Big art flood for this chapter! Pictures of Link, Maple, and Syrup are now up on garden-eel-draws . tumblr . com, as well as a collection of Hylian fashions for this era and high-effort beauty shots of the items the Harrys have acquired so far (Magic Lamp, Lenses of Truth, Vine Whip, Zora Earring, Abyssal Vase, and Magic Rod). All of that content can be found by clicking on the "concept art" tag in my pinned navigation post, or (as time goes on and things get buried) by following the links/looking at the embedded images in the Ao3 version of this chapter. As always, I endeavor to make my art as easy to find as possible years down the line, so you will also find dungeon item art organized under my numbered dungeon tags on my navigation post.
[Man, do I wish I could post URLs for stuff on this fragging website without it deleting them AUUUGH]
Content warning this chapter for Malfoy's fantasy racism. He will get better, but it's going to take a shock to his system first.
It was a warm summer dawn on what should have been the 15th of December when the Harrys and Malfoy lined up in front of a hard-to-find gap on the fifth floor of the castle. The void in the stone was two meters tall and one meter wide, and its placement well away from the monsters on the ground and the more-traveled corridors down on the first floor meant that no one thought it was worth guarding. After all, what foolish student would want to exit a hole on the fifth floor?
"Ugh, this is humiliating. I have my own broom!" Malfoy griped as he mounted the back end of Red's hovering Nimbus 2000. He ran a hand through his hair, which he'd been doing since Red had shorn it on Friday. It was now a few inches long in front and shorter around the sides and back, resulting in a soft puff on top of his head.
"But unlike us, you actually put it in the equipment shed and now the teachers have it under lock and key. Sucks for you!" Red teased. "Now hold on properly. If you think people are gonna judge you for riding on the back of a broom, wait till they see you fall off."
Muttering in aggravated French, Malfoy sullenly wrapped his arms around Red's waist.
"Everyone, check your masks, put your glasses on, and make sure your staffs aren't going to fly out of your pockets," Harry coached. He tweaked the wetted-down strip of old T-shirt wrapped around his face and conjured the conveniently goggle-like Lenses of Truth on his face. When Malfoy popped into his true colors, his hair became pink around the sides and a frosted mix of pink and white-blond on top.
"Oh, Malfoy, your hair is so cute!" Yellow gushed. "It's such a nice color."
The Slytherin sat up straighter, seeming to lock up at the compliment. A sneer curled his upper lip as he went to say something cruel, but conflict warred in his eyes. He exchanged a glance with Red, who gave him a little nod, before uncertainly saying, "Thank you?"
"You're welcome!"
They filed out of the opening in the wall one by one, with Harry going first. He emerged into the darkness of early sunrise. The sky was a mixture of purple and brilliant blood red. Harry didn't know the exact chemistry of it, but he had a strong suspicion it was the volcanic gunk in the atmosphere exaggerating the colors. Outside of the shelter of the castle, he could already feel it starting to weigh on his lungs.
Farosh had gotten up early too, it looked like; the great glowing dragon was weaving around the legs of the Hylia bridge, occasionally rubbing his scales against the metal supports. Sparks flew around him, both the ones created by the electric aura buzzing around his serpentine body and from the tough stala he was scratching his itch against. Harry watched the graceful creature wind through the air, content to watch from a (very) safe distance.
"What is that?" Malfoy squawked behind him. "Is that mutated thing this world's idea of a dragon? Why is it a snake? It doesn't even have wings!"
"Don't be mean to Farosh! He's only a baby," Yellow admonished.
"The dragon whose teeth we're going to knock out has wings, if that makes you feel better," Blue said. "Farosh is the only wingless dragon in the kingdom, since he's from a newer generation."
"D'you think that maybe we should practice that arrow spell against Farosh first?" Red asked. Yellow zipped sideways on his broom to slap him upside the head. "Ow! It's not like it would hurt him! Tiamus said their teeth grow right back."
"No shooting the baby dragon," Yellow said sternly.
"He's three hundred years old, Yellow."
"Endraal is thousands of years old. Three hundred is nothing."
"We can ask around the locals later to see if it's alright to shoot the non-crazy dragons for scales and things," Harry said, wedging himself in between them. "In the meantime, we're going waaay north. If we keep on at a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, it should take us a little over an hour to get to Endraal's Keep." He turned his broom toward the northern end of the Hylia Bridge and took off, expecting the others to follow.
Exhilaration surged through him at the sight of the ash-laden countryside flying by. It felt like it had been years since he'd last been in the air! How had he managed to give up this wonderful feeling for a whole semester? Feeling the wind rip at his robes and hair felt like breathing for the first time in ages. He never wanted to give up flying for so long again!
The others pulled up next to him, flying in a rough arc formation at his sides. Together, they were five rippling shadows shooting through the bloody light of the smoky sun.
