Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Harry Potter.
/Blah/ Yugi talking to Yami Yugi //Blah// Yami Yugi talking to Yugi
:Blah: Ryou talking to Yami Bakura ::Blah:: Yami Bakura talking to Ryou
*~*~*~*~*~*
Harry awoke quite suddenly the next morning. Ron was still asleep. Yugi and Ryou were sitting on their beds, fully dressed and talking to each other in whispered voices. But Seto's bed was empty.
Ryou noticed that he was awake and said, cheerfully, "Good morning, Harry. I hope you slept well. Yugi and I were waiting for one of you to wake up so that we could go to breakfast together."
"Where's Seto?" Harry asked.
"I don't really know. Oh, and he might not want you to be calling him that," he added.
Harry dressed quickly and the three of them went down to the common room together. Seto was already there. He was typing on his laptop, his fingers flying over the keys. Nefertari was at his shoulder, looking at them with intelligent eyes.
"Oh, hello, Harry," Seto said without looking up. "I do believe you owe me 10 galleons. Good morning, Yugi, and Happy Birthday Bakura."
Their reactions were all different.
"How did you know that it's my birthday?" Ryou asked curiously.
/Hey Yami! Seto actually said good morning!/
//Well, I'm not really surprised. He's been changing a lot lately.//
Harry just gaped at Seto. Was his laptop even working? And if it was, how? He walked over to where he was sitting and stared at the screen. It appeared to be operating normally, and the screen was filled with complex graphs and charts.
Just then, Hermione came down from the stairs to the girls' dormitories and Ron stumbled down from the boys' dormitories. They caught sight of Seto's laptop and walked over, too, amazed that it was working.
"Wow! How did you get it to work?" Ron asked, staring at the screen.
"I'll tell you when I'm ready," he replied. Mokuba came down, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Hi, big brother!" He hugged his brother awkwardly around the middle. Then he yawned a 76 second yawn. He was suddenly awake. "Hey everybody!"
Then Mokuba spotted the laptop. "Oh no, Seto, have you been working all morning again? I thought I told you not to!" he said. Harry had to bite back a laugh. Seto Kaiba, a teenager who could make most people shake in fear with one glare, was being told off by his little brother!
Mokuba shut the laptop with a voice command and rounded on Seto. "You're going to breakfast! And no laptop until you eat a proper meal!"
*~*~*~*~*~*
They walked into the Great Hall to many stares. The girls drooled over Seto as he walked confidently past. He even looked good in the standard Hogwarts robes. Other muggle-borns were trying to get a closer look at Yugi and Seto.
Seating themselves at the Gryffindor table, they started helping themselves to breakfast. Seto just poured himself a cup of coffee. Pretty soon Malik came, and sat down at their table next to Ryou as if it was where he belonged.
"I'm not sure if you can do that," Hermione said. "You're supposed to eat with your house members, and get to know them better."
"I already know plenty about them," he replied coolly. "They're all stupid- "
He was interrupted by the sound of rushing wings. "Ah, the mail's here!" said Ron.
"What the hell?!?!" Malik exclaimed. Owls had begun to zoom in, dropping letters and packages into people's laps. A few of the more inexperienced owls accidentally dropped the parcels into their owner's food. A lot more owls were in the Great Hall, more that usual, it seemed. All of the sixth years were receiving one with the Hogwarts seal on the back.
Hermione read hers quickly and then burst out, "I don't believe it!"
"What?" asked Harry, opening his own.
"Yeah, what's up, Hermione?" Ron asked.
"We're going to have to take O.W.L.s again!" she exclaimed loudly. "That foul Umbridge woman lost our records, and someone evidently destroyed our files in the Ministry of Magic. And I worked really hard last year, too..." she moaned.
"So that's why we didn't get our results this summer!" Dean Thomas said.
"No way!" Ron, who had forgotten the fork that was halfway up to his mouth, managed to choke out. "Not the O.W.L.s ! It was torture last time! I just barely got through last years!"
Harry also remembered the O.W.L.s only too well. It was exhausting, and he doubted it he even passed all of them. He had been focused on Voldemort too much during that time... And speaking of Voldemort....what was he planning right now? He supposed that Dumbledore wanted the students to have an ordinary year and pretend that nothing had happened. Panic would only make Voldemort's job all the easier.
"Hey, look! Yugi, Bakura, Malik, and Seto've also got letters from Dumbledore!"
Harry snapped back to reality.
"Wha'?" he asked.
Yugi read his letter. "It says that we can take the O.W.L.s too, if we want. It's in two months, we're going to take it again with you guys, so we'll have plenty of time to prepare. We're going to take the normal classes until we get our results. Then we can see which O.W.L. classes we got into and drop the other classes."
"Wait a minute," Malik interrupted. "What are O.W.L.s?"
"They're a kind of wizarding test that you have to take in your 5th year," Hermione explained. "They're really tiring, and there's a practical exam and a written exam for each class."
"And what classes are we in?" Malik asked with a raised eyebrow. Hermione was stumped.
"Didn't Dumbledore tell you anything about your classes?" she asked. "Well, you'll see once you get your schedule. Oh, here they come now." She passed a sheet of paper over to Malik. "Yours actually got delivered to the Gryffindor table. I wonder why..."
