric: And there’s a moment where Harry sees it, too, where, when Sirius smiles, he says that somebody ten years younger was smiling through all the dirt…

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: … and all the grease, and for just a flickering moment, he was that man laughing at his parents’ wedding in the photograph. So this was definitely touching to see that the years can just melt off and also, just the prospect for Harry. We know he hates his aunt and uncle. I mean, it’s only been three books, and he’s had to live with them for his entire life, and we’ve seen how they abuse him. And this idea… and it took me by surprise. I can remember very clearly reading this for the first time and thinking, “Oh, my God,” because that’s really a revelation here, is that we learned chapters and chapters ago that Sirius was his godfather, but now, it means Harry can go live somewhere and be among somebody who loves him.

Rosie: Suddenly it’s an emblem of hope rather than an emblem of disaster.

Eric: Mm.

Alyssa: It did strike me as funny, though, that after all of that, after of a year of fearing him and being worried that Sirius was coming after him, after this whole confrontation, he’s like, “Yeah, we’re best buds now. Let’s move in!”

[Alyssa, Eric, and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: That’s true. He forgives very quickly.

Eric: “When can I start?”

Caleb: Yeah. Totally.

John: I love how he asks, “Do you have a house?”

[Alyssa, Eric, and Rosie laugh]

John: [laughs] No, I’ve just lived in prison for thirteen years.

Alyssa: It’s so cute, though. It’s very charming and childlike…

John: No, yeah.

Alyssa: It’s just an excited kid who gets to leave a place that’s horrible.

John: Well, the ironic thing is he does have a house.

Alyssa and Eric: Yeah.

John: Rereading it you know that, but…

[Alyssa laughs]

Eric: But you’re right. He probably wouldn’t, right? I mean, who keeps up on their mortgage payments from in the slammer?

[John and Rosie laugh]

John: From in prison.

Alyssa and Caleb: Yeah.

Alyssa: Well, I guess wizarding property… especially since there were supposed to be so many magical wards on 12 Grimmauld Place anyway.

Caleb: Mhm.

John: Yeah.

Eric: True.

Caleb: So I think we touched on this slightly earlier, but I still want to bring it up. What… if they would have been able to turn in Pettigrew, if he would not have transformed and scurried off, if Lupin would not have turned into a werewolf, would they have freed Sirius so easily? And would they have been so quick to just say, “Yup, go chill with Harry wherever you want”?

[Eric laughs]

Alyssa: Hmm.

Rosie: If they could prove that Peter was responsible for the deaths, then possibly.

Alyssa: Yeah, burden of proof.

Rosie: Then you’d have to be believing… I guess if you could use Veritaserum then it would really work.

Caleb: Hm.

Rosie: So yeah.

Caleb: So I think the most important thing for this Ministry is to get someone behind bars…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: … and they’re not necessarily worried about who it is.

Alyssa: Mhm. Well, at least the Ministry of the first war.

Caleb: Well, yeah, that’s… yeah.

Alyssa: Yeah.

Rosie: But it would mean that Sirius would have to register as an Animagus.

Caleb and Eric: Hmm.

Caleb: Very true.

Eric: [laughs] All that bureaucracy, that red tape.

Alyssa: All those laws that you need to follow.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: But hopefully he wouldn’t go to prison for breaking that particular law because he’s already been in prison. That can be his jail experience.

Caleb: Right.

Alyssa: It would explain why he didn’t confess that in the first place.

Eric: Honestly, I think it really would have been quite simple to free Sirius. Pettigrew is… part of what happens in Book 4, Book 5, Book… the rest of the series happens because nobody believes that Voldemort is back, and people don’t believe that Pettigrew is still alive. Pettigrew being alive, somebody seeing Pettigrew… I think in that moment when, in the film, Fudge sees Voldemort, and he’s like, “He’s back!” Pettigrew’s very existence… so much hangs on it, the fact that he’s still alive.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: It immediately proves that everything Dumbledore and Harry and Sirius are saying could be true beyond this huge doubt. So yeah, I do think it would have been quite simple to free Sirius. I think Pettigrew did knowingly fake his death and knowingly not come forward about it, and plus there’s the Weasleys that can all testify that “Yes, he was this rat who lived with us all this time.” So it would have been more of an open-[and-]shut case, I think. And Sirius would have been freed quite quickly, I think.

