Hunt for the Items
42.
'The key lies in the river,' Hermione muttered to herself. 'What does that mean?'
'The Nile?' Harry suggested. 'Though it's a huge river. It'd be impossible to find anything.'
'Maybe she meant it literally,' was Ron's suggestion, and he glanced quickly around, made sure there were no onlookers, and whipped out his wand. 'Accio key.'
Nothing came.
Hermione sighed. 'Lucky you didn't summon every house key in the vicinity,' she said, before she brightened. 'Maybe by key, she meant the ankh.'
'The millennium item?' the boys asked, together.
Hermione looked at Ron.
Obligingly, he brandished his wand again. 'Accio Ankh.'
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43.
A summoning charm would have been too easy, probably. And they could think of no better places to search than the Nile so they found themselves, a little reminiscent of the cave with the Hocruxes, in a little boat scanning the bottom of the river.
Harry was right; it was too big. But they were two wizards and a witch and even if a summoning charm didn't help and they weren't game enough to try gillyweed in the famous Nile, they had other means to search the bottom of the river.
Doesn't mean they'd found anything, three sun-baked days later.
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44.
On the fourth night, Harry had a dream. He was in a maze of some sort, something that made the third task of the Triwizard Tournament and the Department of Mysteries both seem like childs play. Or perhaps it was only because there'd been an end in sight, for those. And a goal he'd been moving towards.
This time, there were just doors upon doors, and he couldn't even work which way was up or down.
He wished he had his broom.
And then suddenly, he did. But it didn't help him orientate any better –
Until he flew into someone.
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45.
Professor Quirrel had put him off turbans entirely, but somehow it didn't look out of place in this man. More distracting, though, was what he held in his hands.
What two things he held in his hands, rather. A key and a pair of scales, both made from gold.
Two of the Millennium Items, then.
But when curiosity got the better of him and he reached out to touch, they were transparent. So was the man.
'I am Shadi,' he said. 'And the gods of death may have put their trust in you, but I have come to see myself.'
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46.
Harry wasn't sure what Shadi saw, but he awoke in the morning with a sense of purpose. He couldn't explain it to Hermione either, much to her frustration, but they were happy enough to abandon their fruitless searching and accompany him.
They trekked across the desert instead, to a long abandoned city that stank of death. "Kul Elna," Hermione whispered, shuddering, and they remembered that city from what Bakura Ryou had told them before, and shuddered as well.
But they'd come for a reason, regardless, and in an underground cellar with a huge empty vat, they found the Millennium Ring.
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47.
'So I had the items wrong.'
Neither Ron nor Harry had brought it up, but Hermione seemed to be taking it hard anyway.
'Still,' Ron comforted, 'it's a Millennium Item, isn't it? One item down! And there must be a reason we were led to this one. I mean, Harry basically woke one morning and marched us here.'
Harry scratched his head. 'I'm still not entirely sure why myself,' he admits. 'Shadi said he was testing me, but I don't recall the test itself. I just had the urge to come this way.'
'I guess you passed the test then.'
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48.
Harry held the ring gingerly. Knowing it housed a genocidal thief didn't make it particularly easy to wear, nor did the thorn-like decorations that dangled from it.
Fleetingly, he wondered if Bakura Ryou carried scars from those, but that would have been a rude question to ask. He knew better, wearing scars himself: the bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, and the words permanently etched into his right hand.
He felt a sudden stab of pain, and then heard a curse echo in his ears. 'So you're not going to let me in, new landlord.'
'Nope, definitely not,' Harry said automatically.
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49.
Harry didn't often count his experiences against Voldermort as lucky, but one good thing that had come out of it was the occulomency (once he got past the fact that it had cost him both Sirius and Dobby). But without that, the Thief King would have had free reign over his mind, and given that he'd sold his soul to Zorc some three thousand years ago, that would arguably have spelt the end of the world.
Hermoine and Ron were reluctant to let him keep the ring anyway, given what had happened with the locket last time. They did, though.
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50.
Along the shore of the Nile, the ring began pointing. Harry asked the spirit if it knew where. It stayed stubbornly silent.
They followed the ring, given they had no better leads. Caught another boat to do it, too. Eventually, they found themselves at an excavation site. And they weren't the only ones there.
The spirit laughed, suddenly. 'I might have known. Kaiba Seto.'
Harry repeated the name. Hermione pointed at the logo on the jacket of each man, and the one who wasn't in uniform above them all. That must be Kaiba Seto – or Seto Kaiba, in English, then.
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51.
Seto Kaiba, it turned out, wasn't particularly thrilled by their lack of progress, but hadn't made much more progress himself either. He still had the puzzle, thankfully, and apparently it was safely in orbit at the present time.
Which didn't explain what the ring was pointing to, until they followed it all the way to the tablet.