The others got their schedules relatively quickly and they compared them with each other.
"Hey, look! Malik's in all of our classes!" Yugi exclaimed.
"Yeah, I suppose Dumbledore wanted him to stay with people he knew," Harry told him.
"And Seto's got Arithmancy with Hermione, look," Ron pointed out. "That class is supposed to be really hard, good luck with you on that one." He peered at Ryou's schedule more carefully. "Wow! Harry, come see this! Yugi, Bakura, Malik, AND Seto're in the Ancient Runes class."
But Harry was focused on something else. "Divination?!?!" he asked with astonishment. "We've still got Divination?!?!" Professor Trelawney, the Divination professor, was his least favorite teacher, along with Snape, the head of Slytherin house and Potions Master.
"We all have it," Ryou said. "It can't be that bad, can it?"
"Oh, yes it can," promised Ron darkly.
*~*~*~*~*~*
On the way to Defense Against the Dark Arts, their first class, the topic of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher popped up.
"I wonder who our teacher is going to be this year," Hermione said thoughtfully.
"Even less people want the job now," Ron said. "Let's see, one dead, one's memory gone, one who resigned-mind you, he was a really good teacher-but they'll think he was afraid of the job or something...one locked in his own trunk for the whole year, and one who got attacked by centaurs. Yup, I think that Dumbledore had a pretty hard time getting a new-"
They had just walked into the classroom, and standing at the front, removing some papers from a battered old briefcase, was...
"Lupin?!?!" Harry stood there with his mouth open, staring at Remus Lupin. He looked even more tired than usual, with more gray hairs and lines on his face, but was smiling at him.
"Why hello there, Harry," he said pleasantly. "How has your summer been?"
"Are you our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Yes, Professor Dumbledore needed somebody for the job, and seeing that you have a lot to catch up on, I volunteered. And are you the newcomers?" He studied Yugi, Ryou, Malik, and Seto carefully. "Please sit down, so we can begin class."
He started passing out papers. "Now, I have put together a kind of review, to see what you've learned so far, and to tell me what you need to know. As for the new students, you won't have to worry if you don't know much, you're not expected to. Just try to answer as many questions as you can. I'm sorry, I know it's really boring, but I think all of the teachers have compiled something like this." There were groans from the class. Lupin just gave them an apologetic look. "Alright, you have the whole class period, please start...now!"
Harry, who was seated next to Ron, looked over at Hermione, a seat in front of him. She had already begun to write very fast, hunched over her paper. Yugi, sitting next to her, looked at the questions in confusion.
Malik and Ryou, to their right, were trying to use the quills properly, failing miserably. They already had enormous blotches on their parchment and were cursing at the quills in some foreign language. This seemed very uncharacteristic of Ryou, but Harry brushed it from his mind. He turned back to his own test and looked at the first question.
What is a boggart, and how do you get rid of one?
Harry grinned, he remembered how Neville had defeated a boggart back in their third year. He took his quill, dipped it in some ink, and began to write.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sometime later, he reached a question he didn't know the answer to.
a) What is the incantation to a Deplacement Spell, and b) what does it do?
Harry had never heard of a Deplacement Spell, much less know the incantation for it. He glanced over at Seto, and got a big shock. He was sitting back in his chair, looking relaxed for the first time. His papers where stacked in a neat pile at the edge of his desk, and Harry could see neat handwriting answering all of the questions.
Was he done already? This fast? They had been working on the review for barely twenty minutes! He looked at Hermione, and saw that she was only on her third sheet of parchment. She still had three more to go! Shaking his head, he turned back to his test. He was on the second page, and decided to skip the question about the Deplacement Spell.
Ten minutes later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a cell phone ringing. But that was impossible at Hogwarts! Yet, it was true. Students were turning around to see where it was coming from, and even Lupin looked confused. Seto stood up, excused himself from the class, and strode into the hall, accidentally leaving the door open.
"Kaiba," he answered, using his business voice. There was a few moment's pause. "What do you mean, 'it crashed'?!?!" More silence. "No, you listen to me. If you don't get it up and running by tomorrow, I'll personally fly back to Japan and deal with you and the rest of the department, understand? Good, I expect it to be ready by tomorrow." There was a click as Seto shut the cell phone. Then they heard a small sigh. He returned to the room, glaring at everybody who looked at him. He sat back down, and returned to doing nothing.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Twenty minutes later, they were walking down the corridor to Transfiguration. There were a whole lot of people staring again, but the four new students ignored them with a lot of skill. They were talking as if nobody was there.
"Did'you actually finish in twenty minutes? And what was that fellytone call for?" demanded Ron.
"Yeah, why?" asked Seto, looking indifferent, completely ignoring the second question.
"Wow, you finished that quickly?" Hermione asked, amazed. "I didn't know some of the answers, I hope it won't count as anything!"
"Of course it won't," said Yugi reassuringly. "When they give you something like that, they never keep it as a permanent record, they just want to see how much you know."
"I couldn't get the stupid Ra-damned quill to work," Malik said furiously. "It kept on making these huge blotches on my paper!"
"Same here," commented Yami Bakura dryly. "Of course, I could've just let my aibou do it, but making it seem as if he doesn't know anything is so much better." He grinned.
