Harry had always hated the Tournament. The bloodlust. The desire to kill. The unexplained want to feel someone else's blood on your hands. He hated that, hated what it did to people. He hated how so many wanted to be a part of it, chose to be a part of it, and those who didn't were forced to go into it anyway.
Maybe that was what he hated most. Not the blood. Not the death. But the volunteers. The people who chose to be sacrificed like pigs for slaughter. The people who chose to slaughter the other people, the forced victims. Like it would bring them happiness. Or glory. Or pride. That's what sickened him most about the Tournament now. The brutality. When he was younger it was mainly because watching it made him feel queasy, damn near sick to his stomach with all of that blood and starvation on top of it all, but now that he'd reached seventeen, he didn't care much about blood. He'd seen a lot worse in his time in District 12.
But the voluntary tributes...they got him every year. He didn't close his eyes to avoid blood anymore. He closed them to avoid seeing the joy in spilling it.
There was always someone, though. In every district, at least one person who had secretly been training themselves for this their entire lives, for the day when they would be able to step up and say, "I volunteer as tribute," and then be shipped off to the Tournament to compete. And from there, they had to follow the whole cursed process. They were paraded around like royalty, given food and water and fancy clothes, and for a while, everyone up near the Ministry loved them. Worshiped them. Begged for their attention. They offered them money, sponsorship, sex, anything, anything at all to get a taste of them before they were gone. But the glamour never lasted. Soon enough, the interviews got finished, the pretty clothes got put away, the makeup got washed off, and they were all thrust into the arena. Alone with nothing but themselves, a wand, and a rulebook.
It was disgusting.
The rules were simple - no Unforgivables. That was a given. It made it too easy. No immobilization spells of any kind - also a given. Basically anything that could give you the upper hand was taken away, including Tripping Jinxes which had been a source of controversy for years. You were allowed to Disarm, to get water for yourself (or use it as a weapon, as some tributes had done in the past), and to use simple Hexes: Stinging Hexes and the like that didn't do fatal damage but enough to seriously disadvantage who you were dueling. That wasn't the disgusting part, though. Duels happened all the time, even for fun.
It was the killing that made it wrong.
Everyone knew the curse. It was something whispered, not often spoken aloud. Even those who used it in the Tournament didn't like to say it. Sectumsempra.
It was worse than any swear word; worse even than the killing curse. Once your opponent had fallen, surrendered, given up on fighting back, you said it - a simple slashing movement as if you were actually cutting them with a knife and they were gone.
They never took them away until they'd bled out.
It was supposed to be a reminder - magic is dangerous. Beware. Wizards are only safe when restricted. Wizards can only be trusted without their wands. Give them wands, and look what happens. Look who suffers. Look and see who the true animals are.
Harry hated it.
But no matter how much he hated it, the Tournament still came, year after year. The reaping still came year after year. They still chose two tributes. Year after year.
That was another thing that bothered him - how they chose the tributes. A long time ago, back before he had ever been born, they used to have criteria set for who the tributes could be. No one under seventeen. One boy. One girl. No one injured or severely disadvantaged. No one who had survived the Tournament before. That sort of thing, to keep the Tournament even and fair. But things weren't nearly as civilized now. Now anyone with known magical ability was entered into the game for a chance to play - regardless of age, mental state, or physical health. Volunteers were allowed to be asked for, but they couldn't be over twenty-five years old. There weren't any gender limitations now either. Two boys could go; two girls could go; one of each gender. A family could lose both of its children. A girl could lose both of her brothers. A mother could lose her two baby daughters. It was sick, and it was wrong, but the Ministry somehow got the idea around twenty years ago that limitations on who could be entered only held back the message they were trying to convey: all Wizards are dangerous. No matter who they are.
Not that it was all bloodthirsty killing. There was always a champion, sometimes even a pair of champions. The last District standing. That was one thing the Ministry never made the tributes do - they never had them kill anyone in their own District. If they were the last two standing, they both went home. They both survived.
Pairs rarely won, though. It was almost customary to take out at least one person from each District on the first day, just to be safe. But it wasn't unheard of. It had been managed before.
"Harry."
