Chapter Text
Bastard of Godsgrace
A Harry Potter/Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Crossover
By Sif Shadowheart
Prologue: Born Admist Smoke and Salt
Bloodstone, The Stepstones, 260 A.C.
Ryon Allyrion, the heir of House Allyrion of Godsgrace and squire to Lord Edgar Yronwood – who would also one day be his goodfather after he married his daughter Ynys – staggered in shock towards the billowing silks and canvas of the Dornish encampment.
The battle – the final of the War of the Ninepenny Kings if they were lucky – had been nothing short of bloody.
Far too bloody for a thirteen-year-old squire who before leaving with the other Dornish spearmen to take up arms against the Band of Nine along with men from the rest of Westeros, had never seen combat.
He’d been separated from the lord and knight he served – and would continue to serve until he was of age to be knighted himself and return to his home of Godsgrace – during the battle, though he hoped to find Lord Edgar well if bloodied in the encampment.
Camp followers were already fluttering around the winning combatants, maesters and septas flocking to the battlefield to care for the wounded or the dead.
War was nothing like the stories or the songs.
Ryon knew that now.
Ryon knew many things that he hadn’t any idea of when he’d left Godsgrace after last visit to his family before meeting Lord Edgar and the Dornish spearmen at Sunspear to sail for the Stepstones.
He was still a boy, he knew that.
But he wasn’t innocent.
Not anymore.
Battles, including this last that had seen both Maelys the Monsterous, the final of the Blackfyre pretenders, and Crown Prince Aerys fall, had seen to that.
Well.
Battles and the camp followers anyway.
One of whom, though he didn’t yet know it, nor would it matter at that moment even if he did, labored admist the smoke from the burning encampment on the other side of Bloodstone island and the salty blood-laden air.
He would come to know of her labor however.
And of her death in childbed after birthing a bastard boy with deep sea-green eyes and rich brown hair with the rich bronze skin of a Dornishman.
A Dornishman born to a line known for a particular birthmark in the shape of a hand the size of a copper over their heart.
The mark of House Allyrion of Godsgrace.
And one Ryon Allyrion, all of thirteen and having lost his virginity to a particular camp follower of fine Lyseni bones and sea-green eyes, was the only Allyrion of Godsgrace to have spent the last year fighting in the Stepstones along with his fostering lord…and future goodfather.
That child was lucky in a sense.
The Dornish don’t treat bastardry the same as the other six kingdoms of Westeros.
Had he been born a Stone or a Flowers or a Rivers and so on, and not a Sand, his life would have been one of little consequence, likely not lasting long at all on the brutal Stepstones.
Instead, he’d been born to a too-young squire of a Dornish noble House.
His father, when the whore-midwife of the camp dumped his two-day-old son in his arms without ado after remembering the birthmark – and where she’d seen it before – named him Haeron Sand and his future goodfather merely rolled his eyes at the panic on his ward’s young face, his friend Prince Doran Nymeros Martell laughing helplessly at the sight and sent his page off to find a wet-nurse for the boy.
He would be raised at Godsgrace, at least until he was old enough to serve as a page, an honor that Prince Doran offered the infant then-and-there if he survived to reach nine years of age.
Ryon was his closest friend after all, both serving as pages to House Dayne of Starfall before their fostering and squiring for their separate foster lords had been arranged. As close as a brother given that Doran’s only living – thus far – siblings were toddlers. And so it was agreed, though no promise of serving as a squire to the future ruling Prince of Dorne was made.
Haeron had the great misfortune of being born a bastard, this was true.
But it had been matched with nearly-equal good luck of being born a bastard of Dorne…and that was a different creature entirely.
His grandmother wasn’t pleased at her son’s sowing of seed in the Stepstones having taken root, but she accepted babe Haeron to Godsgrace with equanimity and set plans for him to be taught all the things a child of noble blood should learn from languages to sums to the sword and spear.
They weren’t savage, careless Westerosi after all.
They were of Dorne.
Unbowed, unbent, and unbroken.
