Chapter Text
Alicent Hightower first met the silver-haired witch when she was only five.
She was accompanying her father—then only a junior advisor to the Wizengamot—to see the Minister of Magic. Alicent was instructed to wait outside the office, in the empty corridor, alone.
Alicent looked down the dimly-lit space, watching the half-darkness stretched far down the length of the hall, all the way to the same elevator that they just arrived in. Alicent felt fear creeping up her spine.
She remembered wanting to say no, to cry and ask her father to take her into the office with him, but Otto was firm and his voice stern, so Alicent stood quietly against the wall, watching the heavy door closed behind her father.
Alicent thought she must’ve heard the girl first, before she saw her tiny figure stumbling down out of the shadow, hair gleaming under the dull light. The girl was perhaps a year or two younger than Alicer herself, and to the advisor’s daughter’s surprise, the girl was making a strange, animal-like noise as she barrelled down the long corridor.
“Grrr,” the girl mimicked some kind of roaring, and only stopped when she noticed Alicent standing four steps away from the office door.
The girl blinked at her with curiosity in her blue eyes. “You work here?”
Alicent looked at the girl, taking in her crimson dress, her pale silver hair, and the lilt in her speech. She remembered what her father said about them. The important people. The important people like the Minister for Magic, who was likely sitting behind a giant desk behind the scary door, talking to her father about important things.
Alicent shook her head. “My dad works here.”
“My dad, too,” the girl made a face, the corners of her mouth turning downwards. “What’s your name?”
“Alicent,” Alicent said, and then as if remembering. “Alicent Hightower, of Oldtown.”
“Okay,” the girl nodded. “I’m Rhaenyra. Do you want to come to my birthday party?”
Alicent looked at the girl—Rhaenyra—and then at the office door. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Rhaenyra nodded again, an easy smile on her face. “I’m going to play with Syrax now!”
And then the girl started running again. With one hand raised above her head, she ran the long way towards the elevator, the soles of her shoes making loud, echoing noises in the empty corridor. Alicent watched her for a moment, and when Rhaenyra inevitably had to turn around and make her way down to where Alicent was again, the older girl finally understood why the girl had an arm in the air.
Rhaenyra, face flushed and out-of-breath, was holding a toy dragon with flapping wings in her hand. The faster Rhaenyra ran, the more realistic the wings moved; somewhere around Rhaenyra’s third lap, Alicent noticed the toy breathed white smoke out of its perpetually opened mouth, too. A charmed toy, Alicent was certain.
“Are you not tired?” Alicent finally asked when a wheezing Rhaenyra ran past her ten minutes later.
Rhaenyra stopped in front of her at that, her hair damp with sweat and her breathing beyond labored. But the girl was smiling, showing Alicent all of her tiny teeth, and said, “No, coz I will be a dragon someday, Alison High-cower!”
“It’s Alicent Hightower ,” Alicent tried to correct her, but Rhaenyra was back to running full speed down the corridor while roaring like a lion again.
Alicent sighed and wondered whose child that was.
The next time Alicent saw Rhaenyra, they were at the Ministry of Magic’s boring party. She was nine and a half, and Rhaenyra eight.
Her father had said it was her duty as a Hightower to acquaint herself with these people, so Alicent put on a dress her nanny picked out and dragged her feet all the way from their London townhouse to the dark, suffocating government building.
Alicent quickly found out that there weren’t many children at this thing, despite the fact that the banner in the lobby clearly stated that it was a gala for children in need. Alicent wondered if her need to get out of her itchy gray dress would qualify her as one of these children that the adult pledged to help.
She wandered around the venue, hoping to find her father amongst a sea of black robes. Instead, she came face to face with a boyish-looking girl with long, silky silver hair in a knee-length dress that’s slightly too big on her skinny frame. Alicent blinked, recognizing the girl yet couldn’t quite place her.
“Are you a vampire?” The question took Alicent by surprise.
“No?” Alicent answered with a frown. “Why would I be a vampire?”
The girl shrugged, staring at her with a pair of indigo eyes. “My cousin told me vampires are all very beautiful, and father said there would be vampires here today.”
Alicent was silent for a few seconds, half unsure what to say, half uncertain if she liked being observed by those keen eyes. “Perhaps the grown-ups, maybe?”
The girl groaned, but then quickly stopped and straightened her spine, as if remembering herself. “I don’t like parties like this.”
