P/N: Yup this is a publisher's note. This story is not of my own creation, although I sincerely wish it were! One of my closest friends wrote this, and got me interested in the idea. I have been hanging on, waiting for more, and my friend has finally agreed to publish it so that the world can lose themselves in the wonders of this author's writing style. I hope you like it, but even if you don't, reviews are always appreciated.
Reeling in the Wake: Part One
It was a cold Saturday in early November. A thin layer of frost encrusted the grounds of Hogwarts and a howling wind stirred opaque clouds, threatening real snow and the onset of winter. It was not the kind of day Albus Potter expected to change his life.
Most of the school was tucked away in their warm common rooms, playing chess or studying, glad not to be out in the grounds. But Albus was not one of those lucky people. Seven scarlet blurs were shooting around the Quidditch pitch, taking advantage of the ideal practice conditions.
With the first game of the season exactly two weeks away, Dominique Weasley, newly made Quidditch captain for the Gryffindor team, was getting nervous. They had to win their first game. They had to. Not only was it her first chance to prove herself (or fail miserably), but it would also get the school to shut up. The team Dominique had tentatively put together was the source of much gossip and muttering. Because four of the six other team members were Dominique's cousins.
It wasn't favoritism. Dominique did not play favorites, especially not when Quidditch was involved. But she couldn't help that she came from a family of Quidditch talent. A very large family of Quidditch talent. And with at least one, half the time two, Weasley grandchildren in every year except seventh, and all nine of them in Gryffindor, it was not really so surprising how tryouts had ended.
Dominique was a slightly short, stocky fifth year, and she had earned her captaincy by playing Beater (to her mother's slight dismay) for three years and being damn good at it. So she was a bit wounded when people muttered that even her selection as captain had been brought about by her head of house and the headmistress herself being family friends. But the muttering that went on after tryouts really got her blood boiling.
Nobody seemed to remember that Fred and James had already proven themselves last year when Emilia Robbins put them on the team and they won all three games. Nor did they take notice of the fact that Roxanne had tried out for Chaser, but didn't make it. Because Roxanne was a first year, was not allowed her own broom, and, as good as she was, could not quite compete with the older students just yet. And Dominique played fair.
And so this was the reason for the fire in Dominique's eyes as she soared around the pitch, observing every move her team made, determined that they should work like a well-oiled machine. No mistakes. This was the advantage of having five of seven players from the same family. They had grown up playing together. They had a good decade of practice more than any other team.
They had been at it for hours, but it was a testament to their dedication that no one had come close to complaining. Albus circled one of the goal posts at the opposite end of the pitch from where Rose stood guard, watching James and the other Chasers with quick, calculating eyes. He had caught the Snitch three times, each time more quickly than the last. But he didn't let that get him cocky. With another team and another seeker racing him to the capture (not to mention all the people watching), it would be very different.
Ignoring the feeling that his fingers were freezing to his broom, Albus rose higher and squinted down at the darting players, trying to spot a flicker of gold. And then he saw it. His heart leaping in the familiar way, Albus dove straight for the ground, not taking his eyes off that speck of gold. He swooped under Erin Fry, one of the other Chasers, and swerved around Dominique, heart bounding as he closed in on his prey.
Dominique sent a bludger rocketing his way, but he ducked it, nearly close enough to reach out his hand and make the grab. But then, in a desperate bid for escape, the little ball made a sharp turn. Albus jerked around to follow it, and the second bludger Fred had aimed for his shoulder smacked hard into the side of his face.
Albus was nearly knocked off his broom. Stars popping in front of his eyes, he clung on with his left hand, feeling something hot and sticky dripping down his face.
"I'm sorry!" Fred's frantic voice said in his ear as someone pulled him straight again. "I didn't mean to hit you in the face, honest Al!"
Albus blinked and shook his head, feeling slightly dizzy.
"You alright, Al?"
Dominique had joined them. She looked over the side of Albus's face, assessing the damage while Fred hovered guiltily beside them.
"Black eye and a bloody nose," Dominique said, pressing gently on Albus's streaming nose. "Doesn't look broken. You'll be fine, but maybe you should take a seat in the stands 'til it stops bleeding."
Albus nodded and headed unsteadily to the ground, Fred flashing him one more apologetic look.
"Alright, show's over, let's keep going," Dominique shouted to the rest of her team, who had all paused to see what was going on.
