Wild cards
Chapter 01

…

How did it come to this?

"Look out!"

"Get out of the way!"

"Oh sweet Merlin!"

"Run for your lives!"

"She's gonna eat me!"

Less than a week ago Harry Potter had turned eleven years old and found out he was a wizard. Now he stood staring down an honest to god monster, a three-headed cocaine fueled nightmare looking to have him for a snack.

It was insane. He'd only just turned eleven and his life had been turned on its head several times. Learning he was a wizard from a giant man who'd knocked down a door by knocking to hard had seemed wild at the time. Then he'd gone to Diagon Alley and the standards for 'weird shit' had been on a steady rise.

That day he saw a man sitting on a throne on top of a giant lizard beast swaggering down the street like he owned it. Of all the things he'd seen up to that point, that had been the weirdest.

Where on earth had he gotten such a creature? How did he get such a creature around without the muggles seeing it? Why would he need to ride such a creature, the alley wasn't that big?

He was beginning to think wizards might not be a terribly practical sort of people. It must be a common occurrence since his giant new friend hardly seemed to notice as he came walking up.

"So, got yur wand then?"

The young man grinned, holding up the holly twig with the phoenix feathers in it.

"Good, good" said the massive man stroking his great bushy beard, "jus one more thing then."

"But Hagrid, I thought this was the last thing I needed."

"Yeah, well, that letter I brought you was rushed n' there was one more thing was spose to be on it. New class ya see 'Arry, only been on the criculum three years now."

Harry looked up at the massive man and nodded. If he needed one more thing he'd get one more thing, and hopefully avoid blowing anything up like the last shop.

"So, what is it I need?"

"That'd be yur duel deck."

"Duel deck?"

…

"Good afternoon and welcome to… oh, Hagrid."

"Andrew" Hagrid greeted the man at the counter.

"Wasn't expecting to see you today."

"Jus showin young 'Arry ere round the Alley while e' git's ready fur Ogwarts."

Harry waved timidly.

"I see, that means you must be here for your first deck."

"Yes sir."

"Well then, let me give you the overview" said Andrew, and with a wave of his hand he conjured nine small boxes, "what we have here are our standard decks. The bronze are the cheapest, then we have the silver, and the gold being the most expensive."

"What're ya thinkin Arry?" Hagrid asked after the young Potter had stared at his options for a while.

"I don't really know" he admitted, "I don't know anything about this so I wouldn't really know a good deck from a bad deck" or even the purpose of a deck, he thought.

The shopkeep smiled knowingly.

"Of course, there's always the option of making your own deck. Between you and me, that's usually the best way to do it."

"Spose at is, in it" Hagrid nodded.

Seeing Harry's hesitance, "Why don't we go look at the card shelves in back and I can run you through the basic's while we put your deck together" Andrew offered.

"Okay" said Harry, "Hagrid?"

"Sounds like a plan" the massive man said, "while yur doin tha, er's sommin I wan'd do real quick, I'm just gunna pop out n take care o that then, alright?"

Harry nodded. If he could survive Olivander on his own he could certainly do this. Andrew did seem a much more… sane, person.

"I should be back afore yur done. You'll take care o im Andrew?"

"Course Hagrid, take your time."

And with a nod the big man trundled off.

"Well, shall we?"

Harry followed through the swinging doors and into the back room. It was much larger than he was expecting and every wall was covered from floor to ceiling in shelves, and on every shelf, cards.

Harry stared, he'd seen cards before but not like this. There were no numbers, no diamonds or hearts, instead there were small pictures. And what pictures they were. He felt as though he'd been whisked into a fairytale surrounded by centaurs and dragons, strange beasts and monstrous birds and plants with eyes. It was amazing and fantastic and his eyes couldn't decide where to stop.

"What'cha think?"

"I don't even know where to start" Harry said despite grinning like a fool.

"With the game."

"So, these are game cards?"

"Yes and no" Andrew replied, "the game was something that got cooked up some years back, well after the first cards. The magic of the cards is a form of summoning. When you go to Hogwarts they'll teach you how to summon the things on these cards."

