HERMIONE

Hermione sat frozen in place, blinking in astonishment.

He'd just kissed her.

He'd just kissed her.

Well, ok, so, the side of her head, but still.

He'd kissed her like it was normal. Like that was something he did.

Why on earth was he so incredibly, unbelievably, freaking annoying?

Hermione retrieved her book from the other side of the table where he'd left it.

RON

Ron stood on the balcony and shoved a whole crumpet in his mouth. His hands were shaking slightly. That whole situation had got way out of control, but damn it, he thought it had gone pretty well.

A mouthful of squishy crumpet and honey was reassuring in any case.

He chewed and swallowed, and took a breath.

Two things, he thought to himself, one: never stuff a whole crumpet in your mouth, you git. And two: there is something there. I'm almost certain….

RON'S PLAN

Ron waited until Hermione was in bed and Harry was in the shower and George- well, George seemed to be spending nights elsewhere.

"Hey Ginny," Ron flopped onto the end of the bed, "I need a favour."

Ginny looked up from the Broomsticks Australia catalogue she was reading, and considered him.

"If it has anything to do with George's new love interest, I'm not getting involved,"

"What? Nah, not that. Hey, look, I might have a lead on- well, you know, but I don't want to get her hopes up or anything. Do you think you could like, plan some girly day out or something tomorrow? Keep her out of the way while I check it out? It might be nothing, but if it is them-"

Ginny eyed him thoughtfully.

"Are you taking Harry?"

"Uh-"

She grinned suddenly.

"You prat. You really have found them, haven't you!"

"Well-"

"And you're not taking Harry because you want to be the hero,"

"Hey, that's not- look, will you do it or not?"

Ginny smirked at him.

"You are so pathetic, you know that,"

"Gee thanks," said Ron dryly, "So will you do it? Or do I have to ask Ahaana or whatever her name is,"

Annoyance flashed across Ginny's face.

"Of course I'll do it," she said, picking up the catalogue and irritably flicking pages, "I mean, I would rather go broomstick shopping with Harry and George, but if you insist I'm sure I could let myself be dragged through every second hand bookshop in the Northern Rivers,"

Ron let out a relieved breath

"Thanks Ginny, you're the best,"

"Yes," said Ginny crossly, "And don't you forget it," she glared at him, but her expression softened, "I hope you find them," she said reluctantly, "I really hope you do,"

"Yeah," said Ron, "Me too."

MULLUMBIMBI HINTERLAND

"Ron, are you sure this is the way? I did look up all the bookshops in the area, and there was nothing out here,"

Ron grinned.

"I didn't say it was a bookshop, I said it was a surprise. Come on it's not far,"

Hermione made a disgruntled sound and evaded a large puddle which meant walking half into some kind of dark green foliage which set a million insects to flight. She stumbled, and put her foot in the puddle anyway.

"Great. It is extremely hot, and extremely humid, and I'm pretty sure I had a nightmare about my hair doing exactly what it's doing at the moment, so this had better be a damn good…" the words died on her lips.

She was hallucinating. Or dreaming. Maybe she was asleep. No, it was far too hot. It felt real. She felt dizzy though, and like she couldn't hear. But she could hear everything. Their voices.

But it couldn't be.

She felt Ron's big hand on her elbow, tugging her forward towards them, and they were crying, and saying her name over and over again, and suddenly it all snapped into clear focus, into real time, and she was being hugged by two people who looked and sounded exactly like her parents except…

"You smell funny," she said, and burst into tears.

Ron was feeling very pleased with himself, right up until she pulled out her wand.

"Whoah, whoah, Hermione, what are you doing?"

He whipped in front of the Grangers, hands out to defend them in the same manner as a quidditch goal.

"They're not real," she said, "Ron they're not my- they can't be, they're all- they're-"

Tears welled up in her eyes and she tried to dash past him. Ron grabbed her as she went and ended up holding her tightly on a funny sideways angle and talking into the stupendous cloud of her hair.

"I checked Hermione. They are. They are your parents. And they remember you. And yes they smell like hippies, and they're wearing funny shorts and the most ridiculous shoes I've ever seen in my life and I'm one hundred percent certain your mum is not wearing a bra, but they are your parents. I checked. I double checked. I triple, quadruple checked, because I didn't want to tell you without being sure."

She was gulping and shaking and clearly panicking.

Ron sighed. Time for a bit of blatant manipulation.

"Don't you want to know how they got their memories back?"

She flinched, and stopped sobbing abruptly.

