The Chess Piece (RV)

by Wentworth

There's war, Sun Tze quotes, democratic organizations and still chess pieces in my revised version of my first story, that I have brought out to celebrate the opening of the Stellionmere website. R/R and don't nit-pick.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J.K.R. not me… I just take liddle, iddy, bitty bits of it that I find interesting, at least I have in this.

Written in celebration of the opening of Stellionmere, the website founded my me, Huginn and Noodle!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This story is meant to be less than normal, so don't complain about that. I am also from England and my computer has an Anglo-English dictionary rather than an American-English one, so my spelling might appear a little odd at times, but you will still be able to understand it. In brief, everything is written the way it is meant to be.

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 yet another pawn.

Pawns had once heard of names and indeed "Bob" the leader of the Liberated Pawns for Equal Rights on the Chessboard, who had believed in stating all of their demands with detailed clauses and always adding the date, had once suggested that pawns started calling themselves things. This caused the historic split forming the Reformed Pawn Army for Equal Rights on the Chessboard, the Liberated Pawns for Equal Rights on and off the Chessboard Front and Bob, Pete, Phil and Waste-Paper Basket ­– who hadn't quite got the idea.

"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. "Wheels within wheels..."

"How does that involve chess pieces?" asked the Pointless Bishop.

"Well – er…" 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, everyone would no doubt recall him 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 Defensive Castle. "Perhaps when the boy grows up he might 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 pawn that had spoken in the beginning of the dialog.

"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 reason, or indeed any 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, perking up now he was allowed to be in the centre of attention again. "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, enjoying himself an awful lot. "All we really need is something tall, flat-topped – 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.

*****

There was any number of organisations in the common room for pawns. As previously mentioned there was the Reformed Pawn Army for Equal Rights on the Chessboard and the Liberated Pawns for Equal Rights on and off the Chessboard Front who believed in positive action with some key differences in their policies. There were also a number of underground movements that were frowned upon by the larger organisations, as they employed non-pacifistic tactics to achieve their goals and often launched surprise attacks from beneath the sofa cushions and used other, similar, unsporting tactics.

None of the organisations had yet managed to go as far as actually entering a dorm unless they were already in a box. Many a brave pawn had perished underfoot if they spent too long in that dangerous territory. Even in the vast expanses of the common room, which at night was inhabitated by rats, cats and occasionally a toad that had apparently got lost, it was every pawn for himself. A great pawn who had been slightly beige with a blob of red ink on his head had once managed to defeat all the odds and journey completely around the Gryffindor Common Room before his head was bitten off by a cat.

*****

Thankfully tonight the various indigenous species of common rooms were not to be seen. But if anyone had been up in the Gryffindor Common Room that night they would have seen a group of chessmen – and woman – braving the dangers of the common room and 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.

"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."

"…" said the pawn as if it was a perfectly common name – technically it was.

"Ah, yes well – jolly good, smashing name that," said the Right Knight, cleaning out his ear. "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'!"

It is heroic tradition to strike a pose that will look very good in a portrait when they have finished doing whatever heroic thing they had to do. Then years from now while people might not be able to recall exactly which hero of the previous era it was without looking at the little gold plaque they will be able to say: "Well wasn't he a handsome devil and he certainly looked awfully heroic, don't you think so… Liam put your shoes on and stop skidding around on the marble floors!"

"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.

"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; the King would no doubt remember him.

"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. It was people like us that did that."

"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 what they had done while they were rampaging and pillaging.

"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.

Another standard aspect of narrative is that when one hears a distant scream it is always in your imagination. Unless of course the person screaming is the heroine and you are the hero, in which case the hero runs to the rescue and a lot of sword fighting and dry, cool and not very funny wit in involved.

"Hmm, yes, you're probably right. Rather silly of me really, sort of thing I really must stop doing," said the Queen. "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 added, his eyes flickering shut.

"What happened, man?" demanded the Queen, grabbing his shoulders.

The Right Knight's eyes flickered open, "Enemies everywhere… Tactical withdrawal… the others… gone."

His eyes flickered shut again and the Queen shook him again until he opened his eyes. "Are the others alive?"

