34A/N: NEED a beta like whoa. Pretty please?
"The British have a way out." Mirror clutched in hand, Alcyone took the measure of Samuel Quahog's assistant. He looked as frazzled as the rest of them, but determined. He wouldn't hesitate when the time came, she knew.
"Fischer, how many here, and at Ilvermorny?" She barked.
"Most of the MACUSA has left to retaliate, the rest to defend their families. We've got about two dozen. Ilvermorny has only sixty something students left, and they were restrained by their professors after receiving reports that to leave would mean exposure or worse." Worse was the reports of being shot down like so many animals. Instinctually she itched to find how how they knew every entrance, how they had orchestrated it all, but that was pointless and secondary to securing as much as they could of their population and fleeing to Britain.
They had enough Portkeys for those numbers, if everyone could make it here in an orderly fashion without exposure. With the floo system shut down to stem the tide of the illness, Portkeys were the only safe and secure method of travel. Those in the mountains would likely hunker down and wait, while the Californias relied on mainland China to shield them or damn them. Everyone from the dust bowl to the eastern coast would try to find their way here, and most, if not all, would die in the attempt. Whatever it was, was everywhere.
"Send a message to the professors to line up their students in groups of eight and Portkey them to the left atrium. Bubblehead charms for all of them as a precaution. No one is to attempt to enter Woolworth from any entrance or Portkey anywhere else. We have all other areas on lockdown due to infection." Outside, past the doors, they could see the outline of No-Maj men with their guns and black padded clothing, pacing. Above them the magical exposure meter stood at level six, and Alcyone couldn't help but marvel at how little it had all mattered in the end.
As the children, some under incarcerous or stupefy were dropped unceremoniously into MACUSA, she heard a booming sound in the distance. Intellectually, as an Auror, she understood what bombs were, what guns could do. There'd been demonstrations and documentation on how protegos could be ineffective against some bullets, that entire wards would destabilize if the building's structure was no longer in place.
"Start sending them all to the British Ministry. We don't have any more time."
"You know your enemies now." The Wizengamot had gone more smoothly than anticipated. Harry retained the cloak, with votes settling in his favor on the technicality of the law. With only about half of the Wizengamot being British in origin and the rest American, many hadn't cared about the sentimental value of a hereditary object. But they did respect the law as it stood, for however long it remained. The cloak would be theirs soon, and the other old families would find a way to keep their own treasures to themselves.
"Does he." Draco drawled. His robes were a dark grey, cut tightly to his chest, which had broadened over the years. Harry doubted that Draco was ever dressed in less than the best, even though they hadn't been able to recreate many fabrics from their home as of yet. He assumed that most of what Draco had was leftover from his manor when it had come with, modified using transfiguration. It wasn't so long ago that mostly transfigured clothing would have been in poor taste, when now it was the norm to reuse scraps from their homeland as precious adornments. Malfoy was a veritable prince in his original british attire.
Percy continued.
"Perhaps. Nott has support from a small minority within the American wizards and two thirds of the British wizards, but when issues cross into territory relating to the defense of wizarding kind against outside threats he tends to receive more votes. And then there's the Sentinel votes. Parvati, Seamus and Charlie were never informed about the nature of the cloak being a Hallow. It's to be expected that the three of them will solidify Nott's voting block given the surprise of its existence to them. There are too many issues right now cropping up with the non-magicals to have less of a firm hand on powerful artifacts."
"If I'd told everyone I had the Invisibility Cloak, then someone would have come for it sooner, to try and take it. I didn't want to be dishonest. I mean blimey, even Charlie looked gutted." Harry said.
"Yes, well, finding out a close friend has the Invisibility Cloak and has never told you can grate." Percy's lips twitched upward and he eyed Harry without any subtlety.
"It's something I've kept from everyone but Ron and Hermione. And I've just been up North for so long, I wasn't thinking of its importance now and generally…" The cloak, even without this Master of Death business, was no one's concern but his.
"Potter, you mean to tell me that time in the train…?" Draco chortled, and looked genuinely surprised.
"Yeah, it was the cloak." Hermione looked anxious, likely remembering that Harry had confided in the incident to her. And now, she and Draco were… something.
