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Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the end of 14th Century
Loras’ fingers tighten around a thin air, missing the Golden Snitch less than an inch, and the stadium erupts with a disappointed groan of Gryffindors that is soon swallowed by the triumphant screams of the Ravenclaws, when Margaery passes her brother gracefully and catches the snitch.
“I’m sorry, I miscalculated the distance and lost my balance! Happens to everyone,” Loras, the best seeker in the history of Hogwarts, tries to defend himself later.
Sansa is almost sure he did it on purpose, though, and it looks like her brothers share her suspicions. Her fingers tighten on a rose Loras gave her before the game started, and Sansa wonders what Robb is going to do now. But her brother only shakes his head, speeds up and flies back to the changing room.
*
The common room is quiet, dark, lightened only by the flames flickering in the fireplace and empty if you don’t count the two of them and a dark grey cat currently unraveling someone’s shirt in a corner. There is a window ajar and cold, autumn air fills the room, bringing a smell of the first snow.
“Winter is coming,” Robb whispers, shivering when Jon’s tongue finds this sensitive spot under his right ear.
Hidden behind a stone handrail Sansa sighs closing her eyes and pretending that she doesn’t listen.
*
She sleeps in the next morning, misses breakfast and is really late for her Potions classes.
*
Winter came just as Robb said it would, wrapping the school fields in a delicate coat of the first snow.
“You must imagine the snow and shake your wand gently, as if you’d like to shake it off,” Sansa instructs Margaery. “Renly didn’t show you this spell on the Charms last year?”
Margaery’s laughter is almost magical, pure and resonant, so warm that students are turning around and smile at them. Margaery shakes her head, a wicked grin spreading across her face.
„Last year Renly wasn’t really able to think about anything but another date with my brother,” she says taking her wand out. She shakes her wrist gently. The wind blows her snow away, making it dance and tangling it with Sansa’s hair.
*
„I wish Lady was here,” Sansa says one evening.
She sits on a carpet before the fireplace, her back leaning on Robb’s legs. She uses a spell to make soap bubbles in shapes of small direwolves and makes them chase each other around the Common Room. The other students are torn between amusement and irritation but most of them just squeal in wonder.
“Only owls, cats and toads, you know that,” Robb answers, stroking her hair gently while using his other hand to write something in his essay for the History of Magic.
Sansa closes her eyes and in her dream she’s Lady.
*
„What do you see in him?” Robb asks the very next evening.
Her dorm is lightened by dozens of small, blue flames. Robb is sitting on her bed; his legs crossed, and wave his wand thoughtlessly. Sansa turns back from the mirror, but Robb doesn’t see her disapproving glare, so Jon takes his wand away from him and hides it behind his belt.
“What do you see in him, Sansa?” Robb repeats the question, his voice sharper now, and Sansa turns her eyes away.
Robb must have seen her talking to Joffrey earlier this evening, when he and Jon got back from the Quidditch practice. It’s hardly the first time he asks her this question. Robb, more than anyone Sansa knows, cannot stand Joffrey and is unable to understand why everyone falls for his false charm. Sometimes she thinks she knows what her brother means, that she can see traces of cruelty hidden under a mask of courtesy, but she closes her eyes then and tells herself that it’s only an illusion of some kind, that she’s tired and Robb’s words are getting to her. When Joffrey’s with her he’s the perfect prince, charming her with words and delicate kisses, and showering her with gifts. Today he presented her with a beautiful velvet etui for her wand, and three days ago she received a silver hairbrush jewelled with rubies, charmed to brush her hair.
When Robb repeats the question again Sansa shrugs.
„I might be a queen someday. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
*
“Bran will never walk again,” says Robb and swallows hard. He tightens his grip on a parchment that cracks loudly beneath his fingers. “Father writes that they’ve tried everything: charms, potions, magical waters from China. The best healers agree that it’s a work of the Dark Arts and it’s irreversible.”
Silence that falls around the table then is thick and heavy and no one knows what to say. It’s not every day they learn that magic cannot fix everything.
*
A few days later Robb lets Joffrey provoke him. Charms are flying around the hall, bouncing from the stone walls, statues and shining armours. Students steal to the Great Hall, navigating between colourful sparks that fill the air.
Slytherin loses fifty points that evening and Gryffindor sixty because Jon couldn’t possibly stay away, could he? No one is surprised that Joffrey spends the next three days in the Hospital Wing. Robb always was the best in the Defence Against the Dark Arts.
*
Sansa almost doesn’t see her brothers for the following week. They’re spending more time cleaning cauldrons and vials in the Potion classroom during their detention than anywhere else, and besides Sansa’s avoiding them, especially Robb and another of his Joffrey-is-not-good-for-you talks. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. They’re betrothed and they’re in love. Right?
*
Winter comes for good a few days later. Snow wraps the castle fields in a soft blanket and the whole world looks like it’s enchanted. Sansa feels all of her anger disappear instantly and all she wants to do is to go and find Robb, Jon, Margaery and Loras, to tighten her hand on her wand and build a magical fortress with them, Winterfell or Highgarden, where they could plan a strategy and win the traditional Battle for The Winter Cup of Hogwarts.
She puts on her coat, the blue one with the white fur that the Queen liked so much, and runs to find her friends.
*
Their fort is the weirdest castle Sansa has ever seen. It’s a cross between Winterfell, Highgarden and Hogwarts. But it doesn’t matter as Robb’s tactics are flawless as always and their snow storm distracts everyone so they can let their snow knights leave the castle. Three snow direwolves are running between snow horses, making more havoc in the snowy ranks of their enemies than snow swords of their snow knights.
When the other teams are yielding one by one, Jon catches Robb’s wrist and pulls him down, behind one of the towers of Highgarden, pins him to the ice wall and kisses him hard, as if he has been waiting to do it for weeks.
*
“Bran writes that parents involved themselves into a fight with the Lannisters again,” Jon says quietly, throwing a letter into the fireplace.
Robb nods, rubbing his temple. He’s tired; Sansa can see dark bruise-like shadows under his eyes and his pale skin. She suspects that Robb knows a lot more than he lets go.
“Joffrey says there will be a war” she adds, and shivers when she hears Robb’s answer.
“This one time, he may be right.”