Time to answer some questions again! Some of these appear to be caused by my wordy, decompressed writing style, which makes things slower in coming. Because remember, there are seven dungeons in Hyrule and a final boss level after that, so we've got all the time in the world to cover various points of interest! Mild *SPOILERS*:

Will the Harrys get a mentor?

Mentors and helpful NPCs will trickle in once we reach Hyrule. First, an unorthodox quest guide throwing his hat into the ring, then some people they can hit up for info on Hyrule circa 1993, and then after the first Light World dungeon kicks their butts, they'll get a sword mentor and Lupin will pop back into existence to help with combat magic. Magic will work a little funny in Hyrule, so sword skills will still be a must.

What about Sirius?

The Dogfather is one House Stone away from returning to godfather form! I don't intend for him to catch his rat for a while, though...

What about Wormtail?

I don't have an actual answer yet, but I also don't want to ignore this question. Due to Wormtail's existence as an ending-related plot device, he's sitting in the wings until I plan that part of the story. Since my current focus is figuring out my dungeons and how the Harrys reach them, the details of the ending beyond "the day is saved" are on the back-burner. I'd also like to focus on an LoZ-only fic set in this "era" after I finish HP:FSA, which adds to my considerations. Please don't feel the need to suggest endings for me; I want to write one that follows naturally from wherever this narrative goes and also suits my writing priorities.

*SPOILERS END*

On my Tumblr, I've posted a full Oracle of Seasons/Ages style map of the Hogwarts grounds under the "map" tag on the navigation post! In particular, it includes details of what the game-ified version of the Black Lake would look like, if you're curious. Moving on, content warning: this chapter includes probably the hardest dissociation episode that'll happen in this fic, and Malfoy asphyxiates a little later on.

"You alright there, Harry?" One of the Weasley twins leaned over the back of the couch. The hand-knitted sweater he wore had an "F" on it, so it was probably George.

"No," he said.

"We've got Honeydukes candy. Want some chocolate? You look like you need some."

"Sure," Harry said. "Wait. Hogsmeade trips are still off. Where did you get Honeydukes candy?"

The other twin popped up and dropped the last third of a dense, red-wrapped candy bar on his chest. "Honeydukes, of course! It might be raining hippogryffs, but we have our ways."

Harry peeled back the wrapper and took a nibble of chocolate. The warm, mildly bitter sweetness helped take his mind off of the memories of cold, dark, endless water. "Thanks," he said with a weak smile.

"Did you and your friends get into a little too much mischief?" George asked. "I heard Ron blew up the potions lab today. Kudos to him, but we're docking points for it being on accident."

"And Lavender's been complaining to everyone who'll listen that Hermione woke her up by screaming bloody murder at three in the morning."

Harry savored a lump of chocolate before asking, "Have you ever been in deep water before?"

"No. Mum starts yelling at us if we go more than shoulder-deep at the beach," Fred said.

"Well, it's scarier than you'd think." He took another little bite of chocolate and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. "There was something down there. Or maybe there wasn't. There was so much nothing, my eyes were making things up. I was just…floating. In space. If Hermione hadn't been there, I—" His eyes burned and his throat went tight. Harry dug his nails into his palms and took a steadying breath. He remembered the stars hanging peaceful and still, then vanishing and shifting in the wake of things best left unknown and unseen. Harry didn't think he'd be able to look at the night sky the same way again. "It was worse than that temple we went to. It was just empty caves and water and the only things that hurt us were some sharp rocks, but it was the scariest place I've ever been. I'd rather walk on a floor of bones than have no floor at all."

The twins exchanged concerned frowns. "Not to sound all responsible here, but maybe you should talk to a teacher about this," Fred told him. "I think you need more than a chocolate bar."

"I'll be fine," Harry told them. He'd been saying that to himself so many times today that he wasn't quite sure whether he'd actually said it aloud that time. "Gonna dive into the Black Lake after classes on Saturday. I have to find the last temple before everyone drowns. It's probably on the lake bottom."

George's eyes went wide. "Before everyone drowns?"

Fred gripped the edge of the couch and leaned over farther. "Harry, the bottom of the lake's over a hundred and twenty meters down," he said urgently.

"Yeah, I know. Read it in Hogwarts, A History." He took another bite of chocolate. "That's fine. At least it isn't a cave this time."

Fred put a hand on his shoulder. "Do we need to have Percy haul you off to a teacher?"

"No, I'm okay. Thanks for the chocolate." Harry blinked and saw cyan constellations superimposed over the ceiling. "It's good." He spent a while sucking on a block of candy and watching the stars while the twins retreated to whisper at each other.

