Rhaegar Targaryen
VI
Rhaegar Targaryen did not remember much of the Magus who came well into the night hours to his families marquee, the small nondescript place the Magus, Lord Weasley, had squirrelled them away to on the very edge of their campsite.
Welcome, Rhaegar thought, but not overtly so. Tolerated was, perhaps, a better term to use by their allotted location.
Nevertheless, Rhaegar did not remember much of the Magus, not his face, his name, nor the shade of his eye. There was not much to remember, merely that he had been gigantic fellow of dizzying proportions, the dip of a heavily bearded chin in greeting and the gruff 'Harry want's to speak to ya'. Like a puppet with his strings knotted and tangled, Rhaegar was helpless not to go along with the tug to his filaments. Elia and Lyanna had made to follow, Rhaegar remembered that much. Excited and eager… Until the Magus had shot an extensive arm out, over the tents entrance fold, barring their steps.
"Only him."
So Rhaegar had gone alone.
Small steps.
It had been two sunrises since that fateful evening on the hillside, and Rhaegar had not wanted it to be a further two if he had declined without Elia and Lyanna's presence at the clandestine meeting.
They had understood with the nod they had urged him on with. At least, now, seemingly, Shaera was willing to speak to one of them.
Small steps… Slight, small steps.
How… Productive that speaking could be was anyone's conjecture, given the nightly hours it was called to replace in the stead of sleep.
The Magus had led the Westerosi King right to the red-and-gold tent again, stood stationary at the door, and gestured his entrance in with a jerk of his thumb thrown over a barrelled shoulder.
Rhaegar slipped between the folds.
The tent was a dark, soft thing in the night, like a bruise on the thigh of the hill, something… Ticking here or there, a relaxed feeling to the thump as if it were a heartbeat at rest. Rhaegar felt as if the air moved in this tent like cool water, the aroma of scented candles-
Orange peel and honeysuckle, Elia's favourites, infused more deeply under the moon than it did in the light of day. In this twilight, the wolf hour, the cloths of the tent were muted hues, a tarnished burnt gold and a red so dark it was almost black as if they too awaited sunrise to kindle once more.
Shaera sat behind the sole desk of the tent, alone in the low light of a nearly all-burned tallow candle. She did not have a book before her as the Lady Granger had, but a bottle of amber liquid already heavily drunk from, and two glasses, one empty one nearing that way, dashed at the bottle's side along a pile of singed scrolls. She met Rhaegar's gaze across the stretch of space, and time, and memory with a mismatched stare.
Her eyes were wet, Rhaegar noticed, but, stubbornly, no tears fell.
"You're looking rather spritely for a dead man, I must say."
Straightening out from ducking in, Rhaegar let the flap of the tent close behind him. It felt as resolute and heavy as he imagined the Black Cell's iron gate clapping shut.
"And you have grown far more than I could have ever dreamed."
Shaera took the softness of his voice, rolled it up tightly in her small hands, and threw it over her shoulder, downing what little drink she had left in her glass.
"Dreams. Funny things, aren't they? Funny and terrible."
Popping the cork free from her bottle, she poured two glasses, gesturing to the seat before her with a flippant wave of a delicate hand. A scared, calloused, delicate hand.
The kind of hand that knew how to fight and build and work for a living.
Slowly, carefully, Rhaegar took the offer.
"I have dreamt of what I would say to you if I ever saw you since I was a little girl. Sometimes I screamed myself hoarse calling you every name under the sun for what I thought you did to my mother."
Rhaegar swallowed deeply, watching a glass screech across the wood in his direction with no push or pull.
Magic.
"And the others?"
He took the glass as he had taken the seat, lightly. Shaera shrugged across the way.
"Sometimes I said nothing at all. In others I asked you why. In some I cried, and fewer yet I laughed. A thousand different dreams, and a thousand different ways I have met you before. A dead man. And yet, here you are…"
Rhaegar lifted the glass, sipped the bitter-burning liquid that scorched a winding path down his throat, and said what Shaera, plainly, could not.
"Here I am, not so much a dead man, and that was a salutation you never thought possible... Not even in your dreams."
