News of Joanna Lannister's new child reaches Storm's End months later.
Ostara is nearing nine and she's thought very little about the Lannister woman since that night in the woman's bedchambers. Too engrossed with discovering her new powers and harnessing them to bother with a pregnant woman. Obviously, that's a mistake Ostara will never be making again. Ever. Thankfully nothing happened to Joanna or the baby.
All the same, she listens carefully to her mother as she reads Joanna's letter to Steffon at lunch.
They're whispering to one another. That can't be good. Ostara sips at her water and pays closer attention to the conversation being had between the two adults. Her mother is telling her father about the childbirth, apparently there'd been so much blood and Lady Lannister is so weak now that the Maester won't allow her out of bed until she's regained most of her strength.
It's to be expected though, magic can only do so much after all. Ostara's not worried about it. She even goes to turn her attention back to her meal, only stopping when something her father says chills her to the very bone.
"Lady Lannister has given birth to a what?" Ostara growls, slipping into their conversation with as much grace as can be expected given her anger and her disbelief.
Beside her, Stannis goes still and looks up from the book Maester Cressen had given him to read. It's about the Dance of Dragons, Ostara's read it twice. It's interesting but hardly very informative when it comes to battle strategies and the flaws of both parties involved in the conflict. It's very biased and Ostara would much rather have Stannis read something better suited to his needs.
"Lady Lannister," Her father repeats, "has given birth to a dwarf."
"You mean a babe?"
"Well, it is a babe. Yes. Lady Lannister fears it will not last the month."
While Ostara understands that a good portion of the babies born in Westeros die before the reach their sixth or seventh year the young witch isn't upset about that. Because she understands Joanna Lannister's worry. It's her father's flippancy that has her raging.
"So I'm to assume that because the babe's dwarfism means that it's not worthy of having a gender to be acknowledged by if no name has been chosen yet. Is that correct?" Ostara bites out, fingers curling around the handle of her knife until her knuckles turn pale.
"I beg your pardon, young lady?"
"Oh, right, I forgot," Ostara stands and levels her father with a glare, "it's our gods given right to degrade a child, right? I mean, Gods forbid we don't judge a babe for something out of even our control and reduce the poor thing to nothing more than an it simply due to the fact that we find the situation disturbing." Ostara is spitting mad and her father looks like he's more shocked by her outburst then upset. "Excuse me, please, I'm just going to go and write to Lady Lannister and congratulate her on surviving the difficult birth or having a relatively healthy child seeing as no one else wants to."
With that said Ostara pivots on her heel, storms to the door, throws it open, and stomps out into the corridor leaving her stunned family behind her. She knows that later there will be hell to pay, her father or mother will likely punish her for her disrespect but Ostara's simply can't bring herself to care. Not when there are so many reasons Ostara's angry with her parents and this entire fucking world.
Reducing the worth of a baby, an innocent child who has done nothing wrong, to his or her outward appearance... It's sick. It's cruel. Besides, it's hardly the baby's fault that he or she was born with dwarfism traits, if anything it's Tywin and Joanna's combines genetics that caused it. The fact that no one can see that and have already begun reducing the worth of the child to outward appearance is horrific.
Ostara slams the door to her room behind her and paces like a trapped animal.
Rubeus moves to lay across her bed, eyes blazing in the sunlight streaming in through her window. His presence is calming, Ostara doesn't feel like she's suffocating, doesn't feel like the sudden beating and howling of the wind at her window is her fault (even if it is and she's quite aware of the foreign magic stirring in her blood).
Sucking in a deep breath Ostara rushes over to the bed, drops to the floor, pulls out the hidden trunk, and begins rummaging through it until she finds one of the old Latin journals full of spells at the bottom of the trunk. She pulls it out and begins flipping through it until she comes to a paged lined with carefully penned instructions. With gritted teeth Ostara makes her way over to the wardrobe.
Pushing her dresses to the side Ostara moves her attention from the journal to the unsuspecting wood of her closet's back panel.
"We," Ostara tells her shadowcat as she reaches to pull her wand out of her pocket, "are taking a little trip."
