Hermione's parents were not thrilled at the prospect of her staying out overnight to perform a ritual to help the hedgewitches protect themselves from werewolves.
"Why can't you do it during the day?" her mother wanted to know. "Daylight's much safer, isn't it?"
"Plus then you can avoid werewolves," her father pointed out. "They only become werewolves at night, don't they? Going out at night during the full moon seems like just asking for trouble."
"Yes, but that's kind of the point," Hermione argued. "We're doing most of the preparation during the day, but we use the light and power of the full moon in the ritual. It helps imbue the wards with the magic necessary for them to work."
Her parents exchanged a glance.
"Can your friends do this without you?" her mother asked.
"No," Hermione said emphatically. "I have to teach them how."
"And you've done it before?" her father asked.
"Well, no, but I'm the one who designed it," Hermione protested. "As part of my promise to them for youth representative, I said I'd help protect them from werewolves. Please. Mum, Dad, I have to do this."
Hermione looked at her parents pleadingly. Her parents exchanged a long look, expressions and emotions playing out a conversation their faces. Her mother raised her eyebrows and looked skeptical, while her father kept tilting his head and giving her mother different looks, glancing pointedly at things with his eyes. Finally, her mother sighed.
"You may go help your friends—"
"Yes!"
"—if you have appropriate adult supervision at the event," she finished, fixing Hermione with a stern look. "Your father and I will be coming along."
Hermione's jaw dropped. "What? No, Mum—"
"It's either you take us with you, or you don't go," her mother said calmly. "Which is more important: helping your friends, or saving face in front of them with your parents?"
"You're not even magical," Hermione protested. "You can't help with the ritual – everyone will have to hold the ley line's magic—"
"From what you've described, not all of the ritual will be magical," her father pointed out. "You'll need volunteers to help lug around these wards. You'll need other people to help dig holes. You'll need someone on hand to help with any injuries. You'll need lookouts for actual werewolves."
Hermione gnashed her teeth.
"So? Which will it be?" her mother asked, folding her arms. She raised her eyebrows. "Ritual with supervision, or no ritual at all?"
To her eternal embarrassment, instead of just ignoring her parents like any normal teenagers would, the hedgewitches seemed awed by Hermione's parents coming along. It was as if they'd never met a muggle before (which, to be fair, she supposed many of them never had). A large group of hedgewitch boys, armed with spades and shovels, were questioning her dad, fascinated.
"You're Hermione's parents?" Derek said, awed. "An' like, you can't feel magic at all?"
"Not a bit of it," her dad said cheerily.
"What's with your breeches?" Derek wanted to know. "How d'you move with them all tight and stiff like that?"
"What, my jeans?" her father laughed. He bent his knees up as high as he could. "Just the same way you do, I imagine. They're not restrictive, and they're good for protection for some things."
"Wicked," breathed Worm.
Hermione's mother, at least, was being less embarrassing, conversing with Clover and Blackbeard.
"So this will protect you from werewolves?" she asked. "Does it keep them out entirely? Or kill them?"
"It won't be strong enough to kill them," Clover explained. "It'll put them in agony, though, if they try to enter the warded area when transformed. They won't stop feeling burning pain until they run out. And if they howl, we can all run out and take them down while they can't attack us."
"I see. And if a werewolf transforms inside of the area?" her mother asked mildly.
Clover and Blackbeard's expressions both darkened, and they exchanged an ominous look.
"There are no werewolves living among the hedges, ma'am," Blackbeard said, diplomatically.
"And if there are, this'll root them out for good," Clover muttered viciously.
To her credit, Hermione's mother seemed to accept this in stride and dropped the issue.
"Do we have a schematic drawn up?" she asked. "Do we know which wards will be going where?"
"We mapped out the areas," Clover said, spreading out a parchment. "We're doing three tenancies tonight, if we can."
Hermione's mother was startled. "Three?"
"The Notts', Longbottoms', and Shafiqs'," Clover said. "We're only doing the Shafiq's 'cause they're right next to the Longbottoms anyway and smaller. We'll need more silver to cover the Lestranges' and Greengrass' next time."
Hermione's mother blinked.
"Well," she said. She looked up. "I'm supposing this is 'central command' because you produced all these beautiful silver pieces?"
"Wards, madam." Blackbeard grinned at her. "But yes, I cast the wards in silver."
Her mother turned back to look at Hermione.
"Hermione, come here," she said, gesturing. "If we're going to have these boys dig dozens of holes, we need to be able to tell them where to go."
"I know," Hermione said, annoyed. She joined Clover and her mother at the table all the same. "They didn't have these maps ready the last time I was here, okay?"
"Well, they have them now, dear," her mother said, patting her on the back. "Work with Clover on this, will you? I'll go make sure the First Aid station is set up properly and help Aurican with the refreshment table."
