Chapter 9: The Arena
They were in the hovercraft for what seemed like an eternity. Harry thought he was going crazy, stuck sitting, strapped to his seat, staring at the faces of the people who would be trying to kill him in a few short hours. He realized he's never really made any alliances, and it was probably a good thing too. At least on his own he wouldn't ever have to worry about turning on his allies.
When the hovercraft landed on site, the restraints that were holding everyone back released and Harry filed out of the vessel with the rest of the tributes. Their stylists waited for them outside the craft to bring them to their individual prep chambers. They'd said goodbye to their mentors and escorts already that morning.
Harry spotted Madam Malkin near the back of the pack of stylists and joined her as she led him underground and down the long corridor to his prep chamber. Inside there were a small table and a single chair in one corner, a tube in another corner, and an outfit hanging on the opposite wall. Ignoring the tube for the time being, Harry walked over to the far wall and began to silently change into the provided outfit.
The clothes were plain and didn't give much away about where he would be going. He would be wearing plain black pants and a grey top with a black jacket overtop for warmth. It didn't seem that he would be going anywhere too cold, or else the material would have been more thermal. He also deduced that it wasn't going to be a warm and sunny place, or else black would have been a poor choice on the Gamemakers' parts.
Wordlessly, Madam Malkin held out Luna's blibbering humdinger necklace to Harry. Harry had all but forgotten about his promise to wear it in the Games, but he took it and slipped it over his head, tucking it beneath his shirt anyway. It was comforting, even though the necklace itself meant next to nothing to him, to have something with him to remind him of home.
A voice announced that Harry had one minute and he started to panic. This was it, possibly his last moments of life. His heart suddenly started pounding and his breathing picked up as he started to hyperventilate.
Madam Malkin stepped over and placed her hand on Harry's shoulder in an attempt to calm him, to steady him. "Don't worry," she said as Harry tried to regulate his breaths. "Death is but the next great adventure."
Harry didn't know why this made him feel better, but it did. It was pretty obvious to everyone involved that Harry wasn't going to make it out of this alive, but Harry needed to know that this wasn't the end for him. Whatever lay ahead for him after the arena would surely be better than what he'd faced already in this life. At least in death, he would be free of the Capitol's grasp.
"Thirty seconds," the cool female voice announced. Harry took a deep breath and turned to face the tube he had been ignoring thus far. The door into it stood ajar and Harry took a deep breath before stepping forward and onto the small white disk that would lift him into the arena.
"Twenty seconds." Madam Malkin walked over to the chair and sat down, her eyes never leaving Harry's. Harry tried to tame his racing heart as he thought of all the people in his life who were important to him – Ron and Hermione and Ginny. Moving on to the next great adventure was fine for him, but what about everyone he was leaving behind?
"Ten seconds." Even though he didn't stand a chance, Harry knew he would fight. If it was just his own life, he would give it up in a second, but it wasn't just about his own life. It was about the lives that would be destroyed if he was gone. He just couldn't do that to them.
"Five seconds." The door sealed itself and suddenly all Harry could hear was the ringing in his ears. Nothing moved, and then suddenly the ground shook beneath his feet and he began to rise up out of the prep chamber towards the arena.
It felt like forever that Harry was in the dark, and then he was suddenly blinded by the light of the outside world. He shut his eyes and rubbed them as they stung from the brightness of the sun while he listened to the countdown begin.
With about forty-five seconds until the start of the Games, Harry's eyes adjusted to the light and he looked around at his surroundings. As usual, the twenty-four tributes were evenly spaced in a circle around the cornucopia – a large golden structure filled with everything a tribute could possibly want in the Games; food, water, supplies, weapons…
Extending his gaze to the greater arena, he concluded that they were standing in some sort of courtyard. The ground was paved in stone and they were surrounded by a rectangular enclosure. To Harry's right, there stood a huge castle towering far higher than Harry could see. An ornate set of double doors served as the entrance into the castle, and they stood wide open, as though beckoning to the tributes to come inside.
What was distinctive about the castle and the courtyard was that they seemed to have been ravaged by war. Whole chunks of the castle seemed to be missing, and piles of rubble and brick were scattered all over the courtyard.
On his left, past the courtyard, there stretched an expansive forest with a thick blanket of trees blocking out all light and hiding the potential dangers that might be lurking inside. Ahead, it appeared to Harry that the ground dropped off like a cliff, and craning his head around to see what was behind him, he found that there was a large lake, the surface of which was rippling, suggested that something sinister lurked just underneath.
The announcer of the Games, Lee Jordan, was already down to the last twenty seconds of the countdown, and Harry refocused his attention to what was important now. He had to make a decision; would he run for supplies, or escape and hope that he would survive without them? It was a difficult decision that he'd never really talked to Hagrid or McGonagall about. In fact it was something he hadn't really thought about until this exact moment.
