I might have to edit and repost this later, because I got sidetracked by a multitude of distractions this week and writing fell by the wayside. I didn't even think to check the Divination curriculum until after I'd written the chapter, so let's pretend this is an AU in which Trelawney does a Crystal Ball unit in the fall semester, shall we? I'm experimenting with a hint system here, just in case I need it later.

Content warning: this chapter features the Harrys being very Not Okay and doing their damndest not to get help with their home situation. This isn't healthy behavior, nor am I promoting it; Harry has just come to equate adults trying to help with the Dursleys taking their anger out on him, so he's trying to avoid stirring anything up at home. It's a mindset I still find myself in with certain members of my family, even though I can comfortably admit I dislike them, so I'm writing from experience here.

"No way! We've got class today?" Ron said incredulously after the school-wide announcement. "It's only been two days since Shadow Harry bombed us! Can't we get a week off, at least?"

"The only injuries suffered were minor enough for Madam Pomfrey to fix within a day or so," Hermione told him. "Most everyone who was hurt can go back to class now."

"Didn't at least one of the bombs go off in a classroom?"

"They were magic bombs," Harry told him. "They're scary-looking, but they don't do much compared to the usual sort. A few spells could set everything right again."

Ron stabbed his fork into his hash browns. "Now we have to go to Divination with Trelawney," he complained between bites. "She's having a field day over this, I bet. 'Ooh, I predicted the coming of an evil not-Harry with bombs'!"

Red raised an eyebrow at Ron from across the table. "You sounded just like Hermione, there," he remarked. "I think she'd have approved if she were here."

"I even made sure my mouth wasn't full while I was talking," Ron said proudly.

"Where is Hermione?" Yellow wondered. He sat close to Red with a cautious amount of space between him and the girl on his other side. Lavender had been eyeing him warily every now and then, resulting in him nestling farther into his brother's side as the meal went on. "She doesn't usually sleep in."

"She's hogging the Bestiary again," Blue grumbled into his eggs. "Even though you gave her a copy of my notes and she can't read the bloody thing."

Harry patted him on the shoulder. "I'll make sure to read as much of it to you as I can once you get it back." His blue counterpart was attached to the tome like a toddler to a favorite blanket. Harry didn't understand the obsession, but he'd feed into it if it kept Blue from moping.

Blue scowled. "If I get it back, you mean."

Hermione strolled into the Gryffindor cafeteria from the common room a few minutes later. Sitting down between Yellow and Lavender, she set the Hylian Bestiary on the table. Her hair was livelier than usual and wild excitement showed on her slightly flushed face. "I've made a ghost friend," she declared.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Like, with Nearly Headless Nick? If he invites you to his deathday party, you're on your own. Once was enough for me, thanks."

She shook her head, her eyes bright. "No, a Hylian ghost!" she proclaimed. Lowering her voice, she went on, "There's a ghost in the Bestiary. I don't know why, but I'm the only one who seems to have noticed. She's been teaching me about Hylian magic."

Blue looked scandalized. "She's spoken to you, but not to me? Why not? I've been studying the book more!"

Hermione rolled her eyes at him. "Well, maybe she doesn't like people who hog things like you do," she said snidely. "I'd say a queen like her would be more a proponent for sharing knowledge than keeping it locked up in a boys' dormitory."

Harry choked on his eggs and coughed hard to clear his lungs. "A queen?" he wheezed. He envisioned the Queen of England giving Hermione a lecture on proper spell pronunciation. The idea was so ridiculous that his coughing morphed into giggles.

"Queen Zelda," Hermione said in a low voice. "Not just any Zelda, either—her great-great grandmother was the one to find land and re-establish Hyrule after the original kingdom was consumed by a flood. She was the fifth ruler of this Hyrule." She pointed to the ground beneath their feet. "Zelda says her castle might form the base of this one."

"Whoa, does that mean people from around here are descendants of Hylian people?" Yellow asked in wonder. "Are Professor McGonagall and Hagrid Hylian?" He gasped. "Could there be people related to Zelda around? Royal people?"

