# Winterfell - Hadrian's Chambers - Dawn
The grey light of northern dawn crept through the shutters like a thief with no particular urgency, and with it came the sound of wings.
Not ravens bearing tedious messages about grain stores and tax disputes—those feathered bureaucrats could sod right off—nor the soft flutter of owls returning from their nightly murder sprees. No, this was something altogether different. Something that made the hair on Hadrian's arms stand on end even before his brain caught up to what his body already knew.
*Phoenix wings.*
He was moving before his eyes properly opened, muscle memory overriding the pleasant fog of sleep. His feet hit cold stone—always a deeply offensive way to achieve full consciousness—and one hand closed around the wand that lived beside his bed like a paranoid lover.
The other hand scrubbed at his face, trying to convince his eyes that the world was worth looking at despite the hour.
The hearth exploded into golden flame with the sort of theatrical flair that suggested phoenixes had invented dramatic entrances sometime around the dawn of creation and everyone else was just copying their bloody homework.
"Fawkes."
The name emerged rough as gravel, weighted with seventeen years of hoping and not-hoping, that peculiar state where you wanted something so badly that you convinced yourself you didn't want it at all because wanting things led to disappointment and disappointment was exhausting.
The phoenix materialized from flame like he was simply stepping through a door, which—Hadrian supposed—was probably exactly what he was doing from his perspective. Magnificent bastard. All scarlet and gold and looking supremely unconcerned about minor details like the laws of physics or the general impossibility of his existence.
Strapped to his leg with what looked like expensive Dornish leather was a case. Not the modest little cylinder Hadrian had sent south, but something considerably more substantial. The sort of case that suggested his letter had prompted a response of some length.
His hands started shaking.
Just slightly. Just enough that he noticed and immediately began an internal lecture about emotional control and tactical discipline and how he was better than this, more professional than this, not the sort of person who got the trembles over *correspondence*.
Except it wasn't about the correspondence, was it? It was about what the correspondence represented. The possibility—the absolutely terrifying, completely unreasonable possibility—that someone in this world of steel and suspicion actually remembered Harry Potter.
"Right then," he said to the room, to the phoenix, to whatever cosmic forces might be listening and probably laughing. "Let's see if I've completely lost my mind, or if losing one's mind is simply the new standard for baseline sanity."
He approached Fawkes with the sort of careful deliberation usually reserved for disarming explosive curses or defusing situations where one wrong word meant death. The phoenix watched him with those ancient eyes that had probably witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations and found them all rather tedious in the repetition.
The case was heavier than expected. Good weight. Solid. The wax seals caught the firelight, and Hadrian felt his breath catch as he recognized the symbols pressed into cooling wax.
Oberyn's sun-and-spear, clear as day and twice as bright.
And beside it, overlapping like they were sharing space at a very crowded party: the Black family grim.
Not the formal crest—all pompous and proper, the sort of thing the Blacks used when they wanted to remind everyone that their family tree stretched back to when dragons were fashionable and everyone was considerably more dramatic about blood purity. No, this was Sirius's *personal* seal. The mark he'd used for letters that actually meant something, that came from him rather than the ancient house whose name he'd worn like badly fitting armor his entire life.
Memory crashed over him like a curse to the chest.
Seventeen again. Standing in the Department of Mysteries while the only father he'd ever really known fell through a veil that whispered promises it absolutely intended to keep. His own voice screaming Sirius's name—raw and desperate and the sound of something being torn out of him that had never quite healed properly.
"He remembers," Hadrian whispered, and his voice had gone soft in that dangerous way that happened when you were trying very hard not to feel things because feelings were weaknesses and weaknesses got you killed. "Merlin's saggy left testicle. He actually remembers."
Fawkes made a sound that was definitely agreement mixed with what might have been amusement at human tendency toward creative profanity when confronted with emotional situations.
"Don't you start," Hadrian told him, but there was no heat in it.
The seal broke under his thumb—a small violence, necessary and final. The parchment unfolded with the whisper of expensive paper, the good stuff that lasted, not the rough nonsense most people used for letters about livestock prices.
Multiple pages. Two distinct hands that he would have recognized blind and drunk and possibly dead because some things carved themselves so deep that even reincarnation couldn't touch them.
One flowing and elegant, the penmanship of someone who'd been forced to learn proper writing by a family that valued appearances over affection and had decided to be deliberately excellent at it out of spite. The other precise and controlled, every letter perfectly formed because sloppiness offended her on a fundamental level that bordered on religious conviction.
Sirius and Padma.
