Toast

Bakura rolled his eyes and took two steps forward, moving so much faster than Myrtle that he had her by the arm before she realised that he'd moved. "Honestly, you're so sensitive." He strode off in the opposite directing, heading for the common room. As he had yet to let go of her arm Myrtle had to follow him or be dragged, and she seemed to have chosen the first option.

Reaching his destination, he sat Myrtle down in the corner and pulled up another chair across from hers, then crossed his arms and stared at her. "Have you ever tried to stand up for yourself?"

This seemed to bring Myrtle to life. "What makes you think you can judge me on that? If that creature hadn't appeared you would have been toast!"

"Toast?" Blinking, Bakura reached out to touch her forehead, but she didn't feel overly hot so... "He was going to try to turn me into toast?"

"What?" Now it was Myrtle's turn to stare at him as though he had lost his mind. A moment later she seemed to realize why he was confused, however, and shook her head. "It's a figure of speech. I meant that you would have been in big trouble if that thing hadn't appeared."

"Thing?" A smirk appeared on Bakura's face. "You call my lovely Diabound a thing?" He pouted briefly, then shrugged, returning to his standard 'neutral' expression, a half-smirk that could hide just about any emotion. "I'll have to learn how to use magic in a more standard manner, but until then Diabound can protect me from most things." He smiled ruefully and added, "The problem with that, of course, is that I have to summon him first rather than letting someone else get the first blow in."

Myrtle was staring at him. "You summoned that huge thing?"

Arching his brows, Bakura gave the girl a look. "I thought I'd told you not to call him a thing. Diabound is my Ka beast. Now, why don't you try that again?"

Myrtle's laughter lightened the depression that she had been stubbornly clinging to, and the witch finally relaxed, leaning back in her chair and losing the miserable expression on her face. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"Ah." She would pick the worst possible question to ask him. "Actually I learned at home, before I was sent to the orphanage. It was the first time I ever realised that there was magic in the world, when I yelled for help and looked up to find him towering above me." Bakura smiled then, forgetting about his secrecy for a moment as he remembered the moment. "That was glorious." It had only been later that he'd realised Diabound could kill – and that he could find the will to order it.

Shaking his head, Bakura willed the thought away. Now was not the time to think about his own regrets. "Anyway, we were talking about you. Unlike me, you know the spells that wizards use – and if you don't you shouldn't be here. You can at least try to defend yourself when someone tries to bully you into submission rather than letting them walk all over you. It might actually help, and even if you lose, you'll learn something from it and be able to fight better next time."

He'd said far more than he'd intended to, so Bakura stood, leaving Myrtle where she was as he walked towards the door. "Thank you," Myrtle said quietly, halting him, and he turned to give her a brief smile in return for her words before heading outside. The sunshine was warm and comforting, even if the greenery in this place was utterly unfamiliar and everything was colder than it had been back home.

Lying down in the grass by the side of the lake, Bakura stared up at the sky and contemplated his position. He was here under false pretences. If the headmaster knew even a fraction of the things he had done the man would kill him or at the very least throw him in prison. Bakura might be ignorant in the standards of the wizarding world, but he knew enough to be sure of that.

Murder was a crime no matter where you went. He sighed and rolled over on his stomach, staring morosely at the lake. Destruction, malice, terror, they were all things that he had tried to spread in order to wreak his revenge on the pharaoh. He had known that he would fit the definition of evil, but somehow he'd hoped that he wouldn't. It was stupid to think about it, but he couldn't help it. While he had been entirely focused on killing the pharaoh and releasing his family's souls he'd felt nothing. Anything was possible so long it was conceivable. Now that he was no longer so purely focused, however, he was guilty and regretful. Surely some of the men that he had killed had families or sweethearts.

It didn't matter now. Leaving his things in a heap, Bakura plunged into the water, swimming down as far as he could and coming up without having seen the bottom of the lake. He reached the center, ignoring the tentacles that poked out of the water and waved at him, lying on his back and floating for a moment. All too soon, however, he began shivering, and struck out for the shore, emerging to stand, dripping wet and with weeds caught in his clothes.

He'd forgotten how cold it was here, but this was a more than satisfactory reminder. Still shivering, he dried off his hands enough to pick up his things and went inside, ignoring the fact that he was leaving a dripping trail of water behind him. He had been cleansed in the primordial waters, and for the moment Bakura was at peace.