LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET THE SEVENTIETH HUNGER GAMES BEGIN!
Tom Marvolo Riddle watches from his tributes' podium as the timer counts down.
He does not know who his parents are, and he does not care.
Caring in a place like this is too risky. Having friends or family means watching over them and worrying every time the Reaping comes by. It means giving the Peacekeepers even more leverage over you. Good thing he only has himself to watch out for. It is how he survives. His mother, apparently, died in the community home where he grew up, as a good-for-nothing whore, a helpless young woman, worthless and abandoned, like so many others in the poor end of the district. His father is missing. His mother cared, and she died. His father abandoned her, and he probably still lives.
Tom Marvolo Riddle is special. Tom Marvolo Riddle is special and he knows he's special, and it's not just because of his unusual name, although it is still a big part of it. At first glance he looks just like another community home brat, in his tattered gray uniform and hollow cheeks. But look a little closer, and you see that he is not just some community home brat at all.
All orphans, from any district, look the same. Cowed eyes, hunched posture, cowardly stance. They cringe at every loud noise or raised hand. They are prey. Easy pickings. They are at the bottom of society. The townspeople chase them off. Even the workers scorn them. They are the lowest of the low, and they know that. When they grow up they will be sentenced to the most menial of labor, usually clearing areas of poisonous plants before the real workers, the lumberjacks, come in. If they are lucky, they might be sentenced to a sawmill, where they feed the logs to the giant machines and hope that they don't get a finger taken off or a splinter in the eye.
The orphans know their fate, and they have resigned themselves to it. All of them face the abuse, and accept their status as the Omegas of a pack of wolves.
All of them, except Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Because his eyes are not the sad, broken look of cornered prey. He was born a predator. And hardship, rather than dulling his senses, only sharpened them.
If the townspeople chase the orphans off, they flee from him.
District Seven is one of those relatively well-off districts. Not wealthy like One, Two, or Four, but not starving like Twelve. It is situated in lush forest, where the lumberjacks make their living. As such, food is usually plentiful enough, for those who knew what they were doing. Unlike the other districts, where trespassing the fences to go gather food is punishable by whipping and even death, the people of District Seven commonly venture into the forest - to hunt, to gather, to play, whatever.
The lumberjacks are strong; they work out in the open air, carrying their heavy axes all day, not slaving away in sooty mines or dark, dusty factories.
Within the fence, however, was a different story. The community home never gave out enough food. Orphans usually had to forage for themselves. Unlike the children of the lumberjacks, no one was there to teach them about the right animals, the right plants, the good hunting paths, how to wield an axe, what not to touch. Most orphans took their chances in the rubbish bins of the towns, willing to face humiliation or a beating (they faced those things on a daily basis anyway) for a few scraps of rotting food. Most of the ones who ventured into the forest never came back. Just because people usually went there didn't mean it was actually safe.
Then again, Tom Marvolo Riddle wasn't most people.
No one dares say a word when he walks down the street. Or, they used to, but people learned quickly. There might not be any proof of his wrongdoing, but no explanation did not mean no correlation.
Bad things always happened to people who treated him poorly.
Once, when he was four, he was standing in front of a shop. Not the candy shop or the bakery next door, where most of the orphans sat and stared with watering mouths and wished they could afford something from it. He knew that sugar was a waste of money, a waste of energy anyway.
No, it was a book shop.
At that moment in time he hadn't taken anything yet. He was debating borrowing something - no one ever had the time or money to buy books anyway (despite the fact that knowledge could be more valuable than food - for food disappeared, whereas knowledge didn't), and he knew that the wizened old man with the half-moon glasses behind the counter would like some company for once. He didn't actually like the man - he didn't like anyone - but he knew a kindred spirit when he saw one. Here was a man who was too special for the lot he was given in life, and had thus resigned himself to being a hermit, hiding away inside a house no one would ever set foot into.
