The Three Kings: Hunt

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Prologue: The Real History of Magic

It ended, as it always did, at Hogwarts.

But the war had been raging for centuries beforehand and would for almost a millennia afterwards, so it was difficult to say if the great battle that took place that day ended anything. Perhaps it was more of a defining moment in history – a pin on the very map that was time. And yet, even that was a debatable statement, as the truth was covered up and altered to fit the stories of the victors. To turn them into heroes, into legends, and into myth.

To the Wizarding community, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin were considered to be the greatest witches and wizards of their age. To that of the mage society, they were known as the instigators of the largest genocide in recorded history.

However, to truly understand what occurred that fateful day, one must learn of a past that was never allowed to become history. At a time when there were no mages or wizards, and magic had just been gifted to the humans that walked the earth. So while it ended, as it always did, at Hogwarts, it began in Egypt. It started with four great gods, a book bound in human skin, and a set of twin boys.

The story of these boys starts out simple enough. They were born to the Pharaoh through his wife and destined to live forever in royalty and luxury. The eldest, named Aknamkanon would become Pharaoh after his father's death, and the younger, Aknadin, would enter the priesthood and serve the gods dutifully for the rest of his life. But a tale that would have such an impact on the course of human history could not remain this simple for very long.

After the birthing, the royal midwife made a grave error: she forgot which boy had been born first. Fearful for her soul, she told the Pharaoh of her mistake in hopes that her honesty would save her in the afterlife. The Pharaoh responded that there was a way to test the children to discover which one was the eldest.

"Whichever one cries the loudest is my firstborn son," he declared, and so it was. The one on the right was proclaimed to be the heir, Aknamkanon, and the one on the left became the priest, Aknadin. The two children were forbidden from ever learning the truth, but like all secrets, it eventually came to light.

By this time, Aknamkanon sat on the throne of Egypt and had already taken their sister, Mukarrama, as his wife. Aknadin was furious, convinced that his brother had stolen his true birthright and claim. He broke his priestly vows of celibacy and, in rebellion, had relations with a young noblewoman who would give him a son. Upon his discovery by the girl's father, Aknadin was banished from the kingdom. In his exile, he discovered his real talent for magic, a relatively new thing amongst the Egyptian people and a completely unheard of trait to the rest of the ancient world, and began to practice.

In time, he discovered the Great Gods of Life and Magic. They transcended the sun, moon, and water deities upheld by the people of the earth. They were The Mother and The Father. They were Chaos and Order. And they were not to be trifled with.

The Mother and The Father were Darkness and Light. They were neither good nor evil, merely existing as they were. They watched and observed the goings on of the minor gods of the world, hardly ever stepping in to solve disputes unless it was necessary. To Aknadin, they were useless.

To accomplish what he wanted, he needed a sturdy and active divine backing. He ignored The Mother of Darkness and The Father of Light and concentrated on their younger siblings: Zorc the Destroyer and Horakhty the Creator.

These two gods represented the extremes of the world, always battling back and forth with each other for domination. Their powers increased and decreased depending on those that followed them, and all it took was a single person to tip the balance of the scale. Aknadin was to be that one person.

They fought for his support, trying to convince him that their powers would be what he needed to take his rightful place on the throne. Eventually, Zorc created the Millennium Spellbook, a tome bound in the skin of man and containing all the secrets of magic that could and ever would exist. Aknadin made a contract with The Destroyer, pledging his life and soul to the god. In return, Zorc would finally have the power to manifest in the realm of men.

The tides of war would soon change in his favour as an invading army attacked the mighty Egyptian Empire. Try as he might, the crown could not secure a victory, and there was the talk of rebellion amongst his people. The Pharaoh turned to his brother, begging for support and promising lift his banishment if Aknadin were to provide an answer to his problem. Seeing his chance, the Destroyer's follower suggested using the Millennium Spellbook to create seven divine weapons that would give Egypt vast magical powers, enough to destroy the enemy. Secretly, Aknadin planned to use these items to make himself a hero in the eyes of the people and then turn them on his brother once and for all.

