(Mostly) Half-Blood Prince

[ciroccoj]

Can't remember what my kids said today that made me giggle, but it reminded me of an exchange a while ago:

Daniel: (downstairs, says something that sounds like) Justin! It's ALL YOUR FAULT!!
Me: OK, that's it, automatic time-out for you! (All Your Fault is a hot-button phrase here)
Daniel: What?
Me: You said 'It's all your fault', automatic time-out!
Daniel: No I didn't! I said I HATE YOU!!
Me: Oh, that's much better.

***
Mostly pretty good day today. The kids are learning to put away their own laundry. It's slow going and right now it results in hilariously overstuffed drawers, but we're getting there.

Daniel is also mastering greetings and polite exchanges (please'n'thank yous) in Spanish. Justin... well, I hope he learns through osmosis, or that being in French Immersion next year helps a bit. Because he's not terribly interested and not terribly good at Spanish.

Daniel, OTOH, is very eager to learn. Also very eager to keep up his French, especially since he won't be in French Immersion next year. It's one of the only worries he expresses about home schooling, actually; that he'll lose his French.

I love him.

***
So, I'm reading Half-Blood Prince over again, noticing all sorts of stuff that I didn't the first time through. I must say I prefer reading books the second, third or fiftieth time; without the urgency of What Happens Next, you can see so much more, and so many little details come out. I've only read the previous Harry Potter books twice, but I think I'll go back to HBP a few more times than that.

And yes, I know that more than two people haven't read it ;)

• I've purposely stayed away from all the discussions re. the book, Brilliant v. Godawful, Snape=evil v. Snape=tragic hero, and all that hoo-ha (sp?).
  
  I did get a good laugh at all the shippers out there who were horrified when their particular ships were proven non-existent. Because, really. Did they honestly think J.K. Rowling would reveal in her sixth book that Harry Potter was madly in love with Neville Longbottom or whatever? Like, really?
  
  Snickered along with all the shippers who cheerfully accepted that canon had gone one way and decided to ignore it and keep going their own merry way. It's fiction, folks. That means you can, in fact, decide to disregard it. Ron and Hermione are officially an item, but you think she's better off with Harry? More power to you. Ignore the Ron/Hermione stuff then. Heck, we're ignoring the fact that MAGIC ISN'T REAL, so what's the big deal about ignoring a part of canon that you don't agree with? As long as you're aware you're doing so.
  
  Goggled in disbelief at the fact that apparently a lot of ficwriters were convinced that J.K. Rowling had STOLEN FROM THEM the idea that Ron&Hermione/Harry&Ginny/Filch&Fang would make a cute couple, or that Snape was actually a bad guy, or that Dumbledore could (gasp!) die. Some were even talking of suing. Because how DARE she STEAL from THEM.
  
  Um... oh never mind.
  
  Anyway. That's as far as I got in the madness before retreating and sticking to my own theories and opinions and those of the non-lunatics I actually know and like.
  
  
• Not that I had/have all that many opinions. I'm mostly just happy to have read a darn good story (IMHO) and have lots of new canon to follow/disregard.
  
  
• I was quite shocked (mostly pleasantly so) at the deep changes by the end of the book. I really expected that the sixth book would end pretty much like all the others; stuff has happened, it may have an impact on the next book, or it may be totally disregarded by the beginning of the next school year. Oh, and they'll need a new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher.
  
  
• I was pleasantly surprised that Lucius Malfoy was still in Azkaban, and stayed there. I really expected that to be a shock-plot device for the end of OoP, to be totally disregarded by the beginning of book 6.
  
  
• I did think Dumbledore would die and that this would have a deeper impact than the death of other characters like Cedric Diggory and Sirius Black, but I really didn't expect to also lose Snape and Draco and possibly Hogwarts and, in the end, the Harry and Hermione and Ron we know as well, because Harry says at the end that he won't return to school. I was totally shocked by that. In a good way, mind you, but I sort of sat back and went, Huh. Wow. So no matter what, book seven can't be more of the same but more intense, because if nothing else, they won't be students any more. Whoa.
  
  
• Dumbledore himself... seemed off. I was expecting to find out that he'd been taken over by somebody else. He just seemed a heck of a lot more excitable and conscious of his own brilliance and passive-aggressive than in previous books. Around where he got all snippy at Harry for not manipulating a memory out of a teacher I started to really wonder whaddup. But maybe that was just a Prince Humperdinck "Try ruling the world some time" kind of thing. Horcruxes to track down, an Evil Overlord to defeat, a teenage saviour to teach, a school to run, his wife to murder and Guilder to blame for it - oops, wrong fandom.
  
