The Hogwarts Games

Chapter 1

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Marietta's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course she did. This is the day of the reaping.

I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the Dormitory to see them. My little sister, Marietta, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten down. Marietta's face is fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as it was before I cursed "Sneak" over it in spots. I remember how furious I was when I found out she'd broken my favourite doll. I'm too old for such things now, obviously, but I still sometimes hold the rag body (missing all four limbs, now) when I need to get to sleep on a particularly bad night. It works a charm. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

Sitting at Marietta's knees, guarding her, is the world's ugliest cat. Mashed-in face, bandy-legged, eyes the colour of mustard. Marietta named him Crookshanks. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I still don't know what possessed me to buy him. Everyone in Hogwarts must have a regulation animal, but nowadays I wish I'd bought an owl. He is a bit useful though. It turns out he's a born mouser. Even catches the occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Crookshanks the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my hunting boots. Supple dragon hide that has melded to my feet. I pull on trousers, a shirt, hunting robes and tie my bushy brown hair up into a plait. Then I grab my wand.

Our part of Dormitory 12 is usually crawling with Obliviators heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Wizards and Witches with hunched shoulders, bruises, and premature lines on their sunken faces. But today the corridors are empty. Beds are segregated with drawn curtains. The reaping isn't until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.

Our beds are almost at the edge of the Dormitory. I only have to pass a few beds to reach the corridors, and it's only a few flights of stairs and I'm outside.

I have to run for a while, but soon enough I'm in the scruffy, out of use Quidditch field. Separating the field from the Forbidden Forest is a high chain link fence topped with barbed-wire loops. In theory, the magic's supposed to be turned on twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods- werewolves, centaurs, thestrals-that used to threaten our castle. But since we're only lucky enough to get two or three hours of magic in the evenings, it's usually safe to touch. Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully for the magical hum that means the fence is protected. Right now, it's silent as a stone. Concealed by a clump of bushes, I flatten out on my belly and slide under a two-foot stretch that's been loose for years. There are several other weak spots in the fence, but this one is so far from the castle that I almost always enter the forest here.

As soon as I'm in the trees, I retrieve a muggle bow and sheath of arrows from a hollow log. Magic protection or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of Hogwarts. Inside the forest they roam freely, and there are added concerns like unsuspecting muggles, that abandoned Ford Anglia and no real path to follow. But there's also food if you know how to find it. My father, James, knew, and he taught me some ways before he was killed by Minister for Magic, Lord Voldemort. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

Even though trespassing in the Forest is illegal and poaching carries the severest of penalties, more people would risk it if we still had magic. But most are not bold enough to venture out with just a knife. My bow is a rarity, crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the forest, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. This muggle technology repulses some people, but most have accepted the fact that we need to learn new ways to survive. My father could have made good money selling his bows, but if the officials found out he would have been publically executed for inciting a rebellion. Most of the Death Eaters turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. In fact, they're among our best customers. But the idea that someone might be arming Dormitory 12 would never have been allowed.

In the autumn, a few brave souls sneak into the forest to harvest apples. But they're always in sight of the Quidditch field. Always close enough to run back to the safety of Hogwarts if trouble arises. "Dormitory 12. Where you can starve to death in safety," I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you.

When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about Dormitory 12, about the people who rule over the Wizarding population of our country. The Ministry of Magic, and the lucky few who get to live outside the castle that was once a school. Hogwarts. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no-one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in Transfiguration and Potions classes. Make only polite small talk in the Great Hall. Discuss little more than trades on the third floor, which is where the black market is, and that is where I make most of my money. Even in our part of the Dormitory, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food and magic shortages, or the Hogwarts Games. Marietta might begin to repeat my words, and then where would we be?

In the forest waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Oliver. I can feel the muscles in my face relaxing, my pace quickening as I climb the hills to our place, a rock ledge overlooking a ditch, where a rusty Ford Anglia lies. A thicket of berries protects it from unwanted eyes. The sight of him waiting there brings a smile. Oliver says I never smile except in the forest.

"Hey, Mione," says Oliver. My real name is Hermione, but when I first told him, I barely whispered it. So he thought I'd said Mione. It stuck.

"Look what I shot." Oliver holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and I laugh. It's real, house elf made bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make from our grain rations. I take it in my hands, pull out the arrow, and hold the puncture in the crust to my nose, inhaling the fragrance that makes my mouth flood with saliva. Fine bread like this is for special occasions.

"Mm, still warm," I say. He must have been at the bakery at the crack of dawn to trade for it. "What did it cost you?"

