Chapter Twelve—Heart of a Lion
Dear Harry,
You can't imagine how much of a surprise it was for me to read the word "Hyrule" in your last letter. I have heard of the place, but I know nothing about it. Peter stumbled across it once, I think, in some book or another which only mentioned "the great, lost civilization of Hyrule, under the ocean." We fully intended to find out everything we could, and of course we talked about finding and excavating it one day, but it was only the next month that your father and Sirius put two and two together about me, and all our attention turned to the Animagus transformation. Hyrule fell onto the backburner, and we never thought about it again. I had forgotten about it entirely until you mentioned it.
So, thank you for answering the one question that Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs never really got around to.
Harry could almost hear Remus' sad smile in his voice, the one that silently spoke in the back of Harry's mind as he read the letter Hedwig had just brought him. Only one of their inseparable foursome had gotten to find out the truth about Hyrule.
It sounds like a fascinating place, and I'd love to get a chance to meet Zelda and Link firsthand. Dumbledore sent a letter to the Order about them as well, and he said that the three of you have gotten quite attached. Neither one of you really said much about their personalities, though. So what are they like? A noble queen and a great warrior?
Harry almost laughed out loud. Even as he sat in the common room, he could hear them bickering in the background from Link's dorm. ("Zel, I'm telling you, it's no big deal!" "I swear to all three goddesses, Link, sometimes…") Their arguments were as omnipresent as Ron and Hermione's, and twice as childish, not to mention entertaining. Strange how some people just showed their mutual affection that way.
Not much is new here. At least, not anything half so interesting as what's going on there. The usual occasional bits of information come in, but I don't think it's anything you would really care about. No, I'm not just saying that. No, I don't think you're too young to handle it. And no, it's not just the fact that I don't want to put things like that in writing. It's the truth.
Keep me updated on how thing's are going on your end. Your match against Hufflepuff is coming up soon, isn't it?
Good luck!
From, Remus
Harry pulled out his own piece of parchment to scribble a reply to Remus, just enough to say that their Quidditch match was, in fact, the next day. He would send along a more in depth letter afterwards, and explain then about Zelda and Link: how they acted like normal people, how they were such great friends to each other and everyone else, how skilled they were, how interesting they were, how they both had a gift for knowing what people were thinking…
In short, how they just reminded him why every moment of life was worth living to the fullest.
Of course, Link and Zelda couldn't presume to be a part of life at Hogwarts without undergoing one critical experience: witnessing a Quidditch game.
Sadly, they had arrived too late in the years for the season opener of Gryffindor versus Slytherin, but the match against Hufflepuff also promised to be a good one. Over breakfast the Saturday morning of the game, Harry and Ron attempted to explain the rules of the game to the Hylians, something they had meant to do before (since the library books had proven to be not much help, being written mostly for people who already understood the sport) but hadn't gotten around to. It was not easy, since they had no reference sports like rugby or football to compare to. The whole concept of scoring points, having teams and players and positions, was really unlike anything they had in Hyrule. Zelda never had the luxury of childhood games, and Link's early years had been so full of play that there were really never any formal games with established rules and strategy; life was a game.
"Wait a minute," Link interrupted, after Harry explained about his role as Seeker. Harry waited patiently for the question, watching the searching expression on Link's face as he tried to find words to explain what he didn't understand. "Okay," he said finally. "What's the point of the Snitch?"
Hermione shot a look at Ron, who was biting his lip to keep from laughing.
"My job, the Seeker's job, is to catch the Snitch," Harry reiterated. "When I do, that ends the game and gets our team a hundred and fifty points."
"Okay," Link said, nodding. "I think I get it."
"I don't," Zelda spoke up. "That is, I understand what you're saying, but…doesn't that make the rest of the players irrelevant?"
Harry and Ron stared at her, then each other. Irrelevant? How could any part of the airborne glory that was Quidditch be irrelevant?
"Yes, it does," Hermione answered. "The rest of the game is just to be entertaining, really, and it is fun to watch, but honestly." Nodding towards the boys, she rolled her eyes and added, "Try telling them that the world doesn't revolve around the Quidditch cup."
Zelda nodded sagely. "Ah. It's one of those things, is it?"
"Yes," Hermione agreed.
"One of what things?" Ron asked indignantly.
"One of those boy things that doesn't make any sense," Hermione informed him casually.
"Hey, that's not fair!" Ron objected. "Plenty of girls like Quidditch! What about Ginny?"
"What about me?" asked the Weasley daughter, snapping out of her own conversation a few seats away at the sound of her name.