Graveyard, Little Hangleton, England; 24 June 1995
The pain eventually stopped, even as his body continued to writhe under a Crucio cast by one of the most powerful wizards alive – well, alive was relative given the near-corpse appearance of the reborn Lord Voldemort.
It left a soul-deep cold in its wake, even as Harry’s jaw snapped under the strain of refusing that bloody bastard the pleasure of hearing him scream.
Harry knew what it meant, that cold.
But even as he realized the truth of what had happened as a result of yet another Wormtail fuck-up, Harry tucked the thought away behind his pain, taking no chances that Voldemort might pluck it from his mind.
It wouldn’t do for him to know.
Not when the knowing would force his hand, likely resulting in something so much worse that what would happen if Harry kept his counsel and simply…let go.
He was just so tired.
Tired of everything.
He was fourteen years old, and he felt ancient.
His body hurt.
Hurt to the point where more days than not he was in constant pain, only stopping to take a paracetamol nicked from his aunt or a pain potion once it climbed passed the point of ignoring it and carrying on with his day.
But that was nothing at all compared to the rest of him.
Harry was tired.
He was hurt.
But above all…he was done.
So no, he didn’t show by word, deed, or thought that he knew he was bleeding out from Wormtail’s fumbling with the silver dagger.
That rather than a simple bleed, Pettigrew had severed full veins just below his elbow, allowing the boy bound to a tombstone to already be half-dead by the time Voldemort arose and turned his wand on him.
That the Crucio Voldemort had turned on him after failing to – even half-dead – force Harry to submit had finished the work Wormtail’s piss-poor knife skills had begun, forcing more and more blood to rush from his veins as his body shook and snapped under the Dark Lord’s wand.
No, he just let nature take its course.
Let himself…go.
Why should he continue to fight after all, when the only ones who’d ever done so for him were already dead and gone?
He felt a bit of distant sadness over Sirius.
He knew this would likely finish the job of breaking his godfather’s sanity.
But, though he’d never admit it, part of him blamed Sirius as well.
Felt it was fitting.
After all…if Sirius had put Harry first over his revenge, Harry would have a reason to fight.
A reason to live.
Shoddy turncloak friendships and a future of being alternately worshipped and reviled certainly weren’t enough of a reason to worry about the distant notion of escape…not when a leave-taking of a different kind was so very close.
Lord Voldemort screamed with rage when he realized, then sent the bodies of the two dead champions back via portkey with a Morsemorde burned into Potter’s cheek below his infamous scar.
People panicked.
A war was fought and then ended.
And life continued on, as it always did, despite any tragedy that might befall a single soul.
That might have been that.
Except there was just one hitch in the grand design.
Harry Potter was never meant to die until 2 May 1998.
And gods knew…fate hated loose threads in their design.
Elsewhere
“Well?” The strange voice demanded. “Wake up! I don’t have all century to fix this you know!”
If it weren’t for the lack of pain, Harry would think that all that had come before was just a dream.
That he hadn’t died from a combination of Voldemort’s lunacy and Wormtail’s incompetency.
That he hadn’t lived most of his life in pain.
That he hadn’t died before ever really living at all.
But…he wasn’t in pain.
That meant that he wasn’t awake…per se.
The banshee howling in his ear put paid to the idea of him hallucinating but at the same time when he’d thought about what came after, a screaming voice certainly wasn’t what he thought of…unless the Dursleys had actually been right about something for-fucking-once and he’d actually gone straight to hell with “the rest of his freakish kind.”
“None of that!” The same voice snapped, as if hearing his thoughts. “Get the fuck up, kid, I can’t fix this shit alone. Well, I could.” It corrected itself, the voice being a strange tone that lacked any real identification but still sounded alive unlike the dull monotone of a computer-generated tone. “But since it’s your life that’s on the table I thought you’d like some input…”
Now that was the exact right thing to say to get him to come fully awake…or whatever…from his foggy-fugue state.
Eyes snapping open, Harry looked around and saw nothing but grey.
