Secret Snarry Swap: FIC: No Magic Fix Title: No Magic Fix Author:me_midget Other pairings/threesome: None Rating: NC-17 Word count: 5,300 Content/Warning(s): (highlight for warnings) *mpreg, description of injury* Prompt:: #13 where "Magic is dying [...]" Summary: Magic has disappeared and their world is in shambles. As Christmas is coming closer, sudden events force Harry and Severus out of their stupor. There is only one thing left to do: Fix what has been broken. A/N: A gazillion thanks go to llaeyro for doing such a wonderfully thorough and great job on beta-reading this fic and for taking the time to teach me what em-dashes are!
No Magic Fix
The sun had lost its brightness, colours seemed duller now. The radio had claimed today would be a fine winter day, but instead Harry found it grey and cold. He wondered if Severus experienced it the same way and turned to him. He found Severus frowning at two pigeons walking along the park's path, just a couple of metres away from them.
"What's up?"
"I don't trust pigeons," Severus growled. He sounded a bit bonkers, but then again Harry thought he probably was mad—just like the rest of them.
"There used to be no pigeons around here."
"That's because of the owls," Harry said. "The owls attacked them and so the pigeons kept away from where the wizards were." The owls leaving had been the first sign. It should have been a warning of what was about to come, but Harry suspected that no one had made the connection back then. He certainly hadn't. For him, it had all started when the Weasley family’s clock fell down from the wall.
"Stop that."
Harry looked at Severus questioningly. Severus pointed at his forearm. Harry lifted his left hand off his right arm and sat on it. He had tried to stop scratching his arm, but couldn't. The itching was just too bad. He could feel where the magic was supposed to be, where bits and pieces of it—–not nearly enough—still coursed through his veins. "What are you doing today?" he asked in an attempt to distract himself.
Severus shrugged. "Not quite decided yet. I thought about reading a book." Severus always said that, but Harry didn't think he'd touched a single page since magic started fading. And he was with Severus almost every day – he should know.
Their friendship had begun years earlier, when Harry had taken over Ollivander’s. Severus had set up shop down the street not too long after the war, and so it had felt kind of natural to go over there and get reacquainted. And now? Now no one needed wands anymore, because no one could cast spells properly. Potions had become impossible to brew and what Severus had stocked sold out or was slowly losing its function. There was nothing for them to do anymore, because there were no customers to serve and no products to be brewed or crafted.
Harry took out the mobile phone Hermione had got him and checked for new messages. He had seen so many Muggles glued to those things, but he probably had been out of the Muggle world for too long to see the appeal. At least it allowed him to stay in contact with his friends, now that it had become impossible to pop over to Kent in the blink of an eye.
"News?" Severus asked, looking vaguely interested until Harry shook his head.
"No, nothing. There never is anything."
******
Harry brought two coffees to the park the next day. It was freezing—Harry hadn't felt the cold like this in years. Warming and insulation charms had kept his life nice and cushy for a long while. The hot coffee was welcome. Even Severus almost clung to the cheap paper cup as if it would save him. For a brief moment, Harry wondered if they should be meeting inside the next time, but discarded the idea almost immediately. They'd never done that before. And inside… Harry could barely stand being in his own flat, surrounded by all those things that had been magical once. Yesterday, he had discovered that his parents' photograph stopped moving.
"What day is it?" Severus asked him. He had started doing that about a week ago.
Harry gave him a worried look. "It's Friday."
Severus nodded. "Two weeks to Christmas."
"That's right." Harry sipped on his fancy something something latte. "I'm thinking about getting a job."
"You have a job."
"I have a business. A dead one. I have almost spent the Galleons, Sickles and Knuts that I had in cash. And as you know, I can’t get into Gringotts, because the goblins have gone berserk and whatever magic was operating the place has fizzled out."
"And?"
"And I need food. Soon enough people will start to realise that our money is worth shit without the baking system. And what then? Muggles won't take it."
Severus stared holes into the ground and said nothing.
"I thought of working at that coffee place. They're hiring and I suspect they don't have the strictest requirements for their workers. If I start now, I should be able to bridge over that time when shit hits the fan in our world."
"Shit has already hit it and it has flown into our faces, I'd say."
