"You look so grown up!" Hermione's mother praised her. "Do you like it?"

Hermione twirled around in her dress, standing on the dais in the dress shop.

"I think I do," she said decisively. "It's very pretty, but it's not too much."

"Very elegant," her mother said, nodding. "Not so much with all the crystals and sequins."

The sales lady gave her mother the side-eye for that comment, and Hermione snickered.

"Let's get this one, then," she said, turning so her mother could help her with the zipper. "Then we can go get the paintings."

Afterward, on the way to the local university in the car, Hermione brought up something new.

"So we know you can kind of do magic," Hermione said, "or at least magic can be done with you involved. Do you think magic can be done to you?"

"I'd imagine so," Hermione's mother mused. "The magic's in the power you use, isn't it? Not the subject."

"That's true," Hermione said, thinking of the Ministry Obliviators. "But not all magic is that straightforward. Like potions – is the magic all in the brewing of the potion, or is part of it in the potion reacting with magic inside the body of the person who consumes it?"

Her mother blinked.

"I have absolutely no idea," she said, looking at Hermione. "Why? Do you want me to try a potion?"

"Only if potions work on you," Hermione admitted, grinning slightly. "If they don't, then the whole thing is futile anyway."

Her mother drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, musing.

"With Potions, it's even a step back more than that, isn't it?" she asked. "Is the magic in the preparation of the potion, or is it in the magic of the brewer?"

Hermione paused.

"I… I'm not really sure," she said slowly. "I'd say it involves the magic of the brewer, but I feel like if it did, I'd be able to feel it when I make a potion. I'm generally pretty good about being aware of my magic and when I'm pulling on it." She paused. "Daphne did say that hedgewitches were too weak to brew potions once, but I know Clover works in a Potions factory, so…"

Hermione's mother laughed.

"Only one way to find out, then," she said, ruffling Hermione's curls. Her voice was teasing, and Hermione rolled her eyes.

"'Test your theory, and see what results'," she quoted back at her, and her mother laughed.

"Oh, don't be such a Negative Nancy about it," she said, amused. "It'll be fun."


Hermione's father was particularly enthused about testing Hermione's theory. The fact he was outside on the patio, in the heat, in an apron patterned with various pastries didn't deter him in the slightest.

"We haven't tested one of your theories in ages!" he crowed. "And now we get to help test one with magic!"

"It's not even a theory," Hermione muttered, her face red as she set out three cauldrons. "It's just to see what happens."

"Well, then your theory is just the affirmation or negation," her father said, waving away her concerns, "and then you can have it disproved or not."

"I know that," Hermione said, exasperated. "But I was just saying…"

"Do you remember that time when you were five and designed an experiment to make your own flashlight?" her mother said fondly. "You explained it to me and everything – you took a paper bag outside to catch sunlight in it, and then you hurried inside and opened it in the pitch-black of your closet—"

"I remember," Hermione cut her off, embarrassed. "And I was five! I didn't understand about how light worked—"

"Oh, I'm not saying it to embarrass you, dear! It was just so cute, my little girl with her scientific mind trying to catch the sun—"

"So what are we doing here?" Hermione's father asked, clapping his hands. He stepped up to his cauldron and peered inside of it. "Is this just a giant pot?"

"Essentially," Hermione told him. "We're going to try brewing one of the easiest potions I know of to see what happens. My cauldron will be the control. We're all going to do the exact same things."

"Will the humidity affect the potion?" Hermione's mother asked curiously. "You usually brew these in a dungeon underground, don't you?"

"…I suppose we'll find that out too," Hermione said, blinking. "Err – as this is a hot potion, though, and not a cold one, I don't think it will matter – the humidity in the air isn't likely to condense into the cauldron—"

"Cauldrons," her father said, picking up his and putting his head inside of it. His voice echoed back out. "This is so cool."

"The first step is to fill the cauldron with water," Hermione said loudly, and her father withdrew his head.

