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The end of Harry’s relationship with Nick was full of crying and yelling and Harry packing all of his shit and leaving their apartment. He went and stayed with Niall and cried for about two weeks straight during which time Niall worked a lot of overtime and usually left Harry to his wallowing with a frown and a promise to come home and spend some time with him after work. He was always exhausted after work though so Harry let him have his alone time and basked in his own misery.
His only comfort during one of the hardest times of his life was the unfailing love and enthusiasm Harry was always met with in Niall’s dog Nando. Nando was a big bouncy golden retriever, and he would from napping in his plush bed to cuddling with Harry and licking his cheek at the first sign of a frown or a sad sigh. He was filled to the brim with energy when Harry needed a pick me up, and he would curl up against Harry’s hip when he felt like watching sad movies and crying in front of Niall’s TV.
Nando followed Harry around whenever he was at home and came bounding over to greet him at the door when he returned from running occasional errands and from work. Soon Harry was feeling in much better spirits, chatting animatedly with Nando as he prepared dinner for himself and Niall more often than not.
Two weeks of misery turned into two more weeks of apartment hunting and a month after his devastating break-up saw Harry signing the lease on the first apartment he’d ever lived in alone. He hadn’t bothered to go back and pick up any furniture from his old apartment, unwilling to face Nick again, so he’d invested in a fairly cheap bedroom set and some mismatched living room and kitchen furniture.
Once he had the essentials moved in, he sought out the finishing touch that would change his new apartment from unfamiliar living space into a Home: a pet. Harry missed Nando terribly and had already stopped by to visit him and cook Niall dinner every night since he’d moved into his own place. He knew he couldn’t replace such a wonderful furry friend as Nando with some other pet, but he desperately needed some other living thing to come home to and to take care of. He needed something to break up the monotony of going to work and coming home and watching TV until he was tired and going to sleep only to repeat the same process the next day. He needed something to love.
He visited the shelter in town on a Friday after work so that he would get to spend all weekend getting to know his new pet and earning their love. The shelter was loud and warm and smelled strongly of piss and shit and the all-around musty smell that many animals in close quarters tended to give a place, but Harry was too busy cooing endearments at the adorable animals to care too much about that.
He got to see a handful of cats including one sand-coloured adult cat named Dusty who weaved her body around his ankles and meowed repeatedly until he picked her up, then snuggled down into his sweater and purred happily in his arms. The only other true contender was a fat beagle named Chester who, upon having his cage opened, immediately waddled towards Harry and sat down heavily on his feet, looking up at him with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He expressed his preferences to the employee helping him and she was just running him through the checklist of things he’d need for the care and happiness of each animal when the back door of the shelter swung open and a ruckus erupted.
Two people were attempting to wrangle a squirming howling flurry of an animal down the hall and presumably into a cage. They succeeded eventually, but not without knocking into the walls and nearly getting scratched and bitten numerous times. They finally managed to shove the ball of fury into the cage and got it locked shut. The creature barked once more at the closed door of the cage and then retreated against the back wall, growling lowly the entire time.
“What happened there?” Harry asked, having to raise his voice to be heard over the other animals that were barking and hissing and generally freaking out due to all the disruptive noise.
“Found her tied to the fence in the yard of a house that has to have been empty for a month,” one of the staff who’d wrangled the animal into the cage replied. It had all happened so fast that Harry wasn’t even sure what kind of an animal she could have been.
“She’s gotta be less than a year old. Just a puppy,” the other worker commented sadly. A dog then, Harry thought. His heart went out to the puppy. He didn’t understand how someone could just abandon another creature and leave it to die.
“That’s terrible,” Harry said quietly, watching what he could see of the growling reddish-brown lump in the cage.
“Happens all too often with pitbulls,” the worker who had been helping Harry said with a sigh. “People buy and they’re raised to be fighting dogs or guard dogs and they get to be so aggressive that no one can have them as pets and they have to get put down.”
“Don’t think she was raised to fight,” one of the workers observe. “She’s too young. I think she was just abandoned because she was bought when she was a puppy and then she got to be too big. Some people are so irresponsible.”
“Some people are garbage ,” the other worker said with a snort, giving the puppy’s cage one last look before he turned and went to go hang up his jacket. The other worker followed him and Harry watched the puppy in the cage for a moment longer before he turned to his worker, who smiled awkwardly at him.
“So Dusty and Chester both took quite a shining to you,” she commented.
“What’s going to happen to that puppy?” Harry asked, disregarding her statement.
