Harry Potter and the Interdimensional TriWizard Tournament - Chapter 4: Breakfast of Champions (Patreon)

Chapter 4: Morning finds Harry and Diana walking into the hall together, and breakfast brings new challengers, new temptations, and the Cup's first task: a Minotaur waiting in the pit below.

Harry Potter and the Interdimensional TriWizard Tournament

Chapter Four: Breakfast of Champions

They had gone up to the hall at first light and found the Cup dark. A line of script over the dais said the naming would wait for breakfast. Diana had looked at his door on the way back down. He had taken her wrist and brought her in. They slept a few hours with her back against his chest and the burn still faint on his wrist.

He woke hard.

She was on her side, tunic gone, trousers gone, one knee drawn up. The sheet had slipped. Morning light cut across her hip and the heavy hang of one breast and the mark his mouth had left on her shoulder. He put a hand on her waist. She stirred, felt him against her arse, and made a low sound.

"You're awake," she said.

"So are you."

"I can feel you." She pushed back, slow, and the head of his cock slid along the wet of her. "I want you. Please. I woke up wanting you."

He kissed the back of her neck and reached between her thighs. She was already slick. Two fingers went in easy and she gasped and opened her legs for him.

"On your knees," he said. "Hands on the headboard."

She went. She didn't make him ask twice. Her back arched, her hair fell to one side, and she looked over her shoulder at him with her mouth open. He knelt up behind her and stroked himself once. He was thick and heavy and the head was wet. He set it against her cunt and held her hip.

"Tell me you want it."

"I want it. Please. I want you inside me. I don't want to wait."

He pushed in. She was tight from sleep and still wet enough to take him, and the stretch pulled a loud sound out of her before he was halfway there. He stopped. She shook her head and pressed back.

"Don't stop. Please don't stop. I can take you. I want all of it."

He gave it to her. One long stroke to the root. She cried out, hands white on the headboard, and he felt her cunt grip him. He stayed there a second, buried, and then he started to fuck her. Slow for three strokes. Then harder. The bed hit the wall. Her breasts swung under her and she got louder with every thrust, plain sounds, no words at first, then his name.

"Harry. Oh. Harry, that's so deep. You're so big. Please, just like that."

He got a hand in her hair and pulled her head back so he could hear her. His other hand stayed on her hip and set the pace. She couldn't do much but take it, and she took it, pushing back to meet him, begging every time he slowed.

"Please. Don't ease off. I need it. I need you to keep going. You feel so good. No one has filled me like this."

"You're loud."

"I can't help it. You're fucking me so well. Please. Harder. I'm close. I'm so close."

He fucked her harder. The wet sound of it filled the room. Her thighs started to shake. He reached under her and rubbed her clit with two fingers, rough and steady, and she broke. She screamed. The sound bounced off the stone. Her cunt clenched around his cock in hard pulses and she kept saying his name, praise and plea mixed up, please and yes and don't stop. He didn't stop. He fucked her through it until her arms gave and she dropped to her elbows, still coming, still loud.

He pulled her hair, seated himself deep, and came. His cock pulsed and he spilled in her while she whimpered and pushed back for the last of it. He stayed inside until the shaking eased. Then he kissed her shoulder and pulled out slow. His come leaked down her thigh. She looked back at him, flushed, wrecked, smiling.

"I wanted that," she said. "Thank you. You didn't have to ask. I was already yours for it."

"Breakfast," he said. "If we miss the naming they'll start without us."

"Then we won't miss it." She sat up, unsteady, and laughed once under her breath. "My legs don't want to work. That's your fault, and I'm not sorry."

*

The hall had been reset. Long tables ran the length of it, bread and meat and fruit and pitchers of something that smelled like oranges. Champions filled the benches. Most of them were women. A few men had come in overnight, or the Cup had let them in at dawn, and they sat in a knot at the far end like they'd claimed the ground by sitting on it. The Cup hung over the dais, dark, waiting.

Harry took a place with his back to a pillar. Diana sat at his right, hair tied, armor on, a fresh mark at her throat that the collar didn't quite hide. She didn't cover it. Across the table Daenerys Targaryen had a cup in both hands and her silver braid over one shoulder. She looked at the mark. She looked at Harry's mouth. She didn't look away.

"You smell like her," Daenerys said.

"Morning," Harry said.

"That isn't a denial."

