CHAPT DISC: Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 13: Gryffindo...

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190055

Shelley:
 "No time" would have been a good time, because is essentially 
> all boiled down to believing in Trelawney or not, and I doubt that to 
> the fan club of Trelawney ever even considered reason or logic when they 
> decided to support her. I don't fault Hermione as "picking a bad moment" 
> to speak her mind, because I don't think the result would have been any 
> different, and if I understood the book right, it was Lavender who 
> wanted to have that discussion to persuade Hermione, and not the other 
> way around. I'll have to reread that part to be sure.
> 

Pippin:
I agree there would never be a time when Lavender would be more convinced by Hermione's argument. But there could have been a time when a  discussion of the prediction would have been less painful for Lavender. For instance, a time when Lavender wasn't around, or at least when her grief for her pet was not still fresh. 

You are right that Lavender introduced the subject of Trelawney's prediction. It doesn't follow that  she was signaling that the circumstances of Binky's death were no longer a painful topic for her, any more than Harry's desire to play Quidditch rather than talk about Sirius was a signal that Sirius's passing wasn't painful any more. 

Ron is of course wrong and cruel to suggest that people's pets don't matter to Hermione. She proves that by putting in a huge effort to save Buckbeak. But there is of course nothing to be done for Binky except to mourn him, and I don't think Hermione understands very much about that yet. She's heard, I think, that people who've suffered a loss need to talk about it, and she doesn't understand yet that this doesn't apply to everybody.  

So, as usual, Hermione thinks she's being helpful. She's been taught that if she's kind and considerate, people will want to be her friend, she thinks that's what she's doing, and she can't understand at all why it doesn't work for her.

The problem for me with the word "insensitive" is that it can mean morally or emotionally insensitive, and I don't think that applies to Hermione at all.

You might compare her actions here to the way she behaves when she first meets Harry. She starts chattering on  about his parents' role in history, not realizing that it's a difficult subject for him. 

Draco, on the other hand, really is what I would call insensitive, in the moral sense, but though there's no feeling at all behind his "sorry" when he learns that Harry's parents are dead, he immediately grasps that Harry doesn't want to talk about them, and this without even being able to see Harry's face.

Pippin