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Chapter Text

Red Wedding

Blood was the first thing Robb Stark understood.

It coated his hands, slick and warm, soaking through wool and leather alike. Every breath dragged like broken glass through his chest, shallow and useless, his ribs refusing to rise properly. The pain was everywhere—white-hot and blinding—but beneath it was something worse, something colder.

Betrayal.

He lay on his back, staring at nothing, vision swimming. The last clear image burned behind his eyes: Roose Bolton’s face, calm and courteous as ever, leaning close enough for Robb to smell wine on his breath.

Jaime Lannister sends his regards.

The blade had gone in deep. Clean. Certain.

Robb’s fingers curled weakly over the wound, as if pressure alone might argue with death. His hand came away red. Of course it did. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it, but his throat seized instead.

“Talisa…” The word slipped out, barely sounding at all.

She had been right there. So close he could have reached her. Her scream—cut short, brutally—still rang in his ears. Her eyes had found his in that last instant, wide with fear and something worse: apology. As if she had failed him.

And their child.

A sharp, choking sound tore from his chest. His vision blurred again, this time with tears he had no strength to hide. A king was not meant to weep like this, sprawled on a blood-soaked floor while his bannermen died screaming around him—but there was no hall now, no music turned to slaughter, no banners torn down.

The world lurched.

Cold earth pressed against his back.

Robb frowned weakly, breath hitching. The air smelled wrong—damp and green, heavy with moss and leaf-mould instead of smoke and blood. He blinked, slow and confused.

Trees rose above him. Tall. Ancient. Their branches tangled together overhead, blocking out the sky. Mist curled low across the ground, pale and restless, sliding between thick roots like something alive.

This wasn’t the Twins.

“This… isn’t…” His tongue felt thick, useless.

The Wolfswood, his mind supplied dimly. It had to be. Nothing else made sense. Perhaps he had fallen. Perhaps he was dying and dreaming his way home.

Dark spots crept at the edges of his sight. His chest burned with every breath.

“So, this is it,” he thought, a strange calm settling over him. “This is how I die.”

A sound reached him—soft, deliberate. The snap of a twig. Leaves shifting beneath careful weight.

Robb turned his head with effort. Pain flared, sharp enough to steal what little breath he had left. His vision swam, then steadied just enough for him to see a shadow moving through the mist.

Warm breath brushed his cheek.

A rough tongue dragged once across his skin.

“Grey Wind,” he whispered, relief cutting through him so suddenly it almost hurt more than the wound. His lips twitched, trying for a smile. “Good lad… you got away.”

The presence lingered, close and watchful—but something was wrong. Grey Wind was solid, familiar, smelling of fur and blood and home. This was heavier. Broader. The breath carried the scent of earth and night, not wolf.

The ground trembled faintly.

Hooves.

More than two.

Robb’s eyes widened as the mist thinned.

The thing above him was not a direwolf.

Gold eyes regarded him with an unsettling intelligence. The upper half was a man—broad-shouldered, dark-haired, his expression stern and unreadable. Below, the body of a great horse stood rooted to the forest floor, powerful and impossibly still.

Fear sliced cleanly through the haze.

“I’m dead,” Robb rasped. “This is judgment, then.”

The creature studied him for a long moment before lowering itself with surprising care, kneeling so its eyes were level with his.

It closed them briefly, as if listening to something Robb could not hear.

“This one does not belong,” it said at last. The voice was deep, old, carrying the weight of centuries. “Not of this world.”

Shapes shifted in the mist. More figures. More eyes watching. Low murmurs followed—words Robb didn’t understand, but he felt their weight settle over him all the same.

“He bleeds out of time.”

“He was taken too soon.”

“A wound has been torn.”

Robb tried to speak—to demand answers, to ask why he still lived when everyone he loved lay dead—but the strength fled him all at once. The forest seemed to tilt inward, shadows closing around him like a grave.

Darkness crept back, thick and gentle.

Just before it claimed him, a certainty settled deep in his bones. — This was not mercy. Nor was it punishment. It felt like being set aside.

As if the world he had fallen from had not finished with him yet.

“We will not leave him to die,” the creature decided quietly. “But his fate is not ours to finish.”

It turned its gaze toward the distant edge of the forest, where the trees thinned, and another presence lingered—large, clumsy, and stubbornly kind.

“Fetch the half-giant,” it said. “This one has crossed where he should not have.”

Robb Stark slipped into unconsciousness beneath unfamiliar stars, bleeding into soil that did not know his name—a king without a crown, a man between moments, unaware that he had crossed more than one boundary.

Time itself, it seemed, had missed him.

Robb did not wake so much as surface.

Pain came first—heavy and dragging, no longer the clean fire of steel but something deeper, slower, as though his body were being pulled back together against its will. He learned its shape without opening his eyes: the tight pull across his chest, the dull throb that never quite left, the sharp warning if he tried to breathe too deeply.

Voices drifted in and out, blurred and meaningless.

Only one anchored him.

A woman’s voice—low, steady, unmistakably real. British, clipped when she was tired, softer when she thought no one could hear her. It reached him through fog and fever like a hand on his shoulder.

“Easy now.”

“Don’t move.”

“That’s it. Slow breaths.”

He held onto those words the way a drowning man clutched driftwood.

