Dany leaned low over Drogon's long neck, feeling the wind whip her face as they raced in the direction of the golden arrow. A faint light could just be seen ahead, which Dany assumed to be the crashing Airbus. It was hurtling towards the ground at an almost impossible speed, the Dragon Queen felt her heart racing as she silently prayed they would make it in time.
Despite the urgency of the situation, a part of Dany's mind still found time to go over all the many, complex feelings she held towards her sad old knight. No one else could fill her with such confidence, such surety - she trusted Ser Jorah's advice above almost all other people - but at the same time, no one was so frustrating, so infuriating, so... Jorah!
"I'll rescue him." She told Drogon. "Then I'll kill him myself."
It had been over two years since Daenerys had banished Jorah from her sight upon pain of death after he had installed that hidden camera in her personal privy. He'd claimed that it was a security measure to protect against ingress by the faceless men, but a quick search of his laptop had revealed lurid mkv video files with such titles as '154: D takes a dump' and '748: Piss and a fart'.
Being somewhat of a deviant herself, Dany could have perhaps forgiven Ser Jorah for this, but when his website was uncovered by Greyworm and the whole truth came out, Dany had had to act swiftly. It turned out that Ser Jorah had been running hundreds of voyeur cams, which he'd hidden all over the great pyramid of Meereen; he had specialist sites for people with every kind of fetish imaginable, from eunuch porn, to disabled scat fetishes and everything in between. Greyworm had been incensed at the treachery and had gone looking for Mormont with the intention of running him through with a spear, but once he found out how many fans he had all over the world, he'd been absolutely delighted and agreed to let Jorah cut him in as a partner.
That was another reason Dany was upset with him; she'd lost her best, most capable warrior because of Ser Jorah's dishonesty. Greyworm was now a Youtube star; he made millions streaming himself playing MMOs and he had sponsorship deals from everyone from the Wise Masters of Yunkai, to Red Bull (which he had become addicted to, even though it gave him arrhythmias.)
Another reason Dany had to suspect Mormont of foul play was the platinum white wig she had found hidden under Missandei's mattress. It was tattered and unkempt, and bore a style that Daenerys herself had worn some months back. At first Dany had been flattered by the imitation, but when she questioned Missandei about the wig she had clammed up tight and refused to speak. The poor girl had looked terrified; all Daenerys could get out of her was that 'it was a game' and 'she wasn't supposed to tell, or the people she cared about would get hurt'.
Dany had sent Missandei to the maester for a full examination, and sure enough, she was brutally ruptured inside, and bore the telltale scars of repeated, forced entry. She had succumbed soon-after to a sudden infection which, coincidentally, had begun the day after Mormont had taken her out for a 'birthday treat' to McDonalds. Dany suspected that all was not quite as it seemed with the devastating virus; indeed she could not prove anything, but poison had been foremost on her mind. Missandei of Naath had died after a brief, agonising illness which lasted for three tortuous days and nights, in which her muscles spasmed so violently she broke her back and bit out her own tongue. They buried her in a quiet, secluded garden surrounded by flowers and delicate fruit trees. She was only ten years old.
The orange glow grew larger in the middle-distance.
"Onwards Drogon my love, with all speed!" She said, as much to herself as to the racing dragon.
Just then, the golden arrow disappeared and the name 'Hermione' flashed up on the screen of her iphone. Dany agonised for a couple of seconds, then answered the call.
"Hermione?"
"Daenerys-" The girl began breathlessly.
"Is everything OK?" Dany asked worriedly.
"OK?" Hermione laughed, a mad, shrill sound. "Better than OK, I should think. I'm having the time of my life!"
Daenerys frowned. "You sound... different, somehow. Do you feel OK? You're not lightheaded, confused at all-"
Hermione let out a childish snort of mild exasperation. "I'm fine" she stressed. "It's just- well look don't judge me-" She added quickly. "We've been drinking champagne and I feel a little giddy. But oh! Daenerys, he's such a gentleman! He's so noble... so brave! Have you ever noticed how his shiny pate just seems to gleam, like a-"
"Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?" Dany asked, narrowing her eyes.
"I'm not a little girl!" Hermione shot back, a little crossly.
Dany rolled her eyes.
"I heard that!" Hermione said accusingly.
"Hermione-" Daenerys began. "It's just that, he's the Dark Lord and you're a brilliant young feminist with-"
"Oh, I'm done with all that!" Hermione interjected, laughing scornfully. "McGonagall was right, it's a cult, a cult of victimisation. I'm a strong, independent woman-"
"Which is why you're allowing yourself to be treated like some sort of prize, rather than a rational, intelligent individual." Dany cut across, feeling the heat of her Targaryen anger rising to the surface.