As he stared at the old man, he found himself growing more and more disgusted. He didn't know what exactly awaited his future, but wasting away inside a bookshop was not it.
Before he could do anything else, however, the baker ran down the alley, brandishing a rolling pin to chase away the rest of his idiot peers still standing and goggling at the iced cakes. The baker had taken one look at him, his sweaty, hairy face red from the heat of the ovens, and, mistaking him for one of the other urchins that came to look and not buy, went to attack.
The man raised the rolling pin.
It caught fire.
By the time he managed to drop the flaming object, his whole arm had already been charred.
To this day no one could explain that instantaneous combustion, except for the little Devil set it aflame himself.
He might be a penniless orphan, but he is not a beggar. The other orphans are sorry sights. He, on the other hand, carries himself tall and proud, so that even the Peacekeepers scramble out of the way and stand at attention when he strolls down the street, rags and all.
He does not lower himself to looting rubbish bins. Whenever he is hungry - well, hungrier than usual - he walks down to the baker's, or the butcher's, or the greengrocer's, and they always give him something. Not because they like him, or pity him, but because they are afraid of him. Their gifts were not charity - they were offerings. They were pleading him, stay away. He accepts the gifts with a smile, one that says if you stop giving me these offerings everything you hold dear will burn down.
He has more food than any of the other orphans. Sometimes he gets feasts grander than that of the towns' children. He is not an idiot; he doesn't share the food. Not with worthless wastes of space. But he is not a glutton, either. He does not eat everything at once. Having enough to be more than an emaciated skeleton is one thing, but having too much reminds him of that obese captain of the Peacekeepers for District Seven.
With the proper nutrition, he grows into a quite tall and handsome boy, and while people still fear him, they also start looking at him with respect. Perhaps it is because he learns to perfect charm as well as force. The boys follow him around, and the girls swoon in his presence. But their admiration comes from afar, because they know that behind his angelic face, a demon grows. They know that his silky, smooth words drip with poison, the sweet taste of antifreeze. They know that one moment he can coddle them and make them feel like they are in heaven, and the next, smash them down to earth in pieces. He is their God, with the power to uplift or destroy.
(The last time someone insulted him, his whole family died from mysterious snakebites.)
The first time he killed, he was six. Billy Stubbs was a rather wealthy town boy, and he had a pet rabbit that he liked to drag everywhere, just to shove it into others' faces. I have a rabbit. I have my own pet. Because I have the money and food to afford another living being. What do you have, Tommy? Huh? What do you have?
The next day, Billy Stubbs' rabbit is dead, hanging from the rafters of the town hall, its white hair glistening against the sun.
The dead rabbit is in full view of all of District Seven. If people didn't believe the tales before, of the demon boy, they believed it now.
Because rabbits didn't hang themselves from rafters. The rabbit was not just there because of petty schoolboy revenge. It was also there as a warning. The rabbit was a warning, that if you did not give the true ruler of District Seven his proper respect, you could be the next decoration in place of the rabbit.
After seven workers lose their lives, slipping off unstable ladders and rickety staircases and poorly designed cranes, everyone has stopped bothering to try to get the dead animal down. People eventually give up, and its decaying carcass hangs there, to be picked at by the crows and eagles, until nothing remains but a tiny skeleton dangling in the wind. The omen of death hangs heavy over the skies of District Seven every day, as the citizens see the strangled remains of a boy's beloved pet right in front of their faces. No one is safe. Not even innocent fluffy bunnies.
What do I have, Billy? I have the power to take lives. That is what I have.
To this day the rabbit still hangs.
The first time he talked to another living thing in a friendly manner, it wasn't even human. The orphans had been sent out on a miniature expedition into the woods, to prepare them for their future work. Or at least, the other orphans worked. Tom Marvolo Riddle was above such peasant occupations. He walked off by himself and didn't bother to come back until it was time to return to the community home. A new Peacekeeper, who had not yet heard the stories of the boy from District Seven, had asked what he was doing. He did not answer back. The Peacekeeper attempted to whip him.