Behind her Rubeus makes a sound and Ostara twists to offer thin a tight lipped grin before turning back to the closet. The Latin that spills past her lips is softly spoken but clear and the tip of her wand glows a strange off-pink as she begins to trace it along the seams of the closet.
The spell she's using is similar to the one linking the vanishing cabinets Draco Malfoy used to sneak Death Eaters into Hogwarts but a bit less finicky. It's entire purpose is to create a passage from one place to the other, only accessible to the witch or wizard who casts the spell. No one aside from Ostara will be using or finding this little portal between her bedroom in Storm's End and Renaehra's bedroom in Valyria.
Ostara thinks that would be the best place to go.
Valyria is quiet, empty save for the ghosts of Renaehra's memories that come to her in dreams and brief flashes whenever they see fit. It'll be a good place to practice her magic and blow off steam. She needs to check on her potion ingredients anyway. Phil hasn't mentioned them and she wonders if he even knows how to care for the plants properly.
Pointing the Tip of her wand at the center of the closet backing Ostara envisions the finely crafted Wardrobe in Valyria and thinks of it as more a door then anything else.
There's a sharp sound, like splintering wood, before a thread of light races down the middle of the backing to create something akin to a double door. Ostara pushes against one side of the split and smiles when the wood swings out to reveal Renaehra's dusty, forgotten room. Her head is pounding and her muscles stiff but it worked. It worked and Ostara feels pride well up to replace her discomfort.
A knock on her door has Ostara scrambling away from her own closet and shutting the door with a smack.
"Ostara, open the door."
It's her mother.
"One moment."
Ostara doesn't want to let her in, not really, but she can't just disappear through the newly made portal either. It would cause her mother to panic and send the Keep into a frenzy, which wouldn't do seeing as it would only get Ostara into more trouble. So in the grand scheme of things letting her mother in is really the best option.
After her mother has entered the room Ostara crosses her arms over her chest and frowns.
"I'll not apologize."
Her mother presses her lips together, "Ostara, it is not your place to write to Lady Lannister nor is it your place to speak to your father the way you have."
"Why? Because I'm a child?" Ostara demands and at her mother's exasperated look she continues, "What would have happened if Stannis had been born different, or me, or Robert? Would you or father allow others to use such derogatory language when speaking of us? Would you use it? I am angry because it's apparently perfectly acceptable to attack a child for something as uncontrollable as outward appearance."
Cassana Baratheon sighs and it sounds strange, exasperated and sad and maybe even frustrated.
"Ostara, I understand why you're angry but there are some things even you cannot change, certainly not with disrespect and anger in any case."
"I am I being punished?" Ostara bites out.
"Yes, but your father and I have decided that as you are not old enough to understand so no whipping boy will be chosen to take your punishment but you will be confined to your chambers without supper."
The horror must show on her face because her mother reaches out to stroke her cheek. Ostara steps away from her, sick with the anger and disgust warring in her belly. She's read about whipping boys in Hermione's books on medieval culture and she's heard the parents of other noble children threaten to designate one to take their child's punishment but... Ostara has never actually seen another child take punishment meant for a lord's son or daughter.
It's disgusting, it's sick.
Her mother is speaking but there's a ringing in Ostara's ears and she barely has control over the heat searing in her veins.
Control it, she thinks, control it!
There's a soft press of something over her hair then the click of wooden heels and finally Ostara is left alone in her room. The door's locked firmly when she tries to open it. Fucking perfect.
Ostara changes into a her training leathers, grabs her wand and the journal she'd used earlier, and waits until Rubues is beside her before storming over to the wardrobe and ripping open the door. The portal is still open and Rubeus leaps from one side of the closet to the other with graceful ease before turning to face Ostara.
She follows after him without a second thought, only pausing to pull the doors of her wardrobe shut behind her.
~X~
Blood pools in the center of her palm and Ostara shakes as she presses her hand back to her nose where the blood is slowing to a stop. The training yard is a mess around her, a result of years of improper care and Ostara's own rage. Marble and stone litter the floor around her, there's a distant rumble of storm clouds and Ostara finds herself wondering if she'll be able to get herself together before the storm reaches her.
