Transcript – Episode 61
[Show music begins]
Caleb Graves: This is Episode 61 of Alohomora! for December 14, 2013.
[Show music continues]
Caleb: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Alohomora! I’m Caleb Graves.
Alyssa Jennette: I’m Alyssa Jennette.
Noah Fried: And I’m Noah Fried. And I’d like to intro the guest today, who is Logan Anbinder. I met Logan at a LeakyCon – I think it was two years ago. And ever since I met him, I knew he was a huge Harry Potter fan. He also works for the IQA, but let me have him introduce himself. Say hi, Logan.
Logan Anbinder: Hi, Logan. Well, thank you guys for having me. I’m really excited to be here. Like Noah said, I am a volunteer for the International Quidditch Association. I am the Marketing Director for the IQA. I’ve been involved with the IQA for about three full years now. So I was actually helping out with the IQA booth and the demos at LeakyCon when I met Noah, which is really great. And my work in the IQA involves spreading word about the sport, promoting the sport to all audiences, and I’m also doing marketing for our World Cup, which is coming up this April. It’s April 5 and 6 in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So we’re really excited about that, especially.
Caleb: I really love every time someone talks about the World Cup this year, there’s been north and south in the same line.
Logan: Mhm.
Caleb: It’s almost like you did that on purpose. I really enjoy it.
Logan: Yeah. It’s a little bit confusing to keep straight, but we’re pretty excited.
Caleb: So, Logan what is your Hogwarts house? It’s a tradition to get this from people.
Logan: That’s a great question. I’ll… yeah, it would be Hufflepuff. I always say I have an identity crisis, because as an 11-year-old, 10-year-old, I would have been sorted Ravenclaw…
Caleb: Hmm.
Logan: … but a couple of years in, I’d be going, “Wait a sec.” So now I’m definitely a Hufflepuff.
Alyssa: Yeah!
Caleb: Interesting.
Alyssa: Hufflepuffs rule.
Noah: You too, Alyssa?
Alysaa: Yup.
Noah: Oh, great. This is the Hufflepuff show.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Deal with it.
Caleb: And just in case there are slightly new listeners here who are like, “Who are these people?” Alyssa is not a stranger to the show even though she’s not one of our regular co-hosts. She’s co-hosted before. She’s been a guest before. She’s a blogger for MuggleNet. She’s also extremely awesome. So we’re happy to have her today.
Alyssa: Thank you. What a nice introduction.
Caleb: You’re welcome. And most the people, I feel like, know Noah. Noah has been gone for a while, but I’m really excited because, Noah, this is our first time hosting together again since you’ve come back.
Noah: For a long time. Yeah, I know. And yeah, I mean, I’m here to stay as far as I know. I just had some other stuff going on, but yeah, it feels good to get back into it again.
Alyssa: [singing] Reunited and it feels so good!
Caleb: Perfect.
Noah: All right, so I’d like to remind all the fans right now to read Chapter 23 before we proceed. That would be “The Yule Ball” chapter. If you don’t read the chapter, you won’t get as much out of the episode as we go further.
Alyssa: So pause this now and go read!
Noah: Right, read. Read!
Alyssa: Okay, but before we talk about the chapter, we have a couple of comments from last week’s show. We have a comment from the main site by Erin White about wizards and religion, and her comment says,
“The most compelling evidence that wizards practice Muggle religion can be found in ‘Deathly Hallows’. When Hermione and Harry visit Godric’s Hollow, they find that there is a Christmas Eve service going on in the church, which leads them to explore the church graveyard. There, they find that the Peverells, the Dumbledores, and the Potters are all buried in the church graveyard. I think it’s pretty unlikely that the church would permit them to rest there in death, had they not practiced the religion of that church (C of E, perhaps?) in life. Whether they believed, or whether they practiced because it was a good cover for being a wizard, it’s clear that they must have practiced.”
Caleb: So these comments are going to be really fun this week because none of us were on last week, so it’s like a totally new discussion.
Alyssa: I think this one’s really fascinating, honestly, because I’ve heard a lot of discussion about wizards and religion.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: And I think that… I mean, obviously, there’s been a lot of controversy about Harry Potter and religion in general because the witchcraft thing.
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: But Jo has made it pretty clear that Harry is a Christ figure and that her faith is a Christian faith.
Caleb: Mhm.
Alyssa: And actually, even… speaking of the Deathly Hallows graveyard scene, this is something that Erin White didn’t mention in her comment, but on Harry’s parent’s grave it says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” which is actually Biblical. That’s actually a Bible verse.
Noah: Yeah.
Caleb: Hmm.
Alyssa: So that’s another little nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Logan: And the…
Caleb: Right.
Logan: … Dumbledores have one too, right? They have, “Where your treasure… where your home is, there will be your heart also.” Or…
Alyssa: Yes. Yes, that’s right.
Noah: I guess the question I have, generally, is how far does that go? Because then we have John Granger who might say that it just… the book runs deep with the symbolism and then, others who say, “Oh, it’s just Harry. It’s just loosely connected to the Bible.” So, where would you draw the line, Alyssa, I guess? Where do you think… how much of it is Christianity?
Alyssa: Well, I don’t think… I mean, I don’t think Harry is literally representing Christ, but his sacrifice is Christ-like in the sense that it’s selfless, in the sense that he goes to death…
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: … willingly even though it’s really hard. But I do think that in terms of wizards and religion in the world that, I mean, Muggles and wizards intermingled until the 1400s. That’s well after Christianity was established and was part of an empire. It doesn’t surprise me that wizards would have been a part of religion alongside Muggles. I mean, that seems pretty likely.
Noah: And do we get much other religion in the books? Any other sort of holidays practiced? Or it seems that at Hogwarts, at least, everyone’s was pretty Christian.
Alyssa: Well, I mean, there’s Pavarti and Padma who could be Hindi, or Hindu rather.
Logan: And there’s… you’ve also go Anthony Goldstein, right? He’s probably…
Alyssa: Yeah.
Logan: … not a Christian.
Alyssa: Probably Jewish. Actually, there’s a really wonderful essay called “Secrets of the Class List,” which might have been on MuggleNet. It might have been on the Leaky Cauldron. I can’t remember, but it talks about the etymology of all of the Hogwarts students’s names and what… where they may be from and also what religion they might be, which is really interesting. So you should check it out, “Secrets of the Class List.”
Noah: Cool.
Alyssa: Oh, it was from the Lexicon. John has just informed me. It’s on the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Caleb: Thanks, John.
Alyssa: Thanks, John. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely makes a lot of sense that – like you said – for so long with the two societies being intermingled before there was this splitting, that it would make sense for them to practice religions. And I definitely think there would be other religions, but it, obviously, wasn’t central to Jo’s plot. So she didn’t include them as well. But I think what’s really interesting is – like you alluded to, Alyssa – that, obviously, in the beginning Harry Potter drew a lot of religious controversy. I guess it still does in some degrees, but nothing like that fire that started then, but there were all these little tokens along the way to be like, “Hmm, maybe you should chill out. It’s not that, not what you think it is.”
Alyssa: Oh yeah, definitely. People were really… I mean, I… people tend to get very upset when… it’s like buzzwords. When they hear witchcraft, they get worried that it’s about the devil even though this could literally not be less devilish. I mean, the wizarding world is pretty dangerous and messed up, but it’s not straight up satanic in any way.
Caleb: Right.
Logan: What has been the reaction since Deathly Hallows came out to have all that symbolism? I hadn’t really followed or listened to see if we’d heard anything from the same people who were saying the books are so un-Christian. To be… to have a book that has Bible verses in it and to have all that symbolism, do you think that changes folks’s minds? Or does it… do they say that they’re using it in an inappropriate way? What’s the takeaway for people who might have that perspective?
Alyssa: Well, I haven’t seen anything in particular. Then again, I don’t follow it super closely. I don’t seek that stuff out, but I imagine that if people did realize that they were mistaken, they probably wouldn’t say anything at all…
Logan: That’s true.
Alyssa: … and just not address it because people don’t like admitting when they are mistaken.
[Caleb laughs]
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: Anybody else want to add anything before we move onto the next comment?
Noah: I wonder what the new Pope would think of Harry Potter.
Caleb: Dude, the Pope is a baller.
Alyssa: I know, right?
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: Shout out to my boy.
Alyssa: Seriously. Shout out, Pope Francis. Congratulations on becoming…
Caleb: Person of the Year.
Alyssa: … Time’s Person of the Year…
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: … even though it should have been Edward Snowden.
Caleb: It should! Oh my God. We should talk about this later.
[Alyssa and Noah laugh]
Alyssa: But I’m totally happy with Pope Francis. That’s fine.
Caleb: I keep seeing him being called the people’s Pope and I love it.
Alyssa: No, me too. I think it’s great.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Anyway, [laughs] we have another comment from the forums from the user GhostHeart about Ron, and GhostHeart says,
“I’ve never seen Ron as a jerk. A bit of an idiot, maybe, and inconsiderate, but not a jerk. He’s the character in the trio I identify with the most. Since he is friends with Harry Potter, he is almost always overshadowed when hanging out with him. Of course he’d want to somehow get to the Yule Ball with a beautiful girl. People would talk about him, and he’d be able to brag about something that he’s done. It wasn’t at all worded well by him, but I understand why he wanted to do that. As for the Book 6 comment, while we aren’t there yet, I’ll just say that what he did there was also understandable, and it’s not like Hermione was completely innocent and smart during all of that.”
