"I am not worried, I am with you."
In case you missed the LJ Cut, SPOILERS! Rawr.
OK, here's what's on my mind (note: this will not have any kind of focus. I reserve the right to ramble and ramble and ramble some more). First of all, I have to state that I'm over my whole "I HATE YOU SNAPE! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THAT?!" phase. I think more than anything my sudden turning on my very favorite character (which, I will have to admit, he still is) was borne from anger that things did not turn out how I expected them to. For one thing, I did not expect Dumbledore to pass on in this book. I thought he was at least going to wait until book number 7 to do that, and I especially didn't expect Snape to be the one to kill him. In my mind the situation was going to come down to a showdown between the two of them (Dumbledore and Snape) and rather than fulfil his Unbreakable Vow Snape would do the noble thing and croak, sparing Dumbledore's life. Of course, this was the stuff of purest fantasy but by the time I rolled around to reading the last few chapters I had utterly convinced myself that this is what was going to happen. Well, you can imagine my shock when not only did that not happen something much, much worse occured. So I lashed out in anger and disapointment and Snape was a very easy target to do so upon. Of course I realize now that it would have been supremely stupid for him to keel over rather than kill Dumbledore (as he had obviously prearranged with the Headmaster to do) because then Snape would have died and Fenrir Greyback would have chomped out Dumbldore's throat anyway. Boy would that have been pointless. So it's okay now, I'm back in love with poor little angst-ridden Snape (who I am fairly sure Harry is going to kill whether or not he had any kind of arrangement with Dumbledore). Either way, there is no way Dumbledore's trust was unfounded.
As for the Half-Blood Prince, I would like to state for the record that I knew who it was all along. I only wavered in my firm belief that it was my favorite dude once and that was for a very brief period of time before I returned to the truth. Mean James and Sirius, using the hex that he created against him. Mean, mean evil boys.
I also want to state for the record that I love Harry. He's grown up so much in this book and the way that he is able to take charge of himself...it's just wonderful. I can't get over the way he talked to Dumbledore during their escape from that beach cave and the way he was willing to walk away from everything at the end of the book without a tremendous ammount of angst (which is not to say that there was no angst at all), it was just really, really great. Thank you for not making me want to strangle you even once in the entire book, Harry. It was a nice change from Order of the Phoenix.
The last thing that I want to say is yay for Lupin/Tonks! Though I can't say I gave the pairing a great deal of thought before this book now that it's actually cannon I can't help but be delighted. Frankly, so long as Remus is being loved by somebody (especially somebody so cute and cuddly as Tonks) I don't think I will have a single complaint.
Overall I loved the book. LOVED IT. I laughed, I cried, I chewed my nails to the quick...it was everything that a very, very good book should be. And that's the final word on the subjet from me.
James and I went to go see Charlie & the Chocolate Factory on Friday night (shortly before going to the midnight release party for HBP) and I give it full props. It was far more excellent than I thought it would be and I would definitely go see it again. Movie Diary will be forthcoming, I swear (I'm so behind on those!).
In other news...well there really isn't any other news. I went to the Renaissance Festival on Sunday with Bronny, Jesse, Andreas and James and we all had a very wonderful time. James bought me a leather diary and a quill to go with it (the diary has a wolfie on it, it's awesome!) and was given much kissin' in return. I ate chicken gyros, which were not quite as nasty as they might sound, though they were most assuredly not a delicacy of any sort as they were slathered in some kind of strange mustard. All in all it was a good time of eating, drinking and snickering quietly at women who maybe missed the instructional period where they taught us that our boobs go INSIDE our clothing.
And now we turn you over to Jim for sports. Jim?