I remember the first time I read The Deathly Hallows and I got to the scene where the doe patronus leads Harry to the forest pool and the sword of Gryffindor. The way J.K. wrote this scene, the reader knows that someone has been forced to rescue Harry from drowning in the pool but she never gives us any clue as to who it is.
We're as ignorant of the identity of his rescuer as Harry is.
When the mystery hero blurts out, "Are you mental?", once they're both safe, however, I needed to read no further to know that it was Ron, come back to save the day.
It's brilliant writing. J.K. had carefully trained us to recognise each character's patterns of speech and favourite expressions: anyone who had read all the books to that point would have known immediately who had come along and rescued Harry.
"Mental" had always been one of Ron's favourite terms. He calls Dumbledore mental in the first book and I believe he also uses that word to describe Mad-Eye Moody early in The Goblet of Fire.
Rowling does a nice job of keeping us in the dark as to who is saving Harry from the pool and then divulges his identity with a single, well-designed statement.
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