I, London Man, did NOT write this story. This was written by Frosty. I am just hosting it because EF was going to cancel their account. EF allowed me to have them on my site so people can read or reread them if they wanted.
I did NOT steal this story. Also, I want to thank Frosty for letting my host their stories.
Chapter 11: Resolve
Harry Potter and the Setting Sun
Disclaimer: HarryPotter by J.K. Rowling, the Twilight Sagaby Stephanie Meyer and all related materials belong to their respective owners. This is non-profit fanfiction.
Warning: This story contains slash.
Chapter Ten – Resolve
Dr. Sheldon's long explanation of the test results had faded into a dull buzz. After the first sentence or two, Harry became very detached from the conversation. He simply sat in one of the chairs opposite of the oncologist's desk and stared out the window at a tree. A phrase or two of what the doctor said managed to permeate the wizard's brain every couple of minutes.
"How long?" he asked, interrupting the doctor midsentence.
Dr. Sheldon hesitated for a moment before answering. "Weeks. A month at the outside."
"A month?" Harry asked, his voice quivering as he turned to look at his physician.
Dr. Sheldon couldn't bear to look at the teen's stricken face, and so looked down at the files spread out in front of him. "That is if we continue your current treatment regimen," Dr. Sheldon added grimly. The old man licked his chapped lips as he kept his eyes downcast.
"I don't understand. I thought the last set of tests said that I was making progress."
"You were," Dr. Sheldon began. "But I'm afraid that the cancer isn't as isolated anymore. It has since moved throughout the rest of your lymphatic system. Aggressively." The oncologist steepled his fingers before he continued. "There is still a chance that we can force the cancer back into remission."
"But not a very good one," Harry surmised from the doctor's tone of voice.
"No. I'd put the number somewhere around 4%. We could double that number if we tried something more aggressive."
"More aggressive than what we're already trying?" Harry asked as if he couldn't imagine a treatment regimen more aggressive than the chemotherapy he had already endured for months. On an intellectual level, he knew there were stronger drugs. And that the drugs could be taken more often. But the idea being put through something worse than what he was already going through was mind-boggling.
"Yes. We can try a different chemotherapy configuration. We would try stronger chemicals more frequently," Doctor Sheldon explained as though he read the teen's mind. "Two days in a row with treatments followed by two days without. We would cycle through that method as long as your body can take it. At a minimum, it should extend your life by a few weeks. At best, it might be able to trigger a period of remission."
"Is that the treatment you think I should try then?" Harry asked as he turned back to the window to once again focus at the icy tree.
"It's the treatment that has the best chance of survival."
"You didn't answer my question," the teen pointed out.
"No, it isn't what I think you should do," Dr. Sheldon answered. "I think that you should discontinue treatment all together."
Harry gave a sharp, involuntary gasp of surprise at the admission.
"I think you should begin to think about quality of life rather than quantity. Drop out of school. Take a vacation. If there's anything you've always wanted to do but never done, do it now. Once you discontinue your current treatment, you'll have a pretty short window of opportunity, but you'll feel better during that period than you have in months because you won't be pumping your system full of poison anymore.
"Mr. Harris . . . Jay," the doctor started hesitantly. "You put up an amazing fight. You've been eating the rights things, exercising, and doing everything else you could to increase your chances of survival. You managed to beat your original prognosis by several months. If we'd been able to catch the cancer a few months, even a few weeks, earlier . . . I'm not in the habit of telling people to just give up, but if it were me, I'd just want to rest. To be as comfortable as possible and spend what time I had left with the people I love."
"With the people I love," Harry parroted despondently.
The teen managed to slowly rise from his seat, his hands and knees shaking as he did so. "I'm, uh, going to go to home and rest for a bit and then to school. Can you write me a note?"
Dr. Sheldon nodded his head up and down for a moment before fishing a piece of paper out of his desk. He scribbled a short note asking that 'Jay' be excused for missing his morning classes and then handed the note to his patient. Harry took the crisp sheet of paper in his hand and read it over once before folding it up and placing it in his inner jacket pocket. Harry regarded the doctor once more before making to leave. "Please keep me on the books for this afternoon. I'll decide if and how I wish to proceed by then."
