A/N: I've always been intrigued by how parents of Muggleborn witches and wizards accept their children's strange capabilities. Thus, this story was born. As JKR hasn't provided us with names for Hermione's parents, I've given them some. Also, I'd like to think that in discovering that their children are magic, Muggle parents might need some persuading that the Hogwarts acceptance letter isn't just a clever hoax. I imagine that it might be the duty of the Deputy Headmaster or Headmistress to do some convincing.

Obliviate

"Mum," Hermione Granger said, "I have something to tell you and Dad."

Jean Granger turned around from the stove where she was busy trying to get dinner ready and surveyed her daughter with pursed lips. She knew that tone of voice; cool, straightforward and meaningful. Hermione only used it whenever there was something serious going on in the wizarding world; something serious enough to put non-wizards in danger.

Jean had only heard it three times before. She had hoped that she would never have to hear that tone of voice again.

"Can you at least wait until I'm done cooking?" she said, turning back to the stove and stirring the large, wooden spoon in the pot. "The pasta's almost ready." It was a feeble attempt at stalling the inevitable. Hermione had a forceful personality – if there was something she wanted to say, she would say it.

"Mum, stop, please," Hermione said. "The pasta can wait. This can't."

"Hermione—" Jean stopped short. The wooden spoon had jumped free of her hand and began to stir itself rapidly, turning the strings of spaghetti over and over in the bubbling water. Moments later, it jumped free, hanging in mid-air as the pot flew up in the air and dumped the steaming spaghetti into the strainer lying in the sink and then fell back on to an unused burner to cool. With a clatter, the wooden spoon fell into the pot. The stove turned itself off.

Jean swallowed hard and looked at her daughter. Her hands clutched the edge of her apron, squeezing the material between her fingers again and again. Hermione stared at her from across the kitchen, her eyes burning with intent and a thin piece of wood grasped firmly in her fingers. She gently lowered it.

"Sorry," she said softly. "But this really can't wait."

Jean wet her lips. "Hermione," she said, forcing her voice to work, "I thought you weren't allowed to do magic outside of school—"

"I'm almost eighteen, Mum," her daughter interrupted. "I've been of age in the wizarding world for practically a year. I don't have the Trace on me; they won't know anything has happened." She stowed her wand away in the pocket of her sweater and sat down at the kitchen table. "Please. I need to talk to you now." Hermione looked upset; there were tears in her eyes that she was determined to hold back. Jean recognized the look – it was similar to the one she herself had on tough days at work.

A soft meowing sound was followed by a pattering of feet; Crookshanks, Hermione's cat, padded into the room, his bottlebrush tail held high. His yellow eyes stared at Jean and he meowed again. Jean had always found that there was something unnerving about the cat; it was like he knew what was really going on. Several times, she had found herself in situations where she almost expected Crookshanks to start talking.

Despite the cat's oddities, Jean was thankful that Hermione had never gotten an owl. That would have been terribly difficult to explain to the neighbours. It was difficult enough whenever her daughter received owl post from her friends, let alone owning one herself.

Leaning against the kitchen countertop, Jean watched her daughter closely. To aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends, Hermione appeared as a bright, intelligent girl who too immersed in the literary world for her own good. Any oddities that developed in her everyday language were quickly explained away as something she had picked up in a fantasy novel. Outside the immediate family, Hermione was supposed to be becoming a writer of some kind. It hadn't been easy; everyday, Jean felt as though she was bearing a heavy weight on her shoulders. She knew of the existence of an entire underground world, a world her daughter had been apart of since she was nearly twelve years old. It was a terrifying world, one that exploded with the weird and the wonderful – and the dangerous. It was something that Jean and her husband could never be a part of, but always had to keep an eye on.

It was a fact of their lives that they had been destined for the moment their daughter had joined their family.

She couldn't remember a happier day than the day Hermione had been born. Jean was a dentist, as was her husband, William. There had never been a time for children in their lives – one of the reasons why Hermione was an only child. Keeping their practice up was a challenge and they had been married for nearly seven years when Jean had discovered she was pregnant. She had always wanted children, but there had never been an ideal time. She relished being able to care for her child, watch her grow and blossom into an intelligent young woman and lead a life of her own.

Friends and family had been so surprised at this unexpected turn of events that there had been much teasing thrown in with the rejoicing at an addition to the small family. Jean remembered exactly how Hermione's name had been chosen. Will had insisted that their child's middle name be after Jean's own name if it was a girl and after his name if it was a boy. As for the first name… they had gone through more girl names than boy names. Boy names were easy. Girl names were the opposite.

Jean remembered, to this day, the teasing she had received from her sister, Mary, about how her little baby was going to get a name that reflected something to do with science.

"What do you think of the name Ethel, Jeanie?" Mary crowed. "Ethel, ethyl? Get it?"

"Very clever," a heavily pregnant Jean snapped and then promptly waddled across the room in search of an appropriately-sized pillow to throw at her.

