A.N. Sorry, yet again, for the long delay! I was going to finish it and post it by New Year’s at least but it just didn’t work out that way. Ah well, hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: HP and YGO characters still not mine, the Wingendi are, hehe. It’s nice to be able to claim something.

:. . .: is Yugi, double is Yami

(. . .) is Ryou, double is Bakura

;. . .; is Malik, double is Ishtar

Anything with -. . .- around it is a broadcast to all six.

Chapter 27

“What is going on here?” Trelawney’s airy voice drifted across the stifling tower room as she spied Ryou and Yugi staring down at their tabletop, apparently frozen. Moving between several poofs, she leaned over their table and examined the three blank, white cards lying there. She frowned.

“What’s this? You are supposed to be learning about the mysteries of tarot reading, not playing games.”

“But they are tarot cards, Professor,” Yugi said, looking earnestly up at the Divinations teacher. “It’s just that when we flipped them over they’d all gone blank.”

“Blank?” she repeated, clearly disbelieving. “My boy, cards do not go blank. They may speak ill tidings or foretell great fortune, they may give you the most unexpected of news, but they do not simply go blank.”

“But Professor—” Ryou started, picking up one of the cards to show her. But she only gave it a brief glance before fixing her large, magnified eyes on them.

“Do not expect me to believe such foolish nonsense,” she said stiffly, drawing herself up. “If you are not going to treat these cards with the respect they deserve, then I have no choice but to believe that you are not yet ready for them. The crystal balls are in the cupboard. You will practice your crystal gazing for the rest of this class period.”

That said, she turned and drifted away, her many bracelets jingling against each other.

(( . . . What?!)) Bakura exploded. ((Who does she think she is? I’ll show her a thing or two about card reading—))

(Yami . . . we’ve gone over this before. We all know you know all about card reading, but now just isn’t the time to get offended.)

Yugi frowned as he got up and headed for the cabinets more out of reflex than any actual desire to spend yet more time staring into a crystal ball. :Do you have any idea what this means? The cards being blank?:

Yami was silent for a long moment before he let out a long, resigned sigh. :No, divination was never a specialty of mine, but I can say that it may not be an entirely bad omen.:

Yugi paused, his hands resting on the cabinet doors. :Really? I can’t really imagine it meaning anything good.:

:This may be pure speculation, but I believe it might simply be a sign that the answer is as yet too uncertain or buried too deeply in other matters that cannot be clarified to the degree of being viable for even the broad representation of the cards. Thus it is not really either a sign of ill fortune or inability, simply mystery.:

:That makes sense…:

:We may have to consult the Tomb Robber for confirmations.:

Yugi blinked then laughed out loud. Opening the cabinet he fetched two crystal balls and made his way back to the table where Ryou looked like he was having some mental argument with Bakura.

:What?:

:It’s just that you don’t actually say we should get Bakura’s opinion very often.:

x-X-x

The first thought that sprinted through his mind with the speed of someone running barefoot over hot coals was that this was definitely not a good situation to be in. The second hought was his yami’s irritated shout inside his head that that was the most useless thing he could possibly be thinking and if he didn’t get the damned Rod out now he was going to be just another human popsicle in the Frost Monarch’s already extensive collection. The part of his mind that was coherent agreed with this and so he scrambled back onto his feet as his right hand dove into his pocket questing for the Millennium Rod.

But instead when his fingers finally met something hard and emerged from his pocket with said item in tow he found himself holding his wand. He stared at it for a moment, caught between incredulous horror and the sudden urge to throw the ridiculous little thing away. But the Monarch was coming fast and he didn’t have time to get rid of the dratted thing and fetch the Rod before fate dealt him the popsicle card.

So instead he leveled the flimsy stick of wood at the oncoming monster and chanted the binding spell he had learned from the yamis but never thought he’d need to use, trying all the while to forget that he wasn’t actually holding a Millennium Item. The air around him crackled with black lightning that raced through his wand with an audible crack. The Frost Monarch froze as the air around it darkened first to violet then to a deep, flawless black. Sweat beaded on Malik’s forehead as he stared hard at the struggling monster, focusing all the willpower he could muster on the single thought of binding it. For a moment the darkness wavered, but then it collapsed inward on itself. The monster let out one last defiant bellow then it was gone, leaving nothing but the ice and snow filling the corridor to mark its presence—that and a single card that lay on the floor where it had last stood.

Slightly surprised, Malik looked down at the wand in his hand. It looked like it always did, plain and far too easy to break. But then again it was a device used for channeling magic… Perhaps it could be bent by shadow powers to cast shadow mage spells as well as use said powers to cast wizard spells. He tucked the thing back into his pocket. He could investigate thte theory further later.

;;You know, it probably would have been easier jst to banish it.;;

;I know that,; he snapped, his mouth pressed into a grim line as he advanced on the card. ;But this way we might get some answers. Whoever summoned this Frost Monarch called an un-carded monster to the material realm—that hasn’t been done for centuries.;

Ishtar fell silent and Malik bent, gingerly retrieving the card with thumb and forefinger. It felt like a solid binding, even if it had been a bit slow and more strenuous than it would have been had he had the Rod in hand.

