Daricio: Ok, new chapter of Millennium Magic.
Malik: (sulking in the corner) yay...
Daricio: (amused sweatdrop) Ok, I know that I confused everybody with the last chapter... I'm sorry!!
Malik: No you're not.
Daricio: ..... ... Ok, you're right, I'm not... (sweatdrop) Except for giving Lisa a headache. That I'm sorry for...
Malik: Just start the chapter already... You ARE going to tell us who the culprit is this time, right?
Daricio: Maaaaybe....
Malik: (death glare)
Daricio: (amused sweatdrop) ok, ok, yes, I'm going to tell who the culprit is.
Malik: Right now? (hopeful look)
Daricio: No, in the chapter, silly.
Malik: Darn.
Daricio: Anyways, read on for the chappie!
(----Divider----)
The three headed off to school feeling more down than they had in a long while. They left late, so they missed Yugi's group. They'd have to let him know in class...
All of their suspects had been cleared and there was nobody left that could have done anything wrong, but nobody wanted to give up yet, which was why they were even going to school that day.
The worst part about the whole thing was that there was no way of knowing if the Ministry of Magic had any more leads than they had, or even if the Ministry knew that they were there...
Surprisingly, when they got to school, Kaiba was waiting for them at the front doors.
"Did you see the news yesterday?" he asked them as they drew near. They shook their heads.
"What news?"
He handed them a newspaper and pointed to the headline.
"Huge Explosion Cuts Off Entire City!!!"
Harry nodded gravely. "Oh, yeah, we heard about that. This is another disappearance by our little 'Friend'..."
Kaiba agreed. "Not just that, though. Look at this, too." He handed them an issue of the Daily Prophet.
Harry's eyes went wide as he read this headline.
"More Magic Disappearing!"
He read the article out loud. "According to reliable sources, not only have magical and non-magical places alike been disappearing, but the magic that we all use is being removed from the very air! Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge warns wizards not to use any sort of magic whatsoever as long as they can help it. "Most who attempt to do even the simplest charms simply cannot complete the spell, but in the more drastic cases, even those who are more experienced end up causing the wrong spell, with horrible effects, simply because of the sudden lack of magic everywhere." This has been confirmed as a world wide crisis. Please use caution!!"
"I thought the Ministry was here!" Ron wondered.
"They can apparate, remember?" Hermione reminded him. "I assume they'd want to be checking things in at the Ministry's headquarters..."
Harry sighed. "Do you have any more leads than you had before, Kaiba?" he asked.
Kaiba shook his head. "No, just the ones that I had previously. How about you?"
"Nope. In fact, we ended up clearing each and every one of our suspects..." Harry said gloomily.
Nothing more was said as the new information sunk in slowly. Finally, the four decided that they'd better head in to class.
They reached the classroom and went inside. The half-mind controlled teacher looked up at them in slight surprise that somebody was interrupting her lesson.
"Ah, Kaiba... Nice of you to actually join us today." She said somewhat sarcastically when she saw who it was.
Kaiba rolled his eyes and headed for his seat. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were about to do the same when the teacher's attention turned to them.
"And why are you three late?" she asked.
Ron stammered for a moment before Kaiba spoke up. "They were with me, don't worry."
The teacher looked flustered for a moment, then she sighed and told them to go to their seats.
They all did so, and then Harry began looking around the room at all the different students. Most were sitting in their seats looking with boredom up at the teacher's lesson. But there was still that small little group sitting off in a corner dueling.
Because of what Joey had said the night he had snuck into his house, Harry knew that the only reason the teacher didn't notice this group was because of Malik's Millennium Rod mind controlling the teacher just enough so that she ignored them.
Harry looked back over at the teacher with curiosity. How had she even noticed the four of them coming in, if she was mind controlled to ignore distractions? Was Malik's mind control slipping?
