Author's Notes: Sorry for the long wait. I was side-tracked by my Mass Effect/The Flash crossover (if that interests you, please check it out).
On his eleventh birthday, Harry Potter's life changed forever.
For almost a month beforehand, the house on Private Drive was being flooded with more and more letters addressed to Harry. He hadn't read any of them, of course. He couldn't. As soon as they found them, the Dursleys would destroy them. Ultimately, the house was flooded with them, and Uncle Vernon had forced them all to pack their bags and move into a small shack on a rocky island in the middle of the Northern sea until further notice.
That night, the eve of his eleventh birthday, Harry had drawn himself a birthday cake in the dust of the floor. He placed his Charmers around it. For the first time in his life, he was having a birthday party with his best friends.
I wish we could have real party together some day, he thought as he blew "out" the candles of his cake. His life was a dark one, often running the spectrum from "Awful" to "Bland." But, he was still just young enough to still believe in the tiny, ordinary magicks of childhood, like birthday wishes. He'd never had one come true yet, but then, he'd never wished so hard before.
Then, the door was knocked off it's hinges, and Harry learned that he was invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Hogwarts was wonderful. Not because of the magic lessons, which were mostly pretty lame. (Really, turning matches into needles?). No, it was just how magical the school was. The moving staircases, the ghosts wandering the halls, and the paintings . . .
The paintings!
The people in them moved. On their own, they moved; they spoke, and they thought, and they played. They were people, real people, who just happened to live in a two-dimensional space made of paper and paint.
According to his new friend, Ron, it was the same way with the Wizard trading cards you got from chocolate frogs.
Harry spent every spare moment he could in the Library, reading about magical paintings and their creation. Ron complained about this quite often, but Harry ignored him; the young wizard continued his quest to discover how pictures could be brought to life. If it could be done for chocolate frog cards, he knew it could be done for duel cards. Soon, Harry would finally meet his dearest friends.
Most of what he found was too vague or advanced. There were references to things like Runes and Arithmancy and "Advanced Theory of Animation" that Harry hadn't even heard of. Most of it didn't make any sense. Any other person would have given up at this point, or decided to hold off on the project until a later date.
Harry Potter was not any other person. He was determined to find the spell or potion or whatever it was that let pictures move and work it. Ron was a good friend, but he wasn't one of the ones who had gotten Harry through years of loneliness and neglect. That honor belonged to his cards, especially his Charmers. Harry had collected other cards over the years: like much of what he owned, they were mostly Dudley's cast-offs or things other people had no interest in (If you waited long enough, you'd eventually scrape a little change off the school playground, and there were plenty of children who preferred snack money to "weak" cards), but his Charmers were still his favorites, his best friends. And Harry was going to bring them to life. All he needed was the right spell.
Finally, he found it.
It was a week later that Harry had finished his preparations. It took a lot of materials to perform the spell, but they were all a part of his standard potion-making kit. He'd probably have to talk his friend Hagrid into taking him on another trip to Diagon Alley soon to replenish his supplies, though.
Harry gently placed his six charmers in a circle of runes he'd drawn on the stone floor of the Common Room. Normally, paintings and other images were enchanted when they were made, but Harry was trying something different. The circle was enclosed within a hexagon, and Harry had placed a small bowl at each of the six points. Each bowl held within it a magical elixir representing one of the six elements of magic: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Dark, and Light.
Coincidentally, these were the same six Attributes of Duel Monsters . . .
Harry picked up his wand in one hand and steadied the book on his lap. He then almost took out an eye as he absent-mindedly rubbed it with the hand holding the wand. He was so tired, but he had to do this tonight, or the stars would shift and he wouldn't be able to for another year. He began tracing the patterns he saw in the book in the air with his wand and started to read the spell aloud:
Elementa Magia, vicino positis quam procul,
Veni ad nos hujus noctis insidias venire ad nos cum his stellis.
Harry bit back another yawn. He couldn't let the spell stop.
Aquarum terrarumque animaeque virtutibus spiritus,
Scilicet vitam ad huiusmodi species.
Almost there. Almost. Harry was fighting to stay awake now. It was obvious that this was more than just fatigue. The spell was taking a toll on his body, but he couldn't stop, not until he had his friends.
Ignis simulachra atque spectra rerum ventus,
Dotabit cogitatio in adaptátas.
Harry almost fainted. Taking a deep breath he shouted aloud.
Tenebrarum lucis umbras manes,
Mittat in anima easdem imagines!
The young wizard fell back; the effort of his spell too much for his body to take. Just before he hit the ground, he dimly saw six shadows circling above his head, reaching out to him.
"Aw, man. We finally get to talk to him, and what does he do? Faint. Men, am I right?"
Author's Notes: Sorry if that was too short. The next one will be longer, and should include our first duel.
I am such a tease. Heh, heh . . .