He seemed to realise what they had to do in less time that it had taken her. After reaching out to see where she was, he then grasped her chin and sealed his mouth over hers.
Air! Oh sweet Jesus, he was giving her air!
She took it from him greedily and then wrenched her mouth away when she realised this was probably going to mean his death as well.
Draco was operating purely on faith, apparently, for he had come without a wand. There was no way, then, to tell if the wand she had been using was simply not functioning. She tapped it against his arm anyway. He immediately took it and a part of her felt immense relief not to be the one responsible for failing to rescue them.
It was selfish of her, but she was too far gone to care. She had skipped past panic.
Or maybe not. Maybe all that had already been panic.
She was so light-headed. The pressure on her chest was unbearable. It was taking every ounce of willpower she had to not open her mouth and suck in a lungful of water. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and resigned herself to the fact that she probably wasn't going to be able to open them ever again.
I'm so sorry, Mum and Dad. Harry, Ron, Ginny.Draco.
Draco was still inspecting one side of the cage. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his beautiful, dark wings, as if that alone would help ease the terror of dying.
There was a body floating below them.
He flinched when Hermione tapped the wand she was holding against his arm. He knew that wand. Recognition and familiarity coursed through him. This is my father's wand! He knew it as surely as he knew Hermione's eyes were brown.
His very first spell had been cast on Lucius' wand. He remembered the day very well. Lucius had smiled a rare, genuine smile of pleasure.
They were going to die if he didn't work out how to break the seal on the cage very quickly. He had seen magic like this before. The dungeons they had come from had been imbued with similar spells. If the cage was charmed to prevent magic from the inside, perhaps it was not impervious to magic from the outside.
It seemed so simple a solution, but their survival was going to depend to how far outside the cage the charm extended.
Every charm operated within a set boundary.
The key, however, was not to panic by the fact that they were drowning.
Draco shoved his hand out between the bars and turned the wand back to face the cage. The spell he cast did not work.
Damn it! Perhaps he had to try from further out still, but he didn't have any more arm left to push through the bars. Or maybe he was just plain wrong. Yes, that was entirely possible.
Don't.Panic.
Hermione was no longer holding on to him. He had felt her clutch at him tightly, convulse and then her hands had fallen away. It was acute torture to not be able to turn around to see to her, but Draco needed to concentrate on what he was about to do. If he gave in to his terror, they were going to die for certain.
He jammed his left shoulder in between two bars as violently as he could manage. Some of the rust on the metal flaked away. It was hard to build up the required momentum underwater so he propped his back legs on the wall of bars behind him and pushed.
It worked. His damaged shoulder joint dislocated and the familiar pain radiated through him. He was already in serious danger of passing out from blood loss and was starting to see tiny, white spots flickering before his eyes.
Thanks to the unnatural alignment of his dislocated shoulder, two more inches of his arm passed though in between the bars. The pain was bordering on ridiculous and he was having trouble forcing his hand to maintain its weak grip on the wand.
But he revelled in the pain because it told him he was still alive.
He prayed, not knowing who he was praying too or what exactly for, but he figured God knew complete desperation when He heard it.
When his hand was as far away from the cage as was possible, he turned the wand back towards the bars, made sure he was out of the way of the spell trajectory and then blasted the bars.