March 18, 2025 • 33 mins
We continue our reread of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Chapter 12: The Patronus.
A lot of time passing through updates about whether or not Harry is getting his Firebolt back in time for Quidditch and many reminders that QUIDDITCH IS LIFE!
More importantly, if anything could be more important than quidditch, Harry and Ron are still mad at Hermione and Harry has started private lessons with Lupin to teach him how to fight off the Dementors.
Through these Patronus trainings, we get a lot of backstory about Harry's parents, Lupin's relationship with James and Sirius, and the emotions Harry is experiencing when the Dementors are near him.
Also lots for foreshadowing!
For bonus episodes as well as many other benefits such as early access, show prep notes, personal shoutouts, and more BECOME A PATRON: https://www.patreon.com/BelatedBinge
I'd also love for you to join the discussion, which you can do by joining the free Facebook Group for listeners of the show: https://www.facebook.com/groups/688037702835574/
Find Belated Binge on social media:
-
Twitter: https://twitter.com/belatedbinge
-
Instagram: https://instagram.com/belatedbinge
-
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belatedbinge
-
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@belatedbinge
-
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@belatedbinge
https://belatedbinge.podbean.com/
Thanks for listening!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In this chapter, Harry learns how to make a Patronus, which
becomes very important in our story, through which we get a
ton of back story and foreshadowing at the same time.
Plus Oliver Wood reminds us all that Quidditch is life.
Oh, and Harry gets his fire boltback.
Hi and welcome to Belated Bench Harry Potter, the podcast.
(00:22):
It doesn't take itself or the books too seriously.
I'm Zach, your host. I didn't read this series till
my mid 20s and now I'm here so that you can relive your
favorite books as an adult with an affinity for sarcasm.
Today we pick back up with Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 12,
The Patronus, the Belated Binge podcast.
(00:47):
Before we start. Spoilers, obviously.
Language. Yeah, maybe shout out to the
Bonus Binge Squad on Patreon if you want to hear these episodes
like right after I record them instead of waiting for them to
release to the general public. And also bonus episodes with
some other cool benefits too. Check out patreon.com/belated
(01:09):
Binge. And in case you were Obliviated
or you got your Hogwarts letter late, let's shove our faces in
that white liquidy substance of our pensive in Chapter 11.
The last chapter that we read, it was called the Fire Bolt.
Our trio spent some time with Hagrid and they came away
(01:32):
promising to help him with his case.
The one about Buckbeak trying tomake sure that the Ministry
doesn't, you know, murder Buckbeak.
Harry also got a new broomstick for Christmas called the Fire
Bolt. Crookshanks tried to kill
Scabbers again, or at least so Ron thought.
And after lunch with the professors, a ton, a ton of
(01:57):
foreshadowing. Professor Mcgonigal takes the
fire boat away to check it for jinxes, and now the boys are mad
at Hermione for telling her about it, but she's worried that
the broom came from Sirius Blackand it's a big old murder stick.
And that is where we left off. So shall we Priori Incan
(02:17):
chapter. This is the part where our wands
connect, not the tips, just the streams so that we can recap
what went down in the chapter that we just read this week.
Chapter 12. The Patronus in this chapter,
Well, Ron and Harry are still mad at Hermione about the broom.
(02:38):
They're worried about how it being stripped down and violated
by Professor Mcgonagall and Flitwick, you know, the teachers
that are just trying to make sure that the broom's not going
to kill Harry, you know, that whole thing.
They're really worried about howthis process is going to affect
the greatest broom in the world.And Hermione doesn't really come
(03:03):
around anymore because this is the end of the holidays and it's
still just them in the castle. So it makes it even more awkward
that she's been isolated from her friends over a wooden broom
stick. Come on.
(03:25):
Come on. You'll get there.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, probably not. Inappropriate jokes do not
belong in a kids book series, orso they tell me.
Actually, I don't know if anybody has ever told me that
because I think they totally do belong here as long as we keep
them tasteful. Wood, Speaking of Oliver Wood
(03:51):
was about to kick Harry off the Quidditch team.
He sat him down when everybody came back from the holiday
break, and he seems to be about to tell him that he has to
replace him as Seeker because ofthe Dementor problem.
(04:11):
Like, hey, this kid was attackedby dementors who weren't
supposed to be there in our lastmatch, and it made us lose.
And that's your fault, Harry. You shouldn't have passed out.
You should have caught the snitch.
So we need somebody else that's not going to crumple under the
extreme pressure of the dementors to catch that damn
(04:33):
Snitch. Yeah, but he did take comfort in
Harry saying that he's actually starting lessons with Professor
Lupin to help him keep those dementors at Bay.
And he also got very excited about the fire bolt.
Very, very excited indeed. I would say he probably
(04:55):
resembled the burn stick handle at the fire bolt.
He's decided that he is also just the person that it's going
to take to get Professor Mcgonigal to change her mind
about the safety of said Broome because Quidditch is life.
Classes are now back in session as well, and Ron reminds us all
(05:16):
about Remus Lupin, the teach allbeing ill, and Hermione makes a
little snarky laugh and a comment about knowing what's
wrong with Lupin. And so this is one of those
things, right? Like, I feel like it's all Ron
and Harry's fault for the rift in the friendship right now.
(05:40):
They are to blame because of theway that they have treated
Hermione since the fire bolt incident.
It's their fault, but she's not exactly innocent in the
aftermath here. Because when Ron says, you know,
(06:02):
hey, what do you think is wrong with Lupin, she basically laughs
at them and kind of antagonizes them and teases them a little
bit about not being able to figure it out because, well,
it's obvious, isn't it? And we know that she knows
(06:23):
exactly what's wrong with Lupin.She's put that together for a
little while. She just hasn't said anything.
And you kind of wonder if she would have if they weren't in
this little three-way spat as friends.
But alas, we'll never know. The main thing that we care
about in this chapter is the one-on-one lesson with Lupin.