“I don’t, either,” Alicent found herself answering.
“Cool. Do you want to see my flying dragon? It’s a Norwegian Ridgeback, but it can’t fly on its own. My uncle Daemon found a way, though,” the girl said, reaching a hand into her dress’ hidden pocket to retrieve something.
Alicent’s mind turned—half trying to focus on the girl’s words, half trying to figure out why the girl felt familiar to her—as she watched the girl pull out a gold orb and a delicately made mechanical dragon, two of them tied together using a thin gold thread. Even from where she was standing, Alicent could tell that the toy was expertly crafted. Complex, shiny, and with wings made with leather and metal wires, this was likely not a toy made for children, but one of those items that adults kept on their shelves for display.
“This is a Norwegian Ridgeback,” the girl said, happy to see how closely Alicent was examining it. “Uncle Daemon said they let him ride one the last time he was on a diplomatic visit, but I don’t think they would. Uncle Daemon also promised to bring back a Hungarian Horntail for me next month.”
“It’s a pretty dragon,” Alicent said, looking at the way the dragon’s claws moved as the girl babbled away, as if alive.
“Do you have a favorite dragon?”
Alicent looked up at the question. “I don’t know much about dragons.”
That seemed to put the girl into deep thought for a bit, but then she smiled and said gladly, “It’s okay, I know a lot about them. I can tell you. I’m Rhaenyra, by the way.”
And just like that, the memory of the silver-haired girl with the smoke-breathing dragon landed itself on Alicent’s mind. “We’ve met.”
“Really?” Rhaenyra shot her a puzzled look.
“I’m Alicent. We’ve met here years ago. You had a toy dragon that let out white smoke.”
Rhaenyra’s face broke out into a wide smile. “You’ve met Syrax!”
“I have, yes,” Alicent nodded.
“Good, then you’ll like this Norwegian Ridgeback. Look,” Rhaenyra said happily, waving the mechanical dragon in front of Alicent’s face. “Give me one of your hands, Alicent.”
Skeptical as she was, Alicent gingerly extended her right hand. Rhaenyra wasted no time putting the gold orb and the dragon onto her outstretched palm, and Alicent’s arm dipped a little, not expecting how heavy the small dragon would be.
“Okay, now watch,” Rhaenyra said with a childish wonder in her eyes and stared intently at the two items in Alicent’s hand. Alicent wasn’t sure what the dragon was supposed to do, but she felt something flutter against her skin, and the next second, two paper-thin wings unfurled from the gold orb.
“It’s a golden snitch,” Rhaenyra said when she saw the look of confusion on Alicent’s face. “For Quidditch?”
Alicent shook her head to indicate that she had no clue what it was, but she stopped when she saw the gold orb— golden snitch —lifted off her palm in a jerky move, before it flew even higher, taking the heavy dragon with it.
“How?” Alicent asked, staring at Rhaenyra in wonderment.
“Golden snitches are supposed to fly,” Rhaenyra said, eyes following the unsteady movement of the golden snitch. “That one was charmed to do my bidding, and right now, I want to see it take the dragon around the room.”
“Won’t they be mad? Seeing the toy flying in the hall?” Alicent asked in a hushed voice as she, too, paid close attention to the two things in the air. “I heard the Minister for Magic is here.”
“Father? I think he’s in his office again,” Rhaenyra shrugged. “Besides, he’s used to seeing it flying around our house. He won’t get mad.”
Alicent looked at Rhaenyra for a second, and then turned toward the ceiling again, where the dragon and the golden snitch circled the crystal chandelier.
The two of them stood side by side in the middle of a busy banquet hall, staring at the flying objects, until Alicent’s father showed up to take her away to meet some other important adults.
“Bye, Alicent,” Rhaenyra’s piercing indigo eyes found hers as Alicent was led away. “Bye, Mr. Otto!”
Later that night, Otto Hightower would ask Alicent how she came to befriend the Minister for Magic’s only child, and Alicent would answer honestly: she remembered her dragon.
Alicent was eleven—but then again she supposed everyone was eleven—when her Hogwarts acceptance letter arrived.
Her father took her to Diagon Alley in August, and frowned disapprovingly when Alicent walked out of Ollivander with a red oak wand. A dueling wand with a dragon heartstring , Otto said with a slight twitch in his cheek. What a terribly unbecoming wand for a noble young lady .
