A/N: We've reached fifty reviews, so special thanks go to Joshua the Terminian, sillymoose13, PeridotPi, santiago poncini20, DaughterofTerpsichore, oceanfanfiction, Coaster317 and Elphaba for reviewing!
It seems like Sunday is becoming my regular updating day... I really need to do something about getting more chapters done during the week. Then again, we're in the arena with the next chapter, so I'm sure that'll spur me on for more regular updates :)
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading this chapter :)
Chapter Ten
With a gasp of recognition flickering through the crowd like a shockwave, Draco paused for a moment stood on the edge of the Gamemakers' balcony, a calm smile on his face, waiting for the cameras to catch up to him.
"Why bother," the Slytherin began with a smile, before clicking his fingers again and reappearing in the middle of the crowd in front of the stage.
"Using a wand-"
CRACK.
"When you can-"
CRACK.
"Do something-"
CRACK.
"Like Apparition?" Draco finished, leaning back in his chair across from Caesar Flickerman as though nothing had happened.
It only took another second before the whole crowd was on their feet.
"I can't believe none of us thought of that," Hermione fumed as the tributes gathered backstage, waiting for their mentors and escorts to arrive to take them up to their quarters.
"Well, there's a reason why," Ron said bitterly. "Half the year haven't passed their tests yet - hang on, he's not even seventeen yet, is he?"
"No," Harry sighed. That was one of the main reasons why he hadn't attempted anything like Apparition; he wasn't old enough for lessons. Not that it seemed to stop Draco, though. He was sure that, just like everything else, his father had been pushing Draco to start early. He'd been a Seeker at twelve, after all.
"It's ridiculous," Hermione said, pulling out a couple of hairpins to let her hair fall past her shoulders once more. "That I spent hours thinking up an impressive sequence of magic and never considered anything as obviously crowd-pleasing as Apparition."
"It does look impressive, no matter how hard it is," Ron admitted. "Maybe that was how he got his twelve," he mused.
"No," Harry said firmly. He had grown used to keeping an eye on Malfoy that year, and something about the way he almost seemed to be talking directly to the Gamemakers before his spectacle tonight suggested that the Gamemakers had never seen it before.
Telling the others that, Hermione countered, "So you're still hanging on to your Death Eater theory?"
Harry took a moment to reply; he was busy watching Malfoy get into an elevator with Blaise Zabini and his mentor Johanna. Once they were gone, he said, "I don't know. I just think we need to keep an eye on him."
"Yeah," Hermione replied nervously. Harry noticed her eyes had been on Malfoy too. "So do I."
Before any more could be said on the matter, Marie bursted across the room towards them, a massive grin on her face, Katniss and Finnick talking in more refined tones behind her.
"Well done, everyone!" Marie said enthusiastically, her auburn curls bouncing happily beside her. "You're almost there now!"
"Oh, great," Ron muttered. "Thanks for reminding us."
"Good job tonight, though," Finnick said with a more reassuring smile. "We'll see to it that you have enough support in the arena, I'm sure. Should we head upstairs?"
With that, Finnick led his tributes back to the elevator for the journey back to their rooms. In the elevator, everyone was silent. Looking out over the bright lights of the Capitol, Harry couldn't shake the feeling that this would be the last time he saw that view. That it was his last night on Earth, and whatever hell he was being flung into in the morning would take place somewhere else entirely, completely detached from reality.
He felt as though in many ways, he would die in the morning. Any survival in the arena would merely be prolonging the inevitable.
Looking around the elevator, everyone else seemed to be in similar states of mind; Hermione was fidgeting nervously with the fabric of her dress, Parvati and Lavender looked close to tears, Neville stared nervously out over the city, and Ron sulked at the back. What a difference a week had made.
Arriving on their floor, Finnick gathered everyone together in the sitting room, guiding his tributes to seats while he paced in front of the television, uncharacteristically nervous. He reminded Harry of the Finnick he had seen during coaching for the interviews, when the victor stripped away the seductive mask that he constantly wore during his time in the Capitol. Finally, with a deep intake of breath, he began to speak.
"I would just like to say," Finnick began slowly, looking at each of his tributes in turn. "On behalf of both Katniss and myself, what a pleasure it has been to mentor all of you this week. When I was in the Games a decade ago, my mentor had suffered a nervous breakdown - an unfortunate yet sadly common side-effect of becoming a victor - just a fortnight before the Games, and was barely able to answer a question for the whole time I was in the Capitol. In the end, it's thanks to my district partner's mentor Mags, who worked her socks off when she took me on too, that I pulled through when it counted. So I suppose, more than most victors I really do appreciate the value of a good mentor. I just hope that Katniss and myself have done enough to help you survive the Games.
