Written for the Golden Snitch "Build a Burrow" challenge. Thanks to summersaults16 for the lovely cover photo!

Tools: 11. Wand: write about a pureblood made to go without their wand for a day.

'Ron, it's just for one day,' Hermione reassured her boyfriend, no, fiancé, by placing a hand on his cheek.

'A lot can happen in a day,' Ron replied, the light dimming in his eyes as he was overcome by past memories.

Hermione put a hand on her fiancé's other cheek, turning his head and leaning in to touch his forehead with her own. She searched out his gaze with her own.

'The war is over, Ron,' she said softly. 'Nothing will happen, I promise. It's just to remove the temptation of magic. I can always call Harry if there's a problem; he promised he'd keep his schedule free just in case.'

'So you admit that something could happen?' Ron caught onto the implication within her words.

Hermione pursed her lips, cocking her head to the side and breathing deeply out of her nose.

'Fine, fine,' Ron gave a sigh. He placed his wand inside his bedside cabinet, turning the key in the lock and pocketing it in one swift movement. 'I suppose I can go without magic just this once.

'Thank you,' Hermione replied, accentuating the syllables to show how much she meant them.

She checked over his Muggle clothing one last time, straightening the collar of his polo shirt. She laid her hands flat on his chest and gave him a quick kiss before opening the door.

'For luck,' she said by way of explanation.

Ron shook his head grimly and followed her out of their flat.

'Hermione!' Mrs Granger beamed, engulfing her only daughter in a bear hug.

'Mum,' Hermione greeted warmly, enjoying the hug.

It took Hermione two days after the Battle of Hogwarts to look for her parents. Two weeks to find them in Australia. And two years to find out how to lift her Memory Charm without damaging their intellect. Now, another two years later, her parents had mostly forgiven her, though they remained terrified of magic and the evil it had wrought.

'And you must be Ron,' Mrs Granger welcomed the redhead with a handshake. 'Our Hermione has told us so much about you. I'm glad to finally meet you.'

'Yeah, um…I'm sorry I kept refusing before. Auror training and all that,' Ron said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head.

His hand went automatically to his pocket, the result of seven years of fear and three years of survival training after that, but his wand was not there. He almost started to panic, before remembering his promise to Hermione earlier that day.

'Ah yes, Aurors,' Mrs Granger frowned for a few moments before her face cleared. 'That's some kind of wizard policeman, isn't it?'

'In a way,' Hermione replied, motioning for Ron to step through the front door. 'Where's Dad?'

'In the kitchen,' Mrs Granger explained. 'He couldn't very well let your boyfriend leave without one of his traditional Sunday roasts now, could he?'

Hermione let out a laugh, and Ron felt himself relax a little. The Grangers weren't so different from his own family, though Hermione had to explain what a dentist was at least four times in the car.

I'm going to have to spend a lot more time with Dad, he realised, noticing all of the unfamiliar objects in the room. He wasn't sure he liked being somewhere so…foreign.

Of course, he recognised the fellytone and the moving picture box - they were apparently staple items in a Muggle home - but nothing could have prepared him for the kitchen, with its cacophony of whirring and drilling, cables covering the surfaces.

He was relieved to see that Mr Granger was stirring a pot of gravy on a normal-looking stove. When Ron didn't respond to the greeting, Mr Granger followed his gaze.

'You must be wondering about the oven!' the older man misinterpreted the look. 'It's an AGA. I know that it's probably easier to have an electric oven, but I find that nothing beats the slight smoky edge to the wood burning AGA. Of course, Jean thinks it's all in my head, but she's not the one doing the cooking!'

'I like it,' Ron blurted out. 'I think my Mum has something similar, actually.'

Almost. She usually used Incendio to get the thing going.

He glanced back to Hermione, who gave him an encouraging smile. It was going to be a long day.

'...and that's how I pulled the right tooth out by mistake!' Mrs Granger finished, wiping a tear of laughter away from one eye.