Lake Hylia quickly fell away, replaced by an ocean of undulating grass interrupted by clusters of darker green treetops. Homesteads dotted Hyrule Field here and there, boasting acres of golden wheat and pastures for grazing goats and cows. There were no lines of glowing blue scrolling across stripes of dark stone, just people living off the land. Dirt roads lay across the stretch of pale green prairie like dropped string, waggling around ponds and fields and copses of trees. They were currently empty of travelers; Harry was sure that as soon as the monsters had started appearing, the natives of Hyrule had stopped all nighttime and early morning travel to avoid Stalfos attacks. They certainly would have known the drill by now.
From several dozen meters off the ground, he took in the lay of the land. Central Hyrule looked like heaven for farmers, boasting plenty of wide plains with few rocky hills. A broad river waggled around the edge of the land, forming a vaguely circular outline before it faded from sight. In the hazy distance to the south, too many kilometers away for the power of his magical glasses to cut through, he could just barely discern the vague shapes of gray mountains bordering the green heart of the kingdom. To the north, there was nothing but orange-tinted gray lit by soft circles of blue and gold light that he assumed indicated magic-powered cities. There was a particularly big and bright spot farther along their flight path. The capital of Hyrule, perhaps? He was tempted to pull out the Navi Slate to check his location, but he was liable to hand it off to the sky at this speed.
'I wonder how this place would look if the air quality weren't so bad,' Harry mused. From what he could tell, this region of Hyrule was flat enough that could probably see for ages if it were clear out.
Without meaning to, he gradually descended toward the brightest and nearest cluster of lights below. He only noticed what he was doing when a large barn passed by and he saw he was only ten meters away from its roof. There was something about that city that had consumed his focus without him realizing. He was being drawn toward it. By what, he couldn't be sure, but he was willing to bet it was the Four Sword working its subtle mind-control again.
The fuzzy glow separated and sharpened into individual sources. Signs, street lights, torches, illuminated windows, and garlic-bulb power stations emerged from the smog. Then multi-story buildings in an eclectic mix of medieval European and distinctly Japanese styles. Some looked like small pagodas, others like compact stone fortresses; the houses between them were split indecisively between clay-tiled and thatched roofs, wooden walls and bricks. The city was built in a system of concentric circles split into smaller sections by blue-lined stone roads, with the buildings getting taller and grander toward the center.
Harry slowed down as he peered in fascination at the people passing below him. This was Castle Town! He recognized it both from the map he'd been staring at all day yesterday and the silent bells of recognition ringing at the back of his mind. Castle Town was a place most bearers of Hyrule's magical swords inevitably wound up spending a lot of time in, according to his not-quite-memories.
Hylian soldiers dressed in plate armor and tabards bearing the symbol of the royal family guarded the ramparts and the closed gates of the city, keeping a sharp eye out for monsters. Within the safety of the high stone walls, merchants were already setting up their stalls. People in tunics and kimonos flowed along the curving streets, disappearing into their places of work. The markings on buildings were flaring from dull orange to active blue-white as they powered up for the day's work. As Harry watched, illuminated signs were flickering on here and there across the semicircular town, giving him an idea of just how far its limits reached.
'I think this place is too big to be called a "town". Maybe it's "Castle City" now,' he thought upon seeing a neon pink billboard light up at least two kilometers away. If he'd thought Fortune City was sprawling, that had nothing on this place.
There was one section of the medieval metropolis that was completely devoid of magical lights, however. It was smack in the middle of town, too, next to what looked like a business area with three and four-story buildings all lined in energy markings and accented with stala. The buildings in the unpowered area were one and two stories tall, their lack of floors made up for by incredibly steep roofs. They were made of soot-stained stone and brick that reminded Harry of London, and lit solely by torches and gas lamps. Most of them hosted many-windowed round shop displays in front, as opposed to the open market stalls Harry had seen along the city's main street. Harry flew in that direction, intrigued by the fire-lit neighborhood with its oddly familiar stone.
Upon getting close enough to read the signs on the buildings, he nearly fell off his broom.
"Holy shi—Guys, that's Hogsmeade down there!" he hollered over his shoulder. "I can see Honeydukes on the corner!"
His brothers narrowly missed him when they zoomed over to investigate. "WHAT?!"
Yellow leaned so far forward on his broom that the vehicle went vertical. "This is awesome!" he exclaimed. "I mean, I feel really sorry for all the super confused people down there, but we can go to Hogsmeade!" He spun his broom in a circle, squealing with delight. "Who needs a permission slip? Not us!"
"How the hell did Vaati get his aim so off when he brought Hogwarts here?" Red asked incredulously. "Forget hitting the broad side of a barn—he couldn't hit the broad side of a bloody castle!"
"I know Shadow Harry said Hogsmeade was transported here, but somehow that didn't sink in until now," Blue said, staring wide-eyed at the dimensionally-misplaced shops.
Malfoy hung on tight to Red, dead quiet. Behind his tinted glasses, his eyes were wide enough to show the whites all around.
