AAAH I'm so excited to drop this chapter! The Zora species I'm introducing here was one of the first ideas I had for this story. River Zoras are pretty cool-looking to me, and I wanted them to get some Great Sea rep, too, y'know? I've posted species art, a pic of the NPC I'm introducing here, and a handy evolution chart on the garden-eel-draws tumblr for those who want to check those things out! I've also made a painted story illustration for this chapter that I'm super proud of! Just follow the "dungeon 4" tag on the pinned navigation post and you should find those. I'll include a little infodump on this Zora variation in the endnotes, too.

Another rainy day. Harry was starting to get worried. Ignoring the cup of tea in front of him, he peered through the small window beside him at the Black Lake. He'd initially been trying to pry it open to let some fresh air into the heavily cinnamon-scented Divination Tower, and then he'd noticed how high the edges of the lake had gotten. The shoreline was narrow when the lake was at its usual levels, but now it was gone. It had been swallowed by the rain-swollen waters.

While storms weren't uncommon in late autumn, they were usually as much wind as they were rain. After the great blustering gusts on Sunday that had swept it onto the grounds, this particular storm had gone from a tempest to a stationary deluge pouring from a sea of black clouds. Today was the fourth day of torrential rain; there had never been a moment where it had lessened to a normal drizzle or a break in the clouds had offered an hour of relief. It was quickly becoming apparent that this storm wasn't like the others.

Harry hadn't spent much time outside since the rain had begun. Hagrid had been holding Care of Magical Creatures classes in an unused classroom since Monday and the Herbology greenhouses were fairly close to the castle. How badly were the grounds flooding? None of the teachers had said anything about it, so did that mean they had it handled?

He bit his lip. Harry wasn't fond of rain—too many days of being ordered to weed the garden in foul weather did that to you—but he was curious.

Professor Trelawney, sensing distraction, swooped on him. "Mister Potter, what vision of the future have you been graced with this afternoon?" she asked. Her voice was a tad less hazy and mysterious than usual, possibly because she'd already had to wake up Red twice and intervene in a heated match of Hangman between Blue and Ron.

Harry looked into his teacup. There was a vague clump of leaves at the bottom. "It's a Grim again," he said. "When do you think I'll die, Professor?"

"With dark omens such as these, forcing a date to reveal itself can worsen the manner of one's death. It is best to leave that dark day hidden within the mists of the future," she said. "All you can do is await your fate. And focus properly on your classwork in the meantime, if you please." She and her plethora of scarves fluttered off to mistily lecture Yellow and Dean, who appeared to be having a doodle war on a piece of parchment.

After class, Harry went to Gryffindor Tower to fetch his umbrella. He was surprised to see Scabbers lounging openly on Ron's bed when he entered the dorm. Usually the rat stayed hidden under the pillow or stowed himself in Ron's bag when Ron returned from class. He had been looking healthier since Vaati had locked down the castle, despite Crookshanks's continued habit of hissing at and chasing him on sight. Maybe Scabbers was finally used to it?

A bow-wielding Moblin spotted Harry one corridor away from Gryffindor tower and proceeded to fire giant arrows at his back as he sprinted for the next corner. One arrow caught the edge of his sleeve and almost yanked him off his feet. Thankfully his robes tore, or he would have been left on the ground and at the monster's mercy. Harry skidded around the corner and kept running.

Another arrow clipped him as he bobbed and wove down the narrower hallway. He clapped a hand over the gash that had opened up along the side of his left arm and lurched for the closest route of escape. The nearest exit happened to be a door, so he opened it and threw himself in. He slammed it shut behind him and leaned against it as he caught his breath.

Moblins were the worst. They couldn't be disarmed from a distance with an Expelliarmus because they kept too strong a grip on their weapons, their size and reach made them difficult to fight at close range, and they were so strong that one direct hit from their swords, spears, arrows, lanterns, or fists was enough to incapacitate. With his sword practice building up his strength and skill, Harry could now fight Skulltulas and Wizzrobes without casting a single spell, but he needed at least one other Harry with him to have a chance of defeating a Moblin. Even with two Harrys, there was still a fair possibility that one of them would need to go to the Hospital Wing.

