A/N: In a change from the norm as far as this story goes, part of this chapter will be told from Harry's point of view.

Darkened World

Questions from a Toad

The Death Eater standing behind Rose had such a forceful hold of her arms as he held them behind her back that she thought her shoulders might just dislocate.

The pink monstrosity that was Dolores Umbridge had picked up Harry's wand and was now twirling it between her short, pudgy fingers.

Yaxley was standing rigidly next to Umbridge's desk, his face expressionless and his soulless black eyes were constantly flicking between Harry and Rose.

"You have certainly given us quite the run-around, Mr Potter." said Umbridge, her sickly sweet voice dripping with gloating pleasure "But even after over twenty years, the Ministry caught you in the end, as you knew it would."

"Only after it bowed down to Voldemort's rule like the bunch of feckless cowards it represents." Harry practically growled in reply.

The Death Eater behind Harry pulled on his arm forcefully, and Yaxley's hand twitched as though he desired to go for his wand.

The smug smile dropped from Umbridge's face.

"The British Ministry of Magic is the finest of its kind in the world, and you would do well not to criticise it, Mr Potter. Now, tell me where you have been."

Harry gave her no answer.

"That wasn't a question, Mr Potter. I am ordering you to tell me where you have been."

Still Harry gave no answer.

Umbridge scowled "Still defying your superiors, Potter? Apparently my detentions with you during your fifth year were not effective enough. However…"

She placed Harry's wand back onto the table and drew her own. She aimed for Rose "I cannot help but wonder how Miss Granger here will hold up under the same punishment."

As she found herself facing the business end of the wand of Dolores Umbridge, Rose suddenly realised something. Everyone that they had encountered so far within the Ministry, including Bellatrix Lestrange, had been operating under the assumption that Rose was actually her mother. It seemed that no one knew just how badly the Golden Trio of Hogwarts had split apart. And nobody so far seemed to be all that concerned that Ron Weasley was not with them. But then again, they probably knew that the Weasley family had fled the country and probably assumed that Ron had gone as well.

Assuming that there was someone in this building intelligent enough to surmise such things, of course.

"And I should hardly need to point out to you, Mr Potter," continued Umbridge "that the Cruciatus Curse is entirely legal now."

"Is that so?" asked Harry.

"Indeed. Now, unless you begin to answer my questions, your little mudblood whore here will feel the full force of its sting."

Harry glanced towards Rose and then asked "What do you want from me?"

Umbridge's horrible smile returned "Yaxley, perhaps you should assist Goyle in taking Miss Granger here outside. I want to talk to Potter privately."

Yaxley protested "Now, Madam Umbridge, I really thing I ought to remain here, for your protection, of course."

No one in the room believed him. He just wanted the chance to get the same information as Umbridge in the hope that he could report it to Voldemort first.

Umbridge levelled a venomous glare towards him "I assure you, Yaxley, that I can handle Mr Potter. He is, after all, completely unarmed. And I am sure that Crabbe will be more than capable of providing me with backup should it become necessary."

Yaxley said nothing more. He merely gave a nod of his head and turned to follow Goyle as the large man jostled Rose out of the room. As she was being shoved along, Rose looked back over her shoulder at Harry, but all she could see was the back of his head.

One the door had shut with an audible click, Umbridge's interrogation really began.

"Where are they, Mr Potter?"

The question caught Harry a little off guard ""They"?" he asked "Who is "They"?"

"Your supporters. The muggles and mudbloods and the filthy half breeds that litter our country, plotting to overthrow the Ministry and pollute our perfect pureblood society with their filth."

Harry frowned "I have no supporters, you mad old cow. They've all fled, if you and your ilk didn't hunt them down and kill them first."

"Do not lie to me, Mr Potter." she picked up Rose's knife "This was confiscated from your little whore when you were captured. It is not Goblin made and so it must be muggle in origin. I know that you are consorting with them."

"You're barking." replied Harry.

Umbridge stared at his with a hard look from a moment before opening her desk drawer "You are not making this very easy, Mr Potter." she took out a sheaf of parchment and placed it on top on the desk for Harry to see "This is the warrant for the arrest of Miss Granger. A month ago she and several others broke into a Ministry-owned building and assassinated the pure blooded head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Mulciber."

Harry glanced down at the sheet of parchment. On it were two pictures; one was a blurry photograph of Rose that seemed to have been taken from someone's memory. The other was a portrait of a tall and distinguished looking man who was obviously meant to be Mulciber. He sort of looked like the bloke Harry remembered in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, but there had obviously been a bit of artistic edits when the portrait was made; the man in the portrait didn't have features that screamed "psycho bastard" for example. Though maybe that was just Harry's memory playing up. The last he had seem of Mulciber had been when Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody had blasted him across the Death Chamber room to smash into and then over a hunk of broken rock.

