Chapter Text
Ron kept a close eye on Hermione as his friend struggled against her own deep respect for authority figures. She was holding her chin up like she’d jammed a broom handle under it, shaking with nerves as they waited outside of Dumbledore’s office. She still had that determined fire in her eyes, though.
A yawn crept up Ron’s throat, and he took his time in letting it out. He’d gotten up at a ridiculous hour the previous day for Hermione’s field trip, spent a good chunk of his magic yesterday fighting fires and monsters, and then gotten back to the castle late last night. His muscles ached, his magic felt hollow and strange, and his entire being was pleading with him to go back to bed. All in all, he was too exhausted to be nervous. He wished he could have gotten this talking-to over with yesterday, like Luna, Parvati, and Padma. That would have meant following orders and not sticking around to help Castle Town, though, and Ron wouldn’t have stood for that.
“Remember, just let me do the talking,” said Ravenclaw’s Head Girl, who stood beside them on the landing. She had also stayed out late, coordinating with the adults of Hogsmeade to help around Castle Town after she’d sent Lovegood and the Patil sisters home. Despite the bags under her eyes, she looked far too alert for the early hour, standing as straight as a young Auror with her arms neatly folded behind her back and her shiny badge pinned perfectly straight to her robes. “I said I’d take responsibility for this, and I keep my promises.”
She said that, but Ron doubted that Dumbledore would believe her if she said this outing was entirely her idea. Hermione had been kicking up a considerable fuss over the teachers’ paranoia about letting students out, and Dumbledore had been talking to her quite a lot this year due to her friendship with Queen Zelda and her knack for faithfully repeating large amounts of information. A plan like this one had Hermione’s signature all over it, and Dumbledore would know it.
‘It’s nice of Kajiwara to offer to take the fall, though,’ Ron thought. For an older student, and a Head Girl at that, he supposed she was pretty cool. Percy could stand to take a leaf out of her book.
The door to Dumbledore’s office jerked open, making him blink in tired surprise. Malfoy stood there, with a stone-faced Snape looming at his back. “Weasley? What are you—Granger? And a Head Girl?” He looked around at the three students on the landing in confusion.
Snape put a pale, possessive hand on his shoulder. “No need to associate with these troublemakers, Draco,” he said, giving the boy a nudge forward. “We have our own business to attend to.”
Malfoy’s posture sagged, a look of absolute misery flickering across his face, before he drew himself up and expertly hitched on an air of aristocratic indifference. If not for the expression he’d let slip just a moment ago, Ron wouldn’t have known the boy was bothered at all. “Of course, Professor,” he droned obediently. As he passed, Snape’s hand still gripping his shoulder, he reached into his pocket and flicked a slip of paper out of it. The neatly folded square landed near Ron’s feet.
Ron’s eyebrows went up. He knew he hadn’t been seeing much of Malfoy lately, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Snape might have been the one enforcing the separation. It made sense, though, given how protective the man was of his favorite Snake. Just how close did Snape think Malfoy was to Harry, and Ron and Hermione by extension?
If you asked Ron, a professor keeping a student isolated from other students solely out of personal dislike for those students ought to go against some sort of school rule. That certainly sounded rather shady, didn’t it? But then again, Snape had been getting away with terrorizing his classes and singling out students for ages now, so maybe Dumbledore knew how he was treating Malfoy and didn’t care.
What was Snape’s deal, anyway? Though Ron and Hermione were known trouble-magnets and not quite friends to Malfoy, they were certainly safer company for a half-breed pureblood than most of his fellow Slytherins; one would think the Head of Slytherin House would understand that. Ron didn’t think the man was stupid, even if he thought Snape was a terrible teacher, so what giant chip on his shoulder kept making him act like this?
Once Snape had disappeared down the spiral stairs, Ron snatched up Malfoy’s note and tucked it in his pocket. He could see Professor Dumbledore through the open doorway of his office, focused on some piece of paperwork his quill was waggling across. Hopefully, he’d missed that little exchange.
“Do come in,” Dumbledore called out, waving them over. Fawkes, currently a scruffy fledgling gripping a towel-wrapped perch on the Headmaster’s desk, produced a high-pitched trill that washed pleasantly over Ron’s nerves.
