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Daemon Targaryen/Laena Velaryon (Daughter of Corlys)Alicent Hightower & Rhaenyra TargaryenRhaenys Targaryen/Corlys "the Sea Snake" VelaryonAlys Rivers/Edric Stark
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Published:2022-11-20Updated:2024-09-01Words:328,865Chapters:61/?Comments:5,091Kudos:6,170Bookmarks:2,718Hits:367,838
(Restricted) A Stranger in a Strange Land
A_Strange_Twist_of_Fate
Chapter 9: Daughters
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hariel #6
Common was such a difficult language to learn Hariel found it hard to believe that it was….well, the actual Common language spoken around Westeros!
At least Princess Rhaenys shared her frustration with Parseltongue. Hariel did know what she would do if she was the one who looked like a struggling fool. The grammar, the syntax -- it was all so difficult to keep in her head, and although she was making progress it was stilted and frustrating. She found that she understood more than she could speak, but summoning up the correct word in her head seemed to take ages. A conversation that was meant to take a minute took almost thirty as she tried to understand, translate, and remember how to speak back!
Impossible! That's what it was.
Which is why she thought she could be forgiven for abruptly storming out of her Common lesson and ignoring the feeble call to return by the Maester. She needed to clear her head and to get away from that blasted room.
Aemond was where she'd left him, in a room that looked like a living room to Hariel — thick, expensive looking sofas with plush cushions, hard wooden tables and chairs, and artwork that all depicted the sea in some way. There was at least three lighthouses, and two that depicted sea-monsters attacking ships that really drew Hariel's attention.
The book Hariel had leant him so she could learn with the Maester, A Beginner's Guide to Potions, was still securely in his lap and he'd already read through a great chunk. He'd been able to read it with a good amunt of accuracy, although he'd interrupted her lesson a few times to clarify a word.
Hariel should have been frustrated, but really it had been a nice break away from learning Common. At least with High Valyrian she didn't feel like an idiot.
She had the kid start with the first chapter that stressed the importance of potions, how dangerous they were, and how important it was to pay attention and not mess around with them. Hariel had given him stern instruction to start with the beginning chapter before he moved on to the rest because the last thing she needed was for him to become flippant about safety.
They still didn't know how the Targaryens magic worked, how the magic of Old Valyria worked, so it wasn't like he could do 'foolish wand waving'. From what Artemis had been told it had to do with blood and fire, and Meleys seemed to think the same. They hadn't had the time to try to draw the magic out of their blood, to see what shape it would take yet as they'd been at sea for so long, but they would be doing so soon.
King Viserys had been delighted to learn that magic may return to their blood, although Hariel had hoped he understand that that was a big 'may' and not a promise. They would start with the adults as they didn't know what to expect, although Hariel was happy to teach the kids potions, dragonspeech, and some of the histories that Artemis and the dragons had passed down. It was what she'd agreed to, after all.
Then King Viserys had requested that she make more Headache potions and more Dittany Ointment, as it had helped him leaps and bounds, and had even gone so far as to offer her the ingredients she would need in addition to a parcel of land wherever she would choose so that she could make her own home eventually. The stern eyed man that was always his shoulder -- Lionel Strong she thought, had tried to protest that it was too fine a payment but the King had brushed him off. She was to name any parcel of land that was not taken and it would be hers, by right, to be passed down to her children, and eventually to theirs.
Privately, Hariel did think it was too much a payment. The ointment was easy to make, as was the Headache potion, but she would not deny that it was something she needed. So she had promised to make him so more soon, and had asked that she be given time to choose her land as she didn't know where anything was.
"How's the reading?" She had to ask twice before he pulled his eyes away from the book and Hariel could feel her heart ache with the way he looked like Hermione, all bound up in his reading and blind to the world as he did so.
"Did you know that the Drought of the Living Dead potion looks remarkably like the Dreamless Sleep potion? They are even said to smell similar." Aemond said, wide eyed. "One could take a potion to try to sleep better, and then find that they can never wake!"
He shuddered a little, pale purple eyed still wide with wonder, although oddly enough he did not seem frightened. "It says, here, that you have to be very careful with what you make because with some potions even a minor mistake can turn deadly."
His expression was so serious Hariel had to resist the urge to smile at him. Instead, she nodded grimly and sat down next to him at the table.
"Yes, the professor that taught me potions at my school was always emphasizing that it is something that one must put effort into, and that it is not an easy art to master." Hariel said, as her thoughts turned to Professor Snape. "Unfortunately I never really got into the art."
