harry potter - and the half-blood prince

by j.k. rowling

wow ... she actually moved me. she made me want to cry. luckily, i was, riding the rocket, so to speak and this made me hold the tears back. i couldn't believe how fast it flew by, especially relative to number 5. it took me a bit longer than it should have to get to it since i had made this silly decision to re-read the five books leading up to hbp. i thought that this should take me just a couple of months. if i get into a good groove, i can finish one of those books in a day or three. but, the the weeks leading up to july 16 flew by and when it arrived i had only just cracked open prisoner of azkaban. i think that reading the books one after another was a good idea. it refreshed my memory and actually made me have a new appreciation for books 2 and 5, which i was rather disappointed with before. to go with my whole book review theme which i've been trying to keep up with here, i *should* have written an entry for each book. but i have decided to just write something up for first-reads only. that's my story, and i'm sticking to it!

so to get to the meat of it all ... my questions (warning, spoilers ahead... but if you haven't read it by now .. you better have a darned good reason):



1. does the sorting hat really only sort purebloods into slytherin? and was snape a slytherin as a student? i believe he was, but i can't remember for sure. anyway, if the sorting hat only sorts purebloods into slytherin, how did snape get put there? i understand why riddle was put there (slytherin's heir .. he's gotta be in slytherin) and harry had some of voldemort's slytherin-esque powers transferred to him, so that's why the hat wanted to put him there ... but if snape is *really* a half-blood, then why did he get in there? is there something about his heritage that we don't yet know?

2. what reason did dumbledore have to trust snape? there *has* to be a reason. and did dumbledore actually ask snape to kill him in the end? through their legilimens powers? i think dumbledore recognized the fact that harry would never be able to fulfill his own destiny while dumbledore was alive. now that dumbledore's gone, harry has no one else to turn to than himself.

3. will hermione and ron actually skip seventh year at hogwarts? will hogwarts open next year? and if it doesn't open next year - does this leave room for an 8th book? the 7 book series has been defined as such due to the fact that there are seven years at hogwarts ... but if they spend a year not at hogwarts ... can they go back? are hogwarts students allowed to take a year off? hmmm ...

4. WILL RON AND HERMIONE GET TOGETHER ALREADY?!?!?

5. so is r.a.b. really regulus black? or is j.k. just trying to trick us? and if it is regulus - how come he was trying to destroy the horcrux? how did he know about the horcruxes in the first place? although, slughorn did know about them and regulus was one of his favourites - maybe he told regulus too. and also - voldemort killed regulus himself, which means regulus must have done something super bad (perhaps destroy a horcrux? or maybe regulus was killed by voldemort's horcrux, which means that he was indeed killed by voldemort) ... and does this mean that regulus was actually good? was he a double agent?

so j.k. do you have any answers?