Aside from Al catching a bludger in the face, things were looking excellent. Dominique and Fred were hardly able to break through the Chasers' seamless plays. James, Erin Fry, and Mackenzie Bell spent half the time swooping around each other, working as one unit, and the other half practicing steals and defense. Rose managed to block them a good three quarters of the time, but that left a healthy quarter of their shots to score.
Albus thought they looked really good as he watched this coordinated display, pressing a handkerchief to his nose. He gently felt the side of his face, watching James send the Quaffle spinning towards the left hoop, and winced. He'd have a nice bruise there. He hoped Madam Pomfrey would heal it tonight.
That was all he needed in the run-up to his first big game; ammo for the Slytherins to taunt him with. He was nervous enough as it was. Rose carried herself with a dignified imperviousness to taunts and snide remarks, and James gloried in the verbal sparring that preceded Quidditch matches, but Albus didn't have quite as much confidence.
But he couldn't let nerves ruin this for Dom. He was one of the reasons most of the school was grumbling about her. He had to catch the snitch. He had to prove Dominique had made the right choices.
"Hey, Al! How's that nosebleed coming?" Dominique yelled down to him, aiming a bludger neatly into James's path and forcing him to veer off course and lose the Quaffle.
Albus pulled the handkerchief away from his face and was startled at how much red had seeped into the linen. And he could still feel blood gushing down his upper lip. He ran a hand under his nose and looked at the thick smears of crimson that came away on his fingers, feeling slightly panicky.
Dominique landed in front of him to take a closer look. He held up his stained handkerchief and hand, looking at his cousin with wide eyes. Dominique hurried over to him, alarmed.
"Hospital wing," she said, pulling out her own handkerchief and handing it to him. "I might've been wrong about nothing being broken."
She turned to the rest of the team, who had once again paused, looking anxiously down at Al, who was visibly covered in blood.
"I'm taking him to Madam Pomfrey!" she called up to them. "You lot keep practicing. We'll be back in a bit."
Dominique helped Albus to his feet and put an arm around his shoulders as they headed for the school, trying not to look too freaked out. That was a lot of blood.
Madam Pomfrey thought so too.
"What on earth happened to him?" she demanded when she saw Albus.
"Quidditch accident," Dominique said a bit sheepishly, pushing Al over to one of the beds. "Got a bludger in the face. I think it might have broken his nose."
Madam Pomfrey bustled over, muttering under her breath about dangerous sports and something that sounded like, 'just like his father'. Dominique watched anxiously as Madam Pomfrey siphoned the blood away and waved her wand over Al's face.
"Not broken," she reported. "You'll be good as new in a second, Potter. Hold still."
With a sharp jab of her wand, the flow of blood stopped. Madam Pomfrey handed Albus a cloth to wipe off the last smears of scarlet.
"Once you're cleaned up, you can go," she told him and swept off down the ward to finish sorting potions.
Dominique waited as Al hastily wiped the last of the blood from his face and slid off the bed.
"That was one hell of a bloody nose," she told him good-naturedly as they set off down the corridor. "For a while there I was afraid you were going to bleed out on me."
Albus grinned sheepishly. "Guess Fred can hit harder than we thought."
"Well, he better not do that in the match, or he'll be giving away penalties," Dominique said.
She glanced at Al as they rounded another corner and put out a hand to stop him. Albus looked quizzically up at her.
"You're bleeding again," she told him.
"I am?"
He lifted a hand and stared in dismay when his fingers came away red again.
"Come on, back to Pomfrey," Dominique sighed, turning Al around and marching him back up to the hospital wing.
"Forget something?" Madam Pomfrey asked when she glanced up to see them back in her doorway.
"It came back," Albus explained, whipping the trickle with a finger to stop it dripping onto his robes.
Madam Pomfrey frowned. She hurried over to him and forced him down onto one of the beds.
"Did you get hit again?" she asked, jabbing her wand to stem the flow and siphoning off the blood again.
Albus shook his head. "Just started up out of nowhere."
"Hm, well sit there a moment so we can make sure it doesn't happen again."
Albus sat still, Dominique watching him with a crease between her eyebrows. Madam Pomfrey went back to her potions. Nothing happened for a few minutes, and Albus was just about to ask if he could go now when he felt something hot trickling down his lip again.
