Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Just Another Crossover...Or Is It? ❯ Chapter 3

"See?" asked George at lunch. He, Fred, and Lee walked over to where Ron, Hermione, Harry, Yu-Gi-Oh, Malik, and Kaiba were sitting.

"'Mazing, isn't he?" Lee asked.

Ron nodded enthusiastically. "I really don't see what you have against him," he told Yu-Gi-Oh. "I've never learned such incredible stuff, and he isn't a jerk either. He's the first nice teacher I've ever met who could make Malfoy behave."

"Nothing nice about him," Yu-Gi-Oh retorted while Harry, Hermione, and Malik scowled and checked their schedules.

"I don't have him until Tuesday!" Hermione whined.

"How nice for you," Harry replied dryly. "I don't have him until Thursday."

"Same here," Malik confirmed with a frown. To Yu-Gi-Oh, he said, "You really have to let go of this grudge you have on the guy. I mean, who could be better at teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts than him?"

"Anyone!" Yu-Gi-Oh cried. "Anyone's better than him! He's evil, I tell you! Evil!"

"And you are too judgmental and hold grudges for too long," Kaiba snapped. "Even I liked his class, and I never like anything!"

"You said you liked dragons," Hermione reminded him.

"Like them?!" cried Yu-Gi-Oh, half-wanting to laugh. "He's obsessed with them! I wouldn't be surprised if he is half-dragon!"

"Wouldn't surprise me, either," Malik agreed.

Ron, Hermione, Harry, Fred, George, and Lee all lifted their eyebrows at Malik and Yu-Gi-Oh-who, for their part, seemed completely serious.

"Do you really have three dragons at home?" Harry asked.

"He has more than three," Yu-Gi-Oh replied. "He just has three favorites, the others are sort of unimportant. Where we come form, lots of people own magical creatures, but the Blue-Eyes White Dragons are three of a kind. Well, they used to be four of a kind-" here he glared at Kaiba, who shrugged innocently. "But the fourth one kind of got ripped to shreds."

"Most of us use them as weapons," Malik added. "We summon them through cards, just like they used to be summoned with blocks of stone three thousand five hundred or so years ago. Kaiba just has a special relationship with his dragons."

"Have any pictures?" Fred asked, and everybody except Yu-Gi-Oh and Malik looked at him with a mixture of hopeful and inquisitive expressions.

Kaiba took out his deck and showed them one of his Blue-Eyes. Everybody except, again, Yu-Gi-Oh and Malik (who had seen them before) leaned forward to admire it. Ron opened his mouth to ask why it didn't move, if it was magical, but at that moment-

"You can never resist showing off those dragons, can you?" asked Bakura from behind, making all of them jump. Even those facing the direction he had been coming from hadn't seen him coming.

Bakura let go of his cat. She and Hermione's cat Crookshanks started circling each other, before beginning to purr and pat each other with their paws.

Yu-Gi-Oh immediately jerked up and glared at him, but one of the twins came forward and started shaking his hand. "Hi! I'm Fred Weasly! Big fan!"

The other started shaking his other hand. "Actually, he's George and I'm Fred. He's just jealous of me because I got the brains and all he got was the got the looks!" Malik snickered and Ron rolled his eyes. "You do remember us, don't you?"

"Of course I do. You're in my first period class. You and your friend Lee-" Lee beamed at the recognition. "Tried to put a gargantuan flesh-eating spider in my desk when you thought I wasn't there."

Kaiba pinched a snickering Yu-Gi-Oh not-at-all-gently on the shoulder and returned his glare twice over. Lee, Fred, and George actually had the decency to look embarrassed.

"Yeah, about that…" Fred muttered.

"It was…an accident?"

"No, it wasn't. But it was a surprisingly good try." They beamed at the apparent compliment. "My second period tried a frog. It seems they don't take kindly to Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers here." Then suddenly he smiled-and it was a particularly unpleasant smile, I might want to add. "They won't try that again."

"Excuse us," Yu-Gi-Oh said to the others, before dragging the taller man by the arm to somewhere no one would be able to hear them.

"What are you doing?" asked Bakura, and Yu-Gi-Oh blinked-for a moment the white-haired Spirit had sounded almost sincere.

Then he reminded himself who he was speaking to and growled, "Don't 'what are you doing' me, you bastard. You may have everybody else fooled but I know you. I know you're planning something, and I'm going to stop you whether you like it or not."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bakura replied, but from the way his eyes hardened it seemed that he knew exactly what Yu-Gi-Oh was talking about: the former Pharaoh was sure of it.

"So what are you planning?" Yu-Gi-Oh sneered. "To gain the Items? Suck out the students' souls? Create your own little army?" He smirked at the swiftly growing anger in Bakura's eyes. "Well, what is it?"

"Listen, your Royal Pain-In-The-Ass Half-Porcupine ex-Highness! I know you can't accept it, but I can do something without any ulterior motives-and I happen to like being a teacher!"

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Yu-Gi-Oh retorted. "I told you, I'm not as naïve as the others. I know you're up to something-I just need to figure out what it is!"