"Just a squirrel. Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning," says Oliver, "Even wished me luck."

"Well, we all feel a little closer today, don't we?" I say, not even bothering to roll my eyes.

"I almost forgot!" says Oliver suddenly, falling into a Ministry of Magic accent as he mimics Dolores Umbridge, the maniacally upbeat woman who arrives once a year to read out names at the reaping, "Happy Hogwarts Games!" He plucks a few blackberries from the bushes around us. "And may the odds-" He tosses a berry in a high arc towards me.

I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue. "-be ever in your favour!" I finish with equal verve. We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits. Besides, the Ministry of Magic accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.

I watch as Oliver pulls his knife and slices the bread. He could be my brother. His hair, short as it is, is thick, and almost precisely the same shade of brown as mine. He is burly and well-built, but his eyes are also brown, and are very similar to mine. But we're not related, at least not closely.

My mother and sister don't resemble me though. My mother has red hair-not ginger, it's a shade of red that no dye could ever quite replicate, and her eyes are emerald green. And Marietta's dark brown hair is as curly as mine is bushy, but in a different, and infinitely more attractive way. And they're different. Different because the way they look is...rich.

And it's true, kind of. My mother's parents were healers at St. Mungo's, and they ran an apothecary shop inside Hogwarts. Since barely anyone can afford the floo network fees to take them to St. Mungo's, they began healing here in the castle.

After Voldemort rose to power, he began charging for things like that quickly. Little things, like the use of Broomsticks, and Flying Carpets. Then he banned those forms of Transportation, and began limiting other things, like Apparation (only available between six o'clock and nine o'clock every morning and night), and the Floo Network (three Galleons per journey.) Since practically no-one in Hogwarts has three Galleons to spare, even in a life or death situation, we're basically confined to the school, with no feasible means of escape.

Anyway.

My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed into remedies. She must have really loved him, to leave the shop to join him in a small corner of the dormitory, where she once had one of the five remaining four poster beds. Her parents disowned her, of course. I try to remember that when all I see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

"We could do it, you know," Oliver says quietly, jerking me out of my thoughts.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Oliver.

I don't know how to respond. The idea is so preposterous.

"If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly.

They're not our kids, of course. But they might as well be. Oliver's two little brothers and a sister. My sister: Marietta. And you may as well throw in our mothers as well, because how would they live without us? Who would fill those mouths that are always asking for more? Even when we hunt, there are still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs rumbling. Still nights when our families go hungry.

"I never want to have kids," I say.

"I might. If I didn't live here," says Oliver.

"But you do," I say, irritated.

"Forget it," he snaps back.

The conversation feels all wrong. Leave? How could I leave Marietta, who is the only person in the world I'm certain I love? And Oliver is devoted to his family. We can't leave, so why bother talking about it? And even if we did...Even if we did...Where is all this stuff about us having kids coming from? There's never been anything romantic between Oliver and me. When we met, I was just a skinny twelve year old, and although he was only two years older, he used to be a keeper-before Quidditch was banned-and it was evident in his build, so much so that he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to begin helping each other in the hunt, to work together.

Besides, if he wants kids, Oliver Wood will not have any trouble finding a wife. He's good-looking, he's strong and muscled, and he can hunt. You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous, but not in the way people would think. Good hunting partners-and friends-are hard to come by these days.

"What do you want to do?" I ask. We can use what little magic we have to catch some rare meat, or we can fish, hunt and gather the muggle way.

"Let's fish at the lake. We can enchant the nets and go and gather in the forest. Get something nice for tonight," he says.

Tonight. After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. And a lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year. But at least two families will pull their curtain around their beds, although we'll still be able to hear them sobbing into their pillows. They'll have to figure out how to survive the painful weeks to come.

We do well. The predators ignore us on a day when easier, tastier prey abounds. By late morning, we have a dozen fish, a bag of greens and, best of all, a large quantity of strawberries. I found a patch a few years ago, but Oliver had the idea to string mesh nets around it to keep the animals away.

On the way home, we go to the third floor market place, in a room that is rumoured to be the home of an ancient relic: The Mirror of Erised. No-one's ever seen it though. Most businesses are closed by this time on reaping day, but the black market's still fairly busy. We trade six of our fish for delights such as pumpkin pasties, Mrs Weasley's rock cakes, and a flask of Butterbeer. Mrs Weasley also takes half of the greens off our hands in exchange for some good meat.

When we finish our business at the market, we go to the Head of House, Professor McGonagall, and sell half the strawberries. We charge a relatively high price, but she can afford it. Professor McGonagall's daughter, Penelope, opens the door to the office. Penelope's in my year at school. Being the Head of House's daughter, you'd expect her to be a snob, but she's alright. She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other while announcements are made, partnering for lessons. We rarely talk, which suits us both just fine.

