As the DVD and Blu Ray for Half-Blood Prince comes out this week, some of the extra features have sprung up on the web and it blew up the #harrypotter stream in my Twitter feed! Below is a roughly two minute video from  Daily Motion with a quick look at some of the scenes and settings for Deathly Hallows. You won’t find anything terribly revelatory, but you will see a few quick glimpses of the tent, Olivander, Griphook, and a couple of scenes I didn’t quite recognize.

Thoughts? Ideas?

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Chapter 1: The Other Minister
Chapter 2: Severus Snape, Fiery Snake
Chapter 3: Dumbledore Visits the Dursleys
Chapter 4a: Horace Slughorn
Chapter 4b: In the Spidery Broomshed
Chapter 5: An Excess of Phlegm Chapter 6: Disappearances and Detours
Chapter 7: The Slug Club
Chapter 8: Snape Victorious
Chapter 9: The First Day of Class: Snape and Slughorn
Chapter 10: The Gothic Gaunts
Chapter 11: Hermione’s Helping Hand
Chapter 12: Silver and Opals, Irony and Foreshadowing
Chapter 13: Young Dumbledore and Younger Voldemort
Chapter 14a: Harry, Like Dumbledore
Chapter 14b: The Felix of Fair Fortune
Chapter 15: A Party and a Promise
Chapter 16: Christmas Eve at the Burrow
Chapter 17: A Sluggish Memory
Chapter 18: Apparition, Bezoars, and Poisoned Mead
Chapter 19: Elf Tails
Chapter 20: Lord Voldemort’s Request (by Dave)
Chapter 21: The Unknowable Room, by revgeorge
Chapter 22: Essence of Insanity, by Lily Luna
Chapter 23: Horcruxes (by Johnny)
Chapter 24: Sectumsempra, by Arabella Figg
Chapter 25: The Seer Overheard, by revgeorge
Chapter 26: The Crowded Cave, by Red Rocker
Chapter 27: The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker
Chapter 28: The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
Chapter 29: The Phoenix Lament, by Arabella Figg
Chapter 30: The White Tomb (by Dave)

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• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker
• The Crowded Cave

Half-Blood Prince’s final chapter opens with a favorite device of Ernest Hemingway, the simple declarative sentence:

“All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed.”

It really is one of Rowling’s finer moments as a writer, poignant and rich with subtlety.  In this one statement, she wipes away all the carefree wonderment of childhood with pointed irony.  Hogwarts shifts in symbolism from a place of comfort and safety where the worst worry was two parchments on werewolves for horrible Professor Snape, to a place in which parents are spiriting their children away as fast as possible because Snape has murdered the headmaster.

We see the Centaurs and Merfolk gather and pay their respects in ways I believe would have left Dumbledore deeply honored.  His entombment is rich with symbolism, as Harry thinks “for one heart-stopping moment, that he [sees] a phoenix fly joyfully ino the blue.”  Yet, the “next second the fire had vanished,” and a brilliant “white marble tomb” sits in its place.

In Dumbledore’s death, Voldemort has seemingly gained a devastating victory. Harry and Hogwarts no longer have their protector.  The last bastion of paradise is now vulnerable — very vulnerable. Hogwarts has become, in one sense, a graveyard.

A palpable threat glares at us from the edges of this chapter, never clear and explicit, but there nonetheless. It peers at us from the Riddle mansion. The effect is amplified in the explicit declarations that our enchanting rhythm of nearly six long books has been broken.  We’re no longer tied to time as it is dictated in school.  Instead, everyone’s concerns take on much more urgent tones, emanating from a great emergency — war and death. Like the disjointed feeling new-minted graduates experience upon leaving school for “the real world,” so, too, with the Wizarding World as we’ve known it. Rowling is playing with an emotional realism like never before. Even as the Trio debate whether or not Hogwarts will be open in the next year, Harry makes it clear to readers that it doesn’t matter:  “I’m not coming back even if it does reopen.” The chapter’s overriding emotion is not only sadness, but anxiety.

Harry understands his childhood is over.  Yet, Rowling isn’t ready to declare him “ready.”  To lift a line from another heroic opus, Harry must complete his training.  In Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Yoda’s warning to Luke refers to a need to complete both a physical and mental training that prepares him to confront ultimate evil in the form of his father.  The trope is a common one, and often serves as a way to remove our Hero’s wise mentor out from under him.  In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore is taken from Harry so that Harry has to complete his heroic quest on his own.

I’ve always argued that HBP’s central plot thread is Dumbledore’s intense efforts to educate Harry in a more hazardous, yet consequential, way of engaging Voldemort — the fine art of speculation and inferrential reasoning.  The Pensieve lessons are always about piecing together incomplete pieces of Voldemort’s past so as to anticipate his plans.

Yet, there are sharp indications that Harry still has much to learn now that he has been thrust prematurely into his adulthood.  Trying to decipher who might be R.A.B, his feelings betray him:

He did not fell the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery, he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcruxes had to be completed before he could move a little farther along the dark and winding path stretching ahdead of him, the path he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone.  There might still be as many as four Horcruxes out there somewhere. … He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them within reach.

