The Three Kings: Resist Chapter 3: Tails, a Harry Potter + Yu-Gi-Oh Crossover fanfic

The Three Kings: Resist

Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

Disclaimer (2): Jeep belongs to Chrysler Group LLC.

Warning: Mentions of divorce, previous political assassination attempts, censorship, government takeovers, breaches of privacy, sexual slavery, homelessness, incest, pregnancy, sexual situations, fantasy-based racism and classism, fire, slavery, unsafe sex, possible impregnation, burning to death, child soldiers, torture, rape threats, starvation, consensual body modification, and the unintentional misgendering of a closeted transgender individual.

Chapter 2: Tails

The doorbell rings, jerking Reyna out of her sleep. The book in her lap falls to the floor. Cursing, she bends forward and picks it up. It's a first edition copy of Violetta Black's Throne, free of the editing that a lawsuit had forced her to comply with. Tavell had given it to her to celebrate their first Christmas as a couple because he'd known how much she'd loved the Lady Pharaoh growing up. He'd told her that he'd started his search the day that they'd met and paid an arm and a leg to get it.

Reyna chuckles at the memory, placing it on the side table beside the wingback chair she'd been napping in. The bell chimes again and the feeling of happiness fades.

It's time, she thinks. Reyna checks that her wand is at her hip, still shaken from Morin's attacks all those months ago, and goes to answer the door.

Her ex-husband, Tavell Cross, stands on the other side, hand in hand with his new wife. Tavell looks as tired as Reyna feels, the lines on his dark face brought on by the stress. He'd gone grey in the last few years and had taken to shaving his head bald rather than have his hair dyed. He gives Reyna a small smile, which she returns, and steps forward to hug her.

"How are you?" He asks, looking her in the eye when they part. Tavell is just as tall as Reyna is and she always used to appreciate the fact that they could never not look at each other when they spoke. But right now, all she wants to do is to focus her gaze on anything besides him.

"I'm alright," she lies. Reyna turns to the woman beside him, "Angelina. You're looking well."

Angelina is almost a foot shorter than Reyna and nearly twenty years her junior. She's a radiant young woman, always seeming to be full of laughter. Angelina's hair and makeup were as stunningly perfect as the rest of her, her stylish robes uncharacteristically somber for the occasion.

"Thank you," Angelina says and Reyna can tell that she means it; she likes that about the girl.

"Please come in," Reyna gestures invitingly toward the open door.

Despite what The Quill claimed, Reyna's divorce was less of a riveting tale of scandal and more the final chapter of a story that needed an end so that it's cast of characters could move forward. She and Tavell had moved too quickly and married far earlier than they should have, resulting in a partnership that could never have outlasted the storms they faced. They'd tried to make it work, if only for their children, but eventually decided that they were better off apart.

There had been no infidelity, though the timing of their actions after their divorce had been finalized had not helped to quell the rumours. Tavell and Angelina had met no less than a week later and hit it off spectacularly and Reyna had made the mistake of bringing Neal Pendergrass as her plus one to Nicholas Hatfield's retirement party three years ago. The media had picked those stories up and run with it after Hatfield announced that Reyna would be replacing him as Minister for Magic.

"Where are the kids?" Tavell asks as he sits down at the kitchen table.

"Upstairs. Chanara's behind on packing," Reyna explains, not wanting to get into the argument that she'd had with her daughter this morning. Chanara didn't understand why she had to move, didn't realize that Reyna and her security force might not be able to protect her from the next Adam Morin. And while she takes some comfort in Chanara's belief in her strength, she knows that it will only make it worse when the anvil finally drops.

"And how's Marco taking it?" Tavell says, glancing up at the ceiling, knowing that their children's rooms were just above their heads.

"He's excited to see you again. It's been too long," Reyna says, couching her lies in truths. In almost direct contrast, Marco seemed to be all too aware of her weaknesses and was convinced that she'd be killed on the job. Reyna had gotten a floo call from his school just the other week saying that Marco had been sent to the nurse's office after a lockdown drill. Apparently, one of the other children had started a rumour saying that there'd been another assassination attempt and Marco had had a panic attack, believing that it had been real.

It's for the best, Reyna tells herself, swallowing around the lump in her throat as the coffee pot finishes with her brew. Tavell's parents left him a cottage up in their will. And once we cast the Fidelius Charm, they'll be hidden away, protected for good. Her fingers curl around the handle and she lifts the carafe from the heat. It's for the best, she repeats.

Halfway through their divorce, Tavell's parents had been killed in something that the New York Auror Department had classified as an accident, saying that they'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and gotten merely caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Tavell had been so distraught at the time that the judge had awarded Reyna full-custody of Chanara and Marco, worried that their father might not be able to care for them in the long term. But Reyna had always had her suspicions. Travone and Nayshya Cross had been wealthy muggleborn business owners making moves in a predominantly pureblood circle of competitors, meaning that it wouldn't be completely out of the way to think that they'd been the victims of a hate crime. She'd brought it up with Neal Pendergrass once in an attempt to get him to reopen the case, but he'd told her there was nothing that they could do.

People like Neal don't like talking about how blood purity still rules our society, especially when they profit off of it, Reyna thinks, gritting her teeth and tries to think straight. She hadn't been alive the last time America had a supremacy war, but both her's and Tavell's parents had been survivors of Marie Fawly's rise to power in the sixties. I always knew which side Neal's family supported, but I also know where he stands now.

Yet, after pictures of Adam Morin's corpse hanging from the ceiling of his cell leaked to the press, Reyna worries that her children will grow up amidst the next wizarding civil war.