At the time, both Jean and Will had had the feeling that most people thought they lived and breathed science. What was tended to be forgotten was that both of them were fans of Shakespeare. They devoured the plays and the sonnets; when they had been dating, they had read passages from Romeo and Juliet to each other, quite aware of how cheesy it was to do so. Jean was not, however, going to name her daughter Juliet. She wanted a strong name, something with some originality, some flavour – something no one else was going to think of. She didn't want her child to be named Katherine and become one of a dozen Kates or Katies in her school year.

Jean had been reading A Winter's Tale in the final months of her pregnancy and she had fallen across the right name: Hermione. She couldn't think of a character that had shown more endurance and more strength than Leontes' virtuous and beautiful wife. Perhaps it was also partially because she could only think of one other Hermione (actress Hermione Gingold), but she knew in an instant that it was the right name.

And so when Hermione Jean Granger had been born the blustery morning of September 19th, 1979, Jean and Will could not have been prouder.

Nearly eighteen years later, Jean and Will were still proud – but worried. Unfathomably nervous and worried. They had known since Hermione had been a toddler that their daughter was a little different from others. Perhaps it was the way she learned at an extremely fast rate – she had learned to read before she was scarcely two years old and she had moved on to devouring books by the age of three – or the way she seemed to know exactly what was going on when no one else was aware of it.

Jean could remember with dead accuracy the warm July morning when she, Will and Hermione had been driving through the back roads to the Forest of Dean (where they planned to spend the weekend camping) when she had told her father to pull the care down a lane they didn't need to go down. Three year old Hermione's cries of insistence grew louder and louder until Will turned down the street just to appease her and they had come across a car accident that would have gone unnoticed for hours as the road was seldom used. Jean and Hermione stayed with the injured people while Will drove for help; soon an ambulance arrived and all of the victims, they later found out, survived thanks to their timely arrival.

Jean did not think much of this incident – it was more like a stroke of luck than anything else – but it was not long until the weird and the strange began exploding around her daughter. One afternoon she came back from work earlier than usual and found the nanny who had been hired to look after Hermione until she was old enough to go to school running screeching from the house with a children's picture book clamped to her nose. Jean tried to calm the hysterical woman down, but she was baffled when she found that the book was refusing to come off. Hermione was standing in the doorway with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe dangling from one hand. When questioned what happened, the nanny said through panic-stricken gasps that when she had taken away the children's novel and replaced it with the age-appropriate picture book, Hermione had glared at her and the book flew up and started beating the nanny around the head, finally coming to clamp relentlessly on to her nose.

Jean stared at her daughter in bewilderment after Hermione shrugged and did not deny the nanny's story. Jean, completely baffled by the incident, finally decided to sack the poor woman as she was clearly having hallucinations.

Hermione had been four at the time.

Jean and Will could not explain it. In her early years, Hermione seemed completely unperturbed by her sudden outbursts of what they would later learn to be magic. She was a well-behaved little girl, adorable and loving, but she was a might odd. She never fit in at school and had very few friends – the teachers could never find a reason why, though they were a little taken aback by the rapid pace Hermione devoured her lessons. The only person who found Hermione to be a completely normal child was her grandmother.

"It's nothing to worry about," Jean's mother said calmly as she sipped her morning tea. "You were exactly like that when you were a little one, Jeanie. She's a keener. Just wait and see – perhaps she'll win a Nobel Prize someday with a brain like hers."

However, that explanation failed the morning when Jean had been pinning her hair up for the day and Hermione wandered in, promptly causing her mother's dark brown hair to turn a bright, vivacious shade of red.

"I wouldn't complain," Will said later, eyeing his wife with a smirk on his face. "I rather like the colour. You should have done it earlier."

"It's not the colour that's the problem!" Jean exclaimed. "It's how it happened!"

"What d'you mean?" Will said with a snort. "Doesn't hair normally change colour under the command of hairdressers?"

"Hermione did it, William," Jean said, folding her arms crossly. "Our daughter."

He raised an eyebrow. "So now she's a prodigy hairdresser? Good for her. Nice to know she has many talents."

"No, Will!" Jean shouted. "She walked into the room and then bam. My hair was red. It was like… like magic."

Will stared at her, obviously thinking that he had misunderstood his wife.

Jean's hair never went back to its original colour on its own. Her friends continued to badger her for the name of her hairdresser for many years afterwards until Jean became so annoyed with them that she dyed it back to brown.

Hermione was eight when she began to become uncomfortable with the strange things that kept happening around her. Will was away in France visiting some old school friends at the time. There was a loud thunderstorm outside and the rain was bearing down heavily upon the roof. Jean was attempting to get to sleep when there was a loud crack of thunder and the flash of lightning illuminated the open doorway that led into the bedroom from the hall. Hermione was standing there, her bushy brown hair (inherited from her father) wilder than usual, her brown eyes wide with fear.

"Mummy?" she said.

Jean sat up against the pillows. "Yes, dear?"

"Can I come in?"

Jean smiled and shifted over in bed. "Of course you can."

Hermione crawled in under the sheets and snuggled up against her mother, pulling the covers far over her head. Jean held her daughter close, humming and softly rocking her to sleep. But Hermione did not want to sleep and it was not the thunderstorm that was keeping her awake, either.

