Colours of the World
is an Fullmetal Alchemist and Harry Potter crossover fanfiction by MaiKusakabe. It is told almost entirely from Roy's point of view.
When Roy Mustang went to retrieve his eyesight from Truth, he wasn't expecting to end up doing a job in exchange. It couldn't even be an easy job, of course, because Edward's assessment of Truth was a pretty accurate one.
Tropes:
- The Ace: Subverted up until the end of fifth year. Only then does Roy reveal his true trump card: his Flame Alchemy.
- Alternate Techline: Or magical equivalent. The Wizarding World has the same potential to develop Alchemy as far as Amestris did, but simply never realized it. There was a close attempt with one of Nicolas Flamel's contemporary alchemists, who developed an array that led him to Truth. However, the immensity of the toll he had to pay (his arms) doomed him when he returned to reality. Flamel was unable to aid him, and he filed his friend's notes with a warning never to try anything similar.
- The Atoner: Even in another dimension, Roy never allows himself to forget about the mistakes he made in the past. His vague, yet ominous statement to Sirius practically embodies this:Mustang: People may not be able to atone for their sins, but they can change. I need to believe that, or I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning...I'm just saying we all carry sins. Some are simply heavier than others. Trying to atone for them doesn't mean they never happened.
- Badass Boast: Gives a particularly strong one to Umbridge after Saving Harry and company in her office.Mustang: I'm stopping you from continuing with your reign of terror, obviously.
Umbridge: You won't get away with this! I'm the Minister's right hand!
Mustang: Not for long. I hear there is a Department of Mysteries full of Death Eaters that's about to cost Fudge his position. - Actually Pretty Funny: After hearing a group of fourth year Hufflepuffs comparing him to Mustang, Snape is torn between feeling this or offense.
- Badass Bookworm: Not much has changed here from canon. This trait allows him to bond with Hermione quite easily. So much so that Hermionie approaches him with the offer to supervise their DA Club in sixth year.
- Badass Teacher: Mustang has proven to be a very competent professor and is very protective of the students of Hogwarts. This fact is only cemented when he nearly burns Umbridge's hand off in her attempt to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry.
- Beneath the Mask: Just like in the Amestrian military, Mustang had perfected his persona of a 'naïve but charming and reasonable scholar who wanted nothing to do with politics' so well that he even throws Mad-Eye Moody off when the mask comes off in the Department of Mysteries.
- Berserk Button: If there's one thing that Mustang hates it's even the thought of intentionally hurting children.
- One of the first things he does when Fred and George flee the school is destroy Filtch's permit to whip students, and destroys said whips shortly after.
- He allows his true rage to show when catching Umbridge about to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Tonks admits that her fake-dates with Roy were some of the best dates that she had, even with her real boyfriends. This only leaves her shocked frozen when she witnesses Roy's flame alchemy in battle for the first time, briefly unable to process that this is the same person.
- Blind Weaponmaster: Heavily downplayed. After losing his eyesight during Father's plan, Mustang tries to recover it by bargaining with Truth. During his mission to England, he is given part of his eyesight back, but due to only giving Marcoh's faulty Philosopher's Stone, his ability to see colors is somewhat warped. This does not stop him from being a supreme badass.
- Broken Pedestal: Dumbledore admits Flamel confessed the exact method of creation of the Philosopher's Stone, and his tone alone tells Mustang Dumbledore never expected a close friend to have done something so utterly awful, especially considering the sheer number of souls needed to keep him and his wife alive for so long.
- Commonality Connection: Due to their shared love and devotion to research and study, Roy and Hermione develop a close professional, yet sibling-like, bond with each other very early on. Hermione often confides with him in personal projects and theories, whether regarding alchemy, magic, or otherwise.
- Crossover Power Acquisition: Tangentially, since Alchemy and Magic work along a common base. Apparently, Voldemort's horcruxes are a form of human transmutation, and the first step is likely blocking Truth's ability to interfere with his Gate. Given he wasn't the inventor of the Horcrux technique, Mustang suspects that whoever was it had working knowledge of the Gate and Truth.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Mustang has perfected the persona of a charming but largely useless academic to the point the entirety of the Order of the Phoenix and Hogwarts' staff is fooled. When confronting the Death Eaters, Moody thought that at best, he'd manage the alchemical equivalent of an incendio... only for Mustang to nearly cremate the entire group with Flame Alchemy far closer to controllable Fiendfyre and then go on to brutally repulse Voldemort. Speculation immediately changes to how it was possible such a skilled and powerful combatant hid as a teacher without anyone realizing what he really was.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Literally just a snap of his fingers is all it takes to take down the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries; Moody compares it to a controlled fiendfyre and it leaves every one of the targets with major burns (at the very least, Lucius Malfoy is seen to have lost around half of his right hand and sustained major burns to his legs, and Bellatrix loses her wand arm entirely, leaving bone exposed). Again, all it took was a single snap of Mustang's fingers, and he was still holding back to avoid killing.
