Vox Corporis: Rebirth

Vox Corporis

Chapter 73: Together



Original story by -> MissAnnThropic

http://fanfiction.portkey.org/story/6586/1

Email: miss_annthropic@yahoo.com





Pursuant to the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act of 1998, this work is copywrited 2007 with all rights expressly reserved by its author unless explicitly granted. No portion may be reproduced in any fashion without the express written and notarized permission of the author.



Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters. All characters are creations of Joanne K Rowling, © 2007, to whom I am deeply indebted.



Standard Disclaimer: This story contains sexually graphic and explicit material and as such, it is not suitable for minors. If you are a minor, please leave now, as it is illegal for you to be here. If it is illegal for you to read or view sexually explicit material in the community you view such material, please leave now. This story and characters are purely fictional and any resemblance to events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. If you are offended by sexually explicit stories, please read no further. If you are offended by stories featuring group sex, bisexual situations, incest, or any other situation, please check the story code before reading the text. These stories are just that, stories, and do not promote or condone the activities described herein



NOTE: The original story was created so beautifully and so powerfully by MissAnnThropic. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to her for her kindness in letting me ‘play in her sandbox’.

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From chapter 73 – "Always and Forever"



He pulled her into his arms and their lips met, each hungry for the contact and the reassurance. When they finally broke apart, Harry looked at her “Hermione, would you go to dinner with me tonight? I didn’t want to tell you before, but I have reservations for us at The Capital Restaurant for us. The maitre’d is from Hogwarts – four years ahead of us. I told Dumbledore I needed some help with the plans for tonight and he came through.”

Her smile had finally returned, though her eyes were still red from crying. Harry reached out one hand to wipe away the last tear from her cheek. “Of course, Harry. How could I not? With my parents away, we can do anything we want.”



A flash of inspiration washed over Harry’s face and he grinned at her. “You know how you were about to….” He left the question hanging. She knew exactly what he meant. “Want to be catty instead? There’s no house-elf around to stop us.”



Hermione didn’t answer. She just grinned and in an instant, she was the lioness. Only, she was the lioness with her head down and her tail very much UP.



“I’ll take that as a yes” Harry chuckled, as he finally let the jaguar out and roared his desire for his wife-to-be.

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The only problem with making love as a cat was, Harry reflected, was that things tended to get ripped up and destroyed as they thrashed, snarled, yowled, and roared their way through several thunderous climaxes.



When their needs were finally satiated, Harry and Hermione resumed their human forms and retreated, after repairing Hermione\'s room, to her bed. There they slept for a couple of hours before rising to prepare for dinner out.



Knock knock knock…..



“Sweetheart?”



Knock knock knock…..



The voice came again. Hermione’s face was snuggled into Harry’s chest and his breathing was low and rhythmic.



A cold hand on her shoulder.



“Protego!”



SLAM! Miranda Granger was thrown back against the wall by the force of her daughter’s magical defense and the back of her head slammed hard into the bookcase, momentarily causing her to see stars.



The noise woke both Harry and Hermione with a start and Hermione’s wand was in his hand before he consciously knew that he needed it.



“Miranda! What?........”



“Mom? What are you doing home? You weren’t supposed to be home until tomorrow”



Miranda was unsteady on her feet and Harry could see some blood trickling down the back of her head, by her ear. He reached out with his magic to heal her. “Enervate.” Harry’s spell cleared her head, but didn’t clean up the blood. There was a small cut that needed healing, so Harry pointed his wand carefully and whispered “Suture”.



Once Miranda was steady on her feet and no longer in pain, she looked down at her daughter, who was obviously naked under the covers, next to Harry. “Hermione! Have you to been….?”



Hermione pulled the blankets up around herself as she looked at her mother “Mom? How much do you want an answer to that?”



“Enough, Hermione, to ask the question again.”



Hermione looked obstinate and determined. She took Harry’s hand and brought it around her shoulders, in such a way that it was obvious that she and Harry had crossed some kind of threshold. As she did so, her left hand was exposed. Miranda was a very, very quick and bright woman and she knew that her daughter had never worn jewelry on that hand before.



“Hermione! Hold up your hand.”



Hermione blushed appropriately, though she was secretly very pleased that her mother had seen the ring. She held out her hand, not looking at her mother, but rather at Harry as she did so.



“Hermione? Is this what I think it is?”



Her only daughter – the girl she and Jake had raised together with as much as love and good character as they could – leaned towards Harry and kissed him for a long moment before turning her head to meet her mothers’ eyes.