The whip got tangled in a branch.
The branch broke and fell.
The pointed end went right through the man's eye and into his brain.
The man didn't die, somehow, but his motor skills were damaged enough that he never walked or talked again. As the other Peacekeepers tried to grab the body to take back to the inside district fence for medical treatment while the traumatized orphans screamed, he heard a little giggle from the bushes. He went to investigate, and found a rather large copperhead snake. He knew, from the books, that this one was poisonous, but he found himself approaching it anyway.
Were you laughing? he had asked.
At the man, not at you, Speaker, it had responded.
Do you bite people? he had asked.
Not Speakers, it had responded.
Will you bite something, should I ask you to? he had asked.
I would ask every other snake in the region to bite that thing, should a Speaker command it, it had responded.
From then on, he could walk in the forest without fear of any predator. Even the wolves learned that little humans who smelled like snakes probably had poison on them, too.
The first time he killed another human, he was ten.
Peacekeepers. He hated them. He hated many things. He liked nearly nothing.
He enjoyed the bookstore. A quiet place where no one bothered him. Except for the old man, but he could live with that. The old man was special, too. He taught him how to control his powers. But the old man was also stupid. He teaches Tom Marvolo Riddle to control his powers and then sits back and expects him not to use them.
It's wrong to hurt others, the man said.
Says who? he replied.
How would you like it if others hurt you? the man said.
Do I look like I care about the others? he replied.
You should, the man said.
They don't care about me, he replied.
If you cared about them they would, the man said.
You wish, he replied. No one cares. In this world, it's either me, or them.
The old man has no response.
That night, Tom spends a little extra time in the bookstore, in a corner. He has memorized every book by heart, but there really isn't anything better to do. Like school was any useful, when all they talked about were trees. The old man, as deluded as he was, was still useful for some things. He had old textbooks - real textbooks - with hard covers. They came from the Capitol, though thankfully, they were mostly on engineering and science and mathematics. Any history printed by those idiots was probably skewed beyond recognition anyway.
After that conversation, the old man seemed to see him in a new light, one that said irredeemable psychopath rather than poor lost orphan boy who needs a nudge in the right direction, because the next time they met, the old man refused to talk to him anymore. Which was fine with him. He had milked the old man for all the information he was worth, anyway. Only today, the old man had not bothered to tell him that it was already past curfew. When he stepped out, it was dark, and the night watch lined the streets.
The Peacekeeper on his end of the block yells at him to get inside and moves to hit him with the butt of his gun.
He ends up asphyxiating for no good reason whatsoever.
Those who are Reaped at least have someone to cry over them. The orphans do not. They know that, should they be called up to the podium, there will be no sobbing from friends or family. Just silence. No one cares. Not even if the orphan is twelve years old. They are even glad that orphans are called up sometimes. Less mouths to feed, less sorrowful families. No one will miss an orphan. Rather a parentless sacrifice - because that is what the orphans are, sacrifices, rather than an actual child with loved ones.
He has never taken any tesserae. He doesn't have to. The older orphans have to take tesserae for the younger ones, but the matron has given up on forcing him along. She, for all her faults, was a sharp enough woman. She knew what would happen, should she attempt to classify him along with everyone else.
He is seventeen during the Seventieth Hunger Games, from District Seven. Seven, Seven, and Seven. He hates the District, hates the Capitol, hates everyone, but he likes the snakes and he likes the woods and he likes the number seven from which he is born.
A girl is called, and she walks up with shaking knees. He sneers at her weakness. Even if she was faking, no one would believe her. Not after the stunt Johanna Mason pulled the last year.
Johanna Mason is one of the few people he can tolerate. She was a clever one. Clever and brutal. Not special like him, so she still has to follow the rules, but she's good enough to get around the few that she can. Her Hunger Games was one of the few that he actually found enjoyable. She deserved to win. The dumb muscle from Two never saw her coming.
