If I were to ever split this story up to make it easier for future readers to navigate, this would be the conclusion of "PART 1". Here's a response to a...not quite question, but consistent comment I've been getting for some time now:
Regarding the Harrys' skills, if you ask me, they're doing quite well! In two months, they've slain a dragon the size of a Welsh Green, a ghostly demon formed from hundreds of amalgamated vengeful souls, the wooden cousin of Thunderblight Ganon, an electric eel-whale that could fry up and eat Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk, survived oodles of death traps, and beaten monstrous swordsmen multiple times their size! The Tasks of the Triwizard Tournament would hardly faze them at this point. They'll use magic more often alongside their items in future dungeons and find someone to sharpen their weapon skills after the first Light World level shows them it's necessary, but the Harrys will always take some hits even as they become more adept; as some things get easier, others will get harder. I think heroes who fight against difficult odds, endure injuries with gritted teeth, and get up after a hard knock to hit back even harder are the coolest, so that's the treatment I'm applying to the Harrys here.
Heads-up: there are a couple of low points coming up for the Harrys, and the first of them is in this chapter. These moments aren't to take away from the boys' achievements, but to give them a clear picture of the power level they're going up against. These children are fighting something close to a god, but they haven't quite internalized that yet. I'm putting an explanation/warning here and on that future chapter in case people take those scenes particularly hard.
Harry stumbled and slid in the mud as he struggled up the final stretch to the castle's nearest entrance. His legs were starting to burn from exhaustion as he made the climb. The small boost that touching the temple's spell scroll had lent them was fast running out in the face of their exhaustion. Swimming for hours on end, exceeding the bounds of human endurance using the mild restorative atmosphere of the temple, had resulted in a level of "tired" that far outstripped the limitations of the word. Harry was soon wobbling with every step.
What definitely wasn't helping was the purple maelstrom consuming the sky and the tremors turning the muddy ground into soup. The wind threw sleet with such ferocity that all of them had conjured their Lenses of Truth to wear like protective goggles. Harry almost fell on his face when a particularly strong gust gave him a forceful shove. He swore he could see eyes among the swirling clouds on the rare occasion he turned his gaze away from the marsh sucking at his feet. Speaking of marshes, there definitely should have still been grass sticking out of what remained of the lawn. Instead, there was only liquefying purplish soil topped with black debris resembling confetti. No grass whatsoever—at least, not near the castle. Harry looked over his shoulder. There was green behind him, starting around a hundred meters out, but the grounds near the building were a dark, lifeless mire.
"Heeeroooes!" the wind screamed as Harry forced his heavy legs to scale Hogwarts's steps. "Youuu shaaalll paayyy!"
"Yep, he's mad," Harry grunted, limping over to the door. His knees were screaming now. He gave one last look over his shoulder at the grounds. There was definitely something wrong about the area near the castle.
The castle was in similar chaos to the great outdoors. Wind ripped through the halls, snatching torches from their brackets, knocking over and scattering suits of armor, and tearing violently at the clothes of anyone who dared to fight through it. Without the torches lit, the only light came from the open doorway behind them. Harry pressed himself against the wall to keep himself from being knocked around by the shifting winds and sidled down the hall.
Ron sidestepped along the wall and asked him something that was immediately torn from his lips by the howling hurricane. Harry put on an expression of exaggerated confusion and pointed to his ear. "WHERE ARE WE GOING?" Ron tried again, this time at the top of his lungs.
"I DUNNO!" Harry shouted back. Peering down the line of people clinging to the wall, he hollered, "WHERE DO YOU THINK VAATI IS? ANY IDEAS?"
"ONE OF THE TOWERS?" Blue replied.
"HEADMASTER'S OFFICE?" Hermione offered.
:Heir, the cassstle calls upon you,: hissed a voice, perfectly heard over the wind.
