Thoughts on Harry Potter

[andrew_jorgensen]

Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

• I crumpled while reading the scene where Dumbledore and Harry recover Regulus's costume Horcrux as Harry forced himself to pour goblet after goblet of poison down his mentor's throat. The whole chapter was suffused with foreboding -- I was half-convinced that Dumbledore would reveal that Harry was the seventh Horcrux, created through the death of James and Lily, that this was the source of the connection between the two and why one could not fully live while the other survived, and that Harry would have to kill Dumbledore in self-defense. In fact, I'm still holding out hope that this'll be revealed to be the case in the seventh book, and Harry will have to take the noble way out.
  
  
• Now that people have been forced to rewrite the timeline, can they arrange it so that the events of this book take place after Harry has seen Spider-Man but before he's seen Spider-Man 2? Otherwise I think the proper response to "Ginny, I want to be with you but I can't because I have to go save the world and my enemies will come after you" would be a bludger to the bollocks.
  
  
• In North By Northwest, the sinister and effete henchman Leonard, played by Martin Landau, says, "It's an old Gestapo trick. Shoot one of your own people to show that you're not one of them. They've just freshened it up a bit with blank cartridges." You know, Martin Landau would have made a great Snape.
  
  
• The book is so full of snogging and almost-snogged and should've-snogged that I was quite afraid that when Harry burst in on Draco in the Room of Requirement he'd interrupt a Slytherin make-out party. Slytherin's an ambitious lot, so make that a full-out orgy.
  
  
• Hell, other than making out, for what would a sixteen year-old want a Room of Requirement?
  
  
• I loved the scene where Molly, Ginny and Hermione have their worst expectation confounded as Fleur declares the depth of her love for Bill following his disfiguring werewolf attack.
  
  
• In the previous books, have Harry's initial, prejudiced suspicions ever turned out to be right?

Comments

[angels-nibblet.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore and Harry recover Regulus's costume Horcrux

Did it actually say it was Regulus and then I skimmed over it and thought it was my own brilliant theory, or are we just arriving at the same conclusion here?

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

It's a guess.

It wasn't the first thing that sprang to my mind ("Remus A. Blupin," followed by "Ron Bweasley") but when it did, I decided there wasn't any other real possibility.

OMGmindmeld!

[angels-nibblet.livejournal.com]

Or Roonil Blazlib.

Bwahahaha, that will never stop being funny! I love the Weasleys. That comes a close second to U-No-Poo.

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

My first thought upon finishing the book: when did Harry learn to swim? The Dursley's never took him, and there's no mention of a Hogwarts swimming pool.

This may suggest the strength or otherwise of my involvement in the rest of the book.

TCH

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

Eep, superfluous apostrophe alert. I do apologise for defacing your journal.

TCH

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

My first thought upon reading your comment: Harry swam? This may suggest the strength of my involvement in the book.

I'm being relentlessly cheery because I know how much the internet loves a whiner, but I'd have to say that while I kept turning the pages, I didn't have the same sort of experience with Prince I had with either Azkaban or Phoenix.

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

No, we're in this together then. I didn't really dislike it, it was just so-so, and slightly takes away from the way I thought the whole thing was heading after Phoenix. Plus, the one after the Umbridge one is always going to be a tough sell- this book had no successful bad guy.

TCH

[randomways.livejournal.com]

That was the twist: everyone was a bad guy. From Ron's assholery to Hermione's bitchiness, to Dumbledore's (and McGonagall's) insistent obtuseness, to Snape's Snapery (plus that little thing at the end), to Draco's nasty passive-aggressiveness, to Slug's pandering famewhorishness (was he somehow worse than Lockhart?), to Ginny's manipulativeness, to Tonk's persistent 'woe is me', to Trelawney's whining, to Hagrid's usual ineffectuality, to the entire Weasley clan's...oh, hell, you get the point. I think Rowling's going for the big finish, only eschewing the normal hero's journey for the entirely more contemporaneous "Hell is other people."

Fred and George will save the world. No, really.

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

Well of course Fred and George indirectly allowed Malfoy to escape: the moral ambiguity of anarchy...

TCH

Help?

[wisewoman.livejournal.com]

I trusted Dumbledore! I believed Snape was on our side! How could I have been so wrong?

Was I wrong?

Is it because I'm old? Do you think that the kids who are Harry's age knew all along that Harry was right and Dumbledore had been mislead? Harry's never been right before, as you mention above.

Or could it possibly be the "old Gestapo trick?" One thing I did notice: Dumbledore has had not one iota of doubt in Snape, but at the moment S bursts through the door to the top of the tower, D's voice immediately becomes "pleading," quite shocking poor Harry. Now, why wouldn't D initially still believe that S had come to save him, just in the nick of time?

And, of course, I knew it was Ginny for Harry from the very first book. Fleur did surprise me though--how lovely! Winning over the Weasley women in a snap--quite the illustration of Dumbledore's theory on the power of love.

Is it possible that next year will not take place at Hogwarts at all? Okay, I'll stop babbling now...

;o)

Re: Help?

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

Word on the street is that Dumbledore asked or even forced Snape to kill him rather than compromise Snape's infiltration of the Death Eaters, much as Dumbledore asked or even forced Harry to feed him the poison hiding the false horcrux. That Dumbledore knew all about Snape's position from the beginning, knew all about the unbreakable vow, and begged Snape to sacrifice Dumbledore rather than himself.

The inevitability of Harry and Ginny is, in my opinion, what least recommended it.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

• The book is so full of snogging and almost-snogged and should've-snogged that I was quite afraid that when Harry burst in on Draco in the Room of Requirement he'd interrupt a Slytherin make-out party. Slytherin's an ambitious lot, so make that a full-out orgy.
  
• Hell, other than making out, for what would a sixteen year-old want a Room of Requirement?

*grins*