I've drawn some examples of islander clothing and put them under the "concept art" tag on garden-eel-draws! I've also posted an illustration of the Hylian Alphabet for this story in my reference guide "A Hylian Conlang" on Ao3 (it's part of the same series as this story on that site), as well as under the "concept art" tag on my blog. Hylian lettering in this story will look like a heavily hiragana-influenced English font.
After cautiously picking their way across the wind-blown bridge and trooping down a winding, grassy path, the Harrys entered Hylian civilization for the first time. Harry felt like he was stepping into history, studying the clothes the farmers wore and looking at their houses up close. The men working the fields of Outset Isle wore a mixture of tunics, knee-length leggings, wide-legged pleated shorts, and hip-length cotton kimonos in soft shades of blue, green, pink, orange, and white. Embroidered and painted designs of fish, water snakes, sea serpents, and lobsters swam across the plain fabric and decorated the broad leather belt at every farmer's waist. The thatched-roof houses they lived in, up close, were like medieval architecture made new. It was definitely a different country's version of medieval, but they emanated a sense of history that plucked at the strings of his sword-memories. From ground level, he could look through the blue-tinted windows at the bright turquoise lines decorating the interior of each building, running along stone conduits tracing the edges of the ceilings and floors and stopping at circular nodes every now and then. What were they for? He'd never seen anything like the glowing lines all over the island, and his sword didn't seem to have anything to tell him about them.
Farmers looked up from their work as the Harrys passed, doing double-takes at the four identical boys dressed in mud-smeared foreign clothes and sporting bizarre eyewear. Harry vanished the Lenses of Truth, winced at the sudden assault of unfiltered sunlight, and put them back on. He could deal with looking extra strange if it meant not having to endure the feeling of his eyeballs simmering in his skull. Yellow, however, wasn't taking the attention well. He had switched to his normal glasses and was tucked behind Red's shoulder, keeping his gaze aimed shyly at the ground.
When they reached the central road, even more people stared at them. Women carrying vases of water on their heads shied toward the side of the street, wide-eyed children were tugged back by their parents, and farmers ferrying heavy loads from one homestead to another stopped to ogle at them. A couple of people might have even bowed, or maybe they'd just chosen an odd way to avert their eyes.
Harry stared right back, though he made an attempt to observe without drawing even more attention. He'd expected Hylians to look like the depictions of past Heroes in the Bestiary, but they weren't all blonde, blue-eyed, and pale-skinned. In fact, most of the people had the same medium brown complexion as Harry, with straight dark hair ranging from coffee-colored to shining blue-black. Some of their features were a half-step to the left of human, however. There were variations, of course, but most of the people he saw had big, expressive eyes set in heart-shaped faces framed by ears that came to extended points. He could see a bit of Vaati's unnatural beauty in their elfish features.
In contrast to the men, the women wore narrow dresses with high slits up the sides, loose trousers that ended at mid-calf, and even broader leather girdles with colorful ribbon-lacing at the back. Children played in the street wearing tank tops, open kimono jackets with three-quarter sleeves, and mini-shorts. As the long trek down to the beach went on, Harry regarded those tiny shorts and flapping wide sleeves with growing jealousy. It was hot. Not only that, but it was terribly humid. The sun beat down on him relentlessly, soaking into and heating up his oversized, sodden swimming trunks and similarly unfitting T-shirt. The air here was just too waterlogged for them to dry and their ill-fitting nature meant they covered up enough of his body for him to feel like a steamed potato.
Yellow tugged on his sleeve. "Could we buy new clothes, please?" he asked plaintively.
Harry nodded. If all of Hyrule was this hot and humid, they'd definitely have to acquire some local clothes before they bought armor; the rest of their wardrobe back at the castle consisted mainly of wool and heavy denim, which would have guaranteed heatstroke in these conditions.
"I'm guessing this place isn't in the same area of the planet as Scotland," Blue panted. He fanned himself with both hands. "It feels like we're at the equator."
A rickshaw went past them, the strapping young driver pulling two pale, blond, blue-eyed Hylians in her little wooden carriage. The passengers were obviously tourists; they wore dual layers of woolen tunics, woolen tights, and knee-high leather boots. Both were visibly wilting in the heat as perspiration beaded on their reddened faces. The sight brought a wry smile to Harry's lips. Good to know he wasn't just being overdramatic.
When they made it into town, he ignored the funny looks still coming from the locals and scanned the signs. He was hunting for a clothing store or someplace that sold water—either would do. Blue suddenly squealed and seized him by the shoulders, making Harry squeak and almost elbow him in the face. "Hylians use something like the Latin Alphabet!" Blue proclaimed. "They write with almost the same letters that we do! It just looks like a weird font!"
"Wha—really?" Harry asked in surprise. He'd seen glimpses of the raw, untranslated text in the Hylian Bestiary when the Four Sword's memory magic had still been settling in, and it had looked nothing like English. "That'll make my job translating for you easier, then. The faster you learn Hylian, the less reading I have to do."
Blue clenched his fist in determination. "Once I learn how to read, you can't stop me from finding a book about trains!"
Harry wandered through the town square, half-distracted from his mission of finding the shops they needed by crowd-watching. People flitted around wearing a rainbow of clothes varying from Medieval European to samurai-era Japanese. There was a certain theme of geometric white patterns and stylized goat and ox designs among the tourists' clothes. Harry also noticed an array of specifically waist-covering accessories, be they the leather wraps of the islanders or the short stone corsets of the lighter-skinned Hylians. Harry looked at one of the corsets incredulously as its wearer passed by. It was definitely made of the same dark stone as the dragon train, with raised designs in lighter stone and glowing orange jewels sparingly dotting it across the front and back. Harry didn't think it was squeezing the man's waist too hard and there was an obvious latch and hinge system keeping it on, but Harry couldn't imagine wearing something that heavy and hot to a place like this. No wonder so many of the tourists had switched to wearing islander-style leather belts.
