Pig in a Wig in a Hospital Gown
Harry Potter glanced down again at the standard issue, printed letter in his hand. It had arrived by muggle post, two weeks late due to small problem of his house not being registered by any muggle council. The second glance didn't tell him anything new. He was standing in a muggle hospital. He had been summoned. And he had no idea why.
He walked up to the reception desk. "Hello, I was sent this letter-" He waved it about vaguely a bit "- it said that I've been contacted as next of kin for someone here?"
"Your name and name of patient please." The secretary said monotonously.
"Harry Potter, but, sorry, I don't know who I'm here to see." He shouldn't be next of kin to anyone. Ginny and the kids had all been accounted for, the Weasleys' were as normal as they ever were, Teddy and Andromeda were in rude health, and he wasn't next of kin to any of the Durselys.
"Potter..." The secretary typed furiously on his computer. "Potter, Harry J. Could you tell me the first line of your address please?"
"Um, why?" Harry wasn't in the habit of giving out personal details. Risky business.
"To confirm your identity. I'll need to see some form of identification as well." Ah, well that Harry did have. He pulled out his muggle driver's licence and handed it over. The secretary's eyes flicked between his face and the card suspiciously. "First line of your address."
Harry took a wild guess as to what address a muggle hospital would have him registered under. "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place...?"
More furious typing. "Potter, Harry J. of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, here to see one Dursley, Dudley V. Fourth floor, room two. Enjoy your visit. Next please!"
And with that Harry was ejected from the queue.
Dudley? Dudley? Harry was here to see Dudley? His mind struggled to grasp hold of the concept as he took the lift up to the fourth floor and found the correct room. He was still struggling with it as an old voice called him into the private room.
"Dudley?" Harry asked in shock. Lying on the bed before him was a man - a shadow of the boy he had known.
The boy, now man, cleared his throat, and said in a weary voice "Hello, Four Eyes."
Well it was Dudley alright. No one else had ever taken such pleasure in reminding him that he had less than 20/20 vision. Not even the Slytherins had bothered much.
"I would ask how you've been doing, but um..." Harry stood at the end of Dudley's hospital bed awkwardly. He hadn't seen this man in over ten years.
"Cancer." Dudley said plainly.
"Oh." Harry looked at the letter he still held in his hands. "Sorry." He looked up but couldn't make eye contact, so settled for observing the machines which snaked wires into his cousin's veins and nose. They beeped a lot. The lights were turned low, Dudley's statistics were flickering slightly on a screen, and an old sports magazine was lying, curled, on the bedside table. All in all, it was a rather depressing, oppressive scene.
"Mum's dead." Dudley said suddenly. Harry looked back to Dudley sharply. "And Dad. And Aunt Marge."
"Christ. I'm so sorry Dudley." Harry breathed. Seeing the look that Dudley had made the effort to express, he quickly added. "I mean, I know we didn't have the best relationship. But, that's awful. Especially for you. I had no idea. How did it happen?"
"Heart attack. That was Aunt Marge." Dudley's eyes dropped to the quilts. "Car crash got the parents. Dad was drunk."
Harry had the wholly inappropriate urge to laugh. After everything they had said about his own parents... Instead he forced himself to say "So that's why I was called. Next of kin. Don't you have a wife? Husband...?"
Dudley's eyes bulged and he shot upright with the force of the cough that racked him. Harry flew to his side and instinctively put a hand out to steady him. When he'd caught his breath back Dudley motioned with streaming eyes for the glass of water that stood on the table. Harry handed it over, but Dudley nearly dropped it. So Harry wrapped his hand around the glass too, and held it steady whilst Dudley drank, like he did to his own children when they were sick. Of course, they were never in hospital with a life threatening disease.
"I'm not a dirty shirt lifter, Potter." Dudley said the moment he was able. Harry frowned; about to point out his cousin's frankly derogatory language, and probably make some less than complimentary comparisons between father and son, but Dudley beat him to it. "Put me down." Gritting his teeth at Dudley's tone, Harry took the glass back and gently let him lean back onto his bed.
After a moment's tense silence, Dudley spoke again. "Kirsty. Hospital won't contact her." Harry understood. He too had come up against the same problem before he and Ginny had married. The hospitals had refused to give out any information to anyone who wasn't registered next of kin. For Ginny it had been her mother, and Andromeda became Harry's, by proxy via the guardianship of the still underage Teddy. "I didn't want you here." Dudley announced. "But the Hospital insisted."
"Cheers." Harry was rather used to this feeling. "Why am I here then?"
"I want you to get Kirsty." Dudley said simply. "Sign her over as next of kin. Then you can leave."
"Sure." Harry fished about in his pockets. That was the problem with wizard pockets- too big. One was always losing things. He eventually pulled out a scrap of parchment (with the words "-three galleons four knuts compensation to be paid to-" on the back) and a broken but working quill. Seeing the look on his cousin's face, Harry shook the quill slightly, causing it to turn into an equally broken fountain pen with a pop. Ink began to leak over his fingers. "What's her address?"
As Harry crossed the threshold, after taking down the relevant details and going through a rather awkward goodbye with his cousin, he paused. "Hey, Dudley," he waited till his cousin's eyes came to rest on his face, "it's serious, isn't it?"
The corner of Dudley's mouth twitched up and a faint smile. "Yeah. Extradural spinal tumour. Means it's in the bone. Somewhere in my coxis. Operation failed. We're trying chemo, but..."
Harry stared at his cousin. Cancer, of the spine. His cousin had cancer. In his spine. Against all logic, Harry actually felt his eyes beginning to well up slightly. He cleared his throat. "God. Um..."
