Disclaimer: The Harry Potter and Hunger Games franchises are the brainchildren of JK Rowling and Suzanne Collins, respectively, and I don't own a single bit of either of them. Other than the books, the dvds, some posters, and maybe a replica of Hermione's wand.
Warnings: This piece will contain slashy slashy overly gay homosexual adventures driven by a big gay romance. Also some graphic violence, highly unlikely situations, slight changes to the Hunger Games timeline, general tomfoolery and mangling of either canon to suit my whimsy.
Paranatellon
(n.) A star which rises at the same time as another star or object.
Four year old Harry Potter was confused.
He's never really sure why the yelling starts, it's different every time. He's sitting in his cupboard, chin balanced on his knees, which are drawn to his chest, staring into the darkness and thinking about how much nicer the house would be in a pleasant shade of blue…how much happier it would make everyone to see the home in a cheery light blue, when the racket begins.
Normally, Harry first hears his Uncle's yell coming from either the sitting room or upstairs, in which case the yell is immediately followed by the loud smashing of his footfalls on the stairs over the child's head. The overly rotund man would then round on the door to Harry's cupboard, growling threats as he fumbled with the lock. Uncle Vernon's bellowing won't stop once he gets Harry out, though his threats are usually worse than his punishments.
The average punishments are pretty gentle to the five year old now. Two days locked in the cupboard, only given water and let out to go to the bathroom when necessary are the standard. On occasion, either his aunt or uncle would knock him around a little, never enough to bruise or scar him.
Today, however, Uncle Vernon's enraged shout seemed to come from much further away to young Harry. The cry was so muffled that had Harry not had five years of practice listening for that particular sound with bated breath, the child would have missed it.
With a resounding slam, Harry heard what must have been the front door flying open and hitting an interior wall, rattling picture frames on the wall.
"FREAK!"
The fat man's roar seemed to shake the very foundation of the house, and little Harry instantly squeezed strikingly green eyes shut against the tears he felt spring up.
"BOY!" Vernon's volume and sudden closeness to the door made Harry jump wildly. "As soon as I get this lock off, you're in for it!"
The small boy in the cupboard began to tremble uncontrollably. A small sob escaped his throat and he sniffled slightly. Harry just didn't understand why he was punished so often, why he was such a bad person. He jumped again as Vernon began scrambling to grab the combination lock that kept the cupboard shut. Bouts of anger made Vernon clumsier, and his grotesque, sausage-like fingers had a tough time maneuvering the small lock around on the best of days.
Harry whimpered softly, begging in his mind to be anywhere other than his cupboard. Vernon's angry shouts and lumbering around with the lock began to fade away as Harry tuned all of it out. The little boy wanted so desperately to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Somewhere that he wouldn't be punished just for no reason, somewhere that his family would love him even though he was a freak, and maybe somewhere with lots of blue.
And before he knew it, the Boy Who Lived lost consciousness, gently slipping into a deep sleep as his magic swept him away.
Fate had something else in mind for the boy.
Five year old Harry Potter was a very happy boy.
Bright green eyes sparkled behind thin framed glasses as the little boy tromped up the cobblestone street, his hand clutching that of a tall, stylish, and slender blond woman. The two made quite a striking pair, a study in opposites. While sharing a very thin, waif-like shape, the two were completely un-alike in coloring. Harry was very fair of complexion, all snow white skin, plush red lips and an eternal blush on his cheeks. The little boy's hair was dark as night, and a startling contrast to his almost unnaturally green eyes. He looked like a child's doll brought to life. A little on the small side, but not disconcertingly so.
The woman, however, sported a healthy tan, her lean body spoke more of athleticism than a lack of nourishment. Her hair was the color of straw, and her eyes, hidden behind darkly tinted lenses, were a very becoming shade of hazel.