Alicent had no say in the matter of her wand, but she did beg her way into the one House she knew would make her father happy. And as she sat on that wooden stool, with the Sorting Hat on her head, Alicent’s one wish was granted.
A Hightower who wishes to stay in the dungeons , the hat had murmured in her ears. I know an ambitious Hightower once, but you are not as cunning or as willing to do the things he no doubt will do. You would’ve made a fine Ravenclaw, but as you wish, you’ll be joining…
“Slytherin!” The Sorting Hat called out, and Alicent let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
Her father’s letter arrived during breakfast a few days later. The letter was full of reminders, of Alicent’s duty to excel, of Alicent’s responsibility to represent the noble house of Hightower in a good light, and of Alicent’s dedication to the ancient faith of the Seven. Her father did not congratulate her on getting into Slytherin, and he sure did not ask about how she was settling into her new school.
Alicent spent the first year in Hogwarts as the studious, pious, too-well-behaved daughter of the Ministry Advisor.
The next time Alicent saw Rhaenyra—she remembered her name this time—was on the Hogwarts Express.
Alicent was silently praying to the Seven when her compartment door slid open with a loud squeak, and in walked the same head of silver locks that Alicent had come to associate with flying dragons.
“Hi, Alicent,” Rhaenyra said, sitting down in the upholstered seat opposite the older girl. “Father said I might find you in the private compartments.”
“The Minister knows who I am?”
“I tell Father about all of my friends,” Rhaenyra said nonchalantly. “He’d much rather hear me talk about people than my dragons.”
Alicent ducked her head and suppressed a chuckle. “How is your Norwegian Ridgeback? Is he well?”
Rhaenyra’s eyes, already so bright and so mesmerizing, shone with excitement at Alicent’s question. Alicent listened, as Rhaenyra told her about her uncle’s travels and the new creatures he got to meet. Most of the time, Alicent couldn’t quite picture the places the younger girl spoke of, but she didn’t think it mattered much, since Rhaenyra had a knack to subtly guide any topic back to the one thing she was truly passionate about: dragons.
That was, of course, until the Honeyduke Express trolley rolled up outside of their compartment.
“Cauldron Cake?” Rhaenyra held out one of the many sweets she got, after the trolley left.
“I’m not supposed to,” Alicent said.
“The train ride will be boring if you don’t enjoy yourself.”
“I am enjoying myself,” Alicent said defensively. “I am talking to you.”
Rhaenyra took the cake back and bit into it. Alicent watched as cake crumbs fell onto Rhaenyra’s woolen trousers, and felt a slight pang of envy. Born and raised as a Hightower, from the more conservative part of the country, Alicent had not had the chance to acquaint herself with the idea of reckless hedonism.
“Can we still be friends if we are in different Houses, Alicent?”
“Of course,” Alicent swallowed. “Just as long as you’re not a Gryffindor, I suppose.”
Rhaenyra beamed at her with frosting on her cheek, and Alicent couldn’t help but mirror her expression. A friend. At Hogwarts. Alicent found herself growing fonder and fonder of the concept.
Rhaenyra was sorted into Gryffindor, and Alicent pulled at her green and silver tie as she watched the girl run to join a long table of red and gold.
Alicent met Rhaenyra again a month later, when they were supposed to be in class.
Alicent was heading back down to the Slytherin common room when a soot-covered figure approached her from the opposite direction. The two girls came to a halt in the middle of an empty corridor.
“Alicent,” Rhaenyra was the first to offer a small wave and a soft smile. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I forgot something in the common room,” Alicent said, pointing in the general direction of where the underground room would be, and Rhaenyra nodded.
“And you?” Alicent took in the state the first-year was in. The girl was covered from head to toe in a thick layer of black soot; there was more black than silver in her hair now, and the house emblem on her robe was completely obscured by the soot. She looked like she was freshly spat out of an out-of-use fireplace, but Alicent couldn’t imagine that such a thing existed in Hogwarts.
“Oh, this?” Rhaenyra gestured at herself, slender finger moving from her dirtied tie to her dirtier shins. “I did a spell wrong, and almost burned down a classroom.”
Alicent’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you hurt?”
“No, fire can’t hurt me,” Rhaenyra scoffed. “I’m just going to change out of this.”