Probably not.
She is so incredibly angry at the moment that the thought of calming down and regaining control of her magic is a laughable thought indeed.
No whipping boy will be chosen, her mother's voice rings in her ears, no whipping boy will be chosen.
No whipping boy.
Ostara growls, fingers curling into fists at her sides. A few feet away a large portion of what might have been the ceiling at some point begins to shake, then it begins to rise off of the ground and Ostara barely has time to glance at it before it's shooting off to smack against another large pile of ruble. The resulting spray of dust and marble crumbs doesn't even bother her.
With a sigh Ostara pulls her hand away from her nose, licks the blood away from her lip, and vanishes the mess from the palm of her hand.
There's not much else she can do at the moment. She's already destroyed what was left of the training yard, reduced it to nothing more then rubble and dust, even the stone beneath her feet is splintering and all because of the magic Ostara had inherited from her father's bloodline. Wild and uncontrollable and dangerous in a way that had made Ostara shiver delightfully upon realizing what, exactly, she was dealing with.
What she would be dealing with for the rest of her life.
Ostara rakes a hand through her hair, sighs, and glances around the training yard.
It's a damn shame, what happened here. From what Ostara can remember the Vaelmaereon house had been beautiful. The epitome of craftsmanship and art during the height of the Valyrian freehold. Ostara bites her lip. Now it's nothing more then a dusty, broken, pile of ruble only standing to serve as a reminder of the terrors that happened here.
She could fix it... If she wanted.
It would be slow going but Ostara could fix the ruins of the Vaelmaereon Keep, give herself a place to work and train and escape should she need to. All she'd need is her wand and time.
Besides, it would give her something productive to do as opposed to sitting around and destroying things.
Pursing her lips Ostara glances around the training yard, fingers drifting to her pocket where her wand rests, and asks herself whether or not it's a good idea. She'd need to explore the rest of the keep to ensure no protective measures would be set off due to Ostara's magic. It's a good plan, something that will distract her from her anger but keep her active so as not to become boring.
Ostara turns on her heel and moves to there Rubeus is spread out across the ground next to the door.
"Come on, we're going to look around." She tells the amber eyed feline, to which he yawns and rises to follow her out the door into the corridor which attaches the training yard to the rest of the keep.
Pressed against her thigh Rubeus is a reassuring presence, always there, never straying. Ostara reaches out to lace her fingers through his fur and take comfort in the fact that no matter what her familiar will be there to protect her from the worst of whatever they might find.
And what they find is dust, bones, and relics.
Ostara is especially bothered by the bodies littered around the keep.
Some of them she thinks she could recognize had they not been stripped of their skin, others she doesn't recognize at all. It doesn't matter. A good portion of the bodies she finds are slaves. It's the collars around their throats or the chains around their ankles that give their status away. She removes the shackles and collars, kneeling in the ash to vanish the Valyrian steel keeping them hostage.
It is... It is the least Ostara can do for them.
But even then her anger, her hatred, toward the men and women who did this to these people does not fade. It grows, like a wild festering thing and Ostara decides that no matter how long it takes, no matter what she has to do to achieve it, slavery will be abolished in this world. This time it won't be with knitted hats and S.P.E.W pins. It'll be with fire and magic and the resulting storm she will bring.
Because these people did not deserve the hand they'd been dealt in life.
They didn't deserve a damn bit of it.
Something moves in the corner of her vision and Ostara whips around, wand raised, a spell leaving her lips, and she barely has time to wince as the ball of silvery white light sifts through the darkness of the being stand behind her.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Ostara yells, heart stamping a crescendo against her sternum.
Phil merely stares at her form beneath his hood before disappearing into shadow and mist, he reappears at the end of the hall with his hand outstretched and pointing at a door.
Ostara stomps over to where he's standing, Rubeus at her side, and stops at the door to glare at the being.
