The ride from Platform 9¾ to Hogwarts isn’t always eventful — except when Dementors are involved, of course. Likewise, noted Harry Potter enthusiast Shirin Oskooi was facing demons of her own on her journey from Survivor: Worlds Apart to Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance, whether or not she was ready to admit it at the time. During our pre-game interview, Shirin’s observations about her opponents were sharp and on point, a testament to her recent exposure to the game. When wielded properly, that recency became a weapon, used to take down someone like Vytas Baskauskas. But swords cut both ways, and Shirin felt the other edge of the blade on Night 6, as she became the second person voted out of Second Chance. Months later, Shirin acknowledges that she played Survivor again way too soon. Ahead of the season, however, she was doing her best to turn that negative into a positive. “It’s funny, seeing all of that in the pre-game press now,” she tells me on the phone, the morning after her exit episode. “I even remember doing a podcast with Rob Cesternino when I was campaigning to get back on, and he was insistent that this would be a problem for me. When you get asked back, you don’t say no. I was doing my damnedest to convince myself that I was okay and I was going to be fine and do everything in my power to actually get there, to get to a better place, and be able to play a brand new game, as if I did have time to process.” “But the fact of the matter is, I’m not a sociopath,” she continues. “The things that happened to me on my season cut deep and opened up really old wounds. At the live reunion show, I had to deal with more grossness and I didn’t get to spend any time with my family or loved ones to process that or help me move on at all. I went straight into lockdown and straight into the next season.” Shirin refers to the turbulent Worlds Apart finale, which focused on the storm of controversy surrounding remarks from Will Sims II toward Shirin, among other topics. She tells me she didn’t realize just how affected she was by the finale until Second Chance was well underway. “I think the first couple of days, I did fine,” she says. “But by day four, I was drained, particularly having to live with Abi-Maria and be her on-site 24/7 babysitter, whenever she would lash out or break down, whatever emotion she was feeling of the day — and by of the day, I mean of the minute. It changed by the minute. I was not emotionally capable in that moment of playing that role. It drained me. On day four, I had a total meltdown, and I didn’t know why. I think what it came down to is I didn’t have time to process my own season and I wasn’t emotionally ready to return.” In simpler terms, Shirin breaks it down with five words: “I dug my own grave.” And it wasn’t all about her past, either. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Killing Curse

In the weeks after leaving Cambodia, I thought about the outcome of Second Chance more times than I can possibly count now. I spent weeks wondering who was voted out next after Vytas, figuring there were only three real possibilities on Ta Keo: Terry Deitz, Kelly Wiglesworth and Woo Hwang, the three Shelter People who were on the wrong side of the first vote. Never once did I imagine that Shirin would go next. Leaving that first Tribal Council, she looked like she was in an extreme position of power — but that’s not accounting for the Jeff Varner of it all. Shirin tells me that the very next morning, the Australian Outback veteran, easily the most gripping personality of the season thus far, started going after his number one target from the pre-game: Spencer Bledsoe. “He started gunning for Spencer after we voted Vytas out,” she says, “and nobody liked living with Abi-Maria, so she was also on the chopping block. Now all the sudden I’m looking at voting out either Spencer or Abi, and I’m thinking, ‘This is wrong. Varner has just totally turned on us.'” After reaching that conclusion, Shirin felt she had to turn the tables against Varner — and in order to pull that off, she felt that she needed to work with the Shelter People she already voted against. But Kelley Wentworth, one of Shirin’s closest allies, advised against the move. “Bless her heart, she was right,” says Shirin. “She knew those people would not work with me and they would rat me out. I was like, ‘No! No, I can do this, because this is right! This is rational! He screwed them over, now he’s screwing us over. If they’re rational players, they will do this!’ And Wentworth was like, ‘No, don’t do it!'” Despite Wentworth’s warning, Shirin went ahead and approached the old schoolers with the idea — and just as Voldemort casting Avada Kedavra with the Elder Wand became his undoing, Shirin also found herself on the receiving end of a rebounded killing curse. “I reached over to the other side and I tried getting Terry and those guys to get Varner out — and ultimately, Varner still had them,” she says. “Even though he screwed them over on the first vote, he was able to mend fences and win them back over. They ratted me out to Varner, and Varner knew I was coming for him. I was caught red-handed. That’s when he decided to vote me out instead of Spencer.” In order to survive, Shirin had absolutely no choice but to vote against Spencer, and vice versa — a development she describes as “heartbreaking.” “In my mind, he, Kelley Wentworth and I were the only rational, calm players on that tribe,” says Shirin. “I’m not taking away from Varner, because he’s incredibly strategic and is clearly making the season a lot of fun. But in terms of making optimal moves and being calm and stable, Spencer and Kelley were my peeps, and Spencer in particular. I’m good friends with him. I love him to death. The fact that it came down to us having to vote for each other pretty much was the worst case scenario.” Shirin holds no ill will toward Spencer for writing her name down. She feels the same about Wentworth, too: “When I got caught, what’s she going to do? She knew I got caught. There was nothing she could do. So she went along with whatever they told her to do to save her own skin and buy her some time.” But that’s not to say there’s no bad blood between Shirin and anyone out on that beach. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Playing With Fiendfyre

In the pre-game, Shirin told me about two prospective alliances she wanted to forge: Shirin’s Army, inspired by Albus Dumbledore, and The Babe Brigade. What she ended up with was a mixture of the ideas, prominently featuring prospective brigadier Abi-Maria Gomes — someone Shirin could not gush about enough when we spoke at Ponderosa. “I think Abi sees what her flaws are from last time,” she told me, “and she wants to correct that reputation that she has, and I want to be a part of that.” Shirin’s early notions about Abi-Maria, much like One World, were out the window as soon as the game actually began. “I realized it wasn’t going to work on minute zero of landing on the beach,” she says. “Abi, in front of everyone, grabs my arm and says: ‘I don’t trust Peih-Gee. She’s evil.’ Like, what? Instantly, I was like, ‘Oh, my, god. What am I stuck with?’ She hated Peih-Gee from the get go because her gut told her to. She hated Kelly Wiglesworth because she reminded her of Denise. She hated Terry because Terry reminded her of Michael Skupin. It just did not stop.” I ask Shirin why she chose to work with Abi in the first vote, given her minute zero impressions of the Survivor: Philippines fifth-place finisher. Shirin says it’s because she did not have a choice. “Half that tribe was not willing to work with me,” she says. “Vytas, Woo, Wiglesworth, Terry — the four of them were never, ever, ever going to work with me. I’m not Joey Amazing. I’m not this tall attractive super-athletic fire-making person that everybody is going to want to instantly align with, at least in the beginning of the game. Even though I bring a lot of other things to the table, they’re not as evident or obvious. I can only work with what I got, and what I had was Kelley Wentworth, Spencer and Abi.” “I knew that Varner and Peih-Gee were potentially going to swing my way,” she continues. “Even Peih-Gee wanted to go with the old school side, and the only reason she didn’t is Terry and Vytas refused to make her a deal. Terry actually said to her: ‘I’ve got my five votes. I don’t need your vote. You can be my sixth.’ So naturally she came to my side and voted with us.” Peih-Gee joined Shirin’s Army for the Vytas vote, but she also contributed to the big dramatic moment that helped take Shirin down. In the episode, we see Peih-Gee and Shirin having a nighttime conversation behind Abi’s back — except that Abi’s back happens to be two feet away. “In that scene where she starts going at it with Peih-Gee and I walk away, it was literally one hour after I had my total emotional meltdown,” says Shirin. “The reason I was talking to Peih-Gee in the first place was because I needed some emotional comfort. Unfortunately, it turned into Peih-Gee saying some [expletive] about Abi refusing to do work around camp and then [complaining] about people working. Abi overheard it, Abi blew up, and I had just had a meltdown. I couldn’t deal with it in that moment. That’s why I walked away. It’s so pathetic that I turned around and walked away to the rest of the tribe sitting in the shelter, and I just said: ‘Can I get a hug?’ We had a big group hug while Peih-Gee and Abi were fighting, because I just couldn’t take it anymore!” Shirin sighs and pauses, almost like she’s reliving her days on the beach with Abi: “My thought with Abi is that I would need her for the first couple of votes, and then we would get rid of her, because there’s no way you can carry this all the way to the end. You cannot control this. You cannot put a leash on this. There’s just nothing you can do with this. This is insane. There’s no logic.” In Harry Potter terms, Shirin classifies Abi as Fiendfyre, an erratic and unpredictable form of fire magic that destroys virtually everything it touches. “You cannot contain it,” says Shirin. “It’s just purely random and destructive. That’s what Abi is. Fiendfyre Abi.” Malcolm Freberg famously described Abi as a Dementor. Shirin calls her Fiendfyre. These are not flattering Potter comparisons. But what about Shirin? How has her story ended, in Potter terms? ON THE FINAL PAGE: The Half-Blood Princess