Grab your signed permission slip, leave Harry behind, and come to the Three Broomsticks: Join DJ, Ev, Sophia, and our guest Nadia as they discuss Chapter 8 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – “Flight of the Fat Lady”!
In this episode:
- Magical textiles and what to do with them
- Flobberworms are officially boring
- Where’s Grubbly-Plank?
- Is Crookshanks secretly multilingual?
- Is Hermione more insensitive than Ron?
- Lockhart’s dusty teabags
- The Fat Lady is holding all of Hogwarts security on her shoulders
- Is Sirius hyperfocused or just provoked by Peeves?
Resources:
- We haven’t won since Charlie left… by Steve VanderArk
Pub’s Jukebox:
On my first few reads of Prisoner of Azkaban, I felt unsatisfied by the end-of-book explanations of his practically deranged actions throughout the year, and because of that, I had a lot of difficulty trusting Sirius. That’s why I loved your thorough analysis of his psychological state in this episode, which helped me understand him much better. But this isn’t the only time that I’ve felt like a character’s mood swings have seemed like a bait-and-switch, especially when it’s for the purpose of setting up a mystery and a twist. Just a couple of examples off the top of my head — Snape’s rage-inspired attempts to expel Harry seem incompatible with his supposedly ironclad commitment to protect Harry, and Tonks’s listlessness and her attempts to break into the castle in Harry’s sixth year don’t feel sufficiently explained by lovesickness. Is it just me? Or is realistic character development sometimes hampered by the quest to establish an epic twist?
Host DJ here!
I definitely can see where you’re coming from! Sirius I think is the “best” example of character whiplash in the series. I too never fully bought into the idea that he should be fully redeemed at the end of PoA, and as we talk about in the episode, his total 180 shift in GoF is jarring to me on rereads.
Snape is, to use the authors words, a grey area. He can’t be seen (from Voldy’s POV) to be blatantly supporting Harry without blowing his cover, so I think him actively trying to get Harry expelled can be written off as him trying to stay in Voldy’s good graces. I think if Snape really truly wanted Harry expelled, he would have actually tried a lot harder to get it done.
One example, that I believe I said previously in a comment on an earlier episode, but the flying car incident in CoS really should’ve had Fudge/the Ministry involved and Harry really should’ve had Ministry punishment beyond a school detention. If Snape had let slip to Fudge that Harry had been responsible for that, it would’ve come up at his trial in OotP and I actually think Harry may have been punished for it at that time. The fact that Snape kept that to himself rather than telling Fudge about it may be an example of his (quiet) restraint. It’s actually excellent double agent work, really!
I personally have never really had a strong opinion on Tonks one way or the other tbh. She’s just kind of…there, for me. That said, I agree with you that her love for Lupin does kind of come out of nowhere and is poorly explained IMO. And it doesn’t really even…go anywhere? That said, there aren’t many candidates for women around Lupin’s age to replace her with that we see in the series. Lupin connecting with Rita Skeeter would be way worse than Tonks. There aren’t any other female Order members Lupin’s age. I think, at the end of the day, Tonks was a device to get us Teddy in the epilogue. Jo has said that she wanted an orphan to repeat the story of Harry in the epilogue (paraphrasing) and Lupin and Tonks were just kind of…the best way to do that. (Bill and Fleur, maybe could’ve had a kid and died in the battle instead I suppose? But I think all 4 Marauders were going to die no matter what.)
Interesting, thanks! I think your explanations are reasonably compelling. (As I said, Sirius’s actions also make sense, in a way, once you step back and really dig into his character.) I suppose I’m focusing here on the reader’s point of view, rather than the in-universe explanation. Is the story guiding you smoothly from the mystery to the reveal and then the redemption? I don’t think it quite wangles it. But maybe I’m begging for too much handholding from the author and the narrator. It might just be healthy for us to leave the story with these conflicting feelings, because we have more to wrestle with when we return to it. I love the clean, easily palpable lessons that the series often impresses upon us, but would there be nearly as much interesting stuff to discuss if ALL of the conclusions were so clear-cut? Unlikely.