“I’m glad you came out of it unscathed, then.”
Rhaenyra smiled at her again, before her indigo eyes looked her up and down. Before Alicent had a chance to be self conscious, Rhaenyra opened her mouth. “Green suits you. More than gray, actually. It brings out your hair.”
Alicent looked down at her own Slytherin robe and tried to see things from Rhaenyra’s perspective. She supposed, with her auburn hair and pale skin, green truly might be the best color for her out of the four Houses. Still, Alicent didn’t quite get why something as unimpressive as her hair would prompt the Targaryen girl to mention it specifically.
“Thank you,” Alicent said, feeling suddenly shy. “I’d say you look quite nice in red, but it’s more black now, isn’t it?”
Rhaenyra let out a laugh. “Maybe that could be my colors. Both black and red.”
Alicent stifled a laugh. “Isn’t that already the Targaryen colors?”
Rhaenyra paused for a second, before beaming giddily. “I guess it is!”
Three days later, just as Alicent was reading by the Great Lake, close to the woods, something very slowly flew into her peripheral vision. Alicent looked up from her book of poetry to find a singular Cauldron Cake levitating in the air. Judging from the way the cake was practically wobbling in front of Alicent, she could only guess the spell was cast by someone who barely learned how to hold a wand.
Alicent closed her book and looked around her for Rhaenyra. When she couldn’t see the girl, she called out her name.
“How do you know it’s me?” A head of silver hair popped out from behind a tree.
“The spell,” Alicent said, taking out her own wand from inside her robe. With a simple swish and flick, the cauldron Cake was now hovering beautifully in the late autumn sun.
“Forget about spells,” Rhaenyra came out from her hiding place and hurried over to sit down next to where Alicent was sitting. “Can you at least try the cake?”
“Why?”
“I like the cake,” Rhaenyra reasoned, even though Alicent wasn’t clear about the logic behind that.
“Then you eat it.”
“But I want you to try it,” Rhaenyra insisted. She plucked the cake out of the air and presented it to Alicent like it was something exotic and precious. Alicent grudgingly accepted the cake, but only broke off a small piece with her fingers before plopping it into her mouth.
Rhaenyra watched her the same way she once observed her reaction to the mechanical dragon. “Well, how is it?”
“Sweet,” Alicent said with a hand covering her mouth. “Good.”
“But do you like it?”
Alicent nodded.
“Good,” Rhaenyra nodded, too. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring you something else.”
And Alicent came to learn that Rhaenyra did not joke about cake.
For weeks, the Gryffindor girl would find Alicent in all corners of the castle and send over one kind of sweets or another. By late November, Rhaenyra was so good at levitation spells, she became some sort of legend to the rest of the first-years.
By the end of the school term, Alicent was so used to seeing objects floating into her view, she didn’t question how they found her anymore.
“I should send my dragons your way,” Rhaenyra mused when Alicent, nose buried in her Herbology notes, reached out a hand blindly and caught a flying quill that was heading toward her.
“You have dragons now? More than one?” Alicent looked up from the parchments. “The same mechanical kind you once showed me at the Ministry’s gala, or have your uncle acquired something even more sophisticated for you?”
Rhaenyra grinned and sat down in the squeaky old library chair opposite her friend. “There’s a wizard who’s so skilled in carpentry, he can make flying dragons out of a block of maple. I have three of them by my bedside, and I wish they would let me set them free inside the castle.”
Alicent put down her notes and frowned at the silver-haired girl. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Oh, you know,” Rhaenyra said with a petulant pout. “The Ukrainian Ironbelly crashed into Professor Beesbury in the corridor, and he took it away with him.”
“Ironbelly,” Alicent thought back to what Rhaenyra had told her throughout the year. “Bipedal, scales like steel, metallic gray, and the very largest dragon breed we know of.”
Rhaenyra beamed with a childish glee. “You remembered!”
“Of course I do,” Alicent said with a smile. “It’s useful knowledge if I ever want to become an advisor to the Ministry like my father.”
Rhaenyra’s face fell at Alicent’s words, and Alicent could not understand what she had said offended the younger girl. The next second, Rhaenyra was out of her seat and straightening her black robe. Before Alicent could think to ask the girl to stay, Rhaenyra had already walked away, leaving Alicent alone at the table again.
Alicent was waiting by the classroom door for Rhaenyra, a week before summer break started.
