𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛.

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The first thing that Hollis could do was smell and listen, because the place they had arrived to was so dark that she couldn't see her own hand a few inches in front of her face.

There was the pungent scent of strong salt that she deeply inhaled after the breathlessness of apparating, along with the vague, metallic smell of something that she recognized to be blood.

The sound of enormous waves as tall as hills made of water crashing against solid, indomitable stone sounded all around them and, to Hollis's slight alarm, right below them. The sounds of water hitting what she assumed were cliffs confirmed that they were indeed by the ocean.

Looking the way she assumed was up, Hollis's eyes were only met by a sky that was painted a heavy, dark steel with thick clouds that wouldn't let even the tiniest bit of starlight penetrate through.

"Reg?" Hollis asked, turning around quickly to try and see where he was. "Where-"

As she rotated though, a small, unexpected rock slick with water and ice skid under her black boots, catching her off guard and slipping.

A firm pair of hands caught her right around the waist.

"Lumos," Regulus muttered, lighting up the two of their faces with pale, blinding white light. 

They locked brown eyes for a few seconds before immediately standing back up, deciding to ignore that little trip.

Hollis lit up her wand as well and was able to get a good view of the scene around her for the first time.

The two of them were standing on a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning viciously below them. Glancing over her shoulder, Hollis saw that there was a towering cliff standing behind her, with large chunks of rock just like the one she and Regulus were standing on nearby it.

Connecting the fragments quickly, Hollis realized that these pieces must have been knocked off the original cliff over some point in time, by an enormous amount of either natural or magical force.

But above this eerie appearance, there was a deeply wrong, magical air surrounding the place that sent a shiver down Hollis's spine from something mental rather than physical.

"I know," whispered Regulus, seeing the sickened expression on her face. "I can feel it, too."

"What is this place?" Hollis asked, turning to him and away from the cliff she had been staring at with intensity. 

Swallowing hard, Regulus knew this was the part where he would have to explain everything to her.

"I think we should both answer each other's questions now."

And so, the two Slytherins sat down on the rocks without even noticing the cold for hours upon hours, completely captivated by the other's story.

At first, the tension between them had been very high, with tightened expressions and emotionless reaction for their sudden lack of trust for one another that had grown with the months of separation.

But then, the more they talked, the more they started to stop focusing on the bad memories between them and change that aim towards the fact that even after everything, they were finally together again.

By the time the sun rose with a dim, blood orange light over the stormy sea only slightly lessened in its ferocity by the change in tide, the purebloods had discovered in fullness what they had missed out on in each other's lives.

All, except that is, the most recent even of what this place was.

"And that makes us wind up here," Regulus said sourly, trying to hold in a yawn after staying up all night talking to her. "I've been waiting for months for the Dark Lord to finish his protections of the object hidden somewhere around here, but it was only a week or so ago that he finally did."

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