Silver Spoon Child Eating off a Paper Plate by MellarkandArt

“Harry! Where have you been?” Hermione exclaimed upon Harry’s reentry to Grimmauld Place via the floo. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“Oh,” Harry said, flushing as he brushed the soot off his clothes, noting all the people that were standing in the living room just then. Sirius, Ron, Hermione and even Dudley was huddled on the couch in the corner. Awkward. “I’m sorry, Snape didn’t stop long enough for me to tell anyone…”

“Snape? And just where exactly did he take you without telling anyone?” Sirius demanded.

Harry waved him off. “We just went to his house, it’s no big deal.” He realized how weird that sounded only as he said it. “I’m sorry I worried you all.”

“Blimey, Harry, why’d he make you go there?” Ron asked, looking almost as horrified as Sirius.

“He didn’t make me do anything,” Harry huffed. “I just wanted to get out of this place for a bit, that’s all.” He gave Sirius an apologetic glance. “No offense.”

Hermione frowned. “It’s a bit odd to go to a teacher’s house though, don’t you think?”

It was then that Harry realized that hardly anyone was aware of Harry’s change of guardian. He thought it best not to mention it. Not only would Sirius be hurt that he himself wasn’t, couldn’t possibly have been, selected to fill the role, but he would be furious if he knew just who had. Best to keep it under wraps, then, as there was no need to cause a ruckus over nothing. It wasn’t as though Snape was a real guardian, after all. He was just doing Dumbledore a favor. And maybe Harry, too.

“Um, maybe usually, but I’ve been there before, the day-” he glanced at the downtrodden Dudley quietly listening in on the conversation, “he brought me there for a minute before he brought me here. He just had me cut up potion ingredients for a while.”

“And you went willingly?” Sirius deadpanned. Harry couldn’t shake the feeling that he was disappointed in him.

“Of course. Look at me, I’m fine. You’ve seen me after coming back from places I didn’t go willingly,” Harry said, gesturing vaguely to the arm that Peter Pettigrew had cut open for Voldemort’s blood sacrifice, then feeling a bit awkward for it. “Er, anyway, I’m back now and everything is fine. Does anyone want to play a game of Exploding Snap?”

Sirius shook his head, muttering something about needing to reorganize the bookshelf before he walked off. His friends still looked confused and concerned but seemed to agree to let it go. Ron went to go get the card game while Hermione picked a spot on the floor. Dudley was still sitting hunched over on the couch. Harry bit his lip.

“Do you wanna play, Dudley?” Harry asked quietly as Ron came back into the room and sat with Hermione.

Dudley looked over at them, the slightest bit of curiosity reflecting in his watery eyes.

“You have to have a wand to play, Harry,” Hermione reminded him gently.

“Oh, yeah,” Harry murmured, feeling foolish for having asked.

“It’s alright,” said Dudley, sitting up and going to leave the room.

“No, wait, don’t go,” Harry said impulsively. “We can play something else. Um… I don’t suppose that Sirius would have any muggle board games here, would he?”

“Actually, yes,” said Hermione. “There’s a couple of sets in the room I’m staying in. I’m not really sure why they would have… Well, I suppose Sirius must have had them. I’ll go get them.”

“Great!” said Harry. He went to sit down on the floor next to Ron and motioned for Dudley to join them. His cousin did, hesitantly lowering himself down next to Harry and looking extremely uncomfortable. It had only been a few days ago that Harry had been so rude to him. He thought that Snape may have had a point about Harry’s mood swings.

Hermione came back into the room, carrying three slim rectangular boxes in her arms. She sat down on the floor next to Ron and across from Harry, setting the boxes to the side. “Okay, so there’s Clue, Aggravation and Monopoly. Which one do you want to play?”

“I’ve never heard of any of these,” Ron said. “How do you play them?”

“You’ve never heard of Monopoly?” Dudley asked incredulously.

“Well, no, we don’t exactly play a lot of muggle board games in the wizarding world,” said Ron.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dudley said blankly. “What’s it matter if they’re not magical? They’re board games, everybody plays them.”

“Well obviously not everybody,” Ron huffed.

“I meant normal people.”

“I’ve never played them either,” Harry said rather pointedly, though he knew that didn’t count for much. He could hardly be considered normal in the Dursleys’ books. But it wasn’t because he’d never heard of them or grown up around them, it was simply because he hadn’t been allowed to play games with Dudley and his friends.

“Well, Dudley and I can teach you both, then,” Hermione said placatingly. “Clue is like a detective game I guess, I haven’t played it much myself. Aggravation is, uh… well, it can be very aggravating.” She glanced at Ron and Dudley. “Probably not the best one to start with. Monopoly is… it can be fun, if everyone is a good sport. It’s based on both luck and strategy. Basically, the goal is to buy properties and have the greatest net worth.”

“How do you get the money to buy properties in the first place?” asked Ron.

“Each player starts off with fifteen hundred in Monopoly money. You get two hundred every time you pass go, and you collect rent from your properties from other players when they land on it. But you have to keep an eye on that because if someone lands on your property and you don’t notice and they don’t say anything, they don’t have to pay you.”

“Isn’t that kind of… cheating?” asked Harry.

Hermione shrugged. “That’s Monopoly.”

“Alright,” said Ron. “How do we start?”

Hermione opened the game box, laying out the game board and pieces. “Everyone picks a token to start with; it’s your moving piece.”

