I'm so pleased that the Big Meeting in the last couple of chapters was received well! This week, we've got another character meet-up, this time with Zelda! Character art of Zelda and her parents has been posted under the "characters" tag on garden-eel-draws and is linked/displayed on Ao3.

Yellow's stomach churned with anxiety as they approached the massive gates blocking the long road that spiraled up to Hyrule Castle. He never would have thought that the sight of a paler, brighter Hogwarts standing in the distance would inspire such fear. All he could imagine was saying the wrong thing and getting them all beheaded, or causing a war that would get all his teachers and classmates killed. Princess Zelda came from a long line of ruling queens, and would one day be a queen herself. She had legends behind her. This wouldn't be like talking to Link, who was just a normal kid whose bad luck had a high chance of turning exceptionally terrible sometime in the next few years. Zelda was, well…Zelda.

Avoka put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Is talking to the princess really that scary to you?"

Yellow smiled politely. "Oh, no, I'm not scared," he did his best to say in Hylian.

Behind Avoka, his siblings raised their eyebrows at him. Yellow elected to ignore those hypocrites in favor of keeping his expression pleasant for the Sheikah.

"You totally are. I can't analyze people like Link does, but I know what it looks like when he's overwhelmed," Avoka said, putting his hands on his hips. "Seriously, the princess isn't scary. She uses fancy words because that's how she was raised to speak, but that's it. Mostly, she's just boring."

"Good to know," Yellow said. "But I'm fine."

"You are not."

"He's going to insist he is until you give up," Malfoy advised. "They do that even to each other. It's very strange."

"But why? Link doesn't do that—he knows when to ask for help. Why the difference there?"

"If you ask me, it must have something to do with those beastly Muggles who—"

Yellow fired Malfoy a deadly, Snape-ish look. The pureblood went silent, spooked. "I'm not scared, I promise," Yellow told Avoka with a measured mixture of reassurance and cheer, making an effort not to speak through his teeth. "We can go."

"But I don't want you to be afraid of Zelda," Avoka insisted. "She wouldn't want that."

Now Yellow was getting exasperated. He couldn't dissuade the stubborn Sheikah because he was terrible at speaking in Hylian and successful redirections required a lot of careful phrasing. His more fluent brothers weren't helping because, going by Blue's smirk and Green's satisfied look of "now it's your turn," they had other priorities.

"I'm going ahead!" he announced, deciding to throw the fight before it could properly begin. When persuasion and gentle manipulation were off the table, it was time to pull a Red and take the least subtle route away from a topic. Yellow marched right up to the colossal double-doors that gated off the base of the mountain Hyrule Castle sat on. The mixture of stala and steel resembled richly embroidered fabric, heavily encrusted in Bluestone tracery and raised reliefs of heroes and goddesses and monsters being defeated. There were all kinds of symbols woven into the different scenes on the doors, many of which Yellow recognized from studying the Hylian Bestiary and asking Zelda about their meanings. They gave the images a surreal look, like religious paintings whose various literary references he didn't quite understand.

"State your business!" a voice commanded.

With his nerves as tightly strung as they were, Yellow jumped with a dramatic gasp of fright and curled in on himself when he landed. The gate guard who'd spoken, a teenaged Sheikah dressed like Avoka, gave a little shout of surprise at his reaction. She blinked at him, gave the Harrys a long, blank stare, and then turned her stunned gaze on Avoka. "I'm not seeing things, am I?" she asked in a less deep, more normal voice. "There's four of the sword-delivery kid! And a half-Zora version of you! How?!"

The other guard, a Sheikah man somewhere in his later thirties, turned to give the girl a disapproving frown. "Trainee Ume, you're here to learn your lesson, not to further your unprofessional behavior," he reprimanded. Twitching his ceremonial-looking stala sickle blade so the bronze metal caught the morning sun, he barked, "State your business or leave!"

"Trainee Avoka reporting for apprenticeship duties, accompanied by informants seeking an audience with Princess Zelda, sir," Avoka said, snapping to military attention.

"Informants are to speak with the king during times of strife," the elder Sheikah declared. "The princess sees the public only as she wishes."

"Yes sir, and the princess wishes in this case," Avoka said. "You can call up Commander Impa to verify, if you doubt me. I've already notified her, sir."

Before they'd set off from Link's house, Avoka had pulled out a Gossip Stone and disappeared into another room to talk to his boss. Yellow had suddenly been reminded that Green was carrying their group's Gossip Stone, and the nature of it being stored in a Bag of Holding meant it had been effectively put on "mute". None of his siblings seemed to recall they had a phone they should probably take a look at—understandable, as they'd never had much access to one before. They'd been too pressed for time at Link's house to check their calls, though. Yellow hoped no one was desperately trying to reach them at that moment.

The older guard reached into his pocket to pull out a red Gossip Stone.

"Oh come on, really? You're actually going to check?" asked the younger sentry. "You know Avoka! If anyone would have arranged something with the princess, it's him."

"Wh-What's that supposed to mean, Ume?" Avoka spluttered.

"Well, I mean, you guard her tower the most often and you talk about each other a lot, so…"

Avoka turned pink. "It's not like that! Do people really think the princess and I are—"

"One more word of childish gossip from either of you, and I'll assign you both to scrubbing the stairs in Princess Zelda's tower," the older guard snapped. The two teens immediately shut up. He glared at them for a few seconds longer before raising the Gossip Stone to his lips. "Contact Impa Gingetsu," he said loudly and clearly.

"What do the red ones do, again?" Red asked. "I remember it was something fancy."

"They let you set a command stone and arrange a lot of other ones to contact it," Harry said. "It's probably the closest Gossip Stones get to cell phones, except only the command one has multiple connections. All the others are the usual two-way unless they're plugged into a phone booth."

"Oh, huh. Kinda lame. Why can't all the stones just contact each other?"

