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Harry Potter And The Half-blood Prince

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You keep beating me to everything!!  Grrr.  Maybe I should check this site more often.  I do like the idea of Lily teaching Potions though.

I also didn't even notice Regulus had those initials!  Man, I'm a bit off.  Good ideas, good ideas...

:D Sorry. I'm quite a bit obsessed, and as it's summer and I'm sitting at home, I have plenty of time to devote to looking things up. Hey, it only happens once every two years. And there's only one left. *sniff* :lol: I looove mysteries. I'm done for the moment though. Ships are not my area of expertise. I have to go back and look in OotP at Snape's worst memory again, to see if it gives any hint of his feelings. :)
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How was Dumbledore killed but not dead?

The Avada Kadavara curse is unblockable and cannot be survived...and that is what Snape used. Dumbledore is dead...

Ahh, J.K. Rowling is the all-time Grandmistress of suspense, I tell you, because she makes you think it was someone else all along.

It's entirely possible that Snape really DID betray Voldemort, but it's so important for him to remain in Voldemort's good graces that he has to suffer all kinds of horrible, nightmarish contradictions. Remember that he hesitated just a second before taking the last part of the Unbreakable Vow. Quite likely Dumbledore knew the entire time exactly what was going to happen and he decided to let it go ahead to keep their invaluable resource, Snape, in a position to spy.

I'm betting that Snape becomes abosolutely indispensable in the last book, because he's the only one that has an "in" to figure out where the other Horcruxes are. Snape's been suspected of EVERYTHING from the very beginning and it always turned out to be wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm going with the pattern :D

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Ugh. How horrible this all is. Harry will never be able to forgive Snape now, even if it does turn out that he was working on Dumbledore's orders all along. But if Snape really betrayed Dumbledore... I think I'll start crying in the middle of book 7. How awful. Slimy git... I've never been this confused at the end of a Harry Potter book before. You read it, and then you think about it and say to yourself "wait, did that just really happen?" It seems so simple that it's just got to be hiding something, it's just got to be... :D

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I'm kinda confused about what you're saying here about Luna and Ernie.  Do you mean as descendents of the House Founders?

that's exactly what i mean. remember that a few books back... GOF i think... the Sorting Hat kept talking about House unity.

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I just found something on Mugglenet.com. In Order of the Phoenix, pg 116, Harry and co. are cleaining out some cabinets in Grimmauld Place. They find: a locket. It is described as heavy, and no one can open it. RAB has to be Regulus! Harry Potter Sleuth Rule #3: There is no such thing as a coincidence. Hah, that stupid vanishing cabinet proves that. I can't believe it! Nearly Headless Nick persuaded Peeves to crash it over Filch's office the time Harry got caught dripping mud everywhere in book 2. Filch said it was extremely valuable. Then in book 5 with the Monague thing... It was there all the time. But not this time. I've got my eye on that locket. :)

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I just found something on Mugglenet.com. In Order of the Phoenix, pg 116, Harry and co. are cleaining out some cabinets in Grimmauld Place. They find: a locket. It is described as heavy, and no one can open it. RAB has to be Regulus! Harry Potter Sleuth Rule #3: There is no such thing as a coincidence. Hah, that stupid vanishing cabinet proves that. I can't believe it! Nearly Headless Nick persuaded Peeves to crash it over Filch's office the time Harry got caught dripping mud everywhere in book 2. Filch said it was extremely valuable. Then in book 5 with the Monague thing... It was there all the time. But not this time. I've got my eye on that locket.  :)

You really make me wish three things. 1) That I didn't have to work and could go over those books again. 2) That I could afford internet for my apartment. 3) That my work computer didn't have internet filters on it, so I could go to mugglenet.com

*sigh* Such is the life of a poor college student... :D

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I've got my eye on that locket.  :lol:

Just out of curiousity, do you think Mundungus Fletcher found the locket when he was raiding Sirius' house? That would add complications for things since he's now in Azkaban.

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The only way I could forgive Snape is if he knew that Dumbledore wouldn't survive the poison.

Great sleuthing, finding that mention of the locket. And, Harry inherited all of Sirius' things so he just has to think of it being there.

I doubt Lily is related to the Weasley's or else there wouldn't be any need of Harry to go to the Dursley's and I doubt Rowling would have the love thread between Harry and Ginny.

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What the heck. Okay, here are a couple of speculations of my own for book 7:

1) Dumbledore is dead and gone, but will still be able to return briefly (in a sense). Remember how it was established in book 4 that a wand can be made to "replay" the spells it had cast in reverse order, and how shades of Voldemort's last five victims popped out of his wand? If such was done to Snape's wand...

