For this installment, you can find examples of archaic Sheikah Slates and menu displays under my "concept art" tag and an in-game style screenshot of the book/slate store under "pixel art"! I got stuck trying to draw what a chariot looks like, so I drew cyber-medieval 90s iPads instead lol. This chapter features some Hylian with translations listed at the end.
Oh, and the general consensus concerning my art questions so far seems to be "maintain the current balance of displayed art to links, but more detailed art can be a tad bigger", so I'll stick to that for the time being.
Fortune City was a sensory barrage of attention-grabbing signs, glittering lights, crowd noise, clattering carriages, and fascinating feats of magical technology. Between the horse-drawn carriages and carts slid big three-wheeled, stone and metal chariots steered by panels in the front that resembled medieval computer monitors. The driver would poke and slide their hand across the rectangle of bronze-lined shiny glass that formed the screen of the stone monitor, and their vehicle's rubber-lined bronze wagon wheels would respond to their instructions. On the metal-braced brick and stone buildings, some of which stood up to eight stories tall, were mounted signs with Hylian writing that glowed like neon. Was it neon, though, or was it more of Hyrule's mysterious blue-white energy colored by the billboards' inlaid glass? Blue could follow the glowing stone inlays and see the flow of that energy throughout the city, manifesting in the form of lights, spinning clockwork in animated signs, the glowing sculptures shaped like garlic bulbs that seemed to serve as power stations, and the enclosed bronze and glass terminals (telephone booths?) that dotted the street here and there. What was it that powered this world?
The buildings were impressive spears of masonry and bronze topped by peaked turret roofs and dotted by narrow windows. They looked comfortingly familiar—not too unlike the architecture of Hogwarts Castle. In the center of town, two stories taller than anything else, stood a lighthouse bearing a huge windmill fan. Painted imagery of sailing ships, sparkling Rupees, and bountiful shop fronts decorated the square metal blades spinning slowly in the gentle breeze.
Blue wanted to take in everything at once, mystified by the self-propelled chariots, the cheerfully lit and air-conditioned interiors of shops, the not-quite-neon signs, and the giant blue garlic bulbs people kept stopping and plugging their chariots into, but it was too much to absorb all at once. He was soon forced to duck behind Green to find any peace from the noise and light and jostling crowd. Yellow had been clinging to Red since they'd gotten off the train, so he felt a little less embarrassed about doing something so childish.
Green jumped a little when Blue dropped his forehead on his shoulder. "I thought it was just Yellow who did that," he remarked. "Are you scared of something?"
A carriage passed by, carrying with it the horrible clacking of horseshoes on cobblestone. Then a magical chariot-car, ferrying three avidly chatting Hylians raising their voices over the crowd noise. Blue put his hands over his ears, pressing his head harder against Green. "Loud," he ground out. "I hate people."
"Oh," Green said, probably recalling how much time Blue spent holed up in quiet places doing quiet things. "Er, let's see…" Blue felt him swiveling his head. "Clothing shop, restaurant, clothing shop…Sheikah Slate store? Don't know what that is…Oh, it's a bookstore, too! It doesn't look like there's too many people in there, so I bet it's quieter." He led Blue across the street and into a place that was blessedly cooler and quieter than outside.
Blue opened his eyes. He was in a brick building with rune-covered, light-studded bronze pipes snaking around near the ceiling. They appeared to be the source of the illumination and air-conditioning he'd noticed from the street, with turquoise-lined cut-outs along the bottom blowing cold air. Below the network of pipes lay lines of tall, sturdy shelves hosting a mixture of brightly colored books and dark gray stone tablets.
A few customers milled around the store, mostly on the table-filled side devoted solely to stone tablets. They wore dark colors in multiple rich hues, some clad in straight-up black, with articulated stone corsets with more elaborate carving than anything he'd seen on Outset Isle. Some wore leather instead of stone, using those wide belts along with many other straps to carry a worrying number of weapons. Blue saw one man with leather and metal armor, a sword at his hip, a fancy blue Hylian Shield on his back, another sword and a weird rounded sheath Blue didn't recognize on the other side of his waist, a quiver of arrows hanging over his backside, a dagger in the sheath on his thigh, and a gold-embroidered leather shoulder bag that looked identical to the ones the Harrys had gotten from Ruka. Green had said that particular style of enchanted storage artifact was terribly expensive, according to Ruka and his giant grandmother, and a sought-after item for wealthy adventurers. Judging from the amount of leather, metal, and fancy equipment the bloke with all the weapons was wearing, he either made good money as a treasure-hunter or he came from a very rich family. He was perusing some of the smaller stone and glass tablets, picking them up from the displays and poking around their glowing screens with the critical eye of an expert.
