Hunt for the Items
11.

'Where's the puzzle now?' Hermione asked first, and finally.

'In space,' Mokuba replies sheepishly. 'Sorry, my brother's really stubborn about duelling the Pharaoh again.'

They groaned. Magic could do a lot of things, but they're all pretty sure they can't apparate into space quite yet.

'Figures,' Ron grumbled. 'We're walking completely blind.'

'We do have the Ring,' Mokuba offered.

'Right,' said Hermione, cutting Ron off. 'We'll need that.'

'It's…' Mokuba hedged. 'It's got this tendency to possess anyone who touches it.'

Sounded like the locket. That was one of his least favourite Hocruxes. And he'd had one in his head.

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12.

Hermione whipped out the dragonhide gloves, then considered them. They'd never tried handling the hocruxes with dragonhide gloves, and Mokuba's method of using robotic arms seemed to work better.

At least when no-one was in contact with those robotic arms, anyway. The moment Ron, fascinated with the robots, touched one, the theory was blown out the window.

Harry had his wand out and a banishment charm on his lips before Hermione could draw her own. It did the job too, though perhaps not elegantly.

Hermione fixed the damage with a neat reparo. Mokuba gaped at the blatant display of magic.

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13.

Thank goodness the Statue of Secrecy had been rewritten, otherwise the owls would've been knocking them down for that. But they were a recognised company dealing with magical artefacts, and this came under some blanket agreement only Hermione really understood.

Harry didn't worry about things like that. Neither did Ron, even if he was nursing his head and spitting out apologies and thank yous. Hermione did. They figured she was still looking to rewrite the Ministry, even if Kingsley was doing a decent job. Harry… He'd just be happy once Auror training was over. Hunting evil artefacts became nice breaks.

Though the fact that the ring had vanished after that display was somewhat bitter.

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14.

'So that's a Millennium Item.' Ron is still a little breathless. 'Merlin, that was worse than the locket.'

Harry was inclined to accept Ron's assessment on that, considering the red-head was the one who wound up destroying it… And the one probably most affected by it too.

Hermione hummed. She probably agreed too. She was looking towards the ring anyway… And why was it even called a ring, when it looked more like a pendant with pokey things dangling off? Rings went around people's fingers!

Mokuba shrugged. 'I'm not that interested in history. You could probably ask Mutou Sugoroku-san though.'

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15.

They did ask Mutou Sugoroku-san, who turned out to be the elderly owner of Kame Game, a modest little card shop. Which mightn't have been their best move, but was still far smoother than Xenophilius Lovegood.

He just talked a lot, and got off track a little, and mentioned a grandson so many times, they almost wondered if he was dead instead of buying tomatoes.

Because it certainly didn't take all afternoon to buy tomatoes. 'We can look?" Harry offered, a little tentatively because finding people was a whole other kettle of fish – but he'd be damned leaving this alone.

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16.

To their surprise, the old man just laughed. 'That's my Yugi,' he said affectionately. 'Always distracted by an adventure. You might meet him anyway, looking for ancient Egyptian artefacts. You are looking for ancient Egyptian artefacts, right?'

At that moment, the trio wondered just how much the old man knew about the items. Hermione made the mistake of asking.

They were treated to a long lecture that lasted well past (and, at least, included) dinner, which possibly only Hermione paid any real attention to. Some of it was interesting, and Harry found himself intermittently listening… but he'd never liked history.

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17.

They had a list of names, in the end. Old owners of the Items but that didn't really help them locating them now.

Still, after the Ring vanished into thin air and left them dry, it might be a good idea to see them anyway, to know what sort of effects they had. So Hermione pointed out anyway, and she always was their voice of reason.

Or almost always, anyway. Harry and Ron didn't pluck their embarrassing stories store out of nowhere, after all.

But her idea was sound, especially since scrying was a thing of Muggle fantasy and not a reality in the magical world quite yet.

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18.

Two of them were in Egypt, where they'd have to visit due to the tablet anyway, but some were in Japan and that was far easier. They were already there, after all.

Finding Mutou Yugi was probably going to be one of the harder ones, sans Kaiba Seto somewhere in space. So those two were back-benched. That left Pegasus J. Crawford, who Mokuba promised to get them a meeting slot with (being another company CEO), and Bakura Ryou who was currently studying archaeology at Domino University.

