"A not-insignificant number of people discovered their trans identities through Harry Potter roleplay and Harry Potter cosplay, because Harry Potter was so big and such a big part of our lives. I was trying to make a list of the people I knew on LiveJournal who went through transition, and it was so long that I gave up. It's a demographic, not just a few people we knew."

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Giving Harry back the cloak and the Marauder's Map, Lupin so distinctly crosses over from being a teacher to being a pure agent of chaos. He has zero compunction about this, but that's his actual true nature. He is a very edgy character, and that's something that I want to advocate for in portrayals of Lupin in fanfiction. He is a mollifying person, but he isn't a domesticated safe human. He is chaotic. He has a lot of edge to him.

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Whenever time travel and Time-Turners are used in Potterverse, I read it as this metaphor for how you can go back into trauma, into the past, with a different perspective and change not what happened, but change your view of the innocence and guilt of yourself, as well as other people, and understand where strength in yourself came from that you didn't believe in at the time. 

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The appearance of this Patronus made me think, 'This is the love that had strengthened him from his father.' This is so much more coalesced now in him. He's gotten to know the bonds between James and James' friends. He's connected with these friends, and he's been told that he's like James; flying, the most Harry thing, is connected to James. We have seen how that has changed Harry in this one chapter.

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This is the one character that every person, every character in this series, is unanimous about. There is nobody else where every single character on every side has the same reaction, but everybody loathes Peter Pettigrew.  Have you and I talked about the name of J.K. Rowling's father?  First, middle, and last. I'm going to sit here while you Google. For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

Sirius has re-entered relationships. Until this moment, he had nobody but himself, so what did it matter if he killed Peter now or five minutes from now? Now Lupin is saying, "I don't know the story. These children don't, and James's kid doesn't know." Suddenly, Sirius has relationships that he's responsible to, and that brings life; that brings more reason to live. Scabbers is squealing; he's listening, too. This chapter is set up so that we can go back and reread it from every character's perspective; every character has something different going on.

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'Don't kill. Get the full story. You might think what you want is revenge or anger or hatred or murder, but what you really want -- what's really going to satisfy you -- is knowing the full story.' Expelliarmus, disarmament, enables the story to be told. Oh, Sirius... His voice is all rough because he hasn't had anyone to listen to him for so long.

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In this series that is overtly skeptical about a lot of new age or mystical things, we see something that is obviously meant to be genuine divination. It's powerful and it's undeniable, so do we suspend our belief or not? This series has simultaneously disbelieved and believed. It's fun, and the fact that Trelawney doesn't know about it somehow makes it more authoritative. For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

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.

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