Instead of using exact moves, rather use the aura that each piece carries with it. It's similar to what I'm doing in a one shot I'm trying to finish.

Like when a trap is being set:
Rook cuts King Knight Pawn

....
...

Knight cuts Rook.

etc etc...
Use the old notation instead of the standard. It would carry much more emphasis.

 

If you're looking for a good collection of chess-related fiction, you can't do much better than The 64 Square Looking Glass. Pretty much all of the great chess scenes are in there, from From Russia With Love to Alice in Wonderland.

I think the best way to integrate chess into a HP story would be in a sort of horror/thriller. Start with Harry receiving a letter from an unidentified owl containing a single chess move ("21. ... BxN"). Later that night, Bellatrix LeStrange kills whoever. Two days later, he gets another message ("25. ... PxR")... that night, Remus Lupin is found dead, killed by Peter Pettigrew. And so on. Maybe even have Harry get mail depicting white's moves in response to actions by the Order or Harry. This could either happen over the course of a few weeks, or could be stretched out over years (retconning the messages back into OOtP and HBP, and with Harry continuing to receive the taunting messages while he goes on his Horcrux hunt).

Harry does some research (maybe with Hermione's help) and discovers that in addition to being Head Boy and an all around great guy, Tom Riddle was captain of the Hogwart's chess team. And the moves that Harry has been getting in the mail match up perfectly with the most well known game of his brief career. Tom Riddle was playing the white pieces in that game, and he won... in fact, it was immediately following the most recent move mailed to Harry that Riddle made the masterstroke that decided the game. The problem is, he did it by sacrificing the piece that represents Harry...

 

That sounds ill as hell. You should definitely write that. Sounds like a great read, not to mention it's probably never been done before.

 

Sounds like a good little plot bunny, good job on that. If you do decide to write it, make sure you post it up here. Though the only question I have would be why would Voldemort send Harry the messages? It could be an outside observer, but then why would they have reason to send them? Prophecies are rarely this accurate, which is basically what this is since Voldemort couldn't orchestrate everything to fit exactly to his chess game. You could have Dumbledore incorporate this into HBP, in one of the scenes from Tom Riddle's life. Maybe have it show a display of emotion from Tom, get him angry or frustrated at the game so he makes a few mistakes (signifying times when he has been beaten and when he tried to kill Harry as a child).

Chess is a good way to see the heart of the person, if they are willing to sacrifice pieces as a distraction or for the greater good then you know they can be a bit heartless, if they try to protect every piece they can and try to whittle away at the enemy pieces, that shows a very defensive stance. See where I'm going with this?

You could probably have this as being worked out just before the final battle or before the final horcrux is found. Have Hermione, or more probably Ron (since he has been played up as the chess genius, and it wouldn't be a huge step for him to watch old games of chess masters) see the chess match and connect the dots to recent history. I imagine Ron would do this as a kind of hobby outside of studying, that is linking games of chess to past events, since he is without competition, in a chess sense, compared to Harry and Hermione. Even if you go with the prophetic thing, you could always have Ron be the prophet, of a kind, which would explain his skill at chess and his academic idiocy.

Now, its pained me to complement Ron at all, but I've now got fifty billion ideas running through my head because of it. Damn.

Aekiel

 

Thank you for the feedback. Fleshing it out a little more, here's what I'm thinking.

I think the plausibility works. In my setup, Harry is a pawn, Dumbeldore & Voldemort are the queens, and the horcruxes (horcruxi?) are the black pawns. Other than that it's pretty wide open, so Voldemort has some flexibility in his notes. He's also not going to match up every move from his old match, just enough that it is recognizable, and enough that the last few notes that he sends match the last few moves of the game.

As far as why, I think the main idea would be to fuck with Harry's mind. I'm still working out to exactly what end; at the beginning, it would just look like taunting ("I'm going to kill your friends" or "I know what you're doing"); at the end, there are a lot of different choices for the ultimate purpose (to fool Harry into sacrificing himself, to convince him to go dark, etc.).

I think I've figured out how I would want the chess board setup: after the last move by black, the Harry pawn is poised to move to the eighth rank and promote to a queen. However, if he does that, black has a series of moves that will lead to a forced checkmate (and possibly to the death of the pieces representing Ron/Hermione/whoever). But if the pawn is promoted to a knight, white has a series of moves that lead to a forced checkmate. The problem is, the knight dies right away.

Meanwhile, in the non-chess portion of the story, the deaths of those close to Harry (and the taunting notes) have made him a little scary-driven to train, find the horcruxes, etc. Not completely crazy, but a little distant from his friends, a little shady, definitely not somebody you want to mess with. The impact of the taunts on his development would seem to be their main point, up until the big reveal.

After he gets the note signifying the death of (say) Molly Weasley, he/Ron/Hermione is finally able to figure out the game that the moves come from. There would also have to be some sort of real world mechanism presenting Harry with the sort of choice presented in the game.

The symbolism could go in a lot of ways after that. Does Harry follow Tom Riddles' footsteps on the chess board, or in life? Does he play the white knight, sacrificing himself to allow the light side to win? Or does he seek to become as powerful as Lord Voldemort, dooming the cause of the light? Or is the message that no matter what Harry does, Tom Riddle will somehow triumph?

Any other ideas?