Chapter 19

"I believe he's still thinking about that last game."

Flashback

"The third and final game is simple. It's a game that everyone knows. One that both of you should, if my information is correct, be equally proficient at. This is a chess match. Yami is black, Ron is white. Let the game begin." Harry yelled.

"It's not as if we really need to have this game anyway." He muttered to Bakura, who was sitting beside him. "Yami's already beaten Ron at two of the three games. It's only Ron's stubbornness that's keeping him at this. I'm really sorry. Your friend shouldn't have to go through all this."

"It doesn't matter really. Yami likes games and he hadn't gotten anyone willing to play with him in a while. He's enjoying this."

"Oh good," Harry sighed in relief, "Now I don't have to feel guilty any more."

"Yeah," Marik agreed, laughing. "Yami shouldn't win as much. He'd have a lot more people wanting to play him if they didn't always lose."

"Always?" Harry's brows arched in surprise. "No one always wins."

"True," Bakura agreed, "But put it this way, Yami's only lost twice. He's played hundreds of games with many different people, all of them champions at their own game, and he's only lost twice."

"When was this again?" Marik asked curiously, "I don't remember Yami saying anything about that to me."

"He wouldn't," Bakura replied, "I was there, or rather, my hikari was, for one of them, and Ryou got the story of the other one from Yugi earlier as an explanation of what they were all doing there. In Duelist Kingdom," He added, seeing that Marik was staring at him blankly.

"So who beat him?" Marik asked. "I didn't think anyone could. Yami is the king of games after all. No one ever defeats the king of games."

"Pegasus in a timed game and Seto." Bakura made a face. "But Set cheated. He said that if Yami attacked he'd die, and course Yami, being the goody-goody he is couldn't handle it enough to figure out that he was bluffing." Marik looked at him questioningly, gesturing towards his Rod, and Bakura nodded slightly.

"Every other game he's won." This was Marik. "He never lets anyone win against him either. Thinks it's against duelists' code or something. Bit stupid of him really but if that's his notion of honor I'm not going to argue."

"I should hope not," Harry agreed. "That would be really wrong to interfere with another's code of honor." He looked at them and asked, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes," Bakura's eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter as he glanced over at Marik who was shaking, hand over his mouth to prevent anyone from hearing him. "We have our own secrets you know."

"All right," Harry said, "I won't press you. But, I have to tell someone."

"Tell us then," Marik agreed. "We won't tell anyone."

"Well, then," Harry lowered his voice, "Did you know that the sorting hat wanted to put me in Slytherin? It may not seem to be that big a deal to you guys but, it's really been bothering me. If I was meant to be in Slytherin does that mean I'm a bad person?"

"No," Bakura told him comfortingly, "It just means that you have the skills to go into that house. The hat wanted to put me in Slytherin too. I just told it I wasn't going and it decided to put me here. I think that if you were really irredeemably evil it wouldn't have let you go anywhere else. Does that make sense to you?"

"Yeah," Harry smiled at him. "Thank you. That really helps. I hate thinking that maybe I was meant to be in Slytherin because I'm a really awful person or something. It would be awful if that were true."

"True," Marik agreed, "But think for a minute. If you were really that evil you would have wanted to go into Slytherin. Slytherins are mostly very proud of their house if you've noticed. So the fact that you didn't want to go into Slytherin is in itself proof that you shouldn't be there."

Harry nodded. "That's what Dumbledore said, though he just said it was because of our choices that we are what we are. But it helps hearing it from you. Thanks again guys, I needed that." He fell silent and the three simply watched the chess match to its predictable end.

End Flashback

"Just go to sleep," Bakura finished. "It's no big deal." Ryou nodded, snuggling into him and smiling as he felt Bakura relax in sleep. Sleep was the only time he ever did relax, Ryou mused. 'I wonder if he really meant all that about love, and how most people never find it? It's nice to know that somewhere out there is someone who's perfect for me.' And with that thought he slid into sleep.

Some time later Marik drifted into the room and over towards their bed. He picked up his armband, quickly putting it back where it belonged, and walked over to shake Bakura's shoulder gently. Bakura was awake in an instant and Marik tugged him out of the room, up to their tower.

"So what did you want?" the slightly shorter boy asked finally, "I assume you have a reason to wake me up in the middle of the night."

"I just wanted to talk," Marik replied nervously, "You're not mad are you?"

"If I was mad you'd know," Bakura retorted. "And I wouldn't have come up here with you. Actually I figured you do something like this. I'd just like to know what it is that's gotten you all worked up."