His godfather and one of his oldest friends. Both alive. Both here. Both remembering when they should have forgotten, when any reasonable cosmic order would have wiped their memories clean to avoid exactly this sort of complication.
The first words hit him like a warhammer to the solar plexus:
*My dear, infuriating, impossible godson,*
*If you're reading this, then Fawkes has successfully navigated approximately a thousand miles of hostile territory, several kingdoms' worth of airspace that theoretically shouldn't permit phoenix transit, and whatever metaphysical barriers separate one life from another when souls get scattered across dimensions like seeds thrown by a particularly careless gardener who's had too much wine and stopped caring where things land.*
*Which means either I'm actually Sirius Black wearing Prince Oberyn Martell's admittedly magnificent body—and it really is magnificent, pup, the sort of thing that makes people reconsider their sexual preferences, their religious convictions, and possibly their life choices—or I'm the most elaborate fraud in the history of two worlds and you should probably have me executed for crimes against credulity.*
*I'm hoping you'll give me the benefit of the doubt on the former. The latter would be disappointing after all the effort Padma and I put into this response, and I've had quite enough disappointment for several lifetimes. Or however many we're counting at this point. I've lost track.*
Hadrian had to stop reading.
Had to actually set the letter down and press both hands against the desk because his vision had gone blurry and his throat had closed up and he was absolutely *not* crying because he didn't do that anymore, hadn't done that since he was seventeen and broken and learning that tears solved exactly nothing except making your face wet and your nose run.
"You absolute bastard," he said, and his voice cracked on the words like ice breaking, and he didn't even care because Sirius was alive. Sirius was alive and writing letters that sounded exactly like him—dramatic and irreverent and making jokes about how attractive his new body was because of course he bloody was, because Sirius Black had never met a situation he couldn't make somehow inappropriate while simultaneously being oddly endearing about it.
He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand—just clearing dust, absolutely not dealing with moisture that had no business being there—and forced himself to keep reading because he was a grown man, a battle-hardened wizard who'd killed dark lords and survived wars, and he could handle reading a letter without falling apart like a green boy getting his first rejection.
*You asked if I remember autumn afternoons teaching you to fly. I remember every single one, pup. Every bloody afternoon where I questioned my judgment and James's sanity for trusting me with a child and a broomstick, which is basically the recipe for disaster written in letters visible from the moon. Like giving a drunk a bottle of wine and asking him to babysit. Everyone knows how it ends, but you do it anyway because optimism is a disease.*
*I remember the time you decided that 'up' was merely a suggestion rather than a fixed direction and nearly killed Filch's damned cat in your enthusiasm to prove that Gryffindors could match Seekers despite having all the aerodynamic grace of a drunken hippogriff with vertigo and possible inner ear problems. Mrs. Norris survived—tragic, really, nasty creature—and Filch complained for weeks. Weeks, pup. It was glorious. I've never been prouder of anything in my life, including that time I turned Snape's hair pink for an entire month and convinced him it was a curse that could only be broken by public apology, which he refused to do because he was a stubborn bastard even when he looked like a children's toy.*
*You asked if I remember the Veil.*
The handwriting changed here, became less controlled, the letters sharper and more aggressive as though emotion had interfered with the careful penmanship.
*I remember falling. I remember Bellatrix's curse—bitch always did have excellent aim, shame about the complete and total insanity—and I remember the sensation of going backwards. Of losing my balance. Of knowing with absolute crystal clarity that I'd fucked up in a way that wasn't fixable with clever words or quick thinking or any of the usual tricks I'd used to get out of trouble my entire life.*
*I remember your voice. Screaming my name like your soul was trying to follow mine into whatever darkness waited beyond that cursed archway. Like something was being torn out of you. I remember wanting to tell you to stop, to stay, to save yourself because you were young and stupid and had your whole life ahead of you and I was just a broken man who'd spent twelve years in Azkaban going slowly mad. But my voice was gone and my body wasn't responding and everything was going grey and cold and wrong in ways I couldn't describe.*
*I remember being scattered. Like ash on wind. Everything I was being torn apart and distributed across distances that shouldn't exist, across spaces that didn't make sense. Not death—at least not death as most people understand it—but dissolution. Becoming nothing, or many things, or the same thing spread so thin across existence that coherent thought became impossible.*
*And then I woke here. In this body. In this world. Carrying Oberyn Martell's memories alongside my own like two books written in different languages but somehow telling the same story about loss and rage and love and the particular brand of fury that comes from watching people you care about suffer for things that weren't their fault, that they didn't choose, that they couldn't prevent no matter how hard they tried or how much they sacrificed.*
The script shifted to Padma's smaller, more controlled writing. Professional. Precise. The kind of handwriting that suggested she was composing formal documentation even when discussing things like dimensional displacement and blood magic and cosmic bureaucracy that defied reasonable explanation.
