That's a really great point. I had thought about it in this very narrow context here, but it really is a pervasive part of his personality. His habit of lying to authority and distrusting even benevolent authority, his readiness to assume the worst about even his friends' motives, all seem to point back to an almost unconscious conviction that he is nothing more than an object for other people.

This actually sends me off on a tangent, thinking about the case of Sirius, who is maybe the only exception to this rule, and where Harry goes to the opposite extreme, almost pathologically. I won't run with that point now, but I want to think about it more.