"Becoming a tribute is a difficult adjustment for anyone to make," Finnick continued. "But especially for all of you, having travelled so far and seen so many new sights this week, and I think you have done an incredible job adapting to your circumstances. I must admit, at first I was somewhat sceptical about this whole magic thing, but after this evening I know I'll never doubt again, and I don't think I'll ever be able to give any of you enough respect."
"You have all been through so much in the last week," Katniss added. "And have all come through it far better than I did, if that counts for anything."
"I'll second that," Finnick added with a smile.
"The only other thing I would like to add is something that I cannot stress enough," Katniss said. "When you are in the arena, keep your head in the game at all times. Be prepared to fight or flee in an instant. Think with your head; sometimes, engaging even a weaker tribute can be too much of a risk. Make sure you keep your eyes peeled for signs of danger. Rest only when you need to. Trust nobody. The Games twist everyone; people change in the arena. Expect the unexpected. Keep your weapons on you at all times, and keep your mind clear; bad judgement is the last thing any tribute needs. Constant vigilance will win the Games, not necessarily strength or ability."
After a while, when nobody spoke, Finnick clapped his hands together and brought the gathering to a close.
"Right then," the victor said. "That's everything covered, and you should all be off to bed; you've got an early start tomorrow morning. Good luck, everyone, we wish you all the best, and hope that if not for yourselves, then you will at least win the Games for Gryffindor."
Two hours later, and Harry was still awake. The digital alarm clock on his bedside table told him that the time was a quarter to midnight. He'd been told he would be woken at six-thirty. He knew that he'd need a good night's sleep, but now that he could count the remainder of his life in days and possibly hours, he felt like somehow sleep wasn't so important.
After it had become clear to him that sleep was out of the question, he'd flicked through the Half-Blood Prince's textbook one last time, but it held no new secrets; he'd well and truly scoured it from cover to cover, with a couple of secret weapons up his sleeve.
After that he'd given up trying to entertain himself, choosing instead to lie back on his bed and stare at the ceiling, wishing the seconds by until dawn, but ultimately wanting to savour every moment.
Eventually he could stand the boredom no more, and stood up from the bed, content for a moment to pace through his room, trying to do anything to take his mind away from the Games. It didn't take long before he started to feel penned in, and after testing his door to find it unlocked, Harry took to pacing the corridors, ending up staring out the sitting room window, looking out over the bright lights of the city.
It didn't take long before Harry heard the door open and close behind him, along with the sound of two pairs of feet trying very hard to be silent.
"Couldn't sleep either?" Harry asked quietly, not taking his eyes away from the window.
"Well, it's hard to get your mind set for sleeping when you think about where we're going," Ron replied. Harry could guess who the other pair of feet belonged to. Both of his best friends came to join him at the window.
"It all just feels like we don't stand a chance," Harry said defeatedly. "The numbers are against us, and all the attention is on Malfoy."
"Oh, who cares what he's up to?" Ron said. "Give it a day into the Games, and everyone will realise just what a sly git he is."
"Ron might have a point," Hermione said, and then almost without thinking, she added, "although hopefully we'll get lucky and someone else will take him out before us." She finished by clapping her hands to her mouth, as though ashamed she had even thought such a thing. Harry understood almost immediately. As much as he loathed Malfoy, he wasn't exactly sure he wanted to see him dead, either. He didn't want anyone to die. He didn't see why they had to.
"Yeah, maybe," Ron smirked, missing the unease in the air between Harry and Hermione.
"I must say, I partly disagree with you," Hermione replied.
"What?"
"I care what Malfoy's up to."
"Really?" Ron replied. "I don't give a damn what he's doing as long as he stays well away from us."
"Ron, have you ever heard of the expression, 'Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer'?" Hermione asked. When Ron didn't reply, she added with a sigh, "I think we should ally with Malfoy."
If she'd expected Harry to see reason in her argument, she'd misjudged him, and instead found both boys turning on him.
"Are you mad?" Harry snapped, suddenly feeling angry. "Don't you realise who he is?"
"Yes, I do," Hermione stood up to him. "And that's exactly why I think we should keep an eye on him. He's dangerous, but with three of us around him, he won't be able to step out of line." She smiled a little. "He might even be able to help us out a little."
"No," Ron replied. "I flat out refuse."
Harry, however, was more conservative in his judgement.
"It's a good idea, Hermione," Harry said. "But if you seriously expect us to find some sort of civil agreement to work together, you can forget it. If you can manage to keep an eye on him somehow, though, I'm more than happy to benefit from that."