George stepped back toward the couch. "Did Ron say…Er, do you know what Ron saw down there?" he asked.

"A dead guy," Harry answered. "Malfoy said the fish probably ate his eyes."

The twins gave him slow blinks, then looked over their shoulders at the boys' dorms.

George thumped his way up the staircase and Fred pulled Harry into a sitting position by his shoulders. "You're going to the Hospital Wing," he said in a voice that left no room for argument. It was an older-sibling tone the twins rarely used with Ron. "Up you get."

"Okay." Harry stood on wobbling legs. The soreness in his muscles was a distant thing. He'd felt floaty all day, as though his mind were still bobbing in the abyss. He took another nibble from the chocolate bar. "Can I take this with me?"

"Yes, absolutely." Fred steered him toward the portrait opening. "Oi, Angelina!" he called to across the room, making his year-mate look up from her homework. "Could you fetch Hermione and tell her to go to the Hospital Wing?"

"Er, sure?" the girl said, watching Fred usher Harry out of the common room.

Harry idly let himself be pushed along. He was on land, there was air and light, and he had a nice bit of chocolate. He was having a pretty good day, all things considered.

Harry stared at the board. There were words on it that were in English, but for some reason he couldn't read them. Huh. That was weird.

What class was he in? The teacher was tall and scary and yelling at him. Ah, Potions, then. Harry set down his knife and stared up at Snape until the man went away. He didn't know what he'd done wrong, but then again, he didn't have to be doing something wrong for Snape to be mad at him.

Now he was in a spare classroom. What class was this? Care for Magical Creatures? Oh, there were plants. The Herbology classes had been moved indoors because the greenhouses were flooded. Right. Harry stood and stared at his pot until Yellow took his hands and showed him what he should be doing. Then he diligently pruned the angry, snapping whatever-it-was until Yellow's hands told him to stop.

The teacher was small and squeaky now. He was in Charms. Did that mean today was Tuesday? He had Charms on Tuesdays.

Why was the professor right in front of him? He was saying things, like Snape had been. Quieter, though. Harry kind of heard the words, but kind of not. Professor Flitwick was worried about him. Why?

Harry was out in the halls for some reason. Dimly, he recognized that he was supposed to be in class right now. His brothers were leading him somewhere. He figured they had a good reason to take him out of class, even if he didn't understand it.

He now sat on a cot. Madam Pomfrey was there. Distant alarm broke through the fuzz wrapping Harry's brain. Had he hurt himself? He looked down. There wasn't blood anywhere. He was sure he would have noticed if he'd blown himself up with a mispronounced charm. He didn't remember casting any spells today.

Madam Pomfrey gave him a bottle of something. Harry drank it.

Words started having sound again.

"Green?" Yellow laid a hand on Harry's knee. "How are you feeling?"

"Erm." Harry put a hand to his head. He felt…heavier. The meaning of things had settled back in. "Today's…Tuesday?"

"Yes, it is," Yellow agreed. "Do you know what class you were just in?"

"Charms," Harry said. "Shouldn't I be in class right now? Why am I here?"

"You've been spacing out hard all day and it freaked Professor Flitwick out. He said Madam Pomfrey would have something for it," Red said. "I'm guessing you can hear us now."

"I could hear you before. I just…couldn't make the words make sense." Harry closed his eyes and tried to summon up the memories of that day. They were dim and wispy, like the memories the Four Sword sometimes showed him. He could feel impressions of having done things, but he didn't actually remember most of it. "I definitely didn't pass today's classwork in Potions," he groaned. He could definitely recall the yelling that had happened that morning. "Snape was really mad. What did I do?"

"Well, first you were slicing instead of chopping, then you weren't responding to his questions, and then you were being a 'disturbing little nuisance'," Blue listed off. "After he realized something was actually wrong with you, he left you alone and bothered the rest of us instead. You didn't even make a potion today. Snape turned off the fire under your cauldron and you didn't notice."

"Oh." At least he hadn't blown up the classroom while he'd been unable to pay attention.

"Alright, now that your brothers have made sure you're up-to-speed again, it's time for you to get some rest," Madam Pomfrey declared. She shooed the other Harrys away and laid a heavy hand on Harry's shoulder to push him down onto the cot.

"But I have Charms and Astronomy left today," Harry protested. "Isn't it bad if I skip?"

Madam Pomfrey pulled a blanket up to his chest. "In the state you're in, it's best if you take the time to get yourself back in order," she told him.

"We'll explain to the teachers, Green," Yellow soothed. "You just get some sleep, okay?"

Well, Harry was tired. He shut his eyes and drifted off.

