A/N: Thanks to happyland3000, keelanmurray, sillymoose13, harrypotter24, AstrisDreams, PeridotPi, Artemis Castellan, Slightly addicted to HP, ProditorMagnus and Joshua the Terminian for reviewing the last chapter! :)
I don't really have too much to say about this chapter, so I'll just say that I hope you all enjoy reading it :)
Chapter Twenty-One
The snow was still falling when Harry woke up, more gently now than it had been through the night. Over six inches deep, covering everything in a white blanket. If Harry had struggled to tell exactly where he was before the snowfall, he had no hope now; everything looked the same when coated in snow.
All he did know was that he was somewhere within a mile or so of the Cornucopia. He and Hermione hadn't moved far after their fruitless trek to the centre of the arena the previous day. The day had been wasted, really. No supplies gained, no advantage made against the other tributes. And, of course, no progress had been made in deciphering the message. Even that had fallen silent the previous afternoon; it had now been twenty-four hours since he had last heard the voice.
"Do you think that's it for the message?" Harry had asked Hermione at sunset the previous evening, when he had realised they hadn't heard the voice since early in the morning. He was used to it appearing out of nowhere every few hours, and unlike Hermione, he had grown used to its chilling tone. It didn't scare him anymore. All that he felt when he heard the disconnected sentences was an increasing build-up of frustration at not being able to understand them.
"Harry, that can't be all the message has to say," Hermione had replied to him. "It rhymes, remember? We've only had seven messages. As we need something else to rhyme with clue, there's at least one more sentence to come."
After that, Harry hadn't pressed her on the subject any further. He'd done enough thinking about it for one day.
Indeed, the only positive thing that Harry could say had come out of the previous day (if you could call it a positive, and that was a stretch) was the death of Padma Patil, reducing the pool of surviving tributes down to just nine. Fifteen of them had died in the past week. By that rate, there'd be none of them left in just a few days...
"Harry!" Hermione called, trudging through the snow towards him, tightly wrapped in several layers beneath a thick coat, flakes of snow caught in her wild, wind-swept hair. "Glad to see you're awake." Harry smiled weakly back at her. His face was already feeling flushed, attacked by the biting cold.
"You too," he murmured, shivering involuntarily, tucking his hands into his coat pockets.
"Oh, I've had an idea," Hermione said brightly. "Do you remember how, when we were younger, we used to use a flame hidden in a jar to keep warm during cold break-times at school? We'd stand in a corner huddled up around it, you and me and R-" Hermione paused, her eyes moistening, the grief visible on her face.
"Yeah, I remember," Harry said quickly, trying to move past the painful silence.
"Well," Hermione recovered, "I was thinking that the same thing could help us out here, too. If you passed me an empty water bottle or something, I could set the fire in it, and you could tuck it in your backpack to keep yourself warm."
"That's a brilliant idea, Hermione," Harry said earnestly, smiling at her with one hand rested on her shoulder. The last thing he needed to see was Hermione break down again. It hurt too much.
"It's a good thing I pay complete attention in Charms, then, isn't it?" Hermione said with a grin.
"Yeah, it - Hey! I pay attention too!" Harry said, defending himself.
"Only when you've run out of points to make about Quidditch..."
Harry opened his mouth to defend himself, but knew that Hermione had made a fair point. He'd often used Charms - often a noisy lesson based on improving practical skills - as a way of running through new Quidditch strategies for the Gryffindor team with Ron...
He shut his mouth again without saying anything, unable to think up a comeback, which made Hermione laugh. Actually laugh, which almost seemed impossible after the severity of everything they had been through in the past fortnight.
Then, before he realised what was going on, Hermione had picked up a clump of snow and flung it at his face. Gasping from the cold as he staggered backwards, removing his glasses to wipe the ice from his face, he struggled to resist the temptation to strike back.
Somehow, he managed it.
"Come on," Harry said finally, now with a proper smile on his face, trying to calm down Hermione, who was still giggling. "Let's get moving."
"So where exactly are we going to, Hermione?" Harry asked her, half an hour later, feeling more invigorated than he had done in days. He had to admit, the fire-in-a-bottle idea of Hermione's seemed to have done more than just keep him warm, but actually brighten the mood, too. Making conversation felt like a far easier task than it had been the previous morning.
"I don't really know," she said quietly, paying more attention to where she placed her feet in the snow. She knew it would be easy to trip on something buried beneath the white blanket, and was taking care not to do herself any harm, her eyes scanning the ground ahead constantly. "I just feel like we haven't explored this area much before."
