Another review-splosion! Some of the questions were answered last chapter, but here's some more I saw repeats of. Mild spoilers, which I forgot to warn for last time:

Are there a Link and Zelda in this era?

Yes, but it's going to be awhile before they appear. They're both thirteen at this point and their quest is destined to start when they're seventeen; that fic will come later. They'll both be important recurring NPCs in their own ways, though. If I say any more than that, I'll give everything away! In between now and them appearing is: the final Dark World dungeon arc, establishing the Hylian setting and the scary logistics of the violent world-shift, and the first Light World Dungeon arc.

Are you basing this off of the Zelda mangas?

No, I'm working off of game canon here. I'll check the mangas for personality reference sometimes (I read most of them some years ago), but the backstory stuff there doesn't have much to do with the generation of Zelda NPCs living in this era.

What Zelda canons are you including?

Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild, mostly. Spirit Tracks, Four Swords Adventures, and Link Between Worlds are other big contenders. Ocarina of Time's music magic will show up in spell scrolls (and later, Hylian item-enchanting). Twilight Princess canon directly clashes with my version of the Dark World, but it inspired one of the items and bosses I have planned. I'm not pulling much from Majora's Mask, but that's where I got the idea of a Deku Scrub civilization (which will be visited properly later on). Bits of the Oracles games and Minish Cap canon will appear here and there. My goal is to write a new "game" with several inspirations, so canon will be curated and shaped to suit this crossover.

Will you write this [insert request] fic?

I apologize, but I'll have to turn down requests. There are very few fandoms that I have a good enough retention of lore to confidently write for and this fic is going to be occupying all my writing time for quite a while.

Alright, enough spoilers. It's forest temple aftermath time! Content warning for mild dissociation and mentions of death and suicide. Also, Malfoy is fantasy-racist.

Blue lay sprawled on his back, staring at the underside of his bed's wooden canopy. The pose wasn't too dissimilar to the one he'd been knocked into yesterday, when that monster had appeared in front of him and—

He put a hand over his stomach. There was no scar, nor even a hint of phantom pain. The wound had just vanished like it had never existed. Hell, he didn't even have the clearest memory of getting it. He'd been standing there with his sword raised in one of the techniques he'd inherited the muscle-memory for from Green, waiting for an attack, the monster had appeared, and then…

Pain.

That was the one thing he remembered. Not the size or severity of the wound, just the pain. So much pain his brain hadn't been able to process it. It had been everywhere and everything, swallowing every other sensation. Then it had just turned to cold static. Blue was more afraid of the numbness than the pain. Numbness meant his body had been giving up.

Blue curled up on his side. He didn't know what to do with the information that he'd nearly died. It was just a fact of life now; a plant-monster had sliced his gut open and he'd almost died. It wasn't a useful fact, or particularly interesting. It was just…there. Stuck in his mind like a lump in porridge. What was one to do with such useless, yet somehow important information?

"Blue?" Yellow eyes blinked at him. Blue didn't know when they'd gotten there.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Do you need a hug?" Yellow asked.

"Dunno."

"Are you napping?"

"Sure."

"I'm napping next to you, then. And I'm getting you a book."

"Okay."

Yellow disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a book. Blue couldn't bring himself to read the title. Yellow opened the book, laying it face-down on top of Blue, then snuggled into bed next to him.

Blue turned his head to look at the heavy volume laid flat on his chest. The cover was close to new, the spine relatively unbroken. "If you open a book like that, it damages the spine," he said with a spark of annoyance.

"Does it?" Yellow asked. "I didn't know that."

"Yes you do. Our English teacher in Year Four told us."

Yellow's look of innocent confusion became a sly smile. "Well, are you going to do something about it?"

Blue's lips twitched. "You arse." He picked the book up, snapped it shut, and lightly thumped Yellow on the leg with it. Then he propped himself up on his pillow and opened the book properly. It was a treatise on the guiding principles of Alchemy. That could be interesting. His brother must have fetched it from the library beforehand just in case, the clever fox.

He could see Yellow's blinding grin out of the corner of his eye as he started reading.

Hermione faced surprisingly little opposition when she went to fetch the Hylian Bestiary. Usually Blue was quick to take it from its podium, but he'd been holed up in his room all morning. Was he really that sore?

Well, no matter. The book was hers. Hermione vibrated with excitement as she limped up the stairs on her shaky, aching legs. Zelda was going to flip her lid! Or rather, freak out in some mature, queenly way, but still. This was the biggest news Hermione had ever had to share. Forget a basilisk in the plumbing—this was the Multidimensional Hypothesis proven true!