(06:48):
There's actually a couple of them, but the first one is kind
of our introduction to Dementor training, which is actually
going to be what we focus on during the Lumos segment of this
episode. But the Cliff notes for that
first lesson are that Lupin has tracked down another Boggert in
(07:09):
the castle that he's going to use as a stand in for a
Dementor. It takes Harry a few tries
before he's able to make a silvery, wispy, cloudy Patronus
that kind of like holds the Dementor off for a second.
The fake Dementor, and throughout the lesson we get
some back story about Harry's parents through what he hears
(07:32):
when he's fighting the fake dementor and Lupin telling him
that he was friends with his dad.
And another hint about Lupin because of his Bogart turning to
a silvery orb and confirmation that being friends with James
meant he also knew Sirius Black.Again, we're going to dive into
(07:53):
a lot more detail from that particular lesson in just a bit.
But after that lesson, Harry's stewing on the emotion and he's
eating his chocolate because chocolate cures all in this this
dementor world. Which just a reminder that I'm
sure that I've said on this podcast before and that you are
(08:15):
aware of if you are a fan of Harry Potter, the dementors are
a stand in for the effects of depression and chocolate is, you
know, the remedy because, you know, people like chocolate when
they're feeling blue. That's at least the way that I
(08:36):
have absorbed that part of this story in the narrative after
said lesson and stewing and emotion and chocolate.
What he's doing is trying to convince himself for the sake of
Quidditch he better stop wantingto hear his parents voices so
(08:59):
that he can actually fight off the dementors for good.
Because Quidditch And now it's montage time.
That's at least how I hear thesenarrative time jumps that that
we get where it just kind of describes time passing.
I see them in my head as little montages of Quidditch practice,
(09:19):
of Patronus practice, and throughout this we get a
reminder of how much work Hermione is doing with all the
classes that she's taking. And Ron still seems to be the
only person in the world that gives a shit about that.
We've got Oliver Wood who's still bugging Professor
Mcgonigal about the fire bolt and that is not going
particularly well. He literally told her and admits
(09:41):
this to Harry, that he said he didn't care if the fire bolt
threw Harry off as long as he caught the snitch first.
Which is actually chapter and verse straight quoted from the
Oliver Wood Bible for the Quidditch is Life sermon which
meets every Thursday on the Quidditch pitch.
(10:03):
More montage and time jumping ishappening.
Basically, we know it's cold, weknow it's almost Quidditch time
and we know we still have no fire bolt and we know that it's
been about four weeks because that's what they tell us about
the Patronus practices that havebeen happening.
After four weeks, Harry still hasn't figured out a been able
(10:28):
to make a like fully fledged patronus.
He can make a cloud that can stop a dementor from, you know,
continuing to to charge towards him, but he can't drive them
away with his fully formed Patronus yet.
So if I can take some liberty here, he can make a pass
(10:48):
blocker, but he's not running the tush push anytime soon.
And that joke is going to make sense to about one of my
listeners, but it was the best Icould do to make a sports
analogy instead of one about erectile dysfunction.
But it seems he's still holding on to a little bit of wanting to
hear his parents, which is why that thing isn't coming full,
(11:13):
full force. And Harry almost during this
this final lesson with Lupin that they're talking afterwards,
he almost gave away that he's been sneaking to Hogsmeade when
he starts drinking with his teacher after a private lesson,
which is a thing that happens all the time for 13 year old
(11:35):
boys. And it's always completely
appropriate. But the real thing that's
happening here between him and Lupin is it's teaching us about
the Dementor's Kiss and how theyliterally suck the soul out of a
human being, leaving them as just this empty husk of
lifelessness but still breathing.
(11:57):
It's particularly pleasant to think about.
And this is this is more to build intrigue and stakes for
the climax is that's what's going to happen to Sirius Black
when he gets caught. Apparently, they actually put
that in the paper, which is an interesting thing to do.
(12:19):
And you can hear Lupin still struggling with his old
friendship when he asks Harry. And they're going back and forth
about whether Harry really thinks that someone could
deserve that punishment. Could anyone actually deserve
that punishment? At least that's what Lupin is
posing. But you have to, you have to
(12:42):
feel like he's doing so not justout of a philosophy and thinking
that that is a fate that no human being could have done
anything to deserve, but also, he was friends with Sirius
Black. And even if Sirius Black did
(13:03):
something horrible, which he believes he did, does he really
want to see that be his fate? But after this particularly fun
chat, Professor Mcgonigal finally brings Harry back his
Fire Bowl, and she reminds him how important it is to win
Quidditch. Because Quidditch is life.
(13:23):
And now that it's back in his life, he's ready to forgive
Hermione. And this gives us a moment of
foreshadowing in passing as theyget to the portrait hole.
And, well, they get to the portrait.
It's not a hole because Neville is pleading with circa Duggan
that he wrote the passwords down, but he lost them.
(13:46):
That won't be important at all. Once they get inside.
Everyone wants to touch Harry's broom stick.
And as they're trying to chat upHermione and make nice, Ron
decides that he's going to be the one to take the fire boat up
to the dorm to put it away to keep it safe and give Scabbers
(14:11):
his rat tonic that he needs to give him.
Anyways. Two big things happen at one
time. The 1st is that Harry actually
starts to give a shit about Hermione's workload and trying
to figure out how she's doing this and why she can't offload a
subject or two and just take it easy a little bit.
(14:34):
He's actually starting to care about his friend, which is a
very novel concept. And then Two Scabbers is gone,
there's blood on the sheets, andRon blames Cruikshanks for
finally succeeding in eating himbecause of some orange hairs he
(14:55):
found at the scene of the crime.Like some kind of CSI
investigator. Ron the Little or even, though
we don't actually know that termyet.
