The District
“Get the hell out of here!”
Harry dodged a fist flying toward him and flashed a smug grin over his shoulder as he darted away with a small loaf of grain bread clutched in his hands. The man could say what he wanted, Harry had dinner. It was cold, and the man had wanted more than it was worth, but it was more than Harry had eaten in days.
And it was free.
Harry darted around the other shoppers of Knockturn Alley, the legitimate shoppers of the illegitimate section of District 12. All around him, people were browsing the peddled (and oftentimes stolen) wares that the others sold as a way to feed their families without going into the mines. Mothers clutched whatever meager amount of money they'd managed to scrounge up tighter than they did their children's hands, while the sellers, who didn't look any richer than their shoppers, kept their sunken eyes on their potential customers, boredom and a general lack of life written all over their faces. None took note of one fourteen year old darting up and down rows of stands, avoiding shoppers and off-duty peacekeepers alike.
Nobody cared much, as usual, but they cared especially less when there would be a crowd filling the square tomorrow and feasts to be expected. How anyone was supposed to have a damn feast in the poorest, dirtiest district, Harry would never know. But Harry wasn’t supposed to know, it was for the ‘oh so wonderful’ Capitol to know and the piss-poor citizens to guess at until they died in the games or in the mines.
Harry didn’t plan on dying in the mines or in the games. Harry planned on dying on the streets, just like hundreds of others before him and hundreds of others after. It wasn’t glamorous, but nothing about Harry’s life in District 12 was.
District 12 itself wasn’t glamorous to start with, not with its coal covered streets - soot clinging to everyone's skin, hair and clothes even if they'd never stepped foot inside the mines once in their lives - starving citizens, and houses that were nothing more than four sheets of plywood with a metal slab for a roof. It was less glamorous in Harry’s part of town, the tiny tents of thin plastic sheeting that he and a few other ‘street rats’ stayed in.
The ‘street rats’, or ‘tent kids’ as a more charitable citizen once called them, were all young like Harry. It wasn’t that anyone hit adulthood and suddenly had a home, it was just that they died before they could. It was an ugly end, but at least it was an end. Harry didn’t know where the others started, he didn’t care, but he knew those tents that froze in the winters and burned his skin in the summers were better than the orphanage he’d been in for the first half of his life.
‘District 12 Orphanage’ had been the darkest time in Harry’s life. And that was really saying something, as Harry navigated the dark streets he knew so well and dodged peacekeepers to make it back to his tent. The peacekeepers wouldn’t arrest him, most of them were too drunk to care much about one kid clinging to shadows and alleys to get away from the city square and back to safety.
An ironic thing to call his tiny corner of the town, but the tents were safer than the square. The street rats that he shared a space with were cruel and liked to fight, but the peacekeepers liked to get a lot rougher with threats of arrest and imprisonment for ‘noncompliance’.
Harry often wished that District 12 would burn to the ground. Just… let the coal ash catch fire, spread from home to home, and take them all out of their misery. It would certainly be a better fate than whatever they were doing now. But, until then, at least he had bread.
In his little tent - he remembered the vivid red color it was when he first got it, which had faded into a sad, pale pink with white patches, courtesy of the wear and tear it had gotten over the years - was where Harry enjoyed his ‘feast’. He picked off little pieces, trying to drag it out. When he was younger, he used to do it to trick his brain, or maybe stomach, that he was eating more food than he actually had in his possession. He hadn't managed to break the habit even now, years later. He ignored the grime under his nails, the reminder that it had been quite a while since he’d been able to use someone’s shower to wash himself. He’d have to in the morning, no need to look filthy for the cameras.
The thought of the dual horrors that the morning would bring was enough to turn Harry’s stomach, but he forced himself to keep his meal down through sheer stubborn willpower. The Capitol had already taken so much from him, he wasn't about to let them take his - small as it was - dinner too.
Harry smirked at his success and continued his feast while he moved over to the mismatched pile of pillows he’d acquired over time from various homes he’d been a guest in. He also had a stack of blankets, but the night was warm enough to lay on them instead of burrowing beneath them.
There wasn’t much else in his home; a rusted tin cup he caught rain in for water, a knife hidden inside it, the matching blade to the one he always carried. There was a book, some of the pages torn from when Harry needed to start a fire and realized that using it as kindling was much more useful than attempting to read it. And the pile of grass Harry laid out as a makeshift bed for the little green snake that sometimes hid out in Harry’s tent.
It was simple, clean and relatively dirt free, and depressing as hell. But so was Harry’s life.
Actually… Harry inspected his nails again and grimaced… perhaps he wasn’t exactly dirt free.
Morning would be there soon enough though, and Harry would clean up then. God knew that old man Yaxley would let Harry wash up at his house.
Not for free, but Harry knew nothing in life came without a price.
Once his stomach was full, Harry settled down on his pallet and let his mind wander to the events that would unravel the next day.
