HBP MUST have appeared in COS

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 103441

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "albusthewhite" 
<jacobalfredo at h...> wrote:
> now me:
> In an interview given 10/2004, Jo was asked, "What was the 
original working title of 
> Chamber of Secrets?"  She replied, "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."  No relation whatsoever...  
> I'm taking that as pretty good evidence that the HBP will not be 
related to CoS.  Perhaps 
> she was using it to refer to Riddle/VM (certainly apt) but then 
decided it would work better 
> for something else?  Certainly the HBP might appear in CoS, but 
not necessarily and we 
> might not recognize him (or her or it?).
> 
I don't take her words quite so literally.  We're still all debating 
what the meaning of "Prince" and "Half-Blood" are here, and rightly 
too, because the meaning isn't all that obvious.  If a lot of 
background explanation is required to understand just who is the HBP 
and why, then it's quite possible that Rowling felt that such 
lengthy explanations didn't belong in Book 2.  In that case, 
introducing the term wouldn't make much sense, and would just raise 
questions that weren't going to be answered for several years. 
That's what I think she meant by "bore no relation" - that so much 
of the background was missing that the term would not have made any 
sense, not that the character himself was completely omitted.  I 
happen to think the HBP is Tom Riddle, but others have made a good 
case for different characters.  However, as CoS stands right now, 
referring to ANY of them as a Half Blood Prince would have just come 
across as nonsense.  There are too many pieces missing.  I suspect 
that Rowling didn't want to go so deeply into Tom Riddle's 
background that early in the series; as it happens, the next bit of 
information we get about his youth comes in GoF, two books later.  I 
think the next book will focus on some crucial incident(s) in his 
formative years, and that will make clear why the title is 
appropriate.

Wanda