Midwinter Sun

Midwinter Sun

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. - Victor Hugo

Fortune favors the brave. - Virgil

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

The words ran like a mantra through my head, echoing and reverberating like a chant in a cathedral. They were a leftover scrap from my Muggle upbringing, with no irreverence meant. The Dursleys had stopped bringing me to the local church when I was five and the deaconess asked Aunt Petunia why I was dressed in Dudley's old clothes. Still, it left something of an impression on me and in my mind I use 'God' as an invective almost as often as 'Merlin,' and I have lived in this world longer.

I had been staying with Remus at 12 Grimmauld Place for a few weeks. Mostly, it had just been the two of us there, doing our best to ward off the painful ghosts of our pasts. The loneliness and monotony of those weeks were only broken by sporadic visits from Order Aurors. The house seemed hollow and empty without the rowdiness of the Weasley clan and the sibling-like arguments among Order members throughout the first two floors. Days would go by when the only other living things I saw were Buckbeak and Remus. Well before Snape brought August's Wolfsbane potion, he gave me a series of potions to try. I had asked him about charms and Snape snorted at me, rather derisively, and told me that charms were unreliable and liable to fade or be forcibly removed by an enemy. Potions had neither weakness.

The potions were not as bad as I had feared. One was a standard Calming Drought, modified with asphodel, or so Snape told me. Remus was ready to rend Snape limb from limb for giving me that one. It worked better than Dreamless Sleep, but neither Snape nor I had told Remus what I had taken. He thought that I had died, especially when he could smell the asphodel on my breath. The other potions were well beyond my grasp, though Snape attempted to explain them to Remus and me, with mixed results. Most of the modified Calming Droughts were too strong for me, even when he mixed in moonstone to counteract the asphodel. When he added ginger and lionfish spines, it made me jittery and worsened my condition.

Remus spent weeks looking as though he were on his last legs. Between the full moon and looking after me, the poor man was lucky to catch five or six hours of sleep every night. Whenever I took a new potion, he insisted upon sitting it out with me, so that if something went awry, he could contact Snape immediately.

Nearing the end of the third week of August, we finally found a potion that did not put me to sleep or give me spasms. It was shockingly similar to what Snape himself took. It was Ruhiger's Serum mixed with some Pepper-Up in a base of hellebore and sage. It tasted awful, but it made all of our lives much easier, and I was not about to be shown up by Snape. He also gave me a few small vials of the Drought of Peace and a very concentrated form of a Spanish calming serum, "in case of an emergency," whatever that meant.

Twice a day I drank the mix. Snape had called it a Hellebore Tonic. I honestly did not care. It was a nuisance to need to take it with breakfast and supper, though, and I worried as to what I would do during my time at Hogwarts. People would eventually become suspicious if they saw me drinking from a strange flask everyday, especially with our fourth year still burned into our collective memory.

And that day, the day after the full moon, Remus sat with me at the kitchen table, plying me heavily with mint and chamomile tea while he guzzled coffee in a slightly pitiful attempt to remain awake. Ron and Hermione were coming to Grimmauld Place a little before noon. The next day, the thirtieth, we would collect our school supplies in Diagon Alley. But they did not know that anything unusual happened that summer. Molly and Arthur did; they had been dutifully warned of my limitations, but nothing had been told to my two best friends.

When Ron tumbled out of the fireplace, quickly followed by Hermione, I could actually feel my muscles tighten. It is a hard feeling to explain, but the best description I can give is that of a heightened fight-or-flight response. I felt my leg twist in a most unnatural way, but tried to ignore it as best I could. I had planned on rising and greeting my friends when they arrived, but, with this new development, I forewent the plan and remained seated. I tried to smile at them.

Hermione, her bushy hair liberally littered with soot, saw Remus' closed face and my, according to her at a later date, nervous expression and she realized that something was wrong. Her letters that summer, the few that she had written, were light and casual, a blatant attempt to cheer me, despite the events of the spring. She knew that I had returned to Grimmauld Place and had sent me a small knit blanket which, not unsurprisingly, was of a finer skill than the blobby caps the house elves had dutifully avoided.

Ron, on the other hand, was as oblivious as a plank of wood, a fact for which I was incredibly thankful. He saw my pitiful cup of chamomile tea, appearing to be confused for a moment, but he was quickly distracted by some toast, left over from our early breakfast. His birthday gift had been a small chess set. Remus and I had whiled away a few afternoons with it and the pieces were adapting well to my rather inept leadership. They were a bit suspicious of Remus, for all that he played with them as often as I had. I had begun to suspect that there was a magic on it that let them know who their owner was and who was merely borrowing it for a few games.

