"Hermione!" Ginny called, her voice booming through Hermione's ears from the distance. "Hermione, where's your waffle-headed husband?"

Hermione peeked through her tousled bed hair as she opened her eyes, and swept the hair from her face. She sat up, pulled the sheets off her body, and maneuvered herself until her toes touched the soft material of the carpet. She noticed her nightgown, scrunched up to her mid thighs, and did her best to pry it down. Her arms extended up, as she arched her back, moving her right hand over her mouth to stifle her yawn. Through heavy eyelids, she turned her head to the side table and squinted at the clock that rested there. It read 6:30 A.M.

A soft glow of misty blue streamed through the crack of her shutters, indicating early dawn. Heavy snores came from the spot beside her where Ron was still very much asleep. There was a tiny squeak of sound as the door opened and she saw Ginny's red hair peek through the doorway followed by her head. The gentle bluish hue of light from her wand filtered into the room. She noticed Ginny had her hand covering her eyes which were tightly squeezed shut.

Hermione released a silent chuckle that mostly sounded like a release of air. "Honestly, Ginny," she whispered. "You can look, you know!"

She saw bits of Ginny's eyes peek through the opened spaces of fingers. When she deemed it safe, she moved her hands from her face and let them dangle down her sides where they rocked back and forth. Walking further into the bedroom, she shot Hermione a cheeky grin. "Honestly, with you two I can never be sure. I was already scarred once." Her voice seemed to take a highly dramatic, shaky tone. "Never again," she finished and shivered, Hermione assumed, for dramatic effect.

"That was ages ago," Hermione responded with an eye roll. "And in case you've forgotten," she rushed, "I'm eight months pregnant!"

"Yeah, well..." She trailed off with an innocent shrug of her shoulders. She stalked forward, seeming unconcerned with her brother being asleep on the bed. She offered Hermione her hand, and together they were able to pull Hermione to her feet.

"Is there a reason you're here at six-thirty in the morning?"

"I need your help," she muttered sheepishly. "And Lily woke me up, mind you. Harry said it's my turn to get up."

Hermione raised her eyebrows at Ginny as she led her through the hallway. "Harry nor Lily is here with you," she said, her voice rising higher with the last word like a question.

"Told him to sod off like the good husband he is. I'm always up with the kids, he's just being lazy, I suspect. But no one told him to stay up and argue with his rook over which was the best move."

Hermione laughed.

"Sorry, I know it's early," Ginny said with a guilty look. "I'll make you tea."

Ginny strolled to the wall and flicked the light switch up. "Genius, the muggles," she muttered under hear breath. "Nox."

Hermione sat herself down close to the armrest on the sofa. After a few minutes of clanking and bustling around in the kitchen, Ginny appeared before her with two mugs of steaming tea and set one down on the table in front of her. Hermione grabbed the mug and brought it near her lips, blowing on the hot liquid.

"So why do I have a waffle-headed husband?" Hermione asked in amusement.

"Because this-," she growled, lifting her jumper to reveal a bright orange shirt underneath. In the center in bold, black letters read, "Chudley Cannons forever" with a shadowed image of a man on a broomstick, three high hoops centered behind him printed on it. "-was my Holly Harpies shirt." She tugged her jumper back down, several inches of the orange still showing, and shoved herself back into the cushions with a defiant "hmpf." She crossed her arms so tightly around her chest, they appeared to be glued together.

Hermione suppressed her laugh, but from the quick glare Ginny shot at her, she must have noticed.

"It just looks like a simple glamour spell, maybe," Hermione said quickly. "It will most likely wear off in a few hours."

"Well, I don't like it, the sneaky git." Ginny spat out her words with defiance. Ginny ignored the look Hermione gave her, like she was making it into a big deal. "But it was my team shirt," she whined. "I played for them. It has sentimental value.

"I was just thinking about hexing him or returning the favor, but I reckon embarrassing him will be much more satisfying."

Hermione pursed her lips out and slightly rocked her head back and forth in sync with her eyes, as if weighing the options. She finally spoke. "So what do you have in mind?"

