Heart of Ember, Autumntide is a crossover fanfic between Harry Potter and Final Fantasy XIV by ThatOnePsycho.
To avoid Harry being starved by the Dursleys, his magic teleports him to the Source. Several years and insane adventures later, the Warrior of Light returns home due to desperate Portkey usage by Dumbledore and isn't exactly happy with the change of setting.
It can be read here
at Spacebattles Dot Com, and on AO3 here.
This story contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Harry is a Composite Character with the Warrior of Light, making him leagues beyond his canon self's level of badass.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Due to being much closer age-wise than the canon Warrior of Light when they met her, Harry and Alisaie are an Official Couple in this story. He proposes to her during his first Christmas at Hogwarts.
- Age Lift: Due to the Timey-Wimey Ball between the source and his native Earth, Harry is nineteen years old when he first arrives at Hogwarts.
- Brutal Honesty: When Snape tries to question Harry about what would happen if he mixed two potions ingredients (which in canon was an excuse to mess with Harry, who he knew dodn't know the answer), Harry retorts that he hasn't ready the required lessons yet, subtly calling out Snape for doing so.
- The Chosen One: As soon as Harry is sorted into Gryffindor, his Reaper Soul Crystal chooses Neville to be its bearer. After the Halloween troll is dealt with, Hermoine ends up chosen by his Black Mage Soul Crystal.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: As Harry was at peace in the Source, he's not happy to be brought home because the method used amounted to kidnapping.
- Didn't Think This Through: Dumbledore was so panicked when he found that Harry was missing that he used a specially enchanted Portkey to bring him back to Hogwarts. As Professor McGonagall notes, he didn't even consider checking first with Durmstrang or Beaubaxton to see if Harry enrolled there.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Dumbledore sent out a Portkey to retrieve Harry because he was terrified that the boy was suffering wherever he was. The first half of the prologue showed that Harry was about to take a break from adventuring and is quite annoyed to have been kidnapped.
- Hagrid assumes that Harry won't be able to see the Thestrals at Hogwarts because he hasn't seen and comprehended death. Harry is by this point a One-Man Army who has killed innumerable people and watched several friends die right in front of him, and states this immediately after admitting he can see the Thestrals.
- Flat "What": Snape's reaction when he uses a Legilimens spell on Harry, only to see the boy's memories of Eorzea without any context.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Played for Laughs example, while looking over all the weapons on Harry's Chocobo, Dumbledore wonders why a frying pan is among them. Since none of the combat classes in FFXIV use frying pans, it's a mystery why Harry packed it with his weapons.
- Horse of a Different Color: Harry has a black-feathered Chocobo named Squall that he uses as a mount. A later conversation with Hagrid reveals he has ridden many other beasts, but hasn't tried with a unicorn because they are too skittish. Hagrid begins planning to teach him to ride a Hippogriff after Harry successfully earns the respect of one.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite all of his adventures Harry went on and all the powers, light and dark, that he has acquired, the Sorting Hat still declares him a Gryffindor. Justified in that, as the Hat notes, while Harry's journey has been focused on his friends, he still devoted himself to saving a world that wasn't his because it is the right thing to do, emphasizing many of Gryffindor's virtues.
- Irony: Hermoine spends the first few chapters worried that Harry will teach Neville dark magic due to how the aesthetics of the Reaper look. At the end of Chapter 6, the Soul Crystal for the Black Mage (one of the actual Black Magic classes in FFXIV) chooses her to wield its knowledge and power.
- Magitek: Harry carries loads of this - he's mentioned as having the weapons of all three magitek-wielding classes in FFXIVnote .
- Only Sane Man: Hermoine is a Deconstruction of this, in that, in the words of the author, she's an Only Sane Man "in a world where Sanity got shot in the head from the word go" - she's trying to apply logic to Harry when everything about him defies reason. She's rightfully suspicious of him because he's supposed to be eleven but showed up looking nineteen years old, and that's just the start of it.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Dumbledore is absolutely livid after seeing that the Dursleys forced Harry to live under the stairs of their house, noting he hasn't been this angry with muggles since what happened with his sister.
- Our Dragons Are Different: In-Universe, dragons native to the Earth of the Wizarding World are implied to be weaker than those of the Source, since Harry doesn't sense any aether in his dragonhide gloves, instead finding them to be just really tough leather.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Harry is somewhat surprised when he meets the goblins of Gringotts, as the only thing they share with those of the Source are eye color.
- Outside-Context Problem: Harry - he spent several years in another universe which uses completely different varieties of magic than the Wizarding World, magic that can be used by anyone, and as a side effect, has no masquerade or stigma against magitek. Dumbledore is puzzled by some of his weapons, while Gringotts is surprised that one of his powers lets him understand the language of goblins.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Hermione assumes that the Reaper Soul Crystal that Harry gave Neville is an item of dark magic, since it produced a smoke entity resembling a Dementor. But while
Word of God confirmed both that Harry is a Black Mage and that there is a connection between the Voidsent and the Dementors, there's nothing wrong with the crystal - the entity is indeed a Voidsent, but it's just a normal example of the species, honorable adherence to contracts included, same as any other Reaper avatar. - Timey-Wimey Ball: Harry spent much more time in Eorzea than has passed in his native world, being nineteen years old when Dumbledore kidnaps him home via Portkey when, according to the Hogwarts registry, he should be about eleven. When he uses a crystal to talk with Alisaie, though, it's implied the same amount of time has passed for him as it has for her.
- True Companions: Harry's friends in Eorzea mean the world to him. The Sorting Hat even brings this up, but when Harry wonders if this will get him in Hufflepuff, it notes his greatest trials have been aiding complete strangers.
- Wrong Context Magic: Wizarding World magic runs into this issue when compared to Aether based magic. In particular, Dark Magic on Earth is defined as anything that intentionally harms the target, while in Eorzea and the Source, it's Entropy and Chaos Magic.
