Crosswinds of Fate
by WayFarer2000 is a dead crossover fanfic that combines Harry Potter and Fate/stay night.
Ten years after the good ending of the Unlimited Blade Works route, Rin, Shirou, Saber, Sakura, and Rider travel to the Harry Potter universe on the advice of Zelretch in order to learn about that world's magic. They arrive in the Harry Potter universe during the summer between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.
In contrast with most stories with this premise, the Fate cast approach the Hogwarts staff almost immediately, revealing their identities as visitors from another reality and their desire to exchange knowledge. From there, Rin and Sakura get jobs teaching formalcraft and runic magic at Hogwarts, whereas Shirou and Saber are hired as security guards.
The story reads more like an academic analysis or a magical comparison with some political intrigue mixed in than a typical action/adventure story, but it makes the concept work quite well.
It also has the aptly titled side story, Crosswinds Of Fate: Side Stories.
Unmarked spoilers for all three routes of Fate/stay night below
This fanfic provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: What the Fate cast's home universe is relative to the world they're visiting. The fic follows the books' timeline, resulting in about a twenty year time gap.
- All Myths Are True: Each of Luna's "made-up" creatures' existence is verified in passing. Rider corrects Luna that slashkilters have four legs and that the Ministry would never be able to control heliopaths, which are Phantasmal Beasts. Additionally, Moody's magical eye apparently allows him to see wrackspurts.
- Always Someone Better: When within Unlimited Blade Works, Zelretch pulls out a Mystic Code to analyze one of the blades he sees. A moment later, Rin demonstrates the version of Structural Grasp spell adapted by Shirou, which works more quickly and obtains better analytical data. Acknowledging that even a Wizard Marshall has a lot to learn, he irritatedly tosses the Code away and convinces Rin to teach him the spell.
- Another Dimension: The Fate cast used the Second Magic to travel to the Potter universe. Unusually, they reveal this fact straight away, as the alternative would be tedious.
- Appeal to Popularity: The fallacy that governs the current pureblood debate. Professors McGonagall, Dumbledore and others worry that the research assignment Rin gave will change it from this to actual fact.
- Arc Words: In a fairly lighthearted example, "blood pops" show up several times throughout the story, alluding to Zelretch's implied Fetch Quest.
- Background Magic Field: The one in the Potterverse is stronger than the Nasuverse's. For the Fate characters, it means increased effects for their magecraft at the same cost, but they have yet to figure out what this means for the locals' magic.
- Badass Boast: When showing Zelretch, Luvia, Rin and Lorelei Barthomeloi around Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou defends himself against the latter's incredulity when he admits he has no idea how many weapons he has saying it's like asking a magus how many spells they know. All of them recite their number.
- Badass Crew: A given for the Fate cast, who in the case of the magi characters have grown even more powerful than they were at the end of the visual novel. In particular, Rin has her jeweled sword from the Heaven's Feel route, Sakura has full control over her dark form, and Shirou has mastered his Reality Marble.
- Blatant Lies: Zelretch claiming that he had nothing to do with a Noodle Incident in the Sophia-Ri estate and Shirou stating that he has no idea what Rin is talking about when she mentions the dangers of learning magic incorrectly. The narration points it out in both instances.
- Book Dumb: Ron, but not to the normal stupid levels shown in most fanfiction; he's just unmotivated.
- The Cameo: Arcueid and Ciel make a brief appearance in a cutaway gag after the narration obliquely mentions one of them in chapter 6.
- Chick Magnet: Shirou. In the side story, Rin actually considers for a second the possibility that Lorelei may have stayed for dinner because she's interested in Shirou.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: This is how Harry ends up meeting Rider.
- Could Say It, But...: Or "could do it", in Dumbledore's case when Harry asks him for some emergency portkeys.
- Culture Clash: Examined in depth. The culture difference is a major driving force in the story for both character interaction and plot development.
- The Hogwarts students and staff are struck by how the magi treat muggle concepts as if they're common knowledge, to the point where Dumbledore seriously considers changing school policy on the matter. On the flip side, the Fate characters find it strange that wizards use magic for almost every problem, even things that have perfectly non-magical solutions available.
- When the topic of magical pedigree gets brought up in class at one point, the magus idea that some bloodlines can be inherently stronger than others (through magical crests and selective breeding) interacts in interesting ways with the blood purity issue in Harry Potter.
- The more upstanding members of the Hogwarts populace such as Dumbledore and McGonagall are disapproving and wary. Dumbledore in particular is concerned by the idea that the concept of a magic crest could allow for blood purists to legitimize their claims of superiority.