Marik nodded, "When you said that about the hat not letting anyone who was irredeemably evil go anywhere but Slytherin; did you mean it?"

"Yes. I did. I believe that if I was truly evil, without any good in me, then the hat would have put me in Slytherin no matter what. Same with you. But neither of us is really evil, so we're in Gryffindor. Does that help?"

"Yeah," Marik, agreed, "Thanks."

Bakura watched him for a few seconds before nodding and standing up. "I'll be in my room if you want me." Marik watched him go before reluctantly returning to his thoughts.

"Hey Bakura?" Harry called.

"Yeah?" Came the reply, from the other side of the common room.

"Why are you practicing transfiguration? You're better at it than any of us already and we've been practicing it for years."

"I read that you've figured out a way of turning some special people into animals so I'm trying to get better at this so I'll be able to do it too. Besides there's nothing else to do. Yami's off with Hermione, Marik's still thinking, and," He came to a sudden stop. "And there isn't anything else to do." He finished, shrugging.

"You could talk to me," Harry suggested.

"No offense," the other replied, "But no, not really. There's nothing to talk about with you. We have nothing in common. Other than that we're both here of course."

"Well what have you got in common with Marik and Yami then that you haven't got with me?" Harry asked daringly. He knew that for some reason this was a subject that the three had always avoided speaking about and he was curious. Besides, as Bakura had said, there wasn't anything else to do.

"Plenty of things," The other replied, absently. They'd spent a lot of time thinking up an explanation that would fit, and have enough of the truth in it to sound right, without revealing anything and had a competition going on who could get it out first without making the timing seem contrived. "A past friendship for instance. We knew each other before we knew you." Here he paused again, "Strange, it feels like a long time but it's only really been a few months since I first met Yami. Marik came into it a bit later."

"So that's it? You can talk to them because you share a past? If you look at it that way then that should mean that I can't talk to you, for the same reason, that the only ones I can talk to are Ron and Hermione?"

"You can talk to the people here because you have much the same interests as they do." Bakura retorted. "I don't care about all that Dark Lord stuff, underneath that you're just an ordinary kid. Admittedly you're an ordinary wizard kid, but you're still ordinary. You've had a few adventures, and a few narrow escapes but you're still basically a normal person who's had a lot of bad stuff happen to them."

"And you're not?" Harry snapped. "From what you said you didn't even know you were wizards until Dumbledore told you. How are you any less normal than I am?"

"Well, let me think," Bakura replied sarcastically. "Perhaps it's because, while you've had a lot of weird stuff happen to you, we've started a lot of weird stuff. You've been a mostly passive, defensive person, exactly as is normal. We have purposely gotten ourselves into and out of life-threatening situations without magic. That's the difference between us."

Harry stared at him blankly. "I don't get it. How could you get yourself into a life threatening situation without magic and compare it to anything that's happened to me? All the situations I've been thrown into were magically based."

"The point isn't the type of situation," Bakura replied scornfully, "It's what you yourself said. 'The situations you've been thrown into.' You fought back when people tried to make problems for you. I made problems for other people. That's one reason why we're all here. Isis decided that we'd be more likely to behave in a situation where we don't know anyone and where we're facing an entirely different way of life. This is our therapy you could say. Entirely different from you."

"So you're saying that you were a bully or something like it and that that's why you're in Hogwarts?" Harry shook his head, "Yeah right. Pull the other one."

"It's got bells on it." Bakura finished for him. "And as a matter of fact the answer is no, not really. Just a rebellious kid stuff. Typical teenagers in a way. Except that the stuff we got into was not typical. Occult stuff, Duel Monsters, knives... not the ordinary teenage rebellion." He smirked and looked at his arms. "The scars barely show any more."

Harry stared at him, "You mean you used to cut yourself?"

"Yeah," Bakura agreed. "I used to cut myself, Yami got into the crowd which was so obsessed with Duel monsters that the stakes for a game could become a human soul, and Marik got himself into one of the gangs hanging loose around Domino. Nothing too serious, just a few minor fights, but enough to get Isis worried. We ended up getting together and forming a group just before she lost it and brought us all to England. It wasn't long after that that we came here."

"I... see," Said Harry finally. "So that's what you meant when you said that I was ordinary and you weren't. It makes a weird sort of sense too."

"Yup," Bakura agreed cheerfully. "I've gotta finish my practice now, see ya." And he ran upstairs before Harry could think of anything else to say.