Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 83: Reckless Actions
The cabin of the Storm Dancer was warm, lit by a single swaying lantern that cast golden shadows across the walls.
The ship rocked gently on the waves, and the distant sound of sailors singing drifted through the timbers.
Outside, the sea had grown warmer, the skies clearer; the grey pall of Asshai was days behind them now. The sun, when it appeared, was a welcome sight after months of perpetual twilight.
Saera lay beside him, her golden hair spread across the pillow, her skin still flushed from the heat of their nightly activities.
Her breathing was slow and content, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his chest.
Ros was on his other side, resting quietly against the soft pillows, her red hair a stark contrast against the white linen. She was more reserved than Saera, but her eyes were sharp.
The redhead woman had been an unexpected addition for tonight. She had come to bring wine, and Joffrey had offered to drink it together. One thing had led to another, and they had ended up in bed.
But the most surprising part was that Saera had been the one to start it, pulling Ros into their intimacy with a confidence that had not been there months ago.
"Is there something wrong, my prince?" Saera asked, noticing he was staring at the ceiling instead of at her.
"Maybe the prince is ready for another round." Ros joined in, moving closer and resting her bare breasts on his shoulder. "I haven't been with a man this energetic in a very long time."
The three of them had been together for hours, moving from the bed to the desk to the floor, lost in the ancient rhythms that needed no words.
But now, in the quiet after, Joffrey's mind was elsewhere.
"Nothing is wrong, Saera. I was thinking on-" Suddenly, his face changed.
The moment of pleasure was drained away, replaced by something sharp and cold, a tension that coiled in his shoulders and tightened his jaw.
"My prince?" Saera became immediately worried. As his personal maid, she had learned to read his expressions, and she recognized this one...it was the look he wore when something was terribly wrong.
She had seen it before Stygai, before the storm, before every great danger he had faced.
Joffrey's eyes became distant, unfocused. "There is something wrong. I have a bad feeling." He could not explain it. But his instincts were screaming, a primal warning that had saved his life more times than he could count.
Ros said nothing. She only watched him with those sharp blue eyes, seeing more than she let on. She had learned long ago that some questions were best left unasked, and that the prince would speak when he was ready.
"A bad feeling?" Saera touched his arm. "Like wh—"
The maid was interrupted by a flash of light.
The glass candle resting on Joffrey's desk had suddenly come to life. A green flame burst upward, almost reaching the ceiling, casting sickly shadows across the cabin.
The flame flickered with an otherworldly light that made the skin crawl.
As quickly as it had appeared, it vanished, leaving only the smell of burned stone. When the flames went out, a large crack appeared on the surface of the candle, running from base to tip like a wound.
"Does it normally do that?" Ros asked, her voice steady but her eyes wide.
Saera glanced at Joffrey. The last time the candle had done something strange, it had led him to danger.
"Joffrey…" she murmured, concern thick in her voice.
Joffrey threw himself from the bed, naked and unarmored, and rushed to the desk.
As soon as his fingers touched the cracked glass, he felt a pull...a tug at his mind, magic, and his very soul.
The vision swallowed him whole.
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Winterfell was frozen.
The walls were thick with ice, the towers draped in icicles, the courtyard buried under a layer of snow that had not been there when he had last seen it.
But the cold was not natural. It was the cold of death, of a winter without end, of a power that should have been left to rot in the darkness.
The dead walked among the living.
Figures in ancient armor...bronze, iron, and rusted steel...they moved through the yard, their blue eyes burning with hunger, their hands reaching for the living. Soldiers and servants fell before them, their blood steaming in the cold air, their screams cut short by grey fingers and rusted blades.
The snow was stained red, and the red froze almost instantly.
And in the center of it all, untouched by the chaos, stood a woman.
He knew her.
She was pale as milk, with long white hair that flowed like water and eyes of piercing blue.
A silver crown rested on her brow, and she wore elegant robes of black and grey, the direwolf of Winterfell embroidered on her breast.
Her face was captivating to an extreme degree. She did not speak. She did not need to.
'It is her,' Joffrey thought, his mind reeling. 'The one I found at the bottom of the crypts. The one I stabbed with the obsidian spike. I destroyed her. I am sure of it.'
For a moment, he thought he was watching a vision of the distant past...perhaps the last Long Night, a thousand years ago, when the Corpse Queen had first walked the world. But when the vision shifted to the great hall of Winterfell, he saw familiar faces.
Robb Stark stood near the high table, his greatsword in his hands, his face streaked with blood and sweat. He looked older, harder, a man who had been forced to grow up too fast.
His mother, Catelyn, stood a short distance away, a dagger in her hand, her face pale but her eyes hard.
Sansa had her arms around Rickon, her face white as snow, trying to calm her little brother as he sobbed.
Arya was next to them, Needle in her hand, her grey eyes blazing with the same fierce determination as her older brother. She was not crying. She was ready to fight.
She was so brave.
And then Joffrey saw them...two more figures, huddled together on a bench near the hearth. Tommen and Myrcella.
They had changed. Tommen was taller, his face losing its childish softness, though his eyes were still wide with terror. His hands clutched a letter opener, as if that small blade could protect him from the monsters at the door.
Myrcella had grown into a young woman, her golden hair longer, her features sharper. She was whispering words of encouragement to her terrified younger brother while trying to hide her own fear. Her hands were steady, but her voice trembled.
They were holding hands, clutching each other as if the world were ending.
Joffrey felt something he had not expected.
Guilt.
'Did I do this?' he thought. 'Did I cause this?'
It rose in his chest like bile, hot and bitter.
