Dumbledore looked at the black flame hovering in midair, brimming with terrifying power, then at Hermione. He rubbed his brow helplessly and said:
"Someone still has to follow the rules."
"Oh, give me a break!"
The girl curled her lip in disdain and shot back without hesitation:
"Either follow them completely, or, once you've broken them, use every means at your disposal."
"But you want to follow the rules while constantly breaking them in secret. You never fully obey them, always sneaking around behind the scenes, but you never fully break them either. You have the greatest advantage of all-magic-and yet you never use it."
"If you went all out and took over the Ministry of Magic outright, you'd have no shortage of supporters. You'd have taken Grindelwald down long ago. How else could these useless idiots at the Ministry have let Grindelwald toy with them for so many years?"
Ignoring everyone from the Ministry of Magic, Hermione looked at Dumbledore.
"Do you know what the biggest difference between you and Grindelwald is?"
"Grindelwald likes to beat people up before reasoning with them."
"You only want to reason with them."
Dumbledore fell silent.
Of course he knew that was the fastest, most effective approach.
With his reputation and strength, the position of Minister for Magic was his for the taking whenever he wanted it. Everyone would submit to him.
But he dared not do it.
Restraint had become ingrained in Dumbledore's thinking. He feared that, once he allowed himself to believe that powerful magic entitled him to do whatever he pleased, sooner or later he would become someone just like Gellert.
So he would rather contend with others within the rules, even if those rules had been set by his opponents.
Travers could not listen any longer.
"You're the Dark