Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince-J.K.Rowling

How I found this book: I squealed like a school girl when the name was released, and called my Mom in a tizzy. I was so excited about this book, and then…it got delivered to my old house. When I went to my old house, it wasn’t there. I finally managed to buy it at Target the day it was released. So I bought TWO copies of the book. *grumble* Then worse, because I waited all day for a book that never came, I didn’t get a chance to read it all before having to go to a friend’s party that night. So of course….I read the end first, just so I wouldn’t have to anticipate! (Anyone who knows me knows I read the ends of ALL books first, even textbooks.)

Setting: In the ’96-’97 school year, almost completely at Hogwarts.

Main Characters:

Harry Potter: It’s been rough the last few years for our now sixteen-year-old hero. He’s lost a classmate and his godfather to Lord Voldemort and his allies. And he now lives with the full weight of the prophesy made about him years ago and the knowledge that he must be the one to face Lord Voldemort. But there is some respite for the weary, as Harry gets to do some ‘normal’ things for a change, including captaining his house Quidditch team, studying for his upcoming NEWT exams, and falling for someone new. Sadly, this someone new is Ron’s little sister, Ginny. Figuring out how to get Ginny to notice him and not having Ron kill him is the least of Harry’s worries this year. His favorite and best class, Defense Against the Dark Arts, is being taught by Professor Snape this year, making it almost as unbearable as the year before. Thankfully he has a potions book, annotated by the Half-Blood Prince, whoever that is, to help him with the new Potions Master, who had a special affection for Harry’s mother. And Dumbledore has Harry studying with him in particular this year, privately and alone. Dumbledore is preparing Harry to face his greatest challenge, but will Harry find all the answers he needs in the mystery of Tom Riddle?

Ron Weasley: One of Harry’s best friends, Ron is flying high after leading the Quidditch team to a House Cup the year before, and looking forward to making the team again under the leadership of his best mate. Not even Quidditch is simple for Ron, though, who not only has to worry about his performance issues, but about the changes in his relationship with Hermione, and his sister Ginny’s popularity with the boys. When he loses his temper and ends up dating Lavender Brown, he not only hurts Hermione, but makes a mess he isn’t so sure he can get out of readily. But Ron has his best friend Harry to help him out when he’s being stupid, and Hermione isn’t as lost as he thinks. It’s their deep loyalty to one another that will hold them in stead for the things to come.

Hermione Granger: The other of Harry’s best friends, studies aside, Hermione is having a tough year. Just when she thought things between her and Ron were changing, he grew angry and began dating Lavender Brown, her roommate, and she has to face the two of them all over each other all the time. And then Harry is outperforming her for a change in Potions with a textbook she is sure is a form of cheating. Nothing seems to be going her way this year. But she will find that her boys will need her more than ever in the days and weeks to come, and when the unthinkable happens and puts them all in danger, it will tie her to Harry and Ron even more closely than they were before.

Ginny Weasley: Ron’s younger sister, she is starting to come into her own, and becoming more and more popular, particularly with the boys. And amongst her admirers is suddenly Harry. Ginny comes up big on the Quidditch field, and suddenly she comes up big in the romance department as well, as the one boy she’s always cared for suddenly feels the same way about her.

Professor Dumbledore: Injured in some unexplained accident before the start of term, Dumbledore seems to be trying his best to prepare everyone for the war to come. Even more so, he is trying the help Harry finally understand just who and what he is up against in the form of Lord Voldemort, where he came from, and how to defeat him. But the dangers are looming on the horizon, and will he be able to impart all that Harry needs to know before Harry must face Voldemort?

Severus Snape: Now finally in the position he always wanted, Snape seems delighted that he can make Harry and the others lives miserable at a subject he knows so well. But what games is Snape playing at anyway? Harry feels he should trust him to some degree as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and Dumbledore refuses to Harry’s insistence that there might be something more going on with the new Defense teacher. What is it that Dumbledore is so sure of that he won’t share with anyone else?

Horace Slughorn: A former Potions teacher at Hogwarts, he was infamous for having favorites and ensuring his students found good positions after school to ensure he had a web of highly placed connections with which to make his life comfortable. One of his favorites was Harry’s mother, Lily. After the last war, he retired, and since the start of this one, he has gone into hiding, knowing that he could be in danger because of who and what he knows through his network. Dumbledore convinces him to return to Hogwarts as a teacher, to side firmly with Dumbledore, and be safe. He is easily talked into it, especially with the thought of having “The Boy Who Lived” as one of his pupils.

Remus Lupin: Harry’s former Defense teacher, and best friend of James and Sirius, he has gone deep undercover tracking Fenrir Greyback, an evil werewolf who preys on children, such as Remus when he was bitten as a boy.

Nymphadora Tonks: While doing double duty for the Ministry and the Order, Tonks seems to be depressed and listless, even her hair is its normal color rather than one of her favorite crazy ones. Harry assumes that it must be due in part to Sirius’s death, and that perhaps she was in love with her cousin.