"I don't know how you can think that," Harry replied between breaths, following Hermione's footsteps for an easy bath through the forest. "Everything looks the same beneath the snow." He paused. "Then again, I don't suppose it matters where we go, does it? We either find someone, or the Gamemakers give us a hand going in the right direction."
"Exactly," Hermione said purposefully. "At least by keeping moving, we're prepared for whatever we meet, rather than just waiting in our tent until someone finds us."
To Harry's surprise, it didn't take them long before they broke out of the forest entirely, fifty metres from the shore of a large lake, its surface frozen over. Harry was confused for a moment until he realised that despite the similarities, this wasn't the lake that held the lighthouse where he'd spent that terrifying evening on the day the voice arrived.
But there was another structure; a small wooden shack, barely a hundred yards away, its roof covered in snow. The wood looked tired, but there was glass in the windows and none of the signs of neglect he had seen at the lighthouse.
Still, the place made him feel uneasy, even this far away.
"Should we take a closer look?" Hermione asked him.
"I don't know," he said slowly, but Hermione was already walking towards the shack, her wand at the ready. Reluctantly, he followed her.
As he approached the building, Harry saw that it was larger than he had originally thought, but not quite big enough to be anything other than one room. The shack was built right at the edge of the lake, and Harry saw that on closer inspection, the building stretched past the edge of the land. Looking through the ice, he could see wooden stilts extending down from beneath the floor of the building, holding it in place.
The front door was thick and sturdy, made from tough oak planks and set on heavy iron hinges, painted black. The metal knocker and handle were completely void of decoration. Everything about the place seemed plain and functional.
Hermione tried the handle, only to find that it didn't budge.
"Locked?" Harry asked, and she nodded, pointing her wand at the door.
"Alohomora," Hermione whispered, tucking her wand back into her pocket and trying the door again. Still it wouldn't move. Frowning, Hermione moved stealthily around the side of the building and onto the frozen surface of the lake to peek through one of the small square windows. Harry was surprised that the thin ice was able to take her weight.
"Someone's been living in there," Hermione explained to Harry as she returned to the front door. "They might still be, actually. There's a fire on, and all sorts of stuff sprawled across the room. There's a rucksack in there that looks almost identical to ours; I'm certain it's from the Cornucopia."
"So someone's been in there at some point, at least," Harry added.
Hermione nodded. "That explains why the door won't open. There have been charms put on it so that it can't be unlocked with magic."
"You can see that someone's still living here because of the footsteps in the snow," Harry added. "Look, there's tracks leading away into the forest."
"Harry, those are ours."
"Oh, yeah..."
"Which reminds me, I could really do with remembering to get rid of those from now on," Hermione said, more to herself than to Harry.
A brief silence followed, and Harry noticed that it had finally stopped snowing; instead, the weak, wintry sun had reappeared, its slanting gaze making it blinding to look out across the lake.
"So," Harry said, looking at Hermione once again. "Are we going to try and get inside this place? Is it worth it, or are we just going to move on?"
However, before Hermione could reply, Harry heard a deafening crack behind him. Remembering the last time he had heard that sound, he had his wand ready before he could focus on whoever had Apparated behind them, expecting Nott or Malfoy and wanting to be ready for a fight.
Instead, Harry found himself face to face with Michael Corner.
"Oh, w-"
"Expelliarmus!" Harry stood frozen in shock at the unexpected arrival, but Hermione still had enough of her wits about her to disarm the young Ravenclaw, sending the knife in his right hand flying backwards, spinning over and over until it landed handle-first in the snow. Michael began to walk slowly backwards, both hands held up, showing his empty palms to Hermione, who was still pointing her wand at his chest.
"So this is where you've been hiding out, is it?" Harry snapped. Both he and Michael knew their relationship was strained, especially following their argument in the Training Centre. "Not bothered to help out your classmates, have you?" Harry didn't know what made him say it, he just felt a week's worth of stress and anger reaching boiling point within him, and Michael was a decent enough target for his fury. He'd have preferred Malfoy for everything the Slytherin had done, but sometimes Harry just had to take what he'd got.
"I don't need them," Michael replied coolly, a half-smile on his face, not at all bothered that he had two wands pointed straight at him. "I never did, never will. I'm winning this my way."
"Doesn't look like you're doing such a good job of it now, does it?" Harry retorted, taking a couple of steps towards the Ravenclaw.
