Disclaimer: None of these lovely characters is mine. Neither is the world which they inhabit. It all belongs to the inventive Ms. Rowling, who accordingly makes all the money.

Hermione Granger sat on the bow of the midsize sailboat, one leg tucked up under her and the other dangling over the gunwale. She was half watching the waves and half listening to her parents argue affectionately over the proper angle to set the sail at. After three weeks of cruising the Australian coastline with them, she had a vague idea of how to sail a boat, but if it had been any other day, she would have been back in the cockpit trying to learn more.

Today, however, was different. It was her last day down under. Then she was going back to London, and her parents weren't coming with her.

It had taken Hermione by surprise how much they had grown to love Australia in their year there. While she and her boys had been hunting Horcruxes, she'd imagined again and again what it would be like when she finally returned to her parents and restored their memories. She had researched proper techniques of memory restoration whenever she'd had a spare moment, knowing that it was a delicate process that could easily drive them mad.

And when she'd dared to think about what her success might feel like, Hermione had always imagined her parents, a bit dazed and a bit teary, hugging her desperately like she had saved them. Because she would have. Didn't she mean the world to them? Wouldn't remembering her be the greatest gift she could give them?

She had been stupid, and she wasn't afraid to admit it. But it still surprised her.

She had come to them well-dressed in a pin-striped business suit and spouted a story about hypnosis and new identities and protection from war crimes. Her mother hadn't wanted to believe her, but her father had admitted to a touch of confusion about the past and a strange fascination with teeth.

"You were dentists in your past life," she told them with a bit of a laugh, and they had accepted her unspoken cover story. She would not lie to them again, not ever, but if they were willing to assume she was from the Muggle British government until she gave them their memories back, she wasn't going to correct them.

They had had questions about their former life. And she had given them answers. David and Moira Granger. Surrey. Yes, both dentists. Twenty-three years of marriage, she'd kept that the same. No dog ("What were we thinking?" her mother laughed, as a chocolate retriever named Mindy and a little corgi named Kip sprawled across the floor.) A daughter. Eighteen. Hermione.

"Our boat's called Hermione," David had muttered as Moira shrieked, "We have a daughter?"

And so she had explained, haltingly, carefully, that their daughter had been involved in the war effort (yes, even though she was only eighteen), that she had feared for them and enlisted them in the relocation program without their consent, that she was so so sorry, that the process could be reversed, that they could get their old memories back and still keep their new ones, that Hermione missed them very much.

They had agreed. She had performed the charm. There had been a moment of blankness, and then...

"Hermione, darling!" her mother had said, shock on her face. Abruptly, the corners of her lips had turned down. "Why didn't you write us at all this past year?" A gasp. "What happened? What did you do?"

Hermione had paused mid-hug with her father. "Mum, I was hunting Voldemort with Harry. You remember what I told you? About Voldemort? And how we had to stop him? How he was killing all those non-magic folk too?"

"Of course I remember," her mother had said, a dangerous edge entering her voice. "Of course I do."

From there, there had been a series of arguments, furious ones and then intellectual ones and then teary ones. Her parents didn't think she had the right to take away their memories. They would have preferred that she had told them everything and let them join the battle. She was their daughter, and she should have respected them enough to ask them what they wanted to do. It had been selfish of her to protect them, when they would have died to protect her.

And then, finally, quiet in the Granger household. Mindy had whimpered, nudging Hermione's knee, and the witch had petted her.

"Perhaps I'll just go for a bit then, shall I?" Hermione had said in a crisp, clipped time, turning to collect her bag. It was her beaded one, but she'd transfigured it for the occasion. "Give you a few days to sort things, before we talk further?"

A hand on her wrist. "No you don't, missy!" her father had said. She had turned back, tears in her eyes, to face her tall, proud father. "You don't get to go all British on us and just walk out our door. You're a coward if you do."

Hermione had blinked. "But..."

"Let her go, Jack," her had mother said, and Hermione had been surprised by how much it hurt to hear her call him by his Australian name.

"I won't let her go. If she walks out that door right now, we'll never be a family again."

