Chapter Twenty-One
**Hermione's POV**
The reaction she got from Lady Stark was highly unexpected, and mildly concerning.
As Hermione explained what Dany was asking about, she watched the woman's face carefully, looking forward to actually giving some good news for once. Instead of the relief or even simple confusion she had anticipated at the news that her husband had not been unfaithful, she saw something else entirely.
Horror.
Pure, absolute, unguarded horror.
What happened next, no one in the tent had been prepared for.
Lady Catelyn Stark, a woman who had held herself together with what Hermione could only describe as sheer force of stubborn will through everything that had happened to her in the last few four hours alone let alone the past year, collapsed to the floor.
Ser Jorah moved fast to try and help her but there was no helping what followed. The woman was completely hysterical, hands going to her own hair, pulling, crying out in a way that had nothing to do with the situation in the room and everything to do with something older and private and apparently devastating. She was saying things in fragments that made no immediate sense, something about a pox, something about being cursed by the gods, something about a promise she had not kept.
Hermione stood and watched for approximately four seconds before she decided this was not going to be getting better on its own.
She simply pointed her wand and sent the woman into a gentle and hopefully dreamless sleep.
The tent went very quiet.
"What in the Seven Hells was that about?"
Ser Barristan, as it turned out, was the only one present who had recovered his tongue first.
Everyone looked at Hermione.
Hermione looked back at them with genuine bewilderment.
"Don't look at me," she said, with some indignation. "I haven't the foggiest why she went looney on us."
She looked down at the now sleeping woman on the floor, sincerely puzzled, turning the fragments over in her head. Pox, cursed, a promise. She checked over Lady Stark quickly concerned when she heard the word cursed, but found no curses, jinx, hexes, nothing. Something was not right but it was not magical, some piece she didn't have yet, and she disliked very much not having pieces.
She filed it away, as probably something to discuss with the woman in order to help calm her down.
She gave Missandei quiet instructions that Lady Stark was to receive a calming draught the moment she woke, and that someone was to fetch Hermione immediately when that happened. With that temporarily out of the way she went to find something useful to do with the rest of the afternoon, because standing around being confused was not one of her better skills.
---
The healing corps was coming along nicely.
Twenty-two people was not many, but it was a start, and they were eager which counted for a great deal. Hermione moved among them with her usual combination of genuine praise and immediate correction, the approach Professor Sprout had used with many in her classes, Hermione's one on one the last year was entirely different though. The ones she corrected were, without exception, pleased to have her attention, but embarrassed whenever they needed correcting. They fixed their errors quickly enough and were getting proficient at making poultices from the local plant life. She made a note to herself that this was worth remembering for later, as it could produce a steady income for later.
The fletchers had progressed to making their own bows and arrows they had switched from her wood stock and were now using some that had been imported from there good friends in Qarth, which freed her from that particular task entirely. She paused to watch them for a moment with quiet satisfaction, happy that these people were starting to not rely on her to ek out a living.
Across the practice grounds, Grey Worm was running the new archer force through street-clearing, and small scale defensive formations, the Unsullied moving as a shielded line, crouching in turns at his signals so the archers behind them could shoot over their shoulders, then rising again in a smooth rotation that had taken about a week to look anything other than chaotic and now looked rather impressive.
He was genuinely gifted at this, she thought, at taking a bunch of ragtag former slaves and turning them into something that could help change that world for the better. She had not known what to expect when she first met him and was privately thankful his tactical genius was on their side.
She had also noticed, as had many in camp, that Grey Worm's lessons with Missandei had taken on a quality that had very little to do with reading and writing, but more (language).
He called them reading and writing lessons.
Hermione thought of a film she had watched with her parents not long before everything changed, Better Off Dead, the last movie they had all seen together on the sofa with her, her father doing the voice of the French exchange student, acting the fool for her blushing mother just content in the moment. She rewatched that moment in Pensieve at least once a week after everyone had gone to sleep. It helped sometimes on difficult nights hearing the last time her parent would tell her they loved her before retiring for the night. The language lessons in that film had been of course referring to the language of love, how typically French.
She smiled to herself and decided not to notice anything about Grey Worm and Missandei for the foreseeable future, she was sure Missandei would tell her and Dany all about it when she was ready.
That was when she spotted Rakharo.
He was standing at the edge of the practice ground looking disgruntled for which in this case Hermione didn't begrudge him, he took his guarding job far to serious for her liking.
Hermione had, apparently, saved his life, and this meant she was owed a debt, and since she had a Gryffindor crest with a winged lion on it and hair that the Dothraki had decided was proof enough, the prevailing theological position in camp was that she was the daughter of the Great Stallion, part dragon, part lion.
She had tried to explain this was not the case.
Three times.
She had even attempted to sit them down and try explaining what she truly was.
