times. She felt herself shot backward as if hurled from a cannon, everything spinning away behind her eyes into gray mist. She threw her hand out and caught at something -
Rons hand — she seized his fingers and gripped them with terrific force. She felt him grip her hand in return, and a desperate relief flooded through her — Ron was alive, he returned the clasp on her hand, she was not alone. She gasped in relief — or tried to.
There was no air. She gasped again, in disbelief, but her lungs strained at the vacuum. I?m dying, she thought, and a desperate fear raced through her veins. Beating it back, she thought of Harry.
She could not die. She had to get to Harry, to protect him. Without her, Harry would die. That Harry had survived the second year of his life at all proved that it was possible to keep someone alive by loving them enough.
Her vision was suddenly split by shards of blue light, and for a split second she saw Harry, actually saw him, as clearly as if he stood before her. He sat with his back to a blue wall, his hands behind him, and his clothes were torn as if they had been shredded by the claws of some wild animal. His slender body sagged as if he were exhausted, and she couldn?t see his face — his head was bowed, his face hidden by dark hair, and he was… covered in blood.
She threw herself forward, just as the vision vanished, the world sealing itself back up. She felt Rons hand scrabble after hers, but their fingers slipped, barely touching now — and he was gone. No!
She flailed out towards Ron with her hand, but she could neither see nor feel anything beyond the heaving, freezing gray mist, and the chain of the Time-Turner was gone from her throat -
'Oh!' Hermione gasped out loud as the gray mist suddenly vanished and she pitched forward hard, slamming her hands into the ground.
Her knees collapsed and for a moment she just lay still, catching her breath, her eyes screwed shut.
When she opened them, the first thing she saw was brilliant blue sky. This was disconcerting. Not, however, as disconcerting as the realization that she was no longer connected to Ron and Ginny via the chain of the Time- Turner.
She hurled herself into a sitting position and stared around wildly.
Rubble. She was sitting among a mass of rubble, the remnants of some huge structure which had suffered a massive bout of destruction: broken stone and smashed glass littered the churned earth, as did the trunks of trees ripped from the ground, their roots clawing the sky. The air carried a smell of burning wood: sticky pitch, sharp-burning cedar. Huge listing chunks of stone showed where there had once been walls: one was even adorned with a shredded remnant of tapestry, another sported a staircase that ended abruptly in midair.
Hermiones eyes saw all this as she scanned the scene, but she barely took it in. She was searching, her heart pounding…
There. A flash of red.
She leaped to her feet and raced forward, staggering over broken paving stones and twisted bits of metal that looked as if they had been melted in some great blast. Nearly tripping over a pile of smashed stones, she rounded a corner and saw Ron.
He was kneeling on a pile of broken stone, gazing around with a rueful expression. Hermione flew over to him and threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely before he had a second to react.
'Oww..gerroff Hermione. No need to shake me. I?m not a martini,' he said, looking rather gratified anyway. 'I?m okay. Landed just fine. For a second there I thought I?d dropped the Invisibility Cloak,' he added, pulling the silvery Cloak out of his pocket briefly and showing it to her before tucking it back in. 'Gave me a horrid turn.'
She released him, and giggled — Ron was so covered in dust and ash that his flame-red hair was streaked with white, and he was indescribably filthy. He immediately seemed to know exactly why she was laughing.
'You look just as bad as I do,' he pointed out, rubbing his cheek with the back of his sleeve, which served to redistribute the dirt without actually removing any of it. 'Don?t think you don?t.'
But Hermione had quickly sobered. 'Ginny — '
Ron paled under the layers of ash. 'Shes not with you?'
'I?m over here,' came Ginnys voice. Hermione turned and saw the slender figure of Ginny clambering over an upended tree trunk. Like Ron, she was filthy, her face and hands streaked black with ash and dirt. 'What happened here?' she demanded crossly, tossing back her flaming hair. 'It looks like Fred and George set off the worlds biggest Filibuster Firecracker.'
'Aftermath of a magical battle,' said Hermione briefly, and shivered.
It was cold, despite the brilliance of the sun. She recognized the slant of it as winter sunlight. Which made sense — if a time turner could take them back to any year, surely it could take them back to any season of that year. She just wished she?d dressed more warmly.
'Must have been a hell of a battle,' said Ron, looking impressed.
'I?ve never seen anything so destroyed. At this point, a direct hit by a meteorite would count as gentrification.'
'Mmm,' agreed Hermione, not really listening.
Ron reached out and touched her cheek lightly. 'What is it, Hermione?'
'I?m just wondering where everyone is. Why would the Turner be set to bring us back to a place where everything is destroyed? We must have arrived after the battle with Salazar…'
'Where are we?' demanded Ginny, glancing around.
'Just where we were,' said Hermione. 'The Time-Turner moves you in time, not place. So it looks like your father was right — the Burrow was a castle, once. Only it was razed down to the foundations. But there must be some survivors…'
'Survivors!'
For a moment, Hermione thought she was hearing an echo. Then, glancing up, she saw someone poised on a slant of overhanging rock above where she, Ron and Ginny were standing. Instinctively, she stepped back, trying to push Ron and Ginny behind her. The sunlight was behind the person standing above them, so she could see clearly only the outline of a robed wizard or witch, wand out, staring down at them. 'Survivors!' the person