Probably not. Harry was just jumping to conclusions. After all, if the control was slipping, then-
"Harry Potter?" Harry jumped at his name being called, and he looked up at the teacher standing right next to him with a small stack of papers.
"Yes?"
"Homework?" she asked.
Harry blinked, then shook his head. "I didn't do it..."
Her eyes flashed in annoyance and she moved on to Ron's desk. "Homework?"
He also shook his head. This was too much for her. "That is IT!" she yelled, slamming the stack of papers on Ron's desk. Ron very suddenly looked scared.
Everybody else in the room, especially Malik, looked very surprised.
"You come in here late, hoping to get away with it because you happen to be friends with Seto Kaiba, and THEN you don't even get your homework in?! I cannot handle this any more! You three are going to detention!"
Malik's eyes were open wide, and he looked down at his Millennium Rod, knocking against his hand slightly and looking back up at them slightly fearfully. The teacher had apparently broken from its control.
The small group began trying to gather up all their cards as fast as they could.
Hermione held up her completed homework to the teacher timidly. "Ma'am?"
"No excuses! To detention! NOW!" the teacher said, pointing at the door. The three abruptly stood and headed for it, heads ducked down.
Yugi stood as well. "They don't know where it is, I'll show them." He said quickly.
"Fine, fine." The teacher said, holding her head in one hand and waving him away with the other.
Quickly, the four exited the classroom and stood in the hallway for a moment.
There was silence between them for a short time, then Yugi began to laugh. Ron and Harry joined in. Hermione just looked peeved.
They laughed for a while as Yugi led them towards the detention room. "Did you see the look on her face?" Yugi giggled. "She was MAD..."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I don't see why Harry and Ron didn't just do the homework in the first place."
"And I don't see why you DID do the homework! We're not in Muggle Studies, you know..." Ron returned easily.
Yugi grinned. "Speaking of 'muggle,' where did that term come from, Hermione? Do you know?"
Hermione shrugged. "It was a combination of magius meaning Magic and trenuggle which is a word that they had thought meant none, but really means trash. And nobody thought to change the word when they figured out what trenuggle really meant." She blinked. "But that's not what we were talking about!" she said in annoyance.
Yugi laughed again.
When they reached the door to the detention room, the three had to say goodbye to Yugi and went inside.
There weren't very many people in the room when they entered, and those who were there were being quiet. The three took seats near the windows.
Harry and Ron, having nothing better to do, took out their homework and began trying to start on it. Hermione gave them a few pointers now and then, but mostly she just read the book that she had checked out of Domino High School's library.
No more than 5 minutes had gone by when the door to the detention room opened again and a small group of people entered, led by Malik.
When he spotted Harry, Ron, and Hermione, he gave them a sheepish grin, then went and sat down with the rest of the dueling group.
Harry smiled. Apparently, they hadn't gotten their cards out of sight before the rabid English teacher of doom had found them...
Harry let out a small sigh and tried to turn his attention back to his work. It wasn't all that difficult of an assignment, but still... He had always hated writing essays anyway, and here he needed to write it about the book that they had been reading in class, and he hadn't been paying attention.
He looked out the window, spacing out slightly. He really didn't want to do the essay, and it's not like it would hurt him if he just skipped doing it... after all, he wasn't going to keep going to Muggle School...
Movement out the window caught his eye, and he focused on it, mildly curious as to what it was. The window had a view of the school's front doors, and a student dressed in a long black cloak had just exited quickly.
Harry watched him with interest, wondering why a student would want to keep his identity secret like that. Suddenly, the front doors opened again, and out walked the Ministry, eyes clearly set on the boy who had just exited.
Just then, 500 miles away, a small chameleon (named Stephanie) scurried across an abandoned road.
Back in Domino, Harry's eyes opened wide as he realized that this meant that the Ministry was about to catch their suspect.
Quickly, he stood from his seat, grabbed Hermione and Ron, and ran from the room, heading for the school's main entry, to the great surprise of the detention teacher and all the students in there.
