Lots of art has been posted for this chapter, under my "concept art" tag on the garden-eel-draws tumblr and linked/displayed in the Ao3 version of this. I decided to challenge myself for no reason and made Lake Hylia Zoras distinct from Zora's Domain (i.e. BOTW) ones, with their own fashions and a more dolphin-like, duller-colored appearance. Art this week includes: one illustration for the differences between Inland Zoras from Lake Hylia and Zora's Domain, another illustration for the sexual dimorphism of Lake Zoras, two fashion examples, and two particularly high-effort pictures of Prince Tiamus (naked and Fancy).

Content warning for intentional dissociation in this chapter.

After they'd trooped up to the boys' dorm from the breakfast table, Hermione had dropped a proverbial bomb with no warning whatsoever. Harry gaped at her. There was a thud and a thump as Red banged his head on the underside of his bed and Blue dropped his upraised Potions textbook on his face.

The echoed pain barely registered for Harry. "A volcano went off and you think I can do anything about it?" he shrilled. "It's a volcano! I'm thirteen!"

"The Hero of Time was nine," Hermione reminded him.

"What does he have to do with—" Images of a huge, dinosaur-like lizard flashed behind his eyes. He saw it roll around a lake of lava and rumble toward him like a wrecking ball, as big as a semi and even more unstoppable. "Oh. I guess he managed to fix a volcano," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. That lizard had been way more armored than anything Harry had fought so far, and yet that boy had still found some way to slay it. On his own, even! Harry was sure he wouldn't have stood a chance in that kid's place. "Huh."

"It isn't the volcano you have to stop, just the monster causing it to act up," Hermione said. "You've fought giant monsters before; it's definitely doable."

"Except for the fact that it's inside of a volcano," Harry said. If he had all four of him on hand, fighting monsters several times his size was in his wheelhouse, but volcanoes were in another dimension entirely. "How the heck are we supposed to get to the thing making it erupt without roasting to death?"

Hermione's confident expression turned uncertain. "Erm…" She opened the book sitting on her knees. "Zelda, do you know how someone might go inside Death Mountain without burning up?" Harry got up to look at Zelda's pages. Red crawled out from under his bed and pocketed the potion-stirring stick he'd been searching for as he drifted across the room to see what the hubbub was about, Yellow trotting along behind him. Blue just sat up and peered over Hermione's shoulder.

"There are a great many artifacts that can allow one to enter Death Mountain even at its hottest," Zelda wrote. "Several Heroes have used them in the past, from specially fashioned tunics to enchanted jewelry. If you've managed to come across an earring that allows you to breathe indefinitely underwater, I'm certain there must be something like it in this era that allows one to traverse Death Mountain's lava flows."

"I'm sure it'll either cost us an arm and a leg in quadruplicate, or Shadow Harry will show up to traumatize us again," Blue said dryly.

Red cupped one hand around his mouth. "Oi, Shadow! How do we know you're not the one messing with the volcano, anyway?"

The question hadn't been serious, but they still got an answer. "Because if I were off having fun, I wouldn't be around here doing boring things like watching you, would I?"

Everyone in the room jumped and searched the room for smoky robes.

Harry spun around. "Where—?!"

"Your shadow, obviously. Where else?"

He looked down. His shadow glared up at him with mismatched red and yellow eyes, its arms crossed and its toe irritably tapping. "Can you believe I got stuck on hero-sitting duty while that hideous affront to magic is mucking about in my playground? Ugh, this is the worst!" The spirit flinched, clutching at his chest. "Master, please…I'm still spying, aren't I? They already know...Yes, I apologize," he wheezed. "Of course I appreciate your work! It's beautiful! Please forgive me for my insult. I didn't mean it!"

Red snickered, which earned him a smack on the shoulder from Yellow and a raised middle finger from Shadow Harry.

Still issuing choked apologies, the dark spirit conjured a written sign whose letters glowed pale gray against the carpet. "Dragon fangs make great jewelry, I hear. Get three. Don't die, or I'll kill you," it read. As soon as Harry had frowned in confusion at the message, it faded from sight along with the dark spirit's presence. His shadow lightened in color and returned to mimicking what he was doing.