Harry’s worker (he thought she remember her being named Miranda) frowned and shrugged. “We’ll clean her up and feed her and get her healthy and try to find her a home.”
“How long do you think that’ll take?” he asked, fidgeting a little. He was worried about this puppy. He’d never cared this much about an animal in his life. She was just so innocent and didn’t deserve to be treated the way she did. Everyone, animals included, should be treated with kindness.
“Hard to say,” maybe-Miranda admitted. “She’s very hostile now and if she doesn’t warm up to people, we might not be able to find her a home. Families are our biggest market and no family wants a dog that hates people and growls and bites at them. Especially a pitbull.”
“What’ll happen to her if she doesn’t warm up to people?”
Maybe-Miranda gave him a significant look and he didn’t need to ask any further. “I want her,” he decided.
“...what?” Most-definitely-Miranda sputtered. She gaped at Harry and then at the puppy, still glued to the back wall of the cage and growling, perhaps even louder as if sensing that they were talking about her. “She’s not socialized to be around people and we don’t know if she’s house trained or if she’s had her shots or carrying and diseases or-”
“Do whatever you have to to make sure she’s healthy enough to go home with me, and then I’m adopting her,” Harry told her. “How soon can I bring her home? How soon do I need to puppy-proof my apartment?” Harry had been googling a lot in the past couple of weeks. He had already picked up almost all of the supplies he needed except for specific food and toys.
“Uhm - if… if you’re sure ,” she said, putting emphasis on the last word. Harry nodded firmly, watching the puppy in the cage with narrow-minded focus. “We can get her to the vet tomorrow for a check-up and find out any shots she might need, and then it should take us a couple weeks to get her up to a healthy weight.”
“Alright. Is it alright if I drop by in like a week then?” he asked. “Just to see how she’s doing?”
“Sure,” Miranda said. “We can wait to fill out the paperwork if you want. Just in case she isn’t… exactly what you want.”
“No,I’ll fill it out today,” Harry insisted.
“Mr. Styles,” Miranda said, taking a more serious tone with Harry very suddenly. Harry had asked her to call him Harry earlier, but he could tell that her tone left no room for comments on his part. “This puppy has been abandoned and possibly abused by her family. She may never not be hostile towards humans. You can’t just insist that everything is going to be fine and then change your mind when she isn’t immediately all cuddles and cute selfies to show your friends. A dog is a serious commitment and a lot of responsibility, and I’m not going to give her to you only for her to get abandoned by yet another person who was supposed to take care of her. Pets are like children and if you’re not willing to accept that kind of responsibility and make the needed adjustments in your life, then I strongly recommend you do not adopt a pet of any kind, especially this one.”
“You care so much about her, and that’s amazing,” Harry began. “But I’m serious about this. I don’t have kids or a partner or anything else that takes up a lot of space in my life. I want a pet to love like it’s my own child, and that puppy is the one I’m going to love.” Harry put on his most imploring face. “Please, Miranda. I’ve been itching to start a family of my own since I was sixteen. I’ve got so much love to give, and this puppy needs so much. Please . I will give her such a loving home and take such good care of her. It’s all that I want. To give her a good life.”
Miranda stared at him with her eyes narrowed for another moment. “No paperwork today,” she told him. “Come back in a week and we can see if she likes you.”
Harry thanked her profusely and left, sparing one last glance at the matted fur and protuberant ribcage of the puppy in the cage.
-
Harry went back a week later. He called ahead to let them know he’d be dropping in, and when he arrived, the workers didn’t look very happy to see him.
“She’s not eating,” they reported to him. Miranda was working, but she was busy with someone else so Harry was talking to a worker named Jack. “What she does eat she can’t keep down and she has blood in her stool.”
“Fuck,” Harry cursed. “Do you know why?”
“Probably some kind of infection,” Jack answered. “The vet here is testing some samples and we’ll know within the day. She’ll probably go to the specialist at the animal hospital downtown and they can get it sorted out.”
“So I can’t see her?” Harry asked, miserable, and the worker shook his head.
“If you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you when we know what’s happening with her,” Jack said, offering Harry a pad of sticky notes and a pen. He left his cell number, his landline, his e-mail address, and his mum’s cell number just in case .
“Please let me know as soon as you know anything,” Harry begged, and Jack promised he would.
-
The next morning, Harry received a call on his cell phone from the shelter, which he’d added to his contacts anticipating this exact call.
“Hi, this is Harry, how’s she doing?” Harry asked all in one breath, desperate to know how his future puppy was doing.
