I'm posting this a day early because I'm going to be hella busy all day tomorrow. Hylian in the chapter, translations at the end!

Heads-up: Hey, remember some weeks back (Chapter 47) when I said the Harrys were going to be facing a couple of low points to establish the power difference between them and the demigod they're up against? Yeah, the second one is in this chapter. Things are going to get a bit dark when the boys reach Dracozu's Claw.

Content warning for stabbing, blood, death, and someone throwing up.

Steel flashed in the sun trickling through the jungle canopy as Red blocked a blue Bokoblin's overhead strike. His sword bit a small nick into the sharpened bone tied to the monster's spiked club. Pushing back against the creature's weapon, he struck at his enemy's belly, only to be blocked by a similarly bone-decorated shield for the fourth time. Red snarled. He'd been able to beat two red Bokoblins before this one in a few easy sword strikes, but he hadn't been able to land a single hit on this blue one so far! It was like being a different color made it faster and smarter, or something. The reds had been super slow and clumsy compared to this.

One of Red's cheeks was swelling up, he had a line of punctures going down one arm that was making it harder to raise his sword, and he still had no idea how to wield the silly buckler on his left arm. The last time he'd used the rounded shield, he'd accidentally deflected one of the red Bokoblins' weapons toward his face, thus the swollen cheek. He hadn't tried that against this blue guy; that club had a decent chance of taking his eye out if he repeated his mistake.

Red winced at the dull-sharp burst of discomfort when another blue Bokoblin wielding a bone-tipped spear jabbed Yellow in the kidney. Luckily, the leather corset Yellow was wearing kept him from being pierced too badly. Thank goodness for armor, as little as theirs was.

Pain ripped through Red's upper back just as his enemy struck again. Caught by surprise, Red briefly locked up, leading to him taking a heavy, spiky swing to the chest. The strength behind the blow sent him flying. Experience from fighting Moblins on the way to class kicked in, and he tucked his arms to send himself into a sideways roll instead of an uncoordinated sprawl across the muddy grass of the jungle floor. He hopped back to his feet as soon as he was able, nursing bruised and skinned elbows from rocks he'd found the hard way. Pain was alight across his body, both from the (honestly kinda cool-looking) constellation of shallow punctures running across his chest and the echo he'd just gotten from…Blue?

As he backed up to give himself time to think, he spotted Blue knocked flat on his belly with a bloodstain spreading across his shoulder blade. The blue monster that had stabbed him approached with its steel-tipped spear, intent on finishing the job. Red almost abandoned his fight to protect his brother, but then Green came in with a hail of furious slashes. The spear-wielding Bokoblin was knocked off-balance and then sent into the dirt, where Green pinned it with a foot on its neck and attacked it with heavy, two-handed swings.

Assured that Blue wasn't going to die just yet, Red lashed out at his own enemy with a quick step-and-thrust meant to get under its defenses. He growled in frustration when the monster crouched slightly to deflect his strike to the side with its shield. A crimson tint filled his vision at the sight of that infuriating chunk of bone-reinforced tree bark. He wanted it gone.

Enough trying to think around that shield. Being clever was his brothers' thing. Straightforward stubbornness was Red's.

Figuring the metal of his sword was stronger than the wood of this creature's defense, he braced both hands on the Four Sword's grip and shoved it straight ahead. The monster's shield came up and Red's blade bit into it—deep enough to get a grip on the wood. Red wrenched his sword up, causing the chunk of bark to fly from the surprised Bokoblin's weakened grasp. While the monster watched the shield arc through the air with an oddly human look of shock, Red drew his left fist back and socked the Bokoblin in the snout with his steel buckler, knocking the man-sized creature on its back.

Red descended on the downed Bokoblin without mercy. Whether the creature was technically a real, living being or not, he didn't feel an ounce of guilt as he hacked into it. He and his brothers had come across a whole troupe of these things in the midst of terrorizing a group of travelers on the way from Dracozu's Claw. One of those travelers was on the ground and moaning in pain, her hands pressed to a bloodstain on the right side of her chest. So Red took great pleasure in sinking his sword through the Bokoblin's heart. He whirled to face the next monster without hesitation.

