Rated for language, violence, and mild sexual references.

Disclaimer: If you recognize any names, terms, or concepts, that's because they are not mine.

CHAPTER 6 - Pursuit and Partnership

Just before 5 am the next morning, a vague awareness sprouted in Harry's head, whispering the prey is moving, it's time to hunt, follow him, stalk him, take him… Harry was reminded why the tracking spell he had chosen was not strictly approved of by the Ministry and the DMLE. While it was by far the most powerful and precise of all the non-invasive trackers (meaning that it did not require a piece of the target for scrying, which was explicitly unlawful by most Ministerial standards), it also had the tendency to force onto the caster certain predatory feelings, which sometimes caused the tracker to act with rather less impartiality than the Ministry preferred to see in its Aurors.

Nonetheless, it was terribly useful; Harry conjured up the globe and saw that Leather Jacket had just Apparated to Gifu. Two minutes later, he was just to the left of Kyoto. He's planning on island hopping over to South Korea, seems like. Harry was proved right when the jumps continued to Shunan, then to Tsushima. He would probably have to Apparate onto a ship sailing across the Korea Strait; most countries had Anti-Apparition wards set up around their borders to prevent illegal immigration or emigration, and Japan was one of them. Indeed, Leather Jacket had stopped momentarily, likely to catch his breath and scope out an appropriate vessel on which to stow away.

Harry vaulted out of bed and grabbed from his trunk the canvas backpack Hermione had given him for his last birthday, enchanted with powerful expansion, feather-light, and preservation charms. He always kept it stocked with emergency supplies in case he had to drop everything and run for any reason, a habit he, Hermione, and Ron had retained from the Horcrux Hunt. There were several sets of clothes already inside, along with a newer wizard tent, a full set of medical potions, and food and water kept fresh for months by the preservation charms. On a whim, he grabbed the set of twenty Duel Monster cards he had bought the day before.

He changed quickly and washed his face before scurrying out of his apartment and rapping loudly on the door of 520. He had only to wait a moment, before Ryou appeared with dark eyes and the most impressive bed-head Harry had ever seen. He barely choked down a giggle, but couldn't quite suppress the grin that had been stretching his mouth since he woke up.

"Harry-san, what…?" Ryou started, his usually soft voice rough with sleep.

"Leather Jacket's on the move, I'm going after him. Would you let Sugoroku know I won't be in for a week or two? Please give him my apologies," Harry spoke quickly, excitedly, eager to get to hunting down his prey.

"Surely you're not thinking of going without me, are you, wizard?" Bakura spoke from behind Ryou, where he had just appeared wearing a pair of dark grey pajama bottoms and nothing else. Harry struggled to keep from examining the man's muscles.

"If you want to come, hurry and get dressed. I've already got packed everything we're going to need," Harry said, lifting the backpack for Bakura to examine. He raised a skeptical eyebrow at the small bag, which Harry had appeared to lift without trouble, but shrugged, conceding, and turned away to pad into his bedroom. Harry bounced on his toes, toothy grin pulling wild, excited, so excited, and Merlin's pants, what could be taking the man so long…? It was time to go, go GO-

Harry cut himself off, taking a deep breath to regain control of himself. It really was a mentally taxing tracking spell to use.

Bakura reappeared moments later, but rather than let the man step out into the hall, Harry forcefully pushed himself into the apartment and grabbed hold of his arm.

"I'm going to Side-Along Apparate you," he said hurriedly, feeling the alarm whisper to him that the target was moving again. "It'll be uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. Don't struggle, or you might lose a limb."

Bakura balked at that, and Ryou made a vaguely confused noise, but Harry turned on the spot before either had the chance to get a word out.

They landed with a loud, echoing crack in a park in Osaka. Bakura immediately ripped his arm from Harry's grip and leaned against a tree to gather his breath, an expression of supreme discomfort on his dark, gaunt face.

"What the fuck-" he began to snarl, but Harry cut him off.