Shaera kicked back in her chair, regarding him in the dark with a bright eye, lilac and green and keen in the candlelight.
She was dressed in a strange animal hide, leathers dappled in tiny black scales that bled together in a sheen, tattered by her wrists and neckline. The leather's were clearly for battle use rather than comfort, had seen conflict by the discoloration of the supple clothe in patches, a line of hastily applied stitches by her chest, hurriedly fixed by what could only be a slice aimed for between the ribs, durable and light looking, and worn well.
Was that to be this meeting then? Another war to win? How many skirmishes had those leather's seen exactly? How many had Shaera?
"Not even in my dreams, and now I find myself only wanting to know one thing."
There was silence then, a tap of a nail striking against a half-filled glass in a pattern of three, melting with the ticking of something lost in the dark.
"Was it worth it? The pain and the death and the loss… My mother-… Lily, she died before I ever took my first breath, covered in river silt, bleeding-… I was constantly reminded of how my mother was found growing up. The sacrifice she made for me. Her last breath for my first. I was never allowed to forget that. I have to know if it was worth it."
Another drink. His hand trembled now, between the short distance from chair arm to lips.
His heart shook worse.
"I cannot speak for Lily-… I-… I believe she was happy. I pray she was. With me. With us… But for I?"
His fingers threatened to shatter the glass in his fragile hold. Rhaegar's voice did the breaking for them.
"I would spend a life in Wildfire, a thousand dreams of you calling me every name under the sun and stars, for one more day with her and you. I loved her-… We loved her, Elia and Lyanna and me, more than any of me or my wives could say. That will never change."
Shaera let that linger between them in the night, ferment like a sweet wine to erase the sour notes of their past. The woman that bound them together.
The dead woman.
She smiled then. Brittle and stiff, toothy as it was lacking in any sort of humour.
"You're good with your words, aren't you? A right Byronic poet… Albus said you were."
Shaera shrugged noncommittedly, finishing off her glass of amber fire.
"He also said you was a nomad and a thief with a drinking and gambling problem who cared nothing for anyone but yourself…And yet here you are sitting before me as a King."
Rhaegar understood then, that glint in her mismatched eye. She was trying to piece together the stories she had been told to the evident contradiction before her. Expecting the dead carcass of a rat, she had instead stumbled across a very much alive tiger, and the stripes were hard to count over the visage of frightening teeth.
Rat and tiger, tiger and rat, her past, her beginning, was not what Shaera had always believed it to be.
Perhaps that burned hotter and more bitter than her amber drink.
More crucially, Rhaegar and she were…
Well, they were in the same boat trying to cross the same sea in a storm.
Shaera in leather armour, grown, achingly like her mother, and so very tragically like himself, and not the dead babe in a womb. She too had her own scales and sharp teeth.
Rhaegar straightened in his seat.
"Here I am sitting as a father, and all I ask is for a chance to be one finally."
Rhaegar watched as she chewed this over, spotted the jumping muscle of a jawline, and when she replied it was not cruel, or cold, but it did not broker any room for argument either.
"My list of priorities will not be changed. My main concern is the people outside this tent. They are my brethren-… My family. My people. They have been through too much, and I would not add to that by failing them now. They must, and will, always come first. This does not change that. It can't change that."
Proud.
That was the spark in Rhaegar's belly, burning and proud.
She would make a good Queen one day, he thought. Possibly, however, by the happenings of two sunrises prior, by the clear devotion and affection those outside this tent had shown, Shaera was already one in her own right.
"And I would never ask for it to, only that upon that list of priorities you might make room for one more, wherever high or low you wish to place it."
Rhaegar dared to reach across the table, to the lax hand resting on the wood.
"Shaera-"
She jerked the limb away from his reaching grasp. Anew, her voice was not callous or cool, but it would not be challenged.
"Harry. I go by Harry."
See me as I am and not what you dreamed of, if you wish for me to see you as you are and not the one I dreamed of.
That was the truth. The miserable truth. Here they were, fighting facades of themselves conjured by fantasy. Vagabonds and dead children, and stories both dreamt and told.