"Because they were crafted by barely-more-than-Muggles," Malfoy said snidely. "You can't expect something like that to equal real magic."

Blue peered at him like a specimen trapped in a jar. "You're just grasping at every ledge you can find now, aren't you?" he remarked. "You know, eventually you're just going to have to acknowledge that people other than you are able to achieve what you can't."

"Conventional magic is easily capable of creating long-distance communication devices!"

"Sure, but can you?"

"I can read a book and learn how, Potter. It's only a few charms," Malfoy sniffed. "Certainly better than hours of chanting."

"You might have to spend weeks getting those charms right, though. If they were easy, wizards would have cell phones."

"We don't need cell phones!"

"Oh, so it's that much more convenient to have to talk to everyone in person? Instead of, you know, calling them wherever they are from wherever you are?"

"Why would anyone want to speak to a talking object instead of face-to-face?" Malfoy asked, tossing up his hands. "I might as well send a letter!"

"Can you speak to a friend across the world in real-time with a letter, though?"

"Why would I have a friend across the world?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

Yellow prepared to intervene when Malfoy's face went pink with frustration. He'd let them bicker a little because a quarrel between the combative duo was inevitable and it was better to let them work off some of their steam than wait for an explosion, but real anger from Malfoy could end badly. The boy wasn't used to his new strength yet and he had more knowledge of curses and hexes than the Harrys. He'd also been raised to lash out at people who displeased him, which meant there was a higher chance of him doing something dangerously impulsive.

"C'mere, you." Avoka leaned in and towed Malfoy away by the front of his shirt. "Maybe I don't speak English, but I know what it sounds like when I'm being an arse. Let's go. Agent Mengo just checked us in."

"I wasn't being an arse! He wasn't making sense!" Malfoy protested.

The Sheikah rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure that's what happened."

The glowing orange designs on the grand metal doors ahead of them flared blue. In eerie silence, the thick slabs of steel swung outward on giant hinges and articulated metal arms like the ones lying half-assembled around Link's yard. Yellow, Blue, and Red stared up at them with interest as they passed by.

"I wonder if the Bluesmiths made those," Red mused. "Our double is really smart, isn't he? Crafting swords and making up your own enchantments has to be complicated."

"I'm sure a lot of the work on that gate would have been his sister's doing, or another older relative," Blue said. "Still, I don't doubt Link is smart. Going by some of the pictures in his house, he's had at least a few inventions featured at science conventions. I don't get why he's so quiet, though. Maybe it's that odd speech impediment?" He rubbed his chin. "I swear it's familiar, somehow. There are some—what's the term—learning disabilities, I believe, that can cause that kind of difficulty. The one I'm thinking of…er, it starts with an 'a'?"

The Harrys' faces screwed up as they thought. They'd had a classmate like Link in primary school, though with some different symptoms. That boy had talked almost nonstop, but he'd had a similar tendency to stare (yet avoid eye contact) and a habit of humming to himself and phrasing things oddly. Like Link, who tended to tick back and forth to some silent tempo, he'd never been able to stay still. He'd always been rocking or bobbing or fiddling with his hands to some degree. Yellow tried to call to mind the word their teacher had used to explain the boy's behavior and came up with "automatic". Nope, that wasn't it.

"All I can think of is 'Austria'," Red declared.

Blue rolled his eyes hard enough that they were liable to stick. "Oh, yes, Link is Austria. The country. Brilliant."

"Hey, you're supposed to be the nerd here."

"You were thinking of 'autistic', Red," Green said with amusement. "But sure, I guess 'Austria' is close."

"He got the 'au' sound right, and there's a 't' in there," Yellow said.

"Do you suppose that the Muggles here have come up with their own version of psychology?" Blue wondered. "It took quite a lot of trial-and-error to figure it out in our world, and a great deal of human experimentation—much of it basically torture and murder with fancier-sounding steps and people writing notes. Lobotomies are a great example. Given how much friendlier things are around here, I wouldn't be surprised if they've taken a gentler, more natural approach to figuring out the kinds of sciences where progress has to be tempered with ethics. Or they could be at a medieval level with those studies, like they are with their fashions and architecture, and think mental problems are signs of possession if they get bad enough. 'Hysteria is a wandering uterus', and all that. Hell, maybe the only phrase this world has for 'autistic and maybe kind of transgender' is—" he cut himself off with a wince, "er, well, the sort of thing the Dursleys might say."

Yellow could imagine exactly the sort of words his relatives would describe Link with. His lips pressed in a line. That primary school classmate of theirs had gotten bullied to the point of being put in a special education class, even though he'd been really good at classwork when left to his own devices. Harry had watched from afar, afraid of bringing his own collection of bullies down on the poor boy's head. Their world wasn't kind to those who were different, or who needed a little help. Harry was only a tad weird by English standards—brown, undersized, glasses-wearing, and shabby-looking—and man, had his neighbors and classmates back in Little Whinging never let him forget it.

"Maybe we can get Link some books about that stuff from our world, the next time we go back. Translate the relevant bits into Hylian for him," Yellow said, to nods all around. Even if that sort of book just told Link what he'd already learned through the school of hard knocks, Yellow would like to give their dimensional alternate at least a little bit of the help they hadn't been able to give to that classmate of theirs back in Year 4.

They walked along a broad road paved with big, flat stone panels lined with thread-thin lengths of Bluestone. Curiously, the subtle accents of magical rock were standby-orange; Yellow took that to mean they weren't channeling power to anything. Was the road enchanted, then, and its spells weren't currently on?

Upon closer investigation, ne noticed the Bluestone was cut to fit each block of the road instead of being continuous. Every panel on the path had its own lining. Upon stepping from section to section, the boys were turning the lights to their left and right from orange to blue.

Yellow frowned in thought, searching for words. "The road is magic?" he asked Avoka in Hylian after piecing the sentence together in his head. "Why?"