They entered the office, Kajiwara striding ahead to take the lead. The girl came to a sharp halt in front of the Headmaster’s desk, standing so stiff and straight that it looked almost painful.
“I take full responsibility for this field trip and everything that happened during it,” she proclaimed. “I made a decision that I thought—I believed would demonstrate how foolish and needlessly harmful the school’s current policy of keeping everyone locked inside is.”
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak, but Kajiwara ploughed on, “Despite what happened, I still think there were benefits to our trip. We wouldn’t have known to warn the school if we hadn’t been at the right place at the right time to get the information we did, and we wouldn’t have been able to show our people’s usefulness to Hyrule if we’d cowered away from the Muggles while they fought fires with nothing but plain water.”
Ron’s estimation of the girl’s character went up further. While she didn’t seem to have a sneaky or subtle bone in her body, her straightforwardness made for a nice shield to duck behind in a situation like this.
Dumbledore folded his hands together on top of his desk. His blue gaze was frighteningly serious, bereft of its usual sparkle. Those cold, sharp blue eyes flicked in Hermione’s direction as he asked, “Do you truly view the school’s policies, meant to maintain the safety of all its students, not merely the most capable in combat, to be so oppressive that you were inspired to break those rules so flagrantly? Are you claiming that you, Head Girl of Ravenclaw, recruited far younger and more vulnerable students to assist you in this show of rebellion, knowing that all of you would be caught and punished?”
Kajiwara wavered, but didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” she proclaimed, her voice only cracking slightly. “The school’s current stance of excessive caution is depriving students of their health, keeping them trapped on a tiny island in a lake that most of them don’t know how to swim in. It’s also depriving us students of a huge educational opportunity, hiding us away from an entire country of magic-knowledgeable and wizard-friendly Muggles. Some of the purebloods enrolled at this school don’t even think of Muggles or sapient non-humans as people, Professor.”
Kajiwara crossed her arms. “There are also lots of job opportunities in town to keep us students occupied while classes are still getting set back up—even the younger kids, since Hylians start their kids in trade apprenticeships at age eleven instead of sending them off to a school like Hogwarts. And, with Hyrule’s capital still smoking in the middle and sporting a big hole in its defensive wall, we have an excellent opportunity to both allow the student body to learn things they otherwise never would and help the people of this country in a very PR-friendly way.”
She stared the Headmaster down, her gaze no less intense than his. “School policy has been changing to fit the circumstances, but not quickly enough. While you and the teachers have spent weeks struggling to wrap your minds around the concept of Hogwarts being visible to Muggle eyes, your students have been denied the educational and recreational opportunities that they and their families were promised. Doesn’t that alarm you, Headmaster?”
Hermione had stars in her eyes as she looked up at their Ravenclaw upperclassman. Ron would have clapped if Dumbledore weren’t right there. Kajiwara was definitely going to lose her Head Girl badge today, but holy hell, he wished he had the gall to tell off a professor like that! She’d even used some of the terms they liked to talk about, like “educational opportunity”!
Dumbledore looked shrewdly at Kajiwara, then Hermione, before letting out a quiet sigh and leaning back in his seat. Ron was happy to be left out of his scrutiny; nobody who knew his friends, especially Hermione, would ever mistake him for being anything but the dumb muscle in their schemes.
For an uncomfortable while, the only sounds in the office were Fawkes’s shuffles on his perch, the shifting robes of three fidgeting students, and the gentle snores of the portraits hung on the walls. The collection of strange paperweights that interrupted the bookshelves sat still and silent.
Then, there was a soft shussh of cloud-patterned silk as Dumbledore leaned back over his desk. “What you did was reckless and dangerous. Had you not received warning of yesterday’s attack, you very well could have lost your lives. You would have disappeared in the midst of another country’s disaster, a handful of unknown and foreign names among dozens, or hundreds of lives lost,” he pronounced gravely. Exhaustion seemed to pull at every sagging line of his aged skin. “We adults don’t wish to cage or limit you, children. In fact, the purpose of your professors is to do just the opposite!” He gave them an earnest look that bordered on desperate, the stress on his face belying the slight sparkle in his eyes. “We only wish to keep you safe and make certain that you return to your families happy, healthy, and more learned than before. Which means that, as harmless as you might find it to disappear out from under our noses, such a ‘prank’ is not half as entertaining on our end.”