The young woman's name was Gwenyth Ahearn, and her life had taken a very peculiar turn almost two years beforehand. The animated young boy gallivanting by her side had simply appeared in the doorway of the cottage that she and her husband shared. As Gwen herself was unable to have a child, the couple had happily taken in the young boy, and had enthusiastically taken on the job of pampering him and giving him all the love and affection the boy clearly craved and had lacked wherever he'd come from.
"Mommy!" Harry cried exuberantly, swinging his arm with a great heave to garner the woman's attention. "Where are we going!?"
The beauty smiled softly at the boy. "We're going to the Justice Building, Harry. A very special event is happening today."
Harry scowled at his mother, black eyebrows furrowing into a threatening –and absolutely adorable, thought his adoptive mother- pout.
"But Mommy, my birthday isn't for another week. They can't celebrate it now! What will we do on my birthday!?"
The woman chuckled outright at that, valiantly attempting to smother a laugh that would no doubt upset her sensitive child if he thought she was laughing at him.
"Don't worry, my lionfish. What they're doing at the Justice Building today does affect your birthday, but not very much. Your birthday is a very important day, Harry. It's the first day of the Hunger Games."
"Hungry…Games?" Harry said the words haltingly, as if testing them with his tongue. "Mommy, I was hungry in the old place and it never felt like a game to me. I would much rather play with the crabs on the shore than play hungry games."
"No, Harry. Not Hungry Games, Hunger Games…though, really, there's very little difference in the end." She muttered the last part under her breath.
"Remember how I told you about the Capitol, Harry?" The little boy nodded his affirmation as they continued walking. "Well, every year, one boy and one girl from each of the Districts go to the Capitol, where they compete in the Hunger Games. It's a great honor to win the games. Your father won the Games that he competed in."
"Really! I want to win them, too, then! How do you win?"
Gwen nearly stopped short at the question. While she knew Harry was aware of what death was, he'd known his birth parents had died after all, how exactly did one explain the Hunger Games to a small child? Especially when she and Wil had gone to such lengths to shelter Harry from all of Panem's unhappiness.
Luckily for Gwen, Harry continued barreling through his questions with all of the carefree delivery of a little boy.
"Is it like chess where you have to be smarter than everyone? Or is it like that game Ruhn, Shelly, and I played where we tried to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater at the cove and the only reason Shelly won is because I started to see spots?"
Sensing the perfect moment to divert the boy's attention, the blonde beauty struck.
"Excuse me?" she quickly interrupted, voice full of ire. "You did what?! You wait 'til your father hears about this."
At that, the boy's mouth snapped shut with an audible click. The statuesque blonde looked down at her son to see him staring forward resolutely, flushing with shame.
He peeked back up at his mother through thick black lashes, timidly asking where his father actually was.
"Your father is probably already at the Justice Building. He was at the docks in town this morning helping Mr. Odair work on his boat, you'll see him when he gets home this evening."
The pair continued ambling up the cobblestone street to the Justice Building, listening idly to the sounds of the water lapping at the nearby shore and the gulls calling out overhead. It was a hot and muggy morning in Panem's 4th District, even for the end of July. Not for the first time, Gwen found herself grateful to be living in District 4, rather than one of the poorer outlying Districts. Cooling oneself in the summer was never further away than a dip in the nearby sea, and the District was never cold enough to warrant more than a light jacket, so heating your home was never a problem. Food was always in abundance, and the people were more apt to share if a neighbor was suffering from a streak of bad luck fishing. Being a favored District with the Capitol didn't hurt at all either, Gwen mused idly.
Harry's mood began to lighten again as mother and son entered town. The normally bustling streets were fairly quiet, only random grown-ups milling about. Harry noticed that the townspeople about were giving off some nervous energy, but the exuberant five year old quickly wrote it off as the Justice Building began to take shape in the distance.