*Hadrian,*
*Since Sirius is clearly dedicating half this letter to being theatrical about his feelings—which is both endearing and exhausting in roughly equal measure, as you well know—I'm intervening to provide actual useful information about your origins and what they mean for your current situation.*
*The night you appeared in James and Lily's sitting room, you were perhaps weeks old. Maybe a month, possibly less. Still wrapped in blankets embroidered with golden stags. Fine work. Expensive work. The sort that only highborn families commission for important births, the kind of thing that costs more than most people earn in years of hard labor.*
*There was no warning. No spell signature we could identify. No magical resonance beyond the raw power of whatever force had transported you. You simply... appeared. One moment their sitting room was empty except for James and Lily discussing fertility potions and whether they should try despite the risks, and the next moment there was an infant screaming with the sort of determination that suggested you'd been doing it for quite a while and were thoroughly put out about being ignored.*
*James saw the stag embroidery and claimed it as divine confirmation. His Patronus. His symbol. Proof that magic itself was answering Lily's grief about being unable to bear children naturally. He was convinced you were a gift from forces they didn't understand but could accept as fundamentally benevolent because the alternative—that powerful magic was randomly scattering infants across dimensions for unknowable reasons—was too disturbing to contemplate without questioning everything they thought they understood about how magic worked.*
*Lily was more practical. She examined you thoroughly for signs of dark magic, curses, anything that might suggest malicious intent behind your sudden arrival. Found nothing. You were healthy, furious about the crying situation, and completely mundane except for the minor detail of having apparently traveled between worlds without any visible means of doing so.*
*She performed the Sanguis Fidelis the next day. Blood adoption. The ritual that rewrites bloodlines at the deepest possible level. Not just name and inheritance, but magic itself. The fundamental nature of what you are.*
*It's powerful magic, Hadrian. The sort most wizards won't touch because it's irreversible and because it changes things that people believe shouldn't be changed, that they think should remain fixed and immutable regardless of circumstances or desire. After that ritual, any test performed would show you as James and Lily's biological son. Any test. Hogwarts' wards recognized you as Potter blood—actual Potter blood, not adopted, not honorary, but genuine descendant of the line. The family vault at Gringotts opened to your touch because the goblin magic read you as legitimate heir. Even Voldemort's Horcrux saw you as carrying Potter magic, else it could never have attached itself to you the way it did.*
*For all practical purposes, you ARE a Potter. The magic made it true in ways that transcend paperwork or social convention or anyone's opinion about the ethics of such rituals.*
*But.*
The word stood alone on its own line, weighted with implications that spread like cracks through ice.
*That doesn't change where you came from originally. And based on the timing—seventeen years since your appearance, which matches exactly with Crown Prince's disappearance from the Red Keep under circumstances that were never adequately explained—Sirius and I are both convinced that you are Robert's lost son.*
*The firstborn child of King Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei Lannister. The true heir to the Iron Throne, whose disappearance was mourned and investigated and eventually forgotten because people can only sustain grief for so long before it becomes too exhausting to maintain, before life demands they move forward regardless of losses they haven't properly processed.*
*Whose survival would make you the most politically significant person in the Seven Kingdoms whether you want that designation or not.*
Hadrian set the letter down with the sort of exaggerated care that suggested if he wasn't extremely careful about his movements, he might do something regrettable. Like putting his fist through the wall. Or setting something on fire. Or both simultaneously because why choose when you could have comprehensive destruction.
His hands had stopped shaking. They'd gone cold instead. The sort of cold that had nothing to do with Winterfell's climate and everything to do with the ice that settled into your bones when you realized the universe was laughing at you again.
He moved to the window with controlled precision. The courtyard below was beginning to stir—guards changing watch, servants starting their morning routines, the familiar rhythms of a great castle waking to another day of not knowing they were hosting a lost prince who hadn't asked to be found.
"Robert Baratheon's son," he said aloud, testing how the words felt in his mouth.
They tasted of ash and iron and the particular bitterness that came from having jokes played at your expense by forces you couldn't fight or reason with or even properly curse because they were too abstract to target effectively.
He laughed—short, sharp, utterly devoid of anything resembling actual humor. The sound was harsh in the quiet room, the sort of laugh that came from men who'd stopped expecting good news and had learned to greet fresh disasters with dark amusement because what else could you do when the universe kept dealing you impossible hands.