"I'm not sure I want to be a family again."

Hermione had felt her face go white, and had had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing. You knew this might happen, she had told herself.

"Prove it to us," her father had said, his hand tight around Hermione's wrist, his dark brown eyes solemn. "Prove that you're not a coward. Stay here with us, tell us what happened, remind us why we love you ― no matter how much it hurts. You owe us that."

And Hermione supposed she did.

Some things about her return had been almost seamless. The way she and her parents moved in tandem about a kitchen, she chopping veg, her mother minding the stove, her father doing the washing up. The way they all read in the evening, sharing tidbits over tea. In her company, their laughter and playfulness was gone, but the bones of the routines they had all followed long before she started Hogwarts remained.

It wasn't enough. They couldn't pretend that none of it had ever happened. Trying to made them all quiet and strained, and Hermione sometimes wondered if it would be so awful to be a coward, to leave them to the lives they'd made in her absence.

On the 23rd of June, she received an owl from Harry.

Dear Mione,

How's Australia? I've always wanted to go.

By popular demand, Kingsley's having a victory ball on July 15th. Think you'll be back by then?

I hope everything is going well with your parents. I hope they're not too angry with you, but I imagine it might be a little like when I kept trying to leave you and Ron behind and go off to save the world by my lonesome. And you lot never liked that.

Miss you loads.

Love,

Harry

That night, instead of taking out her book, Hermione had told them about the Forest of Dean.

Three days later, they had packed their bags, left Mindy and Kip with a neighbor, and stepped aboard the Hermione. It was a relief to be doing something new, something different, to acknowledge everything that had changed. Almost suddenly, the tension had faded.

And then it seemed as though her parents could not stop talking. Returning their old memories had not removed the ones she had created or the ones they had made in the last year, and so they had inexhaustible reserves of stories to tell her.

They rented the little condo they lived in, but they'd bought the boat first. She was their pride and joy, and accordingly, they'd named her the Hermione. They had new jobs. Her mother was an opinion columnist for a big newspaper and her father taught people to scuba.

And they loved their lives. Hermione couldn't remember ever seeing them as happy as they were now. It was like they were ten years younger and falling in love all over again. As cheerful as they'd always been, the Drs. Granger were serious people, a trait they'd passed to their only daughter. But now they were playful and a little silly and a little irresponsible.

And they wanted to stay.

"You were our pride and joy, dear," Hermione's mother had told her, "but you started leaving us for nine months out of the year when you were only eleven. Our time with you was so short, and when you were gone we were so sad. It was hard on our marriage. We're happy here. At least let us be happy while we're missing you with every fiber of our beings."

How could a daughter say no to that, especially a daughter who had betrayed them by wiping their minds and bringing them to Australia in the first place?

"Hermione?" her mother called from her seat in the cockpit. Hermione rose, clutching a new letter from Harry in her fist, and walked back along the boat, bracing herself with one hand as she plunked into the seat between her parents. They were relaxed and slathered in sunscreen, her mother holding a gin and tonic and her father nursing a whiskey on the rocks. Hermione raised an eyebrow. It was barely noon.

"Five o'clock somewhere, love," her father said, brushing a wayward curl behind her right ear. "Now tell us what's in that letter that's got you so worried. You're not going to have a thumb left soon." Hermione blushed. She hadn't even realized she'd been chewing a nail up on the bow.

"It's terrible for the teeth, dear," her mother said, taking the offending hand in her own and squeezing it.

Hermione hated to wake them from their lazy, peaceful afternoon, but she knew it was time to return. The weeks they had stolen away from the world were over. Either her parents accepted her now for everything she was and had to be, or they would have to go on with their pretty little Australian Jack-and-Amy life alone.

"I have to go back."

Her father's face stayed stoic, but her mother's twisted with something like bitterness. "Why?" she asked.

"There's this party tomorrow," she said, blushing as her mother's face grew darker.

"A party."