2) There may be an extra Horcrux around. The diary that Harry destroyed in book two was one of them, and Voldemort learned that it was gone. If he's obsessed with keeping the number of his soul fragments at 7, he's had years to create a replacement...

.

.

.

Of course, take these predictions with a grain of salt. I knew that having Voldemort be the half-blood prince would be too obvious, but I actually thought it would be Hagrid! I figured the book would focus more on making and breaking political alliances (such as with the giants)...

Clearly, I do *not* have a future in fortune telling...

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What the heck.  Okay, here are a couple of speculations of my own for book 7:

1) Dumbledore is dead and gone, but will still be able to return briefly (in a sense).  Remember how it was established in book 4 that a wand can be made to "replay" the spells it had cast in reverse order, and how shades of Voldemort's last five victims popped out of his wand?  If such was done to Snape's wand...

Don't forget his portrait in the head's office. I wonder if it will have his memories. We know Dumbledore used to talk to the old heads, so they must be of some value. Phineas Nigellus in particular, seems like he remembers his life because he remembered Sirius. So Dumbledore's portrait could clear a lot of things up for Harry. If, that is, it is more *ahem* forthcoming about what it knows than the live Dumbledore. :dough:

2) There may be an extra Horcrux around.  The diary that Harry destroyed in book two was one of them, and Voldemort learned that it was gone.  If he's obsessed with keeping the number of his soul fragments at 7, he's had years to create a replacement...
I think there is an extra, possibly two. I think that Harry is a horcrux but that Voldemort does not know it. The only way Harry could be a horcrux is if Voldy accidentally made him into one by killing Lily. Otherwise, I doubt Voldy would be so keen on killing Harry. The reasons I think Harry is a horcrux are:

1) In PoA, Harry keeps having encounters with dementors, culminating in one of them trying to give him the kiss. Now, Dementors only do that to the really horrible criminals, and the teachers in the book are confused on why they would attempt to do it to a student. I think this is a clue. The Dementors weren't after Harry's soul, they were after Voldy's.

2) Dumbeldore never really explained how Harry became a parseltongue or how he got his scar. We know it had something to do with Avada Kedavra, and that Voldy put a "bit of himself" in Harry. That sounds very much like a horcrux to me.

So, if Harry is a horcrux, but Voldy doesn't know, then he probably went and made another, the 7th. Dumbledore guessed that Voldy intended to make the 7th after killing Harry, and I'll go with his guess. So when Voldy gets his body back, he makes what he thinks is the 7th horcrux, but which is actually the 8th: Nagini. When Malfoy tells him that the diary was destroyed, he may have made another one. My question is whether there is actually something about having 7 horcruxes, and if having too many screws it up, or whether it's just another weird Voldy obsession.

As for whether Harry will have to die to get rid of the Voldy bit, I really hope not. I think Dumbledore would have told him. We still don't know all of Dumbledore's plan. The gleam of triumph still has yet to make an appearance, and according to JKR, it is enormously significant. (If you don't know what I mean, re-read the part of GoF when Harry is telling Dumbledore and Sirius what happened in the graveyard.) I don't believe there is any way that Dumbledore could have missed these suspicious signs that Harry is a horcrux, or that he would tell Harry that the memories would help him survive, if there was no chance of it.

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The title of the thread says "Spoiler Thread" on it, so you should have paid attention to that!!

Last time I was reading the thread before I saw spoilers, there weren't any, and most unfortunately, I clicked the link on the main forum index, as I knew I already participated in a Harry Potter thread (mistakenly I thought this was it), so I didn't see the subtitle (!).

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Why did Snape leave his Potions textbook in the back of the classroom? Didn't he own the book? Seems a little too convenient.

Convenient, but this HAD been his classroom, he might have just forgotten it there.

Why did Snape decide to return to Voldemort? As characters mentioned in the book - what made Dumbledore trust Snape so much?
Snape explained that he had always been on the side of the Dark Lord in the beginning of the book. Why did Dumbledore trust him? He must have lost his grip.

In the cave with the Horcrux - since the cup passed through the barrier why did someone have to drink the liquid inside? Couldn't he have just spilled it instead?

One stupidity which just messes up the jigsaw completely. I have several theories:

1. Dumbledore did it on purpose, because he had prearranged with Snape the scene in the corridor of Hogwarts (in which he "dies"). What happens, however, is not that Snape kills him with the Avada Kedavra curse, but that Snape simply says the words of the curse, but actually thinks of a different spell, which simply throws Dumbledore, or transports him somewhere, leaving only the fake body. This is too far-fetched, but not impossible, but it does fail to the fact that I've never seen it said in the book that it is possible to cast a different spell than the one said out loud, and Rowling usually does that - she prepares the facts, then uses them in the climax.