"Of course," he continued, still staring out at the courtyard where people lived normal lives with normal problems. "Because being Harry Potter wasn't enough. The Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, the poor bastard who killed Voldemort at catastrophic personal cost while everyone cheered and then promptly forgot how much the war cost anyone who actually fought it—that wasn't complicated enough. No, I also needed to be a secret prince. A lost prince with legitimate claim to a throne currently occupied by bastards born of incest between twins so similar that sleeping together probably counts as extremely elaborate masturbation with extra steps."
Fawkes made a soft sound—part sympathy, part what was definitely amusement at human tendency toward bitter sarcasm when confronted with cosmic irony.
"You think this is hilarious," Hadrian observed, turning to give the phoenix a look that could have stripped paint. "And you're probably right. Poor Harry Potter can't even get properly reincarnated without stumbling directly into a succession crisis that makes his previous adventures look like practice runs for the real catastrophe. It's almost impressive how consistently I manage to find the worst possible complications. I should write a book. 'How to Attract Political Disasters: A Comprehensive Guide by Someone Who Really Wishes He'd Stayed in Bed.'"
The phoenix trilled agreement, or possibly just commentary on human tendency to state the obvious when stressed.
"Sod off," Hadrian told him without heat, returning to the desk where the letter waited to deliver what he suspected would be even worse news because it always got worse before it got better, that was simply how these things worked in his experience.
He picked up the parchment again, noting how Sirius's flowing script had returned for the next section. The handwriting was slightly less controlled here, sharper, as though emotion had interfered with careful penmanship.
*Now, about your mother.*
*And before you tell me that Lily was your mother—and she was, pup, she absolutely was in every way that mattered—I need to tell you about the woman who birthed you. Because if you're going to survive what's coming, you need to understand exactly what sort of person Cersei Lannister is.*
*I won't soften this. You deserve honesty even when—especially when—it's uncomfortable. You deserve to know what you're facing without pleasant lies or diplomatic euphemisms designed to make ugly truths more palatable to sensitive ears.*
*Cersei Lannister is beautiful. Staggeringly, impossibly beautiful. The sort of beauty that makes men write terrible poetry and start wars and reconsider their life choices. Golden hair like spun sunlight, green eyes like summer grass, features that look like they were carved by sculptors whose only goal was creating physical perfection. She's also brilliant—genuinely brilliant, not just clever, with a mind that can see three moves ahead and calculate political outcomes with the sort of precision most people reserve for mathematical proofs.*
*And she is utterly, completely, horrifyingly without conscience.*
*She celebrated Oberyn's sister's murder. Elia Martell and her children were butchered during the Sack of King's Landing. Raped, killed, mutilated in ways that made hardened soldiers vomit when they saw the bodies, that gave men who'd fought in wars nightmares for years afterward. Cersei heard the news and smiled. Actually smiled, pup. She saw the death of children—innocent children who'd done nothing wrong except being born to the wrong family—as political convenience. Obstacles removed from her path to power.*
*She's caused suffering that would make demons reconsider their career choices. She's had people killed for minor slights, for imagined insults, for simply existing in ways that annoyed her. She's manipulated, lied, seduced, and murdered her way through life with the sort of casual ruthlessness that suggests she genuinely doesn't understand why other people think morality should constrain behavior.*
*From what I've learned through Oberyn's memories—and gods, pup, some of these memories are like looking into a pit that goes down forever with no bottom in sight—she's exactly the sort of woman who would look at an infant son and calculate whether his continued existence served her interests better than his convenient disappearance. And if the calculation came out wrong, she wouldn't hesitate. Wouldn't lose sleep. Wouldn't spare it a second thought beyond planning the logistics.*
*I don't know if she was involved in whatever cosmic force scattered you across dimensions. But I know—absolutely, certainly know—that if she discovers you survived, she will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat you pose to her children's claims. She's killed for considerably less. She's had people tortured for offenses that existed only in her imagination. And she's patient, pup. Patient and creative and willing to wait years for the perfect opportunity to destroy enemies who thought they'd escaped her notice.*
Hadrian read those words three times, his expression growing progressively more grim as implications crystallized around information he'd been hoping wouldn't prove as bad as his worst fears suggested.
But of course it was. It was always worse than the worst fears. That was simply how the universe operated when it came to his life—find the outcome that combined maximum complexity with maximum personal discomfort, then add complications just to make it interesting for whatever cosmic forces were watching.