Harry exchanged baffled looks with Red and Blue. The one Light World dragon they'd come across so far had not only been the size of a large serpentine airplane, but surrounded by electricity. Was there a different dragon related to fire? One that was hopefully much smaller, and not wreathed in its element of choice? Because that would be nice, if much too convenient to follow their usual brand of bad luck.

Yellow was the only one who didn't appear bewildered by their new mission. "Green said he heard from the Master Craftsman that her ancestor made the Zora Earring with a scale from someone, right?" he said. "I thought 'Lanuatu' was an ancient Zora, but it could be the name of a dragon instead."

"Zelda, is Hyrule known for its friendly dragons?" Hermione asked. "I know I've seen some described as monsters in the Bestiary, but the electric one the Harrys ran into in the rainforest sounds like something very different from a Dodongo or Gleeok."

"Most of my experiences with dragons have been at the hands of evil sorcerers attempting to claim my country for themselves. The only friendly, non-conjured one I knew of in my time was Valoo, the Sky Spirit. He was one of the World Spirits that survived the Great Flood, like Jabun and the Deku Tree," Zelda said. "If any tales of other benevolent dragons were spoken of in the Old Kingdom, my divers were never able to retrieve their records from the ruins."

Deku Tree. That name rang a bell. Several, actually. Harry could picture a colossal old tree with low branches and knots in its trunk that formed a face. He could also envision an endless forest, dark and dense enough to swallow the unwary and never release their bones. "I kind of know what a World Spirit is," he said slowly. "Like the guardian of an important place, but also that place, kind of. A representation."

"Yes, that's a good description. World Spirits are distinct from other spirits in that they're as much flesh and blood as they are the place they represent the life force of. They live, die, and are reincarnated in forms that represent the new era. Valoo passed from old age not long before I did. I would assume whatever spirit took his place also lives atop a volcano or has something to do with fire."

Harry mentally requested an image of Valoo and was met with confused memories of various fiery dragons tumbling through his mind. Either his sword had no idea what Zelda was talking about or it understood the gist, but lacked a memory to express it properly. "So maybe we have to find Valoo's reincarnation and get a fang from him?" Harry decided to guess.

"Assuming you take proper precautions, it couldn't hurt to try."

"But the fire dragon might be on fire. We need to get three fangs from the fire dragon so we won't get set on fire," Red said. "So how do we get the fangs if we need the fangs to get the fangs?"

Hermione squinted at him as she parsed through his question.

Harry got it immediately. "There has to be some other way to make ourselves fireproof, just not well enough to explore a whole volcano," he declared. "Hey, Hermione, aren't there a bunch of Zoras in the castle right now?" The memories that directly preceded him passing out in his bed the day before were fuzzy, but there'd definitely been a mention of Zora refugees somewhere in there.

"Yes, in the Great Hall," she replied. "Why do you ask?"

Harry turned to Blue and put his hands on his hips. "It's time to ask some of those awkward questions you like," he said with an inviting grin.

Blue perked up. "Really?"

"Yup. We need to know how the dragons and potions here work and I want you to take notes."

"Yes!" Blue dove for his bed and snatched a spiral-bound notebook out from under his pillow.

"Why do you keep that there?" Red asked, bemused.

"In case I wake up and have any interesting ideas I need to write down!" Blue bounded out the door ahead of Harry like an overeager puppy. "Now let's go ask questions! I want to know everything!"

The Harrys all marched down to the Great Hall. "You don't have to come if you don't want to," Harry told Red and Yellow on the way there. "I'm sure it'll be dull."

Red shrugged. "We don't have anything else to do. We might as well give you a few extra questions to ask."

"I want to know more about potions!" Yellow chimed in.

Harry led his little troupe through the doors of the Great Hall, then hesitated at the sight of three dozen very big Zoras looking over at him with curiosity. They were yet another kind of Zora he hadn't seen in the Bestiary. These ones were all tall enough to make Rutari look petite, with swanlike necks, incredibly long torsos, and short but powerful legs. Instead of being all-blue or all-green, their skin was bicolored, with some light shade of gray or cream in front and a muted tone of blue, gray, brown, or green on the back. Unlike the Zoras of Five-Spear Isle, most of them wore jewelry and bits of clothing. He saw quite a few silver and bronze bracelets, chokers, and headdresses decorated with pearls, sapphires, and shiny blue enameling. Metallic blue and silver scarves, capelets, and waist wraps also seemed to be in vogue. A couple of people were even wearing entire dresses made out of shimmery blue fabric. These Zoras were so fancy!Had any of the previous sword-bearers run into big, dapper Zoras before?

