Time for the chapter you've been waiting for for a while now: the Big Meeting! Yes, it's time for the Harrys (and Malfoy) to meet the main two main Zelda NPCs for this fic, Link and Avoka! I've done a lot of writing and re-writing of this chapter, trying to get all the details I want to include and the hints I want to drop as perfect as I can. Artwork comparing these characters back-to-back has been posted under the "characters" tag on the garden-eel-draws tumblr and is displayed in the Ao3 version of this chapter so you can play Spot-the-Difference. I'm so excited to post this one, you guys! :D

Link's bedroom door rattled with the force of Avoka's knocking. "Wake up! It's lunchtime! I've got the rest of the day off, and I've brought food," the Sheikah called.

Food…Food was good. Link sat up and rubbed his eyes. When he took off his hearing dampeners—gadgets crafted by his sister to counter that magically overpowered sense—the muted sounds of the world crashed in. He gritted his teeth and pounded his fist against his thigh as he weathered the painful onset of his usual headache.

The magical song of everything in his surroundings room jumped at him before anything else. A steady dirge from the stone walls and floor lay beneath the soft, whining strains of the paper in his reference books, the wistful melody of the wood in his bedframe and shelves, and the low grumble of the steel that protected the surface of his work table.

Real-world sounds followed at the music's heels, the noise and magical song swirling together in a mix that made his head spin before separating out into layers he could parse. Now he could hear it raining Dodongos outside, creating a roar on the roof and sharp patter against the windows. Every raindrop on the glass felt like a pebble being pelted at his head. As Link breathed through the discomfort of becoming re-accustomed to his hearing (stupid dampeners! Stupid loud rain making it hard to sleep without them!), lightning flashed outside, followed all too quickly by a boom of thunder that made him hiss and rub the sting out of his still-adjusting ears.

Once he had his hearing in order, Link sat up straighter, now worried. Hagrid was out in the experiment shack, which was sound enough to weather the rain, but not built to handle the icier temperatures of storms like this. Was he okay? The kindly foreigner was still thin and walking on a cane from his illness, but Link doubted he'd shelter in the house unless given permission. Hagrid was a very polite fellow that way.

A startled cry of "Why are you in here?!" from the kitchen reassured him. Gabbi must have let Hagrid in while Link had been sleeping.

"No interrogating!" Link shouted through the door before getting dressed. Since it was a little chilly even with his house's climate control running, he put on his dependable ox tunic, some leggings, a ruffled skirt, and a too-small dress that Avoka had tailored into a long vest for him. A set of fingerless leather gloves with the first letter of his name embroidered on the backs—his favorite accessories and another Avoka creation—completed his outfit.

He left his room to find Hagrid and Fang in the kitchen, staring wide-eyed at the young Sheikah attempting to give them a Royal Guardsman Glare.

Hagrid asked something in English, pointing from the large kettle on the stove to the mug of tea he held. Gabbi had given him a set of big dishes from the Gerudo-crafted assortment that she used, since all of Link's were comically tiny in the giant man's hands.

"How long have you been in here? Where's the Mad Owl? Shouldn't Link's sister be supervising you?" Avoka demanded.

Hagrid just gave him a slow blink. "My name Hagrid?" he said in his limited Hylian. He caught sight of Link and smiled. "Allo, Link! Good sleep?"

Link nodded. "Good sleep. Made tea?"

Hagrid nodded. "Mint-honey-apple."

"Mmm. Good tea." Link leaned down to pet Fang before going to the stove.

Avoka looked askance at both of them. "How are you already friends with him?" he asked Link with exasperation. "He barely speaks five words!"

Link shrugged. "Makes talking easier," he said. People in general were loud and talked over each other and got frustrated with him when he didn't talk enough or missed some of the too-fast words they'd said. He wouldn't classify them as mean or anything, just nerve-wracking to communicate with. Hagrid's unfamiliarity with Hylian forced the man to pick his words carefully and his current lack of comprehension meant that Link's slow, painstakingly articulate, and simple style of speech made it easier for him to understand. Maybe the foreigner would get frustrated with him later, when he had more words than Link and had to wait for the young blacksmith to catch up in any given conversation, but Link enjoyed the tilt of the conversational playing field they were on for the time being.

He poured himself some fragrant, fruity tea, cleaned out the infuser in the kettle, and sat down at the table. "There's tea," he told Avoka. "It's nice."

"Don't trust food from strangers," Avoka said sternly.

Link's lips curled slyly. "You gave me candy before I knew your name."

The tips of Avoka's ears darkened. "Well, er, I…Oh, just eat something." He set a rubber-sealed wooden delivery box on the table and pulled up its sliding shutters. "Today the castle cooks were making extra for all the staff kept indoors by the weather, so I've got a good haul. Just make sure your giant friend doesn't eat all of it."

Link's face lit up at the sight of carrot cake. It was his favorite dish, full of all the expensive jungle spices that he could never justify buying when he was in town. He rushed to the cabinets and laid out plates and spoons before reverently serving himself one of the slices. Yesss, cinnamon and nutmeg, his greatest loves…

Avoka rolled his eyes and added a couple of meat buns to Link's plate. "Food first, dessert last. If the next testing phase of your Pegasus Boot project is coming up, I'm sure you've been forgetting to eat in favor of music revision."

Yeah, that was fair. Link claimed a bowl of duck soup and a big sausage.

Avoka narrowed his eyes. "Vegetables."

Link pointed at the slices of radish and carrot among the meat and noodles in his soup.

"Alright, fine." Avoka loaded up his own plate and then motioned for Hagrid to do the same. The foreigner beamed at him and then set about grabbing what was left.

