We aren’t told (and I, for one, am dying to know). I’m trying to figure out what, if anything, is up between Tonks and Snape. Does he call her “Nymphadora” just because it annoys her, or was he her Head of House, or is there a streak of sexual jealousy there?
And what happened to HBP’s textbook? If I’m remembering, Harry just so happened to shove it into the same eeevil cupboard that Draco was rebuilding as a teleport to and from Borgin’s. And in the shock of all the ending stuff, he never picked it back up, right? So was the book just a short-term item to advance this one story (a Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone, as it were) or an item that will reappear in the last book (a Marauder’s Map)?
I’m not sure that Ron is really in a position to gauge how well Tonks knew Sirius – he’s probably right that their families didn’t meet after Andromeda’s marriage, but that doesn’t preclude Sirius going to visit Ted and Andromeda on his own, after he ran away. Besides, they could easily have gotten friendly during OotP.
And I think Lupin is thoroughly broken up, too, he just doesn’t show it as much because, well, he’s Lupin. During the very-brief dinner table scene at the Burrow over the summer, and the longer Christmas scene, he seemed to be in a grim sort of mood most of the time.
Glad they found each other. The Order could use a little happiness 
That’s her given name…I’d say it’s because Snape wants to annoy pretty much anyone who was friends with /related to the Moony/Padfoot/Prongs crowd given how much torment they gave HIM in school. He’s being a prat.
What was Snape’s reaction to it? I seem to have not picked up on it.
At the beginning of the book a mention is made that the reason there is so much fog and mist is because the “dementors are breeding.”
:eek:
I would have like to explore that a bit more. Wonderfully creepy plot point that fell by the wayside, probably to be picked up in Book 7.
Harry put the HBP’s book into a cabinet in the same room as the vanishing cabinet, but not into that cabinet.
The Potions Book: It was surmised by Hermione (so it must be true, eh?) that the book had belonged to Snape’s mother, who had then passed it down for his use - or it could have just been a used book he bought at Flourish and Blots, I recall that they did sell used ones.
Snape, Dumbledore, and the Tower: I am leaning toward the hypothesis put forward by others, that Dumbledore was begging Snape to kill him. Remember, he sent Harry specifically to get Snape once they had landed on the tower.
Harry didn’t shove the book into the same disappearing cabinet. I did a second read-through last night, and it states very clearly that he made a left (IIRC) past the vanishing cabinet and put it into something else. So I think the potions book is safe.
Also upon the second-rereading, when it registered that in order to create a horcrux, one has to commit murder, I revised my opinion. NO WAY is Fawkes Dumbledore’s horcrux. Dumbledore would kill when necessary, but he would not murder.
Carry on.
I finished reading it at 2 AM last night but was so tired I went to bed right away. I’m so glad to have fellow Harry Potter fans to discuss this with!
I didn’t think R.A.B was Regulus Black right away. I figured it would be someone we had already been introduced to, even if it is only by name. After reading the posts here, I’m pretty convinced that’s him.
The fact that Snape killed Dumbledore was supposed to surprise me, but it didn’t. Some idiot on another website posted half a page from the book, and underlined the words where Harry was telling Hagrid “Snape killed Dumbledore” so it was hard to miss. I was told it was fake, and I was hoping so but as soon as I read the second chapter where he talks about the plans with Narcissa and Bellatrix, I knew Dumbledore was done for in the hands of Snape.
I find it odd that with all the hype about who the half bloond Prince was, Snape would reveal it basically by shouting “You fool! I’m the half blood Prince!” then poof vanish in a smoke of air. There’s something comically cartoonish about it. However, I had the inkling that it would be Snape, simply because of the fact that it is a potions book and also the nastiness of some of the spells. I love the great irony of James using Snapes own spells against him though.
I didn’t like all the lovey-dovey stuff in the book, but I thought they were fitting. All of them are teenagers with raging hormones and they’re lucky if they stop at snogging! I found it funny that when Won-Won and Lav-Lav were going at it like a pair of rabbits, Hermoine changed the password to abstinence. Ginny is not going to let Harry slip away from her though, despite the fact that he wants to be all dramatic and pull a Spider-man on her. The way Ron was described stroking Hermoine’s hair and comforting her sounds like they have already started going out. The Tonks and Lupin pairing was okay, but like many said, that leaves out the reason why Tonks was moping so much over Sirius’s death.
This is something I’ve noticed no one has pointed out. In the book, there were several accounts by Harry where he noticed Draco looking ill, pale, and basically not up to form. Combined with the fact that Snape was trying to help him, I was beginning to wonder Draco himself had turned into a werewolf. I know fixing a cuboard requires a lot of energy and concentration, but would it actually make someone look ill? Of course, we already had that whole plotline in the third book, so I dismissed the idea after a while. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was some other kind of monster though.
I don’t know if it was fan speculations or something J.K. Rowling actually said herself, but I was under the impression the 6th book would reveal a lot more about Harry’s past, so I was dissapointed all we got was Voldemort/Tom Riddle. A lot of the things in his past were pretty obvious already, they were implied and mentioned in the previous books, so all that really captured my interest in those lessons Dumbledore gave was when Riddle asked about horcruxes.
