The Alliance
Neville toyed with the remote attached to his bed. He swirled the buttons and changed the window scene from the current sunrise - too bright and too clear - to a more muted sun rising behind a green mountain. It wasn’t as good as the one back home had been, but it was the best that Neville would ever see again.
Neville sat there for a few minutes, letting a couple silent tears slip down his cheeks, just thinking. Thinking about his mom - she’d be in the greenhouse, watering their plants. Neville wondered if Luna still came by to help or if she’d be too upset. Luna was a sensitive person, Neville just hoped she wouldn’t take his death as badly as she had her mom’s. Neville’s dad would surely already be awake, out in the workshop with his fire burning and his tools pounding as he forged metal for the miners.
Neville wondered if he was disappointed that all the knowledge he’d passed on to Neville would go to waste.
A knock on Neville’s door prompted him to wipe his face and get to his feet.
“Breakfast.”
Neville grunted to indicate he heard Sirius and then ignored him entirely to get a shower.
It wasn’t like Sirius had any advice to share over meals with Neville anyway, Neville just needed to arrive in time to eat before their second day of training.
When Neville arrived in the dining room, whatever hissed conversation Harry and Sirius were having fell silent.
“Don’t stop on my behalf,” Neville said, forcing some cheer in his voice. He sat down beside Harry and began helping himself to the breakfast dishes. “I can pretend to be deaf.”
“Trust me, it’s not important,” Harry said with a vicious glare at Sirius.
Neville shrugged and started eating. If Harry was upset with Sirius, he had plenty of reasons to be. Neville hadn’t known that Harry was oblivious of their connection until they had been reaped. Everyone in District 12, or Neville’s parents’ friends anyway, gossiped about it occasionally.
It was sad, in Neville’s opinion. What kind of person let their family grow up in an orphanage and on the streets? Neville and Harry had been classmates back when Harry lived at the orphanage; Neville remembered him coming to school with bruises and busted lips. He remembered how tiny Harry was, how scared and just pathetic looking he’d been.
Neville’s mom sent him an extra lunch for Harry back when they’d been much younger. Neville had told her how Harry never had anything to eat at lunch and how the other kids made fun of him for it.
“Oh, that’s James’ boy,” Alice Longbottom had said after Neville told her about his friend. “It’s despicable what Sirius is doing. Haunting the roads and forgetting that child. Here, lovey, you bring Harry a lunch tomorrow, okay?”
Neville hadn’t known then what ‘despicable’ meant, but he did later. By then, Harry had dropped out and run away from the orphanage, and Neville agreed that Sirius was despicable. Sirius never brought his godson, the son of the friend that Sirius made a promise to before the entire country, to his home in Victor Village. Maybe he forgot, maybe he didn’t care, but the cards were played and Harry was left alone.
But Neville would gladly team up with him again, watch his back like he once had in school, if only Harry would let him.
Stubborn jerk.
The boys spent the morning in training. Training was a strong word to use, really, but that’s what the Capitol called it. Neville thought it was just another way to humiliate them and laugh at their expense - look at the poor tributes from the lower Districts, trying to learn how to kill in three days; early entertainment for the watching Gamemakers. Neville spent some time with the girls from District 4, Hermione and Daphne, toying with the weapons. There were a few weapons that looked like the chisels and hammers his dad used to forge metal, and Neville showed the girls how to hold them most effectively. In return, Daphne taught Neville the proper stance to use a bow.
The three of them weren’t particularly skilled with any weapon, and the girls were clearly familiar friends, so Neville wandered off after an hour to a different station. All around him, he could see other tributes flocking together in pairs or groups - alliances clearly being formed - except for himself.
Well. Himself, Harry, and the little boy from 11.
Harry stood at the target range, throwing knives with uncanny accuracy over and over; the boy from 3, Blaise, stood to the side, watching him slyly. Neville didn’t know how to warn Harry that he was being watched, so he said nothing and looked toward the other loner in the group.
The little boy from 11 was…
Uh…
Neville paused in the middle of the room to cock his head curiously and watch as little Trent danced from beam to beam in the ceiling with a grin on his face.
It was cute, and terribly sad.
That boy would be dead in days, Neville was certain of it.
To distract himself more than anything, Neville went to the station for snares where the red-headed twins were carrying on loudly at.
“Lookie who we have here!” One of them smiled at Neville, as if they weren’t all competing to kill one another. “Nellie, right?”