Caleb: Uh…
Alyssa: I have so many feelings about this comment right now. [laughs]
Caleb: As do I.
Alyssa: Well, what do you think, Caleb?
Caleb: I mean, well, we have talked about Ron in depth outside of the show, so that’s why I think this…
Alyssa: Oh, yeah. We had a big conversation about this. [laughs]
Caleb: I have a lot of problems with Ron. I mean, I definitely get where this person is coming from, GhostHeart. I see where you think that Ron… there are justifications for his actions, but God, he just gets on my nerves so much in this book! And he’s going through a lot. Brother’s got some stuff going on and it comes really fully into the picture here, but… well, there [are] even more problems in this chapter that I won’t get into yet since it’s in this discussion.
Alyssa: I don’t think Ron’s a jerk. I mean, Caleb knows my feelings about this. I just think Ron is… I honestly think Ron is actually a very sweet guy who is generally speaking, actually quite tactful in a lot of ways and I know that is a very, very unpopular opinion, but actually, while I was rereading the chapter, Ron really stuck out to me. I mean, apart from his interaction with Hermione, but I feel like that’s a very special case, but we can talk about that later on. I feel like Ron is actually, usually, pretty delicate about these kind of situations, I think, because he is a youngest sibling and he’s very used to not being heard. He tries to find other ways to make himself stick out as much as he can, which is, of course, hard because he has five older siblings and his younger sibling is the only girl.
Noah: Right.
Alyssa: So, he… it’s not just overshadowed by Harry, he’s been overshadowed his entire life and then, when he gets the chance to strike out on his own, his best friend happens to be the most famous person in the world and maybe in wizarding history. So he gets a pretty rough deal, and I think he actually handles it with a lot of grace about probably 85 percent of the time.
Noah: Yeah. There’s actually an editorial on MuggleNet – actually a few, maybe – written by hpboy13 and he goes deep into Ron’s character, just finds him the most envious person in the series, stuff like that, again because he grew up with his family, overshadowed like we’re saying. But I really think he’s all heart. He’s really lead by his emotions and he really just says whatever he’s feeling. So I don’t think that makes him a jerk. That just makes him impulsive, not like Harry, but emotionally so that it might come off as a jerk, especially towards Hermione.
Alyssa and Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: He and Hermione are definitely the most volatile relationship in that way.
Caleb: Right. And I guess I have to check myself sometimes because I have to remember that Ron is, what? 14 or 15 at this point?
Noah: He’s only 14, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah, so I remember how I was at that age and I probably wouldn’t want someone critiquing the way I handled a lot of things then. So…
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: … I’ll get off his back a little bit, not when we get to Deathly Hallows, though.
Noah: That’s right.
Alyssa: Oh man! Well, we’ve had this talk. It’s fine.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Alyssa: Okay, well. We have another comment from the forums from StoneHallows about the Harry-Cho-Ginny triangle. So we get a little more shipper talk in here. And that comment says,
“[It was] mentioned how it was important for Harry to like Cho, the weepy girl, because that is what makes him know that he doesn’t want that in a girlfriend. While there are obviously people who will marry their first boyfriend or girlfriend and be happy for the rest of their lives (I know one couple personally, and know of two others) this is not the typical case. Most people need to date the wrong person to know who the right person is. […] Harry realized that Cho is the weepy, clingy, jealous girl, and he realized that he didn’t want that. Later on, at the end of the sixth book, when Harry is breaking it off with Ginny because he knows what he is headed towards and doesn’t want to drag her into it, he notes that she wasn’t weepy at all, and it’s one of the things that he loved most about her. So while it is possible that a night at the ball with Ginny would have sped the romance along […] II do agree that it was imperative for Harry to see that weepiness in Cho so that he could appreciate Ginny all the more later.”
Logan: I think that that makes a lot of sense, that concept, and I love the reference to Ginny at the end of Half-Blood Prince, but I also think it’s a little bit unfair to Cho to say Harry realized that Cho’s personality was weepy and crying and clingy because I think Cho is going through some rough stuff and I think what Harry maybe realizes, that situation with Cho with the specifics is not ideal, but I don’t think it’s necessarily Harry realized that Cho is not the person for him because of those actions that she’s going through because I think that’s a… she’s victim of circumstance in that aspect.
Noah: Very good contribution, Logan.
Alyssa: Yeah, definitely.
Caleb: Mhm.
Alyssa: I a hundred percent agree. I think that Cho is put in a very, very difficult circumstance, which is why she has that pressure and that emotion and is depressed. I mean, she’s depressed and I don’t think that… and Harry is a teenage boy and he doesn’t fully… he hasn’t fully plumbed the emotional depths at that point. But yeah, I think that this is just a little bit of a judgmental comment toward Cho, who probably could have handled things better…
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: … but, as you say, they’re teenagers dealing with a very, very difficult situation. And Ginny, I have my own problems with Ginny.
Noah: Oh, yeah?
Alyssa: But I can’t say that I’m… I’m not… I just don’t really understand the, “Well, Ginny didn’t cry, therefore she’s better.”
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: Well, not really. I mean, that’s something that Harry prefers, obviously. We see the whole thing from Harry’s perspective…
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: … but I feel that’s not a great, I don’t know, point to put out there…
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: … to be like, “Well, therefore, she was stronger, strong female character trademark.”
Caleb: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say as we get into this tricky place where you start to place stereotypes on what is a strong female and what that actually means.
Noah: Yeah.
Caleb: But there’s actually a couple of people in the forums… and all you guys who are listening should definitely go there and contribute your thoughts, but there are a couple of people who come to Cho’s defense and say she’s not really whining. I know one user posted a picture from their book of a text defending Cho, so that was really awesome. So yeah, there [are] definitely some people who are articulating those same thoughts about Cho.
Noah: And it could be a case of having the movie being too much of an influence in that case because I think the actress in many of the scenes…
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: … came off as extremely weepy and whiney. Of course, she’s dealing with the death of her boyfriend, but…
Caleb: Yeah, definitely.
Alyssa: Yeah, teenagers, man. Also, murder.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Alyssa: What’s the deal?
Caleb: Whoops!
Alyssa: Well, those were great comments. Thank you, guys.
Caleb: Yup.
Alyssa: Please keep posting more stuff. We love it.
Caleb: Definitely. And before we move on, we just want to take a quick second to remind you all to check out our MuggleNet Fandom Calendar that we have out for you to purchase. It is $15.95, which includes US shipping. If you’re outside of the US, it costs a little bit more because we’re going across oceans. It’s $14 for shipping and handling to Canada and $17 for the rest of the world. It is an incredible calendar that is so elaborate and extensive. Every Harry Potter fandom birthday, anything related to Harry Potter, both in the books and outside of the books, it’s on there. I know we even have the Quidditch World Cup on there, so Logan will be happy about that.
Logan: Yes.
Caleb: But seriously, you should check it out. Go to MuggleNet or just check our social media outlets and you will see the information about it.
Alyssa: Awesome.
Noah: Now we are moving on to the Podcast Question of the Week responses from last week and in a nutshell, the question was, what kind of other extracurricular activities should Hogwarts include given that they had dance at the Yule Ball? So I came up with a couple responses and let me just share it.
Caleb: Just you? Just your responses?
Noah: No, no, rather I found these responses from our fans in the comments on the website.
Caleb: There we go.
Noah: This first one is from cenntenialstar:
“I’d love to see some magical community service! I can totally imagine a bunch of Hufflepuffs getting together and making Christmas cards for St. Mungo’s patients.”
[laughs]
Alyssa: Oh my God.
Logan: Can I be a little indignant about that?
Noah: You could be a lot indignant about that.
Caleb: That it’s just the Hufflepuffs doing?
Noah: Hufflepuffs can make Christmas cards, but the other houses might have some Christmas cheer as well.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: I can see the Slytherins going up to the hospital the following week and saying, “Hey, so did you get all our cards?”
Alyssa: No.
Caleb: Yeah, there you go.
Alyssa: Their dads would just donate money to St. Mungo’s probably. [laughs]
Caleb: And we Gryffindors would probably do something that would end up hurting them more because we would try to go too over the top. So…
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: Sounds about right. It’s like if Fred and George did fireworks in St. Mungo’s.
Caleb: Yeah, there you go.
Noah: But community service in general, do we see any of that in the books? Or are they just an uncaring lot for the most part?
Alyssa: Well, Hermione tries with SPEW.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: There’s certainly community service that can be done, especially interpersonal stuff, but a lot of the stuff that I think you think of when you think typical community service like cleaning the area, getting rid of trash and stuff, a lot of that is just sort of maintained by magic so you don’t need a group to go around and clean the Hogwarts grounds because it’s all… well, you’ve Hagrid too and you have Filch, but a lot of it is magical, so that is sort of interesting that it removes maybe one of those in the standard community service responsibilities.
Noah: That would make for an interesting essay. The extent in which magic has made the wizarding population just terrible to each other. Probably not.
[Logan laughs]
Noah: Hogwarts does bring its student body to Hogsmeade village and in some way brings commerce there. I don’t know if that is community service, but…
Alyssa: Yeah, it’s tourism.
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: Which is still good. It’s still helpful to the community. It’s a college town thing.
Noah: Yeah. I wonder if they do other stuff in Hogsmeade, though. They don’t really go into that. So next comment from DolphinPatronus, which is a cool name:
“I’d like to add cheerleaders! Each of the four houses could have its own cheer squad to support the Quidditch team. I think it would be interesting to see a magical cheer squad.”