2. Dumbledore saw something that Rowling didn't say. Maybe spilling the contents would have caused someting even more terrible, but I certainly would have liked her to say so. Then again, Dumbledore likes to keep things to himself. This, however, fails to explain why he trusted Snape so much, except that Snape was so good at Occlumency he managed to conceal his intentions. However, Dumbledore DID say that he had a very good reason for trusting Snape. We never learned that reason.

3. Dumbledore was just plain stupid. You figure out why that fails.

Whatever was the matter with the potion Dumbledore drank, Snape might simply have acted out of fear. He made the Unbreakable Vow, which if you break it, you die. When he came to the scene, he thought that Dumbledore was dead anyhow, seing him surrounded by Death Eaters. So, he may have decided to gain absolute trust by Voldemort by finishing Dumbledore for good, and he decided to do that because of two reasons:

1. Because he really was devoted to Voldemort.

2. Because by gaining Voldemort's trust, he can get close enough to kill him.

Things could have happened as I described, or one of the many variations that I can still think of may have happened. The fact that I don't know so many things, that throughout the book we have been told that Snape is on Dumbledore's side (except by Harry), and then killing him finally, is why I want to read that last book so badly. The book really complicated everything and I think it will be a great climax.

However...

There was another piece of "art" which I awaited with the same anticipation, and then was thoroughly dissappointed. It was called The Matrix. After the second part, there were many theories about how it will end, and then the third part turned out to be total junk. I'm hoping that this will not happen to Harry Potter, however, I will also be dissappointed if Rowling doesn't take into account all the things that bother me after reading the sixth book.

Who stole the Horcrux? Any ideas?
R.A.B.

As the book says, it must have been someone who knew Voldemort, or who knew that he was making Horcruxes. My first thought was Horace Sloughorn, but the initials don't match. :ninja:

Isn't it becoming sort of trite for heroes to banish their loved ones when they need them most? (Harry and Ginny)

Ron and Hermione have promised to help Harry next year. Maybe Ginny comes too and saves Harry and they live happily ever after.

The only thing I wished was that the book was longer - by 200+ pages or so. I didn't really feel the flow of time in the book as well as it did in previous ones - a little extra material would have been nice. For instance they barely described Harry's NEWT classes or how Snape handled Defense Against the Dark Arts. Overall I enjoyed the book very much and await the final book (If she can manage to fit the ending in one book!)

We already saw Snape handling Defence Against the Dark Arts in the third year, when Lupin became a werewolf. However, I think that it was well shown here too. In fact, I thought that Rowling had described much more of Harry's lessons than in the prevous books.

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I think Snape fed Narcissa and Bellatrix a load of hooey, I think Snape told Dumbledore about the Unbreakable Vow as soon as he got back to Hogwarts, and Dumbledore ORDERED him to do what he promised to do; that is why they argued and Snape complained that he "didn't want to do it any more". If Snape had intended to fulfil the vow he would NOT have quarreled with Dumbledore at any point during the year, he would simply have fudged the results of his investigations into his own house instead of complaining to Dumbledore.

The story he told Narcissa rang sort of false to me, not entirely sure why, though.

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The story he told Narcissa rang sort of false to me, not entirely sure why, though.

One of the things I've considered too. I just don't see why Dumbledore would have sacrificed himself for Snape's sake. All I can do though, is wait for book 7.

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I don't think Snape switched back to Voldermort's side, but I would prefer if it turned out he had. It would show the dangers of trusting people who had not really earned that trust. Also I dont think Dumbledor begged for his life. He was begging for Snape to kill him in order to fully gain the trust of the Death Eaters and possibly motivate Harry a little more against the death eaters (ala Obi Wan in episode IV).

The one thing I am suprisd no one mentioned so far is the most rational way Dumbledor could return in the last book. I'll give you a clue: What did Harry and Nearly Headless Nick talk about at the end of HP and the Order of the Phoenix?

Harry is a horcrux, although by accident (IMHO). The way horcrux are made is by fracturing a soul through murder and then bonding it to something else. If Voldermort was prepared to make one at the moment of Harry's murder it is rational (as rational as magic can be) to belive the spell backfired. However I do not believe Harry would willingly die for the "greater good" (sure, to imediately save his friends lives like in Chamber of Secrets, but not for people like those in the Ministry). Instead he would find a way to remove the soul from himself or imprison the rest of Voldermort in some way. Well, Hermony will while Harry watches.

One last thing, Ron and Hermony will be major players in the next one, and maybe a few more from their class like Nevil and Luna, (probably Doby and an army of bumbling but powerful house elves) but not Ginny. She will only be sixteen while they, and Harry, will be adults (in the magical world), able to legaly use magic outside of school at seventeen.