“Hi Harry, it’s Miranda. We spoke when you first visited the shelter,” Miranda said. Harry knew it was rude, but he didn’t acknowledge her greeting and after an awkward moment of dead air, she carried on. “Our vet here at the shelter ran some tests yesterday and has determined that your puppy has parvo, which is very serious.”
“What does that mean?” Harry asked, dread settling in the pit of his stomach.
“It means that her previous owners did not get her vaccinated against the virus, which is common for dogs to encounter, but most dogs are vaccinated and immune to it.” Harry cursed, extra spiteful of the puppy’s negligent asshole previous owners. “Agreed.”
Harry felt a burst of appreciation for Miranda. She was so viciously passionate about the health of animals and Harry appreciated that about her. “So will she get better? Can she?”
“This is where the decision becomes yours, Mr. Styles,” Miranda said, tone turning cold as steel. “For diseases like this, the shelter is not equipped to deal with treatment. All we can do is put her in quarantine and sanitize the entire building to prevent it from spreading to any of our other animals. It’s highly contagious.” Harry hummed for her to go on. “We can give her light antibiotics and some fluids via IV but that probably won’t get rid of the virus. She needs to go to the veterinary hospital downtown and that will be expensive. We are not able to provide funds for lengthy hospital stays.”
“So you need money to pay for the treatment,” Harry said.
“She’d need to stay at the hospital for a week or more,” Miranda told him, quoting him $2500 estimate for a seven day stay. “Are you prepared to provide that kind of money or more for her treatment?”
Harry didn’t even need to hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “Do I need to come to you to pay or do I need to go to the hospital, and can I pay with cheque?”
Miranda sounded a little choked up when she said, “They take cheques. We’ll drive her over now and you can meet us there.” She rattled off the address for the hospital, and Harry jotted it down. He told his boss that he had a family emergency and took off, barely obeying traffic laws in his hurry to get to the hospital and save his dog.
Harry met Miranda at the loading bay of the hospital where a man with a gurney was waiting for them to load the puppy on and take her inside. They kept her inside her carrier but Harry could tell from the lack of barking and movement in general that she must have been so weak that she could barely move. Harry and Miranda went ahead to get the puppy admitted and write the cheque and then she was being taken in to see the vet that Miranda always dealt with.
Miranda had to go back to the shelter to help with the disinfecting process, so she left Harry biting his nails to the quick in the waiting room of the second floor of the animal hospital. He waited around for an hour and a half before someone came to get him, a nurse bringing him back and into a room where Harry’s puppy was snoozing on a table, hooked up to a bunch of different wires and tubes.
“Dr. Tomlinson will be in with you shortly,” the nurse told him, offering him a smile as he left Harry alone with his puppy.
She was asleep, but Harry couldn’t help himself from wandering closer to get his first close look at the dog he’d adopted. She was emaciated and had patches of thinned fur, a visual testament to her failing health as a result of the infection. She snored softly as she slept, probably as a result of one of the IVs she was hooked up to. She looked rough, for lack of a better word. Maybe as she got older she stopped being cute, but Harry was never going to let her down like her previous owners had done, especially not for a bullshit reason like that.
The door opened and Harry finally looked away from the unconscious dog on the table. The vet closed the door behind himself, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking up from his clipboard to smile at Harry.
“Mr. Styles, then?” the vet asked, voice high and raspy. “Your girl here is an absolute doll. Appropriately terrified, but very sweet.”
Harry nodded and tried to speak, but disuse had gummed up his larynx and he had to pause and clear his throat in order to talk to the vet. “How is she doing?”
“I wouldn’t say she’s entered ‘good’ territory yet,” the vet told him, looking down at his clipboard and furrowing his brows. “But she’ll be alright. The key is getting puppies vaccinated as soon as possible, which I’m sure you would have done if she’d been yours earlier, since you don’t strike me as an absolute piece of shit.”
“So she’ll be fine?!” Harry asked, whisper-yelling even though the dog was in a drug-induced sleep and wouldn’t wake up just from Harry speaking with his low, slow voice.
“It’ll take a few days,” Dr. Tomlinson said. “The treatment is quite aggressive, but so is the virus. I’m confident that within a week, she should be ready to go home with some antibiotics that you can slip in with her food.”
Harry couldn’t help how he rushed forward and swept the vet up in a hug. This man was a stranger (a handsome, nice-smelling stranger, but definitely not someone he should be hugging) but Harry was feeling so flushed with relief and joy that he didn’t know how else to let it out. Before he knew it he was shaking with sobs, and the vet, bless him, just rubbed Harry’s back.
