hhanahakii

[hhanahakii]

Petals.

Pairing: Bill Weasley x Jacob’s sibling

Warnings: Hanahaki disease, unrequited love, angst.

Cassiopeia (my OC) has fallen hard for the oldest Weasley brother, but after several weeks of not talking to each other and a nasty encounter in the courtyard it seems that her feelings aren’t returned. Instead of moving on she develops a illness that may threaten her life.

Crisp autumn air brushed Cassie's cheeks the first time her heart broke. Chilly wind played in her slightly untidy hair as she watched the boy she loved love someone else. Diamond teardrops from the fountain fell gracefully on her back, where she sat on it edge with her legs crossed elegantly, when Bill met her gaze for the first time in weeks, and his smile turned upside down. The bow Penny had given her on her birthday didn't seem as pretty anymore, as the ginger boy looked her up and down and frowned. And her silver locks was suddenly ten times more horrible than what she usually found them.

Barnaby touched her arm, prodding her to see if she was still listening to his and Charlie Weasley's conversation about bowtuckles. He didn't see Bill, and the tall and lovely girl he had leaning against his arm. Darling raven locks fell down her back, bangs held back by a royal blue diadem, matching her lovely eyes. Cassie felt sick, and she tugged absent minded at her ghost coloured ends. At that exact moment she felt uglier than she ever had in her life, when Bill escorted by the girl across the Clock tower Courtyard. "That damn prick." Charlie whispered, angrily, eyes narrowed. "At least now we know why he hasn't been talked to us in weeks. Been busy with Missy Landon." Charlie was lying, he had been talked to the gang, just not to Cassie. Charlie didn't know that Cassie was in love with Bill of course, Cassie had refrained from telling everyone except Penny and Ben, who weren't there to witness her first ever heartbreak. "Wasn't Missy a prat to you last year, Cassie?" Barnaby said, and watched as she nodded soundlessly. She had been bullying Cassie about her brother, like most people, saying how she would end up like him. She had gotten so used to it by then that she hadn’t really acknowledged Missy, but seeing Bill with her was like having a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. Charlie growled. "That bloody wanker." And Cassie smiled for a moment,  before she remembered the situation. "I think I'm going to go..." She began, quietly, but was stopped when Charlie hooked his fingers into her blazer. "The hell you are. Do you know what we should do?" Cassie didn't want to know. "Talk to him." Before she could stop him, Charlie rose to his feet, cupped his hand over his mouth and yelled. "Hey, Billy Willy!" Bill turned to look at the trio with a scowl so cold Cassie felt a chill go through her body. When the older boy and his companion started walking towards them she forgot how go breathe for a moment. It had been so long since she had heard his voice, felt comfort in his nearness.

He reached them, and Missy was clinging to his arm, sharp blue eyes narrowed into slits as her gaze landed on Cassie, a look of distaste forming on her face. "What is it, Charlie?" He tries to sound as tough as he can, but he isn't mad at his brother, even though he wants to be. He's angry at Cassie, for a reason she can't seem to figure out, and the only reason his brother is getting cold looks is because he chose her side, not Bill's. "I was about to ask you the same thing." Charlie spat, with real anger, because his brother was hurting Cassie. It was painful to see them against each other, especially because of something she did, or didn't do. She hadn't figured out which. "I thought it was strange that you had stopped speaking to us." Cassie. "But now I see that it's because you've found new play mates." Play mate. Singular. Missy. Cassie holds her breath, lowers her gaze. Raises it again and sees Missy smirking at her. She has toned out from the boy's argument by then, focused on the gorgeous girl that was looking at her like she's just cracked the joke of the week. It made her uneasy, it made her blood boil. She doesn't know whether she should punch Missy or run away crying. "What's so funny?" She hissed quietly, so that the boy's didn't catch her speaking. "Nothing." Missy replies in a silky voice, mockingly. "Only that you we're bragging on and on last year, about how great friends the two of you were. And in my experience great friends doesn't run around talking bad about you behind your back. I can't blame him of course, I am much prettier than you, and I'm not mental." Cassie tried to reach for Charlie's sleeve, wanting to get the he'll out of there, but ended up nudging her wand. This contact made small orange sparks sprout out of her pocket, one hitting Missy on the hand. She screamed. The boys got quiet, and Bill rushed to check on Missy's ever so slightly reddened hand, as big fake tears filled her eyes and coated her long lashes. "That little wrench cursed me!" She screeched, pointing a blue painted nail at Cassie. "Look at my hand, Bill. She's bloody mental!" Her yells we're shrill and exaggerated, but the eldest Wesley boy didn't seem to notice that, when he threw a hateful look at Cassie. It hurt, a lot, when he asked the question she would be asking herself many times after that. When his baby blue eyes shone like hard ice. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Cassie wished that she had attacked Missy then, so that Bill saying that would not have been for nothing, so that there were a reason for him to hate her. Perhaps then she might have found some satisfaction, that it hadn't been just her that had gotten hurt. Was she an awful human being for thinking that? "Why don't you ask your girlfriend, she seems to know a lot of them." She thought she heard Missy saying something about her being 'insane' and 'just like her brother', but all she could focus on that Bill hadn't denied her accusation. Not that she had expected any less. "I'm going to see to it that you're expelled!" Missy cried, pointing her long dainty finger at Cassie. Her face was still dry, even though she was seemingly sobbing unevenly. Bill was in love with Missy. He hadn't spoken to her because he was with someone he'd rather to spend his time with. Someone taller, and older and prettier. Someone who's brother wasn't mad and who's mother wasn't dead. Someone who wasn't going to get him killed in her mad persuade for the cursed vaults.