"To think I just laid it on you like some cheap scrap of Demiguise hair." Draco hummed thoughtfully before continuing, "Potter, has no one ever told you how to fit in to our society? " Draco was now mostly ignoring him as he spoke, his eyes latched upon Hermione, who pointedly did not look at him as she sat stiff backed in her tidy robes. She'd dressed up some for the Wizengamot, the cut of fabric fitting smoothly over the lines of her body. Harry tried not to notice how intently Draco studied her through the slits of his eyes.
"I suppose not." He shifted uncomfortably in one of Hermione's chairs. He hadn't thought too deeply about how his friends, family and co-workers had smoothed the way for him. How he thought he never had to learn about any of the bizarre traditions of being a pureblood, that it could be left behind with the war along with all the people who believed in these things that he found trivial. Draco sighed and turned his head to look at Harry, which was more of an evaluation than a cursory glance.
Harry had never felt distinct embarrassment before about his lack of knowledge of the wizarding world. Not that he was incompetent with magic. But he associated all of these institutions of wizarding superiority wholly with the the misguided people who had supported Voldemort. It was easy to dismiss their concerns in light of their bad choices.
Surrounding him at the time was his family, the Weasleys, who cared not a fig for custom. Neville had taken up his seat in the Wizengamot, but Harry hadn't. Every time the man had tried to talk politics with him, Harry had politely demurred and closed his ears, not wanting to dwell on how the Ministry had bollocksed up the war effort for so long. Harry wasn't sour on the idea of government in general, he had just wanted nothing to do with its inner workings, except where it allowed him to get his hands dirty ensuring dangerous magics didn't infiltrate the world. He knew what he was good at, and it wasn't compromising with the people who had started the war. There were plenty of people with more patience and fortitude to pick up what he felt slipped through his fingers like water. It was self-perpetuating. He had known enough to not want to know more and had found his niche, so there was no need to keep pushing at trying to understand the better parts, if there were any, of the Dracos of the world. And the moment he encountered situations where it would require him to relinquish his, now admittedly illusory, moral high ground in his personal life, he had turned and walked away.
Outside that, it was the Aurors, including Harry, who left the circumstances of their homelife at the door and instead chipped away at Dark Magic with single minded purpose. Harry wasn't a dunce about the nature of magic, where it hid and how it skulked about in wizarding houses like a miasma. And it didn't require knowing hows of things like familial or sacrificial magics, only in managing their outcomes sufficiently to conclude the case or pass on the torch to the Unspeakables.
It was funny then, that in a world where there had never been wizards, that all of this was becoming more important. Even to people, like the Americans, that had never held such traditions in high esteem before.
"I've been informed that you wished to speak to me privately. This is not as clandestine a meeting as I was given to understand, but I suppose it can't be helped that you collect redhead indigents." Percy huffed, and stood up, looking moderately ruffled from Draco's insult. The man's lips were set in a thin line and he looked ready to chastise Draco on the finer points of being indigent and red-headed and Weasley.
"Hey, Percy, it's ok, just maybe you could go into another room with Hermione while I talk to Malfoy?" Hermione was already gliding away, taking no responsibility for Draco's poor behavior. The expression on her face at the man spoke volumes about how much Draco would hear about it later, however.
"Come on Percy, we can review the Wizengamot memories together." She offered her arm, which Percy took unthinkingly. Draco looked incensed as Hermione threw another look over her shoulder at Draco, insinuating that she would teach him a lesson. She might even be doing it right now.
"Mate, probably not the best to be ragging on the Weasleys at all. Ever." Draco turned his head towards Harry, glowering.
"Not your mate, Potter. I'm only here because the Chosen One requested my presence, and I can hardly refuse that invitation, no?" Harry didn't take the bait, reasoning that Draco apparently had some absurd standard of annoying git-ness to keep even at their age.
"Ok, right. I need, I don't know, lessons in how to do this." He gestured with his hand up towards the ceiling and windows of the palatial rooms that looked out onto the sprawl of the city below. The sounds of the city were muffled, the smells filtered by a series of spells, and the grime that sat solid on the walls inside the palace had been scoured away with a perfection that could only be magic. Harry dreamed of cities stacked with rooms like this. Clean water and sanitation at the bare minimum, but someday, carriages spelled to draw themselves, trade with the Free Cities as easy as breathing, muggle children playing with wizarding children, both learning science and humanities together in school. By making their people one, what had happened to wizards in his world wouldn't happen here.