Tom Marvolo Riddle is on six of those slips. Six out of thousands. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Next year he will be eighteen, and his name will be on seven slips. One more year. One more year, until he is free from the system, and then he can do whatever he likes. Being mayor of a district is a hereditary title until the line ends, but he has long since convinced the mayor to disown his own son and put down his name as heir. Once he is mayor, he can deal directly with the Capitol. He is intelligent, energetic, smart, charming. He can change things. Persuade people. A direct audience with the Capitol should be of no difficulty. Then, from there -
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
On the other hand, dealing with the Capitol now rather than later is good enough.
There is some shock around the audience, but it is torn shock. He is infamous in local circles. He is an orphan, yes, but he is not a normal one that they would easily miss, one that they would not care to see die. The people of District Seven will miss the charming young man, but they are glad to see the demon go. They are torn between pride and fear, too. Pride, that District Seven might get to win twice in a row, and fear, that he will come back.
Because he will come back.
He walks up calmly, takes his place, shakes hands with the girl whose name he can't remember (Magpie? Molly? Mistletoe?). She will not last long. She is not underfed, but not fit, either. Too much acne. Not pretty enough to gain sponsors. Annoying and insecure too, if he remembered correctly. She was the type to spend hours crying in the school lavatories over every little insult. No sense of humor. She would win no one over with her personality, either. The only angle she might play successfully would be demure and shy, but that only worked for pretty girls. And the girl was about as pretty as she was physically strong. Apart from the usual deficiencies she is pathetically nearsighted. Large, thick glasses with thin, cheap frames. She is blind without them. Should they break, it would be all over for her.
She was no threat to him. The Capitol would eat her alive.
The train ride is unbearable. Their district escort constantly babbles about something totally pointless, face covered with grotesque makeup, hair styled like a crow's nest, clothes like a clown. His failure of a district partner is constantly hiccupping, trying to hold in her sniffles.
After the introductions are over they are assigned to their mentors. He is initially handed over to some man named after a plant disease. The girl goes to Johanna.
Five minutes later, she's back out, openly sobbing, and Johanna demands that they switch, because she can't take a crybaby who reacts to ever little sarcastic statement. Blight shrugs and agrees, and it is clear that he doesn't really care.
Good. He can take Johanna. They both have similar mindsets: fight to win, fight to kill, fight to live. Whatever it takes. To them, it is all or nothing, and total war.
All is fair in love and war. And there is no love in the Hunger Games.
He and Johanna sit in the same room. They size each other up, like they are fellow tributes rather than mentor and student. Not that she can teach him anything he doesn't already know. She is only a year older than him. But that's not a bad thing. She is still young enough to know how he thinks, to know that he doesn't want or need any advice, to know that he just wants to be left alone (to plot how to win by himself, but she doesn't need to know that). Adults were fussier. He hated everyone, but he hated adults, especially, because being an adult simply meant the right to behave condescendingly because of a few years of age difference.
She does not sit down and go over strategy or give him useless advice. She gets straight to the point. She's not here to help him. She's here to bargain. He knows that look in her eyes. She wants something, and she is brave enough to ask because she thinks she has a chance of getting it. Whatever she wants must be something he wants, too, or at least, something he finds acceptable, given the right payment.
I have a question, Johanna says. Those burning houses and snakebites and dead Peacekeepers...are they really you like everyone says? Can you really do that?
Now that would be telling, he grins.
Instead of being frightened, Johanna smirks back. You're going to use those demon powers, aren't you?
I don't know what you're talking about. His grin grows wider. He forgives Johanna for calling them demon powers because she is not afraid of them. She is not afraid, but triumphant, and proud, that he actually has them. She is proud that he has them because now she can tell herself that she has associated with someone who is special, someone who will definitely rise above the muck of district life one day. He forgives Johanna because in the end, that is what they are.