They ate quietly, Avoka turning his chair around to maintain his facial modesty as a very traditional Sheikah. Avoka's suspicious glances and tenseness slowly lessened over the course of the meal as he realized Hagrid wasn't planning Link's fourth kidnapping. The paranoid boy even tried a cup of tea, which he begrudgingly complimented Hagrid on. Fang sat on the floor, happily devouring anything that was dropped into his bowl. The kitchen was pleasant and warm, kept heated by a vent system connected to the house's Blue Flame power generator/forge. Soon Link was feeling a little sleepy again, surrounded by the smells of good food and the comforting sound of Avoka talking about castle gossip.

A ringing at the door interrupted the meal. Link looked over his shoulder in confusion. Gabbi usually had lunch at work and just expected Link to come in whenever he woke up or felt like going to the forge, even in the middle of the night. His apprenticeship was less formal than Avoka's that way. Clients went to the smithy, and the few people who frequented the house had a magical key to get through the front gate. Except Hagrid—Link hadn't crafted one for him yet, since the man wasn't yet recovered enough to be traveling significant distances without supervision. Who could that be at the door, then?

Avoka stood up at the sound of the doorbell, suddenly on high alert. He pushed down on Link's shoulder to keep him in his seat and walked toward the door, slipping one of his signature kunai throwing knives into his hand from a sheath hidden by his wide uniform jacket's sleeve. Link hopped up to stop his friend before he could terrorize a potential client. As costly as his family's Bluestone experiments were, even with funding from the castle, scaring off customers was a no-no.

"No knife-threatening!" he hissed at Avoka. "It's rude!" He knew Avoka wouldn't hurt anyone with his blades without reasonable cause, but it was just bad form to whip out a knife instead of saying "hello".

"If it's a Yiga at the door, here for your latest kidnapping, we'll have a split-second to act," Avoka said lowly. "I'm only a trainee, and not exactly at the top of my class. Any adult Yiga warrior could easily overpower me if I don't use the element of surprise."

The doorbell dinged again, followed by some muffled foreign muttering from the front porch. Link swung his hands toward the noise-making mechanism—a variation on his room's warning system that he'd come up with as an alternative to the horrible metal-on-wood clacking of a door-knocker.

Avoka's intensity subsided somewhat. "…I guess using the doorbell would be kinda stupid." He returned the knife to its place under his sleeve. "Be careful, though."

Link breathed a sigh of relief and went to the door. A brief glance through the peephole told him it was just a gaggle of kitted-out adventurer kids. Definitely would-be customers who'd somehow wandered past the gate, then. Younger adventurers had a high likelihood of losing, damaging, or needing their first weapons. Rich kids' parents in particular wanted all kinds of enchantments on their children's equipment, too, which made them a lucrative market. It meant getting extra contracts signed to keep his sister's smithy from taking the blame when those young adventurers inevitably got themselves maimed or slaughtered by their dangerous hobby, though. Link closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Time to perform some memorized business-speak.

Once he had a customer-service script loaded up and ready to go, he unlocked the door and opened it. "Hello, this is the Bluesmith residence," he declared with speed and bouncy cheer that were unnatural to him. Talking like this was like singing the words of a song in a language he didn't speak, but he could do it in short bursts. "I'm Link Bluesmith, apprentice to Gaebora Bluesmith, the famed 'Mad Owl'. To meet with her and arrange a project, you should go to the Bluesmith Forge—"

The faces of the people he was looking at finally registered in his mind and the practiced song stuck in his throat. Four small, raven-haired Links and a Zora-ish boy who resembled Avoka stared at him in open shock. Link gaped uncomprehendingly at the gaunter, younger versions of his own face looking up at him from the doorstep. Avoka had said there were foreigners who looked like him, but he'd thought they'd share an unusual similarity, not literally the same facial features!

He observed a symphony of magic playing around all the adventurers, courtesy of the augmented hearing provided by his own magical talent. The air rang with power, as if every one of them were carrying a backpack full of spell nodes singing their personal tune. Infinite possibility, spun into a river of song. He had never heard such a powerful melody coming from any one person—not even Maple and Avoka, the most impressive mages he knew. One of the versions of Link with gray-brown eyes had the loudest song out of the five boys, made discordant by sour notes that slipped in where they didn't belong. His magic was both strong and ever so slightly wrong.

When the stunned silence went on for too long, Avoka and his part-Zora double started talking in their surprisingly similar raspy voices. "Staring won't get us anywhere. We should—" They bristled and shot each other matching glares. "Stop copying me!"

"Hello?" The golden-eyed Link with a yellow stripe in his hair raised his hand and stepped forward. "I'm Yellow. They are Green, Red, Blue, Malfoy. You are Bluesmith?"

Link blinked, unfreezing. Right, these were foreigners, not spirits playing a trick or Yiga agents here to kidnap him again. There were only so many faces in the world, and the people in this room just happened to have a couple in common. Yeah, that seemed possible. He nodded to answer the question, his flighty ability to speak having run off at about the same time these strangers had given him a mild heart attack.

The yellow-eyed boy dug through his bag while one of the two brown-themed ones (Red or Green, presumably) stepped up to explain. "We were just at this place called the Death Mountain Lightware Facility," the latter said in much clearer Hylian. "Have you heard of it?"

Link and Avoka exchanged alarmed looks. Had they heard of it? The tragedy of that facility's ransacking and collapse had been in every newspaper and flying across the Gossip Stone network for years! Everyone they knew had a parent or grandparent who remembered the news that day. That lightware factory had been a shining jewel of the kingdom since the first Link Bluesmith, the Hero of Lights, had founded it centuries ago. The day of its collapse had not only been a horrific loss of life, but the destruction of a major piece of modern history.

