Harry Potter and the Competent Editor
I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night. Would have been sooner, but I didn't get through rereading Order of the Phoenix until Sunday night.
Then I promptly jumped online and proceeded to read three days' worth of other people's comments, spoilers, analyses, and general nattering. :-)
So, rather than go back and comment everywhere that I read interesting things, I'm just going to write up a few of my thoughts and reactions here.
I. Dumbledore. Aaaaaugh!
A. Yes, yes, there was going to be a significant death and "everyone knew" AD was likely to get it, to allow Harry's hero quest to come to its full mythic fruition. (And, as someone pointed out, JKR wouldn't have wanted to slam us with that in Book 7. This way we get to stew about it for two years, and then she gets to come up with some clever way of ameliorating the loss before the end.)
B. Gandalf, anyone? Hey, he came back... So, yeah, the temptation to say "Oh, this was faked!" is great, but -- not so convincing. I think what clinched the reality of the death for me, even before the Tomb, was when McGonagall takes Harry to the headmaster's office and AD's portrait is already installed there, slumbering peacefully. That got me almost as much as anything.
C. Which isn't to say that there wasn't more to AD's death than met our/Harry's eyes. The showdown with Snape: ... Well, I'll get into that in a minute.
D. Which also isn't to say that AD will be any less of a presence in Book 7. It needn't even be as a ghost ("Master Kenobi!"); the portrait right away is a clear indicator that AD's consciousness will remain on hand to advise, and help in the limited way that portraits apparently can. (It's also been asked before whether the ability to move between one's own portraits might extend to the Chocolate Frog cards... Harry and Ron could have Dumbledore in their pockets at all times! No wonder Dumbledore "doesn't care what they do as long as they don't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards"!)
(added) E. Reading this (which is, so to speak, dead-on) just reminded me: I picked up so much Aslan in the entire sacrifice-of-Dumbledore scene. His words to Snape, but more especially to Draco.
II. The Horcrux (and R.A.B.).
A. Wow. I've been thinking for years that the Founders were going to come into greater mythic play before the end, and this is certainly pointing in that direction. I so very much wonder what Harry will find/learn when he finally goes to Godric [Gryffindor]'s Hollow. (Now that he can Apparate, you know.) Exposition galore, I hope.
B. Is it a coincidence that Horcrux sounds like Horace [Slughorn]?
C. Okay, so, the locket.
1. What, oh what was that potion all about? I grasp its logistical function, of course, but -- what was AD experiencing in the drinking of it? Simply "pain" seems an inadequate answer. Was he reliving past horrors, like with dementors? Also, once they got back to Hogsmeade/Hogwarts, what did AD want Snape to do to help him? Granted he's the potions master (literally), but what would he have known about this particular case?
2. The fact that Harry pulls a switched locket off AD's dead body does not mean, to me, that the locket had been switched in Voldemort's cave. Surely in the amount of time that Harry was not near AD's body, someone in the know could have come in, taken the real Slytherin locket that they had recovered, and planted the fake with the note on AD's body. -- OTOH, the note was addressed To the Dark Lord, which suggests it was meant to be found in the locket's original secured location. OTOH -- that could still be a ruse to throw Harry (and us) off the scent...
3. "R.A.B.": "Everyone" is buzzing that this "HAS to be" Regulus Black, Sirius's former-Death-Eater brother who was killed immediately after defecting. It doesn't have to be anyone we've already seen. It's an appealing theory, but I'm reserving judgment. Granted, though, that "heavy locket" that "no one could open" that they had found in Grimmauld Place, the previous Christmas, seems a fruitful connection to make.
4. Multiple Horcruxes. Brilliant.
4'. AD thought Nagini might be one of them. But if living creatures can be Horcruxes, who else might be? Someone else suggested: Harry himself?
III. Snape.
A. I accidentally got the spoiler that the HBP was Snape early on (reading hp_lexicon_jr's notes chapter by chapter, but missing the admonition that Ch. 11 "contains spoilers beyond this chapter". D'oh!).
B. Still, I liked that Eileen Prince turned out to be Mama Snape. I actually really liked Merope Gaunt, come to think of it, and the whole construction of Voldemort's origins we got to see this time.
