Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine, I'm just playing with it.


Last time on Let the Games Begin:

Terry exchanged helpless looks with his companions. It seemed they were about to become gamblers.


They reluctantly took position at the blue table, sitting on five of the stools ready for them.

The woman abruptly lost her scowl and her impatience and became all genial smiles: "So!" she shouted brightly. "What will it be? Poker? Blackjack?... Any preference?"

The five exchanged uneasy glances.

"Does anyone even know how to play?" muttered Potter, trying to keep their opponent from overhearing. Judging from her shark-like smile, he wasn't successful.

"I know how to play poker. Sort of," whispered, quite unexpectedly, Neville. He was blushing and mortified, as if he'd done something shameful. "Seamus taught me."

"He did?" said Potter sounding outraged. "How come he didn't teach me?"

Neville shrugged, embarrassed: "I doubt what I learned from him would be enough here, anyway. I don't think any of us has any chance of winning at poker against a professional player."

"Nope," agreed Terry. "Mind you, I don't think we have any chance at any of the games. The house always wins," he said, gloomy. Then, as everybody stared at him, he added defensively: "That's what my dad always says!"

"Nonsense!" butted in the bosomy woman. "That's just what blue-noses say to keep you from having fun!"

They looked at her warily and she went on: "You should never listen to that kind of lousy, goody-goody spoilsports. Ha! Teetotalers, I'd bet - the lot of them. They never want people to enjoy themselves!"

She looked righteously upset. It didn't quite fly with them.

"Come on, kiddies," she cajoled. "Show me some courage! Make. Your. Choice." She watched them expectantly, then rolled her eyes: "This year would be nice."

"Blackjack is perhaps the simplest to learn quickly," said Hermione hesitantly.

"Of course it is!" the woman proclaimed in a sugary tone. "Blackjack is very simple!"

"Yeah, right," muttered Terry with a sinking feeling.

"Anyone has a better idea? …Didn't think so. Right, then. I suppose blackjack it is," said Hermione with a sigh. "Hum. If you can explain the rules to us, that is."

"Don't you worry, you little lost lambs." She started shuffling a deck of common cards with a smug grin. "You know, I'm happy you chose this..." she shook her head nonchalantly, still shuffling, her agile hands a blur. "I'm particularly fond of this game, truly. I used to work as a blackjack dealer on a cruise ship. Ah, good memories!"

They froze.

"Ah... perhaps, on second thought..." said Hermione faintly. "Maybe... maybe poker isn't that bad an idea..."

"Do you really think it'll make a difference?" muttered Potter morosely.

Hermione shook her head disconsolately: "At least two of us know the rules already."

"Three," murmured Terry, who did, in fact, know the rules, though the closest he'd ever come to an actual game was watching movies.

"Knowing the rules doesn't really mean you know how to play," pointed out Neville nervously. "Or that you've played at all."

"Be that as it may, Neville, if you at least know something of the game than it's better than nothing, right?"

"Aw, don't be spoilsports!" cooed the woman, with an unnerving smirk. "I was so looking forward to a good blackjack tournament. It's been ages since my last!"

"Why'd you stop?" asked Terry before he could stop himself.

"Switched to Duel Monsters," she answered easily. "Much better for catching rich men. They never can resist getting challenged into dueling me!" She gave a swooning sigh as fake as a Barbie doll.

"Is that how you found your husbands?" asked Hermione, quite obviously still torn between outright disapproval of the woman and disapproval of Malfoy's disapproval.

"A few of them," she answered nonchalantly. "There were always suitors buzzing around me. Especially after I found my first Harpie Lady," she sighed reminiscently.

"Her what?" whispered Potter and Terry could only shrug, equally perplexed. At a guess, he'd say it was a card, but she made it sound as a pet almost, so he really wasn't sure.

"Most of them were pretty boring, sadly," the woman prattled on. "Mind you, they would pay good money to get a chance with me. But what can I say? A woman wants more than just cash – especially if she's made a good deal of it already." She laughed daintily. "Some of them were so insistent! You wouldn't believe what poor, dear Jean-Claude did just to gain my notice!"

Casting a rapid glance at them, she precised: "Jean-Claude Magnum."

Then, since they didn't look very impressed, she went on petulantly: "Hello? Jean-Claude 'Badass Ninja' Magnum? The famous actor? The King of Kung-fu Movies?"

Awkward silence met her, while each presumably wondered how to tell her it didn't ring any bell with a shred of politeness.

"Humpf!" she sniffed, irritated. "Uncultured brats."

"So you duelled this famous actor?" asked Potter in a painfully obvious effort to be ingratiating.

