Fleur looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and horrified. 'This is the last door,' she whispered. 'It leads outside — he must have sealed it closed!' She caught at his hand. 'What can we do?'
'Break it down,' said Harry from behind them. He was leaning back against the wall, using the side of his sleeve to rub the green bloodstains from his sword. He looked at Draco. 'Break it down.'
Draco turned back to Fleur. 'Brace yourself,' he said, grabbed her, and kissed her hard. She flailed her arms for a moment, and then relaxed into his embrace. He pricked his ears up for any kind of explosion or boom noise, but there was….nothing. He kept up the kiss for few moments longer, generally in the spirit that if a thing was worth doing it was worth doing right, and then released her.
She gave a little squeak and stepped back, staring at him.
'So,' said Harry, his eyebrows raised, 'anybody want to venture a guess where Slytherin might be?'
Draco looked over at him. 'Not really; why?'
'Because if my only other choice is to stand here and watch you two kissing, I think I?d like to go spend some quality time with him. You know, I kinda think he liked me.'
'Don?t whine, Potter,' said Draco dispiritedly. 'What I was trying to do, didn?t work. We?ll have to try something else.' He eyed Harry speculatively for a moment.
Harry raised an eyebrow. 'You're not going to kiss me, are you?'
Draco grinned slowly. 'I might.'
'I really think you should,' Fleur said. 'He's a much more powerful Magid than I am.'
'Desperate times,' said Draco, and took a step towards Harry. 'Shut your eyes, Potter, it'll all be over in a second.'
'I am not going to shut my eyes,' Harry began indignantly.
'So you like to kiss with your eyes open? Kinky, that,' said Draco, cheerfully, and grabbed Harry by the front of the shirt.
Harry rolled his eyes. 'Oh, all right then. Get it over with.'
But Draco had frozen in place. A familiar tingling had begun to spread through his fingers where they touched Harry's shirt. A well-known familiar, dreaded feeling. He released Harry and stepped back abruptly. 'We have to get back.'
They both stared at him.
'We have to go back,' he said again, more firmly this time.
'Back where?' said Harry. 'You think theres another way out?'
'Back where we started, where else?' Draco snapped.
'Draco, we can?t,' said Fleur, looking desperate.
'What do you mean, we can?t? You got into the castle once through here. You can get back.'
'No I can?t!' cried Fleur, visibly upset. 'Before, I was following that -
' and she pointed at the emerald in his sword hilt. 'I put a Tracking Charm on my broomstick and left it outside this door, as well, so I could find my way back to it — but Draco, this is a maze. If we 'ead back into it without knowing where we?re going, we could wander until we die. Did you not see all those skeletons in the corridors?
What did you think 'appened to them?'
'Well, have you got a better idea?' Draco demanded.
'I?ve got one,' said Harry.
Draco raised an eyebrow. 'You?ve got a plan? Forgive me if I don?t leap up and down with excitement, but your record in this department is not exactly gold standard. So what is it?'
'Lets try to break down the door together — you and me — you know our power is stronger when its combined, and it doesn?t matter if we do magic now, we?re so close to getting out. Besides, what other choice do we have?'
Draco ruminated. The idea of holding hands with Harry did not exactly appeal to him at the moment, given the fact that he was increasingly positive that the Will-Strengthening Potion was wearing off. Once they got outside, Fleur could swiftly remove Harry from the vicinity via her broomstick, but at the moment, trapped together in a very small corridor with no appreciable way out — on the other hand, Harry was right, what other choice did they have?
Well. There was one other option. But he didn?t want to have to take it.
Draco stuck his hand out towards Harry. 'Lets do it.'
Fleur watched with raised eyebrows as they locked their hands together. Draco debated asking her to link hands with them as well but dismissed the idea, since they had never tried such an experiment and he was dubious about the side effects. He felt the familiar bolt of cold as Harrys scar touched his own; then they directed their linked hands towards the door and -
'Alohomora!' cried Harry.
A jet of whitish light shot from their hands, struck the door — and bounced off, shooting back towards them like a bullet. Draco threw himself flat as it whipped over his head, nearly singing his hair, and turned to watch in amazement as the bolt of light, making the whistling noise of a teakettle on the boil, erupted down the corridor, ricocheting off the walls as it went and in general making a thundering racket. He sat up slowly and looked at Harry, who was gazing off after the bolt of light, eyes wide and jaw hanging open.
'Great plan, Potter,' he said. 'Another world-beater. Congrats.'
Harry looked at him, and, instead of telling to shut up, suddenly grinned instead. He was covered in dirt from the corridor floor, and his green eyes sparkled in his grime-streaked face. 'Ha!' he said cheerfully. 'You?re just