Hours later, when the sun had risen brightly in the sky and the morning air cooled the flat from the open windows, Harry and Ron had a feeble attempt preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Ginny cradled Lily in her arms as she fed her, hiding discreetly in the corner. Hermione held a pen in her hand as she scribbled a letter to Mrs. Weasley.

Through the fireplace emerged Luna and then Neville. Ron and Harry managed to serve a tasty breakfast of sausage, eggs, bacon and buttered toast with tea. After eating, the group settled in the front room. Ginny laid Lily to sleep in Rose's old cradle in the spare bedroom.

Hermione gripped the book with gentle fingers and thumbed through the pages. She cleared her throat about to begin when Luna's soft voice spoke up.

"Do you mind if I read this chapter?"

Hermione smiled at her and leaned forward, handing the book over. "Not at all, Luna."

One time, when I was in a blind tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back.

"Sounds bloody painful," Ron said, his face wrinkling into a grimace.

"It is bloody painful," Harry added. "Like falling off your broom."

It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.

That's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounced around the inside of my skull.

Luna stopped reading and glanced up from the book. Everyone's faces were masked with hints of sympathy and sadness.

"That's how I felt," Luna said softly, "when Voldemort said you were dead, Harry." She frowned and her blue eyes seemed to be slightly glossy. Harry looked at her with concern. "I know it was ages ago, but it still makes me quite sad to remember that moment. You were one of my first friends."

Neville nodded his head solemnly where he sat beside her.

"All worked out in the end, mate." Ron clapped Harry on the back. "Couldn't get rid of you that easy."

"You're bloody well right," Harry said.

Someone is gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught me.

There must have been some mistake. This can't be happening. Prim was one slip of papers in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I'd not even bothered to worry about her. Hadn't I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered.

Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair.

"None of it is fair!" Hermione spat out.

And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.

"Prim!" The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again. "Prim!" I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.

"I volunteer!" I gasp. "I volunteer as tribute!"

"Seems you were right, Luna," Harry said in a flat tone.

"It was most fitting for her character," Luna stated simply.

"Yes. Seems obvious now. She'd do anything to protect her little sister," Ginny agreed.

"Let's see if she's able to," Ron said hurriedly.

There's some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn't had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute's name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy's name has been read, or a girl, if a girl's name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated.

"They're mad, they are," Neville said aghast, shaking his head with a scowl on his face.

But in district 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.

"Lovely!" says Effie Trinket. "But I believe there's a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um..." she trails off, unsure of herself.

"You can't curse a character in a book, can you?" Ginny asked to no one in particular with an aggravated eyeroll.

"Unfortunately not," Hermione said. "I'd just silence her if I could."

"What does it matter?" says the mayor. He's looking at me with a pained expression on his face. He doesn't know me really, but there's a faint recognition there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized in the mines. Does her remember that? "What does it matter?" he repeats gruffly. "Let her come forward."

Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She's wrapped her skinny arms around me like a vice. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"

"This novel's a cheerful one," Ron said sarcastically with a grim look on his face.

"Prim, let go," I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don't want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I'll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no one that satisfaction. "Let go!"

Ginny groaned loudly at that. "I'd forgotten the whole country would be watching her."

"She's quite practical," Hermione said.

I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted Prim off the ground and she's thrashing in his arms. "Up you go, Catnip," he says, in a voice he's fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.

"Well, bravo!" gushes Effie Trinket. "That's the spirit of the Games!" She's pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it.

"And you said I had the emotional range of a teaspoon!" Ron said to Hermione, slightly bumping her shoulder with his own playfully.

"Well you did when we were children, at times," she responded.

"What's your name?"

I swallow hard. "Katniss Everdeen," I say.

"I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don't want her to steal all the glory, do we? Come on, everybody! Let's give a big applause to our newest tribute!" trills Effie Trinket.

"Oh, sod off Effie," Neville mumbled.

To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

"What an interesting gesture. Do all muggles in America do this, Hermione?" Luna asked.

