FOREWORD
I have to confess, the Lostbelts of Fate/Grand Order, for me, were rather formulaic, and bleakly so at that. You could sum up most if not all of them by the following phrases: humanity made livestock, gods screwing things over, tree falls, everyone dies. It got to the point where I began skipping the story.
Yet there was one Lostbelt I decided not to skip, that I would try to go all the way through. And I am glad I did. Avalon le Fae was easily the best of the Lostbelts, even when going through parts of the formula of the previous ones. Most of the characters, fair or foul, were at least interesting, there was a real sense of worldbuilding previous Lostbelts lacked somewhat, and there was some decent timey-wimey stuff.
The Fairy Knights or Tam Lin as the localisation puts them were amongst the more interesting characters in the Lostbelt, each quite tragic in their own way. But I found myself gravitating to Tam Lin Gawain, aka Barghest. Although I detested her brutality and ruthlessness at certain points in the arc, she also showed herself to be a genuinely decent and virtuous person in her own way, and by Fae standards, she was practically a saint. Her fate was debatably the least-deserved of any of the Tam Lin. True, I don't really have that much of a thing for heavily-muscled women, but Barghest won me over.
And it's fitting that a story bringing her together with Harry marks my return to the Nasuverse. I found myself burned out on writing Nasuverse fics for a time, after I finished my Harry/Tiamat fic Primordial Song. Even though there were plenty of other potential stories and pairing to explore, I found myself unable to write them up, partly because I had done so many variations on crossovers with Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night, and Fate/Apocrypha. But I thought, why not do an epic that was both an epilogue to the British Lostbelt, and a prologue to Fate/Grand Order? Because the Fate/Grand Order elements come in (aside from the Lostbelt characters) much later on in the fic, and because Barghest has a pairing tag in the Fate/Stay Night category and not Fate/Grand Order, this will be marked as a Fate/Stay Night crossover. Any sequels will be in the Fate/Grand Order category.
Anyway, time for the usual disclaimers. Firstly, there will be spoilers for both Harry Potter and Fate/Grand Order.
Secondly, there will be heavy annotations, as is usual for my works. You have been warned.
Thirdly, this is an M-Rated work. There will be coarse language, violence, and sexual references. Again, you have been warned.
Finally, the following is a fan-written work. Harry Potter and Fate/Grand Order are the properties of their respective owners. Please support the official release. Otherwise, Barghest will turn you into a Black Dog…