The young Wizard lifted his head, turned in the direction of the voice. In his bedroom doorway stood Sirius Black, the only person in District 12 to have ever made it out of the Tournament alive. And that was thirteen years ago, when they were still adjusting the rules to see which bloodthirsty tactics the audience responded to the least. Sirius had been smart - he'd hidden up in trees or in caves and used his talents as an Animagus to slip past the tributes who didn't know any better. It was really clever, honestly, but it was because of him that using your Animagus form was illegal now in the games. It was handled the same as the rest of the illegals now - if you were caught (and they were always caught) then you died. No one had ever escaped the Gamemakers in that sense. If you cast the wrong spell, it took about half a second before you were hit with Sectumsempra. No one ever figured out how they managed to get there so quickly; no one ever bothered to ask. They just knew that that was how it happened. It was a miracle Sirius hadn't been taken down for getting around the system, but Harry supposed that they couldn't kill a Wizard for being smart. That, at least, was unethical.
"Harry," Sirius said again quietly. "Come on. It's almost time for the reaping."
A lot of people in the District thought that Sirius was a little creepy. He was tall and thin and his eyes were so sunken in that he did look a bit skeletal. He had been handsome once before the Tournament - now he just looked haunted, like a ghost who forgot that he was supposed to leave the body he inhabited. He was also insanely quiet, a hunter through and through. He could walk through your entire house in the middle of the night, opening and closing every door, and you'd never hear him. He was a master of disguise, the most stealthy (and only) person to have ever outsmarted twenty-three other tributes long enough to survive the Tournament without killing a soul. But he'd seen the deaths. He'd seen the bloodlust. And everyone could see that he'd seen it. It was written all over his face, so on the whole, people tried to avoid him. But not Harry. Harry liked him. Sirius was one of the few people that showed real, genuine affection for him. He had been Harry's father's best friend before the mine accident that had taken both of his parents; he probably just felt obligated to take Harry in because of that. As a debt to James and Lily. But Harry didn't care. Any affection was better than none.
"I don't want to go," Harry replied to his guardian quietly, fiddling with the hem of one of Sirius's old suit jackets. He hated being dressed up, especially in public for something so cruel. Sirius gave him a tight smile.
"You know you can't miss it," he said in that same quiet tone, and then he grabbed Harry's arm to gently pull him up. Knowing he was right, Harry let him.
The pair walked out to the town square together, Sirius leading Harry with a firm hand, and found a nice empty spot to stand together while a woman with big blonde curls on stage started setting everything up. There were three chairs on the stage - one for the mayor, the other two for the tributes. In front of those, on a big white pedestal, sat a giant ornate glass ball filled to the top with tiny slips of paper. Each held a District 12 witch or wizard's name, written in careful handwriting to ensure its legibility. In a few minutes, the woman on stage would make an opening remark, invite the mayor to plunge his hand into that glass, and change two peoples' lives forever. And she'd do so with a smile.
The woman's name was Rita Skeeter, and though she was in fact a witch herself, she was so thoroughly "human", so nastily journalistic, that she had managed to somehow work her way up with the Ministry and avoid the Tournaments altogether. Of course, being a witch, they didn't assign her to any District that had any real worth to it; she had been stuck with District 12, the coal district, left to walk through the filthy streets once a year and take two filthier Wizards back with her to the Ministry to prepare for the Tournament. Overall, not a bad job, and she had a heart just small enough to be able to manage to live with herself for taking it. Harry hated her more than anyone.
"Who do you think it's going to be this year?" Sirius asked Harry quietly, starting the annual bet that the two had been making since the beginning. See, there actually weren't enough witches and wizards in town to fill that giant glass ball; there was no way there were that many in any District, not with the Tournament happening every year. If they combined every name of every living witch and wizard now under the jurisdiction of the Ministry, the ball still wouldn't be full. So they had to come up with a different program.