"Get the rest of the team," Harry instructed her, stopping Ron and Hermione's argument in its tracks. "We should start getting ready for the match."
"Good luck," Hermione called as the two boys rose to leave, followed shortly by their five teammates.
When they were out of earshot, Link demanded of Zelda, "So what are some other 'boy things that don't make sense'?"
"Oh, you know," Zelda sighed. "All your fencing and archery and all that…"
"You like those things," he reminded her defensively. "And what about Sheik?"
"Sheik is a boy," she told him in her most dignified voice.
Link was unperturbed. "Sure he is. You just don't want to admit that I'm right," he decided, smirking.
"I like to spar with you now and then," the queen acknowledged, "but I can also think of any number of fun activities where nobody gets hurt. And I never understood why you and Chezdon felt the urge to settle every little dispute with a wrestling match."
"Because we're brothers," Link informed her, as if this should have been blindingly obvious. He was clearly poised to launch into a lecture on the value of the martial arts.
Hermione, however, cut him off with, "If you're ready, we should go down to the pitch to get good seats."
"Good idea," Zelda agreed, rising to her feet. The look she gave Link told him to drop it, and he only gave a small sigh of annoyance before complying.
Whatever happened today, Harry thought, they couldn't lose. He didn't ever want the Gryffindor team to fail to live up to their image, but especially not in front of Link and Zelda. It occurred to him that their opinions shouldn't have mattered to him, since they knew nothing about the sport, but…for some inexplicable reason, he just wanted to impress them.
Somehow, he rather thought the rest of the team felt the same way. As they walked out onto the pitch, he noticed that all their gazes flicked up to the Gryffindor stands, where the Hylians (not wearing Hogwarts uniforms anymore) stood out colourfully against the mass of black.
"GO GRYFFINDOR!"
Amid the explosive cheers from all sides, Harry wondered if he was just imagining that he could hear one particular voice letting out realistically leonine roar. Whether or not it was a figment of his imagination, it made him grin as he shook hands with the Hufflepuff captain, who said, "Good to see you back, Potter."
"Thanks," Harry replied, smiling even wider. This time last year, he had been banned from playing Quidditch by Dolores Umbridge.
"Mount your brooms!" hollered Madam Hooch, and Harry and thirteen others did so. They were ready to spring into action, and Harry felt himself slipping into that zone of perfect unity with the pitch and his Firebolt and the game of Quidditch.
With a shrill whistle blast, the game began.
In the stands, Zelda jumped slightly in surprise when she saw how quickly Harry shot from the ground, leaving teammates and opponents alike in his wake.
"Wow!" exclaimed Link. "He can really fly, can't he?"
"He really can," Zelda agreed, a smile playing on her lips; Link sounded exactly like he always did when speaking about his daughters' accomplishments.
Meanwhile, Harry's thoughts were so completely focused and clear that they weren't even thoughts; they were instincts. His sense had reached their peak, and he was in a state of feline readiness to pounce when he spotted his prey. The sound of the crowd was white noise, as was the commentary of Toby Wainwright.
This, Harry suddenly realized, was Occlumency.
His mind was blank and controlled, and he was aware of every corner of it. He was void of emotion. He existed in no space and time other than his own body, and there was nothing else in the universe except his broomstick and the Snitch.
And the Bludger that soared at his head. He dodged it easily, without thinking to do so. It didn't touch his pure mental state.
At long last, he really understood what he had been aiming for. It was as if his entire world had slipped into place.
Snitch!
The word popped into his mind when he saw the golden glimmer dart by, and he went to top speed instantly.
"What's Harry doing?" asked Zelda, shouting to be heard over the screaming crowd around her as she noticed a change in the Gryffindor Seeker's behaviour and watched him attentively. On either side of her, Link and Hermione had similarly become more alert. Hermione clasped her hands together in desperate anxiety, and Link was now leaning over the railing of the stands, so far that Zelda thought he was in danger of falling (or would have done if she had really been paying attention to him), holding onto it with a white-knuckled death grip.
"He spotted the Snitch!" Hermione shrieked, wringing her hands tightly. "Already!"
"COME ON, HARRY!" Link shouted. "COME—NO!"
For the Snitch and zoomed directly at a Bludger, and Harry was forced to dive slightly to avoid taking the metal ball to the face. In that brief second, he lost the Snitch. The Hufflepuff Seeker, however, whom Harry only now realized had been tailing him, didn't move quickly enough, and took the Bludger directly to the chest.
