Transcript – Episode 5

[Show music begins]

Noah Fried: This is Episode 5 of Alohomora!, for June 17th, 2012.

[Show music continues]

Noah: All right, everybody. Welcome to Alohomora! again. We’re re-reading the books, one book at a time, one chapter at a time – actually, two chapters at a time. But today, I’m Noah.

Rosie Morris: I’m Rosie.

Kat Miller: And I’m Kat, and I want to welcome to the show this week Maya, who’s our special fan guest. She’s fourteen years old and is from Israel. Maya, say hi and tell the fans a little bit about yourself.

Maya Hollander: Okay. Hi, I’m really happy to be here. I’m Maya, as you said. Tenth grade, Israel, Ravenclaw, kind of crazy. I love to read, love to write, that’s it.

Noah: What do you write?

Maya: Novels! I want to. I’m starting.

Noah: So do I!

Maya: Cool! I really didn’t have a lot of time in my life to [laughs] actually write anything really good, but…

Noah: Well, I mean, you’re still young, so you’ll get there. And you said – you’ve been following Alohomora! for a little while, and you said you had some question about the wands we were doing on another episode. You had an opinion?

Maya: Yeah, because on the third episode you said that everybody was really happy with their wands, and I didn’t have time to comment, because everybody who commented said they were happy. And actually at first – now I’m really happy with my wand, but at first I really didn’t like it. I looked at the wand woods – I actually read every single one, and I was like, “Oh my God! This one is so much better for me!” But I got spruce, and now after you talked about how the wand wood – the qualities of it are actually good for the person – actually suit the same person too, I started to like it more, because it said:

“Unskilled wandmakers call spruce a difficult wood, but in doing so they reveal their own ineptitude.”

So, it’s kind of – yeah, it’s kind of like a Hermione trait that people who get to know you at first don’t really like you that much, most of them at least, and they really have to…

Noah: Is that your experience?

Maya: Yeah. With me, with myself.

Kat: Oh, you seem so sweet. I don’t believe that.

Maya: [laughs] Thank you.

Noah: Well, a lot of people were commenting that with the wand descriptions it was something like a cold reading, which a lot of magicians do, a lot of psychics do, which is to say that some of these descriptions are kind of broad, they kind of lure you in, and suddenly whatever you get you just believe works with you just because of the way it was written. So, it’s either that or – what I choose to believe is the fact that these descriptions are kind of accurate based on these little questions that J.K. Rowling devised. So, it’s good to hear that your wand works for you. But keep mailing in your experiences, other fans listening to the show, if your wand did not work with you.

Kat: Yeah, and we’ll probably read them on the show much like the ones we’re going to read right now. So, let’s hop right into that.

Rosie: Yeah. We’ve had plenty of comments on our discussions from our previous weeks, and we’re going to just start off with our discussion of the Gamp’s Laws, which we’ve been really – we’ve been struggling to try and find out which ones are the actual Gamp’s Laws. So, we’ve been asking you guys and we’ve had a few suggestions. SlytherinGirl has said on our main site that:

“Gamp’s Laws of Elemental Transfiguration: Food, Air, Electricity, Fire, and Water.”

However, incognitovalentino… [laughs]

Noah: [laughs] Ooh.

Rosie: …also on the main site, has said that:

“Hermione clearly states in ‘Deathly Hallows’ that the five exceptions are: Food, Money, Love, Intelligence, and Life.”

Maya: She does?!

Rosie: Apparently! Can anyone find this quote out there in the fandom? We’ve been struggling to find it ourselves.

Kat: Yeah, I mean, I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. He or she also mentioned that maybe Jo is the one that said that, but even when I researched trying to find that quote, I couldn’t. So, if anybody out there is aware of this, please send it to us so we can get this right. But what do we think about SlytherinGirl’s choices here? How do we feel about those?

Noah: I mean, I feel electricity – if you want to just talk about energy. Energy can’t be generated from nothing, I guess is the idea going here.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: And that makes sense, but I feel as if – we were talking on the last episode, if you have some elements working you can combine them with others. Magic is the super stimulus, and then you can kind of generate energy. And electricity itself seems kind of a very specific one for this list. I would just say energy in general. You can’t create energy out of nothing. And that would follow along with food. Now, air…

Rosie: Especially seeing as the wizarding world doesn’t use electricity.

Kat: Exactly.

Rosie: Especially with Mr. Weasley’s comments. Like, “What is the use of a plug?” So, why would electricity be there?

Noah: Yeah, so maybe we can say energy for that one.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Now, food – we know that’s true, but again I’m going to hold to my belief that while you can create things that form the appearance of food, such things that you could even eat quite enjoyably, they would provide no nutrients for you. So, in that way you can’t create food with nutrients. But now there’s also air in this example from SlytherinGirl and I think you can probably create air just by manipulating the elements in whatever…

Kat: But you would be creating oxygen, right? I mean, not air. Because air has a lot of components to it, right? I mean, it’s not just oxygen.

Noah: That’s true but you don’t think there’s a spell that we can manipulate whatever elements are in the air, or vacuum that you’re in – that you could possibly create air? I don’t know, it’s – we can keep this debate going, but – I don’t…

Kat: Yeah. No, I mean, I see what you’re saying. Yes and no, I guess.

Noah: There are plenty of ways for somebody with magic to create a – to let them breathe in an atmosphere, whatever it is, I’m sure.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: If wizards go into space.

Kat: Well, it’s funny because to – I mean, pretty much everywhere – Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, the main site, the forums – everyone pointed out to us that there’s no way that you can transfigure the elements because then the Philosopher’s Stone would be unnecessary.

Noah: That’s true.

Kat: Basically everyone kept saying that’s what nuclear fission is, and how would wizards be able to do that?

Noah: I just thought the whole debate tying into science and stuff – I don’t think this talk has really happened before on such a large scale.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: So, props to the fans. And…

Rosie: That said though, I think I do like the second suggestion of this more in terms of Potter. The idea of love, intelligence and life rather than electricity, fire and water, and that kind of thing.

Noah: Well, isn’t that kind of an ancient tradition, you can’t magically create love?

Rosie: Yeah, which I think we see that most clearly in the Potter series with Tom Riddle Sr.

Kat: Right. Right.

Rosie: And the fact that once he – once the love potion wears off, he just abandons Merope and Tom Riddle Jr.

Noah: That’s true. And that created some kind of love, but clearly not the real thing. What about life? It makes sense that you can’t create life – I mean, we did talk about that with McGonagall creating the pig, but we have kind of decided at this point that that wasn’t a genuinely real pig, a real life form. So, I would believe that you can’t reanimate life, you can’t bring back from the dead. And that kind of fits all in the same category. Would you agree with that, Maya and others?

Maya: Well, when Hermione talks about Gamp’s Law she says that it’s true to transfiguring something out of air – making something out of air. She doesn’t say that you can’t turn something from a desk to a pig.

Noah: But is that a real pig?

Maya: But she says you can’t summon food, but you can turn things into food. So, you can – maybe you can create life out of – well, I don’t know how that would work. But you can create out of…

Noah: I still don’t believe that you can create an animate object from a non-animate object.

Kat: No, I don’t either. I mean, isn’t that why Death gave the Peverell brothers the Resurrection Stone, because there was no other way to kind of bring life back?

Noah: And even then you…

Kat: And even then they’re not back. Right.

Maya: That didn’t really work the best. It didn’t really make them alive again.

Noah: Right. It only – it kind of brought them back in the sense that they could possibly see and kind of be with the living person – their loved ones, but they couldn’t actually be there. So, it was like this torture, almost like the Mirror of Erised, which we’ll get to later. But there’s a subtle difference between bringing someone back who’s pre-existing and then creating something out of nothing, or creating a living soul from nothing.

Kat: Right, like the desk pig.

Noah: Right, like the desk pig, which I refuse to believe because that would make witches and wizards like gods in a way, creating…

Maya: Oh, wait, didn’t you say that wands and brooms have thoughts because – they have emotions because they are made from trees?

Kat: Yeah.

Maya: So, if it’s from a desk…

Noah: We did say that.

Maya: Yeah, so the desk is made from a tree too, if it’s a wooden desk.

Noah: That’s true, there’s some life that could be essentially part of that based on the tree. But is the – unless that tree – the spirit has died after having been made into a desk. [laughs] Wow, this conversation can keep going on.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah, it could.

Rosie: So yeah…

Noah: But I think what we agreed with the wands and the brooms, they’re more reactionary. They don’t really have – they can’t process thoughts, but because of their once having been a part of this living thing they have a natural connection to humans. And that’s why the magic can be produced and have effects.

Kat: Right.

Noah: Maya, would you eat the desk pig?

Maya: What?

Noah: Would you eat the desk pig, hypothetically speaking?

Maya: Yeah, I might.

Noah: All right.

Maya: Maybe just the problem that it could turn back into wood in my stomach.

Rosie: In your stomach? [laughs]

Maya: That would – yeah. That wouldn’t be nice.

Rosie: Definitely. But we’ve talked this desk pig to actual death now…

[Everyone laughs]

Rosie: …so let’s finish off this discussion with a couple of more comments from the fans out there. So, Inspirement on the forums says:

“I think eating a transfigured pig is strongly discouraged, because what would happen if the charm wore off in your stomach? I don’t think it would be good. Now, imagine if you ate something transfigured from something made of iron? Ouch.”

Kat: Ooh yeah, that would be rough on the stomach.

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Kat: And everything…

Maya: Well, you would get a lot of iron.

Kat: And everything that comes after the stomach.

[Maya laughs]

Noah: Well, I believe KyKid on the forums mentioned that this would actually just be great for your bloodstream. You’d get all that iron.

Kat: Well, that’s…

Rosie: I’m sure too much iron would be a problem as well, though. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah. No, that’s true.

Noah: Anyway… [laughs]

Maya: So, let’s just agree that you shouldn’t eat animals made from other things.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Well, we have a few more comments, Maya. I’m still all for eating it.

[Maya and Noah laugh]

Rosie: And so is @MichaelPlatco on Twitter. He says:

“I would only eat the pig in bacon form, if the desk was made of maple wood… but with toast.”

[Kat and Maya laugh]

Kat: That’s a great comment, Michael! Nice.

Noah: McGonagall should have just went into the restaurant industry after that boyfriend didn’t work out.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Yeah, right.

Rosie: And our last comment on this is from Ali Wood on the forums and it says:

“[If you are] right and the pig takes on the essence of the desk, and you eat it, well you’d get one nutrient: a lot of fiber!”

Kat: [laughs] Oh, our witty fans.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: That’s very true, Ali. You’re very right. That’s great. Good comments, guys.

Rosie: Yeah, definitely. Great there’s so many people thinking about it in so many different ways.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: So many hungry fans out there.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yes, but we are done discussing desk pig because I have a feeling this could go all the way into Prisoner of Azkaban.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: It’s so interesting, but…

Noah: I have a feeling I’m going to ask it to every guest fan on the show. First off.

Kat: Okay. Well, everyone else can go to the forums and go to the main site to continue that discussion.

Noah: Yes.

Rosie: So meanwhile, we have also been talking about other things recently, such as odd or wrong sortings. And FlightQuest91 on our main site has said:

“I heard a theory that Zacharias Smith was a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff. We heard the Hepzibah Smith is related to her, so is it possible that Zacharias is related to Hepzibah, and therefore Helga Hufflepuff?”

Maya: Yup!

Rosie: [continues]

“Is that why he got Hufflepuff…”

Maya: Sorry.

Rosie: [continues]

“…instead of Slytherin?”

Maya: Yup, but then that would kind of ruin…

Rosie: And…

Maya: Oh sorry.

Rosie: No, go ahead.

Noah: Go on, Maya.

Maya: That would kind of ruin the whole system because if you’re only sorted from – according to what family you’re from that would really ruin it, wouldn’t it? Because then it wouldn’t be your real personality.

Kat: Yeah, I think a lot of people were saying that Zacharias really belongs in Slytherin because he holds much more of the traits from that house, but I think what FlightQuest was trying to say is that he was sorted into Hufflepuff basically because of his – because of his bloodline. And yeah, I agree. Maybe that was kind of a wrong sorting on the Hat’s part.

Maya: All the Weasleys are in Gryffindor, so maybe one of them wouldn’t have belonged in Gryffindor but still would have gotten Gryffindor just because they were a Weasley. In the movie when the Hat is like, “Ahh, Gryffindor. Weasley…”

Noah: [imitating the Sorting Hat] “Another Weasley!”

Rosie: “Another Weasley!” [laughs]

Maya: Yeah, that. “I know just what to do with you.”

Rosie: We definitely have proof that bloodlines aren’t necessarily certain to get into a particular house. Sirius got into Gryffindor after all.

Noah: That’s right.

Kat: Right. But…

Noah: And I’d be surprised…

Kat: …he had the conviction to not be in Slytherin though.

Rosie: This is true.

Kat: He didn’t want to be a dark wizard like the rest of his family.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: I think you probably bring the nature versus nurture argument into this. I mean, how much of Zacharias’ childhood would have been determined by the fact that he was a Smith and he was a descendant of Hufflepuff? He could have Hufflepuff traits that we don’t see, but he has an equal amount of Slytherin ones.

Noah: You know what? Considering the Hat was made from part of each house’s founder’s brain, as we know, it’s possible that – how do you pronounce the name? Hepzibah? Helga.

Rosie: Hepzibah.

Noah: Hepzibah…

Maya: Wait, which one?

Noah: No, I mean Helga. It’s possible that Helga’s brain in there was saying, [impersonating Helga] “You know what? He’s not quite right for the house but he is my blood. I’ll have him.”

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Something to that effect. Speaking in the Sorting Hat’s mind, we can never really know. But I’d be surprised if the Hat was truly making its decisions based on blood overriding the stuff inside. So, I’m sure as we get more into Zacharias Smith we’ll get more and more Hufflepuff traits that make sense, I think.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: We’ll have to wait on that. And while we’re on this discussion – if you guys don’t mind me going on a tangent slightly – there were a lot more comments especially in Noah’s Nook about Peter Pettigrew’s sorting. We came to the conclusion that it was Hufflepuff but then I got a lot of comments back saying, “No, he’s not a Hufflepuff. Loyalty is the first and foremost thing of Hufflepuffs, and Peter betrays his best friends.”

Rosie: That’s true.

Noah: And while he might be loyal to the Death Eaters, he seems to react more out of fear than out of loyalty. So, I just want to put it out there that we’re not going to decide on Peter’s sorting just yet. He could be in any old house. But actually a lot of people were saying Slytherin for him. Not just because he’s evil, but because he seems to have some Slytherin properties.