The coolest-looking people were the rare white-haired, red-eyed humans who may or may not have been Hylians. The Four Sword was flickering in bafflement at the back of Harry's mind for whatever reason. These people wore blue cotton kimono jackets that went all the way down to their knees, with a stylized red eye on the back and pale blue swirling patterns at the neckline and ends of the sleeves. Instead of leather belts or stone girdles, they closed their jackets with big scarlet sashes that tucked into neat, boxy bows on the back. Under their coats, they seemed to wearing bodysuits—almost like ninja outfits, but in more shades of blue. They also wore wide-brimmed straw hats that swept up to high, narrow points, making them stand out in the crowd like church steeples among houses. Harry wanted one of those hats; they were like wearable parasols.
A loud voice somewhere in Harry's age range rose above the general mumble of the crowd. "Mooom, why can't I have a sword? I'm twelve, aren't I? And I'm all dressed up!"
Harry glanced to the left and felt his mind lock up like an overworked computer. He gaped incredulously at a boy who looked nothing like him, but was nevertheless dressed like the Four Swords Hero. The Four Sword was similarly sent reeling in the back of his mind. The ancient weapon was already struggling to match this place to its memories of Hyrule, but now this? Was the boy a Kokiri that had somehow broken loose from the Great Forest? Was he in some kind of uniform? Was he a Hero? What was going on?
The boy's mother joined him in front of the display window of a shop that seemed to specialize in swords. Most of the weapons on the display rack were similar to the Four Sword—short, fairly basic in design, and easy for children to handle. The design of the shop, too, was oddly child-friendly for a place that sold actual deadly weapons. Its sign was almost rainbow, with the letters of "Cyclone Adventure Supply" painted in a sequence of blue, white, orange, and red. There were clothing racks in the main body of the shop behind the display, showing garments that would probably fit the Harrys. Along the wall were various kinds of shelves showing off things like small shields and daggers and such. Harry started gravitating toward the store. It was huge compared to the others, completely taking up the building it was in without having to share floor space. They had everything. The niceness of the interior made his stomach do a little flip, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek. Maybe they had everything, but would Harry be able to afford it with his pocket change?
"Billi, you don't have any use for a weapon like that," the boy's mother said, interrupting Harry's thoughts. "This is an adventuring shop, besides. You know what happened to your uncle when he tried adventuring, don't you?"
"Come on, pleeease? For my birthday? It's a way cooler tradition than having to wear these hot mainlander clothes!" The boy pressed closer to the window, his eyes on a sword with a bluish steel blade and a blue hilt and fan-shaped cross guard that reminded Harry of the Four Sword. "Look at that one! It looks like the sword the Hero of Winds had, doesn't it?" The boy pointed behind him, not at the sword.
"Oh Billi…"
Harry's eyes followed the direction the boy had pointed in. Up on the side of a stone cliff, too big to miss, was a mural. Harry drifted toward that instead of the adventuring shop, straining to make it out over the heads of all the adults in the tourist crowd. The art style was a strange kind of abstract; everything seemed to be made up of snaking lines of color, as though every figure were a maze game on a children's menu. Harry squinted at the huge painting as he drew closer. It was a depiction of a boy dressed like Billi—dressed like all the Four Sword's various wielders until Harry had stumbled upon it. Rather than a sword, he held up something that looked both like a baton and a stylized gust of wind. Harry had trouble telling which. Poking over the Hero's shoulder was the unmistakable bat-winged hilt of the Master Sword. The boy's right hand was marked by a Triforce painted in flashing gold. In the background, mostly hidden by the main figure, lay a tiny, simple red sailboat with a prow shaped like some kind of animal head.
Who was this?
Harry stared up at the mural of someone who could only have been a hero of legend, frowning in confusion at his lack of recognition. The Four Sword didn't always have answers for everything, but it definitely should have had at least a few of this kid's memories. Enough for Harry to identify him, at least.
"Green! What are you doing?" he heard one of his brothers call out behind him.
Harry roused from his thoughts and looked over his shoulder. The other Harrys were weaving through the crowd toward him. Yellow reached him first.
"You just disappeared," Yellow said with a frown. "Where did you go?"
"Erm…" To be honest, Harry had kind of let go and allowed the Four Sword to steer him for a bit. Probably not a good idea, in hindsight. "I think this kid was a hero from after the Great Flood," he said instead of answering. He turned back toward the mural. It looked brand new, but there was a thickness to the paint's texture that hinted at layers upon layers being laid down. Harry wouldn't have been surprised if the villagers of Outset Isle cleaned and repainted the mural often to keep it clean and new-looking.
"That's the Hero of Winds you're looking at. Well, in painting form, obviously. He would have lived around…twenty-six hundred years ago, I think," Blue said. "Zelda has been writing articles for stories from the New Kingdom, including those of the Hero of Winds and the Spirit Hero. The Hero of Winds was the first of the next generation of Hyrule's legendary warriors. Link and Zelda's ancestor, Tetra, were the ones to find the mainland and establish the New Kingdom there."
