What is Harry's crime in the Half-Blood Prince?

There is something that has always bothered my about one of the key scenes in The Half-Blood Prince.

As you will no doubt recall, in the later stages of the novel, Harry sees on the Marauders Map that Malfoy is in a boys bathroom with Moaning Myrtle. Harry enters the bathroom and finds Malfoy leaning over a sink, crying, while Myrtle attempts to soothe him.

Harry takes no action, other than to stand looking at Malfoy. Malfoy pulls himself together and looks up into the mirror. He sees Harry standing behind him, draws his wand and casts a spell at Harry. That spell misses and a duel ensues.

The two are well-matched (surprisingly so, considering Harry's experience and training, but I wrote about that in an earlier post). After several shots back and forth, Malfoy attempts to cast the Cruciatus curse on Harry but Harry is a shade quicker, hitting Malfoy with the mysterious Sectum Sempra spell that he found in his potions text.

Malfoy collapses to the floor, bleeding profusely and dropping his wand. The duel is over. Harry takes no further offensive action but merely stands by as Myrtle screams and Snape thunders into the room to render aid to the bleeding Malfoy.

From what I can tell, Harry did nothing wrong. He walked into a public bathroom. He watched a schoolmate cry. He responded to an attack by that schoolmate. He avoided being tortured by that schoolmate (who was attempting to use an Unforgiveable Curse on him). He took effective action to render his attacker incapable of continuing the attack, without actually killing his attacker. He took no further aggressive steps once his attacker was incapacitated.

Where is the crime? Why is he punished? Why is he subjected to such significant vilification from Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall and even Hermione?

Malfoy cast the first spell and started the duel with no more provocation than that Harry happened to be standing there watching him cry. Malfoy escalated the duel by attempting to cast an Unforgiveable Curse. Harry defended himself once attacked and stopped once he had rendered his attacker incapable of continuing to attack.

Malfoy was forgiven for attacking Harry and forgiven for casting an Unforgiveable Curse.

Harry was found guilty of defending himself effectively from an unprovoked, serious, perhaps deadly attack.

Okay, I can understand that Snape, who hates Harry immensely for a variety of perhaps understandable reasons, might see this an opportunity to get at Harry. Fine.

But McGonagall? Once she heard Harry's story and interviewed Myrtle, wouldn't she intervene in support of Harry? Wouldn't she demand that Malfoy, once recovered, be punished (and likely expelled) for launching an unprovoked attack on a schoolmate and for attempting to hit that schoolmate with an Unforgiveable Curse?

And Hermione? Sure, she doesn't like the Half-Blood Prince's book. And sure, she quite properly chastises Harry for using an untried curse on someone like this. But why does she so thoroughly condemn Harry for his actions?

From a narrative perspective, on the other hand, I can understand this scene and its outcome. It provides action in the middle of a fairly static plot. It permits the duel between Malfoy and Potter that we have been hoping for since book one. It creates a reason for Harry to be forced to miss the final Quidditch match and sets up the climax of the Harry-Ginny romantic build up.

And, of course, if Malfoy were punished or expelled at this point, the climax of the entire novel would be impossible -- with Malfoy kicked out of school, there would be no way for Dumbledore to be trapped by Death Eaters on the top of the tower that fateful night.

So I see the value in the duel and Harry's punishment to Rowling as a writer but... the outcome of the duel still does not make any sense in the world of the novels.

Rowling would likely have been better to have the duel start less decisively -- Malfoy and Harry square off, trade words, then begin to duel together. And she should never have had Malfoy attempt an Unforgiveable Curse. It doesn't have much impact in the course of the action scene, it is unsuccessful and it creates the problem of Malfoy getting away with attempting to cast it.

Then, Harry could legitimately face punishment for using a curse without knowing what it did and, perhaps, for responding to Malfoy's less nasty attack with a ferocious spell that endangered the life of a schoolmate.

These are not major changes I am suggesting but I think they would make the outcome make much more sense and not seem so contrived.

"Harry Potter and Me" offers insights

In a 2001 interview with the BBC, Jo Rowling tells the story of how, after the publication of The Chamber of Secrets, she received a stern letter from a parent who basically told her the violent and scary ending of the second book was unacceptable and that the parent expected better from Rowling in the upcoming third novel.

Rowling's reaction is wonderful. She becomes very angry, even though several years had passed between the incident and her recounting of it to the BBC.

"I'm not taking dictation here," she says after a moment. "Do I care about my readers? Profoundly and deeply. But do I ultimately think they should dictate a single word of what I write? No. I am the only one who should be in control of that."

This is a pretty important statement for me as a Potter fan. It tells me that Rowling committed herself, early on, to remaining true to her own plans for the Harry Potter books and to avoid being influenced, dictated to even, by outside forces, be they her readers, her editors or even the films made of her books.

Two other highlights from this BBC interview, filmed between the publication of the fourth and fifth books:

1. Jo Rowling makes it clear that the film version of her books were, at least to that point, entirely outside her control. No matter how carefully she kept control over the writing of the books to herself, she was clearly willing to turn over complete control over the film versions to others.