"Mum," she said quietly, "I think something's wrong with me."

Jean stopped humming. "Are you feeling sick, sweetie?" she asked, concerned.

Hermione shook her head. "No. I feel normal. It's… everyone at school says that there's something wrong with me. They say I'm not normal. They don't want to be my friends."

Jean sighed heavily. "Sweetie, school can be very difficult sometimes. You're not the only one. It's best to try to ignore what the other kids say."

"I do!" Hermione's eyes were full of tears now. "I really do, Mum! But today… today Kyle Wyatt kept saying that I was a… a buck-toothed weirdo and that I made things happen and that no one would ever want to be around me unless they wanted their hair to turn blue or something. And… and I got so mad that I pushed him, but he didn't fall! He went up – up really high, like he was flying! And then he landed in a tree and they had to call the fire department to get him down. He got detention because the teachers thought he was climbing trees, but it was really my fault and all the other kids saw! Now no one wants to talk to me." She sniffed loudly.

Jean looked away, frowning. She didn't know what to say. This was not the first odd incident, nor was it the last. She could not understand why these things kept happening, and she wasn't sure what to say to her daughter about it. Finally, she took a deep breath and decided on a course of action.

"Hermione," Jean said, "I want you to listen to me very carefully. You are a very special girl. Your father and I love you very much, and so does the rest of your family. That's all that matters. We don't care if you can do strange or weird things that other people can't. We know you're a good person and accidents do happen. Kyle Wyatt wasn't hurt, so there is no real problem. I know you're scared, sweetie, but it's part of who you are and everyone is different."

"But what if I'm the only person like this?" Hermione squeaked.

"Sweetie," Jean said, "it doesn't matter if you are. We love you for who you are. Everyone's different. That's the important thing. Besides, if everyone was exactly the same, wouldn't the world be a very boring place?"

Hermione smiled faintly and curled up next to her mother. "It sure would," she said.

After that, Hermione never looked back at her odd abilities. Whenever something strange happened, she hardly flinched. Jean knew that she was secretly working on trying to control her abilities, but she did not dare to say anything about it. It wasn't something she could understand. It wasn't something she thought anyone could understand. She did not ignore it, but she watched from a distance. Perhaps some day it would go away.

It was a feeble hope, but a hope nonetheless. Jean wasn't surprised at all when it didn't go away.

Having spent almost twelve years bringing up their strange daughter, Jean was only mildly shocked when an owl collided with their kitchen window one July morning. The bird was rather dazed, but when Will went out to see if it was all right, it righted itself and hooted at him, holding out one leg to which there was a rolled up piece of brown paper. Will cautiously approached the bird, uncertain of what to do. It hooted loudly at him and shook its leg.

Hermione and Jean ventured outside to investigate. After staring at it for a while, Hermione finally said, "I think you're supposed to take the piece of paper, Dad."

"What, that thing attached to its leg?!"

Hermione nodded. "It seems to want you to do that."

"Hermione, it's an owl. How can it want me to do anything?"

The owl hooted more forcefully this time and shook its leg again.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Oh, fine, if you're going to be so worried about it." She stepped forwards and untied the band around the owl's leg, releasing the paper. She stared at it for a moment, her eyes wide with shock, one hand tugging at her bushy hair.

"Mum," she said, holding out the paper, "look at this. I think it's made out of parchment."

Jean took hold of the paper and discovered immediately that it was a heavy envelope, addressed to Hermione in sparkling emerald ink. On the back there was a coat of arms that she had never seen before – a lion, an eagle, a badger and a serpent all intertwined around a large letter "H."

What was more, it was clearly not made out of normal paper. If Jean hazarded a guess, she would have said that Hermione was right in saying that the envelope she was holding was made of parchment.

The envelope contained the explanation they had been waiting for ever since Hermione had been born. Will downed many cups of coffee as mother and daughter sat at the kitchen table examining the contents of the envelope. There was an opening letter from a man called Albus Dumbledore (Will scoffed at the name – he said that if anyone ever told him again that Hermione had a strange name, then he would tell them Dumbledore's) which calmly explained that there were witches and wizards living amongst them in hiding and that it had been this way for years. It was fairly common place for a witch or wizard to be born into a Muggle, or non-magic family. Hermione was one. The odd occurrences that had been happening since she had been born were caused by her magical abilities. As such, she had been invited to study magic at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which Dumbledore was headmaster of. It also said that someone from the school would be along to explain the situation to them within a couple of days. Following this letter was another one with the official invite and a list of things Hermione would require.

"It's a load of bosh," Will said over his sixth cup of coffee. "Cauldrons? Wands? Owls, cats and toads? A complete hoax!"

"William," Jean said slowly, "I don't think so."

He slammed his cup down. "Look at this, Jeanie," he said. "Just look at it." He pointed to one of the titles on the book list. "A History of Magic? The Standard Book of Spells? Someone clearly has too much time on their hands—"

He was cut off by a loud, angry hoot from the owl outside.

"Won't someone get rid of that damn bird?"

