Professor Snape's Lily & Mr. Malfoy's Harriet: The Bonds of Family

Chapter 22 - Feelings

Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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Harriet blinked at Ron and Hermione.

Ron and Hermione blinked back.

"Are you......are you positive you heard him correctly, Harriet?" Hermione asked.

Ron frowned as Harriet furrowed her brow and replied in a huff, "Yes, I'm positive I heard him correctly, Hermione! Do you think I'm daft?!"

"No, no!" Hermione said defensively as she raised a hand, "I didn't mean that......it's just.....you did have a really terrible fall. I'm certain Madam Pomfrey gave you a few potions to help with the pain. Are you positive that what you heard wasn't a hallucination?....From a side effect or something?"

Harriet frowned at Hermione while Ron innocently asked, "I thought Professor Snape told us that most healing potions don't give people many side effects?"

"Not many and none are two different things, Ron." Hermione quipped.

Ron shrugged as he glanced away.

"So you two don't believe me then?" Harriet asked with a scowl, "Look, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I heard him! I did!"

"No, Harriet! It's not that! We believe you!" Hermione insisted, "I....I think you should be absolutely certain though before you accuse Malfoy of saying all that! Can you imagine what would happen if I was right and you dreamed it instead?"

"I never said I was going to accuse him of anything." Harriet huffed.

".........Then what are you going to do?" Ron asked with a frown as he looked at Harriet.

"The same thing I've done for years." Harriet shrugged, "I'm going to try my best to avoid him."

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That night, Draco wore a deep frown on his pale, handsome face as he stared down at the blank diary page.

He had become well accustomed to the exact time that Harriet's words usually appeared in front of his eyes.

As Draco did every evening, he sat with the diary page in his hand, ten minutes before he expected to begin communicating with his darling.

He eagerly anticipated the start of what would be another one of their secret conversations, but the time for Harriet to write came.......and passed.

Draco's heart clenched as two minutes went by and her words failed to appear.

Three minutes.

Four...........

Five.

By minute ten, his pulse pounded so quickly that his arms trembled as he waited, quill in his hand, frown still on his face.

Draco sat there for the next hour, waiting, watching, and hoping, but for the first night in over a year, Harriet's words never came across that torn out diary page.

Across the castle, during that hour before bed, although Harriet kept up a lively conversation with her friends in the Gryffindor common room while they laughed and chatted together, her mind kept wandering back to the diary.

It pained her to have finally learned the identity of her pen pal.

She had really enjoyed using the diary to find a confidant in an unseen friend, yet the truth that she had been writing to Draco Malfoy the entire time mortified her.