HPST Re-Run – Suspicion: The Dark Lord Ascending (Book 7, Chapter 1)
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Hi, everybody. Technically, we are off this week between seasons, but we thought it would be fun because we recorded Book 7, Chapter 1 so many years ago now that we thought it would be fun to replay that before you hear us next week with our new thoughts about Book 7, Chapter 1. You said we were on a break.

of this show is that we change and the times change. And so the way that we read the text changes, even though the text stays the same. So we'll see you

If we have new thoughts, if we are new people. But we thought it would be fun to re-listen. And so we thought if we think it's fun, all of our ideas are smart. So you'll probably think it's fun too. Enjoy episode one of book seven the first time around. And we'll be back next week with episode one of book seven the second time around. See you then. Talk to you next week. Bye.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Chapter 1. The Dark Lord Ascending. The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second, they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests.

I'm Vanessa Zoltan. And I'm Casper Ter-Kyle. And this is Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Season 7. Welcome to Season 7, Casper! Here we go! Alarm bells ringing. Is that what your alarm sounds like? Yeah. That sounds horrible. It's like, welcome back to another day. Yeah.

It's actually really bad if you're trying to avoid being hunted by Death Eaters. But so far, I'm still safe. So that's good. That's because no one would want to hunt you. That's true. They're like, let him run feral. The world is better off.

Well, I know who we're better off thanks to, and that's to some of our amazing patrons. Zandy Wood, Robin Ray Stipe, Megan Rose, Salome Lang, and Carolyn Schramm. Thank you so, so much for supporting us this season. You are making the difference. And everybody, you only have one week left to get the Patreon perk of us shouting you out and thanking you on the podcast. So if you join Patreon now at the $5 level or go up a

a level on Patreon, you will hear one of our beautiful voices thanking you personally on episode of season seven. And we just want to thank our patrons so, so much. If you feel like you can't join in our Patreon right now, we totally understand. And we are so grateful that so far we've not had to lay off any employees. And that is really because of your support. So thank you so much.

So Casper, you have the honor and the privilege and the responsibility of telling the opening story for all of book seven. It's a good thing that we've trained for this because otherwise I might not be ready. So my experience of being suspected of something goes all the way back to like really middle school. I remember being

like 12, 13 year old and people just like whispering or like insinuating or sometimes like just outright saying like, oh, you're gay, aren't you? Or like, that's so gay. And we're talking like 2001, 2002 here. So this it's it's a different cultural moment. Thank God the world has changed. Still much more to happen.

And it was meant with some like aggression and embarrassment, right? Like it was a way of trying to put you down. Right. It wasn't like, oh my

Okay. Right? Like, I wish I was too. That is what's coming. But you know how like acrobats mold themselves into strange body shapes? That's what I felt like I was doing every day to try and like avoid those whispers. So I would think so carefully about the way that I dressed. I thought about the way I moved my body. Do I cross my legs? How do I walk? How do I lift out my chest and like pull my shoulders back? What is my hairstyle going to be?

What kind of glasses should I wear? Like every day, constantly, I was having to think about what would make me less suspicious? What would make me feel like people wouldn't think about me in this particular way?

And it was exhausting. It was exhausting because of course they were right. Spoiler alert. And it was taking me some time to figure out that they were right. And then it was taking me a lot longer to be like, oh, and it's okay that they're right. Right. Like it's not necessarily a bad thing. And to some extent, I think that stuff doesn't leave you. It doesn't magically get solved.

And I'm still like so many queer people making a decision every day. Like how am I signaling my queer identity? Like how much do I want to do that? How much do I want to hide it right now?

And what all of this is making me think of as we come to this chapter, where we're seeing Death Eaters gather together and we're seeing how much and how intensely they're navigating one another, right? They're like jockeying for position and who's closest to Voldemort and who's being humiliated. Like all of them are having to deal with the suspicion that, you know, are their loyalties divided? And of course, for some of them, they are. So I want to read this chapter through that sense of

When a suspicion is there and it's right, what do you do with it? Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I just want to say, like, God, that sounds awful.

awful. Middle school is hard enough where we're like all contorting ourselves into trying to be whatever popular or acceptable looks like in our eyes. And then the added pressure of like being targeted because of something that like really shouldn't matter to anyone. It just makes me sad and mad. It makes me mad for you.