Cassie didn't know what made her run after that. Or why her lungs burned so. But she couldn't stand and take Bill's cold stare any longer, or the shock of Charlie and Barnaby. Like they too believed that she had attacked Missy. And she couldn't take that the older girl looked so pleased with herself. So she ran, fast. Perhaps hoping the heartache wouldn't follow her inside.

The next morning Cassie was alone in the dormitory, heaving. Coughs wracked her small body as she choked on the contents in her throat. Red petals was scattered over her sheets. Amaryllis, poppies and azalea tangles in her hair and sticks to her uniform, while tulips got stuck between her teeth. Her lungs hurt so badly, but she is too exhausted to cry. She tries to stand, knowing she'll have to eat if she's going to make it through the day. Cough. She caught a rose in her  shaking hands. The common room is quiet too, but there was Bill, holding a book about arithmancy. He hadn't seen her yet, but he will if she moved, so she stayed still as long as she could, until a sweet pea stuck in her bangs fell before her and she's coughing again, until another set of poppies litter the floor, and she had to quickly get out of there before he could look at her so coldly again. She already knew that he hated her, she didn't have to see it again. So she didn't meet his gaze when she passed, slightly out of breath from the blossoms clogging her throat. He doesn't say anything, she didn't let him before she stormed out through the portrait hole.

Ben and Cassie sat huddled up in the sofa in the common room when Bill entered, out of breath and hair ruffled. Ben was reading her poems aloud from a book he had brought from home, and Cassie found herself enchanted by the words of the muggle writer. He had just begun to read about a rose garden when the red head made an appearance, and it made Cassie taste poppies in the back of her throat. He looked disheveled, wild, and she swear that she saw a cherry blossom on his shoulder. A gift from Missy, most likely. She thought, picking a rose petal from her lips. “I don’t want to talk to him.” She whispered in Ben’s ear, who nodded in understanding. He looked around for a short moment, searching silently. “Rowan and Charlie isn’t here, unfortunately. Do you want me to hex him?” Cassie scoffed at him, licking her lips with a reddened tongue. “As much as I’d like to say yes, I can’t.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Just please tell him to sod off if he goes here.” She really didn’t want that, but she couldn’t take him being there, near her. “I’d rather want to hex him.” Ben joked, at least she thought he did, almost hoped he didn’t. She stopped smiled however, when Bill did make his way over to the two, and her heart stopped momentarily. His jaw was stiff and he looked a little too serious for her taste, but at least there was no hate in his eyes. She didn’t know what was worse though, the anger, or the indifference. He reached them in seconds, but it felt like minutes worth of anticipation was building in her chest. “Why are you looking at me like that.” Was all he said, and Cassie let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Ben was the one that answered. “Because I want you to bugger off, Weasley, we’re reading.” Bill didn’t move, instead he plopped down on the sofa next to Cassie, close enough to make her skin tingle. She clung desperately to Ben, who didn’t seem to know what to say. He didn’t have to say anything though, because like a knight in shining armor, Charlie appeared in the portrait hole, eyes fiery when he saw Bill, and when he noticed the discomfort on Cassie’s face. “You don’t get to just talk to her after what you did William, sod off.” Bill scowled at Charlie, as if to challenge, but decided against it, deciding that it would be better to just leave. But when he went to sit with some other Gryffindors she coughs up some rose petals. “He’s such a prick.” Charlie said once Bill had left, taking his place her. “Yeah.” She agreed, exhausted.

