His choice to let her go free was the final piece of that ruinous puzzle. Letting Hermione discover for herself what thin loyalty—what pantomime of mercy—Heaven showed its own foot soldiers. The truth of her predicament sank into her bones like the bitterest cold of the deepest dungeon, not one built of stone and steel but the prison of ignorance inside her own mind. The trust and naïveté that the Light used to cage her, until the Dark General set her free.