C. I am totally willing to buy the Snape-was-in-love-with-Lily thing. Not sure it would have been enough to bring Snape back from the Death Eater camp ("Oh No, you mean it was Lily I just betrayed? Remorse!!"), but it seems to me there is a narrative angle yet to be covered there, anyway.
D. Dumbledore was not betrayed or misled; he definitely still has some inside knowledge on Snape that we don't. I am convinced it will all come clear next book.
IV. Relationships.
A. I am admittedly gratified that my certainty of Harry/Ginny has been borne out. (Also Ron/Hermione, but they haven't exactly started "Going Out" yet.) The James/Lily parallels are a bit inescapable. Some people cry "Oh, no, but Harry/Ginny is so obvious! Too heavy-handed!" To them I say: Yeah, that's exactly why it is the only possible outcome. This is ultimately children's lit, people. The romantic ends have to tie up neatly.
B. I'm not so thrilled with the way it was all written out, though. Very third-person. If Harry's really falling for Ginny, there should have been more there. As much as I've been waiting for this, it left me almost as cold as the Ron/Lavender thing, where it was like, two or three glances exchanged and suddenly they're sucking face all over the castle.
C. On the whole, a lot of the soap-opera threads in this book reminded me a whole lot of the small amount of fanfic I've read. I don't know if that's bad or good. :-)
(added) D. Bill/Fleur: I was gagging right along with the Weasleys at the beginning, but I admit Fleur's response to Bill at the end was pretty admirable.
D'. Tonks/Remus: Yeah, I didn't see that coming. I thought someone else had changed places with her, maybe, and that was why she was so "not herself" the whole book... I also concur with all the slashfic wailing that Remus seems underwhelmed at the prospect of hooking up with Tonks, and his demurral is not just pro forma.
D''. So what did Tonks's four-legged Patronus change into? A wolf, is that the idea? Or a dog (as in Sirius has somehow now become her Patronus)? Did any of you pick up, BTW, that the members of the Order communicate with each other via their Patronuses? JKR says so!
IV. Overall series notes, questions, predictions.
A. The Chamber of Secrets has got to come back into play. Note that "Secrets" is plural, which suggests to me that the Basilisk is not the only secret it contains. (I read a really nice essay a week or two ago analyzing the resemblance to an Egyptian temple of Thoth and the legend of an emerald tablet. This isn't it, but might be similar.) Giant monkeyish statue of Slytherin; yes, he built the thing, but are the other founders involved in it anywhere?
(added) A'. What's with the caved-in passage behind the fourth-floor mirror? Fred and George mention it in PoA, when they first give Harry the Marauder's Map, as having become unusable sometime last winter (i.e., during CoS). (However, they also name it specifically in the context of passages that lead/led into Hogsmeade.) It's mentioned again about once per book after that. I am curious.
B. What is the connection of Godric Gryffindor to the Potters, Evanses, Weasleys, and/or Dumbledore? I don't think we've heard anywhere (yet!) that Gryffindor himself had red hair, but obviously red/gold are his theme colors, and the red-hair connection among the others looms large. (Speaking of which, there's the Conspiracy Theory of Ron's secret identity that I just read about last night, which I find very interesting.) Speaking of relics of Gryffindor's: AD points out the sword, but there is also the Sorting Hat itself (it actually says it was Gryffindor's hat, in one of its songs), and it's not hard to assert that red-and-gold immortal Fawkes also belonged to GG.
B'. Yes, the Evanses can't be descended from Gryffindor because they are of course Muggles... OR ARE THEY? (Dun-dun-dunnn!) Seriously, I wonder if there isn't more than meets the eye there, as well. As of Book 5, Petunia certainly knows more about the wizarding world than she's ever been prepared to admit.
C. Neville. I have been convinced for several books that the reason Neville is such a gimp is that he has (unbeknownst to him) grown up with a serious Memory Charm in place, sealing off knowledge about his parents (either their fall or their previous lives) to protect him (either from internal pain or external danger, i.e. Voldemort). Memory Charms impair general memory functioning; think about Bertha Jorkins, think about all the Muggles at the World Cup.