"It's entirely possible." Hermione wore a manic grin. "Since I have plenty of time, I'm going to ask her everything she knows and take notes as thoroughly as I can. She doesn't know much about Old Hyrule, but she was a scholar of her own people. She even learned how the trains of her era worked, since the Link of her time was an engineer! Can you imagine? Ancient trains!" She hurriedly loaded a plate with random breakfast items and then hurried off to the girls' dorms.

A little baffled by her excitement, Harry watched her go. Yes, being able to communicate with a long-dead queen was pretty cool, but it wasn't like there weren't a bunch of dead people around Hogwarts that Hermione had already seen and spoken to. And who got excited over trains? Trains were trains, no matter when they were from.

Ron seemed bemused as well. "'Plenty of time'?" he said. "How does she have time, with a schedule like hers?"

Harry shrugged. He dimly recalled seeing Hermione's tangled schedule, but he hadn't really thought about it beyond his initial surprised reaction. The person writing down schedules had probably just gotten things confused and written them down wrong. "If anyone can stretch an hour, it's Hermione."

"Huh. I guess so."

Yellow stared into his crystal ball with glassy eyes. With every breath of the warm, incense-scented air of Professor Trelawney's tower, he slid deeper into his light doze. The class had started off exciting enough, with the professor wailing dramatically and proclaiming—with much fluttering of hands—that she'd predicted Shadow Harry's attack. Yellow had squeezed his eyes shut and silently borne the inquisitive stares of his classmates until Trelawney had calmed down and assigned them classwork.

Now, despite his previous anxiety, he was fighting and failing not to fall asleep. Who had come up with the idea of crystal balls, anyway? Staring at glass just made him bored, not enlightened.

A quick movement to his right roused him enough to look over. Red had lost the fight with consciousness and now slumped over his crystal ball, fast asleep. Green nudged his shoulder a couple times, shrugged when the boy didn't wake, and then slumped in his seat with a yawn.

Professor Trelawney swept by their tables a short while later and frowned at the sight of one sleeping Harry, Blue and Ron playing Tic-Tac-Toe on a piece of parchment, and Green idly doodling various Hylian swords on his otherwise blank page of notes.

Clearing her throat with pointed emphasis, the professor drew their attention. "So, my dears, have any of you made contact with the beyond this morning?" she asked hopefully. Her magnified gaze fell on Yellow, who sank in his chair. It was bad enough that she'd loved foretelling his death back when he'd been one Harry Potter; it was going to be twice as bad now, to be the singled-out student among singled-out students. Why couldn't Shadow Harry have had purple eyes, or orange?

"I would expect you, especially, to have a close connection to the future," Trelawney told him. She swept over to his side in a profusion of perfumed scarves. "Let us see what we may." She waved her hands around Yellow's crystal ball. "Oh my…such darkness…"

Yellow suppressed a groan and shared a commiserating look with his friends. Blue's expression of sympathy was marred by a poorly hidden smirk, but it halfway counted.

Professor Trelawney gasped and recoiled from Yellow's crystal ball. "Death and despair! Unending darkness!" she proclaimed. The woman put one spindly hand on his shoulder and shook her head. "I foretell a shadowy and dangerous future to come, Mister Potter. You must lean on your brothers for support, for I fear you won't survive otherwise. You have my condolences, my dear." She walked away, murmuring "poor soul" loud enough for anyone nearby to hear—

That was, until her shadow stuck out its foot and sent her sprawling onto the rug-cushioned floor.

Several people around the hazy classroom tittered after their initial shock. Yellow sat frozen in his seat while Lavender and Parvati rushed to help the fallen professor. Had he really seen that? Such a thing surely wasn't possible.

There was a tug on his trouser leg. Yellow looked down, and sucked in a tight breath at the sight of his shadow staring back at him with amused yellow eyes. It made a pushing motion with its hands and a large, blue-black sphere rose from the ground.

"Moon Pearl. Great for keeping bug-eyed old bats off your back," Shadow Harry's voice whispered in his ears. "Sorry for the mix-up. You were the nicest to me, last we met." The shadow at his feet waved, and then its yellow eyes faded.

