Last-chapter recap: The Harrys got a mission briefing about Gerudo Desert from Avoka, who Red discovered wasn't the Sheikah pureblood he looks like. Shadow Harry fretted over an unraveling disaster in the desert, in which a growing existential void was utterly destroying any living thing that stumbled into it, life-force and all. Elsewhere in the desert, the royal Gerudo twins Koume and Kotake schemed to go out into the unnatural storm while their younger sibling Korva attempted to talk them out of it.

Art of the new consumable item introduced in this chapter can be found under my "dungeon 6" tag on the garden-eel-draws tumblr.

Content warning for Blue's unreliable narration when it comes to letting people care about him.


The Harrys stood with their brooms in hand in front of Link's house, where Avoka had requested they meet before the brothers headed off to Hogwarts to make some final travel preparations. Link slumped next to Avoka with a large and absurdly heavy-looking bag full of tools and weapons on his back. He looked dead on his feet, yawning every few minutes and swaying like a blade of grass. Avoka was, as usual, straight-backed and alert. That boy never stopped being on edge.

Blue yawned in time with Link. He was accustomed to early mornings, but organizing their supplies and making lists of objectives to accomplish at the castle had kept him up last night. Right now, he was running on three hours of sleep and a Stamina Potion.

"Okay, some last-minute advice?" Avoka said, standing in front of the line of Harrys with his hands on his hips. He'd been giving them a final mission briefing that Blue had only half been paying attention to. The boy was very focused on combat and survival and other things Blue's tired brain didn't much care about. "You'll be heading into Yiga territory on this trip, so you might just have to fight a few humans in addition to monsters. Keep an eye out for the guys dressed like red versions of me." He gestured toward his sneak-suit, which he was wearing under his uniform trousers and jacket as usual. "If the Yiga mistake you for Link or think you might be connected to the Bluesmiths in some other way, they will most likely be aiming to capture you, not kill. Take that into account if you find yourself facing them."

Stepping forward, Avoka seized Green by the shoulders. "I'm going to tell you what the Commander told me when she started teaching me how to throw knives," he said gravely. "Unless you can bear the weight of taking a life, do not kill anyone. This isn't a moral plea I'm making; the goddesses won't curse you for striking someone down in self-defense. I say this because once you commit that act, you may find yourself fighting an eternal war with your own mind. Most people don't have a nature suited for such a drastic action, even when it's justified."

Behind him, Link's sleepy eyes popped wide open. "Avoka, no," he said, aghast. "Never justified!"

"It isn't murder if the casualties are enemy combatants attacking with intent to kill. If you ask me, it's nothing to get guilty about, either," Avoka countered. There wasn't the slightest waver of uncertainty in his strong, authoritative voice. "Even so, I'm advising them not to take lives, Link. There's nothing to get mad about here."

"Killing is wrong," Link said with a firm set to his jaw. "Always."

"It's inadvisable, but occasionally necessary," Avoka countered. "Only for the people who can handle it, though, of course." He matched Link's disapproving scowl with a stubborn frown.

"And someone like you can handle it?" Blue asked skeptically. "It isn't like you're any more of an adult than us. You're only a kid, too." In fact, they'd puzzled out that Avoka was a month younger than them and they were older than Link by half a year, due to the six-month difference that set Hyrule's seasons opposite to what the Harrys had left behind. Link would be twelve for another month.

A chilling look of dark resolve entered Avoka's gaze. It raised goosebumps across Blue's skin. Suddenly he was very aware that, perhaps, he and his brothers were a lot softer by nature than some people. "Sure, we're all the same age," Avoka said, his husky voice as smooth as silk, "though I'm sure you understand not everyone is built quite the same." He moved one arm in front of him and slid back his haori's wide sleeve to reveal an assortment of knives and long, thick needles contained in holsters on his forearm before letting the cover of navy blue cloth fall back into place. Combined with his magical talent and excellent aim, any one of those projectiles was a one-hit-kill, and he had at least a dozen strapped under that sleeve. Blue known that the kid was armed, but not this armed. Did Link know how much heat his friend was packing?

Blue's heart leapt into his throat. He'd assumed Avoka was just a friendlier version of Malfoy, one who'd turned out less selfish and emotionally twisted due to a less bigoted upbringing, but that look in the Sheikah's eyes…Blue didn't doubt that this boy was someone who absolutely could and would take a life if he felt it necessary. Avoka was nicer than Malfoy, yes, but he was dangerous in a way that the petty bully was not and could never be.

His eyes roved over to Link, who had on a puppy-like pout of confusion as he analyzed the Harrys' reactions. The blacksmith hadn't seen Avoka's gesture, hidden as it had been by the Sheikah's turned back. It was very a good thing, Blue decided, that someone like Link was attached at the hip to someone like Avoka.