Today, her drab school robes have been replaced with an expensive white dress, and her long, curly blonde hair is done up with a blue and red ribbon. Ravenclaw-Gryffindor colours. These are her reaping clothes.

"Pretty dress," says Oliver.

Penelope shoots him a look, trying to see if it's a genuine compliment or if he's just being ironic. It isa pretty dress, but she would never be wearing ordinarily. She presses her lips together, then smiles. "Well, if I end up going to the Ministry of Magic, I want to look nice, don't I?"

Now it's Oliver's turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? I'm guessing the second.

"You won't be going to the Ministry," says Oliver coolly. His eyes land on a small circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family alive for months. "What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old."

"That's not her fault," I say.

"No, it's no-one's fault. Just the way it is," says Oliver.

Penelope's face has become closed off. She puts the galleons for the berries in my hand. "Good luck, Hermione."

"You, too," I say, and the door closes.

We walk towards the Dorm in silence. I don't like that Oliver took a dig at Penny, but he's right, of course. The reaping system is unfair, with the poorest getting the worst of it. You become eligible for reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times. That's true for every citizen in all twelve dormitories in the castle that is our only home and community. Hogwarts.

But here's the catch. Say you're poor and starving, with no magic, as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for magic. The magic we get is a pitiful amount, barely enough for a month. But you can do this for each member of your family. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once because I had to, and three times for magic for myself, Marietta and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Oliver, who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times.

You can see why someone like Penelope, who has never needed magic, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us in need of any magic we can scrape together. After Lord Voldemort won the war, he took away our magic. No-one knows how, or even why, seeing as he valued the status of Witch or Wizard above anything else. Now, we live on the barest form of our rudimentary powers. We each have a wand, which is at most times useless, until something like the reaping comes along and a little magic is restored into these wands. No longer does the wand choose the wizard-these are regulatory sticks, wood with no magical core, because it must be Voldemort who keeps the power; with what is rumoured to be the most powerful wand in the Wizarding world. But anyway, the chances of Penny's name being drawn are slim. Not impossible, but slim. And even though the rules were set up by the Ministry of Magic, not the Houses, certainly not the Heads of Houses, it's hard not to resent those who don't have to sign up for magic. It's not like Penelope's family has unlimited magic. But they have enough. More than us, anyway.

Oliver knows his anger at Penny is misdirected. On other days, deep in the Forest, I've listened to him rant about how the magic rations are just another tool to create misery at Hogwarts. "It's to the Ministry's advantage to have us all divided among ourselves," he says, in response to the further segregation of houses and Wizarding families.

The houses. Once there were only four, while nowadays there are twelve. Still based upon the same template. All split into their own Dormitories. What once was a simple school tradition has evolved into a gruesome separation of magical folk. We're barely permitted to talk to members of other Dormitories/Houses.

As we walk, I glance over at Oliver's face, still smouldering underneath his stony expression. His rages seem pointless to me, although I never say so. It's not that I don't agree with him. I do. But what is good about yelling about the Ministry in the middle of the Forest? It doesn't change anything. It doesn't make things fair. It doesn't stop Voldemort's reign of terror. But I let him yell. Better he does it in the Forest than inside Hogwarts.

Oliver and I divide the food, leaving us with a fair amount each.

"See you in the square," I say.

"Wear something pretty," he says flatly.

Back in the Dormitory, I find my mother and sister are ready to go. My mother wears a fine dress, preserved from the day before her parents disowned her. Marietta is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It's a bit big on her, but my mother has made it stay with pins. Even so, she's having trouble keeping the blouse tucked in at the back.

My mother has saved the adjoining bathroom for me. There are a few scattered around the Dormitory, but still too few for us to share easily. A tub of warm water waits for me, and I scrub off the dirt and sweat clinging to my body and wash my hair. To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes.

"Are you sure?" I ask. I'm trying to get past rejecting offers of help from her. For a while, I was so angry, I wouldn't allow her to do anything for me. And this is something special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her.

"Of course. Let's put your hair up, too," she says. She braids my hair before it can puff out into its usual bushiness. Then she pins it in a spiral on top of my head. I can hardly recognize myself in the cracked bathroom mirror.

"You look beautiful," says Marietta in a hushed voice.

"And nothing like myself," I say. I hug her, because I know these next few hours will be terrible for her. Her first reaping. She's about as safe as you can get, since she's only entered once. I wouldn't let her take any magic. But she's worried about me. That the unthinkable might happen.