Harry knew it was a difficult dream to have and a far off future, but he felt more than ever that it was attainable, and must be so, or history would repeat itself. Draco tapped his fingers on the armchair and crossed his legs expectantly, drawing Harry from his thoughts.
"Well?" The Slytherin prodded.
"I need to know how to work with the Wizengamot, how to get what I think we need as a people out of this." He tried to be as concise as possible, and not make an emotional appeal to the Slytherin. Draco didn't care that he felt like Parvati, Seamus and Charlie were strangers now when they hadn't been before. He also wasn't the person who necessarily agreed with Harry's views on what was best. Draco had sided with Theo as an isolationist, but he was only one vote. It was Parvati who held a large faction of votes in trust for the orphaned children as the Sentinel in the Water Gardens. Without her votes, wizards would have remained unseen in this world as well.
"You're asking me to take you, a wizard raised by muggles, and make him look like he wasn't. That's it, right?" Harry's jaw worked for a moment, before he closed it and nodded. That was probably the best way that Draco would understand what he needed.
"That's going to take more than a few meetings, and I may not outright despise you Potter, but I'm not ruddy well on your side. I should be floo'ing Black and Nott right now and having a laugh over this." With ease borne of familiarity, Draco called a bottle of the whiskey that Harrenhal had been producing and allowed it to pour him a glass, neat. Swirling the amber liquid in the crystalline tumbler, Harry suspected that Draco was only maintaining a twisted sense of propriety by saying he'd tell his friends on a lark.
"Just being up front here Malfoy, I know you have appearances to keep. I'm asking for private lessons, your oath that you won't reveal them and vice versa." A slow, sneering smile crept onto Draco's face, though somehow Harry didn't think it was directed at him. It looked more like the blond man had won a prize.
"Well, first order of business, you should know that a pureblood wizard always plays both sides. I'll take your oath Potter, and help you learn exactly what you need to know to maneuver against my people. For an equal favor in return." No one had to tell him there would be the price. Though for Draco, 'equal' would be flexibly defined.
Harry already had the contract drawn up and levitated it out along with some quills and ink. Draco smoothly accepted the parchment and began reading, his brow furrowed.
"I've made the appropriate changes to the payments section. This will do nicely." Signing with a flourish, the parchment rolled back up and tucked itself away. Draco took a healthy swig of his drink and settled in, the magicked chair beginning to knead the man's shoulders reflexively. Wizarding furniture still surprised him after all these years.
"Now, Potter, your friends have been unreasonably gentle in handling you. You will receive no such compassion from me. Understood?" Harry nodded, swallowing.
"Then it's time to talk about your daughter, Lily." His heart sunk, throat tightening in panic and grief. He could see her green eyes even now, exactly like his own, accusing him. She was in the Water Gardens, safe, and happier without him. In his mind's eye he could see her freckled skin and long mane of hair, so like Ginny's, as she dashed about with Hugo and the other children. In all these thoughts he had of her, every time he inserted himself in them he could see the light in her eyes dim, and her pale skin turn pallid with sadness and anger.
There was a deep pit inside his chest when it came to Lily, that housed feelings that were barely audible echos, but still so potent. Hollow and yawning and wide; if he thought too long on the darkness there it would swallow him in front of Draco.
"I don't understand what she has to do with learning about how to be more Slytherin, Malfoy." He croaked, his despairing feelings leaking into his thoughts.
"She has a lot to do with it. You are not a man who can afford to make mistakes. To not communicate with her regularly, is one such issue, and an important one. The pureblood tradition may seem founded in the belief of our inherent superiority to muggles, but that comes from a well-spring of care and concern for our people, our children. Not many people know about your distance from your daughter, but I am aware through Hermione. Others are starting to notice, however." Eminently reasonable, Harry saw that even if this didn't seem like the truth in his experience, it was the way the purebloods saw it. As long as it wasn't their children that Fenrir clawed up or got crucio'd by the Carrows, it was all well and good. And if you disinherited your children, then it was completely acceptable to treat them like garbage. But named heirs were precious, not for their person, but their ability to carry on the line. It made Harry feel such anger, for his godfather, Sirius, who'd been victim of that mentality. If Sirius had been the heir, he'd never have been thrown into Azkaban.