Months ago, when the sun had been shining and everything still was normal, Harry had been about to ask Severus out. He'd worked up the courage for weeks, had worked out a plan on how to approach the topic. It had taken him a long time to accept what he felt about Severus. That, yes, he did fancy the man. And, yes, he enjoyed spending time with him. But when Harry had tried Apparating that night, he hadn't moved an inch. For the first time in many, many years, his Apparition technique had failed him. He could count himself lucky. By now he had heard stories about people who had Splinched themselves and had died in the process, because their magic had failed them when they had tried to call for help. On that particular night, Harry had written his failure off as nerves and tiredness. Then the next day, he'd flown over to the Burrow—back when the brooms had still been working—and the clock had fallen. He never had told Severus how he felt.
"Stop that."
Harry put his arm on the skin he had scratched and pressed down hard to fight the urge. After a couple of deep breaths, he picked up his coffee and clung to it instead. He looked around; the houses surrounded the park were all nicely decorated—tasteful applications of fairy lights, poinsettias in the windows, garlands covering entrance doors. Harry hadn't had the energy for proper decorations at home.
The ringtone of his mobile phone startled him so much that he dropped his cup. Hermione's face was on the screen and Harry pressed Answer. "Hallo?"
It wasn't Hermione's machine-gun vocabulary that greeted him, but her sobbing.
"Hermione? What's wrong?"
"It's Ginny," she said, her words barely audible through the line. "She tried to Floo to Dean and the fire didn't turn green."
"What? What are you saying?"
"She was in a hurry. She didn't notice that it was still a normal fire."
"Hermione—"
"She stepped inside." He heard her suppress another sob on the other end of the line. "It's bad, Harry."
"But…" Harry gripped the bench hard.
"The healing ointments don't work anymore. We had to take her to a Muggle hospital."
"Is she alive?" The question made Severus's head snap up.
"Yes. They've pumped her full of pain killers. She might need skin transplants on her arms." Hermione started crying again. "Oh, Harry. She’s so badly burnt!"
Harry struggled for something to say. Ginny critically injured. He couldn't breathe. His vision swam, the back of his neck was prickling. He registered that Severus took the phone from him and talked to Hermione for a bit, before slipping it into Harry's coat pocket again.
For a while they just sat there, Harry focusing on his breathing and the pressure of Severus's shoulder against his. "We have to do something," he said eventually.
"Like what? My potions don't work anymore and our healers are useless. We have to rely on the Muggles now."
Harry shook his head. "No. There has to be a way! We have to do something to fix this." He waved his arms around, meaning the magic in general.
"Harry—"
"No. I can't take it anymore. We need to do something. I need to do something!"
"Why us?"
"Who else?"
Severus sighed. "And what would you have us do?"
"I don't know." Harry bit his lip. "But we need to find a way. There has to be something… This has to be fixable!" An idea overcame him. "Where's the biggest library around."
"Hogwarts." Then Severus shook his head. "You're grasping at straws."
"Maybe I am," said Harry and ran a trembling hand through his hair. "But will you come with me anyway?"
"Yes."
******
That night, they got on a train to Scotland, bags hurriedly packed. They slept fitfully in a cheap B&B near the train station in Edinburgh. In the morning, Harry used his fully charged phone to send Hermione a text saying where they were going, before buying rations at the next Asda. A bus then brought them as close to Hogsmeade as possible. Lazy snowflakes were falling from the sky, slowly covering the landscape with white. They continued on foot afterwards. Avoiding the village, they circled around the castle, always making sure not to come to close too the Forbidden Forest. While the goblins had only locked up Gringotts and made a stand with the fortunes hidden inside, there was no way of knowing how other magical creatures had been affected. The castle itself had been abandoned in the early days. Children had been sent home, but a couple of teachers had stayed for a while, until they, too, had become too unsettled to stay there.
Finally, Harry and Severus reached the gates. Chains hung on the ironwork—something or someone had forced the lock open. Harry looked at Severus questioningly, but Severus only shrugged. "Maybe some idiots who thought they might find treasures inside." Harry knew they both hoped it had only been Muggles and nothing else.
They squeezed through the opening and kept pushing forward through the snow. In all his years that he'd gone to school there, Harry had never found the castle with its turrets and gargoyles anything but welcoming. But now he found the dark windows foreboding. He shivered and told himself to keep going, for Ginny.