The Four Sword projected the mental equivalent of a shrug and flicked memories of dark-eyed, blue-skinned, Old Kingdom Zoras through his head. They were sleek and graceful-looking, but naked, so he supposed the answer there was "no".

Though it was rather intimidating to be surrounded by so many huge, important-looking people, Harry stepped farther into the room anyway. "Erm, I'm trying to learn more about Hyrule, and I was wondering if any of you could answer my questions," he told the room. He and Yellow shuffled nervously on their feet when dozens of pairs of curious eyes turned in their direction. "I'm the only one in the castle who can speak Hylian so…Yeah, I'm sort of doing my part for everyone at Hogwarts here."

"You can speak Hylian? Wonderful!" a voice boomed. The Zoras parted to admit a taller, somewhat heavyset Zora with an especially brawny frame and a round face. He was the fanciest-looking of the lot, with a headdress of iridescent pearly scales and a bejeweled metal plate, a draped metallic blue capelet fringed with flashing silver coins, gem-studded silver bracelets and anklets, and a belt made out of interlocking fish-shaped chain links. The white spotted patterns on his dark gray head-tail and the large fins on his hips further set him apart from the other Zoras, whose markings were plainer. The man's bright smile was reassuringly approachable, even if it was full of serrated teeth. "I'm Tiamus, second child of King Pontas. I must thank your people for so kindly taking mine in when our lake became overrun with monsters." He bowed to Harry.

"Erm…" The only royalty Harry had spoken to before was Queen Zelda, and it definitely helped with his nerves that she was stuck in a book. He didn't know what to do about living royalty standing right in front of him. "Y-You're welcome, Your Highness. I'll, er, pass that along to the Headmaster. And my name is Harry, by the way." He bowed back to Tiamus—even lower than the prince had, just in case.

"I'm sure I have just as many questions for you as you do for me, young Harry," Tiamus said. He swept his arm out to the side, indicating a corner of the room where a few low, sturdy tables had been laid out to be used as chairs. "Come, sit with me! We have much to discuss."

The Harrys piled onto a table, while Tiamus sat cross-legged on one across from them. "Are you the spokesman among your siblings?" the Zora asked, having clearly noticed the lack of comprehension on the other Harrys' faces.

"For some reason the sword only translates for me, so yeah," Harry said. "To me, it sounds like you and I are speaking English, not Hylian."

"A weapon with a translation spell? What a novel idea!"

Blue bumped against Harry's shoulder and handed him the notebook he'd brought along. The first two pages were filled with questions.

Harry scanned through them with incredulity. The list included such gems as "What do the glowing garlic bulbs do?" and "Are fairies real?" Most of them were less silly-sounding, but there was a certain inherent stupidity to asking a total stranger basic questions that made Harry cringe in apprehension. While he wanted to know what all the glowing blue stuff was about and why there was so much bronze everywhere, he hated to consider asking. Aunt Petunia would have given him a swat if he'd ever presented her with such stupid questions. "When did you even have the time to write all of this?" he asked Blue. "We've been sat here for five seconds!"

"Yes, and we also walked here for several minutes. Your point?"

Harry sighed and ripped the first leaf out of the notebook before handing the book back to his brother. "I have some basic questions, if that's alright with you?" he said, holding the page up for Tiamus to see.

The prince tilted his head to one side to read the slightly sideways writing. "So 'English' uses a similar script to Hylian?" he remarked. "That should narrow the communication gap immensely! Amazing, what things have echoed across worlds."

"My brother—Blue, over here—said about the same thing," Harry told him. He brought the page up to his face and winced at the first question. Hopefully the Zora didn't laugh. "So, er, what's with all the glowing blue and orange rocks?" Tiamus's jewelry featured that particular stone quite prominently. Dots of gently pulsing orange decorated the metal cuffs on his wrists and formed eyes for the silver and bronze fish on his belt.

Tiamus rocked back in shock. "You don't have Bluestone where you're from?" he asked, aghast. "What form of energy does your country use, if not magic?"

"Electricity, mostly. Witches and wizards like the people in this castle use magic, but I'm from a place where everything is electric, even the kettles," Harry explained.

