The Training
Harry had been the first to arrive to breakfast the morning after the parade. The morning after he’d been dressed up and people cheered for his imminent death.
Cheered to know he’d be murdered for entertainment soon.
And people called the Tent Kids animals back in District 12. At least all their disagreements ended with a scuffle, a few fists, and the flash of a knife once or twice. They’d never cheered for each other to commit murder.
The little pets living in the Capitol were sick and Harry wanted nothing to do with them.
Neville was the first to join Harry. He stumbled in the room and looked like he’d slept nearly as well as Harry did.
“Morning,” Neville mumbled, seeming unsurprised at Harry’s lack of a response. He began scooping food on his plate - warm eggs and sausages and gravy for the soft bread they would never get at home. Neville loading his plate reminded Harry, who had been lost in his thoughts of all he learned about himself last night, to eat as well.
Just because the Capitol sucked didn’t mean that Harry wasn’t going to eat their food, and as much of it as he could, at that.
Sirius joined them not long after Harry began eating. He sat down silently and poured himself a cup of the rich smelling coffee. And Harry, who had never tried coffee except once at Yaxley’s, went ahead and tried a sip as well.
Ugh.
Still terrible.
Sirius’ lips curled up over the edge of his mug at whatever face Harry pulled.
“You thought about alliances?” he asked, apparently thinking Harry was speaking to him.
Harry had nothing to say to the guy who owned a giant house, rights to Harry’s life, and never tried to combine the two together. According to the conversations Harry eavesdropped on the night before, Sirius was a bit of a celebrity even amongst victors and fellow mentors.
Sirius had once been willing to die so Harry’s dad, his best friend, could win their games. It sounded like it came down to the two of them and Harry’s dad killed himself so Sirius could win and take care of his pregnant girlfriend and unborn son.
And since Sirius didn’t ever seem to have given a damn about Harry, despite him having years to step up, Harry had no problem labeling him a traitor to his dad’s memory.
Haunted grey eyes that had once looked at Harry with concern aside, he could have given Harry a bedroom in his fancy house. He could have mentioned going in the games with Harry’s dad.
Harry shouldn’t have had to become a tribute to find out all sorts of things about himself.
One mentor, with greasy hair and a hooked nose, said that it was irony that Harry had been born the day Sirius gave his victory interview.
Harry didn’t see the damn irony, but maybe he wasn’t meant to. He was meant to be a quiet little tribute and wave to the crowds and beg for their money.
And Sirius wanted him to create allies in the arena? Fat chance.
Neville clearly didn’t hold the same bitterness that Harry did though, because he cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders up by his ears when Harry and Sirius both looked at him.
“We could be allies?” Neville told Harry quietly.
Harry’s brows pinched together at Neville’s suggestion. Why would he want to be allies? What good was it to die together, or risk one of them having to kill the other after working together?
Why would Harry trust him to watch his back when his own godfather never had?
“No thanks,” Harry said coolly.
“You’re going to need allies, kid,” Sirius said to Harry. “You won’t make it far on your own.”
“I suppose I won’t make it far then,” Harry said with a mocking drawl.
Neville poked moodily at his food and glanced at Harry out of the corner of his eye. “I think we’d make a good team,” he said. “We could watch each others backs.”
“There’s only one winner,” Harry told him harshly. He moved his glare from Neville to Sirius. “Besides, the last two guys to team up from District 12 didn’t exactly have a happy ending, did they?”
Sirius made a pained sound and Neville started to protest and Harry wanted to hear none of it. He got to his feet and slammed his chair beneath the table.
“I’m going to get a shower,” he said as he stormed toward the room he slept in.
“Training starts in thirty minutes,” Sirius called to his back.
Nice of Sirius to stay sober enough to remember the important things. Not that he had a godson who lived on the streets and had to resort to desperate measures to survive, no, but at least he knew what time training for the games began.
Kind of him, really.
When Harry and Neville stepped in the training room, Sirius hovering beside them long enough to ensure they actually entered, Harry wished he hadn’t.
