Ch 2.1 Harry Potter and the Game of Desire (Patreon)

Harry Potter

and the Game of Desire

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Chapter 2.1 - 

Of Wishes and Desires

Disclaimer: Hogwarts starts late, and everyone here is an adult!

Everyone stared.

The demon—Momo, Harry's brain supplied unhelpfully—sat perched on the board as though she belonged there, red eyes bright with amusement as she surveyed the circle. She looked no older than them, perhaps a year or two at most, but something in those eyes was ancient. Something that had watched people make very poor decisions for a very long time and enjoyed every moment.

Katie had a bottle halfway to her mouth and had forgotten it was there. Ginny's hand had found Luna's knee and stayed. Cho's face had cycled through three expressions and settled on a kind of appalled fascination. Even Malfoy—one arm clamped across her chest, the other pressed flat over the emerald triangle—had let both hands slide to her sides, staring at the girl on the board with her mouth hanging open.

The girl waved at her, fingers waggling. Malfoy didn't wave back.

"Wait." Hermione's voice cut through the silence. "Asmodeus. That's a demon of lust. Christian and Judaic mythology—the Book of Tobit, the Testament of Solomon—"

"Ping pong!" The green-haired self-proclaimed demon pointed at her, palm up, thumb and index finger extended like a Muggle playing cops and robbers. She winked. "Ten points to the clever one. Not real points. Don't get excited. But gold stars for you."

"So gods, demons, and ze spirits exist?" Fleur had not moved from Harry's lap. Neither had Padma. Harry had lost feeling in both legs some time ago and hadn't liked to mention it. "And did we forfeit our souls when we rolled ze die?"

The circle went still. Cho's hand crept up to her throat. Susan Bones had gone the colour of old parchment. Tracey Davis whispered something that sounded like Mum's going to kill me.

"Don't you have ghosts in this palace of yours?"

No one replied. It was a rhetorical question, and Harry already knew—courtesy of Hermione's lengthy explanations during their first year—that the ghosts of Hogwarts were only imprints. Not the real souls of the deceased.

The demon grinned.

The hair on the back of Harry's neck stood up.

"No fun! Nuh-uh." She pressed her palms together and tipped her cheek onto the back of one hand. "Nothing like that. Souls are so last eon. All that weighing and measuring and eternal damnation paperwork—" She mimed writing and yawned. "Tedious."

Pink smoke swirled.

A soft pop.

"Oof—"

The weight on Harry's lap doubled. The demon had reappeared sitting across Fleur's thighs, one arm slung round the veela's neck, one fishnet-clad leg stretched out over Padma's lap. Padma yelped and tried to scoot backwards. Fleur went rigid, every muscle locked.

"Don't you worry, little veela." The demon patted Fleur's cheek with exaggerated tenderness. "Think of me as a facilitator. Hopes, dreams, and—" she drew the word out like pulled taffy—"desires. I can give you all of it. Terms and conditions apply."

"Can everyone get off?" Harry's knee had started to complain in earnest. His left foot had gone completely numb. "Please?"

The demon turned red eyes on him and pouted, lower lip jutting out. "Is poor little Harry-kins calling the three of us fat?"

"I—no—that's not—"

Fleur and Padma wriggled free without waiting for permission. Feeling came back to Harry's legs in a rush of pins and needles. The demon did not move. She simply went with Fleur, rearranging herself in the veela's lap as though she'd always been there, and Fleur, jaw tight, let her.

Padma tucked her hair behind one ear and straightened her clothes. "You said wishes. You grant wishes?"

The demon's nose wrinkled. "I grant them. I don't ruin them. Please don't lump me in with the djinn."

"What's wrong with the—"

"Oh, you know the type." Momo waved a dismissive hand. "Someone says 'I want a million pounds' and poof—" She mimed an explosion with her fingers. "They're crushed to death because their body suddenly gained a million pounds of fat. Heart gives out in seconds. Very messy. Very boring. Wish fulfilled, technically."

She held up a second finger.

Several people went green.

"Or my personal favourite: 'I wish to live forever.'" Momo's voice dropped into a theatrical whisper. "So the djinn stops them from dying. But they didn't ask to stop decaying. Didn't ask to stop ageing. Fifty years later they're a pile of sentient rot, still breathing, still aware, begging for a death that won't come."

The green turned darker.

"That's djinn." Momo shrugged as though discussing the weather. "Or there's the classic: 'I wish to fly.' Up they go! Lovely view. Blue sky, fluffy clouds. Then they realise they're three miles up, the temperature's dropped to minus forty, and human lungs weren't designed for thin air." She made a falling motion with her hand. "Splat."