Every time you did a misdeed around town, your name was added to the ball. Every time you couldn't pay your rent or for food, you paid instead with an appropriate amount of Tournament entries. If you needed water, you paid in entries. If you needed heat, you paid in entries. What people lacked in currency they made up for in little slips of paper with their names written on them, and every year, they always filled the ball right up to the very top. And they left the papers in there, always crushing them, always making room, and just getting rid of the names of those who had died. There were people in town who had their name entered in that ball hundreds of times. Some a few dozen. Harry was lucky in that he lived with Sirius, so he was pretty much provided for and tried to stay out of trouble as much as possible. His name was only entered fifteen times, one mandatory slip for each year they had known he had magical ability. Sirius, having already won the Tournament before, wasn't in that ball at all. The rest of the town, though, especially the more rebellious troublemakers didn't have their luck. And though it was awful, every year, Harry and Sirius liked to sit back and see if they could predict who would be drawn. A little bit of a wager to make sitting through the ceremonies a little more bearable.
"Blaise Zabini," Harry said quietly, offering up his best bet. Blaise had always been an eternal thorn in the Ministry's side, spitting at Aurors, stealing from their supplies, resisting arrest, mouthing off. Harry had always admired him, his determination to do what he felt was ethically right, and Blaise never failed to be forced into the crowd at the reaping with wands pointed at him in all directions in case he tried to run away. And he also never failed to call the Aurors still working under the now Muggle run Ministry cowards. If anyone had made their list after all these years, it was definitely Blaise. It was a miracle he hadn't been chosen already.
Sirius scanned the crowd, looking for Zabini's usual entourage. Sure enough, there they were at the front of the crowd - ten Aurors and in the middle, Blaise Zabini, looking as smug as ever, like he knew something that the Auror's didn't. Sirius shook his head. "I wouldn't be surprised, but I have a feeling they're waiting on him. Until they can take him away when they think it'll hurt him." Harry nodded but didn't change his vote. Blaise had been pissing off the Ministry for ten years. His name probably made up the majority of that ball; he was going to be drawn one day. There was no way in Hell he couldn't be.
"My vote goes to Narcissa," Sirius said after a few minutes. Immediately, Harry's eyes went to the back of the crowd, where the less wealthy tended to hang around. He caught sight of two blonde heads, a rarity in District 12 in which everyone was mainly dark-haired. And one of those blonde heads belonged to Narcissa Malfoy, who had lost her husband in the same mine accident that killed Harry's parents, and who was considered to be the saint of the town. She was a launderer and a pair of extra hands when you needed an odd job done, a miracle worker almost, a complete saint by District 12 standards. Harry furrowed his brow. There was no reason at all for Narcissa's name to be drawn from that ball. No reason at all except for her age.
"She's a saint, though," Harry muttered back, and Sirius shook his head.
"It's not her they're after."
Up on stage, Rita cleared her throat before Harry could question what his guardian had meant. It didn't matter now. Their bets had been placed; the reaping had begun.
"Welcome, District 12," she began in a high, loud voice, a voice that scratched at the back of Harry's mind like nails on a chalkboard, "to the 56th annual Witch Hunt!" She paused for applause, but they never came. Witch Hunt. The proper name. Harry had always hated it; all the Wizards did. It was why they never called it that. They never called it the Hunt. That was a Ministry name. To Wizards, it was the Tournament, a twisted abomination of what used to be the time honored tradition of the Triwizard Tournament. Only the Triwizard Tournament was nothing compared to the Hunt. No, not even close.
But it seemed to hurt a little less to let your family and friends go to a Tournament rather than a Hunt. So they never once called it the Witch Hunt. Well, no one except Rita.
She then dived into a long-winded monologue about the dangers of magic, the power of the Ministry and how the Muggles overpowered the dangerous Wizards about sixty years ago, how they now used this day to make people believe that magic is not, in fact, might. She spoke of wand makers being taken out of commission (a fancy phrase for "murdered") and every living Wizard's wand being snapped. She spoke of the formation of the Hunt, the twisted rules they changed in the Triwizard Tournament so there really could be just one champion. She even went into the history of the rule changes. But she was speaking to a deaf audience. They had all heard it before. Every last one of them. They knew the story like the back of their hand; they weren't listening to it now.