"Whoa," Harry breathed, looking up at the boy in green. It was one thing to learn about a historical figure from an encyclopedia entry in an old book. It was another to see people honoring that history in real-time. The Hero of Winds lived over two thousand years ago and kids were still dressing like him.
"He was from Outset Isle, so it makes sense that people would honor him like that around here," Blue said. "That baton he's holding is the Wind Waker. It let him control winds, somehow."
"Weird superpower," Red remarked. "What are you supposed to do with that?"
"Steer a sailboat, maybe?" Yellow pointed out the little red boat behind the boy in the painting. "Remember that boring story we read in school about that guy who shot down an albatross and made all the wind around his ship go away? Well, if they'd had a wand like that, they could have made the boat go wherever they wanted!"
"Oh yeah, good point. I forgot sailboats need wind."
"It's a sail, Red. What else do you think powers it?" Blue said with a roll of his eyes. "Wishing hard enough?"
"I dunno if you've noticed, but none of us have even been to a dock, let alone around boats."
"I've never been to an airport, but I know that planes fly."
"But I bet you don't know how they do that."
"Through air-resistance and, er…flaps…?" Blue's cheeks turned pink. "Shut up!" He shoved Red and stomped back into the town square.
"Ha! Gotcha!" Red crowed before following him. "You don't know how airplanes work!"
"Neither do you!"
Yellow and Harry looked at each other, sighed, and wove through the crowd to catch up before the four of them got separated again.
Harry soon found himself once again searching for a place to herd his brothers into to both purchase some less miserable clothes and escape the relentless sun and heat. He wasn't sure whether escaping the heat was possible—why would a rural place like this have air-conditioned shops?—but shade was only a doorway away. There was a part of him that squirmed uncomfortably that the thought of walking in and not buying anything, though, despite his earlier suggestion to window-shop.
Harry licked his lips with his dry, sticking tongue. Maybe they could get some water first and clothes later? Because he would kill for something cold and refreshing right now…
"Hydromelon-coconut juice! Come get your hydromelon-coconut juice here!" he heard someone shout. Harry wove through the crowd and caught sight of a boy a little older than him flapping around a flag with a watermelon painted on it. He stood next to a food cart with a decent-sized queue in front of it, staffed by an older man slicing big green coconuts and watermelons with a short sword. "Cools you down, tastes great! Buy it for five Rupees a cup! It's a steal!"
A family passed by Harry holding coconut shells full of pink juice. The kids took drinks from theirs and the heat-induced flush in their faces faded, the sweat seeming to lift from their skin. Harry licked his dry lips.
He was cruelly held back from joining the juice line by a hand clamping on his wrist. "Look! Clothes!" Blue said, pointing to the sign of the shop he was now dragging Harry into. The sign had a cartoon drawing of a palm-tree-patterned tunic on it, reading "Mama Lena's Island Boutique."
The kindly old lady minding the shop took pity on the dirty, tired, obviously overheated boys. She sat them down on a bench by the changing room before fetching wooden bowls full of cool water. Harry held himself back from slurping the water down too quickly, while Red polished off his in a few long swallows.
"Hello, I'm Lena. I've been running this shop for about thirty years now, and I know a customer in need when I see one," the old lady said in grandmotherly tones once they handed the bowls back. She had a distinctly American accent, though not as thick or regional as Ruka's. "Would you like some clothing suggestions, my dears?"
"Yes, but, er…" Harry looked down at the Rupees in his bag. "We don't have much money. Do you have anything on clearance? Or is there a secondhand shop on Outset?"
"Why don't you tell me what you have and we can work something out?" she suggested.
"Twenty-eight Rupees," Harry said with a slight blush. He was reminded of the times his aunt had taken him to get new glasses, asking around loudly for where the charity bin was. It had been a while since he'd been pitied by strangers. "Is that enough for anything?"
"I'll worry about that, honey. You just stay there and try not to overheat."
Lena clattered off on her raised wooden sandals to check the shelves. "How old are you boys?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Thirteen," Harry said.
"Oh?" She turned away from a rack of tank tops, going to one full of short tunics instead. "You're older than I thought! That's reassuring."
"Reassuring? Why?"
Lena folded four different-colored cotton tunics over one arm before moving on to a shelf full of wide-sleeved jackets. "You don't know the history of this island, do you?" she asked with amusement.
"Er, no?"
"Outset Isle is one of the few places remaining where people treat the older heroic legends of Hyrule as more than mere children's stories," she said. "Everyone knows that the Hero of Winds was born here, but few are aware of our practices of historical conservation. Before the New Kingdom was established, we were passing down tales of past heroes' exploits and dressing our boys in green to honor them."
Harry nodded. Those traditions explained why that kid had been dressed in a way that hit so many of the Four Sword's stored memories. It was an Old Kingdom thing, like he'd guessed. Somehow, the people here had managed to hold onto that even before Zelda had begun her diving expeditions to retrieve Hyrule's history from the depths of the Great Sea.
He was curious, though. Why had Lena brought up Link? Harry didn't look anything like him, with his dark hair, green eyes, and round ears. While he'd seen some islanders with round ears, too, none of the incarnations of Link he'd seen portraits of in the Hylian Bestiary had shown that trait.
"That's interesting, but what does the history of this island have to do with me?" he asked. "My brothers and I aren't from anywhere near here."
The shopkeeper turned and gave him a wink. "The point is, the people of Outset know a sword like that when we see one. I'm just glad you're not quite the youngest children to be sent on this sort of quest." She turned to rifle through a stack of shorts.