Hermione was looking rather frightened. "Dad," she said.

"What?" he snapped.

"This would be a… a logical explanation, wouldn't it?" Hermione said timidly. "If magic is real… it explains a lot."

Jean smiled slightly. Her daughter had just voiced her own thoughts. Will's furious expression faded.

"But… but it's complete absurdity!" he said.

"Dad," Hermione said plainly, "I really did turn mum's hair red when I was seven. I still have no idea how I did it."

Will stared at her blankly, uncertain of what to say next.

If the Grangers needed any more persuasion that their daughter was really a witch, it came in the form of a tall, severe-looking woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She looked like someone who was to be taken seriously – if it weren't for the long, swishing dark green robes and the tall, pointed hat she was wearing.

"I am Minerva McGonagall," she announced upon her arrival. She looked oddly out of place in Jean's kitchen. "I am Deputy Headmistress at Hogwarts." After her straightforward reinforcement of the letter's contents, she promptly turned herself into a cat and back.

It was July 17th, 1991. Jean remembered the precise date because that was the day that there was no going back for them.

At first, a sense of bewilderment settled over the small household. Then there was a week of estrangement where Will avoided his daughter at all costs. Finally, Hermione became so upset by his behaviour that he immediately apologized and decided to settle down, re-read the Hogwarts acceptance letter and start a foray into the magical world that had been existing under their noses.

Everything was explained in the letter. Hermione needed to visit a place called Diagon Alley – a street hidden from view to non-wizards unless they were shown it directly. Directions of how to get to it were given. As soon as she could convince Will to let her go, Hermione dragged both of them into London. This was when Jean saw her daughter's independence streak like she had never seen it before. For a brief moment, it crossed Jean's mind that Hermione was the parent here and she and Will were the children. They were being led around by their eleven-year-old daughter who could see buildings made invisible to the non-magic eye.

It was with some extreme anxiousness that the two dentists – thought of so highly in normal society – made their way into Diagon Alley for the first time, led by the hand by their daughter. She gasped in awe at the explosion of colour that met their eyes the moment they stepped through the grubby little pub called The Leaky Cauldron and went into the street beyond. After a few moments, Hermione was nearly giggling with excitement. Jean could understand it. It was like the day she had discovered the Science Club at her school; Hermione had finally found where she belonged.

They stood out, and they knew they stood out. People passing them on the booming, popping and whirring street stared at them as much as they stared at everything around them. More than once, some kindly witch or wizard in a funky hat and robes offered to lend a hand – but they always addressed Hermione first. Hermione politely turned them down, wanting to explore things herself. It took them nearly an hour and a half to make it to the tall, white building that was the wizarding bank and even longer to exchange their money for pieces of gold, silver and bronze so Hermione could buy her school things.

That, of course, didn't include the time wasted when Will nearly had a heart-attack from seeing what they quickly learned were goblins.

By the time they left Diagon Alley four and a half hours later, Jean was nearly a hundred percent convinced that she had hallucinated the entire thing. She and Will both had to take a couple days off work after that – an occurrence that had never happened before.

The rest of the family was, to put it simply, shocked.

Hermione delved into her textbooks with some kind of fanatical glee. She wanted to learn everything possible about the wizarding world. It was all new to her – an opening that she had never known was there. A new world, a new start. A place where she could finally be accepted as herself. She tore through her textbooks faster than she had ever done with a normal school book and within a week of their visit to Diagon Alley, Jean poked her head into her daughter's room to find her waving her wand around and producing some kind of bright blue flame out of the tip.

Jean gave her a warning not to set the house on fire and left her to experiment.

Hermione barely came out of her room and whenever she did, she either hand her nose in a book, was holding her wand and practicing flicking it in short, precise movements or was whispering nonsense words under her breath. Jean heard what she thought sounded like "Alohomora!" one evening when she came back from an exhausting day at work and started on the laundry, but she shoved it off as a figment of imagination produced by an overly tired brain.

Two weeks after the visit to Diagon Alley, Hermione rushed down the stairs and told Jean that she wanted to go back.

Jean promptly dropped the dinner bowl she was holding. It smashed on the floor, sending pieces of shattered porcelain in every direction.

With a grin on her face, Hermione pointed her wand at the bowl and said, "Reparo!"

The porcelain shards moved together feebly to restore the broken bowl, but they did not stick. Hermione frowned and lowered her arm. She looked like she was going to burst into tears. Jean hurried over to her and they sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, Jean's arms around her daughter.

"Don't worry," she said calmly, "you haven't even started classes yet. You only found out that all this stuff exists a couple weeks ago. I know you'll be brilliant."

"But Mum," Hermione said, her cheeks streaked with tears, "what if I can't do it? What if I'm horrible and they send me back here and I have to go to school and be a loner for the rest of my life?"

"Hermione," Jean said sternly, "no daughter of mine is ever going to be a loner. You'll find your place, sweetie. And besides—" she smiled and stroked her daughter's hair, "—I know you'll be the best at it. Even better than the kids who have witches and wizards for parents."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you're a hard worker, that's why, like me and your dad. Everything in life's the same – you work hard, you're rewarded. I doubt magic has any easy ways out."