He is a demon and he is proud of it.
Not just that, Johanna continues, because they both know that he is lying when he denies it. I want you to make the Hunger Games as bad as possible. The Capitol likes it to be fun and a little stretched out. It would be pretty bad if every other competitor just died of a snakebite. How unentertaining would that be?
And my reward? he asks.
Your reward will be the amusement that it will provide you, Johanna smirks. Plus, it's in your best interests to win as fast as possible, with as little physical combat as possible. Things will be more comfortable for you that way, and you know it.
They would hate it, he agrees, letting the fact that someone managed to get something out of him without giving anything in return slide for once.
Oh, and one more thing, Johanna says as she turns to leave.
What? he turns to her.
President Snow. And her mischievous grin turns feral. You know what he does to people like us.
I don't particularly care about the others, he tells her. But since I am already here...
Excellent, she says, with that predatory expression that he sees on himself all the time. Make him pay.
He plays the prep team like a fiddle and bow. They thought they were going to strip him down and scrub his body? Only when hell froze over. One glare sends them scurrying like rats. He bathes and cleans by himself. He takes his time with the robe, too. He sees no point in being their dress-up doll. Not only is it degrading, but also unnecessary. As a male, whatever clothing he will be wearing will be limited to long suits. The Capitol will see nothing but his face and his hands. He permits them to fix his hair - according to his directions - and trim his fingernails, but that is as much liberty as he gives them.
Mind control. How he loved it.
He loves his powers especially when his costume designer comes out with the most ridiculous tree costume ever. Brown one-piece bodysuit, leafy headdress. It's not a tree. It's a wilting piece of broccoli.
He is not broccoli. Broccoli is food. Food is to be eaten.
He is the predator, not the prey. He will be damned if he doesn't leave this place at the top of the food chain.
And he sure as hell does not wilt.
As soon as he is alone he transfigures it to something more befitting of his nature. Dark, dangerous, deadly. The thin onesie jumpsuit morphs into a pair of trousers and a longcoat. The gloves sprout long, thin, leafless branches, giving his fingers a skeletal look. The collar and hems of the cloak, too, are decorated in this manner. They extend beyond his head and below his heels like the dress of a vampire. As he walks, the twigs and branches seem to grow and move and curl like they are alive, grasping the air like a bizarre predator from the depths of the extinct rainforests. He ditches the headdress altogether. The only color he allows himself is a sprig of yew, the bright red and green of death, pinned to the lapel. Otherwise, he is the tree of nightmares, the trees which witches congregate underneath to brew their poisons, the tree in horror stories that reaches out and traps unwitting travelers to devour their souls. He is the Night Rider, the Headless Horseman, the Grim Reaper himself. He is Death incarnate, with his shroud of spiderwebs and human bones.
Later, he finally reveals himself. The effect is quite astonishing. Both the mentors and costume designers, even Johanna, gape. Of course, they are too afraid to say anything about it. He is Tom Marvolo Riddle. He does what he wants, and usually ends up better than the status quo.
When he steps out to the carriages, no one ever looks at a stupid tree the same way ever again.
Later, when he is showed to his rooms, he is also assigned to a guard, like all the other tributes, just to make sure they don't commit suicide or something before the games.
The guard looks a lot like him. His nametag reads Riddle. It doesn't take an idiot to put two and two together, and he is anything but an idiot.
In a twist of ironic fate, the guard is the one who commits suicide before the games, not the tribute. Cause of death is unknown. His eyes are frozen in fear. Peacekeepers suspect a gas leak, but there is no gas.
The training days are a joke. He breezes through the theory, the knowledge. A little bit of his power, and even the heaviest sword feels like a feather in his hands. Any knife he throws will hit any target. Not that he lets anyone, even the judges, know. He doesn't need such brutish weapons to kill. To him, murder was an art. He will not dirty his hands with the blood of someone so clearly beneath him.
