Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.
Author's note: Let me start by thanking all of you for your tremendous feedback to all this so far. So here it is, finally, the Ministry break in. I hope it's not too late for you guys. It was so much fun to write, it may be one of the longer chapters so far come to think of it. Be far warned, there be action here. Once more thank you all so much, you're so positive and accepting of a newcomer and his novice piece that it instills me with a great amount of confidence, and helpful too. Much of this would be so much worse without your great hints and critiques. You guys are just great, but I gush too much, you know how awesome you are! Well anyway, sincerely, enjoy this latest chapter. And as always comments and critiques are welcome.
Ron stood next to Harry, as he ever did, with Hermione flanking Harry's other side. The rain came down in sheets. Ron racked his brain for a time recently that the sky wasn't waging it's wet lightning smattered war on the surface. It seemed like it had been raining for weeks now, perhaps it was an indication of the way the world worked now. Now. Now that it was under He-who-must-not-be-named 's rule. A bolt of hot white electricity lit up the world for just long enough to see the Ministry through the down pour. Today was the day. Today they broke in and took the first horcrux, and perhaps took one step closer to the end of the long strange journey they had been on since a little raven haired boy had chosen his compartment on the train all those years ago.
Harry's plan was risky, but brilliant in a few ways the first of which was the sheer amount of preparation it took. The amount of time spent brewing so much Polyjuice Potion aside, he had them memorizing stolen blueprints of the Ministry until Ron was sure that if he closed his eyes he would still see the solemn corridors they were to burst through. The most risky portion was in the execution however. After drinking their potion they stood over the subdued Ministry janitors (who Harry assured them could go anywhere within the building without being noticed.) bound in thick ropes Harry had scared up somewhere in the manor. The tens had become the perfect clones of the three unconscious people. Next Harry began to prop the prone forms of the people up, tilting their heads back as he poured potion down their throats, massaging their necks to make sure they swallowed it all. Within the space of moments the appearances were shifted and the janitors now looked like them.
"That's damn eerie" Ron said aloud to the other two. They both shook their heads in quiet agreement before Harry indicated with a movement of his hand that it was time to go. They were on the clock and it was ever ticking down. Not to mention that they were heading into the stronghold of the enemy all the while smuggling in three teenage bodies with them. How Harry had worked that out was kind of ingenious in it's own right. Harry had determined that He-who-must-not-be-named must have his dirty fingers in the Ministry in order to cover up his own existence. The coup they were warned of at the wedding must have been a successful one for no one to have seen a word of it in any newspaper of note.
Rushing to the entrance and heading down into the heart of the Ministry was nerve racking. Ron shifted on his feet and looked at the ruddy skin covering the back of Harry's transformed neck. He flipped the lid of his pocket Deluminator up and down in time with his own panicked heart beat. Harry displayed a kind of assurance in demeanor and stance that made Ron and Hermione seem like frightened children. But somehow Harry's strength also flowed into them and made them feel less like they were heading into an obvious suicide mission. Ron knew what to do when the elevator hit bottom floor, he just wasn't anticipating it.
When the door finally opened Harry stuck his head out and glanced around. Soon he gave the all clear and the three of them dragged their replica selves to a discreet broom closet just off the main entrance hall. They knew exactly where to put him thanks to Harry's forethought and managed the task with loads of time and minimal effort. In their stronger new bodies their old bodies were much lighter than they had thought they'd be. Harry's back up escape plan was in place. Ron hoped they wouldn't have to use it.
He and Harry parted ways with Hermione. She was on another mission, one Harry didn't even tell Ron. Ron could tell though. He had known them both far too long to not see them hiding something. After flashing their badges to the guard Harry and Ron boarded the elevator to go up to the floor they knew Umbridge's office was on. Ron gazed around at yet another elevator. He had never felt so terrified of elevator doors until this very day. He knew that when they opened he would be in for a world of near death escapades. The anxiety was killing him.
* * *
After splitting off from the group Hermione made her way down to the basement levels. Where all the records were kept. Where any information could be found. Her mission was clear, she was to spend no more than twenty-five minutes digging for information before leaving to meet with Ron at the little diner Harry had picked out. Harry had no intention of being there, he just didn't tell them that. She knew. She knew him. She had a plan of her own. At twenty-five minutes she was going to find Harry and drag him kicking and screaming back with them. She loved him, she thought that she could let their one night of passion be his parting gift to her, but she had grown greedy for his touch.
