“I love that idea that it's the choices that we make that are the most important rather than the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Just because -- under the circumstances you were born -- you were assigned a particular gender, doesn't mean that that's how you have to stay. You can make a choice to live your life the way that's going to be fulfilling to you.”  -JC

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Now he knows, "there's somebody that was at least as powerful as me. I have to meet this person." The diary he originally wrote -- with the stated intention of just trying to kill the people he despises -- now has changed to a deeper yearning for somebody to talk to that might understand him so that he might not be alone. 

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The conditions do not have to be reproduced. It does not have to be a snake in front of you. What has to be reproduced is the person's magical state of mind. That's what's real. That's why, when you read a book of fiction, it changes you, even though you haven't been through the adventures that you've read about. This is why visualizations work.  

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“At Malfoy's last words, Ron had leapt off the stool, and in the scramble to collect bags and books, his attempts to reach Malfoy went unnoticed." This is, I think, the only time in history that Snape ever doesn't notice a Gryffindor trying to hit a Slytherin. And yet, Draco has said this very loud, audible thing and then Ron is trying to hit him, and somehow Snape's attention is accidentally elsewhere.

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The scapegoating:  the timing of Rowling's anti-trans campaign when it really hit full speed -- when she published the manifesto about gender on her website -- was during June 2020, during the time of the COVID pandemic and also the global Black Lives Matter protest movement against police violence that's racially motivated.

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LK:  "Harry cannot resist the diary. This is our first sign of two horcruxes wanting to join each other because bits of soul, by nature, want to re-merge."

JC: "Expelliarmus is used to take a weapon away, so the implication that the book is a weapon and no one really realizes it yet is very interesting, too." -Ep. 2.13

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"Harry comes out of the bathroom stall and he looks at himself in the cracked mirror. This is the difficulty with which you look at your enemy. What would it be like to look in the mirror and see this person instead from that different perspective? This is the same cracked mirror that Harry and Draco see each other in in Sectumsempra. Same bathroom, same cracked mirror." - Ep. 2.12

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Now that Snape has Harry and Draco practice Expelliarmus against each other -- the people that they hate the most -- those boys are going to eventually go on to use this spell to bring down, each of them, one of the most powerful wizards of the century. In both cases, it's going to be Draco's wand against the Elder Wand. Both Harry and Draco have been taught by the same person, and the wands consider their magic to be interchangeable.

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"There's this madman… this madman's coming at me!" His arm is shattered, it's hanging by his side. He's been drenched, he's got this intense look on his face. That must have scared the crap out of Draco. - JC, Ep. 2.10

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"During the time of the Four Founders, there was an overriding real danger, which is that non-magical people were killing witches and wizards. That's what you want to be fighting, but Slytherin took it to in-fighting, had a blow-up with his three partners, took it out against them and decided that he was going to focus on killing Muggle-born students who are in Hogwarts. Is that really going to do anything against the real danger here, or is that the setup you've had in your mind because the real danger is so big and you're so powerless against it?" - Ep. 2.9

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