Harry Potter and the Interdimensional TriWizard Tournament - Chapters 1-2 (Patreon)

New story: Harry's pulled into an interdimensional tournament where every champion is a woman from another universe. He plans to get to know every one of them.

Harry Potter and the Interdimensional TriWizard Tournament

Chapter One: Grimmauld Heat

Harry sat at the kitchen table with a mug going cold between his hands and Ginny already behind his chair with her mouth on the side of his neck, copper hair falling over his shoulder, her tits pressed to his back through her shirt, her palm sliding down his chest to his belt and staying there. Hermione shut the folder she had been pretending to read and came around the table and took his jaw in her fingers and turned his face and kissed him, her mouth warm, a brown curl catching on his cheek, the weight of her chest against his arm. He wanted both of them upstairs and naked and on his cock and he wanted it now. He wanted Ginny's marked skin under his hands and Hermione's hips in his lap and their mouths open for him.

"Upstairs," Ginny said against his throat.

"Now," Hermione said against his mouth.

He set the mug down and stood and they stayed on him, Ginny's fingers working his belt open while Hermione kissed him like she could not stop, her face tipped up and already pink, her lips wet. Ginny put her palm over the hard line of him through his trousers and pressed until he throbbed against her hand, and even through the cloth she could not cover the whole of him. Hermione's fingers were in his hair and her breasts were mashed to his ribs and he could smell Ginny's soap and the ink on Hermione's wrist and the heat coming off both of them. He wanted Ginny on her knees with that red hair wrapped in his fist. He wanted Hermione under his hands. He wanted to watch their mouths take turns on him until they were shaking.

He got an arm around each of them and lifted. Ginny came up easy, her ass filling his hand through her skirt as she hooked a thigh around him. Hermione was heavier in the thighs and the chest, one breast soft against him, a curl in his mouth, and he carried them out of the kitchen and up the stairs with Ginny kissing his throat the whole way and Hermione holding the back of his neck and watching his mouth. Her blouse had pulled loose enough that he could see the top of one breast and the color climbing there. He did not put them down until he reached the bed.

He set Ginny on the edge of the mattress first, her hair spilling over the blanket as her shirt rode up so he could see the scatter of marks on her stomach and the tight fit of her skirt over her hips and the long clean line of her legs. He set Hermione down beside her. Hermione's hair was already coming loose and her blouse was pulled tight across her chest and her mouth was wet from his.

"Take it off," Harry said.

They stripped because he told them to. Ginny pulled her shirt over her head and her tits were pale and heavy for her frame, nipples already tight, a dusting of color over the tops of them and down onto the skin underneath, and she shoved her skirt and knickers down together and kicked them off. The hair between her thighs was a darker red than the hair on her head. Hermione unbuttoned her blouse and dropped it and took off her bra, her tits bigger than Ginny's, the skin going pink as he looked, the nipples a shade darker, and she pushed her trousers down and her hips were wide and her thighs touched. The hair between her legs was brown and thick. When she sat back there was a soft fold of her stomach above it.

Harry stripped without looking away from them, and when his cock came free it hung heavy and huge against his stomach, thick enough that Ginny made a low sound at the sight of it. Hermione's eyes went down and stayed there.

"Harry," Hermione said.

"On your knees. Both of you. Side by side."

They knelt on the rug in front of him. Ginny's hair hung down her back and her ass rested on her heels, pale, a few marks high on one cheek. Hermione's curls fell forward around her face and her mouth was already open and her breasts hung as she knelt. He took a handful of Ginny's hair and a handful of Hermione's and brought their faces in until their mouths were an inch from him.

"Open. Ginny first."

Ginny opened. He put the head of his cock on her tongue and even that filled her mouth, massive against her lip, and when she tried to wrap her hand around the base her fingers did not close. She tried to take more and her lips stretched wide around him and her cheeks hollowed as she worked to fit him. Hermione leaned in from the other side and licked the shaft where Ginny could not take it, her tongue hot along the underside, and he felt it all the way up into his gut.

"Suck," Harry said. "Look at me while you do it."

Ginny sucked, her cheeks going hollow, her eyes watering and staying on his while he held her head and fed her another inch of that thick length. She gagged and he stopped and then gave it to her again, and spit ran from the corner of her mouth onto her chest and caught above her nipple.

"I can't," she said, and opened her mouth for him anyway.

"You can. Hermione. Balls. Don't stop until I tell you."

Hermione put her mouth on his balls and licked them slow and then took one into her mouth and hummed, and the sound went through him while he pulled Ginny off by her hair and put himself in Hermione's mouth. Hermione's lips were fuller and they stretched just the same. She took him deeper on the first try and still could not get that heavy cock to her throat without her eyes going wet, and she tried anyway, her hair shaking against his thigh, spit running down her chin onto her chest. He watched it drip over the curve of one breast and onto her nipple. When she put her hand on him her fingers left a gap around the girth of him the same as Ginny's had.