“Neville,” Neville corrected him politely. Neville had no reason to be nasty to his fellow tributes - unlike himself, they hadn’t asked to be there. “Is it okay if I join you?”
“The more the merrier!” one of them said. “We’re old hats to these tricks, but they’re still a good time to practice while the careers take up the sparring rings.”
Neville glanced toward where the twin pointed and grimaced at the display. The girl from 1 and one of the boys from 2 were both in separate sparring rings with Capitol assistants. The girl was quick, bloodthirsty. The boy was slower, but powerful as he struck his assistant with fists as big as a small anvil.
Swallowing harshly, Neville ripped his eyes from them and gave the twins a smile.
“I don’t know anything about snares,” he admitted. “Are they hard to learn?”
“Not at all!”
After a couple of hours where Neville’s clumsy fingers had only managed to create one snare as compared to the twins’ dozen tricks and traps, he’d been relieved to be released for lunch. The twins jogged off with jaunty waves while Neville followed more slowly, not eager to get in shoving matches for food like some of the other tributes were.
It took Neville a couple extra minutes to make a plate from the buffet of endless foods being offered to them, but once he did he looked around for a place to sit.
The kids from Districts 1, 2, and 3 all sat together. The tributes in 4, 9, and 10 were together. The rest of them were clustered around a few different tables, none talking much, save for the career pack, but at least together.
Neville never felt as lonely as he did then. It had taken him years to find friends back home, but he did eventually with Luna, and now he was alone while facing his hardest challenge ever.
Dying with his head held high.
Harry was sitting alone again though, so Neville chose to go sit across from him.
“Just like school, huh?” Neville smiled slightly in an attempt to defrost the cold look on Harry’s face.
Harry drew his black brows down, scrunching his eyes up, and tilted his head at Neville. “What?”
Neville dipped his roll, so soft and sweet, not like the ones from home that his mom made on special occasions, in soup, and shrugged after he took a bite. Harry’s green eyes (large and bright like Luna’s silver ones were) were trained on Neville so Neville dabbed his face with a napkin after swallowing.
“When we were kids?” he said, gently prodding in case Harry forgot. It had been seven, maybe eight, years ago. Neville might have forgotten if he hadn’t always considered little Harry to be his first friend.
If things had been different, if Sirius had been better, maybe Neville and Harry would have grown up to be the best of friends. As close as brothers.
Maybe it was for the best they hadn’t, it was already hard enough on Neville entering the arena with Harry as it was.
“We used to share lunch, when you lived at the orphanage,” Neville reminded him. Neville felt his neck burn in embarrassment when Harry said nothing and he ducked his head to dunk another piece of his roll in his soup. “Nevermind, it’s stupid. I’m stupid, ignore me,” he muttered.
Neville didn’t need friends anymore than Harry clearly didn’t need allies. Just as he’d resigned himself to die when Harry’s name had been called back in District 12, he resigned himself to a lonely existence between now and then.
Harry cleared his throat. “Your- your mom cut the crusts off the sandwiches, yeah?”
Neville jerked his head up and saw that Harry had his eyes screwed up and a thoughtful look on his face.
“Yeah,” Neville said, smiling in relief. “Until you said you liked crusts.”
“I didn’t, actually.” Harry dropped his eyes to his plate and stabbed at his food. “But that was the only thing I ate most days.”
Neville felt pity settle in him, clear down to his bones. It wasn’t that Neville had been privileged, but with his mom selling herbs and his dad forging equipment for the mines, they’d had enough for three meals a day.
Since Neville didn’t know what to say, he opted to remain quiet and they ate the rest of their meal in silence.
Just before they left the lunchroom, Harry kicked Neville’s foot lightly.
“When you get back, tell your mom I said thanks.”
Neville shot Harry a look of surprise. Surely Harry didn’t truly think Neville would outlive him in the arena.
“When you make it back, tell her yourself.”
After lunch, Neville went back to being on his own as Harry broke apart from him and wandered somewhere else. Neville looked around at the various stations and the tributes and assistants filling up the room, trying to decide what to do next. He had precious little time until he'd find himself in the arena, fighting to stay alive for as long as he could, and he wouldn't waste it by lolling about and doing nothing.
He started walking around, taking in the various weaponry and survival stations at his disposal. It was as he was passing by the redheads from 7 that he overheard their conversation and decided to halt.