The supplies weren't all in the Cornucopia. Some of them were scattered on the ground around it as well. Harry decided he would try to grab a couple of the nearest items before escaping and do his best to avoid most of the bloodbath. If he was lucky, he could make it to the doors, and once he was past them, he would be out of knife throwing range and hopefully would be able to find some small corner to hole up in.
As the countdown hit zero, a loud going clanged and Harry bolted from his disk without a second thought. The nearest thing to him was a sleeve of crackers, which he snatched up before going just a little deeper to grab a backpack. All the weapons were at the heart of the cornucopia, and Harry knew there was no way he would make it all the way there and back alive, so he didn't even consider trying for a weapon. As he ran for the large doors, he reached for another pack and dove to the ground as a knife whizzed past him, burying itself instead in the chest of the girl from six.
Not wanting to be a sitting duck, Harry scrambled up and raced towards the doors, narrowly avoiding another whizzing knife which imbedded itself in the back of the girl from twelve. As Harry rounded the corner into the castle, he had one last fleeting thought – Lavender. Sure she'd said she didn't want to ally with Harry in the arena, but they'd been through so much over the past few days, Harry felt guilty for leaving her behind. Harry turned and quickly located Lavender, who was cowering behind a pile of rubble on the other end of the courtyard.
"Run!" he cried to her as they made eye contact. Fearfully, Lavender nodded and after checking the coast was clear, she ran out and made a sprint for the door. As she neared, the girl from two – Bellatrix – jumped out with a sword and with a downwards slicing motion, ended Lavender's life.
Harry felt like he was going to be sick. He wanted to run, but he couldn't look away. He watched as the tributes from district 8 ran off in the direction of the forest and Sirius grabbed the tributes from nine and dragged them in the direction of the lake. Individual tributes were escaping, some of them running straight past Harry as he stood there opened mouthed, watching the Careers take out the boy from twelve and the girl from four.
Finally, when a knife came hurtling at Harry, he ducked and it hit the wall behind him and clattered to the floor. Remembering that he was in a fight to the death, Harry picked up the knife and ran, knowing that he had to get as far away as he could from the bloodbath.
He ran out onto a landing to find himself presented with two options; he could either go up or down. Harry didn't know how he felt about going down – the dungeons of a castle could hold any number of terrifying things, so he decided that up was the best option. He ran up the first flight of stairs and found himself faced with the choice of going through a door or up the next flight. He chose the stairs again.
He continued to climb the stairs over and over again, no matter how many times he was presented with another door. He decided that most people wouldn't want to climb this high, and that he would be safest if he climbed to the very top of the castle. He couldn't tell how high the staircases went, but he had to be on the fourth or fifth floor by now.
Suddenly, the ground underneath him shook and the stairs were moving, swinging him through the air in a swivelling manner. Harry grasped onto the railing for support as he looked down and saw that all the staircases below were moving too, probably an invention by the Gamemakers to mess up everybody's routes.
When the staircase stopped moving, Harry doubled his speed, hoping to reach the top before the staircases moved again. Finally, when he'd reached the seventh or eighth floor, he'd run out of stairs to climb and he ran through the door into a long corridor. Along the walls of the corridor stood suits of armour, some standing upright and others splayed across the floor as though they'd been knocked over. There seemed to have been an explosion in the right wall, as there was quite a large hole in it and rubble and brick littered the corridor.
Harry ran down the hall to the end where he found himself at a dead end. In the wall in front of him was a life-sized portrait of a large woman holding a goblet in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. Just as Harry was preparing to turn around and go back, the portrait revealed itself to be a door and it swung inwards, revealing a secret room.
Curiously but cautiously, Harry stepped inside. As he did, the canons began to fire, indicating that the bloodbath was over. Harry heard six canon shots – not as big a number as he'd been expecting. He knew five of the casualties, but he would have to wait till night to discover the identity of the sixth.
The room Harry found himself in was quite large. It seemed to be a sitting room of sorts, but designed for a lot of people. There was a beautiful fireplace on one wall with couches and armchairs around it and also in grounds around the rest of the room. There were a few desks against the walls as well, and some larger tables with wooden chairs around them too. The room was entirely decorated in red and gold, from the hangings on the walls to the pillows on the couches, to the rugs on the floor.
Papers and feathers littered the floor and tables, and there were some overturned inkpots as well, the ink long since dried up. Books lay open here and there, giving the impression that whatever had happened here had required everyone to evacuate with very short notice and leave everything behind.
There were two staircases leading from the room, one on the left and one on the right. Curious as to what he would find, Harry chose the right-hand staircase and ascended it. The staircase curved as it rose in a circular pattern and each time it circled back, it revealed another door, all of which stood slightly ajar. Inside each one, Harry observed that they were dormitories – each room containing four to six beds in a circular pattern around the room.
As Harry ascended further up the staircase though, he discovered that the top had been destroyed. Rubble was in the staircase and the walls and ceiling were completely blown off. With nowhere higher to go, he decided to return to the main room below instead, where he would look through his packs and assess his situation.