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Chapter I - Pull the Blindfold Down

Wednesday, 18th December 2002

"I'm sorry Harry, I'm not sure I heard that quite right. Would you mind repeating yourself?"

Harry Potter stood leaning against a countertop in the kitchen of the flat he shared with Ron and Hermione, nervously rubbing the back of his neck with one hand while his other arm lay crossed over his torso.

"Wizarding cancer," he repeated himself haltingly, his eyes darting around the room and steadfastly refusing to meet the shocked gazes of his two best friends sitting at the small kitchen table before him. "It's too early to say how serious, and the Healers won't give me a prognosis, or even an estimate of its… severity." The last word of his sentence came out stilted and hesitant, as if an attempt to mask what 'severity' truly meant.

Ron was sat bolt upright doing his best impression of a fish out of water, repeatedly opening and closing his mouth in rapid order, staring at Harry as if he were speaking Gobbledygook. Hermione, meanwhile, had gone as pale as a sheet, quietly fidgeting while looking up at Harry and then again down to her restless hands.

Cancer, she thought. Cancer. After all this, after defeating the greatest threat to the world in perhaps its history. Cancer.

Recognising the grim silence that had fallen over the room, she got up abruptly, wincing slightly at the sharp whine of the wooden chair moving back across the exposed oak floorboards. Crossing the few steps to Harry, she threw her arms around his neck, barely noticing the faint tensing of his muscles as she made contact with him.

Harry moved the arm previously wrapped around his midriff to circle Hermione, resting his hand in the small of her back as he absentmindedly stroked his thumb back and forth across the fabric of her jumper. He finally let his gaze settle and looked Ron straight in the eyes.

"As I say," he began. "As I say there's no knowing just yet of how it's going to develop. Hopefully, they'll be able to contain it and they said themselves it could go into remission of its own accord. If not…"

Harry let his speech trail off into nothing. The alternative to recovery or remission wasn't one he could quite bring himself to speak aloud, not this early.

Ron finally closed his mouth with an almost audible shuttering sound and began to pace the room, gesticulating and speaking rapidly, as much to himself as the other two also present in the room.

"Of course it'll be fine, the Healers at St. Mungo's are the best in the world. There's no use getting worried about it, they'll have it sorted in a jiffy, Bob's your uncle, case closed." Ron stared briefly out the window before resuming his walking lap of the kitchen. "My Uncle Bernard had cancer and he turned out fine, they fuckin' healed him up so fast no problem…"

Hermione, with her arms still ringed around Harry's neck, tuned out Ron's rapid-fire self-assurances and moved her head from where it lay in the slight hollow between her best friend's collarbone and neck. She tilted upwards to face Harry, but still he would not meet her deep chocolate-brown eyes with his own of sparkling emerald green. He knew they would be filled with tears, tears for him, and that he could not countenance.

Returning her head to its previous resting position, Hermione let her tears fall silently into Harry's shirt. Cancer, she thought again. By the power of all that is holy, magical and sacred, please don't take him from me.

Monday, 3rd February 2003

The last six weeks had gone by in a blur. Hermione barely remembered Christmas and New Year, with the festive season having fallen so soon after Harry's announcement and, as a result, the passing of the remainder of the year had hardly penetrated her shock. With Harry refusing to tell anyone else until January, she'd spent the majority of the holiday period with an almost too convincing fake smile plastered across her face. She let the mask slip when she was alone, sobbing into her pillow late through the night or crying her eyes out in the shower, where her subconscious might have told her that the stream of running water hid her tears.

As Hermione sat at her desk in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on another dull Monday, she let her mind wander to Harry, who of all people seemed the most at ease with his diagnosis. Ron had carried on almost completely as normal and only the most observant of people would pick up that he was drinking ever so slightly more while shagging his way around the 18-21 year-old population of Magical London like there was no tomorrow. This, after all, was just standard Ronald Weasley behaviour. Ginny would later tell her that Ron's preferred coping mechanism was simply to pretend nothing was wrong and channel his feelings into his more destructive tendencies. Apparently, when his and Ginny's grandmother died when he was nine, he spent most of the first month afterwards angling the sun at ants through a magical magnifying glass.

