Harry Potter Lexicon Minute

About Harry Potter Lexicon Minute

The Harry Potter Lexicon website has been in existence for almost two decades. Over that time, J.K Rowling thrilled us with her magical creation — in novels, interviews, on her websites, on Twitter, and more. And here at the Lexicon, a small group of dedicated fans have worked very hard over all those years to catalogue all the magical details she revealed. The Lexicon website has always been seen as the gold standard for careful research and faithfulness to Rowling’s created world, all because of these amazing fans. Now we editors of the Lexicon would like share some of what we’re so passionate about in a new way. So we’ve creating this podcast as a way for you to hear from us. It’s called the Harry Potter Minute, and in it you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing a few of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. We are fans from all over the globe who love to spend our time keeping track of the interesting details and obscure references which make Rowling’s work so rich and wonderful. In each podcast, around four or five minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We might share something that’s stuck in our heads as we researched the books or maybe recall some event from the history of Harry Potter fandom. The podcasts will come out once or twice a week. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts. Special thanks go to Felicia Cano (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/author/felicia-cano/) who gave us permission to use her amazing artwork of Hermione (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/?attachment_id=23072) reading a book for the logo, which was brilliantly created by Kim B (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/author/kim/).

Publisher

The Harry Potter Lexicon

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Aug 2019

Latest episode

11 Jul 2021

Latest episodes

50 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   11 Jul 2021

   OP36: Of Magic and Duels Part Two

   In my last podcast (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2021/07/03/op36-of-magic-and-duels-part-one/), I talked about the first of two magic duels in chapter 36 of Order of the Phoenix (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/source/the-harry-potter-novels/op/op36/), the one between Harry and Bellatrix. Now it’s time to move on to the main event, the massive duel between Albus Dumbledore and Voldemort. There is no other magical battle in the entire series to equal this one. The roller-coaster flow of spells and counterspells is wild and breathtaking. This is certainly one of the most exciting, most cinematic magical battles in the entire saga. This mighty duel is the centerpiece of the entire seven-book tale. We are most of the way through the middle book of the series. It’s the watershed moment, when the forces of good and evil collide and the fate of the wizarding world is at stake. But neither side wins, not yet. So what is the actual point? The most important aspect of this duel is to show how powerful truly high-level wizards are, and how powerless Harry is in this situation. Remember, up to this point Harry has seen himself as what I call “super-hero Harry.” He has begun to count on his abilities and his “special-ness” to be able to face Voldemort one day. And of course he does! Any of us would. If we have to fight a supervillain, we had better find our inner superhero or we’re toast. And toast it is. Harry gets a first hand look at just how powerful he will need to be in order to go toe to toe — or wand to wand — with Voldemort. He sees magic way beyond that which he has experienced, way beyond what he even thought possible. His abilities, while impressive for a fifteen year old wizard, are nowhere near strong enough for a flat out battle. Of course, we’re seeing it too. We’ve been wondering how this is all going to end and assuming there will be a huge showdown at some point. We have imagined Harry and Voldemort in a duel, something like that Priori Incantatem (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/event/duel-in-the-graveyard/) faceoff in the graveyard (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/place/great-britain-united-kingdom/england/yorkshire/little-hangleton/graveyard/), and figuring that maybe, just maybe the twin wand cores would be the secret to Harry winning the day. But in this duel, there is little wand-against-wand spellcasting. The truly epic combat consists of all environmental effects and transfiguration. The most jaw-dropping spells completely bypass the kind of “spells meeting in midair” situation that allowed Harry to escape the graveyard battle. Instead we see the water from the fountain whipped into a liquid prison and streams of fire morphing into a serpent. We see Voldemort teleport from place to place and then completely dematerialize to take on spirit form and to possess Harry. Even Dumbledore has no defense against this last tactic, and Harry feels Voldemort take over, enveloping and consuming him. And then we get the first inkling of the kind of power which CAN defeat the Dark Lord. Harry’s heart is filled not with hate and aggression but with love for Sirius. And that power is what drives Voldemort away. Here’s how it’s described: He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature’s began: they were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape And when the creature spoke, it used Harry’s mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move `Kill me now, Dumbledore…’ Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again… `If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy…’ Let the pain stop, thought Harry… let him kill us… end it, Dumbledore… death is nothing compared to this… And I’ll see Sirius again…

2. 