Yellow cautiously picked up the ball that Shadow Harry had given him. It was opaque, as pearls tended to be, and a mesmerizing blue that shifted from royal to midnight to deepest black depending on the angle he looked at it from. Despite being the size of the crystal ball he'd been yawning at for the last forty-five minutes, the pearl was only half its weight. He picked it up easily and set it in his lap.

"What's that?" Ron peered over the table.

"Shadow Harry gave me a present," Yellow said, holding up the Moon Pearl. He switched it out with the crystal ball Trelawney had assigned him. "He said he was sorry about the mix-up. Apparently, we met before and I was nice to him? I don't remember that, though."

"You did meet before," Green said. He had a puzzled frown on his face, as though he weren't quite sure what he was saying. "You were Red."

At the sound of his name, Red's head snapped up. "'M awake," he slurred. "Whass th'question?"

"Yellow got a crystal ball from Shadow Harry and Green is being weird," Blue summarized. "You've got fifteen minutes to sleep until Transfiguration."

"Brill." Red closed his eyes and resumed his nap.

"What do you mean, 'last time'?" Blue asked Green. "Are you talking about the second Four Swords Hero?"

Green frowned bemusedly. "Er, I guess? I just had a moment of—you know when you know a song, but you can't remember its name or where you first heard it? It was like that." He looked down at the page he'd been drawing swords on. "You know, I don't think all of these were in the beastie-book."

"Did the book say anything about Moon Pearls?" Yellow asked. "Can they be used like crystal balls?"

"That's what they're for," he said. "Magical Hylians used them to tell people's futures."

Yellow turned his attention to the Moon Pearl that glimmered prettily in front of him. Could one really see the future with it? He laid a hand on the stone's cool surface. He wasn't sure what Divination was really supposed to be like; he was pretty sure that what Trelawney taught was the kind of stuff that Muggles did for money, not actual magic.

"Are you sure that shadow didn't lay a curse on it?" Ron asked uneasily. He gave the ball a suspicious frown.

"Maybe, maybe not," Yellow said with a shrug. "If he did, we have a Hospital Wing to fix me up. If he didn't, I can look into the future, woooh." He gave his fingers a Trelawney-esque wiggle.

Ron snorted. "I bet Hermione would love to hear that."

Yellow looked around to check for any nearby Trelawneys before whispering, "I think she'd be proud that I managed to outdo a teacher." He laid both hands lightly on the Moon Pearl's sides and stared deeply into its dark surface. Trelawney and her textbook had gone on about opening one's "Inner Eye", which he'd never quite understood, but Yellow definitely knew how to focus. Years of brain-numbingly repetitive chores had taught him how to concentrate on any task, no matter how boring or pointless, like his next meal depended on it.

As he bored into the ball with his piercing gaze, the pearl's opaque surface began to shift. Striations of blue and black spun in hypnotic swirls. The midnight whorls slithered away, out from the center of his vision, until he could see into the pearl's crystal heart.

Hagrid appeared, his brow knitted in a deep frown. He stood at the edge of the Forbidden Forest with a lantern in hand, studying a line of large, curiously flat flowers with a critical eye. The focus of the scene then turned to one of the squashed-looking blooms, an unusual specimen whose petals were blue as opposed to the pale green of the others.

The illusion slipped away, curtained behind the Moon Pearl's soft sheen. Yellow blinked and rubbed his stinging eyes. He must have been focusing on the ball for quite a while.

He paused when he realized the classroom had gone quiet. Everyone was staring at him, including Ron and his other selves.

"Y-Your eyes were glowing," Neville remarked from where he sat at a nearby table. "How did they do that?"

Now Yellow noticed that a number of the looks he was getting were fearful. He picked up the Moon Pearl and clutched it to his chest. It was the perfect size for hugging. "I was just seeing the future," he mumbled. "I didn't know that would happen."

Professor Trelawney broke the silence. "You saw the future, Mister Potter?" she asked excitedly. "Oh, first in the class! Tell us, what did you see?"