Harry peered through a telescope with his tongue poking out, charting a particularly tricky constellation. The stars really didn't want to sit still tonight. Every time he found what he was looking for, it slipped away the moment he went to write its position down.

"Professor Sinistra, it's not sitting still," he complained. "Can I chart another—?"

He was alone in the dark classroom. Pages of recently abandoned notes lay next to the other telescopes.

Harry turned back to his own telescope. Just in case everyone came back, he didn't want to wind up behind in his classwork. It was bad enough that he'd totally spaced out through all his other classes today.

Blue-green stars swayed in the viewfinder. They danced like smoke, laughing at him as he begged them to stay still. Were they really even stars at all? There were no constellations to be seen.

The sky flowed down through his scope and swallowed him in a cold embrace. Harry sank like a stone, inexplicably paralyzed. He watched the green stars swirl past him. The silvery light of the moon rose into the distance until it was only a twinkling memory. Still, Harry fell into endless, airless space.

Suddenly, the stars moved. All of them in the same direction, as if a magnet had tugged them all sideways. A sound that wasn't a sound—the feeling of the deepest noise he could imagine—filled the water. Harry could only watch as the stars continued following the unseen something, forming a ghostly outline around it as they parted around a form he couldn't quite make out.

The moon reappeared in the sky, a soft white jewel that outshone all the dull green dots around it. Harry's heart leapt. The surface was right there!

Darkness lowered over the moon, sending it through all its phases in seconds. When it lifted, Harry realized that wasn't the moon at all—it was the unfathomably large eye of the Thing that lurked behind the stars.

The unseen head turned and a starless void opened before Harry.

He awoke screaming just as it swallowed him.

Saturday, Nov 14

Saturday afternoon. The day Blue had been dreading. He twisted his hands in his bedclothes as he watched Yellow and Red leave the dorm. Then he set his sights on Green, the instigator of his gnawing unease.

"This is beyond idiotic. You're asking to die of fright, is what you're doing," Blue said. "You were in and out of shock for two days. Madam Pomfrey had you drinking Calming Draughts before bed until yesterday."

Green waved off his concerns. "I'm fine, Blue, I keep telling you. I've had all week to get over it."

"I had to make you a night light so you could sleep."

"And then I started sleeping again! Problem solved." Green pulled a pair of swimming trunks out of his stirred mess of clothes. They were oversized cast-offs like most of their Muggle clothing, made wearable only by their drawstring waist.

"You're not fine. You're traumatized and in denial."

"So long as I can act fine, I am fine. It's not like we don't have experience with that."

Blue tossed his hands up with a cry of frustration. He'd spent the last week watching his brother shuffle from class to class, spend meals staring glassily at the wall, and stumble his way through blotchy, scratchily written schoolwork. Green's last Transfiguration essay had gotten a "D".

Ron and Hermione had been similarly out-of-sorts. Hermione jumped at any sound and rarely went anywhere on her own. If she wasn't with Ron or any of the Harrys, she was contributing to her dorm-mates' conversations or hanging in Percy's orbit. She had been sleeping in the common room as of late. Ron was pale and quiet. Like Hermione, he gravitated toward groups of people. Unlike her, he didn't insert himself into conversations. He just shifted his gaze from face to face, as if he kept forgetting what they looked like. Ginny, Fred, and George had been sitting with him in the common room more often and checking on him between classes.

Malfoy was difficult to get a read on. Blue had been informed of the Slytherin's ancestral situation by a dull-voiced Green on Monday, but he had yet to determine how Malfoy's aquatic adaptations had affected his level of trauma. Hermione had expressly forbidden him to ask about it and he couldn't bring himself to go behind her back and do so anyway. The haunted look in her eyes as she'd wearily pleaded with him had been enough to convince him to limit himself to observing the blond in class. Malfoy, like Ron, had been quieter than usual. During the school day, he walked the halls with Crabbe and Goyle in tow. After class, he added Dog to his complement of guards. He'd been wearing a set of big, round, dark green shades since Thursday, spending his classes listening to instructions and studiously blending in. He only spouted one halfway-nasty comment on Monday after Ron had made his Wiggenweld Potion boil over so fiercely that it turned into a slime-spewing explosive. Clearly the experience he'd had the previous weekend had affected him, but Blue didn't know whether the boy was as badly shaken as the others.

Given that at least three of the seven people going on this foolhardy lake excursion were halfway toward having nervous breakdowns, Blue would have liked to know whether it was going to be kept to those three or extend to more than half of their group. He speculated that Ron was going to lose it first, given what he'd seen in the caves. Hermione would probably be second. She had seen the same things as Green, but she didn't have years of experience in suppressing unhelpful thoughts. Green seemed to be the most stable of the three, but he might have been internally screaming even louder than Ron, for all Blue knew. Harry Potter could be very good at sweeping his broken shards together and arranging them into a convincing facade.