"Whoa!"

"Pretty awesome I know" Andrew chuckled, "but that's for school."

Harry nodded, "So what do I need?"

"Well, your starter deck is thirty cards and at least half those should be summons, what are commonly called your 'monster cards'."

"Kay."

"Also" he added before Harry could run off, "You'll want to pay attention to their manna cost, that's the little stars under their name" he said showing Harry a three-star card of a plant looking monster, "up to four stars can be summoned straight out but five and higher requires a sacrifice."

"Sacrifice!"

Andrew chuckled, "In game only, you don't have to slaughter a chicken or anything."

"Oh" Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

Directions given, he went about his task. Andrew watched him pace the wall back and forth. He could have given him some advice on what to pick, the type, theme, or style of a good deck, but he didn't.

Part of it was curiosity, seeing what he'd pick without any bias. He'd seen lots of people do this and it was interesting the things you'd learn about them. Also, it hardly mattered what he chose. He wouldn't know how to use them anyway.

"Done" he declared several minutes later.

"Alright, let's have a look."

The shopkeep perused the young wizard's selection and wasn't too surprised by what he saw. There was no rhyme or reason to the selection, he'd just grabbed what he thought looked cool. There was at least one of every type, only two of which were above four stars.

At least he was listening, Andrew thought.

"Okay, that just leaves spells and traps. Probably do traps next."

"What's that?"

"Traps you can lay out on the field and activate when your opponent summons or attacks. You can lay magic cards out like that too but you can only activate them during your turn."

"This is getting complicated."

Andrew smiled and chose three cards and added them to Harry's deck.

"These are very basic traps so you shouldn't have any trouble using them. Now, magic cards."

"And what are those."

"Mostly cards that can be used to enhance your monsters, or weaken your opponents."

"Okay, that seems simple enough."

"Yeah, what's not so simple is that certain cards can only be used on certain types of monsters. Which is a problem since the monsters you've picked are all a different type. Was that intentional?"

Harry shook his head, "oops."

"Beginner mistake, something to keep in mind going forward but, that means your next twelve selections must be made carefully."

Andrew, who knew these shelves like the back of his hand, picked out a dozen while explaining to his captive audience why he picked them and how they could be used. He then proceeded to give Harry a full rundown of the game. Harry listened intently but felt like he really wasn't absorbing much.

They'd moved their conversation back into the shop by the time Hagrid returned, carrying with him a beautiful snowy owl. You would have needed a sand blaster to get the smile off Harry's face.

"I think this has been the best day of my life" he said to Hagrid at dinner that night.

"Glad ta ear it 'Arry" the giant man said.

The part Harry found most touching was he actually believed the big man meant it. People didn't say nice things to him. Then he remembered, he had to go back to them.

"I don't want to go back to the Dursley's" he said, drooping.

Hagrid drooped a bit too, "I don blame ya. Unpleasant folk ain't they."

Harry just nodded morosely.

Hagrid remained quiet for a few moments, contemplating, then waved Tom the barkeep over.

"Say Tom, you got a room 'Arry ere could rent for the week afore ee heads off to Ogwarts?"

"I reckon I probably do" he said thoughtfully, "one of the luxury suite's is open."

"I don't really need anything that nice" the boy said timidly.

"Well, it's not so much about what you need, is it. I'll tell you what, you spend the week in that suite, free a charge, and when you leave, I rename it the Harry Potter suite."

Harry gave the barkeep a baffled look, "Why would you want to do that?"

"So I can charge more for it" said Tom, "people pay good money for the 'Minister's' suite, but they'll pay even more for the 'Harry Potter' suite. Minister's come and go but there's only one Harry Potter."

Harry didn't understand it but he was smart enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Once Tom had left to prepare Harry's room the young man turned to his massive new friend to fill in some blanks. He'd been getting hints all day that people knew something about him that he didn't and it was time to find out.

Despite looking very uncomfortable, the giant man made his best effort to answer, "The first thing ya gotta understand Harry is that not all wizards are good."