"I know, I know, Apparation sucks, but you'll get used to it, and we really have to get moving, he's already found a ship to take him across the Strait." Harry stepped forward to grip the man's arm again, and Bakura grudgingly let him, a dark, disgusted scowl etched into his face. They jumped again, and again, and a third time, before Harry finally landed them beside a harbor warehouse on the northern tip of the island of Tsushima. Harry stared out over the water, took in the overwhelming stench of fish and brine that wafted over from a barrel of offal. The sky was just beginning to lighten at the horizon, turning it a rather ugly dark gray. It would be daylight soon, and he would have to be more careful with his Apparations. Behind him, Bakura fell to his knees, narrowly missing a suspiciously oily puddle, and gasped harshly.

"By the wings of Horus…" he wheezed. "Some warning next time!"

"Sorry, but we're really in a hurry here. This is going to be a really fast paced chase, Bakura. We only stop for breaks when he does, or we'll get too far behind and might miss our chance to see his leader," Harry said, glancing back at the man sympathetically, but firmly. "Anyway, we're in luck. The ship he chose isn't out of Japanese waters yet, so we can hop on board that one too, maybe catch a glimpse of him, see how he's faring."

Bakura grimaced, nodding, and reluctantly held out his arm again. Harry took it and popped them onboard the ship he could not see, but could somehow sense. He tried not to think about how his intrinsic knowledge of the Death Eater's exact location was a bit too precise for the tracking spell, and the way that knowledge made him take extra notice of the wispy shadows that always flickered in the corners of his eyes, now.

They landed atop a salt-crusted crate in the ship's dark cargo hold. He froze, silent, listening for movement to determine if the telltale crack of Apparation had been detected. Bakura needed no warning from him to do the same. They both listened intently for a moment longer, before Harry felt more than saw Bakura's nod. They slipped off the top and settled into the damp space between two large crates, where Harry cast a murmured Homenum Revelio. Faintly glowing figures appeared above them on deck, and across the ship in the crew's quarters. A single form was attached at the tip of the tallest mast. Harry knew instinctively that this was his prey – cowering pathetically from his hunters, as is the natural order of things – likely Disillusioned and secured with a sticking charm. Harry had to grudgingly admit it was a good place for a short-term stowaway. He would be able to see land more quickly from up there. Harry whispered his findings to Bakura, who settled back against the crate to wait for the ship to cross into Korea's territorial waters, when they would be able to Apparate again.

Harry pulled two bottles of water and a pair of apples from his pack and offered the meager breakfast to Bakura. They sat in a surprisingly comfortable silence, rocking with the vessel and listening to the waves lap against the hull. Harry closed his eyes, sinking into his thoughts to force down the artificial predatory instincts that were even now baying for him to rush the deck and bleed Leather Jacket. His meditation was interrupted by a soft chuckle from Bakura. Even in the darkness of the cargo hold, Harry could see the glint of his teeth as he bared them in a feral grin.

"Ah, this is so fun…" he murmured. Harry grinned back.

"Mm. Don't go getting too excited, though. I might need you to hold me back. This spell just…" he made a vague, frustrated gesture with his hand, not entirely sure what he wanted to say, but he needn't have bothered. Bakura was nodding before he even finished speaking.

"Yes, you seem far more, ah, eager to track him than I would have expected of you. It is the effect of the tracking spell you are using?"

They continued speaking intermittently for an hour more, before Harry felt a light tingle on the back of his neck that indicated they were approaching some very powerful wards.

"Get ready," he hissed to Bakura. "He's about to go!" No sooner had he spoken than Leather Jacket disappeared. Harry whipped up the globe, took half a second to identify the location, grabbed Bakura's arm, and Apparated them to Pusan, South Korea. They followed the Death Eater north towards North Korea, and opted to wear Harry's Invisibility Cloak (which Bakura had eyed with a disturbingly greedy expression) to walk across the border rather than wait for some large vehicle to carry them across. Harry opted not to tell Bakura that they would have been immediately detected and summarily arrested if they had tried that with any other invisibility cloak.