His Shaera was grown up, alive, going by Harry in worn-well armour. She'd lived a life far away from Westeros, and Rhaegar does not want to change that, could not even if he wished to, that was the cruelty of history, but he did want to know it. Everything. The good, the bad, how she got those callouses and the scar streaking across her brow, and where she had picked up drinking and such.
"Harry, I must leave this coming morn. I have been away from my throne for too long as it is, and as your people need you mine similarly need me. But… But I would enjoy, and would hope you would too, if you would call upon us at the Red Keep. Perhaps for a meal. Perhaps… Perhaps so I may come to know this Harry as you may come to know this Rhaegar."
Silence and-
A stiff nod.
"I'm busy this coming week. I have much to do around here and-… I'll visit as soon as I can."
It was not the greatest reassurance, but it was something small, and perhaps that was how it had to be right then and there. Something small with something small until there was something big.
Small steps.
Even small steps reach the end of the path eventually.
Rhaegar smiled.
Hermione Granger
I
When Hermione Granger came strolling into the head tent come sunrise the next morning, Harry was already up and about, standing at the back wall, eyeing the crudely drawn map Neville had assembled from questioning the locals.
"Did you sleep at all last night?"
Harry didn't turn around at the sound of her voice, kept her gaze straight and locked on ink and paint, likely already expecting her friend this early.
"Of course I did."
Hermione huffed and edged into the large room.
"More than four hours?"
The silence was answer enough.
"Merlin Harry, you need to sleep-"
"What I need is to find a place for our permanent settlement. Sleep can come after I know Teddy and everyone else will have a roof over their head by next month."
Coming to the side of her oldest, and dearest, and most stubbornly tenacious friend, Hermione delicately shook her head.
"And you won't be able to do that if you pass out from exhaustion."
One green eye peeped at her from the side, peering through the starlight curl that had escaped her long braid. Harry's shoulder's deflated a fraction. The barest of an inch, but, as with all things Harry, it was the little wins that counted.
"I promise I'll grab a nap later."
Hermione did not try to push for much more. It would be fruitless, and as mulish as her friend was, Harry's word was more obstinate. If she promised something, it would be done.
Come hell or Tom Riddle.
Hermione too turned her gaze to the map, smiling at the lines of rivers and roads and swathes of green and white and golden sand.
If she squinted… It kind of looked like a mushed-up Britain.
"Found anything that caught your eye?"
Harry's arms folded over her chest.
"The north looks promising. Neville said it's large but sparsely populated. We could have proper growing room up there. Magic will take care of the making the ground fertile and productive for farming. Same with Dorne. They have deserts where no settlements are constructed. Extreme temperatures have kept the Muggles out from both, but seen as we're a hardier breed it might just work out for us, and we won't be stepping on any toes."
Hermione scratched at her chin.
"Dorne or the North… It's a good shot. They have spare land to offer, and we can extend their productivity in return. It might just be enough to win them over to having strangers setting up shop in their land. Which one are you leaning towards?"
Harry grumbled and spun from the map, turning to face Hermione head on. Her mismatched eyes were dark that morning.
Dark and tired and slightly frustrated.
"No idea yet. I've sent McGonagall and Shacklebolt out to try and get a missive to both leading… Houses? They call them Houses here?"
Hermione nodded, and Harry carried on.
"Houses. I want to meet them face to face first… Put my feelers out, sense what sort of people we'll be dealing with. The last thing we need is to begin rebuilding and then be chased out by xenophobes."
Hermione chuckled dryly.
"You're telling me one time was enough?"
Harry joined her in the laughter, face lightening, smoothing, the tension seeping from the sleek lines of her face like ice melting under a spring sun.
"Bloody hell yes."
She really shouldn't… But…
Hermione's voice dropped low, slow, cautiously pleasant.
"You know… The two Queens are from those places. Maybe if you talked to Queen Elia-"
And as quick as Harry had melted, she hardened again, swift on her feet as she marched passed, face shut and closed and turned away as she went to the lone desk of the tent.
"The letters McGonagall has will be enough."
"Harry… I watched them leave this morning, saw them to the road myself. I know you spoke to your father-… Rhaegar last night. Maybe… Maybe this doesn't just have to be just a new start for us. Maybe it can be a new start for you too."