The doors to the Entrance Hall were closed, but Severus wordlessly led Harry to a side door. As a student, he'd mostly ignored the door, as it had been too close to the teachers' lounge to be practical. Now, it opened with only a little resistance. Inside, darkness greeted them. Harry switched on the torch he had thought to bring along. Slowly and careful not to make too much noise, they moved forward. At least in here there was no snow they had to fight through, even if it was still bitter cold. Suddenly, a noise cut through the stillness of the forsaken castle. Severus closed his eyes. "We're not alone in the castle."
"No," Harry said and shone the light at a set of stairs that led to the kitchens. "We're not." The bodies of the house-elves lay there. The state of their decay indicated they had died before the temperatures had sunk below zero degrees. One had died with a knife in his chest. Harry swallowed hard and tried not to think of Dobby. He forced himself not to wonder what had become of Winky and continued on. Whatever had happened here, he hoped it was over. He'd come for information and not for another war.
They avoided the stairs that started near the Great Hall and opted for stairs in the northern part of the castle that would lead them closer to the library. Little had they known what they would find there.
They had only climbed a few stairs when they heard that noise again, only much closer. A growl followed. Harry stared at Severus with wide eyes, as if to ask him what could have crept in from the forest. Severus reached for his wand automatically, only to remember that it was useless. "Run!"
The noise and the growling got louder and suddenly a shriek joined in. They had woken what had been lurking in the shadows. Something grabbed for Harry's ankle as they ran past and Harry kicked it as hard as he could without stopping. There was thundering behind him. He couldn't help but turn around. Just in time, he managed to grab Severus' hand and jerk him forward, away from the flames of what had to be a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
"Left!" Severus yelled and they turned into the next corridor. Something loomed in the shadows up ahead. "The door!"
Harry reached for the iron handles and pulled as hard as he could. What magic locks had once protected the place had gone, and with a marrow-shaking screech, the door opened. They hastened inside and started pushing the doors closed, when the face of a troll appeared in the gap. His roar let their ears ring.
"Fuck!" Harry let go of the door and looked around frantically.
"What are you doing?!" Severus struggled to keep the troll at bay, then Harry found what he was looking for. He grabbed the heaviest-looking chair nearby and smashed it with a roar of strain and desperation against the troll's head. It withdrew immediately. Severus shut the door as quickly as he could. Together, he and Harry pushed desks and chairs in front of it in hope of keep everything and everyone outside.
******
Severus looked around the shelves they'd taken refuge behind. The entrance door of the library was still closed and everything seemed calm for now. It had been quiet for a couple of hours, save for the shrieks that came from various areas of the castle and the grounds.
"Do you think the troll will be back?" Harry asked while he sorted through a stack of books.
Severus shook his head and winced as the movement pinched the wound on his shoulder. The Blast-Ended Skrewt had hit him with one of its pincers and they had wrapped the wound as well as they could at this time. "Trolls are stupid. It will most likely have forgotten where we are. If it remembers us at all."
"Good. I just hope the rest of those crazed beasts stay out, too."
"It's a miracle they are still alive. After all, they have a lot of magic in them. They aren't called magical creatures for nothing."
"How's your fake gauze holding up?" Harry asked. They had used part of the only clean shirt Harry had thought to pack.
"It's fine." Severus scooted over and looked at the books Harry had collected so far. "Where are these from? The section on Magical History?"
"Yes."
"I doubt we will find something in there. This situation doesn't seem like your regular part of well-known history."
"Well- known?" Harry snorted. "Most of these books were so dusty they probably haven't been touched in years."
"Just because most students don't care for History…"
Harry shot him a look.
"Or was it just that you don't know utter shite about Magical History?"
"Yes. I alone am responsible for the dust on the books' spines," Harry said and kept sorting. "You can keep insulting me, but I'm the only one here doing some actual work."
"I still think going through these has little to no merit. If it were so easy to find something about this situation, someone else would have found the solution for it."
"Not if everyone thought like you." Harry leaned back and sighed. "Well, where do you suppose we should look? The library is kind of big."
"I suggest you polish your glasses then, Mr Potter. We have quite a couple of days of reading ahead of us," Severus said and got up. "As for where I suggest we start this endeavour, we should start with the difficult material. The Restricted Section."