I will say, you know, I came out in high school, so I was about 15, 16 when I came out. And I feel like I went all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum then. Like, I had one big folder which had all of my classes in it, and there were dividers between each section in my folder, like a legal size, A4 size folder. And on each, like, dividing page, I put pictures of, like, hot shirtless guys. So, like, English was Jake Gyllenhaal. History was, you know, Bradley Cooper, or, like, whoever it was at the time.

And so there's this sense of like, once the suspicion has been confirmed, there's some freedom in it. Cause you can just like lean all the way in and just like drool over hot soccer players and friends.

Yeah, there's freedom in it. There also is potentially like a little performance in it. Oh, big time. Big time. I'll rub your freaking nose in it. And then also there's some danger in it. It's all of those things. And I think that's why I exactly as you said, I think I like really leaned into it to like say, yeah, you can't hurt me with this anymore. Like I'm taking away all the oxygen.

And obviously different things that you might be suspected of play very, very differently, right? So we can't just translate all of it onto this experience that we'll see in the books, but I'm curious to see what we'll find. But before we talk more about that, Vanessa, let's do our 30 second recap. This was a punchy and delightful chapter. So I'm expecting high standards from you. Not from me, but just from you. Count me in. All right, here we go, Vanessa. 30 seconds on the clock. Three, two, one, go.

So Snape and Yaxley show up at Malfoy Manor. They're like very rich. And there's this big conference table and all the other furniture has been pushed up against the wall and they're having a meeting. And Snape is like, this is when Harry is going to be moved. And Yaxley is like, I got different information. And Snape's like, girl, no. And then Draco is sitting there and is like horrified by this thing that he can't stop looking at. And then it turns out that it's the Muggle studies thing.

professor and then at the very end um someone says avada kedavra and then nagini gets to eat the muggle studies teacher boom wow strong opening game thank you thank you i'd like to thank no one it was just me okay casper i'm suspicious as to whether or not you can do as good of a job oh my god put 30 seconds on that clock

Okay, on your mark, get set, go. So we're at this kind of like baddie meeting in the boardroom and Voldemort is hiding in the shadows. And turns out there's a teacher we've never met before called Charity Burbage just like hanging around upstairs. Oh, it turns out she's suspended by invisible curses. Drake goes there. We're in Malfoy Manor. We can hear screaming prisoners downstairs. The Malfoys are being humiliated by Voldemort, as is Bellatrix, who like cannot stand this spurned lover spiel. All because Tonks married Lupin.

And so, yeah, who's the new fave? Snape, probs, but soon to see. Wow, that was awesome. Also, they've infiltrated the Ministry. Not thoroughly, not enough to count on the fact that they can kill the Minister of Magic. True, but they have Imperius someone at the highest level.

So Vanessa, I want to start really where the whole book starts, which is by seeing Yaxley and Snape arrive just outside Malfoy Manor. And they're arriving both late, nearly late to the meeting because they both got new information. Snape has just found out this is the date that Harry is going to be moved.

And Yaxley has counter information. And so in this conversation at the table, we're seeing not just information being shared, but there's a lot of jockeying for position. There's a lot of trying to gain favor from Voldemort by making the other people wrong. So Snape says, this is what I've learned. And Yaxley's like, well,

I heard. And then Snape is like, yeah, because that's what the decoy is meant to be. Like, you're wrong. There's this culture of suspicion, right? Like they don't share this information before they walk in to have like a shared, you know, message for Voldemort. They're duking it out in front of him to try and win favor. And this is interesting because on the one hand, sometimes that kind of healthy competition in a team is

creates a sort of Lincoln's team of rivals, right? That great historical idea of like, if you bring the best of the best and they're each wanting to perform at the highest level, you need that healthy dose of competition. But this doesn't feel like that. This feels like a, I'm willing to throw you under the bus in order for me to win the day. And I think Snape definitely is

is not saying like, oh, yeah, actually, that's really interesting. Great that you heard that. Actually, what I've learned recently is that this was a, you know, whatever, whatever. Like there's a nastiness to this whole thing, which makes it a very unproductive culture in the end. Yeah, I think that suspicion assumes finite resources, right? It's like there's only a certain amount of goodness that can exist in the world and you don't have it. Right.

