Not a Thing I Can Do

All I can do is watch you.

All in a second, my world is changed. Three words. Who would've thought something so simple could be the end of you.

**********Flashback**********

"Hermione, I need to tell you something," Ron said, his face tense.

I stopped laughing at the look in your eyes. "Yes?" I breathed.

You paused. "I have cancer," you said. Cancer...I searched my mind. Surely there was some magical cure for it? Surely...surely... I knew there wasn't one. There isn't a cure for cancer in the muggle or magical world.

"Did they find it early enough?" I asked desperately.

"No. They give me a year, tops."

"Oh."

**********End Flashback**********

Oh Ron! Why you? You're so young...only twenty-three. What about Isabelle, our daughter? What will she do without a father? Why is the world doing this?

I go outside. It's raining, of course. How fitting. I'm walking down the road alone. It's cold and I forgot a cloak, but that hardly seems to matter.

And there's something I haven't told you, Ron. I'm pregnant again. What will this baby do? Never growing to know his or her father?

What will I do? I'll have to take up an extra job sense you won't be here to support us. Does that mean our children will never know their mother either because I'm never home? That's not fair, Ron. It's not fair at all.

I'm not blaming you. I know this wasn't your choice. But why you? Why did it have to be you?

Maybe this is just an illusion. A nightmare. Maybe all of these past few years have been. Maybe I'll wake up and I'll be in my four-poster bed in my dormitory at Hogwarts. Maybe I've gone mad.

This isn't right, you know!

I'm lifting my eyes up to the dark sky. They're wide open and the raindrops are falling into them. It stings, but I don't blink.

I'm screaming at the heavens. I don't know who I'm yelling at, or who I'm angry at. The world, I suppose. Who knows? That doesn't really seem to matter either.

I'm remembering when we first met on the train. You thought I was an insufferable know-it-all, and I thought you were a prat-on-ice. I remember later in the year when you saved me from the troll. You never knew you had it in you. You told me later that you had gathered the strength from being near me. You said that it was then, so early, that you had fallen for me.

You're so different from that skinny impossibly immature boy. You're muscular and handsome. Responsible and mature. But overall you're a fantastic father. What will we do without you? Ron, this is all so wrong.

I decide it's time to head home. You might be worried. And besides, I need to put Isabelle to bed. I'm shuffling my feet in the gutter again. What will it matter if I get sick? You're sick too. We do everything together, right?

I open the door and step inside. You see that I'm soaked and you immediately look concerned. You take off my cloak and I peel of my clothes. I slip on a nightgown and before I can sit down you gather me into your arms and rock me, kissing my hair and rubbing my arms.

I realize I've begun to cry. I sit and let the tears flow without making a sound or moving a muscle.

I want to sit here in your arms forever and ever. I want to die like this, wrapped in your warmth.

But now I know that's not possible. You'll be dying before I do.

And there's not a thing I can do.