She pours two cups of coffee and set them in front of Tavell and Angelina before grabbing the third mug for herself. Reyna sighs, adding creme and sugar before taking her first sip, "I told them that you would be coming to pick them up, so they should be ready to go.

"Do you want me to have a talk with them first?" Tavell offers. Reyna nods, but she doesn't think that it will change anything. She's already told both Chanara and Marco that The Quill was wrong, that their father wasn't trying to take them away. Instead, she and Tavell had asked a judge to change the custody agreements of their divorce so that her ex-husband could leave with their children without having to worry about an investigation by the Auror Office. The Quill had taken that, sensationalized it, and turning this whole thing into another story about how Reyna fucked up and wasn't fit to be Minister.

I'm trying to protect them, she thinks, remembering how helpless she'd felt when Adam Morin attacked her parent's home in New York, using her own body to cover Marco while her security team worked to protect them from his onslaught. Why can't everyone just see that?

Tavell finishes his coffee and moves toward the staircase, pressing a comforting hand to Reyna's shoulder before starting his ascent. Angelina gives her just half a minute of silence before she pulls a stack of papers out of her bag.

"Is that…?" Reyna starts but lets her sentence peter out.

Angelina nods, "The findings of my investigation, as ordered ma'am."

While she may have started her Ministry career in the Department of Magical Cooperation, Angelina Mina's skill set would have been wasted there had her resume not made its way across Nicholas Hatfield's desk shortly before his retirement. Following the collapse of Marie Fawly's regime in 1962 and the resignation of Hatfield as Minister of Magic, he created a secret spy network that worked to gather information about threats to the American Ministry and reported back to the Minister themselves. And Angelina, who'd graduated Ravenwood Magical College with top marks in all her subjects despite her abysmal attendance record, seemed to be someone with a unique information gathering skills. Hatfield had recommended that Reyna hire her after he'd told her of the Board's existence, just before their transfer of power had taken place.

Shortly after returning home following the Confederation Broadcast, Reyna had promoted Angelina to Head of the program and tasked her with finding out everything that she could on the mages of San Francisco, specifically the strange looking pair that had declared themselves the leaders of the movement. Angelina had come back to Reyna nearly three months later, admitting that all she could on the two mages was a few credit card transactions - more from Bakura than Atem.

"Bakura, I can at least date him back to late April 2013, when he bought some furniture for an apartment. But it's like Atem didn't exist until she went to a hairdresser roughly a week before she helped blow up the island in the Pacific," Angelina had growled, pacing back and forth in Reyna's office. "The birth certificates and passports that they have are bullshit, all leading back to some obscure village in Egypt that doesn't even exist on a map. Whoever Bakura and Atem are - if those are even their real names - San Francisco went out of their way to hide their pasts from the world."

But now, she sits in Reyna's kitchen with a stack of parchment so thick that it makes a noise when Angelina thumps it triumphantly on to the table.

"You've found who they are?" Reyna asks, her eyes wide.

Angelina shakes her head, scowling, "Sadly, no. My team still hasn't made any headway into discovering who Bakura and Atem were before they came to San Francisco. But we have made surprising headway into what they have been doing afterward." She pulls a map out of the stack, "They've been making trips around the world, looking for allies."

Reyna frowns, "The only country to openly suggest an alliance with San Francisco has been China. There have been whispers of others, but-"

Angelina interrupts her, "I'm not talking about human allies. I'm talking about other non-magical races around the world."

"What?" Reyna asks, taking a better look at the map.

"Aurors in Detroit are telling us that the Werewolf packs that have squatted there for years are on the move, heading south. Someone also broke up the Veela sex trade in Chicago just before the wolves disappeared," Angelina pauses to pass Reyna a grainy muggle surveillance photo. Several of the most beautiful people she's ever seen stand off to the side in the middle of a train station. Beside them with a laugh on his lips is Bakura, looking so relaxed and non-threatening that Reyna doesn't even recognize him at first. "This was taken from a security camera in the Amtrak station. The train they got on was heading west making all stops to Reno. And from there, it's only a five-hour bus ride to San Francisco."

Angelina takes a breath before she continues, "We've got evidence of them in Central America visiting Vampires, in Russia talking to Giants, and even in Britain itself after they closed their borders."

"What were they doing in Britain?" Reyna asks, while thinking, So much for British superiority… Because if Angelina could get information out of the country without causing an incident, she's honestly not surprised that the mages could slip past their security unnoticed. Hell, even Neal could get in - though he had what their Ministry thought was a valid excuse. And Bakura has done something similar before, she thinks and remembers the day that her Ministry had been turned into a desert.

"Well, considering that that foul woman, Dolores Umbridge, has been calling for the restriction of Centaur territories, we can only guess that they were heading to talk with them," Angelina answers.

"But why? Why them…? What can Veela and Centaurs do that talking to us can't?" Reyna asks. Before they'd disappeared entirely, Atem had warned the Confederation that they'd be in touch. And yet, no one except Xiang Li had even heard from them. Hell, half of Angelina's rationale for Reyna to hire Kisha Borrego was to see if she was still in contact with San Francisco and control the flow of information the mages had about the American Ministry itself (which had proved ineffective because they somehow had a way of filtering out false information and acting accordingly). "Could they be building an army?"

"It's a possibility," Angelina says. "With tensions brewing within the goblin ranks, it won't be long before they turn sides too."

"How are they doing this?" Reyna asks, "To organize something on this large a scale, they need some form of communication."

"We think they're using the internet."

"The what?"

"The internet," Angelina explains. "It's like… imagine if the floo network was connected to the biggest library in the world. You can't actually go to the library, but you can get information from it just by asking it a question. And anyone can access it through their computers - these machines that the muggles build to use the internet. I've put a Squib in our employ who's really good at hacking, so we've been able to see a few their communications. We think that they've got this group called the Jackals helping them out. There's leader is someone called Leo. Bakura and Atem seem to talk to him quite often. I actually think that they're close friends."

