Traitor
The word thundered through her mind as she left the crowded hall. Behind her, the celebration roared to life, loud and joyous.
After all, Voldemort was dead.
Traitor
If she hadn't done what she had, he would still be alive, killing the innocent. What else could she have done? On a scale, one life, no matter how precious, would never measure up to the hundreds that would have died if he'd been allowed to live.
Traitor
She had killed a child. What else could she have done? Offer herself, Harry had said.
It never would have worked. She hadn't been innocent for so many years.
Traitor
She killed a child. There had been so much blood, so much pain. She to be quick, to be gentle? But how can murder be gentle?
Some might call it a mercy killing. Still...you could call carnage "war", but in the end it will still be carnage. The child was ill, she would have died within the year.
TRAITOR!
Hermione jolted upright in bed, a hand pressed against her laboring heart. Her short curls slid across her face. She hadn't dreamed of the last battle and its aftermath in years.
break
A glimpse of situational ethics and the hard choices wars forced upon us, and the consequences therof. How regret will linger.