This picture starkly contrasts what we’ve seen from Harry before.  Whenever confronted with a problem, excitement and curiosity have coursed through him, often uncontrollably.  Philosopher’s Stone describes his first use of the Invisibility Cloak in terms of pure adrenaline:  “The whole of Hogwarts was open to him…”  Yet, in two years Harry has watched both Sirius and Dumbledore die as his intelligence and heroism failed him.  His rash dash into the Ministry’s aptly named Department of Mysteries ends in tragedy.  One year later, he can do nothing whatsoever to fight off Dumbeldore’s killers.  In two crucial moments, Harry believes that his greatest attributes have betray him completely.

Now, harry must rely on the kind of reasoning (incomplete as its bases may sometimes be) in order to think through the journey in front of him. And we see examples of incomplete thoughts seeping forth from Harry:

Neville and Luna alone of the D.A. had responded to Hermione’s summons the night that Dumbledore had died, and Harry knew why: They were the ones how had missed the D.A. the most… probably the ones who had checked their coins regularly in the hope that there would be another meeting.

The ellipsis points the reader to something omitted here.  Harry attaches a kind of childish need-to-belong to their loyalty.  Yet, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to add that Neville and Luna missed the D.A. the most because they believed in its cause.  It was surely one of the first places either had experienced social acceptance, but they also chose what was right over what was easy. And Neville will prove it in grim and terrifying fashion at the end of DH.

Harry’s breakup with Ginny is another pointer that Harry hasn’t quite thought his plan through.  As Harry laments what might have been, Ginny’s response is both knife-edged and sympathetic:  “‘But you’ve been too busy saving the Wizarding World,’ siad Ginny, half laughing. ‘Well…I can’t say I’m surprised.  I knew this would happen in the end.  I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort.  Maybe that’s why I like you so much.’”  Without question she resents his choice here, but accepts it without too much protest.  There’s a sense in which she seems to say to him, “Do you really think my safety is what matters now?  Don’t you see my importance to you in all of this?”  Harry hasn’t quite recognized in his friends and true love what we as readers see in John Granger’s eloquently explicated alchemical narrative.  All of them are absolutely important for Harry’s efforts to overcome Voldemort’s plan.

In addition, we witness the Trio speculate on Snape’s motives by looking at the past hinted at in Harry’s illicit Potions book.  Snape’s lineage leads Harry to conclude quite simply that Snape is “just like Voldemort.”  As determined as Harry needs to be, this reads alongside what we learn in Deathly Hallows, as a warning against thinking dismissively.  Admittedly, Harry is thinking emotionally.  But, if we learned anything from Dumbledore in the last three chapters, it’s that facing a crisis with a calm mind and steady courage is absolutely important.  Harry has to relearn this now that his challenges have grown more sinister.

Other moments Harry takes notice of are just as compelling in light of Deathly Hallows.  The appearance of an anonymous Elphias Doge foreshadows his role in DH.  Harry dismisses the man’s eulogy because “It did not mean very much.  It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him.”  Immediately, Harry flashes to his first vision of Dumbledore and his wonderfully odd welcome to Hogwarts:  “Nitwit! Oddment! Blubber! Tweak!”  What Draco and the other Malfoys want to construe as Dumbledore’s senility, Harry recognizes as Dumbledore’s playfulness.  In light of Doge’s highly romanticized view of Dumbledore in DH, the one Harry so desperately wants to cling to, his entire performance here reads as a bright warning to Harry not to read too much into Doge’s sentiments.

Harry declares he is “Dumbledore’s man through and through,” but this final chapter is full of flashing warnings of Harry’s biggest fight to come.  He’s faced down Voldemort multiple times on pure instinct, and he’s felt the warmth of victory and chill of defeat.  He’s even forced Voldemort from his mind and body.  Along with that metaphor in Order of the Phoenix, “The White Tomb” shows us that one of Harry’s greatest foes yet to come is his own self.  Dumbledore has armed for this battle more than perhaps any other.

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Chapter 29 of our Half-Blood Prince Read-Through is brought to you by Arabella Figg!

Shock and grief define this chapter’s mood. In addition, we have three betrayals that took place before Dumbledore’s death on the tower.

We don’t get a Dumbledore denouement in Half-Blood Prince, but we still get a book-ending data dump in the hospital ward and Headmaster’s office, as the characters deconstruct the evening’s events.

As we move alchemically from white to red, moisture continuously flows—tears, blood, sweating, and ointment.  Silver-haired Phlegm’s frozen expression upon seeing Bill melts in a red-hot passion as choleric as that of any Weasley. Rubedo elements abound: a lot of Hagrid, the Weasleys, Gryffindor rubies, bloody Bill, Gryffindor’s sword, Rufus Scrimgeour, battle blazes, and recounted wounds. In the heard but unseen presence of red and gold Fawkes throughout, and Dumbledore snoozing in a golden frame in the Headmaster’s office, there is promise.

Harry and White Hats

I see Harry as taking on the Dumbledore role here, especially in the hospital ward where he gives critical information and explanations, and questions the others about events. Though McGonagall presides in the Headmaster’s office, Harry interacts as an equal with the adults, refusing to give her information, and insisting on a Dumbledore funeral/burial at Hogwarts, so the students can say goodbye to him (in contrast to his own experience with Sirius).

It’s Ginny who leads dazed Harry away from Dumbledore’s body; only when he recognizes her “trace of flowery fragrance” does he realize whom he unthinkingly obeyed. What symbolism might be here?