The chase began immediately once again, further north into China, whose Anti-Apparation wards were a particularly brutal sort, if Harry recalled correctly, often leaving violators in tiny, bloody chunks. They sneaked across again under the Cloak before entering a truly grueling series of jumps west across the whole of China. Leather Jacket didn't stop until he was across the border in Kazakhstan. Harry was grudgingly impressed with his prey's stamina; all the Apparations were really taking a lot out of him personally.

They stopped for the night in a copse of trees Bakura had determined was safe and secure, two miles away from where Leather Jacket had petrified a family and had taken their dinner and beds for the night. They settled in to the fully equipped wizard tent – which Harry could tell had impressed Bakura immensely, despite the man's noteworthy attempts at nonchalance – and fell asleep immediately after a cold dinner of deli meat and bread, which neither could be bothered to form properly into sandwiches.

The next morning, long before the sun rose, they were on the move again. Leather Jacket immediately adopted the feverish pace from the previous day, cutting a straight line across the continent, stopping only to wait for Muggle transportation with which to cross warded borders. They were given a nice reprieve when Leather Jacket overshot an Apparation intended to land him on a ship passing over the Caspian Sea, falling instead in the middle of the saline. Harry had appeared on board the vessel, too far off to see him, but able to feel his prey's distress. He could practically hear the wet, panicked gasping, see him flailing wildly, sinking and cold, trying to stabilize himself enough to Disapparate, but he didn't know how to swim, never learned, fuck, fuck, the salt is b-burning-

Harry let out a long, low whine. It didn't matter how he knew it – the tracking spell wasn't invasive and shouldn't have been able to tell him the target's mental state – but he knew his prey was right there and was struggling, stuck, helpless, this was the perfect opportunity to take him, RIP him APART-

The heavy fist colliding with his jaw snapped him out of that particular train of thought.

"Get a hold of yourself!" Bakura hissed, pushing Harry to the ground and covering his mouth. Harry realized he'd been making strange, guttural vocalizations as he had been overwhelmed by the spell's hunting instinct. He took a deep breath, then shoved Bakura off of him.

"Sorry. It's just, he's landed out in the sea and he can't swim. He'll be fine, s'long as he calms down enough to Disapparate, but I can feel him struggling. Makes me want to, you know, hunt him," he finished lamely with an awkward half-shrug.

"You almost gave us away! You're lucky most of the crew is dining right now, or they would have heard you!" the taller man growled. Apparently he was the type to hold a grudge, Harry thought, disgruntled and embarrassed.

"I know, I know! That's why you're here, though, yeah? To snap me out of it," Harry offered. Apparently he's also weak to flattery, he thought amusedly, watching the other man sniff haughtily and visibly calm at the mention of his usefulness.

They slipped down into the ship's cargo hold to wait for Leather Jacket to make his next move. It ended up taking the man ten minutes to gather himself enough to be able to Apparate into the ship's cargo hold, luckily on the other side to where Harry and Bakura were seated beneath the Invisibility Cloak. Harry couldn't help but perk up a bit at the sudden proximity to his prey. He was a bit offended, however, when Bakura took a firm, restricting hold of his arm. He wasn't about to go after the man, he had more self-control than that! …Probably.

The ordeal seemed to have taken a lot out of the Death Eater, though. Harry's Homenum Revelio showed him huddled tightly in the corner, gasping and shuddering, unmoving for hours. He did not move even after passing the wards, so Harry assumed it safe to doze a bit; the man was probably doing the same. He and Bakura took a few short, alternating naps while waiting for the ship to cross the Caspian. It wasn't until they were approaching the docks on the Russian coast that Leather Jacket finally roused himself and continued jumping.

They continued travelling vaguely northwest, stopping for the night once more when Leather Jacket became exhausted, and having breaks only when they had to wait for illegal passage into a new country. Bakura, frustrated with being unable to truly contribute to the pursuit thus far, had decided to scout Leather Jacket's location whenever they stopped.

