Certainly the level of wedge between Harry and Dumbledore if Dumbledore let something really bad happen to Hermione, versus the amount of political capital Dumbledore would have had to spend/lose helping Hermione, covered a broad range of probabilities. I put it in maximal terms, mostly to put it in sharp relief; the precise costs would have been uncertain, but almost certainly real to some extent. Some advantage gained in any case, if not devastating.
And I will freely grant that the percentage of “Magical Britain horrified at the sentence” is hard to determine, but I think 5% is a solid lower bound; some advantage if not big advantage.
Similarly, , per Spurlock’s comment, wiping out Hermione as “a Light-side witch showing skill at military command and Battle Magic”, well, it was obviously not enough of a consideration to keep him from making Hermione a general in the first place . . . but even then it’s still at least some advantage.
And so on. There are, I think, reasonable arguments for minimizing many of these items, but even then you still wind up with a long list of small advantages, and a lot of small advantages in itself adds up to a big advantage.
What’s also interesting is how many of these got at least partly achieved even though Hermione basically is going unpunished. QuirrelCloakMort’s plan may not have achieved everything it could have, but it didn’t fail.
wiping out Hermione as “a Light-side witch showing skill at military command and Battle Magic”, well, it was obviously not enough of a consideration to keep him from making Hermione a general in the first place [...]
It gets better if you think of it as make use of the powerful witch to level-up Harry, then get rid of her before she’s a problem and make do it in a way that brings all the advantages you quoted.
Certainly the level of wedge between Harry and Dumbledore if Dumbledore let something really bad happen to Hermione, versus the amount of political capital Dumbledore would have had to spend/lose helping Hermione, covered a broad range of probabilities. I put it in maximal terms, mostly to put it in sharp relief; the precise costs would have been uncertain, but almost certainly real to some extent. Some advantage gained in any case, if not devastating.
And I will freely grant that the percentage of “Magical Britain horrified at the sentence” is hard to determine, but I think 5% is a solid lower bound; some advantage if not big advantage.
Similarly, , per Spurlock’s comment, wiping out Hermione as “a Light-side witch showing skill at military command and Battle Magic”, well, it was obviously not enough of a consideration to keep him from making Hermione a general in the first place . . . but even then it’s still at least some advantage.
And so on. There are, I think, reasonable arguments for minimizing many of these items, but even then you still wind up with a long list of small advantages, and a lot of small advantages in itself adds up to a big advantage.
What’s also interesting is how many of these got at least partly achieved even though Hermione basically is going unpunished. QuirrelCloakMort’s plan may not have achieved everything it could have, but it didn’t fail.
It gets better if you think of it as make use of the powerful witch to level-up Harry, then get rid of her before she’s a problem and make do it in a way that brings all the advantages you quoted.