He curled tighter around the ball. Compared to Trelawney's usual predictions of doom, his vision was just going to make people laugh.

"It's alright if it was only a small thing, dear," the professor assured him. "Every Seer has to start somewhere."

"I saw Hagrid. He was frowning at some funny-looking flowers," he confessed. "I guess that means I should visit him? Or look for those flowers?"

The woman nodded solemnly, while some of his classmates rolled their eyes and resumed pretending to crystal-gaze. "Either of those options would be a good course of action. While long-reaching, contextless visions can be disastrous if one acts on them, the unimportant, everyday ones can be safely followed," she advised. Yellow was surprised to find that her wisdom seemed sound, for once. "Pray tell, where did you find that crystal ball? I've never seen any like it," Trelawney said with longing in her magnified eyes.

"Erm…" Yellow scrambled for a lie. Being the worst of a quartet of bad liars, he had more than a little trouble. "The sword did it?"

Professor Trelawney sighed. "I see. Well, if the sword gives you another, I'd love to borrow it." She swept off to another corner of the classroom, were Dean and Seamus were busy arm-wrestling.

"I didn't think seeing the future could actually be done!" Blue whispered loudly, a giddy grin on his face. "That was wicked! Can you do it again, for science?"

"Maybe later." Yellow shoved the Moon Pearl into his bag. "I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea."

Soft brown eyes zeroed in on Yellow, who froze like a startled rabbit.

Professor Lupin cleared his throat. "Yellow, could you please stay after class? I'd like to speak with you."

'Whyyy?' Yellow wanted to whine. He held it in, as he did with most every urge to complain, though he allowed his shoulders to slump dejectedly.

Ron and Hermione peeled away from the exodus of students filing out the door, as did Red, who'd taken off running as soon as the lecture had concluded.

Hermione raised her hand. "If this is about his essay, Professor, I assure you all I did was proofread it," she said. "I've been tutoring him, so his writing has improved."

"This isn't about that, but I'll award ten points to Gryffindor for your hardworking spirit," the professor said with a small smile. "I wished to speak to Mister Potter—and the other Misters Potter, I suppose—about a private matter. They aren't in trouble, I assure you."

While Hermione seemed appeased, Ron wore a thoughtful frown. He fixed Yellow with the same kind of gaze he used to analyze a chessboard. Yellow gulped nervously.

"This is about the boggart, isn't it?" Ron said with his characteristic bluntness.

Hermione now wore the same unnerving Chess Face as Ron.

Before Yellow could stammer an unconvincing lie, Green and Blue squared their shoulders and stepped up. "Yellow had a couple nightmares and the professor's just worried, is all," Green said. "That's what professors do, when they aren't total arses like Snape."

"On top of that, we've accidentally inherited a legacy spanning millennia," Blue added. "We're only thirteen, and we have to stop a giant eyeball even stronger than Voldemort who thinks he's a god? If McGonagall weren't so used to Gryffindors getting up to ridiculous shenanigans, she'd have definitely called us in for the wizardly equivalent of a psych eval! Lupin's just checking up on us." He shot the professor a narrow-eyed glance. "Isn't that right?"

"Of course," Professor Lupin agreed easily. "I'm only making sure Mister Potter is handling his current situation in a healthy manner. As a new teacher, I'm not as familiar with his personality, and so I fret more. Don't worry, Mister Weasley, Miss Granger; I'll just have a quick chat with him and he'll be right out."

"We'll be outside, then," Hermione said. She gave Yellow a stern frown that promised a Friendly Discussion after their McGonagall-ordered detentions that evening, and then ushered Ron out the door.

Professor Lupin flicked his wand once he and the Harrys were alone. "Muffliato. There, that should discourage eavesdropping."

"Alright, how much have you dug up and how much do we have to pay to get it buried again?" Blue demanded. "I'm sure Gringotts has some kind of money-by-owl system—"

Red held up his hands. "Whoa, slow down there, Mister Slytherin. We don't need your dastardly plans just yet."