"It's tracking your movement," Avoka replied. "Up in those security towers, there are Royal Guardsmen watching screens that report where we are on the road." He pointed up to one of the turrets sticking out of the raised walls that lined the path toward the castle. A mixture of Sheikah and Hylians were posted along the top of the wall in wildly different uniforms. The Sheikah wore gray ninja suits and matte steel plates that blended in with the stone, while the Hylians were dressed in more intimidating knight armor than what the city guard wore. "It comes in handy for invasions and tracking anyone trying to sneak in," Avoka continued. "There are random pressure-plates buried around to trip any non-guardsmen up, too,"

Green stepped experimentally on a panel they'd just walked off of. Its Bluestone didn't activate until he had most of his weight on it. "So it's like a security camera, basically?"

"Exactly, except it gives better real-time information. Cameras always have that lag, you know."

"'Lag'?" Green asked. "What do you mean?"

"It takes about ten seconds for even the most cutting-edge system to record each photograph, so the image is never quite caught up. At the end of the day the camera operators have to delete everything or move the files into a big storage module, too, otherwise the camera freezes up from a lack of recording space. I've heard it's a real pain."

"So…instead of saving videos, they're taking pictures like a photo camera?" Green asked, exchanging a confused glance with his brothers. "Why?"

Avoka raised an eyebrow. "Cameras take photographs. Or 'pictographs', if you ask anyone not from the mainland. What else are you expecting them to do? And what is a 'video', anyway?"

Blue surged forward with excitement. "You don't have video cameras?" he asked excitedly. "That must be one of the points of difference between our worlds!"

"You mean besides the fact that I apparently turned out like him in another dimension?" the Sheikah said dryly, jerking his thumb toward a miffed Malfoy. "Why, what does 'video' mean to you?"

"Well, when you take a lot of pictures of something happening and then flip through them one after another really fast, you get an animation." Like the term "video", the last word was in English. "If you find a way to put it on a projector—" another English word, "or in a computer, it turns into a video."

"What's a 'projector'?" Avoka asked.

"You don't have those, either?! Okay, a projector is—wait, hold on, I should tell Zelda this, too." Blue dug through his bag for the queen's book.

Avoka locked up like someone Petrified. His face went almost as pale as his silver hair. "Zelda? Here?" he croaked.

"Not the princess," Green hastily clarified. "This Zelda is, erm…It's weird to explain…"

"Green, translate for me. I want to use big words," Blue said before going on, "She was cursed with the ability to detach her soul from her body." Green put the sentence into Hylian while Blue hauled the Bestiary out of his bag. "When she was old and gray, she decided to seal her soul into a book of mythical knowledge in order to teach anyone who unselfishly sought to learn about Hyrule's history." He opened the book to its back pages. "Hey, we're telling this Sheikah kid about you," he told its occupant in Hylian, tilting the book so Zelda could see who he was referring to. "Do you have some reference point for when you were alive? I don't know how Hylian dates work."

"You're telling me that book is possessed by an ancient queen of Hyrule," Avoka said. If his eyes went any wider, they'd fall out. "You can't be serious."

"She says her great-great grandmother founded the country one hundred and five years before her reign," Blue reported.

"Zelda Marinus Harkinian Hyrule," Avoka recited as if on reflex. "The Spirit Queen."

"Yes, that's her. Do Royal Guardsmen memorize the ruling family's ancestry?"

"How could I not know her? She's the reason that door back there had so many stories carved into it!" Avoka flung his hands in the direction of the gate down the hill. "If not for her, most of the legends of Old Hyrule would have been lost to the sea! Not to mention she and the Champion of her time were the ones who restored the Spirit Tracks. Can you imagine if we had to travel everywhere by carriage or steamship?"

"With how scary your trains are? Yes."

Avoka squeezed up next to him to stare with laser focus at the book. "Can I speak to her?" he asked eagerly. "Please?"

"Er, sure. We've got a while to walk, and she really wants to learn about what Hyrule is like these days." Blue handed the book to Avoka, who carefully cradled it.

The Sheikah looked at the tome with respectful awe. "Hello?" he almost whispered. When modern Hylian letters started scrolling across the page instead of English, the boy gave a soft gasp. "So it's real."

Blue put his hands on his hips. "Of course she is. Why would we lie about that?"

"Why such interest in a long-dead queen?" Malfoy asked with his usual lack of tact. "Surely you have one alive in the present day."

"The Spirit Queen is one of the founders of my country's modern culture!" Avoka curled around the book, his scarlet eyes narrowed in offence. "Have some respect!"

"And here I thought talking to royalty 'isn't a big deal,'" Malfoy drawled, crossing his arms. "Which one is it, then?"

Yellow fixed the Slytherin with a sharp smile. "Malfoy, please be nice." He let an edge of disapproval leak into his voice. "Imagine you could speak to Salazar Slytherin through a book. Wouldn't you be excited?" Yellow knew he personally wouldn't be, but Malfoy had had a strange upbringing. To him, that ancient blood-supremacist was somehow a hero. He'd basically said as much last year.

Malfoy's chin dipped as he processed that. He withdrew from of Avoka's personal space. "I suppose," he admitted.

"You need better idols, mate," Red said. "That bloke trained his snake to murder innocent people, you know."

"It was only set to eliminate the Mud—" The Slytherin caught himself partway through his flippant response. "The…the muggleborns and others he would have considered unworthy of Hogwarts's legacy. Like Granger and…" He put a hand to his illusion-hidden gills. "Hm."

Sensing impending conflict, Yellow suctioned to Blue's side and covered his brother's mouth before he could interrupt Malfoy's thinking moment. "Let him learn," he murmured in Blue's ear.

"It's taking him long enough," Blue muttered back once he could speak again.

