PotterCast 96: Phoenix, Arizona Transcript

Part 1 (0:00 - 13:36)

Dumbledore: Welcome, welcome to another...

Harry and the Potters: Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Hey, Potter People! Hey, Potter People! We always talking, you're always listening! We always talking! We're PotterCasting! Hey, Potter People! Hey, Potter People! We talk about the Harry Potter stuff. Yeah. We talk about the Harry Potter stuff. Oh, we talk about the Harry Potter...

Girl: I heard you made out with a goblin. Oh, my God!

Harry and the Potters: Hey, Potter People! Hey, Potter People! We always talking, you're always listening! Hey, Potter People! Hey, Potter People! We always talking! We're PotterCasting! Whaaaaaat?

Borders Ad: Today's PotterCast is brought to you by Borders. In May, thousands of Harry Potter fans descended upon New Orleans for the Phoenix Rising conference. Borders and your friendly PotterCast hosts were there to take in the sights and share a lively discussion of the series that bewitched the world. Listen in and watch the action yourself. Check out the Phoenix Rising/Borders Book Club Discussion at BordersMedia.com/HarryPotter or click the Borders banner at the top of the PotterCast page.

(audience cheers and applauds)

Melissa Anelli (MA): Hi, guys! Thank you for coming out on, I mean, even if I lived here I would be sitting right in front of an air conditioner today. (audience laughs) Oh, my. Before we do anything, John- what? What?

John Noe (JN): What? I've got my little armadillo friend, here.

Sue Upton (SU): It's not Scabbers, is it though?

JN: No, it's the Arizona equivalent of the Scabbers. His name is Fred, and he's going to be hanging out tonight, today during the show, (MA: God help us.) giving his opinions every so often, as it were.

MA: Well, welcome. We are having a great time. This is the second Borders stop on our tour. (JN: Mm-hm.) It's our third show for our summer tour. It's our first ever summer tour. It might be the first ever podcast tour. (JN: Mm-hm.) We're not quite sure, but we've been going around the country, or will be going around the country, talking all about the big stuff coming in Deathly Hallows. How many days? Who knows?

Audience member: Twenty-nine.

MA: Twenty nine! (JN: And a half.) Less than an month. And a half. (SU: Oh, no!)

JN: Nine and three-quarters.

MA: Nine and three-quarters? (JN: I don't know.) Twenty-nine and three-quarters? (JN: Exactly.) Well in every city that we go in, we have been trying to figure out which city knows the most about Harry Potter. And the way we do this is we have a five question predictions exam, and we're going to record all your predictions, and on July 22nd, one city's going to look really stupid!

JN: One's going to look brilliant.

MA: Brilliant! And one city is going to look pretty dumb, and we will laugh and point. No.

SU: Sure, we will!

JN: Those guys at Tucson were talking pretty bad trash about you guys up here, so (MA: Yeah, totally.) you guys have some proving to do here.

MA: So, our first- okay, first of all, who thinks that Phoenix will win this competition? (silence) Oh, God guys! Come on! (JN laughs and audience starts cheering)

JN: Delayed. (cheers)

MA: They're like, "if we must."

JN: "I think we can do it, sure, why not?" As good of a chance as anybody.

MA: You can do it! You can do it!

JN: Why not? What do you think, Fred? (using high voice) There's a pretty good chance of that, I say. (back to regular voice) Okay, well, Fred believes in you guys, so what do you think? (MA snorts) Our first question is the biggest question of the series. Will Harry walk out of this book alive? If you think he will, clap. (audience claps and cheers) And if you think that he will kick the bucket...

MA: Then leave! No.

JN: No, make some noise for Harry kicking the bucket. (few audience members clap and cheer) (SU: Boo!) Okay, we've got a few of them.

MA: I would like to point out that he's wearing a Hufflepuff shirt and has a Hufflepuff banner (JN: I love those kind of Hufflepuffs!) and thinks Harry will die. It's a sad day for Sue. It's a sad, sad, day for Sue.

JN: Yes, I'm holding out for a bunch of Death Eater Hufflepuffs.

MA: She, I'm sorry, I'm not wearing glasses.

JN: I cannot wait to read about the Death Eater Hufflepuffs in Deathly Hallows. (SU: What! There are no- no!) There's going to be so many of them. It's going to be like the surprise force that comes out of nowhere with all of their enslaved House-elves.

MA: Oh, no, stop! Please, please! It's too early in the show to start with the enslaved House-elves! This is every day. You think that...

JN: You leave Fred out of this!

SU: See. Get him, Fred. Get him!

MA: You think that this is just during the show; this is all day in the car, this is at night. Before they go to bed, they scream at each other, "She enslaved the Hufflepuffs!" "No, she didn't!" You know? So, okay, what's our second question?