I havn’t read this whole long-ass thread, so I’m probably repeating what a bunch of people have said, but, DAMN!!! :eek: I feel like Snape just kicked me in the nuts, and then slapped me on the face for good measure. I was hoping that he’d end up saving Harry, that he’d found a loophole that let him out of his Unbreakable Vow, but no. He just killed Dumbledore like it had been his plan all along. I’m still hoping that he gets redeemed somehow in book 7, but right now it’s looking like Snape’s only good qualities are his mastery of potions, and his excellent acting skills :mad:
I can’t imagine Dumbledore making a horcrux. I’m sure we’ll see him again in a portrait or two, however. Maybe as a ghost, but I hope not: that would mean that Dumbledore never moved on to the afterlife.
I suspected that the Half-Blood Prince might be Snape. We knew that it wasn’t Harry or Voldemort, and the fact that there was a new potions teacher made me suspect that there was a connection between Snape and the Prince. (Because Snape would, presumably, have recognized his old potions book, and never ever given it to Harry.)
Although they never said so, does anyone doubt that Harry went back to the tower to retreive his cloak? I don’t. I only wonder what happened to that potions book. It would be great if Harry (or Dobby, or some other good guy) went back for the book, and Harry used one of Snape’s own potions to take him down.
We definitely are seeing the beginnings of a Ron-Hermione marriage. I’m sure of it. I hope that Harry survives book 7, and finds Ginny waiting for him. He deserves it. When Bill got mauled, I was afraid that Fleur was going to leave him, but I’m happy to see that she’s not that shallow. That evil werewolf Greyback is now at the top of my hit list, deliberately attacking children like that. It looked like he got caught; I hope they shoot him with a silver bullet or something :mad: It looks like Draco might be redeemed after all. I think Dumbledore was right: Draco isn’t a killer. I even managed to feel sorry for Narcissa Malfoy. Yeah, she’s a Death Eater, but in the end she loves her son like any other mother would.
I predicted that the potion puzzle back in Book 1 foreshadowed that the new DADA teacher would be an ineffectual “nettle wine” teacher. That obviously didn’t happen, but the theory might still hold, except that what the puzzle forshadows is the new teacher. Slughorn, aside from giving Harry the memory thread and the luck potion, really isn’t too relevant to the story. (Plus, he’s got a haughty, snobbish air about him that reminded me of Joan Rivers.) He could be the innocuous teacher predicted by the potions puzzle, just with the added wrinkle that the new teacher was not the DADA teacher for once.
If Hogwarts doesn’t re-open, however, then it’s hard to see how anyone could be the “new teacher” in book seven, and I’m probably going to have to abandon the foreshadowing theory. Still, we don’t know for sure that Hogwarts is going to close, or that Harry won’t attend. Others might talk him into attending, at least part-time. Even if he doesn’t, I’m sure that he’ll go back there at least once for some reason.
Ditto on the theory that Harry is the last Horcrux. It just makes sooooo much sense. And lets not forget: Voldemort probably MEANT for Harry to be involved in the seventh Horcrux: it was to be the final crowning murder. But something about hitting Horcrux number 7 had an unintended effect.
I agree that Fletcher’s stealing from the Black residence might be more than just a flourish: he might have ended up with something important. Like a LOT of things in this sixth book, it was something that got brought up but was never quite developed by the end, leaving things open for number seven.
Don’t you agree though that this book just wasn’t as coherent as the others? It was all over the map with disparate elements, without the same sort of framework to tie the story together (Umbridge’s reign in the fifth book, the GoF in the fourth, and so on).
Uh, it was the Fat Lady who changed the password to “Abstinence”, and it refers to sobriety, not sex. Remember, she and Violet had gotten smashed the night before, and she was incredibly hungover.
Well, the book was found in the Potions dungeon, which used to be Snape’s classroom. Perhaps Snape stupidly forgot he left some of his old schoolbooks there.
So from reading the threads, here are my thoughts:
-Dumbledore was dying all along, whether from the cursed ring or the potion its not clear: probably the ring (which made him risk the potion). There is something deeply significant about the potion Dumbledore drank and his reaction to it (please kill me!) This explains much of Dumbledore’s attitude in the books, and is the only real thing that could let Snape off the hook. There is obviously much more to the Dumbledore/Snape relationship than Harry thinks.
-Snape was furious at having to kill Dumbledore.
-Harry is wrong: the locket with Regalus Black’s note (and I think we can all agree he’s only one that we are familiar with that fits) will prove deeply important. It is evidence of some incredibly important secret story that delves into Voldemort’s past, the Black’s and the Potters. I might even tie back to Sirius somehow. And for all we know, Regalus could still be alive. It’s a major major clue.
It wouldn’t be so stupid. He’s not the potions teacher any more. However, I can’t see Snape giving Harry his special annotated copy, which is probably why Rowling “promoted” Snape to DADA teacher, and brought in a new potions teacher.
Rowling had to get Snape out of potions so that Harry could NEWT in potions in prep Auror training.
After reading the other Harry Potter thread, I’m starting to buy into this theory. It makes sense: we never really found out what was going on with Dumbledore’s hand (other than that it was caused by the retreival of the ring), or what that potion was that Dumbledore had drank. And it sounds like a good, Rowling-ish twist for Book 7. Still, I can’t imagine how Snape could ever convince Harry of this, and in the end I must suspect that he won’t survive book 7.
From p. 160, U.S. edition:
hmmm… who or what was the old one?