To that I’d say, I think that would also be interesting.
Alyssa: [laughs] That would be pretty cute. I don’t really know how well that… cheerleaders aren’t really a thing outside of the US. [laughs] So that would be funny, I don’t know, to see what that would be like.
Noah: Is that true? I thought that was a world… no, actually that makes a lot of sense. [laughs]
Alyssa: Yeah. I’m sure maybe other places, apart from the UK, but I can’t see that being a big thing in the UK.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s probably real.
Noah: It’ll probably distract from the Quidditch balls and stuff. The next one is from Olivia Underwood:
“In ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Dumbledore says that there used to be a drama club at Hogwarts until a production of ‘The Fountain of Good Fortune’ took place in the Great Hall. Needless to say, a jealous catfight between the two leading ladies (not acting) erupted and they ended up setting the whole place on fire. They could have brought that back during the ‘Potter’ books, I’m pretty sure Luna would have participated. Perhaps Neville too. Imagine a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ or ‘The Tempest’ – it would be bloody amazing!!! Muggles can write too, you know.”
So that’s cool. A drama club.
Alyssa: Man, that would so great.
Caleb: Yeah, I would totally be in that.
Alyssa: Yes, same here. I would absolutely be all over that.
Logan: Speaking of things, clubs that could be resurrected, what happened to the Dueling Club after it didn’t go so well the first time. But it wasn’t just Chamber of Secrets when they needed that.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: It would have come in handy when Sirius Black was attacking the castle, it would have come in handy during the Triwizard Tournament. You can bring back the Dueling Club at some point.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Caleb: It is surprising that the Dueling Club wasn’t a thing already and doesn’t continue. You think about Flitwick was a dueling champion back in his day, and it just seems like such a common thing, I’m surprised it isn’t a bigger… it wasn’t a club already.
Noah: Well, do we know for sure that it’s not there?
Logan: I think so.
Caleb: Well, yeah because…
Alyssa: Yeah.
Caleb: … Lockhart makes a big deal about starting it.
Noah: Yeah.
Logan: I think it is an interesting question, what stopped it? I know…
Caleb and Noah: Yeah.
Logan: … when you lead a college club, clubs will disappear on campus just through attrition, if there is no one to lead, and I wonder are clubs at Hogwarts student-led like that? Do teachers run them? Why did the Dueling Club disappear?
Alyssa: Mhm.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Yeah. I don’t know.
Caleb: I guess there is just so much bad stuff that happens. You think about the Dueling Club: Harry starts talking to snakes and then they have to deal with the Chamber of Secrets, so…
Alyssa: I also can’t imagine that they encourage students to attack each other. [laughs]
Caleb: That’s true.
Logan: But the DA becomes the Dueling Club, basically.
Noah: Right.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Caleb: That’s true.
Noah: And I wonder after everything happens with Voldemort and years following, they have some sort of dueling club in place just because it proved so necessary with the DA. Who knows?
Alyssa: Mhm.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: Well, at point… not to go off on to much of a tangent, but at what point… how much dueling experience do you need to reach the equivalent of someone like Bellatrix, or if not Bellatrix then another Death Eater? Are Death Eaters particularly accomplished at dueling, or are they just stronger than the students generally because they are adults who have had more experience? Can you go through a semester of dueling and then you can protect yourself, or is it something like you have to study before you become a black belt duelist?
Noah: I think that they learn on the street. The Death Eaters.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: That’s probably a mix.
Caleb: Yeah, I think there is probably… there are some people who are definitely more prone to doing well, like Harry is obviously a very good dueler, Bellatrix is a very good dueler. I think there is a natural element to it, but I think obviously some people are going to have more experience with it, like Harry, before he’s… a couple of years at Hogwarts, has much more experienced then probably a lot of seventh years do.
Noah: I think for the most part, though, it’s stuff you learn outside of school, both for Aurors and for Death Eaters. I can imagine there’d be some sort of program. There probably are programs, but I don’t think… I wonder how widely they’re used.
Caleb: Yeah, Aurors would go through training, I would think.
Noah: Right, that makes sense.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: So the next and final thought from Watchsky181:
“Art club? Presumably someone has to learn how to paint all the portraits that they hang everywhere and since there is seemingly no traditional Muggle lessons (see Maths, English, etc.), I guess that one can surmise there would be no art class in the formal curriculum. The only time art is ever mentioned is in relation to Dean. Maybe if his character had been expanded (as planned?) we would have found out more about art in the wizarding world.”
So that’s interesting. There really isn’t an art class, as far as I know, at Hogwarts.
Caleb: Yeah, there’s not a lot of vocational or creative classes at all.
Alyssa: Yeah, Hogwarts is a very, very particular, niche sort of [laughs] conservatory. They are all about everything magical and not really about too many practical elements or art elements.
Noah: There’s the Frog Choir.
Alyssa: Well, that’s in the movies, though.
Noah: That’s true. Does that not actually exist? Is there no real Frog Choir? [laughs]
Alyssa: I wish there were.
Noah: Somehow I thought that was part of the books. Oh, man. Okay.
Alyssa: Well, get on it, Hogwarts.
Noah: And I think Dean’s drawing ability, he’s Muggle-born so he would have probably learned those abilities in his home. Maybe witches and wizards don’t actually know how to use their hands to draw or paint. They just use their wands.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Well, there are magical portraits and those had to be painted. I can’t remember what it says on Pottermore about them. Does the person paint them and it gets enchanted or something?
Logan: I’m not up to speed on Pottermore, but I know the Dumbledore portrait just appears, right? That might be magic because he’s the headmaster and it’s a different spell.
Caleb: I think… well, he had his portrait commissioned before he died so that he could talk with it.
Noah: Train it.
Caleb: Teach it things.
Noah: Yeah, secrets.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: How interesting.
Alyssa: Oh, Dumbledore, you jerk.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Noah: May he rest in peace.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: I guess.
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: Caleb, do you agree with me that Dumbledore is kind of a butt face?
Caleb: Oh, yeah.
Alyssa: Oh, high five!
Caleb: He’s definitely… he’s one of my favorite characters but for very bad reasons at times.
Noah: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Dumbledore is not a butt face.
Alyssa: He totally is.
Logan: I’m with you, Noah.
Noah: Thanks, Logan.
Logan: Well, he’s… “butt face” is a strong term.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Alyssa: I got that all the way from kindergarten, thanks.
Caleb: Yeah. Sweet. So we’re going to move into our chapter discussion for this week.
[Goblet of Fire Chapter 23 intro begins]
Student: Chapter 23.
[Sounds of giggling]
Student: “The Yule Ball.”
[Goblet of Fire Chapter 23 intro ends]
Caleb: All right, so the beginning of this chapter, Chapter 23, it is finally Christmas break and Harry slightly laments over the amount of work he has but he’s not too worried about it, and it made me think, man, I… obviously in college it’s different because you’re on break from semester, whatever, but thinking back to high school, I never had homework or projects over Christmas break. Did any of you guys?
Noah: I certainly did.
Caleb: Wow.
Noah: I had readings and essays and stuff. I don’t know, they… my teachers just didn’t really care.
Alyssa: I don’t really remember. I don’t think so.
Caleb: That’s really interesting because since I taught high school for a couple of years, my mentality would be, “I don’t want to grade anything when we come right back from Christmas break,” so…
Alyssa: Yeah, I wonder what wizarding curriculums are like. If they’re like, “All right, well, we need to squeeze this much information. The Ministry says we need to teach this stuff.”
Noah: Hermione is the only one who does homework at Hogwarts.
Logan: Yeah. [laughs]
Noah: Let’s be real here.
Alyssa: [laughs] Well, that’s what it seems like.
Caleb: Yeah. So there’s this really interesting short scene where there’s this almost girl fight, where first Fleur is complaining about the Hogwarts food. Fleur does a lot of complaining in this chapter. It’s very annoying.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: But she’s complaining about the Hogwarts food being too heavy and how she’s not going to be able to fit into her dress robes, and Hermione comes back, snapping something about, “Oh, there’s a tragedy,” and how she thinks a lot of herself. And I really enjoy Hermione in this chapter. She gets a little catty, and there’s an attitude that’s starting to develop that I really love.
Noah: Well, I think Fleur… the dynamic between Fleur and Hermione is really interesting in this chapter because I feel this is the only chapter where I was really thinking about Jo as a writer and also as a woman, and how maybe she feels because Fleur is painted as this most beautiful girl. She’s part Veela, and Ron is going crazy for her. Everybody is. But she’s also a complainer, this nasty person, and there’s even a line later in the chapter – which you might get to – where Hermione says to Ron, “Oh, you’ll date anyone as long as she’s pretty? You don’t even care what she’s like?” So there’s definitely this beauty versus brains thing going on here.
Alyssa: That’s something that comes back later, too. In Book 6? Or Book 7 when Fleur comes to the Weasleys’ and Ginny and Hermione are complaining about her being there, and Tonks and that whole comparison.
Noah: Yeah. She’s just hated in this book, in a way.
Alyssa: Which is too bad. Fleur is pretty cool, actually.