"I didn't offer one."

Her mouth tightened, and something else moved under it. She set the cup down. The coat was buttoned high. It still didn't hide the small high shape of her breasts when she leaned in.

"The hall watched you walk in together. Half of them have already decided what that means. I haven't. I want to hear it from you."

"We fought. It ended even. Then I took her to bed. She asked. I wanted her. That's the whole of it."

Diana buttered a piece of bread and didn't interrupt. Daenerys's eyes stayed on him.

"And the women you left at home."

"Still at home. Still mine. This place doesn't get to spend them."

"Honest," she said. She didn't sound pleased about it. She sounded like the word had caught on something. "Most men in a room like this start lying before the bread is cut. You're not doing that. It's inconvenient."

"For you."

"For my plans." A flicker at the corner of her mouth. "I meant to have you unsure of me by now. You aren't. You keep looking at my mouth like you've already decided what you'd do with it, and you haven't asked."

"I'm eating."

"You're staring."

"Both." He tore the bread. "You came to my world in a coat and a claim. You told me fire wouldn't keep me. I told you I'd walked through it. We can do that again at the table if you want. I'd rather hear what you actually want."

She held his look. Color sat high on her cheeks, faint under the silver hair. "I want the Cup. I want to go home with a city still standing behind me. And I want to know if the man who put an Amazon on her back can stand in front of me without flinching when I don't kneel. That's three things. I'd rather you didn't mix them up."

"I won't."

"Good." She picked up the cup again. Her knee found his under the table and stayed there, a light press, gone before he could call it an accident. "I'm going to eat. The naming won't wait because we're talking."

Katniss dropped onto the bench at his left with a plate and a braid over one shoulder. She looked at Diana's throat, then at him, then at her food.

"So the yard wasn't just a fight," she said.

"No."

"I figured." She cut the meat like it had offended her. "I'm not here to scold you. I'm here to eat and to win. If you get between me and the way home I'll put an arrow where it ends the problem. If you don't, I don't care whose bed you slept in."

"Fair."

She glanced at his hands. The glance stuck a second too long. "You still smell like the yard. Dirt and her. It's distracting."

"Sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. Just don't expect me to pretend I didn't notice." She went back to the plate. Her ears were pink.

Bella stood behind Katniss's bench and didn't sit. Still. Pale. The cup in her hand had nothing in it. She looked at Harry's throat like she could hear the pulse there.

"You were loud," she said. "The stone carries. I wasn't listening on purpose."

"Noted."

"She said your name." Bella's mouth almost moved. "I've heard men get named like that. It usually means the woman is past pretending. I came down to see if you'd look different in daylight. You don't. That's worse."

"Worse for who?"

"For me. I keep thinking about your wrist." She set two fingers near it, not touching. "Cold. Steady. If you want me to sit, I'll sit. If you don't, I'll stand here until the Cup speaks."

"Sit."

She sat. Her shoulder was a hand from his. She didn't lean. She looked like leaning would be a decision she hadn't made yet, and she wanted him to know she was close to it.

Lara stopped on her way past with an apple and a pistol she wasn't hiding. She tipped two fingers off her brow.

"I'd like you alive long enough for a longer look," she said. "That was the deal."

"I remember."

"Good." Her eyes went down his chest and back up. "Breakfast suits you. So did the yard, from what the windows say. I'll want the story later. Or I won't ask, and you'll tell me anyway."

She moved on. Xena watched from two tables over, weight on one hip, and lifted her cup without smiling. Yennefer caught his eye from the stair and mouthed something that might have been later. Natasha walked the line of the table once, tapped two fingers on the wood by his elbow, and said, "Left side. You still drop it. I'd look at that before the task, if I were you," and kept going. None of them ordered him. They looked, and they waited, and he let them.

*

The men at the far end weren't waiting.

One of them stood up when the noise dipped. Tall, scar through his eyebrow, a sword on the bench beside him like he'd brought it to breakfast on purpose. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. The tables near him had already gone quiet.

"Name's Harlan Crowe," he said. "I came through at dawn. Some of you have been here a day already, pairing off, marking throats. That's your business until the Cup says otherwise. After that, I don't care who slept where. I came to win. I'll put down whoever stands between me and the prize. Man or woman. I've done both."