"She's happier than she would be with me, believe me. I get reports on her and she doesn't mention me. She talks about Ginny and her brothers some, but ignores any of the caretakers who try and mention me to her. Draco, I can't make her want me as a father. I'm afraid that if I came back, all we would have is the empty spaces our family used to be sitting between us." He felt like the things he couldn't say were eating up all the space in the room. Instead he tried to fill it with rational explanations, not the ones that filled up his heart. That she didn't want him as a father, and he wasn't so sure he could be a good one anymore.
"She isn't going to be chuffed to see you now, no, but that's your bloody problem isn't it." Draco's insensitivity spurred him to frustrated anger.
"So I take her away from her friends and install her in King's Landing with me? While all this is going on?" His words were dripping with sarcasm. The emergency vote regarding the cloak hadn't covered the current issues at the capital regarding the Lannisters. When shite hit the metaphorical fan, and it would, this would be no place for a child, or so he told himself.
"Don't get shirty with me Potter. You'll visit her, tomorrow. You will start calling her, three times a week. Honestly, I can't believe I have to get you to see your own daughter." Harry had to remind himself that Draco didn't understand. Draco had lost his only son and wife, never having to explain to Scorpius why he didn't try harder to get to Astoria.
"I'm just- I can't-" His throat closed and his heart, which had been racing for some time, was loud in his hears. He remembered the day he left her at the Water Gardens, how they couldn't meet each other's eyes for longer than a few seconds. Every time their gazes connected, it was like an electric shock of pain straight to his heart, how her eyes denounced him. She had clung to Hugo's hand and answered him in monotone. It was only hours after she had raged with him alone in their temporary rooms, screaming at him and blaming him for Ginny's death, asking why he didn't go and get her brothers like uncle Ron had tried. That he should have died with them if he couldn't bring them back. Hermione hadn't been there, hadn't seen his daughter's justified anger or heard her words. She'd smashed her small fists onto his chest as he tried to hold her close, and finally she wrenched herself free with a sharp slam of her small foot into his instep.
Don't touch me. You're not my daddy! My daddy would never leave mommy.
There was nothing he could say to her or to anyone on the matter to make it better. Lily wasn't wrong.
"Bollocks Potter, don't bloody well cry." Draco conjured a handkerchief that he levitated over to Harry, contempt coming off of him in waves.
"She said it was my fault Malfoy. And it is, it was my fault." He wasn't near crying, the antagonizing git. The handkerchief blossomed into a small flame and the ash drifted to the floor.
"You're telling me your ten year old daughter was stroppy and said some spiteful things to you." Gesticulating with a dismissive air, Draco continued in a scathing tone.
"Scorpius said he would disown us for what I'd done in the war, but we reconciled, in the end." Harry watched Draco take a silent gulp from his glass as the decantur rose up to fill it some more. The blond waved the eager bottle away, and Harry wondered how Draco was coping with the loss of his wife and son.
They sat in silence for a time, the breeze off the bay trying to cause the curtains to flutter about, but the spelled tassels gripped tighter to the fabric, drawing it further away from the windows. Hermione's desk uncoiled part of its decoration to hold down some parchment that threatened to blow off the surface.
"I cannot tell you how to love your daughter. I can tell you how to do your duty by her." Draco said finally. Inside, Harry knew Draco was right. There would be sleepless nights, more crying and pain, but he'd have to hold on and not let go. Ride out his daughter's pain with her, and reopen all the barely closed wounds from before that would regain their potency the moment he saw her again.
"And if she doesn't want me around?" Harry wondered how Scorpius had come around the first time. He wanted to know if Draco had talked to Hermione about the war, but wouldn't ask. Hermione hadn't confided in him about Malfoy's feelings, at least. Harry thought on how Ron, Hermione and himself had always been close, each of them a silent and supportive presence to lean on as they recovered. None of them had ever wanted to explain in detail to their children what might have been lost had they not won. Had Draco told Scorpius he was happy that the Dark Lord lost?
"You wouldn't be the first wizarding parent with a rebellious child." Draco shrugged, offering no more advice beyond that. Harry wanted to shout at Draco that he'd never do to Lily what was done to Sirius. Lily had a right to her feelings.
"All right. Tomorrow. I'll go tomorrow."
"Excellent, time's up now." His new teacher's pensive mood flipped like a switch, and Draco, who'd been almost vulnerable, closed back up tight again like a self-packing trunk.
