Snowing_Melody

Chapter 14: Drogo's Funeral

"We have over two hundred people," Ser Jorah reported, his voice grim, "but fewer than a hundred who can truly fight. The only elite warriors are the sixty men of your own khas." He paused, a look of pain on his face. "It is foreseeable… on the long journey ahead, that we will lose half of the old, the weak, and the children."

"And supplies?" Dany asked, her brow furrowed.

"There is a horse for everyone," Rakharo answered. "But only two hundred cattle and sheep left for...

Chapter 13: Blood of the Dragon

Lyra’s face was contorted with a vicious, triumphant spite. She thought she was delivering a killing blow, a final, shameful secret to shatter Dany's composure.

Daenerys simply looked at her, her expression flat. "And then what? Viserys was a bastard. I have always known that."

Lyra’s triumphant look faltered, replaced by confusion at Dany’s calm. Seeing her words had failed to wound, her anger flared hotter. She turned and pointed a trembling finger at Ser Jorah, who stood ...

Chapter 12: Lady Silver

Drogo's tent had been a palace of its kind. The walls were woven from thick rushes, but the roof and facade were layered with fine silks, enough to fill ten carts if ever taken down. The furs that had adorned its interior—golden mink, thick bison pelts, and the priceless hides of Hrakkar, the white lions of the Dothraki Sea—were almost beyond value. The greatest Khal deserved the greatest tent.

"Khal," Mago said to Jhogo, gesturing at the darkening sky. "It is late. We should make c...

Chapter 11: Everyone Knows

The night she gave birth to Rhaego, a great turmoil ripped through what was left of Drogo's khalasar. It began quietly, with an old bloodrider moved by a desperate princess's oath. Under the cover of a greater chaos, Cohollo and the five hundred elite horsemen of Drogo's personal khas bypassed the camp's sentries and fled north into the darkness, carrying the child they believed was their future.
But the true chaos, the one that had allowed them to slip away, had been an act of br...

Chapter 10: The Oath

For two days, Drogo's khalasar had remained stagnant in the desolate, red-earthed wasteland, and a single truth, whispered until it became a roar, circulated through the tribe: the Khal is dying.
It was no longer gossip. It was a fact, plain for all to see. Khal Drogo was too sick to mount his horse, and a khalasar without a Khal to lead it is a body without a head. It cannot move.
That night, Mirri Maz Duur announced, her face ashen in the firelight, "The Khal's wound has rotted to the...

Chapter 9: The Andal and the Witch

A loud commotion outside the tent ripped Daenerys from her concentration. Annoyed, she opened her eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on the black dragon egg, directly in the heart of the bonfire, letting the flames lick at her bare skin.
She was disinfecting herself.
A fire of more than a thousand degrees was more effective than any antibiotic, cleaner than any poultice, and with no side effects. She clenched her fists. Instead of feeling weak from the ordeal of the birth, her body felt...

Chapter 8: Blood and Fire

Lyra's fall from the horse hadn't been severe—the filly was a small one, much like Dany's—but the jolt had sent her into a premature, and complicated, labor. The fetus was in the wrong position, stuck in the uterus, unable to be born. It was a death sentence. The Dothraki healers, who treated even the simplest of cuts with chants and mud poultices, had no answer for such a crisis.
"Send her to my tent," Dany commanded, a deep, calculating light in her violet eyes. She turned to her mai...

Chapter 7: The Red Waste

Unlike the people of her past life who often stayed awake long past midnight, the Dothraki lived by the sun's rhythm, sleeping after dusk and rising before the dawn. By the time Daenerys had dressed and walked out of her tent, Drogo's khalasar was already a boiling cauldron of activity.
Women shouted at their children, warriors barked orders as tents were struck, and the ever-present horses stamped and whinnied in the cool morning air. A haze of gray-black smoke from a hundred cooking fire...

