Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Shin Megami Tensei.
This story is also posted on Spacebattles under the account "Lermis", which is my own.
Prologue
Blazing Black Sun
The world sat on the verge of death.
Science, created by men, who acted as gods,
assumed our image and betrayed its creators' purpose.
Mankind signed a contract for great power and wealth
without realizing they had signed their own death warrant.
At first, they thought nothing of it.
The sky was a little brighter, the rays of the sun piercing through, sharper than ever before. No cloud could form in the face of the sun.
Everyone was joyous. The wizards could make anything theirs, but the sky itself was beyond their reach. A few more weeks of sunlight were a source of delight for those who had spent almost each of their days under the rain.
The muggleborn wizards were uneasy about the sun, whispering while sitting under the shade, pointing at the sky. "Climatic change", they said. "Global warming. It's our fault". But nobody paid them any mind. The sun was good. It made their days brighter, their homes greener.
The weather gradually became hotter. The grass and the plants started drying around their homes. Nobody was certain when. But this was of no issue. Water was easy to produce.
Many started complaining about the sun burning them, and causing aches all over their bodies. Nothing a few potions and spells could not solve.
Many started facing problems with their wands, but it was an occasional thing. They kept it to themselves, thinking it an accident. Those happened. And so, nobody noticed it. It vanished in the shadow of far more important things.
Many years after the fall of the Dark Lord, the Boy Who Lived had reappeared in the wizarding world. The newspapers buzzed with his latest deeds, claims and achievements, praising him or mocking him depending on their mood. There was no room for idle chatter on the weather.
An old wizard appeared on St. Mungo's one day, his fingers having turned into stone. A few months later was a child with petrified cheeks. Mandrigore juice did nothing on them. The causes were never found. However, strange happenings like that were commonplace among the wizards. They were secluded alongside several other patients with strange and unknown conditions, and nobody truly thought anything of it ever again.
More people started showing up. A toe, a nose, fingers, their hands and legs. Of all ages, of any blood status and gender, the strange happening made no discriminations. And the result was… nothing. No matter what the healers did, no matter what potions they brew, nothing could help them. Those with the less crippling… infections were discharged. Those with the more crippling ones were kept in the darkness of their rooms.
A couple of muggleborn wizards brought in the old man from before. What had once been a few fingers were now entire limbs. The man suffered from intense pain.
They told the mediwitches that the disease was called the "Curvier Syndrome". They said it was caused by sunlight. That there was no cure. They said it was their fault. "We burned the Earth's shield against the sun and now it's killing us. Stay out of the sun. For God's sake, stay away from the sun."
Perhaps some thought them paranoid. But then the Dark Lord came and they were forced to heed their warnings for far different reasons.
The Dark Lord came and went, but the sunlight remained. The plants started dying no matter how much water they produced with their wands. The toads and the mermaids started dying en masse. The rains stopped almost entirely. The stone disease spread further and further. And there was still no cure.
The message was finally hammered. The sun was dangerous. The wizards feared that there was a new Dark Lord on the rise; some curse that may have caused this.
The muggleborns denied this. "It is our fault. Our waste. Our pollution. We have angered the sun."
The surge of the Curvier Syndrome dropped, if only because nobody would dare to venture out during the day. Many wizards refused to use the name that the muggles had assigned to the disease. They thought the disease to be a curse, magical in nature; that the muggles should have been the last people to be aware of it and that the Ministry of Magic should have done a better job at enforcing the Statue of Secrecy.
While some people were raging, others tried to find means of protection. Charms. Layers of clothing. Wards. Party tricks. Nothing worked. The syndrome just kept on spreading. Only those who lived away from the sun were safe.
Magic was getting increasingly harder to practice. Most of the time it was normal. Others, their wands either refused to budge or outright exploded with power; two extremes that seemed to be based on a mysterious internal clock.
The muggleborns had other words on this. "We have hound God. He is the sun. This is His punishment on us. The data emitted from His rays can pierce through anything. No matter what magic you use, you cannot defy Him."
God; what an outrageous claim.
And then the sun turned black.