Harry was a bit apprehensive at first, worried that he might alert their prey to their presence, but his fears abated when he saw how easily Bakura was able to slip undetected through darkness. Harry's fears were then thoroughly obliterated when he saw the man summon some great white monster with a snake for a lower body that lifted him onto its shoulder and turned invisible. Harry tried not to show how impressed he was, but Bakura's smug grin told him he wasn't successful.

Each break, Bakura reported back to Harry that Leather Jacket seemed nervous and jittery and on the verge of collapsing with exhaustion. They concluded that he was likely on a strict schedule; he had a deadline to meet, and he was close to missing it. His break-neck pace continued into Poland, where he finally stopped in Lublin.

Harry and Bakura, heavily Glamored to look like a blond-haired father and son pair on an outing, stalked after the broken down Death Eater through the crowded city streets. A stroke of luck had placed them in the city during the daylight hours, allowing them to keep half a crowded street between them and their prey at all times, with him none the wiser. Leather Jacket seemed to wander about aimlessly for around three hours, before finally slipping off into a side street and following a circuitous route leading to a line of old row houses. Harry and Bakura, hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, were just approaching the front window of the house Leather Jacket had entered when the tracking spell abruptly snapped, the sudden magical rebound making Harry jolt and fall back against Bakura.

"What happened?" the taller man hissed, taking hold of Harry's upper arms to steady him.

"The spell just broke," Harry gasped back. "That only happens if someone uses the exact counter-spell. Or if there's no more life for the spell to track." Which meant that whomever Leather Jacket had come to meet was either terrifyingly observant and knowledgeable, or had been terribly displeased with him. Behind him, Bakura began hissing vitriolic curses in a language Harry could not identify, evidently having reached the same conclusions as Harry.

He quickly cast a Homenum Revelio, but the house was now devoid of life. Harry could not recall hearing the crack of Disapparation, which Bakura corroborated as they made for the front door. Harry eased open the front door, wincing when the rusted hinges squealed, and stepped in cautiously. Inside, the row house was dilapidated and musty, painted in washed out shades of grey. The small entry way opened into a short hallway studded with faded wooden doors, and ended in what looked to be a dimly lit kitchen. Harry shifted to the side to allow Bakura to step past him, and together they crept silently down the corridor, peeking into each dusty room, Harry murmuring elaborate detection spells under his breath and Bakura casting hawk eyes into every corner, both checking and triple-checking for traps. The found nothing but dust and broken furniture and a mouse nest. The latter actually eased Harry's mind a bit; the nest was obviously extensive and the population was thriving, and if there were any serious traps in the building, the mice would likely have been killed long before they had the chance to breed.

When they came to the back room, they found Leather Jacket's lifeless form sprawled across the floor, still warm, a surprised look on his face and not a mark on his body but for the remnants of the battle and his interrogation by Harry. How strange he looked, Harry noted abstractly, still and dirty across the grubby linoleum with his warm brown hair and his deathly pale complexion and his ragged blue duck-print pajamas.

"Fuck," Bakura groaned. Harry watched from the doorway as the taller man knelt beside the body and poked at a waxy cheek. He grumped a bit more before standing and casting a pale, probing stare about the room. He stepped away, eyes flicking rapidly around for any clues of the murderer, while Harry crouched down to examine the body more thoroughly.

Their respective searches turned up no hints but for an odd, barely distinguishable ring of color on the floor that Bakura noticed, less than a half meter in diameter. Harry moved from his place by the body and settled beside it, using a fingernail to scratch at the discoloration. It was barely half a shade darker than the dirty, stained linoleum around it, and remained stubbornly inert to his examination. It was likely nothing, just an old stain left by a former inhabitant, but something about the mark niggled at the edges of his mind, a worm of suspicion tickling at his instincts. He frowned, concentrating deeply, but could not conceive of any magic that would have left such a residue. He'd have to ask Hermione later.