"What?" Harry asked quickly. What was an 'aibou'?
"Nothing," Malik quickly said, cupping his hand over Yami Bakura's mouth. Harry frowned. There was obviously something that they were keeping from him, but then again, it probably wasn't any of his business. Then he noticed that Yugi had been really quiet for the past few minutes. His eyes had a glazed look to them, and he was walking as if on autopilot.
"Um, hello? Earth to Yugi?" he asked him, waving his hand in front of Yugi's face. He didn't show the slightest sign that he had heard him.
"Pharoah's hikari, wake up!" Malik sang. The change was instantaneous. Yugi's eyes suddenly cleared up, and turned a slight shade of...crimson? And they became more narrowed, as he glared at Malik and Yami Bakura.
"Have a nice make out session in the soul room, Pharoah?" Yami Bakura asked lazily.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione weren't getting anything in this new conversation.
"Shut up, baka Tomb Robber," Yami replied sharply. "You're giving too much away."
"Hmm? Oh. Oops."
Ryou stood blinking in the middle of the hall.
"Did he shut you off from the conversation?" Malik asked. "Is that why you look so clueless?"
Ryou just nodded, and then asked politely, "Where are we going? Is Defense Against the Dark Arts over already?"
At this point, please insert five anime sweatdrops, one each for Yami, Malik, Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still confused. What in the world was Ryou talking about? He had just gone to Defense Against the Dark Arts with them. Why had he forgotten already?
'He must have a really REALLY short term memory,' Ron concluded, thinking to himself.
"Why couldn't you just ask him?" Malik asked Ryou. Harry thought that he meant Yugi, but that was apparently not what Malik had meant when Ryou replied.
"He's asleep," he said promptly. "So, what time is it?"
"Don't worry, it's still morning, and we're going to Transfiguration," Yami told him.
"Oh. What did we do in Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
"Nothing much, we just took a pretest," Malik shrugged.
"What?!?! What'd he do? What if I got all of the answers wrong?!?! What if-" his eyes had glazed over, as Yugi's had. A faint pink tinge appeared on his cheeks.
By now, the corridor was almost empty. Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to keep their distance for the time being. These new students were starting to act just a little weird. They seemed fine when they were staying at the Leaky Cauldron, but then again, they hadn't really seen them that much after the first week or so. The three foreigners had just stayed in their rooms.
And where had Seto gone? One minute he was walking beside them, and the next, he had disappeared.
"They're definitely mental," Ron said to Harry and Hermione as they entered the Transfiguration classroom.
Professor McGonagall was waiting for them, and Seto was sitting in a seat near the middle.
'How had he gotten here so fast?' Harry wondered, as he took a seat beside him.
"Okay, I have a pretest for you, to see what you have learned, and what you have forgotten. Since you have to take the O.W.L.s again this year, I suggest you prepare even harder, as you have experienced how exhausting it can be. Half of today's class will be spent on the review, and the other will be a practical lesson." Professor McGonagall was a strict as ever, and as she started handing out the reviews, Harry caught sight of some of the questions. They were in the same format as Lupin's, and he thought that he could answer most of them.
"You may begin...now," Professor McGonagall told them, and then returned to her seat.
The first question was:
Name the theory of a Switching Spell, and the how to cast one.
Once again, quills began scratching.
Harry was only through with half of his test when he heard the quiet shuffling of papers, and saw Seto put his quill back into his inkbottle. When he glanced at the top sheet of parchment, he saw the same, neat handwriting filling the whole page. Once again, Seto had finished before everybody else. He looked up, and saw Professor McGonagall surveying Seto with approval. Seto just sat there, looking nonplussed, resting his chin on his hand and looking bored.
Fifteen minutes later, Professor McGonagall collected their sheets and began lecturing them on transfiguring furniture and other objects into other things.
By the end of class, they had all been assigned ten inches on transfiguring stationary objects.
"Can you believe her?" asked Ron as they walked up to North Tower with Ryou, Yugi, and Malik. Hermione and Seto had left to go to Arithmancy. "Ten inches, on the first day! And now we've got Trelawney. Hey, d'you reckon that Firenze bloke's going to be there as well?"
"Dunno, but I was hoping that I could drop that class. I guess we'll just have to take it for two more months..."
They climbed the silver ladder and through the trapdoor to the Divination classroom. It was as stuffy as ever, and the perfumed fire was going full blast. Lavender and Parvati were sitting near the front, as usual. Yugi, Ryou, Malik, Ron, and Harry all managed to squeeze in around one table. Professor Trelawney came in, readjusting her shawl, her hugely magnified eyes peering at every one of them.
She acted as if nothing had happened last year. When she spoke, it was still in her mystical voice. "My dears, welcome back to Divination. I'm pleased to see that you are all well, and have gotten here safe, as I knew you would. This month, we'll be touching up on all of the subjects that we have studied in the past. After the O.W.L.s, some of you may leave us, but some will remain with me and take two more years of Divination. They will be the ones who have traces of The Sight, and I'll guide them through their journey to uncover more about the future..."
"I heard that they had to do a memory charm on her," Ron whispered to Harry as she began passing out copies of the Dream Oracle, as she had done the previous year.
They began interpreting each other's dreams again, and by the time class was over, they were all thoroughly glad.