Bakura clenched his fists, battling the urge to turn Yu-Gi-Oh into something large and slimy and preferably without a mouth. At last, he hissed, "fifty points from Gryffindor! And I would give you a detention, too, but I don't want to spend any more time with you than possible!"

They strode back to the table. Bakura grabbed his cat and stalked off, Yu-Gi-Oh sat down with the familiar (to Kaiba) air of a particularly smug martyr.

"Now, why in the world did you go and do that?" Fred complained.

"Yeah," George added. "I liked him!"

Glaring at Yu-Gi-Oh as the twins and Lee trounced off to go prank somebody else, Kaiba hissed in Japanese, "Little your Royal Piss-Ass Highness! Leave him alone! Haven't you held this grudge long enough as it is?"

"No, I don't!" Yu-Gi-Oh replied hotly, also in Japanese. Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at them curiously. Malik quickly started asking about the school, using anything which came to mind-the teachers, the classes, the lessons, anything that would distract them.

"Well, you should!" Kaiba cried. "From what I can tell, Bakura likes teaching-and besides, he's fucking good at it! Why can't you just let him be? Just once in your eternal life, why can't you happy for somebody who isn't part of your precious little fanclub?"

"Because that somebody is him!" Yu-Gi-Oh replied as if it should have been obvious. "And when did people start taking his side, anyway?"

Kaiba stared hard at him, eyes glittering with rage just as his hands glittered with lightning. "I don't know," he replied, his voice almost a hiss. "But maybe we should have started a long time ago."

***

"Malik, you were right!" said Ron happily as they entered the fifth-grade boys' dormitory. "I like Professor Isis much better than that old bat-she's creepy, but she knows things. She walked up to anybody who doubted her and started spouting out information no one else knew until they swore they were believers, just to make her stop! It's a lot funnier watching it than being the one she uses her powers on…by the way, why does she want to be called by her first name?"

Malik shrugged.

"Where have you been, anyway?" Yugi asked his friend. "You just went and disappeared on us? It looked like you were going to the Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Mou Hit-I was kind of upset."

Kaiba snorted loudly, and Yugi glared at him. "As a matter of fact, I was," Malik replied. "I was asking Ryou for homework help."

"And Bakura was all right with that?" Kaiba asked. To most, it would just seem that Kaiba was referring to him by his last name and Malik by his first-Malik knew better.

All of them except the ever-stubborn Yu-Gi-Oh had agreed to call the dark side 'Bakura' and the light side 'Ryou'-easy to remember, and no risk of people being suspicious that they were calling one person by two names because it was just the first and last name.

Yugi was still mad at Yu-Gi-Oh for not using it, since it was his fault they had to make that decision anyway-it was too much of a risk when Bakura started yelling at him in the mall ("My name is Bakura! Not Thief, not Tomb Robber, not Bandit King, not Scum, not Bastard, not Soul Stealer, and not any of your other cute little nicknames! Bakura! Bakura!!"­)

"Surprisingly, yes," Malik replied without missing a beat. "He just wanted us to be as quick as possible because he had to plan tomorrow's lessons-and Ryou couldn't help me with my Defense Against the Dark Arts homework because he thought it was cheating."

"I don't really think he could make the amulet Bakura assigned us if he wanted to," Yugi replied. "Where are we supposed to find quartz anyway? Professor Snape or Professor could have the herbs we need, and sharp objects could be lying around anyway, but quartz?"

Then he froze, realizing he had just said a teacher didn't know how to make the item he had taught the class to make-a small blue or purple velvet pouch with some protection runes stitched on it, filled with protection herbs and sharp objects and a chunk of quartz.

But Kaiba caught his mistake, too, and decided to come to the rescue-just this once. Rolling his eyes, he said "Really, Yugi, hasn't this grudge gone on long enough?"

Yugi gave him a sharp look-he knew very well that it wasn't him who had the grudge-but also a grateful smile. That little slip-up could have caused big trouble.

"What do you have against Bakura anyway?" Ron asked. "Because he is a teacher, and we already have a teacher who hates one of our students"-

"Gee, thanks," Harry muttered.

"-and we don't need another," he finished. "Besides, he's so much cooler than so many of our other teachers. That was the best class all day!"

"Oh, rub it in, why don't you?" Harry snapped.

Ron looked hurt. "I'm not rubbing it in!" he protested, tucking a wisp of red hair behind his ear. "Bakura's a really nice teacher-and he made Malfoy behave!"

"I wish I could've seen that…" muttered Malik.

"I told you already," said Yu-Gi-Oh, popping up out of nowhere-well, the Puzzle, actually, but there's no time for mathematics. "There is absolutely nothing nice about that bastard! How many times do I have to say it for it to sink in?"

"You're lucky Hermione is a girl," Ron replied, not noticing the change-it actually wasn't as noticeable as the dub wants you to believe, unless you have magic as ancient as his and have actually seen the change (this is pure speculation, I'm just assuming there's a reason no one without magic noticed the change unless Yugi actually told them about it, and it's true that in the manga his height doesn't change.)

