Chapter:
First Impressions
Part 2 of 10
Warnings/Tags: This chapter is mainly plot advancement. Sane!Aerys. Good!Targaryens. Good!Weasleys. Cersei being Cersei.
Rhaegar Targaryen & Haraella Targaryen
V
The local subscription dance at Fairmarket hall was a rough-and-ready affair, where yeoman and farmers, small-time squires and ruddy-cheeked daughters mingled unapologetically. Neither the heart of the Riverlands, nor north enough to act of any importance to Winterfell, or due west enough to be of significance to Wayfarers Rest or Deep Den of the Lannister lands, Fairmarket and Oldstones was afforded liberties outside the strictest of social norms.
Until Mr Dayne came strolling into town.
It would appear, to any layperson around, that the mere rumour of his presence within the insignificant damp countryside town had snagged the attention of any Lord and Lady within earshot, and as the earth orbited the sun, they too came swinging around the gravity of hierarchy.
In shorter terms, Fairmarket hall was packed to the brim with every man and woman from every walk of life, all bated with breathe for a glimpse of the fine fellow with a star for his crest. They were not left waiting long, and were, by his extraordinary company, given much more than a glimpse and an errant rumour to keep their gossip fed for many a moon.
Two carriages pulled up to the courtyard of Fairmarket hall in a trundle and a squelch of wheel slick in mud. From the first carriage, made star shine from velvet dresses and jewels under moonlight, came two women. Ashara Dayne appeared as her brother did, fair and lovely, as tall as she was lithe, and all the inch commandingly beautiful in lush purples and pale whites. Beside her, on her tour of the great Houses where she would stay with Ladies of renown for a short spell or two, of which only the very rich now partook, Cersei Lannister appeared golden even in the pale light, buxom and verdant, and scowling at everything in sight. Even the dragonflies, of which there were plenty to be found in Oldstones and Fairmarket, earned her searing disdain.
Until, that is, the men left the second carriage.
Ashara greeted her brother, in all his finely pressed coats, with a soft smile.
Cersei latched onto Rhaegar's arm with fingers tight and stiff.
"Shall we be quite safe here, my Prince, do you think? I have never seen so many vagrants moving so freely in one place. If this is the company of their most popular ball, I despair to think of the backstreets. This simply cannot be allowed to pass for anything remotely like sophisticated camaraderie. My mother, may the Father bless her soul, would weep at the mere sight of it."
With a sloping shirk of his shoulder, Cersei's hand fell from his elbow, and without further word or acknowledgement, Rhaegar Targaryen made haste for the entrance of the hall.
"I suppose that is his answer."
Arthur Dayne smiled, and ushered his sister towards the lobby, Cersei scoffing and following suite.
VI
Ron and Ginny Weasley stood before their mother at the corner of the hall, fussing over their clothes as Molly pecked and preened over their dresses and shirts, slipping a wayward curl back into place, sweeping fringe from freckled forehead, and swiping off the smudge of coal dust on her son's cheek with a tongue licked thumb.
Ginny groaned and plucked at the waist of her dress, faded blue now, perhaps an inch too short to not be seen as rehemmed for the fifteenth time.
"I literally cannot breathe, mother. It's too tight."
Ron, scuffing his heel on the cobblestone floor, glared down at his feet in boots two sizes too small, shoe polish blotching out the patches that had faded to white.
"My toes hurt."
Molly braced her hands on her hips and scowled.
"Nonsense! You both look delightful… Now go and mingle! And do not forget, Ginny dear, to keep your chin high but not too high, and do not-"
"Yes, mother!"
The two siblings dashed for the crowd, far away from their mother's shouts and prods and pricks. Molly laughed, plucked up a goblet of passing wine, and made haste for what she believed to be the shadow of Mrs Longbottom by the punch.
She would never believe the rumour Molly had overheard from a passing carriage just last Wednesday when-
VII
Hermione Granger sat in her mother's finest dress, a plain thing of white cotton and purple trim, the best two millers could give, and watched as her dearest friend came dancing through the crowd, windswept and breathless, and everything wild.
Haraella Targaryen was a girl hard to describe.
Feral, certainly, Haraella appeared as if she had been wrangled in from some moor or heath, she was not one of little measures, and the fearlessness of her character shone through every pore and dimple and keen grin. She looked, more often than not, far larger than her small frame, or the delicate twist of her bones, sleeker than the curve of her silver lashes or more bright than the green of her startling eyes.
Beautiful, in the way natural disasters could be beautiful, Hermione thought. With grit, and grin and something more than little devilish.
And barefoot.
She was always barefoot.
