The secrecy motif

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179635

I'm probably posting prematurely since all I have at the moment is
some half-baked thoughts on the subject. We learn in DH that Albus
Dumbledore learned secrecy at his mother's knee, and we see some of
the results of his failure to trust others with his secrets in DH. But
Harry, too, has a tendency toward secrecy. How many times in every
book does he start to tell someone something and then suppress the
impulse? In PoA, for example, he starts to tell Lupin about the
Grimlike dog that he saw in Magnolia Crescent; in GoF, he decides not
to tell Sirius about his dream of Voldemort and Wormtail (true, he
doesn't remember the details, but he does remember that they're
plotting to kill him! Oh, well; not important. I'll just tell Sirius
that my scar hurts); in GoF again, he neglects to tell Ron that
"Moody" thinks whoever put Harry's name in the goblet wants him dead;
in OoP, he refuses to tell McGonagall or DD about Umbridge's cruel
detentions; in HBP, he decides not to tell Hermione that Ron is acting
as he is because he thinks that Hermione kissed Viktor Krum (not
earth-shaking, but it could have saved some ruffled feathers). Those
are just the examples that pop into my mind at the moment; I'm sure
that there are plenty more.

Dumbledore is falsely suspected of trusting without good reason; the
opposite seems to be true. Even the people he "trusts completely"
(Snape and Harry) turn out to be trusted with some crucial information
not given to anyone else but not with the whole truth. ("Truth is a
beautiful and dangerous thing, Harry.") We've talked about how the
books might have been different if DD had been more trusting (I don't
think, however, that he should have told the entire Order about the
Horcruxes, but if he had told Snape and McGonagall and allowed them to
work together, and if Portrait!DD had told McGonagall that Snape
killed him on his orders, surely a lot of grief would have been
avoided and the tiara Horcrux found a lot more quickly.)

But what if Harry had not learned this lesson the hard way? Don't be
so secretive. Don't suppress key information. What if he had trusted
people (not everyone, but the examples I listed will do for starters)
with his secrets? What if Snape had trusted the Order members with his?

Yeah, I know. It would be a different book altogether. But somehow, I
sense that secrecy is a bad thing in JKR's universe (unless you're
keeping secrets from the enemy). We can see in the epilogue that Harry
is giving his children information that was kept from him, whether
it's that Slytherins can be admirable or that Thestrals are nothing to
fear. If we examine all the suppressed information and distortions of
the truth that shape Harry's perceptions throughout the books, it
seems that a half-truth is as good (or rather, as bad) as a lie, as is
well-intentioned misinformation. Unless, of course, you're Snape
keeping secrets from Voldemort.

Carol, just tossing out this idea to see if anyone thinks it's worth
examining