Finally. A lead, Reyna feels hope blossoming in her chest. She'd been so without it in the last few years, leading her to do something as desperate as straight up asking Borrego for her to contact Bakura and Atem for her. If they don't come to me, I'll have to go to them.

"My Squib thinks that we can track Leo's internet address. Do I have your permission?" Angelina asks. She looks up, squints, and then starts to put her papers back in her bag.

There are a series of thumps coming from the ceiling, meaning that Tavell has convinced their children to come downstairs. Reyna has to make the decision now.

"You do. Come back to me when you have a location and I'll take it from there," Reyna says. She stands and turns just in time to see her children comes down the stairs.

Light flickers around the Cave of the Eternal Flame and Holly stands beside her husband. They are dressed in flowing black and yellow silks, the colours of the Houses Sidonia and Hufflepuff, holding hands before the blazing inferno before them.

Their audience is comprised of the purest blood that the world can offer. In the front row are the remaining members of Italy's oldest families. Decimus Papas, a wisp of a man with swollen joints and bones that were prone to breaking. Decimus had lost both a son and a brother-in-law to the Zabini black widow, but his sister had died giving the world Holly's husband, so she had ordered that he be seated in the middle as an honoured guest.

Quintus and Otacilia Seanus had been placed to his left. Otacilia had a shaking hand over her pregnant belly, her skin-and-bones fingers twitching uncontrollably. Her brother and husband sat beside her, his thin face gaunt and his eyes staring hungrily at Marcellous.

He wants my husband's strength… or perhaps he just wants my husband, Holly keeps her eyes on Quintus, her lip curling in warning. He is mine, boy. You had best remember that.

Just behind her two children, Caesia Seanus had chosen to stand rather than sit, barely holding herself up as she leaned on her cane. If Holly remembers correctly, one of Caesia's grandmothers had been a foreigner and Luccenia Sonia had used the woman as an example for her repeating of the Pureblood Protection Act. Holly regards the old woman carefully, for she had a shrewd look about her.

A space had been left at Marcellous's request for the Zabini heir, for when Viola would return to the home of her birth. Holly looks out at the crowd beyond and sees the lesser families of Italy, those few that had remained loyal to their betters. She doesn't understand how those that sided with Luccenia could commit such a heinous act. Justice lays across her lap and Holly imagines unsheathing it and running it through the Vestalis Maxima's chest, watching the blade run red as the girl's life left her body.

"My brothers and sisters," Marcellous rises to his feet, taking a few steps forward. Holly doesn't think that she'd ever get used to seeing him move without pain, but she revels in it nonetheless. By the looks that Quintus continues to give him, she is not the only one. "For too long have we sat silent, held back by those with mud flowing through their veins. For too long we have been forced into the dark, while the spawn of muggles sit in our rightful places. No longer! Not a moment longer!"

A cry goes up amongst the crowd and Marcellous waits for it to settle before he continues.

"My half-blood sister calls herself Minister, using a power granted to her by my father to steal his position from him. If she were to have her way, our children," he points to Otacilia and her unborn child, "would mate with muggles and mages, polluting our blood with their filth!"

"Never!" Otacilia hisses, "She will have my son over my-" her words are cut short as she starts to cough so violently that her entire frame seems to shake. Caesia rushes forward, pressing a handkerchief to her daughter's mouth. When she pulls it away, it's stained red.

"I have been given new strength, using the power of the ancient wizards of this city hid within this Cave. My brothers and sisters, I give you the Eternal Flame!"

Marcellous gestures toward the bonfire, burning in a thousand nameless colours, arching high above their heads as Holly's husband raises his hands toward it.

"The Flame has kept my wife alive for nearly a thousand years. She is the daughter of Hufflepuff, the granddaughter of the great Pompilia Sidonia, and the heiress to the Pendragon throne. When she married me, she told me of the Flame, so that I might lead the wizarding world into a golden age!"

Their audience roars, sending red and gold sparks overhead. Marcellous knows how to put on a show, regardless of the falsehoods in his words. The bonfire was just that - a bonfire. The rest power lies in the tunnels above, in the small red stone that her mother held in her hands.

"I want to share this power with you, my brothers and sisters! I want to you to stand beside me so when I fight in this war, you will fight alongside me!" Marcellous shouts and the crowd goes wild, screaming at the top of their lungs. "Walk through the flames and do not be scared! Because tonight, the Roman Empire begins anew!"

One by one, the Italian families of old were reborn. Otacilia and Quintus are the first, the siblings holding hands as they walked through the fire. They emerge unburnt the other side black haired and beautiful, their baby kicking in its mother's womb. They are followed by Demicus, who needs to be carried into the Flame by his house elves. As his servants burn beside him, Demicus roars as he is filled with life. He steps out of the flames a handsome young man with a full head of red hair and a spring in his step.

"Mother! Walk through! Walk through!" Quintus calls, reaching out for Caesia to join them. The old woman moves slowly but surely, limping toward the Flame with her ever cautious gaze. But she too is transformed, her age reversed and her long dark hair flowing thick against her back.

Their celebrations continue throughout the night, as they eat and drink in the light of the Flame. Sometime around midnight, Holly tugs her husband away from his conversation with the Seanus siblings and pulls him into a hidden cavern, kissing him for all that she worth.

Marcellous pushes her against the wall, pushing her silks up around her hips and fucks her roughly against the stone. They don't do this often - him inside of her, even after his health has been restored - but tonight they come together as one.

They are interrupted once your when Decimus pulls a weepy looking girl into their hiding spot.

