Chapter 5: A Perfect Tragedy
King's Landing was a beast of sweat, shit, and secrets. From the rented manse on the Street of Silk, Harry could feel the city's feverish pulse, a frantic rhythm set by the tourney unfolding in its heart. The roar of the crowd was a constant, distant wave, breaking against the walls of their temporary fortress. Here, there was only the sharp clink of steel on whetstone and the low murmur of conspiracy.
Their first days were a study in faces. Amid the fluttering banners and shimmering pavilions, Harry and Sirius watched. They stood in the press of the crowd, smelling the wine on the breath of merchants and the horse sweat on the leather of knights. They saw King Viserys, his face already etched with a weak man's worry. They saw Otto Hightower, a serpent coiled beside the throne, his eyes missing nothing. And they saw her. Princess Rhaenyra, the Realm's Delight, laughing with her rogue uncle, Daemon, a flicker of true fire in a court of embers. The pieces were all on the board, just as his memory had foretold.
The real work began when the sun bled out behind the Great Sept of Baelor.
Darkness fell, and Sirius flowed into it. He became a shadow with paws, a large black dog pouring through the labyrinthine alleys. He was a phantom of scent and silence, the patrols of the Gold Cloaks just another predator to be evaded. The Red Keep loomed, a jagged crown against the star-dusted sky. Its walls were a brute's challenge, but its veins pumped with life. Supply carts rumbled through service gates, servants scurried like mice, and the castle exhaled the smells of baking bread and steaming laundry. Sirius slipped through a side gate by the kitchens, a ghost swallowed by the machine.
For two nights, he became the castle's secret. He mapped its arteries, the flow of its guards, the hushed gossip of its servants. He learned the silent language of the Kingsguard, their stoic, white-cloaked paths. His destination was the heart of the fortress: Maegor's Holdfast. And there, on the third floor of the east wing, he found it. The royal birthing chamber. A place of dread and expectation. Two of the Sworn Brotherhood stood vigil at its main entrance, unmoving as statues, their presence a promise of grim duty.
But Sirius found the flaw. He always found the flaw. Fifty feet down the corridor, half-hidden in the gloom, hung a vast tapestry depicting Aegon's fiery conquest. It was a monument to power, and a lie. Behind it, Sirius's keen nose caught the scent of lye soap and dust. A narrow service entrance. A way in.
He was back before the first hint of dawn, the chill of the stone still on him. He shimmered back into the form of a man, his face stark in the candlelight. "Third floor, east wing," he said, his voice a low rasp. "Two Kingsguard on the door, day and night. But there's a tapestry. Hides a service door. That's our way through."
And so they waited. The tourney screamed on. Lances shattered, bones broke, and men roared for glory. In the manse, there was only a tense, coiled silence. Harry and Sirius were a pocket of stillness in the celebrating city, their gaze fixed on the fortress where a queen's life hung by a thread.
The signal was not a proclamation, but a change in the air itself. On the fourth day, the bells of the Great Sept began to toll. Not the joyous peal of victory, but a slow, rhythmic clang. A sound of labor. In the markets, voices dropped to whispers. The Queen's time was come.
Inside the manse, Harry rose. The waiting was over. The days of deep meditation, of gathering his will into a single, devastating point, had come to fruition. The air around him felt thin, charged.
"Sirius," he said, his voice unnervingly calm. "Guard our retreat. A diversion only if the walls are coming down around us. We are ghosts tonight."
Sirius's face was a grim mask, but his eyes burned with fierce loyalty. He gave a single, sharp nod.
They left the manse and plunged into the festival night. The city was a riot of sound and light, a perfect cloak for two shadows with a purpose that would shatter a kingdom. They moved against the current of celebration, drawn toward the tolling bells that rang for a royal birth. Harry Potter moved through the darkness to answer their call.
The din of the tourney grounds masked their approach, a steady wave of noise that swallowed the scrape of their boots on cobblestone. The service gate stood unlatched, an invitation into the belly of the beast. They were inside.