Harry drew away from the wall and looked down at where his arm had been resting. A carved snake stared at him expectantly, its tongue flickering. :The Wind recklesssly pulls at the magic of thisss plassse, dessstroying the integrity of the land in itsss quessst for power,: it warned. :If left unchecked, thisss world ssshall crumble, as it nearly did long ago.:
:Oh, is that what he's doing?: Harry said. He had vague sword-memories concerning a "Golden Power" and something about needing it to hold a place together. Maybe magic was some version of the power his borrowed recollections were muttering about? :Where is the Wind right now? I need to find him.:
:It has jussst consssumed the enchantmentsss of the Great Hall.:
Harry's stomach swooped. The magical sky of the Great Hall, something that had probably been around since forever, just…gone? :Has he been dessstroying anything elssse?:
:For monthsss, the Wind has merely used Hogwartsss as a conduit to channel power from the land beneath it. Now, with itsss connection to Hogwartsss lossst, it tears blindly at the earth and the cassstle with greedy desssperation, breaking many enchantmentsss. If you are ssslow to act, Heir, the magic keeping the lower levels from flooding ssshall fail. You mussst hurry!:
:It'll flood?!: Harry exclaimed. He spun around to face the line of people trailing behind him. "WE NEED TO EVACUATE THE DUNGEONS!" he bellowed into the wind.
Malfoy leaned out from the wall to give him a look of alarm. "EVACUATE? WHY?"
"BECAUSE THE SLYTHERINS MIGHT DROWN!" Harry yelled. "RON, HERMIONE, MALFOY, GO TO THE DUNGEONS! WARN THEM!"
"WHAT ABOUT YOU?" Hermione asked, gesturing toward all the Harrys.
"WE'LL HANDLE VAATI!" Harry made a rounding-up motion toward his brothers.
Two sets of brown eyes and one set of firefly green opened wide. "YOU'LL WHAT?!" the three non-Harrys cried.
Harry didn't stick around to let them stop him or try suggesting an alternative. The Harrys peeled away from the side of the corridor and ran toward the Great Hall, trusting the others to warn anyone in the dungeons. They moved in a tight square, the two in front clasping arms and the two in back holding onto the sweaters of those in front. When the wind threatened to push them off their feet, they ducked down and pressed closer together for stability.
The farther into the castle they went, the darker it became. Not only due to a scarcity of windows, but also because of a thickening fog that crept along the floor and cast an ominous tinge over everything. Harry's breathing, already made difficult by the wind, became even harder. He was reminded of the surreal experience of stumbling across the Four Sword, drifting along in a waking dream as his brain distantly screamed for untainted air. The Harrys fell into more and more synchronous movements as the fog ate at their ability to think. They let go of one another, unsheathed their swords in one motion, and moved along with smooth, half-crouched steps that kept them low to the ground.
The doors to the Great Hall were wide open, flapping in a wind that blew from within. Dark smoke poured from the opening, rippling and swirling with the violent gusts. The Harrys held their breath against the cloying reek of evil in the air and pushed on through the wall of opaque fog blocking the doorway.
Harry was startled into independent thought at the sight that greeted him. The Great Hall was no more. There were no long tables and benches for the student body to eat at, nor the raised table for the staff. The enchanted sky was gone, as were the House pennants that hung below it. Instead, the room was nothing but stone—reduced to a naked, unfurnished state. Glowing cracks ran along the floor, leading away from a crumbling pit bursting with yellow light.
A tall, slim man hovered over the pit, his solid red eyes narrowed hatefully at the cluster of children that had invaded his sanctum. He was a grand figure with the dress and bearing of a king, his lavender hair woven around a crown of golden horns and his shadowy robes shifting just far enough to reveal a similar garment of richly embroidered red silk underneath. He was beautiful enough to be described as angelic, and yet the sense of malice he emanated was strong enough to make Harry's stomach clench.
"You," the man said. He spoke in the voice of a child, an adult, and a monster. It made Harry's organs hum.
"I have never met a gnat so audacious," the man spat. "Why do you stand against the great Wind Mage, pretender? You have no divine directive to challenge me and I am only working to save this world of darkness. Your waters are poisoned, your air is corrupted, and your land is becoming fallow. The power animating this world is mindless and unguided, left to sit idly in the earth instead of being harnessed. If you mages knew anything about the power you squander with every wave of your little sticks, you would be supporting my endeavor!" His robes flared, showing a giant, gold-edged red eye opening and closing within.
