Cultural Shock
Chapter 4
Cultural Shock
Harry frowned down at the assortment of letters on the sheet of parchment in front of him. He had come to know the individual sounds quite well, but putting them together to actually make words was proving much more difficult. It didn’t help that he didn’t really understand what the words themselves meant.
He couldn’t exactly remember how he’d learned to read English at school but he knew that already having a reasonably good grasp of speaking the language had made things a lot easier. He was also pretty sure that he’d been given child-friendly books with only a couple of words and a large picture to get him started, but there didn’t seem to be any children’s books in Winterfell.
Winterfell. That had been on of the first words they’d learned in this language and it still seemed a strange one to him even after two months of living here. But pretty much all the words seemed strange except some of the people’s names.
He looked down at the parchment again, trying to spot any familiar words like ‘the’ or ‘was’. Luckily, it was Hermione’s turn to read aloud to Maester Luwin at that moment, which gave Harry a bit more time to sound out the words in his head.
While Harry knew that Hermione was finding acquiring this new language difficult, he was also aware that she was progressing an awful lot quicker than he was. He wasn’t annoyed or surprised. In fact, he would have been amazed if he’d found things easier than her; she was extremely intelligent after all and he’d never known anybody work as had as she did in her school work. Even here she had her nose in a book most of the time, but instead of reading quietly in her head, she’d recite to anyone who would listen. At first, people had been willing spare a few minutes to listen and correct her but they soon got bored of this. Only the Stark family would listen to her now because they were too polite to tell her to go away. Harry smiled to himself as he remembered the bored expression on Sansa’s face the last time he had come across her suffering through Hermione’s reading.
Hermione had often instructed him to practice his reading with other people, but he thought he’d get better at reading if he could actually comprehend the words first. He had a feeling that Hermione thought he wasn’t really trying to learn this tongue because he spent a lot of his time just listening and observing. But the number of words he had learned at Winterfell had risen quite quickly. He set himself a target of learning ten new words a day. This didn’t sound like much and sometimes he couldn’t’ remember those words a couple of days later, but he was pleased with his own progress. The majority of the words he knew were nouns as they were the easiest to translate. He only had to point at something and fix a quizzical expression on his face before someone told him what it was.
Fortunately, the language they spoke here wasn’t impossibly complicated; most words only had one or two syllables and their letters were more like the ones he was used to rather than those he’d seen in Chinese or Arabic. But it wasn’t an early form of English they spoke at Winterfell, as Hermione had first suspected.
One of the very first things Maester Luwin had shown him in his teaching room was an elaborate, colored map. On it there were three land masses and Maester Luwin pointed to a tiny spot on the westernmost island and said “Winterfell.” Harry had stared at the map with wide eyes because it most certainly wasn’t a map of Britain. Hermione was gazing at it in despair too.
“Do you recognize it?” He asked, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Hermione just pursed her lips and shook her head slightly. He turned his eyes back to the detailed map, searching intently for anything that might give him some clue as to their location. His eyes roamed over mountains, seas, forests and lakes but it was to no avail. “Where on earth are we then?” His eyes met hers and the fear he saw in them at his words, made his heart burn for a moment. No.
“Harry,” she said timidly, but he shook his head.
“No. We don’t know what scale this map is. These places could be small islands,” he argued.
“Harry, no small islands are going to have ice at the top of one and a desert on one not too far away.” Hermione point out, gesturing to the corresponding places on the map. “If they are islands, then they are huge ones and I don’t know any like that on Earth.”
Harry’s mind whirled furiously, refusing to believe what Hermione was saying. “Will you listen to what you’re suggesting? Look, the time-turner sending us back centuries in time I can believe, but it transporting us to another planet?! That’s insane!”
“I don’t think it transported us to another planet in our universe, but perhaps… maybe taking us to an alternate dimension is more feasible?”
“Alternate dimension? That sounds even more less feasible.”
But when they got down to it, another planet or alternate dimension didn’t seem to matter either way. It didn’t change the fact that they were stuck one way or another.
