Harry Potter: Darker, Richer and All Grown Up

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley, David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and Oliver Phelps as George Weasley in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Warner Bros.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter and Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Warner Bros.

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Father Figures
Three other Hogwarts boys — one in the present, two from the past — have virtually the same burden: they've been chosen to play crucial roles in the great conflict. One shadowy figure is a student whose old, annotated schoolbook, marked "Property of the Half-Blood Prince," helps Harry ace his potions course and perform some vital magic. The other, seen in flashbacks, is the brilliant, troubling Tom Riddle, Voldemort to be, whom Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) recruits from an orphanage to Hogwarts. As played at 11 by Hero Fiennes Tiffin (a nephew of Ralph Fiennes, the series' Voldemort) and at 16 by Frank Dillane, the lad emits a smooth, brooding dark-star quality that makes you wish there were a parallel group of coming-of-age books about You Know Who — Darth Vader to Harry's Luke Skywalker. As other boys face the surge of puberty, so Tom and Harry feel a thrill and a shiver at the dawning recognition of their immense powers.

And as Harry and Tom have mirror-image histories, so Harry and Draco (Tom Felton) here become like twins. One is good, one corrupted, but each is bent on avenging his father by annihilating the adult who killed or exiled him. (The story is really about the risks boys take for the grown-ups whose favor they cherish.) In earlier chapters, Draco was simply the upper-class bully. Now that he's Voldemort's chosen one, there's fear in his sneer. When he nears the man he's supposed to murder, he blurts out, "I have to kill you, or he's gonna kill me" — and you can feel sympathy for the devil's disciple.

With most parents (except for Draco's mother and the Weasleys) absent from the action, the Hogwarts teachers are the guardians of youth. They're not all suited to the job; some are foolish, some sinister. The new teacher, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), runs a salon for his pet students. An incorrigible name-dropper, he "collects" children whose talent or connections might bring him glory. The resentful Snape (Alan Rickman, effortlessly oily), whose motives have been murky but whom Dumbledore continues to trust, becomes Draco's surrogate dad: snake for snake.

The deepest kinship, man to boy, is Dumbledore's with Harry. From the start, when the dean of wizards puts a protective arm around Harry, to the probing trips they take through time and space, Dumbledore is Harry's true godfather — a role into which the great Gambon pours his craggy majesty and cello voice. One might wish that their visit to Voldemort's cave had the shuddering poignancy it does in the book, where a weakened Dumbledore tells his protégé, "I am not worried, Harry. I am with you." But their scenes together cast a lingering spell.

In the final films, the boy will grow into the holy warrior. Those climactic works couldn't have a stronger prelude than Half-Blood Prince — an evocation, not leering but knowing, of adolescence under siege.

Watch TIME's video "Harry and the Potters Will Wizard Rock You."

Read TIME's Nerd World blog post "Values Learned Through Wizard Rock."