Avada Kedavra!
There was a moment of silence before the eerie green light that shrouded the Potter house dissipated like mist. As the curse lifted, it seemed to take with it the Dark Lord's stranglehold on the Wizarding world. Yet somehow, left lingering behind was the heavy feeling that all was neither forgiven nor forgotten as the thin wailing cry of an infant cut through the quiet of the night.
"Stalemate!" Crowley shouted in exasperation. All that work for this?
"Now, now." Aziraphale tried to soothe his irate companion. "You're not going to be, well... a sore loser. Are you, dear?"
"You lost too, angel." Crowley couldn't stand being bested. "And don't you find this odd?"
"What's odd?" The angel responded with misleading innocence.
"We play this game a lot, don't we?"
"Well, yes." Leave it to Crowley to state the obvious.
"And sometimes you win and sometimes I win, but most of the time, it ends like this - a draw."
"I don't see why you're so surprised especially when you explained it once already." Aziraphale's tone was patronizing, as if he was about to launch into a well known sermon. "While we may play on opposite sides of the cosmic game board, you and I are really just cards in a greater more complex game of solitaire (1)."
Crowley groaned in exasperation. He hated when his own words were used against him, but was grateful at least that the angel's explanation hadn't used the word "ineffable".
"Now don't be like that dear." Aziraphale didn't want a sulking demon in his shop. "Fancy another game?"
"Yeah, sure." It wasn't like he had anything better to do at the moment. "Why the hell not?"
Quickly the supernatural beings reset the chess board then turned it around, giving Crowley control of the white army and Aziraphale control of the black (2).
"You know what's funny?" Crowley said as he considered his first move.
"What."
"Humans," Crowley answered as if that explained everything (3). "I mean most of them are convinced that good will always triumph over evil, but both you and I know that's not the case."
"There's no need to be so pessimistic." Aziraphale said as Crowley moved his pawn into position. "Good may not always triumph, but it certainly holds its own and keeps evil from conquering it."
"I hate having these conversations sober." Crowley muttered as the angel made his move. "Can I tempt you to a drink?"
The angel looked at him slyly from across the board. "Forfeiting the game already I see."
"Not forfeiting!" Crowley sounded appalled. "We can finish it some other day. Now let's hit the bar."
Aziraphale didn't need to be asked twice. Standing up from the table, he grabbed his coat and they both headed to the door.
Not far from the pub where Aziraphale and Crowley were sitting, Sirius Black stood in the midst of a shattered street surrounded by thirteen unfortunate muggles and a disembodied finger. The magical authorities found him laughing hysterically as he realized that for the first time in his life, he'd been had.
And somewhere, deep underground, a sewer rat struggled frantically, desperate to escape the city.
Crowley and Aziraphale liked chess. They had played it many times over the millennia. Some games lasted hours. Others lasted days, but the most memorable ones lasted a mortal lifetime.
(1) Although God's not adverse to playing Minesweep once in a while.
(2) In chess, the white army, having the first move, practices offensive tactics while the black army defends. The tendency of people to use chess to symbolize certain universal conflicts ie, that of good and evil, has been a source of amusement for various supernatural entities for quite sometime.
(3) Occasionally, it did.
Harry Potter characters and concepts created by J.K. Rowling.
Good Omens characters and concepts created by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
Used without permission but with good intentions.