The Bokoblin with the steel spear chased Yellow, whirling its weapon overhead. Yellow could only run, unable to put enough space between them to turn and counterattack without having his head knocked off. Red grimaced. Fighting spear-wielders with swords meant having to get in close, work fast, and take the offensive, which Yellow and Blue weren't great at. These blue beasties were also quick and clever—almost as clever as the Harrys currently were with their swords. Red ran up behind the Bokoblin, keeping his head low, and tackled it to the ground. Locking his legs around its torso, he bashed it in the face with his shield until it stopped struggling. With a roar of fury, he hopped to his feet and stabbed it multiple times through the chest with his sword while it lay dazed. It wasn't the coolest or fairest way to win a fight, but it was quick and effective.

He looked around. Was there anything else to kill?

No, it looked like Green had that covered. The remaining blue Bokoblin and three reds had been reduced to bits of horn and bone, their weapons strewn on the ground. Green now crouched by Blue, who was arguing with him as he struggled to push himself up with one arm.

"I'm almost fine! It's not like I got hit in the heart. I can still treat her," Blue snapped, pushing Green's hands away. "She got stabbed in the chest! She could be dying!"

"Her friends are already giving her first-aid," Green said, sending a worried look at the injured woman. Her fellow travelers were clustered around her, their pack mules pawing anxiously at the ground nearby. "Heal yourself first, Blue. You don't even know if your spells will work on her, since we haven't got Magic Rods yet."

Blue ground his teeth. "Fine," he spat. "Ugh, this is going to be such a pain. Someone get my jacket off." Green helped Blue sit up and, with Yellow's help, undid the laces of Blue's adventuring belt. Then they peeled off Blue's bloodied kimono jacket. Shivers of echoed pain went through Red as the piece of clothing was worked over Blue's arms. Once he was stripped down to his tunic and shorts, Blue got his wand out of its sheath with one hand and pointed it blindly at his back. Green reached over and adjusted his aim.

"Punctum Sigilla," Blue incanted. The big, bleeding puncture over his shoulder blade gained the slightest frosting of pink. Blue glared at their general surroundings. "Just work with me, you stupid Hylian anti-magic!" he snapped at the trees. "Punctum Sigilla, Punctum Sigilla, Punct—Ow!" There was a sizzling noise and white smoke drifted up from the wound.

All the Harrys flinched. Merlin, that hurt!

Blue clapped a hand over the scorched, barely-scabbed injury, which made a second wave of pain flow through his siblings. "Fffauuugh…I forgot healing spells really burn when you get impatient with the casting. At least it's cauterized now," he groaned, grinding his forehead into his knees. "Ooowww."

"Um, p-perdonias?"

The Harrys looked up in unison, spooking the timid-looking Hylian who'd spoken.

"Hai, qual ari?" Green asked in a strained voice. "Sor donni…Ari-sa bonni?" He craned his neck to look at the injured woman, who was now being helped to her feet.

The traveler brightened at the sound of a familiar language. "Oh, ya," he said with an enthusiastic nod. "Habos potions heilant. Vi, um, vi sa hoshei?" He took a round glass bottle out of a side pocket of his shoulder bag and held it out. It was full of a bright red, somewhat thick liquid that sloshed gently as he held it out. "Por nonne salves," the young man said. He dipped his head respectfully. "Damos."

Green's face lit up. "Oh! Hai, damos macchi!" He took the offered potion and gave it to Blue. "It's a healing potion! I forgot they have those here," he said excitedly. "Also, that lady's okay. Red healing potions aren't the strongest, but those weapons the monsters were using weren't all that deadly, anyway."

Blue took the bottle, uncorked it, and downed the contents with a grimace. Red felt a rush of energy bloom in his stomach and spread across his body, exactly like the pick-me-up they got from finding spell-scrolls. Warm red light bloomed around Blue's wound as it healed within seconds. "Ugh, it tastes like fish," Blue remarked. "Ask that bloke what it's made of, will you? I need to know how to brew this."

Green and Red shot him exasperated looks. "Why do you keep wanting me to ask people weird questions?" Green groused, taking the bottle. He handed it back to the traveler, asking sheepishly, "Er, perdonas, mat povei explanen duu fachen sal?"

Ten torturous minutes of boring Hylian chatter later, the Harrys were finally back on the road. Green and Red walked shoulder to shoulder, giving Blue aggravated glowers. Blue, meanwhile, looked a tad ill after hearing about what insect, fish, and lizard bits he'd swallowed.

"What did you think that potion was made of, pure ChuChu jelly?" Green said. "There aren't always monsters attacking. People have to make due with whatever's around."