"Good," he said. "Ginny. Switch. I want both of you on it."

Ginny ducked under and licked him while Hermione worked the head, and their mouths touched around him as Ginny's shoulder pressed Hermione's arm. He kept his hands in their hair and moved them when he wanted a different mouth, pushing into Ginny again until her nose was against his stomach and holding her there while her throat fluttered around him, and then he let her breathe. She gasped and went right back, lips red, spit hanging off her lower lip, her eyes on his.

"Please, Harry," Ginny said. "Please. You're so huge. I can feel you in my throat."

He rubbed the wet head of his cock across her lips and then across Hermione's.

"Take it together. Hands on the base. I want to see that you cannot close them."

They did, two tongues on him at once, Ginny on the left and Hermione on the right, both of them licking up and meeting under the head while each of them wrapped a hand around him and left a space between finger and thumb. He pulled their hair when he wanted more pressure and they gave it, Ginny's tits brushing his thigh, Hermione making a wet sound every time she stretched her mouth around the head of him.

"Look at me."

Both of them looked up. Ginny's mouth was shiny and red with a smear of spit on her chin. Hermione's face was pink down her throat and across the tops of her breasts.

"I'm yours," Hermione said, the words mashed around him. "Harry. I'm yours."

"Stay," he said, and held them there a long time, using their mouths, deciding the pace, and when the need in him climbed he pulled back instead of giving it to them. He pulled them up onto the bed.

"Hermione. On your back. Knees up. Hold them there."

She lay back with her hair spread on the pillow and held her own knees the way he told her, and he looked at her, her pussy already wet, the pink of her darker now, her breasts fallen toward her sides with the nipples tight and the color on her chest gone down between them. He rubbed the head of his cock through her and she twitched, and even that thick head looked too much against her.

"Ginny. Sit by her head. Touch her. Keep her still."

Ginny crawled up, her ass high as she moved, the backs of her legs pale and dotted, and she sat on her heels beside Hermione's shoulder and put two fingers on Hermione's clit. Her own tits hung forward, nipples pointing down, and he watched them shift when she breathed.

He pushed into Hermione and she was tight, so tight the first inch of him stretched her open in a slow burn she could not hide, and he had to work for it, inch by inch, her mouth open on a broken sound while Ginny stared at the place they joined and rubbed her faster. Hermione's hands left her knees and found the sheets. Her breasts shook when he gave her another inch of that thick cock and still was not all the way in.

"Harry," Hermione said. "Harry. You're splitting me. I can't. It's too much."

"Take it. Hands back on your knees."

She put her hands back. He gave her more, slow, letting her feel the stretch as her pussy opened around the sheer size of him, and when he was only halfway she was shaking and wet down onto the sheet. He stayed there and let her adjust, watching her try to breathe around the burn of it, watching the flush spread from her throat down between her tits. When her thighs stopped fighting him he gave her the rest, and when his hips finally met hers she shook and put her wrist to her mouth and he stayed buried so she could feel all of him. He could see where she was stretched white around the base of him.

"Don't cover your mouth," he said. "I want to hear you."

She dropped her wrist and looked at him. He pulled back and fucked her in steady strokes deep enough that her tits moved on every thrust, and Ginny bent and sucked Hermione's nipple into her mouth while Hermione took him, still adjusting, still making a sound on every push.

Hermione came with her thighs locked on his waist, pulsing around that huge cock, her eyes on his face. A wet sound left her that she did not choose. Her stomach jumped and her legs kicked and then went slack, and wetness ran down onto the sheet.

"Harry," she said. "Harry. Please."

"Again," he said. "You come when I say."

He did not stop. He held her hips down and kept the same pace, and she tried to twist and he kept her there, and the second one hit her harder than the first, her hair stuck to her forehead, her mouth open and silent for a second before the sound came, her pussy grabbing at him in waves she could not talk through, tears starting at the corners of her eyes. Ginny had three fingers on her now. Ginny's own hips were rolling against nothing, red hair hanging in her face.

"Ginny," Harry said. "On your back. Spread your legs. Hermione, you watch and you hold her."

He pulled out of Hermione. She lay there with her knees still open, her pussy red and used, her chest rising fast, one nipple wet from Ginny's mouth. He moved Ginny down the bed and her hair fanned out and he pushed her thighs apart and looked at her, slick down onto her ass, the muscle in her legs standing out, the hair on her pussy dark with it. He put her knees up and hooked them in the bend of his arms.

"Hermione. Her tits. Her clit. I want her watching me."

Hermione rolled onto her side, still breathing hard, and put her mouth on Ginny's breast. Her hand went between Ginny's legs. Harry lined up and pushed in, and Ginny took the head and then had to stop him with a hand on his stomach, her fingers shaking on his skin, her other hand trying to close around him and failing the same as before.

"Wait," Ginny said. "Wait. You're so massive. Just wait. I can't take it."