Crookshanks meowed loudly as she hurried past him. She sat down cross-legged on her bed, opened the bestiary to its back pages, and gave her cat an absent pet when he leapt up to get his missed attention. "Zelda, Zelda, are you awake?" she asked excitedly. "I've got news!"

Zelda's elegant writing scrolled across the page. "You look all atwitter! What has you so excited, my dear?"

"You're in an alternate dimension! Everything brought over from Hyrule—your book, Harry's sword, the labyrinths, the monsters—is from another world!"

It took several seconds before Zelda responded in faltering text, "An alternate…dimension? How?"

"Well, another dimension, timeline, or time. I'm only assuming dimensions because it makes the most sense," Hermione admitted. "As for how, it must have something to do with Vaati's magic. The first part of Hyrule that appeared here was the room with the Four Sword pedestal, after all. Vaati must have found a way to kick his prison into a place where someone was more likely to find it. Where was that room in your world?"

"It was of the Old Kingdom, so presumably somewhere only the deepest-dwelling race of Zoras would ever come across," Zelda said. "Even with magical equipment, my diving teams could only go down so far. The less elevated areas of the Old Kingdom were beyond us."

"He would have gotten out eventually if no one had found him, but he could have gotten impatient and sent himself here for someone to set free sooner," Hermione mused. "Say, what kinds of portals do Moon Pearls make?"

"Moon Pearls are an ancient magical tradition, meaning the records of such things were half-lost even before the Old Kingdom flooded. I know about their usage as scrying and fortune-telling objects, but…hmm," Zelda's book shivered in Hermione's hand and then flipped through its own pages. Gold-edged parchment blurred by, then stopped on an article near the start of the book, in the Legends section. Hermione squinted at the garbled heading. It was one of the ones that was all in English characters, but not all in English.

"'Heldan of Velkais'?" Hermione read aloud. "The least important word was the only one that translated."

Blue handwriting appeared above the narrow black font. "It means 'Hero of Worlds'," Zelda explained. The words faded, replaced by, "I assumed 'world' meant 'foreign land' because the words are the same in Hylian. Any country beyond the goddesses' domain might as well have been another world, as far as we were concerned."

"You are in another country, so you weren't entirely wrong," Hermione said.

"Ha! I suppose not!" A circle appeared on the page, indicating a cluster of runes. "Here, the article mentions Moon Pearls and their more mythical use. Because the Hylian definition of 'world' distinguishes between only 'Our Blessed Lands' and 'other places', there's no telling what axes of time and/or space this hero might have travelled along."

"But the Moon Pearls definitely open doors between one place and another, right?"

"Yes, they do, according to this legend. How did you learn that, by the way?"

"Oh, right! In the temple my friends and I just sent back, there was a Deku Scrub queen who knew about this subject. I didn't hear from her directly, just from Harry, but he said she's a scholar like you. In fact, some of the records she studied were probably fetched by your diving teams."

"That's wonderful to hear! I'm pleased to know that my efforts are still helping people in this age learn about the Old Kingdom. It would be a travesty if all those millennia of history were lost."

"How old is the Old Kingdom, anyway?"

"Excellent question!"

Hermione waited for an answer that didn't come. "You don't know?"

"If you think I didn't spend many of my living years agonizing over that question and wondering why NOBODY WROTE THE BLOODY DATE DOWN…you'd be sorely mistaken, my dear."

"Ah, so it's one of those mysteries."

"Yes, a historian's worst enemy: poor record-keeping."

Draco awoke. He wished he hadn't. Even without him moving, still warm and snuggly under his covers, he was sore. He closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep. It firmly eluded him. His body was tired but his brain was too alert to wind down.

'Well, fine. I'll just lie here, then,' he thought stubbornly. 'It's Sunday. No classes on Sunday.'

He was around five minutes into his not-sleep when he started noticing things. The bed was hard. His blanket was too thin. He could hear a woman's voice issuing a sharp lecture at low volume. A girl's voice, he could understand—Hogwarts's outdated rules meant girls could intrude upon the boys' dorms if they ever felt like it—but he'd definitely never seen or heard a grown woman in his dorm before.

Draco gingerly sat up. His shoulders sagged when he laid eyes on the white curtain drawn around his bed. Oh, right. The Hospital Wing.