Hagrid’s eyes may be blurry with tears throughout the chapter, but his vision is quite clear, and his devotion to Dumbledore steadfast and touching. And don’t you love Professor Sprout voicing Dumbledore? “If a single pupil wants to come…,” she says, the school should remain open.

Betrayal # 1:   The White Hats by Dumbledore and Snape.

(While we, having read Deathly Hallows, know the truth, the characters at this point surely perceive their actions as betrayals.)

Stunned by Snape’s evil deed, the WHs are appalled by Dumbledore’s seeming naiveté when they learn his “ironclad reason” for trusting the former Death Eater. Disaster has ensued because they had put their unswerving faith in Dumbledore, and therefore Snape, though McGonagall says, “We all wondered….” Slughorn later says about Snape, “I taught him! I thought I knew him!” Curious reaction. Didn’t Sluggo see that the adult Snape was far removed from the boy he’d taught and Lily had loved? Does this betrayal foreshadow the betrayal Harry will feel in DH?

Upon learning that Dumbledore’s “ironclad reason” was Snape’s deep regret over James and Lily Potter’s death, Lupin is incredulous. “Snape hated James,” he declares. Again, no one makes any Lily/Severus connections, though some of them must have remembered the two as friends for most of their school years. (As Remus and Lily were same-year Gryffindors, and Remus was present at the event Harry refers to, wouldn’t Remus have known of it?) But Harry forestalls any speculation by bitterly adding, without explanation or context, that Snape “didn’t think my mother was worth a damn, either,” and had called her Mudblood. No one questions this.

What do you think of Harry, and how he takes command in this chapter?

The Black Hats

Betrayal # 2: Draco by the Death Eaters

We clearly see how Draco has lost any control he believed he had in his assignment. Not only do the Death Eaters attack and hurt students (and use killing curses!), they bring along the hideously violent Fenrir Greyback, known to prey on and eat children. However nasty he is, I can’t see Draco condoning this. He expected no WHs to be on watch, and perhaps naively believed the DEs were to secure the school borders, be his guard, and set off the Mark. Instead, there was a “fight-to-the-death battle.” Once Greyback emerged into the RoHT, I think Draco felt desperate and trapped well before ascending the tower stairs to his doom.

Also, we see how much Draco has kept Snape out of the loop to attain all the glory for himself (symbolized by carrying the Hand of Glory?); Snape only learns of the infiltration from Flitwick.

Romance

Amidst the anguished discussion over Bloody Bill’s bed, we have an interlude—the Tonks/Lupin romantic revelation/argument, and a brief discussion of love, referencing Dumbledore. Fire away.

Snape

Snape certainly never expected White Hat witnesses at the Dumbledore execution. When Flitwick came to fetch him, Snape Stupefied him. Was Snape sidelining a talented “foe” able to stop or report him, or protecting a fellow-teacher from harm? Remember that Snape, no matter how distasteful, has been a protective figure all throughout the books.

Betrayal #3:  Snape by Draco and the Death Eaters

Draco betrayed Snape through exclusion, even though he knew his mentor had taken the Unbreakable Vow on his behalf. This exclusion and the mass DE attack made Snape’s position that much more difficult. Because of Harry’s witness (and surely Snape realized Hermione and Luna would tumble to Flitwick’s Stupification), he now had to flee the school, where Dumbledore intended him to stay. This put serious sand in the gears. In DH, we learn Snape was to continue his double agent work, protect Harry, and give him the Scarcrux information if LV stopped using Nagini. Also, Snape was to prevent the Carrows from taking over the school.

Fawkes

Fawkes the phoenix “flies somewhere out in the darkness,” singing a “stricken lament of terrible beauty,” heard within the hearer, rather than without, turning “grief magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows.” While actively listening, everyone loses a sense of time (as did Harry when he kissed Ginny), not knowing why “it seemed to ease their pain a little to listen to the sound of their mourning.” Most of the chapter takes place in the hospital wing, a place of healing.

Harry, reflecting Fleur’s frozen shock, is himself numb with grief and shock at chapter’s end. Lying on his bed, he suddenly realizes the grounds are silent; Fawkes “had left for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world…had left Harry” (another foreshadowing). Thoughts on Fawkes symbolism? How does phoenix Fawkes tie in with Dumbledore’s phoenix Patronus rising from his body (which seems to be three days later) in the next chapter?

Arabella out. As Stan Shunpike would say, “Take it away, Ern!”

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Another guest post by Lily Luna! Chapter 28 of our Half-Blood Prince Read-Through.

Tonight has been one adrenaline-pumping moment after another for Harry.  He learns it was Snape who relayed the prophecy to Voldemort.  Dumbledore gives him a ludicrous explanation of Snape’s remorse.  He experiences Gothic horror upon Gothic horror in the cave.  He is forced to torture and nearly kill Dumbledore by force-feeding him poison.  They are nearly killed by Inferi.  They return to see the Dark Mark over the Tower.  Harry is forced to watch helplessly as Draco and Dumbledore confront each other, the other Death Eaters taunt Dumbledore and lust for his death, and finally, the ultimate horror: Snape blasts Dumbledore off the Tower with the killing curse.  Harry then almost has his throat ripped out by Greyback, fears his friends are dead, duels Death Eaters, engages in a long tortuous foot race through the castle and grounds, ineffectually duels Snape who sneers at him while Hagrid’s hut is set on fire and Fang howls, and is tortured by Rowle.  Is it any wonder that by this point Harry is crazed beyond reason or fear and tries to kill Snape?