Blue nudged Green. "Ask the fancy bloke what those things are," he told him. "I'm assuming they're the 'Sheikah Slates' mentioned on the sign."
"He's wearing our weight in weapons and armor, though," Green said nervously. "And he has the same snooty look that Malfoy does. Look at his face."
"Those things look expensive, and posh people tend to know about expensive things," Blue said. "Just act like you're a country bumpkin who doesn't know anything. You look like you're from Outset Isle, so I'm sure he'll be happy to condescend to you."
Green sighed. "Okay, but only because I want to know what those things are, too." He walked into brighter-lit, more minimalist side of the store. Blue stood around long enough to gesture encouragingly at him, then immersed himself in the bookshelves. Since there were even more stone tablets over there, just bigger and clunkier-looking, he slid one labeled "Sammli da Estudis Hyrulias da Gerudo Voe" out between two books. It was a flattened four-kilogram brick of stone and glass with dark crystal piping that lit up in orange when he touched it. The glass screen blinked to life with turquoise text on a navy blue background decorated in faint swirling patterns.
Blue sat down cross-legged in the aisle and marveled at the dense piece of technology weighing down his legs. He had limited (mostly secondhand) experience with electronic gadgets, but this was absolutely some form of computer. Not only that, but after a bit of poking at options he could only vaguely understand, he discovered it was a computerized book. With a smile lighting up his face, he slid his fingers across the glass and explored its contents. The stone tablet contained one-thousand, three-hundred and fifty-four pages about vaguely Indian-looking, incredibly tall men dressed in beautiful silk clothing and wearing all kinds of bejeweled and enameled jewelry. They lived in a vast desert with shallow rolling dunes, either in grandly decorated tents the size of small houses or cities made of sandstone. Many of the men wore some form of crown and sat in some kind of throne surrounded by armored women their size or taller. The book's numerous monochrome blue illustrations depicted them from a time well before cameras to the current day, showing changing fashions and levels of opulence along the way.
"You've been grinning like a maniac for ten minutes now. Doesn't your face hurt?" Red asked, crouching next to him. "What is this thing, anyway? A magic book?"
"Yes, and it's brilliant," Blue said, flicking back through the centuries. "It's a computer, but it's a book! How did they do it?"
"Well, I've heard that if you go on the Internet, you can find a whole lot of books," Red said with mocking slowness.
"Have you seen the Internet? Look over Dudley's shoulder sometime when he's on his computer. It's a nightmare," Blue said. "Look at this." He tilted the book tablet in Red's direction. "Look how sleek it is. How easy it is to use. And the whole unit is in this one thing! No keyboard or tower, just an all-in-one monitor you control by touching virtual buttons onscreen. Isn't that brilliant?"
"But isn't it a waste to have a whole laptop that's just one book?" Yellow asked. "I'd want to have more than one book in the same place. Even if the Internet is confusing, you can use it to read a lot of different things on the same computer."
"I'm assuming this is a cheaper version of the Sheikah Slates on the other side of the shop," Blue said. He turned the tablet over, searching for any interesting physical features. The only things that stood out were a big rectangular port on the bottom and the handle on top. "Maybe the fancier ones have more information. Still, though, this thing is less cumbersome than a paper book its size. There's thirteen-hundred pages in here." He found a button on the outer edge of the tablet that made it blink off, hauled it back onto its shelf with its labeled handle pointed out, and set off in search of a dictionary. The stone books were all labeled the "Sammli da" of something-or-other and contained over a thousand pages each, so he took that to mean they were all compendiums about different subjects. He was looking for a sammli da hyrulias…language, or dictum, or some other word for words.
Rather than a slate, he found a normal hardcover. "Manual Kodamas da Lingua Hylian". It was about three hundred pages and its label was painted in cartoon rainbow letters, which was why it had drawn his attention. Sliding it off the shelf, he discovered it was a children's dictionary, complete with plenty of color illustrations. Its pages weren't parchment, like his school books, but the same kind of glossy paper as Muggle textbooks. Hylians apparently had some analogue to modern papermaking and copy machines.
