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Dany Targaryen was the smallest girl on the cheerleading squad. That meant she was also the one who got picked up and lifted and thrown. Technically, she should have been the “butterfly” of the squad, but she hated the term and insisted on being called the “dragon” instead. The other girls thought she was weird and dorky. Jon Snow thought she was adorable. He was the backup quarterback behind his half-brother Robb Stark, and he spent a lot of time on the bench listening to the cheerleaders talk. He considered himself an expert on the adorableness of the dragon.
Dany was intense and smart and driven and - yes - a little dorky. But he was a little dorky too, always dreaming of being a knight on the front lines against evil even though he knew he would actually end up working in some mid-level managerial position in their dad’s company, 9-5 and out of sight. He wasn’t like Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon. He was illegitimate, his mom long gone, and while his dad had always looked after him, he knew he wouldn’t inherit any major piece of the company. So he daydreamed about doing something else instead. And if Dany wanted to daydream about dragons, then he didn’t see what was so bad about that.
Jon worked up the guts to ask her out the day the Homecoming Court was announced. They were finally old enough to be nominated for it, but neither of them were. Jon wasn’t surprised that he didn’t get voted for. Backup quarterbacks don’t get much glory. He was surprised that Dany didn’t get picked, especially since every other cheerleader in their grade was on the court. But he didn’t want her to feel like nobody liked her, so he asked her out, like he’d meant to for 3 years. And it turned out that it wasn’t even that scary. She smiled, and accepted his offer, and if she could tell that his timing was a little pitying, she accepted it gracefully.
The real problems started with what came to be called the “Red Dinner.” It was a fancy dinner one of the moms held for the entire Homecoming Court on the night before the King and Queen were announced, the main course was red snapper, and everyone at the dinner ended up with food poisoning. Jon was woken in the middle of the night by his brother being loudly sick in the bathroom down the hall, and when none of the court was at school the next day, they all knew it had gone farther than that.
That night’s Homecoming Game was the first time Jon had ever walked into the school’s football stadium knowing he was actually going to play. His palms were sweaty inside his gloves and his heart was racing as he ran out onto the field for warmups. And that was when he saw her. Dany. Half the varsity cheerleading squad was out with food poisoning, but that hadn’t stopped her from finding a way to support the team - and him. She bounced on a trampoline, a sign held high over her head at the top of each bounce.
It said “Jon Snow is my White Knight!” and it had a picture of a dragon on it, which was maybe a bit of a mixed message, but he knew what she meant. She meant that while he was on the bench listening to the cheerleaders talking on the track behind him, she’d been on the track behind him listening to him talk on the bench. He blew her a kiss, strapped on his helmet, and went out onto the field to play in his first ever game. If Robb couldn’t be here, he’d just have to win the game for both of them.