Episode 1: The Raven is Coming
"...For some time House Slytherin had always sat on the iron throne. That is, until king Salazar Slytherin was murdered, supposedly by rebels led by Godric Gryffindor of House Gryffindor. After Gryffindor took the throne, he was much beloved by people of his own house, and by many in the houses of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff as well, for he was a good and just and heroic king. It is believed that Salazar Slytherin had no heirs, but, a cunning yet charismatic House Slytherin nobleman, Tom Riddle, the former hand of the king, plotted in secret to overthrow Gryffindor and restore honor to House Slytherin. Some of his chief advisors included Lord Abraxas Lannister and Lord Cygnus Black as well as Lord Lancel Lestrange and others…"
The woman who rode South from the wall did so on a black Garron horse that was darker even, than the woman's own hair, which was clearly once curly, but now matted beyond recognition and tangled to her waist. She was still quite pretty, however, and she knew it. Just as she knew she wouldn't have been able to escape from the realm's highest security prison fortress if she wasn't. Now, though she still bore the dirt and scars of one who'd spent fourteen years in prison, she wore the robes and clothing of a woman of high status-a long black dress made of silver-lined black Braavosian silk that was cinched at the waist, a metal-plated corset, black leather boots, and a wolf fur cloak shrouding her shoulders and back and clasped in the front with a brooch of solid silver adorned with tiny emeralds and the serpent seal of House Slytherin.
She may not have felt like it, but she was proud to look the part as she would be a woman of status again soon, for she was riding swiftly to King's Landing to reunite with her Lord.
"It will be the sweetest release to feel the air on my face again, my darling," were the last words she'd spoken to the Faceless Guard who thought he was her lover. And she'd meant them. Even if she'd spoken them to No One.
Though the most important face he'd given her, along with his return of her wand and clothes that had been taken from her when she was captured, was her own.
But the woman who met the Brotherhood Without Banners in the woods had a different face.
Her Guard had given her these faces so she could safely escape Westeros and meet him in Braavos at the House of Black and White. Bit thick of him, really. He must have known. And if he didn't, he deserved her betrayal.
The woman who met the Brotherhood in the woods wore the face of a different woman, one who'd died for the Many-Faced God in the past. The different woman's face was thin and pale and young, almost waif-like. The different woman's hair was short, sandy blonde and close to her face and her eyes were blue and round where the woman's eyes were dark and angular.
When the men of the Brotherhood surrounded her on their horses, she couldn't help but scoff. There were four of them, but they all rode rounseys and stots-capable for mutt horses to be sure, but they couldn't well traverse the snow.
"Bit late to be riding alone, m'lady, don't you think?" said the obvious leader of the rag-tag group. He was a brawny, bearded warrior-type who smelled of drink when he rode up closer to her.
"What business is it of yours?" she said curtly, with one hand on her wand tucked into her right sleeve and the other reaching for the dagger at her waist.
"All the goings-on of these woods are the business of the Brotherhood, m'lady,"said another of the men-this one shorter, with a face like a rat and a mouth too big for his own good.
"What Brotherhood?"
"The Brotherhood Without Banners. We wear no colors, affiliate with no House...we fight to protect the common folk of the North from all manner of threats," said the leader.
"Do you mean to protect me?"
"If you ain't a threat to the North," growled the rat-faced man.
"And what threat might I possibly pose?" she replied coolly and tightened her grips on both wand and dagger.
"Depends. What are you doing in Slytherin colors this far from the capital?" said a third man, who rode up to flank the first two. This one had the nicest armor of the group and his stony expression reeked of privilege. He was likely a nobleman who could have easily been a knight, but probably didn't like to follow rules.
"Does a lack of affiliation not free you from prejudice? Fifteen years its been since the war, or so I last checked."
"Officially. No one who wears that snake can be trusted. Ain't that right, Notch?" said the rat-faced man, tilting his head in the direction of the leader.
"You would dare say that when you have a Slytherin queen."
"The Brotherhood honors no King or Queen, madam," said Notch.
"Everyone knows the Lannisters swore allegiance to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…"
"Easy, Mudge. We can all play nice here." Notch swept an arm across the front of the rat-faced man who must have been called Mudge, but whether it was to shield him from the woman or keep him from drawing his sword, she couldn't tell.
