Author's Update - The original version of this chapter had duplicated scenes from Ch. 45. This was a mere oversight on my part, not some clever scheme.

March 6th

"I've already explored this area, Draco," Harry said, as they trudged up another flight of stairs. "We're heading towards the defense lecture hall, but if you go up the eighth flight of stairs you go back to my office. I pass this area every day." Draco nodded, a few steps ahead of Harry.

They'd been walking for a bit, Draco said he had something he wanted to show Harry. A secret room as a reward for Harry showing Draco his office, and this was the rare Saturday afternoon that had nothing scheduled. No Quidditch game, and the N.E.W.T. armies were battling in the streets of Hogsmeade so nothing worth spectating. Harry had considered pulling rank to go watch that battle. During negotiations with the mayor Professor Lockhart had graciously granted the residents permission to stun or harass any annoying students. Harry felt like it would be hysterical. But he'd also wanted to talk with Draco, who seemed pleased to have discovered a secret Harry didn't know. They passed the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry and then Draco veered over to a door that Harry had never noticed.

Draco swung the door opened and bowed dramatically.

"How. About, A nice game. Of Chess?" Draco said with no inflection, no emotion. Harry wandered into the majestic ballroom, the walls were covered with bookshelves, and there were small coffee tables and chairs all around the room, but the center of the ballroom was covered in an elegant eight by eight checkerboard, with chess pieces standing almost as tall as Harry.

Harry Potter chuckled. "You know, if you told me I'd sometimes regret how popular Muggle Movie Night has become, I wouldn't have believed you. Muggle or Wizard?"

Draco dropped his robotic impression, and switched to a formal, fluid voice that Harry called Draco's playwright "By Custom, By Law and by the 2nd ruling of the 18th Wizengamot, the challenged party in the duel gets the right to choose." Draco walked inside the room and the door shut behind him. The torches on the wall were far enough away that the lighting barely flickered, just gave a warm glow, like soft incandescent lighting, only slightly orange.

"You've become quite good at Muggle Chess," Harry said. "You could be great at it."

Now Draco chuckled.

"People like you and me, we'll never get great at chess. We have natural talent and enjoy it, but the effort required is a gigantic waste. So we just spend the rare hour or two playing to relax. And I've found the perfect place, admit it." Draco had taken out both chess sets and placed them on the floor between himself and Harry, who both sat on the ground, cross legged.

"OK, OK. I've got to admit, this place is great. Muggle Chess, then. Wizard chess would hardly be a contest for you, not anymore. Although if these were neutral pieces." Draco walked over to a smaller Wizard Chess set - there were several smaller board scattered around the main board – and took out his wand and waved it at the set "Leviludis!"

The pieces floated up, complaining and scrabbling on the board for purchase. Draco just shushed them quietly, like a gentle mother. Harry watched Draco grabbed two pawns out of mid-air, one white and one black, and put them behind his back, mixing them up. He stuck his hands out, and Harry pointed to Draco's left hand.

Draco opened it to reveal a black pawn. He placed both small pawns on the board. There were two high chairs off to the side of the main board and Draco climbed into the chair slightly on the white side, while Harry climbed into the other on the black side. The small set floated up alongside with Draco, possibly just attached, and he pulled it out of the air and set it down on the table. Draco adjusted his spell so that small board floated, dropping slowly back to the table between them as though it were underwater. Or on the moon.

Draco picked up a small conical megaphone and said "Pawn to Queen Four" and the large pawn down below them slid smoothly two spaces forward. Harry had lent Draco a book, a collection of games from an early tournament to select a challenger for the world championship and Draco had been slowly going over the games with Gregory and Harry in his rare break from studying or (Harry knew), plotting to break into the Hall of Prophecies.

Those games had subtleties they didn't understand, even with the grandmaster commentary, but Draco had picked up a feel for how different opening moves led to different games, and he preferred the more subtle queen pawn openings. Draco passed the megaphone to Harry and he chose his move.

They quickly played the first few moves, passing the megaphone back and forth, and settled into an Old Indian Opening. After Harry's fifth move Draco paused, they'd gotten past a position Draco recognized and could just play from memory.

Draco spent several minutes thinking, but he talked while he thought. It was rude to talk during your opponents turn, so conversations between the two were like extended soliloquies.

"This opening reminds me of a game from your book. Great game. Black sacrificed his queen for only a pawn, but it pulled the white king half way up the board and really exposed him, and then twenty moves later Black won. It's clear, once you play through it, that he hadn't seen the winning position, Black played a few waiting moves just shuffling pieces back and forth, until he saw the winning play. But the sacrifice gave him position and tempo."

