“Of — course.” Hermione couldn't breathe. She kept speaking in the cruel, relentless voice she had learned from Draco. “You've had no time. Obviously the DA members take precedence; for the sake of unit cohesion. If you hadn't been so busy, I'm sure everything would be different. You would have been able to offer some kind of acknowledgment over the years. But since you had no time, you had no choice but to pat Ron on the shoulder after he called me bitch in front of the entire Order. After all, he is your dueling partner.” Her tone was acrid.
“You were saying we should use the Killing Curse.” Harry's voice was bitter and incredulous.
Hermione gave a faint laugh. “I still want you to.”
There was a stunned silence. The whole room had fallen quiet. Harry was speechless for a full minute. “Still?”
Hermione gave a short nod.
Harry shook his head slowly as though he couldn't believe it.
“I'm a realist, Harry. I want this war to be done. I don't want the Order to think it won and then have everything start all over again in fourteen years, the way it did last time.” Her tone was hard. Tired.
She knew exactly where to cut.
Her heart hurt, her chest too. It felt as though there were something burning inside her abdominal cavity. If Harry were still holding her hand, he'd feel that she was shaking.
“Do you have any idea what Dark Magic does to a person?” Harry's voice was furious.
Hermione kept her expression cold. “Of course I do; I'm a healer. It's my part of speciality. And I'm telling you, it's worth the cost. I'm not telling you to use Dark Rituals or drink unicorn blood, I'm just saying kill people who are trying to kill you. Are you really thinking you can just put him in prison somehow? Do you actually think you'll defeat him with an expelliarmus? Are you willing to bet your life on it? Ron's? Ginny's? The entire Resistance? It is worth it to kill him and his supporters. Do you somehow not hate them enough yet to manage that?”
“I don't. Because it will never be worth it,” Harry snapped. “We won't win that way. I can't fight that way. When I fight I'm thinking about all the people I love. How I'm protecting them and how I want to see them again. What is the point to any of it, if winning just means watching you and everyone else die slowly instead? Every battle is a test. Not giving into hatred is a choice. You don't get to choose both Love and Hate. I won't be like Tom Riddle in order to win. The lesson of the first war is that Love trumps all when people believe in it. We have to choose between what's easy and what's right. If we get it wrong we'll never defeat him.”
“You're accusing me of wanting easy choices?” Hermione was legitimately stunned.
“You want to use the Dark Arts because they'd be more 'effective'. Yeah, I'd say that's clearly a choice of easy instead of right.” Harry was pale, his fists clenched until the knuckles showed white. “The fight between Good and Evil is a test. You haven't just failed it, Hermione, you're trying to take the whole Resistance with you. I thought for a while that it was because you spent so much time with Snape. But I'm realising now, it's you. You actually believe it.”
Hermione didn't have to pretend to be enraged or bitter any longer. She scoffed in his face. “Of course I believe it. Think of Colin, Harry. Think of how Colin died in front of you and then multiply it. Multiply to include the casualties from every battle and raid in the last THREE YEARS. That—,” she gestured sharply around herself, “—has been my life since the moment I came back from training. That is how your friends are dying.”
“You don't need to tell me, Hermione.” Harry's voice was shaking, and he leaned toward her, his teeth flashing. “They were my friends. I trained them. I fought with them. I carried them back. I would die for them. I would do almost anything to have saved them. But when it comes to Light and Dark Magic, it matters. It's never worth giving into the Dark Arts, no matter what you think you'll get from it. The Order is going to stay Light.”
Something inside Hermione snapped. “You're not Light if you let people sacrifice themselves in order to keep your hands and soul clean.” She sneered at him.
Harry turned pale.