In the books, he's the only one that notices Hermione's weird
schedule and behaviors all year long, and now he's pulling cat
hairs at a murder scene. Unfortunately for him, he
(15:17):
doesn't know that his pet rat isa quite skilled and experienced
human wizard man who's getting pretty good and adept at faking
his own death. Which led me to a random
question that I'd like to pose to you.
Did Peter Pettigrew have to transform back into a person to
stage this? How often does he find himself
(15:41):
alone and transform just to stopbeing a rat for a little while
since he's, you know, dropped himself into the Weasley's
lives? Imagine for a moment that little
4 year old Jenny stumbles into aroom that's supposed to be empty
and he finds a she. Yeah, he Jenny finds a 30 year
(16:03):
old man just sitting there. And then she runs off to get her
mom, brings her back to see a rat sitting in the same spot.
If you're on YouTube, let me know in the comments if that's a
thing that you think ever happened, because in my head
totally did. And that's the chapter.
Well, it was the chapter before that detour we just took.
(16:27):
It's another fairly low key chapter.
There's a lot of descriptions oftime passing through the context
of the fire bolt being ready forQuidditch or not.
You know, it's that anticipationbecause Quidditch is life.
But the in between has a lot of detail packed into some sort of
like subdued moments. The biggest ones are obviously
(16:49):
the lessons with Lupin, which we're about to dissect further.
But before we do that, I want toask you if you are listening on
a podcast app to leave a five star rating and review for the
podcast. It truly does help the show.
It will make me feel all warm and fuzzy like I just ate some
(17:09):
chocolate after fighting dementors.
And also, it will let the evil algorithms know that this show
is actually worth being shown tosome people.
And we can grow the audience of people like you around this
show. And if you're watching on
YouTube, like the video for the same effect.
(17:32):
Now we are in the Lumos segment of the show.
This is the part of the show where we light our wand tips and
illuminate something from the chapter.
I want to talk about Harry and his Patronus lesson,
particularly the first one. This is how it goes down.
So Lupin found another bogger asa stand in for a dementor and
(17:54):
explains what a patronus charm even is and how hard it is to
make. So this is this is to basically
set the stage of like Harry is actually good at magic, despite
the fact that he doesn't ever actually do magic.
It it gives us the IT gives us the feeling when he finally
(18:17):
succeeds at this, that he is particularly powerful.
And that that could be a way that he might actually live
through the end of this book. Because when we really break the
series down, he's going against one of the most magically gifted
dark Wizards of like a generation.
And he has to have something about him that is powerful and
(18:41):
even more so than just like the excuse of love protection,
right? Like, he's got to be good at
something. And other than Quidditch.
But Quidditch is life. And this Patronus charm is one
of those moments where it's like, oh, this is magic far
beyond what a 13 year old shouldbe capable of doing.
(19:03):
And Lupin is already teaching him.
And he's actually, he's actuallygoing to get it.
And luckily for the convenience of these lessons, the boy who
hears his parents dying screams when the dementors come near
him, has a divination teacher who's been predicting his
imminent death since he met her,and has been told by everyone
(19:25):
all year long that there's a lunatic murderer that has
escaped prison to kill him. Not to mention said Darkest
Wizard of the Age that people won't even speak his name, a
serial killer who's already tried to kill him multiple times
and is most definitely going to continue to try to do this.
(19:47):
Of all the things for this kid to fear most, Luckily it's a
Dementor. And lucky that the fake boggart
Dementor also holds all the samepowers as a real Dementor.
Lucky indeed. Anyways, we're not going to Stew
(20:11):
on that. It's also interesting that there
is a suggestion that Harry actually wants to hear his
mother's screams, because it's horrible as it is.
And he reflects on this later too, after, after the lessons
and continuing in the chapter. It's the only way that he can
actually hear her voice, and it's that distraction that could
(20:37):
be why he fails, particularly atfirst.
It's also very funny that the biggest concern in all of this
is if Harry can't fight off a Dementor, they might come to
Quidditch again and they're going to lose the match.
Nothing else. There's no other reason for him
to want to have these lessons other than Quidditch.
(20:59):
Of course he tries multiple happy memories, because that's
what Lupin tells him he has to do.
He has to be able to really, really focus on the happiest
memory of his life, basically, in order to produce a Patronus
charm that can project these happy feelings outward in front
(21:19):
of him. And that's what the Dementor
feeds off of instead of Harry's own, right?
That's how this thing is supposed to work and the
memories that he chooses in order because he tries three
times. The first one is the first time
that he flew on a broom, the second one is the previous year
when they won the House Cup, andthen the third one is when he
(21:41):
first found out that he was a wizard and would leave the
Dursleys to go to Hogwarts. This kid doesn't have a lot of
happy memories to reach back andchoose from, so it makes it
interesting to me that he actually ends up being so good
at doing this charm because there's not a lot of happy in
(22:04):
Aries life. We also we get an evolution to
that sort of culminates in this first lesson of the effects that
Harry is the effects that the Dementor is having on Harry when
he faces them, whether it's the real ones or the fake ones,
(22:25):
right? It starts with just hearing his
mother screaming. And that first time back on the
train, he didn't even realize itwas her necessarily.
He just heard a woman screaming.And it's progressively gotten
more and more distinct. And he starts to hear his mother
pleading and Voldemort laughing and it gets progressively
(22:48):
louder. And then he finally at the in
the final one, hears his dad andhow he tried to hold off
Voldemort and let his mom and Harry get away.
And then on the third try, the screaming wasn't as pronounced
and he was actually able to makea cloudy patronus and hold the
(23:11):
fake dementor at Bay a little bit.
So within that, when you unpack it, these lessons are not only
an exploration of depression andstress and honestly the silly
motivation of a 13 year old who subscribes to the religion of
Oliver Wood Quidditch, his life.They also act as a vessel for
(23:32):
filling in some of the back story and building some intrigue
and foreshadow moving forward aswell.
