Fate Ends
is a crossover fanfic between Scumbag System and Harry Potter, written by Araceil on Archive of Our Own.
In which Harry Potter finds himself forced into witness protection after the last battle against Voldemort, donning the false persona of Shen Yuan, sickly chinese fuerdai.
The thing is, it never was intended to be permanent. So when Harry wakes up in a grave, blessed with a brand-new body courtesy of the Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom, he's rather upset by his past decisions.
Actually, screw that, he's furious. Fuck Fate for dragging him into yet another mess! And fuck the System for throwing him at Luo Binghe!
Contains the following tropes
- Abhorrent Admirer: Luo Binghe is a rather tragic example of one. He does genuinely love Harry, but his obsessive behaviour and refusal to respect his beloved's privacy ultimately destroy any chance for the transmigrator to ever return his feelings.
- And I Must Scream: Shen Jiu didn't die from the qi deviation, his soul kept safe in Harry's Horcux-less mind. Meaning he saw "Shen Yuan" stealing his hard-won name and achievements, completely upending his life and being alright with letting someone Shen Jiu couldn't stand lust after their body.
- Attempted Rape: Luo Binghe is so overwhelmed by feelings of guilt (caused by learning the Awful Truth regarding his fate) and fear (caused by Harry's Martyr Without a Cause tendences) when he's reunited with his Shizun, he steals Harry to the Huan Hua Palace and starts to molest him. Harry barely manages to escape through teleportation and is very much shaken afterwards.
- Awful Truth: Learning what happened in the Proud Immortal Demon Way utterly horrifies the Cang Qiong Mountain Peak Lords, and blatantly traumatizes Luo Binghe since the half-demon was supposed to become the Villain Protagonist.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Luo Binghe wanted to learn why his beloved Shizun was so skittish around him. After hearing everything supposed to happen in the canon timeline, the half-demon is nothing short of traumatized.
- Culture Clash: Harry has to explain Luo Binghe about the supernatural being very much feared in the West, to the point civilians would hunt and kill witches as they would demons.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Harry disapproves of the Dementor's Kiss, no matter the victim. Yes, it includes Umbridge.
- Shen Yuan was rather self-centered and bent on treating everyone around him as mere characters in a novel, but even he felt bad about making the hopelessly nice Yue Qingyuan suffer.
- For all his loathing towards Luo Binghe, Shen Jiu is extremely disturbed by the Old Palace Master's thwarted lust for Su Xiyan being reported upon her son.
- Qiu Haitang is visibly uneasy and guilty when she finds out that she attacked and persecuted Harry, whom she believes is Shen Qingqiu's underage son rather than Shen Qingqiu himself. This is increased when Harry reveals that he is not trained as a cultivator.
- Fate Worse than Death: How Harry describes the Dementor's Kiss, since it actually destroys the soul and prevents it from ever being reborn, meaning the victim will never be able to redeem themselves.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The System is implied to be this — it stuffed an amnesiac Harry within Shen Qingqiu's body and would have deleted Shen Jiu's consciousness entirely if Harry's soul hadn't been able to hide it, it prevented him from seeking help under pain of torture and is now pushing for the transmigrator to become Luo Binghe's lover in spite of Harry's extreme distaste for the prospect.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The Old Palace Master is very, very jealous that Luo Binghe idolized Harry as a shizun instead of the old letch himself. This envy increases when Harry reveals that he is not trained in xianxia cultivation. The Old Palace Master is pretty much foaming at the mouth at the idea that an utter beginner like Harry could have trained a cultivator of Luo Binghe's calibre.
- Happily Adopted: The Cang Qiong Mountain Peak Lords decide to formally add Harry to their rolls as Shen Qingqiu's child, and treat him as such. A freshly re-corporated Shen Jiu approves the decision and tells Harry to call him "baba".
- Identical Stranger: Downplayed, Harry's new plant body certainly looks related to Shen Jiu, helping to sell the story about him being the Qing Jing Peak Lord's child.
- I Hate Past Me: Harry feels quite ashamed of his "Shen Yuan" persona for being horrendously naive, self-centered and stubbornly insisting on denying people around him were actual people.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Luo Binghe's reaction when he gets to hear he was fated to raze Cang Qiong to the ground, rape any pretty woman on his path and gruesomely torture the man he loves until death. He's sobbing with such strength, he barely manages to beg for his Shizun's forgiveness.
- Irony: "Shen Yuan" attempted to mimic Shen Jiu's mannerisms only to make obvious that he wasn't the original goods in spite of his frantic desire to fool everyone on Cang Qiong. After regaining his memories, Harry decides he doesn't care anymore about hiding and promptly does a better job of emulating the former Qing Jing Peak Lord's behaviour than his false persona ever could, something Yue Qingyuan ruefully points.