Miranda looked down at her daughter and the young man to whom her daughter had pledged her heart.



“Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised. Your father and I expected this, but maybe not quite this soon. We knew that you had basically already agreed to be married, so I suppose that this is a formality really. I’m glad to see it though.”



“Mir?”



Jake Granger’s voice called from the hallway.



“We’re up here, love. Come on up. Hermione has something to show you.”



Jake’s heavy footsteps could be heard all over the house and they seemed particularly loud to Hermione as her father came into her room. She might have been more concerned about what her father was going to say if Harry had not, very quietly, and so Miranda could not see, cast a disillusionment charm that made Hermione’s body blend into the covers in a way as to lessen her physical exposure and Jake’s shock in seeing his daughter in bed together with Harry.



“Mir? What is it. What did you want me to see?”



Miranda glared down at Hermione as if to say…”show him.”



“Daddy? Harry gave me this.” She proffered her left hand, so that Jake could look at the ring up close.



Jake’s face broke into a grin. “Oh sweetheart! Congratulations! Harry! Good going! I’m really pleased that you’ve taken this step. I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t sure when. I’m really glad.”



Hermione beamed at her father. “Daddy! I love you. Thank you for understanding.”



His smile faded though as he looked again at her and something clicked in his head. “Mir? Have they been?...”



“Yes.”



Harry thought it was time for him to say something. “Jake? I think you ought to know something before you get angry at Hermione. First – I couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do and two, we’re both ‘safe’ if you want to call it that…because when Hermione and I are intimate, we’ve been in our animagus forms. It’s perfectly safe that way and it allows us to have the contact that we’re both desperate for while preserving our wedding night for the special night that it will be.”



Jake was wide-eyed. He said very slowly “You mean that you…..as cats?”



Harry almost broke out laughing at Jake’s incredulity. “Yes, complete with the snarls, hisses, and growling.”



Jake broke out in laughter. “Oh my lord, Harry. That’s too funny. Are you serious?”



Harry pulled Hermione really close to him and kissed her, and then turned back to Jake. “Yes sir. Dead serious.”



Miranda was silent through the entire give-and-take and Jake looked at her; a mischievous look in his eyes. “What’s wrong, Mir? Cat got your tongue?”



*********************************

It took a full moment for his comment to register with Miranda. Her jaw dropped as she saw the playful look in her husbands’ eyes. She knew in that moment that she had lost any argument that she had about Harry and Hermione sleeping together or about Hermione’s ‘virtue’ and that Jake completely supported his daughter and the choice she had made.



She swatted at him with her right hand “Jake! That was awful.”



He grinned. There was nothing like a time-delayed joke.



Hermione and Harry were both laughing too hard to say anything and so Jake could do nothing but stand his ground and wait for their reactions to die down.



When Hermione and Harry finally composed themselves, they studied Jake’s face for any signs of residual anger or anything. Seeing none, Hermione spoke up. “Mom, dad, Harry and I have dinner reservations in a little while in London. We’ve got to start getting ready.”



“What do you mean, Hermione? How are you going to get to London?”



It was in that moment when it really struck her that it meant something totally different to be magical. She realized that neither Hermione nor Harry was confined by the normal rules of life that she had grown up knowing. They could come and go at a whim; cross vast distances with a thought; and could defend themselves in ways that where the stuff of fantasy for muggles. It was unnerving and it made her just a little sad that her daughter might have her brains, but she would never share the same life experiences because of what she was and what that really meant.



“Of course, I’m sorry, Hermione. That was a silly question. You’re going to apparate or whatever it is you call your disappearing act.”



“It’s apparition mom, or ‘apparating’. Most wizards and witches don’t even talk about travel. We just all assume that we can come and go by apparating or by floo. And yes, we’re going apparate to London. Harry knows where we’re headed tonight, so I’ll just hold onto him and close my eyes. When I open them again, we’ll be in London.”



“Oh. Ok, I guess. I don’t understand it and I know that I never will, but maybe someday you can explain it.”



“Mom, some day, if I’m strong enough magically, Harry and I will use side-along apparition and we’ll take you somewhere. It’s very, very physically exhausting to do with a muggle, but it can be done. Harry’s the most powerful wizard in a thousand years and if anyone can do it, he’ll be the one. It’s not something we’ll repeat more than once, though.”