He waited. He watched her try to breathe around the stretch of that thick head inside her while Hermione licked her nipple and rubbed her clit in small circles. Ginny's hand fell away. Her thighs trembled in his arms. She looked at him and nodded.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Please. I'm yours. Put it in."

Harry pushed the rest of the way in, slow, giving her time to open around the length of him, and even then it took her a full minute of shaking and swearing under her breath before her body let him seat all the way. Ginny's back arched. Her mouth opened and nothing came out at first, and then she said, "Harry." He fucked her hard once she had all of him, shorter strokes than he had given Hermione because she clenched every time he bottomed out, her tits bouncing under Hermione's mouth, the marks on her chest going pink. He could see himself moving in and out of her, thick and wet, her pussy stretched around the size of him.

"Don't stop," Ginny said. "Harry, don't stop. I can take it. I can."

She came on him with her heels digging into his back and her eyes locked on his. He felt it squeeze down the length of his cock, a hard flutter that ran out into her thighs, and she went silent and then loud, a raw sound that lost the end of his name, tears at the corners of her eyes.

He kept going. "Again," he said. "Give me another."

The next one took her before she had her breath back. Her whole body shook. Her legs kicked in his arms and then gave out, hanging slack while he held them. Hermione kissed her mouth and kept her fingers moving until Ginny shoved at her wrist.

"Too much," Ginny said. "Don't you dare stop. I'm yours."

He pulled out. Ginny's pussy stayed open for a second, used and wet and still trying to close. He looked at both of them on the same bed, Hermione's thighs wet, Ginny's stomach jumping with her breath, and he wanted more.

"Up. Ginny, face down. Ass up. Hermione, in front of her. I want your pussy on her mouth. Hold her hair."

They moved how he told them. Ginny put her chest to the blanket and her ass lifted, pale, a few marks high on the backs of her thighs. Hermione knelt at the head of the bed and spread her knees over Ginny's face, her breasts hanging over Ginny's hair, and she took a handful of that red hair the way he had told her. He saw Hermione's used pussy lower onto Ginny's mouth, and Ginny licked.

He took Ginny by the hips and pushed back into her from behind, and the angle let that heavy cock go deeper than before. She moaned into Hermione and he felt the sound on him. He set a hard pace and watched Hermione's tits sway above Ginny's hair, and he watched Hermione's mouth fall open when Ginny got her tongue right. Hermione's curls stuck to her neck.

"Fingers on your clit," he told Hermione. "Come on her face. Now."

"Yes," Hermione said. "Yes. Watch me."

She rubbed herself while he fucked Ginny under her, and her hair shook, and her thighs trembled on either side of Ginny's head. When she came her head tipped back and her other hand fisted in Ginny's hair and she wet Ginny's mouth and chin in a long, shaking pulse, her eyes on Harry the whole time, a sound leaving her that started silent and broke loud.

"Ginny. You next. Come on my cock."

He fucked Ginny through Hermione's shaking and reached under her to find her clit with his fingers. She shoved back on him and came with her face still buried in Hermione, her ass tight in his hands, her tits crushed to the blanket. Her thighs jumped and then gave out. A sound tore out of her that the silencing charms ate.

He pulled out and sat back against the headboard, still hard, still holding himself in one fist because one hand was not enough to cover him.

"Come here. Mouths. I want to see you taste each other on me."

They crawled to him. Hermione's lips were swollen. Her breasts hung loose as she moved, nipples still tight. Ginny's chin was shiny. Her hair was a wreck. He put his cock between them again and they sucked him together, slower now, sloppy, taking turns stretching their mouths around the head of him while the other licked the shaft and his balls. He held their hair and fucked Ginny's mouth for a few strokes and then Hermione's, and each time a hand came up to hold him the fingers left that same gap.

"You're so thick," Hermione said when she came off him for air. "I can still feel you in my throat."

"Give it to us," Ginny said. "Please. We're yours."

"Not yet," Harry said. "On me. Hermione first. Face me."

She climbed into his lap. Her breasts came in close to his mouth. He held his cock at the base and she sank down on it with her hands on his shoulders, slow, her mouth open against his cheek, her hair falling around both their faces, and even used she had to stop halfway and breathe around the stretch of him. When she had him inside she stopped again. He put his hands on her ass and lifted her and put her back down at the pace he wanted.

"Ginny. Behind her. Tits on her back. Fingers on her clit. Keep her on me."

Ginny knelt behind Hermione with her nipples dragging on Hermione's back and her hair mixing with Hermione's brown, and she reached around and rubbed Hermione where he was moving her. Hermione's tits bounced in his face. He took a nipple into his mouth and sucked, and he felt the mark he left when he let it go.

"Come," he said.

Hermione came on him with her forehead on his shoulder and her pussy squeezing around that huge cock, wet running down onto his hips. Her whole body locked and then broke. "Harry," she said into his skin, and held on, shaking, tears at the corners of her eyes.

"Again."