The sound of squeaking heralded the arrival of a Keese, which dove at his head. Harry swatted it out of the air and slayed it with his sword. "Anything else?" he said in exasperation, looking around. He half-expected a Skulltula to crawl out of the dusty chairs piled up in front of him. Thankfully, his question didn't bring any more bad luck on his head. "Well, good."

He put his ear to the door. No hoof-steps outside. The Moblin had returned to its usual patrol.

Opening the door made his fresh wound twinge. He stopped with a wince. Right, he was injured. Harry pulled his robe sleeve back and frowned at the blood that had stained his uniform along the cut in his upper arm. It wasn't too bad a scratch, though. He'd gotten worse from pruning Aunt Petunia's rosebushes.

Since Hermione had made him start carrying plasters around (he had refused to take along anything more extreme), Harry slapped one onto his arm and fixed his clothes with a Mending Charm. The bloodstains…eh, he wouldn't worry about them. Whoever did the laundry at Hogwarts seemed to have just the spell for getting those out.

Harry left the room and continued more cautiously through the castle. Keese, Octoroks, Peahats, Skulltulas, Floormasters and Wizzrobes, he could fight. The Phantoms and Moblins patrolling several of the main corridors? Not so much. He was willing to antagonize a Phantom for a shortcut if he couldn't find a Floormaster, though.

He kicked a passing Phantom in the shin on the third floor and woke up in front of the Great Hall. The headache from the teleportation magic mingled with the mild warning throb of being too far away from his brothers. How did he keep forgetting about the Phantom headaches? He groaned and pried himself off of the wintry stone. Next time he'd either make the whole trip on foot or find a Floormaster.

Staggering to his feet, he opened his umbrella and left via the castle's main entrance. He stepped into a solid blanket of rain. There was so much water in the air that he might as well have walked into the Black Lake. Harry stared up at the sky from under the dripping edge of his umbrella. The clouds were thick, dark, and showing no signs of running out of water anytime soon.

Dropping his gaze from the heavens, he took in the sight of the sprawling lawn. There wasn't much to see; he could only make out vague shades of green through the sheets of pale gray obscuring everything. He started heading down to the Forbidden Forest, shuddering when he stepped onto the grass. The lawn had turned to muddy sponge, so heavily battered by rain that the water had sunk in deeply. It squelched and sucked at his shoes as he walked.

The usual contingent of Octoroks and Buzz Blobs was absent today. There were usually a few puttering around Hagrid's cabin and the pumpkin patch, but he didn't run into a single monster. He was particularly glad there weren't any Buzz Blobs out in the storm; he didn't want to think about what would happen if one discharged its electricity into the waterlogged air or through the soaked ground. He looked over his shoulder at the silhouette of Hagrid's cabin. He should pay the groundskeeper a visit soon. Not right now, because Hagrid would just bundle him up, give him rock cakes and tea, and send him back to the castle, but definitely sometime.

Continuing toward the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Harry switched out his spectacles for the Lenses of Truth. Suddenly, he could see right through the rain. The falling droplets had gone clear. Harry mentally kicked himself. If the glasses could cut through darkness and illusions, it should have occurred to him that they might be able to see through rain, too! He scanned the edge of the forest for any signs of Hylian strangeness. No vines, no Deku Scrubs, and no clinging shadows obscuring the trees. It seemed fine. He decided to poke his head in anyway.

He followed the same path he'd taken to reach the Forest Temple. It was deeply flooded. The forest was downhill from the castle and full of shallow basins—a prime location for pooling rain. Harry stopped at the edge of a temporary pond to look around; his shoes were half-soaked, but he wasn't committed to soaking them fully just yet. Vaati's influence had lifted completely from the forest, leaving the trees standing straight and healthy. Even with the dark skies and heavy rain, the atmosphere was considerably lighter than it had been. The large clearing that had housed the maze in front of the temple was gone now, replaced by more…trees…

Those trees didn't look right. They were shorter and wider than the others, their pale tan trunks lined with squiggly dark rings. Their crowns were shallow and wide with big, vivid green leaves. Harry wasn't a botanist, only a reluctant horticulturist, but he would have said they looked tropical.

"Hey! Hey, you!"

Harry sprang into the air like a startled cat. He landed with one foot in the giant puddle he'd been avoiding. "Who?!" he squawked. What other nutter was out taking a stroll in this kind of weather?