- The Dark Arts: What the Order of the Phoenix assumes at first after witnessing Mustang's alchemy. Moody even admits he's not sure whether to point his wand at the Death Eaters or at the man who just nearly incinerated the entire group by himself. In a similar vein, the Ministry asks him to hand over the information on the lethal array, but he flatly refuses, determined to keep Berthold Hawkeye’s array safe, knowing how really dangerous it is.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Mustang has a natural flair and makes even the dreariest clothes look amazing, something that does not escape Hogwarts' female population. To the mild disgust of the other teachers, Umbridge is not exempt from this.
- Frame-Up: One of the first things Mustang warns his Alchemy students is that under absolutely no circumstances are they ever to experiment with arrays on their own. Some time later, Hermione's bag falls, spilling out an incomplete array diagram. A politely furious Mustang instantly sends her to detention, along with Harry and Ron when they try to defend her. When they present themselves, Mustang stops them and immediately tells them he was the one who slipped the array into Hermione's bag, so he could have a private conversation with them about their plans to start their defense club without anyone else from the faculty listening. Unfortunately, the tactic is invalidated when Umbridge is promoted to Headmistress, since by then she would have forced herself into any detention involving Harry.
- Fridge Horror: In-Universe, Mustang has to restrain himself from calculating how many souls it took to create enough Philosopher's Stone to keep Nicolas Flamel and Perenelle alive since the Middle Ages.
- Gate of Truth: Mustang returns here at the beginning to bargain for his eyesight back from Truth, hoping that the fact he was coerced and bringing Marcoh's nearly depleted Philosopher's Stone will earn him some leniency. While Truth agrees on principle, the fact is he doesn't have as much to bargain as he hoped, so it proposes an alternate payment form - undo whatever is blocking Truth away from Tom Marvolo Riddle's Gate, and Truth restores his eyesight in full and sends him back at the exact instant he left.
- I Know You Know I Know: Dumbledore and Mustang have a discussion, where without mentioning the specifics, both realize the other is well aware of the steps necessary to create a Philosopher's Stone, and regard the process as a
Moral Event Horizon. - Imagine Spot: Mustang has several of these during his time spent on Earth and in The Wizarding World. To Mustang's regret, whenever he imagines Alphonse Elric, he imagines him as the suit of armor, since he never saw him in the flesh. When thinking about the Hogwarts House System, he began to imagine Edward Elric and the members of his team in exactly what House their personalities would have aligned with.Edward would either be in Gryffindor or become the strangest, most conflictive Ravenclaw in the history of Hogwarts.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: While not shown, it is implied that members of the DADA also learned some form of physical combat in their lessons besides defensive spells. There is evidence for this when Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna all are physically able to subdue the members of the Inquisitorial Squad that hold them captive. Without magic.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Barty Crouch Jr. passes on the details of Roy's visit to Voldemort, who's delighted with the possibility of interrogating an alchemist with working knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone, which he regarded as hopelessly lost after his ill-fated attempt to steal it in canon.
- Older Than They Look: To many wizards and witches, Mustang appears to be in his early twenties, while in reality he's in his early thirties. This causes Harry to believe he regularly uses a Philosopher's Stone to keep himself young.
- Omniglot: As part of the Required Secondary Powers needed for Roy's mission, Truth gives him knowledge of the English language.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Even though most of the things that wizards do catch Mustang off guard (he constantly has to remind himself of that in the first several chapters), he's fairly good at hiding his surprise. This isn't the case when he looks up what dementors are. He's visibly shaken and drops the book he was reading about them. He admits that he was extremely grateful he was alone when this transpired.
- The Order of the Phoenix in turn is caught off guard at Roy's persona change after Harry has the vision of the Department of Mysteries. Unbeknownst to them, this is Roy's true personality.