"You use electricity? That's the most dangerous power source there is!" Tiamus said with a look of awe. "I've only heard of the Gerudo managing to harness it effectively."

"What does Bluestone do, exactly, if it's not electric? Is it magical? Why does it always run along stone instead of metal?"

"Magic, as one of the forces that created this world, is something that must be channeled through some form of natural earth. Any stone or sufficiently compacted soil will technically do, but Bluestone crystal is the most effective medium. Bluestone can serve as a capacitor, a spell node that can be slotted into any object and pass along its enchantment, and a perfect conduit with no energy loss, so it's the most common material for the power grid. Using electricity-conducting metals around power lines interrupts the magic flow, so we use stone and stala to brace them," Tiamus said. "There are two ways to draw up such magic on an industrial scale: pulling it from the land and using a Blue Flame forge to generate it. Blue Flame burns like the sun and is difficult to put out if it escapes containment, so ground-tap power stations are safer and more common. Using that sort of generator too heavily will turn the land fallow, however, so we don't rely too much on powered devices if we can help it. Careful moderation and respect to the land are key, otherwise we'd drive our crops to ruin or light the country afire in the blind pursuit of energy."

Harry nodded, the gears in his brain spinning. The energy source they used here was the land's magic, was it? It had to be their version of the power that Vaati had been stealing out from under Hogwarts. That level of usage wasn't too different from magical society back home, in some ways. Witches and wizards waved wands, drank potions, and relied on enchanted objects for just about everything. The main difference was that the Golden Power in the Dark World was used in dribs and drabs by individual magical people who didn't know what kind of energy they were using to strengthen and stabilize their internal magic. Here, people knew what that power was and they'd learned how much they could siphon away to keep their cities humming. It was a carefully regulated thing here, rather than the more loosely defined magic back home. No wonder Vaati had been so angry! If he'd been watching from his extradimensional prison as the peoples of Hyrule found a way to carefully draw out and shape their version of magic into something both Muggles and mages could use like electricity, the wizarding way of doing things must have looked totally backwards to him!

Red poked him in the cheek. "Why're you staring into space?"

Harry realized he'd unintentionally been drilling a hole into the wall beyond Tiamus's shoulder. He shook his head to snap himself out of it. "I'll tell you later," he muttered to Red. Taking the notebook from Blue, he started scribbling notes furiously. Once he'd poured all the thoughts in his head onto the page, he looked up at Tiamus. The prince didn't seem annoyed that Harry was acting odd. If anything, he seemed amused.

"Your Highness, I think we might be here for a while," Harry said with an apologetic smile. "I've got a lot of questions like that."

"If I thought this would be a brief chat, I wouldn't have invited you to sit," Tiamus said with an airy wave. "Don't be afraid—ask away! I have two hatchlings younger than you, and their curiosity is something for the ages. I encourage questions."

Harry passed much of the morning pleasantly chatting with the Zora prince, his brothers occasionally chiming in with their own questions. At a hundred and sixty-six years old, Tiamus had a fair amount of experience with the threats Hyrule often faced. He'd spent much of his youth hopping from waterway to waterway to adventure across the mainland, so he had a lot of good stories and advice on that front, especially concerning fish-based potions and travel meals. In addition, as a member of royalty whose small kingdom also served as a major reservoir for several nearby cities, including the capital of Hyrule, he'd done quite a lot of studying up on his country's infrastructure. Blue was delighted to learn about the many uses of stala (that green-brown metal they'd mistaken for bronze), how the Spirit Tracks had come to be and what methods had been used to reshape the magical rails over the millennia, how the trains used Bluestone thrusters to keep from literally flying around every turn, and so on. The prince also knew a fair amount about the landscape and the spirits that helped maintain it, as someone whose lake was apparently haunted by both a giant carp and an enormous electric spirit-dragon.

"Farosh likes to wind around the legs of the Hylia Bridge when he has an itch," Tiamus said. He spoke with the same fondness one might use to describe a friendly neighborhood stray. "He's the youngest of the World Spirits—only about three hundred years old. My grandparents saw him when he was just an egg!"

Harry was stunned. Just the other day, he'd met a cranky Zora grandma who was older than that huge dragon! Farosh had had such a wise, ancient look to him, too…

"You wouldn't happen to know about any other dragon spirits, would you?" Harry asked. "My brothers and I are trying to find one that has to do with fire. We have to fight a monster on Death Mountain, and someone told us that a certain dragon's fangs would help us get past the lava."