Maya: Maybe he could be in the house Harry made up for people who feel slightly queasy. In the first – in one of the first chapters.

Noah: Ooh, good! [laughs]

Kat: That would work. I’m sure he’s probably pretty queasy most of the time. [laughs]

Noah: Well, that – we won’t dive right head first into the Peter Pettigrew discussion again. But if you want to go to the forums they are still talking about that.

Kat: Great.

Rosie: Definitely. And elsewhere on the forums we were discussing the chapter of Halloween last week, but we forgot pretty much to mention the Halloween discussion itself. So, Snodge on the forums says:

“I’m a little surprised that the significance (or lack thereof) of the events happening at Halloween were not discussed; Halloween being a time where the spirit world and the physical world being at their closest, it would make sense that at that time Voldemort would have been perhaps somewhat more powerful in his current form than usual, and able to exert more control over Quirrell than usual.”

What do you guys think?

Noah: That’s an awesome comment.

Kat: Yeah, I’m not quite sure how we overlooked that. Maybe having it being the whole scope of the chapter. But yeah, I agree with that. I mean, a lot of readings and writings say that the worlds are more open to each other on that day, so that makes sense.

Noah: I think someone commented in the forums though in response to that, that Jo is – sometimes she’ll follow traditional ways of thinking about stuff, but other times not. And the fact that it was Halloween was just kind of a dramatic motif for the troll to come in and it had no symbolic bearing. Of course we’re going to go into the symbolism because that’s what this podcast is all about. So yeah, we probably should have brought up the point that it was Halloween, and that in the spirit world – that is cool. And I think this is the only book where Halloween is actually really played up, especially the fact that it’s given a whole chapter dedicated to it, right?

Rosie: I think we do have key events happening on Halloween in other books as well.

Maya: Really?

Noah: It’s the deaths of the Potters.

Rosie: [laughs] It’s an excuse for a feast which means that everyone is all together, so it’s quite a good use of a dramatic moment…

Kat: That’s true.

Rosie: …throughout the books.

Maya: What I’m wondering is, why didn’t Harry remember his parents that day ever, when they talk about Halloween? They died that day.

Rosie: But does he actually know that?

Noah: I don’t think he knows, does he?

Kat: I don’t think he knows at this point.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: How sad is that, that he doesn’t even know?

Kat: Aww, I know. Woe is Harry.

Rosie: Poor Harry. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah. [laughs]

Noah: And now I’m thinking, are there any events of that night that kind of parallel the events of – with his parents? I guess we can just say that Voldemort does some nasty business on Halloween generally speaking. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah, I mean, he died – or quote-unquote, “died” – and he was trying to, quote-unquote, “come back to life.” I mean, kind of a full life cycle, but he didn’t succeed as we later find out. Yay!

Rosie: Maybe he thought it was symbolic though, because wouldn’t it have been the tenth anniversary of his first non-death?

Noah: That’s right!

Kat: That’s true. Yup.

Rosie: Maybe he thought that would be a brilliant time to be reborn.

Noah: And he was trying to get to the Stone that night, wasn’t he?

Kat: Yup.

Rosie: He was.

Noah: Wow!

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Nice, guys. [laughs] Okay. We can close that up. What’s next, Rosie?

Rosie: We were talking last week about the idea of the Snitch and the gender politics of Quidditch.

Noah: Yes.

Rosie: Noah, did you want to take this one?

Noah: Yeah, I do. Okay, so just to rephrase from last week, I was thinking about the balls in the Quidditch game, and it seemed to me that the Bludgers are these culturally masculine objects always being kind of aggressive, going after everything on the pitch. And the Snitch with it is actually a feminine – a more feminine character. Of course, I’m just speaking in broad, general terms. A female can be aggressive and a male can be passive. I’m just talking about the cultural symbolism with it. And we have this little, fluttery Snitch, that’s also shining, going around the pitch, and a Seeker has to catch it. And as we know, when you catch the Snitch you – that Snitch is – there’s a flesh memory as we learn in the seventh book, and it remembers who was the first one who catches it. And specifically this Snitch with – because Dumbledore enchants it so it opens to its first catcher. So, taking all this information, HeadGirl actually responded to my comments, and she writes how this reading of the Quidditch game is actually quite problematic. She says:

“If we continue with the theory that Quidditch is some kind of analogy for gender politics, with the Snitch being the more feminine aspect, it gets really problematic really quickly when one takes into account what we learn about Snitches in ‘Deathly Hallows’. Page 127 of the U.S. version: ‘A Snitch is not touched by bare skin before it is released, not even by the maker, who wears gloves. It carries an enchantment by which it can identify the first human to lay hands upon it, in case of a disputed capture. This Snitch … will remember your touch, Potter.’ So, it’s not touched until it needs to be of use, and then, it’s bonded to the very first person to ever touch it with bare skin. I’m really hoping that this isn’t reflective of J.K.R.’s views on women! Also, it raises the question: what happens to Snitches after they’re used? Is there a Snitch preserve somewhere? And how high is Hogwarts’ Snitch budget, anyway?”

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: All right, so that one means something very interesting. But I’m going to agree with this. I think the Snitches can be read as women, and thinking about this in terms of the first book and the last book is incredibly problematic. What do you guys think?

Rosie: I really strongly disagree.

Noah: Ooh, okay.

Rosie: [laughs] I don’t think at all that it would be J.K.R. representing women in any way. I think, sure, you can read some feminine qualities into it, but I definitely don’t think that, as HeadGirl said, it would reflect her views on her women. We’ve got some amazingly strong female characters. I mean, think of Ginny. She becomes a Seeker at one point.

Noah: That’s true.

Rosie: She is such a strong and feisty character and so unlike a Snitch, although she is very fast and all of that aspect. So, I don’t think that it would – the female characters don’t need to be captured within the game. [laughs]

Maya: Yeah, we do know that Jo is actually a really big feminist. And another problem with the Snitch – yeah, she said that a few times. Another problem with the Snitch is that when you catch it, you score points and you win the game. If that’s – I don’t think she really thought when she was writing that she was going to reflect men and women. Because yeah, when you write, you think about all kinds of metaphors that you’re using all the time and you think what everything symbolizes, but really, I don’t think she was thinking about that with the balls.

Noah: It may or may not matter whether she was intending it or not. This could just be a reading that we get after the fact that could reflect either unconscious thoughts of hers or not either one of those, and it just – it happened this way and this is the result of reading the game this way. What do you think, Kat?

Kat: Well, going off of what Maya said, it brings in a lot of real sexual undertones if that is actually what she meant, and I don’t think that it is because I don’t think Jo at all is trying to bring sexual tension or any sort of – anything in that realm into the books. So, I’m with Rosie on this one. I don’t think…

Noah: Yeah. Well, whether or not intended, an interesting play here by HeadGirl, and I personally like this theory. If you want to keep discussing about it, go straight to the forums on Alohomora!, and that is all. [laughs]

Maya: Yeah, you can also think about it like – you don’t have to think about men and women, you can think about it as life. You have the ball that you’re always playing with, you can’t really see what’s going on, and then the Bludgers that are trying to get you, and then you have to catch the little Golden Snitch, the little exciting moment. I don’t know, you can think about that.

Noah: But Maya, we just love to just go in-depth, go crazy, go on tangents…

[Kat laughs]

Noah: …and find crazy symbols which may or may not exist, but that’s true. In terms of itself, it is a fun game, but…

Rosie: I think I really like it as a symbol or a metaphor for life and the struggles that we go through rather than gender politics.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Yeah, I would agree with that completely.

Noah: Well, just to throw in the last word before we move on, I think that Ginny’s character, in a way, she is a Snitch for Harry a little bit because we keep talking about her as a powerful feminist character. But towards the end of the sixth book, I believe she is kind of reduced to a Snitch. She is reduced to this – the love story debacle between Harry and her. And I know she is doing stuff, but in Harry’s world and the world that we are filtered through because we’re reading it through his point of view, she becomes just part of the love story.

Kat: Maybe at the end, yeah, but he doesn’t care about catching her for several books. If she’s the Snitch, he’s not a very good Seeker…

[Maya laughs]

Kat: …if he doesn’t care about catching it.

Noah: Well, he does care about catching her.

Kat: Not until the end.

Noah: In the game…

Rosie: If you want to follow on this metaphor, Noah, think about the fact that the one time that he does catch her. When he finally gets that kiss, it’s the one that he’s not actually playing Quidditch.

Kat: Ahh, there you go.

[Noah laughs]

Maya: Like, literally what happened in the very first game. In the very first game, when he catches it in the mouth. [laughs]

Noah: Yes.

Maya: Sorry.

Noah: No, keep going.

Maya: No, I said when he catches the Snitch…

Kat: No, that’s – she was commenting on Rosie’s comment, yeah.

Maya: No, when he catches the Snitch in his mouth.

Noah: Yeah.

[Maya laughs]

Rosie: So yeah, it immediately links…

Maya: Unconsciously.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: It can link the Snitch to kissing, and to open it you have to actually kiss the Snitch.

Noah: Oh wow, yeah. Oh, that’s great. Great comment. I see now. Okay.

Kat: All right, all right. Good.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Let’s worm our way out of this one.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: That’s right.

Noah: Let’s get to the next comment.

Kat: Move on to the next comment.

Rosie: In a very completely different topic…

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Rosie: …SneakySnape25 has said on our main site – about our previous discussion about Harry being beaten at home, they say that:

“I think that Vernon did hit Harry. Think of all the horrible forms of punishment the Dursleys used on Harry. Does it really make sense for them to have some sort of compassion to not hit Harry? Plus, with Harry being so nonchalant about ‘wood’ meaning a beating cane instead of a person, it is pretty easy to assume he was exposed to this sort of punishment. He probably was hit for major offenses which is why he thought a cane for disobeying the teacher was normal.”

Kat: Yeah, I agree with that. I thought from the beginning that they definitely beat him in some way. He talks several times about having to duck away from his uncle and learning to avoid the situation. So yeah, I’m with this one. I agree.

Noah: Yeah, I think…

Maya: But every time they…

Noah: Go on, Maya.

Maya: Every time they want to punish him they just lock him in his cupboard. That’s what we know.

Noah: And that is certainly a form of abuse.

Kat: Mhm.

Maya: Yeah, but I don’t think they hit him.

Rosie: No.

Maya: Especially not Petunia. She wouldn’t. He’s the only thing she’s got left.

Rosie: It’s more emotional abuse and neglect rather than physical abuse.

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: I think over the course of his ten years there, or eleven years, it’s not unlikely that it happened at some point. I think Caleb brought up the – he mentioned the fact that if word had gotten out at Vernon’s office that he was beating a child or something, Vernon wouldn’t care very much at all for that kind of reputation. So, for that fact alone it probably wouldn’t have happened. But behind closed doors? Considering again SneakySnape’s comment about how nonchalant Harry was in this scene, the fact that “Wood” might be a cane, and what I pointed out, I think it’s a direct possibility.

Kat: Yeah, I completely agree. Especially at school, too, which we have talked about previously. But I think moreso at home, I just – Vernon just dislikes Harry so much that I see it happening.

Noah: It’s very possible.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: And another comment from SnapeEscape.

Rosie: Yup, from one strict person to another:

“Speaking of McGonagall, you guys mentioned how she is very strict and likes to abide by the rules. I’m sure this has been brought up before, but isn’t Hermione freakishly similar to young Minerva? Thanks to Pottermore, we know that she achieved the maximum amount of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s and she was top of her year. She also believes in clear organisation and has strong morals, just like Hermione. Does anyone else see the comparison here?”

Maya: She was a Hatstall too, Hermione. Was she a Hatstall?

Noah: No, she was very close.

Kat: Very close to being a Hatstall, yup.

Maya: And she got into Gryffindor, just like McGonagall, but we know from Pottermore that McGonagall was a Hatstall.

Noah: Yes.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: So, maybe the Hat learned from McGonagall’s experience and decided to just put Hermione in Gryffindor.

Kat: Right, because the other house that she was stalling on was Ravenclaw, yes?

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: And I’m surprised that McGonagall and Hermione don’t have more connections throughout the book series, more one-on-one time. I guess in the third book with the – what’s that device called where you go back in time? Time-Turner. [laughs] Sorry. We know that Hermione went to McGonagall about the Time-Turner so that she could take more classes, so I’m sure McGonagall empathized with Hermione very deeply when she was organizing the whole thing for her.

Kat: Oh yeah, I’m sure that she looked at her and saw herself at that age.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Absolutely. I definitely see the comparison. They feel very similar to me. McGonagall, again, as we learn, was very proud of who she was and where she came from and all that, so…

Noah: Absolutely.

Rosie: Definitely.

Kat: Good. Good comments. Keep them coming, go to Alohomora.MuggleNet.com and comment on anything we say on this show or past shows, and we just might read it!

Noah: That’s right. And we love to do it, because you guys are great.

Kat: We do. That’s very true. [laughs] So, let’s move on. Last week our special feature was called What If? and we asked several What If? questions, and we actually got some really great ones in return. So, we’re just going to read a couple of those now. This one is from Facebook, user Helen Schwieger. Sorry if I pronounced your name incorrectly. I am bad at pronouciations. Anyway, she says:

“What if Harry and Voldemort’s wands didn’t share the same core?”

Thoughts?

Noah: Well, then Harry’s love would still be protecting him, wouldn’t it?

Kat: Yeah, but wouldn’t he have been blown to bits when he was riding on Hagrid’s motorbike? Or when they met in the graveyard in the fourth year?

Maya: He would. He would have died. But maybe that would be when Voldemort had destroyed the Horcrux, and then he would have come back then.

Kat: True.

Maya: Think about it: Harry has one time to die. He doesn’t know it, but he has one spare life. So, if Voldemort kills him, he’ll come back if he wants to.

Kat: Right. Okay, so basically the order of the Horcruxes would have been destroyed differently.

Maya: Oh, but he has to want to die.

Kat: He has to be ready to die, right.

Maya: Yeah.

Rosie: Interesting ideas.

Noah: But then what if his – having a different wand had different abilities which would also allow him to counteract Voldemort’s wand?

Rosie: Yeah, what if he had Lily’s wand or something? Would the love aspect of that brought it…

Noah: Had been more powerful.

Kat: Do we know what happened to their wands?

Rosie: No.

Maya: Probably got blasted.

Kat: Yeah, or maybe they were buried with them. Who knows.

Maya: Maybe. Like Dumbledore’s.

Noah: These What If’s just make me so confused.

Kat: Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: We just don’t know.