I protect Marietta in every way I can, but I'm powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she's in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face. I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. "Tuck your tail in, little duck," I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.

Marietta giggles and gives me a small "Quack".

"Quack yourself," I say with a light laugh. The kind only Marietta can draw out of me.

At twelve o'clock, we head for the Great Hall. Attendance is mandatory unless you're on your death bed. This evening, officials will go round the dormitories to check that this is the case. If not you'll be imprisoned.

Each House has the reaping for their Dormitory held at a different time. Dormitory 12 is first, at one. Exactly half an hour later, we are expected to have evacuated the Great Hall, to make way for Dormitory 11 and so on.

People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Ministry to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve to eighteen year olds are herded into roped areas (the tables are temporarily gone) marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the young ones, like Marietta, towards the back. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another's hands. But there are others, too, who have no-one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among the crowd, taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Odds are given on their ages, whether they're poor or rich, if they will break down and weep.

The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic, as people arrive. The Hall's quite large, but not enough to hold Gryffindor-Ravenclaw's population of about two-hundred and fifty. Latecomers are directed to the Entrance Hall, where they can watch the event from father away, but the magically enhanced voices mean that nothing is missed.

I find myself standing in a group of sixteen year old girls. We exchange terse nods, before turning to the platform at the front. There are three chairs spaced along the professor's table. There's no headmaster's chair anymore. I suppose Voldemort's our headmaster, ever since he killed Dumbledore, but he's never even visited Hogwarts, so the Heads of Houses are the more active participants in running the school. There, in the middle, is the Goblet of Fire. Or, at least, that's what it once was called. Now it's the Reaping Goblet.

In one chair is Professor McGonagall, our Head of House. She's pale and drawn, and was once in the Order of the Phoenix, but succumbed to Voldemort after he threatened her daughter. Next to her, in the middle, is Dolores Umbridge, who this year has dyed her hair bright pink to match her clothes. There's a writhing cat that was probably once white in her fluffy handbag, but some sadistic stylist has even dyed the defenceless animal the colour of candyfloss. But one seat remains empty, and when the clock strikes one, whispers are exchanged at the absence of the occupant of the last seat.

Regardless, McGonagall steps forward and begins to read a very rehearsed speech. It's the same every year. She talks about the history of Hogwarts. How Voldemort rose to power, and spared people who converted to his side. How merciful he was. Never mind the people he ended up killing. Countless lives, lost. She talks, stiffly, about how the houses were split up, to make space for the entire Wizarding world to live in Hogwarts; together in unity. Except that that's not true. We don't speak to anyone from the other Dormitories. We don't share classes with them; we sit at other tables when we eat. Then Dumbledore and Dormitory 13 (Gryffindor-Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff) rose up to try to destroy Voldemort. But they were crushed by the Ministry, and Voldemort decided that a reminder was needed for the Wizarding World, a reminder to stop us ever stepping out of line again.

The Hogwarts Games are a simple concept. Each of the twelve Houses must simple present one girl and one boy to compete. These twenty-four children are known as Tributes. These Tributes are imprisoned in a magical arena which can be anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. The competitors must fight to the death. That's all.

And the last one standing wins.

And those...monsters at the Ministry, they treat it like a game. Like it's funto watch. Like they can have feasts and banquets while children kill each other. Become murderers. But the winner-the winner becomes rich. Receive a realwand, with unlimited power. And get all the gold they could ever wish for.

It's been 49 years since the first Hogwarts Games, and yet Dormitory 12 has had only one victor. Rubeus Hagrid. And at this moment the man himself manages to stagger on stage. He's massive, and the rumours say he's half giant. Umbridge shies away, after her campaign against "filthy half-breeds" flopped- but not without causing more hate for them- she's done all she can to make them feel excluded and different. The chair breaks as he tries to sit down, and his bloodshot eyes are wild and feral.

Professor McGonagall looks stressed. This is shown in all the other Dormitories, live, and Hagrid is making Dormitory 12 an embarrassment. Not that we aren't already. She hastily introduces Umbridge to draw attention away from Hagrid.

Bubbly and patronizing as ever, Umbridge trots to the podium and gives her signature, "Happy Hogwarts Games! And may the odds be everin your favour!"

She clears her throat as though she is about to give a speech, but Hagrid is making his hands talk to each other so she hastily says, "Ladies first!"

The flames in the Reaping Goblet turn blue, and a piece of paper is spat out. I'm desperately hoping, not me, not me, not me...

And it's not me.

It's Marietta Granger.