She came again with a broken sound and her nails in his skin and her thighs shaking on either side of him, her eyes on his, her legs giving out so that he was lifting all of her weight. He lifted her off before he finished and set her on the bed beside him, her pussy open and wet, her breasts marked from his mouth.

He laid Ginny across his lap on her stomach first just to look, her ass up, pale, dotted at the edges, and he put two fingers in her and she pushed back on them.

"Same," he said. "Down. Take all of it."

He turned her and put her in the same seat Hermione had just left. Ginny took him easier this time and still hissed when her ass met his thighs and that thick cock filled her to the end.

"I can't," she said. "I can. Don't stop. I'm yours."

He held her hips and moved her. Her tits were in his mouth. He bit down and she gasped, and the mark he left sat pink on the underside of her breast. Hermione, wrecked beside them, put her fingers between Ginny's legs from the front and rubbed her clit while he fucked up into her.

"Now," Harry said.

Ginny came with her hair in his face and her hands locked behind his neck, a hard clench that made her go silent and then loud, her legs shaking against his sides. He made her stay on him until she came a second time, sloppy, her mouth on his ear, tears starting again.

"Harry," she said. "Harry. I can't stop. Please."

He lifted her off too.

He laid Hermione on her side and hooked her top knee up. Her ass was soft against him when he moved in behind her. He pushed into her again, slower, deeper, and he reached around and held one breast in his hand with his thumb on the nipple, the weight of it filling his palm.

"Ginny. Between her legs. Lick her where I am. Don't you come until I say."

Ginny got between Hermione's thighs. Her hair spilled over Hermione's hip. He felt her tongue on his cock and on Hermione's clit at the same time.

"Hermione. Now."

Hermione came with a long sound and her hand in Ginny's hair, her pussy fluttering around him, her eyes squeezed shut and then forced open so she could look at him. He kept her there until she came again, smaller, twitching, her legs giving out against his.

"Please," Hermione said. "Please. Yours."

Her ass pushed back on him in little jerks. He pulled out of her and put Ginny on her back and pushed Ginny's knees to her chest. Her pussy was dark and open from him already. He pushed into her like that while Hermione sat on her heels beside them.

"Hold her wrists. Above her head. Keep her there."

Hermione held Ginny's wrists to the pillow. Ginny's tits pointed up. Her stomach pulled tight. The marks on her ribs showed with each breath. He watched himself sink into her and pull out shiny, that thick cock stretching her on every stroke, and he fucked her steady and deep.

"Come for me."

She came once with her mouth open and no sound, her wrists pulling against Hermione's hands and then going slack, her legs shaking so hard he had to hold them. He kept the same pace.

"Again. Look at me."

She came again with tears at the corners of her eyes and his name in pieces, her whole body giving out under him.

"Harry," Ginny said. "I can't. I can. Don't stop. I'm yours."

He did not stop until her legs shook too hard to hold and Hermione's arms were shaking from keeping her wrists down, and only then, when both of them were wrecked and wet and looking at him like they would take whatever he gave them, did he let himself go. He pulled out and came on her stomach and on the underside of her tits, a thick hot stripe of it, more than she could catch, white against the marks on her skin, and it kept coming, enough that it ran down her side onto the sheet. Hermione bent and licked a line of it off Ginny's skin. Harry put a hand in her hair and held her there until she finished, her mouth moving over Ginny's stomach and then over the soft underside of one breast.

The room was quiet except for their breathing. Ginny lay on her back with her legs still open and her hair stuck to her throat and her pussy wet and dark and come drying on her stomach and on her tits, her chest high with color, her legs slack on the sheet. Hermione had collapsed on her side next to her with one arm thrown over Ginny's waist, brown curls a mess across both of them, mouth open, breasts rising fast against the sheet, a mark from his mouth showing on the inner curve of her left breast, her inner thighs shiny, her hips still tipped toward him. Their skin was flushed all the way down. Ginny's knees had not come back together.

Harry sat on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees and his cock wet and still heavy. He looked at the curve of Ginny's ass against the blanket and the soft hang of Hermione's breast and the bite-pink of both their mouths.

Ginny cracked one eye and looked at his chest and his stomach and his cock.

"You look fine as fuck," she said.

"He does," Hermione said.

Harry leaned down and kissed Ginny's mouth and she kissed back, slow. He kissed Hermione and her lips were slack and warm. He pulled the blanket up over their hips and over Ginny's tits and over the mess on both of them.

"Sleep," he said.

Ginny's hand found his wrist and then let go. Hermione's eyes were already shut. Their breathing evened out. He watched the red of Ginny's hair on the pillow and the dark spill of Hermione's curls and he wanted to get back in with them. Their mouths were slack. Their hands were open on the sheet.

