Wasn't that surprised when I started seeing 'Smoke and Spells' pop up on my feeds. Garcia's got this quiet tragedy baked into him—all the smoke, the fading out thing—and Annie's... not exactly sunshine, but there's a directness to her magic that cuts through his haze. Most of the fics I've clicked on latch onto that dynamic: her trying to fix what can't be fixed, him trying to shield her from his own inevitable end. It gets heavy, obviously, but the better writers avoid pure angst porn by giving them moments of weird normalcy, like Annie dragging him out for milkshakes he can't really taste or him teaching her guitar chords while his fingers keep phasing through the strings. The emotional core feels less about romance in a traditional sense and more about two people finding a temporary harbor in each other's specific kind of loneliness.
Honestly, I think the bond works because they're both, in different ways, trapped. He's literally fading, a ghost tied to a cigarette and a melody; she's bound by her role, her magic, the expectations of 'Annie.' Their connection becomes about acknowledging that trap without trying to violently escape it—a quiet understanding that most other pairings in that universe are too loud or dramatic to manage.