A woman at his shoulder didn't stand. She had black hair cut to her jaw and a ring of dull metal on one thumb, and she peeled an orange with her nails while he talked. When he finished she looked at Harry, not at Crowe.

"I'm Vess," she said. "I don't make speeches. I take things. The Cup is a thing I mean to take. If you want it too, get to it before I do. I won't warn you twice, and I'm not warning you now. I'm telling you what I'll do."

Crowe glanced at her like he wanted the next line. She didn't give it to him. She ate a piece of orange and watched Harry's hands.

"You've got a look," she said. "Like you think the room is already yours. It isn't. Not yet."

"I don't need it to be mine," Harry said. "I need to go home."

"Then lose quickly. It'll hurt less."

Diana's hand rested on the bench between them. She didn't reach for her lasso. "Truth is cheaper before a fight," she said. "You're spending yours. Remember what you spent."

Vess smiled without teeth. "I like her. She can keep the sermon. I'll keep the Cup."

Daenerys hadn't looked at either of them. She was still looking at Harry. "Men who announce themselves at breakfast are usually dead by supper," she said, to the table, not to Crowe. "I've watched it. The quiet ones last longer. You're quiet. I'd hate to see you waste that on him."

"I wasn't going to."

The Cup woke.

The note ran through the stone, the same one from the yard, and the flames in the lamps bent in. Letters wrote themselves in the air over the dais, white and plain.

THE FIRST TASK IS OPEN.

A MINOTAUR WAITS IN THE PIT BELOW THE HALL.

FIRST CHAMPION TO PUT IT DOWN WINS THE PASS.

NO KILLING OF CHAMPIONS. THE BEAST IS NOT A CHAMPION.

GATES OPEN AT THE COUNT.

People stood. Benches scraped. Katniss had her bow in her hand before the last line faded. Daenerys rose and buttoned the coat that was already buttoned, a small useless motion, and her knee brushed his again on the way up.

"Fire won't be enough if it gets inside my reach," she said. "You've fought things that don't stay down. If you see me in trouble you can help. I'm asking. I'm not expecting it."

"I'll be in the pit."

"I know." She looked at his mouth one more time. "I'd like you alive after the bull. I haven't finished talking to you."

Diana stood at his shoulder. "I'll take the left if you'll have me there. I want to. The task is first to put it down. I still want to walk in with you."

"Left is yours."

Bella was already at the stair that led down, still, watching the dark. Lara checked the slide on her pistol. Xena rolled her shoulder and picked up the sword she'd eaten beside. Yennefer's fingers left a violet smear on the air and wiped it. Crowe laughed once, short, and went for the steps like the count had already started. Vess followed without hurrying. She looked back at Harry on the second step.

"After," she said. "If you're still standing."

Harry stayed on the landing a moment longer than the others. The pit smell came up the stairs, straw and hot animal and old iron. Diana checked the coil of the lasso and didn't draw it. Daenerys stood with her hands open, fire a faint wash under the skin of her wrists, and she didn't look at Crowe when he shouldered past her. He wanted the brush. She gave him the space instead.

"He's going to swing at the first person in the gate," Harry said.

"Then he can be first," Daenerys said. "I'd rather be the one who puts the beast down. If you get there before me, I'll still want the story after. I'm asking for that now, while I've got you in a stairwell and not in a pit."

"You'll have it."

Katniss fitted the arrow and didn't raise the bow. "I'm taking the high side if there's a wall. I don't need a partner. I wouldn't mind you not standing in my line."

"I'll keep clear of it."

"Good." She almost smiled. It didn't stick. "You look like you're already in the fight. It's a better look than breakfast."

Bella was at his other side by then, close enough that her sleeve touched his. "I'll stay at your back if you want me there. I won't go in front of you. I want to see what you do when it charges."

"Back is fine."

The stair opened under the dais and went down into warm air and the smell of straw and animal. A gate of iron stood at the bottom, and past it a pit of packed sand, and in the middle of the sand a shape that was too tall to be a man. Horns. A chest like a barrel. An axe head resting on the ground. It lifted its head when the first boots hit the step.

The Cup spoke again, from the stone this time, close.

THREE.

Harry had his wand in his hand. Diana was at his left. Daenerys was three steps ahead and didn't look back. Katniss had an arrow on the string. Crowe was grinning.

TWO.

The Minotaur stood up. The axe came off the sand.

ONE.

The iron gate began to rise.

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