He didn't need to wonder for long. There was a comfortable sofa in the library and Hermione was dragging him in that direction. She quickly rid herself of her clothes and then helped Harry get rid of his. She then pushed him on the sofa and straddled him. He didn't need to be a genius to understand where that was leading.
It took several orgasms to calm Hermione down. She then grabbed his hand. "We need to go to bed. Don't you agree, dear?"
They didn't bother with their clothes. Harry was sure that the house-elves would collect them, clean them and have them ready to wear before he would even wake up in the morning. He only wondered if Hermione would let him sleep, not that he was complaining.
They got ready for bed as usual. Hermione seemed worried, though. "What's bothering you, love," Harry asked. He found it natural to use endearing words since they discovered their bond.
Hermione bit her lip. "I'm not sure. I just have a heavy feeling. I'm probably worried about your scar and the way to remove it. Unlike muggle medicine, where I can at least understand the procedures, magic in general and especially magical procedures can't be explained logically. I find it hard to trust them despite using magic since the first year at Hogwarts. Isn't it weird?"
Harry hugged her. It was still a new and exciting experience to hug a nude Hermione, one he could never tire of. "It's not weird. We both grew up in the muggle world, where everything was governed by logic, so that's how we think. We may have grown comfortable with doing things by magic, but it may never be as natural for us as it is for those who grew up with magic since early childhood."
"Shouldn't there be a way to merge the two?" she asked, suddenly sounding like a little girl.
Harry gave it a thought. "I'm not sure. They co-exist, but I doubt to what extent the two ways can be merged."
"May I still worry about you?"
He swallowed a smile, not wanting to offend her. "Isn't that what you've been doing since we became friends? You wouldn't be you if you didn't"
That brought a small smile to her face. "So, you're not upset with me that I'm worried?"
Harry tightened the hug. "Not at all. I think I would have been even more worried had it been you who needed to get treated."
Some mischief crept into her tone. "Care to work on lessening my worries?" She moved out of his hug and spread herself on the wide bed. "After all, we must make sure that our bed is good enough. Don't we?"
Both teens worked hard on making sure that the bed was good enough. By the time they fell asleep, Hermione could not feel worried any longer. They would need to check the bed some more, though. Many times over.
\/\/\/
The wide bed gave the teens some new ideas for fun when they woke up in the morning. Not having any plans for most of the day allowed them to work on those ideas for quite some time before they went to check the attached bathroom, making sure that it would be good enough, and not for cleaning only.
"It seems to be a nice day," Harry noticed, looking through the wide window. "Would you like to try the pool?"
"That could be nice," she said. There was a protected walkway connecting the pool to the main building, allowing easy access even in bad weather.
"We can stay in our bathrobes, then," Harry said.
Hermione loved the idea.
They ate breakfast leisurely. It was a new experience for both. Never before had they had a private breakfast like this.
Harry looked at Hermione as if trying to remember every little detail of her face. She chuckled noticing it. "Why are you looking at me this way? I'm not that pretty, you know."
Harry found himself disagreeing. "You're more than pretty; you're very beautiful. Yet that's not why I look at you this way. In a day or two, we're going to change our looks. I want to remember you this way, the way you really are."
She smiled lovingly. "Then I should try to do the same. You'll seem very different after we change the colours and styles. I don't think that will change the real us. We may look different, but we shall still be the same people."
"And we shall still have the same bodies, won't we?"
She smiled teasingly. "Sure, when nude, but I think we may change the way our bodies look by using some padding for my breasts, your shoulders, your muscles, our bums. We won't really change them, but we can make our bodies look different when clothed."
Harry also got into the teasing mode. "In that case, we should go to the pool naked, so we'll remember how we really look that way too."
"Of course, love," she said, and both started laughing.
The pool was well heated, as was the air in the pavilion covering it. Hermione swam a few lengths of the pool, enjoying the exercise. Harry didn't swim much. He had never learned how to swim and felt clumsy in the water. He still liked seeing Hermione enjoy swimming. They then frolicked a bit in the warm water before lying down on a double tanning bed, letting the sun warm and invigorate their bodies.
Harry took a good look at both their bodies. He'd always been slim, but more than two months of wandering in the wilderness without proper meals and with no real rest made him turn almost sickly thin. A few days of rest and food had no chance to change it much yet. Hermione had always been quite slim, as far as he could tell. The few times he'd seen her in muggle clothing she was thinner than most of the other girls he knew. Only Luna was thinner. Since they fled Grimmauld place, Hermione became much thinner too. As much as he liked her body, he could clearly see that she needed to recuperate almost as much as he did.
He suddenly felt an urge to hug her tightly, to show her how important she was for him. He moved closer to her and wasn't surprised to see her moving with the same purpose. They hugged each other, trying to show their mates how much they loved them, cared for them and how important they were for each other. Despite their nakedness, that hug was of pure love with no other implications.
They stayed that way for some time, neither wanting to part, revelling in the feeling of love.
After a while, the close proximity of naked bodies started to have some effect. Their minds switched tracks; their hands started roaming and soon enough they were uniting again.
This first round of sex only served as an appetiser. Hermione grabbed Harry's hand and rushed to their bedroom as soon as she could control her body. Harry didn't complain.