That evening, she was in a dress of dark sea green, no lace or velvet or trim to be found, not a pearl or bow to be had in her braided hair. Impoverished, certainly, but Hermione knew that dress, knew that it had belonged to her mother, perhaps the only belonging Haraella had of the woman after the great fire of Oldstones, and she wore it as if it were sable and mink and encrusted with jewels. The finest of dresses simply because it was from a mother's love she was now able to fit.
Over the top, perhaps indecently Molly would surely say, she donned her father's waist coat, beige and worn thin by the pockets, and in the riotous, almost blindingly silver-white, curls half battled into braids that whipped at her waist, she had a single river reed laced at her ear, plumed like a feather fluttering in the wind. With every step across the flagstone, bare, pink toes flashed underneath the candlelight.
Bare, pink toes that came to a dashing stop before Hermione sitting on the benches of the far wall of the hall.
Haraella grinned devilishly over at her.
Perhaps Haraella had the features of her name Targaryen stamped across the planes of her face for all to see, and perhaps she had the disposition, the wildness of her mother, the girl Jenny known as a woods witch, but that smile, that damned smile, was all Sirius Black.
"Come, 'Mione. Dance with me!"
Hermione shook her head violently.
"You know I am not one for dancing. Everyone here will… Stare."
Sweeping to the left, Haraella slipped in at her side, still grinning from ear to ear, flushed cheeked from the heat of the hall and so many bodies pressed in one small space, eyes sparking in the glow of flickering flames.
"Of course they'll stare! If every man in this room does not end the evening completely in love with you then I am no judge of beauty."
It was a kind thing to say, perhaps more kind than Hermione's modest dress deserved, but that, she thought, was her dear friend.
Wild and somehow, impossibly, kind beyond account.
And, conceivably, a little delusional.
"Or men, I would suppose, for what experience, other than cutting them with your words, have you had with men? And dare I say, what greater pleasure do you take than seeing them dumbfounded at your humour."
Haraella flippantly waved her hand.
"I get along just grand with Ron and Charlie and Bill."
Hermione scoffed.
"They do not count, and you know it. More brother than boy they are to you."
Haraella's grin grew toothy and sharp.
"Well, men do make it far too easy for us to judge them, do they not? Peacocking around the place."
Hermione chuckled.
"They are not all so bad."
Hermione knew her mistake by the time she saw the quick glint in Haraella's eye turn gleam, the way she dipped in closer and lowered her voice to something like soot and smoke and smouldering fire.
"I suppose not all… I remember a fellow, do you? The one you danced with last summer? The one who keeps sending you letters, even now, from all the way from Romania? What was his name… Ah, yes! Victor Krum. A general in the army. He was a pleasure to meet, wouldn't you say, Hermione?"
Hermione, in response, flushed and slapped at her friends' shoulder, but found herself chuckling all the same, her reticence abruptly gone.
Perhaps that was Haraella's goal from the beginning, to ease her discomfort by jest and jokes.
"It was Bulgaria… And enough. One of these days, Harry, someone will catch your eye and, by the Gods, somehow you will have to watch your tongue."
Haraella didn't seem perturbed by the idea.
In fact, she seemingly took it as a dare, leaning back in that seat with a smirk and a wink.
"And eat my hat."
That was when the halls doors opened, the hush fell, and, conceivably, the worst thing could have possibly happened... happened.
VIII
The group of two Ladies, two Lords, and a sprinkling of footmen was a dazzling spectacle to perceive. The first to enter, Hermione saw, was a tall man, dark hair primly combed and oiled, face bare and pale, hard and handsome, almost too handsome in the way things could be too sweet or too salty, with a sting to the eye and a lurch to the gut.
Or, possibly, only to Hermione.
She did, for a moment, feel a little… Sick. Yes, sick. As if her feet had come away from the ground, and she could have floated right up into the ceiling or beyond, up to the sky, and away in the clouds, perhaps, where stars did shine, such as the one upon the breast of his coat.
This must have been Mr Dayne.
Beside him was, clearly, his sister, as beautiful as her brother was, dominating in sheer presence alone, and, unconsciously, Hermione's hand lifted to her hair, too frizzy unlike the woman's onyx wave, too thick and too kinky and too simple.
Alongside her was another woman, fierce in her fine red dress shot through with decadent gold, as gilt as the cascade of her hair piled upon her crown in braids and curls and lynch pinned pearls, a green gaze that was, possibly, only a shade or two duller than Haraella's own remarkable stare.
A green gaze scowling fiercely that anything that came remotely close to her affluent skirts.
Apart from the man at her side, a man she kept stealing glances to, a man not one in this room would not know upon sight.