The teams for this incredibly stupid venture were as such: Group 1 would include Hermione, Green, and Yellow, while Group 2 was comprised of Malfoy, Ron, Red, and Blue. Pairing Malfoy and Ron was a potentially explosive combination, but Blue wanted to keep Hermione and Green together. They had supported each other in the caves, so he reasoned they might be able to do the same in the depths of the lake. Or maybe their shared traumas would crash into one another and send both of them spinning to pieces. Blue didn't claim to be an expert in psychology; he was well aware he was taking a gamble on his loved ones' mental health.

What else could he do, though? The four idiots insisted on finding that infernal temple, no matter what protests Blue put forth. Red was happy to go along with the idea and Yellow was just as horrified as Green at the idea of Hogwarts being totally flooded, so Blue was fighting a lonely crusade against six dissenting voices. Once he'd realized he was arguing with a brick wall, he'd done his best to make the trip as smooth as possible instead. He'd had Green ask Ruka where the temple might be, and the Zora had said he could lead them there. Then Blue had organized the groups. During the week, he'd filched a couple of Wiggenweld Potions from Madam Pomfrey's cabinet. He felt guilty for pilfering medical supplies, but Hermione was too rattled to be brewing tricky potions and it was safer than stealing from Snape. He had also dug a book of camping spells out of the library and forced everyone to memorize the incantation and wand movement of a Warming Charm. Finally, on Wednesday, he'd roped the other Harrys into sacrificing a pair of overlarge, frequently-patched old jeans to make wand sheaths for them to wear while swimming. The thick cuffs would be pulled up to rest on their upper arms and featured extended, upward-facing pockets with lids that tied shut, since the Harrys didn't have spare buttons sitting around. Getting their wands out wouldn't happen quickly, but at least it would free up their hands if they needed to sacrifice the ability to cast Lumos in exchange for being able to swim faster.

"Everyone else is ready and waiting in the common room," Green said as he tied his shoes. He wore a T-shirt, swimming trunks, shoes with no socks, and his wand sheath. Nothing else, unless his sword counted. He stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Come on, Blue. We all have to go, or we'll get hit with separation sickness again."

Blue grimaced, remembering the agony that had gripped him when Green had fallen across dimensions. While his pain tolerance was higher than most thirteen-year-olds', he wasn't the toughest among his siblings. The interminable stabbing in the base of his skull and the core of his soul had been enough to knock him into the deepest state of unconsciousness he'd ever experienced. Madam Pomfrey had said he'd been nearly comatose. Now, when pain began throbbing at the back of his head, it always inspired a mild thrill of panic.

"Fine, I'll get dressed," Blue said with a scowl, "but I won't be happy about it."

Green shrugged. "Good enough." He walked out of the dorm, an affected spring in his step.

'If he loses his mind underwater, I'm going to shower him in I-told-you-sos,' Blue thought venomously as he got changed. He'd thought Red was the thick one, but no, it was Green. He combined the best and worst of his separated aspects. In this case, he was channeling some of the worst: Blue's bullheadedness, Red's careless attitude toward danger, and Yellow's compulsion to force enthusiasm under even the worst of circumstances.

With great reluctance, he dressed in an outfit identical to Green's (since they had copies of the same clothes) and checked his bag. The Wiggenweld Potion was where he'd put it, wrapped in a ragged T-shirt to keep the glass bottle safe. Yellow's bag held the other potion, since Blue didn't currently trust Hermione to keep her head in an emergency. With his affairs in order, he stomped downstairs. Ron, Hermione, and the other Harrys were milling around the fire in their swimming outfits, drawing confused looks from other people in the common room. Fred and George were bickering with Ron in low voices and Yellow was winding Hermione's braided hair into a knob on the back of her head. He secured it with an elastic hair tie and bobby pins as Blue joined Green by the podium that held the Hylian Bestiary.

"I'm ready," Blue growled.

Green pasted on a Yellow-ish smile. "Great! We can head out now." He waved for everyone to follow him.

"Sorry, gotta go," Ron said shortly to his brothers, stepping away from them.

"If you do this, I'm going to pull a Percy. You hear me?" one of the twins hissed. "I'm gonna tell!" Ron's shoulders hitched up, but he continued following Green toward the door.

Blue stopped by the fireplace. "You'd better not include me in that confession," he said. "I kept trying to tell them this was a bad idea. The sole reason I'm going is because I'm the only one with sense and they need supervision."