Time lost all sense. He slipped between half-dreams and broken memories. Sometimes he was back in the hall at the Twins—music screaming, steel flashing, blood everywhere. Sometimes he was in Winterfell, young again, running across the yard with snow in his hair. And sometimes Talisa was there, smiling, warm and alive—

—and the pain surged so suddenly it dragged a sound from his throat.

“No—”

Hands caught him at once. Firm. Grounding.

“Hey,” the woman said sharply. “You’re here. Stay with me.”

Cool fingers pressed to his temples. A cloth brushed his face. Something bitter touched his lips.

“Drink,” she told him. “Just a little.”

He swallowed because she said so. Because resisting felt impossible.

Days passed. Or nights. Or weeks. He could not tell. Only that the pain eased and returned in cycles, and that her voice was always there when he came back to himself.

“You were stabbed,” she said once, as if explaining to him rather than the empty room. “Badly. You lost a lot of blood. Don’t try to sit up.”

“Dead,” he murmured, the word scraping out of him. “Should be.”

There was a pause. A quiet breath drawn in.

“No,” she said, very firmly. “You shouldn’t.”

Fever took him hard after that. The world twisted. Shadows crawled at the edges of his vision. He thrashed weakly, breath hitching as memory and nightmare tangled together.

“Mother—” The word tore loose before he could stop it. “Talisa—”

Her hands were on him immediately, steadying his shoulders.

“You’re safe,” she went on, slower now. “You’re not dying today.”

Safe.

The word felt wrong. Foreign. Yet it settled something in him all the same.

Sometimes she spoke when she thought he was unconscious.

“You’re stubborn,” she muttered once, exhaustion fraying the edges of her voice. “Most people wouldn’t have held on this long.”

Another time, quieter, almost to herself: “Whoever you are… you’re not done yet.”

He wanted to tell her his name. Wanted to give her something real to hold onto, the way she held onto him. But his tongue would not work, and the darkness always pulled him back before he could try.

He learned her moods by sound alone. The brisk efficiency when she was focused. The softer cadence when she checked his pulse, as if reassuring herself as much as him. The way her voice dipped unconsciously when she spoke to him, even though she didn’t know who he was.

“Stay,” she would say. “Breathe.” “That’s it.”

Once—only once—he managed to open his eyes. Just enough to see lamplight and the blurred outline of her bent over him, hair loose, sleeves rolled up and stained.

She noticed at once.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. Then, more gently, “You’re awake.”

His fingers twitched, moving on instinct alone. They brushed fabric—her sleeve.

She froze.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then she carefully wrapped her fingers around his, warm and steady.

“I’ve got you,” she said quietly. Not reassurance. Fact.

He slipped back into darkness soon after, but it felt different then. Less like falling. More like resting.

Over the weeks—months, perhaps—Robb Stark, king without a crown, learned one truth in fragments: He was being kept alive by a stranger who did not know his name, his rank, or his sins. Only that he was breathing. And that, for reasons she never spoke aloud, she refused to let him stop.

September

Robb Stark woke to softness—and it unsettled him at once.

Softness meant safety. Safety meant guards down. His body ached in a deep, all-encompassing way, the sort of pain that came after battle or fever or something far worse, the kind that settled into bone and reminded a man he had survived when he should not have. A low groan escaped him before he could stop it. His hands tightened instinctively around the fabric beneath his fingers, searching for something familiar.

It gave way.

Not straw. Not fur. Not even the fine wool reserved for lords.

This was… different. Too soft. Like feathers packed too richly, as if someone had tried to drown him in comfort. Confusion stirred, sharp and unwelcome, as bright light stabbed through his eyelids. He squeezed them shut, jaw tightening, then forced them open with effort.

White.

Too white.

The room was bright and clean in a way that felt wrong—smooth walls without soot or age, tall windows pouring sunlight freely inside. No smoke. No banners. No shadows cast by torchlight. The bed beneath him was narrow but comfortable, its frame made not of wood but of some pale, cold metal that gleamed faintly.

Robb’s breath quickened despite himself. This is not a lord’s chamber. And it is no hall I know.

He turned his head slowly, every movement measured. Rows of identical beds stretched away on either side of him, all empty, all perfectly made. A hall, then—but not one he recognised. The air was warm and carried a sharp, unfamiliar herbal scent, clean and almost biting, nothing like the chill stone corridors of Winterfell or the damp, river-scented chambers of Riverrun.

Where am I?

The thought struck hard, panic curling low in his chest. He tried to lift his head and hissed as pain flared down his spine, forcing him back. Through the tall windows, green ground spread beneath the sun—vivid and alive—with distant mountains rising blue and jagged against a wide sky. Birds sang, light and strange, their calls unfamiliar to his ear.

The south, his mind supplied desperately. Somewhere far south.

It was the only explanation that made sense.

Memory returned in broken shards.

The Twins. The music. Steel sliding between his ribs.

Talisa.

His hand flew to his side. There was nothing there.

No torn flesh. No blood. His fingers met smooth skin beneath thin fabric, unmarked where Roose Bolton’s blade had pierced him through the heart. His breath caught painfully as his mind rebelled against what his body insisted was true.

That blade killed me.

Talisa’s face rose before him—shocked, disbelieving. Her scream, cut short. Black Walder’s knife rising and falling. His child died with her. His men slaughtered while he stood frozen, useless. His mother’s eyes, wide with horror as she watched her son fall.

A broken sound tore from his throat.

I died.

There was no other answer. There could be no other answer.