"Fill it?" her mother asked, surprised. "That will make a lot of potion, won't it?"

"Usually we use smaller cauldrons for potions like these," Hermione explained. "Because this is an experiment, I thought we would have better visibility into the results if we magnified everything."

"Makes sense to me," her father said, shrugging. "I'll get the hose."

Despite being part of the magical world for years now, there were still some parts of it that seemed to catch Hermione entirely off-guard. Seeing her parents, both clad in old kitchen aprons for safety, chatting about the neighbor's garden while filling giant cauldrons with the hose on the back of their muggle patio was incredibly surreal. If Snape were here, she thought, he'd likely either have a heart attack at the sight, be astonished into silence, or give her a long lecture on the core concepts behind potion-making as an art.

"Cauldrons are full," her mother declared. "What's next?"

Carefully, Hermione lit fires below all three cauldrons. Because the fire wasn't an ingredient of the potion and a non-magical fire would have worked just as well, she didn't think it would interfere with the results. As the water heated up, Hermione instructed her parents on ingredient preparation.

"You're going to crush these Flitterby moths," she explained, demonstrating with her own. "It'll result in a sort of glittering mush. When there's steam starting to rise from the cauldron, you dump it in and stir the mixture clockwise until it turns green. Next, the Bouncing Bulb has to be ground with a mortar and pestle and added to the cauldron, and then we'll add the foxglove at the end."

Her parents enthusiastically began smashing their own moths into a pulp before moving on to grinding up their Bouncing Bulbs. Hermione had to guide them on how to use the mortar and pestle by demonstrating with her own, but they fast got the hang of it. Her mother was faster at slicing the foxglove than her father, presumably because of her kitchen skills, and she shot a smug smile at Hermione's father as he painstakingly finished cutting his own.

"Ready?" Hermione asked. "Here we go."

There was an immediate issue at the end of Step 1 – one had to stir the mixture until the potion turned green before moving on to Step 2, and her parents' potions didn't turn green.

"Did yours?" her mother asked, still stirring hers.

"I've got just a blob of the glittery moth guts kind of floating in mine," her father declared. He looked closer. "It kind of looks like one lone gnocchi, now."

Hermione bit her lip. "Let's just move on to Step 2 – we've all been stirring the same amount of time, after all. Let's see what happens."

Step 2 also ended with a conditional: add the ground Bouncing Bulb and stir counterclockwise until the potion turned red.

"I read a book about witches where they called counterclockwise 'widdershins'," Hermione's mother said, stirring her own potion. "Do you use that term at school at all?"

"This one sunk to the bottom," her father declared. "If it was supposed to dissolve, it didn't dissolve at all."

Hermione guided them onto Step 3 – add the sliced foxglove and stir clockwise until the potion turned orange, which would indicate it was complete.

As she watched, her own potion morphed from a red to a bright orange, indicating a perfectly brewed potion. Her parents', however, did not.

"The little slices are floating," her mother told Hermione. She tried to poke one down under the water. "I'll keep stirring, but they're not integrating at all."

"How are they supposed to, anyway?" her father wondered aloud, stirring his own pot of water with bits floating in it. "The other ones – the goop and the ground dust – that at least made sense. Those are things that can dissolve. But how are slices of a root supposed to become homogeneous with a liquid merely by stirring?"

"Magic?" her mother suggested, teasing Hermione's father. "How does any of this work?"

"I think we can safely conclude that some part of the brewer's magic is necessary for a potion to actually work," Hermione said, frowning at her parents' attempts. "The difference is pretty clear."

"At least my cauldron with blobs in it doesn't look radioactive," her father objected.

"It's orange," Hermione defended. "A bright orange. It's supposed to turn your head into a pumpkin."

"My goodness!" Her mother put a hand to her mouth, staring at Hermione's cauldron. "Turn your head into a pumpkin? Why on earth is there a need for such a thing?"

"…you know, that's a very good question," Hermione said. "Especially because there's the Pumpkin-Head Jinx, which is a lot faster and simpler than brewing this mess."