"You went inside it?!" Avoka shrilled. "Do you know how many people have died in there? It's flooded with lava and there are parts of it that could still come down at any moment! Why would you do that?"

"There was a Gleeok-phoenix making Death Mountain keep erupting. My brothers and I went in to sort it out," Red-or-Green said. "We helped Endraal, too, so that's why all the clouds cleared up before this weather started." He waved a hand toward the door.

Link reeled. A Gleeok was huge. They were a breed of monster that only the most powerful of evil mages could summon. There were stories of them destroying armies. And Endraal…He'd heard that there had been attempts to disenchant the maddened World Spirit a century ago, but the death toll had quickly ticked up too high for anyone but the bravest of the Zonai to mess with her after that.

"But what's important is that we think we found a relative of yours in there, Link. He was, erm…" The foreigner paused and then cleared his throat. "Gaebora saved a lot of people in the collapse, and he was trying until the end. He was guiding people from the control room on the lowest level. We couldn't bring him back with us, but we brought these."

Yellow held out a set of old-fashioned amulet earrings and a big enchanted locket, all designed with the Bluesmith family owl crest. Link recognized them in an instant; his grandmother always wore them when she came to visit. She and her twin brother had worn identical sets when they'd worked in that facility, imbued with magic in the same enchantment session.

Link claimed them with shaking hands, tears forming in his eyes. Never would he have imagined that a group of strangers would show up one day to do this for his family. The Bluesmiths had been among the people clamoring for rescue and retrieval efforts fifty years ago, but it had been deemed too unsafe. He clutched the items to his chest and jerked into a bow, unable to verbalize his thanks.

"Erm…" Avoka looked from Link to the foreigners, then back at the kitchen/dining room, where Hagrid still was. "Why don't we talk while Link…processes?" Pointing sternly at the visitors, he said, "Hold on for a second. Stay here and don't touch anything."

Avoka ushered Link to his room. "I'll try to be nice to them for you, okay? So don't worry. No knife-threatening unless you're there to supervise, I promise," he said. "Take your time to get your words back and, er, take deep breaths?" He closed the door so Link could have quiet.

Link gave a weak snort at Avoka's attempt at comfort. His friend did his best.

He set his great-uncle's earrings on his nightstand and then opened the locket. Within lay the same portrait Mama Kappi wore, a picture his grandmother and her twin brother with their husbands. Link's father and uncle were in the picture, too—born back-to-back and utterly inseparable. So many of the people in that picture were gone now, thanks to the Yiga.

Link closed the locket, wrapped both hands around it, and laid down with it hugged close. He'd call his grandmother to tell her the news once he had words again. In the meantime, he could trust Avoka to tell him anything he'd missed.

"'Arry! Is that really you?"

Harry stared at the man taking up half of Link's small dining room table. Hagrid was significantly thinner than the last time Harry had seen him, his bushy hair and beard trimmed a bit closer than before and a steel cane set for his unusual height leaning against his side. He was alive, though! He was okay! Harry hadn't had any idea what had happened to the groundskeeper after Vaati had chucked the castle across worlds. There had been a very real and scary likelihood of Hagrid's hut winding up in the middle of Lake Hylia with its occupants still inside.

Hagrid stood up with the help of his cane and the Harrys rushed forward to hug him. "I'm so glad yer all okay," Hagrid said, patting them with one hand. "We've 'ardly seen each other out o' class all year, but I've heard yeh've been up ter all kinds o' trouble. Yeh bin stayin' safe out 'ere? Yeh have a good place ter be?"

Harry pulled back to look up at him. "The whole castle is here, Hagrid," he said urgently. "All of Hogsmeade, too, I think. And some of the Ravenclaws—they're over in the Lost Woods! It's this big, erm, fairy forest. Worse than the Forbidden Forest, for different reasons. We think they're okay, though."

"They're all here?!" Hagrid asked hoarsely. "Merlin, it's worse'n I thought! Here I was thinkin' I was all alone in this place with Fang—not great, but better'n everyone bein' thrown to wherever this is!"

"You're in a country called Hyrule in a dimension called the Light World. Think of it like the brighter flip-side of our Earth," Blue said. "They have different peoples, different magic, and different landmarks, but things line up on occasion. All of us and Link, for example." He gestured toward his face.

"Ah, righ'. I thought tha' was real strange, him lookin' like you. An' that friend o' his—the eyes are a mite different, but I swear he's a dead ringer for Draco Malfoy!"

"Yeah, that's another one of those things that lined up," Red said. He looked around. "Where did Malfoy get off to, anyway?"

Harry leaned back through the kitchen door to see Malfoy pressed up against the wall to eavesdrop. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Why would I want to talk to that oaf? He must want my head on a platter, and there's nothing out here to stop him!" Malfoy hissed. "I tried to ruin the man! And granted, he oughtn't be a teacher if he thinks hippogriffs are appropriate as a first lesson for third-years, but the fact still stands!"

"He isn't like that, Malfoy. Sure, I don't think he likes you and your dad much, but he doesn't want you dead," Harry said with exasperation. "Besides, if you'd just admit you messed up by ignoring his instructions, he'd probably forgive you pretty quick."

"All I said was one wrong thing and that beast tried to kill me!"

"Yeah, you insulted the horse-bird version of you and Buckbeak acted like Hagrid said he would," Harry said. "Imagine doing the opposite of Snape's instructions in class, then blaming your potion for blowing up in your face and trying to get Snape fired for assigning the potion. That's what you sound like." Speaking of Buckbeak, he wondered where the hippogriff had gotten off to. Was he a free bird now, wandering the wilds of Hyrule and eating his fill of unsuspecting wildlife? Or was he trotting about the Forbidden Forest back home and doing essentially the same thing? Harry had a feeling the hippogriff would survive just fine no matter where he wound up.