"Why would something called a 'Sleepy Toadstool' have healing effects, though?" Blue ran his tongue over his teeth. "And why bass guts and skeletons specifically? Or the lizards and beetles?" he went on, making a face. Then he shot Red a Look. "Don't say it."

Red grinned mercilessly. "Because magic."

Yellow snagged Blue by the collar before he could strangle Red. "Once we get back to the castle, we can use our potions equipment to make Hylian potions," he said brightly, tugging Blue into a one-armed hug. "They seem way easier to make than the ones we brew in class. Even Red could make them!"

Red pursed his lips, but didn't protest the insult. He was a solid "P" student in Potions, and not just because Snape hated him.

The Harrys traveled mostly in cautious silence, going as fast as they could while keeping their eyes peeled for any odd spots of color among the jungle's green foliage. Yellow squealed and clung to Red when he mistook a few clusters of bananas hanging from a short palm tree for a monster, but the trip was otherwise peacefully uneventful.

That was, until they got to Dracozu's Claw.

Bokoblins chased human and bird-person townsfolk through the streets, menacing them with a mixture of crude wooden weapons and ivory axes and spears stolen from the city's defenders. About half of the citizenry were still putting up a fight, but it had clearly been going on for some time. Blood slicked the streets and ran down the arms of those still struggling against the horde. The stone walls of the city had been overrun and now swarmed with monsters standing over the fallen bodies of leather-clad Viking-like soldiers. Moblins, much larger and more monstrous than any the Harrys had seen before, lumbered in the wake of the faster Bokoblins. They used their huge weapons (some of which were literal tree trunks) to smash the sturdy doors of buildings and hunt down anyone who had managed to hide. In the town square hovered a cluster of Wizzrobes, who were gleefully sending fireballs at every wooden structure in sight. They teleported constantly, dodging most attempts to knock them out of the air.

Winged defenders swooped in from above with bows and swords clutched in their scaly feet, delivering wicked fly-by strikes before winging their way back into the sky. Human warriors perched on platforms built into the trees, adding to the hail of arrows pelting the invaders. They were steadily slaying the monsters, but not fast enough to save their comrades on the ground or the many travelers who had gotten caught up in the battle on their way to the province's train hub. The creatures shrugged off attacks that should have maimed and took multiple fatal hits to actually kill. Red knew from experience that any sense of pain the beasts had wasn't nearly enough to affect their ability to fight. An arrow to the arm would slow down any person, but a monster wouldn't even notice the injury after a few seconds. They were like zombies that way; they didn't stay down until they were done.

The Harrys' goal, a bronze tower whose multiple rotating floors hosted layers of crisscrossing golden train tracks, lay near the center of the city. Trains were still pulling in, undoubtedly shooting off along the hovering magical tracks and past the red cliffs around the city with far more people than they'd originally been carrying. Fleeing civilians ran toward the station from all directions, only to be set upon by the beasts prowling its base. Red's stomach turned when one of the Moblins brought its tree-trunk club on an unfortunate barbarian warrior's head. On the slim chance the bird-man had survived having his skull smashed in, he definitely hadn't lived through being trampled by the stampede of panicked people he'd been defending.

Yellow stumbled away from the group to retch into the bushes. Blue looked halfway to joining him. Green, meanwhile, just seemed at a loss. His wide, overwhelmed eyes flicked all over the place, from the village's overtaken front walls to the train nexus to the multitude of burning buildings.

"Th-There's just so many," he said, gripping his head. "What are we supposed to do? Can we fight all of those? There are so many people still trapped—"

"We can't do anything," Blue said hollowly. "There are at least a hundred monsters in there. Most of them have real weapons. We had trouble fighting ten Bokoblins wielding sticks and chunks of wood with bones tied on. What can the four of us do against a whole battalion, powered-up Moblins included?"

Red was silent. He didn't want to admit out loud that they were far outmatched. Their sword skills had been improving, thanks to Green and his mysterious ancient sword journal, but there was no denying the fact that they were four unarmored, undersized teenagers with only a couple of months of combat experience. One hit from one of those mutated Moblins—or, hell, even a lucky strike from a Bokoblin with a looted barbarian weapon!—and they'd join the bodies of the trained, armored, adult warriors that had already fallen. Maybe after another few months of adventuring they'd be able to face something on this scale, but as they were? Not a chance.

