"Mental, emotional, and moral conditioning via deep hypnopedia throughout early childhood development?"
"Been done."
"Constant surveillance and propaganda to make it impossible to even think of plotting rebellion and excruciating, unbearable torture for anyone who tries?"
"Been done."
"Erasing all memories of a time before the present age?"
"Been done."
"Banning all books and replacing them with superficial, mindless, trashy entertainment?
"Has potential, but been done."
"Removing the word 'I' from the language?" A short pause of silence followed this suggestion before the speaker shrugged and said awkwardly, "Well, it's been done..."
The President finally threw his pen down on the table in exasperation and rubbed his brow. "I'm surrounded by idiots," he groaned softly before speaking up. "Was this rebellion so much fun you all want to go through it again?!"
"No, sir!", "Definitely not!", "If I ever hear the word 'thirteen' again..." and the like were repeated from various points around the room.
"Then I suggest you find those brains I hear you have and get them to work finding an answer!" the President said fiercely. "How can we keep the Districts in line? How can we ensure that this rebellion never happens again? We need something original, something unique, something... unexpected. All the regimes in the past eventually fell; all of their strategies failed. We need to try something different if we don't want another revolution on our hands next year, something that will guarantee no District will ever dare to rise up and resist our power again!"
"The hijacking process has been remarkably improved since..."
"Pfft, brainwashing, torture..." the President scoffed. "Can't you get more creative than that?"
"The success rate has always been..."
"Temporary," the President finished for him. "It's obvious the old methods aren't enough anymore. You can crack down on their freedom all they want – there's always someone foolish enough to stir the others up into rebellion. We need something that will absolutely, undoubtedly, unquestionably prevent the Districts from ever forgetting what will happen to them if step out of line again. Now, I know this is hard for you, but think! What would send the strongest message? What would be the best reminder? The most effective way of keeping them in their place?"
Everyone was too afraid to speak up at this point with whatever ideas may have been going through their minds. The President chose a young official looking intently at the tablet in his hands to take his frustration out on. Looking in his direction, he cleared his throat loudly and menacingly. The young man's neighbor bumped his shoulder with his own, causing his head to snap up to attention. "Yes, Mr. President, sir!" he said automatically.
"Thank you for volunteering," the President said, with the same smile he used when sending convicted war criminals to the guillotine. "You have a suggestion?"
"Uh... a suggestion?" the young man repeated, looking every which way as if begging someone, anyone for help.
"Yes, for keeping the Districts in line."
"Oh, yes, the Districts..." His eyes flicked back and forth from his colleagues to their leader to the tablet in his hands and the page of his e-book on the screen. He knew it was foolish to be reading it during such an important meeting, but... he just couldn't put it down! He'd just finished the part when Harry's name flew out of the Goblet of Fire! How had that happened? Who put it there? Was it really a plan of Voldemort's to kill him and make it look like an accident? How could they expect him to concentrate on the security of their nation with questions like that on his mind?! He had to stay calm – if the President knew he wasn't paying attention, he'd been thrown in prison and his tongue cut out before he got the chance to finish the series! He had to improvise. "Well, we need to remind them who's in charge here..."
"Brilliant – why didn't I think of that?" The President's sarcasm and amused smile were not good signs – he was never amused unless he was plotting a particularly gruesome, heinous method of execution.
"Yes, we need to scare them... hit them where it hurts... crush any hope they may have of ever overthrowing us..." He was running out of time. He needed to come up with some concrete suggestion, but what? What would scare the Districts the most? What would a boggart turn into for most of them? Would lock them in their own despair like dementors did to the inmates of Azkaban? Would leave them as helpless as Harry Potter being sent to his all-but-inevitable death in a savage tournament after his name was drawn from...
"I trust you have something useful to contribute to that problem?" he dimly heard the President ask.
"Yes!" he exclaimed in desperation. Think, you idiot, think! He looked down at the page of text on the screen again. He ordered his brain to think of something, but it could conjure up nothing more than his memory of the scene he'd just read. He'd have to use it. "What if, every year we entered their students'..." Not "students," you moron! "... their children's names, ages..." 11 to 17? Maybe that was too young. "... 12 to 18, in..." This time, he managed to stop himself before he said, Goblet of Fire. "... in a lottery... and those whose names were drawn were forced to compete in a tournament..." He quickly added, "... to the death." The Triwizard Tournament wasn't intended to be a fight to the death, just came with the risk of death, but close enough – hardly much of a difference. He finished with, "For everyone in Panem to watch!" After all, if the wizards of England got such a kick out of watching children risk their lives performing dangerous tasks, surely the Capitol citizens of Panem would, too. The ultimate Circuses!
He stopped as he saw eyebrows rise and heard whispers all around him. Drawing young teenagers' names from a pool and forcing them to fight to the death as entertainment for a live audience... they all found it intriguing. The President stroked his beard, his eyes crossed in deep thought – it certainly had potential. "Interesting idea," he eventually said.