Or there's only a certain amount of information that Voldemort is going to find helpful. And so if you have any, I have less. I feel like if you feel as though there is enough of something or an abundance of something, you're not going to suspect that your neighbor is taking more than his due of bread, because who cares? There's plenty of bread. I've been thinking about that a lot in terms of our country's response to COVID-19. There is

is this pervasive cultural idea in our country that the best ideas win. Everything is a meritocracy. And I think that COVID-19 has really called that into question because this thing happened so randomly and disrupted so randomly. And so somebody, for example, who just opened the

Absolutely best restaurant in the history of restaurants in downtown San Francisco. If they had the bad luck of opening that restaurant in October of last year when we had no reason to think that a pandemic was going to hit, then they are just out of luck right now because we don't have a social safety net today.

to protect them. And that is the same kind of scarcity that we're seeing in this scene, right? Where we think that that competition and having a little bit of suspicion is going to make everybody compete and do better when really you lose out on so much potential for collaboration and we lose out on these great restaurants just because—

Instead of feeling like there's enough love in this room, there's enough trust in this room or there's enough resources where it's OK if I have to go out of business for a year, I can come back. Like we think of those things as making a soft or weak, but they don't. Right. They actually get the best product and the best ideas.

Yeah, 100%. And social scientists talk about that as like the idea of psychological safety, right? And Google did all of this research to look at the teams that are most creative, that are most productive, are ones where you feel psychologically safe to say something counterintuitive or to say something that other people might disagree with, because you know that the disagreement doesn't risk the breakdown of the whole relationship. Like we see in this situation. I mean, some of the Death Eaters are being absolutely humiliated in front of one another. So it's not a safe place to do it.

Yeah. And what's so sad to me about that is that the culture of this room is so psychologically unsafe that they literally can't imagine a non-suspicious space. You know, they say something along the lines of, yeah, a team of oars is going to help move Potter. And we know that that's not true, that the order is made up not just of oars, but just of people who love Harry or people who

who love people who love Harry, right? Like Fleur is there and Bill and like Bill and Harry don't have a longstanding relationship. So I think that we see Voldemort not understanding love as like interfering quite literally with his magic and

But also his inability to imagine that people would just do something out of love and generosity hurts his strategy. Oh, 100 percent. I mean, and very concretely, even the fact that they're going to use polyjuice potion to look like Harry, like that's a kind of pre-sacrificial act that would not make sense unless you love someone. So, yeah, I love that insight. I think it's totally true.

To exactly your point, that hadn't occurred to me about the Polyjuice potion. We have, again, like the perfect juxtaposition of that with how resistant Malfoy is to give up his wand. Yes. Right? He's like, really, you want my wand? And then he's like, well, Voldemort, you'll obviously give me your wand back. And there's this take-take relationship.

Whereas everybody shows up to Harry and is like, give us your hair. And he is like, no, I don't want you to endanger yourself. And they're like, shut up. Of course, we're going to endanger ourselves. And so we see like suspicion breeding this completely dysfunctional team and a lack of suspicion and trust winning with fewer resources. Yeah. Well, and ultimately what this culture of suspicion creates is betrayal, which...

We're seeing right now in the very first chapter, the Malfoys being targeted specifically. I mean, it's meant to humiliate them. Honestly, I don't understand whether Voldemort is just doing this for his entertainment. Is he trying to demonstrate that like no one is safe from my wrath, like not even the most trusted people. So like you can rise in the ranks, young Death Eaters, you know, who've only just joined me. Like what is he trying to do or is he just dumb? Yeah, I mean, it's destructive in all the ways that

The other thing that's interesting for me here is like this confrontation between Bellatrix, especially Bellatrix and Voldemort, it's so focused on humiliation. I mean, she's in tears, right? Like we know how she feels about getting approval from Voldemort and he's playing with that. He's toying with it. And I think there's an interesting relationship between that kind of humiliation and suspicion because part of what I remember feeling, you know, as a queer kid before I came out was like,

I was humiliated that they were right. I was embarrassed. And I'm first of all, of the fact, and then of the fact that I couldn't convince them that it wasn't true, you know, like, so it's like this double failure and it's so public, right? Like once those rumors start, once people are talking, once like, there's nothing that you can do about it. And that's, what's going to happen to Bellatrix after this moment, everyone's going to say, well, you'll never guess what the dark Lord did to Bellatrix, you know?

