Chapter 9: District 12, Panem, 2114

The DING of the fire ovens has barely faded before I am pulling the latest batch of bread from its depths. "The sourdough is ready!" I throw over my shoulder to no one in particular, hurrying with the bundle out the back of the shop and putting it in the display basket. Hopefully, one of my husband's employees heard me.

I am turning around when a body suddenly presses me up against the glass of the display windows, and I feel his strong, firm lips on mine. I close my eyes and moan happily. "Hmmmm... Peeta..."

I whine when we break apart far too quickly for my liking. "Nice hustle, dear. Keep up the great work."

I give him my best smile, but he and I both know it is strained, even as I say with crippling honesty, "I love you too." I have to keep up the great work, especially on today of all days. The day of the Reaping. The Reaping for the 98th Hunger Games.

After Peeta and I got married, I moved out of the little shack I had shared with Ron in the Peacekeeper Barracks, and went to live with my new husband in his Bakery. The Head Peacekeeper, Cray, was not at all pleased to learn about Katniss Everdeen and Captain Ronald Weasley's mysterious disappearances. But with the help of a Confundus Charm, I convinced the old bastard that Katniss and Ron made a break for the woods beyond the fence, and to not concern himself with the matter further. The case has never been solved since, giving the people of District 12 a small measure of hope that somebody escaped... and perhaps even lived to tell the epic tale. Of course, no one knows for sure... except for Peeta and I.

I cried all night in our bed when Peeta first explained to me what the Reaping was. How it fed into the Hunger Games - a barbaric contest in which two dozen teenaged children enter a wild arena for a fight to the death, until only one remains. Suddenly, the picture I saw of that kid bleeding to death, the one that Peeta painted and showed me when I was first beginning to discover my love for him, made sense. And it also explained the almost ghostly presence of that drunken tosser who lives alone high on the hill, in the place they call Victors Village: Haymitch Abernathy, my adopted homeland's only living Victor out of a pathetic two.

It has been agony these past twelve years to be forced to watch this sick contest. But the choice is either you watch or you die. And I have no intention of dying. My intention, as I watch my eleven-year-old daughter, Rose, take orders (Peeta and I got pregnant almost immediately after our wedding), is for there to not be a Hunger Games this time next year, when my baby first becomes eligible. My intention is to someday live in a land that is no longer Panem, one in which my daughter can grow up to be anyone she chooses. I fought and conquered tyranny once, in a world so far removed from this place it almost feels like a dream. I will do it again.

And I know there are plenty others here in Twelve who feel the same way I do. The legend of Ron Weasley and Katniss Everdeen even now gives people the one thing the Capitol and their maniacal President fear the most: hope. As the years have passed, Cray has gotten more inept in keeping his district under control. Some vendors in the Hob are taking bets to see how long he will last until he is finally removed from power or drops dead - whichever comes first. He is getting rather old. More fresh Peacekeepers have been inculcated off the train, and these cadets are harsher, more ruthless. Some of the rules that Cray once flagrantly ran afoul of have come back with a vengeance, many for the first time in years and years, or so Peeta says.

But with every crackdown, more and more I see ordinary Merchants and Seam folk actually fighting back. It won't be long before the President and his administration have to get involved. In sacrificing my old life for this one, all for the sake of true love, I willingly entered under a cloud.

And yet the sight I now hold in my eyes - Peeta's smile - reminds me that he alone has made it all worth it.

"Thanks, Hermione!" The shoemaker's wife calls as she walks out the door with the order I presented her. Last customer of the morning. I flip the front sign to say CLOSED. We have to be shut down for the rest of the day - Reaping Day is considered to be pretty much a holiday, if not exactly a full one when all businesses are closed around the clock. Taking Peeta by the hand, I drag him upstairs to our bedroom and we dress in our fancier clothes for the Reaping. We must look presentable for the Capitol. I would really like to throw Peeta on the bed and give him a really hot shag right now, but I'm afraid we haven't the time. Finished donning my dress, I go see to our daughter and make sure she is presentable. Thank Merlin she is still only eleven. Please, please, let me her never turn twelve...

Sensing my distress, Peeta takes my hand and gently kisses my lips once. We'll be OK, he tells me. We have each other. He has been my greatest comfort, at nights, desperate to sleep, pushing me up against the headboard, filling my mouth with his tongue and my cunt with his cum. All while I loudly moan and thrash beneath him.

The whole of the district gathers in the square in front of the Justice Building. The proceedings afterwards are pretty rote. The Mayor says a few words. Haymitch Abernathy, our folk hero is introduced as a guest of honor, after which he promptly tumbles headfirst off the stage. Effie Trinket, our district escort from the Capitol, prepares to pick the names of one doomed boy and one doomed girl.

But before she can, the proceedings take a decidedly unexpected turn.

At the edge of the square, there have been individuals growing increasingly fidgety, even more fidgety than children and adults alike get on Reaping Day. Suddenly -

A great shout goes up. "FOR PANEM!" And a crowd of Seamers, Merchants and even some rogue Peacekeepers still in their uniforms rise up and fall upon our oppressors. Bedlam ensues in the square. At first frightened and then excited - it's finally happening! - I grab Rose and Peeta and we hustle to a safe row of buildings to watch.

Peacekeepers still loyal to the President, Capitol officials fall to mining picks and knives and even improvised weaponry, like barrels full of wine. Blood runs thick and fast along the cobblestones, giving a disturbing visual to match the cries of the dead and dying. Before long, the brave people of Twelve have taken over the District, sparking a rebellion and revolution at long last.

Even with the horrid sights all around us, Peeta and I fall into each other's arms. There, relieved, and with as much passion as we did the first time all those years ago, my husband and I share a long, slow kiss.

A kiss to end all kisses, as District 12 crumbles around us, starting a fire that eventually burns Panem to the ground, throw off the yoke of authoritarian rule and gifts us with a democracy once again, for the first time in nearly a century.

That is the kind of time and land I want to live in, with the love of my life and our child.