Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 19: Elf Tails

• “Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Harry and Ginny’s obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.” – It is hard that it took Ron almost dying for him and Hermione to make up and speak again and rekindle their friendship. Not to be melodramatic on main but whenever you fight with someone, whenever you feel like you can longer talk with each other, the reasons for it are usually not worth the fight. Don’t get to the point where you regret you never made up with someone. And I think this is what Hermione has been thinking about all day: how she almost lost Ron without the chance to make up, with all the anger and hurt feelings between them, and how trivial the reason for them fighting seems now. Something to consider before you throw away a friendship.

• “‘Who’d want to kill Slughorn?’ ‘Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side,’ said Harry. ‘Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And …’ he thought of the memory Dumbledore had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn, ‘and maybe Voldemort wants him out of the way, maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore.’” – I think this is the real reason Voldemort is after Slughorn – right now he is the only one who knows about the secret of his immortality and therefore how he could become mortal again.

• “‘But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,’ Ginny reminded him. ‘So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore.’ ‘Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,’ said Hermione, speaking for the first time in hours and sounding as though she had a bad head-cold. ‘Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d keep something that tasty for himself.’” – It is the same pattern as with the Cursed necklace – there was a big chance the necklace would never make it into the castle, just as there was a big chance the poisoned mead would never make it to Dumbledore given Slughorn’s nature. Both times Dumbledore was the actual target, both times the execution was sloppy and careless.  And this is something Dumbledore points out later in his final conversation with Draco, that perhaps Draco never wanted to succeed, that he might have even hoped Dumbledore would put a stop to it.

• “‘Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren’t, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course,’ she added broodingly, ‘that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don’t seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim.’” – If we do believe Dumbledore that Draco secretly wanted his plans to fail, I don’t think it was his intention to hurt others in the process, or even kill them. If Katie hadn’t touched the necklace then surely Filch’s Secrecy Sensors would have detected the necklace. And he might have assumed that either Slughorn or Dumbledore would have tested the mead of poison before drinking it. Draco is, as Dumbledore tells him, not a killer.

• “‘I mean, it’s always bin a bit of a risk sendin’ a kid ter Hogwarts, hasn’ it? Yer expect accidents, don’ yeh, with hundreds of under-age wizards all locked up tergether, but attempted murder, tha’s diff ’rent.” – Is there a compulsory education in the Wizarding World or is it up to the parents to decide whether they send their kids to school or teach them at home? Hagrid’s wording makes it sound like home-schooling is an option, because surely not just Hogwarts but every Wizarding school is a bit risky for the same reasons (though clearly the weirdest stuff always happens at Hogwarts).

• Also by now it is an established plot device that whenever Harry needs to know something he isn’t supposed to know to just let Hagrid accidently tell him.

• “‘I’m a ruddy teacher, aren’ I, yeh sneakin’ Squib!’ said Hagrid, firing up at once.” – Using the word ‘Squib’ as an insult is not very cool, Hagrid.

• “‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back,’ said McLaggen, disregarding Harry’s drawn wand. ‘Must’ve fallen asleep. Look, I saw them taking Weasley up to the hospital wing earlier. Didn’t look like he’ll be fit for next week’s match.’” – Leave it to McLaggen to use the first chance he gets to get a place in the Quidditch team. I mean Ron, Harry’s best friend, has been in the hospital wing for hours, clearly Harry has other concerns, but all McLaggen cares about is Quidditch and his chance to play. Jerk.

• “Harry, however, had never been less interested in Quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy.” – A sentence straight out of a fan fiction, I am sure.

• “‘Yeah, I’m really going to tell you, because it’s your business, Potter,’ sneered Malfoy. ‘You’d better hurry up, they’ll be waiting for the Chosen Captain – the Boy Who Scored – whatever they call you these days.’” – The Boy Who Scored. THE BOY WHO SCORED. I mean it does sound like the porn version of Harry Potter, just so you know it.

• “Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called ‘Loser’s Lurgy’.” – As much as I am not interested in Quidditch I would love to hear Luna comment matches.

• “‘Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious,’ he said, after a long pause, and Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing …” – Confirmed: Harry James Potter secretly reads romance novels.

• “‘Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do!’ said Dobby, tears now streaming down his shrivelled little face on to his jumper.” – I had wondered about this last book. After Dobby had warned the DA about Umbridge Harry had forbidden him to hurt himself and Dobby had accepted that order. Now we know why. Dobby is free to choose his master (Dumbledore) and apparently he can obey more than one person, based on who he likes and respects.