Grounded for life

"What's wrong honey?" Hermione's mother asked her.

The young witch looked at her parents and knew she had to do something she really hadn't been looking forward to, telling them the truth.

As usual her father had let her mother take the lead, silently supporting her, but ready to help if needed. Hermione was glad she'd found a man like that to support her. She couldn't imagine how she would have handled this if Ron hadn't been there to listen and offer suggestions on how to handle things when she'd talked to him earlier.

"I've…I've been hiding things from you," Hermione admitted.

"Is it drugs? No, we would have seen the signs," Dawn corrected herself. "Oh my god, you're pregnant! I knew magic wasn't reliable enough for something that important."

"I'm not pregnant!" Hermione shouted.

"Our daughter is too responsible to get hooked on drugs or pregnant, honey," Alex assured his wife.

Dawn relaxed. "Sorry dear, the telly got stuck on a talk show marathon and I was too relaxed to bother changing the channel."

"I'm guessing our daughter joined a band of vigilantes fighting for justice and is on the run from a corrupt government," he said, studying her carefully through his one good eye.

"You two never take anything seriously!" Hermione complained before giving in to her boyfriend's earlier suggestions, obliviating them both and flinging the vials of new memories she'd crafted on them.

The liquid memories turned into a silver fog that obscured them as it slowly entered them through any exposed skin.

Hermione quickly apparated away with tears in her eyes. She'd hated to do it, but muggles just couldn't understand what was going on.

"Well that was different," Alex Granger said thoughtfully. "At least she remembered I like Australia."

"So, fugitive from a corrupt government?"

"Yep."

Dawn sighed. "We're going to ground her until the end of time."

"Yep," her husband agreed easily.

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

Harry looked up as Hermione apparated in with tears in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

She sniffed and explained tearfully how she'd had to obliviate and send away her parents for their own protection.

Ron hugged her tightly and rubbed her back, showing rare depth for once. "It had to be done. Muggles would be defenseless against Death Eaters."

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

Alex opened up the weapons cabinet in the rumpus room. "I'm thinking I'll use Olaf's hammer and a 38 special. How about you love?"

"If you're going for overkill I guess I have to go with subtlety. Give me a sword and a plinker," Dawn said while adjusting her clothes. "Do these still look ok on me?" she asked, trying to get the leather pants to fit right, even though she hadn't worn them in over a decade.

Alex looked over at his wife wearing skin tight black leather pants with a matching duster and a black half shirt and his left eye glowed green for a moment before replying, "No, I think you'll have to take them off."

Dawn sighed and began to unbutton them, before Xander's tone sank in and she saw the look in his eyes. "Well I guess the wizarding world can wait another day."

The Next Morning

"Are you ok?" Harry asked, knowing it was a stupid question and how much he hated being asked it, but finding himself asking it all the same.

"I'm fine," Hermione began, then stopped and burst out laughing until tears ran down her face.

Ron noticed, even if he was busy making inroads into the Dursley sized meal Harry had made out of habit, but since it was laughter figured she was fine.

"I just realized how stupid that question actually is," she said. "I mean no one is ever ok when we ask it and saying 'I'm fine' is pretty much the equivalent of saying 'I don't want to talk about it'. It just struck me as funny to have the roles reversed for once is all. I'm not fine, but I will be."

Harry smiled and nodded, relieved that she would be ok and began to serve himself breakfast.

"So what's the plan?" Ron asked as he looked up from a meal that not even he could finish.

Hermione took a sip of tea before replying, "Don't have one. I figured we'd come up with one today."

Harry nodded and ate his breakfast.

"I'll start," Ron offered while the other two ate. "We need to find and destroy the rest of the Horcruxes. We know there are four left; the locket, which is missing, Nagini his snake, something at Hogwarts and…"

Harry spoke up, "The Hufflepuff cup according to Dumbledore."

"Yeah," Ron nodded. "We're screwed."

The two just stared at him.

"What?" Ron asked. "Listen, he only needs one of the blasted things to stick around. What are our chances of finding all of them? I'll tell you, slim to none and slim left town. We're going to have to come at this from another angle if we want to win."

Hermione and Harry just stared at him like he'd grown another head.

"What? If I'm full of it, just let me know. I just think that even though Dumbledore was a great wizard, right up there with Merlin, his plans sucked. I mean, letting the Death Eaters lay low for a generation and expand their numbers wasn't exactly brilliant was it?"

Harry found himself nodding. "Yeah, he gave them all a second chance to do the same thing and it took away a lot of people's first chances to do anything."

"Well if we can't stop him by finding his Horcruxes what can we do?" Hermione asked.

"If we could get another decade without him we would be set," Ron said. "I mean a decade of training and looking for the Horcruxes is a lot easier without Voldemort and his lackeys around."

"I'm not sure I can rebound another curse off my head," Harry volunteered. "I mean my mother sacrificed her life to let me do that and I'm all out of parents."

"So we need a different way of putting him down for a while. What's the easiest way to incapacitate a wizard for a long time without killing him?" Hermione asked.

"Magical sleep?" Harry suggested, thinking of Rip van Winkle.

"Transfigured into an animal long enough to lose his sense of self?" Ron offered, thinking of a common magical horror story told to children.

The three began to grin as they started tossing back and forth magical warning tales about how easily magic could go wrong and ideas on how they could encourage things to go wrong.

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

"Shall we try again?" Xander suggested as they finished breakfast.

"That depends. Are we going to be able to put on pants?" Dawn grinned.

"Stranger things have happened, but I doubt you can get out the door with skin tight black leather on."

"Well considering our daughter will probably be putting herself in danger by this afternoon, I may have to chance it."

Xander sighed. "Yeah, I knew there wasn't much she'd be up to last night, and she's no doubt plotting right now, so I'm thinking we finish breakfast and go break the wizarding world before lunch."

"Where should we start?" Dawn asked.

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

"Let's try the magical sleep first. All we need is a Horcrux and Hermione can cast protean on it and then one of us can inscribe the sleep rune on it."

Hermione and harry stared at Ron again.

"What?"

"That's brilliant," Harry said with a grin.

"I thought you were against hunting the horcruxes down?" Hermione asked.

Ron shook his head. "I'm against betting everything on being able to hunt down and destroy them while being hunted by everyone and their mum. Hunting down a single horcrux is fine."

Typing by: The Last Primarch!

AN: Wrote this up while thinking about how Ron somehow managed to speak parseltongue in the last book. What if the reason Harry and Hermione became such slow witted idiots near the end of the series was because Ron performed a ritual that shared their strengths… and he was an enormous drag factor? I really don't like his character. Naturally it's also a Xander and Dawn as Hermione's parents fic as well.