A humanoid figure emerged from the copse of foreign trees. The creature was as alien to Scotland as its tropical surroundings; it didn't look quite like anything in Harry's half-memories, but the being could only be some form of Zora. He was a stocky, muscular, aquamarine-complexioned, naked person around Harry's height. His slick blue-green skin was interrupted by a plethora of large, coral-colored fins. He had fins on his elbows, his ears, the top of his head, the backs of his calves, down the sides of his thighs, and forming wings on his back. It reminded Harry of antiquated illustrations of possible flying machines, with all sorts of kite-like flaps. The Zora's large, feline yellow eyes glowed in the darkness of the storm and a forked line of coin-sized spots running down his pointed nose and across his brow outlined his features in a border of shimmering silver-green.

"I'm gonna guess you've never seen a Flying Zora before. That's fair—most of us don't bother goin' to the mainland," the Zora said with an amused grin exaggerated by his salmon-red lips and fanged underbite. "I'm Ruka. Glad to see another sapient face out here." He strode through the deep puddle between them, surprising Harry by the fact that he didn't have the awkward waddle that most finned creatures had on land. Curiously, his feet were the only part of him that didn't sport fins. They were almost human, with four fused toes and one long, webbed big toe on each. Ruka stopped a couple of meters away and put his hands on his hips. "So, can you tell me about wherever I am and point me to a place with fish? Freshwater or saltwater, I can do either, but I'm starvin' right now."

Whatever form of Hylian Ruka was speaking, he must have been doing it in a thick accent; the sword's translation magic made him sound like he was from a New York gangster movie. It made the situation that much more surreal. "Er, you're in Scotland. Which is definitely not Hyrule," Harry said. "I think you might be from another dimension, or time, or timeline—something like that."

Ruka went bug-eyed. "Another dimension? Like, a whole 'nother Earth? That's a bit of a stretch, kid."

"I know it sounds crazy, but Hyrule doesn't exist here," Harry said. "Either this place used to be Hyrule a really long time ago or it's just where Hyrule would be in another dimension, but it's not on any maps."

The Zora's fins pulled in tight as his confident posture wilted. He ran a hand over the Mohawk-like fin running down his head. "You're serious? You don't have a Hyrule here?"

It wasn't a pleasant feeling, informing someone that they were lightyears away from their home with a significant possibility of not being able to return. "Sorry, but no, we don't. There's this evil sorcerer that just got loose, and he's been pulling chunks of your country into this place for whatever he's planning. You're not the first person to wind up here by accident. Do you know how you got here so I can help you get back?"

Ruka blew out a breath. "Wow. Dimensions? Time-travel? That's bananas." He paced in a little circle and then started talking. "Well, uh…I was explorin' some caves on the back side of Outset Isle, since I heard some mermen talkin' about Zora treasure and I thought it sounded promisin'. So I'm swimmin' around, lookin' for this cool vase, and then right when I'm on my way back home to try again later, bam! I get sucked up by a whirlpool! Just popped out of nowhere and spat me out here. Along with a chunk of the island, looks like." He glanced over his shoulder. "I've been wanderin' around for ages, tryin' to find someone other than a tree to talk to, and now I'm hungry. Can you point me to a shoreline?"

"Er, yeah?" The Zora definitely had his priorities in some kind of order. Harry would have been more preoccupied with the whole "being teleported through space and/or time" thing, if it were him. "There's a lake on the other side of the castle. I can show you."

"There's a castle?" Ruka asked. "As in Hyrule Castle? Are you a prince, kid?"

Harry laughed. Him, with any kind of fancy title? Preposterous. "No, it's Hogwarts Castle. It could have been Hyrule Castle a long time ago, but nowadays it's a magic school." He started leading the befuddled Zora out of the forest.

"A whole school?" Ruka said with wonder. "I've never heard of learning magic like it's any old thing. Where I'm from, it's a whole apprenticeship-to-mastery deal. Either that, or your folks pass the family songs down to you while you're growin' up. How do the people here do magic?"

Harry thought back to his first impression of everything wizardly in order to come up with a basic description. "We use wooden sticks with magical creature bits in them and say special words to cast spells. You have to be born with magic to use it, though," he explained. It was rather unfortunate that magic was something not everyone could learn. While it felt nice to be born special, what about the Muggle relatives of witches and wizards who were interested in magic? Could they still make potions?