His fingers were still interlocked on his desk. The man’s knuckles were white, the tendons in his hands straining despite their seemingly relaxed pose. One of his thumbs rubbed over the other—a nervous gesture, if Ron had ever seen one. He just wouldn’t have expected to see something like that from unflappable, whimsical Professor Dumbledore, of all people.
‘How dangerous does he think Hyrule is?’ Ron wondered. Though he wasn’t like Harry or Hermione, eager to throw himself into the jaws of danger for no good reason, he’d definitely done way more dangerous things than stand around a castle while a train ran into a mostly-evacuated area of the city below. What about this country freaked Dumbledore out more than, say, three first-years running into the Cerberus he was keeping (on purpose!) inside an easily-accessed part of the school? Or one of those first-years facing You-Know-Who himself? Had Harry just been considered too young at the time to get a talking-to like this?
In his experience with the Light World so far, which was quite a lot more experience than Dumbledore could boast, stuff from Hyrule had generally been safer than what he’d imagine the wizarding equivalent to be. There were a lot of things mages took for granted that were, in fact, often quite dangerous for children to do. Potions classes, for example. Or school-level Quidditch, Transfiguration, Herbology, Care for Magical Creatures—pretty much everything, he could imagine the terrible downsides of in his mother’s stressed, shrill voice. The Mandrakes he’d learned about in his second year could have killed someone, the things that lived in the Forbidden Forest could kill someone, falling from a broom during Quidditch practice could kill someone, and so on. The kind of magic he’d grown up with was often as silly as it was useful, but it also never held back; magic could go from harmless to devastatingly harmful in the blink of an eye, and not everything could be fixed as easily as it could be destroyed.
But Light World magic…even the most clearly ill-intended stuff was still holding a hand behind its back. The Moblins that had infested the school hadn’t killed anyone, and hadn’t even maimed any of the students too badly. The Phantoms and Floormasters had been outright nonlethal, more annoying than anything. None of the puzzles or traps, even the ones with rolling marbles or pitfalls, had resulted in anything worse than broken bones. The pointed sense of danger that wizardly magic could so easily conjure just wasn’t there.
Like, for instance, if Vaati wanted the people of Hyrule to sit still and let him rip up whatever bits of their world he thought looked nice, he could have just destroyed the capital city and let everyone fall into despair. He was the Wind Mage, wasn’t he? Why not call up a hurricane big and strong enough to wipe Castle Town off the map, conjure an army of monsters inside its walls to clear out the survivors, and let the country fall into panic? Even if the Hylian royal family had some kind of magic to protect them and their castle, that wouldn’t help the city. And if Vaati really hated the trains so bad, why didn’t he just conjure a big stone block into the middle of every line of tracks? One of those would be hard to move, wouldn’t take much magic to put there, and would handily smash any train that dared ignore his commands. It would certainly be more effective than halfheartedly hen-pecking at the tracks and attacking stations here and there. Ramming a train into Castle Town was the first clever thing that had been done on that front, and Ron doubted that had entirely been Vaati’s idea.
Maybe it was a true lack of evil that Ron kept picking up on. He was friends with someone who’d nearly been killed as a baby by his world’s biggest villain, after all, and the older brother of a sister who’d nearly been turned into a meat-puppet by a freaky memory-ghost of said villain. Vaati might have been more powerful, and more creative in some ways, but there was a roundabout air to his methods that seemed to be the theme with all of the dangerous things in the Light World. If Dark World magic was a sharp kitchen knife that could easily be turned to a dagger in someone’s heart, then Light World magic was a cricket bat that could be used to beat someone into the ground.
“You’re overreacting about a lot of this, you know.” The words spilled from his tired brain and fell out of his mouth before he could think too much about them. Ron startled at the sound of his own voice, then froze as all eyes went to him. Hermione was mildly surprised, while Kajiwara looked like she was silently willing his mouth to button shut. Dumbledore seemed shocked he’d spoken, like he’d forgotten Ron was there.