Harry cautiously moved closer to him. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You look, er…" The Slytherin bore a certain resemblance to a terrorized cat. Maybe it was the motion of the broom, but Malfoy looked like he was trembling. "…overwhelmed."
"They're just…living there. Openly. Among all those Muggles," Malfoy said. His tone was somewhere between contemptuous and fearful. "All these Muggles with magic lights, and the place where there should be the most magic is the darkest. The Muggles are more like wizards than the wizards! What is this backwards place?!"
Red tapped at the arms crushing his ribs. "Gonna need you to let up a little there, bruv," he wheezed. When Malfoy loosened his grip just enough to let him breathe, he suggested, "How about we land for a minute so you can calm down? We've been flying for around a half hour, anyway."
"Land?! With all those Muggles down there?"
"You just said yourself that they're magic-using Muggles," Harry pointed out. "And if we're ever going to sell things or go shopping, you'll have to deal with them at some point."
"What could I want from a Muggle shopkeeper?" Malfoy asked snidely.
"My brothers and I have a magical telephone that'll let us call Ron and Hermione back at the castle whenever we want, since we gave them the twin to it," Blue said. "If we plug our Gossip Stone into the terminal at a phone booth, we'll be able to contact anyone else who has a Gossip Stone, even if they're all the way out in the islands."
"And we have a magic-powered computer that shows us maps of things," Yellow added. "It has a touch screen and its spell nodes won't run out for ten years!"
"There are people who sell potions that would work on you, too," Harry said. "They do all sorts of things, just like the ones back home. Tiamus gave me the recipes for the potions he used to make when he went treasure-hunting."
Malfoy's sneer cracked. The uncertainty hiding below it showed through. "B-But Red said that Tiamus is a Muggle," he stammered. "How would a Muggle brew potions?"
Harry shrugged. "Some kinds of magic here don't require any kind of internal power. There's enough magic soaked into everything that people can just pick it up and use it," he said. "If the lizards and fish guts you're throwing into a cauldron have enough power on their own, who says you need to be a wizard in order to brew a potion? You just need the right ingredients."
Malfoy stared at him. There was a certain vacancy in his gaze.
"Come on, let's check things out! After all, it's not like we're going to get in even more trouble if we spend a little time walking around." Harry descended to street level and hopped off of his broom. After a moment of thought, he shoved the broom in his magic satchel. If his sword, partially held together by wizard magic, could survive Hylian magical storage, he figured his Nimbus 2000 would be unscathed. He skipped off to inspect the shops as his brothers descended behind him.
'Shame we left before most of the shops opened. I want to go in already!' he thought, peering in at the enticing display within Honeyduke's dark interior. The shelves were pretty bare, from what he could see, but there was still some candy left and Harry didn't mind stale chocolate. 'I hope they find a way to start making more candy again,' he thought. It must have been terrifying for all these shopkeepers, being sent to a place where their magic didn't work for no apparent reason. The people at Hogwarts castle at least had the Hylian Bestiary to keep them informed; the residents of Hogsmeade didn't even have that much.
A hand clutched at his sleeve. "What are we doing here, Potter?" Malfoy's stressed voice hissed in his ear. Was it raspier than before?
"When did your voice start sounding cooler?" he absently asked, eyeing a mostly-full bowl of red lollipops. He wondered why those weren't sold out yet. Was it a candy that tasted bad on purpose, like some Bertie Bott's jellybeans did?
Malfoy made a choking noise.
Red joined Harry at the window. "He's touchy about that," he said.
"Oh. Sorry, Malfoy."
"You—I don't—Potter, just answer the question!" the Slytherin burst out. The people on the street glanced curiously in the direction of his shout, some of them doing double-takes.
A middle-aged woman clad in a tunic, Hylian trousers, and a striped scarlet kimono secured by an islander-style leather girdle rushed over. "I haven't seen you around town before!" she said excitedly. Her lips matched the words, so she must have been speaking English. "You're wizards, too, aren't you?"
Harry nodded. "We were at Hogwarts when all of this happened," he said. "The whole school is here, actually. Over on an island in Lake Hylia." He pointed in the general direction of the castle.
The lady's brows went up. "The entire school is in the middle of a lake?" she said incredulously. "Blimey, I thought we had it bad out here. At least we have neighbors to lend us a cup of sugar." Her green eyes wandered over Harry and his brothers. "Say, what are your names, boys?" the woman asked. "I'm Rosmerta. I manage the pub down the way." She gestured with her chin toward a tall longhouse with a rounded roof. "We've got Butterbeer back in stock, so you'd have something to drink if you paid us a visit!"
Malfoy shouldered his way past Harry and stood tall. "I'm Draco Malfoy, heir to the House of Malfoy," he said with pompous glee. It sounded like he'd been holding that in for a while.
