A/N: Hey there! This is pretty much as short as the last chapter. It's not that interesting, but I'm getting there! Please remember to review.
The girl who had introduced herself as Elspeth helped them get up, and offered them pieces of ragged cloth to put over their mouths-though Luna put it on her head. Apparently the area they were in was tainted with nuclear radiation.
"What happened here?" Ron asked, astonished.
"What do you mean?" Elspeth replied. "This place-from the looks of it-has been like this for hundreds of years."
"Hundreds of years?" Hermione gasped. "Ron, whatever you did, you are such an IDIOT!"
"It's not my fault," Ron whined.
"Ron, take us back now," Harry said. Ron pulled out the time-turner and twisted and shook it, but it was stuck.
"It's stuck!" he yelled. "Harry?"
"Ron!" Hermione yelled angrily.
"Hermione," Luna called. "And Harry!"
"Luna?" Harry asked, confused.
There's people coming up the stairs," Luna explained. Meanwhile, Elspeth just looked away nervously, not sure what to make of the situation.
"You okay…heard voices…yelling…" a male voice drifted up the stairs.
"Garth, come up here," Elspeth called nervously. "There's something you should see."
"No, that's important," Hermione was saying to Ron. "Don't touch it. Would a spell work?"
"It might muck up the device," Harry pointed out. Luna looked around, not that interested in the conversation.
Hey, this is where your bed was, Harry," Luna remarked. Eventually she reached the wall, and she stopped. Most of the wall was gone, and outside, the country looked bleak and desolate. Even the lake was gone. "Look at this!" she gaped.
The others looked up, and gasped, just noticing their surroundings, and didn't notice a large boy come up the stairs and talk to Elspeth.
"What happened here?" Harry asked softly, but no one answered.
Elspeth and Garth led the four extra people to the cart, where the others on the expedition-Jak, Fian and Qwinn-were waiting. Once Elspeth quietly explained what had happened, they decided to cut the trip short. They would take some books-though it wasn't clear what the books were about- and pots, which Hermione told them were called cauldrons, and anything else they had found. They also found fossilised remnants of some herbs, so they took some of that too.
"What should we do about them?" Jak asked nervously, gesturing to the four teenagers huddled on the steps of the castle.
"We'll bring them back to Obernewtyn," Elspeth replied.
"Would Rushton mind?" Qwinn asked as he heaved a particularly large cauldron onto the cart.
"Oh, Rushton… of course…" Elspeth answered vaguely.
"You shouldn't do that," one of the new people, whom Elspeth recalled was Luna, said.
"What?" Jak asked, confused.
"Pile the cauldrons up. It's bad," Luna said. Jumping down to the cart, she stacked books inside the cauldrons and switched the pots around.
"What are you doing? That took ages to pack!" Fian protested.
"Trust me," Luna said levelly. Looking into Luna's eyes, for some reason he did what she said, and motioned for the others to help her.
Elspeth looked curiously at Luna, and sent a delicate probe into her mind.
'What are you doing?' came a shocked mental voice. Elspeth retreated, startled, as Luan turned around to face her. Luna studied Elspeth's face, then walked up into the crumbling castle where the other three waited, talking to Garth.
'She has a sensitive mind,' Elspeth noted, and frowned. 'Or is she one of us?'