The duo eyed him suspiciously. "Fine, I'll try to spare you, but you'd better bring our baby doofus back alive," said the more talkative of the two. Fred, maybe? "Harry said the rain wasn't going to stop until you found this place under the lake, otherwise we'd cast a Full Body-Bind on all of you and levitate your sorry arses into McGonagall's office."

"Next time you hear them planning things like this, you'd better tell us," George said sternly. "We could help, at least. Do you know how good we are at potions? If we had money for ingredients, we could stock Snape's stores."

"Hell, we could make more staffs like the one Hermione waves around if she told us the chants for it and we had the materials. We learn quick."

"So tell us when you need some help breaking the rules, toss us a Sickle or two, and we'll try to make sure something like this," George jabbed his thumb toward the portrait opening, "doesn't leave all of you twitchy emotional wrecks. We'd like to be able to play pranks on you without landing you in the psych ward at St. Mungos. Alright?"

Blue nodded seriously, and a deal was struck. Of all the people to tattle to about what his friends and brothers were getting into, the twins were a good choice.

He picked up his pace and caught up to the rest of the group while they were in the middle of fighting two particularly squirrelly Ice Wizzrobes. The cackling toucans were dodging Disarming Charms with quick, erratic teleports that had everyone constantly spinning around, searching for the next place to aim. Blue hung back and watched for a bit. Were the monsters learning? It used to be that one could cast Expelliarmus at a Wizzrobe and the bird wouldn't notice the attack until it hit.

Unsheathing his sword, he stepped into the fray. A Wizzrobe appeared in front of him with its back in his direction, and he hit it with a hard slash. It wobbled and teleported by Ron, who bashed it with his shield. The group switched to physical attacks only and bounced the birds between their members one hit at a time until the Wizzrobes wailed and vanished.

"That was new," Green said, a hint of worry infecting his put-on cheer. "Er, did anyone get hurt?"

Red slipped off his shoe to smash the ice-coated side of it on the floor. "My foot's a little cold, but I'm alright," he said.

"The enemies in the temple might be smarter, too," Blue commented idly to Green. He kept his tone light, but narrowed his eyes sharply. "Are you up to it?"

"Hogwarts isn't going to flood any slower if I waste another week sitting around," Green said. "The lake started overflowing two days ago and the pool in the Forbidden Forest is moving up to meet it. Hagrid's cabin is sitting in centimeters of water. Who even knows what's happened to Hogsmeade! There's no time, Blue." He turned on his heel and resumed leading the way toward the stairs.

Blue set his jaw and followed. His brother wasn't wrong. As far as Blue was aware, there was literally nothing that could destroy Vaati's curse-maintaining eyes but the Four Sword. They had to do this, and their time to reach the temple was running out. He just wished they didn't have to make this dive when Green was still having nightmares. Ron and Hermione didn't have to be there at all, but the other Harrys weren't turning them away and no one was listening to Blue. He could only hope that Malfoy at least had his head on straight.

They met up with Malfoy and Dog on the first floor. Dog, with an expression of annoyed resignation, was laying on the floor with the blond sitting on top of him. "He tried to drag me back to the dungeons," Malfoy explained. "I picked him up and carried him with me, which took most of the fight out of him." He looked down smugly at his pet, who growled in a disgruntled fashion.

He got up to join the group and Dog sat up with a shrill bark of protest.

"Just go back to the dungeons and keep an eye on Crabbe and Goyle. It'll take your mind off of things until I get back," Malfoy said. "If you try to stop me again, I can just pick you up and take you out to the lake with me. Then you'll be stuck outside the dungeons until Professor Snape says you're dry enough. Do you want that?"

Dog laid down with a whine, his ears flattening.

"That's what I thought."

They got ready for their trip outside. Yellow passed out the wand holsters, everyone applied Impervius Charms to their shoes, and everyone but Malfoy received a Warming Charm. Then they stepped into the downpour with Dog's worried yelps ringing in their ears.

Even with the Warming Charm, the sudden flood of water hammering at his head and shoulders made Blue jump. It had been raining like this for two weeks? He could hardly fathom how hard it was pouring. He'd seen it from the windows and heard descriptions from his brothers, but it was a different thing to be in the thick of it.

Upon experiencing the weather for himself, Blue could definitely sympathize with Green's fervor to solve the last temple. His brother had been going out once a day to check the damage and speak with Ruka, getting an up-close eyeful of the damage to the campus as he did. The grounds of Hogwarts were so rain-beaten and waterlogged that the grass was permanently plastered flat against the soupy soil. Blue could see where the ground had been sliding, pulling away from the castle in the grips of gravity. He put on the Lenses of Truth and looked into the distance. Water completely filled every dip in the ground, no matter the size. A rainwater moat pushed against the wall around the school, washing over anything not far enough uphill. The Whomping Willow, which they passed on the way to the lake, was sagging in apparent exhaustion, some of its roots raised to escape the water pooling at its base. The greenhouses were in at least thirty centimeters of water. Water, water, everywhere. Hogwarts was on its way to emulating the Old Hyrule.

