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Mysaria had been at Hogwarts for exactly six hours when three separate Ravenclaws warned her about Rhaenyra Targaryen.
The first warning came from a fourth-year who helped carry her trunk up the staircase and then, on learning she was transferring into fifth Year, went pale and said, “Oh. You’ll probably have classes with her.”
“Her who?” Mysaria asked.
The girl looked offended on behalf of the entire castle. “Rhaenyra.” As if that explained everything.
The second warning came at dinner from a boy named Alyn, who leaned across the Ravenclaw table and lowered his voice despite the fact that the Great Hall was loud enough to hide a dragon. “Slytherin. Heir of the Targaryen family. Terrible influence. Very pretty. Do not encourage her.”
Mysaria looked across the Hall. She found Rhaenyra immediately, because of course she did. Not because of beauty, though there was that. Silver hair, sharp profile, posture like she had been born on a dais. Not because she was laughing, because she wasn’t. It was the stillness.
Rhaenyra sat at the Slytherin table as if the room arranged itself around her. Everyone else moved. Talked. Reached for plates. Leaned in. Rhaenyra listened. Then spoke, and three people near her stopped at once.
“Ah,” Mysaria said.
Alyn nodded grimly. “Exactly.”
The third warning came from her new roommate, Elinda, while unpacking.
“She’s not cruel,” Elinda said, which was a promising way to begin absolutely nothing. “She just… behaves like rules are suggestions.”
“That sounds like half this school.”
“Yes, but she’s good at it.”
Mysaria folded a sweater and set it in the wardrobe. “And why is everyone telling me this?”
Elinda blinked. “Because you’re a prefect.”
Mysaria paused. “Meaning?”
“Meaning she’s always out after curfew. And now that you’re on rounds—”
Elinda made a small, pitying face.
“Oh,” Mysaria said.
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Rhaenyra noticed the new girl before she knew her name.
That was not unusual. Rhaenyra noticed everyone.
What was unusual was that the new girl did not seem to notice being noticed.
Transfer student. Fifth Year. Ravenclaw. Dark hair, sharp eyes, posture too composed for someone walking into Hogwarts after the war and surviving the staircase politics in one day.
Rhaenyra watched her through dinner while pretending to listen to Alicent explain scheduling changes for prefect rounds.
“She’s a prefect,” Alicent said, stabbing a potato with unnecessary force. “Try not to torment her.”
Rhaenyra dragged her gaze back. “I don’t torment prefects.”
Alicent looked at her.
Rhaenyra amended, “I torment them evenly.”
Daemon, sprawled two seats down like a decorative threat, laughed into his goblet. “New Ravenclaw is looking at you like she’s assessing a cursed artifact.”
Rhaenyra did not turn around. “And?”
“And I respect her already.”
Alicent glanced toward Ravenclaw. “She’s a transfer. Doesn’t know the ecosystem yet.”
Rhaenyra’s mouth curved. “Then she’ll learn.”
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Mysaria’s first night on rounds was quiet for almost forty minutes.
Too quiet.
She checked corridors, moving staircases, one deeply suspicious suit of armor that seemed to be drunk, and a pair of Hufflepuffs trying to smuggle some pumpkin pasties into the library.
Then she turned a corner near the Charms classroom corridor and found Rhaenyra Targaryen sitting on a windowsill in full moonlight, reading a book she was definitely not reading.
No one else was in sight.
“You’re out after curfew,” Mysaria said.
Rhaenyra looked up, entirely unbothered.
“So are you.”
“I’m on rounds.”
Rhaenyra considered that. “A technicality.”
Mysaria crossed her arms. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Probably not.”
The answer came so easily that Mysaria had to fight the urge to smile.
Rhaenyra closed the book and slid down from the sill in one fluid movement.
“You’re the transfer student.”
“You’re the problem.”
Rhaenyra’s brows rose. “That obvious?”
“Three people warned me about you before dessert.”
Rhaenyra looked delighted. “Only three?”
Mysaria stared at her for a long second.
Rhaenyra tilted her head. “Are you going to deduct points?”
“Should I?”
“Depends. Do you like rules?”
Mysaria’s mouth twitched. “I like sleep. Which you are interrupting.”
Rhaenyra took one step closer, curious now, not provocative.
“You don’t sound impressed by me.”
“I’ve known you for twenty seconds.”
“And?”
“And so far I’m impressed by your confidence and your disregard for school policy.”
Rhaenyra smiled, slow and bright. “Those are my best subjects.”
Mysaria should have sent her back to the common room.
Instead she said, “Walk.”
Rhaenyra blinked. “What?”
“If you insist on being out, you can at least be useful. East corridor, then the Astronomy tower stairs.”
For the first time that evening, Rhaenyra looked genuinely surprised.
Then she laughed.
“Yes, Prefect.”
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She was funny.
