I have wondered this myself. Honestly, though, I think he's pretty far gone by this point. So he might actually believe the tripe he's spouting out.



Agree with you and Ron. As for discussing it with Harry, well, she's been around his temper lately and probably knows how he'll react to the mere idea of Rita Skeeter. Who I incidentally notice just now has a slangy name for "mosquito" as her last name. Not a beetle, but still an insect. Anyway, I think if Hermione had given him time to think about it, he would've waffled and possibly not gone through with it. By springing it on him, it probably worked out for the better.



Did she give some sort of hint when they signed? I suppose she did not.



He is growing quite rapidly here. I like it.


Ugh, seriously.



Hm. I think *all* boys are that clueless.



Again, like Fudge, it's kind of hard to tell at this point. It takes a whole lot of ignoring evidence at this point, but apparently she's quite practiced at that.



It's pretty awesome. They did the same thing to Lockhart in book 2.




Yeah, as readers we can tell that he wants Harry to learn, but I can see from Harry's point of view where the mistrust/hate/anger/whateveryouwanttocallit comes from. Doesn't stop me wanting him to practice more, though.




And Harry's shock when he realizes what Dumbledore is telling him to do. It's more direct communication than he's had from Dumbledore in nearly the whole book so far, too. Which admittedly is not much.



I liked that quite a lot. I couldn't remember if someone had brought it up earlier in the discussion when I read it, but it made me pretty happy.