"Don't know,,, they… they might be…"

"I wonder how long it actually takes to die," mused the Defensive Castle. He was obviously not familiar with the fact that the almost dead warrior always had enough time left to give an accurate description of the enemies defences so the hero never has to go onto battle without knowing exactly how big the odds against him are. In the absence of a hero in this story another character will have to substitute.

He went limp in the Queen's arms, shooting daggers at the Defensive Castle. The Queen threw herself dramatically onto his chest, beating her fists on his torso with heart wrenching sobs. The Defensive Castle gently prodded the quill nib in the Right Knight's side and wrenched it out to get a better look at it.

"I am awfully sorry to point this out," said the Defensive Castle, after several minutes examining the quill nib. "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 raised an eyebrow at the Defensive Castle.

"Don't look at me," said the Defensive Castle. "I'm not the one who thinks they're dead."

The Queen held out her hand and the Defensive Castle handed her the quill nib obediently. She glared at the Right Knight. She pulled back her hand and brought it back against his face with a slap before drawing back the quill nib and stabbing him with it. The Right Knight's eyes flickered open and he sat bolt upright.

"My word!… That was extraordinary…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, brandishing the quill nib, but she didn't need it. "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.

*****

"Now sign here, here, here and initial here," said the pawn, who had hit the King very hard on the head, he would certainly remember that one.

"Now – er – what exactly does this document do?" asked the King, drowsily.

"It merely means that all power is ours and that although you will be kept as a figurehead, which we do understand is necessary, you will hold no power," said the pawn holding a quill before him.

"Oh, well that's alright then – I thought it was going to be something that might rob me of my rights there," muttered the King, signing and initialling the document before him.

*****

"As Sun Tze says to win a war do not go to war," said the Sinister Knight looking at the large, battered box where hid enemies dwelt.

"Ah…" said the Pointless Bishop, nodding slowly. "But surely you would have to be at war to win and war… But if you can't win a war without not going to war then –"

"He was a very intelligent bloke," said the Sinister Knight, glaring at the Pointless Bishop, there was always one. "And he said that those skilled in war could make themselves invincible, but cannot cause an enemy to be certainly vulnerable."

"What does that mean then?" asked the Pointless Bishop.

"Well – well it means that we can beat them if we are skilled in the art of war, but we cannot make them vulnerable ourselves," said the Sinister Knight.

"Oh… But we're not strictly skilled in the art of war are we," said the Pointless Bishop slowly.

"Strictly no we're not, but we can make ourselves invincible," said the Sinister Knight firmly.

"How would we go about that then?"

"Invincibility lies in defence and the possibility of victory lies in the attack," said the Sinister Knight.

"So… we do what exactly?"

The Sinister knight glared at him, "You're making this more difficult than it needs to be."

According to the laws of the logical universe – which is different to ours in many ways - every leader has to have some annoying little person whom picked at the details. They were the bane of every great leader's existence with their continually pointing out little things. They were always saying things like; "are you sure it's wise to blow up the sun, sir, as it might destroy us too," and "should you leave your arch nemesis in the hands of your bumbling guard while he awaits a slow death?". In our universe they are invariable shot before we actually get to the interesting plot, or they became accountants.

"How's the siege going then chaps," said the Right Knight, appearing beside them.

"Well why don't you ask our military leader," huffed the Sinister Knight, folding his arms and turning away from them.

"Come along now, chaps," said the Right Knight. "I'm sure some wrong words have been said, but there really is no need to sulk. We need to join together and win the day."

"They out number us," said the Pointless Bishop.

"Well yes… But we have strength of spirit!" cried the Right Knight, everyone knew that if you had strength of spirit you could even beat twelve to one odds.

"We do?" asked the Pointless Bishop innocently, unfortunately the very same everyone forgot to add that you would also need to be on the side that outnumbered the others twelve to one.

"Yes, we do," said the Right Knight, frowning at him.

"It doesn't matter whether we have strength of spirit or not, it's all in the strategy," said the Sinister Knight. "He who knows the art of direct and indirect approach will be victorious."

"You seem to know what we ought to do," said the Right Knight. "What's your strategy?"

"We attack from the bed, higher ground, and take them by surprise," said the Sinister Knight.

"Good plan," said the Right Knight. "Off we go then."

"Um – aren't we waiting for reinforcements?" asked the Pointless Bishop.

"Whatever for?" asked the Right Knight. "All the more glory for us I say."

The Pointless Bishop peered down the stairs and then back at the two knights who were already starting their climb up the bed. He sighed heavily, "As Sun Tze says; when the officers are valiant and the troops ineffective the army is in distress."

*****

The two valiant chess pieces and one more who didn't think he ought to be here, crept over the hilly terrain of the blanket at the bottom of the bed heading for death or glory. The red-headed boy in the bed snorted in his sleep and rolled over, throwing the chess pieces across the bed.

"Duvet-quake!" screamed the Right Knight and the Sinister Knight clamped a hand over his mouth.

"We need to maintain the element of surprise," hissed the Sinister Knight.

"I think they heard that," said the Pointless Bishop, taking up a defensive position on the boy's left foot.

The knights scrambled across the blankets to the Pointless Bishop. "Good God!" cried the Right Knight.

The pawns were setting up a perimeter defence with sharpened stakes with burnt tips for some reason. The walls of the box were lined with the other chess pieces and the Queen was holding her sceptre menacingly, waving it at them up on the bed. Some people thought that one could win a war with sheer bravery and the nobleness of their spirit. There were some other people who knew that in order to win a war one would require a number of other things, bravery and nobleness of spirit were just nice things to have along as well.

"Apparently we have lost the element of surprise," said the Sinister Knight.

"Alright then chaps," said the Right Knight, pulling himself up and raising his sword. "Death or glory and all that."

The Pointless Bishop sighed heavily. It seemed reasonable to assume that charging into the enemy was what ought to be done because you had to survive it didn't you, otherwise how would the DNA strand that promoted that particular tactic to come to the front of the mind carry on down the generations. One might argue, however, that stupidity was an entirely random thing. Another could continue the argument by saying that therefore killing off those stupid enough to charge boldly into the enemy ranks wasn't that bad a thing.

The three charged down the bedspread and burst through the stakes, cutting a path through the pawns. Screams echoed over the battlefield and blood was spilled, it would have been anyway if chess pieces bled. Just as the upper hand was gained the knights of the enemy charged out of their box and the Right Knight locked swords with one of them.

The Pointless Bishop was thrown into combat with the second enemy knight and the Sinister Knight was swamped under a scrum of pawns. And then from the distance was a cry to lighten the hearts of men and strike fear into them at the same time, which was a very hard thing to do, but most people's mothers had this ability.

"I'll teach you to break my sceptre," screamed the Queen, bearing down upon the enemy.

"Yeah," said the Defensive Castle, who hadn't quite got the hang of an offensive war cry.

The Queen battled her way to the box in a very unlady-like manner, uttering a few choice phrases that certainly wouldn't go down well in polite society. She pulled herself up onto the makeshift battlement and head butted the enemy queen, seizing her sceptre as she fell with a yell of triumph.

"Was there any call for that, madam?" asked the enemy king, peering down at his queen.

"I think there way," snapped the Queen and spun around. "And what do you lot think you're doing out of your box in the middle of the night, hmm? Back in the box the lot of you - don't even think about running away, I can see you there."

*****

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.

"Wazza bloody goo' fight," said the Sinister Knight, who had banged his head quite hard on a pawn.

"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 along.

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: Thank-you to my reviewers from my previous version of this story and thank-you to my roommates, especially Noodle who leant me her copy of Sun Tze's The Art of War. Brownie Points to any of you lovely reviewers who gets the play on words in the title, by the way.

I am tempted to right another story about the Chess Pieces, probably not a sequel, most likely to be about the pawn organisations. But you're the readers, tell me what you think I should write about the chess pieces next. If you don't my roommates will no doubt convince me to write another story about them anyway, in between trying to convince me to climb aboard the H/G ship of course. I have to admit a story about the "slightly beige pawn with a blob of red ink on his head" might be an interesting one, at least to me ~ Wentworth.