"We've barely started talking. Where do you have to be anyway?"
"You know, at one point I would have thought I couldn't be paid enough to listen to your problems. Some things change, but not others. Where I'm headed is irrelevant to you." Harry watched as the man stood up and smoothed his robes down over his lean frame. Draco wore his pureblood mask once more, eying Harry with a many-layered expression on his face.
"But what about next time?" The other man walked towards the door, not breaking stride as he responded.
"I'll be in touch. It's not like you have anything to do. And don't you have an assistant for the rest?" Harry sighed his agreement as he watched Draco shift through the wards, effectively cutting off the conversation, before getting up himself. He could hear his friends talking just beyond the door, no doubt engaged in some esoteric magical discussion. Draco was right about that too; he had an assistant, and it was time to educate the undoubtedly confused lad.
He found Jon near the Healers, looking out of place in the hand hewn clothes and leathers of the North. The boy smelled unbathed, and looked it, as he gazed through the window into the warded safe room that his people had put Bran under observation inside.
"Why won't they let him out?" As Harry stood beside Jon, Jon didn't acknowledge his presence but for his harshly intoned question. Harry gathered his thoughts to explain, feeling regretful that he'd not been more careful, had dived right into saving Bran and not left any word of what to do in the worst case scenario. Jon had been forced to go through an oath, yet had been told nothing after, had been taken back to King's Landing in what amounted to a whirlwind.
It was an oversight, that Hermione and he had lived so long in the wizarding world that they forgot what it was like to learn about magic existing and to be at the beginning, helpless. Even aurors, when dealing with muggles, always had the upper hand of using obliviation; a muggle could stay locked inside a cell of the Ministry for several days, and a spell would smooth that time away as though it had been nothing. The changeover for Harry to consider Jon a… well, not a wizard, but something beyond muggle, hadn't really occurred to Harry yet. And his failure in that stood before him, in what must have been several days of worrying about Bran, about himself, about the fall-out with his own family for binding himself to Harry.
"If I had known this is what would happen, I never would have asked you to help."
"If I had known it was a magical affliction within Bran, I never would have agreed to take you on. But we'll make the best of it. I'd let you out of it, if it were easy." It would be a travesty to obliviate Jon as had been done to Catelyn. Catelyn was the kind of person who wanted to forget an event like that, and the spell was aligned with her baseline emotions. Jon had a strong sense of duty that would put him at odds with the spell. Obliviate covered memories, but feelings and desires would linger in the subconscious and if the removed memories were potent enough, it would carry the obliviated person back to where it began. And if that person couldn't find their way, they'd be left wanting.
Hermione's parents, when they'd been living in Australia, had been planning a vacation to Europe, though they'd been compelled to not go, ever. Instead the couple would say they needed to save more money before they could go, though the Order had set them up with plenty of muggle money. They'd even gotten a dog and named her Hermione.
"I would never go back on my oath. Never." Jon replied, accusatory, confirming that Harry's thoughts on how Jon felt.
"Never said you would." Harry murmured as he looked in on Bran and Catelyn.
"My father is disappointed." Jon looked small.
"You knew that would happen. He's here yes?" Harry said gently.
"In the Hand's tower with Arya and Sansa. It should have been Bran here, looking to be a squire for a Knight. And I should have been on the Wall."
"There's never a 'should' when it comes to the past. Only what is." He felt the ghost of hypocrisy brush his mind.
"This doesn't feel right. Bran is here, barely able to walk yet, and Robb is at Winterfell. And your people. They're…" Jon trailed off. Harry knew how his people were. Hermione had set Jon up with rooms, but there had been no one Harry or she had trusted to inform him of the state of King's Landing as perceived by the wizards, and Hermione had stuck by his side through the incident with the Northern magic. His people would see Jon as a symbol, as a role that was being filled. They would like that role or hate it, but even to those sympathetic to muggles thought of them as separate from wizards. Like they were curiosities, foreign.
There was nothing Harry could do about Jon's treatment except to correct any misunderstanding of Jon's purpose.
"We need to talk, away from here." His assistant acquiesced, his gaze drooping away from his brother and his body shifting towards Harry. They moved away from the Healing rooms towards Harry's assigned quarters. The halls were blessedly empty.