Malfoy made a noise that wasn't quite a word. Harry found the board suddenly very interesting.

"Merlin's beard," Katie breathed. "That's—that's horrifying."

"And completely pointless!" Momo's cheer returned in full force. "What's the fun in granting a wish if the wisher dies before they can enjoy it? Where's the drama? The entertainment? The story?"

She leaned forward, red eyes gleaming.

"No, no, no. I don't twist wishes. I read intentions." She tapped the side of her head with one finger. "You've already seen proof, haven't you? Little Harry here wanted to see little Miss Malfoy in a skimpy bunny outfit, and I delivered exactly what he pictured. No monkey's paw nonsense. Just pure, undiluted desire made manifest."

"You read minds," Hermione said flatly.

"Only the fun bits."

Something heavy dropped into Harry's lap.

He looked down. A book—black leather, thick as a hymnal, the same curling pink lettering as the box stamped across the cover. Asmodek: Catalogue of Wares. Around the circle, multiple identical thumps. Cho caught hers before it hit the floor. Malfoy's landed against her bare stomach and she flinched away from it as though it had burned her.

"Browse." The demon flapped a hand. "Take your time. Points don't expire. Nothing in there is compulsory, and everything in there is lovely."

Harry opened it.

The first page was a contents list in neat columns, each entry with a number beside it. He ran his eye down, and his mouth went dry.

Refractory Period, Reduced — Tier I (halved): 40. Tier II (quartered): 120. Tier III (what refractory period?): 400.

Climax, Own — Command. Hold, release, or repeat at will: 250.

Climax, Another's — Command. Terms apply; see Consent: 600.

Stamina — Legs: 30. Lungs: 30. Tongue: 45.

Body Heat, Adjustable: 25.

Wardrobe — Self, one change: 10. Another, one change (Terms apply): 60.

Silver Tongue — for one hour, whatever you say sounds reasonable: 200.

The Quiet Room — for one hour, nothing you do can be heard beyond arm's reach: 80.

Perfectly Ordinary — for one hour, everyone present regards whatever you are doing as unremarkable and not worth a second look: 350.

He read that last one twice. Then he turned the page, because the alternative was looking up and discovering whether Padma was reading over his shoulder.

She was. Her ears had gone dark.

The next page had only three entries, boxed in elegant script.

WHIM — small, and within a day's walk of already true. 1,000.

BOON — larger. Bends the world; does not break it. 10,000.

DECREE — ask. 100,000.

Harry sat with that.

Someone had put his name in the Goblet. Moody had said it plainly in the staffroom, and nobody had argued with him: a fourth-year didn't hoodwink an artefact that old on his own, and nobody did it for a laugh. Someone wanted him in a maze with dragons and whatever came after dragons. Someone wanted him dead, and had gone to a good deal of trouble about it, and in ten weeks he was going to have to swim, or climb, or duel, or whatever the second task turned out to be, with that person watching from the stands.

Decree. Ask.

He looked up. Hermione was looking straight at him, her finger resting on the same line of her own book. Her mouth was set in a thin line.

She gave him one small nod. He gave it back.

"How do we earn them?" Luna had her catalogue open upside down and didn't seem to have noticed. "The points. And is there anything you won't do?"

"Two things." The demon held up two fingers. "Nothing that kills. Nothing that raises the dead." She paused. "Unless the person in question already has a foot through Death's door, in which case—" she drew the finger across her throat—"a mercy is a mercy. I'm not a monster."

"You're a demon," Daphne said.

"Yes, but I'm not a monster." She turned back to Luna. "Second: nothing against anybody's will. Can't be done. I can't make a person want what they don't want. Not for all the points on the board."

"But—"

"But," the demon said over Hermione, "I can turn the volume up. Say someone in this room fancies someone else in this room and has never said a word about it." Her red eyes drifted around the circle and did not settle anywhere in particular, which was considerably worse than if they had. "I can make it louder in their head. That's all. Whether they do anything about it—that's theirs. Always theirs."

"That's coercion," Hermione said.

"That's a nudge. You've all been drinking firewhisky since ten o'clock, and firewhisky does the same thing and tastes worse."

Padma frowned at her book. "So a love potion—"

"Is against the will. Not on the menu. You can't buy a person, sweetheart. You can buy the nerve to ask them." The demon shrugged. "Most people find that's plenty."

Katie found her voice. "And the points? How do we actually earn them?"