"Yes, Seamus, I get that. But how do I make it light up if IT’S WET!" the girl pressed, her voice rising with her frustration. She threw the flint and steel in her hands down to the table and they clattered noisily as they fell over the sticks already lined up on the metal surface.
"No need to yell at me," the boy, Seamus, said frostily. He crossed his arms across his chest and scowled at the girl. "I'm just pointing out where you're going wrong so that you don't fucking die in that arena!"
Neville decided to intervene before they could start fighting. "Uhm, we could figure it out together," he suggested, stepping in shyly and smiling at the two tributes.
"You know how to light a fire?" the girl asked with a cocked eyebrow.
"Not really. But it can't be that hard," Neville replied. He could feel an embarrassed flush rising on his cheeks as he stood there under the scrutiny of the redheads. "I'm Neville, by the way."
"The volunteer from 12, yeah. I know you," Seamus said, snapping his fingers in the air as remembrance lit up his eyes. "Seamus, pleasure to meet you."
Neville accepted the offered hand and shook it firmly.
"I'm Susan. If you can figure this thing out, I'll owe you one," the girl said. She didn't offer her hand for a shake but that was alright. Neville wasn't offended.
"Sounds like a deal."
The three of them spent the better part of an hour learning how to ignite a flame and keep a fire going in the wild. After Neville finally figured it out, they all took turns, doing it over and over again, each time faster and better than the last, until they were satisfied with their skills.
Afterwards, they moved on to hammock-making. Here too, they spent around an hour learning how to make a hammock from nothing but rope. It was exhausting, and Neville got some annoying rope burn on his hands from handling it for so long, but by the end of it he felt much more confident in his ability to make a halfway decent hammock. No skill was a bad skill to have, that's what his dad always said.
The three of them broke off after that. Susan went to the archery station while Seamus went in a corner to take a break and drink some water.
Neville moved over to the plants station, a place he’d avoided since he hadn’t needed it.
His mom’s greenhouses had prepared Neville just as much as her old volumes of books, the pages faded with age, had. If the winner was selected on who knew the most about plants, maybe Neville would win then.
But winners in the Hunger Games were selected based on their determination, lack of morals, and the amount of support they got from sponsors and their mentor. Which meant that Neville was certain that the winner of the 74th Hunger Games would be…
“Hey.” Harry nodded, more civil than he had been since they’d left District 12. Harry stood in front of the screen of plants, a simulation running that Harry was failing.
“Hi,” Neville said, only a touch bashfully. “You’re almost out of time,” he inclined his head at the timer counting down, giving Harry only seconds left to filter out the plants that were poisonous.
Harry shrugged and crossed his arms. They both flinched when the screen began flashing bright red letters ‘YOU DIED’.
“Mind if I give it a go?” Neville asked, more to reset the screen than anything.
Harry stepped to the side and waved his hand at it. “It’s not my fucking machine, is it?”
Neville grinned at the way Harry followed that hypothetical question with a glare to the Gamemakers - if the sponsors loved rebels, then Harry would never lack for anything in the arena.
As the timer reset to show 60 seconds available in bright blue letters, Neville took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He knew it was just a simulation, but he also knew that he could very well end up in a situation not too long from now where he'd have to make a split second decision between a plant that could heal and a plant that could make you foam at the mouth before you died.
Neville hit play.
Thirty different plants blinked into existence on the screen, some dull and plain looking, others dyed a handsome green, while others were sporting so many colors and patterns that it made his eyes lose focus just glimpsing at them out of the corner of his eye. He took all of this in during the five seconds allotted to preparing himself for the start of the game, then as the screen flashed from READY? to GO!, Neville's fingers started flying across the screen, tapping the right leaves and plants with quick precision until all that was left were the poisonous plants. The screen flashed green as it proclaimed Neville alive, the counter showing 33 seconds left from the total of 60 he started out with.
“How…?” Harry blinked at the screen as the edges flashed green once more before it reset itself. “How the hell did you do that?”
Neville tried to remain modest, but it was one area he could be proud of himself at. He was a mediocre student, he’d quit school after Luna’s mom died last spring so he could help his parents and keep track of Luna. He wasn’t brilliant in his dad’s workshop, though he held his own, but in the greenhouses his mom ran?
That was where Neville thrived.