"So my birth mother is a murderous narcissist who views children as tools or obstacles depending on their political utility," he said aloud, his voice flat, deadpan, the tone of someone reading inventory lists rather than discussing maternal relations. "Well. That's actually rather on-brand for my experience with maternal figures, isn't it? Petunia treated me like a servant and hid me from the world like a shameful secret. Bellatrix tortured my friends while laughing about it. And now Cersei, who apparently looks at murdered children and smiles because their deaths cleared convenient paths to power. I really do have the most spectacular luck with mothers. You'd think eventually the universe would give me one who wasn't either uselessly cruel or dangerously insane, but apparently that's too much to ask. I should start a support group. 'People Whose Mothers Are Terrible: We Meet Tuesdays and Bring Our Own Wine Because We'll Need It.'"
Fawkes made a sound that might have been sympathy or might have been the avian equivalent of 'yes, your life is rather ridiculous, isn't it?'
"Your support is overwhelming," Hadrian told him dryly. "Truly I feel better already."
He continued reading, forcing himself through Sirius's detailed catalogue of Cersei's various crimes—not presented for shock value, he could tell, but as tactical briefing. Know your enemy. Especially when your enemy was the woman who'd given birth to you and would cheerfully arrange your death if you became inconvenient to her plans.
The section about Robert proved marginally more hopeful, though "marginally" was doing considerable work in that assessment:
*Your father is complicated, pup. Robert was magnificent once—truly magnificent, not just in the way songs claim every knight was magnificent because the singers are paid to lie and make everyone sound better than they actually were. Brave to the point of madness, strong enough to shatter armies with that warhammer of his, the sort of man who inspired absolute loyalty in people who followed him into battles that rational calculation suggested were suicide missions. The kind of leader who made men believe that individual courage could change outcomes that politics and resources had already determined.*
*He killed Rhaegar Targaryen at the Trident. Single combat in the middle of a battle, with thousands watching and the fate of kingdoms hanging in the balance like a sword about to drop. Rhaegar was supposed to be unbeatable—trained from birth, carrying a sword named for prophecy, fighting for his family and his crown and everything he believed in. Robert crushed his chest with the warhammer and sent the rubies from Rhaegar's armor flying into the river where they still lie like drops of frozen blood. That's the man who sired you. A warrior who could end wars through personal prowess.*
*But as a king?*
*He's weak, Hadrian. Not evil like Cersei, not cruel, just... tired. Worn down by responsibilities he never wanted, drowning in wine and whores while pretending his problems will solve themselves if he just ignores them long enough and drinks enough to forget they exist. He won the throne through conquest and discovered he had absolutely no idea what to do with it beyond trying to recapture the glory days when life seemed simpler and choices seemed clearer and all you needed was a good warhammer and the will to use it.*
*He's let Cersei and her family run the kingdom while he hunts and drinks and fucks his way through the Crownlands like a man trying to outrun his own disappointment. He's allowed corruption to flourish, debts to accumulate, problems to compound because dealing with them would require being the sort of king he never wanted to be. He wanted to be a warrior. He got a crown instead, and he's spent seventeen years resenting it.*
*Don't judge yourself by his weaknesses any more than you should judge yourself by Cersei's sins. You are who you've chosen to be, shaped by James and Lily's love and the lessons you learned watching good people sacrifice themselves for causes larger than individual survival. That's what defines you—not accidents of birth involving people whose relationship was political convenience rather than anything resembling actual affection.*
Hadrian set the letter down again, his tactical mind already working through implications even as emotional reactions threatened to overwhelm the careful rational processing he'd learned to maintain when everything else was falling apart.
"So," he said to Fawkes, his voice carrying that particular British dryness that suggested he was discussing something mildly inconvenient rather than a fundamental identity crisis. "My biological father is a brilliant warrior who became a mediocre king and then gave up entirely, drowning his disappointment in wine while his kingdom rots around him. My biological mother is a beautiful monster who calculates murder with the same casual indifference other people bring to choosing what to eat for breakfast. That's exactly the sort of heritage every child dreams of discovering. Really. I'm overwhelmed with familial pride. Should I commission banners? 'House Potter-Baratheon: Our Parents Are Disasters But At Least We're Pretty.' Has a nice ring to it."