"But Professor Snape is competent," Malfoy argued.

"So is Hagrid. He told you not to piss off the bird, didn't he?" Harry countered. "Besides, it's just an apology. Do you seriously think that you, a half-reformed school bully, have never done anything wrong before?"

Malfoy sneered. Harry had spent enough time around him this year to recognize it as defensive. Weird, that he was getting a feel for Malfoy's shades of mean in the same way he could gauge the shade of pink in Ron's ears when his friend lost his temper. "I'm nothing so boorish as a 'bully'," the blond sniffed. "I'm just fundamentally better than you."

Sighing, Harry straightened and returned to the kitchen. "Red, I'm tapping you in." He jerked his chin toward the pale, nervous face peeking around the corner. "He's being a git again."

Red nodded. "I'm on it." He stepped out of the kitchen and started a quiet conversation with the Slytherin.

Hagrid frowned over their heads. "Yer with him?" he asked in surprise. "Did his father blackmail yeh with somethin'? D'yeh need help?"

They were valid questions, if one had no idea what had been going on with Malfoy that year. The Slytherin had started it off as a perfectly horrible prick with a sadistic love of ruining everything for everyone else. Now, he was just kind of lost and pitiful with maybe a third of his mean streak left. Harry found it a lot easier to brush off the nastier stuff that Malfoy said because he now knew the boy wasn't as confident as he wanted to seem and there were giant swathes of things that Malfoy genuinely didn't understand. Malfoy had never been taught how to have proper manners or apologize when he was wrong. Like Dudley, he'd been raised to be awful to everyone his parents said was beneath him, and now he was stuck living as someone his parents had told him was worse than a "Mudblood". In a way, the Slytherin was just as new to his current situation as Harry had been when he'd learned he was a wizard. So long as Malfoy was honestly trying to figure things out, Harry didn't mind serving as the Ron Weasley to his Harry Potter. Call it kindness or call it pity, but Harry wanted the posh jerk to know he had someone on his side in case his parents turned him out. Harry knew firsthand how terrifying the possibility of being left on the street was.

"Nah, he's alright," he told Hagrid. "You know, for him."

"Malfoy's been doing a lot of learning this year," Yellow added. "In fact, if he weren't getting nicer, he would have run in here to gloat or something."

"Why's he with yeh, though? In fact, why aren't all o' yeh at the castle, if it's here? Why're yeh dressed like that?" Hagrid scrutinized their Goron clothes, which made them look like little medieval workmen. "Yeh haven't had ter find jobs, have yeh? Yer only students."

"Oh, no, we just needed these to, er…" If Hagrid was worried now, what would he think if he knew the Harrys had just fought a three-headed dragon multiple times the size of Fluffy? In the heart of a live, erupting volcano, no less?

"We were on a construction site with a dress code, so they had us wear these outfits for our safety," Blue said. "We were just using our magic to help out. Most people around here don't have any."

"Really?" Hagrid asked in surprise. "Huh. The kids livin' 'ere—Link and Gaebora—and that grumpy 'un over there, Avoka, all have some kind o' hedge-witch magic," Hagrid said with a nod toward the surly Sheikah watching them from the corner. "I figgered it just worked a mite different for these folks."

Harry stood straighter and looked over at Avoka. Link having magic was kind of what he'd expected, if the boy was dimensionally related to Harry, but he hadn't thought the loud kid from the market would have it. Harry had a hard time connecting the flash and sparkle of magic with whatever covert activities a masked ninja would get up to. What kind of sneaky spells would a ninja find useful? Door-unlocking charms?

"Can we finally talk now?" Avoka complained now that he had someone's attention on him. "I did the nice thing and let you all have your reunion. Now can you explain to me why a bunch of face-stealers showed up, gave my friend family artifacts that literally no one should have been able to retrieve, and wound up in Hyrule in the first place? Also, what was that about slaying a Gleeok earlier? I must have heard wrong."

"No, you heard right," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. "We can explain, but, erm…do you have an hour or two?"

The boy raised a gray eyebrow and pushed himself away from the wall. "Learning what you foreigners are doing here and what's happening to Hyrule is Royal Guard business. If my boss needs me back at the castle, I'll be furthering my apprenticeship here."

They sat around the table. Hagrid still took up one side because he needed to sit and he was just that big. Red and Yellow stood on either side of him, while Malfoy was presumably listening in from the front room. Harry and Avoka sat with their chairs turned toward each other on the other side, with Blue standing nearby to translate for Red and Hagrid.

"Okay." Harry braced his hands on his thighs. "First things first: we aren't face-stealers. As far as we can tell, we're another version of your friend from the dimension on the other side of this one. Not an exact copy—more of an echo, or a rhyme. We weren't expecting you and Malfoy to look alike, but you could be dimensional doubles, too. All we know for sure is that there's a Light World and a Dark World, and we're from the Dark World. It used to be called Lorule, but something must have happened to that place, because no one's ever heard of it now. Our dimension and the Light World don't line up as much as they used to."

Avoka's scarlet eyes were already as round as coins, which didn't bode well for the rest of this conversation. "You're from the Dark World. As in, the boogeyman country from heroic legend. That one?" he asked, his voice steadily rising in pitch. Like Malfoy, he had an impressive amount of higher range. "All of you mages are from there?"

"It's not as scary as it sounds in the stories," Harry reassured him. "Well…horrible things probably happen there more often than they do here, but there are a lot of good things, too. I mean, Hagrid's from there and he's one of the nicest people we know."

When Blue translated, Hagrid blushed and said, "Aww, that's sweet o' yeh, Harry."