"Oh, looks like this spot is already occupied," Decimus smirks and tugs the girl away.

"With any luck, the girl will give him an heir tonight," Marcellous says as he moves within her. Holly grins into his mouth.

"With any luck, I'll give you an heir tonight," she whispers. Marcellous grips her tight as his cums, filling her completely.

When they return to the party, laughing as they tug their silks back into place, a man is waiting for them.

He's not of Italian blood, that is certain. Holly recognizes the high cheekbones of the British noble families and the silver blond hair of one in particular.

"Lucius Malfoy," the man introduces himself. He takes Holly's hand and bows low, pressing his lips to her fingers. "My lady, you are as lovely as your groom promised you would be. I apologize for not making it to your wedding, but it was an honor to receive your invitation for tonight's ceremony."

"We were unsure if the members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight would be able to attend, what with Britain closing its borders," Marcellous says, though his eyes narrow when he notices that Lucius's hand had lingered on her's a second too long to be polite. Holly wants to scoff at her jealous husband, wants to kiss him with pride.

"Cornelius Fudge is a friend with deep pockets that enjoy being filled with gold," Lucius explains. "He owes me a favour or two. So when I ask if I can bend the rules a bit, he looks the other way."

Holly rolls her years, Malfoys never change. The Malfoy mercenary clan had aided her mother and their family in the sack of Camelot and their leader, an impressive man named Swain, was said to have a friend in every castle - one that often owed him a boon.

"And what did you think of tonight's ceremony?" Holly asks.

"I thought it rather dull at first, to be honest. But when the honorable couple from House Seanus stepped through the Flame, well…" Lucius's eyes stared at the flames with naked desire, "I could not help but believe."

"Would you pass word of the revelation onto our cousins in Britain?" Marcellous asks. "To remind them of their duties to the Roman Empire?"

"I shall, but if I may say so, I believe that I can go a step further," Lucius's mouth curls into a sly smile. He reaches into his robes and pulls forth a battered leather-bound book. On the cover are the initials T.M.R.

"This diary was entrusted to me long ago by the Dark Lord himself. He told me that one day, I was to give it to my son and it would aid him in finished Salazar Slytherin's greatest world: purging the mudblood filth from our country," Lucius says, turning the boom over in his hand. "But my former master lies dead at the hands of a half-blooded infant and Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets remains locked beneath Hogwarts Castle. I have never been able to decipher how this book was to help Draco, but now… Now I wonder if, perhaps, it was just waiting for the right moment."

Holly frowns in confusion, remembering her cousin Sal. What is this fool talking about?

"You wish to unleash this Chamber upon Britain's filth, so instigate fear into the hearts of our enemies?" Marcellous grins, "You do not need my permission to do such wonders, Lucius Malfoy."

"I'm not seeking permission, Lord Sidonia. I want this act to be seen as an… offer of sorts. From House Malfoy to you own."

Marcellous pauses and sees that his peers are watching this conversation with interest. They want to see how he acts, to see how he leads.

"An offer?" Marcellous asks. "In exchange for what, might I ask?"

"I have a son. And if you and your beautiful wife have children of your own, you might have a daughter," Lucius leers at Holly. "Might I propose that we join our Houses, in celebration of a barren well struck."

Marcellous regards Lucius for a moment before turning to Holly. They exchange a look, their fingers intertwining with one another. Holly nods.

She lashes out, digging in Lucius's mind with her Occlumency, aiming not to find anything, only to inflict as much pain as possible. The man falls to the floor, screaming and clawing at his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. Holly kneels down beside him to watch him shake, to listen as he begs for mercy, begs for his mother, begs for death. She smiles.

"My lord of Malfoy, you seem to be under the impression that you are equal to the likes of my brethren and me," Marcellous smears from up above. "I wish to dissuade you of that notion as quickly as possible. You and your family may be able to trace your lines back a thousand years, but my ancestors were birthing wizarding kings when yours were picking up their wands for the first time."

Holly lets Lucius breathe for a moment before pulling Justice from its scabbard and pointing its tip at the man's throat.

"You are going to let your son unleash Slytherin's Chamber upon the filth of Britain, but not because of a promise of marriage. You are going to do it because if you don't, my darling wife is going to kill you," Marcellous continues. Then he pauses, tilting his head to the side in contemplation. "On second thought, when the war is done and my father has been freed from his wrongful imprisonment, your son may fuck Luccenia, if he desires her. His tainted blood is worthy enough for a bastard girl from the traitor house of Sonia. And if she whelps a child before I kill her alongside the mages and muggles she loves so much, then you are welcome to keep it and name it your heir."

"Do you understand?" Holly asks, pressing Justice's point into the thin flesh of Lucius's neck. A trail of red runs down his throat.

"I… I understand," Lucius answers

"I am not Lord Voldemort, Malfoy. I am not a single-minded moron created by the Department of Mysteries so that they could harvest babies from the wreckage he left behind," Marcellous hisses. "I am creating a new world, where all that are pure may live in peace away from the unclean masses. My wife and I will rule as the immortal Emperor and Empress and you, with the filth that runs through your veins, will learn your place."

"Do you understand?" Holly asks again, prodding at Lucius's mind just to watch him squirm.

"I understand! I understand!" He scrambles away from Justice's kiss, grasping at his neck to quell the bleeding.

"Then leave us," Holly stands, turning her back on Lucius. She listens to his footsteps as he stumbles toward the exit.

Marcellous's smile is infectious. Holly moves forward and kisses him passionately in front of the purest of the Forum Romanum, as her mother looks on from the tunnels above. Let them see our love. Let them see their future. We will lead them into a new era and nothing will stop us!