She made her way to the basement. She did what Harry had told them to do, "GO anywhere like you belong there, like you've been there for years, and nobody questions your being there." She pushed the greasy hair of her new body from her eye and pushed her janitor cart down the long corridor leading to the Records room. One her way she passed several of the court rooms for wizard trials. She noticed on her way a much higher number of people there than usual. She tried to quiet her curiosity but this was not a part of Harry's plan. He had figured a midweek day as a slow day for the Ministry, they usually were. Hermione couldn't help but wonder if this would effect the plan, and more so if it would put them all in danger.
Just as she was making her way past the courts one of the doors swung open rapidly nearly jamming her nose into her brainpan. She recoiled and said a polite 'excuse me' to the feet of someone she thought had very familiar shoes. She chanced a glance up and say the toad-like Umbridge looking annoyed and holding a clipboard with several pieces of pink stationary on it. The header of the pink paper caught her by surprise. It read
Ministry inquisition and deposition of Wizards and witches with unsatisfactory proof of pure genealogy. Case # 17147
That didn't look good. It was fancy talk for Umbridge rooting out Half Bloods. She was forcing people to prove they were pure blooded. The only real question was, 'to what end'. Was being Half blooded a punishable offense now? Perhaps Harry was spot on about Voldemort having his hand in the Ministry these days. Whatever it was she couldn't dwell on it, she had a mission to accomplish she had to stop dawdling. She pushed herself past the horrid little imp of a witch without making so much as a disgusted face in her presence and continued down the hall. She turned down a new corridor and another farther on and came upon the Records room.
Once inside she checked the room for occupants before locking the door with her wand and setting to work. She removed dusty tomes from the shelves and poured into them. After several minutes of research she had a long piece of parchment filled with quick quill notes she had dictated. Hermione forgot how much she had missed this. She was alive when studying. She wondered if Harry had given this assignment to make her happy. She shook the thought from her head. She knew that Harry was well aware of how valuable she was in a fight. She had to remember that he gave her this task because they needed the information and she was simply the best person able to gather it. Though maybe Harry had put her on this mission to shield her from harm.
If that were true she really didn't know how to take it. On the one side it was the truest expression of love that Harry wanted so badly to protect her from harm, on the other it was rude to assume she had to be protected to begin with. She pushed it out of her mind, she had a mission to accomplish. She had to put her whole mind to the task or she would never get what they needed.
Several more minutes went by and Hermione had compiled quiet a nice list of information. She checked her watch and saw that her time was growing dangerously short. She endeavored to hurry her work along but was interrupted by a loud noise. Suddenly the floor shook and books flew from the shelves. An explosion went off somewhere on the upper floors. It must have been incredibly powerful to have rocked the basement, Hermione felt a sick wave rush through her. She stuffed the parchment into her pocket and ran for the door. She ran through the corridors in a wild abandoned panic. She knew Harry was at the heart of all of this.
When she got upstairs she saw several guards blasting spells around the room at three franticly running teenagers. This was all wrong, and her frantic mind was having trouble putting it all in place. What she saw was Harry running wandless around the main hall of the room in his under things. Next she spotted Ron huddled, equally in his unmentionables, under a heavy desk. She spotted herself next, floating face down in the fountain. She dabbled with the idea that somehow time travel was in play before she was yanked roughly to one side by a man with ruddy skin.
* * *
Harry exited the elevator first. He didn't do anything flashy or surefooted he just walked like he knew the area. When they turned the corner they saw Moody's eye glancing to and fro on the door of Umbridge'd office. Harry felt a seething hate well up in the pit of his stomach. This, he felt, was the surest proof that Voldemort was somehow connected to the Ministry. If that withered old toad could collect the eye of their fallen friend . Harry steeled himself against the consequences of his actions and determined to take that eye from her door and bury it like Mad eye deserved to be. Harry took a moment to glance around the office and saw a single receptionist sitting off to the side of the office. He nodded to Ron and taking the hint Ron walked over and began to flirt with the pretty young witch sitting there. Harry hoped it was enough of a distraction to cover his entering the office.
Harry crept closer and closer to the wall making sure to land his steps from the outside of his heel first to muffle the noise. As soon as he was slightly out of sight he quietly turned the doorknob and with the softest steps he entered the office. Once inside he began to snoop around the drawers and cabinets in the office. After several long and laborious minutes he tried to think like Umbridge, as much as it sickened him to do so. He figured that it was shiny and looked nice and she would probably put it in some place of honor. Somewhere that people would notice it if they looked past all the cats she had splayed out on her walls.
