Disclaimer: I do not own Hary Potter or Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, They belong to JK Rowling and HBO/JRR Martin. All hail the masters of fantasy.

Chapter 4 - Consequences

~o0o~

Ned sat next to the sick beds of his daughters with his head in his hands. He had been given two tasks. Care for his children... and never let his daughters touch the bark of a weirwood. He had failed. He had failed spectacularly and now both girls would pay the price. Perhaps even the entirety of his line would bare his shame.

He lifted his head to gaze at his green eyed daughter. It was possible that his shame would have his family forsaken by the Old Gods. He had been entrusted with one of their own after all. And how had he repaid their gifts? With negligence and failure, that is how. But these worrying thoughts of the future slid to the back of his mind as he watched the serene face of his sleeping daughter.

When he looked at Lyarra all he could think of was her beatific smiles and warm giggles. Her sweet, curious voice questioning what duty he was working on or her mischievous grin when she was planning to prank one of her siblings. She may have been born from the gods, but she was his. She was his little love and just as deserving of a joyful life as his other little love. The lord turned to the second bedridden redhead. His sweet, dutiful Sansa. Always so willing to please and loving to her twin despite her own mothers misgivings.

Ned frowned as he thought of his wife. Catlyn had come to him in a rightful panic. Their daughter had collapsed at prayer and was unable to be roused. Then Jon had come to him, crying about his sister's fit after touching the Heart Tree. It was at hearing this that a burning fire of hatred had burned in his wife's eyes. She had raged at him on how it was all "that little demon's fault" and he had actually had to strike her cheek to snap her out of her tirade. He had never before struck his lady wife before that and, despite it being light handed, the shock of it had at least snapped her back to rationality.

Though his heart had been breaking and his fear rising to choke him, he had sternly commanded his wife to have the maester bring Sansa to a bed and tend to her while he went to see to their other daughter. She had still been holding her cheek as she glared at him, but after a quick glance to their gobsmacked guest Lord Umber, she followed his command. Ned in turn hurried Jon to bring him to Lyarra and the Great Jon followed after. The scene of a fully rejuvenated heart tree, branches full to the brim with blood red leaves, had stunned the other lord. Ned, however, only had eyes for his poor daughter collapsed in a crumpled, bloody heap at its roots.

Coming back to the present, Ned reached out to touch the bandage covering Lyarra's head, but pulled back at the last moment. A flash of the gruesome visions he had seen from his last contact with her caused him caution. And what a shock it had been to see the death of millions and the collapse of countless civilizations while trying to tend to your own daughter's familiar rune shaped wound. He glanced again to his other daughter Sansa and brushed a stray lock of hair from her pale face to placate his need to do something.

He stood and turned to the third of his "children" in the room. Jon was curled into an uncomfortable ball in the chair next to Lyarra's bed. Ned grabbed a blanket to cover the boy with. There was no use in waking him and sending him off to his own bed. In the two days the girls had been unconscious, the lad had not left Lyarra's side. Jon blamed himself for what had happened and vowed to protect Lyarra with his life to make up for it. No amount of persuasion would work on Jon. He was dead set on his course. The boy also had none of his father's reservations in touching his sister, Ned noted. The boy held his sister's hand limply in his own as he slept.

Ned's soft smile at the sight turned into a frown as his had brushed Jon's skin while covering him. He lifted his hand to the boy's head and it was burning! Jon stirred before looking up at him with fever hazed eyes.

"Father?" the boy croaked out before succumbing to sleep once again.

In a panic, Ned picked him up in his arms and turned to go find Maester Luwin. As if summoned by thought, the man in question bustled into the room. Before he could even notify the man of Jon's illness, Luwin spoke in a rush. "My lord, it is your Lady Wife. I'm afraid the stress of the situation at hand," he said gesturing to the girls, "has sent her into an early labor."

Ned was struck speechless as he looked between the maester, his ill son, and comatose daughters. Perhaps his earlier thoughts of his family being forsaken was not so far fetched after all...

~o0o~

A few hours later found the lord in a very similar position as before. His heart was even heavier now. His wife was in yet another hard labor, his adopted son had the pox, his daughters still lay unconscious and again he is powerless. 'The gods know, I should be used to this feeling', he mused grimly to himself. His life was a long mummer's farce of failure and helplessness. Even all of his battles and fights in Robert's Rebellion had done nothing for his sister. He had lost her all the same. Just as he would lose them all, he thought as he bowed his head.