“My mom grows plants,” he explained to Harry. “I help, sometimes.”
Harry rolled his eyes and Neville grinned more confidently.
“I can show you?” he offered. He took a step to the side, leaving space for Harry to step up in front of the screen. “Come on,” he encouraged him when Harry didn’t move, “I won’t trick you, I swear.”
Harry stepped up, but kept his arms firmly crossed. “Why would you teach me something I might use to kill you?”
Actually… Neville hadn’t really considered that at all. He’d just been walking around the past two days, sharing skills and tips with the other tributes. But this wasn’t school, helping them was meant to hurt Neville.
“I…” Neville shook his head at his own naivety. “I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m not planning on killing anyone and I’m not planning on winning. So… so if you want to kill me with a plant,” Neville raised his hand to point at a dark green and purple stem of hemlock, “you should use that one.”
Harry was quiet while Neville pointed out all the plants and named them. He tried to keep his explanations simple, categorizing them as medicinal, nutritional, or poisonous, but he tended to go on a bit when it came to plants.
“You want to try now?” Neville asked after he finished his lecture on the plants.
Harry uncrossed his arms and slowly stepped up to the screen. “Alright then.”
Neville watched as Harry slowly made his way through them, clicking away the plants that would end his life. He was down to his final seconds when he clicked the last one away.
“Good job.” Neville smiled at him. “Think you’ll remember it when we’re in the arena?”
Harry turned so he could look at Neville. The two of them stared in each other's eyes for a long moment, Neville felt as if he were being weighed up - by friend or foe, he wasn’t sure. Then Harry slowly stuck his hand out to Neville.
“No need, not when my ally can do it for me.”
Neville’s smile was true when he accepted Harry’s handshake. “No need at all,” he agreed.
Neville stuck by Harry’s side the rest of the day. They moved from the plant station to the rope climbing station. Neville had wanted to check out more of the survival stations, the ones that taught them how to build tents and the like, but Harry waved it off.
“I’ll show you to do that stuff when we’re there,” he said. “Let’s practice climbing, instead. Might be handy.”
Neville hoped he never had to climb a rope to prolong his life, because he was terrible at it.
“Come on,” Harry urged him, close to the rafters of the ceiling and dangling precariously on his rope. “Use your arms more than your legs.”
“Your arms are toothpicks,” Neville hissed as he slowly hefted himself up another knot in the rope. “How the hell did you do that?!”
Harry smirked and shimmied down just to shimmy back up.
“I spent a lot of time climbing trees to avoid the kids at the orphanage, didn’t I? Wish they’d play this bit on the screens, it’d really piss Ickle Diddykins off to see his bullying help me in the games.”
Neville pulled himself up another knot and grunted. He wasn’t entirely sure that Harry was fully sane, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. If he wasn’t crazy then, he would be after the games.
Harry lowered himself down to swing closer to Neville, a curious look on his face.
“You’re not planning on winning?” Harry asked.
Neville huffed and scrambled to set his shoes on a knot, resting his body for a moment. He was only about ten feet off the floor, but it had his muscles aching in a productive sort of way.
“No,” Neville said shortly. It wasn’t Harry’s fault, necessarily, and he wouldn’t take it out on him. It was just… just bad luck that they were both chosen.
Harry swung closer, almost mocking Neville with his athleticism that he simply shouldn’t have.
“Why? I think you could,” he said flatly, a statement.
Neville scoffed and carefully moved his hands one at a time to wipe on his jeans.
“With Sirius as our mentor? Fat chance.”
Harry hummed and continued swinging on his rope.
“Why won’t you kill anyone?” he asked, clearly choosing to not discuss Sirius. “Too ‘noble’?”
Neville frowned at how Harry was able to hold himself up with his knees and free his hands to do mocking air quotes.
“Yes,” he said bluntly. Unlike Harry, Neville couldn’t risk letting go of the rope so he pointed with a jerk of his chin over where the little boy from 11 was working with the District 8 tributes at the camouflage station.
“When I die, I’m not going with his death, any of their deaths, on my conscience,” Neville said. “I won’t let my parents see me turn into a killer." He lowered his tone so the Gamemakers watching them couldn’t hear. “They don’t get to change me.”
Harry squinted at Neville for a long moment then shook his head disbelievingly.
“Final five only then,” he said just before scrambling to the top. “I won’t stick around once you decide you want to live more than you want to be ‘pure’.”
