INTERLUDE:Ronald Bilius Weasley

Seven Weeks Ago

The Burrow

Night Harry Fought Voldemort

Harry had just finished explaining himself for the third time in a row, and the way Moody was carrying on, there would soon be a fourth. So, Harry, not-too-subtly, suggested that the "official" members of the Order consider the facts that he'd already done what they were saying was impossible and shouldn't have done, and get over themselves as quickly as possible. For that, he and all the other "children" were expelled from the kitchen to the living room, and told to wait until they were called back in.

Sighing to himself, and seeing that despite the homey atmosphere, there really was just not enough room in the Burrow for all these people, and with Grimmauld Place potentially compromised, they would need a new place for meetings.

Harry chuckled to himself as he quietly and silently took a look at the wards currently protecting the Burrow and it's inhabitants. It was impressive, powerful and potent enough to keep out the Dark Lord and all his followers obviously, but it was only temporary at that. The so-called Dark Lord was a master ward breaker, having gotten around obstacles that even the eldest Weasley son, Bill, who was a professional ward breaker with Gringotts, would call absolutely impossible to break down singlehandedly. What could not be gotten through today could fall like wet tissue paper tomorrow.

Harry knew a few wards that could certainly improve things, and even more so had designs for a near-fortress of magical strength and ingenuity. The problem, however, lay in that Harry, despite the boost from being merged with his other half, did not have the raw magical power to pull of those special wards, and it would require a few weeks of constant work, even with all the magical clones he could create to rebuild the Burrow from the ground up, which is what would basically be required.

Still, that was for later on, and he figured they would just be sitting here waiting for about another hour before the rest of the Order finally pulled their heads out of their arses. Plenty of time for him to test some of his new knowledge against his old friend.

"Hey Ron," he called, moving over to his red haired friend, "From the sounds of it, they're going to be in there a while, and I'm still to wound up. Care for a game of wizard's chess?"

Ron's eyes immediately lit up. Being the youngest brother, and have a sister that is as good as in many aspects, he'd always felt belittled and like he wasn't good enough. Except, when it came to Wizard's chess! His father had started teaching him the game young, as he had Ron's older brothers, but Ron quickly took to it like a bird to flight. Once he learned the rules, and how to properly play the game, Ron beat his teacher quite easily.

From there, he quickly moved on to each of his brothers, mother, and sister, sticking with it until he'd learned all of their basic strategies until he could beat them every single time they played. If they came at him with a new strategy, as Percy almost always did, he could usually figure it out and fully adapt to it within ten moves. At first. He even beat the twins when they played together and were cheating! (They still had trouble figuring out how he'd done that)

By the time he entered Hogwarts, Ron pretty much thought the only thing he was any good at was playing chess, and his first few years more or less proved him right. He taught the game to Harry, but his raven-haired best friend didn't seem to have the knack for it that he did. Still, it was only chess. Wizard's chess, but still just chess.

He eventually learned other skills, focused on Quidditch, magic, and becoming a better all-around wizard and passing his OWLs. Nevertheless, he loved a good game of chess and always played when he could talk someone else into being beat by him. Harry had stopped playing him shortly before the whole Triwizard Tournament mess. So, having someone who's sworn never to play against him again suddenly challenge him to a game was absolutely brilliant in his mind.

"Sure!" Ron raced forward and quickly set up the Weasley's rather battered chess set.

Five minutes and six moves later, Ron, and everyone else in the room, were staring flabbergasted at the chessboard. For the first time ever, since he was eight years old and Percy had surprised him with a new combination strategy, Ronald Weasley was defeated at Wizard's chess!

"That was brilliant Harry!" Fred congratulated the young mage.

"Mad Brilliant!" George agreed. Then, together, they asked, "How did you do it?"

"Care for another game to see if you can figure it out?" Harry asked aloud with a cocky smirk on his face. He could have been talking to the twins, or Ron, but it didn't matter as Ron immediately reset the board.

Six minutes and twelve moves later, Ron growled stared with uncanny concentration at what had happened twice in a row. Harry was likewise staring hard at the board, but for different reason. He glanced back and forth between the board and Ron, and though nobody could tell outwardly, he was very curious.

"Another game?" he offered. The board was reset in a flash.