"Fine," Hermione said, frustrated by her friends' lack of cooperation, but she knew not to push the matter, and for a moment all fell silent. In the end, it was Ron who spoke up first.
"I can't believe it's all going to end like this," Ron muttered. "A massive bloody mess."
Hermione looked up; she had been picking at a fingernail. "What do you mean?"
"When you were younger, did you ever wonder what it would be like when we all grew up?" Ron asked. "Like, what would happen to everyone after Hogwarts?"
"Sort of, I guess," Hermione shrugged. "I'd like to think I had a plan for my life, before the Capitol stole our futures."
"I think that's exactly the point I'm getting at. Our final chapter has already been written by the Gamemakers. They've already told us how our story is going to end. A massive bloody mess in the middle of a field somewhere." Ron muttered. "Or whatever environment they choose to chuck us in the morning."
Hermione paused for a moment, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. Something about Ron's words had touched her, and she wasn't sure how to respond. Eventually, resting a hand on her friend's shoulder, she said, "Ron, the Games aren't over yet. Our hands may have been dealt, but we can still choose how to play the cards. We can still fight. Isn't that right, Harry?"
Harry nodded, offering Hermione the ghost of a smile. The tiredness was finally starting to hit him. "We can still fight."
Hermione glanced up at the clock on the sitting room wall. Two-thirty. "I suppose we'd better try and get some sleep tonight, while we can," she said shakily, breaking away from the others. Then, tears threatening to form in the corners of her wide brown eyes, she pulled her best friends into a tight, trembling embrace, whispering softly, "Good luck to both of you in the morning. I'll see you again soon, don't worry."
Then she kissed them both once on the cheek and was gone.
Harry was woken simultaneous by the sunlight starting to force its way past the blackout blinds and by his stylist Iris hammering on the door, desperate to wake him. A glance at the clock told him he was already twenty minutes late.
And then it really struck him. The day was finally upon him. The Hunger Games would begin in just over three hours. And he would be a player.
Harry dressed himself hurriedly and met Iris outside his door. "About time," she said, half-joking as she led him towards the elevator.
Katniss had told Harry that all the tributes would be transported to the arena by a hoverplane that collected them from the roof of the Training Centre, so Harry was visibly surprised when the elevator went down instead of up.
"There's been a change of plan," Iris explained, noticing Harry's confusion. "The Gamemakers want to speak to all of you before the Games begin."
So instead, Iris led Harry down into the gymnasium. Harry had thought he had seen the last of the gymnasium, and in a way, he had; it looked noticeably different that morning, with all the equipment having been packed away already. It was just an empty space. And, in the centre of the room, there was a crowd of around twenty tributes and two Gamemakers. One of them was the young purple-haired Gamemaker who had spoken to them before the interviews the previous evening. The other, clearly his assistant, was taller a couple of decades older, stood to one side with a clipboard and notes, much as Seneca Crane had aided President Snow in greeting the tributes when they first arrived in the Capitol, six days before.
It turned out Harry was the last but one to arrive; only Michael Corner was later than him. Once all the tributes were present, the younger Gamemaker addressed them all.
"Following some unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances, Seneca Crane is no longer fit to perform his role as Head Gamemaker, and has resigned with immediate effect." Vague mutterings spread through the crowd; Malfoy laughed. The young Gamemaker merely smirked. "The name's Marshall, and I'm Crane's replacement, so you're all my responsibility from here on out. Before we send you all of to the arena, we have a couple of messages for all of you.
"The first message is that none of you will be given your wands prior to the start of the Games," Marshall explained, smiling once again as several tributes looked visibly worried. Harry reasoned that this sort of reaction was exactly what the Gamemakers were after. Not that it bothered him; he had high training scores in both disciplines. "Instead, you will receive your wands during the Games, but only when we feel that you have earned them."
That made sense, at least, Harry reasoned. Prove your worth to the Gamemakers, and they would reward you. An incentive to get stuck in. Forcing people to be active and not passive, for fear of being left at a disadvantage.
"The second message I have for you," Marshall continued. "Concerns a branch of magic that has recently come to our attention known as Apparition."
With no surprises as to how the Gamemakers have discovered this method of transport, nearly all the heads in the room turn towards Malfoy, who merely shrugs, arms crossed, looking down at the floor.
