The Shrieking Shack

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 19-22. Our third reading adventure is over. After fifty Quidditch games and ten chapters of faffing around in the titular Shrieking Shack, we discuss the end of Prisoner of Azkaban in fine detail: including dog brains, House Elf Dementors, the ethics of taking a life, and fate vs. free will. That sounds like a joke, but it's not! Listen now and find out if the third Harry Potter book stuck the landing or takes a dive. (incidentally, Harry's really good at those)

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 17-18. We uncover Pottermore's "revelations" about Fantastic Beasts. Then we get into the very exciting scenes that take place in the Shrieking Shack itself, which are way more farcical than we were expecting. To commemorate this occasion, Liz's fanfiction chops are put to the test with the ultimate Marauder fic quiz.

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 15-16. Liz conjures up the dark spirit of an ancient basic cable TV drama before we discuss Prisoner of Azkaban's tenth Quidditch match. Just like Harry, this book's specialty seems to be dives--does the rest of this reading pull up in time, or are we headed towards a crash of Norbert Chapter proportions?

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 13-14. Knives out!! We've been enjoying this book so much we hadn't quite realized how hungry we were, and this chapter about how cool the Firebolt is just dumped a ton of blood into the water. We discuss the Firebolt's superb handling, pinpoint precision, and whatever the hell else it has along with Leakycon updates and our own American broom marketing plans!

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 11-12. We hit up Bustle for some headlines and Pottermore for some marketing material before discussing the most drama-filled chapters of this book yet. Hermione took away Harry's Xbox! The flobberworms are dead! Crookshanks is scheming! We cover all this and more before taking a trip overseas to learn all about Chinese Harry Potter fan fiction and bootlegs.

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 9-10. Happy birthday, Harry Potter! And a happy birthday to you too, JK Rowling--we hope you got a third treehouse or whatever. After we finish wishing our heroes a happy birthday, we travel to a very rainy Hogwarts to discuss the Marauder's Map, pub waitresses, reddit, and who would win in a fight between Sirius Black and John Wick.

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 7-8. Comic-con happened, so naturally we have to pick over the remains of WB's nightmarish press conference (and the Fantastic Beasts trailer). Xeecee did a little bit of field reporting at a Target "event" and has the misspelled Hogwarts acceptance letter to prove it. Then, our reading for the week is a roller coaster of melodrama, Quidditch rules, and wad-blowing!

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 5-6. We investigate the "new" JK Rowling interview content "discovered" this week before getting into our reading--which we really liked! Still, there's plenty to go over in detail, from train stoppages to knight paintings to JK's strangely cruel supplemental writing about her own characters. Finally, we top it all off with some of your confessions!

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 3-4. The guy whose name rhymes with Bhonny Bepp is back in the news and WB has a movie to promote, so you know what that means: it's time for us to predict what brand of non-reaction the Harry Potter brand will have. Then we're off to the Knight Bus, where things are considerably better! We loved our reading so much this week, Liz had to come up with an extra cursed final segment: the confession booth.

Prisoner of Azkaban chapters 1-2. It's season 3! And what better way to start a new book than going through a new Rowling tweetstorm. We're both excited and cautious about starting a new book - will Harry have a character this time? Will Dumbledore tell him any more bird facts? Only time will tell, but for now we'll make do with bonkers articles about Harry Potter from 1999.