She says, "The closer the viewing [of the film version of The Philosopher's Stone, the first novel] came, the more frightened I became, to the point where, where I actually sat down to watch the film, I was terrified because I thought 'oh, please don't do anything that's not in the book; please don't take horrible liberties with the plot'."

She concludes by saying of the first film: "I liked it, which was a relief, as you can imagine."

This may just mean that I can absolve Jo Rowling of any blame for the ridiculous liberties the film makers took with the plots of the later books, the devastation they wrought on The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows especially. I can't imagine Rowling emerging from any of the last three films thinking that they had stayed true to her original books.

2. By that point at least, Rowling had written the Epilogue for Book Seven. She actually holds up the file folder for the camera, calls it the Epilogue and says, "In the Epilogue, I basically say what happens to everyone after they leave the school, those who survive."

That doesn't prove conclusively that she had the final plot completely figured out but it does indicate quite clearly that she spent a lot of time early on planning out where the novels would go.

Oh cursed spite: The Half-Blood Prince of Denmark

Harry bent over him; and Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.

A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat.

"I am dead; thou livest; Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied."

Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was...

"Look ... at ... me .... " Snape whispered. "In this harsh world draw they breath in pain, To tell my story."

The green eyes found the black, but after a second something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

Sorry, a little bit of poetic license there. But every time I read J.K. Rowling's affecting description of Harry's last encounter with Snape and the Half-Blood Prince's death near the end of The Deathly Hallows, I am strongly reminded of the dying wishes of another Prince from another legendary English writer: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare.

And so I've taken the liberty of combining Rowling's scene with that written by Shakespeare. They fit together quite well, don't you think? Certainly the words Shakespeare provided to Hamlet to express his request that Horatio explain his story, his plight to the disbelieving world capture exactly what Snape, in his gasping last breaths, is asking of Harry Potter.

I know that the tendency must be to compare Harry himself with Shakespeare's tragic prince, and there are ample reasons to do so, but I think this scene, the last moments of Snape's rather tragic life, align the Half-Blood Prince quite closely with the Shakespearean hero.

I'll probably write more on Harry Potter and Hamlet in a later blog entry but, for now, I'm quite pleased with the blended passage I've created above. What do you think?

Answering My Own Question

That just shows how carefully I read. Or maybe it says something about my memory.

A couple of posts ago I asked the question: whom did Tom Riddle murder to create the Horcrux in the diary? I speculated that it might have been the girl whose death was blamed on the monster hidden in the Chamber of Secrets during Riddle's (and Hagrid's) tenure at Hogwarts.

Well, surprise, surprise. J.K. answered that question clearly and unequivocally in The Half-Blood Prince. Riddle killed his Muggle father and grandparents when he was 16.

How did I not remember that?

It just goes to show how detailed and complex Rowling's magical world is. Over the course of the seven novels, she really did cover it all.

The Art of The Half-Blood Prince

I've finally completed my reading of The Order of the Phoenix, having thoroughly enjoyed the final interaction between Harry and Dumbledore at the end. Now I'm onto The Half-Blood Prince, the book that has been broadly panned for being merely a set up for the final novel.

Problem is, I have grown to enjoy the sixth novel very much. I think it is the best written of the seven. Rowling makes it interesting without imbuing the story with the heart-stopping action of the other books.

The first two chapters of the novel send a clear message that something new is afoot. Harry Potter appears in neither of them. The first is a vivid scene told from the point of view of the Muggle Prime Minister, who is dealing with a string of disasters and a visit from the new Minister For Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour.

The second chapter involves Narcissa Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape. Both are very well written but very different from each other. In the first, Rowling speaks from a particular point of view, that of the Muggle, while in the second, her narrator is much less subjectively placed, following the interactions between the three characters in an almost objective fashion.

It's writing at an exceptionally high, surprisingly adult level. It sends a message that the Harry Potter series has come of age.

The Weasley Homestead

I'm trying to figure out what screen-writer Steven Kloves and director David Yates have against the Weasley homestead, commonly known as "The Burrow".

First, in a completely invented scene in the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, they have Bellatrix and her pals burn the place down. If that's not bad enough, in the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, they have several characters (like Mad-Eye Moody) call the place "The Burrows", plural.

In an interesting contradiction, some characters call it by its singular name and others by its new plural name, both in the film and in the special features that come with the Blu-Ray version of the movie.

Strange. J.K. refers to it, consistently and without exception, as "The Burrow" across all six books in which it is mentioned (I don't find any mention of the Weasley home, at least not be name, in The Philosopher's Stone). Why change it in the film?

Oh, which reminds me, from what I understand, the first novel in the series is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in just about every English-speaking country in the world except the United States: so why do the British producers refer to it constantly as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the American title) in the Blu-Ray extras?

By the way, I recently picked up the French version of the first novel and I think the direct translation of the French title is Harry Potter at the School for Magic. Neat.