"You're quite right, Red. As I said before, you aren't in trouble," Professor Lupin said. He went over to the teacher's desk that had sat neglected during his lesson in warding off Red Caps and reached under it. He withdrew a slim manila folder. "You're a difficult boy to find, Mister Potter, even in the Muggle world. Unusual, given Muggles' meticulous record-keeping," the man commented as he returned with the file held open in one hand. "Have you gone in for a single medical check-up since the one you had before Kindergarten?"

"I didn't need any," Green declared. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and his back straight. "Until I came to Hogwarts, I only needed a plaster here and there."

'He's not lying, really,' Yellow mused. He'd gotten bruises from Dudley's games of Harry-Hunting, some burns from cooking, and a knock here and there from Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon, but he'd healed just fine without any medical help. When he'd gotten sick, he'd been quarantined in his cupboard (except for bathroom breaks) and given two bowls of chicken soup a day, and he'd always gotten better on his own. If here was one thing he agreed with his relatives on, it was the pointlessness of taking him to the doctor.

"You should be receiving a check-up once a year, if not every six months," Professor Lupin chided. "I'll have Madam Pomfrey take a look at you, once she's calmed down over recent happenings."

The Harrys all spoke up at once. "Professor, no, we don't—"

"Moving on," Professor Lupin said calmly, but firmly, "it says here that you once paid a visit to the school nurse after your cousin attacked you on the playground in third grade. While her findings may not be the same as a hospital's medical report, they are not insignificant." He focused on the open file and read, "'Long-term malnourishment, severely underweight, long-term dehydration, nerve damage from burn scarring along the right palm and all five fingertips of the left hand, multiple contusions in varying states of healing ranging from hours old to 5-7 days old,' and the list goes on." He snapped the folder shut. Yellow and Green flinched at the sound. "The nurse was fired soon after making this report due to rush of complaints filed by a number of concerned parents. Many of these parents mentioned being made aware of 'controversial behaviors' by a well-known member of the local community, Petunia Dursley."

"If you wanted to know my cousin's a bully, my aunt's a hag, and I'm bad at using a stove, all you had to do was ask," Red said with a relieved laugh. "And by the way, Aunt Petunia got the nurse fired because the lady said Dudley was too fat and needed to be put on a diet, not because she did a check-up on me."

Yellow breathed a quiet sigh, his shoulders starting to relax. Professor Lupin hadn't found anything that would get them in too much trouble, even if him getting ahold of that kind of info within a few days was scarily impressive. The boy was pretty sure that was illegal, too, but Yellow was admittedly a lot more familiar with the laws in the Muggle world than the magical one.

Professor Lupin raised an eyebrow, which made Yellow's breath catch in his throat. Uh-oh. "Your cousin needed to be put on a diet, yet the nurse identified signs of long-term underfeeding in you, Mister Potter?" the teacher inquired.

There was a short silence, during which Blue slapped Red upside the head and Green and Yellow face-palmed.

"Fine, we didn't get to eat as much as we liked, growing up," Blue snapped. "Dudley was always stealing off of our plate, so yes, we're on the thin side. Honestly, we'd rather have Malfoy as a cousin than that bullying arse. He's an arrogant prat and just as bigoted as Dudley, but at least he's smart enough to do his own homework and too scrawny to throw a decent punch. Can we go now?"

"We've got Care of Magical Creatures next," Green added. "It's outside, so we have to deal with lots of Octoroks on the way over."

"Just a few questions first and then I'll set you free." The man's warm, concerned gaze frightened Yellow more than anything Professor Snape had ever dished out. "Firstly, Yellow, I would like to know whether you're comfortable living with the Dursleys."

Three Harrys barked out a laugh, and Yellow tittered incredulously. "Comfortable?" he repeated. "I would be more comfortable hugging a Dementor, Professor. I hate them. I wish I could stuff them all in the cupboard under the stairs, leave on the Knight Bus, and never see them again." He laughed again, now more hysterical. "At this point, I'd almost be willing to move in with Malfoy, now that he's a little nicer. His dad is evil, but at least he's kind of polite about it. The Dursleys are just plain mean."