"I could say the same about you," Michael replied, looking up as his eyes met Harry's for the first time. "Tell me, whatever happened to Weasley?"
Of all the things Michael could have done, Harry hadn't expected that, and the sudden flash of pain and regret that burned through him was enough for Michael to reach into his back pocket, pull out his wand and produce a well-aimed Impediment Jinx that took an equally-stunned Hermione off her feet.
Flushed with anger, Harry's first Stunning Spell missed as Michael scrambled away through the snow towards the forest. His second was blocked by a last-second Shield Charm, and then Michael had reached the trees. Dragging a flustered Hermione back to her feet, Harry led the way as he set off after their attacker.
Thankfully, Harry was faster than Michael, and Hermione didn't need to run; she had her bow. The gap steadily closed as Michael sprinted through the icy forest, roughly in the direction of the Cornucopia. Not that he was likely to reach it; Harry assumed the lake must have been miles from the Cornucopia for him to have missed it until that day.
Hermione, who had seemed much more determined following Michael's cheap remark, soon found luck with her bow, sending an arrow into the back of Michael's right calf, and he was sent sprawling to the floor.
"Petrificus Totalus!"Michael called out in desperation through cries of pain as Harry closed the distance to him, but Harry blocked the spell with a flick of his wand. The fury was building through him at Michael's brash attitude and the terrible things he had said, and Harry found himself wanting to cause the young Ravenclaw as much pain and misery as he could. Grabbing Michael by the neck and dragging him to his feet as he prised Michael's wand from his left hand, Harry pushed the boy forcefully backwards towards a nearby tree, blood still spurting eagerly from his recent arrow wound.
What Harry didn't expect was for Michael to dig his heels in, skidding across the snow, and swing a ferocious punch at Harry that once again caught him off-guard. Connecting heavily against his cheekbone, stars burst in front of Harry's eyes as his neck snapped quickly to the right, recoiling from the strike. Cursing, he staggered backwards, dazed, and Michael saw his chance, diving on him and the two collapsed together into the deep snow.
The temperature was almost overwhelming at first as Harry found himself half-buried in the ice, so cold that it seemed to burn his skin wherever he touched it. Scrabbling, clawing and throwing Michael over and over, searching for any way to assert dominance, any way to end the fight, Harry found himself struggling. Michael was a few inches taller than him, and he didn't seem to be showing any signs of weakness despite his injured leg. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione looking on helplessly, not daring to do anything for the fear of making things worse for Harry. He was sure that for Hermione, this was the same as watching Ron's final stand, the duel with Malfoy.
That, more than anything, spurred him on, told him to keep fighting despite the piercing cold screaming at his body, telling it to give up the fight. He wouldn't let Hermione go through that ordeal again.
Yet somehow he still losing, and the two boys finally came to rest with Michael pinning down Harry in the snow, his hands reaching down to Harry's belt to retrieve the steel dagger that Harry had kept there since the start of the Games.
Harry grabbed Michael's wrist with both hands before he could drive the knife into Harry's chest, but even with both hands, it was a struggle to stop the blade from piercing his heart. Breathing heavily with exertion, he struggled to hold on as Michael leant his weight onto the blade and Harry watched its tip sink slowly towards his chest.
He was losing the battle, and he was going to die. A hundred panicked thoughts swam through his brain, but there was nothing that could him.
Then, all of a sudden, the pressure on the dagger vanished, and Michael gasped; a panicked, desperate gasp, as both boys' eyes fell on the bloodied tip of an arrow protruding out of the front of Michael's chest. Stunned, Michael staggered to his feet, his hands grasping the arrow driven through him. Harry looked beyond him to see Hermione standing fifteen metres away, all the colour drained from her face as her bow hung loosely from her hands.
Michael, however, was panicked and frenzied, staggering madly through the snow, hurling his knife at Hermione in a final burst of anger, but it flew harmlessly past her. Losing energy fast as the snow turned red in his wake, Michael crashed into a thin-looking tree nearby and slumped to the floor.
The tree shook heavily, and Harry heard something snap nearby above his head. Then he saw it, the branch crashing to the floor, the white-brown lump hanging from its underside.
With a thump, the branch crashed to the floor, the lump shattering on impact, leaving a rising, buzzing cloud of yellow and black in its place.
A wasp's nest.