"He's been taught wrong for thirteen years and we've spoken to him nicely for a few months," Yellow said. "Learning to be better is hard." If changing were easy and everyone really wanted to do it, there would be no such thing as people like their relatives. Malfoy had a lot of taught-in, needless cruelty to untangle in his head, and Yellow was happy to give him the time he needed. It was something he wished he could do for Dudley, his other poorly-raised mean cousin.

Blue pursed his lips. "Hmph. I guess."

The group continued up the road at a slower pace than before, now that their guide was moving on autopilot rather than with purpose. Avoka was absolutely enamored with the Hylian Bestiary. He chatted with Zelda in low, almost secretive tones as his feet continued carrying him along the path.

Yellow found it odd that Avoka would be so deeply fascinated by the book. Perhaps it was due to the social isolation he'd experienced growing up, but Yellow couldn't bring himself to be that interested in his country's past royalty. Oh, sure, he'd be properly shocked and awed to be brought to Buckingham Palace to speak to the living queen, but if he were given a book with the soul of Queen Victoria in it, he wasn't sure he'd be this level of elated. Historical figures were neat and all, and had information on their eras that modern people would never quite "get"; talking to one (and he had, in the form of their castle-haunting ghosts) could be interesting, but he'd never describe it as utterly enchanting.

'Is Avoka like Hermione, then?' Yellow wondered. The Sheikah seemed smart, if as socially bullheaded as Malfoy. Maybe he really was super interested in Zelda because of her value as a historical source. It was just funny to imagine a ninja poring over books.

They arrived at something that Avoka absently mumbled was the "First gatehouse, tell'm your names 'n business." It was a one-room mini-castle easily large enough to serve as a family home, bristling with Hylian and Sheikah warriors. Its upper balcony was stocked with four cannons, a plethora of crossbow turrets, and a company of soldiers ready to lay waste on any would-be marauders.

Yellow stuck close to Red as Green and Blue spoke to the Sheikah guards looming over them. If he'd thought Avoka was frightening, the trainee had nothing on these adult versions. His kind of intimidation was closer to the Harrys' social level; Avoka was combat-trained and way more fit than them (in a stringy sort of way), but ultimately he was just a kid. These adults were tall and strong and terrifying. There was no warmth in these people's stony expressions. One would think their lack of masks would make them less scary, but no; the fact that they could look so unforgiving while unmasked only increased the amount that Yellow didn't want to be here.

The Sheikah spoke in measured, deep, and somewhat quiet tones to Green and Blue while Yellow wrestled with his fight-or-flight. Suddenly, he didn't mind Malfoy's and Avoka's tendency to talk loud. Their confident volume didn't send this kind of dread creeping up his spine.

They were only allowed to leave the gatehouse once they had stowed all of their weapons in their bags…including the Four Sword. Yellow could feel the back of his neck prickling madly before they'd made it even twenty steps. Sure, he could summon his Magic Rod with only a flick of his will, but the Four Sword held his soul. He'd been forced to cut himself off from the thing keeping him real. Yellow shuddered and rubbed his arms, a motion his brothers copied.

Avoka stiffened and stared wide-eyed at the book in his arms with disbelief. "The Four Sword is what?" he asked in alarm at something Zelda had said. "It can do that?!" He cast a horrified look toward the Harrys. "How do you get your life-force entwined with a blade of evil's bane? Has it been cursed?"

"We're magic ourselves, and our power got tied up in holding the sword together," Green said. "Getting kicked across dimensions the first time almost broke it. Now that it's technically part of both, with our wizard magic stuck in it, I don't think that'll happen again."

"But…is it alright for you to put it in your magic bags? Will you die, if it's connected to you like that?"

"In around ten hours, I guess? The time-limit could be longer, now that Link's fixed the sword up some," Green said. "So long as we aren't having a sleep-over here, the worst we'll get is a headache."

"Keeping those weapons in magical storage will actually kill you?" Avoka shrieked.

Yellow bit the inside of his cheek, wishing he could intervene. The Sheikah had seized upon the wrong side of the point and Yellow lacked the Hylian words to talk him down. Green and Blue were fluent enough in Hylian, but would just make the boy panic more with the way they spoke.

Green patted at the air. "Only eventually! And if our headache gets too bad, we can—"

"Take those swords back out right this instant!" Avoka ordered.

Yellow was halfway into retrieving his blade before conscious thought caught up to his actions. Avoka had a really compelling tone of command. It was like he'd taken Malfoy's voice and replaced its whine with bark. How did he sound like that?

Malfoy squinted suspiciously at the Sheikah. "Who are you?" he asked. "A servant doesn't speak that way."

"A servant doesn't speak what way? With concern?" Avoka sniped back. "Your friends are sharing their lives with a sword! Why aren't you more worried?"

"If I fretted over all the strange and impossible things that happen around and because of the Potters, I'd lose my mind before the day was done. It's better for my health to rat them out to a teacher than to try understanding their reasons for causing chaos," Malfoy said, crossing his arms. "Better question: why do you care about the lives of a group of foreign strangers? Is it because they're of use in protecting your kingdom?"

Avoka was so caught off guard that he took a step back. "I'm…sorry? Did you just ask that? You don't understand why I should care about people's lives?!"

Yellow clapped a hand to his face and sighed. If there was anyone that best represented the citizens of the Dark World as they were portrayed in Light World legends, it was Malfoy. That kind of thinking was already a little odd in their dimension for anyone outside of wealthy pureblood wizarding social circles. Here, he might as well be a mustache-twirling villain.

Green slid between Malfoy and Avoka, who was stalking up to lecture his dimensional double. "He's a work-in-progress!" Green said quickly, now nose-to-mask with the angry Sheikah. "His parents are, erm, dark mages. We're figuring it out."

"D-Dark mages?!" Avoka spluttered. "How could I—he—?"