******
The caged-in area of the library had proven to be even more of a challenge than it had been in the previous years. The books, too, had suffered from the sudden loss of magic. Some seemed closed forever, others had burned up or had lost pages as a tree loses leaves. One book had bled out the words written on its pages. They had searched through what was left, fine-combing through the words, looking for clues. The days passed, Christmas got closer, and they found… nothing. The battery on Harry's phone had long fizzled out, leaving them stranded for information. Harry constantly thought about the Weasleys, how they must be sitting in the unfamiliar surroundings of the Muggle hospital, worrying about Ginny.
"What now?" Harry said as he looked at the stack of useless books. "Where should we look?"
"Stop that."
Again with the scratching. Harry pulled his fingers from his skin and looked at the rest of the library. "You didn't want the History books. Transfiguration? Potions? Those probably will render even less. Charms? Magical Folklore?"
Severus nodded at the latter two. "Let's collect all of those and start with what we have."
Harry sighed, got up and stretched. "Do you think we will find something?" He helped Severus to get up and lingered near him for comfort.
"I'm not sure. But we're here and I'm not giving up until we've looked through all the books available in this blasted library." He picked up two legs of a chair they had destroyed earlier and pressed them into Harry's arms. "It's time to build a fire again. The cold is creeping back in."
"At least there's no shortage of wood," Harry said and marched in the direction of their sleeping place. He set up the fire first, using matches and pages from Hogwarts, A History, then went to fetch books for them to go through. When he returned, he found Severus reading near the fire. Harry sat down next to him and, out of pure impulse, put his head on Severus' shoulder. For a couple of minutes they just sat there, Harry staring into the flames and Severus reading.
"What are you doing?" Severus asked then.
"Shall I move?" Harry's heart was beating fast against his chest.
"No, that won't be necessary."
******
A couple of the Charms books were promising at first. Chapters spoke of reawakening magic in individuals, how to tickle magic out of children who were slow to show their abilities, and how spell damage could be repaired. One book even discussed the possibilities of finding magic in Squibs, but stayed purely theoretical. In the end, none of them were helpful. None held a solution for their problem.
Two days before Christmas, they finished the last of the Charms books and started on Magical Folklore. That night, by the fire and now completely immune to the fact that neither of them had showered in almost two weeks, Harry kissed Severus for the first time. Severus welcomed him as if he had been waiting for the kiss to happen for long time now and Harry held him close, soaking in the feeling of being so close to the man he'd come to love. He told Severus how much he meant to him and Severus said, "I know."
"How long?" Harry said, smiling wryly as he hid his face his the nook of Severus' neck.
"Several months now."
"And you…?"
"I'm not averse to the idea," Severus said, his arms around Harry.
Harry chuckled. For now, this might be the closest he would get to Severus saying how much he liked him. "That's good, because I don't intend to let this go."
******
On Christmas Eve, they shared a can of ravioli heated by the fire. Their food and water rations were dwindling, but they had enough to last another five or six days at least. Harry suddenly jumped up as if stung by a bee. "Here!" he shouted, pointing at a page so violently that he almost ripped it out with the movement.
"What is it?" Severus got up as well and looked over his shoulder. "What does it say?"
"This chapter is describing how to counteract a curse that takes away magic!"
"A curse?" Severus frowned. "That can't be right. You can't curse away all the magic in the world."
Harry shook his head and held the book up to Severus' face. "Look! It's not talking about the magic gone everywhere. Rather, it's magic in a certain space that's affected."
"That doesn't sound like our situation at all. I don't know what caused our current predicament, but it certainly wasn't a curse."
"No, it probably wasn't. But there is a ritual described here. If it can counteract a curse that bad, maybe it can counteract whatever is happening here," Harry said, almost frantic in his attempt to get Severus to believe him.
Hesitating for a second or two, Severus took the book and sat down. Together, they read through the ritual. They were silent for a while, alternating between looking at the fire and rereading the text. Eventually, Severus spoke again: "Do you… You are grasping what this means?"
Harry nodded and took a deep breath before saying, "Yes. It says the ritual needs to be performed at midnight, that we will need to scratch these symbols in our skin and mark our foreheads with fresh ashes and that we will have to have sex during which I will get pregnant."