He thought about the Sheikah's advice on the half-hour flight to Hogwarts Castle. In his furor of churning out preparation lists for this mission, Blue had come up with a handful of offensive spells he'd wanted to ask Professor Lupin about. It was a collection of purposes, really, that he'd hoped the professor could come up with a matching series of incantations for. If thrown at monsters, those spells would perhaps blow a limb off at worst—an effective tactic to hamper them, but not a deadly blow. Against a Light World person, though…

Ach, but that took a certain amount of magical mathematics, didn't it? The toll this world's magic took on Dark World spells, plus the natural resistance of native beings to their wizard spells, balanced against the power boost from the Magic Rod and the base strength of the spell…It made his head hurt to mentally juggle all those factors while keeping his broom straight, but he figured it was best to err on the side of caution and not use most spells against living beings like the Yiga unless he absolutely had to. Maybe it would be better to start off with the other spells he'd written down, in fact—things like shielding charms and something to retrieve more distant loot. That would please Yellow, who had been looking a bit peaky since Avoka had given them that last, disturbing piece of advice.

From an aerial view, they could spot a few changes that had happened around Hogwarts during their absence. A curl of golden track now peeled away from the line that crossed Lake Hylia, stopping on the strip of sandy beach that stretched out in front of the castle. A small locomotive with two carriages and two trucks sat at the end of the tracks, its Bluestone lights dim and orange as it sat idle. The round brown shapes of Gorons could be seen toiling away on one of the larger spits of land that stuck out from under Hogwarts. It looked as though they were clearing the area, scraping away grass and dirt and stone until it lay flat.

'They mentioned installing a turnplate, so I'm assuming that's where it's meant to go,' Blue mused, studying the work area. He guessed the tracks leading to the sandy shore in front of the castle must have been temporary, meant to bus in Goron construction workers for the project. It made more sense than putting the rock-people on a boat or airlifting them in.

The smaller, dark-robed figures of Hogwarts students milled around outside the fencing of the worksite, some clumping together to chat and others sitting under the shade of the nearby apple trees on picnic blankets. A few Zoras were in the mix, hanging out with the kids enjoying the early summer sun.

Something tickled at the back of Blue's mind. A sense of surreality. He frowned, hovering in place on his broom as he tried to figure out why the sight below felt so weird. He'd seen a hodgepodge of the Light World's peoples flowing through Castle Town before, after all.

Then it struck him: humans and non-humans, mages and Muggles, socializing like it was no big deal. It was a kind of scene one would never see in the Dark World. Magical humans subjugated the other magical races of their world, classifying them by their dangerousness and usefulness. Muggles were regarded with amused disdain, or as a hostile foreign culture living on the other side of a great invisible wall.

Blue looked away, gripping his broom tight. How messed up was it that he'd never thought twice about those History of Magic lessons about the Goblin Rebellions and Giant Uprisings? He'd heard from a teacher's mouth how human mages had turned Goblins into a serving class and just nodded along when the wizards had come out the victors against those uppity magical creatures by using their marvelous wands and superior magic. Hip-hip-hurrah.

The Dark World was even darker than he'd realized.

A voice coming from beside Blue made him jump. "Are you okay?" Yellow peered at his face with wide golden eyes.

"I was just thinking," Blue said. "Too much, maybe." It wasn't productive to waste brainpower on things he couldn't fix. The crooked foundation of wizarding society was certainly not something he could do much about. He didn't know where he'd even start! But it was…something to keep in mind.

The Harrys entered Hogwarts via one of the openings in the walls on a higher floor, foregoing the whole production of knocking on an entrance and asking someone to let them in. They kept flying while inside, sticking close to ceilings and keeping chatter to a minimum. People would kick up a fuss once they noticed the Harrys were back, and they wanted to forestall that drama as long as they could. They didn't intend to stay for more than a day—just long enough to hang out with their friends for a while and ask Lupin for some for some incantations they could practice on the road.

They split up as they flew through the halls. Yellow and Green branched off toward Gryffindor Tower, taking the group's two Invisibility Cloaks along with them so they could pass through the common room without Percy immediately tipping off Professor McGonagall, Red flew off to find Malfoy, and Blue went in search of Professor Lupin.

Blue made his way toward Professor Lupin's private rooms. Zelda had reported that he had taken Sirius Black in since the teachers had deemed him innocent of his crimes. Blue's stomach fluttered nervously at the thought of him meeting his godfather. He didn't really know what a godparent was, nor what Mr. Black taking that role might mean. Would he take Harry (the future, singular one) away from the Dursleys? Not that he'd miss them, but where would he be staying? Where would Mr. Black get the money to care for a whole teenager? Blue knew from hearing his relatives' complaints that it was exorbitantly expensive to feed, clothe, and house a child, no matter how frugal one attempted to be about it, and an ex-felon as famous as Sirius Black would be hard-pressed to find a job.