As my red-haired friend managed to simultaneously consume the rest of our toast, coating said toast thickly with marmalade, and search the kitchen for pumpkin juice, Hermione sat beside me at the table. She levelled me with a glare, not terribly unlike the one she gave me back in second year when she learned that I was a Parselmouth and never told anyone. Once again, I felt slightly like a deer in the headlights, but Remus rested his hand on my shoulder and I allowed myself to relax slightly into him. He might be an exhausted werewolf, but he was on my side and was prepared to support me. Ron, thoughtfully, gave Hermione a cup of pumpkin juice before joining us at the table.

"Harry, it's good to see you," Hermione said, slightly hesitantly, no doubt remembering my fits of temper during the previous year.

I tried to force a smile, but my mind was running ahead of me. It had lost its previous chanting and was now displaying, quite vividly, all of the terrible things that could happen that day: Hermione knowing more than was good for her (as per usual) and being horrified at my condition; Ron knowing only the Wizarding rumours and being equally horrified; Ron being furious at being left out of all of this, as he had during the Triwizard Tournament. In the back of my head, I knew that none of this would happen. Hermione and Ron had been my best friends for five years, through Basilisks, Death Eaters, possessed teachers, just plain evil teachers, OWLs, dragons, and everything else. For Merlin's sake, Ron had been trapped underwater for me in our fourth year and he was merely angry that I had waited to rescue Gabrielle before returning to the surface.

Remus touched the back of my neck lightly, bringing me back to the world of Grimmauld Place's kitchen. "Shh," he whispered. "Calm down. They'll accept you just fine, Harry. Now I'm going to leave you to talk to them."

Frowning slightly, Hermione watched Remus leave the room. "What's going on? Why didn't we meet you at the Leaky Cauldron this year?"

"Yeah, mate, why did you have to come back here? I would have thought it was the last place you wanted to be." Hermione looked as though she might like to smack Ron upside the head for that particular comment, but she remained dutifully silent and just waited for my answer.

"Well, something came up around my birthday, actually," I opened, hesitantly.

"Did you have another vision? I told you to practice your Occlumency!"

I raised a hand to forestall any more comments Hermione had. She might have been one of my best friends and the smartest girl I knew, but she needed to be quiet if I was going to explain everything correctly.

"Remus took me to London for my birthday," I continued. There was the slightest bend of Hermione's eyebrow when I did not say 'Professor Lupin' and Ron had stopped eating in order to better hear me. "We encountered some difficulty there. The next day, he brought Snape to Surrey." Ron's eyes narrowed ever so slightly and Hermione appeared ready to reprimand me, though she held back the words. "The Order Mediwitch looked me over. Apparently, I have something called dystonia."

For once, Hermione's face was blank. I had found something about which she had not read, nor had she, judging from her pure lack of facial expression, even heard of it. Ron, on the other hand, had quite clearly heard of it and understood the ramifications of the Boy-Who-Lived suffering from such a dreadfully Dark disorder. His face flushed and created an interesting contrast with his freckles, his hair and the orange marmalade that was stuck to his chin.

"Voldemort?" he ground out.

I shook my head and shrugged. "We don't know. They don't think so. They think I've got the Muggle sort, which is really rare - rarer than the Wizarding kind anyway. Voldemort might have, you know, made it worse, maybe. But they don't think he did it, totally."

"Dystonia?" Hermione asked. She paused for a moment. "Dys... Tonia... It affects your muscles?"

I nodded. "Mostly my legs." I pushed my chair out from the table and showed them my right leg, grateful that neither of them had taken the news as badly as I had feared. "But Mediwitch Vance warned me that I've only got the preliminary symptoms and with the Muggle sort I have, it might affect more than just my legs."

Hermione worried her lower lip, as she always did when she came across a problem she could not immediately solve. It was slightly unnerving that I had seen her stare at Arithmancy problems in the same manner.

"Will you be able to ride a broom?" Ron asked quickly.

Once again, I shrugged. "It depends. I might, I might not. Dumbledore isn't even sure that he can lift Umbridge's ban, anyway."

"What do you mean, it depends? It depends on what?"

"Snape has been making me potions, trying to find out what will help me and what won't. If he can find a combination that really and truly works, then I might be able to ride a broom again. But if the dystonia worsens or we can not find a good combination, then I might not be able to ride a broom again."

"Snape? Why is Snape brewing your potions? Shouldn't St. Mungo's, or at least a certified Mediwizard Potions Master be doing it?" Hermione asked, slightly concerned.

"No. Can you imagine what would happen if the Wizarding world found out that the Boy-Who-Lived had dystonia? In the Muggle world, it's just a strange muscle problem. In the magical world, it's linked to the Darkest of Dark Spells. It's most commonly associated with the Cruciatus Curse, Hermione. The Cruciatus Curse! Besides, we can't afford to let the Death Eaters have an advantage. They could skew the battlefield in their favour by specifically attacking in ways I couldn't fight. Right now, any Cruciatus I suffer will worsen the dystonia. We can't afford that."