Her mother strode off back towards the empty clearing that had become a sort of 'home base' for the ritual activities, Clover and Hermione watching her go.
"'First Aid station'?" Clover asked. "'Refreshment table'?"
Hermione groaned.
"My parents dragged folding tables through your Floo and a bunch of medical supplies," she said. "They're convinced people are going to get hurt digging holes or that they'll forget to drink water and end up dehydrated."
She hadn't even been sure if her parents would be able to use the Floo, being muggles. They'd figured out together the Floo required Hermione to be the one to toss the powder in and yell out the destination, but it was the Floo powder and system itself that was magic, not the traveler. Hermione's parents took to the form of magical travel in an instant, having Hermione follow them back and forth for several trips to transport all their supplies, like a real-life version of the fox-chicken-feed boat problem that had annoyed Hermione as a child.
Better to Floo several times than an hours-long car ride into the countryside, though, Hermione supposed.
"To be fair, someone is likely to get hurt digging a stupid hole," Clover pointed out. "The boys will start having competitions to see who can dig a hole the fastest, and someone's going to end up twisting an ankle or bashing themself in the head."
"Yeah, yeah," Hermione dismissed. "Still. She's so annoying. I could have done all this on my own."
"On the contrary," Clover said, smirking, "I think she's awesome."
"Awesome?" Hermione's jaw dropped. "My mother?"
"She's a muggle, but she's here, unafraid, and she's helping everyone else get set up," Clover said, grinning. "She strode in, saw what needed to be done, and immediately took charge. That's a woman who knows what she wants to do, and who knows exactly how to get it done."
Hermione made a face.
"Anyway," she said. "We need to do these diagrams. If we need a ward every so far…"
They took to drawing on the diagrams. The trick wasn't to spread them out a set distance apart, Hermione explained, but to put them at key places to help cast a net.
"These shield knots at the corners are crucial," Hermione said, drawing, "but we need the quarternary ones at the intersection areas and between the far apart shield knots to help hold the net together."
Clover frowned. "So shield knots at the corners, shield knots on the perimeter at street intersections, and the round diamond ones between them all and in the middle of the streets?"
"Close," Hermione said. "Here, like this…"
Once they were done diagramming out all of the locations, they took them over to the First Aid station. Hermione's mother swept the maps up, examining them critically.
"I need Team Longbottom!" she called out.
To Hermione's astonishment, about a dozen hedgewitches immediately broke out of the larger group and approached her mother, spades laid over their shoulders. Hermione had no idea they'd already been divided into teams. Hermione drifted out of the way, taking up a spot next to her father as she watched her mother take control.
"Right, you'll need 32 Shield Knots, and 48 Quarternary Knots," her mother instructed them. "That's 32 round ones, and 48 square ones. Who's Team Captain for the Longbottom Team?"
"I am, Ma'am," Derek said, stepping forward, and her mother handed him the drawing.
"Remember: holes need to be at least a foot down, and a foot either in diameter or in sides of a square to fit each ward." She nodded to the side. "Go get your flags from the table over there – red for diamonds, blue for circles – and make sure your team maps out everything with the stakes before anyone starts digging. It's much less work to correct a flag than fill in and re-dig a hole."
"Where did Mum get the flags?" Hermione whined to her Dad. "She seriously has little stations all set out. She even brought a water cooler."
Her Dad grinned sheepishly.
"That might've been me," he admitted. "I got excited and wanted to help out. I went out to get supplies first thing today."
Hermione's jaw dropped.
"You said you were going to get extra medical supplies from the dental practice," she accused.
"Well, I did that. But then I went and got more things," her father said reasonably. He withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. "I thought it'd be helpful. And it has been so far, hasn't it?"
Hermione snatched the paper, eyes rapidly scanning over it.
Folding tables
Water cooler
Paper cups
Rubbish bin for cups
Bandages
Alcohol wipes
Antiseptic
Tent stakes
Colored flags
Cheap battery-powered torches
Megaphone?
New trainers
Hermione glanced down at her father's feet, which were indeed sporting new trainers, and he grinned.
"C'mon love," he cajoled her. "This is your old Dad's one chance to actually help do magic. Let me have some fun and help you, alright?"
Hermione sniffed, folding her arms.
"It's just… Mum is doing what I was supposed to do," she admitted. "I was supposed to be the leader. What am I supposed to do now?"
"Oh, you are the leader, love," her Dad reassured her. "Your mother is just helping designate the mundane logistics. She's freeing you up to worry about the important part, the magic bits. She's not going to be able to help spread out the rune wards or tell everybody when and where to bleed."
Hermione bit her lip. "That's fair."
"Why don't you go figure out how to get these massive piles of silver distributed all over the country before sundown?" her father suggested, eyes sparkling. "Meanwhile, I'm going to trounce these boys and show them how a man properly digs a hole."