Harry Potter Blog Post 10
Hi everyone! Episode 5 of The Pensieve Podcast is out now! You can listen to it @ https://anchor.fm/alexandras-adventures! It is all about book 5 of the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We had a great conversation about Quidditch, Sirius’ death, and the prophecy.
This episode’s scholarly second was by Bill McCarron, whose article is titled “Power vs. Authority in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
Now for this week’s blog post:
This week’s blog post is a little different. I wanted to share more information from the book that we did not get time to talk about in Episode 5.
Number 12 Grimmauld Place is the ancestral home of the Black family. Sirius Black lets Dumbledore use it as headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, so many people are staying there. While cleaning up the house, Molly Weasley thinks that there is a boggart in one of the cabinets upstairs. As we learned from Professor Remus Lupin earlier in the series, no one really knows what a boggart's true form is. Molly asks Mad-Eye Moody to check the cabinet with his magical eye for her. Moody does confirm that there is a boggart and knowing that the boggart could not see Moody and become his worst fear, this means that Moody is probably the only person in the world who knows what its true form is.
We also learn what Molly’s boggart is when she goes to get rid of it. Molly’s boggart is the corpses of her family and Harry Potter. Every time Molly attempted to banish the boggart, it changed into a different member of the family, ending on Harry. Having seen the student’s experience with a boggart and seeing fears such as spiders and teachers, this moment becomes much more emotional. We also watch Mrs. Weasley breaking down for one of the first times. This was shocking to read because she has always been so strong and caring. This moment shows that even the people we see as the strongest can still break.
I also enjoy the little moments when we learn about what is going on in other characters’ lives although they are not always joyful moments. When Harry arrives at Grimmauld Place, he is told not to bring up Percy to Molly and Arthur. It is revealed that he has been given a promotion at the ministry, and when he came home and told his family, they believed that he was given the position in order to spy on the family. This led to an argument and Percy packed up and left the family, getting a flat in London. We also learn that in his argument, he blamed his father for the fact that they did not have much money growing up. Percy’s opinions and job come into play later in the book. He actually sends Ron a letter in the middle of the night hoping Ron would be able to read it in private. However, the letter just angers Ron, because Percy told him to stop being friends with Harry because when things are done, he won’t want to be on the wrong side.
