Hermione's "Hidden" Obsession

[entropymail]

Been taking a breather from posting for quite a while now, but with
July 16th looming, I'm ready to get back into the thick of things
again.  So, here goes...

I've been mulling over several themes lately, and the one thing that I
keep coming back to is the use of the concept of "hiding" in OOP. I'm
not just talking about invisibility, here.  It's more specific than
that.  It's about JKR's practice, throughout OOP, of hiding things in
plain sight.  That is, the object is actually right there, in front of
everyone's eyes; if they only knew how to see it, they would.  Of
course, we've seen this sort of thing in other books, but never to the
degree we see it in Book 5. Is this just some overused magical
literary device? Or is JKR trying to tell us something by repeating
the same pattern over and over again?

Here's a quick list of some of the things I could think of off the top
of my head that use this concept of being hidden right under one's nose:

Things hiding in plain sight:

Thestrals
12 Grimmauld Place
Headless hats
Hermione's numbered coins
Hermione's D.A. list of names
Hermione's house elf hats
Harry's Quibbler article
Room of Requirement

Interestingly, every one of these things can be tied to Hermione in
one way or another. And, even more interesting to me, is the fact that
Hermione seems to be absolutely fascinated with the magical workings
of this concept. I've noticed her either oddly mulling over how some
"hiding" has been accomplished, or trying to figure out how she could
hide something.  She's said things like: "How do those hats work,
then?
I mean, obviously it's some kind of Invisibility Spell, but it's
rather clever to have extended the field of invisibility beyond the
boundaries of the charmed object
I'd imagine the charm wouldn't have a
very long life, though
"(OOP, Ch 24)

And

"Well, Sirius, it's just that there were only four of you meeting in
the Shrieking Shack
But there are twenty-eight of us and none of us is
an Animagus, so we wouldn't need so much an Invisibility Cloak as an
Invisibility Marquee —" (OOP Ch 17)

What is this all about? Why JKR's and Hermione's fascination with
hiding things?  As a supporter of the theory that Sirius' death has
been faked and he's just "hiding out" until things quiet down, I tend
to think that most of this stuff is just one big clue.  But I'm sure
there are lots of other reasons for all of this hiding about; what are
your ideas?

:: Entropy ::