He kind of hoped that Mr. Black didn't decide to take that godparent thing too seriously. It would cause too much trouble. Harry would have to move house and leech off of a stranger who had no obligation to keep him alive! The thought of it made his skin crawl. He didn't like putting himself in others' debt. With the chore regimen and punishments his relatives saddled him with, Blue considered them on fairly even footing; each side of that relationship gave and took in different ways, but in equal measure.

Mr. Black…What if Harry took too much from him? What if it was like living with the Weasleys, but long-term, with Harry doing nothing but draining the man's resources? Though staying with the Weasleys had made something in his chest feel warm and whole in a way he'd never experienced before, that kind of feeling couldn't last. He'd have been consumed by guilt if he'd hung around long enough to see Mrs. and Mr. Weasley be forced to work even harder to support their children. If Harry became the reason his wrongly imprisoned godfather never got the chance to get back on his feet and build a new life, he'd never forgive himself. He was still unsure what he'd do come this summer—whether he'd use the money from this quest to rent a long-term room at an inn until he was old enough to get an apartment, or stay with the Dursleys and buy his own food and clothes. One thing he was certain of, though, was that he didn't want to make things any more difficult for Mr. Black. The man had been through enough as it was.

Blue landed in front of Professor Lupin's door. 'Be cold and standoffish, and Mr. Black won't want to waste resources on you,' he thought determinedly as he knocked. He could manage that. Harry had always possessed more of a knack for getting on people's bad side than he did making friends, and Blue took that ability to a higher level.

The door opened and he was met by a man he didn't quite recognize. Mr. Black's face was lined and made hollow by years of extreme stress, but fuller in the cheeks and less haunted than it had been on the wanted posters. He was clean-shaven, with shiny black hair neatly tied at the base of his neck rather than hanging around his face in lank ropes. His gray eyes—remarkably similar to Malfoy's in shape and (former) color—brightened in recognition when he saw Blue standing in the doorway.

"Harry!" he crowed. Before Blue had time to shrink at the volume, Sirius had shape-shifted into Dog and pounced on him. Blue landed on his back with a "whuff!" of expelled air, Sirius circling him and wagging his tail hard enough to shake his whole bum. The giant dog snuffled at Blue, his pale eyes so wide with excitement that Blue couldn't help a laugh.

Professor Lupin skidded out of the back rooms of the apartment and rushed to the door, catching the ratty couch with his hip and stumbling as he did. "Sirius!" he barked sternly. "You're a stranger to the poor boy! He was a toddler the last time he saw you, remember?"

Mr. Black's shaggy head raised up and he looked away from Blue with an air of sheepishness. Shifting back into human form, he leaned down and offered a hand. "Sorry about that," he said, blushing. "I, er, my emotions can get too big for me to think through sometimes. I didn't mean to knock you over."

"Hmph. Apology accepted," Blue said, though his tone wasn't as cold as he would have liked. The joy on Black's face made it hard to be sour toward him. He gripped the man's hand and stood up.

"I came to ask for some magical instruction," Blue told Professor Lupin, who stood behind Mr. Black. "My brothers and I intend to head out for Gerudo Desert tomorrow, and having some new spells to practice will make us more effective in our quest and give us something to work on in our free time. If you haven't the time to spend teaching me how to cast, just a handful of incantations would do." He took his notebook out of his bag and held it up. "I've written a list."

Mr. Black's face fell. "You're only staying for a day?" he asked with great disappointment. "That's hardly enough time to do anything, let alone learn how to cast multiple spells!"

Blue stood firm, though inside he wavered at the sight of this adult somehow distraught at the thought of not being able to spend time with him. Even Hagrid and Professor Lupin, the adults they got on the best with at school, didn't value the Harrys' presence to that high degree. "Reality is unraveling to the southwest, Mr. Black," he declared. "We've sat around waiting for a go-ahead for long enough."

The two men goggled at him. "What do you mean, reality is unraveling?" Mr. Black asked. "Literally, what does that mean? I can't imagine it."

Professor Lupin frowned in that way adults often did before they decided to make a nuisance of themselves. "What kind of situation are you four heading into, Blue?" he demanded. "Does the Headmaster know about this?"

"He knows what he needs to know. The Headmaster has an entire castle's worth of students to worry about," Blue sniffed. "He can worry about his area of expertise and we'll worry about ours."

