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harry potter - What parts of Half-Blood Prince were originally written for Chamber of Secrets?


I just ran across this comment:



Never mind that in HBP case, we know that large swaths of HBP were witten to be in Book 2 (Chamber of Secrets) and then cut out and postponed till Book 6 :)



I haven't heard this before. But it kind of seems like it'd make sense - Chamber of Secrets has always felt a little off, and only really fit in with the overall plot once we learned about the Horcruxes in Half-Blood Prince. If parts were transplanted to the later book, that could explain it.


What parts of the story did Rowling move from Chamber of Secrets to Half-Blood Prince?



Answer




J.K. Rowling has never exactly laid out what parts of Half-Blood Prince she cut from Chamber of Secrets, but, if I recall correctly, the story about Snape being the half-blood prince was originally slated for Chamber of Secrets.



J.K. Rowling: There is no trace of the HBP storyline left in CoS, rather the link between the two books relates to a discovery Harry made in CoS that foreshadows something he finds out in HBP. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was once, in the long distant past, a possibility for Chamber of Secrets, and from that we deduced that it was genuine. Certain crucial pieces of information in book six were originally planned for Chamber of Secrets, but very early on (first draft of CoS) I realised that this information's proper home was book six. I have said before now that CoS holds some very important clues to the ultimate end of the series. Not as many as six, obviously, but there is a link.

J.K. Rowling - ACCIO QUOTE



I guess this to be referring to Horcruxes. She says the information in question would have been presented too early in CoS; Horcruxes makes sense in this regard. If Harry hadn't learned of the prophecy until OOTP, I might have wondered if the issue in question was that Snape had been the one to take the info from the prophecy to Voldemort. Harry didn't find out it was Snape until HBP. All in all, though, the concept of Horcruxes makes the most sense to me.


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