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ArisKatsaris comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong
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If by "herself" we mean without being Imperiused, Confunded, Dark-ritualed or otherwise having her mind directly messed with, it's because we've been inside Hermione's mind enough to know that she wouldn't murder a classmate.
Human beings have characteristics just as inanimate objects do.
Maybe we have different standards, but the Groundhog Day Attack and (at least) one False Memory Charm is quite enough mind-messing for me to believe she did it.
ETA: just to make it perfectly clear, I don't think this value of "she did it" is the sort that should require her to be held liable in a criminal trial. I just meant that the Stunner and Blood-Chilling Charm came out of Hermione's wand while she was holding it.
I still can't figure out whether you're excluding the Imperius.
chapter 79
'She was Imperiused and then Obliviated' looks like the likeliest hypothesis right now.
I think the idea is that with just an Imperius and an Obliviation, she wouldn't remember herself deciding to cast the Blood-Chilling charm -- she might remember doing it, but not remember deciding to do it, which would be difference enough to be noted by the Veritaserum and/or Legimancer.
So you'd need the False-Memory-Charm on top of that, and once you have the False-Memory-Charm you don't actually need to complicate this further with an Imperius and Obliviation, it suffices by itself.
If that were true, it'd be really easy to detect an Imperius by examining the subject's memories... The subject wouldn't remember deciding to do anything the Imperius made them do. [Test Foo]
Instead, McGonagall's statement implies that the best way to figure out whether the subject was Imperiused is to see if they remember being Imperiused, even with all the information that would allow you to perform Test Foo.
Then again, McGonagall's speaking outside her area of expertise.
Lucius is an Occlumens, and lesser Death Eaters might self-obliviate whole weeks/months of their lives and then claim that they were both Imperiused and obliviated.
I suppose that throughout the duration of Imperius its victim may be thinking to himself "Damn this Imperius which is making my body do things that I don't want to do", so one wouldn't need to obliviate just the moment of the Imperius, but the whole sequence of events. Which would be counterproductive in Hermione's case as her own memories is the chief incriminating factor.
I don't think a False Memory and whatever persuasive words were used in the Groundhog Day attack would have sufficed for her to cold-bloodledly murder a 11-year old classmate, even if she had seen him openly declare a desire to rape Hannah Abbot. (she might have hot-bloodedly murder him then, but not cold-bloodedly so).
I think you underestimate the power of the GHD. If Hermione really believed she had to kill Draco or he will, for example, murder every student in Hogwarts the next day, I'm pretty sure she would cold-bloodedly kill him.
Okay. How about we take up this discussion again in, let's say, thirty-five hours?
Sure. :-)
'She was Imperiused and then Obliviated' seems to be the likeliest hypothesis.