Kat: Well, speaking of Lily and the night they got exploded, unfortunately, @MichaelPlatco on Twitter asks us:

“What if Sirius got to the Potters’ house earlier or if Hagrid let him take baby Harry from the rubble?”

So, basically if Harry had grown up with Sirius instead, yeah.

Rosie: I think Sirius was just…

Maya: Yeah, but Sirius got sent to Azkaban.

Rosie: …too angry at that moment. I think he knew exactly what had happened, so that’s why he went to track down Pettigrew. I don’t think he would have been in the right state of mind to look for Harry at that state. Even though he is his godfather and he does love and care about him, he’s just lost his best friend and the person that made him feel accepted in the world. So, I don’t think he would have been focusing on Harry, sadly.

Noah: Do you think he would have taken Harry on the run with him?

Rosie: If he’d been able to, probably.

Noah: That’s what I think would have happened.

Maya: Yeah, but – if he had taken Harry, he wouldn’t have had time to go after Pettigrew and then he wouldn’t have gotten blamed for the mass murder and then he could have raised Harry.

Rosie: Did he actually know that Harry survived at that point? When did the wizarding world find out that Harry had defeated Voldemort at that stage? Because he knows that the house has been destroyed. Maybe he got into a blind rage at that point and looked for Pettigrew thinking that all of them had died.

Maya: Oh, well I supposed Harry would have cried a lot, would have been heard.

Kat: I mean, I think Dumbledore was the only one who knew Harry was alive for some time. Obviously, Hagrid – because even McGonagall didn’t know when they met on the wall. She didn’t know Harry was alive.

Noah: But didn’t everyone know that Harry had survived?

Rosie: The wizarding world was celebrating before that.

Maya: Yeah, she did say she knew he was alive.

Kat: But weren’t they just celebrating that he was gone?

Rosie: They were whispering about Potter.

Maya: “To Harry Potter – the Boy Who Lived.”

Kat: Oh okay.

Noah: So, that was well-known information, but whether or not Sirius knew this when he went out for Pettigrew, I’m not sure. That might have been after Hagrid had collected Harry.

Kat: Well, Alyssa Feller asked us a What If? on Facebook going along with the same idea:

“What if Sirius didn’t go after Wormtail the day the Potters died? What if he went directly to Dumbledore and explained everything? Would he be able to have some kind of relationship with Harry?”

Rosie: Definitely.

Maya: Would have raised him. He’s his godfather.

Noah: Yeah.

Maya: He would have raised him.

Kat: Yeah, but do you think Lily’s protection would have been – what’s the word I’m looking for?

Noah: I don’t think it would have existed though, because didn’t it…

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: …work in the Dursley home because of the blood? Because Petunia was there?

Kat: Because of the blood, right. Yeah.

Noah: So, it wouldn’t have worked otherwise, so this actually worked out the best for Harry.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Possibly. Maybe not in terms of his raising but in terms of his protection.

Rosie: Maybe Dumbledore would have explained that to Sirius. But Sirius could have lived nearby.

Noah: That’s true.

Kat: Right, they definitely could have had some sort of relationship somehow. I don’t know, Sirius is kind of reckless though, so I don’t know how good he would have been for a young Harry.

[Maya laughs]

Noah: Yeah.

Maya: That would have been an exciting childhood.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Well, that’s true.

Noah: Way better than the beatings, anyway.

[Kat and Maya laugh]

Kat: Right, exactly.

Rosie: And Sirius would want to – I think he would want to be a good parent because of his own childhood. He would have made sure that Harry was loved and treated with respect and stuff, more than he was.

Maya: Harry would have really turned out like James.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: A lot like James. He would have been overconfident and probably mean if Sirius had raised him.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Well, he would definitely…

Rosie: It would be a very different series.

Kat: Yeah, he would definitely know more about the wizarding world.

Noah: Right.

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: And I guess that’s what Dumbledore didn’t want, so again…

Rosie: He would probably be more like the Weasley twins. Marauders, mach two.

Kat: Yeah. Oh boy. Not good.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Following on that, talking about Quidditch and McGonagall and such, Jon Kunitsky on Facebook says:

“What if McGonagall never saw Harry fly on his broom and catch the Remembrall? What if he never was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team?”

Noah: He just would have been a normal school boy. He would have got all of his homework done.

Maya: No Quidditch.

Kat: Right, but then he would have never caught the Snitch, and Dumbledore could have never hid the Resurrection Stone in it.

Rosie: Mhm.

Noah: Hmm.

Maya: Well, maybe he would have tried out in his second year and then caught a Snitch.

Noah: I don’t know, Harry is not the type of person to try out for things. It just kind of happens to him.

Kat: Right.

Maya: Maybe Ron would have dragged him with him.

Rosie: Or Madam Hooch could have seen his skills. It didn’t need to be McGonagall.

Noah: True.

Kat: That’s true. That’s true. One final What If? we got from Lynette Dalley, again on Facebook. She says:

“What if the magical world actually existed and J.K.R. is just writing about real things that had happened and just passing them off as fiction?”

Maya: Did you never think of that?

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Maya: Am I the only one?

Rosie: Come on, every eleven-year-old waits for their Hogwarts letter these days.

Maya: Oh yeah, I remember.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Noah: I mean, I try not to tell people that I’m a wizard, but now it’s out.

[Maya laughs]

Kat: Oh boy.

Maya: Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was young enough to wait for my letter at eleven. Instead, I got the last Harry Potter book same year, but not quite as good.

Noah: Maya, how popular is Harry Potter in Israel?

Maya: Everybody knows it. It’s just as popular, probably, as in America or in Britain or anywhere, but I’m the only Potterhead in my class.

Noah: Oh cool.

Kat: Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with being individual, right, Ravenclaw?

[Rosie laughs]

Maya: Woo!

Kat: That’s right. Cool.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Well, good What If’s, guys. Thank you for all those. Those are a lot of fun to ponder. We’ll definitely do that special feature again soon.

Noah: Someday. Okay, and now it looks like we’re getting responses now from the posed question of the week I read on last episode, in which we were discussing the different ways the trio are courageous in the series. And I was wondering – I was looking at Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and I was sort of wondering if maybe J.K. Rowling is making a comment about bravery in the series and how it’s multi-faceted, because we know Harry and Ron are a bit more reckless and Hermione has her – on occasion is reckless, but most of the time, she’s kind of calculating things through her mind, and that’s still bravery. And just to throw it in there for the question of the week, I wanted to talk about Lily and James Potter, and the fact how we know James immediately rushes to stop Voldemort and again, that’s reckless kind of bravery, but Lily actually sacrifices herself at the end, and because that is the sacrifice that allows the love charm to take effect, I was wondering if Jo is therefore commenting on bravery and saying that though it is multi-faceted, this very human sacrifice is the greatest kind of bravery. And that is potentially problematic, so I wanted to – I threw that to the fans, and we got a lot of great comments. First one is from Nana:

“We know that bravery is very important to the writer because she made a point of sorting her principal characters in a house that stands for courage. Gryffindor is symbolized by the lion which itself represents heart and courage. So, we know right away that this is a quality that matters, but she shows us that there are many different expressions of bravery, and that it depends on the capacity of the person. What might be easy for one might take a lot of courage for another. That’s why Neville is awarded points at the end of ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ because standing up to your friends might take another kind of courage than fighting trolls. But real courage nonetheless.”

A comment from Ali Wood:

“I see the trio as a three-headed part of the same thing. They are almost one person with one goal, Harry’s goal. To describe it best, I just see the three of them, wands out and crossed, pointing at the same danger. Their courage mixed, and the courage of each one of them builds up each other. I think she is saying there are different types of courage, and when a lot of courage comes together, great things happen.”

So, we had a lot of comments, guys, about this, how each one reflects a different sort, but it all kind of boils down to the same thing. What do you guys think, especially considering the sacrifice I brought up?

Maya: True. This is true.

Noah: What do you think, Maya?

Maya: Well, Harry Potter did make me believe that bravery comes in different forms. I never thought I was brave, and then, getting to know Hermione, I thought, well there’s another kind of bravery. There’s the bravery of standing up against what people think about you and what people say about you behind your back – or not behind your back – and just standing strong, and that’s bravery that is undervalued a lot of time.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Definitely.

Maya: So, that’s what that made me believe.

Rosie: The moment with Neville, as well, right at the end of the book that he eventually wins the house points for – the idea of it takes true bravery to stand up to your friends. I think bravery and courage and all of the different aspects are really important, and I think Jo really tries to show them at their best within the series.

Kat: Yeah, and I think that’s why the trio is in Gryffindor because I definitely think that that’s a trait that she values above all else. Think about her situation when she started writing Harry Potter. It’s pretty brave to put yourself out there and let people judge you and your writing. So – yeah.

Noah: All right. And once again, what do you think of the potential prejudice of sacrificial bravery being the truest kind of all? Because we know the book starts with Lily just sacrificing herself for her baby. And then at the very end, it’s Harry sacrificing himself for everybody. So, this seems to be a step above reckless going into fight. Is Jo saying that it’s better to be a sacrifice?

Maya: No, I think she’s saying it’s the highest form of bravery, maybe, but everything – it’s the highest evolution of bravery that at first you have to be strong on the inside and then you have to be strong for everybody else. You have to evolve.

Noah: To do that. All right, that’s good. Rosie?

Rosie: Is the idea of putting others before yourself, which is a common phrase that anyone in England – certainly anyone who does either Brownies or Scouts or any of those kind of moralistic ideas that you’re taught when you’re very young. Putting others before yourself is a truly important thing, and I think…

Noah: Hey, we have that in America too, you know.

Rosie: Yeah.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Maya: I got to do that for a year. I got to be a Brownie, I remember that.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: Yeah?

Maya: When I was really little.

[Maya and Noah laugh]

Maya: That was nice.

Rosie: But yeah, it’s that idea that it was taught to you when you were young and you kind of go, “Oh yeah, I know what that means.” But it’s the idea of putting that into action in situations where – not necessarily as a sacrifice but in situations where it could cause problems for you, putting others first in those moments is stronger than putting them before you in just a normal situation.

Kat: Right. Actually, WiseOldBaker on the main site had a really good comment on this. She said:

“The definition of bravery that I got from the series is this: A brave person is one who is willing to face a situation head on even though they know the outcome may be grim. I think that every person that has shown bravery in the story was willing to sacrifice something to reach their goal and that takes guts just as well. Lily and James sacrificed their lives to save Harry, Neville took a chance on losing friendships, and Hermione was sacrificing her school career to save the boys. In that sense all the acts of bravery in the story, though varied, seemed to be on equal footing to me. I never saw one person’s act more brave than another because in the end all of them have a chance at losing something or had lost something.”

I just thought it was a great comment.

Maya: Yeah, that’s truer than just putting others before yourself, because – this might sound very Slytherin-y, but sometimes just putting yourself before others is more important. You have to know, because you are just as important as everybody else. That’s at least what I believe, that just sacrificing yourself for others, being the martyr all your life, is kind of wrong. Because then what’s your life worth, really?

Noah: I just have a problem with the fact that sacrifice is so played up as so big in the series and the potential violence that you have to do to yourself to prove how much you love or to reflect – your love is basically remembered in as much as how much violence you are willing to bring yourself for that person. I think it’s a cultural thing, but it is kind of messed up when you think about it from that angle.

Rosie: I think there’s an important distinction there that you were saying that they are being brave to prove something, and I think it is the selflessness of the act that is the most important. If you were doing the brave deed to prove yourself as better than them, it wouldn’t count as much as if you were doing it purely out of love, which I think is what Jo really emphasizes.

Noah: Well, I don’t think Lily let herself die to prove a point or anything. I just think that it comes off in the series as if you have to – this is the mark of somebody who truly loves, and I don’t know if that is something that we should be defying or something we should really be celebrating. Or maybe it is, but…

Rosie: Allyhomora on the main site has a comment about this, and she or he says:

“I think moments of bravery in many cases within the HP series are spawned from moments of adrenaline. We have all heard the stories of mothers gaining extraordinary strength in a desperate situation, and I think that perhaps ‘true’ bravery is the kind which is anticipated rather than being spur-of-the-moment. I think the strength of the love protection being linked to Lily is for two reasons: the first is that she makes a decision to physically come between danger and Harry, whereas James is aiming his anger at Voldemort, rather than sacrificing himself directly to save Harry specifically. The second reason for the love protection being linked with only Lily’s act of sacrifice is that it is Snape’s love for her, and his promise to make up for his mistakes that he in turn plays a huge role in ultimately keeping Harry safe. Lily sacrifices her life for Harry and Snape does the same in honor of his love for Lily.”

Noah: Yeah again, sacrifice is important, but we should always think about the fact how love can never be separated from its counter death. There is something that bonds these two, and we’re going to talk about it a lot in the series, but they are like these two things interweaving throughout the entire series. Let’s move on to our next chapter discussion.

Kat: Okay, this week we are discussing Chapters 11 and 12 of Philosopher’s Stone. We start off at the beginning of Chapter 11 here, just having ended with the trio defeating the mountain troll. And I was just curious, what do you think they did with that troll?

Noah: Did they release it into the forest?

Maya: Vanished it.

Noah: Oh.

Kat: Vanished it into the non-being, right?

Maya: Which means into everything, and then all of Hogwarts would smell like troll all day.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Noah: I hope not because that’s troll cruelty. I’ll call it right now.

Kat: [sighs] Okay.

Noah: What they probably did is they vanished it into the air.

Kat: Probably.

Noah: Maybe an air pocket. [laughs]

Kat: But I mean, you can’t create air, so… [laughs]

Rosie: It must have come from somewhere. They probably just put it somewhere else that mountain trolls live.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, sent it back up to the mountains, right?

[Noah laughs]

p>Kat: So anyway, the trio become best friends because they defeated the troll, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion of what was being hidden underneath the trapdoor. He says, “The grumbly package from Gringotts.” And he’s slowly starting to put the pieces together. But here we are, it’s the beginning of November, it’s a cold blistery day and the trio is out in the courtyard when Snape kind of sees them and comes limping over. And Harry begins to wonder, why is he limping? So, later that evening, after their exchange in the courtyard where Snape takes Harry’s Quiddich Through the Ages book, Harry decides to go find Snape to try and get the book back from him, and he decides to go look in the staff room. So, Harry knocks and there’s no answer, so he just walks right into the room, of course, being a brave Gryffindor. He doesn’t care what he’s going to find. So first off, I was wondering, why isn’t the door locked? It’s a staff room, students shouldn’t be allowed in there.