"You were right, Ron," Malik said. "It really was awful-she's the biggest fraud I've ever seen." He turned to Ryou. "Maybe Isis could replace her! At least she's accurate on predictions."
*~*~*~*~*~*
They met Hermione and Seto at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. Malik had once again chosen to sit with them instead of the Slytherins.
"How did Arithmancy go, 'Mione?" asked Harry.
"We have to write fourteen inches on something or the other," replied Hermione. She had gotten a little less paranoid about homework, and Harry was glad.
"Hey, Seto!" It was Mokuba.
Seto greeted him with a slight smile. Harry noticed Seto was like a whole different person around Mokuba. He was caring, and compassionate. He kind of wished that he had an older brother who cared about him as much as Seto cared about Mokuba.
"...and I went to Herbology, and I made two new friends," panted Mokuba, finishing up his two minute long sentence.
"That sounds very exciting," Seto replied. "Do you want anything to eat?"
"Yeah! I'm starving!" Harry felt the same. Ron was already eating, and before long, all of them were enjoying the break in their day.
*~*~*~*~*~*
After lunch they had Care of Magical Creatures. Seto and Yugi were discussing some kind of card game as they strode down the lawn to Hagrid's hut.
"So what do we do in Care of Magical Creatures?" Malik asked.
"Well, with Hagrid, you never know. Remember how we told you about Norbert, Fluffy, and all those other creatures he likes? The problem with him is that he doesn't think that they're dangerous."
"Yeah, remember those Blast-Ended Skrewts, Harry?" Ron reminded him, "And Aragog?" He shuddered.
"Scared, Weasley?" came a cold voice from their right. Turning, expecting to see Malfoy smirking at them, they received a big surprise. A girl was standing there with her hands on her hips, with all of the Slytherins behind her. She had sleek blond hair just like Malfoy's, cold grey eyes just like Malfoy's, and what seemed like an attitude just like Malfoy's. And Malfoy was nowhere in sight.
"I wonder what the great big half-blood's going to try to give us this time," she continued. "From what I've heard, he's quite-" Then she caught sight of Yugi, Ryou, and Malik. "Hey, look, here's the Muggle lovers and Mudblood Club!"
Ryou and Yugi were suddenly acting weird again. They had grown more confident, and their voices had certainly changed. They looked more sinister somehow, and radiated with dark energy. There was also some kind of dark purplish mist fogging up their vision. The new students just seemed like different people, or were they just imagining it?
The girl obviously felt the atmosphere change, and her smirk faltered.
"What do you think, Pharoah?" The person that looked like Ryou asked. "Should we just punish them or get rid of them so that they won't get in our way in the future?"
"Uh, Tomb Robber, as much as I would want to see them die, I don't think that would be a good idea here. There'll be a lot of witnesses, and I doubt killing students is aloud at Hogwarts," Malik said loudly. Other people exchanged confused glances.
"True," mused Yami Bakura. "We'll deal with *you* later," he spat, and then they strode off towards Hagrid's hut.
They met Hagrid at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He had a unicorn with him, and by the looks of it, it was only a foal. It was golden, and tossed its head nervously as they approached.
"We're jus' going to be reviewin' a little bit for the firs' part of the year," Hagrid told them. "And after yer O.W.L.s are over, we can begin other things. Now this one's just a filly, so it won't protest boys that much. Now gather round, that's it, just lightly stroke it..."
The amazing part was that the unicorn seemed to favor Seto the most. She nudged him when he stopped stroking her, and followed him around.
"Why does it like Kaiba, and not us?" grumbled Malik.
The unicorn had gone wild when he had tried to touch it, and had run over to Seto.
"It probably senses our darker halves," Ryou replied.
"But my Yami's in Egypt with Isis right now! How can it sense him?"
"So that's why he hasn't popped up yet," Yugi said, remembering the absence of Yami Malik. Then he sighed. "Darn, I really wanted to touch it. Oh well, look, class is almost over. We'd better head back up to the castle.
"I wonder who that girl is," Ron wondered aloud. "She seemed almost like Malfoy, and Malfoy was acting really weird on the train."
"She's his cousin," said Neville, who had overheard them talking. "Lavender told me. She acted all snobby to her and Parvati during another class. Her name's Dracilla and she's just transferred here from Durmstrang. Crabbe and Goyle are now her bodyguards. It seems like she's just like Malfoy."
This gave them all something to ponder as they walked back up to the castle to go to History of Magic.
*~*~*~*~*~*
History of Magic was boring, as usual. Professor Binns didn't give them any pretests, but went right into his lecture about troll wars. But Hermione wasn't the only one taking notes this time. Seto, Yugi, and Ryou were also paying attention. There were times when Harry could have sworn that he had seen two Yugis or two Ryous, but when he looked again, there was only one of each. And so Professor Binns droned on. In the end, he assigned them a foot long essay on troll wars.
"Where to next?" asked Yugi, as they walked out of the classroom. Ron was grumbling about homework again.
"Double Potions. Be ready for the worst," warned Harry as they walked down to the dungeons.
*~*~*~*~*~*
I didn't really know what to add/change in this chapter, so...if you have any suggestions for me, please tell me!