Fred and George Weasley: Ron’s older twin brothers, they have left Hogwarts and have started a joke shop in Diagon Alley called Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.

Bill Weasley: Ron’s oldest brother, he works for Gringott’s Bank as a curse breaker. He is engaged to Fleur Delacour, one of Harry’s rival champions at the Tri-Wizards Tournament.

Fleur Delacour: One of Harry’s former Tri-Wizard Championship rivals, she has fallen in love with Bill Weasley and the two are engaged, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Weasley and Ginny, who dislike her.

Draco Malfoy: The archenemy of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, he has become a Deatheater over the summer, in retaliation for his father’s failure at the Ministry of Magic. He is charged with a horrible task, one that, if he doesn’t complete it well it could cost him his life.

Bellatrix Lestrange: One of Voldemort’s trusted leaders; she is the sister to Narcissa Malfoy and aunt to Draco. She distrusts Severus Snape, and is proud of her nephew for the mantel he’s taken on as a Deatheater.

Lucius Malfoy: The father of Draco, he was one of Voldemort’s most trusted leaders, but when he failed at the Ministry he not only was arrested and sent to Azkaban, but he was in disgrace with the Dark Lord as well. His disgrace has dire consequences for his son, ones that could lead to Draco’s eventual demise.

Rufus Scrimgeor: The new Minister of Magic and former head of the Auror division, he has set out to take a head on approach towards Voldemort, as well as repair the damage done to the Ministry’s reputation caused by the ineptness of Cornelius Fudge. He would like Harry to speak up about being the so called “Chosen One” as well as show his support for the Ministry, something Harry refuses to do. He seems more fond of getting Dumbledore and Harry to play politics with him than actually working with them to help stop Voldemort, though he is more accepting of the work Dumbledore is doing than Fudge ever was.

Plot: After the loss of his godfather, sixteen-year-old Harry has been despondent. Not even the public’s terrified realization that “You-Know-Who” has returned is a balm to him, rather it is a reminder of the horrible realization he has discovered. He is the only one who can face Voldemort, and it will either end up with him being a murder, or him being dead. But while the war between Voldemort and the Ministry begins, and the Death Eaters start their reign of terror, Harry begins his sixth year at Hogwarts. This year brings many other, more positive changes for Harry, he is named the Captain of the Quidditch team, and he has become a natural leader amongst his other students. Many look up to him, especially after his leadership of Dumbledore’s Army the year before. But there are not-so-good changes as well, as Snape has finally been granted the post of Defense teacher, and Harry’s favorite class is now an exercise in holding his temper. At least in Potions he is excelling, thanks to the help of a mysterious Potions textbook with notes from a mysterious former student who calls themselves the “Half-blood Prince”. The Prince can’t help Harry in affairs of the heart, when he finds himself falling rather hard for someone rather unexpected…Ron’s little sister, Ginny. It certainly doesn’t help when Ron begins dating Lavender Brown, hurting Hermione and causing a rift between them that Harry has to navigate carefully. But none of these issues compares to the problem of Lord Voldemort and how to defeat him. Only Professor Dumbeldore seems to know the answers to that, and he begins teaching Harry the secrets of just who Tom Marvolo Riddle was, and what he did, and how this orphaned boy became the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. In this, he hopes that Harry will learn just how it was that Voldemort lived on that night so long ago when Harry’s parents died, and how is it that Harry can possibly defeat him.

Themes:

Even the Dark Lord was a boy once: Unlike Darth Vader, who started out as the sweet, cute, and helpful Anakin Skywalker, Lord Voldemort started out as a mean, creepy, sociopathic, psycho kid named Tom Riddle. To be honest…yeah, he was messed up, we are talking Stephen King level of messed up. When you meet his family, the Gaunts, and see how inbred and backwards they are, it’s little wonder that Tom Riddle is a bit…different. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree there. And his father’s family, the rich, indolent Muggles the Riddles, with their upper crust disdain for everyone and everything, he has it no better on his dad’s side. One can criticize the Dark Lord for not making better choices, for deciding to do the evil things he did, as everyone has a choice to do and be something different. But with that genetic pool to choose from, its small wonder Lord Voldmort became what he became. Still, I find it hard to feel sorry for him, Harry was an orphan as well, and from all accounts had a much harder childhood than Tom did in his orphanage, and didn’t make the choices Tom Riddle did, nor did he blame his parents for the situation and try to subvert it somehow. In the end, Lord Voldemort comes out even more evil in my mind because he willfully made the decisions he did, and even if he did have a banana or two missing from the bunch, he could have chosen differently. He just didn’t. Who knows, maybe the nuttiness in his head meant he couldn’t even begin seeing the issue differently, it’s hard saying. What a wack job.