The only real town in District Four was built around the Justice Building. The village consisted of one long road, the Justice Building on one end, shops lining either side of the road, and the train station at the other end. The Justice Building itself was enormous by any standard. It was a large coral-colored building, the only building in the District other than the station that had more than one floor, featuring a bright red tile roof and wrought iron detailing. The entrance to the building was a raised platform looking out onto a large garden that hosted all of the village's important gatherings.
Harry found it very strange that the garden was full of people, but a strange quiet reigned over the crowd. It was the only time Harry had ever seen that many people in one place not speaking. When they reached the arched entryway to the building, there was a table set up with several peacekeepers sitting at it, and Harry noticed that everyone in the garden was in a roped off area. Boys were separated from girls, and then age groups were separated from one another. To the immediate right, though, stood all of the adults and small children in their own roped off area. There were also large screens set up on either side of the stage, as tall as the Justice Building, they were showing scenes in the courtyard. Since coming to Panem, Harry had only known major news to be on the telly, so he knew something big was happening.
Harry's mother muttered something to one of the peacekeepers at the desk, Harry was too invested in thinking over what was happening to notice, and then gently pulled her small son over to the crowd of people in the very back.
The little green-eyed boy was taking in the crowd raptly, because for something his mother described as an honor, the crowd was very somber. It didn't look at all like people were being chosen for a game. He noticed all of the kids and teenagers up front were dressed well, most of them wearing their finest clothes. Their hair was neatly done, and the most of the older girls were sporting make up and little shell trinkets in their hair.
He was broken from his reverie by the amplified sound of a man clearing his throat. Harry turned to the platform on the front of the Hall of Justice, seeing a man had taken the stage while the black haired boy hadn't been paying attention. The man was elderly, and flanked by two peacekeepers. He was wearing what appeared to Harry to be a dress, light blue and lavishly adorned with little shiny things and silver patterns throughout the blue fabric. His hair was grey bordering on white, a long beard reaching his mid-chest, and small spectacles were perched on his nose jauntily. With a small sigh, the man began to speak.
"Greetings, District 4. I am Albus Dumbledore, and I would like to welcome to the reaping of tributes for the 64th Annual Hunger Games!"
Harry raised a small eyebrow at the word 'reaping.' It didn't sound like a terribly happy word. The crowd gave the strange looking man –Albus, Harry mentally corrected- a smattering of applause, and two peacekeepers from the sides of the stage moved to place giant bowls full of paper in front of the man onstage.
"Without further ado, let us begin. Ladies first, as is the way of things," and with that, Dumbledore moved to one of the glass balls and plucked a name from it. "This year's female tribute is Neara Opis!"
The crowd let out a collective gasp, and a few sobs could be heard breaking out. Harry drew his attention to the projector screen, unable to find the girl in the commotion. He watched as a pretty blonde girl, typical of the district, pulled her shoulders back and resolutely made her way to the stage. She took a spot next to Dumbledore, where the man smiled gently at her and congratulated her before moving to the other bowl of what Harry now knew to be names.
"And this year's male tribute is," Albus moved his spectacles slightly to read the name better. "Bay Kelvin!"
If Harry thought the crowd had reacted poorly to the first tribute's selection, they absolutely erupted at this one. The general uproar was so much that the peacekeepers began making nervous gestures of moving at the crowd. On the screen, Harry watched in confusion as a small boy made his way to the stage, tears streaming down his face. Bay had been standing towards the very back of the crowd, with all of the youngest children allowed to participate, Harry noted. The boy in question also had an appearance typical of the district, tan skin, blond hair, and sea green eyes.
Dumbledore then spoke into his microphone, loud enough to interrupt the turmoil in the courtyard.
"That concludes this year's reaping. Will any wishing to visit the tributes before they leave for the Capitol please make their way to the peacekeepers in the front of the building. Everyone else, please exit the complex in a timely and orderly fashion."
Harry took a second to look at the man more in depth than before and saw his too blue eyes twinkling sadly behind those half-moon shaped glasses.