Malfoy puffed up indignantly. "My parents are perfectly fine members of society!" he snapped, the reptilian harshness of his voice stronger than usual. "My father was never convicted of anything, and they host multiple charity balls every year!"

Avoka gave a slow nod, his bewildered expression shifting toward analytical. "Ah. I think I understand the biggest point of divergence between us now," he remarked. He walked off, shaking his head. "Somehow, I'm the lucky one here."

A combined set of warning looks from the Harrys convinced Malfoy to let the subject drop.

As they continued along the path, their surroundings became increasingly ornate and more built up. The sprawling castle complex was simple by the huge entry gate—just a collection of sturdy white walls and guard towers patrolled by soldiers. Then, as they went up, pretty plazas of patterned blue and white tiles began appearing here and there. Manicured bushes, healthy green grass, and bright flowers started lining the bases of the guard walls. Around the middle of the walk lay a number of entrances to different sections of the castle that had been built into the dark stone of the mountain. Avoka, who had the whole layout memorized, named them off for both the foreigners' and Zelda's benefit.

It became quickly apparent that this castle had done a lot of things differently with its internal space, despite sharing a lot of its outer layout with Hogwarts. The library was accessible via a door to the outside, rather than being closer to the middle of the castle. Likewise with the kitchens, which had a sophisticated-looking, Bluestone-powered incinerator bin outside the door for any waste they couldn't repurpose. Zelda's Tower took the place of the Astronomy Tower, while the turret where the Gryffindors would have resided was instead an important lookout point and security hub for the castle's complement of Sheikah guards.

Once they'd passed through the second guardhouse (with a fair amount of arguing on Avoka's part to excuse the Harrys' weapons), the castle's design aesthetic took off in an even fancier direction.

Blue roofs and white masonry contrasted against gilded details and stained glass. Up close, Yellow could see that the castle was far grander than Hogwarts. Its front doors were made of burnished stala, surrounded by a big archway portraying the goddesses of Hyrule holding up a winged, golden Triforce. Similar elaborate molding decorated other turrets—images of mythical figures locked in battle and standing in triumph. There was more of a graceful church-ish feeling to this castle, as opposed to Hogwarts's utilitarian fortress look.

The guard walls were interrupted by flat platforms hosting turrets that looked out over the sides of the mountain. Yellow paused to study one as they passed it. Manned by a Sheikah in heavy, Bluestone-studded armor and a Hylian knight wearing a mixture of steel plate and bronze scale mail, the weapon wasn't a big crossbow like he would have expected. Instead, it was something similar to a cannon. The dark, blue-lined metal barrel was long and narrow, leading back to a chunky body that seemed to be built into the ground. A ring of inactive orange Bluestone and some clockwork could be seen under the raised platform the operators stood on, and big gears on the sides of the cannon seemed designed to let it turn up and down. The lack of cannon balls anywhere nearby mystified Yellow, though. Cannon balls were heavy, right? Wouldn't you want a crate of those sitting nearby, just in case?

Green stared at one of the cannons with horrified wonder. "Hyrule has laser guns now?" he asked uneasily.

Yellow squinted at the cannon. He supposed the amount of Bluestone wiring on it could be a little ominous, but lasers? There was no way Hyrule had those, right?

"I don't know what a 'laser' or a 'gun' is, so I doubt it," Avoka said. "That's a Light Cannon you're looking at." He turned Zelda's book so she could see what they were talking about. "It uses a direct line to a power station and some kind of enchanted lens system to fire focused beams of force. Think of it like a Beamos with a stronger train rocket for an eye, and aimed by operators. The Hero of Lights came up with the first prototype and Raurim Bluesmith—Link's father—refined her design into this about twenty years ago. It doesn't have the range or portability of a normal cannon, but it can blast through just about anything at two hundred meters or closer and ammo isn't an issue. Because it would be super bad if a shot went awry and melted through part of the castle, there are always two operators to check one another's adjustments."

Blue shook his head incredulously. "Wait, if two hundred meters is a shorter range, how far can a normal cannon shoot?"

Avoka frowned, puzzled. "Around fifteen-hundred, I think. You don't have cannons where you're from, either?"

"They're, erm, a different kind of cannon," Green said. Here and there, from history classes and snippets of movies, he'd heard of things like mortars and Howitzers. "Less gunpowder and cannon balls and more…" He recalled an incident in which his neighbor, Mrs. Figg, had needed to call over a bomb disposal squad to remove the unexploded shells she'd found in her garden. "I'm not sure I should tell you." If Hylians hadn't come up with things like frag grenades and explosive high-speed projectiles on their own, he certainly didn't want to be the one to introduce those concepts to this world.

Avoka gave him an odd look. "Okay…? Well, you'll only see Bluestone-powered weapons like Light Cannons around Hyrule Castle and major fortifications under close oversight by the Royal Guard. The Bluesmith family doesn't pass the music for those enchantments around, and they've managed to keep the secret of how these weapons work from the Yiga. The 'laser guns' are nothing to be scared of unless you're trying to take over the castle. We don't fire cannons around here for no good reason."

They continued up the front walk, surrounded on all sides by knights, ninja, crossbow mounts, and futuristic cannons, and passed through the castle's partially-open doors. The entry hall was hung with massive gold, blue, and scarlet pennants, tinted in a rainbow by the stained-class windows out front. Great decorative columns of gold-striped white marble stood against the walls, framing paintings of past royalty. The figures within those portraits were magnificently done up, all draped in fancy furs and bedecked with jewels and golden jewelry. Common figures were dainty-looking blonde girls dressed in pink, willowy and elegant queens wearing rich shades of magenta, and broad-shouldered, angular-faced princes and kings with forbidding frowns and crimson coats worn over ornately embroidered doublets.

