The Victors
Harry
“Only one winner will be allowed.”
Cornelius Fudge’s missive rings in Harry’s ears. Only one winner. He won’t get to go home with Katniss after all. Of course not. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. There’s a reason he’s never felt hope until that game-changing (fake) rule. His life isn’t worth hoping for.
Katniss is staring at him with disbelief in her eyes. “It’s not that surprising, really,” he tells her, rising to his feet, and pulling his knife from its holster. She immediately aims her bow at him, but he just shakes his head and lays the knife at her feet. Followed by his slingshot, and the ammo bag. She lowers her bow.
He pulls the berries out of his pocket.
He won’t make her kill him. He’s just going to kill himself.
“No!” she screams when she sees what he’s holding. She tries to knock them out of his hand.
“Katniss,” he says, closing his fist tightly, “this was always the plan. You have a family, people who depend on you, Prim. I have nothing. No real family, no friends, nothing whatsoever worth living for.”
She’s crying. He hates making her cry. There’s nothing for it though. He tries to raise the berries to his lips, but she has a death grip on his wrist.
“You have me!” she sobs desperately, but he shakes his head.
“Not if I win,” he whispers, using his free hand to stroke the fingers gripping his arm, trying to persuade her to let go. “They have to have a Victor. We both know it.”
A whole spectrum of emotions flashes across her face in the span of a few seconds. He tries to name them. Despair, agony, confusion, then… relief? And determination. Then she starts prying his fingers open. He’s too weak to resist.
She tilts his hand to pour the berries into her own. “No–” he tries to stop her, but she cuts him off.
“Trust me,” she breathes – and takes half the berries. “Don’t make me go home without you.”
A suicide pact? Unacceptable. But… They have to have a Victor.
That’s why she was relieved. His own words gave her an idea. They’re giving the Gamemakers an ultimatum: either crown two Victors, or none.
“On three?” he murmurs. She kisses him sweetly, a bit wetly with all the tears.
“On three,” she agrees when she pulls away.
They stand, back to back, hands out and open for the cameras to see. They count in unison.
“One.”
He hopes this works. He hopes she’s right.
“Two.”
The Gamemakers could just let them die. Maybe they’d be happy to have no Victor to spoil.
“Three!”
It’s too late now. He tosses the berries in his mouth.
The trumpets sound. “STOP!” Fudge is screaming. “Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the Victors of the 74th Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen and Harry Potter of District 12!”
He spits the berries out immediately, hearing Katniss behind him doing likewise. They’re both at the lake in an instant, washing the poison out of their mouths desperately. She pulls him into a tight embrace.
“You didn’t swallow any?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “You?”
She shakes hers too. “I’d be dead by now,” she says.
The speakers start playing the sounds of cheers from the Capitol. The hovercraft reappears overhead, dropping two ladders down, but Katniss doesn’t let him go. She helps him to the closest ladder. His whole body freezes when his foot meets the rung, and he feels hers do the same, still wrapped around him tightly.
They rise into the air. He watches his blood pour towards the ground. Then he blacks out.
Katniss
“HARRY!” she’s screaming, pounding on the glass that separates them. “HARRY!” She can see the doctors working with furrowed brows. Someone hands her a drink. She throws it on the floor.
Harry is full of tubes, the wall beside him covered in lights and readouts that make no sense to her, but twice they flash red and she thinks they have to restart his heart.
She catches sight of her reflection: dirty, feral, borderline insane. No wonder everyone’s keeping their distance from her.
She’s watched families stand around their dying relatives in the past, and always wondered why they stayed to watch. Now she gets it. There’s no other choice.
They land on the roof of the Training Center. Harry is wheeled out of the ‘craft. She’s pounding on the glass again when she spots purple out of the corner of her eye – Ludo Bagman, it has to be, come to rescue her – then a needle jabs her neck and everything goes black.
***
When she wakes, she’s in a bed, in an otherwise empty room with a glowing ceiling. There are no windows or even a door that she can see. It smells like cleaning fluids. Her arm is full of tubes that connect to the wall. She’s naked, but the sheets are silky soft against her skin.
She lifts one hand. It’s scrubbed clean, the nails filed to perfection. She checks herself over and all her wounds are healed – she can even hear from her left ear again.
Trying to sit up, she realizes she’s restrained at the waist. The wall slides open before she can really start panicking, and the sight of the redheaded Avox girl calms her. The girl puts a tray on Katniss’s thighs, raising the bed so she can sit up. She risks one question.
“Is Harry alive?”
The girl’s nod relaxes every muscle Katniss hadn’t even realized she’d been tensing. When the girl leaves, she realizes she’s starving. The meal is spare, but she still struggles to finish even this meager portion. She wonders how long she’s been out.
Somewhere, Olivander and Madam Malkin will be designing their wardrobes for the presentation of the Victors. Remus Lupin and Ludo Bagman will be arranging the sponsor banquet and final interviews. District 12 will be scrambling to organize a celebration, for the first time in sixteen years. Soon, she’ll be home, with Prim and her mother and the Weasleys and even Prim’s cat, Crookshanks. And Harry.
She has to see him. She tries to escape the restraints. A cool feeling seeps into her veins, from one of the tubes, and everything goes black again.
