The Half Blood Prince's Secrets *SPOILER ALERT*

I just read "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling, for the first time in what seems like years. As a "young adult reader", I'm starting to notice a trillion new factors in the book that I didn't notice before. When I first read it, I read it to get it done with. The second time I read it, I read it to understand it. And then the 37 other times I read it, I read it because I wanted to. Which brings me back to this reading. I read it to catch up, so I could be completely ready for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2, which comes to theaters this July.

Firstly, I'd like to say that this is the first time I'm noticing actual scenes. Theres a scene where Snape shows Harry all the memories he has involving Harry's mother. Harry's looking them after Snape dies, and sees all these moments that Snape had with his mother, where he was either teaching her, or she was mad at her. And it's funny because until this reading of the book, I didn't notice how much in love Snape was with Lily. This is what made me realize, Snape spent all his time with Lily telling her really cool facts about the wizarding world, so that she would hang out with him longer. In the real world this is true to. In other books and movies, when a guy falls for a girl he tries to teach her something, like roller blading or sailing, or something corny like that.

Another thing I noticed was that Harry inherited his fathers hate of Snape, even though his father didn't really live long enough to hear Harry talk. On Harry's first day at Hogwarts in "Harry Potter and Sorcerer's Stone", we can see that without even knowing Professor Snape, he doesn't like him. He sees him at the staff table in the dining hall and already hates him, after one glance, and no conversation. The hate escalates with Harry's first potions lesson, where Snape humiliates Harry in front of the class.

The third thing I noticed was that Snape had a reason to be mean to Harry. First of all, Harry resembles his dad so much, and his dad happened to be a really big bully to Snape. Snape was in love with Lilly Potter, and having her marry his greatest enemy almost killed him. And the worst part is, he has to teach his kid. And that's not even all of the problem. He also had to protect Harry from a bunch of evil forces a-brewing in Hogwarts, and he must have been pissed off that he had to spend his time protecting the thing he loathed the most.