Draco exchanged his queen pawn for Harry's king pawn. Harry could retake with either a pawn or a knight. He considered the implications of each move.

"I remember that game. It made an impression on me, too. But with grandmasters you really only get great games when the position is so complicated that neither one of them can see how it ends." Harry recaptured with his pawn. The captured pieces slid gracefully off the board, other pieces moving aside, and then kept going until they were up against one of the walls. You could still see them, if you knew where to look.

"Yeah," said Draco. "If they both agreed that one position was good for one side, the other would naturally avoid that position. So we only witness a great game by the masters when it's nebulous. Most of their excellence is above our heads. It takes a rare position too complicated for even them before we witness fireworks on the board."

"Yes, it's like the Bludger simulation. You avoid a situation where you can lose. If everything goes well with your plan, there's nothing to watch."

Draco and Harry continued to array their pieces as the opening transitioned to midgame, each trying to get more mobility. They challenged each other for the center in a slow build up. During Harry's turn Draco still watched the board spread out below them, but he also took the Wizard chess set beside him and balanced the board on a pawn. It would have been impossible, but the levitation spell made it barely work. The chess pieces complained, and they formed a rough circle around the center of the board to keep it from toppling. It wasn't a regular chess position, pieces were on two squares or more, and all mixed up, but Draco kept tinkering with it.

Harry tried to ignore it and made his move, ordering a pawn forward to storm the kingside. Draco would have counter-attacking possibilities if he exchanged pawns and opened it up, or he could lock the position but be cramped.

Draco flicked the wizard chess set's side at the corner, and the board slowly spun like a top while he thought for several minutes, pausing to flick the wizard board. Beside him, a queen complained loudly about the treatment – calling Draco 'a cretinous cur' – apparently comfortable talking back since Draco was treating that set like a toy, not a game. Draco picked up the megaphone and captured Harry's pawn.

Harry had expected that, neither one of them liked a position where you had few choices, and he'd planned his response but it didn't hurt to double check. The problem with chess is that you had to visualize the position and as you saw further ahead you sometimes misplaced a piece mentally. Some players, probably all the great ones, could see the position perfectly in their head. Harry's visualization wasn't perfect. Harry flicked the wizard chess board a few times then confirmed his analysis and made his move.

Draco nodded. "I see your point about the Bludger," Draco said, "but in real life it probably happens more often." While he was talking Draco reached up and snatched the silver knight off the slowly spinning board. The board lurched wildly, but all of the pieces took a few steps around, shifting their way as they shouted advice to each other. After a minute, the board's wobbling subsided. "After all, in the real world everyone has their own view of the situation. And their own information. If something strange happens, the others compensate."

Draco counter-attacked, as expected. It was a complex position and Harry fell into a deep thought. After a few minutes Draco started spinning the toy between them, poking at pieces with his finger and watching board wobble as the pieces adjusted. Normally it was the right of the person thinking to talk or fidget, so as not to distract the other, but Harry had taken a long time (by their standards) to move, so he didn't press the point.

Harry picked up his megaphone to make his move when suddenly his robes started to constrict and changed color to white. Harry saw Draco flick his wand and say Somnium.

March 7th

Harry heard them coming down the stairs. He was in a basement … somewhere. He didn't recognize it in the hours he'd been awake. Harry grunted as loudly as he could. He was bundled into an Acromantula web, naked except for underwear, trussed tightly onto a cot. His eyes were uncovered, at least. He didn't know how long he'd been awake.

Since Draco stunned him.

He'd used the time to try to figure out what was going on.

The 'how' part didn't take much effort. The robes he'd been wearing were a gift from Draco, and Draco had studied fixed transfiguration. He could switch his own clothes from suit to robes and back. Presumably he'd made one set of robes out of web and had given them to Harry at Christmas. Or switched them out at a later time. Harry might have been able to win a duel with Draco, but being ambushed while in a constricting web, he hadn't had a chance.

A part of Harry admired the elegance of the ambush, while he struggled in the web. But his struggles had merely confirmed that boys his age couldn't fight their way out of strong webs.

Draco had made his move now, but what move?

The real question was 'why?' Slytherin said inside his head.



Had Draco done this as part of an elaborate scheme to test Peverell? Gryffindor offered, but the rest of the voices shouted him down. Well, we can hope, Gryffindor said quietly. But Harry knew it was wishful thinking. It lacked all sense of proportion. Draco might overreach when provoked – he'd done just last year when torturing Harry - but he wouldn't spend ten galleons to win a Knut. Draco hadn't done this out of anger, or fear, or pride. The planning clearly marked this as a plot, or contingency plan, and nothing had changed recently enough to warrant springing the trap.