"There is some precedent for it, sir," someone else said. "Many years ago, King Minos of Crete punished Athens for the death of his son by demanding they choose 12 young men and 12 young women every year to offer up as tribute to him and be fed to his half-man, half-bull monster, the Minotaur."
"What a convenient number," the President commented. "If we apply that to your plan, we would draw the name of one boy and one girl from each District every year to compete in these games until only one was left alive?"
"Exactly!" the relieved young man said. "Show the Districts what happens when they have the gall to defy us!"
"Two children lost every year, to entertain the masses with their bloody, violent deaths..." the President mused aloud. "See what your last rebellion accomplished – how much worse do you think it would be if you tried again? Yes, I like it, I like it. Very effective. Just the message we need to send... All those in favor of drawing the names of two adolescent tributes from each District to be compelled to compete in a tournament to the death?"
The vote was unanimous. Within three minutes, discussions of how the first drawing would be conducted, where the games would be held, and whether or not eligible candidates should be permitted to volunteer (after all, if twenty-four unwilling tributes all just stood in a circle and refused to lay a hand on each other, the entire plan would fall apart) were underway. The mastermind behind the plan sighed deeply, his lapse in attention safely forgotten. That was a close one, he thought. Thank you, Harry Potter!
It was over seventy-five years later when another committee met in Chicago, gathered around a table covered with books. "Just look at the state of the world," one woman said. "Consumed by moral degeneracy."
"How could society have ever deteriorated this far?" another wondered in disbelief.
"We must learn from the mistakes of the past," the woman at the head of the table said firmly. "No more vice, no more evil, no more selfishness. From now on, our society must be dedicated to the worship and respect of virtue, dedicated to preserving and promoting the best, most admirable, most noble, most heroic traits of humanity. But how can we get people to embrace virtue as an honor and not shun it as shameful weakness?"
"Make them proud of their virtues?"
"But how?"
"Nobody takes pride in being virtuous anymore – just in rebelling."
"Yeah, evil rebellion is just as popular as heroic rebellion."
"Every attempt to promote virtue as cool and evil as stupid has always failed."
"Come on, everyone – if the founders of Hogwarts were able to establish a school centered around the virtues of courage, intelligence, and kindness, surely we can..."
"Wait a minute... that's right – they did!" The woman waded through the books until she'd fished the right one out of the pile. "Every student was assigned to a house based on their most prominent virtue, and every student was proud of their house and what it stood for! What if we did that on a much bigger scale – sorted all citizens into different... factions – each one dedicated to a different virtue – based on their nature?"
"How would we know which faction to sort them into? We don't have a magic hat we can place on their heads."
"We don't need magic – we have technology."
The scientists of the group assured everyone it would be easy to design a process that would determine which virtuous house... er, faction a citizen was suited for.
"Readers loved the series. They loved the school, they loved the set-up..."
"They would love it! The chance to be sorted into their own faction!"
"How many factions would there be to choose from? 4?"
"Which virtues would they represent?"
"What virtues did the houses in the books value again?"
"Gryffindor – courage, daring, bravery, dauntlessness."
"Ravenclaw – intelligence, wit, erudition."
"Hufflepuff – kindness, hard work, selflessness."
"Those are so important, we'd better divide them in two."
"That would give us at least five factions instead of four."
"Well, good. After all, we don't want it to look like we're copying Hogwarts."
"Would there be five? I mean, the cunning and ambition of Slytherin aren't exactly traits to be encouraged in a stable society."
"Slytherin didn't value those traits. What he really valued was purity of blood. Perfect genetics."
"When it comes to that, if we really want to improve the quality of life..."
"That's a discussion for another time. Either way, Slytherin never belonged; his views made him the black sheep of the founders."
"Give him credit – at least he was honest about them."
"Honesty, sincerity, candor... very important to the survival of civilization."
"That faction could replace Slytherin."
"All those in favor?"
A few hours later, the votes were cast, the details were worked out, and the utopia of virtue was designed.
One more question came up before the meeting adjourned for the day: "What if someone came along who had traits of two or more factions, like Harry Potter himself? What would we do with them?"
Someone laughed as she answered, "Well, obviously, they would choose the faction of courage and dauntlessness, just like Harry did, as well, but what are the chances of that?"
"But if someone..."
"Anyone too arrogant to wholly devote themselves to one virtue, instead thinking they have a right to claim all of them, as if they're better than everyone else with less virtues, doesn't deserve the honor of a faction. The factionless and divergent will not be tolerated. By weeding them out, society will prosper."
"It's a perfect plan!"
Their leader sighed in contentment as she looked at the book in her hand. "Thank you, Harry Potter."
When they read the history of their societies, how they had begun, and where their founders had gotten their inspiration, two young women also said, "Yeah, thanks, Harry Potter!"