But it was at that moment that The Mother and The Father opened their eyes and saw what would become of the future if Zorc and Aknadin were allowed to continue their plans unchecked. And so they chose three children and prepared to gift them with abilities previously unknown to humanity. They were to be given the powers of gods so that they could unite a people once divided.

The seven Millennium Items could only be created out of death and blood. Aknadin knew this and chose to sacrifice the small, outlying village of Kul Elna to bring them into this world. The inhabitants were sick and starving, often resulting to thievery to survive. In the mind of the Destroyer's follower, they were wicked and evil and did not deserve a place in his soon-to-be Empire.

He fell upon these helpless people with an army provided to him by his patron god. Aknadin drove the people of Kul Elna into one of their crypts and killed them – a total of ninety-nine men, women, and children. Their bodies were melted into gold under the instruction of the Millennium Spellbook, and the seven items were formed.

However, Aknadin had missed a single soul that night. A boy of four years of age watched as his family was slaughtered and the Destroyer's follower proclaimed himself to be the real Pharaoh. This boy would grow up to become the Thief King.

The battle against the invading forces ended just as swiftly as Aknadin had expected, though not in the way that he had planned it. Upon presenting the Millennium Items to his brother after returning from Kul Elna, Aknamkanon refused to let Aknadin wield them all on his own. The Pharaoh distributed them amongst their half-siblings, taking the pyramid-shaped Pendant of Unity as his own and leaving Aknadin with the Eye of Thought. They fought their enemy in the village of Deir El-Medna and were assisted by the people who lived there. As thanks, Aknamkanon awarded the leader of the town a place in the royal household and entrusted him with the raising of one of his sons.

Upon his return home, Aknadin was surprised and outraged to hear that Aknamkanon's wife had finally given birth to a child, after having lost so many to plague. Fearful that it was a boy, he secretly tried to murder the child, but to no avail. This girl would eventually become the Lady Pharaoh.

He would then turn on the son of the leader from Deir El-Medna, fearful that the man would use this boy to claim power within the empire. He was, however, foiled in his attempts and this boy would eventually become the King Commander.

For his crimes, Aknadin was declared an enemy of the state and sentenced to death He stole the Eye from his brother, who planned to lock the Millennium Items away out of fear of their abilities, taking it into hiding with him.

Many years passed. The girl became learned in the arts of magic and ruling, the thief boy came to the city to earn his pay with light fingers, and the boy from Deir El-Medna was trained as a warrior of the Medjay. Aknamkanon would learn of the slaughter in Kul Elna and fall gravely ill out of grief, sparking a series of events that would cause the three children to meet. At first, they would not know each other's identities, but when the truth came out, it was only the Pharaoh's quick thinking that would save their friendship.

But Aknamkanon passed one night in the girl's eighteenth year, making her the Pharaoh. Quite by coincidence - or, perhaps, it wasn't at all, considering that The Mother and The Father were watching over them – that night the boy from Kul Elna would fight and kill the King of Thieves before him while the boy from Deir El-Medna watched his Commander die in the field. The three would rise to their stations as one and, unlike in the years previous, would rule together. All the people of Egypt would, for the first time in history, cooperate.

But the Aknadin would return, bringing with him a great and powerful army. During the battle that would ensue, the Three Kings would don the Millennium Items to combat their enemy. The Lady Pharaoh would wear her father's Pennant of Unity, the Thief King would hang the Ring of Souls around his neck, and the King Commander would wield the Rod of Thought. The Necklace of Time would choose a priestess as its owner, while the Key of Minds would gift itself to the Dragon Princess of the Medjay. Finally, the Scale of Intent would fall into the hands of Jono the Brave, then a young street rat with not but a dull knife to his name.

And all of Egypt would, for the first time, fight as one to stop Aknadin and Zorc. Many would fall, but none in a more gruesome fashion than the Kings themselves. Faced with annihilation, these three took it upon themselves to seal the Destroyer away at the cost of their lives. Their existences were wiped from history, and their names were forgotten to all that knew them.