"Of course," Doctor Sheldon said with a slight nod as Harry silently left the room.
Harry left Forks General at a brisk pace. He didn't stop or slow down at all on the fifteen minute walk home. By the time he reached his destination, he was out of breath and sweating profusely, despite the cold and snowy weather. Harry's hands were shaking badly enough by that point that it was a chore unlocking the front door. He managed to succeed after several attempts. Once inside his rented home, Harry slammed the front door shut as hard as he could. The clock hanging on the wall rattled as a result of the force.
The teen turned his back to the door and then leaned heavily against it. His hands were still shaking as he attempted to unbutton his jacket. His fingers seemed to be unable to manipulate the buttons. Harry was beginning to find it difficult to breathe, as though the jacket was so tight around his chest that it was suffocating him. After struggling with the buttons for a minute, the teen finally settled for forcing the jacket open, ripping a half-dozen buttons off in the process. As the little pieces of plastic clattered to the floor, Harry began to force in ragged breaths in a poor attempt to calm himself down.
It took Harry the better part of five minutes to get his breathing under control. When he finally did, he staggered his way over to the overstuffed recliner and flopped himself down. The exhaustion of the last 24 hours weighed heavily on the teen and he soon fell into a heavy sleep.
It was noon when Harry regained consciousness. He had been asleep for about three hours, but didn't feel the least bit rested. The sleep had at least succeeded in calming him down considerably and he was now able to ruminate over what the doctor had said.
Harry rose stiffly from his chair and walked into the kitchen where he had a calendar pinned to the wall. "Weeks. A month at the outside." He counted 28 days forward. The 28th day was December 27. Two days after Christmas and exactly one year since the Cullen family had left Forks.
God, Harry mused, must have a real sense of irony.
He had three realistic options. One: Continue treatment and die soon. Two: Forego treatment and die sooner. Three: Try a more aggressive treatment a die a little bit later.
Not very attractive options.
It was with a sense of resignation that Harry left his home for school a short while later. He walked at a far calmer pace than he had walked home at. After stopping by the front office to drop off the note Dr. Sheldon had written him, he proceeded to biology.
Harry joined the mass of students that were heading to class after lunch. In the distance ahead of him he could make out Edward's copper-colored hair. The sight caused Harry's heart to constrict painfully in his chest. He hadn't taken the time to consider what effect the news of his impending death was going to do to his loved ones.
The bespectacled boy stopped so abruptly at that thought that the person behind him almost collided with him.
"Walk much?" the girl, whom Harry vaguely recognized, said as she stepped around him.
Harry didn't respond the girl's question—not that a response was either warranted or expected. He was too absorbed in the traitorous thought he had just had. He was worried about how Edward would deal with his death. How Edward—someone whom he loved—would cope. But it was more than that. It wasn't just that he loved Edward. The truth that he had avoided and run from came to the forefront of Harry's mind. Weeks of ignoring his instincts and dodging questions came to an end in one moment of perfect realization.
Harry Potter was still in love with Edward Cullen. Despite all of the pain the vampire had caused him. Despite the almost full year of separation. Despite all of the time and energy Harry had put forth to try to freeze the vampire out of his life. Despite Harry's decision to talk to the vampire and simply put the past behind him.
Jacob Black, it seemed, was right. He read Harry's feelings on the matter better than Harry read himself. He was still in love with Edward.
The teen continued to watch the vampire as he made his way into the small building that held the biology room. Despite the distance, Harry could see the dread on Edward's face. He was going to have to sit through another biology lecture next to Bella Swan, the girl whose blood sang painfully to vampire. And he was suffering through it because he had returned to Forks for Harry. Because he held out hope that Harry would forgive him and the two could be happy and together once more. The look of dread that Harry could see on the immortal's face as he turned to enter the building made Harry's chest ache painfully.
That was when an idea struck Harry.
He took his glasses off and proceeded towards his classroom. As Harry neared the building, he allowed his spectacles to slip through his fingers and land right in his path. Harry brought his foot down on top of the glasses and, once he was sure that the bulk of the glasses were underneath the heel of his shoe, he shifted all of his weight to that foot. The lenses made a very audible cracking sound as they broke on the icy ground.