Sometimes a kid has to be a kid: One thing Harry has never been is ‘normal’. This is the one book in the series where we see Harry finally, for once, being comfortable in his own skin. He is growing up before our very eyes, and enjoying being a sixteen-year-old kid who has all the same problems other kids his age do. He has to deal with the adulation of girls younger than him who wish to try and make him notice them, he is stuck in the middle of a potential lover’s spat between his two best friends, (and he’s not so sure he’d be keen on the idea of the two of them hooking up), and he’s FINALLY noticed that Ginny is a cute, attractive girl. The Ginny angle is one fan’s have suspected for some time, since book one really, and many were happy to see it, (except if you happened to be one of the strange, Harry/Hermione fans who got so mad about it, that was disturbing.) Harry for once gets to deal with all the same things other kids deal with. It’s a pity that it doesn’t last.

Harry turning into an adult: Harry has been sort of at the mercy of his elders most of his life. Either he was told he was too young to understand, or he was too young to fight, but with little to no explanation about why things are happening, or what he should do about it, if anything. Much of this has of course led to bad, bad results, with even Albus Dumbledore finally coming to the realization that Harry is growing up, and what’s more, he isn’t a child anymore. While Molly Weasley hasn’t come to this conclusion, (hopefully she does by the next book), Dumbledore at least begins to treat Harry less with kid gloves, and begins to be more honest with him as to what is going on.

Harry as a leader: On top of growing up, Harry is also becoming more and more of a leader. He not only is the Captain of the Quidditch team, but he is seen by other students as someone who understands what is going on in a world that is rapidly falling apart, especially by former members of the DA. Younger students look up to Harry, part of it is natural as they all grew up with stories of Harry Potter as children, but part of it is in seeing who he is, hearing the stories of his exploits at Hogwarts, and the growing rumbles in the wizarding community about Harry being the “Chosen One.” A sign of maturity on Harry’s part, in another time, all this attention to him and dependence on him would have made him angry or frustrated. Now he simply accepts it as something that just is, and moves on.

The bonds of friendship: This book shows ever growing shifts in the bonds of friendship Harry has built for himself with those closest to him. Hermione, who he was always close to, but never as close to as Ron, begins to fill in more and more that role of older sister she’s always inhabited for Harry, giving him advice, being the sympathetic ear, and of course coming to him when her own troubles get too much for her. Just because he is Ron’s best mate doesn’t mean he doesn’t have room for Hermione in his heart when the two are feuding. With Ron, he has the ability to tell Ron the truth, even when it hurts, knowing that Ron will not hate him for it. And he doesn’t laugh at Ron about Lavender, though you get the sense he hardly approves, but instead is willing to let his friend make his mistakes and is there for him when he needs picking up. It is Harry who saves Ron’s life, binding the already close pair even further, (much like we see the relationship of James and Sirius), and Ron and Hermione are able to get over their differences, and take those first, ever so tentative steps to the changes in their own relationship. Dumbledore cautions Harry that the only two he should really ever trust are Ron and Hermione, and it is those two he entrusts his secrets, knowing that neither will break that confidence. And when he must do what he must at the end of the novel, it is Ron and Hermione who unquestioningly stand by his side, even at great personal cost to them. Their bonds of friendship go so deep now, that Harry doesn’t even try to talk them out of it. This friendship will be a key aspect to the next book of the series.

Draco Malfoy is up to something: No one else believes Harry in this, and Harry knows Draco is up to something, and that its potentially dangerous. While Harry doesn’t realize the true ramifications till too late, it does change how he perceives Malfoy, and Harry begins to understand that perhaps Draco is forced into the situation and is as much a victim in his own way as any of the countless people who have actually lost their lives.

What is up with Snape anyway: This is a questions that readers keep repeatedly asking since book one, when I think this theme first appeared in my review. Snape is a very complex character, and becomes even more so in the next book as well. What is the real motivation he has for putting up with Harry, who he clearly hates, and why is it that he hates Harry’s father so much? What was his role in the prophecy surrounding Harry, and was it really Snape who set up Harry’s family for the ultimate betrayal by Peter Pettigrew? Even worse, was Snape ever REALLY a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and why was it that Dumbledore trusted him so much anyway?

Every book sucks somewhere: Well besides the most obvious sucking point, (and if you haven’t read it, I’m not admitting to it in this review,) the book had few sucking points for me. I have to say that this is one of my more favorite books in the series, though I think 4 and 7 certainly take those top spots. Perhaps it sucks because we know this is the last of the good times at Hogwarts for Harry.

What did I like: Watching Harry grow up as a person. He starts to come into all the potential we saw for the little, stunted kid who lives his life in a broom closet, and you start to feel proud of Harry as a person.

How would I rate this wormy book: This is a big, MONSTER WORM, it sets you up so well for the ending of the series, and slowly leads you up to the top of the big, old hill for the ride of the rollercoaster finish. It is great.