Finally, though, Rita seemed to run out of steam and turned over the stage to the mayor - she would give the speech, but she wasn't going to put anyone's blood on her hands. That weighed on the mayor, on Cornelius Fudge, on a man whose long terms lead him to alcoholism and baldness. As he rose unsteadily to his feet, Harry thought that he had never pitied a man more.
The crowd all held their breath as Fudge's hand crept past the top of the ball. His hand fished around inside for a while, moving the papers around carefully, before he pulled out a single white strip and surveyed the name with a frown.
"Narcissa Malfoy."
Harry's eyes immediately snapped to Sirius, ready to tell him that he had been right, but the grim look on his guardian's face stopped him. Sirius wasn't looking at him; he was looking toward the back, where the two blonde heads had been before, and now the woman stepped forward while the man by her side pulled on her arm and started to pull her back, silent save for the look on his face. But Narcissa Malfoy was not a woman to be swayed, not even by her son. She pulled out of his grip as Aurors held him back and made her march out toward the stage.
"NO," her son cried out, fighting against the hold of the Aurors. "NO, YOU CAN'T DO THIS."
Everyone was silent. Quiet tears streamed down Narcissa's face as she continued her walk, but she never once turned around to face her son.
"NO, I WON'T LET YOU."
His voice sent chills running down Harry's spine. He was struggling against the Auror's still, thrashing around wildly.
"I VOLUNTEER," he shouted, his tone pleading, his expression desperate. "I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE IN HER PLACE."
Narcissa stopped walking. Harry's heart stopped.
"I beg your pardon?" Rita said from on stage. No one in District 12 ever volunteered. They were a mining district; sacrifices to the Tournament, not winners. Well, save for Sirius, who got by on sheer luck. If your name was picked, no one ever took your place. No one ever volunteered.
Until now.
"I volunteer," Draco Malfoy said again, chest heaving as the Aurors around him began to back away.
"Well I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy," Rita said from his place next to the large glass ball, "but now is not the time to ask for volunteers. Just let your mother come on stage and then we'll ask for volunteers and-"
"Oh Rita, what's the harm?" Fudge interrupted, tapping his fingers impatiently against the glass. This was at least a death that would not be on his hands. "The boy already volunteered. If it gives him some comfort to never see his mother on this stage..." Let him have it was the silent ending to that statement, but he faded off as he began to realize he was the only one talking. Everyone else was too fixated on the determined face of Draco Malfoy to even whisper.
Rita sighed. "Very well, then. Draco Malfoy, congratulations on being the first tribute of District 12. Please step come up onto the stage."
No, Harry thought to himself as Draco began to make his way forward. No, please Merlin, anyone but him.
Everyone knew Draco Malfoy. His mother was the sweetheart of the town, and he took care of her by any means he could. Poaching. Stealing. Adding his name to the ball for food, for blankets, for clothes. He was hard, brutal, if not a bit of an ass, but everyone respected him. He was a hardened man who was barely a man at all, just seventeen years old with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Not everyone liked him, but everyone knew him. And everyone had dreaded this day would soon come, leaving Narcissa alone.
A few people reached out to the young blonde as he passed them, brushing their fingers against his shoulder or wrist. A couple of the braver ones grabbed his hand and didn't let go until he was too far away for them to hold on much longer. As he reached the middle of the crowd, there was a bit of a disturbance when someone began pushing through the mass of people. Immediately, Aurors Apparated to the disturbance with a crack and seized a young man who pulled against them. When his face came into clear view, Harry recognized him as a man only a few years older than he, who he knew only by the name of Cedric. "Draco, no," he called out, pained. "Draco, please, she doesn't want this. This isn't right." He wasn't putting up the wild fight that the younger blonde had been earlier but he still pulled against the hands and arms that restrained him. "Draco, please."
But the blonde didn't even turn around. From the look on his face, it didn't even phase him.
"Excuse me," Sirius said quietly, touching Harry's shoulder lightly. "I should be up there with him."
Sirius, as the only living Tournament survivor, was obligated to join the tributes at the Tournament as their mentor. But he'd never bothered to get attached to them, get up on stage and comfort them. But this was different somehow. He took his place on the stage and when Draco reached him, he opened his arms and embraced him. Draco didn't even respond; he just stood there stiffly until Sirius released him.