Green walked up when Blue was thirty pages in. "That bloke wasn't just rich; he was a nerd," he reported. He had the tired, disgruntled look he always got after Blue dragged him through translating a long section of the Hylian Bestiary. "Sheikah Slates are computers you can download books and maps onto. Bookstores and adventurer shops have terminals to buy that stuff from. Also, the super expensive slates double as cameras for some reason." He gave a puzzled shrug. "Salvio—the posh bloke—said it's a better idea for new adventurers to buy a set of Gossip Stones and a basic Navi Slate, which is like the map-only version of a Sheikah Slate, instead of sinking over a thousand Rupees into one of those fancy computers. He was surprisingly nice, actually. He told me there's an adventurer's shop down the street and what model of Gossip Stones we might like. They're like telephones, but smaller, and also magic rocks."
"Those slates are over a thousand Rupees?" Blue asked, his eyebrows shooting up. They'd gotten five hundred Rupees from Ruka, which the Master Craftsman had given them a stern warning to spend wisely on their way out of her lair. He'd taken that to mean five hundred was a lot. "How much are the ones in this section?"
"Er…" Green pulled a tablet off of the shelf, braced it on one arm, and did a bit of poking. "They have a store-lock enchantment that makes them freeze if you try to steal them, and it shows the price," he said, hefting it up. A big green "100" showed onscreen.
Blue's eyes lit up. "We can afford that!"
Green put the slate back with a grunt of effort and then started ticking things off on his fingers. "At some point we'll have to find an inn to sleep at, buy food times four, buy armor times four, buy a Navi Slate, buy—"
"Okay, okay, no stupid expenditures. I get it," Blue grumbled. "We can figure out a budget later. Can I get this, though?" he raised the dictionary and then flipped the cover open to check the price written there. "It's twenty Rupees."
Green read the spine. "Sure. Now, where'd the others go?"
Only then did Blue realize that Yellow and Red had wandered off while he'd been reading. "Er, good question."
They tracked the other Harrys down in another section, reading picture books. "This one's about the first Hero to use the magic train tracks! He's the Link that Zelda was friends with back when she was alive," Yellow told Blue excitedly, showing him his reading material. It showed a watercolor illustration of a short, muscular blond man and a tall, graceful blonde woman standing in front of a grand red and gold tank engine. The man had a sword at his hip and wore a dark blue jumpsuit, heavy work gloves, and a red cap, while the woman wore the usual pink gown and decorative armor of Hylian princesses.
"This one's about one of the newer Heroes." Red showed them a picture of a long-haired blond kid dressed in green clothes holding a large hammer with a blue head. "This helped him—or her, I can't tell—craft things out of that blue stuff we keep seeing everywhere. The kid was a blacksmith and an inventor put together, I think," Red said, tapping the hammer. "And I think they built a robot? I dunno, I'd call it a robot." He flipped to another page, which showed the kid standing next to something like a playhouse-sized metal castle on wagon wheels. Its creator had their hammer pointed at a Bokoblin, the head glowing white. "FIRE!" the child shouted in the form of a speech bubble. Light was illustrated building around the little castle's blue crystal eye. "The kid told it what to do with their hammer, I think," Red explained. "They could order the robot to follow them around and blow monsters up with a laser cannon. Way cooler than hitting stuff with a sword." He went to re-shelve the book, only for Blue to snatch it out of his hands and check the price. "Fifteen Rupees," he told Green.
"Nope, ten. All the children's stories are on sale," Yellow said, pointing to a painted sign. "If there's anything decent that Aunt Petunia taught us, it's how to shop."
Green stacked the books and took them to the register. "No more shopping until we have food and we know how much an inn costs," he decreed once they'd checked out. "I have no idea how we'll make money here, so we should be saving up."
"We're not even getting those other gadgets that adventurer mentioned?" Blue asked. "Couldn't we at least buy Gossip Stones? I mean, just imagine Harry Potter getting a cell phone before Dudley." He grinned spitefully, picturing the gobsmacked look on his cousin's face with wicked relish.
"I think he'd just get mad and knock out our teeth again," Yellow fretted. "We don't have that many baby teeth left to lose, Blue."
"Fine, we don't have to tell him. But still!"
"I guess we could at least take a look. We'll be able to check out armor while we're at it," Green allowed. "It'll mean being out on the streets for longer, though. Are you alright with that?"
Blue shrugged. He didn't like the hustle and bustle of the city (with all the neon lights and the clattering carriages going around, it was worse than Diagon Alley on a busy day), but enduring it was worth looking at more interesting things.
"I don't like the crowd noise, but you really need some armor or a shield, Green," Yellow said seriously. "You almost bled out in the last temple. Red should get something to protect himself, too, if we can't afford to buy enough for all of us."