That’s right, KILL.  When Harry tries to use Sectumsempra on Snape, he is trying to kill, not just injure, the person he has come to hate as much as he hates Voldemort.  He has seen what the curse did to Draco and to the bodies of the Inferi, yet he deliberately uses it “blindly” and therefore uncontrollably on Snape.  Snape has just stopped Rowle from torturing Harry and saved Harry from being kidnapped and brought to Voldemort, but Harry does not even notice.  He is intent only on destroying the man who has verbally tormented him for years and now has seemingly shown himself a traitor and murderer.  Is Harry morally responsible for his actions at this moment?  If Snape had not blocked him would Harry have been guilty of murder?  Dumbledore with all his plotting very nearly saves Draco’s soul at the cost of Harry’s.

Snape is enraged at Harry’s attempts to torture and kill him, at his ingratitude, at the thought that he has been protecting a boy whom Dumbledore keeps praising and yet has turned to the Dark Arts in pursuing him, and at his own spell being turned against him.  When Harry tries to use Levicorpus on him, to humiliate him like James did and throw him off balance thereby making him vulnerable to a repeated Sectumsempra, it is the last straw.  Snape in that moment feels a hatred for Harry and for his mission equal to what he felt having to kill Dumbledore on the Tower.  He tells Harry just who the Half-Blood Prince was, tells him he’s just like his “filthy father,” thereby denying Dumbledore’s assertions that he’s more like his mother, and blasts Harry’s wand away when he dives for it.  Harry then pushes Snape over the edge by again calling him a coward.

“DON’T – ” screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them – “CALL ME COWARD!”

For Snape, who has displayed tremendous courage ever since Voldemort first threatened Lily, this is the ultimate insult.  For the third time in the series he loses his self control and his inner torment shows in his face.  He looks like an animal in as much pain as the howling Fang, just like he made “a terrible sound, like a wounded animal” during his grief and remorse after Lily’s death.

There is a strong parallel between this scene and the scene in the Shrieking Shack in Prisoner of Azkaban, where Snape looked “suddenly quite deranged.”  There, too, Harry threw the bullying that Snape had suffered in his face and called him “pathetic,” leading Snape to call Harry arrogant, “like father, like son,” and revile Harry for his ingratitude.  There, Harry, Ron, and Hermione slammed Snape into the wall and knocked him out when they tried to disarm him.  Here, the situation is reversed.  Snape has already effectively disarmed Harry and now magically whips Harry across the face, slamming him into the ground so hard he is dazed and cannot breathe for a moment, lying there like Snape lay “lifeless” in PoA.

Buckbeak intervenes, slashing at Snape with his razor-sharp claws and chasing him off the grounds.  A hippogriff and perhaps a symbol of Christ (per John Granger’s speculations in Unlocking Harry Potter, p. 124, 2007 edition), Buckbeak is doing more than protect Harry from Snape.  He is protecting both of them from themselves and from each other.  He prevents Snape from going too far and harming his own soul and by making Snape run as fast as he can, he protects Harry from finding his wand in time to try again to kill Snape.  This passage reminds me strongly of the scene in C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy where the Christ-like lion Aslan chases Shasta and Aravis on their horses to make the horses run as fast as they can so that Shasta can deliver a warning in time.  At the end of the chase, Aslan attacks Aravis, clawing her back to give her wounds like those she callously left a servant to suffer from a whip when she left home.  Aslan is not trying to kill Aravis, only make her feel the servant’s pain.  Here, Buckbeak claws but does not try to kill Snape, giving him wounds that make him feel the pain he has inflicted on others, including James, from his own use of Sectumsempra, as well as Harry’s pain from Snape magically “whipping” him and from the many cutting remarks Snape has made to Harry over the years.

There are additional parallels to other books in the series:

• The chapter title “The Flight of the Prince” foreshadows the literal flight of the Prince from the castle in Deathly Hallows.
• Harry hits Amycus (who has been trying to Cruciate Ginny) with an Impediment jinx, slamming him into a wall with a “piglike squeal of pain,” which foreshadows him hitting Amycus with Crucio in DH, slamming him howling in pain into a cabinet.
• Harry is comforted by Fang’s warm body, just like he is comforted by the warmth of Fawkes in Dumbledore’s office at the end of Goblet of Fire.  Hagrid rescues Fang from the fire; Fawkes lives in a cycle of fiery death and rebirth.  At the end of this chapter Fang howls; in the next, Fawkes laments.  Fawkes leaves; Fang stays.  What are some other Fawkes and Fang connections and what do they mean?
• What other instances of foreshadowing are there in this chapter (one is obvious)?

Some more questions to consider:

• What meaning(s) do you read into Harry’s feeling that if he could just get Snape and Dumbledore back together the murder could be reversed?
• What are some of the alchemical elements in this chapter?  There are a number of symbols of each of the black, white, and red stages and a descent from the Tower down through a labyrinth of hallways, secret passageways, and stairs inside the dark castle (from the air to the ground instead of underground).  Do we seem to go through more than one stage within this chapter and if so are the stages in the usual order?
• Why is Harry able to catch up to Snape and Draco?  Did Snape deliberately take the longer route so he could be around to protect Harry from the other Death Eaters?
• Is Snape right to fear telling Harry the truth about his motivations or does his pride nearly get him killed?
• What else can be said about Buckbeak and similarities between PoA and HBP?
• Was the trip to the cave pointless as Harry believes?  Did Dumbledore notice that the locket was wrong when he took it from the basin?  What clues are in RAB’s note as to his identity?

