The Red Keep slumbered in the deep hours before dawn, its massive walls holding the warmth of the day's sun like a mother's embrace. In the highest tower, where the royal family kept their most private quarters, Princess Gael Targaryen lay dreaming in a bed carved from Myrish cherry wood, her silver-gold hair spread across silk pillows like spun moonlight.
But her dreams were not peaceful.
She was eleven years old again, but not the eleven she remembered. This eleven-year-old had bushy brown hair that never quite lay flat no matter how much she tried to tame it, front teeth too large for her small face, and amber eyes bright with an insatiable hunger for knowledge that seemed to burn from within. Her name was... was...
"Hermione," she whispered in her sleep, the word foreign on her tongue yet somehow more familiar than her own heartbeat. "Hermione Jean Granger."
In the dream—though it felt far too real to be merely a dream—she was raising her hand in a classroom filled with floating candles and moving portraits, eager to answer questions about transfiguration theory while other children rolled their eyes and muttered about know-it-alls. She was brewing potions in a dungeon laboratory, following recipes with the mathematical precision of a septon copying scripture, her small hands steady as she added ingredients at precise intervals.
*Wingardium Leviosa.* The incantation echoed in her sleeping mind, along with the memory of wand movement—the precise flick and swish that made magic flow like water through willing channels. She remembered the rush of triumph when the feather finally rose, Professor Flitwick's delighted applause, Ron Weasley's grudging admiration.
But there were warmer memories too—moments that made her sleeping form smile despite the tears that had begun to track down her cheeks. A boy with impossibly messy black hair that stuck up at odd angles, emerald eyes bright with mischief and kindness in equal measure, sitting beside her in the library late at night, their hands intertwined as they studied together.
Harry. Her Harry.
She remembered the way he'd look at her when he thought she wasn't watching—as if she were the most precious thing in all the worlds, more valuable than the Philosopher's Stone or any treasure in Gringotts. The way he'd absently play with her fingers when they were studying, tracing patterns on her palm that made her shiver with delight. The way he'd kiss her forehead when she was stressed about exams, whispering that she was brilliant and wonderful and that he loved her more than magic itself.
"You know," he'd told her once, his voice soft with wonder as they sat by the fire in the common room, "I used to think magic was about spells and potions and all the things they teach us in class. But then I met you, and I realized that the real magic is having someone who understands you completely, who sees all your flaws and loves you anyway."
The memory of their first kiss bloomed in her sleeping mind—tentative, sweet, perfect in its imperfection. They'd been fifteen, supposedly studying for their O.W.L.S in an empty classroom, and she'd looked up from her Arithmancy notes to find him staring at her with such tenderness that her breath caught in her throat.
"What?" she'd asked, suddenly self-conscious about her hair or her ink-stained fingers or the way she'd been muttering formulas under her breath.
He'd simply leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, soft as butterfly wings, gentle as morning rain. "I love you," he'd whispered against her mouth when they broke apart. "I've loved you for years, Hermione. You're everything to me. You're my best friend, my anchor, my reason for fighting this war. You're my future."
And she'd kissed him back with all the passion her bookish heart could hold, knowing that whatever came next—war, death, the end of the world itself—they would face it together, hand in hand, heart to heart.
But dreams, like tides, have their own cruel currents.
The scene shifted with the logic of nightmares, and she was older—seventeen still, but standing in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, that monument to old money and older cruelties. The walls were decorated with artifacts that whispered of dark magic, portraits whose eyes followed movement with malevolent interest, and on the ceiling, something that had once been Charity Burbage moved with serpentine grace, her eyes reflecting madness and hunger in equal measure.
Harry wasn't with her. Harry was somewhere else, somewhere hopefully safe, and that was the only comfort she could cling to as Bellatrix Lestrange stepped forward with predatory grace, her dark eyes alight with the kind of enthusiasm most people reserved for their favorite pastimes.
