Yes, to make it plausible you do have to put Hermione in an impatient or infuriated state of mind, and Harry has to be out of contact. So, for example, suppose:
Harry is elsewhere, preparing his next move against Voldemort; and
Hermione gets dragged to Azkaban on a visit by someone intending to intimidate her, and she concludes it is just as monstrous as Harry thinks. (Actually, she’d probably be even less tolerant: Hermione is not a lesser-evil-excusing sort of person, once you jolt her out of her status-quo bias.)
You could argue that would be enough—Hermione is good at hard work and righteous indignation, and she and Harry could be arranged by the author to have discussed hypothetical Azkaban strategies beforehand. If you wanted added pressure on Hermione,
someone threatens her with death or, indeed, imprisonment within Azkaban.
In which case Hermione might rationally decide to “go out with a bang.”
The hardest part of this (in a literary sense) would be keeping Harry away from Hermione for the critical period.
But Hermione isn’t really rational, she’s just intelligent. I don’t think she can perform a feat of astounding rationality in this fic, as you are suggesting. Her idea of morality is flawed and naive. If I imagine her going to Azkaban and destroying it, it would be for decidedly uninspiring reasons to me, as a rationalist.
I am confused. What would you suggest as an example of an “inspiring reason” to go and destroy Azkaban, that does occur or could occur to Harry, that would not normally occur to Hermione?
Yes, to make it plausible you do have to put Hermione in an impatient or infuriated state of mind, and Harry has to be out of contact. So, for example, suppose:
Harry is elsewhere, preparing his next move against Voldemort; and
Hermione gets dragged to Azkaban on a visit by someone intending to intimidate her, and she concludes it is just as monstrous as Harry thinks. (Actually, she’d probably be even less tolerant: Hermione is not a lesser-evil-excusing sort of person, once you jolt her out of her status-quo bias.)
You could argue that would be enough—Hermione is good at hard work and righteous indignation, and she and Harry could be arranged by the author to have discussed hypothetical Azkaban strategies beforehand. If you wanted added pressure on Hermione,
someone threatens her with death or, indeed, imprisonment within Azkaban.
In which case Hermione might rationally decide to “go out with a bang.”
The hardest part of this (in a literary sense) would be keeping Harry away from Hermione for the critical period.
But Hermione isn’t really rational, she’s just intelligent. I don’t think she can perform a feat of astounding rationality in this fic, as you are suggesting. Her idea of morality is flawed and naive. If I imagine her going to Azkaban and destroying it, it would be for decidedly uninspiring reasons to me, as a rationalist.
I am confused. What would you suggest as an example of an “inspiring reason” to go and destroy Azkaban, that does occur or could occur to Harry, that would not normally occur to Hermione?