When Ron and Hermione were once again walking by themselves instead of being dragged by Harry, they followed him.
"What's up, Harry?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, what did you see?" Ron huffed.
"Ministry. Chasing somebody. Gotta go see." Harry said shortly, focusing on opening the front door.
Harry glanced around quickly and just managed to spot one of the Ministry members disappearing into an alleyway. "Come on." He said, breaking into a run towards the alley.
Somebody in the detention room had opened a window, and as they ran by, the teacher yelled at them. "Get back in here! You're not supposed to be going outside of this room until..."
But his voice was drowned out by the cheers of the other students in the detention room, and Malik's voice was loudest. "Yeah! Go, Harry! You rock!"
As the three teens entered the alleyways, it was obvious that the Ministry was trying to use magic to subdue their suspect, as there was a faint trail of pink smoke for them to follow.
They wove in and out of the alleys, going this way and that until Harry was sure that they were completely lost.
They came to yet another fork in the road, and Harry started to follow the now yellowish black smoke down one of the two ways when Hermione hissed at him quietly to stop.
He did, earning him a slam on the back from Ron, who did not stop.
"What?" Harry whispered, watching as the smoke grew thinner. "If we don't go after them, we'll lose them!"
"I know." Hermione returned, still whispering. "But they're not who we're after. He is!" she pointed down the other way, and Harry caught a brief glance of the cloaked boy disappearing around another corner.
Ron grinned. "I like him. He managed to lose the Ministry."
"Yeah, let's just hope he doesn't lose us too!" Hermione said, starting after the boy. Ron and Harry followed.
He was fairly easy to follow now. He was no longer running, figuring that he had lost all of his pursuers, and the swishing of his cloak against the ground was easy to hear.
He went around one final corner, and the three followed closely. Too closely.
As they went around it as well, they immediately screeched to a stop. The cloaked boy had stopped, looking up at a large warehouse that looked like it had gone through a fire recently.
Slowly, the three began to inch backwards, hoping that he hadn't heard them, but they were out of luck. He turned around and they froze.
His facial features were lost in the shadows of his hood, as well as any other features about him.
"Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I thought you'd come after me..." he said in a voice that they only partly recognized. An aura of magic power began to form around him, making him look intimidating.
"Very foolish, though. I would advise you three friends to go back to school now."
"W-we're not friends, we're siblings!" Hermione said, trying to keep up their cover.
The boy just laughed. "No you're not, Hermione Granger. Go, before I need to hurt you." He said, reaching out his hand and blasting a wooden box to smithereens as a demonstration.
The three started walking backwards slowly, eyeing the boy's display of power.
Unexpectedly, Ron shot forward towards the boy like a football player, hoping to catch him off guard. It didn't work, and the boy simply sidestepped out of the way. Ron, thinking quickly as he realized what the boy had done, stopped the moment he was beside him, then thrust himself sideways, jabbing him with his elbow as he did so.
Harry and Hermione took advantage of the distraction by pulling out their wands and pointing them at the now fallen cloaked boy who was quickly getting to his feet.
"Why you little..." he muttered to himself.
"Don't move." Harry said sharply as Ron also got his wand out. "We have you surrounded."
Hermione decided to pull a bluff. "The Ministry of Magic knows that we're here, and they'll be here any second now."
The boy began to chuckle, and he stood completely straight. "You know, you are absolutely terrible at lying, little girl." He said menacingly, baring fangs as he grinned. "You have no idea what you are dealing with!"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione stared at him for a second, then began attempting to cast spells.
Just as the newspaper had predicted, nothing happened no matter what sort of curse they tried.
The cloaked boy laughed at them. "Those things are no use to you." He said unnecessarily. The aura of power around him flashed and the three of them were thrown backwards into the walls of the alley.
The boy didn't even have to lift a finger.
"Powerful..." Hermione squeaked as she slid to a sitting position.
"Who... who are you?" Ron asked, coughing and trying to stand up again.