'It was just as well that the tooth was rotten,' Mr Granger said, shaking his head as he mopped up his gravy with some bread. 'We could have gotten into big trouble if the mayor suddenly found himself with rotten gums after having regular consultations for the past five years.'

Ron gave a polite smile, and bit into his final potato. The story had actually turned out to be rather funny, considering that Hermione's parents healed mouths for a living. However, he hadn't been able to enjoy it, since the meal had been nearing to an end and he still hadn't managed to get the words out. The words he had come here for. The words for which he was wearing his ridiculously stiff shirt.

'Mr and Mrs Granger,' he started, having gulped down the last of his food. He didn't get further than that before he was interrupted.

'Oh, Jean and Graham, please,' Mrs Granger urged.

'Um…Jean and Graham,' Ron corrected himself, the words feeling strange on his tongue. 'It was really nice to meet you, but-'

'You have to leave already?' Mrs Granger looked crestfallen. 'I had already made up the bed in Hermione's old room.'

'Let the lad speak, Jean,' Mr Granger admonished his wife, recognising the worried look on Ron's face. 'He'll tell us what he has to say.'

'Yes, well, um…As you know, Hermione and I have been together for… 'round about four years now. I know I haven't met you in all of that time and that most of that is my fault-'

'My fault,' Hermione interrupted in a small voice. 'If only I hadn't...' she trailed off, picking at her napkin.

This was not going how Ron had planned.

'Anyway,' he pressed on, feeling as though he was back in first year, playing against McGonagall's giant chess set. 'We've been going out for a while, and now that Hermione has finished her studies and is working in the…Law Department, and now that I've got a bit of spare time, since I'm mostly a detective now...'

Ron realised he was rambling and stopped. The rest of the dining table was hanging onto his words, letting him gather his thoughts.

'What I'm trying to say is that I love your daughter, and I'd like to marry her. We've talked about this together, and Hermione reckons it's a good idea.'

He stopped abruptly, not knowing how to go on. He couldn't ask for her father's permission, because that would seem archaic and barbaric, but he felt like they were going behind Hermione's parents' backs, which was why he had refused to let Hermione simply tell her parents herself.

'Why, that's wonderful news!' Mrs Granger cried, breaking into his spiralling thoughts. He looked up hopefully. 'I've been telling our Hermione that you would end up married since your very first year of school, haven't I Minny?'

'She has, actually,' Hermione admitted to Ron, not even blushing at her childhood nickname. 'All of our fights were the symptom of something wondrous, I recall her saying.'

'Well,' Ron said, going to his standby reaction of shrugging at this piece of news. 'I guess you were right then, Mrs Granger.'

'Jean, Jean, please!' Mrs Granger replied, going over to Hermione and hugging her tightly. 'Just think, Graham, our little girl's grown up!'

'Our little girl was grown up far beyond her time,' Mr Granger replied with a smile, but it was strained. His joke fell flat.

The joyous atmosphere turned solemn as memories of the war flashed across Ron's eyes. With a tremendous amount of effort, he managed to banish Fred's face from his mind. His brother would have wanted him laughing as much as possible. Or crying because of one of the twins pranks. But Ron preferred the former.

'Everyone did,' Hermione said warningly to her father.

'It's all because of magic,' Graham started, but Hermione interrupted.

'It's not, Dad, it's really not. In the past one hundred years, we've seen two of the worst wars in history, with no magic involved at all. I thought we were past that.'

Mr Granger seemed to deflate a little.

'I'm sorry, darling,' he replied. 'But it makes me feel so…so inadequate. Your mother and I can't protect you - couldn't protect you as parents should have. Magic…it's an unknown to us, and we can't do anything about it. Not one thing.'

Ron suddenly realised why Hermione had wanted him to leave his wand behind. It wasn't because her parents were afraid of household spells, or the wizarding world. It was to alleviate their feeling of being burdens on their daughter, the sensation of helplessness as powerful as any Imperius Curse.

He vowed then to never use magic in the Grangers' house. Not once did he bring his wand to the house, not even when Hermione and the children did twenty years later.