After what seemed like an hour, hands stilled and lips parted.
Bodies suddenly jerked backwards as mind overcame matter and the hormone raging bodies were subdued by the more sensible thinking brains.
They stared at each other in horror.
Bellatrix, no longer a teenager and much more practiced in the art of pretending nothing had happened then Harry, recovered first.
"See?" she said, getting up and brushing the dust off her robes and cloak, "only a few rocks. The ceiling has held. We're not in the middle of the lake."
Harry gasped for breath.
"Are you coming or what?" Bellatrix sneered, looking at the puddle of teenager on the floor.
Taking a deep breath, Harry managed, "Don't. EVER. Do. That. Again."
Another breath, and he could add, "You nearly got us killed! How stupid can you be?"
Bellatrix shot him a glare.
"I'd be careful if I were you," she said coldly, "I WILL kill you, as soon as we are out of here."
"Not if I kill you first," Harry retorted, confused, furious, and feeling very guilty.
They climbed over the boulders and finally reached the end of the corridor.
"Right," Bellatrix said.
"Left," Harry corrected.
"What?"
"Left. We need to go left."
The witch was about to reach for her wand, but thought better of it and simply stalked away, robes billowing. Briefly, Harry wondered if the Death Eater course 101 was dedicated to making robes billow like that. Snape's robes did that too. Though Snape's ass wasn't nearly as nice as Bella's.
Nearly gagging at this line of thought, Harry shook his head and slapped it for good measure.
Finally, after another twenty left and rights, they reached a solid wall.
"Looks like the little painting was having us on," Bella nearly exploded in fury.
"Oh, shut up," Harry said, taking out his wand.
"Here it is," he said after some scanning, "This is the door."
Casting the detection spells Bill taught him, he detected at least four curses. Two of them of opposite categories.
"Oh great," he groaned. Looking around, he gave the witch the torch.
"You might as well sit down," he grumbled, "this'll take a while. It's complicated."
Bellatrix raised an eyebrow. "You can break curses?"
Harry shrugged. "I'm only an amateur, but since we have no professional at hand…"
Three of the curses would easily have been disspelled with an adaptation of a basic countercurse, but the fourth complicated matters significantly. Not only did it make the countercurse for the opposite category impossible, it also meant that using the counter for the other two wouldn't work either.
Harry pulled out the book Bill had given him and started studying.
After an hour or two, he nodded.
"Ok. So. I need to use the countercurse that will provoke the least reaction, and cast a containment field first. In that field I need to use the countercurse that is adapted to the particular curse."
Bella stared at him.
"Well, it makes sense to me," Harry said defensively.
"Let's see. I can't do both at the same time. Can you cast things like this?"
Bellatrix shook her head.
"Pity. Erm…darn. Now I understand why cursebreakers work in teams so often. Perhaps if I can tie the shield to a password so that it automatically activates after I cast the countercurses…"
Harry sighed.
"You had better stand back a bit," he said.
Then he raised his wand, creating the shield first.
"Ok. One down, four to go," he trembled a bit as he levelled his wand at the wall.
"Finite Incantatem," he said.
The wall glowered and runes appeared.
Meticulously aiming for each of the runes, Harry cast the appropriate countercurse, save one.
As he cast the last counter, the wall began to crack and sparkle with electricity, but the moment the last word had fallen from his lips, Harry stepped back and a shield formed.
The electrical outburst attacked the shield and it wavered.
It was Harry's most terrifying moment. Not counting kissing his arch enemy, of course.
Feeding more strength to the shield, it held until the energy was spent and the runes fell, leaving a stone door behind.
"There," Harry said, sitting down, "done."
Bellatrix glowed with pleasure.
"Good, now hiss something and we can get out of here," she said.
Harry smirked.
"Honestly, how stupid do you think I am? I'm spent; I need rest. If we exit now, you could easily defeat me. No, I'm going to take a nap," he rolled over and yawned, "and when I've recovered, we'll see about getting out…" he slept before he had properly finished the sentence.
Three hours later he woke up to find Bellatrix sitting in 30 feet away, studying her Dark Mark.
"Ready?"
She nodded and got up.
"I'm going to press my Mark to the door, and you need to speak at the same time. I presume my Lord just said 'open', I don't speak parseltongue, of course."
The tension in the air intensified, and they both grabbed their wands.
Bellatrix put her Dark Mark on the wall.
"Open, Sesame," Harry hissed.
The door seemed to melt away into a short tunnel.
And at the end of the tunnel, there was a light.
They exited to bright sunlight in the mountains just beyond Hogwarts.
And suddenly they both had their wands aimed at the other.
"I swore I would kill you," Harry said.
"And I would like nothing better then to bring your head to my Lord on a platter," Bellatrix stated.
They stood there for what seemed like hours, neither of them making the first move.
Then finally, Bellatrix looked away.
"I can give you about six hours to warn Snape," she said, "after that I can no longer explain my delay from the moment we left here to when I reported back to the Dark Lord."
Harry couldn't believe his ears. For a moment, the thought of simply taking her out was all that filled his mind. Sirius! She killed Sirius!
"Next time, I will kill you," he said, his voice shaking.
"Not if I kill you first," she used his own words against him. Then she nodded.
"I'm counting on a decent fight, next time, Potter."
With that, she apparated away, and Harry began his own journey back to the school.