"She would go nuts if she heard you cursing at a teacher. She does when I do."

"But Ron's right, what's wrong with him?" Harry replied. "Not many teachers would come over to a student's table just to say `hi.'"

Yu-Gi-Oh suspected that it wasn't to say `hi' so much as to make sure Kaiba didn't slip up and tell their secret, but he didn't say anything.

"So, where did your sister get psychic powers?" Ron asked.

"She was born with it. She used to have a Necklace that let her control when she saw the past or future, and show it to other people too, but she gave it away. Even when I was a little kid, she always knew so much it was creepy even to me. I have some telepathic powers, but I'm not really clairvoyant."

"Tele…Claire…What?"

"Clair-voyant. Clair meaning clear, voyant meaning seeing. It means you can see things other people can't, like the past or future. There are actually five 'clairs.' I know clairaudient-the same thing, but with hearing-but I don't know the rest. Can you believe there's psychic smelling?"

Ron boggled at him, astounded by how much he knew, but Harry replied, "That's incredible. What does telepathic mean?"

"You know, mind-reading and stuff. Though it's actually really, really complicated-mostly I just use it to communicate mentally, either with thoughts or feelings."

"Neat!" Ron cried. "Is it with, like, everybody in the entire world, or just people that you're close to?"

"An experienced person could do it with everybody, I can only do it with either someone I know very well or who has powers similar to mine. Me and Isis used to use it all the time, and I can use it with Bakura because he's really skilled telepathically-and clairvoyantly, and clairaudiently…I actually hear he used to live with ninety-nine ghosts!"

"Wouldn't surprise me," muttered Yu-Gi-Oh.

"Are the rest of you telep…tilipa…toliepith…whatever it is?" Ron asked. Malik covered his mouth to muffle his laughter.

"It's pronounced tell-eh-path-ik," Yu-Gi-Oh replied. "And I am a little, but I can only do it with people that I'm really close to." Meaning Yugi. "I can also do it with Bakura and Malik"-that sounded so wrong-"but that's more their power than mine."

"Wow, Yugi," said Kaiba coolly, barely hiding a smirk. "Are you actually admitting you're not the best at something? I'm impressed."

For a moment, Yu-Gi-Oh seriously considered punching him. But Yugi insisted that he was not getting them expelled on the very first day of school, so instead he let Yugi take over again and resigned himself to sulking in the privacy of the Millennium Puzzle.

"And I'm not 'clair' or 'tele' anything and damn proud of it, too," Kaiba informed them. "I hate all this freakish psychic stuff."

"Because it scares you," Malik muttered, earning a glare. "What? It's true!"

"But that isn't really true, Kaiba," Yugi piped up. "You can see the past sometimes in your dreams, and you have a telepathic bond with your dragons."

"The dreams are of my past life," Kaiba protested, and Malik muttered something about how astounding it was that the pigheaded Kaiba actually admitted to having a past life. "The dragon thing is a technicality. They aren't human."

"Actually, the 'they-aren't-human' thing is the technicality," Malik informed him. "Telepathy with a mythical creature is the same as telepathy with a high-school kid. It's still telepathy."

"Well, in that case, I'm not 'clair' anything. Are you happy now?" that said, he sat on his bed and took out his books and homework assignments. Under his breath, he muttered something about this putting him behind in his business.

"Business?" Ron asked.

"He owns his own company," Yugi replied. "The vice-president is his little brother, and somehow I doubt Mokuba can run a company. And Mokuba's the only one he actually trusts-not that I can blame him, seeing as how so many people have tried to take over his company in the past."

"He owns his own company?!" Ron cried, drawing attention from other fifth-year boys. Harry's bottle-green eyes seemed bigger than his head.

"Yeah," Malik replied casually, as if it were the most normal thing on earth. "Kaiba corp. His stepfather owned it before him. It used to be for war machines, and stuff. Now it's for computers, games, things like that. He's actually making a game park for orphans right now, though this may set him back a bit."

"He must be a genius," said Ron. "Too bad, though. If he has his own companies, he can't work with dragons like my brother does."

Kaiba dropped his pencil. "Your brother works with dragons?"

Malik groaned. "Please don't get him started," he moaned. Yugi would never say something like that, but from the look on his face and the words he muttered under his breath I suspect he agreed.

Kaiba scowled and stuck his tongue out at them.

"Oh, that's mature," said Yugi, sounding more disdainful than he had intended to. But, then again, he didn't want people to be able to tell the difference between him and Yu-Gi-Oh.

"You're one to talk," he retaliated immediately, focus already captured by his Potions Assignment ('List thirty-eight uses of toads in potions, as well as which parts of the toad are better for which purpose.')

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you're a midget," replied Malik, as if he were saying 'you're a boy' or 'you're from Japan.' "What else is it supposed to mean?"

"Are toads related to dragons?" wondered Kaiba aloud, and Malik threw his arms in the air with a dramatic "I give up!"

"What? What did I say?"