Rosie: If Pettigrew had been caught at this point, do you think Voldemort would still have risen again in Goblet of Fire? Because Barty Crouch, Jr. is still out there, so he could still have made that connection, but without Pettigrew would they have ever managed to meet up?

Eric: I don’t think so.

Alyssa: This is actually my entrance here because I am sort of… this is going to sound bad, but I consider myself as someone who defends Peter a little bit. Not in his actions. He obviously was a traitor and did something horrible and chose himself over the life of his friends, but this is where I feel Peter gets really misunderstood because he’s always… “Oh, he’s so bumbling and not talented and so much lesser than his companions.” But he made it happen. He went to Albania. He found Lord Voldemort. He brought him back to England somehow and helped create the potion and the spell that brought him… gave him a body back. That’s a big deal!

Rosie: Yeah.

Alyssa: That’s a lot of brain power and a lot of creativity. Even with Voldemort’s help.

Rosie: Major deal. I mean, we see his main Death Eaters, Malfoy and Bellatrix, never actually manage to find Voldemort and bring him back like that. Whether they were too afraid of him, but I don’t think Bellatrix would ever have been too afraid to have actually gone and searched for him.

Alyssa: Well, she was imprisoned. [laughs] But…

Rosie: Yeah, but before that she was all right torturing people rather than actually searching for the ghost of her master.

John: True.

Alyssa: Very true.

John: She was hunting down the Longbottoms.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

John: But that’s true, and actually I was sort of talking about Peter in that way – to connect it with Barty Crouch – from what we know. I mean, obviously we can get into this when that part comes up, but what we know, if they’re the only two guys [who] are free and around, if Peter [weren’t] there, it would just be Voldemort and Barty, and we figure Barty went into Hogwarts and did that whole plan because someone had to stay and take care of Voldemort. He’s this little baby thing.

Alyssa: Yeah.

John: Someone needs to be there to protect him. I mean, he can hold a wand and stuff, but if it [were] just Voldy and Barty, I don’t know if that plan would have been able to be pulled off quite as successfully.

Caleb: And then you get a spin-off series: The Adventures of Voldy and Barty.

[Alyssa, John, and Rosie laugh]

Alyssa: It’s like The Odd Couple.

[Everyone laughs]

John: Also, who is going to milk Nagini for him? If Peter [weren’t] around?

Alyssa: That’s very true.

Caleb: Hmm.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: Yes, but to answer Rosie’s question, I think it would have happened but probably not as soon.

Caleb and Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Voldemort always has to come back but definitely not in the same time frame.

Alyssa: So we would’ve gotten more books. Damn.

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Eric: No, they would’ve just gotten [in] a lot more camping in between…

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Oh, God. Can’t. Ugh. And as you were saying, Eric, I think it is a really touching moment as Harry is wanting to go live with Sirius and escape the Dursleys, but I was also wondering, “What would Dumbledore have said about this?” I mean, obviously he would not have the love protection of the Dursleys’ home anymore.

Rosie: Oh, that’s true.

Caleb: And maybe Dumbledore… I think Dumbledore would have been against it, definitely, but would he have maybe given Harry the option? Given him the full information at this point, tell him what’s up, and say, I mean, “This is what you’ll lose, but I’ll let you choose.”

Rosie: I think that Harry should’ve kept Sirius as his pet dog and gone and lived with the Dursleys still. That would’ve been hilarious.

[Eric laughs]

Caleb: Oh, God.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: If they barely feed Harry anything, what would they feed the dog?

Rosie: But then Sirius could just growl at them. and they’d be too terrified to do anything.

[Eric laughs]

Rosie: He’s still a character when he’s a dog. [laughs]

Caleb: Definitely.

Alyssa: He still has a human brain. That is true.

Rosie: I want to read that book. It would be brilliant. [laughs]

Eric: [laughs] Yeah. Well, no, I think that it’s interesting because Grimmauld Place is protected by the Fidelius Charm, which is the same charm that obviously James and Lily trusted their life to.

Rosie: That’s true.

Eric: So it’s still pretty strong magic. This time, Dumbledore is…

Caleb: Is the Secret Keeper, yeah.

Eric: …the Secret Keeper, so it’s a lot safer than before. So it’s possible it still would’ve been adequate enough until Mundungus came along into Grimmauld Place for them to keep it away from Voldemort.

Alyssa: Speaking of the Fidelius Charm, I think it’s very interesting… and I think this was brought up on last week’s show. It doesn’t really look good for Sirius that he was like, “Oh, no, no. Peter, you be the Secret Keeper.” It seems like a little bit of a shirking of responsibility. I mean, not necessarily… I wouldn’t go straight to cowardice, but I feel it’s a little bit like, “Why don’t you do it? You’re the one who says you’ll die for your friends.”