Every child in the district, from eleven to seventeen, would fill the square while their families would twist their hands and quietly cry in the background. Then, with a dozen cameras and the eyes of the nation on them, Rita Skeeter, the Capitol woman with red lips - the color of the blood spilled with every Game - and blonde curls - the gold District 12 will never see, let alone have - would choose a name. The first child to be ‘reaped’. That unlucky soul would walk up to the stage, forced to see their home district for the last time, while the others watched and thanked God it wasn’t them.
They would choose another name, another unlucky soul, and everyone left behind would be forced to celebrate while the kids were taken to the Capitol for the annual Hunger Games. Two families would board up their house, ignore the order to celebrate, as they mourned.
District 12 hadn’t had a child return from the games in fourteen years. And damn if Harry knew how Sirius Black did it.
Sirius Black, the mentor and most recent victor for District 12, was a man who looked both haunted and haunting. He stumbled around town sometimes, his hair as black as Harry’s and three times as long, his eyes sunken, and wearing what Harry heard used to be a handsome face that had gone entirely gaunt and wasted before Harry could remember anything other than the death-like appearance of the older man.
Harry knew Sirius Black was a morphling addict, but he figured he earned that right when he killed an arena full of twenty-three other children at only sixteen years old.
They’d interacted once, Harry and Sirius. Harry had been leaving Yaxley’s house in the middle of the night. It had been one of the first times Harry had traded himself for food, and he’d been crying like a baby as he tried to quietly run through town to get back to his tent. He’d tripped over a skinny leg, landed in a mud puddle, and fell apart entirely.
Harry had sat in that puddle and broken. He'd screamed until his throat tore and he'd cried until his shirt collar had been soaked. He’d gotten to eat, but at what cost?
What was the point in keeping a body alive if the soul didn’t want to be entrapped anymore?
What was the point in Harry fighting so hard to survive? Just so he could wake up the next morning and do it again?
Harry was tired of fighting, he was tired of surviving.
Harry had jerked harshly when thin and bony fingers curled on his shoulder. He'd whipped his head around, his eyes flicking anxiously up to the face of whoever grabbed him.
It had been Sirius Black.
“It’s raining,” he’d told Harry in a voice that was softer than Harry thought a victor should have. “Go home, kid.”
It might have been Yaxley, it might have been Harry’s bone deep exhaustion, or it might have been the look on Sirius Black’s face that Harry could have almost convinced himself was concern. Whatever it was, something had loosened Harry’s tongue to an unsafe level.
“I don’t have one,” he'd admitted, caught in grey eyes that never looked away from his face. Harry had swiped his soaked bangs from his forehead and then wiped his nose with his arm.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius Black had said, a whisper with much more weight than Harry thought the situation warranted. It wasn’t as if Harry were the only homeless person in District 12, he wasn’t even the youngest.
Harry had gotten up, feeling stupid and shameful for sitting in a mud puddle and crying like a baby over choices he got to make. Nobody forced him in Yaxley’s house. Lots of other people did it. There was no reason to cry over it.
“Not your fault,” Harry had muttered. He had tried to wring the water from his shirt and knew that he needed to resign himself to having a cold and wet night. “Bye then,” he had said when Sirius Black continued to stare at him like Harry was the one who looked like a ghost.
It had been nothing major, a tiny interaction, but Harry still sometimes dreamt about grey eyes that looked concerned, and apologies that sounded genuine.
All in all, Harry didn’t know how someone like Sirius Black won the Hunger Games, but he didn’t care either.
If it didn’t get him food, money, or shelter, Harry didn’t give a damn. He couldn’t afford to give a damn. Not when the cost was his own survival.
Harry moved on autopilot the next morning. He pulled his sneakers on, worn and filthy things that showed a bare toe and squeezed his feet uncomfortably. He checked his pockets to make sure his knife was still on him. He straightened his pillows, folded the blankets, and then prayed to the god he didn’t believe in that he would make it back to his tent that night.
It wasn’t much, but it was home.
The sun was barely beginning to rise when Harry ducked outside. The horizon looked as if someone had taken a brush to it and smudged the smoke-like white clouds still clinging to the sky, blending them into hues of pretty pinks and oranges - the only pretty thing in District 12. It was chilly out, the autumn air promising winter soon. The crispness was biting at his skin slightly, not fully unpleasant but bad enough to make him uncomfortable with his scanty, faded clothing. Harry wrapped his arms more securely around himself and moved over to the notepad that had been laid out the night before every reaping since Harry moved to ‘Tent Town’.
It was a simple list, one that each kid in their camp added to. They wrote down their tent number and then the number of the tent owner they wanted to take their belongings if they were chosen for the reaping. The person chosen would hold on to their belongings until they died in the games, then they’d divide things equally amongst the others. Two of Harry’s blankets had been from tent kids who died in the games. One from the year Harry had been nine, and the other two years later, a consolation prize for surviving his first reaping.
Harry squinted at his tent and saw that someone had painted a small 3 on his door flap sometime in the night. He shrugged and used the tiny nub of a pencil and carefully penned down ‘3 to 1’.
It didn’t matter who got the belongings, they’d been split evenly both times one of the tent kids had been chosen. Honor amongst thieves, and all that.