"It's not given to you by the goddesses or Great Fairies?"

"Nope, it's just a thing some people have." Harry hadn't known that Hylian magic was both divine and rare. He had come across enough magical artifacts and spells that he'd assumed the people of that kingdom had been similar to wizards. Although Ruka may have just been from a different time period than the people who had crafted those items and buildings. Queen Primrose hadn't come from the same time period as the temple she'd been guarding, for example.

"Huh. Wild. Say, what's your name, kid? Why were you out in the woods if you've got a nice, warm castle to live in?"

"I'm Harry," Harry said. "I was out in the woods to investigate something. The last people who wound up stuck here got teleported to the same place that you did. I was checking to see whether some other weird thing had happened."

"Did those other people manage to get back?" Ruka asked hopefully. "I've got family waitin' for me back home."

Harry grimaced. "They were here because Vaati—the evil guy who sent you here—wanted to use them to protect his temple, which he teleported in from some other time and place. I sent them back by breaking the curse on the temple. Unless you took a building with you when you came here, I'm not sure how to his."

Ruka's shoulders slumped. "Oh. All I brought with me were some trees and a little pond full of seawater." He looked up at the sky. As he did, a translucent set of secondary eyelids closed to shield his eyes from the water. "Although I'm not sure how long that pond is gonna stay salty at the rate that rain's coming down. Those clouds don't look right if you ask me."

"Yeah, I didn't think they were normal, either. That's why I was out looking for anything suspicious." Harry peeked up past his umbrella. In the middle of the afternoon, it was as dark as dusk. "It usually doesn't rain this hard or for this long. I've never seen the forest flood like that."

"You think it's that Vaati guy, maybe?"

"Probably. He could have teleported the clouds in from somewhere, or maybe his wind magic is good for storms, too."

They made the long uphill trek toward the castle with difficulty. The whole lawn had become a grass-coated mire. Harry wondered whether the loosened muck would slide toward the Forbidden Forest along with the rainwater.

Ruka whistled when they neared the castle. "If that isn't Hyrule Castle or some alternate-dimension copy of it, I'll eat my fins," he said. "Looks just like it does on the postcards, only ten times spookier."

Harry looked up at the castle. Its dingy gray stone, stained by age and coal smoke, made it an ominous specter looming in the darkness of the storm. The narrow windows dotting it looked like yellow eyes. Even if it was home to him, he could see where Ruka was coming from.

"You can go in there if you want," he said. He wasn't sure what the Zora would do in the castle, though. There weren't too many large bodies of water in the school and any fish they had would probably be cooked. "I'm sure my teachers would want to ask you about Hyrule. There's been a lot of stuff from there showing up here and we're having trouble figuring out how to deal with it."

"Sure, I can talk to them. Only once I've got some fish in me, though, or I'm gonna start gnawin' on legs." Ruka patted his stomach. "Are there any Zoras in that lake I might have to deal with? Some of us can be a little territorial and I'd rather avoid any Inland Zoras. They're big, prissy killjoys."

"Er…" Harry rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. "I don't think Zoras exist here. The closest we have are merpeople. They're like fishy Hylians with tails."

"The mermen where I'm from are all just big talking fish," Ruka mused. "Maybe Zoras and mermen got mixed up and turned into merpeople here."

Harry shrugged. "Maybe."

Soon the vast, inky expanse of the Black Lake became visible. From ground level, it was even more apparent how alarmingly swollen it was. If memory served, the original shoreline had to be about a meter underwater now, if not two.

Ruka thumped the back of his hand against Harry's shoulder. "Hey, who're those guys over there?" He pointed to the lake's current shore.

A robed human figure and a large canine shadow stood like sentinels by the lake. The person was actually in the lake, standing in water up to their ankles. They also lacked an umbrella. Harry frowned. That figure could only be Malfoy, and yet he was standing out in the pouring rain without any cover? With his shoes and trousers getting soaked in lake water? Something was very wrong here.

"That's a classmate of mine, Malfoy. He's got his dog with him," Harry told Ruka. "I have no idea why he's out here. He hates getting dirty."