When they arrived, Harry made to pour the boy some Arbor gold that he'd received from Dorne, avoiding using the unconscious magic that all wizards prefered. It had been replicated, so it wasn't as good, but given the quality of beverages in Westeros, it wasn't half bad. Jon took it shakely, likely surprised that he was man enough to drink in front of Harry when he'd only been able to imbibe while blending in with the men at Winterfell.
"What is my duty, then?" Jon, never one to blanche at his responsibilities, gazed at Harry with sleet gray eyes.
"The things I am about to tell you are bound under oath. In this world, I believe that you'd take that vow with the utmost care for its sanctity. But you don't have to. The oath enforces itself, and you'll never be able to tell another about our magic. If you sdo o under duress, you will die, but thankfully you'll feel it start as soon as you try to tell our secrets. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I'd never tell, I told you once I don't forsake vows-"
"Yes, yes I understand. But if you do, you will die. It's important to realize the difference between willpower and inability. You can let the vow do the work of keeping itself." Jon was silent at that, and Harry could see the boy's mind churning away at the idea. After a moment, Jon spoke hesitantly.
"Even under torture?" Harry nodded
"Especially under torture." He confirmed.
"And not my father?" It was a question Jon already knew the answer to, but Harry supposed he needed the confirmation so that when he conversed with Eddard on the subject, Jon wouldn't be at fault for having a secret.
"The price we pay for keeping those we love safe and whole can often be our silence." Severus's face appeared in Harry's thoughts.
Jon sighed and ran a hand through his black wavy hair, his face empty and seeking. Finally he looked up at Harry with grim determination.
"Ok, tell me more."
Viserys glared at the ship that would take him to Crackclaw point, before he'd have to traverse the shoreline and shoals of the peninsula.. The Usurper's men roamed the thin strip of water that would take him up to the Saltpans and so abruptly into the mountains, and he would have to walk like some commoner. He had been in a rage the few nights before over it, Illyrio swiftly spinning brave words of Viserys's quest to claim his birthright that would be considered a great undertaking of honor and cunning.
He was draped in fine silks with leathers tied to his lean frame: vambraces, shin guards and . The leathers had been dyed black with squid ink, boiled and pressed, then carved with whorls of dragons. A compromise to the armor that her brother had wished to flash to all at the docks. The Usurper's eyes were everywhere.
"Will you miss me, sweet sister?" Her brother grasped a limp strand of her hair, the chewed pieces of his fingernails scraping her face uncomfortably.
"Must you go?" His grip turned tight as he twined the hair into his fingers.
"You must be a princess while I'm gone. There can be no failure Daenerys," gripping her face, he smiled wide and down at her indulgently. "Now don't slouch, remember to stand straight. You're a dragon, and you don't want to disappoint me, do you?" His fingers dug tight to her head, clutching her in his hands, his mouth close over hers now. She blinked up at him, the sun hallowing light around his face.
"My great King, all is made ready for you to make your way across the narrow sea. The blood of Aegon the conqueror returned to the shores of Westeros once again!" Illyrio sat jovial under his slave-brought shelter, fans swinging over his bulk, ineffective against the heat. The scent and sound of the market swept over her, reminiscent of the muffled noises of the street outside the red door of their old home. She thought she wanted to go home, but she wasn't sure what home was as they stood there on the cusp.
Looking into her brother's eyes, they were a dark mirror of longing, the shadow of his righteous anger flickering beneath the surface. She could feel a bead of water drip down her spine, and the hard bone of Viserys's fingers burrowing their way into her. Seeing his plans to reclaim their father's throne being threaded together with promises and a boat to take him across the sea, her gut clenched tight with worry.
"Illyrio will see you off to the Dothraki horse lord while I go to reclaim the throne. This is only temporary, Dany do not fail me, for when I come back, it will be on a dragon. And if I find you don't have my army, well, I'll burn you along with your barbarian husband." His grin grew wider, his breath misting over her lips, warm and wet.
"But, my darling sister, if you obey, when I come to retrieve you, you'll take your rightful place by my side after we conquer Westeros with the blood of our savages and the fire of my dragons!" His spittle flicked on her face, and she blinked it out of her eye. She couldn't help but smile back at him, even if it felt ephemeral, and so unlike what she thought fate would be.
But would be a short time for her, no longer than a year in the vast fields of the Dothraki Sea. She would face the Khal, she'd do what was needed to survive, and then they would be home.