A.N.: I had to get Harriet and Cedric in the same room, and I was thinking about how I had conjunctivitis in March when it snowed, and I had to stay indoors all week!

Conjunctivitis

Unfortunately, the first week of October meant a bought of Conjunctivitis for Harriet, which had been making the rounds through the first-year class: being contagious, and Hogwarts being a school, Harriet was confined within the white curtains of the hospital wing for a week, feeling miserable and in pain. Madam Pomfrey could just as easily have slipped her a potion and sent her on her way, but seeing as Harriet was already 'delicate' in Madam Pomfrey's eyes, she liked to keep Harriet under her jurisdiction for as long as reasonably possible.

Between meditating for Occlumensy lessons, and reading through Secrets of the Darkest Art for any sign that Voldemort could have possibly made more than one Horcrux, and completing all the many, complicated assignments their teachers were giving her on a daily basis through Hermes, Harriet still found time to make a birthday-present for Cedric: she enjoyed it. She knew mid-October was Cedric's birthday. His seventeenth birthday, on the eighteenth of October, would make him eligible to put his name in for the Triwizard Tournament, and Harriet knew from the rumour-mill that Cedric was considering entering.

While she wasn't exactly hanging out with him at lunchtime or sprawling over the lawn in the courtyard during break or free lessons (which only N.E.W.T. students had, regretfully) Harriet liked Cedric: She liked seeing him smiling in the hallways—he always had a smile for her, too. He said hello to her whenever she was close enough, and she always felt really good when he did that.

So, while she was sequestered in her hospital bed, she worked on the present she had thought up for Cedric: she had ordered a photograph-album from Flourish and Blotts, a handsome black leather one with a badger embossed on the front cover, and she'd had Cedric's initials—C.D.D.—embossed on it too. And inside, she had filled the album with coloured card from the stationers, fun prints and quirky patterns, kind of like the kind of side of Cedric she had seen over the summer, with the photographs she had printed last week in the lab that Cedric had particularly liked.

She remembered everything Cedric had said about the photographs she had taken over the summer, and had written his comments down in her neat, pretty calligraphy, decorating the pages with small drawings. She had wrapped it and it was waiting in her schoolbag for the day she was released.

She was lying in a daze, staring up at the ceiling through tired, pained eyes and feeling completely miserable, the strong sunlight, strange for October, splashed across her sheets, highlighting the dust floating in the air, and the fluffiness of her odd socks—one was a striking acid-green with emerald-green snakes slithering around her toes, the other was fawn with great winged palomino horses flying around her ankle. Padfoot slept curled up at the foot of the bed by her feet, as usual, sleeping in a big patch of hot sunlight.

"Harriet, you have a visitor," Madam Pomfrey said happily, and Harriet wrinkled her nose and pouted, hauling herself up into a sitting position. She ran her hands through her hair and righted her pyjama top, and thanked the good gods above that she was wearing her own pyjamas, not the unflattering hospital-issue ones when non other than Cedric came through the divide in the curtains.

"Hi!"

"Hey," Cedric smiled, tugging the chair beside her bed a little closer, and sat down. "So she's got you locked up in here, huh?"

"Madam Pomfrey prefers to have me in here with Conjunctivitis than wait for me to crack my head open," Harriet sighed. "Again."

"I see," Cedric grinned coyly.

"How'd you know I was here?" Harriet asked, glancing over him; he was in his uniform, so he was either on a free-period or it was lunchtime. She hadn't been paying attention to the bells, muted as they were in the hospital-wing for the peace of the patients.

"Hermes," Cedric smiled. "He mentioned it."

"You've been talking to him a lot, haven't you," Harriet guessed. Cedric laughed softly.

"Yeah," he smirked at her. Harriet narrowed her already pained eyes.

"Something tells me I should be wary about what you two talk about," she said, and Cedric smiled coyly, glancing at her through his lashes.

"Oh—I have this for you," Cedric said, tugging something out of his bag; it was a neat powder-blue envelope, with her name scrawled across the front. Harriet took the card and smiled to herself, opening it: backed onto a powder-blue card was a sort of rectangle of frayed, bluebell-patterned fabric, with one large blue heart sewn around the edge with white stitches, with white lettering spelling out 'Get Well Soon', and as Harriet pulled the card out of the envelope, three beautiful iridescent, velvety greeny-blue butterflies opened their wings and fluttered them: there was a sprig of forget-me-nots by the ribbon that tied the card closed.