Noah: Snape knows his reputation, I guess he doesn’t expect any students to wander into his office. [laughs]

Kat: But it’s not his office, it’s the staff room.

Noah: Oh.

Kat: It’s like the teacher’s lounge.

Maya: Ehh. [laughs]

Noah: Should have locked that door.

Kat: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Rosie: Especially if it’s such a private moment as well. It’s not just hanging out for a cup of coffee in the staff room, it’s getting someone to check out your leg. [laughs]

Kat: Right.

Noah: It’s probably got to stay open for the rest of the staff, because what are they going to think if he’s just locked in the staff room with Filch?

Kat: Yeah, but shouldn’t there be a password on the door or something?

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: That’s true.

Kat: Okay, so you bring up Filch, so my second question is: why is Filch helping Snape?

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Do we think Filch has any idea about what’s going on, what’s up on that third floor corridor, what’s protecting…

Noah: Oh, he certainly does, because doesn’t Snape have a comment to Filch about, “How are you going to watch all three heads at once?” about the dog.

Maya: Yeah, but maybe Filch doesn’t know what’s under the dog.

Kat: Yeah, maybe Filch just knows about Fluffy.

Maya: Yeah, but he would suspect, why would Fluffy be there?

Noah: I think he probably knows that at least something is being kept.

Rosie: I think all the professors probably know. I think all of the staff of Hogwarts probably know.

Kat: So, we trust Filch enough to not try and do anything with it? I mean, we know how badly he wants to be a wizard.

Rosie: But the Philosopher’s Stone wouldn’t actually give him any powers, it would just give him eternal life.

Kat: Well, he’d be powerful because he had it.

Noah: I think he’s accepted he can’t get past the dog and the numerous enchantments below, especially considering he’s not magic.

Kat: Okay. But still, why Filch? Why not go to the hospital wing, or go see Dumbledore?

Maya: Oh, because she wants to align Snape with evil, and Filch has from the beginning been really evil to them. We can’t say evil, but maybe really unkind to them.

Noah: No, that’s true. It’s completely a plot device. We’re sort of unconsciously assigning different characters, who we know are not evil, with evil. Snape, Filch – and this helps to make us think of him more evil. But in terms of the actual story itself, why didn’t he go to Dumbledore or Madam Pomfrey? Because I think he just wants to keep this as low key as possible.

Rosie: In terms of the evil discussion, there’s actually a good discussion of that going on in my forum, Rosie’s Roundtable on the forums. So, if you want to go and join in that, go over there.

Kat: Oh nice.

Noah: Shameless plug.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: That’s right, exactly. So, Harry quickly runs out of the room and upon getting back to the Gryffindor common room, he immediately shares everything he learned with Ron and Hermione. And I think this goes back to – slightly back to the conversation we had last week about is going – defeating a mountain troll really enough to bond the three? And what is it about them that Harry immediately trusts?

Noah: Well, it’s the mountain troll thing. I mean, he’s been talking to Ron from the very beginning already. I think when you’re eleven you’re excited to talk about with anyone, and you instantly decide who is going to be your best friend and who is not, so…

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: …that’s just the state of affairs, I guess.

Rosie: I’ve actually got a friendship discussion going on in my forum as well. [laughs]

Noah: Rosie! [laughs]

Rosie: Sorry!

Maya: When you’re eleven, it’s like, “Oh, be my best friend?” “Oh okay!” “Yay! Now we’re best friends!”

Noah: Then you actually are for years.

Maya: That’s how it works. Yeah. Or not.

Noah: That’s true.

Maya: Best friends do divorce when you’re eleven.

Kat: [laughs] That’s true.

Noah: And then, from LumosNight3:

“As we know, the ‘Harry Potter’ series is largely about getting past differences and various forms of discord, and I think this particular moment where we see the trio defeating the mountain troll at Halloween is no exception. In the chapters building up to this moment, we see both Harry and Ron expressing frustration over Hermione’s bossy, know-it-all attitude due to the various reasons you have all discussed on the podcast. This seems to be an instance where Jo has taken the larger over arching theme of the series and brought it down to the simple level of what friendship means. At the end of the chapter, we’re left with the statement that there are some things you can’t do without becoming friends, and beating a mountain troll is one of them. I see the real ‘troll’ in this instance as symbolic of the discord that happens when people tease one another or don’t listen as real friends do. This kind of friction is, like the mountain troll, ugly, powerful and just plain old dumb, without any justifiable basis, but at the end of the day, it can be won over with real friendship.”

Maya and Noah: Aww.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Good comment, LumosNight3. Okay, I’ll give it up. I mean, I guess a mountain troll is enough to bond you for life. Fine.

Rosie: A great comment from SnapeEscape on the forums is that Jo is realistic in the portrayal of friendship. It’s not idealized, it’s not all happy, best friends for life, nothing can tear us apart. There are moments when the relationships between the characters are wobbly and where the outcome seems to be blurry: will they make it up? Will they not? And it’s things like the heartbreaking row of the trio in the Forest of Dean all the way in the future in Deathly Hallows. The friendships have ups and downs, but they do have fun together and they have these challenges that they do kind of face as a unit, and that is the mark of true friendship. It’s overcoming the obstacles whether they are a mountain troll or whether they are just an argument amongst friends.

Noah: It’s almost like the love and death conversation. You can’t have happiness and friendship without the chaos that must create it.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: These are all the friendships – they’re like a matter of necessity.

Kat: So after this, they start slowly talking about what’s going on. But eventually it becomes bedtime and Harry tries to go to sleep, and it says right on the page that he is trying to clear his head and he’s having trouble clearing his head. And we learn later in the books that this is a practice of trying to learn Occlumency. So, do we think Voldemort is already somehow, someway inside of Harry’s head?

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: Looking through him?

Maya: His Horcrux is there, obviously, but he’s not since he’s not in his full form, Voldemort. He doesn’t have as much power, so he can’t kind of project images into Harry’s head or anything. But his presence is still there, I think.

Noah: I don’t think Harry is – sorry, I don’t think Voldemort is terribly interested in going inside Harry’s head right now. Because he doesn’t – as far as he’s aware, he doesn’t know that Harry knows anything about what’s going on. He does however want to kill Harry, as we know.

Maya: He’s already inside someone’s head, that’s enough. One head.

Noah: Oh, we know that he is unconsciously inside Harry’s head. But keep in mind that Voldemort doesn’t know that Harry is a Horcrux.

Maya: Yeah.

Rosie: I think it’s just that there’s an awful lot going on. Harry is only an eleven-year-old. He wouldn’t normally be faced with mountain trolls and professors who are having their legs ripped off by three-headed dogs.

[Everyone laughs]

Rosie: There is a lot to think about, whether you’ve got Voldemort in your head or not.

Noah: This is true.

Rosie: It would be troubling enough not to get sleep. [laughs]

Kat: No, that’s true.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Okay, I’ll give you that.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: So, then the next morning Harry wakes up and he’s having – it’s the day of his first Quidditch match for Hogwarts. And we get out there and we see that Dean has made a poster that says, “Harry for President,” and I’m so excited because this is proof that there is art at Hogwarts. And do you think that it’s a subject that’s taught or is it more like a Gobstones Club?

Noah: Well, as we know, Dean is a Muggle, so he is probably just kind of bringing this cool thing into…

Kat: Oh.

Noah: …a wizarding community.

Kat: Well he’s not a Muggle, he’s a Muggle-born.

Noah: That’s what I meant. Sorry if I offended anybody out there. But…

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Maya: Any Muggles. [laughs]

Noah: …he comes from the Muggle community, so all I’m saying is where art might be more prevalent there, maybe it’s less so in the wizarding world. Of course we get more and more instances of art being there, but I don’t believe it’s taught. Maybe an elective for seventh years, but they don’t really go for their seventh year, do they?

Kat: No, that’s true. I mean, yeah, we see people being artsy, like Luna with her jewellery and her hats and such, but…

Noah: We know that magic, magical spells, there’s certainly an art to it. I mean, Defense Against the Dark Arts and other stuff, but art for its own sake without magic in it I think people would find boring in the wizarding world.

Kat: Right. Okay. No, I see what you’re saying. Okay, so getting back to our discussion here.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: So, I briefly wanted to talk a little bit about the history of Quidditch. I don’t know how much you guys know about this. Do all of you have your Quidditch Through the Ages?

Maya: Yes. Actually, I do.

Kat: Oh good, okay.

Maya: I thought about that.

Kat: You did? Good. Glad we’re on the same wavelength.

[Maya laughs]

Kat: Okay, so according to Quidditch Through the Ages, the form of Quidditch that modern wizards play was first mentioned in the journals of Gertie Kettle, a local Queerditch March witch, who lived in the eleventh century. She wrote of a leather ball landing in her cabbage patch, as well as wizards zooming rocks around the pitch, trying to hit other players. The Snitch wasn’t introduced until sometime later, and is modeled after the common – well, at the time, but now protected – Golden Snidget. Barbaras Bragg, chief of the Wizards’ Council back in 1296 brought the Snidget to a Quidditch game and offered the capturer a hundred and fifty Galleons. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, and even now, we have Muggles that play Quidditch, so who would have thought? I thought it was a good little history lesson.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: You have to Snidget to win it. [laughs]

Rosie: I hope everyone was paying attention to that, as a little history lesson, if you’re planning to do the MuggleNet O.W.L.s, because I’m sure some of that would come up in Quidditch Through – some of the Quidditch Through the Ages things would come up in History of Magic.

Kat: Oh yes, absolutely.

Noah: When are the O.W.L.s? I have to study!

Kat: They actually started last week sometime. Has anyone taken any yet? I’m actually a little ashamed to admit that I only got an “Acceptable” on my Charms O.W.L. Not cool.

Noah: I got an “O” on every one of them.

Kat: Oh, you liar. You did not.

Noah: That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

[Kat and Noah laugh]

Kat: Did you take any yet, Rosie?

Rosie: No, I haven’t taken any yet, unfortunately, but I will definitely try to soon.

Kat: Okay. Well, go to MuggleNet, everyone who hasn’t taken them, like Rosie, and take your O.W.L.s. It’s really cool, actually.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Props to our development team for getting that done.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: Stuart and Keith and Caleb, good job.

Kat: That’s right. MNI, cool. But have any of you seen Muggle Quidditch? Because that’s really quite interesting.

Noah: Not only have I seen it, I’ve played it.

Maya: Really?

Rosie: The Quidditch World Cup is going to be held in Oxford, my hometown, next month, I think, so I’m looking forward to that.

Kat: Oh right, during the Olympics.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: The exhibition game. Cool. I was going to say you should go cheer on Team U.S.A., but you’ll probably be cheering on Team U.K., wouldn’t you?

Rosie: U.K., sorry. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah. No, that’s okay. That’s okay.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: That’s okay.

Maya: Why is there no Team Israel? I would have played. I don’t play sports. I would have played Quidditch, though.

Kat: Yeah. No, there’s four teams: the U.S., the U.K., France, and Australia. So…

Maya: That’s not fair. They should play more Quidditch.

Rosie: Maybe in the future.

Kat: Get a team together when you get to high school. There’s plenty…

Maya: Maybe they should officially put it in the Olympics.

Rosie: They really should.

Maya: That would be really cool.

Kat: I think that’s what they’re trying. They’re trying to get it to be a more serious sport, but…

Maya: They would – the Olympics would get so many more viewers.

Kat: That’s true.

Maya: So many more people would come.

Kat: Harry Potter fans, right?

Noah: You put them on jet packs and it’ll turn serious real quick.

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Okay, so back to the chapter, just as of a note, we noticed here that Hagrid comes to join them in the stands. Do you think these stands are magically reinforced? Because Hagrid is huge.

Noah: That’s just what I was going to say. They’re magically reinforced, of course.

Maya: Like the chair in the wedding. In Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

Kat: Oh, but he sits in the wrong one and breaks it anyway.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Right, okay.

Maya: Yeah, but…

Kat: Because he sits up in those stands quite often.

Maya: So, they must have just gone around the whole stands, just in case.

Kat: [laughs] Just in case.

Noah: And you know how high those are.

Rosie: The stands have to be fairly robust though, because they’re there all the year round, and how old are they? They must be fairly decent stands.

Maya: A few centuries old, probably.

Noah: And plus, that would be a terrible book if Hagrid just fell through at the very beginning.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: And you know how high those are in the air. That’s a terrible book.

Maya: [laughs] If he just got in and sat down, and all of the students would have died.

Kat: Just broke right through. Ouch. Okay, all right, I got it.

[Noah laughs]

Maya: Someone should write a fan fiction for that, or not.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: That sounds like an extraordinary “What if?” question.

Kat: Yes, it does, doesn’t it?

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: What if Hagrid had died in Chapter 12? I mean, 11. Yeah, right. Lovely.

Noah: That’s terrible. Let’s move on.

Kat: [laughs] Okay. So, we see a few fouls in the game, and then Seamus – who is a Muggle-born as well, much like Dean – starts screaming about soccer and a red card. And I was wondering that…

Maya: Wasn’t that Dean?

Noah: That was Dean, yeah.

Kat: Oh okay.

Noah: Seamus doesn’t know what soccer is. Actually, “football,” if we’re going to say it correctly.

Kat: Okay, well she says “soccer” in the book.

Noah: No, in the U.S. version.

Maya: That was in the American version.

Rosie: She says “football” in the book.

Kat: Oh, in your edition.

Maya: It depends what version you have.

Kat: That’s true.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Okay, so – anyway, I’m wondering how these students that were brought up in wizarding families, how do they not know about soccer? Isn’t it kind of everywhere in England? I mean, I’ve been there. I’ve seen that it’s everywhere.

Rosie: Definitely, especially right now.

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: How do Muggle children not know about Quidditch?

Kat: Well, because wizards are secret. Soccer/football is not a secret.

Maya: Yeah, but they don’t really want to educate themselves on Muggles.

Rosie: Yeah, wizards don’t pay attention to Muggle culture.

Noah: And it probably would seem terribly boring to a wizard child, wouldn’t it?

Maya: Yeah, that’s what I talked about when – on the recording I sent you, about how wizards don’t really care about Muggles. So, Muggles have an advantage of getting to do whatever they want, and nobody caring and stuff.

Noah: Ooh, yeah.

Kat: That’s true, that’s true.

Maya: Plus, they know math.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Noah: Nice.

Kat: They do. That’s right. Muggles do know math. [laughs] That’s true.

Rosie: But yeah, football would really be boring to wizards. I mean, they’re just running around a field kicking a ball around.

Kat: Yeah, but even…

Rosie: There’s no flag or anything.

Kat: But even that, shouldn’t they at least know what it is? Like I said, it’s a pretty large part of English culture in general.

Rosie: True.

Noah: I don’t know. The cultures, even within countries, are just completely split, and that’s how it’s been.

Maya: It’s the same thing when Ron was like, “You don’t know about Quidditch?! What?!”

Rosie: Or about the fairy tales.

Maya: Yeah. “How can you not know that? Every wizard knows that.”

Noah: Yeah.

Maya: Same thing.

Kat: Okay. So, suddenly Harry’s broom starts bucking, and he says it’s as though it’s going to throw him off. And Hermione, being the bright witch that she is, quickly realizes that somebody must be jinxing the broom. And what do you know, she sees good old Snape staring right up at the broom whispering something. So, she heads over and tries to stop him from hurting Harry, and in the process, who does she knock over? Quirrell. Here he is again in the background, just waiting to be revealed as the bad guy.

Noah: Yup.

Kat: Did anyone…

Maya: There’s a little problem here, because she knocks over Quirrell and then she sets fire to Snape’s robes, and then it takes him thirty seconds to realize it, and then Harry stops falling off his broom, or almost falling off his broom.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: But she doesn’t knock over Quirrell, does she? I thought that Snape knocks over Quirrell.

Noah: No, she does.

Maya: She does.

Kat: She does, she bumps into him and knocks him over.

Maya: That’s in the movie.

Rosie: Okay.

Maya: In the movie, Snape knocks him over.

Rosie: Ahh.

Maya: But here, there’s a delay when – with the curse when it stops working.

Noah: Oh, interesting point. Maybe Voldemort is, at this point, still trying to keep it going on his end even though Quirrell seemed to be the one who was first starting it. But then perhaps someone sits on Quirrell, the back of his head or something.

[Maya and Noah laugh]

Noah: Or at least that’s what I’m going to imagine.

Kat: Yeah, but I don’t think Voldemort was the one doing the magic. I think Quirrell was the one doing the magic, because what can Voldemort really do besides kind of stick out the back of his head?

Noah: And talk very evilly into his ear. I don’t know. [laughs]

Kat: Right, so is this a book error, or…

Noah: No, maybe it just takes a few seconds for the magic to wear off. I don’t know.

Rosie: Or for Harry to realize. It could just stop moving and then suddenly be jerking him around again. It doesn’t necessarily have to be kind of constantly bucking every single time.

Noah: Right.

Maya: Yeah, but forty seconds? That’s a long time.

Noah: You know what? I found another error in the next chapter, so we can really talk about the subtle mistakes in here. But that’s nothing to worry about too much, I would say.

Kat: Okay. So then, here we get is the first all-important Snitch grab. Harry, as we know, nearly swallows this first Snitch that he ever catches, and did this seem odd to anyone? Did anyone look at this and say, “Hmm, this is going to be significant”? Personally, I can’t imagine not choking on that Snitch if you were trying to catch it while flying and you accidentally caught it with your mouth. I don’t know.

Maya: Yeah, it’s a walnut, a walnut-sized ball sticking in your mouth.

Kat: Yeah.

Maya: Ugh. That’s not fun.

Noah: Going into gender politics for it, it’s just terrible that Harry is going around eating women. You don’t want to see that.

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: That’s a joke. Go on, Maya.

Maya: If I had been a Seeker, I would have probably caught it that same way, too. Which is why I wouldn’t have ever been a Seeker, but still.

Noah: You know why this happens? Because the Dursleys didn’t feed Harry when he was young.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Kat: So, he just eats everything that is flying in front of him?

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: He’s not Crabbe and Goyle.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Noah: He’s just – he’s really starved. But [laughs] anyway…

[Maya laughs]

Rosie: But that’s the thing, he did almost choke on it. He has to cough for it to fall out into his hand, so…

Noah: Yeah. I mean, he certainly wasn’t trying to do this. He wasn’t going mouth-wide, “I’m going to dive in and this is going to be a great idea.” I’m sure he was…

Kat: I know, but how does it end up – how does he end up catching it in his mouth? I mean, he obviously must have had…

Rosie: He just…

Maya: He flies into it.

Noah: Yeah.

Maya: But maybe he’s just used to eating really not fresh stuff with the Dursleys.

Noah: That’s right.

Maya: So, that’s how he managed to not choke.

Noah: They throw a few nuts under the door, walnut-sized objects, and he just…

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: Oh, poor Harry.

Noah: Yeah.

[Maya laughs]

Kat: Okay. All right, so after he proclaims, very excitedly, that he caught the Snitch, everybody leaves the match and the trio is in Hagrid’s hut, chatting with him. And I want to thank SnapeEscape on the forums for pointing this little tidbit out. In the book, it says – Harry mentions Fluffy and Hagrid says that he bought him off a Greek chappie that he met in the pub last year. And SnapeEscape said, “Oh look, it’s Cerberus!” because Cerberus was Greek.

Maya: Oh right!

Noah: Yup.

Rosie: I think that’s definitely J.K.R. putting a little hint to Cerberus there, yeah.

Maya: She’s a genius.

Noah: I love all the subtle homages to classical culture. Isn’t that great?

Maya: Yeah. Do we have to point out every time that she’s a genius?

[Rosie laugsh]

Kat: I think we do.

Rosie: Just the whole book.

Kat: I think we’re obligated to point out her genius as often as possible.

[Rosie laughs]

Maya: Yeah, just maybe every episode of Alohomora! should be like, “Hi! J.K. Rowling is a genius. Bye!”

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Perfect. That sounds wonderful. [laughs] So yeah, I thought that was a great little bit, and thanks again for SnapeEscape for pointing that out to me. But then, right here at the very end of the chapter, while they’re talking, Hagrid lets slip that Nicolas Flamel is involved. Did anyone pick up on this the first time through? Because, as we know, the name had been mentioned before. Harry read it out loud on the Hogwarts Express.

Noah: From the Chocolate Frog card.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: But what stunned me more was the fact that Hagrid always is doing this. I mean, I love the guy, but…

[Maya laughs]

Noah: …quite frankly, he can’t keep a secret. And I don’t think it’s a matter of intelligence. It’s a matter of just – he doesn’t…

Maya: Care.

Noah: He doesn’t…

Maya: He doesn’t notice.

Noah: He doesn’t notice what he’s doing, so he kind of comes off as slightly…

Kat: Dense?

Noah: Slightly dense, slightly dim, unfortunately. And that’s the – because he kind of has this – he’s the village character, I guess. That’s kind of his role. Great guy, but…

Maya: Dense.

Noah: …he’s got to keep a lid on that.

[Rosie laughs]

Kat: Yeah, I mean, he does have loose lips, that’s true. But is he drunk most of the time? Do we think that’s part of the problem?

Maya: No.

Noah: [laughs] I think Potter Puppet Pals thinks that.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah.

Maya: Hagrid is not drunk. I don’t think Hagrid is drunk most of the time. I think he’s just like that in real life. Because we know when he’s drunk. We know, from Book 6. But just one question: When you read the book for the first time, did you know who Nicolas Flamel was? Because he’s actually not just a Harry Potter character. He’s actually famous.

Rosie: Yeah, I knew a bit about the Philosopher’s Stone before I was reading it, so I did know about Flamel. So, when I saw his name in that chapter, I didn’t recognize it as it was mentioned from earlier. I recognized it because I knew a bit about Nicolas Flamel.

Maya: There’s a whole book series now about Nicolas Flamel. I was told it was good. I didn’t read it, but…

Kat: Yeah, my niece is reading it right now. She said it’s great.

Rosie: Really? What series is this?

Maya: Nicholas Flamel: The Alchemist in some kind of order.

Rosie: Okay.

Maya: I don’t know.

Noah: Well, if any fan would like to pick that up and note the distinctions between the two, or make connections, you can always go to Alohomora! Forums.

Kat: That’s right.

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: That’s great. So, that’s the end of Chapter 11 right there. The trio learns that someone named Nicolas Flamel is involved, but they don’t know who he is, so…

Noah: It’s a great mystery.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: All right, now it’s time for Chapter 12, “The Mirror of Erised.” So, the chapter begins with Fred and George throwing enchanted snowballs at the back of Quirrell’s head.

Maya: At Voldemort!

Noah: And we know now that that’s at Voldemort’s head. So, think if you’re Voldemort at the back of Quirrell’s head, just feeling this – just, “Oww! Oww! Got to take over the world! This really sucks, right now!”

[Everyone laughs]

Maya: Fred and George would never have done that if they had known Voldemort was there.

Kat: No, see, I actually disagree.

Maya: Or would they?

Kat: I think they would.

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: Because Fred and George poke so much fun at Voldemort and everything having to do with the Dark Arts throughout the entire series. I think this is beautiful.

Noah: No!

Kat: It’s perfectly Fred and George. I love it. It’s great.

Noah: But Kat, you’ve got to remember: they’re thirteen right now. They know – Voldemort has been a common name in the household for their entire lives…

Maya: Thirteen years.

Noah: …and they’re not going to…

Rosie: Correction: “Voldemort” itself wouldn’t have been a common name.

Noah: That’s true.

Rosie: They’re not allowed to say it.

Noah: I mean a common idea, at least.

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Noah: They would not – the funny business would end there if they’re throwing snowballs at Voldemort’s head. I would say that’s probably a bad idea. [laughs]

Kat: No, see – no, I think it’s perfectly Fred and George. I mean…

Noah: You think it’s…

Kat: You-No-Poo? Come on.

Noah: Kat, but they’re thirteen. You think in full knowledge of Voldemort’s head being on the back of Quirrell’s – in whatever we can say he is – they would still do this? Really?

Kat: Absolutely, they’re Gryffindors. They don’t care. They’re brave.

Noah: I completely disagree. I think if Voldemort – they would not do that. Anyway, we can…

Maya: I could imagine that in the final battle, if they had the chance, they would have thrown snowballs at him. They would have done that, I think.

Kat: Absolutely. That’s what I’m saying.

Noah: Okay.

Maya: But yeah, maybe as thirteen-year-olds…

Noah: I don’t think as thirteen they would want to do that. Maybe…

Rosie: I think it’s a moot point that – I mean, if anyone knew that Voldemort was there…

[Maya and Noah laugh]

Rosie: …then they wouldn’t be standing there throwing snowballs. They would be trying to get Voldemort…

Noah: [laughs] I think they’d just go to Dumbledore if they knew it!

Kat: That’s probably true, okay.

[Maya laughs]

Noah: So, we know it’s a very stormy number of days, or at least that’s how the chapter opens, and it’s a terrible winter storm. Hogwarts is covered in snow, and we get this line about how, “the few owls that managed to battle their way through the stormy sky to deliver mail had to be nursed backed to health by Hagrid.” And I just thought…

Maya: Poor owls!

Noah: …animal cruelty, anyone? These animals again – I know the mail delivery men – you go in any storm, but now they’re having owls do it? I’d say a certain storm at a certain point requires hand delivery by a mail man, who frankly can just kind of use Floo powder.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah, why doesn’t…

Kat: But even in the U.S. postal system, the mail has to be delivered. They don’t stop just because there’s a storm or there’s snow or anything, and I feel like owls have kind of an obligation to deliver the mail no matter what.

Noah: Yeah, but that owl…

Rosie: Why doesn’t the postal service use the Floo Network? I mean, you could…

Noah: Just send things.

Rosie: …send the post to somewhere closer and then send an owl for the last bit.

Kat: Yeah, but we’ve already shown several times that wizards generally don’t care about this kind of thing. They don’t see it as being cruel or unusual.

Noah: And the owls probably don’t either. It’s just kind of learnt behaviour over centuries.

Kat: Well, yeah. Plus, they’re used to living outside so they’re used to going through storms and all that stuff.

Rosie: I guess it’s kind of like homing pigeons. They have to find their way home eventually as well.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: In any weather.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: And maybe the owls even take pride in being able to do it in any kind of weather, because that’s their business.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah. They are very proud creatures.

Noah: Still, I mean, they should be using in the Floo Network themselves. Wobble through.

Maya: [laughs] Can owls use the Floo Network?

Noah: I don’t see why not.

Kat: I mean, they can’t speak.

Noah: But they can – they have a degree of – they’re smarter than normal owls, because they can – they take the money and then…

Maya: Yeah, but then…

Rosie: But they can’t say, “Diagon Alley.” [laughs]

Kat: Right. Yeah. [laughs]

Maya: If they used the Floo Network, then what would be the point of using owls? They could just – wizards could just throw letters into the Floo Network.

Noah: [laughs] I was thinking about throwing the owl into the…

Kat: [laughs] Oh Noah!

[Maya laughs]

Noah: “Diagon Alley!”

Kat: Talk about animal cruelty.

Maya: And that’s not animal abuse?

Noah: No, because it’s not flying through the storm. It’s a moot point.

Maya: Yeah, just throwing an owl into a fire…

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah.

Maya: …and letting it go through a few sooty…

Noah: It’s a magically enchanted fire.

Rosie: Yeah, but think about the state of Harry when he gets out in Knockturn Alley.

[Maya laughs]

Rosie: Poor owls.

Noah: [laughs] Yeah. Well, what’s my next comment?

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: So, the trio come out of Potions class and they immediately run into Hagrid, once again. And the trio tell him that they’ve been looking for Nicolas Flamel’s name in all the library books, and he says, [impersonating Hagrid] “You what? I’ve told ya – drop it. It’s nothin’ to you what that dog’s guardin’.” [back to normal voice] And I was just wondering – Hagrid, again, not very – not the greatest idea. If you really want to get somebody off your tracks or off the track of what’s being hidden, you don’t tell eleven-year-olds that, [impersonating Hagrid] “Oh, it’s no business to you. You best not be looking there.” [laughs]

Kat: Yeah, he obviously doesn’t understand the concept that telling someone not to do something will only lead them to do exactly the thing you wish they wouldn’t. So, I mean…

Maya: Especially when they’re eleven.

Kat: Yeah, I mean…

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: …despite the fact that he’s around kids all day, I don’t think Hagrid is one to absorb that type of lesson.

Noah: Is it fair to say that his social skills have been slightly stunted ever since he was expelled from Hogwarts?

Kat: Yes.

Noah: Because making – being made gamekeeper…

Maya: Ever since he was born to a giantess, maybe?

Noah: That contributes, too. He’s the – in a way, a foreigner to the students, because of his difference of abilities and obviously his size, but also because he was expelled at a young age. He just didn’t have the close relationships in his upper teenage years, I guess – outside of the Mauraders. But he was always an outsider.