Slowly sitting up, he craned his head around as he swung his legs down from the slab of…something he’d been splayed out on, spying a strange figure in a long purple cloak with golden edging staring at a massive tapestry and cursing under its breath at a snarled ball of broken strings.
Broken strings that were every shade of grey but with a rare single string here-and-there in a rich red or a gleaming silver or any other color found on Earth.
It was beautiful beyond imagining…except for the aforementioned snarl.
“Well?” The figure, who was the owner of the voice, snapped, seeming to tap one foot impatiently under the hooded purple and gold cloak. “Are you going to get over here to help or not, kid? To avoid the endless rounds of questions and denials,” it continued in that same snappish, impatient manner as Harry stood, noticing in part of his mind that he was wearing a plain robe – no hood – in the same endless grey as everything else except the figure and the tapestry its quick-clever hands were plucking at: smoothing one thread here, snipping another there, tying off a loose end, and so on faster that Harry could really track for the most part. “I’m Fate, you’re dead, and yes, this is really happening.”
“Fate like the Fate?” He finally choked out after he finished hyperventilating as the figure scoffed and mocked him under its breath.
“Yes.” Fate snapped. “Now: are you going to help me with this or not? I’m a busy being you know. Lots of worlds and realms and ‘verses to keep an eye on, especially with meddling fuckers like your former Headmaster fucking with my design every other fucking second.”
Fate was bad tempered and cursed like a sailor, Harry noted arching a brow.
It was actually comforting in a way.
And explained, so fucking much.
“I’m dead.” Harry told the…being deadpan. “How am I supposed to help you now?”
The underlying haven’t I done enough didn’t really need to be said to the being that had supposedly overseen the fate of his entire world, not just him.
Fate knew.
For once he didn’t have to explain a thing.
Fate knew.
“That’s the mess I’m trying to fix, kid.” Fate told him, exasperation oozing from every inch of the figure, the tangle slowly growing less and less of an eyesore as the being worked on its giant loom, eventually all that was left was a single loose thread in a color Harry knew all too well: rich emerald green; that it teased from the tangle and twined around its fingers so it wouldn’t be lost to the grey void surrounding them.
Flicking its wrist at the loom, Fate sent it away then summoned one after another with snaps of its unoccupied hand as it explained the “mess” to Harry.
“You weren’t supposed to die in that graveyard.” Fate told him, its eternal frustrations over dealing with humans leaking through. “That stupid little bipedal rodent cut too deep. That’s the first problem.” It sighed. “And with your body dead, your thread cut, I can’t just stick your soul back and call it all good, that’s not how Fate works. But still,” Fate lifted the hand that had, a shiver went down his spine, Harry’s thread wrapped around it in emphasis. “I can’t just let you fade into nothing either. That’s also not how Fate works.”
“Then what’s the solution?” Harry asked, trying to sum up some feeling of…something but coming up blank. Honestly, whatever decision Fate came up with, he’d deal with it. It wasn’t like there was really anything he could do about it anyway.
Not that there ever had been before either.
And yes, Harry was aware that he sounded more than a little bitter, even if only to himself.
“Your body is out of the question.” Fate told him, temper seemingly settled for the moment now that the snarl was taken care of, turning now to a more brisk, no-nonsense type of tone. “And I really rather doubt you were so enamored with your world that you want to go back to it if you have another choice. The problem is finding a being close enough but destined to die so that I can slip your thread into the weave without causing an even bigger problem elsewhere.”
“So…” Harry drawled, trying to keep up. “You’re looking for another me?”
“Destiny no.” Fate sniffed, wincing. “That would be a disaster. No. I’m not looking to replace you with you. But someone close enough in the basics that it would go unremarked if your thread was slipped in. Or a world different enough that it wouldn’t be noticed….yes…” Fate murmured, Harry very much getting the feeling that the being was in need less of Harry’s help than a sounding board. “That might be the best way.” The being gave a quick double-snap of its fingers and a new loom appeared, Fate humming a pleased note at the sight.
It was fashioned of a deep gleaming grey that Harry had never seen the like of before in his life, while the tapestry itself…it was total dichotomy mixed with a sense of chaos, much wilder than the one that his premature death had fouled up so thoroughly.