"Madam Pomfrey, he's bleeding again!' Dominique called, grabbing the box of tissues next to the bed and handing one to Al.
The matron was with them in a second, frowning more deeply as she stopped Albus's nosebleed for the third time.
"Is there something wrong with him?" Dominique asked worriedly.
"I'll fix him up, don't worry Miss Weasley. You go on, now," Madam Pomfrey said, shooing Dominique out of her ward.
A bit taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, Dominique backed out of the hospital wing, shooting a confused and anxious look over her shoulder at her little cousin, who gave her a gloomy wave.
Albus watched a little nervously as Madam Pomfrey gathered a couple of vials. Was there something wrong with him? He could not afford to be dealing with some stupid injury like this so close to a match.
"Drink this," she told him, returning and handing him a half-full goblet of some bright orange potion.
He drank obediently, feeling like the potion was sliding down his throat in slow motion. He coughed and swallowed, grimacing.
"How have you been feeling lately, Potter?" Madam Pomfrey inquired, taking his pulse.
Albus shrugged. "Fine I guess. Tired. We had practice all last week. Why? What's the matter with me?"
"I'm not sure yet. Maybe nothing," Madam Pomfrey soothed. She tipped his face up to look into his eyes, laid a hand on his forehead. "Anything hurt?" she asked.
Albus shrugged again. He'd been sore for weeks, but that was just from Quidditch practice too. He had never trained so hard in his life.
"You need to tell me, Potter," Madam Pomfrey said sternly. "Everything."
"Well, I felt kinda sick in the beginning of the week, but it went away before I came up here for pepper-up."
"Hmm, well you've got a temperature now, so I'm keeping you a bit longer," she told him, pushing him back against the pillows and pulling back the blankets for him to get under. Then she handed him another tissue. "You're bleeding again. Not much, though. The potion I gave you should stop it. Hold out your arm."
Albus complied, dabbing dully at his nose. So he was sick on top of getting smacked in the face. Great –
"Ow!"
A sharp prick in the crook of his right elbow distracted him from his gloomy thoughts. He looked down at the arm he'd been holding out for madam Pomfrey and saw a small cut, but it was already knitting itself back together. Madam Pomfrey was putting a cork in a tiny glass vial filled with something that was dark red.
"Just to have a look," Madam Pomfrey assured him, pocketing the vial. "Sometimes blood can tell us more than magic."
XxX
"Where's Al?" Rose called when she saw Dominique returning alone.
"Pomfrey's keeping him a bit longer!" she called back as she mounted her broom to join them.
"He's okay, though, right?" Fred asked a bit guiltily. "I mean, I didn't, like, break him or something, did I?"
"He'll be fine," Dominique assured him. "Madam Pomfrey can fix just about anything, and it wasn't too bad. You didn't even break his nose. He'll be fine."
XxX
"Come on, Al, let's see the shiner," James teased that evening as he threw himself down on the end of his brother's bed and pried the blankets away from his face.
"James, go away," Albus complained, still half-asleep, dragging the blankets back over his head. He felt awful: sore and tired and sick.
"Is that any way to treat your visitors?" James chastised, tsking like their grandmother. "All your concerned friends and family want is to make sure you're okay, and you tell us to go away."
"I only told you to go away," Albus muttered, rolling over and sitting up.
When he saw Albus's face, James sucked in a sharp breath, wincing along with most of the little group that had gathered around Albus's bed.
"Oooo, you really got him good, didn't you?" James said to Fred, looking with mingled awe and repulsion at the bruise that stretched from Albus's blackened eye across the entire left side of his face. James poked it reverently, and Albus slapped his hand away.
"It's like somebody finger painted half your face," he told his little brother, squinting at the impressive array of blackish blues, greens and deep purples.
"It's not that bad," Albus protested, pushing himself up a little and groping for his glasses.
"Have you seen yourself?" James asked incredulously. "You look like you're half raccoon."
"Shut up, James," Rose said, putting Albus's glasses into his scrabbling hand. "It's not… I mean, really you can hardly… okay, it does look pretty nasty," she conceded finally.
"Er, right. I'm really sorry about that, again," Fred told Albus sheepishly.
Albus shrugged, trying to grin at him, but a dull throbbing in half his face turned it into more of a grimace. "S'okay."