***
She wakes. Eats. Gets knocked out again. Rinse and repeat.
Her scars are disappearing. A nearby voice with a District 12 accent calms her, even though it’s shouting. Someone is looking out for her.
Wake. Eat. Sleep.
The Avox girl does not return. A parade of unfamiliar faces brings her food instead.
Wake. Eat. Sleep.
***
Finally, she wakes to no tubes, no restraints, and no scars. Not even the ones she had before the Arena. She slips out of bed and is surprised to find her legs strong, more than able to bear her weight. There’s an outfit at the end of the bed – a brand-new copy of the Arena uniform. Of course. This is what she’ll wear to greet her team.
She dresses and stands, fidgeting, in front of the wall that she knows can slide open, and it does. The hallway before her appears doorless, but there must be a door with Harry behind it. She calls his name, but it’s Bagman who answers.
At the end of the hall, they’re waiting for her – Bagman, Lupin, and Olivander. She runs to them and surprises even herself when it’s Remus she hugs. He whispers in her ear, “Brilliant work,” and it’s not even sarcastic. Bagman gives her a bear hug with loud claims of how he knew she could do it. Olivander hugs her tightly but silently.
“Where’s Madam Malkin? Is she with Harry? He’s all right, isn’t he? He’s– he’s alive?” she asks desperately.
“He’s fine,” assures Remus. “They just want to do your reunion live at the ceremony.”
Of course, they do. The awful dread that Harry’s dead dissipates again. “I guess I’d want to see that too,” she admits.
Remus hands her off to Olivander, who takes her to her prep team on the twelfth floor of the Training Center. After the obligatory screaming and fawning – and her first real meal in weeks – they get to work.
Apparently, the scar removal process is called a “full body polish”. She’s still painfully thin. The dress Olivander puts her in is padded to make up for her lack of breasts or hips. Olivander tells her it’s an acceptable alternative to giving her surgical enhancements. At first, she thinks he’s given up on dressing her in flames, but the yellow fabric glows like a candle.
“What do you think?” asks Olivander.
“I think it’s your best yet,” she answers honestly.
It’s still disconcerting to see that the hair and makeup and dress all make her look like a little girl, even younger than she really is. Olivander doesn’t design anything arbitrarily.
“I thought I’d be wearing something more… sophisticated,” she probes warily.
“I thought Harry would appreciate this more,” he answers cautiously.
Something about his reply sounds like a warning – she’s still in the Games.
Harry
There’s new construction under the stage at City Center. A metal plate to transport him upward, and a makeshift wall that surely separates him from Katniss. He wants to tear it to pieces.
They’ve dressed him in a suit but made him up to look like a little boy. He doesn’t question it. He just wants to see Katniss.
Phantom pains shoot through his missing leg, making him want to scratch his prosthetic. It doesn’t matter. Katniss is close.
The anthem booms. Rita Skeeter is greeting the cheering crowd. She introduces the prep teams, Ludo Bagman, Olivander and Madam Malkin, and Remus Lupin. Finally, finally, the plate starts to rise.
The lights blind him for a moment – and then he sees her.
She’s gorgeous. Well, adorable might be more accurate. They’ve made her up to look younger too. It does not matter. She’s running, flinging herself into his arms. He staggers on his half-fake feet, nearly dropping his cane. Their lips meet.
Something about her kiss feels wrong. Too cautious, too stiff. Does she regret their ploy with the berries? No, it must just be the audience, because she slowly loosens up, pouring her emotions into his mouth. He pours his own right back into her.
Time is passing, but he doesn’t notice. Someone taps his shoulder, and he shoves them away. All that matters is Katniss.
It’s only after Lupin shoves them towards the couch that he pulls his face away. Katniss sits practically in his lap, then kicks her shoes off, tucking her feet in and laying her head on his shoulder. He wraps both arms around her. He never wants to let her go again.
Rita makes a few jokes, and then the three-hour highlight reel begins. It’s a love story. There’s an inappropriately upbeat track playing over the training sequence – most of the children shown are dead.
He learns that their first few days in the Arena were a series of near-misses; so many times where he was so close to Katniss, and something drove them apart. He can’t watch Luna’s decapitation again, turning his face into Katniss’s hair. They play Rue’s death in full, including Katniss’s heart-wrenching song, but cut out the floral burial. Of course. The act reeks of rebellion.
Katniss shouted his name after the fake rule announcement. He smiles. The expression mirrors the grin he wore after that selfsame broadcast.
They show the Feast and he cringes. She came so close to death just to save him. Both Pansy and Blaise had ample opportunity to kill her.
Every kiss, every laugh, every tender moment is shown, even a view of the tent shaking with their ill-advised amorous activities. Then they cut to Draco’s death, which is definitely a mood-killer. Then the nightlock gambit. Then Katniss – pounding on the glass while the doctors work to save his life.
The anthem plays and Tom Riddle takes the stage with the crown-bearer. The crown is a clever Capitol device, twisting apart and separating into a tiara and a broader, more masculine crown. President Riddle crowns Harry, then Katniss.
Harry does not like the look in Riddle’s eyes as he places the tiara on her. Not one bit.
Something is very wrong.