Bellatrix was beautiful in the way poisonous flowers are beautiful—deadly, seductive, wrong in ways that made the soul recoil. Her dark hair fell in wild curls around a face that belonged in paintings of fallen angels, and her smile held all the warmth of winter's heart, all the mercy of a blade's edge.
"Well, well," Bellatrix purred, her voice cultured silk wrapped around sharpened steel, the accent of old pure-blood families who considered themselves royalty by right of blood. "What have we here? A little Mudblood who thinks she can play with the big girls? How absolutely precious."
She circled Hermione like a cat toying with a wounded bird, her movements liquid with predatory grace. "Tell me, darling, does your precious Potter know where you are right now? Does he know that his little pet has gone wandering into dangerous places without her leash?"
"He's not my master," Hermione said through gritted teeth, though her voice trembled despite her efforts to sound brave. "And I'm not anyone's pet."
"Oh, but you are, sweet thing. You're his pet Mudblood, his little charity case, his way of proving how progressive and accepting he is. Did you really think someone like Harry Potter could ever truly love something like you?"
The pain began then—not physical at first, but something deeper, more fundamental. The Cruciatus Curse tore through her nervous system like liquid fire, making every nerve ending scream in perfect, crystalline agony. She tried not to cry out, tried to hold onto dignity even as her body convulsed against her will.
*For Harry,* she thought desperately as her muscles locked in spasms that felt like they might tear her apart from the inside. *Hold on for Harry. Don't give them what they want. Protect him, protect the mission, protect everything we've fought for.*
"Where is it?" Bellatrix demanded, her wand steady in her pale hand, dark eyes bright with the kind of enthusiasm that spoke of years spent perfecting her craft. "Where is the sword? Where did you get it? Did you take it from my vault, you filthy little thief?"
"I don't know!" The words tore from her throat, raw and desperate, though she knew even as she said them that the truth wouldn't matter here. "I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Liar," Bellatrix whispered, leaning close enough that her breath was warm against Hermione's ear, close enough that she could smell the expensive perfume that couldn't quite mask the underlying scent of madness and violence. "You're lying to me, little girl. And I *hate* liars almost as much as I hate blood traitors and Mudbloods who forget their place."
The curse hit again, stronger this time, and she heard herself screaming—a sound that seemed to come from someone else's throat, someone else's lungs. Through the haze of agony, she thought of Harry's eyes, his crooked smile, the way he'd promised they'd have a future together after the war was over.
"We'll have a house," he'd told her one night as they lay together in his narrow bed at Grimmauld Place, her head on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. "Somewhere quiet, where no one knows our names or cares about scars or famous defeats. We'll have a garden where you can grow herbs for your potions, and a library where you can read to your heart's content."
"Children?" she'd asked softly, hardly daring to voice the hope that had been growing in her heart.
"If you want them," he'd replied, his arms tightening around her. "Little ones with your brains and your courage. Though I hope they get your hair instead of mine—the world doesn't need more people walking around looking like they've been struck by lightning."
She'd laughed then, pressing a kiss to his chest. "I love your hair. It's so distinctly you."
"The knife," Bellatrix said conversationally, drawing Hermione back to the present horror with brutal efficiency. The blade appeared in her hand as if by magic—not magical, but honest steel, sharp enough to part flesh like silk. "I find that physical persuasion often succeeds where the Cruciatus fails. Something about the permanence of scars, the way they serve as lasting reminders of one's mistakes."
She traced the point of the knife along Hermione's cheek with the delicate touch of an artist preparing her canvas. "Tell me, little Mudblood, how much of your pretty face are you willing to lose to protect whatever pathetic secrets you think you're keeping?"
"I don't know about any sword," Hermione gasped, blood and tears mingling on her cheeks. "Please, I'm telling you the truth—"
"Truth?" Bellatrix laughed, the sound like breaking glass, like children crying, like hope dying in darkness. "Oh, my dear, sweet, stupid little girl. The truth is that you're nothing. Less than nothing. You're mud in human form, an accident of genetics that should never have been allowed to touch magic, let alone wield it."