With no other clues in evidence, Harry was about to call it quits and suggest they head back when Bakura, with some strange burst of inspiration, decided to check the mouse nest they'd seen earlier. They shooed away the incensed rodents and began poking in the piles of fluff and feces. Half chewed and stuffed into a wad with a bit of moldy fabric was a small, crumpled piece of yellowed parchment, which had been folded with deliberate care despite its obvious age and creases indicative of heavy use. They unfolded it with bated breath, anticipation rising in Harry's throat. The slip displayed a surprisingly elaborate web of lines, letters, and numbers, covered liberally with scribbles and crossed out pathways in ink that seemed to cover a gradient of age. At the very bottom was a relatively fresh series of letters that had been circled vigorously several times.

GGDSVP

"Any ideas?" Bakura asked, eyes sketching over the sequence bemusedly.

"Not really. We can't even say for sure who this belonged to. Could've been our killer, could've been the previous owner of the house. No, it's parchment, not paper, must have been a wizard, umm… Maybe if we could find out more about the house…? No, probably no records of any wizard inhabitants, not if they decided to borrow the place from muggles temporarily…" Harry mused, more to himself than to Bakura.

"Copy down the address. It won't hurt to look into the building, and I know someone who can do that with no issues," Bakura muttered. His eyes were narrowed as he continued to examine the letters, a contemplative frown twisting his gaunt face. "Assuming this did belong to our killer, and assuming this killer was the one to arrange the hit on you, could the last initial be a reference to your family name? Would the other letters make sense in that context?" Bakura asked suddenly.

Harry glanced back over the letters and felt his breath leave him. His eyes zeroed in on the sequence and he tried to gulp, but there was nothing to swallow – his mouth was dry, and his tongue suddenly seemed thick and swollen. It's got to be a coincidence. There's no way someone could have figured it out. The letters have to mean something else. Because if they stood for what he desperately hoped they did not, then someone apparently very intelligent and very ruthless knew one of his greatest secrets.

Gregorovich - Grindelwald - Dumbledore - Snape - Voldemort - Potter

It wasn't the true sequence of mastery of the Elder Wand, of course; Draco Malfoy was missing from the list, and Severus Snape and Voldemort had never been a part of it. But this was the path Tom Riddle had traced and believed in. Had he told one of his Death Eaters, or had one of them figured it out? Were they truly after him for revenge, as he had originally believed, or was it an elaborate plot to obtain the legendary Deathstick? Would Harry be the hunted, now? Hadn't he earned a bit of fucking peace for once in his life?! No, he was overreacting, he was-

He was being shaken. Harry's head shot up, narrowly missed Bakura's nose, who had gripped him by the shoulders and had apparently been calling his name. Harry met the man's intense, pale gaze dazedly.

"What did you realize?" Bakura said, speaking slowly and clearly, his voice a deep growl.

"I-" Harry paused. He had never, not in a thousand years, entertained the thought of discussing the Elder Wand with anyone, except Ron and Hermione who already knew. He swallowed. "I think it has to be a coincidence, what these letters stand for. They represent something really, er, personal to me, don't think anyone else would know about it."

Bakura thrust his face even closer to Harry's, staring him dead in the eye. He suddenly looked very angry, and Harry couldn't help but be a little intimidated, especially with the way the man's scar contorted with his scowl. "You never know what someone else may know about you. What did you realize?" he hissed lowly. Harry took half a step back, shaking his head.

"I don't want to tell you, not yet. Please, just… That contact of yours, who can find stuff out about the house? Could you talk to them first? And if we don't get any more leads, then I'll tell you," Harry bargained desperately.

Bakura's scowl deepened, but he nodded slowly, reluctantly. "Very well. If our business here is completed, then we should return to Domino." Harry watched helplessly as the man retreated, and couldn't help but feel that he had disappointed him deeply in some way.

It ended up taking them five days to make their way back to Domino. Still exhausted from the initial trip and no longer running on adrenaline, the constant Apparation required Harry to take longer, more frequent breaks. While waiting for illegal passage across the borders and waiting for Harry to recharge, the pair had taken to wandering around foreign cities, ostensibly taking in the sights, together but apart in a way they had not been during the hunt.

