/Text/ Spirit to Host
/Text/ Host to Spirit
Chapter 44: Telephone
Monday
Ding!
Yugi blearily blinked his eyes open to the darkened dormitory ceiling, sighing as the last remnants of his dream flitted away. It was a strange one at that, too – he and his friends had to chase after his grandfather, who had gotten himself into trouble on an archaeological "secret expedition" trip, only to find themselves in some wacky Shadow Game-esque world, hidden deep inside an Egyptian pyramid – in India. Where, the last time he checked or was aware, there were no such structures. And the only way out of this freaky pyramid game was to shoot Duel Monsters creatures out of a glorified-looking foam dart-gun.
How his brain created that after a night of studying Transfiguration theory for next week's test was beyond him.
He propped himself up against an elbow and looked around, trying to place the random noise he had heard that tossed him out of his dream. It was the middle of the night, and the room was calm. Silent. Ryou was soundly asleep in the bunk next to him, and he could just make out Kaiba's form in the bed across the room, through the curtains he oddly neglected to close.
Yugi frowned. Wasn't the noise he heard a phone notification? He thought maybe Kaiba might be awake still, but that notion went out the window with the last lingering flecks of his dream.
Ding!
He jumped, eyes darting to his bedside table, squinting against the brief flash of light coming from his own cell phone, not Kaiba's like he initially thought.
When the phone turned dark again, Yugi took another quick scan around. Neither the second jingle or the bright light flash woke his two roommates. Picking up the phone, he quickly silenced it and drew the curtains shut around his bed.
Who would be bothering to send him a message now? It was the middle of the night. Joey and Grandpa and the others back home already knew what his school schedule looked like, and how many hours apart Britain was from Japan. He doubted it was Ishizu. She was back in Egypt, and they were only an hour or two ahead of him, so it would be in the early hours there as well.
An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. He could only think of one reason why someone would send him a message this late at night. Someone must be in trouble. Were there more Death Eaters running around in the desert? Even with Bill Weasley hanging out with Ishizu, would they contact him if something went awry? Or would Bill just send a message to Dumbledore for help?
Would he even hear about it? Or would news stay a mystery until one of his friends could contact him? If he remembered right, it took several days for them to find out Ishizu was even attacked in the first place. If something else happened, even at home with everyone hiding away, and the Ministry of Magic got involved before the Japanese Ministry could, would he even be told? Or like what almost happened to Roland…would there be a massive cover up?
He took a deep breath and tapped his thumb against the screen, waking it up. As he thought, it was a text, but not one from his grandfather, Ishizu, or any of his other friends.
[Unknown Sender]: A/05818798 D.
Yugi stared blankly at it. The numeric sequence was too short to be a phone number…and what did the letters mean? And who would have access to his phone number? Surely this wasn't some sort of spam message…right?
While he continued to stare at the message, the phone jingled again, and a new line dropped below the first.
[Unknown Sender]: B/12580477 SP. 64428736 A. X.
Yugi felt Yami emerge from within his soul room as he tapped through the notification to view the whole message. Was there anything to go with that weird line?
…Nope.
/Curious…./ Yami mused. /Do you know what that means?/
/…I haven't the slightest idea…. I've never seen something like this before./
Yugi frowned and lowered his arm to let the phone rest on the blanket. Kaiba had built the phone for him. Maybe there was something screwy going on at Kaiba Corp. …Maybe he wasn't the only one getting this message. Surely Kaiba built his own phone as well. Would these be popping up on the device across the room too?
The phone flashed again and Yugi quickly poked his head out from around the edge of the curtains to where Kaiba's nightstand stood. The other side of the room was dark, and Kaiba's phone, assuming it was even on, didn't light up.
Yugi huffed and looked down at the third text.
[Unknown Sender]: A/65240384 D.
/This is almost the same as the first message…only the numbers are different./
/Why don't you ask Kaiba about it in the morning?/ said Yami. /There is no use worrying over it now./
/Yeah…/
Yawning, Yugi switched the phone to vibrate, set it face-down on the bedside table, and slid back under his blanket. With everyone asleep, there was nothing he could do about the texts now.
But as he rested his head against the pillow, trying to will himself back to sleep, he couldn't help but think there was something familiar about the numbers.
They couldn't be telephone numbers…so where might he have seen them before?
By the time that Yugi woke again, bright sunshine had wormed its way through the dormitory, filling it with warmth, inviting its occupants into a new day. He pushed aside the scarlet curtains and stretched – almost clocking Ryou in the face as he was pulling on his socks.
"Oh! Sorry Bakura!"