"So, let's assume you're not lying and you're from another planet. How did you get here? How do you go back?" Avoka asked.

"Well, how we got here is kind of complicated. If you've heard of this bloke named 'Vaati'…" Harry explained in order how and why the Four Sword had wound up in the Dark World, how he'd found it, what the sword did, what Vaati had done back home, what Vaati was currently up to (according to their best guess), and what the Harrys were doing to get strong enough to stop him.

Hagrid's eyes had grown wider and wider and his posture had kept sagging more precariously until Avoka had ushered the overwhelmed, still-recovering man to a guest room to rest. Avoka had his head in his hands before Harry had finished his explanation. "Madness. Just bonkers. I know my mind spins conspiracies all the time, but this is beyond anything I'd ever come up with," the boy moaned. "Vaati and the Four Sword and alternate worlds…This is—this is legend. It's more than any Champion story. This is heroic myth happening around me. I always thought it would be inspiring to see one in motion. Instead, I just want the goddesses to whisk me off to their realm beyond time so I can avoid the train wreck." He slumped over the table. "This sucks."

The Harrys who could understand him winced in sympathy. "Yes, is scary," Yellow said in his limited Hylian. "Danger happen before at school. But not so big."

"Do you get kidnapped and held hostage, too?" Avoka asked tiredly. "Link's one of the easier members of his family to capture and use as leverage, so he keeps getting targeted by the Yiga—Ganon-worshipping evil Sheikah, you could call them. They want the Bluesmiths' technology for their 'cause'. That cause being to resurrect Ganondorf somehow. The Hero of Winds stuck a sword in his head for very good reasons that anyone with half a brain could agree upon, and yet the Yiga think his soggy ReDead ought to rule New Hyrule." He sighed. "It's deeply stupid, but it's gotten people killed. Largely through incompetence on the idiot cultists' part."

"We don't get kidnapped, but one of our teachers two years ago was possessed by the soul of the mass-murderer who killed our parents, and then last year we had to fight that murderer's ghost again, but this time he had a hostage and a giant snake that killed you if you looked it in the eye. He was sucking the life out of my friend's sister to come back to life again, too," Harry said. "It's really lucky the basilisk he set loose just wound up Petrifying people around the school instead of killing them."

"Well, damn. Sign me up for a kidnapping case anytime. At least Link is good at freeing himself." He looked off to the side. "Did your super-ears catch any of that? These guys have lives even crazier than yours!"

Link stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing the locket Yellow had brought back from the foundry. "That's not hard," he said with a shy, crooked-toothed smile not unlike Harry's. "I'm just Link. Boring."

If not for the fact that Harry had gotten used to other people who had his voice, he would have been surprised to hear it used so differently. Link spoke more softly than Harry, a few notes lower in his register. There was a slowed-down, steady rhythm to it, as if each syllable were carefully slotted into place and pushed out one by one.

Beyond their voices, Harry was fascinated by the physical similarities and differences. Link's eyes were a startling shade of aqua and his wild, shaggy hair was a peculiar yellow-green. His brown complexion was darker than Harry's, a deep tan marking his forehead, cheeks, and the topsides of his muscular arms. He was taller than Harry by at least fifteen centimeters, with broader, brawnier shoulders and a face whose square angles were softened by baby fat.

Hair and eye color aside, Link looked like what Harry should have been. He was strong, tall, fed properly, and loved enough for there to be pictures of him on the walls. Link had family instead of a famous scar on his forehead and relatives who wished he'd died with his parents. Harry couldn't help being envious.

It was a little odd that Link seemed to be wearing pink girl's clothes over his boyish ox tunic, complete with lace trim on the collar and cap sleeves of his dress/vest and two lines of ruffles around the bottom of his skirt, but Harry thought that just counted as another sign of a better life. For instance, Harry liked purple and pink; the colors were bright and eye-catching in the clothing shops he'd been dragged past while growing up, reminiscent of the sweets his cousin often got. Back when chores had still been a shared activity between Harry and his aunt, though, Petunia had developed a habit of "accidentally" spilling bleach on any cuts and colors she didn't approve of before putting his clothes in the wash. He'd been trained to pick only the "right" clothes out of the charity bin after a few doses of that unpleasant lesson. Link, meanwhile, could apparently wear whatever he wanted without fear of punishment. Those were expensive girl clothes he had on, too. Was that genuine silk and handmade lace? How rich was this kid?

"You're really me but better, aren't you?" Harry said, a thought he hadn't meant to voice. Crap. He could play that off, right?

Link tilted his head to one side, the motion looking distinctly birdlike in combination with his round, curious eyes. He glanced down himself and then stared at Harry. "…How?"

"I don't get it, either," Avoka said. "You're an ultra-powerful mage from a world full of mages and you've been chosen by destiny to wield the Four Sword and save two kingdoms. Sure, your life might be harder—destinies do that—but that doesn't make you worse."

"Er, right," Harry said quickly, looking away. His eyes caught on one of the photos mounted on the wall, a blue-tinted, frozen Muggle snapshot of Link and a huge, muscular woman who looked a lot like him posing proudly next to an articulated metal arm mounted on a sturdy rack. They wore matching soot-stained leather aprons and purple-lensed goggles whose metal nose protectors made their messy-haired wearers resemble ruffled owls. The happiness radiating from the picture made his chest pang.

"We do need your help, though," Blue said. "We've heard from a 'friend' that Link is good at magic swords?"

The duo gave him funny looks, Link's more amused and Avoka's closer to suspicious. "They told you that Link, an apprentice to the Mad Owl, is good at weapons enchantment?" Avoka said. "I mean, they're right, but it's a bit like going up to an apple tree to pick its leaves. The Bluesmith Forge isn't known for its youngest apprentice."