The knife moved with surgical precision, carving letters into her left forearm with the methodical care of a scholar illuminating a manuscript. Each cut was a burning brand that would never fully heal, blood running warm down her skin to pool on the marble floor in shapes that looked almost like ancient runes.
*MUDBLOOD.* The word burned into her flesh, burned into her mind, burned into her soul with all the hatred that pure-blood fanatics could pour into a single syllable.
"There," Bellatrix said with satisfied pleasure, admiring her handiwork like an artist stepping back from a completed painting. "Now you'll never forget what you really are, will you, darling? Now you'll carry the truth with you for whatever brief time you have left."
"Harry loves me," Hermione whispered through cracked lips, her voice barely audible but filled with absolute conviction. "He loves me for who I am, not what blood runs in my veins. He sees past all your prejudices and hate to the person I really am. That's something you'll never understand, because you've never been loved like that."
Bellatrix's eyes flashed with rage, her beautiful face twisting into something ugly and primal. "Love? *Love?* Stupid little girl, love is a weakness, a vulnerability that gets people killed. Love makes you soft, makes you make foolish choices, makes you—"
She raised her wand, green light already gathering at its tip like captured starfire. "—care more about other people than your own survival. Love is what brought you here, isn't it? Love for your precious Potter, your desperate need to help him in his doomed quest. Well, let me show you what your love is worth."
The final curse came with almost gentle precision—*Avada Kedavra* spoken like a lover's whisper, like a lullaby sung to a sleeping child. Green light filled her vision like the last dawn she would ever see, cold and beautiful and utterly final.
She felt life leaving her body like water draining from a broken cup, felt consciousness fading into darkness that was somehow warm and cold at once. Her last coherent thought wasn't of pain or fear or regret, but of Harry's emerald eyes and his crooked smile, and the way he'd promised to love her until the end of time.
*Until the end of time,* she thought as darkness claimed her, her lips forming the words though no sound emerged. *I'll find you again, my love. Somehow, someday, across whatever barriers death might raise between us, I'll find you.*
---
Princess Gael Targaryen woke screaming.
The sound that tore from her throat was primal, raw, filled with such anguish that it seemed to shake the very foundations of the Red Keep. She thrashed against her silk sheets like a woman possessed, her slender body locked in the phantom memory of curses that had never touched her flesh but somehow felt more real than the carved wooden posts of her bed.
Tears streamed down her face—not the gentle weeping of sadness, but the desperate sobs of someone who had experienced death itself and been forced to return to a world that no longer made sense. Her hands flew to her left arm, fingers frantically tracing skin that should have been scarred with cruel words but remained unmarked, perfect as fresh snow.
"Harry!" she gasped, her voice breaking on the beloved name, the syllables carrying a accent that belonged to no corner of Westeros—something crisp and English that had never touched her tongue before this moment. "Harry, where are you? I have to find you, I have to—"
She stopped suddenly, pressing both hands to her temples as two sets of memories warred in her mind like dragons locked in aerial combat. The careful, measured tones of a Valyrian princess battled against the quick, passionate speech of a Muggle-born witch, creating a discord that made her skull feel like it might split apart.
"No, no, no," she whispered, her voice climbing toward hysteria. "This isn't possible, this can't be happening. I'm Gael Targaryen, I've always been Gael Targaryen, but I'm also—I was also—"
The door to her chamber burst open with such force that it crashed against the stone wall, sending a shower of dust and small chips cascading to the floor. Ser Harrold Westerling burst through like an avenging angel, his sword already half-drawn from its sheath, steel singing as it caught the moonlight streaming through the tall windows.
The grizzled knight's weathered face was set in the kind of grim lines that spoke of decades spent perfecting the art of violence in service of those he loved. His steel-gray eyes swept the chamber with the methodical efficiency of a predator assessing threats, taking in every shadow, every potential hiding place, every angle of attack an enemy might use.