C'. The way JKR keeps harping on Mimbulus mimbletonia, what significance or special powers might it (or Stinksap) turn out to have?
D. Cats. There is more to them than meets the eye, and I don't think it's just that Crookshanks is "part Kneazle" as people have so gleefully pointed out. Mrs. Norris has some kind of weird psychic link to Filch, and Mrs. Figg's cats are certainly sentient agents as well. And how could Crookshanks tell right off the bat that Scabbers was the enemy?
D'. invisible__girl pointed out a striking similarity of description between Crookshanks and Mundungus Fletcher (bandy-legged, ginger-haired... and Dung is certainly enough a crook!) -- although we do see them in the same place so it's not Yet Another case of Animagic (and anyway Crookshanks is way more dependable than Mundungus, they can't be genuinely co-identified).
E. Going back to Book 5, the Department of Mysteries: Like the Chamber of Secrets, the name alone is enough to shout "Hi, major plot points still lurking here!" Specifically, the Death Room and the archway. I am convinced that there is more to Sirius's "fall" than meets the eye. But then, the Time Room? And the Brain Room? (What happened to Ron when the brain attached itself him, anyway?)
E'. What are all those silver instruments in AD's office? (They weren't there in Armando Dippet's time. Will they still be there now McGonagall is headmistress?) Betcha some of them have to do with time travel, at least as much as the Pensieve does (viewing past events).
(added) F. Oh, I almost forgot: Speaking of those Chocolate Frog cards, remember how Dumbledore's starts off? "Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945...” Yeah, SO famous that Grindelwald's name has not ONCE been subsequently mentioned or explained in the 6 intervening years of Harry's magical life. Conspicuous by omission? I say there's a total World War II tie-in looming somewhere. Assuming that Harry was born in 1980, and counting backwards 50 years from CoS, the original opening of the Chamber of Secrets (and the flashback of AD we see in Riddle's diary) was in 1942...
Ohhhh, yeah, I can't wait for the final volume.
Meanwhile, I shall begin my second reading of Book 6. :-)
Then I promptly jumped online and proceeded to read three days' worth of other people's comments, spoilers, analyses, and general nattering. :-)
So, rather than go back and comment everywhere that I read interesting things, I'm just going to write up a few of my thoughts and reactions here.
I. Dumbledore. Aaaaaugh!
A. Yes, yes, there was going to be a significant death and "everyone knew" AD was likely to get it, to allow Harry's hero quest to come to its full mythic fruition. (And, as someone pointed out, JKR wouldn't have wanted to slam us with that in Book 7. This way we get to stew about it for two years, and then she gets to come up with some clever way of ameliorating the loss before the end.)
B. Gandalf, anyone? Hey, he came back... So, yeah, the temptation to say "Oh, this was faked!" is great, but -- not so convincing. I think what clinched the reality of the death for me, even before the Tomb, was when McGonagall takes Harry to the headmaster's office and AD's portrait is already installed there, slumbering peacefully. That got me almost as much as anything.
C. Which isn't to say that there wasn't more to AD's death than met our/Harry's eyes. The showdown with Snape: ... Well, I'll get into that in a minute.
D. Which also isn't to say that AD will be any less of a presence in Book 7. It needn't even be as a ghost ("Master Kenobi!"); the portrait right away is a clear indicator that AD's consciousness will remain on hand to advise, and help in the limited way that portraits apparently can. (It's also been asked before whether the ability to move between one's own portraits might extend to the Chocolate Frog cards... Harry and Ron could have Dumbledore in their pockets at all times! No wonder Dumbledore "doesn't care what they do as long as they don't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards"!)
(added) E. Reading this (which is, so to speak, dead-on) just reminded me: I picked up so much Aslan in the entire sacrifice-of-Dumbledore scene. His words to Snape, but more especially to Draco.
II. The Horcrux (and R.A.B.).
A. Wow. I've been thinking for years that the Founders were going to come into greater mythic play before the end, and this is certainly pointing in that direction. I so very much wonder what Harry will find/learn when he finally goes to Godric [Gryffindor]'s Hollow. (Now that he can Apparate, you know.) Exposition galore, I hope.