But the letter wasn't finished. The script shifted again to Padma's controlled precision for what she'd apparently decided were the practical matters requiring immediate attention:
*First: The blood adoption means conventional tests won't reveal your Baratheon heritage. Any maester examining you would conclude you're James Potter's son because the magic made that true at the deepest possible level. The ritual didn't just change your name or your legal status—it rewrote your blood, your magic, everything that determines identity in ways that transcend normal understanding.*
*We can't simply present you to Robert with evidence from magical tests because those tests will confirm you're Potter blood, not Baratheon. The magic that made you James and Lily's son was thorough enough that even the most sophisticated detection methods would support that identity rather than revealing your original parentage.*
*Second: You need physical evidence—something that predates the adoption ritual, something that carries markers even magic can't completely erase. Material objects that were present at your birth, that touched you before the ritual transformed your fundamental nature.*
*Sirius believes you might have such evidence in your possession, though you may not have recognized its significance because why would you? You had no reason to think blankets you arrived wrapped in were anything more than ordinary cloth, expensive but mundane, the sort of thing wealthy families use because they can afford it rather than because it means anything.*
*The blankets, Hadrian. The ones with golden stags embroidered in thread-of-gold, the sort of work that royal families commission for important births. If you still have those blankets—if they survived whatever cosmic transition scattered you across dimensions, if you kept them when you emptied the Potter vault—they might carry physical traces that would prove your origins beyond what magical tests could reveal.*
*Thread-of-gold holds memories. It's not magic as wizards understand it, but there's something in gold worked fine enough that it retains impressions of who touched it, who wore it, whose blood it contacted. Maesters have tests—primitive compared to magical detection, but effective for what they measure—that could potentially identify genetic material preserved in fabric that old.*
*Check your belongings. The Potter vault, if you emptied it before crossing over. The Black family vault, which Sirius had access to and might have stored items he considered too significant to leave behind. Your expanded trunk, the one that's carried your possessions through wars and escapes and whatever impossible transition brought you here.*
*Somewhere in whatever you brought with you across dimensional barriers, those blankets might be waiting to provide exactly the evidence you need to verify identity that magic has made otherwise impossible to prove through conventional means.*
Hadrian's breath caught as memory crystallized around information he'd dismissed as unimportant during the chaotic aftermath of arriving in this world.
"The trunk," he whispered, and his voice sounded strange even to himself—rough, uncertain, carrying hope that he was trying very hard not to feel because hope was dangerous.
He moved toward the heavy magical container with controlled urgency, each step deliberate, his breathing measured despite the way his heart was trying to hammer its way out of his chest like it was late for an important appointment. The trunk sat in the corner where he'd left it, looking mundane despite containing compartments that extended considerably deeper than external dimensions suggested was physically possible.
His hands worked the complicated locking mechanism—seven different catches requiring precise timing and the correct magical signature to open without triggering defenses that would reduce casual thieves to their component atoms scattered across a radius that would make identification extremely difficult.
The catches clicked open one by one, each producing a soft snick that seemed too loud in the quiet room. When the final lock disengaged, the lid swung open with the whisper of well-maintained hinges.
He began searching methodically, lifting items with care, examining contents that represented everything he'd valued enough to preserve when his entire world was collapsing around him.
Books that had belonged to his parents, their margins filled with notes in handwriting he'd memorized. James's commentary on Transfiguration theory was characteristically irreverent—jokes in the margins, doodles of stags and griffins, suggestions for pranks that violated approximately seventeen school regulations and possibly several laws of physics. Lily's notes on Potions were precise, methodical, showing the sort of systematic thinking that had made her brilliant.
Photo albums. His father's Invisibility Cloak, folded with reverence. The Marauder's Map, though it was useless here. Various artifacts he'd considered too significant to abandon.
And there, at the very bottom of the compartment—wrapped in preservation charms that had kept them pristine despite seventeen years and dimensional displacement—he found them.
The blankets.
Fine wool, impossibly soft, worked with silver thread that caught the morning light. Not rough weave common people used, but the sort of fabric that cost more than most families earned in years. The kind that required looms built specifically for such fine work.
And embroidered across one corner in thread that seemed to shimmer with its own inner light: a golden stag, rampant, worked with such precise detail that individual hairs of its coat were visible. The creature seemed almost alive in the shifting light.
Royal work. Unmistakably royal.
Hadrian lifted the blankets with trembling hands—and damn it, they were trembling again, the careful control shattered by physical contact with objects that had witnessed his beginning.
The fabric was heavier than expected. Not just physical weight, but something else—temporal weight, the accumulated significance of objects that had survived when they should have been lost.
"Hello there," he murmured to the fabric, his voice soft. "Been waiting a while, haven't you? Seventeen years of sitting in the dark, being ignored, dismissed as nothing more than expensive fabric with sentimental value that I kept because I'm apparently sentimental about things I don't even remember. Sorry for the delay. I've been rather occupied with not dying and occasionally saving the world from dark wizards with questionable fashion sense and delusions of immortality. You know how it is. Busy, busy."