"You wouldn't even speak his name. You claim to protect the North, yet you fear a dead man," she whispered.
"Don't speak the evil on your lips, lest you become that evil," muttered the third man almost imperceptibly.
"Did your mother teach you that? Again, I question your fear of a dead man."
"Everyone wants to think the war is over. But the Hand of the King was murdered and the dead man's whore has escaped from Azkaban-you tell me what the people need protecting from!" Mudge shouted aggressively. He definitely had one hand on his sword now and his horse pawed at the ground in anticipation.
"Dead man's whore?" the woman asked, feigning ignorance and trying to hide her excitement at the same time. She liked to play with her food before she ate it, after all.
"Bellatrix Lestrange. They say he found her in a brothel and made her his last concubine before he was defeated. Suppose being owned by a murderer old enough to be her father was better than being owned by all of King's Landing." Mudge laughed.
"Whore? Concubine? Property?" the woman hissed. "Try First Warrior. Captain of his guard. Most trusted advisor and devoted lover. Daughter of Lord Cygnus and Lady Druella Black. Associate of the Faceless Men. Devotee of the Many-Faced God and of my Lord and your future king, Voldemort." The woman peeled back the face of the waif just then, revealing it to be a mask of sorts, disguising her true identity, and then Bellatrix Lestrange blinked back at the four men of the Brotherhood-but not for long.
Before they could react, she drew her wand.
"Petrificus Totalus!" she encanted the spell verbally only once, but as she swept her wand over the lot of them, they fell, one-by-one, off their horses with their arms stiff to their sides and eyes wide like they were paralyzed. She saw fear, then. Perhaps the most in Mudge, the rat-faced man who'd insulted her so freely.
She slipped off her horse and got on the ground, up close and level with him, all the while exchanging her wand for her dagger.
"Mudge, is it? You're right, darling. You've got more to fear than a dead man...you've made an enemy of me." She stroked the outline of his sallow face with the flat side of her dagger. "I could kill you right here, easily, but what lesson would that teach you?"
She reached into his mouth and let her fingers tighten around his tongue. It lolled helplessly against her palm as she pulled it out of his mouth and inspected it.
"I'm sure I'm not the first person to tell you that you should have held on better to this. Though admittedly, some do learn better by example." With one clean sweep of her dagger, the woman, Bellatrix, sliced Mudge's tongue off into her other, waiting hand. His eyes went white and if he could have screamed, it would have pierced the night for miles. Blood seeped into the snow and she smiled, closing her hand into a fist around the still warm and flapping tongue.
"A gift...for the Dark Lord, after I bring him back," she said and dropped the tongue into the satchel at her waist. She glanced quickly from the bleeding man on the ground to the other three, immoblized by their horses, but whose paralysis would likely wear off soon.
"Now, what to do with the lot of you…You're going to be a problem for me in the future, aren't you? I can tell that," she said, rounding on Notch.
She even surprised herself when she killed him so effortlessly-slitting his throat and gliding out of the way in time to not let his blood fleck her. Even before prison, before any association with the Faceless Men, she'd been an assassin to her core. And it was this-not her pretty face nor her blood status nor her cleavage-that first drew Voldemort to her. Some natural-born killers worked like artists, with knives and swords as their brushes and flesh as their canvas. Bellatrix understood this. But she also resented it for its inefficiency. Killing could be art in its way, but it wasn't meant to be beautiful.
Careful not to walk through the blood and stain her boots, Bellatrix crunched through the snow until she was standing over the fourth man, the one who'd stayed behind the others, spoken not a word. He was certainly large enough, muscular enough and looked skilled enough with a sword that he probably could have fought her better than anyone if it had come to that...but instead he'd chosen to hang back and observe, probably knowing he didn't have anything he needed to prove.
"You're the smartest of the lot of them, aren't you?" she said, already knowing he'd do just fine to suit her next purpose. "And it is a shame I'll have to kill you, too...but if I'm going to be doing all this work in his name, the Many-Faced God will need a worthy sacrifice. And he doesn't accept personal kills. I don't particularly want to kill you, you haven't offended me, and I don't even know your name after all. You'll die No One."
Killing him was easy-she slit his throat just like she'd done Notch's-but removing his Face proved more difficult given the cold. But it was the Many-Faced God who'd helped free her from Azkaban after all and if she was going to resurrect the Dark Lord in his name, she couldn't risk making any personal kills without sacrificial ones to abet them. Any time one stole from the Many-Faced God, a debt was owed and in her mind, this work was her service.