Hermione screamed, and Harry cursed as he sprinted at her, desperate to get away from the swarm of angered insects that were already heading towards him. The pair barely hesitated before sprinting off through the woods, the wasps hot on their heels. Harry hoped that at least a few of the insects would be attracted to Michael, but if any were, they left him alone pretty quickly; within half a minute he was dead, his cannon barely audible over the droning buzzing of Harry's swarming pursuers. Whether that was because these wasps were more lethal than he imagined, or just because Michael was almost gone anyway, he didn't know. But it definitely spurred Harry on as he hurtled through the snow, frustratedly running towards the blinding sun.
"Hermione!" he called out above the incessant buzzing behind him. "What can we use to get rid of these?"
"I don't know!" Hermione called back, visibly panicked, screaming as a wasp stung her on the knuckles of her right hand. Harry watched helplessly as the sting swelled to an unnatural size within moments.
Then, before he could do anything about it, there was a piercing pain in his cheek, another burning coming from his left wrist, another on his neck, and all at once he was crying out in pain, cursing as he felt the wasps' venom coursing through his veins, immediately sapping his energy as he continued struggling away from the terrible insects.
They certainly weren't ordinary wasps.
"Hermione!" he choked out, staggering forward with all the energy he could muster. "Do something!"
This time, Hermione seemed to sense that things were getting desperate, and she stopped in her tracks, directing her wand at the swarm and decimating the numbers with a fierce burst of flames, trying to placate the survivors. Harry didn't stop running; he was just desperate to put as much distance between himself and the terrifying swarm as possible.
As Harry kept moving, he became aware that the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and that a low-lying mist had fallen across the arena. Desperately losing energy as his swollen wounds weeped and throbbed, Harry slowed to a stop as his remaining resolve deserted him, leaving him with only a cold, clammy feeling of unease as he walked slowly onwards into the mist.
Then he saw them.
Dementors. Five, seven, ten, a dozen of them gliding towards him through the mist, their distinctive black hooded cloaks, decaying skin on their thin hands and the uneasy rattle of their breaths immediately removing any doubt from Harry's mind as to what he was facing.
Steeling himself, Harry pooled all of his remaining energy together as he stood his ground, directed his wand at the approaching threat and cried:
"Expecto Patronum!"
Harry felt a burst of relief as his silver stag shot from the end of his wand, charging towards the terrible creatures, but no sooner had it reach the nearest Dementor did Harry see the stag falter and disappear in front of him, leaving the way clear for the Azkaban guards.
Stunned, Harry felt a weight build in his chest as he staggered backwards away from the Dementors, tripping on something hidden beneath the snow and collapsing backwards to the ground. Hermione called out to him, but he was too drowsy to tell what she had said. The overwhelming sense of dread inside him reached new levels as the nearest Dementor closed in on him. Harry could almost make out the terrifying features lurking beneath its hood-
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"
"Stand aside, you silly girl... Stand aside, now..."
"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-"
Harry felt his body seizing up, shutting itself down, giving up the fight. He no longer cared; what hope did he have? The game was up.
"Not Harry! Please... Have mercy... Have mercy..."
Through the drowsy, chilling haze, Harry faintly heard the screaming voice echo through the sky, as though the words were from the Dementor hovering over him, but before her could make out its message there was a scream and the chilling sound of high-pitched laughter that played over and over in his head until everything faded into black.
As of the most recent death recap (the end of day six), the tributes alive are:
Gryffindor: Hermione Granger, Harry Potter
Hufflepuff: Sophie Roper, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Ernie MacMillan
Ravenclaw: Michael Corner
Slytherin: Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini
A/N: The Lily/Voldemort exchange has been borrowed from page 134 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in case anybody thought it seemed really familiar.
Anyway, if you enjoyed this chapter, please review! As ever, I welcome constructive criticism :)
P.S. I've been having difficulties deciding what I should do with these final few chapters, especially concerning who should win the Games. I've seen several posts in reviews with people commenting on who they would like to see win, and the opinion would be split. I would be favouring the more popular characters as that result would please the most people, but then I run the risk of ending this story with a bunch of clichés...
So basically, while I have a rough plan, I'm setting up a poll on my profile for so that you can all let me know who you want to win and WHY (explain either by PM or review), so that in a couple of chapter's time I can make my decision on who should win the Games.
Note: it won't just be the most popular tribute wins. More than likely, whoever convince me that the tribute they're backing would make the best victor will get it. And I won't be revealing that before the end of the story, in case any of you are wondering ;)
I look forward to hearing what you all have to say :)