"Seven bloody hells and all their demons," he growled in his thick Highland accent, the words rough as gravel and twice as hard. "Your Grace, where are the bastards? How many of the sons of bitches are there, and which way did they go?"
His sword cleared its sheath completely with a sound like winter wind through bare branches. Despite the silver threading through his dark beard and the lines that mapped forty years of campaigns across his weathered face, he moved like a man half his age—every muscle coiled and ready for the kind of brutal, efficient violence that had made him legend in three different kingdoms.
But the room was empty save for Gael herself, curled in her bed like a wounded bird, her violet eyes wide with terror and confusion that seemed to look right through him to some horror he couldn't see, couldn't fight, couldn't protect her from.
"I'm not—" she started, then stopped, pressing her hands harder against her temples as if trying to hold her very soul together. When she spoke again, her voice carried that strange new accent more strongly, the crisp pronunciation of someone educated in institutions that didn't exist in this world. "I'm not Princess Gael Targaryen. Or I am, but I'm also someone else entirely. Someone who lived and died in a world where magic was hidden from ordinary people, where I learned spells with a wand made of vine wood and dragon heartstring."
She looked up at him with eyes that held far too much knowledge for her sixteen years, too much pain for someone who had lived a life of royal privilege and protection. "Tell me, ser, in all your battles, in all the campaigns you've fought from the Stepstones to the lands beyond the Wall—have you ever died? Really, truly died, felt your soul leave your body, and then woken up in someone else's skin with someone else's memories?"
Harrold stared at her for a long moment, his scarred face unreadable as granite. He'd seen plenty of strange things in his forty years of soldiering—men touched by battle madness who saw enemies that weren't there, nobles driven to hallucinations by poison or fever, even a few who claimed to have been cursed by wood witches or kissed by shadows. But there was something in the girl's manner, something in the way she held herself, that set his professional instincts on edge.
"Right then," he said grimly, sheathing his sword with a decisive motion that spoke of years spent making quick tactical decisions. "That's well above my pay grade, Your Grace. Time to wake the King and Queen before this gets any more complicated than a Dornish succession crisis."
He moved toward the door with purpose, then paused, glancing back at her with something that might have been sympathy on his battle-scarred features. "For what it's worth, lassie, I've seen enough impossible things in my time to know that sometimes the world's stranger than any of us want to believe. But questions of souls and memories and past lives? That's a job for people with more books and fewer scars than old Harrold."
Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside—more than one person, moving with the kind of urgent purpose that came when beloved children cried out in the night. The measured tread of royal feet, the whisper of silk against stone, the distinctive cadence of those who had spent decades walking the halls of power together.
Harrold stepped back to give them room, his hand instinctively returning to rest on his sword hilt—not from any expectation of danger, but from the ingrained habit of a man who had spent his entire adult life ensuring that harm never came within blade's reach of those under his protection.
King Jaehaerys himself appeared in the doorway first, and despite his advanced years, he moved with the fluid grace of a man who had once been considered the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. His silver hair was disheveled from sleep, his nightrobe of midnight-blue silk hastily thrown over his tall, still-lean frame, but his pale eyes were sharp with concern and the kind of commanding presence that had united a fractured realm and ruled it with wisdom for more than fifty years.
There was something almost mystical in the way he carried himself—not the careful steps of an elderly man, but the measured pace of someone who understood that true power came not from the sword or the crown, but from the ability to see past surface appearances to the deeper truths that governed the world. He had been called the Conciliator not just for his political skills, but for his uncanny ability to understand what drove men's hearts and find common ground between the most bitter enemies.
"My dear child," he said, his voice carrying the warm authority of a grandfather who had guided kings and princes through their darkest hours, tinged with the slight accent of Old Valyria that marked the highest nobility. There was music in that voice, the kind of cadence that could calm frightened horses or convince warring lords to lay down their swords. "What has brought such terror to your dreams? Your cries could wake dragons from their slumber."
Behind him came Queen Alysanne, and even in her nightclothes, even with her silver-gold hair loose around her shoulders like a waterfall of starlight, she moved with the kind of ethereal grace that had once made men write songs about her beauty and wisdom in equal measure. But it was her eyes that truly commanded attention—pale violet depths that held the sharp intelligence and steel-wrapped compassion that had made her one of the most formidable queens in the history of the Seven Kingdoms.
She had been called Good Queen Alysanne not just for her charitable works, but for her ability to see past the surface of any problem to its heart, to find solutions that elevated everyone involved rather than simply benefiting one side over another. There was something luminous about her, a quality that suggested she saw the world with greater clarity than ordinary mortals, as if she existed slightly apart from the mundane concerns that occupied lesser minds.
"Gael," she said, settling beside her daughter with the fluid elegance of water finding its level, her voice carrying tones that could have gentled dragons or commanded armies with equal ease. "Sweet girl, what nightmare has gripped you so fiercely? You speak in your sleep of names we do not know, of places that exist in no atlas I have studied."
The imposing figure of Ser Ryam Redwyne filled the doorway behind them, his white cloak flowing like liquid moonlight as he scanned the chamber with eyes that missed nothing. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard carried himself with the kind of quiet menace that came from decades of being the last line of defense between royalty and those who would do them harm.
His weathered face was impassive as granite carved by wind and rain, but his pale eyes held the cold assessment of a professional killer who had spent forty years learning to read danger in the set of a man's shoulders, the tension in a woman's jaw, the way someone held their hands when they were deciding whether to reach for a blade. He had earned his white cloak in the brutal campaigns that had forged the Seven Kingdoms into a single realm, and every line on his face was a testament to choices made in split seconds where hesitation meant death.
"Room's secure," he said in a voice like gravel scraped over steel, each word clipped and precise as a blade thrust. "No signs of entry, no evidence of intruders, no disturbance in the chamber save what the Princess herself has caused. Looks like we're dealing with something that can't be solved with sharp steel and quick reflexes."
His tone carried the faint disappointment of a man who had spent his entire career solving problems through the application of controlled violence, only to be confronted with something that required entirely different tools.
Gael looked between her parents—seeing them, recognizing them with the bone-deep certainty of sixteen years of love and care and shared family moments, but somehow feeling as though she was meeting strangers who happened to wear the faces of people she had loved all her life. The disconnect was so profound it made her stomach lurch like she was falling from a great height.
"I remember everything," she whispered, her voice barely audible but carrying the weight of absolute conviction. "I remember growing up here, remember learning to read with Septon Barth in his tower study, remember the first time Mother took me flying on Silverwing and how the world looked like a map spread out below us."
Her voice grew stronger, more certain, but the accent remained—that crisp English pronunciation that had never touched her tongue before this night. "I remember Father teaching me the histories of our house, the stories of Aegon the Conqueror and Queen Visenya and Princess Rhaenys. I remember the taste of honey cakes from the castle kitchens, the way the salt wind feels when it blows in from Blackwater Bay."
She pressed her palms against her eyes, as if trying to block out visions that refused to be dismissed. "But I also remember another life, another world entirely. I remember being eleven years old with bushy brown hair and teeth too large for my face, walking into a castle called Hogwarts and discovering that magic wasn't just the province of dragons and ancient bloodlines—that it could be learned by anyone with the will and the wit to master it."
"Dreams can be remarkably vivid, my darling," Alysanne said gently, though her voice carried a note of uncertainty that suggested her maternal instincts were detecting something far beyond the scope of ordinary nightmares. Her pale eyes searched her daughter's face with the kind of penetrating intelligence that had once been called the closest thing to magic the Seven Kingdoms had ever seen. "Especially when they touch upon our deepest desires—the longing to be more than we are, to possess abilities beyond those granted by birth."
"This wasn't a bloody dream!" Gael's voice carried a sharp edge that seemed older than her years, tinged with an authority that belonged to someone who had faced death itself and found the courage to fight back. "Mother, I lived an entire life! I remember learning to brew potions that could heal any wound or kill with a single drop, depending on the brewer's intent. I remember casting spells that could mend broken bones or stop a beating heart, magic that worked through will and word rather than blood and flame."