"Blue—"

"You can decide to help us or hinder us, but either way, we'll be heading out to address the hole in the world and all the people who were snatched through it," Blue said stubbornly. He flapped his notebook. "Now, shall I be learning from you or will I have to shake down the school library?"

"I'll help you!" Mr. Black swung his hand up into the air like Hermione in class. "I'm not a teacher, but I learned all kinds of dueling magic as a kid and during the war."

The moral thing to do—the option that would cause less future strife for himself and his godparent—would be to refuse the man's help and insist that only Professor Lupin instruct him. It wouldn't be good for a recovering felon to get attached to Harry and throw his future away to house a kid he wasn't obligated to care for in any way. It would be like the Dursleys 2.0, except he'd feel way guiltier over it because Mr. Black seemed a lot nicer.

But then Blue opened his mouth and said, "Okay." Exactly like he shouldn't have. Why had he done that?

Mr. Black ushered Blue into Professor Lupin's quarters, vibrating with excitement. "What kind of spells do you want to know? Charms, curses, hexes? I've always been handy with a good jinx—"

"Sirius, he just said he's off to fight a hole in existence! Why are you so quick to help push him into it?" Professor Lupin asked harshly. "This isn't like setting up a prank!"

Blue looked up at him curiously. "What would a square like you know about pranking, Professor?" Lupin had his moments of being cooler than most teachers, but he was still a teacher. A rather straight-laced and scholarly one at that, despite his more engaging methods of instruction.

Mr. Black snickered. "He is kind of a square," he agreed. "One who was great at refining plans and coming up with cover stories for your dad and me, though. Every pranking outfit needs a respectable spokesman with a good brain in order to run smoothly."

Oh, right, both of these men had been close friends with his father. Blue had forgotten, focused as he'd been on questing and research. Family was a distraction—something that came with emotional baggage he didn't have the time, nor the patience to process when there were two worlds to save from an existential rift. That kind of emotional nonsense was for Red to deal with, not him. Blue had supply lists to write up and maps to study.

"Huh," he said, hoping his noncommittal response would head off any attempts to engage him on the topic of his parents. Speaking of responsible squares and respectable spokesmen, maybe he ought to have sent Yellow here in his place. "So, can either of you think of incantations that might match my list of functions?" he asked, flipping through his notebook to the right pages. "I was thinking of picking up four spells while we were here. That's a small enough number for us to focus on improving one at a time, and not so many that my brothers would be overwhelmed."

"Let me see…" Mr. Black took the notebook and started scanning the list. "Yeah, some of these are some pretty useful basics that they should be teaching kids earlier, if you ask me. Especially the Summoning Charm. That's a must-have for sure."

Professor Lupin sighed, closed the front door, and frowned down at Blue with his arms crossed. "Before we teach you anything, I want you to tell me what you intend to do."

Blue pursed his lips. "So you can tattle to Dumbledore, right?"

"Of course. You're a student here, and as long as you're in his care at this institution, the Headmaster ought to know what you're doing." Professor Lupin lifted his chin. "I'll arrange a practice space and teach you until we both fall over if you give me a full report of what you've been, and will be, up to."

Blue narrowed his eyes. "What level of detail do I have to give you? I don't have all day."

Sirius gave him a studying look. "You're rather shrewd for your age, aren't you?"

"Because I'm not the original Harry, in case you haven't noticed." Blue pointed at his hair stripe. "We all have different things we're better at. Green would have gotten flustered and walked off to the library by now." He returned his attention back to Lupin. "I'll tell you what happened with minimal omission, but only if you don't clutch your pearls every time I mention something dangerous or attempt to stop us from leaving. There's a god out there who needs humbling and my brothers and I are the only ones for the job. Wrapping cotton-wool around us will only help Vaati."

Professor Lupin's face scrunched like he'd suddenly gone constipated. He let out a quiet, doggish whine, conflict warring in his eyes.

"Remember what we've talked about, Remus," Mr. Black said softly.

Blue sent the ex-convict a suspicious look. "What have you talked about?"

Mr. Black smiled and gave him a wink. "Causing you a little less trouble."

Blue squinted at him, puzzled. Was his godfather…enabling him? Out of all the magical adults at the castle, was this man he hardly knew the most willing to assist in the Harrys' admittedly impossible-sounding cause?

Professor Lupin paced in a short circle and took off his hat to run a hand through his recently thickened brown hair. Blue blinked at the sight of the triangular furry ears pressed against his head in canine distress. Right, Ron had mentioned those…

"Alright, I won't stop you," Professor Lupin said, the words sounding as though they'd been wrung out of him. "Now and in the future, even. I've read enough of the Hylian Bestiary to understand how these quests tend to go. But I expect you or one of your brothers to report to me truthfully, without downplaying things, so I know what you're facing and what spells would help you." He ruffled his hair again. "Merlin, I wish I could have found that sword before you did. What you were doing around the castle in the Dark World seemed tame enough, but I never expected you'd graduate to fighting bloody volcanoes!"