Kat: I mean, it’s kind of like a home-schooled student being pulled out after third grade and not really developing any other further friendships or social skills whatsoever.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: Not to say that home-schooled students don’t get to have friends or anything.

Kat: Well – right, exactly. I’m just saying that they’re not in that environment every day, all day, kind of learning the social ways of the school itself.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: That’s also probably why he can’t lie, why he’s such a pure spirit, because he never grew up to learn the natural deceptions of adulthood or the social skills.

Maya: To learn that the truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must be treated with caution.

Noah: Exactly, Maya. He’s just – he’s going to openly say it to everyone.

Kat: Right.

Noah: So, that’s why he instantly is very friendly with these eleven-year-old kids because it’s just – it’s very natural for him to talk openly.

Kat: Mhm. He’s just a very honest person, I think.

Noah: Which is great. We love Hagrid.

Kat: We do.

Maya: Wait, what House was Hagrid in?

Noah: Gryffindor.

Kat: Mhm.

Maya: Why wasn’t he in Hufflepuff?

Noah: Ooh.

Maya: He’s such a Hufflepuff. He’s honest and loyal and kind.

Kat: But I think his bravery, above all else, is his defining characteristic. In the same way that Hermione is brave, he doesn’t really care. Well, with the exception of what happens to him in Book 4, but he really doesn’t care about what people think about him.

Rosie: Mhm.

Noah: And if we want to say that your sorting is a matter of your values – he really worshipped James, I believe. James and Sirius and the Marauders and people willing to do brave, exciting, adventurous things.

Kat: Right, except that Hagrid was sorted years before the Marauders arrived.

Maya: [laughs] Yeah, but he probably…

Noah: I’m just saying he is of the temperament to be very worshipy of these people.

Kat: Right.

Noah: Look at Dumbledore. Look at his praise for Dumbledore.

Kat: Yeah. But that speaks to me of a Slytherin because that’s them being in awe of power, wanting power, wanting to surround themselves with powerful people.

Maya: Hagrid doesn’t want power.

Kat: No, but…

Maya: Hagrid lives in a tiny hut with a dog and takes care of everybody else.

Kat: Right, but…

Noah: That’s true.

Kat: …I was thinking of what Noah was saying, about how he’s in awe of all these people and…

Noah: It could be your virtues that sort you, really.

Kat and Maya: Yeah.

Noah: Or – wow, all these houses are really blending, aren’t they?

Kat: They really are.

Maya: But that’s a Hufflepuff trait again, admiring everyone and – not admiring them, but more like putting everyone before you, like you said at the beginning, and kind of…

Kat: Being selfless.

Maya: Yeah, being selfless, exactly. And loving everybody. [laughs]

Noah: And being willing to do a tough job. That’s certainly Hufflepuff. For being…

Kat: Right, hard-working. Yup.

Noah: And that’s definitely Hagrid, working the fields there. But…

Maya: I always thought he should have been a Hufflepuff.

Noah: Well, if you’d – if any fans are listening and want to comment on this, feel free to go to the forums and we’ll figure out just what Hagrid is, and we’ll discuss that on the next episode.

Kat: Exactly. Good.

Rosie: Definitely.

Noah: So, page 199: Ron actually introduces Harry to some Wizard’s Chess, which we learn is exactly like Muggle chess, except “the figures are alive.” That’s a direct quote from the book.

Maya: How do they come back? How do they come back after they killed them?

Noah: The chess pieces?

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: I think, when they do fight each other, they’re only kind of tattered. I’m not sure that they’re completely obliterated.

Maya: But he said…

Rosie: I’m sure you could magically put them back together again.

Noah: That too.

Maya: But when Ron went into the giant chess set, and then the queen or somebody smashed one of the pieces, he was like, “Oh, this is just like real chess.” Like real Wizard Chess.

Kat: Yeah, that’s what Reparo is for, right?

Noah: Yeahh, I’m sure they all magically come together in some form at the end of the game, but we know from a quote in the book that Ron’s pieces looked really tattered, or maybe it was Seamus’s set. So, after a while they kind of get these battle scars, which I’m sure is true.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: And we know that they kind of talk to each other about the best strategies. Seamus’s pieces keep telling Harry what to do and they don’t quite trust him. So, this is problematic to me that we have these enchanted piece-like things that think, almost like they’re alive and forced to battle each other at the mercy of eleven-year-olds who use them. So…

[Maya and Noah laugh]

Maya: Ouch.

Noah: Yeah. Again, sentient creatures that Jo has created – kind of troubling, the extent to which they’re damaged and they like to damage each other.

Kat: I don’t think they’re sentient creatures, though. I think they’re just charmed to think. It’s not like they’re…

Maya: Like the Hat.

Kat: Yeah.

Maya: The Hat goes on fire.

Kat: Right.

Maya: He doesn’t care.

Kat: Right. I mean, they’re not departed souls and they’re not like Inferi or anything. I think that they’re just clever chess pieces that have been charmed to learn from the user, much like a wand.

Noah: Sure, I’m just saying there’s a lot of ambiguity here.

Kat: Yeah. No, it’s true.

Rosie: It always reminded me a bit of Jumanji. [laughs]

Kat: Oh yeah.

Noah: The pieces?

Rosie: Yeah, things that move around the board by themselves.

Noah: [laughs] Yeah.

Kat: A lot less ominous than Jumanji, though, huh?

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]

Noah: I think it’s probably fair to say they can’t think about anything other than the chess game. That’s probably everything that consumes their lives.

Kat: Oh yeah.

Noah: You couldn’t just talk to them about the day’s news, I’d assume.

Kat: No, probably not.

Noah: Yeah. So…

Rosie: Yeah, they don’t talk. They’re not intelligent in that way. They have to be ordered when they move. It’s just that…

Noah: No, but Rosie, they do talk. There’s a line in the books about how they’re talking to Harry, giving him advice about what to do. “Don’t move him. Move that one. We can afford to lose that one.”

Rosie: Oh yeah. I forgot about that.

Maya: “Don’t send me there, can’t you see his knight? Send him, we can afford to lose him.”

Noah: Yes.

Rosie: Okay.

Noah: So you see, problematic for me, but we’ll…

Maya: Yeah, why am I reading the quotes?

Noah: Because you’re a great guest fan, Maya.

Kat: That’s right, you are.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Maya: Yay! [laughs]

Noah: So page 200, Christmas morning. Harry awakes, and he has presents for the first time. He has a Weasley sweater from Molly, which I sort of took to be a little bit of foreshadowing that he’s going to be a Weasley himself one day, or at least, part of the Weasley family.

Maya: I never thought of that.

Noah: That’s at least…

Rosie: I don’t think I saw it as foreshadowing. I just thought it was nice and accepting. Harry doesn’t have a family and Mrs. Weasley knows that. She wants him to be included in her own.

Kat: Yeah, I agree with that.

Maya: And eventually he is.

Kat: Yeah, I think Molly is just a really super-loving, caring mother and just feels for Harry. Yeah.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: Right, so we all…

Kat: But I can see what you mean by the foreshadowing.

Noah: All right, so we all agree that it’s foreshadowing. So, going on…

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: And then he gets from Aunt Petunia and Vernon – he gets a nice letter talking about, “We’ve received your message. Here’s your gift.” and it’s just attached to a 50 pence piece. So, Rosie can tell us exactly what that can buy you.

Maya: How much is that?

Rosie: Less than a packet of sweets.

Noah: Yup. So…

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Noah: That’s about how much they care about him, it would seem.

Maya: Less than a packet of sweets?

Noah: But it’s the thought that counts.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: This one seems to be more of a negative thought, but that’s not important.

Kat: Well, it’s better than the dirty sock.

Rosie: Definitely.

Kat: I would take 50 pence over a dirty sock.

Noah: You wouldn’t if you were Dobby.

Maya: Why did they give him a sock? They could have just given him nothing.

Kat: Because they hate him.

Rosie: A 50 pence piece, within children’s literature, especially in England, is really interesting because there’s a book series – and it used to be a TV series as well – called The Queen’s Nose, which is about a 50 pence coin that if you rubbed the Queen’s nose, you got wishes granted.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Ooh.

Rosie: So, it has its own little bubble of literature around it.

Noah: Was that written prior to this book?

Rosie: It was, yes.

Noah: Okay.

Kat: Huh.

Maya: So, did Harry rub the money…

Rosie: [laughs] Maybe.

Maya: …on someone’s nose?

Kat: No, I think he gave it to Ron, and then maybe if Ron had seen the series – but oh, I guess the cultures don’t clash, so he would have never seen the series, so he wouldn’t know…

Rosie: No.

Kat: …that he could be rich from a 50-cent piece.

Rosie: No.

Maya: Maybe if – since Ron is the king, right?

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Maya: And then he marries Hermione, and she’s the queen – yeah, because they sing “Ron Weasley is Our King” – and then he marries Hermione, and she’s the queen and then maybe if he rubbed the money on her nose…

[Everyone laughs]

Maya: …then he would have gotten his wish.

Kat: Maybe.

Noah: That is quite silly.

Maya: [laughs] I don’t know.

Rosie: The image of the Queen is on the 50 p coin.

Maya: You said you liked crazy theories. [laughs]

Noah: Here’s an aside: Draco Malfoy would be having a field day with this conversation right now.

Kat: Yeah, he would. [laughs]

Rosie: He would. [laughs]

Noah: That Ron is getting very excited to see this 50 pence piece.

Kat: That’s true.

[Maya laughs]

Rosie: But it’s very sweet.

Kat: It is very sweet. It’s very kind of Harry to give it to Ron.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Noah: And there’s one other gift, and as we know, it is the Invisibility Cloak left by Dumbledore, who chooses not to sign his name because he’s just mysterious. And the note says, the note reads – does someone have that quote ready?

Kat: Yup, right here. It says:

“Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well. A very merry Christmas to you.”

Noah: All right, so I had a ton of interesting thoughts about this. I’d like to start with – we know now, having read all the books, that Dumbledore took the Cloak because he realized it was a Deathly Hallow, and he wanted to study it. But do you think he feels eternally guilty having taken it from them when perhaps they needed it the most, to possibly save themselves from Voldemort?

Kat: I’m not sure if he feels guilty, but I think he’s definitely ashamed at the fact that he wanted to look at it so bad that, yeah, he had it when they could have used it. Although, like I said, I don’t know if it is guilty. I think he feels more ashamed about the way he felt about it.

Maya: That’s another one of Dumbledore’s mistakes. He still has that…

Noah: Desire.

Maya: …the Hallows in mind. Yeah.

Noah: This reckless desire for the Hallows, which sometimes steps in the way of his logic.

Kat: Mhm.

Maya: Yeah. And by the way, in the movies, they say “Happy Christmas.” I was always wondering, do you say “Happy Christmas” in the U.K.? Seriously.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: I was like – really?

Rosie: Yeah, we do.

Noah: The British do, yeah, Maya.

Rosie: Do you guys not?

[Maya laughs]

Noah: They also…

Maya: I don’t know, I’ve always heard just “Merry Christmas.”

Noah: They also eat a lot of the…

Maya: And plus, we don’t have Christmas. We don’t have Christmas, we have Hanukkah.

Rosie: That’s what I wanted to talk about, actually. The wizarding community still seems to be…

Maya: Yeah, religion.

Rosie: …kind of inherently Christian.

Noah: Yeah, and…

Maya: Maybe just in Britain.

Noah: Yeah, sure. Maybe in other schools, like in Durmstrang, it’s slightly different, but it would seem that at least within these books it’s only Christmas. And that’s fine. I think it’s been the answer to a lot of people who read religion in the series, and they say, “Oh, look at the fact that they are actually celebrating Christmas here. This is a Christian work deep down.” But then again, we’re just trying to accurately…

Rosie: They celebrate pagan things as well.

Noah: They celebrate pagan things as well. The whole idea of magic, the whole idea of Lily’s sacrifice at the beginning. Yes, it could be a Christ metaphor, but then again you have a woman being the sacrificial person and the spirit that kind of overrides the whole thing, and that seems more pagan…

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: …because it’s more feminine. There are so many different ways you can spin it, and then at the end of the day, we’re trying to – Jo is capturing a real school with students in the U.K., an exciting time. They’re going to celebrate Christmas. That’s…

Rosie: But that ties into our football discussion from earlier. The whole idea that if it’s borrowing culture from just England in general then, yeah, maybe wizards should have known about football because it’s something that is so inherently part of the English culture.

Noah: A big part of the culture.

Kat: Right.

Noah: So, I guess there is something to be said by the fact that the celebrations of Christmas seem to be the only things that are tied between the two communities that seem very, very similar.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: But if there was a wizarding school – like in Israel. I always thought about that – what would they celebrate? How would it be different?

Kat: Well, your religions and your holidays, I would imagine. The wizarding world is only as different as the people in the schools, so…

Noah: Right.

Maya: The Jewish School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

[Rosie laughs]

Maya: That would be cool.

Kat: There you go.

Noah: Maya, I’m Jewish – and this is kind of an aside and it doesn’t have to be a long conversation – but do you see magic anywhere in Judaism, or do you see any kind of ties between the two faiths at all?

Maya: Well, obviously what I think is really kind of stupid is when – sorry, is when religious people are like, “Oh no, magic! You can’t read Harry Potter because of the magic.” But isn’t God kind of magic? And that’s…

Rosie: Yeah, I know.

Noah: Yeah, it would seem so.

Maya: I don’t know. Why would they…

Rosie: I work in a bookshop in my hometown, and when we had Deathly Hallows being released, there were people who bought boxes of books to burn.

Maya: What?

Rosie: Because they were Fundamental Christian and thought…

Maya: Well, that gives her more money.

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah, it gave us more money, but it was just such a waste.

Noah: Absolutely.

Rosie: And I just don’t understand how people can’t see fiction as fiction.

Kat: And if you don’t care about – I mean, if you’re that against it – personally, the things that I’m against – yeah, I just kind of ignore it. I’m not a wasteful person, and I feel like that’s just hateful.

Rosie: Mhm.

Maya: Yeah, I wouldn’t buy – I don’t buy certain books that I don’t like and burn them, even though sometimes I feel the need to, but I don’t.

Noah: I can understand where it’s coming from. Harry Potter has become such a cultural phenomenon that if people were legitimately concerned that it came with the symbolism of witchcraft and this affected readers on an unconscious level, then I could see people getting a little upset. The truth of the matter is that Harry Potter has been ingrained in us so much that we do identify with a lot of the value systems in it, but I don’t think you can limit all of those to either any one faith or any one point of view.

Rosie: No. They’re general things. They’re general messages about love, about bravery, about all of that kind of thing that are inherently human, not…

Noah: Which all faiths have in some degree.