"We understand that in order to Apparate, you must have a clear image in your head of where you want to travel to; in other words, you can only Apparate to places you have already been to. While Apparition within the arena is permitted, I must make it clear to you that all the places within the Capitol that you have been allowed to visit will be heavily guarded by Peacekeepers for the duration of the Games. Anyone who Apparates out of the arena will be shot on sight. Am I clear?" When nobody answered, the new Head Gamemaker asked again, more forcefully this time, and the tributes nodded in agreement.
"Good," Marshall said, smiling once again. "Well, that concludes our meeting here. To save time, you'll all be travelling to the arena together on one hoverplane, which I have just been informed has landed on the roof of this building moments ago. Good luck, tributes, and may the odds be ever in your favour."
After almost two hours pinned into a seat on a hovercraft, forbidden to move so that none of the tributes take an early shot at each other, Harry was finally free to move once the hovercraft had touched down, but not before a tracker was injected into his left arm. The last thing the Gamemakers would want at this stage would be a lost tribute.
Stepping out of the hoverplane alongside Iris, Harry found himself underground, which surprised him even though Katniss had told him what to expect. Realising how close he was to the arena, every step he took as he followed Iris through a maze of corridors towards the Launch Room felt heavier than the one before. As though he was being dragged towards a future he didn't want.
The Launch Room itself was a brilliant white, sparkling and clean, barely more than a three-metre square. Off to one side was a bathroom with a shower cubicle. With half an hour before the start of the Games, Harry decided there was little else to do but shower and brush his teeth. It would be a long time before he would have another opportunity to thoroughly clean himself, and if nothing else, it was something to keep him busy. Better than feeling penned up pacing around the Launch Room, anyway.
By the time he was out of the bathroom, an Avox had delivered a bag full of clothes that he was required to wear for the arena. All of the tributes would begin the Games in matching attire. If nothing else, it kept the playing field even.
Iris laid out the clothes along the wooden bench at the side of the room; there was a white cotton t-shirt, dark combat trousers, grippy leather fingerless gloves and soft leather boots with durable rubber soles.
"Any clues about the arena?" Harry asked Iris. It was well-known that the clothes provided for the tribute could gave hints as to the conditions in the arena.
"Well, you haven't got a coat or a jumper, so it's going to be hot," Iris replied immediately. Upon closer inspection of the combats, Iris noticed that the bottom half of them could be unzipped and taken off, turning the trousers into shorts. "Maybe the conditions will be fairly varied," the stylist added after her discovery. "The gloves don't mean anything, as they're not for keeping in heat; they're just a nice thing to wear. As for the shoes, well, a tread like that would be good on almost any surface, so they don't give anything away, sadly."
"That's fine," Harry said, at least now being able to rule out an ice storm from the list of terrible things he would be facing the moment he arrived on his pedestal. As Iris helped him dress in the clothes provided for him, he couldn't help noticing the air conditioning that kept the Launch Room at a reasonable temperature. He wondered whether, once he arrived in the arena, he would feel a cool breeze ever again.
Then, all too soon, time was up, and a pleasant female voice came through the speakers, telling all tributes to prepare for launch into the arena.
Slowly Iris led Harry to the circular metal plate in the corner of the room that would rise upwards into the arena. During the past week, he'd seen footage from countless Games on the television, attempting to familiarise himself with the Hunger Games. Every year, he'd seen these plates; twenty-four of them held on pedestals, delivering tributes to a myriad of hostile environments. An abandoned city. A barren ice waste. Vast underground caves, where visibility extended just past two metres. One year, the Games had begun at the top of a volcano.
He only wished he could guess what the Gamemakers had in store for him this year.
The female voice spoke again, reminding tributes that there were twenty seconds remaining until launch. Hurriedly, Iris caught Harry's attention and said, "Remember, once you arrive in the arena, you have to stay on the pedestal for sixty seconds. Move before then and you'll be blown sky high."
"Sixty seconds, got it," Harry nodded as the glass cylinder began to descend around him, offering Iris what he hoped was a brave smile.
"Good luck, Harry," Iris said, smiling back at Harry as the cylinder sealed him to his fate, cut off all sounds of the outside world and the metal plate beneath his feet began to ascend, delivering him to the arena.
As the Launch Room disappeared beneath him and he was plunged into darkness, Harry felt the adrenalin build within him, a terrifying rush that he fought to contain, counting the passing seconds as he stood paralysed in the darkness. Five seconds, ten, fifteen...
Then, all of a sudden, the dazzling bright light of the arena was all around him.
It was time to play the game.
A/N: If you enjoyed this chapter, please review! As ever, constructive criticism is welcomed :)
I get the feeling most of this chapter was filler... I hope everyone still liked it, though!
P.S. Now all the preparation for the Games is over, any predictions for who's going to win? :)