Nothing you're aware of, anyway, said Ravenclaw.

Had Draco finally decided we're Voldemort? said Hufflepuff.

That risk had always existed, that Draco would reach the wrong conclusion.

No, answer Slytherin. If he had we'd be dead right now. Or worse.

Harry's voices bickered amongst themselves and Harry - or at least, the internal Harry supervisor voice - went off in another direction.

Was this some lesson? Draco and Harry had taught each other lessons, and if so, this would be memorable. As the minutes stretched into hours that seemed less and less likely. Harry's stomach knotted itself. Harry started reaching out from the obvious facts and cast his memory back into the previous semester. The previous summer. Last year. Nothing came up. Perhaps he could ask Draco when he got out, but Harry didn't imagine Draco would be talkative.

If I can even find him. Draco had spent last summer looking for Snape. Harry and Draco had discussed strategies and steps necessary to avoid being discovered. Harry didn't know how long he'd been out, but if Draco didn't want to be found, Harry couldn't find him. The more worrying thought was that if Draco didn't want Harry to be found ... although he had a few contingencies, but they might take a while.

Had Draco discovered Harry's betrayals? That seemed likely. Moody had read Draco's mind under orders, and now Harry regretted not having him dig deeper. If Draco had discovered that fact, although it wasn't at all clear how, he may consider it an act of war.

"And in the real world everyone has their own view of the situation. And their own information." Harry remembered Draco's voice, during the chess game. Had he misjudged Draco so badly? Had Draco misjudged him?

Harry spent his time reviewing everything he knew, and kept coming to the same conclusion. I need more information. I'm missing a fact. He then considered the details about more. Why had Draco used that room to ambush Harry? Well, it would naturally intrigue me. The ambush over the game of chess would appeal to Draco's sense of style, but he'd ignore that if necessary.

Harry had decided that the most likely reason was that the room was out of the way when he heard Gregory's voice shouting from the top of the stairs, "I see him" and Hermione and Gregory raced down the stairs. It took them a while to cut Harry out of the web, he'd lost the sense of time. Harry could see that Hermione had been crying. Gregory's face was set in stone. Just like when he rescued Draco. Hermione blushed when the web finally parted, but Harry just reached up and ripped the webbing off his mouth "What's the situation?"

Hermione said, "We're … not sure. We repelled the attack on Peverell. The chalice is safe. But there's a lot of damage, and not just there, but Hogwarts, too." Harry noticed that her thoughts weren't nearly as organized as usual. He realized the implication right as she said, "At least three Aurors are dead, and some students, too. They think they can save Mad-Eye. I was too late, Harry, I'm sorry ... Draco probably thought he was protecting me but he should have known ... "

"Where's Draco?" Harry asked, and Hermione sucked in her breath and bit her lip.

Gregory shook his head then turned away and went back up the stairs. Harry looked around, he didn't recognize the room. It looked like a small basement apartment, with some goods stored along the walls. There was only a picture, but the picture showed what looked to be a closed cave mouth, rocks jumbled all around the front, perched precariously along the frame. Harry start towards the stairs but stopped. There was a second cot lined up beside the wall and set carefully on top of it was a chess set. A muggle chess set, small, made with light and dark brown wood. All of the pieces were set up in the opening position.

Except both kings had been knocked over.

Hermione stopped biting her lip. "Draco and Neville are dead, Harry."

Author's Note –I had considered a final exam, much like in HPMOR, but honestly I couldn't create a compelling one in any case, Draco's final exam would be composed by Lucius, not Voldemort. You have as much information as Harry (more), but you don't necessarily have all the pieces to fill in all the blanks. But you do have enough information to understand what Draco hoped to achieve. Ignore the tactics, focus on strategy.

A (guest!) reviewer on last chapter mentioned Apollo Robbins, specifically his TED talk and how it applied to attention. That's a good catch, one that Harry would point out, except that Apollo wasn't famous yet. Apollo Robbins is a magician/pickpocket (with at least one published neuropsychology paper co-authorship!) who is an expert on exploiting attention. He likens attention to a security guard watching a row of monitors, but who can only focus on one or two at a time. His TED talk ("The Art of Misdirection") is one of the legitimately brilliant (as compared to "just interesting") lectures I've seen and well worth the ten minutes.

Also, on a related note, I like reviews.

The game discussed was Averbakh-Kotov, Zurich Candidates Tournament, 1953.

Update to the Hot Hand "Fallacy" - The Wall Street Journal had an article saying that Hot Hands actually do exist, courtesy of Adam Sanjuro, Joshua Miller, and some really unintuitive math. FF doesn't like links, but that should be enough to google if you care.