Disclaimer: Anything you recognize – be it character, location, idea or line – belongs to others; I may be playing with them but I make no profit from this.
Last time on Let the Games Begin
The blond haughtily ignored them and whipped out his wand, pointing it to the variously coloured and sized bubble-shaped targets hanging on the walls. Before anyone could react, he started firing off well-aimed reductos.
"Malfoy, NO!"
Three other bubble-targets blew up in quick succession, as the blond ignored their shouts.
"Malfoy, STOP!"
"What are you doing!"
"Stop! You can't! Malfoy…!"
"EXPELLIARMUS!" bellowed Potter, taking matters into his own hands.
Malfoy shrieked: "Potter! How dare you!"
"You – bloody – idiot!" shouted the dark-haired Gryffindor in anger. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm clearing this ridiculous, low-class task before we're forced to sully ourselves with…"
"Do you want us to be trapped here forever? Is that what you want?"
"Don't be an idiot Potter! Of course I don't!"
"I know you have a brain in that little head of yours, contrary to all appearances, so why on earth don't you use it from time to time?…"
"Watch your mouth Potter! I'm not in the mood to bear your petty insults!"
"Look! You bloody jerk, look!"
Potter grabbed the blond by and arm and yanked him around over his loudly screeched protests.
"LOOK!" he repeated, pointing to the steel doors.
"What?" spat Malfoy, barely sparing them a glance. "And let me go, you oaf, haw dare you touch me…"
"Are you blind?" growled Potter getting in Malfoy's face. The other took a step back, alarmed, and was jerked back by the grip Potter hadn't relinquished on his arm.
"What does the display say?" asked Potter through clenched teeth.
Judging by Malfoy's expression, he might as well have spoken Aramaic; Terry and the others however swivelled to look at the digital display and understood immediately.
It still read 0000/1000.
"Damn!" exclaimed Neville. "Blowing the targets up doesn't give any points!"
"Oh, great going, Malfoy!" spat Terry annoyed.
"What are you talking about?" sneered the blond, looking offended.
Potter hissed: "He is talking about the fact that you were trying to destroy our chances of going on!"
"I was not!" cried the other, aggravated. "It's clear we must hit those bubbles – I'm merely doing it the proper, wizarding way instead of submitting to use these… these muggle…" He waved, an expression of distaste on his face: it seemed words were failing him in his disgust.
Potter snarled wordlessly, abruptly releasing him and throwing his arms in the air in exasperation.
"You prejudiced idiot!" groused Terry. "And now we have less possibilities to make points! Way to go, really!"
"You're not making any sense!" cried Malfoy, incensed.
"Am too…" started to retort Terry, thoroughly vexed.
"It's just not worth it, Boot," said Potter disgustedly. "Come on, let's make the most of what we've left."
Fortunately they'd stopped the Slytherin with still plenty of colourful bubbles around them.
Terry, Neville and Potter all gripped one toy gun firmly and looked at each other, taking deep breaths to calm down and focus.
"How do you think this works, exactly?" asked Neville.
Potter shrugged and pointed his cheery yellow gun to a random, blue bubble. "Let's find out, shall we?"
He squeezed the trigger and a lemon yellow beam shot towards it, hitting it squarely. A yellow bubble popped into existence and quivered, glued to the blue one.
Potter lowered his gun, bewildered. "Ah… perhaps not, then?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Terry, looking at his own, red toy gun. "I think I've got it!" he exclaimed and aimed at a red bubble.
The aim was a little off, but when his red beam grazed it, the bubble exploded with a soft pop and a trill was heard from the doors. The display was blinking to 0010/1000.
Potter and he looked at each other and grinned.
"Alright!" exclaimed Potter cheerfully. "Let's shoot some bubbles!"
And they did just that.
Soon coloured beams were streaking through the room and crossing each other and the three of them were laughing and yelling in triumph or dismay, caught up in the game.
Whenever they missed and hit the wrong colour, newly created bubbles were left sticking to the pre-existing ones, making everything more complicated. Worse still, when Terry cleverly decided to pop the original bubble, hoping it would take out all the ones glued to it too, they instead fell to the floor, where they bounced and leapt and rebounded every which way, adding to the general confusion – but also, they had to admit, to the fun.
Terry was chagrined to realize he was responsible for the most misses – so much so that Neville mock-yelled at him: "The green ones are mine,Boot! Stick to your own reds!"
Potter on the other hand had an excellent aim (probably all that practice with hexes and curses) and the number of yellow bubbles quickly dwindled to zero, at which point he switched to the purple gun, so that he could continue.
When the score touched 0500/1000, all the bubbles still on the walls started suddenly moving, back and forth along the wall and up and down as well, catching them off guards and exponentially increasing the chances of them hitting each other instead of the targets… fortunately, nothing untoward happened if they did, except that yet another bubble would start bouncing crazily around.
Every 100 points after that the moving bubbles doubled in speed, until the last ones were zooming all around them like rainbow-coloured streaks.
As a consequence, they were forced to jump around and run all over trying to chase them down and they made it an impromptu contest of just who could come up with the most creative insult for the devilish devices that were continuously eluding them.
They shouted and laughed and cheered Neville on when he doggedly pursued a smaller green bubble that kept eluding him and boasted about their hits or bemoaned their misses and generally endeavoured to make as much confusion as the bubbles themselves, despite being only three.
When at last a triumphantly grinning Potter, who'd switched gun again, made the last blue bubble pop with a victorious yell, the three of them were panting and laughing like loons and not even Hermione's severely pursed lips could dampen their fun.
The double doors slid open with barely a sound and they saw the corridor continuing forth, identical, until another set of double-doors. This time the lettering was green instead of red and it said 'Scarab Hoarding'.
With a sigh, Terry put his gun down.
That had been fun!