They dove back into the streets, Blue and Yellow sticking close to their less bothered brothers as the sounds of carriages and conversation enfolded them. Blue wrinkled his nose as a passing carriage left a trail of horse dung in its wake. He was glad this half-modern, half Medieval city had some form of enclosed plumbing, but he could have done without the horses and lack of sidewalks.
Green jerked to one side, pulling Blue with him. A self-propelled chariot cruised through where they had been standing, the people riding in it blithely paying them no mind. Blue took his wand out of the sheath on his arm and sent a few Stinging Hexes at the cyber-medieval car. Or rather, he tried. Either his magic didn't work or it didn't affect Hylians. He frowned at his wand, perturbed. True, conventional magic hadn't been all that useful against Hylian monsters so far, but potentially being unable to use it at all was incredibly disquieting. The only Hylian spells they had were one that let them fall safely from heights and another that banished undead and darkness-dwelling monsters. He would have to check later, once they were out of town, whether the issue was Hylian magic-immunity or a lack of magic.
Yellow lifted his head from Red's shoulder and sent him a reprimanding look. "What did you do? Just because the Ministry of Magic isn't here, that doesn't mean we can curse anyone who crosses us," he admonished. "We'd be no better than Dudleys than wands."
"I know that," Blue said, annoyed. "I didn't even manage to hex them, anyway. It didn't work."
"Well, good. Don't hex people."
"The important thing here is that it didn't work. Why did the spell fail?"
"Maybe everyone from Hyrule is immune to magic, not just Zoras," Green said. "But how about you don't test that in the middle of town, where there are probably police officers around?"
"Fiiine," Blue sighed. He would test his magic out later, once they found a hotel room. "But it was self-defense, I tell you!"
They stuck closer to the side of the street after that, avoiding most of the slow-motion chaos created by the lack of lane markings and stop-lights. Relying on Green to do the people-dodging for him, Blue stared through the fancy displays of the shops. He saw fanciful clothing displays (including one shop that seemed to sell ninja outfits), enticing baskets of cooking ingredients laid out on long counters, a magical luggage/purse store, and a bakery with mouthwatering pies and heavenly-smelling bread protected by bronze and glass cases. He wanted to peruse them all—particularly the medieval grocery store, as some of its wares were rather exotic. How did one cook with those spiky green melons sitting next to the bright yellow mushrooms, for example?
Green led the way into a shop full of things Blue had considerably less interest in, those being armor, weapons, shields, and other violence-related things. A sword was a sword and a breast plate was a breast plate no matter what dimension one was in. Yawn. Red, of course, practically ran to the wall mounts displaying an array of bladed weapons. Yellow gravitated more sensibly toward the smaller, cheaper-looking shields.
"Gossip Stones and Navi Slates are over there," Green muttered to Blue, pointing to a set of shelves in the back corner. "Salvio said gray stones would work for us just fine. Red stones are expensive, so before you ask, the answer is 'no'. As for Navi Slates, look for the biggest, heaviest one they've got. Bigger means cheaper."
"You've gotten a little bossier lately, haven't you?" Blue commented, although he didn't mind the instructions. He knew he was wont to get lost in the magic of studying the new and exciting, forgetting their budget in the process.
"Have I?" Green's brow furrowed. "I didn't even notice." He looked at the sword hilt over his shoulder. "Not sure if I like that."
"Well, it's not a problem until it's a problem," Blue said. "If the sword is making you more assertive to help us survive being sent here, so be it."
"Says the Harry not being mind-controlled."
"Green, we're currently on our own in a foreign country whose language most of us don't speak. We have a million things to worry about that we can do something to ameliorate. Why waste energy fretting about things we can't help? The sword might as well be grafted to you; there's no way for us to fix whatever it may or may not be doing for the time being." He gave Green a "what can you do" shrug and then went to study the techno-magical adventuring gadgets for sale. Either Green would regain his composure or Yellow would take the reins as the Most Responsible Harry. Either way, Blue was going to find out just how fancy and expensive Hylian computers and cell phones could get.
The staff of Hogwarts, after being thoroughly informed by Hermione (as well as Ron, Malfoy, and any other student who knew anything about the Hylian goings-on), had rounded up every kid in the castle into the eerily empty Great Hall. Then, upon pronouncing them safer there than anywhere else in the castle, they'd scattered to the four winds. Ron didn't know what they were going to do, or why they thought this creepy, stripped-down version of the Great Hall was safe. It wasn't like Gryffindor Tower had been creaking or leaning, and at least it still looked like what it was supposed to look like.