And so she can see that happening. And I think we all do, you know, in those moments where something that you're being suspected of that is true, that you don't want everyone to know, is suddenly exposed in public. I just can feel it in the pit of my stomach as I'm talking about it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but there is something you can do. You can send me a list of names. Oh, I still have them. Don't worry. Yeah.

Right.

But it's a humiliation that then leads you to be suspicious in the future. Right. Because you don't want to ever feel that way again. Right. And you're like, well, I was blindsided last time. And so that leads to suspicion. So I do think that humiliation and suspicion have this really like tightly linked relationship.

relationship, right? And that if somebody suspects you and it's true, you're humiliated. And if you are humiliated, you turn suspicious onto yourself. Like, what was I not paying attention to? What was I doing that made them think that I was queer, right? There's something about the relationship between those two things that is really uncanny to me.

That is so interesting, especially that idea that you have to then become suspicious of your own like senses, right? Your own reasoning, your own sense of self. That is so destabilizing. I mean, and that's something that I think, you know,

I'm getting like tired of myself making jokes about men that like, ugh, the way that men treat me. And it's like, but that is because I have been humiliated several times by men. And I remember once I was on my cell phone with my dad and I was walking in New York and these men started harassing me while I was on the phone. And I was so embarrassed, right?

And then, of course, like you just become suspicious of like all construction crews, which isn't true or fair. But you just have one or two bad experiences. And then like it just becomes this really unhealthy, awful loop.

Where you're like, well, I don't want to feel that feeling again. And so I don't know. I'm just thinking about how I think suspicion is earned, right? Like you go through a bad experience. But then it can just so quickly turn into really harmful things like bigotry and assumptions. And so there has to be a fine line between like learning from the moments where we've been treated horribly and

And like sitting with our embarrassment, but not letting our suspicion or our savviness make us become less human. Right. We don't want to become death eaters after we go through a bad experience.

Yeah, because otherwise you end up in a place, you know, like what we see here in this chapter, where there's just this deep culture of mistrust and suspicion when no one can escape that. And once it's seeped in, it's very, very hard to get out of it because the only way to survive is to assume everyone else is doing exactly that thing. And that's ultimately what brings Voldemort down is exactly this moment.

And it makes for me it all the more remarkable to see Snape in this scene because he's the one who's actually being duplicitous in the midst of all of this. And, you know, it's so striking that everyone is kind of cowering and they can't look at Voldemort. And Snape is the one who looks him directly in the eye. I mean, for me, it's both testament to his incredible occlumency skills, but there's also just this

amazing courage for me. I mean, I would just be shaking him in my boots, you know. I find his sense of self remarkable and his willingness to trust his judgment remarkable in this scene. Well, to me, it's like clarity of purpose and that he no longer seems afraid to die. He is like so entirely dedicated to this cause and

It's like, what could Voldemort really do to him? Right. There's like physical torture. But like if you're willing to die for a cause and you have complete clarity of purpose, which comes around so infrequently. Right. The world is too complicated for many of us to be offered opportunities where you have complete clarity of purpose and the opportunity to live into that purpose. I think a lot of times we feel called to it. Right. If you have a sick child, you will think to yourself, I would do anything to save my child. But you can't.

Like nothing you do will make a difference. Whereas Snape is in this like,

You know, once in a generation situation where he has both. I think that we see a lot of doctors and nurses doing that right now, right? Where they are like, okay, I'm on the front lines of this. I trained for 10 years. I never thought that I was training to be in a war zone. I thought I was training to be a doctor in suburban Ohio. But it turns out that I was training for this moment. And they are stepping up. You know, and I'm sure that Snape has a lot of dark nights of the soul of...

Being scared and wondering why he found himself in this awful situation and why couldn't he have just been a dermatologist in suburban Ohio. Yeah.

But we're just seeing people be heroic in this exact way right now. Oh, Vanessa, that is such a powerful, powerful comparison. I mean, I just saw some video reporting inside hospitals from The New York Times and just seeing, you know, doctors in ski masks and homemade equipment. I mean, it was just outrageous. And yet exactly what you're describing happens, right? That sense of camaraderie and that sense of clarity of purpose of like, this is what we're here to do. No one else can do this except us.

We have to keep as many people alive as we can. And the deep sadness of when people return from the ward or even soldiers returning from battle, it's the moment when you come home and there's nothing to face. But the deep grief of what you've experienced, things can fall apart really, really quickly. And so that's such an interesting insight that actually what we're seeing is Snape in the battlefield.