Blue looked up. Black clouds spread in every direction like an airborne ocean. He couldn't see where they ended. What other lakes might have flooded? How many towns and villages?

He gritted his teeth. They absolutely had to break Vaati's curse on the castle and shatter the magic keeping these stolen clouds here. It was just…Dammit, why had Shadow Harry had to send Blue's brother and friends through a set of terrifying sea caverns right before those same people had to dive into the belly of an equally deep lake? Maybe the creature had done it for fun, or some twisted idea of forcing his victims to toughen up, but traumatizing one of the people that he wanted to wanted to face in a fair fight certainly wasn't doing him any favors!

'I hope Vaati found him and made that punishment hurt,' Blue thought vindictively. He wanted the shadow to suffer horribly for every nightmare he'd inflicted.

The Black Lake yawned far out of its usual bounds. It had risen well above its usual shoreline, high enough that it could gobble up the relatively flat land surrounding it. Blue couldn't even begin to guess where the original edge of it had been; there was just a rippling gray expanse of rain-patterned water now.

Everyone slipped off their shoes and waded in. Blue felt an unpleasant thrill go up his spine as the water enveloped his legs. The Warming Charm muted the effects of the temperature, but the knowledge of how cold the water likely was still made him want to leap out of it. He reinforced the charm, just in case. After the group stopped on a stretch of submerged sand close to the castle, Blue slashed his wand out and incanted one of the new spells he'd drilled himself in over the course of the week. "Verdimillious!" His wand spat an orb of green that stopped over the middle of the lake and exploded in a cloud of brilliant sparks. The magical flare crackled in the air for ten seconds before vanishing.

A head rose out of the water in the distance, then a hand giving a friendly wave. Ruka disappeared under the water, then jetted out with incredible speed, shooting through the air like an arrow. In two more gliding leaps, he made it to the shore.

"Hi! How go you?" he rasped cheerily in English.

"How are you," Malfoy corrected sharply. "We've been over this."

Ruka put a hand on his hip. "How arrre you?" he drawled, rolling the "r" and shooting Malfoy a look.

Green returned his greeting in English and then started chatting with him in Hylian. Blue half-closed his eyes and tried to pick up on the words. Green and Ruka spoke so fast that he couldn't pick out much, except for Ruka's alternately sibilant and staccato accent. The language sounded vaguely European, but he couldn't place what general region it reminded him of. Green's (presumably standard) pronunciation was rather French and the language itself was just Latin and German-adjacent enough for some of the words to be semi-recognizable. While he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to get the hang of Green's throaty Hylian "r"s, Blue found his determination to learn the language renewed. He needed to find a way to have Green teach him, once his brother was on more emotionally stable ground.

Their conversation ended in a set of nods and Green turned around with shoulders squared and a look of hard determination in his eyes. "Alright, we're heading in! Get your earrings on!" Green called. "And wear your glasses, too. The earrings don't count the same as other artifacts."

Blue called up the Zora Earring and shuffled over to join his group for the trip. Ron and Malfoy, surprisingly, weren't sending one another death glares. The former just looked pale and nervous, while the latter was doing his best to seem aristocratically aloof. Red was busy seeing how deep he could bury his feet in the sand by wiggling his toes. He had them in up to the ankles. Blue exasperatedly tugged his brother free from the muck and rounded his team together.

"I'm going to be using a modified blue Lumos, so if you need help or you need us to surface, swim for the blue light and give a two tugs on my robes," he said. "I want us to swim in pairs, as well. Holding hands, like Hermione and Harry did in the caverns."

Malfoy's face pinched. "We aren't a bunch of girls, Potter. Besides, we'd only slow one another down if we were holding hands, as well as our wands, while swimming."

He had a good point there. Blue hadn't thought much about the mechanics of it when he'd come up with that idea, just keeping Ron from panicking.

"Ron can hold onto me anyway," Red volunteered. "I heard from Green that it can get a little freaky when there's no ground for too long, so grabbing onto someone helps." He put an arm around Ron's shoulders, to which the anxious boy responded with a tremulous smile.

They lit their wands and slogged through the water after Ruka. Blue took point with thankfully little protest from Malfoy. He was sure the Slytherin would swim ahead out of impatience, but Blue trusted him not to get separated from the group.

