Disclaimer:I do not own Zelda or Harry Potter. If you at any point along the line you thought that I did, I would like to speak with you about the sale of one of my islands named 'Taiwan'. I can cut you a very reasonable deal.

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Title: Who Wants to Live Forever?

Chapter: 4

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Last Time:

Link peered into the bag and came face-to–face with a pair of green, slitted eyes.

"What the heck?!"

Apparently Andrew wasn't very happy.

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Link sighed as he reached into his bag and pulled out a panicking cat.

"What the heck is going on?! Why was I in a bag? Why am I a cat?! Did those crazy wizard people do it? I knew this was a conspiracy!!"

Link fought back the urge to tell Andrew to calm down seeing as it would only aggravate the situation and turn the boy's ire on him. Instead, he simply waited until the cat's rant about conspiracies, lawyers and illegal slave rings had run its course before drawing attention to himself.

"It wasn't the wizards."

Andrew jumped about a foot in the air before falling off the bed and promptly darting across the room to hide under another bed. After a few minutes of silence (Link refused to talk to someone he couldn't see) a small brown head poked cautiously out from under the overhanging blankets.

"You…you're that kid from the train. You turned me into a cat? Why? Was it some kind of messed up wizarding test?!"

Link could tell the only reason Andrew wasn't screaming was because his curiosity was overwhelming his anger and fear.

"No. I turned you into a cat because I needed to take your place as a student." Link quickly went over the details of what happened in his mind and decided to go with it. After all, telling the kid a bit of the truth should satisfy him as well as keep him around the school to serve as a decoy if Link ever needed to make an escape.

"You see, I didn't mean to get on the train to Hogwarts. I just wanted to get out of London."

"Why?"

"I was getting there," Link rolled his eyes as Andrew crawled out from under the bed and began slowly padding back over to him. Man, this kid was trusting. If it was him in this situation he would have attacked himself by now, or at least attempted to escape.

"I'm guarding some ancient artifacts. Some people are hunting for these same artifacts. Needless to say, they found me and I needed to leave the city as soon as possible. The Hogwarts train was the only one leaving at the time so I got on."

"Ancient artifacts?" Link was amazed at how fast Andrew managed to make it back up on the bed and stuff his furry face into Link's bag, "Whoa…"

"You're the last member of an ancient powerful clan charged with guarding these sacred objects by a god, right!?" Andrew demanded as he pulled out of the bag in order to fix his literally glowing eyes on Link.

"Um…not re-"

"And the ones chasing you are evil demons bent on the extermination of the human race, right?!"

"…What?"

"And your parents died protecting you from some really powerful demon and now you have vowed never to let that happen to anyone else and travel around the world exterminating demons and protecting people, right?!"

"…That's some imagination you got there…"

"So am I right?!"

"…Some of it was right, but…where did you get the rest of it?"

"Here and there," Andrew tried to wave his paw in a dismissive manner only to recall seconds later that cats aren't built like humans when he smacked himself in the face. Andrew tried to discretely rub at his sore nose (and failed for the same reasons as before) as he continued excitedly, "Which parts were right?"

"I was charged with guarding one of these objects-"

"And you liberated the rest from the demons!"

"…No. The rest just belong to m-"

"So you inherited them from your demon hunting parents?!"

Link twitched, completely unsure how to handle this situation. Should he just let the kid assume whatever he wanted or should he stick with the story he was originally going to feed the kid?

"I never knew my parents so how could I-"

"They were killed by demons!"

Link sighed in defeat. Why was this kid obsessed with demons anyway? "Yes. They were killed by demons."

"All right!" Andrew cheered before abruptly realizing what he was cheering for. "I mean- …uh…sorry? That was a terrible thing for them to do. …Are you going to hunt them down and exorcize them?"

Link almost rolled his eyes at the kid's hopeful tone. "Yeah, right. I doubt they are even alive anymore." It was true. The moblins that supposedly killed his parents would have been turned to dust a long time ago even if they somehow managed to survive the purge that took place after the Binding Wars in Hyrule.

"Rival hunters killed them?"

"No. Ridiculous age."

"Ridic- ! You're an elf!"

Link choked on air. "What? Why on Earth would you jump to that conclusion? Shouldn't you assume that the demons were really old?"

"Please," Andrew scoffed. "As if old-man demons could kill legendary demon hunters like your parents."

"…Now you're blatantly ly-"

"That's why you wear that bandana, right? Awesome! How old are you? You look kinda young…around my age… then again, according to Lord of the Rings elves are immortal so you could be older then…then…" Andrew was visibly searching for a name of someone who he thought was as older then dirt. "…then Jesus!"

