Chapter Text
The first thing I became aware of in this new, dreadful existence was the cold. Not the crisp, magical cold of a Scottish winter, or even the damp chill of a Privet Drive cupboard. This was a *historical* cold. A cold that had seeped into the stone of Runestone over millennia, a cold that carried the weight of dead Bronze Kings and their equally dead ambitions. It was the kind of cold that made you believe in grumpy, frostbitten gods.
The second thing was the profound, staggering *incompetence*.
“She’s not taking the teat, m’lady.”
The voice was as sharp and unwelcoming as the room. I, currently a pathetic bundle of newborn reflexes and overwhelming cosmic horror, was being jostled by hands that had all the tenderness of a house-elf in a bad mood.
“Then make her.” The reply was flatter than a Dementor’s affect. It came from the blurry shape that was, according to the fragmented whispers and the sickening pulse of shared blood I could somehow feel, my mother. Lady Reah Royce. The words weren’t just cold; they were *final*, like a judge passing a sentence on a particularly uninteresting beetle.
Ah. So that was the theme. Neglect with a side of contempt. A classic. I’d had warmer receptions in a nest of Acromantulas.
I decided to spare the miserable nurse further effort and latched on, if only to shut her up. The milk was tepid. Of course it was. Metaphors were becoming frightfully literal.
Days bled into one another, a monotonous parade of grey light, cold swaddling, and the distant sounds of a fortress that had no joy in it. My body was a traitor. Frail, prone to shivering at the slightest draft, it felt like it had been assembled from the spare parts of sickly Victorian poets. My magic, that immense, familiar ocean of power, was locked away behind a dam of infant physiology. I could feel it, a restless leviathan in my chest, but trying to access it was like trying to drink the ocean with a teaspoon. A *plastic* teaspoon.
The naming ceremony was a farce held in a drafty hall. Reah, a woman with a face carved from the same stone as her keep, stood rigid. The man beside her—*Daemon Targaryen, my father*—was a study in disinterest. He looked like someone had forced him to attend a lecture on goblin accounting. Handsome, in a sharp, cruel way, with silver-gold hair and violet eyes that scanned the room as if looking for an escape route, or preferably, a fight.
“The name is Haelix,” Reah announced, her voice echoing. “A Royce name. For the hills. For the bronze. A strong name.”
A murmur went through the small assembly. Not a happy one. I, from my perch in a nurse’s arms, caught the eye of an old maester. He looked away quickly, making a subtle sign against evil.
*Oh, brilliant.*
“Haelix,” Daemon repeated, tasting the word. He smirked, a flash of white teeth. “A curse-laden name for a cursed-looking creature. Fitting.” He looked directly at me, and in his eyes, I saw no fatherly warmth, no flicker of recognition. I saw a flawed product. A disappointment. “Let us hope the strength of the name outlasts the child. She’s smaller than a dragon’s tooth.”
And with that breathtaking display of paternal charm, he was gone, his black cloak swirling. He left Runestone that afternoon, reportedly for the “warmth and civilization” of King’s Landing. My mother did not shed a tear. She looked at me, now officially Haelix the Cursed, with a loathing so pure it was almost impressive.
“Take it away,” she said to the nurse. “The sight of it sickens me.”
So, the board was set. A hated daughter, a name whispered to bring death, a father who saw me as a stain, and a body that seemed determined to prove them all right. Trapped in a medieval nightmare with the mind of a woman who had faced down Dark Lords and bureaucratic horrors at the Ministry.
I lay in my crib that night, staring at the oppressive stone ceiling. The cold was constant. The weakness was infuriating.
*Right then,* I thought to the universe, to Death, to whatever cosmic joke had deposited me here. *You’ve had your fun. The neglected infant routine is tired. The ‘cursed name’ trope is melodramatic. I’ve died before. It was boring. I am Harriet Potter, and I do not fade away in a drafty nursery.*
I focused inward, not on the vast magic, but on the tiny spark of will. The core of *me*. I pushed it, not outwards, but through the frail channels of my own infant body. A simple, foundational piece of magic. One Hermione would have scoffed at for its lack of complexity. *Thermoregulation.*
It wasn’t a spell. It was an *instruction*. A command from the Mistress of Death to her own mortal vessel: *You will not be cold.*
A warmth, minute but defiant, began in my center. It didn’t flood my limbs—the dam was still too strong for that—but it held the creeping chill at bay, creating a pocket of livable temperature around my core. It was exhausting. I fell asleep instantly, but I slept warm.