She stood with her back stiff and her hand picking at her nail beds. Alicent was hoping to catch Rhaenyra alone in the corridor after her Potions class, but she guessed it would be okay, too, if she simply stood here and waited for the first-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws to be dismissed.
It took a good fifteen minutes before the first boy walked out of the classroom, and Alicent let out a sigh of relief when she finally saw the familiar silver locks amongst the students.
“I want to show you something,” Alicent linked their arms as soon as Rhaenyra saw her, too. “But you’ll need to come with me to the grounds.”
Alicent led Rhaenyra up the main staircase, out the building, and into the early summer sun. The two girls walked along the side of the castle and towards the Great Lake, till they were a safe distance away from the other students and their watchful eyes.
Alicent had come to accept that people would always turn their heads in the corridor when they walked by. It was unusual enough for a Slytherin to befriend a Gryffindor, even without the added tension of both girls being from powerful wizarding families that had been in the political arena for years.
“I saw Professor Beesbury this morning,” Alicent started, when they reached the clearing far from the castle’s entrance, where students didn’t normally gather.
“Did you take me to our spot just to tell me that?” Rhaenyra frowned.
“Not exactly,” Alicent continued. “I asked him about the Ukrainian Ironbelly he got from you, and…”
Alicent reached a hand down the side pocket of her robe, felt around it for a second, and then pulled out Rhaenyra’s wooden dragon.
“You got it back!” Rhaenyra cried happily as Alicent showed her the dragon on her outstretched palm.
“Beesbury said you can’t set it loose in the castle,” Alicent said, touching the back of the wooden dragon and watching it spread its wings in anticipation of flight. “But we’re outside now.”
Alicent gently tossed the thing up, just enough for it to leave the palm of her hand. The dragon’s wings started flapping almost instantly, suspending itself in the air, before it started circling Alicent.
“It likes you,” Rhaenyra said with something twinkling in her almost-purple eyes. “You should give it a name.”
Alicent watched as the magic toy made its final lap around her and took off into the air a few meters above where she and Rhaenyra were standing. “It’s your dragon, Rhaenyra.”
“Name it anyway.”
Alicent thought for a moment, and tried to imagine the pale wood dragon as an actual Ironbelly. She pictured it, silver and free, and looked back down at her friend. “Aegon.”
Rhaenyra’s face went from a happy smile to a guarded confusion. “A Valyrian name?”
“It is still your dragon. I thought I should name it something in House Targaryen’s language,” Alicent said with an apologetic smile. “I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s…I don’t know you know Valyrian names,” Rhaenyra’s expression softened. “Most people find it impossible to spell, that’s all. Why Aegon?”
Alicent stifled a laugh at Rhaenyra’s comment about the spelling, and instead pointed upwards at the flying dragon. She was almost shy when explaining her choice of name. “It’s an Ironbelly. Aegon means iron, from the High Valyrian word aegion.”
Rhaenyra’s indigo eyes studied her for a bit. Neither girl was paying attention to the wooden toy in the air now, but then Rhaenyra held out her hand, with her palm facing up. The dragon slowly made its way back down, till it came to rest on the silver-haired girl’s hand.
“Aegon Targaryen,” Rhaenyra murmured, lifting the toy up to inspect its head closely, only to turn it to face Alicent a moment later. Rhaenyra held out the wooden dragon so it would seem like she was presenting Alicent with it, and then squinted her eyes to look between Alicent and Aegon.
“What?” Alicent chuckled, finding her friend’s sudden seriousness amusing.
“I am bequeathing this to you,” Rhaenyra thrusted the toy in Alicent’s face.
“ Bequeath ?” Alicent repeated the word.
“I heard it from a king once,” Rhaenyra shrugged. “It just means to give away, but in a very formal way, I think.”
“And you’re bequeathing Aegon to me?”
“You should keep it. After all, you’re the one who named it. It’s your dragon.”
“You just said it’s a Targaryen,” Alicent furrowed her brow. “Shouldn’t it be a Hightower if it’s my dragon?”
“No,” Rhaenyra said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Because it’s a gift from me, a Targaryen.”
Alicent took the wooden dragon from Rhaenyra’s hand. “Thank you, King Rhaenyra Targaryen.”
“You’re very welcome, Lady Hightower.”
They shared a look, and both burst into laughter at the titles.