closer to him and peered down into his face.
Then he reached up and drew his hood back.
Draco stifled a yell. A bald, hairless skull the color of blood- yellow, slitted eyes with vertical cat pupils- slits for nostrils-a lipless mouth.
'Lucius,' said the horrible voice, which belonged, Draco now knew, to Lord Voldemort. 'You have done very well here, very well indeed.'
Once he let Hermione and Sirius out of the cell, Sirius made Harry describe the glowing cage in which they were keeping Draco several times before he was satisfied. 'I can take the spell off,' he said. 'But I'll need my wand.'
'You can use mine,' offered Hermione, but Sirius shook his head.
'This is a very involved Charm,' he said. 'I need my own wand. I know where it is, I saw Lucius put it in a drawer in his study. Look,' he added, 'in dog form, I can get up there a lot faster than you can. I think I should go ahead, and you two come behind. I'll take the Imprisonment Charm off, if I can, and meet you in Draco's bedroom.'
'What if…' Hermione swallowed hard. 'You-know-who's already got him?'
Sirius looked grim. 'Then I'll still meet you, and we'll figure out what to do from there,' he said. He put his hand on Harry's shoulder and Harry looked up at him for a second. Then he nodded. 'Okay.'
Sirius let go of Harry, and turned immediately into his canine form, in which he loped out of the dungeon. Harry and Hermione followed more slowly. Harry was very silent and looked very unhappy. He was walking very fast, nearly running.
'Is Draco all right?' Hermione asked timidly. 'I mean, you said he wasn't too badly hurt, but he must be really afraid.'
'He's not too good. In fact, he asked me to kill him,' said Harry, climbing over a pile of broken stone. He turned back to help Hermione over the pile and found that she had stopped climbing and was goggling at him.
'What? What did you say, Harry?'
'I took out my trusty knife and stuck it in his throat. What do you think I said?'
snapped Harry, nettled. 'I told him he was mental, I'm not going to kill him.'
Hermione started to climb after him without assistance. 'Why? Not why wouldn't you kill him, but why, you know, did he ask?'
'If they put the Lacertus curse on him, it'll kill him anyway,' said Harry soberly.
'He doesn't want them to do it, he doesn?t want to risk that he might end up murdering people. He said it would just be dying a little earlier than he would anyway.'
Hermione stopped stock-still again. Harry began wondering if they were ever going to make any progress. 'Harry….' she said.
'What?'
'That's something you said. Our first year, when you were going after the Philosopher's Stone…you said that if you-know-who got you, it would just be dying a little earlier than you would anyway.'
They looked at each other. 'You think that was me talking?' said Harry uneasily.
Hermione looked extremely unhappy. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't want to think so.'
'I don?t think it was,' said Harry, rather unexpectedly.
Hermione smiled at him. 'I hope not,' she said, 'I already invited him to come visit me over the summer.'
Now it was Harry's turn to stop walking. 'He'll turn your whole family into toads, Hermione,' he said, eerily echoing her own fears.
'He will not,' she said obstinately. 'My parents will like him. He's got really good manners, and he dresses well and…and he's read Hogwarts: A History.'
Harry turned around. Then he came up to Hermione, took her by the arms, and stared intently into her face, something he had never done before. 'Do you like him, Hermione? I know you kissed him and all, but do you like him?'
'Yeah,' she said, surprising herself. 'I do, I really do.'
'Do you love him?'
'Harry!'
'Could you love him?'
'Yes!' she exclaimed. 'Yes, I could!' She tried to yank her arms away, but he held on tightly. 'I'm getting really fed up with this whole big-brother thing, Harry,' she added sharply. 'I'm not twelve, and I'm not an idiot, and it is my business who I want to-' 'Hermione,' he interrupted her furiously, 'you're so stupid.'
And he kissed her.
It was nothing like kissing Draco. Kissing Draco was sweet and intoxicating and fun. Kissing Harry was none of those things. It was a little like a bomb going off in her head. She felt herself clutching at Harry as if she might fall otherwise, felt Harry gripping her arms with a force that was painful. She would have bruises, but she didn't care. She couldn't breathe, but she didn't care. There was a rock digging into the small of her back but she didn't care. She could feel Harry's heart beating wildly against hers and that was what mattered; that, and the pressure of his mouth on her and the yearning she felt from him as he kissed her.
It was a shock when he let go of her and stepped back. She saw that his chest was rising and falling rapidly as if he had been running. He continued backing up until he was standing against the opposite wall, staring at her in what looked a lot like horror.
