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Hello internet. Before beginning today's episode of Potterless, I wanted to give a huge shout

out to Katie Rican, our newest supporter on Patreon, which is a website that's basically like a running Kickstarter.

Katie, among others, has decided to pledge money to Potterless and in return gets rewarded with bonus content.

So there's bonus episodes, behind the scene stuff, directors, commentary, et cetera.

If that's something that interests you, feel free to go to patreon.com slash potterless.

If not, don't worry, that makes

you a normal human being for not wanting to give money to this silly little podcast. But anyway,

let's not waste any more time. Let's get into episode seven, starring return guest Amanda

McLaughlin to discuss the first section of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ascaband.

All right. Welcome back, everyone. The third book in the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Asgaband. Welcome back to Potterless, everyone. The tale of a 24-year-old man reading a series of children's novels for the first time. My name is Mike Schubert, and I am joined back again for her second crack at the series. Amanda McLaughlin, Amanda, how are you? I am so pumped. This is my favorite book in Harry Potter. One of my favorite sections in one of my favorite books ever. And I'm pleased to be back. Double whammy. I'm glad to have you back. We haven't released any episodes at the time of recording this, but I'm sure that people are... I'm going to be a proud favorite. Let's be realistic here. I'm crying and begging for your return, like, oh, why isn't it on every episode?

I'm a professional podcaster. In that, I make a very small amount of money from podcasting, so, you know.

Still a professional? You know.

So let's not waste any time. Let's get right into it. So chapter one of this book is called owl post. And chapter one is really bad. It was, I thought that by the third book, J.K. Rowling would stop the whole. Let's refresh everything. Oh, no. There's endless sign posting. Yeah. I was like, all right, the first two books, it makes sense. Third book, like, she's not going to tell us everything that happened in the first two books, is she? And that's exactly what happens. To be fair, this is really when the popularity of the series picked up. Like, my first midnight release party for a Harry Potter book was for Prisoner of Ascaband. You know, Chamber of Secrets release in the U.S. wasn't like a huge media event, but Ascaband was. So I get that there may have been some new readers. But yeah, I mean, you are, you're getting the trends now where every book opens with Harry, you know, home and summer. It's Harry's birthday and he's sad. Yeah, so it's Harry's 13th birthday. He's very

sad, classic Harry Potter birthday of the Dersley Housewell. And lots of unluckiness running through

this book, 13th, 13th year. Oh, that makes sense. Omen's. That makes a lot of sense. So the

biggest thing that happens in the beginning of chapter one is Ron calls the Dursley

...