Harry stared at her, wide-eyed. It made sense, given they were in Hyrule, that someone might recognize the weapon, but he honestly would have never expected it. The legends of the Four Sword were among the oldest stories in the Hylian Bestiary, and unlike the Master Sword, the blade was rarely mentioned elsewhere in the book.
"No wonder they kept staring," he muttered. The four-person rainbow was a pretty distinctive feature of the Four Sword, even if Harry's magic had messed the colors up.
"Translation time: what were you talking about?" Blue whispered.
Harry summarized the conversation. "I think she might be giving us a better deal because she thinks we're a great hero or something," he concluded guiltily. "All we've done so far is make things ten times worse by pissing Vaati off, though."
"So? Our lives suck, and they're only going to get harder for as long as we keep fighting Vaati," Red said. "Why not let the nice lady help?"
"It's not like she's rich enough to waste money on us," Harry protested. The shop was tiny, sharing a building with another business next door. It hosted four wooden racks of clothing, two shelving units with more clothes, a changing room hidden behind a hanging screen of woven straw, and no other customers. He didn't know much about Hyrule's standards of living, but this place didn't exactly scream "money to spare".
Blue cupped his cheeks. "Green, I love you, but if we all followed your stance on charity, we'd starve in the street while people offered us food," he said. "We're trying to save the world and this lady just wants to make it easier. Be a little selfish, will you? We need all the help we can get."
Lena went to the front counter and laid out four short-sleeved tunics in pastel versions of the Harrys' colors, four sets of matching shorts, and four gray kimono jackets. "I'd throw in some girdles, but the leather is actually a bit expensive. You look young enough not to seem too unkempt without them, though," she said apologetically. "So, boys, pay up and get changed!"
They gladly did as told, although Harry still felt like he was swindling clothes off of the nice old shopkeeper. He tried to magically clean himself up in the changing room, but the mud stayed like a stubborn stain after his Scouring Charms. He fought it back with five spells, and yet some still remained. Harry mentally shrugged, putting it down to Vaati's influence on Hogwarts's grounds making the dirt partially magic-immune. He used one of the cleaner sections of his T-shirt to scrub his face and hands and then got changed.
"My, you all look so dashing!" Lena gushed when they lined up in their new outfits.
Harry wasn't so sure about "dashing", but he certainly felt about ten pounds lighter now that he wasn't covered in heavy, sodden hand-me downs. The thin, breezy cotton of his new outfit practically floated around him.
The shopkeeper glanced out the window. "Oh, look, the next train is coming in," she said. "There isn't much for kids like you to do on Outset, so I imagine you're probably headed somewhere more exciting. Do you know where you're going?"
"Five-Spear Isle," Harry said.
"Ah, I see. So, you'll want to catch the Fairy Line train pulling in, ride it to Southern Fairy Island, and then catch the Forest Line loop on its way to Five-Spear Isle. If you want to reach the mainland from there, you can take the Windfall Line to Fortune City, and then ride the Southern Express aaall the way up to the mainland. A lot of the lines overlap, so make sure you check the model of the train against the guides at the stations, alright?"
Harry wished he had a notepad. He'd never gone rail-hopping on his own. The closest he'd come was riding the metro with Hagrid, or unintentionally flagging down the Knight Bus. While he didn't consider trains exciting enough to understand why Blue wanted to study how they worked, he couldn't say he was a pro at navigating railway lines, either. "O-Okay," he said. Mentally, he chanted her instructions on a loop so he could tell Blue later. Once Blue had the list of steps in his memory, Harry wouldn't have to worry about keeping them straight. "What about paying for tickets, though?"
She laughed. "Why would you have to pay for a train ticket? That's what taxes are for!"
The Harrys bid hurried, but emphatically thankful goodbyes to Lena and then ran to catch the train. As he boarded, Harry looked up at the glittering silver filigree of the giant stone beast with exhilaration and fear warring in his gut. It was finally feeling real; until they returned to Hogwarts, he and his brothers were roaming completely free and untethered in a foreign land. No adult oversight, no friends to help him, and no familiar faces but his own. Harry hoped he turned out to be as capable as Shadow Harry and Lena thought he was.
"Zelda, what is happening?" Hermione asked the book set open on her bed. She was curled around her poor, traumatized kitty, who she'd found trembling under her bed. Now, with some cat treats in his belly and her hand stroking his back, Crookshanks was considerably closer to calm than Hermione.
"My dear, you must remember I'm currently a book. I can see and hear from my pages, but I've been closed and sitting on a pedestal in the common room for the past several hours," Zelda said. "From my point of view, I was compiling notes for an article about Flying Zoras before something shook the castle hard enough to knock two of the copies of my book to the ground. Then you opened me up and asked what happened. So, Hermione, what happened?"
Hermione laughed mirthlessly and ran a hand through her frazzled hair. "Remember what I told you about what we saw when we went through that portal? How we went to Hyrule and found out we'd never heard of it because it was in another world?"
"I certainly couldn't have forgotten! I'm still having trouble grappling with the concept, I must admit. I must have read the article about the Hero of Worlds a million times by now. It's amazing that my book, of all things, managed to slip between dimensions and fall into a world thought to exist only as a distant foreign country in heroic myth! I never would have imagined it," Zelda gushed in rapidly scrolling cursive. "But why do you mention that now?"
"Because we aren't in the Dark World anymore. We're in Hyrule. Not just you and me. Everyone. Vaati took the whole castle and dropped it into a Hyrulean lake!" She threw up her hands, making Crookshanks grumble at the sudden lack of petting.