Harry's heart broke.
"Well," Fudge said clearing his throat. "That was...uhm...Draco..." He paused. "Welcome to the Hunt, Mr. Malfoy." Draco just stared stonily back until Fudge put his hand into the bowl again. Harry immediately turned to stare in the direction of Blaise Zabini, and he was so lost in the boy's furrowed brow and pained expression that he almost missed who the next tribute would be.
"Harry Potter."
"What?"
Harry couldn't stop the word from coming from his guardian's mouth anymore than he could keep his names from coming off of Fudge's lips for a second time. Harry Potter. Him. Him, out of all the people whose names were in that ball...
"Harry," a girl in his grade whispered behind him, prodding him with her finger. "Harry, that's you."
"Harry Potter?" Fudge called again, scanning the crowd. "Harry, where are you?"
He couldn't bring himself to move; his feet felt like they were made of lead, his legs stiff. He kept hearing Fudge's voice in his head over and over, seeing Sirius's enraged face...
"Harry, go."
A final shove from the girl propelled him forward and Harry didn't stop his legs from moving toward the stage, no matter how much he wanted to. If he did, he might never get started again, and he didn't want to deal with the Aurors. Not after this. There were no sympathetic pats or hand-holds for him as he walked. No friends bursting through the crowd to tell him it didn't have to be this way. There were no volunteers to take the place of Harry Potter.
"Harry," Sirius said, rushing forward to embrace him as he took the stage. "Harry this is a mistake, it has to be. I'll fix this, we'll find a way somehow t-to make things right o-or..."
"No," Harry said quietly, glancing quickly at Draco. "My name was chosen. This is...I was chosen, Sirius."
Draco raised a curious eyebrow but the pair didn't speak. Eventually, Harry looked away and back at Fudge, who was talking to the crowd about the "two tributes of District 12!" Harry and Draco got a round of applause at the end for their courage, their bravery, their silence. And then they were swept away by Rita Skeeter, pulled toward the outskirts of the District with Sirius close on their heels. It was then that it dawned on Harry what was happening. This was real. He was chosen for the Tournament.
He was a tribute.
Draco gave him a tight, almost apologetic smile as they were pushed along toward a train, but Harry couldn't bring himself to emote anything but shock at the moment. He could feel Sirius's guiding hand on the small of his back but everything else was a giant blur to him. He was a tribute. A real tribute.
Rita pushed the two boys into a train compartment, seated them on a couch. "You'll meet with your family and friends here," she said shortly. "Then I'll take you to your private quarters and we'll leave." She glanced down at a pocket watch that was hanging from a loop on her pants. "You have ten minutes." And then she was gone, turning on her heel and stomping out, as if it was a displeasure to have ever been in the two boys' company. To be honest, for her, it probably was. They weren't exactly the most glamorous of people.
Almost immediately after Rita left, Sirius and Narcissa stormed into the room. Narcissa immediately broke into tears, walking up to embrace her son, and then Harry's view was blocked by Sirius launching himself onto him, holding on tightly as though afraid that he would disintegrate. Then both of the adults started talking so fast that their words started jumbling together.
"Draco, you didn't have to do that, you brave-"
"- son of a bitch, Harry, this isn't -"
"- what I wanted but honey I -"
"- am going to fix this, Harry, you are not -"
"- going to die, Draco, you're a Malfoy and -"
"- I didn't raise you all this time just so they could kill you at the proper moment."
" - I just love you so much."
"Sirius!" Harry said, pulling back from his guardian to look him in the eye, "I'm not dead yet." The two stopped talking to stare at one another, ignoring Narcissa's chatter next to them. "You're going to be with me every step of the way. A mentor. I'm not..." He swallowed the best he could; his throat was getting tight. "I'm not going to die."
"Damn straight you're not going to die," Sirius said quietly and then he pulled Harry into another bone-crushing hug. Unsure of what else to do with himself, Harry hugged him back, and he didn't let go until Rita came back in to tell the three men that they had to go because they were running late damn it. In respect for his fellow tribute, Harry looked away to ignore the teary goodbyes between mother and son. However before Narcissa left, Harry did turn in time to see one final goodbye embrace, and he felt a tug of want in the pit of his stomach. He didn't have anyone back in the District to worry for him like that. His mind flashed back to Cedric running through the crowd, pushing people aside to try and get to Draco as quickly as possible. Jealousy burned in his gut, and he walked out of the room to avoid thinking about it.