'Zorc's tablet,' said Ron with a grimace. 'Think if we destroy that, we can avoid the end of the world again?'
'Don't you dare,' the spirit seethed, where only Harry could hear it.
Only Harry, apparently, and Shadi and Sara who'd also appeared.
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52.
This time, Harry was able to place Shadi as the ghost who'd hired them initially. Perhaps he hadn't seen the resemblance in his dream because the other hadn't been so ghost like in it. Or perhaps it was because he hadn't physically been there when the request came through, and had gotten the information second hand.
Neither Hermione nor Ron, for whatever reason, mentioned the turban.
Though it didn't really matter. They were only there to can the idea of destroying a Milleniumm Item or the stone itself, because that would also spell the end of the world.
Bloody inconvenient.
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53.
'You found the ring,' Sara smiled.
'You found the ring.' Shadi looked solemn.
'I don't get it,' Harry admitted. 'You hired us, and then you tested me?'
'I had to make sure you could withstand the ring,' he replied, 'elsewise you could have been the instrument of our demise.'
'But you're already dead,' Ron pointed out.
'And it was the ring who did that,' Shadi sighed. 'The ring in the hand of a poor little boy.'
They gasp, horrified, when it clicks. Who could ask a kid to control a wayward spirit?
Who could ask a baby to defeat Voldermort?
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54.
And, it turned out, Shadi and Sara had come with more news for them. Shadi suggested a trip to America. Sara pushed back her hair and revealed a necklace.
The necklace. 'That party trick again,' Kaiba frowned. 'Don't you girls get tired of predicting the future.'
Sara smiled. 'It is precisely that you take that stance that I have taken this,' she said, 'but rest assured the others were not stolen by me or mine. He'd taken pieces of the puzzle, and the ring, and that was all. He had no interest in the rest.'
But the question was who did?
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55.
Sara kept the necklace, but she did tell them to look for jealousy close to the past owner of the eye. From that, they apparate to the headquarters of Industrial Illusions and Hermione does a bit of quick talking to get them through the door.
In fact, it is Ron who comes in handy, having previous knowledge of the game and a head of strategy. He manages to bluff his way through card designers and to the front door, aided with confoundus charms of course.
And there is Pegasus J Crawford, the previous owner of the Millennium Eye.
'Hello there.'
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56.
He didn't have a future-seeing eye or any shred of magic, but he had an entire staff of people and seemed to know more about them than they'd expected.
And though he didn't have any magic himself, he was pretty familiar with it.
'It is a pity though,' he said, somewhat longingly. 'Though I suppose magic comes with its own problems. Just like the Millennium Items. But is it true it can't bring back the dead?'
'We can reanimate dead bodies,' Hermione said, sympathetic but clear, 'and make horcruxes, but no-one cheats death forever.'
'Death is a friend,' added Harry.
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57.
'A friend,' Pegasus repeated. 'How interesting. And have you lost anyone you loved?'
'Yes.' He had lost plenty.
And maybe it had showed on his face, because the man's face softened. 'I'm sorry; that was insensitive of me.' He glanced at a photo on his desk.
'Your wife?' Ron asked. She was a pretty woman, full of life.
He nodded. 'The reason for my descent and my saving grace as well.' A hand brushed away his hair. They all gasped at the empty eye socket and scar tissue coating it. 'My eye was a small price to pay for it.'
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58.
After that, they talked about Sara's hint, though they quickly realised that, as the long time CEO and world famous card designer, there was no shortage of people jealous of him.
Though the ring pointed down, which suggested someone in the company.
'Maybe…' Pegasus thought aloud. 'I can't think of any of my employees, but one is working on a new card series and is being rather secretive about the details. I'm not too worried though; he's always delivered.'
He points them in the direction of a Mr Phoenix's home anyway. And they see a man in a beanie outside.
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59.
From their vantage position, they see a young boy and a man in a neatly pressed shirt and pants walk into the building. They watch the man in the beanie watch him.
Harry feels the ring in his bag. Its pointing to the man in the beanie. He's sure of it.
He's also sure that if they leave him alone, something will happen, but he wasn't sure why.
He wished he could read the other's mind, but he couldn't.
'What is it?' Hermione hissed.
'That man…'
'He's creepy, right?,' Ron agreed. 'He must be our guy.'
'It's circumstantial,' Hermione hissed.
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60.
It wasn't circumstantial when darkness fell, and the man took a gold eye out of his apartment and used it to stare at the building once more.
A quick stupefy took care of him, and the eye was in their possession as well.
'But what I want to know is what he planned on doing here,' said Ron. 'We should obliviate him just to be safe.'
They look at Hermione. She shook her head, hair flying. 'Mine fell apart,' she protested. 'It should be Harry; he's good at charms too.'
So Harry took a breath and levelled his wand. 'Obliviate.'