Miranda’s eyes went wide at the thought of traveling magically with her daughter. She found herself very excited by the prospect.



“What about me?”



Harry looked at him and grinned. “Jake? I’m sorry, but for you, it might be impossible. You’re a big man and apparition gets harder, apparently, the greater the mass. We can take Miranda, probably, but it might be too much for us to take you. The last thing we want to have happen is for you or me to get ‘splinched’.”



“Splinched?”



“Yea…it’s when you apparate somewhere and you leave a body part or parts behind. Most often it’s a hand or a foot, but sometimes it’s worse. It usually happens to young people who don’t have their apparition license yet or who are drunk. It’s like driving drunk in the muggle world and can have just as bad consequences.”



“I take it you have your license?”



“Yea…got it way early. The Ministry was pretty accommodating for those few days after I killed Tom.”



“So you’re not going to splinch yourself or Hermione?”



“No. I won’t. I’m really careful about it and I’d never take a chance with Hermione.”



Jake could hear the protectiveness in Harry’s voice and got the sense that he shouldn’t push the issue. Jake had always considered himself pretty courageous in comparison to other men (mostly because of his SAS training early on in his life), but Harry’s powers really scared him. He thought that it was uncomfortable to be 45 and afraid of someone who has just turned seventeen.



Miranda saw the doubt in his eyes. She had been married to Jake for twenty years and she knew what he was thinking more often than not. She knew that his concern was about much more than the way that Harry and Hermione get around. She touched his arm gently and then their fingers curled together, just like they did every morning and every night when they held each other in bed. “Jake, sweetie? It’s all right. Harry will take care of our little girl.”



Jake looked at the ring that was shining on Hermione’s left hand. It had a brilliantly, deep blue, triangle-shaped sapphire on one side and a deep, internally flawless, blood-red ruby of the same shape and equivalent to any of the stones in the Gryffindor Sword on the other side, with a very large, cushion-cut blue-white diamond in the center. He couldn’t see the faintly glowing runes lining the band either, not that it mattered, because he wouldn’t have known what they meant, the way Hermione did. He also didn’t know about the rings’ resemblance to Gryffindors’ sword, but he would not have been expected to know.

Hermione saw her parents holding hands and so she took Harry’s hand in hers and smiled at her, as if to say two can play that game.



Miranda saw what Hermione had done and she smiled all the wider.



“That’s a pretty nice ring, Harry. Where did you get it?”



“It was my mothers’, Jake. There was a prophesy apparently that meant that the ring had to come to Hermione. It’s a beautiful ring and there’s some magic in it that I can feel, but what exactly, I don’t know.”



He looked at the ring again and then at Hermione. He went quiet for a moment and then said something that shocked Hermione. “Harry. When Miranda and I got together, I knew that I wanted to marry her almost immediately. I couldn’t though because of the fact that I had almost no money for a ring. I had just come back from three years in the SAS and I was broke. It hurt incredibly not to be able to afford a ring like the one Hermione is now sporting. ”



Jake squeezed his wife’s hand and looked at her for a moment, as if he was seeking permission to tell the rest of the story. She seemed to nod at him and so Jake took in a breath and continued.



“Hermione, you don’t know your grandfather, and there’s a reason for that. I think either your grandmother or grandfather was magical. They disappeared when I was about fifteen and I went and finished out school while living with your uncle Fred. That’s why he was around so much when you were young. Your uncle gave me somewhere to live and some security until I went off to Leeds.”



Hermione could not contain herself any longer “Daddy! Why didn’t you and mom tell me this before? HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE TOLD ME! I WENT ALL THIS TIME THINKING I WAS THE ONLY MAGICAL ONE IN THE FAMILY..AND NOW THIS?”



Jake sat down on the end of the bed so that he could reach a hand out to Hermione. “Pumpkin? I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean for it to come out this way, but the truth is, there’s never been a ‘good’ or ‘right’ time to tell you. I don’t even know for sure that it’s true. All I know is that my parents disappeared and there was no sign of struggle or anything. One day they were at the house and the next, they were gone. There’s never been a sighting or a body or anything.”



“Well, if they were magical, there’ll be a record of it. There is a magical record created of ever person born who is a witch or wizard. All I need are their names and I can try to find them. Witches and wizards live a very long time.”



Hermione said it matter-of-factly, but the cold sadness that she had had to come to grips with was that she would outlive her parents and all of her friends who weren’t magical and anyone else in her family. It was true ‘downside’ of being magical in a muggle family.