He sank back onto the uncomfortable medical cot. Dog and Red had pushed him into Madam Pomfrey's domain the night before and made absolutely certain he got seen to before they were shooed off to their respective dorms. There hadn't been much for the nurse to see, though. The spell scroll had healed up everything but his exhaustion and the thing he had really been suffering from was covered by a glamour that could only be bypassed with a Hylian artifact. Madam Pomfrey, being a responsible magical adult, had of course tried to confiscate the magical glasses on sight. So what, then, was there for her to investigate? Draco was no longer coughing up blood and was fairly certain that wasn't going to happen again. He was too pale and his eyes were a somewhat strange color, but no diagnostic spell was going to label those symptoms alone as a medical issue—not that diagnostic spells worked on him, anyway. While his feet had begun itching terribly later into the evening, no magical glasses meant no ability to see what was happening. She had just given him an ointment to stop the itching (a completely useless measure, since its effects were magic-based) and told him to sleep off his exhaustion.

Draco folded his legs and felt around his dully-itching feet. He could take a guess as to what was happening there. Even so, he felt his heart squeeze in his chest when his fingers slid across the beginnings of a webbed membrane between his toes.

"Father will disown me," he groaned into his pillow. How was this happening to him? The Malfoys were pure! The Blacks were pure! How, in a union of those two ancient family houses, had he wound up with polluted blood? He was absolutely positive neither of his parents was unfaithful. They were devoted to one another; it was their duty to their family. Where had the bad blood slipped in, then? One of his grandparents? Great-grandparents? Who in his family line had betrayed him? What nutter among his ancestors had thought a Zora was a worthy addition to their pedigree? A Veela was understandable, but an ugly fish-creature? Inexcusable.

He felt for the horrific disfigurements that had opened up along the sides of his neck. On each side were three bony ridges hiding untold strangeness underneath, currently clamped so tight to his skin that they flowed into his neck almost seamlessly. He laid his palms against them and shuddered. It had been horrible when they had first opened. There had been a sensation like someone had taken several knives to his throat, and then he'd been struggling to remember how to breathe. His logical thinking had told him to use his lungs, while his newly-awakened fish-brain had mindlessly screeched at him to swallow. He might have suffocated like a real fish if Potter hadn't coached him into breathing properly again. What a humiliating cause of death that would have been, forgetting how to manage something an infant could do!

After that, he'd been kept busy trying to breathe through the right hole and clear out the unwanted additions to his throat. They hadn't appeared cleanly, like a transfiguration. Instead they had rudely popped into existence without clearing the way first and forced him to cough out the mess they had been filled with.

'I'm still going to have to find a way to clean them,' he thought with dread. His stomach turned at the notion, however necessary it was. 'They're full of plant muck and who knows what else. If I'm going to die, it isn't going to be by gill-induced sepsis, of all things.' His seafaring family background meant he had some familiarity with fish and their odd biology. It wasn't something he had ever thought too hard about, but he'd been taught how to gut and clean a fish, how to identify certain structures of its body, and what those structures did. As a consequence, he had an idea of how gills worked, even if he never would have imagined that trivia would one day become useful.

Draco decided he needed a bath, no matter how much it was going to hurt to walk all the way back to his dorm. He hadn't gotten the chance to wash properly before Madam Pomfrey had sent him to bed, and cleaning spells were no substitute. There was a certain stickiness that was always left over. He sat up and swung his legs to the side of the medical cot. Then he took a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and ignore every body part that had just shouted at him to stop. He eased onto his itching feet with a wince. His legs hurt less than his arms, at least.

As he slid his shoes on, he wondered whether he might need to order new ones soon. There was no telling what strangeness his suddenly mixed ancestry might thrust upon him next, although the illustrations in the Hylian Bestiary gave him a daunting look into his possible future. Would his feet turn into flippers? Would he grow fins at his elbows or a tail from the back of his head? Would his eyes become black and soulless?

He shook his head at the last one. Under the glamour, his eyes had been sticking to an obnoxious shade of chartreuse as of late. It was odd, actually. The Zoras in the Bestiary were…well, about as decent-looking as Merfolk-adjacent creatures could be. They were generally human-shaped, blue-skinned, and sharp-featured with disturbing shark eyes. Draco, meanwhile, had been turning green, not blue. His eyes were becoming a lighter color, if anything, and he was starting to think his lips were adopting a brighter shade of pink. He'd been getting drawn toward the Black Lake and had recently developed gills, though, so what other magic-immune aquatic race could he be related to?

'This is what I scheduled a talk with Granger for,' he thought, dismissing the questions from his mind. Those were her problem to worry about, not his. Draco's only concerns for now were finding a bathtub and cleaning out his stupid fish-man gills before they got the chance to poison him. He pulled on his magically-cleaned robe (he'd sneak it into the common room's fireplace later) and slipped out of the Hospital Wing.