What Harry hears when the dementors, even the fake bogger
version, is a reliving of his parents final moments of life
and this allows him to understand what happened to them
the night that Voldemort came tokill him.
(23:53):
He now knows that his father stepped in to try to buy them
time to get away. He sacrificed himself to give
them a chance to live. Could we have a discussion about
why this sacrifice didn't work the same as his mother's and
protected them from Voldemort? Yeah, I think there's a valid
conversation to be had there. He admittedly flimsy explanation
(24:17):
I'm clinging to to avoid said conversation is that Voldemort
didn't give him the option of survival when he stepped up.
Voldemort simply laughed and killed him.
Sacrifice, yes, but less of a choice at that final moment
unless he just ran away to save himself.
(24:38):
He was dying that night. And we get more of that back
story later in the books to fillin some more of the gaps.
But even in these Dementor moments, we hear a bit of a
difference in Harry's mom's screams, too.
She's saying things like, pleasenot Harry, have mercy, not
Harry, things like that. And I believe that we've, I
(25:00):
believe that in one of these, we've heard Voldemort say things
like stand aside. And that's that element of
choice, the element of choice that James didn't get, but Lily
did. And I think that's what we're
meant to believe is the difference and what makes that
sacrifice possible. But also it's it's giving Harry
(25:25):
information. It's giving us information.
It's giving us the foundational elements of the series in a lot
of ways. And we also get more of that
back story with Lupin as Harry tells him what he's hearing.
We discover that Lupin and Jameswere friends at Hogwarts, and
through Harry's immense deductive reasoning skills, that
(25:48):
he also knew Sirius Black. And his confirmation here is
subtle and interesting at the same time.
With words, he says I knew him, or at least I thought I did.
You can see he's still wrestlingwith that part of his life and
that relationship, that friendship.
(26:09):
But it's that first reaction as the book describes it as A quick
turn, a sharp response, and thenhis face relaxing when Harry
explained why he asked in the 1st place.
It's this tense reaction that's something of someone who's being
accused of something, a guilty conscience.
(26:33):
This is Lupin not just reacting as if Harry is accusing him like
Snape has been accusing him all year.
But he's not just reacting to this idea that perhaps because
of their past friendship, he would be willing to help Sirius.
(26:54):
It's the guilty conscience that's just that.
He is wrestling with the knowledge that he alone knows
that Sirius Black is an Animagus.
And that could be a way that he escaped and is being
successfully staying on the run and not recaptured and perhaps
(27:17):
is getting into Hogwarts. But he's trying to convince
himself that he's using some kind of dark magic so that he
himself can sleep at night and not admit to Dumbledore what
they had done as students. And we're going to hear all
about that story in the later chapters of this book.
(27:39):
And the Patronus part of this lesson, it is educational and
important to Harry. You know, he is at school.
After all, he does have to learnhow the magic works if he's
going to work the magic. But for us as readers, this is
far more important for these details, these emotional
(28:01):
reveals, these foundational elements of the series in the
plot as it as it stands for thisentire entire world that's being
built around Harry, his whole his whole existence and the
foreshadowing of the climax to this book.
(28:23):
There's a lot packed into this one first little lesson that
does also get built upon, you know, in in the the subsequent
lessons. But this first one in
particular, there's a lot, a lotgoing on in this and most of it,
(28:45):
most of it really isn't about whether Harry successfully
achieves a Patronus or not. Thanks, Lupin.
All right, so before we do anything else, we must give out
some House points. In true Hogwarts fashion, these
(29:05):
points are completely subjectivewith no oversight and fully at
my discretion. This week I am giving house
points to Lupin for teaching Harry how to protect himself
against the Dementors and setting him up to show just how
big his wand stick is when he can make a fully fledged
(29:26):
Patronus at 13 years old. 150 points.
Just like catching a snitch. I hope that I get to work that
in when they finally do catch the snitch or the rat.
Anyway, the next points I'm going to give out are to
(29:47):
Professor Mcgonigal for giving the fire bolt back so that Harry
can dominate in Quidditch, 10 points, and also to Oliver Wood
for continuing to push the good word of the Quidditch life, Five
points to Wood. Now I'm going to take away some
points from Scabbers, AKA Peter Pettigrew for ruining the
(30:10):
reunion of Ron and Hermione. They were just about to be nice
to each other again, and he staged his crime scene in the
frame job of Hermione's cat, Crookshanks.
I'm taking away 100 points. We need our friendships in these
(30:32):
dark times. I'm also taking away points from
Harry and Ron on a similar premise for continuing to be
Dicks to Hermione, all because she wants to make sure that
Harry isn't murdered by a broom curse. 20 points each.
We need our friends in these dark times.
(30:55):
Come on guys. Anyway, before we go, we must
expecto plot changeo. Let's rewrite Harry Potter one
small change at a time. This expecto plot changeo
question from the chapter is what if Harry's biggest fear
really was Voldemort or something other than a dementor?
(31:20):
How could that have changed the events in this chapter, the
series? Like perhaps, how would Lupin's
lessons have changed to teach him how to make a Patronus in
the 1st place? Could he have taught him at all?
The first couple of things that came to mind for me when I posed
this question to myself is that maybe they would have had to
(31:44):
sneak out of school. Took one of the dementors
guarding the school on like thisrogue mission.
Maybe an adventure to try to getone isolated to make sure that
they don't get overpowered by like 100 of them?
Or could the story have been tweaked slightly that the
Marauders had actually discovered the rumor requirement
and that's how it gets its firstreveal, and that it simply only
(32:07):
doesn't show up on the Maraudersmap because it's unplottable,
not because they didn't know it existed?
Maybe, perhaps, possibly, I don't know.
You can share your thoughts withme on social media at Belated
Binge. You can do so in the comments if
you are on YouTube, or you can join the free Facebook group for
listeners of this podcast. There is a link in the show
(32:31):
notes. I would also be interested if
Facebook groups are still a thing that you care about as
listeners of this podcast. Would you prefer that it be a
Discord server perhaps instead of a Facebook group?