As the crowd groaned and shouted in empathetic pain, Harry saw the winded Seeker's face register stunned agony as he slipped on his broom. They were only about twenty feet from the ground, but it would still be a dangerous fall. Harry turned on the spot and made back towards his Hufflepuff counterpart, but the fifth-year boy, whose name Harry could never remember (something he felt guilty about now, for some reason, as if such a thing mattered at all at this moment of all times), only managed a pained gasp as he lost his grip and fell towards the ground.
"No!" Harry shouted out, reaching towards the falling boy. He grabbed desperately, but his hand closed on empty air.
The gasp from the crowd was audible, but the loudest voice was Zelda's.
"No!" she shouted, just as Harry had done, and she lunged forward in the stands even further than Link, reaching towards the young Hufflepuff. Of course she was much too far away to grab him, but she wasn't too far away for her magic to manage. It burst from her open palm in a blast of yellow light, just as a jet of blue shot from the other side of the stands, from Dumbledore's wand.
Both caught the boy, but Zelda's was more powerful. It stopped his fall unequivocally, engulfing him in yellow energy, before easing him slowly to the ground. Only when he had touched did Wainwright announce, "And the Hufflepuff captain is actually not bothering to call a time out as we investigate the condition of their Seeker."
Harry watched Madam Hooch swoop down to land before the wounded player, who looked to be unconscious where he lay in a pool of Zelda's magical energy. Madam Pomfrey as well was running to his side. As the light faded away, though, Harry could see his opponent's eyes fluttering open.
His opponent… Suddenly Harry remembered that he was in the middle of a game. Soaring upwards, he tried to pull his mind back to the task at hand, scanning the air all around him for the Snitch.
It was difficult to focus, though. Besides the fact that a voice in the back of his head was nagging him that it was unfair to get this head start over the Hufflepuff Seeker, even though it was completely within the rules, he was still caught on what had just happened. He had never seen anyone unleash magical power that was greater even than Dumbledore's, especially without so much as the use of a wand. Of course, he had known Zelda was a great witch…but still…
"I hope he's all right," she was muttering worriedly in the stands, oblivious to the fact that as many people had their eyes on her as on the pitch.
"He'll be fine," Link assured her as he gave her shoulders a squeeze, though he sounded slightly concerned himself. "Just a Bludger, right? Harry and Ron said people get hit with them all the time."
Zelda made an annoyed noise in her throat, as though she doubted it, but moments later, the boy was climbing to his feet again. The spectators saw him lay a hand gingerly against his ribcage, but after a jab from Madam Pomfrey's wand, he nodded, picked up his broomstick from where it had fallen nearby, and took to the air again.
"He's okay, folks!" Wainwright shouted, as the match resumed its normal pace.
For twenty more minutes, they played on uninterrupted.
Harry began listening for the score, which would become more relevant to his strategy as it climbed higher. Currently it was forty to thirty for Hufflepuff, but he considered that a good one. It meant Ron was holding his own and remaining relatively calm. Pausing for a moment, he observed as one of the Hufflepuff Chasers wove towards Ron's end to shoot.
"Come on, Ron…" Harry muttered to himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw sudden movement. Looking up sharply, he saw the Hufflepuff Seeker zooming downwards. Harry's first impulse was to follow suit, but there was something odd about that dive. It didn't look direct enough, somehow.
Confirming Harry's suspicion, the Golden Snitch just then made its appearance elsewhere, circling only a few feet about the grass, directly below Harry, who gave a shout of laughter. His opponent was feinting, and now it would backfire.
Pulling into an all but vertical dive, Harry thought how strange it must have looked to the crowd to see both Seekers plunging straight down towards different points.
"And Weasley blocks a shot from Hufflepuff Chaser Harcourt, throws the Quaffle to—Hey! The Seekers, both of them, look like they've spotted the Snitch! Obviously at least one of them's feinting, but which—?"
Hearing the commentary, the Hufflepuff Seeker abandoned his dive and looked around in bewilderment, but it was far too late. With exact precision, Harry used one hand to pluck the Snitch out of midair as he used the other to force his Firebolt back to a perpendicular angle with the ground, gliding to a slow enough speed that he could land.
The crowd exploded into vociferous cheering. As Hermione jumped up and down, making herself hoarse with screaming, Link lifted Zelda clear off the ground in a celebratory embrace. She laughed loudly, removing his hat to scruff up his hair and replacing it when he put her back down.
"GO GRYFFINDOR!" she and Hermione shouted in synchronicity, as Link roared again.
"Harry Potter catches the Snitch!" Wainwright shouted over the deafening roar. "Final score is one hundred eighty to Gryffindor, forty to Hufflepuff! GRYFFINDOR WIN!"
