Truth, Lies and GIGO

[pippin_999]

Neri:
You mean, the baddies are careful not to lie too much 
because it might expose them? I'm not sure I'm convinced. 
After all, as you and Dave pointed out, these baddies DO 
lie. It just that they rarely do it by telling the lie 
explicitly. For example, Crouch Jnr. is already
pretending to be Moody, so why wouldn't he say: "they say 
I'm obsessedwith caching dark Wizards"? Instead he says: 
"they say old Mad-Eye'sobsessed with caching dark 
Wizards". This doesn't make him less of a
liar. It just makes him less of a literal liar.

Pippin:
The equivocal lies makes the stories fun to re-read. For 
example, Quirrell's "c-can't t-tell you how p-pleased I 
am to meet you." This is actually true in two literal 
senses, in that Quirrell is not pleased to meet Harry, 
and in that he has physical difficulty in saying the 
words. Of course as the phrase is usually understood, 
it's a lie. Lupin, need I add, is much given to saying 
things that could be interpreted in this manner.

Harry, who seems to be something of a natural legilimens, 
never detects this kind of lie, which makes me think that 
on the story level, the reason the baddies are so given 
to this kind of thing is that as long as they are 
convinced they are telling the truth in some sense, no 
legilimens will  detect that they are lying. That's my 
theory anyway.

Neri:
I can think offhand about only one official whodunit 
mystery in the series that was not solved in the
same book it was presented. This is of course "who heard 
half of the prophecy in the Hog's Head?" and it's really 
not surprising that it wasn't solved yet, as it was only 
presented in the chapter before last
in the last book. It is the "why", "what" and "how" 
mysteries that stretch over more than one book, like 
(counting both solved and unsolved ones):
> 
<snip excellent list>

Pippin:
I am not sure what you mean by "official" whodunnits.
If you mean, things that Harry has explicitly wondered
about, quite a few things on the what, why, how list
don't qualify either.

Here are a few who's you may have overlooked:

1. Who told McGonagall that Dumbledore would be at Privet 
Drive?
2. Who killed the unicorns?
3. Who was the hooded stranger in the Hogs Head?
4. Who passed the Riddle diary to Lucius Malfoy?
5. Who is the half-blood prince?
6. Who was Voldemort's second in command?
7. Who owns the Riddle house?
8. Who removed Voldemort's wand from Godric's Hollow
9. Who sent the Fearsome Four after the Longbottoms?
10. Who told Dumbledore that the time of Harry's
hearing had changed?

Pippin