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Ballad of Dusk and Dawn

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Ballad of Dusk and Dawn is a crossover fanfic between Harry Potter and Tolkien's Legendarium, written on Archive of Our Own by AzarDarkstar.

Harry merely wants to enjoy his retirement in peace and quietness. Valinor is quite the nice place, and alright, the Ainur are always entering and leaving but that's fine.

No, what he cannot deal with, are these exhausting Finwëans who won't believe him no matter how much he repeats he's not this Makalaurë person's lost child, and stop barging into his life, he never asked for them to adopt him!

The thing is, when the world believes a lie is the truth, can it actually become the truth?

Contains the following tropes

  • Ambiguously Human: Harry certainly isn't pure human anymore, but he doesn't feel very Elven either, and constantly hanging around the Valar further blurs his nature.
  • Birds of a Feather: Harry and Gil-Galad are Happily Adopted, hail from extremely nebulous circumstances, are The Good King yet operate under a heck of an imposter syndrome. They fall in love with each other.
  • Cassandra Truth: No matter how many times Harry swears he's not related to this Maglor person in any shape, the Elves politely listen and keep slotting him in the House of FĂ«anor.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Belief shapes reality. If a bunch of Elves are genuinely convinced that Harry is Maglor's child, then for all matters and intents, he is.
  • Culture Clash: Elves are a very social species with barely the slightest inkling that personal boundaries are a thing, since Fingon is completely baffled by Harry wanting to go back to Formenos after being his guest for a few months instead of a few years. It causes a deep wedge between Harry and Celebrian when she sends agents in Formenos to keep her informed of what's going on in his household — said agents view themselves as chaperones ensuring the youngest member of the family won't be too lonely, and are left dumbstruck when Harry suffers a meltdown over spies violating his privacy and refuses to speak to them afterwards.
  • Curse Escape Clause: The House of FĂ«anor will be forgiven when one of them will hold a Silmaril in their hand. Since Harry fulfills the Oath by handling the one carried by Eärendil, a member by adoption qualifies.
  • Divine Date: So Maglor has a son showing abilities wielded by the Ainur? Surely the logical conclusion is for him to have bagged a Maia!
  • Don't Call Me "Sir": Harry is waging an one-man uphill battle to persuade everyone in Valinor to not refer to him as a King or a Lord or a Prince. He's not very successful.
  • Doting Grandparent: Nerdanel for Maglor's unexpected child — partly because he's the lone member of the House of FĂ«anor to not be stuck in Mandos or Middle Earth, partly because he's an artist just like her.
  • Dramatic Irony: Harry's insistence he doesn't know this Maglor character and certainly isn't his son, when Nienna gifted him an enchanted harp allowing him to communicate with a rather depressed and isolated fellow wanting to be called "Kano", who gave him a name and certainly behaves in a deeply parental way.
  • Fire/Water Juxtaposition: It's a thing in the House of FĂ«anor — FĂ«anor himself has been heavily associated with fire in the original material, but Nerdanel is given a water motif in the story, and it's more or less inherited by their children as Maedhros is described as a smoldering caldera while Maglor is more of a shore. Harry fits the water motif because he's associated with snow and ice, but it also underlines his status as a foreigner because it's frozen water.
  • Happily Adopted:
    • Gil-Galad can only remember being raised by Cirdan alongside Erestor, and he's pretty content with that, not even sparing a thought for the mystery of his birth family.
    • Harry's complains ultimately make no difference in the fact he has been integrated into the House of FĂ«anor, since Maglor decided to go along with all these people insisting he has a third son. Fingon actually asks Harry if being embraced by the FinwĂ«an lineage truly is that terrible a prospect.
    • Nienna wasn't Namo and Irmo's sister at the beginning, but she certainly gets better with them than with her original brothers — as Morgoth willingly betrayed everyone and ManwĂ« fell out with her in a rather noticeable way.
  • I Have No Son!: Inverted. Courtesy of Celembribor disowning Curufin as his father for all the Kinslayings, the Elves think Harry is constantly denying being Maglor's child because he's ashamed to be related to such a wicked sinner.
  • Middle Child Syndrome: Among FinwĂ«'s three sons, FĂ«anor the eldest was daddy's favourite and a genius no matter his glaring personality flaws, Finarfin was the golden youngest and Indis' favourite, and Fingolfin was stuck between them. He quietly admits his only wish was for FĂ«anor to acknowledge him as his brother instead of a rival for affection.
  • Modest Royalty: Harry hates wearing jewelry, constantly argues with anybody trying to call him a King or a Lord, and has no servants to tend to his castle as he's doing all the cooking and cleaning on his own.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: The Valar really appreciate Harry treating them as people instead of bowing and scraping and keeping his distance as Elves are wont to do in their presence. As EonwĂ« visits Harry under Fingon's roof, the wizard gets the Ainur treatment by proxy and finds it extremely distressing as it's everything he hates about being considered royalty ramped even further.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: A convoluted, retrospective example. When they first stumbled upon this green-eyed clone of Maglor, the Elves concluded it had to be Maglor's child — and because belief shapes reality, Harry slowly becomes Maglor's child.
  • Trauma Button: Elwing spends the whole time of Harry's visit to Idril and Tuor shaking in a corner, because he bears the same face as one of the kinslayers who chased her off a cliff.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Harry has been left paranoid by constant murder attempts on Earth and utterly bereft of self-esteem by his abusive childhood and the Wizarding World nagging at him for not fitting their idea of a saviour. The Elves' well-intentioned attempts to make him comfortable and encourage him to enjoy himself are thus twisted to appear more sinister and self-serving than they actually are.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Harry has survived a world war and so many murder attempts on Earth he doesn't bother remembering them all, and outlived everyone he cared for in his first life. He's so emotionally exhausted that he's barely able to connect with his self-proclaimed family at the very beginning of the story.
  • Winter Royal Lady: Rare Male Example with Harry, since he holds himself aloof and distant from the Elves, is ruling over Formenos that's built in the arctic part of Valinor, and is frequently associated with snow and ice. Maglor actually gives him the name HerrurivĂ«, Lord of Winter.

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