Severus spluttered. "It doesn’t… nothing here says it has to be…"
Harry put his hand on Severus' shoulder to stop him. He swallowed nervously, because it definitely wasn't easy talking about this, when their hands had stayed over their clothes so far. "When we sleep together, I want you in me." Both of them blushed a deep beet-red.
"And you'd be willing…? I mean, I still don't hold it as very likely that this will prove to be the cure we need to fix our world…"
"But having sex isn't too much of a hardship, right?" Harry grinned nervously. Of courses he had thought of fucking Severus. But in his imagination, it had happened mostly in a bed. With cushions. Or in front of a fireplace with a cushy fur underneath.
"Yes. No." Severus rubbed a hand over his face. "If the ritual does work and you end up pregnant…?"
"Well." Harry cleared his throat. "This clearly isn't how I think this should be going. But this situation isn't exactly normal. I love kids and I always imagined myself having some at some point in my life. If the ritual works and I end up pregnant, then we'll figure it out. It's not a hard price to pay if we can repair magic through this. And if the ritual won't work… well, without magic I won't end up pregnant anyway," Harry added with a trembling voice.
Severus nodded slowly. "I guess we should start the preparations, then."
******
Harry barely noticed the pain from where they had cut into their chests. They had lit some candles that they had left and placed them in a circle around their sleeping bags, the fire crackling a few meters away. Their ashen foreheads touched as they kissed before taking off their clothes. Each of them took a couple of seconds to look at the naked body of the other. Harry found that he had never looked at something so beautiful—despite Severus's being dirty and bloody and pale and ashen. He smiled and reached for Severus's hand.
"It will be alright," he said and drew him in for a kiss. Slowly, they sank down onto their sleeping bags, kissing and touching. They tugged and caressed and kissed until both of them were hard. Some ointment, which they had found in Madam Pince's old desk, that must have lost its function a while ago, served as their lubricant. Severus generously coated his fingers before circling them around Harry's hole, waiting until he was almost begging before pushing them inside slowly. He worked them in and out, kissing Harry and pushing his cock against Harry's leg.
"Fuck, Harry, you are so tight," he groaned against Harry's neck, and Harry tugged on his hand.
"Can't wait any longer. Please!"
Severus pulled his fingers out and lined himself up between Harry's legs. For a moment they looked in each other's eyes, torn between being turned on and hoping that the ritual would work. Then Severus pushed inside slowly. "Fuck!" Harry clung to Severus while he tried to relax around him, breathing deeply through the pain. Eventually he nodded, and Severus pulled back and pushed in again. By the third thrust, Harry was moaning openly, begging Severus to move faster and fuck him harder. Severus complied.
When Harry felt himself getting close, he wormed his hand between them, rubbing his dick in time with Severus' movements. Severus breathed hot and quickly against Harry's cheek, words an impossibility by now. When he came, he groaned and shuddered, finishing with three small, quivering pushes. He managed to hold his position for a couple more seconds until Harry, too, climaxed. Then he sank onto Harry, his eyes closed, both men breathless.
******
When they woke up, Harry needed a few seconds to remember where he was. When he remembered, he sat up quickly, ignoring the aches and pains of his body, and reached for his backpack. His wand was tucked safely into a side compartment and he got it out with trembling fingers. He looked at Severus, who was staring back at him silently, and swallowed thickly. Turning his attention back to the wand, he said "Lumos!" loudly and clearly. He waited for the surge of magic to race through him, for light to appear at the tip of the wand and shine brightly—but nothing happened. Not even the tiniest bit of magic sparked inside of him. Harry tried and tried again, until Severus pulled him against his own body, holding his arms tight so he couldn't move.
"It didn't work," he said numbly.
Harry nodded, tears running over his face. He had wanted this to work so much, had believed it would. "Maybe we did something wrong."
"No, we did everything the books said. We read it often enough. It just wasn't the right thing to fix this." Severus took a deep breath then and added, "We just have to keep looking." But they didn't, not that day. That day, they just sat on their sleeping bags, staring into space, getting up only to relieve themselves.
The second day of Christmas, they collected more books, even though they had no hope they would find a solution and went through them almost mechanically. In the night, they helped each other, fucking for comfort and because it was the only thing they had left.
