Why did Hermione lie?

[Oona <srsiriusblack@aol.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51555

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "errolowl <nithya_rachel at h...>" 
<nithya_rachel at h...> wrote:
> 
> *What* trouble?? As far as I can see, they did nothing wrong. They 
> did go and save her when there was no time to get anyone else. The 
> only thing that Hermione lied about was *her* reason for being 
there. 
> She was crying and missed dinner. Surely that was better than 
saying 
> she went after the troll herself?
> 
> Perhaps they were so new that they didn't realize that missing a
> meal was not a major transgression. Still that's *Hermione* in
> trouble not the boys. Hermione could just have said that she'd
> been in the bathroom, (no need to mention she'd been crying), and
> hadn't heard the announcement (true), and that the boys had come
> to 
> get her(all the same as before). 
> 
> I just don't _get_ this thing! :(

I have a few points.

1. Hermione wouldn't want to admit to McGongall or especially Snape 
that she had been crying. She already has a sense of McGonagall who 
for the most part- save some Quidditch incidents and petrified 
Hermione- is a stern and rather emotionless woman. Snape would *love* 
to have more to pick at with any of the trio. So, in a way she is 
protecting herself from ridicule.
2. Earlier that day, ron points out how she has no friends. To me, 
Hermione seemed to have already decided that he and Harry were her 
friends, so to hear that they were not must have been devastating. By 
telling the lie, she gives them three things. One, she gives them 
some honour in the eyes of a Professor. Two, she makes it look as 
though they were not breaking rules by coming to find her, but really 
coming to save her from ultimate death-- which is true, but at the 
moment of the lie, she doesn't know WHY they are there. and Three, 
She makes an unsaid apology for being an 'insufferable know-it-all'

When HHR reach the dormitories after the incident, Harry thinks about 
Hermione as his friend- something that hadn't been stated before. 

Hermione was just trying to salvage the one friendship she really 
believed she had at the time, which was with HR. 

I don't think there was much else to the lie but to get HR to look at 
her as a friend.

-Snuffles