Chapter Four

With Blinky's help Harry managed to roll Hermione into bed around 12am to get some sleep. She was like a research demon. Hermione on a mission was someone not to be trifled with. When he got up at 6am he found her sprawled across the living room floor surrounded by a pile of books and writing in a muggle notebook that she'd found from god only knows where. Blink started tugging on his arm "Mistress Mioney won't eat Blinky's food. Blinky is a bad elf. Blink can't please Miss Mioney." As the elf started to wail Harry sighed and went to drag Hermione to the kitchen.

Hermione refused until Harry simply pointed at the wailing elf and held his hand out to help her up off the floor. As Hermione collected the notebook filled to the brim with information Blinky turned and gave what Harry could only describe as a smirk and strutted off into the kitchen to cook breakfast for the pair. Bloody elves thought Harry. Ever since they'd accidentally acquired her she had them twisted around her little finger. Between Harry's dislike for arguing and Hermione's obsession with elf rights, little Blinky had the run of the house.

Shaking his head Harry followed the elf towards the kitchen and as he sat down Hermione started to prattle facts at him that his sleepy brain could simply not comprehend. He grabbed her arm to gain attention, "Hermione, it's early. Can we please have some food THEN you can tell me what you learnt". With a flourish Blinky presented the two with their omelettes and went to leave.

"Stop Blinky. What we learnt yesterday will affect you too so you may as well hear this too." Blinky slowly nodded and sat next to the pair, she was a young elf and was more open to change from traditional elf/wizard roles, they often had odd requests of her but if it pleased her two masters then she was happy to oblige.

Hermione took a deep breath and started to explain. "It seems here that the earth witch and the goblins are correct I do have dryad blood and am starting to come into something called my majority. From what I can determine is that I will undergo some minor physical changes but most importantly as I have magical blood my magic may be a bit erratic for a while."

Harry nodded. "That seems manageable. We'll just stay close to home and go blow some training dummies up; you seemed to enjoy that a couple of years ago" he said with a smile.

Hermione smiled briefly then grimaced at her next entry in her notebook. "This is the part where we may face problems. It seems it's common for dryads to seek out a mate during and after their majority. I will need to bond with some type of forest or earthy type area in order to get some sense of calm when I'm dealing with all the changes. The part I'm worried about is this whole 'mate' business." She said scrunching her nose at the word.

"Mate as in like mating. Like babies and stuff?" questioned Harry.

"Seriously Harry? Babies and stuff?" she laughed. "Yes I suppose babies come into it at one point. Supposedly I have previously or will soon be drawn towards my mate. Dryads can, luckily for me, survive without their mate but will at times be plagued with great loneliness. Loneliness I can deal with if we can't find my mate or if it's someone like Ron."

"Loneliness doesn't sound good but I can understand where you're coming from with the Ron comment. There's no way we are getting tangled back in with the Weasley family. We've learnt our lesson with that bunch of leeches. If they couldn't understand my need to go find your family with you after you'd sacrificed so much for me and why Ron's betrayal of us for his bloody stomach was such a breach of trust, then they aren't the type of people we want to be around." he said shaking his head. "Plus Ginny kind of looks like my mum and that's more than a bit creepy right?" he mumbled.

Hermione burst out into giggles. "Yeah she does look a bit like your mum in the photos you've been given. Gross." Blinky had no idea what had pleased her mistress so much but that was fine, as long as she was happy again. She used the fact that they were both distracted to slip a bit more food onto their plates. She couldn't let her new family waste away. She smiled to herself, Blinky was a good elf.

"Ok, ok. Teasing Harry time is over." Harry said as he shovelled another mouthful of omelette into his mouth completely missing the wide grin stretched across Blinky's face. "So what's the plan? Meet Ragnok at Gringotts and look at your land, maybe find some trees or something and have a look at those heirlooms he mentioned. We can leave the whole mating thing until later, I really don't want to think about someone doing that with my sister."

"That sounds like a decent enough plan. I think we should go clean up and get ready to meet Ragnok. You can have a look at my notes when you're done with your shower." The pair nodded and set off upstairs to wash and dress ready to go to the bank.

Blinky began to clean up the breakfast materials and straighten up the mess of books Hermione had left on the floor ready to return to Ragnok.