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Today’s guest post for chapter 26 of the Half-Blood Prince read-through is from one of our longest-standing patrons: Red Rocker!

In Chapter 26 of Half-Blood Prince, we witness Harry and Dumbledore make their way into a large, dark cave, take an enchanted boat to a rocky outcropping in the middle of a dark lake, dispose of the green potion of awfulness in a particularly awful manner, fight off some inferi, and grab the fake amulet and run, attended by fireworks.

They are alone in the cave, save for the aforementioned inferi, who are so featureless as to be characterless. Voldemort’s enchantments live on, but he himself is a topic of conversation only. For all intents and purposes, Harry and Dumbledore are alone.

But it’s a crowded place, all the same.

Look in the shadows, and you can see a crowd of myth masters: The unknown story tellers of Norse and Roman mythology are present. The blind poet Homer is there. I suspect Plato and his mouthpiece are there too because it’s really hard to think of a cave, without thinking of The Cave. Dante Alighieri is there, and his Roman mentor and sometime traveling companion, Virgil. Not surprisingly, Tolkien is there, puffing on his pipe, reminding Sam to keep Frodo from touching the water. And not surprisingly at all, David is there, singing praises to the Lord.

Not much doubt about where Chapter 26 takes place: the old Norse word for “cave” is “hellir”. Our word “hell” comes from Norse mythology: the dark goddess Hel, Queen of Shades. But if doubt remains, we can refer to Roman mythology, where the name for the gods of the underworld was “Inferi Dii”.

The trip that Harry and Dumbledore take to the underworld has been done before, and the rites and rituals are known: when Odysseus and his men visit the Underworld in Homer’s Odyssey, they make a sacrifice of blood, which attracts the spirits of the dead. Odysseus fends them off, until he finds the dead man he came to speak to. He uses ram’s blood, while Harry and Dumbledore use Voldermort’s preference: their own blood.

Plato’s Cave? Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But there is a strong theme of reality vs. illusion. So much in the cave is deception: the invisible archway, the hidden boat, the intangible potion, the fake amulet. Reality is not available to Harry at all who only sees the shadows dancing on the wall. Dumbledore, though, can see the “invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp.” So it’s Dumbledore who finds the invisible archway in the wall, feels out the invisible chain that pulls in the hidden boat, intuits the presence of the invisible island, the hidden locket, and the secret enchantments placed on the cave by Voldemort.

And then there’s Dante’s trip to the lowest levels of hell, in the company of his spirit guide, the poet Virgil. In the eighth ring of the Eighth Circle – Counselors of Fraud (Sins of Malice division) – they encounter Odysseus and friend, who walks wrapped in flame, his punishment for his schemes and conspiracies that won the Trojan War.

Reminds me of the Jason Cockcroft cover for HBP: Albus Dumbledore and friend, surrounded by rings of fire. Any other resemblance of character or motive may or may not be spurious.

And for the grand finale, we get a reading from Psalm 23:

‘I am not worried, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. ‘I am with you.’

It’s one of JKR’s strongest chapters. And the strength comes from the voices of all the shades whose words she’s listened to and heard. And repeated in her own words so others too could hear and understand.

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Another guest post by revgeorge!

Glad to be back with another post on HBP. Sorry I’ll have to briefly touch on many points.

The Trio plus One is enjoying an interlude of calm and happiness. Harry is blissfully happy with Ginny. Even Ron and Hermione are happy and laughing for once. But there are still hints of gloom. Ginny mentions three Dementor attacks. The war is still going on despite the relative insulation the students enjoy at Hogwarts. Do you think Rowling succeeds in showing us the intensity of the war raging outside through only snippets of information breaking into the pretty much routine life of Hogwarts? After all, even though Voldemort’s back and war is on, this school year for Harry is pretty much the same as usual. Any thoughts?

Quite a bit of time seems to pass in this chapter without much comment. Harry & Ginny’s happy times are curtailed because Ginny must study for OWLS and Harry has detentions still with Snape, which Snape seems to relish dragging out. So, several weeks or more must pass rather quickly in this chapter.

Hermione won’t let the Half-blood Prince go and through her research comes up with the picture of Eileen Prince. After much heated discussion, no one is satisfied with this information. Harry is certain the Prince is a boy; Hermione thinks it must be Eileen Prince. In a way they are both on the right track. Eileen is the mother of the Prince, and the book is most likely hers passed down to Snape. But Snape is the self proclaimed Half-blood Prince.

Right after this discussion about the Prince, Snape is mentioned again. It’s almost as if JKR is slapping our faces with the latent connection, Half-blood Prince=Snape, with just enough doubts thrown in with Eileen Prince to keep us from seeing the connection clearly.

