Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Clean? Profanity and Content Guide for the Audiobook

The category that stands out in Half-Blood Prince isn't the one you'd guess. Violence is still the biggest by far, with 73 moments and about 16 minutes filtered, but only three of those are rated severe, fewer than in the books on either side of it. What jumps is substance use: ten moments totaling three and a half minutes, far more than the books around it, which fits a story with plenty of Hogwarts teenagers getting older and a few potions and drinks along the way. Language stays light. Profanity shows up 14 times, with a single severe tag, and blasphemy is entirely mild. Four slur tags, three of them severe, include the wizarding world's insult for Muggle-born characters. Sexual content and crude humor are both brief and mild. In all, you'll lose about 22 minutes of an eighteen and a half hour listen, and Jim Dale's performance runs straight through the cuts. My recommendation for a reader around ten to twelve: turn on Violence at moderate and severe, add Slur and Substance Use, and leave the rest alone. For a teenager, I'd filter severe violence and the slurs and call it done. This is the most grown-up book of the series so far in tone, but the data shows it is not the most intense, so you don't need to go heavier on filters here than you did for the book before it.