But his words were lost in the celebration of the crowd, who didn't need to be told the end result anyway. The students were frantically waving red and gold flags, posters featuring lions, and other Gryffindor insignias. They were already trampling their way down to the pitch to greet the victors, who had landed in a tangle of joyful embraces and handshakes. Hermione greeted Ron with a congratulatory kiss, and Harry was mobbed by people patting him on the back so many times that he felt like the epicentre of a small earthquake.
"Harry, that was amazing!"
"How did you know he was feinting?"
"That dive—awesome!"
"I thought you were going to crash!"
"Are you kidding me?"
The last voice hushed those around it, because they all knew who it belonged to.
"He knew exactly what he was doing," Link went on, smiling confidently down at Harry with his arms folded across his chest. "And I've gotta say, Harry…that is absolutely the best game I have ever seen."
This was better praise than all the rest put together. Harry felt himself grow taller.
"Thanks," he answered, trying not to sound too pleased with himself. Noticing something, he added, "Hey…where's Zelda?"
"Oh…" Link glanced around uncertainly.
"Right here," came the queen's voice, as she made her way through the Gryffindor crowd. "I just wanted to make sure that other boy was okay… Congratulations, Harry!" she said cheerfully, giving him a bright smile and a peck on the cheek.
"Thanks," he said again, hoping his grin didn't look as stupid as it felt.
"Party!" shouted Dean Thomas, a few feet away, and the Gryffindors roared their approval.
Someone grabbed Harry from behind, and he found himself and his teammates being hoisted high onto the shoulders of their fellow Gryffindors as they all paraded back to the castle, chanting victoriously at the tops of their lungs.
"GO! GO! GRYFFINDOR! GO! GO! GRYFFINDOR!"
Ron was still in bed, having been up well past midnight the night before; so was Link, and it was just lucky for him that souls couldn't get hangovers. Hermione had been up early to head to the library and get some essay writing done; possibly Zelda had gone with her, unless she needed to recover from the excessive festivities of the night before as much as Link did, which was a distinct possibility. Because the victory party and its after effects had lasted the rest of Saturday, it was the middle of Sunday morning before Harry got a chance to sit down before the fireplace and write the full letter to Remus that he had intended. As Harry launched into a play by play description of the finer points of the match, the letter grew longer and longer.
"Who are you writing to?"
Zelda stood behind him. Looking up at her, upside down, Harry answered, "Oh…just an old friend of my dad's who's a friend of mine now."
Owl post, while Harry, Ron and Hermione had of course explained it when Hermione had received the Daily Prophet, had startled the Hylians anew when the term had started. At the first breakfast they ate with everyone in the Great Hall, they had been slightly alarmed when hundreds of owls had swooped in and begun raining letters and packages down on everyone, but they were used to it by now, and both quite liked Hedwig, though she still avoided them suspiciously. Harry suspected that she was mistrustful because she could tell these people were neither human nor alive. Crookshanks held out the same wariness, though he was coming to terms it, and Pig, as always, just loved everyone.
With a smile, Zelda circled around the fireside armchair in which Harry sat and said, "That's nice, that you can keep in touch with someone who knew your father. Do you know many of his old friends?"
Harry shook his head, looking back down at his parchment. "Just the one," he said simply, not wanting to get into it.
Zelda didn't reply at first. Then she said gently, "Link told me about your godfather."
"Oh," Harry said heavily, feeling dread settle into his stomach.
"I know what you mean," the queen agreed with a faint sigh that betrayed more sadness than Harry suspected she had intended it to. "I saw my own parents…everything I loved…murdered, when Ganondorf took over Hyrule."
Harry blinked, though he still hadn't looked up at her.
"I felt so horrible afterwards," she went on quietly, half speaking to herself. "I knew that Ganondorf was evil, and I'd tried to warn them…and I still felt like it was my fault when they didn't listen, even though he…" She paused, staring off into the distance. "It took me years to accept that the problems of the world weren't all my responsibility."
"But…you're the queen," Harry pointed out, glancing up to meet her eye.
"Yes. I'm not destiny, though. No one is. You deal with what comes, and don't let it eat you alive. You react to things with action aimed towards the future, not with regrets aimed towards the past, because you can't change that…"
Harry knew that. He had learned in third year that trying to change the past wasn't something anyone had the right to do, even if they had the ability.
"Well, unless you're Link," Zelda corrected herself with a slight laugh, even as Harry thought this, "in which case you just happen to have the ability to travel through time, and destiny actually expects you to learn from the future. For the rest of us, though, life only flows one way, so it's best to just go with it."