Harry had felt a distinct sense of camaraderie with Bakura before, had enjoyed the way they worked easily around each other, the way they seemed to challenge each other to keep up the grueling pace. The silence and the occasional waiting hadn't been uncomfortable the way it was now. Harry feared he had broken something irreparable in their tentatively forming friendship by refusing to tell the man what the letters meant to him.

Then he knew he had broken something, when he caught Bakura staring at the scars on Harry's hand, but not asking why he had I must not tell lies carved into his flesh. The Bakura from a few days ago would have never hesitated to ask about something that so obviously interested him. Harry sighed, growing increasingly morose. He couldn't wait to get back to his apartment and part ways with the confusing, frustrating man currently in his company.

Finally popping off a ship bound from Korea to Japan, he cast a quick Tempus and noted that it was about noon; there would likely be a few shadow mages at Kame Game right now. Might as well get the report over with, he thought, grabbing Bakura's arm one last time and taking them directly to the back room of the shop.

Honda and Jounouchi, who were there lifting some heavy boxes for Sugoroku, both shrieked at their sudden appearance. Honda dropped his box on Jou's foot, who stumbled back into a shelf with an almighty crash. The door burst open and Sugoroku came rushing in, Yugi at his heels and Atem following at a more sedate pace

"Aww, jeez, you two… Way to give a guy a heart attack," Honda wheezed.

"And a broken foot," Jounouchi grumbled as Yugi helped him up. Harry snickered tiredly, flicking his wand at the wrecked shelf and setting it to rights.

"Sorry about that. Didn't want to appear in view of muggles. I figure I've broken the Statute of Secrecy enough for one lifetime." Yugi gave a small, appreciative chuckle before grinning widely at Harry and Bakura.

"It's good to see you guys! We were starting to get worried. You look really, um, tired, Harry-kun. Did everything go alright?" Harry shook his head solemnly and told them about the chase across Asia and Europe, only to find their target dead in Poland. He didn't mention the slip of paper, or the ring on the floor. He wasn't comfortable calling those evidence yet. He was gratified and a bit hopeful when Bakura did not correct him.

"How unfortunate," Atem murmured, arms crossed and staring slightly off to the side, apparently lost in thought.

"Yeah, especially after you went to all that effort to track him…" Yugi said, looking a bit disturbed. "There's nothing we can do about it now, though. Harry-kun, you should get some sleep. You really don't look good. You too, Bakura-kun."

Harry couldn't even muster the energy to give a verbal agreement. He just nodded tiredly and offered his arm to Bakura, who only took it after hissing, "This is the absolute last time I ever let you drag me about like this."

They popped into Harry's apartment, startling Em into motion. Bakura flinched, snarled, at the sudden activity. "Why is there a bird in your apartment?"

"Oh, bloody hell, sorry Em… Um, she's a post bird, everyone in the wizarding world uses them for communication. I sent her off just before I was put in the hospital, she must have gotten back days ago…" He saw the remains of some poor mammal on the floor by his couch and was relieved to see that she'd at least been able to occupy herself, despite his disgust at the mess. He quickly untied the letters from her leg and dropped them on the table, then turned to usher Bakura – who was similarly eyeing the carcass with a wrinkled nose – out of the apartment. As soon as the door closed, Harry banished the mess and then stumbled gracelessly into bed with just enough presence of mind to kick off his shoes, but not quite enough to bother crawling under the sheets.

Greetings~ So I've got a bit of a dilemma that I'm hoping you all can help me out with. The problem is that I'm posting much faster than I've been writing, and in a few weeks, I shall have nothing left to post, after which there will likely be a very long hiatus while I keep writing. So do you guys want me to keep posting at the same speed I have been and then deal with a long break, or should I spread out my updates more and hopefully have a less long break later? Unfortunately we're looking at a hiatus either way...

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!