Aemond looked scandalized. "Why?! I don't understand, it's so…so…fascinating!"
He sounded so genuinely insulted that Hariel couldn't help the little laugh she gave, although she quickly covered it with a not so entirely-convincing cough. "My professor was…he was complicated, but when I first started learning he hated me. He had hated my father and thus he hated me, and so when I tried to learn potions he made it difficult. I tried to take notes the first day of class and he ripped into me for not paying attention, and it never got better from there."
"He…ripped into you?" Aemond looked concerned. He peered around at her body as if looking for a wound.
A turn of phrase that didn't work out so well, then. Bollocks.
"It means when someone verbally tears someone down, when they insult someone and are very rude to them. I didn't know anything coming into the class as it was my first day and I was new to learning magic, and he humiliated me in front of the class for it. After that I found that I just didn't really care about the subject anymore because I knew that he would always be watching and criticizing me for everything I do."
It was a shame, because cooking was something that Hariel didn't hate and potions seemed to be like cooking. But after that day, where Snape had made her feel like she was two feet tall…well, she'd never recovered the interest. Better to spitefully turn away so that he could not mock her for her earnest efforts.
Aemond scoffed. "I don't see how he's complicated, he sounds like a craven fool."
Hariel smiled a little. He hated being called a coward, and while he had, in the end, been not so terrible a person…she did not like him at all. She would have called him a bastard, but she had found that here that was an entirely different insult to what it was at home.
"People are complicated, Prince. You'll find that someone who you dislike, someone you hate, whose perspective you thought you could not understand or sympathize with…is just someone looking at the same thing you are from a different angle. Snape was a bad person, who hated everyone around him and was more than happy to make them miserable. He also risked his life for nearly seventeen years to work against a group that thought everyone without magic should die, against a Dark Lord who would have done terrible terrible things to him if he'd found out. He died to save me. He also made my school years absolutely miserable and hated every breath I took."
Aemond's silver eyebrows wrinkled. "He hated you…and then he saved you? I don't understand…" He trailed off.
Hariel nodded, and wished she could pat him on the head or shoulder or something -- but one of the rules that her guardians had established was one does not touch royals or nobility.
"It's like I said, people are complicated. You never know what is going on in someone's head, or in their hearts. Snape was still a b-- I mean, he was still incredibly unpleasant, still rude and hateful. Yet that was not all he was."
Aemond looked troubled as he nodded his head, and Hariel understood. Life was easier when things were black and white, when there were enemies and friends and nothing between.
But that was not life. She hated Snape, he hated her….and yet he had died to save her. He had also been the one to set Voldermort on the path to kill her parents.
His good actions did not erase all the bad he did, or the children he'd tormented. It did not make him a good person, but it made him something in the middle.
"You went to school, then?" Aemond asked, and Hariel nearly sighed.
This again. She'd come to understand the old school misogyny that plagued this world. Princess Rhaenys, who could have been Queen if not for the fact that she was a woman was one aspect that Hariel had found out earlier. That and that women did not go to school. Admittedly, most didn't and the royals and lords and ladies had tutors for their male children, but still.
"Yes, it was a magical school that taught the basics. One graduated when one turned of age at seventeen, and then after that they could decide if they wanted to learn more about one subject, apprentice with a work, or whatever else they wished to do."
Aemond nodded, excitedly and then sighed. "Oh, I wish I could have gone. That sounds like it would be so much fun."
Deadly, was more like what it was, although Hariel could admit that she should have spent more time actually acting like it was a school. Now that Aemond had said it, the very idea sounded exciting…but then when she remembered Professor Binns.
She had been excited to go to Hogwarts once, hadn't she? Eventually she saw it more as a home than a school….but, once, she'd been so excited to go to a school away from the Dursleys and to learn magic.
"I'm sure you would have loved it. C'mon, let's try one of these potions before Rhaenys gets back from flying. Is there one you want to try most?"
Aemond eagerly flipped to the back of the book and pointed at one of the potions, although he made sure not to touch the page with his finger. "This one, this one for sure!"
It was the Levitating Potions. A potion that made one able to levitate a few inches off of the ground for an hour or so. Only seven ingredients and a cool off time of three hours.
"Alright. Let's grab our ingredients."
By the time they'd finished making the potion, which had a silvery-blue sheen to it that made it look like an opalescent pearl, the dragon hatchlings were awake and their cries for food and fire so loud that Hariel could hear them from the castle.