Harry looked at the very top of her desk and smacked himself on the forehead. There the damned thing was just sitting on her desk. She must have been admiring it before she left the office. He should have seen it before. Rookie mistake, He chastised himself in his head. He walked over to the desk and pocketed the locket just in time to hear the doorknob begin to turn. He darted his eyes around the room all the while chastising himself further for not bringing the invisibility cloak. He saw nowhere he could easily fit his own frame. He turned on his foot and saw a guard barrel into the room.
"What are you doing here!" The guard bellowed. Behind the guard Harry could see several more and Ron being subdued by even more. Harry quickly ran through a dozen scenarios in his head, they were all suicidal so he picked the one that seemed the least impossible and bolted toward the guard. The guards eyes went wide at his recklessness. At the last second Harry hit the deck and slid through the guards legs and into the mass of guards around him. This was the tricky part. Tricky for many reasons, the first of which was speed, he had to do this fast, the second was that he was still uncertain how well he could perform his secret weapon.
"Ron! DOWN!" Harry shouted at the top of his lungs before throwing both arms out forcefully. He opened his hands out so they were flat palmed as the guards crushed in around him. He took in a huge breath of air and prepared for the worst should this fail him. He let out a ferocious roar that was only just distinguishable as a single incantation, "STUPIFY!"
Within less than a moment's breath a huge wave of power shot out in a perfect circle hitting the oncoming guards dead in the chest. They flew back like rag dolls from the sheer force of Harry's unexpected use of wandless magic. The guards that were holding Ron were caught up in the rush of magic as well. Their grip on him going totally slack. Ron, even though he was now free of his captures sat slack jawed on the floor staring flabbergasted at Harry. His mouth was moving in the shape of the word 'when' but no noise could get out. Harry, finally with a free moment, withdrew his wand from his back pocket and muttered a new incantation.
"Accio rope." He knew that in a broom closet just off the main entrance hall to the building he had freed three captive teenager clones who were probably awake and struggling to free themselves at that very moment. Next he waked over and scooped Ron from the floor so they could beat a hasty retreat. The plan was falling apart so badly that Harry had to use his back up. He hadn't anticipated this many guards in the building today. Something must have been going on somewhere. Something big enough to require a dramatic increase in guards. Harry swore aloud for not planning all this out better. He wouldn't be able to split from his friends now, no time. He had to put them in worse danger than ever just to get them out of all of this alive.
You better get to be a goddamn good leader fucking quick, he thought to himself. He was going to have to become more than a warrior if he was going to save his friends. He could gamble with his own life as much as he saw fit to do in order to accomplish his task, but not their lives. They were as close as kin to him. That meant something. He grabbed Ron's arm and bolted for the staircase. After a few steps Ron yanked his arm away and began firing spells and jinxes at a barrage of oncoming security Harry hadn't noticed. Harry had been so caught up in his problems that he had let his defense drop. Thank Merlin Ron was one of the best damn wizards around in a fight. Still Harry couldn't let it continue to happen. He had to be more alert. Harry began to submit hexes and spells of his own to the battle. Several hexes lobed by security ricocheted off the walls and toppled things from shelves and walls in the area.
Before long, based on sheer surprise tactics Harry and Ron had overcome the onslaught. Harry lead Ron to the stairs. They wouldn't expect them to take the stairs, they wouldn't expect them to know the lay out as well as they did. Finally something was paying off. When Harry put his first foot on the stair the whole area was rocked by the force of an explosion somewhere in the building. The aftershock of the thing launched Harry down several flights of stairs. Just in time he tucked his head back a rolled to his feet, sustaining minimal damage. Somewhere deep inside of himself he smiled, his back up plan was working.
By the time they reached the lobby the place was in utter chaos. It looked like a small war was being fought in the confines of the spacious room. The guards and Ministry Officials use of excessive force on the scattered decoys had very visible ramifications. In the chaos of it all Harry swept a quick glance around the room and saw the body Hermione was using glancing on the spectacle with shocked interest. She was too shocked for this to register. Harry should have seen this coming. They were not trained soldiers, just kids. Ron and he had come from small battle to small battle to this, she had come from a quiet room where she was reading. It was too much too soon, he would have trouble processing the rapid fire change just as badly.
"GO TO THE SPOT!" He commanded Ron, who nodded and made his way through the carnage as though he were a frightened employee looking to escape. Harry admired Ron's solid deduction, that was the best way to get out. With Ron's retreating back to his own he bolted across the room. He grabbed Hermione's arm and pulled her roughly to his side before leading her quickly to the nearest exit. They would go to meet Ron and leave immediately. They had maybe fifteen minutes more use out of the Polyjuice and they had to be far away before it ran out.