Thank you, t.a.g.0! *starts bowing to her*
/Blah/ Yugi talking to Yami Yugi //Blah// Yami Yugi talking to Yugi
:Blah: Ryou talking to Yami Bakura ::Blah:: Yami Bakura talking to Ryou
*~*~*~*~*~*
Harry awoke quite suddenly the next morning. Ron was still asleep. Yugi and Ryou were sitting on their beds, fully dressed and talking to each other in whispered voices. But Seto's bed was empty.
Ryou noticed that he was awake and said, cheerfully, "Good morning, Harry. I hope you slept well. Yugi and I were waiting for one of you to wake up so that we could go to breakfast together."
"Where's Seto?" Harry asked.
"I don't really know. Oh, and he might not want you to be calling him that," he added.
Harry dressed quickly and the three of them went down to the common room together. Seto was already there. He was typing on his laptop, his fingers flying over the keys. Nefertari was at his shoulder, looking at them with intelligent eyes.
"Oh, hello, Harry," Seto said without looking up. "I do believe you owe me 10 galleons. Good morning, Yugi, and Happy Birthday Bakura."
Their reactions were all different.
"How did you know that it's my birthday?" Ryou asked curiously.
/Hey Yami! Seto actually said good morning!/
//Well, I'm not really surprised. He's been changing a lot lately.//
Harry just gaped at Seto. Was his laptop even working? And if it was, how? He walked over to where he was sitting and stared at the screen. It appeared to be operating normally, and the screen was filled with complex graphs and charts.
Just then, Hermione came down from the stairs to the girls' dormitories and Ron stumbled down from the boys' dormitories. They caught sight of Seto's laptop and walked over, too, amazed that it was working.
"Wow! How did you get it to work?" Ron asked, staring at the screen.
"I'll tell you when I'm ready," he replied. Mokuba came down, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Hi, big brother!" He hugged his brother awkwardly around the middle. Then he yawned a 76 second yawn. He was suddenly awake. "Hey everybody!"
Then Mokuba spotted the laptop. "Oh no, Seto, have you been working all morning again? I thought I told you not to!" he said. Harry had to bite back a laugh. Seto Kaiba, a teenager who could make most people shake in fear with one glare, was being told off by his little brother!
Mokuba shut the laptop with a voice command and rounded on Seto. "You're going to breakfast! And no laptop until you eat a proper meal!"
*~*~*~*~*~*
They walked into the Great Hall to many stares. The girls drooled over Seto as he walked confidently past. He even looked good in the standard Hogwarts robes. Other muggle-borns were trying to get a closer look at Yugi and Seto.
Seating themselves at the Gryffindor table, they started helping themselves to breakfast. Seto just poured himself a cup of coffee. Pretty soon Malik came, and sat down at their table next to Ryou as if it was where he belonged.
"I'm not sure if you can do that," Hermione said. "You're supposed to eat with your house members, and get to know them better."
"I already know plenty about them," he replied coolly. "They're all stupid- "
He was interrupted by the sound of rushing wings. "Ah, the mail's here!" said Ron.
"What the hell?!?!" Malik exclaimed. Owls had begun to zoom in, dropping letters and packages into people's laps. A few of the more inexperienced owls accidentally dropped the parcels into their owner's food. A lot more owls were in the Great Hall, more that usual, it seemed. All of the sixth years were receiving one with the Hogwarts seal on the back.
Hermione read hers quickly and then burst out, "I don't believe it!"
"What?" asked Harry, opening his own.
"Yeah, what's up, Hermione?" Ron asked.
"We're going to have to take O.W.L.s again!" she exclaimed loudly. "That foul Umbridge woman lost our records, and someone evidently destroyed our files in the Ministry of Magic. And I worked really hard last year, too..." she moaned.
"So that's why we didn't get our results this summer!" Dean Thomas said.
"No way!" Ron, who had forgotten the fork that was halfway up to his mouth, managed to choke out. "Not the O.W.L.s ! It was torture last time! I just barely got through last years!"
Harry also remembered the O.W.L.s only too well. It was exhausting, and he doubted it he even passed all of them. He had been focused on Voldemort too much during that time... And speaking of Voldemort....what was he planning right now? He supposed that Dumbledore wanted the students to have an ordinary year and pretend that nothing had happened. Panic would only make Voldemort's job all the easier.
"Hey, look! Yugi, Bakura, Malik, and Seto've also got letters from Dumbledore!"
Harry snapped back to reality.
"Wha'?" he asked.
Yugi read his letter. "It says that we can take the O.W.L.s too, if we want. It's in two months, we're going to take it again with you guys, so we'll have plenty of time to prepare. We're going to take the normal classes until we get our results. Then we can see which O.W.L. classes we got into and drop the other classes."
"Wait a minute," Malik interrupted. "What are O.W.L.s?"
"They're a kind of wizarding test that you have to take in your 5th year," Hermione explained. "They're really tiring, and there's a practical exam and a written exam for each class."
"And what classes are we in?" Malik asked with a raised eyebrow. Hermione was stumped.
"Didn't Dumbledore tell you anything about your classes?" she asked. "Well, you'll see once you get your schedule. Oh, here they come now." She passed a sheet of paper over to Malik. "Yours actually got delivered to the Gryffindor table. I wonder why..."