James was rummaging in Albus's bedside table for a mirror, determined that his brother should witnesses the phenomenon that was the left side of his face. Albus gaped at his reflection when James finally shoved the polished metal lid of a tin in his face in place of a mirror.
"That looks…worse than I thought. And that's saying something 'cause I can feel it."
"It's an impressive specimen, little bro'," James agreed.
Dominique rolled her eyes at James. Boys.
"So, has Madam Pomfrey figured out why her spells weren't working this afternoon?" she asked instead.
Albus shook his head, noticing as he did so that the world seemed to pitch a little. He sank back against his pillows, feeling a little sick.
"You okay?" Rose asked, touching his arm lightly.
"Yeah, I'll be fine by tomorrow," Albus said, trying to sound it.
It was then that Madam Pomfrey appeared to chivy the group along, insisting that Albus be left in peace to rest. So his brother and cousins said their goodbyes, James messing up his hair for good measure, and filed out of the hospital wing.
XxXxX
Madam Pomfrey sat back in her chair and rubbed vigorously at her itching eyes. On the table before here was what looked like a handful of tiny red beads. With a tired wave of her wand and a muttered "Reducio totalum" the blood sample she had taken from Albus Potter shrank back to normal size and poured itself neatly back into its vial.
After nearly fifty years of looking after children at Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey had developed something of a sixth sense. She had known somewhere in her gut when Albus Potter reappeared in her doorway, dripping blood again, that something was very wrong. Her minor healing spells always worked the first time. Always. But she had hoped it was just a fluke, that she would find some easily fixable explanation.
But with each new test on the blood sample, the farther from that hope she got. She had spent all night poring over the enlarged platelets, waving her wand in complex patterns, willing different results. She had even retested one more time that morning, just to make absolutely sure. But nothing had changed.
Madam Pomfrey stood slowly and made a fuss about placing Albus's blood sample just so on a shelf behind her desk, putting off the moment all she could. But when she could not get the potions bottles and vials any straighter, she turned and made her way slowly up the aisle between the beds.
She spotted Albus curled up under his blankets near the end of the ward, fast asleep, and had to swallow hard. With a heart feeling as though it were made of cinder, Poppy Pomfrey went to make one of the worst kinds of calls.
XxXxX
Two figures appeared outside the gates of Hogwarts with simultaneous pops.
The cold wind whipped Ginny's long red hair into her face and she brushed it away irritably.
"So what do you think this is about?" Harry asked her as the pair of them walked up to the gate.
"You're the one that talked to Neville this morning," she reminded him, peering through the wrought iron bars. "If James is getting expelled, I'm blaming it on our lack of foresight when we named him after two Marauders."
Harry grinned in spite of himself. "Neville said it had to do with Al. What's your excuse if he's getting expelled?"
"The way he takes after his father," she said, flashing Harry a cheeky grin. "But that makes me feel a little better. At least I highly doubt we'll be hearing about something getting blown up today."
"There's Neville," Harry said suddenly, pointing to a figure coming down to open the gate for them.
"Hey, Neville!" Ginny called, waving.
Neville raised a hand in acknowledgement, jogging forward to tap the gate a few times with his wand. It swung open to admit them.
"Hey," Neville said as he and Harry shook hands and Ginny hugged him.
"So what's going on? Hope the boys haven't set fire to anything too valuable this time," Harry joked.
Neville gave a weak smile as they set off towards the school.
"It's nothing like that," he assured them. "Madam Pomfrey actually asked me to get hold of you this morning."
Harry and Ginny exchanged looks.
"Why? You said it was about Al. Is he hurt or something?" Harry asked anxiously.
"I really don't know," Neville told them apologetically. "He seemed fine yesterday… Madam Pomfrey didn't tell me anything, though. Just to get the two of you. She… well, she was looking a bit grim."
Harry and Ginny exchanged another look, this time with mild alarm.
"I'm sure Al's fine," Neville said hastily. "Look, I really don't know why Madam Pomfrey wants you. Could just be paperwork or something like that."
He tried to smile reassuringly.
Ginny drew her cloak more tightly around her in the chilly air and Harry wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
XxXxX
"I'm sorry," Ginny said, shaking her head a little and sitting forward in her chair. "You said there's something wrong with Albus's blood. What does that mean exactly?"