Logan: I think eventually she’s portrayed as deep down – not even that deep down – she’s good. When at the end of Half-Blood Prince she decides to stay with Bill, and that’s portrayed as a big moment. And there’s not… she’s not really around in the book before then for there to be development, but I think that’s as much development as Fleur gets. And maybe part of that is Jo realizing, “Well, she’s going to be around next book, I better make her a bearable character,” but part of it was also, I think, the intensity of war and the things that are going on bring people together, and they force people to reveal their true selves. So in peace time Fleur is one thing and she has the luxury of complaining about will she fit into her dress, and then when things get tense, she really starts shining through.
Noah: Well said.
Alyssa: Yeah, definitely.
Caleb: That’s a good point.
Alyssa: And it’s the difference from being seventeen and being twenty also…
Logan: Yeah.
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: … which is a pretty big jump.
Caleb: [laughs] And then, so, Ron tries to get it out of Hermione again who is taking her to the ball, and she still isn’t telling them, so I’m wondering is she… because she says that she doesn’t want to tell them because they’ll laugh at her, so I’m wondering, is that really the biggest motivator for her, or is she just waiting for this big… she thinks she’s going to have this big entrance, and she really wants to save it?
Logan: I don’t think it’s an entrance. I just think she doesn’t want to necessarily force the issue with Ron. Maybe she knows there’s going to be a fight, or she knows it’s going to be uncomfortable, and it’s just awkward for her to say, “Krum is taking me,” and Ron goes, “What are you talking about?” And reading this chapter, I always wondered what Ron thought was going to happen. Has that ever happened for any of you, where you surprise someone with a question and they just blurt out the answer?
Alyssa: No.
Logan: Especially Hermione.
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: Yeah, that always seemed strange to me. Good luck, Ron. Good try, but…
Caleb: Yeah, that’s true.
Alyssa: For being such a good chess player, he didn’t really go for a good strategy with this one.
Logan: Yeah.
Noah: But that said, I still feel she was anticipating a moment here by keeping it in and even asking presumably Ginny to not tell them also, which we find out. So I think she was… she wanted to milk this a bit.
Caleb: Mhm.
Alyssa: I wouldn’t be surprised if she… she knew people would be surprised. She’s not Miss Popular, and he is world-famous, and I also imagine that in terms of fear, being afraid they’d laugh at her, they probably would think she was lying if she was like, “Well, Viktor Krum asked me,” and they’d be like, “Yeah right.”
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: “Good one.”
Noah: That’s true. That is a good point. That would set up this whole weird thing.
Alyssa: It’s like, “No, seriously though. I really am.”
Noah: Yeah.
Caleb: That also makes it interesting when you think about that Ron, even though he didn’t mean to, asked another Triwizard champion to go. He asked Fleur to go, and she doesn’t obviously say yes, but then this champion does ask Hermione and she obviously says yes. It’s just all of these little things that happen with Ron and Hermione are always just so cleverly done.
Alyssa: I know. So adorable.
Noah: As if their romance is just a pattern in the books. That just…
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Somehow people missed that pattern, but it was there all along.
Noah: It’s so clear in this chapter.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: It really is.
Noah: How could you not think that it is?
Alyssa: I find myself feeling a little bit bad for Viktor Krum. This is a very recent occurrence for me, but I’ve seen GIF sets or little excerpts from the book, and he really liked her a lot.
Caleb: He did.
Alyssa: So I kind of feel bad that he basically got so royally denied.
Caleb: Yup.
Noah: He’s a star Quidditch player.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: I’m sure he’ll do okay.
Caleb: Hermione continues her little spurt of attitude, though, when Malfoy tries to make fun of her because he overhears that someone’s going with her to the ball. And she pulls the Moody card and acts like she sees Professor Moody near, and Malfoy of course does not react very calmly to that. And Hermione’s line is, “Twitchy little ferret, aren’t you, Malfoy?”, which I just love the little jab she gives him.
Alyssa: Ooh.
Logan: I like to think this is something that Harry and Ginny tell Harry’s kids when Albus Severus and James are going to school with Scorpius.
[Caleb laughs]
Logan: “Yeah, I remember when my dad told me when your dad was a ferret.”
Caleb: That’s really funny.
Alyssa: Oh God, I don’t think Draco would be very happy about that when Scorpius came home and is like, “So, Dad…”
Logan: Probably not.
Caleb: No.
Alyssa: [laughs] “… my best friend Albus…”
Caleb: [laughs] My best friend. What if?
[Alyssa and Noah laugh]
Caleb: And then we also find out – this is actually a little bit back, but – Hermione, they notice that her teeth are different. She explains that when Madam Pomfrey shrunk her teeth from the curse that rebounded earlier in the book, she just had her bring them on back so they… she looked with less-large teeth in front of her face. Also, guys, how do you just now notice that? I would notice it.
Alyssa: They are the least curious boys in the world.
Caleb: They are.
Alyssa: And Harry way more than Ron.
Caleb: That’s true.
Alyssa: Harry has just no interest in anything going on around him ever. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. I also feel there’s all these things building. Jo is giving us these indicators that Hermione is about to have this big coming-out moment. She’s showing this attitude to Malfoy, she pushed… she did something that she definitely would not normally do with Madam Pomfrey, letting her just magically fix her. I think it’s brilliant, the way we’re just building to this big moment for Hermione.
Alyssa: Cinderella moment.
Caleb: Definitely.
Noah: That Ron will just waltz in and ruin.
Caleb: Right, like he does.
Noah: Yeah.
Alyssa: Oh, Ron.
Caleb: Whoops.
Alyssa: Bless your little heart.
Caleb: So after that, Harry wakes up the next morning on Christmas, but he immediately notices that something is not quite right, then realizes that Dobby is creepily sitting right on top of him with his big, bulging eyes poring into his face.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: Dobby, you’ve got to shake back, man. You’ve done this too many times.
Alyssa: Yeah, Dobby is not very good at anything [laughs] pretty much.
[Caleb laughs]
Alyssa: I like Dobby very much, and I like him more than another incompetent, lovable character, but yeah, this definitely is very creepy. [laughs]
Caleb: But he does deliver just a wonderful line when he notices Harry’s socks. It’s the socks that, I guess, Harry gives him from the Dursleys. He says, “But, sir, they has made a mistake in the shop, Harry Potter. They is giving you two of the same.”
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: Talk about kind of a jerk move from Harry, though. He’s like, “Crap, I didn’t buy him anything. Here are literally the grossest socks I have.” [laughs]
Caleb: Actually, could he have described those with any… I read that, and I was like, “Ugh, I need to go wash my clothes. I feel gross.”
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: Where do you think Dobby got that misconception? That sort of lends credence to the theory that house-elves don’t do laundry because if Dobby was mixing up socks for the Malfoys, I don’t think that would have ended well.
Alyssa: You’re right.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, he would have gotten slapped around.
Noah: It’s still a better gift than what the Dursleys gave Harry.
Logan: Harry is just regifting what the Dursleys gave him, though, right?
Caleb: Right, yeah. This is an older gift, I should say, because this year he gets a tissue from the Dursleys.
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: Damn, Harry, regifting Dursley gifts.
Noah: I thought that was…
Caleb: That was useful. It’s cold outside, I guess.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: But the gift for Harry, which of course is socks… guys, I really like these socks. I want these socks.
Alyssa: Oh, they’re cool.
Caleb: “The left sock was bright red and had a pattern of broomsticks upon it; the right sock was green with a pattern of Snitches.” I would wear those.
Alyssa: He’s a really good knitter, though. Right?
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: You go, Dobby! Better than Hermione in this book. [laughs]
Noah: I’m surprised he wasn’t somewhat impressed or somewhat interested. Because that is kind of unique.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Least curious kid ever.
Caleb: But Harry does end up wearing them to the Yule Ball, right?
Alyssa: Mhm.
Caleb: Yeah, so he takes notice, I guess. So I thought about something I had not thought about before. We see these scenes a lot throughout the series of like birthdays and Christmas of them getting gifts, but we never see moments of them buying gifts for one another. So I’m always wondering, when are they buying gifts for one another and where are they doing it? I know Hogsmeade is close relatively, but they don’t go on trips that often and we never hear about them buying gifts for one another when they’re in Hogsmeade. So I was wondering, is there some sort of Amazon in the wizarding world that’s bringing them gifts?
Logan: I think the closest we get is the end of Prisoner of Azkaban when Sirius sends Harry the letter: “By the way, I got you the Firebolt.” Doesn’t he say, “I had Crookshanks take it to the Owl Order office for me”?
Caleb: Hmm.
Noah: Whoa!
Logan: So a) I guess that’s Amazon, but b)…
[Caleb laughs]
Logan: … if I’m remembering correctly, does that mean you can have a cat place your order…
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: … of thousands and thousands of Galleons?
Noah: That’s nice.
Logan: Because I think my credit card security is a little bit better on Amazon.
Alyssa: That’s crazy! I don’t know, actually. I wonder… I feel like since the wizarding world is kind of old school, I think there has been evidence of mail-order type stuff like in the backs of comic books or magazines or newspapers.
Caleb: Hmm.
Alyssa: Like where you just see it and “Okay, I’ll order that.” And you just send them a check forward.
Logan: Mhm. Witch Broomstick has that, I think, when Harry needs a new broom.
Alyssa: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: So I guess it would be something like that. I’m sure you can order it in person as well, but the kids can’t just leave Hogwarts whenever they want.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: Yeah. We know that the school has owls, too, even if they don’t have personal owls. So I think it’s probably something like that.
Logan: And the presents always just magically appear each year, too. So maybe that’s a house-elf thing, but you never hear… Harry and Ron can’t give Hermione her presents because they can’t get up to her dorm. So, do you give them to the house-elves or something? “Here, give these to my friend.”