The halls of Hogwarts were quiet. With monsters like Moblins about, many students had decided it was best to stay in their dormitories unless they had to go to class. There were adventuring teams that quested through the castle's growing collection of hidden nooks and crannies, but they weren't too common. It was several minutes before Draco saw another student run by, chased by a flock of Keese. Draco picked off a few of the bats with jets of white fire and left the screaming Ravenclaw to her fate. If she wasn't prepared for a fight, she shouldn't have gone out into the halls alone.

There was a metallic grunt to his side. He glanced over and sighed before forcing his body into a sprint. The Phantom whose patrol path he'd wandered into thundered after him.

His lungs and legs were burning within seconds. Purple tiles, purple tiles…where were they? He scanned the wide-open hallway and willed an escape from this situation to appear. What, was the castle feeling stingy that day?

'Wait a minute. I'm trying to get to the dungeons.' Draco skidded to a stop. Phantoms weren't convenient shortcuts—it could take up to fifteen minutes to wake up after being knocked unconscious by one—but he wasn't worried about getting to class on time today. He turned around with his arms held out. "Come and get me, you great brute!" he taunted. The Phantom was quick to oblige. Draco sucked in a panicked breath, his eyes clamping shut—

Ow. Headache. He'd forgotten Phantoms caused those. Draco flopped onto his side and forced himself up from the cold stone floor in front of the Great Hall. His back popped and his knees threatened to revolt.

"I'm going, I'm going," he muttered to his aching body. He'd drop it into a nice, hot bath soon, he promised.

He slayed a couple of Ropes and warded off a Floormaster as he made his way down to the dungeons. Moblins and Wizzrobes didn't pop up all that often down here, thank Merlin. Vaati seemed content with throwing bats and snakes and shadowy things at the Slytherins instead.

A low rumbling noise reached his ears when he was one hallway away from his goal. He groaned and dragged his feet around the next corner. Marbles. Of course there had to be marbles. Rather than spanning the length of the hall, they only took up a crosswise section. It seemed Hogwarts was experimenting with larger puzzles today, because there were ports in the walls allowing the marbles to flow across multiple corridors. Usually the metal spheres were spontaneously generated by a single port in the wall and vanished at the end of the hall.

He stood at the edge of the obstacle's range of influence and watched the rolling spheres for a safe gap. Perhaps because they were blocking a shorter distance today, they were grouped more tightly together than usual. He counted the number of smaller spheres that rolled through before a large marble appeared and then ran across when the next large one interrupted the flow. Then he scurried the rest of the way to warmth and safety.

"Valerian," he said to a blank stretch of wall. He waited impatiently as the hidden door appeared and swung open. Finally he could wash!

Dog accosted Draco as soon as he entered the common room. He greeted the boy with a happy grin and a wildly wagging tail, though he thankfully had the sense not to bark.

"I wasn't dying, you silly beast. I'm fine," Draco assured Dog as the pony-sized canine sniffed as many parts of him as he could reach. "Honestly, did you spend the whole night worrying?"

"He did in fact, Mr. Malfoy."

The voice was soft and even, but it made Draco jump.

Professor Snape closed the potion-ingredient catalogue he'd been occupying himself with and rose from the chair he had claimed in the middle of the common room. He pointed sharply to the side. "My office, sans your pet beast. Now."

Draco's heart leapt into his throat. He swallowed hard and, with great self-control, extricated himself from Dog. It took all he had not to give his pet a pleading look. Dog would absolutely tackle Professor Snape if given half a chance, but that wasn't going to help Draco in the long run.

"We knew this talk was coming," he said to Dog in a low voice. The mutt was shooting daggers at Professor Snape, though he'd learned by now that growling was a bad idea. His ability to stay in the Slytherin dorms was entirely dependent on the Head of House's willingness to put up with him. Were Hogwarts not currently a puzzle-box in which having a large attack-animal was a good safety measure, Professor Snape would have already kicked the Crup out of the castle.

"Rrrph," Dog rumbled discontentedly.

"Be a good boy and behave yourself. After this, I'll draw a bath and both of us can wash up properly. Won't that be nice?" He gave Dog one last pet and then reluctantly followed Professor Snape into the man's office.

The door snapped shut with a wave of the teacher's wand. Draco flinched at the sound. Professor Snape walked around to his desk and sat down. He gestured for Draco to take one of the seats in front of him.

