A/N Thank you all again for your generosity with this fic. You make writing it much easier.

Chapter 2

Every muscle in Hermione's body was aching. Each slight movement she made caused pain to flare across her body.

Eyes still firmly closed, she attempted to recall what had happened to make her feel this way. She could remember Hagrid crying and then Ron throwing himself out from under the invisibility cloak after Scabbers. She winced as she recalled the lethal branches of the Whomping Willow. Then everything seemed to speed up: the Shrieking Shack, Sirius Black, Professor Lupin, Expelliarmus, Peter Pettigrew, a werewolf and dementors, hundreds of dementors. But there was more – the hospital wing, the time-turner, Buckbeak, Harry, falling…

They'd fallen from Buckbeak, hundreds of feet off the ground.

Perhaps she was dead.

The thought terrified her so much that she opened her eyes.

It was quite dark in the room, but light enough to slightly ease her fears that she was in some sort of afterlife. Above her head there seemed to be a stone ceiling and she relaxed even more at her belief that she was safely at Hogwarts, though why she wasn't in the hospital wing, she couldn't understand.

Hermione forced herself to sit up and take stock of where she was; chests, tables, chairs and other pieces of broken furniture surrounded her from her seat on the hard stone floor. What a strange place to put her in.

She was completely alone, too. Harry wasn't here. A prickly feeling covered her whole body and she pushed her cloak away from her as she grew uncomfortably hot. If she had survived that fall, then surely Harry had too. She had to believe that. Harry was in another room like hers, that was all.

She made to get to her feet so she could see if she was able to get out, when a sudden realisation made her gasp; they had failed to save Sirius Black!

Hermione didn't know how much time they had lost since falling from Buckbeak but it seemed almost impossible that they would be able to rescue Sirius from a dementor's kiss now. It had probably already happened. Somewhere in the castle there was an innocent man condemned to a masquerade of life without a soul. Her stomach roiled and she got on her knees, retching, though luckily she was not sick.

And then there was the comprehension of how much trouble she, Harry and Professor Dumbledore would be in. They had attempted to undermine the Minister of Magic's sentencing of a convicted criminal by using time travel! Hermione had promised Professor McGonagall that she wouldn't misuse the time-turner and now she was facing certain expulsion, if not a trip to Azkaban herself!

Dumbledore would more than likely be removed from his post of Headmaster at Hogwarts too unless she and Harry could keep him out of it. Yes. She'd say it was all her own idea. She could save Harry too if she told the Minister that she'd taken Harry against his will, which was actually true. None of this was Harry's fault. It was her time-turner after all.

Suddenly she realised why she was being kept here and not in the hospital wing; this was some sort of holding room before the authorities dealt with her.

She retched again, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. She could just picture her parent's faces when they found out what she'd done.

Hermione could feel the chain of the time-turner tracing a cold line against her skin. Unable to bear its touch, she drew it over her head and was about to fling it away when she saw that the time-turner was gone. Only a tiny piece of gold and jagged glass remained where the hourglass had once been…

She needed to find Harry, now.

Hermione raced towards the old wooden door and attempted to open it. Locked. She searched quickly and thoroughly through her robe but she could not find her wand.

Fighting down hysteria now, Hermione returned to the wooden door and started pounding her fists on it. "Harry?" she screamed. She needed to find out what had happened. She'd never heard of a time-turner being broken before. She dreaded to think what the consequences might be. "Harry, can you hear me? Harry?"

Her final scream was cut off as she heard the unmistakeable sound of a key being put in the lock. She scrambled away, feeling utterly defenceless to face whoever was on the other side of that door without her wand.

The first to enter the room was a man who looked about forty. His long face was matched with his hair, though his beard was trimmed short. He was swiftly followed by two boys who looked similar in age to her and Harry. One had the dark hair and long face of the man, leading Hermione to believe them to be father and son, while the other boy's hair was a mix of red and brown. The last to enter was a small, older man, clothed in a great, grey cloak with huge sleeves that nearly reached the floor.