"We're back in Hyrule?" Zelda exclaimed in larger font. "Oh, you must show me what it looks like these days! I'd love to see how my descendants are doing…But you have more pressing priorities, of course. You say the entirety of the castle was taken, in one piece?"
Hermione opened her mouth to say "yes", then paused. The castle had definitely been taken, and Hermione didn't doubt that Vaati would have snatched up the entire building. He seemed like someone who either aimed for overkill or didn't have the greatest skill at narrowing the radius of his magic. In one piece, though? From the temples she'd seen so far, especially the one they'd just escaped, Vaati didn't really do "in one piece". He spliced things together from various chunks. The most cohesive temple, the one in the forest, had still possessed an odd piecemeal design. Its sections of land and sections of swamp had been connected in aesthetics, but it hadn't made any architectural sense for any one of those rooms to lead to another, or for an upper level to be flooded while a lower one was dry. Vaati might have mixed together different floors from the same building, resulting in that patchwork of dry dirt and swamp.
"What if there are parts of Hogwarts scattered across Hyrule?" Hermione shrilled. She hadn't seen anything important missing from the castle when Professor Snape had ferried her and Ron back to Gryffindor Tower, but there had been more square chunks bitten out of the external stonework. What if people had been out in the halls, standing close enough to those missing pieces that they'd been taken along? And what about the grounds? Had anyone been in the greenhouses, helping to save the drowning plants? If Hagrid had been out in his hut, had he been left behind or had his home been thrown into another part of the country?
"I wish I had an intelligent answer, but all I can come up with is 'that would be unfortunate'," Zelda said. "Because Hyrule is a collection of smaller nations within the goddess Hylia's realm of influence, its citizenry isn't hostile to people from foreign lands. However, between the language barrier, the vast amounts of untouched wilderness, the probability of landing on an isolated island, and the possibility that there is now a horde of scattered children roaming the Hylian countryside without any form of adult supervision, I can't say I have high hopes."
Hermione dragged her hands down her face. "You're not helping me feel better," she groaned.
"Have I ever struck you as an idealist?"
Hermione buried her face in her cat, who patiently sat still and purred. She hugged him to her chest. "What should we do?" she asked Zelda, her chin in Crookshanks's fur.
"I'd suggest leaving it to the adults," the queen replied. "Finding and taking care of you children is their duty."
"I can't stand the thought of just sitting around and waiting," Hermione fretted. "I feel like I should be doing something, but I don't know what I can do. Vaati is still out there, somewhere, and the Harrys are the only ones who can fight him. Where are they? I could have sworn they were going to the Great Hall; they should have gotten back to Gryffindor Tower before Ron and I did."
"Perhaps they were teleported elsewhere," Zelda suggested. "If they went to fight Vaati directly, he might have given them particular treatment."
Hermione's stomach plummeted. In the chaos of coming to terms with her new country of residence, she'd forgotten about the Harrys rushing off to fight Vaati. Shadow Harry had said their swords were close to breaking. On top of that, the boys had just burned off the magic from all the jewels they'd collected by breaking the anchors of Vaati's spell in the lake temple; they'd run off to fight the spell-caster himself with no extra power in their blades whatsoever. Even more, if Shadow Harry was powerful enough to match legendarily skilled swordsmen in equal combat and Harry was unable to beat him, how on earth were the Harrys meant to defeat the dark mage the shadow served?
"What if they're d-dead?" Hermione whispered, feeling sick. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. Hermione had had a very long day, and this was too much. She couldn't deal with anymore today—maybe not even for the next week.
"No, no, my dear! Don't fret just yet!" Zelda wrote quickly. "Remember what the stories say about him! Vaati is not Ganon. He doesn't embody that level of hatred; he's a being of arrogance, not wrath. You must hold onto the hope that your friends will return. Wallowing in darkness will only empower the enemy."
Hermione sniffled and then hiccupped a laugh. "Well, it's kind of hard not to wallow when my friends disappeared after picking a fight with someone who can cross time and space at will!"
"You forget that you have also crossed time and space, voluntarily. Vaati is powerful, but he is no god," Zelda told her. "The Wind Mage must rest for days after pulling something through time. For you, time-travel is as easy as turning an hourglass. Stealing magic from your world to boost his new tricks might make him more intimidating, but he is all brute force with little finesse. That is why he relies on servants like the Shadow, who handle the finer details."
Processing what Zelda had said, Hermione rubbed at her wet eyes and sat up straighter. "You said he was stealing magic from our world?" she asked. "That's why he was focusing on the area around the castle?"
"I didn't realize this was unclear to you, or I would have said something," Zelda said apologetically. "When a dark mage anchors themselves to a place, it allows them to more easily manipulate anything within that area. In Hyrule, since the goddesses permeate the land with their blessings, it's much more difficult for a dark mage to twist the world to their liking. Anchor spells are used by dark mages to root their magic in the ground, allowing them to poison the land, steal its blessings for their own ends, shape the living creatures within the range of the spell to their own liking, and so on. It's a more effective way of staging takeovers, essentially. Since Vaati didn't fill the castle grounds with miasma or turn you all into monsters, I'm left to assume he was siphoning magic from the land."
Zelda went quiet for a bit. "Hold on, someone just opened another copy of my book…Hylia preserve us, her room is sideways."