'He's creating emotional distance through physical distance,' Draco thought, a memory of one of his mother's high-society communication lectures running through his mind. He sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs and tightly puzzled his hands in his lap. To distract himself from the urge to flee, he dropped his eyes to his shoes and studied the scorch mark a Beamos had left in the side of one. He'd tried using a Mending Charm, but if a simple Reparo could fix everything there would be a great many clothiers and cobblers out of business.

"You were in the Hospital Wing overnight," Professor Snape said. There was a subtle hiss to his voice. "Care to explain why?"

Draco thought for a moment. He hadn't planned to leave with the Gryffindors on this particular trip, so there wasn't any physical proof that he had gone—not that he would ever leave a list like that lying around again. Professor Snape didn't know that he'd gone on another foolhardy expedition, and neither could he make a decently substantiated guess. His only proof was that Draco hadn't returned to his dorm following his Saturday classes and that his student had spent the night in the Hospital Wing with a case of exhaustion. Both of those events could have multiple causes. However, Professor Snape was uncannily good at knowing when Draco was lying—to the point that he could tell even when Draco's voice was even and his posture was perfectly natural. Therefore, Draco would just have to find a way to lie using the truth. His father had given him lessons in just that sort of thing. He could do this!

With a new sense of determination, he squared his shoulders and said, "I had a minor health emergency yesterday, Professor. Thankfully it was only a temporary symptom due to breathing in contaminated air, but it was alarming enough that I elected to see the nurse."

"Oh?" Professor Snape puzzled his fingers together. "What health emergency would that be?"

"I spent a few hours coughing blood, Professor."

The man blinked and did the slightest of double-takes. "I beg your pardon?"

"I was on my way back to my dorm, but I entered a strange place full of stagnant water and all of the health risks that come with it. Something in the air didn't agree with me and I was coughing my lungs out for as long as it took me to find the exit." He grimaced, and it was only half-faked. "The effect faded once I started breathing in clear air, but I've definitely learned that ancient magic isn't something to be trifled with."

Professor Snape stood up from his desk and stooped closer to Draco's level. Draco could tell from the look of concern on his face that the man had been at least somewhat convinced by his version of the truth. The teacher peered closely at his face and then did a first-aid diagnostic spell.

Draco held his breath. To his relief the spell just malfunctioned and reported no health problems, like Madame Pomfrey's attempts had. Draco would have had a whole lot more explaining to do if it had failed completely.

"Did Madam Pomfrey even see to you? You still look traumatized," Professor Snape said. "I will have to give that woman a talking-to later. In the meantime, I'm giving you a Calming Draught and a Cough Potion and sending you off to bed."

"But Professor, the coughing wore off—"

"If you could see yourself, you would know that I'm only doing what is best for your health." He turned to consult his shelves of low-level medical potions that he kept for hysterical and mildly ill students.

Draco suppressed a groan and slid his hands down his face. His makeup-free face. He'd been wearing powders for the past fortnight, but even the most expensive stay-put enchantment wasn't a match for his anti-magical skin and the waters of a Hylian temple. None of the Potters or their friends had said anything about it because Gryffindors were the least observant people on Earth. Did he really look that bad? Madam Pomfrey hadn't made too much of a fuss about it. Although by the time he'd gotten to the Hospital Wing, most of the lights had been off to let the occupants sleep, so maybe she just hadn't noticed.

Professor Snape handed Draco two small bottles and stood over him with an air of paternal sternness until Draco swallowed the contents of both. The Cough Potion made a weak attempt at cooling the back of his throat before the magic gave up, and that was it. Hmm. If healing spells didn't work and potions were barely effective, Draco was going to have to find some way to remedy that before it got him tied up in a real health emergency. Was there such a thing as a Hylian medical potion?

"Good. Now off to bed with you, Mr. Malfoy. If you ignore my instructions, I will assign you detention," the man said briskly once Draco had handed the bottles back.

No! He couldn't just go to bed! Draco had gone through too much that morning to be denied his goal! "Could I take a bath first?" He pouted pitifully and looked up at his godfather through his lashes. He didn't go for wide puppy-eyes because his eyes weren't quite the right color and Professor Snape was sure to notice. "Madam Pomfrey cleaned me up with magic, but I could still have mold or something in my hair."

Draco could see his godfather mentally add to the list of things he intended to yell at Madam Pomfrey about. "Yes, Draco, you may wash," he conceded. "Just make sure you get proper rest and tell me if you need to be excused from classes tomorrow."