They were all gazing at her with wide, curious eyes and Hermione was dismayed to discover that none of them was even slightly familiar. Their style of clothing seemed distinctly old-fashioned, with hose on their legs, tops that looked more like tunics and cloaks that appeared to be made of real animal fur.

"Where's Harry?" She blurted; her fear for her best friend out-weighing her anxiety of these strangers. "Who are you and why are you keeping me here?" The boys exchanged stunned expressions but the older men both looked disappointed. "Why won't you answer me? Harry?" She yelled again, moving forward to try and get past, but they moved to block her. "Harry?" Her throat burned in protest but she didn't care.

The grey man was easily the weakest link so she ran at him, dodging to the side to avoid his grasp. She was almost at the door but a pair of hands grabbed her waist and pulled her back. "No, I want to see Harry!" she yelled as she lashed out with elbows, feet, arms and nails. There were shouts and yells around her but above her own screams she couldn't make out what they said. Her shoe connected with something hard behind her and the grip around her waist loosened enough for her to break free.

She stumbled forwards and ran straight into the chest of the long faced man. The collision made her fall to the floor and a pair of hands pinned her arms tightly behind her back. She cried out at the pain lacing up her arms but she refused to let any tears show.

"We should take her to see the boy." It was the grey man who spoke but Hermione couldn't understand a single word that he said.

"Are you sure seeing him unconscious won't set her off again?" The man in front of her replied but his words also didn't make any sense. Dread filled her stomach. Was it possible that these people didn't speak English?

"I cannot be sure, my lord, but I believe it would help her to see he has come to no harm." Hermione listened but was unable to comprehend. She knew a very limited amount of French and even a tiny bit of Spanish but she was pretty sure they weren't speaking in those languages either. Given the broken time-turner, the strangers' clothes and her belief that she was still in Hogwarts, the most logical explanation was that she had been transported hundreds of years in to the past and these people were in fact speaking some form of Old English that she couldn't understand. If this was true then, quite simply, her entire world had been turned on its head.

Momentarily stunned, she found herself being pulled gently to her feet and escorted from the room. A man decked in leather armour stood with a spear just outside the door and he gaped openly at her. Or, rather, at her legs. Hermione glanced down at herself, to see what he was staring at but they looked perfectly normal to her. By his expression you'd expect he'd never seen a pair of legs before, Hermione thought. But if she truly was back in the middle ages or even beyond, then he probably didn't see bare legs on show very often.

She was marched down some unfamiliar stone steps to another room with a guard. This man was able to hide his surprise better but Hermione hardly noticed, hopeful as she was that Harry lay on the other side of the door.

When the grey man opened the door, at first all she could see were barrels, but there on the floor was her best friend. "Harry!" she cried, less vociferously than before, as relief rolled over her in waves. She pulled forwards and whichever of the boys was holding her, let her go.

Hermione knelt down next to her best friend and barely restrained herself from throwing her arms around his prone figure. She settled instead for grabbing and squeezing one of his hands between her own. She wasn't alone; whatever she would have to face here, she wouldn't be going through it on her own. Tears welled up in her eyes as the gravity of the situation began to dawn on her.

She sensed someone kneel next to her and she brushed the moisture from her eyes. She didn't want to show weakness in front of these strangers.

It was the boy with the red and brown hair. His blue eyes were clear and kind but she tensed all the same. He placed a hand on his chest and said, "Robb," very slowly and clearly.

Is that his name? She wondered. "Robb," she repeated and the boy nodded with a broad smile. The dark boy came forward and copied the action of putting his hand against his chest.

"Jon."

"Jon." She repeated, feeling very much like a parrot. She pointed at the first boy and said, "Robb." Then at the other she said, "Jon." They nodded again and indicated for her to speak her own name.

She held a hand to her own chest this time and said, "Hermione."

The boys' tongues stumbled over the foreign name and she almost smiled. It took a few more repetitions from them before they could say her name correctly.

"Hermione," Harry murmured next to her, causing her to jump. The boy's eyes were still closed but he seemed to be coming round.

"Harry!" Hermione cried, taking his hand and squeezing it again. "Harry, wake up."