Avoka stopped at one vertical line of paintings. "That's the current ruling family," he said, pointing up. "The princess is way less round in person, by the way. I don't know why the royal painters always make the princess' faces look like eggs. Nobody really looks like that."

Yellow looked up at the wall. The line of paintings included a square-jawed, powerfully-built man with a short blond beard and a stern scowl, a ghostly pale woman somewhere in her thirties wearing a veiled, twin-horned hat and a dark blue dress with poufy sleeves, and a young blonde girl wearing a pink dress and a heavy golden circlet with wing-like white extensions that stuck out behind her pointed ears. She had a secret smile on her delicate, red-painted lips and her full cheeks glowed a soft, healthy pink. Avoka was right; the painted figure's face was too smooth, bright, and perfect to belong to any real person. Her parents' portraits seemed more true-to-life.

"You're the foreign visitors, I presume."

Yellow started at the sudden unexpected voice. He tucked himself behind the nearest person, who happened to be Malfoy, to take stock of the situation. The Slytherin looked at Yellow like he was being absurd, but didn't shove him away.

The tall, narrow, scary lady who'd dragged Avoka off when they'd first run into him now stood only a meter away. Somehow she'd arrived there in absolute silence when Yellow hadn't been looking. Yellow mentally kicked himself for his lack of situational awareness as he studied the stranger. She had the same calm, stony "I can absolutely kill you" look on her face that all the other Sheikah guards did, Bluestone-studded armor, a sword strapped at her waist, and an unknown number of weapons holsters probably hidden under her loose jacket and pleated trousers. This was not a person to be tested.

"Commander Impa, meet the divided aspects of Harry Potter—the latest bearer of the Four Sword—and their friend, Draco Malfoy," Avoka said, sweeping the arm not supporting a large book toward the rest of the group. "Boys, this is my boss! She's also my guardian until I'm done with my apprenticeship, since she signed up to foster me."

"You're an orphan?" Malfoy asked in surprise.

Avoka gave him a funny look. "Yeah? That's why my last name is 'of Hateno' instead of a family surname. Don't you know how names work?"

Impa raised an eyebrow. Her maroon eyes flicked between Malfoy and Avoka in particular. "Now I understand what you spoke of earlier, Trainee," she remarked. "The princess will certainly be interested to hear about how this came to be, and so shall I." She gestured for everyone to follow her. "Visitors, follow me. Trainee Avoka, return their book to them and notify the princess that her visitors have arrived."

Avoka hugged the book. "Return it already? But I—"

"Child," Impa said with a sharpness that made the Harrys shiver. They'd heard that tone before, usually from Aunt Petunia right before she did something painful and permanent.

Avoka bore the implied violence that word held with only a pout. "Yes ma'am." He held the book out to Green.

"This won't be the last time you see us, so you'll have another chance to talk to her later," Green promised.

Impa aimed a curious look at Avoka. "The book is a 'she'?"

Avoka nodded, clearly beaming behind his mask. "It is! You're totally going to freak out when I explain, so I'll do it later. Trust me, it's incredible….ma'am. I, erm, I'll go get the princess now." He sprinted down the hall with loud clacks of his wooden sandals, slipped and skidded around the corner on the slick marble tiles, and sped down the next corridor.

Impa sighed and shook her head. "I've told him countless times not to run on waxed floors in those geta he insists upon wearing." She turned her cool maroon gaze on the Harrys. "Now, what was he talking about?"

An intimidated silence followed, in which the Harrys stared up at Impa with unified unease and she looked entirely unperturbed.

"You Potters are all ridiculous," Malfoy huffed, casting a glance at Yellow over his shoulder. "The book is possessed by your country's fifth ruler, one of the Zeldas. She used some curse she was previously put under to do it. Now, may we speak to the living Zelda?"

Impa's only sign of surprise was a dip of her upward-angled gray brows and a small tilt of her head. "…I see. Trainee Avoka will have to submit a thorough report later," she said. "Now, please follow me."

They silently followed the woman through the familiar floorplan and alien surroundings of Hyrule castle. Seeing a place like this used as a medieval fortress rather than a school was bizarre. Hogwarts's halls were relatively bare but for torches, paintings, and suits of armor. Since they regularly hosted floods of students speeding from class to class, it only made sense that there wouldn't be a bunch of decorations hanging around to get damaged and dingy. The more furnished rooms always had a dark, cozy, lived and worked-in feel to them. But for a few areas like the Great Hall, Hogwarts wasn't grand; it was home.

Hyrule Castle was very far from that. Maybe the non-visitor areas were less dressed-up for the public, but what he could see had a light, airy, pompous feeling to it. Yellow could feel the money oozing from the masterfully woven wall-hangings, elaborate stained-glass windows, gleaming stala statuary, and meticulously dusted chandeliers. Malfoy was looking around with an expression of approval, which Yellow thought said a lot. This place was ornate and expensive and terribly put-on. It was designed to impress, not to house. Yellow couldn't imagine living here.

They soon arrived in the equivalent of the Great Hall, which in this universe was a throne room. It was, of course, bedecked with gold decorations and ceiling murals and all those rich-people trappings. After being directed to wait quietly, Yellow and Green stood meekly where they'd stopped, while Red, Blue, and Malfoy explored the room. Blue, who'd claimed the Bestiary from Green as soon as he could, held the book open to show Zelda around. Red stared straight up with his mouth slightly open to gawk at the painted scenes above. Malfoy poked around like he was doing a house inspection, studying the molding before scrutinizing the long red carpet that stretched through the middle of the room.

Yellow stood still, focusing on his breathing so he didn't hyperventilate. He did not like being held under watch by a walking mystery who emanated only icy professionalism. Impa was nothing like, say, the Gorons, who were very big and loud, but so friendly and open with their smiles and frowns that Yellow could endure their boisterousness if he had a sibling nearby to cling to. This woman was quiet and controlled and dangerous, and Yellow couldn't get a read on her. That was really what all his anxiety was about; Impa had zero tells. Everything about her body language and facial expressions was kept under lock and key. Yellow didn't know how to handle people like that. He couldn't please someone who didn't show their displeasure. Even Snape, as stubbornly sour as he was, had clear ways of being managed.

