"What do you mean dentists? What's a dentist?"

"It's a sort of doctor. They clean people's teeth."

He's eleven and pureblooded and his mouth is full of food and he's not nearly as open-minded as he liked to pretend to be, so he just wrinkles up his nose in disgust and turns back to his turkey legs.

She's eleven and muggleborn and her mind is still full of wonder over this bright, new world and she's not nearly as thick-skinned as she liked to pretend to be, so she just turns back to her book and pretends that her feelings aren't hurt.

And years later, when Wars are won but feel so lost and they are so far away from home and finding a pair of lost parents who don't know they need to be found is turning out to be much more difficult than they ever thought (hoped) it would be, he'll wonder what in the world she ever saw in him.

"Cinderella? What's that, an illness?"

He's seventeen and War is here but still just at the door. Not inside the house, yet, leaking in and spreading and draining out every spark of happiness. The War only just arrived and he still had the emotional range of a teaspoon and everyone still thought they could have a wedding.

Looking back now, he doesn't know how they ever managed to be so delusional. How they ever thought for even one second they could display happiness and love without Death Eaters coming like Dementors to suck it dry.

Now he is still seventeen but he feels seventy-four and Hermione spends every night of their (long, so long) journey in Australia pressed against his side with her face in his shoulder, shuddering and pretending she does not want to cry.

In the day, when they pour over maps and show pictures to every muggle or wizard they find, he tries to make jokes. She told him, once, that she fell for him for his sense of humor, so he tries to make her laugh. And sometimes it works but most times he just feels like an idiot and like he's not very funny at all. Not like Fred was funny. Not really. (Though, he doubts—one of those few, rare times when he lets himself think of it—that Fred would have been able to make Hermione laugh, either. She never did think he was very funny. Not that she'll ever say so now. No one ever says anything about Fred anymore to make him seem like he was anything less than a saint—no more stories of Montague locked in a lavatory or teddy bears turned to spiders—and Ron hates it. Hates all the left-out stories and unvoiced thoughts. It makes him feel like he's losing Fred all over again. Like they're turning him into less of a person, somehow.)

But no matter how hard he tries to make Hermione laugh in the day, at night she still shudders and tries not to cry. And he feels useless and stupid and wonders if this is how it was when he walked away from her and Harry, months ago. And he hates himself.

Not so much of a teaspoon, anymore.

She takes another deep, trembling breath and he doesn't think he can take any more.

"Tell me about your parents."

She looks up at him. Her eyes are red. "Wh-what?"

"Your parents." She still looks confused and so he tries to blunder through anyway, gathering up all the confidence he has. "I don't know anything about them. Not their favorite foods or sports or anything. What do you expect me to talk to them about when we find them?"

She looks at him and as soon as he says 'when we find them' a little light enters her eyes and she sits up. "What—what do you want to know?"

"I don't know. How about when they taught you how to ride—what was it?—um…bicycles, yeah? Maybe I can talk to them about that."

"How?"

He shrugs. "Maybe we can compare them to brooms or something, I don't know."

She still looks a little confused. And a little suspicious. For a moment he worries she'll see right through him and he's not going to be able to distract her, after all. Then she opens her mouth and starts to talk about her first time out on a bicycle with her dad behind her and her mom standing beside them, cheering her on.

Maybe it's his imagination, but she looks just slightly less sad, after that.

Soon, every time she starts to look worried or sad or her lips turn down and crinkle in that little way they used to whenever she'd get frustrated and close her books, he asks her to tell him a story. For a few minutes while she tells them, she starts to look almost happy again. And he wonders why she never told him any of these stories before. Because for all of his dad's enthusiasm about muggles and plugs and ekeltricity, this is the first time Ron's really heard about muggles as if they were regular people. Regular, relatable people with stories and lives that didn't need wizards to marvel at or pity or snub them to still matter. To still be amazing enough all on their own to produce someone as fantastic as Hermione.

He starts to really care about the stories after that.

"How does football work?"

"Did your dad ever teach you to drive a car?"

"What music did they listen to?"

"Are muggle girls in short skirts all scarlet women?"

"What did you do for holidays?"

And one day he wakes up and she's lying next to him and there's sunlight in her hair and she looks so beautiful and he blurts out, "How do weddings work, in the muggle world?" And they both blush.

Later, when weeks have passed and the amount of time he can get her to smile has dwindled so, so much, they knock on one last door and there they are. Hermione's parents. Hermione screams and forgets herself and jumps straight into their arms. They look confused, but Ron doesn't interfere. Hermione's the smartest witch of her age; they'll remember her soon enough. She deserves this moment.

He sags against the doorframe and thinks that maybe, when all of this is over, he'll ask them what it's like to be dentists.