- The blood purists are naturally quite pleased to learn that the magi characters seemingly agree with their point of view.
- Lastly, the magi characters look down on pure-blood ideology because their methods are self-destructive and there is no scientific basis behind it.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The few small fights shown all end heavily in favor of the Fate cast.
- Curse: At the end of her battle with Rider, Lorelei Barthomeloi is left with a dangerous curse in her system. Several options are discussed as to how to remove it.
- Death by Adaptation: Because Harry never went back to the Dursleys over the summer, when the dementor attack happens, all three Dursleys get kissed.
- Dimensional Travelers: The Fate cast, by means of the Second Magic.
- Dirty Old Man: Subverted. Zelretch isn't one, and everyone is shocked by that. Rin and Saber accuse Made Eye Moody of being a voyeur when they discover he can see through clothes, but he and several other natives deny it.
- Enemy Mine: Downplayed. Although Dumbledore and Rin are not enemies, their ideological differences regarding the bloodline matter do somewhat put them at odds with each other; they still work together, without prior planning, to discredit Umbridge.
- Exact Words: Rin likes to use non-committal statements and ambiguous wording in order to subtly mock Umbridge while coming off as agreeing with her.
- Failure Is the Only Option: In chapter 2, the Nasuverse group already know that hiding Rider will end in failure and the only question is how: being accidentally discovered, or some situation that requires her to reveal herself. Both end up happening.
- Fake Memories: Moody is able to show Harry one using legilimency.
- Fantastic Racism: Lorelei Barthomeloi would rather endure a long and excruciatingly painful excuse for a surgery than accept help from Zelretch.
- Fetch Quest: It's heavily implied that the real reason Zelretch sent the characters to the Harry Potter world is to restock his supply of blood pops.
- Fix Fic: The story has shades of this.
- On the Harry Potter side of things, several major sources of conflict and angst from the fifth book are defused, such as Dumbledore keeping important information from Harry, or Harry, Fred, and George receiving a ban from quidditch.
- On the Fate side of things, all three heroines plus Rider are in a relationship with Shirou despite things following the Unlimited Blade Works good ending.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- There are a few minor changes to the Harry Potter timeline before the Fate characters even get there, such as Dumbledore not even bothering to send Harry back to the Dursleys, and Dumbledore having Harry claim the prophecy from the Department of Mysteries.
- Due to a chance encounter with Sakura at the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione is a lot more open-minded when she meets Luna, resulting in a much friendlier relationship between the two.
- Genre Savvy: When asked why she outright revealed that they are from another dimension, Rin replies that sooner or later they would end up exposed because lies can only get one so far, and it would end up doing them more harm than good in the long run.
- Head Desk: Rin supresses the urge to do this when she learns that wizards don't need to learn the details of how a certain spell works in order to cast it.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Umbridge shows how ignorant she is of the world by stating that "Muggle" biology has no bearing on the magical world, or how just repeating a belief verbatim does not make it true without any empirical evidence.
- Imagined Innuendo: When Luvia tries to justify blackmailing Shirou for sex as an incentive to accept her offer and calls it "the carrot and the stick", Zelretch wonders this about "take the carrot."
- Impossibly Delicious Food: A special blend of tea Sakura made with input from the other members of the Fate universe receives high praise from every single character who tastes it. The Hogwarts faculty fall in love with it and Lorelei wonders if they drugged it or something due to how delicious it is.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite Harry no longer residing there, dementors are still sent (by Umbridge) to attack the Dursley home. Without Harry there to drive them off, however, it results in the entire Dursley family being kissed.
- In the Blood:
- The Ollivander family's—and by extention in her formalcraft paper, Luna's—theory is that one's magical affinity can be traced to one's genetic information. This is why Ollivander tape-measures seemingly irrelevant things such as the length of one's nose.
- Hermoine's paper runs in a similar fashion, only focusing more on specific abilities granted by genetics such as being a metamorphmagus or a parselmouth, not knowing that such things are already common for the Nasuverse group with those abilities being known as Sorcery Traits.
- Irony:
- Dumbledore, Rin, and to a lesser degree the rest of the staff use Socratic Irony to expose Umbridge's ignorance by constantly patronizing her and treating her as a foremost expert in her field.
- When Saber visits McGonagall's office she spots a tapestry depicting Cú Chulainn, William Wallace, and a third man she does not recognize. When asked, the professor tells her that the man is King Arthur. Made more ironic by the fact that Saber is described as an expert in Arthurian lore not long before, and McGonagall's obvious disbelief in Saber's explanation of the artist taking liberties.
