Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling or Mark Burnette, and I do not own the rights to the Harry Potter books or movies or to the television show Survivor. All original characters are of my own creation.
A/N: Here's the next chapter, this time written much more quickly. Once I got past the introductions, it was so much easier.
Anybody who doesn't know how the television show Survivor works can probably find an explanation on CBS's website, because I don't have the space to explain all of the details here.
I won't be going into extraordinary detail with the challenges, simply because I don't think that they're very important. Certain challenges, (mostly reward) will be important for emotional reasons, and those I will go over more carefully. That's just so you know in advance that there will be many occasions on which I simply say "Harry's team won the immunity challenge," simply because I was out of ideas for challenges and it wasn't necessary for the plot for me to describe the challenge.
I was going to hold out for more reviews before posting this, but sabrina seemed very eager for me to update, so here it is.
As the Pizarro team started off to find its campground, Harry's began to introduce themselves.
"Hey," said a man with brown hair and blue eyes. He was one of the guys Harry had noticed earlier. "I'm Jacob." He held out a hand.
Harry took the hand and shook it. "Harry," he said in response.
After that, Harry introduced himself to five others. Heather, a girl who strongly resembled a less ethereal and slightly darker-haired Fleur Delacour, smiled widely, (and, it seemed, fakely) and said her hello in a rather high voice. She already seemed to be forming a bond with a girl who Harry soon came to know as Jackie. Jackie had curly dark brown hair and hazel eyes, and was a good six inches shorter than Harry.
A blonde-haired, green-eyed man who seemed to be hanging around with Jacob introduced himself as Jeff. There was William, a short, sixty-year-old man with crooked teeth, and Tabatha, a middle-aged woman with graying red hair and a big smile.
Harry saved the introduction he had been most anticipating for last. The mousy-haired woman was standing off to the side of the group. She could have been older than twenty-five, but she was acting noticeably differently from the two other young women in the group. Harry still didn't know why she interested him so much.
Harry detached himself from the group and approached the woman. "Hey," he said quietly. She looked up.
"Hi," she said, even more quietly.
"I'm Harry," he said, extending his hand.
"I'm Shelley," she said. Shelley reached tentatively for Harry's hand and shook it quickly.
"Well, it's very nice to meet you, Shelley," said Harry.
Before Shelley could reply, Jacob came over.
"Hey, you guys," he said. "We're trying to figure out who's doing what. D'you think you could work on the shelter with Jackie and Jeff? Me, Heather, and the other two are going to try to start a fire."
"Sure," said Harry. He looked back at Shelley. "How 'bout you, Shelley?"
"Okay," said Shelley softly.
They walked over to join Jackie and Jeff. Jeff raised a hand in greeting.
"Alright, so you two are working on the shelter with us?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Harry. "So how are we going to do it?"
Jeff motioned at the palm trees that littered the area by the beach. "I thought we'd use the logs to actually build the structure, and the leaves as a sort of thatching."
"Sounds like a plan," said Harry. He noticed that Jackie was eyeing Shelley with great disdain, and immediately began to dislike her.
The shelter was about halfway built when Harry heard a great whoop and, by reflex, spun around, instantly ready to defend himself and those around him. He had his wand tied to his leg, should the need arise, though of course he would only do magic on television if absolutely necessary.
In a fraction of a second Harry remembered that he was on Survivor, that there were cameramen and producers all around, and that there was no way that Voldemort could be here, as Voldemort was dead. For good this time.
As it turned out, the whoop had come from Jacob, who had finally succeeded in building a fire. As he and Heather set out to get water, William and Tabatha came over to work with the group building the shelter.
"No, no, you're doing it wrong," said William to Shelley, who was setting up a floorboard. He hurried over and took the board from her. Shelley backed away and stood next to Harry.
"What was I doing wrong?" she asked Harry.
"Nothing. I'm sure he's just picky," said Harry, watching William with distaste.
The next morning, fire still burning and shelter almost completed, Harry awoke to the sound of a high voice shouting, "Tree mail!"
There was a specific tree designated on the map of Atahualpa's campsite where messages appeared telling them of reward and immunity challenges. Reward challenges were for luxuries, like blankets, and immunity challenges were to determine which tribe would have to vote off a member.
Heather appeared outside the unfinished shelter wearing her orange buff as a tube top. "It's an immunity challenge!" she shouted.