A tear slipped free, hot and unwanted, soaking into the strange white pillow. If this was death, then why was he alone? Where was his father, stern and silent? Where were his brothers? His wife? His child?

His jaw clenched hard. His fingers dug into the edge of the bed until his knuckles whitened.

If I am dead, he thought fiercely, then they must be here somewhere. And I will find them.

A sudden shout shattered the quiet.

“POTTER!”

Robb jerked violently, heart slamming against his ribs. His hand shot out on instinct, grasping for Ice—

Empty air.

The realisation struck a heartbeat later, bitter and sharp. He had given the sword away. Trusted it. Trusted men who had smiled while planning his death.

“Healer Potter!” the voice bellowed again. “The boy is awake!”

Boy?

Robb turned his head sharply—and froze.

A woman smiled at him from the wall.

Not standing before it.

Inside it.

A large painted portrait hung near the far bed, its subject a plump, middle-aged woman in rich purple robes. She leaned forward within the frame, eyes bright, alive in a way no painting had any right to be.

“Well,” she said cheerfully, “took you long enough.”

Robb stared, stunned past words. His thoughts scattered uselessly.

Paintings do not speak.

Another voice cut in beside him, calm and grounded. “How are you feeling?”

He turned his head again, pulse racing.

A young woman stood at his bedside, dressed all in white. The garment was shockingly short by any standard he knew, ending at her knees and fitted in a way that would have scandalised half the court at Winterfell. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows. Dark hair lay braided over one shoulder, practical and slightly untidy, and her eyes—sharp, assessing, unmistakably green—studied him with careful attention.

She held a slender wooden stick in one hand.

“Where am I?” he demanded hoarsely. “Who are you?”

One dark eyebrow lifted—not in surprise, but consideration. “I’m Edith Potter,” she said evenly. “I’ve been healing you since you were brought here.”

Healing, his mind echoed dimly. Then I am not dead.

“And where,” he pressed, frustration bleeding through exhaustion, “is here?”

She hesitated. Barely a moment—but he saw it.

“Hogwarts,” she said at last. “You were found in the Forbidden Forest. Firenze sent word, and Hagrid brought you in. Madam Pomfrey stopped the bleeding. You were… fortunate.”

Her eyes flicked briefly to his chest.

Robb followed the glance.

No wound. No scar.

That is not fortune, he thought hollowly. That is sorcery.

A mug appeared in his vision. He eyed it warily and made no move to take it.

“It’s water,” Edith said, a touch brisk, though not unkind.

She watched him the way a healer watched a wounded man—not afraid, not hostile, but alert, as if expecting him to shatter without warning.

If she meant me harm, he reasoned, I would already be dead.

Slowly, he took the mug and drank. The cold slid down his throat, easing the raw burn there.

When he handed it back, she studied him for a long moment. “So,” she said gently, “are you going to tell me who you are?”

Robb hesitated. He did not know this place or its rules—but he was not a liar.

“I am Robb of House Stark,” he said carefully. “First of His Name. King in the North.”

Silence stretched.

Edith’s eyes widened—but not with recognition. With concern. Her mouth parted slightly, then closed again.

“Right,” she murmured. “That’s… quite a story.”

Anger flared, sharp and instinctive. “You do not believe me.”

Her gaze softened—not dismissive, but careful. “I believe you believe it,” she said quietly.

The words struck harder than disbelief would have.

Robb straightened as much as his aching body allowed. “I do not lie about my name or my crown, my lady.”

“My lady?” she echoed faintly, then sighed. “How did you get here, Mr Stark?”

Robb’s head lifted despite the pain, the movement small but deliberate, pride flaring sharp and instinctive.
“It’s Lord Stark,” he corrected curtly. “Robb of House Stark.”

The correction landed. The Lady did not argue. Did not apologise either. Her brows drew together, just slightly, eyes flicking over his face with renewed focus—as though she were reassessing him, weighing something she had not before. The room seemed to still around that brief, charged silence.

He swallowed, breath shallow now, jaw tightening as frustration edged through the ache. “I do not know how I came here,” he went on, each word measured. “One moment I was dying. The next, I woke in a forest I did not recognise. Nor do I know where here is—only that it is not my home.”

Her expression shifted—professional now, guarded. “You crossed wards no one can breach by accident,” she said quietly.

Wards. The word meant little to him, but the way she said it did not. It carried the same weight as walls, oaths, lines men do not cross unless something has gone terribly wrong.

“I did not come willingly,” he snapped, the effort of it sending pain flaring sharp and bright through his chest as he tried to rise. His body betrayed him at once, strength failing, breath hitching. “We were attacked—betrayed—at the Twins. I was stabbed. And then I was in the woods.”

“The Twins,” she repeated slowly.

“Aye.” His voice roughened despite his effort to keep it steady. “We were promised safe passage. Walder Frey and Roose Bolton betrayed us.”

Saying the names felt like pressing on a bruise that ran straight through his heart.

Something changed in her face then—not disbelief, not shock. Sympathy. The quiet, careful look one gave a man too broken to be argued with.

“You’re safe here,” Lady Potter said softly. “No one is going to harm you.”

Safe, his mind echoed bitterly. I was promised that once before.

The word tasted false. Dangerous.

“I need to go back,” Robb insisted, even as exhaustion dragged at him like deep water pulling at his legs. “My family—”

The room tilted. Darkness swept in before he could finish, stealing the words from his mouth.

