IV
With complete confidence, Jon could say that there had not been a woman in his bed since Arya turned six and was deemed too old to be sneaking into his room at night.
So, as he skulked towards his room, ducking behind a pillar to avoid Theon, he was not expecting that record to be broken- and especially not by Lady Hermione. The only thing that stopped him from stopping in the doorway and gaping at her, as she lounged in his bed, wearing a fluffy red robe, and short trousers that Lady Catelyn would hiss scathingly at, was the sight of Robb digging through his dresser.
Jon shut the door behind him and stepped into the room. The thump of the door got the attention of the three interlopers.
“Jon!” Robb beamed at him from where he was digging through Jon’s smallclothes.
He rushed over to his dresser and shoved Robb away, his face bright red as he snuck a glance at Hermione. She wasn’t paying them any attention, too busy throwing a small stuffed stag back and forth with Teddy.
Jon hissed, “What in the Gods are you doing with,” here Jon paused and looked at Hermione again, “Her in my room?”
“You didn’t even tell him?” Hermione demanded, pushing herself off the bed but not stopping her game with Teddy. Jon wasn’t sure how she was throwing the toy to Teddy so accurately without looking back at him but suspected the answer was magic.
Robb shrugged, not answering her question.
Hermione placed her hands on her hips and glowered up at him.
Robb slumped his shoulders and turned to Jon.
“Jon,” Robb paused, and then put his hands on his shoulders, pulling his brother-cousin closer, probably to increase the dramatic tension in the room. “We’re going on an adventure.”
Hermione made a noise between a growl and a sob. Teddy laughed delightedly.
Jon looked at Robb carefully and tried to ascertain if the stress of the past few days and their revelations had broken his brother’s mind.
Robb ignored everyone- as he was wont to do- and continued, “We’re going to Essos to find the rest of the Targaryens!”
At this, Jon’s face shuttered, going from concerned to blank in an impressively short time. He shrugged Robb’s hands off his shoulders.
“Father,” Jon stopped and shook his head in painfully sharp turns. He started again, “Uncle ordered us to not speak of such things.”
“Well, he has lost the right to make decisions about any Targaryens,” Robb replied while he casually picked his way back to Jon’s dresser and continued to throw things into a large bag at his feet. “Hermione, can you really fit all this,” Robb gestured with an arm to the bag he was packing and then to another fully loaded bag in front of Jon’s bed, “in that?” he pointed to a small beaded bag that was sitting on the bed, a sharp, colorful contrast to Jon’s beige sheets.
“Lord Stark won’t allow us to leave,” Jon addressed Hermione, hoping that she would be more reasonable than Robb.
Jon, however, was a young man, and as young men are oft to do, he made a mistake in understanding a woman. This was not wholly his fault- Hermione would admit- given that Westeros seemed even more old-fashioned and patriarchal than the Wizarding World at its worst. Jon made the mistake of treating Hermione as if she was any other woman in the North, one that would understand that Lord Stark’s word was law.
Unluckily for Jon, Hermione’s knee-jerk reaction these days to being told what to do was a bone-deep desire to do the opposite. “Lord Stark,” Hermione said scathingly, “Doesn’t have to allow me to do anything.”
Robb laughed, “That’s the spirit!” He threw one more pair of trousers into the bag he was packing and tied the bag’s straps together. He picked it up and hefted it over to the bed, as Lady Hermione followed him.
Jon was sputtering behind them, but only Teddy seemed to care. The little boy waved at Jon. Jon felt very roughed up and run over, but he waved back.
Hermione snapped her wrist, and her wand slid into her palm. She murmured under her breath as she waved it at both bags, and they shrunk to the size of an apple. Then she threw both apple-sized bags into her beaded bag and turned back to face them.
“Is this going to be a problem?” she waved at Jon, who didn’t like being referred to as ‘this’.
Jon crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes,” he said firmly.
Jon would never admit this out loud, but he’d been toying with the idea of leaving to find his aunt and uncle in Essos himself. He was meant to take the Black. He’d dreamt of it since he was old enough to understand the difference between a Stark and a Snow.
He was neither now.
Still, this adventure of Robb’s wasn’t as simple as a group of green-boys sneaking off to Wintertown’s brothel.
“They’ll come after us.”
Hermione’s lips thinned as she turned to glare at Robb.
“We’re going to write them a letter,” Robb responded as if this was obvious.
“They’ll send riders after us,” Jon shot back. “And they’ll send a raven to White Harbor before we even pass Castle Cerwyn.”
Robb looked ready to dispute this but then frowned after he thought for a moment could not come up with a good answer. White Harbor was a fortnight’s ride from Winterfell, and it was unlikely they’d make it there without being stopped.
Hermione spoke up, “Well, we could probably get there a little quicker.”
Jon turned his attention to her.
Hermione bit her lip. “If either of you,” she nodded her head towards them, “have been to White Harbor before and let me,” she waved her hands around her skull in circles, “well, if you let read your minds to find the location,” she offered them a crude explanation of legilimency, “I could take us there instantly.”
Robb looked both terrified and delighted- terrified that she could read his mind and find all the things he’d thought about her short trousers and delighted that a solution to their problem had presented itself.
“Absolutely,” Robb nodded in agreement. “We were there for Lord Manderly’s granddaughter’s nameday.”
“And the direwolf pups? You’ll leave Greywind here to be raised half-wild like Nymeria?” Jon interrupted. Both men winced, remember the way Lady Catelyn’s lips had thinned when Arya’s direwolf had jumped on to the high table and eaten directly from a serving platter.
Robb responded, “No, we’ll take them with us!”
“On a ship for a moon’s turn?” Jon exclaimed, trying to make Robb see sense.
Hermione, not enjoying the way her fact-finding mission was quickly becoming a family affair, chimed in, “Well, the ship we steal should within a fortnight. I have to carve some runes into the floorboards, but we’ll make good time.”
Robb had already heard her plan and didn’t look too concerned, but Jon was aghast. His voice was squeakier than it had been in years, “Steal!?”
Hermione turned her sharp eyes to him, and Jon’s ears tinged pink as she smirked at him. “We’ll leave them gold,” she assured him.
“Bugger me,” Jon cursed. Hermione reached out to smack his shoulder as Teddy perked up.
Teddy sing-songed, “That’s a bad word, Jon,” and stuck out his palm, waiting for a shiny piece of money.
The pink blush spread to Jon’s cheeks, and Hermione reflected that he was a very pretty man. Jon patted his trousers’ pockets, hoping he had some copper but came up empty-handed and turned to look pleadingly at Robb, not wanting to disappoint the little boy.
Robb snickered at him and pulled a coin from his jerkin. Hermione ruffled Teddy’s hair as he crowed over the copper Groat Robb had handed him.
Jon snuck down on his bed and shoved his head in his hands.
Robb clapped his hands together, “So, we’re all set then?”
Hermione hummed as she thought it over. Robb had stolen plenty a fortnight’s worth of food from the kitchens, and Hermione had cast preservation and freezing spells over their spoils. She’d also been assured by Robb that he was able to fish. She didn’t quite believe him but was willing to watch him make a spectacle of himself, regardless.
“Yes,” she replied, and then hoping to make Jon squeak once more, she continued, “If not, we can steal what we need.”
Jon groaned again.
“So, which one of you is going to let me poke around in your mind?” Hermione asked.
Hermione gave them a few moments to consider her question, but as neither man was quick to volunteer, she decided for them. She told herself that the only reason she picked Jon was because he was already sitting down.
“Robb, go get your wolves,” she ordered. Robb offered her a sloppy salute and rushed away.
She turned to Jon, and he looked up from where he was smacking his head into his palms as she reached her hands towards his head in askance.
Jon gaped at her, his head just level with her neck, and nodded. She stepped closer to him and raised her hands to lightly brush her fingers across his temple.
She smelled like the tonka beans from Dorne they’d planted in Winterfell’s greenhouse and the lavender Sansa liked to press into her pillowcases.
“I’m going to be gentle,” Hermione promised, knowing all too well how brutally someone could use legilimency. “Clear your mind and think about the dockyards of White Harbor. Focus on the memory, and I’ll try to get to it without seeing anything else, alright?” she asked.
Jon nodded again, and a few of his curls came loose and brushed over where her knuckles were skimming his forehead. He watched her, enthralled, as she tucked a lock behind his ear and closed her eyes.
The moment she entered his mind, his eyes shuttered close, and his teeth clacked together. He felt her presence as a tangible summer breeze, sifting slowly through what he imagined was his consciousness. He tried to reach a hand out to catch the breeze and startled himself when his fingertips brushed against something warm.
Hermione walked through Jon’s mind slowly, trying not to disturb any of the pieces. His mind was a vast snowy landscape, each piece of him a trail of footprints, matching up to his memories. She trekked through the scene unfaltering, until she is forced to pull her knees higher on each step. She’d never seen so much snow before, and for a moment wondered if she would get lost.
Jon felt the warm breeze flagging and forced himself to follow it. Together they walked in a path of barely worn footsteps that sloped to the high-rising hills of the Wolf’s Den. In the distance, round, white stone buildings appeared, with the hint of a blue see peaking around them. There is a fleet of large ships resting against a pretty green and blue seaport and Hermione can pick out Jon’s memory, a sharp contrast against the rest of the snow.
The memory firmly in hand, she picked her way through the fluffy snow to leave but is stuck as she catches the whisper of a dark-haired women, her hair pulled back in a windswept braid and her light blue summer dress, torn and bloody, that is physically shoving blizzards hissing the words, ‘bastard’ and ‘dishonor’, away.
She turned her head away from the specter, her eyes stinging suspiciously, and focused on the path of snow that was hardening to stone. She lingers, liking the way Jon’s cool presence brushes against her, but when she hears a distant thump as the bedroom door opens and closes, she quickly retreats.
Jon and Hermione wince in unison.
“Sorry, sorry,” Hermione exclaimed, blushing and pulling her hands away from where they’d moved to clutch at his hair.
“Puppies!” Teddy squealed, and the pair break apart as Robb set a squirming Greywind and a sleepy Ghost on the floor.
“We’re ready to go,” Hermione informs Robb.
Robb nodded eagerly and grabbed Hermione’s drawstring bag to hold it for her.
“Okay, hold on tight,” she ordered. She doesn’t warn them about how apparition feels, but a woman’s got to have her simple delights.
She knelt and let Teddy wrap himself around her shoulders. When she stands back up, Robb let her grab onto his forearm and prepares himself. Jon awkwardly did the same on her other side.
“Hold on!” she reminds them again and then turns on her right foot quickly before they can respond.
In a flash of light, their group of four leaves Winterfell and finds themselves on a dark seaport, staring at dozens of ships. Robb quickly falls to his knees and retches as Jon stumbles, almost falling into the water.
Hermione ignores them, perusing the available ships, and then points to a medium sized vessel named the Vystolie. She points at it and asks, “This one looks good, right?”
Both men glared at her from the ground where they’re recovering, refusing- or perhaps unable- to answer.
However, within the hour, they’ve boarded the Vystalie, leaving no trace except a small bag of Gringott’s gold left behind for the man down one ship.
XXX
Across the sea, a young girl sits in a too-hot bathtub, her blonde hair loose and sticking to her sweat-slick skin.
Her brother watches her, his eyes gleaming half-mad, half-lustful, as a maid pours sweet-scented oils into her hair. He is flipping a knife through the air in sweeping arches. Within the next moon’s turn, he plans on trading his sister away for an army, and soon he would be king.
Daenerys knows of her brother’s plans. For a brief shining moment, she thinks about reaching across the space between them, snatching the knife from his hands and using it. She wonders what it would feel like to be free.
She doesn’t outwardly show her distress- she’d learned long ago that her fear fed her brother’s madness, but in the comfort of her own mind, she shakes.