Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine, I just like to borrow to amuse myself :) I don't make any money from this either. So, please don't sue me :)

Authors Note is at the bottom.

Chapter One - Diagnosis

In recent times it could be said that an anxious depression seemed to have taken hold of the entire population, both muggle and wizard alike. It spread like a disease in an epidemic fashion, born from the knowledge that he was back and determined to live up to his formidable reputation. It was easily noticeable in the faces of those that passed you in the street as they scurried along, even in their children's eyes as they questioned the unexplainable, yet undeniable, frantic quality to their parent's barks to just hurry up already!

There was only one place left untouched by the mounting hysteria, a place that gave the gift of separation from the world outside to its students. Here, at Hogwarts, the children still laughed, made jokes, hung out with friends, and complained about the last-minute homework stealing their precious time, knowing they were safe.

One noteworthy student, however, did not particularly feel up to taking advantage of the rare but happy atmosphere that the castle offered, the blanket of magic wrapped around him giving no comfort…

..:..

Poppy Pomfrey stared at the boy sitting rigidly on the bed in front of her, waiting for his reaction as he absorbed the heavy words that had dropped from her lips just moments ago. She couldn't help but be afraid of having to consider the meaning of them herself, but as a dedicated healer she could not shy away from the time-bomb that had presented itself to her. She had a duty to be strong and provide the support that would undoubtedly be needed from her.

"You can't tell anyone." His voice finally breathed, quickly bringing her out of her daze.

"What?" she asked, shocked. She had prepared herself for a lot of possible reactions but this one had failed to cross her mind.

"Please Poppy, I need you to keep this secret for me" her most frequent visitor pleaded her, and a pleading Harry Potter was almost impossible to deny.

"Why on earth would you want me to do that? Don't you want to get help? Support? Your friends would most certainly want to be informed of something like this! Are you intending to keep them in the dark?" she questioned incredulously. Harry bowed his head so she couldn't read his facial expressions, but when he looked her in the eye once more with a desperate glint she sighed and conceded defeat, appallingly easily.

"Very well. Dumbledore – "

"Not even Dumbledore." Came the unexpected clarification.

"Seriously? But – "

"Please Poppy, just trust me that I need this to be kept confidential!" The woman's mouth abruptly clacked shut.

"Alright. I won't tell anyone Harry." Harry shot her a relieved, grateful smile, even if it did seem like a mere shadow of what it usually was. This only made Pomfrey want to give the boy a much-needed hug, but she held herself back. If she came over all emotional in front of him she may just set him off too.

"May I go?"

"Sorry? Oh! Um, well, yes I suppose you might as well. I won't have any of the potions in for a few days yet, but if you pop in and see me at some point I can give them to you then."

"Thanks" Harry hopped down off of the bed and started in the direction of the door.

"Perhaps you'd like to stay here? Just tonight?" Poppy asked his back concernedly, only to be refused with the reassurance that he was fine as he walked out the door and left her standing there biting her lip and wondering what exactly this would all mean.

..:..

Brain cancer.

He had a cancer of the brain.

'What did that mean?' Harry wondered dazedly as he meandered back to the gryffindor common room. Well, he knew the obvious stuff. Like how he could die. But he didn't know how advanced the cancer was. What were his chances? Was he supposed to get that treatment that made all of your hair fall out? What did this mean for the rest of the world?

Madame Pomfrey probably could have answered a lot of his questions, and no doubt was actually supposed to tell him all of this while he was there, but to be fair she looked more shocked and confused than he had felt. He suspected she hadn't had her mind organised enough to think of all that after the impact of the news. Or maybe she simply hadn't had the heart to go into detail about the disease that was slowly killing him.

Either way Harry didn't want anyone to find out. If it turned out that he could be treated and eventually cured then it wouldn't be necessary to have everyone worrying and depressed over him. If not…well, Harry wanted the time to take it all in and make sure he understood everything he needed to know and what he needed to do before he even thought about telling anyone. Even then the drama would no doubt interfere with everything. People wouldn't be able to prepare for exams properly, and the time they spent with Harry would be tainted with the thought in the back of their minds that this would be some of the last moments they shared with him.