"I thought you agreed with McGonagall?" Hermione sounded exasperated and perplexed.
Dany sighed, it was easy to forget how young the girl still was. "I do agree with her," she explained as patiently as she could. "But I don't think she'd advise throwing away your agency to someone who puts you on a pedestal - which is never healthy - and simultaneously treats you like an inferior when it comes to things like your own independence-"
"Everyone is inferior to the Dark Lord." Hermione's voice was high, and cold. "You think I don't know what I'm doing; you think I'm just a silly little girl. Well I know more than you, I know more than McGonagall, Bombadil, or any of the rest of them!" She was almost shouting now, close to tears. "I know he's not perfect, but I can change him! I've seen the good in him, I've touched his soul!"
Dany couldn't quite mask her snort of contempt. There was a click, then the line went dead. Dany was too worked-up to feel particularly guilty, although she knew it would come given time to calm down. She had a strong suspicion that Hermione would not feel the same; the girl was too far gone and it would end in tears - if she was lucky.
Suddenly she felt savage heat on her face and heard a agonised screeching sound. She looked up; the aeroplane was nearly upon them!
Drogon drew level with the plummeting Airbus as Dany scanned the windows frantically for any sign of Jorah. Suddenly she spotted a face smushed up against the window, so flattened by the plexiglass it was nearly unrecognisable - nearly but not quite - it was her bear. She gave him a quick thumbs up as her mind worked frantically on how to solve the problem of the crashing jet. She could maybe use Drogon's head to ram the window? But no, that was too risky, for Mormont and for Drogon. There was no way of towing the plane, it was just too big; and besides she'd lent her towing cables to Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who had never returned them.
A terrifying sight loomed up in front of them, it was a tower of some sort and they were heading right for it. She looked once more at Jorah and saw a single tear roll down his cheek. He gave her a little nod, which Dany took to signfy that he was ready to die, that he understood she had tried her best. Just then, another face came into view; it was a young girl, around twelve years old with red-rimmed eyes and bleached, platinum-blonde hair. Jorah looked at Dany, then to the girl; he extended one hairy arm and forced the girl out of sight.
Daenerys wheeled Drogon around in a tight circle so that they kept pace with the Airbus, but were now slightly behind it. The tower - Gryffindor tower she could see now - grew ever larger in their direct line of travel.
'Jacob is in there!' She thought desperately.
Not knowing what else to do, Dany got Drogon to dip slightly and cried with all her might; "DRACARYS!"
A fierce jet of scorching dragon-fire lit up the underside of the plane, warping the metal before her very eyes, despite not making direct contact. The shrieking metal protested, hurting Dany's ears but she screamed again; "DRACARYS! DRACARYS! DRACARYS!"
The plane began to stabilise, and then... yes it was beginning to lift! The superheated air had become buoyant, beyond all of Dany's wildest hopes and expectations. The Airbus swept over the pointed turret, screaming in protest where the pointed apex dug into the laser-welded aluminium alloys of the lower-fuselage. Dany breathed a huge sigh of relief, she saw Jorah through the small square window, seemingly struggling with something below and to his left. He gave her a thumbs-up signal with his right hand and Dany felt all the residual anger melting away; seeing him felt wonderful.
She spent the next few minutes controlling the plane's descent with decreasing bursts of searing dragon-fire until it bumped to the ground, almost gently. A raucous clapping went up inside the fuselage, where relieved passengers who a moment before had been preparing to meet their makers, basked in the cloying sense of an impossible reprieve. The door flew open and an escape chute noisily inflated beneath.
Jorah was carried out on the passengers' shoulders. He was clapping his hands above his head and crying: "Yes it was me, I did it! It was all me! Thank you- thank you all!" He was stuffing flyers for his fetish sites in their pockets as they hoisted him.
Dany frowned, but let it pass.
When all the passengers were safe on the ground, she approached Jorah apprehensively.
"Khaleesi..." He said in his inimitable way, as he saw her threading a path through his admirers. He was handing out autographs and accepting small monetary donations of thanks from the grateful passengers. He bullied the people who didn't have cash into scanning a QR code on his Galaxy S6 and paying him electronically.
"Ser Jorah." Daenerys' face was stern.
"I wasn't sure you'd come..." Jorah said, sadly. "I thought..." He let it hang.
"No one gets to kill you but me." Dany told him, tight lipped. She stared at him a moment, the broke into a grin. "I've missed you Mormont."
"I've missed you too; Khaleesi." Jorah replied.
Just then, Olechka wove her way through the throng and came to stand besides the reuniting pair. Sometime between the conversation with Dr Beckett and the rescue, she had gotten herself a black eye, about the size of a man's fist. Dany recognised her as being the face at the window next to Mormont, whom he had quickly tried to hide from view. She took in the girl's violet eyes, her silver hair - badly dyed - the way she was looking up at Ser Jorah expectantly. Queen Daenerys frowned her displeasure.
