Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 7: The Slug Club

• “Harry spent a lot of the last week of the holidays pondering the meaning of Malfoy’s behaviour in Knockturn Alley. What disturbed him most was the satisfied look on Malfoy’s face as he had left the shop. Nothing that made Malfoy look that happy could be good news. To his slight annoyance, however, neither Ron nor Hermione seemed quite as curious about Malfoy’s activities as he was; or at least, they seemed to get bored of discussing it after a few days.” – And thus started Harry’s obsession with Draco Malfoy. And thus started me shipping Harry and Draco. Like obviously this pairing existed well before book 6, but up until then I never found Draco to be an interesting character and I also didn’t think there was a lot of shipping material in the first place. But here we have Harry stalking Draco for almost a year, and I mean the fan fiction almost starts writing itself. And furthermore Draco becomes a much more complex and interesting character. His final dialogue with Dumbledore is the reason I will always have a soft spot for him.

• Nevertheless while reading this book for the first time I was pretty much with Ron and Hermione here, entirely unconvinced that Draco could be a Death Eater, for the very same reasoning they had: he is only sixteen. Then again I think Regulus Black was only 16 as well. And while it seems okay that Harry and his friends fought off Death Eaters by the age of 15 and he is now with 16 taking private lessons with Dumbledore, whose purpose is to prepare him for war, nobody believes Voldemort could recruit someone as young as Harry. They are in the middle of a war and we see these characters involved in it that we still consider to be children, but that is the point: they are no longer children. They lost their innocence.

• I wrote a lot about Harry’s behaviour in book 5, that while his anger was justified it was not okay to let said anger out on his friends, and that a lot of times he acted like an ass, but also how these scenes work in contrast to the later books. A lot of people act like idiots when they are 15. In book 5 Harry had to share a compartment with Luna, Neville and Ginny, and when Cho greeted him he had wished to be surrounded by cooler people. This year as well he shares a compartment with Neville and Luna. Ginny is not around (to Harry’s annoyance) because she has her own friends, so we can assume she found those friends in the last year, when she had opened up more, and Harry noticed her as a person for the first time. Romilda Vane offers Harry to sit with her and her friends, but Harry coldly replies that Luna and Neville are his friends, thank you very much. The entire scene would not have such a significance if it didn’t show us the change Harry went through, how he became more mature, how he realized who his real friends are and that there are more important things than popularity.

• “Had Voldemort chosen Neville, it would be Neville sitting opposite Harry bearing the lightning-shaped scar and the weight of the prophecy … or would it? Would Neville’s mother have died to save him, as Lily had died for Harry? Surely she would … but what if she had been unable to stand between her son and Voldemort? Would there, then, have been no ‘Chosen One’ at all? An empty seat where Neville now sat and a scarless Harry who would have been kissed goodbye by his own mother, not Ron’s?” – That is not how prophecies work though, Harry. At least not in the Wizarding World. There would have always been a Chosen One, someone who would have been marked as equal by Voldemort, for the very same reason: a mother who dies for her child and gives it therefore protection and the means to defeat Voldemort. And perhaps Neville would have not defeated Voldemort, because the prophecy only says that only one of them can live, but never says who. We don’t know. Still, there would have always been a Chosen One. You can’t prevent a prophecy to come true; Voldemort tried and set it in motion instead.

• “Every now and then students would hurtle out of their compartments to get a better look at him. The exception was Cho Chang, who darted into her compartment when she saw Harry coming. As Harry passed the window he saw her deep in determined conversation with her friend Marietta, who was wearing a very thick layer of makeup that did not entirely obscure the odd formation of pimples still etched across her face. Smirking slightly, Harry pushed on.” – I get it, Marietta put everyone in deep trouble, but still isn’t it time she got rid of those pimples? She can’t wear them forever. And I know Hermione is really good, but still someone at Hogwarts or St. Mungo’s should be qualified enough to make those pimples vanish.

• The book makes it look like neither Harry or Neville know who Cormac McLaggen is, despite the fact that he is in the same house as them. We know Harry is Captain Oblivious but Neville as well?

• “It was as Harry had suspected. Everyone here seemed to have been invited because they were connected to somebody well-known or influential – everyone except Ginny.” – Why though? Why would the Weasley family not be considered to be well-known? Arthur works at the Ministry at a high position, Percy works there as well and was junior assistant to the former Minister of Magic. Bill works at Gringotts, Charlie with dragons, the twins have a successful business. Also the Weasleys are one of the oldest pureblood-families and associated with Harry as well. Everyone in the Wizarding World seems to know them, so I think it would be odd that the only reason Ginny got invited for is her bat-bogey-hex.

• “‘A lot of boys like her,’ said Pansy, watching Malfoy out of the corner of her eyes for his reaction. ‘Even you think she’s good-looking, don’t you, Blaise, and we all know how hard you are to please!’” – I think this is the first time Ginny is described as handsome, and it happens in the same book where Harry falls for her. She is also described to be popular among the boys of Hogwarts, which oddly enough kind of makes her price for Harry to win, as Ginny clearly could date anyone she wants. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ginny as a character and the development of her relationship with Harry. It is just annoying that the book has to mention how beautiful she is (from an objective point of view, not just Harry’s) and that a lot of boys are interested in her, even though it is his jealousy that makes Harry realizes he has a thing for Ginny.

• Both Draco and Theodore Nott are not invited into the Slug Club, despite their fathers being close to Slughorn at their times in Hogwarts, because they are both revealed as Death Eaters. I wonder though how the Slug Club would have looked like in the previous year. Would Harry have gotten an invitation by Slughorn despite his reputation at the time? (He was still famous after all) It seems that Draco and Nott might have gotten one. Slughorn does judge people by their family. We know of course that Draco is a bully and by now a Death Eater, but Slughorn doesn’t. He doesn’t want to be associated with the Malfoy and Nott family, despite the fact that Draco and Theodore Nott are their own persons.