He spends most of his time observing the others - not so he can defeat them, because the way things are going, killing them all will be only too easy. He observes them because he has a sick sense of courteous humor, and feels like he should get to know his victims before he slaughters them all. Not that he ever bothered to know any of his other victims, but then again, they weren't going to die on live television.
He considers sneaking into their rooms at night and assassinating them all before the arena is even open, but decides against it. He wants the world to see his power. He wants the world to see how pathetic they are before him. He wants the world to see exactly what he can do, and be helpless in their inability to prove that he was the culprit.
He breezes through the evaluation. Had he been trying, he would have definitely scored like the Ones or Twos or Fours. But he doesn't, because these people don't deserve to be graced with his presence. He still manages a seven, though. Seven was a good number.
The interviews, likewise, are a complete waste of time. But he smiles at the camera anyway. And the Capitol falls head over heels for him. He talks to them for two minutes and they are willing to abandon their lives for him. Just think of the possibilities, when he finally gets through this place.
Idiots.
He is in the arena now. He looks at all the other tributes. Knees bent, ready to run. So pathetic.
The timer is at seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One -
Every single land mine except for his explodes.
In the Capitol, there is shock. The games ended before it had even begun.
Some people called for a redo. But all the tributes were dead, except for one, so he must be crowned Victor. And the Reapings were over. They would not start again until the next year.
After the shock has died down, however, there is celebration. The Capitol applauds for him as he steps onto the stage and receives the crown. He is one of the favorites. If they can look past the absolutely stupid way in which he won, and they can, they are glad for him. He was easily the most handsome of all the tributes this year, even the classic beauties of District One. Some say he is the most handsome ever. They have forgotten about Finnick Odair. He is the new Desirable Number One.
Back home, he was beautiful, and that was where everyone knew that he murdered people for fun.
Here, where he is their decorated Victor, he is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.
Shallow fools.
In the Capitol, the Gamemakers are executed. They know that they will die for the fiasco, that is obvious. They do not understand why it even occurred in the first place, though. A post-game investigation shows that there was nothing wrong with the mines themselves, whether in wiring or security. All they know is that the mines all detonated to leave one person alive.
After the investigation is finished, the source of the explosions are deemed inconclusive. Obviously there was no problem with the mines themselves. The explosion must have been manually set off by a hacker, before they could be deactivated. They suspect that a rabid fan was behind it, because how could some tribute, standing on a mine himself, have accessed the things? He wasn't even from District Three.
They do not know his secret.
They still do not know his secret.
And they never will.
In the Capitol, women and men alike are tripping over their own feet for a chance to be with him. President Snow approaches him later with a proposition, and he is reminded of Johanna Mason.
Make him pay.
Suddenly he understands why, last year, the Masons were killed. That was the one set of deaths in District Seven that had come as a surprise to him, because, after all, he wasn't the one who did it.
His respect for Johanna Mason grows. She sacrificed her whole family for the sake of her own pride. Now there was something he couldn't ever do. Well, he supposed he could have, had he had a family, but as it was, President Snow has no way to threaten him. He is politically immune, for he is a Victor, and Snow can't exactly kill a Victor, especially one as popular as he is. And there is no one he cares about. Unless the man burnt down the forest and killed every single snake in the vicinity - which would be stupid, because then where would the Capitol get its lumber? - there was no way he was going to make him do it. He is untouchable, and yet President Snow dares to have the audacity to challenge his power. This worthless moron dared to believe that he was little more than an inferior District brat, only good for being used.
The next day, President Snow is dead, hanging from the rafters of the town hall, his white hair glistening against the sun.