Harry then receives another note from Dumbledore and heads off to meet him. Along the way he passes near the Room of Requirement just in time to hear Professor Trelawney thrown out of it by an apparently ecstatic Draco. Interesting point about the Room, if you try to get in and find out what someone is doing, you can’t. But if you try to get in for your own purposes, like Harry with the potions book or Trelawney and her sherry bottles, you can get in with no problems and possibly interrupt someone trying to work secretly. Does this make sense? Wouldn’t the Room had made some especially hidden place for Draco to work? Plus, for the first time all book neither Crabbe nor Goyle are on lookout.

This chapter then closes off with two terribly important things, which I will just comment on in brief. Harry finally hears from Trelawney who exactly overhead the prophecy being made, Snape again! Dumbledore says in Order of the Phoenix that the eavesdropper was found out half way into the prophecy and thrown out of The Hog’s Head. But Trelawney sees Snape caught by Aberforth after she comes out of her trance. What’s going on here? It’s obvious that Snape only gives Voldemort half the prophecy but did he hear all of it or did he catch only part before being caught and held up to be seen by Trelawney?

After this an enraged Harry rushes off to Dumbledore’s office to confront him but is quickly dumbfounded when he learns Dumbledore has located another horcrux and wants Harry to go with him. His excitement and anger wage war until Dumbledore presses his thoughts out of him.

For more discussion:

• Thoughts on Trelawney. She seems a complete old fraud but yet does have a real gift. What do you make of her and prophecy and divination in general?
• Dumbledore’s face whitens when Harry reveals he knows Snape told Voldemort the prophecy. Why do you think Dumbledore reacted this way, and what do you think of his attempted defense of Snape?
• Dumbledore told Harry to keep his invisibility cloak on him at all times but yet gives Harry time to go back to Gryffindor Tower to retrieve his cloak. What do you think of this?

Any other thoughts? After this chapter things get progressively darker for awhile.

Related Posts

• The Hog’s Head Half-Blood Prince Read-Through
• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker

Our next guest post comes from Arabella Figg! ~ Travis

This is my first post here, and what a chapter to work on! So, no metaphorical Dung Bombs, please. (All page references are from the American edition.)

Sectumsempra could well have been titled Truth or Consequences, as deceit plays the starring role. Moreover, two events we’ve long-anticipated—a confrontation between Harry and Draco, and another kind between Harry and Ginny—occur.

The chapter begins with good news—Katie Bell’s return and the Ron/Lavender and Ginny/Dean breakups, Harry can now pursue Ginny, but fears Ron will disapprove; is he right (Ron has previously indicated how he would feel)? He returns Katie to the Quidditch team, displacing Dean who has played most of the year; was this fair?

Why do you think Slughorn stops holding Slug Club parties after telling Harry the truth about his Horcrux conversation with Tom Riddle?

Now we come to the heart of Sectumsempra: Harry’s bathroom encounter with Draco.
We have seen some amazing changes in Draco in this book—from brutish strutting to terrified crying. We also learn what drives him: if he fails, Voldemort will kill him. Is there any significance to Draco seeing Harry in a cracked mirror?

Throughout his many travails involving desperation, frustration or fear, Harry has never shed tears (except in grief over Sirius’ death). What does this say about him? How do you feel about Draco’s tears; do they diminish him? Though Draco has always been cowardly, do you feel differently about him in this chapter?
What follows is not Harry’s finest hour. We have to ask, who are the heroes and villains in the following sequence?

(Note: Sectumsempra is a favorite curse of Snape’s. He uses it nonverbally twice in the series: against the tormenting James Potter (OotP 647), and in trying to save Remus, instead accidentally severing George’s ear (DH 688).

Now, into the bathroom, friends. First Harry spies upon and then unwittingly humiliates his tormented enemy by watching him cry, thus engendering a duel. To counter Draco’s Cruciatus curse, Harry employs the Prince’s Sectumsempra curse, which he’s been itching to try, to disastrous results. What were his other options?

Snape seems to arrive at the bathroom quite quickly. Was he following Harry or Draco? If he was watching over Draco, should he have diverted Harry from entering?

Along with using his wand, Snape sings over Draco three times to heal his wounds, each pass a step of healing. What relationship to Phoenix song might this have? What about any symbolism in both blood and water drenching the scene (and Harry)? What do you make of this line: “There were bloodstains floating like crimson flowers across [the wet floor’s] surface” (523)?

When Snape orders Harry to wait for him in the bathroom while taking care of Draco, “It did not occur to Harry for a second to disobey” (523). Yet within minutes, he’s boldly lying to an expert Legilimens (quite familiar with his mind) about where he learned the curse. Though Harry knows Snape sees the Potions book in his mind, he continues lying, and disobys Snape’s order to give over the Potions book. Instead, Harry switches covers with Ron’s book (involving Ron in his deception), hides the Prince’s book in the Room of Requirement (now the Room of Hidden Things), and brings Ron’s book to Snape. Harry then “firmly” and with “defiance” (527) heaps lies upon lies to Snape about the book’s ownership and provenance. Snape calls Harry “a liar and a cheat,” (528) and gives him a Professor McGonagall-approved Saturday detention for the rest of the term, thus making him miss the rest of the Quidditch matches.

Who are the honorable and dishonorable ones (or is each person partly both) during this sequence and why? How did you feel about Snape calling Harry a liar and cheat? Consider Harry, throughout the series, cribbing Hermione’s homework to pass his classes, and lying in many and varied circumstances? Did you read this scene differently after having read DH? Has Snape always been truthful to Harry, no matter the cruel and self-serving the delivery?

