A/N: Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and review and/or favourite this little story. It's getting quite the following. Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out, my muse was elsewhere, determinedly working on plot ideas for stories that may never see the light of day. I have finally managed to wrangle it back in and focus it on this story. So enjoy!

A Darkened World

The Torture of Sleep

In the darkness of the night a frantic scream tore through the night air, shocking Rose out of her sleep. Wide eyed and disoriented she looked around, trying to remember where she was. Then she remembered about the tent she had found herself in the day before. She turned her eyes across the room and in the gloom she could just about make out Harry's bed. It was he who was screaming, and he was violently thrashing about on his bed as he did so, the blankets tangled around him.

"No! Leave her alone! Luna, no! No. Leave them alone! No, don't!"

Rose threw back the blankets that covered her and turned up the gas-powered lamp that sat next to her bed, increasing the amount of light inside the tent, before she darted over towards Harry's bed. She grabbed a flailing arm in a firm grip with her left hand, and placed the palm of her right hand on the side of Harry's face.

"Harry!" she shouted, desperately trying to wake him "Harry, wake up."

His emerald green eyes opened and he stared at her. He was pale and covered in sweat; his soaked hair was stuck to his forehead, covering his scar, and his damp t-shirt was clinging to his chest. His breaths came in deep, heaving gasps, and his eyes were full of a mixture of fear, anger and confusion.

He stared at her, almost as if he was trying to comprehend who she was.

"Hermione?" he asked in a shaky voice.

Rose sighed and shook her head "No Harry. I'm Rose, remember."

He continued to stare at her, his expression one of confusion.

"Rose?" he asked.

"Yeah." she replied, reaching for his glasses that sat on his bedside table.

"Here." she held them out to him and, with a shaking hand he took them and placed them on his face. Once they were in place, he looked at her again, and she saw the comprehension dawn in his eyes.

"You're Rose." he said finally "Not Hermione."

Rose nodded, and silence fell between them again.

'Awkward.' she throught.

"Sorry." he eventually muttered.

"Don't be." said Rose "I imagine that without your glasses on I would look quite a lot more like my mother than I usually do, and I do resemble her quite a bit."

"Not for that." said Harry "Sorry for waking you."

Rose shook her head "There's no reason to be sorry for that, Harry. I know you can't really control it."

"Your mother tell you that?" he asked.

"My mother told me lots of things." she replied with a smile.

Again silence fell for a few long moments.

Finally Rose said "Harry, if you want to talk about what you see in your nightmares, then I'm more than prepared to listen."

He looked directly at her, studying her. For a moment Rose thought he was going to reject her offer, but finally he began to speak, though there was pain in his voice as he did so.

"It was at Hogwarts, just a short while after the Death Eaters won their battle there. They were all celebrating the slaughter, with students and staff lying dead all around them. There were Werewolves fighting over the corpses and feeing on them. It wasn't even the full moon.

"There were survivors, and they were being tortured by the Death Eaters for their amusement. Then Draco Malfoy came in with Crabbe and Goyle. They had been to Malfoy Manor to retrieve some prisoners. Voldemort"

At this, Rose looked suddenly very anxious and drew her wand, but Harry shook his head "Don't worry. The taboo's not in effect anymore, Voldemort realised what a crap idea it was. Anyway, as I was saying Voldemort spoke with one of the prisoners. It was Mr Ollivander, the wand maker. Voldemort said that he now had an all-powerful wand and so he had no further need for the man. He waved the wand and sent out a spell that cut him clean in half. There was blood going everywhere, and the prisoners were screaming. The Death Eaters just laughed. Then Voldemort turned on another prisoner. This one was a Goblin, I think he was called Griphook, and Voldemort forced him to bow to him and then kiss the hem of his robes, torturing him until he obeyed. Then he killed him too. The last two prisoners were Dean Thomas and Luna Lovegood.

"Draco Malfoy took great joy in pointing out that they were good friends of mine. That news made Voldemort very happy indeed; especially when he learned that Luna was one of those who were with me when he was exposed to the Ministry in my fifth year. He had Draco point out others who were friends with me, and Draco gleefully pointed to those who were in the D.A."

At this Harry looked to Rose and asked "You know what the D.A. was, right?"

Rose nodded "I've met a few, and several are within my family; mum, dad, Ginny, Lee, George, Angelina..." she trailed off, hoping that her mentioning of her parents would not put Harry off of talking.

Fortunately it didn't seem to, for he continued "Amongst the prisoners were Susan Bones, Parvati Patil, Cho Chang Terry Boot and Katie Bell, the only members of the group not to be killed in battle or to flee from it. Voldemort had very special plans for them, ones his followers enjoyed immensely. They were especially delighted with Susan being there, what with her being the last of the Bones family, one that had always taken a stand against Voldemort and his evil minions."