"It's alright," said Ryou, "I'm surprised to see you up this late. Breakfast has started already."
Yugi let out a small yawn and reached for his phone. "I woke up in the middle of the night. Someone was texting me, and I forgot to silence it after talking with Téa earlier in the afternoon."
Ryou tilted his head curiously. "Who was it?" Yugi's phone didn't get nearly as much activity as Kaiba's over the course of a day, but it was still no stranger to messages from any of the gang back home. Now, messages in the middle of the night? That was something new. Normally, something from Domino filtered through in the early afternoon, occasionally in the morning hours – but not the wee early ones where the only creatures awake were the owls out hunting, or the bats in the forest.
…And sometimes Kaiba.
"I don't know," said Yugi. He woke up the phone, and didn't bother hiding the relief on his face that no more of the strange messages had come through after he had gone back to bed. "It didn't have a name. And the text was just a jumble of letters and numbers."
He opened the log up and passed the device to Ryou, and then reached into his trunk for his shower kit. "Here, I'm going to get ready. See what you can make out of it?"
By the time he returned, showered, dressed and teeth brushed, Ryou was still exactly where he had left him, perched on the edge of his bed, staring down at the phone. The fact that he didn't give up and toss the device back down onto his blanket made him hopeful for good news, and he bit his lip and crossed his fingers.
"Well? What do you think?"
Ryou could only shrug as he passed the phone back to him, and Yugi felt his hopes dash. "I really haven't the faintest clue. I can't figure out what the numbers mean, and the Spirit doesn't have much to offer either."
Yugi pouted.
"Maybe Kaiba has an idea. Or maybe it's just a glitch," said Ryou, "Kaiba may have built it better than the ones you'd get at the booth in the mall, but that doesn't mean they're perfect and immune from going all wonky."
Yugi laughed quietly. "Honestly, I kinda did expect that because Kaiba built it."
And speaking of, Yugi looked across the room. Kaiba's bed was neatly made up, and his school bag sat on top of the trunk at the foot of it. But there was no sign of his rival anywhere. "Where is he, anyhow?"
Ryou shrugged. "He was gone when I woke up. And it's way too late for him to linger around here in the mornings, anyhow."
Yugi had to nod and concede the point. Kaiba being up and out the door before the rest of them was nothing new, but he would have to track him down later, which turned out to be much harder than he thought when he and Ryou arrived in the Great Hall for breakfast and Seto was nowhere in sight.
Hermione was instead paging through his copy of The Daily Prophet, her Arithmancy book propped up against the fruit bowl sat abandoned beside her. She seemed to be purposely avoiding Ron again, who was a foot or so away from her, joined by Lavender, and the two of them were talking quietly to each other while Lavender read over his Potions essay, and every so often giving him tips on what to fix and where to switch paragraphs around.
Harry, on the other hand, was glued to the Marauders Map, discreetly peeking out from Defensive Magical Theory.
"No Kaiba this morning?"
"You missed him," said Hermione idly. "I saw him in the Entrance Hall on my way in. I think he went home for work."
Yugi's eyes widened and he exchanged a curious look with Ryou. "Oh…I didn't even know he was returning to Japan already…."
Ryou shrugged as he buttered his toast. "Me neither."
"I didn't think he'd go back this soon," said Yugi, "but oh well. Maybe the change of scenery will be good for him."
Harry continued to stare at the Map and let out a sudden surprised gasp that it even drew Hermione's attention away from the morning newspaper.
"What?" she asked. "What did you see?" Brow furrowed, she took a side-eyed sweep of the Slytherin table, and then sighed, her interest almost immediately lost. "…Where's Malfoy?"
"On the seventh-floor corridor, at the Room of Requirement," said Harry, "I just saw him walk past where the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry would be, you know, so he could get in…and then…"
Yugi paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. "…And?"
"Did he go inside?" asked Ryou.
"No," Harry murmured, "He's on his way back down…and just passed the sixth-floor landing."
"Well that doesn't make any sense," said Ryou, "Why bother going all the way up there from the Dungeons and not go inside?"
"Maybe he was caught by a teacher," said Yugi, "I mean, everyone else is here and there aren't any classrooms running on that floor. I'd be a little suspicious."
Harry shook his head and gestured to the map. "Yeah, but there wasn't anyone else up there," he said. "The Marauders Map would have shown them to me."
"Look Harry," said Hermione, coolly, "Unless you manage to sneak into the Room with him, you're never going to find out what's going on, and in the meantime, you're just speculating malicious intent when there's no proof of it."