He stood up and pulled on his trousers and left the shirt and went downstairs barefoot. The kitchen was as he had left it, his mug on the table, Hermione's folder still shut where she had dropped it. He poured water and drank it at the sink with the water running over his wrist. He could still feel their mouths on him. He could still see Ginny's marked chest and the wet of Hermione's pussy when he shut his eyes. He set the glass down and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the parlor with his hand on the frame, restless and awake, already thinking about going back up and waking them with his hands on their tits and his cock against the wet of them, even though they needed the sleep.

On the parlor shelf the old Triwizard Cup rang. Harry turned. The Cup had sat there for years, scratched gilt, dust in the seams of the handles. It rang again, a note that did not belong to silver. Heat ran over the metal without fire. Lines opened in the bowl that had not been there when he walked past it on the way upstairs. The trophy split along those lines and three dark openings showed in the gold and one of them filled with light. A circle lifted off the shelf and hung in the air in front of him and letters wrote themselves across it, clean and close enough to read.

HARRY POTTER. CHAMPION OF THE WIZARDING WORLD. THE CRUCIBLE IS OPEN. STEP THROUGH.

Chapter Two: Four Champions

Harry stepped through.

The parlor and the mug and the two women asleep upstairs went out like a snuffed candle, and stone came up under his bare feet, warm and smooth and cut in a curve that ran out farther than the light. He had come through in the trousers he had pulled on at Grimmauld and nothing else, wand still upstairs on the nightstand, and the first thing he did was reach for it and find empty air at his hip. The second thing he did was look up.

The arrival hall was a bowl of banners and breath and metal. Hundreds of women stood in rings around a sunken floor, so many that the far ranks blurred into color and steel, and every face in the front rank had already turned toward the circle he had walked out of. Armor sat next to silk. A bow as tall as a man hung at one hip. A sword with a lion on the pommel caught the light two rows back. Magic moved in the air the way heat moves off a road, visible if you knew how to look, and Harry felt it slide across his bare chest and stop.

He was the only man in the hall.

A murmur went through the nearest rank and then the next and then the one after that, and heads kept turning until the whole bowl was watching him stand there shirtless with war-scars and the black hair still flattened on one side from Ginny's mouth. He let them look. He had been looked at by worse rooms. He took the measure of the place the way he took the measure of a dark alley, counting exits and weapons and the way the floor sloped down to a dais where the Cup from his mantel now hung in the air, opened into three dark mouths with one of them still lit.

A woman at his left had antlers worked into her helm. A woman at his right held a staff that dripped green fire onto the stone and did not burn it. Behind them the hall kept going, galleries stacked on galleries, more champions on the stairs, more banners with crests he had never seen and a few he almost knew. This was not a four-person cup final. This was a tournament built to run for months, maybe longer, and the women in it had already started measuring one another for the first Gate. He counted banners until he lost the thread at eighty, then stopped counting faces and started counting weapons instead, swords and staves and things that did not have names in his language. Somewhere in the upper ring a horn sat silent on a table as if it had already been blown once today. A pair of women in white cloaks argued in a tongue he did not have, then both looked at him at the same time and went quiet. A gallery above the dais held still more of them, seated as if they had arrived days ago and were only now bothering to look down. If the Cup meant to finish this in a weekend it had overbuilt the room.

THE CRUCIBLE SEES ITS CHAMPIONS.

The voice came from the hanging Cup and it filled the bowl without echo. Women who had been whispering went still.

TASKS WILL BE SET IN WORLDS FUSED FROM YOUR LEGENDS. GATES WILL OPEN BETWEEN THEM. THE PRIZE IS THE CUP AND THE RIGHT TO WALK HOME WITH WHAT YOU CAME WITH. FOR THE LENGTH OF THE TOURNAMENT EACH CHAMPION IS HOUSED IN THE TOWER. PRIVATE ROOMS. PRIVATE DOORS. THE LINTEL BEARS THE NAME. ONLY THAT NAME OPENS THE ROOM.

A pause. The lit mouth brightened.

BEFORE THE FIRST GATE, A SHOW OF POWER. THE HALL WILL KNOW WHO STANDS IN IT.

A woman in black and white stepped out of the second rank without being asked. Violet light gathered in her hands and snapped into a sigil that hung over the dais and made the nearest banners lean. Yennefer of Vengerberg, if the stories that had leaked through wartime books were true, black hair glossy as ink, a mouth painted red, a body cut narrow at the waist and full through the chest under a square-necked gown that put the pale inner curves of her breasts on display when she lifted her arms. She looked at Harry while she did it as if the spell were a greeting meant for one person. The sigil died. She stepped back and her eyes stayed on his mouth.

A compact woman with red hair worn plain and a black suit that did nothing to hide the tight athletic lines of her took three steps into the open and threw a small disc that burst into a net of red light and then vanished into her palm. Natasha Romanoff. The suit sat close over a modest, high chest and a waist that looked like it could take a hit. She did not bow. She looked at Harry's hands and then at the bare plane of his stomach and then she was in the crowd again.

