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SPOILER warning. If you haven't read the recently released Fire & Blood book by George R. R. Martin, or haven't seen the last episode of season 7, then this post contains possible spoilers.

In the book Fire & Blood, when Queen Alysanne, married to the Old King Jaehaerys, visited the Wall and tried to cross it on her dragon Silverwing, she refused to take her beyond the Wall. Here's an excerpt from the book which describes the incident:

“Thrice I flew Silverwing high above Castle Black, and thrice I tried to take her north beyond the Wall, but every time she veered back south again and refused to go. Never before has she refused to take me where I wished to go. I laughed about it when I came down again, so the black brothers would not realize anything was amiss, but it troubled me then and it troubles me still.”

Fire & Blood, "Jaehaerys and Alysanne - Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

From the ASOIAF books, we know that the Wall is not just a high ice wall but it also has its own magic (spells and whatnot) which is why the dead cannot cross it. Probably the magic works both ways and dragons being the magical creatures, cannot cross it, or wouldn't cross it, just a theory.

That brings us to the last episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones; As we know Danaerys' dragons crossed the Wall to save Jon Snow and his companions. The dragons may be smarter than your average beasts but I don't think they shared any knowledge down the generations of Targaryen dragons which would explain why Silverwing didn't cross the Wall but Drogon and other dragons did because they weren't brought up on Dragonstone or the pit.

So why would the dragon Silverwing not cross the Wall?

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    1. Show and Books are different canons 2. How would the wall go down in the books would be opinion based, a safe guess would be horn of joramun 3. We do not know why the dragon did not cross the wall on Alysanne's bidding
    – Aegon
    Dec 13, 2018 at 6:32
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    Did the series actually show her flying over the walls or did she take the shortest route across the sea and thus around the wall?
    – Theik
    Dec 13, 2018 at 7:54
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    @Theik In that particular season, you have a lot of people teleporting about because it's convenient for the plot. A group of characters are trapped far north, beyond the wall, and one of them goes sprinting back to Castle Black for help. Seemingly the next day, Dany shows up beyond the wall with three dragons.
    – Liesmith
    Dec 14, 2018 at 0:59
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    @Rand, out of interest why did you edit the “Spoiler Warning” back into the question? Typically we try to avoid random warnings like that on the site? Or at least we certainly used to.
    – Edlothiad
    Dec 17, 2018 at 12:24
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    Except that it's a network wide policy to remove what may be considered "noise" from posts, one the community has never voted to ignore. This meta seems to suggests the only thing we should do with regards to marking spoilers in questions is use spoiler markdown. Not use random warnings (the randomness being where/when an OP may choose to leave a warning on their post). As such it would appear that "someone" has merely followed the network wide policy to remove noise. Given there's a disclaimer anyways without the emboldened "warning".
    – Edlothiad
    Dec 17, 2018 at 13:06

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The best guess to answer your question would be: Because the dragon was smart enough to know that there was a real threat up there. Magic or not, dragons are intelligent enough to discern from danger or a treat. Did it know the Night King in particular was up there? Probably not. But it knew something magical was up there. Think of a large 50 foot fire burning. If you never saw fire before, you could at least feel the heat coming from it while at a solid distance(even if you had blindfold on, you'd still feel the flames from that same distance.. The magical enchantments may be emitting a warning of some kind to the dragon saying-hey better stay south buddy where you belong. (opinion-The magic of the night king might be stopped by the wall-if it wasn't, then winter might actually flow thru the country permanently without even him invading)

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    [citation needed]
    – T.J.L.
    Oct 14, 2019 at 13:24

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