At the top of the tapestry were all shades of icy whites and blues and greys while at the bottom were those of fire: oranges and yellows, purples and whites and reds; and in the midst of it all a pattern emerged in rich greys and greens and colors of earth.
It was magnificent.
And as Fate had said…very different than the design that Harry’s thread had originally belonged to, even as he watched new threads be woven in by the loom working seemingly on its own and others being slipped and fastened tight, then with a wave of Fate’s hand it all stopped and the being leaned closer to examine the threads that were just-cut or about to be, rattling off options – or so it seemed – to Harry.
“Let’s see, what do we have available?” Fate mused, trailing a finger along the edges of the tapestry. “Does the life of a war lord or an inbred king have any appeal kid?”
Harry made a face at that, Fate somehow seeing it despite facing the tapestry and giving other options.
“We also have soldiers of all sorts, a woman dying in childbirth…” It muttered then exclaimed. “Oh! How about a true fresh start?” Fate asked, turning towards Harry though he still couldn’t see what face – if any – belonged to the figure.
“What, like a baby?”
“Exactly like a baby.” Fate enthused, nodding. “A newborn, destined to die within moments of its mother. Shame really. Kid was the sort that could literally become whatever it wanted short of royalty.”
Now that sounded tempting even if the idea of being a baby again was less than tempting.
“Think about it.” Fate continued to persuade the teen.
Which not at all had anything to do with this being another one of Fate’s “project” worlds that it liked to play with to see just how frigging early it had to off Aerys-the-fucking-Mad-King before the World of Ice and Fire stopped imploding. Thus far in other “project” worlds patterned off of the first one but with playing with different threads to see the problems, Fate had learned just how pivotal Aerys had been.
Almost as pivotal as his son really.
Killing Aerys before Robert’s Rebellion kept the entire world from facing apocalypse, but this was the first time he’d cut the thread and given some of the excess to his parents Jaehaerys and Shaera.
A project.
And since it was already a project…well.
Adding another thread to the weave wasn’t as big of a hassle as it could be otherwise.
Besides.
Fate truly believed that Harry would like the life he could choose to live as the infant grew.
Another life would never come to fruition if Harry agreed, but that life wasn’t all that pivotal. A supporting thread, with little impact on the world around it. Not that big of a deal in Fate’s design and whatever little impact it had, Harry could easily take over.
The kid deserved the shot at least.
Some versions of Harry might think he’s Fate’s bitch or punching bag, that Fate enjoyed fucking with him, and that was kind of true but not at the same time.
Harry was interesting.
And to an eons old being like Fate, that was worth more than anything else.
So this time, Fate would edge the odds a little in Harry’s favor.
It wasn’t like Death was going to bitch.
The stuffy fucker always hated reaping the kid.
And now there would be decades or more before that ever happened.
“You’d have a family.” Fate explained a little about the infant Harry would be agreeing to take over. “A really young father, more like an older brother, but still: a father. Grandparents, cousins, a step-mom and half-siblings eventually.” Fate continued the sell, even knowing that the family was the hook. The rest was just bait. “You’d have a similar background to your original one: your father is nobility and your mother common-born but beautiful. You’d be educated, allowed to choose your own path. In your world you were Welsh and English with a helping of Punjabi, in your new one you’d have a similar racial mix only: Lyseni with First Men of Westeros and Rhoynar. Thanks to that Lyseni and Rhoynar you might learn some water magics or weather magics depending on if you have the aptitude for it so you wouldn’t even have to leave magic behind you: they still have it in this world and its acknowledged to exist even though its rare.”
“What kind of magic?” Harry asked, eyes narrowing in interest. “You said I might have water or weather magic thanks to part of the background but what others are there?”
“All kinds but nothing like wizarding magic.” Fate told him honestly. “It’s wilder than that there thanks to the odd seasonal shifts from the ley lines the continent your father calls home has. Elsewhere in that world the seasons are more like what you’re used to. It’s only Westeros that’s fucked up from the magical ley lines screwing the weather.”