"It's a bit much all at once," said Mrs Granger, anxiously, "Sorry Ronald, I completely forgot we never used to dress like this,"

"And it's just citronella," said Mr Granger, "I guess we've just go so used to it, living out here in the bush…"

Hermione seemed to have snapped out of it. Ron tentatively released his hold on her, and she pushed at her hair impatiently, and put her chin up.

Uh oh. Battle Hermione. Good luck Grangers… Ron winced.

"I don't believe it, but I am prepared to be convinced," said Hermione icily, "While I can't think why anyone would want to impersonate my parents, except to kill me or Harry-"

"Gee thanks"

"-or Ron, I also know from extensive research that reversing the effects of obliviation is simply not possible. So you had better have a pretty damn convincing explanation."

Mr Granger beamed.

"That's my girl," he said, "Fancy some tea?" He gestured behind him to the verandah, where the makings of afternoon tea were laid out on the table.

"Emphatically not," said Hermione, "Poisoning might be obvious and facile, but it's still effective."

She stalked up the path and steps and sat down at the table. Ron decided his plan to leave them to a touching family reunion of tears and tales and tea had gone decidedly awry, and he'd better stay. He reached for a slice of watermelon and found his hand instantly batted away by a forceful blast from Hermione's wand.

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Better make it quick, this spread looks delicious,"

Mr Granger pushed his glasses more securely onto his nose, and sat down.

It was such an idiomatic thing. Such a particular action. So… Dad. Hermione felt an involuntary lurch of emotion and clenched her wand tighter.

He wasn't. He couldn't be. He was wearing a t-shirt, for heaven's sake.

Her mother, or at least, the woman who looked like her mother but from an alternate universe, was fidgeting nervously with the teapot. Her hair was short. It had never been short before.

Hermione frowned.

"I suppose we had better start at the beginning," said Mrs Granger

"Which beginning? From when we were not ourselves, or from when we decided to futureproof ourselves?" Mr Granger seemed to think this was a reasonable question.

"From when we were not ourselves," said Mrs Granger, "That will make the most sense I think."

"Right," Mr Granger smiled. "The flight over here is something of a blur. I'd say we were both on autopilot, what with the memory overwrite and everything. I think we'd been working in Sydney, staring at teeth, for what? About a month? Before we noticed."

Mrs Granger was nodding.

"And as soon as we did notice, we couldn't believe we hadn't noticed before,"

"Noticed what?"

They both grinned. It was a relaxed, happy look. Not at all like her parents.

"The tattoos,"

Hermione frowned. Mr Granger slid his chair back and started to pull up the shorts to reveal his hairy white thighs. Mrs Granger did the same.

Hermione blinked. This was… they were definitely not her parents.

"It had to be somewhere not normally on view," explained her mother apologetically, "And honestly, we didn't think you'd send us somewhere with beaches,"

Tattooed upsidedown across the thighs of Mr and Mrs Granger, was a web address on the left thighs, and a series of numbers on the rights, arranged like a paragraph.

"We thought about getting different ones, you know, so that we'd need both of us to solve it, but then we thought, what if one of us was killed-"

"-or died of natural causes, or got lost or something," added Mrs Granger hastily.

"So we got the same ones, so even if you'd obliviated us into thinking we didn't know each other, there would still be a connection,"

"Obviously, we went to the web address straight away," Mrs Granger smoothed the cotton of her shorts back down over her thighs and crossed her legs neatly, "But it took us a few months to crack the code in the number section,"

Ron seized the opportunity while Hermione was looking pinched and green to steal a piece of pineapple from the fruit platter.

"See, the website was password protected. It said that if we were the right people, we would have access to a piece of code, and only if we were able to find the key word would we be able to solve the code and discover the password."

Dad loved codes. Encryption. Spy movies. Annoyingly in character. Hermione's frown deepened.

"This is where it gets good," said Ron, licking pineapple juice off his fingers.

"We knew something wasn't right," Said Mrs Granger, "There was something missing,"

"And in retrospect, I have to say, I think we took one hell of a risk," Mr Granger pushed at his glasses again. "It worked out ok, but I don't know- I don't remember, but I suppose you can't really believe obliviation is going to take it all until it has, and you're on the other side."

"That remains to be seen," said Hermione tersely, "What was the key word?"

"Your name," said Mrs Granger, "You're our daughter. You're… unforgettable. Of course it was your name. You said time and again that love was a powerful magic in its own right- that it saved Harry's life- we thought that meant that we couldn't, wouldn't ever forget you."

"We were right," said Mr Granger, "Well, we were sort of right. Neither of us could shake the feeling that there was something very important missing."

