Devlin Scott

Harry Potter Year 6: The Half-Blood Prince

It took me a while to realize what J.K. was doing with this novel. It wasn’t until I was midway through the next to final chapter that it dawned on me. Perhaps I was too engrossed in the story to notice earlier. From the beginning of this book J.K. was teaching us about the Hogwarts family.

She began by showing us the love of Fleur and Bill (annoyingly so). From that point onward she wove other relationships around a simple and ABC-like plot. Ron’s love triangle; Harry’s sudden fixation with his new feelings for Ginny (which I will admit seemed as if it sprang forth out of the blue); the sudden and surprising relationship between Tonks and Remus; she even allowed us to glimpse the father son dynamic between Harry and Dumbledore. I believe the main purpose of this novel was to show us how fragile and lasting relationships can become. We even see this dynamic hard at work between Snape and Malfoy’s personal and collective family obligations. But, with one tragic death I watched life unravel and witnessed how much it affected everyone else’s relationships…how fragile it all is. Why it took me this long to piece it together I can’t say. Maybe I’m not the sharpest quill in the desk.

For a few months, I don’t know how long, J.K. held the world as hostage with the horrific and heart wrenching ending of book six. For what must have seemed like an eon, the world suffered, waiting for its nightmarish torture to end with the release of the final book in the Potter series. I am so far fortunate to have escaped this madness. I need only reach for the final book resting next to me and continue the story…


Devlin