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was quiet, hushed by the surprising amount of tension in the air. It was like watching to clashing titans, unnerving, but impossible not to watch and pay attention. Harry was paying almost as much attention to Ron as he was the game, and he was very intrigued by what he saw.

As a Battle Mage, he'd been trained in the use of strategy and basic tactics and more complex wartime and battle oriented thinking since the age of eleven. It took all of that training and experience to beat Ron those first two times, and it was taking all that and more to keep from being soundly defeated this time, as Ron was displaying skills that surprised the experienced Battle Mage. He wouldn't call them tactical skills, not by far, but there was the seed for it to grow.

Another twenty minutes later, over a hundred moves made across the board in a flashing display of command and strategy, Ron was looking panicked and Harry was concentrating solely upon the game. He knew there was something more to his friend than anyone else suspected, but he needed full concentration on the game, otherwise he would soundly lose and his two wins so far called a fluke.

Fourteen moves later sealed the deal and Ron cried out in shock, while everyone else in the room just stared at the board, their jaws hanging open in awe. Harry finally took his eyes off the board and glanced back up at his redheaded friend. On the board, two Kings stood squared off against each other with a Rook each to take the other's King and other pieces; Knight and Pawn, to take them should either try to dodge. It was a draw.

Unfortunately, by this time, the Order had finished their arguments and Harry was called back in to explain himself one last time, and shortly after that they were all sent off to bed.

Two Weeks Later

12 Grimmauld Place

Day After Cleaning the Attic

"Hey Harry," Ron greeted his friend as he entered the private study Harry seemed to have acquired as his own, "Hermione said that you wanted to see me about something? Hope it doesn't have to do with more cleaning. The attic was more than enough, thank you!"

"No, no more cleaning," Harry chuckled. "At least none on that scale. Basic cleanliness is still expected, Ronald. You may no longer be at home, but all that means is your mother is not here to pick up after you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ron grumbled. "So, what'cha need?"

"Tell me, have you been enjoying our chess matches of late?"

"Yeah! They're blood brilliant! Where'd you learn how to play so good, mate? I never figured half those moves that you used, and it took me a bloody long while to figure out how to counter'em!" Ron enthusiastically replied.

"Ron, it took you twelve moves and one game a piece to counter every one of my basic strategies," Harry observed.

"Yeah," said Ron, sitting down across from Harry, "Like I said, took me a long time!"

"Most people study chess strategies for entire lifetimes before they fully understand the concept of different strategies and the existence of counters for them. I know, because I happen to be one of them. It took me years of strategic training and tactical exercises to understand concepts that seem to come naturally to you."

"Yeah, so what?"

Harry chuckled again. "Well, I'm going to give you the same training I got and see where you can go with it. You already know chess, so introducing something simpler like chess, poker, or trading card games is pointless. Therefore I'm going to teach you another classical game that has aided military minds across the planet for centuries."

"Really? Wicked! Is this some sort of secret Battle Magic ritual?" he cackled.

Giving Ron a look that more or less said 'Huh? What? Are you out of your mind?' and replied, "No. I'm going to teach you Go."

"Go where?" Ron was confused.

"Proper phrasing should have been 'Go, what', but that's beside the point," Harry sighed. "The name of the game is Go. Just that, Go. G-O, Go. Go is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19 × 19 grid board. The object of the game is to control a larger part of the board than the opponent. This is your standard Go-board. Traditionally, unlike in chess, black goes first. I'll be black, so I can show you the basic rules of the game. Best way of learning is to actually play the game."

"So... where are the pieces?" asked Ron.

Harry gestured to two small clay jars on either side of the board, placed so that each was on the right-hand side for the respective player. Harry then reached into his jar and pulled out a small black circular stone, holding it between his middle finger and his index and ring fingers in the "correct" way of holding and placing the stone. He placed it on the board, clacking it onto the wood before delicately sliding it into place on a point where the grid lines met.

"Also," added Harry just as Ron was pulling out his own stone, "once the pieces are placed on the board, they cannot be moved. This is very different from chess, Ron. Also, as you can see, the pieces don't talk back and give hints. You have to figure out how to win on your own."

"Yeah, so, what's this have to do with Battle magic?" impatiently Ron asked.