Hermione stared dully at the broken bowl. "But I can't even repair it," she said quietly.

"Don't worry about the bowl, dear," Jean said. "A broken bowl is a broken bowl. It doesn't matter."

Hermione wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "So," she said, "can you take me to Diagon Alley?"

That weekend, they went back to London. This time, Jean stayed in the car outside the invisible pub, anxiously re-reading the same spot on the same page of her magazine as she waited for her daughter. Hermione had told her strictly that she wanted to do things herself and that she was tired of being stared at by overly curious witches and wizards looking at the "quaint non-wizards." Jean had to give in after that; she handed Hermione some money and gave her a timeframe for which she needed to be back at.

Jean did not realize that even if Hermione was late, there was no possible way for her to go trudging into Diagon Alley to find her.

Jean always had to wonder whether the witches and wizards found it odd to see an eleven-year-old girl curiously walking through the street by herself, buying what she found interesting and questioning them about life as part of the wizarding community. Magic had become Hermione's obsession. Jean recognized the symptoms: once Hermione latched on to something, she would not let go. She would learn every little, tiny detail she could about the wizarding community before going to Hogwarts. Jean wondered with a slight smile whether Hermione would end up knowing more about the magical community than the students who grew up in it did.

Jean's guesses were revealed to be true when Hermione stumbled out of The Leaky Cauldron at the end of her allotted time, quavering under the weight of several large books she had spent all of her money on. It was with no surprise that she began to read as soon as she got back in the car.

"I can't wait to get to school, Mum," she said as they drove.

"I had no idea," Jean said, an amused expression on her face.

"They'll have a library!" Hermione said excitedly. "An old lady in a large hat with a stuffed vulture on it told me."

"A large hat with a what?"

"A vulture. It's a huge library! It means I won't have to spend all my money on buying books, I can just borrow them whenever I want to find something out!"

Jean had never seen her daughter so excited.

For the month of August, Hermione devoured her books. She talked non-stop at the dinner table about the new things she was finding out. Jean was gathering a rather good mental picture of Hogwarts – in her mind's eye, she saw an old, stone castle with lots of turrets perched on a cliff by a Scottish loch – but that didn't stop her from nearly choking on a piece of broccoli when Hermione excited stated that the ceiling of the Great Hall was enchanted to look like the sky outside.

"It's all in Hogwarts: A History," she said, tapping her fork on her plate. She hadn't touched any of her food. "It's so fascinating! It's like these people can do anything!"

For the first time, Jean saw the manic gleam in her daughter's eye that appeared in her husband's expression whenever he got excited about a root canal.

"There's a boy called Harry Potter," Hermione said when they were at the greengrocer's on the weekend. She was helping to pick out heads of lettuce.

"Oh?" Jean said. "Is he famous or something?"

Hermione nodded. "Trust me, Mum, if you and Dad were wizards, we'd never hear the end of it. He's the one who made He Who Must Not Be Named go away. He saved the entire nation, and probably all the non-magic people, too!"

"Who's He Who Must Not Be Named?" Jean asked. "And why can't you name him?" She had a sudden, vivid recollection about the Kray twins. Rumours had spread wildly that people living in London's East End in the '50s and '60s were so terrified of speaking the name Kray aloud due to the swift and bloody retribution that would follow.

"They're scared," Hermione said simply, searching through the lettuce heads. "He was a dark wizard, one of the most powerful ones, at least since Grindelwald. He was murdering people left, right and centre. The whole wizarding community was at war during the 1970s—"

"Pardon?!"

Jean had dropped the lettuce head she was holding; it hit the floor and rolled to Hermione's feet.

Hermione bent down and quickly scooped the lettuce up off the floor. "Yes," she said simply. "There was a war going on right under our noses."

Jean couldn't think of what to say. Suddenly, she noticed that several people were staring at her. Hermione's voice must have travelled.

"It's a book she's writing," Jean said, forcing a laugh. She winced inwardly at the sound of her own voice. "Overly creative imagination!"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. Jean gave her a significant look and they quickly went to buy their groceries and leave as soon as possible. Hermione had the sense to wait until they were back in the car before she continued her story about Harry Potter.

"He Who Must Not Be Named attacked and killed his parents when he was only one year old," Hermione went on as they drove home. "He has a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. But the biggest mystery is that no one knows how he survived the curse that killed his parents, or how You-Know-Who was destroyed."

Jean thought this was all very morbid. Her anxiety level about surrendering her daughter to this strange world was rising.

"I wonder if anyone actually knows this person's name," Jean mused.

"Oh, they do," Hermione said. "But they just won't write it down in the books. At least, not in any of the ones I've read." She paused, fiddling with a strand of her hair. "Harry Potter's going to be in my year at Hogwarts."

"Oh?"

So, her daughter had a wizarding celebrity in her year. Splendid. Jean wasn't sure what to think except that the poor boy was clearly famous for something that was absolutely horrible. She felt a surge of pity for him and started to lecture Hermione on not asking him too many questions.

