I have a new favorite Harry Potter book.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ve probably heard that this book is "darker" than the earlier books, and that the fun details of the earlier books, like Quidditch, and the characters Hagrid the half-giant and Nearly-Headless-Nick, are reduced to almost walk-on roles in
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

This is true.

And it is the best thing that could have happened to the series.

Harry is getting older, and he’s facing all the usual difficulties of being 16, plus losing his one decent "relative," godfather Sirius Black, and being hunted by the most powerful and evil villian in his universe. If it weren’t a dark book, it would also lose the humanity that made the earlier books moving and powerful, and made the series is the insane phenomenon that it is.

Interesting plot points that are ALSO SPOILERS:

1) Harry was right about Professor Snape all along. He is still a Death Eater, and he’s been at Hogwarts spying on Dumbledore and taking advantage of Dumbledore’s trusting nature. Very early in the book, he demonstrates his loyalty to Voldemort and his supporters by taking an Unbreakable Vow to help Draco Malfoy with a task that Voldemort has given Draco. Draco, for reasons that are left slightly ambiguous in this book, doesn’t want Snape’s help, but when the moment comes, he has no choice.

Unfortunately, no one believes Harry about Snape until too late. Horribly, horribly, horribly, Snape kills Dumbledore, who has used his last moment of action to sacrifice himself and protect Harry. Harry sees the entire thing, but is powerless to do anything.

Incidently, Snape and Draco both disappear at the end of the book. Harry also makes noises about not coming back to Hogwarts for a 7th year, but since the conflict with Voldemort is unresolved, we know he’s returning in some way. But is it possible that Snape will be a minor character dragged out for the climactic fight scene in book 7???? And Draco will be unable to torment Harry at Hogwarts?

2) How Voldemort has managed to achieve "immortality" or at least avoid actually dying: He has divided his soul into multiple parts, which are then protectively hidden in physical objects, which are called "horcruxes". In order to kill him, all the horcruxes need to be destroyed. Dumbledore thinks that Voldemort divided his soul into 7 parts, and at least two of them have been destroyed, including back in Book 2, when Harry drove the basilisk fang into Voldemort’s old school diary.

In this book, Dumbledore winds up weak enough that he gets killed because in the course of looking for one of these objects, he drinks a quantity of terrible poison.

3) The relationships that have been slowly brewing in Gryffindor finally blossom.

Ron and Hermione bicker and fight through most of the book, because in the way of real teenagers, they have no idea how to tell each other how they feel. Instead they hurt each other and try to distract themselves with other "romantic" interests until a crisis brings out the truth.

One thing not satisfactorily explained is why Hermione quit seeing Viktor Krum, but that’s a small point.

Harry and Ginny’s hookup is given less elaborate foreshadowing, at least in the earlier books. But it seems entirely plausible, if not overly predictable given the whole connection between Harry and the Weasley family.

That said, when Harry breaks it off at the end of the book, because of his concern that Voldemort and his followers will try to use Ginny to hurt him, it seems real, terrible, and heartbreaking. I hope his resolve weakens in the next book.

Like I said, I have a new favorite Harry Potter book, and I’m delighted that the books are growing up.