Join hosts Aureo, Irvin, Sierra, and guest Karoline as they discuss chapter 5 from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: The Whomping Willow.
In this episode:
- Ranking the Weasley chaos year by year
- What if the diary never made it to Hogwarts?
- The Weasleys are clearly bad parents
- Only magical trains can leave on time
- The flying car would never happen with Hermione
- RIP Chess Master Ron
- Follow the owl instead of the spiders
- We need to understand magical car physics and magical tree biology
- Snape seems weirdly obsessed with Harry and Ron
- This episode’s theme: Sierra has questions!
The pub’s jukebox:
Hate to point this out (as we’re already feeling old), but 1992 was 32 years ago. It was the movie version that was 22 years ago.
That was uncalled for.
What was that, young’un? Speak up; my ears ain’t what they used to be.
Bearing in mind that the (fictional) Ottery St Catchpole is somewhere in Devon (near the River Otter), you’re looking at maybe a 3.5 hour drive into Kings Cross (assuming the Anglia doesn’t have any other tricks). Leaving before 7:30 in the morning.
They’re waking six adolescents at the crack of dawn; no wonder there’s chaos. I’m not making it worse by telling them they can’t have breakfast for another few hours.
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I imagine Ron probably knows more about magical law than the average 12-year-old: it’s what his dad does for a living, and earlier in this book we see the boys all eager to hear about Arthur’s work day. Besides, magical children likely learn about the statute of secrecy the way we did concepts like “stranger danger”.
We’ve also seen that the twins have shared their lock-picking skills with Ron, so it’s not surprising they’d have taught him about driving/flying the car. I also suspect flying the car is easier than driving it; magic responds to intent, even if you’ve forgotten to use the clutch pedal.
As well as the train being bright red, it’s a steam engine. Outside of the Isle of Sodor, most trains were probably diesel or electric by this point. If the train had veered off somewhere, they could just follow the smoke.
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Horned King as Voldemort: yeah, I can see it. Though my initial reaction was “what if Skeletor was a druid”.
Is the smoke that persistent and easy to see? I didn’t realize the smoke trail would be much more helpful than the tracks or the train!
There may be enough branches that the tracks aren’t helpful. The smoke may not persist (on a clear day with a breeze, I imagine it would disperse pretty quickly), but the smoke-cloud directly above the train is likely visible from a greater distance than the train itself.
(Have you seen a steam engine in person? Those things belch it out)