Rosie: I think it’s that he was trying to be too clever. I think he knew that he would be the main target because everyone would think that he was their best friend, so he would be the Secret Keeper. So he was trying to be clever and trick people into not thinking it would be Peter.

Alyssa: Yeah.

Rosie: It’s more about Sirius’s arrogance than his lack of caring.

Alyssa: Yeah. No, no, I’m sure it’s not a lack of caring, but it’s definitely really stupid. [laughs]

Rosie: Yeah.

Alyssa: Very poorly though out. And yeah, well, it’s true. I think someone said in a comment… they were just like, “He’s definitely a pranky kind of person, but it seems very foolish to put your friends’ lives on the line for a trick.” Like, “Gotcha! It wasn’t me at all!”

Eric: Yeah, we talked about that last week, though, about Sirius’s decision and how it obviously failed, so we can judge it harshly and look back and say, “Oh, that was a dumb idea.” But really, I guess what Sirius must have been thinking is, “They can torture me, and to death, and even if they had a way to get it out of me, they wouldn’t be able to because I’m not the one.”

Caleb: Hm, yeah.

Alyssa: He was just trying to protect his friends.

Caleb: Yeah.

Alyssa: Sad times.

Caleb: And more sad times continue because just when Harry thinks life is going to be wonderful, things go awful.

Rosie: As usual. [laughs]

Caleb: As usual. Murphy’s law. The Moon decides it wants to come out, and of course Lupin starts to transform into a werewolf because he has not taken his potion. So it’s this really intense scene. The description of what’s happening with Lupin’s transformation is very vivid in the book, and then you think about what I think is just an awful werewolf in the movie version. What do you guys think about the movie version?

Rosie: I know that they had a lot of difficulties with the actual technical side of it, so I can forgive them since going to the studio tours and hearing how they made them. But yeah, it’s a terrible werewolf. [laughs]

John: Yeah. Actually I saw this as a topic, and so I have my copy of Page to Screen because I know that they talked about this on the werewolf…

Rosie: Yeah.

John: … and it has a nice little paragraph of Alfonso Cuaron, who directed the third film, talking about what his thoughts on the werewolf transformation were, so I could read that. I think it’s an interesting…

Caleb: Yeah, totally.

John: … little thing. I mean, I don’t know what it means overall. You still have… the jury’s still out, but this is what he said. It says, “‘Professor Lupin is like the favorite uncle who is hiding a horrible disease. We wanted the werewolf to look sick. We didn’t want it to be something healthy and powerful; we wanted to see not only the obvious danger that being a werewolf is to everybody else but also the tragedy that it is for Lupin. So the dynamic we established between Harry and Lupin is never that it’s a kid hanging with a werewolf; it’s this kid hanging out with his favorite uncle who has this disease.’ As Cuaron explains, this metaphor informed the design [for the werewolf]'” as well. “‘After looking at reference material on all the great werewolves in films, specifically at An American Werewolf in London, which portrayed the iconic transformation from a man into werewolf, we needed to challenge the concept. One way we did this was to create a hairless werewolf. Filmmakers always do werewolves by adding hair to a human. But losing hair plays into the idea of it being a disease.'” So that’s an interesting…

Alyssa: That’s very interesting. I mean, I’m not a film werewolf hater in this sense. I mean, it’s not my favorite design, but I definitely don’t hate it.

Eric: I think my big problem with it in the movie is that Hermione can mimic its call.

Caleb: [laughs] Yeah.

Alyssa: Oh, that’s so annoying! Oh, that was so stupid.

Eric: That was my biggest thing about it. And then it’s like, “Ooh, what? Mate?”

John: Well, Hermione is so smart, guys. She can do everything.

Alyssa: She can do anything.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: That’s fair, that’s fair.

Alyssa: In this world.

John: No, no.

Alyssa: No, that’s a joke.

[Everyone laughs]

Alyssa: No, actually…

Eric: No, that’s an interesting… I’m glad you added that because, essentially, Cuaron wanted to make it look pitiable and…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Well, success.

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: Yeah, and not cool in a way but I mean, for the right reasons, I think. Probably those concepts that he was talking about show forward pretty darn [well].

Caleb: Mhm.