You tell me whether that's a thing that you would be
(32:52):
interested in for our little community.
With that, we have reached the end of this episode of Belated
Binge. If you enjoyed this, please
follow subscribe on whatever podcast player you are using
right now. And as a reminder, if it has a
rating and review function, please leave one.
(33:13):
Also check out the additional benefits available on
patreon.com/belated Binge. Thank you for listening.
And remember, life is short by the wand.
Wear the cloak, muffly auto the haters, and always tap that
little radio with the password Belated Binge.
Harry Potter.
In this chapter, Harry learns how to make a Patronus, which
becomes very important in our story, through which we get a
ton of back story and foreshadowing at the same time.
Plus Oliver Wood reminds us all that Quidditch is life.
Oh, and Harry gets his fire boltback.
Hi and welcome to Belated Bench Harry Potter, the podcast.
(00:22):
It doesn't take itself or the books too seriously.
I'm Zach, your host. I didn't read this series till
my mid 20s and now I'm here so that you can relive your
favorite books as an adult with an affinity for sarcasm.
Today we pick back up with Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 12,
The Patronus, the Belated Binge podcast.
(00:47):
Before we start. Spoilers, obviously.
Language. Yeah, maybe shout out to the
Bonus Binge Squad on Patreon if you want to hear these episodes
like right after I record them instead of waiting for them to
release to the general public. And also bonus episodes with
some other cool benefits too. Check out patreon.com/belated
(01:09):
Binge. And in case you were Obliviated
or you got your Hogwarts letter late, let's shove our faces in
that white liquidy substance of our pensive in Chapter 11.
The last chapter that we read, it was called the Fire Bolt.
Our trio spent some time with Hagrid and they came away
(01:32):
promising to help him with his case.
The one about Buckbeak trying tomake sure that the Ministry
doesn't, you know, murder Buckbeak.
Harry also got a new broomstick for Christmas called the Fire
Bolt. Crookshanks tried to kill
Scabbers again, or at least so Ron thought.
And after lunch with the professors, a ton, a ton of
(01:57):
foreshadowing. Professor Mcgonigal takes the
fire boat away to check it for jinxes, and now the boys are mad
at Hermione for telling her about it, but she's worried that
the broom came from Sirius Blackand it's a big old murder stick.
And that is where we left off. So shall we Priori Incan
(02:17):
chapter. This is the part where our wands
connect, not the tips, just the streams so that we can recap
what went down in the chapter that we just read this week.
Chapter 12. The Patronus in this chapter,
Well, Ron and Harry are still mad at Hermione about the broom.
(02:38):
They're worried about how it being stripped down and violated
by Professor Mcgonagall and Flitwick, you know, the teachers
that are just trying to make sure that the broom's not going
to kill Harry, you know, that whole thing.
They're really worried about howthis process is going to affect
the greatest broom in the world.And Hermione doesn't really come
(03:03):
around anymore because this is the end of the holidays and it's
still just them in the castle. So it makes it even more awkward
that she's been isolated from her friends over a wooden broom
stick. Come on.
(03:25):
Come on. You'll get there.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, probably not. Inappropriate jokes do not
belong in a kids book series, orso they tell me.
Actually, I don't know if anybody has ever told me that
because I think they totally do belong here as long as we keep
them tasteful. Wood, Speaking of Oliver Wood
(03:51):
was about to kick Harry off the Quidditch team.
He sat him down when everybody came back from the holiday
break, and he seems to be about to tell him that he has to
replace him as Seeker because ofthe Dementor problem.
(04:11):
Like, hey, this kid was attackedby dementors who weren't
supposed to be there in our lastmatch, and it made us lose.
And that's your fault, Harry. You shouldn't have passed out.
You should have caught the snitch.
So we need somebody else that's not going to crumple under the
extreme pressure of the dementors to catch that damn
(04:33):
Snitch. Yeah, but he did take comfort in
Harry saying that he's actually starting lessons with Professor
Lupin to help him keep those dementors at Bay.
And he also got very excited about the fire bolt.
Very, very excited indeed. I would say he probably
(04:55):
resembled the burn stick handle at the fire bolt.
He's decided that he is also just the person that it's going
to take to get Professor Mcgonigal to change her mind
about the safety of said Broome because Quidditch is life.
Classes are now back in session as well, and Ron reminds us all
(05:16):
about Remus Lupin, the teach allbeing ill, and Hermione makes a
little snarky laugh and a comment about knowing what's
wrong with Lupin. And so this is one of those
things, right? Like, I feel like it's all Ron
and Harry's fault for the rift in the friendship right now.
(05:40):
They are to blame because of theway that they have treated
Hermione since the fire bolt incident.
It's their fault, but she's not exactly innocent in the
aftermath here. Because when Ron says, you know,
(06:02):
hey, what do you think is wrong with Lupin, she basically laughs
at them and kind of antagonizes them and teases them a little
bit about not being able to figure it out because, well,
it's obvious, isn't it? And we know that she knows
(06:23):
exactly what's wrong with Lupin.She's put that together for a
little while. She just hasn't said anything.
And you kind of wonder if she would have if they weren't in
this little three-way spat as friends.
But alas, we'll never know. The main thing that we care
about in this chapter is the one-on-one lesson with Lupin.
(06:48):
There's actually a couple of them, but the first one is kind
of our introduction to Dementor training, which is actually
going to be what we focus on during the Lumos segment of this
episode. But the Cliff notes for that
first lesson are that Lupin has tracked down another Boggert in
(07:09):
the castle that he's going to use as a stand in for a
Dementor. It takes Harry a few tries
before he's able to make a silvery, wispy, cloudy Patronus
that kind of like holds the Dementor off for a second.
The fake Dementor, and throughout the lesson we get
some back story about Harry's parents through what he hears
(07:32):
when he's fighting the fake dementor and Lupin telling him
that he was friends with his dad.
