Harry Potter After 2020

JC:  For Harry, this is one thing that he has that is really his own. I think about the students I've worked with. How important it is for a kid to have a thing that they are good at and that they know they're good at. To have an identity as, "I am a person who is capable of something."

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LK:  To me, this chapter is a masterpiece. People have secret agendas, everything is working on at least three layers at once, and everybody in this chapter is right and wrong about everything. 

JC: It's a common refrain online for people who really dislike the author, for extremely legitimate reasons, who will often say, "Oh, the books are mediocre." This is the kind of chapter where I want to go, "How do you read this and call it mediocre?" As much as I dislike the author personally, I've got to admit this is just damn good.

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JC:  “How cool would it have been to be one of the teachers in that school, to be sitting in that game and to watch Harry Potter shoot off a fully formed Patronus?  Everybody else knows what Harry's Patronus looks like now, except for Harry. Lupin knows. Lupin is the only person in that space who knows what that stag means.” For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

You can't tell Harry Potter, "Don't continue to integrate your memories. Don't continue to uncover who you are and to be yourself." These are his memories; they belong to him. These are his parents that were taken from him, but he can't remember them without this agony. Okay, Lupin is here to try to give whatever advice Lupin can about how to strengthen yourself so that you can go in and be reunited with what's yours. 

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Why is there this broom? Why is it so suspicious, even though it turns out to be fine? What passions have all come together in this wildly ostentatious, inappropriate, mysterious, dangerous gift replacing a gift that was already in itself inappropriate and ostentatious from two years ago? This child of destiny with the only two people in the world he can trust, and now one of them has just turned in his broom. For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

"Harry gets to ask Lupin, somebody who knows what this is like, "Why is this happening to me?" and Lupin gets to tell him straight out, "There are horrors in your past that the others don't have." This is a really good thing that Dumbledore did, to bring Lupin in. The larger theme of this book being time travel and being haunted by the past, this is not only Lupin being good for Harry the character but I think this book, Prisoner of Azkaban, being good for kid readers."

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What we're seeing is the origin of Harry's 'saving people thing’; this is what Voldemort did to him to change him from being a baby to somebody who is scarred for life. This tiny baby felt he had to help his mother. And yet, Harry having this flashback… it's also restoring some of his own story and his own mother to him -- which makes it so conflicted and so bittersweet.

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For Snape to walk in, look at this kid and Lupin, be wary, deposit this tricky potion and then back out… We're not imagining that the author wrote secrets into that scene -- secrets in history and suspicion, and everybody having agendas that nobody else knows about. Also, how very wrong every character is about something in the end, and they don't all learn that about each other, either.

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JC:  If you think about Neville in this chapter… We get two lessons in a row on how to bully people. Snape has just given a masterclass on how to be cruel to a person who is powerless, and then Lupin gives a class on how to respond to that with more bullying. The kids are learning that here's how adults do it.

For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

"These divination methods are real subjects. There are things that you and I as Muggles know about, like scrying and tea reading and tarot cards. These are things with a human history and meaning, and even learning what they are and what they have meant to people over the ages, that is a thing that is worth studying; she can provide that even if she doesn't have the Sight most of the time."

For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.