The others got their schedules relatively quickly and they compared them with each other.
"Hey, look! Malik's in all of our classes!" Yugi exclaimed.
"Yeah, I suppose Dumbledore wanted him to stay with people he knew," Harry told him.
"And Seto's got Arithmancy with Hermione, look," Ron pointed out. "That class is supposed to be really hard, good luck with you on that one." He peered at Ryou's schedule more carefully. "Wow! Harry, come see this! Yugi, Bakura, Malik, AND Seto're in the Ancient Runes class."
But Harry was focused on something else. "Divination?!?!" he asked with astonishment. "We've still got Divination?!?!" Professor Trelawney, the Divination professor, was his least favorite teacher, along with Snape, the head of Slytherin house and Potions Master.
"We all have it," Ryou said. "It can't be that bad, can it?"
"Oh, yes it can," promised Ron darkly.
*~*~*~*~*~*
On the way to Defense Against the Dark Arts, their first class, the topic of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher popped up.
"I wonder who our teacher is going to be this year," Hermione said thoughtfully.
"Even less people want the job now," Ron said. "Let's see, one dead, one's memory gone, one who resigned-mind you, he was a really good teacher-but they'll think he was afraid of the job or something...one locked in his own trunk for the whole year, and one who got attacked by centaurs. Yup, I think that Dumbledore had a pretty hard time getting a new-"
They had just walked into the classroom, and standing at the front, removing some papers from a battered old briefcase, was...
"Lupin?!?!" Harry stood there with his mouth open, staring at Remus Lupin. He looked even more tired than usual, with more gray hairs and lines on his face, but was smiling at him.
"Why hello there, Harry," he said pleasantly. "How has your summer been?"
"Are you our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Yes, Professor Dumbledore needed somebody for the job, and seeing that you have a lot to catch up on, I volunteered. And are you the newcomers?" He studied Yugi, Ryou, Malik, and Seto carefully. "Please sit down, so we can begin class."
He started passing out papers. "Now, I have put together a kind of review, to see what you've learned so far, and to tell me what you need to know. As for the new students, you won't have to worry if you don't know much, you're not expected to. Just try to answer as many questions as you can. I'm sorry, I know it's really boring, but I think all of the teachers have compiled something like this." There were groans from the class. Lupin just gave them an apologetic look. "Alright, you have the whole class period, please start...now!"
Harry, who was seated next to Ron, looked over at Hermione, a seat in front of him. She had already begun to write very fast, hunched over her paper. Yugi, sitting next to her, looked at the questions in confusion.
Malik and Ryou, to their right, were trying to use the quills properly, failing miserably. They already had enormous blotches on their parchment and were cursing at the quills in some foreign language. This seemed very uncharacteristic of Ryou, but Harry brushed it from his mind. He turned back to his own test and looked at the first question.
What is a boggart, and how do you get rid of one?
Harry grinned, he remembered how Neville had defeated a boggart back in their third year. He took his quill, dipped it in some ink, and began to write.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sometime later, he reached a question he didn't know the answer to.
a) What is the incantation to a Deplacement Spell, and b) what does it do?
Harry had never heard of a Deplacement Spell, much less know the incantation for it. He glanced over at Seto, and got a big shock. He was sitting back in his chair, looking relaxed for the first time. His papers where stacked in a neat pile at the edge of his desk, and Harry could see neat handwriting answering all of the questions.
Was he done already? This fast? They had been working on the review for barely twenty minutes! He looked at Hermione, and saw that she was only on her third sheet of parchment. She still had three more to go! Shaking his head, he turned back to his test. He was on the second page, and decided to skip the question about the Deplacement Spell.
Ten minutes later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a cell phone ringing. But that was impossible at Hogwarts! Yet, it was true. Students were turning around to see where it was coming from, and even Lupin looked confused. Seto stood up, excused himself from the class, and strode into the hall, accidentally leaving the door open.
"Kaiba," he answered, using his business voice. There was a few moment's pause. "What do you mean, 'it crashed'?!?!" More silence. "No, you listen to me. If you don't get it up and running by tomorrow, I'll personally fly back to Japan and deal with you and the rest of the department, understand? Good, I expect it to be ready by tomorrow." There was a click as Seto shut the cell phone. Then they heard a small sigh. He returned to the room, glaring at everybody who looked at him. He sat back down, and returned to doing nothing.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Twenty minutes later, they were walking down the corridor to Transfiguration. There were a whole lot of people staring again, but the four new students ignored them with a lot of skill. They were talking as if nobody was there.
"Did'you actually finish in twenty minutes? And what was that fellytone call for?" demanded Ron.
"Yeah, why?" asked Seto, looking indifferent, completely ignoring the second question.
"Wow, you finished that quickly?" Hermione asked, amazed. "I didn't know some of the answers, I hope it won't count as anything!"
"Of course it won't," said Yugi reassuringly. "When they give you something like that, they never keep it as a permanent record, they just want to see how much you know."
"I couldn't get the stupid Ra-damned quill to work," Malik said furiously. "It kept on making these huge blotches on my paper!"
"Same here," commented Yami Bakura dryly. "Of course, I could've just let my aibou do it, but making it seem as if he doesn't know anything is so much better." He grinned.