“We know, sweetie. Dumbledore told us. At first we didn’t believe that he was as old as he said he was, but then he started talking about actually seeing things that happened during America’s civil war and things and we believed him. It was hard, because we realized what it meant for you and our family. I think that it is why my parents disappeared. They didn’t age, or at least I don’t remember them aging at all, and thought at the time that it was kind of weird.”



They talked back and forth for a while and Jake told Hermione about some of the memories that he had of his parents. It wasn’t until Harry looked out the window that the four of them realized that it had gotten dark out.



“Mom, dad? Harry and I have dinner plans and we’ve got to get ready. Can we have the room please?”



Jake and Miranda looked at each other and smiled. “Of course, sweetie. We’ll leave you two alone for the rest of the night. I presume we’ll see you both tomorrow at some point?”



Hermione blushed furiously as she looked at her mother. “Yes, I’m sure you will.” And then Hermione’s own playfulness kicked in as she added “at some point.”



It was Miranda’s turn to blush and she did, just the way her daughter did. “C’mon, Jake. Your daughter is being fresh and I’m not sure how much more of it I can take.”



Jake stood up and, playing as if he was being led off to his death or something, Jake slowly walked out of the room, smiling the whole time.

*********************************



It was fashionably late for dinner at The Capital Restaurant and clients were coming in from the theatre. While Nonington-on-Kent had been reasonably cool all day, London had been hot. The late summer sun had come out with a vengeance and it was obvious that peoples’ activities had been shifted more towards the cooler evening hours and into the night, to escape the worst of the heat. Of course, Harry and Hermione were both enjoying the effects of cooling charms that Harry had applied just before they apparated to the restaurant.



As the two of them walked into the foyer, they were met by the young man with whom Dumbledore had connected Harry during the week previous, while Harry was planning his evening out with Hermione.



She was looking radiant, in the beautiful blue outfit that she had worn to the Yule ball during their forth year together at Hogwarts. Hermione had discreetly, and with the help of Mrs. Weasley, let out the top of the dress so that it fit her properly over Christmas break in hopes of just this kind of evening occurring. When Molly had seen just how developed Hermione had become, she had clucked to herself and told Hermione just how lucky she thought Harry was to have fallen in love with her.



Hermione thought for a moment about her best friends’ mother. She knew that Molly was a bit wistful about the fact that she and Harry had gotten together. Molly had very much had had her heart set on Harry and Ginny being together, but realized at the end, once the war was over, that Harry’s heart belonged fully to Hermione and that truly, Ginny had never really had a chance with Harry, even given that she was good a Quidditch. Ginny was a good girl and would make someone a fine wife, but she just did not have either Hermione’s powers or her wit and intellect and she was not a proper match for Harry. More, Hermione knew, Ginny still loved, to some extent, the image of Harry that she had in her head. She also knew that Molly was aware that Ginny had fallen in love with the idea of being married to the “boy-who-lived” and not Harry Potter – the real person – the way that Hermione had.



As they walked into the restaurant, Hermione caught her reflection in a full-length mirror on one of the walls. Her hair was up, in a spiral of ringlets that showed off her beautiful neck and amazing, alabaster skin. She did a small pirouette and Harry saw that Hermione’s natural and extraordinary cleavage was shown off dramatically and sensuously by the modified dress. Because she was not wearing a bra under the dress, her pointy nipples were obvious through the silk fabric of the dress. Hermione thought it felt incredible to have them rubbing against the super-soft silk as she moved. In fact, her whole body was alive and erotically charged because of the silk dress.



The restaurant’s maitre’d was waiting for them. “Harry! Good evening! I’m Johnathan Banks.” Harry shook the proffered hand. “I’m glad that you could come out tonight. I have a special corner table set aside for you and I hope that it’s acceptable.”

Harry looked a bit abashed. “I’m sure it will be fine, Johnathan. Thank you for being willing to take us with such little notice.”



“Oh, my pleasure. Please, follow me.” Harry and Hermione walked together after Johnathan and found the corner table that their schoolmate had described. It was everything he said it was going to be and more. There was a small bouquet of yellow roses on the table and there was a chilled bottle of Alban Vineyard’s 1991 Viognier Reserve. It had been a particularly excellent year and Johnathan was sparing no expense for these two.



Once Harry had held the chair for Hermione and she had sat down, Johnathan turned to them and said, so only they could hear him “I’ve cast what charms I can get away with here. You won’t be bothered by anyone tonight, I promise. Our security is very, very good and we keep out the trouble-makers.”



