Half-Blood Prince: The Long Reaction

[pegkerr]

I liked it.

I liked very much the topicality of it. This is a book about terrorism, and the fog of fear surrounding a war. I wonder how very different this series would have been if it hadn't been for all the events in the news over the past five years: 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, suicide bombings in Israel, the war on terror. And no, I don't think that everything revolves around American preoccupations, but Britain has been directly affected by many of these news stories, too. As the recent bombings in London make clear.

I am pleased with the way Harry continues to develop emotionally. Last year he was chip on the shoulder, CAPS LOCK HARRY. He has calmed down a lot, and he is taking time to think through consequences of at least half of his decisions (but not all of them).

Chief weakness: I knew right away that the potions book was Snape's. This seemed perfectly obvious to me; it was Snape's old class room; why else would it be stored there? Harry seemed dense about it, particularly given Hermione's warnings and Snape's reaction to the Sectumsempra curse. He was dense, particularly given Ginny's experience with the diary second year. And hell, wouldn't he have recognized the handwriting, especially from Snape writing vindictive comments on his essays? (And Rowling recognized this weakness herself; she says, "Slughorn would have recognized his writing at once" p. 638. Well, so should Harry.) And hasn't he learned to listen to Hermione by now? Ah well, this is one of those plot weaknesses that she just had to hope that the reader will swallow. Dense cluelessness can be a characteristic of 16 year old boys, even ones as experienced as Harry.

As some have said, this is the hook up book. I wasn't whole heartedly affiliated with any of the shipping loyalties so I'm not crushed to have any of my pet theories disproven, and I'm more or less pleased with how she handled things. Sorry, all of those of you to whom H/Hr or S/R is the OTP and whose hearts were crushed. I can certainly buy R/T: as a metamorphmagus, this is a woman who understands bodily transformation; that you are more than your body's moment-to-moment physical details. Not to mention all the times they've had on those Order of the Phoenix stakeouts together. So, could be a really good match for Remus. Yeah, yeah yeah, I understand the attraction of One Big Happy Weasley Family. I liked the interactions between Hermione and Ron; sixteen year olds are that mixed up, vindictive and venal. Last year was Harry's caps lock book; this year was Ron's year to be a prat. But it was fun to see all the hormones exploding; Rowling writes about the inherent embarrassment of sixteen year olds watching other sixeen year olds exploring each other's tonsils with both understanding and humor. I thought she handled adroitly making Ron act like a jerk while still making us see why Harry wanted to keep him as a friend. I did want to see more reasons for why Harry fell for Ginny, although Rowling probably didn't want to spend much more time on it and make the book still longer. I like Ginny's reaction when he tells her that they can't be together; it makes her worthy of him.

I like that she the way that she didn't stretch our credulity by giving Harry an O at Potions, but she still found a way to keep Harry on the Auror track.

Oh and, yes, R.A.B. is definitely Regulus A. Black. I couldn't identify who it was until I read my friends page (I blame sleep deprivation) but yes, it makes sense, and it explains why Regulus was mentioned at all in first place in the previous book. So nice to know that Regulus was redeemed in the end, too. So both Black sons died striking against Voldemort. Excellent.

I was so glad that we finally got to know Dumbledore in this book. I liked him immensely, and I appreciated that he learned from his mistakes in the last book by moving their relationship to one which recognizes Harry's growing toward adulthood. It was moving that he was touched to the point of tears when Harry reported his conversation with Rufus Scrimgeour, when Harry said he was Dumbledore's man, through and through.

The potion scene at the lake was heartbreaking. I think if I hadn't had the ending spoiled for me, I would have found it even more affecting.