The last thing he felt was the bed beneath him—impossibly soft, yielding where a soldier expected resistance—and the faint pressure of her hand at his shoulder, steadying him even as he slipped away.

As consciousness faded, a quiet, unsettling certainty settled in his chest: That whoever Lady Potter was, she did not see a king before her.

Only a wounded man, clinging to a story the world had already taken from him—and refusing, stubbornly, to let go.

When Robb woke again, morning had found him.

Sunlight filtered softly through pale curtains, warming the room without blinding him this time. For a few disoriented seconds, he lay still, listening to the steady rhythm of his own breathing. His body no longer ached the way it had before—no fire in his chest, no sharp agony along his spine—but the absence of pain only sharpened the unease coiled tight in his thoughts.

This is wrong, he thought. I should hurt. I should be dead.

Talisa. His mother. His men.

The names came unbidden, heavy as stones. The stillness around him felt false. Too gentle. Too kind for a world that had butchered everything he loved.

Robb pushed himself up on his elbows, heart beginning to race despite his effort to stay calm. The sheets whispered beneath his hands. He needed answers. He needed to know where he was—and how to get back.

The door opened quietly.

The healer from before stepped in, parchment in hand, eyes already scanning the page as she walked. When she looked up and saw him awake, something in her expression eased—not surprise, but careful relief.

Robb watched her closely this time, wariness sharpening his focus.

She could not be much older than he was—perhaps a year or two at most. Her dark hair was black and unruly, curling in much the same way his own did when he had no time to tame it. The similarity unsettled him, tugging at a sense of recognition he did not trust. Her eyes were green, clear and alert, missing nothing.

Too calm, he thought. Too steady.

She did not look away when she met his gaze. She did not smile to soothe him, nor soften her stance. There was no false gentleness in her posture—only the composed readiness of someone accustomed to hurt and difficult truths.

Robb studied her as he would a stranger in a war tent: searching for weakness, for deception, for the telltale signs of a smile offered too easily. He found none—and that made him more cautious, not less.

Trust cost me everything once.

He said nothing, only followed her movements with guarded eyes, already certain of one thing—whoever this healer was, she would not be allowed near his confidence until she earned it.

“Good morning, Mr Stark,” she said evenly. “How are you feeling today? Any pain?”

The title struck sharper than it should have.

Mr Stark, his mind echoed coldly. After I told her.

He remembered it clearly—telling her his name, his house, his crown. Correcting her once already. And yet here she was again, brushing it aside as if titles were trifles that could be ignored.

His jaw tightened, but he held his tongue. Not yet.

Her tone remained calm. Too calm. The voice one used with frightened children or wounded soldiers who might break if pressed too hard.

“No,” he answered shortly.

“Good.” She nodded once, making a note on the parchment. Then she looked up again, studying him the way a maester might study a patient who had spoken nonsense after a fever. “You said you’re the King of the North. Where exactly in the North?”

His eyes narrowed.

“Winterfell,” he replied. “It is the capital of the North. The seat of House Stark.”

“Right,” she said, as though humouring him. “And where exactly is Winterfell?”

Robb stared at her.

The silence stretched long enough for him to notice the way she shifted her weight, how her fingers tightened around the parchment. Waiting. Watching.

“In the north of Westeros,” he said slowly, each word measured, as though explaining something painfully obvious.

She frowned. Just a little. “And Westeros is… where, exactly?” Then, after a beat, “In Britain?”

Now it was Robb’s turn to falter.

“Britain?” he repeated.

“Have you heard of Europe?” she tried gently, as though offering a lifeline.

He shook his head. “I’ve never heard those names before, Lady Potter.”

Her lips pressed together. She glanced down at the parchment, then back at him. “How did you come to be at Hogwarts?”

His patience snapped.

“Are you making a jape of me?” he demanded, voice rising despite himself. “Or is this yet another trick by my enemies? I was betrayed once already—I will not be toyed with again!”

She did not flinch. Instead, she raised one hand slightly, palm open. Calming. Grounded. “I promise you, I’m not your enemy. And I don’t even know who you are.”

“I am Robb of House Stark,” he said fiercely. “First of His Name. King in the North.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding a little too quickly. “You’ve mentioned that.”

The way she said it—gentle, noncommittal—made his jaw tighten.

She hears the words, he thought, but not their weight.

“You’re at Hogwarts,” she continued, “in Scotland. The Scottish Highlands, to be precise. Though I imagine that doesn’t mean much to you.”

“Scotland,” Robb repeated. The word tasted strange. “Is it a kingdom?”

She hesitated. “A country. Part of the United Kingdom.”

“United,” he echoed faintly. “Kingdom.”

Her eyes searched his face, as though looking for cracks. “Hogwarts is a school.”

“A… school?”

“Yes.” She tilted her head slightly. “A place where children are taught.”

“Oh,” he said, blinking.

The pause that followed was heavy.

“You don’t have schools where you come from?” she asked carefully.

“We have the Citadel,” Robb replied after a moment. “It trains maesters—men of learning. They serve lords. Teach their children. Tend the sick.”

“Maesters,” she repeated softly.

“Aye.”

She was quiet for a long moment, then murmured, more to herself than to him, “You really aren’t from here, are you?”

“I’m not certain I am,” Robb admitted.

The strength left him all at once. He leaned back against the pillows, exhaustion washing over him despite the lack of pain. His voice dropped, rough and unguarded.

“I just want to go back,” he said. “Back to Talisa. Back to my mother. Back to Jon and my sisters… back to a time when my father still lived.”