He looked around the bare stone room again, puzzled by the lack of Ravenclaws. While he couldn't put a number on how many seemed to missing, but there were definitely fewer than the other classes. The ones that remained all looked horribly distraught, too. What had happened to the rest?
Ron shook his head, frowning, and turned his attention back to his own cluster of friends and…not-quite-enemies. He felt decidedly odd, sitting on the floor in the Great Hall among mostly Slytherins. There was Malfoy, who'd been silent as a ghost since walking in, Zabini, who looked even more stricken than Malfoy, two Bulstrodes, who huddled together like twitchy boulders, and Crabbe and Goyle, who were the calmest of the bunch. The only Gryffindor on Ron's side was Hermione, who'd been staring avidly at the Hylian Bestiary for some time. Fred and George were nearby, but they were busy bickering over whether being thrown into a new dimension was terrible or terrific.
"They won't have any proper potions ingredients here. How are we supposed to make anything?" Fred demanded.
"If Hylians have magical weapons, they must have other magical things, including plants and animals. We can invent potions," George argued.
"And chart a whole new field of magical interactions from scratch? That's a bit much even for us, isn't it?"
"But imagine the research grants, Fred. A few specimens and a boring essay, and then we'd get paid to do what we were already planning!" That statement led to a whole new line of muttered discussion.
Hermione slapped the Hylian Bestiary down in the middle of their rough circle. The heavy book landed with a loud thud that made them all jump. She leaned over it, giving them all an intense look that demanded their attention. "I have news," she announced.
"News from what? Did an owl fly in while I wasn't looking?" Millicent Bulstrode drawled.
Her sister elbowed her. "No, it's the book! I told you it was magic! My friend speaks to it all the time," the younger girl said. "You just didn't believe me because you hate Luna like everyone else."
Millicent rolled her eyes. "It's bad enough that you're learning Hylian monster magic. Must you also befriend the daughter of the nutter who writes The Quibbler?"
"I can't speak for Luna's level of nuttiness, but she's right about the Bestiary," Zabini said. Ron raised an eyebrow. He hadn't been expecting a Slytherin to stand up for anyone outside their House. "There's a ghost possessing it. Draco and I have seen her write back when you ask her things. Haven't we, Draco?"
Malfoy, who'd been anxiously fiddling with his tinted glasses and checking his makeup since Snape had all but thrown him into the Great Hall, didn't seem to hear the question. He was staring at the book, whose pages were splayed open to show a blue-ink illustration of a large dog and a group of children surrounded by sword-wielding Deku Scrubs.
"Where is this?" he demanded. He crawled into the middle of the circle and almost butted heads with Hermione as he hungrily scanned the page. "Where is Dog? Who is he with?"
"He's with the missing Ravenclaws. A section of Ravenclaw Tower was transported separately from the rest of the castle and landed in the Lost Woods," Hermione explained.
Malfoy, Zabini, and the younger Bulstrode sucked breaths through their teeth. "What? What does it mean?" Ron demanded. Internally, he kicked himself for not paying closer attention to Blue's translation notes on the Bestiary. They were as dry and dense as the book itself, but he couldn't deny they were probably useful. Damn his inability to focus on boring reading! "What are the Lost Woods? Is that place like the Forbidden Forest?"
"It's like the Forbidden Forest, but with spirits instead of spiders," Hermione explained. "The spirits are like children and they like to play with anyone that wanders in. They don't know how delicate living beings are, though, and they can cause people to dance to death to their songs, or starve to death admiring the scenery. And then, once those people die, they join the forest as either an animated skeleton or as a Skull Kid—the same manner of spirit that killed them."
"That's a kind of magic you don't hear about much anymore," Ron heard one of his older brothers mutter behind him. "Some real Sidhe-level stuff."
"They didn't lose anyone, did they?" Bulstrode the younger asked, stricken. "What about Luna? Is she okay?"
Hermione grimaced. "Luna is fine, but they've lost several students to the woods. Children are particularly vulnerable to the Skull Kids' music. However, I have some more news." She bit her lip. "It's both good and, er, incredibly alarming."
"Out with it, Granger. Good, alarming, I don't care. Just tell us everything," Malfoy said impatiently. Behind his dark green sunglasses his pupils were blown out wide, swallowing his irises.
"You aren't going to like this, Malfoy," Hermione warned. She flipped a couple of pages back through the book. The page she had gone to bore an illustration of a tired-looking man with dark hair halfway down his back being clung to by a blonde girl half his size. His clothes were terribly ragged, as though he'd never realized he could cast a Mending Charm to fix the holes. "I'll preface this by saying that there's a possibility he's innocent, he isn't nearly as homicidal as he looks on the posters, and he claims he was under a curse that turned him into a real dog during the time we knew him, but…Dog is Sirius Black."