[Caleb laughs]
Alyssa: They must have a wrapping service.
Logan: Yeah.
Caleb: Yeah. House-elves! Elves for Christmas.
Alyssa: Christmas elves, though.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: [laughs] You said “wrapping service” and I had this vision of Dobby doing hip-hop or something.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: Dobby is like frantically wrapping with four different types of wrapping paper for one gift.
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: Winky is sobbing over her wrapping paper.
Alyssa: Well, a lot of rap has – going back to R&B – dubious grammer anyway, so Dobby would fit right in.
Logan: [laughs] Yeah.
Caleb: There you go.
Logan: MC Dobby.
Noah: Wait, isn’t there an MC Dobby?
Alyssa: Is there?
Caleb: I don’t know.
Logan: That sounds familiar.
Noah: There’s a wizard rock…
Logan: MC Kreacher, right?
Noah: Oh. Okay, okay. My bad. I knew it was a house-elf. Because I was like, house-elves and rap, there’s some kind of mix that I’ve heard before. Yeah. I’ll have to give that a listen later.
Caleb: Well, shortly after they’re getting ready to head down to the Yule Ball. And one thing they noted on last week’s episode that I had never actually thought about was in the movie we see the girls in actual dresses, but in the book it’s pretty clear that they’re wearing dress robes. I would assume there would be a distinct difference in that. So I guess it made sense to make the change in the movie, to make more of a dress.
Noah: What’s the major difference?
Caleb: Well, when you think about what Hermione wears in the movie, those aren’t robes. That’s a dress.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Noah: Oh, yeah.
Alyssa: It’s an evening gown, definitely.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Well, it’s hard because the only description we really have of robes from the books and how they function is actually in “Snape’s Worst Memory” because he’s clearly not wearing anything underneath them.
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: So it’s not like a jacket that you put on over your regular clothes.
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: It’s basically like a black dress essentially that you just wear. And that seems to be the main deal in the wizarding world. But again this is just kind of an issue of what we really don’t know. We don’t have anything else. We only know what the student robes are like. We don’t really know how much different the designs are for grown wizards who can buy whatever they want or order whatever they want.
Noah: Right.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: So I wouldn’t be surprised if the female dress robes had a more Muggle-y, dressy design.
Caleb: That makes sense. Especially as times change.
Alyssa: Oh, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah. So before they even get inside – I guess when they’re walking down to meet Padma – Ron is already asking about where Hermione is. He’s waiting for his date, and even when he gets to his date, he’s asking where Hermione is. He’s kind of the worst Yule Ball date ever for Padma.
Noah: Oh, yeah.
Alyssa: Yeah, this is definitely rough. I mean… and Padma isn’t awesome either because she’s judging him hardcore.
Caleb: No, she’s a…
Logan: I don’t have to be petty, but he started it.
Caleb: That’s true. But Padma came in… well, yeah. We don’t know much about her character other than this chapter. This is the only time we really get her, but…
Noah: We can assume that her nose is aligned properly.
Caleb: Right. Which is apparently very important.
Noah: To Ron. We never knew.
Logan: We don’t know who Eloise Midgen goes with or if she goes at all.
Caleb: That’s sad.
Alyssa: You know what? Poor Eloise Midgen. I hope that she went with someone hot.
Caleb: I hope so.
Logan: Yeah, I hope so.
Noah: Is that the last we hear of her?
Caleb: Probably. I think so.
Noah: Did she survive the war?
Caleb: I don’t know, dude.
Alyssa: I don’t think they ever mentioned her.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: I choose to believe she did.
Caleb: Yeah. And she got her a hunk for a husband.
Alyssa: Exactly. And had a lot of beautiful babies.
[Caleb laughs]
Alyssa: And her acne cleared right up.
Logan: If her nose is off-centered, then she just needs to marry someone whose nose is off-centered in the other direction so that their kids have perfectly-centered heads.
[Everyone laughs]
Alyssa: Average right out.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: I feel like we completed her story well.
Caleb: [laughs] To Eloise, everyone.
Alyssa: This episode is dedicated to Eloise Midgen and her progeny.
Caleb: [laughs] So Harry, when he enters – because the Champions enter first, they’re obviously the first main attraction – he actually sees Hermione with Krum but he doesn’t recognize her. Like you mentioned earlier, Alyssa, these guys are just so lacking in curiousity and in some ways perception, because obviously Hermione looks a lot different. But she’s your best friend. How do you not recognize her face?
Alyssa: I know, right? Harry, get on it.
Noah: No, the line was just that Krum was with a pretty girl, or something like that.
Alyssa: It said “that Harry had never seen before.” [laughs]
Caleb: It’s not… it is really clear. He thinks he has never seen this person.
Alyssa: Harry, I love you, and yet you are an idiot.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Alyssa: Why are you the savior of the wizarding world? [laughs]
Caleb: Right. So in the books Hermione’s dress robes are periwinkle blue, and obviously in the movie it’s pink. So I was wondering… do we think that… why the change? Would we have liked to have seen her in blue in the movie?
Alyssa: I like blue. I would have liked to see blue.
Caleb: I agree. I think blue would have looked better.
Alyssa: I think pink is probably a better color for Emma Watson.
Caleb: That’s fair.
Alyssa: And also, I think they were going for, “She’s a girl! Look! Pink!”
Caleb: Hmm.
Alyssa: But just like in Sleeping Beauty, I side with the blue dress.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: What’s periwinkle like? I have to Google that. Is that a special blue?
Alyssa: It’s like a light, very… I don’t know, it’s actually one of my favorite shades of blue. It’s sort of like a light, lavender blue, almost.
Caleb: Mhm.
Noah: All right. Yeah, I can see that.
Caleb: So here… once we find out that it is actually Hermione, Harry and Ron realize that it is their friend up there. If it wasn’t enough for Ron to be pissed at Harry for being a Champion for the Triwizard Tournament, he’s now super upset at Hermione for being Victor Krum’s date. And like we sort of brought up earlier, this is a place where a lot of jealousy is coming up for Ron, and he’s clearly having a really rough time.
Alyssa: Yeah, Ron needs to deal with his jealousy issues a little bit in this. It all just kind of comes to a head in Book 4 for him.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: Again, I don’t see why people didn’t realize at this point that it was going to be Ron and Hermione.
Alyssa: Oh, yeah.
Noah: Clearly.
Alyssa: Definitely.
Logan: I don’t know how old you guys were when you read this but I was very firmly, “It has to be Hermione and Ron.” But I couldn’t really see Harry and Hermione but I could see it more than I can now, and it’s every trick in the book to show it’s Ron and Hermione. But is that a “reader comes of age” thing and it becomes more obvious? Or is it just, you see what you want to see?
Caleb: Yeah, I think it is a lot “you see what you want to see” because in the very beginning, I thought it was going to be Harry and Hermione from very beginning – early, early books. I wouldn’t say I actively rooted for that, but I kind have wanted that more. But in this book it was very clear to me. This is where I started to get annoyed with Ron because he’s got all these jealous moments, but it was very clear it’s going to be those two. Especially when Harry and Hermione – I think it’s Harry and Hermione, when they’re together, when Ron is mad at Harry – I think those moments actually show it more than ever because there’s no spark of romance whatsoever between Harry and Hermione when they’re totally alone.
Alyssa: Yeah. I agree. Well, Goblet of Fire came out in what, 2001? Is that right?
Caleb: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Alyssa: So I was thirteen years old.
Caleb: Same.
Alyssa: So, pretty close in age to these kids at the time. Yeah, I don’t think there was ever a time when I thought that Harry and Hermione would be together. I think that’s something that has been conditioned in us because it’s like, “Oh! Well, here’s the leading guy, and here is the closest girl to him. They are going to end up together.”
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: But I mean… I think that it’s been pretty clear that the tension has always been between Ron and Hermione – for better or worse, good tension and bad tension. So sorry, Harmony shippers, but…
[Caleb laughs]
Noah: I mean, it’s what I always wanted, but…
Caleb: It’s such a good ship name, though.
Noah: Harmony.
Alyssa: It is a good ship name.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: And yet… [laughs]
Caleb: [laughs] Wasn’t meant to be.
Alyssa: Was not meant to be. Sorry, guys.
Caleb: So we… it’s kind of a side moment, but it bothers me enough to talk about because we find out that Crouch is not there, and all of a sudden Percy is there in his place. My favorite character. Not!
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: And we find out that he has been promoted to Crouch’s personal assistant. And I’m not really sure, why does Percy make an appearance?
Logan: Plotwise, I think it’s foreshadowing [that] there’s something really wrong with Crouch. You look back and you’re like, that’s why he wasn’t at the Yule Ball.
Alyssa: He’s already dead at this point, isn’t he?
Caleb: That’s true. Yeah, that’s what…
Logan: Is he?
Caleb: … I wasn’t sure about. I couldn’t remember if he was or what had happened. I couldn’t remember the timeline.
Logan: I don’t think he dies until the Third Task because that’s when Crouch comes out of the… Harry is walking back with Krum and then Crouch comes out of the forest.
Noah: Right. Yeah.
Alyssa: Oh, maybe.
Caleb: Oh, okay. So maybe…
Alyssa: Maybe he’s just flipping out.
Logan: So he’s just losing it, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah. Okay.