And another hint about Lupin because of his Bogart turning to
a silvery orb and confirmation that being friends with James
meant he also knew Sirius Black.Again, we're going to dive into
(07:53):
a lot more detail from that particular lesson in just a bit.
But after that lesson, Harry's stewing on the emotion and he's
eating his chocolate because chocolate cures all in this this
dementor world. Which just a reminder that I'm
sure that I've said on this podcast before and that you are
(08:15):
aware of if you are a fan of Harry Potter, the dementors are
a stand in for the effects of depression and chocolate is, you
know, the remedy because, you know, people like chocolate when
they're feeling blue. That's at least the way that I
(08:36):
have absorbed that part of this story in the narrative after
said lesson and stewing and emotion and chocolate.
What he's doing is trying to convince himself for the sake of
Quidditch he better stop wantingto hear his parents voices so
(08:59):
that he can actually fight off the dementors for good.
Because Quidditch And now it's montage time.
That's at least how I hear thesenarrative time jumps that that
we get where it just kind of describes time passing.
I see them in my head as little montages of Quidditch practice,
(09:19):
of Patronus practice, and throughout this we get a
reminder of how much work Hermione is doing with all the
classes that she's taking. And Ron still seems to be the
only person in the world that gives a shit about that.
We've got Oliver Wood who's still bugging Professor
Mcgonigal about the fire bolt and that is not going
particularly well. He literally told her and admits
(09:41):
this to Harry, that he said he didn't care if the fire bolt
threw Harry off as long as he caught the snitch first.
Which is actually chapter and verse straight quoted from the
Oliver Wood Bible for the Quidditch is Life sermon which
meets every Thursday on the Quidditch pitch.
(10:03):
More montage and time jumping ishappening.
Basically, we know it's cold, weknow it's almost Quidditch time
and we know we still have no fire bolt and we know that it's
been about four weeks because that's what they tell us about
the Patronus practices that havebeen happening.
After four weeks, Harry still hasn't figured out a been able
(10:28):
to make a like fully fledged patronus.
He can make a cloud that can stop a dementor from, you know,
continuing to to charge towards him, but he can't drive them
away with his fully formed Patronus yet.
So if I can take some liberty here, he can make a pass
(10:48):
blocker, but he's not running the tush push anytime soon.
And that joke is going to make sense to about one of my
listeners, but it was the best Icould do to make a sports
analogy instead of one about erectile dysfunction.
But it seems he's still holding on to a little bit of wanting to
hear his parents, which is why that thing isn't coming full,
(11:13):
full force. And Harry almost during this
this final lesson with Lupin that they're talking afterwards,
he almost gave away that he's been sneaking to Hogsmeade when
he starts drinking with his teacher after a private lesson,
which is a thing that happens all the time for 13 year old
(11:35):
boys. And it's always completely
appropriate. But the real thing that's
happening here between him and Lupin is it's teaching us about
the Dementor's Kiss and how theyliterally suck the soul out of a
human being, leaving them as just this empty husk of
lifelessness but still breathing.
(11:57):
It's particularly pleasant to think about.
And this is this is more to build intrigue and stakes for
the climax is that's what's going to happen to Sirius Black
when he gets caught. Apparently, they actually put
that in the paper, which is an interesting thing to do.
(12:19):
And you can hear Lupin still struggling with his old
friendship when he asks Harry. And they're going back and forth
about whether Harry really thinks that someone could
deserve that punishment. Could anyone actually deserve
that punishment? At least that's what Lupin is
posing. But you have to, you have to
(12:42):
feel like he's doing so not justout of a philosophy and thinking
that that is a fate that no human being could have done
anything to deserve, but also, he was friends with Sirius
Black. And even if Sirius Black did
(13:03):
something horrible, which he believes he did, does he really
want to see that be his fate? But after this particularly fun
chat, Professor Mcgonigal finally brings Harry back his
Fire Bowl, and she reminds him how important it is to win
Quidditch. Because Quidditch is life.
(13:23):
And now that it's back in his life, he's ready to forgive
Hermione. And this gives us a moment of
foreshadowing in passing as theyget to the portrait hole.
And, well, they get to the portrait.
It's not a hole because Neville is pleading with circa Duggan
that he wrote the passwords down, but he lost them.
(13:46):
That won't be important at all. Once they get inside.
Everyone wants to touch Harry's broom stick.
And as they're trying to chat upHermione and make nice, Ron
decides that he's going to be the one to take the fire boat up
to the dorm to put it away to keep it safe and give Scabbers
(14:11):
his rat tonic that he needs to give him.
Anyways. Two big things happen at one
time. The 1st is that Harry actually
starts to give a shit about Hermione's workload and trying
to figure out how she's doing this and why she can't offload a
subject or two and just take it easy a little bit.
(14:34):
He's actually starting to care about his friend, which is a
very novel concept. And then Two Scabbers is gone,
there's blood on the sheets, andRon blames Cruikshanks for
finally succeeding in eating himbecause of some orange hairs he
(14:55):
found at the scene of the crime.Like some kind of CSI
investigator. Ron the Little or even, though
we don't actually know that termyet.
In the books, he's the only one that notices Hermione's weird
schedule and behaviors all year long, and now he's pulling cat
hairs at a murder scene. Unfortunately for him, he
(15:17):
doesn't know that his pet rat isa quite skilled and experienced
human wizard man who's getting pretty good and adept at faking
his own death. Which led me to a random
question that I'd like to pose to you.
Did Peter Pettigrew have to transform back into a person to
stage this? How often does he find himself
(15:41):
alone and transform just to stopbeing a rat for a little while
since he's, you know, dropped himself into the Weasley's
lives? Imagine for a moment that little
4 year old Jenny stumbles into aroom that's supposed to be empty
and he finds a she. Yeah, he Jenny finds a 30 year
(16:03):
old man just sitting there. And then she runs off to get her
mom, brings her back to see a rat sitting in the same spot.