A gust of wind knocks Bill's hat from his head. He summons it back with his wand and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Jamming it on his head, Bill rises to brush the dust from his muggle cargo pants.

"Well," he says to no one in particular, "That was a waste of time…"

It had taken him almost an entire year to get a permit to leave Britain following the closure of its borders. The Ministry witch who had worked his case had assured him that she was doing everything that she could to help speed the process up, but Bill seriously doubts that. His father had ranted for nearly a fortnight about how Lucius Malfoy could leave the country on a moment's notice, but Arthur's own son had to slog through miles of paperwork just to be able to submit an application.

Besides, Bill was a Gringotts Curse Breaker, which might have held a bit of weight a year ago, but now it only brought suspicious down on his head. What actually happened the day of the theft? People asked him that question almost as often as, Did you see the thief Bakura? Or his personal favourite, Why didn't you stop him? Like Bill could have done anything from the Burrow, where he was helping his youngest brother, Ron, get ready for his first year at Hogwarts.

This year it was Ginny's turn, but Bill couldn't be there to send her off. Instead, Gringotts bank had spent almost twelve months and a ridiculous amount of money to send him to Iraq.

Or more specifically, to the ruins of Assur, the ancient capital city of the Assyrian Empire. Assur had remained occupied for nearly four thousand years, from the time of its creation in the early Bronze Age to the Tamerlane massacre in the fourteenth century. The city that had withstood millennia of conquest had been reduced to a few low rising walls of red brick, with that threatening to collapse as well.

A muggle war, the scale of which Bill could hardly comprehend, was being waged around them. Gringotts had provided him with a security force to keep him safe while he took one last look through the site, searching for anything of magical historical significance before it was declared unsafe for exploration. Bill, of course, had found nothing that hadn't been stripped from the site decades ago. He sighs and abandoned the temple remains that he'd been investigating, flanked by his guard.

The sun dips below the horizon and one of his guards tells him that they need to hurry back to the safe house.

"Well," he says to no one in particular, "That was a waste of time…"

Bill shoves his hands into his pockets in irritation, squinting in the evening sunlight. Another wild goose chase like this wasn't going to win the bank back any more credibility. If anything, the Ministry was going to give Gringotts employees an even harder time when they were just trying to do their jobs.

Of course, it probably didn't help that Bill had finally managed to publish his thesis paper about the truth of the Statute of Secrecy. While he was proud to finally get Yanni's words out to the public, he had done so at a high cost to his family's safety.

"Tell the world the truth," his father had said after Bill told him that he'd been approached by Oracle, an independent magazine from America, a few months ago. "Never be afraid to do that, Bill. Those who choose to be voiceless in times of crisis have always sided with the oppressor. I know that. Your mother knows that. And we will always support you, no matter what."

Within hours of the publication, the Ministry had sent an investigation team to the Burrow and searched it top to bottom, looking for any evidence that they had sided with the mages of San Francisco. Bill's brother Charlie had sent word that the dragon sanctuary that he had just gotten a job had been raided by Romanian Aurors and that he'd been interrogated for nearly eighteen hours. They'd kept asking him about Ryou Andrews, a wizard born mage who they'd both gone to school with but never actually met.

The sun dips below the horizon and one of his guards tells him that they need to hurry back to the safe house.

"Well," he says to no one in particular. "That was a waste of- Wait."

Bill looks around and finds himself standing in the temple remains that he'd just left his guard waiting to take him back to the safe house. The sun was still in the sky, hovering just above the horizon.

He shakes his head, clearing his thoughts. I'm just imagining things, Bill thinks and begins the long walk back to base.

The sun dips below the horizon and one of his guards tells him that they need to get inside quickly. But then a gust of wind knocks Bill's hat from his head. He summons it back with his wand and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Jamming it on his head, Bill rises to find himself right back in the middle of the temple remains.

"Well," he says to no one in particular. "This is officially weird."

Clearly, something or someone didn't want him leaving this spot. Bill takes a better look around, because in all his years as a Curse Breaker, he's never seen magic powerful enough to lock someone in a time loop like this before. It makes him wonder, How long have I been looping, without even realizing that I was doing it?

The temple is located in the northern half of the inner city, just west of a ziggurat built during the time of the Old Empire. As for the Temple itself, it was roughly one hundred and twenty square meters in size and dedicated to a primary deity of the Mesopotamian region. Inanna had started off as a Sumerian goddess but had found a home amongst the Assyrians under the name of Ishtar.

There were magical stories about this site if you knew where to look. According to Tamotsu Kitamori, one of Bill's idols in the field of archeology, this was the supposed home of Clan Ishtar, the King Commanders legendary family. They had been nobles who dedicated their lives in the service of their goddess but had fallen on hard times after a family feud divided the Clan, sending half their members into exile while the others remained behind to serve their city.

Following the collapse of Egypt's Amarna Period, the Clan had managed to reconcile before they'd disappeared from the records entirely. Their temple had remained vacant for several years until the wife of the Assyrian king had reopened the grounds.

Bill takes a few cautious moves to his left, unsure of what will activate the time loop spells. He ignores his guard, who has started to yell at him to come back to the safe house with them. Bill kneels before one of the back walls of the temple, poking his wand at the brick.

"Okay," he says to no one in particular. "Not that way then."

To the right then. Bill pads carefully across the floor, remembering how Yanni had told them that not everything a Curse Breaker did was based in magic. Sometimes, you had to hear what the earth was telling you.

Bill's footsteps sound just a tad louder in this section of the temple. He leans down and presses his ear to the stone floor, closing his eyes and listens.

"Weasley! Hey, Weasley! We have to get back soon! It's almost nightfall!" One of his guards calls, but Bill doesn't care. He shouts and jumps to his feet.