Hermione looked appalled. "Mum!" she said. "Do you think I'd do that? I'm not senseless!"

She was very put out after that.

Jean continued to grow very worried. She stole a few peeks at the books Hermione was reading; the more she learned about recent wizarding events, the less she liked it. The knowledge that there were people running around who could kill with a single word was terrifying. Several times she had to stop herself from telling Hermione that she would not be allowed to go to Hogwarts. Each time it happened, she reminded herself that the non-wizarding world was just as dangerous and that the only reason she was terrified right now was that she was learning about wars that had taken place right under her nose. Hermione would be safe at the school.

Wouldn't she?

It was with some anxiety that Jean and Will bid their daughter farewell and good luck on September 1st. She told them that she would send them an owl. Will complained about it all the way home, saying that he could not put up with those dreadful birds.

Jean didn't mind it too much.

Soon, owls were colliding with their kitchen window three times a month as Hermione wrote them long, steady letters. She wrote about her classes, she wrote about everything she was learning, she wrote about her teachers and the meals and the magical surprises that exploded around her every day. Jean was concerned as Hermione made no mentions of any friends.

"Don't worry, Jeanie," Will said after she stated her worries. "I'm sure Hermione is fitting in just fine."

But she wasn't. About a week after that, Jean got a letter from Hermione with only five words on it:

I want to come home.

Jean scarcely had time to consider what was happening at the school when she got another letter where Hermione had happily written that she had finally made friends. When Jean read the name Harry Potter in her daughter's letter, her mind flickered back to the memory of the conversation she had with Hermione in the grocery store. She pursed her lips, but from the sound of it, they were genuinely friends.

Oh, and I met a troll on Hallowe'en. Don't worry about me, though, everything was fine. Harry and Ron rescued me and we didn't get into too much trouble from the teachers.

Jean re-read that last bit several times, staring agog at the words, "I met a troll."

When she and Will picked Hermione up at Kings' Cross station at Christmas, she was beaming with happiness. She talked non-stop about school all the way home and Jean got the feeling that she couldn't wait to go back.

After Christmas, they did not receive as many letters. Hermione explained once that she was becoming very busy as she needed to revise for exams ("Right now?" Will said, stunned. "But there's six weeks left! She's working like you, but ten times overkill!"). Jean got hints that she was up to something else. She wouldn't find out what it was until they went back to Kings' Cross in June at the end of the school term. Hermione spoke briefly about something called the Philosopher's Stone and how she, Harry and their friend Ron Weasley had made a desperate attempt from stopping someone from stealing it, but Jean and Will got confused as to what was really going on. After a while, Hermione decided that it was better to keep her mouth shut and she turned, instead, to enquiring her parents about how their practice was going.

Will wasted no time in telling her that she was to never use magic on her teeth. He then proceeded to tell a highly exciting and exaggerated story about how a little boy had bitten his finger the month before.

They settled into a kind of long, stretched-out routine. Hermione's summers were spent with them. The rest of the time, she was in the wizarding world. Jean got the feeling that over time, she was losing touch with her daughter as Hermione delved deeper and deeper into the magical community that was off-limits to her parents. The dream Jean once had of watching her daughter grow up was quickly disappearing.

But then, she concluded one evening, nothing about Hermione had ever been normal. With the tales of success and her high marks brought back from school, Jean always sensed a flicker of strong pride that her daughter was this talented. It was something she could never share with the rest of the family, but she was content to keep it between herself and Will.

The first time Hermione had come down the stairs and used her serious tone of voice when asking Jean if she could speak to her was when they were on holiday in France the summer before Hermione's fourteenth birthday.

"Mum, Dad," Hermione said, "I have something to show you. Please don't get too worried, but I think it's something you should know about so you can be on guard and not left in the dark."

She then threw down a newspaper on the table. The pictures on it were moving and Jean immediately recognized it as a wizarding paper from England called The Daily Prophet. On the front page was a picture of a gaunt and long-haired man who was leering at them. His name, the caption said, was Sirius Black. He was a known killer of non-magical people.

He had also escaped from the wizard prison, Azkaban.

"Don't worry," Hermione said, her eyes pleading, "but just be careful, okay? Black was a supporter of You-Know-Who. The Ministry has people out looking for him and they will hunt him down. He shouldn't be attracted to any Muggle-areas, though, but you can't be sure."

Jean looked down at the mad, leering man and felt her heart leap into her throat. What was Hermione's connection to the wizarding world getting them into?

She would soon find out that it was much, much worse than it seemed. When Hermione came home after her fourth year at Hogwarts, she told them in a quiet, desperate voice that the dark wizard who had terrorized England in the '70s had returned to life – or something of that sort – and that Harry had, once again, fought him off and barely survived. This was when Hermione began to slip away for good. She once again gave Jean and Will a warning to be careful and to not to spend too much time outside at night. She stayed at home for a week and then her friend Ron's family came around to pick her up and take her to London, where she was up to goodness-knows-what. She sent them one letter, telling them how she had been made prefect. Jean's glow of pride was dampened by how she would not be able to celebrate this achievement with her daughter in person.