Harry, as she did when faced with anything remotely emotionally uncomfortable, or even the prospect of it, ignored Hermione's suggestion completely.
"They're gone? Good. They stood out like a sore thumb around here."
Hermione slumped where she stood, withered and wilting, scrubbing tiredly at her eyes.
"Harry you're being incredibly-"
"Petty?"
When her hands fell and she saw Harry once more by the table, the star-shine-haired girl did not appear irate, vicious, or condemning. She was smiling sadly, lost, a little bit misplaced and a little bit unsure.
"I know Hermione. I know I'm being childish and petty… And I know what Albus did…. What he told me… Being left to fight a war I never wanted-… I know it isn't their fault. I know. But… But just let me have my little tantrum, yeah? Let me… Let me figure out exactly how I feel about all this first before anything else. Let me at least try and find my footing here before you want me to run."
Emotions were like that when you grew up, Hermione thought. Anger, joy, disappointment, remorse, sadness, grief and excitement… It was not always one or the other. Sometimes it was all at once, muddled like a stagnant pond one had to try and see the bottom of. It was only natural; it was only right.
And it must have been confusing for Harry, after everything, after all the blood, sweat, and tears she had shed, being locked in an understairs cupboard, beaten and starved for what she was, and raised to die and-
It mustn't have been easy finding her family here, now, after all was said and done. Finding them happy and whole and-
And with everything Harry never had.
It mustn't have been easy discovering Albus Dumbledore had reached a new low.
It mustn't have been easy.
Not at all.
Letting Harry deal with this her way, on her own time, was conceivably the minor solace she needed right then.
The consolation she had earned.
"Of course Harry."
Harry gave a stiff nod, a jerk of chin up and down, the clear and evident full stop to the conversation, and, of course, Ron came tumbling into the tent, bleary eyed from slumber still, carrying a plate of steaming food.
"Got breakfast for the big boss… Or by the look of those dark circles, a very late dinner."
Harry lunged away from the table, beaming, already reaching for the plate.
"You gorgeous bastard you. I'm starving."
Taking the plate, Harry dug into, what appeared to be to Hermione, some sort of Jerk chicken dish with rice and… Vegetables? Something red and gold and juicy looking.
Hot red and spicy.
Just how Harry only liked her food.
She groaned heavily on the first bite, sucking the sauce off her thumb with a pop.
Ron held out a mug in Hermione direction.
"And an Early grey for the fine lady and brains behind our glorious operation."
Hermione grinned and took the drink, smiling brighter at the sight of a slice of orange floating through the steam.
"Harry's right. You're a life saver Ron."
Ron winked.
"Don't let ferret hear you speak like that. He might get jealous."
"Oh Morgana… For the last time, there is nothing going on between me and Malfoy-"
"Sure, sure, and I ain't ginger-"
Already two legs down, and a fork full of rice being chewed, Harry eyed Ron suddenly with a cocked brow.
"When the hell did you learn to cook? I wasn't gone that long, was I?"
The question by itself was innocent. Perhaps it could have been mistaken for sarcasm, as Ron clearly had. Nevertheless, it made Hermione frown.
I wasn't gone that long, was I?
There was no sarcasm in Harry's voice, only thinly veiled candour. She honestly did not, by the looks of it, know exactly how long they had been separated. That was… Worrying, in more ways than one, to Hermione.
Animagus magic was… Tricky. A double edge sword that was, more often than not, pointy end in grip. Beyond it's physical manifestation of transfiguring forms, it was more… Complex than that.
If it were simply transfiguration, a lot more Witches and Wizards would be capable of the extraordinary magic.
Instead, Animagus magic was more a… Subjective sorcery than a transmutation. The reason Sirius had been a dog and not a, say, horse, was because he was loyal, steadfast, playful. If fate had flipped their coin and landed on tails instead of heads, Sirius would have, if given animal form over human, been that very same black dog.
Harry would have been a dragon. Protective, energetic, a natural leader, Harry was… Defensive of those she deemed in her nest, but relentless, sometimes arrogant, and prone to a fiery temper and a short fuse on the best of days.