JN: Our second big question is about Mr. Snape. Mr. Snape, look around the store, lots of people saying he's a foe, lots of saying, people thinking- I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. And they're saying he's a bad guy, but everybody can make some noise if their sticker of choice would be to trust Snape.

SU: Yes. (audience applauds loudly)

JN: And make some noise if you believe that Snape will betray and is a very bad man. (few people in the audience applaud)

JN: Ee, okay. Very smart Borders store we have here!

MA: Seriously.

JN: Pretty darn good.

MA: You guys got Tucson owned already. (JN and audience laugh)

MA: Not really, I think they had the same ides. But those are our two easy ones, come on.

JN: Okay. Well, what's the hard ones, Sue?

SU: Okay! Well, this is actually a pretty interesting one. Is Harry a Horcrux? (JN: Oh, my!) If you think that he is...

JN: Make some noise. (audience is silent)

JN: Oh, no noise for Sue.

MA: Oh, oh!

SU: The silent crickets.

MA: Crickets. I like it.

JN: Was she speaking Hufflepuff there?

MA: What is the Hufflepuff's language, Suze?

SU: What?

MA: Nothing, I missed that joke completely. That was a lame joke, John.

JN: Ah, was that a lame?

MA: Oh no, she's mad! (laughs) All right, okay.

SU: If you do not think that Harry is a Horcrux, make some noise. (audience applauds loudly)

JN: It's a brilliant Borders store we have here.

MA: Yeah.

JN: It's a brilliant Borders store.

MA: I don't think Harry is a Horcrux.

JN: No. This is ridiculous.

MA: Harry's not a Horcrux. It's a silly- anyway, anyway, I like you guys, the heat certainly has done you well. (audience laughs)

MA: So, number four is one that I will remember in a moment.

SU: (whispering) About the veil.

MA: Mm? No that's five!

SU: Oh!

MA: Get it right, Sue! No, um, okay. Who here thinks, if you think that Harry will attend school at Hogwarts, make noise. (few people in the audience applaud)

JN: Will Harry return to Hogwarts for his final year of school?

MA: Or Harry not attend school in this book? (more people in the audience applaud)

JN: Harry will be a drop out! Yay!

MA: Magic school drop out!

JN: School's out!

MA: Have the girls in curlers come down with wands in their hair, you know.

JN: Aw, is Snape going to sing the song?

MA: Snape! Oh, my God! In silver lamé!

JN: Snape's going to come down, yes. (making some crooner voice sounds)

MA: (laughs) Only if Alan Rickman does it.

SU: Wouldn't that be great? He'd be awesome at it, too.

MA: Yep, yeah. What's number five? (laughs)

JN: Number five.

MA: Sorry, guys. The heat man, it's like...

JN: One of the more important questions...

SU: Sad one.

JN: Will Neville Longbottom...?

SU and MA: No!

JN: And Grubbly-Plank...?

MA: No!

JN: Find love in the...? (audience laughs)

MA: I'm taking your armadillo.

JN: You give Fred right back to me!

MA: Our fifth question is whether you think that we will see the other side of the veil. Will we go behind the veil? So if you think so, make noise. (some people in the audience applaud)

JN: Behind the veil! Hmm.

MA: And if you don't... (some people in the audience applaud)

JN: It's pretty split there.

MA: Yeah, well no, you think they're going to go. I think that's a "we will." You really think we're going to go behind the veil? (audience responding "yes")

MA: Is that what's on the cover of the book? (few people in the audience responding "yes")

MA: Oh, we'll talk about that later.

JN: No, it's an old quidditch stadium in the front of the book. (audience laughs)

JN: One of the oldest, the original one; what was that called? Uh, the marsh...

SU: The Coliseum of the Greek?

JN: No, the original Quidditch pitch.

MA: Queerditch Marsh.

JN: Queerditch Marsh. Yeah, that's right; that's what that is.

MA: Wow!

JN: That's what that is.

MA: I didn't know I knew that.

SU: So you think Voldemort- what does he play? What is Voldemort position, what does he play?

JN: Voldemort's a beater, obviously.

SU: Is he? (audience laughs)

JN: He likes to inflict pain. Naturally, come on.

MA: All right, well...

SU: It's hard to recover from that one.

JN: That was our five questions game.

MA: Our five questions. I don't know, guys. You guys might have been, no.

JN: We'll mark your answers down.

MA: Did you have the same- I'm trying to think if you had the same answers as Tucson. You know...

JN: I think almost everyone has had the same answers, so far.

MA: No, everybody's had at least one different.

JN: Really?

MA: At least one has been different in every city.

JN: Well, you didn't let them answer the Grubbly-Plank question.

SU: But the one... (audience snickers)

MA: Gee, I'm sorry.

SU: I think they were- that they had the most that Harry was not going to be a Horcrux. I mean there was- like no one said anything here.