The room was massive - as big as Knockturn Alley itself. The grey stone walls looked blue in the soft, dim light filling up the room, and there were dozens of different sections, clearly separated by workstations and shelves or racks filled with different types of weaponry. Harry could spot a handful of bows and quivers full of sleek, metal looking arrows, as well as all manner of knives, axes and spears. His eyes lingered on the knives for an extra second or two before he let them slide away.
Further away, there was a net hanging from the ceiling - Harry could use it to exercise climbing since God only knew what he'd encounter in that godforsaken arena in a few days. On the far wall on his left, human targets were on display, while on the other, there were dozens of bullseye targets for knife throwing.
And finally, as he looked up and to the side, there was a balcony filled with comfortable looking seats and tables full of food and drinks, where the Gamemakers were looking at them like they were watching a play at the theater. Lounging on the largest chair with the best view was a dark haired man with a pretentious beard, watching them with calculating, dark eyes from his throne. The Head Gamemaker - Tom Riddle himself.
Harry narrowed his eyes at him, his chest heaving with a shallow breath full of hate and spite. If Harry’s fate was to die at the end of one of the weapons filling the room - he wished he could take that man with him.
See how smug he looked if Harry used one of the silver swords on the wall and drove it through his throat.
“Come on,” Neville whispered. He tugged on Harry’s black shirt sleeve, the match to his own, and inclined his head slightly toward the group of tributes waiting in the center around a fearsome looking woman.
Harry loped over to the group, holding his head high and keeping his eyes away from the smirking boy from 3. That boy could smirk and threaten Harry as much as he wanted, Harry would just do his best to let anyone else kill him.
“Listen up!” The woman standing in front of them had her hands planted firmly on her hips and she gazed at them all one by one. She looked vaguely familiar to Harry, a past victor for sure, but with the severe bun on her head and the streaks of grey at her temples, Harry couldn’t begin to remember her name.
“These next three days are to prepare you to fight,” the woman said, her tone as severe as her hairstyle. “You will use these stations provided to you to prepare you in weaponry, feeding yourself, and protecting yourself from whatever elements you’ll face.” She glared especially hard at the kids from Districts 1-3, “You will not engage in combat with a fellow tribute. You will not touch a fellow tribute. We have assistants on hand for mock combats and I will remove you from training if you do not follow these simple rules. Is this perfectly understood?”
All Harry understood was that if he hit one of the other kids, he could ignore the farce all together and wait for his death up in the bedroom he’d been assigned. Harry glanced thoughtfully at Neville, judging the likelihood of Neville letting him punch him just to be kicked out.
Neville grinned and shook his head, either somehow guessing at Harry’s thoughts or refusing him either way. Probably refusing to look weak or because Harry had just shot him down to be allies.
Which was fine, but if Harry got the chance, he’d hit him in the arena as payback anyway.
Once the woman dismissed them, informing them that they had lunch at noon and their day ended at five, Harry strode off in the opposite direction of the others. If the loud and buff group of soon-to-be-careers wanted to go straight for the weapons, Harry would go straight to the first aid stations.
He breezed past the survival stations with a smug look. If the other kids froze to death because they were too used to comfy beds and warm homes then perhaps Sirius had given Harry an edge after all.
The man standing at the first aid station had been rude and snappy until Harry simply chose to ignore him and try to look over the different medicinal plants and concoctions that would be possibly available to him in a few days time. It was… mostly confusing, honestly.
Harry had never had any sort of treatment available when he’d been sick or injured before. There had been one time that a woman in town had given Harry a balm for an open wound he had on his arm, an infected insect bite, she’d said. Of course, Harry looked back at her kindness more cynically now.
Had she done it to be nice or did she do it because Harry was the most pathetic celebrity in District 12? Sure, she offered a balm, but nobody bothered to tell him that his dad died in the games second to the man he’d named Harry’s godfather.
Harry hoped the town burnt to ash after he died in the arena. It would serve them all right.