"You'll see. Eventually. It's one of those; 'You have to figure it out on your own to understand it' kind of things. Now, like I said, the object of the game is to control most of the board. To do this, you must surround your opponent's pieces completely with your own. Each person can only place a single stone each turn, and this grid is only 19 by 19 lines in size, so while it allows for some interesting combinations, thankfully it can't go on forever. Once you have the other's stones surrounded, consider that 'conquered land', and the surrounded pieces might as well not even be there. There's also a recently added rule... recent being in the past five hundred plus years, give or take... that says your next move cannot return the game to a previous set-up. I'll show you what I mean when we get more pieces in play." Harry put his next stone by Ron's.

Curious as to why Harry was handling the stones in such a way, Ron asked about it. "Hey Harry, how come you're holding the pieces like that? Good luck charm or something?" Ron put down his next stone.

"No," said Harry, putting his next stone in play immediately, "It just happens to be the proper way to hold the stones when making place. Nothing magical about it, just shows to other players that you know how to play the game. Like good manners and so forth."

"Ah, gotcha," Ron nodded as he put down his next stone, and then froze when Harry's was down before he could blink. When he did blink, he realized very quickly what had happened. "How'd you do that?!" he exclaimed as he looked down at his surrounded stones.

"That, is what I am here to teach you," Harry chuckled and handed Ron back his stones and took up his own. "Let's start over, shall we?"

One Week Later

12 Grimmauld Place

Day Before Day Off

"Impressive," said Harry, "Most impressive. I think you're getting the hang of multi-tasking."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't patronize me, mate," Ron grumbled. "You're only doing this to me because I said that stupid Go game of yours was stupid! Knight to E7, Rook to D4, Pawn to F3, Check, King to A6, and Queen takes Knight G5, Check."

Harry made the appropriate moves on the five chessboards, all four were muggle boards and so could not move on their own and nobody trusted the few chess sets they'd found here in Grimmauld place very much. While Harry was controlling the pieces, Ron was across the room doing some Earth katas that Harry wanted him working on. The objective of this little exercise was to improve Ron's ability to multi-task, but at that same time improve his concentration. Getting him to stop begging for another Battle magic spell was just a bonus.

"Care to give Go another chance after we're done here?" Harry moved his own pieces and recited the positions as he made them. Ron immediately replied with the next moves, still doing the same practice moves, and Harry lost the two games where he'd been in check, and was very close to losing the other three.

"Maybe later," said Ron. "Right now, I'm enjoying beating you too much after all this time where we kept coming out to draws or you beating me by one move. I was starting to get worried there for a while."

"Yeah, about that..." Harry interrupted himself to announce his next moves on the three remaining games, then continued, "... I don't suppose you've noticed something about these five games here, have you?"

"No, not really," said Ron, right before he announced his next three moves for each game in turn. "Why? What do you..." Harry interrupted with his next moves, and Ron was already a few steps ahead of those moves, which is when it clicked, "...mean? Bloody hell!" He stopped moving entirely, almost getting up and going over to the boards himself, but Harry glared at him.

"Back in position! If you want, think of this as a test. A chess test. Keep practicing, and tell me your next moves!" snapped Harry. Ron complied.

"You're playing the way you used to," accused Ron after he resumed his katas, "Before you merged, when you were just... uh, Wizard-Harry. You're making the same kind of moves he would make!"

"Correct," Harry acknowledged. "Consider this the 'Easy' setting. After you beat me in these five games, we'll reset and I'll start playing you like I did that week leading up to my birthday, which if you'll recall, I started beating you in chess again after that. Then I'll start playing you for real after you beat me in those five games. Once you're able to come to a draw with me in all five games, we'll move it up to ten games with the same 'Easy', 'Medium', and 'Hard' levels each. Unless you'd like to give Go another chance after this game?"

Scowling, Ron barked out his next few moves and announced checkmate in all of the remaining games. "Reset the board!" he snarled, moving on to the Fire moves that he'd learned so far.

An hour later, Ron was sweating as Harry was playing him full out in ten simultaneous games, and teaching him new moves for Fire, Earth and Water all at the same time. Finally, another half an hour later, the torture was almost over, as Ron had fought Harry to a draw in nine of the games, and learned a bunch of new martial arts moves, and was only one move away from either putting Harry into Check, or calling out another draw for the last chess game.