It still felt absurd all these weeks later, but his mind had somewhat accepted that he was on some alternative version of Earth. They knew that they weren’t on some other planet in the universe because the moon and stars corresponded with what they had studied in astronomy. Back on his own Earth he had never considered the possibility of there being alternative worlds, but that was the only explanation that he and Hermione could come up with. He looked at the faint scars on his hand where the time-turner had cut into his skin. He would do it again, he told himself, because otherwise he and Hermione would have died. Being at Winterfell was surely better than death and Hermione was utterly determined and convinced that they would find a way back.
“Harry, are you ready?” Maester Luwin asked. Harry put his hand back down and glanced at the parchment.
“Um, yes.” He cleared his throat and focused. “In the on… one han… handed,”
“Hundred,” Maester Luwin corrected.
“Hundred and five, no fifty-seven year,”
“Fifty-seventh year.”
“In the one hundred and fifty-seventh year after Aegon’s Landing, King…” Harry frowned at the unfamiliar name. “D… Der…Deron.”
“Daeron.”
“Daeron set out to con… que… quer—conquer Dorne,” Harry breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he had gotten through the sentence with minimal mistakes.
“Good,” Maester Luwin commented. “Did you understand what you read?” This was asked pretty much every time Harry read aloud, although it wasn’t often that he could reply in the affirmative.
“Yes. Westeros gets seven kingdoms,” Harry replied haltingly.
Maester Luwin nodded. “And what are the seven kingdoms of Westeros?”
Harry felt Hermione flinch next to him and he could only presume that she was fighting her instinct to raise her hand to answer. “The North,” Harry started, but that was the easy one. He tried to picture the map of Westeros that he had now seen many times, and gradually made his way southwards. “The Vale… the Irone Islands… the Riverlands…”
But Maester Luwin shook his head. “The Riverlands were not a distinct kingdom. They were under the rule of the Iron Islands.”
Harry frowned, annoyed with himself for forgetting. “The Westerlands,” he continued. “The Stormlands…” How many was that now? Five? Six? He counted on his fingers. Two more. “Dorne and… the Reach!” He finished, pleased to have remembered.
“Well done. We shall continue to read of the conquest of Dorne on the morrow.”
Harry rose quickly, pleased to be done with the day’s reading, for now it would be time for him to go to the yard for weapons training.
The first time he had been brought before Ser Rodrik Cassel he had been distinctly wary of being trained to use a sword. In his mind, swords were used to attack and kill people, and he didn’t really want to learn how to do that. In his studies at Hogwarts he had learned how to use offensive spells but there was much more to a wand than that; a sword was just a weapon. He wasn’t denying the value of having a sword, especially as he had used the sword of Godric Gryffindor to defeat Tom Riddle’s basilisk just a year ago. But when he’d been handed his first practice sword, he’d been left feeling cold.
Ser Rodrik hadn’t seemed particularly impressed by him either. He’d felt the muscles of Harry’s arms, shaking his head and muttering words that Harry was grateful he couldn’t understand. While his slender physique was ideal for his quidditch position as a seeker, it obviously wouldn’t be much benefit in a sword fight.
Ser Rodrik set Jon on him first, perhaps just to see how Harry measured up. Within seconds, Harry had experienced blows to his shoulder, ribs and writs and dropped his wooden sword. After massaging the areas of injury, Harry snatched up his sword and held it out, ready to go again. At that moment, he’d realized that learning to use a sword wasn’t about killing people; it was about agility, strategy, strength and discipline. It was a battle of both mind and body and he was determined to master it. There were times when he woke the next morning sporting various colored bruises and barely able to move from deep-rooted aches, that he considered sitting out weapons training that day, but he never did.
Hermione would give him a look of concern whenever she caught sight of a particularly hideous bruise but she never suggested he stop. “I wish I could learn,” she admitted to him over breakfast one morning. Harry nearly choked on his mouthful of bread. “I know I’d be awful but I just feel so vulnerable here.” She glanced nervously around the great hall and Harry could understand what she meant. When they’d had their wands they had the reassurance of knowing that they could perform some sort of spell to protect themselves. Without them, they were defenseless. It was one of the reasons why Harry had relented to taking up weapons training in the first place, so that at least he had some idea how to defend himself physically.
“It wouldn’t really make a difference though,” he said when he’d cleared his throat. “Practically any man would be able to defeat you in a sword fight no matter how hard you trained; you’d just never be strong enough.” A defiant fire burned in her eyes and Harry gulped. “You’d be better off learning some sort of self-defense.” He added quickly. “You know, like, punch them in the nose, elbow them in the ribs or kick them in the crotch.” The tension she was holding seemed to ease and she shook her head with a grim smile.
“Back home there’s this sort of romanticism attached to the time of knights, ladies, and castles, isn’t there? But I’m under no illusion.” She sighed and cast a sweeping glance around the hall. “I wonder if anyone here knows any self-defense?”
Harry echoed her gaze with a frown. “I don’t think they’ve ever really considered it. If they’ve got a sword, shield, and armor, I doubt they see the value in being able to throw a good punch. And even if they did, I bet they’ve never tried to teach the skills to a lady.”
Hermione scoffed and muttered, “Lady indeed,” under her breath as she took a bite of bread and honey. “It would be worth taking up a sword and getting as many bruises as you do just to avoid going to needlework or music.” She said the words with the same dismissive tone she used when she had talked about divination back at Hogwarts. “Can you honestly think of anything so pointless as being able to sing or play the harp for the rest of your life? Or put stitches into a piece of fabric? I wouldn’t mind if it was something practical like making clothes, but we only ever do decorative stuff like embroideries and tapestries. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with sitting through these tortures with Septa Mordane.”
Harry ate a bit more of his breakfast to avoid laughing.
Since that morning, as far as Harry knew, Hermione had never been to another session of music or needlework.
As he stepped out into the mid-morning sunshine, he found Robb and Jon waiting for him at the bottom of Maester Luwin’s turret.
“There you are. We thought you were never coming out,” Robb said, pushing himself away from the wall.
“Reading is more… important than fighting,” Hermione commented with a slight smile.
“We’ll have to disagree on that, my lady,” Robb replied and Harry smiled at the formality. All the boys knew that Hermione disliked being addressed as a lady ever since she had refused to learn to ride her horse in side-saddle form. Hullen, the Master-of-Horse, had tried to convince her that ladies did not sit astride horses, to which Hermione had declared that wasn’t a lady. Harry had been worried at first that Hermione would become upset by the moniker and he was going to tell Robb to stop, but she seemed to take it in good grace. “When a battle is won with reading and not with fighting, then I will gladly change my mind.”
Hermione shook her head a little, but her smile remained.
“Are you coming to watch?” Jon asked.
“No, I go ride with Arya and Sansa,” Hermione replied, walking in the direction of the stables. “Don’t break bones,” she said semi-seriously.
“Don’t fall off your horse!” Robb called to her retreating back. “Come on, Ser Rodrik’s probably waiting.” They walked quickly to the training yard, eager to start. “Are you going to put up more of a fight today, Potter? I reckon I beat you in about ten seconds yesterday.”
Harry caught a few of the words and was helped by Robb’s grin and the ten fingers he held up. “I beat you today.” He replied with a grin of his own. He highly doubted he would beat either of them any time soon but the banter was part of the experience.
Ser Rodrik was waiting for them with Theon Greyjoy, but not to start training. “There’s been a rider from the Deepwood Motte, boy’s,” he said with a dark look on his face. “Galbart Glover’s men have come across a deserter of the Night’s Watch. Lord Eddard rides to meet him shortly.”
Harry saw Jon and Robb wear equally dark looked but the meaning was quite lost on him. “What is go on?” he asked.
“Someone’s about to lose their head, Potter,” Theon said, though he didn’t look as bothered as the others. When Harry still looked confused, Theon grabbed one of the training swords and mimed severing Harry’s head. Harry flinched, an icy finger creeping up his spine.
“Lord Stark will kill?” he asked with a feeling of dread. The others all nodded. “Why?”
“The breaking of a sworn oath is punishable by death,” Ser Rodrik replied gruffly. “You do not take the black lightly, boy.” And with that, he left, leaving Harry still nonplussed. The others started following in Ser Rodrik’s footsteps and Harry joined them.
“You know what the Night’s Watch is, don’t you?” Jon asked him, sensing Harry’s continued confusion. “Taking the Black?”
Harry nodded hesitantly. “The Wall,” he said. The Wall was as it said; a wall. But Harry had been told that it stood hundreds of feet high and stretched for miles across Westeros.
“Yes. The brothers of the Night’s Watch vow to serve on the Wall for the rest of their life,” Jon explained.
“So… if you go… you die?” Harry asked, feeling that he already knew the answer. Jon nodded.
Harry felt sick. Desertion wasn’t something new. He knew there’s been soldiers shot during the muggle World Wars for running away and there were probably similar incidences throughout Earth’s complex history. But killing someone for being scared or a coward, left Harry feeling very hollow.
The stables were a hive of activity as people prepared for the ride. The stable boys were quickly saddling up the horses while the squires and pages ran all over the place to prepare the men who would be accompanying Lord Stark.
The news from Deepwood Motte must have come in very recently for he could see that Hermione’s horse was yet to be unsaddled. She wore a very solemn expression as he stood with her horse out of the way of everyone else. Arya was standing next to her, watching with wide eyes.
Lord Stark entered into the courtyard, striding over to his mount. Harry paused, contemplating, and then walked over to the Lord of Winterfell.
“Do you wish to come, Harry?” Lord Stark asked when he saw him approach. He swung up onto his horse and Harry tried not to feel intimidated as Lord Stark gazed down on him, layered in his leather armor and furs.
“I do not, my lord. I…” Harry steeled himself. He had faced Voldemort, a basilisk, and hundreds of dementors – he could tell Eddard Stark what he thought of this execution. “I wish you not do this. To kill is wrong.”
Lord Stark’s face was devoid of any emotion, though his horse shifted impatiently underneath him. “You think I take pleasure in the killing of men?” He asked.
Harry held Lord Stark’s gaze. “No.”
“This man has broken an solemn vow to the gods, abandoned his brothers and turned against the King’s Justice. He knew the punishment for such an act and now that justice will find him.” Harry dearly wished he had a better understanding of this language for he was only able to distinguish a few of the words Eddard Stark had spoken. He could sense that they had attracted the attention of many of those in the courtyard, though he did not look away from Lord Stark.
Harry struggled to think of the words to argue his point. “To kill does not… make right. Life is…”
“Sacred,” Hermione called, drawing both Harry and Lord Stark’s attention. She blushed under their gazes but radiated an air of defiance.
Lord Stark looked back to Harry pensively. “You will come,” he ordered and he signaled for someone to bring Harry a horse.
Harry frowned. “I do not want—” He could feel the people in the courtyard bristle and Lord Stark cut across him.
“You will come.”
Lord Stark wheeled his horse around but Harry could still feel everyone’s else’s eyes on him. He considered refusing again, but he reminded himself that without his wand he was very vulnerable. He had probably already broken some sort of hospitality rule by confronting Lord Stark in the first place.
Harry mounted his horse, ignoring the stares and focused on not making a fool of himself on the actual ride; after all, two months ago he’d never even sat on a horse!
There were some raised voices behind him and Harry turned to see that Hermione had mounted her horse as well. She still held her expression of defiance as all those around her looked on in surprise.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Harry asked in English. “I don’t think women are supposed to go to executions.”
“Of course, I don’t want to go and see someone beheaded!” She retorted. “But I think… I think I need to. I know we’ve been here a while now, but this place is still a foreign land and I need to understand it better – the good and the bad.”
Harry didn’t see the point of trying to convince her to stay behind as Hermione always pretty much did as she thought she should do. He looked over the courtyard to see what Lord Stark would make of it. Jory Cassel, the captain of the guard, Ser Rodrik and Hullen were all looking at Hermione and talking to Lord Stark. Whether they were in favor of her joining their party or not, Harry couldn’t tell, but he highly doubted it. Lord Stark was sending Hermione one of his unreadable gazes, but after a few seconds he looked away and nobody made any move to get Hermione to dismount.
“You’re going to find it hard to keep up,” Harry warned as they walked their horses forward. “I don’t think they’re going to ride at a gentle pace and you’re a worse rider than I am.” Hermione frowned at his words but did not deny them.
“You are both either very brave or very stupid,” Robb said as he rode over to them, though a smile lingered about his face. “There are not many grown men who would openly criticize my father or dare to defy him.”
Harry did not respond. What more was there to say that he could actually express?
Harry did not respond. What more was there to say that he could actually express?
“We do not like… pointless death,” Hermione said. “It is not our way.”
“Maybe, but you’re in the North now,” Robb pointed out.
“We want no anger from Lord Eddard,” Hermione explained.
“You won’t have angered my father, Hermione,” Robb reassured her. “It’s my mother you’ll have to watch out for.” He grinned as Hermione blanched and Harry couldn’t blame her. He doubted that lady Catelyn would be particularly impressed with her unexpected participation on this trip.
Someone called Robb’s name at the head of the party and he turned his horse. “Safe journey, Potter, my lady.”
Harry suddenly became aware of someone small standing between his and Hermione’s horses. “Arya?” He said but she put a finger to his lips to make him quiet.
“Take me with you,” she pleaded to them.
“No,” Harry and Hermione replied flatly. “You are too small,” Hermione added.
“Robb told me that the first time he went he was only eight years old and I’m’ nine,” Arya argued.
“Lord Stark say no, we say no,” Harry said. He wasn’t about to defy Eddard stark for the second time in only a matter of minutes.
Arya turned her back on him, obviously believing him to be a lost cause. “If I was a boy, Father would have let me go. That’s not fair, is it?”
Hermione seemed to struggle to find the right words. “It is not up to us, Arya. I am sorry,” she said gently.
The little girl screwed up her face in despair, ducked under Harry’s horse and sprinted away. Hermione sent Harry a pained expression but he just shrugged his shoulders.
The command came to move out and Harry braced himself for the ride ahead. Their horses moved automatically after the others in the party. They passed out of the south gate and the pace picked up significantly.
After a few minutes, he noticed Jon peel off from the party and circle back to ride with them. “You’re both making me nervous,” Jon called over the pounding of the hooves. “I keep looking over my shoulder to check neither of you have fallen off your horse so I’m going to ride back here to stop my neck hurting.”
Harry wanted to respond but he was focusing too much on not falling off. He was grateful for Jon’s presence though. At the back of the group there were only some of Winterfell’s guardsmen and Harry doubted whether they’d be overly concerned should he or Hermione come into any difficulty.
As the minutes stretched by, Harry could feel himself relaxing slightly—but only slightly. As they travelled through a dark, dense forest, his mind turned to what lay ahead and the cold sensation crept up his back again. He had never seen someone die before. He had been around death, yes, when Voldemort had killed his parents and Professor Quirrell had tried to retrieve the Philosopher’s Stone. He’d even destroyed that memory of Tom Riddle with basilisk fang but that hadn’t been a real, living person—at least Harry didn’t think so.
Executions still took place in some countries in his muggle world, he knew that, and it wasn’t that long ago that they’d stopped in the United Kingdom. But Harry was pretty sure those had been for the most serious crimes, like murder. This man of the Night’s Watch had broken a promise—a very serious promise, yes, but it wasn’t as though anybody had been seriously hurt. It didn’t seem as though his actions were bad enough to lose his life over. He’d broken plenty of rules at Hogwarts and the worst anybody had ever done to him was dock some house-points and give him a detention. But people had been given the death sentence in the Wizarding Britain, too, for Nearly Headless Nick had almost lost his head. Harry didn’t think that they still executed people though. No, we just suck out their souls.
Harry shifted uncomfortably on his horse as he thought about the wizard prison, Azkaban. He had a feeling that many of its inhabitants would choose a clean death over a lifetime of having your happiness and sanity leeched from them.
Even worse, he recalled that he’d thought Sirius Black had deserved to get the Dementor’s Kiss. When he’d been in the Shrieking Shack, he’d actually seriously considered killing Sirius himself! He hadn’t though, he had to remind himself. He hadn’t let Sirius and Remus Lupin kill Peter Pettigrew either, even though Peter had been the real one to betray his parents and murder all those muggles. Would he have let them administer the kiss to Pettigrew, though? The uncomfortable connotations to that question stayed with him all the way to their destination.
The place of execution was on the side of a large hill. A ring of standing stones surrounded a wooden black that was obviously where the man was to be beheaded. The party from Deepwood Motte were already there. Harry counted twenty men in all. A grey haired, bearded man in an impressive fur coat moved forward to welcome Lord Stark.
“That’s Galbart Glover,” Jon said as they dismounted. “He’s the Master of Deepwood Motte.”
“A Maester?” Harry frowned. Glover didn’t look like the quiet, learned Maester Luwin of Winterfell.
“No, Master,” Jon corrected. “It means he’s not quite the Lord.”
Harry nodded, taking a firm hold of his horse’s reins. His thighs ached horribly from the ride but he ignored them. Hermione looked very pale as she came to stand next to him. She was shivering despite the thick layers of clothing. Jon noticed too and began to unfasten his cloak but she shook her head.
“No, Jon. You have it,” she insisted.
A shout echoed from the other side of the stone circle as the prisoner was brought forward. When Harry saw him, he felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach and he heard Hermione gasp. This brother of the Night’s Watch looked barely a couple of years older than he was.
The boy, for you could hardly call this person a man, had chestnut hair that hung limp and greasy against his scalp, his skin was the color of milk and his eyes… Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen a pair of eyes so full of fear.
He was being dragged, kicking and screaming, before the block by two of Glover’s men. For once, Harry was glad that he was having difficulty in understanding what the boy was saying. Disapproving looks showed on the faces of those watching though Hermione’s eyes seemed to glisten with tears of fury.
“Some justice,” she spat to the only one who knew the words she said.
Lord Stark seemed to question the boy but Harry was too far away to hear of understand what was said. The boy just wailed and held out his hands as though begging for his life. After a minute, Lord Stark nodded and the boy was forced down to the block, his head jutting out over the edge.
“No! Please!” The boy’s yells were loud enough now for them hear. “Mother!”
He could feel Hermione shuddering next to him and he put out a hand to comfort her, but she pushed it away, the tears leaking down her cheeks.
Harry felt slightly surreal as he watched Lord Stark draw the biggest sword he had ever seen—the same way he had felt just before Buckbeak’s execution.
“In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name,” Lord Stark declared loudly, while the boy continued to sob. “King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, I, Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, sentence you to die.”
Harry considered closing his eyes or turning away; after all, he had not wanted to see this. He wasn’t scared of seeing death; he just didn’t think that someone else had the right to take a life away
Lord Stark positioned the sword backwards and Harry steeled himself. If Eddard Stark wanted Harry to see, then he decided that he would see, but Harry knew he wouldn’t come again if another situation like this was to arise.
The motion of the sword was a blur as it swung downwards, and the boy’s final sob was cut short as his head was separated from the rest of his body. It fell to the ground with a soft, wet noise and the body’s life blood drenched the immediate vicinity, staining it a dark red. The silence on the hill was almost deafening in the absence of the boy’s cries.