"I don't really appreciate you just popping up whenever you want and just expecting me to go along with your plans," Ostara bites out. "I've got plans of my own and if you think I'm just going to drop everything for you then you've obviously got the wrong impression of me."
Instead of replying Phil merely stands and continues to point at the door.
"Are you giving me the silent treatment? Seriously? You are not five." Ostara snaps, but she's already moving to rip the door open.
The fact that nothing flies out to smack into the being standing in front of the door is a disappointment to say the least. Ostara would have liked to see that... Even if it didn't do anything. It still would have been funny to watch.
Ostara peaks around the door to stare into the darkness, barely able to make out the impression of stairs leading down into what must be the lower levels of the keep. Something aches in her, a deep yearning for whatever's hidden in the darkness. The strange thing is, it's not a feeling coming from Ostara personally. It's something older, something like an imprint of a forgotten memory.
It's Renaehra's longing, her yearning, her desperation.
Not Ostara's.
"What's down there?" Ostara asks, horrified by the slight quiver in her voice.
She tells herself she has the right to be upset after the morning she's had and it helps her feel a little better about herself. Especially when Phil's silence grows to fill the space around them and Ostara's sure she can hear her heart beat, beat, beating in her chest.
Thankfully, it's Rubeus that makes the decision of whether or not to begin the trek down into the darkness. He presses passed her, quickly disappearing into the darkness, and Ostara pulls her wand out to light her way as she chases after him, careful of the loose steps that would have killed her had she not thought to light her wand.
Around her the air smells like mold and rotting meat, a cloying stench that makes Ostara gag as she continues down into the darkness.
Down and down and down until she begins to wonder how long she's been following after Rubues.
The shadowcat doesn't seem terribly worried which is a relief. It means nothing's lingering in the dark to attack or hurt them. Nothing's waiting to kill them. It's a relief in and of itself, Ostara's nerves are shot as it is, the last thing she needs is to extinguish her light to fight off invisible assailants.
Suddenly there's nothing but air beneath her feet and Ostara shrieks as she pitches forward, stumbling across flat ground and running shoulder first into something that clangs and shutters beneath her. Ostara pulls away and moves her wand up to see what she's just run into and finds herself standing before a set of intricately carved, circular iron door similar to that of a vault.
On either side of the door are the skeletons of four men who'd been instructed to guard the door at the cost of their lives. A task it would seem their took quite literally. None of them wear the collars or chains of a slave though so Ostara has to assume they were soldiers loyal to the Vaelmaereon house.
Ostara eyes the dead men as she extinguishes her wand and points it at the door.
"Alohomora."
A low, almost mechanical whirl fills the air and Ostara jumps back just in time to avoid getting smacked by the door as it pops open. Ostara steps off the the side before magicking the door open completely to ensure she doesn't get killed by any possible booby traps set up to kill unwanted visitors.
Nothing happens.
Ostara feels mildly silly when she steps out of her hiding place to meet Rubeus stare. He seems mildly disappointed in her. Ostara kind of understands why. But instead of bothering with embarrassment Ostara steps closer to the inky black hole left by the now open vault door, clears her throat, and steps into the shadows.
Whatever magic the Vaelmaereons set up must have been exceptionally powerful because the golden light that floods the room was not produced by Ostara's magic. Not that Ostara's worried about that at the moment. No, her attention is focused on the piles of gold and jewels and trunks filling the room. Stepping further into the treasury, further into the sea of gold and precious gems, Ostara wonders why he would urge her to come here.
"... I guess it's finders keepers." Ostara mutters more to herself then anything but Rubeus pads off anyway, in search of rodents or something else Ostara isn't sure she wants to know.
Ostara herself begins making her way toward the side where a small chest of necklaces had been left open on a display table.
Stop, a feminine voice rings through her head, not those.
Frowning, Ostara glances around the room.
What else would she be here for if nor jewelry or coin or the occasional weapon? Some of the other chests might hold something of more value but Ostara doubts it would be anything so important that she'd hallucinate Renaehra's voice.
Unless...
