'That could be arranged,' replied Draco, ice in his tone.
'Listen, Malfoy. You can take your instructions and you can shove them right up your-'
'Hermione, are you listening?' Harry said.
She turned and raised her face to his, and caught her breath. He was very white, as white as he had been that day when they had stood in front of the Mirror of Erised and he had told her he loved her. She knew how hard that had been for him, sure as he was at the time that what he had to say was too little and too late. She wondered what equivalently terrible thing was weighing on his mind now; or perhaps it was just the danger they were in…
She reached out and took his hands, glancing down at them as she did. Harrys hands, so familiar and so known, even when he was eleven and scrawny and small, he had had these delicate beautiful articulated hands. They were very like Dracos hands, the same tapering fingers, the index a little longer than the others, the same scar on the palm, but they were uniquely Harrys — hands that passed her quills in Potions class, that carried her books, that reached to catch the Snitch, that held her tightly in the dark.
'I don?t want you to go,' he said, with a sudden and surprising intensity. 'I have a bad, bad feeling about this, Hermione. I want you to stay here.'
'I have to go. Ginny — '
'I know.' He drew her towards him by her wrists. 'I know, but-'
'I?ve hardly ever seen you be frightened,' she said, with a wobbly sort of smile. 'This isn?t the first time we ?ve ever been in danger, we?ve looked death in the face before, its been worse than this — '
Harrys hands tightened on hers. 'There are worse things than just dying,' he said, his voice low and fierce. 'I couldn?t stand it — if something happened to you — and I had to wonder, if you were somewhere, waiting for me to — to — '
'Harry!' Having no idea what he was talking about, but responding without thought to the pain in his voice, Hermione almost tripped over herself in her hurry to get near him. She flung her arms around him and hugged him hard, and he brushed a hesitant hand over her hair.
'I?ve always loved your hair,' he said.
'Oh surely not,' said Hermione, before she could help it. 'You and Ron used to say it looked like I had a very angry cat on my head!'
Harry choked. 'Yes, when we were twelve.'
'It was still very rude of you,' said Hermione. 'You should do something to make it up to me.'
'I?m not sure we?ve got enough privacy for that,' said Harry, looking solemn.
'You certainly don?t!' called Draco irritably from the other side of the wardrobe. 'Please — spare us.'
Harry closed his eyes. 'I?m just going to pretend I didn?t hear that.'
Hermione reached up and pulled his head down, and kissed him soundly. It always amazed her, even now, that she had to reach up to Harry, that he had become so tall and limber and… grown-up.
Not that grown-up was bad. Grown-up was good, especially when it suited someone as well as growing taller and broader in the shoulders seemed to be suiting Harry.
It was a brief kiss, nonetheless. She broke it off, and let Harry lead her back to the center of the room, where Draco was leaning against the wall near the cell entrance, all elegant scowling and long legs and arms crossed over his chest. She looked at him. 'Wheres Ron?'
'I?m here,' said Rons voice, from a spot next to Draco. 'Why?'
'Erm,' said Hermione, staring.
'I threw the Invisibility Cloak on him,' said Draco blandly. 'I got sick of looking at his face.'
There was a sputtering sound, and Ron reappeared, having wriggled out from under the cloak he had, apparently, not noticed he was wearing. He was glaring at Draco again, and quite pink around the ears. 'You — sodding — bastard — '
Hermione seized hold of him and dragged him towards the exit.
Having turned the Time-Turner over, Ginny found herself falling through clouds of violet blankness, but in no recognizable direction.
It might have been up, down, or sideways through space. Everything had vanished into the violet nothingness. She knew an endless moment of vertigo and rushing motion, then the dizzy emptiness vanished in a breath and she was standing with her feet on solid ground, surrounded by blackness.
She strained her eyes to see, her heart pounding. She had tried to set the Turner to bring her back to the past at the moment after she had left it, but she wasn?t yet adept at setting it. Perhaps she had missed her goal by a few hours, and it was nighttime.
But even in the darkest night she should be able to see her own hands in front of her face.
She scrambled for her wand, and fumbled it out of her pocket.
'Lumos,' she whispered.
Light blossomed from the wands end, lighting her surroundings.
She was standing in the corridor, exactly where she had expected to arrive. It looked much the same, although the floor was thickly layered in dust, and the torches were missing from the wall brackets.
She hurried forward, suddenly desperate to get outside of the castle, which had a terrible, grim, deserted sort of feeling. Her feet slapping the dusty floor made the only sound: there was no whistle of wind, not even the sound of insects. She reached the end of the corridor, found a heavy, curving stone staircase, and barreled down it as fast as safety permitted. When she reached the foot of the stairs, she found herself in a huge antechamber whose floor, like a chessboard, was patterned with green and white squares of marble. She raced across the floor to the huge double doors, yanked them open, and stepped outside.