He stopped a moment; started to turn away, then turned back to face the two. His face was pale and it was obvious that he was fighting to control his emotions. “Harry, I want to thank you, personally. You saved my family and more importantly, you saved my youngest sister when you killed Tom. She was in her first year. Dinner is on me tonight, ok?”



Harry shook his head. “Johnathan…please…you don’t have to do that.”



“Harry, my sister told me what happened. She saw it from the Astronomy tower. You saved as many as you could. Both of you are heroes and really I’m grateful just to be able to say thank you. There are so many who would want to do the same thing, but can’t because it would be too much. Let me thank you for all of them, ok?”



Hermione started to tear up. She didn’t know that Johnathan’s sister had seen the fight, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the emotion in his voice and the strength of what he was feeling. Harry stood up and came around to Hermione’s chair, so that he could dab away her tears. He looked up as he did so and said, “Thanks. I’ll let you, just this once. Next time, I pay, ok?”



“Next time, Harry, we’ll have a drink together. Tonight is for the two of you. Congratulations, by the way, on your engagement. How long?”



It was Harry’s turn to blush. “Today.” He said, very quietly.



“Well, good. About time, I think. I saw the articles in the Prophet after you beat Tom. They were some put out that they had been all but cut out of the action in terms of interviews or anything. By the way, what’s with the Schools’ connection to the Quibbler?”



Harry laughed. “Oh. That. The daughter of the owner/publisher is Luna Lovegood, who is a sixth-year. She’s Ron Weasleys’ fiancée and so anything that we want to see published goes to her and then to her father. Dumbledore is arranging the memorial services and he’s going to announce the date in the Quibbler. It’s to get back at the Prophet for all of the things that they said about all of us over the years.”



Johnathan looked pleased by that. “Good show, then. Have to support your friends!”



Harry nodded and then bent down to kiss Hermione.



Johnathan saw that and knew that it was his cue to depart their company. “Remember, if you need anything at all, just ask.”



Harry and Hermione nodded at him and then went back to kissing for a moment, before Harry resumed his seat.



Harry opened the bottle of wine and poured Hermione’s goblet and then his own. They sat in silence, looking into each other’s eyes and tasting the wine. Finally he said “Pence for your thoughts?”



Hermione looked at him and thought for a moment before replying. “I was just wondering about my father and what he went through with my mother early on. You know that he’s never talked about it or what he did for the SAS. I didn’t even know about my grandparents. I’m also wondering how my father didn’t end up being magical. He’s not a squib – he’s a complete muggle – and I think the chances of that are less than one in a hundred. It makes me wonder about my mother’s background and if there was any magic on her side.”



Harry was nodding. Harry’s parents were both magical, but his mother was from non-magical parents while his father was a ‘pureblood’. That was the way that magical offspring often happened: magical parents (at one of whom) had come from non magical grandparents giving birth to magical children. Hermione’s father was the exception. Magical parents or even a magical parent almost always gave birth to magical children or to magic-sensitive squibs like Argus Filch. It was something she wanted to look into when she got back to school.



“Hermione? Have you thought about our children?”



Her eyes brightened enormously when he said it and she practically threw herself out of her chair in an effort to get into his lap.



“Oh yes, Harry. Oh yes. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that! You’re going to be a great father.”



“And you, love, are going to be a great mother. I can already feel it. Speaking of feeling…” Harry’s hand slid down the back of her silky dress and over her bottom, where he noticed a distinct absence of knickers. The thought excited him.



Hermione knew exactly what he was feeling and she whispered in his ear “Like that? It’s all for you, Harry. My sex is as smooth as silk right now and I’m very, very wet. I can’t wait to get you back to our bed.” Harry groaned with raw desire for her as he thought of what he wanted to do with her. He was glad, for once, that Hermione had been straight with her parents and not let them think that the two of them were going to make any sort of early morning appearance.



It was a good thing that they were constrained by being at a formal restaurant, because if they had been at school, or anywhere else, Hermione might very well have found herself well on the way to being naked.



Harry whispered in her ear “Want to order dinner now so that I can take you home and have you for desert?” The thought of being between Hermione’s long, silky thighs and pleasuring her orally made Harry instantly erect.



She snuggled down onto Harry’s erection, which caused her to smile that much more and whispered back to her lover “How can I resist that offer?”



