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Take into the Air (My Quiet Breath)

GuardianMira

Summary：Draco is dying of Hanahaki Disease. Serves him right, Harry thinks.

He’s been sick since sixth year, if the rumor mill has it right, but only once the war is over does Draco get too sick to hide it anymore.

They’ve all returned to Hogwarts as the first-ever class of eighth years, Harry and most of the people he grew up with—the ones who survived and the ones who could face coming back, anyway. His circle is largely intact, and integrated seamlessly with the rest of the student body.

Somehow, though, the whispers don’t reach Harry’s ears. It’s not until he sees Draco cough the lily petals out of his lungs and onto his breakfast that it even occurs to him that something might be wrong with the git.

“Is it some kind of a curse?” Harry asks queasily. Draco primly dabs away the blood at the corner of his lips with a handkerchief—embroidered with his initials, Harry knows—and sweeps the petals off the table before picking up his fork as if nothing at all had happened.

A few others are staring at Draco, like Harry is, but mostly people avert their eyes with expressions ranging from pity to disgust.

Ron swallows hard around his mouthful of eggs, looking about as nauseated as Harry feels. “It’s bloody horrifying, is what it is.”

Harry’s face must betray his shock, because Ron flushes.

“What? My mum’s cousin had the same thing,” he mumbles. “We saw her at the hospital, and she looked…” He shudders a bit. “Gave me nightmares for weeks.”

“It’s not a curse,” says Hermione. “It’s a disease.”

“Oh,” Harry says. “I s’pose Madam Pomfrey will put him right, then.”

Ron and Hermione trade meaningful looks. Harry waits it out, all too accustomed to their silent exchanges by now, until Hermione comes out with: “There’s no cure.”

“No cure?” he says. “So, what, he vomits flowers for the rest of his life?”

“Yes, Harry,” says Hermione, as tentatively as if she were defusing a bomb. “But he won’t live very much longer. Hanahaki Disease is fatal.”

He hears that word, fatal, as if at a great distance. Is it possible Draco Malfoy survived a war only to die of disease? It seems so farfetched. So pedestrian. Harry is outraged, blindingly so, out of nowhere.

“That’s ridiculous,” he blusters, “that doesn’t make sense, how can there not be a cure—”

“There is a cure, sort of,” Ron interrupts. “He’s sick because he loves someone who doesn’t love him back. If he gets loved back, he gets better.”

Ron glances sidelong at Hermione, and his face goes from embarrassment to relief to something else, something Harry doesn’t feel right seeing, so he looks down at his untouched plate of food. Somehow he doesn’t think he’ll be finishing it.