Harry Potter: Scrabble (1/1)

Title: Scrabble
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: The Slytherins take Scrabble very seriously.
Character(s): Draco Malfoy, Milicent Bulstrode, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Severus Snape, Madame Pomfrey, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle
Wrod Count: 2569
Notes: Written before OotP was released.

“Ha!” shrieked Draco Malfoy. “Triple word score.” Proving him right, the board undulated and absorbed letters he’d just lined up, turning them bright silver. The scorekeeper, a small statue of a robed wizard, carrying in one hand a lantern and a scythe in the other, tapped the butt of his long scythe and the count reflected Malfoy’s impressive showing.

Bulstrode: 49, Malfoy: 47, Parkinson: 39, Zabini: 30

As always, Bulstrode was in the lead, thanks to hours spent with her beloved dictionary. The Slytherins took Scrabble very seriously.

Contrary to popular belief in the Muggle world, Scrabble had been invented three centuries ago, by a witch by the name of Philipa Wordsmith. Philipa had been dreadfully concerned with the state of her children’s vocabulary and that of magical society on the whole. She’d watched the drastic decline in literacy, since languages had been removed from the Hogwarts curriculum. And so, her solution, knowing that most people have abominable attention spans, was to create a game.

Bizarrely enough, her rather obvious attempt at subversive education caught on, and Scrabble became the pastime of witches and wizards less inclined to Quidditch than their more athletic counterparts. Of course, it hadn’t been called Scrabble, in Philipa’s day, and had undergone several names changes, until the modern name had been settled on. Some of the stranger names it had held were Grab, Spellditch, and Wooterwans.

It was a surety that it would eventually be renamed again, as the ever-growing professional associations never could agree on anything - the infighting on the circuits was intense and unforgiving.

While the European circuit was comparatively pleasant, especially when one considers that there usually were multiple fatalities in Asia, it was still enough to scare the toughest of Quidditch hooligans away from attending matches. The British contingent was nearly always dominated by former Slytherins, though no one had bothered to look into the reason for it. The players themselves only mentioned that Scrabble status was very important in the house.

And important it was. Having lost their primary sources of pride - dueling, the Dark Arts, competitive poetry readings, and Quidditch, ever since the rules had been tightened - the Snake House had to have something, by which to define standards. Without a mostly unbiased mechanism to establish hierarchy, the house’s natural competitiveness and scheming ran amok. During the two weeks that Scrabble had been banned, back in 1937, six students had been sent to the hospital wing, the prefects summarily banished and the Head Boy disrobed, bound and tossed into the lake.

The annual Scrabble championships were known to fatally ruin reputations, spread heartbreak and topple Slytherin regimes. The game was therefore taken very seriously.

Malfoy sneered at his competition and drew his wand. He shifted his gaze from the others and turned it to the difficult task at hand - getting new letters. The gold letter bag sat quiescently for now, so he slowly inched his left hand towards it.

A hush fell on the spectators and some vainly tried to push closer, but were neatly stopped by Crabbe and Goyle, who, like always, worked the crowd.

“Come on,” he whispered under his breath. The game had been underway for several hours now - the scores only as low as they were due to the usually counter-cheating - and the bag was getting testy. This would take finesse, but luckily he’d enough of that to charm every girl in the year, and enough left over to start in on the boys. Assuming that Parkinson didn’t gut him after the first.

His fingers brushed against the shiny fabric and it rustled restlessly, still playing coy. In one smooth, practiced motion he brought he hand down against the bag, hard, and shot off a stunning spell. The bag, being sneaky, managed to curl enough of itself away just in time, and flapped in his grip, trying to break free.

He managed to wrestle it flat against the table, one handed, but it successfully dodged his every spell.

Then, every Scrabble player’s worst nightmare happened - the bag went on attack.

He shrieked in fright, as it slipped from his fingers and launched itself at his face. Oh no, he thought. Not the face. Ruthlessly, the bag scratched its rough side against his delicate complexion and its corners smacked him like four tiny, embroidered fists. In panic now, he tried to rip it from his face, pulling and tugging and even trying to shred it with his short nails. But all was to no avail.

Finally, admitting defeat, he signaled that he wanted to take his last time out, by waving his hands madly and kicking his feet. A gong sounded and the bag hopped off his face. Malfoy, by this time half-suffocated, sucked in a long, shuddering breath and glared at it. It just waved a corner and toddled off, back to its resting place.