“What kind of person would my father be?” Harry asked, even as his heart ached. “You said he was young and noble?”
“He is.” Fate nodded, fashioning an illusion of Ryon Allyrion for Harry to view. “You would be his first-born son, born outside of wedlock to a camp follower while he was at war with his people against some war lords.”
“Young?” Harry asked in exasperation. “He’s my age if not younger!”
“And?” Fate snorted. “He’s not exactly the first teenager in the world to have a baby. And he’s going to have a son out of wedlock either way: you now or another later. But if he has you then he’ll be more careful and not get himself into trouble with a nobleborn girl in a couple years and that boy won’t be alive to fall into a political plot that kills him because he loved the wrong grasping princess.”
Harry scowled.
Fate was playing on his saving people thing for a person who didn’t even exist…and wouldn’t if Fate had its way.
“What’s the other alternative or is that it?” Harry asked. “Newborn baby or dying soldier?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” Fate gave a shrug. “I could make you a slave or a slave-child but I don’t think you’d enjoy that very much.”
Harry gave a snarl under his breath.
He’d already been a slave in his, he could barely believe it and still half-thought it was a delusion, first-life, he wasn’t going to fucking volunteer for the shit in his second.
“Being a bastard is usually a problem for nobility though isn’t it?” He checked, self-preservation instincts on high-alert.
“In some places of this world: yes.” Fate answered simply. “Not in Dorne where your father is from however. Can’t inherit unless you end up being legitimized but otherwise you’ll be treated just the same for the most part as a trueborn child of your father.”
“Why do I have a feeling like my consent is more for show than anything?” Harry sighed.
“Because you’re not fucking stupid.” Fate snorted. “I’ll have to make it so your memories come back slow, a baby’s brain isn’t developed enough to deal with the sum of fourteen years of life. But you’ll still be you, and Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“Try and fucking enjoy your second life, yeah?” Fate’s voice softened. “It’s not often I get to give one of my favorites a second chance.”
And with that, Fate’s dexterous fingers wove the emerald green thread together with one of soft sea blue-grey, creating a pretty and bold sea blue-green color, Harry’s figure glowing bright in the dim grey of Fate’s void and then shimmering away.
Meanwhile, on Bloodstone, a stillborn baby sucked in a deep breath and gave its first screaming cry, living despite all odds otherwise, not the least of which was being born weeks early and to a camp-follower mother who slipped away along with her hemorrhaging placental abruption.
And over his heart, about the size of a penny, was a birthmark in the shape of a hand on bronze skin.
Godsgrace, Dorne, Last Moon 260 AC
Lady Delonne Allyrion stood strong and proud at the gates of Godsgrace to welcome her only son and heir home from victory in the Stepstones against the Band of Nine.
Her Ryon was young, only thirteen name days old, but already had been blooded in battle, a distinction he shared with his closest friend – and future ruling Prince of Dorne – Prince Doran. Her husband had wanted to venture to the Stepstones as well, but the Targaryen King Jaehaerys had only demanded ten thousand spears from Dorne, a number easily fulfilled between the Martells, Daynes, and Yronwoods without having to pluck any further forces from the other noble and knightly houses. Squads of all the houses had gone of course. It wouldn’t do for the Westerosi to realize that only three houses had called up ten thousand men – and even that wasn’t the whole of the garrisons belonging to those three houses.
Every banner of Dorne – for the most part – had been seen in the Stepstones.
Including the golden hand on red-and-black of House Allyrion on her son’s banner and breast.
Granted, with him being only twelve when he arrived and thirteen returning, she hadn’t anticipated that he would return with a new member of House Allyrion.
Still, there were worse results from sending a boy to war than having him return with a natural child.
Such as having him fail to return at all.
Her husband Daemon, he who was from a cadet line of House Allyrion, and the commander of her men-at-arms gave a cheer as the banner of House Allyrion was spotted making the turn through the bustling city of Godsgrace, named for the stronghold of House Allyrion that it had grown around in the rich fertile valley of where the Scourge and the Vaith joined as one to create the Greenblood.