'He's willing to excuse me from classes?' Draco thought with a note of alarm as he took his leave. 'Just how sick do I look?' He hadn't meant to sell his story that well.

Dog joined him at the door. So did Pansy Parkinson, who had apparently been lying in wait.

"Draco, why did Professor Snape—" Her eyes went wide and her strident voice caught in her throat. "My goodness, what happened to you?" She reached out with lightning speed and clamped her hands onto his cheeks. Turning his face this way and that, she exclaimed, "You look frightful! Did one of the Gryffindors jinx you in the halls?"

He wrenched his face free of Pansy's grabby hands. She had a bad habit of getting too touchy with him. "No, I got caught in the strangeness happening around the castle." It was hard not to snap at her in irritation. Due to her lack of volume control, half of the people in the common room were now looking their way. "Professor Snape already gave me health potions and told me to rest. I'll be fine by tomorrow, I'm sure."

Her voice turned sickly sweet. "Do you promise?"

Draco gave her a funny look. "Er, yes?" What kind of a question was that?

She seemed appeased by that response and flitted off to chat avidly with her other friends. He was certain she was describing his current state to them in florid detail. It was going to be whispered all throughout the dungeons tomorrow that the Prince of Slytherin was dying on his feet.

Draco almost ran to his dorm and dug through his trunk for his toiletries. He had to get to the bathroom before someone else decided to waste his time.

Blaise's voice came from behind him. "So, Draco…"

Draco rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and breathed out a controlled breath. He would not curse his roommate, he would not curse his roommate... "Yes, Blaise?" he said, not quite through his teeth.

"I heard through the grapevine that you vanished after classes and reappeared in the Hospital Wing yesterday."

"I wandered into a dangerous section of Hogwarts. It happens."

"Does it generally happen at the same time the Potters and their friends pull a similar disappearing act?"

Draco sighed and glanced over his shoulder. "Look, Zabini—" He froze at the sight of the magical glasses his fellow Slytherin wore. With a curse, he turned his face back toward his trunk. "Why are you wearing those?" he hissed. Against his wishes, his cheeks burned with shame. He'd been seen by a pureblood!

"Because you've been avoiding Greg and Vince every time they wear these things and I was wondering why." The boy sounded shaken. "What's going on? Why are you green? Why are your eyes glowing?"

"Shh! Keep your voice down!" Draco looked around for anyone else who might be in the room.

"They're all out in the common room," Blaise said. "Wh-What are those on your—do you have gills?!"

Draco aimed his wand at Blaise's mouth before he could do any more shrieking with it. "Langlock." It was a spell his godfather had taught him.

Blaise's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He choked in surprise but was rendered otherwise silent.

"Yes, they're bloody gills. No, I'm not a merman," Draco growled. He plucked the glasses off of Blaise's face and tossed them aside. "And no, it's not contagious. I'm the only one suffering from this, so you don't have to worry about turning green. Are you going to keep your voice down once I lift the jinx, or are you going to start broadcasting to the common room about things only you can see?"

Blaise made an offended noise and put on a show of looking hurt.

Draco snorted. "Right." He lifted the spell anyway. Leaving it on for too long would result in Blaise seeking revenge, and his roommate had a talent for sadistic pranks.

"How did this happen?" Blaise demanded in a loud whisper. "When did it start happening? What is even happening?"

"Why should I tell you?" Draco snapped. "How stupid do you think I am?" Draco knew better than to hand blackmail material to someone as clever as Blaise. There was no telling what the boy would do with it. He wasn't as afraid of Draco's family background as he should have been, and that made intimidating him into silence a lot harder.

Blaise leaned in, putting one hand around his mouth. "Draco, I'm not asking so I can start a rumor. I'm asking because my roommate is turning into a fish!"

Draco bristled. "I'm not turning into a fish!" he snarled.

"Then what is this?!"

Draco ground his teeth and looked away. He could understand how Blaise might possibly be genuine about his concern. If one of his bodyguards had grown gills, Draco would have at least wanted to know the cause so he could avoid such a fate himself. It wasn't as though Blaise had quite the same reputation as a rumor-starter, anyway. Unlike Draco, he held information close to his chest until it could be used to the most strategic advantage. The trouble was figuring out when that time might be.

"If you're not going to cooperate, I'll just keep wearing the magic glasses and looking weirdly at you until you say something." To demonstrate, Blaise re-conjured the ugly magenta spectacles to his nose and fixed Draco with an intense, faintly horrified stare.

"Stop that!" Draco snatched the hated magical artifact from Blaise's face and chucked it over his shoulder. "Fine, I'll tell you if it'll keep you quiet."