Tiamus regarded him with pity. "Oh, child…The current Spirit of Eldin is Endraal. You wouldn't want anything to do with her."

Harry wrote down the name. "Why? What did she do?"

"Over a century ago, the dragon's mind was poisoned by an evil wizard attempting to use her as a tool for conquering Hyrule. Since then, she's been forced to guard the ruins of that wizard's base of operations with a level of obsession that nothing can break. The only way to survive her flames is to use a strong Fireproof Elixir and avoid any direct hits, because the magic of even the most effective potion pales in the face of a World Spirit's might. Only the Zonai are mad enough to challenge her. The warriors who settled out there have made shooting and retrieving a fang from her mouth into a trial of adulthood. It's utter folly if you ask me." He shook his head.

"They've managed a way to do it, though?" Harry prompted. "How?" He didn't know what a Zonai was, but if there were people around Hyrule who'd made a regular thing out of what the Harrys needed to do, that meant there was a technique they could follow.

"The Zonai method for antagonizing Endraal and getting away with it is having a Rito fly around to distract her and fire arrows at her mouth while a human partner on the ground runs to retrieve whatever gets knocked loose. The key is keeping her off the ground, since she's much more agile on her feet than in the sky." Tiamus rested his chin on his interlocked fingers. "You little wizards wouldn't happen to be hiding wings up your sleeves, would you?"

Harry grinned. "No, but I do have a broom under my bed."

"Mister Potter!"

Harry jerked upright at the sharp, echoing shout. He turned away from Tiamus's thoughtful frown to see Professor McGonagall striding across the room toward him. "Mister Potter, why is it that you have such difficulty reporting your continued existence to any one of the many members of staff at this school?" the professor demanded. Her eyes were alight with something between anger and worry. "Thank goodness your Head Boy takes his position so seriously." She glanced over and nodded at the Zora prince behind him. "Good morning, Prince Tiamus," she greeted in a strange accent. It took a second for Harry to realize her lips hadn't matched what he'd heard; it seemed the teachers were starting to pick up Hylian already.

"Good morning, Professor McGonagall," Tiamus said in equally strange-sounding English. His accent sounded a little French, which Harry wouldn't have expected.

The professor motioned for Harry to follow her. "The Headmaster has been desperate to speak to you, Mister Potter. You especially, Green."

"Really?" Harry said, though he wasn't all that surprised. He was the only person in the castle who could speak both Hylian and English fluently, after all. After bidding Tiamus a polite farewell, he and his brothers followed Professor McGonagall out of the room.

Twenty minutes later, Harry found himself slumped over in one of the chairs before Professor Dumbledore's desk, desperately wishing he could rewind time and go back to talking to Tiamus. Anything to save him from even more expectations being dumped on his head.

Yellow sat up straight in the chair next to him, dutifully nodding as Professor Dumbledore went on to explain the many plans he had for Harry. His eyes were wide and blank; Yellow was hearing and responding to the words, but had no doubt let his mind float off like a balloon to keep himself from breaking down from stress and causing a scene. The tears would come later. Blue and Red had adopted positions of silent agony in their seats. Red was staring at the floor with his fingers drumming on his knee. His shoulders were tense, his right hand squeezing his thigh. Beside him, Blue was draped languidly across the chair, his eyes half-lidded as he listened to Professor Dumbledore's speech. His jaw was clenched, despite his seemingly relaxed position, and his upper lip was ever so slightly curled in contempt. One of the hands laid carelessly over the arms of the seat had its fingers curled in a straining claw.

The Harrys had explained their case to Professor Dumbledore almost as soon as they'd entered his office. It was a matter of saving the world, after all—two worlds, even, now that Vaati had decided to plague the citizens of Hyrule with monsters in addition to his reality-violating, occasionally people-snatching tornadoes! Whether it counted as child endangerment or not, it was vitally important that the Headmaster give the Harrys permission to go out and do what they had to do. Blue had even promised that if anyone back home pressed charges, the Harrys (or the singular remaining Harry, if they successfully sealed Vaati with the Four Sword again) would do whatever lying they had to in order to keep Professor Dumbledore from getting in trouble.

