Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
There weren’t any answers to anything! We still don’t know what the Veil is, or what answers the two-way mirror holds, or anything else about the Prank…it’s driving me nuts. Instead, we’ve just got more questions. (I, like everyone else, reckon that R.A.B is Regulus Black, but…I dunno…we might all be thoroughly wrong. I guess we have been before. ;) )
Shipping
-H/G: was expecting that, really.
-R/H: Okay, so it’s not canon canon like H/G is…but I did like ‘I love you, Hermione’ :) (Can’t honestly say I liked a lot of the rest, though)
-B/F: Oh, I love. I hope we get the wedding at the beginning of Book 7.
-R/T: Dude! I wasn’t expecting that, but I like it so very much. They deserve each other, you know? (Not in a bad way). I hope we see more in the next book. Congrats, fernwithy and co. :D
Quibbles
-Ginny…she’s pretty and popular, and all the boys fancy her and now Harry loves her. I hope that whatever fatal flaw she has, we get to see it at some point.
-Marietta apparently still has SNEAK on her face. I remember people saying they’d start to get angry with Hermione if that turned out to be the case…and I was probably one of them…
-Still hardly any Peter. (Actually, almost less than in OOTP)
-And hardly any Luna, either
-My prediction didn’t come true. :p
The Rest
-I’m very impressed with Draco not killing Dumbledore-possibly he’s no longer my least favourite character. :)
-I’m not as annoyed/upset about Dumbledore’s death as I was about Sirius’s, mostly because I saw this one coming.
-Voldemort’s mother! We have a name for her and everything! And Voldemort’s uncle, a Parselmouth (he was a great character, by the way)
-Narcissa has a nickname in canon! (Actually, she was very close to fanon!Narcissa)
-Oh…I love the utter irony of the Vanishing Cabinet being the thing Draco was fixing. And it was Fred and George who pushed Montague in there…that’s disturbing for two reasons: one, if not for that then Draco might not have realised the cabinet could be used, and two- Draco said Montague nearly died, so Fred and George nearly killed someone. Gaaah. Never going to look at those two in the same way again.
-EDIT (This is the fourth edit, believe it or not): Is Zacharius Smith related to Hepzibah Smith?
The Theory That I Can’t Remember The Name Of
Said theory goes like this: POA mirrors OOTP, COS therefore mirrors HBP, and PS will mirror book seven. (GOF stands on it’s own.) It’s bugging me how HBP was originally the title for COS…there must be a clue in there somewhere.
And HBP does mirror COS in a sense, because both books are where we learn more about Tom Riddle and what he became- and POA and OOTP both feature revelations about the Potters. So- book seven- well…my one thought on what might happen is below somewhere…
The Really Big Spoiler
I don’t think Snape is evil. It just…doesn’t sit right with me. It was someone else Polyjuiced into Snape, or some cunning plan between Snape and Dumbledore we know nothing about, or something to do with the Unbreakable Vow, or something. It just…well, in PS, we’re supposed to think he’s the villain when really he’s not, right? So this might be the same trick. Same trick by the author, I mean.
That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. ;)
One Other Thing
Dude, we have zombies in Harry Potter now.
And that’s it. Oh, I want book seven now…
July 16, 2005 @ 5:50 pm
R.A.B is Regulus Black I though so too, but she said in an interview once that we’re never going to see him as a major character so *shrugs*. HBP was originally the title for COS Well, Tom is a half blood and was at the time, Prince of Slytherin, so I can see where she’s coming from with the title. Dude, we have zombies in Harry Potter now. I know! Total Shaun of the Dead squee-age! Is Zacharius Smith related to Hepzibah Smith? I assume so. There’s all the clues: Zacharius is a Hufflepuff & if Hebzibah was too then it explains why she had the cups. And they both have interesting names… So this might be the same trick. Hmm, I don’t know. It sits right with me, because I do think that Snape makes a good Dark agent as opposed to a Light one. And I was pretty convinced by his defence to Bella and Narcissa at the beginning. But it could go either way – they were arguing, someone commented on mine and suggested that Dumbledore ordered Snape to kill him and Snape didn’t like that. Dude, we have zombies in Harry Potter now. Unchallenged.
July 16, 2005 @ 7:22 pm
adding this to my memories for later viewing (after i finish) while covering the screen with my hand was quite difficult ;-) as is typing this comment with my head bowed…i must look away! i’ll give my thoughts after i finish reading.
July 16, 2005 @ 9:56 pm
I so agree about Snape. I think it would be bad writing form to have Snape be nasty to Harry, suspicious, have greasy hair, like the dark arts AND turn out after everything to be an ultimate evil. Kind of a cliche type thing, you know? Like you said, it doesn’t feel right. But of course, the Ginny thing also goes against all good writing instincts as well, so… ;) (towards the end I was starting to *hate* her…) I think it’s the Unbreakable Vow thingie. Because Snape never seemed to directly help the Death Eaters, like, he didn’t shoot any one on the way out, he was escaping with Draco, not the rest of them. I dunno, something was very fishy about that whole deal. I think in the last book he’ll die doing something redemptive and heroic. (but, I also thought in the last SW *Dooku* would die doing something redemptive and heroic, so it may just be a pattern of thought for me. ^_~) Also; JK’s accumlulating an awfully large number of ‘accessory bad guys,’ isn’t she? It’ll be interesting to see if she can land it all with just one book left. Regulus Black? I never thought of him!! Yes, that fits very nicely!
July 16, 2005 @ 10:03 pm
That ‘accessory bad guys’ comment made me try and count them- Snape, Draco, Lucius, possibly Narcissa, Bellatrix, Rodulphus, other assorted Death Eaters, Umbridge, Fudge, Percy (kinda), and now Ferir and a couple more Death Eaters and the new Minister… Blimey, that *is* a lot… Book 7 is going to be huge. ;)
July 17, 2005 @ 2:55 pm
Whoah…. I had never thought that R.A.B might equal Regulus Black. That’s interesting. I like the idea. Does it bother you that Sirius had little to no mention in this book? Love how she fails to expand on his death AT ALL. *grumbles* I personally can see Snape being evil, but I guess I’m baised. I never really liked him in the first place. And it would be horribly befitting if he passed the info about the prophecy on to Voldermort… Oh I dunno, I’d have to read the book for any hidden clues…
July 21, 2005 @ 3:27 am
Those zombies were so random. I kept picturing how freaky that part will be in the movie though. Throughout the book, I just kept thinking “So how will this look in the movie?” I kind of WANT Snape to be evil, bc I hate him right now, and I wouldn’t like to find out that my hating wasn’t for a good reason. But I do sense something more with his whole Death Eater thing.