Harry didn't answer. It was amazing to him, sometimes, how a brief conversation like this could make him feel better. Zelda had been though the same thing he had, and she had come out not only all right, but better for it.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
Apparently understanding, Zelda gave him a small smile and nodded.
After a pause, during which Harry returned to his letter and Zelda was contented with her thoughts, she asked in her usual polite way, "I don't mean to interrupt, but…have you seen Link?"
Frowning, Harry said slowly, "I thought he was still in bed. Or else with you."
"And I thought he was with you."
Panic began to rise within Harry, but died down when something occurred to him. "Can't you just use your telepathy to contact him?"
"I could," Zelda acknowledged uneasily. "I don't like to when I don't know what he's doing, though, unless it's an emergency. I don't want to interrupt anything I shouldn't. We sort of have an agreement about that sort of thing."
"Oh… Doesn't this count as an emergency?" Harry suggested. "If we don't know where he is?"
"I don't think so. He can take care of himself, so I shouldn't worry. Besides, you don't know where Ron and Hermione are right now, but would that count as an emergency?"
"Hermione's in the library, as usual, working on…I'm not sure what, and Ron's in bed," Harry replied automatically. "And if you shouldn't worry about Link, then why are you worried?"
"I don't know," she sighed casually, crossing her arms. "Probably because he can just be such a little boy sometimes, I half expect him to show up all covered in mud or something with that sheepish little grin and a well-rehearsed excuse for—"
She cut herself off with a small gasp of mild surprise.
"What is it?" Harry demanded instantly, sitting straight up.
"Hold on…" said Zelda vaguely, and her eyes slipped out of focus in a way that Harry recognized by now as meaning that she was using telepathy. Apparently Link had contacted her first. After a pause, she muttered, "Oh, the idiot… I knew he was going to do that eventually. See, this is what I'm talking about."
"What did he do?" Harry asked nervously.
"Went into the woods," Zelda sighed, waving out the window at the Forbidden Forest.
"What?" Harry yelled, jumping to his feet. "Why would he do that?!"
Looking overtly surprised at what she clearly thought was a dramatic overreaction, Zelda reminded him, "He grew up in a forest. That's the kind of place he loves."
"But it isn't safe like Kokiri Forest!" Harry objected. "There's all sorts of monsters and things in there!"
With a bit of a smile, though she was clearly trying to conceal it, Zelda said placatingly, "Harry, Kokiri Forest may be safe, but it's attached to the Lost Woods, which definitely isn't. Link's childhood haunts were absolute death traps, to be honest. He's just lost, that's all, and he needs some help finding his way out. He can find his way around any and all woodlands in Hyrule with any number of tricks and techniques, but I guess his skills don't work in such a different environment."
Despite Zelda's words, and despite the fact that he knew Link was probably a match for anything in the Forbidden Forest, Harry couldn't ignore the knot in his stomach. There were centaurs, and Grawp, and who could say what else…
The more Harry thought about it, the more panicked and the more certain he became that something horrible had happened to Link.
"Zelda, we have to find him," he insisted firmly.
Though she still looked more concerned about Harry than Link, the Hylian queen consented, "Yes, I was just about to go."
"Come on!"
And Harry was gone out of the portrait hole, without further hesitation, knowing that Zelda would have no difficulty in keeping up. He tore through the all but empty halls, flung wide the main entrance, and sprinted across the smooth grounds towards the mammoth, looming darkness of the Forest. As he approached the edge, though, he slowed to a halt, heart sinking.
"What's wrong?" asked Zelda, catching up to him. "Did something happen?"
"Well…no… It's just, that's a big forest, and I have no idea where he is in there…"
"Of course you don't," the queen said unconcernedly. "That's why we have to look for him."
With that, she ventured forward, supremely unafraid.
"Hey!"
Harry wasn't about to let anyone walk into the Forbidden Forest alone, even if she was an undying spirit. She could still get lost, or be victimized by any number of other things. He ran after her.
"Link!" she was calling loudly. "Link, can you hear me?"
Shouting out didn't strike Harry as the wisest course of action. "Er…Zelda?" he spoke up uneasily.
"Yes, Harry?"
"What if…someone other than Link hears you? Monsters or something?"
Pausing to look around Zelda creased her brow thoughtfully and admitted, "Oh, I suppose you're right. But I think I can handle any sorts of beasts you have here."
Possible objections died in Harry's throat as he remembered this woman's exploits. Hadn't she been at Link's side every time he'd saved the world? Hadn't she trained in every form of combat there was? Hadn't her last incarnation, Tetra, been the leader of a band of pirates? She was Dumbledore's ancestor, after all, and Godric Gryffindor's, and, he remembered, his own.