So he's got his full game face on and that's partly why he's able to do this. Who knows what he's like when he's home alone? That's a really striking contrast.

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Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Which actually, Casper, leads me to something that I really want to talk about, which is

You know, I was thinking, oh, my God, when Snape agreed to be a double agent, what he did not agree to do was like watch one of his fellow teachers get tortured. Right. Like he like had to be really convinced about killing Dumbledore, who was already dying for the strategic reason. He did not agree to that.

watch this woman who he's known for years and is calling out his name, being tortured and killed. And then I realized I always assumed that it was just a Voldemort who says Avada Kedavra and then Nagini eat. And it is very unclear in the text. It might be Snape. What? Who kills Charity Burbage? Yes. Should I read it to you as to how unclear it was? Okay. You're going to have to prove this to me.

Okay, so for the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly from him again. Avada Kedavra. It doesn't even say Voldemort. And then it's the flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell with a resounding crash onto the table. Voldemort says dinner.

But this could be Snape being merciful on Charity and, again, with this clarity of purpose, being like, I'm going to look like the biggest badass in the entire world. Purr, purr, purr, purr, purr.

Whoa. I mean, it's, I've always, of course, read it as Voldemort, but it's absolutely texturally possible. And it would fit into this idea of like mercy killing that we've seen Snape do at the end of book six. I mean, it would be enormously presumptive of him to do that, right? Like, I think very much this is kind of Voldemort's job to do, like he gets the right, but it's possible. And it might be, oh,

Oh my goodness, that would be so interesting. You know, there probably is a right answer about this and I bet our listeners will write in. Maybe we'll put a poll up on Twitter. Nice. I mean, this is what's so fun about paying close attention, right? That you see new possibilities within the narrative. I mean, it definitely opens up

This deep trust amidst the suspicion coming from Voldemort to Snape, right? He's sitting at his right-hand side. There's all of these indicators of that level of trust. And so that kind of dyad is this island of trust within a sea of suspicion that's happening throughout the scene.

So, Vanessa, our first spiritual practice for Book 7 is going to be marginalia, which, of course, we learned from Broderick Greer a couple of seasons ago. And this is a practice that really focuses on not just the text itself, but how we interact with it. So often we'll underline things or we'll add comments in the margins or maybe reflections. And the idea is that we make those pieces of writing and lining sacred in themselves.

And this becomes especially fun over time if you're returning to a text over and over again and you're starting to see, oh, you know, in this red pen five years ago and in this blue pen two years ago and this black pencil. I used pink this week. Well, there you go. Exactly. And you kind of build up this whole new text.

surrounding the original text. And if you think in Jewish tradition also, you have the Mishnah, which is a commentary on the original sacred text, which then itself also becomes sacred. So I'm going to ask you, first of all, will you give me a word or phrase that you underlined this reading? I underlined pure white peacock. Oh!

So did I. Did you also Google it to see if it was real? No, because I just assumed it wasn't. Is it real? It's real. Whoa. And photos of the Incredible, when their feathers are down, they sort of look like a waterfall.

I'm looking at pictures right now. They are gorgeous. Wow. Okay. So what we'll do with this marginality practice is I'm going to reflect on the sentence that you pick first, and then I want to hear from you. So this is wild because we both underlined this.

So what it really reminded me of, and of course, this is a peacock that's outside Malfoy Manor that Yaxley and Snape see as they're walking into the house. Although I wouldn't put it past Malfoy to have these things like walking around his bed chamber, you know, that seems very on point. But first of all, a peacock is this kind of very like visibly ostentatious bird. And then to have it not just be a peacock, but like a white peacock suggests to me this dissonance

deep sense of vanity and like, I'm special. I'm better. Like I have things that you don't have. It's very conspicuous. It's very much like, look at me. I'm awesome. Which is such a contrast to his humiliation in the room with Voldemort. So the thing that I really took away was this vanity project of Lucius Malfoy, presumably. But I'm curious, why did you choose it? What struck you about it?

I mean, all of that, yes. And the other things, there are two other things that struck me. Is one, that peacocks can fly, so he obviously clipped their wings. He has trapped these birds here.