"I don't think so. It must be something the author created."

"I don't know if it's good they care or bad that everyone knows she's going to die," Harry said glumly.

"Maybe a bit of both," Neville responded with a sigh.

Now I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Haymitch chooses this time to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. "Look at her. Look at this one!" he hollers, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He's surprisingly strong for such a wreck. "I like her!" His breath reeks of liquor and it's been a long time since he's bathed. "Lot's of..." He can't think of the word for a while. "Spunk!" he says triumphantly. "More than you!" he releases me and starts for the front of the stage. "More than you!" he shouts, pointing directly into a camera.

Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? I'll never know because just as he's opening his mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.

"He's barking!" Harry shouted, his lips curling into a grin. Ron chuckled to himself which quickly spiraled out of control. The tension in the room seemed to break suddenly as the group broke out in laughter. Luna gripped her side, inhaling deeply for air.

"Not exactly gracious, is he?" Ron said, regaining his composure.

He's disgusting, but I'm grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I have just enough time to release a small, choked sound in my throat and compose myself. I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a moment, I yearn for something...the idea of us leaving the district...making our way in the woods..but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Prim?

Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie Trinket is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" she warbles as she attempts to straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. "But more excitement to come! It's about time to choose our boy tribute!"

"How can she be so bloody cheerful doing something like that?" Ron asked.

"I suspect it could be how she was raised," Hermione said in a half-hearted manner.

Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that contains the boys' names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to wish for Gale's safety when she's reading the name. "Peeta Mellark."

Peeta Mellark!

Oh, no, I think. Not him.

"Who is this bloke?" Neville asked.

Ginny shook her head at his question. "She's not pleased."

Because I recognize this name, although I have never spoken directly to its owner. Peeta Mellark.

No, the odds are not in my favor today.

Harry raised a questioning eyebrow as Luna read the last sentence, but said nothing.

I watch him as he makes his way toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build, ashy blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I've seen so often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.

Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older brothers, I know, I've seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other won't. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What I did was a radical thing.

"That's incredibly depressing," Luna said with a frown.

Ron wondered if one of his brothers would step forward to take his place. The thought unsettled his stomach. He decided her wouldn't want any of them to if something like that happened. He asked Luna to continue.

The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point—it's required—but I'm not listening to a word.

Why him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn't matter.

"Sounds like someone might fancy him," Ginny laughed.

"It could very well be a number of things, not necessarily a cr-" Hermione blurted in her know-it-all tone.

"Oh, please, Hermione," Harry interrupted. "After watching you two dance around your feelings for each other in self-denial..." He trailed off, shaking his head violently. "Years, I had to deal with it."

"Years, we all had to hear you two have a go in the common room," Neville added.

"I think there might be something there eventually," Harry finished.

Hermione blushed a deep scarlet color and the tips of Ron's ears looked slightly pinkish. "We weren't that bad," Ron insisted.

"But you were," Ginny said calmly. "We had bets on when you two would stop denying it and get together."

"Really, now?" Hermione asked. Her lips seems to just barely twitch upward.

"Who won?" Ron asked eagerly.

"I did," Luna spoke, eyes wide with joy. "I always knew you two are destined to be together. But I thought it might take a life-or-death situation to be very forward. You're both quite stubborn."

Hermione cleared her throat louder than necessary. Memories of panic and Ron mentioning the house elves clouded her mind. It was life or death and it was beautiful. She and Ron got life together, but Remus and Tonks...her dear old friends got death. Hermione inhaled and forced her lips in a smile. "Let's continue, shall we?"

Peeta Mellark and I are not friends. Not even neighbors. We don't speak. Our only real interaction happened years ago. He's probably forgotten it. But I haven't and I know I never will...

"Now we'll find out!" Ginny squealed. She took Harry's hand in her own, winking at him, and lodged herself on the edge of the sofa.

It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

The district had given us a small amount of money as compensation for his death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time my mother would be expected to get a job. Only she didn't. She didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance.