They continued, keeping on the path, as per Harry's advice, and shouting for Link as they went. Harry's robes snagged frequently, but Zelda's dress less so, because spirit matter seemed magically immune to such things.
Darkness spread around them, growing more complete. Harry lit his wand ("Lumos.") and Zelda herself gave off a faint glow. The echoes of their voices carried less and less as the thickness of the trees stifled them.
Harry was about to suggest that they turn back, because Link couldn't have wandered this far, when Zelda said, "He must have gone off the path somewhere before here. Stupid idiot!" The insult was, Harry knew, just a sign that she was worried.
"You have no right to criticize the intelligence of others," came a cool voice, "when you have committed the same folly."
Harry froze, electrocuted with terror. He knew who was speaking.
"Magorian?" he asked, feeling his heart sink fearfully.
The chestnut centaur came into sight, bow in hand, nocked and ready to fire. Although the weapon was pointed at Zelda, he himself glared at Harry.
"You," he said. "We have warned you enough times not to come into our forest. Young though you may be, you have now not only have defied us, but brought another human here…"
Harry noticed on some level that it was odd that Magorian was alone. But then, the last time he had seen the centaurs, Grawp had been on a violent rampage against them. Their numbers must have been considerably diminished.
Thinking quickly, wildly grasping at straws, and praying Zelda would have the sense to go with his story, he blurted, "But she's not a human. She's an elf."
Doubt flashed in Magorian's eyes, but he quickly replaced it with stony anger again. "An elf? She is no elf. Those people are a myth, a creation of Muggles with overactive imaginations."
"No, it's true!" To Zelda, he said desperately, "Show him your ears. That proves it."
Bewildered, but clearly accepting that Harry must have known what he was saying, Zelda lifted her hair to show the distinctive feature of her race.
Magorian lowered his weapon slightly, but more out of confusion than trust. He looked her over slowly, noticing that she didn't look quite real, and Harry could practically see him thinking that perhaps Harry was telling the truth.
"And…and…you know how elves love the forest," Harry went on, talking to keep Magorian from killing them. Centaurs weren't like giants, he knew, who would lash out when they were required to think too hard. They would rather rationalize. "I told her not to come in here, but she's just got this affinity for nature—"
"Who else is here?" the centaur interrupted, raising his bow again. "She said there was someone else."
"No one," Harry said quickly. "We—She thought that her friend, this other elf, had come in here, but we couldn't find him, so we're just leaving. I only came in here in the first place to get them out of your forest. Her, I mean. Because the other one's not here. He can't be, can he, or you'd have found him by now, and since you haven't, he must not be here."
Magorian looked suspicious. However, he was also still looking at Zelda carefully. Maybe he didn't believe she was an elf, but he certainly didn't know what she was, and it was obvious he weighing the risks of threatening someone who was such an unknown quantity.
"We were just leaving your forest," Harry repeated.
"Yes," said Magorian slowly. "Good. Get out. I will not be so forgiving if I find either of you here again, or your friend."
"Thank you," said Harry, feeling slightly faint with relief as he backed away. He had a feeling that confronting Magorian wouldn't have been so terrifying if the setting hadn't been so sinister, but as it was, he was ready to get out of this place and let Link fend for himself. He was armed, he knew what he was doing. He'd be fine.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the centaur, Zelda said, "I suppose we really are leaving, then? He looked like he was ready to carry out on his threat."
"Yeah," Harry agreed uneasily, his heart rate still not quite normal, looking around and wishing his wandlight illuminated a greater area. "But we should check if Link's around here… Can't you make a magic light or something?"
"Yes," Zelda replied, "but I don't want to. It would definitely disrupt the natural environment here if we lit the place up, and I doubt its inhabitants would be too pleased with us."
Now Harry, seeing the sense in this, wished he had no light. "Oh," he said, lowering his wand. "Let's just go back then, I guess." He tried to sound nonchalant, but he didn't think he had succeeded. At any rate, Zelda didn't seem to notice; possibly she was too busy worrying about Link. He may not have been her husband, but he was still half of her life.
"Yes," she said again, though Harry didn't think she had really been listening. "We'll keep calling for him, though."
As they walked back along the path, calling out uncertainly into the darkness, Harry strained his eyes in the hope of seeing daylight again.
"Harry," Zelda asked suddenly, "you've been in here before, right?"
"Er…yeah, a few times."
"Have you ever wandered off the path?"
It was Zelda who was now trying to sound nonchalant, when really she felt anything but. Harry could hear it in her tone.