Chapter 6: Mother of Dragons

Pain.
Searing, white-hot pain.
A burning agony so intense it felt like a sharp blade scraping bare bone.
Beads of sweat erupted on Daenerys's forehead. A scream built in her throat, and she almost yanked her hand back from the fire. But she fought the impulse down. She held her palm steady over the dancing, elusive flames. Her motor nerves and muscles were not contracting; her slender white fingers were not charring and curling like roasted chicken feet.
She had succeeded. She had...

Chapter 5: A Test of Fire

There were many prophecies in this world, and Daenerys knew that most of them, in their own twisted way, came true. The words of the Dothraki crones were no different: her child was the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
It wasn't literal, of course. The Dothraki worshipped the horse above all else. They were weaned on mare's milk, grew strong on horse meat, and were buried with their finest steeds to ride in the night lands. To them, 'stallion' was the highest honor, a metaphor for a powerful...

Chapter 4: Poppy and Pus

When Daenerys finally returned to her tent, the Dothraki healers had not yet left. A few of the so-called "hairless ones"—barren women who served as the khalasar's doctors—were in the midst of a ritual. They were hideous, with faces like wrinkled parchment and legs as gnarled and dry as old roots. Their gray, disheveled hair flew about as they danced a rattling, uneven dance of sacrifice.
Their toothless mouths were open wide, singing an ancient Dothraki ballad in voices so shrill they...

Chapter 3: Wild Dogs

Leaving the territory of Jhogo's khas, Dany led her small retinue—Ser Jorah and her four loyal guards—toward the sprawling outskirts of the khalasar. Here, a group of women in stained Dothraki leather vests worked silently, their rough, cracked fingers moving with surprising dexterity. They were weaving massive straw curtains. With methodical motions, they stripped the ears of grain from the tops of freshly cut wheat stalks, tossing the heads into a nearby dustpan. The remaining ...

Chapter 2: The Price of a Goose

The yurt's hide flap was flung aside, and a smell hit her—thick, cloying laurel perfume trying and failing to smother the sour stench of a chamber pot. It was the scent of cheap luxury covering up filth. Two young Dothraki slave girls walked out backwards, holding the flap open for the woman who followed, her own swollen belly a mirror of Dany's.

Dany found herself staring. The woman wasn't in a painted leather vest, but a light lace dress from Myr. The color, a pale bud yellow, made ...

Chapter 1: The Dragon's Womb

A groan slipped from her lips before she was even fully awake, a sound of profound, physical discomfort. The world swam into focus slowly, filtered through a haze of oppressive heat and a blinding, golden light. A thought, sharp and panicked, pierced the fog. Oh my god. Why am I—

She pushed herself up on her elbows, the effort making her grunt. Her gaze fell, and the thought sputtered into horrified silence. A belly, swollen and round, rose from her frame like a massive hill....

Chapter 44: The Price of Knowledge

Harry’s smile was frozen on his face. He held the Golden Snitch aloft, its tiny wings beating a frantic rhythm against his palm, but the triumphant roar he had been expecting never came. Instead, the stadium was chanting a different name. Her name. He looked over at Hermione, who was being mobbed by their ecstatic, cheering teammates, and a profound, bewildering sense of confusion washed over him. I… I caught the Snitch. Didn’t I?

In the teachers’ stand, Profes...

Chapter 43: The Rules of the Game

The two teams hung in the air, separated by twenty yards of tension and bad blood. The roar from the stands was a physical thing, a wall of sound that tasted of house pride and roasted peanuts. Down below, Marcus Flint, a boy built like a brick house with teeth to match, flashed a sneer that was all predator.

“Running out of players, Wood?” he drawled, his voice carrying easily in the charged air. “Sending in babies to do a man’s job?”

Oliver Wood’s knuckles were white...

Chapter 42: A Different Kind of Game

The two teams hovered in the center of the vast aerial stadium, two islands of color in the crisp autumn air. The roar of a hundred thousand screaming students was a physical pressure, a wave of sound that vibrated in their bones. Below them, Marcus Flint, the hulking, buck-toothed captain of the Slytherin team, sneered across the gap at Oliver Wood.