"What?" Harry asked quickly. What was an 'aibou'?
"Nothing," Malik quickly said, cupping his hand over Yami Bakura's mouth. Harry frowned. There was obviously something that they were keeping from him, but then again, it probably wasn't any of his business. Then he noticed that Yugi had been really quiet for the past few minutes. His eyes had a glazed look to them, and he was walking as if on autopilot.
"Um, hello? Earth to Yugi?" he asked him, waving his hand in front of Yugi's face. He didn't show the slightest sign that he had heard him.
"Pharoah's hikari, wake up!" Malik sang. The change was instantaneous. Yugi's eyes suddenly cleared up, and turned a slight shade of...crimson? And they became more narrowed, as he glared at Malik and Yami Bakura.
"Have a nice make out session in the soul room, Pharoah?" Yami Bakura asked lazily.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione weren't getting anything in this new conversation.
"Shut up, baka Tomb Robber," Yami replied sharply. "You're giving too much away."
"Hmm? Oh. Oops."
Ryou stood blinking in the middle of the hall.
"Did he shut you off from the conversation?" Malik asked. "Is that why you look so clueless?"
Ryou just nodded, and then asked politely, "Where are we going? Is Defense Against the Dark Arts over already?"
At this point, please insert five anime sweatdrops, one each for Yami, Malik, Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still confused. What in the world was Ryou talking about? He had just gone to Defense Against the Dark Arts with them. Why had he forgotten already?
'He must have a really REALLY short term memory,' Ron concluded, thinking to himself.
"Why couldn't you just ask him?" Malik asked Ryou. Harry thought that he meant Yugi, but that was apparently not what Malik had meant when Ryou replied.
"He's asleep," he said promptly. "So, what time is it?"
"Don't worry, it's still morning, and we're going to Transfiguration," Yami told him.
"Oh. What did we do in Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
"Nothing much, we just took a pretest," Malik shrugged.
"What?!?! What'd he do? What if I got all of the answers wrong?!?! What if-" his eyes had glazed over, as Yugi's had. A faint pink tinge appeared on his cheeks.
By now, the corridor was almost empty. Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to keep their distance for the time being. These new students were starting to act just a little weird. They seemed fine when they were staying at the Leaky Cauldron, but then again, they hadn't really seen them that much after the first week or so. The three foreigners had just stayed in their rooms.
And where had Seto gone? One minute he was walking beside them, and the next, he had disappeared.
"They're definitely mental," Ron said to Harry and Hermione as they entered the Transfiguration classroom.
Professor McGonagall was waiting for them, and Seto was sitting in a seat near the middle.
'How had he gotten here so fast?' Harry wondered, as he took a seat beside him.
"Okay, I have a pretest for you, to see what you have learned, and what you have forgotten. Since you have to take the O.W.L.s again this year, I suggest you prepare even harder, as you have experienced how exhausting it can be. Half of today's class will be spent on the review, and the other will be a practical lesson." Professor McGonagall was a strict as ever, and as she started handing out the reviews, Harry caught sight of some of the questions. They were in the same format as Lupin's, and he thought that he could answer most of them.
"You may begin...now," Professor McGonagall told them, and then returned to her seat.
The first question was:
Name the theory of a Switching Spell, and the how to cast one.
Once again, quills began scratching.
Harry was only through with half of his test when he heard the quiet shuffling of papers, and saw Seto put his quill back into his inkbottle. When he glanced at the top sheet of parchment, he saw the same, neat handwriting filling the whole page. Once again, Seto had finished before everybody else. He looked up, and saw Professor McGonagall surveying Seto with approval. Seto just sat there, looking nonplussed, resting his chin on his hand and looking bored.
Fifteen minutes later, Professor McGonagall collected their sheets and began lecturing them on transfiguring furniture and other objects into other things.
By the end of class, they had all been assigned ten inches on transfiguring stationary objects.
"Can you believe her?" asked Ron as they walked up to North Tower with Ryou, Yugi, and Malik. Hermione and Seto had left to go to Arithmancy. "Ten inches, on the first day! And now we've got Trelawney. Hey, d'you reckon that Firenze bloke's going to be there as well?"
"Dunno, but I was hoping that I could drop that class. I guess we'll just have to take it for two more months..."
They climbed the silver ladder and through the trapdoor to the Divination classroom. It was as stuffy as ever, and the perfumed fire was going full blast. Lavender and Parvati were sitting near the front, as usual. Yugi, Ryou, Malik, Ron, and Harry all managed to squeeze in around one table. Professor Trelawney came in, readjusting her shawl, her hugely magnified eyes peering at every one of them.
She acted as if nothing had happened last year. When she spoke, it was still in her mystical voice. "My dears, welcome back to Divination. I'm pleased to see that you are all well, and have gotten here safe, as I knew you would. This month, we'll be touching up on all of the subjects that we have studied in the past. After the O.W.L.s, some of you may leave us, but some will remain with me and take two more years of Divination. They will be the ones who have traces of The Sight, and I'll guide them through their journey to uncover more about the future..."
"I heard that they had to do a memory charm on her," Ron whispered to Harry as she began passing out copies of the Dream Oracle, as she had done the previous year.
They began interpreting each other's dreams again, and by the time class was over, they were all thoroughly glad.
