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Velorien comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117 - Less Wrong Discussion
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From her perspective, there are advantages to announcing it in public - for example, there will no be no witch hunt of "which Slytherins turned out to have active Death Eater parents?", and McGonagall also firmly tied the listing of the orphaned children's names to pronouncements of sympathy and solidarity in her listeners' minds.
I still don't think there was any good reason not to break it to them in private first.
In a perfect world, I completely agree.
In a real world, I can see that McGonagall did not have time before breakfast to talk to all of the orphaned children. I can also see that she might strongly prefer to quench the early rumors and avoid starting new rumors by calling a number of students into her office. (Delegating it to Snape, the Head of Slytherin House, was not an option; and delegating it to any other teacher would have sent a signal of McGonagall not caring enough to do it herself, making this a non-option, too.)
Given all this, I still think she should have delayed the announcement to talk to the children beforehand; but I don’t think it’s a simple choice for her.