Throwing caution to the wind, Ned took Lyarra's hand in both of his and brought it close to him. He found himself praying to whomever was left to listen to give him another chance. To not let his family suffer for his shortcomings. A sob escaped him and he leaned down to press his forehead against the small girl's own.

"Hello... little lord."

Eddard Stark jumped back in shock and was hit by a sense of vertigo as he found himself not in his daughters' bedroom, but in a forest glade. Greenery in the height of spring surrounded him and birds chirps merrily from the branches. He looked back down to the girl he had jumped back from and saw his daughter. Her porcelain cheeks were framed by wild fiery locks, pudgy fingers sat idly in her lap, and those too green eyes stared up at him blankly.

That dead look on the face of his daughter was like a knife to the heart. Her next words, even more so.

"You failed little lord," she deadpanned.

"I am so sorry Lyarra," he reached out and took her limp hand in his, "I am so, so sorry. Please, tell me what to do to make this right. I'll give anything, just let me fix this."

She blinked at him and tilted her head. "Lyarra?" She lifted her hand to the scenery and with a snap of her fingers that echoed in his mind, the scene shifted and Ned felt as though he were falling briefly. Then, he was back in a familiar scene. He looked on as his younger self pulled two redheaded infants from a dark pool.

"That," a more mature woman's voice said, "was Lyarra."

Ned turned back to his daughter and was both surprised and not to see the older visage of the maiden he had first encountered that fateful night. She looked through him with those fathomless green pools again.

"Does... does that mean Lyarra is... gone?" he questioned sadly.

"Gone?" She contemplated, "No, not gone." Ned sighed in relief. "But nor am I her still."

Ned squeezed his daughter's/ the goddess's hand. "I don't understand, please help me understand, so that I may correct my mistakes."

"Oh little lord," she patted his hand, "you cannot fix what was never meant to be in the first place." Finally, as she comforted him, she showed some semblance of emotion. A small sad smile graced her lips briefly. With another echoing click of her fingers, the scene changed again.

It was a scene, frozen in time. A familiar, less unearthly version of the woman beside him, lay in the center of some ritualistic ceremony. "What is this?" Ned asked, unsure if he truly wanted to know.

"That, Eddard Stark, is Holly Potter," she answered, gesturing to her plainer look alike. "And these," she continued, "are the fools who ended her life and nearly all life in this world." The scene suddenly started to play out in all it's gruesome glory. The screams of the dying girl turned to gurgles as wooden roots tore through her, consumed her. Ned felt his stomach turn riotously and was forced to turn away from the site. He looked back to his would be daughter and pleaded, "Why do you show me this?"

The redhead, still watching the scene with apathy answered him. "Behold little lord. The death of Holly Potter and the birth of your 'Old Gods'."

Ned reluctantly turned back to the ritual reluctantly just in time to see the wood of the rapidly growing tree to bleach white and the leaves to bleed red. "A weirwood?"

"The first," she answered. "And now," she continued, "watch the destruction these fools caused in their avarice and greed."

Ned watched as the tree grew and at first, the men surrounding it cried out in triumph. Those cheers soon turned to screams of their own. An essence that seemed to ooze from their very beings became visible to the eye and began to drift to the weirwood. The great tree grew faster and its appetite was voracious. It sucked those men dry until they were nothing but husks. The goddess's voice came with a hint of vindictive malice at the scene. "The ones to cause The Great Cataclysm were the first to fall, and justly so."

The view panned out as the tree grew larger and larger. It towered over the already amazingly large buildings and the lord watched as the life essence of all the humans in sight were pulled from them and to the tree. "Unfortunately, their unwillingness to step down from power and lead a simple life cost all humans dearly." Her tone was sad now and Ned turned to look at her again. To his surprise, tears were streaming down the woman's cheeks.

"Is that who you are? Are you Holly Potter?" He questioned gently. Was that why she had been tied to the weirwood?

"Yes and no." Again no straight answer from her. She gestured to the tree of death as it continued to steal life from young and old alike. The life forces flowing into it so thickly that it seemed to be leaking from the tree like steam from a warm drink on a cold day. No man, woman or child was safe from its deadly pull, and all fell before it. "I am also this... abomination before you." She turned away from the scene violently, as if no longer willing to be in its presence and yanked him with her. He felt himself fall briefly, but violently.

