Details, and the unreliable narrator

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 124049


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> 
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Renee" 
> <R.Vink2 at c...> wrote:
> Does anyone remember details from an 
> earlier book that seemed wrong at the time but suddenly made 
> sense when viewed in the  context of later developments and 
> revelations? Contradictions  resolved over the course of several 
> books? Apparent mistakes that  turned out to be no such thing? 
> I'm not talking about details that stood out as strange or 
> inconsistent in retrospect, but about things  that did so at first 
> sight.
> 
> Pippin:
> Oh yes. Scabbers suddenly falling asleep in PS/SS  seemed 
> very contrived to me at the time  but made sense once I found out 
> he's not only a phony rat but a "sleeper" servant of Voldemort. 

Renee:
Ah, I like this kind of symbolism; thanks for pointing it out! But 
this is the same book, isn't it? I was rather looking for examples 
of peculiarities or seeming errors in earlier books that are 
explained in later books.

> 
> Ginny's tearful collapse at the end of CoS was so overdone it 
> seemed  phony. In the light of OOP, I now understand it was 
> intended that way. Not only is Ginny not the shy helpless damsel 
> she appeared to be for four books, she's crying to conceal her 
> guilt.
> 
> Mr. Weasley lectures her about not showing the diary to him or 
> her mother, and Ginny sobs two answers in a row about how 
> she didn't know the diary was dangerous. Clearly a lie, if you 
> think about it. She *did* know it was dangerous by the time she 
> stole it back from Harry.
> 
> Dumbledore interrupts "firmly" and sends her off to the hospital 
> wing. Legilimens that he is, he must know full well that she's 
> holding her guilty knowledge back, and  *that's* why he 
> reassures her that there has been no lasting harm done.

Renee:
Yes, this is more or less what I was looking for. If the sobbing at 
the end of CoS is an act, the way Ginny appears in OotP makes a lot 
more sense. Helpless little Ginny as an act developed during years 
of having to endure a whole bunch of elder brothers, among them 
pranksters extraordiaire Fred & George. 

However, the best thing would be something looking like a real flint 
that turns out to be entirely correct. But I can't think of 
anything.  

I'll take the opportunity to reply to something in message 124019 as 
well:

Pippin: 
The *narrator* says the moon was completely obscured by
clouds. But if the moon is completely obscured he can't tell
whether it's risen or not. It could be the narrator who makes the
mistake, just as it(he?) says that Harry's parents died in a car
crash.

Renee:
I've also been wondering if the error could be `blamed' on the 
unreliable narrator, but I don't think so. The problem is, that the 
scene took place too long after sunset for the moon to rise at that 
particular moment. The sun has set before Sirius drags Ron into the 
Whomping Willow. On full moon nights, the moon *does* rise shortly 
after sunset, even if it's perhaps not yet astronomically full but 
only full to the human eye. Harry & Co. spend a considerable time in 
the Shrieking Shack. There's no way the moon could have risen at the 
moment JKR says it did if it follows the normal pattern. 

Well, maybe things just work differently at Hogwarts. Electricity 
doesn't work there either; maybe the magic influences the sky, too...

Actually, the movie-that-must-not-be-named seems to solve the 
problem by having a mountainside as the horizon and by shortening 
the Shrieking Shack scene just enough to make it plausible for the 
moon to rise at that moment.

Renee