In a way that just seemed, you know, we know that there are like all sorts of prisoners in this house, including Malfoy is sort of a prisoner at this point. So like this has been a prison for a really long time. Well, I'm also thinking of Dobby. Yes, absolutely. And the fact that there's a literal prisoner underneath the meeting room. Yes. And then the other thing that it made me think of is.

I just remember this, you know, my grandparents lived at the epicenter of the 94 earthquake. And right after this, like, incredibly destructive thing, anything that was superfluous and that was just there to be beautiful seemed so dumb. Right? When you're in survival mode, you're like, why did I spend $5 on cumin? I never use cumin. Right?

And these peacocks are just a sign of the fact that fairly recently the Malfoys thought that like they were just going to live this life where they could have peacocks walking around and they could just be doing silly things and have vanity projects and like be showing their white supremacy even on their birds.

That's what struck me was that we have that word pure as well. And of course, this whole chapter is about the obsession with pure bloodedness and the fact that Charity Burbage was a teacher of Muggle studies and that she wrote this kind of powerful op-ed. That pure word is really, really important. Yeah. And so I just think like these pure white peacocks just show that.

So many things that have changed and that are like deeply true about the Malfoys. They've always been imprisoning things. They've always thought that they would be on top. And now the tables have turned. What about you, Casper? What is something that you underlined? I was really struck by the word marched in maybe the third or fourth paragraph, really close to the very beginning of the book. I underlined the word marched and I wrote next to it army. Okay.

So it's so funny. I think we've told the story before, but like when we you and I were first talking about treating Harry Potter sacred, you asked me, oh, don't you feel uncomfortable? It's such a Christian book. And I was like, what are you talking about? It's about the Holocaust. Right. It's like obviously a Jewish book. And this is one of the chapters where to me, I'm like.

oh, this is about the Holocaust, right? Like we have Snape and Yaxley doing Heil Hitler. We have like this completely unhinged person leading a meeting of people who are scared of him and are trying to get his approval by saying more and more horrible things. And then this marched, right? Like people being marched or marching. This is just all so evocative of the Holocaust to me.

What struck you about Marched and Army? The thing that's interesting to me is that we see Yaxley and Snape's long cloaks flapping around their ankles as they marched. That's where the word is. And so the other thing that it made me think of was thinking about the Napoleonic Army marching into Russia in 1812 and returning and just the futility of that expedition, really.

Basically, Napoleon is defeated by the Russian winter and the Russians strategically just keep retreating and allow Napoleon to advance until his supply lines are cut and then his army starve. I mean, the numbers are just insane in terms of how many people left with and the few survivors who came back. So there's this sense of both futility, poor strategy and...

to some extent, the incredible way in which at that point the Russian army, but for us, our kind of heroes survive. Hermione, Harry and Ron are moving locations all of the time, right? Like they're not engaging. So I don't know, there was just this very evocative sense of escaping by hiding and allowing an enemy to defeat itself as Voldemort does in the end. And how that retreating strategy is a form of violence too, right?

Because, I mean, like, everything I know about the Napoleonic Wars I know from Tolstoy. So what it reminded me of was in Tolstoy's War and Peace. And Andrei is part of that Russian army that's retreating and, like, luring Napoleon and his army. But he's away from his love, right? He's away from Natasha. So there's still a violence happening. And that's true in these books, too, right? Like, Ron, Hermione, and Harry are passively...

But there's still violence happening, right? Like of Harry longing for Ginny and Ron worrying about his family and Hermione having to obliviate her parents' memory. So even the passive moments of war, I think, are a kind of violence.

Well, thanks for sharing that marginalia practice with me. I'm looking forward to see what we both underline and if we have another match next chapter. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm just going to try to underline the things that I think that you'll underline. But I'll do the same and then we'll do it for one another. I'm going to underline all the happy stuff. Also, now I want to reread War and Peace. So good.

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With 365 by Whole Foods Market enchilada and mole sauces. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store and online. Our voicemail this week is from Miriam. Hey, Vanessa, Casper, and Ariana. I've been listening to Harry Potter since the beginning. I was a 22-year-old fresh college graduate when you guys started the podcast, and I've been an avid listener since. So much so that I got my older sister Sarah into it.