"I'm—" Harry hesitated. The lady hadn't recognized him, otherwise she wouldn't have asked for his name. His grown-out bangs had kept his scar properly out-of-view. A shiver of nervous excitement went through him. He was tempted to tell her his actual name, since being honest was his default setting, but this was a chance he could take advantage of. If he could get away with it, he'd rather get normal treatment instead than have everyone fall over themselves around him. "I'm Green," he told Rosmerta.
His brothers gave him funny looks. To anyone but them, he didn't usually go by his color. Harry signaled with urgent little twitches of his head for them to play along.
"…I'm Blue," said Blue after a short pause, "and they're Yellow and Red." He pointed to each of them as he spoke, then sent Harry a sideways glance. "We look alike and people kept getting our names mixed up, so we go by nicknames instead."
While Rosmerta accepted this with a nod, Malfoy eyed Harry with suspicion. 'What's wrong with you, Potter?' his frown silently asked.
Harry didn't know how to facially telegraph "I don't want to be famous if I don't have to" through his glasses and mask, so he just shrugged.
Malfoy rolled his eyes at him, then turned back to the barkeep. "Have the Muggles been treating you well here?" he asked her. "It's unnatural, isn't it, them having so much magic?"
Harry sighed. Of course Malfoy would ask that.
"It was odd at first, but we've had some weeks to get used to it. The worst part of all this is not having much magic ourselves, honestly," Rosmerta said. "There's a proper pair of witches running the potions shop on Main Street, though. Born and raised here, but you'd think they were from back home if they spoke English! Their magic works perfectly fine and for the life of me, I can't tell how they do it. Maybe it's those old-fashioned staffs they use."
"Like these, you mean?" Harry asked, pulling his robes back. Underneath, he was wearing his adventuring corset over his airy Outset Isle clothes, since he expected it to get rather warm by Death Mountain. His Magic Rod was slung through a loop on his left side in case he needed to use magic in a fight and couldn't switch hands.
Rosmerta let out a little "Ah!" of recognition. "You have one? Where'd you get it?" she asked with envy.
"Blue made it, actually," Harry said. He glanced at his brother. "Do you have a copy of your notes on you?" he asked. "I bet the witches and wizards around here could use them."
"I mean, I suppose…" Blue reached into his magic bag and pulled out a considerable sheaf of parchment covered in music. Then he pulled out an equally thick stack to transfer a copy onto. "You're assuming they can read music and pronounce Hylian, though."
"The little lass at the Potions shop—Maple—has been teaching me and my patrons Hylian in exchange for Butterbeer and English lessons, so we've learned some," Rosmerta said brightly. "And the fancy gents over at Dervish and Banges know music for certain!"
"How did you pronounce that name?" Red asked in surprise. "Muh-ay-pul? How'd you do that 'r'? I always have trouble with those weird 'r's."
Harry gave him a slow blink. He knew Red was the least academic among them, but surely he knew how to pronounce a simple two-syllable name? "What 'r'?" he asked. "If you can pronounce 'Maple' with an 'r', something's gone wrong."
"Her name is Maple?" Rosmerta asked in surprise. "Isn't that just adorable? Maple, and her grandmother Syrup! Now I get it!"
"But you just said her name is Maple," Harry said in confusion. "How didn't you know…?"
Blue snickered at his confusion. "She said it in Hylian first, genius," he said. Reaching past Harry, he handed Rosmerta the copy of his music. "I don't have much spare parchment, so you'll have to pass that around," he told her with a faint note of apology. "To use it, get yourself a chunk of pure crystal—even good-quality glass will do—and some kind of stick and put them close together, then start this chant. If you can get through all four hours of it without dropping the beat, messing up a rhythm, getting a consonant wrong, or stopping where there isn't a rest, you'll have yourself a Magic Rod. It's all about practice and patience, really."
The woman flipped through the stack of parchment, looking a bit overwhelmed. She blew out a breath and mussed her long hair. "It's better than having to hunt down phoenix feathers, but this is a tall order on its own," she remarked. "No wonder those staffs aren't more common."
"A Magic Rod will cast all conventional spells, just stronger than usual and with a bit of an energy drain. You don't always have to do the wand movements, either, depending on what you're casting," Harry said. "Conventional spells can be kinda iffy in Hyrule—they pick and choose what they work on here—but if you're using magic on stuff from back home, your spells should work fine. Don't try healing spells with a Magic Rod, though; they tend to burn."
Rosmerta winced. "I guess I'll be visiting Syrup's shop for a while yet, then."
"Could you tell us where that is, please?" Yellow asked, stepping out from behind Red. "We'll need some healing potions where we're going."
"Really? Where are you going?" Rosmerta asked. "Not somewhere with monsters, I hope. Even the little ones are bigger than you!"
Yellow fidgeted with the shoulder strap for his sword. "Well…"
"There are monsters around Hogwarts, and without healing magic working right, we thought we'd stock up the Hospital Wing just in case," Blue lied for him. Now that he mentioned it, though, Harry thought that was a good idea. While the Hylian language and enchanting classes had gotten up and going, they hadn't put a plan for Hylian potion-making in the works yet. "Do the vendors here take gold at all?"
