Hermione's parents came home early one day to find Hermione drawing with chalk in the entry way, candles at the points of a star inside of a circle. Hermione was in a set of robes, a silver knife from the kitchen in the middle of the circle with her, and there was a brief stand-off as her parents stared at her in horror, Hermione staring back in shock.
"Mum…" Hermione said weakly. "Dad…"
"Hermione." Her mother's tone was polite. "Might we come inside?"
Hermione scrambled out of her ritual circle and out of the way, wringing her hands as her parents entered the house, gingerly stepping around the candles.
Hermione was mortified, and her parents had to be highly alarmed, she imagined. After the awkward dance around the set-up of the ritual as they entered, her mother insisted on a family discussion in the living room, and Hermione slinked into the room and sunk into a chair.
Her mother brought a tea tray, and there was an awkward silence as they all took tea, not looking at each other.
"Hermione," her mother said finally, with a sigh. "What were you doing in the entryway?"
"Nothing," Hermione muttered. "It was just a protection ritual. I wanted to see if I could get it to work."
"A ritual…?" her father said, frowning. "I thought you did magic with your wand. What's all this about rituals?"
"Magic used to be done only with rituals," Hermione said, not looking up. "More powerful magic is still done with rituals, sometimes. Wands can't do everything."
Her parents exchanged a look.
"It's just… Hermione, that symbol has a very different meaning to us than it does to you," her mother said gently. "I know we've never been a religious family, but that symbol generally means-"
"It's not demonic," Hermione cut in, with a scowl. "I made sure it was right-side up. It's for protection. Pentacles are only bad if you make them upside-down. I can't believe that you'd think that I would-"
"Do not talk to your mother in that tone," her father said sharply, cutting her off. "Hermione, we have been very patient with you with all this magic. We are treating you with respect and as an adult. Do not make us regret that choice."
Hermione sunk deeper into the couch, scowling darker, not looking at her parents. She was embarrassed, and angry that she had been so foolish as to have been caught. She'd gotten sloppy, over the summer. If she were in the Slytherin dorms, she'd never have been so careless.
Her parents looked at each other again.
"Can we see this ritual you were planning on doing?" her father asked.
Hermione swallowed hard.
"You don't really have a choice," her father said, his voice hard. "Go."
Sulking, Hermione went and got the spell book she had been using. It'd been one in the book Snape had given her, luckily – she didn't need her parents seeing some of the horrific ones in the books she'd inherited from Quirrell. Unluckily, it was definitely a blood magic spell – one that the Ministry would definitely classify as Grey at best.
"See?" she said, pointing to the drawing of the pentacle on the page. "It's designed to keep bad people who would intend us harm out of the house. That's all."
Her parents, to her annoyance, didn't take her at her word; they both insisted on reading the entire ritual, as well as the footnotes and example cases on the next page. They took their time, and Hermione had nothing to do but sit on the couch and wait, jiggling her foot, anxious.
"So you wanted to protect the house?" her mother said finally.
"Well, that too," Hermione said. "Mostly you."
"Us?" her father said, his eyebrows raising.
"Um." Hermione looked down, embarrassed. "Yes. You and mum. And me too, I guess. From robbers and burglars and the like. I heard on the telly that there's been a run of burglaries around. And I'd just thought... you know, if bad people can't get in, we'd be safer from that sort of thing."
Her parents looked over the ritual again.
"This says you need blood to link it to the house," her mother said. "That sounds… unpleasant."
Hermione shrugged uncomfortably, trying to minimize the damage. No matter how she spun it, using blood in magic came off as… not good.
"The blood links the house to my magic, so the ritual knows what to protect," Hermione said. "It's just an issue of marking the door with my blood, and the circle as well."
Her father whistled. "Magic is certainly not what I expected."
Hermione bit her tongue.
Her mother looked thoughtful for a moment, before her face settled into resolve.
"Hermione, you've certainly caught us off-guard, with this little ritual of yours," she said, looking at her daughter. "You should have told us what you wanted to do, and you should have asked."
Hermione looked at the floor.
"…but," her mother continued, "this is not a bad idea, on the whole. Neither your father not I would object to this magical security system. It might ease our worries, if anything."
Hermione's eyes flew to her mother's.
"You wouldn't…?"
"Why would we?" Her mother shrugged. "So long as the chalk comes off the ground, I don't see an issue with it."
"But… even with the blood?" Hermione asked, faltering.
"It's messy, but makes some kind of logical sense, really," her dad said, examining the book further. "Here – look, honey, this one says if all the residents put their blood in, they'll get an alert if someone who means them harm tries to enter the home. Everyone part of the same 'bloodline' will be protected." He looked up at her. "'Bloodline'?"
"Family," Hermione translated. "Some magical families have very extended ones."
"So the magic is tracking our DNA," her father said, looking back to the book. "That's… quite impressive, actually."
"We could all do this on Saturday, possibly," her mother told her father. "It looks like this wouldn't take that long, and I'd rather not pay for an electric alarm system if we don't need to."
Hermione watched on in astonishment as her parents discussed what would be the best time for them to do a blood magic ritual as a family. A blood magic ritual. It wasn't Dark, sure – no one could deny that wanting to protect your family was definitively a good cause – but it was still blood magic. And her parents were fine with it – just concerned about the possibility of infection, now, her father mentioning how he'd bring some alcohol pads home from work.