When she descended upon the final Brother, it was her wand she pointed at him, not her dagger. Pointing at and focusing upon only his face, she whispered, "rennervate," and his sharp and sudden intake of breath told her that it worked.
"You're the lucky one today, aren't you, love? I need the rest of you to be still a little while longer, but it's just temporary magic. It won't last. What's your name, anyway? It's alright, you may speak. This is not the hour of your death." When she spoke to him, it was with honeyed kindness that must have seemed even more terrifying than if she'd slit his throat as well, given what he'd just witnessed. And Bellatrix both knew this and relished in it.
"Al...Lord Alyn, m'lady. Of Winterfell," he replied and she had to admire the fact that his voice only trembled slightly.
"You're brave in the face of Death. I respect that. That's why you're the one I've chosen to survive this night in one piece...While we've been chatting, I've nonverbally recast the paralysis spell. By the time it wears off and you've regained the use of your limbs, I will be miles away. At that time, you will ride to Winterfell and inform the warden of the North of our little rendevous here. I don't care what you do with the others, but I'd like you bring this one along with you," she said, gesturing to the now tongue-less Mudge still choking out blood into the snow. "Think of him as my offering...as well as my warning. Tell him compliments of the Dark Lord. Do we understand each other?"
She met his petrified eyes with her own and felt his struggle to nod against her as she wrapped a threatening hand around his throat.
"Good. Then to you my darling, I say, Valar Morghulis," she whispered, before mounting her horse and riding off into the rapidly falling night.
"...Riddle called his army the Death Eaters and soon amassed an army big enough to declare war on House Gryffindor. This marked the beginning of the Great War and during the war, many people lost their lives on the side of the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix (Gryffindor's Army) and many people from House Ravenclaw and House Hufflepuff took sides in the conflict as well, dividing whole families in some cases. The war ended fifteen years ago, when Tom Riddle, now calling himself Lord Voldemort, was nearly the victor of the war and had just assasinated Godric Gryffindor, his wife Lily and their infant son...But something happened and somehow Voldemort was destroyed and House Gryffindor was able to win the war fairly quickly, led by Albus Dumbledore, Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon. Lord Dumbledore, not wanting the throne for himself, seated Robert Baratheon on it and made Ned Stark Lord of Winterfell. Many of the Death Eaters were tried for treason, imprisoned and killed. Others were acquitted or claimed to have been under a spell that Voldemort put them under, or acting out of fear…"
Just south of the northern mountains and east of the wolfswood, lay a fortress guarded by one of the oldest noble families of House Gryffindor for centuries. It was a castle complex that served as the capital of the North and one of the most powerful strongholds of House Gryffindor outside of King's Landing. It was surrounded by a small village called the winter town and enclosed by granite walls, turrets, tall gates, and at all times, an army of soldiers.
Beyond the gates and past the outer courtyards, within the innermost castle known as the Great Keep, the Stark family ruled over Winterfell.
And it was here that fourteen-year-old Harry Stark dreamed of ravens. Or more aptly, a single raven perched among the branches of a black briar tree in the wolfswood. Harry lowered his bow ever so slightly and watched it, careful to stay as still as he could so that the creature wouldn't hear his boots crunching through the snow. No one had seen a raven this close to Winterfell in years-they'd been all but hunted down on this side of the Wall because everyone knew that they were an omen of death.
This raven had her face buried behind one of her wings, like maybe she was cleaning her feathers, and Harry watched her with his breath caught in his throat. Somewhere in the distance, the omnipresent sound of howling wolves cut the morning like dry ice. He raised his bow again and began to pull back, intending to shoot down the dark creature and bring it to his father, but something made him hesitate. He wasn't sure why, but then he realized what it was...it was too quiet. The wind had stopped whistling. The wolves had stopped howling. And then he was a different kind of cold. Even though he was wearing his thickest fur cloak clasped over layers of sweaters, he was cold on the inside, like his blood had stopped pumping and instead, he felt himself filling with an overwhelming sense of dread and the unmistakeable feeling that someone -or something- was watching him.