Walking into the living room section of the small apartment, Professor Lupin summoned a chair from the dining table with a wave of his Magic Rod and dropped heavily into it. Gesturing toward the couch in front of him, he said, "Well, sit down and tell us about your journey. I can't imagine what spells would help you repair," he sighed deeply, "the fabric of reality, but once I'm all caught up, I'll see what I can do to help."

Blue explained what had happened, starting with when the Harrys had wound up on Outset Isle up until now. Professor Lupin had nudged him to begin farther back, but Blue had refused. Just in case, he wasn't about to throw his friends and the Slytherin students that had helped them during the first four dungeons under the bus. He kept his report dry and factual with minimal commentary, trying to get it over with as fast as possible. That didn't keep Professor Lupin from becoming more ashen with every sentence, or Mr. Black from leaning forward with genuine interest shining in his eyes.

"Amazing," Mr. Black marveled once Blue had concluded his list of events. "You've got more mettle than most Aurors I've met." He clapped Blue on the shoulder. Blue jumped, then looked up at him with wide eyes. Even though he and his brothers had been hearing more positive comments since coming to the Light World, since the people here were weirdly peppy and welcoming of strangers, they'd still been faced with a significant amount of disbelief whenever they explained their quest to anyone. Even Link and Avoka seemed worried they were going to get themselves killed playing hero. For this near-stranger to immediately believe in him…

It felt nice.

Blue blinked and looked away, mentally kicking himself. He wasn't supposed to let himself like this man, nor was he supposed to endear himself to him! His goal here was to learn a few spells and get the hell out before Professor Lupin reeled him into a long discussion with too many prying questions. It only was because he didn't have time, of course, not because the idea of talking about his family situation made his heart beat twice as fast and gave him an unpleasant pit in his stomach.

He turned up his nose. "I've never heard of these 'Aurors'," he sniffed in what he thought was a decent Malfoy impression.

"They're magical law-enforcement officers," Sirius explained. "Most of them are a bit like Professor McGonagall, but scarier. The older ones are an interesting lot, though—they've got plenty of stories to tell."

Professor Lupin was still rubbing his temples after the story Blue had laid out. "You fought a volcano and you won," he muttered, his eyes wide and unfocused. "The volcano is alive and also an oversized dragon, and you fought that dragon and then another dragon. One with three heads. In the superheated volcano. And Red died momentarily during the fight." He took a deep breath and pushed his hair back from his face as he hissed it out. "Yes. Mm-hm. Yeah. Okay. Where is that list of spells?"

Blue didn't bother asking whether the man was alright, because he definitely wasn't and the ensuing line of conversation might lead to Lupin asking Blue whether he was alright. Blue, who had recently broken his femur (PAIN PAIN MAKE IT STOP) and experienced a secondhand near-death-experience (there had been a crunch and then blank, silent nothing), wasn't sure he could truthfully answer that question in a satisfactory fashion.

He quietly waited as Professor Lupin and Mr. Black conferred over the list, discussing in mumbles and grunts the efficacy of certain spells over others. At one point, Professor Lupin fished a pen out of Sirius's robe pocket and started marking things down.

"Alright, since you're rather early on in your education, I figure we should start with some basics that any adult wizard ought to know," Professor Lupin declared. "As you improve and gain experience, we can move onto more advanced spells."

Blue nodded. That was reasonable. "What is the difficulty curve when it comes to magic, anyway?" It had always been rather woolly to him. There were spells that could create pocket dimensions inside of wallets and conjure living creatures from thin air, and yet it didn't seem like every wizard knew how to do those things. Why not, if all it took was memorizing an incantation and wand movement?

"Mainly, it's clarity of intent and magical finesse," Professor Lupin replied. "If you intend to conjure a raven and have the spell and wand-movement right, but have only a loose idea of what a raven looks like, you might wind up conjuring a ball of black feathers or a thing with four wings instead. The same goes if you force your magic out or hold it back instead of letting it flow with the intended strength of the spell."

"There are also spells like the Patronus, which require the caster to incorporate a particular emotion in addition to the right mental image, intent, magical control, incantation, and wand movement," Mr. Black added. "A Patronus is damned useful for dealing with Dementors and other Dark creatures—would have come in quite handy back in Azkaban." He smiled wryly. "However, since that spell requires focusing on happy memories and mine have suffered a fair amount of damage, I might not be able to conjure a Patronus even if I got every other part of the casting right."

