History YMMV / HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince

* HoYay: Harry spends a good portion of the book obsessed with Draco and everything he is doing, which to makes him come off like a StalkerWithACrush to many fans. This book is one of the main reasons that Harry/Draco became the most popular ship in the fandom and Harry's obsession is a major reason why.

* CommonKnowledge: Several readers, including those on [[Website/TVTropes This Very Wiki]], think that the book and Harry and Dumbledore somehow justify Merope Gaunt's rape of Tom Riddle Sr. via LovePotion. In actuality, the book not only doesn't condone her actions, Harry outright calls any use of love potions as black magic. The book and Harry and Dumbledore sympathizes with Merope's childhood but never justifies what she did.

** Merope Gaunt. What she did was something wrong, horrible, and a rape. But none of this erases the fact that she was put through the TraumaCongaLine at the hands of her abusive father and brother for all her life. She is described as a physically ugly woman because of the years of incest that occurred in her family, remained isolated from the rest of the world for most of her life, living only with a cruel brother and a cruel father who probably beat her. Tom Riddle was her only chance to be happy, but unfortunately she chose the worst possible way for that to happen. When he leaves her, Merope gives up her life, selling her last family memories and dying in childbirth. Dumbledore and Harry are the only ones in the world who pity her fate, since even Voldemort despises her for dying.

** The book has numerous cases of female characters being treated sympathetically for aggressive or abusive behavior towards males, such as Ginny's physical attack on Zacharias in response to his commentary or Hermione setting her canaries on Ron. Given Rowling's increasingly controversial statements on gender issues, which she has defended by portraying men in general as a threat to women's safety, these moments can come off much worse.

* DracoInLeatherPants: [[TropeNamer Draco]] was already gathering a fanbase just for being the series's "bad boy", but given that this is the book where his CharacterDevelopment started kicking in, it's no surprise that it's also when his fandom started increasing exponentially. [[spoiler:He starts to become a lot more pitiable by the end of the book, what with it being revealed that he's terrified of dying and/or causing the death of his family. It's clear that this is the point where Draco stops being a petty jerk and realizes the weight of the situation. You can ''see it in his eyes'' as Bellatrix destroys the Great Hall and he's forced to run away from the school.]]

** The book has numerous cases of female characters being treated sympathetically for aggressive or abusive behavior towards males, such as Ginny’s physical attack on Zacharias in response to his commentary or Hermione setting her canaries on Ron. Given Rowling’s increasingly controversial statements on gender issues, which she has defended by portraying women in general as victims of predatory men, these moments can come off much worse.

** The book has numerous cases of female characters being treated sympathetically for aggressive or abusive behavior towards males, such as Ginny’s physical attack on Zacharias in response to his commentary or Hermione setting her canaries on Ron. Given Rowling’s controversial statements on gender issues, which she defended by portraying women in general as victims of predatory men, these moments can come off much worse.

** Ginny physically assaulting Zacharias by ramming him with her broom [[DisproportionateRetribution because she didn’t like his commentary]], leaving him “feebly stirring” comes off as a startling physical attack but is not called out at all by the narrative, with Harry seeming to approve of it.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Hermione during her feud with Ron. While what Ron did may have been a low blow, Hermione reacts to it with complete immaturity by assaulting Ron with bloodthirsty canaries. Her inability to take the high road was only HandWaved. Made worse when one considers how it's clear Hermione had to have been practicing that spell for a while based on the paragraph before she releases the canaries:

* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: The game was considered mediocre and only a slight improvement over ''[[VideoGame/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix Order of the Phoenix]]'' (if only for removing the {{fetch quest}}s), which was found particularly underwhelming as once Warner postponed the movie EA had an extra year to punch things up.