Black eyes stared.
Green eyes stared back.
Blue eyes was switching between watching the other two.
"Well Fawkes, your poker face is impressive but I've got you this time. All in" said Harry as he pushed his chips to the middle of Dumbledore's desk.
"Alas, the stakes are much too high for me, I fold" Said Dumbledore placing his cards on the table.
Fawkes glanced down at the cards held in the stand in front of him before pushing his remaining chips forward and looking challenging at Harry.
Harry merely smiled as he laid down his cards. "A full house, your luck has finally turned now."
Fawkes just gave a short trill before spinning the stand around to reveal four of a kind and began making the quick repeated trill that Harry had come to recognise as phoenix laughter.
"Dammit! That's four weeks running! How are you so lucky?" Harry exclaimed, exasperated that he'd lost at poker to a bird for the fourth time.
Dumbledore sighed, "I don't know why you are complaining, he has been beating me at every game I've tried for the last 80 years. The only person I've known to beat him has been Alastor, and I suspect he was using his eye to cheat."
"What does he even do with all of his winnings?" asked Harry as he packed up.
"That's the real kicker, I have no idea. He just flashes it away and comes right back. I've never seen him buy anything, or appear with anything new. My best guess is he hides it somewhere and rolls around in it feeling rich"
Fawkes gave Dumbledore a withering glare at the idea that he would do something like that. Dumbledore was right, he did enjoy doing that but there is no way he would admit it.
"Well I better head back to my dormitory, I'll see you both next week. I might bring the twins, they'd take Fawkes' winning streak as a personal challenge."
"I suspect they would. Goodnight Harry."
"Goodnight sir, Fawkes." said Harry, giving a nod to each before leaving.
After Harry had left Fawkes waited for Dumbledore to finish bagging up his winnings, grabbed it and flashed away. To reappear in front of a bored looking goblin in the magical creature side of Gringotts.
"Another deposit for you vault sir?" asked the teller.
Fawkes trilled.
"Very well." said the teller, who then called out to a passing goblin, "Deposit for vault one."
Turning back to Fawkes "Will that be all Sir?".
With a tilt of his head Fawkes considered heading down to is vault to bask in his wealth, but after Albus' comment suspecting him of it he decided against it. Quickly swiping a but of parchment from the goblin Fawkes proceeded to burn a message on to the page, much easier to use his natural fire than ink. Fawkes then pushed the parchment toward the goblin, gave a quick bout of phoenix laughter and flashed away.
The goblin teller just shook his head at the antics of their biggest client, chuckling to himself thinking about the phoenix who had spent the last few thousand years that he had appeared in goblin banking records repeatedly fleecing the wizards. And now, glancing down at the paper was about to make a significant investment all to get back at a single wizard.
A few weeks later Dumbledore could be found on his knees at his fireplace talking to the saleswitch at Honeydukes when Hogwarts was deafened by the Headmasters shout of "A LEMONDROP SHORTAGE!"
Fawkes flashed away to the Gryffindor boys dormitory and burst into laughter. Harry who had been led in bed at the time took one look at the laughing phoenix, muttered about not wanting to know and rolled over trying to ignore it.