Hermione was aware that a small handful of other people had noticed the Bestiary hosted Zelda's spirit. It was inevitable that others would notice her special pages. The caveats to accessing Zelda's section were that the reader be open to learning from her and interested in her knowledge, not malicious in intent, and not have the potential to abuse her expertise for any reason. The ability to craft things like Magic Rods, for example, could easily be taken advantage of by a non-malicious, but greedy mage who saw the staffs' tendency to supercharge spells as a way to gain power over others. With only those three bars to clear, plenty of knowledge-seekers could find her. The queen didn't speak of her other readers, possibly to keep Hermione from becoming jealous (and she was, a little bit). "Is she one of the other people you talk to? Could you tell me who she is? Or where in the castle?" she asked. "Is she alone? Wait, you said 'her room'. Is she in a dorm?"
"What have I said about rapid-fire questions, my dear?" Zelda chided. "Yes, she's another child I have spoken with. The girl is a Ravenclaw in the class after yours, Luna Lovegood. She is indeed in her dormitory. And no, she isn't alone. Her dorm mates are with her and I hear other voices outside the room. Older students are calling out, taking a count of the younger children. Wait just a moment; I'm going to ask her to give me a look around."
The writing stopped. Hermione stared at the book with bated breath, gnawing on her lower lip. Crookshanks sprawled out to claim more of her lap and demand more pets. She obediently obliged to distract herself from the fearful wait.
Ravenclaw Tower—or at least the fifth floor of it—was laying on its side somewhere in Hyrule. The best-case scenario was that it had just broken off during the transfer and wound up landing right next to the castle. Wait, no, that was bad, because the castle was sitting on an island barely larger than it. She'd seen that much through the missing chunks in its outer shell and the windows of Gryffindor Tower. If the wayward tower had landed next to the castle, it was at risk of rolling into the lake. So hopefully it was somewhere other than the middle of a large body of water? A nice, wide field next to a city full of friendly people, perhaps?
"Luna climbed over to a window to show me the area outside. They're in a forest—a dense, ancient one," Zelda wrote. "The trees are large, so closely packed that they're blocking out the light, and there's mist creeping across the ground. That isn't good."
Hermione exhaled her held breath. "Do you recognize it?"
"I'm sorry to say this, but...I believe your classmates may have landed in the Lost Woods."
Sirius was having one hell of a day. First he'd suddenly found himself in the middle of Hogwarts castle, in dog form, remembering exactly how he'd gotten there but barely understanding how it had happened. Then he'd been knocked out and woken up as a human lying in some dark, creepy forest. His memories as a dog were often harder to interpret, but this was a new level of confusing. It was as though all but the barest flicker of his mind had gone on holiday while his body and animal instincts were still walking around and making new friends. Sirius's head pounded as his recently-restored human brain reached back through time, turning the dreamlike experiences of the last several weeks into very real, serious scenarios.
The first thing that came to mind was an image of grayish-yellow eyes. He had wound up in a dark cave, somehow, then he'd seen those eyes. That was when the long stretch of mental fog began. The next memories to translate involved him accompanying a troupe of children through trap-filled mazes. Sirius had gotten up to a considerable amount of trouble back in his day, but none of that had involved fighting flaming bat-dragons, dodging giant guillotines, or crossing smelly swamps while being shot at by ancient robots. How had those kids wound up in those ridiculous situations anyway?
Right, evil mage or something. Summoning monsters and buildings into places they definitely didn't belong. Sirius remembered biting the throat out of a pig-thing…a Moblin, once. That had been interesting. There were giant armored ghosts that smelled of storm clouds, bird-wizards, electric blobs his dog-brain had been particularly scared of…and that Zora! There had been a merperson kidnapped from another world, a magical creature that looked and smelled a bit like—
Oh, Draco! How could Sirius forget about his caretaker for the past several weeks? Sirius had been his younger cousin's pet for over a month now, following loyally at his heels like a trained hound. It should have made his blood boil to be humiliated in such a way by one of the pompous blood-purists he'd left his family to get away from, but all he felt was a mix of canine and human worry about where his pup was and whether the kid was alright. Draco hadn't known anything about the true nature of the animal he'd decided to adopt in the middle of a dark cave; all he'd done was do his best to make sure "Dog" was kept happy and healthy. He'd fed his pet well, bathed and brushed him, laid down soft blankets for him to curl up on, and given him plenty of cuddles and chances to play outside. Thanks to Draco, Sirius felt mentally and physically more fit than he had in over a decade. He had flesh on his bones, he was clean but for his ratty robes, and the inside of his head was quiet, for once. There were no voices from the past reminding him of every terrible mistake and impulsive decision he'd made, no loud dog-emotions papering over his human thoughts, or crushing feelings of despair inspired by the Dementors. His mental north star, the burning desire to avenge his friends that had kept him from completely losing his grip on reality, had gone from his one overriding coherent thought to a more controllable sense of purpose. After having spent several happy weeks as a well-loved pet, his thoughts now flowed in a straight line rather than grating through his head at jagged angles, dragging the agony of loss and betrayal in their wake. The pain and obsession weren't gone, just…ignorable. Manageable.
Now that he had his brain somewhat in order, Sirius looked around. Big, dark, unsettling trees loomed over him and a milky white mist washed over the bed of graying leaves that lay below. He stood up shakily, unaccustomed to being on two feet. These trees didn't look quite like anything from the Forbidden Forest. While they were certainly forbidding, they were bigger, more twisted, and wider-crowned than the trees back home. And, last he remembered, the forest around Hogwarts had become a shallow, frigid lake. Here, it didn't look like it had rained in the last few days.
He turned around, starting to get worried. What forest was this? How deep into it was he? Was there any sign of civilization he could spot through the…?