B. Is it a coincidence that Horcrux sounds like Horace [Slughorn]?
C. Okay, so, the locket.
1. What, oh what was that potion all about? I grasp its logistical function, of course, but -- what was AD experiencing in the drinking of it? Simply "pain" seems an inadequate answer. Was he reliving past horrors, like with dementors? Also, once they got back to Hogsmeade/Hogwarts, what did AD want Snape to do to help him? Granted he's the potions master (literally), but what would he have known about this particular case?
2. The fact that Harry pulls a switched locket off AD's dead body does not mean, to me, that the locket had been switched in Voldemort's cave. Surely in the amount of time that Harry was not near AD's body, someone in the know could have come in, taken the real Slytherin locket that they had recovered, and planted the fake with the note on AD's body. -- OTOH, the note was addressed To the Dark Lord, which suggests it was meant to be found in the locket's original secured location. OTOH -- that could still be a ruse to throw Harry (and us) off the scent...
3. "R.A.B.": "Everyone" is buzzing that this "HAS to be" Regulus Black, Sirius's former-Death-Eater brother who was killed immediately after defecting. It doesn't have to be anyone we've already seen. It's an appealing theory, but I'm reserving judgment. Granted, though, that "heavy locket" that "no one could open" that they had found in Grimmauld Place, the previous Christmas, seems a fruitful connection to make.
4. Multiple Horcruxes. Brilliant.
4'. AD thought Nagini might be one of them. But if living creatures can be Horcruxes, who else might be? Someone else suggested: Harry himself?
III. Snape.
A. I accidentally got the spoiler that the HBP was Snape early on (reading hp_lexicon_jr's notes chapter by chapter, but missing the admonition that Ch. 11 "contains spoilers beyond this chapter". D'oh!).
B. Still, I liked that Eileen Prince turned out to be Mama Snape. I actually really liked Merope Gaunt, come to think of it, and the whole construction of Voldemort's origins we got to see this time.
C. I am totally willing to buy the Snape-was-in-love-with-Lily thing. Not sure it would have been enough to bring Snape back from the Death Eater camp ("Oh No, you mean it was Lily I just betrayed? Remorse!!"), but it seems to me there is a narrative angle yet to be covered there, anyway.
D. Dumbledore was not betrayed or misled; he definitely still has some inside knowledge on Snape that we don't. I am convinced it will all come clear next book.
IV. Relationships.
A. I am admittedly gratified that my certainty of Harry/Ginny has been borne out. (Also Ron/Hermione, but they haven't exactly started "Going Out" yet.) The James/Lily parallels are a bit inescapable. Some people cry "Oh, no, but Harry/Ginny is so obvious! Too heavy-handed!" To them I say: Yeah, that's exactly why it is the only possible outcome. This is ultimately children's lit, people. The romantic ends have to tie up neatly.
B. I'm not so thrilled with the way it was all written out, though. Very third-person. If Harry's really falling for Ginny, there should have been more there. As much as I've been waiting for this, it left me almost as cold as the Ron/Lavender thing, where it was like, two or three glances exchanged and suddenly they're sucking face all over the castle.
C. On the whole, a lot of the soap-opera threads in this book reminded me a whole lot of the small amount of fanfic I've read. I don't know if that's bad or good. :-)
(added) D. Bill/Fleur: I was gagging right along with the Weasleys at the beginning, but I admit Fleur's response to Bill at the end was pretty admirable.
D'. Tonks/Remus: Yeah, I didn't see that coming. I thought someone else had changed places with her, maybe, and that was why she was so "not herself" the whole book... I also concur with all the slashfic wailing that Remus seems underwhelmed at the prospect of hooking up with Tonks, and his demurral is not just pro forma.
D''. So what did Tonks's four-legged Patronus change into? A wolf, is that the idea? Or a dog (as in Sirius has somehow now become her Patronus)? Did any of you pick up, BTW, that the members of the Order communicate with each other via their Patronuses? JKR says so!
