I said it in the old A/N, and I'll say it again- I love this chapter. It's short, but I like it anyway. I changed... almost nothing.
Edits- most basic form of cleanup. New first paragraph. Moved last section to the next chapter where it fit better.
Upstairs, deep in the innermost bowels of Grimmauld Place, in one of the many bedrooms that crowded the living space, Harry was weary and exhausted from his one-sided shouting match with Hermione and Ron. "Look," he began, seeing the nervous way that his friends were looking at him. Hermione interrupted him before he could say anything.
"We knew you'd be angry, Harry, we really don't blame you, but you've got to understand, we did try and persuade Dumbledore-"
"Yeah, yeah," Harry muttered grudgingly. He glanced around the room looking for another topic of conversation that didn't revolve around Dumbledore, a name that made his anger flare up just a little bit every time he heard it. "So, who's that guy? Ree-yo or something right?"
"Ryou, yes. We really don't know a whole lot about him. He just showed up a little over a week ago," Hermione said.
"And he didn't know any magic," Ron added. "Didn't even have a wand yet. Moody had to take him to get one."
"What? But if he's a wizard, how did he not have a wand yet?"
Hermione shook her head. "We've been trying to figure it out. And that's not all, either, Harry. I think Ryou's hiding something from us. We overheard him and Dumbledore talking about a secret they can't tell anyone outside of the room. It was really suspicious. I've been trying to find out more, but he acts completely normal."
"'Mione thinks there's something wrong with him," Ron said, as though he thought his friend was crazy. "She's even been tutoring him to see if he lets anything slip about that secret."
"And has he?"
Hermione made a face. "Honestly, I think there's something off about him! But every time I talk to him, he just seems so... polite. He couldn't stop thanking Ron's mom for fixing dinner the first night, and always insists he help clean up afterwards. It's so strange..."
"He's just nice. He even bowed to us after introducing himself. He's just weird, and Hermione's imagining things," he laughed.
Harry cracked a small smile. "Maybe. You know, that's probably it. Isn't he foreign, too? I swear I heard an accent, just a little bit."
"Yeah, Japan," Ron answered. Hermione was simply glowering at the two of them.
"Fine. If neither of you want to take this seriously, then just forget it," she said.
"Excellent!" Ron replied. "I'm starving." He led the way out to the hall, just about to start down the stairs when he threw his arms out, stopping abruptly and forcing the other two to stops as well. "Hold it! They're still in the hall, we might be able to hear something-"
Harry glanced around at the assembled witches and wizards, all of whom were whispering excitedly. It took him little time to spot the startlingly bright white hair of Ryou Bakura, who was talking animatedly to Professor Snape.
After a brief moment, they began to make their way towards the front door and out of sight. The audible, even from here, sound of the door opening and closing reached them only seconds later.
"Snape never eats here," Ron told Harry quietly. "Thank God. C'mon."
"And don't forget to keep your voice down in the hall, Harry," Hermione reminded him.
Mrs. Weasley led the procession back, informing them that dinner would take place in the kitchen. Ryou came next, expertly dodging the hideous troll-leg umbrella stand with what almost passed for well-practiced precision. Tonks brought up the rear, except she hadn't been so fortunate in avoiding the stand. In fact, she tripped over it just as Mrs. Weasley had been about to show Harry the way to the kitchen.
An earsplitting shriek drowned out her words, and Harry whipped his head around trying to find the source of the awful din. Tawdry velvet curtains that hung stiffly and moth-eaten on their respective hangings had flown wide open, revealing a painting on the wall of a woman, her face contorted as if in pain. The old woman was drooling with utter abandon, her eyes rolling wildly in their sockets.
Lupin and Mrs. Weasley tried to close the curtains, but to no avail as the painting continued to scream. Her senseless cries had become a foul sort of bigotry. "Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers?" she cried. Her rolling black eyes landed on Ryou. "You! Blood traitor, abomination, shame of all that is pure! Stealer of souls! Leave this house now!"
Her eyes wheeled freely around the room again, landing on each of the present Weasleys in turn, as well as Tonks, who looked thoroughly horrified at her actions. And then they landed on a shaggy, dark-haired man who'd just appeared in the room, drawn by the noise.
"Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!" Sirius roared, lurching towards the hangings and assisting Lupin in replacing them. The curtains fought fiercely, refusing to return to their original places, but were soon brought back to where they belonged. The screams died down as soon as they had settled. "Hello, Harry," Sirius finally said, his expression just a little grim. "I see you've met my mother."
Summer faded away for all of them in that strange and unique way time has. Days stretched on for forever, the hours moving excruciatingly slowly and yet you can suddenly look up and realize that your week has already slipped away in the blink of an eye. This was exactly how the next few days were spent, awaiting Harry's hearing for underage magic. The day had rolled by with less pomp and circumstance than one might have expected, except, perhaps, for Ryou, who had been boundlessly excited to hear what it had been like.
The very name, Ministry of Magic, just made him curious. He'd congratulated Harry just as the others had for getting off scott-free, barely keeping back all of the questions he had wanted to ask. He barely knew Harry, after all, but he seemed fairly nice once he'd gotten over his petty yelling. He just didn't want to scare him off with his questions. Bakura liked him about as much as he liked Ryou's father. That is to say, not at all.
Ryou, however, had been enjoying himself greatly these last few days. He wasn't fully sure what the other three thought of him, and there were certainly times when they would seem just the slightest bit confused or suspicious, but he'd hardly noticed it at all. They were nothing but nice. He was also wholly entertained, with cleaning becoming the focal point of their days.
Magic took a bit of a backseat since Ryou's crash course that first week or two. He was finally starting to get the hang of second year spells, and found that some third year spells weren't much more difficult. He still practiced in the evenings, usually alone nowadays, and read voraciously. But now his choice in books had become decidedly darker after his discovery of a library behind a snake-adorned tapestry. Every one of the books contained spells that seemed more like Bakura's style than than the ones contained inside of Hermione's books. He itched to practice them out of sheer curiosity, but had a feeling it was probably for the best that he didn't for now.
Their letters eventually came in the mail. Ryou had been thrilled, ripping into the envelope much more eagerly than he had his last letter (which he had successfully forced from his mind). A long list of things filled the sheet, and he smiled broadly. He found out that evening that Ron and Hermione became prefects, which was cause for celebration that night at dinner. Mrs. Weasley had even bought her son a new broomstick. One thing had led to another, and Ryou eventually found himself learning about the wizarding world's most popular sport- Quidditch.
They had talked Ryou's ear off about the game, keeping all of them entertained while they waited for Mrs. Weasley to return with their books. Apparently it would have been a safety risk to take all of the students shopping, so Mrs. Weasley had gone alone. On the advice of both Ron and Harry (although Hermione had told him it was stupid to do so), he had given Mrs. Weasley money enough to also cover the cost of a broomstick of his own. Not an expensive one, of course, but one that was still nice, like Ron's.
After getting the broom, he'd spent a solid hour stroking the smooth wooden handle, tugging at the twigs at the bottom, and watching the broom float in the air as if buoyant. Of course, it was no different from what Ron did, which was talk anyone's ear off about the new broom who was unfortunate enough to linger long enough within a ten-foot radius. They wouldn't get a chance to fly the brooms until they got to Hogwarts, but Harry and Ron promised to take him out for a lesson or two.
The next morning, Lupin approached him with a new lesson- there was a boggart in the drawing room. Ryou was going to learn how to get rid of one. As Lupin explained it, the spell itself wasn't difficult. He taught thirteen-year-olds how to perform the spell back when he taught at Hogwarts, so teaching Ryou the spell should be no problem. It wasn't the spell that was hard- it was plucking up the courage to perform it in the face of a person's greatest fear.
Ryou couldn't quite quell his excitement. He'd read about them a little in his textbooks and was curious as to what his greatest fear would end up being. Bakura had teased him, saying that there were so many things, the boggart would probably get confused and simply vanish. Ryou had indignantly pointed out that he wasn't as much of a coward as Bakura seemed to think. He did like the occult more than normal people did, although he hadn't yet told the others in the house of that just yet.
It was a little funny and quite a bit saddening to think about how many secrets he was keeping from them, for fear of judgement. Uraeus was one such secret, often left in Ryou's room so he couldn't be discovered, much to the snake's chagrin. His love of the occult, his spirit, his past, and his love of dueling were other such things that had been left unsaid. In fact, one could say they hardly knew him at all. They hadn't bothered to get to know him much. It was a little odd, he supposed, but that just came with time. Ryou, much like his yami, could be very patient.
All of these thoughts were buzzing in his head as he entered the drawing room, seeing Lupin waiting for him. He was taught the spell (Riddikulus) and how to go about working it. In simplest terms, the boggart would leap out, showing Ryou his worst fear. Ryou's job was to turn his fear into something funny. It would have been nice to know what his fear was so he could think of something amusing ahead of time, but he wasn't too worried.
He placed his feet solidly on the ground, bracing himself internally as the boggart was released. He hadn't quite been expecting what he'd received. The creature painted an entire scene for Ryou, an elaborate amalgamation of everything Ryou feared. He felt his heart quiver in dry terror, lurching up into his throat as he took in the scene before him.
A massive cauldron, familiar to him from Bakura's own memories, had taken over the room, filled to the top with liquid gold that sloshed cheerily at the sides. Too cheerily, for Ryou's taste, considering how the waves were made by the falling bodies of his friends.
Ryou paled. "R-riddikulus," he said weakly.
Every body to hit the surface threw up another dense cloud of smoke into the air, filling it and making it impossibly dark around him. His friends' screams tore at his eardrums, making him claw at his ears desperately. In the shadows, he could just make out a strange figure in the background. He paid no mind to the figure, however, as his eyes were drawn to the falling bodies.
"Riddikulus!" he cried, slightly more desperately. He jabbed with his wand, but ended up covering his ears again.
One after another the bodies fell, slowing tortuously as they became more and more important to him, dying their respective horrendous deaths. The last ones to fall were Yuugi, and then Malik. And then, where the smoke was thinnest, he could just make out Bakura's laughing figure cut out in the shadows. His heart completely froze as Uraeus wound up Bakura's neck, settling comfortably to watch Ryou's family fall into the pot in slow motion.
He closed his eyes, fighting back the horrified tears that threatened to spill out onto his cheeks. All he could think to describe this as was a nightmare, and even then the words failed to truly encompass all of the pain that stung his heart, all of the fear that wracked his body. Salt stung his eyes as he watch his greatest fears play out in the vision before him.
The twisted and bleeding bodies of his long-deceased mother and sister capped off the long procession of the fallen into that massive, roiling pot of all-consuming molten gold, before the pièce de résistance of this tribulation finally arrived. Ryou himself tumbled through open air, though he hadn't moved once, his brilliant green eyes completely unseeing as he plummeted downward. His body hit the greedy lava and released a loud hissing eerily similar to bacon frying in a pan- the sound of sizzling flesh.
"R-ri-ridik..." he choked, sobs forcing their way out and making it impossible to speak.
Bakura's laughter quickly swallowed the sickening crackle, and the other Ryou's claw-like hand sunk below the surface. The real Ryou teetered unsteadily, swooning under the traumatizing scene before him. Ryou found himself again facing the burning pain of loneliness, a feeling he'd thought was far, far behind him. He was drowning under destitution, again left abandoned, comfortless, and forsaken-
"Riddikulus!" Lupin cried.
The scene around them went up in rapidly-vanishing smoke, the pot of gold shrinking to a pale silver disc. The not-Bakura grinned impishly for a moment before whiffing away into the same smoke, becoming clouds obscuring the moon. It wailed like a balloon leaking air as it began to fly crazily around the room.
"My apologies, Ryou. I had to give you a chance to do it yourself," Lupin told him, distractedly riffling through his pockets. He pulled out a small foil-wrapped chocolate bar emblazoned with a logo spelling out 'Honeydukes'. "Here, have some chocolate, it'll help."
Ryou quivered, sinking to the floor but not making a move to take the candy for several long seconds. Finally, awareness flitted across Ryou's expression, and he reached out to take the proffered hunk of sugared cocoa. "Thanks," he mumbled, placing it on his tongue. It melted slowly and the flavor made him lick his lips unconsciously.
He tilted his head back, scooting his body so he'd be sitting against the wall. He panted lightly. Fear had made his breath short, and it was slow getting it back.
"Well, that didn't go as I expected," Ryou said, cracking a weak smile as if he were fine. The mood lightened slightly, as intended. The chocolate made him feel better physically, but the lingering fear still grounded him to the floor.
"Nor I," Lupin replied. "I really am very sorry. I hadn't expected, well..."
"That my fears would be so vivid? So horrible? Yeah, me neither." Ryou stared at the ground, savoring the chocolate as it finished melting. "I think it was Bakura. No, I'm sure it was Bakura that made it so bad. He's the only one who would think of something like that. I don't know why it would scare him, but I was terrified."
"Was that Bakura who was laughing? If it was made up of his fears too, why would he be the one causing it?"
Ryou glanced up. "Because that part wasn't his fears, it was mine. I've lived for so long in fear that he'd hurt someone I'd love..." Ryou sniffed once. "I guess I'm still just a little worried that he'd do something."
"That does make sense. Ryou, you know that if Bakura ever grows out of hand, we will do all we can to excise him?"
"No!" Ryou cried. Lupin stared at him, confused. "I- I just mean... You can try, but it wouldn't work. We've been together so long... it just wouldn't work. My soul just doesn't function correctly anymore. There was a time a while back when I was separated from the ring. It was... horrible. I felt so empty... It was like a part of me was gone. Don't tell the others, please. There's nothing that can help me now."
Bakura had teased his light, taunted him. He'd told him that he'd be so scared of everything that the boggart wouldn't know what to do with him. Bakura had done everything he could to distract his yadonushi from the fact that he, Bakura, was nervous. And Yadonushi wasn't anywhere near as scared as he was.
As Bakura had seen it, this thing would dredge up the worst part of them. The odds were good that it would draw from both of them, both of their memories, both of their fears. He doubted his light had realized it until the very end. But Bakura was frightened of what it might pull up. Zorc had made him uncaring, but he wasn't necessarily. His past still haunted him like a ghost.
And if there was one thing Bakura knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was that it would pull from him the same cauldron of gold that filled his every day with misery and despair, even after some-odd thousand years. It would pull from him the day that had made his life an eternity of hell, and then throw it in the face of both him and his unsuspecting light.
And then, when everything had gone wrong and just as he thought it would, he was helpless to do a thing about it. Because when the scene sprang forth from the drawer it had been hiding in, a line was drawn in their minds. This line kept them apart from each other, kept them in their respective realms. Bakura was trapped again. The worst part was that it was his light that was trapping him.
Bakura was a strong shadow mage, stronger than any other and with a will to match, but he was helpless under the tumultuous emotions of his lighter half. Yadonushi's fear was like iron chains binding him down, tethering him to his ring. He was blocked out of his light's mind, resigned to watching without a chance of influencing anything. He was trapped. He couldn't even reach for the shadows to form a body of his own.
And so he'd watched, a sour feeling curling in his gut, as his light's mind descended into the same dark pit it had existed in when Bakura had been less Bakura and so much more Zorc. He'd caused this. In a way, he really had. It was feeding off Bakura's fears and using it to fuel Hikari's.
And Bakura actually felt guilty about it. He'd been approaching this feeling for the last few months, since he'd returned after the Ceremonial Duel, Zorc extinguished from existence. He'd begun feeling guilty for what he'd done to his light. He'd started, dare he say, feeling slight affection for the boy.
It'd been slow-growing: a trace of anger when his light thought about his father, a tinge of unhappiness when Hikari didn't notice his friends ignoring him. He didn't even want to admit it to himself, let alone to the boy. He couldn't even bring himself to think the name. Habit kept him seeing his host as 'Yadonushi', 'Hikari', and not Ryou. Never Ryou.
But it was there. Faint, ever present. He'd pushed it back, ignored it. He pushed at Hikari, prodded him and pissed him off. It made it easier to ignore, and it still made Bakura laugh to see his Yadonushi irritated. But he didn't want to hurt him. Not like he used to.
Why, it had only been a few weeks ago when he'd dragged his light to Europe. Taking the shadows there by himself would have caused his host unimaginable pain. The shadows would have sapped him to near-death. Estimated recovery? A month. At least. But it wasn't the thought of inconveniencing himself that made him reconsider.
He could have also never let his host regain consciousness. But no, he was curious. How would the boy take awakening in England? And it had been so much better than Bakura had expected. His host had accepted it, rolled with it. Sassed.
The same again with Uraeus. He'd known Hikari was terrified of snakes, but Uraeus was a piece of Bakura's past. The idea that the same serpent that had saved Bakura time and again could then keep an eye out for his host had been... attractive. Fighting the Pharaoh had made Bakura realize that he might not always be there. His host was a danger magnet, a victim of bullies, his own innocence, even Bakura himself.
Uraeus was a way of paying his hikari back for all that he'd done. They were, in a way, one in the same. Both looked weak, like they'd never do anyone harm, until it came time to stick the knife in someone's back. Bakura'd seen his host angry before, once. It could take anyone aback.