"Oh, yes. Happy Hunger Games, District Four, and may the odds be ever in your favor."
And with that, Dumbledore and the tributes, guarded by peacekeepers, were swept into the Justice Building.
The crowd began to mill out of the courtyard onto the main thoroughfare, Harry catching snippets of conversation from passersby as her mother began to herd him through the crowd.
"It's just so sad-"
"So young-"
"I can't imagine what I would-"
"If he was my son-"
The crowd began to thin out towards their homes as Gwen kept pulling Harry steadfastly towards their cottage on the sea. After winning the Games, Wil, Gwen's husband, elected to have a small cottage built directly on the ocean on the outskirts of town, rather than in the centrally located Victor's Village. His request was initially balked at, but Wil held a lot of sway with the public in the Capitol, as District 4 tributes tended to have, and the Mayor eventually received permission for the private residence from the government.
There was so much about these Games that didn't make sense to Harry. Winning the Games brought honor and fame to the district, but no one wanted to compete. Every year, two people from the district competed, but his father was the only competitor Harry had met. Obviously there was something Harry wasn't being told.
"Mommy?" the child asked hesitantly.
"Yes, lionfish?"
"What happens to the tributes who don't win the Hunger Games? Why was everyone so sad?"
Gwen's mouth set in to a grim line, knowing her inquisitive child wouldn't forget this line of questioning any time soon.
"The way that a tribute wins the Games, my lionfish, is by surviving. Out of the twenty four tributes, only the winner comes home at the end."
In that instant, the future of Panem was changed. Harry Potter had been born for greatness, regardless of whatever parallel universe he'd been thrown into, and the second his mother filled him in on the biggest injustice his young mind could fathom, he knew he had to change it.
Five year old Harry Potter, small of body from years of malnourishment, quick of mind from being thrown into an alternate dimension, and just over three feet of resolute heroism, decided that he was going to train his body and mind every day to enter the Games. He would become a tribute one day, win the Hunger Games, and defeat the system from the inside out.
But first, it was time for a snack.
And so for the next ten years, Harry indeed trained every single day. The Hunger Games that began on the child's sixth birthday ended in the tragic deaths of both tributes from District 4, a rather ingenious teen from the Third District winning by electrocuting an entire alliance of tributes bathing in a small pond.
The small green eyed boy spent his younger years training his mind for the games, knowing that no one in the village would teach any form of combat to a six year old. Harry poured over every book, magazine, pamphlet, and musty old tome he could find for any information that would be useful in the Games. He spent countless hours memorizing animal species and how dangerous they may be, plants that could be used to heal and those that could be poisonous, how the body reacts to dehydration and starvation, how to stretch the human body to its limits while still being able to live.
He read on the theory of several weapons that were in most games, all variations of blades, the bow, throwing knives. He left alone those he knew he would never be strong enough to wield well such as the axes and maces that usually found their way into the arena. Harry watched and re-watched every Hunger Games both for strategy and to desensitize himself to the carnage he knew he'd have to witness firsthand one day. He was, though, both proud and mildly disturbed by the Games won by his father. Wilhelm Ahearn was the victor of the 54th Annual Hunger Games at the age of 17. He'd formed an alliance with the tributes from District 2, and when it was down to himself and them, he decapitated the male with a greatsword and threw the female into a pool of acid after two days of hunting her down.
A particular favorite of his were the trident and net, also favored by his District's latest victor, Finnick Odair. Harry had a lucky in with his father being close friends with Odair's father, so Finnick had always seen Harry as a surrogate brother. After winning his Games, the teen reluctantly agreed to begin training Harry on his tenth birthday, though the smaller boy kept his zeal for the Games hidden from his trainer.
Harry grew inseparable from the blond teen, long having since spurned the other children his age for their insouciance and immaturity. He only had two friends that weren't his parents, and those two were Finnick and Finnick's girlfriend, Annie Cresta. Annie was the sweetest girl in the District, and on Harry's twelfth birthday, she began her own fight for her life in the Games.