That was irritating.
Most people, when told to walk prefect rounds with her, either blushed, postured, or became catastrophically earnest. Mysaria did none of those.
She was efficient. Sharp-eyed. Calm.
She also had the unnerving habit of glancing at Rhaenyra exactly once every few minutes, like she was checking a stove hadn’t caught fire.
“You expect trouble,” Rhaenyra said as they climbed the Astronomy stairs.
“I expect students.”
“That’s bleak.”
“That’s accurate.”
At the landing, Mysaria paused and looked out over the grounds.
The moon lit the Black Lake in silver ripples. Beyond it, the tree line of the Forbidden Forest looked almost soft.
Almost.
Rhaenyra leaned against the wall beside her. “What made you transfer?”
Mysaria did not answer immediately.
“Family moved after, you know, the war” she said finally. “Hogwarts made sense.”
“Ravenclaw by choice?”
“Yes.”
“You say that like there was another option.”
Mysaria glanced sideways. “Wasn’t there?”
Rhaenyra grinned. “I’d have put you in Slytherin.”
“Because I’m ambitious?”
“Because you’re taking me on rounds and pretending it isn’t entertainment.”
Mysaria looked ahead again.
“It’s not entertainment.”
Rhaenyra’s voice dropped just a little. “No?”
Mysaria allowed herself the smallest smile. “Not entirely.”
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By the end of the week, she had run into Rhaenyra on rounds four times.
By the end of the second week, she had stopped pretending it was coincidence.
Rhaenyra was always in a different place.
The Greenhouses one night, claiming she “liked the smell at night.”
The covered bridge another, saying she “thought about things better in the cold.”
Outside the library once, where she was absolutely waiting.
Mysaria began to understand the warnings.
Rhaenyra had gravity.
Not loud, not reckless in the simple way people described. She was strategic even in mischief. She paid attention. Asked good questions. Noticed when Mysaria was tired and offered some butterbeer she had somehow acquired after hours.
“You bribe prefects?” Mysaria asked, taking the mug anyway.
“I invest in cooperation.”
“Do all your schemes sound like ministry policy?”
“Only the good ones.”
They walked the third-floor corridor in companionable quiet.
At one point, their hands brushed.
Neither pulled away quickly enough to call it accidental.
Mysaria stared stubbornly ahead.
Rhaenyra, beside her, sounded almost amused.
“Did I distract you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Mysaria hated how much she liked that answer.
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Alicent noticed before anyone else because Alicent always noticed first.
She found Rhaenyra in the Slytherin common room one evening pretending to do Arithmancy and actually smiling at nothing.
“You’re insufferable,” Alicent said, dropping onto the chair opposite her.
Rhaenyra looked up. “That’s not new.”
“No. The smiling is.”
Rhaenyra leaned back. “I smile.”
“Not alone.”
Daemon, from the sofa, said without looking up from his cards, “It’s the Ravenclaw prefect.”
Rhaenyra threw a quill at him.
He caught it one-handed. “See?”
Alicent folded her arms. “The transfer?”
“She’s clever,” Rhaenyra said, too quickly.
Daemon grinned. “And she tells her what to do.”
Rhaenyra’s expression went very still, which was as good as an admission.
Alicent sighed. “Be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Of people seeing you want something.”
Rhaenyra glanced toward the fire.
For a moment, the joke dropped.
Then she said, lightly, “Since when has that stopped me?”
Alicent did not answer.
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The Forbidden Forest happened because of a missing first-year and poor timing.
Technically, it happened because a Hufflepuff boy named Rowan believed he had seen “a silver cat made of stars” near the edge of the trees and followed it after dinner.
Technically, it happened because Hogwarts was full of children.
Mysaria was sent with two other prefects to search the grounds while a professor checked the castle.
She found Rhaenyra already outside, cloak thrown over her shoulders, wand lit.
“You’re not a prefect,” Mysaria said.
“No,” Rhaenyra replied. “I’m useful.”
Mysaria did not have time to argue.
“Fine. Stay where I can see you.”
Rhaenyra’s mouth curved. “Yes, Prefect.”
The forest at night was a different thing entirely.
Not just dark—watching.
Branches sighed overhead. Somewhere deeper in, something moved with too many legs. Rowan’s voice, faint and frightened, echoed once and disappeared.
Mysaria raised her wand higher.
“Rowan!” she called.
No answer.
Beside her, Rhaenyra went still.
“What?” Mysaria whispered.
Rhaenyra pointed.
At first Mysaria saw nothing.
Then the shape resolved from shadow: skeletal body, dark hide, vast folded wings.
A thestral.
Another stood a little farther back, and another, half-hidden between the trees.
Mysaria’s breath caught.
Rhaenyra looked at her, not surprised.
“You can see them.”
It wasn’t a question.
Mysaria nodded once.
“Yes.”