"We never asked for your help!" Harry shouted. "You just want to turn this place into another Hyrule!" He eyed the distance between the rippling edge of Vaati's robes and the opening in the floor. Had the mage not been levitating, Harry would have attacked him before he could start his monologue.
"Hyrule is a paradise! This world is only its forgotten, decrepit echo. If not for one of those meddling Heroes' interventions, it would have crumbled into oblivion eons ago. It limps on today using a distant, buried memory of its Golden Power." Vaati thrust one spidery hand upward, causing the pit beneath him to widen and glow brighter. "I am here to resurrect that power and breathe life into this world anew! And you dare destroy my hold on this castle?" The mage's crimson irises blazed, his form blurring between graceful humanoid and bulbous hovering eye. "You ungrateful, ignorant worm!"
The wind around Vaati picked up, threatening to lift the Harrys from the ground. 'If he gets us in the air, we're done for,' Harry thought with dread. The widening sinkhole under Vaati created too much of a distance for him to reach the mage with his sword, the only evil-banishing weapon he had. As the wind pushed him into a sideways stagger, Harry bit his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed and summoned his whip. He had to do something!
He ran forward, keeping his center of gravity low, and his brothers fanned out around him. They formed a horizontal line at the edge of the hole and lashed their whips out at the hovering mage. If they could just pull him to land—!
Vaati caught the ends of their whips with a shadowy claw that sprouted from his robes. "You, an insect that has known nothing but darkness and filth, cannot appreciate my work," he sniffed, tossing the limp vines aside. "None of you mortals can, despite your weak connection to the power I now wield. You mages should be my chosen ones—my exalted supporters—and yet you pitiful beings spurn my kindness at every turn." He gave one hand an upward flick, and purple vortexes sprang up to seize the Harrys. They lifted the boys from the ground, holding their limbs tightly at their sides. Harry struggled to get free, only to stop as the tornado squeezed harder with every squirm.
"I think a lesson is in order," Vaati decreed, his pointed chin tilting upward. A cruel smile graced his beautiful face. "You little mages will be useful tools, once taught humility. Once I've broken your troublesome spirits, you will be conduits for my power, spreading across the world like extensions of my hands. It was impulsive of me to order the Shadow to execute you before. Perhaps I should be thankful for his incompetence." He raised both of his hands with what looked like great effort, flickering again between elfish man and monstrous eye. The hole in the floor flared like the sun, making the Harrys cry out and shut their eyes. Harry turned his face away from the light searing through his eyelids as soothing warmth washed away the evil chill coating his skin. Buoyed by the vortex confining him, he heard rather than felt the castle shake. Dust and chips of stone trickled onto his head. "Your pretender status and broken sword spare you from death, 'Heroes'!" Vaati shouted over the sound of cracking, crumbling stone. "I will let you join your fellow chosen ones in the cleansing trials of a better world! You will taste paradise, and you will thank me for my work!"
The light piercing Harry's closed eyes grew to blinding as the sound of the castle breaking apart drowned out all else. He knew he was screaming only by the pain building in this throat. He had failed. Simply by floating out of reach, Vaati had made himself immune to Harry's sword, the only weapon that could slay him. Defeated by limited range—what an utterly pathetic way to lose.
Harry succumbed to the light with a sneer of self-hatred curling his lips. What a useless substitute he'd turned out to be!
Draco awoke to pain, darkness, and the sound of splashing.
He remembered splashing being bad. Water in general was bad. Why was it bad?
Memories trickled in. They had slain that abominable eel and made their way back to Hogwarts. The castle had been dark, ominous, and beset by terrible winds. Potter had started talking to the wall, and then he'd turned around and ordered anyone who wasn't him to—
Draco sat up in a panic. He'd been evacuating the dungeons! The dungeons were flooding!