"Oh, so he's like an Inland Zora, then? I've dealt with that type before." Ruka started walking over. "I'm gonna say 'hi'!"

'I think he'd get along well with Red and Yellow if they spoke the same language,' Harry thought, ambling after the extroverted Zora.

Dog noticed Ruka first and greeted him with a soft "boof!" He stepped into the water and tugged on Malfoy's sleeve with his teeth. Malfoy responded only by swaying slightly on his feet. His eyes were locked on the lake.

Oh, that definitely wasn't right. Harry picked up his pace. Did Malfoy have to go to the Hospital Wing again? Red still hadn't said anything about why the boy had been coughing blood, so Harry didn't know whether it was a recurring issue. Malfoy might have been loopy from blood loss.

When he neared Slytherin, his pace slowed in confusion. Was that Malfoy? His skin color was way off, and it wasn't just the limited visibility from the storm.

Ruka seemed to notice the boy's odd behavior, too, because he slowed down and circled around him. "Hey, kid, you okay…?" He stopped in front of Malfoy, looking dumbstruck. "Didn't you say there weren't any Zoras around here?" he shouted to Harry.

Jogging over, Harry called back, "Yeah?"

"Well, this kid definitely knows one!" He snapped his clawed fingers in front of the boy's nose. "Come on—Malfoy, was it? Wake up and smell the fish, Malfoy."

Harry took off his shoes, rolled up his trouser legs, and waded into the lake. The shock of the water's temperature made him shiver violently. His feet were already going numb! "Wh-What do you m-mean, he knows a Zora?" he asked, his teeth chattering.

"Well, I mean, look at him." Ruka gestured toward Malfoy. "He looks like me."

Harry blinked at Ruka, then turned his attention to his classmate. Ruka wasn't wrong. Malfoy had some of his blue-green skin tone, the red lips, the feline eyes, and a messy spatter of silver freckles reminiscent of the Zora's spots. He even had gill slits in his neck! Harry reeled back a step. The sight of the blood-supremacist with features he would have mercilessly condemned in anyone else was making Harry dizzy. When had this begun happening? How long had Harry been oblivious? 'That explains why he was coughing blood,' he thought. 'How can someone like him, from a family like his, be part Zora?' It was baffling. No wonder Malfoy had had a minor nervous breakdown after the forest maze!

"…Have to go in the water. Don't want to go in the water," Malfoy was saying dully as Ruka continued his attempts to rouse him. "The water is here."

"I have no idea what you're saying," Ruka said, giving him a little shake.

Malfoy's head lolled. "The water is here."

"Hellooo." Ruka flicked him in the forehead, to no effect.

Harry seized Malfoy's shoulder with the hand not supporting his umbrella and marched him out of the lake. The blond had been normal and catty (if exceptionally tired-looking) in Potions class that morning; ergo, there must have been something about the lake that was causing him to act so out-of-it.

A few seconds after his feet (which had webbed toes!) left the water, Malfoy stood straighter and started looking around. "Where am I?" he asked hazily. "I'm wet?"

How had he gotten out here without any memory of doing so? One would think a Moblin would have done him in before he got there. Maybe Dog had dragged him away from any patrolling monsters. "You're outside, by the lake," Harry said. The blown-out pupils of Malfoy's eyes were slowly narrowing as he came back to himself. "Did you sleepwalk out here?"

"I…No, I was…" Malfoy's swiveling head turned in Ruka's direction and he froze. His mouth fell open and any trace of pink fled from his face, leaving him greener than ever. Harry swore he even stopped breathing.

"Uh, hi?" Ruka said after several seconds of being stared at. He gave an awkward wave. "Did your grandparent or whoever not tell you what a Zora is?"

Malfoy looked desperately at Harry. "Am I seeing things now? Do you see that, too?" he asked in a panicked whisper.

"That's Ruka. He got sent here like all those Deku Scrubs were," Harry explained. "I was just showing him the lake so he could hunt for fish." He glanced at Ruka. "You can go eat now, if you want to. Thanks for helping with Malfoy."

"I'm not so sure I did anything to help, but okay." Ruka shrugged and jogged away from the lake. Then he sprinted toward it with impressive speed and leapt high into the air. His various fins snapped out like layered wings, carrying him a few dozen meters across the water, and then he dove with barely a splash.