"We need to go back to Hogwarts," Blue said sharply. "There's nothing we can do here."

Green gave him a look of betrayal. "But they'll die!"

"If we die, then even more towns will wind up like this until some other kid finds a magic sword!" Blue snapped. "Our biggest priority is staying alive so we can fix the main cause of all this. We need to focus on fighting the battles we can win, not throwing ourselves into a meat grinder." He seized Green by the wrist and pulled him away from the sight of the burning city. Green dug in his feet, stumbled, and then let himself be dragged.

Red went to Yellow and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, you okay?" he asked.

Yellow sniffled. "That's so horrible," he said. "Why would Vaati want to attack Hyrule like this? Isn't he from here? Isn't he trying to make our world like this place? Why would he want to ruin everything?"

"Maybe he wanted to stop the trains and all the people are just in the way," Red said, rubbing his brother's back. "He's been so far up his own arse for so long that I don't think he sees people as people anymore."

Yellow's face crumpled. "Well, that's horrible, too!"

Red gathered him in a hug. "Yeah, it really is."

The Harrys trudged away from the battlefield with their eyes on their plodding feet. Red's eyes burned with unshed tears, matching the ache in his chest. Either by destiny or by accident, they were the current "chosen ones". And yet they were useless. Red clenched his fists and focused on the sting of his nails digging into his palms to distract from the urge to cry. How were they supposed to fight that many monsters? How were they supposed to protect anyone but themselves when they were just…Harry?

There was no clever solution to this. There might not have even been a solution at all. Red could bluster his way past a lot of problems, but this one was like a dragon staring him down; four underfed teenagers with mere weeks of sword-wielding experience couldn't defeat an entire army. That was just fact. He couldn't brute-force a solution or get one of his smarty-pants brothers to come up with a plan.

What would they do next time this happened?

His stomach rolled at the thought of running away from another monster-plagued town. He couldn't turn his back on those screams again. If getting involved in the battle didn't kill him, the guilt of leaving those people to die surely would.

Green broke the silence. "All we can do is get better at this," he said. Red looked up from the ground. Green's emerald eyes were burning with determination. "There have been Heroes even younger and smaller than us. If they could do it, we can, too."

Yellow's lips pinched with doubt. "But how? The monsters here are smarter and stronger, and we already had a lot of trouble back home. Blue got stabbed just an hour ago! If that nice man hadn't given us a potion, he could have died of infection!"

"But he didn't," Green said. "There are healing potions here that we can make with a pot, a mushroom, and a handful of animal bits that we can find all over the place if we learn to do a little hunting. We've got monster parts we can sell now. There are stores that sell armor—probably magic armor, too. It'll take a while, but we can fight back. It's possible." Emotional pain creased his face. "I don't want to walk away again," he said quietly. "I don't care what hoops we have to jump though to get stronger. I'm not walking away again."

Yellow and Red nodded, while Blue lifted his chin defiantly. "We might just have to," he said. "If we come across a pack of monsters or another overrun town, we can't run in willy-nilly. I know it feels awful, but we have to prioritize staying alive. This isn't a game; we don't get to spring back to life if we die."

"You're a cold bastard, you know that?" Red snarled, stomping up to Blue. "We're not going to just leave people to get massacred!"

"I'm not saying we should run away from everything!" Blue tossed his hands in the air before setting them on his hips. "I mean that we should pick our battles, and right now, the most we can handle is a single troupe of Bokoblins. As we buy better armor and learn to make better healing potions, maybe we can protect people on the road, then attack a monster patrol, then save a small town. My point is that we can't throw ourselves at every problem just because our feelings tell us to. We need to get stronger, but we also need to be patient."

"I would've thought that you, of all people, would want to get this over with as fast as possible," Red said. "You hate fighting monsters, and I bet you're going to hate camping more than any of the rest of us. All you care about is books and school."

"And where is that school? Do you think it's going anywhere anytime soon?" Blue asked snidely. "If need be, we can finish our education here. The only places we have to go back to in our world are Hogwarts and the Dursleys, and if Hogwarts is here, I don't see any reason to risk the safety of the world just to speed up our return to the Dursleys."

Some of Red's anger left him. He could see Blue's logic. It was too cold for his tastes, but it made sense. He just didn't like it.

"You're still a bastard," he muttered, poking Blue in the chest.

