Disclaimer: Some of the characters mentioned belong to J.K.R. but the story-line, the chess pieces and a few others things that I can't remember at the moment belong to me.
The Chess Piece
"I don't think we've ever won a game," said one of the pawns, who's name everyone would remember in just a moment.
"The boy has no tactical mind," said the Right Knight. "Now the red-head, he has a the knack for strategy."
"Well there's not much we can do about it," said the King.
"I say we desert," said a different pawn to the last one who had spoken who everyone was pretty sure looked familiar, but it might have just been the light.
"I say! Let's not take this too far that man," said the King. "The last thing we want is a total break down of law and order and what not. The boy ain't that bad, lads, he'll get it one day, rest assured."
"Maybe it's all a plot," said the Sinister Knight. "This could all be some conspiracy to ensure that the entire population of the castle thinks that he's a terrible chess player and then one day WHAM!"
"Wham what?" asked the Pointless Bishop.
"Well," said the Sinister Knight, the wind rather taken out of his sails. "Something will happen."
"Involving chess pieces?" asked the Pointless Bishop.
"Well – er – yes," said the Sinister Knight.
The Sinister Knight went off to the corner of the box to brood and look sinister… and sulk. "Well it seems to me, in my opinion," said the Queen, "that the boy is not going to win a game if he continues to play against the red-headed boy. It is therefore logical to assume that we will never win a game… Of course this is just my opinion and probably means nothing," she added with a fluttering laugh.
"We could sneak into the lad's dorm and suffocate the red-head," said a rather militant pawn who everyone would no doubt recall on numerous occasions in the near future.
"Now, now, gentlemen – and lady," added the King after a sharp look from the Queen. "There is absolutely no call for aggressive action towards insuring our future will be victorious."
"We should wait," said the Right Knight. "Perhaps when the boy grows up he will marry a half-way decent chess player, or by some miracle it happens accidentally, we may be passed on to a second generation who are good at chess."
"I'm not going to be holding out for early marriage!" said a pawn who everyone was pretty sure was the first one who had spoken, but he might have just moved.
"We should form a positive action force," said a pawn who may have been one everyone knew, but they weren't quite sure.
"Sabotage the opposition!" cried a pawn who could well have been the one to suggest suffocating the opposition a few moments before.
"Cripple that snooty queen," said the Queen. "She broke my sceptre."
"Come along now, dear – I mean m'lady," said the King quickly. "There is no need to be aggressive, we can sort this all out this –"
"The Queen's right!" cried the Right Knight. "Let's go kill the opposition."
The army of chessmen – persons began to march towards the freedom and victory…. After several minutes they had to sit down and have a rest though because they weren't entirely sure of the way out.
"Excuse me, Sinister Knight," cried the Right Knight. "Any ideas?"
"We need a battering ram," said the Sinister Knight. "And then we can force the lid open."
"We don't have anything that could be a ram," said the Pointless Bishop.
"Well," said Sinister Knight darkly and enjoying himself an awful lot. "All we really need is a tall, flat-topped piece – and we do have tall flat-topped piece."
Everyone turned as one to the King, who began to back away towards the side of the box, "Oh – oh no. I'm the King, it's you lot that have to do the work you know. I'm just meant to stay still and not get taken."
"Nonsense, dear," said the Queen, clenching a fist. "You can do it!"
"I really don't' –"
"Come on lads!" cried the Right Knight.
With several heavy thuds against the side the box toppled over and the chess pieces poured out, followed by a slightly dazed king, who was finding it difficult to walk in straight lines. The chess pieces were on the road to victory and who knows what great adventures awaited them in the brave new world of the Gryffindor Common Room… Except for the author.
*****
If anyone had been up in the Gryffindor Common Room that night they would have seen a group of chessmen – and woman – running across the old, oak floorboards in search of their enemy, accompanied by an assortment of war cries:
"CHESSMEN… and woman!"