Harry took out the red orb he'd retrieved in the temple. Again, it set his ears to itching for some reason. "This rock is connected to our sword," he said. "It needs to be added into it…I think. To be honest, I'm not sure how that would work."

Upon seeing the magical stone, Link started humming and rocking on his feet to a steady tempo. His eyes seemed magnetized to the ancient artifact.

Blue gestured between Link and Avoka. "Are you—Is he okay?"

"It means he can feel its magic really well," Avoka explained. "Right?" Link nodded and kept humming. "Part of his talent lets him hear the songs of things—the magical songs, that is. He can imagine what certain enchantments would sound like, too. It usually takes him a lot of fine-tuning to match his written music to what he feels, but it seems like that rock's magic is loud and clear enough for him to know exactly what makes it tick." He nodded toward the orb. "If that's the Four Sword you've got, I'm guessing this is the power crystal of one of the Sacred Maidens who once guarded it?"

"Erm, yeah, that's exactly what it is," Harry stammered. The story of the Four Sword was one of the oldest and least known in Hyrule, easily overshadowed by tales of the Master Sword. The fact that this random Sheikah kid knew specifics about its legend, including the fact that the Maidens hadn't just been kidnapped damsels, was rather jarring. "How did you know?"

"I've studied firsthand royal accounts of past Heroes, which is more boring than it sounds. The warriors and their quests are interesting enough, but usually the princes and princesses of their eras were the ones recording everything in diaries and such. Royals are taught to write in just the dullest way," Avoka said, which made Link stop humming and stare at him like he'd grown a second head. The Sheikah paled upon catching his expression. "And I've read those accounts because I'm training to be a Royal Guardsman!" he squeaked. "We work with modern Champions sometimes, remember? Learning from history is always the best policy!"

Harry, Blue, and Yellow studied the Sheikah with greater interest. Red, unable to follow the conversation, was busy counting the kitchen tiles. Was it unusual for a Royal Guardsman to be allowed to read royal writings about things despite working closely with the ruling family? And what was Avoka's connection to that woman who'd dragged him off in town? If the tall Sheikah lady was somehow related to various castle protectors in the Four Sword's memory, it made sense that Avoka knew her, but Harry felt there was something more there. Avoka was connected to Link, after all, and Harry was reasonably sure that his dimensional double would wind up facing his own dose of destiny one of these days.

Link shuffled forward, staring at the power crystal. He reached out and made grabby hands. "Can I see?" he asked eagerly.

"Oh, sure." Harry handed him the rock, then took off his sword and passed it over by the straps. "I'll have to stay close by while you do…whatever, because the Four Sword reappears on me when I get too far away. It's connected to my magic."

Link aimed one pointed ear at Harry, then the sword. "It is! Haven't heard that before."

"Also, erm, what should I pay you?"

Blue clapped a hand to his forehead and Malfoy leaned around the doorway to give him an exasperated look. Upon noticing that Hagrid was gone, the Slytherin charged into the dining room. "If someone doesn't tell you a price, don't ask for one!" Malfoy scolded. "Why would you pay for what could be free?"

Avoka put his hands on his hips. "If he didn't ask for a price, I would've. Link's just too nice to know what his work is worth." He held out a hand to stop Link, who was creeping toward a side door in the kitchen. "Hold on, I'm trying to get you some project funding here."

Link rolled his eyes, lifted up the big locket around his neck, and waved it around.

"Oh, right." The Sheikah's expression was hard to read behind his mask, but Harry thought he might have blushed. "Carry on, then."

Link happily rushed to the kitchen side door. Harry hustled to follow him before the Four Sword could teleport out of the Hylian's hand.

Through the door lay a workroom with heavy steel, iron, and stala equipment that reminded Harry of the foundry. He had zero idea what most of the Bluestone-powered machinery was meant for, but a lot of it looked really complicated and specific. Along the wall facing the outside of the house lay large open windows and a massive set of doors closed by a heavy wooden bolt. Rather than glass, the windows were covered by magical force-fields generated by turquoise Bluestone linings. Rain splashed against the faintly translucent blue film, while cold winds were allowed to blow in and mingle with the hot, stifling air in the workroom. The windows' magical circuits, like those of everything else in the room, could be traced along the walls back to a polished stone and stala forge burning with blue fire. Blue lines pulsed along its surface like a slow heartbeat and a robust chimney wicked away the worst of its heat. Along the same wall as that forge lay a more conventional-looking steel one full of coals.

Harry looked around for something that both looked like a chair and out-of-the-way. He sat down on a bench at a sturdy metal table. "You have a Blue Flame generator powering your house? Is it for blacksmithing stuff, too?" he asked.

"Only for stala and Bluestone. Too hot for most materials," Link said. "The fire's magic helps new spells, too. But messes up pre-enchanted stuff. Will use normal fire."

Harry nodded. Messing up the Four Sword's dimensionally-rattled magic would be bad.

Link went to a closet in the corner and exchanged his trailing vest and knee-length skirt for a heavy leather apron that he tied over his tunic and leggings. His fingerless gloves were replaced with thick leather work gloves that went past his elbows and he switched out his sandals for sturdy boots. From an upper shelf, he retrieved two sets of purple-lensed, beaked metal goggles attached to leather caps with chin straps. He pulled on one set, immediately making himself look like a mad scientist, and held the other out to Harry when he walked back over.

"Safety," he advised.