He fell back to the floor and lay still, not capable of much else. Madame Pomfrey rushed to his side and quickly checked him over, all the while muttering about Mad Snakes and silly games. “You seem to be fine, Mr. Malfoy, but I wouldn’t suggest another go with the bag.”

“How do you suggest I play, then?” he sneered. “Oh I know, maybe if I ask it nicely, it’ll give up letters!”

“Perhaps,” she said, clearly short of patience. “You should stop playing.” A collective gasp sounded from the crowd.

“Are you mad, woman?” Zabini jumped to his feet, waving his letter holder. “We are Slytherin, and therefore we play!” Cheers sounded, all over the common room and chants of ‘Go Malfoy’ and ‘Za-bi-bi’ swelled. Bulstrode and Parkinson’s supporters, not to be outdone, added their voices to the clamor.

Pomfrey only rolled her eyes, used to their antics and retreated to her accustomed spot on the couch, next to Professor Snape. “You could at least pretend to control them, Severus,” she hissed.

He looked up from the Potions journal he’d been absorbed in and sneered, eerily like young Malfoy. “Why should I do that?”

The mediwitch sighed and crossed her arms in frustration. “Hate this job… Damn Dumbledore and his vague job descriptions… Should go work at Durmstrang… least I’d only have to bring people back from the dead, there…” Snape merely arched an eyebrow at her mutterings and calmly turned back to his journal.

“Time’s up Malfoy,” said a gleeful Zabini. Malfoy moaned and slowly righted himself. By taking his time out, he’d accepted a ten point loss, which put Parkinson ahead of him. And while Parkinson winning might have some very personal benefits, he wasn’t ready to lose the championship for the third year in a row. Not even for incredible sex.

The four finalists settled back into position, each focusing on the board to exclusion of all else. The gong sounded and the crowd went wild.

Bulstrode’s turn. She considered the board carefully, mentally reviewing the internal dictionary she’d built up over the years. All the really good players had one, but there was such a problem with memory augmentation charms that everyone had to be thoroughly checked before taking their places at the board.

She saw several very good possibilities, but even with her lead, she needed to close up the board and ensure her next few turns would be fortuitous. If they’d been playing Asian rules, she could have easily counted the letters, but the traditional British Scrabble had a limitless bag… Suddenly everything clicked for her and she lined up her letters.

“‘That’?” Parkinson exclaimed. “You spent ten minutes deliberating, only to come up with… ‘that’?”

Bulstrode smirked at the other girl and nodded to the score. She might not go in for the flashy moves, like Malfoy, but she understood strategy, and that’s why she always won. It also helped that her bag technique was legendary. Even Professor Snape, a former intra-House champion himself, had expressed his admiration.

She turned her steely gaze to the bag and made ready. As if it knew who was hunting it, it fluttered nervously. With a yell of primal rage, she pounced - the bag never knew what hit it.

“Good show, Ms. Bulstrode,” Snape yelled over the cheers of the crowd, in a rare moment of praise. Even her three competitors congratulated her on a spectacular catch.

“She’ll go all the way to the worlds,” whispered one spectator.

“The new Slytherin World Champion,” said another.

A glowing Bulstrode ripped four letters from the bag, and negligently tossed it back to its spot. The crowd heckled the bag - they’d all felt its wrath in the past and like any good Slytherins, enjoyed seeing something formerly proud ground into the dirt. The bag affected a sneer (through a complicated process involving vectors and refraction) and curled up.

Parkinson surveyed the board. Bulstrode had tied her hands rather neatly, but for one thing. She had a Blank Letter. She put down all her letters but the Blank and just as the board was ready to spit them back at her, she pushed in her secret weapon. Xenophobia. Ha!

Her bag technique had always been her weaker point - her prowess lay in her ability to come up with unlikely words and rather odd luck, in drawing Blanks. So she was rather pleased that Bulstrode had just given the bag such a thrashing. If she was lucky, it was still too winded to fight her much, but after a nice turn with her, it’d be even angrier when it got to Zabini. She shot him a wicked smirk and petted the bag with her long nails.

It almost seemed to… purr.

“That’s… that’s cheating.” Zabini, high-strung as he always was when safely inside Slytherin, sputtered and pounded the table. The board, not at all liking the treatment hissed at him. It slid across the table and pinched his fist. He reared back in pain and anger, and fumed from a safe distance.

Still grumbling, Zabini stared dejectedly at the board. The very unfriendly board. The very unfriendly and growling board.

