A thought struck me.
Could Harry not personally marry Hermione, thus make her a member of the House of Potter, hence make the blood debt owed one owed by his house? After that he could burden the punishment himself hence display the absurdity of the whole justice system, perhaps off a dementor or two in the process just for the kicks.
Please enlighten me.. If this solution is possible it certainly seems the easiest (all though I do like the "blame Voldemort-option" as well).
They're eleven, and she's been convicted of attempted murder. Those are not generally conditions amenable to a fast marriage.
EDIT: New discussion thread here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With two chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 500 comments. The latest chapter as of 17th March 2012 is Ch. 79.
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. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
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, ten.
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: