Chapter 2: Aboard the Knight Bus
…August began in all its summer splendor, but only Yugi and Ryou gave it much notice. The summer had passed by quickly; the time to leave their friends was soon approaching. The letters had told them that they could tell a close family member, but no one else, that they were going to Hogwarts. Yugi's grandfather, affectionately called 'Gramps', was thrilled that Yugi was getting the chance to develop his magical abilities and to maybe stop blowing up things in the back of the game shop. Mr. Bakura liked that the school was in England, where he'd grown up, and gave Ryou a full overview of the landscape and notable relics throughout the British Isles, completely forgetting that Ryou himself had spent several years in England. They told their friends that they would be leaving to study at an overseas boarding school in a couple of days; everyone was rather sad about it so they had a combined going-away party and birthday party for Anzu, since they'd be leaving before she turned seventeen.
That night, Ryou and Yugi met outside the Game Shop, trunks packed and ready to go, to prepare to go to London. Dumbledore had written in the letters of something called "The Knight Bus" that would take them all the way to London, and Ryou was eager to try it. Yugi stared down at the letter he held now, wondering whether maybe Professor Dumbledore was off his rocker.
"This says we're to take the Knight Bus to someplace called 'The Leaky Cauldron' in London. We can stay there until it's time to leave for Hogwarts," Yugi said, gawking at the words on the paper.
"Yep," Ryou agreed, "I remember that. And he said we stop the bus like this." He stuck his right arm out into the street.
BANG.
They both jumped as a triple-decker, bright purple bus halted to a sudden stop in front of them. They stared wide eyed at the magical bus as the doors opened and a young man with a very bad case of acne stepped down onto the bottom step and began speaking.
"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step onboard, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike and I will be your conductor this evening…What are you staring at?" he asked as he noticed Ryou and Yugi's dazed faces. Ryou shook his head as if to clear it, then bowed and said, "Good evening, Mr. Shunpike–" Stan blushed at the formal title– "My name is Ryou Bakura and this is Yugi Mutou, and we'd like to get to London, please."
"Then you've got the right bus."
"Um, how much is it to get to London?" Yugi asked shyly.
From 'ere? 'Ere, Ern," Stan called back into the bus to some unseen person, " 'ow much is it for these two to get to London?"
Ryou heard a gruff reply but couldn't make out the words.
"It'd be one Galleon an' eleven Sickles," said Stan as he turned back to the teens, "but for three more Sickles you get 'ot chocolate, and for one more th'n that you get an 'ot water bottle an' a toofbrush in the color of your choice."
"Oh," Yugi said. He turned to Ryou, eyes furrowed with worry, and added, "I don't know if we have that much."
"Yeah, we do. Don't worry, Professor Dumbledore provided us enough. Is it per person?" Ryou asked Stan; the conductor nodded his head.
"'Course."
"Okay." The white-haired teen dug in one of the envelopes and brought out two gold Galleons and thirty silver Sickles and handed them to Stan. After dropping the gold into a collection box by the door, Stan helped Ryou and Yugi carry their trunks up the stairs into the bus and placed them under a bed at the very back. Then, he introduced them to the driver, Ernie Prang, and advised them to hold onto something. Suddenly, there was another enormous BANG, the bus shot forward, and Yugi and Ryou were flung onto their backs and halfway down the bus. Ryou pulled himself to his feet first and looked around, noticing for the first time several other passengers that he could see here on the bottom deck and probably more on the upper levels. About half a dozen brass beds lined the walls under the curtained windows and were illuminated by candles in brass brackets above them. He didn't know how anyone could sleep on this bus through all the bangs, though some people managed, and he just figured that traveling this way was so normal to wizards–that they traveled by bus all the time–that they didn't notice anymore.
As Yugi dragged himself up onto on of the beds, which they noticed were bolted to the floor, Ryou walked up to the front where Stan was.
"Um, excuse me, sir…do you know how long it will be until we get to London?"
Stan stared at him in amazement, not for the first time, wondering how someone with such a British accent could have ended up halfway around the world where English wasn't even the native language. And that hair!…the two teens both had the strangest hair! Pulling himself together, he answered, "Be about two days, I 'spect." With increased interest, he watched as the teen bowed and began walking back down the aisle. "Wait!" he called, "I gotta ask. 'Ow'd you get your 'air like that, anyway?"
Ryou turned his head with deliberate slowness, winked, and said harshly, "That's a secret." And then was joining Yugi in watching the Chinese scenery go by. Stan shook his head in disbelief; Ryou had seemed like a different person when he'd said that.
In the back of the bus, Yugi was thinking the same thing. "Bakura, what are you doing?" he hissed. The yami smirked as he looked out the window.
"I'm stretching my legs. I don't like being cooped up for so long," Bakura answered simply. "You don't need to worry."
"Maybe I don't need to worry about me, but what about the other people here?" Yugi glanced nervously back at Stan. "Besides, some people are already suspecting you're not Ryou anymore."
"He's no threat. Oy, we paid for hot chocolate, didn't we?!" Bakura yelled at Stan, who jumped nervously and ran off to the kitchens; he returned after a short time with two steaming cups of hot chocolate, but as he handed one to Bakura he shuttered involuntarily; there was definitely something different about this teen than before.
Bakura stayed in control for the whole night and actually managed to go to sleep despite the constant bangs and jolts of the bus. When he did wake up, sunlight was streaming through the windows, and he was halfway off the bed; worse yet, Yami was also in control, and he was standing at the end, staring out the windows at the seascape speeding by. Bakura stood up quickly, shook his head to clear it of the impending blackout creeping in on his eyes. On the opposite side of the bus, golden sand flew past the widows in a blur. Stan was walking down the aisle, waking up sleeping wizards and turning the beds behind him into about six chairs each, none of which were bolted to the floor. Bakura quickly pulled Ryou's trunk out from under the bed to make sure it didn't get turned into a chair, then walked over to where the pharaoh was standing to watch the scenery go by.
"Good morning, tomb robber. How in the world were you able to sleep on this bus?"
"What do you mean? That was easy. Why are you out anyway? To annoy me?"
"No. Yugi couldn't sleep properly on this infernal thing, so I–" he cut off as Stan came near and turned the bed into chairs. When the young men was gone, Yami continued quietly, "so I told him to get some mental rest and I'd take control since I was sleeping all day." He stared sternly out the window. "Do you know why we're in Egypt?"
"No, but if I were to guess–"
BANG.
Yami and Bakura were thrown off their feet onto several chairs and were spread out painfully over the floor and the chairs– one in particular was jabbing an edge into Bakura's back–when Stan opened the bus door and began talking to some on the street. Bakura was not one who sat well with humiliation, especially in front of stuck up Pharaohs who would love a chance to blackmail him, so he hastily struggled to his feet to glare out the window at the perpetrator. He smirked and gestured briefly to the teen outside the bus; this could be amusing.
"Oh Pharaoh," he said in a disturbingly sweet tone of voice. "Who would be the last person you'd want to see right now?"
"You, bastard," Yami groaned as he tried to get up.
"No, no, someone else."
"Malik, if you really want…to…know…" He stopped abruptly as he noticed two lavender eyes staring down at him. Yami was on his feet in an instant, face red with embarrassment, facing the Egyptian intruder. "Malik, what are you…why…how…?"
"Good morning to you too, Yugi, Ryou," Malik answered, though he knew perfectly well that he was not looking at the hikaris– experience had taught him that– and that made the whole situation a lot funnier.
"Why are you here?" asked Yami, picking up a chair he'd been laying on and still looking extremely embarrassed. Malik snickered quietly.
"Same reason as you, I guess. To learn other magic. I'll bet Ryou's going to feel right at home when we get there."
"Most likely, and it's going to be very irritating to have a hikari like Pharaoh's," Bakura answered.
"Yugi isn't that bad!" exclaimed Yami indignantly.
The bus started off with another BANG; Malik, not knowing what to expect, was knocked off his feet, but Yami and Bakura held onto a couple of candelabras on the wall.
"From what I've seen he couldn't be much worse," Bakura retorted and with a nod of his head his features softened and Ryou was back in control. He appeared to be very confused, like he almost always did after being possessed. Ryou sighed.
"What did he do?"
"You weren't paying attention?" asked Malik as he lifted himself to his feet.
"No. I was sleeping. He doesn't like for me to spy on him. What'd he do?"