The resulting shouts of disbelief and outrage were deafening.
"That…that can't be!" Malfoy shrieked. "I gave him baths!"
"That's so messed up!" Zabini crowed, sounding caught between being horrified and pleased.
"He's been in the girls' dorms before!" Millicent Bulstrode exclaimed, aghast.
"I bribed him with chicken to steal the Hylian Bestiary from Malfoy's room for me!" her sister squeaked.
"I was right! Dog was an Animagus that got stuck," Crabbe said. He and Goyle high-fived.
"So Black was here the whole time?!" Ron added to the chorus. "Why the hell didn't he try anything, then?"
"He was literally a dog!" Hermione said with exasperation. "Don't you remember that collar with all the House-colored gems on it? And Shadow Harry saying we'd break some curse he'd cast once we finished the last temple? The curse was on Black! He didn't have any choice in what happened after Shadow Harry put that collar on him; if Malfoy hadn't found Black and taken him in, he would have starved to death in that cave."
"So you're on Black's side now, defending him?!" Ron squawked. "He's a mass-murderer, Hermione!" Ron was willing to put up with a lot of Hermione's idealistic tendencies, but this? She could wind up putting herself in real danger if she went around thinking murderers were harmless.
"He's a man who wandered into Vaati's trap, got cursed into a dog, and, from his testimony and actions so far with the Ravenclaws—" Hermione picked up the massive book on the floor and shoved it in Ron's face, "—there's a good chance he was falsely accused for a crime he didn't commit! He didn't even get a proper trial! They just shuffled him off to prison without following proper procedures!"
"And you just believe him?" Ron said incredulously. "As smart as you are, you have a bad habit of believing every adult that speaks English! Remember when Lockhart—"
Hermione snapped the book shut and raised it over her head. "You say one more word about Lockhart, and you'll be waking up in the Hospital Wing," she growled. "It was a mistake to look up to him, and I've acknowledged that, but this is different. This is about a man who's currently doing his best to keep the Ravenclaws safe and may have been locked in Azkaban for over a decade because of your bloody pet rat."
Ron drew back, blinking. "I'm sorry, my what?" His rat? His rat Scabbers? Killing a dozen people, framing Sirius Black, and faking his death?
"Black is an Animagus," she said, flipping to another page and jabbing her finger at a picture of the large black canine standing among children. "James Potter was an Animagus. Peter Pettigrew is an Animagus."
"Scabbers is an ordinary rat! My family had him tested for magic!" Ron poked her in the sternum with an accusing finger. "This is just a way to get Crookshanks off the hook for trying to eat him, isn't it?"
"Black says that Pettigrew blew up the street, severed his finger, and has been hiding from You-Know-Who's supporters as a rat for the last twelve years. How old is Scabbers, Ron? Is he missing a finger from one of his front paws?
"He's not—"
"Animagi can only turn into non-magical animals. Just because Scabbers registers on pet tests as a normal rat, that doesn't mean he is; his life-span is definitely a clue that he isn't."
Ron vibrated with feelings, unable to decide which to express. Disbelief over Hermione being so gullible? Fury over Hermione covering for her awful cat by accusing his pet rat? Doubt, because it was odd that Scabbers had lived so long and there was a sliver of a chance that Black wasn't lying?
"If you curse my rat because a mass-murderer told you to, I'm tossing that ruddy cat of yours into the lake outside," he snarled. Ron and Hermione stared one another down, bristling as they fought the temptation to stomp off in a huff. Currently, the only good places to stomp off to were being blocked off by Prefects and puffed-up Head People like Percy.
Ron looked away first. Hermione was just impossible sometimes, and he didn't have the patience for a staring contest today. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to rush back to Gryffindor Tower and save poor Scabbers from Hermione's ugly orange beast.
"Hey, what was the good news?" Goyle asked, cutting the tension. "You gave us the alarming news, but not the other kind."
Hermione, keeping her burning scowl aimed at the side of Ron's face, laid the oversized beastie-book open across her lap and flipped through the back pages. "The Ravenclaws got split up across the Lost Woods, but after they made it to Kokiri Court, Black managed to convince the queen to help them find the missing students," she said, finally looking away from him. She turned another page. "Queen Primrose recognized him as the dog that was traveling with us when we saved them from Vaati's world-mixing magic."
