Vox Corpis [Harmione]

Chapter 47

It was nearly midnight. The house had been quiet for hours, her parents and grandmother had gone to bed well over two hours ago, and Hermione had been lying in bed staring at the ceiling in restless anticipation since the moment her head hit the pillow. Harry's hushed words still rang in her ears, 'let's meet in Avalon'. It had raced right down her spinal column, paused a moment to pool achingly in the pit of her stomach, and made her toes curl. He'd been a bit of the jaguar when he said it, Hermione could tell from his voice and his forwardness in public and the look on his face. It did dangerous, maddening things to her when her boyfriend was part wild animal. He was... sexier when he was touching the jaguar. It was silly, but true. And just then, Hermione wanted absolutely nothing more than to be the lioness to his black jaguar.

Soon, she would be.

It was making her heart race, waiting to meet him. But she couldn't sneak out just as soon as she went into her bedroom. What if her mother or father popped in for some reason? She had to give the others in the house time to fall asleep. So as she waited, she did what Hermione Granger did best. She thought.

Her hours of research into animagi were proving more useful than she'd expected. She wasn't worried about getting caught by the ministry for her and Harry turning into their animagus forms outside of Hogwarts grounds. When she was trying to find something they could do during the summer without using magic she'd been really intent on that aspect of the possible options. She became almost lawyer-like in examining the actual mechanics of how much magic would be used and how, and how it could circumvent ministry rules. The devil was in the details, as they said, but it made Hermione smarter on ministry standards of magical application than she'd been before. Ministry of Magic underage detection spells were triggered by the emission of magic by underage witches and wizards. Animagi transformations consisted completely of internally focused magic. Nothing was outwardly affected by the change, only the witch or wizard. If magic was not actually emitted, there was nothing for the ministry to detect. There were so few forms of magic that were entirely internal, and even fewer of them that underage witches and wizards were capable of performing, that the ministry had never bothered trying to set up any spells to catch them being done by children. That didn't worry her. Of course, Harry hadn't known that when he suggested it, but then the jaguar tended to make him braver, more the warrior inside than he usually let show.

The thought caught Hermione in the gut and made her squirm. She had always known the strength Harry hid behind that self-effacing, shy exterior of his, but to see it come out... quite frankly, it made her want him. It made her want to throw caution to the wind and be that cavalier with him. The two of them racing headlong and free. The demons of Harry's past could not catch them when they were beyond human. Hermione believed that in some animal part of her. The bad guys wouldn't know how to find them; they were looking for a fifteen-year-old boy with a scar and a wand.

Hermione turned on her side and looked at her clock. Midnight. She'd been waiting for the hour for the simple fact she did not think she could wait longer than that. Quietly she slipped out of bed in the dark and went to her closed door. She stood silently and listened. She wished she could touch the lioness and borrow her hearing. She would have turned, but it seemed too risky to be the lioness in her grandmother's house. Her entire life she'd been hiding her magic from her grandmother; old habits died hard.

Hermione scarcely breathed as she strained to hear any sounds of wakefulness outside her door. All was perfect quiet.

Had Harry already slipped the house? No doubt he would have used the backdoor. Was he waiting for her in Avalon, a regal black beast with blue eyes and searing intensity?

Only one way to find out.

Hermione dressed in the dark, shrugged into a jacket and slipped on her trainers, and crept to her bedroom window. Snow had rimmed the panes and frost glazed the glass. It promised to be cold outside. Hermione could have done without that; the lioness wasn't a winter animal. It liked the sun and dry grass underfoot. But neither was Harry's jaguar a snowbound creature; it was built for the jungle. They could both put up with the weather. Being the cats felt too good to be deterred by something as insignificant as snow.