"But it is something important enough that he feels he had to prove himself – and that Snape bothered make an Unbreakable Vow to try and help him. So unless Katie can come back from St. Mungo's and say that she's absolutely certain that he had nothing to do with it, of course I'm suspicious!"
Hermione pursed her lips and went back to her book without another word.
Harry scowled back at the Map. Malfoy had left the Grand Staircases and was on his way to the Great Hall with the last of the morning's stragglers.
What was going on? Why would Malfoy go all the way to the top of the castle and then not enter the Room of Requirement? Did he realize he was out of time? Did he forget something and then decided to just double-back for the sake of keeping up appearances with the rest of the school?
He stabbed his fork into the sausage on his plate and chewed thoughtfully. Maybe, like the times he had tried to get in after Malfoy, the entrance simply didn't open up, and Malfoy was forced to abandon his early morning plans before class. But that only happened when the Room of Requirement was in use by someone else.
Harry swallowed. That couldn't be it. The entire school was here at breakfast. There was no one unaccounted for to be missing off of the Map.
…So what happened?
"I just wanna say," said Joey, "We've been in this house…with Mokuba n' Kaiba's spook, and Pegasus, kay? And there hasn't been a murder yet. Somehow, we've all gotten along, and it's… goofy."
Téa leaned forward to fit further in the phone's line of sight. "What he means is that there haven't really been any fights around, which we more or less expected between Pegasus and Mokuba, after Duelist Kingdom and everything…. But it's really weird. The outside of this place didn't look very big at all, and yet there's tons of room for us to all have our own space! Really, we've only run into Pegasus a handful of times, and I think that's because there's only one kitchen. But there was an entire wing set up for us!"
Tristan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and Toon Monsters everywhere. You know, in case we forgot who owns the place."
"Hang on," said Ryou, and he too leaned closer to look through Yugi's camera. They both sat on his bed near the window. "I don't remember seeing Toon Monsters anywhere."
"Me neither," said Yugi, "Did Pegasus add those after we left?"
"Nah," said Joey, "They're upstairs, where you didn't go. Outside all our doors are our favorite cards, toon-ified. I got me a tiny Red-Eyes and a Goblin Attack Force!"
"Oh cool," Yugi smiled, "What about you guys?"
"Dark Magician Girl," said Téa.
"Swamp and Lava Battleguard," said Tristan, "And there's even a room here for you guys too. I saw a Dark Magician over one door for you, Yugi, and there was a toony Change of Heart over another one down the hall."
"It's kind of cute, in an odd way," said Téa, "There are other toon cards between the doors. Just other monsters running around and messing with each other. But because you really just think of all the problems Pegasus's toon monsters caused you and Kaiba in those duels, you wouldn't expect them to just look so…"
She trailed off, waving a hand until the right words seem to form. "…so innocent, I guess."
Ryou pressed his mouth into a thin line and held back a snicker. "Don't tell me Kaiba's got a room too. What's he going to say when he arrives in Japan and he has a Blue Eyes Toon Dragon on his door?"
"Heh, well…he'll get over it," said Joey, "Mokuba n' Roland have like a whole different section of the house. So when you wander up the steps, you go to the left and that's where our rooms are, right? But if you go the other way, you get to theirs. There are freakin' toon dragons all over the place."
"We'll have to take a picture of all of them and send it to you," said Téa, "There are three Blue Eyes specifically – one for Kaiba, one for Mokuba, and then one for Roland."
"Please do!" Yugi said, "How's Grandpa doing?"
"He's fine," said Tristan. "I don't think he stayed up this late to say hi though."
Yugi's face fell. This was the second time in a row he missed catching up with his grandfather. And he was in class when Grandpa tried to return the call the last time.
"He was tired," said Téa, "Roland took him back to Domino so they could inventory the shop and take care of some backroom stuff."
"Oh that's right," Yugi said, "I remember him mentioning something like that the other week." He hoped Grandpa was only exhausted and didn't overexert himself again. Usually he was there to help him do a full count of everything they had in stock and work on creating the orders for the upcoming months. But that was a lot of work for one person to do all by themselves – especially at Grandpa's age.
"I think he was gonna try and give you a buzz tomorrow," said Téa.
Yugi glanced up at the dormitory ceiling, doing a quick mental check of his class schedule in his head and then counted out the hours. "If he wants to call around…8pm tomorrow night? I'll be out of class then."
"I'll let him know," said Téa.
"So what have you all been up to?" asked Ryou.
Whatever Téa and Tristan started diving into fell onto deaf ears as a text notification flashed across the top of the screen, and Yugi and Ryou exchanged glances. The entire message wasn't displayed, but they could both see it was from the same 'Unknown Sender' as all of the others.
