Heroes and hormones

Harry, who was widely reviled at the beginning of "Order of the Phoenix" as a result of a snarky smear campaign in the Daily Prophet, is now heralded as the "Chosen One" who'll save the wizard world from its enemy. Girls fuss and giggle over him in the Hogwarts hallways, and the school's new teacher, a name-dropping networker par excellence, keeps inviting him to tea parties for the school's movers and shakers. (Ron Weasley, in case you're wondering, never gets asked.) Rowling parodied tabloid reporters with the Rita Skeeter character in "Goblet of Fire;" this time she shows us how alienating it can be when the people around you suddenly decide you're a celebrity.

This is also the year that Harry and his friends, now 16, graduate from awkward, abortive flirtations to something more like actual dating. Granted, the progress is bumpy and consummation is limited to snogging (these are still children's' books, after all). But Harry, recovered from his crush on Cho, experiences the first real stirrings of romantic love, an ordeal (when he witnesses the young lady in the arms of another) that feels like "something large and scaly erupted into life in his stomach, clawing at his insides." Perhaps even more troubling, what effect will the intrusions of love have on the once-invincible bond uniting Harry, Ron and Hermione?

Most of the middle section of the book deals with the agonies and ecstasies of adolescent social life. There's no mysterious magical menace stalking the halls of Hogwarts (at least, not according to anyone but Harry, who's obsessed with spying on his nasty fellow student, Draco Malfoy) and this makes "Half-Blood Prince" less suspenseful than the previous five books. The fantasy thread in this book is mostly taken up with Harry's private lessons with Hogwarts' headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, who at the end of "Order of the Phoenix," promised to stop treating Harry like a child and tell his student more about the anti-Voldemort campaign.

Dumbledore's lessons all concern the history of Tom Riddle (Voldemort's real name), which the two investigate via the Pensieve, a basin through which other peoples' memories can be entered. This fleshes out the back-story of the whole series, and answers a lot of questions that have no doubt been nagging hardcore fans. But it's exposition all the same, especially since Dumbledore is called upon to spell out the finer points to Harry. "He preferred to operate alone," he explains, dropping heavy hints about the qualities that will ultimately save Harry. "Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one." Later, Dumbledore observes that even back in his Tom Riddle days, Voldemort liked to keep souvenirs of his bad deeds, a bit of analysis that makes the headmaster sound like a profiler describing a serial killer on a cop show.

What Voldemort's story will remind most readers of, however, is the Darth Vader bio-pics that are the most recent "Star Wars" films. Rowling's dark lord has gotten scarier since the days when nearly all her characters referred to him by such campy sobriquets as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and You-Know-Who. Exploring his past is one way to increase his gravitas. Another, in the later books, is Voldemort's power to violate the emotional connections that mean so much to Rowling's heroes. The more serious the Voldemort story line grows, the less smoothly it blends with the farcical school-daze scrapes Harry and his friends get into, the teapot tempests over homework, sweethearts, exams and Quidditch tournaments.

So it's no wonder that the middle of "Half-Blood Prince" seems a bit leisurely, all Dumbledore-directed flashbacks and Harry mediating in the jealous spats between Ron and Hermione. This is a transitional book, the one in which Rowling's readers are gently shown that much of what made them fall in love with her world -- the sheltered adventure that is life at Hogwarts -- has got to go. Negotiating it seems to have given her some trouble (how, for example, has Harry so thoroughly recovered from the teenage attitude problems that plagued him only a year ago in "Order of the Phoenix"?), but negotiate it she does.

What finally makes "Half-Blood Prince" work is Rowling's commitment to going beyond all the wildly popular and genuinely charming trademarks that no doubt make her feel safe as an author. There are relatively few fanciful new magical tricks or creatures introduced, and no wacky new characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say that with "Half-Blood Prince" Rowling has written a grown-up's novel, with all the refusal of easy comforts the label implies, but she's moving in that direction. And she's moving with absolute conviction, a force that can be just about irresistible in the hands of a talented writer. Like it or not, adulthood is the next stop for the Hogwarts Express.

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