"Shhh, keep your voice down," Yami hissed, dragging Ryou down onto one of the chairs he'd righted. "You're going to make others suspicious; Stan already is. Your yami pretty much just scared Stan and humiliated and insulted me, that's all."
"Oh."
Harry walked silently up Mongolia Crescent, dragging his trunk behind him and carrying his Firebolt and an empty cage for his owl, Hedwig. He'd sent her with a letter to Ron just before he'd left, saying that he was going to leave for Diagon Alley on the Knight Bus and he'd either see his friends there or on the school train, nowhere else. So now he was fulfilling that promise. When he'd told his aunt and uncle he was leaving, Uncle Vernon had told him that he'd better not summon some enchanted bus near the house; that was why Harry was here on Mongolia Crescent. He stopped and looked around; no one was around, not even a dog…like the first time he'd seen Sirius…Harry shook his head to clear it– he'd cried over that particular loss too many times that summer– and stuck his right hand out into the street.
BANG.
A large, purple bus rolled to a halt in front of him, the doors opened, and a familiar freckled wizard stepped down to face him.
"Hi Stan," Harry said before the other wizard could open his mouth. Stan looked down and his eyes grew wide in recognition.
"'Arry! Hey, Ern, it's 'Arry Potter! Nice to see ya, 'Arry!"
"Thanks Stan," said Harry as he dragged his trunk to the steps. "Listen, I need to get to Diagon Alley." He handed Stan fourteen Sickles.
"Righto, got four others 'ere 'oo are gettin' to London, too. 'Spect it's th' same place. Need 'elp wiv that?"
Together they carried the trunk up the stairs and placed it under the same bed Harry had used the last time he'd ridden the bus at night. Only when the trunk was out of the way did Stan notice the Firebolt in Harry's hand.
"Blimey, is that a Firebolt?" Stan exclaimed as he noticed the superb broom. Harry sensed someone behind him turn to see what the commotion was about. Harry stuttered uncomfortably, "Yeah."
"Cin I 'ave a look at it, 'Arry? This's th' best broom in th' world, init?"
"Yeah it is," Harry answered as he handed the broom over and placed the cage under his bed. The bus started up again, soon there was another BANG, and they were barreling down a completely different street. "The Irish International team won the Quidditich Cup two years ago riding seven of these," he continued. He glanced backwards to where he still felt eyes watching him. At the very back of the bus, he noticed a boy about his age with stark white hair sleeping on a bed, and next to him (Harry could only assume it was a him; with hair that long it was hard to tell), another teen standing, watching the scenery fly by. The teen had very tall black hair, tipped with crimson and golden bangs outlining his face; he hadn't seemed to acknowledge Harry's arrival. Maybe Harry'd just imagined being watched; it was happening more often lately. But just then, the teen, obviously sensing he himself was being watched, turned his head and stared back with turbulent, reddish-purple eyes; Harry quickly turned away. Stan finished admiring the Firebolt, handed it back to Harry, and bid him goodnight, quite forgetting that Harry had paid for hot chocolate. Harry had forgotten, too; he was more interesting in the other passengers of the bus, specifically those with strange hairstyles near the back.
The next morning, after a brief duel between Yugi and Ryou, which Yugi lost because he was too frightened of the cards in Ryou's deck, Stan came by and asked where in London they wanted to go. Just as he'd suspected, they answered that their destination was Diagon Alley (Harry listened to this with much intrigue, especially after he'd seen the last member of their gang: a teen, same age as the rest, with platinum-blonde hair, gold earrings, and lavender eyes). After about an hour, the bus halted abruptly in front of an old, shabby-looking pub labeled The Leaky Cauldron. Ryou and Yugi grabbed their trunks, got off after a boy their age, and headed toward the building; Malik, however, stopped just after getting off and gazed expectantly up the stairs as though waiting for someone. When Yugi asked him what was wrong, he waved them off, saying that he'd follow in a moment. Yugi shrugged and hurried off to catch up with Ryou, who was already talking with the pub owner.
"…So you see, we'd like to rent…two rooms until school starts."
"Sure, just follow me."
Tom led them to two very nice rooms on an upper level (rooms eight and nine) and then led the boy who'd gotten off with them to another room next door. He then returned and offered to show them into Diagon Alley for the first time.