- Perception Filter: When Mustang visits the library, there's a hidden hall sandwiched between two normal ones containing the Wizarding World books.
- Poor Communication Kills: Mustang is well aware of the trope, and harshly averts it to derail Umbridge's career and destroy the Death Eater attack at the Department of Mysteries. Merely contacting Sirius and warning him to stay put keeps Harry safe at Hogwarts, while Tonks disguises herself as him and pretends to have fallen into the trap, with Mustang appearing to confront him and return him to the school. The temptation of their two biggest targets together proves irresistible for the Death Eaters, which fall into the trap.
- Power of Trust: Harry admits that due to Mustang's actions in Umbridge's office, the alchemist has become one of the few Hogwarts professors he trusts completely, the others being Hagrid and Dumbledore. Enough so that it doesn't take much convincing from Hermione to make Mustang their teaching supervisor for the DA starting in year six.
- Precocious Crush: Mainly due to his natural good looks and younger appearance, a majority of the female population of Hogwarts develop a crush on Mustang. It's only the few that attend his alchemy classes that lose it when they realize how much of a slavedriver he is on his students.
- Pride Before a Fall: At the end of term, Draco is left despondent - just a day earlier, he was a leader in the Inquisitorial Squad, with the full backing of his wealthy family, and the favor of the Dark Lord. After the attack on the Ministry of Magic, the Squad is dissolved in disgrace, Umbridge and his father have been arrested, Voldemort is furious with everyone, and everyone in Hogwarts hates Draco.
- Psychic Static: When Dumbledore attempts to use Legilimency to look into Roy's mind, all he gets is a vast sea of white, and nothing he does can offer any different result. This briefly leads to him asking Roy to teach Harry Occlumency... except Roy doesn't know where the shields came from, until he realizes they come courtesy of Truth, who most likely put them in place to avoid anyone gaining alchemical knowledge they shouldn't without paying the toll.
- Scars Are Forever: Mustang was given the chance to get the damage Wrath inflicted upon him fully healed, but made the choice to restrict the healing to the bone and muscle, keeping the surface scars, as a constant reminder of the horror of the Promised Day.
- The Stations of the Canon: Mustang's presence changes certain events, though others remain unchanged. He warns Sirius to stay put, preventing Harry from falling into the trap at the Department of Mysteries; instead, most of the main Death Eaters, including Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, are brutally confronted and arrested. While Dumbledore still falls prey to the trap of the ring, due to Mustang's and Snape's intervention, he makes it out somewhat better. Fudge still is ousted and replaced with Rufus Scrimgeour; likewise, Emmeline Vance and Amelia Bones die during the summer between the fifth and sixth years.
- Stern Teacher: Much to the chagrin of several students, Harry and Ron included, Mustang turns out to be a very stern and strict professor. Some go as far as to compare him to Snape in regards to harshness. Fortunately, unlike Snape, as Hermione frequently points out, Mustang is also a fair professor. He holds no bias towards any Hogwarts house (he very blatantly warns on their first day that should any fights between houses start in his classroom, he will expel them from his class, not caring if they were good at alchemy or not) and grades purely on merit rather than favoritism, and will gladly offer assistance to struggling students outside of class time.
- Tempting Fate: Dumbledore offers Mustang the book he believes Voldemort used to base his Horcruxes on, and warns him it's a very difficult read. Roy accepts it, feeling that no book can possibly be worse than the horrors he witnessed and inflicted during Ishval. By the time he's finished, he's ashen-faced, terrified and exhausted, and admits that while the book was indeed not worse than Ishval, it's a very close second.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: To make sure their deal is a true Equivalent Exchange, Truth makes it so however long Mustang takes to find and undo the block on Voldemort's Gate, he will return back at the exact same instant he activated the array.
- Your Magic's No Good Here: Averted. Alchemy and magic are related but not identical, and can be freely used in the Harry Potter world. Nicolas Flamel also used the exact FMA mechanics to create his own Philosopher's Stone and bore witness to an encounter with Truth. That said, alchemy is comparatively primitive in the Wizarding World and the art is seen as largely useless until Roy visits, bearing knowledge of the more advanced Amestrian variant, which requires a much larger investment and knowledge of chemistry and mathematics, but can easily be superior to the local magic in many ways, if properly used.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Mustang wonders exactly why Truth considers Tom Marvolo Riddle's life worth less than a normal life, and while he's initially relieved to have the non-lethal option available, soon he realizes it's a pipe dream at best.
