Half-Blood Prince (character)
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The Half-Blood Prince is an alias of a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry's investigation of the true identity of this person is one of the major plotlines of the book, and the mystery is solved at the conclusion.
Harry returns to Hogwarts at the start of his 6th year believing that he will be unable to take the NEWT-level Potions course.
However, Professor Snape has been replaced by Professor Slughorn, whom Dumbledore has persuaded to return to the school and resume teaching Potions. Twenty years before, Slughorn had taught the class including Harry's parents James and Lily Potter, Harry's godfather Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Snape, and in earlier times also taught Tom Marvolo Riddle. Professor McGonagall informs Harry that Slughorn is more lenient and allows students to advance to NEWT class with poorer OWL exam grades.
Slughorn finds old copies of Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage from the Potions storeroom, which he lends to Harry and Ron. Ron is also unexpectedly able to continue Potions for the same reason. The copy that Slughorn lends Harry has alterations to the potions written into it, making most of them much easier to brew. The book also contains a collection of jinxes and hexes and an inscription saying that it is the property of the Half-Blood Prince, all in the same handwriting.
Harry's performance in Potions improves greatly when he decides to use the potion modifications, so much so that Horace Slughorn compliments him for having inherited his mother's outstanding ability at Potions. When Harry uses tips from the book, he wins a prize from Slughorn for brewing the best Draught of Living Death in the class. Harry feels that the Prince is a better Potions teacher than either Snape or Slughorn. Slughorn repeatedly tells Harry that his work reminds him of Lily's ability at Potions, saying she was 'naturally talented' and 'instinctive', and had rare ability.
Harry notices that whilst the potions tips are written down without alterations, the jinxes and hexes contain crossings out and corrections, and this leads him to believe that they were original work created by the Prince. In particular, the spell Levicorpus contains many changes and seems to have caused the Prince some trouble, but Harry succeeds first time when he tries it on Ron.
The difference between the potions tips and spells might be because the potions tips were obtained as-is from another source, or alternatively, because the Prince made other notes, or was better at creating potions tips than at writing spells and didn't need to amend those notes. It may be that Snape was not as skilled as Lily, or may mean that Slughorn knew that Harry would not want to hear if he was. It may also be that the alternative source of tips was Lily; indeed, it has been stated throughout canon that Snape was employed as Potions master only as a temporary post, and that each year he requested the Defence Against the Dark Arts post from Professor Dumbledore. However, Snape is acknowledged to be excellent at creating potions, even recognising from the student's failures what they did wrong. Dumbledore trusts Snape more than any one to brew him potions, implying that Snape is better at Potions than Dumbledore.
Harry learns other new and sometimes dangerous spells from the notes, including Sectumsempra and Muffliato. Hermione becomes suspicious about the Prince's nature because of these spells and researches the matter in the school's library. Lupin suggests checking the age of the book and Hermione uses the publication date, some 50 years earlier, to look for possible owners. This is earlier than the period when Sirius, Lupin, James and Lily went to school. Harry originally suspected that James or Sirius might be the Prince, however Lupin confirms that neither of them was ever known as 'Prince' anything. Hermione first believes that she has discovered the identity of the Half-Blood Prince to be a girl named Eileen Prince, who was a Hogwarts student at the right time. She reveals her findings to Harry, showing him an article from an old copy of the Daily Prophet, which says that Eileen was once the Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team. The fifteen-year-old girl in the paper's photograph is described as being thin, pale, and sullen-looking, with a long face and thick eyebrows.
Lupin tells Harry that the spell Levicorpus was popular around the school during his fifth year, and indeed had been used by Harry's father James. It is finally confirmed that this spell had been created by Severus Snape.
Hermione looks through marriage and birth announcements in the Daily Prophet. She now finds that Eileen Prince married a Muggle named Tobias Snape and they had a son, Severus, who was described as knowing more curses and jinxes when he arrived at Hogwarts than most did when they left. The 'Half-Blood Prince' was thus a literal description of Snape himself, with his half-Muggle status and mother's maiden name of Prince.
A comparison has been drawn with Tom Riddle, who dubbed himself Lord Voldemort, which is part of an anagram of his original name. Prince is also a title, but the expression half-blood is described as an insult in the wizarding world, particularly amongst Death Eaters or in Slytherin house, and it is not explained why he might wish to adopt such a name. Harry asked Lupin if he recognised the name from the time when he was in the same class as Snape but he did not. Later, as Harry tries to use Snape's own spells against him in the heat of battle, Snape confirms to Potter that he (Snape) is in fact the Half-Blood Prince.