"We tried all sorts of logical things for the key word- though in retrospect how logical you can be when trying to work out the key to a code for the password to a site entitled 'things you've forgotten' is up for debate,"

"But eventually we found we kept coming back to your name. It was just one of those things, in our dreams, floating in the back of our minds- we kept having these odd conversations about what an excellent name Hermione is, and what kind of a person might have that name- and one night, I tried it, and it worked."

"So what do the tattoos say?"

"Our names, your name and the password to the website,"

"And on the website?"

"A video of us, explaining everything, and providing as much evidence as possible. The site also contains digitised copies of as much of our family photos and paperwork as we managed to upload before the memory wipe,"

"Right." Hermione was rolling her wand back and forth between her fingers. Pensive, thought Ron, good.

"Of course, it was fascinating, but we still didn't really remember, you see, so we fluctuated between believing, and just thinking we were mad or part of some very elaborate practical joke,"

"And that's when we went looking,"

"For?"

"Magic."

As the conversation continued, Ron served himself a nice pile of fruit and leaned back in his chair. She hadn't let go of her wand yet, but now it looked like an afterthought.

Ron ate another piece of pineapple and tried to squash down feelings of annoyance. Of course she wouldn't believe it. Of course she would question it. You don't spend your teenage years dodging death and mayhem only to take the first really good thing to happen at face value.

But it still hurt that she hadn't believed him.

Typical.

Ron realised he was annoyed at himself for being annoyed. And for not having realised that she wouldn't believe it.

He'd wanted to find her parents. He'd thought, best case scenario, they're fine, so he'd looked up 'Granger' in the phone book. And after meeting a bunch of miscellaneous unrelated Grangers, he'd found them.

It was the stupidest thing.

He wouldn't have been the slightest bit convinced, except that when he'd been walking up the driveway, Mr Granger, halfway through planting mango trees, had dropped everything and called out to him.

"Ron! Ron Weasley? Is that you? Ha! HaHA! It is! It is you!"

And Ron had found himself being heartily embraced by a very sweaty, soil covered, hippie version of Hermione's father.

And after some kind of quinoa cupcake and conversation, and both parents agreeing to submit to whatever tests he wished to place them under, and the surprising revelation that this driveway was one of many on the mountainside that served as an oasis for magic users, squibs and muggles in the know, Ron had reached the conclusion that they were her parents.

It had helped a lot that they'd insisted he prove his identity, and that they had asked a neighbour over as a safety measure during the tests. The neighbour had wafted in like the personification of incense, and reminded Ron strongly of Luna.

They explained that they had been following the news very closely, that they'd been clinging to every mention of Harry and his friends, and that the news of Voldemort's defeat had sent them into a cycle of panic because the papers at first had not reported who had survived. They'd known that Harry, Ron and Hermione were in Australia. That had been in the papers too. So they sat tight, and hoped that someone would think to just look them up.

"Hermione's smart, we knew she'd work it out eventually," Mrs Granger had said, and Ron had tried not to feel small.

The Grangers' memories weren't perfect. 'Returning in trickles' was how Mrs Granger had described it. She didn't remember Ron particularly. Said she had a clearer memory of Harry, though Mr Granger couldn't remember him at all.

Ron realised he was still feeling a tad insulted by being forgotten by someone who'd been obliviated. Ridiculous really.

He picked up a lychee, and realised as he started peeling it that being remembered by Mr Granger made him feel important, and that was why he was now thinking of Mr Granger as being really rather excellent.

His next feeling was shame.

This was turning out to be an awful afternoon.

HEADING BACK

With the exception of saying thank you, Hermione was silent all the way back to the apparition spot they had chosen.

Ron squashed feelings of annoyance all over again. He'd done it. He'd actually found her parents, when she couldn't, and now she was… what? Giving him the cold shoulder? Ignoring him? Unbelievable, just unbelievable…

In the same moment he felt a surge of empathy for her.

It can't be easy, finding the thing you were terrified of finding. Or realising you were wrong. She was so smart. Being wrong must be quite hard.

A little hard angry part of Ron's brain suggested she should just get over it, other people were wrong all the time and had to deal with it, and was she just annoyed with him because he'd done something she couldn't?

He was part way through giving in to the little angry monster in his mind, bitterly thinking that try as he might, no-one would ever see him as anything other than stupid, when Hermione slipped her hand into his.

He glanced down at her, startled.

She didn't look up, just ahead, trudging down the track in front of them, stepping round potholes.

Her hand was cold.

The day was very muggy.

He ran his thumb lightly across her fingers, and she clung tighter.

Maybe he was being unfair.

They said nothing, and when they got to the apparition spot, she let go and disapparated as though she'd never existed.