Those that survived The Time of Millennia would become the first to begin the worship of these three, spreading the word that they would one day return to rule once more. The Items that they wore – the Pendant, the Rod, and the Ring – would be hidden away in anticipation of this event. High Priest Seth, cousin of the Lady Pharaoh, would become the next Pharaoh and rule beside the Dragon Princess of the Medjay and Jono the Brave. Together they would guard the Millennium Spellbook, which still contained such incredible power that it would be unwise to let it be seen by the rest of the world.

Time would continue and the years would pass. Several centuries after The Time of Millennia, tension would brew again. There would be a growing fraction of people who disliked the idea of such power like magic being given out seemingly at random by forces that they would not see or prove to exist. These people wanted to possess it permanently within their families. And so it was that three brothers created a way to force the gods to bend to their will.

Cadmus Peverell, the middle brother, was the sole sibling with magical talent – a mage, by modern-day definition. Specializing in the art of necromancy, he revived the half-brother of the Lady Pharaoh, Priest Shada, to tell him the secret to creating divine weapons like the Millennium Items. Cadmus created a terrible stone that could open the barrier between this world and the next, forcing the dead to cross back over from their rest in the afterlife.

Then, by soaking the wood from an Elder tree in the blood of fourteen women and imbuing it with the essence of Death's horse, Cadmus created the first wand for his elder brother, Antioch, and imbued magic into his very blood. This rod became known as the Wand of Destiny, as it was so powerful that it could make the gods tremble at the very thought of it turning upon them. In retaliation, the gods of Rome and its Empire cried for help to come from The Mother and The Father, as it had come in The Time of Millennia – but it was to no avail. For his third and final brother, Cadmus created a cloak of invisibility that could shield the three brothers from even their eyes.

Using these three items, forever dubbed the Deathly Hallows for the destruction that their existence would bring, the three Peverell brothers started the movement amongst certain noble families to become wizards and witches. They offered to control magic in a way that had never been seen before and granted them whatever power they wanted. They could keep it within their families and ensure success for the rest of time.

There was controversy about this, as was to be expected. There were those who opposed this control of magic, claiming it to be theft and blasphemy. At the same time, there were those rebelled at the idea of waiting to be ruled by the Three Kings, who, by this time, were nothing more than fairytales. In the meanwhile, wizard numbers began to increase drastically, and they began to attack those who clung to the old way of doing things.

However, neither wizard or mage did not take first blood in this war. The current king of Camelot, a man named Uther Pendragon from the island of Britannia, had had enough of the religions of magic and made it his duty to try and destroy both sides. Several other kings took up his call to arms, and thus the Purge began.

At the same time, a witch by the name of Nimueh prophesied that Uther's son, Arthur, would bring magic back to Camelot. Both sides of magic sent their best to try and convince the Prince to support their party. The high and powerful Merlin represented wizards and witches while the Lady Morgana came from the mages. But what happened was something that no one ever thought possible.

Merlin and Morgana began to share their ideas of magic with each other. They spoke commonly with one another, learning and eventually falling in love. They married on the eve of Arthur's coronation, and it was decided that both sides of magic would exist as equals in Camelot.

The mages were content with this agreement and, in a show of goodwill, presented the Millennium Spellbook and two of the mythical Millennium Items, the Thief King's Ring of Souls and Seth's Eye of Thought, to the new King Arthur Pendragon. Not wanting to be outdone, but in no way pleased with the idea of sharing power, the wizards sent their four best and brightest: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.

For many years, King Arthur reigned, but over time the hostility between the mages and wizards only seemed to increase. Merlin, though widely accepted as being incredibly powerful, was being pulled back and forth between his people and his wife. The battles that had caused Uther's Purges began to occurred once more and, at the same time, the wizards started to distrust the non-magical peoples of the world as they seemed to be siding with the mages.

The fighting broke out openly once more when Godric's son, his son named Baltazar, attempted to don the Ring of Souls. He was killed instantly by magic contained within it and, stricken with grief, Godric turned on Morgana's family and killed her sister's son, Mordred – a boy of fourteen. Morgana and her sister, Morgause, retaliated and cursed him to have all those whom he loved to turn away from him in death.