Harry walked down the slope to the dais. He did not hurry. He stopped under the Cup and lifted his right hand, and because the wand was in another world he used what he had always had without it. Magic came when he asked. It came the way it had come in a forest and in a graveyard and in a wrecked hall of his own, a pressure first, then a brightness that did not glare. A stag stepped out of the air beside him, white and solid and the height of the first gallery, and it walked a slow circle through the front rank without touching anyone, hooves silent on the stone, and every conversation in the bowl stopped. Harry watched the stag finish the circle and then he closed his hand and the light went out as if he had blown on a candle.

He stood there in the quiet and looked at the Cup.

"Harry Potter," he said. "I'm here."

The lit mouth dimmed to a waiting glow. Openings showed in the far wall, a run of dark wood with names already burning over them in a script that changed as you looked at it. Champions began to move, some toward those doors, some toward him. He stayed where he was and let the first of them arrive.

Diana of Themyscira came through the front rank as if the crowd had left a path on purpose. She was as tall as he was. When she stopped in front of him her eyes were level with his, blue and clear, and he had to tip nothing to meet them. Bronze skin over muscle that had been used for work, not display. Shoulders cut for a shield. A red and gold breastplate that made no secret of what it covered, heavy breasts high and full against the metal, the inner curves visible where the plates met, a faint press of nipple under the gold when she drew breath. Black hair fell to the middle of her back in a single clean fall. Her mouth was wide and unpainted. The lasso at her hip hung in a tight coil. She looked at his bare chest and at the lightning-cut on his forehead and at his hands, and then she looked at his face.

"You walked out of a private house into this," she said. "Underdressed for a declaration of war."

"I was told to step through. I stepped through."

"And the stag. That was not theater."

"It was a message. I can do it again if the hall needs another one."

Her mouth almost moved. She put out her hand the way soldiers do, wrist firm, and he took it. Her grip was as strong as his. Up close he could smell leather and clean sweat and sun-warmed stone. The top of her breastplate rose and fell against his knuckles when she shifted her weight, and the heat of her skin came through the metal.

"Diana. I do not compete to be looked at. I compete to finish. If you came here to collect women you will find me a poor prize."

"I came because a cup on my shelf opened a hole in my parlor. I have two people at home I intend to get back to. If I look at you it is because you walked up to me."

"Good. Then we understand each other." She had not let go of his hand. Her thumb rested against the inside of his wrist, a slow test of pulse. "You carry yourself like a man who has already decided the ending. I have met that before. It usually breaks. We will see if yours does."

"We will."

"Your magic has a clean edge. Most men who come out of a war bring the war with them into a handshake. You brought control." She glanced at the stag's last fading print on the stone. "I patrol an island of warriors. I have stood in rooms like this in other ages. The honest ones tell you what they want before the first trial. What do you want, Harry Potter?"

"To finish whatever this is and go home. To keep the people I love out of it. To not lie about the rest."

"The rest being the way half this hall is looking at your mouth."

"I noticed."

"So did I." She let his hand go at last and the absence of her grip was its own fact. "I train at first light in the yard below the Tower. If you can keep your feet against me I will consider you a peer. If you cannot, I will still respect the attempt. Do not come to my door with anything smaller than that."

"I do not knock for sport."

"See that you do not." She stepped aside without turning her back, and the space she left was filled at once.

Daenerys Targaryen did not wait to be invited. She was small enough that the crown of her silver-white hair came to the top of his breastbone, slight through the shoulders and the arms, a dark coat buttoned high and still unable to hide the small high shape of her breasts or the narrow line of her waist. Violet eyes. A mouth made for giving orders. She stopped close enough that he could have put his hand on the back of her neck without reaching, and she looked up at him as if height were a problem she had already spent a lifetime solving.

"You are the one the voice named first," she said. "Harry Potter. I have been told you killed a dark lord in your own world. I have killed men who thought that made them safe. Do not expect me to kneel because a cup likes you."

"I have not asked anyone to kneel."

"Not yet." Her gaze dropped to his chest and stayed there a breath too long, then climbed back to his mouth. "You are larger than you looked from the gallery. That will not matter when the first Gate opens in fire. I was born in it. You were not."

"I have walked through fire. It did not keep me."

A flicker at the corner of her mouth that might have been approval. She lifted one hand and set two fingers against the scar on his forehead as if she had a right to it, and warmth gathered under her skin until it was almost heat. "My dragon is not here. The Cup was wise enough not to let me bring him, or cruel enough. I intend to find out which. When I win I will take you back to a city that still needs a man who can stand the sun. You may refuse. I enjoy a refusal that turns."

"You assume a lot for a woman I met twenty breaths ago."

"I am a queen. Assuming is how thrones stay upright." She took her fingers back and looked past his shoulder at the Tower doors, then at him again, and the coat shifted so he could see the small tight lift of her breast when she breathed. "I have been married. I have been sold. I have been worshipped. None of those are the same as being chosen by someone who could have walked away. Your room will have a door. So will mine. I sleep lightly. If you come, come with a reason I can respect."