That Christmas, Jean made an attempt to pull her daughter back to their family by organizing a ski trip.

She and Will went on the ski trip alone.

Things steadily began to go downhill from there. Jean was still very proud of her daughter for continuing to succeed so well at school and for finding a place where she fit in, but she was worried sick every day for Hermione's safety. She noticed that Hermione was beginning to tell them less and less of what was going on in the wizarding world and she knew things were getting worse. Finally, at the end of her fifth year, Hermione came home to tell them that He Who Must Not Be Named – or Voldemort, as Hermione finally called him, as she was not afraid of the name – had come out into open warfare with the rest of the magical community and that things were now becoming exceedingly dangerous for Muggles as they happened to be the dark wizard's followers' favourite playthings.

"Please, please be careful," Hermione begged. She then kissed Jean on the cheek and gave Will a hug and disappeared to the Burrow to stay with Ron and his family again.

They barely heard from her until they suddenly received a letter one wintry December morning asking to be picked up at Kings' Cross Station the next day.

"I thought she was planning on staying at Hogwarts?" Will said, bewildered, as they drove to the station.

Hermione was very sullen when they picked her up.

"How is school?" Jean asked. "How are Harry and Ron?"

"Harry's fine," Hermione said shortly. After a brief moment, she added, "Ron's a prat."

For the first few days after she came home, Hermione did not touch her textbooks at all. Instead, she curled up in a chair by the fire, reading Shakespeare. It was almost as if she was keen to push the wizarding world as far away as possible. However, that idea clearly conflicted with Hermione's work ethic and by Christmas Eve she had gone to Diagon Alley. When she returned, she informed Jean and Will that she had made arrangements to return to school by Floo Powder the day after Christmas.

"I have work to do," she said. The bitter tone remained hanging in her voice.

Jean desperately wanted to know what was going on, but Hermione was adamant not to tell her. Christmas was a chilly affair, one which Jean was severely disappointed in considering it was the first Christmas Hermione had shared with them since her first year. Hermione barely spoke throughout the day. Jean was quickly becoming tired of this new, brooding attitude her daughter had taken on and finally, she and Will bid their daughter goodbye and watched Hermione disappear into a blaze of green flames in their fireplace.

By the time Hermione returned in June, the moroseness had left but it was replaced with sadness and then nervousness. Hermione was both prone to bursting into tears and biting her nails, something Jean had never seen her do very often. Jean knew immediately that whatever had been bothering Hermione at Christmas had gone away, but something more serious had occurred.

And now it looked like Jean was about to find out. Here Hermione was, seventeen years old and officially an adult in the wizarding world, and she was sitting at Jean's kitchen table with a tortured look on her face and that dreaded serious tone in her voice.

Jean leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. She vaguely thought how she was standing in the exact space where Minerva McGonagall had transformed into a cat six years ago.

"Mum?" Hermione said timidly. "Why… why don't you sit down?"

"Why don't you tell us what's going on this time?" Will said gruffly, coming into the kitchen.

Hermione ran a hand through her wild mane of hair. "Okay… okay." She took a deep breath and stretched her hand out on the table. She looked extremely uncomfortable, as if she didn't know where to begin.

"I'm not going back to school," she said.

Jean's eyes widened. "What?" she said, temporarily discarding all worry set off by her daughter's tone of voice. "Why?"

"I thought you loved school!" Will said.

"Yes, I do love learning," Hermione said, now twisting and untwisting her fingers together, "but I can't go back now. Voldemort's back in the open. He's taking over the whole country, either with fear or by converting people to his side. He's striking at the Ministry of Magic and once the government goes, I doubt there'll be any protecting for people like me."

"Why are you so different?" Will blurted.

Hermione's look hardened. "Because I'm Muggle-born," she said. "Because you and Mum aren't wizards. There's a nasty prejudice in the wizarding world. There are those who feel that anyone who has Muggle parents is inferior to those who are 'pure blood', as they call it. Voldemort and his Death Eaters want to stamp out Muggle-borns."

Will stared at her. "They want… they want to kill you?"

Hermione pursed her lips. "What they really want is Harry."

Jean folded her hands. She was surprised that she was still standing. "Because he defeated Voldemort the first time, isn't that right?" she said.

Hermione nodded. "I'm going to help Harry. Me and Ron. That's why I'm not going back to Hogwarts. He has something that needs to be done if Voldemort's ever going to be stopped, and we're going to go with him."

Will stood up. "No, you're not."

"Dad—"

"Listen to me for once in your life, Hermione!" He was nearly shouting. "I am not having you walk knowingly into danger! I don't want to live with the knowledge that you're God-knows-where, fighting for your life! You could die!"

"Dad, that's a risk I'm willing to take!" Hermione said anxiously. "Please understand! I have to do this!"

"If you're so keen on staying in the wizarding world, why don't you stay at Hogwarts?" Will yelled.

"William!" Jean said, grabbing his arm and trying to get him to calm down. He wrenched his arm away from her grasp, glaring at their daughter.

