The Coldest Spring
No. This cannot be happening.
This is all your brain says as you look up and see the last person you wanted or needed to see at a time like this. You had kept it hidden for so long and now a moment of weakness has stolen everything away.
"Ron! Are you alright?" asks the Slytherin youth, rushing toward you, trying to help you up. You pull away, with nothing but a deadly seriousness in your eyes.
"I'm fine. It was nothing, I just choked while I was breathing." Sure, like anyone would believe that. Oh well, you had always been a terrible liar. He glares at you, reading through the lie that no one believed.
"No, it isn't nothing, Ron. You're sick." You feel irritation rise to your chest.
"I'm quite aware of that, Harry. Thank you, for pointing the more than obvious." You didn't mean that, and this is one of those moments you feel like hitting yourself. This isn't you.
"Idiot." He looks at you defiantly. "Only hours ago you told me I shouldn't be a child, but right now you treat me like one. And now you tell me that I should leave you alone, but in Hagrid's hut, when all I wanted was to be alone, you wouldn't leave me alone. Tell me, are you really this redundant?" Your annoyance peaks up a little higher, but that's only because you that what he's saying is true. You feel the urge to hit him again but miraculously you restrain yourself and wait for him to say more.
"Is it tuberculosis?" he asks you, coming loser to wipe the blood from your hands with his handkerchief.
"I'm pretty sure it's obvious, Harry." You walk to the wall and slide down against it burying your head in your hands. You feel uncomfortable for only hours ago your positions were reversed.
"For how long?"
"Seven years." You look up to meet his surprised face but it is you who are surprised to see that he is undaunted.
"Who knows?"
"No one until now." You say, yours ears red and heat rises in your chest, replacing your anger, and you feel him bring you up by the collar.
"You haven't told anyone?" he demands, looking at you directly in the eye. You shake your head and Harry's frustration becomes evident.
"You could've died! What the hell were you thinking?" What were you thinking? You wonder as you look at across to the other wall. Silence passes in all his glory while something dawns on both of you.
"Do you even know what it's like to know that you're going to die? To know you won't live to see the age of thirty?" he asks you.
"I have a vague idea." That was the biggest overstatement you had ever made in your entire life. Of course you knew what it was like to know you would never see the age of thirty. In fact, it was even a surprise you even made it to seventeen. Tuberculosis was funny like that, it placed the blade on your heart without drawing blood, and little by little it twisted inside letting the blood flow out but never enough to finish you off until it was done playing with its toy.
"That's all you have. A vague idea." No. It wasn't all you had, not a vague idea. All you
really had was far worse. Death had been knocking on your door for a long time, you just ignored him, but he was patient, death. He waited until he could wait no more and would smash the door to pieces. But you were even more persistent than Death. You wanted to live. You wanted to be there, not for yourself, but to be there if anyone needed you. Cruel, this all was, but you wouldn't let Death win. You wanted him to wait. He wasn't going to come in. Not yet.
"Why didn't you tell anyone, Ron? Why were you hurting yourself?" He doesn't look at you anymore. He's afraid and you can feel his fear. You know exactly why you didn't tell anyone but it would be hard to explain. No one wants to die.
"If I told anyone, they would all treat me as if I'm dying. I don't want that." You say quietly, turning to leave for the North tower.
"But you are dying!" You freeze. You hadn't been expecting that. You meet his eyes, rotating your head. Now that he realizes what he had just said, his eyes are wide and he looks up at you like a person who'd just made a great mistake and was now uncertain. You smirk and look at him. You had never acted like this before, clearly, you are not yourself today
"I may be dying, Harry, but I refuse to let people treat me that way. I don't want people to think that I am weak." No one should think that you are weak. You aren't, of course, of course not, you have never been weak. It's the reason why you're still alive, isn't it?
Because I am strong, I'm still alive.
"Ron, what are saying about being weak and strong? Don't you understand what could have happened if I didn't find out about this? You would have died!"
"You haven't done anything to help me! Even without your help I'm still alive. I've been alive for seven years with the disease and no one has helped me. I do not need your help, Harry." You say it with such calm anger that the other boy staggers away from you. His green eyes convey pain that you are all too familiar with, but you don't care anymore. You've already helped him once. You owe him nothing.