Professor Dumbledore had listened attentively to their explanation of what Shadow Harry had told them so far, including their current mission of hunting down three dragon teeth to help them stop a legendary volcano from continually erupting. He hadn't panicked, which Harry had been dreading, so he'd taken that as a good sign.

As it turned out, the reason Professor Dumbledore hadn't panicked was because he had absolutely no intention of letting the Harrys out of his sight anytime soon. It didn't matter that they needed to save the world; he needed them. After appearing to listen so well to what the Harrys had said, the Headmaster had proceeded to kindly steamroll them with his plans for what they were actually going to do over the course of the next few months. He wanted Harry to work with Malfoy, Snape, Professor Babbling (whom Harry had never heard of), and the Zoras to start a language exchange in which the locals would learn English and the people of Hogwarts would learn Hylian. The other Harrys would be assigned to participate in the enchanting classes that Hermione and Zelda were soon going to be called upon to come up with. Once everyone in Hogwarts had a magical staff and a basic Hylian vocabulary, only then would the Harrys be allowed to request the occasional outing to an approved, pre-explored safe location.

Harry could feel his respect for the man dropping by the minute. He and his brothers had explained—quite clearly, Harry thought!—that Vaati's reckless power-grab could literally wind up breaking magic, if not their entire world. Just the wind mage's impatient clawing at Hogwarts's magical foundations had been enough to make the lower levels of the castle flood and the lawn around the building shrivel. Harry had described with great urgency how the grass had turned black and dissolved into the toxic-looking mud around the castle. Surely the Headmaster should have found the notion of that patch of wasted land spreading rather disastrous? Potentially apocalyptic, maybe?

"—and a conjugation chart for regular verbs would be a solid foundation to start with. Basic vocabulary is all well and good, but teaching someone the mechanisms of a language is far more important than simply inundating them with new words," Professor Dumbledore continued. "Wouldn't you say, Harry?"

Harry nodded. He didn't know what "conjugation" meant, nor did he care.

It wasn't that everyone learning Hylian and having a way to defend themselves from monsters wasn't important; Harry just wished he didn't have to be involved in those plans. He already had enough on his plate, having to hunt down five different temples and fight his way past all their traps just to get the things he needed to have a chance of bringing Vaati down.

'Why don't you arrange to have us fetch the missing Ravenclaws, too, while you're at it?' he thought with a suppressed roll of his eyes as Professor Dumbledore continued droning on about crafting a curriculum. What even was a curriculum?

Did Professor Dumbledore just have a hard time understanding what Harry was capable of? Flying a broom and hassling a mad dragon were things he could do. At this point, after fighting a whale-sized, man-eating eel in its dark watery lair, a dragon in the sky was nothing. Learning to shoot a bow and arrow while on a broom was going to be difficult and frustrating, but it was a challenge he could push himself through if he had to. Figuring out a lesson plan, though? Explaining the workings of a language he didn't technically speak? Those were way above his level of skill or ability to apply himself. Harry was a third-year student with grades that were decent, but definitely not Hermione-tier. How could he even begin to teach a class on anything? He had enough trouble wrestling with his attention span while doing homework, and now the Headmaster expected him to assign it? Harry couldn't help but wonder if the man was so old that he'd forgotten what it was like to be someone who could barely sit still in a classroom.

As the Headmaster produced a scroll of parchment covered in instructions and advice from inside his desk, Harry found himself flashing back to the other long conversation he'd had that morning. He liked talking to Tiamus. The Zora was just as friendly and extroverted as Ruka, but mellowed by age, parenting experience, and a more polite temperament. He hadn't lumped expectations on Harry, just given him a lot of helpful advice to help him on his way. The Zora hadn't told Harry he was a reckless idiot for wanting to get a tooth from Endraal, either, nor had he flat-out said that Harry couldn't do it. A total stranger had been more accommodating and understanding than the Headmaster of Hogwarts, which came to Harry as both a surprise and a disappointment. Why didn't the teachers take the students seriously where Hylian matters were involved? Harry knew first-years with more monster-fighting and spell-finding experience than most of the teachers; if he were a member of staff at Hogwarts, he'd be listening to the kids who had actually been fighting back against Vaati and learning Hylian magic, not making up plans with no input from anyone who knew better and just expecting everyone to follow them.