*********************************



Eventually Harry and Hermione ordered the tasting menu and sat, together, and ate their fill and drank the rest of the wine in the bottle. At the end, the two of them were feeling happy and relaxed and feeling tremendously satisfied. They decided to go for a walk and told Johnathan so. “Not a good idea. Too many paparazzi outside. Even if a cast a glamour over both of you, they’d probably see through it. Better to head back to wherever you’re calling home right now and go for a walk there. It would be a lot safer.”

Harry was about to protest when he saw a familiar face in the foyer. It was Rita Skeeter. She was one person whom they really didn’t want to run into.



Rita had written a particularly vile article after the war which questioned Harry’s integrity, honesty, and his courage by arguing that the wizarding world should in no way esteem or give accolades to a young man who had flouted the Ministry’s rules regarding animagi and who had killed Tom; not was a proper wizard (standing up), but rather in his animagus form – which Rita slammed as being the cowardly way of winning a fight.



Unfortunately, the particularly harsh blow-back from that article had not deterred Rita for long. She had been attacked by a person or persons unknown, stripped naked, physically beaten until she could no longer move because of the number of broken bones she had received, and left for dead in the middle of Diagon Alley. That she was still writing just meant to Harry that Rita was either exceptionally stupid or financially desperate. Harry figured that it might be a little of both. Certainly her writing was never going to be good enough to write for a muggle publication, so she was limited to writing for whichever magical rag would pay her for the scurrilous rants which she tried to pass off as reporting. As to her magic, Harry figured that if she had been a stronger witch, she might have been able to protect herself better. No witch worth her salt coming out of Hogwarts would have ever allowed herself to be overcome and beaten so badly.



Harry suspected, as he thought about it, that one or more students from Hogwarts had been involved in the attack on Rita, but he was not going to do anything to pursue it. It would have done nothing but stir up feelings of resentment and made the attackers, if they were from Hogwarts, feel unappreciated and ill-used. Harry knew that Rita probably didn’t deserve to be killed, but there was fairly large part of him that didn’t have a problem with what had happened to her because of the nagging feeling that Rita, as much as anyone else, had done as much as anyone to help Tom survive and grow his forces as one of the death eaters had done. Harry remembered thinking at the time that the news had come out about the attack, that it was interesting that no magic was used to harm Rita. Rather, she had been beaten muggle-fashion. That limited the possible group of attackers to a narrow few and he suspected that he knew, as a result of those deductions, exactly who had done it. What surprised him was that the person he suspected had lost his parents (in all the ways that really count) to the actions of Bella Lestrange – who was the quintessential evil witch. Bella would never have resorted to physical violence.



Knowing that they couldn’t disapparate from inside of the restaurant, Harry asked Johnathan a quick question. He pointed to a corridor and a sign. Harry thanked him for a wonderful dinner and then quickly pulled Hermione down the hall and into the mens’ room.



“Harry? Unless you’re going to try to take advantage of me here, which I might not mind, can you tell me what we’re doing here?”



Harry held up one finger, as if to ask her to give him a moment. Finally, Harry saw a pen that was lying on the granite to the right of the sink. Harry took it and pointed her wand at it. “Portus” Hermione automatically knew what was going on and she grabbed one end of the pen as Harry began to count to three.



*********************************

When they emerged from the magic of the port key, Hermione looked at him. “Ok, what gives? Who did you see?”



“Rita Skeeter. I figured that she was a confrontation that we didn’t need. I just wanted to get you out of there quickly and the mens’ room was the best place to disappear from.”



His wife-to-be grinned. “Good, Harry. That was good thinking. I might have been very, very tempted to hurt her.”



“Yea, me too. I’m not sure that I could have resisted using that hair removal hex and or the burning boils hex.”



Hermione giggled. She knew how bad the burning boils hex was. It was like the muggle affliction, chicken pox, but considerably worse and more immediate. She envisioned Rita bald with the boils erupting and bursting all over her body.



“You up for that walk now? Or do you want to go for a run? There’s no one around. We could let the cats out…”



Hermione looked at Harry in his fine dress robes and then sidled up next to him. “Actually…” she purred, “I was hoping that my husband would take advantage of me, like he promised earlier…”



Harry looked as the woman he already thought of as his wife “I think that can be arranged…”



Hermione caught him by his bowtie, untied it, and used both ends to pull him backwards to their bed. “You’re going to be the death of me, ‘Mione. I love you.”



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Next chapter…. In Memoriam