Harry stepped back, bent over, and picked up his now-ruined glasses. "Oops," he said lightly before pocketing the mess and heading for biology.
Once inside the room, Harry headed straight for Bella and Edward's lab table in center of the room. Edward was watching Harry from the moment the younger boy entered the room. Bella wasn't paying attention to the door; she was sitting in her assigned seat as Harry's table mate, Tyler Crowley, made a fumbling attempt to ask Bella out on a date. This, Harry realized, would be far easier than he originally thought.
"Excuse me, Bella?" Harry interrupted as he approached.
"Yes, Jay," she responded quickly, clearly excited at being able to dodge Tyler's advances for a moment or two.
"I was wondering if you could do me a favor." Harry pulled his ruined glasses out of his pocket. "I'm such a klutz. I broke my glasses. I was wondering if you would mind switching seats with me for a few days until I can get them replaced."
"Oh," Bella replied uncertainly. "Wouldn't a seat closer to the front be better?" It appeared that rumours of her interest in Edward Cullen were not entirely unfounded.
"No, they're bifocals," Harry lied. "I will have just as much trouble sitting at the front as the back."
"C'mon, Bella," Tyler said enthusiastically as he began to gather the girl's things up. He completely ignored her protests. "You can slum it with me for a few days."
Harry couldn't help but smile as Bella was dragged away by her would-be suitor.
"Broke your glasses?" Edward asked suspiciously as Harry took the seat next to him.
"Yes. It was the strangest thing. I stepped on them, and then they broke," Harry said quietly. "Shoddy craftsmenship, that's what that is."
There was silence between the pair as they simply stared at one another. "Thank you," the vampire said gratefully.
"No problem, Edward," Harry said looking straight at the vampire. The pair smiled at each other and then turned to the front of the room in anticipation of the lecture beginning.
By the time class was dismissed, Harry was feeling far more at ease around Edward than he had at any point since the vampire's return to Forks. It was nice. Familiar. The pair left the classroom together. They walked in companionable silence until it was time to split up; Edward would be turning towards the locker rooms and Harry towards the front office.
"So, um, Edward," Harry started before his companion could walk off.
"Yes?" Edward asked hopefully.
"I'm going to busy the next couple of days. But, if you're free sometime next week, I thought maybe we could study together. And, you know, talk," Harry said a bit uncertainly.
Edward's reaction was instantaneous. His eyes lit up and an uncharacteristically large grin formed on his full lips. "I'd like that very much."
Harry smiled back at Edward for another moment before giving him a slight wave and heading off to the main office. He looked back several times as he walked away and found Edward standing in the same spot watching as Harry left. It felt very much like when the two first started flirting with one another the previous year.
The rest of the day passed by rather quickly. Aside from Emmett sending him smug smiles throughout study hall, Harry's last two classes were uneventful. It was shortly before four that afternoon that Harry arrived back at Forks General. He made his way straight to Doctor Sheldon's office.
"Mr. Harris," Doctor Sheldon said as he rose from his desk to greet the teen.
"Doctor Sheldon, I've spent a fair amount of time thinking it over and I've made a decision. I want more than a vacation or couple weeks without being sick. The things I want to do before I die aren't things I can get done in a month. I'm gonna fight this thing like hell. I'm gonna take that 8% and I'm gonna run with it. Either I'm gonna beat this thing, or I'm going down fighting. So, I would like to know how soon we can start the more aggressive treatment."
A/N: I got a review asking about why Harry hasn't been found by magical means, including cooperation between the British Ministry of Magic and its U.S. counterpart. These are plot points that will come up much later in the story.
Here are a couple parts of the explanation that don't really ruin anything for later: The Trace hasn't found Harry because he hasn't used any magic that would be detected. Why owls haven't found him has a very specific explanation that will come up in a later chapter. Finally, I operate under the theory that there aren't general locator spells that could be used to find Harry. Why? Because if there were such spells, why the heck weren't they used liberally throughout the books to find the various fugitives that weren't hiding under the fidelius charm? Hope that answers the question for now.
