Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (spoilers)

Cafe Society
481

Thanks so much for the link to the interview! It also reveals that Rowling is just not into sport(s), like many people here have already said; she invented Quidditch because Harry would be expected to play one sport or another and she wanted one where she could totally invent the rules so she wouldn’t have to study a real-life one. She says that she’d talk more like Luna’s commentary about a game and, in fact, that Luna’s commentary was the most fun part to write of the entire book.

Hamish, word on the customer service. My mom wonders why I don’t volunteer more and I tell her that after seven years in a social service agency I’m lucky I slow down to let pedestrians cross in front of the car.

Another parallel between the Houses of Black and Slytherin–now both places, first the cottage, and now 12 Grimmauld Place, are falling into disrepair and being looted and abandoned. The pure wizarding families are falling apart except for the Weasleys (and they’ve lost Percy, although he’s not evil, just officious).

482

perhaps snape and potter had an instant dislike to each other, rather like malfoy and potter. snape and potter seem to have taken it a bit further than malfoy and potter.

i’m in the midst of rereading and have come across some interesting points.

re: finding headquaters after dumbledore.

snape says to cissy and bella: " i am not the secret-keeper; i cannot speak the name of the place. you understand how the enchantment works, i think.

it seems you can know where it is, you just can’t tell or show anyone.

re harry and mourning sirius.

he could tell that dumbledore understood, that he might even suspect that until his letter arrived, harry had spent nearly all his time at the dursleys’ lying on his bed, refusing meals, and staring at the misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to associate with dementors.

harry continues, while i was at the dursleys’ i realized i can’t shut myself away or crack up. sirius wouldn’t have wanted that, would he? and anyway life’s too short.

re dumbledore’s hand

hermione stated "it looks as if it’s died, but there are some injuries you can’t cure…old curses… and there are poisons without antidotes.

that last bit seems to be very prophetic given the end of the book, and may be why dumbledore asks for snape.

re tonks and her seeming grief

dumbledore shares a memory of burke buying the locket from merope. he is explaining to harry her desperate need of gold. harry states, but she could do magic! she could have got food and everything for herself by magic, couldn’t she?

dumbledore says, "but it is my belief - and i am guessing again, but i am sure i am right - that when her husband abandoned her merope stopped using magic. of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen.

it seems tonk’s feelings for lupin are getting in the way of her magic.

483

But Tonks can do magic just fine, apart from Metamorphosing – we see her cast a Patronus and do a Healing spell without difficulty, and I doubt that she would have been assigned to guard Hogsmeade if she were having serious trouble with magic. She’s definitely not in a Merope-style decline. And I think she really is grieving over Sirius, and probably Amelia Bones, who was her boss – and heavily affected by the dementors on top of everything else.

I don’t see Tonks as the type to be Pining Away For Love unless she’s got a heck of a lot of other things on her plate at the same time – which she does.

484

Yes, and Merope was a much weaker witch who’d been abused and degraded her whole life. Perhaps she didn’t want to use magic because of shame and anger at herself at the way she’d tricked her husband into loving her.

I agree about the poison at the end being one of those without an antidote. I wonder what would have happened if there hadn’t been a pitched battle going on when Dumbledore and Harry arrived in Hogsmeade, and why Dumbledore let Harry see Snape kill him.

485

i was thinking of her metamorphosing magic more than the other things. she is not letting it stop her work. for sure she is not the down trodden merope.

486

I agree in part about this, but in a few interviews JK Rowling has pointed that very fact out about Sirius – that he basically never had a chance to really grow up, having landed in Azkaban and just surviving for 13 years made him go a bit odd in the head. Unlike Lupin, for instance. Of course Lupin was always more level headed than everyone else.

As for James, we’ve only seen bits and pieces of him. I think he was an idiot at 15, but we didn’t see him with Lily, or later in the Order of the Phoenix before he died, so I’m reserving judgment.

I still just don’t know what to think about Snape. I pitied him before HBP came out, but right now I sorta loathe and despise him. Despite the logical arguments in this thread, I’m just not sure, yet, that he really did it all at Dumbledore’s bidding.

487

I got the impression that I was supposed to be sympathetic to Merope, but frankly I was more sympathetic to Tom Riddle (Voldy’s dad). He didn’t want to marry Merope or have kids with her; he only did so because she used the love potion on him. I can see him finally coming to his senses (after Merope stopped giving him the potion) and being so disgusted at how she used him that he just walked out the door and never looked back. That doesn’t excuse him for abandoning his son, but I can easily understand why he acted the way he did.

488

:shrug: To me that excuses him for walking out on his son. I mean he was tricked into the whole thing. Even if there was a kid, I can’t expect him to stick around after that.

489

Actually I found it interesting that Snape also lives in relative squalor – and in the depths of Muggle Country, as well! Some interesting karma or guilt thing going on there. I guess it isn’t surprising that Snape never learned to care about his environment, but I find it really odd that he would choose to be surrounded by muggles. Paying penance to Lily, perhaps? (I am among those who believe Snape loved Lily.)

490

I’ve gone back to OotP to look for details and hints. One thing that Sirius tells Harry, fairly early in the book, is that he left home when he was 16, and spent summers with James’ family, who were really great to be with. While it may not tell us much about James as a child, it certainly means that he was much better off than Snape or even Harry.

Another interesting detail from OotP. When they are cleaning out the glass cabinet in the drawing room, one of the objects they apparently threw out was “a heavy locket that none of them could open.”

Back to HBP…

If Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper for the location of the OotP HQ, what happens now that he’s dead? The other members can’t tell anyone where headquarters is, right? Or does the secret’s protection die with the Secret Keeper?