Finally, "Queen takes Pawn E8, Check," Harry announced, which is exactly what Ron had been waiting for and sprung his trap. "Bishop takes Queen, Checkmate!" Ron crowed, leaping up into a flawless flame uppercut.

Harry stood there and moved the pieces, then continued to stand there and stare at the chessboard, the one game out of ten that he'd just lost, and he'd been playing all out too. "Huh," he grunted, going over the game move-by-move to understand what was done, and when he did, he had to say he was impressed. Ron had more or less thrown nine games, using amazing gambits and strategic insights that would have most chess masters wondering how he'd done it, all so he could win this one game, by distracting Harry with more elaborate plays in other locations.

"All right, now we play twenty games," Harry grinned, and turned around to reset the boards and conjure another ten for play.

"NO!" Ron cried out, collapsing to the ground as though in horrible agony. "All right! You win! I'll learn how to play Go! Argh!!"

Harry smiled and vanished all the chessboards and pulled out the still saved Go board and two comfy looking armchairs. "You get to be black this time. I'll have Kreacher get us some refreshments while you get comfy, all right?"

Ron just flipped him off and flopped into the appropriate chair.

One Week Later

12 Grimmauld Place

Half Hour Before Ginny Transforms

"This is impossible!" 'Ron' cried out. "You can't honestly expect me to play like this, do you?"

Harry chuckled and nodded his head. "The assignment is for you three to remain in animal form until you figure out the next step. You've got another five minutes before you're allowed to transform again, by the way. Besides, I'm told badgers are supposed to have very sensitive paws."

The red-brown furred badger across the Go board from Harry seemed to scowl, but it was really hard to tell, before reaching into it's jar and pulling out a black stone, held delicately between three of it's claws, where it then seemed to struggle a bit into putting the stone into one specific spot. Growling deep in it's throat, Ron's voice came from it's moving jaws, "Sensitive maybe, but dexterous and easy to manipulate they're not."

"Getting the hang of the game yet?" Harry asked as he placed his white stone appropriately.

"You're letting me win, aren't you?" 'Ron' asked in reply.

"Same deal as with multi-chess," their nickname for whenever Harry 'threatened' Ron with another multi-tasking exercise of playing so many games of chess while practicing martial arts, "I'm still playing you at the 'Easy' level until you've caught up and beat me every time. Then I'll move on to 'Medium', and when you're actually any good, I'll start playing you for real. But that's still a long way off here."

"And the reason you're making me do this while we're changing into animals every ten minutes?"

"Magical multi-tasking," Harry grinned.

Ron gave a badger-growl, then concentrated on the game, and not spilling the stones all onto the floor by slipping or moving his paw in the wrong way. Some time later, Ron was clearly the winner, but there were still a few moves to make, but nothing that would make any difference in the end. After staring at the board for those few minutes, Harry nodded in acknowledgment and announced, "OK. You win. I concede this game. Good game, Ron."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the badger grumbled. "It would mean a lot more to me if you were actually trying. Does this prove that I'm ready for 'Medium' yet?"

"Not quite, but you're getting there. Five more games where I have to concede instead of fighting to the end, then I'll put some more pressure on you," Harry grinned at his animal-shaped friend.

"Oh whatever," the badger huffed and moved out of the chair and fell heavily to the floor. "I've gotta go to the loo. Keep the game warm for me, eh?"

"Sure thing, mate," Harry nodded and started putting away all of the stones into their respective containers. A minute after Ron had left, a yellow and red-stripe furred feline prowled into the study. Harry took one look at the cat and grinned, saying, "Hey Ginny. How goes the assignment for you?"

"Do I really have to answer that?" she sighed and then leapt up onto the couch in the study. "I still don't see the entire point to all this. Why do we have to do this again?"

"To give you experience with the spell, to improve your control, and in hopes that one or all of you figure out how to do the tricks I told you all about," he said while putting away the last of the Go stones.

Suddenly, on the level above them, there was a loud thud followed very quickly by a shrill scream that was intermixed with the trumpet of an elephant. Harry winced as he could easily guess what had just happened.

"What was that?!" cat-Ginny hissed.

"That... was an unforeseen complication biting me on the ass," Harry sighed and fully put away the Go board and all associated pieces. "Ron had to use the loo. My guess is Hermione had to as well, but probably about a minute before Ron did."