"Once or twice," he replied evasively.
Zelda stopped in her tracks. Harry panicked momentarily, until he saw the familiar look of telepathic concentration on her face. Blinking, she informed him, "Link is close. I can feel his presence in my—"
She stopped, and when Harry opened his mouth to ask why, she placed a finger to her lips to silence him. She was listening intently, and though Harry didn't hear anything, he remembered Hermione's words about how Hylians could pick up a greater range of sounds. He wished his heart would beat more quietly, because to judge by the way Zelda was looking around, something was coming.
Or many somethings…
"Link?" asked Harry hopefully.
Next second, he just caught himself from letting out a scream when Link, silently as a cat, dropped from the branches overhead onto the path. He didn't look afraid, because he was never afraid, but he was certainly on the edge.
"Harry," he said in a whisper, "Zelda. Very quietly…run."
"Link, what—?"
But he was already darting down the path, nimbly dodging branches and bushes, and Harry and Zelda had to follow quickly or risk losing him. He was certainly good at moving with both speed and silence. No wonder the centaurs hadn't found him.
When they caught up with him, Zelda asked in a low, angry hiss, "Link, what in the name of Nayru is going on?"
Without answering, he stopped in his tracks, looking around with wide eyes. Harry realized why; there was a faint rustling sound coming from the bushes, all around them, coming closer…
"I think…Ghoma…Skulltula…" he whispered, half to himself.
As the word escaped his lips, Harry saw something move in the foliage. Something horribly familiar.
"Aragog…" he breathed.
The sound stopped. Yet Harry knew, as he carefully looked at the surrounding forest, that the offspring of the Acromantula had them encircled.
Why had they snuck up, though?
"Link," Zelda growled, inching closer to him and eyeing what was visible of the arachnids that surrounded them, "what did you do?"
"Nothing," Link hissed back defensively. "I was just looking around, and I found… Well, I guess it's their nest or lair or something… There was this one huge one, and it didn't see me, but I figured I should get away. I was trying to get out of there without bothering them, but…" He paused and frowned. "They followed me. I tried to sneak away and lose them, but apparently that didn't work. And here we are."
Slowly, gradually, more and more spiders were appearing. Harry felt his heart sink to his knees. Maybe the feral Ford Anglia would save them, he thought fleetingly. If it didn't, he could see no hope…
"You shouldn't have come here, Harry," Link said. "You could get killed."
"Me? I've gotten away from these things before," Harry informed him, feigning confidence.
"Besides, it's your fault they found us in the first place," Zelda reminded Link sternly. "Why did you wander off the path in the first place?"
"Because I'm used to the Lost Woods, where staying on the path can be more deadly that leaving it. The whole place is one big—"
He cut himself off when one of Aragog's young pounced from its hiding place to attack. Zelda gasped, Harry gave a shout of surprise, and Link cried out viciously as he leapt forward and swung the Master Sword down hard, severing one of the great monster's legs. It let out a furious clicking and a faint scream of pain, stumbling back and bleeding freely from the gaping wound. Harry would have felt sick with disgust, but there was no time.
Link's attack had taken one instant, and in the next, it was chaos. Every hidden spider sprang from its coverage to launch itself at the ones who had wounded their fellow.
Spells were flying instantly, from Harry's wand and Zelda's bare hands; Link continued to make efficient use of his steel. They held their own, but the flow of spiders was endless.
"We have to do something else!" shouted Harry. "Stupefy! This can't—Petrificus Totalus!—go on forever!"
"Zelda!" Link ordered. "Nayru's Love!"
Though the queen said nothing, she must have understood, because she grabbed Harry by the shirt and pinned him against her with one arm. This, however, didn't startle him half as much as what happened at the same time, as she raised the other hand over her head before touching it to the ground at her feet. From the point she had touched, there spread a blue crystal that encapsulated her and Harry both.
Yet, even as Harry recovered from this dizzying surprise, Link provided another. He had sheathed his weapon and now clasped his hands to his chest; he then swung both arms in a wide circle, one forward and one backward, before thrusting his left hand down. For a fraction of a second, Harry thought that Link was casting the same spell as Zelda had done, until he realized that this was not a shimmering blue crystal, but a dome of lethal, red fire.
It expanded to conflagrate everything in sight, the trees and bushes and spiders alike, but, by some miracle, Link, Zelda and Harry remained unharmed.
Even this inferno of apocalyptic strength didn't stop the hoard of beasts. Those in its range died instantly, their bodies burned away, but there were more moving in to replace them. This battle would never end.