Alyssa: Speaking of Lupin’s transformation, I do… this was something that wasn’t brought up last week in terms of why Snape bound Lupin first. Since Snape makes the Wolfsbane Potion, he probably knows Lupin didn’t take it. And he knows it’s a full moon, so let’s get the werewolf out of commission before he can transform.

Eric: I think he could have pointed that out. [laughs] Like, [as Snape] “Uh, by the way, Lupin, you didn’t take your potion.”

Alyssa: But there’s a lot going on. [laughs]

Eric: It would have been clever. Yeah.

John: But that actually reminds me of something I’d read just today on the forums that Ali Wood mentioned about Snape’s motivation being fear. A lot of it was being fear of Lupin being a werewolf. He still thinks that Sirius is a mass murderer, and Harry is in danger. He’s with a werewolf in the Shrieking Shack, and his main goal is to keep Harry safe. From the beginning, that was Dumbledore’s plan, so I think rather than proving that he’s right, that might actually be sort of played into it, too, because a werewolf’s kind of dangerous. [laughs] It’s a pretty big deal.

Alyssa: Yeah, if Harry’s safety is, above all, the most important thing, I can understand that that would be a major fear.

Caleb: So after Lupin becomes a werewolf, obviously, that is an immediate threat to the children there. So Sirius decides he needs to go into dog form, and he attacks Remus to give them time to get away, and of course, this is the perfect opportunity for Pettigrew to escape. And I think it was really amusing because before he turns into a rat he makes sure to stun Crookshanks, so I wonder if this is just a little bit of revenge for Crookshanks basically making his life a living hell for the past couple of months.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

John: Well, it’s actually practical because, considering it’s nighttime, Crookshanks is probably the best bet of catching Peter as a rat.

Caleb: Mm.

Alyssa: That’s very true.

Eric and Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: Is Pettigrew that smart, though? Or is he just…?

Eric: I think he is. Yeah.

Alyssa: I think so. Absolutely!

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: Cats go after rats in the dark all the time.

Alyssa: Pettigrew knows what’s up.

John: Well, Crookshanks has been causing problems the whole time.

Alyssa: And Pettigrew’s been a rat for twelve years. I think he knows the habits of rats and of their predators.

Rosie: He knows how to protect himself.

Eric: We know that Sirius isn’t that good at catching rats. Sigh.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, whoops.

Alyssa: At least not until the fifth book.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Yeah. All right, so Pettigrew uses Remus’s want to transform himself into an Animagus, and this obviously… I can’t remember. I feel like we’ve talked about this on the show before, but maybe we haven’t. Maybe I’m just thinking of another discussion, but does this sort of prove that you need a wand to transform into an Animagus form…?

Alyssa: Absolutely not.

Caleb: … or is it just showing that maybe Pettigrew is either not skillful enough or not in a strong enough state to do it without a wand right now?

Alyssa: I think he only took the wand to stun Crookshanks and Ron and then transformed. Period.

John: Actually, Harry – let me look at this in the book – stuns Crookshanks. Harry disarms him – that’s how you find out that it’s Lupin’s wand – and then Harry says, “‘Stay where you are,’ he shouted, running forward. Too late. Pettigrew had transformed.”

Caleb: Hmm.

Rosie: Yeah, he uses the wand in the movie but not in the book.

Caleb: Right. I guess it doesn’t say anything, so I just sort of assumed he uses his wand.

John: It is vague, though. It is… you bring the attention that he has a wand and then…

Caleb: Yeah.

John: … you sort of vaguely just get rid of it, so I can see how you would think … and especially when the movie does it.

Rosie:: Yeah.

Alyssa: Which is very strange because they already show in the movie that Sirius can obviously transform without a wand, so why would you…?

Caleb: Right.

Rosie: Yeah, so can McGonagall.

Alyssa: … put that in as a detail? Yeah, and McGonagall.

Caleb: True.

John: That’s a great little look, though. Timothy Spall did really [well] in that little scene where he is like, “Goodbye.”

[Alyssa, Eric, and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: So creepy.

Rosie: Timothy Spall is actually brilliant and perfect for Pettigrew.

John: Yeah.

Alyssa: I disagree. I never liked him as Pettigrew.

Rosie: Really?

Alyssa: I mean, I thought he was too fat, personally. I mean, he’s a fine actor.

Rosie: I always imagined him quite fat in my head.

Alyssa: Not at all. I mean, he has been living as a rat for thirteen years. I mean, [he]’s described as small as well.