Harry got up, ignoring the slight pain in his chest that was left over from a nightmare he could no longer remember. He walked over to Heather, who showed him what looked like a piece of parchment that had been burned around the edges. On it in thick black writing was a poem.
Now your teams are full,
But they can't remain that way.
Try hard as you might,
Not everyone can stay.
Always keep your balance,
Be careful you aren't thrown.
Because if you fall first,
You could be going home.
"Sounds like Dumbledore," Harry muttered, thinking of the old man's tendency for cryptic bits of advice.
"Come again?" said Heather interestedly.
"Er- nothing," said Harry, cursing himself for letting that slip. They're Muggles, he told himself. You can't let them know about wizards.
"So what do you think it means?" asked Heather, breaking his thoughts.
Jessica had shown him some taped episodes of Survivor before he left, and this sounded suspiciously like the one where the contestants had fought to throw each other off of balance beams above water.
"Erm- I think we have to throw the other tribe's people into the water," he said.
"What?" asked Heather.
Harry explained what he meant, and Heather hurried off to tell the others about the challenge.
Harry's tribe arrived at the challenge a few hours later to find that Harry had been correct. When they had lined themselves up on the orange mat next to the already waiting Pizarro tribe, Jeff Probst explained the challenge. They would be going up in individual rounds, in each of which one player from each team would go up on a balance beam set above the ocean water and try to wrestle the other tribemember into the water. The person who touched the water last won a point for their team. At the end of eight rounds, the team with the most points won what Jeff Probst almost lovingly called the "Immunity Idol," a large wooden figurine. The rule was that while wrestling, each person had to have one foot touching the large black mat set in the middle of the balance beam.
Jeff Probst gave them their "randomly selected" order, and, to his surprise, Harry was first, up against the woman with dirty blonde hair and green eyes who had been behind him in line to choose tribes, whose name, it turned out, was Karen.
As Harry climbed onto one end of the balance beam and Karen onto the other, he was surprised to find that he wasn't very nervous. He was a little, enough to make his right arm twinge a bit, but both the nervousness and the pain were nothing to him, survivor of countless painful (and nerve-wracking) Quidditch matches.
Jeff Probst stood on the shore, his right arm raised in the air. "Survivors, GO!" he shouted, bringing it down with a cutting motion.
Harry walked quickly down the balance beam and put one foot onto the black mat. A minute after him, Karen did the same. Harry paused a moment, uncertain what to do, and Karen grabbed his right wrist. Reflexes kicking in, Harry twisted his right hand around her wrist, grabbed it with his left hand, and wrenched quickly to the left. Then he easily pushed Karen, who was already unbalanced by his last move, into the water.
There. That had been easy. One point for Atahualpa, thought Harry, remembering points he had won for Gryffindor in his years as a student at Hogwarts. He jumped into the water and swam back to shore.
Atahualpa, heartened by Harry's easy victory, was on a winning streak. Every single person on their team won their round, except for William, who was defeated by a rotund middle-aged man named Daniel, and Shelley, who lost spectacularly to the bright red-headed woman who had been the first person on the Pizarro tribe. Jeff Probst handed the Immunity Idol to Jacob, who raised it victoriously.
All in all, Harry was very happy, and for the first time in weeks, the pain in his chest began to lessen.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Nighthawk: Wow, there's lots to reply to in your review. I don't know if you watch Survivor, but last season (or maybe it was the one before it) there was an amputee on one of the tribes. One of his legs ended at the knee. Well, he stayed in the game for awhile, and trust me, Harry will too. Remember, though, that no one on the show knows about his pains. They actually don't find out anything at all until next chapter. (There, I've just gone and given something away.) Don't worry, I'll tell you right now that Shelley isn't a witch, nor does she know anything about the wizarding world. She's an ordinary Muggle with an interesting backstory, and she doesn't know anything about Harry's situation. Harry won't exactly go through this alone, but he doesn't have anyone on the show to help him deal with his problems (yet). If you know anything about Survivor, however, you'll be able to guess how I plan to incorporate some of the characters from the series into the fic. (Now I've gone and given away even more!)
sabrina: Yes, yes, you're quite forgiven for your random shipping. As for what happened to Harry, all will be revealed in time. You'll find out a little more next chapter, though, so maybe that will hold you over, and keep you from dunking your manipulative alter-ego in a pond. If you search this chapter carefully, I actually told you something in it.
Please review. It only takes a second and it makes me so much happier about writing!