"There's something underground!" He pulls his wand out of its holster and pushes a gust of air from its tip, blowing the dust and sand away from the ancient temple floor. Bill runs his fingers along the seams between the tile, looking for something that was out of place. He hits a ridge where there shouldn't be one and his heart skips a beat.

"Come and help me!" He calls to his guards but gets no response. Bill looks up to find his companions laying face down in the dirt and a lone figure standing over them.

He points his wand at the figure, firing off a curse. But the figure vanishes before it hits him, fading into the lengthening shadows. Bill stands still, listening to the wind blowing around him, as the sun dips below the horizon and leaves him in complete darkness. Then, suddenly and without warning, the air became unnaturally still, the temperature dropping exponentially.

"Mr. Weasley," a voice calls out and Bill spins around, only to be blinded by a flash of light. He raises his arms up to block it, squinting toward the sound of the voice. A low hum rings out in the background, and Bill recognizes it as the sound of a muggle car.

How did that get here without me noticing? He wonders, his stomach churning with anxiety. How long have I been looping?

"Who wants to know?" Bill shouts back as his eyes begin to adjust. He manages to make out a pair of headlights and a man leaning against the hood of a muggle Jeep.

The man is dressed in a long billowing robe that seems to move despite the sudden lack of wind. A turban donned his head and a scarf was wrapped around his shoulders. All in all, he looked like one of a thousand people who frequented the local village that Bill was staying in. But there was something about the man that set Bill's teeth on edge like he was witnessing something that shouldn't exist.

"William Arthur Weasley," the man begins again. "Born November 29th, 1991 to Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewett in the small town Ottery St. Cattermole, located in Devon, England. Attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry between the years of 2002 and 2009, where you were sorted into Gryffindor House and eventually became Prefect and then Head Boy. After being hired by Gringotts wizarding bank, you went on to fight in the Order of the Phoenix and then marry-"

"Marry? I'm not married," Bill frowns, lowing his arms. He sees the man pause and look at the paper he seems to be reading his facts from with a look of careful blankness.

"Ah," the man says eventually. "My mistake. My friend who gave me this information often forgets what year it is - an unfortunate consequence of her gift. Do you know a Ms. Fleur Delacour?"

"Ms. Who?" Bill feels incredibly lost.

"Not yet, then. Or perhaps never, at this rate. The future is constantly in flux, while the past remains rigid and unchanged," the man moves forward. Bill swears he sees his legs move beneath his fluttering robes, but something tells him that the man is gliding across the stone floor of the Temple Ishtar.

"Who are you?" Bill asks, taking an involuntary step backward. The man comes to a halt just in front of him and Bill can see that he has the glossy grey eyes of a dead man.

"I have had many names over the years. You may call me Shada, for it was my first and my favourite," the man raises a hand for him to shake. Bill nearly jumps a foot in the air when he passes right through Shada's skin, feeling an icy trickle of water running down his spine.

"You're a ghost," Bill realizes. Except Shada is unlike any ghost that he has ever encountered. He wasn't transparent like any of the spirits Bill had run into at Hogwarts. Instead, Shada seemed surprisingly solid, almost unnaturally perfect, like an artist had painted him into the fabric of the world.

"No. Not a ghost. I don't know exactly what I am, only that I brought back from the Realms of the Dead against my will using necromancy," Shada explains.

"That's not possible. Necromancy has never worked, except-" Bill stops short.

During his first few days working as a Curse Breaker, Yanni Kanas had petitioned the Forum Romanum to grant the two of them access to the tomb of Olcinia Zabini, the first known wielder of a wizarding wand. Olcinia had not been buried in the crypts of her family's home but in a plot beside Cadmus Peverell. Her ornate sarcophagus had been engraved with the mark of the Deathly Hallows: a straight vertical line that divided a circle in half, following by a triangle that encompassed them all.

Yanni had explained what the sign meant, but Bill only remembers the circle right now, "The Resurrection Stone? The Hallows are real?"

"Thankfully, when Cadmus attempted to revive me, he and his brothers were still unused to their new weapons. I was able to fight back against his will, but in doing so I severed my connection to the cycle of Life and Death, cursing myself to remain on this plane for the rest of eternity," Shada says. "For two thousand years, I have walked the earth. But I've always managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except, perhaps… right now."

Shada, Bill thinks, wracking his brains for why the name sounded familiar. Where have I heard of him before? Shada wasn't a prominent character in the Peverall legend - especially since, according to the man himself, he had been dead at the time. So who could he have been?

"And what do you want me to do?" Bill asks.

Shada smiles, the skin of his lips peeling back and revealing a void where there should have been teeth and tongue, flesh and bone. There's nothing inside of him, Bill realizes a moment too late. He's not human any longer.

"I've already set you on the path," Shada answers, gesturing at Bill's torso and legs. Bill looks down and sees that his pale skin has been burnt red in the sun, his shirt and shoes barely holding themselves together. He's walking and has been for a while, though he doesn't remember moving his legs.

Bill looks up at Shada, who's gliding alongside him and his trek. He tries to speak, but his mouth is so dry that he can't get the words out. Something gold glitters around Shada's neck.

"I'll see you soon," the shade says before disappearing into the headlamps of the muggle Jeep. "Wake up, Mr. Weasley. Hey! Hey, Weasley! Wake up!"

Bill jerks awake, stumbles, and then falls to his knees gasping for air. His entire body is trembling with exhaustion, his burnt red fingers gripping at the desert sand.

"Merlin's fucking dick, Weasley! What the hell are you doing?" Bill turns and sees his guard holding out a canteen of water. He grabs it, ignoring the searing pain that erupts when his skin touches the metal, and guzzles its contents.