The Dothraki had listened politely and continued believing whatever they liked, except now they believed the gods battled for the souls of man or some such and sent their daughter to fix the world or something else equally as ridicules.
Rakharo had therefore been appointed her official guard by Dany and was currently furious at her for having been in danger without him present, which he explained had shamed him, at some length, while she nodded and tried to look even remotely interested in being lectured about things not in her control, and mostly succeeded.
She had promised to try and bring him next time something sticky needed fixing. He had accepted this with the gravity it apparently deserved.
And then, because he was Rakharo, he had immediately challenged her to a sparring match.
---
A sizable crowd had formed with the speed that crowds always formed when Hermione and Rakharo sparred, which was the speed of people who have learned that this is the most entertaining thing that happens in camp and have no intention of missing it.
Hermione held a practice dagger in her left hand and her wand in her right; the tip ignited into a whip of blue fire that crackled softly in the afternoon air. Rakharo circled her, his own whip moving in small, controlled flicks at his wrist, watching her just waiting for that perfect timing, which was with a great deal more caution than he had shown in the beginning.
She struck first, Apparating behind him and swinging the fire whip at his backside, the trick that had worked six times before he learned to expect it.
He deflected it cleanly and sent his own whip straight at her head, the tip carrying the small, bladed dagger he had started attaching three weeks ago.
Hermione flicked it aside with the practice dagger without breaking her step.
This went on for ten minutes, attack and counter, neither of them landing anything decisive, Hermione moving with the loose ease of someone who was not in any serious danger and was mostly curious what he was going to try next.
Then he threw the dagger right at her.
Hermione had not expected that.
She leaned back fast enough that it missed, but the *YIP* she made was involuntary and she was going to be annoyed about that later.
Rakharo picked his moment perfectly, while she was still recovering her balance and before she could disappear again the whip came around her waist and pulled, sharp and decisive, and she was yanked forward into his arms. His free hand was already moving for the hidden dagger at his back, coming around and forward, finally, after months of trying, about to make her submit—
Her wand was already in his face.
She looked up at him with a smirk.
He looked down at her and the wand and took in the full picture of the situation, which was that she had protected her wand arm throughout the entire exchange and the whip had left it completely free, and he had not noticed.
He smiled.
Cheers and groans broke out from the crowd in roughly equal measure as money changed hands all in good sport.
Hermione lowered her wand with the expression of someone who had never had any serious doubts about the outcome, she had not been trying to win, she had more or less understood people would always fear her, but if she could show them her human side, they could learn to trust her.
He kissed her.
She had not expected that either.
He was already running before she had fully processed what had happened, hooting and hollering across the practice ground at a speed that suggested he had been planning the exit strategy longer than the sparring match.
Hermione stood still for one full second.
Then she went after him with stinging hexes.
The laughter from the Unsullied and the Dothraki and the volunteer forces followed them both across the camp as Rakharo zigzagged between tents and supply wagons and Hermione's aim got progressively more accurate the more annoyed she became.
---
It was at approximately this point that Dany appeared with two guests in tow and a crowd that had been watching the proceedings began dispersing with remarkable speed.
Hermione had Rakharo suspended three feet off the ground in the form of a very muddy, very undignified black ferret, bouncing between a patch of dry dirt and a puddle in a rotation she felt appropriately communicated her feelings on the subject.
"Hermione," Dany said, in the voice she used when she was trying to be stern and finding it difficult. "Is that Rakharo?"
"Technically," Hermione said, not breaking eye contact with the ferret, "it is a naughty ferret that is currently learning about the importance of consent."
"Can you please change him back, we have guests."
Hermione looked up.
Both Starks were awake and standing just behind Dany, staring at the scene in front of them with dumbfounded expressions of people not accustomed to people being turning into animals and dunked in mud.
Hermione straightened up, dusted herself off, and with one final emphatic bounce flung the ferret sideways. He changed back to Rakharo mid-arc, landing in a patch of dirt and rolling to a stop looking muddy and dizzy but structurally sound.
"My apologies," Hermione said, with as much dignity as the situation permitted, which was not a great deal. "I was providing a remedial lesson to a dear friend who appears to have either a learning difficulty or a genuine preference for being transfigured into small animals and bounced in mud." She turned toward the tent. "Shall we go inside for some refreshments and discuss something, anything, other than the peculiarities of unwanted Dothraki courtship rituals."
It was not quite a question.
She walked toward the tent with her head held high, leaving the crowd to finish dispersing on their own.
Rakharo, Dany reflected, was currently leading the camp's unofficial running tally of who had successfully stolen a kiss from the Star Goddess, but only by a narrow margin. Doreah was in second place and closing fast, owing largely to being extraordinarily sneaky and consistently receiving lighter sentences, possibly because Hermione had not quite worked out how she kept managing to sneak up on her.
Hermione really did not understand some people.
She was beginning to suspect she never would.