"I don't understand…who are you? You're not like the Ron I knew," he says softly to you. It's almost a whisper but in the silence, it's loud and unmistakable.
Who are you? Hm, you don't even know, do you? You stand there looking at the young man destined to change the world who is asking you who you are and you have no idea what to say because deep inside you know no answer.
Who am I?
"I am whomever I choose to be. If you cannot see that then you never knew me at all, Harry Potter."
"You're lying." He says it as though it's the only way to break you, to get inside. But you're stronger that. Right?
"Prove it." He looks away from you and a feeling of great frustration mounted with regret, sorrow, guilt and so many other emotions washes over you. You can't explain it. It's funny because this isn't something new to you…this feeling.
Opening your blue eyes to a new day and knowing you're still alive relieves you but as you sit up that nameless emotion is suddenly there again, eating you little by little from the inside out. A bitter reflection of the sickness you carried in your lungs. You remember the first time you ever felt it. It was the last day of spring and it was the coldest spring ever. It waited for you to wake up so you could suffer its game of torture. And that's what it is, pure torture.
"I know you more than you think. You're funny and nice and you definitely are strong. But you make yourself look so much stronger than you really are and you appear so much weaker that way," he says and you are brought back, crashing sown to reality. You had forgotten he was even here. Your face twists in distaste. This boy is getting on your nerves a lot today, more than Hermione does in a year.
"Now who's redundant? Just a minute ago you were asking who I was, but now you seem to know all the answers. So, which is it really?" You ask him, but as you do you feel something stinging in your throat. You open your mouth to say something more but all that comes out is another marathon of coughs. It hurt so much, that rattling in your lungs. You collapsed on the floor clutching you chest blood spilling from your mouth again. Hostility aside, the Slytherin boy rushes to you and brings you up and with his aid you slowly make your way to the one place you've avoided when it came to situations like this.
"I cannot believe the foolishness of your actions, Mr. Weasley," scolds Madame Pomfrey as you lie in bed and Harry has long been sent way, (not without being checked for tuberculosis), free from the sticky and dirty blood that you vomited on him.
"How could you think that you could handle tuberculosis on your own? You could have died!" she ranted on and on as she bustled for potions here and there. Undoubtedly, she was more than just frustrated with him. Naturally, who wouldn't be? How many times had he gone to the infirmary complaining of some minor wound just to get out of class, when in fact bacteria were slowly killing his lungs?
"Here," she says and hands you a glass of blue liquid. You take a sip and true enough it tastes horrible but you down it anyway. The last thing you need is another one of her legendary lectures.
"Next time," surprisingly her tone is gentler. "Do not be afraid to came to me if you're really sick, Mr. Weasley." You nod your head slightly. Sleep is now taking over you, slurring your words of you had any and making you eyes feel so heavy and so tired.
I won't be afraid anymore.
When you wake the next morning you hear the sound of Hermione and Ginny's voice arguing with Harry's.
"Why didn't he tell us anything? Why did he tell you about it?" demands your younger sister, sobbing. You can feel the tension in the air but you refuse to partake in any more fights that concern anyone's well being.
"He didn't tell me. I found out," he says to them. Suddenly you feel Hermione's body heat somewhere behind you looming over you with an air of vengeance. From her shadow you see that her arm is poised, ready to slap you. But as she strikes, Harry intervenes and your brain is still so scrambled that you can still wonder why in the world is Harry doing this?
"Don't, Hermione. Even though Ron didn't tell you, you can't hit him. He's still sick," warns the green-eyed boy.
"Hey, guys," you whisper sleepily, rubbing the last remainders of sleep. You turn to look at them and surprisingly; Hermione's eyes are red, just like Harry's when you found him in Hagrid's hut. Her lip quivers and she throws her arms around your shoulders.
"You idiot! How could you do this to yourself?!" she shrieked, sobbing on your pyjamas. You sigh. Hearing those words again and again was frustrating. You know they mean well, but still, you only need to be told off once.
You raise you hand to her face and wipe away her tears. She looks at you with those soft brown eyes behind her, Harry is giving you the same look; one of pain and sorrow for you. You pull both of them in a hug and you feel them purge the cold you feel from the wind. Inside, however, is a different story. Inside there is still cold, and the spring is late. Inside the winter wind rages and the solitary cherry blossom on the white blanket is whisked away.