"This is lovely," Harriet smiled at him. Even with her tired, gross eyes, she could see it was very pretty. She untied the ribbon and smiled when the sound of birds singing in the morning with a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of trees in the background quietly filled the air around her.

"I thought you hadn't been outside in a while, so…" Cedric smiled, and Harriet beamed at him.

"Did you make this?" she asked, amazed; the message inside read, 'Please Get Well Soon, I miss seeing you around school. I miss your smile, love Cedric.' She placed the card on her bedside cabinet with the others she had received—one from Dean Thomas, a fascinating rendition of Harriet-Smoad with conjunctivitis with weepy eyes, alternately putting drops in them or dabbing at them with a handkerchief, her lower-lip wobbling, another from the Creevey brothers.

"Um…my mother did," Cedric admitted, smiling. Harriet glanced up. "She likes making pretty things—cards, photograph frames, jewellery."

"I thought she worked at the Ministry," Harriet frowned.

"She does, part-time," Cedric shrugged. "She does this kind of stuff as a hobby, sells it at Madam Primpernelle's."

"How is she? Is she still working overtime at the Ministry?" Harriet asked. Mrs Diggory usually stopped by every evening after work, even when Cedric was staying with the Weasleys; she would pop in to say hello, and Mrs Weasley had never been annoyed if it was quite late. Harriet liked her a lot; she had been very quiet, affectionate, and quietly mischievous like Cedric.

"No, things have calmed down where she is," Cedric smiled, as if he was relieved. "Dad's still up to his ears in bother, though."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Harriet said politely. Cedric shrugged.

"Keeps him occupied," he said softly, smiling.

"I have something for you," Harriet said, leaning over the bed to her bag on the floor. Cedric stooped and lifted it for her, and Harriet lifted out the present she had wrapped in brown paper and ribbon.

"What's this?"

"It's for your birthday. You don't have to open it now…but I don't know when I'll get out of here, so I want you to have it," Harriet said, passing him the present. A tiny smile played on his lips and he undid the neat Spellotape Harriet had secured the paper with, tugging out the handsome leather book.

He flicked through it, slowly examining the photographs and the comments and the drawings Harriet had added. "This is wonderful," he smiled, pausing for a longer time over Harriet's favourite photograph—the one of just her and Cedric in the back-garden of the Burrow with their fairy-cakes and Butterbeer—and shot her a grin. "You made this?"

"Yeah."

They talked for a little while about the summer, and what had been happening around school—"Warrington, in Slytherin, likes all things frilly," Cedric whispered. Harriet gaped incredulously, and laughed—but when the bell rang, Cedric had to get to Transfiguration, and Harriet should have been making her way to Snape's office after dinner, however, being quarantined, Harriet was forced to remain in her little area for the duration of the weekend—which didn't mean she didn't have homework:

"There you go," Rhona groaned, dumping half the library's worth of books on her bed. "That's all I could carry. Snape's set another essay. I think he's feeling vindictive because you weren't there to punish this week."

"It's not my fault—Madam Pomfrey won't let me leave," Harriet huffed. Her eyes were fine, now, she'd finished using the preventative and healing drops and she'd spent every hour of the past six days lying in bed, doing work. Nobody could say she'd been dossing around.

"Hey, who's this one from?" Rhona asked, picking up the butterfly card. Harriet made to grab it but Rhona, smirking deliciously, was faster.

"Oooh, Cedric," she taunted, dancing out of reach with the card—"'I miss seeing you around school. I miss your smile, love Cedric'—'love'. Oooh!"

"What are you going on about?" Hermes asked, delivering a note from Professor Snape.

"Harriet's got herself a laddie-love," Rhona smirked, showing Hermes the card.

"Oh, Cedric—yeah, I told him you were here," Hermes nodded, without even reading the greeting. "I just saw him—you gave him his present, didn't you."

Harriet nodded, accepting the note from Snape:

Miss Potter,

You will report to my office at seven a.m. on Monday evening to continue your tuition. No exceptions,

Professor Snape.

A.N.: Please review!