Logan: But this kind of sucks for Percy, too. He did not behave well for the entire second half of the series until the very end, but he at some point – assuming he really knew all along that he was in the wrong and it was just pride – he got played by the Death Eaters pretty bad. Like they say, at some point he didn’t recognize that his boss was controlled by Voldemort. So it’s…
Noah: Yeah.
Logan: … problematic.
Alyssa: Percy is fascinating to me. Just to show how opposite Caleb and I are in many ways, I actually really like Percy. He’s one of my favorite characters. [laughs] I think he gets a lot of unwarranted hate. He’s just very complex and I think that he has a lot of similar problems that Ron has. Which is one of the reasons that Percy looks out for Ron so much in his way.
Logan: How did Percy end up in Gryffindor? Is that just a “Weasleys Are Gryffindor People Through and Through”? Or is it something where if Jo knew what Percy’s storyline was going to be starting in Book 1? I think it could have been a really powerful thing to show Slytherin – his Slytherin tendencies the second half of the series and [how] he’s dealing with them. Not to put put down all Slytherins, but it’s a very Slytherin thing he does, and then he comes around and it shows that Slytherins can be good. Would that be an interesting line or why wouldn’t that happen?
Caleb: That’s a really good question. I think maybe it’s because it would have been too easy to do it if he was already Slytherin…
Logan: Mhm.
Caleb: … and there’s more of an effect with him being a Gryffindor.
Noah: Yeah.
Logan: That makes a lot of sense.
Noah: Great thought.
Alyssa: I think that the Sorting system is wonderful, but I think it’s also slightly flawed from an author’s perspective. Because it’s very evident that she doesn’t make much of an effort to show Slytherin as complex, even though on paper they definitely are. But I also think that… if we’re talking about it from a book perspective, Percy is a Gryffindor not because he is brave in his personality but because he values bravery and he values principles, which is something very important to Gryffindor. He is stuck by his principles, even though he was mistaken. And that’s something that a Gryffindor would absolutely do. [laughs]
Noah: That makes sense.
Alyssa: And make a fool of himself!
Caleb: Totally.
Noah: And he sticks around for the Battle of Hogwarts and fights alongside his brothers.
Alyssa: And he apologizes.
Logan: So sad.
Noah: He’s got that stuff in him.
Alyssa: Whatever. Percy’s great. Mic drop.
[Caleb laughs]
Noah: Except for that great line where Harry says he was so smug that he seemed to be as if he were Prime Minister of the World or something.
Alyssa: Yeah. As if he had just been elected Supreme Master of the World, or something like that.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: I thought that was a great line.
Logan: Yeah. First thing he says to Harry is “I’ve been promoted!”
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: Right.
Alyssa: Go Percy. You cute little try-hard.
Caleb: So we get this… when they’re at the tables of the Champions, Harry overhears Krum describing Durmstrang to Hermione. The description is pretty cool. We figure out that Durmstrang is definitely very cold because they don’t light fires enough. But it is also interesting that Karkaroff stops him from revealing too much, and then Dumbledore sort of jumps in. We also get Fleur acting out again, talking about how much better Beauxbatons is than Hogwarts. So it’s kind of an interesting way we get the juxtaposition of the three schools and their differences.
Alyssa: Where do you guys think that Durmstrang is based on that description?
Logan: I guess the clues are somewhere north because they don’t get a lot of light in the winter and Krum goes there and he plays [Quidditch] for Bulgaria. So I actually don’t know exactly where Bulgaria is…
Alyssa: Eastern Europe.
Caleb: Yeah, it’s around Greece and Romania…
Logan: Okay.
Caleb: Yeah. I always thought… I guess it makes sense because he plays for Bulgaria, but for some reason Bulgaria just seems too south for me. I don’t know, though.
Alyssa: I personally – considering what I reread about them not getting a lot of light in the winter – that kind of made me think of somewhere like Iceland or Greenland…
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: Mhm.
Alyssa: … that does get like “days of night.” And it’s very far north but they still do have beautiful summers. I think it’s actually really interesting that he points out that in the summers they fly every day. Which means they have a full year and probably have longer breaks.
Caleb: Mmm.
Logan: Mhm.
Caleb: I always thought about Northern Scandinavia for some reason. Their descriptions in the books don’t really match the people there, but the geography always made sense to me.
Logan: Mhm.
Alyssa: Yeah. Well, I imagine it’s probably a pretty big group of people. Because if Hogwarts is just Britain and then Beauxbatons would probably be Western Europe, Durmstrang would be Eastern Europe and maybe some of Asia in terms of Russia or something.
Noah: Right.
Caleb: Can’t you have a lot of small former USSR countries that… no, I don’t think a school would be in one of those smaller countries, so no.
Alyssa: Actually, I wrote an essay about education in the magical world…
Caleb: That’s right.
Alyssa: … if you guys are interested in reading it. Of course, now I can’t remember what the title of it is! [laughs] I wrote it a while ago… well, not a while ago but a couple of months ago.
Noah: What was that for?
Alyssa: It was for the MuggleNet Blog. It’s on the MuggleNet Blog.
Noah: Oh, cool.
Alyssa: Why can’t I remember what it was called? It had a really snappy title.
Caleb: Was it something like “The Melting Cauldron”?
Alyssa: Oh, yes! “The Melting Cauldron”.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: It was about education in magical America. Because we’re like the melting pot, but melting cauldron. But then I also talk a little bit in the introduction about different cultures and how they might incorporate magic into their cultural practice. So check it out.
Caleb: There [are] duels in Texas, which I love.
Alyssa: Yeah. I took a little bit of inspiration… the dueling didn’t come from Caleb, but I was thinking of Caleb when I wrote it. I give him a little shout-out.
Noah: They would duel.
Alyssa: And they would have… actually, one of my favorite details is that their wands would be decorated with filigree that you would find on Old Western pistols.
Logan: Oh, that’s…
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: Just a little… it’s half headcanon and half actual research. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: Nice.
Caleb: Everyone should check it out on the MuggleNet Blog. So in this short conversation, Dumbledore is talking again with Karkaroff about not knowing all the secrets of Hogwarts. And he talks about a room that he found that’s full of chamber pots, and so I was wondering, “Do we think this could be the Room of Requirement that he’s talking about?” But then I thought, “Surely, by now, Dumbledore knows about the Room of Requirement,” and this is a room he says he didn’t know about.
Noah: I believe it is. I think it is.
Alyssa: Yeah, it’s definitely the Room of Requirement, but I would be really, really surprised if Dumbledore had not discovered it until this moment.
Caleb: So you think he’s just sort of… he’s not being totally truthful about saying he didn’t know about it?
Logan: I think it’s…
Alyssa: Well, Dumbeldore is never totally truthful.
Caleb: Yeah, that’s kind of where I was getting.
Noah: And then there’s the huge stretch that he somehow knows that Harry is in ear shot and is cueing him in to the Room of Requirement.
Caleb: Ooh.
Logan: I don’t think that’s a huge stretch.
Alyssa: Well…
Logan: Because he… does he look at Harry? He winks at Harry, so he knows Harry is listening, whether or not…
Noah: Ah, that’s true.
Alyssa: It says he gives him a very small wink, whatever that means.
Logan: Yeah.
Noah: So he’s clearly…
Alyssa: John and I tried to act that out earlier.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: Yeah, how do you do a small wink?
Caleb: Well, he… but I think he’s winking at Harry because Harry laughs at…
Noah: Yeah.
Caleb: Because he says, “‘… when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder.’ Harry snorted into his plate. Percy frowned, but Harry could have sworn Dumbledore had given him a very small wink.”
Noah: But Caleb, Dumbledore has very sacred eye movements. What about the fire in his eyes when the blood cometh…
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: “Sacred” eye movements or “sexy” eye movements, Noah?
Alyssa: The gleam of triumph.
Noah: The gleam of triumph in his eyes. All I’m saying is that when Dumbledore does something with his eyes, something’s going on that is…
Alyssa: Well, I mean, also – well, sort of – the Room of Requirement obviously becomes very, very important later, not just because of the DA but also because Voldemort hid a Horcrux there.
Caleb: Hmm. Yeah.
Logan: But I think… I feel like the Room of Requirement is something that Dumbledore knows… has an idea that it exists, but I think it also seems clear that he doesn’t know the full extent of it because Voldemort is able to hide a Horcrux there, and when Harry is trying to figure out where the diadem is, there’s a line where he says, “Well, of course Dumbledore, that model pupil, would never have found it, but Harry is a rule breaker, like Voldemort, so he knows where it is.” So Dumbledore might know, “Hey, there’s this bathroom room, and it’s probably magical” – or it’s Hogwarts; it’s definitely magical.
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: But maybe he doesn’t know the full extent, but it’s something like, “Hey, I should let Harry know that this is around.” I can definitely see Dumbledore consciously planting the seed even if he doesn’t really know what Harry is going to use it for.
Alyssa: Mhm.
Noah: Yeah.
Logan: Because he plays the long game.
Noah: Yes, he does. Pig for slaughter.
Caleb: Mhm.
Alyssa: Once again, Dumbledore… kind of a buttface.
[Caleb and Logan laugh]
Logan: Yeah, sorry, Noah.
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: Still a cool guy. Not mutually exclusive with being a buttface.
Alyssa: Oh, he definitely has his cool moments. I just think he has a lot of problematic elements as well.
