JC: Coming from a teacher education perspective, we spend so much time talking about building appropriate relationships with students. That just hits all the wrong buttons for me, but for creepy reasons. Why would you be choosing students? Who are you as an adult that you need that to bolster your -- We tell people, "You have your own life. Go have your own life and set up boundaries."

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Lorrie: Because Voldemort cursed the curriculum...

JC: If people can't defend themselves on a very basic level -- people can't do critical thinking or media literacy, or just basically being able to do things without having to turn to AI -- that feels like an intentional long game to do damage to society so that people have to rely on something else.

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Harry and Draco are in that liminal space between being old enough in many ways to be an adult, but still technically young enough so that they're still a bit malleable. There's still a chance to turn back. Is there still time to save Draco? A little bit. This is a moment where, even if it's too late for some things, it's not too late for everything; it's still worth doing.

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The thing that Dumbledore wants to force Slughorn to do against Slughorn's will… Dumbledore actually has Slughorn's best interests at heart. That's the greatness of this character: he will go against your will and he'll be right. After he's done with you and you do what he made you do against your will, will you be thankful? Yeah, kind of.

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JC: Dumbledore taking the Dursleys to task. That's the way that he is throughout this chapter, and I remember thinking this feels like fanfic because it felt like such fantasy fulfillment. I had wanted to see somebody tell the Dursleys how badly they treated Harry for so long, and to have Dumbledore come in and do it, I had to keep thinking, 'Really?! Is this really happening?'

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This is the closest that Snape ever gets in his life to a wedding. It's not that he's going to be loved, but he is going to be needed. He won't be loved, but he'll have to love. Three times, Narcissa asks him to swear an oath; three times, he says, "I will." He's being called upon as a teacher. He's not a father, he's not just a friend. What is he? He's a teacher.

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This volume is going to humble us all. We're all going to have to face the parts of ourselves that we're not sure we're strong enough to face, and everyone else in the world can see these things about us. What are you going to do if the world is in an urgent enough crisis so that we don't actually have time for self-delusion anymore? Well, just give it up and just do what you have to do.

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On Umbridge: How would you feel if you had tried your absolute best to get somebody destroyed and they come to save you? It's not because they love you; it's because you have worth -- because people have worth. I think that being face-to-face with the greatness of that humbling mercy and that moral code is world-destroying for her.

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Recently, having seen what becomes of people when they become billionaires, how it warps them… I have felt a greater appreciation for what Dumbledore did for Harry by not having him be raised from the age of one as The Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the savior. Neglect and abuse are awful; uncontained indulgence is frightening in a completely different way.

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Grace Candido-Beecher [author of Voldemort] reads that phrase "the boy" as when Voldemort says it, he means Harry and he also means that part of himself that was the young Tom Riddle growing up in an orphanage.

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