March came before Amaranth finally exploded. "You're spending way too much time with him!" she yelled, her face pinched-looking in its little-girl fury, stomping her foot as she rounded on Albus in the empty room she'd led them to. Both the locket he'd given her for Christmas and the bracelet from Valentine's were absent from her person, though he was hardly surprised.

He stared at the girl for a moment, gaping, before his expression darkened, snarling as his eyes narrowed. "Excuse me? My best friend has been in the hospital wing for weeks, he's not getting any better, no one knows what's wrong with him or how to fix it, and you're upset because I spend visiting hours making sure he doesn't fall behind in classes?"

She seemed to shrink as his words got sharper, avoiding his eye, but she stubbornly crossed her arms and turned her head, cheeks burning with shame (somehow it wasn't quite cute this way), glaring at the wall. He waited for her to say something, but when she did nothing he turned to leave.

"If you walk out of this door," she called out to him coldly as his fingers met the handle, turning her head to look at him sideways, "we're through."

He turned to give her a long and unwavering stare, which she met with equal force. "I never would have thought you to be so selfish," he told her softly, emotionlessly. "Goodbye then."

He turned from her and stepped through the threshold, slamming the door behind him with resounding force.

(He heard later that she was found a good hour after the event, crying in a corner of the room, but he found it hard to care, even as Amaranth's best friend slapped him. He only watching her with cold eyes and smirked as she screamed in unfettered rage before telling her, in cold anger and in no short terms, why exactly he wasn't at fault and how she'd find some particularly nasty things being spread about her and his ex-girlfriend if either of them dared speak badly of Scorpius again.)

The rest of the day he spent alone, stomping up and down the common room, the other Slytherins avoiding him neatly. He left for breakfast as soon as he could the next morning, and left breakfast as soon as possible for the Hospital Wing. He looked tired as he sat beside the bed, and quietly directed his pieces against Scorpius' set of marble chessmen, though his team was being pushed back with little effort. Once they had played through a game, Scorpius handed him a letter, folded at an odd point so that only a certain portion of the text was visible.

The hand was not one Albus recognized. Written in cobalt, the script was smooth and feminine, small but quite legible despite the ornate letters.

-The creams I have sent you have your medicine inside them. St Mungo's has just given me a new prescription; they hope that it will work far better. Your father assures me that they know what they're doing, but a mother always worries, as you know. I'm told that this particular concoction can have a quite serious effect on one that is healthy, so do be sure to keep them away from your Albus. I'll be going to Brazil to speak with a Healer there, so I shan't be about to send him anything for his birthday, but do tell him to have a good year for me, and I'll send him some Millefeuille as soon as I get back.

The letter had greater length, but its text had been folded back, so Albus did not read on despite his curiosity. It seemed rather formal. He was certain it held great feeling, but there was an awkwardness in the way it was shared. Scorpius undoubtedly had no trouble reading past it, however. He glanced at the box beside the boy; each of the small delicacies had tiny labels with a date and time. Albus only wished that his own medicine could look and taste so good when he was sick, though the way she'd described it put him on edge. Why would one try to remedy an illness with something that would sicken the healthy?

He only sighed, and thought instead of his birthday- in a week and a day, he would be fifteen. There wasn't anything terribly magical about the age, but he felt it was alright to look forward to it anyway.

The week passed quickly enough. James, captain of the Quiddich team like their father and uncle Oliver, had been quite nervous over the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw match and therefore had been taking out his anxious tension on Albus, asking him the most ridiculous questions about Quiddich (which Albus cared nothing about) and the breakup with his girlfriend (which was certainly not a subject he felt like discussing with anyone, especially not his brother.) He found the whole thing quite ostentatious, and by the fourteenth he was in a particularly irritable mood.

He needed a hobby, that was it. He pondered on it, wondered what he could do that wasn't rampant in his rather large family. Quiddich was out- James or not he'd never had an interest in it, despite his mother and his uncle's words of encouragement when he was young. Grandpa Weasley collected plugs and Percy Weasley collected miniature astronomer's globes. Grandma Weasley knitted, Aunt Hermione had her books, Uncle George his comical inventions, his father ran the Auror department with Uncle Ron so who knew if they had time for hobbies at all. Rose had her writing and Lily her garden- Neville (Professor Longbottom, whatever) had even given her a small, empty corner of Greenhouse Three for her own. He'd heard some muttering about it, but Neville had told them that as her Head of House he thought it would help wonderfully with her self-growth and if everyone could please shut up and stop complaining because they all had better things to do.

After long thought he resolved that it was quite strange no one in the family had ever learned to play an instrument. He supposed the Weasley family of old couldn't have afforded it, but it seemed hardly a problem now. Nevertheless, it would be wonderful to learn. However, finding a teacher out here would be a problem, so- there was only one answer, really. (That way, one day, he might be able to play the song that was written for him, and that would be wonderful.)

He'd made up his mind: he'd ask Scorpius to teach him the harp.