Hey y'all. :)
This was updated WAY earlier than anticipated, but I had a free day, so hey, why not? (ihavenolife:C )
There's some Bakura POV coming up. I hope that you guys all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'm a fangirl, so sue me. We all are, otherwise we wouldn't be here, right?
I own nothing!
-blah- = mindlink , but I'm sure you've got this down by now.
Enjoy!
Chapter 9
"Nearly time for bed, I think," yawned Mrs. Weasley later that night after Ellie and Harry's welcoming feast. It was getting late, thought Ryou. They had spent nearly the entire day cleaning.
"Not just yet, Molly," Sirius said. He pushed away from his plate and turned to Harry and Ellie. "You know, I'm surprised at you two! I thought that the first thing that you would do would be to start asking questions about Voldemort."
The light, cheerful atmosphere in the room instantly changed to a heavy one. Ryou looked at Harry, who looked slightly offended at his Godfather's accusation.
"I did! I asked Ron and Hermione, but they said we're not allowed in the Order, so-"
"And they're quite right, you're too young." Mrs. Weasley interjected, approvingly.
"Since when did someone have to be in the Order of the Phoenix to ask questions? Harry and Ellie have been cut off from us for a month. They've got the right to know what's happen-"
"Hang on!"
"How come Harry gets to have his questions answered?" The twins interjected hotly.
"We've been trying to get stuff out of you for a month and you haven't told us a single stinking thing!
This resulted in a full on argument, involving pretty much everybody at the table. Ryou, Malik, and Yugi automatically leaned in towards each other in order to be close enough to hear each other over the shouting.
"They're crazy!" Malik declared, warily eyeing Sirius, who, at the moment looked positively murderous.
Yami took over for Yugi in order to have his opinion heard. "You are right, Tomb Keeper. I do not wish to be involved in this petty drama. I am only here in order to protect my hikari."
Ryou frowned. He wished that Bakura would have the same mindset about him, but all he cares about is finding a way to get a body of his own, Ryou be damned. "We should go." He finally said quietly.
The other two transfers nodded, and they slipped upstairs, unnoticed.
xxx
Later that night, while everyone was sleeping, Ryou's eyes snapped open. But their coloring was off. What was usually chocolate brown was now blood red. His long white hair was now spiked up, considerably higher than normal.
Bakura sat up, and pulled his clothes on. He made sure that his deck was in his pocket, and he snuck towards the door. Malik's loud snores made the perfect cover for anybody sneaking around trying to be unheard, but the Thief King needed no such thing, as he was silent as a ghost. The normally squeaky door didn't make a peep as he slipped through it.
Nighttime was the perfect time to defy his irksome host. Ryou had surprisingly grown powerful enough to be able to annoyingly communicate with the spirit when he is in control of his body. This usually only happens when Bakura is doing something that Ryou is particularly opposed to, though. But when Ryou's body fell asleep, so did his mind. This meant that Bakura could wake the body up without alerting Ryou. So the spirit was, for the time being, completely alone.
The very first thing that Bakura did was pull out the Millennium Ring. He knew that there was a lot of magic running through this house, and he wanted to know where the more powerful items were located. They could come in useful.
He laid the ring flat on his hands, and before he could give it instruction, the pointers went haywire. No two pointed in the same direction, and they didn't point at the same thing for long. It looked as though a heavy gust of wind had taken the pointers and was flaying them about as if they weighed nothing.
Bakura rolled his eyes. He had expected this, but it was so very inconvenient. There was too much magic in this house for the ring to hone in on one thing. With all of the interference, he doubted that the ring could lead him to Yugi or Malik, who were both only through the door that he was only steps away from.
This meant that he had to do this the old fashioned way, meaning rifling through things and hoping he came across something powerful, and then being able to identify it if he did find it. He growled, and slipped the ring under his striped blue and white shirt.
Bakura knew that this was also dangerous work, as he himself had witnessed the house and it's objects itself try to harm anyone who touched them. His host had done the tiresome job of cleaning without a second thought, but Bakura had been paying attention. He had a slight idea of which threats he should watch for, but he still did not have as much knowledge of this magic as he knew he should.
He headed to the drawing room, as there was nothing of much value left in the library after they had finished with it today. It was a shame that they wouldn't leave it as it was. Nobody staying in this house liked the dark, dirty, shady atmosphere, but it was certainly preferable to Bakura. He breathed in the scent of dust as he stepped in, closing the door behind him soundlessly. Dust meant old, and old meant valuable.
