The Weight of Whispers
Harry had spent four days drifting from village to village, gathering what little information he could from lips too drunk or desperate to remain sealed. Each conversation added a sliver of horror to the image he was assembling in his mind. Each revelation was another jagged stone in the coffin of House Targaryen.
A disguise of necessity. A lie to keep curious eyes away. Even so, he could feel the strain it placed on his bones. His breath came shorter than it should. His limbs ached.
The spell he’d used was small, simple by his standards—just a touch of transfiguration laced with concealment—but it had drained him to the bone. Sweat slicked his back. His hands trembled. He could still taste blood.It cost him more than it should have. Magic here didn’t obey; it resisted. Like pouring power into stone and expecting it to ripple.
A drop in the ocean, he thought bitterly, and I feel like I’ve dueled Voldemort twice.
Magic shouldn’t cost this much, he thought.
Harry (grim): It’s like the world is allergic to me.
Rhaegar (calmly): Or perhaps you are allergic to what this world became.
Harry didn’t answer. The words had weight, but no comfort.
Magic in this world resisted him in strange ways. Something is wrong with this world, he thought, not for the first time. Magic didn’t flow. It fought. Every spell scraped at his marrow, as though the world itself were rejecting him. It didn’t crackle with power—it slithered, sluggish and poisoned. A murmur rather than a roar. Even the simplest spell brought a backlash, as though the world resented being bent.
He hadn’t realized how much he had come to rely on magic’s whisper in his bones, its quiet readiness in every nerve. Now, he felt… abandoned. Like a conductor stripped of his baton, asked to summon music from silence.
Despite gaining superhuman power, his body ached from the journey—from days of walking through war-scarred woods and villages left gutted and burned. Each town carried the same stench: ash, despair, and death made mundane. He had passed gallows still creaking with half-frozen corpses, crows pecking at unburied dead, children wandering aimlessly through ruined homes.
And always, the silence. As if the world held its breath.
He’d arrived three days ago, having walked from the edge of a forest ravaged by war. He’d crossed villages where the trees were strung with corpses, “traitor” carved across their chests. He had seen children fight over rats in back alleys, nobles riding past in litters while peasants died in the mud.
The world was broken.
The tavern itself—The Ashen Tankard—sat like a wounded beast on the edge of a crumbling village. Its timbers sagged under years of disuse and disrepair, the roof patched with mismatched tiles and sodden wool. The stink of mildew and spilled ale clung to the air, thick enough to taste. Inside, it was dim—a single hearth crackling in defiance of the storm lashing the Crownlands beyond.
Tavern reeked of spilled ale, old sweat, and the rot of stories left too long in the dark. Mold in the rafters. Broken chairs. It smelled of sweat, smoke, and despair. Shadows clung to the rafters like cobwebs, and the only light came from a hearth that barely held its flame. The fire didn’t warm—it flickered out of habit, as if unsure whether anything in this place was worth preserving.
War refugees, petty criminals, and tired soldiers drank side by side, their conversations a blend of old regrets and fresh threats.
Harry sat hunched in the darkest corner, his hood low, his back to the wall. His reflection in the tankard before him was not his own. He had chosen this corner for the wall at his back and the line of sight to every exit. Auror instincts. War instincts. Habits he’d tried to leave behind, but which clung like scars. Silver-gold hair now black as coal, eyes dulled to a darkest black.
He scanned the tavern. Rough men clustered at tables—sellswords, ex-squires, broken knights. A few women worked the room, serving bitter ale and muttered curses. No songs, no laughter. Only low voices and old wounds.
Over the clatter of mugs and the creak of the wind-warped door, voices shared rumors like coins.
Then came the stories.
A man slammed his tankard down. “Six bloody months!” he bellowed. “Six months from the prince's fall to Robert’s crown. Don’t tell me it wasn't planned.”
