Chapter 15 The Board is Set
Steel on Wood
Ruler and Ink
Black and White
Paint it Thick
The Board is Set
Minerva lowered her eyes and looked at the Diary once again as Alastor’s sharp orders filled her ears and Order members rushed off to obey them. They were waging real war again, they were back in the playing arena, and all for a prophecy made thousands of years ago. Alastor, she knew, didn’t care why as long as he got people moving and had something to work on, something to try. She hoped it would be worth it. Minerva shook her head; there was no time for this idle thinking, not now.
“Chess, Mr. Weasley?”
The sunset’s last rays cast an eerie reddish glow over the chess board. The taken pieces stood upright at the side of the playing arena; watching, even the black pieces. He walked closer to set the board up for another game.
Ron had not played with a Wizarding Chess set since that day; since the day they left Ginevra Weasley at home for safety from the war and returned to find no Ginevra and no home left. Since the day the pieces became real.
“We need time,” he let his fingertips touch his players one by one as he stared at the board, “Time before the battle begins.”
“Before the battle begins?” Minerva shook her head, “We cannot force the sun to stay up; we cannot change the playing board now, it’s too late.”
He nodded, “We have to study it quickly and know every slight imperfection in the wood or the paint or the lines. And if it doesn’t work for us, we have to strip it bare and paint it over.”
It was a race against time as they levitated luggage, moved furniture, and tested protective charms. It had to be done quickly and quietly. The Order of the Phoenix was moving in to new headquarters and it had to be unexpected. And they needed to make this bloody hole big enough just with Magic and without attracting any attention to their proceedings. Kingsley growled in frustration, where was Arthur Weasley when you needed him.
…
Arthur strode purposefully through the deserted hallway. He shuddered slightly as the memory of guarding one of these doors surfaced in his mind. But he wouldn’t have to go that far today.
Looking around one more time he let his hand turn the doorknob as he muttered the incantation, it would not creak or even make a clicking noise this way or he wasn’t the father of Fred and George Weasley.
R, he thought, A and B and any combination of the three. This would take too long to do manually so he raised his wand and preformed a nonverbal Accio spell. They came zooming through the air from all over the shelves and landed in neat piles before him. A quick copying spell, then a shrinking spell and he had pocketed one of the secrets You-Know-Who was apparently dying to discover.
He muttered the other curse under his breath and watched, fixated as the names on the top of the pages shuffled themselves as easily as playing cards.
“We need to make sure some of their most dangerous can’t operate properly,” he stared down at the black and white squares once again, “We need to take away some of their resources.”
Remus’s eyes shone with the light of boyish revenge. He stared down at the beautiful plants competing for space in the small hidden potions Garden. The flowers were beautiful, and the leaves were the most vivid greens, purple-greens, and yellow-greens he had ever seen. Gorgeous, he thought, half-wistfully, but then again all poisons were sickeningly beautiful.
The sky was cloudy and the rain already hammering down, this made his job much easier. Voldemort was not the only one capable of causing “freak accidents” and “strange weather conditions”. He grinned and raised his wand, suddenly springing to action with curse after curse and spell after spell. And they had to be undetectable too…he had to play off the weather.
Finally, he had done all he could and stood at the side watching the vicious wind tear the leaves and plants to pieces. Who knew it would be so much fun breaking Snivelus’ toys.
“We need to leak the prophecy,” Ron said, “The one about Harry. Voldemort needs to know just how dependent the Wizarding World is on Harry’s success.”
He was met with five pairs of shocked eyes when he looked up from the board.
“Only we won’t really be so dependent on the prophecy by the time the battle begins.”
Moody grinned as he stared at her from across the room. He tried not pace too much and fixed his eyes on her every move. The quill moved elegantly across the paper, spilling secrets that could be their end, but she seemed unruffled. Her eyes gazed dreamily down at the scroll as if she were writing a love letter or a story about crumple-fanged snotrags or whatever the blasted things were.
“And,” Ron whispered looking up, “We need him to come and get the blasted thing because we know it’s here, but we haven’t a clue what it is. He needs to know that Dumbledore’s death has weakened Hogwarts just like he wanted.”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about, Ron?!”
Order members had begun to arrive now and there was only one more spell that needed to be preformed. He watched through the Common Room windows as his Hogwarts Professors stood on the grounds, wands raised and uttered the spell that would lift a small part of Hogwarts’ protective magic.
The light of the spell finally faded and Ron could have sworn he could feel the defenses go down around him. He turned back to the room, which was now full of Order members in varying degrees of exhaustion.
“The Board is Set.”