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I don't think Snape switched back to Voldermort's side, but I would prefer if it turned out he had.  It would show the dangers of trusting people who had not really earned that trust.  Also I dont think Dumbledor begged for his life.  He was begging for Snape  to  kill him in order to fully gain the trust of the Death Eaters and possibly motivate Harry a little more against the death eaters (ala Obi Wan in episode IV).
Snape did earn his trust though, IMO. We just don't know how. Who would have thought that the big septology question would be why Dumbledore trusts Snape. One lesson JKR could be trying to point out to us though, is that we can't really blame Dumbeldore for his trust in Snape (even if he is evil) because even with all the evidence against him, we don't take it for granted that he's evil either. Dumbledore is trusting, but he never trusted Riddle. I don't think Snape is evil, if only to give the beloved Headmaster the benefit of the doubt before I jump to the conclusion that he made the biggest mistake of his life.

The one thing I am suprisd no one mentioned so far is the most rational way Dumbledor could return in the last book.  I'll give you a clue: What did Harry and Nearly Headless Nick talk about at the end of HP and the Order of the Phoenix?
I don't really see him as a ghost. Why would he need to be, with his portrait in the head's office? He didn't fear death. He will have gone on. Nick only came back because he was afraid to die. I could definitely see a ghost Voldy though.

Harry is a horcrux, although by accident (IMHO).  The way horcrux are made is by fracturing a soul through murder and then bonding it to something else.  If Voldermort was prepared to make one at the moment of Harry's murder it is rational (as rational as magic can be) to belive the spell backfired.  However I do not believe Harry would willingly die for the "greater good" (sure, to imediately save his friends lives like in Chamber of Secrets, but not for people like those in the Ministry).  Instead he would find a way to remove the soul from himself or imprison the rest of Voldermort in some way.  Well, Hermony will while Harry watches.
My thoughts exactly. Harry doesn't want to be responsible for the death of a friend, so he risks his life to save them. Plus, I very much doubt that Dumbledore would ever have arranged a plan where Harry would have to die. And yes, I belive that Harry is still, more or less, working on Dumbledore's plan. I can't help but think that this is the way things were intended to go. From what he said in OotP, Dumbledore had a clear plan of how to defeat Voldemort. He never told Harry the plan. Why?

One last thing, Ron and Hermony will be major players in the next one, and maybe a few more from their class like Nevil and Luna, (probably Doby and an army of bumbling but powerful house elves) but not Ginny.  She will only be sixteen while they, and Harry, will be adults (in the magical world), able to legaly use magic outside of school at seventeen.

Yes, that made me feel very sorry for Ginny. However, she can leave school after she turns 17, so hopefully her birthday is early in the school year. And if they close the school... But I don't think they will, as JKR has saif that there will be a new DADA teacher. Well, I suppose some things never change. :lol:
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The one thing I am suprisd no one mentioned so far is the most rational way Dumbledor could return in the last book.  I'll give you a clue: What did Harry and Nearly Headless Nick talk about at the end of HP and the Order of the Phoenix?

Bah! Dumbledore a ghost?! Well, he would be the first headmaster to return as a ghost, if he did, but I'd rather he didn't. One thing that would be totally out of character if he did return, would be celebrating his death day.

Anyway, I agree that Dumbledore pleaded for Snape to do what he did, rather than for his life. Then his teaching Harry Occlumency before he left with the Death Eaters actually adds up (he said something similar to "keep your mouth and mind shut"), and instead of hurting Harry or knocking him out with a spell, he only blocked him. Besides, I doubt there is much Dumbledore could have shown Harry, which he couldn't learn by himself.

What I find particularly fascinating in the book is that people can actually invent spells of their own. I'm often wondering why Harry himself isn't more interested in learning more about the principles behind magic, like Hermione, which would help him do that by himself. Then again, he is still young. It took me quite a while too to realize how helpful the underlying principles really are in solving certain problems.

As for Harry being a horcrux... Wouldn't that make him one of inferi rather than Voldemort's greatest enemy? Is it possible to make a horcrux of another living human being? Didn't they say that only inanimate objects can be horcruxes? Anyway, if he is a horcrux, then I doubt it is really up to Harry whether he will sacrifice himself. It is up to Rowling, and I really think she WOULD sacrifice Harry. But that will basically seem like something from Terminator 2. (There's another chip - and then Arnie points to his head).

Edited by source
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As for Harry being a horcrux... Wouldn't that make him one of inferi rather than Voldemort's greatest enemy? Is it possible to make a horcrux of another living human being?

Harry wasn't killed so he wouldnt be an inferi. Inferi are just animated dead people without minds (see Night of the Living Dead). Also, it does not have to inanimate. Rowling left this open when Dumbeldore said he thought Voldermort's snake was an horcrux.

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