Hermione later upbraids Harry, but Ginny defends his use of the curse. Both love Harry, in different ways. Who is right and/or honorable here?

The chapter closes happily. At long last, after a critical Gryffindor win, Ginny runs to Harry and…they kiss! Did you feel this hit the expectation mark? What about Ron’s reaction?

There’s so much more to ruminate over in this chapter, but I leave it to you. For example:

• Why do you think Harry didn’t connect the curse and the Prince’s book with Snape, as Snape’s knowledge of this curse, questions and behavior were, as Rowling might say, “obvious”?
• Truth or Consequence: what might have happened if Harry been truthful about the Potions book? Was he right to deceive Snape?
• Draco knows that Snape has made the Unbreakable Vow (323), yet says Voldemort will kill him if he fails. Does this fit with the Unbreakable Vow as explained in Chapter 2?
• Why do you think Moaning Myrtle (after what we learned about ghosts in OotP) remained a certainly unhappy ghost?
• What does this chapter reveal about achieving access to the Room of Requirement? Why did Harry fail earlier and then succeed?
• Did Harry’s viewing his father’s misdeeds during detention have any value, especially after his Pensieve experience in the previous book?
• What setups for the last book do we find in the Room of Hidden Things?

Have fun!

Related Posts

• The Hog’s Head Half-Blood Prince Read-Through
• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker

Chapter 23 (“Horcruxes”) is one of the most important chapters in the book with great implications for what happens thereafter, especially the last novel. The Felix Felicis potion is wearing off as Harry arrives at the portrait of the Fat Lady, but not before he finds out from Nearly Headless Nick that Dumbledore arrived at the school an hour ago. How lucky indeed! Harry arrives at Dumbledore’s office and now both of them can finally see the true, unaltered memory of Slughorn. A few observations:

1. Tom Riddle is wearing Marvolo’s ring so he already killed his father and paternal grandparents prior to the memory. Slughorn’s comments that he has “never been wrong about a student yet” is interesting because the reader knows that he is in fact wrong about Tom Riddle. Perhaps the main reason why Slughorn says this is because of Tom’s “careful flattery of the people who matter…” We know Slughorn has a weakness in this regard, but perhaps Slughorn shouldn’t be faulted for this. Many people, with the exception of Dumbledore, were taken in by the charming and talented Slytherin student.

2. The fact that Tom has the ring calls into question whether he really needed to know what a horcrux was. Despite what Slughorn says about the availability of horcrux books at Hogwarts, there is one book as we discover in the last novel, Secrets of the Darkest Art, which gives explicit instructions on making a horcrux. It is possible that Tom Riddle had access to that book before speaking to Slughorn. While horcruxes was banned as a subject at Hogwarts as of Professor Dippet’s reign as headmaster, there is no indication that any books on horcruxes were immediately taken out of the library, at least until Professor Dumbledore took over as headmaster. All the questions Tom asks Slughorn are building up to the information that he really seeks: can someone split their soul into two or more fragments. Such information would not be found in any book because it was never attempted.

3. Harry responds to Dumbledore’s comment that Harry has a power the Dark Lord never had with “I can love!” and almost saying “Big Deal!” Dumbledore picks up on this and says, “Yes, Harry, you can love…Which, given everything that has happened to you, is a great and remarkable thing. You are still too young to understand how unusual you are, Harry.” Harry’s reaction is not unusual because up to this point, he has heard constantly that love conquers all and that love will defeat Voldemort in the end. Harry sees Voldemort as stronger and does not yet see or understand that he can defeat Voldemort because of his self-sacrificial love in the end.

This leads us to the last part of the chapter and probably the most useful for discussion, namely what is the role of free will in the whole prophecy business. Dumbledore says that Harry is “setting too much store by the prophecy” before essentially saying that if Voldemort never killed Harry’s parents, would that have given Harry the desire for revenge. Of course not. It is because Voldemort killed his parents and is seeking to kill him that Harry will have to face the Dark Lord in the end. As long as Voldemort sets store in the prophecy, Harry will not rest until he defeats him. How can we understand Harry’s choice in light of the prophecy? Does Dumbledore answer the question sufficiently? How about Harry’s choice to go to Voldemort in the Forest and give up his life in light of his knowledge that this scenario has been planned already by Dumbledore? Is free will still involved?

Finally it is only fitting to close this post with the quote that closes the very chapter we are about to discuss:

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.

Related Posts

• The Hog’s Head Half-Blood Prince Read-Through
• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker

Special thanks to Lily Luna for her willingness to guest-blog for Chapter 22 of our Half-Blood Prince Read-Through! She’ll be returning for “Flight of the Prince” as well. Enjoy! ~ Travis

I am honored to be asked to assist with the HBP read-through.

In Chapter 22, Slughorn extracts a bottle of valuable venom from the dead Aragog and Harry in turn extracts a bottle of valuable memory from him. Thus both spinners are milked of something evil. Harry gets the memory through a combination of drinking lucky potion, luring Slughorn with the promise of the venom, getting Slughorn drunk, appealing to his love of Lily and affection for Harry, and promising him that giving Harry the memory will cancel out the damage done by discussing horcruxes with Voldemort.