"Green, what do you know about this lady?" he asked in English. If he couldn't figure her out himself, maybe his kind-of-psychic brother would have some insight.

At the sound of Yellow's foreign speech, Impa's chilling stare shifted to him. Yellow dropped his chin to avoid eye-contact and shuffled a half-step away from her.

"She's the protector and/or governess of the princess, usually found somewhere in her orbit. Not always a Sheikah, but sometimes she is. If she's not a little old lady, she can kick your arse," Green rattled off. His eyes went dreamy as he focused on his sword-feelings. "I'm seeing a lot of her, so I'm guessing she reincarnates like the Heroes do, maybe? A lot of people around here do that. Like Beedle."

That sounded…complicated. Hyrule was such a weird place. "Is she a good person?" Yellow asked, focusing on what was relevant.

"Yes, just intimidating. She isn't anything like Snape."

"So she wouldn't hurt us?"

"Not unless you tried to hurt the princess. She might kill you if you do that."

Yellow breathed out. "Well, that's alright, then." If Impa was focused on the princess, that meant Yellow knew how to please her. Treat the princess with respect and keep his distance, and her granite-faced bodyguard would be content.

After a while of uncomfortable silence, waiting in the fancy room for the fancy girl to arrive while stewing under Impa's watchful stare, a door at the back of the hall finally opened. A small, elderly Sheikah man with a full head of bushy white hair walked in and stood tall. "Her Highness Zelda Florian Honora Hyrule now enters! Feel blessed, for she has heard your wish to testify before the royal family and lends her ear to your plight!" he announced. "Those who have sought an audience, you may approach the throne!"

Malfoy strutted along the scarlet carpet, confident as could be. The Harrys walked up more cautiously. Even Red seemed spooked. It felt like every word they said for the next however long would have ten times the meaning. Given how poorly spoken his brothers often were and Malfoy's…Malfoy-ness, Yellow didn't have high hopes for the coming situation.

A girl glided out of the open door by the three thrones. She was small but willowy, with slender limbs sliding under the liquid silk of her clothes. Her incredibly long golden hair was done up in a stiff, waxed bun that fanned out like a halo behind her head before sending a cascade of smooth, straight tresses down her back. A red-enameled metal ornament shaped like an abstract bow held the bun in place. Her outfit was somewhere between European and Japanese—a fitted magenta tunic over a pale pink dress whose wide sleeves hid her hands and whose skirt fell in a rippling column. A thick scarlet sash covered her midsection and formed a huge box-like knot at the back. From a slim golden belt laid over the sash hung a blue and red pennant with an elaborate winged Triforce design on it, and a vaguely military-looking metal plate and tassels hanging from her neck glowed with studs of standby-orange Bluestone. Curiously, the Bluestone gem on her hair decoration shone turquoise with an active enchantment. Yellow wondered if it was some kind of personal protection charm.

Zelda was good-looking, but not in way Yellow would call pretty. Unlike her portrait, she had very sharp features for a kid their age. High cheekbones, an angular narrow jaw, a prominent and pointy nose and chin, and a high forehead combined to create an elfishly handsome collection of balanced extremes. It was clear she took somewhat after her father. Yellow squinted, struck by an inexplicable sense of recognition. The painted, doll-like make-up the girl wore was throwing him off, but he felt like he recognized that face from somewhere.

Once the princess sat down delicately in the smaller throne to the left, the man who'd announced her scurried to take his place at a little desk tucked against the side of the stairs leading to the throne platform. He poked a few things at the desk, which then lit up and revealed itself as the screen of a very large Sheikah Slate. A virtual keyboard appeared under his waiting hands.

"I thank you for doing your duty as temporary citizens of Hyrule and bringing your concerns to the royal family," Zelda began. Her voice was like a flute, high and sweet. "As people so new to this country, it must have been a frightening prospect to make the journey here. Please, tell me what has caused your people to be torn from their homes. Just as it is an informant's duty to speak the truth, it is mine as a member of the Hyrule bloodline to respond."

Green stepped forward with his arms folded behind his back and took a deep breath. Malfoy shouldered him aside. "I'll do the talking, Potter. This is a negotiation, not a time to make friends."

Clearing his throat, Malfoy stood tall. "An ancient evil from Hyrule is the cause of our misfortune, Your Highness. He is Vaati the Wind Mage, and he has gained the power to tear through the walls of reality," he declared in Hylian. "Just as he has taken a school and village of wizards into your world, he has stolen pieces of Hyrule and thrown them into Lorule."

The princess tensed ever so slightly in shock and the stenographer's head jerked up from his work. "Lorule? I know of that dark place from ancient legends, but assumed it was only another country," Zelda said. "What pieces do you believe the Wind Mage has taken? We have received no such reports at the castle."

"The ruins of the Jabun Kingdom under Outset Isle, a craftsman from Five-Spear Isle, the Deku Scrubs of Kokiri Isle, parts of the Shadow Temple, sections of the Well of Three Features, and an unknown forest temple and cave system," Green listed. He shook his head and put a hand to it, bewildered. "The Four Sword just tells me these things; I'm not sure what some of those places are."

Zelda leaned forward on her throne, bracing one hand on its polished arm. Her navy blue eyes were bright and intense. When she spoke next, it was with an edge of urgency. "Some of those locations must have been taken across time, if they weren't flooded ruins when you encountered them. Tell me, do you know whether any citizens were pulled though time as well as space?"

"They were all from this time, we're pretty sure, Your Highness."

Zelda laid a hand against her chest and breathed out. "Oh, thank Hylia."