Turning it over, he frowned. The space where the monster’s attribute should have been inscribed was blank. Instead there was the black silhouette of a skull with a serpent’s tongue. And over it all lay a vaguely humanoid shadow with no distinct features that seemed to seep through the card itself. It felt…tainted.

;I don’t like the way this looks.;

;;The colorful circles are more attractive.;;

He snorted. ;That’s not what I meant. We should show this to the others. That symbol with the skull doesn’t look familiar.;

;;It’s a skull, what’s so special about it? The shadow’s far more interesting. It feels old, maybe as old as the Pharaoh.;;

;As old as the Pharaoh?; Malik mused, gathering his deck from where it had been scattered all over the hallway floor. ;That’s…interesting.;

Standing, he cast one last look around the hall for any cards he might have missed. Seeing nothing but frozen people who were rapidly beginning to defrost he stepped back into the shadows by the wall and closed his eyes, pulling them aound him and folding himself back into the shadow realm. He had a lot to think about now and he had the impression that Yugi, Ryou, Yami, and Bakura weren’t going to be the only ones interested.

x-X-x

The advantages of having a maze for a soul room was that one could never run out of room to pace. It wasn’t perhaps the most practical of settings—some might have aversions to being under a constant barrage of echoes created by one’s own footsteps or disturbed by the lingering shadows on the walls—but for Yami it had always been a comfortable place. Then again, he supposed that was only natural considering the nature of soul rooms. The only real drawback was that no amount of pacing could answer the questions that had been chasing themselves around and around his head during recent times.

On the one hand the Records had manifested itself outside of the shadow realms, indicating some kind of danger or imbalance involving or in the realm itself—something that the appearance of the Cyber Dragon and the breech Shadi had been keeping sealed had confirmed. But the Records had vanished, either stolen or perhaps having returned itself to the shadow realm. Granted the latter solution seemed unlikely if not altogether unrealistically wishful considering the almost certain fact that someone had performed a summoning in order to bring the Cyber Dragon into the material realm . . .

There were too many loose ends. The Records, if stolen, must have been taken by someone at school, but he was relatively sure that information on the shadow realm was limited in the wizarding world. Shadi himself had apparently made a thorough search and if there was one thing about Shadi any of them knew for certain it was that he took anything he considered a part of his duty as a guardian very seriously. Thus how would someone who happened acoss the Records even know that it was something worth taking?

Pausing beside a particularly twisted staircase he gazed pensively up into the darkened reaches overhead. They were silent as they always were.

The only logical answer that came to mind was that the one who took it had perhaps taken it out of spite. But from what he could remember they hadn’t spent enough time interacting with the general school population to incite such ire. Yet even so a book was an odd choice for someone seeking revenge for some petty wrong. Furthermore, the summoning could not have been performed within Hogwarts or on the surrounding grounds. One of them would have sensed it if it had.

Malik had mentioned something about other forces after his meeting with Shadi, but he had been too agitated to explain clearly.

Letting a long, frustrated breath hiss out between his teeth, he continued his aimless wandering of the endless, empty halls. He had spoken out of the desire to reassure when he had told Yugi they could solve it all when the time came, but their lack of information was growing more and more unnerving by the moment. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly into a small, wry smile.

Sometimes it was a curse to have so much time to think.

X-X-x

The small crowd of students gathered outside Hagrid’s hut was the first thing Malik saw when he stepped through the veil between realms and into the shadow beneath the Forbidden Forest’s outer fringe. Casting a quick glance around to make sure that no one was looking his way, he jogged out from amidst the trees to join them. It looked as though he had managed to get back just before class started. Spying Yugi and Ryou standing near the front of the group with Wadjet draped about the smaller duelist’s shoulders he shouldered his way through the crowd to join them. He was greeted with a few cries of protest from his fellow students but he ignored them. As far as he was concerned what he had to say was far more important than their moments of discomfort.

His pace slowed as he neared them and he realized that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were standing right next to them, conversing quietly as the class waited for Hagrid. Yugi appeared to be explaining why they had named Wadjet the way they had. Grimacing inwardly, Malik stepped up next to them, his teeh clenched firmly on the urge to drag his fellow duelists off somewhere quiet and tell them about the Frost Monarch in the hospital and the strange symbol that had replaced its attribute mark.

Ron spotted him as he approached and he directed the others’ attention in the same direction as he waved. “Hey, Malik! Where were you this morning? We didn’t see you in Divinations.”

Malik resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Seriously, some people just couldn’t keep their noses to themselves. And was it just him or had the redhead traded looks with Harry and Hermione when he asked that?

You’re getting paranoid, he told himself firmly as he gave them all a vague shrug. Being on edge with all the trouble from the shadow realm reminded him too much of the old days when suspicion of everything and everyone had been a necessary part of life. Instead he opened his mouth to tell them he had dozed off in the library while working on one of their potions’ essays.

The problem was that what came out of his mouth was, “I went to check on my sister.”

He froze, his eyes going wide. Yugi and Ryou were staring at him. Even Wadjet had roused herself to level him with an unblinking, yellow gaze.