He was the one who had opened the crypts. He had broken the obsidian bars. He had ignored the warnings of the ghost, too curious, too arrogant, too sure of his own power.
The vision ended so abruptly that he lost his balance and staggered back from the candle, his bare feet slipping on the wooden floor.
He caught himself on the desk, gasping for breath, just in time to see the glass candle shatter into a dozen pieces.
"Joffrey!" Saera climbed from the bed and hurried to his side, not bothering to cover herself.
"Prince Joffrey? What is wrong?" Ros covered herself with a blanket and stood up, her eyes wide.
Before either could reach him, the door burst open.
Lyssara stood in the doorway, her red hair looking disheveled, her pale eyes wide with terror. She wore only a thin shift, and her feet were bare.
She had run from her cabin without stopping to dress, without stopping to think. Her hands were trembling.
She saw Joffrey kneeling on the floor, fragments of the glass candle scattered across the desk. "You saw it too," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "The flames showed me. Winterfell. The dead queen."
Joffrey nodded, already reaching for his clothes. "Did it already happen? Or did it show me the future?"
"I do not know. The vision was unclear. But I believe it is happening now. Or it is about to." Lyssara shook her head, her red hair falling across her face. "I have never had a vision like this. It felt so intense. So personal. And that silver-haired woman... she felt incredibly dangerous. Ancient and powerful. She is not like the others."
"It is happening now." The words struck him like a blade. He was half a world away. The Starks and his siblings were likely dying at this moment, and he was here, on a ship, surrounded by people who could not even understand what was at stake.
He dressed quickly, pulling on his crimson armor. He strapped his sword to his hip.
"Joffrey, what is happening?" Saera asked, her voice cracking. "Where are you going?"
"I am going to Winterfell."
"Winterfell? But that is impossible." Saera's voice rose. "We are weeks from Astapor. Westeros is months away. You cannot-"
"It is not impossible. Not for me."
Tyrion appeared in the doorway, drawn by the commotion. "What in the seven hells is going on?" He looked at Joffrey, armored and grim. "Are we under attack?"
"No. Someone else is."
Tyrion glanced around the room....at Saera, Ros, Lyssara. He raised an eyebrow. "Looks like you were having fun. Wait...who is being attacked?"
Joffrey secured his sword and walked past his uncle. "Winterfell. I need to go now, or it will be too late."
"Too late?" Tyrion watched his nephew rush out of the cabin. "Too late for what?" He turned to the women. "Did he say Winterfell?"
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Joffrey walked to the deck of the Storm Dancer. The night air was cool on his face, and the stars above were bright and unfamiliar.
The mariners turned their heads as he passed, their eyes widening at the sight of him in full armor.
He stopped at the bow, looking out at the vast ocean. The other two ships of their small fleet, the Summer's Gale and the Shadow's Kiss, were visible in the distance, their lights twinkling like distant stars.
"Am I really doing this?" he muttered to himself.
There were two methods of magical teleportation. Portkeys were the safest, but they required being anchored to a specific location beforehand.
He did not have the means to create one during his last visit to Winterfell. And he had been too focused on his own goals, his own ambitions, to consider the possibility that he might need to return in haste.
The other method was apparition.
He had hoped never to use it here. The risks were immense. Absolute precision was required. Any mistake could lead to splinching...the loss of a limb, or worse.
In his old world, wizards trained for a long time before attempting long-distance apparition, and even then, they always used wands to focus their magic.
Joffrey had become skilled at wandless magic since waking in this body. But he was not confident he could pull this off across half a world, with only his memory of Winterfell to guide him. At least not without taking a big risk...
'What am I doing?' he thought. 'This is not like me.'
Taking chances for the sake of others was something only his old, foolish self would have done. The Harry Potter who had walked into danger without thinking, who had sacrificed himself for people he loved, who had died and come back and died again.
That boy had been buried long ago. Joffrey had buried him, layer by layer, century by century, until only the cold, calculating sorcerer remained.
But here he was, considering doing exactly the same thing once more.
'Because this is my mess,' he reminded himself.
His carelessness in the crypts had unleashed this creature. His arrogance had endangered everyone he had come to care about.
His siblings were in danger because of him. Tommen and Myrcella, innocent children caught in a war they did not understand, were about to die because he had been too curious, too proud, too sure of his own power.
He could not live with that weight.
"Fine. Let us get this over with." He scoffed, the sound lost to the wind. If this were his mess, he would be the one to clean it.
Behind him, the cabin door opened. Footsteps rushed onto the deck. He turned to see Saera, Tyrion, Lyssara, and Daenerys staring at him, their faces a mixture of confusion and concern.
Daenerys had her dragons on her shoulders, their golden eyes fixed on Joffrey.
"Joffrey, what are you doing?" Daenerys demanded.
"I am going to Winterfell to solve something. I'll return as soon as I can."
"How? You are hundreds of leagues from land."
"Magic." He did not have time to explain. "I will be back before you reach Astapor. If I do not return... wait a bit longer."
"Wait for what?" Tyrion's voice was sharp. "For your corpse to wash ashore? Joffrey, this is madness. You cannot move across the world without-"
"I can." Joffrey cut him off. "I will."
He closed his eyes.
He focused on Winterfell. The great hall and its ancient stone walls. The hearth, cold and dark.
He built the image in his mind, layer by layer, detail by detail, until he could see it as clearly as if he stood there.
The magic built inside him...unstable and dangerous. Without a wand, it was like trying to hold lightning in his bare hands.
The power roared through him, and he felt his body twist and pull...
A crack of displaced air.
He was gone.
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