He looked around. Though he didn't remember how, he'd made it to the Slytherin common room. There was water above his ankles, which his House-mates were now splashing through, but it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. That was the only positive thing he could think of.
The common room was in utter disarray. Furniture was broken and scattered—worn velvet, antique silk, and exotic woods torn, splintered, and sodden—the thick, richly woven wool carpets were ruined, and centuries-old paintings had been knocked off of the walls to drown. Cracks ran through the walls, frighteningly numerous. Even more terrifying were the cracks in the ceiling. Whether this place was still filling with water or not, the Slytherin dungeons had to be evacuated regardless. Several of his classmates were already leaving without having to be told, some not even bothering to fetch their trunks before fleeing out the door. Others, however, were busy being stupid in a myriad of ways. Some were wallowing in the water, crying. Many were wandering around staring dumbly at the cracked walls and ruined décor. The biggest hindrances were scurrying away to hide in their dorms, as if their four-poster beds would protect them from a collapsing building.
"GET YOUR THINGS AND GO!" he barked at the idiots around him. "If you dunderheads die, it'll be your own faults for being stupid!"
Glaring at anyone around him that dared to move too slow, Draco slogged to his dorm to grab his trunk and his pet. He would have expected Dog to greet him when he'd neared the dungeons, if not when he'd entered the castle following his experience in that awful temple. Dog was the kind of pet that waited up anxiously, impatient for their master to return. He certainly would never hide from Draco.
"Dog," he called as he stepped into his dorm. Crabbe and Goyle were desperately stuffing their scattered belongings into their trunks. They had more brains than the upper-years he'd seen going into their dorms to cower. "Have you seen Dog?" he asked them.
"Haven't seen him since this morning," Crabbe said.
"He took off after you, didn't he?" Goyle asked.
"Yes, he did…" Draco frowned in concern. Even if ordered to, Dog wouldn't have returned to the Slytherin dorm while Draco was out adventuring. He would have been sitting by the side exit of the castle, if not waiting by the lake. Where could he have gone?
Draco pulled his wand out of the pocket on his arm and tapped his trunk with it. The charmed luggage floated up and followed him as he continued his search for his pet. 'If I hear the walls creaking, I'll run right away,' Draco thought, moving farther into the dormitory. Yes, it was unwise to waste time wandering around when the stone was visibly compromised. If Dog was down here, though, it was worth giving a look. What if his pet was lying unconscious somewhere and couldn't respond to his calls?
He ran to the bathrooms, then buzzed in and out of the other boys' dorms, badgering any stragglers he found while he was there. His Illumination Charms kept coming out weak and fading quickly for reasons he currently didn't have the time to discern, so he focused on the inhuman sharpness of his senses as he searched instead, listening for Dog's telltale snuffle and scouring the darkness for the glint of shiny fur. If he got any funny looks from his classmates for the color of his eyes, he didn't notice or care. He had someone to find.
Draco was the last to leave the common room, and only did so after several more of his classmates confirmed his pet hadn't been there since that morning. Draco cast one more worried glance behind him before stepping through the hidden door.
The halls of the castle were nearly as dark as the Slytherin dungeons. All of the torches had been blown out, if not picked up by Vaati's wind and thrown from their brackets. Bits of armor and knocked-down paintings littered the water-covered floor. It was also oddly warm and humid, two things Scotland's climate wasn't known for in late autumn. Draco was tempted to remove his sweater as he walked through the water, stepping around the debris. He was unnerved to find himself stepping onto dry stone halfway down the long hall. If the corridors of Hogwarts had any sort of slope or dip due to the effects of age and settling stones, it was generally very subtle; the water level in the common room was high enough that the whole floor should have been flooded to around the same depth.
"The castle is tilting," Draco breathed, looking from the dry floor to the flooded area behind him. It wasn't a steep angle, but a stone building of this size having any significant slope was something worthy of panic.
Blaise's voice came from right next to him. "Excuse me, it's what?"
Draco jumped, shrieked, and almost cursed his dorm mate. "We've just survived an earthquake! Now isn't the time to sneak up on people!" he hissed at Blaise. When Draco had cried out, so had several of their nervous classmates, who were now looking around for monsters.