;;I can’t believe you just said that.;;

“Your sister?” Hary inquired, surprised. “I didn’t know you had a sister here.”

“I don’t.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them and he clamped his mouth shut. What was going on here? They were all looking at him oddly now, though for different reasons. He was given a temporary respite as Hagrid came around the corner of his hut.

“S’rry I’m a bit late,” he announced, breathing a little harder than usual. “It took me a while ta get ‘im ‘ere. Now, if you’ll all just come ‘round ta the back you c’n say hello.”

Hagrid appeared to be unusually pleased. There was a moment of uneasy silence before the class trickled around to the back of the house. Since the Wingendi had been introduced and the class had aken on their responsibilities caring for the serpents Hagrid had brought in other creatures. None of them were going to forget the fire-breathing chickens anytime soon. Malik could remember Hermione muttering worriedly about not being sure if the feathery flamethrowers were legal but all he had been thinking at the time was that the things seemed like shadow realm escapees. Granted, he’d never heard of a fire-breathing chicken duel monster. Still, one could never be sure.

Mentally preparing themselves in case they had to leap out of the way or raise a shield, the hikaris rounded the corner of the hut into the backyard with the rest of the class. Malik noted with a certain degree of annoyance and amusement that Ryou seemed to be purposefully putting himself between him and Harry, Ron, and Hermione. He appreciated the thought, but it wasn’t pleasant to be reminded of his slip. Maybe the trip to the hospital had unsettled him more than he had thought?

;;Maybe you’re getting old. I hear age makes mortals lose their wits.;;

Malik snorted. ;Yeah? Well, you aren’t exactly any younger than me.;

“Malik!”

Jerking out of his mental conversation, Malik stumbled, catching himself just in time to take a hurried step back. He had come face to face with a pair of very large, yellow eyes. He stared. They stared back. He blinked. They didn’t.

Someone grabbed his am and pulled him back a few steps. It was only then that he got a good look at the owner of the yellow eyes. It stood as tall as he did at the shoulders—the hairy, feline shoulders attached to a powerful pair of wings that were currently folded primly against its back. The eyes themselves were set above a deadly looking beak set in an eagle’s regal head.

“This ‘ere’s a griffin,” Hagrid’s excited voice boomed over the heads of the class at that exact moment. “Real special they are. Can’t tell ‘nythin’ but the truth ‘round ‘em.”

;Shoot.;

;;You said it.;;

;Looks like we’d better keep our mouths shut for now. Damn.;

x-X-x

“So what did you find?” Yugi asked. The three of them were huddled in the back of the Defense Against the Dark Arts’ classroom. Shadi seemed distracted at the moment and he had given the class the entire period to study. Most of the students cracked out their textbooks but a few slipped out of the classroom while the professor wasn’t looking. When Shadi said nothing of this Lavender had asked tentatively if they could leave once they had finished the assigned chapters. Shadi had given his permission and half the class had immediately up and left. It was a mark of just how distracted he was that Shadi hadn’t said anything about that either. Of those who remained Hermione was the only one who seemed to really be studying. Harry and Ron had their books open but the pages had turned only a handful of times since class had begun. Instead they kept casting covet glances towards the hikaris when they thought they wouldn’t be noticed. They were all too preoccupied to inform the two wizards that their timing was off.

“Someone attacked Isis,” Malik replied, his words edged with suppressed anger. “Whoever or whatever it was took the Necklace.”

Ryou’s brow furrowed. “Is she all right?”

The Egyptian youth nodded, a short, sharp jerk of a motion, before fishing around in his pockets and producing a card. He set it on the table where they could all see it. “She’ll be fine, but this Frost Monarch attacked me while I was at the hospital.”

Yugi and Ryou both leaned forward for a better look. The diminutive duelist reached out and gingerly picked up the card.

:The seal is solid.:

:That’s good. But it seems . . . cold . . .:

“Do you know how it got there?”

Malik shook his head. “I would’ve pegged it as a rift—I didn’t sense a summoning—but something tells me it’s not.”

It was Yugi’s turn to frown. “You know, I think things are probably a lot more serious than we thought.”

The blonde snorted. “Go figure. The weird thing is…well, you two must have noticed. The attribute is missing—it’s been replaced by some kind of skull thing.”

“Let me see.”

Yugi handed the card to Ryou who stared hard at it. “I’ve never seen anything like it before…maybe Shadi would—”

He was interrupted by a loud crash and a shout. All three of their heads turned in unison to where Ron had shot to his feet, his face pale and his fingers trembling as they pointed at the card in Ryou’s hand. “That—that has the Dark Mark on it!”

TBC

Names: I know I’ve gone over this before, but since someone complained I guess I’ll go over it again. I call Yami Malik ‘Ishtar’ because that was what I was first introduced to way back when I first joined the fandom. I know there are a million of other ways to refer to him and Malik including Marik and Mariku, etc, but they look so similar that it’s harder for me to distinguish them when reading. Thus I prefer just to use Ishtar because it’s easily distinguishable. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.

A.N. Well, what do you think? Thoughts, comments, questions all welcome. Hope you liked it. Oh, and the reformatting of previous chapters has been put on hold.