"Noble and Most Ancient House of Mulciber" Harry read off of the parchment. He looked up "Doesn't a family have to be over twenty generations old before getting the title of "ancient?" I'm sure I read somewhere that the Mulcibers were ten generations old, at best guess. Are they just giving the title away now?"

He was deliberately trying to annoy Umbridge. He knew from past experience that the more annoyed she got the most likely she was to make a mistake. Like when she willingly followed Harry and Hermione into the Forbidden Forest without someone watching her back.

Stupid old bat.

Umbridge's scowl deepened "You have a choice, Mr Potter. Either way you and your mudblood face execution. The Mulciber family is demanding that Miss Granger be turned over to them for them to "deal" with. And I can assure you that her death in that situation will not be a pleasant one. However, if you tell me everything that you know, I will take steps to ensure that her death is a quick one. The amount of pain involved will directly correspond with the amount and quality of the information you divulge, of course."

Harry stared at her. He always knew that this woman was foul, evil and fanatical, now he could officially add "twisted" and "delusional" to that list of adjectives.

"Well, Mr Potter? Will you cooperate with the Ministry to make your whore's death easier?"

Harry gave his answer in the form of a glob of phlegm spat right into the bitch's left eye.

Umbridge reeled back in disgust, and Harry made his move. It was awkward, but he managed to twist himself enough to smash the left side of his forehead into Crabbe's skull. Crabbe staggered backwards, clutching his face and giving a grunt of pain, and Harry dove for the desk, grabbing his wand in his right hand and Rose's knife in his left.

A flick of his wand had thick ropes winding themselves around Umbridge, tying her to her chair as he rounded on Crabbe.

"Sectumsempra!"

Crabbe was howling now, the agony of a hundred cuts opening all over his body was only comparable to the torture curse when it was performed by Voldemort.

But all of that noise drew the attention of others. The door to the room burst open and Goyle charged in first, followed by Yaxley.

Quick as a flash, Harry banished Rose's knife across the room, where it imbedded itself in Goyle's thick neck, piercing the trachea at it did so. Goyle crashed to the ground as Yaxley raised his wand and fired off a killing curse. Harry ducked the curse and it blew a chunk out of the wall behind him.

As Harry and Yaxley duelled, Rose scrambled into the room and dove towards Goyle. She grasped the handle of her knife and yanked it from the man's neck.

Harry dropped down and rolled behind Umbridge's desk, using the foul woman as cover from Yaxley.

The Death Eater made to move forward, but suddenly felt a terrible pain in his leg. He wheeled around to see that Rose, who was still on the ground, had come up behind him and driven her knife into his leg. He raised his wand to finish her when a spell from Harry caused his back to literally burst open in an explosion of gore.

What remained of the man fell to the floor with a fwump next to Rose.

As she got to her feet, Harry's wand made sure that Crabbe and Goyle were definitely dead before he turned his attention to Umbridge.

Footsteps came pounding along the corridor outside, not that Harry seemed to notice, and someone else burst into the room. Acting on instinct Rose swung her arm and drove her blade straight through the man's eye and into his brain.

Pius Thicknesse, Voldemort's puppet Minister, fell forwards and hit the floor with a thud.

While this was going on, Harry's attention was fully focused on the pink monstrosity bound to her chair behind her desk.

At this point, it is important to note the use of what are known as "modifiers" in spell use. These are additional words spoken at the end of an incantation to change the effect of the spell, usually to make it more powerful.

One example is "Horribilis", which, when added to the incantation for the standard Shield Charm (Protego) the spell changes to one that can protect a large area from Dark Magic. Another example is "Solem" which, when added at the end of the wand-lighting charm (Lumos) changes the spell from a power level similar to that of an average desk lamp to a powerful beam of light akin to sunlight. By far the most common addition is "Maxima" which can be added to the ends of many spells, charms and curses (including Lumos, Protego and the explosion spell, Bombarda) to increase their power quite significantly. In theory "Maxima" could be added to the end of any incantation to make the spell stronger, but wizards rarely bother too much unless it is absolutely necessary. One spell never to have been tried with the "Maxima" modifier added is that of the torture curse (Crucio). Even after all this time, Voldemort has never tried it. Why would he? He uses the torture curse either for pleasure, for punishment, or to get information. Too much exposure to the torture curse results in the loss on ones' mind and even death. Adding the modifier of "Maxima" would make that end result come far too quickly for it to be of any use to Voldemort; a victim that died too fast gave him no pleasure, a follower who died could not fight again and a prisoner who died could offer no more information.