Bakura looked around. He didn't want to be taken by surprise by anything when he began his search. The only things out of the ordinary were the buzzing drapes over a window so filled with grime that you couldn't see through it, and the desk. The desk was rattling like there was something inside that couldn't get out.
Bakura approached it cautiously. He didn't want whatever was inside of the desk to lunge out and attack him.
But no, he thought, it seemed that it couldn't. Whatever was inside of the desk must have been trapped inside, and it was desperately fighting to get out. Bakura smirked, and pulled out the Ring once more. He had to see what was in there.
He summoned the shadows to open the drawer, so he could safely stand back at a distance. What came out was not what Bakura was expecting, not at all.
A cloud of black erupted out of the drawer. The cloud was so thick that it obscured everything behind it. It was getting bigger and bigger, and getting closer to Bakura. He reached for his deck, in order to summon something to keep it at bay.
But before he could do anything, there was a loud crack, and with a flash of light the black disappeared and he was looking at himself laying on the floor.
No, it wasn't himself. The eyes, they were different. It was … it was Ryou.
Dead.
How could that be? He was in Ryou's body right now. Ryou couldn't be dead. No. His mind was whirling. It was impossible. He would never let anything hurt his light.
Bakura fell to his knees, and put a hand to his chest. His heart, no, Ryou's heart was beating. He wasn't dead. His hikari couldn't be dead.
He crawled towards Ryou's body, and reached out a hand to touch him. He needed to feel for himself.
At the exact moment that his hand would have made contact with his light's cheek, Ryou's body disappeared with another crack. The cloud of black was back, and Bakura jumped to his feet, livid.
He understood now. It was the creature. It must show him his worst fears. The shadows and a dead Ryou. With a mask of rage on his face, Bakura used the power of the ring to stuff the creature back into the desk. With a satisfying thud, the drawer closed, the desk rocked, but more importantly the creature was trapped once again.
Bakura backed as far away from the desk as far he could, and slipped back out the door.
He slammed it, and sank down it until he was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. There was only one thought running through his head. When he had seen Ryou's body, his mind had not jumped to his own fate if his host had died. No, he was upset that Ryou was dead. Nothing less, nothing more. He had only Ryou's safety on his mind. Since when did he worry so much about his host?
And since when did he worry so little about himself?
If Ryou had really died, then what would have happened to Bakura? Back to the ring, he supposed, until some other poor soul was destined to have it. That could have meant another 3000 years stuck in the ring.
Bakura was well aware that he needed his host to live in the real world.
He was just so shocked that this thought did not cross his mind once when he saw him dead.
He just thanked the Gods that Ryou had not woken at any point during any of this.
He stood up, and slipped to the foyer. Bakura needed out of this house. He needed to be as far away from that wretched creature as possible in order to think properly.
Bakura reached the front door, and tried to pull it open. Nothing. It was locked. He pulled out his lock picking kit (neither he or Ryou were ever without it, but Ryou wasn't aware of this) and stuck it inside the lock. It immediately zapped him and sent the lock pick flying.
Bakura turned around to go and retrieve it, but there was already someone there, holding it in her hands.
"Going somewhere?" Ellie asked, examining the pick. "Only official members of the Order are able to open that door, you know."
Bakura examined her. He could see why Ryou liked her so much,. She was pretty, but in a simple way. She wasn't the girl that turned heads everywhere she went: Ellie was just the embodiment of what Ryou liked in a girl. She had the pale skin and wild hair, with a small stature that was very similar to that of Amane's.
Standing in front of him in a long pink nightgown, she looked completely harmless and innocent. But that didn't matter to Bakura, who needed an outlet for all of his rage.
He resisted the urge to banish her to the Shadow Realm, (this was only for Ryou's sake, it seemed that he now cared about the foolish boy) and instead stalked forwards and snatched the pick out of her hand, shoving past her. She was knocked into the wall. Bakura ignored the sound of her head smacking the wall, and gripped the pick so hard that it's sharp edge cut into his palm.
He prayed to Ra for the strength not to harm this foolish girl who was now hurrying after him down the hall.
xxx
Ellie heard a faint crack from downstairs. She had always been a light sleeper. She looked at Hermione and Ginny, who were both still fast asleep in their own beds. Quietly, Ellie climbed out of bed, slipped on her glasses, and grabbed her wand.
Mrs. Weasley had told them that there was a boggart in the drawing room earlier that day, and that's what the crack had sounded like. She wanted to go and make sure that none of the transfers had stumbled across it and were facing their worst fears.