“Er, w-well, I, errr…” Ron floundered. He grabbed desperately for the train of thought he’d been riding before he’d derailed it by opening his stupid mouth. “I’ve done dangerous Dark World stuff, and I’ve done dangerous Light World stuff. I’ve been right in the thick of it next to Harry—and the Harrys—for the last three years. Even before all of this, he was the closest thing our world has to one of those ‘Hero’ guys in the beastie-book,” he said, silently praying that Dumbledore didn’t start badgering him for the specifics. “This world really is less dangerous than ours, even with the monsters. With Magic Rods, we’re basically as powerful as Ganondorf to all the people here. To them, we’re a whole school and village full of non-evil Ganondorfs with magic that breaks the rules of their world. There’s nothing as powerful as us here—no magic that matches ours except our own. That means that danger is different here.”
Ron stood taller, looking Dumbledore in the eye. “I’ve spoken to one of the Darkest spirits this place has, you know. The literal ‘Shadow of Hyrule’, who draws power from suffering and fear. And do you know what that oh-so-terrible spirit written about in Hyrule’s myths is like in person?” He scoffed, an imitation of Percy. “He’s a way more powerful, slightly more evil Peeves. That big, bad, Dark spirit doesn’t even want to kill people; he actually whines about being ordered to do it.” He crossed his arms. “I’m best friends with someone who nearly got murdered before he was even out of diapers by a man with a wand. Not a god, not a demon, not a spirit—a wizard. We’re the most dangerous thing about our world, Professor. The Light World doesn’t have anything like us. The only way for us to be in real danger around here is for us to do the barmy stuff the Harrys are doing, hunting down volcano spirits and mending holes in the world.”
Ron was glaring now, staring down the frail old man hiding behind his big desk. “We’re in the safest part of a friendly, Light country that could do a lot to help us if we just reached out a little more, and you’re wasting our position here because you’re scared of magic and Muggles you don’t understand,” he accused.
Dumbledore’s eyes widened slightly, and Ron knew he’d hit the nail on the head. It wasn’t like he’d said anything all that insightful; anyone who’d grown up among wizards knew how terrified and disdainful the magical public was of unfamiliar magics, less conventional casting methods, Muggles, and magical humanoids other than themselves. Honestly, it was a miracle the castle had kept its doors open to the Zoras whose lake they’d barged into. That was probably more due to the fact that it was unwise to piss off a race of big land-sharks who could shrug off most curses than because the staff at the school actually wanted them associating with the students.
“I’m not a nerd who knows everything, like you and Hermione, so I don’t understand all the complicated stuff you’re worried about. I’m damned good at chess, though, and I know what it looks like when someone’s ignoring a huge opening,” Ron continued, turning his words in a direction he knew would get the man’s attention. Dumbledore was a politician, and a famously good one; there was no way he’d never looked at other people or his own circumstances like they were pieces on a game board. “Instead of hiding here and waiting for Hyrule to poke bits of bread under the door, you could start moving a few pawns forward by gathering up as much of this place as you can before we get sent home. Or do you not want more people back in our world to be able to make really strong, easy healing potions or be able to put a rock on a stick and make a Magic Rod in the event of a wand-materials shortage? You’ve got the future of Britain’s wizards under your roof and a wide-open opportunity outside. What are you going to do about it, Professor?”
The silence that followed was positively thunderous. Once he’d gotten all the words out, Ron felt the mysterious wave of confidence he’d been riding crash into the shore and withdraw. He knew where all those words had come from—inside his head, obviously—but why the hell had he said them? He’d mouthed off to Dumbledore before, but not like that.
Maybe he ought to avoid talking to authority figures when he was tired.
There was still a tightness to Dumbledore’s eyes that boded ill, but the man leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard thoughtfully. It lowered his intensity level somewhat, for which Ron was grateful. Maybe he’d only get one month of detentions, instead of three.
Hermione was grinning at him. “That was so cool!” she mouthed, lightly elbowing him.
Ron grimaced. “I messed up,” he mouthed back.
She shrugged. Ron supposed she had a good point there. They already had one foot in a gnome’s burrow as it was. Putting another foot in it didn’t make them much more stuck than they already were.
When Dumbledore cleared his throat, signaling their incoming punishment, Hermione reached out and took Ron’s hand. He gave her a grateful look and gave her hand a squeeze of support. If things were going to suck, they might as well muddle through the consequences together.
Green was sick.