Sirius led them through the guts of the castle with a predator's certainty. Up three flights of stairs, their steps whispers against the stone. They melted into alcoves to avoid a pair of weary servants, flattened themselves into shadows as a guard patrol passed, the light of his lantern swinging just feet away. At the corridor of the royal wing, the two Kingsguard stood at their post, twin pillars of white before the ornate doors. From within, a muffled cry of pain, quickly stifled.
Harry didn't look at the guards. His eyes were fixed on the tapestry of Aegon's Conquest. He reached out, not with his hand, but with his will. For the two knights, the tapestry and the wall behind it simply ceased to be interesting. Their eyes slid over it, their minds refusing to register its existence. A blind spot painted onto reality itself.
They slipped behind the heavy fabric into a cramped, dusty passage. At its end, a simple wooden door. The sounds of distress were clearer here. A woman's ragged breathing. The low, panicked murmur of men. Harry didn't need a lockpick. The tumblers in the lock clicked open with a silent push of his mind. They were in.
The room was a canvas of sweat, blood, and despair. Queen Aemma lay dying on the bed, her face pale and slick with sweat, her eyes wide with terror. King Viserys was a broken thing beside her, weeping uselessly. Grand Maester Mellos, his face a mask of grim duty, held a polished steel knife, his voice a low drone as he explained the necessity of the cut, the choice.
Harry acted.
He unleashed his will, and the world stopped. It was not a freezing of time, but a conquest of it. The King's tears hung on his cheeks. The maester's hand, holding the knife, froze mid-gesture. The midwives became statues of useless pity. Every soul in the room was pinned in the amber of his power. Only Queen Aemma was left untouched, her terrified gaze snapping to him, the impossible man who had appeared from nowhere.
Before he moved to her side, Harry wove. He pulled on the raw magic that saturated the ancient castle, twisting it with his own immense power. He sculpted two perfect, transient lives from light and will. The first was a flawless copy of the Queen, right down to the frantic pulse in her throat and the sheen of sweat on her brow. The second was a pale, stillborn infant, heartbreaking in its perfection. He settled the phantom queen onto the bed, shifting the real, trembling Aemma an inch to the side. The phantom child he held in reserve.
Only then did he turn to the real Queen. He laid a hand on her forehead. The terror in her eyes melted away, replaced by a wave of impossible calm. His other hand hovered over her womb, and the room was filled with a silent, golden light only she could see. He commanded, and her body obeyed. The labor, the tearing, the pain—it all simply ceased. The delivery was a silent, swift miracle. A moment later, a healthy, squalling baby boy was cradled in Harry's arms. Prince Baelon.
Harry swaddled the true prince and, with a gentle push of magic, levitated both him and the sleeping Queen Aemma through the service door. Sirius was waiting, a wolf in the darkness.
"Go," Harry whispered, his voice the only sound in the universe. "Back to the manse. Don't let them out of your sight."
Sirius nodded, his face awestruck and grim. He gathered his precious, impossible cargo and was gone, a shadow melting back into the ship of the castle.
Harry turned back to the frozen play. He placed the phantom infant into the scene, then wrapped himself in a cloak of perception, becoming nothing more than a ghost of air. He released his hold.
Time crashed back into itself.
To their minds, no moment had passed. Grand Maester Mellos, his resolve inexplicably hardened by a decision that now felt like his own, stepped forward. "Your Grace," he said to the weeping King. "There is no other way."
He made the cut.
The construct on the bed reacted with programmed, agonizing realism. A final, shuddering gasp. A tremor that ran through the frame. Then, stillness. The maester reached into the ruin he had made and pulled forth the infant construct. It was blue. It took a single, stuttering breath. And then it, too, was still.
The tragedy was absolute. The chamber filled with the King's raw, broken sobs and the maesters' hollow condolences. Their memories of the event would be pristine. Traumatic. And utterly false. They would remember their impossible choice, their terrible loss, and the bloody price of duty.
His work complete, Harry Potter slipped from the room, leaving nothing behind but a perfectly crafted lie and a river of genuine grief.
Back at the manse, Sirius stood sentinel over a peacefully sleeping Queen Aemma. Across the city, the bells that had tolled for a prince's birth slowed their rhythm, shifting into a deep, mournful dirge. King's Landing began to grieve a son it had never had.
In a quiet, warded room far from the Red Keep, he slept soundly in his mother's arms.