It was horror incarnate. The blue of the sky vanished before their very eyes, leaving nothing but a glaring, harsh yellow behind. The rays of the sun turned blinding, like the hottest desert. The golden disk that was the sun started darkening and darkening, until darkness was all that was left.
And then, Curvier Syndrome hit. Everyone. The people outdoors. The people standing next to windows. The people enjoying the shade. Only those away from any natural source of light were spared. Screams filled the air as their bodies turned into stone and salt before their very eyes, the intense pain and numbness overtaking them.
And then, nothing.
Terror. Confusion. Panic. Most of the few survivors did believe that God existed. Those who already did lost their faiths.
Life was dead. All the plants, magical or not, dried out in days under the harsh sunlight. The humans all turned into stone; everything that was not human was spared from the curse, but even they had to deal with the dwindling supplies and the scorching heat. Water evaporated; at first it rained a lot but even that soon vanished. The temperature never changed; it was only hot and suffocating. The air became more and more unbreathable.
There was still no cure.
The wizards tried to find the cause for this change, searching through the world for any hint of a new Dark Lord; nobody could imagine anyone else who could have such power. The old saviors of the wizards; the Boy – now Man – Who Lived and his allies tried desperate to find a cause; rumor had it that one of his own children had turned into stone. They were not sure.
However, the sun was an ever present obstruction, and no curse at work could be found. Some said that this level of magic would be impossible by a single wizard; especially when news came that this phenomenon was world-wide and had affected the muggle world as much as the wizarding one.
In the end, the muggles' God seemed to be the only believable explanation.
And so, the wizarding community tried to continue their lives like before. It was not quite so difficult. Magic allowed the wizards to grow their food. Meat was extremely scarce, but that was a small price to pay next to their lives. The dark creatures that roamed during the nights could still be found, as they would not dare to venture under the light regardless. They were drawn towards the villages and the cities were the few remaining wizards lived. Occasionally, the stone statue of a werewolf who had spent too much time outside could be found, or some other wanderer. The magical creatures such as centaurs had taken claim over the surface, priding themselves in being able to walk under the sun while hiding their discomfort.
For the muggles, it was different. Rumours reached them that they had hidden underground; that they were trying to build giant domes of glass over their heads. To them food was harder to find, but they were not afraid of the dark the way wizards were. For the muggles, the night was merely another set of hours on the clock. At times like this, it was something to be jealous of.
And so, the years passed. Life had no choice but to move on. With the strangely fluctuating magic, and the blazing black sun burning eternally, there was little anyone could do. Eventually, the new life in the dark became a routine, whether they could use magic or not. Hogwarts still kept teaching new students. Ollivander still made his wands with whatever ingredients he had in stock. Goblins still kept hoarding up their gold. Many magical creatures seemed to have disappeared from the face of earth, but whispers were spreading about other, stranger things that roamed during the day as much as the night. Going out was a luxury now.
One day, something odd started happening on the streets. A strange green glow seemed to cover everything. Strange writing could be seen swirling around them; those who knew better recognized it as Sanskrit.
The ground itself started rapidly vanished beneath their feet… The buildings collapsed… they wizards found themselves glowing, their hands vanishing before their very eyes…
Nothingness.
Author note: Very obscure fandom crossed with an extremely popular one. This idea has been dancing in my head for a while now. This is my second attempt at a Harry Potter crossover, and while that story remains my most popular fanfic, when I see how I wrote back then I cry a little because it was bad. I did not even really get how formatting worked at the time, many names were wrong, the chapter length was totally uneven and my OC turned into a Villain Sue before I even introduced her and every chapter was overtaken by her. I realized that I had no plot to speak of, and even though I have started working on it again, a rewrite is in order and the plot is still absent. I could tell how my readers started losing interest towards the end.
But it has been a number of years since back then, and I have written a lot of stuff. I think I'm better equipped for the challenge, and I like to think that within the past years my writing has improved dramatically.
Right now, I am managing a number of projects, so except irregular updates. I may even lose interest only to come back a long time later. It has happened before.
Still, I would love to see your opinion on this. There is nothing that I love more than a good review with constructive criticism. They always make my day.
Signed, HelenTheMoon.