She also liked collecting shiny things to shove underneath her mattress lately.
It got even more complicated when one realised that when in their Animagus forms, their minds were not completely… Human any longer. She was still Harry, but dragon Harry, and that was imperative to realize when dealing with Animagus's. Dragon's had no concern for time, and when shifted into one, apparently Harry had lost her own.
Hermione's mind whirled with half-formed thoughts.
And if there was still bleed over now when Harry was very much human-faced and soft-bellied-
Maybe she had spent too long transformed this time, one time of many in recent years, too long in her scales and out her tender flesh, maybe it was time to sit down and think about-
Which might be the root itself of Harry's mixed emotions. If she were currently more in tune with her Dragon half, her protective tendencies for her 'nest', for Teddy and Ron and Hermione, might be in conflict with her unexpected revelation of another 'nest', filled with strangers, with Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses-
Harry would not be the first Witch or Wizard to get fed up with their two legs, lulled in by the tempting and ever mounting seductive Animagus magics, and choose to transform one day, only to never revert back-
"Nah. That Egg Prince over in the kitchens whipped it up and sent me over with it. What was his name again? Arron?"
Now it was Harry's turn to scowl bleakly.
"Aegon?"
Ron snapped his fingers.
"Yeah, that one."
Harry's mismatched gaze swept over to Hermione as her fork lowered, clanking on the side of the plate, abandoned in the half-ate dish. All thoughts of Animagus magic was suddenly left to the wayside under the glower.
"I thought you said they left this morning?"
Hermione shuffled on the spot. Fire. That was Harry's gaze. Something that blazed.
"Yes. The King and two Queens. I saw them out the compound myself. They said Rhaenys, Aegon and Jon would follow when you leave to visit them next fortnig-"
The clank of the plate hitting the desk rang out in the tent, and before Hermione could finish her sentence, Harry was already on the move, thundering for the entrance.
"Harry, what are you-"
And… gone.
Hermione herself flung her own cup down and made for the door, Ron scoffing out behind her.
"Now where are you going?"
Hermione glanced back from the crux.
"To make sure Harry doesn't bite some poor sod's head clean off!"
Ron waved her off glibly.
"It'll be fine."
Hermione guffawed.
"Fine? Fine?! Ron, you saw her yourself. She hasn't slept, she's just came back from holding off an army, She's-"
Ron shrugged and sharply cut her off.
"Leave it be, 'Mione. She needs to do this-… She needs this. It's like Yule Ball and Cedric Diggory all over again. I know Harry just as much as you do. She wants to speak to them, but she can't figure out how to approach it so instead she'll leave herself on the side-lines thinking it's all better off that way. Why do you think she's not slept a wink? Likely been running a million and one ways to say hello threw her head, and has neglected to actually do it. I just gave her a way to… Get the conversation going. Either way, her bark's meaner than her bite. It'll be fine."
Hermione let the tent flap slip through her fingers.
"When did you become so underhandedly shrewd?"
The placating little slip of tongue, the jovial Arron, little lures dropped into the stream for Harry to pick and nibble on.
And Harry, clearly, had bit.
Ron smirked and winked.
"Your boyfriend must be rubbing off on me-"
"Ronald Weasley!"
Next Chapter: Harry finds Teddy in the kitchen tents of the compound, perched on the shoulders of a very tall, slightly blue-tinged white-haired Targaryen…
A.N: There's been a bit of a change up to our broadcasting schedule. I did say Lyanna and Elia were up next, and Rhaenys, Jon and Aegon following. Well, I've sort of switched this around a bit, so some R and J and A are coming in hot next chapter, and Lyanna and Elia will follow after that. It just makes more sense, plot wise, for it to happen this way, and it felt more natural to write.
Now for the big question. I am debating where exactly I want the Magus's settlement to be in this fic. So far, I've whittled it down to the two most logical conclusions, Dorne and the North. Both have pro's and cons to them, but I wanted to hear from you guys too. Where do you think Harry and Co should settle down?
For those who followed, reviewed and favourited, and those who have silently read along with this messy thing so far, thank you all! If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review, and until next time, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21