Hermione's reliability (Was: Harry's compassion )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 89640

Del wrote <snip> And Harry has never been the translator of JKR's 
> feelings and opinions. Hermione and DD are, and they don't 
> necessarily hold the same feelings regarding all those characters as 
> Harry does.


IIRC, JKR has indicated that we can trust Hermione when she's making
factual statements. However, she often makes errors when she jumps
from facts to interpretation. To give just one example, when she sees
Winky in the woods apparently being restrained by some force, she
says, "That Mr. Crouch made her go up to the top of the stadium, and
she was terrified, and he's got her bewitched so she can't even run
when they start trampling tents!" (GoF 125 Am. ed.). The first half of
the sentence is a correct observation, the second half a faulty
interpretation of an observed event. As for Hermione's emotions, she's
an exaggerated version of JKR herself, which does not necessarily make
her feelings "right" or "wrong." I think most of us agree that her
compassion for the house-elves, however noble, leads her into
patronizing and unwise actions like the hats and the aptly acronymed
S.P.E.W. As for Dumbledore, she has referred to him as "the epitome of
goodness," but he's also the epitome of ambiguity for Harry and for us.

I'm at a point, actually, where I don't trust *anyone's* statements,
including the narrator's, except in the rare moments when he/she is
not inside anyone's head and is reporting events from an objective
point of view.

Carol, who apologizes for replying only to a small segment of your post