Lovely Half-Blood Prince

***SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE AHEAD!!!***

12-Nov-02 to 17-Nov-02: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
18-Nov-02 to 24-Nov-02: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
27-Aug-03 to 29-Sep-03: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
29-Sep-03 to 27-Nov-03: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
24-Dec-03 to 5-Jan-04: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Rereading. Anxiety. Spoiler-ducking.

15-Jul-05 (um... nights can count as the day before :B ) to 19-Jul-05:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!

Here follows a long tedious report of the release and my so called thoughts on the book. Cuz it's all a bit historical. And maybe I'll keep polishing it, filling it with desperate theories, until the next book comes out. :)

It must have been the most anticipated book in my life! (Well, I couldn't wait for Jean M Auel's fifth cavewoman novel back in 1995, but I could when it was released seven years later. So.) Like a good coward, I pre-booked it at the nearest suburban book shop. By MSN:ing a fellow Pothead two hours prior to the release, I found out that only a special sci-fi book shop waaaaay downtown would do the real thing and offer the book before dawn. At 1.00am, to be precise.

Suburban book shop, suckling of daylight, I am deeply sorry for your loss.

Well, I drove to town and found the sci-fi book shop crowded. The wee number of non-pre-booked Princes was skillfully concealed behind... Everyone Else. Although Everyone Else was running around lovingly clutching 6.8 books, on average, to their thumping heart. I gave up on grabbing a copy before joining the queue. Somewhere ahead, the treasure shelf lurked... A few people called to the front of the line and got books thrown (OK, sent) to them but hey, I don't much like to open my fecking mouth.

"I am wearing the Lucky Knickers - what can go wrong?"

Listened to some queue talk:

"Was it the Dumbledore actor or the Gandalf actor who died? Gandalf, wasn't it?"
"WOOHOOOOO! Read THIS!"
"Mum, you'll have to tell us who the Half-Blood Prince is when we get the book [as we won't be taught English for another eternity]."

Then I reached a stretch of wall displaying a magnificent poster of the adult cover. (Not as slimy as it sounds.) For the first time, I realised that the book on this book cover... was titled...

Advanced Potion-Making

"Then Harry must have scraped that Potions O after all! So Snape finally gets some! Exposure, I mean! FIREWHISKY'S ON ME, PEOPLE!"

... I mused.

Of course I needed that fancy cover. (POTIONS, and it would look painfully gorgeous covered in silvery autographs, eh? Aye, dream on.) When I was at last able to reach the tiny blue cardboard shelf I started to dig into it. The guy in front of me had just grabbed his copy, and he was kind enough to dig one out for me. The last of them all. Kid cover. Oh well... It's what's inside that counts. Actually. Grunt. So I glanced around, wondering silently if anyone would like to trade their horribly expensive and involuntarily acquired adult copies, but I was afraid to scare anyone. It was a dark and stormy night, after all.

Maybe the clerk would be able to find an adult copy somewhere. She looked panicky and tried to calm the raging mass of bodies.

"Ehehe, yeah, we expected a lot of customers, but not THIS many! Yes, I can go and get some more from the store room - TWO MINUTES! OK? Phew! *sweat* OMG what the hell is 200 - 185?! Let me just rub my brain for a few minutes! Have you pre-booked anything? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..."

I hope the poor lass was a Pothead.

Tragically, since I had decided to save myself for the right cover, I didn't open the book before I reached the counter. That would have been cool... Everyone else read their way through the queue. They must have reached the end of the book so much faster than I did! DAMN THEM! I HAD HOPED TO BE THE FIRST WORLD CITIZEN TO READ THIS BOOK, EVER! :O

No.

I got my adult cover copy at last - the one on display. :) More luck. I floated back to the car. It had not been stolen. Scary kind of luck. I placed the book on top of my bag in the passenger seat and drooled over and admired it at every red light and more, chanting "OMG, OMG."

Aye, the most anticipated book ever. Not just by me, I think. My eagerness to start on another Potter book had increased with each one - but now I had done the true fan thing and bought one on the release night. *slurp* I pulled into a nice empty parking space on the way home and ceremoniously read two pages...

WTF was this?

NO SNAPE FOR TWO PAGES? CALMING POTION OVER HERE! (Not really. But I wouldn't have complained.) When I thought my folks must be worried enough, I euphoria-blasted home, landed on the sofa with a bucket of tea and a stack of sandwiches and licked 90 pages.

Spinner's End. A beautiful street. As I said to my fellow MSN Pothead, I wonder if the role of Narcissa Malfoy has been etched in stone yet? Snape sure got some... hand-kissing. I would of course make certain suggestions to enhance the scene in the film compared to the book - they would realise that a steaming sex ritual on a threadbare couch in the name of the Unbreakable Vow is a greater ticket-seller than hand-holding, wouldn't they? Alan would surely agree. For the sake of the art. I'd better fill that ammonia bucket in good time. And keep it close to my bed, so I can submerge my head in it as soon as the casting agent hangs up.

Or I could at least write to JKR and ask her what the street number is. X Spinner's End. HOW COULD SHE NOT TELL US? :O

After those 90 sweet pages it was 7.30am and I figured I'd have a better reading experience if I wasn't a corpse. I felt blunt, but not truly sleepy until I put the book down.

"OH GOD! SLEEP! I NEED SLEEP! I CAN'T GET TO SLEEP FAST ENOOOOOOOOUGH! DOWN, BRAIN, DOWN! *shiver* KILL ME!"

