Those words instantly sent the crowd into an uproar.
"What did she say?!"
"Let the Dark Lord come back to life? Has she gone mad?!"
"That's the Dark Lord!"
"Stop her! Someone stop her!"
Panic spread once more, even worse than when they had seen Voldemort resurrected.
If Voldemort's resurrection was a natural disaster, Hermione's words amounted to deliberately inviting that disaster-and even complaining that it wasn't big enough!
"Quiet!" Dumbledore's voice rang out again, this time infused with even greater magical power, forcibly quelling the commotion.
He gazed intently at Hermione, a complicated gleam in his eyes. "Hermione, I imagine you have your reasons, don't you?"
Hermione nodded to Dumbledore, acknowledging his trust.
"Of course." She turned toward the shaken crowd. "Voldemort's greatest safeguard, his Horcruxes, has already been completely destroyed by me."
Everyone: "..."
So you're not even pretending anymore? You really were behind that whole Basilisk business!
"If he were still an elusive wandering spirit," Hermione continued, "honestly, tracking him down all over the world would be quite a nuisance."
She smiled faintly, her smile taking on an eerie edge. "But now, thanks to this resurrection ritual, he's obligingly given himself a physical form and come out into the open."
Hermione spread her hands. "Once he's fully alive and has a body that can be destroyed, wouldn't killing him again settle everything neatly?"
The entire gathering fell deathly silent.
They could have heard a pin drop.
Everyone stared at the girl on the raised platform, their eyes wide and their mouths agape in disbelief.
Kill Voldemort?
That was the Dark Lord!
The dark wizard who had terrorized the entire wizarding world so thoroughly that people dared not even speak his name!
Who besides Dumbledore dared claim they could defeat him?
*Even Dumbledore hadn't managed to kill him