Something flickered across Lady Potter’s face then—sympathy, real and unguarded—but it was quickly tempered by concern. The look of someone piecing together an answer she did not like.

She watched him the way one watches a man who had lost too much and built a world in his mind simply to survive it.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Truly.”

Robb closed his eyes. He did not see her turn away, parchment clutched tightly in her hand, already thinking of other healers, other rooms—of conversations she would need to have with people who knew far more about broken minds than broken bodies.

He only knew this: Whatever this place was, it did not believe him.

And that frightened him more than any blade ever had.

Two Days Later

The last thing Robb Stark remembered of the world before waking in this place was cold.

The biting, bone-deep chill of a northern winter creeping ever closer—snow threatening the Wolfswood, breath fogging in the air, steel burning against numbed fingers. That memory still clung to him, sharp and unyielding. So it was deeply disorienting—almost offensive—to stand now before tall windows and look out upon early autumn.

Beyond the glass, the world was caught between seasons. The green had not yet faded, but it had softened. Leaves were beginning to yellow at the edges, some already loosening in the breeze to drift lazily to the ground. The air outside looked crisp rather than warm, sunlight pale and slanted, carrying the promise of colder days to come. Somewhere beyond the walls, birds called—fewer than before, their songs shorter, as if even they sensed the turning of the year.

Robb stood with his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders tense beneath the unfamiliar fabric of his borrowed clothes.

This feels like false peace, he thought. The calm before the snow.

Old Nan’s voice echoed faintly in his mind—summer children, she had called them, those born in warmth who had never known true winter. He had laughed then, safe within Winterfell’s walls.

He was not laughing now.

This autumn was wrong.

His thoughts turned, as they always did, back to the Twins.

To smiles and bread, and salt. To betrayal wrapped in courtesy. To the sound of steel tearing through flesh. To Talisa—her eyes wide with shock, her body folding as if the world itself had failed to hold her upright.

His fingers curled slowly, nails biting into his palms.

And his men—how many had died with cups still in their hands? How many had escaped, wounded and hunted through the night? Had the Freys shown mercy to any of them?

Grey Wind.

The thought struck him like a blow. His direwolf had been outside the hall. Had they harmed him, too? Had they—

“Mr Stark?”

Robb startled violently.

Instinct surged before sense. His hand reached for Ice, heart pounding—only for his fingers to close around empty air. The sudden lack of balance nearly sent him stumbling, and he caught himself sharply, breath coming fast.

Edith Potter stood a few paces behind him.

She watched him closely—not alarmed, not mocking, but alert. The way one watched a man who might bolt or break without warning.

“Easy,” she said quietly. “You’re all right.”

Robb straightened at once, jaw tightening with embarrassment and anger both. You are not helpless, he reminded himself fiercely. “I apologise,” he muttered stiffly.

She nodded once, accepting it without comment. “Ready to meet the headmistress?”

He studied her for a moment before answering.

She had told him the previous day that the head of this place wished to see him now that he was strong enough to stand. That answers—whatever answers could be given—would come then.

I doubt it, he thought. Answers had a habit of slipping away from him lately. Still, he nodded.

“Aye.”

She turned on her heel, brisk and decisive. “Right. Let’s go then.”

Robb followed.

His old clothes, he had been told, were ruined beyond saving—cut away, soaked in blood, disposed of by house elves. He still did not know what such creatures were, only that everyone spoke of them as if they were as commonplace as stable hands.

The clothes he wore now were strange but comfortable: loose trousers of rough blue cloth, a soft tunic fastened with buttons down the front, shorter than any garment he had worn before. The fabric was lighter than northern wool, better suited to this milder air. His boots, at least, were sturdy—and for that he was grateful.

As they stepped out into the corridors, irritation prickled at him again—until he truly saw the place.

The castle rose around him in sweeping arches and spiralling staircases, ceilings vaulted impossibly high, dark wooden beams crisscrossing above like the ribs of some great beast. Tapestries lined the stone walls, rich with colour and movement, and between them hung portraits—dozens of them—depicting landscapes, people, moments frozen in paint.

His steps slowed despite himself.

Winterfell was ancient. Riverrun was proud. But this… this was something else entirely.

His eyes lingered on one painting of rolling hills caught in late-summer gold—so like the Reach, yet not—and another of storm-lashed cliffs that stirred painful thoughts of the Iron Islands.

“Hello, Ms Potter.”

Robb nearly shouted.

He spun around sharply, heart hammering, searching for the speaker—only to find Edith already turning toward a nearby portrait.

“Hey, Circe,” she greeted casually. “How are you?”

“Timothy ran off again,” the woman in the painting said with a careless shrug. She was beautiful—golden-skinned, black hair bound back by a circlet, dark eyes sharp and knowing. Her gaze slid to Robb. “And who’s this young man?”

Robb stared openly.

His chest tightened.

The portrait… was looking at him.

He took an unconscious step closer to Edith.

She noticed. Said nothing.

“That’s Robb of House Stark,” Edith said dryly, nodding toward him. “King of the North.”

“King in the North,” he corrected automatically, still staring. “My lady—how is she—?” He swallowed. “It’s a painting.”

“The portraits here move,” Edith replied, sounding tired. As if she had explained this many times before.

Circe’s gaze met his fully now. “You have travelled far, Robb Stark,” she said softly.

His skin prickled. Too far, he thought.

