Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Dumbledore, a Mysterious Potions Book and the Road to the End
The end of J.K. Rowling’s saga is approaching. In this sixth book Harry turns sixteen and begins his sixth year at Hogwarts. His main worries are exams and Quidditch, but the calm does not last long.
Author: J.K. Rowling (born 1965)
Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)
Format: English paperback (Bloomsbury Children’s Books), 560 pages
Series: Book 6 of 7
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1408855704 (ASIN 1408855704)
The Prophecy
The prophecy foretells the moment when Harry Potter and Voldemort will face each other to the death, and Albus Dumbledore, the old headmaster of the school, knows it. Together they must set out on dangerous journeys to weaken their enemy little by little.
The Half-Blood Prince
To help him, Harry has an old Potions textbook that once belonged to a mysterious former owner who called himself the Half-Blood Prince. The notes in its margins turn Harry into a star pupil, but also raise uncomfortable questions.
Lessons in the Pensieve
The heart of the book is a series of private lessons in which Dumbledore takes Harry into the Pensieve, a stone basin that holds memories, to explore Voldemort’s past. They visit the squalid home of the Gaunt family, his mother’s ancestors; the orphanage where young Tom Riddle already frightened other children; and the moment when he first heard of an obscure and terrible kind of dark magic. Piece by piece, Harry learns how Voldemort has made himself so hard to kill, and what will be needed to destroy him.
Slughorn and Draco
A new teacher, Horace Slughorn, a vain and comfortable collector of promising students, holds the key memory Dumbledore needs, and Harry must find a way to obtain it. Meanwhile Draco Malfoy, burdened with a secret mission, grows pale and desperate, and Harry becomes convinced he is up to something. Their parallel stories give the book a tense, ominous undercurrent beneath the school routines.
Love and Laughter
For all its darkness, this is also the series’ most romantic and often funniest book. Ron’s relationship with Lavender Brown, and Hermione’s fury about it, are comedy of the most painful adolescent kind; Harry’s feelings for Ginny Weasley finally surface; a potion of liquid luck, Felix Felicis, produces a gloriously lucky day. Rowling balances these scenes with the growing sense that the safe world of school is about to end.
Towards the End
The final chapters, from a dark cave by the sea to the top of the Astronomy Tower, are among the most shocking in children’s literature. Published in July 2005, the book was filmed by David Yates in 2009. It answers many questions and raises the biggest one of all, about whom Harry and the reader can trust.
Who Is the Prince?
The identity of the Half-Blood Prince, the former owner of Harry’s brilliant textbook, is a puzzle worth solving for yourself. Avoid spoilers if you can.
A Darker Wizarding World
The opening chapters widen the frame. In a scene at Downing Street, the Muggle Prime Minister learns from the Minister for Magic that the strange disasters of recent weeks, a bridge collapse and unusual mists, are the work of Voldemort’s followers. Diagon Alley is half-boarded up, the Weasley twins’ joke shop is the only bright spot, and families take security precautions. Even at Hogwarts, pupils are searched on arrival. The war has begun, even if nobody at the Ministry will say so.
Reading Tip
Pay close attention to the memories in the Pensieve: every detail matters in the final book.
Why Read It
It is the book in which the saga’s history is revealed, through Dumbledore’s lessons on Voldemort’s past, and it ends with one of the most shocking chapters of the whole series. Read it just before Deathly Hallows.
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