She had never been a Harry Potter fan, only a movie watcher. And after listening to you guys, she was hooked and started reading the books and became a big fan. It's one of the things the two of us used to share until she died in May of 2018. And I remember that period of my life being really tough and leaving you guys for a little bit after listening to Matt Potts on your episode in Grief.

in book four, and in my grief, I just needed to leave Harry Potter, the books, movies, and this wonderful podcast behind so that I could grieve my sister. And the last four months, I've finally made it back to you guys, and it's been really nice to know that a piece of my sister, a piece of her memory, something we shared together, is still with you guys, and that you guys are still kicking and making amazing podcasts. So...

I just wanted to offer a blessing to the three of you and anyone who helps make this podcast a thing that can remind me of my sister. I thank you guys so much. It's an incredible gift. Thanks. Miriam, thank you so much for that.

Voicemail, my goodness, I can only imagine the mix of emotions that you feel when listening to the podcast, you know, feeling that closeness with your sister, but also, of course, her absence amidst that presence. So just know that we're grateful to have you and her with us as we make our way through book seven.

And I'll just echo Miriam. I'm just, I'm so sorry for your loss and any small part of peace or grief process that we can offer you during, you know, your really lifelong grief process makes me very glad. So thank you for letting us know. And I hope you enjoy season seven with us.

So Vanessa, it's time for us to bless someone in the pages of this chapter. And boy, do we have some people in need of blessings. What do you want to bless someone for in this first chapter? I would like to bless Charity Burbage. I want to bless her for two things, actually. One is what it sounds like is an awesome op-ed that she wrote. In really scary times, she was still speaking out and doing whatever she could to get her message out and

Saying that, you know, muggles are great and half-bloods are great and we shouldn't care and any message of tolerance is just a good thing. And so I want to honor her and bless her and thank her for that. And it's not just tolerance. Like she's saying that it's a good thing, right? Like that's what I love about this piece of writing. It's actively pushing against this purity narrative. Like go Charity Burbage.

I agree. I hate the word tolerance as if all we should do is tolerate each other. No, that's exactly right. She's just like this really awesome voice for a better world. And the other reason I want to bless her is just, you know, she has like heard that Snape killed Dumbledore, but she still like does not believe that it's possible that Snape won't save her here. And

We know that Snape probably does it if he does it out of mercy or at least lets Voldemort do it because there's a bigger game plan. But she doesn't. And she goes to her grave not knowing that. And I guess I just want to offer a blessing for people who die in the middle of things and like don't know that we came out on the other side. So a blessing for Charity Burbage and her bravery and her really untimely death.

What about you, Casper? Who would you like to bless? When I was reading this chapter, I just couldn't help at the end, especially to really notice Draco. You know, he is in so over his head. He's looking at his teacher kind of floating, turning around. You know, his gaze is up there nearly the whole time. He's witnessing this humiliation of his parents who are powerless. His father is literally giving up his wand.

And then he finally literally falls on the floor. I mean, when Charity's body lands on the table, he falls over and is again embarrassed.

So I guess this is a blessing for anyone who feels like they're in way over their head, that they can't control what's happening to them, that the usual sources of stability and support are ineffective. So everyone during the coronavirus. It kind of feels like that. And yeah, just a blessing with every hope that both Draco will make it through and find a different way to be and that we may too.

You've been listening to Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. And you can join our Facebook common room to chat with other listeners about this episode. Or come and join the community of people supporting us on Patreon. You have one more week in order to get this new special temporary tier of us thanking you on an episode.

Casper's book is available for pre-order and it is amazing. It is like getting into a bubble bath with Casper. It's called The Power of Ritual and you can order it on our website or at powerofritual.org. Next week, we'll be reading chapter two in memoriam through the theme of boldness. This episode is produced by Not Sorry Productions. Our executive producer is Ariana Nettleman. Our associate producer is Ariana Martinez. Our music is by Ivan Paisao and Nick Boll and we're distributed by ACAST.

Thanks for this week's voicemail to Miriam. Thanks also to Julia Argy, Nikki Zoltan, Maggie Needham, Megan Kelly, and of course, Stephanie Pulsar. We'll be with you all again next week. Thanks, friends. I would just like to tell the listeners at home that I was like, I hated this chapter and Casper was like, I liked it. It was short. Like the true bro-y dude he is. Books are hard. I liked it because it was short.

This poem is awesome. It has nine words in it. I really like haikus because they're like short.

Whoa, easy there. Yeah.

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