“I… I suppose I have,” he managed.

“You have suffered much,” the woman continued. “And yet your path is unfinished.”

Ignoring the woman, Edith cut in quickly. “We’ve got to go. I’ll see you later, all right?”

“Piggywiggy,” she added under her breath.

Robb shot her a sharp look—but before he could speak, the portrait swung open.

Stone stairs spiralled upward in darkness behind it.

“A secret passage,” he breathed. “Hidden behind a portrait?”

“Hogwarts is full of them,” Edith said lightly. “I don’t think anyone knows them all.”

She stepped inside.

Robb hesitated only a moment before following, the portrait closing behind them with a soft click. His heart raced—not with fear, but with a sharp ache of home.

If Winterfell had such ways…

They emerged elsewhere in the castle. Sunlight poured through enormous windows overlooking a vast lake, its surface rippling under a cool breeze, darker now, edged with the promise of autumn storms.

Robb opened his mouth to ask—

“Dumbledore,” Edith said to an ugly stone gargoyle.

Robb blinked. “You’re speaking to—”

The gargoyle jumped aside.

Stone rotated. A circular staircase revealed itself.

“Another hidden way,” he murmured.

“Come on.”

He stepped onto the stair—and shouted as it moved, carrying them upward in a smooth spiral. His hand flew out, gripping her arm instinctively.

She steadied him without comment. “You’re not in danger,” she said, almost amused.

He released her at once, mortified, but said nothing.

At last, the stairs stopped.

Edith pushed open a heavy wooden door.

Robb stepped inside—and forgot how to breathe.

The office was unlike any chamber he had ever seen. Circular and vast, filled with light and a quiet sense of power. Portraits lined the walls—older, wiser faces watching with interest. Curious silver instruments whirred and clicked softly. Shelves groaned with ancient tomes and strange artefacts. A quill wrote on parchment by itself.

And above it all—

An old man in a portrait slept loudly, beard rising and falling with each snore.

Robb stared.

Then the door behind them opened again.

A woman entered—tall, dignified, wrapped in black velvet robes. Her hair was greying, her posture unyielding, her gaze sharp behind gold-rimmed spectacles.

But her accent—

It reminded him of home. Of the North. Of stone halls and measured words.

“Welcome to Hogwarts, Mister Stark,” she said. “I am glad to see you out of the infirmary.”

Something in Robb’s chest loosened.

“I am Minerva McGonagall,” she continued calmly. “Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Robb inclined his head automatically.

And for the first time since waking in this strange, impossible place, he wondered—not with fear, but with quiet, aching hope—whether the world had truly finished with him yet.

Robb Stark sat stiffly in the chair opposite the headmistress’s desk, his back straight despite the softness of the cushions beneath him. Habit held him upright when comfort tried to tempt him into ease. The room felt too full of light, of quiet magic humming just beneath the air, of watching eyes hidden in portraits that pretended to sleep. He kept his hands clasped in his lap, as he had been taught as a boy when facing a lord or a king, though here he did not yet know what titles carried weight.

Posture first, his father’s voice murmured in memory. A man’s bearing is his armour.

Lady Potter—Healer Potter, as she had first been to him—had flopped into the chair beside him with far less ceremony. She crossed one ankle over the other, parchment abandoned on the desk, her posture deliberately casual. Robb noted it anyway. The ease of it. The lack of armour in it.

She does not fear this place, he thought. Or the woman who rules it.

Across from them, the headmistress regarded him with a steady, assessing calm that reminded him uncomfortably of Maester Luwin—and, gods help him, of his father when he had been deciding whether Robb was lying.

“A school,” Robb said slowly, the words still feeling unreal in his mouth, “of witchcraft and wizardry?”

“Yes,” the headmistress replied simply.

Robb’s brows drew together as his thoughts turned inward. Witchcraft. Old Nan’s voice stirred in his memory, crackling like firewood—tales of red priests and shadowbinders, of flame and prophecy, of gods who demanded blood. Witches. Warlocks. Fire made flesh. R’hllor. The Lord of Light.

If this is witchcraft, he reasoned grimly, then there must be a god behind it. Essos, then.

His gaze lifted sharply to the woman across from him. “You’re a witch?”

There it was—the smallest pause. No surprise. No offence. Calculation.

Edith, however, sagged back in her chair as though relieved he had finally said something that made sense to her. “So—you do know what witches are,” she said, cautiously relieved.

“I know of them,” Robb replied. “Are you followers of R’hllor?”

“Ruh… who?” Edith frowned.

“The Lord of Light,” Robb said, a little impatient now. “God of fire. Of heat and life.”

Silence followed.

The headmistress’s expression softened—not into understanding, but into certainty. “I’m afraid we know of no such god, Mr Stark.”

The words struck colder than denial. Robb straightened at once, pride bristling despite the ache still lingering in his bones. Whatever madness this place harboured, he would not be diminished in it.

“Lord Stark, if you wish to be informal,” he said firmly. “Or King Robb—first of my name. King in the North.”

Edith shot him a wide-eyed look, half disbelief, half something like embarrassment, as if she were watching someone walk straight into a social wall she knew very well.

The headmistress studied him for a long moment—his posture, his voice, the stubborn certainty in his eyes—before inclining her head.

“My apologies, Lord Stark.”

Something in Robb’s shoulders eased despite himself. At least here, he thought, words still mean something.

“Now,” she continued gently, “before we go any further, would you care for some tea? Pumpkin juice, perhaps?”