"So, what if I wanted to learn how to cast something most wizards have to buy, like a Space Expansion Charm?" Blue prompted. "What's stopping me?"

"There's another wall when it comes to doing high-level magic: the huge risk and consequences of messing something like that up," Sirius told him. "You'd have to learn how to visualize very clearly the kind of result you were aiming for, and make absolutely certain your incantation, wand movement, and magical control are matched to the object and the size you're internally enlarging it to, otherwise…" He shook his head. "Well. The result of a wizard creating a temporary localized black hole is a special kind of awful, I've heard."

Blue's head lifted. "You know what a black hole is? But that's Muggle science!" he exclaimed. Wasn't Mr. Black an older cousin of Malfoy's, part of one of the pureblood family Houses that the (somewhat reformed) prat liked to brag about? Malfoy barely understood that the planets they studied in Astronomy class were real places that one could theoretically land a person on; someone raised like him wouldn't know what a black hole was.

Mr. Black grinned proudly. "I'm the black sheep of the Black family! Back when I was going out of my way to do everything my parents hated, I was reading facts out of your mum's Muggle textbooks just to spout them at dinner. It was interesting stuff, all those discoveries made just through setting up experiments and taking notes, so I bought a few more advanced books as time went on. Mostly ones about chemistry and astronomy."

Blue set his estimation of the man a little higher (though he was still determined not to let either one of them get attached to the other). He'd observed during his time at Hogwarts that pureblood witches and wizards tended to suffer from very boxed-in thinking as a result of the hard separation between the magical and mundane worlds. They thought little of the Muggles they lived literally right next to and kept in ignorance, and weren't wont to make any effort to understand the people they shared a country with. Some even blamed Muggles for not knowing anything about magic, as if the people they kept warding off and modifying the memories of even had a chance to learn!

Professor Lupin had been writing something down, and now handed the notebook back with it turned to that page. "Those are the four spells we'll be starting out with," he said. "I've written all the particulars there so you and your brothers will have something to study on the road."

Blue hummed and rubbed his chin. The spells listed would make Yellow happy and disappoint Red; they weren't the sort that might blow someone up or rip a limb off. There was the Summoning Charm, Banishing Charm, Shielding Spell, and Cleaning Charm. Out of the four, the Shielding Spell was by far the most complex, with a double-underlined "clarity of intent" requirement.

"I understand the first three, but why the Cleaning Charm?" he inquired. "We already know one."

"You know the Scouring Charm, which is easily the most painful way to wipe acid-venom or whatever else off of one's face," Professor Lupin replied. "It's harsh enough on bare skin, let alone melting skin! Really, I must wonder what you four think a normal level of pain tolerance is."

Blue rolled his eyes. "The Scouring Charm barely stings, Professor. I've easily got the least pain tolerance out of us four, so I would know." Even before Harry had started running into interdimensional trouble at Hogwarts, Dudley's punches had hurt way more than the feeling of boar-hair scrubbing across his face.

Professor Lupin gave him a doubtful frown, which Mr. Black nudged him into dropping before striding toward the door. "Let's go secure a classroom to practice in, shall we?" the latter proclaimed. "It's time to do some good old-fashioned cramming!"


"Hi!" a voice said out of nowhere, causing Ron to fumble with the sword he'd been putting through slow-motion moves he'd learned from Prince Tiamus. He almost went to grab the falling blade, stopped himself mid-reach, and watched it thump onto the rug in the middle of the dormitory instead.

"Harry?" he asked, looking around. Invisibility Cloak or no, his best friend was easily the most cat-footed person he knew.

"Yellow, actually." In a wave of shimmering air, Yellow emerged from under his Invisibility Cloak.

Ron shrugged. "Still Harry, mate." He brought Yellow into a hug and clapped him on the back. "What have you been…?"

He trailed off when he noticed the state of his friend. There were deep, dark bags carved out under Yellow's eyes. His shoulders bowed with exhaustion despite his upright posture, and the way his hair was tied back emphasized the unhealthy sharpness of his cheekbones.

"Before you ask, we're fine," Yellow said quickly. "Blue and I are tired from doing research and Green is tired from doing weapons practice, but we're all okay. For reals, I promise."

"You look like you've been working yourself to the bone, though," Ron said. If he were on the same quest as his friend, he would've been spending the time between dungeons relaxing while he could, not working even harder. What other time would he have to rest? "Did you sleep at all?"

Yellow yawned. "We've slept enough."

"Yellow," Ron sighed.

His friend smiled sweetly. "Yes?"