Blue sat on a rug that had been rolled out on the hardwood floor of the Bluesmiths’ guest room, listening worriedly to Green’s raspy breathing as he pored over his medical books. A mixed collection sat around him. Some had been bought in Castle Town or borrowed from the city’s library, some had been “borrowed” from Hogwarts’s library (because he didn’t want Madam Pince bothering him about late returns), and a couple had been bought in Oasis City the day before.
He’d spent all morning searching for a magical or mundane explanation for the soaring fever Green had developed during the night, and found nothing. This wasn’t a symptom of magical exhaustion. A mild fever could be caused by normal exhaustion, but this fever was hot enough that Blue intended to put Green in a cold bath if it didn’t let up in the next hour.
As Link suggested, this could have been one of the Light World’s illnesses finally catching up to them after months of being in Hyrule. The Harrys had rarely ever gotten sick in their own world, which had something to do with their magical natures. That was why Dark World mages had their own magical diseases to contend with. Blue didn’t know enough about how Light World maladies interacted with Dark World people to agree with or refute Link’s hypothesis, and it irked him. He hated not knowing the things he needed to know; he didn’t understand how Red could be so complacent in his ignorance.
None of his medical books, even the more advanced Gerudo ones, could tell him anything about what he needed to know. Wizards, Hylians, and Gerudo all used miasma theory to explain the cause and spread of illness; they couldn’t tell him a damn thing about cross-dimensional antibody reactions.
He huffed in frustration and dropped the useless book he was holding on the floor. For once, reading was getting him nowhere.
Getting up from the floor, he went to Green’s bedside. He shifted the cold wet washcloth covering Green’s forehead and checked his brother’s temperature with his hand for the second time that hour. Still alarmingly feverish, sliding toward almost oven-hot in the swollen, puffy area around his scar.
Blue was certain that Green’s scar had something to do with this illness, but that didn’t help him make it stop. Usually when their scar acted up like this, it was because Voldemort was about. Something about the ghostly wizard’s presence made it flare up for some reason. There was no way Voldemort could be in Hyrule right then, though; at least one of the Harrys would have surely seen or felt some sign of him in the months before Vaati had thrown Hogwarts across worlds. The creep would have also needed to be close for Green to have a reaction this bad—as in, in the same room as him. Blue had functioning eyes, and he could definitely tell that there weren’t any Voldemorts hiding in the guest room.
Magic exhaustion, a scar reaction, persistent unconsciousness, and a fever. Those were the symptoms Blue had to work with. Yellow had already given up on figuring out the cause, instead heading off to Castle Town’s biggest apothecary to buy ingredients for potions that would hopefully lower Green’s internal temperature. Blue wasn’t convinced such methods would work. If this was a Hyrulean illness, Light World problems often responded best to Muggle solutions—Muggle solutions that Hyrule didn’t necessarily have. They might have even been best served by going to the Dark World, breaking into a chemist’s shop, and filching antibiotics. If this was a scar problem, then Blue wasn’t sure if anything would work. The magic in their cursed scar was strange, beyond their limited understanding of wizardry. Maybe a Dark World magical solution could work, but he didn’t know…
Blue blinked slowly as something obvious occurred to him.
Dumbledore. As annoying as the Headmaster had been lately, there was no denying that he was one of the most knowledgeable wizards around. Hogwarts was too far away for the Harrys split up and have two of them fly there; Green would surely sicken further if he had to maintain the Four Sword’s spell across such a distance. Dumbledore could be called here, though. Or rather, to Castle Town. Blue would prefer not to bother the Bluesmiths any more than he had to.
Humming thoughtfully to himself, he conjured his Ice Rod and applied a bit more cold to the washcloth before placing it back on Green’s forehead. He’d have to wait for his brothers to get back from their shopping trip, since Yellow had custody of their Gossip Stone. Or Blue could buy another one, since they were currently swimming in Rupees, and use a Gossip Booth to call Dumbledore. Yellow would scold him for wasting money, though, and so would Green once Yellow told him about it.