Robb hesitated. Hospitality before questioning. That, at least, he understood. He inclined his head. “Whatever you’re having.”

“Tea, then.”

She lifted her wand.

Robb watched closely as the teapot appeared, milk pouring itself, sugar leaping of its own accord. He did not shout. He did not recoil. He merely breathed—slow and measured—grounding himself the way his father had taught him when the world tilted.

If they wished me harm, he reminded himself dully, they would have done it already.

The thought did not bring comfort.

A part of him—small, shameful, and terribly tired—almost wished they would. That this strange magic would turn cruel, that a blade or spell would end it cleanly and finally. No more questions. No more distance. No more waking alone in a world that did not know his name.

Let it be done, he thought bleakly. Let me go back to them.

But when Lady Potter accepted her cup without comment and took a sip, watching him over the rim, Robb’s hope diminished. Sighing, he lifted his own mug carefully and drank.

Warm. Sweet. Familiar enough to hurt.

As a tin of biscuits floated onto the desk, Edith reached for them at once, shoving one into her mouth with little regard for decorum. Robb looked away, startled by an unexpected thought—Arya would like her.

The ache returned, sharp and sudden.

He set the mug down. “Headmistress,” he said formally, “you have my thanks. Both of you. For tending me when I was… at my weakest.”

Edith swallowed. “Well. I’m still training. Madam Pomfrey did most of the work.”

“Then my gratitude extends to her as well.”

The headmistress folded her hands. “You said you’re uncertain how you came here.”

“Aye.”

“Tell me of your home.”

Hope flickered, cautious and bright. Robb leaned forward. “Westeros is called the Seven Kingdoms. Winterfell is the seat of House Stark, capital of the North, beside the Wolfswood.”

“And Hogwarts?” she asked quietly.

“I’d never heard of it,” he admitted. “Nor of schools.”

“And before you were found?”

The dam broke.

“I was betrayed,” he snapped before he could stop himself. “By men sworn to protect me. My wife was murdered. I was stabbed. And then—” his voice broke despite his efforts, “—I was in the woods.”

Silence fell.

The headmistress’s gaze softened—not indulgent, not patronising. Understanding, dawning.

Edith glanced at her, uneasy.

“What is it?” Robb demanded, sharper than he intended, his voice echoing faintly off the curved stone walls. Confusion and anger twisted together in his chest. “You keep looking at me as if I’ve spoken madness. Say it plainly.”

Edith opened her mouth, then shut it again.

“Westeros… well,” she began, clearly regretting every word even as she spoke. “It’s just that—we—well, not we, you—oh, blast—”

She scrubbed a hand through her hair, leaving it messier than before, and glanced helplessly at the headmistress.

“What Miss Potter is very poorly attempting to say,” the headmistress cut in crisply, shooting Edith a withering look, “is that we have never heard of a place called Winterfell. Nor Westeros.”

The words landed like a blow.

Robb stared at her. “Never heard of it,” he repeated, incredulous. “That’s not possible.”

“And yet,” she continued evenly, “I am fairly certain that you have somehow crossed into our world from another.”

Another.

The room seemed to tilt. Robb’s eyes narrowed. “Another what?”

Edith leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, voice dry as old parchment. “World. Reality. Bit of a cosmic wrong turn.”

“Miss Potter.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, slouching lower.

Robb dragged a hand down his face. “You’re telling me I’ve fallen into… what did you call it?”

“A different dimension,” the headmistress supplied.

“Dimension,” he repeated slowly, as though testing the word for poison. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

She sighed—not impatient, but weary—and summoned a blank parchment and quill. With deliberate care, she drew two circles, leaving space between them. Inside the first, she wrote Earth. Inside the second, Westeros.

“This,” she said, tapping the first, “is our world.”

Her finger moved to the other. “And this is where you say you are from.”

“There is no Westeros in our histories,” she went on. “No Winterfell. No Twins. And we have not had kings or queens in centuries—not in the way you mean.”

Cold spread through Robb, starting at his chest and working outward. He searched their faces for mockery, for some cruel jest.

There was none.

“This is nonsense,” he snapped, clinging to anger because fear threatened to drown him. “I did not travel between worlds. I was stabbed. I was dying. That is all.”

“We live in a world where very little is impossible,” the headmistress said gently.

“How,” he demanded hoarsely, “could I cross worlds without knowing it?”

“We don’t know,” she admitted. “But I believe you slipped through. And the forest—our Forbidden Forest—caught you.”

Silence fell.

Robb stared at the parchment, at the gulf between the circles. His reflection stared back at him from the window beyond—older than he remembered, eyes hollowed by grief.

“I’ve travelled to another world,” he murmured.

Outside, the lake lay calm beneath the pale September light, uncaring. His thoughts churned—Talisa’s blood, his mother’s scream, the knives, the betrayal. He needed to go back. To save what might still be saved. To punish what could not be forgiven.

But here, he was no king.

Only Mr Stark.

He drew a steadying breath and lifted his head. “Headmistress McGonagall. Lady Potter,” he said formally, voice low but resolute. “I am far from my home, in a land I do not understand. I ask for your guidance—and your help—in finding a way back. Will you give it?”

The headmistress regarded him for a long moment, then inclined her head. “I will. It may take time. And it will not be easy.”

“Time,” he echoed dully.