No, Harry would keep this secret.

"Hey Harry, how'd it go?"

Harry looked up across the gryffindor common room from his position in the portrait hole to a smiling Hermione sitting at the table in front of the fire doing homework with Ron. He walked over, an answering smile on his lips, and sat down on the couch next to Ron.

"Fine. She's getting some migraine potions for me in a few days." Hermione frowned concernedly.

"I thought you said it was just headaches? Did she find anything wrong? I know you think it's just Voldemort but these ones seemed different to the other times, y'know? Just, the way you act when you have one isn't the same."

"Geez 'Mione, don't worry so much, loads of people are just prone to migraines you know. It doesn't mean something awful is wrong with him and he's gonna drop dead tomorrow! Hannah in hufflepuff gets them all the time and she's fine." Ron answered jokingly, poking fun at Hermione for her worry over Harry and saving him from having to think of something to say.

"Oh shut up Ron, I know that perfectly fine, I was just asking for heaven's sake, more than what you did." Ron just raised his eyebrows in response to Hermione rolling her eyes at him.

"Oh, well excuse me! Someone's moody today aren't they?"

"Well what do you expect when – "

"Guys, I'm just going to head upstairs and go to sleep, okay? My bed's sounding pretty tempting right now, I was up late last night."

"Sure Harry, goodnight."

"Night Harry."

The sounds of Ron and Hermione's escalating bickering floated on the air as Harry climbed the stairs to his dorm room, realising how tired he actually felt. He stripped down completely and climbed into bed, leaving his pyjama bottoms at the bottom of the bed so that he could put them on inside the confines of the curtains in the morning. He did not particularly want to get up and walk around while giving his dorm mates an eyeful after all. He found it uncomfortable to sleep wearing pyjamas, though he sometimes wore a t-shirt to bed when it was cold. The covers were pleasantly cool and welcoming, allowing him to lie in comfort as he let his consciousness drift until sleep took him.

..:..

The next day Harry couldn't help but start to think that his visit to Pomfrey had simply been a horrible dream. Everything was so normal. Nothing had changed at all. He almost expected some kind of major event to happen, something weird maybe, anything really which would reflect the life-altering diagnosis from Pomfrey. But the world kept turning around him anyway. As a result, Harry had succeeded in pushing the issue to the back of his mind to hopefully be forgotten about.

'I mean, really, what's the point of going back to see Pomfrey? She hadn't even explained what potion she was on about last night anyway.'

However, before he could fully attempt to write off the whole incident as some kind of nightmare in a bid to avoid dealing with it, Madame Pomfrey appeared in the doorway of his last period potions class.

"I apologise Severus but may I borrow Mr Potter? I need to talk some thing over with him about his last visit to me. I would have done it at the time but, well, I forgot." Here she blushed in a sheepishly embarrassed way, raising a few eyebrows, the most notable of which belonged to Draco Malfoy.

Since when did Madame Pomfrey do anything other than be efficient, organised, unflustered and dependable? Draco wondered vaguely what Potter had managed to do to put her in such a tizz and glanced up at his godfather, who was standing in front of his cauldron, to see if he thought the phenomenon was rather strange as well. Severus glanced down to meet his eyes once, confirming he too had noticed the oddity in Pomfrey's behaviour, besides the fact that this was quite possibly the first time he knew of that the healer had come to a class to fetch someone personally.

Both slytherins then looked over at the boy in question. Harry had gone a sickly pale colour and seemed frozen in place, his eyes fixed on his desk in front of him.

"Certainly Poppy. Potter, I do believe Madame Pomfrey is waiting."

There was a moment when it seemed like Harry would ignore both adults and remain where he sat instead, but after the suspiciously long pause he rose to his feet, trying to concentrate on breathing normally. He manoeuvred himself between desks and students till he reached Poppy, though he couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

The door closed behind the pair and it was as though a strange spell has been lifted and the rest of the world filtered back into Draco's mind, allowing him to more or less dismiss his curiosity of the incident with the passing thought that perhaps Potter was shagging Pomfrey, allowing a smirk to bloom and die on his lips in quick succession at his own, unvoiced joke.