Blaise sat down on his bed and perked up attentively.

With a sigh, Draco began, "It started around two weeks ago. People just started staring at me one day." His lips pursed at the memory. Malfoys were meant to draw admiration, not strange looks. "As for what and how…I can only assume I have some distant ancestry that all of this Hylian nonsense is forcing to the surface. Maybe there are other students in the school suffering the same symptoms without noticing. I wouldn't have realized anything until yesterday if not for those enchanted glasses." He rubbed at the thin lines of bone running down the side of his throat. "I can only hope whatever accidental magic is hiding this sickness holds out instead of failing like every other glamour I try."

Blaise's eyes lit up in realization. "So that's why you've been leaving behind a mess of makeup powder in the bathroom lately. I thought you were experimenting with a new beauty routine."

Draco laughed bitterly. "I am, just not by choice. If the reactions I've gotten today are anything to go by, I'm going to have to get up earlier to make absolutely certain I've put my face on before anyone sees me. Professor Snape was even willing to excuse me from class, if you can believe it."

His dorm mate grimaced. "I can believe it. Without the magic glasses, you look like a corpse in lipstick."

Draco renewed his efforts to search his trunk and pulled out his toiletries bag. Rooting through it, he found one of his hand mirrors. He cast a weak Lumos and scrutinized his reflection.

Oh. Oh no. The illusion keeping his secret was definitely failing. This was not good.

He pawed at the pallid skin of his cheeks. If he had seen anyone else with that coloring, he would have thought they were a dead man walking. And his lips were redder than they should have been, a bright coral pink that contrasted sharply against the rest of his complexion. His eyes had lost even more of their original gray color, the pupils ever so slightly longer than they were wide. Draco's time as an esteemed pureblood member of wizarding society was quickly running out. Soon, he'd be no better than Hagrid the half-giant. Only it would be worse for him because his family actually meant something. If the sole heir to the Malfoy family was found out to be a half-breed, something even below a Mudblood, their reputation would be ruined!

Even though he knew it would only make things worse, Draco summoned his glasses. And Merlin help him, he looked so much worse.

He was going to cry. Not in front of Blaise, who would love to watch, but definitely at some point soon. He was a fish! There was no possible denial he could come up with to justify the wrongness of his reflection. He had glowing cat eyes. He had gills. His skin was like milky green tea with silver spots across his nose and cheeks. His hair was…

Draco combed his disgracefully messy hair apart with his fingers. His roots were red. A pale, pinkish red in the same family as the color that had taken over his lips.

He screamed softly.

Dog stood up from where he'd laid down to watch the conversation and gently took the hand mirror between his teeth. He deposited it back in Draco's trunk and then draped himself over the boy's lap. Draco dragged his hands through the Crup's thick fur and stared into the middle distance.

"What did you see?" Blaise asked. Now that the initial shock had worn off, the drama-hound's voice held a hint of unsuppressed glee.

"I'm turning into a Weasley, red hair and all. I'd rather go bald."

"Wait, really?" Blaise called up his glasses and squinted.

"If you say anything to anyone about this, I'll sic Dog on you," Draco said tonelessly. "I might not have my father on my side once this gets out, but I'll have a pet Grim."

"Calm down, Draco. I collect gossip. I don't disseminate it." Blaise drew back from his inspection of Draco's hair with a satisfied smirk on his face. "I'm just here to enjoy the free entertainment."

"You'd better be." Draco pushed Dog off of him and snatched up his toiletries bag. Then he yanked a few articles of clothing out of his trunk and turned back to Blaise with a huff. "Can I take a bath now? Or do I have to endure yet another round of time-wasting nonsense?"

Blaise backed up with his hands raised. "You're free to have a swim, Ariel. I won't get in your way."

Draco narrowed his eyes at the boy as he passed by. That had been a Muggle reference, most likely an insult. He wasn't sure, though, so he just responded with a vaguely annoyed "hmph" and went on his way with Dog in tow.

Once he was in the cool, tiled confines of the bathroom with the door locked behind him, Draco breathed a deep sigh. Sweet success! He'd had to go through, what, an hour (two hours?) of unwanted conversations and magical obstacles to get here? He was going to spend at least that much time washing away the memory of swimming in creamy green water.

"I'll wash myself first, then you," he told Dog. "It's going to take all day to clear out that thick fur, even after all the cleaning spells I already used on you."

Dog gave an approximation of a shrug and wandered off to sniff the toilet. He wasn't a particularly water-averse animal, but he didn't nag Draco for baths, either.