For a moment neither moved.
The forest noise seemed to recede.
There was a strange intimacy in it—this quiet, shared knowledge. This admission without words.
Rhaenyra’s voice, when it came, was very gentle.
“Most people can’t.”
“I know.”
“You’ve seen death.”
Mysaria swallowed. “Yes.”
Rhaenyra did not ask who. Or when. Or how.
She just stepped a little closer, shoulder almost brushing hers as they looked at the thestrals standing silent and patient among the trees.
“So have you,” Mysaria said quietly.
Rhaenyra’s expression shifted. Not softer exactly. Truer.
“Yes.”
A branch snapped somewhere to the left.
Both of them turned instantly, wands up.
“Rowan?” Mysaria called.
A miserable voice squeaked, “I’m stuck.”
They found him ankle-deep in a patch of enchanted bramble, crying and insisting he’d only followed the cat “for a little.”
Rhaenyra handled the brambles with the confidence of someone who had definitely broken rules in this exact forest before.
Mysaria steadied Rowan and checked his leg.
He sniffled and looked between them. “Are you two together?”
Rhaenyra laughed out loud.
Mysaria, still kneeling in leaves, said, “No.”
Rowan squinted. “You seem like you are together.”
“Walk,” Mysaria told him.
Rhaenyra did not stop smiling the entire way back.
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After that, things changed.
Not dramatically.
No declarations. No grand gestures in corridors.
Just… ease.
Mysaria no longer seemed surprised to find her on rounds.
Rhaenyra no longer pretended she was “just passing by.”
They talked.
About classes. About post-war Hogwarts. About why Ravenclaws were all secretly competitive and why Slytherins were all secretly sentimental.
(“That is slander,” Rhaenyra said.
“It is observation,” Mysaria replied.)
Some nights they walked in silence, shoulder to shoulder, the castle settling around them.
Some nights they argued about rules.
Some nights Rhaenyra made Mysaria laugh so suddenly she had to stop walking.
That one became Rhaenyra’s favorite.
---------------------------------------------
“You like her,” Elinda said one night, very casually, while polishing her glasses.
Mysaria looked up from her notes. “I tolerate her.”
Elinda snorted. “You’ve used that line three times. It’s lost all meaning.”
Mysaria returned to her parchment.
Elinda smiled to herself. “Does she know?”
Mysaria hesitated for just a second too long.
“Oh,” Elinda said, delighted. “She doesn’t.”
Mysaria set her quill down. “She knows many things. I’m not sure she knows this.”
“Good,” Elinda said. “It’s nice when someone like her has to wonder.”
Mysaria tried to look stern and failed.
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“You’re doomed,” Daemon said, helping himself to Rhaenyra’s tea.
Rhaenyra didn’t look up from her homework. “Get out.”
“She’s made you punctual.”
“I was always punctual.”
Alicent, from the armchair, said, “No.”
Daemon grinned. “She tells you to ‘walk’ and you do.”
Rhaenyra finally looked up. “I could hex both of you.”
“Sure,” Daemon said. “Right after prefect rounds.”
Rhaenyra threw a cushion at him. He looked unbearably pleased.
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It happened slowly enough that neither could point to the moment.
A hand at her back in a crowded corridor.
A shared cup of tea on the Astronomy stairs.
Rhaenyra waiting outside the library because she “happened to be nearby.”
Mysaria pretending to believe her.
Then one night on rounds, they stopped near the courtyard arch because it had started raining hard.
Water hammered the stones. The castle smelled like wet earth and smoke.
Mysaria stood close to avoid the spray.
Rhaenyra looked at her and forgot whatever she had been about to say.
“What?” Mysaria asked.
Rhaenyra shook her head, then said, more honest than she meant to be, “I look for you now.”
Mysaria went very still.
Rain filled the silence.
Rhaenyra’s voice dropped. “I did not intend to.”
Mysaria’s mouth softened just a little.
“No,” she said quietly. “Neither did I.”
They were close enough that moving would have been obvious.
Close enough that not moving was a choice.
Rhaenyra lifted a hand, slow enough to be refused, and touched the edge of Mysaria’s sleeve.
Mysaria looked down at her fingers. Then back up.
“You should ask,” Mysaria said softly.
Rhaenyra’s breath caught.
“May I kiss you?” she asked.
Mysaria’s expression—calm, sharp, impossible—went warm in a way that made Rhaenyra feel suddenly, absurdly victorious.
“Yes,” Mysaria said.
The first kiss tasted like rain and tea.
Not rushed.
Not uncertain.
Just the quiet click of something finally aligning.
When they pulled apart, Mysaria rested her forehead briefly against Rhaenyra’s.
“You’re still out after curfew,” she murmured.
Rhaenyra smiled, eyes half-lidded. “Deduct house points then.”
Mysaria chuckled, and kissed her again instead.