“Final five,” Neville agreed as he slowly began hefting himself toward the top of the rope.
When they arrived back in their suite, Harry took one look at Sirius and went into his room. Neville wasn’t Sirius’ biggest fan by any means, but his mom had raised him better. And, to Sirius’ credit, he was nursing a glass of something dark red, wine maybe, and looked more sober than he had ever been back in District 12.
Neville didn’t let himself wonder if Sirius was trying to stay semi-alert solely for Harry’s sake or if he did it for all the tributes he had. Because then Neville would remember classmates of his that had been reaped before and probably entered the arena with a mentor too high to learn their names.
And he couldn’t let his judgment of Sirius’ choices cloud his last few days alive. Neville didn’t want to spend his time bitter and angry, jealous and furious - he was better than that.
“Hello.” Neville sat in the living room with Sirius, opting for the chair instead of the sofa. “Busy day?”
Sirius made a noncommittal noise and sipped his drink.
“Yours?” he asked Neville.
Neville shrugged and picked at a blister the ropes burnt in his hand.
“Fine,” he said lightly. He didn’t comment on how hard it was to see all those kids that would soon be dead. He didn’t mention how much it hurt putting his knowledge of plants towards life or death situations. He mentioned the only thing he knew Sirius cared about instead. “Harry and I have agreed to be in an alliance; final five, he said.”
Sirius’ glass slipped in his hand and he barely caught it. It was nice to shock him a little, put some life in his dull eyes.
“How?” Sirius asked. “He said no?”
“I guess when he sees someone watching his back,” Neville accidentally let some of his bitterness seep through, “he changes his mind. Odd thing, that.”
Sirius lowered his face to his glass and nodded; Neville hoped he felt ashamed, but he figured the morphling would burn that away just as it had his promise to his best friend. Sirius cleared his throat after a moment and spoke up.
“What did you work on today?” he asked, still not looking at Neville.
Neville scoffed and pushed off on the armrests to get to his feet. He’d been polite to Sirius, but the man insulting Neville’s intelligence was too far.
No, Neville had never been top of his class, but he wasn’t an idiot either. Sirius didn’t give a damn what Neville did until he said he got Harry to agree to an alliance.
“You mean ‘what did Harry do’?” Neville asked scathingly. He rolled his eyes for emphasis when Sirius glanced up at him. “Don’t insult me, I know you don’t care about me. It’s fine,” Neville held his hand up when Sirius opened his mouth, “if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t either. Family first, right? But if you want to know what your godson did during training, I suggest you ask him.”
With that, and with his blood boiling in anger at the surprise in Sirius’ hollowed out eyes, Neville turned on his heel and stormed away. He bypassed his room and went straight for the emergency stairs that led to the roof, a peaceful place he found on their first night.
Sirius had no right to act so shocked that Neville was bright enough to realize he wasn’t going to survive the games. It was an insult on top of the actual injury that Sirius being his mentor dealt him.
If they'd had any other mentor, if there had been any other name called besides Harry's, Neville might have had a chance to win. But that was too many ifs that didn't reflect the reality of his situation.
Neville hadn’t felt resigned to his death when he’d volunteered. Neville had been fueled by righteous outrage that the Capitol tried to take someone as lovely and vulnerable as Luna and put them in their games. He had stormed to the stage with his shoulders squared, ready to battle and win.
And then the second name had been called at the reaping.
“Harry Potter.”
He’d prayed in the silence that followed that someone, anyone, would volunteer for Harry. Despite their brief friendship as children, Neville didn’t feel any worse for Harry being reaped than he would have if it had been any other kid.
In the silence that followed Harry being chosen, Neville had been shamefully selfish.
There was no chance of Neville winning the games if his competition was Harry Potter and their mentor Sirius Black. Neville wasn’t stupid, he knew that Sirius couldn’t continue to forget Harry’s existence when he was tasked with keeping him alive in the arena.
All of Sirius’ focus, all of his attention and efforts, would be aimed at Harry.
When Harry had stepped on the stage beside Neville, Neville had known that he would die in the arena.
His only hope since then had been to go out honorably, play the games in a way that he could respect himself and would make his parents be proud of him.
If that meant partnering up with the cause of Neville’s impending death, so be it.
At least Luna would eat well if Harry won and District 12 had a celebration hosted by the Capitol.