Noah: It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have sexy eyes, though.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: So finally, the dancing actually gets started. And guys, this is not the kind of dance party that I want to be at because – except for maybe a few exceptions – we get descriptions of Neville awkwardly with Ginny. He’s stepping on her feet. Dumbeldore is dwarfing Maxime. Really, the only people knowing what they are doing [are] Fred and Angelina. As expected, though, they are clearly the life of the dance party. [laughs] But these poor children just… they do not know how to dance.
Alyssa: They have no idea.
Caleb: [laughs] Kind of like sometimes when you’re at LeakyCon and…
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: … everyone is dancing by the stage. Everyone is having a wonderful time, but there are some fun moments going on there. So we also… we’ve actually talked about this topic earlier in Goblet of Fire – how there’s this sort of misconception that Beauxbatons is all girls, and on the other side, Durmstrang is all boys – but we definitely know that Beauxbatons has boys because a Beauxbatons boy comes and takes Parvati away from Harry because Harry is sucking and not being a good dance partner.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: I mean, but to be fair, Harry seems like he put on a good face for a little while. He danced with Parvati for a while.
Noah: When he had to.
Caleb: Yeah, but he’s deserving of a break.
Alyssa: I mean, I like how you let that slide for Harry, but Ron is the worst date ever.
Caleb: Well, but Ron never dances. He doesn’t dance at all.
Alyssa: No.
Logan: Harry only dances because he has to, though.
Alyssa: Well, Harry is required to. Yeah. Harry has to.
Caleb: Yeah, well, that’s fair. Let’s be clear: Harry is… I would be on the floor much more than Harry would, but at least he tries to put on a good face a little bit. But Parvati clearly just wants to have a good time, so…
Alyssa: I know. I feel bad for the girls.
Caleb: Yeah. Especially Padma.
Noah: Yeah, she gets it the worst.
Alyssa: Oh yeah, poor thing. But they end up finding their way in the end…
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: … with those Beauxbatons boys.
Caleb: Disappearing, probably.
Alyssa: Go make out in some rose bushes, girls.
Caleb: There you go.
Logan: The whole date thing, I think they talked about this on last week’s episode, but the date sort of sets a lot of the plot going forward. If Harry had asked Cho, and Cho said yes, it would be Harry and Cho, and it wouldn’t be Cho and Cedric, and so Harry wouldn’t have dated Cho later, and Harry wouldn’t have ended up with Ginny.
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: A whole bunch of stuff wouldn’t have happened, traced back to – well, you could trace it back to whenever you want – fourteen-year-olds asking each other to the dance.
Caleb: It’s your choices, man.
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: In this case, Cho’s choice, or I guess Cedric’s choice of asking her quickly enough.
Alyssa: Yeah, of Cedric being proactive.
Caleb: Maybe he wouldn’t have died.
Logan: Aww.
Caleb: Whoops.
Alyssa: Too soon.
Caleb: Too soon? Guys, it’s been a long time.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Noah: We’re Hufflepuffs, man. We’re still holding on to that.
Alyssa: This is seriously a sore subject for us.
Caleb: So Hermione finally comes over to Ron and Harry, while Viktor – Vicky, as Ron calls him – is getting them drinks, and Ron clearly is upset. He starts snapping at Hermione. I don’t think Hermione really expected him to go that over the top, especially not in public. It’s interesting because Ron is, at least verbally, upset because Krum is Harry’s competition in the Triwizard Tournament. But do we really think that’s the reason that Ron is the most upset… ?
Alyssa: Oh.
Caleb: … or is he probably more upset because it’s Hermione, and he isn’t her date?
Alyssa: I wonder. I wonder what the answer to that question is.
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. But I mean, it’s funny. I don’t know if that just popped into his head or he had been trying to… actually, I bet he was trying to justify it to himself with that reason, more than admitting to himself his feelings for Hermione.
Alyssa: Oh, definitely.
Noah: That’s true. That’s it.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: Ron, just going about this… literally he could not be doing it worse. [laughs]
Caleb: Right. God, those two. [laughs]
Alyssa: I know. Got to love them.
Caleb: Got to.
Noah: I hope they make it.
Caleb: [laughs] I think they’ll be okay.
Alyssa: Yeah. I’m a little more worried about Ginny and Harry, actually.
Caleb: Yeah. They probably have some rough nights. Screaming. I see Ginny throwing some things at Harry.
Alyssa: Oh, definitely. Ginny is kind of a bully, actually.
Caleb: [laughs] Yeah.
Alyssa: But we can touch on that another time.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: [laughs] That’s another episode.
Caleb: So Hermione walks off, and Harry and Ron go outside to get some fresh air, and they overhear Snape and Karkaroff talking. And obviously, the first time you read this you don’t really know what’s going on, but it sounds very, very suspicious. Later, we find out that they were talking about the Dark Mark. But this is the first time we really see Snape and Karkaroff on some sort of familiar terms like this.
Alyssa: What did you guys think it was when you first read it, if you can remember?
Caleb: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to think. Because I guess we kind of do know… isn’t it in an earlier letter that Sirius tells Harry that Karkaroff was a Death Eater? Or maybe it’s in the fireplace. I can’t remember.
Logan: I think it’s in the fireplace before the first task, when Sirius is about to tell Harry about how to get past the dragon, and then Ron shows up. I think it’s that conversation.
Caleb: Yeah. So we know they’re Death Eaters at this point.
Noah: Well, we don’t know Snape is a Death Eater. I don’t think.
Alyssa: No, I mean, I think there’s always been suspicion.
Caleb: Yeah, right.
Alyssa: But it’s never outright said until the Pensieve at the trial.
Caleb: Mhm. Yeah.
Alyssa: And Dumbledore vouches for him.
Caleb: Right.
Noah: Yeah.
Caleb: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I guess I want to say that my mind probably just went immediately to something Voldemort but probably nothing specific because I had no idea.
Alyssa: Well, we don’t know about the Dark Mark at this point.
Caleb: Right, that what I’m saying. I wouldn’t have known anything specific like the Dark Mark but maybe something. “It’s getting clearer and clearer for months.” That’s the quote. I can’t imagine what I would’ve thought that was.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Logan: You have to… I don’t know if you have to, but Snape, I think, maybe got some respect in this because no matter what’s going on you get the sense that Karkaroff is freaking out, and Snape is in the same boat, but Snape is playing it much more coolly. And whether that means he has Dumbledore’s support, or he just has to stay to kill Harry when Voldemort comes back, Snape is… he’s taking it pretty well.
[Alyssa laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: He’s in control.
Caleb: He definitely is. Then after that they overhear Hagrid and Maxime talking, and we learn about Hagrid’s really sad childhood – about his dad and his giantess mother – and then he tries to relate it to Maxime, but she denies that she’s half-giantess. And it’s a really sad scene. For all of Hagrid’s faults, you get this… he’s finally getting this moment to relate to someone that he’s probably been missing his whole life, and she shuts him out and acts offended.
Noah: And doesn’t it seem as if he hadn’t brought that up that it was going to work out for him with her on some level?
Logan: Mhm.
Caleb: Yeah.
Noah: Yeah, that’s really rough.
Alyssa: Yeah. It bums me out. Hagrid is really, really good at saying the absolute worst thing, but this is something that… I mean, Maxime did not react well. She obviously was very insulted, but she also is very deluded. [laughs] “Oh, I have big bones!” Oh, okay. [laughs]
Caleb: Right. Yeah.
Alyssa: Nice try.
Caleb: Whoops.
Logan: It’s also maybe another one of his instances of if characters knew etymology, they would have an easier time reading people. Because I don’t… I’m just looking it up now, but Maxime sort of sounds like “maxum or “maximum” – “big” – and Wikipedia is saying from Latin maximus, which means the “greatest,” so that’s sort of… “greatest” isn’t quite “biggest,” but…
Alyssa: Oh, yeah. Her first name is Olympe.
Caleb: [pronounces incorrectly as “oh-LIM-pay”] Olympe, yeah.
Alyssa: It’s just Olympe; you don’t pronounce the “E.”
Caleb: Well, that’s true in French.
Logan: That’s sort of a subtle… that must have been a tough name to grow up with.
Alyssa: Yeah, poor thing. But also, she was kind of a jerk in this scene.
Logan: Yeah.
Caleb: Right. And then when they go inside, Ron has to tell Harry that – because Harry doesn’t really make a big deal about the fact that Hagrid is half-giant, something Hagrid has never revealed to any of them – giants are really viscous, and we get the sort of backstory on how giants play into this wizarding world. And he understands why Hagrid would hide this information, but it’s strange that they react to Hagrid being half-giant in this way because… really? What else did you expect was the deal with Hagrid? I can’t imagine a different explanation for him being that large.
Alyssa: Well, I think Draco in a couple – or later in the book – is like, “Oh, I just thought he swallowed some Skele-Gro,” and Ron is like, “I thought he got in the way of an Engorgement Charm,” And I’m like, “Wow, you guys.”
Caleb: Yeah. You’re really dense.
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: Yeah. [laughs] No problem solving skills or critical thinking.
Caleb: Maybe for Harry I understand, but Ron, you grew up in a magical family; you know what’s going on.
Noah: You should know.
Alyssa: Although I imagine they never really conceived of the idea – ha, that’s kind of a pun – that giants and humans would conceive.
[Caleb, Logan, and Noah laugh]
Caleb: Ha, whoops!
Caleb: No, that’s true.
Alyssa: So feel free to talk about that in the comments.
[Alyssa and Caleb laugh]
Noah: I’m still confused by that myself.
Caleb: Well, we’re not going to go there.
