I really liked the book as well. Sadly, I was fooled by Snape’s deception and was shocked by his dastardly deed. You all make good points about his remaining ambiguous.

Though I enjoyed reading it and can’t wait for the next one, I have a major reservation about the series which only became more pronounced after this installment. Harry Potter is a lousy protagonist. He’s a swell kid who can readily summon a patronus...and that’s about it. He is not a compelling hero at all and doesn’t deserve to have his name on the front of seven books. Here’s why.

A hero (it seems to me—this isn’t intentionally based on any critical framework) needs to have some exceptional quality to earn his/her hero/heroine status. It can be strength, courage, intelligence, perseverance, maybe even luck to some extent, but it has to be some advantageous quality that sets him apart from his peers and adversaries. I will sort these into special skills/abilities, character traits, and moral qualities. Harry just isn’t exceptional enough in any category to be a good hero.

First, Harry is a good wizard, but not a great one by a long shot. He has a reputation for greatness at defense against the dark arts, which is based largely on the aforementioned and woefully overworked patronus charm. The "love" thing is retarded and the end of book one sucked, in my opinion. He is totally inept at occlumency, a skill which would be indispensable in the struggle against Voldemort. His OWL scores were above average, but not even good enough to become an auror, much less the title “chosen one.” He is deplorably mediocre at potions, which seems to be one of the most important subjects for a wizard. He does have unusual skill as a quiddich seeker, which, in conjunction with $1.09, will get him a cup of coffee in the war against Voldemort. He has come up with some clever solutions to problems (jamming the tooth in Tom Riddle’s book, for example), but more often he relies on someone else’s thinking and advice.

Strength or skill aren’t the only ways to be a hero, though. When other heroes have lack some applicable skill, they often make up for it with a character attribute, such as perseverance or work ethic. Harry is a lazy piece of crap. While this book shouldn't be a tract on the importance of doing your homework, you guys are too hard on Bert. Not only is Harry not a model student, he is inexplicably careless. He knows his past and throughout the series has at least some idea about the showdown in his future, yet this fails to motivate him in an meaningful way, which would be to work harder...not because it's the "right" thing to do, but because he and everyone else he loves will be killed if he doesn't. In book after book he would rather whack off with Ron and roll his eyes at Hermione than, say, figure out what the next Triwizard clue means before the day of the trial (and studying for OWLs doesn’t count—even the most lazy-ass college students get religion during finals week and cram). I can’t speak for you guys, but if I knew the fate of the world depended on my ability to strike out Barry Bonds sometime during the 2007 season, I’d be spending every waking moment out back pitching at my tire swing. If I were lucky enough to be attending a pitching boarding school where Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens were my teachers, there’d really be no reason for me to not hone my skills to perfection. But Harry, who goes to such a school and has a work-horse ace in his dorm to work out with (Hermione), is content to half-ass his way through most classes (oh, but he really loves defense against the dark arts, the little dear) and stew with immature, unfocused anger (“Oooh, that damn Voldemort!”). A real hero who was a better-than-average wizard with a prophesy might actually study potions and charms harder on the off chance Voldemort doesn’t appear as a dementor in the last book.

Finally, a hero can win the job with some outstanding moral attributes. I give him credit for taking Luna to the party, but he blew her off constantly in book 4. Aside from being a nice boy, Harry fails on this count as well. The laziness outlined above is a moral taint, but he doesn’t even always take the high road: he spies on his enemies and even tries to use an unforgivable curse (which fails laughably) at the end of book 6. If his stupid "love" thing is to be meaningful, it would have to be something like mercy or Christ-like loving his enemy (someone else rightly noted how he felt for young Snape and Tom Riddle). But to have mercy, one must have power over another. For example, when Luke is about to kill Vader, he casts his lightsaber away and realizes his victory over evil. It is impossible for me to conceive Harry holding Voldemort's (or anyone else's) life in his hands because he is such an average wizard. It would be more likely to have Harry saying to Voldemort, who is standing with his boot on Harry's bleeding neck, "Aha! I've got you right where I want you. I won't kill you because it would be wrong!"

Luke Skywalker had the destiny thing going, but he was exceptionally gifted with the force. Bilbo Baggins was honest and clever. Frodo was pure hearted and brave. Bruce Wayne trained for years to become Batman. Neo (heaven forgive me for using a Matrix reference) was a savant at manipulating the program. Paul Atredies had the strategic cunning to get in with the Fremen. But what does Harry Potter have? He is like Forrest Gump: always in the right place at the right time. Harry’s victories are more often the results of someone else (Hermione, Dumbledore, winning the Triwizard tournament because bad guys are pulling strings) or dumb luck (getting Snape’s potions book and winning the felix felicis, receiving invisibility cloaks and ultra fast brooms from mysterious benefactors, priori incantatem, getting the marauder’s map from the Weasleys). Even in this last book, what did Harry actually do? Oh, right, he followed instructions and kept giving Dumbledore goblets of green potion. He couldn’t fight off the zombies and he didn’t even remember to pick up the friggin’ locket after the potion was gone.

After this book, it is clear Harry is only ¾ the wizard Hermione is (witch...whatever), 1/100th the wizard Snape is, and 1/1000 the wizard Dumbledore was. So, now that he’s dropping out of school (!), what is he going to do when he has to fight Snape and Voldemort? I’ll tell you what. He’ll play with himself for 100 pages, find some gadget under a park bench that happens to be a horcrux-melting talisman, kill Voldemort, be honored with a parade, and become the new defense against the dark arts teacher at Hogwart’s on the strength of his ability to use the expelliarmus spell.

Finally, you guys are all wrong about one thing. The book is totally anti-Christian. In chapter 16, Harry confronts the propagandist Minister of Magic for lying to the public about the War on Voldemortian Terror and imprisoning innocent people without due process. Clearly, this is thinly-veiled anti-Bush slander, which can be shown to be anti-Christian by the following syllogism:

1. Bush (W), the choice of believers and voters with morals, consults directly with Christ (C), who gives divine authorization for whatever the administration does.
2. The novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (H) opposes the administration’s policies.
3. To oppose the administration’s policies is to oppose Christ himself.
4. Therefore, the novel opposes Christ and is thus anti-Christian.

The argument can be symbolically rendered thus:

1. C ) W
2. H ) ~W
3. ~W ) ~C (corollary of 1)
.: 4. H ) ~C (2, 3 h.s.)
Q. E. D.


Other than that, it’s all good. For the record, I rank them in the following ascending order: 5, 1, 2, 6, 4, 3.