   6 Jul 2021

   Of Umbridge and Macnair

   Umbridge (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/character/umbridge-family/dolores-umbridge/) is one of those characters the reader is supposed to hate and despise, but she isn’t a Death Eater, she’s just a nasty person (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/event/1993-dolores-umbridge-crafts-anti-werewolf/). Sirius sums this up well by saying “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters”, and Umbridge is the perfect embodiment of this maxim, showing the nuance that Rowling can give to her characters. Not everything is black and white, and characters can be antagonists without being associated with Voldemort. However, not every Harry Potter character has this depth. In the third book we are introduced to Macnair (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/character/walden-macnair/), the Ministry of Magic executioner who’s tasked with killing Buckbeak (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/character/buckbeak/). The books show him as a little bit too bloodthirsty, and obviously, Harry, and us the readers, dislike him because of what he’s there to do. Surely this is just narrator bias though, right? Nope. In the next book we learn that he’s literally a Death Eater too. And in Rowling’s original outline of the fifth book (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/?attachment_id=16219), he’s the most mentioned death eater after Lucius. If he’s not a good person, even if only from the limited viewpoint of the protagonist, then clearly he must be a Death Eater and Rowling confirms this. Some characters really are that one dimensional.

3. 

   3 Jul 2021

   OP36: Of Magic and Duels Part One

   In this podcast we’re going to take a look at the incredible magical duels in chapter 36 (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/source/the-harry-potter-novels/op/op36/) of the Order of the Phoenix. Before we get to the main duel in the chapter, however, that between Voldemort and Dumbledore, we learn a bit about the Unforgivable Curses (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/magic/unforgivable-curses/) when Harry and Bellatrix have their own duel in the Atrium before Voldemort appears. After killing Sirius, Bellatrix runs away through the Department of Mysteries (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/event/june-1996-the-battle-of-the-department-of/) and into the Atrium (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/place/great-britain-united-kingdom/england/london/ministry-of-magic-headquarters/m-o-m-level-eight/atrium/) of the Ministry of Magic headquarters (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/place/great-britain-united-kingdom/england/london/ministry-of-magic-headquarters/). Harry chases after her, consumed by righteous anger. Once he catches up to her, he fires off the Cruciatus (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/magic/cruciatus-curse/) curse in her direction, knocking her off her feet. But she isn’t affected the way he would have expected. He has cast the spell incorrectly. Here we see something very interesting. The spell clearly involves more than the words and the wandwork. In some ways it mirrors the Patronus Charm (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/magic/patronus-charm/), which requires happy thoughts. In this case, Harry’s anger, fierce though it is, doesn’t provide the needed “energy,” if you will. Here’s how the book describes it: Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before; he flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed, “Crucio!” Bellatrix screamed: the spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville had &#8211; she was already back on her feet, breathless, no longer laughing. Harry dodged behind the golden fountain again. Her counter-spell hit the head of the handsome wizard, which was blown off and landed twenty feet away, gouging long scratches into the wooden floor. “Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?” she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. “You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain &#8211; to enjoy it &#8211; righteous anger won&#8217;t hurt me for long &#8211; I&#8217;ll show you how it is done, shall I? I&#8217;ll give you a lesson -” The intention must be there, not just the emotion of hatred, but an actual desire to cause pain. Perhaps this is why the Curses are considered as evil as they are: they are specifically caused by evil emotions. Rowling actually has another larger reason for this exchange, a reason which comes into play at the very end of the series in the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/event/the-death-of-voldemort/) in chapter 36 of Deathly Hallows (https://www.hp-lexicon.org/source/the-harry-potter-novels/dh/dh36/). You see, the key to that confrontation and indeed, the key to the overarching plot of the entire series, is Harry’s intentions in that moment. He is facing Voldemort, the cause of all the pain and suffering and sadness in not only his life but that of so many others in the Wizarding World. He has every reason to be filled with hate and anger. He has every reason to want to make Voldemort suffer and die with dramatic vengeance. In other words, he has every reason to want and be able to use the Unforgivable Curses on Voldemort. And here, in chapter 36 of Order of the Phoenix, we see that he has learned how to use one of them, the Cruciatus Curse, from a true mistress of inflicting pain, Bellatrix Lestrange. He has learned his lesson well. He has clearly mastered the Imperius Curse, as we see when he uses it to control <a href="https:...

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