The first of those was what I was referring to. Apparently it’s phrased a bit more softly than I remember, though it certainly displays that mindset. And all the second one says is that honest people keep their word. There’s things in the world more important than honesty, Kant be damned.
...I don’t think it does. I think what we’re supposed to take from those passages, plus every other time Harry has made a promise, is that he doesn’t make promises with the intent to break them.
The latter, yes. The former, no. I think he’s basically honest, and as such the statement made in Parselmouth is not a lie, but he’s not going to feel himself bound by that promise in extremis.
(Unless Parseltongue is magically binding.) But yeah, of course I agree that Harry doesn’t consider keeping his word to be the be-all end-all. For instance, in the course of TSPE there were several times that Harry considered breaking that specific promise and confessing all, and I don’t think the fact that he promised not to was ever even brought up in his internal narration- the decisive factor was always the consequences to Quirrell if he did.
But I still disagree quite strongly with
Harry explicitly says earlier that he’d say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn’t be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it. I think his statement there is actually a known lie
The first of those was what I was referring to. Apparently it’s phrased a bit more softly than I remember, though it certainly displays that mindset. And all the second one says is that honest people keep their word. There’s things in the world more important than honesty, Kant be damned.
...I don’t think it does. I think what we’re supposed to take from those passages, plus every other time Harry has made a promise, is that he doesn’t make promises with the intent to break them.
The latter, yes. The former, no. I think he’s basically honest, and as such the statement made in Parselmouth is not a lie, but he’s not going to feel himself bound by that promise in extremis.
(Unless Parseltongue is magically binding.) But yeah, of course I agree that Harry doesn’t consider keeping his word to be the be-all end-all. For instance, in the course of TSPE there were several times that Harry considered breaking that specific promise and confessing all, and I don’t think the fact that he promised not to was ever even brought up in his internal narration- the decisive factor was always the consequences to Quirrell if he did.
But I still disagree quite strongly with