The Half Blood Prince (was my favorite HBP picks)

[albusthewhite]

No: HPFGUIDX 103429

I'd like to amass some of the possible candidates for who everyone thinks t=he eponymous Half Blood Prince is.  Jo has told us that it is definitely not Harry or Voldemort - so who is it?  Armadillof and others have some great suggestions, so I'll start by commenting on some of what has been said.  Here's a quote from BBC Newsround where Jo talks about the 
relationship between HBP (the now-confirmed book 6 title) and CoS:

Q: What was the original working title of Chamber of Secrets? 
JKR: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I quite liked that title, unfortunately the story bore no relation whatsoever to the title by the time I'd finished. 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/tv_film/newsid_2353000/2353727.stm

IMHO this means that no logical connection between CoS and the HPB can necessarily be made.  (Not to rule out those great suggestions, notably Hagrid, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

armadillof:
> #1  PRINCE OF WHAT?
> #2  Blood line inheritance of royalty....or selected?

me, Albusthewhite:

Great place to start.  My initial thoughts are that the character is either= a) a half-blood who is prince of something, or b) someone who is prince of half-bloods (e.g. Dumbledore). 
Duh, but it's always good to start at the beginning.  As several people have pointed out, "prince" could be used literally or metaphorically, so the person in question wouldn't necessarily have to be royalty or even selected in any way.  Think of Robin Hood - the prince of thieves (and not that Costner movie!)  is not *really* a prince, but the leader of a band of thieves.

armadillof:
> #3  Do you think the character's parents are dead? 

Albusthewhite:
Another interesting question – in terms of royalty, of course, a prince necessarily has a parent or other older relative (sibling, uncle/aunt, etc.) who is king or queen.  If the HBP is not literally a royal or hereditary prince, then all bets are off.

Some of the candidates for the HBP so far:
Hagrid, Lupin, Snape, DD, Riddle (perhaps is not technically VM?) and Dean Thomas (major support coming from the fact that he was supposed to be pivotal to CoS and HBP was the original title
a somewhat tenuous link)

Some of my comments:
Hagrid is a great choice because he's been left with Grawp, which may give =him an "in" to the giant community – tho' he didn't get such a great reception there in OotP, did he?  Still, he could be a half-blood (giant/human) prince of the giants.

Lupin/Snape – surely possible, but no specific evidence thus far.  Also, ba=rring some unforeseen circumstance, Snape is pretty clearly a pureblood (Slytherin and  Malfoy connections).

DD – definitely one of the common man's favorite wizards, a protector of ha=lf-bloods & muggles.  I'll point out again that the HBP doesn't need to be half blood, he could be the prince of half bloods.  


And now for some candidates who are completely different:

Neville – to me, the most obvious choice, since he's the "other" child the =prophecy could have referred to, but is he half-blood?  I suspect he's a pureblood, but in  SS "The Sorting Hat" there's a brief discussion of which Gryffindor students in Harry's year are full/half blood and muggles.  Jo is introducing us to how wizard children are produced, but also 
working in important info (as she is so skilled at doing).  Here's what Neville has to say in SS: "`Well, my gran brought me up and she's a witch [
] but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages'" (125, USHB).  He doesn't specify whether his parents are wizards or muggles (as he is understandably reticent to say anything about his parents) so he could be either half- or fullblood wizard.  Not Muggle, because there is certainly wizard in his 
family.  I assume his father, as a witch's son, is a wizard, so it would th=en depend on whether his mother is a witch or a muggle.  Are the Longbottoms a royal family?

Seamus - Seamus tells us in SS, "`I'm half-and-half [
] Me dad's a Muggle. = Mom didn't tell him she was a witch `til after they were married.  Bit of a nasty shock for him'" (125).  But I only mention this because it is deliberately plugged in there.

James - Does the title character have to be living?  Does the HBP have to exist in the "now" of the story, or could it be a piece of history or myth that figures into the story of book 6 somehow?  Do we know anything about James's ancestry?  

I know Jo says that the HBP isn't Harry, but if we hyphenate it to "Half-bl=ood Prince" then the abbr. is HP.  Eh?  Eh?  Whaddya think?  Ok, stretching a bit, I admit.

That's all I've got time for right now.  Please keep posting suggestions and evidence, as I am really curious what all those bright, creative minds out there come up with!

Albus the White
(whose ability to procrastinate is matched only by his
hmmm, I'm stumped. Well, I'll figure it out later)