Harry himself, however, really had gone on as though everything was the same. He still wrote his Quidditch editorials for Wizarding Sportsman magazine, still met up with the old gang for pints after work every Friday without fail, and still continued to have the unfalteringly bright attitude to life that Hermione had come to know and love since his defeat of Voldemort a few years previously.

She thought back to his words to her from the previous night, after he and Ron had stumbled through the door at three in the morning after a particularly boisterous drinking session. Hermione was wide awake, having been reading through her case files on the sofa and lost track of time. How can you do it, she had asked him, how can you carry on the same way? He had turned to her with the lopsided, boyish smile she adored so dearly; a grin that belied the serious nature of his words. The worst thing you can do, when confronted with hardship, is let it consume you, he had said, before gracefully and profoundly throwing up into the kitchen sink.

Hermione sighed and glanced at the clock in her office, wondering if she could justify knocking off prematurely.

5.15, she thought. Fuck it. What point is there to being the Deputy Head of the Office of the Misuse of Magic if you can't skive off early once in a while?

As she gathered her things and wound her scarf around her neck, Hermione realised she had been rather self-centred in her reaction to Harry's illness. As one year turned into the next her fake-cheery façade had fallen and she had found herself in a constant state of worry and angst to the detriment of nearly every aspect of her life, be it work, social or familial. Maybe, really, she was pushing Harry away with her melancholy. Of course, she'd told him that she always there for him to speak to and that they would get through this together, but he didn't need a carer – he had Healers for that – he needed a friend.

With the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips, Hermione made her way to the street exit of the Ministry of Magic. She would change, she decided, and for the better. With the thought of curry from their local Indian takeaway on Clapham Road, and perhaps a Star Wars VHS binge later on, she apparated away.

OoOoOoOoO

Struggling to juggle the carrier bags of food alongside her work satchel, Hermione turned the key in the door to their flat.

"Harry? Ron?" She called out while sliding off her shoes, knowing the pair would both be home at this time. "I went to Jaipur Palace on my way home, I got that saag paneer you love, Harry, and they were doing a 3 for £4 deal in Tesco on the big bottles of Cobra so I got us all…"

Her voice faded away as she put her keys in the wooden bowl on the kitchen counter and spotted a letter of the palest blue lying on the side, its colour indicating it had come from St. Mungo's Hospital. Setting her bags down on the breakfast table, she nervously picked the letter up and scanned the first few lines:

Dear Mr Potter,

Pursuant to your appointment on Friday 31st January 2003, I am writing to confirm your transfer into the Palliative Care Ward at the P.N. Black Annexe of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Please find enclosed the guidelines and instructions for your stay, as well as answers to numerous frequently asked questions…

Hermione's head jerked up at the sound of a loud crash from the other side of the flat, quickly followed by an irate "stupid, fucking, bastard, arsehole" in a familiar voice. Shaking slightly, she padded over to Harry's open bedroom doorway with the letter in one hand, being greeted by Harry's crouched back and a smashed lamp on the floor by his bedside table.

"Harry…" she began in a faltering voice, taking stock of the weekend bag lying on his bed, half-packed with books and random bits of clothing.

Harry shot to his feet as though someone had shocked him with an electric current.

"Hermione, I didn't know you'd be back this early," he said, slowly turning to face her as his eyes drifted down to the letter she held. "I…"

"Harry, palliative care," she continued, her voice rising a touch in both pitch and volume. "That means… that means…"

"That means I've gotten worse, Hermione," Harry said firmly, but not unkindly, putting an end to her floundering.

Harry let a beat skip.

"They can't cure me."