Who disagrees that Dumbledore had prearranged his death with Snape? Not the entry of the Deatheaters into the castle, perhaps. But that Snape would be the one to kill him, rather than Draco. Evidence: this suits Dumbledore's purposes because 1) it keeps Draco innocent of the crime of murder; [edited to add, aside: and the whole conversation with Draco was pretty interesting because it harkens back to Book 2, when Dumbledore tells Harry "it is our choices that makes us, Harry, more than our abilities." Dumbledore recognizes that right now Draco is making his choice, and he is pleading with him to make the right one. Draco's tragedy is that he waits a split second too long to decide and we must wait to see whether that in and of itself was a decision that will doom him] 2) Dumbledore reasons his life is pretty much over, if he has given Harry all the guidance he can to defeat V.; it gives the reason for his urgency on having Harry take private lessons with him. He wants to prepare Harry to go on after he is gone; 3) it sets up a helluva twist in the last book (Snape was on our side all along--a parallel with the first book); 4) the reason that Dumbledore knew what Draco was assigned to do was because Snape had told him; 5) the fight between Dumbledore and Snape that Hagrid reported on p. 405: Snape saying he doesn't want to do it, and Dumbledore telling him to stick to it; he has already agreed; 6) it is probably the one thing he can do to make V. be totally convinced of Snape's loyalty, which puts Snape in position to help Harry at the end of book 7; 7) because of Voldemort's curse on the DADA job, Dumbledore already knows whoever he gives the job will not be there next year. He has not trusted Snape up until now to give him the job, but now he does. Why? Because he knows what he will do will please Voldemort, and because he knows, once killing Dumbledore, Snape will not be able to stay at Hogwarts anyway. So he has no barrier now to giving him the job; 8) Dumbledore had Order members patrolling the castle when he left it so he was expecting trouble 9) Dumbledore paralyzes Harry so he cannot interfere; 10) moony caught this one: When Harry forces Dumbledore drink the potion (at Dumbledore's bidding) Rowling says he does it "hating it, repulsed." Rowling uses almost exactly the same words when Snape kills Dumbledore: "with hatred and repulsion." The implication, of course, is that both their cases are parallel: Dumbledore was making each of them do something they didn't want to do; 11) Dumbledore says "Severus, please." He is not pleading for his life. We have been told repeatedly that Dumbledore does not fear death, that he recognizes that there are things worse than death. Therefore, he is not pleading to be spared, he is urging Severus to go ahead. (And I found it very moving that this was the first time that night that he was actually pleading. Pleading to be killed!) Note that this is where Dumbledore is making his choice that is right, rather than the one that is easy; 12) kiwiria passed this observation on from a discussion thread on HPFGU: Hermione let Snape pass while she was under the influence of Felix Felicius (see fully discussion at the end of the entry here) 13) Snape reacts so badly to Harry calling him a coward. This genuinely gets under his skin. What is more, we know that Snape is a supurb occlamens, which means he is very very good at controlling his emotions, so if his emotions crack, there has to be a really good reason. Why does he get so angry? If he had truly changed sides and thrown his lot in with the Deatheaters, he wouldn't have cared at anything Harry said at this point. He would have dismissed this accusation as pointless with the same amused contempt that he deflects Harry's hexes. But he hasn't changed sides; instead, in order to be true to the mission and go even deeper undercover, he had to kill his longtime mentor, someone he has always respected, and the only person who ever truly treated him with respect and kindness, perhaps the only person who ever held him as a person of value. It was probably the hardest thing he has ever done. That knowledge Snape can barely bear, and since he had to overcome his hatred and repulsion for this dreadful task in order to serve the greater good, he CANNOT bear to hear Harry taunt him as a coward; 14) Snape actually seems to be coaching Harry in their last confrontation, teaching him specifically what he will need to know to defeat Voldemort, telling him that he must control his emotions or he has no hope of winning; 15) note another point that suits Dumbledore's purposes: Snape is now absolutely useless to Voldemort as a spy on the Order, because he has putatively broken with them. Voldemort may trust Snape more, but he won't be getting inside information about Dumbledore or the Order anymore from him.

I think back to the chess game in the first game (see the Knight2King website; Of course, Rowling has spiked the initial K2K theory, that Dumbledore is a grown Ron Weasley who went back in time). But with this book, Dumbledore's death perhaps corresponds to the death of the second knight (the parallel isn't perfect, since in the chess game, the chess piece who did the knight in was the Queen, which according to the K2K analysis was Bellatrix LeStrange. Anyway, the two strongest pieces of evidence to me are the fight between Dumbledore and Snape that Hagrid reported, and the fact that Dumbledore gave Snape the DADA job. The job alone means that this was the plan by the time that Dumbledore made his staffing decisions for the year. That means that Dumbledore knew from around the time Snape made the unbreakable vow: I expect he was the one that suggested Snape make it an unbreakable vow.

It is a chess maneuver worthy of that crafty old master. And it will increase our respect for him: he wasn't a gullible fool who was blind-sided by Snape, but a chess master who willingly sacrificed himself to set up a win by Harry at the end of the game.

It will create a lovely conflict for Harry with book seven, when he realizes that the man he hated for killing Dumbledore was actually doing what Dumbledore wanted him to do, what Dumbledore urged him to do, because he [Snape] was reluctant all along. Harry prides himself for being "Dumbledore's man." How galling it is going to be for him to discover that Snape, the man he has despised since his first year, has even more reason to be considered "Dumbledore's man." And it adds to the complexity of Snape. I wonder if there is another reason (other than the one that Harry think is the reason) that Dumbledore trusts Snape. [Edited to add: In this entry here, I wonder whether Snape, on the night Lily was killed, offered in remorse an unbreakable vow to Dumbledore to obey him in all things. Further discussion continues on that entry.] I will also be interested to see what the events of the next book will mean for Draco's development (does he still have a chance for redemption? Dumbledore thought so), and Harry's reaction to him.

How many readers will see it that way?

Who else was annoyed by the fact that Harry should have thought of curing Bill's wounds with Fawkes' tears, particularly after the fact that he was himself cured by them, second year?

I will have more reactions later, perhaps, and will write them as they occur to me.

But I am still beyond pissed off at the bastards who went out of their way to deliberately spoil it for me and for hundreds of others. I think it felt like a very different book than it could have been because I knew that Snape killed Dumbledore before I started reading it. I think that I would have loved it even more if I had had the chance to read it the way it was meant to be read. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't take such cruel maliciousness personally. Shut up. It was cruel and malicious. They were assholes who shouldn't have done it, and I refuse to listen to people (both the assholes and the condescendingly well-meaning) who try to explain that the bigger problem is that I shouldn't care about things.

Well, screw that. I don't believe that. And it still sucks. Next time I will cease reading LJ entirely the day the next book gets shipped. I'll be damned if I will let this happen to me again.

Edited to add: I am not going to mention my theory about Snape to the girls at all. I wonder if it will occur to them on their own. They are on chapter 10 of the audio CD, and Rob is reading the book now.

Edited to add again: I totalled up the people who had the forums on their watch list that the bastard posted p. 606 on, thirty-six hours before the book was released.

That troll spoiled the book for, conservative estimate, at least 5,000 people, from just the five forums of that I know he posted it on. See below. And it spread from there. Others disseminated the information even further, all for malicious pleasure. Unspeakable.

Comments

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Where do you think the sixth Horcrux actually is?

No idea, but that's okay. I'm glad not to have everything possible figured out before starting the seventh book.