The Too Unreliable Narrator (was: What really happened on the tower)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 155893

  
> 
> Renee:
> Neri isn't the only one who would feel cheated if it turned out to be
>  Lupin who killed Sirius in the case that Harry had seen who did it. I
> would feel cheated, too, because nothing in the final chapters of of
> OotP, or in HBP, indicates that Harry "knows" anything of the kind. If
> he did, it would be completely out of character for him to interact
> with Lupin the way he does after the MOM, and therefore ridiculously
> bad writing. 

Pippin:
I agree, but the narrator does not make it clear that Harry saw who 
did it.

It does establish that both Lupin and Bella were standing in front
of Harry and so could have blocked his view of the spell being cast.

I think JKR's definition of 'tricked but not conned' doesn't refer to
anything so specific as Neri's 'non-description'. I think she simply
means that while both play on human gullibility,  the con artist 
never allows her victims to doubt, while the trickster freely admits
that she's trying to fool you and  plays a game of 'catch me if  you 
can.' Rowling uses many devices to trick the reader, but AFAIK, 
she never uses a device in  a plot twist that she hasn't already
demonstrated to the reader. I observe the following:

No magic has ever been used in a plot twist before it was explained 
to the reader. (animagi, polyjuice potion, portkeys)

No improbable event has ever occurred as  a plot twist that wasn't
shown to occur before. ( Hagrid tells us that it was hard to know
which wizards you met were trustworthy, setting up Quirrell's 
surprise.  Voldemort's death is pronounced to
be codswallop, setting up Peter and Barty. Sirius escapes from 
Azkaban before Barty does. Snape gives fake veritaserum to Umbridge 
before Harry gives fake felix to Ron.)

No character has been  revealed to be innocent in a plot twist 
whose character was not previously vouched for. (Hagrid vouched 
for Snape in PS/SS, Madame Rosmerta vouched for Sirius in PoA.)

No character has ever been revealed as guilty in a plot twist who was 
not previously  challenged. (Snape challenged Quirrell, Dumbledore
challenged Riddle, Crookshanks challenged Scabbers, McGonagall 
challenged Fake!Moody.)

No character (including the narrator) has been revealed to have deceived 
the hero or the reader in a plot twist who had not previously appeared to
be unreliable.

That Harry would mistake the origin of a hex that happened 
right in front of him is an improbable event, but to determine whether
it is possible according to the rules above, we need only ask if such 
an improbable event has already occurred in canon. Of course it has, 
when a whole street full of Muggles thought they had observed Sirius 
hexing Peter. Hermione also mistook the origin of the broomstick
hex, so this is not an error limited to Muggles.

The same incidents also allow the device of the narrator letting us
presume that a character has observed something when he hasn't.

Pippin