"Why do you say that, Princess?" Blue asked. "Would it be any worse than places being taken out of time?"

"Hyrule is a land with many historical figures crucial to its continued existence," Zelda said gravely. "I don't mean that in the sense that other countries lack important people of their own; it is just that Hyrule's link to the powers that created this world makes it a particular focal point. The last time a pivotal historical figure was made to vanish before entirely fulfilling their destiny, it led to the formation of the Great Sea and the near-complete annihilation of all of the known kingdoms. One missing Hylian caused the end of the world as the ancients knew it, reducing great continents to archipelagoes of mountaintops."

Yellow's stomach plummeted. Being from a country that had been heavily bombed a great many times and having grown up nearby a capital which had burned down on multiple occasions, he wasn't accustomed to thinking of a nation as fragile. England was the kind of place that would adjust its hat and keep on grinding along no matter what happened to it. Hyrule, though, had so many weak points it was unreal. Killing a single spirit could lead to mass chaos and suffering. Messing with one volcano could poison the atmosphere across the whole mainland, if not farther out than that. Screwing up time even a little could end everything. If Vaati learned to get more creative than monsters and dungeon-crafting, the Apocalypse might hit before they could do anything about it!

While Green and Malfoy continued explaining everything to Zelda, Red backed up next to Yellow and put an arm over his shoulders. "I don't know what you're freaking out about, but I bet it isn't worth it," he whispered.

"Breaking Hyrule would end the world!" Yellow hissed. "I can't be calm about that!"

"Well, America launching a missile at Moscow could end the world, too," Red pointed out. "It's the same thing, but different. Like the castle around us."

"That isn't…oh. Huh." All-out nuclear war was probably about as deadly as an ocean falling from the sky, now that he thought about it. Worse, even, since radiation was such a nasty, easily-spread poison. Perhaps his world was fragile, too. "That makes sense."

"Yeah, I say smart stuff sometimes."

Their audience with Zelda went on far longer than Yellow had the attention span for, and he lost his ability to keep track of the words as explanations became negotiations, then planning. Absently, he noticed that the princess spoke less fancy when she was excited about something, and she got really excited over the deals she and Malfoy were hashing out. Maybe there was a normal kid under that expensive pink silk after all. Well, as normal as Malfoy, anyway. Yellow had trouble understanding why anyone would be pleased about coming up with "preliminary contracts". Even Hermione would have been more interested in talking about the differences in their worlds or something. Zelda and Malfoy seemed absolutely chuffed, though.

Yellow's stomach growled loudly. He grimaced, wishing he knew a spell to silence the noise. Because he'd felt bad about taking Link's food, he hadn't eaten much of the pot of savory porridge they'd shared that morning. The rest of his portion going to Hagrid was a good cause, though; the man was too thin, and he needed a lot more food than the Harrys did. That truffle oil also had some healing properties, so in theory it would help with the lingering effects of his magical illness.

There was a light tap on his shoulder. He looked around and saw only Impa, whose ominous presence he'd become resigned to over the past…hour? Two hours? His feet were starting to hurt.

Impa raised up a white, powder-dusted thing sitting on a cute maple leaf with rounded edges. The object was large enough that it would take up most of Yellow's palm, resembling a spherical Turkish delight. "It's a daifuku mochi, a Sheikah sweet," she explained under the sound of Malfoy's and Zelda's energized business discussion. "It sounds like you could eat something."

Yellow hesitated, because he knew better than to accept candy from strangers.

"It isn't poisoned," Impa said, accurately guessing his thoughts. "This is a poor place for an assassination, and I have no motive to harm you."

Yellow supposed it wouldn't make sense for her to poison only him and not his brothers—and right in front of the princess, too. He allowed himself to perk up and took the offered food on its adorable leaf. "Thank you, ma'am," he said softly.

Impa gave him a short nod and then resumed monitoring the conversation happening by the thrones.

Yellow took a curious nibble of the candy. The gooey softness of it wasn't what he'd expected, nor was its filling of sweet red beans (why beans?), but it was nice. Since Hogwarts was currently rationing its food, desserts like treacle tart were rarely on the table anymore. Yellow happily savored the first blast of sugar he'd had in weeks. He decided he liked Impa now.

Notes:

-I'm still sticking to my "Sheikah will have fruit-names" theme! "Ume" refers to a kind of Japanese plum, while "Mengo" is Mango. Clever, I know!

-Link's speech impediment is that he speaks a bit slowly and rather robotically because he's mentally timing each syllable to a tempo (in this case, quarter notes at a brisk 175bpm) in order to get his sentences out more quickly than he'd otherwise be able to. I sometimes have trouble getting words out myself, so speaking in quarter-notes is a tactic I use when my mouth gets stuck on a phrase.

-While this version of Hyrule Castle sits on the same mountain as the one in BOTW and has similar underground levels and trailing guard walls, the "cake-topper" bit that can be seen from a distance is based on Hogwarts's design, so it's quite a lot larger on the surface.

-Zelda does genuinely like her fancy, girly princess clothes (sometimes). Her main bone of contention with her parents is that they prefer lace, corsetry, patterns, poufy shoulders, and under-supported skirts, while she hates all the above. Her sense of style is rather Sheikah, with an emphasis on solid colors, sleek and slim silhouettes, mobility, and few decorations that might catch on things. The painted make-up style she's wearing, with a ring of bright color painted around her eyes and on her lips, with a touch of white powder on the cheeks (not that Yellow really noticed), is inspired by a historical Sheikah style.

-Because Yellow and Impa are both equally strange in their own ways, Impa managed to reassure him instead of spooking him like literally any other child but one of the Harrys lol. Technically she gave him a kashiwa mochi, since it's wrapped in a kashiwa leaf, but daifuku mochi are somewhat more familiar, I'd say. Also, they're my favorite Japanese sweet :D