The sun shines down from above. It's daytime, he realizes. But… it was night just a moment ago.

"You've been missing for three days," the guard says. "Disappeared right in the middle of the dig in Assur. We've been looking all over for you!"

"Three days?" Bill wheezes and looks around, trying to figure out where he is. All he can make out are the sandy dunes of the Iraqi countryside. "How… What…?"

"I mean, fuck man. If you needed to get to Toronto so badly, you could have just asked."

Bill whips around, grabbing his guard by the lapels of his shirt, "What did you say?"

"Toronto. You kept saying that you needed to get to Toronto," the man says.

"Toronto?" Bill repeats and something feels so right about that word. "Yes. I need to get to Toronto. Take me there."

"You need to rest-"

"Take me to Toronto," Bill tells him. "Now."

"What a load of bullshit."

Amane looks over at Blaise, who's staring at the newspaper stand in Diagon Alley. The front page of The Daily Prophet read: PROFESSOR LOCKHART: FORMER CONVERT ASSURES PUBLIC OF PROGRAM'S SUCCESS.

Amane thinks that if Blaise rolled his eyes any harder, they'd pop right out of his head and onto the street.

"Everyone knows the conversion program as bullshit, but the Ministry keeps trying to convince people that mages aren't that big a deal," Blaise mutters under his breath. "Fudge thinks that if he claps his hands over his ears and shouts, 'La! La! La!' as loud as he can, then the problem will just go away. This thing with Lockhart is just another stupid distraction, just like the Border Closure."

"I don't know," Amane says, teasing. "Lockhart's face is pretty distracting."

"Not you, too," Blaise groans, over dramatic as ever. He squints at the picture of Lockhart posing for a picture with the Minister of Magic, flashing his blinding smile to the crowd of Prophet reporters. "That's all that anyone ever says about him. Ooooh, Lockhart's so smart! Lockhart's sooooo pretty! If that's what you think, maybe you should marry him?"

"Maybe I will," Amane smirks. She enjoys pushing Blaise's buttons a little too much for her own good.

"You won't. He'd bore you to death within a week," Blaise snorts, but it was clear as day that he was jealous. "Come on. We're gonna lose your cousin to the ice cream parlor again. And you know that milk makes her sick."

Akoi Nakada, Amane's seven-year-old cousin, had moved to Britain with her family not a week before Fudge enacted the Border Closures. Akoi's mother and Amane's aunt, Ayame Nakada, had uprooted her husband, brother, and parents upon receiving Natsuki's letter, swearing that if her sister would not come home to her family, then her family would come to her. And so, Amane gained six family members that she'd never even known existed within the span of a few days. They'd moved into one of the apartments in Viola's building and refused to budge, even after the Ministry closed the borders.

Of course, this had been followed quickly by Ministry officials swooping into their new home, demanding to immigration papers and identification certificates. Amane's grandfather, Tamotsu, had even had to use his extensive background in history to prove the pureblood ancestry of the Kitamori Family just so that they could have a chance to remain in the country. Even then, they were faced with constant threats by the Ministry to deport them.

Amane was just glad that her cover at Hogwarts hadn't been blown yet. That being said, she didn't know how much longer that was going to last.

She and Blaise intend to pull Akoi out of the line in front of Florean Fortescue's, but give in the moment the girl starts to cry. Amane ends up asking the owner if they carried a dairy-free ice cream, to which the man smiled and handed a bouncing Akoi a cone topped with bright pink shaved ice. The girl happily skipped along beside Amane, chatting away in Japanese about how each bite seemed to have a different flavour.

They cross the street, heading into Madam Malkin's. Amane sits Akoi down in the chair at the front and tells her not to move until they've gotten their robes, hoping that they'll be able to get out of here quickly. Akoi sticks out like a sore thumb dressed in her bright red kimono, decorated with golden dragons. It's dangerous these days, being different, Amane thinks, fingering her shoulder length hair, which was still dyed tea brown. She hates the colour.

The line at Madam Malkin's is ridiculously long and the more they stand around, the more looks that Akoi get. A witch three people ahead of them starts to whisper with her husband, pointing at the little girl with nasty words under her breath. Amane's clenches her fingers into fists. She'd gotten a lot of that last year at Hogwarts, ever since Xiang Li announced that China was going to open its doors to San Francisco.

It doesn't matter that Japan's following in Britain's footsteps. If you look Asian, they all think you're Chinese, Amane thinks. Blaise notices and takes a step closer to her, his shoulder brushing up against hers.

Sometimes she wishes that Blaise had been sorted into Hufflepuff with her instead of Slytherin. He told her that he'd fought against the Hat's decision for a while, though she'd never gotten an answer out of him for why he'd given in at the end; Blaise seemed to clam up when she pried too much, wrapping his arms around his chest and refusing to speak. It was only when Amane brought out their map to see if he wanted to sneak out at night again to break into the Restricted Section of the library that Blaise would unwind enough to talk.

"Amane? Amane, is that you?" Amane turns just in time to see her dorm mate, Hannah Abbott, waving at her from further up in the line. Hannah motions for them to join them and Blaise, ever the Slytherin, grabs Amane by the hand and ignores the angry squawks of the customers that they cut in front of.

Hannah isn't alone. She's joined by one of her usual pack of friends, Ernie Macmillan. Amane didn't usually hang out with them, despite being in the same House. She'd kept Dumbledore's words close to her heart, including his threat to expel her if she caused any trouble.

"Oh, I thought that you were by yourself," Hannah says, smiling slyly and nodding towards where Blaise was still holding her hand. Amane feels her cheek heat up and snatches her hand away.