"You were right, Ron," Malik said. "It really was awful-she's the biggest fraud I've ever seen." He turned to Ryou. "Maybe Isis could replace her! At least she's accurate on predictions."
*~*~*~*~*~*
They met Hermione and Seto at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. Malik had once again chosen to sit with them instead of the Slytherins.
"How did Arithmancy go, 'Mione?" asked Harry.
"We have to write fourteen inches on something or the other," replied Hermione. She had gotten a little less paranoid about homework, and Harry was glad.
"Hey, Seto!" It was Mokuba.
Seto greeted him with a slight smile. Harry noticed Seto was like a whole different person around Mokuba. He was caring, and compassionate. He kind of wished that he had an older brother who cared about him as much as Seto cared about Mokuba.
"...and I went to Herbology, and I made two new friends," panted Mokuba, finishing up his two minute long sentence.
"That sounds very exciting," Seto replied. "Do you want anything to eat?"
"Yeah! I'm starving!" Harry felt the same. Ron was already eating, and before long, all of them were enjoying the break in their day.
*~*~*~*~*~*
After lunch they had Care of Magical Creatures. Seto and Yugi were discussing some kind of card game as they strode down the lawn to Hagrid's hut.
"So what do we do in Care of Magical Creatures?" Malik asked.
"Well, with Hagrid, you never know. Remember how we told you about Norbert, Fluffy, and all those other creatures he likes? The problem with him is that he doesn't think that they're dangerous."
"Yeah, remember those Blast-Ended Skrewts, Harry?" Ron reminded him, "And Aragog?" He shuddered.
"Scared, Weasley?" came a cold voice from their right. Turning, expecting to see Malfoy smirking at them, they received a big surprise. A girl was standing there with her hands on her hips, with all of the Slytherins behind her. She had sleek blond hair just like Malfoy's, cold grey eyes just like Malfoy's, and what seemed like an attitude just like Malfoy's. And Malfoy was nowhere in sight.
"I wonder what the great big half-blood's going to try to give us this time," she continued. "From what I've heard, he's quite-" Then she caught sight of Yugi, Ryou, and Malik. "Hey, look, here's the Muggle lovers and Mudblood Club!"
Ryou and Yugi were suddenly acting weird again. They had grown more confident, and their voices had certainly changed. They looked more sinister somehow, and radiated with dark energy. There was also some kind of dark purplish mist fogging up their vision. The new students just seemed like different people, or were they just imagining it?
The girl obviously felt the atmosphere change, and her smirk faltered.
"What do you think, Pharoah?" The person that looked like Ryou asked. "Should we just punish them or get rid of them so that they won't get in our way in the future?"
"Uh, Tomb Robber, as much as I would want to see them die, I don't think that would be a good idea here. There'll be a lot of witnesses, and I doubt killing students is aloud at Hogwarts," Malik said loudly. Other people exchanged confused glances.
"True," mused Yami Bakura. "We'll deal with *you* later," he spat, and then they strode off towards Hagrid's hut.
They met Hagrid at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He had a unicorn with him, and by the looks of it, it was only a foal. It was golden, and tossed its head nervously as they approached.
"We're jus' going to be reviewin' a little bit for the firs' part of the year," Hagrid told them. "And after yer O.W.L.s are over, we can begin other things. Now this one's just a filly, so it won't protest boys that much. Now gather round, that's it, just lightly stroke it..."
The amazing part was that the unicorn seemed to favor Seto the most. She nudged him when he stopped stroking her, and followed him around.
"Why does it like Kaiba, and not us?" grumbled Malik.
The unicorn had gone wild when he had tried to touch it, and had run over to Seto.
"It probably senses our darker halves," Ryou replied.
"But my Yami's in Egypt with Isis right now! How can it sense him?"
"So that's why he hasn't popped up yet," Yugi said, remembering the absence of Yami Malik. Then he sighed. "Darn, I really wanted to touch it. Oh well, look, class is almost over. We'd better head back up to the castle.
"I wonder who that girl is," Ron wondered aloud. "She seemed almost like Malfoy, and Malfoy was acting really weird on the train."
"She's his cousin," said Neville, who had overheard them talking. "Lavender told me. She acted all snobby to her and Parvati during another class. Her name's Dracilla and she's just transferred here from Durmstrang. Crabbe and Goyle are now her bodyguards. It seems like she's just like Malfoy."
This gave them all something to ponder as they walked back up to the castle to go to History of Magic.
*~*~*~*~*~*
History of Magic was boring, as usual. Professor Binns didn't give them any pretests, but went right into his lecture about troll wars. But Hermione wasn't the only one taking notes this time. Seto, Yugi, and Ryou were also paying attention. There were times when Harry could have sworn that he had seen two Yugis or two Ryous, but when he looked again, there was only one of each. And so Professor Binns droned on. In the end, he assigned them a foot long essay on troll wars.
"Where to next?" asked Yugi, as they walked out of the classroom. Ron was grumbling about homework again.
"Double Potions. Be ready for the worst," warned Harry as they walked down to the dungeons.
*~*~*~*~*~*
I didn't really know what to add/change in this chapter, so...if you have any suggestions for me, please tell me!
Thank you, t.a.g.0! *starts bowing to her*