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123 AC, Dragonstone
Rhaenyra, for all her poise, didn't know what to make of it. Something about the entire encounter felt off-balance, like a dream that veered off course without warning. But one thing she knew with absolute certainty: whatever came next, she would never forget this breakfast.
The future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms watched as their guests calmly ate their food. This was further proof that they were of nobility. What she had in front of her was essentially a small feast, more than enough to beggar some Knights and even some Minor Lords. It was made by some of the best cooks in the Seven Kingdoms, and yet, the Potters didn't seem especially impressed with it. Anyone who was not used to this would have been salivating despite themselves. She had done this small test with many lords and merchants, and it allowed her to quickly make some judgements about who she was meeting.
Her children and Daemon's daughters seemed enthralled by the white owl, petting the disturbingly intelligent creature, who had, just as Potter stated, started to eat one of the sausages from Lucerys' plate. That bird even turned towards her master occasionally and gave what she could only describe as smug hoots.
Perhaps she was imagining things.
Nevertheless, she did not invite them to eat her food. Instead, she spoke up, directly, "Lord Potter, I admit that I am quite curious about your name. Do you have any relations to House Potter from the Reach?"
A wide, delighted smile grew on his face, and he asked excitedly, "There is a House Potter here as well? How wonderful!"
Daemon snorted, "A Knightly House at best, barely more than a few decades old. I would not be delighted to be related to them."
Harry Potter smiled at him, "Oh, I'm not related to them. I've traced down my lineage back centuries, and I know for a fact that I'm the first one to ever come to Westeros, let alone found a house. Yet, the world is full of coincidences, isn't it?"
Her husband wanted to say something, but she decided to intervene, "You said that this is your first time coming to Westeros. So, where do you come from?"
"Far away, very far away. I very much doubt that you know of it," he answered with a slight smile on his face, "The world is far larger than most people know, and life blooms in even the most unlikely of places. One need only look."
That was a vague answer if she heard any, "I am quite well-educated, my lord. I might surprise you."
"Oh, it's not my education I doubt, your grace, but the general knowledge of all Westerosi."
That made Rhaenyra's hackles rise, "So, you're calling me and my people ignorant."
"No. I call you uninformed about certain matters. And I am sure that I am uninformed about matters that would feel trivial to you, such as the legends of Old Valyria. When one believes that they know all there is to know, that is when they are truly ignorant. One must never stop striving to learn more, to understand more," the young man lectured as if he were a Maester.
"Is that why you came here? To learn," Rhaena asked, while looking up from the owl she was so taken with.
The man gave her a soft look, "Well, of course. I'm a traveller of sorts. I explore ruins, civilisations, try to understand as much of the world as I can, and then I leave."
"Have you been anywhere interesting?" Jacaerys asked.
It was the woman who answered this time, "Harry, let's not traumatise the children with your adventures, especially not while we're eating."
The man rolled his eyes, "Sorry, kids. I guess you don't get to know of the treasures and tombs I explored and the monsters I fought."
"Monsters?" Baela scoffed, "You don't look like a warrior."
"I don't?" he replied in a falsely confused look, before turning towards his wife with an accusing tone, "Why did you never tell me that?"
"I thought that it was implied, my love," the blonde woman answered with a sly grin on her face, "You've always preferred staying by a good book than fighting a war."
The man's face fell, and he pouted. The children giggled at the byplay, before Lucerys asked, "Is that why you're wearing far-eyes on your face? To read from far away?"
"Now, that's a very interesting question. But no, these are not far-eyes. They're glasses, or spectacles if you want to be fancy, and they're meant to cure blurry vision. You see, sometimes people are born with eyes that see the world as blurry. Most people, when they get older, end up with this affliction anyway, but the average life span in Westeros is a bit too short for it to be an issue on a large scale. Anyway, these glasses help unblur the vision, essentially correcting the world to allow them to see. The glass is warped, shaped in a way to achieve this, in a very similar way to how Myrish far-eyes operate."
A weakness. Rhaenyra did her best not to gape as the man, just casually admitted to a weakness, something that she had never seen before. He looked unbothered, as if no one could even make use of this weakness against him.
"You can't see without this contraption?" Daemon asked, perking up, probably coming to the same conclusion she had.
"Oh, I got that fixed after a few years. Now, I just wear them because Daphne grew to like the look."