And then there was the ghost who had commissioned them in the first place.

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19.

The ghost hadn't been kind enough to leave them a forwarding address, nor had he mentioned that he'd once been the owner of two of the Millennium Items he'd commissioned them to find.

Ron in particular grumbled about elusive ghosts, but they all shared the sentiment. And that meant they really only had one lead until next week, because Pegasus J. Crawford wasn't in any particular hurry to see them (since the world wasn't in any acute crisis, apparently).

So they checked out Domino University and its archaeology department.

Then, to Ron's delight, the cafeteria because Ryou was eating lunch.

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20.

He blinked and stared at them: three foreigners who'd stopped at his otherwise empty table.

And they were surprised to see he didn't look entirely Japanese himself. Maybe he was half? Or an immigrant? Or just studying at the university…

While Harry's mind drifted, Hermoine introduced them. Still bemused, Ryou offered them a seat and food, and they happily accepted.

Things were calm until they mentioned the Millennium Ring. Then Ryou's face paled and his shoulders stiffened.

'I don't know where the Ring is.'

'We have it,' Hermione hurried to reassure.

Ryou's face lost what was left of its colour.

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21.

'I don't – ' He stopped, aborted, and started again. 'I don't want to talk about it.'

And he was gone before they even registered him getting up. Ron stared at the doors, then the food at the table. 'Should we chase him or wait for him?'

'Which direction did he go?'

Ron groaned and reached for a pudding. 'You're a witch, remember.'

Hermione blushed, a kick-back to their first year as she pulled out her wand (after a discreet check, of course. The cafeteria was mostly empty, and Harry could cover her wand hand easily enough.)

'Point me Ryou Bakura.'

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22.

They never talked about people possessed by Hocruxes long term. There wasn't anyone, really. Except for Harry but Harry didn't count because he hadn't been possessed, for the most part. Nagini counted, but Nagini had lost her mind and sense of self far too long ago to tell them anything of her experience.

And she was a snake. Human minds were far sterner… and far more fragile.

They never talked about it. But sometimes they thought. Especially Harry. What he could have been. What he could have turned into.

Maybe Ryou Bakura's knee-jerk reaction to the Ring was close enough.

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23.

When they found him, he was crying. The three of them shared awkward looks at that… Because they were all awful at dealing with people crying.

So they left and came back the next day, hoping Ryou wouldn't see them and run the other way.

He didn't. He just offered them chocolate bars.

Harry wondered if food was a comfort for him, or if he'd been so desperately starving at one point it had become a lifeline.

Ryou followed his line of thought. Or maybe just his gaze. 'Sometimes, I'd be in the Shadow Realm for months at a time.'

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24.

The Shadow Realm, after a few tentative questions, sounded very much to Harry like that weird limbo place he'd met Professor Dumbledore in. The one he'd wound up in when Voldermort had killed his own horcrux instead of him. That place that was neither life nor death.

But it wasn't like that, after a few more questions. It was a nightmare one couldn't get out of. A darkness that went on forever. And the only light in there was the one that came from their rescuers, in a place where hope was nothing more than fleeting sparks till they're saved.

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25.

Ryou was munching on another chocolate bar as he wrapped up his explanation of the Shadow Realm, but even Ron who never turned down free food was looking a little green. So was Harry, who could understand a little better than the other two, even if it hadn't been a problem for years…

Still, the day he woke up and realised he was starting to look like his cousin had been a scare. (Still, he'd never approached his cousin's previous body habitus – not dissimilar to a whale).

Hermione was probably preoccupied with the cavities. Two dentists' daughter through and through.

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26.

They didn't learn much about the capabilities of the Ring, in the end. Just the malevolent spirit who'd lived in it, hijacked the poor guy's body, caused damaged that couldn't always be repaired and left holes like swiss cheese.

All of them were also sure there were some things left out of the tale, but they didn't push. They probably didn't need to know that stuff. And the spirit stuff was useful. A being completely enveloped by Zorc, like Nagini had drowned in Voldermort. Or Bellatrix, or some of his other Death Eaters.

He's still somewhat amazed the Malfoys didn't.