And that is why Harry Potter was about to do a first amongst wizards. He wanted no information from Umbridge, he did not want her to live, and he would only get pleasure out of her death once she was dead.

"You'll never escape this building." she practically snarled.

"Perhaps not." replied Harry in a strangely calm voice "But if I do die, I'll make sure that as much of this building as possible is splattered with "pure" blood before I go. And as for you" he levelled his wand at her, pointing it right between her eyes "This is for every innocent soul that you have tortured and condemned to death in you miserable and pathetic life.

"Crucio Maxima!"

The screams of Dolores Umbridge as she died were terrible but, thankfully, short-lived. Her body spasmed and contorted violently in her chair, she choked on her own tongue, blood began to leak copiously from her ears, eyes and nose, and then her brain overloaded from the agony of it all.

Her end took less than thirty seconds.

"Holy crap!" exclaimed Rose.

"She deserved nothing less." said Harry, before turning to face the door.

The sounds of more running footsteps were coming from the corridor outside. Harry banished the corpse of the Minister to the other side of the room, away from the door, and then he and Rose threw themselves against the wall on either side of the open door.

Three men burst into the room this time, though only one was a Death Eater. All three were unprepared for an attack from behind. Rose stabbed one and he went down as Harry blew the head off of another before engaging the third, the Death Eater, in a duel that lasted only as long as it took for Rose to get near enough to stab him to.

Harry's wand made short work of the task of making sure that the two downed victims of Rose's knife stayed down, then Harry went around grabbing up the wands of all the fallen in the room.

Standing back from Thicknesse's body, Harry turned and saw Rose hurriedly going through Umbridge's desk and pulling out stack after stack and file after file of paperwork.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"What does it look like?" demanded Rose "I'm gathering information."

Another Death Eater burst into the room and Harry killed him before saying "We really don't have time for this."

"Fine, shrink what I've got though." replied Rose.

Harry rolled his eyes and shrank all the paperwork to be small enough for Rose to shove it all into her pockets. Then she took the collected wands from him and began trying them out to find the best match for her. As she did that, Harry took down the next two Death Eaters to charge into the room. They lost the duel, and also their lives, quite quickly, but not before one of them had managed to clip Harry's shoulder with a poorly aimed cutting spell.

Rose now had a wand that was a half-decent match. She gave the rest to Harry for him to shove into his pocket and she patched him up with a healing charm.

Now they just had to escape.

Working as a pair, Harry and Rose charged into the corridor and violently blasted their way towards the golden lifts at the other end, cutting down everyone that got in their way. There was no point in worrying about just who these people were exactly, they worked for the Ministry and they were therefore considered enemies. Once more person left dead was another blow to this arm of Voldemort's influence.

One of the lifts trundled into place and the golden gate doors rattled open. Harry and Rose killed the four occupants and then jumped in.

As the lift began to move once again Harry said "Once we get to the Atrium, we'll need to get to the fireplaces as quickly as possible. Those are the apparition points, as well as being used for arrival by floo powder."

Rather than take Harry and Rose straight to Level Eight, which contained the atrium, the lift first made a stop on Level Two, which was home to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Given that all the so-called Aurors were now loyal to Voldemort and the pure-blood movement; this was exactly where Harry and Rose did not want to be. Their problem was made worse by the dozen or so people who wanted to get into the lift, presumably to get to Level 1 and stop Harry and Rose escaping from it.

"Oh bugger." exclaimed Rose.

Just as she was wondering what the hell they should do now, Harry's wand came up and he shouted out an incantation.

"Pila Fulgur!"

A bright blue sphere about the size of a beach ball formed from the tip of Harry's wand, its surface crackling and sparking with what had to be electricity. The sphere raced forwards, away from Harry and Rose, and blew the Aurors off of their feet and killed them. As the lift doors closed and the lift continued on towards the Atrium, the sphere hovered in the air and for the next five minutes anyone who got too close was fatally electrocuted.

"Where the hell did you learn something like that?" demanded Rose.

In answer, Harry merely pointed a finger towards the scar on his forehead that signified his link to Voldemort. Rose decided that that was all she needed to know on the matter.

The lift doors opened again on Level 6, and Harry sent another lightning ball into the Department of Magical Transportation.

"Hopefully that'll keep them occupied and prevent them closing the fireplaces off before we can escape." said Harry.

The Atrium was surprisingly bare when they reached it, only a few people were there to provide resistance. The rest were probably either working on the other level, or had taken the other lifts in and attempt to cut off Harry and Rose's escape on another level.

Idiots.

Some of the few people in the atrium ducked behind desks at the sight of the two prisoners. A few raised their wands, but none were a match for Harry. Also Rose wasn't too bad either.