If you're on YouTube, let me know in the comments if that's a
thing that you think ever happened, because in my head
totally did. And that's the chapter.
Well, it was the chapter before that detour we just took.
(16:27):
It's another fairly low key chapter.
There's a lot of descriptions oftime passing through the context
of the fire bolt being ready forQuidditch or not.
You know, it's that anticipationbecause Quidditch is life.
But the in between has a lot of detail packed into some sort of
like subdued moments. The biggest ones are obviously
(16:49):
the lessons with Lupin, which we're about to dissect further.
But before we do that, I want toask you if you are listening on
a podcast app to leave a five star rating and review for the
podcast. It truly does help the show.
It will make me feel all warm and fuzzy like I just ate some
(17:09):
chocolate after fighting dementors.
And also, it will let the evil algorithms know that this show
is actually worth being shown tosome people.
And we can grow the audience of people like you around this
show. And if you're watching on
YouTube, like the video for the same effect.
(17:32):
Now we are in the Lumos segment of the show.
This is the part of the show where we light our wand tips and
illuminate something from the chapter.
I want to talk about Harry and his Patronus lesson,
particularly the first one. This is how it goes down.
So Lupin found another bogger asa stand in for a dementor and
(17:54):
explains what a patronus charm even is and how hard it is to
make. So this is this is to basically
set the stage of like Harry is actually good at magic, despite
the fact that he doesn't ever actually do magic.
It it gives us the IT gives us the feeling when he finally
(18:17):
succeeds at this, that he is particularly powerful.
And that that could be a way that he might actually live
through the end of this book. Because when we really break the
series down, he's going against one of the most magically gifted
dark Wizards of like a generation.
And he has to have something about him that is powerful and
(18:41):
even more so than just like the excuse of love protection,
right? Like, he's got to be good at
something. And other than Quidditch.
But Quidditch is life. And this Patronus charm is one
of those moments where it's like, oh, this is magic far
beyond what a 13 year old shouldbe capable of doing.
(19:03):
And Lupin is already teaching him.
And he's actually, he's actuallygoing to get it.
And luckily for the convenience of these lessons, the boy who
hears his parents dying screams when the dementors come near
him, has a divination teacher who's been predicting his
imminent death since he met her,and has been told by everyone
(19:25):
all year long that there's a lunatic murderer that has
escaped prison to kill him. Not to mention said Darkest
Wizard of the Age that people won't even speak his name, a
serial killer who's already tried to kill him multiple times
and is most definitely going to continue to try to do this.
(19:47):
Of all the things for this kid to fear most, Luckily it's a
Dementor. And lucky that the fake boggart
Dementor also holds all the samepowers as a real Dementor.
Lucky indeed. Anyways, we're not going to Stew
(20:11):
on that. It's also interesting that there
is a suggestion that Harry actually wants to hear his
mother's screams, because it's horrible as it is.
And he reflects on this later too, after, after the lessons
and continuing in the chapter. It's the only way that he can
actually hear her voice, and it's that distraction that could
(20:37):
be why he fails, particularly atfirst.
It's also very funny that the biggest concern in all of this
is if Harry can't fight off a Dementor, they might come to
Quidditch again and they're going to lose the match.
Nothing else. There's no other reason for him
to want to have these lessons other than Quidditch.
(20:59):
Of course he tries multiple happy memories, because that's
what Lupin tells him he has to do.
He has to be able to really, really focus on the happiest
memory of his life, basically, in order to produce a Patronus
charm that can project these happy feelings outward in front
(21:19):
of him. And that's what the Dementor
feeds off of instead of Harry's own, right?
That's how this thing is supposed to work and the
memories that he chooses in order because he tries three
times. The first one is the first time
that he flew on a broom, the second one is the previous year
when they won the House Cup, andthen the third one is when he
(21:41):
first found out that he was a wizard and would leave the
Dursleys to go to Hogwarts. This kid doesn't have a lot of
happy memories to reach back andchoose from, so it makes it
interesting to me that he actually ends up being so good
at doing this charm because there's not a lot of happy in
(22:04):
Aries life. We also we get an evolution to
that sort of culminates in this first lesson of the effects that
Harry is the effects that the Dementor is having on Harry when
he faces them, whether it's the real ones or the fake ones,
(22:25):
right? It starts with just hearing his
mother screaming. And that first time back on the
train, he didn't even realize itwas her necessarily.
He just heard a woman screaming.And it's progressively gotten
more and more distinct. And he starts to hear his mother
pleading and Voldemort laughing and it gets progressively
(22:48):
louder. And then he finally at the in
the final one, hears his dad andhow he tried to hold off
Voldemort and let his mom and Harry get away.
And then on the third try, the screaming wasn't as pronounced
and he was actually able to makea cloudy patronus and hold the
(23:11):
fake dementor at Bay a little bit.
So within that, when you unpack it, these lessons are not only
an exploration of depression andstress and honestly the silly
motivation of a 13 year old who subscribes to the religion of
Oliver Wood Quidditch, his life.They also act as a vessel for
(23:32):
filling in some of the back story and building some intrigue
and foreshadow moving forward aswell.
What Harry hears when the dementors, even the fake bogger
version, is a reliving of his parents final moments of life
and this allows him to understand what happened to them
the night that Voldemort came tokill him.
(23:53):
He now knows that his father stepped in to try to buy them
time to get away. He sacrificed himself to give
them a chance to live. Could we have a discussion about
why this sacrifice didn't work the same as his mother's and
protected them from Voldemort? Yeah, I think there's a valid
conversation to be had there. He admittedly flimsy explanation
(24:17):
I'm clinging to to avoid said conversation is that Voldemort
didn't give him the option of survival when he stepped up.
Voldemort simply laughed and killed him.
Sacrifice, yes, but less of a choice at that final moment
unless he just ran away to save himself.