If Snape invented the Levicorpus hex, how does James learn it to use it on him at school? It’s a non-verbal spell, so James couldn’t have heard Snape use it (even if he had seen it work), and I seriously doubt that Snape would have willingly taught it to James…

491

I believe that Harry speaks it when he first uses it on Ron.

492

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]

I think that blood will not matter. It will be the choice made by whoever. I am not sure if HP will die or someone else (and I hesitate to predict one of the Trio’s deaths–now a Quad with Ginny…make that inner group with Neville and Luna, and even Draco)–but perhaps it is Snape who dies to protect the Group and the future of Good Magic.
QUOTE]
Hmm, that would make 7 of them and seven seems to a powerful number. 7 books, 7 horcruxes, 7 Weasley children, 7 potions… probably more if we thought about it.

493

Hey Rysto, thanks for the clarification, hon. :slight_smile: And, sorry I’m just now getting back to you. There are just not enough hours in the day. However, I’m still wondering about Rowling’s plotting. And my questions center around your points #4-7. Why didn’t Voldy immediately after he took over Quirrel’s body seek out one of these horcrux things rather than go after the Sorcerer’s stone? It doesn’t make any sense. Did his soul getting reduced to vapor and shadow somehow affect his memory of his stashes? He could make Quirrel do anything so why not go after a horcrux, unless he did, and that’s how he attached himself to Quirrel. Or something. So perhaps Voldy using Quirrel did access one of the horcruxes, but since he split his soul so much, he was still too weak. Only then could I see him needing the Sorcerer’s Stone. Perhaps. Also, in book four, when Voldy got his body back, he must have accessed one of the horcruxes then. Otherwise, why did he make them in the first place? If Harry’s a horcrux–which I sincerely doubt–Voldy would have accessed Harry then, rather than trying to kill him and feed him to Nagini. And why would Voldy use that poor man at the beginning of Book 4 to make yet another horcrux? He’s too weak by far, and if he’s only operating on the power of 1/6 or 1/7 of his soul, making another horcrux at that juncture splits that 1/6 or 1/7 of his soul in half again. My head hurts too much to consider what half of 1/6 or 1/7 of a soul adds up to. At any rate, if by my calculations, Voldy’s accessed two of his horcruxes by the end of Book 4, and Harry and Dumbledore have gotten rid of two, and he only made 5-7 of the damn things, then there’s really only 1-2 of them left out there. Somewhere. That would be more doable for Harry & Co. for Book 7. Rowling’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. :mad:

494

“Pointing his wand at nothing in particular, he gave it an upward flick and said Levicorpus! in his head.” (p. 239) (Bold mine)

This also shows that Harry is capable of using nonverbal spells, even though he can’t seem to do it at all as he’s chasing Snape and Draco at the end of the story. As Snape points out, the whole point behind nonverbal spells is to keep your enemy from knowing what’s coming.

495

I dunno if the if the spell dies with the Keeper-somehow I doubt it, but can’t give an backup for that doubt.

I don’t think Snape invented the Levicorpus hex–I think he tried to improve it. Doesn’t Lupin say that hexes come and go out of fashion(for practical joke purposes)?

Teanr I thought that Snape came from poverty. His underpants are gray, and there have been other clues which elude my memory so early on a Sunday morning. I don’t think that Snape had a happy childhood, or a financially secure one…

Maybe Lily reminds Snape of his mother (in a weird, but non-Freudian way?) Eileen is good with potions (if that is indeed her book, and I think it safe to assume it is), and so is Lily. I’ll bet that his feelings for Lily are strengthened by the similiarities between Lily and Eileen (don’t have too many characteristics to compare at present).

496

celestina, my theory(and I’ll admit, JKR wasn’t totally clear on exactly what a horcrux does) is that the existance of a horcrux only prevents Voldemort from dying. So long as at least one of the horcruxes exist, killing Voldemort would only make him go back to that shadow and vapour state. However, the horcruxes can’t bring his body back – he needed the potion in GoF for that. It doesn’t seem that horcruxes can be “used up” or anything, they’ll just sit there for all time, keeping Voldemort alive when he’s killed.

497

:confused: It’s not safe to assume that. There’s not even any evidence to suggest it. There’s no reason at all to think that Snape got the book from his mother.

498

I’m not sure if he is poor or just neglected and abused; I’m not disagreeing, mind, it’s just that unless there is some kind of British drive to hang around the old homestead as an adult, there has to be some kind of reason why he still chooses to live under such conditions. Granted, it may be simply that he has other priorities or doesn’t know anything else, or it may be (and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit) a whopping great case of depression.

I still think ol’ greasy boy will be vindicated in the end. (I also think he’ll end up dead in some sort of grand suicidal act of heroism). I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

499

OK, new theory on Horcruxes. If Dumbledore’s right (and I guess we’ve got to assume he is, though why Voldemort would want to use a live snake for this purpose is beyond me), the Horcruxes are as follows:

  1. Voldemort himself, whom we meet in Book One.
  2. The diary, which Harry destroys in Book Two.
  3. Something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s (?)
  4. Nagini, whom we saw for the first time in Book Four.
  5. The locket, presumably the same one the Order found while they were cleaning out 12 GP in Book Five.
  6. The ring, which appears in Book Six.
  7. The cup, which we haven’t seen in “real time” at all; presumably, we will in Book Seven.

It looks an awful lot like there’s a one-per-book pattern, and if so, this mysterious object of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s should be something that we’ve seen in passing in Book Three. Any guesses?

500

I’ve wondered about Tom Riddle’s award for services to the school or whatever it was - the one that Ron puked slugs on during Chamber of Secrets.

We know the school was important to Riddle/Voldemort, but I also have doubts that it’s one of the horcruxes, mainly because it doesn’t have the connection to one of the school’s founders, and no Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw connection.

Just one of those thoughts that occasionally pops into my head.