He is replaced. Within a year, the replacement dies of a newly developed severe allergic reaction to peanuts that oddly wasn't an existing problem before. The replacement is replaced. This replacement's replacement has his career ruined by the tabloids when he is caught with an Avox in his bed. And so it continued. None of the presidents last longer than a year. All of them meet their ends in gruesome, horrid, humiliating ways. The third in line is randomly hit by a car. The fourth, accused of laundering money. The fifth is dismissed when he makes a fool of himself by ripping his trousers during the Third Quarter Quell Hunger Games speech. The sixth does well at first and then resigns for no reason, and that evening his body is found smashed against the pavement below the tallest tower in the city.
Panem is in disorder. Without a constant leader and constant policies, no one knows what is going on. The economy plummets. There are riots in the streets. Peacekeepers are withdrawn from the districts. The Districts, sensing an upcoming power vacuum, rise up in rebellion.
At their head is none other than Tom Marvolo Riddle.
The rebels easily win. Unlike last time, there exist Victors to provide easy access into the Capitol walls. The Capitolites are easy pickings. Their citizens are weak and lazy, having faced no hardship or hunger for three generations. Without a strong leader or a cohesive, organized fighting force, the battle is painfully pathetic. Depressingly one-sided. Within minutes, the Capitol issues a statement of unconditional surrender.
The rebels milk this surrender for all it is worth. They want revenge for their suffering. They want the Capitol to feel the pain they once had. And Tom Marvolo Riddle gives it to them. Tom Marvolo Riddle, demon, heartbreaker, and hero, is clearly the one to follow and trust. He promises change. He will be better than his predecessors, he vows. He will last longer than the six cowards who came before him. He will understand the common man better than President Snow did. The people shall be happier and healthier under him.
(Somewhere, sometime, the old man with the half-moon glasses from the bookstore dies quietly and subtly. He is old, and no one misses him. Johanna Mason follows, and that is questionable because she is young and healthy, but like with all other things, the world quickly forgets her and moves on. No one pauses to realize that those two people are the only two people intelligent enough to know Tom Marvolo Riddle personally at one point in his life, and therefore be considered a threat.)
Whatever mistakes he makes can be forgiven, because even if the people are still hungry and poor, they are doing much better than they ever did in President Snow's time. And now, the people of the Capitol are suffering alongside them, too, so it is only fair. Everyone might have a hard life, but life is supposed to be hard, and now that everyone suffers, not just the districts, life is a little less hard than before. Or at least, that was what the Capitol-distributed statistics said. Everyone is hurting. Everyone knows that they are unhappy. But Tom Marvolo Riddle assures them that things are getting better. That things are better compared to last year.
And since Tom Marvolo Riddle is always right, they accept it and move on. Because Tom Marvolo Riddle is their savior, leader of the Revolution, so obviously he would never lie to them.
No one is sure what real happiness should be like, but they know that they are happy because to think otherwise (waking up at five and slaving for twelve hours a day with a short break to eat so they don't faint and back to work again) would be lazy.
No one is sure what real happiness should be like, but they know that they are happy because to think otherwise (a rickety shack for a home that barely keeps out the elements and has the basic necessities not out of kindness but because useful workers must survive) would be greedy.
No one is sure what real happiness should be like, but they know that they are happy because to think otherwise (soldiers stationed everywhere ruling with an iron fist and no one has any rights but at least there aren't spoiled Capitolites who are unfairly privileged either) would be selfish.
The country is poor and dying, but what do they care, as long as they can see the handsome, charming, and charismatic face of Tom Marvolo Riddle on the television screens nationwide, a beautiful face frozen in time forever, thanks to the Capitol's fashion technology?
He is the greatest president they have ever known.
(Because the alternative is the six cowards who came before him. Because the alternative is President Snow, and god forbid that man come back to life.)
As the leader of the revolution, the sheep all turn to him to lead them. Unfortunately for the lambs, Tom Marvolo Riddle is a snake and not a border collie.
In the Capitol, a new tyrant reigns.
Tom Marvolo Riddle watches from his President's podium as the timer counts down.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH HUNGER GAMES BEGIN!