Harry raised his eyebrows, impressed by the show of grace. When Ruka had said he was a Flying Zora, he hadn't been kidding.

"That was…That was real? It could fly?" Malfoy said, his voice cracking. He stared at where Ruka had disappeared under the water. "Am I dreaming?"

Dog seized his sleeve and led him over to Harry. With a worried whine, he pawed at Harry's trousers.

Harry gripped Malfoy's upper arm to get his attention. The boy's narrow pupils immediately focused on him. "Y-You're not Red," he gasped. "The glasses. You're wearing the glasses. You can see me?!" When Harry recoiled at the pitch of his screech, Malfoy took the opportunity to scramble away from him. "Don't touch me! You can't touch me!" He stumbled in a puddle and fell on his rear.

Dismissing the Lenses of Truth, Harry gave Malfoy some space and raised his hands inoffensively. "Okay, I won't touch you," he said. He nudged Dog in the ankle with his foot and jerked his chin toward the panicking pureblood. Dog padded over and laid next to Malfoy, lifting his head to lick the boy in the cheek. Rather than scold his pet for dirtying his countenance, Malfoy just buried his face in the thick fur of Dog's neck.

While Malfoy came down from his panic, Harry fetched his shoes, poured the rainwater out, and pulled them on. Hermione had taught him a spell to dry things after the last temple, but there wasn't much point in using it until he got back to the castle.

"Why don't you want me to touch you?" Harry asked as he rolled his trouser legs down. They were wet and filthy, but there was still a chance they could still keep his freezing ankles a little warmer. "I mean, not that I'm about to give you a cuddle, but why?"

Malfoy's fingers clenched in Dog's fur. "I'm a freak!" he cried, his voice muffled. "I'm like that… that thing!"

Harry rolled his eyes. Really, "that thing?" "Ruka's just some Zora bloke who wound up here by accident. He's more human-looking than the Deku Scrubs were. Why didn't you freak out about them?"

"Because I'm not a bloody Deku Scrub, am I?!"

"Because you're part Zora, you think they're less like people?"

"I've got gills, Potter! I'm entitled to think whatever the hell I want about the bloody fish-men!"

Malfoy had him there. It wasn't like Harry knew what it was like to turn partway into an aquatic magical being. "If you have gills, why were you standing there like a post instead of swimming?" he asked, deciding not to argue the point. "There's nobody out here to see you."

"I'm not going swimming just because my instincts tell me to! I'm stronger than this."

Harry's face screwed up as he processed Malfoy's logic. He was part Zora—a big enough fraction that he had gills and a need to swim. Not only that, but the urge to seek out water was so strong that he was compelled to sleepwalk all the way from his dormitory to the lake in the middle of a historic rainstorm. Then he had walked into the lake, and he still refused to do what his body was screaming at him to do. He'd already had both feet in the door, yet he was deciding to be difficult about this minor thing anyway. Why?

"It isn't like going swimming is all that hard, with the lake right here. Why couldn't you just go for a dip every now and then to keep yourself from sleepwalking? People play in the lake all the time during the spring," Harry said. "I mean, you must have been standing out here for ages and you're not shivering, so you probably won't freeze."

Malfoy lifted his face from Dog's neck. "Why aren't you screaming at me right now?" he demanded. "I'm not a pureblood, I'm a fraud! I'm worse than Granger! Everything I've done to you was for the sake of establishing my superiority, but it turns out I have none! Once my family disowns me, I'll be more destitute than a Weasley."

Dog grumbled and draped his muddy body heavily over his owner's lap. "I can say they're poor," Malfoy defended halfheartedly as he petted the beast. "It's only the truth."

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. He kind of understood the Slytherin's logic. Malfoy was losing his mind because his head was full of blood-nonsense about who was better than whom and he didn't know how to deal with falling down the rungs of that stupid ladder. On top of that, he had to deal with all the people he'd surrounded himself who fervently believed the blood ladder was a real thing. Meanwhile, from Harry's perspective, Malfoy was freaking out over a minor cosmetic change (it wasn't like he'd turned into a half-cat like Hermione had after her Polyjuice accident) and gaining the ability to breathe underwater, which was a pretty cool talent to have. If he wanted to hide his Zora bits, he could do it with some makeup and colored contacts. He wasn't like Hagrid, whose unusual stature drew constant attention. Even if he grew fins, those were easily hidden under robes. And wasn't he immune to magic now? That meant he could be as much of a Malfoy-ish prick as he wanted, and any hexes or jinxes people sent at him would just slide off! Harry could definitely see the benefits here.