Harry groaned and used his free arm to rub at his eyes underneath his glasses. "The beds in the hospital wing are a lot more uncomfortable than I remember." He muttered sleepily.

"Um, Harry we're not in the hospital wing," Hermione explained gently. She took a deep steadying breath. How was she supposed to explain this situation to Harry? She glanced around at the strangers. At least none of them would understand what they were saying.

Harry finally took his hand away from his eyes, seeing his surroundings and the people in the room for the first time. "Er, Hermione…?" Harry asked weakly.

"Harry, I don't want you to overreact but it appears that my time-turner has been broken and the consequences have sent us here, whenever here might be." She said breathlessly. Harry's brow creased at her words, as though his brain was trying to process what it had heard.

His face paled and he looked at his left palm in dismay. "Your time thing?"

"Yes, the hourglass."

"It was me." Harry said miserably. "I broke it. When we fell it was right before my eyes and I just grabbed it by instinct." He showed her the palm of his hand – it had half a dozen small cuts and she could just make out a couple of glass fragments embedded in the wounds. "Hermione, I'm sorry. It's all my fault!"

His green eyes were full of sorrow and Hermione sincerely wished she'd never asked to take up so many lessons this year. "Don't be ridiculous, Harry, you saved us! If you hadn't broken the time-turner then we would've certainly died!" Hermione argued, the mournful expression in Harry's eyes lessening somewhat.

"But…where are we? Who are those people?" He nodded in the direction of Robb, Jon and whoever the others were. They were watching the encounter with curious eyes.

"I don't really know," Hermione admitted. "But they don't speak our English or any language I might recognise. I think that when the time-turner broke it sent us so far back in the past that English has changed in to something we don't understand anymore."

Harry stared at the strangers warily. "You think we're still in Hogwarts but just in a different time?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? A working time-turner can only move you to a certain extent in terms of both time and physical location. I know my one was broken but…" The sceptical expression on Harry's face made her doubt herself. "You mean you don't think this is Hogwarts?"

Harry shrugged. "It doesn't feel right."

Hermione looked round at the walls again. They were made of stone, like Hogwarts' walls, but that didn't mean she was still in her beloved school. Nor had she ever thought Hogwarts had employed guards with weapons. She had read Hogwarts: A History, numerous times and it had never been mentioned. Plus, she hadn't glimpsed a single wand...

"Well, we won't know for sure until we get out of here." She glanced over her shoulder again at the staring strangers and it was a queer feeling to be able to talk openly about the situation with Harry, while knowing that the others couldn't understand a word she said. "Can you discretely check to see if you have your wand?" she asked. "I don't have mine but there's a good chance it came out of my robe when we fell." Harry took his hand from hers and placed both of his over his robe pockets. The look in his eyes told her all that she needed to know.

"It's not there," he confirmed.

Hermione sighed. "If we had use of magic then we could escape from these people, find out where we are and…"

"And what, Hermione? The time turner is broken, we don't know when or where we are and even if we did, we don't know the first thing about time travel to the future!" Harry pointed out

"We just have to be patient," she declared, crossing her arms. "There's no point in giving up before we've started. If there's a way for us to get home then I'll find it. If magic brought us here, then there must be a way for magic to take us back!" He looked far from convinced but she could understand how he felt; in all of her reading and research, she had never found an account of any one ever succeeding in travelling forwards in time before. She sighed. "You're right though, there's no point in escaping now until we have more information."

Harry rubbed his hand over his eyes again. "I can't believe this is real," he muttered. "It's insane. Are you sure this isn't just some crazy dream I'm having." He attempted to smile at her but Hermione couldn't return the gesture. His lips dropped but then his eyes abruptly widened. "Sirius!" He cried in despair. "What's happened to Sirius? We were supposed to save him!"

Hermione reconsidered her earlier thoughts about Sirius Black's fate. Their extreme time travel meant that there was a possibility of hope for Harry's godfather. "We might still be able to save him." She said, squeezing his hand and he looked like he desperately wanted to believe her. "When you leave one time stream and go to another, that first time stream is essentially paused until you return to it. As far as we're concerned, time stopped at Hogwarts the instant we disappeared from the Hospital Wing. Absolutely anything possible could happen after that moment but until we get back to a point in time after we left, we won't know." Harry screwed up his face in concentration.

