A/N: Happy Birthday Hermione! What with patrolling and rehearsal, I almost didn't make it…

Summary: Family dinner doesn't quite describe it. For starters, dinner implies actually eating.

Building Barriers: The bricks may be of misunderstanding, but the mortar is of love.

Chapter 3: A Bed of Mortar

Later that evening, Hermione walked down the stairs to the dinner table. Automatically, she headed for the cabinet and opened the door to retrieve three white plates with blue floral trim. Carrying them over to the table, she placed one in front of each chair. Noting that there were already forks, knives, and napkins, she returned to the cupboard to fetch three glasses.

Hermione felt a little guilty for not helping with the rest of the table; she had stayed in her room for a long time. In fact, she now realized that she hadn't left it since the walk with her mother earlier.

Fifteen minutes later, Hermione sat down to eat her first full meal of the summer holiday.

"Hermione?" Her father suddenly put down his fork and stared at her thoughtfully.

"Yes, dad?"

"Your teeth, they're different." She had almost forgotten. After all, it really did more good than harm, and after Harry and Ron had noticed—well, other things just became more important (like getting Harry through the second and third tasks. Then of course there was the matter of Cedric's death and funeral). She fabricated what she was going to tell her parents shortly after Madame Pomfrey fixed her teeth, but any formulated explanations had long since been forgotten.

"Oh, yes, that," Hermione began. "Well, there was an accident in the corridor. A curse hit me by mistake, and my teeth were affected." She surprised herself with the ease and comfort she found in lying. As far back as she could remember, she had never lied to her parents…at least not about anything important.

But then I suppose, she thought, next to the other events of the year, the altering of my teeth really isn't that important, even if it crashes like a meteorite into the lives of my parents. And perhaps, after all, she wasn't really lying; she was only bending the truth.

This time it was her mother scrutinizing her. "Well there has to be some way of fixing it—with magic? It caused this mess, so it should be able to help correct the problem, right?" Mrs. Granger paused only slightly before continuing. "We told you that we didn't want you meddling with your teeth."

"It's not a tragedy, Mum…after all...they don't look that bad," Hermione squeaked. "It could have been worse—they could have grown enormously." She cringed at the memory of her front teeth extending to a monumental size in the Potions corridor.

"Isn't there any way at all of fixing it?" her father suggested, softly but positively. A red cloud moved in front of her vision.

"I thought you would be happy. Well, no, I didn't, but… I know you don't like mixing magic with teeth, but it was an accident [of sorts and can't be reversed, and I think they actually look better, and now you don't have to worry about working on them." Hermione said all of this very quickly, so that by the time she finished, she panted slightly, and both parents stared fixedly at her. Blinking, she added almost defiantly, "I like them better this way."

"I thought we agreed on no magic before you left."

The small twinges of guilt she had experienced earlier began to give way to anger. "You agreed," she said timidly. "I didn't do it on purpose; it just happened. Now that it did, can't you just accept it?" She would never understand the fuss they were making over her front teeth. She never fully understood why they couldn't just let her fix her teeth with magic either. Okay, she appreciate that they were dentists, and teeth were, after all, their forte, their passion. So, their overly-protective manner should have been a given.

But she, Hermione, was a witch. A witch who could do magic. No, magic wasn't--and shouldn't be--a quick fix for everything, but something so harmless, surely it wouldn't matter. It would make her life so much easier. And then she could move on to more pressing and important matters.

This was where she had been hitting the brick wall with her parents. They failed to see that there were much more important happenings in the world. Teeth were certainly not the most essential of all subjects for discussion and debate.

Maybe she was being unfair again. They didn't live in her world .They couldn't know the threat that Voldemort posed. She shouldn't expect them too. After all, hadn't she been masking it since she began her term at Hogwarts and became friends with Harry? They had no way of knowing.

All of these rational thoughts, usually absorbed and then used to screen her vocalizations, vanished in an instant as she looked at the accusatory expressions on the faces of her parents.

Perhaps, it was time she educated them.

"A boy at Hogwarts died, and all you can worry about is the size of my teeth."

Hermione whispered, but her words easily carried through the house. She would not have been surprised if the neighbors had heard.

Mrs. Granger's expression faltered. "A boy? Died?"

Hearing the words from the mouth of another gave Hermione strength.

"Yes," she replied, looking pointedly at first her mother and then her father.

Mrs. Granger quickly recovered and jumped in with a question. "How horrible. What happened? Was he ill?"

"No," said Hermione, shaky once more. "He was murdered.

"Murdered!" her father boomed. "By who? Another student?" Hermione fought to find the right words to explain the…circumstances to her non-magic parents. Try as she might to wade her way through the thick sea of vocabulary in her brain, no words would or could accurately signify the weight of the events. Her eyes flicked back and forth as she rejected explanation after explanation, deeming each worse than the one that preceded it:

After her first year, she rambled on for hours about the glorious and fascinating new subjects at this school, about her fellow Gryffindors, about her favourite teacher. She even told them how she had won house points by solving a deceitfully simple riddle that led to Gryffindor winning the house cup.

When returning from her second year, Hermione beamed about her improvement in Potions and explained to her parents that she hadn't written in a while because she had been sick in the hospital wing with a kind of flu, and the nurse wouldn't let her do anything but lie in her bed.

Her tales of third year were noticeably shorter. She told her parents of her wonderful Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, conveniently leaving out that he had almost bitten her on the last full moon. She did tread dark waters then, describing the Dementors and their "mistake" that put her in terrible danger—never near death though.

And now, being pushed forward by a year of incomparable anxiety and danger for her, Ron, and especially Harry, Hermione was at a loss for words.

How do you explain that someone—an incredibly powerful someone who wants to kill not only you, but your parents as well for the sin of existence—has returned to full power and intends on achieving the aim set twenty-three years before?

Mouth slightly open, Hermione looked at each of her parents in turn, before speaking…