Annie returned to the beachside district as a victor, but assuredly changed. There was a weariness in her blue-green eyes, a nervousness in her demeanor, she couldn't be in the company of more than a few people at once, and only Harry and Finnick could get close to her without triggering a panic attack.
The black haired boy's vow to end the Capitol's reign of terror was only strengthened by this, what he saw as a personal offense. By his thirteenth birthday, his father had discovered Harry pouring over the journals of former contestants in the Games, and began to train him in yet more forms of combat.
By the age of sixteen, Harry was a force to be reckoned with. Still small for his age, Harry was only around 5'4, but there was not an ounce of excess on his body. Lean, whipcord muscle covered his small frame, and all of his combat preparation with his father and Finnick had trained his body intensely in agility in flexibility. His brain was finely tuned, and his personality was sure to win over the hearts of the Capitol. While rather aloof with his peers, Harry had never been anything other than charming to a fault, and his appearance would definitely catch the eyes of the unbelievably shallow population of the Capitol.
All in all, he was ready.
Harry filed his nails with a piece of dried out coral, idly watching the crowd mill about him nervously. The moment he'd been preparing himself for over the last ten years had finally arrived. The reaping for the 74th Annual Hunger Games. He'd already been identified at the peacekeeper desk, sorted like a fish at the market, and herded into the rest of the fifteen year old boys. The games would open on Harry's sixteenth birthday. He grimly wondered if he'd receive any gifts from a sponsor.
Harry had already decided this would be the games for him. The following year was a Quarter Quell, and the green eyed teen had no desire to enter what would no doubt be a shitstorm, as all the Quells were. Buying tesserae was out of the question as the child of a previous victor, so Harry would have to rely on luck or volunteering, which was not totally out of the ordinary for the career district he lived in.
Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the crowd tensed en masse. He turned nearly luminous green eyes on the stage as Albus Dumbledore again strolled out to a microphone. The man looked much the same year after year, though Harry had watched as the twinkle in the Dumbledore's eyes had become sadder and sadder. The peacekeepers again laid out the two reaping bowls, and the elderly man cleared his throat into the mic.
"Ahem," Albus began. "Greetings, citizens of District 4! I hope you've all been enjoying this lovely weather on today, reaping day for the 74th Annual Hunger Games!"
A half-hearted cheer rose up from the crowd, mostly for the audience in the Capitol they all knew to be watching.
"Let's begin with the reaping," Albus moved to the first reaping bowl and reached in with a flourish. "Ladies first…the female tribute for this year's Hunger Games is Miss Luna Lovegood!"
The projector screens zoomed in on a blonde girl fairly close to Harry in the crowd. She had large, dreamy grey eyes set in a soft, cherubic face. Her hair was waist length and adorned with various shells and sand dollar pieces, oddly complimentary of her floor-length, grey, halter topped dress. For having such a soft appearance, she held her head up high and approached the stage with a soft smile on her face, greeting Dumbledore with a serene curtsy as she took her place next to him.
"Such a lovely competitor," Dumbledore smiled at her and motioned for the crowd to continue applauding. He waited a few more seconds for the crowd to die down before reaching into the second bowl. As his hand descended into the pile of names, Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on his name being on whatever paper Albus grabbed. Harry's luck had never failed him on things he wanted desperately, something he'd always kept in mind since coming to Panem.
"And District Four's male tribute is," Albus announced, looking over half-moon spectacles at the crowd. "Mr. Harry Potter."
A/n: And there it is! I had the idea for this after watching The Hunger Games with my boyfriend on Tuesday, typed up a brainstorm on the plot on Wednesday, and have literally written in every spare second for the past two days. After clocking maybe five hundred words over two years, 9 pages in two days has been pretty reaffirming for me. Hope you stick around for the rest of this ride, it's gonna be a little bumpy!