Blue crossed his arms. "I'll happily be a bastard if it keeps us all alive to fight another day."

The Harrys kept on walking, ignoring the pain building in their feet and the leaden soreness of their legs. A set of golden train tracks glittered above their heads, useless to them but still tantalizing. Red wished they'd been able to stop at the train hub in Dracozu's Claw, not only because it would have meant the town were alright, but because his blisters were getting blisters and his legs felt like they'd give out soon. Better to be fighting motion-sickness on a Hylian rocket-train than dragging his heavy limbs along this endless road! He'd never done so much walking in one day before.

When the giant obelisks bordering the road became shorter dragon statues and the trees around them shifted from giant tropical palms to smaller maples and oaks, the boys stepped off the stone path to catch their breath. After some debate over resources, they each ate two bananas from the twelve they'd found earlier in the jungle. It took all of Red's self-control not to inhale his lunch in a few bites. Eating too fast after a while of skipping meals was a bad idea. He laid back on a thick patch of grass in the shade of a dragon statue with his head spinning somewhat less and his stomach mercifully quiet. 'Putting off food for much longer isn't going to be an option, even if we do wind up having to ride another train,' he thought grimly. In the event they didn't find Hogwarts today, scrounging for Rupees was going to be a must. Hopefully there were some Rupee-hiding Minish living on mainland Hyrule, too. He liked the idea of getting money from fighting monsters, but he didn't fancy his less battle-inclined brothers getting broken bones and infected wounds while healing magic wasn't an option. Also, now that he stopped to think about it, where were they supposed to sell the stuff the monsters dropped anyway? It wasn't like every weirdo in Hyrule could be willing to buy monster parts. Interesting weapons, maybe, but probably not the sticks and bones the Bokoblins attacking those travelers had wielded. Still, they'd picked those shoddy-looking weapons up just in case; no need to leave clubs and spears lying around for other monsters to arm themselves with.

After a short nap, the Harrys got back up and kept going. Red had no idea how long they'd walked that day, but it felt like at least twenty kilometers. That sounded like a pathetic distance when he thought about it. Twenty kilometers was ten minutes in a car on the motorway. In mud-encrusted old trainers, though, after several missed meals, it felt like trying to traverse the whole globe on foot. Worse than that, there was no telling how many more kilometers they'd have to walk before they came across another inn. Red wondered whether they'd have to go against Shadow Harry's advice and sleep under the trees that night.

"What'll we do next time we have to eat?" Yellow asked not long after their stop. The trees were starting to thin out. In the distance, they could see where the forest ended, becoming an upward slope with stony gray hills on either side. The walled road became a simple cobblestone path at the edge of the trees. "Should we try foraging before we leave the forest? It doesn't look like there's anything useful up ahead, and we still don't know how far away the castle is."

Red looked around. Beyond the stone road lay an abundance of potentially useful plants and mushrooms sprouting from the lush grass. The forest, much like the jungle right next to it, was a bountiful place. Trouble was, those bright red and green mushrooms all looked toxic and the plants were just foreign-looking enough that he wasn't sure whether he was identifying them right. Was that a radish, or a poisonous thing that just resembled a radish? Red didn't know, and he was hesitant about checking by eating it. He was willing to do a lot of impulsive things his brothers would think twice about, but he'd learned the hard way that eating unfamiliar plants was a risky gamble. As a small, desperately hungry child, Harry had once made the mistake of eating some berries he'd found growing on a vine in Aunt Petunia's garden. The ivy berries had turned out to be poisonous and had left him hunched over a bucket in his cupboard, crying, for three days. Since then, he had always made sure he knew exactly what a plant was before touching it, let alone putting it in his mouth.

"Does anything look familiar, Green?" Blue asked. "Does the sword have any suggestions?"

Green bent down to study a red mushroom. "Er, I think this one might be a Sleepy Toadstool?" he said. "Although I don't remember those having spots…"

"Well, at least we still have some bananas from that tree Yellow screamed at," Red said.

Yellow pouted. "There could be yellow Bokoblins out there! You never know."

Green stepped off the road and shuffled around the trees with his eyes on the ground. "I'm pretty sure that's a carrot," he said, pointing to a plant with lacy leaves. "And that's…probably a radish?" He pointed to a long, narrow stem with a single pink flower. "The flower's a little off, but it's close. And that's a—is that a truffle?" Lunging at a nearby tree trunk, he snatched a fist-sized black ball from the ground. He held it up like a holy object. "Truffle," he said with awe.

