Chapter 11 Knight to E4
Knight to E4
Rook to F8
Game without hope
Moves without aim
But White Moves First
Knight to E4
Minerva stared into the crackling flames, her hand rested on the diary, waiting for Remus. He understood the gravity of the situation and they had both agreed not to tell anyone anything about what had occurred, but he also insisted on doing some tests to try and understand it better. This was his third night going back there and Minerva had made him promise that he would not attempt to go near the place after tonight.
She shuddered.
Slowly stroking the cover of the book, but still hesitant to open it, she allowed her gaze to drift to the portrait hole. The order members were already arriving although it was still two hours before the meeting. She watched Alastor who was pacing nervously and slowly counted the seconds in her mind.
A small smile spread across her weary face when he stopped and pulled Tonks and Kingsley from the room exactly after thirty seconds. Alastor could be surprisingly patient as he stood behind cover, breath bated, waiting for the onslaught of battle, but in situations like this he could never last more than thirty seconds without doing something. These days his time was usually spent pondering and discussing his most recent obsession. How to recruit new members for the order by making the Wizarding world lose all hope of survival first. She shook her head.
“Yeah, sure mate, I’ll bloody apologize when the ferret face decides to get a career raising fluffy pink bunny rabbits instead of following He-”
“Mr. Potter!” Minerva interrupted before the Weasley boy could get too carried away. She did not care to know what had caused his row with Hermione this time.
“I believe Alastor is waiting for you two doors down the hall, he’s got something very important to discuss.”
She ignored his groan and watched him with a pointed glare before turning back to the diary and opening it up carefully to a page around the middle. “Sit down, Mr. Weasley; the meeting will begin in a few minutes.”
The prophecy is weighing heavily on my mind today and I have a strong urge to speak to someone about it. But no one must know; no one except the four of us…the three of us and Salazar. I wish I had never spoken that night. I wish that Salazar did not know, but it is far too late and all I can do is hope that he will forget it. Salazar always thought things like this were petty and unfounded. But then again, he wasn’t there when the prophecy was made. He does not know every chilling detail of it, for some parts I kept to myself.
Minerva’s eyes narrowed and she forgot all about the other occupant of the room. She flipped back a few pages and scanned the old parchment for anything resembling a prophecy. She did not, of course, believe in them, but if her memory was correct this was one of the more important prophecies in all Wizarding Britian. It was almost legend, but only among the historians and those interested in divination.
She skimmed through more and more pages and began to get impatient. This prophecy, as she recalled was taught as one of the most changing and unresolved prophecies in the history of Hogwarts. But even the most in-depth history books on the Founder Era only ever mentioned it in passing stating that it was unresolved, important, and that it shaped many of Helga’s views that she brought into Hufflepuff house.
Finally her eyes lighted on a small paragraph by itself in the center of one of the pages:
The badger will flee her stronghold and sparrows will fall, in the knowledge of the keeper of the count, one and twenty…Darkness will reign ere the breaking of the friendship for four and twenty years before the Phoenix is reborn.
Minerva stifled her gasp and slammed the book shut. “Chess, Mr. Weasley?” she was glad that her voice did not come out shaky or irritated. She needed a good chess game to clear her head from all this foolishness.
“Sure!” Ron hastily conjured his old chess set and Minerva motioned for him to take the white pieces. She wondered silently to herself, she had always loved to play white.
The boy’s moves were slow and well-considered. She sat up straighter in her seat and eyed the game carefully; it would not do to lose.
“Why does white always go first?” Ronald suddenly asked, shocking her slightly and impressing upon her mind just how this war had changed these young warriors who should only be carefree seventh years.
She moved her black night, trying to ignore the strange, but very clear images it had conjured in her mind, before speaking, “It does not seem to be the case in real life?”
“No,” he replied taking one of her pawns, “But it should be, or else we’ll never win. Not if we give them free reign to kill and make their own moves first.”
Minerva eyed the boy carefully, but he was staring thoughtfully at the chess board and didn’t notice the sudden scrutiny. It took her a long time to consider her next move, but when she made it, it was a vicious attack against his carefully laid plan. But he was a worthy opponent and the game was far from over.
Her thoughts began to drift back to places she did not want them to go. She had wanted to play chess, not think even more about the war, but that was what this game was doing to her. Suddenly a look of severe pain crossed the young Weasley’s face and she looked down at the move he had made.
“We gave her up like that,” he said his voice barely a whisper, “She didn’t slip away or anything, we did it to her, knowingly.”
“It was no one’s fault Mr. Weasley,” she began to comfort him as she looked down at the piece he was offering her. This game was becoming far too symbolic, “We thought she was safe-”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Ron said hurriedly as if regretting his comparison, “We tried our best, but that’s the Bloody problem!”