“Let it out, love. She’s gonna be fine,” the vet murmured, voice so soft and tender that Harry just clung to him and cried harder. He’d never even had a friendly interaction with this dog, but she was his and she was going to be fine .
-
Harry visited the animal hospital every day that his puppy was getting treated there, and he soon discovered that Dr. Tomlinson had been correct in his statement about her being sweet. When she started to regain her strength she was nothing but a happy, loving puppy. Harry had to wear gloves and a mask and an apron that made him feel like a surgeon as well as dorky little paper booties over his shoes whenever he visited with her, but she seemed overjoyed to see him, licking his gloved hands and leaning most of her weight against him where he stood next to the doggy bed that had been placed on the table for her comfort. She couldn’t be around other dogs while she was still getting treated for parvo, but they tried to make her table as comfortable for her as they could.
Harry also found himself hopelessly endeared by his new puppy, who was nothing but big brown eyes and floppy pink tongue after four days, but to his surprise, he was also growing very attached to Dr. Tomlinson, or Louis, as he insisted Harry call him after the first day.
Louis was so kind and gentle when he worked with Harry’s dog, chatting with her like she was a child and apologizing profusely whenever he had to do anything that would cause her pain. He rubbed his hand over her thickening midsection as she slowly put on weight while her body was fighting the virus, telling her that he wanted her to be the chubby little sweetheart she was meant to be when she came back for a check-up in two weeks. She looked up at him like he’d hung the stars, and Harry could understand her fondness for him.
On the third day, Harry entered the hospital to find Louis standing at the nurse’s station and chatting with one of the staff. When he noticed Harry standing across the reception area from him, he smiled the scrunchy little smile that he only seemed to show when he was interacting with an animal or, for whatever reason, Harry. His eyes practically sparkled as he walked across the room to greet Harry and collect him, leading him back to his puppy’s room with a gentle hand braced in a barely-there touch at the small of Harry’s back.
“Let’s go see your girl,” Louis said, walking with Harry towards the hallway where his dog’s room was.
He was carrying a clipboard that usually stayed in Harry’s puppy’s room, and Harry noticed a green letter ‘H’ scrawled across the front of the file that hadn’t been there the day before. “What does the H stand for?” Harry asked, nodding down at the folder as they walked down the hall.
“Oh - uhm - well, I talk to her a lot when I’m working with her, you know, keep her company,” Louis explained. “And it felt weird to just talk to without using a name. So I sort of… named her.”
Harry stared at him. He immediately began backpedalling.
“I just didn’t know if you’d named her yet and you can absolutely change it whenever you want, it’s just the first thing that came to my head-”
“What did you name her?” Harry asked, cutting off his rambling and apologies. His cheeks were a rather charming pink and he looked sheepish as he answered. They stopped at a supply station so Harry could get suited up so he could visit with his dog without risking contamination.
“Hope,” he replied. “Because… you know. She’s been through a lot but she’s still such a happy puppy, and whenever I look at her, I feel like everything is gonna turn out alright.”
Harry hummed, pursing his lips as he considered. They reached the door to his puppy’s room, and Louis held it open for Harry.
“Sorry. It’s kind of dumb, innit? You can change it to whatever you want. It’s not my place to name your pet.”
“Nonsense. I love it,” Harry decided. “Her name is Hope. It’s a perfect name.”
Louis furrowed his brows and gave Harry a look of confusion, features softened by the dark frames of his glasses. He looked like he thought Harry was making fun of him, so Harry put on a beaming grin and stepped into the room.
“Hi Hope!” he exclaimed, making Hope bark at him and wag her tail is glee. ‘Hi baby!”
He stepped into the room to play with his puppy so he didn’t see all of Louis’ reaction, but he thought he caught that adorable scrunched-up smile out of the corner of his eye.
-
A week had passed since Hope had been admitted to the animal hospital, and she was finally clear to be released into Harry’s care with a hefty bag of medication and a promise from Harry that she’d be returning for a follow-up appointment in two weeks. In the World’s Smoothest Move, Harry suggested that maybe Louis could give Harry his number and they could arrange for him to come over to Harry’s apartment and check up on Hope himself. So he wouldn’t have to wait the full two weeks, of course.
It was with a now-familiar glittery, crinkly eyes and scrunchy smile that Louis scribbled down his name and number on the edge of the folder that he kept Hope’s file in and ripped it off, pressing it into Harry’s hand and letting his touch linger, warm and full of promise. Of hope.