Taller than even Mr Dayne, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, for with those silver locks pinned neatly at the nape of his neck he could not be anything other than a Targaryen, cut a dashing figure in silk and leather. His lilac gaze was dark, darker than Hermione had pictured Targaryen's to have, deep and serious and opulent, but… Sad.
Sorrowful and brooding and poignant, and easily misconstrued as hauteur.
He kept his hands neatly folded at his back, kept his crevasse, red and black, stitched with the dragon of his House, stiffly pressed into his waistcoat at collar, not a hair or boot lace or breech button out of place.
So very, very, very, very different to the only other Targaryen Hermione knew.
Haraella.
Wild, untamed, suddenly standing Haraella.
"I have to go."
She hissed, but Hermione reached out and snagged her arm.
"Haraella, don't leave. Just because-"
She whirled around, ashen faced, and Hermione saw the alarm shadowing her eye.
"I knew I shouldn't have come. I knew-… I have to go. Before they see me and-"
Hermione's gaze flashed over her friend's shoulder.
She winced.
"Perhaps it is a bit too late for that."
Haraella followed her line of sight.
Prince Rhaegar and his cohorts stood by the door, barred from further entering the room for the crowd that had rushed to greet them, and although a man and his family stood before the group, talking animatedly to Rhaegar, the Prince was not looking his way.
No.
Oh no.
The Princes gaze had seeped over the hall, and locked onto the only other silver haired person in the room.
Haraella.
Haraella who, upon finding herself being watched so zealously, with an expression Hermione could not name, whipped back around to her friend.
"Shite."
She cursed, tugged, but Hermione did not let her friends arm go.
"Do not run, Haraella. This is your home, and these are only guests here. An hour or two at most, and this ball will be over, and you can rest your head easy knowing you did not turn and flee."
A breath through quivering nostril, a slow exhale.
"Right… Yes, you're quite right. Why should I hide away? If my mere face affronts his highness, well, he can very well turn away and leave. I have done nothing wrong but be born to a name. Nothing more, nothing less."
Hermione smiled.
"Exactly."
The hand holding Haraella's arm slipped between the crux of her elbow, and, for once, just once, in the face of her uncharacteristically fretful friend, Hermione led Haraella to the dance floor.
"Now, about that dance."
For what else were friends for if not to strengthen? Even if it meant dancing in front of so many strangers.
IX
At the entrance to the hall, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen cut over the voice of the Sir stuttering through his long-winded greeting.
"That girl, over there, the silver haired one, who is she?"
The Sir, a clothe merchant by trade, the richest sort in Fairmarket it would seem, blinked owlishly before glancing to the dance floor, face alight with recognition at the sight of two ladies dancing in the throng.
"That, my Prince, is Haraella Targaryen. Lord Duncan's girl. A sprite of a girl if there ever was one, but much loved in these parts."
Now it was Rhaegar's turn to blink swiftly in confusion.
Had he heard right?
Duncan's girl?
"Duncan? Duncan has a child?"
Seemingly happy to be in conversation with the Prince, the longest conversation the man had partook in all evening, Sir Willhelm flushed eagerly.
"Aye, that's her. Jenny's little lass."
Rhaegar swept the hall with his keen eye.
"And Duncan is here this night? Where would I find him?"
The balcony, surely.
Nuncle Duncan, from the sparse memories Rhaegar had of the jovial man, had always ended up on the balcony at balls. He said he could almost touch the sky from so high up in the Red Keep. Perhaps not so much in the squat Fairmarket hall, but maybe habit had stubbornly stuck.
The smile dropped from the Sir's face like glass on stone, shattering at their feet.
"Well… The sixth grave beside ol' Mudd Church, me Lord. Beside dear Jenny. Shame about that fire. Terrible thing."
The music seemingly crashed too, and all Rhaegar could hear was the thrumming of his heartbeat in his ear.
"Grave… Duncan's dead? Jenny too?"
The man, this Sir, chewed at his lip, gnawed at his words like picking meat from a bone.
"You… It is well known, me Lord. They've been gone, may the Mother watch over their souls, for the last ten and eight years. A terrible fire broke out at Oldstones manor. Took everything, and then some. A few knickknacks and Haraella were the only things plucked from the ashes in the end. Remarkable story, truly. The babe did not have a single burn. Must be blessed, I think. Or cursed, depending on the flip of the coin."
Rhaegar squared his shoulders and glared at the man who shrank down deep into his bears.
"Why was no word sent to my father and mother of this?"
The Sir spluttered, and coughed, and fidgeted with his stained cuffs, and appeared to wish to be anywhere but where he was.
"But it was, me Lord! The magistrates of this town sent letter after letter. We didn't know what to do with the babe that had survived and thought-… They all came back unopened apart from the last. That came back in a pouch of ashes, burned. We believed the message was clear. When Duncan was renounced-"
"Renounced? What do you mean renounced? My good Nuncle was never renounced."
