Chapter 222: An Overwhelming Response
"We'll see about that, Ron," Draco said disdainfully, glancing at Ron's battered old chess pieces. "Hopefully your skills are at least a little better than Potter's."
Harry and Ron searched around for quite a while before finally finding Hermione, who was about to face off against Pansy Parkinson.
A strange feeling suddenly crept into Harry's mind.
He had carefully read through the tournament rules. Matchups were supposedly random, and even students from the same house could end up facing each other.
Yet after walking around and observing several matches, he noticed that most of the Slytherins were paired against Gryffindors.
Was that intentional?
No… that couldn't be right. There was no reason for anyone to rig things like that.
Harry shook his head. He was probably overthinking it.
What he didn't know was that Russell had indeed designed the matchmaking system that way on purpose. Even Harry's opening match against Malfoy had been deliberately arranged.
After all, rivalries were far more entertaining than friendly in-house matches.
And judging by the crowds gathered around Harry and Malfoy's board earlier, Russell's instincts had been completely correct.
Pansy rested her violet-painted fingernail against the serpent-crowned queen piece, her face openly dripping with contempt.
"You know," she drawled, "Muggle-born witches are best suited to being pawns."
She pushed her black pawn to D5 with a sharp scraping sound.
The Slytherin snake pieces hissed in unison, dripping venom onto the board's surface. Thin trails of green smoke rose from the squares before the board restored itself moments later.
To be fair, the Slytherins had clearly spent a fortune customizing their chess sets.
Their pieces all came with elaborate magical effects and polished aesthetics—far beyond the mass-produced sets most Gryffindors used.
But in the end, those were just cosmetic details.
What truly mattered was the skill of the player.
Hermione's wizard chess set was made of aged bronze, deliberately crafted with weathered rust stains. She loved things that looked ancient—even if the antiquity was artificial.
She tapped the edge of the board lightly with her wand.
The bronze pawns shook off flakes of rust.
"C3 forward."
The white pawn advanced two spaces, raising its ashwood shield into a defensive formation.
By move twenty-two, Pansy traded her rook for Hermione's bishop and let out a mocking laugh.
"So that's it? Out of tricks already?"
"A bookworm is still a bookworm. You might ace exams, but you should quit chess while you're ahead."
Her black queen surged into the third rank, turning toward the white rook like a predator sizing up prey.
Hermione calmly adjusted glasses she wasn't even wearing.
"G5. Rook to the flank."
The white rook, shaped like a stone gargoyle, suddenly spread its wings and glided into position.
As Pansy tried to pull her queen back, she abruptly realized she had trapped her own retreat path.
"You think stalling tactics will help?" Pansy snapped.
Her earrings jingled violently as her black knight charged forward, smashing apart White's final frontline pawn.
By move thirty-seven, only six pieces remained on the board:
Hermione's king, queen, and rook.
Pansy's king, rook, and bishop.
Pansy had already fallen into a severe disadvantage, and her clenched fists slowly tightened beneath the table.
Impossible.
This had to be some kind of illusion.
How could she possibly lose to a Muggle-born first-year?
"Check."
Hermione's bronze queen lifted the hem of her dress in a graceful curtsy. The tome in her hands suddenly flipped open, its pages projecting the illusion of a colossal clock across the chessboard.
Time itself seemed to freeze.
Pansy's king was pierced through the chest by bronze spikes, and the throne behind it collapsed with a thunderous crash.
"…You win this time."
Pansy Parkinson abruptly shoved herself to her feet. Without even bothering to collect her chess pieces, she turned and prepared to leave.
"Your pieces are still waiting for you," Hermione said softly.
She could see Pansy's chessmen desperately pleading for their mistress to take them with her.
"They're useless junk now," Pansy replied coldly. "Failures don't deserve to remain under me. I'll buy a new set."
Hermione didn't know how to respond to that.
After carefully packing away her own pieces, she left as well. As for Pansy's abandoned set, someone from the Dark Moon Circus would clean it up later.
The tournament continued at a feverish pace.
Before long, the first-year finals arrived.
As expected, Ron made it all the way to the championship match.
What nobody had expected, however, was that the other finalist would be Draco.
"Not bad, Weasley," Malfoy admitted, a flicker of surprise flashing through his eyes.
"Save the talk for the board," Ron replied coldly. "We'll settle it there."
The match began.
Draco tapped the edge of the board with his serpent-headed wand. Black's C5 pawn lunged forward, brandishing its spear with a savage roar.
Ron tugged at the faded red-and-gold crest on his collar as White's E4 pawn slammed into position.
The Gryffindor pieces looked battered and worn—the bishop's tome had lost its cover, and the knight's lance was wrapped in old bandages—but when they formed ranks, their collective battle cry actually silenced Malfoy's army for a brief moment.
"A pile of scrap metal," Malfoy sneered.
By move ten, Malfoy's black knight vaulted deep into enemy territory, locking onto Ron's rook.
"Don't tell me your openings are secondhand too?"
His black queen swept forward dramatically, smashing White's F3 pawn aside as her skirts billowed through the air.
On move fifteen, Ron suddenly launched a double-rook pincer attack.
As White's rook from A1 thundered across the third rank, Malfoy abruptly realized he had walked into a carefully disguised trap.
Ron's formation perfectly sealed off the diagonal route his queen needed for defense.
"Knight to G5. Intercept."
The muscles beneath Ron's freckles twitched faintly.
The chestnut-colored knight charged through the air, its rusted iron hooves scorching the H7 square black.
Black was forced to trade away a bishop, only for the retreat route to be blocked by White's advancing pawn.
On the left side of the board, the hunting formation Charlie had once taught Ron began to take shape—a triangular kill zone built from three seemingly minor pieces.
Malfoy loosened his silver-and-green tie.
On move twenty-three, Black castled with a sharp gust of wind.
He attempted to trap White's king using a queenside pawn chain, never noticing that Ron's E-file pawn had already slipped through six defensive layers unnoticed.
When that chipped, weathered white pawn finally endured the pressure and promoted into a queen, the newly crowned ashwood queen immediately pinned Black's bishop to the back rank.
By move thirty-one, beads of sweat glittered at Malfoy's temples like shards of ice.
His prized black queen was now trapped inside the cage Ron had constructed, completely unable to move.
"Check."
Ron's voice was icy.
The white queen and rook formed a cross-shaped noose, while the newly promoted ashwood queen sealed off the final diagonal escape.
Malfoy's black king staggered backward under the relentless barrage of killing moves.
Even at the very end, Malfoy still couldn't believe he had lost to Ron.
Lost to a disgrace to pure-blood families.
To be fair, Malfoy's skill wasn't bad at all.
But against Ron, it simply wasn't enough.
Ron's talent and dedication toward wizard chess were on a completely different level.
Of course, part of that came from his childhood. Growing up with almost no toys, wizard chess had been one of the few ways he could pass the time.
In terms of sheer experience, there were probably professors at Hogwarts who hadn't played as many games as Ron had.
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