The boy laughed, coming closer to Ron. "I have been called many things. But because you have trifled with me, you shall know me as your executioner!"
He placed the palm of his hand against Ron's forehead, sending the pain of the Crutacious curse coursing through his body. Ron screamed in torment.
"Petrificus totalus! Petrificus totalus! Incendeo! Oh, come on please work!!" Hermione cried, waving her wand.
Harry ran forward and tried to pull Ron away from the evil boy's grasp, but the moment he touched the boy, the same pain went through his own body. He cried out and let go as if he had touched a hot stove.
The boy laughed again, and a bright light shone through from underneath his cloak. Ron's cries increased in intensity, and he convulsed in pain
"Leave him alone!" Harry yelled weakly. The boy looked away from Ron to grin maliciously at Harry, his hand never leaving the poor teen's head.
After what seemed like an eternity, the boy stepped back, the glowing dimming down until it could no longer be seen. Ron collapsed against the wall behind him, almost unconscious.
Harry and Hermione rushed to his side to try and help him up, both glaring at the evil boy who was now standing with his arms folded, watching to see what they would do next.
When nothing happened for several seconds, the boy chuckled to himself. "Maybe now you'll all learn to quit sticking your noses in other people's business." He said, turning and walking away.
The three made no move to stop him. Soon, they were alone in the alley, and the only sound was that of Ron's labored breaths.
Hermione looked as though she was about to cry. "He has all the magic in the world now... How are we supposed to beat him now?"
"We have to try." Ron coughed. "We have to. Come on, help me up."
Between the two of them, they managed to get Ron on his feet. "all right, let's go."
"Where?" Harry asked him.
"After this guy." Ron returned darkly. The three set off. Every step seemed to bring pain to Ron, but he seemed determined to stop all of this.
After they had walked in near silence for a few minutes, they suddenly heard a small groan. Looking ahead, they saw the silhouette of a person leaning up against the alley wall.
They walked forward, realizing that whoever it was, they were in pain. Maybe the wicked boy had been this way...?
Slowly, the three were able to see more and more details of the person as they came closer... When they came close enough to see what he was wearing, they stopped, eyes wide.
Up ahead was a boy wearing a long cloak with a hood, the exact same as their attacker had been wearing. They stared at him for a moment, then Ron cleared his throat to catch his attention.
The boy looked up in slight confusion. When he recognized the three, he quickly removed his hood and jogged over to them.
All three of them stared at him with shocked recognition. "Bakura?!"
Sure enough, that's exactly who the boy was! When he got over to them, he looked worriedly at Ron.
"Are you ok, Ron? I'm really sorry..." Bakura looked down.
Ron growled. "Ok, Bakura, you've got some serious explaining to do." He said, not answering the boy's question. "Why did you attack us?"
Harry nodded angrily. "You were the first person we trusted here, how could you have been doing all of this?!"
Bakura kept his eyes on the ground. "I... I didn't." he said slowly. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen..."
"Well, if you didn't, then who did, Bakura?" Ron shot at him accusingly. "Your twin brother who happens to be wearing the same clothes as you today?"
"Ron! Let him talk! Look at him, he's been bean up a little bit already, this obviously isn't the same person who hurt you." Hermione said softly.
Bakura shook his head. "No, I deserve him yelling at me, Hermione. I should have told you about him and about what I suspected that he was doing..."
"But who is he?" Harry asked.
"He's... Well, it's a little hard to explain. You know about how Yugi has a darker half, right?" Bakura said hesitantly.
Harry nodded. "Yeah."
"And you expect us to believe that you have a spirit like that too?" Ron asked rolling his eyes.
Bakura paused, then nodded. "Well, yes actually. Yugi's is an ancient Pharaoh, and mine is a Tomb Robber from the same period. Not generally a nice person."
"Yeah, right. Yugi's spirit came from his Millennium Item. Where'd yours come from? You dream him up?" Ron said sarcastically.