Hermione's face went as white as a sheet and Ron looked more than a little green around the gills. I thought that perhaps I should not have phrased my response in such a manner. I mentally winced. They were probably associating me with Neville's poor parents. Lovely.

"Oh, Merlin, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed.

That was when I physically winced. Hermione did not need to say it like that. Looking back now, I know - and, to an extent, I knew then - that Hermione, the sweet girl that she is, did not mean her exclamation in the manner I interpreted it, but it still hurt. I knew I was sick and I knew I was not going to recover. Remus and Snape and Vance had told me as much. I just needed to learn to function. Hermione coming to this sudden realization was not going to help my transition from fully functioning solider-to-be to surviving invalid.

"So," I began, trying to break the momentary silence. "How did you two spend your summers, now that we've covered mine?"

The two exchanged glances. Ah, had they finally found that they both wanted each other in a romantic sense? No, no they had not. They were exchanging glances over my change in topic, not over their love lives.

"Well, Hermione spent the last two weeks at the Burrow," Ron explained. "We were hoping you could join us, but I guess now we know why not."

I shrugged again, still feeling slightly uncomfortable about the whole situation, and it was clear that my friends were as well. I had spent nearly a month cooped up in my late godfather's old house, with only Remus, Buckbeak, Snape, and the occasional Auror for company. My problem was known to everyone and they always knew more about it than I did. Suddenly I was in a place where I was spending time with two of my favourite people in the world and it felt like we were awkward first years on the Hogwarts Express all over again. I began to seriously dread the Welcoming Feast at Hogwarts.

"We had a great Quiddi-" Ron's sentence was cut off as Hermione not so subtly elbowed him in the ribs. He scowled at her - well, as much as Ron would scowl at Hermione, anyway - and rubbed his tender ribs.

"Really, Harry how are you doing?" Hermione asked earnestly. "Is there anything we can do to help you at all?"

I realized that Hermione did not want Ron to tell me all about Quidditch at the Burrow when I could not be there and might never be able to ride a broom again. Part of me was pleased that she cared so much and part of me was peeved that she thought I could not handle being told about a friendly Quidditch match. "I'm fine. It's not like I'm about to drop dead at the table." Judging by Hermione's face, that was not a good thing to say, though Ron grinned at me for it. "Now, let Ron tell me the story."

The rest of the day continued in a similar fashion. We overcame the initial awkwardness, though there were some rough moments, especially when I slipped on the stairs, showing them to their bedrooms, and again at dinner when I had to take the Hellebore Tonic. Hermione had wanted to look at it and Ron wanted to know why I was willing to take something that Snape had concocted. When I lost my temper at them, they were both rather shocked, even more so when Remus came down to the kitchen and told them to leave me alone if they were only planning on bothering me for the rest of the night.

August thirtieth dawned in London dull and early. We Flooed to Diagon Alley with Mrs. Weasley, Ginny, and Remus. We went to all of the usual stops - Flourish and Blotts, the Apothecary, Quality Quidditch Supply, the Magical Menagerie (for pet treats and tonics) - and stopped at Florean Fortescue's for ice cream. Remus took special care to walk beside me, in a casual fashion, and catch my elbow if I faltered or pay for my items if my hands shook. Not a single witch or wizard would have chanced to think that something was wrong with the Boy-Who-Lived.

While Hermione and Ron took Ginny into the Magical Menagerie to look at the pets, Remus and I went to Madame Malkin's for some new robes. Madame Malkin fussed over me, saying that my current school robes would do for another year, as they were skimming the tops of my trainers, but I, as prompted by my three mentors in dystonia, insisted on buying newer, longer robes. It had been Vance's idea, originally, inspired by Snape swooping about the house like an overgrown bat. We had been trying to find a way to hide my condition from the rest of the school and she suggested that dramatic, draping robes could hide my disability, much as Dudley's hand-me-downs had hid them from Remus over the summer. As they were uniform, my robes were not as concealing as Snape's infamous attire, but, as Madame Malkin measured and grumbled and cut, I realized that they might help.

If I was nervous telling Hermione and Ron the truth of what was happening, I did not stand a chance at letting Hogwarts and the rest of Wizarding Britain know. I was struggling to deal with the issue on my own and coming to grips with the idea that my life might not entirely be in my hands (or Dumbledore's or Voldemort's) anymore. After speaking at some length with Remus, it seemed that my dream of becoming an Auror grew more unlikely by the minute. I would be a liability on the field, especially since a Dark curse might affect me even more than the next person. Unless someone found a cure in the next two years, which was highly unlikely, it was suggested that I find another career path. Supposedly, Snape was to help me with that, as part of his program with me during the year. I found it rather unlikely that we would find such even footing as to sit down to a cup of tea and quiet discussion after a nice evening of Occlumency lessons.

But I realized when I left the robe shop and Hermione took up her post on my left and Ron on my right, that I would make it through my sixth year, come what may.