Did he know any other adults who might be able to tell him more about this than his books? Blue screwed his eyes shut as he wracked his memory. Professor Lupin taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, so there was a possibility that he could help with a curse. He was also fairly approachable, since he was already willing to teach Blue new spells in exchange for quest stories. And...there was Snape. Blue didn’t know much about Snape, but his least-favorite teacher had the air of someone who’d learned a thing or two about Dark magic in his day. Snape was friends with Lucius Malfoy, who’d been the one to drop Voldemort’s diary in Ginny’s cauldron; there had to be some shared knowledge between them.
There was a name missing from that short list. He knew someone else who knew a lot about magic, didn’t he? What other name was trying to ring a bell in his mind…?
“Shadow Harry!” he exclaimed aloud. Green didn’t stir in the slightest at the sound of his raised voice.
The Shadow of Hyrule was thousands of years old, could perceive magic in ways that mortals couldn’t, and was bound by his own self-imposed moral code to be more helpful than harmful in his current iteration. Surely he could at least see the problem here, even if he hadn’t encountered this sort of illness before.
“Shadow, are you there?” he asked the room. It was possible that the entity was still on the outs with Vaati and keeping his distance, or off editing one of Vaati’s dungeons. “Green’s sick, and he could get worse. None of my books are helping to identify whatever this is. I’m going to ask the headmaster of my school and maybe a couple of my professors about it later, but there’s no certainty that they’ll know what this is, either. If it’s a Light World illness, you’re probably my only hope.”
The shadow of the bed, cast against the kitchen-facing wall of the room by the large window behind Blue, stretched up and formed the shape of a boy. “You do know that Hyrule has doctors, right?” it said, canting its head to one side. Shadow’s face looked normal now; Vaati must have lifted his tumor-eye punishment for the time being. “They might not have fancy ‘germ-theory’ like your world’s doctors, but they can at least recognize symptoms.”
Blue breathed out in relief at his success in drawing the spirit’s attention. Now he could start getting somewhere! “This might not even be a Light World sickness. It seems magical, since Green’s scar is reacting to something,” Blue told Shadow. “He incurred a case of magical exhaustion last night, which started out normal enough—if rather severe—but then he dropped into this state.” He waved a hand toward Green’s unconscious, sweating form. “He won’t wake up, his scar is the most swollen I’ve ever seen it, and his fever is going to cook him alive if it doesn’t break soon.” Crossing his arms, he shook his head in frustration. “It’s the scar that I really don’t get. The fever seems to be coming from there, but why? What is it reacting to?”
Shadow Harry leaned out of the wall, his silhouetted torso pouring smoothly into three-dimensional space. He hummed and tapped on his lips with one finger as he scrutinized Green with narrowed, softly glowing eyes. “The soul-shard in his scar is reacting to his magical exhaustion,” he said. “And what a nasty soul that shard came from!” Flicking the washcloth off of Green’s forehead, he grimaced at the revealed scar. “I’ve never seen such a self-serving, cowardly, mewling thing. How embarrassing.”
Blue stared blankly at him. “‘Soul-shard’?” There was a piece of soul in their scar, not a curse? Whose soul was it from? Their mother’s? Dumbledore had never said exactly how her protective spell on them worked…
The spirit gave him a funny look. “According to your memories, you had a soul-snuffing death-curse bounce off your face and hit its caster, kid. And then your scar kept freaking out whenever that caster’s soul got close to you. What kind of curse did you think it was?”
“We’ve got a piece of Voldemort’s soul in our head?!” Blue shrieked.
Though Shadow Harry swore up and down that he was evil, he hadn’t lied to them yet. If he said that was the true nature of their scar, Blue believed him. But what the hell?! The Killing Curse was soul magic? You could break a soul? Shards of that soul could stick in things?
That diary that had almost killed Ginny…What if the ghost in it hadn’t been a “memory”, but a piece of soul? That entity had been too alive for a ghost, but not tangible like a living thing, either; could that be what an autonomous piece of someone’s soul was like?
He put a shaking hand to his scar. If the Harrys—or just Green right now, he supposed—had a piece of Voldemort’s core essence in them, what did that make them? Were they like that thing in the diary, just with a convenient human form that allowed that “memory” to think it was a real person? Were they merely a receptacle, holding onto that piece of Voldemort until the madman could wrench it out of Green’s head? Was the soul-shard biding its time until it could take them over like Voldemort had with Quirrell, waiting to turn them into a meat-puppet later on?
What were they?