The boy ignored Draco's ire, busy looking between his feet and the water. "Oh Merlin, it is at an angle," he gasped. "We need to get out of here."
Millicent stomped up, her younger sister in tow. "What are you two standing around muttering about?"
"The castle is tilting," Blaise whispered urgently.
"When did that happen?" Millicent asked with a frown. "What even happened, anyway?"
The slightly smaller Bulstrode at her side spoke up in a hushed voice. "I was out in the halls with my team when the flooding started—"
"Just call them your friends, Amanda. No point in denying it," Millicent cut in.
Amanda glared at her. "Fine, I was out with my friends, looking for a Skulltula nest we heard about on the floor below this one. There are a lot of lake-bottom windows in the old torture cells down there, like the one in the Drowning Room. They were cracking."
Draco took a step toward her, shoving Blaise out of his way. "The enchanted, indestructible windows were cracking?" he said incredulously. He knew from experience how hard it was to do any permanent damage to that glass.
"Yeah, and water was leaking in. The walls were leaking, too, like the mortar was dissolving," Amanda said. "We got out of there pretty quick, but we heard a couple of the windows break behind us. That whole floor and anything below it is underwater now." She regarded the puddle consuming half of the corridor grimly. "After that, there was this huge earthquake. I can't remember everything, but there was a whole lot of shaking, and then it felt like somebody picked up the castle and dropped it about a meter." She cast a worried look upward. "My friends split up to run back to their Houses after we escaped the flooding dungeon. I hope they didn't knock their heads against the floor or something. Luna's really clumsy."
"Picked up and dropped," Draco said, horror blooming in his mind. Picked up and dropped, following a violent windstorm. The Deku Scrubs had been taken to Scotland via a tornado and Ruka had been sucked through a watery vortex. Shadow Harry had said he expected something "fun" to happen. Oh no.
He curled his fingers in his filthy, ruined hair, only just controlling the urge to scream and start ripping it out. Draco had wanted to visit Hyrule again, but not like this! There was a world of difference between jumping through a portal and being forcefully dragged across dimensions, as they had learned with Ruka. The Zora hadn't been able to see the portal in the pond he'd brought with him, let alone go through it. If they were ripped from their homeland like this, would they be able to return even on the off chance they managed to open a rift between worlds, or would they be trapped for the punishment of having been dragged across reality the wrong way?
The Bulstrodes both gave him funny looks. "Why do you look even closer to death than usual, Draco? Does that phrase mean something to you?" Millicent asked.
Draco was too consumed by terrible realization to bother responding to her insult. "We're in Hyrule," he said hoarsely. "Vaati stole us."
Hermione cautiously lifted her head from her arms. When the earthquake had forced her to her knees and a wave of light had washed down the corridor, she had hunkered down with her face hidden in the crooks of her elbows. It was a good thing, too, because otherwise she might have knocked a tooth out when she was violently dropped on the floor. Her left arm and shoulder had taken the brunt of the landing instead, and ached dully as she sat up. There was light streaming in from somewhere behind her, but not enough to really see by. She shoved her Hylian staff as deep into her pocket as it would go, took her wand out of her arm sheath—which she was incredibly glad she hadn't landed on—and cast an illumination charm. It formed a weak, sputtering glow around her wand, as if she were holding a candle. She frowned, extinguished the spell, and tried again. And again. Still, it remained dim and unstable. Hermione inspected her wand. Was it damaged?
Then she realized she wasn't alone in the hallway. Ron laid next to her with his arm over her legs, as though he'd gone down shielding her. He didn't appear hurt, only knocked unconscious like she had briefly been. A couple of meters away laid a large lump of black cloth. Hermione struggled to her feet, her sore knees threatening to buckle. Who was that? Were they okay?
The lump moved, rolling over to reveal the pale, angular face of Professor Snape. Hermione froze up with the instinctive fright every Hogwarts student learned within a few months of Potions classes. With a pained groan, Professor Snape sat up. His dark eyes opened to slits. "Granger," he grunted upon noticing her. "Injuries?"