IV. Overall series notes, questions, predictions.
A. The Chamber of Secrets has got to come back into play. Note that "Secrets" is plural, which suggests to me that the Basilisk is not the only secret it contains. (I read a really nice essay a week or two ago analyzing the resemblance to an Egyptian temple of Thoth and the legend of an emerald tablet. This isn't it, but might be similar.) Giant monkeyish statue of Slytherin; yes, he built the thing, but are the other founders involved in it anywhere?
(added) A'. What's with the caved-in passage behind the fourth-floor mirror? Fred and George mention it in PoA, when they first give Harry the Marauder's Map, as having become unusable sometime last winter (i.e., during CoS). (However, they also name it specifically in the context of passages that lead/led into Hogsmeade.) It's mentioned again about once per book after that. I am curious.
B. What is the connection of Godric Gryffindor to the Potters, Evanses, Weasleys, and/or Dumbledore? I don't think we've heard anywhere (yet!) that Gryffindor himself had red hair, but obviously red/gold are his theme colors, and the red-hair connection among the others looms large. (Speaking of which, there's the Conspiracy Theory of Ron's secret identity that I just read about last night, which I find very interesting.) Speaking of relics of Gryffindor's: AD points out the sword, but there is also the Sorting Hat itself (it actually says it was Gryffindor's hat, in one of its songs), and it's not hard to assert that red-and-gold immortal Fawkes also belonged to GG.
B'. Yes, the Evanses can't be descended from Gryffindor because they are of course Muggles... OR ARE THEY? (Dun-dun-dunnn!) Seriously, I wonder if there isn't more than meets the eye there, as well. As of Book 5, Petunia certainly knows more about the wizarding world than she's ever been prepared to admit.
C. Neville. I have been convinced for several books that the reason Neville is such a gimp is that he has (unbeknownst to him) grown up with a serious Memory Charm in place, sealing off knowledge about his parents (either their fall or their previous lives) to protect him (either from internal pain or external danger, i.e. Voldemort). Memory Charms impair general memory functioning; think about Bertha Jorkins, think about all the Muggles at the World Cup.
C'. The way JKR keeps harping on Mimbulus mimbletonia, what significance or special powers might it (or Stinksap) turn out to have?
D. Cats. There is more to them than meets the eye, and I don't think it's just that Crookshanks is "part Kneazle" as people have so gleefully pointed out. Mrs. Norris has some kind of weird psychic link to Filch, and Mrs. Figg's cats are certainly sentient agents as well. And how could Crookshanks tell right off the bat that Scabbers was the enemy?
D'. invisible__girl pointed out a striking similarity of description between Crookshanks and Mundungus Fletcher (bandy-legged, ginger-haired... and Dung is certainly enough a crook!) -- although we do see them in the same place so it's not Yet Another case of Animagic (and anyway Crookshanks is way more dependable than Mundungus, they can't be genuinely co-identified).
E. Going back to Book 5, the Department of Mysteries: Like the Chamber of Secrets, the name alone is enough to shout "Hi, major plot points still lurking here!" Specifically, the Death Room and the archway. I am convinced that there is more to Sirius's "fall" than meets the eye. But then, the Time Room? And the Brain Room? (What happened to Ron when the brain attached itself him, anyway?)
E'. What are all those silver instruments in AD's office? (They weren't there in Armando Dippet's time. Will they still be there now McGonagall is headmistress?) Betcha some of them have to do with time travel, at least as much as the Pensieve does (viewing past events).
(added) F. Oh, I almost forgot: Speaking of those Chocolate Frog cards, remember how Dumbledore's starts off? "Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945...” Yeah, SO famous that Grindelwald's name has not ONCE been subsequently mentioned or explained in the 6 intervening years of Harry's magical life. Conspicuous by omission? I say there's a total World War II tie-in looming somewhere. Assuming that Harry was born in 1980, and counting backwards 50 years from CoS, the original opening of the Chamber of Secrets (and the flashback of AD we see in Riddle's diary) was in 1942...
Ohhhh, yeah, I can't wait for the final volume.
Meanwhile, I shall begin my second reading of Book 6. :-)