"That's how mum was after Fred," Ginny thought sadly. She now knew that no amount of crying or begging would bring her brother back. It had been nearly ten years, but there was still times when she would be telling a story of her childhood and Fred's name would spill out of her mouth, then she'd be silenced into sadness. Or she would see George in the middle of conversation, he'd be joking and she would catch his head turn just slightly as if trying to share the moment with his twin, before he remembered he was not there. Sometimes it still made her heart feel like it's aching. She didn't think that feeling would ever fully disappear.

Once in a while, she'd stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. No amount of pleading from Prim seemed to affect her.

I was terrified. I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well.

Neville and Harry looked affected by the last sentence as Luna read it. They both looked up from their hands and caught each other's eyes for just a second, but then looked away as if the silent communication caused physical pain.

At eleven years old, with Prim just seven, I took over as head of the family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and cooked it as best I could and tried to keep Prim and myself looking presentable. Because if it had become known that my mother could no longer care for us, the district would have taken us away from her and placed us in a community home. I'd grown up seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders. I could never let that happen to Prim. Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my mother's hair before we left to school, who still polished my father's shaving mirror each night because he'd hated the layer or coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush her like a bug. So I kept our predicament a secret.

The faint lines on Harry's face seemed to deepen as the frown bore into his skin. "What a shit life. Poor girl," Harry said gently. "At eleven!"

"Well yours wasn't exactly a fly around the quidditch pitch, was it?" Ron said. "Living with the Dursley's, being lied to about your parents..."

"Maybe I was neglected but I didn't have to have the burden of my family on my shoulders."

"Cooking and cleaning like a house-elf," Hermione injected fiercely. "Threatened days without food!"

"Yeah, chores, but I didn't actually have to worry about providing the food or starving."

"Fluffy blocking the trap door," Hermione continued as if Harry hadn't spoken.

"That thing had a name?" Neville injected abruptly.

"Hagrid," Ron muttered to him. "And Voldemort trying to kill you."

"Yeah, okay," Harry said exasperated. "But I also made my first friends ever, I learned the real truth, I went to Hogwarts, I was the youngest bloody quidditch seeker in a century!"

"It's good you're an optimist, Harry," Luna said cheerfully.

"Er, right. Thanks, Luna." Harry took a deep sigh and gestured toward the book in her hands. "Shall we?"

But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. There's no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8, and I would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oil to feed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well be dead by then.

"Unpleasant thought for an eleven-year-old," Neville released a soft whistle, shaking his head.

"For anyone, really," Ron added.

Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn't seen the victims? Older people who can't work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.

"Like the stories the muggle news said as a cover-up for Voldemort's murders," Harry said darkly.

On the afternoon of my encounter with Peeta Mellark, the rain was falling in relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby clothes of Prim's in the public market, but there were no takers. Although I had been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone. The rain had soaked through my father's hunting jacket, leaving me chilled to the bone. For three days, we'd had nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves I'd found in the back of the cupboard. By the time the market closed, I was shaking so hard I dropped my bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle. I didn't pick it up for fear I would keel over and be unable to regain my feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.

I couldn't go home. Because at home was my mother and her dead eyes and my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn't walk into that room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of the woods after the coal had run out, my hands empty of any hope.

"Hope is possibly the worst thing to lose," Neville said so softly, it sounded almost like a whisper.

"It is, mate," Ron muttered.

"It was the only thing that kept the DA going at Hogwarts," Luna said.

"That Harry was still alive and we could still win," Ginny nodded.

I found myself stumbling along a muddy lane behind the shops that serve the wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their businesses, so I was essentially in their backyards. I remember the outlines of garden beds not yet planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post, hunched defeated in the muck.

All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher's or rotted vegetables at the grocer's, something no one by my family was desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the bins had just been emptied.

"I always envied other people growing up," Ron said, "but now I don't think I've ever felt more thankful that at least we were all fed."

"Someone always has it worse," Ginny said softly.

When I passed the baker's, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The oven were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. I stood mesmerized but the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. I lifted the lid to the baker's trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.

Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker's wife, telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash.