"But what if we never get back there?" He said at last.

"We'll never know if that will happen or not." Hermione replied.

"So basically we've just got to forget about everything that was part of our lives before I broke your time thing because it doesn't matter anymore?" Harry did not look pleased with that prospect.

"You're twisting my words." Hermione muttered, shaking her head. "Of course we won't forget anything about home, do you really think we could? But we know that our lives there are still waiting for us when we return."

"If we return." He muttered bitterly.

She'd tried to be strong for Harry, to show him that this wasn't a hopeless situation but the acknowledgement that she might never get to see her family again was suddenly too much to bear. With a sob, she threw her arms around him, her tears beginning to dampen his shoulder. Harry had ever been a reluctant hugger, but for once he seemed to need the comfort of an embrace too because his arms wrapped tight around her chest.

The sound of someone talking made them draw apart. Hermione didn't know who had spoken and of course, what was said. The four continued to stare. Hermione expected that it was very boring to watch two people have a conversation in a foreign language. She just hoped that once these people saw that she and Harry were no threat, they would let them stay long enough to figure out some answers.

"They look very suspicious of us," Harry said, his eyes moving from one figure to the other.

"Well, of course they are," she replied. "It's bad enough if they just found us unconscious and have now discovered we don't speak their language, but if they actually saw us arrive?" She left the rest unsaid. They'd already broken the most important rule of time-travel by being seen, but that had been out of their hands. "If you're right and this isn't Hogwarts, then these people are probably muggles."

"Don't worry, I remember that summer homework on medieval witch burning. Even if I do get my wand back, I don't plan on revealing magic to them and being burned at the stake." Harry said with a slight smile but Hermione frowned.

"Don't joke about that." She warned. "I might know the incantation for a flame-freezing charm but I've never performed one. Not to mention that we've never apparated either."

Harry held his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay."

"I've already made things bad enough by attacking them," she mumbled.

"You…what?" Harry asked, amazed.

"I didn't know that they couldn't understand what I was saying so when they wouldn't let me see you I got scared and angry." She suddenly became very interested in playing with her tie. "I made an escape attempt out of the door but one of the boys grabbed me and I went a bit mad. I think I gave Jon or Robb a horrible kick on the shin."

Harry laughed. "That still doesn't sound as good as when you slapped Malfoy."

Hermione's cheeks flamed red. "He deserved it," she replied defensively. She felt much more comfortable talking about this, than the elephant in the room. "He shouldn't have done that cruel impression of Hagrid."

"Oh, I don't disagree." Harry said with a grin. But the moment passed and they returned to reality. "So, which one's which?"

The boys seemed to sense that they were being spoken of because they stood a little taller and eyed Harry even more curiously.

"Jon is the one with the dark hair." Hermione explained. "I think he's the son of the man with the long hair. The other one's Robb." She pointed then at Harry and said his name. She was unsurprised that they found his name easier to pronounce than her own.

There followed an awkward moment of silence where both sides seemed to realise that was about all that could be communicated at this moment. Hermione was almost tempted to ask the grey man and the one with the long hair what their names were, but the cool grey gaze of the latter made her keep her mouth closed.

It was only the sound of Harry's stomach rumbling that seemed to break the moment.

"They should have food." The long haired one said.

Hermione assumed it was some sort of order because the grey one bowed his head slightly and replied, "Would you prefer to keep them separate, my lord?"

Long hair nodded. "For now." He made a gesture with his hand which prompted movement from Jon and Robb. Hermione shrank back against Harry as the boys came closer and reached out to her, obviously wary of how she had attacked them the last time they had tried to contain her.

"Go with them." Harry instructed calmly. "It'll be fine." Hermione was perfectly aware that neither of them knew that for sure. Apart from a couple of names, they really knew nothing about these people. "All we can do is what we are told. They'll soon see that we mean no harm." Harry gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and it gave Hermione the courage to get to her feet without being forced.