Kat: Right, exactly.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Okay, so getting back to Dumbledore and the Invisibility Cloak.

Noah: Right, I have some more thoughts about it. The fact that we know that the Cloak is passed down by father to son or mother/father to child, it’s interesting here that the inheritance cycle is continued, but Dumbledore is the one who gives the Cloak to Harry. So, I just thought it was really interesting that there is kind of a law of inheritance of objects here in the magical world that Dumbledore seems to be subscribing to. I guess James probably left the Cloak for Harry in his will, maybe?

Kat: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, but then why wouldn’t the Ministry – maybe the Ministry just assumed that it got blown up with the house.

Noah: Perhaps. No, but if they knew…

Maya: Did the Ministry know about the Cloak?

Noah: They didn’t know it was a Deathly Hallow.

Kat: No, because most people don’t believe in that, so what I’m saying is they probably just thought it was a normal old invisibility cloak with the charm on it…

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: …and it got blown up in the house, so why worry about it?

Noah: I’m sure that’s true.

Rosie: And even if they did know that Dumbledore had it, they would have trusted Dumbledore to keep it in his possession and pass it on to Harry when the time was right.

Noah: Because they…

Maya: If it had been in the house, would it have been blown up?

Kat: No, I think they’re – well, with the stupid exception of Harry snapping the Elder Wand in half, I would like to say that they’re probably pretty invincible.

Noah: Well, not “they,” as the Deathly Hallows separates it from all other invisibility cloaks. I’d say…

Kat: I meant the Hallows in general, yeah.

Noah: We know that…

Maya: You can just snap it in half, the Wand.

Noah: The Wand.

Maya: So, why not the Cloak?

Noah: If you’re the master of the wand…

Rosie: Isn’t it one of the qualities of the Cloak that it doesn’t tarnish?

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: It doesn’t tarnish, and it can reflect spells to some degree, right?

Rosie: Yeah, so it’s got kind of an in-built security system.

Noah: Defense. Yeah, so I think it would have been fine.

Kat: Yeah, I think so too.

Maya: So, you can’t ruin it. You can’t do anything to it ever.

Kat: No, I mean…

Rosie: You could cut it up, but you wouldn’t want to.

Noah: Where does Frodo throw the Ring at the end of the…

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: In Mount Doom?

Maya: Oh no, don’t tell me! I’m reading it this summer, don’t tell me.

Noah: Oh my.

[Maya laughs]

Noah: Well, you can throw the Cloak over Mount Doom…

Kat: [laughs] Oh okay, perfect.

Noah: …if you want to destroy it.

Rosie: And what? Hide Mount Doom?

[Everyone laughs]

Kat: I think Mount Doom is already gone though, so…

Noah: [laughs] Anyway…

Kat: Anyway – okay.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: What else then? Okay. Even more on the Cloak: We know the whole mentality of the Invisibility Cloak is to kind of hide from Death, or to save yourself from it and not go off chasing it, and I was wondering, is this idea of the Cloak counterintuitive to the ideology of Gryffindor? Which is to say you’re always facing death for your loved ones, so is…

Maya: But hide from it?

Noah: Yeah, the Cloak seems to be a way of hiding from it, isn’t this right?

Maya: But that’s the opposite of Gryffindor.

Noah: That’s what I’m saying. Isn’t…

Maya: Hiding from Death.

Noah: So, isn’t the Cloak the opposite of Gryffindor in mentality?

Maya: Oh, I thought you meant that it represents Gryffindor.

Noah: No, I’m saying, isn’t it counterintuitive to Gryffindor thoughts?

Maya: Yeah, it is. But when – she says he hid from Death, but she’s saying it’s okay, and that’s the whole opposite of what she’s been saying all of the seven books. She’s saying it’s okay. Death is okay.

Rosie: But I think it’s important to note that whenever anything important happens, whenever Harry faces his actual enemies, the Cloak is always taken off. He’ll use it to get to a place or to achieve an end, but when he has to face…

Maya: [clears throat] Slytherin.

Rosie: [laughs] Yeah. When he has to face the actual battles, he will do it without hiding.

Noah: He will do it, yeah.

Kat: That’s true. He uses it more as a device to get him to that final part where he can be brave because if he didn’t have the Cloak, it wouldn’t enable him to get to that point, to show his bravery or his courage. That’s true.

Noah: Yup. Just something I want to throw out there, seemed interesting. So then, after the Christmas gifts have been delivered, Harry and Ron make it to the feast, and it is quite a feast. There’s tons of different food which, Rosie, you’re probably more familiar with than anybody else here.

[Rosie laughs]

Noah: They’re eating – how do you pronounce – chipolata?

Rosie: Yeah, chipolata.

Noah: Chipolata, crumpets…

Rosie: It’s a kind of sausage.

Noah: …trifle…

Rosie: Yeah. Do you guys not have trifle?

Noah: We don’t, really.

Kat: Nope.

Maya: No, not here.

Rosie: Hmm.

Noah: So, I think a lot of Americans read the series – they saw this and they associated all the food with the magical world, but this is actually pretty common U.K. fare.

Maya: British food.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: Do you know the Harry Potter Unofficial Cookbook?

Noah: Of course we do. Yeah, we feature it constantly on the site.

Kat: Dinah.

Maya: They just translated it to Hebrew, and I wanted to buy it, and I was like, “Mom, please!” And then she looked at it and was like, “Oh no, that’s just normal – just regular recipes.”

Rosie: “It’s just food.” [laughs]

Maya: “Why do you want that?”

Kat: Exactly.

Maya: [laughs] Yeah. Just food.

Noah: I was kind of thinking about the food, and I was wondering if there was some way we could read into it and see – take a little bit more. I know there was a silver – Percy is eating a slice of turkey and there was a silver piece in it, and I was wondering if there’s any kind of traditional story of there being…

Rosie: Oh yes.

Noah: Is there? Oh!

Rosie: Yeah, it’s a tradition that goes back to the Victorian period to hide a coin or other kind of gift…

Noah: Yeah, really?

Rosie: …within a meal. It’s meant to be lucky. It’s meant to be a good thing supposedly.

Kat: Right, that’s what I’ve heard too, yeah.

Rosie: Yeah. Most people don’t do that these days, but Hogwarts is one for tradition, so…

Kat: Well, money is really dirty.

Rosie: Yeah. [laughs] I would say they washed it first.

Noah: And this is Rowling’s homage to that era and text.

Rosie: Yeah.

Noah: It’s so cool.

Rosie: It’s definitely kind of Dickensian, that kind of…

Noah: Right. I’m so glad you threw that out.

Maya: Malfoy would have liked that. Malfoy would have liked to be there, [laughs] to tease them for finding coins in their food.

Kat: Mhm.

Rosie: But if it’s normal for – if it’s a normal tradition within the wizarding world as well, Malfoy would probably want to find the silver Sickle. He would think of himself as better than anyone else, and would want it.

Kat: That’s true.

Maya: Yeah, like, “Oh, you probably needed that coin. Good, you got it,” or something.

Rosie: True.

Maya: I don’t know.

Noah: “Here’s another turkey.”

Maya: I’m not as clever as Malfoy. I wouldn’t…

Noah: “Would you like to check the gravy?”

[Everyone laughs]

Noah: Anyway – and at the high table with the staff, we have Hagrid drinking his wine quite heavily, and he, for whatever reason, kisses McGonagall on the cheek, who proceeds to giggle.

[Everyone laughs]

Maya: Oh, McGonagall.

Noah: The Hagrid/McGonagall ship, I have not seen any of, but what an interesting pairing that not a fan has brought up, but Jo has brought up to us. Rosie, have you ever seen any pairings of those two characters?

Rosie: Not personally, but I’m sure they’re out there. [laughs]

Maya: I’ll take that. Go to the fan fiction center of MuggleNet…

[Everyone laughs]

Maya: …and submit your fan fiction…

Rosie: Thank you very much, Maya. [laughs]

Maya: …of Hagrid and McGonagall. Thank you.

Kat: Listen to this one! Yeah. Tagging the website.

Noah: We didn’t plug ourselves. Thanks, Maya.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah.

Noah: We need you to do that.

Rosie: I think that moment is more to say that McGonagall was probably drinking as well.

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, and I think it speaks to her fun-loving nature, because I feel like – yes, we know her as this uptight, kind of strict teacher, but again, we learn on Pottermore that she has a heart, she feels, she cares.

Rosie: Yeah.

Kat: So, I think that this is just a glimpse into her softer side.

Rosie: Especially…

Kat: Albeit the drunk side, but…

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Noah: How much drinking is at Hogwarts? I think we’re going to see a lot of it as the books go on.

Kat: Yes, we are.

Noah: Which is fine.

Maya: Especially Hagrid.

Noah: [imitating Hagrid’s voice] Hagrid.

[Kat and Maya laugh]

Maya: And Firewhiskey.

Kat: Mhm.

Noah: [laughs] Oh, Hagrid. So then, wrapping up the chapter, Harry takes out his cloak, he goes to the Restricted Section, looking for a book about Nicolas Flamel, and he comes upon a book that is shrieking wildly. He runs away because he hears Filch behind him, and Snape as well, and he discovers the Mirror of Erised, which…

Maya: Ooh.

Noah: …is a lovely thing. And towards the end of the chapter, Dumbledore is actually right behind him. And he has this famous quote: “I don’t need a cloak to become invisible.” And we’re going to talk about the Mirror in just a sec, but just thinking about Dumbledore, has he been stalking Harry and Ron?

[Maya laughs]

Noah: There’s also a line from him about – when he’s talking to Harry about what the Mirror is, he says, “And it showed your friend Ron himself as Head Boy.”

Maya: He was there.

Noah: So, not only is he there tonight, Dumbledore saw him this other night as well. And we know he’s been invisibly watching them. So, I know Dumbledore is all-knowing, but he’s a little bit stalkerish. And Harry and Ron are eleven, Dumbledore is 150. Generally, this is kind of judged as weird in society.

Kat: No, I think Dumbledore was in the room enjoying the Mirror, just as Harry was. I feel like, even though he doesn’t express it outwardly, his heart is broken, and he just wanted to be in that room to see what he saw, which is his family, just like Harry did. And no, I don’t think he was stalking them. I think that he was not taking his own advice, which he told Harry, “Don’t get involved in the Mirror because it can’t give you what you see.”

Noah: [imitating Dumbledore] “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

Kat: Exactly.

Maya: [imitating Dumbledore] “Remember that.”

Rosie: But think about the fact that the Mirror is there, as well. At this point, it’s in a classroom, it’s not guarding the Stone.

Kat: Right.

Noah: That’s true.

Kat: Right, it hasn’t been moved.

Maya: Why is it?

Rosie: We already know that the Stone is in Hogwarts.

Maya: So, if Quirrell had gotten in before that – if Quirrell had gotten in on Halloween, he would have gotten the Stone.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: Easily. And, by the way, if all of the teachers know about the Stone and how to get to it, then how does Quirrell not know how to get the Stone?

Kat: Because I think Dumbledore is the only one who knows how to get it out of the Mirror. Yeah, so…

Rosie: But the Mirror is not there yet.

Noah: No, but he’s right. He must know how to get past all the traps, and that’s why he was able to do it because all the teachers must have been in on it from the start.

Rosie: But I don’t think…

Maya: Yeah, but maybe…

Rosie: …all the teachers know…

Maya: …he had to want it.

Rosie: All the teachers know the Stone is there, and they know that other teachers have given challenges, but they don’t know what those challenges are.

Noah: Are you sure?

Kat: Right, I would agree with that. Dumbledore is probably the only one who knows what all of them are.

Noah: Teachers talk.

Kat: Yes, they do.

Rosie: But not about secret things that they know they can’t talk about.

[Noah laughs]

Kat: Right.

Noah: Except for Hagrid.

Maya: Maybe they do.

Rosie: They don’t mess about with Hagrid.

[Noah and Rosie laugh]

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: All right, so therefore ends our discussion of [in a dramatic voice] Chapter 12.

Maya: Ooh.

[Kat and Rosie laugh]

Rosie: Our special feature for this week, because of its importance, is our Artifact Inspector on the Mirror of Erised. So, we’re going to look into great detail about the Mirror itself, about what it does and about why it’s important. So, let’s start with the description of the Mirror itself and the fact that it says, written backwards across the top of the Mirror, “I show not your face, but your heart’s desire.” Why do you think it’s written backwards, other than “Erised” being a cool name?

Kat: Well, I think…

Noah: Because it’s a mirror.

Kat: Oh.

Noah: The whole idea of the mirror is that you can read it backwards.

Kat: Oh okay. Well, I’ll buy that.

Maya: That makes sense.

Kat: But I think, too, that it is kind of an object of mystery and to just write it straight-forward seems a little – not mysterious, pretty transparent.

Rosie: Did any of you not get that it was “desire” spelt backwards when you first saw it?

Noah: Oh, me certainly because I was pretty young, but now it’s quite obvious.

Rosie: Quite a nice little Easter egg for people that are coming to it.

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: Now, here’s a question: Is it the heart’s desire or is it the mind’s desire?

Kat: It says “heart’s desire”.

Noah: I know it says “heart’s desire”…

[Kat laughs]

Noah: …but just for the mere discussion point.

Maya: If it were the mind’s desire, then he would have known what it was. He wouldn’t have had to look into a mirror.

Noah: Yeah. So, does this speak to a truer desire because your heart/brain is more powerful than your brain/brain?

Kat: Yeah, I think so because I feel like desire of the heart speaks to the things in life that are seemingly unattainable. The things that you feel like you might never be able to achieve, the places you might never be able to get, the things you can never go back to is what your heart truly desires and yearns for.

Maya: But the mirror – Dumbledore says it gives you nothing except more obsession with your desire. But Harry didn’t know what his parents and his family looked like before he looked into the mirror. So, it did give him something and without all of the enchantments that Dumbledore put on it for the Stone. Before that, it did give Harry just knowing what his family was like.

Noah: And that’s a great question. How did the mirror produce exactly what these characters look like with Harry having never really seen them before at all? And them smiling at him and Lily is crying in the mirror. Is he actually seeing these spirits and are they looking back at him?

Maya: That’s like the Remembrall, how it can create a whole memory even if you don’t remember the exact memory. So, the mirror – not the Remembrall, the…

Noah: The Stone?

Kat: The Pensieve?

Maya: What’s it called? The Pensieve, yeah. So, that’s the same thing with the mirror maybe, that it just knows somehow.

Noah: Right, right, exactly right. The Pensieve can recall all the details even if the memory is kind of fuzzy. It legitimately puts you there.

