How dim is Harry?

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 98346

Our eponymous hero struggles with monsters, Dark Wizards
and occasionally with his friends. Life is dark, desperate and
seemingly without succour. In between all these shenanagins
he makes fitful but apparently futile attempts to find out more
about his parents and the circumstances surrounding the 
events at Godric's Hollow.

Sometimes I get the impression that we feel more urgency
regarding these questions than Harry does,  'cos he keeps
making a pigs ear of it. He *always* asks the wrong people,
or if not the wrong people, then at the wrong time, or both.

But there is someone he's never asked; someone who has
already volunteered that they are in possession of a great
deal of information about Harry - Hermione.

Oh, yes! Little-miss-know-it-all let the cat out of the bag
in PS/SS chap.6 when she first meets Harry and Ron on
the Hogwarts  Express:

"I know all about you, of  course - I got a few extra books
for background reading, and you're in "Modern Magical
History" and "The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts" and
"Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."
"Am I?" said Harry, feeling dazed.
"Goodness, didn't you know, I'd have found out everything
I  could if it was me," said Hermione.

Harry, being as thick as two short planks, never raises the
subject again during the next 5 years.

I think I know why, too. This passage is a remnant; a trace
of the *15* chapters that were excised from the first book
because they revealed the entire plot. 

But why not excise this bit too? Because I suspect that at
some point Hermione is going to pipe up with "But every-
body knows that! Don't you read any books? It's in..... and
I told you so!"

Meanwhile Harry wanders around like an Obliviated Troll,
blind to what's under his nose.

I despair of that boy, I really do.

Kneasy