As one, they dove. Blue had to fight against the learned reflex of holding his breath and closing his eyes. Much like the feeling of not immediately freezing upon entering the water, it was uncanny in a way his instincts didn't much like. Magic bent the rules in ways he was still getting used to.

The uppermost level of the lake was clear thanks to the rain, but the murk wasn't too far below. Blue tried very hard not to speculate about where some of that fog in the water might have come from. The castle's toilets drained into the—no, not thinking about it. He distracted himself by checking on his group. Malfoy was still with them, though pulling ahead toward the lights of Group 1. Ron had taken Red up on his offer. He had his wand in his cuff pocket and gripped Red's upper right arm to leave them both with one free hand to swim with. He was wide-eyed and pale under the blue light of his magical earring's enchantment, but he was still moving with the group.

After moving away from the shore, they started going straight down. Down, down, down, into the deepest part of the lake. Blue's heart started beating faster as visibility fell. He was increasingly aware of how far the surface was, how far the bottom was, and how much nothing there was in between. Oh, sure, he occasionally saw a fish flitting away from the light of his wand, but he was essentially hanging in empty space. He bit his lower lip, remembering the stomach-dropping panic of going to the wrong side of a pool and having the ground fall away. He had learned to swim since then (as a matter of survival, since Dudley had gone through a phase of throwing him into the deep end of the community pool), but that feeling now pulled at his gut.

Waving fronds of towering seaweed began appearing from the dark green void. Blue screamed when he spotted one ouf of the corner of his eye, only to mentally slap himself when he recognized what it was. The unnerving plants were pitch black where they weren't lit up by his wand, reaching for him like shadowy hands. He gave the dark tendrils a generous berth, hoping Red would follow his light and do the same. The Black Lake was home to a multitude of unpleasant creatures, most of whom resided in its aquatic forests and the caves dotting the stone cliffs by the castle.

Blue was relieved to see coarse sand come into view. They were at the bottom! They were almost there! He was surprised they hadn't been accosted by merpeople by now, actually. While he didn't know much more than was printed in Hogwarts, A History, he was certain the tribe of Selkies living in the lake didn't care for visitors. In fact, they'd been known to push students out of the lake if they ventured too far in—either in a show of territoriality or to keep the foolish human children from drowning in the deep water. Where had the merpeople gone?

Blue noticed a shift in the atmosphere as he continued following the Illumination Charms and the sloping lake bottom ahead of him. The lights were going from a bright gold to a tad gray. It was colder, even through the Warming Charm, and the water felt heavier. Though the magical earring negated the effects of water pressure (as evidenced by the fact that Green and co. hadn't suffered a horrific bout of the bends after their expedition), a leaden force seemed to press him toward the lake bottom. His limbs, already tired from the trip down, started slowing even more and every breath came with more difficulty. Was the water getting thicker? Was the green fog turning purple? He swore his eyes were playing tricks on him. Why would there be anything purple in the lake?

A limp body hanging in the water entered his field of view and Blue froze in fright. He almost fired a Sunburst Spell out of reflex. With the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears, Blue held out his wand with a shaking hand to see what he had come across.

Pale green skin and woolen gray trunks. It was Malfoy.

He let out a breath he didn't remember holding and swam up to the Slytherin. Blue stuck his wand between his teeth and turned the boy over. Malfoy wasn't quite unconscious, just dazed. His luminous eyes were half-shut and unfocused, but he was awake enough to push weakly at Blue's hands. Blue ignored Malfoy's mild protests and looked him over, trying to figure out the problem. Blue wasn't a strong enough swimmer to pull the boy along, so if they were going to catch up to Group 1, he needed to sort this out.

The freckles on Malfoy's cheeks and nose, which glowed softly in the water and reflected any hint of illumination, were currently flashing violet in the light of Blue's wand. Blue looked from the boy to the water around them. The cloudy darkness and swirls of suspended particles made it hard to tell, but the green had indeed shifted toward purple at some point. Well, green-black to violet-black, but still. Blue was puzzled. That stuff clearly wasn't natural to the lake, but what was it? Vaati's dark magic? Some kind of…

'Oh hell, it might be poison,' Blue realized. Ron had mentioned finding a corpse in a tunnel full of purple stuff; that diver could very well have died from ingesting that substance somehow.

He peered at Malfoy's neck. More purple, this time forming an unhealthy tinge around the boy's weakly fluttering gills. If Blue didn't know better, the boy looked like he was starting to suffocate. Assuming the water was the cause of Malfoy's condition, Blue needed to get him to switch to air ASAP.

Blue gave Malfoy a hard shake to rouse him. The Slytherin flailed, almost catching Blue on the chin with one swinging fist. Blue caught one flapping arm and waved his hand in front of Malfoy's face. "It's me, you idiot!"