For a moment, the Hylians locked eyes, communicating at the speed of thought, then they darted in opposite directions, Zelda pulling Harry along so he could stay within the blue crystal that went with her.
"Zelda—!" he began to shout.
"I'll explain later," she told him shortly. Even as she spoke, she swung one arm in another complicated motion to cast a spell, and Harry saw and felt a green wind sweeping them both away. His own body disappeared…
"He'll be killed!"
Instantaneously, the magical wind which had caught both Harry and Zelda rematerialized them outside the Forest. The blue safety zone was flickering away as well, but Zelda was still holding Harry's arm tightly. He tried fiercely to break free of her grip— He wasn't going to let another innocent person die to save him, not after his mother and father and Sirius… Not Link, too…
"Stop, Harry!" Zelda ordered, pulling him back forcefully. "Link can't die, remember? He's a spirit!"
Of course; Harry had briefly forgotten this. He stopped fighting, but he still stared desperately at the trees, as if by so doing he could see through them to help or at least find Link.
"He can get hurt, though," Harry mumbled, half to himself. "He.. He…"
"He'll be fine," Zelda said gently, slipping an arm over his shoulders maternally. "Now that I've set up a warp point, he can teleport out here once he's done what he's intended."
"Why couldn't he teleport before?"
"Oh, he could always teleport. He just doesn't know how to set up a warp point and use it at the same time, like I did." She shook her head, smiling slightly. "He may be one of the most magically powerful beings in the world, but I never could teach that boy to use his powers properly."
There was a pause before Harry asked, "And…and what is Link intending to do?"
Zelda didn't answer for a moment. It was only when very obvious wariness that she finally replied, "He's going to kill their leader."
"He—What?"
Harry made again to run into the trees, but again Zelda pulled him back. He gave in, but only because he couldn't make up his mind what he was most horrified about. As much as he dreaded Aragog, and considered the whole colony of Acromantulas to be monsters, he still didn't think it was a good idea to kill the brood's patriarch. The smaller ones would all want to avenge their parent. And Hagrid considered Aragog a friend, for whatever reason, so…so… Did that mean the bloodthirsty monster deserved to live? Or to die?
Harry stared at the trees, trying to make up his mind. Aragog had never killed anyone. He had consciously chosen not to, out of loyalty to Hagrid. His children, as well, would never harm the groundskeeper, but they had tried to kill him and Ron, and now Link and Zelda, and Aragog hadn't hindered them. So…
In the end, it didn't matter. Link would do it whether Harry wanted him to or not. The Master Sword had slain many demons and monsters, and surely a few people, in Link's hands. And it had killed a Basilisk in Harry's. Now it would draw fresh blood.
Harry just hoped that Link knew what he was doing, so that at least one of them would.
"Do you think he'll be—?"
There was a bright green flash, and Link stood there, crimson blood slicking easily off the silver blade of the Master Sword to leave it as immaculate as if it had just been forged. He sheathed it on his back and shook his head.
"That was a close one," he commented, exhaling heavily.
"Did Aragog do something to you?" asked Harry edgily.
"Aragog?" Link echoed blankly.
"Oh…the big spider's name is Aragog."
"Ah. I was calling it Ghoma. She was a giant spider I had to kill when I was ten… Anyway, yeah, Aragog tried to take a piece out of me, but I finished it off."
Harry felt strangely numb. Just like that, so quickly and indifferently, Aragog was dead…
"And that's not the close call I meant," Link went on. His voice had gone distinctly paternal, and Harry suspected a lecture was coming. It was Zelda, however, who spoke first.
"Don't you blame him," she told Link warningly, putting her hands on her hips. "You should have known he would want to help if he thought you were in trouble. That's what you always did in the same circumstances, and still do. And frankly, if he wasn't ready for that battle—I'm not saying you weren't Harry, but if you hadn't been—then that wouldn't be his fault, either. You're the one who's supposed to be training him."
Link stared at his queen, and Harry thought he looked as if he hadn't understood a word she'd just said.
"You know I'm right," she added when he didn't speak, folding her arms bossily and scowling at him much as Harry thought she would have done if Link was in trouble for putting a bug in her hair or some other transgression. He reflected briefly on how odd, and almost impressive, it was that they could continue to sound as old as they looked, like teenage siblings bickering, even while debating matters of life and death.
With a grunt of concession, Link rolled his eyes and mimicked Zelda's gesture. "Fine," he snapped sulkily, "but I'm still not admitting I was wrong. Because I wasn't."
Now Zelda mimicked him, rolling her own eyes. "Sure you weren't. Come on, let's go back up to the castle."