The man looked for an exit, but found none underneath the heavy, Targaryen stare.
"Well, he gave his right for the throne up, didn't he? Gave it up for his Jenny, and… and…"
Yes, Nuncle Duncan had relinquished his claim for the throne, but it had not been for Jenny. Jenny had come later. Duncan had simply not wished to rule, and when he had met Aunt Jenny, fell in love, and moved to his wife's homeland, Rhaegar's parents had simply believed he was settling down but... Relinquishing his claim to the throne had not meant he relinquished his name, his family.
When the letters stopped coming, it was easy to think he had moved on with his life-
Years could pass by so quickly, and-
Nuncle Duncan had never been keen on the throne, had always found the politics chaffing, had always been happier away from the seat, and Rhaella and Aerys had been equally happy to grant him that life, had loved their brother dearly, had-
They would not have ignored his letters.
Mother still wrote to him monthly.
She wrote to a dead man.
"And the babe? Haraella? What happened to her?"
The Sir shuffled on the spot.
"The Potter's took her in. We granted them Wardenship over her after the last letter to the Crown. They… They passed not long after, and so she moved in with her Godfather for a turn or two."
Rhaegar, thoughts whirling, grimaced.
"And he is here now? I wish to speak with him. I would like to know why my family has been-"
The Sir scratched at the back of his neck sheepishly.
"Uh… He's passed too, me lord. Murdered by his cousin who wished to inherit the Black estate in entirety… Pointless, certainly. He left everything to Haraella, and Bellatrix was committed to the Asylum for her crimes. Same with the Potters. Come her twentieth birthday, Jenny's lass be set. Small comfort, I suppose, given the losses, but the best of a bad hand."
Rhaegar gaped.
"Then who does she reside with now? Who is her guardian until majority? She is not yet twenty seasons old, is she?"
The man brightened at the question.
"No, me Prince. She's twenty seasons next summer. The Weasleys took her in. Friends of the family… The Potter's that is. They take good care of her, me Lord. I can vow for that. She is very fond of them."
Rhaegar nodded.
"Then bring them before me now. I will speak to them personally. I would very much like to know why a member of House Targaryen has been sequestered away without notification, how, by the Seven, my family was left unaware of this tragedy and travesty and, Sir, I would come to know why, above all, who would play such a part in secreting away the heir of my Mother's beloved brother while she is left quite clearly destitute until her estates are opened to her on her majority and-"
Arthur Dayne's hand came down upon his shoulder, fingers flexing into the collar of Rhaegar's coat, voice low and hot in his ear.
"Perhaps another time, Rhaegar. I think this man speaks true, and if he does, then the fault is not here but somewhere back in court. Someone who had taken Duncan's letters before they could be read by your mother and father, and perhaps intercept theirs before they could come to Oldstones."
A waver.
"And if so, if there really is such a man at court, perhaps it would be best to hold your stay. Perchance you should write a letter to your father, explain what you have discovered, and send it by trusted man with the strict instruction to not give it to anyone else but your parents hands. Wait until they know, and then…"
Rhaegar rolled the bitter taste on his tongue behind his teeth.
"And then move when the pieces are in place."
Rhaegar regarded the fidgety Sir before him.
"I have… Changed my mind, good Sir. I do not require the Weasleys presence. Please, enjoy your evening."
The Sir dashed away as if his coattails were aflame.
Rhaegar turned to his closest friend.
"This does not sit right with me, Arthur. Something underhanded and dark has happened, and I do not like the uncertainty of players lurking in the shadows."
Arthur smiled.
"Then, we shall smoke them out from their homes and see them come into the light. But first, let us enjoy this night."
Next Chapter: Rhaegar and Haraella meet face to face, and it goes as well as you might expect it to go...
A.N: I know I don't get much engagement on my fics when I update so soon after a previous update, but I couldn't help myself. Plus, my fics go weird when I post exceedingly long chapters, sometimes emailing people there's an update, but taking hours to actually post it on the fic. So, I thought to keep the chapters of this one shorter, but not too short, and just have fun with it. Seen as this one was mostly plot, I thought it might be good to just get it out the way too, so we can move onto the juicy, juicy stuff.
A lovely reviewer also asked whether I was basing this off the film or the BBC series. I will say it is mostly the 2005 film, but if you think I'm not including the iconic wet windswept Rhaegar scene as we get with Darcy in the BBC series, you have another things coming sis lmao. In the end, it will be a little mixture of both.
That's all for now. Thank you all for taking the time out of your day and reading this, I hope you all liked it, and I will hopefully see you guys soon. ~AlwaysEatTheRude21