Admittedly, Artemis preferred to keep herself and her children out of the caves and under the open sky most of the time, except at night when they couldn't see the sun, so she was pretty close by. The dragon hatchlings liked the Volcanic caves, where the dragons of Driftmark lay, because of the heat but between their mother's heat, the food Hariel brought them outside of their meals, and the open space to play in they didn't seem to hate it.
Aemond was so delighted at the prospect of meeting the dragons that he didn't even mind having to wait three hours for the potion to cool. Hariel was almost positive he'd forgotten about the potion.
Artemis lay with her wings close to her sides, and her body close to the ground where her three children cloistered around her body and complained about how they wanted to eat, now, and that their sisters were taking up too much of their mother's body heat. They were too old for the Mother Fire that Artemis had used when they were young, back when their eggs would protect them from the fire, and Bluebell Flames were only lukewarm to them. Hariel knew that Artemis would return to the Volcanic Underground with them soon, where the very ground was warm enough for them -- although she still insisted that her children needed to see the sky once a day.
There was Moonlight, Sunlight, and Starlight. Admittedly not the most fearsome names for dragons, but Artemis loved the sky so much that they seemed to fit. Artemis, in her tongue, called them Cloudeater, for she dazed at the clouds and desired to eat them, Restful One, for she slept more than her siblings, and Brightone, for her scales shone even brighter than her mother's.
Moonlight and Sunlight were a deep, dark iron-gray so dark that their scales were almost black, although they had the very same red eyes that Artemis had. Starlight, likewise, had red eyes. However, her scales were so silver and bright that when she moved sometimes Hariel could see a rainbow of color that glistened across her scales.
Aemond stared at them, wide eyed and breathless, as Moonlight and Sunlight argued amongst themselves over who would get the first bite of the meat Hariel had brought for them. Deer, she thought it was, fresh from the kitchens and still dripping with blood. A little snack for the girls after their nap, before the dragonkeepers were to bring them some fresh meat.
Starlight, however, had stopped arguing with her sisters so that she could stare right back at Aemond with her own red eyes. Her little head tilted to the side, and she slowly stepped away from under her mother's wing so that she could scamper forwards, closer to Aemond.
Aemond did not wait to move forward, where he kneeled in the dirt so that he could look at Starlight, who was closer to the size of maybe a corgi than anything else by now.
"Human, you smell so good." Starlight said, and then her little head turned towards Hariel and she added. "Sister, I will have this one as mine."
-
Laena #1
-
"Magic, returned." Daemon scoffed and let the letter fall back onto the table as he leaned back lazily in his chair. "Viserys could see a trick of the hand and proclaim it magic."
Laena said nothing to that as she studied the letter. Daemon, of course, could backtalk and insult his brother, but that was a pleasure only he was afforded. No one else, wife or not, was allowed to speak anything remotely similar about the King.
Not that Laena would, she had no quarrel with King Viserys despite him turning down her hand, but it was a hypocrisy that irritated her.
She knew that the King loved magic and Old Valyria more than anything, mayhaps even his own children, but she did not think that that made him so addled that he would mistake a slight of the hand for magic. Whatsmore, she did not think that her parents would make such a bold claim if it were not true. This letter made it explicit that her parents had been the ones to find this Sorceress, on the land of their ancestors, and to bring her back to Westeros. To Driftmark, Laena's home and the home of her daughters.
Pentos was fun, but Laena was getting ready to return home, back where they were not guests living on the goodwill of a Prince but in her own home, her own bed, with her own servants and family around.
Yes, she knew that their marriage, abrupt and without the approval of the King (although with the approval of her parents) would have invoked ire, and yes she had no thought other than her desire for Daemon when she had wed him and then left to Pentos to escape that ire…but it was so long ago, would the King truly be angry? Especially now that they had two children to think of, Baela and Rhaena. The King's nieces.
No, she doubted it. King Viserys's anger towards his brother did not take long to cool. A year would be sufficient, and Laena was even willing to pay lip service with an apology she did not mean to clear the air. Would even try to make it seem like she meant it.
"You cannot tell me that this does not interest you, Daemon." Laena said, and slid the letter back over to her husband. "Besides, I find it tiresome to live as the guest of another when my own home is less than a week away."
Less time, if they would fly Vhager and Caraxes. Did Daemon's own mother not fly with him and his brother on her person? They could do so with their twins, one strapped to Laena and one strapped to Daemon as their dragons brought them back to Driftmark.
Back home, where they belonged.
Daemon scoffed again, but his eyes slid back to the letter and Laena nearly smiled. He could hide his interest behind his mask of indifference and boredom, but she was his wife. After a year of being wed, she knew him.