"Gold is gold no matter where you go. It just spends better here. Silver and copper, too. Hylians don't even blink at the giant gemstones those Gorons bring to town, but they can't get enough of our metal," Rosmerta said with a shrug. "Maybe they need it for all that bronze-looking stuff they use." She waved her hand in the direction of the lit-up buildings a block over. "Syrup's potion shop is right in the middle of town on Main Street, between a group of Deku Scrubs selling wooden weapons and a cheery bloke who'll buy and sell just about everything. His kids help him mind the shop and they look just like him, so keep an eye out for the family with Afros. You don't see too many people with that kind of hair around here."
Red perked up. "If they buy just about anything, does that include monster parts?"
Rosmerta's lips twisted in distaste. "Yeah, the city's soldiers stop by a lot to sell their spoils. Absolutely ghastly, if you ask me." She paled. "…You aren't carrying nasty, slithering Moblin guts in those bags, are you?"
"Nope, we've just gotten Bokoblin bones so far!" Red chirped.
She sent his bag a wary look. "Maybe you should pay Beedle a visit first, then."
Now with a new directive in mind, the Harrys and their flinching, sour-faced tag-along wandered through town in the direction of its central road. Red stuck close to Malfoy's side, and Harry found himself glancing over every time the aristocrat jumped at the sound of a clattering carriage or a too-loud voice. If Yellow and Blue were managing to deal with the noise, Malfoy should definitely have been able to handle it. His family had the time and money to hang around posh metropolitan places all the time!
"The Muggles aren't going to hurt you, Malfoy," he chided the fourth time the blond skittered away from a carriage. "Neither are the horses. You've seen non-magical horses before, haven't you?"
"If any of these primitives tried to put their muddy hands on me, I'd blast them on the spot," Malfoy spat in the vilest tone of voice Harry had heard from him in months. It brought many unsavory memories from second year to mind. "Surely you aren't accusing me of being afraid of vermin."
Harry gawped at him in disbelief. With as reasonable as he'd gotten around Hermione, Malfoy was still like this? Just how deep did that irrational hatred of his run? How many knots was his brain twisted in?
Red nudged Malfoy in the side. "I told you, you sound like an absolute nutter when you talk like that. Why do you think Dog—er, Sirius kept sitting on you?"
"Don't mention him!" Malfoy snapped. "He isn't—" A big carriage loaded down with Hydromelons went by, drawn by two red-maned black horses the size of Clydesdales. Malfoy staggered away from it with his hands over his ears. "I'm not scared of the stupid Muggles, they're just bloody loud!" he complained. "Why haven't they enchanted those horseshoes with silencing spells? It's a wonder most Hylians aren't half-deaf!"
"I mean, it's loud, but it isn't that loud," Yellow said. "There aren't too many carriages and people out yet."
"What do you mean? It's awful! I thought my eardrums were going to break!"
"Are you sure you're not just being dramatic like usual?" Blue asked dryly.
"I'm not!" Malfoy insisted, sounding a little hurt. He spoke with a bit too much volume, like he couldn't quite hear himself. "It's like I've got a dozen horses doing an Irish step in my ear!"
"Oh, it must be your ears, then," Red said. Everyone looked at him. "Er, his hearing…It's scary good now," Red elaborated for his brothers. "Before, it was just that he could catch things from far off, but now it's hard to sneak up on him unless he's staring at the Black Lake. I guess he didn't notice."
Malfoy clapped his hands over his face and slid them down, moaning, "Of course it's this creature-blood curse again. Why?"
"I dunno, maybe so you can hear quieter fish?" Red guessed. Malfoy shot him a glare. "What? That's not a dumb answer." He looked to Blue and Harry for reassurance. "Is it?"
Harry gave him a thumbs-up. "No, it was pretty good."
"What if you wore your scarf over your head like earmuffs?" Yellow advised Malfoy, making a circling motion with his fingers.
Malfoy clutched the scarf at his neck with a protective air. "I'd rather suffer than look like an idiot," he said archly.
Blue sighed in exasperation. "Then suffer. The rest of us have shopping to do." He grabbed Harry's arm and dragged him impatiently in the direction of the market. "C'mere, you. I'll need your sword-brain to help me figure out what I'm looking at."
"It doesn't tell me everything, you know," Harry protested.
"It's better than nothing!"
With Blue leading the way, Harry decided to focus on people-watching instead. There were a lot of interesting-looking people around town. It was about half-and-half between Medieval-looking folks and people who more closely resembled fancy extras in a samurai movie. He was seeing a lot of white and gray hair, red eyes, and blue kimonos that also had red eyes. Were those people a special kind of Hylian?
No, they were Sheikah, the Four Sword informed him. Traditional protectors of the royal family of Hyrule, and currently far more numerous and culturally influential than his sword had any memory of. He caught an imagined glimpse of a blond girl in a pink dress with a tall, muscular, and strict-looking Sheikah woman standing sentinel at her shoulder.