It was a start.
***
The next year was a masterclass in strategic survival conducted from a playpen. My physical growth was still slow, but my mind was a hyper-accelerated engine. I listened. I absorbed every scrap of conversation from the nurses, the guards, the servants who thought the “cursed babe” was too simple to understand.
I learned of my family. The Targaryens. Dragon-riders. Incestuous, entitled, and mad as hatters, by the sounds of it. My father, Daemon, was the King’s brother, a warrior of renown and temper. The King himself, Viserys, was said to be kind, but weak. There was talk of a “Great Council,” of disputed successions. The word “dragon” was everywhere.
Fascinating. A whole new world of political intrigue and violent stupidity to navigate. Just what I always wanted.
My magic practice continued in secret, a daily torture of mental gymnastics. I couldn’t summon a light, but I could, with agonizing focus, make a falling dust mote slow its descent. I couldn’t levitate my rattle, but I could sometimes influence which way it rolled. It was like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with a mop while wearing mittens.
My mother’s visits were rare and dreadful. She would stand over my crib, a statue of resentment.
“You took everything from me,” she whispered once, her breath smelling of sour wine. “My freedom. His regard. And you can’t even die politely.”
*Charming,* I thought, staring up at her with what I hoped looked like infantile blankness but felt more like centuries-deep exhaustion. *You married a man who despises you and your culture, and you blame the baby. A tale as old as time, and just as creatively bankrupt.*
On my first nameday, there was no celebration. A bland porridge was presented. Reah did not appear. A servant, a young girl with kind eyes, slipped me a honeyed finger to suck on when no one was looking. It was the first kindness not born of royal obligation I’d experienced.
I focused on it. The simple sweetness. The girl’s nervous smile. I stored the memory away, a tiny, glowing coal in the chill.
Then, a ripple in the monotonous pond. A royal party was coming. The King himself, Viserys I Targaryen, was to visit Runestone on his progress.
The keep erupted in frantic, unhappy activity. Reah’s bitterness reached new, aromatic heights. But a new, fragile hope sparked in my chest. The kind king. The one the servants spoke of with genuine, if pitying, respect.
Perhaps. Just perhaps.
The day arrived. I was dressed in a scratchy, overly elaborate gown of Royce bronze, making me look like a sickly, gilded mushroom. I was placed in the solar, propped up on a pile of cushions, a prop in my mother’s pathetic theatre of loyalty.
The doors opened. He entered.
Viserys Targaryen was a big man, gone soft around the middle, with a gentle, weary face and the same silver-gold hair as his brother, though thinner. His eyes, a warmer violet than Daemon’s, took in the room with a polite sadness. He greeted Reah with formal courtesy, his gaze already drifting, already looking for the burden he knew was here.
Then his eyes found me.
I saw it. The calculation, the political assessment… and then the genuine, unvarnished *pity*. It melted into something softer, something that reminded me painfully of a look Molly Weasley might give a wounded bird.
“And this,” he said, his voice a rich, quiet baritone that filled the stiff room, “must be my niece.”
He didn’t wait for Reah’s permission. He crossed the room, his movements slightly stiff, and knelt before my cushion throne with a grunt of effort. He was so large he blocked out the bleak light from the window.
“Hello, little one,” he said, and his smile reached his eyes, crinkling the corners. “I am your uncle Viserys.”
He didn’t coo. He didn’t talk in a baby voice. He spoke to me as a person. It was so startlingly novel I almost forgot to breathe.
I looked back at him, my ancient mind whirring behind my two-year-old eyes. I saw the loneliness in him, the weight of a crown he never wanted, the grief for a wife and son lost. I saw a good man drowning in a sea of dragons and vultures.
On impulse, a stupid, dangerous, utterly human impulse, I reached out a tiny, frail hand. Not for a toy. Not for food. I reached out and placed my palm against his cheek, where his beard was neatly trimmed.
The room froze. Reah inhaled sharply. Viserys’s eyes widened. Then they shimmered.
He covered my hand with his own, his palm warm and calloused. “There you are,” he whispered, just for me. “I thought they might have hidden you away completely.”
And in that moment, the cursed girl Haelix, and the weary witch Harriet, found their first true ally in this miserable world. It wasn’t much. But it was a spark. And I had built bonfires from less.