Chess
Diplomacy
The next morning dawned windy and wet around the Hogwarts castle, yet nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the weather, even though the Quidditch game between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff was fast approaching. All everyone cared about was the well-being of the two heroes at the school; the two champions. When Ron made his way down to breakfast that morning with Harry and Hermione he was happy that all his fights with his friends were once again forgotten. He felt the butterflies in the pit of his stomach at the sight of the Great Hall.
"You know, Harry, I can see now why you can't eat before Quidditch matches when you have to be up against Malfoy," he said, fiddling with the pancake on his plate.
"You must eat!" Hermione scolded him impatiently.
"Ah, leave him be," Harry aided his friend with a sympathetic smile. "It's not like he needs that much strength for a mere game of chess."
"But he needs the energy! I mean, the brain can only synthesize adenosine tri-phosphate by degrading the glucose it gets from the blood, so he needs to eat enough sucrose to fill up his glycogen reserve so that—"
Hermione stopped when she noticed Harry chuckling slightly and Ron staring at her with his mouth open and a piece of pancake dangling on his hoisted fork.
"Anyway," Hermione quickly concluded, "you need this to be able to use the full capacity of your brain later today." She sighed. Her friends were hopeless.
"But I never think when playing chess," Ron said in a surprised voice. "I, I don't know, I just play the game."
At that very moment Snape stepped into the hall, made his way straight to McGonagall, and whispered something to her ear.
"Wonder where they're going," Harry muttered under his breath when McGonagall sharply rose from her chair and followed Snape out of the Great Hall again.
"Let's follow them," Ron said, putting his untouched food back down and jumping up from his chair, quickly followed by Harry.
"You coming?" he asked Hermione, who looked up and down the table, then huffed, and then rose to go with them.
"These are very dangerous and difficult times," she said. "These are very dangerous and difficult times…"
"Oh, shut up! Let's find out what they're discussing!" Harry interrupted her rant.
Exiting the Great Hall they found that the two professors had stopped in the Entrance Hall and were silently talking about one thing or another. McGonagall said something, raised her head, and noticed them approaching.
"Oh, my champion. How are you this morning? Sleep well?"
"Professor McGonagall!" Snape said in the reprimanding you-should-be-the-unbiased-Headmistress voice.
"Professor Snape?" she asked with a smile of yes-I-should-be-but-you-see-I'm-not.
At the same moment a group of Slytherins made their way out from the Great Hall, discussing the coming match.
"It's the Slytherins versus Gryffindor fools
And we more or less rule!"
"No one can deny that these are difficult times."
"To our credit putting all that aside,
We have swallowed our pride."
When they noticed the two professors and the Gryffindor champion huddled together in the corner, they moved closer, eager to see what was going on.
"These are very dangerous and difficult times," Hermione whispered as she elbowed Ron to move further away from the teachers. She was afraid that someone might think they were playing unfairly, and she never wanted to bring that kind of blame on Gryffindors.
McGonagall seemed to be thinking along the same lines as her, for she suddenly announced in a loud and clear voice, "It really doesn't matter who comes out on top."
"Who gets the chop," Snape confirmed with a smirk that clearly said he didn't mean any of his words.
"No one's way of life is threatened by a flop," they assured the now growing horde of students that surrounded them, with smiles plastered on their faces. Their eyes, though, told a completely different story, one that was full of dark corridors and cursing from behind and evil smirking all the way.
"But we're gonna smash their bastard!" a bold voice from the Gryffindor side of the room shouted out, followed by a much more timid, "Won't we, Ron?"
"Of course, Neville," Ron said, beaming. "Make him wanna change his name, take him to the cleaners and devastate him, wipe him out, humiliate him," he expanded his definition of smashing.
That was probably too much for the Slytherins to take, because someone from their side shouted out, "We don't want the whole world saying they can't even win a game!"
"We have never reckoned on coming second!" another voice bellowed.
"There's no use in losing!"
The hall was now so full of shouting and angry glares that it became difficult to even separate one yell from another.
"It's the silver up against gold and red!"
"But we're peace loving men," Harry bellowed, with one arm holding back Hermione who was about to jump down on a Slytherin girl that had said something Harry hadn't quite caught but which by the look of it had been pretty insulting, and with other hand keeping the non-alteration charm in place so that Snape, whose hands were twitching already, couldn't draw his wand from his pocket.
"Hermione was right," he told himself, because none of the people surrounding him were in a calm enough condition to listen to anything. "No one can deny that these are difficult times."
Finally Snape gave in and his hand shot into his pocket for his wand, and when he couldn't get it out, he realized something was amiss. He shouted out for McGonagall, who seemed to be waken up from some kind of stupor with that, and realized that she had her wand pointed at a third year Slytherin who now had radishes for ears. She quickly changed the student back to his usual appearance, and pointed the wand at her throat.
"SILENCE," her magically magnified voice ran through the hall, and most of the fights broke up. Snape gave a wry smile and shook his head.
"It's a sweet hail-fellow-well-met affair," Snape said with a forced smile to the Headmistress.