As she was escorted from the door she gave Harry one last glance. He looked so strange sitting amongst all those barrels. "Bye, Harry." He waved and then the door was closed and locked by Grey.

On the way back to her room she was alert enough to pay more attention to her surroundings. The uncomfortable prickling feeling crept over her again at the unfamiliarity of everything. Of course, if this was Hogwarts, then things were bound to change in the castle over hundreds of years and she couldn't claim to know every staircase and room of it. But Harry has been right. It didn't feel like Hogwarts. There were no moving portraits or tapestries, no trick steps or ghosts floating past. In short, there was no sense of magic.

The room of broken furniture looked just as it had when she had left it but Grey lit a lamp for her so she could see more of it.

"I'll be back shortly with something for you to eat and drink." Grey said.

"She'll need some form of bedding and some new clothes." This time it was Long hair. Hermione sighed as he left her room. She hated not knowing what they were saying!

"I think the clothes suit her just fine." Robb whispered to Jon with a grin but an unknowing Hermione seated herself with frustration on a still sturdy looking table as her door was locked too.

She passed her time by inspecting the furniture in the room. There was nothing particularly exciting there and further doubts crept into her about the magical ability of her captors. There was nothing here that a simple reparo wouldn't have fixed.

She managed to climb her way over to the narrow window at the far end of the room. To even call it a window was extremely generous as it was really an arrow slit. Judging by the fact that she could only see darkness and a single star through it, Hermione assumed that it was evening. She sat back on a chest in disgust. Why couldn't they have at least put her in a room with a semi-decent view?

Her door opened and Grey entered with a steaming wooden bowl of stew. She clambered her way over to him eagerly, only just realising how hungry she was. Taking the bowl from him gratefully, Hermione barely noticed one of the guards lay some sort of bedding on the ground as well as some clothing.

Without the intimidating gaze of the other man, Grey seemed to be almost kindly as he surveyed her. "You know my name is Hermione," she made sure to say the last word clearly. "But what is your name?" She held out a hand towards him and he seemed to grasp what she meant.

"Luwin."

"Luwin?" She repeated after swallowing a mouthful of the stew. It was nice. Beef if she wasn't mistaken.

He nodded. "Maester Luwin."

She frowned as she chewed. Was Maester his first name or his surname? Or perhaps it was a professional title? She had so many questions.

"Maester Luwin."

He corrected her slightly and she tried again. He smiled and left shortly with her empty bowl. She looked down at her new clothes. There was a long pale green dress that looked as though it would cover every part of her body except her head and a number of more shoddy items that looked as though they were undergarments.

She put them aside and reached for her robe. She'd wear the clothes tomorrow. For one last night she'd be Hermione Granger, Gryffindor student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The bedding felt suspiciously like a straw filled sheet, but she was so grateful that they'd given her anything at all that she hardly cared. She dragged it away from the door, feeling slightly exposed there, to a snug part of the room that was surrounded by two cupboards. Lying on her mattress with the furniture looming over her, it almost felt as though she was enclosed within her four-poster at Hogwarts.

Tears came unbidden to her eyes and she screwed them shut to stop more forming. If she started crying now then she doubted she'd ever stop.

The Standard book of Spells, Grade 1, by Miranda Goshawk, she recited in her head to distract herself. This was a familiar routine for Hermione as she often used this technique to get to sleep when her mind was on other problems. She moved mentally through the start of the book, reciting the introduction and listing the chapters, already beginning to feel her thoughts slowing down.

After a few minutes of mental recitation she came to The Unlocking Charm. Hermione smiled at her naïve belief that she and Harry should have simply retrieved their wands, unlocked their doors and escaped to freedom before finding out about where and when they were.

Alohomora, she thought mockingly and waved her hand in the general direction of the door.

Encased as she was between the furniture and drifting off to sleep, Hermione didn't hear the click from the keyhole as the door unlocked.

A/N Hope you liked it!

Your thoughts are most welcome.

Love,

Lil Drop of Magic