- Kansas City Shuffle: The Fate cast attempt this by doing a presentation of a magic circle that can share magic with muggles for a limited amount of time (until the effect is over or the magical energy supply is all used up, whichever comes first) by using Filch as an example. The purpose of this is to mislead the wizards from the Potterverse into thinking that Saber's superhuman abilities (despite her being a "squib") are from the same origin. Almost everyone, including Snape, falls for this. The only exception is, surprisingly, Umbridge, who is simply too stupid to fall for it.
- Magical Eye:
- Discussed. Luna's ability to see astralized Servants makes Rin believe she has Pure Eyes.
- Moody's artificial eye, as per canon.
- Magical Girl: Ruby offers to turn Professor McGonagall into one in the most suggestive manner possible.
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Zelretch grumbles that for all his centuries of life and nigh-infinite power, he still doesn't make any pretense of understanding women.
- Masquerade: Defied. Rin opens the interview with Dumbledore by telling him that her group are from another universe. When asked why they're so forthcoming, she explains that the alternative of
pretending to be natives would inevitably be seen through, and make the truth seem less believable. The standard "hide magic from muggles" masquerade still stands, though. - Muggle Born of Mages: The wizards are led to believe that Saber is a squib.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Happens in-universe with History of Magic after Saber starts asking questions. Before long, Binns's lectures are accompanied by a scale model of the battlefield which is updated by the students with magic as the lecture progresses.
- Mundane Utility: The possibility of teleporting (which requires leaving and re-entering a dimension using True Magic) to save commute time is discussed.
- Mythology Gag: While training him in occlumency, Moody makes Harry experience a false memory of eating extremely spicy soup, a reference to Kirei's penchant for mapo tofu.
- Noodle Incident:
- At some point between the Unlimited Blade Works Good End and the present, something analogous to the events of Heaven's Feel happened, leaving Sakura with access to her dark form, Rin in possession of her version of the Jeweled Sword of Zelretch, which he names the Jeweled Sword of Tohsaka, and Rider resummoned despite having been killed off in the Grail War.
- In the side story, Zelretch had something to do with an incident at the Sophia-Ri estate. It involved teleportation, as Lorelei figured out it was him after learning that he can teleport in a way that can bypass most mystical defenses.
- When trying to convince Rin to accept going to the Potterverse, Zelretch talks about the academic value of the expedition and how she'll be away from the Association long enough for the dust to settle after one of her "escapades". It apparently involved Luvia trying to steal Shirou away from Rin.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The Fate cast. Though certainly nothing to sneeze at back home, they are utterly overpowered in the new setting. Shirou's combat assessment with Dawlish really drives it home, as his expectations from his home world mean it takes him a while to realize that Dawlish's slow, weak attacks aren't part of a feint, and are actually him fighting seriously.
- No Social Skills: Downplayed with Shirou, who has been getting better, but he suffers from another problem, No Political Skills. He tries to hide as much of his Mysteries as he can, but his lack of expertise in dealing with magi means Lorelei Barthomeloi can get the information she wants regardless. It really doesn't help that he keeps volunteering information he gains absolutely nothing by airing.
- Not Helping Your Case: After deciding not to issue a sealing designation on Shirou, Lorelei is accidentally cursed after grasping a cursed sword in the middle of a fight and Shirou attempts to use Rule Breaker to get rid of the curse. After hearing the explanation of what Rule Breaker does, Lorelei asks him not to give her more reasons to regret not assigning a sealing designation on him.
- Odd Friendship: Luna Lovegood and Rider strike up a friendship after Luna is able to sense Rider's presence and location while the latter is astralized.
- Off the Rails: Established from the onset. The very first thing we see of the Harry Potter cast is Dumbledore and Harry discussing the latter's summer living arrangements now that Voldemort has circumvented Lily's blood protection.
- Various early changes to the story ensure that the battle over the prophecy at the Ministry will never happen. Sirius has freed Kreacher, Harry has already made significant progress in occlumency, and most damning of all, Harry has already retrieved the prophecy from the Department of Mysteries.
- Oh, Crap!: Dawlish has this reaction after Shirou throws a Black Key at him. Before this, he only fired individual spells. Afterwards, he puts as many conjured objects (and failing that, as much distance) as he can between himself and Shirou.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Rin sees her boggart, she curtly calls for Ruby, and the wand, seeing how furious Rin is, saves the loudmouth act for when it's vaporized the boggart and much of the wall behind it.
- Orphaned Series: The last update was February 26, 2016 and Wayfarer admitted that they are losing interest in the Harry Potter fandom.