“What’s the matter, Wood?” he taunted, his voice a low, brutish drawl. “Finally run out of actual players? Had to recruit a couple...

Chapter 41: The Roar of the Crowd

Fury’s mind raced, weighing the colossal security risk against the immeasurable potential reward. Giving this child access to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s deepest secrets was an act of pure insanity. But she was also the key to understanding a power that could rewrite every rule of modern warfare. It was a devil’s bargain.

“Alright,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble of capitulation. “I agree to your terms. Level seven access, to start.”

“So,” he continued, trying to r...

Chapter 40: The Consultants

Tony stared at Pepper, his face a mask of wounded pride. “I had it under control.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pepper said, her voice soft but unyielding. She stepped closer, her hand resting gently on his arm. “Tony, you can’t do this all by yourself. The armor is powerful, but you are not the armor. You’re a man. You get tired, you make mistakes. What happens when the next Obadiah comes along and there’s no one there to save you? I can’t… we can’t go through that again.�...

Chapter 39: The Pitch

“What was that?” Pepper whispered, her hand instinctively tightening on Tony’s arm as they stood in the vast, pitch-black foyer of the Malibu mansion.

Hermione didn’t answer. She just stood perfectly still, her head tilted, listening to a silence that wasn’t empty.

Tony, his senses still sharp from the previous night’s battle, also felt it. A subtle wrongness. The house was dead. The usual soft hum of Jarvis’s servers, the gentle whir of the climate control—it was ...

Chapter 38: A New Kind of Family

The air backstage was thick with the buzz of a thousand camera flashes and the low, hungry roar of the press corps waiting in the auditorium. Tony stood in front of a full-length mirror, but he wasn't looking at his own reflection. He was looking at Pepper, who was carefully adjusting his tie, her movements precise and focused.

“Just read the cards, Tony,” she said, her voice a soft, calming presence in the pre-show chaos. “Agent Coulson’s alibi is solid. Your robot bodyguard ma...

Chapter 37: A Pound of Flesh

The fire roared. The ice cracked. Inside the metal coffin of the Iron Monger, Obadiah screamed, a muffled, gurgling sound of a man being cooked and frozen at the same time. Coulson and his men could only watch, their hands hovering uselessly near their sidearms. This wasn’t a fight. It was a damn exorcism.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The flames vanished. The ice sublimated into mist. The night was silent again, save for the crackle of burning debris.

Hermione stoo...

Chapter 36: Icy Embrace, Fiery Demise

“A frog?” Hermione repeated, her eyebrow raised in mock surprise. “My, my. An apology from Tony Stark. It truly is a strange day.”

Tony, still dazed from the blast and furious at Obadiah, didn’t have time for her games. “If you want apologies, I’ll give you ten a day, kid, but right now, we’re out of time!”

Hermione waved a dismissive hand. “Calm down, Mr. Panic. I care about Sister Pepper more than you do. She’s with Agent Coulson, and S.H.I.E.L.D. ...

Chapter 35: A War of Iron and Will

“You… you want an apology?” Tony asked, his voice raw with disbelief. He was dying, betrayed, and his only hope for salvation was a twelve-year-old witch who was currently teasing him. “Fine. I’m sorry. I’m a narcissistic jerk. Now can you please hurry up? The man who tried to kill me is currently on his way to kill the woman I—the woman we both care about!”

Hermione’s teasing smile vanished, replaced by a cool efficiency. “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice sudde...

Chapter 34: As Long as I Can Get There

Pepper stared back at the roiling cage of fire, her hand flying to her mouth, her professional composure completely gone. "Hermione, the fire! Will he be alright? Is he safe?"

Hermione shook her head, giving Pepper's hand a reassuring pat. "Don't worry, Sister Pepper. It's just a normal flame, not something dangerous like Fiendfyre. It looks terrifying, but it's controlled. It will burn itself out in a few minutes and won't leave a single scorch mark on him."

Dark magic like F...