“Yes,” Edith said, leaning forward now, seriousness overtaking her usual edge. “Ancient texts. Old magic. Research. We’ll need the library.”

“And Hogwarts’ library is yours,” the headmistress said firmly.

Relief loosened something in Robb’s chest. He bowed his head. “You have my thanks. More than I can say.”

“In the meantime,” the headmistress continued smoothly, as if she had not just shifted the ground beneath his feet, “you’ll need somewhere to stay. The students will be returning soon.”

Robb looked up at once. Edith did not.

Her gaze remained fixed on her teacup. Too fixed.

The headmistress’s eyes slid, quite deliberately, to Edith. “Miss Potter?”

Edith blinked. Once. Then again. “Me?”

“Yes,” the headmistress said kindly. “You’re a healer. And you live alone.”

Edith let out a short, incredulous laugh. “I do live alone, yes, but I fail to see how that’s—”

“And,” the older woman added, unruffled, “from what Molly tells me, your new house has more rooms than you could possibly need.”

Edith straightened. “She had no right—”

“I must refuse.”

Robb was on his feet before either of them could finish.

Both women turned to him, startled.

“It would be improper,” he said stiffly, as though reciting a law older than stone. “Lady Potter has already shown me great kindness. I will not impose further, nor dishonour her by placing myself under her roof.”

Edith stared at him. “You’re… refusing on my behalf?”

“I am refusing on mine,” Robb corrected firmly. “And on the grounds of decency.”

The headmistress regarded him over her spectacles, expression unreadable. “Things are different here, Mr Stark.”

“I am not,” he replied at once.

Edith let out a huff of laughter despite herself. “You hear that? He’s gallant. Dramatically so.”

Robb frowned. “I do not know what that means, but I assure you, I am sincere.”

“I’m sure you are,” Edith said, rubbing her temples. “Very medieval of you.”

The headmistress smiled. Just a little. The sort of smile that meant the decision had already been made.

“Given the circumstances,” she said gently, “this is the safest arrangement. Temporary, of course.”

Robb opened his mouth.

Edith beat him to it. “Fine,” she said flatly, slumping back into her chair. “But if he starts calling me ‘my lady’ at breakfast, this is on you.”

Robb drew himself up. “I will call you Lady Potter,” he said gravely. “As is proper.”

Edith groaned. “I knew it.”

The headmistress rose, clearly pleased. “Excellent. Then that’s settled.”

Robb remained standing, a little stunned. He was still lost. Still grieving. Still very much at the mercy of a world that refused to make sense.

But as Edith shot him a sideways look—half exasperation, half reluctant acceptance—he felt something else settle around him too.

Not safety.

Not home.

But protection, offered loudly, awkwardly, and entirely against both their wills.

Minerva McGonagall watched the boy—the king, he insisted—sit ramrod straight in her chair, hands folded with a discipline far beyond his years, and felt a familiar ache settle behind her ribs.

At first, she had thought him a child.

Not in the dismissive sense—never that—but in the way war left its marks too early. He was scarcely older than Miss Potter had been when she herself was sixteen and fighting Voldemort, eyes too old for the rest of her face, grief-worn like armour because there was nothing else left to wear. Seventeen, at most. A boy who should have been worrying about lessons and friends, not oaths and betrayals and the weight of men’s lives.

They had tested him. Quietly. Carefully. A single drop of Veritaserum, diluted and sanctioned, administered with Pomfrey’s precision. McGonagall remembered the way his answers had come—unvarnished, unwavering, threaded with pain but never with doubt.

He had spoken the truth.

Every word of it.

That truth troubled her more than any lie could have.

What could have happened, she wondered now, that tore a child out of his world and left him bleeding in our forest? Not just displaced, but broken open—stabbed, hunted, bereaved. The state he had arrived in was not the work of accident or wandering magic. It bore the shape of violence. Of intent.

Her gaze flicked, unbidden, to Miss Potter.

Edith sat with forced casualness, ankle crossed, shoulders loose, pretending—rather valiantly—not to be affected. Minerva knew better. She had watched too many young witches learn how to stand after the ground had vanished beneath them.

Edith had lost everyone.

Not all at once, perhaps, but steadily, relentlessly—until grief became a constant companion rather than an interruption. Others had families to return to, homes that still stood, people who waited. Edith had thrown herself into healing instead. Head down. Sleeves rolled. If she could keep someone else alive, perhaps the silence would quieten.

She had finished her training at St Mungo’s with distinction, and had only just joined Hogwarts—eager to help, eager to learn, absorbing everything Madam Pomfrey offered with a determination that bordered on defiance. Twenty one years old, and already carrying more loss than many twice her age.

Alone, McGonagall thought. Brilliant. Capable. And alone.

And now there was Robb Stark—calling her Lady Potter with grave courtesy, no matter how often she corrected him, as if names were vows and titles promises not to be broken. Manners forged by a world that had taught him respect were armour. A boy who had lost his wife, his mother, his men—and still rose when spoken to, still bowed his head in thanks, still tried to protect a young healer’s honour with his last scraps of certainty.

Minerva folded her hands together and made her decision without ceremony.

Two young people shaped by war. One pulled across worlds by forces none of them yet understood. The other, rooted to the ground by grief and duty, refusing to fall.

They would steady each other. Not because it was tidy, or easy, or even sensible—but because it was necessary.

And because, after all she had seen, Minerva McGonagall had learned one simple truth: Children survived wars not by standing alone—but by being given something, or someone, to hold onto.