"Only bruises where I landed, Professor," she said. "I'm sure the same goes for Ron." She knelt by her friend, prepared to revive him, and then paused. Her wand was malfunctioning. Not only that, but students her age weren't supposed to know healing magic. Blue had smuggled those upper-year medical books past Madam Pince using his Invisibility Cloak. She put her wand away and shook Ron's shoulder instead. It was probably better for his health than forcibly reviving him, anyway.
A choking noise from Professor Snape made her look up. The man was staring past her with a look of absolute horror. Hermione spun around, switching her wand to her other hand and pulling out her Hylian staff. What kind of monster was it? She hadn't heard it approach.
Rather than some hulking beast, she saw a pink and white bird. At first she mistook it for a pale flamingo, but its straight beak identified it as something else—perhaps a crane or a heron. It stood in the middle of the hall, illuminated by a bright beam of light that streamed in through a large opening in the wall. Walking around on graceful legs, it cocked its head to look at them and then strutted out the way it had entered.
Hermione stared at the perfectly square void where stone should have been. Hogwarts was a fortress, constructed and magically strengthened to be able to withstand attacks of all kinds. According to Hogwarts, A History, it was a marvel of ancient magical engineering.
There was a giant hole in it, cut cleanly through a wall five meters thick. No rubble or destruction, just a puzzle piece missing.
As Professor Snape ran past her to gape at the damage and Ron stirred into groggy wakefulness, Hermione just sat there, stupefied by a sight that simply could not be.
Notes:
-HYRULE TIME, BAY-BEEE *yeets Hogwarts across the fabric of reality*
-I know the Harrys just got tossed out on their collective ear here, but like...these kids looked up at this dude that they know can break reality and they were like "dammit, get down here so we can stab you!" That's gumption, right there.
-Ruka was stuck in the Dark World because he got hung up in the enchantment that added the Abandoned Ruin to Vaati's power-sucking lockdown zone around Hogwarts. He was tied to the same spell anchors, so he was rubber-banded back to where he was supposed to be when they broke. What happened to Hogwarts was Vaati essentially picking it up and flinging it. No lockdown spell, no eyeballs, no real plan, just Asserting Dominance. Since the residents of Hogwarts aren't tied to any anchors, they can use portals; on the flip-side, they can't break a few electric eyeballs and slingshot the castle back to where it's supposed to be. The only way for them to put it back is to unravel all of Vaati's magic by beating him.
-Yes, wands are malfunctioning. No, that doesn't mean the end of magic in this fic. The HP characters are going to have a lot of learning and adapting to do in Part 2.
-It's actually a good thing the boys never got to use their swords on Vaati. Next chapter will address the topic of the Sword Problem.
Wrap-Up for Part 1:
At this point, the Harrys have managed to destroy Vaati's carefully prepared, well-defended magical anchors and significantly upset his construction plans. Not only did they get the Wind Mage's attention, but they pissed him off enough that they're lucky he didn't tornado them into a wall at 150mph. In response, Vaati decided to teach all the naughty mages a lesson by putting them in time-out until he can put them to use later. With Vaati's control over his new magic being rather clumsy, the transfer wasn't perfect. No one died, though, I promise!
To clarify what Vaati has been doing, he locked down Hogwarts so he could leech power from it for his construction project. It took him thousands of years to build up enough oomph to kick the seal of his extradimensional prison into Hogwarts's basement; supplementing his power with wizard magic speeds up his spell reload time to days instead of millennia. His goals are to 1) acquire power, 2) use that power to make the Dark World suit his aesthetic, and 3) make anything that annoys him go away, in that order.
The grounds instantly rotted because Vaati sucked up a whole lot of magic at once, but it would have happened in another month anyway. While the land's magic can replenish itself over time and is more than enough to aid the natural abilities of witches and wizards, the energy of the Dark World has no chance of keeping up with the Wind Mage's greed. Vaati doesn't care about all that "consequence" stuff, though; he just sees an open well of power with nothing to keep him from it.