The set up for the chapter is a tear-stained note from Hagrid asking Harry, Ron, and Hermione to come help him bury Aragog that evening. Harry is the only one who sees that Hagrid is really asking for their comfort and support, not for them to mourn Aragog, but he reluctantly agrees with Ron and Hermione not to go. Hagrid’s tears are a reminder of Narcissa’s tears in the Spinner’s End chapter and also foreshadow everyone’s grief over Dumbledore’s death.

Hermione suggests that Harry take advantage of most of the class being off taking their apparition tests to try again to get the memory from Slughorn. Harry says “fifty-seventh time lucky, you think” and Ron has one of his brilliant inspirations to suggest Harry try using his lucky potion. Ron often seems like the dumbest of the three, but perhaps once a book has an inspired idea or makes a really important contribution. In Sorcerer’s Stone he beats McGonagall’s giant chess set. In Chamber of Secrets he figures out that the entrance to the Chamber is in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom (after seeing Hermione’s note about pipes), and in Deathly Hallows he comes up with the idea of descending into the Chamber of Secrets to harvest basilisk fangs to stab the horcruxes.

Harry agrees to try the lucky potion that evening if he isn’t successful during Potions class. In Potions we learn that Draco, like Harry, is young for his year, which emphasizes just how young he was when Voldemort made him a Death Eater. Harry notices that all of Draco’s swagger is gone and assumes that means his mission is not going well. While that is true, I suspect Draco is already becoming disillusioned with being a Death Eater and, perhaps, is horrified that he almost killed Katie Bell and Ron with his attempts to kill Dumbledore.

Harry makes an Elixir to Induce Euphoria for Slughorn (sunshine yellow, which reminds me of the clothes the Lovegoods wear to the wedding in Deathly Hallows and of Harry’s eyebrow when he asked Luna to Slughorn’s party). The choice of Elixir seems on a continuum with the Felix Felicis Harry takes later, since a lucky (or happy) day and euphoria might go hand-in-hand.

Hermione becomes the only one of the three legally allowed to apparate during the series. Ron’s splinched half-an-eyebrow foreshadows the much worse injury he suffers escaping from the Ministry in Deathly Hallows.

Felix Felicis turns out to be a very strong confidence-boosting potion, which lights Harry’s path a little at a time. Harry immediately alarms Ron and Hermione by telling them he’s going down to Hagrid’s. This scene is really funny as Ron wonders whether Harry didn’t drink “Essence of Insanity” by mistake. Ironically, Ron’s line has an element of truth to it. Consider Felix’ effects on Harry: he strides through the castle brimming with confidence, knowing what he does is right, he meets no one leaving the castle, he throws open the front door, saunters over to the greenhouses, persuades Slughorn to come on down to Hagrid’s, easily pulls off the refilling charm, remorselessly tells Slughorn how his parents died, that his mother was only protecting him, etc. His boundless-self confidence and certitude in his own rightness are useful for the purpose of getting the memory but are not very attractive qualities in a person over the long-term. We wouldn’t really like a person who acted like that. And really, aren’t those Voldemort’s qualities, super-self-confidence, remorselessness, and no doubts as to his actions? And what is Voldemort in the end? Insane. Thus Essence of Insanity unfortunately is a fitting description for Felix Felicis.

At Aragog’s wake, Slughorn refers to Ron as “Rupert.” I’ve seen comments (I forget where) that this was a mistake on Rowling’s part, that she used Grint’s name by accident because she was too busy thinking about the movies. To the contrary, I think this was a deliberate joke by Rowling, in line with the other instances of Slughorn getting Ron’s name wrong, like calling him Ralph (Fiennes?) on his birthday.

Hagrid and Slughorn sing a song, “Odo the Hero,” about a “dying wizard.” Hagrid sings a final verse immediately after referring to Lily and James:

And Odo the hero, they bore him back home
To the place that he’d known as a lad,
They laid him to rest with his hat inside out
And his wand snapped in two, which was sad.

In one sense this foreshadows Harry’s visit to his parents’ graves in Godric’s Hollow in Deathly Hallows. However, the song also can be read as a composite of other heroes in the series, especially Dumbledore (who is actually slowly dying at the moment), Harry, and Snape. Dumbledore revisits his childhood home in his mind in the cave; Harry bears him back to Hogsmeade; and Hagrid carries him in his arms to a grave at Hogwarts, the place he knew as a lad of 11+. Seemingly dead Harry is borne in Hagrid’s arms back to Hogwarts castle at the end of Deathly Hallows. Snape earlier in this book returned to his childhood home at Spinner’s End and dies in the Shrieking Shack, the place where he was almost killed as a youth, in Deathly Hallows. If we read “hat inside out” to mean a head inside out, Snape’s head is almost literally turned inside out when he releases his cloud of memories and Harry’s head is figuratively inverted when it becomes a misty meeting place for him and Dumbledore’s soul in King’s Cross. Lucius’ wand is snapped in two during the aerial chase by Harry’s wand, signifying the death of Lucius’ status with the Death Eaters. Harry’s wand in turn is snapped in two in Godric’s Hollow, signifying the low point of Deathly Hallows and the near death of Harry’s faith in Dumbledore. Eventually his faith is restored and his wand is repaired (like I suspect Hagrid’s wand once was) by the Elder Wand.

I’ve left some items untouched for others to comment on. I welcome your comments on what I’ve written as well.

Related Posts

• The Hog’s Head Half-Blood Prince Read-Through
• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker