Chapter 4: - An English Intermission
Hermione Granger was frustrated.
Unknown to her friends at Hogwarts, Hermione had taken it onto herself to research everything she could in the magical world to try to help Yami and Ombre with their problem.
She thought she'd found something on Ombre's people in a book in the Muggle Library, the one just down the road from her that she practically lived in during the Summer Holidays, but then that turbaned man, Shadi, he'd said his name was, had taken it from her, saying that the Pharaoh would find out in due time.
Hermione had tried to reason with him, saying that it wasn't fair for Yami and Ombre to be deprived of anything that related to them and that Yami was owed his memories for everything he'd done to protect the world.
But Shadi had merely pulled out a Millennium Item, the Millennium Key he'd said, and entered her mind without her permission.
She had somehow followed him to her Soul Room, where Shadi had examined her mind and soul.
Hermione had looked around her Soul Room, unsurprised by the fact that it was an organised library with a sofa bed in the corner, but hadn't really taken much in as she'd watched the Egyptian judge her soul.
She'd heard the stories but had never expected to have the man judging her soul against the feather of truth, never expected for it to be her soul at risk of being fed to Amut.
Hermione had watched in fear as the man's second Millennium Item appeared as if from nowhere.
Shadi had turned to her, Millennium Items raised.
Then his face had taken on a look of surprise for a millisecond, as if he'd been expecting something else to happen.
"You pass." He merely said and vanished from her room.
Hermione had enough time to take one last look at the room and then she felt herself wake up.
"You passed the trial of the Millennium Scales. I was wrong about you. You seek knowledge for the sake of helping the Pharaoh and the Princess, not to claim the power for yourself." Shadi said, eyeing up the teen, "But you cannot reveal anything to them yet."
He had vanished with the book.
Hermione still hadn't worked out how he'd known what she was researching, or why he was watching her when he should have been keeping an eye out for trouble for the Millennium Item Wielders, but… she was still annoyed at him for taking her book.
The Millennium Items hadn't been in any books she'd read so far, they weren't mentioned in passing, they weren't mentioned in any books on Egypt's ancient history, she'd even looked up ancient artefacts from all over the world but there was nothing.
It was like someone or something wanted all mention of the Shadows to vanish from history.
Had someone known Yami and Ombre would wake up with questions and deliberately kept the answers locked so tightly away that the world couldn't find them so that the yamis couldn't get to them?
Hermione was currently halfway through the pile of books she'd picked up from the library and was finding nothing that was half as helpful as the book Shadi had taken from her.
She wondered if she should send a note to Kari and Ombre, mentioning the man's visit, but decided against it, not wanting to worry them, and unable to think of a reason why Shadi would visit if Hermione wasn't looking up things relating to the yamis.
Hermione growled and picked up the book she was reading, Ancient Cultures and the Myths Surrounding Them.
The book referred to magic as a myth and only went back a thousand years, which was barely anything if you weighed it up against the amount of time Yami and Ombre had been in their items.
Hermione chucked the book across the room in frustration, then went and retrieved it.
There was no point in getting mad at the books, when in reality, she was just lonely and missing her friends and frustrated at her inability to find anything that could help them.
They'd been sharing letters, sending them by airmail back and forward but Kari wasn't expecting replies from Harry, since airmail wasn't cheap and Kari had forgotten to give him any stamps.
There'd been a letter from Yugi that had come this morning with the results of the tournament they'd been competing in and telling her how they'd been doing.
Japan sounded fascinating, but Hermione was certain that she could never convince her parents to go there for a holiday, especially not to a part of Japan that was only well known because of Battle City.
Her parents were funding her Duel Monsters card buying spree only because learning the game kept her out pf the library.
Hermione had been surprised at just how taken in she'd become by the game from merely watching her friends play and meeting the Duel Monsters that had arrived in the human world last summer during a tournament.
She wasn't any good yet, but the cards in her deck liked her, she'd chosen them for that exact reason. There wasn't much rhyme and reason to her deck, it worked well enough, but she had all sorts of monsters in there, Spellcasters, Warriors, Beasts, a couple of Fiends too, Yugi always managed to get a Kuriboh in his Fiend Barrier booster packs and was always willing to let his friend have one.
Hermione had seen Kuriboh in action too many times not to accept Yugi's offer.
She sighed and closed the useless book, pulling out her deck and shuffling it, drawing the top card and grinning at it.
It was the Flight of Dragons card she'd found in a Sky Sanctuary booster pack, one of the last packs she'd bought. It hadn't appealed to her to start with, but it kind of reminded her of their group of friends, a bunch of children, or hatchlings, flying with a group of adults who in turn were still being led by their leader, who at the moment, Hermione figured was either Yami or Harry.
She shook her head, put down the card and picked up the next book.
Distractions wouldn't get her through this fifteen book pile.
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Ron Weasley was glaring at his School Trunk.
He was trying to sort through his Hogwarts stuff, having finally acquiesced to his Mum's continual nagging.
He hated going through his school trunk, there was always so much stuff that had been screwed up or broken or multiple others things and there was always that thing right at the bottom that leaked all over the place, causing a rainbow of messes as parchment and ink and whatever the hell it was that leaked (why was it always sticky?) all mixed together into a gooey paste at the bottom of his trunk.
Ron froze as he pulled something out of it.
"Yugi's going to kill me." Ron growled as the only Fiend card he owned came loose from the sticky mess and Ron felt the forlorn look it gave him.
Ron shook his head in amusement, he'd clearly been spending too much time with Yugi and Boh if he was imagining the look Boh would give him if he was coated in the sticky mess that currently covered the base of his trunk.
Taking the sticky card downstairs, he passed his brothers Fred and George on their way back up the stairs with identical looks on their faces, the look Ron had learnt to worry about, because there would be an angry Mum on a rampage soon.
Mrs Weasley, however, was downstairs cooking. Whatever the twins were up to, they hadn't done it yet obviously.
"Mum?"
"What's wrong dear?" Mrs Weasley asked, turning around.
"How would I clean a card without damaging it?"
"Card?" She asked with a frown, Ron held up the sticky Kuriboh, "Ah, cardboard, Scorgify is too harsh for a card like that." Mrs Weasley took a closer look, "Isn't that one of those Drool Monsters cards?"
"Duel Monsters Mum." Ron sighed, "Yugi gave me this one, he seems to get a lot of copies of it and it's his favourite, so he gives his friends a copy."
"That's nice of him." Mrs Weasley said, "He's a Muto right? One of the twins with the tricoloured hair?" Ron nodded, "Is Yugi the one with the purple eyes or the red eyes?"
"Yugi's the shorter one with the purple eyes. The one who helped save Ginny." Ron said, "Mum, how would I clean the card?"
"Well, how does he do it?"
"Yugi doesn't get his cards dirty, they live in his deck box which is with him at all times."
"Hmmm." Mrs Weasley looked like she was thinking, "Try this." She pointed her wand at the card and said, "Abluo."
The card got slightly damp, but all the stickiness vanished.
"Thanks Mum." Ron hugged his Mum and raced back upstairs with the damp Kuriboh in hand.
It went under his potions textbook to dry so it didn't curl up at the edges.
Ron shook his head, highly amused, as he turned back to the mess in his trunk, the rest of his rather small card collection were all in the other corners of the trunk, well away from the gunk, typical Yugi, getting into trouble.
Not that he'd proved himself much better since going to Hogwarts, but he didn't get into half as much trouble as Yugi and Harry.
But then Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived, who'd defeated Voldemort when he was a baby and had faced down Voldemort twice and killed a Basilisk, while Yugi was something Ron was still only beginning to understand, but between him and Yami was beginning to be called the Twins-Who-Never-Lose and Ron knew both of them had faced Voldemort and Yugi had helped Harry with the Basilisk.
Yugi, Yami, Joey and the others had had other adventures before they'd come to their school too, but Ron often forgot they weren't the same age as them.
He wasn't sure why they were at Hogwarts other then Professor Dumbledore had invited them, but he was glad they were there and were his friends, because he'd seen what they could be like as enemies and he didn't want them against him.
Ron got the last of his cards out and glared at the gunk at the bottom of his trunk, his Mum had told him this morning that she wouldn't clean it out for him, but there was no way he wanted to clean it out by hand.
Percy, however, was doing something and threatening to throttle any Weasley sibling that interrupted him and the twins weren't old enough.
He growled and went and got some clean soapy water, and a couple of towels, kneeling down next to the trunk and putting his hand right in the gunk.
"Blegh!" He moved his hand quickly, and glared at the sticky stuff. It was gross and smelt like something he'd made in potions class with Harry.
He was jealous of Harry sometimes, he could admit it to himself, though he wouldn't admit around the others, Harry was a powerful wizard and he was stinking rich, at least the Mutos were powerful but poor like him and Kaiba was stinking rich but lacked any sort of personal life at all.
Harry was rich, powerful, had a good group of friends and Harry's advice was even taken by Yami, who'd been a Pharaoh before he'd been sealed in the Puzzle.
Ron was good at magic, but he didn't have a Knut to his name and while his friends were great, his suggestions didn't hold half the weight Harry's did.
But then Ron had an unfair advantage over both Yugi who was a famous Duellist, and Harry who was a famous wizard.
Ron's parents were both alive, and here.
And if he was honest, he'd rather have his family whole and well then have the fame of his friends but have his family either scattered or dead.
He could quite easily understand why, to both Harry and Yugi, their friends were their family.
Ron shook his head and got on with cleaning the bottom of his trunk, the sooner he did it the sooner it was over with and the sooner he could see if the twins wanted to play Quidditch.
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Harry Potter was soaking wet.
His cousin Dudley had taken all of the Duel Monsters cards that his friends had given him and either ripped them up or tried to chuck them in the pond at the park.
Half his cards had been torn to shreds and the other half were ruined by water.
Harry had fished them out but the only two that weren't ruined were a Gryphon that Kari had given him and the Kuriboh that Yugi had given him, the rest were all ruined and it was only a burst of accidental magic that had saved these two and sent Dudley packing so he could attempt to save the rest of his cards.
It was strange, he had two of his favourite cards, but the one he'd tried hardest to save had been the Phoenix card that Joey had given him.
Harry knew Joey had even less money then Ron did so any card given to him by his blonde Japanese friend was treasured since the blonde was an absolute fanatic.
Harry sighed and tossed all the ruined cards, bar Phoenix, randomly into his backpack.
He was sure that if he was allowed to use magic out of school, then the warming spell that Kari knew could have saved the other cards, but he could focus on those later, right now he had to focus on saving Phoenix.
He'd originally come to the park with his cards because he was trying not to think about the fact that his birthday was only a few days away and Aunt Marge was coming to stay.
What a pleasant birthday surprise.
Harry was certain Yami would rather have Bakura Malfoy as a dorm mate then Harry would share a house with Aunt Marge and that really was saying something.
Aunt Marge's dog would spend the whole time biting people and she'd spend the whole time sniping at him for some imagined wrong.
He attempted to slip in the back door but Vernon and Petunia Dursley, his Aunt and Uncle, were waiting for him.
"What did you do?" Vernon roared. "I thought you couldn't do weird things out of school!"
"It was an accident, Dudley was chucking something given to me by my friends in the Park's Pond."
"Dudley claims you attacked him!"
"My friends, who are world class Duel Monsters players, gave me those cards and Dudley was chucking them in the pond!"
"You're lying!"
"Yugi Muto, the ex-King of Games, Joey Wheeler, his best friend and Kari Ironhide, the ex-Queen of Games gave me them!" Harry got angry, if he was Dudley they'd have gotten out of the way in an instant, "And he ruined them!" Harry brandished the Phoenix card.
"Why should we let you?"
"Because you really don't want to annoy the King of Games and he's my friend too." Harry took a deep breath, "If I promise to behave when Aunt Marge is over, will you let me go and dry my cards?" Harry tried to reason.
"Fine, go to your room!" Vernon snapped, grateful for a result that meant he technically won, since Harry went to his room, but didn't involve having to talk to the freak too much.
Harry rushed off to his room to save his cards.
Harry missed his friends more then ever as Phoenix went under his Potions textbook to dry and the rest of his cards got closely examined.
Half of them weren't as bad as he'd thought, but it was a tiny amount and he'd only had forty to begin with, a deck built of spares from the others, as Harry hadn't really wanted to get into the game with Quidditch and everything else going on.
He kind of regretted it now, as it was something his friends were really interested in and the game had looked interesting…
Harry sighed as he looked at the ruined cards. Kuriboh, Gryphon and Phoenix were the only ones properly salvageable from Dudley's little assault on them, three cards out of forty…
Yugi had said something in his last letter about the new Wizard Booster Packs that had been released earlier in the Summer and decided he was going to buy some when he got to Diagon Alley to try to make up for having his cards ruined.
Harry sighed and collapsed back onto his bed.
The others were giving him news, letter by letter, but Harry felt bad, not writing back to the ones who sent him letters from Japan, but he didn't have much Muggle money to buy stamps and things with.
For a couple of weeks Yugi, Yami and Joey hadn't been able to afford airmail either, but Yami had won that tournament since, and they'd sent him a letter that was three times the length to make up for it.
Harry grinned slightly at his friend's descriptions of their antics and then wondered how'd they'd react to his cousin destroying Harry's cards.
Yami would have Shadow Gamed him, that was easy.
Joey probably would have gotten into a fight with Dudley and won.
Kari would have glared and used the Orb to embarrass Dudley.
Ombre would have used the Orb too, but since Harry had only ever seen the Princess snap once, he didn't know how.
Ron would have attempted to hex Harry's cousin even though he was underage… if he had a new wand...
Hermione would have easily outsmarted Dudley.
Yugi was the hardest one to pin down. Harry had seen two sides of Yugi, the normal, nice, innocent version, and the version that came to play when Yami wasn't counterbalancing the Hikari's light.
Yugi minus Yami equalled run like hell but Harry had known he couldn't abandon his friend when he'd needed him, even though Yugi had lost control a couple of times.
Harry was pretty sure that if that was what happened when a hikari went a little mad, then a yami without a hikari was probably ten times worse, if not more so, but Ombre hadn't been without Kari long so she hadn't gotten to the point Yugi had.
The teen held the dry surviving cards up and his emerald eyes shot towards the potions book that was trying to dry his Phoenix card flat.
His friends had given him these cards as a symbol of their friendship and Harry felt bad he hadn't been able to protect the rest of the deck.
He was defiantly going to make himself a new one when he got to Diagon Alley…
Unknown to her friends at Hogwarts, Hermione had taken it onto herself to research everything she could in the magical world to try to help Yami and Ombre with their problem.
She thought she'd found something on Ombre's people in a book in the Muggle Library, the one just down the road from her that she practically lived in during the Summer Holidays, but then that turbaned man, Shadi, he'd said his name was, had taken it from her, saying that the Pharaoh would find out in due time.
Hermione had tried to reason with him, saying that it wasn't fair for Yami and Ombre to be deprived of anything that related to them and that Yami was owed his memories for everything he'd done to protect the world.
But Shadi had merely pulled out a Millennium Item, the Millennium Key he'd said, and entered her mind without her permission.
She had somehow followed him to her Soul Room, where Shadi had examined her mind and soul.
Hermione had looked around her Soul Room, unsurprised by the fact that it was an organised library with a sofa bed in the corner, but hadn't really taken much in as she'd watched the Egyptian judge her soul.
She'd heard the stories but had never expected to have the man judging her soul against the feather of truth, never expected for it to be her soul at risk of being fed to Amut.
Hermione had watched in fear as the man's second Millennium Item appeared as if from nowhere.
Shadi had turned to her, Millennium Items raised.
Then his face had taken on a look of surprise for a millisecond, as if he'd been expecting something else to happen.
"You pass." He merely said and vanished from her room.
Hermione had enough time to take one last look at the room and then she felt herself wake up.
"You passed the trial of the Millennium Scales. I was wrong about you. You seek knowledge for the sake of helping the Pharaoh and the Princess, not to claim the power for yourself." Shadi said, eyeing up the teen, "But you cannot reveal anything to them yet."
He had vanished with the book.
Hermione still hadn't worked out how he'd known what she was researching, or why he was watching her when he should have been keeping an eye out for trouble for the Millennium Item Wielders, but… she was still annoyed at him for taking her book.
The Millennium Items hadn't been in any books she'd read so far, they weren't mentioned in passing, they weren't mentioned in any books on Egypt's ancient history, she'd even looked up ancient artefacts from all over the world but there was nothing.
It was like someone or something wanted all mention of the Shadows to vanish from history.
Had someone known Yami and Ombre would wake up with questions and deliberately kept the answers locked so tightly away that the world couldn't find them so that the yamis couldn't get to them?
Hermione was currently halfway through the pile of books she'd picked up from the library and was finding nothing that was half as helpful as the book Shadi had taken from her.
She wondered if she should send a note to Kari and Ombre, mentioning the man's visit, but decided against it, not wanting to worry them, and unable to think of a reason why Shadi would visit if Hermione wasn't looking up things relating to the yamis.
Hermione growled and picked up the book she was reading, Ancient Cultures and the Myths Surrounding Them.
The book referred to magic as a myth and only went back a thousand years, which was barely anything if you weighed it up against the amount of time Yami and Ombre had been in their items.
Hermione chucked the book across the room in frustration, then went and retrieved it.
There was no point in getting mad at the books, when in reality, she was just lonely and missing her friends and frustrated at her inability to find anything that could help them.
They'd been sharing letters, sending them by airmail back and forward but Kari wasn't expecting replies from Harry, since airmail wasn't cheap and Kari had forgotten to give him any stamps.
There'd been a letter from Yugi that had come this morning with the results of the tournament they'd been competing in and telling her how they'd been doing.
Japan sounded fascinating, but Hermione was certain that she could never convince her parents to go there for a holiday, especially not to a part of Japan that was only well known because of Battle City.
Her parents were funding her Duel Monsters card buying spree only because learning the game kept her out pf the library.
Hermione had been surprised at just how taken in she'd become by the game from merely watching her friends play and meeting the Duel Monsters that had arrived in the human world last summer during a tournament.
She wasn't any good yet, but the cards in her deck liked her, she'd chosen them for that exact reason. There wasn't much rhyme and reason to her deck, it worked well enough, but she had all sorts of monsters in there, Spellcasters, Warriors, Beasts, a couple of Fiends too, Yugi always managed to get a Kuriboh in his Fiend Barrier booster packs and was always willing to let his friend have one.
Hermione had seen Kuriboh in action too many times not to accept Yugi's offer.
She sighed and closed the useless book, pulling out her deck and shuffling it, drawing the top card and grinning at it.
It was the Flight of Dragons card she'd found in a Sky Sanctuary booster pack, one of the last packs she'd bought. It hadn't appealed to her to start with, but it kind of reminded her of their group of friends, a bunch of children, or hatchlings, flying with a group of adults who in turn were still being led by their leader, who at the moment, Hermione figured was either Yami or Harry.
She shook her head, put down the card and picked up the next book.
Distractions wouldn't get her through this fifteen book pile.
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Ron Weasley was glaring at his School Trunk.
He was trying to sort through his Hogwarts stuff, having finally acquiesced to his Mum's continual nagging.
He hated going through his school trunk, there was always so much stuff that had been screwed up or broken or multiple others things and there was always that thing right at the bottom that leaked all over the place, causing a rainbow of messes as parchment and ink and whatever the hell it was that leaked (why was it always sticky?) all mixed together into a gooey paste at the bottom of his trunk.
Ron froze as he pulled something out of it.
"Yugi's going to kill me." Ron growled as the only Fiend card he owned came loose from the sticky mess and Ron felt the forlorn look it gave him.
Ron shook his head in amusement, he'd clearly been spending too much time with Yugi and Boh if he was imagining the look Boh would give him if he was coated in the sticky mess that currently covered the base of his trunk.
Taking the sticky card downstairs, he passed his brothers Fred and George on their way back up the stairs with identical looks on their faces, the look Ron had learnt to worry about, because there would be an angry Mum on a rampage soon.
Mrs Weasley, however, was downstairs cooking. Whatever the twins were up to, they hadn't done it yet obviously.
"Mum?"
"What's wrong dear?" Mrs Weasley asked, turning around.
"How would I clean a card without damaging it?"
"Card?" She asked with a frown, Ron held up the sticky Kuriboh, "Ah, cardboard, Scorgify is too harsh for a card like that." Mrs Weasley took a closer look, "Isn't that one of those Drool Monsters cards?"
"Duel Monsters Mum." Ron sighed, "Yugi gave me this one, he seems to get a lot of copies of it and it's his favourite, so he gives his friends a copy."
"That's nice of him." Mrs Weasley said, "He's a Muto right? One of the twins with the tricoloured hair?" Ron nodded, "Is Yugi the one with the purple eyes or the red eyes?"
"Yugi's the shorter one with the purple eyes. The one who helped save Ginny." Ron said, "Mum, how would I clean the card?"
"Well, how does he do it?"
"Yugi doesn't get his cards dirty, they live in his deck box which is with him at all times."
"Hmmm." Mrs Weasley looked like she was thinking, "Try this." She pointed her wand at the card and said, "Abluo."
The card got slightly damp, but all the stickiness vanished.
"Thanks Mum." Ron hugged his Mum and raced back upstairs with the damp Kuriboh in hand.
It went under his potions textbook to dry so it didn't curl up at the edges.
Ron shook his head, highly amused, as he turned back to the mess in his trunk, the rest of his rather small card collection were all in the other corners of the trunk, well away from the gunk, typical Yugi, getting into trouble.
Not that he'd proved himself much better since going to Hogwarts, but he didn't get into half as much trouble as Yugi and Harry.
But then Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived, who'd defeated Voldemort when he was a baby and had faced down Voldemort twice and killed a Basilisk, while Yugi was something Ron was still only beginning to understand, but between him and Yami was beginning to be called the Twins-Who-Never-Lose and Ron knew both of them had faced Voldemort and Yugi had helped Harry with the Basilisk.
Yugi, Yami, Joey and the others had had other adventures before they'd come to their school too, but Ron often forgot they weren't the same age as them.
He wasn't sure why they were at Hogwarts other then Professor Dumbledore had invited them, but he was glad they were there and were his friends, because he'd seen what they could be like as enemies and he didn't want them against him.
Ron got the last of his cards out and glared at the gunk at the bottom of his trunk, his Mum had told him this morning that she wouldn't clean it out for him, but there was no way he wanted to clean it out by hand.
Percy, however, was doing something and threatening to throttle any Weasley sibling that interrupted him and the twins weren't old enough.
He growled and went and got some clean soapy water, and a couple of towels, kneeling down next to the trunk and putting his hand right in the gunk.
"Blegh!" He moved his hand quickly, and glared at the sticky stuff. It was gross and smelt like something he'd made in potions class with Harry.
He was jealous of Harry sometimes, he could admit it to himself, though he wouldn't admit around the others, Harry was a powerful wizard and he was stinking rich, at least the Mutos were powerful but poor like him and Kaiba was stinking rich but lacked any sort of personal life at all.
Harry was rich, powerful, had a good group of friends and Harry's advice was even taken by Yami, who'd been a Pharaoh before he'd been sealed in the Puzzle.
Ron was good at magic, but he didn't have a Knut to his name and while his friends were great, his suggestions didn't hold half the weight Harry's did.
But then Ron had an unfair advantage over both Yugi who was a famous Duellist, and Harry who was a famous wizard.
Ron's parents were both alive, and here.
And if he was honest, he'd rather have his family whole and well then have the fame of his friends but have his family either scattered or dead.
He could quite easily understand why, to both Harry and Yugi, their friends were their family.
Ron shook his head and got on with cleaning the bottom of his trunk, the sooner he did it the sooner it was over with and the sooner he could see if the twins wanted to play Quidditch.
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Harry Potter was soaking wet.
His cousin Dudley had taken all of the Duel Monsters cards that his friends had given him and either ripped them up or tried to chuck them in the pond at the park.
Half his cards had been torn to shreds and the other half were ruined by water.
Harry had fished them out but the only two that weren't ruined were a Gryphon that Kari had given him and the Kuriboh that Yugi had given him, the rest were all ruined and it was only a burst of accidental magic that had saved these two and sent Dudley packing so he could attempt to save the rest of his cards.
It was strange, he had two of his favourite cards, but the one he'd tried hardest to save had been the Phoenix card that Joey had given him.
Harry knew Joey had even less money then Ron did so any card given to him by his blonde Japanese friend was treasured since the blonde was an absolute fanatic.
Harry sighed and tossed all the ruined cards, bar Phoenix, randomly into his backpack.
He was sure that if he was allowed to use magic out of school, then the warming spell that Kari knew could have saved the other cards, but he could focus on those later, right now he had to focus on saving Phoenix.
He'd originally come to the park with his cards because he was trying not to think about the fact that his birthday was only a few days away and Aunt Marge was coming to stay.
What a pleasant birthday surprise.
Harry was certain Yami would rather have Bakura Malfoy as a dorm mate then Harry would share a house with Aunt Marge and that really was saying something.
Aunt Marge's dog would spend the whole time biting people and she'd spend the whole time sniping at him for some imagined wrong.
He attempted to slip in the back door but Vernon and Petunia Dursley, his Aunt and Uncle, were waiting for him.
"What did you do?" Vernon roared. "I thought you couldn't do weird things out of school!"
"It was an accident, Dudley was chucking something given to me by my friends in the Park's Pond."
"Dudley claims you attacked him!"
"My friends, who are world class Duel Monsters players, gave me those cards and Dudley was chucking them in the pond!"
"You're lying!"
"Yugi Muto, the ex-King of Games, Joey Wheeler, his best friend and Kari Ironhide, the ex-Queen of Games gave me them!" Harry got angry, if he was Dudley they'd have gotten out of the way in an instant, "And he ruined them!" Harry brandished the Phoenix card.
"Why should we let you?"
"Because you really don't want to annoy the King of Games and he's my friend too." Harry took a deep breath, "If I promise to behave when Aunt Marge is over, will you let me go and dry my cards?" Harry tried to reason.
"Fine, go to your room!" Vernon snapped, grateful for a result that meant he technically won, since Harry went to his room, but didn't involve having to talk to the freak too much.
Harry rushed off to his room to save his cards.
Harry missed his friends more then ever as Phoenix went under his Potions textbook to dry and the rest of his cards got closely examined.
Half of them weren't as bad as he'd thought, but it was a tiny amount and he'd only had forty to begin with, a deck built of spares from the others, as Harry hadn't really wanted to get into the game with Quidditch and everything else going on.
He kind of regretted it now, as it was something his friends were really interested in and the game had looked interesting…
Harry sighed as he looked at the ruined cards. Kuriboh, Gryphon and Phoenix were the only ones properly salvageable from Dudley's little assault on them, three cards out of forty…
Yugi had said something in his last letter about the new Wizard Booster Packs that had been released earlier in the Summer and decided he was going to buy some when he got to Diagon Alley to try to make up for having his cards ruined.
Harry sighed and collapsed back onto his bed.
The others were giving him news, letter by letter, but Harry felt bad, not writing back to the ones who sent him letters from Japan, but he didn't have much Muggle money to buy stamps and things with.
For a couple of weeks Yugi, Yami and Joey hadn't been able to afford airmail either, but Yami had won that tournament since, and they'd sent him a letter that was three times the length to make up for it.
Harry grinned slightly at his friend's descriptions of their antics and then wondered how'd they'd react to his cousin destroying Harry's cards.
Yami would have Shadow Gamed him, that was easy.
Joey probably would have gotten into a fight with Dudley and won.
Kari would have glared and used the Orb to embarrass Dudley.
Ombre would have used the Orb too, but since Harry had only ever seen the Princess snap once, he didn't know how.
Ron would have attempted to hex Harry's cousin even though he was underage… if he had a new wand...
Hermione would have easily outsmarted Dudley.
Yugi was the hardest one to pin down. Harry had seen two sides of Yugi, the normal, nice, innocent version, and the version that came to play when Yami wasn't counterbalancing the Hikari's light.
Yugi minus Yami equalled run like hell but Harry had known he couldn't abandon his friend when he'd needed him, even though Yugi had lost control a couple of times.
Harry was pretty sure that if that was what happened when a hikari went a little mad, then a yami without a hikari was probably ten times worse, if not more so, but Ombre hadn't been without Kari long so she hadn't gotten to the point Yugi had.
The teen held the dry surviving cards up and his emerald eyes shot towards the potions book that was trying to dry his Phoenix card flat.
His friends had given him these cards as a symbol of their friendship and Harry felt bad he hadn't been able to protect the rest of the deck.
He was defiantly going to make himself a new one when he got to Diagon Alley…