HARRY POTTER AND THE SACRED TEXT 4.29- THE DREAM: Chance Vanessa: HI, everyone, this is Vanessa. Julia: And this is Julia Argy, Vanessa: And we are coming to you from London, England, where we are leaving for our first ever Not Sorry Productions pilgrimage tomorrow morning, where we will be reading and walking with Virginia Wolfe’s “To the Lighthouse” and treating it as a sacred text. Julia: We are also launching our second pilgrimage to Concord, Massachusetts for October 11014, where we will be treating writing as a sacred practice. And we’re going to be reading Vanessa: “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. And we really hope that some of you join us. We’re going to be asking ourselves the question, “What role do we want writing to play in our lives?: and talking about the book “Little Women” and seeing what answers it can give us. Julia: You can find out more about that pilgramage Vanessa: at readingandwalkingwith.com or at harrypottersacredtext.com and click on the big orange button Julia: And we hope that you enjoy this episode of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Vanessa: Say ‘bye. Julia: Goodbye. Vanessa: No, say it like, “Byyyyye!” Julia: Oh, byyyye! Vanessa: Chapter 29, The Dream. “It comes down to this, “said Hermione, rubbing her forehead. “either Mr. Crouch attacked Victor, or somebody else attacked both of them while Victor wasn’t looking.” “It must have been crouch,” said Ron at once. (Quote continues; fades into intro music.) Vanessa: I’m Vanessa Zoltan. Casper: And I’m Casper Ter Kile. Vanessa: And this is Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Vanessa: This week, we have the honor of being joined by Melissa Anelli. She’s the host of Pottercast. She’s the inventor of Leaky Con, which Ariana and I are so excited to be going to this summer. She’s the author of “Harry: A History”. And probably most importantly, she was the correct answer to a Jeopardy question. Casper: Laughs. Vanessa: Melissa, you would say that’s the thing you’re taking to your grave, right? Melissa: I’m still holding out for the answer for the jeopardy question. I’ve been mentioned on Jeopardy, which is almost as good. Casper: Basically the same. Melissa: Basically the same. But yeah. Let me tell you literally nothing I have done in my life has made me seem famous to my family until I was mentioned on Jeopardy. Then, that’s it. There is no higher goal as far as they are concerned. Now I’m the coolest I will ever be. Vanessa: Stop trying. (Vanessa and Casper laugh) Vanessa: Melissa, thank you very much for joining us today. And we’re so excited to talk to you and your thoughts about Harry Potter, but first we’d love it if you could tell us a story on the theme of chance. Melissa: Sure. Mostly when I think of chance, I’m thinking of taking a chance. Of not so much chance occurring to me, but me or my staff or the group of people that I’ve locked into, locked into working with on the conventions and on everything that we do taking chances. So one of the biggest chances that I took that paid off in a big way was when the fifth Harry Potter book had just come out. It was 2003, and Liza M’Zimba who was the CBC announcer, he did most of the reporting of the CBC around Harry Potter. He was to the CBC around Harry Potter-- He was to the legit BBC-world what the Leaky Cauldron was to the fan world. And we were intouch a lot because I would confirm a story, or he would a story, or we would confer on whether we thought the latest crazy rumor was true or not. And they were doing a big book release at Royal Albert Hall to celebrate Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix coming out. And he said to me, “You should come”. And I was in my first job out of college. It was a terrible job. It was a hell job. It was the job that taught me how to not be boss. And he said to me, “You should come. You’ll meet J.K. Rowling.” And I started, you know, literally just laughing at him, “That’s … sure.” You know, nobody went out on assignment to cover Harry Potter story at that time. I paid for it out of my very, very meager salary. And then I was able to ask Scholastic, “Can I come and be press?” and they said, “Yeah, yeah sure. Just let us know when you’re there.” However, when I got there, they instead of putting me in the press penwhich is like a teeming hoard, they brought me over to the place where they had to put all the contest winners. So there I am standing with ten to twenty American kids with their giant blue Order of the Phoenix books. They were all waiting to meet J.K. Rowling and I’m thinking to myself. “OK, OK well maybe if I’m going to meet J.K. Rowling, I should just start getting ready for that.” Thinking that she would just sign my book and that would be that. But when she came up and it was very clear that she was going down the line meeting people. She came up to me and I said to myself, “Well, if I’m going to meet J.K. Rowling and embarrass myself in front of J.K. Rowling, let’s do this all the way.” And I put my hand over my book. And I looked up at her and I said, “Ms. Rowling, my name is Melissa, and I work on a site called The Leaky Caul—” and she said, “Wait, The Leaky Cauldron? I love The Leaky Cauldron!” And she lurched herself over the barrier to give me this huge hug as I was standing there very, very smugly waiting with a camera. It was a very cute moment. But the thing that that taught me about chance in that moment. Not that it was a cool moment, and I got to meet J.K. Rowling, and she knew what the site was, that’s all great. But that kind of validation for all the chances we were taking: doing the fan journalism we were doing, taking steps to be a community for fans which didn’t so much exist then the way it does now. All those things we knew were being supported now by the author. So when I took that chance to go to England, completely not believing it would end that way, it ended up fueling a lot of what Leaky, and Leaky Con, and Leaky Cauldron have done over the years. Casper: I love what you’re saying, because I see what you did in this exact moment of meeting Jo Rowling, to be what you’ve allowed and encouraged fans of the Harry Potter universe to do in being in conversation with one another. There’s an unabashed joy and enthusiasm and a willing to look a little silly now and then. And I think that’s what I love about fandom. There’s no cynicism, there’s no holding back about the fullness with which we want to engage in these conversations. There’s a willingness to dive in all the way. And I think that ws what your story has shown us, and that’s what your work has given us. So I want to thank you for that. Melissa: That makes me feel so incredible. In the middle of all this: In the middle of I’m just out of college and I just love this thing so much and I can’t stop. And now that it’s been nearly 20 years … it’s been 17 years or so since I started on this fandom. I’ve been reflecting on this a bit and what this has all been. And I actually just gave a TED talk on the value of not playing it cool, aAnd the importance of letting those little parts of yourself flare up where you can’t stop yourself from being a little silly, of being a little geeky. It’s not always appropriate, but if you never let those moments happen, if you never see what they’re saying about you, I think you can lose a lot of important and exciting things that you can find. Like I found myself in Harry Potter. I found what I wanted to do with my life. It’s really … Vanessa: What I love about the Harry Potter fandom is that it is like this encouraging place of so much nodding. There’s just an earnestness and supportiveness. I mean like I think that we are very much the beneficiaries of in that like we have the most generous listeners in the world. I mean we’ll say something, like, not great, and they’ll be like, “I’m sure you had great intentions but—” And like teaching us with such a warm heart. There’s just such a generosity of spirit. Melissa: Isn’t it great? I’ve learned so unbelievably much through, I mean, everything over these years but especially Leaky Con. Leaky Con started in 2009 and has grown exponentially. And this audience is now self-feeding, right? I mean, whatever I was doing at that time was feeding off of the energy that the Harry Potter fandom brought, which was an unabashed need to be good, be good in the world, be nice to other people, and plead for tolerance and civility and equality.