"Don't work yourself into the ground with all this hero-ing stuff, okay?" Ron said seriously. "You're not aiming for an O here; so long as you get things done, you don't have to skip nights of sleep to do extra-credit." Harry already had a habit of throwing himself into other people's business without anyone asking him to. Now there were four Harrys, all of whom had that tendency to some degree, and this whole quest of theirs consisted of going into dangerous places and meddling in other people's business. It was Harry's personal catnip, and with no non-Harrys around to tell them when to pull themselves back, he worried they might over-indulge.

Yellow's smile went from bright and fake to something softer, shier, and more genuine. "We've got Link and Avoka sitting on us while you and Hermione are busy at the castle, so don't worry," he assured Ron. "It'd be really cool if you all could meet sometime! Especially you and Avoka. It's kinda funny that Malfoy turned out to be a knife-throwing ninja in another dimension!" He laughed, a young and bubbly sound unique to him among the four Harrys.

A pang of jealousy made Ron's heart ache. "Yeah, I think I'd like to meet up," he said. "Maybe once the train stop here is done."

Was it bad that he'd felt a little ignored this year? Harry had suddenly acquired three new friends in the form of different aspects of himself, then he'd gone out making friends with Slytherins, and now he was out being buddies with people Ron had never seen. It was starting to remind Ron a little of growing up as one of the less favored children out of his siblings. His parents loved them all very much, but there was only so much time and attention one could spread out across seven kids. Percy, Charlie, Bill, and Ginny tended to eat up a lot of it by either being academically perfect or being the one daughter in the family.

But the Harrys were allowed to branch out and make friends with whoever they wanted, weren't they? Ron wasn't the end-all be-all of friendship. Harry wouldn't forget him, surely? The fact that Yellow had come specifically to visit him was reassuring, even if he wondered where the other three had gotten off to.

The rapid thumps of loud, hurried footsteps could be heard beyond the open dormitory door, and then Fred and George charged in. "Harry!" they cried.

"Yellow, to be specific," Ron said. "I can tell you up-front that he won't like what you're going to say." Whatever Fred and George had come up with, Yellow was the most likely of the Harrys to put the kibosh on it.

"Sure he will!" George said brightly as the two strode in. "It's good news!"

George's bulging pockets clinked with glass as he walked. Ron didn't fully know what his older brothers had been up to, both because the twins didn't want nosy siblings (mainly Ginny and Percy) poking around their hidden experimenting area and because Ron didn't fancy involving himself in anything that involved trailing the smell of brimstone back to the common room. He was aware, however, that the Fred and George had a healthy handful of shiny new project materials to work with, plenty of free time outside of Hogwarts's currently limited classes (they were trickling back in, but some teachers didn't trust their Magic Rods yet), and a powerful drive to create chaos that had only grown as they became increasingly bored milling around the castle. Ron hoped that the new turnplate the Gorons were installing and the resulting ease of travel to and from the castle would help his brothers work off some of that trouble-making energy before they decided to do something truly wild, like set off a whole box of home-brewed fireworks in a major hallway. Ron wouldn't put it past them at this point.

"We've been busy," Fred told Yellow, rubbing his hands together gleefully. Ron would consider that statement, said in that tone, a threat.

Yellow looked curious, but foolishly unwary. "Busy with potions? Have you found out what the Fire ChuChu jelly does?"

The twins gave him broad, mischievous grins. "We have," George said, taking a bottle out of his pocket. He gave a bow and flourished his other hand toward it. "Behold: Exploding Solution!"

"If you dip something into this and then throw it, it'll explode against whatever it hits!" Fred declared. "It's not a particularly big blast, but it puts out a fair amount of rainbow fire that ought to catch on a monster's skin. I think the mix of magics is what caused that unexpected color."

"We combined the ChuChu jelly with some of the fire-related ingredients in Snape's stores. Certain things use a mix of sympathetic magic and the caster's power in order to work, so they're inert on their own. Those kinds of ingredients didn't break during the world hop," George explained. "Light World stuff acts really strange in terms of brewing, by the way."

"Powerful, non-volatile, and not too fussed with timing or stirring. It's weird," Fred agreed. "Usually you have to pick one out of the three."

Yellow's golden eyes were wide. "Explosions and fire sound really dangerous," he said, looking fearfully at the bottle of glittering potion. It was an attractive brew, Ron had to admit—a color that shifted between rich red and vivid orange, flecked with sparks of gold. "Also, what's sympathetic magic?"

"Magic based on this-is-related-to-that. It's a kind of symbolic magic powered by a caster, like runes but less abstract. The ingredients themselves can be mundane plants or animals, but the meaning attached to them gives them power in the right hands," George said. Ron was abruptly reminded that, despite the twins' penchant for getting detentions, they were in fact just as smart as Percy when it came to academics. "Potions use a lot of sympathetic magic, which is why Muggles can't make most of them. Conveniently, though, it means that Snape's supplies aren't as useless as he's convinced himself."