Red stared at the lump of fungus hungrily. Aunt Petunia only ever cooked with truffle oil for the fanciest of business dinners, and she'd never let them use or taste the expensive stuff. The smell was divine, though.

"It's decided: we're foraging!" Green announced. "Truffles, carrots, and radishes are probably safe. I think some of those flowers might be garlic mustard, so grab those, too. Oh, and those things over there are…nettles?"

The Harrys scoured the forest for most familiar of the mostly-familiar plants. After a while of searching and back-tracking they had a healthy supply of radishes, wild carrots, nettles, dandelions, garlic mustard, lamb's quarters, fennel, and black truffles. While Red would have liked to have some meat to go with all the greens, he wasn't sure he was up to hunting those cute little rabbits bounding around the bushes just yet. Maybe he could start with gutting fish once they settled back into the castle. Malfoy definitely knew how to do it and he was good at explaining things.

Upon leaving the forest, they trekked up the short hill beyond it and were faced with the sight of a towering bronze and stone arch draped with long pennants and richly decorated in religious-looking carvings. The train tracks they'd seen overhead while in the forest descended to embed themselves in the stone path passing between the gates. Red ran ahead of the group to see what all the grandeur was about.

A huge bridge stretched out in front of him. It was about the width of a highway, with enough room for carts to travel on either side of the trains that would pass through the middle and high bronze fences along the sides. A two-story train station stood in the center of the bridge, hosting an observation deck with plenty of windows and a large balcony.

Most of those windows were broken now, because the only tourists Red saw on the second floor were Lizalfoses and Bokoblins.

Something nearby started making a clanging noise. Red looked around in confusion. The noisemaker was a signal post in front of the wrecked train station, which he wouldn't have expected to still be working.

With a heart-stopping whoosh and a blast of hurricane-force winds, a train swooped from above. Red ducked and stumbled away from the hovering magical tracks even though the train was nowhere near hitting him. Just the sound of it had been enough to make him jump out of his skin!

The train didn't slow down even slightly for the station—a move that probably messed up the timetable, but that Red couldn't blame the driver for. It ploughed mercilessly through any monsters foolish enough to stand on the tracks and trailed purple smoke as it blasted off toward the distant end of the bridge at full speed.

"There's a bunch of monsters here, too!" he reported to his brothers as they caught up. "I took a guess in the last town that Vaati was trying to take out the trains, and it turns out I might be right." He glanced to the side to make sure the nearest monsters were far enough away not to notice him, then stepped up to one of the bridge's metal sides. Beyond the fancily-twisted bronze, which reminded him of a wrought-iron gate, lay a large, deep blue body of water that looked like a bow-shaped patch of the Great Sea. It lay within a massive basin lined on all edges by either sheer stone cliffs or steep hills. No wonder the train station had an observation deck; getting in and out of the lake basin must have been a pain.

Oh, wait—he spotted a line of golden tracks dipping into the deep crater. They descended along one set of hills, stopped at a cluster of buildings that lay on a chain of bridge-connected islands on the right side of the lake, and then followed the hills up on the other end of the bow-tie. Red hoped the train running on that rail was a slower model, because the force of taking a vertical swoop that sharp while going at the speed of a rocket would definitely do something interesting and awful to the human body.

He went to the other side of the bridge to check for any way to enter the lake (other than jumping from a cliff or following train tracks until he found the lake train) and felt a giddy rush of excitement at the sight that awaited him.

"Hogwarts! Hogwarts is right over there!" he crowed, jumping in excitement. The castle sat slightly askew on an island just large enough to bear it. Visible cracks ran through some sections and there were odd, perfectly square voids dotting it here and there, but at least the castle hadn't collapsed. It wasn't overflowing with monsters, either, which was a definite plus. There were just a few handfuls of Bokoblins and Lizalfoses milling around outside.

The other Harrys threw themselves at the fence, pressing their faces against the barrier to get a better look at their misplaced home. "We're so close!" Yellow cried, his eyes sparkling with happy tears. "We'll be able to sleep in our own beds!"

"We'll finally be able to stop all this horrible exercise," Blue said. His grasping at the interlaced bronze was especially desperate. "I never want to do so much walking ever again!"

"If Vaati's taking out the train stations, we might have to," Red pointed out.