Delonne’s son rode tall and strong on his sand steed, a small bundle in a sling at his front, having grown in the last year-plus that he had been absent from his home.
The smallfolk and the men-at-arms and various cousins took up Daemon’s cheer, a smile breaking across Delonne’s sun-bronzed face.
Her son was home, his own son in his arms.
Oh, yes.
There were much worse outcomes indeed.
Though if she had to guess, she would venture that despite the national state of mourning they all were ostensibly under with the death of the Crown Prince Aerys, only his own parents truly missed the wild dragonblood of the Iron Throne.
Crown Prince Rhaegar was too young for any to be certain of course, but whispers reached even the oases and deserts of Dorne that their new crown prince was a quieter sort than his father had been.
All to the good, so long as his grandfather King Jaehaerys held out long enough for Rhaegar to reach an age where the Iron Throne wouldn’t fall to regency upon his death.
Jaehaerys had always been sickly, though it seemed losing his son rather than breaking him had given him purpose: he couldn’t succumb to weakness with his line pruned down to an uncle at the Wall, a single daughter, and a grandson beyond his own wife who had never been a fertile or strong woman herself despite running off to marry her beloved brother rather than a Baratheon.
Yes.
There were worse things for House Allyrion than to have her son return with a bastard son while being hardly more than a babe himself.
Delonne beamed as her Ryon swung down from his horse, one arm locked around his precious bundle to steady the babe that peered all around in interest despite being only two turns of age, taking them both in her arms and smacking kisses to both sets of downy cheeks.
Scolds over camp followers could come later.
For now, there was a feast to dine upon and songs to be sung and a grandson to meet.
Everything else can be worked out in time.
Fate had been right, Harry decided.
Being a bastard son in Dorne wasn’t that bad.
If anything…it was remarkably freeing.
The first thing he really remembers about waking up as himself was on a ship, sailing what he would later learn was up the Greenblood to his family’s home of Godsgrace.
He was Harry.
He had died and met Fate.
He had been reborn.
There wasn’t much more there though he wasn’t confused by this, knowing, even if he wasn’t aware of it at the time, that it would come back.
He would come back.
The language around him was strange, being breast-fed by a wet nurse was stranger still, but nothing was as odd as having a young teenaged father who would take him from his nurse’s arms every day after he’d woken and been fed and changed and would hold him close with an expression Harry easily tagged as a new-father’s terror, having seen it before on Mr. Jenkins four doors down a couple years before he…died. His father toted him all around the ship, rough sailors chucking baby-Harry, or Haeron now he supposed, under his chin or pinching a cheek. Harry wondered a bit at the flexibility of a baby’s brain as he soaked in all the languages around him – and there was more than one spoken on the ship – in his father’s arms or from the sling that was fashioned for him when he showed himself strong enough to hold his head up.
When he was hungry, he was fed.
When he was tired, he slept.
And when he cried…he was comforted for perhaps the first time in his memory.
Of those, more and more returned every day.
But he found it easy to separate himself from the broken child they had happened to either good or bad.
He took the lessons they taught him…but didn’t linger on the hurts or the joys.
Perhaps it was an extra bit of something Fate had done to help him settle into being Haeron Sand instead of Harry Potter or a consequence of being a baby with the malleable mind and open heart that came with it, but either way, by the time the city of Godsgrace and the castle of the same was on the horizon, the architecture reminding Harry of India, where his father’s grandmother had called home in his first life, settle into being Haeron Sand he had as he started to understand some of the words his father and the others spoke around him from simple repetition.
So when his father propped him up against his chest and waved an arm to encompass all of the fertile fields and the rushing river and towering pale stone buildings and told him this was his home, he understood the sentiment if not the exact phrasing.
And when his grandmother took him and his father in her arms and cried tears of joy over them, he understood that as well, even as it soothed old hurts from an old life.
No, he would never forget all he’d learned as Harry Potter.
But he rather thought Fate had been right.
There were much worse things than to live the life of Haeron Sand, Bastard of Godsgrace.