Sixth book shows discovery and sacrifice at Hogwarts

By Christian Ciabattoni, Special to the Town Crier

It’s the middle of July and London is shrouded in fog. Or is it?

Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge explains to the Muggle Prime Minister that the fog is really Dementors breeding.

All over England, bridges are collapsing, buildings are falling and people are dying because of the return of Lord Voldemort and his followers, the Death Eaters.

In the sixth installment of J.K. Rowling’s series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (July 16, Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic), Harry and his mentor Albus Dumbledore have to work harder then ever to fight evil, but what will they have to sacrifice?

Returning for their sixth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione learn how to apparate (move from one place to another by magic) and disapparate (which can go horribly wrong).

Harry is now captain of a Quidditch team (Quidditch is a fast-moving sport played in the air on broomsticks). There is a new Potions teacher named Horace Slughorn, a man who is a little bit chubby and nicer than the previous Potions teacher, Severus Snape. The oily Snape got the job he has coveted, teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry is acing Potions with the help of the marginalia scrawled on every page of the textbook once owned by a mysterious Half-Blood Prince. Harry takes private lessons from Dumbledore that have to do with learning as much as they can about Voldemort in order to figure out his weakness.

Harry and classmate Draco Malfoy have always hated each other, but their loathing increases when Harry suspects that Malfoy has entered Voldemort’s service. No one believes him, but Harry is determined to discover what the secretive Malfoy is up to and why he seems to be in cahoots with Snape.

It seems as if Harry and Malfoy want to kill each other on the spot. At one point, Malfoy ends up with a huge gash across his chest and Harry gets about 20 detentions. Later, Harry sees an unexpected side of Malfoy.

I think this is the best book in the Harry Potter series. The story is more interesting and better written than the first five.

Some parts are sad, some parts are intense, and some parts are happy and fun to read. My favorite part is when Harry and Dumbledore go after a Horcrux (I can’t tell you what this is without giving too much away, except that it is a very wicked invention).

One question I have is why they can’t apparate right up to where the Horcrux is kept; why do they apparate only to the coast outside the cave?

I have the same question for why they need broomsticks to go from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts instead of apparating to the gates (inside of Hogwarts, a spell prevents apparition).

One of the surprises is that Harry and Voldemort do not face off.

Christian Ciabattoni will enter fifth grade this fall at Waldorf School of the Peninsula.