"I hope this Malfoy kid is a fast learner," Sirius was mumbling beside Harry as Rita lead them toward the compartment that would be Harry's for the rest of the journey. "What is the Ministry thinking, throwing two kids into an arena with no experience with wand work? It was different when I was your age." His lips pursed. Harry knew there was a lot more he wanted to say but they were on the Ministry's watch now and treason brought on a fate worse than death. "You'll be fine. No, you will, you will most definitely be fine. You've always been such a fast, fast learner..." He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself of that rather than Harry, but the younger wizard was polite enough not to say so. There was no need to worry the man further and whatever made him feel secure was fine with him. "We'll just have to work, get you some good sponsors...It shouldn't be hard."
They stopped in front of a compartment and Rita opened the door. "Yours is the one right across from his," she said to Sirius, and the older man nodded and thanked her. Then she turned and left them alone.
Harry took a seat on the bunk that was in the compartment, hands clasped firmly in front of him. Sirius knelt down in front of him. "Harry," he said in his usual quiet tone. "You're going to be just fine."
"I know," Harry lied, and Sirius smiled and pushed back his hair affectionately, running a finger over the lightning bolt shaped scar that had been on Harry's head since he was a baby. The only damage he had sustained from the mine explosion that had orphaned him. Sirius's expression immediately got more pained and he stopped, dropped his hand.
"I'll be in my compartment if you need me," he mumbled. "Just get some rest, Harry. You'll need it. It's a long ride." He patted him once on the knee and then he was gone. Harry was alone.
Now alone, in the dark, he couldn't stop the tears from flowing freely. Why him? Why? Of all the people in town, why did his name have to come out of that stupid ball? What had he done to annoy the Ministry? Nothing! Nothing at all! His name was in that ball fifteen times and out of the thousands of slips, Fudge's hands had grabbed his. Out of the thousands of Blaise Zabini's and Draco Malfoy's, of the Cedric's and Seamus's and Neville's, it had not in fact been any of those to come out of the ball. Instead he had grabbed a one in a million name. The name of a boy who had never done a damn thing wrong. Frustrated, Harry picked up the pillow from the bed and threw it as hard as he could at the opposite wall. It made impact and fell to the floor, and Harry let out a frustrated shout and buried his head in his hands.
When he looked up, Draco was outside of his door, staring in and looking shocked. They made eye contact and Harry flushed. Then the blonde was gone, off to find his own compartment. Harry slumped back on the bed.
Draco had looked so haunted looking into the room; like he'd seen a ghost. Did he remember? Was he thinking about it? Had it all come rushing back? For Harry, it certainly had. He could remember it all from the paleness of Draco's chest to the coldness of his eyes when Harry did something, hurt him, damaged him further beyond repair. He could still plainly see the deep gashes in the other man's chest and arms, the clear message that something had gone wrong, something Draco didn't want anyone to know about. And Harry had done what he could, used what salves he had, had even tried wandless magic though he had no idea how and had just sat there trying to will the cuts away. But in the end he couldn't repair him and had let out a scream not unlike the one that just passed through his lips. After he'd calmed down, he'd sat the entire night there with the blonde trying to ease the pain instead with herbs and the occasional painkiller. And then in the morning, Draco was gone without so much of a note of thanks. Harry couldn't fix him; he had gotten himself injured somehow, probably trying to feed his mother, and Harry couldn't repair it the way the child of a Healer was supposed to be able to. But he never forgot it. It isn't often someone forgets the face of the person whose life they saved.
And now there they were, both holding the other's life in their hands. Fate was cruel like that.
Harry sighed. He didn't want to think about any of that - not fate, not the Tournament, not Draco. He just wanted to sleep.
But unluckily for him, when he closed his eyes, he dreamed about all three. And like everything else that had happened that day, there wasn't a damn thing that he could do to stop it.