She let go of his hand as she sat down to lean morosely against the roots of a gargantuan Weirwood. The area surrounding it was decimated. No living thing was left within view of their position. "Gaze upon the great work of your God, little lord, and tremble in fear and disgust," she gestured absently at the decayed land around them. "Death is what I am made of and Death is all I am good for." More tears slid down her cheeks as she gazed up into the red canopy above her. "The Mistress of Death was my title in life, but the title was not what they thought it was," she laughed bitterly. "I was no master. I was its mistress whom it loved and would not relinquish to the void. When those bastards sought to take its power for themselves, Death retaliated most viciously."

Ned sat down heavily next to her. His head was swimming at the revelations he had heard this night, but apparently there were more to come. As he reached out to comfort her she threw him a glare.

"Do not pity me little lord," she snapped. "For if you do then you should pity him!" She threw out a hand and pointed behind him. A sense of vertigo hit him once again and then he was face to face with cold burning blue eyes full of hatred and malice. Her hands pulled him away quickly and she threw him to the ground.

Ned's head was spinning as he sat up, but she was there at his side. Gently she helped him to his feet with an almost apologetic look on her face. When she stepped aside he was greeted to a familiar site. A man was restrained in the center of a circular ritual. This time, instead of men in dark robes, the victim was surrounded by small creatures of dappled brown skin. The duo watch in silence as the leader of the small creatures pushed a shard of what appeared to be dragon glass into the man's chest. The man's screams were painful to listen to and in a sick reversal of a prior scene, the tree withered and the man turned to icy cold death incarnate.

A snap sounded and again they were back at the damaged area of the original tree. "That was the birth of the first of the Others. Born from the misguided efforts of my own would be children. They stole power from me to win their battles and, again, the world nearly ended thanks to my power."

The overwhelmed lord sat down heavily beside her feet and looked out at the scene with her. He noticed the area was not quite as desolate now though. There were small tents in the area, signs of life were coming back. And then a small large eyed, floppy eared creature came out and approached the tree with flowers in hand. "Mistress must not hide forever," it said to the tree. "But mistress is sad and hurt so she must rest. Tweak understands this, but Tweak will be here when mistress is ready." He smiled up at the vaguely face shaped not in the bark of the tree and patted one of her large roots. "When mistress is ready then," it said before walking back to its tent, leaving the pretty flowers with the tree.

"They came to me for nourishment," Lyarra, or was it Holly?, told him. "House elves could not live without a source of living wizards magic you see. I may no longer have been a true witch, but I was all they had left." She smiled fondly at the retreating figure of this 'Tweak'. "But the silly little creatures were big hearted and too kind for their own good. Yes they fed off my magic, but they also cared for me. They showed me love when I deserved none. They brought me back to the surface and taught me to care again."

Her face fell, "But my magic changed them. Death and Nature magic entwined with their own and thus chained their own nature." She was crying again and sunk down to sit dejectedly on the roots of her old prison. "They came to call me mother and I corrupted them. What kind of mother does that to her children?" she pleaded with him. "Creating the others was not the first time they stole my power to do a great deed of evil, but it would not have happened if I had not abandoned them."

She wrapped her arms around her legs and sobbed into her knees. "I corrupted them and then abandoned them for the deeds my corruption had them commit." She turned red rimmed eyes to him. "But I was tired Daddy, I'm so, so tired."

Tying hard to come to terms with the new information, he still heard the anguish clear in her voice. No longer was she the stoic goddess he had met, but in his eyes, she was his daughter, hurt and sad. He tugged her gently into his embrace and she wept against him. Her frame shrank and he found himself holding his daughter. And they cried together for all that was lost and all the hurt.

After what felt like forever, Lyarra's tears quieted and she looked up at him with those beautiful green eyes, now rimed with angry red. "Can we just go home now Daddy?"

Ned half sobbed, half laughed, "Of course little love. I would like that very much." He kissed her forehead and hugged her tight again. His daughter was not completely lost to him after all. He had no idea how to help her work through the demons of her past, the ones his negligence had opened back up to her, but he would be there for her in whatever capacity she needed him in.

~o0o~

IVX: Thanks for reading... ^_~