Blue looked over his shoulder at the train station. A pair of Lizalfoses threw a bench through an already shattered window and a Bokoblin took a torch to it. He sighed and laid his forehead against the fence. "Why do you have to be right for once?"

"I've definitely been right more than once!"

"Name one time, I dare you."

"Well, I'm probably right about the trains!"

Green flapped a hand at them. "Hush! I'm trying to come up with a plan and you're making it impossible to think."

"Why are you planning? The castle's right there," Red said. "We see the castle, we go to the castle. It's as easy as that."

"We go to the castle how?" Green asked, sounding like Blue. "For one thing, I'm not seeing a way into the lake basin other than taking leaps of faith off of a cliff or chasing down a train. For another, the lake's full of Lizalfoses. As tired as I am, I don't fancy fighting my way through twenty of those while swimming."

Red jerked in surprise. There were monsters to potentially fight and he hadn't noticed? He concentrated on the waters of the lake. Before, he'd been more concerned with inspecting the stuff sticking out of the lake than the water itself.

Oh, huh. Streams of frothing water traced the looping paths of Lizalfos patrols. The oversized chameleons were alarmingly fast swimmers. If they were kicking up that much of a wake, they had to be going at jet-ski speeds. There was definitely no way they were outrunning those things in the water!

"Well, that sucks," he said. Their goal was right there, in plain view and at a walkable distance, but Hyrule just had to have weird geology. Or geography? He got those words confused.

Blue sagged against the fence. "Nooo," he despaired. "After all that walking, we have to swim now? My legs are already about to fall off!" Yellow patted his shoulder comfortingly.

Green ignored Blue's complaint. "So, my plan is that we take a running jump off of the cliff closest to the school, use the Falling Spell to keep from smashing against the water, and then approach the island the school is on from underwater to avoid being spotted by the Lizalfos patrols," he said with a determined nod. "Once we're on land, it looks like there won't be too many monsters between us and the eastern side entrance."

"With our wands on the blink, our Warming Charms will be at less than half-strength. It's going to be so cold," Blue lamented, leaning on Yellow for support. "We could go into shock!"

"Lake Hylia is fed by wide rivers, so I'm sure the sun has had time to warm up the water some," Green said without sympathy. "Alright, let's go find a good cliff."

Translations:

1. Um, perdonias? ⇒ Um, excuse me?

2. Hai, qual ari? Sor donni...Ari-sa bonni? ⇒ Yes, what is it? That lady...Is she okay?

3. Oh, ya. Habos potions heilant. Vi, um, vi sa hoshei? Por nonne salves. Damos. ⇒ Oh, yes. We have healing potions. Um, would you like one? For saving us. Thank you.

4. Hai, damos macchi! ⇒ Yes, thank you so much!

5. Perdonas, mat povei explanen duu fachen sal? ⇒ Excuse me, but could you explain how to make this?

Notes:

-Monsters in the Light World are no joke! It's common for them to kill travelers to take their weapons, supplies, and shiny things. During dark times in Hyrule, traveling groups will have at least a few warriors among them, but the people that the Harrys came across weren't prepared for monsters at all. It's been several years since Hyrule was last under attack, and quite some time since a full-scale assault like this.

-"Punctum Sigilla" means "Puncture Seal" in garbled Latin. It's specifically for narrow and deep wounds.

-The potions system will be explained once the Harrys start having to use it, but I'll tell you about the Red Potion that Blue drank. Health Restore and Stamina Restore are related healing effects that can exist separately or be stacked together in the potions/foods of this fic (although adding Health Restore to foods is more difficult than in BOTW). That Red Potion was bought from the potion-master Syrup and had a mid-level Health Restore and minor Stamina Restore effect.

-Moblins in the Light World have mainly the same bulky, porcine Wind Waker design as the ones that showed up in the Dark World, but with the size, long limbs, and most of the movement patterns of BOTW Moblins. The blue ones will be the classic teal of Zelda 1 Moblins, rather than that dark blue I sometimes mistook for black in BOTW.

-The Zonai Rito using bows and swords with their feet comes from concept art I came across in the BOTW art book I'm using to help me with my design concepts.

-The edible flora mentioned in this chapter is courtesy of me googling native UK and German plants, but most of what will and won't appear in this fic will be based on BOTW's compendium. The berries little Harry ate that made him sick were English ivy berries.