Professor Lupin simply nodded at this. "I'll see what I can do, then." He turned his gaze on all of the boys. "As for my second question, were you aware that your father and I were good friends during our years at Hogwarts? I knew you when you were a baby, Harry." His eyes shone fiercely as he said this. "You vanished after that Halloween night, and I thought you had been placed in a safe home."

"You knew my dad?!" Blue, Red, and Green squawked.

Yellow shook his head, still engaged in the argument. "The Dursleys aren't very nice, but they haven't put me in danger—"

"Imagine my surprise when I found out you weren't," Professor Lupin continued, his voice sharp. "No child's boggart should take the form of their parent or guardian like that. Never, Harry."

Casting a helpless look toward his flustered brothers, Yellow said, "You don't have to get all worked up because I'm a pansy, Professor. I know I'm scared of silly things, and I guess the boggart did, too. It's okay." He put on his most pitiful please-I'll-be-good voice and held his eyes entreatingly wide. "Just please don't go around telling people stuff like this. People already look at me funny because of the scar, and I don't want them thinking my family broke me or something. I hate to stand out."

Professor Lupin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Yellow, it most definitely isn't 'okay'. You're the son of my best friend, you've been abused, and you're protecting the people who hurt you." The man sounded like he very much needed a calming cup of tea. "You can be certain I'll discuss this with the Headmaster—"

"What?! Why?" Green burst out. "He doesn't need to know!"

"We can handle this ourselves, Professor," Yellow agreed. If Lupin said something to Dumbledore, Dumbledore would say something to the Dursleys. He didn't want to endure yet another repeat of what always happened when he told a concerned adult too much. "We've done it for twelve years and we can do it for more."

"You shouldn't have to. That's my point," Professor Lupin said with exasperation. "When you go back to your friends, ask them about their childhoods. Were they ever starved? Were they cooking on a stove without supervision before age eight? Were they ever genuinely afraid of their parents? If their answers sound strange to you, come talk to me and I can help explain why. In the meantime, I'll tell the Headmaster to keep this matter as quiet as possible. Is that arrangement alright with you?"

The Harrys exchanged considering looks. Yellow didn't think it was a bad deal. While Professor Lupin was clearly trying to teach them a lesson of some sort, it wasn't all that difficult an assignment. In fact, Yellow thought it might be fun. He liked learning about people! Maybe he could even pry into Draco's background. He imagined it must have been a very different experience, being born with a silver spoon and trained from day one to be a bigoted snob.

"It's okay, I guess," Red told Professor Lupin, shrugging nonchalantly. Yellow could see from the quirk of his lips that the boy was as intrigued as he. "Is there a due date on this?"

"Sometime before the end of the school year would be nice," the professor said with a slight smile. "In the meantime, you can ask me any questions you might have about your parents during my office hours. Though I spent more time around James than Lily when we were students, I stayed in close contact with them both in the years that followed."

The boys' faces lit up. Though they'd heard some things from Hagrid, James Potter's best friend was guaranteed to know more than the groundskeeper. "Thank you, Professor Lupin," Green said earnestly. "I'd like to hear about them more, especially my mum."

Professor Lupin dipped his head in acknowledgment. "My door will be open, Mister Potter."

With grins all around, some broad and some shy, the boys trooped outside the classroom.

Green's cry of alarm was Yellow's only warning before the massive blade of a Phantom sliced through him.

My version of Shadow Harry/Link is very different from how he was portrayed in the Four Swords manga, since I've based him off my experience playing Four Swords Adventures, but I wanted to do a little nod to it. The four Harrys aren't direct copies of the four Links with different colors pasted on, but I did intentionally make Yellow Harry similar to Red Link.

Lupin's deep invasion of Harry's privacy is definitely illegal by Muggle standards, but I feel like most Hogwarts teachers wouldn't have much compunction about digging up a Muggle-raised kid's past if they felt that kid was being mistreated. I didn't get the impression from the books that wizards have much respect for the laws of Muggle bureaucracy, so I don't think they would be too concerned with the whole "children's records are to be kept private" thing.