Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was actually the second-to-last Harry Potter movie I watched before I eventually dove into the books. When I saw it in 2010, it was still a relatively recent release, having just hit theaters and, by the time I caught it, Blu-ray as well. Much like the book, it’s one of my favorite entries in the entire series, and also one of the darkest films in the franchise, though certainly not the most grim.

As David Yates’s second outing directing the series, his influence clearly pushed the tone into darker, grittier territory, though the film doesn’t really deviate from the book’s story so much as trim away content deemed too minor to fit the runtime. That’s been an issue since the very first film, but it became especially noticeable starting with Goblet of Fire.

As always, there’s a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but this time Dumbledore also recruits a retired professor, Horace Slughorn. He’s an eccentric but genuinely warm, likable guy, ironically having once headed Slytherin House before Snape took over. And sure enough, you’d assume he’d be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, except he’s actually brought in to teach Potions instead. That reveal, paired with Snape finally landing the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, was genuinely a shocker, even for me. It’s also worth noting that the film never actually shows Snape teaching the subject he’d wanted his entire career at Hogwarts. And honestly, the movie rushes through explaining the whole “Half-Blood Prince” mystery itself.

Harry begins Potions under Slughorn, despite initially assuming he’d be skipping the class entirely that year. Arriving late, he stumbles upon a worn, heavily annotated textbook once owned by someone calling themselves the Half-Blood Prince. The notes reveal a genuine mastery of potion-making, with cleverly improved techniques and ingredient ratios, and thanks to the book, Harry ends up winning a vial of Felix Felicis, liquid luck. Which makes it all the more ironic that when they genuinely need that luck later, say, to prevent Voldemort from slaughtering everyone, Slughorn apparently can’t whip up any more of it.

I’d also completely forgotten about Lavender Brown, who becomes Ron’s crush and eventual girlfriend. In the 16 years since I last watched this, I’d always misremembered it as Lavender dosing Ron with a love potion, when really it was another girl targeting Harry, with Ron accidentally drinking it instead. It’s also amusing that the actress who played Lavender later gained a different kind of notoriety through a venture on a fairly controversial “naughty” platform.

A major thread running through the movie is Draco Malfoy’s recruitment as a Death Eater, which feels somewhat ironic considering his father’s public failure and arrest left the Malfoy family on shaky ground with Voldemort. It’s possible Draco was already secretly a Death Eater during Order of the Phoenix without anyone realizing, but here, Voldemort explicitly orders him to assassinate Dumbledore. Draco clearly struggles with the weight of the task, since even succeeding would mean killing the most respected wizard alive, a daunting feat for someone who hasn’t even finished school yet.

I always found J.K. Rowling’s handling of the Horcrux plotline a bit odd. I understand narratively why it’s there, but we only learn about it midway through this book and movie, leaving just one more installment to wrap everything up. Much of the film centers on uncovering what exactly Slughorn said to a young Tom Riddle, which turns out to be about his plan to split his soul into seven Horcruxes. What’s never fully addressed, though, is that he only deliberately created six, with Harry accidentally becoming the seventh without Voldemort’s planning. And if Horcruxes could be created unintentionally like that, how could Dumbledore ever be truly certain the number was exactly seven, rather than eight, nine, or some other number entirely?

We recently rewatched it together, and I was curious to see my stepdaughter’s reaction to Snape killing Dumbledore. She genuinely didn’t see it coming, even though the signs are fairly obvious in hindsight. She screamed, “No!”, got visibly upset, and developed a real dislike for Snape afterward. Someone had spoiled the twist for me ahead of time originally, so it never hit me the same way it clearly did for a lot of book readers encountering it fresh at the time.

Still, Dumbledore’s death carries real weight, even though he’d orchestrated much of what led to it himself. For anyone who missed the details, which the book explains far more thoroughly, he’d discovered a ring containing the Resurrection Stone, cursed by Voldemort, and touching it had slowly begun killing him. Snape’s potion simply bought him roughly another year before the curse finally caught up with him. But Dumbledore’s death marks a genuine turning point in the story, the moment it becomes clear no one on the Order’s side is truly safe anymore, since Voldemort no longer fears anyone else standing in his way.

So overall, I initially considered Half-Blood Prince a genuinely excellent film, with strong direction, great performances, a compelling plot, and a truly memorable climax. And after reading the book afterward, it actually became my favorite novel in the entire series. I remember heading to my local library in Boiling Springs, South Carolina, grabbing a copy, and reading the entire thing in one sitting, something I’d never managed with any other Harry Potter book. Considering how lengthy that book is, finishing it in one go is honestly a real testament to Rowling’s writing, even if my opinion of her personally, due to her hateful anti-trans views, has soured considerably since then.