"This is-" She starts to introduce Blaise, but Ernie cuts her off.

"Blaise Zabini, correct? Ernie Macmillan," he offers Blaise his hand in the way that every pureblooded witch or wizard worth their salt seems to do whenever they met him. "And this is Hannah Abbott."

"I know," Blaise says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Your fathers introduced you both to my mum and I after we came to Britain."

"At the party that Maxwell Greengrass threw! Oh yes, I remember now," Ernie laughs in a way that makes Amane think that he did, in fact, remember, long before Blaise had reminded him. "I think he was trying to set you up with one of his daughters, that old scoundrel."

Blaise twitches, obviously uncomfortable, his arms crossed over his chest, "Well, considering that I'm already engaged, he didn't need to bother."

"You are?" Hannah gasps. "To who?"

Blaise doesn't answer, but his eyes do flick toward Amane, which is enough of a response for them.

"Oh! I… I didn't realize," Hannah stammers. Her voice betrays her, letting Amane realizes that Hannah was actually a little disappointed by Blaise's admission. "Is that how you… you know…"

"Is that how I what?" She snaps.

"You know…" Hannah says again, looking pointedly back at Akoi. Amane's cousin has finished her shaved ice and is bouncing impatiently in her seat, her nose up against the glass she stares out that the ice cream store across the street.

"I think that Hannah wants to know if it was your engagement that allowed you to come to Britain, after the Border Closure," Ernie says, a little too quickly. "Immigrants like you and your family are a bit of rarity, these days."

Amane wants to slap him. I was born here, she wants to say but knows that is something that Amane Andrews might have been able to prove. Amane Kitamori was a Japanese transfer student and couldn't.

"She was allowed to come here for the same reasons that I was," Blaise hisses. "Or did you forget, I'm an immigrant as well."

"But that's different!" Ernie tries to defend himself, but Blaise is having none of it.

"It's not different. You just value the blood in my veins more than you do the blood in her's."

"I- I-" Ernie puffs himself up, trying to look indignant. "I don't appreciate what you're implying, Zabini. My family fought and died in the war against You-Know-Who!"

"Just because you don't want muggleborns dead doesn't mean you get a free pass when you say crap like that," Blaise tells him. He grabs Amane's hand again, "Come on. Let's get out of here."

They grab Akoi before they leave, tugging her away from her mad dash toward the ice cream parlor. They end up getting their new uniforms at the second-hand robe shop, which Blaise says will probably make his mother's entire day.

"Anything that will make her ancestors roll in their graves sends her into a laughing fit," Blaise tells her, the bell chiming as they walk inside. "Let's pick out something absolutely awful looking. Like this!"

He pulls a maroon velvet pair of men's dress robes from one of the racks. It was trimmed with lace at the neck and sleeves and smelled faintly of mold. Amane bursts out laughing at the image of Blaise wearing it.

They do eventually find Hufflepuff and Slytherin uniforms in their size, though not before the shopkeeper threatens to throw them out for disturbing the other customers. Amane doesn't think that some of them minded all that much; she recognized a family of redheads from school chuckling at their antics. The twins are quite handsome themselves and Amane ducked her head, staring at her feet, whenever they looked her way.

She finds Blaise absently thumbing through a section of mothball infested dresses with an oddly wistful look on his face. Amane raises an eyebrow and grabs one of them, a periwinkle blue ball gown, holding it up to Blaise's chest.

"It's your colour," she tells him, a smile on her face. She expects him to scoff and make some half-hearted, backhanded joke.

But Blaise does none of that. He blinks once, looking down at the dress that she's splayed across his torso. He glances up at her, almost shy, and asks, "You think?"

Amane doesn't know what to think of that. Her heart races and she licks her lips, "Maybe? I… You want to get it?"

Blaise laughs awkwardly, a little harsh and a little sad, and tells her to put the dress back.

They buy their uniforms and have a few minutes to kill, so they head back to the ice cream parlor because Akoi won't leave them alone about it. The owner remembers Amane's cousin and pulls them out of line to give Akoi another bright pink shaved ice.

Amane pats at her robes, looking at Blaise, "I think I left my wallet back at the shop. I'll be right back. Watch Akoi, alright?"

"I can pay!" Blaise shouts at her, but Amane is racing back to the west end of Diagon Alley.

When she gets back, Amane immediately realizes that something is wrong. The ice cream parlor owner is sitting at a table with Blaise, a hand hovering protectively over the boy's shoulder. Akoi has abandoned her cone, the pink ice melting on the ground at her feet.

An owl pecks at a few crumbs on the table and there is an opened letter in Blaise's hand. Amane remembers receiving another message just over a year ago that had pulled the rug out from under her.

I'm sorry, Ryou had written. Goodbye.

"It's my mother," Blaise whispers when Amane gets close enough. He glances up at her and looks utterly destroyed. Blaise can't seem to get the words out, so Amane takes the letter from her hand and reads it.

And her blood runs cold.

Hey again!

I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: Dana Sto Helit, Moonfirekitsune, green lilah, anita15, Rita Mu, dragomira, Safiruu, and Tz342. You guys are awesome!

So a lot of things have happened in this chapter. Reyna and her Spymaster are closing in on Leo's identity, the Italian families have had their health returned, Lucius is going to make sure that the Chamber of Secrets will open, Bill is heading to Toronto after a conversation with Shada, and something terrible has happened to Viola Zabini.

Isn't this story fun? :)

So we are starting the busy season at my job and I don't know how much time I'm going to have for the next few months. I'm obviously going to keep working as much as I can, but I just want to let you know that I may not be updating as frequently as I did earlier this year. Thanks for understanding, guys.

Until next time,
AlcatrazOutpatient