"I'M SOOORRRRRREEEEEEEEEE—!" the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground floor echoed up from the open doorway, followed by a loud sound normally only heard on the African Savannah when you have one very pissed off PMS-ing elephant.

"HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD OF KNOCKING??" Hermione's human voice shouted down.

"Well it wasn't like I saw anything!" Ron indignantly shouted back. "Not anythin' worth seeing anyway!"

Harry and Ginny-the-cat both winced at the same time they heard a distinctive 'POP!' from the level above and was followed very shortly by a loud coughing-roar of an enraged, large feline. Half a second later they both witnessed a blur of busy ginger fur tearing past the open doorway, heading for the ground level where another 'POP!' sounded and the whining of a scared dog echoed up afterwards.

"Sounds like they accelerated the clock," said Harry. He nodded to the cat, who nodded back, and a 'POP!' later, a large brown-eyed panda was sitting there on the couch.

"They're probably going to be a while," he commented, "Might as well start going through this stuff, see if there's any of it we want to keep. Want to help?" She, the panda, nodded enthusiastically.

One Week Later

12 Grimmauld Place

Earlier in the Evening (Before Hermione rushed in)

"So, this is what you and Harry have been doing all this time when he's not teaching all of us together?" Ginny asked her brother as they sat across from each other in the study. Between them was a Go board.

Ron nodded, saying, "Yeah. It's called Go. Don't ask me why, that's just what Harry calls it. Anyway, he finally got me to agree to learn how to play proper, after making me play twenty games of chess, twenty, at the same time, mind you! Anyway, I'm hoping if you learn too, he'll get off me on learning it so much. I'm barely able to beat him as it is! Wonder how he got so good?"

Ginny gave her brother an incredulous look and rolled her eyes. "You can be so thick some times, you know that, right?" she snarled at him.

"What?" he responded defensively.

"Never mind," she rolled her eyes again. "So, how do you play?"

Rolling his eyes in response, he showed her the basics and how to play, then immediately trounced her just to show her how you were supposed to win. She played him one more time, after a lot more talk and some hints about basic strategy to use in the game. She did a lot better the second time. He still won, but he didn't completely dominate the entire game either, and that was good enough for Ginny seeing it was her first time playing and Ron had been playing it for weeks already.

They reset the board for a third game, and Ginny was concentrating heavily on the game, even subconsciously mimicking the way Ron had placed the stones on the board, the correct way to do it incidentally. They had pretty much established their territories, and each controlled a quadrant, but Ron already had Ginny on the defensive and she knew it. They both considered it to be a huge leap in understanding with the fact that she knew she was on the defensive when most first time players still had trouble with learning how to win.

After some rather risky gambits, she made some headway and gained some considerable territory when Ron suddenly turned defensive on her and began building up his own territory to keep from losing any more of it. Ginny almost immediately counterattacked and started moving further in, which unfortunately allowed Ron to sneak a stone every other turn into her own territory, until finally she realized what was happening, and it was too late to stop it. In five more turns, Ron closed the trap, and claimed almost all of Ginny's territory, effectively removing her stones from the board. Needless to say, Ginny never recovered and the rest of the game was more an exercise in desperation as Ginny struggled just to keep her stones on the board and stay in the game.

She managed to hold him off, playing defensively the entire way, for another twenty or so turns, which was surprisingly impressive, all things considered, even if the outcome was clear almost from the start.

An hour later, they both looked up at a strange sound and an odd breeze of cold air came from downstairs. When no other sounds came and the air immediately warmed right back up, they just shrugged and went back to their reading, Ron, his copy of Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches, and Ginny a book she'd found in the Black's Library entitled Jinxes SO Terrible They Should Be Unforgivable (But they're Not). She'd found a few new variations of her infamous Bat-Bogey Hex, and a few others that she was looking forward to trying out.

All of a sudden, Hermione burst in, asking for Harry. Which, of course, is when they all realized that none of them had seen him since dinner. Given that they were the only ones living in the building, it was pretty hard to miss somebody walking around or occupying one of the rooms. When the copy came in, however, it became obvious where Harry really was and what happened.

They left for the Ministry immediately.

END INTERLUDE