And then it all happened at once. Harry took a step backwards, a twig crunched beneath his boots, and the raven's head snapped up. She flew at him from her crooked branch, black wings outstreched and eyes wide and unblinking, eyes like amber encased around something that was emerging slowly as if through a portal. Something dark and cloaked and moving.
"Have you had others like this dream?" asked Harry's tutor, Septa McGonagall after lessons that afternoon.
"No," he said somewhat nervously, feeling all of his siblings' eyes on him. "It's always the same one." They'd been learning about the history of the north, when Harry asked about the creatures in dark cloaks that made everything feel hopeless and cold, the creatures rumored to exist only along the Wall that separated the Seven Kingdoms from the lands beyond. Creatures he'd been dreaming about for weeks, emerging of all places, from the eyes of a raven.
"I've read about them!" exclaimed his eleven-year-old sister Arya suddenly. "They're called Dismembers and they guard the prison at the Wall for the Night's Watch and if you ever try to escape, you suffer a fate worse than death-they suck out your soul through your mouth!"
"Arya, stop it! You're going to scare Bran!" His thirteen-year-old sister Sansa cut in.
"I'm not scared and I've read about them, too. They're called Dementors, not Dismembers, and they're the guards of Azkaban Prison," said Bran, his ten-year-old younger brother.
"That'll be quite enough of that," said Septa McGonagall, clearly disturbed. Septa Minerva McGonagall was a wise and learned older woman who kept her gray streaked brown hair tucked under a green scarf around her head, a mark of the vows she took to dedicate herself to the Faith of the Seven. Even though the Starks, like most people of the north, still honored the Old Gods, Harry's mother, Lady Catelyn Stark, came from a family that kept the Faith, so they, like many noble families, had a septa to tutor their children. She taught them all history and geography and literature and writing-then helped Arya and Sansa with their etiquette lessons, things like embroidery and needlework, while Harry, Bran and their elder brother Robb studied science and philosophy with Maester Luwin and archery and sword fighting with their father's bannermen. When each Stark child turned eleven, they began learning magic, taking lessons with Luwin and, when he visited, the High Warlock of the realm himself, Lord Dumbledore.
"Now, there will be no more talk of creatures that have never been proven to actually exist. If they did, it was at the time of the dragons, long long ago," Septa McGonagall said with an air of finality. "Now, we return to our discussion of the Great War…"
"Did you really dream about dementors?" asked Bran as they strode through the courtyard after lessons concluded for the day.
"Yes," said Harry, already trying to recall the details of the dream as he felt them slipping away. He knew he'd had the dream before and he proceeded to tell Bran this, along with anything he could remember. The cold, foggy wolfswood...quiet...too quiet...and the raven in the branches with her thin amber eyes-dementors emerging through them as if they were doors into somewhere dark and empty...
Though Bran was only ten and couldn't even practice magic yet, Harry often felt that he was the most mature of all the siblings-maybe because he was the most well read. He was the fifth child and the third boy, only older than their youngest brother, six-year-old Rickon. He looked probably the most like their mother of any of them-mimicing her thick dark hair and deep blue eyes. He was smaller and thinner than other boys his age and always had been, something that earned him much ridicule by his brothers and the boys in town, especially when Bran would talk of wanting to join the Kingsguard when he was old enough. It always seemed, though, that Bran took more easily to remembering all the things he read in books than he did to archery and combat training.
"What do you think it means?" he asked, but before Harry had the chance to answer, someone pushed past them like a cannonball of energy. It was their sister, Arya. For all that Bran looked like their mother, Arya closely resembled their father. Her long hair was thin and light brown, her eyes were gray and she was more often than not called plain of face. This, combined with her athleticism, tomboyish tendencies and, as Sansa called it, "aversion to ladylike manner," often got her mistaken for a boy.
"I know something you don't," she teased, trotting backwards a few paces ahead of them. "I saw Maester Luwin coming to tell Septa McGonagall something, so I pretended to forget my history book so I could listen in-"
"And?"
"Maybe I shouldn't tell you, maybe you wouldn't be interested to know-"She laughed and kept walking backwards in front of them, tripping slightly over her boots.
"Come on Arya, stop it, just tell us,"said Harry.
"Lord Dumbledore is coming to Winterfell!" Arya exclaimed.
"Lord Dumbledore?!"