"Damn right I did, and I defeated him soundly! The he proposed to me, right there on the Duel pitch. Ha! All of his swooning fangirls were green with envy, let me tell you."

"It must have been very romantic," said Hermione in a tone that dripped with her conviction of the contrary. "Was the wedding as idyllic?"

"Don't be silly, girl, I refused him." The woman sniffed: "Who do you take me for? I told him to come back when he became a good duelist!"

They looked at her, wide eyed. "Did he?" asked Potter.

"As a matter of fact, he did." Even she sounded a little surprised at that. "And, well. What can I say? I was in a terrible state at the time, really an awful period – all Joey's fault, of course – and Magnus was so infatuated... and he had become a better dueler, on the whole..."

"...So this time, you accepted him?" asked Terry, not entirely sure why he was even interested.

"Certainly not. The idiot was broke!" Abruptly, the woman slapped her hand on the table loudly and scowled at them: "Enough with the questions! What the hell, brats! Do you think we're here for an episode of Oprah's?! Stop your gossipmongering and let's get on with business!"

"Fine, fine!" said Potter, raising his hands placatingly. "So... how does this blackjack game work?"

"It's basically a comparing card game between players and dealer, from what I know," answered Hermione.

"Precisely!" agreed the woman, sitting down again. "To win, you have to create card totals which will turn out to be higher than the dealer's hand – that's me, in case you're too dim-witted to figure it out. But!" She raised a finger patronizingly: "You must never go over 21: that's busting, kiddies, and it will get you out of the game faster than you can say 'you're lovely'!"

She got a few flat looks for that, but wasn't fazed.

"Card... totals?" asked Malfoy with the slightest trace of disgust in his voice.

"Are you stupid or what?" asked the woman bluntly.

Hermione sighed: "It's about adding up all the values of the cards: the jack, queen, and king count as 10, everything else as their natural value. The sum is what you use."

"Give the girl a prize!" the woman mocked.

"What about aces?" asked Neville sensibly.

"Either 1 or 11 according to the player's best interest," replied the woman promptly.

"Oh, well, that's something," muttered Terry. It came out less sarcastic than he'd intended.

"Now, let us do things properly, hm? This is a real, casino blackjack table, and as you can see, the dealer faces the players – usually five to seven – from behind a semicircular table and – you see those markings?" she pointed at seven rectangular shapes in white print, arranged in correspondence to the seats they'd occupied. "They're called boxes. It's where you place your bets."

"Bets?" repeated Malfoy in a faint voice. "Wait. This is gambling!"

"Yes," murmured Neville, a bit hunched over.

"You're only just noticing?" asked the woman incredulously.

"Maybe casino look different in the wizarding world?" wondered Terry.

"What, pray tell, is a casino?" asked Malfoy through gritted teeth.

"It's a public room or building for gambling and other entertainment," explained Hermione.

"You mean it's a club for the low class," sneered Malfoy. "Bah. It's no wonder that woman goes around like that, if she hangs about such places."

"I don't think wizards have anything like that," explained Neville, more conciliatory. "Gambling's not really something you would do openly."

"It's not something to do at all! Not in polite society!" said Malfoy, scandalized.

"You seriously object to gambling?" wondered Potter. "Not that I blame you, honest, it's just... you argue for Muggle hunting. You can't possibly be opposed to something just because it's illegal!"

"It's not illegal, Harry," corrected Hermione.

"What?"

"Gambling's not prohibited in the wizarding world," confirmed Terry, who'd stolen Anthony Goldstein's copy of You Can Get Arrested for That by Joe Humdrumjust a few months before and incidentally discovered, among many other things, that peeling shrivelfigs in a hotel room was illegal; as was, for some reason, riding a broom around an official building more than 50 times in a single session. Wizarding law could be dumb and weird at the same time.

"It's frowned upon, though," murmured Neville.

"It's vulgar. So working-class. I can't believe you're forcing us to do something so demeaning!"

"No-one's forcing you, hun."

"Good! Then we aren't playing!" Malfoy crossed his arms, looking the epitome of haughtiness.

"Well, how do you propose to leave this room, then?" asked the woman. "Because I assure you, kid, you ain't gonna get anything from me you haven't won!"


A/N: The book Terry mentions is based on an existing (and hilarious) one by Rich Smith, which deals with dumb American laws. Nothing to do with shrivelfigs whatsoever; but peeling oranges is, indeed, illegal in hotel rooms (at least in LA). So's driving around the town square more than 100 times in a row... and fishing in your pijamas... and drinking beer from a bucket... and- you know what? Muggle laws can be weird as well.