I suppose it is for attempted murder, but I can't imagine it being normal procedure for three Aurors and the Headmaster to arrest a student.
My prediction: The sequence of events leading up to Hermione's arrest will not be predicted, because we don't have enough information currently to do so.
Perhaps I'm just overly simple here, but it seems to me that Draco decided to do the murder setup when he was writing the letter. I understand that it could be a lot more complex than that - but not everything -has- to be complex.
My prediction: Draco dueled with intent to frame Hermione for attempted murder. Hermione sat next to HP because she knows she's screwed and there's nothing she can do about it, and she wanted to be near him when the inevitable caught up to her.
This prediction creates what I'd consider an extremely messy political problem for HP, one that quite frankly I don't see an easy magical or non-magical solution to. That may be the point.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. There haven't been any chapters recently, but it looks like there are a bunch in the pipeline and the old thread is nearing 700 comments. The latest chapter as of 7th March 2012 is Ch. 77.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: