The Moon and Mors domini
120 AC
The trees whispered as she ran.
Bare feet pounded against damp earth, twigs snapping beneath her weight as she wove between the ancient trunks of the forest. Moonlight dappled the moss-covered ground, guiding her forward, urging her on.
She didn’t know how long she had been running. Time slipped like water through her fingers, always moving, always changing. But she knew what she had to find.
The man.
The man with raven-dark hair. The man who walked the line between was and will be. The man who danced with the silver-haired lady beneath skies both old and yet to come.
He was here. Somewhere.
The visions whispered it to her, sang it in broken fragments of dreams and shadows, in the flickering candlelight of her chamber when she stared too long into nothingness and saw everything.
She had to find him.
Her breath came in gasps as she pushed deeper into the woods, the cool night air curling against her flushed skin. The wind carried the scent of damp leaves and distant rain, and something else, something faint but familiar, like old magic woven into the very fabric of the world.
And then…
She hit something solid.
Not a tree. Not a man.
A creature of moonlight and dreams.
A glowing silver stag stood before her, its tall, branching antlers like the limbs of an ancient oak, catching the faintest slivers of light. Its strong legs carried the grace of something untamed, something older than the stories men told around their hearths.
It should not exist.
Yet here it was.
She gasped, stumbling back, staring up in awe.
She knew who this was.
“Prongs,” she whispered.
The stag regarded her with deep, knowing eyes, breath misting in the cool night air.
If he was here… then so was the one she sought.
Her heart pounded as realization settled in.
The stag did not belong to her story; he belonged to his.
Which meant… he must be near.
The one who knew the weight of past and future. The one who told her stories when no one else would listen.
She took a trembling step forward.
“…Where is he?”
She ran through the undergrowth, her nightgown catching on brambles, bare feet sinking into the damp earth. The silver stag moved ahead of her, silent as the wind, leading her deeper into the whispering forest.
Her breath came fast, her heart pounding with a desperate certainty, she was close.
Prongs never led her astray.
The trees parted ahead, revealing a small clearing bathed in silver moonlight. And there, sitting atop a weathered rock, a book open in his hands, was him.
The man from her dreams.
The man with raven-dark hair and eyes like bottled storms.
Her steps slowed as she took him in, barely daring to breathe. His black hair, longer than she remembered, fell loosely down his back; stray strands escaped to brush against the edges of his sharp, delicate features. He lowered his hood, and the full intensity of his gaze, as he read, was revealed by the silver stag’s glow, casting shifting shadows across his face.
He did not look up. Not yet.
But she knew him.
And he… he did not yet know her.
Not in this moment.
Not in this time.
But he would.
Her lips parted, the words sitting on the tip of her tongue, words she had spoken in dreams, words he had answered with knowing eyes and quiet truths.
“Hello again, Mors domini.”
But this time… she was the one who had to wait for him to understand.
Harry stared at the small girl who had burst into the clearing, breathless and wide-eyed. Her long, platinum-blonde hair hung in loose waves, and her lilac eyes gleamed in the moonlight. She looked impossibly delicate, dressed only in a thin nightgown that fluttered as she moved. Barefoot, covered in scratches from brambles and twigs, she seemed like a wraith wandering the forest.
He initially thought that she was lost.
But then she spoke.
“Hello again, Mors Domini.”
Harry’s breath caught in his throat. His fingers tightened around the edges of his book as the words settled over him like a cold mist. He knew those words.
Only one person had ever called him that.
But Luna was long gone.
His heart clenched painfully at the thought. Luna, with her dreamy voice and knowing gaze, the one person who had understood him in ways others never could. She had whispered those words to him once, with an eerie certainty that made it sound less like a title and more like a truth woven into the fabric of the universe.
And yet, this little girl, this child, no older than ten, had spoken them with the same quiet familiarity.
Harry forced himself to meet her eyes again, studying her closer. The resemblance was uncanny. Not identical, but close.Her hair was a shade brighter, her eyes a softer hue than Luna’s piercing silver-blue. And yet, something in the way she stood, the way she knew him without knowing him, made his stomach churn with unease.
“…Who are you?” His voice was steady, but there was an undercurrent of something wary beneath it.
The girl only smiled, tilting her head as if considering him. Then, without hesitation, she stepped forward and sat herself down in the grass before him, hands folding neatly in her lap.
“I found you,” she murmured, as if that was all that mattered.
Harry wasn’t sure whether to be intrigued or terrified.
Harry’s grip on his book loosened slightly, but his gaze remained sharp. He leaned forward, studying the girl with careful intensity.
“How do you know those words?” he asked. His voice was calm, but beneath it lay an undercurrent of something far heavier, something cautious, something expectant.
The girl tilted her head, her platinum hair catching the moonlight in soft waves. “The White Lady from my dreams calls you that,” she said simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Harry inhaled sharply, a flicker of understanding settling in his chest. A seer.
Just like Luna.
It didn’t take him long to realize what that meant. Her strange certainty, the knowing way she looked at him, he had seen it before. The difference was, in his world, people at least knew what Seers were, even if they rarely believed them. But here? Here, they treated the bearers of prophecy as little more than broken things, twisting prophecy into omens and madness.
Which meant she had no idea what she was.
“You’re a Seer,” he told her, watching for a reaction.
The girl blinked. “A what?”
He sighed. Of course, they wouldn’t have a name for it here. “It means you have the gift of prophecy; you can see things others can’t. Visions. Dreams. The past, the future, maybe even things between them.”
The girl studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then, with a small nod, she accepted his words without question, as if she had already known deep down but simply never had the words for it.
Harry exhaled slowly, shifting his posture so he was fully facing her. “What’s your name?”
She hesitated this time. “Helaena.”
“And where do you live, Helaena?”
She didn’t answer.
The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy with unspoken meaning. She had answered every other question without hesitation, but this…this, she refused to say.
Harry studied her face, the way her fingers twisted in the fabric of her nightgown, the slight tension in her shoulders. She doesn’t trust me that much yet.
And maybe she was right not to.
Instead of pressing, he gave her a small, reassuring nod. “Alright,” he said. “That’s fair.”
Helaena relaxed just a fraction, her hands stilling in her lap.
Harry closed his book with a quiet thud, resting it against his knee as he glanced at the glowing stag standing just beyond them. Prongs huffed, shaking his massive antlers, and Harry couldn’t help but smile slightly.
“Tell me,” he said, turning back to the girl. “What else does the White Lady tell you?”
A month had passed since little Helaena, or Moon, as Harry had taken to calling her, had joined him. She was a quiet shadow at his side, watching with wide, wonder-filled eyes as he moved through the hidden corners of the city, tending to the sick and wounded. She never spoke when he worked, only observed, absorbing everything with the unblinking focus of someone who knew what she saw was important.
Harry, for his part, tried to keep a low profile. The last thing he needed was more people trying to catch his attention. He already had enough trouble shaking off those who whispered about the “immortal healer” or “the unseen saint.” who he guessed was some God they had mistook him for. It was a nuisance at best and dangerous at worst, and he didn’t particularly feel like dealing with either.
Besides, there was something going on in the city. Something bigger than his quiet existence in the back alleys and hidden rooms of Flea Bottom. The guards were searching for someone, someone important, if the growing tension in the air was anything to go by.
Not that it mattered to him.
But he had his suspicions.
Helaena never spoke of where she had come from, nor did she ever show any interest in returning. And Harry wasn’t blind—he had noticed the way she shrank back when soldiers passed too close, how she always kept her head down when near crowded streets, how she lingered just a bit closer to him when the wrong kind of people started asking too many questions.
She didn’t want to go home.
Not yet.
So Harry let her be.
Instead, he taught her.
Moon loved learning. She soaked up knowledge like dry earth drinking rain, eager for every scrap of understanding he could offer. And when he explained the things no one else could see, the flickering creatures of the in-between, the Nargles that made homes in the ruins of forgotten places and stole random stuff, the Watgwats that darted just beyond the edges of sight and make your brain fuzzy, she listened with an almost reverent fascination.
Most people would have scoffed. Called him mad.
But not Moon.
She only nodded, her fingers tracing shapes in the air where she swore the tiny beings danced. And when she turned to him, eyes alight with something knowing and distant, she whispered,
“They follow you, you know.”
Harry didn’t ask who they were.
He had a feeling she would tell him when the time was right.
The peace didn’t last.
It never did.
Helaena had been laughing, something rare and soft, like the first bloom of spring, chasing after a butterfly with the same wide-eyed fascination she gave to everything she found beautiful. Then she tripped, her small frame tumbling to the ground.
Harry had reached for her, but before he could pull her up, he heard it.
A sharp inhale. A murmur.
Then…
“Silver hair… Gods, it’s the lost princess!”
The world shifted.
The peaceful, hidden corners of Flea Bottom shattered under the weight of reality as armored figures closed in, their hands grabbing at her before she could so much as scramble to her feet.
She didn’t fight them.
Helaena only turned to look at him, her wide lilac eyes meeting his, filled not with fear, but with understanding. She had to go back. She knew this was inevitable.
Still, she smiled.
Because it wasn’t goodbye.
Harry had taught her how to find him again.
It had taken time, effort, and patience, but she had done it. He had shown her how to shape her magic, how to call something from within, something bright and real. She didn’t have a magnificent stag like his Prongs, but she had something.
A rabbit.
Small and delicate, glowing silver like moonlight, its nose twitching as it flickered into existence in her hands. It was hers and she could send messages to Harry whenever she wanted.
Present day.
The room was heavy with silence.
Helaena sat before him, no longer the bright-eyed child who had once danced after butterflies and whispered secrets of things yet to come. The years had worn her down, dulled the silver light in her eyes.
Harry now understood why she had stopped sending her Patronus.
No one could create a Patronus in such a hollow state.
He knelt before her, ignoring the sharp gazes of Daemon, Rhaenyra, and Aemond. Grief and madness had broken her; in their eyes. To him, she was still Moon.
Her gaze lifted, dreamy and distant, yet full of something ancient. Recognition.
“Hello again, Mors domini,” she murmured, just as she had all those years ago.
Harry crouched lower, close enough that only she could hear him. She shifted toward him, drawn like a tide to the shore.
His voice was a whisper against her ear, a secret just for her.
“How about we run away again?”
For the first time in a long time, Helaena smiled.