TW: mentions of blood and gore
Diana Potter took a deep breath of cool air, a soft breeze hitting her face. Despite it being the beginning of July, it was rather cool. She looked out the open window of her dorm room, trying to see past the last remnants of the American wizarding world.
"Diana, come on, we're going to be late!" a soft voice called.
Diana turned away from the window with a sigh and climbed down from the nook, landing with a thump on the maroon rug. She looked at her best friend, Josie Weasley, wondering if the red-headed girl felt that wistful call to what was beyond the walls of their home. She knew better than to ask. The first and only time she had, Josie and her other friend, Halley Malfoy, both said the same thing: "We know what's beyond there, Dy, evil people. They'll kill you the second they get a chance."
Of course, they were right. Videos of the Hunger Games were enough to make anyone frightened of Panem.
Diana grabbed her bookbag and followed Josie into the common room every student from 6th year shared, regardless of house. People said it didn't use to be that way… now it had to be.
Halley stood by the door to the corridor with a hand on her hip and her pale lips pulled into a thin line. "Took you long enough. We're going to be late for potions," she said.
The girls were about halfway to their classroom when the screaming started. They shared a look, Josie's normally pink face going stark white. "Oh no," she whimpered.
Rushed footsteps echoed throughout the halls, forcing students to hug to the walls to let Headmaster Wallace pass with most of the professors following closely behind.
Diana eyed the wands they held at the ready as they passed her. She met Headmaster Wallace's eye and knew it was another attack. Of course it is, she thought.
"… a breach on the north side…" a boy was whispering to another student.
"Follow me," Diana said to her friends, walking away before they had a chance to object. She turned down an empty corridor that was lacking efficient lighting, took ten steps, turned to the left, and pressed her wand to the stone. After muttering a few random words she wasn't entirely sure she understood, the stones moved and rearranged until there was a thin passage that led to an equally small staircase.
"How did you know this was here?" Halley questioned, lighting her wand with a flick of her wrist. Diana and Josie followed suit, exposing damp moss on the sides of the passage.
Diana shrugged. "I was bored."
Josie and Halley were used to her vague explanations, so they didn't push.
The girls ran down the many flights of damp stairs for a good five minutes before landing at a dead end. Once again, Diana placed her wand against the stone, whispered the spell, and watched an exit appear in the stone.
They made it into the courtyard, the Snakewood tree only a few feet in front of them. Crouching down and looking down at the little wizarding community, they watched as witches and wizards rushed back and forth. The alarm from the MACUSA Headquarters echoed from the middle of town, forcing a light throbbing headache to begin in the back of Diana's head.
The wizarding community had diminished throughout the world wars and civil wars until all was left was a tiny fifty-acre town the witches and wizards could call home. Ilvermorny, one of the last standing wizarding schools besides Hogwarts and Koldovstoretz, was perched upon the highest peak on Mount Greylock. Below the school were the homes, stores, government buildings—everything the wizarding community needed to keep living.
Once a year, wizards from Britain and Russia would visit and bring supplies. They would also offer to take anyone who wished to go with them. Some would agree, others were too stubborn to leave the place they had grown up in; Diana included.
Surrounding their haven was the wall. Aurors would guard it day and night, never leaving it unattended or unprotected. Still, MACUSA didn't have enough Aurors to protect every inch of the wall and so that was where they went wrong.
Diana watched the section of the north wall where thirty Peacekeepers were storming into the wizard 'stronghold'. Some called it that, but Diana disagreed. If it truly was a stronghold, she wouldn't be witnessing Aurors and civilians falling like flies because of Capitol-made guns. Headmaster Wallace's powerful voice could be heard from where Diana was, streams of light beginning at his wand and hitting the Peacemakers one by one.
Every few months the Capitol would get suspicious of the one area in Panem—or America, as the wizards still called it—where they could get no signal and no accurate radar image. They would send a team of Peacekeepers out to investigate. Sometimes they would find the wizards, but most of the time the Aurors would confuse them and send them on their way.
Just beyond the wall, not over three miles away, was District 12. She had seen pictures and maps. She knew the exact layout, knew exactly how to walk through the coal-dusted streets. Professor Smith was always so good at explaining everything about Panem in Muggle Studies. Maps, people, the Hunger Games.
That topic was one of Diana's favorites. She would always wonder what would possess a government to do that to children and look back through both wizard and Muggle history to find correlations. While there were some similarities, the Hunger Games seemed to be one of the most atrocious things to happen in… centuries, it seemed. Even the infamous Voldemort and his Death Eaters could not hold a candle to the Capitolites who basked in watching children kill each other.
The girls continued to watch the Aurors, government officials, and professors diffuse the situation. Once a majority of the Peacekeepers were taken into custody, they repaired the wall, and placed the dead onto floating gurneys. Diana realized with a start that watching people clean up dark blood on the cobblestone or carry lifeless bodies away with their wands was something no one should ever be used to, but to her, it was just a way of life.
Peacekeepers had murdered her mother and father when she was ten. They killed her brother in an explosion when she was fifteen. Diana could remember him standing at the wall, attempting to figure out how to climb it, then trying to collect all of his body parts for his funeral. She shivered as the chilly wind brought goosebumps raising on her bare arms. What she wouldn't give to see him or her parents again.
She would have rather died with them.
Of course, telling either of her friends who cared about her too much was out of the question. They already looked at her like she was a ticking time bomb, just waiting for something else to set off the explosion. Diana grimaced at the thought and turned away from the scene.
"Come on, let's go back inside," Josie began, tears filling her walnut eyes. "I hate this."
Halley nodded, wrapping an arm around Josie. She looked at Diana with a knowing gleam. That then turned into concern. "Are you coming, Dy?"
Diana shook her head, her ponytail hitting her cheek. "I'll meet you inside. I just need some fresh air."
Once Josie and Halley went back through the passage, Diana took off running down the mountain. She did not fully understand what she was doing, only that she couldn't stand acting like everything was normal when it decidedly was not. She made it to town in no time and took a minute to catch her breath. The southern side was completely desolate, save for a few families cautiously walking outside on errands.
It took people at least two weeks after an attack to get back into a regular schedule, but Diana guessed this one would take a lot longer. This had been the biggest attack with the most casualties in almost two years; certainly nothing could go back to normal after it.
Diana reached the wall and glanced up at the stone and mortar. She wondered why they didn't use the technology the Capitol used on the wall. It might save more lives. However, she was thankful in this moment it was not powered by a force field.
Without thinking too much, Diana gripped two protruding stones and pulled herself up. She was absently thankful for her dangerous addiction of scaling Ilvermorny and her love of Quidditch as the Chaser on the Horned Serpent Team.
Within minutes, she had climbed up the ten-foot wall and made it to the other side before jumping to the forest floor halfway down. Birds chirped in the trees above and she watched a pair of squirrels chase each other among the undergrowth. Diana had no idea what she had just done, but she loved the feeling of adrenaline rising in her chest. She wondered if this was how her ascendant, Harry Potter, had felt when going on all the adventures he had.
A/N: Hey, this is a story I'm really excited about writing! I hope you all enjoy this first chapter!
A/N (12.03.22): Hello! I know it's been a while since I updated this fanfic, and I intend to start writing chapters again. However, my writing style has gotten a bit better and so I will be going through the already published chapters and re-writing them and making them longer and more interesting!