Finished Harry Potter
Jul. 26th, 2005 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayI finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night. I *thought* ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kestrell finished it then also, but she later confessed to having succumbed to reading the e-text over the weekend. Ah well. I hadn't really expected her to hold out as long as she did...
All in all, a satisfying installment. Spoilers below, possibly including spoilers for Book 7, if I'm right:
Yup, I was expecting the Big D to be rendered not-survived about now. Still fairly moving when it happened. The scene with the potion at the lake, however, was pretty squicky.
I'm about 80% sure that Snape was acting on Dumbledore's orders, though I wouldn't fault anyone for adopting a "shoot on sight" policy at this point. And, as Kes pointed out, this is going to be an *awesome* scene in the movie! I expect that Snape is now in a position very like the protagonist of the (excellent) comic book Sleeper: his double-agent cover is now so deep that he despairs of ever coming in from the cold.
A bit disappointing that Rowling appears to be going for the obvious romantic pairings. If Harry *doesn't* end up including Ginny in his quest, he's an idiot: Dumbledore kept telling him that his greatest weapon against V was love, after all. If he doesn't include Ginny, but he *does*include Ron and/or Hermione, then he's an idiot *and* a hypocrite.
I was honestly surprised at who the Half-Blood Prince turned out to be.
By the Rules Of story, at some point next book, Harry will be captured by the Bad Guys, and Draco Malfoy will come to taunt him alone. Harry will recap the conversation between Draco and Dumbledore on the tower, and try to turn Draco to the Good Guys. The Rules don't guarantee that he'll succeed, but they demand that the attempt be made.
It seems unlikely that Harry will actually stay away from Hogwarts completely next year, though he might well not end up attending as a student. For one thing, Voldemort's obsession with Hogwarts is one of the very few leads that he has.
About halfway through Book 1, I became convinced that, in some important sense, Harry and Voldemort were the same person. The end of Book 1 seemed to derail that idea, but it came back in force at the end of Book 2. Now that I knew it was possible for V to "make a copy" of himself, I became convinced that Harry contained such a copy. Having finished Book 6, I now have a technical term for this: Harry is a Horcrux. I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore never suspected this. Heck, I'm not sure that Voldemort knows, since I'm certan he didn't *mean* to make Harry into one. It probably happened, at least partially, due to Lily's interference. This still leaves puzzling the question of how Harry can actually win in the end without dying himself. and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. As others have pointed out, "either" in this context may be read as "each". And it is curious that it claims that *neither* of them "can live", when both of them appear to be very much alive. Perhaps "live" in this case should be read as "have a complete soul". Which would imply that, in addition to Harry being a Horcrux for V, perhaps V is somehow a Horcrux for Harry. Not sure what that means. Of course, part of the benefit of having V doing all this completely unprecedented magic means that Rowling gets to make up the rules without fear of contradiction. Still, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Harry "die" at some point next book -- though I *would* be surprised if he *stayed* dead.
kestrell finished it then also, but she later confessed to having succumbed to reading the e-text over the weekend. Ah well. I hadn't really expected her to hold out as long as she did...All in all, a satisfying installment. Spoilers below, possibly including spoilers for Book 7, if I'm right:
Yup, I was expecting the Big D to be rendered not-survived about now. Still fairly moving when it happened. The scene with the potion at the lake, however, was pretty squicky.
I'm about 80% sure that Snape was acting on Dumbledore's orders, though I wouldn't fault anyone for adopting a "shoot on sight" policy at this point. And, as Kes pointed out, this is going to be an *awesome* scene in the movie! I expect that Snape is now in a position very like the protagonist of the (excellent) comic book Sleeper: his double-agent cover is now so deep that he despairs of ever coming in from the cold.
A bit disappointing that Rowling appears to be going for the obvious romantic pairings. If Harry *doesn't* end up including Ginny in his quest, he's an idiot: Dumbledore kept telling him that his greatest weapon against V was love, after all. If he doesn't include Ginny, but he *does*include Ron and/or Hermione, then he's an idiot *and* a hypocrite.
I was honestly surprised at who the Half-Blood Prince turned out to be.
By the Rules Of story, at some point next book, Harry will be captured by the Bad Guys, and Draco Malfoy will come to taunt him alone. Harry will recap the conversation between Draco and Dumbledore on the tower, and try to turn Draco to the Good Guys. The Rules don't guarantee that he'll succeed, but they demand that the attempt be made.
It seems unlikely that Harry will actually stay away from Hogwarts completely next year, though he might well not end up attending as a student. For one thing, Voldemort's obsession with Hogwarts is one of the very few leads that he has.
About halfway through Book 1, I became convinced that, in some important sense, Harry and Voldemort were the same person. The end of Book 1 seemed to derail that idea, but it came back in force at the end of Book 2. Now that I knew it was possible for V to "make a copy" of himself, I became convinced that Harry contained such a copy. Having finished Book 6, I now have a technical term for this: Harry is a Horcrux. I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore never suspected this. Heck, I'm not sure that Voldemort knows, since I'm certan he didn't *mean* to make Harry into one. It probably happened, at least partially, due to Lily's interference. This still leaves puzzling the question of how Harry can actually win in the end without dying himself. and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. As others have pointed out, "either" in this context may be read as "each". And it is curious that it claims that *neither* of them "can live", when both of them appear to be very much alive. Perhaps "live" in this case should be read as "have a complete soul". Which would imply that, in addition to Harry being a Horcrux for V, perhaps V is somehow a Horcrux for Harry. Not sure what that means. Of course, part of the benefit of having V doing all this completely unprecedented magic means that Rowling gets to make up the rules without fear of contradiction. Still, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Harry "die" at some point next book -- though I *would* be surprised if he *stayed* dead.