He had three options, really: try for ‘existence’ and risk having his hand bitten off by the board and then his arm by the bag; absorb the point loss and go for ‘do’; or run. You see, competitive Scrabble did not allow the players to piss away the time with tiny words - at least four letters must be placed, or the points were assigned negatively.

Running was becoming very tempted. And really, he should have learned from the debacle of last year, when he’d ended up in the hospital wing for three weeks and accrued a deficit of thirty nine points, which was still better than his housemates could have done against these three. Slytherins took Scrabble very seriously.

Far back in the Zabini line, the pure Slytherin bloodline was a lone, shameful Gryffindor. That might have accounted for his next move, strange as it was. He squared his shoulders, rolled up his sleeves, glared at the board and reached for his letters.

The crowd fell silent, as if it knew what he was about to attempt - this was shaping up to be a Scrabble match of firsts!

Zabini eyed the board, and in its own way, the board eyed the player. He leaned in and reached out both hands. The board skittered, itching to dodge his attempts at placing his letters. Zabini dropped his first letter but the board, rippled and shot it off into the crowd. Several ricochets later, a muffled yelp was the only indication of its final resting place. Suddenly Zabini slammed an elbow into the board, then another - he had it pinned, securely.

The board, much like the bag, thrashed wildly, trying to dislodge the student, but Zabini, desperate (or brave) at this point clambered up from his seat on the floor and kneed it. Pinning it with all four limbs, he delicately maneuvered his letters into place and spelled out ‘existence’.

Zabini managed to extract his letters fairly quickly, after his showing with the board. There wasn’t a quiet Slytherin in the room.

After the cheers died down, all eyes turned to Draco Malfoy, hoping he’d be able to pull some equally wild trick. Not that they were really rooting for him, they simply wanted the quality of entertainment to stay high.

Malfoy leaned his chin against folded hands and seriously considered his situation. He needed a massive point gain and he needed it now, before Bulstrode did whatever she was planning. She had that look again.

He could try… but no. He considered his letters. It might just be possible…

Malfoy glared at the malevolent game pieces. He wasn’t going through what he had, his last turn.

He snuck a surreptitious glance at Madame Pomfrey, still fuming on the couch. Catching Crabbe’s eye, he motioned to the mediwitch. Crabbe nodded, mercifully understanding his instructions and slowly moved through the crowd to Pomfrey’s position.

Bulstrode, Parkinson and Zabini all watched him carefully, unsure of what his move was - he still seemed to be deliberating.

A sudden shriek behind him, signaling Crabbe’s successful interference, told Malfoy that it was time to make his move. He raised his wand and hissed. “Crucio!” The board fell limp. “Crucio!” and the bag too, collapsed.

Not even looking to see if the mediwitch was still distracting, he hurriedly lined up his letters and watched them sink into the board. Seconds later, the room erupted again into pandemonium. The board flashed dully - still a little tired - reading, ‘Juggernaut.’ Not only had Malfoy’s gamble to quell the raging game pieces, he’d found the Secret Word.

He outright grinned, for the first time in years as the scorekeeper doubled his, and pushed his name above Bulstrode’s, who was strangely blank. No matter. He felt sure he was going to win this time. He took his letters like a cat takes a canary and waved Bulstrode on.

She… smirked.

Rather than engage in any of the antics the others had indulged in, she merely leaned over and laid out her letters, glaring at the battered board. She smirked, then leaned back on her heels, revealing…

Antidisestablishmentarianism.

For several minutes, the spectators stood in shocked silence. Then the scorekeeper moved and they erupted into cheers. Bulstrode had taken the game yet again. She smiled serenely, as if the outcome had never been in question, which it might well not have been.

The four players took their ritual bows, and Bulstrode was carted off by the crowd to be cheered even further, leaving behind a distraught Zabini, Parkinson and Malfoy.

“How does she do it,” Zabini wailed.

“Well Blaise,” replied Malfoy dully. “It’s clear that she’s a genius and therefore… therefore, we shouldn’t be upset by her winning.”

“Oh yes, Draco. That makes it ever so much better.” He stalked off to pout in some dark corner of the room and begin plotting for next year’s match.

As a party erupted around her, a confused Madame Pomfrey pushed Crabbe off of her, asking, “What? What, is it over? Thank god.” With that she stalked out of the room, hissing at all who dared to speak with hear, looking, strangely enough, quite a bit like Snape.

“Well Draco,” said Parkinson, placing a hand on her rival’s knee. “Shall we commiserate?”

He grinned wickedly and stood. “Oh yes, let’s.” They ran off up the stairs, past the benevolently oblivious Snape.




END