She looked up at them with desperate intensity, her violet eyes bright with unshed tears and absolute conviction. "I remember falling in love with a boy named Harry Potter—black hair that never lay flat, green eyes bright with kindness and courage, a scar on his forehead shaped like lightning that he got when he was barely more than a baby. I remember the way he'd look at me when he thought I wasn't watching, like I was something precious and wonderful."
Her voice broke, but she pressed on with the determination of someone who had learned that the truth was worth any amount of pain. "I remember our first kiss in an empty classroom, the way he'd hold my hand when we studied together in the library, the way he promised we'd have a future together when the war was over. A house with a garden where I could grow herbs, children with his courage and my brains, a life built on love rather than duty or political necessity."
Jaehaerys leaned forward, his ancient eyes thoughtful and filled with the kind of gentle wisdom that had guided a kingdom through some of its most turbulent years. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of accumulated experience and the patient authority of someone who had learned to distinguish truth from falsehood through decades of ruling the most complex kingdom in the known world.
"In the oldest stories," he said slowly, each word carefully chosen, "the tales our ancestors brought from Old Valyria speak of souls that travel between lives like birds migrating between distant lands. The dragonlords believed that great loves, powerful bonds forged in one lifetime, could transcend death itself and draw souls back together across the barriers of time and space."
He paused, studying his daughter's face with the intensity of a man who had spent a lifetime learning to read the deeper currents that moved beneath the surface of human nature. "Most maesters dismiss such tales as the fantasies of grieving hearts, the stories people tell themselves to make the pain of loss more bearable. But there is something in your manner, child, something in the way you speak and hold yourself, that suggests you have indeed experienced things no sixteen-year-old girl should know."
"With respect, Your Grace," Ser Ryam interrupted, his gravelly voice cutting through the family moment with military precision, "perhaps we should summon Grand Maester Runciter. If the Princess is experiencing some form of mental affliction brought on by fever or poison or—"
"I'm not mad!" Gael snapped, her violet eyes flashing with sudden fire that seemed to burn with its own inner light. "I know exactly how this sounds, I know how impossible it seems to rational minds trained in the observable world. But I'm not suffering from some malady of the brain or hallucinations brought on by bad wine or tainted food."
She sat up straighter, and in that moment, she looked every inch a Targaryen princess—proud, fierce, unbreakable in her conviction, touched by the kind of supernatural certainty that had allowed her ancestors to tame dragons and forge an empire from the ashes of Valyria.
"I died," she said simply, her voice carrying the finality of absolute truth. "I died screaming while a madwoman carved the word 'Mudblood' into my arm, died with the Killing Curse burning through my body like green fire, died thinking of the boy I loved more than life itself. And then I woke up here, in this world, in this body, with memories of both lives warring in my mind like opposing armies."
Harrold, who had been standing quietly by the door like a stone gargoyle given life, suddenly straightened to his full imposing height. "Your Grace," he said to the King, his voice carrying the kind of urgency that came when a professional soldier's instincts detected something that mere book-learning couldn't explain, "perhaps the lassie's tale isn't as mad as it sounds to those of us who've spent our lives in dusty halls and comfortable castles."
His scarred face was grave with the kind of certainty that came from forty years of soldiering in the darker corners of the world. "In my travels—and I've ranged from the Stepstones to the lands beyond the Wall, from the Summer Isles to the Shivering Sea—I've heard whispers of stranger things than souls jumping between lives. Magic that can reach across the boundaries of death itself, powers that can reshape reality according to will and desire."
He glanced at Gael with something approaching respect. "There are places in this world where the impossible happens daily, Your Grace. Old powers that predate dragons, ancient magics that make even Valyrian sorcery look like a child's first attempts at candle-lighting. If the Princess says she remembers another life, another death, another love—well, I've seen enough to know that sometimes the world's stranger than any of us want to believe."
Before anyone could respond to the knight's unexpected support, the sound of more footsteps echoed in the corridor—these lighter, quicker, carrying the sense of someone who brought news that couldn't wait for dawn. The distinctive rhythm of a man accustomed to libraries and council chambers rather than training yards, moving with purpose despite the ungodly hour.
A voice called out, carefully respectful but urgent enough to override normal protocol and the sacred privacy of the royal family's private quarters.
"Your Grace! Forgive the intrusion at such an hour, but I must speak with you immediately on a matter of the utmost importance!"
Septon Barth appeared in the doorway, his usually immaculate robes of deep blue and silver slightly disheveled from hasty dressing, his scholarly face tight with a mixture of excitement and concern that seemed to war with his natural composure. The man who served as both spiritual advisor to the royal family and Hand of the King carried himself with the kind of intellectual authority that came from a lifetime spent mastering subjects that lesser minds could barely comprehend.
His pale eyes held the same sharp intelligence that had made him the most trusted counselor in the Seven Kingdoms, but tonight they also carried the kind of scholarly excitement that came when a lifetime of theoretical study suddenly encountered impossible reality walking the earth in physical form.
"Barth," Jaehaerys said, his voice taking on the crisp authority of a king even in his nightclothes, though there was genuine warmth in his tone for the man who had been both friend and counselor for more than two decades. "Your timing is... remarkably coincidental. We were just discussing matters that touch upon the mystical, the realm of possibilities that exist beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience. What brings you here with such urgency?"
"A dragon, Your Grace," Barth said, his words carefully measured but unable to entirely hide his amazement at what he was about to report. His scholar's training demanded precision, but his voice carried the kind of awe usually reserved for discussions of the Seven themselves. "A dragon unlike any recorded in the histories, any described in the chronicles of Old Valyria, has been sighted flying above King's Landing."
The room fell silent, the only sound Gael's sharp intake of breath and the distant murmur of wind through the castle's ancient stones.
"That's impossible," Ser Ryam said flatly, his weathered face skeptical as granite worn by centuries of wind and rain. "Every dragon in the world is accounted for, every last one of them catalogued and tracked. Vermithor and Silverwing rest in the Dragonpit, Vhagar flies with Prince Baelon in Pentos, Caraxes serves Prince Daemon in the Vale, and Cannibal..."
He paused, his professional certainty wavering slightly. "Well, the Cannibal hasn't been seen in months, but he's never been one for regular schedules or predictable behavior. Still, he's black as midnight, not white as..."
"White?" Jaehaerys interrupted, leaning forward with sudden intense interest.
"Pure white, Your Grace," Barth confirmed, his scholar's precision cutting through skepticism like a blade through silk. "Scales that shine like starlight itself, wings broad enough to shadow entire city blocks, larger than Vhagar herself—and that dragon is already considered the largest in the known world."
The Septon's voice took on the kind of reverent wonder usually reserved for miracles witnessed firsthand. "The guards report that it circles the Red Keep in a pattern that suggests not animal instinct, but conscious intelligence, deliberate purpose. It makes no aggressive moves whatsoever, shows no signs of territorial challenge or predatory behavior."
He paused, his scholarly mind clearly struggling with concepts that challenged everything he thought he knew about the natural order. "Most remarkably of all, it seems to be... searching for something. Or someone. It calls out periodically—not the roar of conquest we associate with dragons establishing dominance, not the territorial shriek of a creature marking its hunting grounds."
"Like what, then?" Alysanne asked, her musical voice carrying the kind of focused attention she brought to the most important matters of state.
"Like joy, Your Grace," Barth said, his tone carrying the wonder of a man who had devoted his life to scholarship only to discover that reality was far stranger than any book had prepared him for. "Like recognition. Like a creature that has found something long sought after, something precious beyond measure. The guards describe it as the sound a mother might make when reunited with a lost child, or..."
He hesitated, clearly struggling with the implications of his own words.
"Or what, old friend?" Jaehaerys prompted with the gentle patience of a man accustomed to drawing difficult truths from reluctant witnesses.
"Or the cry of a loyal companion recognizing its beloved master after years of separation," Barth finished quietly.
Gael sat bolt upright in her bed as if struck by lightning, her earlier terror and confusion transformed into something else entirely—recognition, hope, joy so profound it seemed to light her from within like dragonfire made manifest. Her violet eyes went wide with wonder, and when she spoke, her voice carried the kind of absolute certainty that came from the deepest truths of the heart.
"Hedwig," she breathed, the name falling from her lips like a prayer answered, like a miracle made manifest in flesh and scale and starlight.
Every eye in the room turned to her with the focused intensity of scholars examining a particularly fascinating manuscript, questions forming on royal lips and knightly tongues, but she was already moving. She threw back her silk coverlets and rose from her bed with purpose that seemed to burn in her very bones, her movements carrying a grace and certainty that spoke of profound transformation.
"She found me," Gael whispered, tears streaming down her face but her voice filled with wonder. "Somehow, across death and distance and the barriers between worlds, she found me."
"Who found you, child?" Alysanne asked gently, her maternal instincts warring with her practical nature as she watched her daughter move toward the tall windows that looked out over the city below.
"Harry's owl," Gael said, then laughed—a sound caught between hysteria and pure joy. "No, that's not right. She was never just an owl. She was... she was Harry's owl, but she loved me too. Hedwig. She was loyal and fierce and protective, and she died trying to protect us during the war."
She pressed her face against the cool glass of the window, her breath fogging the surface as she stared up at the star-filled sky. "But if she's here, if she's somehow found me across the boundaries of death itself, then maybe... maybe Harry is here too. Maybe we can find each other again."
Before anyone could respond, a sound echoed across King's Landing that silenced all other thoughts—the cry of a dragon in flight, but not the roar of conquest or the shriek of territorial dominance. This was something else entirely, a call of pure joy, of reunion, of love triumphant over death and distance and the cruel tricks of fate itself.
The white dragon descended through the night sky like a falling star, her scales catching the moonlight and reflecting it back in patterns that seemed to spell out words in languages older than memory. She was magnificent beyond description, larger than any dragon in recorded history, her wingspan broad enough to shadow entire city blocks.
But there was something in the way she moved, something in the tilt of her great head and the intelligence that blazed in her silver eyes, that spoke of a consciousness that had worn other forms, other shapes, other loyalties in different lives.
"She's beautiful," Alysanne breathed, her voice filled with the kind of awe usually reserved for the most sacred moments of a queen's long reign.
"She's impossible," Ryam muttered, though his hand had finally left his sword hilt. Even the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard could recognize when violence was not the appropriate response to a situation.
"She's here," Gael said simply, and her voice carried the absolute certainty of love recognized across the barriers of death itself. "She's here, and that means Harry might be too. Somewhere in this world, in some form, the boy I love more than life itself might be waiting for me to find him."
She turned from the window to face her assembled family, her violet eyes bright with purpose that seemed to burn like dragonfire in her young face.
"I know how this sounds," she said, her voice steady despite the tears that continued to fall. "I know how impossible it all seems. But I have lived two lives, died one death, and been given a second chance that most people only dream of. And if there's even the smallest possibility that Harry is out there somewhere, that we can find each other again and have the future that was stolen from us..."
She straightened, and in that moment, she looked every inch a Targaryen princess—proud, fierce, unbreakable in her determination.
"Then I will move heaven and earth to make it happen. Because some loves, some bonds, are stronger than death itself. And if the gods have given me another chance at happiness, I intend to seize it with both hands."
The white dragon's call echoed across the city once more, and this time, it carried within it the promise of hope renewed, of love triumphant, of reunions that transcended the boundaries of worlds and death itself.
The age of dragons was returning indeed.
But this time, they would serve love above all else.
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