Sirius's train of thought went off a cliff. His mouth fell open as he stared up at the toppled chunk of a castle turret laid sideways across the forest floor. It sat atop a bed of crushed trees, its partial roof askew and its stonework sagging between the thick trunks it was draped over. He recognized that coal-stained stone and tiled, peaked roof; this was a section of Hogwarts, minus the rest of the castle. A few random cubes of the castle's thick outer walls sat around the tower like scattered, room-sized bricks. Where on earth had the rest of the castle gone? Why was this part of it laying sideways in…wherever this was? Where was this place?!
A muffled shout shattered the eerie silence. He looked at the fallen turret with horror. No way…
More voices leaked through the broken windows and cracked stone. High-pitched voices. Children.
"Oh, hell." Sirius stumbled toward the fallen structure on his wobbly fawn legs.
A face peered out of one of the windows. "Look! I see someone! Oi, we need help!" they hollered, sticking an arm through the opening of jagged glass and flapping it to get his attention.
Sirius waved back to show he'd seen them. "Yes, I know! Don't do that, though, with the window!" he warned. "The glass—"
The child cried out in pain and yanked their arm back through the window, dragging a bleeding cut down the side.
Sirius sucked in a breath through his teeth. This was why he hadn't just run like the fugitive he was. Kids had no sense.
He reached the side of the tower, where more little faces had gathered by the window. Sirius wasn't great with ages, but his guess was that they were first or second-years. They started pulling back, some of the kids peering up at him with confusion, others with dawning fear. "A-Aren't you him?" a boy with thick-rimmed glasses asked. "You're Sirius Black!"
Sirius ducked behind the stone side of the tower as the students aimed their wands at him. His fuzzy dog-memories told him that all the kids in Hogwarts knew at least one offensive spell to ward off monsters, even the first-years. Jets of fire and red light shot past him, but…distinctly dimmed. They looked like the summoned phantoms of previous spells.
"Er, those are your best monster-banishing spells?" he asked. "Have you been getting to class at all?"
"The magic isn't working!" one of the children squeaked.
"I've got a piece of glass! I'll cut you!" another threatened with their best attempt at menace.
"Yeah, we'll kick your arse, you murderer!"
"I was falsely imprisoned!" he protested, though he was positive no one would believe him. He felt like he should at least make an effort. If they didn't want his help, then fine; he could turn into a dog and run off, secure in the knowledge that he'd tried. "Peter Pettigrew killed those people, not me! He betrayed the Potters, destroyed the street, and cut his finger off to leave as false evidence! Then he turned into a rat to run and hide. He…My friends, all of us, were Animagi!"
"You're mad!" came a shout from inside the building. "You were mad before Azkaban, and you're only more of a nutter now! Who would believe a story like that?"
Sirius winced. Now that he could think clearly again, he knew how insane that story sounded. There was unfortunately no better way to explain it. "Well, do you remember that Grim that follows Drac—er, Malfoy around?" he asked.
"Yeah? How do you know about him? How long have you been spying on us?" one of the children demanded.
'Is telling them a bad idea?' Sirius stopped to wonder. Maybe giving up his whole identity wasn't smart, if they all hated him. But he'd probably have to use his dog form at some point, given that they were all in the wilderness. He couldn't hunt for food without a wand. "I was under a curse that really turned me into an animal—the magic in that gold collar on my neck—but…that dog was me. Me and Peter are Animagi. Peter turns into a rat."
"You were Dog?" several voices shrilled. A chorus of gagging sounds and cries of "we could have died!" followed suit.
"I'm not a murderer, and I don't want to kill you!" he cried out in frustration. "I only came to Hogwarts to find Peter and make him pay for his crimes! He's still a rat, hiding as a pet at the school. Ron Weasley, you know him? His rat Scabbers is Peter in disguise." He internally winced. Now he could hear just how barmy that sounded. "How many rats can live for twelve years? How many rats are missing the same finger that Peter cut off?"
"You came to Hogwarts for some random Gryffindor's pet?"
"If you can recognize a particular dog, you can recognize a particular rat!" Sirius said, tossing up his hands. "He was my best friend up until he betrayed James and Lily to save his worthless skin!" He realized he'd started growling and took a moment to wrestle with his temper. Acting like an animal wasn't going to make these children think him any less mad. "I know better than almost anyone alive what Peter looks like in his animal form. There's no way I could ever forget," he continued. "So yes, I came to Hogwarts to hunt down some random Gryffindor's pet. He betrayed everyone who put trust in him and all but murdered my friends with his own wand!"
"How do we know you're telling the truth?"
"It isn't as though I carry Veritaserum on me," Sirius said. "All I can do is shout the truth at the top of my lungs and pray someone believes it." He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. It was much too long, but fluffy and clean from his cousin's fastidious pet-grooming habits. "How is the student who cut themselves on the window, by the way? Do any of you know first-aid?"
There was an awkward stretch of silence. "Erm, no? We're all first-years," one of the piping young voices admitted. "I think the Prefects would know, but…their rooms are probably way up in the air right now. And some of the tower is g-gone, so…Oh no, what if they aren't here? What if we're all alone with a murderer?!"
'Little pups, younger than Harry and Draco. I need to get them safe,' Sirius thought. He shook his head and pinched himself. No, these were human children. He was human now, and these were not his pups. They were strange children who were on the fence about hexing him, and he had to treat them as such.
"Children, I need you to focus! You know, on that wound? Make sure there's no glass in it, then wad up some cloth and apply pressure," Sirius coached. "The pressure will help the blood clot. We can worry about disinfecting it later."