In another manor house, the Dark Lord did complain, although he had nobody near. "Potter! He's at it again! Is he a young man or a bunny? Doesn't he know there are more important things than sex? Oh, not again!"
\/\/\/
Except for a lunch break, the young couple spent the rest of the time in the bedroom, although sleep was very far from their thoughts. They only calmed down in the late afternoon, They showered well, put on some clean clothes and made ready to visit Bill and Fleur Weasley.
Dobby was as eager as ever to take them. Bill and Fleur were waiting for the young couple in front of their modest house and quickly ushered them in before starting the congratulations.
"It looks like you found each other as soon as Ron left. How did that happen?" Fleur asked.
Hermione answered. "With Ron, we couldn't stay in muggle areas for long. He has no idea how to behave as a muggle and would attract attention immediately. Once he left us, it was easy to move to a muggle town and disappear among the many muggles there. You know, even a relatively small town has more people in it than the whole wizarding population in Britain."
Fleur frowned. "How big is the British magical population?"
"I don't have exact numbers," Hermione explained. "Hogwarts has roughly forty students in each year, and I know of no other magical school in Britain. Assuming that the average life-span of magical people is one hundred and twenty years, this gives us less than five thousand. Now, let's assume there are two more schools, roughly the same size. This would make the magical population about fifteen thousand – that's quite small for a muggle town."
Both Fleur and Bill looked sceptical. Hermione explained some more. "You see, I grew up in Crawley, which is a town south of London. It's not a very small town, but not a big one either. Last I checked, it had roughly a population of a hundred thousands. London, which is the largest city in Britain has a population of more than eight million. I can't even imagine so many people."
Bill nodded understandingly. "I had some chances to ride the London Underground. The number of people on a single train is probably close to the magical population in Britain. If you don't make some stupid mistakes, you could live your whole life in the muggle world and nobody will be able to find you."
He then sighed. "Well, as interesting as that may be, we have another problem to tackle. Your house-elf suspected that your scar may house a very dark curse. Do you have an idea what it may be?"
"I suspect it might be a Horcrux," Harry said bravely, noticing that Bill paled significantly at hearing that word.
"Do you know what that means?" Bill asked, trying to hide his shock.
"It means that a part of a person's soul is embedded in the scar, or maybe in me, and as long as that part exists, that person can't really die."
Bill nodded. He didn't need to ask whose soul might be hiding there. Everybody knew about that scar and who caused it. He shuffled through his mind, trying to find the right procedure. Based on Dobby's tale, he'd already suspected this might be the case, yet still hoped it was nothing so dark.
Bill sighed. "Normally, the way to destroy a Horcrux is to destroy the object. That is not an option in this case, of course. The other option is to move the Horcrux from the object it resides into another object. That method is used when the object in question is considered valuable enough to justify the long ritual. I believe this should work well for you."
The next question came from Hermione. Well, more than one. "What's involved in this ritual? How can we assure that it works? How dangerous is it to Harry?"
Bill smiled slightly at the verbal deluge. "There's a negligible danger to Harry when performing the ritual. It may fail, of course, leaving everything as is; It may succeed, and that's what we aim for, or it may partially fail. In that case, the soul fragment may seek another vessel, not the one we make ready for it to take. As long as it doesn't try to possess another person, we can deal with it. I'll have specific precautions to direct the soul piece into the intended vessel. They worked fine for many generations, so I see no cause for concern.
"Now, we need seven participants, aside from Harry."
"Must they all be human?" Hermione asked.
"No. This is usually done with Goblins, but house-elves may do just as well," Bill explained.
"We can then have Dobby and three other house-elves," Harry said. "I'm sorry, but I don't fully trust the Goblins. For the right amount, they may sell any secret, and I want this ritual to stay as secret as can be until we get rid of Vo…"
Both Bill and Fleur hurried to cover his mouth. "Don't say the name. It's a taboo and may bring his men directly to you, no matter how successful the ritual is."
Harry shook his head. "You'll have to explain what a taboo is, but all I want for now is to keep it secret until we gain victory, so it should not leak to anybody who might reveal it, even by mistake."
Bill smiled. "That excludes Ron, of course. When angry, he may say whatever comes to his mind with no control at all. You've already noticed this, I believe."
Harry nodded sadly.
"Well, let's start with dinner. It may lose its taste if it cools down, and most rituals work better on a full stomach," Fleur said, leading them to the dining table that was already prepared with the cutlery laid out nicely.
Fleur tried to find out some more about how the two became a couple, but Hermione was too worried about the ritual to cooperate and Harry wasn't sure how much Hermione was ready to disclose, so he kept silent as well. Besides, he was also thinking about the ritual. What if Voldemort's soul piece would try to possess Hermione? Or Fleur, for that matter. Dumbledore had once told him that such possession is a death sentence for the possessed. He wouldn't want to lose any of them, certainly not Hermione, his wife. In a way, he was less worried that the dislodged soul piece would try to possess him. Voldemort had already tried it in a different way after the battle at the Ministry and failed. His only concern, in that case, was how it would affect Hermione. She would be devastated, and he just couldn't allow it. He would fight for the ritual to succeed with anything he had!