The Harrys shuffled out of Professor Dumbledore's office a half-hour later. Harry's fist was locked around a roll of parchment; a one-meter long list of expectations had been foisted upon him before he'd been able to escape. According to Dumbledore, it included detailed instructions on how to come up with lessons as well as what order those lessons should be in, depending on what parts of the Hylian language were most vital for being understood. Harry had caught sight of a section labeled "Syntax" before the scroll had been rolled up. Another word he didn't know, nor care to.

The boys rode silently down the moving staircase leading from Professor Dumbledore's office and walked out into the hall, whereupon Red exploded.

"Who the hell does he think we are? Hermione? Professor McGonagall?" he burst out, flipping off the gargoyle half-blocking the way behind them. It was stuck now, thanks to its broken enchantment. "We have a sword and fight monsters real good! What does that have to do with making up bloody curriculums?"

Yellow pulled at his hair, trembling with distress. Tears were already starting to flow from his eyes as all his emotions started crashing back in. "W-We already have to f-fight a d-dragon and k-kill a monster in a volcano, and n-now we have to teach on top of that?" he asked, his voice so strained it was almost a whisper. "How?"

"Only Green has to teach, Yellow. You're in the clear," Blue said, giving his shoulder a comforting squeeze. He pried Harry's fingers off the roll of parchment and unfurled it. His sapphire eyes slowly rolled down the lines of looping cursive. "I mean, it says that Professor Babbling is going to be the one doing most of the teaching and he's basically laid out the whole program here, but…really? He's a bloody teacher himself, and it's not like he's been busting his bony arse to save the world! He could do this himself!" Blue shook his head with disgust. "He speaks all those languages, and yet he'd rather delegate this? What on earth is keeping him so busy he can't make himself useful like all us mortals down here?" He glared up at the Headmaster's hidden office.

Harry blew out a breath and ruffled his hair. He had two options: do as Professor Dumbledore said and be stuck at the school for a minimum of a few months doing something he was sure to hate, or ignore the Headmaster and dive back into the wilds of Hyrule, risking expulsion in the process. It seemed inevitable that he'd have to bite the bullet and defy his teachers at some point; there was literally no way for them to get home until Vaati was either defeated or arbitrarily decided to let them return to the world he'd reshaped in their absence.

"Blue, what do you think?" he asked. "Should I do all of that?" He gestured with disgust at the scroll of instructions.

His brother pursed his lips. "…For now, maybe," he said after a pause. "We'll need to stick around anyway while we gather up the supplies we need. Hylian staffs are going to be a must, and once we have those, we'll have to make sure we have a travel plan set up. We need to familiarize ourselves with our shields, too, and it wouldn't hurt to do some studying up on how to manage injuries. To get potions ingredients, we can try clearing out some of the monsters in the lake and use Levitation Charms to grab fish out of the water near the shore. Once we have some fish and more monster bits, I'll practice some Hylian potion-brewing. Oh, and according to your notes, we need to learn archery?" He tucked the parchment under his arm and pulled his notebook out of his robe pocket, flipping to the right page. "How and why are we going to learn archery, of all things? Isn't that what wands are for?"

"Well, Tiamus said the Zonai use arrows to knock out Endraal's teeth. I don't know what a 'Zonai' is, but I figure copying them is the best way to go about it," Harry said with a shrug. "You're right, though—once we have Hylian wands, we can just use Severing Charms or something. Maybe there's even an arrow spell!"

Red was crestfallen. "But I want to learn how to use a bow," he said.

"When would we ever need a bow in our daily lives?" Blue asked, raising an eyebrow.

Red crossed his arms. "To hunt? To slay monsters? To look awesome? It'd be useful in Hyrule, at least, and we're probably gonna be here for a while."

The other Harrys made faces, imagining the difficulty of learning how to use a bow. Harry had come across a section in Ravio's sword journal about archery while going methodically through the lessons within. The boy had been particularly enthusiastic about bows, since they let one do damage from a distance. Despite his careful notes on sword-fighting, the many complaints littering said notes indicated the nine-year-old warrior-in-training hadn't cared much for melee combat. Harry had started reading the section on archery and then quickly given up before doubling down on his swordsmanship; bows were finicky things that could cause all kinds of horrific injuries if one forgot the path or sharpness of the string. Ravio, being a clever and cautious sort, had made a list. If Harry could learn a spell that would save him the difficulty of figuring out how to fire an arrow without losing a finger or turning his forearm into one massive bruise, he'd like to skip going through all that trouble.