The first thing that jumped to her mind was the fact that Harry's mother had been a muggle-born and her family blood-traitors. Surely Madam Pomfrey – who had treated her entire family at Hogwarts – hadn't brought her here to make a slight on her son's blood status. But there couldn't be anything literally wrong with his blood, could there? It had been perfectly fine for twelve years, after all.
She glanced sideways at Albus, sitting in the bed beside her and looking perfectly healthy. Except for the large bruise on the side of his face, which could be explained by a bludger. Then Ginny looked over at her husband, sitting in a chair on the other side of Albus's bed. She expected to see a similar confusion, maybe even outrage at the allusion to blood-status in Harry's expression, but there was neither. Harry had a hand on Albus's knee, but his gaze was locked on Madam Pomfrey. He looked as if someone were about to push him off a cliff.
"I mean, Mrs. Potter," Madam Pomfrey began gently.
It jarred Ginny for some reason to hear the matron – who had taken care of her when she was still a Weasley – use her married name. And to speak so gently. Madam Pomfrey was a kind woman, but she always upheld a strictness in her ward. Ginny shook herself and refocused on what the woman was saying to her now.
"…points to an abnormality. I don't pretend to be an expert on micro biology. My specialty deals with magic. But I've seen a case like this before… and my advice would be to have Albus checked over as soon as possible."
"Checked over for what?" Ginny asked, feeling slow. Abnormality? Platelets? White blood cell counts? What did these words have to do with her son? If there was something wrong with him, why wasn't Madam Pomfrey brewing a potion or using a spell to fix it instead of talking medical mumbo jumbo to her?
Ginny started when it was her husband's voice that answered.
"Leukemia," he said quietly. "That's what you think is wrong. You think he has Leukemia."
Madam Pomfrey looked somber. "I don't know for sure. It could be something Leukemic, it could be an immune deficiency of some sort. Like I said, I don't pretend to be an expert on micro medical biology. I deal with spells gone wrong and potions accidents and Quidditch injuries. Not blood cells."
Leukemia. The word felt strange, even in her mind. Ginny thought she had heard it before, mentioned vaguely in someone else's conversation that she was only half-listening to, perhaps.
But Albus was the one that asked, "What is it? Leu- whatever that word is. What does it mean?"
Madam Pomfrey opened her mouth to explain, but again it was Harry who answered.
"It's a type of cancer, isn't it? Cancer of the blood."
Madam Pomfrey nodded.
Ginny felt a little like the ground was spinning beneath her. Cancer? They thought her son had cancer? But that wasn't possible. People with cancer were sick. They weren't in school studying for quizzes or getting injured in Quidditch practices. People with cancer could die. Her son couldn't –
"Cancer," Albus repeated faintly.
And just like that Ginny was firmly present again in the hospital wing, watching his face as he comprehended the news that he might be very ill.
"Right. So what do we do?" she asked, finding her voice again as she turned back to the matron.
"Find out exactly what's causing the abnormality with Albus's blood cells. I might be wrong. It might not be Leukemia…"
But she didn't look as though she expected to be wrong.
Harry let out a deep breath, running a hand over his face.
"And what if you're right?" he asked, looking up at Madam Pomfrey. "What if it turns out Albus has cancer? Isn't there just some potion you can give him to bring his white blood cell count back to normal? Or some sort of spell to fix whatever's causing it to drop in the first place? I mean, you can regrow bones and counteract poisons. There must be something you can do about this?"
He looked desperate, Ginny thought with a shock. It scared her. She knew next to nothing about cancer, had never even had an idea about what Leukemia was until just now. But Harry seemed to understand more than she did.
She looked back at Madam Pomfrey to see her shaking her head sadly in answer to Harry's questions. What did she mean? There wasn't a way for her to treat Leukemia?
"I'm sorry, Potter. Not even magic has all the cures. Maybe there's a potion out there that could treat Leukemia, but we'd have to invent it first. You have to understand that cancer isn't a common thing in the wizarding world, if only because of numbers. Muggles treat cancer far more regularly than we do because their population is hundreds of times bigger. In all the years I've been at this school, I've only had one other student diagnosed with Leukemia. Magical research in that department is sadly undeveloped."
"So then what do we do?" Ginny asked quietly, her mouth going rather dry.
