Disclaimer: As much as I'm ^sure^ I would enjoy the law suit, I'm going to say that I do not own Harry Potter. *apologises to lawyers*
The Game of Life
(With thanks to Britty-Bum for the title)
In the middle of the Christmas holidays on any given year, a group of four Gryffindor boys could always be depended on to be sitting in front of the fire in the middle of the Gryffindor Common Room. These four boys, though known to the larger population as Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter, generally addressed each other by their nicknames: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, respectively.
On this particular chilly day, two days after Christmas, Peter was lying on his back on an overstuffed couch and Remus was sitting nearby, staring into space. Both were pretending not to be paying any attention whatsoever to James and Sirius, who were being their usual, childish selves.
The two teens were sitting cross-legged facing each other in front of the fire. There was a chess beard between them which was covered in both chess and checkers pieces. On either side of the board was a deck of cards. James and Sirius were each holding a few cards.
"Your move Prongs."
James nodded and picked up two cards before placing three face up next to the board: a jack, a queen, and a king.
"Royal Nobodies." he commented. "That means my King gets immunity for the next three moves, my queen gets to eat your queen…" he knocked the opposing queen off the board, replacing it with his own queen, "And this little dude gets knighted."
He tapped one of his checkers with his wand, turning it into a tiny horse and placed a galleon onto the already swaying stack of galleons next to the board.
"Beat that."
Sirius smirked. "Ok, I will." he placed three queens and the three of hearts next to the board. "That's a Lovely Group of Girls… Meaning I get to do this:"
He surrounded James' king with his own pieces, then knocked all of James' checkers off the board, including the tiny horse.
"That's not very nice!" James protested, "Why'd you do that?"
"I did say it was Three Lovely Ladies." Sirius replied.
"So?"
"They were real knockouts."
James groaned.
"Hey, I'm out of Galleons. How many chocolate frogs to the Galleon?" Sirius asked.
"Er, I think we agreed on seven didn't we?"
"No, it was seven cauldron cakes."
"Well then it must've been fourteen chocolate frogs." James corrected.
Sirius thought for a moment, then dumped three cauldron cakes and eight chocolate frogs next to the leaning tower of galleons.
"Hey guys?" Remus prompted. "Didn't James put down those same cards a few minutes ago?"
"Yes," answered Sirius, "Your point being…?"
"Well, when James put those cards down, he moved his pieces completely differently to what you just did."
"And?"
Remus sighed. "Could you explain the rules of this game?"
James and Sirius exchanged an amused look.
"Moony," James said mock-sternly, "You should know by now how much we hate rules."
"Yeah," Sirius continued, "We hate them so much that when we invented this game, we decided not to have any rules except that you have to pay for each move, and the winner takes all."
Remus stared for a moment. "You're nuts."
Sirius and James grinned. "Thanks! We know!"
A/N This may eventually feature in Seven Years at Hogwarts, but I haven't quite decided on that yet. I have to thank Britty-Bum for the title of this short piece. *waves and grins at Britty-Bum* She reckons the card game that they were playing is sort of like life because what happens in it is random and often not nice, and you have to pay for every move, and only the winner comes out with anything to show for it. I think Britt's a genius! What do you guys think?