Cedric and Hermione appeared, exhausted, beneath the quidditch pitch.

They leaned against each other and sank slowly to the ground, breathing deeply.

After a few miutes, Hermione cocked her head to one side, and sat up straight. "If this were a book," she commented, "this would be when we share our first kiss."

Cedric did not sit up, but rather remained resting on his back.

"But I'm not the main character. It should be Neville who's with you. And I'm still with Cho. And she may have been taken prisoner, which rather doesn't put me in the mood. And," he pushed himself up, "no offense but I don't really see you that way."

Hermione nodded, lips pursed.

"I suppose you're right." She sighed. "I suppose I just liked the idea of being in a book."

"It is a bit romantic, yeah."

"Well there's that..." Hermione bit her lip. "And in books the guys tend to win at the end." She looked at Cedric, then back at the castle, whose lights were flickering with green and black as far as several stories up, though not yet at the tops of the highest towers. Her guess was that they had another five minutes at least. "Especially when the odds seem overwhelmingly against them."

Her guess was wrong.

Amycus Carrow didn't have the power to frighten them as much as his daughters did. Perhaps it was the fact that he wasn't a classmate. Perhaps it was how matter-of-factly he bound them and levitated them along as he flew into the castle. Perhaps they were simply too tired to be scared any more.

"Hi, Luna." Cedric said, when the death eaters had finally backed off long enough for them to take stock of the other prisoners around him. "Hi, Professor Flitwick."

"Thanks for joining us!" Luna had an unrealistic amount of cheer in her voice. "It's been rather lonely. Even the swkwlds have been a bit scarce."

Cedric noticed, as she turned her head, brightly colored bruises covering the right side of her face, and a trickle of dried blood at her lips.

Her robes were still mostly intact, and he whispered a silent thanks for that. As with the others, her hands were bound above her head, and her pale arms were even worse in the dank dungeon, almost glowing with lack of blood flow.

Professor Flitwick was gagged. None of their wands were in sight.

Hermione filled in the silence.

"Are there usually many... Swick wool duhs?"

"Swkwlds." Luna corrected her pronunciation. "It's Welsh. They're usually all over. They keep the dust out of the air. They're like tiny dustpans. They're rather convenient." Luna coughed briefly. "You can tell they're gone from how dirty the air is."

"It musssssst be painful," a voice hissed into Cedric's ear as thought from against the wall behind him. From the looks on his friends' faces, they had heard it too, as had the two death eaters who had been spacing out but now came rushing to attention.

"Terribly painful to know that your... friendssss... will never believe you. Never ressspect you. It makesss one wonder."

There was no word but slither to describe how the dark lord entered the room. His face with flattened nose, his tongue forked and darting thinly out as he spoke, his robes ending in a thick tail with no legs visible. Around and through mists of smoke which surrounded him an actual snake moved, but silently.

"Perhapssss you don't feel the ssssame sssenssse of comraderie, missss Lovegood?" Voldemort's voice was eerily close, though he stayed somewhat far from them. His pet snake did not. It approached, and began climbing up Luna's leg, underneath her robes.

Hermione tensed, glared.

Cedric took a deep breath. Wait. Find an opening. Find an escape. That was the only way he could help.

Luna shrieked. A short, desperate cry that she quickly masked with the opening lyrics to an old folk song. By the end of the first verse she was still stuttering, but barely.

"One of you knows my secret. And I will find out how you know. There is no escape, no victory, no opening. You will stay, and Nagini will have her dinner. A tiny nibble to start. Just the smallest piece, every day, until you are ready to talk. And once you have talked, I will allow you to die."