“For kids who treat getting stabbed like tripping over a tree root, you sure are prone to panic,” Shadow Harry said with an exasperated sigh. “The thing in your scar doesn’t really do anything, which is why I didn’t say anything about it. All it wants to do is stay put, which is what it’s done for as long as you’ve had it; from what I can tell, that’s the whole point of whatever soul-splitting magic Voldemort set up before he activated it by accident.” Looking down at Green from where he stuck out of the wall, he went on, “Circumstances have changed, though. Green’s magic has been getting yanked around a lot this year, which is messing with the spell keeping that soul-shard hidden and inactive. It’s making a power-grab, now that Green’s soul is weakened by exhaustion. Opportunistic little blighter, isn’t it?”
Blue’s stomach dropped to his toes. The force of the panic that washed over him was dizzying, making the floor seem to fall away. “What will happen if it succeeds?” he asked faintly, dreading the answer. Possession? Death? What did it want from them?
Shadow shrugged. “No idea. This is some obscure sort of Dark World magic—way more malicious than the kind of stuff most of my masters get up to. I’m just describing what it looks like.” Disaffected expression turning more serious, he said, “I’m being helpful because I want Green to stay alive for now, and a conflict of souls like this could kill him. Get Avoka in here and have him stamp out that vile thing scuttling around Green’s head. He’s crap at using his magic, but it’s the exact kind of magic you need. Have him bleed on Green’s scar to purify it, if need be. Whatever it takes.” He poked a finger into Blue’s chest. “I’ve given you all the advice I can, Hero; now go save yourself so you can keep my country from crumbling into dust.”
Shadow Harry withdrew into the wall, then fell back into the shape of the bed’s silhouette. It was impossible to tell whether he’d actually left or just decided to stop talking. Blue supposed that sort of uncertainty was a natural part of dealing with such a capricious entity.
“Well, now I’ve got a whole lot of news and no way to share it,” he sighed to the empty room. He’d never been one of those kids who longed for a telephone or cellular phone of his own, but now he found himself itching to reach across the airwaves and shout in his brothers’ ears about what he’d learned.
Their scar didn’t hold a curse; it held part of someone else’s soul. Voldemort’s soul. Blue wanted to chew on the rug. He wanted to punch Voldemort in his stupid snake-themed face.
Blue took a deep, slow breath. And screamed.
Link idly stretched the tight muscles in his neck as he walked up the dirt path to his front door. He’d done deliveries that morning and segued directly into five hours of forge-work, so Gabbi had kicked him out of the smithy early. He’d snatched up a commissioned dagger on his way out, though, and planned to lay the requested anti-rust and durability enchantments on it before Gabbi got home from work.
He hopped up the steps to the porch, unlocked the door, and stepped into the cool confines of his home. After hours in the smithy, sweating in the heat of its large Blue Flame forge, the conditioned air was almost icy on his heated skin. He breathed out a satisfied sigh.
After taking off his sandals and neatly lining them up near the door, he tuned his hearing, checking for the sounds of Harrys. They were rather quiet, like Link himself, but their breathing was always clear to hear if Link focused his magic a little. Everyone’s breathing had a certain sound to it, shaped by the size of their chest cavity, the capacity of their lungs, and the diameter of their throat.
He could only hear only one breathing pattern from the direction of the guest room. Too fast—just short of hyperventilating.
Link frowned. Green had been breathing slowly when Link had left that morning to do deliveries, on account of sleeping like the dead. It still sounded like he was asleep; the pace of his breathing was fairly regular, for all that it was too past, and he couldn’t hear any sounds of movement.
Walking into the dining room, Link noticed a folded page on the table labeled “READ ME” in large, bold black letters. It smelled like fresh ink, so it must have been left there only a few minutes ago. He picked it up carefully, so as to avoid staining his fingers, and squinted at the cramped, angular penmanship.
To: Somebody Who Lives Here, From: Harry (Blue)
I just pulled Green out of a cold bath, so he should be fine for a bit. He’s essentially comatose and I can’t do much to help him on my own, anyway.
If someone’s reading this, I should be back in maybe 15min. I’ve flown off to Castle Town by broom, so it should be quick. My brothers are taking too long shopping, and I need to talk to them now about what’s wrong with Green and how to fix it.