"THAT EVIL HAG BROKE MY SCEPTRE!"
"Down with the oppressive system that has kept pawns as an under class and slaughtered them mercilessly in the pursuit of victory!"
"Oh, my poor head…"
The army of chess pieces tore across the common room, rampaging and pillaging the land – they would have liked to anyway, but there wasn't much to rampage or pillage. Theoretically they were rampaging and pillaging, but if you start thinking about 'theories' of things you'll end up spending all day reading books and then you'll end up writing things on the internet about them and influenced by them. That would be a sad state of affairs for any person in the world indeed.
"Where exactly are the opposition?" the King asked the Sinister Knight as a few pawns were tearing at chair leg with little success.
"Well – well they're – they're – well… I'm sure we'll find – they've got to be around here – surely they can't be…" he trailed off.
"Then aren't we really out here for no reason?" asked the Pointless Bishop.
"What's your point?" asked the Sinister Knight, glaring at him.
"Gentleman!" cried the Right Knight. "The scouting party, consisting of myself of course –"
"And me!" cut in a pawn who was very probably the one the Right Knight had taken with him, almost definitely in fact.
"Well – er –yes – and er... Didn't quite catch your name there…, my good man."
"…"
"Ah, yes well – jolly good, smashing name that," said the Right Knight. "Anyway, I and – er – the rest of the scouting party have discovered which of the large portals leads up to the 'Boy's Dorms'."
"Which one?" asked the Sinister Knight.
"That one," said the Right Knight, pointing dramatically towards one of the doors to his right, which looked very good in a pose. "To the 'Boy's Dorm'!"
"Isn't that the 'Girl's Dorm'," said the Queen, frowning.
"Ah yes, it must be because that's the door our boy's bushy haired friend comes out of and she goes up there at night as well," said the Pointless Bishop.
"It's this one," said the pawn who was accompanying the Right Knight, it looked like him anyway, and shuffled off towards the 'Boy's Dorm'.
"Just an accident – could have happened to anyone," said the Right Knight as the King rallied the army to follow them towards their goal.
The Queen gave him a sympathetic look and hopped off towards the door to the 'Boy's Dorm'. Meanwhile the King was having trouble rallying his forces, apparently they would much rather stay here and have a rest rather than be rallied, but thanks anyway.
"Now look here, chaps, the thing is we all agreed to sabotage our enemies and you might not like doing it –"
"We never said we didn't want to," said a pawn who the King was pretty sure he had talked with earlier that day.
"That is oppressing us," said another very similar looking pawn.
"Can't tell us what we're thinking," said yet again a different pawn, it could have been different, the King wasn't entirely sure now.
"Yeah, mate, we can think what we like," said the first pawn, it almost certainly was the first pawn in fact.
"I am not your mate," said the King, who had had quite enough of it.
"Well exactly, that is the point we're trying to make here," said a pawn who looked suspiciously like one who the King had spoken to before about Utopian Societies, the Feudal System and both of their relative places in today's society. "We should be able to vote for you, 's all we're saying."
"Vote?! You can't vote! I'm the King, for God's sake!" he cried.
"You see! You see! We're in the modern era, old timer!" said a very annoying pawn who the King would no doubt remember.
"What do you want? A republic of Chess Pieces?" asked the King laughing at the idea.
"Not a bad idea, not a bad idea," mused one of the pawns, rubbing his chin.
"Chess pieces can't be republics!" snapped the King. "That's the point of chess pieces. You have a king who sits at the back and watches, trying not to get killed. And then you have pawns – you lot – who are there to be sacrificed, thus when one says they are a 'pawn' they are being controlled for purposes that are not there own. When on says that they are a 'king' it doesn't mean they're going to go out and killed for no reason at all!"
"Oh yes, that's right," sneered another very annoying pawn, it might have been the first though. "You're the 'King' aren't you, obviously you're going to say that pawns are crap."