"Yes, he's arriving tonight, which means I'm going to have my first magic lesson with him-I wonder what I'll learn," she went on, but Harry had a hard time sharing her excitement. If Lord Dumbledore, High Warlock of the realm himself, was riding tonight to Winterfell on an unscheduled visit, it could mean nothing good.
The feast for Lord Dumbledore that night was grand and magnificent. Everyone gathered in the Great Hall to welcome the High Warlock, as it was always an honor when he visited Winterfell. The smells of food wafted to Harry's nose as he entered the Great Hall behind his brother Robb , but there was something noticeably different about this feast. It had obviously been thrown together very hastily and servants wove and bobbed their way through the guests in the Hall carrying flagons of wine, loaves of bread, trays of roasted meat, and boats of gravy.
Normally these visits were scheduled well in advance, and Lord Dumbledore might stay a week or so to oversee how the magical education of the noble children was coming along. Tonight, Arya's eavesdropping had proven accurate, and Harry and his brothers had been shuffled away from their afternoon archery lessons to wash up and change into their dress robes. Harry's were a deep bottle-green to match his eyes and he was seated alongside his brothers and sisters on a raised platform at the head of the hall. At the center of their table, his father and mother, the Lord and Lady Stark, hosted their guest, Lord Albus Dumbledore. He was an old man, rumored by many to be over a hundred. He had long silver hair and an equally long silver beard and he wore spectacles shaped like half moons that rested on the bridge of an abnormally crooked nose. As High Warlock of the realm, Lord Dumbledore was recognized as the most powerful warlock in the seven kingdoms through a position to serve as a chief advisor to the king.
It seemed like at least a quarter of Winterfell had gathered in the Great Hall to feast and honor the High Warlock, less than the usual turn out for a feast, but impressive considering the short notice everyone had to let the word travel through the surrounding village. Harry recognized Septa McGonagall and Maester Luwin of course, and then there was Vayon Poole, the castle steward, sitting beside his wife and daughters. He managed the servants and organization around the castle and one of his daughters, Jeyne, was friendly with Sansa and often took etiquette classes with Septa McGonagall alongside she and Arya. Harry also saw Rodrik and Jory Cassel sitting at one of the Hall's front tables. Rodrik was the castle's Master-At-Arms. His nephew Jory served as captain of guards. Harry didn't quite know the difference between these positions yet, but he did know they were both military advisors to his father and that they trained soldiers, including Robb, who had recently come of age to fight if the need arose.
Curiously, he scanned over the crowd of mainly servants, knights, guards and their families, until he spotted a familiar cluster of redheads near the center of the hall. His best friend Ron Weasley sat somewhere amongst them, likely sandwiched between some of his six siblings or his parents. Ron's mother Molly was one of the castle cooks and his father Arthur was the master of horse. They were both incredibly kind and had never seemed to treat Harry differently for being part of the noble family and he'd always appreciated this. Ron had five older brothers, all of whom served House Gryffindor in varying capacities. He had one younger sister, Ginevra, who preferred to be called Ginny. She was the same age as Sansa and Jeyne, but had more in common with Arya. Ron himself was the same age as Harry and dreamed of being a knight for the realm, though his family before him had always been servants.
The entire family, though quite poor, had pledged themselves to House Gryffindor for centuries and had nearly always served Starks in Winterfell and had apparently nearly all been red of hair since as far back as anyone could remember. Harry sometimes wished he could eat down at the servants tables where he could laugh and have fun with the Weasleys and not have to worry about representing the honor of Winterfell while trying to clean the meat off his drumstick.
On nights like tonight, however, he was glad to be sitting up at his family's table where he might be able to glean something of the reason for Lord Dumbledore's sudden, spontaneous visit.
"What are they saying?" Harry asked Robb, elbowing his older brother in the side. Robb was seated directly to the left of their mother, who was immersed in conversation with their father and Lord Dumbledore.
"Never you mind, you'll know if you're meant to," Robb said, straightening his broad shoulders with something of a sense of importance. Ever since Robb turned seventeen and came of age, he liked to act like he'd always been an adult and had never known any different. Ron said his brother Percy was the same way after he came of age, but in Harry's opinion, Percy had always been a little full of himself. Now that he was a scribe of Winterfell, the highest ranked position any Weasley had ever held, he was worse.
Robb, however, used to be fun. Before he began training as a soldier, or as he liked to call it, training to be the future Lord of Winterfell, he often went riding and hunting with Harry and Bran, made jokes and always let the younger siblings in on what was going on if he knew. Even without Robb's help, Harry strained to listen to what his mother was saying. He thought he caught her say "Arryn."
"All the owl said...circumstances mysterious…" he heard, before Robb saw him leaning forward and pushed him back against his seat. But this had given Harry enough to think about for the time being. If an owl was delivering news about an Arryn, news important enough to call Lord Dumbledore to Winterfell, then it had to have something to do with Harry's aunt and uncle. His aunt Lysa was his mother Catelyn's sister. She was heir to the Tully family castle in The Eyrie, to the east. She and Catelyn were both born into House Ravenclaw, as the Tullys had been aligned to for generations, but in marrying Ned Stark and becoming Lady of Winterfell, Harry's mother had sworn loyalty to House Gryffindor. Lysa married into Gryffindor, too, when she married Harry's uncle Jon Arryn, but she'd always remained loyal to Ravenclaw first-likely because she'd never chosen to marry his uncle Jon (as he'd often heard his parents discuss). It had been an arranged marriage to form alliances in the aftermath of the Great War and uncle Jon was significantly older than aunt Lysa. It was all just as well, as it meant Harry and his siblings didn't have to see the Arryns or the Tullys too often-and they were a bit of an unpleasant lot. His uncle Jon had always been nice enough, but aunt Lysa always had her nose in the air like she was smelling something rotten, and their son, Harry's cousin Robin, was incredibly spoiled and always cried if he didn't get his way or win at all the games the cousins played.
Lately though, they'd been spending a lot of time away from the Tullys and the Eyrie, living instead at King's Landing, where uncle Jon served as Hand of the King to the ruler of the seven kingdoms, King Robert Baratheon, of House Gryffindor. If something was going on with any of the Arryns, uncle Jon was probably right in the midst of it. And Harry was determined to find out more.
After the feast, when the Great Hall had descended into the raucous din of drunken conversation, the Stark children were sent to bed and their parents went off with Lord Dumbledore, Maester Luwin and several of their fathers' chief advisors-including Rodrik and Jory Cassel, Robb, and, to Harry's jealousy, Percy Weasley, who was likely meant to keep notes at the meeting. But Harry had no intention of missing out. He knew the meeting would take place in the North Tower, where his father kept his study and if he climbed onto the armory roof, he could traverse the roofs and eaves and tunnels and walls of the castle until he got up to the north tower window.
It was simple enough. All he had to do was sneak out of his bedroom window while his brothers slept, then walk along the top of a long tunnel that led to the guards hall, then climb the roof to that part of the castle, and leap to the roof of the armory from there. He did all this with relative ease, appreciating the cool breeze that rippled over the castle at night, even though it only served as further indication that winter was coming. It had been summer in Winterfell for near on seven years now, and Harry hardly remembered the last time it was winter, but he knew it would be long and cold and would bring snow to blanket the entire northern region of Westeros. He shuddered suddenly, as he remembered his dream and the dementors.
"Careful, you'll fall." Harry spun around abruptly at the sound of the voice just behind him, nearly falling just then. He breathed a sigh of both relief and exasperation, however, when he saw that it was just his brother, Bran.
"What are you doing?" he hissed.
"You think you're the only one who wants to go listen in on the meeting?" Bran whispered. Harry rolled his eyes, but knew there was going to be no arguing. Bran was arguably the best climber out of the lot of them and also, somewhat surprisingly, also the quietest and sneakiest. Robb had often said (jokingly) that if Bran never made the Kingsguard, he'd have a fair shot at being a royal assassin especially if he got really good at magic.
Officially, no one was allowed to climb the roofs and castle walls of Winterfell, least of all the children of the noble family, but when it came to Harry, Bran, and sometimes even Arya, their parents and the guardsmen were fighting a losing battle.
"If you're going to come along, you've got to be quiet," Harry said. His brother nodded and put a finger to his lips.
"I'm quieter than you!" he said, before following Harry across the armory roof. One after the other, the two boys climbed up the side of the partially collapsed tower known as the broken tower, digging their hands and feet into the loose stones until they reached a gargoyle on the side, several floors up, that one could get a good grip on.