The blonde woman blushed slightly and hit him on the arm. Rhaenyra decided to take the initiative before her children could ask him more inane questions, "My husband mentioned a name. Peverell. I do not recognise it, but much of Valyria's history was lost."
The man snorted in amusement, "Believe me, I'm not Valyrian. You're right, though, Peverell is an old name, thousands of years old, I believe, who married into my family. I am the last of that line, I believe."
"Then why did you not take that name, if it has such a distinguished history?" Rhaenyra pressed.
"Well, distinguished is certainly a correct word, but the truth is that infamous would be a more suitable description of the Peverell name."
The blonde rolled her eyes at her husband's words, "Don't dance around the subject, Harry." She then turned towards them with a mischievous glint in her eyes, "They were all hunted down because of a children's story."
That brought her short, "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"There was an old story about three Peverell brothers, Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell. The brothers, travelling together, came upon a traitorous river, one that took the life of anyone who tried to cross it. Yet, the three brothers were no ordinary men, but sorcerers. They used their magic to create a bridge to cross the river. Halfway across the bridge, a hooded figure appeared. It was Death, or as you call it, the Stranger. It was enraged as it felt cheated of its dues. However, Death did not show its wrath towards the brother and instead pretended to congratulate them for their cleverness and offered them a boon each. The eldest brother, Antioch, a warrior, asked for the most powerful weapon in existence. Death took a branch of Elder and gave it to the man, and so, the Elder Wand was created. The second brother, an arrogant but grieving man, asked for the power to recall the deceased from the grave. Death picked a stone from the river and gave it to the man, and so, the Resurrection Stone was created. The third brother, humble and wise, asked for something that would let him hide from anything, even from Death itself. Reluctantly, Death handed over its own cloak and handed it to the man, and so, the Invisibility Cloak was created."
Lucerys grinned and asked, "And did they work?"
The man was the one who answered this time, "According to the story, yes. The Eldest Brother won many battles, killing armies with a flick of his wand, yet after boasting of the power of his weapon, he was later slain in his sleep, the Elder Wand missing. The second brother, who had wished for the stone to see his deceased beloved, whom he wished to marry, was able to summon her from the great beyond. However, he lost himself to despair and madness, for the woman he loved did not belong in the living world. She was cold and sad. The brother couldn't handle it after some time and took his own life. As for the third brother, he was able to hide, even from Death's gaze, and he grew old, passing the cloak to his son, and then meeting Death as an old friend. Together, the Wand, the Stone, and the Cloak make what we call the Deathly Hallows."
Rhaenyra hadn't heard this story before, and it was definitely a grim one. There were often lessons in children's stories, and yet she couldn't find any, not really. Perhaps it was about accepting one's death, but that was hardly suitable for children. Instead, she felt unsettled by the story, as if something was telling her that there was some truth in it.
Baela spoke up, obviously fascinated by the story, "And are they real, these Deathly Hallows?"
"They were real enough for people to kill one another over some myth or another, enough to hunt down every Peverell they could find, hoping that they would lead them infinite power or some nonsense. Then again, they might be real. Who knows?" he tapped his nose playfully, "Who knows?"
The children giggled at the joke, the mood of the room lightened significantly, yet Rhaenyra felt on edge. There was something about this man, about the story, the way he said it, that made her feel threatened. Yet, it was just a story.
Wasn't it?
Daemon seemed to feel it too. He hadn't touched his food once, his eyes fixed on Potter with a kind of wary intensity, like a man watching the sea for signs of storm. The children, blissfully unaware, had taken to arguing quietly about which of the three Hallows was the most powerful. Jace, predictably, was championing the wand, while Baela scoffed and insisted the cloak was cleverer. Rhaena looked down at her empty plate, thoughtful, likely imagining something that would let her speak with her mother, and Lucerys just tried to keep the owl from stealing his second sausage.
But Rhaenyra couldn't shake the sensation, like they'd been shown something important and only half understood it. The story, the smiles, the harmless humour, it all felt too polished, too rehearsed. Like a mask placed carefully over something older and far more dangerous.
She took a sip of wine, her eyes not leaving Harry Potter's face.
He was still smiling. But she suddenly wasn't sure if it reached his eyes.
He looked at them, still smiling. And yet, he had a knowing look in his eyes, as if waiting for them to do or say something. He stayed silent, and it was extremely disconcerting. Then again, why were they talking about a children's story in the first place?
She had wished to meet him to get the man to share his knowledge of the indestructible metals these Goblins were making, and of his method of construction. She was planning on leveraging his illegal construction of his manse in her island to force him to agree to her terms, which were frankly quite generous, given that she could execute him and his wife with a single command and no one would fault her for it.
For all of Daemon's warning, she still had expected a very nervous man, meeting royalty who rode dragons, who could swallow him whole.
Now, she needed to guide the conversation back to its main topic. She put a smile on her face and asked, "So, what brought you to Dragonstone?"
"Nothing much. We needed a place to stay while we planned out our next expedition. This island seemed nice and quiet enough to do that in peace. Daphne wanted to study Weirwood trees, and I wanted to study Dragonglass, and this seemed like a good place to stay in the meantime," the man answered casually.
"You built an entire manse on my island, something that could easily cost you your life, because it seemed like a nice place to stay?" Rhaenyra asked with incredulity in her tone.
"Well, that's not all of it," the man answered sheepishly, "This island has a very impressive history, which makes sense, given that it stands on a mountain of Dragonglass."
Rhaenyra furrowed her eyebrows and asked, "What does Dragonglass have to do with Aegon's Conquest?"
Harry Potter snorted in amusement, "Believe it or not, history did not begin when Aegon conquered Westeros. This island, for example, has existed before the very idea of Valyria was born, let alone your house. No, Dragonglass was used primarily by the Children of the Forest when they still roamed Westeros. From what I gathered, it also happened to be the main weapon used by them and the First Men during the Long Night."
Daemon snorted, "You're japing, surely. What are you going to do next, hunting Grumkins and Snarks? These are stories, legends told to scare children into behaving themselves."
"The cave I discovered on this island with paintings on its walls that are thousands of years old, begs to differ. Then again, I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. This is just to satiate my own curiosity. I just find it fascinating that Religions, continents apart, all have the same account of a war against an endless winter, all the way from the North to Yi-Ti. They're distorted, of course, but they are eerily similar. Of course, there's the Wall. One does not build such a monument to keep away a few savages, do they? Nevertheless, we're planning on visiting it soon enough."
Rhaenyra shivered as the man spoke. She remembered her father's words as if they were yesterday, of the seriousness in his voice, of the burden of House Targaryen, the shadow and ice, coming from the north, swallowing everything.
The room seemed to also share her awkwardness. The children looked uncomfortable, and even Daemon looked slightly unsettled.
"But they're all just stories?" her eldest asked.
"Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they're forgotten," the man answered with surprising wisdom and a kind smile. "In my travels, I found that the world is far larger than one would ever imagine. For example, I have been in places where the idea of riding a dragon is considered to be pure folly, and yet here you all are, a family of proud Dragonriders. Even fewer would believe that an entire family could be so intertwined with fate as yours, guided all the way from the Doom of Valyria, as if it were following a song woven by fate itself, one of fire and flames. Perhaps, that is what the world would need to battle the coming darkness and ice."
That froze Rhaenyra completely. She could see it now, the small allusion to the Long Night being real, the story about Death and its lessons, the mention of songs of fire, and battling ice. This man, somehow, knew of Aegon's prophecy. He knew of the secret only told to the King or Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the burden of House Targaryen.
How was this possible?
Had her father told him? Had her grandfather or great-grandfather? It was technically possible, even if it was very improbable. He didn't look much older than her, and Rhaenyra was barely more than a child when the Old King died.
This went beyond talks of Valyrian Stone and building an illegal manse. This was her house's legacy. The mischievous look on his face all but confirmed that he knew exactly what she had realised.
The future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms slowly stood up, her eyes severe, and spoke up, "Out."
Everyone gave her a confused look, and she yelled, "Everyone but the Potters, leave this room at once."
The Great Hall emptied at once, and she motioned the Kingsguards to do the same, and yet Daemon didn't move. She glared at him, "That includes you, husband."
"Do you think I could…"
She interrupted him, "This is not a request, Daemon."
He glared at her before turning and leaving, following their children out.
Now, in an empty room, she turned towards the couple and their blasted owl, who still looked unconcerned with a Dragonrider's anger. She spoke up in a neutral tone, "I have questions, and you will answer them now. What do you know about the Song of Ice and Fire?"
AN: That was surprisingly hard to write, and I'm not even sure why. The idea is to show the contrast between how Harry acts around children and around adults, and that while he knows what Rhaenyra wants, he's essentially confusing her and distracting her from actually asking anything important. As usual, I don't mind rewriting this depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.