Ron looked at Malfoy, who hadn't reacted to anything Hermione had said since she'd declared that Dog was Sirius Black. The Slytherin was hunched over with his knees to his chest and his fingers curled in his hair, his eyes wide and unfocused behind the teashades slipping down his narrow nose. He was lost to the world, not even noticing that he was smearing his makeup.
'How much has he been leaning on his dog to deal with the fish-man thing?' Ron wondered. It was remarkable, how the pampered pureblood had managed not to lose his mind as he lost his human purity. As fragile as most blood-supremacists were, Ron would have expected Malfoy to go into hiding the moment he realized his skin wasn't quite the same shade of pale as expected. And yet, Malfoy had just put on some human-colored makeup, added some sunglasses and a scarf to his list of daily accessories, and kept on going. How much of that was because he'd had his pet to boost his spirits? It wasn't like he had older siblings to give him crappy pep-talks, and his fellow Slytherins (except Zabini, maybe) would rip him apart if he admitted to being a "half-breed". Now that Dog wasn't just not a real dog, but actually a wanted criminal, Malfoy had no one to hold onto. He didn't even have Red, since the Harrys had been nowhere to be seen since everyone had woken up in Hyrule. Ron still didn't trust Malfoy not to start calling Hermione slurs again, but he couldn't help but pity the boy.
Malfoy's head snapped up, his dark sunglasses fixed on something behind Ron. The other Slytherins stared in the same direction, wearing expressions ranging from horror (the older Bulstrode) to fascination (Zabini). Ron followed their line of sight.
A large shark-man stood at the doors to the Great Hall, peering in hesitantly. He was well over two meters tall, with stark white skin down his front and steely gray down his back. White spots marked his dark fins and head-tail. A fortune in pearl-studded silver jewelry glittered all over him—throat, wrists, waist, and ankles. As he leaned in to survey the room, the long tail hanging from his head twitched nervously. The Prefects that had been guarding the doors were shrieking and pointing their wands at the big Zora, who didn't seem to realize the danger he was in. He frowned at the wooden sticks aimed his way in confusion and then looked around at the rest of the room.
"Bonndia," the Zora said in a deep, pleasant voice that resonated over their heads, "Mi halle Tiamus. Dori vi arias, pov'forda? Vi nai arias da Hyrulia, s'ari nai?"
The Prefects taking aim at him wilted slightly, taken aback by the fact that the giant could talk. None of the monsters that had attacked the castle so far could speak English, let alone this bloke's language.
Ron noticed the clusters of people sitting around his group throwing them expectant glances. "What?" he asked, frowning at a Hufflepuff upper-year looking his way.
"You've been shouting about Hylian stuff for the last five minutes and everyone knows you and the Potters have been doing the most adventuring out of any of us," she said. The girl gestured toward the giant with her chin. "Figures you'd know what this thing is and what it wants."
"He's a Zora, and he just wants to know what we're doing here," Hermione said cattily.
Ron turned around. "You've learned Hylian, too, haven't you?" he said with a roll of his eyes.
She blushed. "No, I've been more focused on studying the legends and magic. I think I got the gist of what he said, though. He mentioned something about us not being from Hyrule, and I would certainly be wondering where an entire castle came from if I were him."
Zabini elbowed Malfoy. "Go talk to him," he stage-whispered.
"No!" Malfoy snapped, pushing Zabini's arm away. "No more strangeness today! My dog is a man convicted of mass-murder, the Ravenclaws have been spirited away into a fairy forest, and now there's a giant merman at the door! I've had enough!" He shoved his scarf up over his face and curled up in a ball with his arms wrapped around his head.
"You know the most Hylian out of any of us, though." Zabini poked him in the side, making him flinch. "Also, you're smearing powder on your scarf."
Malfoy cursed and fumbled his wand out of his pocket. He slid it under his scarf and tapped his face with it, muttering "Evanesco Pulveris". Then he emerged halfway from his wool wrappings a shade paler, scowling at Zabini. "I don't know that much Hylian. It's just that Ruka wouldn't shut up," he grumbled, his voice muffled. "I accumulated vocabulary against my will."
"Who's Ruka?" Goyle asked. "You've never mentioned him before. New friend?"
"New nuisance," muttered Malfoy.
"Yes," said Zabini. He pushed at Malfoy's shoulder. "Go talk to the fish-man, please. He's started multiplying."
Ron glanced over his shoulder to see that a pair of Zora children who shared their father's spotted markings and round face were now poking their heads into the room. The larger Zora held them back with one clawed hand and much parental shushing.
"Ugh, fine, if only to keep a jumpy Prefect from starting an international incident." Malfoy got up and stomped over to the doors.