He carried the blankets to the desk where Sirius's letter waited, spreading them carefully across the surface where morning light could illuminate every detail. The stag seemed to move slightly in the shifting illumination—not magical animation, just the play of light across metalwork so fine it created the illusion of life.
*Evidence,* he thought with a mixture of relief and growing apprehension. *Physical proof that predates magical adoption. The sort of thing that Robert Baratheon would recognize immediately—work commissioned for his firstborn son, distinctive enough that seventeen years wouldn't make him question its authenticity.*
He ran his fingers across the embroidery, feeling the texture of thread-of-gold. The metal was still bright, untarnished despite age. Magic? Or simply craftsmanship so extraordinary that even time couldn't quite destroy it?
His tactical mind was already cataloguing problems.
*If I show these to Stark, he'll know. He'll know I'm not just some displaced wizard with convenient timing. He'll know I'm the lost prince, and that knowledge will force his hand.*
*If I show them to Robert when he arrives—and gods, Robert is coming here, to Winterfell, within weeks—the king will recognize them. How could he not?*
*And Cersei. Sweet fucking Merlin, Cersei will know the moment she sees me. She'll recognize features she last saw on an infant. She'll know her worst nightmare has materialized—a legitimate heir who threatens everything she's built.*
He returned to the letter, forcing himself to continue reading. The final pages were in Sirius's flowing script, less controlled than earlier sections:
*We're coming north, pup. Within the fortnight, Padma and I will leave Dorne with whatever cover story convinces Doran Martell that we're engaged in activities he finds entirely believable and not worth investigating closely.*
*Which, given my reputation as Oberyn fucking Martell—and I do mean that literally, pup, this body has a sexual history that would make courtesans blush and probably take notes—mostly involves claiming I plan to fuck my way through every willing partner from Sunspear to the Wall. It's rather lowering to realize that my carefully cultivated image as a pleasure-seeking wastrel who cares more about wine and sex than politics actually serves tactical purposes, but one uses the tools the universe provides. At least the tools are attractive.*
*Doran won't question it. He's grown accustomed to his brother disappearing for weeks at a time to pursue carnal adventures that would scandalize anyone who hadn't spent years building immunity to shock through repeated exposure to outrageous behavior. He might even be relieved—one less complication to manage while he plays his long game.*
*We'll travel with appropriate escort—enough guards to satisfy protocol, not so many that we draw unwanted attention. We'll make reasonable time, stopping at castles whose lords owe Dorne favors or simply enjoy Oberyn's company because he's charming and dangerous in equal measure and people find that combination intoxicating until it gets them killed.*
*We'll find you before Robert arrives. We'll stand beside you when the truth comes out—and it will come out, Hadrian, make no mistake about that. Secrets this significant never stay buried forever. They fester and grow and eventually explode with force proportional to how long they've been suppressed. It's basically physics. Terrible, terrible physics.*
*The moment the king sees you, he'll recognize something. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with certainty, but there will be recognition. Robert's features breed true—the sort of strong bone structure that shows up generation after generation like the family can't help but stamp every child with the same mold. He'll see them reflected in you, and questions will be asked that can't be easily dismissed with vague answers about mysterious origins.*
*And when Cersei sees you—because she will, pup, she'll be with Robert's party because queens don't let their husbands travel across the kingdom without supervision, especially when said husbands have a tendency to make spectacularly poor decisions when left unsupervised—she'll know. Mothers know their children, even children they haven't seen in seventeen years, even children they might have hoped were dead. She'll look at you and see the son who disappeared, the legitimate heir who threatens everything she's built, everything she's sacrificed for, everything she's murdered to protect. And she will begin planning your death before she finishes her first sentence of polite greeting. Probably before. She's efficient like that.*
*But you won't face it alone. Not this time. Not ever again if I have anything to say about it, and I have quite a lot to say about it because I've spent seventeen years being dead and I'm rather done with being separated from family by inconvenient things like dimensional barriers and cosmic bureaucracy that thinks scattering souls across reality is acceptable administrative procedure.*
*Whatever complications arise from discovering you're the lost prince, whatever political chaos erupts when people realize the true heir survived, whatever impossible choices you're forced to make about crowns and thrones and responsibilities you never asked for and probably don't want—we'll be there. Me, Padma, Fleur if we can find her because I refuse to believe she didn't also survive that final battle. All of us who love you enough to follow you across dimensional barriers and through death itself if that's what's required.*