Harry and Rose were halfway across the atrium when several of the lift doors behind them opened and a collection of Death Eaters, Aurors and other less skilled individuals came charging out. As Harry fired out several more lightning balls, Rose had another idea.

"Piertotum Locomotor!"

With a wave of her wand, the Magic Is Might monument came to life.

The bodies that were supposed to represent muggles who had been put in their "proper place" worked together to stand beneath the weight of the thrones upon which a stone wizard and witch sat. Together the stone muggles threw off their oppressors, and the stone witch, wizard and their thrones were hurtled through the air to come crashing down upon the heads of the real wizards. Then the forty or so stone muggles jumped off of their marble plinth and charged into the ranks of the advancing wizards. A good few of them were blown up, but the rest charged onwards to drive their fists into the faces and stomachs of the wizards and kick and stomp on those who fell.

It was a wonderful sight to behold.

Harry cast one final spell that cut them off from the Ministry wizards with a wall of fire as a last delaying tactic, and then he and Rose turned towards the fireplaces.

Every single one of them was sealed off.

The pair looked around and saw that there was something standing at the far end of the atrium. Whatever it was, it seemed to be covered in pieces of parchment.

Harry led the way towards it and, as they got closer, Rose saw that the pieces of parchment were actually "Wanted" posters. She saw faces that she recognised, either people who had escaped to Australia along with her parents, or whom she had seen in photo albums. She saw her Granddad Weasley, looking much younger than he was now, pictured beneath the heading "Muggle Lover." There was a picture of her Aunt Fleur and Uncle Bill, labelled as "Half-Breeds." There was her Aunt Angelina, under the title "Associate of Harry Potter." There was her father, Ron Weasley, labelled "Blood Traitor." Her Aunt Ginny was labelled with the same title. And there was her mother, labelled as "Mudblood – Undesirable Number Two." Rose couldn't help but think that some pure-blood families must have taken her mother's constant outshining of their kids at Hogwarts really personally for Hermione Granger to be listed as "Undesirable Number Two." Looking at the posters, that placed her as more dangerous than the entire Order of the Phoenix combined (after Dumbledore, McGonagall, Shacklebolt and Moody had been killed off, of course.)

And there he was; the face of a sixteen year old Harry Potter under the title of "Undesirable Number One."

The real Harry was ripping off these sheets of parchment and exposing what lay beneath. It was old, dirty, the windows were smashed and most of the pain peeled off, but there was no doubting what this thing was.

A red telephone box.

Harry wrenched open the door and told Rose to "Get in."

She did so. Then, just as Harry was about to follow her, the line of roaring fire that stretched from one side of the room to the other was dispelled and the remaining wizards began charging through.

Harry pointed his wand and shouted "Ignis Pila Imber!"

Two dozen fireballs, each the size of a football (soccer ball for any American readers) erupted from the tip of Harry's wand and began crashing into and around the approaching Ministry personnel.

Harry threw himself into the phone box and grabbed the receiver. He found no dial tone, and so just smashed his fist against the keypad.

Nothing happened.

"Damn it!" Harry cursed.

"Are we meant to go up?" asked Rose.

Following a nod from Harry, Rose pointed her wand straight up and incanted "Alarte Acendare!"

The spell hit the roof of the phone box and suddenly it began to shoot rapidly upwards.

Harry and Rose looked through the windows to see the Atrium burning below them.

Their ascent was not entirely straight and true, as such rather than simply pop up out of the ground at the point where it was supposed to, the phone box actually burst through several broken paving slabs a couple of feet to the left of their intended arrival point. They didn't immediately stop either; instead the phone box rose about ten feet into the air and then came down again, landing on the roof of a long-ago abandoned ford fiesta.

Harry feeling a little battered and bruised, Harry pushed himself up and opened the door (which was above him). He climbed out and then turned to help Rose out. She had a cut on her cheek and a couple of bumps, but otherwise seemed to be alright.

The climbed off of the ford fiesta and stood in the middle of the street.

"Is this London?" asked Rose, taking in all the devastation around her.

"It was London." replied Harry, before grabbing her arm "Come on, let's get out of here."

And with that he disapparated, taking Rose with him.

They were heading home, if their tent could really be called that.

A/N: So what do you think? People have been asking and waiting, and now you see that Parseltongue, nightmares and a scar are not the only things that Harry has gotten from Voldemort over the years.

Also, this is possibly the longest chapter of this story yet published.

If anyone is interested, Pila Fulgur means "Lightning Ball" and Ignis Pila Imber means "Fireball Shower."

Oh, and also as people keep asking, I will say here and now (though I think I said it in another A/N) that, no I do not plan to get Harry and Rose together romantically.