"…"

"Nevermind. I'm going to sleep." Link shoved Andrew off his bed and hauled the covers up over his head. Honestly. That kid watched too much TV. Hopefully he would know that talking cats were weird even to people with magic and would keep his mouth shut when everybody came back. Link didn't want to deal with the kid anymore tonight and that included fixing his mistakes.

"Hey! Is this slingshot the legendary-"

Link threw the covers off reached over and extracted Andrew from his bag before tossing him off the bed again and dragging the bag back under the covers with him. He had a feeling his plan to keep the kid around Hogwarts and quiet about the cat thing was going to work a bit too well.

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A powerful westerly wind was whipping the fires consuming every object in miles into a conflagration, quickly and efficiently burning a once grand city into ash. A man slowly and carefully picked his way through the rubble and bodies strewn through the streets until he reached the city's main square. There he paused and cast about for something, causing the orange flames to paint his gently swaying crimson cap in an odd mix of deep blacks and a paler red.

There.

Before the fountain the small figure of a woman was sprawled brokenly across pieces of shattered masonry and illuminated by the raging fires.

The man slowly walked over to her, too exhausted to run and knowing that the woman would force herself to remain either alive or conscious long enough to see him. She always was stubborn like that.

The man suppressed a reflexive wince when he finally rounded the once-ornate fountain in the center of the square and saw the extent of the woman's wounds. He was right. Only her will to see him again was keeping her in this world. Kneeling beside her he gently took her hand and stirred her from her life-prolonging meditation.

The woman's blue eyes cracked open and she smiled a sad little smile when she saw him.

"You're older…"

"It has been a long time since I've been home."

"Yes, it has."

Pleasantries now over the woman slowly and painfully dipped her free hand, broken fingers and all, into the bloody sash around her waist and withdrew a small object of the purest blue.

"It is your duty." She whispered, forcing her eyes to remain open and her vocal cords to work.

"Yes. It is." He reached out a hand, torn glove revealing blistered skin, and gently took the object from her. Her arm dropped, boneless, to her side.

They both stared into each others eyes as the city continued to burn, not saying another word. What was there to say? Both knew their duties. The man continued to hold the woman's hand until all life fled from her eyes. It was all he could do for her.

Minutes later the man slowly released her limp hand and, after a heartbeat, reached up and closed her eyes before slowly standing and beginning to pick his careful way towards the city's main gates. The inferno that was once Hyrule's capital would be a fitting funeral pyre for its queen.

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Link slowly blinked his eyes open; somewhat startled to realize that it was still dark when his internal clock was insisting that it was dawn. He quickly pushed the covers off and slipped out of bed.

Ah, that was why. The other boys had drawn the thick, red curtains over the windows. Link was amused to note that apparently that wasn't enough protection from the evil sun's rays and that they had all drawn the drapes around their beds closed too. How on earth did they expect to wake up without either the sun or an alarm clock? Maybe their internal clocks would wake them up too, though Link doubted it.

After a quick scan of the room, Link moved to the foot of his bead and dug through Andrew's trunk. Hmm. Apparently they did expect him to wear that ridiculous pointy hat. And the robes were a familiar site, though an uncomfortable one. Only sages and members of the high courts and councils ever wore them.

Link hesitated, long standing traditions of equally long dead cultures preventing him from immediately grabbing the robe, before he shrugged his shoulders and picked one up. Technically he could be considered a sage and he was certainly old enough to be a member of any council in existence and some that weren't.

Shrugging the slightly- too-short robe on, Link reached over and hefted his backpack before heading off to look for Andrew. He wasn't in the room and they hadn't finished their little talk last night. Link needed to be sure that the boy-turned-cat would stay quiet and try to act like the animal he looked like. The last thing Link needed was some kid attending a magic school blowing his cover. In a non-magic community the talking cat would probably be killed by the superstitious or ignorant populace before anything really incriminating came out. In a magical community, however… while talking cats were unusual, the wizards probably knew of some way, be it a spell or artifact, to shape shift. They would actually listen to Andrew's babbling and he would be discovered. Link did not need another group of power-hungry sociopaths chasing him down. If all he had to do was manipulate a little boy to prevent it, then he would do so with a smile on his face.

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This is not where I wanted to end this chapter. Not even close. But, I figured I ought to give those of you still reading this something, even if it is an incomplete fragment.

Man, I'm bad at this 'updating' stuff. Though, part of it is the fact that I cringe whenever I see the fourth Harry Potter book. Is it wrong of me to not want to read it again? I think I need to appoint a bulldog to bug me to work on this…or obtain a partner. Any volunteers?