Severus' eyes, however, lingered on the closed door and Harry's empty seat, a thoughtful frown gracing his harsh features.

..:..

"I'm surprised you didn't come back to see me yet, what with all the questions I left unanswered." Pomfrey made an attempt at a weak smile as she joked about the state she'd been in the night before, but gained no reaction from Harry, who watched the stones of the castle pass under him as he walked.

"Poppy? If I…I mean, when I get really badly ill…can I please stay here? I don't want to be sent back to the Dursley's if it's getting about time for me to...to die." Harry mumbled, uncomfortable asking in the face of the likelihood that what he spoke of would indeed come to pass. Pomfrey's facial expression saddened at the reminder of how her and Harry had become so close.

Every school year began with the now standard check-up and healing of Harry. She had been horrified in his first year at her discovery of the wretched abuse everyone's favourite young man had endured at the hands of those charged with his care and protection. Harry had pleaded confidentiality then as well.

Of course Poppy couldn't give him that, certainly not when he was clearly being hurt so badly on such a regular basis at "home". However, her attempt at informing Dumbledore had been rewarded with nothing more than the claim that, despite the boy's obvious pain, the blood wards would keep him safe and protected from death eaters. He didn't care how much Harry hurt, as long as he remained living.

In the end she had decided to do the one thing she could do, and the one thing she had once sworn would not happen: she developed a healthy relationship with the boy, beyond the distant and aloof kind of relationship of patient and healer she shared with other students. If no one else would listen to him and care for him then she would, regardless of the fact it was technically favouring one student above others.

He deserved it.

He needed it.

And Pomfrey could tell Harry revelled in having someone he could share his thoughts and feelings with. She squeezed his shoulder lightly and said, "Of course you can Harry, you're always welcome. I would invite you into my own home if it came down to it." Harry glanced at her out of grateful green eyes and smiled, conveying his thanks and allowing her to scrunch her nose up and grin at him in affection as she raised her hand to his head and messed up his hair.

'At least he can still smile.' Thought Poppy. 'As long as he can be happy we'll get through this.'

..:..

When, at last, Harry was secreted away in Poppy's office, she forcefully reeled in her emotions and allowed her professionalism to take over.

"Right then. I will tell you what I know and then once I am finished you may ask any questions I have not yet answered." Harry nodded, biting his lip and playing with the large holes in the knees of his trousers. Other people had thankfully attributed them to a preference of the scruffy style of fashion on his part.

"As I told you yesterday I have diagnosed you with brain cancer. Specifically you have a tumour growing in your head, that is what is causing the headaches. Unfortunately it is very advanced, surprisingly so. I believe your magic has somehow been keeping you healthier than you should be at this stage.

"However, magic can't do everything, and despite the fact you're body is clearly fighting tooth and nail to survive, cancer will eventually win. In fact, if anything, it would have been better if your magic had done nothing, we probably could have caught the disease earlier.

"I'm afraid by this point you'd have no chance in the muggle world. In the wizarding world your chances are, while slightly better, still slim to none." Here Pomfrey gripped the cushions of her seat in a tight grip, reminding herself she had to do this.

"The best we can really do is treat the symptoms as they come to make you as comfortable and active as possible for as long as possible. As time goes on you're likely to experience a number of symptoms, as I just mentioned, some of which may include migraines, loss of the senses such as taste, sight or smell, fainting spells, memory loss – "

"How long?" Harry cut her off. There was a pause.

"Harry, I know you feel like you're supposed to be involved in the defeat of Voldemort, but don't feel like you have a time-limit or anything in which you have to kill him. Dumbledore and The Order can handle it. In reality you're still just a teenager, you should have no place in such a war – "

"Poppy. How long before I die?"

Pomfrey sighed.

"I would say a year give or take a while."

They both sat in silence for a long time.

End Chapter

Authors Note: This is my first fic, though I've been reading for years, so I'd be very much interested in constructive criticism, I want to improve after all :) So, please review!