Hermione was speechless for a moment. Then she raised her head and looked her father straight in the eye. "They killed Dumbledore last June," she said slowly and deliberately. "They killed our Headmaster, on school grounds. Do you really think I'd be safer at school, Dad?"

Jean pressed a hand to her heart. It was thundering rapidly. Did she just hear what she thought she had heard? The Headmaster had been murdered at the school?

Will's face had gone white.

"Hermione," he said very slowly, "I want you to listen to me very carefully. You are going to stay here, do you understand? That's it. No more magic, no more wizards, nothing."

"Dad," Hermione answered, "if I don't help, if I don't do something, they'll come to me. Right now, the best way I can help is to help Harry."

Will lost it again at that point. "I am not having you risk your neck for your boyfriend's sake!" he roared.

Hermione blinked. "Harry's not my boyfriend," she said calmly. "He's my friend. And I'm going to help him, if it's the last thing I do. He needs us, Dad. I'm only trying to do the right thing. You'd do it too, if you were in my place. Please, understand."

Jean raised a hand to her face and finally sunk on to one of the kitchen chairs.

"It's not like I'd really be safe anywhere else," Hermione continued. "The other side knows I'm one of Harry's best friends. Whether I was Muggle-born or not, they'd try to track me down to get to him."

"Why did we ever let you get mixed up in all this… this stuff?!" Will said furiously. "It's dangerous! You could die! I'm not having it!"

"Dad, there's no choice!" Hermione said desperately.

"No! That's enough, Hermione!"

"Will, sit down!" Jean said.

"I'm not – I'm not going to sit down, Jean! This is a serious business—"

"It is." Hermione stood up. She leaned with her hands pressed on the table. There were tears in her eyes. "It's dangerous for you two as well. I can't guarantee it, but the Death Eaters may come after you two to find out where I am. I've told you too much about Harry. I can't see you two get hurt on my account."

Will opened his mouth to say something, but he appeared to have lost his words. "Huh?" he said.

"I've… I've packed your things," Hermione said, now fiddling with the cuff of her sleeve. "You're going to Australia. You'll be safe there. I got your tickets and everything – they're in the front pocket of your suitcase, Dad. It's a one flight only."

"Hermione, I am not running away, and you are not going to go gallivanting around the country!"

"DAD!"

A fearsome gleam had entered Hermione's eyes. Tears were threatening to fall. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. "Just listen, please?" she said. "Don't make this harder than it already is."

Jean lowered the hand that had been pressed to her lips. "Do you really need us to go, dear?" she said heavily.

Hermione nodded.

"I'm not going anywhere," Will said angrily.

"Do you expect to fight them off with toothbrushes, William?" Jean snapped.

He stared at her.

"If Hermione says we're in danger, we better take every word of advice she has for us," Jean said. "We should play things out her way. She's smart, Will. She knows what she's doing. She's always known what she's doing. Besides, there's no turning back now. We're where we are because of events we could not control. Our daughter's a witch and I am damn proud of how far she's come. There's a war going on right now. It's not one that we can fight. So listen to those who can."

Jean fell silent. A great weight had been lifted from her chest. She glanced at Hermione, who was now crying silently. She saw a smile playing at the corners of her daughter's mouth and she smiled back.

Will looked wistfully between his daughter and his wife. "Australia?" he said.

Jean nodded. "Australia. We'll leave now."

"No," Hermione said, standing up. "There's one more thing."

"What's that?" Jean asked.

"I… I…" Hermione faltered. Whatever it was she wanted to say, it was forgotten. She stayed silent for a very long time. Neither Jean nor Will said anything at all. The kitchen was full of the smell of the long-forgotten pasta in the strainer in the sink.

"I need to say goodbye," Hermione finally said. Her voice was very quiet. She hurried over to her father and threw herself into his arms. Will looked slightly taken aback and he patted her gently on the back. "Goodbye," Hermione murmured. "Good luck. I love you."

"I love you, too, sweetheart," he said. He still looked bewildered, as if he wasn't sure what was happening. "Don't cry. We'll see you again soon."

Hermione stepped back, smiling weakly. She wiped the tears from her eyes again.

Jean knew exactly what was going on. This might be the last time she ever saw her daughter alive. All the days of anxious worrying about Hermione's safety built up over the years finally exploded. She crossed the space between them in several steps and hugged her daughter tight.

"Be safe," she whispered in Hermione's ear. "Please come back to us."

"I will, Mum," Hermione said. "I promise."

Hermione released her and stepped back several steps. She took out her wand. Will gripped the back of the chair closest to him with one hand.

"Hermione?" he asked.

She looked forlornly at them. "Mum, Dad… I'm really sorry about this. I hope you'll eventually be able to forgive me for it, but I have to do it."

Jean's heart leapt into her throat and she seemed to realize what was going to happen the moment before it happened. "Hermione, don't—"

The pasta in its strainer smelled even stronger now than it had before. Jean had been going to add a splendid tomato and basil sauce to it.

Hermione's face was shining with tears. She raised the wand.

"Obliviate!"