"And who is this?"
Jorah looked at the girl casually, then back to Dany. "Never seen her before in my life." He shrugged. "Some waif, or other." He flashed Lecha a warning look and balled a fist. She looked at him with terrified eyes and said nothing.
"Do you know this man?" Dany asked the girl, with as much gentleness and kindness as she could muster.
The girl shook her head fiercely, refusing to even look at Mormont.
"Go on then, run along." Ser Jorah told the child, who finally looked at him, with hurt and bewlidered eyes. She was shivering badly in the cold mountain air, wearing nothing but a slip of thin fabric, very like to one of Dany's dresses in Meereen. "What's the matter, are you deaf?" Mormont barked suddenly; and the girl ran off into the night, looking back over her shoulder just once, with wild, questioning eyes.
Dany and Jorah spent the next ten minutes catching up on each other's news. Jorah was disappointed, but not surprised to learn that Daenerys was still locked in a loveless marriage with Jacob; likewise the Dragon Queen was fondly exasperated to hear Mormont's explanation as to why he'd been flying around the country in the first place.
"So you want to get back to Bear Island?" She asked him, with narrowed eyes and a slightly jutting bottom lip. "Why not just-"
"There's no airport on Bear Island and I'm banned from the hovercraft." Jorah interjected, cutting off the half-formed question.
Dany chuckled. "Should I even ask?"
"It was a total misunderstanding, my Queen-" Jorah protested, reddening slightly. "That girl- she fell out of her wheelchair! I was- I was helping her back in!"
Dany frowned.
Jorah tugged at his collar and began to sweat. "Can I help it if somehow my trousers ended up around my ankles? She was thrashing like a wild thing! You wouldn't believe a six-year-old could possess such great strength- And those lungs on her! I only settled out of court to spare any embarrassment to the family name, I swear Khaleesi!"
Something in the back of Dany's mind told her that Jorah wasn't telling the whole truth, but she subconsciously chose to ignore it. She was too happy to have her old advisor back to risk ruining things with awkward questions.
"But how did you think flying around-"
"I got the idea from Lost." Jorah cut in once more. "I thought; if it's good enough for John Locke-"
Dany laughed properly this time, right from the belly. "You and John Locke!" She chuckled, tears of fondness welling in her eyes. "You know, it was Jack who gathered everyone onto the plane to get back to the Island-"
"Don't talk to me about Jack!" Mormont shouted fiercely, a mad gleam in his eyes. "He never understood the Island- he never believed in it, not like Locke! Gods, even Ben had a better grip on the Island than 'Dr Shephard'-" He made inverted commas as he said the surgeon's name. "He was never worthy of being leader, it should have been John!"
"No need to shout at me." Dany raised her hands in a mock defensive posture. "You know I'm team Hurley all the way."
Jorah snorted disgustedly. "Well you got your wish, didn't you?" He spat on the ground. "And what did Locke get? Murdered then possessed and reanimated by the Man in Black! There's no justice in this world Khaleesi." He ranted on, bitterly.
Daenerys smiled to herself. Jorah was such an old fusspot, he had never properly understood the separation between fictional television drama and reality. Indeed when Dany had sat him down one day as he wept and struck himself inconsolably over the death of John Locke and tried to explain the nuance, his take-away had been that Locke was some sort of reality tv star, which only served to heighten his distress. He stubbornly refused however, to believe that the Kardashians could be real. Dany envied him that.
"Let's go to Hogwarts, put on our pyjamas and watch the Golden Child!" Dany said, excitedly. "It'll be just like old times, back in the tent on the Dothraki Sea, remember?"
Jorah's eyes welled with tears. "Khaleesi," he said. "It would be my honour."
Just as they were turning to leave, Dr Beckett hurried up to them, shaking with barely contained excitement. "Excuse me, miss?" He hovered around Dany, trying to hold her attention.
"My name is Queen Daenerys Stormborn, of the House Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains and Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea." She told the man. "But you may call me 'Your Highness', or 'Your Grace' if you wish."
Dr Beckett took Dany in with a wry smile, noting her violet eyes and platinum-blonde hair and smiling at Mormont, knowingly.
"Er, Khaleesi!" Mormont interceded, a little too hurriedly. "Allow me to introduce Dr Samuel Beckett- a good man Khaleesi, very good man."
Dr Beckett held out his hand. "It's an honour to meet you, Your Grace. And almost as great an honour to be in the presence of a magnificent creature such as this."
Jorah swelled up with pride for a moment, before realising that Becket's last comment was directed towards Drogon, who was eyeing the milling survivors hungrily.
"Pray, Ser Beckett, speak swiftly." Dany told the man. "We have a pressing engagement, and the night is dark and full of... kerosene?" She ended, sniffing the air.
"Then I'll make this quick." Sam assured her. "It's just, I've always- since I was a little boy I mean, back on the dairy farm in Elk Ridge, Indiana-"
Dany huffed and made a winding motion with her forefinger to indicate that he should skip to the point.
"Well I want to create a device that will provide cheap, almost unlimited, clean energy to mankind." He went on. "I even have the blueprints for just such a machine stored on my laptop, but modern technology just isn't advanced enough and all my attempts have ended in failure."
"And what does this have to do with me?" Dany asked, feeling more annoyed by the second.
"Everything!" Beckett cried. "Oh my Queen, if you only knew! You see I want to generate energy using a process known as fusion- nuclear fusion that is. In a similar way to how our very own sun takes four hydrogen atoms - the most basic element in the universe - and fuses the nuclei to make a single helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy in the process-" He paused to gasp in air, having almost forgotten to breathe in his excitement. "And, well- If we can harness these principles in the laboratory - that is to say, heat and stabilise a self-sustaining plasma-"
Jorah nodded along, looking like he was on the brink of a astonishing revelation. "You could... you could... Seven above! You could digitally store and playback music in a compressed, lossy format." He exclaimed at last, with wonder in his eyes.
Dany and Sam looked at him with pity.
"That's digital audio." Daenerys shook her head.
Mormont shrugged and looked from face-to-face, questioningly.
"MP3, AAC, AC3, DTS, FLAC?" Dany listed the formats off the top of her head.
"Actually-" Sam began. "FLAC and DTS are both lossless- well technically DTS is lossless/lossy, depending on your decoding equipment-"
Daenerys flashed him a cool look. "The point is Ser Jorah, that isn't what Dr Beckett is talking about."
"What I'm talking about," Beckett continued. "Is a reaction that is self-sustaining, uses some of the most common fuel in the universe and will give out almost unlimited, clean energy to usher humankind into a new dawn; and I only need to generate enough targeted heat to begin the reaction!"
Dany smiled as she finally understood. "You need my dragon." She said, simply. "You want me to lend you my child."
Dr Becked simply nodded and looked at her with wide, excited eyes.
"A DRAGON IS NOT A SLAVE!" Screamed Dany, becoming suddenly furious. "And Ser Jorah-" She bellowed. "Isn't this the man you told me put mascara on dogs?"
Jorah puffed up his chest and turned on Dr Beckett, ready to defend his Queen.
Sam put a hand over his mouth and coughed lightly, "Olechka." He coughed. "Olechka."
Mormont backed down immediately, indeed he seemed terrified. "Um, Khaleesi-" He floundered. "I, er- That is to say... I- I believe Dr Beckett to be a fine and honourable gentleman and I- I beg you to consider his petition, which after all could be to the huge benefit of all mankind."
Dany felt herself calming upon Jorah's words, and turned to Dr Beckett thoughtfully. "Add me on Snapchat, DragonQueen69- No sniggering!" She interrupted herself to scold Jorah. "You shall have my answer within the week, Maester Beckett."
Sam bowed low, winking at Jorah when Dany looked away. "My Queen." He said, then took his leave.
"So!" Mormont said with forced cheeriness. "Golden Child and a mug of hot coco?" He extended his arm towards Daenerys.
Dany accepted the proffered arm and felt a warm glow to be back in cahoots with her old companion. "Did you ever find out how Tywin Lannister ended up in that film?" She asked, half-frowning and half-grinning.
"It was a special favour to Eddie Murphy, I think." Jorah answered, as they skipped towards Hogwarts castle. "Turns out Murphy provided some key intelligence that was instrumental in quelling the fomenting Reyne rebellion, before it could gather critical mass. Tywin never forgot his service to the Lannister cause, and so when Michael Ritchie desperately needed just-the-right-kind of loquacious badass to play Sardo Numspa in the new movie he was directing, Murphy's thoughts naturally turned to Tywin."
"And the rest as they say, is history." Dany beamed at Ser Jorah, who flashed back a wide grin of his own.
Just then Dany's phone rang for what seemed like the millionth time that day. She flashed it out of her bodice, then tried to hide the screen from Mormont when she saw who was calling.
"Yes?" She answered curtly. "Mhmm." She nodded. "Ok." Her face fell. "Gods, no! Yes, right away." She said, then hung up.
"Who was that?" Asked Jorah suspiciously.
"It was- it was Jacob." Dany Answered uncomfortably. "He was calling about Hermione. She's... she's gotten engaged to Voldemort!"