Alyssa: Because you can’t really… I don’t know how much we can discuss that here, but…
Caleb: Feel very uncomfortable.
[Alyssa and Noah laugh]
Caleb: Not sure. And so as the chapter ends, they’re starting to go away. Ron and Hermione go ahead. Ron is still pissed, Hermione’s night is pretty much ruined because of Ron, but before they head off, Cedric catches Harry before… while Cho is still waiting for him at the end of the stairs. This whole chain is all together at once: Hermione, Ron, Harry, Cho, and Cedric.
Noah: Oh, yeah. [laughs]
Caleb: But Cedric tells Harry the trick about the egg, how he needs to open it underwater. He’s finally paying him back for giving him the tip about the dragons. And we find a place – finally – in Hogwarts where people actually bathe, so that’s a plus.
Alyssa: That’s true.
Noah: Right. That’s been a long question. [laughs]
Alyssa: It actually – speaking of the bathroom in general – occurred to me that Hogwarts must not… they must use chamber pots. They probably don’t have toilets in the dormitories.
Caleb: Yeah. I don’t…
Logan: Well, they have pipes for the Basilisk, and they have pipes for the running water.
Alyssa: Yeah, they have restrooms like any school would, but it seems like they have chamber pots in the dorms, so you don’t have to leave the room.
Logan: Oh.
Alyssa: But who knows. I mean, that just goes off of Dumbledore’s comment about the chamber pots in the Room of Requirement.
Noah: I guess you can use magic for stuff. Various sanitary things.
Logan: Yeah.
Noah: Smells and things.
Alyssa: Well, magic. You know how it is. [laughs] Yeah, that has got to be uncomfortable for any Muggle children who are used to indoor plumbing.
Caleb: I would not stand for it. [laughs] I would leave.
Alyssa: Well, you would just have to leave your… you would have to become a prefect, first of all, and [laughs] just be like, “Look, I need my own bathroom stat.”
Caleb: Yeah, that’s true.
Logan: I was just going to say, “I thought Dumbledore’s chamber pot reference was a… there happened to be chamber pots, and they’re historic, not necessarily chamber pots the way the rest of the castle has chamber pots.”
Alyssa: The historic Hogwarts chamber pots. [laughs]
Logan: Yeah. We’ll open the Room of Requirement as a museum.
Noah: Hopefully, they don’t have any contents.
Logan: Yeah.
Alyssa: Oh, yeah, definitely.
Noah: Historic contents.
[Logan laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: I’m just seeing them with famous names engraved on the side, like “This was Merlin’s chamber pot.”
[Logan laughs]
Noah: “Tom Riddle.” [laughs]
[Alyssa laughs]
Logan: [laughs] Are we sure it’s not a Horcrux?
Noah: Don’t go in here. [laughs]
Caleb: But when Harry finally gets back to the Gryffindor common room, he finds Ron and Hermione – like a true married couple – shouting in the common room, and Hermione pretty much slams Ron in that he should have asked her first rather than using her as a last resort, and it’s just like, “Mm, burn,” and Harry knows it.
Alyssa: Yes, when Harry finally notices something, you know it’s serious.
[Caleb and Noah laugh]
Caleb: The least perceptive person ever, so…
Alyssa: Well, I love how it’s phrased as well. I don’t have the book open, but it’s like, “Harry had the idea… ” It’s just like, “He somewhat sensed… ” [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
[Noah laughs]
Alyssa: “… that Hermione had gotten the point better than Ron had,” and it’s like, “Almost there!” He almost came to that conclusion. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah. So that is it for this week – a really fun chapter – but now things start to really hit the ground running after this with the future tasks.
Alyssa: Vacation is over.
Caleb: Yes.
Noah: All right, everybody, here’s the Podcast Question of the Week. “Assuming that the room with the chamber pots was actually the Room of Requirement… ” – which I think we’re pretty solid with now, that we think that’s it – “… did Dumbledore know it was the Room of Requirement when he went in? Does he know about it, and if he did know about it, was he possibly hinting something to Harry in this scene, or potentially seeding it in his mind, as Logan suggests?” You can leave answers on the Alohomora! site, and we will check them out next week.
Caleb: Sweet. And we want to, again, thank Logan for stopping by and joining us for this episode. It was great having you on board.
Logan: Thank you. It was great to be here. Thank you, guys, for having me.
Alyssa: Yay!
Caleb: And since we didn’t really get a chance to talk about it before, tell us: How are things going with… ? I’m sure you guys are in really big prep mode for the World Cup. I mean, when the new year hits, it’s only really a couple of months away.
Logan: Mhm. Yeah, things are going great. They’re definitely ramping up. We’ve got our event website up at iqaworldcup.com, so you can go on there and see a list of the teams who have qualified. The season sort of culminates with the World Cup in April, and so all this year, sort of mirroring the school calendar, we’re having regional championships all throughout the world, and we have six in the US; we have them in Canada, in Europe, and in Australia. And so teams compete at these regionals to qualify for the World Cup, and so those have been going on. We’ve got a couple more to wrap up in February, but the field is getting set for World Cup, and we’re really excited. The competition gets better every and every year, so that’s going to be great to see – even last year to this year – how much more people are on their game, and the intensity of the sport is really growing, so we’re really excited about that.
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: That’s awesome.
Caleb: I mean, it’s so exciting to hear. We had Alex Benepe on just a couple weeks ago, and I’m very invested in this tournament because my university is… my alma mater is the defending world champion, so I really hope… I have something that is also going on that weekend, but I’m trying to make it work so [that] I can go because I will be the loudest person there when Texas plays.
Logan: Yeah.
Alyssa: Oh God, maybe I need to rethink going. [laughs]
[Caleb laughs]
Logan: Well, it would be great if you guys can make it. If not, you can definitely follow it online…
Caleb: Oh, yeah.
Logan: … or we’ll have a livestream for you guys to watch.
Caleb: Totally. For sure.
Alyssa: Oh yeah, I know.
Caleb: And if you would like to join the show just like Logan, we would love to have you on board. You can figure out what it takes to be on Alohomora! by heading over to our website – alohomora.mugglenet.com – and finding the link that says “Be on the Show.” Just keep in mind that you have to have appropriate audio equipment to join the show. In the meantime, head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave us a review about what you think of the show. We love reading those.
Alyssa: And apart from that, you can contact Alohomora! on a bunch of different social media sites, including Twitter at @AlohomoraMN. On Facebook, you can find us at facebook.com/openthedumbledore. Or you can be on the show another way and leave a voicemail at 206-GO-ALBUS – that’s 206-462-5287. Or, if you are phone shy, you can leave a message on Audioboo directly on alohomora.mugglenet.com, and it can be played on the show. And it’s free, so all you need is a mic. There’s no reason not to do it.
Noah: And we also want to remind you that we have T-shirts and now long-sleeved T-shirts, tote bags, sweatshirts, flip flops, water bottles, travel mugs, and there’s of course more coming soon. I have to again remind you that there is the MLF shirt and the Desk!Pig shirts now available, so please go ahead and support the Mandrake Liberation Front. I can personally tell you that Mandrakes will benefit from the proceeds…
[Caleb laughs]
Noah: … so that they can finally escape Greenhouse 3 and take over the world.
[Caleb laughs]
Alyssa: Oh my God. [laughs]
Noah: There are over 80 products to choose from, so really you can’t go wrong with anything you get. We also have ringtones, which of course have our famous Alohomora! song.
Caleb: And the ringtones are free.
Noah: Oh, yeah.
Caleb: And they’re on our website.
Noah: Do that. [laughs]
Caleb: Also be sure to check out our smartphone app, which is seemingly available worldwide. Prices will vary depending on your location. If you get this app, you will get access to things that people without the app do not get. So those are things like transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and so much more.
[Show music begins]
Caleb: All right. Well, that’s going to do it for this episode of Alohomora! I’m Caleb Graves.
Noah: I’m Noah Fried.
Alyssa: I’m Alyssa Jennette. And thank you for listening to Episode 61 of Alohomora!
Noah: Open the Dumbledore!
[Show music continues]
Alyssa: There are a couple of really bad ones.
Caleb: Wasn’t Ginny and Draco’s blooded chocolate [laughs] or something really weird?
Alyssa: Oh God.
Noah: [laughs] What?
Alyssa: I think I’ve seen a couple of different ones for them, but there was actually a really great Tumblr post that I saw the other day, because obviously Sirius and Remus is a very big…
Caleb: Yeah.
Alyssa: … ship, and they’re Wolfstar.
Caleb: They got married at LeakyCon Portland.
Noah: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Alyssa: Oh, did they?
Caleb: Yeah.
Logan: Yeah.
Caleb: There’s the vote that the… I guess… was it the HPA that did that?
Logan: Yeah, I think it was the HPA.
Caleb: Yeah. And they overwhelmingly won.
Alyssa: That’s not surprising. But I guess someone was like, “Well, if Remus and Sirius are Wolfstar, then are James and Sirius Starbucks?”
[Noah laughs]
Caleb: Oh my God.
Alyssa: And I was like, “Yes, I definitely am down with this, just for that name alone.” [laughs]
Caleb: Starbucks. That’s funny.
Noah: You can get your own James and Sirius drink. [laughs]
Caleb: Starbucks needs a James and Sirius drink. There you go.
Alyssa: Oh my gosh, we need to figure it out and put it on the secret menu. Email us with your suggestions.
Caleb: [laughs] Perfect.