Rosie: Okay.

Alyssa: I mean, that could just be “short,” but…

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: My only thing against the portrayal in Movie 3 is that I thought they made him too rat-like…

Alyssa and Caleb: Mhm.

John: Yeah, definitely.

Eric: … especially when he first comes out of the transformation. I thought it was too… I thought it was overdone. It wasn’t subtle enough. But I blame the directors for that. Or the filmmakers.

Caleb: Yeah.

John: Well, that was a rather over-the-top movie in a lot of other ways, too, so…

Alyssa and Rosie: Yeah.

John: … it fits with the movie, but it…

Caleb: I have so many feelings.

John: … is a little bit.

Alyssa: I mean, I love the movie, but it definitely is quite a departure from the usual style.

Rosie: There are a lot of caricatures in the early Potter movies, and I think Pettigrew in that particular movie really plays into that…

Eric: Yeah.

Caleb: Agreed.

Rosie:

Caleb: Yeah.

John: No, he does. I do appreciate that, too. He gets a somewhat nicer suit. Not quite as…

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: I just have a lot of feelings about Peter in general, I think.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Yeah. So I also was thinking this time that I hope nothing dangerous is around or anything. It’s dark and they’re not really right next to the castle because Harry and Hermione just leave Ron to chase after Sirius.

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: Yeah.

Caleb: He’s just stunned and left on his own. Which happens so many times in this series, but… [laughs]

John: I wasn’t surprised that Harry was like, “He’s fine. Sirius is more important.” But I was a bit surprised that Hermione was like, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

[Alyssa laughs]

John: She doesn’t really end up doing anything, so she could have been like, “No.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: But there is a moment [where] they do check on Ron, and the thing of it is that they don’t know what he’s been hit with. They can tell he’s alive…

Caleb: Yeah.

Eric: … but his eyes aren’t fully closed, it’s described as being.

Alyssa: Which is really creepy.

Eric: So as long as – yeah, it’s creepy; it sounds creepy – he’s alive, what they do is they hear Sirius’s wail, and then that knocks them out of it.

John: Yeah.

Eric: And they are like “Oh, my God, we have to go help Sirius. There’s nothing we can do for Ron right now.” Maybe they could have pulled him a little farther away from the Whomping Willow. I mean, Crookshanks did prod the tree, but I don’t know how long that lasts.

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: The Willow was ready to start swinging already, so…

Eric: Yeah, yeah. If the Willow just wakes up and is like “Ooh, little boy to kill. Okay.” [laughs] So…

Rosie: I think the only reason that Hermione follows Harry at this point is to mimic the next scene where it is all Harry and Hermione. It’s just another mirroring.

Alyssa: Oh, yeah.

John: Yeah, that’s true.

Alyssa: That’s a very good point.

John: She went with him because she knew she had to or whatever.

Rosie: Yeah.

John: That’s the deal.

Rosie: She doesn’t know [yet]…

John: Well, yeah.

Rosie: … but she will need to know.

Alyssa: The time loop.

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: Time travel.

John: That’s for next episode.

[John and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Yeah. And so once Harry and Hermione get more into the forest… which also makes me realize that this movie scene is drawn out so much more. It’s funny. They take so much out of the books when it comes to the movie, but this scene is actually drawn out a little bit more in the movie.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: When they’re in the forest. But then the Dementors are suddenly there. Everything gets cold and sad and depressing, and I’m just thinking how much the Dementors must want to suck out Sirius’s soul. Because here’s the guy [who] just broke out of prison to make them look foolish and they’re like, “Yup, we got him now.”

Eric: Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

John: Which is kind of weird because they go for Harry.

Caleb: Yeah.

Alyssa: It’s ironic. They go for the only person [who] isn’t passed out and the only person [who] really made any kind of Patronus even a little bit happen.

John: But I agree with you. They must really… it’s like the guy [who]… you have your perfect… actually, I have a thing at work where we have the warehouse in the back, and “It’s been three years since we had a lost time accident”. And one day it was like, “It’s been 0 days,” and I was like, “Someone’s getting fired for ruin[ing] that perfect record.” No one ever breaks out of Azkaban, and then this guy…

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: So I also was thinking that Harry gets Hermione to try to cast a Patronus with him, and he tells her to think of something happy. And I had never really thought about this, but I wonder, “What is Hermione’s happy moment?” Do you think it is her finding out that she gets to go to Hogwarts?

Alyssa: Probably.

Rosie: Yeah, I would think so.