War was declared, and mages and wizards battled plainly for the first time. Merlin's marriage fell apart when he refused to side with his wife and attack his own people. Instead, he stayed neutral and evacuated the city of Camelot when the fighting got too close for the citizens to live there safely anymore. Salazar and Rowena took King Arthur by surprise at the Battle of Camhalnn, killing him and his Knights of the Round Table. Queen Guinevere was spirited away by Nimueh in the middle of the night and was never seen again.

In the grounds of the deserted castle, Morgana and Morgause fought Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. The battle carved a great ravine in the land, which willed with water to form a lake with depths that would reach the Underworld itself. It seemed at one point that a victor would never prevail, but Helga Hufflepuff turned the tides, quite unexpectedly. She had stolen the Millennium Spellbook and opened a portal to the Realm of the Gods. She revealed that, in that very moment, her husband, Emeric, was marching on the gods with the Wand of Destiny. The deities that the mages had held so dearly were brought to their knees and killed. Mages lost their grip on the world and retreated as Morgana and Morgause fell at the newly formed Lake of Avalon.

Now with Camelot empty and ripe for the taking, the four conquering witches and wizards took it for their own. They decided to use it as a school to teach their own kind, to ensure wizard domination over magic for the rest of time. They encouraged other countries to rise up and cast the mages out and assert their right to rule. And thus the Mage Hunts and the rise of blood purity began.

Those known today by the wizarding community as 'muggleborns' or, more offensively, mudbloods, are not the result of random genetic mutation – the Peverell brothers made sure that the wizarding ability for magic could only be passed down a family tree. However, because they enslaved magic inside the first wizards, there were bound to be anomalies that would occur – like Squibs, persons of wizard descent who could not perform magic. Squibs were usually abandoned by their families, thrown into the non-magical world, and forced to make due. It is from Squibs that wizards with non-magical lineage get their magic. Somewhere along the line, the recessive gene became dominant, and a young witch or wizard was born to one of these families.

The problem with that is that in their infancy, it was almost impossible to tell whether a child was a wizard or mages. Only if the child were to show signs of random, uncontrolled, wandless magic could it be confirmed that it was, in fact, one of them? This created fear and prejudice towards non-magics and those from their families in general for birthing them because the idea of mages infiltrating wizarding society was more than the practice of 'muggle hunting' originally came from the older tradition of mage hunting. If a mage was suspected to have been born into a non-magical family than it was the job of the nearest wizarding family to kill the child and its parents. This practice was hugely successful and, as a result, the mage population dwindled to the point of near extinction. This eventually translated into fear and hatred of non-magics themselves as well as the rising idea of wizarding superiority.

It was this ideology that led to the witch hunts by non-magics in the fifteenth century and the creation of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689. Rather than attempt to cooperate and negotiate with non-magics, wizard-kind rejected them and formed their own society outside of their laws and jurisdiction. The rewriting of wizard history began by the newly created Ministries of Magic and mages were wiped from the pages. Heroes were made of murderers and murderers were made of heroes. And, for nearly two hundred years, wizard-kind was left to revel in its own secretly assumed superiority.

And then the impossible happened: a mage was born into a wizard family. Such a case was unprecedented and covered up almost as soon as it was discovered to be the truth. The Department of Mysteries was told to contain the problem that was Ariana Dumbledore as the usual method of killing the girl, and her family would not go unnoticed by the world, especially with her genius brother, Albus, slowly making a name for himself. Ariana's mother, Kendra, was instructed to hide her away from the world and not to let her practice her magic in the hopes that it would just go away. This led Ariana to have several uncontrollable outbursts of magic, one of which ended up killing her mother.

When it became clear that Ariana could no longer be controlled, it was arranged by the Department of Mysteries to have her secretly assassinated. The opportunity came during the three-way duel between her two brothers, Albus and Aberforth, and Gellert Grindelwald. She was struck with the killing curse from behind and left for dead. It was assumed by those that knew of her existence that that would be the end of wizard born mages. They were wrong.

