That would set Ron off again and send Ginny into a fresh burst of tears. But it was also the truth and Hermione knew it. So did Ginny if she was honest with herself. Eventually the girl would get it through her head. But honestly Hermione was much more concerned with herself right now. One thing she knew for certain. She could NOT return home to her parents with this rune on her face. They definitely wouldn't understand and unlike a majority of this world she knew her mother could read runes. It had been a pastime hobby for her in her college days. That meant her Mother would know exactly what her mark said and she would tell Hermione's dad. Both of them would be very angry with her.
But Hermione was a strong believer in right and wrong and in justice coming to those who deserved it and were willing to work for it. Especially when the wrong in question had been done to her person. This meant spending hours researching just exactly what Harry had done to her and the siblings. Because there was no way she believed what Professor McGonagal had told them. Judgement magic didn't exist. There was Light magic and there was Dark magic. And what wasn't known as Light Magic therefore had to be Dark Magic.
So she spent hours haunting the Library stacks reading book after book and passage after passage trying to find information she'd already been given. And then more hours late at night in the tower working out just how exactly he had crossed the line and why it was up to her to see to it he didn't get away with his crime.
She firmly believed he had wronged her and, without any true parental figures in his life willing to teach him right from wrong, it was up to her to do so. And of course it went without saying that when she finally figured out what he'd done to her and got him to admit it, she'd need to punish him. Because behavior like this couldn't go unpunished. No good parent allowed their responsibility to get away with doing obviously bad things. Not for a second did she stop to consider she wasn't Harry's parent or guardian and therefore had no right or responsibility for teaching him anything. She certainly didn't have the right to go around punishing him for things she believed he did wrong.
Hermione had convinced herself Harry had committed a crime of the darkest nature against them as a part of his descent into darkness to equal the darkness known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and therefore deserved to be punished for it. Not for a second did she think it was this Judgmental magic the teachers said it had been. She'd never once caught any sort of a reference to that branch of magic so therefore it didn't exist. The teachers were just saying it did because they didn't want to admit the truth. Harry had gone dark and used Dark Magic against them.
She fully believed it had to be Dark Magic Harry had used because she hadn't heard him say the name of the spell. That made it a wordless spell and she knew all wordless spells were dark magic. The Headmaster had told her most the wordless spells fell into the category of Dark Magic because it made it easier for them to get away with being dark and hurting others. If they used verbal words to trigger the release of their dark magic, then it would be a simple matter to counter them and cure their victims of the effects as well as prove said caster had slipped too far away from the light and intervention was needed to save them.
But given who Harry was compared to who his victims were, she was also reasonably certain the rest of the Wizarding World wouldn't choose to punish him at all. She knew Harry was right when he claimed he outranked them even if both her Weasely friends disagreed. Halfblood or not, to the Wizarding World, Harry Potter was practically untouchable. That meant it was up to her and his other victims to handle things appropriately. Because no one would bother to try and get justice for them. They just weren't important enough to risk having him turn on whomever tried to intervene. Not at this date in time anyway.
But that also opened a door for them to deal with the situation themselves. Since he had assumed he had the right to punish them himself when he was in no manner a person of authority over them, they could punish him as well. All they had to do was discover a method of doing so. And that meant spending some time in the library doing research. As the only one capable of properly researching anything, she knew it would fall to her to find a spell they could use against him. Something that would remain with him and grow stronger the longer he refused to admit his wrongdoing and lift his curse from them. And maybe when he finally removed his curse they'd remove theirs from him. Maybe. After they were sure he'd gotten the message, of course. He couldn't be allowed to go around thinking he had the right to strike out at them any time he felt like it after all. They were his masters. He wasn't theirs.
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