Six months had passed since Rhaegar Targaryen died on the Trident, his rubies scattered across the river like spilled blood. Six months since a dynasty had drowned beneath Robert Baratheon’s hammer. And in that time, the tales had fermented into legend—and poison.
“I tell you, it was no battle—it was slaughter,” growled a grizzled man with one arm and a gold coin nailed into his eyepatch. “The crown prince rode in like a fool. Alone, like he thought he were some seven-damned hero. Robert cracked his chest in two.”
“Rubies flew like fireflies,” another said. “I heard Lord Hightower still sends divers into the Trident to find them.”
A woman in Dornish silks leaned forward. “The boy fought well. He always did. But prophecy ain’t armor.”
Harry sipped his drink and said nothing. The ale was bitter and sour, brewed badly, but it gave his hands something to do. His ears did the rest.
“Six months,” someone else muttered. “Six months from the prince’s death to the king’s crown. Ain’t that something?”
“Tywin waited until the last minute,” came the reply. “Sacked the city the moment he knew Rhaegar was dead.”
His companions grunted in agreement. One, a hedge knight with a bandaged stump where his ear should be, added, “Tywin marched on King’s Landing the same day. Same gods-damned day. Gates opened like they were waiting for him.”
“Lions don’t fight unless the prey is bleeding.”
Harry said nothing, sipping stale ale. His throat burned. Not from the drink, but from the truth curdling around him.
Rhaegar (quietly): He knew. Tywin knew. He watched and waited. Like a vulture.
Harry (grim): And you gave him the feast.
“Lannisters butchered ‘em,” one man growled. “Cut the babes to pieces. Blood on the nursery walls. Elia Martell, they say, screamed ‘til her throat ripped.”
Another voice joined. An older woman in maester’s gray—no chain, just the robes. “The babe. The Martell girl’s boy. Crushed. The Mountain they call him. Crushed the infant’s skull against the wall.”
A hush fell over the tavern.
A young boy at the hearth stared at the flames. “And the girl? The prince’s daughter?”
“Stabbed,” the woman whispered. “So many times they couldn’t count.”
Harry’s grip tightened on his tankard. The heat of memory—Rhaegar’s memory—throbbed behind his eyes. Elia’s laughter. Rhaenys crawling toward his harp. The way the light caught their hair.
Elia. Rhaenys.
The names dropped like stones into water. Harry winced. So did Rhaegar.
Rhaegar’s consciousness rippled. I should have protected them.
A memory surged—moonlit arguments in the gardens of the Red Keep. Elia’s hands were cold, voice thin. “They say I won’t survive another pregnancy.” Her eyes had been hollow, resigned. Her laughter at court had become less frequent, her shoulders thinner, wearier.
Rhaegar (grief-laced):I left them. I thought they’d be safe in the Red Keep.My father still ruled. I... I never expected Tywin to—
Harry(cold): You should have. You gambled with your family for your prophecy.
Rhaegar (soft):You speak as though your war cost nothing.
He had no reply.
Rhaegar (shaking):I sang to her every morning. I promised her safety.
Harry (gritting his teeth): Not now. Not here.
Rhaegar (pleading):They were just children.
Rhaegar (quiet, broken):I loved Elia. Not like Lyanna—but I loved her.
Harry (muted): Not helping.
He gritted his teeth and forced the flood of memory back. The emotions tangled in his own. He could feel them coil and snap—guilt, grief, helpless fury. Even with his Occlumency shields, Rhaegar’s emotions had become an undercurrent in his thoughts.
The conversation shifted. A boy of maybe sixteen asked, “What of Lyanna Stark?”
A hush fell.
“Brought back in a shroud,” said a Stormlander with a mangled nose. “Ned Stark carried her body all the way from Dorne. Said not a word. Just took her north.”
The discussion turned ugly.
“They say Robert went mad when he saw her. Took his rage to the Reach. Burned loyalist keeps to the ground.”