“I want the dog,” Ron said quickly, snatching it up. Harry didn’t argue, though he privately thought that he may have wanted it for himself. The dog wasn’t as grand as Padfoot by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a dog all the same. The rest of the tokens seemed like rather… odd choices.

“I’ll take the car,” Dudley said next, just as possessive as Ron.

“The ironing board is fine with me,” said Hermione.

The remaining tokens weren’t exactly stellar. “Um, I’ll take the top hat,” said Harry. “Though it does remind me of your Smeltings hat a bit, looks similar,” he said to Dudley.

Dudley frowned. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, it does,” Harry muttered under his breath. “Okay, now what?”

“Somebody gets to be the banker…” Hermione said slowly, not relenting her hold on the Monopoly money. “It’s a very important role, the banker has to keep track of the money and do all sorts of math, I think it’s probably best if I just do it.”

“I don’t think anyone was fighting you for the position, Hermione,” Ron snickered at her obvious hesitance to let someone else be in control.

“Yes, well, all the same,” Hermione sniffed. “You each get two five hundred bills, two one hundreds, two fifties, six twenties, and five each of tens, fives and ones.” She laid the brightly colored notes out in front of each of them as she spoke, putting the rest away in the bank before setting two stacks of cards down on the game board. “Now, there are also some cards to put down, the chance and community chest cards. If you land on one of them on your turn you have to pick one up and do as the card says.

“As the banker, I’m also in charge of holding the title deed cards, so when one of you buys a property I’m to give you a card for it. I’m also in charge of loans and auctioneering, if you land on a property that you don’t want to buy, it will go on the market for bids. The bank does mortgages as well, should you become broke and need to take out a mortgage on your property at any point.”

“Shouldn’t be too different from my current lifestyle, then,” Ron said irritably. “If you’re done sharing what you’re in charge of, can we start the game?”

Hermione sent him a glare and picked up the dice, huffing. “We all roll the dice, the player with the highest total goes first.” She shook the dice in her palms and rolled it, frowning as she landed a two and a one.

Ron snorted, snatching up the dice and taking his turn. He rolled a five and a four.

Dudley went next, rolling two sixes. Harry rolled a four and a three.

“Alright, Dudley goes first, then it’s Harry, Ron, me, and back to Dudley,” said Hermione.

Dudley rolled again, an eight, and took his car to Vermont Avenue. “I’ll buy it,” he said, quickly taking a hundred note out and giving it to Hermione. She handed him a white and blue card that matched the space.

“Dudley owns Vermont Avenue now, the rent is six pounds if anyone lands on it. The rent can increase should he come to own this color set and place houses and hotels on it,” she said.

“Wait, what are houses and hotels?” asked Harry.

Hermione picked up a few green and red pieces. “Houses are green, hotels are red. If you own all the properties in a color set you can buy houses to put on a property within the color set to increase the rent for other players. If you get four houses you can get a hotel, but you have to build evenly to get to that point, like you can’t have one house on one spot and three houses on another, you have to do one at a time on each space and build your way up.”

“That sounds… complicated,” said Harry.

Hermione shrugged. “That’s Monopoly.”

***

Ron, as it turned out, didn’t have any trouble understanding houses and hotels, as he had several of them by now. He owned the red, yellow, and pink color sets and had houses on all of them. Hermione was definitely going to go bankrupt soon and Harry wasn’t far behind her. Only Dudley seemed to be able to compete with Ron at this point and even that was a stretch.

“Is the game normally this long?” Harry asked with a sigh, giving Ron yet another five hundred note for the three houses he had on Virginia Avenue. They’d been playing for nearly two hours now and Harry had been to jail three times in a row in that time.

“Roughly,” Hermione responded as she rolled the dice. Six. Just barely missed one of Ron’s properties, landing on her own St. James Place. “It varies from game to game. This is a rather long one, though.”

“I’ll buy another house,” Dudley said as he landed on free parking. Hermione handed him one and he placed it on Oriental Avenue. He glanced at Harry, who was making his own move. “So many houses and they all look the same, I think I’m building my own Little Whinging here.”

Harry laughed and was almost startled by the sound. It seemed like it had been a long time since he’d last done so. His friends appeared to be rather surprised themselves but recovered quickly. Ron grinned, rolling the dice again. “I like this game,” he commented as he placed down yet another hotel.

Harry liked it pretty well too, but he didn’t so much like how little money he had remaining. Ron was most definitely on his way to victory, and playing a losing game for two hours was kind of tiring.

Still, they kept playing for a long time.

“I’ll buy the boardwalk, then,” Ron said, grinning. “Why not?”

“Because we’re all bankrupt and the game is over?” Dudley muttered.

“Want to go again?” Ron asked happily, already setting the board back up. Harry glanced at Dudley and Hermione, sharing a knowing smile with them. He thought that they were probably all pretty tired with this game, but no one really wanted to kill Ron’s high.

“Sure,” said Harry. “But I want to be the dog this time.”

“Fine,” said Ron. “I think that the money bag suits me better, anyway.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’ll be the thimble.”

“I’ll be the hat this time,” Dudley said, shooting Harry a hesitant smile. Harry smiled back.

Everything was going so well. That probably should have been the first clue that things were fixing to go wrong, but that realization didn’t hit until Harry himself hit the ground.