"Don't you know any healing spells?"
Out of practicality, Sirius had picked up skills in both Muggle and magical first-aid during the Great War, as had most surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. None of those spells were going to be of use here, even in the highly unlikely case that one of these kids let him borrow a wand. "Magic isn't working right, remember?" he said. "For now, just keep the wound clean and apply pressure. I'm going to see if I can evacuate the students from the upper side of this, er, section—perhaps find one of those Prefects. I imagine there are a lot of people in need of first-aid right now, and some of the older muggleborns might know how to do it without magic."
Sirius inspected the perfectly sectioned-off third of Ravenclaw Tower, looking for a way to climb it. Luckily, the bricks had gotten shaken up in transit, which created plenty of crags for him to work his fingers into. He clambered up like a spider, then paused at the top, wondering what he was doing. Why was he still here? Pettigrew was out there somewhere, continuing to live a comfortable life instead of being deservedly dead. Sirius's only goal was to avenge his friends and maybe, if he didn't go back to prison for it, find some way to start living his life again. And yet he was wasting time here, trying to help a bunch of kids who wanted to curse him on sight. He should have taken off immediately to find the rest of the castle, where Peter was.
But that was the selfish thing to do, wasn't it? That was his prison-induced single-mindedness talking. He could imagine Lily lecturing him—not one of the imaginings brought forth in his mind by Dementors, but his own true memories of the fiercely principled woman. She had always been quick to put an end to his and James's more…extreme behaviors. She would have thrown her all into helping these children without hesitation. James, too. Remus, without a doubt.
He sighed and rubbed at his temples. The sounds of older children's voices were reaching him now, streaming through the gaping windows on the upper side of the fallen tower. Pettigrew was in the wind for now, but these kids were right here, in need. Unless Flitwick was somewhere in the tower, Sirius was probably the only adult in the area—Merlin help them all. He had no morally justified reason to run off into the forest and leave these students behind, no matter how much his memories of the last twelve years ate at him.
"Is anyone hurt?" he called, clambering over to the line of windows circling the top of the turret. "I know some Muggle first aid. Magic isn't working right now."
"Who's there?" someone asked.
"A teacher?" another voice wondered loudly. "I don't know that voice."
"Are you from wherever this is?"
"I'm…" He bared his teeth, pounding his fist on the stone. Damn Peter for ruining his name like this! "I'm Sirius," he said, fighting to sound composed. "I'm not the kind of person you think I am, and I didn't do any of what I've been accused of, but I'm Sirius Black. And I'm here to help."
"SIRIUS BLACK?!"
Wands stuck out of the window. Sirius dropped down to the side of the turret in time to avoid a volley of flickering, fizzling jets of light. Some of them petered out before they could even reach him, but the ones that hit the tower still had enough power to scorch the stone. As the sound of panicked shouting and screaming filled the air, he sighed and thumped his head against the wall. He was going to be doing a lot of arguing with and explaining himself to children today. Why did doing the right thing always have to be such a pain in the arse?
Notes:
-I'll post an example of the Island Outfit once the Harrys have a little more of their questing gear. They need more adventuring stuff to complete the ~*look*~.
-The goat designs on Hylian clothes in this era are Ordon-breed goats because I find their circle horns adorable. The stone corsets were inspired by the Ancient Armor in BOTW and ancient Minoan fashion.
-The Four Sword is confused by the existence of Sheikah because as far as it knows, Impa from Ocarina of Time was the last survivor of Hyrule's secret protectors. Those Sheikah that Harry saw are members of the Royal Guard that patrol the Southern Isles, thus the steeple hats and the distinctive blue haori that conveniently hide a lot of weapons. They're part of the Outreach Division, a network of warriors that serves as village protectors (as well as eyes and hands for the Royal Family) in more distant areas of Hyrule. I'll give a proper explanation of what the Royal Guard does in this era when it becomes more relevant.
-Trains on the Spirit Tracks are part of a nationalized public service. You just get your ticket so they have something for their records, hop on, and go. I live in a place with almost zero public transport and have never been on a city bus, let alone a train, so please forgive my inaccuracies regarding how train lines work.
-Sirius's mental state is far from healed, but he's regained enough self-awareness and impulse control to pretend he's fine for a while.
Fashion Review:
-I've been holding this back in my writing so far, but I really like fashion design and fashion history. The Harrys have no reason to know the proper names for the unfamiliar clothing around them in Hyrule and it's causing me psychic damage not to shove my nerd knowledge into their narration, so I'm shoving it here in the notes instead. Here's some terminology I mostly left out of this chapter that might trickle in later:
kimono jacket = haori. You usually wear these over a whole outfit and don't tie them with an obi, but I'm tweaking the rules in Hyrule. Sheikah officers patrolling hotter areas wear these right over their bodysuits to cut down their suffering in the heat.
play-clothes the younger Outset locals are wearing = jinbei
pleated, wide-legged pants = hakama. The islanders cut these at around knee-length because it's hot out and they get better airflow that way.
big sashes the Sheikah are wearing = obi (tied karuta musubi style, specifically)
Mama Lena's raised wooden sandals = geta
the islander women's outfits are inspired by Vietnamese ao dai, but with a different neckline and buttoning style.
girdle = in this story, I'm using the archaic definition of "some kind of belt-ish accessory, accounting for a wide array of widths and materials". Pretty much all the Hylians and Sheikah in this story's era will wear a specific waist-covering of some kind, be it a big belt, stone corset, obi, Ordon-style cloth wrap, etc.