Harry took off his glasses to put the goggles on and was surprised to find that the domed lenses worked much like the Lenses of Truth. They were clear from the inside and, while they didn't make his vision completely free of short-sighted fuzz, they came close. He watched with interest as Link did blacksmithing things. Metalworking was one of those careers that Harry had never really thought about other than "wow, those blokes must be strong", but it was neat to watch Link stoke the forge with bellows and iron pokey things, lay out tools, stick the Four Sword in to heat up, and generally seem to know what he was doing with the room's intimidating industrial hardware.

When he pulled the sword off the fire, Link started singing. Harry's soul hummed like a plucked string. He was dimly aware of sitting perfectly straight, every hair on his body bristling as if electrified. His mind was full of nothing but the sound of magic, and everything else ceased to matter.

Avoka stared down the stranger wearing a version of his face with rounder, more Hylian eyes and all the same hard angles of his own, stoically pretending it didn't make his skin crawl. Avoka could see his grandmother in this guy's features. Goddesses, this was so wrong! It was one thing for Link to have several doubles, because he was just the kind of unsuspecting trouble-magnet who would have that happen to him. Avoka, though, had always had to fight tooth and nail for the merest glimpse of something other than the constant, claustrophobic monotony he'd been born to suffer through. He wasn't someone that interesting things happened to; he had to make them happen.

What was doubly bizarre—other than the fact that this foreigner was somehow both human and related to a completely incompatible species—was that he was male.

Avoka knew what his own body looked like; no matter what direction he was criticizing it from, there was always something too rugged or delicate or soft or square about him. He had a very clear mental map of his physical quirks, and this kid had different ones. The foreigner's shoulders were a little wider, his torso a little longer, his feet a little bigger, his hands a little knobbier. They both had small apples in their throats, but Avoka's had been stuck at the same size since he'd semi-accidentally created it three years before and Malfoy's was destined to become the real deal as puberty went on. As far as Avoka could tell, his double was what he would have looked like as a full-time, born-that-way boy.

He ground his teeth. How dare this kid just get to be that way? And sure, if Avoka had been born like that, he would have just had to wage his secret battle against his aunt in a different direction, but still! After all the mental and physical strife he'd had to go through to reach his current position—which wasn't even what he wanted, but as close as Impa could get him without dooming them both—here he was, staring down a kid who'd gotten all of that freedom for nothing but the price of BEING BORN!

This boy got to adventure! He could wear the clothes he wanted and talk how he wanted and go where he wanted! Meanwhile, Avoka couldn't step outside the castle without either a senior Royal Guardsman tailing him half the time or an embarrassing line of glowering soldiers and simpering servants piling into places after him. And if he got caught outside without permission, he'd be locked in his room for a week!

He was so infuriated by this twisted echo's existence that he could have gnawed through Link's dining room table and spit out the nails. This was so deeply unfair. He hated this so much, oooh—

But he had self-control. Avoka slid his eyes to the side, away from the kid that he deserved to be, and took minutely deeper breaths as he discreetly fought down the urge to explode. Self-control was among the earliest and most important lessons he'd learned as a small child. He was always talked down to, always told what he would be doing, and never listened to. Early on, he'd learned that if he kicked up a fuss about it, he'd be locked in his room until he was quiet and compliant again. Avoka had become accustomed to politely arguing for the rights to a small measure of his own personhood on a daily basis, and the knocks and insults his fellow Royal Guard trainees pelted him with were almost background noise now. He'd even managed not to punch Koume at last month's big get-together after the smirking demon had lit the trailing edge of his sleeve on fire when no one had been looking. Sure, he could handle keeping watch on this disturbing "what-if" of himself. Piece of cake.

But then the boy decided to open his mouth.

Crossing his arms, giving Avoka a scornful once-over that was all too reminiscent of the Demon Twins, the foreigner drawled, "So that's what I'd look like if I didn't know how to dress."

His voice sounded painfully similar to Avoka's hard-won tenor, rasp and all. Because oh, right, he'd been born with that, too! Easy as you please! Avoka let out a controlled breath through his nose. Not fair.

"I've never seen a sillier set of trousers," the boy went on with airy condescension, oblivious to Avoka's seething, "and why do you wear socks that make it look as though you've got hooves? With that hair, one would think you were doing your best impression of a horse."

Avoka pressed his lips hard enough together to make them numb. Dammit, he shouldn't have promised Link he'd be well-behaved. His magic sparked at his fingertips, yearning for action.

"My hair is long out of family tradition and ponytails are a common hairstyle, you prat. What, never seen one before?" he said, a more polite version of what had gone through his head. After a year of argument, he'd gotten permission to trim his hair at the small of his back, which was a perfectly fine length, thank you. He'd just wanted to stop accidentally sitting on it. "Why are you dressed like my friend's grandmother and wearing your shoes in someone's house? You look like you were raised by feral, potion-brewing crones," he riposted. "And who hasn't seen tabi before? Do you expect a Royal Guardsman to go around barefoot in uniform? What kind of uncultured savage are you?"

Malfoy puffed up with fury, his faintly luminous eyes flaring. His upper lip curled to show a hint of unintimidating human teeth. Pfft, he didn't even have his tusks yet, if he had enough Flying Zora blood in him to ever grow them. "You're only a servant. Someone like you doesn't get to talk to me that way," he spat. "I'm practically royalty! Do you know how far back my family goes? What are you, other than a glorified page? Do you even have a pedigree?"

A toothy grin of spiteful delight spread under Avoka's mask. Though he was a ticking time bomb of scandal in more ways than one, this was the one arena in which he had almost anyone in the world beaten. He'd still be learning about both sides of his heritage when he was old and gray because they were just that many notable people to remember. The names of his ancestors were still on people's lips millennia after their deaths.