“Hey.”

In two weeks time Cassie could have sworn that she had produced an entire garden. Ben and Penny brought her dental floss, but it barely helped at all. The flowers kept coming, more and more frequent as the days passed. They clogged up her throat until she couldn’t breathe and she sat heaving and choking panicstricken, holding her throat, watching the floor getting painted red. Rowan had read and read on about diseases, symptoms, flowers, and neither Madam Pomfrey or Professor Sprout knew what had happened to her. Only one thing was certain, it was suffocating her.

She liked being alone on her free time, or with Ben and Penny, away from the rowdy halls of Hogwarts, and the stress regarding the cursed vaults. Sitting by the great lake with one of Ben’s books got her mind off of things, but the poems was often describing love, and what not, and that made her think of Bill.  Bill, who could not even get near her without Charlie or Barnaby, or Tonks and Tulip warding him off. It was little comfort knowing he tried making an effort to talk to her, after ignoring her for so long, but every time she saw his face his chest hurt, and her mouth tasted like flowers.

Now he was there, in front of her, a lopsided smile on his handsome face, that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hello.” She said shortly, removing a piece of dental floss from her mouth, stained red. “Can I sit down?” He asked, politely, but when she didn’t answer he did so anyways. When he was sitting next to her Cassie could feel his scent, like mint chocolate and cologne. It was such a long time since she had smelt him, and now it felt like it would be impossible to part. “I’m sorry.” He said, sounding genuine. “I know you surely must hate me by now, but I had to say that.” She didn’t hate him, and she did hate him. She just hated how he made her feel, and that he didn’t feel the same way. She hated how unfair it was that she had to suffer while everyone else went on with their lives and Bill fell in love with someone that wasn’t her. Cassie wheezed and caught a few petunias in her palms. “I also wanted to see how you were doing. Penny said that you haven’t been coming to classes.” She had been skipping lately, to go to the lake, or lie in her bed until she until she thought that she would explode out of boredom. She wasn’t exhausted from whatever was happening, it just got worse when she was around people. “I’m fine.” Bill winced. He knew she was lying, and he knew she was lying because it was him. Because she did not want to speak to him. “I’m sorry, Cas, if I’m being selfish. Like I said, you probably hate me, but I need to be here right now.” The spot? By the lake? “I need to be with you.” Oh. The sentence made her heart warm. But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t just let him waltz in on her again, so that he could walk out whenever he pleased. “Why is that Bill?” She spat. “Why do you need be with me? You didn’t even look at me for weeks, and now you suddenly have to be with me!” Cassie paused and turned to look at Bill, who looked dumbstruck, before she stood up. “What if I needed you?” The look he was giving her was made her heart twist painfully, like she had just kicked him. “That’s why I wanted to apologize, Cassie, for not being there for you. I feel terrible.” He was standing now too, towering over her. “No, you don’t. You feel guilty, and lonely, because that prat girlfriend of yours probably figured out that you leave the people you care about when they need you.” He looked appalled, sad, frustrated. Bill looked like he wanted to slam her into the tree or run away crying. He didn’t do either. “She’s not my girlfriend.” He said, lowly, cheeks as red as his hair, his blue eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Merlin Cassie!” Cassie backed away a step at his outburst, unconsciously. The fact that Missy wasn’t Bill’s girlfriend should have made her more happy, but she was angry, and unreasonable. “I know I was in idiot, I still am. But I figured if you’re going to hate me either way, I should tell you why.” She nodded reluctantly. Whatever he was going to say couldn’t possibly feel any worse than she did at the moment, then she did when all he would give her was cold glaces. “Are you in love with Ben?” The question came as a shock to her, it was the last thing she expected him to say. “Because if you are, I think my heart will explode.” Another pang of shock, an unexpected statement that she never thought he’d say. “Cassiopeia, I’m not in love with Missy, I’m in love with you. It just took a few white flowers to figure that out.” He pulled a white cherry blossom from his front pocket, and set it in her equally white hair. Cassie opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. So instead she reached to kiss his lips, as tenderly as she could. He kissed her back, hands cupping her cheeks. And for the first time in weeks, she didn’t hurt.