"Just useless enough that he can't brew anything N.E.W.T.-level or above, which is driving him spare," Fred said with a laugh.

"Yeah, he could be resuming classes like most of the other professors right now if he wanted, but he's been too tied up with letting everyone know day in and day out about how much he thinks it sucks to be here." George rolled his eyes. "Anyway, have some Exploding Solution! You guys can use it for your arrows, right?" He pushed the bottle into Yellow's hands, then added another three to the crooks of Yellow's elbows.

Yellow made a weak sound of protest, but wisely didn't struggle and risk dropping said explosives. Instead, he carefully slid the potions into the gold-embroidered messenger bag slung over his shoulder. "Thank you for your hard work, even if I'd rather my brothers didn't wind up with even more ways to blow themselves up," he said, inclining his head toward the twins in a shallow bow. "If Blue decides to string you up by your toes for giving Red the power to use exploding rainbow fire arrows, it's officially not my fault."

"Oh, man, I wish I could see Red shooting those arrows out in the field," Fred said wistfully.

"Alas, it's way more fun to put monsters' innards to use than it is to go out adventuring and fight the things," George said. "The beasties here are a little too clever with their swords for comfort. I liked the dumber ones back home better."

"Before you take off to save the world again, do you have any other spare monster parts you'd like us to experiment with?" Fred asked. "Now that Lake Hylia is monster-free, it's going to be harder for us to get ahold of those on our own."

"I do, actually!" Yellow opened his bag and peered into it. "Green and Red have been wandering into the forest outside of Castle Town to fight Bokoblins during the day and Stalfoses at night, so they've racked up a fair amount of icky things. They don't like having their bags too cluttered—even though the things are thought-based, so it's not like they get messy—so they pass that stuff over to Blue and me." He took a set of dragon-hide gloves out of his bag, put them on, and then reached in again. "Wait," he said, pausing. "Do you have a sack to put these things in? Monster guts aren't bloody, but they're still wet and gross. Not fun to carry around bare-handed."

George pulled a leather sack from somewhere inside his robe with the air of someone revealing a hidden flask. "We've got you covered."

"A true prankster doesn't go anywhere unprepared," Fred said with a sage nod.

"You came prepared, and you knew I was here within five minutes of me landing in the dorm?" Yellow remarked with an awed shake of his head. "Pranking magic is really something else." He started loading up the sack with bones and horns and pulsating fleshy lumps that had Ron turning away and taking a step back.

"Why would you have those?" he asked, fighting down the urge to gag. "Who would want to stick those in their bag?"

Yellow shrugged helplessly. "Brothers are brothers."

Ron eyed one of the bottles sticking partway out of George's pocket, full of an ominous substance that looked like glowing blood and sticky tar loosely swirled together. There was no telling what that might do, or how many times the twins might blow themselves or parts of the castle up as they attempted to answer that question for themselves. Ron sighed. "Yeah, I get what you mean."


Item Get: Exploding Solution. Brewed from a combination of Dark World and Light World ingredients, this potion has the ability to turn anything dipped into it into a colorful, flame-spreading explosive. The percussive force of the explosion is only enough to make a monster stagger and the damage dealt isn't as strong as a Fire Arrow; however, the flames have a wider reach and the potion can be applied to more than just arrows.

Notes:

-Avoka is being a bit of a dramatic edgelord in this chapter, but he is, without a doubt, more (potentially) dangerous than Draco is. Much like Link, if he had been born into his dimensional alternate's family, things would have turned out very badly. Link would have suffered greatly in Harry's place, but the world would have suffered if Avoka had been raised by Draco's parents.

-Blue (and by extension, the other Harrys) desperately wants to be loved and praised and taken care of, but has been taught to think of himself as a toxic burden that can only be dumped from one family's lap onto someone else's. As such, he's even more reluctant to open up to someone who might actually come to love him because he doesn't want to cause that person trouble. I'm planning on cracking that nut open a little during the Medusa Warren Arc coming up.

-If you want to think of Remus and Sirius as being romantic in this fic, feel free, but please don't bug me to write that. Romance is very much not my thing; I'm just writing their relationship in a way that I find fulfilling and enjoyable.

-Sympathetic magic is a real-world cultural practice! I learned a little about sympathetic magic tradition in the British Isles in school, so I worked that in here.

Next month: the Harrys are going to need a Moon Pearl if they're going to get to the bottom of Vaati's latest power-grab, aren't they?