******
"It's New Year's Eve," Harry said as he looked out the window. Night had come already, pouring darkness over the grounds of Hogwarts. Severus was heating up two cans of baked beans near the fire. They only had two bottles of water and a couple of cans with food left. In three days, at the latest, they would have to leave and give up their search.
"What a great way to start the New Year," Severus said. "For the first time in my life, I think the Muggle saying 'there is no magical fix for this' applies."
Harry returned to the fire. "Maybe. But I'm not giving up just now. We have a couple more books to go through."
"You think you'll find something in there?"
Harry shrugged, but said nothing. He leafed through a book on Magical History, the only section they hadn't searched yet, until Severus put the can down in front of him. They ate in silence, then Severus pulled Harry down on their sleeping bags and held him close.
"I remember New Year's Eve in this castle. It seems like an eternity has passed since I celebrated it with someone that meant something to me."
Harry kissed the back of Severus' hands. "What did you get up to on New Year's Eve? Did all the teachers get drunk?"
Severus snorted. "Pretty much. We had dinner with the students, then the fireworks that we all watched together, as you might remember. When we had sent the children to bed, we would meet in the lounge and drink enough punch and Gilly Wine until Pomona's singing sounded good to everyone."
"So you stayed and partied with everyone?" The thought was funny—he couldn't really imagine his grumpy Severus mingling.
"I stayed and got drunk while conversing with Minerva."
Harry laughed and turned in Severus's arms. He kissed Severus and then looked at him earnestly. "Let's at least make this night a good one. Let's forget about everything."
******
When midnight came, they lay naked in each other's arms, watching the seconds tick away on Harry's old watch. "Happy New Year," Harry said quietly and kissed Severus deeply. He was rewarded with a smile, but when Severus wanted to return the sentiment, a shriek broke through the silence of the library. They were on their feet in seconds, looking around wildly.
"Where did that come from?" Harry asked, jumping as the shriek was repeated.
"The Restricted Section!" They were running before Severus had finished the sentence. When they had reached their destination they found a book lying open on the floor, shrieking from a mouth that shouldn't be there. It was the most wonderful sound in the world, that awful shrieking. They looked at each other and hugged fiercely.
Harry peppered Severus's dirty face with kisses. Faintly, he registered a warmth where they had cut the symbols in his chest. "It worked!" he cried and ran back to their camp. "We have to get back!" Quickly, they packed the necessities and turned to the door, both wands in hand this time. Harry's test Lumos was too weak to really shine, indicating that their spells wouldn't be enough to protect them or transport them back home, but magic was coming back.
"The quickest way out is the way we came," Severus said.
"We'll have to be quick about it in case any of the beasts are still lurking about."
"Hopefully, they will be as surprised by the return of magic as we are," Severus said and gripped his wand tighter. They nodded at each other then, cleared the door, opened it and started running as fast as they could with only the torch guiding their way. When they had reached the bottom of the stairs, they heard the familiar thundering of the troll's steps. Not stopping to look or to wait for it to catch up, they sped up and broke through the door, stumbling out onto the snowy grounds.
"To the Quidditch field!" Harry yelled, remembering how the brooms had almost worked until the end. The broom shed wasn't locked and the third broom Harry frantically grabbed hovered when he yelled "Up!" Drunk with joy, he climbed on top of the broom. Severus followed suit and got onto the broom behind him, already holding on tight. Then Harry pushed off the ground, air rushing to greet him, and for the first time in so many months he felt alive. "Let's go home."
******
It took another month for magic to be restored fully. No one said that things were back to normal, because the old normal was not applicable anymore. But things got better, people adapted. No one save Severus, Harry and the extended Weasley family knew that it had been they who had performed the ritual to bring magic back, and Harry and Severus preferred it that way. Ginny had undergone the first treatment of skin replacement at the hospital while Harry and Severus had been at Hogwarts. When magic returned, her healing abilities kicked back in and her family quickly brought her home, where they gave her potions and put ointments on her. The burns healed quickly, but a couple of scars would stay from the Muggle procedure.
Three weeks after their return from Hogwarts, Harry noticed that the ritual had, indeed, worked as promised: he was pregnant. And happy as fuck.