"For both lion and snake," McGonagall confirmed to the watching students. But they, for some reason, still fidgeted on their places, not ready to acknowledge that the fight was over.
"These are very dangerous and difficult times," a voice said silently from somewhere.
"For those that say that this is not a friendly clash
Don't be so rash!
I assure you, friends, that this is balderdash," Snape repeated.
Though Harry knew that McGonagall's abilities of silencing people were nothing compared to those of Dumbledore, it didn't take five minutes for the students to rush out of the Entrance Hall once she had decided they had had enough of audience. A glare and a swift loud "To your common rooms!" was enough to send students of any houses running away.
That didn't mean, though, that the fight was over. Once in the safe distance from the professors, smaller groups of Slytherins paired up with groups of Gryffindors, and now there was no reason for them to stop before they were incapable of continuing and a passing student of Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw helped them to the Hospital Wing.
Leaving the Entrance hall, Hermione quickly ran after the same Slytherin girl that she had been trying to throttle earlier.
"Hermione, don't! Let's get back to our common room," Ron shouted after her, running along.
"Ron needs to rest if he's going to win!" Harry supplied, still dangling onto Hermione's arm and doing his best to restrain her.
"I — kill — her—" was all that Hermione answered, panting.
"Inter-house unity!" Ron shouted out as a last attempt to put any reason into Hermione's mind. But the words that before had worked as a magic password had no effect whatsoever, this time.
They caught up with the Slytherins somewhere deep in the dungeons. It seemed as if their prey had thought they had managed to lose them in the labyrinth of dark corridors that the dungeons were, because they were walking slowly and discussing the upcoming match again.
"What a load of whingeing peasants!" one was saying.
"Thinking they can win — they can't!" the smaller girl that Hermione was angry with supported.
"What an exhibition of self-delusion! This one's a foregone conclusion," another said.
"I will tear your flesh into tiny pieces with my bare teeth!" Hermione hissed, throwing off the arms of Harry and Ron that were trying to stop her, and yanked the smaller girl over.
There was a smirk on the cold calculating features of the Slytherin.
"Oh, I thought you said you didn't believe me," she said coldly, her two companions taking a step back and standing there like bodyguards, watching every move that Harry and Ron made.
"Hermione, what's it all about?" Ron asked his girlfriend timidly, but when Hermione turned her glance burning with hate towards him, he quickly added, "Carry on!"
"I insist you give him back now," she hissed menacingly, clutching her wand in a hand shaking with rage.
"If you kill me you will never get him! Anyway, it's all about inter-house unity," the Slytherin sneered, turned around and gestured for her two friends to follow her.
"Enough of all this beating round the bushes of détente!" Hermione screeched, shot after her and threw herself at her, bodily, hitting and punching her with every limb, trying to cause as much pain as possible, weeping all the time.
"Where did you take him? Is he okay? Is he alive? Do you feed him? Please, tell me he's alive!"
Harry and Ron quickly grabbed her hands and hoisted her up from her unmoving opponent. The Slytherin rose up from the ground, the sneer still in place, though her face was bloody and it looked like she was going to have a black eye, waved for her friends to follow her, again, and left without another word.
Once they were alone, Harry and Ron let go of Hermione.
"What was that all about?" Ron asked again.
"Why didn't you let me kill her! She's a murderer, too!" Hermione sobbed.
"I don't know what she told you, but I think you are losing it, Hermione," Harry said silently.
"Maybe I shouldn't have asked you to be my second," Ron added. "You already are so busy with being the Head Girl and the NEWTs and the study groups you organize."
"She said they're keeping Crookshanks locked up in the dungeons!" she wailed, not paying any attention to what her friends were saying. "She said she can't tell me whether he's alive or dead! She said I will never see my cat again!" Hermione said, a new stream of tears bursting out of her eyes.
Ron hugged Hermione, trying to stop her crying. Harry stepped back and watched them for a moment.
It was awful how much desperation a game could cause.
"Ron, you have to win," he said. "I'm sure Malfoy only got to the final with bribe, anyway."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, patting Hermione on her back and rocking her slightly. "I intend to balloon the golden galleon."
"He shall smash them, thrash them," Harry supplied, stroking Hermione's bushy hair.
Hermione shook her tears away, and tried to smile. "Ron, make sure you win!" she said, and they left the dungeons to go to their own common room for the few hours that they had left before the first match.
"Wonder whether McGonagall and Snape have calmed down," Harry said to make conversation as they were approaching the Entrance Hall, again.
"I'm sure they have, they're both grown-up people," Ron said.
Hermione sniffed.
But just as Ron had finished his sentence, even before they had reached the Entrance Hall, they heard the voices of the two professors, again.
"How could you feel that as this great event begins it underbids? The quest for peace, the bonds of Houses interest both Green and Red!" shouted Snape, his back towards the trio as he ascended the stairs to the dungeons.
"As long as our man wins," McGonagall told him from where she was standing on the other side of the Entrance Hall.
"As long as our man wins," Snape concurred.
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