"Tell you what, I'll find that arrow spell in the library and have Green translate something about archery sometime later," Blue said, clapping Red on the back. "Once we leave the castle, I'm sure it won't be too hard to hunt down a cheap bow and an instruction manual."

"Thanks for volunteering me," Harry said dryly. "It isn't as though I'm going to be doing a whole class full of translating."

Blue snorted. "As if you weren't going to volunteer me to figure out what Dumbledore's instructions mean!"

Albus hunched over his desk once he was alone with his thoughts, putting his head in his hands. Harry was sure to hate him for laying so much on his young shoulders, but he wasn't sure what else to do. A few chats with a foreign merman did not make Albus fluent in Hylian. As much as he desperately wished their resident English-speaking experts in the local language and magic weren't a handful of barely-teenaged children, that fact was just another unfortunate aspect of their current circumstances.

He cursed the situation. It was terrible all around, and there was no way to make it any less so without making it worse first. The Harrys were convinced that only they could stop the mage who had thrown their school across dimensions. There was a high likelihood they were right; the Four Sword was spoken of in the Hylian Bestiary's legends and its abilities as described in the book had indeed turned out to be true.

The thing was, while Harry absolutely had the potential to defeat Voldemort one day, there were several magnitudes of power difference between a mass-murdering cult leader seeking immortality and a millennia-old demigod with several legends to his name who could pitch a large castle across the very bounds of reality and populate an entire country with hordes of autonomous conjured monsters. It was simply impossible for four young boys to survive a fight with an entity like that, let alone defeat him. Perhaps with an army of trained wizards wielding Hylian staffs keeping them safe, they would have a slim chance, but their foolhardy plan to just venture out into the countryside on their own was doomed to fail.

Preparing for battle against Vaati's forces would take time—time they would only be able to buy if they properly established themselves in Hyrule and created the connections needed to survive. Once they had their footing back and the castle's population was no longer in danger of starving, Albus could consider putting together and training a fighting force. It wouldn't be nearly fast enough for Harry's tastes, as even a single year would feel like a very long time to a child his age, but it would be the least risky and most potentially successful method for all involved.

Albus lifted his head and puzzled his hands tightly together on his desk, his wrinkled knuckles showing white. He refused to let Harry's inherent goodness and desire to help get him killed. If that meant loading him down with so many obligations at the castle that he was too busy to even consider leaving, so be it. An occupied and stressed Harry Potter was far better than having four dead children on his hands.

Notes:

-The memory of a giant volcano lizard that the Four Sword showed Harry was King Dodongo from Ocarina of time.

-Tiamus's name comes from the Mesopotamian goddess of the primordial sea, Tiamat, and his father Pontas is named for the Greco-Roman primordial sea god Pontus. Tiamus's design was inspired by a whale shark, and he's a happily married father of two in the equivalent of his mid-thirties.

-We have a name for that blue/orange stuff now! In this era, every Bluestone-enchanted device either needs to be plugged in somewhere or has limited batteries (spell nodes) that require recharging. Power cores aren't a thing yet and mages are weaker and rarer in the Light World, so energy stations are important. The balance of magic in the Light World leans in favor of the land and away from individual mages. In the Dark World, magic favors individual mages and is minimal in the land, which makes ground-tap stations a very bad idea there. This difference in distribution is why each world uses magic the way it does.

-I'm now regretting my decision to use metric rather than Imperial measurements to make this story sound more British, but I'm too stubborn to go back now. Here are some Imperial heights to work with, since I have trouble expressing these in meters: the average Inland Zora is 7'0" and Prince Tiamus is 8'1". And while I'm at it, Deku Scrubs are 4'6" on average, Primose is 5'6", Narcissus is 6'0", Belle is 4'0", and Hylians are 5'7" on average. For contrast, the Harrys are 4'9".

-Electricity is considered dangerous in Hyrule because they haven't yet discovered the insulating properties of rubber. They just know that it's bendy and waterproof, so they use it for rain tarps and the joint covers on trains. Like in Edwardian times (and also BOTW, with those bare chains), electrical power lines in Hyrule are un-insulated and potentially lethal to the touch.

-Endraal is the successor to Valoo and predecessor of Dinraal. Rather than being the spirit of a spring, like Dinraal or Farosh, she instead embodies Death Mountain.