The aristocrat kicked himself upright and gave him a venomous glare. Blue took his wand out of his mouth and pointed to his earring. "Summon this," he mouthed. "Sum-mon."

Malfoy rolled his eyes and pointed to his gills.

"Do it," Blue said.

"Why?"

One hundred meters underwater wasn't the place for an argument, especially when neither party could speak aloud or in sign language. "Put. It. On," Blue growled into his soundproofed air bubble. If Malfoy continued being difficult, he could always strangle the stubborn git to get his point across.

Red and Ron stopped next to him. Ron wasn't quite wrapped around Red's shoulders yet, but he was halfway there. He was half-hidden behind Blue's brother, his wide eyes locked on the shifting seaweed forests around them.

"What's wrong?" Red mouthed.

Blue pointed at his neck, then at Malfoy.

Red swam over with Ron in tow and peered at Malfoy's gills. "Whoa. That's not good," he mouthed. "Malfoy, earring. Wear it." He flicked the Slytherin's ear.

Malfoy gave Red an annoyed shove and then summoned his earring. His face blinked into visibility, now surrounded by a halo of blue light.

"Happy now?" he snapped.

Red nodded approvingly and ruffled his hair. "Good boy." He ducked Malfoy's lunge for him with a playful grin and swam with Ron toward the distant, fuzzy glow of Group 1's lit wands.

Malfoy watched him go with a scowl and then set his sights on Blue. He flitted through the water and seized Blue by the sleeve. "Why?" he demanded, pointing at the earring.

Blue gestured vaguely around them. "Poison," he mouthed. "In the water."

The hostility left Malfoy's face, replaced by alarm. "Poison?" A look of realization came over him. One of his hands drifted toward his gills, which had clamped shut but retained their unhealthy tint. "The merpeople. Oh." He looked off to the side, toward something hidden beyond the seaweed forests.

If Blue remembered correctly, the Selkie colony of Hogwarts resided in a village on the lake bottom, right in the middle. Assuming the entire belly of the lake was filled with this mysterious contaminant, they would have been among the first to be affected. That explained why they hadn't gone out to investigate the foolish human children swimming into their domain; either they had suffocated from the poison or they were giving the area a wide berth to avoid it. Blue wanted to ask Malfoy how long the water might have been like this, or what the effects of the poison felt like, but there was no way to do so without it turning into a time-consuming match of Charades.

"Come on," he said, pulling Malfoy behind him.

The lights of the others thankfully hadn't gone too much farther while they'd dawdled; Group 1 must have stopped to wait. Malfoy swam sluggishly behind him, and Blue wasn't doing much better. The water's consistency hadn't changed, yet his limbs screamed like he was forcing them through honey. His lungs ached—not because his air was running scarce, but because it felt as though a thick rubber band were keeping his chest from inflating too far. He squinted through the water at the distant gold…gray…purple lights? The colors around him were starting to run, shifting between what they should have been and what the tinted water turned them into.

They arrived at a black crevice in the cliffs by the castle with a few brightly-glowing rocks—likely charmed by Hermione—sitting outside it. Blue picked up one of the fist-sized stones and turned it over. Odd that the first group hadn't waited for them.

Oh, wait, they had a water-breather with them, too. And unlike Malfoy, Ruka didn't have an enchanted object that let him switch to air whenever he wanted. Had they taken him with them into the temple? If he was too insensate to swim, that would be the quickest way to get him out of the water. Blue pursed his lips. He wasn't sure about bringing a random unequipped Zora into a Hylian temple. Ruka didn't have any artifacts or spells to help him fight monsters.

They all entered the wide crack in the rock, which led to a narrow vertical passageway. A greenish circle of light twinkled a few meters over their heads. Ron, surprisingly, was the first to swim up. He managed to beat even Malfoy, all limbs working to propel him toward the light with desperate speed. Blue was the last out of the hole. His hands hit rough, crusty sand as he dragged himself out of the water. More sand immediately stuck to him, and he grimaced. Great, the fourth temple was a beach.

Notes:

-I don't interact much with the speculative/theorizing side of the Zelda fandom, but I feel like Link and anyone taking his role should be a little bit messed up by the end of their first big destiny-quest, you know? Better off in some ways, but with at least a few lasting scars. The memories of the sea caves are going to take some time to fade.

-Don't mind me setting up a potential item-getting mechanic via the Weasley twins~ I never know when I might need a thing like that later.

-A few merpeople died from the poison pooling on the lake bottom before they realized what was up, but they managed to evacuate successfully! They're currently hiding out in shallower areas.