John: Probably, yeah.

Alyssa: I mean, at this point especially.

Caleb: That was my first inclination.

Eric: Doesn’t it change? Can’t you think of a different happy thought every time you try?

Caleb: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Yeah.

Caleb: I was just wondering – yeah – what it may be at this point.

John: But also, Hermione hasn’t the experience that Harry does, which explains why she’s so bad at it.

Alyssa: Yeah, absolutely. All he says is, “Think of something happy! Here’s the incantation.”

Caleb: You’ve got to go through some stuff to be able to really treasure those happy moments.

Rosie: But not even that. She hasn’t actually been taught how to cast it, yet.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: As we saw with Harry, it’s a really difficult spell to cast.

Caleb: Harry is just like, “Think of something happy, and say these words,” and it’ll work.

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah, it’s like, “That’s not how it works!”

John: It’s not like Peter Pan, Harry. It doesn’t quite work like that.

Alyssa: Yeah, exactly.

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: This isn’t “You can fly.”

John: But it made me think, too, that… I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with this, and I don’t think anything less of Hermione for it, but do you think that it could be Hermione is so involved in knowing things and learning things and getting everything right that she might not have something quite as happy? Because she’s not “living” life as much as other people who are…?

Eric: I wouldn’t say that, but I would say she’s more of a thinker than a feeler.

John: Yeah.

Eric: And I think you do [have] to be a feeler to really master this type of spell.

Rosie: Ooh, Eric, I completely disagree.

[Alyssa laughs]

Caleb: Oh, I’m with Eric on this.

Eric: So book smarts will teach you how to throw a Patronus?

Rosie: If you haven’t been taught how to do it… we see that it’s a really difficult spell. Everyone is amazed that Harry can cast a corporeal Patronus when he gets to his OWLs and things. So for Hermione to produce anything when she hasn’t been taught anything still proves that she’s this amazing witch and brightest of her age and all that stuff. But I think when we see her being on her own and crying with the troll in Book 1 and all that thing, she is so much a feeler, but she just doesn’t show it as much outwardly as, say, Ron or someone else.

Alyssa: Well, it’s like she feels things deeply, but she is a thinker when it comes to… she’ll think through consequences. She doesn’t just go with her gut and she’s not impulsive.

Rosie: Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t have something happy.

Eric: She’s the one who said, “We need fire, but we don’t have any matches.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: She’s unable to channel that emotion.

Rosie: She was young and panicking. [laughs]

Eric: Well, I think Harry is so – and yeah, he has had the practice – filled with the emotion and the love inside him and everybody else, and he’s more affected by the Dementors. I think Hermione… the reason she can’t cast a Patronus is largely because there'[re] hundreds of them right above her, too.

John: Oh, yeah, of course.

Eric: She hasn’t learned to ignore those feelings or to recognize those sad thoughts that are being brought up to the surface. And that’s what I mean when I say it’s more of a feeling thing is because when you’re in the midst of those Dementors, you really need to channel your emotions.

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: You not only need to lessen what they’re bringing out of you, but you [also] need to strengthen your own emotional core and say, “This was joy!”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: And cast it and show it and have it have form. The reason Harry is so good at it… I mean, he has had practice, but I always felt that the reason that he could cast a corporeal Patronus – and that’s such a rare thing for a young kid – is because of all that love that courses through him and that gooey stuff…

[Caleb and Rosie laugh]

Eric: … but just in general of him being the hero because he has a feeler, I think, for that. Because how easy is it to say that Harry doesn’t think? At all.

[Alyssa and John laugh]

Alyssa: Oh yeah, absolutely.

John: Totally.

Caleb: I think that’s what it is, Eric. Maybe not so much that Hermione isn’t a feeler, though I do think it’s just more…

Eric: I’m not trying to say she’s a sociopath, Rosie!

[Rosie laughs]

Caleb: Yeah, yeah.

Eric: I’m really not trying to make that argument.

Caleb: I think it’s just that in comparison to Harry, you’re saying he is just so much more in that direction.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: On the border of emo at times, so…

John: That actually made me think with Hermione’s not being able to produce a Patronus, do you think that… you know how Dementors make you live your sad moments and how he hears his mother dying and Voldemort’s laugh? Do you think Hermione is hearing Ron being like, “No wonder she hasn’t got any friends” or something?

Alyssa and Eric: Oh, yeah.

John: What do you think is going through her head when the Dementors are…?

