HP: The Salazar's Heir Chapter 36

Chapter 36: A Game of Chess (½)


Harry, Hermione, and Ron stood aghast, staring at the massive hole in the wall. The door they had been trying so hard to open now lay on the floor, shattered to bits.


“That could have been done?” Hermione, who had gone through all the spells in her mind to help open the door, felt embarrassed. “Why didn’t I think of it?”


“Because it was stupid,” Sebastian answered honestly. “And also because we have not been taught most of the explosive spells in class yet.”


“Did I... go through all that trouble for nothing?” Harry looked down, feeling disheartened that his hard work was all for naught.


“You did it the right way,” Sebastian said, trying to uplift Harry. “I just went for the easier way.”


Sebastian didn’t want Harry to feel bad; he just wanted to explore if there were other ways around the challenges. 


Which there were.


“This was a reckless method, and if it hadn’t worked, we would have definitely needed the key,” he reassured Harry, placing a hand on his shoulder. “So, don’t feel bad about it, Harry.”


He wanted Harry not to feel bad, but he also didn’t want to go through the long trials.


“And there is most definitely going to be another trial that we have to clear,” Sebastian said, almost certain about it.


“What makes you so sure?” Hermione wondered. “And how many more do you think there are?”


To answer this, Sebastian merely shrugged. “It feels like an entry test to a major one.”


He then looked at the girl. “As for how many of these there are, we will have to check for ourselves.”


To be fair, Sebastian found it comical. They could have just gone through the opening, and it would have answered their questions. But they decided to waste time talking.


He turned and calmly walked through the opening, fully expecting something to come flying at him. But surprisingly, none of that happened.


‘This is not a death trap, is it?’


He had figured it out long ago. These traps weren’t meant to harm. If anything, they were rather simple.


He even dared to say that it was easy.


“By Merlin, you weren’t wrong,” Ron gasped, looking at the scene in front of him.


Even Harry and Hermione were amazed.


Why?


Because what was before them were massive constructs that stood taller than them. And the most interesting of them all was what those constructs depicted.


“Chess?”


Chess.


Gargantuan statues depicting pieces of a chess game.


“How do we even move them?” Ron asked in wonder.


“Of course with magic, doofus,” Hermione said. “They have to be magical.”


Sebastian couldn’t deny Hermione’s statement. He did feel a slight sense of magic from the pieces.


“How do we move them?” Harry repeated the question, adding a bit more to it. “Even if they are magical?”


Sebastian looked around for a possible door, but this time around, there was nothing.


It was a massive four by four room made entirely of stone that they were stuck inside. Worse was the fact that he could not sense any magic leaking from any of the walls, which made it impossible for him to just randomly blast through the walls.


‘Unlike with the locked door, these walls might actually be the reason this room is standing,’ he wondered. ‘If I simply try to blast through them, the entire room might crumble down on us.’


“If they are magical, we might be able to command them,” Ron said, suddenly drawing everyone’s attention. “What I mean is, if we are supposed to play this, the pieces have to move according to our wishes.”


‘There is a catch though,’ Sebastian mused, ‘There always is.’


“These pieces are already in a certain place,” Hermione frowned. “It is as if someone already played a portion of it.”







“This is a match that they want us to continue,” Sebastian said, walking towards the pieces. “There has to be a definitive winning move in this match.”


Till now, there had been a perfect answer for each of the trials, and while they had been bruteforcing most of it, it could be solved by following the strategies.


But what was the move for this game?


“Black does not have a queen,” Harry said. “Should we take the white side?”


“I don’t think we can,” Ron said almost immediately, which confused both of his friends. And the one to clear their confusion was Sebastian.


“This is a match that we are continuing,” he said. “We are standing against the white, so I doubt we are supposed to take that side.”


“We can still try,” Ron said, walking towards the pieces. “But how?”


“Can we order them around?” Harry asked, looking at Ron.


“I can try,” the ginger said before looking at Sebastian. “You got any good moves?”


“You make the first move,” the heir replied, not wanting to be the one to move first.


This made Ron groan, but he knew that he had to make a move if he wanted to get out of this place.


“Ugh, fine,” he said, staring at the pieces. After about a minute, he finally said, “Pawn to e6.”


It was an order to the white pawn that stood on tile e5. Unfortunately for them, the pieces did not move.


“Let me try for the black side,” Sebastian said, before ordering, “Bishop to e4.”


He wanted the black bishop to move from c6 to e4. It was a random move, but he wanted to see if anything started to make any movement.


Unfortunately, once again, the pieces refused to move.


“What if we…” Hermione drew everyone’s attention towards her. “What if we have to mount them to move them?”


This made everyone freeze and look at the structures in front of them.


The board that the pieces were on was massive, and the pieces were definitely big enough that the students could climb on top of them.


“That… might just be it,” Sebastian frowned, not liking the suggestion, but unable to deny the possibility.


But there was an issue.


“But do we all have to get on top of a piece?”


Harry’s question was the issue.


If it was just the king that controlled the pieces, it was fine. But for them to have to move each piece individually, that didn't sound good to Sebastian.


Why?


“We are only four, and there are multiple pieces that need to be moved,” Sebastian said. “It is not very fair that we have to occupy a piece to move it, is it now?”


However, that didn't mean what Harry said was wrong.


Maybe it was how the game was meant to be played, and Sebastian wanted that to not be the case real bad.


“There is only one way to find out,” Ron said, as he got on top of one of the black knights. “Pawn to e6.”


And once again, that failed.


“Harry, get on,” Ron said. “You too, Hermione and Sebastian.”


Hermione and Harry nodded before rushing towards the pieces. Meanwhile, Sebastian took a step back. “I will look for the time being.”


He really didn’t want to play it that way.


Ron wanted him to take a piece, but he couldn’t force the boy either. But as he saw Hermione taking a rook and Harry taking a bishop, he felt happy enough.


However, as the three tried to make a move, something very unexpected happened.


“The queen!” Harry yelled. “The white queen is moving!”


The four students, who had no idea what or how the pieces began to move, felt aghast as they saw the white queen moving straight towards the black pawn.


“It can take the pawn…” Sebastian frowned, wondering how it was planning on taking it.


But as he saw the queen piece move forward, he knew that this wasn’t a simple chess game.


“No…” Ron paled as he saw the queen piece moving towards the pawn. “It…”


And in one fine swoop, the queen decimated the pawn to dust.


“It is broken…”


That made them realize one grave risk.


“If we lose our piece, we might die.”


The pieces took the place of the other piece by destroying it. And if that happened to one of the pieces that they were on top of, they might get crushed along with the pieces.


And this left Sebastian with only one possibility.


‘Do I… do I have to destroy the chess pieces too?’


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[[A/N: Brute force or a proper chess game? 👀 ]]