JN: Yeah, they're very definitive here.

SU: Oh, I'm sorry- no one said anything about the Horcrux thing here, so...

MA: Nobody here thinks- that was really quiet.

SU: It really was.

MA: You guys are like the quietest city, so far.

JN: For that question certainly, because I don't think anyone in their right mind thinks that Harry's a Horcrux. (audience laughs)

MA: All right, also in every city we go to we're going to be doing our Canon Conundrums. Who knows what a Canon Conundrums is? Yeah, rock! Canon Conundrums are what we've been doing for the past year or almost on PotterCast where we take one of the remaining problems or one of the remaining questions, something that's still a mystery and we're set to find out in Book Seven, or we want to find out in Book Seven and try and figure it out. And we had this beautiful little plan to get all your recommendations in and pick one out, and we didn't do that today.

JN: Oh, sure we did.

MA: Sure we did. Who has and idea of what you would like? What's a conundrum that you really want discussed right now?

JN: Hmm.

SU: Go ahead.

Audience member: Is the dragon animagus form of Aberforth?

MA: See, we keep hearing that the dragon was the animagus of Draco and we're just like "yeah, of course, the trio was riding Draco into the sunset."

SU: Something wrong about that.

JN: Hmm, sounds like a fanfic. I don't know, because Aberforth- we have the association with the goats, which is a goat association also exists with this particular form of dragon as it eats the sheep and the goats. So, if Aberforth is running around in dragon form and eating goats that might explain his stench a little bit. (audience laughs) But, do we even know if anyone can have that magical of an animagus?

MA: All of the animaguses so far have been regular creatures. A stag, a beetle.

JN: I think Jo spoke about that once.

MA: No, I don't think she did.

JN: About like how you can't be a phoenix or something.

MA: No, she never said that.

JN: No?

MA: She never said that.

JN: Oh, I could have sworn.

MA: Ever, ever. But we've discussed it before.

JN: Maybe it was in our little IM chats.

MA: Yeah, noelover42. No, no, no, but all the animaguses we've seen- animagi, animaji, animagus? Anyway, all of them have been regular animals, so it does seem that you're not going to morph into a dragon.

JN: That would be cool.

MA: Though, the dragon has a beard, which is interesting.

SU: Yes!

JN: He is a bearded dragon which would make him look a little bit like one of the Chinese Fireballs.

SU: Oh!

JN: Perhaps we have a bit of a hybrid dragon action going on here.

MA: Actually, somebody brought this theory to us in Chicago.

JN: Yup.

MA: They said that if you look in the Fantastic Beastson the Antipodian Opaleye description, the dragon on that cover, and by the way if you don't know, we're talking about the released artwork for the deluxe edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it has the trio riding on a big dragon off into the sunset which is so bad ass. (audience laughs)

MA: The dragon has no pupils and the only dragon not to have a pupil is the Antipodian Opaleye, so everyone thinks it's an Antipodian Opaleye. When at first when we saw a dragon we said Norbert! And it's probably not. But the dragon also doesn't have the pearly iridescent scales that that dragon usually has, it has a beard, it has a bit of a look of a Chinese Fireball and if you look in that entry in Fantastic Beasts, at the bottom it says well in very rare instances hybrid dragons can occur with very, very rare and then the next entry in Fantastic Beasts is the Chinese Fireball. So, it could very well be one of these rare, huge magical...

JN: And who do we know that could get hold of a rare dragon like that?

SU: 'Agrid! Mr. Hagrid.

JN: Hagrid? No! No, no no, Charlie!

MA: Charlie. Hagrid, when Voldemort shows up wearing a hood in the Hog's Head.

JN: The what now?

SU: What?

JN: Who?

SU: Charlie.

MA: Charlie.

SU: So, you think they're in Romania?

JN: I don't know if they're in Romania necessarily but maybe the dragon could have used like a portkey to get wherever they needed the dragon. Put his little paw up there on a boot. (audience laughs)

MA: Or he could have flown.

JN: That would have taken a long time. (audience laughs) I'm thinking that they're somewhere that, for whatever reason, it's dangerous to be flying on things like brooms or smaller things and they need a dragon to be there to protect them.

MA: Or there are wards, or, or this is how they got out of some huge battle. You know, you don't have to be- he could have just taken them away.

JN: What if they were stuck in this cave, or like a really high ceiling and it's like a chamber or something, and they're stuck and they need to grab on to a magical creature to lift them out of it, and take them back somewhere safe?

MA: Could somebody grab a copy of Chamber of Secrets for John?

JN: Oh! That...

MA: Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Who else thinks that there might be some sort of underground, or somewhere room of Godric Gryffindor's in Hogwarts? Some sort of secret similar to what Salazar Slytherin left?