- Our Vampires Are Different: This trope results in the Fate cast taking Flitwick's initial description of the Whomping Willow to mean it is like the Forest of Einnashe.
- Polyamory: Although not explicitly married, Shirou, Saber, Rin, Sakura, and Rider's relationship fits this trope, although the author stated that Rin and Sakura do not engage in incestuous activities and Rider and Saber merely have a professional relationship.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Harry pulls this on Snape when the latter gives him some poorly-timed occlumency training. When Snape tries to get into his mind, Harry redirects the attack to a memory of the potions master blindly grabbing at the air in an attempt to catch him out after curfew.
- Rage Breaking Point: Lorelei in the side story. As things go on she finds it harder to keep up her Ice Queen mask and finally snaps in rage at the end.
- Retcon: In the original version of chapter 4, the professor of Muggle Studies, Charity Burbage, doesn't know what ions are and instead asks a muggle-born student to explain it for everyone. Sometime later, the chapter was edited so that she knows the answer and explains it.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Umbridge is able to guess Saber is not human, though she thinks that Saber's a form of half-breed rather than the spirit of King Arthur in a magical body.
- Running Gag:
- In the first chapters various characters in different scenes say, "For shame, to be cursed with such [X]" in reference to the other party.
- Professor Binns consistently refers to Saber as various other types of bladed weapons when addressing her in History of Magic.
- Screw the Rules, They Broke Them First!: Discussed in regards to parlay. Both Binns and Saber note that one who breaks the rules of parlay is untrustworthy in general, so they will get the short end of any treaties and they forfeit the chance to be taken prisoner instead of killed in combat.
- Shout-Out: The Sorting Hat begins his story of Merlin seducing Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff with, "Well, one night, Merlin put on his robe and me..." This is a reference to the I Put On My Robe and Wizard Hat meme.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: A key difference between the two settings. Rin has trouble accepting that wizards can cast spells without knowing how they work, and Hermione is quite surprised by Rin's use of the scientific method to experiment with magic.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Several members of the Hogwarts staff take this approach to dealing with Umbridge, being just as patronizing to her as she is to her students. Dumbledore takes it a step further by shadowing her during her inspections and classes on the pretense of learning from her example.
- Too Dumb to Fool: When the Fate cast try to use their demonstration of formalcraft on Filch as a red herring to pass off Saber's unnatural combat strength as magical enhancement, Umbridge doesn't fall for it simply because she's too stupid to make the connection in the first place.
- Tornado Move: Lorelei uses four tornadoes when fighting against Rider. Since they're fighting in Unlimited Blade Works, they become (in Shirou's own words) swordnadoes.
- Tranquil Fury: Rin has this reaction to seeing a boggart take the form of Dark Sakura.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue:
- The "camera" cuts back and forth mid-sentence between Rin and Albus giving the same explanation to Shirou and Minerva, respectively.
- After the security guard evaluations, the "camera" repeatedly cuts mid-sentence from one conversation to another, related one.
- Underestimating Badassery: The Fate cast invoke this by going to great lengths to conceal their talents. Rin and Sakura teach branches of magecraft outside their specialties, whereas Shirou and Saber hold back in combat. Rider is kept completely hidden. It's also inverted, as the Fate cast assume the wizards are doing the same, and consequently overestimate them.
- Undying Loyalty:
- Sakura will follow Shirou wherever he goes and will support him in all that he does. This is to the point that she actually switched from kyuudonote to European archery just because Shirou did.
- Rider is so loyal to Sakura that she has already prepared Bloodfort Andromeda to digest the entire population of Hogwarts, students included, if Sakura were ever threatened.
- Wait, What?: Rin has this reaction when she realizes that wizards still practice "royal and noble breeding" intermarriages and still have no idea of the negative consequences of said inbreeding.
- The Worf Effect: It's a crossover between the Fate/stay night and Harry Potter. This was inevitable.
- Due to a misunderstanding, Saber attacks Moody on the Hogwarts Express. Moody comes out of it with a sword wound, a concussion, and several broken fingers. Saber is completely unscathed and remarks that his spells appeared slow to her.
- Dawlish, as per his status in canon. The man almost gets killed by what to Shirou is merely a probe of his defenses. It's even worse on him than usual, because of how heavily Shirou overestimates him.
- Wrong Context Magic: The Fate cast's goal is to try to unify the two differing magical systems. Exacerbated by the fact that whereas Potterverse characters can learn Nasuverse magic, the opposite does not hold.
- Yaoi Fangirl: Moaning Myrtle starts fantasizing about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy having sex in her bathroom.