"What did they do?" asked Rose, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

"Torture." replied Harry "Rape for the girls. Then a slow, painful, agonizing death. You know, the usual. They started with Luna first, just so the others could see what they were in for. They passed her around like it was a game of pass the parcel, until she was dumped at Voldemort's feet. And he tortured her."

"And that's where I woke you up, right?" asked Rose.

Harry nodded and replied "Yes, but I know all too well what happens next. I've spent the last twenty years reliving it at night with no one to wake me. Voldemort took great delight in knowing that I was watching that night. He made sure I was watching, through his eyes. Seeing her tortured from his perspective… as if it were my own."

Silence fell once again as the enormity of Harry's torment began to really sink in for Rose. Finally she asked "And the others?"

"Went the same way, I suppose." said Harry "Or at least they would have eventually."

"You didn't see it?"

"No. Voldemort was taking so much joy in torturing me as he tortured Luna that he forgot what he learned at the Ministry when he tried to possess me after Sirius died. When my emotions get the better of me, emotions for the ones I care about, I can hurt him. He killed Luna and I had my vengeance. It was like a brief moment of clarity, and I knew exactly what to do. Everything I was feeling, every tortured emotion, I gathered up and practically threw at the point in my mind that links me with Voldemort. And he, unable to understand those emotions, far less experience them, felt his body burn as if it was on fire. He collapsed and so did I. I have no idea how long I was out for, but he has yet to try those mind games again."

Rose sat there, trying to wrap her mind around all this. Voldemort had tried to torture Harry's mind, only for Harry to do the same right back.

Did that then explain one of the old mysteries of the war? She had to ask.

"Harry, following the Battle of Hogwarts, You-Know-Who took a very long time to make his move on mainland Europe. In fact everything went quiet when just days before the battle Death Eaters were performing small-scale attacks upon parts of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Then everything just stopped for two whole months. Do you think that it's possible that you did enough damage to keep him out of action for that long?"

Harry shrugged "No idea."

"Well, either way the delay was enough for those who escaped the battle to flee the country, along with a good few others." Rose hoped that the idea that his actions might possibly have bought the refugees some time to escape might have given Harry some comfort, but now that she had said it she wasn't so sure that it had. His expression was unreadable.

Rose felt a weariness come over her, something she associated with the lateness of the hour. And it didn't seem like she would get much more out of him tonight, so she said "Listen Harry, let's try and get some more sleep, okay? We can talk more in the morning if you want."

Harry took a shaky breath and blew it out as a sigh "You can go back to bed if you want. I've had that nightmare enough times now to know that it will be useless for me to try and get any more sleep tonight."

Rose gave Harry a sad smile and stood up. She returned to her bed and crawled back in under the blankets, her back to Harry. Her mind was thinking on all that Harry had said to her. She couldn't quite believe that he had opened up to her like that. Perhaps her resemblance to her mother had something to do with it.

Or perhaps it was just twenty years' worth of pain finally being unleashed.

Finally after a few minutes her thoughts began to subside as her tiredness began to win over. However, just as she was about to drop off to sleep, she heard a strange hissing sound.

Rose sat up and looked around. Harry was sitting up in his bed, clutching something tightly in his hand. Whatever it was he was holding it was made of gold. And, worryingly, the hissing sound was coming from it. Even more worrying, however, was when Harry started to hiss back at it.

To Rose it sounded like the hissing of two large serpents. She remembered her mother telling her that Harry could do that, he could talk to snakes. What was that ability called again? Parseltongue, that was it.

But the thing in Harry's hand was talking back to him in parseltongue, and suddenly she realised the meaning of that. Harry Potter still had not destroyed the Locket of Salazar Slytherin. It still contained a piece of Lord Voldemort's soul within it, it was still a Horcrux.

And Harry had been living in the company of its negative, corruptive influence for over two decades. It had been poisoning his mind for over twenty years, for longer than Rose had been alive.

And that was not a good thing.

Not if the stories her mother had told her were true, anyway.

A/N: Short, I know, but that's all that this chapter needed. Originally I had planned for there to be a dream sequence in which you see what happens to Luna and the others in more detail, but I just cannot bring myself to write that stuff, so the chapter now is about five hundred words shorter than planned, but in my view that's fine because if my shortcomings as a fan fiction writer include being unable to write an in depth description of good people being violently molested then I quite clearly am not a psychopath with a f****d up mind, and to be completely honest that is something that I can live with. Also please don't flame me for Harry having failed to destroy the locket thus far. Reasons why will be explained in the next chapter, I promise. It's even in the plan I wrote out, it has to be in the next chapter or else everything else falls down! Don't worry though, its not as if he has done nothing in the past twenty years. He has done some things, you'll just have to wait and see what they are (again some of this will be in the next chapter). Remember this is mostly from Rose's perspective so you don't find things out until she does.