1) 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(albeit not by much, given that he seems to consider Quirrell his third father). 2) I think he was just trying to make things very clear - forcing people to actively say something instead of just passively accepting is an effective way of gauging them.
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'm going to need a direct quote. The only thing I can think of similar to this is
"All right," Harry said slowly. It was hard to see how having a conversation and being unable to tell anyone could be more constraining than not having it, in which case you also couldn't tell anyone the contents. "I promise."
Not to mention
...A secret whose revelation could prove so disastrous that I
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