'I've seen like ten Sheikah already and even I bought a budget version of one of their computers a month ago. Why does it take you forever to say anything?' he thought in frustration at the sword. It wasn't like he just knew this stuff. Even Zelda, their main source of Hylian knowledge, would've been pretty lost here. Actually, speaking of Zelda…
Harry dug in his heels and tapped Blue on the shoulder. "Hey, get Zelda's book out. I bet she'd love to see town."
A guilty look flashed across Blue's face. "Whoops, I totally forgot." He opened his bag and pulled out the Hylian Bestiary with a grunt of effort at its weight. He cradled it in one arm and flipped to the back of its many pages. "Hey, Zelda, we're in Castle Town! Did you have lights like these back in your day?" He held up the book and did a slow turn, unaffected by the strange looks it drew from the people around him. After making sure Zelda got a good look, he lowered the book to read her reaction. "I know, right?! It all runs on magic, too, not electricity like back home—not that you'd know what the electric-powered version of all of this looks like…Yeah, I was planning on getting a book about it. Oh, you've got to see the trains! I'll take your book out next time I see one, for sure. You wouldn't believe how fast they are now. We went from the islands to the mainland in eight hours!"
Harry left them to chat, glad to escape being hauled off to the nearest bookstore. Unfortunately for him, Blue could understand Hylian well enough to read the signs now, so Harry wouldn't be able to avoid indulging his brother's voracious curiosity for long.
While the rest of his group fell behind him, Harry went off to look at the open-air shops on his own. They all knew what stall to meet at, so he didn't see any trouble in splitting away for a bit.
Harry loved experiencing new places. Most of his life there had been very few locations he'd been able to go, and so he embraced what was foreign to him as readily as his relatives would reject it. Harry's head turned every which way as he took in the vast array of sellers and products on display around him.
One nervous-looking man with a pasted-on smile and apple-red cheeks was selling an array of shields, some of them even cheaper and simpler than Harry's buckler and others grandly decorated and polished to a high shine. Directly across from him were a Flying Zora and an Inland Zora selling jewelry pieces, spears, harpoons, and swords made out of silvery steel and bronze stala, strategically studded with (currently orange) Bluestone that probably made them magical in some way. Harry could feel his wallet ache just looking at those, although he was tempted to ask about the price of one of the more modest rings set out on their table. A little farther down lay a couple of clothing stores, the one selling fashionable outfits run by an exceptionally tall, red-haired lady wearing Indian-ish clothes (a Gerudo, according to his sword), and the one selling armor staffed by a bored-looking Hylian woman. Harry's eye was immediately drawn to a vivid pink and purple outfit the Gerudo merchant had on display. His relatives would have had a collective stroke if they saw him dressed in poufy trousers and a midriff-baring top, let alone in those colors. He made a mental note to window-shop there later.
Deciding to take a leaf out of Blue's book, he pulled out one of the pieces of parchment his brother had shoved in his bag that morning and started a list in pencil. He compiled a shopping list both for today and for future outings, when he hopefully had a larger budget to burn. Ask about the ring, look at that purple outfit, hit up the armor shop…oh, and four of those wooden shields the red-cheeked man had out on his counter so they'd be slightly less screwed in a lightning storm…What did that shop over there sell? Potion ingredients? Blue would absolutely love that place. Harry imagined his brother would want to stock up on Sleepy Toadstools first, since those were a base for any potion that didn't use monster parts, and then maybe some Fireproof Lizards so he could make some Fireproof Elixirs…
He got so distracted by compiling a shopping list that he forgot other people were walking on the street. Harry ran right into a narrow, bony back.
There were very few times Harry had ever knocked anyone over, on account of him being built like a weed, but he'd managed to collide with the one person his age who was even weedier than him. The girl tripped mid-step with a shriek of surprise and landed in a sprawl, sending a basketful of round glass bottles skittering and shattering against the pavement.
Harry was reaching for his Magic Rod to fix the problem before he'd even fully recovered his balance. "Oh crap, I'm sorry! I should've been watching where I was going. Let me get those—" He repaired the broken bottles with a flurry of Mending Charms that left him a little breathless from the magic drain, then scurried around to grab them all before they got kicked farther down the street. He offered the girl a hand up once he was sure her things weren't going to get trampled. "Sorry again," he repeated contritely. Not only had he knocked into her, but he'd totally mowed her over! He felt like he might die of embarrassment.
The girl gripped his hand painfully tight, almost yanked him off his feet in pulling herself upright, and fixed him with a weary scowl. "This is the third time this month! I swear you're like a homing pigeon." She snatched up her basket, turned to leave, and then whipped around to give him a second, more incredulous look. "Hold on a minute! Why are you dressed like my grandma? And since when did you dye this mess black?" She set the basket down to reach out and ruffle Harry's hair.