Rosie: I would imagine something like… yeah, Ron saying that. And I imagine that she was probably picked on for being nerdy throughout her school life and things even younger than that.

Caleb: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah, she’ll have a backlog of insecurities that she could be playing in her head at this moment.

John: Yeah.

Rosie: Which is sad.

Alyssa: My darling girl.

Rosie: Yeah.

Alyssa: Good little Hermione.

Caleb: And so the Dementors start to swarm in because obviously Hermione cannot produce a Patronus, and Harry cannot produce a full Patronus. And they become too much. Hermione is out, Sirius is out, and Harry is left all alone, and he almost gets a Dementor’s Kiss. But as we know, he is suddenly saved. I wonder what would have happened had the Dementor managed to get a Kiss on Harry. More like, “What would have been the government’s response?? Because these are the government’s official prison guards at Azkaban, and they just… I would assume that if they got Harry, they would probably get Hermione and Sirius also.

Caleb and Rosie: Yeah.

Alyssa: That would have been insanity.

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: It would have been a riot. The [Dementor would have] killed the Boy Who Lived.

Rosie: Fudge would be out, definitely.

Eric: Rita Skeeter’s latest headline: “Harry Potter’s First Kiss.”

[Rosie laughs]

Alyssa: Ohh.

Caleb: Yeah.

John: She would do that, too.

Alyssa: She would. That’s a good one, though.

Rosie: Okay, so that’s our episode title.

[Alyssa and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Yep. There you go.

Eric: “Harry’s First Kiss.” Okay.

Alyssa: That’s perfect.

Eric: But yeah, no. The real question is, “Would the Dementor have gotten Harry’s soul, or would he have gotten Voldemort’s?”

Caleb: Ooh, yeah.

Rosie: We discussed that a few weeks ago.

Alyssa: Ooh, I wonder how that would have worked actually.

Caleb: We did.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah, I realise. But still it’s just kind of interesting.

Rosie: Yeah. It’s a troublesome thought. [laughs]

Eric: But I do think that the evidence is in this chapter that the only reason they did attempt to Kiss Harry is because he was crawling over Sirius, trying to prevent them from getting to Sirius. I think they’re very duty driven oddly enough, as Dementors are. We’ve seen them almost emotional – if you could call them that – where they take it personally almost, as Caleb was saying, too. This guy broke out of Azkaban. They’ve been stationed at this school, been forbidden to essentially eat this whole time they’re here, and now they can do what they came here for and get Sirius. So they will eat or Kiss anybody standing in their way. So there’s that.

Rosie: Yeah, and preventing them from getting to a convict as well is perverting the course of justice, so technically he is doing something wrong at that point…

Eric: Mhm.

Rosie: … and that could be a crime.

Eric: I mean, it really comes down to if the Kiss is reversible or not. If some Dementor is going to be flying around with Harry’s soul in him forever or if that soul ends up being nourishment and getting eaten, and there’s no more of it, any bit left, I don’t see anything Fudge or Dumbledore or anybody could do to get Harry back.

Alyssa: Yeah, that would be bad, I think.

Rosie: Yep, the wizarding world would be screwed.

Alyssa: Neville! He needs to step in.

[Eric, John, and Rosie laugh]

Caleb: Screwed, still screwed. [laughs]

Alyssa: Aww. [laughs]

Caleb: But then the chapter ends on this really intense note. Harry sees someone who’s able to manage conjuring a corporeal Patronus, and the text says he thought he looks familiar, but we don’t really get much other than that. And of course, you don’t stop there; you have to keep reading. But our discussion for the chapter ends there until next week.

Rosie: It’s a good cliffhanger, though.

Caleb: It is. Did you guys…? The first time you read it, through, probably you didn’t have time to think about, “Oh, my gosh. Who is he?” You probably just sped through the next page and kept reading. But I don’t know…

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: I wasn’t thinking about his dad, really.

Alyssa: I probably would have thought that it was Dumbledore or something. I don’t know.

Caleb: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah, it’s pretty vague when she… I love the way it’s written, though, because it’s kind of vague. This whole chapter is really interesting because they’ve spent all this time – how many? – four or five chapters in the Shrieking Shack, and they’ve been gathering these tools, these bits of information that obviously change everything they’ve thought of previously. So they’re like, “Okay, Remus is a werewolf, Sirius is a good guy, my parents were all friends with these guys, Peter is alive, Peter is the bad guy, Peter can turn into a rat”… All this stuff. And then when they get up in this chapter is when all of that information comes back to bite them. “Oh, wait, Remus is a werewolf. Crap, he’s going to change. Oh, wait, Pettigrew is a rat. He can get away.”