That first night, when he'd been cleaning up the mess he'd made under Hikari's orders, he'd told Uraeus all that had happened over the years. Everything had been told, from the night Uraeus had been wrenched apart by the Pharaoh's guards to the night he'd been reborn. And as it turned out, it had been enough that Uraeus could surmise the attraction on his own. He'd known enough about Bakura to see the subtle hints.
Bakura felt for the boy he'd ruined and torn apart. Given time, Yadonushi probably would have gotten over the deaths of his mother and sister without too much guilt of his own. It had been Bakura's stinging barbs that made him think that it was his fault after all, that he'd been the one to bring about their deaths.
And now again, he was ruining his light. Causing his light pain. And the light didn't know that Bakura's appearance in the scene, killing Yadonushi, wasn't Yadonushi's fears- it was Bakura's. He wouldn't, couldn't tell him that.
He couldn't even tell his yadonushi that the nosy little trio he called his friends were watching everything through a crack in the door.
"I told you he was suspicious!"
"Hermione, this doesn't prove anything," Ron said. "Obviously he's got a vivid imagination."
Hermione let out a huff of air at the two nay-saying boys she sat across from. They'd snuck upstairs before they could get caught in the act of observing Ryou's lesson, and all they knew for sure was that whatever they'd seen had been pretty horrible.
It wasn't exactly uncommon for someone to fear the death of people you love, but it was uncommon for one to see those who die actually dying, especially in such a... different way. Where exactly had the cauldron of golden liquid come from? And why was there not one Ryou, but two in the boggart's illusion? Most people never factored into their own boggart-induced nightmares. Most people weren't frightened enough of death for it to be the star. If anything, it was others' deaths.
Hermione had read about it once, surprisingly enough, in a muggle psychology article. It spoke in great length about something called an 'optimism bias' that caused people to tend towards optimism. Even pessimistic people were found to be somewhat optimistic about the future. It was human nature to think about food and shelter before their own immanent deaths. What could have happened to Ryou to make him see so many people die?
And another puzzle- the two people who had looked similar to Ryou. For a while the people, a motley crew of the most unusual people she'd ever seen with hairstyles she couldn't make up if she tried, had screamed while burning alive, but had otherwise been fine. The two women with white hair had been covered in blood, their bodies mangled. They didn't scream, not even when they hit the gold. Neither had Ryou himself. Dead before they ever hit the boiling liquid?
But the other Ryou, the horrible, mean-looking one, had been cackling, laughing at the falling victims. Maybe he was scared of himself? But that 'Bakura' he'd talked about. A brother? It was his own surname, which made it a little strange but not altogether off for him to call his brother that. But then, it wasn't likely, considering how the family tree...
The family tree! The woman was obviously pictured on the tree, right above Ryou. His mother. And hadn't Ryou and Sirius mentioned that his sister hadn't been pictured? A squib? But what about the almost-Ryou? Could it be that he wasn't pictured either?
In the vision, they'd looked similar, but there was enough difference between the two to make it fully obvious that they couldn't be the same person. The eyes, for one. Through all the smoke, it had been the eyes that had shone the brightest. Hermione could remember disturbingly red eyes set under the angry white brows, while dead green eyes reflected pallid light from the falling Ryou's vapid expression. The red-eyed Ryou could be the 'Bakura' spoke of before. Yes, Ryou'd said as much.
She thought back. Had there been two pictures beside Ryou, or three? Had he had a brother? Who was the mysterious Bakura? And another thing- why was this Bakura, whoever he was, influencing Ryou's fears? Ryou had said that the gold was Bakura's, not his. How was something like that possible?
And then the secret. Perhaps this 'Bakura' was the secret Dumbledore had spoken of. Hermione was sure of it, especially when Ryou mentioned that he didn't want Lupin to tell the others. More secrets.
Or maybe it was the ring he mentioned. Ryou said something about horrible things happening when he was separated from some ring. The thing was, she'd never seen him wearing a ring. There wasn't a thing around any one of his fingers, no thin bands of silver or gaudy baubles bearing a curse. From the mention of his soul being somehow broken, a curse was all that occurred to her.
She tried to tell the other two, but they just wouldn't listen. They still saw Ryou as the polite push-over he acted like. He even did their summer homework for them after they asked him to! There was something up; Hermione just knew it. And she didn't like it. She wondered what it would take for them to realize that something was up with that innocent little act.
If it even was an act.
That's all, folks!
Just kidding. The next chapter is just a click away.