Link, if it’s you reading this, we need you to get ahold of Avoka ASAP. He apparently has purifying magic of some sort, and that’s what Green needs to get better. The curse in his scar is actually an evil soul in his scar, and it’s trying to possess him or something. My quest-spirit said that Avoka bleeding on it would help? If that sounds bizarre to you, then that makes two of us. I think he meant that Avoka’s blood has Light magic in it that can counter the Dark magic infecting Green, but maybe ask Avoka about it?
Link read the note, then read it again in case he’d misunderstood it the first time. He didn’t know any more about that blood thing than Blue did, but the warning about an “evil soul” made a disturbing amount of sense.
The mismatched song that Green always carried with him, the one that seemed to play opposite his own, was more complex than a simple curse. A curse would sing its limited purpose on a loop, a focused melody with harmonies of intention woven in. The sound of a magical talent was also one of purpose, but it shifted organically with the feelings, intentions, and usage of its bearer. Rather than being a consistent song, it was more of an eternal improvisation working off of a particular musical theme. Link had suspected there was more to the extra music that haunted Green, but he hadn’t wanted to pry. The Harrys had said it was a curse, and Link hadn’t known what else it could be, so he’d accepted their truth. It really did sound like there was another person in there, though!
Listening hard, he hunted down the sound of that song beneath all the music of the house. It was louder than he’d ever heard it, playing at a frenzied speed in contrast to the quiet, measured dirge of Harry’s own magic.
Green’s breathing pattern was changing, too. There was a sound of cloth shifting as the boy moved, his breaths stuttering and hitching. Link dropped the note on the table and rushed to the guest room.
Opening the door, he took a moment to observe the boy on the bed. He was thrashing, trying unsuccessfully to detangle himself from his bedclothes by applying more force. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, darting and wild. The boy’s mouth worked open and shut as he alternately gasped for air and muttered a rapid series of syllables Link didn’t understand.
Link stepped forward, caught one of Green’s wheeling arms to hold it still, and began to peel the boy’s covers back. “Green, are you okay? Had a bad dream?” he asked. The little wizard’s skin was still feverish and slicked from sweat. His face looked even more skull-like than it had the night before, as though he’d continued wasting away in his sleep.
Green froze in his grasp. The boy looked him up and down with glassy, maddened eyes, his gaze so cold that it made Link shiver. His face transformed as he looked upon Link, his hollowed young features twisting in an expression of disgust that belonged to someone decades older. The depth of malice that oozed from him was almost a physical force, spearing through Link’s soul and finding it lacking.
Link swallowed hard. A prickling feeling washed across his scalp as his hair tried to stand on end. The urge to flee seized his legs, making them start shaking as he forced himself to stay put.
He didn’t know what was looking out from Green’s eyes, but it certainly wasn’t Green.
The air felt charged with something like cold electricity. The song that had overtaken Green’s was a squawking orchestra of broken instruments. Its forgetful stumbles and frenzied repetitions spoke of a mangled entity missing great swathes of itself and poorly filling in the gaps. Intentions and character were often woven into the sound of a mage’s talent, particularly if that talent was used often. All he could make sense of from that horrid mess of a song was a mindless chant of hate, hate, hate.
“H-Hi, I’m Link. Who are you?” Link asked in an attempt at friendliness. His grip on the boy’s arm tightened.
The thing in front of him didn’t know the answer to his question. A lost look interrupted its icy gaze before hatred surged back up to supplant it. “I am your better,” it snarled in English, raising its free hand. In the space of a blink, a Magic Rod appeared in its grip. Green’s body twisted around to seize Link with an iron grip on his jaw. The staff’s gray crystal head was leveled at his forehead.
Link’s heart climbed into his throat. He’d seen what Green could do with that staff. Turn things to stone or into animals, fling objects many times his weight into the distance, conjure the elements—the boy could do anything, and that was without any malice.
Tears stung his eyes. His view of the deadly weapon aimed at his face went blurry. Would Gabbi be able to recognize his corpse, when she got home? Would there be anything left of him to bury? “Please don’t,” he said softly to the broken soul. “You can be better than me. That’s okay. You don’t have to—”
The entity’s eyes were dark and pitiless. “Avada Kedavra.”
Link was blinded by a bright flash.