JKR keeps us awake... until we go MAD! :O

I always kept my green marker pen at hand, marking "Snape", "potion", "Defence Against the Dark Arts", "Lupin", "Lucius" and other cool names, words, jokes, potions, lines, messages, hints and clues. And I scribbled comments in a lot of margins... even before I knew what the Prince had done to his book. :) This time I really hoped to figure things out before the end - worrying about Snape, and hoping he would be the Prince.

Why I could hope Snape was the Prince:

• The Prince used a book, a bit like Voldemort did in Chamber of Secrets...
  ... Voldemort's mixed parentage was forcefully rubbed in...
  ... and Voldemort was a brilliant student, and so was the Prince, apparently. At least as a Potions student. When JKR points at something... you need to look in another direction, eh?
• Snape seemed certain about Harry's cheating after Snape discovered the Prince's book. (Or so I just Wanted To Believe.)
• The Prince was good at Potions. Something tells me Snape is good at Potions. Oh yeah, he was the MASTER. That's it.
• Specifically, the Prince knew about bezoars, which were mentioned by Snape during Harry's very first Potions lesson and made it into the film. :D Hermione even rubbed it in a little by telling Harry he should just have listened to Snape in the first place. *COUGH*Snape.*COUGH*
• The Prince also wrote about jinxes and hexes in his book. Snape knew an awful lot about the Dark Arts even before he started at Hogwarts. We are reminded of his skills again in this book.
• The Prince knew about Levicorpus, which James used on Snape. :'(
• The Prince is repeatedly, rubbingly said to have had a "small, cramped handwriting" - like Snape's writing when Harry visited his 5th year DADA exam in the Pensieve. Did JKR expect us to FORGET? :B Erm, yes. That's why I read Order twice.
• Advanced Potion-Making is old enough to have been Snape's. (Of course, it's closer to Voldemort's age...)
• The fact that Snape the potential half-blood had the stomach to call Lily a mudblood can be explained by some flashy psychological term that I knew in 2001.
• "The Death Eaters can't all be pure-blood," says trustworthy Hermione. Phew. So Voldy couldn't refuse to employ half-bloods. (Any pure-bloods left might be too inbred to work well, anyway...)
• The Prince is compared to Snape several times. COOOOOOUGH.
• At one point I thought things started to get too obvious, yet Harry never considered the possibility that the Prince might be Snape. How sneaky of JKR. (Of course, poor Harry wasn't obsessed with Snape and didn't try to spear every trace of him with a marker pen.)
• JKR is quite obviously a Rickmaniac! (And SHE wrote "... you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love." ;B DUH!)
• And it would be so cool if my favourite Alan character was given some extra attention, such as the title role in the world's most anticipated book. :9 Wait, that's no reason.

My next list is a collection of comforting ideas that were
~Blatantly stolen
~Stolen so long ago I've come to believe they are my own
~Confided by a reliable source (namely, Sevvie-kins) during my many detentions with him

It'll be a useful list. I'll return to it whenever I need to refresh my hope. *angel choir*

OK. A few reasons why I can choose to believe Snape is on the good side:

• Snape seems hopelessly bad now. There is a whole book left. And JKR is NOT going to surprise us at least ONE more time? XD
• Dumbledore knew his life would be over soon anyway. If Snape hadn't killed him, Snape would have broken the Vow and died. Now he also convinced Voldemort of his loyalty. And Dumbledore didn't want Draco to become a murderer, Draco's soul needed saving. Snape may be able to persuade Voldemort not to kill the puppy Draco. If neither had done it, one of the FOUR DEATH EATERS would have done it. ("If I don't do it, someone else will" seems a legitimate excuse in this case. :) ) I haven't found my way back to the row Snape and Dumbledore had, but I hear it clearly concerns the murder plan, once you reread it. :/
• The hatred in Snape's face when he killed Dumbledore was an act for the Death Eaters, directed at Dumbledore for making Snape kill him, and/or directed at himself for following this order. (Poor Snape. Let me comfort you. :x )
• Snape started out as a typical villain. (Dressed in black. Intimidating. Portrayed by Alan.) He can't end that way - so few things are what they seem in Potterverse... eh?! (Though if Snape were a bottle, he'd be spinning faster than everyone else.) Prejudice and jumping to conclusions are baaad things, mmmkay. KEEP SPINNING, SNAPE!
• Harry is, as usual, sure he knows all about the circumstances. How typically JKR-twisty would book 7 be if he was right all along? It would become just one big straight Snape chase. With Voldemort on the side.

And let's hope that JKR:s final way of surprising us won't be the ABSENCE of a surprise. An anti-twist. NO, JKR, NO!

Possible book 7 scenario: Harry tracks Snape down using luck and his little friends. Snape, like Sirius, tries to explain how Harry got it all wrong, as always. Harry doesn't listen but kills Snape. Snape is dead on the grass. Dumbledore's ghost comes floating by and tells Harry that Snape WAS indeed a good lad. Harry hangs his head in shame. Harry moves to a place full of nice people in white coats. Draco saves the world.

~*~

Normally I wouldn't complain about a fictional character being bad. You know I love the fic-baddies. I fall for baddie actors. I mark Lucius's name. Blah blah.

But I don't personally want to BANG THE BADDIES!

And Snape is at the mo my favourite fuzzy daydream material! By the time book 7 is released I may no longer be so, ehehe, physically crazy about Snape or Alan... (DON'T get me wrong... ;) ) I will likely have found a new fuzzball to comfort me. There will be many aspects left of Snape to enjoy - the baddie, the actor, Teh Voice, the importance, the mystery, the coolness, the humour, the darkness... Still, for the time being, I'm glad I dare to remain "in detention" and I get a snug corner of Hogwarts in the bargain - I quite love Potterverse. :9

***END OF SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE!!!***