Kat: But…

Rosie: I love this scene in the books so much more than the movie. In the movie it’s important because it’s obviously his parents…

Maya: And it’s just them.

Rosie: …but the fact that you get to see all the Potters in the mirror – it’s a whole crowd of people standing right behind him, including little old men who have Harry’s knobbly knees.

Maya: Knobbly knees.

Kat: Right.

Rosie: You’re seeing his whole family.

Kat: I think for me, it speaks to – again, it says on there, “I show not your face but your heart’s desire.” And I feel like – there’s a line that Sirius has later in the books that says, “The ones that love us truly never leave us.” So, I feel like these people live in Harry’s heart. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what they look like, because the mirror is reading Harry’s heart and his family lives in his heart. So, that’s where it is coming from for me.

Noah: Can I just make a plug from the Alohomora! section real quick?

Kat: As you wish.

Noah: All right, there’s a user named MidnightCrimson who actually wrote an essay all about the Mirror of Erised and it is currently featured. It is called “The Mirror of Erised: From the Heart?” which actually questions if it is the mind’s desire or the heart’s desire, and I’d like to read a short section from it.

Rosie: Go ahead.

Noah: So, this is after she has made the distinction between the heart’s desire and the mind’s desire:

“I know. You’re asking, ‘Is there a difference?’ I believe so. The heart’s desire to me seems more inherent, more overarching and generalized and long-term than the mind’s desire. A heart’s desire is more something like ‘joy’ or ‘balance’ or ‘love.’ A mind’s desire is rather like ‘to find a man who makes me happy’ or ‘to know who my parents are’ or ‘to find a way out of this financial crisis.’ They all can possibly culminate into achieving the heart’s desire, but are more stepping stones than an overall goal. They’re also susceptible to time, crisis, development [and they can change]. Maybe at one point your desire is to find a job that you love and are good at and become successful at that; maybe then your loved one passes away and you realize all you want now is that person back in your life, or to have at least spent more time with them. So, what would the mirror reflect? Would it change? And if it does, does it change the method of what we see…”

And that goes on. So, that is wondering if the mirror changes based on life events. But it seems her overall resolution is that the heart’s desire reflects some greater truth about you which doesn’t change, and if it reflected your mind’s desire that would potentially change all the time.

Rosie: Definitely. I think – I wanted to draw the parallel between the mirror and Jack Sparrow’s compass in the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Noah: Ooh.

Rosie: The idea that it shows you – it points you in the direction of your one true desire.

Kat: Hmm.

Noah: Well, that one changes.

Rosie: Yeah, we see the mirror change for Harry as well. In that moment where he really wants to get the Stone but not use it himself, we see him getting it.

Noah: That’s tricky.

Rosie: And in that moment, that is his heart’s desire.

Noah: Right.

Rosie: So, I wanted to ask: in the future of the books, if Harry had seen the mirror again, would he have maybe seen where the Horcruxes were hidden? Would he have seen himself with Ginny? Would he have seen any of those things come true…

Noah: Could it have…

Rosie: …once he kind of accepted that his family was still around in his heart?

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Yeah, I definitely think so. I bet – like a few months into camping and Harry, his deepest desire certainly would have changed. I mean – although, I think…

Noah: But that’s a great question that Rosie just asked. Could the mirror have told Harry where the Horcruxes exactly were hidden or would it have just shown Harry with all the Horcruxes destroyed?

Kat: Well, that’s what I think. I think that he so much wouldn’t have seen the Horcruxes but he would see himself happy at the end of it all with Voldemort gone.

Noah: With Ginny.

Kat: Yeah, the Horcruxes was just the journey to get to his desire.

Maya: If he had seen the Horcruxes though, that brings us back to the theory that maybe Dumbledore was wrong about the mirror not helping you in any way except for making you more obsessed because it could actually…

Noah: Tell you something.

Maya: …give you information.

Noah: Yeah.

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: But I guess it wouldn’t because I believe Dumbledore, that there’s nothing – then again, it showed the Sorcerer’s Stone in Harry’s pocket. I just changed my answer. Remember?

[Maya laughs]

Kat: Yeah, but that’s because Dumbledore specifically bewitched it to do that.

Maya: Enchanted it.

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: But is it, though? Because at that moment, the whole point was that Harry didn’t desire to use it himself. It was still the desire that changed the image in the mirror. I think that we have to take Dumbledore’s speech there. Whilst it is obviously really important, he wants Harry not to be obsessed. I think we need to remember that he is talking about a very specific case. He’s talking about the problems of trying to resurrect the dead from a memory, from the mirror. In a way, he is kind of talking about the Resurrection Stone and that whole idea that it would never fulfill your desire to just see it.

Kat: Right. Okay, I see what you’re saying. That makes sense.

Rosie: So, I think that desires can change. You can be obsessed with one desire and in that sense lose your entire life by sitting in front of the mirror, because you’re not experiencing other things to desire.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: So, if you did go away and come back, you have potential to see a different thing in the mirror.

Maya: Did Dumbledore – what did Dumbledore see before Ariana died?

Noah: Or what would he have seen?

Kat: Yeah, what would he have seen?

Maya: The Hallows?

Noah: Maybe himself and great…

Maya: And the Hallows. Maybe himself and Grindelwald and the Hallows?

Kat: It’s possible.

Maya: All happy?

[Noah laughs]

Rosie: That’s the thing. I mean, Dumbledore talks about seeing socks in the mirror. Maybe that was the last thing that Ariana gave him.

Kat: Aww.

Noah: No, I think the socks…

Kat: No, I think he’s lying.

Noah: Complete lie, yeah.

Kat: Yeah.

[Rosie laughs]

Maya: Does Dumbledore – well, he said about the truth. He does – Dumbledore does lie, doesn’t he?

Kat: A lot. Yeah, he does.

[Rosie laughs]

Maya: Yeah. [laughs]

Noah: Not to say he doesn’t enjoy the nice filly sock every now and then.

Kat: [laughs] Yeah. I’m sure.

Noah: He and Dobby can get a room somewhere.

[Kat laughs]

Noah: Anyway…

Maya: [laughs] Yeah.

Noah: Are there any other cool comments for our artifact inspection?

Rosie: I wanted to talk about Ron’s desire for a while, the fact that he sees himself wearing a badge like Bill and holding the Quidditch Cup because he is Quidditch Captain like Charlie.

Noah: Yeah.

Rosie: How much of his desire is built on his desire to be kind of accepted within his family?

Kat: All of it.

Noah: That and he’s extremely jealous, and this jealousy kind of ties through all the way to the last book where he has to get past Harry and Hermione potentially being together.

Kat: I mean, I can’t speak for the dichotomy of a large family because I only have one brother and he’s older than me. But I feel like if you came from a family of people who…

Maya: A lot of people.

Kat: Older people who were constantly doing great things – all of his brothers were smart; they were prefects, head boys…

Maya: Poor Ginny.

Kat: With the exception of Fred and George, but they’re still great in a different way because they’re popular, they have lots of friends, they’re well-liked, they’re funny…

Maya: Yeah.

Kat: …and they still do fairly well in school. So, I feel like for Ron, his desire is just to live up to the family name.

Rosie: And not even just that. I think the idea of – like Noah was saying, his jealously…

Kat: Yeah.

Rosie: …is such an important character trait within Ron. I mean, if you think about how he reacts to the Goblet of Fire and Harry’s name coming out there, and then the jealousy with the relationship between Harry and Hermione when he’s wearing the Horcrux, I think that inherent idea of him not being good enough, of him not being popular enough, of him not being the heroic character and being a sidekick – he is so afraid of that and his desire is to be better than that.

Maya: How is Ginny not affected by this? Is it just her personality that’s different?

Kat: Yeah, I think Ginny is a lot tougher than Ron.

Rosie: But Ginny is also special because she is the girl.

Kat: Right.

Noah: She is the girl that her mother always wanted.

Maya: Yeah.

Noah: And Ron knows this.

Kat: Yup.

Maya: She gets to be this one – she gets to feel like the special one anyway even though she is the youngest one.

Noah: I almost caught a hint of it when Fred and George come barging in with the sweaters that they’re both wearing with “F” and “G” on it, and they say, “Oh, Ron, yours doesn’t have a letter on it. I guess Mom doesn’t have to remind you who you are,” and…

Maya: No, he says that to Harry, doesn’t he?

Noah: No, to Ron. Ron’s is just maroon.

Kat: No, he says that to Ron, yeah.

Rosie: No, Ron – I thought Ron had an “R” on his.

Noah: No, it’s just a maroon sweater with no letter, so I think there was a slight comment about “You’re kind of this extra child” here. And Harry…

Rosie: Plus, he hates maroon and he keeps getting this color. It’s like, is he not important enough?

[Maya laughs]

Noah: Yeah, whereas Harry has a glowing emerald green with a big “H” on it.

Rosie: Yeah. He’s…

Maya: Does he tell his mom that he doesn’t like maroon?

Noah: What was that, Maya?

Maya: Does he tell his mom he doesn’t like maroon?

Noah: Probably. [laughs] Who knows?

Kat: He probably says it in the whiny Ron Weasley way, though.

Rosie: Yeah.

Maya: [impersonating Ron] “But Mom, I don’t like maroon!”

Kat: Exactly.

Rosie: But she just likes it on him. [laughs]

Kat: Yeah.

Noah: What a whiner. [laughs]

Kat: So, good. Good discussion on the mirror. If any listeners out there have any comments whatsoever, feel free to go to the main site at Alohomora.MuggleNet.com.

Noah: Yeah.

Kat: Or click on the “Forums” tab and start a discussion there.

Noah: We’d be really interested to hear how the mirror works. Let us know.

Kat: How you think it works.

Noah: How do you think it works? Is it affecting your brain or can it really look in your heart? And additionally, can it tell you any secret information like it told Harry about the Stone?

Kat: Right.

Noah: Or was that due specifically to the enchantment?

Kat: And where is that editorial posted? That you read from before?

Noah: That’s – that was by Midnight[Crimson]. It’s in the Alohomora! Quibble section and it’s currently featured, and it’s called “The Mirror of Erised: From the Heart?” All right, so everybody check that out. That’s a great essay.

Rosie: Okay, great.

Noah: Thank you for that, Midnight[Crimson]. All right, so this is Noah’s posed question of the week. Due to what we know about magical inheritance, especially with the Invisibility Cloak, we have it going from father to son. And we know that with other certain objects, there seems to be this sort of magical will in place which we know at least in the last book the Ministry could interfere with a little bit, but it seems to be this established order of things. So, I’m just going to throw it to all the fans out there: how does magical inheritance work? Can you leave anything to anybody, potentially? Or anything that is concretely in your possession? And specifically with the Cloak, do we think that Dumbledore gave this to Harry because it was part of this magical contract, or because he thought this really belonged with Harry, and do you think he could have kept it otherwise? That’s the posed question of the week. Feel free to post responses to it on the main page of Alohomora.MuggleNet.com.

Rosie: Great. Well, thank you so much, Maya, for being our special guest this week.

Maya: Thanks!

Rosie: We’ve come to the end of our show.

Noah: Yeah, you were great!

Rosie: I hope you enjoyed your discussions there.

Kat: Yeah, you did a great job. Thank you.

Maya: Thank you! I had a lot of fun.

Kat: Good. Do you want to say hi to anybody as we’re closing out here?

Maya: Hi to all the Potterheads, and thank you to Jo, even – if she ever hears this [laughs] which…

Noah: Maybe she is. Who knows?

Maya: Hopefully.

Kay: We can dream, right?

Maya: Yeah.

Rosie: If you want to be the guest fan on one of our future shows, definitely go to Alohomora.MuggleNet.com and click on the “Podcast” page and read our “Be on the show” section there. Otherwise just make sure you’re submitting content to the Alohomora! website, either on the actual archive, on the forums. And you need to have appropriate audio equipment, so you need to have a good microphone and some recording software.

Noah: Or as best as you can. Just feel free to submit to us, ask us questions, and we’ll be happy to answer them.

Rosie: And if you did want to be on the show, you need to send us a clip of you analyzing something about the books, and e-mail it to us at alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com.

Kat: And if you want to get a hold of us in any other manner, feel free to follow us on Twitter. We are at @AlohomoraMN – “M” as in Muggle, “N” as in Net. And our Facebook is Facebook.com/OpenTheDumbledore. And as we announced on the last show, you can now listen to the podcast right on the Facebook page. Just click on the “Podcast” tab, choose any episode you want to listen to, and enjoy it right there. Also, be sure to check out our Tumblr: It is MNAlohomora.Tumblr.com. And of course, the website that has been mentioned many times: Alohomora.MuggleNet.com. We do want to take a quick second to thank all of the new team members that we’ve hired over the past couple of weeks, notably our editors Jon and Patrick. Thank you so much, you make the show sound excellent.

Noah: Yes, you do.

Kat: Also, Kris, Jessica and Laura who’s the new moderators on the forums. Thank you, guys, for keeping everything in check. And also, the countless number of amazing transcribers. There are so many of you, I couldn’t even begin. I mean, it would take ten minutes to name all of you. But we want to thank them so much because we literally couldn’t do it without them. So, if you have any comments or want to get a hold of us for any reason whatsoever – do you want to be a transcriber? Send us an application. You can send it to alohomorapodcast at gmail dot com.

Noah: Oh, and of course, don’t forget to subscribe to our iTunes feed. That way, you can enjoy the episode the minute we release it. And we love to see reviews from fans on iTunes because that’s, like, our biggest forum for it. So, keep that up.

Kat: Yeah, we love getting them, so thank you so much.

Noah: All right, and that about wraps up our show. I’m Noah.

[Show music begins]

Rosie: I’m Rosie.

Kat: And I’m Kat. Thank you for listening to Episode 5 of Alohomora!.

Noah: [in a silly voice] Open the Dumbledore!

[Show music continues]

Noah: Guys, listen. I think I hear some music right now.

Kat: You do? Is it in your head?

Noah: No, no, let me open my door real quick.

[Piano music plays in the background]

Kat: Oh, is someone playing piano?

Noah: Do you hear that?

Kat: Barely.

Noah: My brother is playing the piano.

Kat: Oh.

Noah: I’ll tell him to shut up because we’re recording.

Kat: Lovely.

[Maya laughs]

Kat: Hi, Noah’s brother.

Noah: [in the background] Seth, quiet down! I’m recording a podcast!

[Kat, Maya, and Rosie laugh]

Noah: [in the background] Shut up! Just please quiet down. I have to do this.

[Maya and Rosie laugh]

Noah: [in the background] Sorry.