"Don't just go over there!" Millicent Bulstrode hissed, flapping a hand at him to come back. "That thing's the size of a troll!"
"No he isn't," Ron and Hermione said simultaneously. They exchanged frowns, their argument not yet forgotten.
"He's just a Hylian merperson, Millie. He doesn't want to hurt us," the younger Bulstrode said, putting a hand on her sister's arm.
"Hopefully he'll be able to get help," Hermione said. "We're going to need food before long, and all of the castle's fields and supply lines are either back in Scotland or scattered somewhere in Hyrule."
Heads around the room turned, wide-eyed, in her direction. The twins stopped their ever-evolving potions discussion to stare at her with dawning horror on their faces.
Ron scoped out the Great Hall, his neck stiff with dread. Hundreds of people attended Hogwarts. For a magical school in Britain, which was still recovering in population from the Great Wizarding War, Hogwarts was pretty big. Not the biggest in Western Europe, but definitely higher up on the list. That was a lot of mouths to feed. It took a lot just to supply his own family of nine when his oldest brothers returned for the holidays. No matter how much food might have been stored in stasis somewhere in the castle, they were going to burn through it with terrifying speed.
As a clamor of "Oh Merlin, what are we going to do?!" arose in the Great Hall, quickly building into a roar of shrill exclamations and crying, Ron elbowed Hermione. "You didn't have to announce that!" he said.
"I thought it was common sense!" she huffed. "Where do they think food comes from? It's not conjured to the table!"
The older Bulstrode moved forward on her hands and knees and seized Hermione by the shoulders. Hermione squeaked. Ron's hand twitched reflexively toward his wand, but he didn't pull it out of his pocket just yet. These particular Snakes had been alright lately, so he'd see where this went. "Are you telling me that we need to depend on Draco Malfoy to work out a trade deal with a tribe of foreign merpeople?" Millicent demanded in a voice tinged by hysteria. "Have you met him?"
Hermione's eyes went wide in realization. "I'll, er, I'll see if I can help him stall until Professor Dumbledore arrives. I'm sure one of the Prefects already went to fetch him," she said, hurriedly standing up. "Oh, I hope Harry gets back soon. We could really use one of him right about now." She rushed off to save Hogwarts from the consequences of Malfoy's attitude.
Translations:
-Sammli da Estudis Hyrulias da Gerudo Voe ⇒ Compendium of Hyrulean Studies of Gerudo Men [with "voe" being a Gerudo word, not a Hylian one]
-Manual Kodamas da Lingua Hylian ⇒ Children's Manual of the Hylian Language
-Bonndia. Mi halle Tiamus. Dori vi arias, pov'forda? Vi nai arias da Hyrulia, s'ari nai? ⇒ Hello. My name is Tiamus. Where are you from, may I ask? You aren't from Hyrule, are you? [polite speech]
Notes:
-Fortune City is the biggest city on Windfall Island and a major tourist stop for vacationers who want the island atmosphere, but mainland comforts. It began where the original village stood 2,600 years ago in Wind Waker and spread out as the waters of the Great Sea receded.
-Back in Þe Auld Dayes, darker and richer colors were more expensive to dye, which is why the people perusing the tablet section were dressed like that. Sheikah Slates in this era are mainly a plaything of the rich and/or nerdy. They're analogues to the chunky laptops of our world in 1993. I've written a little article about them to accompany my concept art, for those who are interested.
-Salvio is kitted out like BOTW Link with the addition of a short sword, a dagger, and a bow sheath. He's just some helpful rando who won't show up again, but a very good example of what the rare professional adventurer looks like.
-The hammer-wielding Hero with the proto-Guardian is one of the most well-known historical figures in the New Kingdom's modern history and will be referenced here and there in the future. She did quite a lot to establish the infrastructure of the current era.
-Gossip Stones in this fic are like the Pirate's Charm used in Wind Waker. They're two-way devices that come in pairs and function like walkie-talkies. Enchanted objects like these are one of those signs that this era of Hyrule still leans more heavily on traditional magic than the people who built the Divine Beasts and Guardians.
-I know, I know, I'm being pretty mean to the folks at the castle. It's for setting integration reasons, I swear! Since very few people in Hyrule have magic, let alone on the level of a Dark World mage, the teachers would be very reluctant to reach out to the sea of Muggles, almost-Muggles, and unfamiliar non-humans around them for help. I'm just adding some stakes to make them get over themselves, since pulling away from non-magical outsiders is deeply ingrained in their culture.