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Matt_Simpson comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong
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One of the goals was to get his parents to stop fighting over whether or not magic was real.
How would it work? As expected outcome is that no magic is real, we'd need to convince the believer (mother) to disbelieve. An experiment is usually an ineffective means to that end. Rather, we'd need to mend her epistemology.
Well, Harry did spend some time making sure that this experiment would convince either of his parents if it went the appropriate way, though he had his misgivings. As a child who isn't respected by his parents, what better options does he have to stop the fight? (serious question)
Having no good options doesn't make the remaining options any good. This is a serious problem, for example, when people try to explain apparent miracles they experience: they find the best explanation they are able to come up with, and decide to believe that explanation, even if it has no right to any plausibility, apart from the fact it happened to be the only one available.
So you think that the best response is to do nothing about the fight. Perhaps, but setting up the experiment didn't take that much effort. What was Harry's opportunity cost here? Is it that high?
It's not completely out of the question that it was a fine rhetorical effort (though it's not particularly plausible), but it's still not concerned with finding out the truth, which was presented as the goal.
There seemed to be two goals to me - finding the truth and stopping the fight. I'll have to reread that section later.