She hurried out of the room, and was on the second floor landing when she heard a thud, and a door close. She didn't know what those sounds meant, but she nonetheless moved faster.
When Ellie passed the drawing room, there was nobody in it. The desk did seem a little more crooked than usual, though. She turned and walked down the hall, wondering who exactly was down here.
Her question was answered when she stepped into the foyer. She wasn't exactly trying to be quiet, but Ryou must not have heard her because he continued to try and get outside. Ellie watched as he first tried the doorknob, but was obviously unsuccessful because Dumbledore himself had placed a seal on the door that only a select few could open.
She then cocked her head as Ryou pulled out a lock pick from his pocket, and unhesitatingly thrust it into the keyhole, only to have it fly backwards past him and land right at Ellie's feet. She picked it up.
Ryou turned around. He was obviously surprised to see her, but he didn't jump, start or give any sign that she had taken him off guard.
"Going somewhere?" She asked. Ellie looked down at the lock pick, wondering where he had gotten it. It looked very old, and if used on the right kind of lock, very effective. "Only official members of the Order are able to open that door, you know."
When Ellie looked up, she realized that Ryou was, once again, staring at her. But there was something different about him. He must have had a massive case of bed-head, because his white locks were sticking up in every direction. And maybe it was a trick of the light, but his eyes were … different. She couldn't place exactly what the difference was, but it was there.
He must have had quite a nasty round with that boggart to have put him in such a bad mood, because the next thing that Ryou did was knock Ellie hard into a wall and grab his pick as he stalked past her. Her head thudded sickeningly on the wall, but he did not turn back.
Ellie quickly righted herself, rubbing the soon-to-be egg on her skull. She hurried after him.
"Ryou? Ryou!" He ignored her, but she followed him straight into the kitchen. "I know why you're acting like this."
This seemed to finally evoke a response from him, because he stopped dead in his tracks and whipped around, his eyes staring daggers.
Ellie was terrified of the look that he was giving her, but she did not back down. She knew what it was like to face a boggart, and Ryou probably didn't even know what it was.
"You just saw your worst fears. In the drawing room. I heard the boggart."
Ryou's face turned from one of pure malice to a look of confusion. "The what?"
Ellie was taken aback from his sudden mood change. "A boggart. They're dark creatures that take the form of what you fear most. They like to hide in small dark spaces. We learned about them in third year." She timidly took a few steps closer, letting her hand drop from the bump on her head. "Are you okay? I know it's, well, it's not easy going through that, especially not knowing that it's only an illusion."
Ryou eyed the now smaller space between them. "I am fine." He said stiffly. He was no longer giving her that death glare, which Ellie took to be reassuring. She knew that he had mastered the ability to summon a power that killed a dozen death eaters, so she should be wary around him. Right now Ryou was anything but vulnerable, but there was something about him that Ellie still wanted to protect.
"Then why were you trying to run away?" She asked quietly.
xxx
Bakura wasn't trying to run away. He wasn't.
He just wanted to clear his head.
Why did this little girl keep making him doubt himself?
"I was not trying to run away." Bakura yanked a seat out from the table, and sat down. He rubbed the lids of his closed eyes with his fists. "I needed to think. I wanted fresh air."
Annoyingly, the girl took a seat across from him. "Would you have come back?" She whispered.
Bakura snapped his head up. "Of course I would have." He spat. Why was she being so nice to him? Bakura was being a real jerk to her, and they both knew it.
"I'm sorry that you're locked up in here, then." She told him. "What about your friends?"
"My. . . friends?"
"Yugi and Malik. Would you tell them if you left? I thought that Voldemort was after all of you."
Ra damn it. There she goes again. Not that Bakura cared about Yugi and Malik, but he certainly did not want someone like the Dark Lord getting his hands on their Millennium Items.
Bakura stood up. "I am going back to bed." He snapped.
He turned around, and stomped out of the room, which was very out of character for him, and that only pissed him off even more.
And there you have it!
Fun fact: Boggarts date back centuries in British history. They were legend to be mischievious poltergiests who dwelled in houses and liked to scare people. AKA the bogeyman.
I thought that that was the COOLEST thing ever, and that I would share with my lovely readers. I got that info from "A Muggle's Guide to the Wizarding World" by Fionna Boyle. It's got pretty much everything you need to know (only up until 5th year, sadly). Seriously guys, check 'er out.
So look, I'm going away this weekend, leaving Friday morning, and won't be back until late Monday or early Tuesday. It probably won't affect anything, but it's just a heads up nonetheless.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Review review review!