"And if I do not come."

"Then I will assume you are afraid, or loyal, or both, and I will enjoy proving the first one wrong in the Gate." She turned her head as a pair of women in scaled cloaks made room for her. "I do not share victories. I do share a bed when the victory is already mine. Remember the order."

She walked toward the doors without waiting for an answer, silver braid swinging against her coat, and a woman in a brown tank top and battered trousers watched her go and then looked at Harry as if she were deciding whether he was a trap.

Katniss Everdeen had a dark braid over one shoulder and olive skin and a body built for running and climbing, lean and wiry, no spare anything except the small firm shape of her chest under the tank and the muscle in her arms where she held a bow that did not belong to this hall and had come through with her anyway. She stood a head shorter than he did. Her mouth was set. She did not offer her hand.

"You made a deer," she said.

"A stag."

"It walked through fifty people and did not touch them. That is either control or a trick. I have seen both get people killed."

"It was control."

"Prove it when it counts." She looked at his bare stomach and then away, jaw tight, and when she looked back it was at his eyes. "I won a Games by doing what I had to and I won a war after that. I am tired of arenas that pretend they are anything else. If this cup wants a show, it can have my arrows. It cannot have the rest of me unless I say so."

"I am not the cup."

"You are standing under it like you own the floor." She shifted the bow. The movement pulled the tank across her chest and he saw the tight small line of her nipples against the cloth before she settled again. "People look at you the way they looked at victors at home. I hated that look. I still hate it. Do not expect me to smile at you in a hallway because you can make light."

"I have not asked you to smile."

"Good." A pause. Her throat moved. "How many people have you killed."

"Enough that I stopped counting in the last year of it. Enough that I still see them."

She nodded once, as if that were the first useful thing he had said. "I left a sister and a boy who waits and a woods that does not ask me to perform. I intend to go back to them. That means I intend to win. If you get in my way I will put an arrow where it ends the problem."

"I would do the same."

"Then we understand each other the ugly way." Her gaze dropped to his mouth and stayed, and color that had nothing to do with anger moved up her throat. "Your magic smelled like cold when the stag went past. I do not trust cold. I also do not trust how long I just stood here talking to you."

"Then go."

"I will." She did not move for another three seconds. Then she did, cutting through the crowd toward the stairs with her shoulders up and her braid hitting her back, and Harry felt the look she left on his mouth the way he felt a hex that had missed.

A laugh, low and pleased, came from his other side.

Lara Croft had stopped on the step above the dais to string a pistol without looking at it, tall and compact in the hips, a tank and shorts that put the long muscle of her thighs on display and a chest that sat full and high in the cotton when she leaned to check the slide. Brown hair in a plait. A mouth that had already decided he was interesting. She glanced down the line of him, lingered on the open V of his throat, and tipped two fingers off her brow as if they had already agreed on something.

"Try not to die in the first Gate," she said. "I want a longer look than this."

Then she was gone into a knot of women with packs and knives. Past her, a warrior in dark leather with a chakram at her hip and a fall of black hair watched Harry over the rim of a cup she was not drinking from. Xena stood with her weight on one hip, leather pulling across a full, high chest and a waist wrapped in belts, long legs planted like she owned the stone. She did not smile. She looked at him the way she looked at a stretch of ground she intended to cross on her own terms.

"You can fight," she said, loud enough to carry and lazy enough to sound like a verdict. "That stag was pretty. Pretty gets you killed. Come find me when you want to see if you can hit something that hits back."

"I will keep it in mind."

"See that you do." She drank at last, eyes still on him, and turned into the crowd.

He put all of that away for later and found the last of the four already waiting as if the hall had arranged her there.

Bella Swan stood as if she had been standing the whole time and the bowl had only just agreed to see her. Pale as poured marble. Dark hair worn loose over her shoulders. Gold eyes that did not blink enough. She was shorter than Diana by a head and slighter through the arms, a slim waist under a dark dress that made no attempt to hide the fuller swell of her breasts, more there than the rest of her suggested, the tops of them white against the neckline, the cloth tight enough that he could see the cold-stiff shape of her nipples. She did not breathe unless she remembered to. When she stepped closer he felt the chill coming off her skin before he felt the other thing sitting under it, a patience that had teeth.

"You are still bleeding a little," she said. "Not blood. Magic. It is all over your mouth and your hands. I can smell the two women you left asleep. One tastes like heat and soap. One tastes like ink and want."

"You can smell that from here."

"I can smell that from the back gallery." Her voice was even, almost gentle. "I am not going to pretend I walked over here for the rules. I walked over because you are the loudest thing in this hall and I have been hungry for a very long time. I do not eat people. Animal blood keeps the gold in my eyes. I still think about throats. Yours is right in front of me."

"That is honest."