*You are my godson. That truth stands above all others—above crowns and thrones and accidents of birth that most people insist define identity more than choices or character. Whatever blood flows in your veins, whatever names history might claim for you, you are mine and I am yours. That bond was forged when your parents died protecting you, sealed when I taught you to fly despite my better judgment about giving small children access to high-velocity broomsticks, and tested when I fell through the Veil while you screamed my name like something was being torn out of you.*
*It held across death and distance and seventeen years of believing each other lost. It will hold through whatever comes next. I swear it on my magic, on both lives I've lived, on every bond that matters—I will not abandon you again. Not to cosmic forces, not to political necessity, not to anything. You're stuck with me, pup. Sorry. Not sorry.*
*I'm coming to find you. To stand beside you when kingdoms shake and thrones are contested and people who thought they understood how power worked discover they were wrong about fundamental things. And yes, to thrash you soundly for facing cosmic impossibilities without proper backup yet again. You have made a habit of this and we are going to discuss it at length. I have seventeen years of accumulated lectures prepared and I intend to be extremely thorough. You're going to wish you'd stayed dead just to avoid the lecture. I'm that committed.*
*Stay alive until I get there. That's an order from your godfather, which means it supersedes any other obligations you might have to things like destiny or prophecy or political convenience. Stay alive. Don't do anything stupidly heroic. Don't sacrifice yourself for causes that can survive without martyrs. Don't face down armies alone. Don't challenge dark lords to single combat. Don't do any of the things you normally do when presented with impossible situations. Just... stay alive. Is that really so much to ask? Apparently it is, but I'm asking anyway.*
*With all the love in two lives, all the faith that survived death itself, and a truly impressive amount of exasperation—*
*Your eternally suffering godfather,*
*Sirius*
*P.S. - Keep the blankets safe. They may be the only physical evidence that survives magical tests designed to determine parentage when the parents in question were systematically erased through blood adoption ritual. Also, they're quite nice blankets. Excellent craftsmanship. Would be a shame to lose them to careless handling or cosmic bureaucracy or whatever other nonsense the universe throws at you. Have you considered that the universe might have it out for you specifically? Because I'm starting to think it does.*
*P.P.S. - Oberyn's body comes with a reputation that I'm trying very hard to maintain because breaking character would raise questions I'd rather not answer. If you hear stories about my sexual adventures during the journey north, please remember that I'm doing this for tactical reasons and not because I'm particularly invested in bedding half the continent. Well. Mostly not. Some of these people are quite attractive and it would be rude to refuse their hospitality. I'm nothing if not polite.*
*P.P.P.S. - Padma says I'm being ridiculous and should stop adding postscripts. She's probably right. She's usually right. It's very annoying. I've told her this repeatedly but she continues being right anyway, as though to spite me.*
*P.P.P.P.S. - She's reading over my shoulder now and glaring at me. I'm stopping. Under protest. This is coercion. I want it noted for the record that I'm being coerced.*
Hadrian read the final lines three times, his throat tight with emotions he couldn't quite name—relief and terror and overwhelming gratitude warring for dominance in his chest.
"He's coming," he said to Fawkes, who had relocated to the desk's edge and was watching him with those ancient eyes that suggested the phoenix had always known how this would resolve. "Sirius is actually coming. Within the fortnight, he'll be here, probably having shagged his way through half the Riverlands and made a spectacle of himself at every castle between here and Dorne because he's constitutionally incapable of being subtle. I'll have family again. Real family. Not just people connected through politics or accident of reincarnation, but someone who knew me *before* any of this madness and loved me despite—or perhaps because of—my pathological inability to avoid impossible situations that would make normal people reconsider their life choices and possibly take up religion."
He looked down at the blankets spread across his desk, at the golden stag that represented identity he'd never known he possessed.
The stag stared back, frozen mid-leap, forever caught in thread-of-gold that had outlasted the child it was meant to protect.
*Like me,* Hadrian thought with dark humor. *Should have died in that cupboard under the stairs. Should have died fighting the basilisk, or the dementors, or Voldemort in the graveyard, or any of the thousand other times death came calling with my name already written on the list. But here I am anyway, too stubborn to stay dead, too stupid to run when running would be sensible, apparently destined to make cosmic forces very frustrated with my continued survival.*
*And now I'm a prince. A lost prince whose return will overturn thrones and upset the careful political balance that's kept the Seven Kingdoms from tearing themselves apart for seventeen years. Because of course I am. Why would I get to be anything simple? 'Just Harry' was never an option. Not then, not now, not ever.*
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