Harry was bewildered by the girl's familiarity with him. He'd never been mistaken for someone else before without pushing the misunderstanding himself, but then again, his unusual eye-color wasn't usually hidden under a pair of purple shades. Harry pulled his mask down and vanished his glasses so the girl could better see his face. Given her loose black dress, distinctive witch's hat, and the miniaturized broom and Magic Rod tied to loops on her broad leather belt, he assumed she was Maple, whose family business he'd been headed toward. He hoped she wouldn't refuse to sell to him because he'd crashed into her.
"I'm Har—er, I'm Green," Harry said, remembering at the last second that this girl spoke on a regular basis to Rosmerta. "Sorry, but I'm not sure who you've got me confused with."
Maple stared at him, her brown eyes wide. She gave him a long once-over, her gaze lingering on his robes and the Magic Rod in his hand. "You're…not him. For one thing, you're a little shrimp who talks too much," she said slowly. "You're one of those 'British' mages, aren't you? That's so weird. You look just like Link!" She laughed and shook her head. "It figures some foreigner who shares a face with that dope would be destined to make me drop everything, too!" Her eyes widened at a sight over Harry's shoulder. "Dear Hylia, there's more of you?" she said, paling. "I've got things to do! I can't be getting knocked over all day!" She hitched up her basket of potions and took off running up the street.
Harry stood rooted to the spot as the rest his group caught up to him. He didn't catch a word of Yellow's scolding or Malfoy's complaining.
There was a boy named Link here that looked like Harry. There was a Hylian boy Harry's age who probably had way more experience with a weapon and who had undoubtedly been destined to find the Four Sword if Harry hadn't stumbled across it.
(The Four Sword's psychic buzz of disagreement went ignored.)
Harry had to find this guy! It was too late for Link to take up the magical blade himself—the Four Sword was tied to Harry's life and magic now—but Harry could at least ask him for advice. Link had probably been adventuring since he was ten!
~Thirty minutes later~
Across town, a kid with shaggy greenish-blond hair groggily stumbled over a raised cobblestone and nearly tossed the wrapped sword in his hands at the soldier he was supposed to bring it to. The man saved Link from falling on his face with a grip on his arm. Most of the City Guard was familiar with Link's sleepy clumsiness after three years of him running morning deliveries; what had started as an occasional character-building chore had since become his weekly routine, but that didn't make the night owl an early-bird. "You should really join an open training session sometime," the soldier chided, a common refrain from Link's customers on the morning shift. "We'd get those feet under control."
Link shook his head and bowed in a polite refusal the soldier sighed at. Yawning, the teen handed the man his repaired weapon in exchange for a ten-Rupee delivery fee, adjusted his pack, and jogged off in search of the next person on his list. He sneezed and tweaked his ash-mask. What a miserable morning, and mornings were already miserable by default! This noxious air was doing a real number on his nose; he was pretty sure it had taken out most of his sense of smell. It made dodging the horse-apples left by carriages on the street that much harder when he was too sleepy to see straight.
After another massive yawn—the crack of dawn really wasn't his time of day—he checked his delivery list. Alright, next was Bashter the Goron. The workman's hammer weighed about fifteen kilograms, and while Link would normally have had no trouble carrying that weight in his pack due to the nature of his magical talent, this air quality was making him feel a tad shaky on his feet.
He cast his gaze past the city wall behind him, in the general direction of Death Mountain. The huge geographical feature was normally visible from here, since Central Hyrule was a flat, low-lying plain. Now, his magic-boosted vision only showed him the same semi-opaque haze that everyone else had to squint through. He hoped that this awful smoke didn't get any worse. There were already too many people who couldn't go outside for all the ash in the air, who had to huddle in medical centers with filtered ventilation systems so they could breathe.
Link sighed, then coughed on a bit of ash that had managed to sneak past his mask and catch in his throat. He'd be glad once this weather cleared up. It probably would; the volcano would have to run out of steam sometime, right? Maybe he ought to ask his well-read friend about how that worked, actually—
Thud! "Oof!" Skrshh!
Link came to a sharp halt when he felt a petite body bounce off of his chest and sighed again, this time with guilt. Maple had been knocked on her rump and sat surrounded by a glittering rainbow of spilled elixirs, cracked bottles, and broken glass. One bottle continued bobbling down the cobblestones, leaking a stream Red Potion as it went.
"Sorry, Maple," he said, offering her a hand.
Maple looked up at him, took in the sight of her dropped wares, and screamed toward the orange heavens in frustration. Link pressed his hands hard over his sensitive ears, but still heard the sound echo off of the buildings around them. Several passers-by jumped and scurried down the street. "TWICE IN ONE DAY! IN ONE HOUR!" the witch roared. "FIVE OF THEM!" She pulled at the wide brim of her pointed hat. "AUGH!"
Link gave her a slow blink and tilted his head to one side. Twice and five? He'd only run into her once this morning and there were more than five bottles broken.