"Besides, there are unclaimed dragon eggs in the Dragonpit with our daughters' names on them. Syrax just laid some just recently. Rhaenyra and I have been discussing having one given to Rhaena and Baela."
She had gone nearly six and ten years without a dragon of her own, and she had been miserable while she waited. It was a wait that was worth it in the end, surely, as she now rode the largest dragon in the world and yet…she wanted her daughters to have their own to claim sooner than she had. To grow up with a companion the way she could not.
They would only get that if they returned to Westeros, to Driftmark, that she could get the eggs her cousin had promised her.
Rhaenyra had promised they would belong to her daughters, and Laena would see to it that they were.
Besides, it would be nice to see her cousin again, her sister by marriage, instead of having to send letters back and forth. Laenor, too, and their boys -- although they bore more of a likeness to the Sworn Sword of her cousin than her brother. It still made her chuckle a little, this little fact.
Still, Laenor claimed them, and they would come to an agreement that their title and land would pass to the family. Her brother had sons, Laena had daughters -- Laena did not think anything more had to be said.
"I do grow tired of this Prince's expectations." Daemon said, almost lazily as he gazed up at the ceiling. "Does this fool truly think we would betroth one of our daughters to one of those fools he calls son?" He shook his head and scoffed.
Of course not. It didn't need to be said that the request -- subtle or not -- was outside the realm of reality. Prince of Pentos or not, his sons would not necessarily take on that title when he passed. No, it could go to any of the forty families of nobility that lived in Pentos.
Not to mention what would happen to the Prince if something went wrong. A war, lost, or a crop failure -- the Prince would be killed. What would happen to her daughter, then, if they'd been foolish enough to take up that offer?
What foolish customs these people of Pentos had, to make one a Prince and then kill him if their crops failed. As far as Laena was concerned, the Prince was anything but. More fool than Prince, although he did not get the choice in accepting the role.
"The wine in Westeros is better as well." She told him, and did not bother to hide her pleasure at this fact.
Daemon complained far too much about the weakness of the wine in Pentos for her to not bring it up as a reason they should leave.
"And the wine is shit." Daemon agreed.
"Besides, do you not want to know what Caraxes says? Mother says she is already learning this language to speak to Meleys. Magic or not -- I will learn dragonspeech."
Vhager must have so much to say, she thought, and she would hear it.
That seemed to draw out her husband's interest enough that he sat up in his chair. "Yes, what a peculiar claim to make, this dragonspeech." He swirled the wine in his cup and wrinkled his nose at it, no doubt thinking of the wine at home that was stronger. "Now, what would Caraxes say if given the chance? That is a mystery I never thought to think of."
Nor had she, really. Sometimes she wondered what Vhager thought, of course, of what they all thought. The idea that Vhager could ever speak these thoughts had never occurred to her, though.
Vhager was so old, from the time of the Conquest. What would she say, if given the chance? What would she say, when Laena learned the language of her kind?
Daemon sighed, deeply and almost begrudgingly, and then looked back at her. "We will get provisions and then make flight in a day, then. The better to get away from this swill."
He dumped his wine out on the floor and stood, no doubt to go for a flight, and Laena smiled as his back disappeared from the door.
She would be going home.
Notes:
I just wanted to address something that has been mentioned a few times to clear up any confusion.
Hariel isn't Lady Potter/Lady Black. I know it's a popular fanon concept, the Lord/Lady system of the magical world in HP, but it's not really something I write often (only in 1 story that's Pureblood Culture).
Thanks for reading, leaving a comment, dropping a kudos, or making a bookmark! :)
Added, after posting: to clear up any concern about Hariel just giving Aemond a book to read, the book she gave him was pure, 100% introductory book. Like reading a textbook on an Introduction to Chemistry XD the layout is basically
1. Introduction to what's been changed in this edition (ex: the Hair Growth Potion is no longer created by Anon but by Amelia Wildd, created in 14th cen Scotland.
2. introduction to what potions are, why we need to know how to make them, how dangerous they can be, and how they affect the world around us
3. History of potions. How did they come to be? Why did we start making them? Some differences in potions now vs then, how they've changed throughout the years.
4. list of common magical and nonmagical ingredients, their names, their properties, what the cannot be used with, and examples of what they're used in. EX: Seaweed: Common ingredient, no magical properties. Found in many healing potions. Does not react strongly to any known ingredients.
5. Simple potions. Hair growth potion, stomach ache potion, potion to change one's hair color. Basically what one would have to try to screw up and what one would teach to an 11 year old.
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