Madam Pomfrey hesitated. "Well, you have some choices. The first thing you'll need to do is take Albus into London and have more tests run. It's up to you where you want this done, St. Mungo's or a Muggle hospital. If it turns out… that Albus has cancer, you'll have to decide how to go about treating it. You should have a medical council with a Healer in St. Mungo's, they know more than I do. I can set up for someone to come over here this afternoon if you like."
Ginny nodded her appreciation of this.
"But I don't understand," Albus piped up. "Why is not having enough white blood cells so terrible? What's wrong with me exactly?"
Ginny conjured a piece of paper and a quill, jotting down notes as Madam Pomfrey explained as much as she could. Her education in things like science and biology was shoddy at best. Her mother had home-schooled Ginny and her brothers, as was customary in pure-blood families. And of course there was little room for biology classes at Hogwarts. She had only the vaguest idea about the mechanics of the immune system or the blueprints of a blood cell.
It seemed a long time later that Madam Pomfrey got up to contact St. Mungo's about sending a Healer over. Ginny set aside her paper and quill and looked back at Albus. He was staring down at his fingers, expression blank.
"Sweetheart? Are – " she stopped herself from asking if he was alright. He wasn't alright, and they all knew it. "How are you holding up?" she asked instead.
Albus shrugged. Harry rubbed his back gently.
"We'll figure it out, buddy" he murmured.
Albus forced a pained sort of smile. "Yeah, Dad. I know. You're the master at beating Death after all."
Both his parents flinched, but Albus didn't see.
Ginny leaned forward and kissed the top of her son's head.
"Daddy and I are going to take a little walk. We'll be back in second, love."
XxX
"What do you know about all of this?" Ginny asked the moment they were in the corridor.
Harry reached for her hand, gripping her fingers tightly.
"Not much more than you do," he admitted.
"You knew what it was coming to, though. You knew it was cancer."
Harry shrugged. "We learned a little bit about this sort of thing in primary school. There was a kid in our class who had Leukemia one year. You heard about it all the time. Blood drives and stuff for sick kids…."
"What happened to him?" Ginny demanded. "The kid you knew. What happened to him?"
"I-I dunno," Harry said, a bit taken aback.
"Harry, what happened to the boy you knew who had this?" Ginny was looking hard at him, almost fierce.
"It was thirty years ago!" Harry said in exasperation. "Besides, I had bigger problems back then than keeping track of a kid who was in school about once every two months."
But Harry did know what had happened. He just refused to voice it. Not now. And to his relief, Ginny let the subject drop.
She sagged against the stone wall behind her, staring vaguely over his head.
"Do you remember this morning when everything was fine?" she asked, and it sounded like years had passed since then, not mere hours.
Harry stepped forward, wrapped both his arms around her, buried his face in her hair. They stood like that for a moment before simultaneously breaking apart and heading back into the hospital wing.
XxX
Healer Eric Hart was a good ten years younger than Harry and according to Madam Pomfrey, the only oncology specialist St. Mungo's had ever had. In addition to his five years of magical study in the Healer program, Eric Hart had also attended one of the best medical schools in the U.K. He was one of the few Healers with an intensive background in Muggle medicine, specifically cancer and blood disorders.
The moment he stepped around the curtain Madam Pomfrey had put up to give them privacy, Harry liked Healer Hart. He scarcely glanced at Harry's scar, offered his wife a reassuring smile, and managed to make his son laugh all in the first two minutes.
Then they started talking about cancer again.
"In order to have a clear idea what's going on, I would need more than one blood sample," he explained. "There are all kinds of tests and labs we would have to run. We can do all that at St. Mungo's, and the upside is that it would be a lot quicker and less painful to use magic. The thing is, though, if you end up using Muggle treatments, you'll have to go through all of it again, without magic, so they can have all your data on record."
"Madam Pomfrey says there isn't much for magical treatments…"
Hart shook his head grimly. "No, there isn't. I'm the first Healer to have any kind of expertise in this field and I haven't been at St. Mungo's long enough to really establish a study. Plus, in the three years I've been there, we've only gotten about five people with Leukemia. Not a lot of opportunities for testing. I'm working on a few trial procedures. If you want to give the magical method a try, I swear I'll do everything in my power to help Al get better, but I can't guarantee any results. And with kids, usually there isn't a lot of time to spare for screwing around.