"I have time to be honest. I do not sleep. I do not get tired. I will still be awake when the Tower goes dark and everyone else is counting their weapons." She tipped her head, gold eyes on his throat, then on his mouth. Her hand rose and hovered over his wrist where Diana's thumb had been, close enough that the cold of her fingers was a fact without the touch. "If I come to a door tonight it will be because I chose to, not because a cup told me to hunt. You should know the difference."

"I know the difference."

"Good." She smiled and the smile did not use her teeth. "You look like a man who gets dressed after the fact. Put a shirt on before the first Gate. Or do not. I am not here to give you advice. I am here because you smell like a decision I have not made yet."

She left the way she had arrived, without hurry, and the crowd closed behind her as if she had never cut it. Harry stood under the Cup a while longer and let the rest of the hall move around him. Yennefer passed close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm and her perfume sat on his skin after she was gone, violet and bitter.

"The stag was vulgar," she said without slowing. "I liked it. Do not waste the next one on a crowd."

Natasha came by on the other side and said nothing at first, only tapped two fingers against his wrist as if marking a pulse she intended to find again.

"Your left side opens when you drop your hand," she said. "Fix it before someone who likes knives notices." Then she was gone too, red hair a clean line into the press of bodies.

The names over the far doors settled. One of them burned HARRY POTTER in plain letters. He walked that way through a last belt of champions, past a woman with a spear and painted cheeks who watched his mouth, past a pair of twins in matching green who watched everything else. A long table had been set against the inner wall with bread and fruit and pitchers no one was guarding, and he took a cup because his mouth was dry and because standing under a talking trophy without water was a poor habit. The drink was cold and clean. Two champions he had not spoken to made room without speaking, one in a cloak sewn with coins, one with a scar through her eyebrow and a look that lingered on the unbuttoned line of his chest until he moved on. The stone under his feet stayed warm. The Cup hung behind him and did not speak again.

Yennefer's voice found him once more from a knot of women near the stair.

"Potter. When the first Gate opens, try not to waste your pretty light on a warning shot. I would like to see what you do when someone aims back."

"You will," he said.

"I know." Her painted mouth curved. "That is why I am still standing here instead of going to bed."

He left her to the knot and took the stairs. The Tower rose in a spiral that passed landing after landing of doors, each lintel already claimed, laughter behind one and silence behind the next. A woman in a travel coat leaned on the rail two floors up and watched him climb with her chin in her hand, openly, and he nodded once and kept going because the night was already full.

The room behind his door was stone and a wide bed and a window that looked out on a night that did not match the hour he had left in London. A shirt lay folded on a chair as if someone had expected him to arrive half-dressed. He put it on and did not button it. A basin of water sat on a stand. He washed his face and the back of his neck and watched the water go dull and then sat on the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees and listened to the Tower fill. Footsteps in the corridor. Women's voices. A door closing two rooms down. He thought of Ginny's hair on the pillow and Hermione's mouth gone slack and the blanket he had pulled over them, and then he thought of Diana's hand on his wrist and Daenerys's fingers on his scar and Katniss looking at his mouth like it was a problem she might solve with her teeth and Bella standing still enough to be carved until she spoke.

He did not sleep.

The window stayed dark. He lay back against the headboard with the shirt open and his arm behind his head and went through the day because that was how he kept from walking back down the stairs to find out who was still awake. Diana would come as a challenge, eye to eye, no small talk. Daenerys would come as a claim and call it honesty. Katniss would come angry at herself and leave marks. Bella would come because she had said she might and she did not seem to waste sentences. Yennefer had already touched him in a crowd and promised she would do it better alone. Natasha had taken his pulse and given him a correction. Lara had asked him not to die yet. Xena had offered a fight she intended to enjoy.

Any of them could be in the corridor. Several of them had looked at him as if the night were part of the tournament. He went through the list again because the alternative was getting up and opening the door himself, and he had done enough walking toward trouble for one day. Diana would fill the frame and make him earn the next sentence. Daenerys would speak first and call it courtesy. Katniss would hate the part of herself that had come. Bella would not bother to knock. The others were less likely and not impossible. He had been wanted in worse places than a tower full of champions. He had rarely been wanted by this many people at once with this little decided. The shirt still hung open. His pulse was steady. He told himself he would send whoever it was back to their own door if the night asked more than talk, and he knew that was a lie he would test when the latch moved.

Footsteps, slower than the others had been, stopped outside.

Harry sat up.

A shadow cut the strip of light under his door and held. He saw the shape of a woman against the glow from the hall, the curve of a hip, the fall of hair, the line of a breast in profile, heat where a body blocked the lamp. Tall or short he could not tell from the angle. Braid or loose hair, he could not tell. Armor or a dress or a coat he could not name. It could have been Diana filling the frame. It could have been Daenerys standing closer than her height required. It could have been Katniss talking herself into a mistake. It could have been Bella, who did not need to breathe while she waited. It could have been one of the others he had only passed.

The latch moved.

The door started to open.

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