In the 1900s, there were several hundred documented cases of mages being born into wizard families across the globe. Unspeakables everywhere were scrambling for an explanation. They turned to the three mage-created items that were in their possession: the Ring of Souls, the Eye of Minds, and the Millennium Spellbook, studying them for the first time since the Golden Age of Camelot.

What they found was petrifying: the Millennium Spellbook had prophesied that the return of the Three Kings was coming soon, at a place where water would meet land. The International Confederation of Wizards was notified, and it was declared that the Unspeakables were to stop this at any cost.

Nothing that the Unspeakables could do would destroy the Ring of Souls, said to be somehow instrumental in the return of the Thief King. They searched the earth far and wide for signs of the other Millennium Items, though they were only able to find the tomb where the shattered Pendant of Unity was said to be hidden. None that entered ever came out alive, so it was considered guarded enough that mages would not be able to get at it to revive their Lady Pharaoh. However, the complete lack of knowledge surrounding the location of the Rod of Thought was troublesome. If the mages were able to bring back the King Commander, said to be the fiercest warrior in all of history, there would be no doubt that this man could raise an army to take back the Items in wizarding possession.

But they also had other things to worry about, like the ever-growing problem of wizard born mages. Hiding them away was only a short-term solution to a long-term issue and having a parent agree to have their child killed was a surprisingly difficult thing to convince them to do.

However, a young recruit to the Unspeakables, an American pureblood named Maximillion Pegasus, developed the idea of conversion therapy: the concept of treating mage magic like an illness. He hypothesized that it could be possible to turn them, over time, into proper wizards. He tested his theory out on the wizard-born mage, Gilderoy Lockhart, and then duplicated the results on the young witch-to-be, Andromeda Black. And thus it became common practice amongst pureblood families that had to deal with the shame of having birthed a mage to have their children cured of their wrongness. Maximillion's groundbreaking research made it possible to regain wizarding control on wizard-born mages around the world.

However, every so often, there would be a child who would reject the program and seek to live as a mage. The story of the Three Kings begins anew with such a child: a fifteen-year-old boy from the Andrews family. His name was Ryou, and it ended for him, as it always did, at Hogwarts.

But you know what they say about endings: they just give way to new beginnings.

Um... so I have an explanation for this. Maybe. Sort of.

Merry Christmas?

Sy, I haven't updated in forever. I'm really, really sorry about that but school and work are taking up all of my time. I'm still trying to write The Others series, but it's going slowly. Very slowly. But it is still in the works.

Meanwhile, I've been working on this for a very long time, on and off over the years. And I thought, what the hell, it's Christmas. I might as well post it and see that people think.

Okay, so background information about this series: it's a Harry Potter x Yu-gi-oh! DM crossover, but only on a technicality. It's really just a massive AU with YGO and HP element. It doesn't focus as much on the life of Harry Potter, though he and a few others will be making some cameos. The Three Kings Series takes more of a look at the whole wizarding culture: the rampant pureblood superiority and how it would be affected if there was more than one type of magic.

On the HP side of things, we'll be looking mostly at the Department of Mysteries, which in this fic is a large international organization that has branches in each wizarding government. The HP timeline has been pushed forwards so that instead of Philosopher's Stone taking place in 1991, it is around 2013.

As for the YGO half of the crossover, the main pairing will be Rule 63!Atem x Thief King Bakura x Marik Ishtar. As far as I can tell, there is no ship name for this. It's going to be a fully functional, bisexual, polyamorous relationship. Bakura, because I love him to pieces, is probably going to end up being the main character, though not the main viewpoint character. And yes, I've switched Atem's gender again, because I honestly cannot see her as anything else besides female. It's weird and I've long since come to terms with it.

Hunt is going to be the equivalent to Season 0, though there probably won't be a lot of references to the events of the manga or the original anime. I'll try to fit a few in, if I can. We'll meet up with Atem by the end of Hunt. Her story will be the main focus of Strike. Sadly, Marik isn't going to be showing up (outside of cameos) for a while. He'll be in Resist, though you might not recognize what I've done to him.

So, hopefully you guys will like this and I'll see you all soon.

AlcatrazOutpatient