Ostara isn't aware that she's moving until she's halfway to the far end of the treasury but by that point there's no point in stopping so Ostara allows whatever muscle memory is controlling her actions to guide her to the back of the room where she stops before a simple looking trunk laid out on a raised platform.
Open it, the voice from early practically roars, open it now.
"Why?" Ostara asks, fingers trailing over the lid, "What's in there?"
But there is no reply, no answering thought, not even an image to tell Ostara what's hidden in the chest.
Swearing, Ostara unlocks the trunk with a quick spell and pulls the lid up to reveal the contents of the oh so important chest. Almost immediately after her blood turns to ice water in her veins. Because resting on a bed of white sand are ten dragon eggs, each of which is paired off with a twin and tucked safely against one another against the sand and the smooth wood of the chest.
With trembling hands Ostara reaches out to brush her knuckle over on of the eggs, a pretty metallic grey thing notably larger then the others, and bites her lips when her skin is met with warm scales as opposed to fossilized stone.
"No," Ostara says as she slams the lid shut and turns on her heel. "No, we're not doing this."
By the time she's made her way back to the entrance of the treasury Rubeus is waiting for her and so is Phil, they both watch her dispassionately as Ostara practically sprints to the stairs. She leaves the door wide open, leaves the dragon eggs unprotected and exposed along with everything else in that room, but no one's coming to claim them anytime soon and Ostara's not going to fall prey to whatever game Phil is playing.
~X~
Pacing around her chamber like a caged animal Ostara thinks about everything that happened today.
She's still mad at her parents and that's not going to change anytime soon (because a whipping boy) but she can admit that when compared to everything else that's happened in the subsequent four plus hours is a lot more worrisome then how she's going to get her parents to give up on the idea of using a whipping boy. Because there is a chest full of dragon eggs in the Vaelmaereon treasury and how the fuck did that happen?
Obviously they hadn't been put there by any of the Vaelmaereons as none of them would ever dare to put their dragon eggs anywhere like a treasury vault but also because those eggs aren't... They aren't like a typical dragon egg.
Not any that can be found in this world anyway.
She'd recognized them easily enough, Hermione had done quite a bit of research during Harry's first task in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and she'd become rather familiar with dragons, or as familiar as a person can get when they've no hands-on training.
There are five different dragons resting in that chest in the Vaelmaereon treasury, and seeing as they've been paired off Ostara would bet good money on the eggs being a male and a female respectively. Which brings up the question; Why would Phil bring the dragon eggs to this world? Why would he want her to find them?
None of it makes any sense and Ostara hates not knowing.
"This," Ostara tells her familiar, "would be so much easier if you could talk."
The shadowcat stares at her before turning his attention back to the flank he'd been grooming before Ostara interrupted him.
Sighing, Ostara makes her way over to the journals spread out on her bed and resumes the task of flipping through them in search of something, anything, pertaining to dragons. There's not much. Most of Renaehra's writing involved spells and potions, not step-by-step instructions on how to raise your death-by-fire babies. Everything Renaehra would have known about training dragons likely would have been passed down orally.
And there's another thing! Ostara's so worried about raising dragons and keeping them safe that she almost doesn't realize that she's fallen right into his trap.
Whatever reason he would bring dragons from Hermione's world and deposit them in this one is beyond her and Ostara doesn't know how to feel about it if she's being completely honest.
Dragons are dangerous, incredibly so, and while Ostara might be able to raise them that doesn't take away the fact that not only would she be putting herself at risk (her family at risk too) but the entirety of the world. If Ostara can't control those dragons then at some point someone is going to get hurt.
But, a voice that isn't quite hers soothes, you will have your memories.
Ostara scoffs.
Right, memories. Fucking load of good memories have done Ostara.
Shaking the viciousness of the thought from her head Ostara moves to lay across her bed. It'll be best for her to plan her next moves very, very carefully but she can't do that on less then three hours of sleep. So it's with a groan that Ostara rolls over to face the window, curls around her pillow, and falls into a fitful rest full of dreams of dragons and flame and a girl with laughing red-purple eyes.