Draco turned the knobs of the tub to his usual mixture of hot and cold and undressed while the tub filled. Then he slid his leg in.

"Ouch!"

He snatched his scalded limb out and hopped back awkwardly. Dog gave a questioning bark from where he now sat resolutely facing the door.

"It's—I'm…" He swore with the crudest phrases he knew, to which Dog responded with a noise not unlike a human laugh. "It's because I'm a bloody fish," Draco grumbled. Aquatic animals didn't typically enjoy steaming water, after all. He drained the tub a bit and added some cold water before testing it again. Even though it must have been close to lukewarm, it now felt perfectly comfortable for a bath. He sank into it, grumbling all the way.

Now to do the thing he really didn't want to do. He had to do it before he added any soap, though, otherwise he'd be choking on bubbles. Draco closed his eyes and dunked his head under the water.

It was strange that there was no mental fumbling to do. As soon as he was submerged, his fish-brain kicked in and he switched smoothly from holding his breath to swallowing water. Breathing through gills was disturbingly easy, now that he'd gotten over the initial breathing confusion he'd suffered in the temple.

However, the sensation of parts of his neck moving that definitely shouldn't have been moving turned his stomach. It was the ultimate confirmation that he was no longer pure. Green skin and yellowish eyes were superficial changes in color, but gills? Those were a structural deformity. Covering those up with scarves and high collars wouldn't change the fact that his very ability to breathe had been altered.

His fingernails—harder and thicker than they should have been—dug into the meat of his thighs as he fought the urge to claw at his neck. Gills were delicate things, as he recalled from lessons in gutting fish given by his distant French aunts and uncles. There was nothing to be gained from ripping his throat to bloody shreds, no matter how much it no longer felt like it belonged to him. In fact, he could very well kill himself in doing so.

Draco shuddered. No, he very much did not want to die. It didn't matter how monstrous he became; he was going to find some way to live with it. If worse came to worst and he turned fully into a Hylian merperson, he could find himself a seaside cave to set up shop in and become a potion-brewing hermit. That sounded kind of nice, actually. No boring society parties, no being forced to go to Durmstrang, and no more dreary politician training; he could just keep to his cave, do what he wanted to do, and not have to worry about upholding his family's reputation. It was hard to imagine living his life without having to consider his parents' high expectations. There was a certain…dangerous freedom to that idea.

Well, at least he had a plan for the worst possible future in place. That took a little bit of the worry off of his loaded plate. Draco sat up so he could add soap to his bath.

With his ears now above water, he heard a collection of muffled noises coming from outside the bathroom. It sounded like shouting, thumping, and…hooting? He listened hard. Was that his problem? It didn't seem like anyone was dying. There was a world of difference between a surprised yelp and screams of bloody murder. If anyone needed his help, they'd come and get him. If they didn't, so be it.

Electing to ignore the distant chaos of the world outside the bathroom, Draco added soap to his bath and settled into the perfumed water. Time for peace, relaxation, and soaking his aches away.

Notes:

-Yes, gills have bones :)

-I anyone's wondering why Draco is magic-immune, it's because of a silly videogame thing I decided to apply seriously. NPCs and non-objects in most Zelda games will either ignore or barely react to anything you throw at them, so I was like "What if things from Hyrule count as non-objects to wizard magic? What I made NPC immunity into an actual thing? What if someone descended from a Zelda NPC could inherit it?", and thus the oddness of Hylian artifacts and one of Malfoy's symptoms was born.

-Here's your solid confirmation: Malfoy is indeed descended from a Zora! What kind of Zora, though? Where have the green and red come from? Could it be this author is a fan of certain oft-forgotten Zora variations and decided to combine that with a bit of Wind-Waker-inspired speculative evolution? Hmm...

I have a question for the audience regarding sidequests:

I understand that I'm a verbose writer and this beast is probably going to wind up being a million words long by the time I'm done. With that said, is there anyone who'd still like to see the Harrys go on occasional non-plot-related sidequests to get stuff like extra costume pieces, items, or spell scrolls in Hyrule? The reason I've cut a lot of that spell-scroll-fetching out so far is that I'm super worried about making the plot move too slowly to hold people's interest. Let me know in the reviews if you only want plot-related items/spells to keep the story moving, or if you'd like to see some episodic sidequest chapters every now and then! Also, if you want sidequests to happen, tell me if you want any of those to occur before the big world flip. Once Hyrule becomes the main setting, the Harrys are going to be stuck there for a while.