His friend scowled at his silent question. "Oh, never mind. Never mind any of it! I'm delivering the next replacement batch by broomstick, and the City Guard can whine about it all they want!" she raged. She gripped Link's hand firmly and hauled herself up by leveraging her small frame against his muscular weight. "They can't arrest me for flying and they know it," she went on with a manic glint in her eyes. "I only walk around town as a courtesy for them and their stupid broom-paranoia, because I'm nice that way. Well, NOT TODAY!" She took her Magic Rod off her belt and swung it around like a club as she repaired the broken containers. Link took a step back to avoid getting whacked, then cautiously approached to return bottles to her basket once she'd stopped to wheeze from her furious magical exertion.
Once she'd caught her breath, Maple threw the remaining bottles into her basket and yanked the carrier off the ground with enough angry force to make all the glass containers violently clink. Link flinched at the sharp, painful noise. "If any version of Link runs into me again this morning, somebody's getting hit with a splash of Rupoor Solution tomorrow, you got that?" Maple shifted her basket under one arm to jab a finger into his chest. "Whoever gets it, he'll be having the worst luck of his life all damn day!"
Link's brow pinched with confusion and worry. What was going on? Why was she extra angry? Maple was usually rather annoyed when he knocked her over, but not this mad. There was an unknown added factor at play here. How might he help her feel better without aggravating said mystery factor?
"I'll buy you a hair tie," he declared.
The witch huffed at him, although with more fondness than fury. "You'd better, you clumsy doofus," she snapped. "Get me one like your boyfriend wore last week."
"Best friend," Link corrected out of habit as he thought back. Maple always called Avoka the wrong thing to get a rise out of the Sheikah. Link didn't mind, but the boy never failed to take Maple up on her many invitations to bicker. Said best friend wore a lot of hair-holding things, on account of having slithery straight hair that went all the way down his back. "Bells?"
She nodded. "Yeah, one with bells. So you'll hear me coming." Maple turned up her nose and irritably flounced off to restock at her grandmother's shop.
Link watched her turn the next street corner, still puzzled. What had changed today? He hadn't tripped and fallen on her, which had happened before and been very bad, given that he was significantly heavier than the petite girl and usually toting around thirty-plus kilos of tools and weapons on mornings like these. It had also been two weeks since they'd last collided, so it couldn't be an uptick in frequency, either. Hmm.
He looked to the sky. Maybe it was the current situation affecting her temper? It was certainly making his big sister grumpy; there were fewer customers at their family's smithy due to the strange weather, and fewer customers meant less money from commissions. They'd been having to eat a lot of plain rice, foraged food, and pigeon stew lately. With no salt, which rendered the bland meals even more miserable. Since most of the train stations were still down and Death Mountain's mines weren't running, salt had become a scant and expensive resource brought in by horse-drawn wagon from Gerudo quarries. It was a little scary, how one thing going wrong in one place could lead to the disappearance of a basic staple from everywhere else. Link had never seen anything like it happen before.
Oh, well. This mess would get sorted out by someone, sometime, and he could endure until then. He was sure that there were knights or some branch of the Royal Guard handling it, if the Gorons couldn't. In the meantime, he had a heavy, freshly repaired hammer to drop off. Link was just another delivery kid, after all.
Notes:
-The red lollipops that haven't sold at Honeyduke's are blood-flavored lollipops. There aren't any vampires in the Light World, and while Zoras and Ritos don't mind the taste of blood (because they sometimes eat raw meat), they don't like human sweets much.
-Maple's name is "Eradel" [air-ah-dell] in Hylian, with a French-style "r". Not important, just wanted to have fun with the way Green's mental translation software works ;D
-Harry liking pink and purple is a reference to Ravio, the nervous-looking red-cheeked guy selling shields is [a reincarnation of] Rupin from Skyward Sword, and magic rings are a thing from the Oracles games.
-For those unfamiliar, running into Maple is a mini-game mechanic in Oracle of Seasons. She flies around on her broom and if you run into her, she'll drop things she's carrying (as will Link), and the two of you race around to pick up the most fallen items first. I absolutely adore OoS, so I had to add that reference here. Also, Maple and Syrup are from Holodrum in this fic. That kingdom (as well as Labrynna) was reduced to islands like Old Hyrule, and is now an achipelago that lies to the southwest of mainland New Hyrule.
-Link's introduction scene was initially a five-sentence cameo, but then writing Maple's intro gave me an idea. I crammed a lot of little details about him in there that will be touched on later! The squiggles on his gloves in the art I've posted are "L"s in this fic's version of Hylian (which can be found within this story's series on Ao3). His best friend made him those!
-The City Guard that Maple mentioned are essentially any large Hylian settlement's police department. City Guard officers are like low-level knights who perform all kinds of duties related to resolving minor disputes between citizens, catching criminals, monitoring traffic in and out of town, and defending the city borders from minor monster attacks. They deal with small, local stuff and report anything major to the Royal Guard, which handles things on a national level.