Motivations for Joining DEs - Pure blood and Propaganda

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 140938

Elyse: <snip> If he wanted to hide the fact that 
> he was a half-blood, writing it in the front of his potions book was
> really stupid thing to do. A sixteen year old trying to hide how 
> pure his blood is in such a glaringly obvious place would have made 
> a terribly incompetent spy dont you think?
>

Carol responds:
But he didn't write it in the front of his book. It's on the back
cover in tiny handwriting:

". . . Harry bent low to retrieve the book, and as he did so, he saw
something scribbled along the bottom of the back cover in the same
small, cramped handwriting as the instructions that had won him his
bottle of Felix Felicis . . . This Book is the Property of the
Half-Blood Prince." (HBP Am. ed. 193)

It's not in plain view for everyone to see. He may even have been
embarrassed by it. And chances are, he kept his precious book to
himself. I doubt very much that he shared his Potions secrets with the
likes of Macnair or Crabbe Sr. or whoever the Slytherins in his own
year happened to be. 

Carol