"Yeah." Dudley repeated hollowly. "So, the end of my spine's mutated. Strange, I didn't get some cool X-Men power, I just ended up dying." He shrugged.
"Well, I hope it all turns out okay for you Dudley." Harry said finally, unable to say the empty words 'you're not going to die'. "I'll go get Kirsty."
Dudley nodded, and lay back. Potter left. For a moment he stared at the dulled ceiling and listened to his machines. Then he felt tired, so he closed his eyes and didn't sleep.
Harry was back at the hospital, signing papers. The fabled Kirsty was sat at his side, filling in the boxes which he left blank. When Harry had gone to see her, she had been more composed and less tearful than he had expected. She had been, relieved. They had taken a taxi back to the Hospital, and Kirsty had told Harry how Dudley had come to be in hospital.
A year ago his old back pain, which had apparently prevented him from boxing years ago, had gotten steadily worse to the point where he couldn't move properly. He'd eventually gone to the Doctor's with severe bowl problems, nausea, exhaustion, and, the thing which had finally spurred him into action, temporary but reoccurring loss of feeling in his legs. He had been terrified. He had been sent for tests, and, after a number of false starts, the doctors eventually found that his spine was longer than normal. He had gone for more tests, and it turned out that his spine hadn't been elongated since birth, but rather it had been slowly extending for the past twenty years. It was now pressing out in a visible bump against his skin, apparently.
The tumour was behaving strangely, so they took him in for observation. They'd operated, but it had grown back. Worse than before. When they realised that it wasn't behaving like a normal cancer they sent him back home at a loss. And for the last year Dudley had been in and out of hospital monthly, each time staying for longer and longer. Then, the doctors had quietly informed him that they didn't expect him to leave again.
Now, as Harry signed his next of kin status over to Kirsty with a final flourish, Harry's mind was running in over drive. He felt as though something was missing. As though he was staring at the scene, seeing the buildings and the people, but not the shadows. The end of Dudley's spine. Twenty years. Old back pain. Unresponsive cancer.
He was still turning those ideas over in his head as he and Kirsty returned back to Dudley's room; Kirsty to greet and stay with Dudley, and Harry to offer his paltry condolences and take his leave. Possibly for another ten years. If Dudley lived that long. The thing that Harry couldn't see picked away at his thoughts. He tried looking at the scene from various different angles, like he did at work, but he couldn't see...
They knocked and entered Dudley's room. Kirsty was straight at his side, but Harry stood stoically at the foot of the bed, thinking.
A heavy, sick feeling settled in the base of Harry's stomach as a dreadful flash of understanding crashed upon him.
"Dudley." Harry said suddenly, breaking his own silence and the rather intimate conversation between Dudley and Kirsty. "Could I talk to you, privately, for a minute?" Kirsty glared at him, but Dudley just looked on dispassionately and shrugged. Glancing down at her boyfriend and pressing her lips together in firm disapproval, Kirsty let go of Dudley's hand and quietly slipped out the room, closing the door behind her.
Harry walked over and conjured a chair next to Dudley's head. He sat down heavily. "Dudley." He repeated. "Do you remember, when we were little, I got a lot of letters." He paused and waited for his cousin to nod slightly. "And Uncle Vernon flipped and drove us around half of England looking for somewhere the letters wouldn't find us. And we ended up on this godforsaken rock out at sea, in this tiny beaten up shack."
"Get on with it, Potter."
"And that night, a half-Giant came to see me." A slow, sickened look fell over Dudley's face. "And he partially transfigured you." Dudley began to shake his head. "He meant to turn you into a pig, but he wasn't fully trained, so all he did was give you a tail."
"No Harry, no."
"And Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia took you to London to have it removed."
"No."
"Well, you see the thing is...you can't really surgically remove magic." Harry said finally. "It reappears."
"What are you saying?"
"Look," Harry drew his wand slowly, "I can just say a little spell, and check if your cancer has, a magic trace, if you will. It's completely harmless." Harry said, speaking over his cousin's spluttering. "Harmless. I won't do anything to the tumour, I'll just, look at it. And you won't feel a thing. I promise." Dudley swallowed. He looked at the end of Harry's wand seriously. Then grudgingly, he nodded.
A minute later, a heavy silence had fallen over them. Dudley had gone sheet white. He was shaking his head from side to side slowly, his mouth hanging slightly open. Harry himself felt a bit dizzy. The results were hanging in the air, plain for all to see, glittering slightly in a mocking manner. Had the magical world done this? Had Hagrid's well-intentioned bit of mischief put his cousin in hospital? Was Dudley going to die because of it?
"I am so sorry Dudley." Harry whispered finally. "I thought you'd gotten rid of it...I, I didn't know anything about magic then...And we've had some problems, if I'd stopped to think, if I'd realised..."
"Shut up." Dudley said gruffly. "It's, it's okay."
"No it's not."
"No. I'm in hospital. But you didn't know, I didn't know. It's, it's not your fault."
Harry ducked his head.
"Please don't shout when I say this." Harry began. "I don't want the doctor to come in here. At least not till these had dissolved." He gestured to the slowly fading results, still glittering in the air. "But, I could take you to a hospital. One of my hospitals. They could get rid of the tail for you. It, it wouldn't get rid of the cancer." Harry added quickly, "But, it would stop the tail growing back once they removed it. Maybe, maybe then the doctors' operations or chemotherapy would work." He looked up. "I don't want you to die...Especially not because of a tail." He joked weakly.
Dudley stared at him. Harry thought he was either going to punch him, or vomit on him. But, after a few tense moments, Dudley closed his mouth and swallowed. "Yeah. Alright then. Let's...let's try your magic then."