Hermione shot a glare at him. "Ron, hush, he's trying to help us."
"Yeah, well I don't trust him as far as I can throw him." Ron returned harshly. Bakura ducked down, still looking at the ground.
Harry stepped forward and placed a hand on Bakura's shoulder. "Where did he come from, if you don't have a Millennium Item?" he asked gently..
Bakura looked up and closed his eyes, bringing his hands up to his chest. Slowly, the Millennium Ring materialized around his neck with a faint glowing. "I do have a Millennium Item... It just likes to hide...."
Ron gaped at it, then looked up into Bakura's eyes. "I'm sorry, Bakura..." he said after a moment.
Bakura shook his head again. "Like I said, I deserved it."
"No you didn't, Bakura.... It's not like you really could have had a chance to tell us something like this if you had an evil spirit listening in on all your conversations..." Hermione said comfortingly.
Ron blinked. "Wait, listening in... Why is he letting you talk to us now?"
Bakura looked up at him, his eyes looking slightly blank. "Actually, we're no longer connected to each other... While he was beating on you guys, he wanted to hurt me too, so he let me watch but he didn't let me do anything about it. After that, he decided that he could hurt me better if I was no longer a part of him, so he used some of that power he absorbed to create himself a new body, separate from mine, but one that still looked like mine, including clothes."
Hermione nodded. "I see... And that's why you're wearing the same thing he had been... But what about the Millennium Ring? Surely he wouldn't have let you have that...?"
Bakura shook his head. "He didn't. This one's a copy. It's got the original magic that the Millennium Ring had, but it doesn't have any of the extra power that he has..."
Ron grinned suddenly. "It still has some magic in it?" he asked. He looked over at Harry. "Hey, do you think that the other Millennium Items also still have their power?"
Harry shrugged, but Bakura answered the question. "Millennium Items all have ancient spells on them to make sure that the amount of magic in them stayed constant. No extra, no less. Voldemort broke the spell on Yami Bakura's Ring somehow... It drained them both a lot until they started their disappearings..."
Ron's grin stayed. "So even if he's got all of our magic, we still have at least some magic. Somebody should run back to the school and get Yugi and Malik. Then, we'll be able to form some sort of counter attack."
Hermione agreed. "I'll go, I'll be able to remember how to get back here. You three stay here for now, I'll be back soon!"
Bakura, Harry, and Ron nodded. Hermione took off running as fast as she could down the complex workings of the alleyways.
After she left, Bakura activated one of the Ring's abilities in order to make them invisible to others. That way, they wouldn't get snuck up on.
15 minutes later, Hermione returned, out of breath, with both Yugi and Malik behind her, and Bakura dropped the disguise so that they would know that they were there.
"I explained to them on the way, they know about it." She said hurriedly. Bakura nodded and stood.
"Ok, then. Let's go." He said. "Let's get that magic back where it belongs."
The rest agreed, and they set off.
(----Divider----)
Daricio: There, you know who it is, now don't hurt me!
Malik: Next chapter is the last chapter, huh?
Daricio: (nods sorrowfully)
Malik: Big battle scene?
Daricio: (nods)
Malik: Me kicking butt?
Daricio: ...... Well, no...
Malik: WHAT?! I'm there, am I not?
Daricio: Well, yes, you are... And you help... but you're not the main bum kicker.
Malik: -.-
Radley: (running away from many people with flame throwers) Aaaaahhhh!!!! I didn't do it, I swear! Daricio wrote it, not me! Aaaahh!!!!
Daricio: (amused sweatdrop) I guess I better save my muse... (puts him in a protective dome)
Radley: THANK YOU. -.-UU
Daricio: You're welcome. Anyways, review! Don't hurt Radley, please! ...... Don't hurt me either!
Kura: (sweatdrop)
Daricio: Oh, and by the way... Ignore the chameleon. (nods wisely) HAPPY! XP