He crouched in front of Malfoy, though not close enough to make him panic again. "Yeah, you've been a bratty arse for the last two years. I still think you're kind of a git," he said. "But you've been almost decent lately and you've helped me with the temples, so I reckon I can return the favor. If your family disowns you, we can figure something out." Malfoy had been a constant source of irritation for the last two years, but Harry had no desire to see him ruined. Hit with a Dungbomb, maybe, or the victim of a funny potions accident, but not rejected by his family and reduced to living under worse circumstances than what Harry faced each summer. He wasn't even sure he'd wish that kind of fate on Snape, as awful as the man was.

Malfoy gave him a deeply suspicious scowl. "You can't mean that. You sound preposterous."

Harry had to wonder what kind of gilded gears were turning in the aristocrat's head. How did any Malfoy keep from losing their mind if they found the idea of showing basic compassion ridiculous? "Alright, I'll try to put this in rich-people-speak. You're useful to me because you know more about the magical world than I do, and probably more spells. Oh, and now you can breathe underwater, which I definitely can't do. So, because you're," he paused to readjust his phrasing, "currently lending those skills to me, I can reciprocate by helping you sort this Zora thing out. There. Does that make sense to you?"

"But why would you want to do anything for me?" Malfoy asked stubbornly. "You should be talking to the Daily Prophet right now, destroying my family's reputation, not wasting your concern on someone you hate."

Harry tossed up his hands. Trying to be nice to Malfoy was as impossible as convincing Dudley to share something. "I don't hate you, I just think you're a brat who didn't get told 'no' enough times growing up! My cousin Dudley is like that, so I get it. You, at least, have been trying to act like less of a prat lately."

The blond dragged his hands down his face. "First I'm compared to a fish-man, and now a Muggle," he despaired.

"See? You're a bigoted git. But I think you're smart enough to get better and I don't want you starving on the streets. Going hungry is…well, you're better off not knowing what it's like."

Malfoy sized him up. "Would you be speaking from personal experience, Potter?"

"You're almost as scrawny as I am, remember," Harry evaded. "So, are you going to get out of the mud and come back to the castle with me, or are you going to stop being difficult and go for a swim already?"

Malfoy looked down at himself, then up at the rain (did he notice he had another set of eyelids now?), then out toward the lake. He gave a defeated sigh. "I'll swim."

Notes:

-So! Flying Zoras. They're essentially what would happen if a River Zora from Link Between Worlds started evolving into one of the bishounen Zoras from Twilight Princess, then took a left turn and became part flying fish instead. They live in matriarchal colonies dotting the archipelago south of mainland Hyrule, specifically populating the Spear Isles (what the multi-eyed reefs of Wind Waker became known as after the level of the Great Sea dropped a fair amount). Though they swim in the open ocean and can dive a significant distance, they typically stay near the surface so they can leap out of the water whenever they need to. Like the Inland Zoras (BOTW Zoras) of mainland Hyrule and the Abyssal Zoras living on the ocean floor (they'll be relevant later), Flying Zoras are known for their skills in high-level enchantments and fine metalwork. Their ability to fly is generated mainly through sheer muscle power and speed, since they've retained the dense body type of their ancestors.

-Ruka does indeed speak in an odd dialect compared to the Deku Scrubs that showed up before. I'll be posting a linguistics chart on Ao3 later (this fic has consumed my brain), but standard Hylian uses a guttural French "r" and a mix of Japanese and French consonants. Ruka rolls his "r"s and turns some of his consonants into hisses and clicks, so the Four Sword picked an accent Harry finds really weird and stuck with it. Most islanders speak Hylian in a vaguely European Spanish-sounding way and Ruka's dialect is an exaggerated, reptilian version of that.

-For those of you that dislike OCs, don't worry; Ruka is firmly an NPC and is here for plot reasons only. He's going to be useful in the next dungeon!