Harry, and then Bran after him, swung from this gargoyle to another attached to the First Keep, a rounded part of the castle connected to the north tower by a covered bridge. They dropped to the bridge like shadowcats, quickly enough not to falter but slowly enough as not to make any sudden clattering noises.
Then, it was a matter of climbing the bridge itself, and once atop it, not only could they view much of Winterfell as though under cloaks of Invisibility, exposed yet unseen, but they were also in the perfect position to eavesdrop under the window of their father's study.
"-if Jon Arryn really is dead-"a voice Harry recognized as his mother's was saying.
"The letter bore the King's seal and was written in Robert's own hand. At least he was taken...quickly, though how, I cannot say," said Lord Dumbledore.
"And what of Catelyn's sister and the boy?" Harry's father asked, in a husky voiced attempt to mask what Harry knew to be grief. His father had known uncle Jon for a very long time, since before the Great War and before he'd met any of the Tullys.
"They have left King's Landing and returned to the Eyrie-" Dumbledore.
"-if there's anything we can do-" their mother cut in, but was soon interrupted.
"Later, perhaps. I come bearing other news as well." Lord Dumbledore paused, as if to let the weight of his words settle. Harry made quick eye contact with Bran. Their uncle was dead—their uncle, the hand of the king, was dead and no one knew why. Bran blinked up at him and they both risked a sharp intake of breath when Lord Dumbledore began speaking again.
"The king intends to ride here to offer you the position of the new hand."
"My place is here in Winterfell," Harry's father replied almost instantly. Someone coughed inside the study and someone else gave an interested hum. Harry almost hastened another glance at Bran, but didn't want his little brother to be tempted to talk. Harry himself almost couldn't believe what he was hearing. There was talk of making his father, Ned Stark, the new hand of the king—one of the most powerful men in the realm—and he was turning it down? Maybe he read more into Jon Arryn's sudden death than the others did...but who would want to kill a member of the royal court? The Houses were pretty much all aligned now, and had been since the Great War. And most of the people of Westeros were happy with the king, weren't they?
"Your place is in the service to House Gryffindor or have you not forgotten?" said Lord Dumbledore, with a new steeliness to his tone.
"When will he make the journey?" their father asked.
"They ride at dawn tomorrow."
"How many?"
"At least half his court, I'd expect. Maybe 100 knights. Cersei and the children...and Lucius and Tyrion as well."
"Hm. Where the King goes, the realm follows, I suppose...Lannisters included," their father said, clearly making no effort to hide his annoyance. The Lannisters of House Slytherin were a wealthy family from Casterly Rock who'd married into the royal family to form an alliance between the two Houses. They'd never gotten on well with the Starks, who'd apparently been inclined to distrust Slytherins for generations. Harry was about to nudge Bran in the side and gesture for them to head back to their rooms so they wouldn't be caught when the meeting let out, for he'd started to hear the rustling of papers and the pushing back of chairs from inside the room. But he hesitated when he heard Dumbledore call out-
"-this meeting is not yet adjourned." All noises stopped. Harry held his breath and strained his ears to listen. "There is one more news item of note-and this does not leave this room. I don't want word getting out yet-no need to worry the realm. I doubt anyone beyond the king, myself and the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch are aware-up until now."
"Aware of what, my Lord?" Jory Cassel asked.
"There was a...security breach at the Wall. At the Prison."
"Not Azkaban Prison? No one's ever escaped before. It's inpenetrable."
"Only until it isn't."
"Who escaped?" Even their father sounded shocked and a little afraid. No one had ever escaped from Azkaban before, not in the many centuries of its existence. It was known to the realm that the prison was guarded by the Night's Watch on the Wall, but there had always been a rumor whispered on the lips of children and conspiracy theorists, that the prison was guarded by something far darker-creatures thought not to even exist anymore, if they'd ever existed at all. Dementors were known as some of the foulest creatures to ever walk the earth.
"A maximum security prisoner. Bellatrix Lestrange. Ned, you may know her as Bellatrix Black...or remember her as the Raven Skull Woman, from the rebellion."
"On the offchance the Night's Watch -have- lost control of the dementors…"
"Lost control of the dementors? Well if they have, then what would that mean, Albus?" Harry had never heard his mother sound so truly fearful.
"It would mean that Westeros is no longer safe."
~"There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: 'Not today'."~Syrio Forel, Game of Thrones