"It's not helping the magical cause for a cure, but my advice is to go straight to a Muggle Hospital. They have treatments with much higher success rates and doctors with much more experience. You won't get healing spells or magic potions, but they know what they're doing."
"And what exactly will they be doing?" Ginny asked apprehensively.
Her experience with Muggle medicine boiled down to exactly one incident: when her father had had the crazy notion of trying to sew himself up after Voldemort's snake had attacked him. The stories her brothers had told her about Muggle doctors when she was little had usually involved a lot of cutting and horror. Even as a rational adult, she was not keen on putting her son on an operating table.
"Well, it depends on the type and severity of the disease –"
Hart was probably not even aware that he had used the word 'disease', much less that it was the first time the Potters were hearing it in regard to Albus. It was one of those moments when the world, already tilting dangerously on its axis, suddenly seems to overbalance and land permanently at a wild angle, and nothing quite looks the same anymore.
But Hart was still talking as if nothing had happened.
"– Most likely Al will start with Chemotherapy. It's also possible radiation or bone marrow transplants will be used. The doctors will be able to tell you exactly what sort of procedures they suggest after the tests are done. I can get you in at the New London Cancer Center within the next day or two, if you want. The sooner you start, the better, really."
"And – and what if we don't treat him?" Harry asked suddenly, surprising even himself.
Healer Hart looked at him with sharp, piercing eyes, and for the first time he seemed hard and cold.
"I just mean," Harry went on hastily, "Leukemia affects the immune system, right? Stops Al from being able to fight off illness and infections. So why can't we give him pepper-up or something whenever he gets sick? Heal every cut and bruise? For Muggles, no immune system is really dangerous, but we have magic to keep Al healthy."
Hart softened again, looking at Harry almost sadly.
"I'm afraid it doesn't quite work like that, Mr. Potter," he sighed.
He took Al's chin in his hand and waved his wand over Albus's face. The bruise that covered the entire left side of his face like some painted-on charcoal mask faded.
"In a normal patient, that's all you would have to do and he'd be good as new. But the blood doesn't work the same in someone with Leukemia.
"See, what all magic basically boils down to is the manipulation of atoms beyond what is natural. Most healing spells involve a rapid speed-up of the body's natural healing process. Healing a bruise on an atomic level would be returning pooling blood back to the veins, clotting to stop anymore bleeding, and repairing the damaged blood vessels. But in a Leukemia patient, there aren't enough platelets to clot, so the spell doesn't hold."
He gently turned Albus's face a little so his parents could see the dark splotches already seeping back across his cheek as the bruise reformed.
"I'll bet he's got a big bruise on his arm where Madam Pomfrey took blood yesterday, too. The skin will repair, but not the bleeding. In a Leukemia patient, our spells and potions don't work like they should. Which means if Al doesn't get treatment… he will die."
He said the last part as gently as he could, but it didn't lessen the blow those words dealt.
Harry swallowed hard, feeling sick that he had even suggested not treating his son. But trial procedures and radiation weren't exactly great options to pick from. He didn't want Albus to go through any of the treatments Healer Hart had suggested.
Albus felt cold as he realized the 'he' in the last part of Hart's sentence was him. But just one glance at his parents and he could tell they were both on the verge of losing it. This has to be some sort of nightmare, he thought.
But it wasn't.
Healer Hart talked with his parents for another long half hour about the New London Cancer Center, what they should expect when they took Albus there, the doctors he had contact with, and what sort of connection St. Mungo's had with the Muggle hospital.
Albus slipped in and out of attentiveness. It seemed impossible to him that it had only been twenty-four hours since Dominique had brought him here, that he had been cocooned in this narrow, too-white ward, hidden away in the aqua folds of the curtains around his bed. It seemed like much, much longer, and he imagined the world outside the hospital wing must have changed drastically since last he'd been a part of it.
At last, Healer Hart stood up. He clapped Albus on the shoulder, shook Harry's and Ginny's hands, promised to be in touch with the time of their appointment at the NLCC, and turned to go. But before he drew the curtains apart again, he looked back at them all.
"Doctors don't tell you this very much because they're too caught up in the innumerable amount of tragedies and hardships they have to see, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry this had to happen to you. To anyone... My sister died of cancer when I was still at Hogwarts, so, I guess I've been where you're sitting. I sincerely hope things go better for you, though."
And with that, he disappeared.