Harry had been toying with a bandage, trying to wrap it as the manual instructed to stabilize a broken bone, when another tribute joined him. It was the kid from 11, the one who volunteered for his little brother, Trent.
“Hiya,” Trent gave Harry a wide and gap-toothed smile. “You’re doing that all wrong,” he said with a nod toward where Harry had been trying to bandage the dummy available to him. “Want me to show you?”
Harry handed him the bandage with a shrug. He watched carefully as Trent’s tiny and clever fingers wound the bandage around the dummy, tying it off in a tight knot.
“Ta da!” Trent smiled proudly at his results. He looked up at Harry and Harry was struck by how young he was.
It caused him to send a venomous glare up at the Gamemakers. Trent was a child being sent to his death for entertainment.
“Thanks,” Harry told him gruffly, avoiding looking at his earnest green eyes. He untied the bandage and tried to wrap the dummy himself, making a similar, if sloppier, version of Trent’s wrap.
“I did you a favor and now you should do me one.” Trent grinned mischievously at Harry when Harry grabbed a stick to try and add to stabilize the pretend injury. Harry grunted to show he was listening and Trent dropped his voice to a whisper.
“We should be allies. Like a team.”
Harry felt his stomach drop and he focused very hard on his wrap, ignoring the half-pleading look from the tiny kid beside him.
“I can’t,” Harry said, refusing to sound regretful. He wasn’t working with anyone; he was being sent in alone, and he’d die alone. He’d rather die on day one than give someone a chance to stab him in the back.
Literally, in this case.
Harry didn’t think little Trent with his messy dark hair and big eyes was much of a threat to him, but Trent posed a different kind of danger. Teaming up with Trent meant Harry would have to watch his back. And Harry didn’t plan on living to the end so how was he meant to watch out for a kid who had no business being there to start with?
“Why?” Trent asked, his voice tiny. “I’m really helpful, I swear. I know all sorts of stuff about lots of things. Please?”
Harry shook his head and got to his feet. He averted his eyes from Trent’s pleading face.
“No,” he said firmly. He lowered his voice just enough to not carry and offered the kid the only assistance he could. “Don’t beg people, it’ll make you look like an easy target.”
Harry turned on his heel and strode away to the edible plants station. He ignored the twist of pity he felt and decided to avoid Trent at all costs for the rest of the training days.
It would be easy to avoid him in the arena, surely a little kid like Trent would die on day one.
After lunch, where Harry sat by himself until Neville plopped down at his table, Harry tried to casually inspect the wall of swords and blades. He ignored the District 2 boys who were each swinging axes with ease against wooden posts and blocked the image of those axes landing in another kid’s chest.
Possibly even his own.
Just when Harry reached up to grab a small knife, similar to one he’d used before, a dark hand reached up and snagged it first.
“Do you know how many ways you can kill a person with just a sharp knife?”
Harry glared up at the District 3 boy, Blaise, irritably.
“No, but I’m sure you do with your mommy being a victor,” he snarled.
Blaise smirked and twirled the simple switchblade between his fingers like a professional.
“You’re awfully bitter for someone who has a godfather for a mentor,” Blaise drawled. His honey-colored eyes flashed with amusement when Harry, quick as a snake, reached out to snatch the blade from his hand, carefully ensuring he didn’t cut himself.
“And you’re awfully slow for someone who plans on killing me,” Harry taunted him. He couldn’t twirl the knife as quickly as Blaise could, but he’d be damned if he let Blaise snatch it from him like he just had. He also wouldn’t admit to Sirius being the world's worst godfather, and likely worst mentor ever, either. If the others thought Harry had an advantage, all the better for him.
Blaise glanced over Harry’s shoulder at loud and angry words being spat from other tributes and frowned.
“Adios, Harry.” Blaise winked at him, causing Harry’s scowl to turn truly hateful. “I’ll be hoping someone else kills you, shall I?”
Harry waited until Blaise was a few paces away to yell at him. “Next time you have your back to me, I’ll jam this knife in it.”
With that, Harry turned to the targets and threw the knife, preening smugly when it stuck dead center.