Her parents were Muggles, she abruptly realized. They had no frame of reference, only what she told them. Hermione had absorbed the biases and opinions of the people around her the previous year, including the cultural condemnation of blood magic as bad. She was the only one concerned with doing semi-forbidden magic – her parents just saw it as "magic", and useful magic at that.
And they wanted to help out.
Not for the first time, Hermione felt desperate appreciation and love well up inside her for her parents, and she threw herself across the room at them, hugging them tightly, choking back tears.
"Hermione-!"
Hermione couldn't get out the words she wanted to. There was a jumble of "I'm sorry" and "-thought you would be mad" and "just wanted to help" and "miss you" and "worry about you". To her embarrassment, she started to cry, and her mother pulled her closer and stroked her hair.
"Oh, Hermione," she said, petting her hair, gentle, and that just made Hermione cry harder. "It's okay – it's hard to be growing up into a mature young woman, but still be my little girl. It's okay if you're both. It's okay."
Hermione felt her embarrassment burning inside of her, but gradually dying out in the face of her mother's comfort. She'd been so embarrassed at being caught, like she was doing something forbidden, but her parents were just disappointed she hadn't trusted them enough to ask permission. She was embarrassed she was crying, and she wasn't even fully sure why she was crying, but she couldn't seem to stop.
A little while later, Hermione's sobs subsided to sniffles, and her mother rubbed her hand on her back.
"Remember, Hermione," her mother told her, her warm brown eyes holding hers. "You're not in this alone. It must be hard growing up in a magical world so different than our own, but we're here for you, Hermione. You can always confide in us, okay?"
Hermione hiccupped. "Okay."
Her mother let her off her lap, and Hermione slid off, her face warm. She wiped at her tear tracks, then went to clean up the ritual set up in the entry way under her mother's watchful eye while her father made dinner.
Two days later, to Hermione's astonishment, her parents helped her with her ritual. While they couldn't do the magic, her father got out a compass and protractor and helped her make a geometrically-perfect pentacle in the entry way. Her mother got out matching tapers that Hermione didn't even know they had, and she helped put the candles at the appropriate points.
When Hermione began the ritual itself, her parents looked alarmed, but they stood dutifully off to the side, watching as Hermione recited the chant and her circle started to glow. She stood and cut her hand and smeared her blood on the door posts of the front door, standing on tiptoe to get above the door too. The blood glowed and was absorbed by the door frame, to her parents' collective astonishment, and Hermione gestured them forward.
Both her parents had alcohol wipes, and they wiped their hands to disinfect them before letting Hermione cut their hands with the silver knife. They both winced, and, looking a little ill, wiped their blood on the door frame where Hermione gestured, before kneeling with her, just outside of the circle, all of them smearing their blood in the center of the pentacle together. Hermione looked back to the book, reading the second part of the chant, and there was a feeling of swelling magic in the air, before there was a loud clap of power, the feeling vanished, and all the candles went out.
Hermione's parents stared down at the circle.
"Is that it?" her mother asked.
"Where did the blood go?" her dad wanted to know.
Hermione stood, her parents following her lead.
"The ritual is over," she said, taking her mother's hand in her own. "The blood's been used by the magic. It's helping protect the house, now. Episkey."
"Oh!" Her mother stared at her hand as the cut healed itself, and Hermione moved to her father, who was giving her a look, but looked amused.
"This would have been a handy trick to mention before I got the alcohol wipes and bandages ready," he told her.
"It would have been," Hermione admitted, face heating, "but I forgot that I could do it. Episkey."
Her father's wound healed, and Hermione healed her own hand last, pleased that she couldn't find even the faintest scar.
"So what happens now?" he asked, looking down at her. "We wait for a robber?"
"Anyone who means us harm will have a difficult time entering the house," Hermione told him. "They'll feel uncomfortable, and suddenly remember something urgent they have to do somewhere else. If they push through, we'll all get a twinge, letting us know the house has been threatened."
"Even us?" her mother asked. "We don't have magic."
"I think so," Hermione said, biting her lip. "The circle took your blood too, so you're in it, too."
"Okay." Her mother sighed. "I hope we never need to use this, but I must admit, Hermione, I feel a little better knowing it's there."
Her parents started cleaning up the remains of the circle, and Hermione hurried to help.
"Ah… it's probably not best to mention this to other people," Hermione said, delicately. "You know, that we did this spell."
Her mother shot her a sharp look. "And why not?"
Hermione bit her lip.
"I'm not supposed to be doing magic at home," she said honestly. "The other students with magic parents can get away with it, but if anyone asks if we did magic here, it'll be obvious I was breaking the rules."
Her parents nodded.
"Makes sense," her father said cheerfully. "You're probably not supposed to do magic with non-magical people either, I bet."
He shot a wink at her, and Hermione cracked a grin.
"Family secret then," he declared. "But Hermione, any other rituals you want to do in the house, let us know and ask us first, okay?"
"I will," Hermione agreed immediately.
"Good," her mother said. "Now: shall we do Indian for dinner?"
Hermione spent the evening warm and happy with her parents over curry, part of her still disbelieving that she'd just done magic with her parents. Her muggle parents.
She wondered if anyone had ever attempted to do that spell with muggles before. From the impressions she got in the ritual books, she doubted anyone had ever tried.