Rosie: Yeah.

Eric: It’s just all… and then, “Oh, wait, these Dementors are all here.”

Rosie: “Oh, wait, Sirius is an escaped convict. Oh, yeah.”

[Caleb laughs]

Eric: Yeah, yeah, exactly. All of this stuff. And so we’ve been taken out of it, and I guess consumed by emotion this whole time. And this chat at the beginning of the chapter with Harry and Sirius and going back to live with him just completely cuts the legs out from under you, and you’re just not prepared to see it all go wrong as it so terrifically does. And then at the end there’s just this gleaming, blinking light of hope as Harry loses conciousness.

Rosie: And that leads us nicely into our Podcast Question of the Week for this week, which I get to write. Yay! [laughs] And that is, “Is this Harry’s most helpless moment? Other than the gleaming hope that Eric just described without the Patronus. In other books, Harry has always saved himself or been saved at the last moment, such as Fawkes in Chamber of Secrets. But here it appears that there is no last-minute reprieve within the original timeline. So if it [were]n’t for the Time-Turner and the actions of the next chapter, Harry would have actually fallen to the Dementors at this point, along with Hermione and Sirius. And if there had been no Time-Turner involved, was there really any hope for our heroes at this moment? And would the Dementors have actually Kissed him and Hermione despite they’re lack of crime?” So that’s our question that we want you guys to answer. Let us know what you think on the archives.

Caleb: Yes. There should be a lot of good discussion going on that, I bet.

Rosie: Yeah. Hopefully.

Caleb: All right, well, that takes us to the end of this week’s discussion. We definitely want to give a major shout out and thank John and Alyssa for joining us this week. You guys put in a lot of really great insight.

Alyssa and John: Thank you.

John: It was a good time. We enjoyed doing it.

Alyssa: Yeah, it was so much fun. Thank you so much for having us.

Caleb: Of course.

Rosie: Our pleasure.

Caleb: And we’re really excited to see you guys and watch you guys do your thing over at LeakyCon in Portland which, hopefully all of our listeners… if you’re even thinking about Portland, you should definitely go. It is a major blast to hit up LeakyCon. I think I can probably speak for everyone who has gone. Check it out because it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Rosie: Yeah.

Caleb: But if you’d like to be on the show like John and Alyssa, we would definitely love to have you. So you can head over to our website, alohomora.mugglenet.com, where we have all the details about joining the show or emails at alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com. In the meantime, you can subscribe and leave us some love on iTunes because we definitely love to read all of your feedback there.

Eric: And the show is on Twitter if you wanted to tweet at us or follow us and see what we tweet out, that address is @AlohomoraMN on Twitter, and we’re on Facebook at facebook.com/openthedumbledore spelled like “Dumbledore,” and we have a hotline. We played one of our voicemails on this episode, and you can leave your own voicemail by dialing our hotline. It is 24 hours a day at 206-GO-ALBUS. Again, that number is 206-462-5287.

Rosie: And don’t forget we’ve also got our fabulous store where you can go and buy all of our host T-shirts, and hopefully we’ll have one for Eric and Laura soon. And we’ve also got our app, which is available in the US and the UK, now on iPhone, iPad, Android, and Kindle. And that’s $1.99 or one pound, 29 pense, depending on where you live. And that’s got transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host blogs, and much, much more, so make sure you go check it out.

Eric: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Joining us, I am Eric Scull.

[Show music begins]

Caleb: I’m Caleb Graves.

Rosie: And I’m Rosie Morris. Thank you for listening to Episode 32 of Alohomora!.

[Show music continues]

Caleb: Did you throw in an accent as you said “Australia” there?

[Rosie laughs]

Eric: Did I what?

Caleb: Did you throw in an accent whenever you said “Australia”?

Eric: No, that’s just… that’s actually how I say “Australia.”

Caleb: Oh, okay. I was like… I was very…

Eric: It’s just I lived in New Zealand for a year, so I think I probably picked up a few things.

Caleb: Oh. It makes sense. Yeah, this is…

Eric: I know. Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anybody with my pronunciation of “Australia.”

Caleb: No, it would have been really good. I kind of wish you had, but…

[Alyssa, Eric, and Rosie laugh]

Eric: Australia. There we go.

Caleb: There you go.