Magical Creature Adventures

It’s true that the Wizard Chess pieces from Zonko’s Joke Shop move and knock out the opponents’ pieces like real life fighters of times gone by. They move about the board in the manner they are assigned, taking captive and effectively knocking off the pieces of the opposing player. The wizard watches in dismay as they lose their piece to the other side and will never be able to get it back.

Julius Xander, the current manager of the shop, reported that pieces from the wizarding chess boards in his shop have gone missing. Random pieces, but mostly from the white side of the board. Those pieces happen to be shinier than the black pieces. As students from Hogwarts arrived on their Hogsmeade outings, they came to the shop looking for some fun and hopefully good deals on the wizarding chess boards. Unfortunately, these sets were not as complete as they would have liked.

Xander hired one of his house elves to watch over the shop at night while he went home to his wife. When he came back to the shop the next morning, he was surprised at what he was told. The house elf reported that he watched closely for the whole night to see who was coming to abduct the wizard chess pieces.

A little brown creature arrived with a round beak that looked like a platypus’ beak. It was a little rodent, with brown fur and a tail and orange feet. Xander realized that the creature was in fact a Niffler! He knew that nifflers were attracted to shiny objects and also liked to hunt for treasures. He wasn’t entirely surprised to discover that the creature was interested in the little shiny chess pieces, but he knew that if he didn’t do something fast he would lose a lot of student customers!

After putting a protective orb around the wizarding chess area, where only humans could go through. He then put a bunch of chocolate frogs wrapped in shiny gold wrappings in another corner of the store. Over the next evening, the house elf reported that the nifflers still arrived, but were distracted by the new shiny things in the other corner. The wizarding chess pieces were saved and so were the store owner’s sales of full chess boards to aspiring wizarding students.