i started to fall, and the silence deafened

[honestlyrubbish]

Glass shattered in every which way as Hermione felt her legs give out from under her, knees colliding unpleasantly with the ground while she managed to instinctively cover the back of her neck. Even as the pain shot through her body, some remaining with a dull ache that dug too deep in her bones, her immediate thought was that she was free to

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[of_badfaith]

Ron... Harry?

There was no mistaking it. It was no coincidence. It wasn't a nightmare, though Lord knew he'd had ones similar. With a sigh, Draco Malfoy pushed to his feet, dusting sand off of his hideous khaki cargo shorts -- all Muggle clothes, all the time for him now -- and stalked closer.

His hands itched for a wand, but it had been three years since he'd been able to use one reliably, a collection of them hidden uselessly in a box under his bed.

Standing over her, tall and with his silver hair hanging loosely across his forehead, he arched one pale brow and drawled, "Granger," his eyes straying immediately to the word scrawled across her arm. Oh, of course.

[honestlyrubbish]

Hermione had been focusing so intently on the mess in front of her, nearly dropping to her knees to examine it all (if it weren't for the fact, of course, that her legs felt very much like they'd just been the recipients of a Jelly-Legs Jinx) and try and determine the reason for the failed charm. The natural assumption was that she was in some place where magic was being suppressed, thorough enough that it even bothered to throw off an extension charm; the pounding in her ears, however, made it very hard indeed to concentrate on the idea

[of_badfaith]

"Right. It was my dream to find myself trapped on a beach with you, with no magic," Draco said, laughter swelling up behind the words, an almost hysterical edge to it. Where there was Granger, Weasley wasn't far behind, and that would inevitably bring Potter.

The fact that he couldn't decipher his feelings on the issue was a bit of a problem.

"Whatever brought you here, did the same to me." Crouching, he plucked a crumpled brassiere up from the sand, letting it dangle from the end of his pinkie with that same blank, but oddly amused expression. "You certainly didn't pack light, I see."

[honestlyrubbish]

The laugh was somehow chilling, in spite of the fact that Hermione couldn't detect very much malice behind it, if there was indeed any at all. Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise, that some of them would remain only as shells of their former selves once the war fell into the background (which it seemed to be right then, even if Hermione still couldn't determine why or how). The only relief came in that small detail Draco gave her- apparently, magic had been suppressed in this place after all. She bit down the temptation to tell him that it couldn't be that there was no magic- how could, after all, magic as a whole disappear, the idea itself was preposterous- and simply that something was weighing down on their abilities, and fixated instead on the fact that he was picking up an article of her clothing that she frankly didn't want him within ten meters of.

"Give that back," she demanded, half-tempted to sock him in the jaw as she closed the distance between the two of them and reached to try and swipe the brassiere away. "'