“He didn’t just punish traitors,” said a sellsword with a Stormlands accent. “He punished loyalty. Any lord who spoke Rhaegar’s name bled. Any bannerman who wore red was stripped and whipped in the square.”
“Half of the Riverlands turned rebel again. Didn’t last long. They say Robert’s hammer broke ten men in a single skirmish.”
“Did you hear? One of the dragon loyalists hold in the Crownlands tried to resist. Women and children inside. They put it to the torch. Called it justice.”
Justice. Harry’s hands clenched around his cup.
In another corner, a merchant barked laughter. “Robert didn’t just win. He made a lesson of them. Set fire to Reach keeps that flew the dragon banner. Cut the tongues from Riverlords who dared call Rhaegar ‘prince.’”
Across the room, a peddler joined the chorus of gossip. “Viserys is all that’s left. Slipped off with the remnants of the fleet. No one knows where. Good riddance.”
Viserys, Rhaegar thought. So young. So alone.
Rhaegar (hollow):He is just a boy 5 or 6.
Harry: Your mother was pregnant, right?
Rhaegar (softly): Yes, mother was with the child when they went to Dragonstone. A girl, she said. She would have named her Daenerys.Gone Now. She must have been still born like the rest. Mother was also very weak.
The words carried no certainty, only aching absence. The idea of a sister he would never know flickered through Harry’s mind—another branch severed before it could bear fruit.
Harry let the peddler’s words hang. There was nothing to say. His heart clenched. No mention of the girl. No rumor. No confirmation. Just silence. As if she had never existed.
Silence stretched between them.
Harry’s stomach churned.
Harry: You shattered kingdoms chasing a song. And now the world burns.
Rhaegar:The dragon must have three heads. That’s what the prophecy said. I saw it in the stars.
Harry (bitter): You saw what you wanted. Like all zealots do.
Rhaegar:Robert hated me more than he ever loved Lyanna.
Harry: “She died anyway.”
The words slipped from his lips like poison.
A bard strummed a twisted tune. “The Dragon’s Bride,” they called it now. Once a song about Elia’s beauty, now warped into satire. Every verse is a mockery. Every note is a dagger.
Harry wanted to snap the man’s strings.
Rhaegar (quietly):They made a joke of it all.
Harry (bitter): That’s what history does. Turns blood to rhyme.
Rhaegar:They don’t understand. None of them.
Harry: Then let’s make them.
He stood and moved to a table near the hearth, where older men nursed their drinks with more sorrow than anger. One wore the robes of a maester, though his chain was gone. Another bore the faded sigil of House Merryweather.
They looked at him as he approached.
“Stranger,” said the maester. “Looking for warmth or answers?”
“Both,” Harry replied, voice low.
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place. We have little of either. what brings you to this part of the Crownlands?” the man asked.
“Curiosity.”
“And what do you seek in ashes?”
“The truth.”
The man studied him. “You’ll find nothing but ghosts. The Red Keep is Lannister gold now. The king wears stag antlers and drinks from dragon skulls.”
“What of the Citadel?” Harry asked.
The maester frowned. “Quiet. Too quiet. After the fall, the ravens stopped. No guidance. No summons. The archmaesters called it neutrality. But I call it fear.”
“Of what?”
“Fire,” he said simply. “Targaryen fire. Magic. Prophecy. They saw what happened at Summerhall and decided the world should never again burn with that kind of flame.”
“Summerhall?”
“Where the dragons died. Where Aerys was born. Where they tried to wake the fire and were consumed by it.”
Harry looked down. The table had a burn mark on its edge. Coincidence, probably.
“What of Dorne?” he asked next.
The maester sighed. “Dorne plots.”
“Plots?” Harry echoed.
“Oberyn Martell has been seen in Tyrosh. Gathering gold. Hiring captains. The Martells sent no hostage to court. No pledge of fealty. Only silence.”
“They don’t forget,” the knight added. “Not Elia. Not the children.”
“And the Free Cities?” Harry asked.
“They don’t trust Robert,” the maester said. “Braavos lent him gold, but not their blessing. Lys and Myr are watching. The free cities liked the old trade routes. The Triarchy stirs again.”
“And the North?”
“Quiet,” the maester said. “Too quiet. Lord Stark returned with his sister’s bones and his silence. But I hear whispers. That he watches. That he waits.”
“Then the rebellion isn’t over.”
The maester laughed. “The war is done. The peace is dying.”
Harry sat in silence. Absorbing every detail.
Rhaegar’s death didn’t end the war. It began a slow bleed.
Harry: “I heard Robert’s crowned,”
A bark of laughter. “A drunk. A king in name. Marries Cersei, then beds half the court. But his hammer swings wild. His court’s a pit of vipers. No one trusts him, not anymore. The North barely tolerates him. The East keeps its distance. The Reach obeys out of fear. The Stormlands—well, they’re his, but even his own lords whisper.”
A hedge knight added, “Four months it took. Four months from the Trident to Robert’s crown. Four months to raze a dynasty.”
A septon sipped his wine. “Too fast. Too clean. As if someone planned it all.”
Harry listened.
The realm was a cracked shell, holding the illusion of a crown.
Dorne waited.
The North watched.
The Citadel silenced itself.
And Robert drank.
It was a broken world. A kingdom of graves and drunken kings.
Harry stepped into the night, the wind slicing through his cloak. Rain soaked the streets. Lightning danced along the horizon.
He walked.
Through alleys littered with refuse and ash.
Past a burned sept, its windows weeping blackened glass.
Past a gibbet where a nobleman’s corpse hung with a dragon pin on his collar.
And there, beneath a twisted oak, a child sat in the mud, whispering to a skull.
Harry (quietly): “This isn’t peace.”
Rhaegar:No. It’s aftermath.
They walked in silence until the tavern’s light was far behind.
Eventually, Harry stopped. A stone wall rose ahead—old, moss-covered, forgotten. He pressed a hand to it.
Rhaegar:You see now. Why I needed the prophecy. Why I had to believe.
Harry (weary): You had options. You chose fire.
Harry rose. The conversation was turning in circles. Same stories. Same blood. Different mouths.
He left the tavern. The cold night greeted him with sleet and silence.
Another day, Another town
The afternoon air bit into his skin as he wandered the crooked lanes of the village. Somewhere a hound barked, sharp and feral.
He walked the muddy streets for hours, hood pulled low, trying to quiet the storm in his head. Every alley whispered accusations. Every face reminded him of what had been lost.
He passed a beggar with dragon pins on a threadbare cloak. An old knight muttering prayers in the rain. A girl who looked too much like Rhaenys, selling flowers from a broken basket.
He wandered again, past ruined manors and burned temples. He passed a boy swinging a wooden sword, singing a song about “The Stag who Slew the Dragon.”
He passed a girl, no older than Rhaenys, offering flowers for bread. Her eyes met his—and for a moment, he saw Elia’s fire, dimmed but not dead.
he wandered through the rain-slick streets, he saw the scars left behind:
A child huddled under a wagon, whispering to bones.
A septon burning his own robes in the square.
A raven pecking at the sigil of a fallen house.
This was not peace. This was a kingdom bleeding out.
Harry (whispering to the storm): “This is what we’re left with.”
Rhaegar (murmuring):And it’s only begun.
A lantern guttered in a window above, illuminating the warped sign of an inn called The Crossed Blades. Below, two men haggled over stolen armor—one of them still wearing the tattered crimson of the Reach.
As Harry passed, he caught fragments of their words.
“Lord Oakheart’s boy didn’t even lift his sword. They slit his throat in his sleep. Said it was mercy. The boy was twelve.”
“Robert’s peace,” the other spat. “A sword in one hand and a barrel in the other.”
Harry pressed onward. At another street corner, a priest of the Seven shouted beneath the rain.
“The gods weep for what was done! The gods see the slaughter of innocents!”
Nobody listened.
He ducked into another tavern—The Inkpot and Iron. Smaller. Cramped. Smelled like boiled turnip and spilled ale. The walls were close, the fire low, the mood bitter.
And yet, it was here he heard what he had not heard before: timelines.
A grizzled hedge knight, missing two fingers and half his teeth, recited them like liturgy.
“Four months it took. Four months from Rhaegar dead to Robert crowned. Four months to raze the dragon’s house and salt the ground. Don’t tell me it wasn’t planned.”
A septon in travel-stained robes nodded grimly. “The Reach split in two. Crownlanders torn apart. Riverlands bled white. Half of Oldtown’s gold ended up in Lannister vaults.”
Harry leaned in further.
“What of Dorne?” he asked quietly.
Every head turned. The silence cracked.
The hedge knight stared. “You don’t ask about Dorne unless you got steel at your back or sand in your blood.”
“I have neither,” Harry replied. “Just curiosity.”
The septon sighed. “Dorne’s not beaten. They never are. They sent emissaries to Braavos. Triarchy’s sniffing around. Even talk of ships from Lys.”
Another woman spoke. “Martells haven’t declared open war. But their spears aren’t resting either. Robert knows it. He keeps his wife close. But not that close.”
The laughter that followed was dry and jagged.
Harry finished his drink in silence. Each new thread of knowledge wove a darker picture. Six months. That was all it took to undo centuries.
He now knew more of the world than when he’d risen two weeks ago:
- The Targaryens were not simply overthrown; they were butchered methodically, with calculated brutality.
- Lyanna’s death triggered Robert’s madness, a rage that burned loyalist towns and drowned any hope of peace.
- Viserys lived, somewhere in Essos, but no one trusted his mind.
- Dorne seethed in silence, gathering strength, allies, and vengeance.
- The Citadel was quiet—too quiet. No maesters sent ravens. No archmaester offered judgment. The minds that once claimed to steward the realm had withdrawn into silence.
And above it all, a king on a hollow throne drank himself into legend.
Rhaegar:My grandfather held the throne for six decades. My father for two. I fell in less than a fortnight.
Harry: “You didn’t fall. You were thrown.”
Rhaegar:And I let them.
Harry (choking): “You tore the realm apart for a prophecy that might not even be true.”
Rhaegar (anguished):I believed. The signs. The stars. The songs. I thought...
Harry (snapping): “You thought wrong!”
Rhaegar (defensive): The dragon must have three heads. Without it, the Long Night—
Harry (snarling): You gambled the world on a riddle you didn’t understand.
Rhaegar (quietly):There was nothing else to gamble.
Outside, the rain greeted him like a second punishment.
He staggered through the alley, hands braced against the wall as cold drops needled his skin. His knees hit the mud. He gasped, magic still draining from him like sand through broken glass. He hadn’t even used much. Just a single spell, hours ago. He should’ve recovered.
He fell to his knees.
Magic wasn’t just failing. It was consuming him.
He pressed his hand to the stone wall, breath ragged.
Harry: “Why? Why is it like this? What is wrong with this world?”
The answer didn’t come.
No more magic. Not until he understood this world’s hunger.
And so he walked into the dark, seeking truth in the shadows.
“Then what do you choose?” Rhaegar asked.
Harry (softly): “We need answers. No more guesses. No more Dreams. No more prophecy. We find the truth. We dig it out, even if it’s buried under a thousand corpses Truth. Before the next fire comes.”
He staggered away, fists clenched. Rhaegar’s sorrow clung to him like frost.
He would not rest. Not until he knew who started the fire. Who poured oil on prophecy and lit the realm ablaze.
“The Wall,” Rhaegar whispered. “Maester Aemon.”
Rhaegar (soft):He remembers. He always remembers.
Harry nodded.
He would go north.
But not for prophecy.
For the truth.