"Lovely woman," Neville grumbled irritatedly.

The words were ugly and I had no defense. As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out from behind his mother's back. I'd seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn't know his name. He stuck with the town kids, so how would I? His mother went back into the bakery, grumbling, but he must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held their pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The realization that I'd have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me died right here in the rain.

"This story is terribly sad," Luna said as she stopped reading. She looked at the book with wide eyes and displeasure on her face. She took a deep breath and continued before anyone could speak.

There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and the sound of a blow, and I vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed toward me through the mud and I thought, It's her. She's coming to drive me away with a stick. But it wasn't her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched black.

His mother was yelling, "Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!"

"Merlin, to her own son!" Neville gasped.

Ginny grumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like 'bitch.'

He began to tear off chunks from the burned bread parts and toss them into the trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a customer.

The boy never even glanced my way, but I was watching him. Because of the bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit him with? My parents never hit us. I couldn't even imagine it.

"What a horrible b-" Hermione started, and looked down at her belly, putting her hands over it as if blocking the baby's ears. "-witch," she whispered harshly.

"There's a lack of dependable parents so far," Harry said.

The boy took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.

"He-he saved her from starving?" Ginny asked unsure of herself.

"It certainly seems that way," Hermione responded almost like a question.

I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except the burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them?

"Yes," Harry whispered under his breath.

He must have. Because they were at my feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened I shoved the loaves up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me, and walked swiftly away. The heart of the bread burned my skin, but I clutched it tighter, clinging to life.

"Quite literally," Ron said.

By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, Prim's hands reached to tear off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good, hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.

I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep. It didn't occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me.

"That's awfully nice for someone you don't know," Neville said.

"Well, she was starving, wasn't she?" Harry said. "I think any of us would have done the same."

"And now she has to go to the Games with the bloke who saved her life," Ron said word-by-word as if clicking the situation into place as he said it. His face sunk into sympathy.

But I dismissed this.

"'Course you do. Stubborn, this one. Isn't she?" Ron said almost fondly.

"Certainly seems so," Neville said in amusement, directing his gaze at Hermione. "Remind you of someone, Ron?"

Ron rose his eyebrows and squinted his eyes in confusion. "Er...?" was his only response.

It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn't even know me. Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in a beating if discovered. I couldn't explain his actions.

Maybe he fancies you, Harry thought.

We ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring had come overnight. Warm, sweet air. Fluffy clouds. I passed the boy in the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends and didn't acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Prim and started for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard. Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away. I dropped my gaze, embarrassed, and that's when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went off in my head. I thought of the hours spent in the woods with my father and I knew how we were going to survive.

"Wow," Luna said in amazement. "He gave her more than bread."

"What do you mean, Luna?" Ginny asked, looking to the others for clarification in case she was the only one not understanding. Their slightly confused faces, looking as if they were searching their brains informed her she hadn't. Suddenly, a light seemed to spark up in Hermione's head as she made a squeal of sound and sat up higher.

"He gave her hope," she said.

To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed.

"This is such a horrible situation to be put in," Ginny said, her voice cold like ice.

"I reckon she won't have it in her to kill him herself," Ron sighed.

I have turned in the school hallway and caught his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit them away. I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I'd be feeling less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple times, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself. And now it never will. Because we're going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thank-you in there? Somehow it just won't seem sincere if I'm trying to slit his throat.

"Quite morbid," Neville said to the book.

The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Peeta and me to shake hands. His are solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Peeta looks me right in the eye and give my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it's just a nervous spasm.

"She's very much in denial," Hermione said with a small chuckle.

We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem plays.

Oh, well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.

Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.

"That's the end of the chapter," Luna said as she set the book down on the side table.

"I hope that last bit wasn't foreshadowing of some sort," Hermione said, fumbling with her fingers and biting the corner of her bottom lip.

"This book has managed to only get more depressing," Harry said flatly.

"Do you think she might die?" Ron asked, an edge of apprehension in his voice.

"Dunno, mate," Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Let's keep reading."