"The game. Missions, circuits, penalties—all of it feeds the board and the board pays out." The demon inspected her nails with casual disinterest. "Sometimes I'm generous, if someone's being entertaining. Sometimes I'm not, if someone's being dull." She looked up. "A full circuit's worth a couple of hundred on a good night. More if you're creative."

Harry looked at the boxed numbers again. A couple of hundred. He did the maths in his head and didn't like the answer.

"And when does it end?" Daphne had not touched her catalogue. It sat closed on her knee with her hand flat on top of it like a paperweight. "The game."

"When you buy your way out."

"With what?"

The demon smiled and did not answer, and fourteen sets of eyes went back to the same page.

DECREE. 100,000.

"That's—" Ginny began.

"Yes."

"For one of us, or—"

"Each." The demon stretched, arms above her head, and settled back against Fleur. "Or you play until you're old. My last pair did. Lovely couple. Married, brilliant, absolutely filthy. Nicolas and Perenelle." She sighed. "Very good at the game. Played for—oh, centuries. She got the idea for the Stone halfway through a Boon card, actually, and wouldn't shut up about it for a month."

"The Stone." Hermione's voice had gone thin. "The Philosopher's Stone. You're talking about Nicolas Flamel."

Harry knew the name before Hermione finished saying it. A Chocolate Frog card. A library at midnight. A trapdoor, a chessboard, a mirror, and a stone the size of a hen's egg in his pocket whilst Quirrell's face came apart.

"You've heard of him!" The demon clapped. "Oh, good. He'd be so pleased. Terribly vain man."

"The Stone was destroyed," Harry said.

"I know." Her smile stayed, but it thinned. "I felt it go. They'd stopped playing long before that anyway. Retired. Cashed out their hundred thousand each and went off to grow roses or whatever it is alchemists do when they've solved mortality." She waved the subject off. "Anyway. Speaking of penalties."

She snapped her fingers.

The card beside Malfoy's piece—the one that had turned face-down when the shirt vanished and lain there blank ever since—flipped itself over. Ink crawled across it. Not written; grown, the way frost spreads across a window in winter.

The demon didn't touch it. She just read.

"Penalty. Concealment." She sounded delighted. "The board does not care to be hidden from." A glance at Malfoy, who had gone so pale her freckles showed against her skin like scattered sand. "The offender's body shall be made sensitive to touch: tenfold for every point owed."

Malfoy's piece sat several squares behind the starting corner. Harry did not do the arithmetic. From the small, choked sound Hermione made, she had.

"The winner of the last circuit shall seek the offender's most sensitive place. Two hours." The demon's red eyes came round the circle and stopped on Harry. "Should the seeker find it: one hundred points to the seeker."

"No," said Malfoy.

"Should the offender keep silent throughout: fifty points to the offender."

"No—"

"Should the offender refuse—" the demon tilted her head—"she remains as she is until she has completed a penalty task in full."

The card stopped growing. The demon sat back in Fleur's lap and folded her hands.

"Well. Those are the terms."

"I am not—" Malfoy had both arms across herself again and had discovered that made it worse; she jerked them away from her own skin and then didn't know where to put them. Her hands hovered uselessly at her sides. "I am not letting Potter—you can't make me—"

"I can't. I just said. Nothing against the will." The demon shrugged one shoulder. "You can sit exactly as you are for as long as you like. Every draught from that window. Every seam in that costume. Have you ever felt cotton at that intensity, sweetheart?" She smiled. "It's educational. Plus, remember I can hear everyone's desire."

Malfoy looked down at herself. Her breathing had gone shallow. A strand of hair had come loose from behind her ear, and when it brushed her collarbone she flinched as though she'd been slapped.

"Do you want an audience—"

Malfoy growled.

For some reason, Harry found it cute. The thought arrived uninvited and he shoved it away.

"Fine, fine!" The demon waved her hand and a door appeared in the middle of the room.

Not against a wall. Not in a frame. Just a door, standing upright on the stone floor, attached to nothing at all. Dark wood with brass fittings. A small plaque that read PRIVATE.

"There. You can have all the privacy you want. Two hours. I'll let you know when the time is up."

The door swung open of its own accord, revealing a room beyond that shouldn't exist—warm light, a low settee, walls that faded into shadow.

Harry looked at Malfoy. Malfoy looked at the door. Then at Harry. Then at the costume she couldn't remove, the card she couldn't refuse, and the circle of people pretending very hard not to watch.

Her jaw tightened.

"Fine," she said through her teeth. "Fine."

She stood. The movement made her gasp—fabric shifting against oversensitised skin—and she walked towards the impossible door with her spine very straight and her fists clenched at her sides.

Harry got up and followed.

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End

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