(24:38):
He was dying that night. And we get more of that back
story later in the books to fillin some more of the gaps.
But even in these Dementor moments, we hear a bit of a
difference in Harry's mom's screams, too.
She's saying things like, pleasenot Harry, have mercy, not
Harry, things like that. And I believe that we've, I
(25:00):
believe that in one of these, we've heard Voldemort say things
like stand aside. And that's that element of
choice, the element of choice that James didn't get, but Lily
did. And I think that's what we're
meant to believe is the difference and what makes that
sacrifice possible. But also it's it's giving Harry
(25:25):
information. It's giving us information.
It's giving us the foundational elements of the series in a lot
of ways. And we also get more of that
back story with Lupin as Harry tells him what he's hearing.
We discover that Lupin and Jameswere friends at Hogwarts, and
through Harry's immense deductive reasoning skills, that
(25:48):
he also knew Sirius Black. And his confirmation here is
subtle and interesting at the same time.
With words, he says I knew him, or at least I thought I did.
You can see he's still wrestlingwith that part of his life and
that relationship, that friendship.
(26:09):
But it's that first reaction as the book describes it as A quick
turn, a sharp response, and thenhis face relaxing when Harry
explained why he asked in the 1st place.
It's this tense reaction that's something of someone who's being
accused of something, a guilty conscience.
(26:33):
This is Lupin not just reacting as if Harry is accusing him like
Snape has been accusing him all year.
But he's not just reacting to this idea that perhaps because
of their past friendship, he would be willing to help Sirius.
(26:54):
It's the guilty conscience that's just that.
He is wrestling with the knowledge that he alone knows
that Sirius Black is an Animagus.
And that could be a way that he escaped and is being
successfully staying on the run and not recaptured and perhaps
(27:17):
is getting into Hogwarts. But he's trying to convince
himself that he's using some kind of dark magic so that he
himself can sleep at night and not admit to Dumbledore what
they had done as students. And we're going to hear all
about that story in the later chapters of this book.
(27:39):
And the Patronus part of this lesson, it is educational and
important to Harry. You know, he is at school.
After all, he does have to learnhow the magic works if he's
going to work the magic. But for us as readers, this is
far more important for these details, these emotional
(28:01):
reveals, these foundational elements of the series in the
plot as it as it stands for thisentire entire world that's being
built around Harry, his whole his whole existence and the
foreshadowing of the climax to this book.
(28:23):
There's a lot packed into this one first little lesson that
does also get built upon, you know, in in the the subsequent
lessons. But this first one in
particular, there's a lot, a lotgoing on in this and most of it,
(28:45):
most of it really isn't about whether Harry successfully
achieves a Patronus or not. Thanks, Lupin.
All right, so before we do anything else, we must give out
some House points. In true Hogwarts fashion, these
(29:05):
points are completely subjectivewith no oversight and fully at
my discretion. This week I am giving house
points to Lupin for teaching Harry how to protect himself
against the Dementors and setting him up to show just how
big his wand stick is when he can make a fully fledged
(29:26):
Patronus at 13 years old. 150 points.
Just like catching a snitch. I hope that I get to work that
in when they finally do catch the snitch or the rat.
Anyway, the next points I'm going to give out are to
(29:47):
Professor Mcgonigal for giving the fire bolt back so that Harry
can dominate in Quidditch, 10 points, and also to Oliver Wood
for continuing to push the good word of the Quidditch life, Five
points to Wood. Now I'm going to take away some
points from Scabbers, AKA Peter Pettigrew for ruining the
(30:10):
reunion of Ron and Hermione. They were just about to be nice
to each other again, and he staged his crime scene in the
frame job of Hermione's cat, Crookshanks.
I'm taking away 100 points. We need our friendships in these
(30:32):
dark times. I'm also taking away points from
Harry and Ron on a similar premise for continuing to be
Dicks to Hermione, all because she wants to make sure that
Harry isn't murdered by a broom curse. 20 points each.
We need our friends in these dark times.
(30:55):
Come on guys. Anyway, before we go, we must
expecto plot changeo. Let's rewrite Harry Potter one
small change at a time. This expecto plot changeo
question from the chapter is what if Harry's biggest fear
really was Voldemort or something other than a dementor?
(31:20):
How could that have changed the events in this chapter, the
series? Like perhaps, how would Lupin's
lessons have changed to teach him how to make a Patronus in
the 1st place? Could he have taught him at all?
The first couple of things that came to mind for me when I posed
this question to myself is that maybe they would have had to
(31:44):
sneak out of school. Took one of the dementors
guarding the school on like thisrogue mission.
Maybe an adventure to try to getone isolated to make sure that
they don't get overpowered by like 100 of them?
Or could the story have been tweaked slightly that the
Marauders had actually discovered the rumor requirement
and that's how it gets its firstreveal, and that it simply only
(32:07):
doesn't show up on the Maraudersmap because it's unplottable,
not because they didn't know it existed?
Maybe, perhaps, possibly, I don't know.
You can share your thoughts withme on social media at Belated
Binge. You can do so in the comments if
you are on YouTube, or you can join the free Facebook group for
listeners of this podcast. There is a link in the show
(32:31):
notes. I would also be interested if
Facebook groups are still a thing that you care about as
listeners of this podcast. Would you prefer that it be a
Discord server perhaps instead of a Facebook group?
You tell me whether that's a thing that you would be
(32:52):
interested in for our little community.
With that, we have reached the end of this episode of Belated
Binge. If you enjoyed this, please
follow subscribe on whatever podcast player you are using
right now. And as a reminder, if it has a
rating and review function, please leave one.
(33:13):
Also check out the additional benefits available on
patreon.com/belated Binge. Thank you for listening.
And remember, life is short by the wand.
Wear the cloak, muffly auto the haters, and always tap that
little radio with the password Belated Binge.
Harry Potter.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com