"You know," she continued uninterrupted, "when we connected."
Harry couldn't understand why his mind was working at such a slow pace.
He should be figuring out a way to gently tell her that she should leave quietly; she really shouldn't be there.
Instead, all he could focus on--other than the incredibly intimate contact she had with him--were a few disconnected snippets of what she was saying.
"Connected?" he asked.
She nodded, apparently happy that he finally seemed to be grasping something.
"When you pulled me out of ze water," she said simply as though she thought it should be perfectly obvious to him.
"I know you felt it."
She leaned forward a bit, increasing her body's contact with his cock, and placed her right hand, palm down, on his chest just above his breast bone.
"Right 'ere," she said.
Instinctively, his hand moved to cover hers.
She smiled shyly at the contact.
How could she be shy, he wondered.
She was sitting on him more intimately than any other girl had ever done while she was only one article of clothing away from being completely nude!
He didn't even know her.
He'd never seen her before that morning and he'd only been in contact with her for the amount of time it took to swim her up to the surface of the water at which point she. . .
His thoughts trailed off.
He'd just remembered something.
Something that he'd almost completely ignored at the time.
After he and Ron had pulled her out of the water, she'd looked him for the briefest of moments and he'd felt something right where Gabrielle now had her hand.
The only way he could think of to describe it was, as she had said, a connection.
What that meant, however, he didn't know.
For several seconds, Harry just stared into her eyes, suddenly very aware of every place that she was touching him.
He struggled for something to say--an intelligent question as to the nature of what it was he had felt down by the lakeside and what it had to do with her being nearly naked in bed with him in the middle of the night.
"Connection?" he repeated unintelligently.
Again she nodded.
"I am Veela," she said as though that explained everything.
Harry's mind latched onto something.
He suddenly flashed on Fleur's comment during the weighing of the wands.
Her grandmother was Veela.
Gabrielle was Fleur's sister so Gabrielle's grandmother was Veela.
"You're a quarter Veela, right?" he asked.
She shook her head as she removed her hand from his chest and straightened back up.
Harry felt a strange reluctance to let go of her hand.
"More zan a 'alf. Mama is Veela and Papa 'as a bit of Veela in 'im too."
"OK. So you're more than half Veela," he said.
"But what does that have to do with the, er, connection?"
She frowned and for a moment, he felt the inexplicable urge to hug her to him.
He mentally shook himself and waited for her answer.
"You never studied ze Veela?" she said as though he'd insulted her heritage.
He briefly wondered why he felt so uncomfortable.
"Erm, no," he said.
"At least-- I don't think we've covered Veela yet. Perhaps next term. I'm not really sure."
Her frown softened and Harry realized he felt better.
"Oh," she said simply.
Then she moved.
It was almost like the way she moved before when she'd raised up a bit and pressed herself against his cock, but where before it was so quick that it was almost over before he realized it was happening, this move was slower--more deliberate--and as she moved forward, she rotated her hips, gently pressing what he knew was her bare sex against his.
He fought to keep his eyes from rolling back and he bit his tongue to keep from making any noise; he was sure that anything that sounded like he was enjoying what she was doing would be taken as encouragement.
As she stopped her forward movement and began to move back--rotating her hips again to accentuate the grinding motion--she continued speaking.
"Veela, 'Arry, are not yooman. While I am part yooman, I am, as I said, more zan 'alf Veela. I 'ave Veela blood and Veela traits."
As she spoke she continued moving, a slow, determined forward and back, grinding herself against him.
Harry found it increasingly difficult to concentrate.
"Veela," Gabrielle continued, "'ave ze ability to form a connection wiz someone--a bond you might say."
Harry realized she was talking about the connection, but at the moment, all he could seem to focus on was the slow, steady back and forth of her hips.
He put his hands on her hips to stop her movement, but it didn't seem to work and soon it was all he could do to keep himself from helping her.
Removing his hands, however, never crossed his mind.
"Normally," she went on, smiling slightly when she felt his hands on her, "Veela only choose to connect--to bond--wiz someone after many years of knowing zat person. But sometimes, somezing can 'appen to make a bond form wizout ze Veela's choosing."
Harry was trying to listen to her, but most of his brain could only seem to understand: grind forward, grind back. . .
"For example: saving ze life of a Veela would not normally be enough to force a bond to form against ze Veela's will, but when a Veela is young, like me," she said as she gave a more insistent grind of her hips, "and just beginning maturation--if I were completely yooman it would be called puberty, but ze Veela do not call it zat--ze changes in ze Veela's body, ze changing--how do you say, er, chemicals?"
Harry was only listening with half an ear, but he still heard her struggle.
"Hormones?" he offered.
He realized as he said it that the place where they were so intimately in contact was rather slick.
Some part of his brain--a part way in the back--told him that it meant she was excited.
In that same, out-of-the-way, back part of his brain, an alarm sounded.
But then again, there had been so many alarms in his head since he'd awakened, one more made little difference.
"Oui, 'ormones," she said.
"Wiz ze maturation and my 'ormones being out of balance, when you saved me from ze lake, we connected--a bond began to form. And now it is time to complete it."
So focused was he on the discovery of the slickness between them that it took a moment for what she had said to register.
"Complete it?" he asked after a few more cycles of her hips.
"Oui, you and I must 'ave sex," she said matter-of-factly with another particularly intense grind of her hips.
"Sex?"