- Just a Kid: The other Cang Qiong Peak Lords immediately freak out when Harry candidly reveals he's younger than Liu Mingyan. Harry doesn't appreciate and points he did a very good job of managing Qing Jing Peak, but it doesn't appease them.
- Lack of Empathy: Harry accuses "Shen Yuan" from having the empathy of a moldy nut, and that's a big part of the reason why he doesn't like his false persona.
- Lethal Chef: Hagrid, of course. Harry muses Luo Binghe's demonic hybrid body might allow him to actually consume the half-giant's infamously inedible rock cakes.
- Nice Guy: Yue Qingyuan is so sweet he decided to adopt the man impersonating his lost love as a younger brother. Harry muses the Sect Leader's kind disposition was enough for the extremely self-centered "Shen Yuan" feel bad for the amount of crap he has to tread.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Tianlang-jun likely wasn't expecting he would re-embody Shen Jiu when he tried to stole Harry's soul away through the ritual in the Mausoleum.
- Noodle Incident: When the Ku Xing Peak Lord refuses to believe Harry is the Shen Qingqiu they interacted with for several years, Harry mentions some hand-drawn spring books thrown somewhere they shouldn't have been as a Trust Password. The Ku Xing Peak Lord folds.
- Oblivious to Love: Harry couldn't understand why Luo Binghe would be so anxious to be reunited with him — until the half-demon tried to force himself upon the transmigrator. After that, Harry is very aware of Luo Binghe's crush and completely horrified by it.
- The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: For all Luo Binghe seethes over Liu Qingge constantly fighting him for Shen Qingqiu's corpse and being a potential romantic rival, the half-demon nonetheless acknowledges the purity of the War God's feelings.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Shen Jiu would rather murder Luo Binghe than entertain the idle possibility of a relationship between the half-demon and Shen Jiu's adopted son Harry. Very much a sympathetic example when the suitor's borderline Yandere personality is taken in account.
- Plant Person: Harry, of course, since he gained his current body through the Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom. Also, the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect gives him a cover story by claiming he was born of the Crane's White Eggplant.
- Rapid Hair Growth: In his new plant body, Harry's hair now reaches his thighs. Even after losing a few inches to escape a crazed Luo Binghe through a portal, it's still butt-length at the least.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Yue Qingyuan never was fooled by "Shen Yuan" attempting to impersonate Shen Qingqiu, but couldn't bring himself to actually say it loud, resolving to watch over the new Qing Jing Peak Lord instead to honor Shen Jiu's memory.
- Someone to Remember Him By: After revealing his Secret Secret-Keeper status, Yue Qingyuan confesses he soldiered on because he decided to love and care for Harry as if he was Shen Jiu's child. Harry is moved and accepts to be seen as such.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Shen Jiu didn't die from the qi deviation, Harry's soul protecting his being from deletion by the System, and later regains control of his body courtesy of Tianlang-jun's intervention.
- Student/Teacher Romance: Deconstructed by Harry who cannot see the relationship as anything beyond an horrendous abuse of trust and influence, to Luo Binghe's utter dismay since the half-demon very much craves his Shizun as a lover and argues his ascension as Junshang puts them on a more equal foot.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: What Luo Binghe thinks of Harry, mainly because the transmigrator is a bit of a Martyr Without a Cause and would sacrifice himself for any cause he thinks worthy of his life and there's a lot of these.
- To Serve Man: Several demon tribes won't hesitate to devour humans because of the famine currently ravaging the Demon Realm. Harry suggests to use pork as substitute, reasoning pigs are easy to farm, the taste won't be that different and it will lessen the hostility between cultivators and demons.
- Trapped in Another World: Harry. He's rather upset about it and longs for a way to come back to his former world.
- Truly Single Parent: Cang Qiong's cover story about Harry claims he was born of a plant tended by Shen Qingqiu, so the Qing Jing Peak Lord effectively would be a single father. Harry went along because his background is already a convoluted mess and he didn't want to add a mother in the mix.
- Twin Threesome Fantasy: As he stumbles upon Harry and Shen Jiu in the Mausoleum, Luo Binghe fantasizes about keeping both of them. It doesn't last with Shen Jiu's sparkling personality coming to the fore.
- Unreliable Narrator: Harry tends to assume the worst regarding other people's opinion of him, has a very skewed sense of danger and insists Luo Binghe's worse tendences are wholly caused by Xin Mo when it's strongly hinted the sword is exacerbing already existing issues.
- Yaoi Fangirl: Liu Mingyan looks starry-eyed when she hears rumors about Luo Binghe pining after his Shizun and gasps in delight when Yue Qingyuan glomps Harry.