"It's another one!" Ryou whispered, and Yugi nodded, tapping on the notice before it disappeared from sight.
"—Oi! What happened, everything went dark!"
"Sorry, Joey," said Yugi, "I'll be back in a second – I got a text."
"A text?" asked Tristan, "From who – the only ones who would be sending you anything are already on the call."
"I know," said Yugi, and he stared at the new message, just as similar and cryptic as the last three.
[Unknown Sender]: B/46130346 SP.
"What is this even…?" Yugi shook his head. "I – I just don't understand!"
"What is it?" said Téa.
"Here, I'll take a screenshot," said Yugi, and pressed the buttons on the side of the phone together to make a snapshot of his screen to send off to the phone Joey held. "I'm sending it over – see what you can make out of this, it's driving me up the wall."
He returned to the call just in time for his own screen to darken as Joey poked at the incoming message.
"…What…the…heyho is all this gibberish!?"
"That's what I want to know!" Yugi said, "Bakura and I can't figure it out at all!"
"Did you ask Kaiba?" Téa asked, and moments later her face came back into view on the camera.
Ryou sighed. "We couldn't. He's on his way home right now."
"I thought maybe the phone was glitching or something," said Yugi. "You guys haven't had anything like that come through, have you?"
"I think it's safe to say that none of us have seen that before," said Tristan, "The only person who texts this phone is you!"
"Well, Kaiba may not be there, but we got Mokuba, and that's the next best thing," said Joey, as Yugi's phone chimed a second, and then a third time with the arrival of two more texts. "I'll show him the pic and we'll get back to you."
Yugi nodded. "Thanks guys!"
"No problem, pal!"
Yugi leaned back against his headboard as they said their goodbyes, and the moment the call ended, he flipped back to the Messages app to see the incoming texts.
[Unknown Sender]: A/18807108 TP S. 40640057 A.
[Unknown Sender]: B/64428736 X 40640057. 18807108 TP A. 46130346 SP.
Wednesday
Another crowded night in the common room brought Harry, Ron, and Hermione back to Yugi's dorm following the end of dinner. Hermione conjured another warm blue flame jar and settled back in her usual spot against the corner post of Ryou's bed, and Harry and Ron across from her along the side of Yugi's.
"At this rate we might as well see if Professor McGonagall will just transform these into bunk beds," said Ryou, "You've all spent most of the month up here with us."
"I know," Harry laughed. "It's nice and quiet up here though. Not that Ron's and my room is worse or anything, not this year, but it would probably save us a lot of trouble in the long run."
Yugi raised an eyebrow. "Would she do that?"
"Let us all bunk? Not likely," said Ron. "And even if she did, it's not like Hermione could room with us anyway."
Hermione turned the page in her book. "Six is a bit much for these rooms. Even in bunks, you'd all be tripping over each other all the time."
Ryou snickered. "Besides, what would your roommates think if you just up and left them for us?"
Harry and Ron exchanged looks before they both started snickering. "Well, my bed has a pretty nice vantage point over the grounds, so I imagine Seamus and Dean would fight over it," said Harry.
"And Neville snores," said Ron, "I wouldn't miss that one bit."
Harry playfully jabbed Ron with his elbow. "You snore too."
Ron looked scandalized. "I do not!"
"You certainly do!" Harry shot back, though he was grinning from ear to ear. "And I ought to know, too – I've only roomed up with you every summer after first year!"
Yugi set his homework down and reached for the phone next to him as it started buzzing, wondering what sort of strange message would grace his screen this time. The buzzing didn't stop, signaling a single text; it just kept going.
He raised an eyebrow. Someone was calling, and he turned it over to see Mokuba's name on the screen.
A quick swipe answered the call. "Hello?"
"Hey, Yugi…." Mokuba's voice wasn't of its usual cheer, and Yugi suddenly straightened up in his seat. Why was Mokuba out of sorts?
"Hey, everything okay?"
"I guess," said Mokuba, "Waiting on Seto still. Joey mentioned he was coming home. Is that true?"
Yugi furrowed his brow and looked around to Hermione. "I…thought so? Hang on."
He lowered the device from his ear. "Hey, you said Kaiba left, right?"
"I didn't talk to him," said Hermione, "But he was in the Entrance Hall by the front doors, he wasn't in his school robes, and we haven't seen him since."
"And none of the professors have wondered where he was, so he must've," said Harry.
"Hm," Yugi murmured, and relayed that over to Mokuba.
"That's weird, cuz he didn't tell us he was coming, and he hasn't shown up yet."
It took a moment for that, and Mokuba's first statement to sink in, and then Yugi's jaw dropped. "Wait – he's not there yet? He left two days ago!"
Harry and Ron then looked up from their homework, and Ryou swung his legs over the side of his bed, straightening up.
"He's not here…."
Yugi lowered the phone to his bed and placed it on speaker as everyone gathered around his bunk. "When did you talk to him last?"
"This morning, he said he was traveling…but I thought the Japanese wizard guys were just going to like…pop him back and forth, and he wasn't gonna take the planes anymore."
Yugi bit his lip. "I don't know, he never talked about his plans with us."
"Have you messaged him since?" asked Ryou.
"Uh huh. He wouldn't answer me back." Mokuba's voice went quiet. "Y-you don't think…he got taken again, do you?"
"No, but I wonder if his phone wasn't working right," said Yugi, "I mean – it was pretty beat up when he made it back to Hogwarts. Maybe something shorted out."
"I guess," Mokuba said glumly, "Well…if you hear from him, you'll let me know, won't you?"
"Of course we will!" said Yugi. "Everything else okay?"
"Uh huh…I miss home though. It's nice being with the others…but sharing a house with Pegasus is…weird."
Mokuba yawned loudly into the phone and Yugi furrowed his brow, doing some quick mental math in his head. "Uh…isn't it three in the morning?"
"…Yeah…I couldn't sleep…"
"Okay, I'll try and get in touch with Kaiba, and then I'll get back to you. I'm sure he's fine," said Yugi. "Please try and get some rest, okay?"
Another long sigh. "Okay…bye Yugi."
"What was that about?" said Ron.
"Something weird is going on," said Yugi and he looked to Ryou. "If Kaiba left Monday, and the Japanese Aurors apparated him back to Japan, he would have been there by now. And if he took his plane…well, he still would have arrived already. If he's not here, and if he's not in Japan, then where is he?"
Hermione crossed her arms against her chest. "I don't know what all of the enchantments were that he used to get his phone to work, but if it was broken and he fixed it, surely there'd be nothing wrong with it now. And I don't see him as the type to ignore his brother."
"He wouldn't," said Ryou.
"Let me try…" Yugi muttered. "…this. Hang on, let's see if he picks up." He held his phone out over the edge of the bed as the phone dialed out loudly for them all to hear.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three ri –
A click, and then a rather annoyed voice filtered through the speaker. "…What do you want, Yugi?"
Yugi huffed. Well, that was definitely Kaiba. "Hi to you too," he said, rolling his eyes. "Where are you?"
There was an unnaturally long pause for such a simple question, and if it weren't for the fact that he was staring at the phone, Yugi almost thought he hung up on him. "…Why?"
"Mokuba's worried about you. They were expecting you a while ago and you never showed up, and I guess you haven't been responding to his messages either."
Another long pause.
"…I'm in New York," Seto finally said, his voice oozing with ire. "And I suppose I have you to thank for getting my brother's hopes up. I purposely didn't tell him I was leaving because I wasn't going to Domino."
Yugi let out a big sigh as relief washed right over him. Kaiba wasn't hurt or lost anywhere. Thank goodness. "Sorry…it's just - we heard you left and I guess when I was talking to the gang, I naturally assumed you were going back home."
"You assumed wrong."
"Why didn't you tell us you were heading out? Could have saved us a lot of trouble in the long run," asked Harry.
"Because what I do in my time is none of your business," Seto snapped. "I didn't realize I had to keep you updated on my every move."
"Well, sorry," Ron shot back, "We were worried, that's all."
"You did get Mokuba's messages though, haven't you?" asked Yugi, chiming in before his rival could fire back at Ron. He sounded furious, and it worried him.
Another long pause, with nothing but faint sounds of typing coming through the connection.
"…No, I haven't. The signal glitched out yesterday. It must not be fixed yet."
"It's okay – I'll tell him," Yugi said, "That way I know the message makes it to him."
"Fine."
Click.
Ron bristled. "Someone is in a bad mood."
Yugi shook his head as he sent off a 'He's in New York, sorry :(' to Mokuba. "That was…weird."
"He sounded cagey," said Harry. "Why was his leaving some big secret?" He looked around at the group, but other than a few half-hearted shrugs, no one really had an answer.
Ryou fidgeted. "I think…something is up with Kaiba."
Harry deadpanned. "No kidding, Ryou."
Ryou shook his head as Bakura phased out of the Millennium Ring. "No, I mean, yeah - something is a little fishy, but…Kaiba came to me last week, and I could tell he was out of sorts."
Yugi tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"Well, he was rather snappish – more than usual…"
"I've noticed that too," said Hermione, "He nearly bit my head off one night in the Library, and all I did was remind him that it was nearly curfew."
Ryou's hands stared down at his fidgeting hands in his lap rather than look out at his friends. "…He was asking about how things were, before the Spirit and I got along."
"Really?" asked Yugi.
Ryou nodded.
/You're really going to tell them? I told you I was keeping an eye on him./
/I know, Spirit, but they may have something that could help. I don't think it's right that we keep this a secret./
"He thought there might be something going on with his memories, if I remember right," Ryou began, "And he made mention of at least once finding himself in a place without remembering how he got there."
"Why didn't you say anything before?" asked Harry.
"What would you have done?" asked Ryou, "And besides, Kaiba came to me in confidence. I wasn't about to share his problems with the world."
"You just did, mate," Ron said flatly.
"But this is serious!" Ryou waved his arms out. "I dismissed it before because I thought he was just overworked and exhausted – you know, like how he was when he first came to the Burrow over the summer? And clearly his abduction is giving him more grief than he's letting on, because I doubt he's slept an entire night through since leaving the hospital."
"But not only that," Bakura said, drawing all eyes in the room to him, "He's hearing voices. In his head."
Harry and Ron exchanged worried looks. "That's not good," said Harry, "that happened to me before, sort of."
"Whose voice is it?" asked Yugi, "It can't be Set's…right?"
"He claimed to not know who it belonged to," said Bakura, "But it was insisting he get something to work, and it made him rather crabby over it."
"Get something to work?" asked Hermione, "He didn't say what it was?"
"No."
Yami phased out of the Puzzle as Yugi sank back against the headboard. "Well, that could be anything."
Ryou stared down at his lap. "I feel terrible. At the time, I thought he was he was just out of sorts from not sleeping, and I think we put him off by dismissing what he was telling me."
The phone buzzed again and Yugi groaned. "Oh come on – not again."
"Another of those weird texts, I take it?" asked Harry.
"Probably," Yugi mumbled.
Ryou turned to Bakura as Yugi reached for his phone. "You haven't seen anything strange, have you, Spirit?"
"Nothing too out of the ordinary," Bakura shrugged. "He wakes up in the middle of the night and goes down to the common room to play on his laptop for a few extra hours before sulking back to bed. Although…"
Yugi glanced up. "Yes?"
"I did catch him talking to himself one night while I was out exploring the castle."
Ryou tilted his head. "You…explore the castle at night?"
Bakura rolled his eyes. "What do you expect me to do while you sleep? Count the bricks in my soul room? Now don't change the subject. Kaiba seemed rather heated over whatever this voice of his wanted, but it seems even he couldn't figure it out."
"When was this?" asked Harry.
"Monday last week."
"And no one's seen or has heard him say mention of a voice since then?" asked Hermione.
Yami shook his head. "He hasn't said anything in class, and considering he barely spends time here or even in the Great Hall for meals, it's rather hard to keep up with him."
The phone buzzed a second time.
Yugi scowled and tapped at the new message. "I swear, I'm about ready to throw this thing out the window." He turned it around so Ryou could see the two new lines. "More gibberish."
[Unknown Sender]: A/05556668 SP. 74677422 A. 74677422 X 64428736.
[Unknown Sender]: B/46130346 SP. 30860696 A. 30860696 EF A. 30860696 X 74677422.
Ron peered at it over Ryou's shoulder. "That's a lot of numbers. No words?"
"Never any words," Yugi sighed. "Just letters and numbers. I want to say that they have to mean something, and I could almost swear a few of them are familiar, but I can't place what they're from, and it's driving me mad."
"I wonder if they're related to what's going on with Seto," Hermione mused.
"I can't see how," said Yugi, "As far as I can tell, he's not getting them. And I can't ask him about it until he gets back."
"Why not send a message? At least you know you can get through to him," said Harry, "And if he's in America, that's behind us in time, so he has plenty of daylight hours to look into it."
"In that cheery mood we all just heard over the phone?" Yugi cringed. "I think I'll wait."
.~.
"Finally!" Ron dropped his quill onto the floor next to him and laid his head back against the edge of Yugi's bed. "It's finished."
Hermione forced a wry smile. "You wrote your essay all by yourself. I'm impressed."
Ron scowled at her. "It's not like I've never done it."
"Just not recently."
Ron exhaled loudly and looked over at Harry's essay. "Almost done?"
"Almost."
"Fancy some Exploding Snap before we head back down?"
"I don't know how you can think of games at this hour," said Yugi, "It's almost midnight – we're going to have to get some sleep soon or it'll be too hard to sit for Charms tomorrow morning."
"It's just Charms," said Harry, "All we have to do is make an effort in class and Flitwick won't care."
Yugi threw his book down onto his blanket with far more force than was needed, closed his eyes, and thumped his head against his headboard the instant he heard the dreaded vibrating buzz from his phone. "Not again!"
"Surely it's not another text," said Hermione, as the buzzing sounded through the dormitory for the umpteenth time that night. "What does it say now?"
Yami raised an eyebrow and looked at the screen. "Ah, Yugi, you're going to want to answer that."
Yugi opened one eye and picked up the phone as it continued to vibrate in his hand. "Oh. Hello?"
"Mr. Muto," Roland's voice sternly echoed through the room. "You'll forgive me for skipping pleasantries, but please explain to me why you told Mokuba that Mr. Kaiba was in New York?"
Yugi raised an eyebrow and looked out at the rest of the group.
Hermione's brow furrowed, and Ryou tilted his head quizzically. Harry and Ron merely shrugged.
"Uh…that's where Kaiba said he was?"
"Yugi Muto, I am in New York, and I can assure you that Mr. Kaiba is not here."
"He didn't say he was in the office, he just said New York," said Yugi.
"When was that?"
"Um…earlier this evening?" Yugi looked to Yami, who hovered nearby, arms cross, his face pensive.
"Who escorted him off the grounds?"
"I don't know," said Yugi. "He was seen in the Entrance Hall Monday morning, but no one had seen him since. Mokuba was worried because Kaiba wasn't answering his messages, and I called him. He sounded kind of bitter on the phone, but it was definitely him, and he said he was in New York."
"I spoke with the Japanese Aurors who escorted me to the States. They are not scheduled to pick him up until next month, and even if Mr. Kaiba chose to leave me in the dark, no one from the Japanese Ministry was dispatched to retrieve him."
"That can't be," said Harry, "No one has seen Seto since Monday!"
"Could you two have just missed each other?" asked Yugi, "Maybe he's in a hotel or something."
"With the security checkpoints set up here in this office, there is no way he would have been able to get through without swiping his badge, let alone sneak past without anyone noticing. His locket hasn't been in active use here since the Grand Championship Tournament."
There was a slight pause before Roland continued. "Not only that, but his phone, pin, and laptop all ping over your location."
"Maybe the signal is faulty," said Ryou, "He said that might have been why he hasn't been receiving Mokuba's messages."
"The Kaiba Corp satellites are working perfectly."
"Could he have left them behind? For any reason?" asked Hermione.
"How could he have – we all heard him talk to us on the phone," said Yugi and then looked down at the call. "We'll check with Professor McGonagall in the morning. Maybe one of the Aurors here let him off the grounds. It doesn't explain why everything is tracking here…unless his devices aren't working properly."
"Maybe that's the thing he was trying to get to work," Ron shrugged, and everyone then turned to him. "You know, the voice thing."
"If he's not there, and he's not here, he has to be somewhere, and someone at that school has to know where he went. I will keep up this charade for Mokuba's sake, but I don't need him to start panicking again."
"We'll figure it out, don't worry, and we'll get back to you."
"Please do."
Yugi hung up, dropped the phone back onto his blanket and looked out at everyone else. "Okay…what the heck?"
"This doesn't add up one bit," said Ron, "Why would Seto tell us he's in New York if he wasn't actually there?"
"Why would he lie in the first place?" said Harry. "You think he just expected us to believe it?"
Yami crossed his arms. "I believe," he said, "that there is something greater at play." He looked to Ryou. "From his questions about your adjustment to the Ring…"
He then set eyes on Hermione. "…to his behavior, and now being very secretive about leaving the school."
"What was he doing in the Library that night?" asked Bakura. "I thought he hated that place."
"He was in the Magical Law section, where he used to go in the beginning of last term," said Hermione, "I found him asleep at the desk, under a mountain of books. I thought maybe he was trying to get that dueling emitter to work."
"The dueling emitter?" Yugi raised an eyebrow.
Hermione nodded. "The one Umbridge destroyed? I thought that, after everything, he would have wanted to duel again, to return to something enjoyable. His phone, I think, was already working again after Professor Dumbledore took all the enchantments off."
"Maybe it wasn't, and that's why the location thing is all screwy," said Ron.
"It's not just his phone though, that's just it," said Bakura, "All of his tech is tracking here. Even if his phone up and stopped working, there's no reason why the rest would have. Dumbledore didn't strip any of that stuff of their magic."
Harry stood up. "I think we're missing the obvious. Let's say the phone is broken. If the laptop is here and the pin is here, then they should be here, in this room, right?"
He crossed over to Seto's bunk, opened the narrow wardrobe, and started shifting through the hangers. Three sets of Gryffindor robes, a Kaiba Corporation hooded sweatshirt, a few dress shirts, a black suit, and – there!
Harry pulled out a slate-grey suit and held it out for everyone to see. Centered on the jacket's lapel was the KC pin.
"Okay, that works for one of them. So Kaiba didn't wear that out of the castle. But the laptop? He wouldn't do company work without it," said Yugi.
"Easy enough to find," said Harry, and after putting the suit back into the wardrobe, walked over to the trunk and threw it open.
"Well?" asked Ron.
"There's no funky dueling emitter, that's for sure," said Harry. He knelt down and started rummaging through the books. "Not much of anything else in here either. Definitely no laptop. But…"
He pulled out several sheets of parchment that looked to have once been crumpled in a ball and smoothened out again. "Why do I get the feeling he wouldn't normally take care of his notes this way?"
Harry laid them out flat on the floor and pulled out another stack of notes, buried deep in the bottom of the trunk. "There's this too, and they look pretty similar to each other."
Yugi slid off of his bed and sat down on the floor beside Seto's trunk. "I remember these," he said, and pointed to the second, smoother stack of papers, "Those were his phone notes in the beginning of the year. But I can't make heads or tails over the rest of it."
Harry passed the papers to Hermione, but she didn't make a move to take them. "Do you think you can decipher what all this means?"
Sighing, she took the wrinkled parchment and gave the pages a quick look-over. "These are definitely the ones from that night in the Library," she said. "I remember the ink smudge. But if they're similar to his tech notes…why would he end up researching everything a second time?"
"That's part of the mystery," said Yami. "What we have is only a piece of the puzzle."
"So what do we know?" said Ron, "That he's been lying about where he is, his laptop is missing, and he's got double of his notes."
"His laptop isn't missing, it must be with him," said Hermione.
"And he's not in New York, and not in Domino. If the phone and laptop create a signal over Hogwarts, then he must be here with them," said Bakura, "Question is – where?"
"He can't be," said Harry, "I've been watching Malfoy remember? I've stared at the Marauder's Map everyday and Kaiba isn't –"
Harry stopped short, looked around at the others, and then sprang to his feet. "Wait here," he said, "I'll be right back!"
Ron watched him bolt through the dormitory door and upstairs towards their room. "What's got him?"
Harry returned moments later with the Map clenched in his hand.
"Wait, for once, you didn't have that on you?" asked Ryou, wide-eyed. "I'm impressed!"
"Ha ha," said Harry dryly, and he sat back down on the floor and completely opened the Marauders Map as the others gathered around it.
"What are we looking for?" asked Yugi.
Harry pointed to the Dungeons, where Malfoy was with the other sixth year boys in the Slytherin dormitories. "Do you remember when I was watching Malfoy at breakfast, and he had gotten all the way up to the seventh-floor corridor and then just turned around and came right back down?"
"Yeah, that was Monday," said Ryou.
"He was going for the Room of Requirement, right?" asked Yugi.
"Yeah, he was right outside the door. It must not have let him in, and that's why he came back to the Great Hall."
Yami's brow furrowed. "Why wouldn't it let him in? It's always done that before."
"It won't if the room was already in use," said Hermione. Her words seemed to linger in the air around them before she gasped and put a hand to her mouth. "No…that can't be."
"It's the only explanation," said Harry. "The Room of Requirement is Unplottable on the Map. That's why in the beginning of term I couldn't find out why Malfoy was disappearing all the time."
"But he didn't disappear," said Ryou. "Malfoy stayed in the – oh."
"Yeah. Malfoy wasn't running late to class or anything. He wasn't caught by a teacher. The Room wouldn't let him inside because someone else was already in it."
"But the whole school was at breakfast," said Ron.
"Not everyone," said Yugi. "Kaiba wasn't with us. We thought he left the school, and the story fit because he didn't show up on the Map."
"Yeah," said Harry. "He didn't show up on the Map, because he's been in the Room of Requirement this entire time."
"What could he have possibly been doing that he needed to fool everyone into thinking he left?!" asked Hermione.
Yami looked grim. "That's what we need to find out."
A/N: I wonder, perhaps, who can decipher the code before the next chapter posts? ;)