This week, Mark is joined by podcaster, improv comedian and Harry Potter superfan Cat Turner, to collaborate on a list of the best five characters in JK Rowling’s Hogwarts universe.
If spoilers are a thing you want to avoid, maybe skip this one until you’re all caught up. Like Mark maybe should’ve.
Cat grew up listening to Stephen Fry read the Harry Potter books, and wants to sort her soon-to-arrive hamster into the appropriate Hogwarts house, but she insists she isn’t a nerd about it.
Mark’s seen some of the Harry Potter films and listened, a little distractedly, to the first four Potter audiobooks.
As well as knowing everything there is to know about Harry Potter, Cat is also a maths genius, which is something she credits partially with her own Professor McGonagall. Cat also presents Cat’s Cabinet of Curiosities, a podcast uncovering the weird things people believe, like that the Titanic was switched at the last minute, or that Beyoncé faked her pregnancy.
Cat’s guide to Hogwarts houses
- Gryffindors are brave, but if you self-identify as one, you’re an idiot.
- Ravenclaws are clever but a bit up themselves.
- Slytherin are cunning, but the less said about them the better.
- Hufflepuff is clearly the best house. Work hard and stick to it.
We have bones to pick with JK Rowling
- Put diversity properly into your book, and don’t try and retrofit it after the fact.
- Rowling follows TERF s on Twitter.
- The American Hogwarts equivalent, Ilvermorny, is problematic.
Honourable mentions
Here are some characters we like, but didn’t make it into our lists. If you finish the episode notes before you get to the end, relax; we know and we address it.
- Dolores Umbridge
- Ron Weasley, as well as his mum and dad
- Nymphadora Tonks
- Remus Lupin
- Sirius Black
Cat’s picks
In order of discussion:
We could all stand to be a little bit more like Hogwarts’ Keeper of the Keys and Grounds. He’s Cat’s top pick as a character with kindness, heart, and the ability to learn from his mistakes. She would have liked a little more back story into the character’s early life, as the son of a human man and a giant woman.
While his brother Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor, Regulus was sorted into Slytherin and dragged into the Death Eaters. He’s a top pick for Cat as a once conflicted character who makes the ultimate sacrifice, for the right reasons.