Minerva abandoned the game now and eyed the young man before her carefully. She knew he had more to say, but he was fighting with himself, with his emotions, and that was clear from his red face and neck.
“We don’t…understand how people think professor.”
He looked down abruptly and made his next move as if nothing had happened to interrupt the game. But as she was making her next move Minerva saw, with the edge of her eye, that he picked up the small White Queen from her place by the dead pieces and stood her up beside the game. As if he wanted her to watch the game, to approve.
“True, Mr. Weasley, perhaps we should tell Alastor, who is wasting his time trying to wage a war of words and minds that he needs to be spending more time anticipating the enemy’s moves.”
He looked slightly disappointed, as if his hope in the ex-Auror was not so great, Minerva thought, as he made his next genius move on the board. She admired him for keeping such a cool head, despite his emotions, on the small battlefield. If they would only agree to tell someone about their crazy adventures, let them help and train them, Minerva knew they would be formidable soldiers, but Harry was very stubborn and surprisingly even the rational Hermione Granger was bent on not telling a soul what they were up to and what this Chosen One business was all about.
“We’ll never win!” the boy surprised her again, and his voice was leaden with a sort of despair that she had only caught whiffs of amidst the trio’s determination.
“We must, Mr. Weasley, we must,” she said in her strong Head of Gryffindor tone, “We must always play to win.”
“But we’re not!” he was becoming rather heated now and she wondered if this would affect the outcome of the game, “We’re not playing to win, we’re not even thinking, we’re just doing ‘whatever we can’ and ‘the best we can given the situation’!”
He would not leave the game and to Minerva it seemed that he was clinging to the familiarity of the chess pieces and the clearly drawn lines across the board as if for his life. She let his words echo through her ears and made her next move before looking back up at his face.
“What do you suggest, Mr. Weasley?”
He shrugged and a small smile crossed his face. “Someone once taught me that you make the best of whatever situation you’re in and you make more choices for yourself if the ones you have aren’t working.”
Minerva’s head dropped back to the game immediately at the sudden smile that crossed his face. She had been winning, his pieces had been trapped in a carefully laid web, but there was no denying that he had somehow managed to surprise her and break her strong hold on the game.
“Checkmate, Professor,” he said calmly and quietly though the boyish grin was still stretched across his face.
The game was not over until she made her move, Minerva thought, and she had more on her mind than rooks and kings. She needed to have a serious talk with this boy, so she looked up from the game, determined to stretch this as long as she could before making the inevitably fateful move, and addressed him very seriously. There was to be no vagueness about this, she would tell him what was on her mind and let him shatter her strange, silly thoughts before they took a hold of her mind and she became like Alastor.
“What if I told you that I have reason to believe that one day soon the sun will just not rise over England?” she said loudly.
“The Dementor mist?” he asked, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Not the Dementor mist,” she said, “Well not for certain, but what if I told you that there will be perpetual darkness for twenty four years?”
“I’d start practicing the Lumos spell.”
Minerva gritted her teeth, angered by his calm acceptance; he was actually taking her seriously! “What would you say then if I told you this was all based on a prophecy?”
She said the last word rather hysterically and tried to calm herself down, but his response made that impossible: “I believe that Harry is the chosen one, and that’s based on a prophecy.”
Minerva just looked at him disbelievingly. “This is all rather ridiculous, Mr. Weasley, and Divination is not the most precise of arts,” she said with a derisive snot, “But if we do not act we may find ourselves in a very difficult situation.”
“And Death Eaters love the dark,” he added with a grim nod.
“But if it is as stupid and unfounded as my mind leads me to believe we could waste much time and energy.”
He nodded and then a short silence enveloped the room. She bent her head and made that move that would let her king be taken. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the piece.
“The most important piece,” he said, “He’s all we need to get, but it would never be a waste to tighten our security, to come together, to really protect our homes. It’ll never be a waste.”
Minerva suddenly cracked a small smile. “I believe this could be just what Alastor has been trying to tell us. To forget about hope and what little we are doing and shape up our act, even if it needs a bit of disillusionment and…” she couldn‘t bring herself to say the word lies, “Manipulation.”
“It wouldn’t be lying to let them know that we’ve got no hope,” he said taking her king, “Even if Harry’s the chosen one, that doesn’t mean he’ll survive long enough to even come face to face with the bloody bastard.”
Minerva smiled ruefully as the door opened and Moody and the other members began filing in. “What do you suggest, Mr. Weasley?” she repeated her question from before.
“I suggest we start playing some real Chess,” he said in a loud voice that attracted some attention from the bustling order members preparing for the meeting, “Because White always makes the first move!”
Minerva picked up the diary once more, she whispered “We will win yet” to the boy before striding to the front of the room to take control of the meeting…and the war.