"Hermione!"

Her father was laughing.

"So what's the next step?" he asked. "You stir our cauldrons and see if anything happens? We try again with you preparing the ingredients instead of us? We prepare the ingredients while you stir? Or we could do one of each?"

"That's a little more granular than I was really looking for," Hermione admitted. "The question was more a general 'Can muggles brew potions?' and the answer, pretty clearly, is 'They cannot'. Potions require the brewer be magical, not just the potion to use magical ingredients."

Her mother eyed the cauldron with the bright orange liquid in it suspiciously.

"You said you also wanted to see if Potions would work on a muggle," she said slowly. She gave Hermione a dark look.

"I thought Dad might have fun trying this one out," Hermione said, the very picture of innocence. "If it works, there's a different potion I'd want you to use, Mum."

"So we're turning my head into a pumpkin?" her father laughed. He walked over to Hermione's cauldron and picked up a ladle, stirring it idly. "Does it wear off?"

"If you only drink a little, yes," Hermione assured him. "And if it doesn't wear off, we'll take you to St. Mungo's. They have a whole department that specializes in potions accidents."

"Are you sure about this, Richard?" her mother asked, skeptical. "What if it works, but it works differently? What if your head is literally just a pumpkin, not a magical pumpkin – brain and spinal cord just suddenly gone?"

Hermione's eyes went wide in horror, but her father had already raised the ladle to his lips.

"Bottom's up!" he said cheerily, and he swallowed what was in the ladle with a grin.

There was a long moment where Hermione and her mother looked at each other in terror, terrible thoughts flying through Hermione's mind – there was a reason Potions experimentation was dangerous, Luna's mother had died, what was she even thinking, risking her parents like this—

There was a loud 'pop!' and abruptly, there was a carved pumpkin where her father's head had once been.

"Oh, this is bizarre." Her father's voice was the same as ever, but it seemed to echo strangely. "And this is more a jack o' lantern than just a pumpkin, really."

"Richard? Can you see?" Hermione's mother walked toward her husband cautiously, running her fingers over the surface of the pumpkin. "Your eyes are just holes. How can you see anything?"

"No idea," came the answer. "No idea how I can speak, either – haven't got lips or a tongue. But I can – it's just a bit echoey and creepy."

"Well." Hermione felt vaguely disturbed. "I think we can conclude that potions work on Muggles. That's the exact result we'd have if a wizard drank the potion."

"Excellent," her father said with satisfaction, turning his vacant glowing eyes toward her. "And even better, you brewed a lot of it with this experiment."

"Why is that excellent, Richard?" her mother asked sharply.

"Oh, come on Jean! Just think – with me as the Headless Horseman and you dressed up as Ichabod Crane, there's no Halloween fancy-dress party we wouldn't win 'Best Costume' at—"

"We are not endangering Hermione's magical society for a gimmicky costume," her mother told him sternly. "They have the Statute of Secrecy for a reason, Richard."

"Oh, people don't believe in magic – they'd just think it was a fancy FX trick—"

"And what if it wore off in the middle of the party?" Hermione's mother demanded. "What then?"

"Err—"

With a loud 'pop!', abruptly, her father's head was back on his body, the pumpkin that had been his head nowhere to be found. Hermione's mother had her arms folded, looking at her husband with one eyebrow raised, and there was a sheepish look on Hermione's father's face. Her father sighed and nodded, before glancing back longingly at the giant cauldron of Pumpkin-Head Potion.

"Well," he said with a sigh. "It was fun while it lasted."

"And Hermione was able to verify her theory," her mother said, nodding at Hermione. "Potions work on muggles, though they can't brew them themselves."

"Hey!" Her father perked up. "Wizards have a Hangover Cure potion, don't they?"

"Richard!"

"I was just asking—"

Hermione was giggling as she and her parents cleaned up the patio, highly amused as her father kept suggesting made-up potions they could use, her mother shooting down every one.