  
• As for Snape's incredible! shocking! OMGWTFBBQ! treachery... meh. I liked what she did, but couldn't muster up surprise either way. If he was really (gasp!) a bad guy all along, he's not exactly the most incredible bad guy ever. If we find out by book 7 that he was really a sextuple agent on the side of good all along... well, again. Not exactly a shock.
  
  Feeling a bit of deja vu. See, I went through this with Alex Krychek on the X-Files. Finally got tired of keeping track of where the guy stood on which particular day and just decided to wait till the end to see where he ended up.
  
  Personally I think he's a good guy (Snape, not Krychek). Well... on the good side, anyway. I think at the end Dumbledore was pleading for Snape to kill him, for some reason Snape already knew about, most probably to prevent a sixteen-year old student from committing murder, especially since Dumbledore was most probably going to die anyway. And Harry is thick as a bag of bricks for not seeing that. But then, that's part of Harry's charm.
  
  
• Totally, totally surprised by Draco's sudden emergence as a three-dimensional character. I felt like I was reading a fanfic. I called it on him being the boy Myrtle was talking about, but told myself that couldn't possibly be because Draco Is Bad In Canon. No room for human feelings like (non-cowardly) fear or ambivalence or loneliness or anything like that. So I remember thinking, when Myrtle said there was a boy who was feeling lonely and bullied and crying in the washroom, "Heh - if this was a fanfic, that would be Draco. Wonder who it is for real, though."
  
  
• Harry and Ginny... well, that was cute. Very cute. Somewhat predictable all the way through, but cute nonetheless. Though I must admit I was a little shocked that apparantly Ginny knows what Harry looks like without a shirt on, which is absolutely freaking hilarious considering the amount of fic of somewhat more... ahem, adult type that I've read since I finally got over (most) of my irrational squick on the subject.
  
  
• Oh, and everything snarkhunter ever said re. the female characters just being human? As in, Hermione and Tonks (and I think Ginny as well) not necessarily being bad role models just cause they get a little down when the guys they love act like big weenies? Word. Absolutely.
  
  
• And I think I also agree with notpoetry: "also need the last book more than I need oxygen, right now."
  
  Which, OK, as I'm not currently dying for lack of it, whatever, but you know what I mean.
  
  
• Happy anticipation for book 7. If it's as much fun to read as book 6, I don't much care what happens or how it ends. It's the journey, and not the destination, that matters to me.
  
  Well... unless it ends with the hideous painful death of everyone who ever mattered to Harry, at Harry's hands, because Harry has decided that Voldemort really knows where it's at and has become Vader to his Sidious. That would bum me out, no matter how wittily and entertainingly it was written.
  
  
• Unless there's a lot of good one-liners.
  
  
• Not my favourite bit, but one of the reasons HBP made me smile:
  
  The bedroom door flew open again and Harry instinctively yanked the bedcovers up to his chin so hard that Hermione and Ginny slid off the bed on to the floor.
  
  A yong woman was standing in the doorway, a woman of such breathtaking beauty that the room seemed to become strangely airless. She was tall and willowy with long blonde hair and appeared to emanate a faint, silvery glow. To complete this vision of perfection, she was carrying a heavily laden breakfast tray.

Comments

[officerjudy.livejournal.com]

No I didn't! I said I HATE YOU!!

Yeah, I remember that one too. : ) Classic.

[jennifus.livejournal.com]

Someone actually said something about suing JKR for... wow. You know? People can be really, really stupid.

It's not a bad book... not my favorite, but I'm so sick of all the debate about it that I'm just jumping over most entries with a cut tag that says anything about HBP.

[linaelyn.livejournal.com]

*shields eyes from text above*

I'm still appreciating the spoiler cuts. Not that I'm deeply vested in the plot spoilers, but I'd rather come to the story without "Oh, Cirocco thought *this* about this part of the story" cluttering my own impressions.

But I don't expect you to keep it up forever. We're about at the end of the grace period, I'm guessing. I should get Book Five read, at least.

[bandgeek.livejournal.com]

Daniel: No I didn't! I said I HATE YOU!!
Me: Oh, that's much better.

Hee!

I haven't read HPB, but I never got past book two, so you don't have to cut anything on my account. :)