Chapter Two: "Improvements"
The morning came sooner than Yugi ever could have imagined, and he awoke to a rather startling surprise as well. Two beady, blinking eyes stared through the darkness towards him, the creature's head cocked slightly in confusion as to why a stranger lied where its master usually slept. Yugi let out a stifled yelp of surprise and drew back, only to see a faint streak of shimmering white in the shadows as the owl took flight from atop him and soared over to Harry, who was sitting awake and reading the same, mysterious book as before. A flashlight was wedged into one of his dresser drawers at the appropriate angle so that it illuminated his text. As the owl positioned itself upon his shoulder loyally and sunk its head in to rest, Harry looked up from his readings with a faint smile upon his face.
"Sorry about that. Hedwig usually comes back during the night and was surprised to find you there instead of me," Harry said simply, turning one of the parchment pages but making sure his other hand fell conveniently over the title of the book, though Yugi was too tired to care about his subtle secrecy at the moment.
"I've never met anyone before that's owned an owl as a pet, though with regard to the troubles that other animals can give their owners it doesn't seem like a bad choice," Yugi said quietly, leaning back onto the wrinkled pillows and attempting to stable himself, knowing there was little chance of ever getting back to sleep. Though there was no clock within the room to indicate the time, the faint light of the approaching dawn alerted him that it was the early hours of the morning. A drawling, obnoxious snore emitted through the entire Dursley home, and as he listened Yugi now realized there wasn't a prayer of falling back into slumber. The sound was far too annoying and inconsistent.
"They usually get up early so it's probably best you're awake now. If they ask, which I'm almost a hundred percent sure they won't, I don't feel like any breakfast this morning. I can't stand to eat near that fat pig Dudley and they won't let me take my meal anywhere else. Aunt Petunia's afraid I'll break her precious china dishes," Harry said, his voice barely audible as the request held little relevance to him.
"But you didn't come down for dinner last night, aren't you getting hungry? It's unhealthy to go without eating for so long," Yugi said with genuine concern, noticing how Harry's body was rather skinny though not entirely starved. The boy simply shrugged however, once again uncaring and monotone towards the meager conversation.
"I get by, usually I won't eat and just sneak all the food into my pockets or something if I can. Like I said, I can't eat in front of their precious little Duddykins. It'd rather watch a nature show while eating with lions tearing apart their prey; it's far less of an animosity," Harry said, and Yugi laughed softly at his comment before both of them were silenced by a sudden noise.
A loud thud echoed through the house, followed by a rampant set of footsteps approaching at a rather menacing but clumsy pace, and suddenly the rickety door into the small bedroom burst open and there stood Vernon Dursley, red at the face as usual and still wearing his pajamas. They looked so stretched over his bulging body that they seemed prepared to simply tear at the seems. He grumbled a bit to himself at first, obviously not completely awake yet as Harry once again swiftly hid the book and switched his flashlight off while Vernon was still disoriented.
But Vernon acted as though his nephew didn't even exist and instead turned to Yugi, who was still sitting partially erect on the bed and putting on a rather unimpressionable smile.
"We're eating breakfast early this morning because my meeting with the contractor is at eight o'clock and we have to get there early for poise. Get your hide outta bed and let's get you fed and decent-looking," Vernon commanded, and with a swift look of encouragement and pity from Harry, Yugi stood from bed and followed the massive man from the room and down to the kitchen.
Yugi this time placed himself in between Petunia and Vernon as they ate and received no argument. Vernon seemed too excited about the deal to be settled this day that he didn't make a comment about Yugi's hair or clothes for a whole ten minutes into the meal.
"Petunia, see if you can find anything of Dudley's that'll fit the little runt and try to get his monstrous hair under control," Vernon ordered, and Yugi found himself being wrenched from the table even though he had only finished about half his meal and was taken into the downstairs bathroom where the gaunt and rather frightening looking woman began to try and transform him.
No matter how many times she combed and harshly brushed his rebellious hair it simply fell back into place as it had been, and with a nervous grin from Yugi she gave up and instead filled the bathtub with scorching warm water and dunked his head into it with little warning.
"This will get that horrendous dye out of your hair," she said, producing a bottle half-filled with a seemingly homemade remedy and pouring it onto his head as he looked up at the ceiling and had to keep from smiling at the stunned and confused expression that came upon her thin face. No matter how much she scrubbed with the fluid and bubbling water the colors didn't change, though the air did fill with an acidic aroma.
"I told you that those colors are natural. You can even ask my grandfather and he'll tell you the same thing," he began quietly, but she interrupted by wrenching his head out of the tub and leaving him dripping wet on the carpet as she left to find him some "appropriate" clothes. Even with his hair still wet it ended up as it had been before within a moment, falling back into its original form. Yugi sighed weakly and leaned back against the porcelain structure, having a sinking feeling in his stomach that the enjoyment of his stay here depended entirely upon this meeting today. Perhaps if he acted as Vernon wished him to he would be treated with more respect, though the thought of acting like some poor wretch from a third-world nation wasn't exactly appealing.
"Why are you allowing them to bully and belittle you Yugi?" Yami suddenly asked, casting a silhouette of his form next to him as Yugi rung his hair out into the draining water.
"They're my host family Yami, and whether I like them or not I have to respect them regardless. It's just a code of honor I have to follow," Yugi said drearily, thinking of spending the next six days amongst these people doing their every beak and call.
Yami sighed and stood, crossing the room to examine the strange, odd-smelling rinse that Petunia had dumped into his hair with a baffled look. "Well, I guess you can't blame them for thinking your hair is dyed. I have not seen anyone else to ever have hair quite like ours," he said with a brief smile though even now the substance was leaving a burning sensation upon the top of Yugi's head. Yugi simply sighed again and continued to sit there, listening as Petunia began to approach once more and gesturing swiftly for Yami to hide himself once more. She was humming a rather annoying melody but silenced with a scowl as she entered the room.
"It seems a waste to dress a scrawny little whelp like you in such fine suits made especially for my widdle Dudley, but Vernon insists upon replacing those revolting garments you came in," Petunia said, casting down upon him an enormous, dulled sapphire suit jacket and pants that Yugi knew wouldn't fit him if he weighed ten times what he did. But before he could say anything she stalked away once more, leaving him to put on the excessive clothes.
He attempted to, but only found himself in a virtual labyrinth of fabric. He finally wrenched his head through the top of the undershirt and put on the pants and jacket, only to find himself bunching up large amounts of the scratchy material until he was a general heap of cloth upon the ground.
"I look like a circus tent..." he groaned as he stared at himself in the mirror, unable to spot either of his arms or legs in the faded blue of the suit.
"Is it customary to dress in strange and ridiculous looking garments when one is going to see an important person?" Yami asked as Yugi tripped with his first attempt at walking in it.
"No, you're supposed to wear something formal, except in my case I have to wear something meant for someone with about a hundred times by body mass," Yugi grumbled, standing and instead sitting down into the toilet lid and listening as the air seeped out from within the folds of the suit, "How can they expect me to make an impression upon this contractor while looking like a complete idiot?"
"I just don't understand why you simply cannot leave. I'm sure your grandfather would understand if he knew how horrible these people are," Yami said, examining various articles of make-up that Petunia had left strewn upon the marble vanity next to where Yugi sat. He sneezed when he reached the thick white powder and suddenly Yugi was covered in it.
"As if I didn't look silly enough," Yugi sighed as he realized just how much Yami had managed to get upon him. Suddenly the bathroom door opened without warning once more and Yami vanished into thin air with swift apologetic expression.
"Oh my goodness! That's my expensive Déesse foundation!" she shouted as she recognized the horrible substance that Yugi was covered in, and he blushed slightly from embarrassment and glared slightly at Yami, who was still slightly visible within the vanity mirror. He simply shrugged in additional apology and disappeared in the blink of an eye as Petunia turned and wetted a washcloth with a drawling sigh, beginning to wipe the powder from Yugi's face and suit with an angered expression.
"I suppose your meager appearance will have to do," Petunia suddenly said, grabbing Yugi tightly by the wrist and dragging him from the bathroom down the stairs and into the living room where Vernon was waiting impatiently. He looked ready to erupt when he saw that Yugi looked almost no different except the baggy suit that he had been forced to dress in, and he continued blushing a vibrant red as he realized how incredibly strange he must seem at that moment.
"So the dye wouldn't come out eh? I guess I'll just have to tell Mr. Gutman that the little brat was part of some gang on the streets he was pulled off of," Vernon hastily said, clamping an ironclad grasp over Yugi's other wrist and yanking him outside to their car once more. Yugi nearly tripped several times over the far-too-long pant legs of Dudley's massive suit, cringing as he began to contemplate the events that were about to take place. It was either he swallow his dignity and pretend to be the starved wretch that Vernon had convinced this Mr. Gutman he was, or he act civilized and natural and be hated the rest of the five days he was trapped with these horrible people. He sighed, realizing that his first option seemed best and would at least make the tensions within the home far more bearable, though he could hardly imagine putting on the front he had belonged to some territorial gang upon the streets of a barbaric third-world nation.
He looked up as he was thrust into the car and saw Harry looking down from his bedroom window with a sympathetic look. Yugi could hardly believe that the boy had managed to survive all those years within such an oppressive and conceited family, but he seemed almost immune to it now, apathetic after all the years of being ignored and despised. Yugi sighed and waved deftly to the boy, which Harry returned it almost systematically, his gaze now lifting from down below where Yugi was to the sky, as though looking for something out on the horizon.
It was then that Yugi noticed something even at the distance he was at. Harry's messy hair was parted a bit to one side unlike it had been last night, and he could see something upon the skin of his forehead. A scar, oddly shaped from what he could see, almost touching the nearby hairline but jagged and strange. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it the night before, though it had been hard to notice anything in the barrage of rude comments and secret motives underway as to his arrival here.
"That sure is a strange scar though. I wonder where he could have gotten it from..." Yugi whispered to himself, quieted with an edgy glare from Vernon and simply watching as the Dursley house disappeared and they departed from Privet Drive.