His contribution to the tradition complete, Harry set off toward the nicer part of town where Yaxley lived. As Head Peacekeeper, Yaxley enjoyed a better quality life than the others. He had a clean and cozy home beside the Mayor’s home and he made enough money to pay for things he wanted.
Namely, booze and young bodies to fill his bed.
There were others Harry had encountered the last few years. Some who were gentler than Yaxley, some that didn’t make Harry feel filthy on the inside when they finished, but Yaxley always let Harry have unrestrained access to his house when he’d finished, so it was where Harry went.
An hour of work in exchange for a warm shower and canned foods. Sometimes Yaxley even had a pair of jeans or sneakers that he’d let Harry take. It wasn't ideal, it wasn't even an equivalent exchange, but it was more than he'd have if he didn't do it. Such was life.
An hour of work for food, clothes, and a shower, he reminded himself when his hand shook as he raised it to knock on Yaxley’s door.
One hour of work oftentimes felt like a lifetime. When Harry had to act shy and submissive, pretty and sweet like Yaxley liked him to, he wondered if surviving the games took as much work as surviving life.
Maybe he’d ask Sirius Black if he ever saw him one-on-one again.
Maybe he’d ask him if he ever felt like a winner. Maybe Sirius Black with his hollow eyes and sallow skin knew the secret to winning life.
Maybe he’d tell Harry and it wouldn’t cost him anything.
And maybe whoever gave birth to Harry would rise from the dead and give him a loving home and a warm bed.
Dreams were something Harry didn’t dwell on. It only took one glance at his pathetic life to know that dreams were as worthless as Harry himself.
At least Harry had enough of a use to Yaxley that he’d been allowed to go use his shower to wash himself until his skin was pale and scarred instead of grey and filthy. Harry also helped himself to a can of chicken noodle soup and a package of crackers. He slipped an extra packet in his pocket and mustered up a forced smile when Yaxley gave him a can of vegetable soup and a clean outfit to wear.
It was nothing special, and Harry damn well earned it, but that collared green shirt and those baggy blue jeans were more than anyone else ever did for Harry.
“I hope you’re not chosen, Pet,” Yaxley said with a leer when Harry was dressed and Yaxley had on his white peacekeepers uniform. They had different parts to play that day, nothing that spoke of years of their mutually beneficial relationship.
“If I am, you think you’ll send me a gift?” Harry asked in a drawling and rude tone. A question that earned him a harsh slap to his cheek followed by a filthy kiss from thin lips that made Harry sick to his stomach.
“No,” Yaxley said. He pushed Harry out the door and slammed it shut when he stepped out behind him. “Good luck, Pet.”
Harry nodded silently before he ducked his head and darted off. Tears stung the back of his eyes while he followed the crowd toward the town square. It got easier to play his part of the obedient whore in Yaxley’s bedroom as he got older, but the desire to scratch his skin off afterwards never went away.
He couldn’t scratch though, so he kept his hands stuffed in his pockets until he got to the check-in point. He presented his right middle finger out on autopilot, a comfortable numbness filling him. Once he’d been poked, his blood was categorized, confirming his identity as ‘Harry J Potter, 14yo’.
It was another sad fact of life that Harry didn’t know his middle initial or his last name until he’d been eleven and included in the reaping for the first time.
After he was counted as ‘alive, in attendance’, he’d been rushed off toward the group of other fourteen year olds. While he followed them, Harry had the same morbid curiosity at what would happen if it marked him as ‘dead, in attendance’ as he always did.
He certainly felt dead on the inside.
Harry’s group stood in the middle of the sections for children. Each age group had their own pen roped off to stand in. The eleven year olds made up the biggest, and tiniest, group. The seventeen year old group had much less in attendance as less kids survived that long in their district.
Harry stood the shortest in his group and he had to throw a sharp elbow at a girl so he could inch up and look to the stage. There were three seats, all filled, and a giant bowl with slips of paper that listed every reapable child in it on a pedestal by the microphone.
Rita Skeeter, the glitzy spokesperson for the Capitol, sat on one side, the Mayor of District 12, a toad faced woman named Umbridge, sat on the other side, and in the middle- Sirius Black.
Harry tried, as he had for the last two years, to catch the man’s eyes, but he failed, just as he had for the last two years.
Sirius Black looked as high as he did at every reaping, a victor as bleak as their District was. It should have been embarrassing, certainly Harry heard others say it often enough, but Harry thought that Sirius Black was probably haunted by twenty-three ghosts every day.
If Harry had to compete in the games and survive to tell the story, he’d probably spend his money on morphling to numb the pain as well. If Harry had money at all, he’d probably try it out.
Unfortunately, Harry only had a can of vegetable soup, a packet of crackers, a pocket knife, and skin that itched terribly.
Harry embraced his inner numbness, willing it to fill him until the reaping ended and he could crawl back in his tent. He watched Rita Skeeter get to her feet as the town clock rang out ten deep gongs.
It was a mark of how miserable life was that Harry hadn’t even anticipated how much worse life could get.