A glorious prince of wails

Though try you will to fixate on this handsome Prince’s royal regalia – what with an opening chapter that teases whimsy and foreboding and a spit-shined middle that wears daring and thrilling on its magical sleeve – the true crown of this Prince (and possibly of the entire saga) lies in the finale. With a spectacular wand-off that makes Phoenix’s look like a clumsy rehearsal, it is clear that the stakes have been raised much, much higher this time around. That’s why the fall that ensues after the striking crack of the climax can only result in a collective wail among many a muggle across the globe. Yes, you’ll be weeping yet another fan favorite’s death. You’ll be sobbing as you pick apart every possible clue that s/he may still rise or maybe just faking it. And you’ll be howling as you, hem-hem, begin your countdown for the seventh – and final – book.

But gosh, before we toast the prince to a butterbeer, we surely are getting way ahead of ourselves.

A Plan In Motion

As the sixth book of JK Rowling’s celebrated series of a wizard boy’s coming of age, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in an unenviable position of having to reveal just enough as well as set everything up – a tricky potion to mix, to say the least. In her previous expositions, Rowling laid down all the story ingredients that would inevitably make up the brew of the final showdown. Racial purity, house-elf slavery, a one-cannot-live-with-the-other prophecy, and the Dark Lord’s desire for immortality have been the elements stirred up from the beginning, mixing seamlessly with the themes of friendship and betrayal, choice and predestination, and the mystery and enchantment of love in a carefully prepared cauldron. Being the second-to-the-last book, it is no surprise that we see less introductions of what is new and more progressions of what has already been established in the Potter-verse.

Unlike the previous installments, which enjoyed greater whimsy in tone and imagination, Prince has clearly restricted Rowling’s daydreams from running loose. No token magical creature or significant artifact is introduced, no new Hogwarts subject is shown, heck, even the new Hogwarts teacher has his outrageous dial turned to low. But while some may miss scenery-chewing and thoroughly entertaining hams at the level of Dolores Umbridge or Gilderoy Lockhart, their absence makes way for the presence of a remarkably tight, filler-free plot effectively centered on Harry’s relationships. Harry’s bonds with his best friends Ron and Hermione, mentor Dumbledore, a (surprise?) love interest as well as his eerily close ties with his archenemy Voldemort are appropriately conjured to the forefront. Chopping off the gratuitous excess that muddled Goblet somewhat and hampered Phoenix’s flight, Book six regains the energy that powered Prisoner, the third and arguably the best entry so far. It carries that energy through thirty chapters of whodunit capers and chilling visits to Voldemort’s past.

Secrets And Lies

Interestingly enough, the book sets the stage on a grander, larger landscape than the drab insularity of Privet Drive or the comforting confines of Hogwarts. When the dumbstruck British Prime Minister receives word that recent national disasters like a collapsed bridge, unusual hurricanes, and gruesome murders, are in fact caused by magic people, we too become prepared for full-scale open warfare. Rowling’s subversive rage rises to the surface here when she takes jabs at current world events and the wizarding world’s equivalent of the culture of fear. From parodying modern security gadgets to the Patriot Act, she lends her tome real world resonance and some real big laughs (Note how the Weasley clock predicts that everyone is almost always in mortal peril).

Then subsequent chapters reveal evil and treachery of a different – and more harrowing – kind, as allegiances cross and criss-cross and the conflict of following duty versus conscience is raised. In Hogwarts, a self-assured Harry is convinced that his long-time rival Draco Malfoy has been employed by Voldemort as one of his Death Eaters. Is he being forced against his will? Harry doesn’t know. And when the titular Prince’s cheat notes in Harry’s Potions book help him perform well in class – to the eternal purist Hermione’s dismay – he unknowingly succumbs to doing what is easy rather than doing what is right. Nobody said that being a teenager is easy, as we too see the trio traverse the winding, unpredictable path of being 16. Again, Rowling mixes the right blend of the everyday and the absurd when Ron mistakenly gulps down a love potion and Hermione contemplates buying a daydream out of the box.

"It is our choices that determine who we are, far more than our abilities," Dumbledore has said in the past. And the moral choices that our heroes and villains make are expertly charted here more than in any previous Potter book. When Dumbledore takes Harry to pursue the "flighty temptress of adventure" into the childhood of Tom Riddle via the pensieve, we begin to truly see – and empathize with? – the boy who would become Lord Voldemort. Like watching Harry’s own childhood through a crooked, trick mirror from the circus, we gasp at how close Harry could have grown up to be like Voldemort and how the Dark Lord could have been – or could be? – redeemed by love. Ahhh, the what-ifs…

The Hero’s Next Journey

Though Rowling’s trademark big twists are akin to the best Quidditch players’ Wronski Feints in their masterful deception, even her most ardent fans admit that endings are not her specialty. With a tendency to ramble on and on, past installments seem to nosedive after the reveal, but not with this one. With the climactic coming out of the Half-Blood Prince, a major puzzle piece falls into place, and the Harry Potter mythos comes together and foreshadows what we can only imagine to be a spectacular finish. Finally, our hero comes of age and transitions from accidental hero to a willful, single-hearted one. And by casting a "lumos!" on Harry’s most special, life-changing choice, we stand in awe of his escape from despair to determination and accept that, though much darkness lies ahead for Harry and for us muggles too, it is only moral courage that can illuminate the path.

Though lacking the novelty and freewheeling buoyancy of the earlier volumes, Book six burdens the series with an emotional heft necessary for its hero to truly shine in the finale. This Prince in fact gives Harry the potential to stand side-by-side with other legendary champions of literature when his adventure concludes in two years. And in traveling fearlessly beyond the normal boundaries of children’s fiction, this Prince has visited a frontier few would have expected from its early excursions to enchanted alleys. You don’t need a Marauder’s Map to see that this Prince has opened up glorious possibilities to the heights Harry Potter can soar.