"Society came into existence by 'networking' and 'communication'," said an even more annoying pawn. "Tribes came together in the spirit of unity and the greater betterment of mankind."
"No they didn't! They massacred each other!" said the King, goggling at them. "You're all being incredibly stupid you know. This is idiotic! You have your heads in the sand! Your political values are just childish and immature with no real place in society. You're just spouting utopian nonsense!"
The pawns all glared at him and very slowly and deliberately began to walk forward, unfortunately the effect you somewhat lessened by the fact that their were monopeds and they had to hop. The King was becoming aware nonetheless that he was outnumbered and although they were smaller than him he had seen them hack at that chair leg.
"Men – friends – lads, let's just forget this shall we?" he suggested. "The others will expecting us to be there and if we don't get going right now they'll be wondering what happened to us… lads…"
*****
"Did you hear something?" asked the Queen, climbing up onto the next step.
"Probably your imagination, my lady," said the Defensive Castle.
"Hmm, yes, you're probably right," said the Queen. "I say! Is that them coming down?" she cried peering up the stairs.
The Right Knight came rolling down the stairs with a quill nib in his side. The Queen and the Defensive Castle rushed to his side and he looked at them with a glazed expression.
"I – I wasn't right… There were too many of them – out numbered us…"
"The Sinister Knight?" asked the Queen. "The Pointless Bishop?"
"Didn't see them, my lady," gasped the Right Knight. "Can't…, go on…"
He went limp in the Queen's arms and she threw herself dramatically onto his chest. Beating her fists on his torso with heart wrenching sobs.
"I am awfully sorry to point this out," said the Defensive Castle. "But aren't we made out of wood? Er – a quill nib is pretty harmless to a chess piece… Um, sorry."
The Queen straightened up and glared at the Right Knight. She pulled back her hand and brought it back against his face with a slap. The Right Knight's eyes flickered open and he sat up.
"Is this heaven? Am I dead? What are you doing here, you Majesty?"
"You're not dead, you silly knight," said the Queen, hands of hips.
"I'm alive? I'M ALIVE!"
"Yes, you are," huffed the Queen. "Now go back up the stairs and get your comrades back."
"Er – I would love to, but – but – I –er…"
"You would love to?" asked the Queen. "Well isn't that convenient. Off you go then."
The Defensive Castle gave him a cheery wave as the Right Knight hauled himself back up the stairs with the Queen glaring at him, her lips pursed and hands on hips. He looked back and when she raised an eyebrow at him he suddenly became much faster.
*****
No-one wandered down stairs in the middle of the night, though a few of the boys in the dormitory had a very odd dream about chess pieces, and so no-one saw the chess pieces staggering across the common room back to their box.
"Was a blood good fight," said the Sinister Knight, who had banged his head quite hard.
"Yes, indeed," said the Right Knight, who was picking at the hole in his side.
"I think that went very well," said the Queen, who was happily swinging a new sceptre as she hopped.
The two knights exchanged glances. They arrived back at their box, which for some reason had several large scratches and dents in the side as though there had been a fight. They climbed inside and found the pawns all on one side of the box while the King, minus an arm and his crown, was on the other and both parties were glaring at each other.
"What on earth has been going on here?" demanded the Queen.
"Nothing," chimed the pawns.
"Capital!" said the Sinister Knight brightly, before toppling over.
The Pointless Bishop closed the lid behind them and with a bit of effort they managed to right end their box. The chess pieces all settled down in their box and thought of the night's events, none of them were entirely sure if they had experienced victory though. All in all it was rather a cheap, tacky ending and whoever had thought it up really ought to have been able to do better.
A/N: My first fic! That's not meant to get any more reviews or justify anything, I'm just telling you that it is my first fic because it is my first fic. The pieces are Harry's if you haven't guessed and there is to be no sequel, it's very much a stand-alone fic. I might do an expanded version one day with the fight scenes in, but for now it will remain the way it is. Enjoy! ~ Wentworth