"Oh, come on, Mum!" Hermione exclaimed. "I'm so very sorry about what I did to you, you know I am! But this thing... It's important. The Minister of Magic is throwing it, it's supposed to mean that the war is over and all is well. But it's not, Mum! The war doesn't end until all the Death Eaters are captured and the captured ones are sentenced and no one cares about a person's blood status anymore and little dentist's daughters don't have to run themselves ragged to prove to the world that they matter too."

Moira Granger ― or perhaps Amy Turner, her parents seemed to go back and forth on what they called each other using some sort of secret silent language Hermione couldn't understand ― sat quietly, listening to her daughter rant, hands folded in her lap, mouth twisted in a prim little frown. When the steam ran out, she looked up, fixing Hermione with a piercing blue-eyed gaze.

"And exactly how will your presence at this party bring about this great and lasting change?" her mother asked quietly. Her mother never spoke loudly, and Hermione had always thought as a child that there was something about straining to catch her words that made them stick with the listener that much more.

Hermione sighed. "It's a start. It shows them that I'm not going to hide my face and my scars while I lick my wounds." She touched her Mudblood arm as she said this, and the thoughtful way her mother bit her bottom lip made Hermione dare to go on. "People are already wondering where I am."

"By people, you mean reporters," her father said.

"Yes, them, but friends and enemies, too. Going to this party... It just seems right. It seems like a way to show the world that this isn't over for me yet. And besides," she pulled out another letter from her pocket, smoothing out the official parchment slowly, "I've been summoned as a witness for a trial the next day. I couldn't stay beyond tomorrow even if the party wasn't happening."

"Whose trial?" her father asked, a spark in his dark eyes. He'd been very curious to know what was to become of the Death Eaters ever since Hermione had told them of Dumbledore's death. ("Why, that's murder!" he'd cried, as if he'd thought magic could only be used to turn toads into teacups and pull rabbits from hats. Just one more reason why Hermione had decided it was best to Obliviate them.)

"I've told you about him. Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

"That horrid little ferret who called you names?"

She laughed a little, but it sounded bitter even to her own ears. Malfoy had done worse than call her names. He'd taken the Mark, he'd let Death Eaters into Hogwarts, he'd stood by as Bellatrix carved him open, he'd been there in the Room of Requirement when Crabbe set the Fiendfyre...

"You're going about it all wrong."

Hermione was immediately pulled from her reverie, and she turned to face her mother once more, putting her patient face on and preparing to explain yet again why these prejudices existed, why they wouldn't just go away.

"Don't give me that know-it-all face of yours, missy," her mother exclaimed, and Hermione recoiled, wincing. That hurt. Worse, her mother knew it hurt. "I've watched you go to this school for seven years and come home crying and silent and defeated. I've watched you grow up and grow tough and learn to take it all and throw it back in their faces, but there was always a price. Us. We were the price. The stupid Muggle parents who could never understand, slowly pushed away and away and then, finally, to keep us out of the way, you sent us to Australia. We could have helped. Maybe not thrown Stupifys and Expelliarmuses, but we could've done research and made proper English breakfasts with tea and everyone in the Order would've had very nice teeth."

Hermione blinked. She'd never imagined that possibility before, and it was quite a lovely one. For the first time in three long weeks, true remorse coursed through her, alternating icy cold and tingly hot. She felt an ache in her throat and a burning at her eyes, and blinked hard to keep the tears away.

The Drs. Granger were the smartest people she knew. And obviously they'd done their homework the last seven years. The Order would have made use of them and kept them safe. "I ― I should've asked."

"You should have." The fire dropped out of her mother's voice. "You talk of prejudice and brainwashed purebloods, Hermione, but... Aren't you a bit like them after all?"

"Moira, please," Hermione's father said, reaching a hand over his daughter to rest it on his wife's back.

Hermione cleared her throat and looked up. "No, Dad, she's right. How would the two of you like to attend the Ministry of Magic's Victory Ball?"

Her mum ― suddenly cold, quiet Moira had melted into her mum again ― reached out and hugged Hermione for the first time since her memories had been returned.

She was forgiven.

"I would like that very much, dear."

A/N: First fic in a long, long time. But I couldn't resist these guys. They wanted to be written about. Expecting to update once a week for now. R&R, please and thank you!