He stepped right up close to Malfoy, making the boy lean back with a defensive sneer. The foreigner's magic and potential Zora strength didn't faze him. This kid was clearly a talker, not a fighter. Though he looked more similar to Avoka than Link did to his mousy counterparts, his nature was different. This boy was gentler and more complacent, lacking the darkness and paranoia that had dogged Avoka's thoughts for as long as he could remember. Avoka could easily read the softness in those yellow-green eyes despite the harsh bite of their owner's words; this was a warped reflection of himself he was looking at, after all.

"In this country, you are nothing," Avoka said, smooth and poisonous. It was a positively milk-curdling tone of voice that he'd learned from Kotake, who'd used it to make him cry on several occasions. "You have no pedigree, as far as anyone in Hyrule is concerned. The humblest street-sweeper has a higher status than you here, so watch your tongue."

The boy sucked in a small, hurt breath and retreated a half-step back. A look of fearful vulnerability flashed across his face before he shuttered it behind icy disdain. Avoka could say one thing for this stuck-up arse; he certainly had a noble upbringing. The kid had been taught to put on a different style of façade than the one trained into most young aristocrats on the mainland, but the method was unmistakable.

Malfoy's eyes darted to the side, where his friends were sitting at the table. What had begun as a look for aid became an open-mouthed stare. "Potter?" he gasped.

Avoka cast the table a sideways glance, then repeated Malfoy's double-take. The color-coded boys were now glowing in the hues they were named for. They sat up arrow-straight with blank faces as light streamed from their eyes, the stripe in their hair, and the gem in each of their swords. Avoka and Malfoy had been so occupied with sizing one another up that they hadn't noticed the kitchen being tinged in primary colors.

He looked to the workroom door and barely restrained himself from running to it. Though he desperately wanted to know what on earth was going on in there, he'd learned not to walk into the middle of Link's spellcasting without warning.

Avoka caught Malfoy by the back of his robes when the foreigner started toward the door. "Maybe magic works differently where you're from, but around here you don't interrupt a spell," he said sharply.

"I don't know what kind of magic your friend thinks he's doing, but this isn't normal!" Malfoy snapped, flinging a hand toward his glowing compatriots. "What the hell is going on?!"

"I don't know, either!" Avoka yelled back. He hated that it sounded like he was shouting at himself. "Just plant your arse somewhere and we'll figure it out when Link's done!" He pushed Malfoy toward the table.

Now more occupied by worry than the urge to pick a fight, the belligerent boy obediently dropped down next to the red-glowing mini-copy of Link. Avoka leaned against the countertop. They both cast looks toward the workroom door, around which a greenish light was seeping through. What manner of magic was going on in there?

Notes:

-How Link's "hearing magic" thing works: everything in both dimensions of this fic has a certain amount of energy in it that keeps it stable in existence. Magic and mundane items all have energy holding them together, and if that magic is drained or destroyed, then that object crumbles into dust. The Light World's music-based enchanting adds to the magic already in an object by using that object's material as a base, so there are musical words for referring to things like stone, wood, leather, and so on in a long-form Light World spell. Link hears and has trained to understand those musical words, so he kind of lives in his own private Pokemon dimension where he can hear the dining room table chanting what it's made out of. If a spell is laid on top of something or someone has a magical talent, he can hear that, too.

-The wrongness Link hears in Green's magic is the Horcrux rooted in his scar. That bit of Dark World magic didn't get multiplied across the Harrys by the Four Sword.

-Ganondorf is not actually dead in this fic-verse. The Official(tm) story in Hyrule is that the Hero of Winds slayed him for good, but he's actually just been forced to stay put at the bottom of the sea with his spirit trapped in a body of stone. That's why New Hyrule hasn't had to deal with any reincarnations of him.

-I've just realized that readers on FFNet don't have the benefit of seeing my Ao3 tags, so I'll clarify certain character details touched on in this chapter. This incarnation of Link is autistic in a way that significantly affects his speech. He is also agender, which is why I haven't been referring to him as a boy. Avoka is bigender (boy-or-girl), thus why he thought of Draco as a "full-time" boy. These traits are derived from common fanon for some of Link's many incarnations and my own headcanon for OoT's Sheik respectively. None of this info is super vital, since this story is mainly focused on HP canon characters. I'm only clarifying because the medieval and no-Internet 90s kids narrating most of this fic won't necessarily be using modern or informed terminology. I'm someone who falls under a lot of adjectives that I had to blindly figure out growing up, so I figured I might as well put these 90s kids through the full 90s Kid experience lol.

-Explanations of body types between dimensional doubles: Draco is a soft, nerdy string bean. He swims sometimes for exercise, but he's quite unathletic despite the super-strength his Zora blood gives him. Avoka weighs as much as Draco despite being a couple of inches shorter because he has some muscle on him. Wiry muscle, sure, but his combat training has made him stronger than he looks. The Harrys are now fitter than most kids their age, but have to contend against a chronically malnourished upbringing. Link is both one quarter Gerudo and possessed of a kind of family magic (to be explained later) that makes him Stronk, so he's a little tall and built like a truck for his age. For those who don't feel like looking up the art, Link is 5'3"/160cm and 125lbs/56.7kg, Draco is 5'1"/155cm and 95lbs/43kg, Avoka is 4'11"/150cm and 95lbs/43kg, and Harry is 4'9"/145cm and 82lbs/37kg (a healthy gain of 6lbs since Madam Pomfrey checked him! :D).

-Just in case any readers have already figured a certain thing out because I am plagued with Perpetual Info-Dumping Syndrome despite my attempts at subtlety, keep in mind that the Dark World's version of the Triforce is a fine dust sprinkled across the entire world. No Dark World mage has an entire third of the Triforce and all the accompanying destiny baggage, no matter who their Light World counterpart is. Not even Harry, who has his own unique destiny baggage to deal with after this year.